through it. The sight of her own grubby fingers on it made her wince. She grabbed one of everything and waited for Séverine to finish pouring. Then she waited as the other woman took her time putting together her plate, unrolling her napkin, and choosing her cutlery. She weighed her spoon in her hand thoughtfully, as though evaluating a weapon.
âI have work for you today, Hwa.â Her spoon slid into the custard and along the edge of the ramekin to bring up a steaming lump of yellow flecked with pink. âRusty and Nail are going to the handoff, and I want you to escort them.â
Hwa swallowed her yogurt. She had never been to the new platform. After the Old Rig exploded, the town had voted to build another. But it hadnât come cheap. It was part of why all the other companies were pulling out, and how Lynch could buy the town so cheap. What remained of the old platform waved halfheartedly from beneath the water like a veteran waggling an accusatory stump at passersby. Whenever her train swerved over it, she made sure not to look. If the dead caught you looking, they might start looking back.
âI understand if itâs difficult for you.â
âItâs not difficult.â Hwa plunged her spoon into the savoury custard with a bit too much force.
âAnd for this job, it will be necessary for you to escort the boys at a distance. Be as unobtrusive as possible.â
Hwa frowned. âWait a second.â She hunched over her knees, slouching be damned. âYou want me to spy ââ
âOh, hush. Iâm not asking you to do anything untoward. Just follow them and make sure theyâre safe, as with any other job.â Séverine watched Hwa over the rim of her teacup. âThis town is changing, Hwa. My boys want to see that change happen. But Iâve already watched my share of train wrecks.â
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The new platform afforded good views of the other towers and their windmills. There was her tower, Tower One, the oldest and most decrepit with grimy capsule windows jutting out at pixel intervals, and Tower Two, all glass bubbles and greenery piled like a stack of river rocks, and Tower Three, made of biocrete and healing polymers, Tower Four, gleaming black with solar paint, and Tower Five, so far out on the ocean that it was easy to forget it was even there. It had been designed by algorithm, and its louvers shifted constantly, like a bird fluffing its feathers up against the cold. Occasionally this meant getting a sudden blinding flash of glare when the train zipped past it, or when a water taxi approached its base. Hwaâs old Municipal History teacher said the designers referred to the towers by their respective inspirations: Metabolist, Viridian, Synth, Bentham, and Emergent. There was an extra credit test question on it, once. Mr. Ballard wrote her a nice note with a smiley face in the margin when she got it right. Now she couldnât seem to get rid of that little factoid.
She watched Rusty and Nail milling through the crowd. Rusty kept shading his eyes. Nail stood stoically, eyes narrowed to the sun, seemingly unperturbed. Heâd remembered to turn his eyes on, apparently.
From the sky, she heard the guttural churn of a chopper homing in on the platform. It bore the Lynch logo. As one, the crowd surged closer to the stage. Rusty and Nail must have moved with them, because she saw no sign of them at the edges of the crowd.
Then the explosions started.
They began as a high whistle. Then a bang. Firecrackers, maybe. Acid green smoke rose above the crowd. Some people fell to the ground. Others ran. Someone ran past Hwa and knocked her down. She rolled over into a crouch and called out: âRusty!â
Maybe Rusty and Nail had fallen down, too. She couldnât see through the rush of legs and green smoke. The smoke itself was thickening, spreading, moving as if by design. A group of people stood under the centre of the cloud,
Anais Bordier, Samantha Futerman