Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

She came to a branch point, an intersection with a duct that had been built with humans in mind. The ceiling rose to a meter, and another quick flash of the ring revealed lighting panels (dead and dusty) and a flat, clear crawlway. She worked her way round into it, and shuffled along on hands and knees as fast as she could go. After about six meters she came to a large inspection hatch and paused. I’m over the road, aren’t I? She put her ear to the hatch and listened, trying to ignore the thudding of her pulse.

“—be not seeing any’ting.” The voice was faint and tinny, but distinct.

“But she not being ’ere!” Protest, muted by metal.

“’An being gone. Considered an’ we tracer ’coy with ’an wall ghost? Be telling you not she’an ’ere.”

“Tell you th’man she not being not here? I an’ you wait.”

Wednesday crept forward, taking shallow breaths and forcing herself not to move too fast. On the other side of the road there’d be another apartment module, and maybe a utility hub or a tunnel up to the next level, where she could get away from these freaks, whoever they were, with their weird dialect and frightening intent. She was still sick with fear, but now there was a hot ember of anger to go with it. Who do they think they are? Hunting her like dogs through the abandoned underbelly of the cylindrical city — the years fell away, bringing back the same stomach-churning fear and resentment.

Another node, another risky flash of light revealing another tunnel. This time she took the branch that headed toward the big empty cavern at the end of the passage. It ran straight for ten meters, then she flashed her ring again and saw a jagged edge ahead, dust and debris on the floor, what looked like the mummified turds of some tunnel-running animal and a pile of blown-out wall insulation. Beyond the ledge her light was swallowed by darkness and a distant dripping noise.

Shit. She knelt on the cold metal floor and glanced back. Below and behind her, two strange men were stalking her network shadow. Here in meatspace, though, she was blocked. Wasn’t she? She crawled forward slowly and looked out into the cavern. There could be anything here: a gas trap full of carbon dioxide, or a cryogenic leak, insulation ripped and walls so cold you’d freeze to them on contact. She sniffed the air, edging close to panic again. Herman would know … But Herman wasn’t there. Herman hadn’t followed her from Old Newfie. He’d told her at the time: causal channels broke when you tried to move an end point faster than light, and the one his agent had planted on her — a pediatrician who’d spent an internship on the hab when she was twelve — was now corrupt. She’d have to figure it out for herself if she wanted to get to Sammy’s party. Or anywhere. Home, even.

“An’ chasing ghost.” The voice was muffled, distant, echoing up the corridor below her. “If she here, how an’ finding she? Dustrial yard my son, dustrial. An’ ghost I telling.” A light flickered across shadows in the gloom on the floor of the cavern and Wednesday held her breath.

“Terascan—”

“—Show none. See, titan alloy walls, you be seeing? She ghost decoy, an’ I telling you.”

“Yurg, he an’ being not happy.”

Titanium walls? She looked down. Metal ductwork. If they had a teraherz scanner, they’d find her in a flash — except these old dumb metal ducts, fabbed from junk metal ore left over from the quarrying of the asteroid, made an excellent Faraday cage. No signal. Her shoulders shook as she heard bootheels below her, stomp and turn.

“Me an’ you, we be going back uplight her patch. Wait there an’ she.”

Stomp. Stomp. Angry footsteps, moving away down the corridor. Wednesday took a deep breath. Can’t hurt? She twitched her rings back on for ten seconds and waited, then off again. The footsteps didn’t return, nor the angry searching voices, but it was several minutes before she trusted herself to turn them back on again, and this time leave them glowing at her knuckles.

“Fuckmonsters,” she mumbled. Not that Centris Magna was exactly overflowing with sex criminals, but it was easier to believe than -

Her phone squeaked for attention.

“Yes?” she demanded.

“Wednesday. This is Herman. Do you understand?”

“What—” Her head was reeling with coincidence. “It’s been a long time!”

“Yes. Please pay attention. Your life is in danger. I am transferring funds to your purse for later retrieval. Keep your implants turned off: if you do that, I will be able to make it difficult for your pursuers to locate you. There is a ladder to one side of your current location; climb one floor, take the second exit on the left, first right, and keep going until you enter a densely populated area. Mingle with a crowd if you can find one. Do not go home, or you will endanger your family. I will contact you again shortly and provide directions. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—” She was talking to herself.

“Fuckmonster,” she snapped, trying to sound as if she meant it. Herman? After three years of silence she felt weak at the knees. Did I imagine it? She turned up the light on her finger, saw the piles of debris and the scuff marks on her oh-so-labor-intensive boots. “No.” Saw the ladder running down to floor level and up to the next corridor up beside the platform. “Yes!”

For this party Sam had repoed a dead light industrial unit on the edge of the reclaim zone. Wednesday didn’t go there immediately; she headed uplight a couple of levels to a boringly bourgeois housing arc, found a public fresher, and used the facilities. Besides getting the muck off her boots and leggings and telling her jacket to clean itself over the toilet, her hair was a mess and her temper was vile. How dare those scumbags follow me? She dialed her lips to blue and the skin around her eyes to angry black, got her hair back into a semblance of order, then paused. “Angry. Angry !”

She shook her head; the face in the mirror shook right back, then winked at her. “Can I recommend something, dear?” asked the mirror.

In the end she let it talk her into ordering up a wispy, colorful sarong, a transparent flash of silky rainbows to wrap around her waist. It didn’t fit with her mood, but she had to admit it was a good idea — her jacket, picking up on her temper, had spiked up across her shoulders until she resembled an angry hedgehog, and without the softening touch she’d have people avoiding her all evening. Then she used the mirror to call Sam’s receptionist and, swallowing her pride, asked for directions. The party was impromptu and semi-random; as good a place to hide out as anywhere, just as long as nobody tailed her there. And she had no intention of letting herself be tagged and followed twice in one night shift.

Sam had taken over an empty industrial module a couple of levels below the basement slums, spray-bombed it black, and moved in a bunch of rogue domestic appliances. Light pipes nailgunned to rubbery green foam flared erratically at each corner of the room. The seating was dead, exotic knotworks of malformed calcium teratomas harvested from a biocoral tank, all ribs and jawbones. Loud waltz music shotgunned into screeching feedback by a buggy DJ-AI attacked her eardrums. There was a bar full of dumb and dumber, the robot waiter vomiting alcoholic drinks, and passing out joints and pink noise generators. Sameena knew how to run a party, Wednesday grudgingly acknowledged. Decriminalization lite, prosperity-bound urban youth experimenting with the modicum of risk that their subtly regimented society allowed them. A cat lay on top of a dead solvent tank, one foreleg hanging down, staring at everyone who entered. She grinned up at it. It lashed its tail angrily and looked away.