Like a Boss (39 page)

The only sounds I heard were my boots pounding on the pavement. Brushhead was graveyard quiet. A work morning like this, there should have been a low-level bustle of tuk-tuks and bikes, but I had the streets to myself. Cafés were still rolled up behind their hurricane curtains, and there were none of the usual breakfast smells of coffee, beignets, and fish sausage. Scorch marks lined storefronts where diesel bombs had flared. A streetlight bent low over the sidewalk, its sides marred by sledgehammer blows.

I rounded Reigert and blew past my old Union office, its windows covered by layers of graffiti, none of it friendly. I turned on Handel and skidded to a halt; a tuk-tuk bomb had gone off in the middle of the street. A blackened crater yawned from the pavement, and all the surrounding buildings were ruins.

One of them was Mooj’s konbini.

I walked toward it. The blast had blown the fruit stand aside like it had been made of cardboard. The konbini’s front had caved in, bringing part of the two stories above down on the sidewalk. I peered into the darkened ruin and coughed at the stench of burned cane plastic and rotten food.

“Hey!” came a voice behind me. “Get lost! You hoods already took everything!”

An angry Mooj Markson stormed at me, brandishing a rolling pin. “I got nothing left! Go loot someone else!”

I held up my hands. “Mooj!”

He swung. I turned in time to get hit in the shoulder. The same one I’d been stabbed in only a week before. My entire left arm went numb, and I fell to my knees.

“Serves you right!” yelled Mooj, waving the rolling pin. “You blow up my store, you take all my food! What more do you want?”

“My rum?” I panted, holding up my right arm.

Mooj’s face softened. “Oh, Padma.” He dropped the pin and rushed to my side. “Padma, forgive me, I’ve had all these people picking over my store’s carcass!”

“No, that’s okay.” My fingers tingled as they regained their sensation. “I should have called you from the sidewalk. You okay?”

“I been better,” he said, “but I been worse, too. None of us got hurt in the blast.”

“Good. Good.” I looked back into the blackened wreckage of the konbini. I’d stuffed the cases into the ceiling crawlspace above the back storeroom. I couldn’t see it from here, but if I could just hop in and take a look…

“Come on,” he said, helping me to my feet. “We got burned out of our home, so Eleanor’s brother has been putting us up. We still got some painkillers in the first aid kit.”

“Thank you, no. What I need are those two crates of Old Windswept.”

He laughed. “Kind of early, isn’t it?”

“I’m thinking ahead. You still got ’em, right?”

“I did.” He motioned toward the burned-out shell of the konbini. “I had a lot of other stuff, too. But that bomb did my store in. What the shock wave didn’t break, the fire burned. And then the looters took the rest.”

“But I
hid
those cases, Mooj, remember? In the storeroom, up in the ceiling.”

Mooj shook his head. “Gone, Padma. It’s cleaned out.”

My heart sank. “Everything?”

“Yeah. But it’s okay, ’cause I re-upped my insurance. Special policy.”

I groaned. “Let me guess. A young woman with really, really great skin?”

He nodded. “That’s her! She said it was backed by a joint venture between the Union and the Co-Op, so I figured…”

I didn’t hear the rest of what Mooj said. I didn’t have to. I could see the scene: the younger Jennifer knocking on Mooj’s door, telling him about a deal that sounded too good to be true. The bomb, parked outside the shop, going off in the middle of the night. The store burning, Mooj’s family escaping, finding their policy was backed by bullshit. One more layer of chaos that Letty had sewn. I would have to look on another stash after work…

… unless
that
had been Letty’s target.

My blood ran cold as I remembered the bombing in Howlwadaag. The crater had been in the middle of García Avenue, all those shophouses had burned… and one of them had been Patel’s Flowers. Where else had those bombs gone off? Where else had Soni and Onanefe said? Only every other neighborhood where I had stashed Old Windswept.

It’s not enough to know where you’ve been
, Letty had said yesterday. But it was. Oh, that bitch, it
was
.

It didn’t matter if I had shut off my pai when I talked. I could still be tracked by my habits, my trips, my constant goddamn need to make sure no one screwed with the rum I’d stashed. I was as predictable as the tides, given enough data and the spiteful desire to analyze it all. Letty would have made an awesome marketing engineer by the way she could predict where to hit me best.

