“You can’t go,” Dante said. “We got a meeting with Suborbital on Friday. Duke has been working on getting us in the door for months. You can’t ditch it just to run off with that . . . that . . . that . . . elf.”
Austin had gone into the house, a one-story bunker of a building, and JT had gone to break the news to Dante. He’d found the kid in the lab programming the industrial 3-D printer. The control booth for the printer looked like it could have launched the Mars missions: eight 210-centimeter monitors in banks, holo projectors glowing blue, sim receivers, interface gloves and crowns, and cabling everywhere, all mounted on a half-cylindrical frame of matte-black carbon alloy and plastered with skate-punk decals. The decals were Dante’s contribution to the decor. She’d even found an antique Misfits one somewhere.
JT said, “The meeting’s two days from now. It’s just San Francisco. I’ll be back in plenty of time.”
“We have a meeting with the banker tomorrow.”
“You can handle it.”
“Are you insane? Caldwell ain’t gonna take me seriously. I’m seventeen!”
Seventeen going on forty, JT thought.
Four months after JT had arrived in Greentown, Dante Riggs had caught his eye. The kid had been looking at JT’s truck the way JT had once looked at trucks: paying too much attention to security systems, sight lines to the driver’s-side door, and surveillance cameras.
Two days later, she tried to steal it. Duke’s boys had beaten the hell out of her, but JT wouldn’t let them call the cops. Honor among thieves, he supposed. And damned if the kid didn’t come limping back, except this time she wanted to talk: “They tell me you built that truck from scratch,” she’d said, eyes still bruised and one tusk broken off short. “3-D printers and nano shit. Teach me how to do it.”
“Fuck off,” JT had told her, and hit her again so she understood he was serious.
JT said now, “You’re just reviewing affidavits for Friday. You’re not asking him for money. You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t own a tie.”
“Caldwell wouldn’t recognize you if you wore one.”
“He’s going to fuck up your life again!”
Ah, there it was. Out of everyone JT had met since he’d moved here, he’d only told Dante the truth. It wasn’t the business Dante was worried about—it was Austin. Well, that made two of them. “It’s only one day, and it’s only this once.”
“Yeah, I’ve said that about a lot of things too.”
“And so have I. But I got things to come back to this time.”
After JT had told the kid to fuck off, Dante had camped out at the gate to JT’s place like she was petitioning for training at a Shaolin Temple. JT had managed to hold out a week before he brought the kid in.
JT clapped her on the shoulder. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
The kid worried her broken tusk with her tongue—everyone learned their habits from someone—shoved her hands deep in her pockets, and hunched her shoulders like eighty degrees was cold. “Yeah . . . well . . . when you come back, lose the elf.” She looked out across the yard at the black space where the Corvette sat. “But keep the car.”
Kitchen, dining and living rooms were all the one room. On the dining table, Chinese takeout was unpacked, white boxes everywhere like blown-up origami. Austin had opened everything to make sure there was no meat in his, and he’d arranged the too-many packets of soy and duck sauce in letters: EAT ME.
He was on the couch, and the big-screen was going at the same time he had the VR glasses on. He absentmindedly worked chopsticks on vegetable lo mein. He didn’t even look at the damn box or have to readjust the sticks every minute like JT had to. He never dropped a bit of it or had to fish around to find something easy to pick up. That was his left hand.
His right hand flicked and twitched in the control glove, and Nazi zombies died.
“Are you cheating?” JT asked.
“I only cheat in real life, when it’s actually fun. The kid not eating?” He ate and killed zombies.
“Nah, she’s eating by herself tonight.” He’d set Dante up in a room over the printer lab when the kid had moved in, and Dante retreated there when she needed her space or JT needed his.
“Tonight? But doesn’t she eat with you usually?” Austin asked, implying something, but JT didn’t want to play games, so ignored him. JT speared orange chicken with his chopsticks. The container of rice sat untouched. Rice was elf food. “She could be useful,” Austin said. “Maybe—”
“Maybe nothing. I brought her here to give her a way out of that life, Austin, not a way in.”
Austin turned just a bit and slid the glasses down his nose (and still his hand flicked, and zombies died, and he didn’t), and ran his eyes up and down JT. “You make a cute daddy. I approve.”
“Fuck you. I’m just doing what I can.”
“You didn’t have to do anything,” He went back to his game and his food. “That’s what makes it cute.”
JT started in on the Szechuan chicken, upending the take-away box to his mouth and using the sticks to shovel the food in. He watched Austin play his game and eat.
“Shouldn’t we be planning this protection job?” JT asked.
“What’s to plan? We need to move Buzz from the place he’s holed up in San Fran to Tahoe and his rendezvous with 3djinn. The quieter, the better.”
“Route? Gear?”
“You’re the pilot. As far as gear, I’m bringing a bow, some arrows, and you. Really, JT, this isn’t a break-in. It’s just deliver-the-package. Except the package is Buzz. Pick a car; pick your drones; and we’re good to go.”
That was just too much blitheness, even for Austin. This was a triad they were messing with, not some street gang. Something was up.
“So what’s the story? Why’s the triad after Buzz?”
Austin shrugged. “He stole something.”
“Software?”
“Something. I don’t know. He calls me—”
“He’s got your contact info?” JT didn’t even have Austin’s contact info.
“It’s not that hard to find.” He gave JT a pointed flick of a glance. “If you wanted to find it. So he calls me and says he’s in trouble and needs to get out of town and over to Tahoe. He’d been working for the Electric Dragon Triad and found something, and, well, he might have taken it—”
“So he didn’t just steal from them, he betrayed them?”
“Suppose you could see it that way.”
“I can guaran-fuckin-tee you that’s how they’re seeing it.” The Electric Dragon was going to be excessive in their vengeance. But it was like Austin had said: they just needed to move Buzz quiet, not a shot fired. “So he never said what it was he took? Must have been something pretty damn amazing to throw your life away for it.”
“Must have been.” Austin stopped playing his game and took the VR glasses off. “Things like that exist, JT.”
“Like hell, they do. And you still don’t think we need a plan.”
“I got a plan. You.”
Hours later, drones all folded up sleeping in the truck bed, software all loaded, and fuel cells charged, JT came back into the house. Austin was still up, still plugged into the VR, but doing what JT couldn’t tell.
JT crossed to his bedroom door. “I’m getting some sleep. You can crash on the couch. I’ll get you some blankets.”
Austin took the glasses off. “What’s wrong with your room?”
JT had known this was coming. “Floor’s a little hard in my room.” He didn’t crack a smile or make a friendly joke of it. Dante had been right, and JT couldn’t risk getting tied up with Austin again. JT had to draw a line, and that line was at his bedroom door.
Austin looked away and worked his mouth as he stared at the ceiling. He looked back and said, deadpan, “Hey, no worries. I’ll find a motel.”
JT didn’t watch him leave, not with his eyes. But every camera networked into his head tracked Austin, one camera after another. They tracked him as he stalked out of the living room, door banging closed behind him. Tracked him across the gravel yard and concrete slabs. Tracked him sliding into the stolen Corvette and spinning it around faster than he needed so the wheels sprayed up gravel. Tracked him, taillights red, down the road toward Greentown, and then kept watching the road after the taillights had been swallowed up by the night.