PLACERS: $15.99
The Placer could have killed me. If he’d cut the rope, or yanked his grappling hook free, or just given me a gentle push, I would have tumbled five stories down to the ground. My head was still swimming with pain; I had been foolish to climb at all.
Instead, he pulled me up. I guess it would have been stupid to kill me after the effort he put in to save me. His team was waiting, looking down at me.
I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to pretend I hadn’t seen them. But I was slowly realizing that I wasn’t very good at doing what was expected of me.
There were three of them, standing there, watching me. Even under their masks, I could sense irritation. The one with the most gear and the fiercest eyes gave me the harshest stare. My chin still throbbed, and the pain radiated out to my jaw and my skull, yet I was thrilled. I was actually seeing Placers!
Everything the Placers wore was matte black: their clothes, gloves, backpacks, tool belts and even the boxes they carried. Every surface seemed to eat light. I could scarcely tell where one ended and the next began. I guessed this team was high-end—a swag crew out to place something more than cereal or cola in a neighborhood like this.
The one I had followed, the biggest of the bunch, made a gesture in the air, drawing a very gently arced line slowly ahead of himself with this thumb and forefinger. He moved it suddenly, straight to the right, then dropped it down with a twist. This obviously meant something to the others, because they stepped back. The leader held her finger firm, pointing at the ground. This was meant for me. I should go back. I did not move. I put a hand to my aching chin and felt the warm blood there again.
With a sigh-like drop of her shoulders, the smallest of the group, a petite girl, heaved her considerable pack from her shoulders and silently reached inside it. She pulled out a Product box with an arrangement of therapeutic supplies from Phisior™ to make skin look younger. She took a healing pad from the kit, tore its package open and handed it to me.
Who were these people? There were few clues. Product Placers were meant to be a mystery. Sam once heard they would bring you a real orange if you kept quiet. Sam had always wanted to taste an orange.
I didn’t know what to expect from them, but this kindness and aid was not what I had anticipated. Did they know who I was? Or were they surprised that I wasn’t speaking?
I secured the bandage to my chin, and the large Placer made his gesture again, this time specifically positioning his fingers so that it was clear he was mapping out a route over the buildings.
Before I could get my bearings, the leader took off, leaping across to the next rooftop. The small one quickly packed up and followed. The big one looked at me and inclined his head so slightly I barely saw it. He wanted me to follow. When he ran, I took a deep breath and plunged forward as well.
I could have gotten myself killed. I wasn’t at my best, though the bandage soothed my pain and, somehow, my dizziness. Sirens began to wail back near the scene of the attack. The lead Placer picked up her pace.
Once we were well away from where we’d started, the big one unfastened my attacker’s Cuff from his pack and flung it into the air, where it pinged off the corner of a building and tumbled down ten stories to the alley below. It hit with a hard crack and a dazzling flash of light, followed by a white-hot glow. The Cuff’s NanoLion™ battery had ruptured. The alley might glow for days.
I stumbled just a moment, thinking of the battery clamped to my wrist. I had to remind myself that ruptures were rare on their own. Rare enough, at least, that NanoLion™ remained profitable. How many suits against them could there be, if their batteries were basically everywhere?
It was hard to keep up, but I felt exhilarated. The rapid, careful placement of my feet, the strain in my legs as I lengthened my strides and the fluid way I followed how they skipped up over fire escapes and lintels to gain more height brought back the joy of my gymnastics classes. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. I was only just managing to keep up, thanks to those years of practice. The team moved like gazelles, jumping effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop, never looking down. I should have done the same.
The buildings on the outer ring are only ten or twelve stories tall. That is as much as the curve of the dome will accommodate here. The gaps between the buildings and their overhanging eaves are mostly eight feet—not a hard distance to jump, but that height is unnerving, and a mistake would be deadly. When the next building was taller, they would leap onto a fire escape with scarcely a noise. When the building dipped lower, they would leap off the edge, grab hold of a rail or pipe and slide down to the next building’s height.
I lost pace. It irked the leader to slow for me, but I was immensely grateful when she finally did. They were actually allowing me to follow. Where were we going?
We moved inward, through the wedge of Section Fourteen, across small roofs and big, and soon were five blocks into the Cinquième, one of the six central sections. The buildings here were taller; everything was taller toward the city center. The leader shot a line up a dozen stories. She attached something to it and zipped up at a speed that didn’t look safe. I felt like I was watching a superhero in action.
The small one quickly did the same. No wonder sightings were so rare; they moved so fast! The biggest one held out his arms to me, a silent offer to take me along. I think he was grinning under that mask. I stepped forward and he grasped me tightly around the waist. A second later, we were hurtling up thirty stories.
The roof door was already open when we arrived. The other two Placers had headed inside. The one beside me pried my hand loose from his arm and, with a click, brought up the guide wire behind us.
Beyond the doorway, the stairwell was lit in a warm amber light. What was this building? What were we doing here? Inside, the leader had a Pad out, and she held it up to the wall. It showed an apartment beyond, like a fuzzy, luminous window. The inside showed up as a cobalt-blue thermal image of expensive furniture and large, open space. She scanned the full length of the place until she came to a bed and two stout figures asleep inside. They glowed as a hot, round mass together in the room. The leader turned to see if the others agreed this was a good spot. The big one tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes like he was going to sleep.
Were they going to do a Placement? Was the plan to show me how it was done? This was sort of what I’d pictured when I thought of Product Placers: a coordinated, silent team, sneaking through the night. But there was something odd about this picture—me. Why had they brought me? It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t ask, and if I had, I’m certain they would have shushed me. I might have known a thing or two about being silent, but this crew was as noiseless as air. In comparison, my breath felt loud, and my feet seemed to slide on the carpet like rolling thunder.
The leader unlocked the apartment door by running a magnetic tool across the edges. The door clicked open. They all rushed inside, silent as ghosts. I followed them, trying to mimic their light steps.
The big one turned out a padded black cylinder from a long foam bag. It was about twice the thickness of a baseball bat and about a quarter as long. He began working a small screen at the top and held it out into the air. My ears instantly felt like they needed to be cleared. I could no longer hear my breath or my footfalls or anything. The air felt strange. The cylinder was suppressing the sound.
They all waited for me before an enormous wooden bookcase. I could not help but stare. I’d never seen a book in person before—only in movies and shows. The people who lived here, the two sleeping yellow-orange blobs a few rooms away—they were people with money. A lot of money. You didn’t just have books in your home. You had to have permits. You had to have means to protect them. Books were dangerous things filled with uncontrolled words and Copyrighted ideas. You could show a book to anyone, replicating the ideas at no cost at all. You could cut up the pages and rearrange the words into who knows how many combinations. You could keep the words, no matter how many times the Copyrights changed hands and prices on the Word$ Market™. It was shocking just to be in the presence of them. I wanted to run a finger down their spines. I wanted to pull one out and crack it open and see the words. Who knew what they might contain?
The leader blocked my view, and waved me back. I had to shake myself. She held her Pad up, scanned around one more time and pulled out one of the books. I thought, for just a moment, she was going to read it, or hand it to me, and that made me feel giddy. Instead, she reached her hand into the gap on the bookcase and gave a little tug. There was a mechanical sound, and my heart seemed to click into a lower gear as I realized the books weren’t real.
They concealed a hidden door. What looked like paper between the covers was only a carefully printed matte plastic. The covers were just a façade. One Leatherette™ bump rippled into the next as the bookcase split open without a sound to reveal a secret room beyond.