Vy woke up to the alarm blaring. She stretched and sat up, back cracking. The alarm was on the other side of the room to force her to get up, but she sat hunched over for another ten seconds before swivelling and plodding over to it. She made to slam her fist down on the alarm, but pulled up at the last second and just pressed the off button.
Vy, against all appearances, was actually a morning person and fired up quickly. A couple more stretches and half a can of cola later and she was up for her morning routine. She exited the caravan and clambered on top, moving past the network of wires feeding into the van. They were caged away to stop any accidental contact, but it was still worth being careful. The caravan was almost up against the wall of the nearest building, which was abandoned. From the top, Vy could just about reach the windowsill and a short jump had her hauling herself over the lip. She’d cleaned out the glass ages ago, put it away in a cardboard box in the corner.
Vy had a tendency to never throw anything out. Broken glass was just about the extremity of that, stored for the chance that it might just be useful to slow a pursuer one day. The empty food containers and cans in her house were… well, laziness, Vy knew.
The room she’d brought herself to was a personal space, doors barricaded with tables and chairs. Every piece of furniture not used for barricading was against the walls, clearing a space in the middle for her exercise equipment. One of the tables was set aside for a pallet of water bottles that had been frustrating to get up here, a small cleaning robot nestled under it. It’s light was duct-taped over, to help keep the impression this room was empty, so the poor thing had stumbled around only using it’s bumpers until it had worked out a map. Vy was loathe to move anything, out of pity for it.
The floor was covered in mats and a double end bag hung from the ceiling, connectors wrapped around the strongest point she could find. One corner had a pedestal bag and the corner across was for weights. It wasn’t a full gym, but it served. Wednesday was cardio day, so Vy moved into her warm-ups.
An hour later, she dropped back down to her caravan, sweating and carrying one of her water bottles, half full. She was running out of bottles, to her disgust. Refilling them would be good, but that water pipe she’d been meaning to get up into the room would be even better. Moving another whole pallet was not going to happen.
She stood outside for a bit, leaning against her door. It might be something of a bad neighbourhood by the current standards, but it was pretty good. Hardly anyone tried to break in, even while she was gone. After the house had electrified some enterprising chaps, they’d tried to break in when she was actually home. That had ended pretty well, considering. They still grabbed her some food from time to time and the scars she’d given that one guy had healed up nicely.
The other reason Vy was pretty safe was she fixed things. In the slums, people who’s stipend was eaten by drugs and other addictions, bad debts or general poor management relied rather a lot on the series of old patchwork wires, pipes and fibre optic. The slums were clustered around a bunch of stipend-affordable housing on the edges of town, and every section had someone like Vy fixing the breaks. There wasn’t much to do usually. She’d placed a lot of emphasis on teaching when she fixed people’s stuff, forced them to sit down a pay attention. Some of the fixers had taken to ruling their own little empires, sending out raiding parties for materials and hoarding their knowledge.
A Dim View was taken of those people by Vy.
There was some stuff to deal with today, however. A fibre line had broken further in, and there wasn’t anyone around with the gear to deal with the glass. Vy finished her bottle, opened the door to her caravan, threw the bottle inside somewhere and picked up her backpack for fibre repair.
– – –
Hours later, the caravan door complained as it was pushed in. Vy was slid her pack onto the floor and slammed the door behind her. The job had gone pretty well today, but the people insisted she hang around for a while afterwards so they could feed her. Despite just wanting to get out of there, Vy had hung around out of politeness until Ziska had sent her a message; that they needed to talk.
She stripped off and got into the shower, rinsing the sweat from her workout and job. Leaning her forehead against the wall, she just tried to relax.
Breathe in for 7… breathe out for 7…
The knock at the door startled her. Vy yelled out “Come in!” and turned the water off. Ziska was the only one who still bothered to knock. Vy’s shower hadn’t been as long as she wanted, but it’d have to do.
Ziksa sat down with a thud on the bed, frustration and worry written on her face. She was still wearing a suit, but she’d opened the jacket. Vy pulled some relatively fresh clothes on and dumped a towel on her head, before reaching into the fridge and handing Ziska a can of beer. Wasn’t often she drank, but she was clearly in the mood tonight. Vy sat down on her workstation chair, cola in hand.
“So, what’s up?” Vy asked.
Ziska sighed. “The Raven data we’ve been analysing at work was probably stolen by a Runner. It’s also probably fake.”
“Ah.” said Vy. “I take it you’re one of very few who know that?”
“Yeah, so the Horned Queen can’t exactly go blurt it out at a meeting. It gets worse, too.” Ziska paused. “Matsushima think that the Festival was an indirect attack by Raven. Both companies are out to haul as many Runners in as possible.”
Vy shifted in her seat. “Greaaat.” she said. “So we tell the Runners this, the corps still roll over us because we can’t really stop them and they know it’s you, but maybe some more get away. Or we don’t, go into hiding and maybe get more people arrested. This is assuming Glass, a known agent of Matsushima, isn’t lying to us about other Runners being operatives, maybe.”
“Basically.”
“Do we have a plan?”
“Tell Torrent or Pitch. Glass contacted them, so she think they’re not agents. They also aren’t anyone who has access to this information and might be able to keep their mouth shut.”
“Uh… Ziska, they didn’t tell anyone what Glass had said. That’s a bit of a hint at them being operatives or agents or whatever.”
“Do we have any other choice?”
“Drop an anonymous tip, go to ground. Change cities maybe.”
“Well, neither of these solve the core issue. That information has to have come from somewhere, which is only me, two colleagues and Raven higher-ups.” Ziska stared at her can. “They’ll start and finish with me.”
They sat there for a while, thinking in circles. Vy eventually turned on her computer, loaded some Run videos, the other side of the screen fitted with news tickers and streams. She really did enjoy watching the sport. It fitted in some way, mix of rules and rebelliousness and competition. Ziska had her eyes closed now, leaning against the wall, so Vy muted everything and just watched.
– – –
Ziska was shaken awake an hour later by Vy, who was looking grim.
“Check Ink. Looks like our problem’s been solved for us.”
Running Silver 