On my way, sent Anja, though she and Jaya didn’t arrive until a few minutes later, when the booming dance song transitioned into something a little more slow-paced.
“Woo!” Jaya flopped down on the bench with an exhausted laugh. “I love this place! Are all American clubs like this?”
“Most of them don’t give you vertigo,” said Marisa, “but yeah, pretty much.” It was slightly easier to hear over here, away from the dance floor, and Anja leaned down to shout at Marisa’s purse.
“You’re missing out, Fang!”
“On what?” asked Fang. “Bouncing around in the dark? How do you know I’m not doing that right now?”
“No wonder you think it’s dumb, if you do it alone,” said Marisa.
“Anything that can’t be done alone is not worth doing,” said Fang. “And yes, I thought about the obvious sexual implications of that sentence as soon as I said it out loud. Shut up.”
Marisa laughed. “Hooray for Fang! It’s like talking to the real you again!”
“Because the real me is inside that shell you tried to pull me out of,” said Fang. “I like my shell. It has free Wi-Fi.”
“C-Gull’s going to be stuck in that line,” said Anja. “Should we maybe just go out and find him?”
“He said he’d contact us,” said Jaya. “We have no idea what he looks like, and he doesn’t know us—just this table.”
“Speaking of which,” said Anja, and leaned across the table toward the couple kissing passionately on the other side. “Excuse me! Hey, excuse me!”
They pulled their lips apart and looked at her, obviously annoyed.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Anja. “This is my first time here: What do you recommend from the bar?”
The couple glared at her, then stood up to leave. Anja laughed and moved around to take their bench. She and Jaya ordered drinks, and they sat back to wait.
They waited a very long time.
“You know,” said Sahara, nearly an hour later, “I’m starting to worry that C-Gull won’t be able to get in this place at all. I mean, not everybody can. If he was planning on a crappy bar like Lowball, he might not even meet the dress code for Daze.” Cameron and Camilla weren’t around to overhear them; Sahara had sent them back to the dance floor to get some party footage.
“I called and left another message,” said Fang. “He knows you’re waiting there . . . or at least he’ll know if he checks his private arms dealer phone. Which he doesn’t carry around with him, so, blah.”
“You suck at good news,” said Anja.
“You suck at finding arms dealers in dance clubs,” said Fang.
“That’s true enough,” said Marisa, looking around for the hundredth time. “Should we maybe leave and go over to Lowball?”
“Dressed like this?” asked Sahara. “We’d get mugged by the first person we saw, and then probably the second and third as well.”
“The fourth would grope us,” said Anja. “And then throw up on himself.”
“Don’t be mean to the fourth guy,” said Fang. “Maybe he’s a gentleman, you don’t know.”
“Oh my gosh,” said Jaya, coming back to the table for the tenth time. It seemed like every guy in the place was trying to dance with her. “Still nothing?”
“Still nothing,” said Marisa. “Two minutes.”
“What?” asked Jaya.
“Ninety seconds,” said Anja.
“You’re way overshooting it,” said Sahara. “Thirty seconds, max.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Jaya.
“They’re betting on how long it’ll be before another guy asks you to dance,” said Fang.
“Excuse me,” said a voice, and they all looked up at a tall Mexican man with a trimmed mustache and his shirt collar open to the third button, showing off a shaved, muscular chest.
“C-Gull?” asked Anja.
“Seagull?” asked the man. “I just want to ask this muchacha to dance.”
“Pay up,” said Sahara.
After another hour, they were starting to get really worried.
“What do we do if he doesn’t show up?” asked Marisa. “He’s our only shot at this. Even with a back door into the Sigan system, we can’t get Alain out on our own. He said the trick was to get him out of his cell, and with the access I found I can totally send a fake order get Mr. Park to move him, but then what?”
“I don’t think he’s coming,” said Anja. “Maybe he forgot? Maybe we can set up another meeting for tomorrow?”
“It took us three days to get this meeting,” said Sahara. “In three more days the tournament will be over, and who knows where Alain will be.”
Marisa looked at Anja. “Have you tried the hoodie again?”
