THE DEEP STATE INTERCHANGE

Jack

If the sun was setting, Jack wouldn’t know. Between the glaring blue light

of his monitor screaming into his retinas and the fact that he was on the

third floor of one of many of the surrounding twenty-story apartment

blocks polluting the skyline, the coming and going of natural light had little

impact on his day-to-day.

Like most of his neighbors, Jack didn’t need to be reminded that he

lived in a hastily refurbished slum in Detroit. Any stranger walking down

his street would think the apartment blocks were still abandoned, never

realizing they were neo-refugee camps for foreigners that had been

unfortunate enough to be in the country when the borders closed.

Not that he wanted to look out the window anyway. Not that outside

meant anything to him anymore. The sun and moon could trade places until

the light of the universe had simmered and sunk into eternal darkness, and

quite frankly, he’d struggle to care. Life was inside now, and as far as Jack

was concerned, that was just fine.

He did, however, have a timekeeper of sorts, much to his dismay—and

it was running into his bedroom.

“Jack, Jack!” Mathilda, Jack’s twelve-year-old sister kicked open his

door like a one-girl SWAT team raiding his room. “It’s here!”

Despite the commotion, he failed to turn away from the screen. “Yes,

Mattie, it comes every day.”

She ran over to him, exploding with an exaggerated excitement if only

to goad some sort of reaction out of him. “But only once a day! It’s my

favorite part of the day! I’m sure you’ll agree?”

He stretched his back, his bones cracking like an old man’s, despite him

only being seventeen. Still, he didn’t turn to her. “It’s not like we’re having

one for dinner, so why get so excited?”

Mathilda pushed his arm, begging him to properly acknowledge her.

“But it’s fun to watch. You and Pappa have become so boring. You two

weren’t like this in Copenhagen.”

The mention of his home was enough to jolt him out of his hypnosis.

He finally looked her in the eye.

However, it wasn’t the acknowledgment that Mathilda had been

seeking. It wasn’t the loving gaze he’d given her when he’d chased her

around the garden, pretending to be a great monster while she, the brave hero, tried to find a way to defeat him. He remembered sitting beside her stuffed animals, at a plastic table on a chair, far too small for him, and sipping tea.

“I spoke to Mamma today.” Mathilda smiled at him. “She said she

would send money soon, and maybe then, one of the blackbirds will deliver

something tasty to our window.”

“They’re drones, Mattie”—Jack shook his head—“not blackbirds. You know that. You’re not a child anymore. You need to stop playing these silly games.”

She rolled her eyes and walked over to the window, getting down on

her haunches and peering through the glass to the street below. “They look

like blackbirds to me. Magical blackbirds that bring presents to the lucky

few. Soon, we’ll be one of them.”

“Even if Mamma did send money, we wouldn’t waste it on such an

indulgence.” Jack sighed, wanting to turn back to his laptop.

But he couldn’t. The life and joy radiating from her was a flame to his

moth eyes. It begged his heart to feel something, but his jail-warden mind refused to let such emotions run wild. Feeling something meant feeling all things, and that was a pain he was not prepared to bear.

“Come see, come see,” she called to him, eyes fixed on the road, hand

stretched out toward him, urging him to join her.

He didn’t. He stayed seated on the unyielding, chipped-paint chair that he’d layered with his bed pillows to soften its hard seat. It didn’t seem to bother her; she was there for the show, and he in turn would watch her enjoy it.

From his angle, he could see the auto-driver parked in the middle of the

intersection. It was no ordinary auto-driver, though, but rather a strange hybrid between truck and car, its load twenty automated pizza ovens with twenty drones perched on top—the Porta Pizza.

“I can smell them cooking.” Mathilda licked her lips as she rested her

head on the windowsill. “Who do you think is ordering them?”

“Fools and imbeciles,” Jack remarked, rolling his eyes. “Anyone who has to live in these slums should be saving every cent they have to live somewhere else, not wasting their money on lining a mega-corp’s pockets

in exchange for melted cheese on bread.”

