The flight attendant read them a security warning and emergency checklist in one long singsong breath. Fede didn't understand any of it. Soon after they were taking off, had taken off. The lights dimmed. He'd never flown internationally before, he realized. He decided he didn't like it.
The next eight hours were interminable. Poulpe had politely requested a blanket and pillow as soon as they were in the air, tilting his chair back and relaxing into a gentle sleep. Fede was sure he had managed to take some kind of drug because he stayed that way the entire flight, seemingly refreshed when he woke. Fede and Cessus played the ancient video games on the consoles mounted on the seat in front of him, all seventeen of them. They couldn't plug into them "for security reasons" so they had to use the cheap square plastic controllers that extended on retractable wires from the seat handles, thumbs cramping from the constant, repetitive button mashing. The hours passed, slowly. Cessus tried to sleep and so did Fed, a restless, sweaty, chilled imitation of sleep where his head kept snapping forward off the seatback, jerking him awake again and again. They were served, and ate, some kind of soy-based meat analog in a tomato sauce. Eventually he slipped into a semi-awake zombie state, the stale air crusting the exhaled breath of a hundred other people in sharp spikes on the inside of his nostrils.
They arrived. As they stood to exit Fede realized he was as tall or taller than most of the people on the plane. Why hadn't he noticed it in Mexico City? And so many people were Asian…
Fede crammed a palm of one hand into his eyes and rubbed them until lights shown. He was sleepy, wasn't thinking right. He was in China. Poulpe ushered him off the plane and they followed Cessus a short distance behind. The terminal was a massive crush of people. Fede found himself getting claustrophobic. There were so many bodies, so many people pushing against him, jostling his ribs, brushing his thighs. And everyone looked the same, a huge sea of people spilling everywhere.
They emerged outside, joined a long line waiting in the rain for taxis. The shadows of the city sprawled overhead, lights upon lights upon lights. A sea of lights glimmered out of a seamless bank of buildings, a solid wall ahead of them. Cessus got a cab, made a show of inviting them to join him. Poulpe generously accepted. Nobody watching looked twice. Fede felt lost in Beijing, like the city was swallowing him whole, like a drop of rain hitting the ocean.
The cab drove. Fede fell asleep. Cessus woke him up when they got to the hotel, a huge posh building with a separate entrance for the cab. When the door opened the smell hit him like a hot wet blanket, the air soiled with the scent of petrochemicals, food, people, old wet dust… And so many people, still more people than at the airport, running at a trot everywhere. And neon glimmering everywhere. Real old fashioned neon. Fede smiled, impulsively. The stuff was rare in the U.S. now that electroluminescents were available, but here you saw it everywhere. "I'm in China" Fede suddenly realized, and he smiled, took a hesitant breath. Disgusting. But new.
He followed Poulpe into the hotel. Sitting in the lobby like a pair of rich tourists were Tonx and Cass, dressed in eveningwear and swirling fancy looking drinks in thick glasses. Cass almost spilled hers as they entered the main doors, started laughing so hard Fede thought she must be pissing herself.
"Looking good there, Fed" said Tonx.
"Yeah fuck all y'all" said Fed, putting his hand on his head before remembering the wax. He was just about to wipe his palm on his pants when Poulpe caught his wrist, raised on eyebrow in stern disappointment. He produced a handkerchief from his breast pocket with a flourish and dropped it into Fed's palm.
"Jesus Christ" muttered Fed.
"I think we done good here, folks" said Cessus. "I'm sticking out like a sore thumb, so I'm going to grab a drink in the bar and see what I can do with the hotel's network. Ya'll enjoy your drinks and let me know when Marcus gets here, yeah?"
"Good thinking" said Tonx. "Poulpe, Fede - care for a seat?"
They sat, Poulpe ordering a warm sake from the young woman who appeared at his elbow as soon as his ass hit the plush chair. She seemed delighted at the request, bowing obsessively as she backed away towards the bar.
"Warm?" asked Fed.
"That is the proper way to drink this brand" said Poulpe. "And from a wooden box. From this you may determine the caliber of the establishment and their perception of you."
"Thanks for the advice" Fede sighed. "Look, are we going to get a room? I'm exhausted."
