I catch a glimpse of a sludge hoodie bobbing away, carried by the surge, and recognise it as Twitch's signature style, or rather signature lack of style. Which means either that he's fucking with me, or that it's time.
I glance over at the team's positions. The bench is vacant. No visual on Ibis/Julia. Doyenne is heading down the stairs at an easy amble. Nice of them to let me know. I sneak a peek at my phone, which is thrumming insistently with an in-game msg and an attachment of ID images.
>> *SECURITY ALERT. #SD-17* Scan cams identified four (4) known terrorists in immediate vicinity.
I dump the pushmag in my pocket, saving it for later, and let the throng sweep me towards the lifts, as per our blueprint. It's basic stuff. Ibis/Julia and Doyenne will take either end of the train, working their way down towards each looking for the terrorist called Unity, the one with the dirty bomb, while I cover the platform – and the little shit keeps a bead on all of us from some disused maintenance cube lodged in the ceiling. They got access to a maintenance cube through sheer fluke. Took them eighteen hours solid gamespace play to crack a drug-bust mission, and when they'd fragged every junkie in sight, they found all kinds of useful goodies tucked among their stash, including an access card that unlocks certain gameplaces realworld.
I click open the folder, flip through the images, supposedly uploaded fresh from the station security cams. Not actually, sorry to disappoint you. It's all pre-scanned. As lucrative as play is, and trust me, Inkubate Inc. is paying Metro bigtime for the rights to play in the underway and set up gameplaces like Twitch's maintenance cube; they're still not allowed to interfere with actual realworld goings on in the public domain, which includes linking to the security cams for our gaming pleasure.
The photo-IDs are, in order:
A heavy in a gold vinyl tracksuit rubbed shiny with wear or maybe distressed on purpose, with tightly wound blond curls and a jaw designed to shatter all the bones in your fist.
A shaven-headed girl, around my age, done up all pantsula in pinstripes and carrying a black steel case, which is so blatantly obvious, I dismiss her as a decoy.
Another macho, business-slick in a suit with a gym bag slung casually over his shoulder, but it's clearly heavy, which is a tad more promising.
And. Hey, there.
I reverse direction, grinning. Of course, I'm contractually obliged to let one of the fulltime members of Clan Stinger take the glory, but is it my fault I'm intuitive? If I've encountered the target previously? I send a msg to the crew, but who knows how long they'll take to get back up here. It might be too late by then.
The people behind me don't take too kindly to me switching against the flow. Some of them have their phones held up at arm's length, beaming laser slogans in all caps above their heads: 'ALL ACCESS' and 'PASSES FOR THE PEOPLE'. Some of the protesters don't smell too fresh, and there's a higher content of street kid per capita than usual.
And I finally twig why it's so packjammed down here. The protest. Great fucking timing, although maybe that's the point – to make it more challenging.
I shove through the press of bodies back towards the kiosk where the podgy girl is attending to a protester with springy little dreads and a leather bandolier strung with audio chips instead of cartridges that are broadcasting slogans at decibel in most of the official languages.
'I'm sorry, did I leave my phone here?' I have to shout over the chips, pushing rudely in front of the protester, who skeefs me with a dirty look, to get to the counter.
The apparently not-so-dullard cow ignores me. And what choice do I have, kids? Really? The .44 is already in my hand, it's only a thirty degree flex of my arm to pull it free of the holster and swing it up so it's level with the bridge of her rather neat little nose. 'I'd suggest you surrender the merchandise.'
The protester squawks and leaps backwards, knocking over a rack of mags, but the resulting crash is drowned out by the electronic chatter of the chips and the protesters shouting and the ambient crowd sounds.
The cow whimpers. She's gone all pasty, which throws her zits into relief. Cunning bitch. Gotta admire the acting talent. You'd think she was the real deal.
'I don't have time. Just give it over.'
She opens her mouth as if to say something useful, but then goldfishes soundlessly.
'Oh for fuck's sake.' I press the gun against her forehead. 'Three, two…' And sudden she finds her voice.
'I don't got nothing! Please!'
'The package?'
'Take it! Take it!' But she fails to hand anything over, covering her eyes and quivering instead. I'm aware that a space has cleared around me, and my phone is vibrating frantically in my pocket.
'Just give me the package and I won't have to shoot you,' I say, real slow, so she can't misunderstand. Maybe I got it wrong and it's the hip gangster girl or one of the heavies after all. In which case, I might have blown the whole fucking mission, exposed us too early. Fuck. And now I'm not so sure I looked at the picture properly in the first place. Maybe it was some other ugly fat girl plus wishful thinking on my part. Or maybe she's an unwitting mule.
I vault over the counter. She shrieks and wedges herself into the corner, weeping now. I pull her down, so that we're out of the limelight, crouched behind the desk. 'Everything's sony, honey, just chill. Stay right there. Don't you move.' I keep the gun on her, hunting around. 'Where's your bag? Where's your fucking bag!'
She points wordlessly at a turquoise tote on a shelf. I press it into her hands, even though she doesn't want to take it.
'Open it.'
'I don't got nothing. I don't.'
