“My condition’s in my halo,” she muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “My halo has all my medical info,” she said, a little louder this time. She shook her watch. “If my specs detect a change in my eye movement, they broadcast my status on the emergency layer. Everyone can see it. Everyone with the right eyes, anyway.”

  “But you don’t wear your specs when you’re running,” he said, and pulled forward.

  The route took them along the Demasduwit Causeway, around Tower Two, down the Sinclair Causeway, and back to Tower Two. It was a school day, which meant Hwa had to scope New Arcadia Secondary before Joel Lynch arrived for class. This meant showering and dressing in the locker room, which meant she had to finish at a certain time, which meant eating on schedule, too. If she ate before the run, she tended to throw up.

  She was going to explain all this, when Síofra slowed down and pulled up to Hwa’s favourite 24-hour cart and held up two fingers. “Two Number Sixes,” he said. He stood first one one leg and then another, pulling his calf up behind him as he did. From behind the counter, old Jorge squinted at him until Hwa jogged up to join him. Then he smiled.

  “You have a friend!” He made it sound like she’d just run a marathon. Which it felt like she had-keeping up with Síofra had left her legs trembling and her skin dripping.

  “He’s my boss.” She leaned over and spat out some of the phlegm that had boiled up to her throat during the run. “What he said. And peameal.” She blinked at Síofra through sweat. He was looking away, probably reading something in his lenses. “You like peameal?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Peameal. Bacon. Do you like it?”

  “Oh. I suppose.”

  She glanced at Jorge. “Peameal. On the side.”

  Jorge handed them their coffees while the rest of the breakfast cooked. Now the city was waking up, and the riggers joining the morning shift were on their way to the platform. A few of them stood blinking at the other carts as they waited for them to open up.

  “How did you know my order?” Hwa asked.

  Síofra rolled his neck. It crunched. He was avoiding the answer. Hwa already suspected what he would say. “I see the purchases you make with the corporate currency.”

  She scowled. “I don’t always have the eggs baked in avocado, you know. Sometimes I have green juice.”

  “Not since the cucumbers went out of season.”

  Hwa stared. Síofra cocked his head. “You’re stalking me.”

  “I’m not stalking you. This is just how Lynch does things. We know what all our people buy in the canteen at lunch, because they use our watches to do it. It helps us know what food to buy. That way everyone can have their favourite thing. The schools here do the same thing-it informs the farm floors what to grow. This is no different.”

  Hwa sighed. “I miss being union.”

  ***

  Joel Lynch’s vehicle drove him to the school’s main entrance exactly fifteen minutes before the first bell. Hwa stood waiting for him outside the doors. He waved their way in-the school still did not recognize her face, years after she’d dropped out-and smirked at her.

  “How are your legs?” he asked.

  “Christ, does my boss tell you everything?”

  “Daniel just said I should go easy on you, today!” Joel tried hard to look innocent. “And that maybe we didn’t have to do leg day today, if you didn’t really want to.”

  “You trying to get out of your workout?”

  “Oh, no! Not at all! I was just thinking that—”

  “Good, because we’re still doing leg day. My job is protecting you, and how I protect you is making you better able to protect yourself. Somebody tries to take you, I need you to crush his instep with one kick and then run like hell. Both of which involve your legs.”

  “So, leg day.”

  Hwa nodded. “Leg day.”

  “You can crush someone’s instep with one kick?”

  Hwa rolled her eyes and hoped her specs caught it. “Of course I can,” she subvocalized.

  “I think I’d pay good money to see that.”

  “Well it’s a good thing I’m on the payroll, then.”

  The school day proceeded just like all the others. Announcements. Lectures. Worksheets. French. Past imperfect, future imperfect. Lunch. People staring at Joel, then sending each other quick messages. Hwa saw it all in the specs-the messages drifting across her vision like dandelion fairies. In her vision, the messages turned red when Joel’s name came up. For the most part it didn’t. While she wore the uniform and took the classes just like the other students, they knew why she was there. They knew she was watching. They knew about her old job.

