Repo Virtual Read online

  “Bro,” he said. “For me?”

  “That was the deal.”

  Khoder snatched the frame from JD and held it close, studying it like it was another of his screens, this one static but still important, a frozen portal to the past, to a point in time that defined the now, remade the city they lived in, run by corporate mandate.

  JD slammed the van doors closed, slid the ramps back into place, and walked around to the driver’s side door. He opened a channel to Soo-hyun. “Shades,” he said. “We’re moving. If you’re not clear yet, meet us on the corner in ninety seconds.”

  He got into the front seat and keyed the ignition, listening to the heavy patter of rain on the roof of the van. He put it in reverse, backed out of the maintenance alley, and steered toward the front gate.

  JD drove slowly past a pair of police dogs, scanning the grounds with the battery of sensors embedded in their robotic frames. His heart beat double-time and he stared ahead pointedly, as though his gaze would be the thing to catch their attention. In the rearview, JD watched one of the dogs stop and turn, raising its snout to scan the vehicle.

  JD cursed under his breath. He stopped at the boom gate and a crackling noise like static emerged from the security booth—the sound of huge crowds cheering. A blur of bright-lit grass streaked across a tablet resting on the guard’s lap, bathing her in a sickly glow.

  The smile fell from her lips as she saw JD. She put her tablet down and exited the booth, wearing a bomber jacket against the wet. “You’re not the usual guy—he at the game?” she asked. She rested a hand on her hip casually, but all JD could focus on were the taser, mace, and heavy steel torch hanging from her belt.

  The muscles in JD’s face twitched in momentary panic. He tried on a smile, but neither he nor the guard believed it. “He told me he was sick, but I’m pretty sure he was lying,” JD said with a shrug, dropping the Omar act. “I don’t mind, I need the money.”

  “I hear that. You gonna show me the back of the van? Standard procedure.”

  “Back of the van? Sure thing,” JD said loudly, hoping Khoder was listening.

  He got out but left the motor running; the curious dog had turned away and joined its partner, heading for the burnt-out apartment. The engine chugged loud and low through the muffler, blowing hot on JD’s shins as he opened the rear door. The guard took the torch from her belt and shone it into the van, a sliver of Khoder visible between two blue plastic barrels.

  “Where are the—”

  With a resounding thonk of steel on skull, the woman collapsed. Red appeared as if from nowhere—the skinny white specter emerging from the shadows, clutching a length of rebar, stained with rust and a small wet patch of the guard’s blood. The cut across the bridge of his nose from the crash flared red, but he had cleaned most of the blood from his face. Only the cracks in his lips were still stained with dark-red lines.

  “What the shit?” JD said.

  “Get in the fucking van,” Red spat. His chest rose and fell as he stood seething over the unconscious guard, ready to hit her again if she moved.

  “Let’s move, hyung!” Soo-hyun yelled. JD glanced up, saw them waiting in the passenger’s seat, face in shadows beneath the brim of their hat.

  Red knocked JD aside with his shoulder and walked around the van to join Soo-hyun. JD swung the first rear door shut, and carefully stepped over the guard to close the other.

  Before he could reach the driver’s seat, JD heard the chank of robot paws on cement and glanced over his shoulder. The dog’s spotlight flicked on, the white glare blinding JD for a second before the light shifted to encircle the prone form of the guard.

  “Fuck,” JD said. He took the driver’s seat, slammed the door behind him, and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The van jolted forward, hit the boom gate, and stopped, engine whining high but going nowhere.

  “Fuck!” JD yelled. He put the van into reverse, remembered the unconscious guard on the ground behind the van and swore again. He put the van into park and got out.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Red demanded.

  JD ignored him. He leaned into the security booth, and thumped the large rubber button that controlled the gate. It opened with the screech of metal on metal as it sheared a layer of paint off the van’s front bumper.

  The noise of celebrating soccer fans came distorted and tinny through the tiny speakers of the guard’s tablet. The game was over, and South Korea had won, thousands of them in white, red, and blue standing and cheering in the stadium. If JD had turned the tablet off and taken a moment to listen, he would have heard the sound of the crowds coming from the stadium just a few blocks away. Instead he heard Red say: “I told you I should have brought my fuckin’ gun.”

