Soo-hyun said. “Check the fridge. Parcel wrapped in white paper. It’s all yours.”
The fridge was tucked away in the back corner of the room, half-hidden behind a mound of scrap metal and drone parts. JD opened the fridge door to a noisy hum, and the faint smell of mold. It was empty but for a single package in waxed paper on the middle tray. He took it and held it up to his nose. Salty.
“It’s bacon,” Soo-hyun said.
“What?” JD said. He almost dropped it in shock.
“One of the residents here used to be a butcher. Killed Quincy last week, and cured her. I put some aside for your mom’s famous fried rice.”
“I can’t take this—”
“You already did, now keep it.”
JD stashed it in his backpack, and downed the rest of his beer.
“Here you go,” Soo-hyun announced. They tossed a datacube across the room, and JD snatched it out of the air. “Everything you need for the job. Just—just don’t open it on a public network.”
“It’s not my first illegal rodeo.”
Soo-hyun smiled. “Take a look and we’ll compare notes tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” JD asked, putting the cube into his pocket.
“Planning dinner.” Soo-hyun left the workbench and crossed over to join JD, trailed by their pet drone. “Thank you for doing this. I’ll talk to you later.” They hugged briefly, and Soo-hyun ducked out through the doorway and disappeared from sight.
JD slammed the fridge door and limped after Soo-hyun, but when he stepped outside, they were gone. A dog drone sat guard beside the entrance, visual sensors whirring as it looked up at JD’s face.
“Where’d they go?” he asked. The dog’s only response was the quiet whir of actuators as it scanned the school grounds, tracking a group of kids playing a chaotic soccer match on a too-small stretch of flat ground.
JD limped away, leaving behind the commune and all of Kali’s followers. He exhaled sharp through his nose to dislodge the clinging scent of solder, but when he breathed in he almost choked on the smell of pig shit, seeing for the first time the pen of sleeping animals beyond the commune’s vegetable patch.
JD slotted the battery into his phone, and blinked the start-up sequence. He waited impatiently for that surge of connection—informational and physiological, feedback loops of connectivity threaded deep through his psyche.
Once he was back online, JD made a call. “Hey, Mom. I’ve got a present for you; is it okay if I come around?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Soo-hyun waited on the cracked footpath outside Kali’s residence. It was the first building Kali had cleaned up and renovated with the earnings from her teachings—a three-story apartment block that housed the woman and held meeting rooms for her inner circle: Andrea, Yoo Jong-seo, Oh A-sung, Brandon “Red” Jones, Jin Sang-yeop, and Park Do-cheol.
A cool breeze rolled in, and Soo-hyun shivered and rubbed their arms through the thick fabric of their coveralls.
A message from Kali had brought them to the apartment block, but nothing in the text told them what to expect from the meeting. A childlike voice somewhere in the back of their head warned that they were in trouble. Sent to the head teacher for disciplinary action. It had been too long since their school days for the fear to emerge so vividly from their subconscious, and yet it had.
They’d been so good lately.
Soo-hyun let their head fall back, and they took in the night sky. Soo-hyun had always lived under that light-stained sky, despite false memories of vivid starlight implanted into their mind by film, TV, and social media. Still, Soo-hyun found a particular sort of beauty in the image—human civilization so bright it blotted the sky itself.
The front door to Kali’s building opened with a quiet squeal, and Andrea stood in the gap, her cherubic face lit from beneath by the tablet she always carried flat across her arm.
“What the fuck are you doing out here? She’s waiting for you.”
“The fuck did you just say?” Soo-hyun asked.
The girl rolled her eyes and sneered. “This is a bullshit-free zone. If you want to come inside and find out why Kali picked you to join her inner circle, you’ll need to adjust your tiny clouded mind to some quote-unquote harsh fucking language. Now, do you want to come in, or do you want to fuck the fuck off?”
Soo-hyun’s heart thumped hard in their chest. The inner circle. They shrugged with the clatter and tink of their many necklaces. “I’m ready. Let’s go.” They pushed inside, past Kali’s personal assistant and mini-doppelganger.
Andrea slammed the