  “Hwa?”

  Hwa turned away from the station where Joel was attempting squats. Hanna Oleson wore last year’s volleyball t-shirt and mismatched socks. She also had a wicked bruise on her left arm. And she wouldn’t quite look Hwa in the eye.

  “Yeah?” Hwa asked.

  “Coach says you guys can have the leg press first.”

  “Oh, good. Thanks.” She made Hanna meet her gaze. The other girl’s eyes were bleary, red-rimmed. Shit. “What happened to your arm?”

  “Oh, um... I fell?” Hanna weakly flailed the injured arm. “During practice? And someone pulled me up? Too hard?”

  Hwa nodded slowly. “Right. Sure. That happens.”

  Hanna smiled. It came on sudden and bright. Too sudden. Too bright. “Everything’s fine, now.”

  “Glad to hear it. You should put some arnica on that.”

  “Okay. I’ll try that.”

  She tried to move away, but Hwa wove in front of her. “I have some at my place,” she said. “I’m in Tower One. Seventh floor, unit seven. Easy to remember.”

  Hanna nodded without meeting Hwa’s eye. “Okay.”

  Hwa moved, and Hanna shuffled away to join the volleyball team. She turned back to Joel. He’d already put the weights down. She was about to say something about his slacking off, when he asked: “Do you know her?”

  Hwa turned and looked at Hanna. She stood a little apart from the others, tugging on a sweatshirt over her bruised arm. She took eyedrops from the pocket and applied them first to one eye, and then the other. “I know her mother,” Hwa said.

  ***

  Mollie Oleson looked a little rounder than Hwa remembered her. She couldn’t remember their last appointment together, which meant it had probably happened months ago. Mollie was more of a catch-as-catch-can kind of operator-she only listed herself as available to the USWC 314 when she felt like it. It kept her dues low and her involvement minimal. But as a member she was entitled to the same protection as a full-timer. And that meant she’d met Hwa.

  Hwa sidled up to her in the children’s section of the Benevolent Irish Society charity shop. Mollie stood hanging little baggies of old fabtoys on a pegboard. “We close in fifteen minutes,” she said, under her breath.

  “Even for me?” Hwa asked.

  “Hwa!” Mollie beamed, and threw her arms around Hwa. Like her daughter, she was one of those women who really only looked pretty when she was happy. Unlike her daughter, she was better at faking it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Hwa shrugged. “I got a new place. Thought it was time for some new stuff.”

  Mollie’s smile faltered. “Oh, yeah...” She adjusted a stuffed polar bear on a shelf so that it faced forward. “How’s that going? Working for the Lynches, I mean?”

  “The little one is all right,” Hwa said. “Skinny little bugger. I’m training him.”

  Mollie gave a terse little smile. “Well, good luck to you. About time you got out of the game, I’d say. A girl your age should be thinking about the future. You don’t want to wind up...” She gestured around the store, rather than finishing the sentence.

  “I saw Hanna at school, today. Made me think to come here.”

  Mollie’s hands stilled their work. “Oh? How was she? I haven’t seen her since this morning.” She looked out the window to the autumn darkness. “Closing shift, and all.”

  Hwa nodded. “She’s good.” She licked her lips. It was worth a shot. She had to try. “Her boyfriend’s kind of a dick, though.”

  Mollie laughed. “Hanna doesn’t have a boyfriend! She has no time, between school and volleyball and her job.”

  “Her job?”

  “Skipper’s,” Mollie said. “You know, taking orders, bussing tables, the like. It’s not much, but it’s a job.”

  “Right,” Hwa said. “Well, my mistake. I guess that guy was just flirting with her.”

  “Well, I’ll give you the employee discount, just for sharing that little tidbit. Now I have something to tease her with, eh?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Hwa said. “Girls her age are so sensitive.”

