'I mean, have you thought about it?' Toby asks.
'What?'
He laughs, but it's forced. 'Whether we should go or not. Or wait. To see, you know?'
'No, bullshit! You guys need to get to one of those vaccine places soon as.'
'Oh, I'm sorry, are we in your way, Unathi?'
'This isn't my problem, Tobias. You shouldn't have come here.'
'You were the one who hooked me up with the fucking mission! It's exactly your problem.'
Their fighting is making the pain in my head worse. It's like a flash-bulb popping, like the veins in my temples are threads of filament burning out.
'Do you have any Ghost?' The questions shuts them both up.
Baldy – Unathi – whatever, smirks. 'There's a spaza. On the corner. On the way out.'
The kid with the bad hair – I still don't know his name – tramps sulkily after us through two sets of security doors, which buzz open in succession to let us out through an alley that backs onto the delivery entrance of the spaza, which is closed.
'Tighter than a nun's–' Toby starts to say.
'Okay. Just. I'm sure there's another one.'
'Not in this neighbourhood.'
We're not exactly residential. It seems to be mainly warehouses and stacks of metal containers, which must mean we're near the old docks, not too far removed from the station. It's desolate, apart from a rat, loathsomely huge, perched on a mound of rotten tarpaulins. It stops to look at us, incuriously, and then resumes cleaning its face in little circular motions with both paws.
'We're never going to get a taxi now.'
'Couldn't pay for it anyway,' Toby says.
'What?'
I glance at my phone to check the time, but the screen is unnervingly blank. I hit the power, but the screen doesn't light up reassuringly, my signature tune doesn't kick in. I pop the battery, click it back in and thumb it again. But there's nothing.
'Yeah, they amped up the juice when the defusers weren't working.'
'Fried everything one time,' the kid says with genuine admiration.
'Even my illegit handset got toasted,' Toby says. 'How do you think we ended up here?'
'What do you mean?'
'No phone. No cash. The last taxi kicked us out.'
'Does this mean I'm disconnect?' It's too much. I sink down heavily on the kerb, not even worried about the rat. 'I don't know. We'll have to see.'
'My mom's going to butcher me if I'm disconnect,' the kid says glumly, flicking a stompie at the rat, which only twitches its ropy tail and goes back to cleaning itself.
'Hey, come on, baby girl. Don't cry.'
'I'm not fucking crying.'
The kid looks away embarrassed. Toby checks his watch. 'Look, it's 3.18. My place is nearby. Well, relatively nearby. It's about six kays, we can walk it. And we'll just go chill out until morning, maybe email some people. Persuade someone to make a call on our behalf.'
'I'm going to an immunisation centre,' blurts the kid. 'You can't stop me. Don't even try and stop me.' He's holding a gun, his hand shaking.
'That's fine, Eddie. I don't give a fuck what you do. All the better. Means you're out of my fucking hair,' Toby says.
'There's nothing you can do. I'm going.'
'So fucking go already!'
The kid stands there trembling, his eyes wild, and then, with a little bounce on the balls of his feet, he turns and bolts away down the alley.
Toby shouts after him. 'Oh, and Eddie! The guns aren't real, remember? Fucking moron.'
It occurs to me that he's terribly young to be alone and disconnect in this neighbourhood at night. But then it occurs to me, so are we.
'So what happens after that, Toby?'
He yanks me to my feet. 'We talk to my corporate friend. She might be able to sort us out. Or we go get ourselves a vaccine and we deal with whatever comes up along the way.'
Toby's apartment is surprisingly immaculate. I know that was an unfair assumption. But when I comment on it, feeling awkward and sweaty after the walk, he laughs and drops a crumpled piece of paper onto the floor. Instantly, a VIMbot shoots out from under the couch, scoops it up, and then darts for cover.
'My secret sharer,' he says, collapsing onto the couch and sliding off his boots with his heels. After the tense silence of the long walk for endless kays, surely more than six, to get here, and the mission at the entrance to convince the doorwatcher to let us in without the benefit of Toby's SIM, it's a relief to be inside, to be safe. Although safety is relative.
'Is that a reference to something? Am I supposed to get that?'
'Oh god, how pretentious. Sorry. It's Conrad. I'm still registered for a literature degree. At least as far as my folks are concerned. Don't ask me to recommend him, though. The book was boring as fuck, but all his stuff is. Total wank.'
'I didn't take you for the literati type.'
'Well, between that and bioscience…' he shrugs.
'Or the studying type.'
'There's no reason to be rude. My darling mother's probably stopped paying the tuition along with everything else. He shrugs, oneshouldered, 'Hey, what was I going to do with a Master's in lit, anyway? You want some sugar?'
'Got any Ghost?'
'You really don't let up on that shit. Have some sugar, it'll chill you out.'
'No, I really don't–'
'Whatever you want to do, sweetness. Doesn't affect me in the slightest.'
He stands up and disappears barefoot into the kitchen. A cupboard door bangs harder than necessary. I sit down on a folder chair at the dining-desk, so that he can't sit next to me.
