Zoo City - By Lauren Beukes Page 0,111

an hour left before the end of

the day. All the signs are there; the flickering vision, the exhilaration, the hissing of a stove-top kettle and the smell of burning. Taking a break would bring down shit from my supervisor. I carry on working even as the exhilaration builds and the world bleaches out.

I look around, blinking stupidly. Everything is saturated with light. One of the Rurals is pulling my arm and pointing at a spill on the factory floor. What the fuck is he trying to say? I can't tell. Is it oil? But it's too bright. A contorted shape lies next to the spill. I struggle to make sense of it… Joseph.

"Ja, it's like I tell everyone, this is a hard business and people get hurt," my manager says. Somehow I'm in his small office on the factory floor. "I know you have medical condition."

I cross my arms over my chest and huddle in the hard plastic chair. Joseph had been cleaning one of the machines, hunched over it scraping out the metal silt. When I whited out, I fell onto the control panel.

"Listen, I understand you're upset, but you can't blame yourself," my manager says. "Christ, these guys from the Rural can barely read and write, let alone operate machinery properly."

"It was my fault," I say.

"Who the fuck cares, the Riffa is dead," he says. I wince at the slur. My parents were staunch anti-classists, and bigotry directed at Rurals always makes me uneasy. "His family will get paid out and everyone will be happy." He sighs, then hesitates, as if deciding whether to say something. "Andrew, I'm recommending a doctor, a corporate." I look at him, not understanding. I wasn't a Corporate Citizen; I didn't get corporate medical aid. "You're doing valuable work here, and XMET looks after its own," he says.

My phone buzzes with a temporary access card to Waterfront City. He puts a hand on my shoulder, like a fat pink spider.

"Listen, take a break, and spend some time with Kara." Despite everything, I'm surprised he knows my wife's name.

My voice is shaking as I tell her what happened. I hear her little nieces laughing in the background. Playing mommy has taken on an edge lately. Kara says she just wants to give her sister a break, but to me it looks more like practice Or an invitation. Or an ultimatum.

There's a long silence.

"I thought you said the fits weren't happening anymore, Drew," she says.

"They weren't."

She breathes out deeply.

"I'm…" I want to tell her what happened. I want her to understand. But I don't. "I'm going to be home late."

Agent HK

I watch the interview again. It's hosted on a trendy subversive site, one of ours. Like everything else, dissent is easier to control from the inside.

The vlogger is American, her hair tied back in blonde dreads under a R4000 Dolce & Gabbana beret. She's overwhelmed at meeting a real life resistance fighter. Matthew Ibrahim, one of the Lionesses' inner circle. He comes across as bitter, cynical, the girl's adulation seems to make him tired. I wonder if he'll feel guilty when his brother dies. If he comes back for the funeral it'll be like a gift to Shaw. A chance to kill the one that got away.

So, Matt, like how did you get involved with Thaba Godima?

The draft. It appeared on my phone on my eighteenth birthday, indicated by the mandatory Governance ringtone. From that point on I had two days to reply or it was a Zimbabwean labour camp. There was no way I could join the Coporate Service Platoon and Godima was the only other option.

Were you close to Nata Mzani? Is she as hardcore as people say?

I don't know if I'd describe the Lioness in those terms. She's incredibly focused. It's part of her training. She was with an MK cadre in Angola during the First Struggle, but after it ended, she refused to take a cushy job in the new government. They hated her for it, more for opposing them. She went into exile and then returned to plant the seed that was to become the Second Struggle and Thaba Godima.

What did you do in Thaba Godima?

I was a Changent, short for "change agent". We were an elite unit trained in Godima camps to fight the power network of the ISU. Did you kill anybody? Are you kidding me?

And what was the deal with the Easter War. That was rough, right?

We had an alliance with the Soldiers of Gaia, an eco-survivalist