"In this place?" asked Tonx. "Not a chance. I got some backing money, but it's not enough for us to sleep here. I've already booked a place a little ways away. Once Marcus arrives we can sync up and take off. Until then, get some coffee."
"I don't drink coffee" mumbled Fed. When the woman returned with Poulpe's sake he ordered a coke. As she left he looked over, noticed the sake had come in an open plastic box.
"Guess they don't like you" said Fed. Poulpe smiled serenely and sipped his drink.
"So here's what I got so far" said Tonx. "This guy that Cessus fingered is either playing his boss or us or both. If he's dicking his boss around there's a good chance he's stupid enough to leave the data in the box Cessus found. If he's trying to lure us into going for it so he can find out more there's a chance we can negotiate, maybe split the profits or find some way around him. I think the least likely option is that he's doing it by the books for his bosses to get a hold of us. If that were the case he wouldn't have posted the dummy data like he did. He also wouldn't have bothered to encrypt the message for us to find."
"Unless he was being clever" said Poulpe.
"What do you mean?" asked Tonx.
"Perhaps he is trying to get you to think he was playing against his employer" said Poulpe. He put his sake box down. "You said you had contacts here?"
Tonx shook his head. "No. That was just to get Esco to play along."
"And Esco is… " asked Poulpe.
"Not here, to state the obvious. What are you getting at, Poulpe?" asked Tonx.
"My point is not to question your reasoning. I only mean to emphasize that we cannot be certain what our opponent will do. From your introduction I would guess you were about to suggest approaching the box directly."
Tonx frowned. "What if I was?" he asked.
"I urge caution. Contingencies" said Poulpe.
"Great thinking" said Tonx, leaning forward. He dropped his glass on the counter next to him. "And what the fuck would you suggest?"
Poulpe picked up his sake again, took a slow sip.
"I have the original data set, yes?" he asked.
They waited.
"And for us it is trivial to manufacture minor workable changes in the code, yes?"
Tonx nodded, once.
"So I would suggest you begin a bargaining process. Encourage them to believe you have a similar solution already. They would not want just one if they could have two, you know. Not if they thought you had perhaps done this before, created something else."
"What would they care?" asked Tonx. "They don't even know what the first data set is for."
"So tell them" said Poulpe.
"What?" asked Tonx "What for? What could I tell them the second, make-believe set was for that would make them hand our results over?"
Poulpe tipped back the last of his sake, gently set the box on the small thin plate it had come on.
"Biological weapons" he said.
"You're crazy" said Tonx. "What do I have to gain by that? The government's already on our ass, we've got Disney hunting for us - why would introducing a major threat to their country help?"
"I'm merely suggesting it may give them pause" said Poulpe. "They would certainly not want to destroy the data set they have if they could parley it for something of established value."
"You're crazy" said Tonx, again. "I'm not going to argue with you about this. All that does is up the stakes and make this more dangerous for everybody."
"It is only a contingency" said Poulpe.
"Fine. I'll remember that if I have a gun to my head. In the meanwhile, how about we figure out how to get into that box, and better yet what to do with it when we get there."
"We don't even know what else is on the box" said Fed. "If the guy has half a brain he's not going to keep the rest of the data set there."
"True. I'm not saying we make the grab first thing. We've got to watch the guy for a while first, figure out who he is, what we can do with him. The only catch is we don't know how much time we have."
"Lovely" said Fed, draining the last from his miniature bottle of coke. It was in a glass bottle, he noticed. He marveled at how heavy it was, even empty. Who made bottles out of glass?
"Where the fuck is Marcus?" he asked.
Tonx said nothing.
Three hours later Marcus still hadn't arrived, and they were running out of new drinks they could order. Eventually Tonx simply stood and walked out, and the rest of them followed. They waited until Cessus appeared a small distance away, seemingly oblivious to them, and started walking.
"Where are we going?" asked Fed. He was exhausted now, stumbling along in a semi-delirious state. The caffeine had failed him, making him jittery and itchy but no longer waking him up at all. All he could think about was getting to a real bed.
"To our hotel" said Tonx. "None of us can think well right now. We'll wait there until we hear from Marcus. He should be able to find us somehow."