  ***

  At home, Hwa used her Lynch employee login to access the Prefect city management system. Lynch installed it overnight during a presumed brownout, using a day-zero exploit to deliver the viral load that was their surveillance overlay. It was easier than doing individual installations, Síofra had explained to her. Some kids in what was once part of Russia had used a similar exploit to gain access to a Lynch reactor in Kansas. That was fifteen years ago.

  Now it was a shiny interface that followed Hwa wherever she went. Or rather, wherever she let it. Her refrigerator and her washroom mirror were both too old for it. So it lived in her specs, and in the display unit Lynch insisted on outfitting her with. That made it the most expensive thing in what was a very cheap studio apartment.

  “Prefect, show me Oleson, Hanna,” she said.

  The system shuffled through profiles until it landed on two possibilities, each fogged over. One was Hanna. The other was a woman by the name of Anna Olsen. Maybe it thought Hwa had misspoken.

  “Option one.” Hanna’s profile became transparent as Anna’s vanished. It solidified across the display, all the photos and numbers and maps hanging and shimmering in Hwa’s vision. She squinted. “Dimmer.”

  Hanna’s profile dimmed slightly, and Hwa could finally get a real look at it. Like Hwa, Hanna lived in Tower One. She’d been picked up once on a shoplifting charge, two years ago. She raised her hands, and gestured through all the points at which facial recognition had identified Hanna in the last forty-eight hours. Deeper than that, and she’d need archival access.

  But first, she needed to call Skipper’s. Rule them out. “Hi, is Hanna there?”

  “Hanna doesn’t work here any more.” Hwa heard beeping. The sounds of fryer alarms going off. Music. “Hello?”

  Hwa ended the call.

  There was Hanna on the Acoutsina Causeway, walking toward Tower One. The image was timestamped after volleyball practise. Speed-trap checked her entering a vehicle in the driverless lane for a vehicle at 18:30. Five minutes later, she was gone. Wherever she was now, there were no cameras.

  “Prefect, search this vehicle and this face together.”

  A long pause. “Archive access required.”

  For a fleeting moment, Hwa regretted the fact that Prefect was not a human being she could intimidate. “Is there a record in the archives?”

  “Archive access required.”

  Hwa growled a little to herself. She popped up off the floor and began to pace. She walked through the projections of Hanna’s face, sliding the ribbon of stills and clips until she hit the top of the list. Today was Monday. If Hanna had sustained her injury on Friday night, then Hwa was out of luck. But Mollie had said she worked all weekend. Maybe that meant—

  “What are you doing?”

  Hwa startled. “Jesus Christ, stop doing that!”

  “Doing what?” Síofra was trying to sound innocent. It wasn’t working.

  “You know exactly what,” she said. “Why can’t you just text, like a normal person? How do you know I wasn’t having a conversation with somebody?”

  “Your receiver would have told me,” he said.

  Hwa frowned. “Can you...?” She wished she had an image of him she could focus her fury on. “Can you listen in on my conversations, through my receiver?”

  “Only during your working hours.”

  “And you can just...tune in? All day? While I’m at school with Joel?”

  “Of course I can. I thought you had some excellent points to make about Jane Eyre in Mr. Bartel’s class, last week.”

  Hwa plunged the heels of her hands into the sockets of her eyes. She had known this was possible, of course. She just assumed Síofra actually had other work to do, and wasn’t constantly spying on her instead of accomplishing it.

  “Are you bored?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you bored? At work? Is your job that boring? That you need to be tuned into my day like that?”

  There was a long pause. She wondered for a moment if he’d cut out. “You watch Joel and I watch you,” he said. “That is my job.”

  Hwa sighed. He had her, there. It was all right there in the Lynch Ltd employee handbook. She’d signed on for this level of intrusion when she’d taken their money. He was paying, so he got to watch. She’d stood guard at enough peepshows to learn that particular lesson. Maybe she wasn’t so different from her mother, after all.

  “You aren’t supposed to be prying into your fellow classmates’ lives unless they pose a credible threat to Joel.” So he’d been spying on her searches, too. Of course. “I know what you’re thinking, and-”

  “How come I can’t do this to you?” Hwa blurted. “That’s what I’m thinking. I’m wondering how come I can’t watch you all the time the way you watch me. Why doesn’t this go both ways? Why don’t I get to know when you’re watching me?”