  The police dog was moving now, actuators whining as it ran along the enclave’s driveway, gaining speed with each bound. The head of security rushed out of the building, flanked by four guards.

  “Stop!”

  Back behind the wheel, JD hit the accelerator and let the momentum swing his door closed. There was a thud as the dog slammed into the back of the van, and a shriek as its metal claws pierced the rear door panels. Khoder shouted a stream of obscenities, drowned out when JD stomped the accelerator flat to the floor. JD yanked the wheel hard right—the dog’s claws tore a jagged hole in the doors as it shook loose and hit the asphalt with a clatter of resounding steel. JD checked the rearview mirror and saw the dog get unsteadily to its feet as the guards caught up to it. They shrank quickly, and disappeared from view when JD swung left off Haedoji-ro, rear wheels skidding in the wet.

  Soo-hyun whooped and Red chuckled loudly. He grabbed JD’s rucksack and spilled its contents onto the floor as he searched for the datacube.

  “Where are we going?” JD asked. He put the windscreen wipers on high and they thonked at each end of their arc.

  Red found the datacube loaded with the heist plans, and held it up so it gleamed in the light of the streetlights they passed beneath. “All that excitement for this little thing, huh? Kali’s gonna be real happy to see it.” He pocketed the cube.

  “Where are we going?” JD asked again, voice edged with anger born of fear.

  “Head for the stadium,” Soo-hyun said, voice casual like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Without the city’s Augmented feed, the road seemed empty—street and traffic lights still glowed in the real world, but street signs, speed limit markers, billboards, and other road signs were all missing.

  “Which way’s the—”

  Lights flashed in JD’s mirrors—green and orange, red and blue, private security and police both hot on their tail.

  “Shit.” JD leaned forward, hugging the wheel so he could look up through the windscreen, searching for the glow of stadium lights. There—one block to the left, and a few blocks ahead. They’d opened the stadium roof—light spilled out like a beacon, and red and blue spots shone into the sky like pillars of fire.

  JD put his foot down further, watching the road in strobing flashes of clarity as the wipers cleared the rain. The roads were empty, but that would change just as soon as the football crowds filtered out of the stadium and into waiting auto-cars. A few vehicles passed through the intersection ahead as the van sped toward it—green traffic lights flared across the windscreen, while police lights gained in the side mirror.

  “Straight ahead,” Red yelled. “Floor it.”

  Flash of white glitched black: static obscuring JD’s vision. His right eye cleared and the traffic lights turned red, too late to stop. His left eye crackled with visual noise and JD yanked the wheel hard to the right, steering away from the distortion as though it were a solid obstacle. The van fishtailed as the back wheels lost traction in the wet, and they took the corner drifting sideways. A flash of bright blue passed through JD’s vision—not another glitch, an auto-bus, traveling across the intersection at speed. The bus passed so close JD could have reached out to touch it, but his hands were gripped tight to the wheel, knuc
kles white, fingers aching with the strain. More adrenaline flooded into JD’s system as he realized how close they came to a collision. Vehicles honked and slammed on their brakes, and JD steered the van through the gaps, powering out of the intersection.

  “Oi, dickhead, wrong way,” Red said.

  JD put his foot down and sat up straighter to see out the rear-view mirror. Police and security cars slowed as they picked their way through the intersection, civilian traffic steering clear of the flashing lights, but neither authority willing to give way to the other. Khoder’s head appeared in the mirror and JD started.

  “Giving me motion sickness back here, bro.”

  “Got bigger things to worry about right now.”

  Through the rain JD could see the next intersection—lights green, no traffic. He accelerated toward it, then a glitched red bar flashed dead across his vision. JD slammed on the brakes and the van slid, tires shushing over the wet asphalt before they stopped, all four passengers jolting forward with the sudden loss of inertia. JD’s sight cleared in time to see a cop car shoot across the intersection in front of them. JD hit the accelerator and turned left, heading for the stadium again—now two blocks left and two ahead.