“She hasn’t put it on again,” said Anja. “I can find Renata, but I can’t get into anything.”
“Wait,” said Fang, “I think I see him.”
“You’re not even here,” said Marisa.
“I’m watching Sahara’s vidcast,” said Fang. “There’s a guy by the side wall who looks like a salty old fisherman. Not exactly your typical Daze customer.”
“Which wall?” asked Marisa. The girls looked around but couldn’t see through the crowd and lights.
“I have no idea,” said Fang. “One with . . . stupid light balls all over it?”
“Ah,” said Anja. They were surrounded by walls that fit that description. “That narrows it down.”
“I think I see him,” said Sahara. “Yep, I got him. Salty old sea dog is right, holy crap. Over Marisa’s right shoulder—don’t look. He’s watching us.”
“Trying to see if we’re being followed?” asked Jaya.
“Trying to decide if you’re his contacts,” said Fang. “I guarantee you don’t look like whatever he was expecting to find for a secret arms deal.”
“Just be patient,” said Sahara. “He’ll come over eventually. Fang, let us know if he slips out, and we’ll go after him.”
“Gotcha,” said Fang.
They waited almost ten more minutes before the man finally approached the table.
“Finally,” muttered Anja.
“Excuse me, young ladies,” said the man. He looked about sixty years old, though it was hard to guess ages after forty-five, when so many people started buying antiaging implants. He wore a wrinkled black suit with a poorly tied tie, neither of which looked like they fit him. Even in the suit, his scraggly beard and weathered face marked him as some kind of seaman, perhaps a smuggler. He cleared his throat. “I hate to ask you this, but I need this table.”
“Sit down,” said Sahara, scooting over to make room, “we’ve been waiting all night.”
“No,” said the man, “I’m meeting someone, and I need this table without you in it.”
“We’re the ones you’re meeting,” said Fang. “You’re C-Gull, right?”
“Your purse is talking,” said the man.
“Daze,” said Marisa, “Wednesday, third booth on the left. This is us. We contacted you about Alain being captured, and you said to meet us here to talk about getting him out again.”
The man stared at them for a moment, then turned to walk away. “I can’t believe this.”
“Wait!” shouted Sahara, jumping up. The club was so loud and crowded that no one seemed to pay them any attention. She grabbed his arm and stopped him. The shape-shifting pillar undulated brightly behind them. “You said you’d meet us—we’ve been waiting all night.”
“You didn’t tell me you were . . . little girls,” said C-Gull. “What are you . . . what am I even supposed to do with you? I’m a businessman, not a babysitter.”
“You heard about Bluescreen?” asked Marisa. C-Gull looked at her, saying nothing, but the word at least had gotten his attention. Marisa nodded. “We took that whole operation down.”
C-Gull raised an eyebrow.
“That’s right,” said Sahara. “And if you know Bluescreen, I assume you know the Softball virus?”
?
??Or the Deadman exploit?” asked Anja. “Trust us, we’re the real deal.”
Marisa watched the man’s face, hoping what they said had convinced him. Aside from Bluescreen, their other hacks weren’t exactly impressive enough to sway an actual criminal.
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” said C-Gull. “And then I’m going to kill Alain for sending me his little gaggle of . . . flibbertigibbets.”
“You won’t regret it,” said Sahara, leading him back to the table. They made room for him and he sat down, pulling at his collar.
“I should have known this was bad when you changed the meeting place,” he said. “I said yes because I owe Alain, but come on. How long do I have to keep this stupid tie on?”
“Take it off,” said Anja. “No one’s wearing one anyway.”
“They wouldn’t let me in without it,” he grumbled, taking it off. “I had to go pull my buddy out of bed and borrow his suit just to get in this stupid place.”
“That’s why you were late?” asked Fang.
“Why is the purse still talking?” asked C-Gull.
“That’s our mission coordinator,” said Sahara. “Now: Alain has been captured by the megacorp he was trying to sabotage, KT Sigan. He was able to get one message out to us, and said you could break him out.”
“Impossible,” said C-Gull. “Prison, easy, but a megacorp? They have way more money, and that means better security, better everything. Way harder to suborn.”