  Another long pause. “Is there something about me that you would like to know?”

  Oh, just everything, she thought. The answer came unbidden and she shut her eyes and clenched her jaw and squashed it like a bug crawling across her consciousness.

  “Are you coming running tomorrow?”

  “Of course I am.”

  ***

  Síofra had a whole route planned. He showed it to her the next morning in her specs, but she had only a moment to glance over it before heading out the door.

  “Why did you stay in this tower?” Síofra asked, leaning back and craning his neck to take in the brutalist heap of former containers. “We pay you well enough to afford one of the newer ones. This one has almost no security to speak of.”

  “You’ve been watching me 24/7 for a solid month and you still haven’t figured that one out? Corporate surveillance ain’t what it used to be.”

  “Is it because your mother lives here?”

  Hwa pulled up short. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  “I only wondered because you never visit her.” He grinned, and pushed ahead of her down the causeway.

  His route took them along the Acoutsina. They circled the first joint, and Síofra asked about the old parkette and the playground. This early, there were no children and it remained littered with beer cozies and liquor pouches. She told him about the kid who had kicked her down the slide once, and how nobody let her on the swings, and he assumed it had to do with her mother and what she did for a living. His eyes were not programmed to see her true face, or the stain dripping from her left eye down her neck to her arm and her ribs and her leg. She had tested his vision several times; he never stared, never made reference to her dazzle-pattern face. And with their connection fostered by her wearables, he probably never watched her via botfly or camera. He could spend every minute of every day observing her, and never truly see her.

  They ran to the second joint of the causeway, and circled the memorial for those who had died in the Old Rig. “Do you want to stop?” he asked.

  It was bad luck not to pay respects. She knew exactly where her brother’s name was. Síofra waited for her at the base of the monument as her steps spiralled up the mound. She slapped Tae-kyun’s name lightly, like tagging him in a relay run, and kept going. Síofra had already started up again by the time she made it back down. They were almost at Tower Three when he called a halt, in a parking lot full of rides.

  “Cramp,” he said, pulling his calf up behind him. He placed a hand up against a parked vehicle for balance. When Hwa’s gaze followed his hand, she couldn’t help but see the license plate.

  It was the one she’d asked Prefect to track. The one Hanna had disappeared into, last night. “I thought...” Hwa looked from him to the vehicle. “I thought you said—”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Hwa.” He smirked. Then he appeared to check something in his lenses. “Goodness, look at the time. I have an early meeting. I think I’ll just pick up one of these rides here, and drive back to the office. Are you all right finishing the run alone?”

  Hwa frowned at him. He winked at her. She smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m good here.”

  He gestured at the field of rides and snapped his fingers at one of them. It lit up. Its locks opened. She watched him get into it and drive away. Now alone, Hwa peered into the vehicle. Nothing left behind in any of the seats. No dings or scratches. She looked around at the parking lot. Empty. Still dark. She pulled her hood up, and took a knee. She fussed with her shoelaces with one hand while her other fished in the pocket of her vest. The joybuzzer hummed between her fingers as she stood. And just like that, the trunk unlocked.

  Hanna was inside. Bound and gagged. And completely asleep.

  “Shit,” Hwa muttered. Then the vehicle chirped. Startled, Hwa scanned the parking lot. Still empty. The ride was being summoned elsewhere. It rumbled to life. If Hwa let it go now, she would lose Hanna. In the trunk, Hanna blinked awake. She squinted up at Hwa. Behind her gag, she began to scream.

  “It’s okay, Hanna.” Hwa threw the trunk door even wider, and climbed in. She pulled it shut behind her as it began to move. “You’re okay. We’re okay.” The vehicle lurched. She heard the lock snap shut again as the ride locked itself. “We’re okay,” she repeated. “We’re going to be okay.”