'Did anyone ask you to hold something for them? Or give you something? A present?'
She's scrabbling in her bag, spilling prettifiers onto the carpet, sobbing so hard her words hitch. 'My… my… boyfriend.'
'Yeah? What did he give you? Where is it?'
'Th-this.' She yanks off a plastech keyring attached to the bag's handle – a mini-figurine of Anika, the virtua pop star.
'Be careful! Shit.' It's not inconceivable that the bomb would fit inside a keyring. I take it from her gingerly and stow it in an inside pocket.
'Now close your eyes.'
'Why?'
'Cos I've been wanting to do this ever since I met you.'
She shakes her head vigorously, sobbing hard. I shrug. She should have known what she was letting herself in for when she took on the assignment.
I pull the trigger.
The .44 kicks in my hand with a sharp metallic roar. Which should have been the end of her, only the blobby cow is still shrieking, clawing at the wet gobs splattered across her face. She squeals even louder when her hands come away sticky with sheen. I am way pissed now, kids.
'What are you doing? You're analogue, baby. You're out. Fucking go down.'
She holds her hands out to me, all shaky disbelief, and catches me left-field by starting to cry, little pathetic mewlings.
'Oh. Hey. Everything's sony, okay? It's not… Look.' I'm about to wipe her forehead to show her, but I don't want to get the dye on my BabyStrange, so I grab her by the wrist instead. 'It's purple, see?' Inexplicably, she starts crying harder. 'It's not blood. You don't gush purple. It's just a game. It's icy. Okay?' But she's sobbing so uncontrollably, I don't think I'm getting through.
I holster the gun and start sliding away from the blubbering girl, making sure I still have the keyring. The hippie with the audio-chip bandolier barges in. 'Bro, that was so uncool.'
'Hey! She was registered gameplay. It's not my fault she's a rookie.'
'Oh yeah?' He bends down, comes back with her handbag and dumps out the phone, turns it over to show me. It hasn't been chipped for ingame. It's so outmoded, it wouldn't even support the tech. Shit.
I hightail it through the crowd, ignoring dreadlock boy's recriminations shouted after me. The protest is going off, it's too thick to move without worming between the bodies, and the amplified chatter is deaf-making. I duck down besides a motobin that's be
en stopped in its circuit by the human traffic, humming quietly to itself, and check my phone. My msgs display various riffs on 'where the hell are you?' from all three of my clan mates.
Surprisingly, Ibis/Julia is the most graphic of all of them, threatening my mother with violence if I don't get my skinny ass down there immediately. Maybe I'll take her up on it later.
But right now I have bigger pilchard to panfry. I skip the rest of the msgs and reload the target list, flipping through the visuals to saggy cow, who is indeed the girl I just fragged in the face, down to the last inflamed zit. This is all seriously dubious.
>> Weird stuff going on. Think the mission has been compromised. Could we have got bad intelligence? Considering mission abort? Confirm?
I sit tight and wait for an answer. The motobin is a little slow, only now detecting my proximity. It swivels on its axis and gapes its flap at me hopefully, waiting for a deposit. No one gets back to me, not even Twitchy, who is supposed to be holed up at high altitude.
Fuckit. What else to do? I throw myself back into the fray, all bargey elbows to get through the toyi-toyi, because the protesters seem to be holding fast to their positions. If they hoped to stop the station functioning today, they're doing well.
From the plastech pedestrian tunnel that crosses over the junction, I can see it's mal chaos below. On the platform, only heads are visible in the mesh of people, like coloured pixels, shoving in different directions. The trains are at a standstill, but there are bursts of flashfire going off inside the compartments, six or seven while I'm watching. I skeem I'm not the only player here today with corrupt data.
A ripple of quiet spreads out from one side of the station as the audio chips suddenly fade out, as if they've been dampened. The protesters' voices sound hollow without them, too warm, too varied without their mechanical accompaniment, and even the voices are starting to falter. I can't see shit, but I can anticipate what's coming.
'This is the South African Police Services,' the announcement blasts over the PA as the protesters and the civilians all fall respectfully, no, fearfully, silent, so now we can hear the shouts from the platforms below. The toyi-toyi-ing wavers and stops as people turn expectantly to the entrance, where uniforms flanked by Aitos are descending the stairs in perfect formation.
'This is an unlawful, unlicensed gathering. You are advised to disband immediately.' It's pre-recorded. Legislation bars the cops from opening their mouths unnecessarily. There's too much room for human error, which means ammunition for the human rights groups – for all the teeth they've got.
It's the same reason the cops are indistinguishable behind their flicker visors – on purpose, kids, so you can't lay an assault charge if they beat you into submission too vigorously.
'Repeat: You are advised to disband immediately. You are in violation of section 14(ii) of the Transport Authority Code, as well as section 11.2(vi) of the Commerce Protection Act.'
I start edging towards the lift. I've no intention of sticking around to see the standard spiel play all the way through.
'Warning: If you choose not to disband immediately, it will be assumed under the Tacit Liability Act that you are fully aware of the potential repercussions of your unlawful actions and that you waive your right to seek any kind of legal recourse or financial compensation for any injuries or damages incurred in the course of law enforcement response.'