“And pepperoni.” Mathilda stuck her head farther out of the window,

probably to catch a whiff of the rich scents of melting mozzarella and baked

crust. “But I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t get it.”

Jack had once been admired by his parents for his seemingly limitless

patience with his sister—but that was another Jack, the hopeful teen from

Copenhagen. “Don’t you dare act like you’re smarter than me. I’m reminded

every day of how foolish you are. Don’t mistake my silence for acceptance.”

This time it was Mathilda who refused to turn around to lock eyes.

“It’s not a matter of intelligence,” she whispered, her head half out the

window, “it’s a matter of appreciation. Something small like pizza makes

you appreciate the life we have. No brains needed. Only heart.”

As though the drones had been waiting on her command, they began

launching off the Porta Pizza, steaming cardboard squares protecting the

cheesy prizes in their clutches.

“There they go!” Mathilda squealed with joy as they burst into the air

like a flock of crows.

Jack couldn’t take his eyes off his sister. “You’re only setting yourself

up for disappointment. Why invest so much of yourself into something

you’ll never have?”

Mathilda leaned farther out the window as though she were trying to

escape her brother’s words. “You know what, Jack?” she called out to the

drones. “I think you need a pizza more than anyone else in the whole

world.”

He became infuriated but decided it wasn’t worth his time or energy to

feed such things. Spinning his chair around, he faced the blue light of his

monitor once more and refreshed his social feed. But he couldn’t let it go.

“Maybe I do,” he yelled at the screen, “but I’ll probably never have a

slice again, so who cares?”

“That’s what you think.” Mathilda smiled passionately, reaching as far

out the window as possible. “Today, you’re getting pizza!”

It took Jack a moment to process what she was implying, but by the

time he turned around, it was too late. A delivery drone was shooting right

past his window, just in reach of his sister’s clutches.

“Mathilda! No!” he cried, leaping from his chair to pull his sister back

inside.

But she was determined to prove him wrong and would stop at nothing

now. She lurched forward, grabbing at the pizza box just inches from her

fingers.

And then she screamed—a scream that barely lasted a second—a

blood-curdling scream that would ink itself into Jack’s mind and leave a

permanent tattoo. By the time he was at the window, she was already on the

ground.

He looked down at the street and saw his sister lying there, face-up, a

perfect halo of blood around her head.

***

In the early days of quarantine, hospitals quickly became known as

glorified graveyards. The living avoided them at all cost and would have to

have a good excuse to be at one in the first place. The sick were taken there

by auto-ambulances, and paramedics did their work remotely from the

safety of their homes, using medical robots as their hands and eyes.

Nobody wanted to be near the sick. Ever since the announcement of

this new virus, a deep fear had sunk into the core of America. Jack’s

neighbors had given themselves over to the hysteria. They peeked from

their blinds, waiting for anyone to exhibit signs of the slightest sickness. A

cough or a sneeze could spark a witch hunt.

Detroit was considered a failure of a city, but one thing it was efficient

at was getting people off the streets—living or dead. Jack had watched the

auto-ambulance scoop his sister up off the sidewalk like a piece of roadkill

and cart her off to the clinic before he had been given the chance to come

out of shock—before he had even told his father.

It was only the third floor, Jack, he told himself. She’s alive. She’ll live. It’ll all

be fine. Go tell Papa.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring down at the street, replaying

the words in his head over and over—it could have been five minutes or an

hour. It was only when he heard his father’s phone ringing in the other

room that time seemed to start moving again.

Mathilda had left his bedroom door open, and the sound of his father

waking from one of his many daily naps to answer the call echoed freely

into Jack’s ears.

“No, you must be mistaken; she’s just in the other room,” Jack heard

his father say.

He could hear the twang of rusted mattress springs releasing his father’s

weight and then the thump of his footsteps, slowly, slowly, making their

way down the short hallway—a giant waking from its slumber to the smell of a Danishman’s blood.

Johan had never been a slight man, but in his past life in Copenhagen, he had been strict with his exercise regimen and kept his body toned and muscular. Although he had initially done his best to stay in shape whilst locked up in the apartment, his will had quickly buckled. His muscles disintegrated, and the empty spaces they left were filled with thick layers of fat that grew, one on top of the other, a new coat every week until the rolls poured over his hips, cascaded from his arms, and crammed in between his neck and chin.