“What can you do, then?” asked Marisa.
“I can sell you weapons,” said C-Gull. “You want to blast your way in? It’s a terrible plan, but I’m your man. Now, if you could figure out when they’re moving him from one building to the next, I could sell you some explosives to—”
“No bombs,” said Sahara. “We don’t want to hurt anyone, or land ourselves in jail.”
“Typical,” said C-Gull, but shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be a bomb, though—I’ve got a whole line of TEDs that’ll take out a car without any collateral damage at all.”
“TED?” asked Jaya.
“A transient electromagnetic device,” said C-Gull. “Instead of a big-boom explosion you just get a pulse wave that takes out electronics—they can shut down cars, djinnis, cameras—”
“And overclocked security guards,” said Marisa, nodding. “It’s like the teddy bear we used on Mr. Park. Alain must have gotten it from you.”
“You put one of my TEDs in a stuffed bear?” asked C-Gull. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“A TED would be perfect,” said Sahara. “Mr. Park’s still there, so we’re going to need one of those to get past him.”
C-Gull nodded. “How big?”
“The size you sold to Alain before was pretty good,” said Marisa. “It was easy enough to hide, and it took out their best overclocked security guard for a good two or three minutes.”
“I have a shipment coming in two weeks,” said C-Gull. “One thousand yuan apiece, as many as you want.”
“Whoa,” said Anja. “We need them way sooner than that.”
“How much sooner?”
“Tonight?” said Sahara. “Saturday at the absolute latest.”
“We’d have to be in the final match for that to work,” said Marisa.
“Final match?” asked C-Gull. “I thought you needed these for a rescue mission.”
“The rescue mission has to take place during an Overworld tournament,” said Sahara. “It’s our only window of access to the Sigan servers.”
“Is this one of those hidden camera shows?” asked C-Gull. He glanced around the club, as if expecting to see a camera crew hiding behind a bench. “You can’t be police, you’re not remotely their style. Maybe in the talking purse?” He grabbed it and opened it up, pulling out a pack of breath mints and a couple of tampons. “Oops, sorry. Whose is this?”
“We need something by Saturday,” said Marisa, yanking the purse away from him. “What can you get us by then?”
C-Gull blushed, then put his hand on his chin to think. He blinked, checking some kind of inventory list in his djinni, then shrugged. “Well, I can get you some TEDs, but they’re not big enough to take out an overclocked djinni. Especially not if it’s shielded.”
“How big?” asked Jaya.
“This big,” said C-Gull, and reached into his hip pocket, leaning practically into Marisa’s lap to open the pocket wide enough for his hand. Finally he pulled something out and slapped it down on the table: a small disk, a little wider than a quarter, and a little thicker than three quarters stacked together.
“That’s tiny,” said Anja.
“That’s the point,” said C-Gull. “They’re easy to carry and easy to hide. I always have a couple on me in case I need to kill a security camera or something.”
“How do you trigger them?” asked Fang.
“Well, talking purse, they’re fully programmable, with a little RF sensor that you can trigger pretty much any way you want. You can set them as time bombs, to go off at certain time, or after a certain amount of time has passed; they even have their own unique IDs, so you can trigger them remotely.”
Marisa picked up the tiny TED, turning it over in her fingers. An idea was starting to form in her mind. “What about proximity triggers?” she asked. “Like, if a certain djinni ID gets too close?”
“Sure. But they’re not strong enough to take out a djinni by themselves. Maybe a whole bunch of them together, but then you lose the benefit of the small size.”
“That’s okay,” said Marisa, “we can work with that.”
“Mari’s got a plan,” said Anja, grinning wildly.
Marisa smiled back, then looked at C-Gull. “How many can you get us by Saturday?”
“A hundred,” said C-Gull. “Maybe one-twenty. A hundred yuan each.”
“We’ll take as many as you can get,” said Anja. “How do we pay you?”
“Cash only,” said C-Gull.
“And where do we . . .” Anja paused, wincing. “Cash only?”
