The hall was filled with the distressed noise of waking others—the director hummed a melancholic tune from behind their closed door that promised a strange lesson, August and Lilah wailed at each other over a grungy sweatshirt they both wanted to wear, and the ominous thumping of Oscar rattled the thin walls to shut them up. Others scurried to the kitchen to devour whatever crumbs they could find. Malory didn’t bother. Instead, she walked to the bathroom and washed the crusty scab on her fingertip and tried not to think of her parents being murdered as the sink ran red. It was going to be a long day. She sighed, wiped her hand on her dress, and headed for the classroom. She found Martin and Spencer on the way bent over a gray object in the living room whispering in short bursts and her curiosity exploded: illicit porn chip, an ampoule of uppers, stolen jewelry, the command codes to an Aeon Automotive combat drone. She stymied her thoughts and headed for them. Martin was titanic, primordial genetics not even a childhood of poverty and malnourishment could staunch, while Spencer was stringy bone and sinew held together by skin like paper. They hid their mystery object when she approached.
“Job for you, if you’re interested,” she said. She thought it resembled the bleak steel of a black-market revolver, but couldn’t be certain.
“Absolutely,” Martin said, his voice was high-pitched and didn’t match his size. Next to him, Spencer shook his head up and down as fast as he could.
“Sneak out with me this afternoon,” she said. She could tell they were afraid of her prying, so she swallowed her curiosity.
She spun on her heel and went to the classroom. It was full of dirty mats for the orphans. None of them had implants, so instead of scrolling through memory chips on their optics while being monitored through the net, they had to use antique VR goggles the director had procured from an old tech salvager after a rare donation. The lessons were rudimentary: arithmetic, basic English, French, Japanese, and Mandarin, the geography of the city within the walls and the gangs and corporations that controlled its territory, some science and technological primers that Nadia obsessed over, history modules with heavy doses of propaganda, a single file on music theory, and a bizarre course the director had created that focused on creativity and acting with an abundance of short films and plays and improv performances. Mal’s favorite was the guidebook on programming—there was no interactivity, but she could dive deep into the languages and memorize whatever she could. She dropped to her usual mat, slid on the visor, and ignored how much she felt like a corpse in a morgue. She let the code cascade across her retinas as she waited for class to start.
The others came in and took their places, chattering until the director navigated them to a saturated blue screen and a narration of an ill man who lived in Old London. Malory tuned it all out and floated on syntax for forty minutes until she was certain the director wouldn’t notice her leaving. She took off the ancient visor, stood, glanced at her sister on the mat next to her, and decided to leave her behind. It was too dangerous to risk them both. She crept to Nadia, shoved a wet finger in her ear, and then moved on to Spencer. She grabbed Martin last, afraid the giant would have trouble shuffling out without making noise. They were out in the crisp, dirty air in less than a minute. Malory coughed. She looked up at the wall that meant hope and safety for so many and knew it was the teeth of a colossal monster that had long swallowed her whole and would never let go. It was early morning, and they’d be in the shadows until almost noon.
“Where to?” Martin asked. He flexed his arms, ready for a fight.
“Bagley,” Nadia called. She hoisted the rechargeable crab to her shoulder and attempted to showboat. “Gonna set off beautiful Ms. Clawdia here and snatch whatever we can.”
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“Awesome,” Spencer said. He was practically vibrating in and out of existence from excitement and low blood sugar, and had something tucked in the waistband of his basketball shorts. There were no more questions.
They headed to the market, and billboards, holograms, and glass storefronts lined the way. Traffic was congested even far from city center as the throngs bustled in the morning commute. Pedestrians multiplied as they reached the monorail stop outside the entrance of the shopping district. One of the holo trees flickered and dropped dainty digital leaves in Malory’s face that splattered into light when she touched them. The sound of the masses was overwhelming, and she had to grit her teeth. She missed the quiet of the closet, the gentle closeness of her friend, the urge to touch. The group of orphans walked through the signed archway, past countless transactions and goods they’d only seen in their dreams, and headed down, down, into the depths of the open-air emporium.
“Here,” Nadia said. She’d stopped at a four-corner junction that had a selection of synth meats, fruits, and breads in one direction, racks and stacks of clothing and animatronic mannequins that displayed fresh designer outfits in another, and tech display cases, code laptops, various sizes of printed circuit boards, mounds of miscellaneous memory chips, and illustrated diagrams of assembly instructions in the third. The final path led to a staircase that ascended directly to street level.
“Showtime,” Malory said. She leaned against a stone pillar to observe the crowd, the way it pulsed, and looked forward to the chaos. Adrenaline pumped. The air was sticky and smelled of autumn and sweat and so many people.
“Focus on food and anything we can actually use,” Nadia said. Her eyes were dilated, wild with manic glee. The exhaustion that haunted her face like a death mask was condemned to the abyss. “If it needs a fence, grab something else!” She slammed the button on the belly of the crab and lobbed it into the center walkway. Seconds passed. A drop of sweat rolled down the nape of her neck, and she clenched and unclenched her left fist over and over. Nothing happened. The murmur continued, buying and selling, buying and selling, a shout, a laugh, and then someone’s boot knocked the machine on the way to somewhere else.
Reality teetered to a halt—a woman in an orange sweater carried a large box against her chest, a hooded man stalked past with his hands stuffed in his jacket, a couple made out on a stone bench, obscuring graffiti. An aggressive Stanton Arms advertisement twirled in bright reds and yellows overhead and demanded attention. With a sharp click, the wave spread invisible electric current that terminated optics, cameras, holograms, ads, robots, space heaters, the fluorescent streetlights, servos on a few arm implants, and one old-school digital watch, but it didn’t stop at the intersection like Malory expected. Instead, it continued to devour the entire market, one shop at a time, until it reached equilibrium at the monorail and fizzled to an end. Her three conspirators moved immediately. They snatched large duffel bags from the clothing area to fill, but Mal didn’t budge. It was too much—they might have gotten away taking out a small corner, but disrupting the business of all of Bagley was beyond the pale. The crowd was disoriented, blind, and on the verge of panic. Mal had to do something, anything to change their fate, but no answer came. She had no power, no way to change the fate they’d set in motion.
Martin, Spencer, and Nadia weaved in and out of the paralyzed throng, their bags near bursting. Grubby palms reached out to secure their gains. More, and more, and more still: packages of dried meat, pasta, assorted tubers, and hard bread, jeans and shorts and sweaters and winter coats and shirts without moth-rotten holes in them, so many sets of current-gen VR goggles to replace the junk they used in class, three compact laptops built for coding and memory design, and entire boxes of high-end educational and entertainment memory chips disappeared into their bags. One by one, they ventured further into the boutiques to search for mandatory treasures, and disappeared from Malory’s view. She was motionless, cold stone at her back, scanning over the sightless. Her body shook with every heartbeat, and each thud drowned out the bedlam of terrified rabble they’d robbed like miracle workers in reverse. It was too smooth, too neat. She could feel the specter of catastrophe coiling around her spine, ever craving, ever keen. Spencer stumbled back into view as it opened its jaws wide for the feast— a security guard reached out with a vice-grip on a skinny arm. Spencer hesitated, a moment where his rational mind still existed, then pulled the revolver from his waistband and fired.
