“Great. Lovely. Beautiful.” Hwa gripped the rail tighter. “Well, give it to RoFo, okay?”
RoFo was a sub-persona deployed by the Urban Tactics office to create an evolving portfolio of tasks based on residents’ complaints. You just pinged RoFo, and complained about any damn thing you could think of. A crack in the wall. A clogged drain. The way your doors kept opening and shutting, opening and shutting, all night long, because the motion detector was tuned so fucking high the food moths set it off. It didn’t mean the problem would get fixed right away, but it did mean you’d been listened to. It was an easy way to feel like someone cared. Even if no one really did.
As her feet found another step, she heard a creak and then a clang. Then complete darkness. The doors had closed.
“Are they supposed to do that?” Hwa asked.
“All the service doors leading to high-speed causeways have an automatic locking protocol.”
Hwa slowly let the breath out of her body. She closed her eyes. Her own personal darkness was warmer and safer than the howling blackness of the tunnel around her.
“Prefect, are you able to open the door? Down here, on the high-speed level?”
Silence.
Hwa swallowed. Master control room, she reminded herself. Just picture the master control room. Picture all the buttons and screens. Picture all your problems on those screens. They’re far away. Remote.
“Prefect?”
A blip in her ears. A pop. Bad audio. A voice that sounded like it was underwater.
“Prefect!”
“—Apologies. Another process briefly borrowed my cycles.”
Down below, another bolt screeched to one side. A door yawned slowly open. Violet light and noise from the high-speed causeway followed. The light exposed the little landing three steps below where Hwa stood.
Blood.
Everywhere.
Old. Rusty. Like the doors.
Handprints. A puddle. A dark blossom on one wall.
Calliope had died here.
*
For about five seconds, she thought about calling the police. Then she thought better of it. She could send an anonymous tip, later. For now, there were the trolls.
They lived under the causeways. Hence the name. Hwa had only visited them once before. Someone stole her backpack and put it there. Probably Missy Thompson, the grade five class bitch, though Hwa never found out exactly who it was. Which was probably for the best.
Then as now, she’d found the secret entrance that took her below the vehicle level and into the girders. It was a runoff channel, meant for slurping down melted ice and snow and whatever else the pavement didn’t want, and dumping it out to sea. She was still just small enough to fit through, once she found a square of grate that was rusted enough to pry up. Back in grade five, she’d had to bring her own crowbar. Stealing the crowbar was half the job.
In October, the runoff was low. Not too much had washed down there. But if someone had killed Calliope—and someone had fucking butchered her—they had to drop her from somewhere. Somewhere close to the water. Somewhere under the causeway itself. In the girders. In the lowest place you could go.
She walked on in darkness. Ahead of her, something skittered. She paused. “I’m friendly,” she said, although it sounded stupid. “I’m not police.”
Nothing. Silence. Just the occasional rush of a ride overhead, and the dry whine of the wind in the channel.
“My friend died,” she said. “She was killed. Here. Close to here. And I want to know who dumped her body.”
A grunt. A rustling. Multiple trolls were in the channel with her. She heard something crunch behind her, softly, and she held up her hands. Who knew what edits they’d done to their eyes. Her own specs told her nothing. There were no maps for this place. No one had bothered to make them.
“I swear I won’t tell anyone how I got down here,” she added. “I won’t bring anybody else into it. I just want to know, for me own self.”
Clicking. A wet clicking, like many tongues striking many roofs of many mouths. Some of the trolls were all networked together, brain to brain, via early skullcap prototypes. Or so she’d heard. That was part of why they were down in the girders. The bleedthrough was too intense. Addictive. It was the only real social network.
Something poked her in the back. It pushed her forward. Together they advanced through the channel. Hwa kept her hands up. Eventually the quiet lessened, and she heard a steely shrieking, and they pushed her out into the light.