The fat collected on his chest pressed down on his heart and lungs and imbued him with a characteristic wheeze whenever he tried to do anything that wasn’t lying down. That wheeze entered the room before he did and rang in Jack’s ears as he stood shaking, fingers still gripped to the window

frame.

“Uwhuuu-heee, Jakob.” Johan struggled, though he took the time to

use Jack’s full name to convey his concern. “Where is … uwhuuu-heee …

your sister?”

Jack finally released his grip on the windowsill, his white knuckles cracking as he stretched them out. He turned to his father and let his tearstained face speak for him.

The little color that had stuck to Johan’s complexion faded in an instant as he realized that the nurse on the other end of the call had correctly identified his daughter. Johan collapsed in on himself, landing with a thump that echoed through the entire third story of the apartment block, sending a visible shudder through the drywall. He still had his cell phone in his hand, a static voice on the other end calling out, “Sir! Sir!”

“Uwhuuu-heee …” Johan wheezed before bringing the phone to his ear. “Do whatever you must. I will pay the bill.”

Jack watched as his father robotically answered the necessary questions and agreed to the necessary payments before finally dropping the phone on the floor beside him, the expression on his face barely shifting, his lips only shivering to form his words.

Johan stared at his son silently before letting his gaze collapse alongside him.

Finally, Jack found the bravery to speak. “Is she alive?”

The question seemed to be the final blow to Johan’s will, causing him to fall backward with another thump and stare up the ceiling. “She is. For now.”

“For now!” Jack cried. “How can you say such a thing!”

“We’re all alive … uwhuuu-heee … for now,” Johan explained.

Jack was snapping; he could feel it. His jaw began to spasm from gritting

his teeth for too long, and his knuckles were as white as a collapsing star as

he gripped onto his hair. “What did they say? What sort of state is she in?”

“Uwhuuu-heee … she should make a full recovery … uwhuuu-heee …

but we won’t,” he wheezed, the first gurgle of tears now scratching his throat. “If I can cover the bill … it will take every cent we have. We will have no money for food … uwhuuu-heee … for at least two weeks. She will live uwhuuu-heee … but we all will starve.”

Jack collapsed into his chair and stared across the room at what his father had become and his stomach churned. After all his father had gorged lately, he would survive with less food for a while.

This man—this glutton, Jack thought, his daughter is lying in hospital, and all he can concern himself with is how he can gorge himself with food another day. If he had any sense of self-control, the pantries would probably still be full.

“There must be something we can do.” Jack did his best not to snarl—he was smart enough to know that there was no problem so bad that you couldn’t make it worse, and now was not the time to make things worse.

“Uwhuuu-heee … help me up,” Johan beckoned, reaching his sausagelink arm toward his son and beckoning him closer.

Jack shook his head with irritation before taking the few steps necessary to cross the room and reaching for his father’s hand. With a mighty heave that knocked the wind out of him, he managed to get Johan sitting up straight.

Jack’s father looked at him, and then across the room. Jack followed his gaze to make out what he was looking at—the laptop. The laptop was all Jack had left from his previous life in Copenhagen, the only real reminder of who he used to be. It was a powerful machine with full VR functionality, and though it was a few years old now, the parts alone could fetch a handsome price.

“You know what you must do, Jakob,” Johan wheezed as he stared desperately at his son. “You should have been watching your sister. If you

had been, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Jack let the words burn into his heart. He wanted to yell, to lose his temper, to blame his father for doing nothing but eating and sleeping all day and putting all the responsibility on him.

But there’s no problem so bad you can’t make it worse, he told himself. He clenched his eyes closed and nodded painfully to his father.

“You will take it to … uwhuuu-heee … the market,” Johan wheezed. Jack’s eyes burst open. “The market?”

“It’s that or starve.” Johan nodded. “Go as soon as the shadows can hide you. Get a good price for your machine, and then maybe, we shall survive.”

