***

  Hwa busied herself untying Hanna as the ride drove itself. “Tell me where we’re going,” Hwa said.

  “It’s my fault,” Hanna was saying. “He told me not to talk to Benny.”

  “Benny work at Skipper’s?” Hwa picked the tape off Hanna’s wrists.

  “I told him I was just being nice.” Hanna gulped for air. She coughed. “I quit, just like he told me to, but Benny and I are in the same biology class! I couldn’t just ignore him. And Jarod said if I really loved him, I’d do what he asked...”

  “Jarod?” Hwa asked. “That’s his name? What’s his last name?” She needed Prefect. Why hadn’t she brought her specs? She could be looking at a map, right now. She could be finding out how big this guy was. If he had any priors.

  “Why are you here?” Hanna asked. “Did my mom send you? I thought you didn’t work with us, any more.”

  Beneath them, the buckles in the pavement burped along. They were still on the Acoutsina, then. It had the oldest roads with the most repairs. Hwa worked to quiet the alarm bell ringing in her head. Hanna’s skin was so cold under her hands. She probably needed a hospital. But right now, she needed Hwa to be calm. She needed Hwa to be smart. She needed Hwa to think.

  “With us?” Hwa asked.

  “For the union,” Hanna sniffed.

  “Eh?”

  The angle of the vehcile changed. They tipped down into something. Hwa heard hydraulics. They were in a lift. Tower Three. They’d parked Hanna not far from where they were, then. Hwa’s ears popped. She rolled up as close as possible to the opening of the trunk. She cleared her wrists and flexed her toes. She’d have one good chance when the trunk opened. If there weren’t too many of them. If they didn’t have crowbars. Something slammed onto the trunk. A fist. A big one, by the sound of it.

  “Wakey, wakey, Hanna!”

  The voice was muffled, but strong. Manic. He’d been awake for a while. Boosters? Shit. Hanna started to say something, but Hwa shushed her.

  “Had enough time to think about what you did?”

  Definitely boosters. That swaggering arrogance, those delusions of grandeur. Hwa listened for more voices, the sound of footsteps. She heard none. Maybe this was a solo performance.

  “You know, I didn’t like doing this. But you made me do it. You have to learn, Hanna.”

  Behind her, Hanna was crying.

  “I can’t have you just giving it away. It really cuts into what I’m trying to do for us.”

  Fingers drummed on the trunk of the ride.

  “Are you ready to come out and say you’re sorry?”

  You’re goddamn right I am, Hwa thought.

  The trunk popped open. Jarod’s pale, scaly face registered surprise for just a moment. Then Hwa’s foot snapped out and hit him square in the jaw. He stumbled back and tried to slam the trunk shut. It landed on her leg and she yelled. The door bounced up. Not her ankle. Not her knee. Thank goodness. She rolled out.

  Jarod was huge. A tall, lanky man in his early twenties, the kind of rigger who’d get made fun of by guys with more muscle while still being plenty strong enough to get the job done. He had bad skin and a three-day growth of patchy beard. He lunged for Hwa and she jumped back. He swung wide and she jumped again.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You told Hanna you’d fix it with the union if she paid you her dues directly. Even though she’s a minor and USWC doesn’t allow those.”

  Jarod’s eyes were red. He spat blood. He reeked of booster sweat-acrid and bitter.

  “And you had her doing what, camwork?” She grinned. “I thought her eyes were red because she’d been crying. But yours look just the same. You’re both wearing the same shitty lenses.”

  “He made me watch the locker room.” Hanna sat on her knees in the trunk of the ride. Her voice was a croak. For a moment she looked so much like her mother that Hwa’s heart twisted in her chest. “He said he’d edit my team’s faces out—”

  “Shut up!”

  Jarod reached for the lid of the trunk again. He tried to slam it shut on Hanna. Hwa ran for him. He grabbed her by the shoulders. Hwa’s right heel came down hard on his. The instep deflated under the pressure. He howled. She elbowed him hard under the ribs and spun halfway out of his grip. His right hand still clung to her vest. She grabbed the wrist and wedged it into the mouth of the trunk.

