Occupy

Virginia snapped her fingers in a way Sam hadn’t seen since before they split. “Calm down, Samir.” These snaps and this tone were reserved for when she felt he was, in her words, spiralling needlessly.In this case, it only accelerated his doom loop.

“You know it existed,” he cried. “You were there. We were there together. Carlos was there.”

He’d repeatedly asked, then begged, Aida to gen a photo of Seb, or of Maelzel’s. Aida had refused, then pivoted to feigning ignorance.

“We must be mis-remembering, Sam.” She was firm, almost academic in her tone. Samir was just a schoolboy who hadn’t done his reading. “We met him some place else.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he shouted, but she remained unfazed, a practised calm he recognised. “Right, wait. Aida!”

“Samir Patel,” came Aida’s voice from an unseen speaker somewhere in Virginia’s room.

“Show us a photo of Virginia, Carlos and I with Sebastian the other night at Maelzel’s Exhibition.”

“Hi Samir,” Aida said with a canned giggle. “I’m so sorry, but there are multiple issues with what you’ve requested. I can’t find a record of who you mean by Sebastian, and I can’t find a record of the location you referenced, and I can’t find the event you’re referring to in your stream.”

Samir’s stomach lurched and jolted as Aida spoke. “That’s impossible.” He pounded his fists on the screen and pain shot through his wrists.

“Samir!” Virginia grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down onto the edge of the bed. “You can’t be here if you’re going to be this way. If she says there’s no record of it, it didn’t happen. Nothing in this city happens without being recorded by a SkyTie device. So, take some relief from that.”

“Aida, please,” Samir sobbed. “Please, show us with Sebastian.”

Aida didn’t respond.

Virginia squeezed Sam’s shoulder. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Wait.” Sam grabbed his bag. “I have this. Look.” He produced a rumpled stack of thin, square printed photos. He could see Virginia’s eyes narrow as he flipped through the largely innocuous photos of abandoned pubs until he came to the first photo he’d ever taken on his PCC camera: Sebastian stood with a smirk next to the brusque, tattooed bartender from O’Leary’s in Los Angeles. “Look, see? Here he is, with the unknowable Irish myth. Remember?”

“I’m surprised you have a physical copy of this.” She took it from him with some care and held it by the edges. “I know Sebastian exists, Samir. That’s not what we are discussing.”

“Lydia, she has a photo printer. Right, but wait. That’s not right. I have this!” He plunged his hands back in the bag, then produced the framed photo that Sebastian had gifted him, straight from the wall of the nightclub. “Look. Look! It’s literally Seb standing in Maelzel’s. From back when his parents still owned it.”

She tilted her head to one side and appeared to stare at the ceiling.

“Virginia,” he insisted. “Please look at it.”

“Wow,” Virginia said. “This is how I remembered him, until I saw him this week. Such a baby face. But… is that…” She moved the photo back in forth in an attempt to focus it, or perhaps to understand it. “It can’t be.”

“It’s Rebecca Prue.”

Virginia shook her head. “In such an odd sweatshirt? No. It’s such an uncharacteristic outfit. How?”

“She was there. In Maelzel’s.” Samir was resigned. Virginia was in her Magenta-induced mania. He’d dealt with this in the past, and now he would deal with it again. All he could do was answer factually and hope he somehow got through.

“So Sebastian’s gen-block is recent,” she continued. “But Rebecca Prue has had a gen-block since, well, essentially since it was possible. How did you make this photo?”

“It’s real,” he sighed. “Someone took it. With a camera.”

"Well, real or not, they look happy at least," Virginia said. "I've never seen Ms. Prue smile like this in my entire time at Magenta."

"Yeah." Sam stared at the photo. They weren't though, he thought. He looked at the faded colours of the photo, at the strained corners of their smiles, of their squinted eyes that betrayed their irritation. They'd been fighting, Seb had said. It was a blurred, analog snapshot of that precise moment in time. But without the context from Seb, it wasn't the whole truth.

“And who is this third person?”

A klaxon pierced the air and interrupted their stalemate. “The illegal occupation of Magenta Tower must end.” Rebecca Prue’s voice echoed through the room as her face appeared on the screen. They both turned, enraptured by the sudden appearance. She was perfectly framed in the middle of her camera, and made intense eye contact with the lens. Her dark brown hair hung straight to her shoulders, her makeup flawless, her skin impossibly smooth.

Sam held the photo up, comparing it to the screen. She was older now, but perhaps cosmetically: a different hairstyle, a professional suit. But the woman herself was identical, wasn’t she? “She hasn’t aged a day,” he whispered.

“Nonsense,” Virginia replied. “And shh.” She pointed at the screen.

“They claim they are peaceful,” Rebecca continued, “that they speak for the silent majority. But history shows that these are terrorists, plain and simple. We are doing everything in our power to bring this to a peaceful conclusion. They have shown they will resort to violence, even murder. We may well be called upon to show strength of our own to resolve this situation, to prevent further destruction and loss of life.”

“This…” Samir gestured at the screen. “She’s all but said it. She’s all but said the club was destroyed.”

