Angus handed over the main event – a packet of zero-nark pads.
‘More like it.’ Ollie hadn’t used nark since the siege began, but Lolo hadn’t stopped. Sie had made an effort to cut down, but hir dependency was starting to worry Ollie. ‘Hey, can you throw in some duct tape, too?’
Angus gave him a calculating look, then produced a half-roll from under the counter. ‘You want anything else? My shoes? My girlfriend to bang?’
Laughing, Ollie grabbed the roll. ‘Tape’s fine. Be seeing you.’
‘Sure. What you want that for, anyway?’
‘Thought maybe I’d see if I’m into bondage.’
‘You take that shit easy, kid. People can get hurt.’
‘Thanks.’ Ollie turned away from the kiosk. ‘Voice of experience.’ He could guess the hand gesture Angus was making behind his back.
*
It took Ollie nearly an hour to cycle from Rye Lane up to Dulwich; these days the clear path was anything but. Two years on and still nobody had moved the broken taxez and cabez and bagez that cluttered the concrete, and now it was getting worse as people started tipping their rubbish wherever they felt like. And of course most of his route seemed to be uphill, leaving him sweating heavily, which was going to play hell with his face again. He’d never even thought about Connexion’s London metrohub network in any of the time before; it just was. Now, distance had become achingly real again – a handicap of effort, sweat and time. As he pedalled away with straining legs, all he could think about was stepping onto his old boardez and rolling along effortlessly one last time. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the electricity to power it up again, but that kind of profligacy would draw way too much attention.
He reached the end of Lordship Lane and turned west onto the A205. The road cut through sports pitches that were now just desert-dry soil as hard as stone, enclosed by prickly dead hedges. But the goalposts were still standing, their scabbed white paint gleaming oddly under the radiant devil-sky.
Past the playing fields, the hedges changed to high brick walls, guarding big houses. Ollie stopped pedalling and freewheeled along slowly until he came to a nouveau-riche three-storey cylindrical house, complete with mock-Tudor facade, that belonged to one Brandon Schumder. The gates at the end of a short gravel drive were tall, topped with spikes that weren’t entirely ornamental. He didn’t expect them to be a problem. In fact, he felt a rush of satisfaction that he’d finally arrived here.
Without solnet, it had taken two years of dealing in markets, building contacts, paying in kilowatt hours or nark, and trading his own information, all with one goal: finding Nikolaj. Ollie still didn’t have her, but he knew for certain now that Nikolaj and Jade worked for the Paynor family, one of the major crime families operating out of North London. That just left him with trying to find a way to reach the Paynors. They were a tight bunch – and even tighter nowadays. But that was what he was good at: planning. It was like his superpower, one of the main reasons the Southwark Legion had never been caught. He just needed an angle no one would expect.
More quiet questions, and he had heard the name Karno Larson, who among other things had acted as the Paynor family’s money man in the time before, laundering illegal wattdollars clean and loading them into the legitimate banking system. There was plenty of cheap talk about Karno, but solid details – such as his location – were hard to find. A couple of small-timers suggested Brandon Schumder might know.
Ollie stared at the gates from the other side of the clear path and raised his arm, running a scan. He’d salvaged several systems from the old stealth suit he used to wear on raids with the Legion. There was no point putting it on now; not even its hazy grey fabric could conceal him under the insistent light of the devil-sky. So, in a marathon whinge session, Lolo had hand-stitched some of its systems into his leather biker’s jacket, along with a layer of armour fabric.
Tye splashed the results, showing zero power in the gates – and specifically the lock. So not even Brandon Schumder had the wealth for that kind of wattage these days. Ollie’s tarsus lens zoomed in, revealing a slim chain holding the two gates together, with a padlock dangling down, its shiny brass casing almost a shout for attention.
‘Too easy,’ he muttered suspiciously. But no, a scan of the house’s curving wall revealed no active electrical circuits. A sign of the times. Before Blitz2, only the seriously wealthy could’ve afforded this house, but material things weren’t a measure of wealth any more. Therefore personal security wasn’t currently high on anyone’s priority list.
Ollie fingered his insurance collar – a black band with a lace trim that fitted so perfectly around his neck that it could have been a tattoo. A silly nervous gesture; its icon was a solid unchanging splash in his tarsus lens. But given who he was going up against, checking wasn’t paranoia. If Nikolaj was as good as everyone said, she might have heard he was asking questions.
He went over to the gates and pressed a small ball of thermon onto the padlock’s hoop. There was an amber flare, and the metal melted away. The sensor splash showed him there was no one on the road or lurking behind the desiccated bushes. Technically, it was night-time. Hard to judge, but with the sun below the horizon, the purple gleam from above was maybe slightly dimmer. He could see a couple of lights on in the house, shining out of second-floor windows.
He shut the gate behind him and wheeled the bike up to the front door. Not a long walk, but the sensation it gave him let loose a whole slew of bittersweet memories. He’d always had the Legion to back him up when they went on raids or burglaries. Now it was their phantom faces that accompanied him down the drive. Tye splashed data about the house’s network. Signal strength was low, but it provided connectivity with the remnants of solnet. Ollie launched a darkware package into the node.
The front door was another faux-Tudor monstrosity – all bulky panels with iron bolts driven through them. He took a strip of charge tape out of the cycle’s pannier, ready to apply it to the lock, when Tye reported the darkware had gained full control over the house network. Ollie drew his nerve-block pistol and ordered the front door to unlock. A soft click confirmed it had obeyed, and he kicked it open. Bursting in like some goon out of a Sumiko interactive pumped up his exhilaration. Nothing like the buzz he used to get on Legion raids, but still his confidence and focus were high.
The wood-panelled hall was dark and long, ending in a broad, curving staircase. ‘Hey, motherfucker,’ he bellowed. ‘Come out. Now! I wanna talk to you.’
Tye told him someone’s altme was connecting to a house network node upstairs, requesting an emergency link to the police G8Turing. ‘Response insertion,’ he ordered his altme. The icons changed, confirming he was the only response Schumder was going to get.
‘Dick move, Brandon Schumder,’ he said. ‘Even if you’d got through to the cops, my dark-ops team inside your house right now could slaughter any tactical squad before they reached the front door. Now get your arse downstairs like a good boy, or there will be consequences.’ The phantom faces escorting him smiled their approval as he imagined their reaction to Schumder’s panicked call for help.
‘Don’t shoot,’ a voice called from upstairs. ‘Please, we’re not armed.’