  “Hanna! Get down!”

  She slammed the lid once. Then twice. Then a third time. He’ll never work this rig again, she thought, distantly. The trunk creaked open and Jarod sank to his knees. He clutched his wrist. His hand dangled from his arm like a piece of kelp.

  Behind her, she heard a slow, dry clap.

  “Excellent work,” Síofra said.

  He stood against the ride he’d summoned. Two go-cups of coffee sat on the hood. He held one out.

  “You didn’t want in on that?” Hwa asked, jerking her head at the whimpering mess on the floor of the parking garage.

  “Genius can’t be improved upon.” Síofra gestured with his cup. “We should get them to a hospital. Or a police station.”

  “Hanna needs a hospital.” Hwa sipped her coffee. “This guy, I should report to the union. He falsified a membership and defrauded someone of dues in bad faith.”

  “They don’t take kindly to that, in the USWC?”

  Hwa swallowed hard. “Nope. Not one bit.”

  Síofra made a sound in his throat that sounded like purring.

  ***

  During the elevator ride between the hospital and the school in Tower Two, Hwa munched a breakfast sandwich. She’d protested the presence of bread, but Síofra said the flour was mostly crickets anyway. So she’d relented. Now he stood across the elevator watching her eat.

  “What?” she asked, between swallows.

  “I have something to share with you.”

  She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t remember anything beyond ten years ago.”

  Hwa blinked. “Sorry?”

  “My childhood. My youth. They’re...” He made an empty gesture. “Blank.”

  She frowned. “Do you mean this like...emotionally?”

  “No. Literally. I literally don’t remember. My first memory is waking up in a Lynch hospital in South Sudan, ten years ago. They had some wells, there. I was injured. They brought me in. Patched me up. They assumed I was a fixer of some sort. They don’t know for which side. And apparently I had covered my tracks a little too well. I’ve worked for them ever since.”

  Hairs rose on the back of Hwa’s neck. “Wow.”

  “As long as I can remember, I’ve worked for this company. I don’t know any other kind of life.”

  “Okay,” Hwa said.

  “I’ve never lived without their presence in my life. I’ve never had what you might call a private life.”

  Oh. “Oh.”

  “But you have. And that’s something that’s different, about our experiences.”

  “Yeah. You could say that.”

  “You don’t have implants,” he said. “Not permanent ones, anyway. They-we-can’t gather that kind of data from you. But they know everything about me. My sugars, how much I sleep, where I am, if I’m angry, my routines, even the music I listen to when I’m making dinner.”

  “You listen to music while you make dinner?”

  “Django Reinhardt.”

  “Who?”

  He smiled ruefully. “What I’m saying is, you’re the last of a dying breed.”

  Hwa thought of the stain running down her body, the flaw he couldn’t see. He had no idea. “Thank you?”

  “You’re a black swan,” he said. “A wild card. Something unpredictable. Like getting into the trunk of that ride this morning.”

  Hwa shrugged. “Anybody could have done that. I couldn’t just let Hanna go. She needed my help.”

  “You could have called the police. You could have called me. But you didn’t. You took the risk yourself.”

  She frowned. “Are you pissed off? Is that what this is about? Because you’re the one who—”

  Síofra hissed. He brought his finger to his lips and shook his head softly. With his gaze, he brought her attention to the eyes at the corners of the elevator.

  “I just want you to know something about me,” he said, after a moment. “Something isn’t in my halo.”

  She smiled. “Well, thanks.”

  “Not a lot of other people know this, about me.”

  “Well, it is kind of weird.” She stretched up, then bent down. She looked up at him from her ragdoll position. “I mean, you are only ten years old, right? You can’t even drink.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Here it comes.”

  She stood. “Or vote. Or even have your own place. Does your landlord know about this?”

  He pointed at the view of the city outside the elevator. “My landlord is your landlord.”

