Wednesday, and I was at work. Vy had contacted me yesterday; it was time for a meet-up with the other Runners. Tonight. We were swapping courses earlier than usual, but after Friday no-one wanted to take any more risks.
Work, on the other hand, had no risk. My “office” was shared with five other people and a water cooler, set up in an open-plan style. Everyone had built up their own little walls of paperwork, computers and assorted personal belongings. My desk was covered mainly in scrap paper, little calculations I’d done without bothering to use the computer. Rising from beneath it was a traditional keyboard, set to the right of a small ring with five holes in it. My hand was currently in it, relaying my thoughts and numbers as I read through the paperwork for today, doubling checking my colleague’s work on the mysterious filtering of fifty thousand dollars from Matsushima’s PR department and it’s eventual location. We were close to certain, to be honest, but the Corruption Bureau had insisted.
Max, the colleague in question, was currently lazing in his chair, feet on his desk, either asleep or watching something on his glasses, soychip packet sitting half-empty in front of him. His desk was right in front of the door.
That meant that when the door slammed open behind him, his chips went everywhere and he sat bolt upright, tearing the glasses off and rubbing his eyes. I smirked.
Crave walked through the door, obviously pissed off, but not saying anything. As soon as I saw the suited man behind him, I was on edge too.
Samuel worked for the Corruption Bureau and was the official liaison to our department, which worked out to he gave us our jobs, so we shut up and listened. Tall, dry and manipulative, he was not well-liked around the office. Ignoring the chips that he crushed as he walked in, he made a beeline to my desk. Crave shrugged and looked apologetic.
“If you’re not up to date, you might want to fix that.” Samuel said, barely a hint of tone. He pulled a tablet out from the file under his arm and tossed it on the desk. I flicked the tablet on.
Members of the Health and Safety Bureau: Account Details for the Last Year
I turned back to Samuel, but only caught his back as he left.
“Crave, what the hell is going on?” I asked.
He grimaced. “I can’t do this one. Someone leaked what looks like a ton of data from Raven Microcyber on the possible side-effects of their implants to Ink. Ink published under all the usual disclaimers, but it directly contradicts what the Health and Safety Bureau published a couple of months back. So, we’re looking for bribes.”
“Crave…”
“Oh, right. You’re looking for bribes. I can’t, for reasons that are obvious, be involved. Which, by the way, means you have to report directly to Samuel.”
“Is that why he’s so pissed?”
“Oh, no. He’s pissed because Corruption did a shakedown of H&S just after they finished reviewing Raven’s new stuff and found nothing. So Corruption have a lot on the line, reputation wise. I actually think he rather likes you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope! He did give this job to you, after all.” Crave wandered over to my desk, avoiding stepping on the chips that Max was now trying to clean up. “Where’re you up to on the Matsushima case, by the way? I’ll take that off your hands.”
“Nearly done, boss. Max did okay.” I marked the point off in blue, saved and pulled up a new spreadsheet. “Did Samuel give a time frame on this?”
Crave grimaced. “Ah. He said end of the week.”
I sat dumbfounded. “That’s not actually possible. Even after we run the usual detecting programs over this and follow that up, we’ve still gotta-”
Crave held up a hand and cut me off. “Go over it all manually, I know. I told him it wouldn’t be possible.”
“And how did he take that?”
“Can’t really tell. I think it just sort of blended into the general background furiousness.”
I made a face.
“Look, grab Max or Anna. You’ll need some help on this and they’re done for now, right?” I nodded and Crave smiled. “Great. Good luck on this.”
“Crave, this sucks. I hate dealing with Corruption personally, we have you for that.”
“Hey, you’ve gotta have something to complain about or it all bottles up!”
—–
It was a relief to get out of the office and home, but it wasn’t to last.
The meeting place was an abandoned and empty hotel, too far away from anything major to be picked up and refurbished. There was a car in the parking lot, settled in a way that made it obvious it hadn’t been moved in years, covered in dust and with garbage collected around the wheels. The hotel itself had cracks down the face, moss and grass growing out of the pits and across the dead signs proclaiming a five-star experience. Runners were filtering in from across the city, the lot filled with the noise of wheels and fences bending as they were clambered or leapt over.
A couple of unshaven faces yelled at us from the upper windows. A couple of Runners shouted back, jeers or replies. A few others had brought along food and alcohol, shared them out among the squatters. It wasn’t really surprising that they’d moved in, but tonight the place was ours. I was around the back, moved in through the kitchen entrance. Most of the fixtures were gone, cracked tiles framing where they had been, the spaces now filled with graffiti. I walked through it at a measured pace, pushed open the double doors onto what had once been a small restaurant section. The glass between that and the lobby had been broken, and Runners filled the space, sitting on turned over tables or the rotted carpet, leaning against walls, chatting away amiably. Sickness and Golden Boy were on the reception desk.
They were the symbols among the public of Runners. Not through being the first or most daring, but through sheer popularity. Sickness wore camouflage and webbing, but in a way that showed he was not regimented in the slightest. He deliberately appealed to the younger crowd, all harsh snark and almost standoffish coolness on camera. He’d once described it as “edgy enough to be appealing, but not so much that I can’t sleep at night”. A lot of people had been introduced to Running by Sickness videos as teenagers, something that a couple of other Runners complained about, claiming he was making us look immature in the public eye.
Given we spent all of our money on costumes and limbs with no other purpose than endless competition with each other, I didn’t think we needed much help.
Golden Boy was the opposite. He wasn’t as flashy as a lot of Runners, but very casual and relaxed on camera, and he was legitimately funny. He’d given his Admin something of a web presence too, as they ran a commentary show about the Running. Usually people moved to Golden Boy when they got engrossed in the Runs and then stuck around for their chemistry and humour. He also had a fair chunk of female viewers; his gold and white chest piece was tight and flattering and his voice had become a meme in it’s own right.
Between the two of them, they basically ran the meets.
Sickness spoke up. “Hey! We’ve past the appointed time, so let’s get this done!” Kraken stepped up.
Everybody respected Kraken, so he was usually appointed MC. He wore a dark grey top, splotched with a lot of other colours. Winding over all of that was a purple octopus, slightly raised. His limbs, unusually, broke very strongly from standard human, splitting at the elbows into ten tentacles. Once everybody was quiet, he spoke.
“Right. First thing, we’re changing the pattern. I know it’s pointless paperwork to some of you, but it’s important.”
That on it’s own took over forty five minutes. We knew the procedure, but it always dragged on. I avoided getting involved in the fights over the technicalities and accusations of bias, sat in the corner with a bunch of other like-minded Runners and swapped war stories. My established Masque meant I listened far more than I shared, but no-one seemed to mind. Glass and Torrent usually tried to establish what our section would look like and they were both here tonight. Pitch was here too, despite her no show on Friday.
The fights finally settled down, everybody sated or at least quieter. Kraken stood on the reception desk and yelled. “Anyone got anything to put forward?”
“How about a Festival?” That was Fivefold. No-one was sure about their gender; they wore bulky equipment with a paper pattern, blueprints and designs printed on a thousand interleaved sheets. “It’s been a while since the last one, and after Friday, I think we might need to blow off a little steam.”
I sighed. I wasn’t really against a Festival, but they were a pain in the ass. Festival Runs took place near or on large public landmarks or events, drawing ridiculous amounts of attention from the Corps and normal police. Every single Runner in the city usually turned up to Festivals, and there were always some arrests.
I tuned back in just in time to hear “the Suntree.”
Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.
Running Silver 