'Maybe it's not a good idea to take drugs on top of whatever we've been infected with.' The desk is stacked with neat piles of epaper, the edges perfectly aligned.
'Best time,' he shouts back. Another bang disproportionate to whatever the hell he's doing.
I start flipping through the pages, careful not to mar that perfectly aligned edge, even though I know he's not the one who stacked it so anally in the first place. It looks like legal documents, contracts. A broadcast agreement. When I see my name near the head of a page, I drop it, burnt.
He stalks back in, carrying a silver cocktail shaker.
'Hey, cut it out. Do I come to your domestic and go through your shit?' He sits down in another folder chair, pulling it up so he's right next to me, and unscrews the shaker, knocking a fair quantity of sticky white powder onto the surface of the desk.
'You didn't have to be so mean.'
'In the streamcast? I wasn't mean. To Khanyi, maybe, not you.'
I shove the chair back, stand up, and prowl to the other side of the room, checking his book
shelf while he sifts the powder for clumps.
'Shouldn't we contact your friend?'
'When I've had a joint, okay? Besides. You may not have noticed, with all that beauty sleep you got in, but it's really late.'
'I said thanks.'
'Don't need your appreciation, baby girl.' He sweeps the powder into a tidy line with a pencil and wraps it up with two short twists of Rizla.
'Well, I appreciate it anyway.'
'Noted duly.' He seals the joint with the edge of his thumb.
'Look, should I just go? If I'm an inconvenience to you? I was so stupid to come here. Shit.' I'm ready to leave, walk another eight kays across town in this oversize shirt and my ruined dress and my broken heel, but I can't find my damn bag.
'Would you just sit down?'
And then I remember that it's still at the station. With my camera. Jesus. I wonder if it's still there, if anyone's taken it, if the pumped-up defuser has fritzed the Zion. But then I start thinking about what's on the memchip, what I've lost, what I can try and duplicate.
'Hey.' Toby takes my shoulders and presses me down into the couch. 'Sit down and have some sugar with me. All right? And then we can do whatever the fuck you want. Get hold of Lerato or your dad or the cops or your boyfriend or whoever. Okay?'
'I've l
eft my camera behind.'
'Least of our worries, sweet K. We could be dead in forty-eight.'
'And he's not my boyfriend. We broke up. Although it's not like we were really together before, I mean–' I'm rambling. 'He was a prick.'
'How are you feeling?'
'Not thinking about it.'
'I have a headache.'
'Me too. Sugar will chase it. Here.'
He hands me the joint and squeezes in next to me.
'I'm not supposed to. The nano. It was in the contract.' On page sixteen, a list of non-standard chems and supplements that are absolutely prohibited, accompanied by dire warnings, long-term damage potential, unpredictable results, permanent health risk, possible heart failure.
'Don't fret it. They're just covering their asses. They know all about you creative types. They would have tested it. They just don't want some supersmack freak ODing and making bad publicity noises. What did you think they were going to say, "mix it up"?'
'I haven't done–'
'I know. It's cool. Hold it like this.'
He lights it for me, putting his arm around me to cup the flame. I take a deep breath, and instantly the room spins and the air takes on a puffy consistency, like we're the centre of a candyfloss vortex.
Toby takes the joint from my mouth, his fingers brushing against my swollen lip, so that I flinch away. But I've already chosen what comes next, even before the air goes shimmery. Even though I know it's only because we're both afraid.
Toby
Sweet K is unexpectedly bold. She pulls into me even before I'm anticipating reaching for her. It's a little annoying, kids, cos where's the fun in that? I think about blocking her, but reconsider and kiss her back, hard, devouring, so that she winces from the wound on her mouth. I don't care.
By the time we make it to the bedroom, her legs are pretzelled round my waist and she's whimpering for the want of it. The third time, I don't even get to the condoms. 'It's coke,' she whispers, looking at me with those pale, pale green eyes. 'The nano'll kill anything you got.'
'Did it say so in the contract?' She laughs and bites my neck and we fuck until I'm raw and aching and glazed from the exertion. Or that could be the virus kicking in. I'm woken by K's fingers gripping my shoulder in a vice.
'They found us,' she hisses.
'Mmmggh.' I try to shrug her free and roll over, cos I'm still mostly unconscious, but she won't let go 'The chem spray. They tracked us.' She's breathing in small rabbity panicky breaths.
'Go back to sleep. You're just paranoid.'
'They're right outside. Toby!'
'It's the sugar. You're not used to it.'
Only then there's a noise, a scratch at the door.
She makes a small choked-off sound.
'It's just the VIM, baby.' I pry her fingers loose from my shoulder. 'You need to drink something.' I feel around for the glass of water I keep by the bed, but it's not there, cos my little cleaning friend is too particular in its habits. Grudgingly, I peel back the covers, which are sticky with an alchemy of juices. How did I end up in the wet spot?