“I have to go to work,” I said. Mooj might have replied, but I just turned and walked toward the plant. There were a few more people in the street, but not enough to make me think that I had done nothing but completely and utterly failed. I hadn’t gotten people back to work. I hadn’t gotten Letty to resign. And I had probably lost every single bottle of Old Windswept I had hidden.

The waterworks loomed overhead as I trudged down Courtland Lane. The stained clock above the front door told me I was ten minutes late for my shift. I had never been late for a day of work in my life, but there was a first time for everything.

The locker room was dark and dusty. As far as I could tell, no one else had clocked in. I slipped into my ancient environment suit, double-checking its seals and rebreather. It was a size too big, so walking through the mains was always a chore. I had to deal with the suit’s bulk as well as the sludge that gathered around my waist. It would probably be even thicker today.

My office for the past eighteen months was a twenty-meter-square pourform pool. Four pipes emptied into one end, and another four slurped in water from the other. My job was to clean out the sediment that settled on the bottom and to ensure none of the pipes got clogged. Even with the giant fans roaring away, the air smelled like a back-flowing toilet. It was an important job, one of the oldest Contract Slots on Santee, but that never translated into anything like pay or prestige. Anyone could do this job, which was why no one wanted it. If the Big Three could ever make proper compliant AIs, this would have been their first task.

But it was mine and mine alone. No one ever came down here unless I reported busted piping. It wasn’t a place to socialize. Other places in the waterworks, like the final treatment pools, were downright pleasant. Not here.

The mains were clogged with great, gray, glistening fatbergs, which meant my suit was soon covered in gunk. I slipped and slid my way through work, sweating despite the suit’s internal coolers. I didn’t bother to break for lunch. I just lost myself in labor, clearing all the crap that the city had flushed into the sewers over the past seven days: engine parts, bones, coconut husks, hair, shit, oil. No bodies, at least. That was a pleasant surprise.

Seven days and people had stopped using their backyard digesters. They had just flushed stuff down their toilets or into the storm drains. They had lost all sense of water discipline, of making sure to keep the aging water system from becoming overloaded. Never mind that we had gotten through thirteen hurricane seasons with minimal injuries and downtime, but one stupid strike and the whole place went to hell.

As I worked, I realized what a perfect spot this would be for Letty to kill me. There was no pai reception, the walls were thick, and the noise from the pipes and the fan could drown any screams. It didn’t help that The Fear prickled at my brain, turning shadows into kill squads.

Somewhere around three o’clock, I heard the distinct heavy clack of the room’s only door. I froze. Oh, shit. She was going to do it. This was a stupid plan, and now it was going to be the end of me. All I had was the rake. I hunkered down in the pool and backed to its far corner. Only my hands and face were above the murky water.

Four people filed in, all of them in rebreather masks. They held tools: a crowbar, a torque wrench, a pipe saw, a welder. All the things you’d need to kill someone and dispose of their corpse. They fanned out. My hands shook, but I willed myself to wait until they got close enough to strike. There would be no hiding in here, no running. I wasn’t going to let Letty take me without a fight.

Torque Wrench made his way toward the outflow pipes and stopped. He looked right at me, and I could see his eyes crinkle in a grin. That was enough for me. I gripped the rake and jumped out of the pool. Torque Wrench’s eyes widened as I hit him square in the chest. Momentum carried us all the way to the wall, where the rake’s handle snapped. The tines clattered to the floor, and I held the splintered end of the handle to Torque Wrench’s neck. “Give me one reason not to drive this in, motherfucker,” I hissed. “Just one.”

Torque Wrench gurgled, “We brought you lunch.”

I didn’t take my eyes off his. Sweat ran down the outside of his rebreather. Through the scratched-up glass I saw Somboon Hallorhan, who was in charge of pH levels in the settling tanks. I glanced at the others and recognized them: Danica Thorwald, Li-Han Wai, and Annie Lonon. They were all people I worked with.

I looked back at Somboon. “You didn’t take a lunch break, and we got worried,” he said. “You’re usually up there with us. So we came down to tell you we brought lunch. It’s back in the break room.”

The door clacked again, and three more people entered. They were also carrying tools. I pressed the handle into Somboon’s neck. “Who the fuck are they?”