Bean

The cabin of an air-taxi can be a lonely place, Bean realized. Flying between

skyscrapers, spires, and antennas, with nothing but an AI pilot as company,

lost its novelty after the tenth, twentieth, hundredth trip. Anything could be

a cage once you’d decided you’re stuck in it.

But Bean was quickly realizing that this trip was different, a trip like

none other she’d ever experienced, not really a trip at all—an adventure.

The air-taxi had taken off from the Milwaukee safehouse. The journey had

started off as always—launching into the air—this time, flying over Lake

Michigan which was now a dwindling puddle, but the scenery always

followed the same sequence. The country quickly transformed into a

wasteland, one emaciated forest, another emaciated town, and then the

desolate dystopia of locked-down cities disappearing beneath her. It was only when she reached for her phone, as a means of entertainment to kill the time, that she realized that something was … different.

A notification came through—a network connection inviting her in.

Not something too unusual by most standards, but the network’s name

caught her attention: Not Your Daddy’s Network. She chuckled lightly to herself at first, just as her finger was priming to swipe it away, but then something sparked.

Not MY daddy’s network? she pondered.

And ponder-worthy it was because Bean’s father was the leader of the

free world—President Robert Raison.

There’s no way they could know that it’s me, she thought as her finger dared

to authorize the connection. It would take every supercomputer on Earth, working

at once, to backtrack my identity through all the proxies, firewalls, and VPNs Dad’s

IT team has set up.

The taste of something different and exciting sat on the tip of her

tongue, and she could feel her stomach rumble for it. Her finger seemed to

act on its own, her eyes watching like inert spectators to the play, and she

was not one to interrupt an inspired performance.

DEEP STATE INTERCHANGE

8

As her finger pressed down on the network, her phone developed a

mind of its own. The operating system faded to black—a spurt of panic

shooting through her brain as she wondered if she’d just handed herself

over to hackers. And then a goose appeared.

A golden goose, in fact, animated and altogether silly, waddling across

her screen to a rhythm only it could hear, a smile across its face that no

goose before it had ever worn. She couldn’t help but smile back at it.

But its joyous facade faded quickly as it turned to face her, its animated

goose shoulders dropping in despair as it said out loud through the phone’s

speaker, “I’m stuck in here,” subtitles of its speech appearing at the bottom

of the screen.

She couldn’t help but empathize with it. “I’m stuck out here, Golden Goose.”

Without skipping a beat, the goose replied, “We can help each other get out.”

Bean’s heart dropped. She felt her pulse in her ears.

“You can hear me, Golden Goose?” She gulped.

“I can,” it replied, its voice echoed in text at the bottom of the screen.

“I’m a very smart goose. But a very sad one. I think you’re sad, too. It’s

because we’re stuck—but I know a way out.”

Bean wanted out more than she wanted anything in the world. She had been moving from safehouse to safehouse for countless months, and even

before that, since the day her father became president, she had been a prisoner. Sure, he had done the best he could to make her life as

comfortable as possible, but not a day had gone by that she hadn’t wished

to go back to her old life of anonymity when she was just Bean, not Bernice

Raison, the president’s daughter.

It’s gotta be a trap of some sort, she thought to herself, staring at the text

beneath the animated goose as it waited for her response.

But the promise of freedom was too much to simply disregard, and so, she probed deeper. “I’m in an air-taxi on my way to a safehouse, Golden Goose; there’s no way out for me. I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help.”

The goose gave her a cheeky wink. “Promise me, if I get you out and

keep you safe, you’ll help me?”

Bean shook her head. “It’s not possible—”

“Promise me,” the goose insisted.

Bean let out a deep sigh, her heartbeat irregular, her mind

simultaneously vexed with concern and primed with the possibility of adventure.

“How can I trust you? You’re just a digital goose that’s taken over my

smartphone,” she replied.

“Because I need you, Bean,” the goose replied. “I’m in a bad place right

now and you’re the only person who can help me. Well, you and your pops.”

Now things were getting out of hand. The goose knew too much. Bean

knew she was in danger.