  The elevator doors chimed open. They were on the school floor. Hwa had fifteen minutes to shower and put on her uniform before she met Joel.

  “Hey, if you’re not too busy? I kind of didn’t do the last question on my physics homework. So I might need some help with that. Before I hand it in.”

  “I think something can be arranged.”

  She stood in the door. It chimed insistently. She leaned on it harder. “Did you ever go to school? After you woke up, I mean? Or are you just winging it?”

  “I know what a man my age needs to know,” Síofra said. “Be seeing you.”

  * * *

  Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer and futurist living in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series. This story comes from her novel, Company Town, coming in spring 2016 from Tor Books. She has also written science fiction prototypes for Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, and others. You can find her online at madelineashby.com, or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.

  I’ve Got The Music In Me

  by Charlie Jane Anders

  “Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head, and couldn’t get it out?” The woman asking the question wore one of those new frogskin one-pieces, with false eyelashes that looked fiberoptic. She leaned on the bar in my direction.

  I shrugged and drank. “Maybe, I don’t know.” I was busy obsessing about my sick dog. Moxie was my best friend, but they’d said the tests alone would cost hundreds, with no guarantee.

  The woman, Mia I think, kept talking about brains that wouldn’t let go of songs. “You know how a song loops around and drowns out everything else in your skull?” I nodded, and she smiled. “Sometimes it’s like a message from your subconscious. Your brain blasts sad lyrics to wake you to a submerged depression.”

  “I guess.”

  “Or you could be overworked. Or sexually frustrated. It’s like an early warning system.” She beckoned another drink. The mention of sex jumped out of her wordflow like a spawning salmon. I forgot all about my dog, turned to face her.

  “I see what you mean,” I said.

  “They’re funny, songs. They drill into your head and form associations.” She batted those shiny lashes. “They trigger memories, just the way smells do.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” I was thinking, do I have condoms?

  She asked me about my past loves, and whether there were pieces of music that came unbidden to mind when I thought of them. I struggled to dredge up a memory to please this woman, her taut body so close to mine I could feel the coolness of the tiny frogs whose hides she wore.

  “Yeah, now that I think about it, there was this one song...”

  From Section 1923, Mental copyright enforcement field manual.

  Subsection 1, Probable Cause:

  Do not bring in suspects without an ironclad case, and avoid any appearance of entrapment. Do not apprehend someone merely because he/she whistles under his/her breath or bobs his/her head to music nobody else can hear. To demonstrate that someone has stored copyrighted music in his/her brain in violation of the Cranial Millenium Copyright Act, you must obtain a definitive statement, such as:

  1) “Whenever I see the object of my smothered desire I hear “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream in my head. This is the full album version, complete with trademark guitar solo and clearly articulated rhythm track.”

  2) “I always tune out my boss when he talks to me, and instead conjure up a near-digital-quality playback of “Bring Tha Bling Bling” by Pimpstyle in my mind. The remix with that Madonna sample.”

  3) “Following the death of my loved one, I listened to the Parade album by Prince so many times I know the whole thing by heart now.”

  Note: the above examples are illustrative and not all-encompassing. Other utterances also could prove the suspect is guilty of keeping protected music in Cranial Audio File format, as prohibited by law.

  Subsection 2, Apprehending the suspect:

  As soon as I admitted that yeah, that “Pimp Your Bubba” song wouldn’t stop infesting my mind no matter how much good music I fed my ears, the woman went violent. She pulled out a badge and twisted my arm behind me. Steel cinched my wrists, turned me into a perp. “You have the right,” she said.

  In her car, she talked to me through a rusty mesh cordoning the back seat. “I’d put on the radio, but you might steal again.”

  “What have I done?”

  “Don’t pretend. Your mental piracy is blatantly illegal.”

  “But everyone said that law was unenforceable—”

  “I got your confession right here on tape. And we’ll get more out of you. The brain’s a computer, and yours is jam-packed with stolen goods.”

  I was terrified. I could be held for days. What would happen to Moxie?