"More likely we'll find him" said Cass. Tonx said nothing.
The hotel was a thin cement building squeezed between two tall office buildings, its stained grey front unpainted. The sign overhead had one Chinese character in lit neon. The dim dirty light of dawn began to seep through the forest of stone and metal around them. Fede waited outside with Poulpe while Tonx went in to secure things. A few minutes later Fede got a notice on his comm and they went in, repeated Tonx's name and access number three times to the faceless metal grille where the front desk would have been. He got no response other than a click as the plain whitewashed fire door to his left opened. They went through, walking on threadbare orange-and-brown carpeting. It smelled of mold, of starch and rice. There was no one in the hallway.
They arrived at room 712, and Fede wondered absently if there were really 711 other rooms. He doubted there were more than a few dozen, but when Tonx opened the door and he peered inside he revised his estimate. The entire hotel room was the size of his bathroom at home, three tiny beds so close together Tonx doubted he could get his knees between them. The one window on the far side of the room was framed in electroluminescent panels, white light bright across the glass, the brick wall directly behind washed out in the glare.
"There's a cot under the bed on the right there. I'll take the floor. Cass gets a bed. You all can draw straws on who gets the rest when Marcus shows up" said Tonx. Fede fell back onto one of the beds, almost went straight into sleep before he remembered Cessus and comm'd him a quick message on how to get in. Then sleep hit him, heavy, angry, and hot.
He woke later, didn't know when. He was pushed up against the wall, Cessus's bony hip digging into his side. He shuffled around, getting a dreadlock in the eye for his troubles. The room looked the same as when they'd come in, Poulpe on the middle bed, Cass and Tonx wrapped around each other on the far bed. Marcus wasn't there. The cot was out, empty, filling the last of the space between the wall and the beds. Fede had to tip in on its side so he could get by to search for a bathroom. There wasn't one.
He let himself out, wandered down the hall in search of a place to pee. It was full of identical wooden doors, all numbered. He came back down the hall and peered out into the lobby before spotting a numberless door across from their own. He paused in front of it. Would they have electrified doorknobs here? Should he knock?
The door opened with a soft creak, revealing a miniscule sink and a hole in the tiled floor. A bulb hung overhead, gleaming dimly. It wasn't LED or anything, just plain old electric filament. A hazard, Fede thought. He aimed a thin stream of piss down the hole, washed his hands in the chill reddish water from the tap, and left.
When he got back into the room Cessus was on his back, arms splayed off both sides of the bed, one leg hanging over its edge. Poulpe had his hands folded over her chest, fully dressed, his face untroubled. Tonx raised his head when Fede came in, eyes bleary.
"There a bathroom out there?" he asked quietly.
"right across the hall" Fede said. "The one without numbers."
He lay down on the cot, the metal frame biting into his shoulders. By the time Tonx came back he knew he wasn't going to sleep anymore.
"Any word from Marcus?" asked Fed. He spoke softly, the room somehow made sacred by the quiet breaths of his friends.
Tonx shook his head, tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.
"No" he said. "I don't know why."
He signed, tried to pace in the space between Fed's cot and the door and succeeded only in turning around twice.
"You get any signal in here?" he asked.
"A little. Regular comm channels. Don't know how the data throughput will be, though" said Fed. "This place seems a little third-world, know what I mean?"
Tonx smiled. "Never thought I'd be in China" he said, quietly. "Thanks for coming with."
Fede looked at the window, at the brick wall beyond.
"What do we do next?"
"I figure you and Cessus go get some gear. The rest of us will scout out our man and his box."
"Then what?"
"That depends on what we find out. I don't know, Fed. We got to get our data, somehow. But I don't know how, don't even know where it is." He sighed, slid to sit on the floor next to Fed's cot.
"Sorry I got you into this."
"Fuck off" said Fede amicably. "Better than dead-ending it at some sucker school, you know? I ought to be thanking you."
Tonx grunted a quiet laugh. "Yeah, guess you're right. What would mom say if she knew her darling boys were slumming it in China, eh?"
"She'd drink" said Fed. He'd meant it as a joke, but neither of them laughed.
"We'll get the data" he said, more to himself than Tonx.