  “Holy shit, Jules,” Soo-hyun said. “I never knew you could drive like this.”

  “I can’t.”

  Behind them, blue smoke poured from cop car tires as they spotted the van and did a tight one-eighty across three lanes. The other pursuit vehicles caught up to the late arrival, and together the three police and two security cars formed a vanguard across the width of the street. Ahead, every light turned red—police traffic control locking the grid down—but JD wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t, not now, with the cube slotted into his phone and fifty thousand euro riding on this moment.

  JD pushed his foot down and ignored the strained sound coming from the engine. Through one intersection, all lights red, a few cars stopped and waiting while the occupants stared wide-eyed at the chase flitting past.

  Next intersection, they needed to go left, then a straight run to the stadium and chaos. Chaos to get lost in.

  JD’s throat ached dull as he swallowed. Sweat poured from every pore, the stink of himself thick in his nose, cut with the scent of artificial pine. JD glanced down at the speedometer, visual static covering half the readout. JD slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor and watched the needle peek out from behind the glitch as the engine whined.

  More flashes across his right eye, as though his brain were screaming LEFT LEFT LEFT. JD turned left, hand over hand as he spun the steering wheel—the van tore sideways through the intersection, barely missing cars loaded with World Cup revelers, hands pumping the air, horns blaring in celebration, cheering him on. JD grinned. The stadium was dead ahead, the opposite lane choked with traffic as cars poured out of the arena, blocking the pursuing cars, blocking the roads in every direction. JD backed off and the van slowed.

  Just ahead, a crowd surged up the footpath, banners, scarves, and balloons all held high overhead. JD aimed the van toward the crowd, and when they were still twenty meters off, he pulled up onto the sidewalk, jumping the curb with a nasty grind of metal on cement.

  With the van stopped, JD fell forward against the wheel. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Soo-hyun said.

  Soo-hyun and Red bailed from the van; JD stayed behind to shove his gear back into the rucksack. When JD opened the driver’s door, he nearly fell out of the vehicle. His legs gave way beneath him and his head swam as the adrenaline quickly leeched from his system. He opened the rear doors and Khoder clambered out, his brown skin shaded green with nausea.

  “Sorry, Kid.”

  “Apologize with money, bro.” He offered JD a weak smile.

  JD clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch. Look after yourself.”

  Khoder nodded, and joined the approaching crowd, disappearing instantly in his team colors.

  Soo-hyun hugged JD briefly. “Thanks, Jules.” They squeezed his arm and held his gaze. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  JD nodded.

  Red grabbed Soo-hyun by the arm and pulled them away. “We’ll be in touch about payment,” he said, wearing a grin that bordered on a snarl.

  Yeah, you’ll be in touch, asshole, JD thought, just as soon as you check the contents of that cube.

  Red and Soo-hyun drifted into the oncoming rush of bodies—Soo-hyun glanced once over their shoulder, and they were gone, swallowed by the mob.

  With everyone else out of sight, JD dipped his hand into the cleaning bucket and scraped around in the dirty water until his fingers found the slick plastic bag. He retrieved it, wiped it on his coveralls, and shoved it into his rucksack. He stripped out of the coveralls and put them in the bag too, then wrapped his South Korean–red scarf around his neck, shouldered his bag, and joined the crowd.

  After years in Songdo, JD was used to standing out, used to the stares. But dressed in football colors, he was finally, for perhaps the first time, just one of the locals. When he made eye contact it was to swap grins—elation at a team’s victory and a successful heist looking indistinguishable.

  Overhead, drones were already gathering—the high-pitched whine of quadcopters buzzing the air, while the police sirens grew louder with each moment.

  JD kept walking, jostled by the fans, hidden deep inside the mass of bodies. He smelled the sour tang of his sweat, but soon it mingled with the smells of the crowd—the sweat on their clothes, the beer and soju on their breaths. When he reached the end of the block, JD looked back. Football fans stood on top of the van, waving banners and cheering, red and blue smoke pouring into the air from flares, music playing everywhere.