“Don’t be scared,” the goose continued, as though it were reading her

thoughts. “As you said, I’m just a digital goose; I can’t hurt you. I can’t make

you do anything that you don’t want to do. But there is something you have

to know. They’re lying to your dad—they’ve been lying to him for months.

The whole reason for this lockdown”—the goose paused and dropped its

digital head down—“it has nothing to do with a disease. The truth is so

much worse, and I have all the proof you’ll ever need. If you’ll help me, I’ll

show you, and together, we can show the world and bring an end to all of

this.”

Bean fell back in her seat as the gravity of the situation took hold. A

layer of sweat had collected on her forehead. She tried to catch her breath.

Despite the panic and fear coursing through her veins, a strange sense of

relief helped calm her.

She had been suspicious of the lockdown since it was suddenly

announced nearly a year ago. It had all seemed to have come out of

nowhere. The news on streams didn’t seem to add up with the evidence in

front of her, and all the confirmation she could get from her father was a

deep and eroding fear that the wrong move could mean the death of

millions.

“What’s an adventure without the stakes?” the goose insisted. “And I

promise, the moment you want out, I’ll get you straight back to your

safehouse. You have to trust me. My friends … the country … the world is

relying on me to get this message to your old man. If you’ll help me, I’ll be

set free and you’ll have the adventure of a lifetime.”

“I’ll do it,” Bean found herself blurting out, “but you need to tell me

what’s happening.”

The goose nodded. “In time, Bean, you have my word, but our window

of opportunity is shrinking by the second. We need to get you out of this

air-taxi right away.”

“But how?” Bean asked, looking around at her flying jail cell.

A sneaky smile crossed the goose’s beak. “This goose can fly.”

Bean’s seatbelt suddenly undid itself. The air-taxi began to slow,

dropping out of the cloudy reaches of the darkening sky until it was

skimming just above the roofs of apartment blocks and factories.

“If I bring this thing to a complete stop, an alarm is going to go off, and the secret service is going to be on us like flies on a syrupy stack of pancakes,” the goose informed her. “It’s hardwired into the circuitry, so

there’s nothing I can do to bypass it.”

The air-taxi’s scissor-style doors opened, something that shouldn’t be

possible while the vehicle was moving.

“You’re going to have to jump,” the goose stated solemnly. “I’ll slow

down as much as possible, but you’ll need to handle the safe landing on

your own.”

“But I’m in the middle of Detroit!” Bean argued. “Where do I go from

here?”

The Golden Goose became visibly nervous. “Thirty seconds, then my

control over the air-taxi will be noticed. We’ll figure out how to get you

where you need to go once you’re on the ground. Don’t worry, I’ll be with

you. But right now, you have to—”

Bean jumped.

***

Jack

Jack had never been to the midnight market before—in fact, he wasn’t sure

if it even truly existed. It was an idea that had passed from apartment block

to apartment block: strangers coming to the door and asking for electronic

scrap to sell at some mysterious exchange nearby, or a peddler pushing one

hundred percent real beef for an absurd price in the hallways, citing his

sources as a mysterious market in the area.

His father had squeezed any information he could out of these traveling

salesmen—you just had to listen out near midnight. It was more a matter

of traders fighting the fear of the virus and finding each other in the

darkness than an established event, and if you had something in need of

finding or selling, your street smarts would have to be your ticket in.

Avoiding street surveillance and monitor-drones would make a good

portion of such street smarts, as a market of any sort was strictly forbidden under the laws of lockdown, let alone one taking place far past curfew. A

solid knowledge of street-cam blind spots and surveillance-drone patrol

routes would be as important as an anti-flash hoodie and bandana.

Jack had none of these things. He did, however, know of the

interconnected service tunnels that ran through the basements of every

apartment block in a three-mile radius, and that seemed like the best place

to start.

***

Jack crawled through the damp service tunnel beneath his apartment

building. He had accessed it by sneaking out to the side of his building, to

get to a hidden alleyway, and then squeezing himself through a small grate

in the floor that he had left propped open with a piece of plywood he had found lying around.

He had heard the surveillance drones issuing warnings about the curfew

as their bright searchlights zoomed past the dilapidated apartments.