As soon as I stand up, though, inky spots swarm in my head and a jazz beat of pain kicks off behind my eye sockets. I stagger, mostly blind, in the general direction of the kitchen. Credit to the girl, she comes after me, naked and armed with a book off my bedside – the collected works of Curtis Malebi, whose prose is dense enough to kill anyone, or at least cause a concussion, if your aim was good. I haven't opened it in months, but the high-gloss cover makes for a perfect rolling surface.
While I'm focused on getting to the kitchen and a glass of water, she sneaks towards the front door, trading the book for a steel vase, which holds the calcified remains of a chronoorchid. Not as unkillable as the product blurb would have you believe.
'Hey. Do you want to get your own water? Cos I was quite happy in bed.'
She shoots me a look so tortured, I almost laugh.
'Baby. It's okay. It's just the drugs. There's nothing out there.'
She's so sweetly lost, I can't resist her. I go over and wrap my arms around her, and she's shaking, wired on the adrenalin. But also very soft and curvy, which stirs something up all over again. Feebly, admittedly, but it does stir.
'I can tell, Toby. I can feel it,' she whispers.
'Shhh. It's okay.' I keep my voice as low as hers. 'Come back to bed.'
I lure her back into the warmth, but she's not up for anything else. And the truth is, kids, sorry to say, neither am I.
Tendeka
It's over.
Ashraf is gone.
Taken S'bu and Ibrahim with him, along with any of the other kids he found en route. Gone belly-up, slinking off to the nearest vaccine centre, and then to find Emmie, make sure she's okay. Always the responsible one. Too impatient to wait it out, to call their bluff. He couldn't see this is exactly what we've been working towards. Pushing the corporates and the cops so far over the line there's no coming back for them.
skyward* says not to stress. There was a box waiting for me, on our bed, when I got eventually got home last night. Inside was a new Nokia. And a note. 'Thought you might need this.' As soon as I turned it on, the messages started coming through. He says it's going to be beautiful, not to chicken out at such a cru cial juncture. They'll never know what hit them.
skyward* says we have to do it now, immediately. Trigger the lightbombs, hit as many of the vaccine centres as we can. We can't let them submit. It's a trick. There's worse waiting for Ashraf and them than being arrested or disconnected. skyward* says they plan to ship them out to the Rural, put them into camps, detain and charge them as terrorists, even the kids. They might not come back. He says he never thought they would go this far, but isn't this the ultimate proof of what they're capable of, how fucked up the status quo really is?
But I'm confused. I thought it was a bluff. Not real. Not cause for concern, not reason enough for Ashraf to leave.
skyward* reassures me: yes, of course, but if they're so casual about inducing widespread panic, lying to us like this, then what else have they been lying about? We have to stop it. We have to expose the underlying tumour in our society. This is not the time to have doubts.
And then Zuko comes back, staggering in, half-fucked on glue, which would be a red card, but under the circumstances, I'll let it slide. Because he's a true believer. And there's work to do today, as skyward* keeps reminding me, the msgs coming in incessantly, like jabs with a sharp stick.
I don't know how he knew where to find me.
Lerato
An incessant bleeping with an undertone of tango drags me rudely from the depths of REMsleep. I've been dreaming about cars loaded down on their axles with trickle castles, like the kind you make dribbling mud between your fingers at the beach, like Toby and I did a couple of years ago. Sturdier than dry sand, but still only sand, and when it dries out it all crumbles, like the castles on the cars, toppling around me.
At first I think Jane's accidentally set off the burglar alarm again and I'm going to have to fend off the security Aitos bounding in to the rescue, but then I realise home™ is playing Buster Mzeke's Asphalt Sonata, the song I assigned to work-related calls. I turn it off, roll over and go back to sleep for another twenty minutes. It is fucking Sunday.
When I get up, the apartment is oddly quiet. Jane is usually up by now, curled up on the lounger on the balcony with the Sunday papers and a chocolate hazelnut croissant fresh from the Communique bakery.
'Jane? You want some ultra?' I call, the volume of my own voice making me wince. On the Richter scale of hangovers, this one could have been responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs. I check her room. No sign of her. Maybe she got laid after her big meeting. What are the chances?
She left the TV on, the menu open to her catalogue of soaps, which means she was up all night watching them instead of getting laid. We're really gonna have to talk. I flick across to the cartoons while I wait for the coffee to brew.
But I'm feeling restle
ss. I get up from the couch, go back to my room and throw open the cupboards. Soon I'm going to have to think about packing in anticipation of my brand-new life. I'll have to shed a lot of it; even Jane would notice if I started emptying my room. I'll take the special items: my music drive, of course, the Joey HiFi print I bought myself to celebrate my first-ever defection at the tender age of fifteen, the Miyazaki necklace a boyfriend bought back from Japan. Stash it all at Toby's apartment for the duration. The furniture I've accumulated over the last couple of years, the Twenties medicine cabinet, the Nash couch, my books and most of my wardrobe are going to have to fly. It's all about knowing when to let go. Because once it's official, I won't be allowed back on the property.