“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 practise? 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.”
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 a sweatshirt on over her bruised arm. She took eye drops 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. After that time Angel choked her out. 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.
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 good at faking it.
“What are you at?”
“I got a new place,” Hwa said. “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. He’s in for a trimming.”
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 a bit 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, b’y?”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Hwa said. “I don’t want her to know I told on her.”
*
At home, Hwa used her Lynch employee log-in 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.