angular geometric shape meant for sitting but never sleeping. He put his phone back together while he stretched his leg.
After a few seconds he laughed despite himself. Soo-hyun had set a curtain on fire to skip out on a bill. Who does that?
He shook his head, anger at Soo-hyun washed away in the rain. He never could hold a grudge, especially not with family. He shook his head again, and felt the adrenaline ebb out of his veins with a shudder.
He blinked his phone on, and after a few seconds of initialization it came to life with a happy chirrup. JD noticed the letters “NKBK” painted messily on the wall in front of him—the inexplicable north korea best korea, like on the outskirts of Liber—then his Augmented feed kicked in, obscuring the graffiti behind a shimmering billboard for no-streak mascara.
Even reconnected to the city feeds, the street seemed eerily quiet. There was minimum biomass moving along the sidewalk, just the occasional cute couple or triple on date night, huddled under shared umbrellas, and homeless people with nowhere else to go. JD smiled at a pair of young guys only to watch their love-struck looks fall away when they saw him sitting there, soaking wet with his leg stretched out across half the path. They steered wide of him, conversation dead on their lips until they were sure he was out of earshot.
JD put the city from his mind and opened VOIDWAR. He looked up at the patch of sky between towers as he waited for the game to log in, but saw nothing of the explosive action from earlier in the night. He scanned the game’s news feed and saw Khoder was right: the massive battle had unfolded in Stokoe, involving three large factions with another half-dozen smaller ones joining in to take advantage of the situation.
Early reports suggested close to two million euro worth of ships, stations, and weapons had been lost, but Zero Corp would never release the actual figures; that data was restricted to board members and shareholders. Regardless, the Stokoe system was going to be lousy with scavengers for at least a day.
JD closed the game and sent Khoder’s contact information to Soo-hyun. He included a note:
>> My knee is killing me. You’re lucky we’re family.
The reply came back instantaneously:
>> Admit it, it’s the most excitement you’ve had in months.
JD sighed. Soo-hyun was mostly right.
He checked his phone’s map and the street signs hanging detached above the nearest corner, temporarily lost after the brisk death march to the restaurant and his rushed escape at a random trajectory.
When he finally recognized where he was, JD realized that maybe his trajectory hadn’t been random. Before the knee injury, the medical treatments, and all the rest, he’d lived three streets away, with Troy. He felt a uniquely modern disappointment in himself—knowing he should have been able to recognize the neighborhood without help. His internal maps and his sense of direction were two more sacrifices he’d made to the machines without a second thought, just like his ability to calculate basic math or remember friends’ birthdays.
JD stood, breathing quick against the pain in his leg. He tossed his rucksack over his shoulder, and limped toward his old apartment.
* * *
Troy opened the door to see JD, dripping water on his welcome mat. He frowned.
“Good to see you, too,” JD said.
“I have class in the morning, Jules; I was just about to go to bed.”
JD bit his tongue—they weren’t at a place where he could casually joke about them sleeping together.
“I was in the neighborhood—” JD stopped when he saw Troy’s frown deepen. “I really was.”
Troy wore a faded green cardigan, which he held tight around his throat with one hand, skin pink-white most of the way up his forearm before giving way to his natural dark pigment. The vitiligo spotted the sides of his head as well, so Troy wore his hair in a neatly cropped Mohawk, self-conscious about the locks of pure white that would grow there if he let them.
Troy stepped back from the doorway. “Come inside then,” he said with a sigh.
JD left his shoes on the landing and crossed the threshold into the apartment. Troy held an arm out grudgingly. They hugged, and JD rested his hands on Troy’s waist, but they felt orphaned there, so he let them fall to his side and pecked Troy on the cheek as he stepped past.
“What is that smell?” Troy asked with a crinkled nose.