“Samir, please.” Virginia placed her head in her hands. “Please, just stop. You’ve let your imagination run away with you.”

The device Lydia had given him started to vibrate. He snatched it off the table and flipped it open. “Lydia?”

With a bit of guidance and the push of the button marked SPK, Lydia’s tinny voice emanated from the tiny speaker. Sam set the device down on the nightstand.

“Lyds, we’re both here.”

“This is Virginia Rose, Vice President of SkyTie…”

“I know who you are, Ms. Rose.” Lydia affected a stronger tone, one Sam had only heard her use the night he was taken by Hector. “I trust Samir has explained who we are, and what we want.”

“No…” Virginia looked at Sam with a puzzled expression.

“¡Hijo de la chingada!” Lydia shouted, then let out a sigh, which came through as a loud crackle.

“It was probably Magenta,” Sam shouted. “This is hopeless.”

“Samir!” Virginia shouted back.

“Sam, please.” Lydia’s tinny voice pleaded, joining the chorus.

“I’ve seen how little Rebecca Prue cares about things like this,” Sam said. “I was in the room after the Hammer bombing. I was in the room. She didn’t care, she just didn’t care.”

“That doesn’t mean she’d blow up Maelzel’s,” Lydia said. “What does she have to gain from that? It’s just some club.”

“She’s not a villain,” Virginia added. “She’s just a woman trying to run a company.”

Sam leaned on the wall, his back to the both of them. “Lydia, you too? I don’t understand. She’ll gun you all down if it gets you out of her lobby. They’ll stop at nothing, don’t you understand? They’ll stop at nothing.”

“Gun us down?” Lydia crackle-sighed again. “No, of course not. Ms. Rose, as you might know by now, I am speaking to you from our camp in the lobby of Magenta Tower. I’d like to tell you a bit about our organisation and our aims, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t know if it’s guns,” Sam interrupted. “I don’t know what they mean. They use words like resolve.”

“Ms. Rose,” Lydia pleaded. “My friends and I just want to talk to you about SkyTie, and about the future of this city and everyone in it.”

“Aida, please,” Samir whispered as the voices behind him dropped away. “Please, you have to let me get to Maelzel’s. You have to let me get to my friend.”

“It’s pointless until they lift the lockdown,” Virginia shouted, and Sam glanced over to shoot her a grimace. She had laid down on the bed and placed the device to her ear.

“Samir.” Aida chimed into his earpiece, rather than the speakers in the room. “Go to the door.”

“If you leave,” Virginia said to Lydia, “you just leave. They’re not going to do anything except thank you for leaving.”

“Get as close as you can,” Aida whispered. “And please go through quickly.”

Sam had made it to the door without drawing Virginia’s attention. “Okay,” he whispered back.

“Good luck, Samir.” The door slid open and Sam dashed into the hallway. It had slammed shut again before Virginia could make it out of the bed.

The path out of the building was not at all like the path he’d taken to get in. Down myriad stairs and labyrinthian corridors he moved, descending at least a dozen floors before he’d made it to a lift that could take him to the ground. He moved with an unnatural confidence as Aida guided him through each step. She seemed to know exactly where he was and where he should turn next, and as he emerged onto 1st Ave. he hadn’t seen a single other soul.

The signs were apparent right away. Sirens blared and police cars sped past with no regard for traffic. Sam moved as if possessed, and with Aida no longer guiding him, he had to rely on his limited knowledge of the city. Maelzel’s wasn’t far at the speed he ran, and before long he made the turn onto Clementina. In the distance, the air was a blur of blue and red. The sight of it constricted his throat, his legs were ready to give out. His body forced him to stop and his hand came to rest on a wall. The club still seemed so far away. A fire engine screamed past, though no sirens came from it. Maybe it was less of an emergency now.

“You!” A familiar voice struck his ear, followed by Melanie’s fist, which struck his right temple.

Sam’s knees slammed into the ground, and his elbows failed to stop him from tipping over. He stared up at the shape of her as her boot connected with his stomach. Coughs and heaves punctuated his few attempts to speak.

“¿Qué chingados hacía ahí?” Her boot met his stomach again. “¡Respóndeme, cabrón!”

Sam curled up and clutched himself. He cried out again as a spatter of blood hit the pavement. “Please,” he finally managed. “I don’t understand.”

“¡Tu chingada madre! Why the fuck wasn’t he at work, Samir? Huh?”

He flinched and pull himself tight, though the attack he’d braced for never came. Mel had instead fallen back against the wall and dropped down to the ground next to him. He could hear her panting and wheezing, and in the corner of his eye, he could almost make out some part of her.

“You said you were going to help.”

“I…” He couldn’t quite get the air to speak. With a wince he managed to slip his arm underneath himself and push until he was upright, and with great effort his back also found the wall. His arms were on fire as dirt and gravel crowded into his cuts, and his stomach was so tender it hurt to breathe.

“He was supposed to be at work.” Mel spoke delicately. “At the port. He said he had taken a night shift.”

“I don’t…”

“Sam. He’s gone.”