  “Take my advice, kid.” We turned onto a driveway with a guard post and tilting arm. The woman showed a card and the arm rose. “Just relax and tell them everything. It’ll be fun, like a personal tour through your musical memories. Like getting stoned with a friend and digging some tunes. Then you just plea bargain and skip outta here.”

  Subsection 3, Questioning the suspect:

  Ask questions like:

  What sort of music did you listen to in high school?

  Here is a piece of your clothing which we confiscated. We’ll give it back if you tell us what song it brings to mind.

  I can see you’re angry. Is there an angry song in your thoughts?

  Complete this guitar riff for me. Na na na NAH na na...

  I kept asking over and over, whom have I hurt? Who suffers if I have recall of maybe a hundred songs? They had answers—the record companies, the musicians, the media, all suffered from my self-reliance. I didn’t buy it.

  “This whole thing is bullshit,” I said.

  The two guys in shades looked at each other. “Guy’s got a right to face his accuser,” one said.

  “You figure it’s time to bring in the injured party?” the other said.

  They both nodded. They took their gray-suited selves out of the interrogation cube. I squirmed in my chair, arms manacled and head in a vice.

  They were gone for hours. I tried to relax, but the restraints kinked my circulation.

  I heard noises outside the door. A scrawny guy with a fuschia pompadour and sideburns wandered in. He wore a t-shirt with a picture of himself, which made him easier to recognize because I’d seen that picture a million times.

  “You’re Dude Boy,” I said.

  “Pizzeace,” said Dude Boy. “You been ripping me off.”

  “No I haven’t.” I fidgeted in bondage. “I don’t even like you.” I remembered when Dude Boy was on the cover of every magazine from Teen Beat to Rolling Stone, and that fucking song was on the air every minute. “Your song sucked aardvark tit. They played it so often I started hearing it when I brushed my teeth, which really—” Oh. Shit.

  “See? You admit it. Thief.”

  “But—”

  “And you never bought a copy, ya?”

  “Yeah, but—It sucked, man.”

  “It was just so catchy and hooky, ya? You had to have it, Mr. Sticky Fingers.”

  “Catchy’s one word for it. You could also try, ‘annoyingly repetitive.’ How many times can you say ‘You’re So Cute I Wanna Puke’ in one song?”

  “That’s the hook, bo.”

  “So I always wondered what happened to you after that one hit. You dropped out of sight.”

  The agate eyes I remembered from VH1 came close. "You killed my career, bo. You and all the others who used my song for your skull soundtracks until you got sick of me. I didn’t ask to have my creation overexposed in your noggin. It’s all your fault."

  “So now you’re working for these creeps?"

  “It’s a job until reality TV calls.”

  He kept staring. He’d always looked goofy, but never before scary. “We’re like intimate, ya know. I seduced ya with my hookitude, and in return you copped a feel of the DB while I slept. It’s good to be close at last.” For a moment I feared he’d kiss me. I tried to turn away, but no dice.

  Then at the last second he whipped around and kicked the wall. “You kidnapped my baby!” He turned back. Spit painted my cheeks. “So here’s the deal. We take this thang to court, I nail your colon to the wall. Or you cop a plea. Small fine, plus an implant. You get off lightly, bo.”

  “Implant?"

  “Yes or no?

  “What implant?

  “Last chance. Yes or no?”

  Most of the time, the implant doesn’t bother me. If I get emotional, like when I buried Moxie, it kicks in just as a tune swells inside me. Then instead of the music, I hear Dude Boy screaming, “Thief!” for like thirty seconds. It really screwed me up this one time I was giving a presentation at work. I was one of the first to get implanted, but now they’re everywhere. It’s become such a cultural phenom that a new hit song samples the sound the implant makes. They had to pay Dude Boy royalties, of course.

  * * *

  Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky, a novel coming in early 2016 from Tor Books. She is the editor in chief of io9.com and the organizer of the Writers With Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, and several anthologies. Her novelette Six Months, Three Days won a Hugo award.