  Police surrounded the van, but no one paid them much mind. By the time they realized the fans weren’t the thieves, he’d be long gone.

  * * *

  As the army of soccer fans marched across the city, restaurants, bars, and cafés opened their doors, ready to feed the crowds with food and booze. The people were the lifeblood of the city, causing it to wake and breathe as they passed down the veins of asphalt and cement. The rain pattered loud against the polyester shell of JD’s windbreaker, but he could barely hear it over the fans’ chatter and songs, unperturbed by the wet.

  The crowd broke like a wave at the corner of Central-ro and Convensia-daero. Bars on all sides of the intersection glowed bright with neon, siren song of various dance beats competing to see who could call in the most lost souls. Three bars shone a little brighter, and JD watched as the crowd split, tracking people with his eyes as if he knew before they did which bar they would choose. Half the throng split away, filing into the three brightest bars; the other half boarded auto-buses and climbed into share cars.

  JD took his phone from the sandwich bag, the thin rectangle of glass and silicon warm in his hand. At his touch it displayed the lock screen—a VOIDWAR wallpaper of ships exploding against a backdrop of stars. He swiped across the screen, unlocking it, and was greeted by a message:

  >> Overheating Risk. Processor usage restricted to 0.3%

  JD flipped the phone over in his hand and for a moment, the noise and bustle of Songdo fell away. He stared in shock—he had never reconnected the battery.

  The datacube sat snugly in its port, but it wasn’t a datacube at all. He’d been told he was stealing a virus, but this was something else, something that shouldn’t be possible—storage, power supply, and shit only knew what else, miniaturized beyond anything he’d seen before. JD slotted his battery back into place, unsure of how long the phone would last on the power from the cube. He shook his head, incredulous.

  Picking a direction at random, JD walked fast. He ignored the throbbing ache in the gristle of his knee, paranoiac fear pushing him forward, as though everyone on the street knew what it was that he carried.

  He didn’t even know what he carried, but he knew immediately that it was worth a lot more than fifty thousand euro.
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br />   He plunged the phone back into his pocket, clutched tight in his left hand. He brought the contex interface up at fifty percent opacity and found eleven messages waiting for him, each from Troy. JD smiled and checked the map. Troy’s place wasn’t far, and he didn’t want to go home—he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he did.

  Decision made, JD took the next left, putting his clogged dorm room somewhere behind him. After hours of disconnection, he soaked up the Augmented advertising plastered over every surface. World Cup merchandise—licensed and un—and other soccer paraphernalia were a constant, hovering in the air across billboards and buildings, shimmering on buses that sped past loaded to capacity with post-game revelers.

  JD slowed his pace. The ubiquitous ads always came packaged with pervasive surveillance on the street and in the skies above. The further he got from the post-game crowds, the easier he would be to distinguish. JD stepped into an apartment building’s alcove, removed his hat, put his jacket on over his rucksack, and counted to thirty before he stepped back onto the busy sidewalk. JD focused on keeping his gait steady, and clenched his jaw to tamp down on the pain from his knee.

  As he reached a corner and stood waiting for the light, JD looked up and closed his eyes against the steady rainfall. Rain had a way of scaring people off the streets—at least, the ones who had elsewhere to go—but nothing less than a torrential downpour could dampen the city’s spirits tonight. He noticed the camera sitting just above the traffic light—the long, squared head stared up, as if mimicking him, as if it too were content beneath the clouds, at home in the rain.

  The signal turned green and JD crossed. He glanced up to the camera at the corner opposite; it turned away from him by degrees, pointing further and further up until it was vertical, more telescope than security. What stars could it see in the polluted sky?

  JD flicked his collar up against the rain and returned to watching his feet—finding something perplexing and uncomfortable in the way the cameras avoided his gaze. He quickened his pace, ignoring crosswalks and lights, ducking across streets when he shouldn’t, watching the ground light up red in warning signs that glitched, flickered, and died beneath his feet.