“You think I want a digital record of my illegal weapons deals?” C-Gull threw his hands in the air. “Why am I even here? I’m leaving—this is stupid.”
“Wait,” said Sahara, grabbing his arm. “We can pay.” She looked at Anja. “Right?”
Anja grimaced. “I can do twelve thousand yuan, but not in cash. That’s the kind of thing my dad will definitely notice.”
“Good-bye,” said C-Gull, and stood up.
“Fifteen thousand,” said Marisa. C-Gull stopped, and Marisa clenched her teeth. This was it. They needed those TEDs, or everything came crashing down. She nodded, and spoke as firmly as she could. “In cash. You tell us where.”
C-Gull turned around. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not convinced.”
“We can get it,” she said. “We can get it early if we have to, just . . . we need those TEDs.”
C-Gull thought for a moment, then slid back down onto the bench. “You pay up front. I’ll send drop-off coordinates for a neutral location, you take the money there, and then I’ll send another set of coordinates for the pickup. Say the word, and I can have the TEDs ready to go in forty-eight hours.”
“No earlier than that?” asked Sahara.
“No.”
Sahara stared at him, then let out a slow breath. “Do it,” she said. “That’s Friday night. But you better not be late, because we have zero wiggle room in our timeline.”
“You insult me,” said C-Gull. “I’m the damn professional here; of course I’ll be on time.” He stood up, then looked at them and sighed. “Are you going to be dressed like fairy princesses when we make the exchange?”
“No,” said Sahara.
“I might be,” said Anja.
Sahara stood up to shake his hand. “Thank you for your time, C-Gull. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Whatever,” said C-Gull, and shoved his tie into his pocket. “I’m getting out of this Barbie Dream House before I go insane.” He walked away, and
Sahara sat back down.
“So,” said Sahara, fixing Marisa with her eyes. “You have a plan?”
“I think so,” she said. “At least the beginnings of one. First of all, with this timeline, we have to make it to the final match—we don’t have to win, but we have to be in the game. It’s the only way to access the company database.”
“Screw second place,” said Sahara. “If we get that far, we’re going all the way.”
“Yesssssssss,” said Anja.
“And then what?” asked Jaya. “How do we rescue Alain?”
“We don’t just rescue Alain,” said Marisa. “We rescue him, and get the financial data, and find Grendel, and destroy Sigan—the whole frakking deal. And, apparently, we win the tournament while we’re at it, because why not?”
“Awesome,” said Sahara. “But how do we make all this happen?”
“Easy,” said Marisa, and smiled. “We start with salad dressing.”
“And the money?” asked Anja. “Fifteen thousand yuan in untraceable cash is not something we can just pull out of our asses.”
“Depends on which one,” said Marisa. “Who’s the biggest ass you know?”
The girls stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out what she meant, and then suddenly Anja’s jaw dropped open. “No.”
“It’s the only way,” said Marisa. “We’ve come too far, and this is too important to back down now.”
“What’s going on?” asked Fang. “Where are we getting the money?”
Marisa shook her head, and forced herself to say it: “Omar Maldonado.”
TWENTY-THREE
That night, Marisa couldn’t sleep. Even if Omar helped them—and they wouldn’t know for sure until they asked him in the morning—their plan still had so many holes in it. How did it end? Pitting Sigan against Johara was great in the long term, but how did it help them escape the building? The first rule of getting in somewhere, Alain had said, was knowing how to get back out again. They could get Alain out of the building, sure, but then Sigan would just chase him down and catch him again, and Johara couldn’t help with that. They needed something better. And what about the data? Their plan to use Johara didn’t work unless they revealed what they stole, but as soon as they did they’d be admitting to the crime. So either Sigan got them, and they were never seen again, or the police got them and they spent the rest of their lives in prison. Was stopping Sigan really worth all of that? Even if Sigan turned Mirador into a slum, at least she’d be in a slum with her family. They could stay together and protect each other. But then . . . her family wasn’t the only one being ruined by Sigan. How many other people in Mirador would lose their jobs or their homes? How many other neighborhoods around the world would get ground down in the relentless search for profit?