"This is Brian," said Opal. "And this is Richie."
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Richie's a tech head. Richie, tell Brian about the Van Vols. You know."
"Say what?"
"In the gloves. Tell him."
"Uh…" Richard shook his head. "She means gekkomere tapping into van der Waals forces."
"Cool. You've got it."
"But Kyle's skating, how does that work?"
Brian gestured. "Show him your boot soles, Opal."
"OK." She put on hand on Richard's shoulder for balance, then raised one foot. "See?"
"Hyperglace gel strips." Brian pointed. "Like the gekkomere, flips between two modes. Just apply a tiny potential."
"And they're frictionless?"
"Coefficient damn near close to zero."
"At ambient temperature?"
"Unless the weather is-"
"You two." Opal lowered her foot, releasing Richard's shoulder. "Tech heads."
The absence of her hand felt… strange. Warm and strange.
"You hack code?" asked Brian. "Course you do. If you want to work, come over to the shop in the morning."
"Er…" Richard looked at Opal. "Work?"
"We aren't losers." Brian nodded toward the seated people. "Apart from maybe Kenny over there. He's a doctoral student at King's, and a total waste of space."
"I love you too, man." Kenny raised a hand to Richard. "Hey."
"Hey."
Richard looked down at the floor. It was cleaner than he'd expected. Of course he had to work, because that was what people did, or at least grown-ups. Fourteen year-olds did not pay tax, were outside the system that adults lived in, so whatever Brian meant it was surely illegal.
"It's what they call cash in hand," said Opal. "No ID required. No phone. Good place."
"Oh. And it's a shop?"
"You'll like it." Brian tapped Opal's gauntlet. "We sell stuff like this. Gekrunner tech, bikes with graphite memories, you name it. At least until July twentieth."
Richard's guts clenched. Knife blade, coming at me. But there was no knife, and he was safe, because Zajac was in school and that was another world. July twentieth was the day of the Knife Edge final, when Zajac had said he'd come for him. But he was away from that, and safe.
Safe from Zajac, anyhow.
"He's talking about the general election." Opal shrugged, distorting the cartwheeling logo on her shirt. "Politics."
"Matters more than you think, kid." Brian waved his phone. "If Fat Billy Church stays in office, they're threatening to make cash illegal. Pure phone-to-phone economy."
"That's impossible," said Opal.
"All they got to do is stop making coins and notes, then announce a cut-off date. Bring your cash into a bank for credit, or it drops to zero value, and you have bugger all."
Richard's stomach made a noise. He felt stricken; but Opal smiled.
"He needs feeding. Smell that? They're cooking chilli."
"Right," said Brian. "Let's get him fed."
But the food wasn't ready yet. It hurt to leave the steamy kitchen and step out into the back yard, where old mattresses lay in neat rows, plastic crates stood in a pyramid, and rusted poles supported a web of clotheslines. Eight or nine teenagers were practicing flips and rolls around the makeshift outdoor gym.
"He's going to mess that up," said Opal. "See?"
One of the youths rolled off a mattress, hitting the ground hard. He stood up, rubbing his ribs.
"Ouch," he said.
"You nearly nailed it," Opal told him.
From their left, a canine yap sounded. A Jack Russell on a lead formed of braided string wagged his tail. His owner was a girl around Richard's age; her sweatshirt was pink, bearing a picture of a flat-chested muscular man holding a knife. The heading read CARLSEN: THE FIREMAN RETURNS, while his blade dripped moving blood, animated droplets sliding down the sweatshirt fabric.
"That's Zoe," said Opal. "And this-"
Everything faded as Richard's hearing filled with the hiss of non-existent surf.
Blades and the whirring machines, peeling back the skin and slicing the skull, glistening folds of fatty brain, trickles of blood and no one noticing.
Richard felt choked by hands that did not exist, punched by invisible fists inside his chest.
"Jeez," said Zoe. "What's with the fucking kid?"
"I don't- Richie? You all right?"
A cramp pulled him over. Hot fluid spewed from his mouth.
"Oh, gross."
"Richie…"
"Sorry." He wiped his mouth. "I'm really sorry."
Zoe picked up her Jack Russell.
"Hey, Opal. You keep a pet, you gotta clean up after it, y'know?"
"Fuck you." Opal put her arm around Richard. "Just go away."
His world lurched again.
She's hugging me.
The world was so strange.
Next morning he walked with Brian through Brixton, past blocks of flats with piles of bin-bags stacked outside. Rotting rubbish emanated a stink; it felt as if the air had thickened, becoming heavier, and you had to push through it to get anywhere.
"No pick-ups for six weeks," said Brian. "And that shit Fat Billy is making like it's not his fault."
"Oh," said Richard.
"And like, the weird thing is people believe him. Like if he had more powers, he'd be able to sort out the mess."
Back in the squat, there had been a couple of people with shirts whose logos were the A-on-pentagram symbol of New Anarchism.
"You're an NAer?"
"Shit, no. They're stupid. OK, through here."
They passed along an alleyway, skirting more rotting refuse, and came out onto a grimy road. Opposite was a shop with a handpainted sign – Cal's Cycles – and ceramic sheeting protecting the window. The metal door was guarded by three locks; Brian pressed his thumb against one, and extended his keychain from his belt to open the others.
"Give us a hand with these, will you?"
"What do I do?"
There was a trick to jerking the ceramic shutters open. Richard tried to helpe push them up, into the slots over the windows, but Brian did all the work.
"Cal won't be in till ten, most likely. You'll recognise him by the tats."
"Tats?"
"Bare arms and tattoos, kind of old-fashioned, but at least the designs move."
Inside, the shop smelled of sawdust and oil, and the floorboards were grey with age, iron-hard. Racks hung from the ceiling; from them bicycles were suspended, looking insectile, like praying mantises, in the vertical position. Gauntlets and boots filled shelves and two glass display cases, one of which doubled as a sales counter. There was a phone pad for taking payments, and a stained coffee mug which someone had left standing overnight.
"If we don't clean that," said Brian, "it'll just stay there growing fungus, maybe evolve intelligence. Could do with the conversation round here."
"You want me to work on software?"
"Got a bunch of gauntlets out back. Whole batch has buggy controlware. You up for sorting it out?"
"I… don't know."
"So let's find out."
The workshop-storeroom was cluttered with electronics and mechanical components, the air tangy with oil and metal dust, sharper than out front. A large scratched wallscreen would serve as Richard's display, and a small graphite processor pad for the actual programming, instead of a phone. On one wall, triggered by Richard and Brian's entrance, a movie poster brightened into animation: a grey-haired man performing gekrunner-style moves but with bare hands and ordinary shoes, and beneath him the words: Le Mouvement, C'est Moi.
"Early parkour guy," said Brian. "French, coming to London to talk about the Tao of free-running. Old school, before your actual gekrunning, cause they didn't have these little doodads."
He handed over a gauntlet with a cracked-open casing.
"Looks like a car motive cell." Richard followed weblines with his finger. "Viral engineering, viruses carrying the electronic-You know."