The uniforms have stopped, arranged in an invert V down the main stairwell, while the Aitos spread out through the crowd, yipping in excitement. It's enough to inspire some of the people to disperse, mostly nervous commuters.
'This is your last warning.'
The tension dies unexpectedly, like a battery running out of juice. It's like the crowd collectively shrug all at once, and start disassembling peacefully and in an orderly fashion so as not to piss off the cops or, more importantly, the dogs.
But then the lift doors open and it becomes obvious the msg hasn't reached the lower floors. Doyenne bursts out, splattered with dye, but not enough to take her out of the game, grinning like a berserker, rabid with battle lust. I'm close enough to see the purple smear over her mouth, as if she's wiped the back of her hand across it. She grins wider and launches into the painfully over-quoted line from Sleepers Phoenix – 'Hi-de-ho, neighbours! I regret to inform you it's time to die!' before opening random fire on the crowd.
Chaos breaks out in shockwaves from the nucleus of the lifts. People drop to the ground, screaming, unaware that it's a game, cos they're idiots, cos you'd never mistake the sting of a dye pellet for a bullet. Others, caught in the panic, surge towards the exits. And then in one convulsive move, everyone drops to the ground, twitching, phones crackling as the defusers kick in.
Unfortunately, mine doesn't go off, which is plenty worrying if the uniforms notice that I'm packing an illegal mod. I drop too, bit of a delayed reaction there, kids, but pay it no heed, and try to avoid the thrashing limbs all around me as I start inch-worming across the floor towards the nearest exit.
I'm not the only one unaffected. Almost none of the protesters are KFC. There are about forty of them, standing defiant in the epileptic human sea jerking around their feet.
'And what are you going to fucking do now?' shouts one of the protesters. The sound is amplified, distorted, but the voice sounds very familiar in its puffed-up wankery.
'Your weapons are useless. We defy your attempts to regulate society. We're voluntarily disconnected! Voluntarily disenfranchised! You cannot control us!' He holds up the remains of a smashed phone, then drops it to the ground.
I catch on. It's Tendeka and his BF surrounded by all manner of ragtag humanity; bergies and skollies and street kids who all have one thing in common – they're homeless and phoneless. Which only means that when they call the dogs in, they're going to be more savage than usual.
Already the cops are switching over to canister guns. It's all strict by-the-book procedure. Verbal warning. Defuse. Dogs. It never takes more. Even the most defiant bloody-minded idiot tends to shut up and give up when facing down those teeth. Well, except for Doyenne.
By the lift, Doyenne has two Aitos attached to her, one worrying at the sleeve of her jacket, the other tugging her jeans, but she's still laughing, still pumping slugs into the crowd and swearing soldier, clubbing alternately at the dogs' heads with her free hand. Two pellets explode across the second dog's flank, the trajectory coming from somewhere up high – like a ceiling hideyhole. Fuck, Twitchy. That's a disconnect offence. I duck my head, smirking, as an Aito bounds across the spasming flesh, its paws coming down heedlessly on groins and heads.
One of the cops fires a chem cap into the thicket of the protesters, hitting Ashraf solidly in the chest, the impact knocking him back into the mass of bodies writhing on the floor.
By now, the Aitos have pulled Doyenne down, but now they look up, ears pricked forward as they pick up the telltale chem scent, and abandon their victim to bound towards the protesters.
The next bit is mess. Tendeka and his ragtag regiment yank out pangas. The first dog to reach them goes down with a meaty thwack more robust than the art thing, which goes to prove, kids, that the attack at the gallery wasn't in aid of animal rights at all. I file this for reference. Ten's bunnyhugger boyfriend would surely disapprove – if he wasn't a little preoccupied drowning in a sea of thrashing limbs.
The Aito howls, but comes straight back up, its lip hanging off its jaw, exposing the teeth. The kids shriek, more horror than rage, lashing out as much to keep it at bay as anything else.
It goes down under a torrent of blows, real Rwanda.
On the stairs, one of the cops raises her baton and then lowers it again, uncertainly. Several of the others are locked in a screaming match, because this shit is way outside the bounds of procedure. People aren't supposed to attack the dogs.
A sharp keening buzz undercuts the noise, a subsonic signal to the Aitos, which all lose interest at the same time. Together, they raise their heads, then bound back to
the cops, to the tune of their master's audio, abandoning their targets.
It's only temporary. Trust me on this. There's gonna be a bloodrush for sure, and it's only going to get uglier. I'm preparing to scram, shifting my weight onto my knees so I can launch towards the exits, when something unexpected happens.
The cops wait for the dogs to reach them and then turn sharply and tromp up the stairs, withdrawing.
It's apparent no one knows what the fuck this means. There's a wailing from the other side of the hall, like someone has figured this can only signify heavy shit to come, but minutes pass. There's no indication that the cops are coming back.
People scramble to their feet, helping each other up, laughing in relief, or bleating. The civilians don't know what hit them. Even some of the gamers are displaying classic shock. Couldn't cut it in realworld after all.