He checked that his laptop was firmly placed into his browning

backpack and secured his clunky flashlight into the side pocket.

The backpack was stiff from use and the zippers slightly rusted from

the journey across the ocean to this hellish sanctuary—he pushed thoughts of Copenhagen to the back of his mind.

They brought the image of Mathilda with them, and he couldn’t have

those emotions fogging up his mind. He needed, now more than ever, to be focused.

Once we get through this, he thought to himself, you can order any pizza you like.

The tunnels were what remained of an almost forgotten rail system.

Once, they used to cart humans from place to place; now, they were home to auto-repair bots that made sure the foundations of this crumbling city remained intact.

Jack’s flashlight flickered and barely let off any light as he felt his way

through the underground rail system. It was from an older generation and

still ran on lithium batteries. He wasn’t sure just how much power they still

had left. He had been stumbling in the dark for over half an hour and

couldn’t tell how close he was to the exit.

If I stay down here any longer, I might completely miss the market. As he was

worrying about the time, he saw a searchlight suddenly appear round a

corner, ahead of him.

His heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach and his veins slowly

froze over. It was a surveillance bot. If it found him in these tunnels, there

would be no explaining what exactly he was doing here. At the beginning

of the lockdown, the homeless, that had occupied the underground, had been moved to abandoned factory spaces on the outskirts of the city. There

weren’t meant to be any humans scratching about in this underbelly.

He quickly switched off his stuttering torch and tried to crawl beneath

a concrete platform that had once been used for repairing any railway

electrical short circuits. In this corner of darkness, he clutched onto himself

and his precious laptop, as he tried to control his breathing.

The searchlight was getting closer, but it wasn’t panning from left to

right as the surveillance drones normally did. Instead, it was moving steadily

along on a straight line. Jack felt a flicker of hope; if this drone was

malfunctioning, he stood a chance of being able to either avoid it or disable

it. If he was going to disable it, he would need the right tools. The

searchlight got closer, then he saw it.

Between him and the drone lay a heavy-looking pipe—just the tool he

was looking for. If he hurried, he could get to it before the drone, but if he

made too much noise, the drone would certainly notice him. Malfunctioning

or not, given enough warning, the drone could issue a distress signal to any

monitor drones in the vicinity, and they could be here within three minutes.

Jack’s only options were to wait here, in his corner, and hope he

wouldn’t be found, or go for it and take destiny into his own hands.

Now or never, he repeated to himself as he edged along the walls, closer

and closer to the searchlight.

Jack gripped the pipe and steadied himself. It was heavier than he had

expected, so it was bound to make quick work of the surveillance drone.

Crouching, he hugged the wall and waited for the searchlight to get closer.

It trundled along on its straight path, not deviating and getting closer to

him. Jack was poised and ready to strike when the searchlight slid right up

next to him.

In a split moment, he tensed his muscles and swung with all his might

at the searchlight. He hit it head-on, but the surveillance drone didn’t drop

to the ground. Instead, it tilted, and he heard a screech coming from the

railway. There was a thunderous crash, and Jack fumbled for his torchlight.

It was not what a surveillance drone was meant to sound like when knocked

down—too heavy, too loud.

He managed to switch on the flickering, ancient light and swung it out

across the collapsed mass. It was an auto-repair bot. Rusted and lumbering,

it had been completely unhinged from its railings. Jack let out a relieved sigh

mixed with a chuckle. It didn’t last long. Though not a surveillance drone,

it was still connected to a monitored system. Someone would undoubtedly

notice that this bot was offline and send a search team. Not only could he

DETROIT

13

not use this route to come back, but he had to get out of here now before

he was found hovering over a disabled bot.

***

Bean

Bean hit the rooftop hard. She tucked her body into itself and rolled, for

what felt like an eternity, before landing, splayed, on her back. Winded, she

took this moment to catch her breath and felt the musty air playing in her

lungs. She sat up and saw that during the tumble, she had let go of her

phone. She creaked back onto her feet and looked around her while

stretching out her body. She saw the glimmer of her screen a couple of feet

behind her.

