“Not if I fucking kill them first, bro. Burn them alive, one at a time,” Khoder said, grinning around the smoldering tube.
Overhead the constellations of VOIDWAR glinted bright against the backdrop of clouds. A series of explosions bloomed slow over the city’s east—atomic suns born from supernova torpedoes, short-lived and devastating. Their flash and violence was emphasized by the city’s Augmented feed, always desperate to keep people invested in the game, keep them buying War Bond subscription packages.
“Think one day they’ll change the real-world overlay to make it resemble VOIDWAR?” JD asked as they both watched the artificial sky.
“Can’t make a city look like space, bro.”
“A space station, then.”
Khoder shrugged. He dragged on his cigarette and squinted against the smoke. “Wouldn’t matter if they did. Still the same shit underneath.”
“Is it, though? Ninety-something percent of people in Songdo think they live in a clean, bright metropolis covered in advertising. That’s real to them.”
Khoder pointed to the sky. “Shit, that’s Stokoe,” he mumbled, ash shaking loose from the end of his cigarette.
JD nodded as though he concurred, but in truth he couldn’t read the virtual constellations any better than the real ones that lingered somewhere above the digital feeds, above the light pollution, above the clouds. “And?”
“I know people in Stokoe.” After a beat Khoder added: “We could raid them.”
The kid took a step backward, eyes still stuck to the sky, but JD grabbed a handful of his vinyl collar. “You’re not going back inside; they just got here.” JD nodded across the road to where Soo-hyun stood, waiting for a gap in the traffic with a harsh set to their mouth.
“But bro, think of the loot,” Khoder said.
JD shook Khoder violently enough for the kid to bring his eyes down from the sky. Soo-hyun wore a heavily constructed black neoprene hoodie, tight gray jeans, and cowboy-esque slouch leather boots they’d stolen from an auto-store and bragged about for a month. The boots were designer-ugly, but the theft gave them a certain criminal charm. A large black bag clung to their back like a baby orangutan to its mother.
“They go by they,” JD said. “So be cool.”
“I was born cool, bro.”
“You were born an asshole.”
Soo-hyun gave up waiting and walked out into traffic—car tires shushed over the wet asphalt as they braked, and horns blared in warning.
They mounted the curb and inspected Khoder. “What do we need him for?”
“Soo-hyun, Khoder; Khoder, Soo-hyun. He’s on digital security.”
“I thought that was your job,” Soo-hyun said.
“If it was a legit repo job I’d have extra tools as part of the contract. Without those I need a hacker.”
Soo-hyun held up a hand. “Okay, you’ve already said too much.” They retrieved a small pouch from their bag, lined with microwidth titanium sheeting. “Batteries, phones.”
JD took the phone from his pocket, cracked open the outer casing, and dropped the battery and phone into the bag. He turned to Khoder, who held his phone tightly in one hand, looking at it as though he were reading something other than his own distraught reflection.
“You’ll be offline for an hour,” JD said. “Two at the most.”
Khoder’s head dropped minutely. Sadly he intoned a single “Bro.”
He disassembled his phone with an air of ritual—sacred rites delivered on the street while all around them the city bustled. Cars hissed as they passed, people walked in tech-solitary silence, and a stray dog sniffed a garbage bin, cocked its leg, and posted to that canine message board. Khoder reached his hand into the bag and placed the phone and battery gently at its base.
“Are you alright?” JD asked Soo-hyun. “You seem different.”
They bit their lower lip and nodded. “I’m good, Jules, really good. Now, let’s move.” Soo-hyun didn’t wait for a response, they simply turned and marched away, slotting the Faraday pouch into their bag without missing a step.
JD was used to Soo-hyun’s ferocious pace, but he kept glancing back to make sure Khoder was keeping up. Where JD could ram his way through the crowded sidewalks with his bulk, Khoder was a wraith. He slipped through gaps that hadn’t been there a moment before, as though the foul-mouthed boy were made of smoke.
The building’s entrance screamed corporate wealth and design by committee, with walls in three different shades of fake gold, and pink marble flooring, all lit sickly orange from exposed industrial light bulbs. JD expected the automatic doors to stay closed at Soo-hyun’s approach, but they slid apart obediently to let them through, and stayed