“Your relief!”

“Bullshit.”

“Padma, I know you’ve been under a lot of stress–”

“You have no
idea
how true that is.”

“– but people have been showing up to work all day,” said Danica from behind. “Shifts are getting double- and triple-staffed. These three usually work on the lifter, but they’re overstaffed, so they came here looking for anything to do. They want to fill in for you.”

I gave them a closer look. They had rakes and shovels and all the implements you’d need to do my job. Of course, they also could have come down here to rush me all together. Seven on one, those were really good odds.

“Padma, please,” said Somboon. “I know you don’t want to trust anyone, but I’m going to ask you to. Please don’t hurt me. Come and eat. It’s just like you’ve been asking everyone to do.”

I laughed. “Nothing’s gone like I’ve asked.”

“We’re here!”

“You weren’t this morning,” I said. “I was
late
, and none of you had clocked in.”

“Because we were late, too! I didn’t want to come into work until Danica and Li-Han dragged me here.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Li-Han and Danica nodded.

“I fucking hate this job, but I’m here,” said Somboon. “I’m here because what you said was right. We can’t look to Letty to resolve this. We gotta do it ourselves, and we start by trusting and talking, right?”

You believe this?
hissed The Fear.
Your own words, thrown back at you. You can take all of them. Start with this one, then hit the rest. It’s a trap. Get out now.

That was new. The Fear, encouraging me? Granted, it was encouraging me to stab Somboon in the neck, but it was still cheering me on rather than cutting me down. The Fear had stayed silent all through work, but now it wanted me to do something that was part self-preservation, part homicide.

Fuck The Fear.

I put down the rake handle.

They didn’t rush me. They didn’t come near me, not even the three replacements. They hopped right into the pool and got to work.

I led the way out the door and up to the locker room. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I peeled off the environment suit and hung it on the cleaning rack. My four co-workers stood there, as I clicked off the seals of my rebreather. Then my heart stopped because I smelled samosas and galbi and freshly cooked rice. The locker room stench tried to fight with the scents of food, and the food won. Christ, I didn’t realize how
hungry
I was.

I turned around and saw the entire crew was watching me. They had left their tools behind and removed their rebreathers. I knew these people. I had worked with them, helped them, let them help me. They weren’t going to kill me.

“Well, let’s wash up and eat, huh?” I said, and everyone sighed with relief.

The spread was even better than I imagined: pickles and chutneys and noodles spread out in an array of open tiffin-boxes. We sat down and passed bowls of bean sprouts and spinach, plates of roasted yams and grilled fish. I attacked my lunch, then went back for seconds. Li-Han made a joke – at least, I figured he did, because everyone cracked up. I was too busy eating to hear it, but I smiled all the same.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Letty’s face when we all show up,” said Danica.

Li-Han choked on his food. “You
campaigned
for her when she ran!”

“So?” said Danica. “I can change my mind. We shouldn’t have let a Freeborn into the Union anyway. They just don’t get it.”

I paused, noodles halfway to my mouth. “Don’t get what?”

“Oh, you know, Padma,” said Danica. “They didn’t grow up around the Life Corporate like we did. They don’t get what it’s like to be a part of something
bigger
. To look out for each other.”

“Like everyone has this past week?”

There was a deathly silence. Danica put down her bowl. “What I’m saying is that Letty wasn’t a good leader. She wasn’t looking out for us. We need someone who will.”

“Really?” I said. “If anything, I think we need to look out for each other even more. And not just Union people. The Freeborn, too.”

“But they don’t want that,” said Li-Han. “They never have.”

“Because we’ve never offered them anything worthwhile.” I threw down my chopsticks. “Holy shit. We’re just going to repeat ourselves. We got into this jam because we didn’t pay any attention. We let the Executive Committee run out of cash, we let them get in bed with the Co-Op over this stupid Mutual Fund, and we’ll get screwed all over again when the cane gets certified.”

“But WalWa’s holding up the certification,” said Somboon. “Aren’t they?”

“It doesn’t matter, because there’s no goddamn reason for us to rely on WalWa. Not for certification, not for Slots, none of that. We work against each other when we should be working together to do one important thing: kick WalWa off this planet.”