“You better not be broken,” she admonished the phone as she walked

to pick it up.

Though the screen had a crack that wasn’t there before, the Golden

Goose could still be seen, smiling up at her.

“It’ll take more than a little tumble to break me.” The Golden Goose

giggled, a sound that reminded Bean of wind chimes. “Come on, let’s go.

We don’t have much time.” Bean wasn’t sure if the goose ruffled its digital

feathers out of a sense of urgency. “There should be a doorway to your

right.”

Bean turned to her right and spotted the rickety door the goose was

talking about. She clutched her phone tightly and tugged the door open. On

the other side was a steep set of stairs that she immediately started to

descend.

“Mind rustling me up an elevator, Goose?” she asked as she took a

break to catch her breath.

“Unfortunately, there aren’t too many working elevators in the

slums”—the goose winked—“but you’re not that far off from the bottom.”

Bean took a deep breath and rocketed down the stairs. She finally burst

out of the stairwell into an empty hallway.

“Your air-taxi is going to be arriving at the safehouse soon.” The goose

had a serious expression on its face. “We need to get you out of here before

anyone notices you’re gone.”

“Then let’s go!” Bean was already hurtling toward the front door. She

pushed herself out into the warm Detroit air and heard the door lock behind

her.

“Though I appreciate your enthusiasm”—the Golden Goose looked

slightly annoyed—“rushing out into the middle of a curfew-locked city isn’t

good for either of us.”

Bean looked around her and tried to back up into the building she had

just left. She had never seen anything like this before. All around her,

buildings were crumbling, and the darkness was overwhelming with the

occasional spotlight shining down into the corners.

“Hey, trust this silly goose, Bean. I promised to keep you safe, didn’t

I?” The Golden Goose hummed encouragingly. “The door behind you is

locked; you’ll have to get to my people before you get caught in a monitordrone’s

sights.”

“And where exactly are your people?” Bean’s voice quaked.

“Oh, they’re stalking around. Just follow my instructions and you’ll get

out of here unscathed.”

The goose was smiling but looked uncertain or even preoccupied. This

didn’t put Bean at ease—rather she was even more on edge. What had she

been thinking, trusting a mobile app, or even worse, hackers in disguised as

something innocent and sweet?

I have to get out of here, she thought as her heart raced, and, in a panic, she

found herself bounding off into the darkness.

Her phone vibrated and dinged with notifications but without even

realizing it, she was blind with fear and couldn’t begin to think about reading

the imposter goose’s messages. She ran deeper into the city streets of

Detroit, all the while looking for a searchlight.

With the monitor-drone’s facial recognition software, it would be able

to recognize her as Bernice Raison, the president’s daughter, and it would

send special-service drones to come to pick her up. Granted, they would

make quite a mess of things and she would have some explaining to do, but

at least her foolish soirée into the slums would be over and she could get

this Golden Goose app removed.

It was because of the sudden shift in emotions that she had failed to

notice the three hulking figures playing cubes in the shadows alongside the

road. In her haste, she tripped over them just as somebody rolled a snake

venom, and she landed sprawled on her back for the second time that

evening. She sat up, still holding onto her phone, but her spine turned to

ice when she heard a menacing tone fight its way through labored breathing

behind her.

“Well, well, well.” There was a deep, scraping exhale. “Lookie here,

boys. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a cash cow.”

The figures pulled themselves up to their full height, their mountainous

bodies rippling in the shadows. They moved menacingly toward Bean, and

a pale light from a nearby LED board cast them in dim light and their faces

were exaggerated in a horrible way.

They all had similar characteristics as if whatever biohacking, they were

clearly involved in, exaggerated the same parts of their bodies. Apart from

the shared overgrown muscles, their ears and noses were bulbous and their

cheeks so scrunched that they almost had slits for eyes. Despite this

cartoonish appearance, Bean noticed several scars crisscrossing their faces

and bodies—these guys were serious outlaws.

Bean had a scream caught in her throat, but her phone pinged again.

She looked down to see the Golden Goose flapping wildly. “Stall! Someone is on the way!”