The Churn Read Online Free Page A

four-pointed star. Erich couldn’t tell if the people getting out were men or women, only that they were wearing riot gear. Metallic fear flooded his mouth. Timmy put a strong hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently but implacably across the street. Two more vans came to a halt at the intersection to the north.
    â€œWhat the fuck?” Erich said, his voice distant and shrill in his own ears.
    Timmy got him across the street and almost up to the doors of a five-story squat before Erich pulled back. “My deck. My setup. We’ve got to go back for it.”
    A deep, inhuman voice broke the air, the syllables designed in a sound lab to be sharp, clear, and intimidating. This is a security alert. Remain where you are with your hands visible until security personnel clear you to leave. This is a security alert. At the intersection, teams of armored figures were already questioning three men. One of the civilians—a thin, angry man with close-cropped black hair and dark olive skin—shouted something, and the security team pushed him to his knees. The biometric scan—fingerprints, retina scan, fast-match DNA—took seconds while the man’s arms were held out at his sides, his elbows bent back in restraint holds.
    â€œI think maybe you used to have a deck,” Timmy said. “I don’t think you got one right now.”
    Erich stood unmoving, caught between the animal urge to flee and to protect himself by hiding the evidence. Timmy’s thick fingers closed around his good shoulder. The big kid’s expression was mildly concerned. “We don’t go right now, they’re gonna have you and it both. I sorta screwed up the last thing Burton told me to do. Let’s not burn my second chance getting you caught.”
    This is a security alert. Remain where you are with your hands visible until security personnel clear you to leave.
    Erich swallowed and nodded. It was the nearest he could come to speech. Timmy turned him toward the squat and pushed him forward.
    In the streets, the security teams converged slowly, moving from person to person, door to door, floor to floor. Before the operation was through, they would identify three hundred forty-three people and detain four who appeared in the operational database as persons of interest. Three unregistered individuals would be identified, entered into the system, and held pending investigation. The two of the unregistered who refused to provide a name would have names assigned to them. The operation, covering three city blocks, would locate an unlicensed medical clinic, three children in distressed circumstances, seven pounds of S-class psychoactives, eighty-two instances of illegal occupation, and the network interface deck and data collection setup offered up by a blue-haired detainee in exchange for a reduced penalty. The process would take ten hours, and so it was still hardly under way when Timmy and Erich emerged from the undocumented access tunnel that connected the squat with an abandoned seawater pumping station. They walked together, Erich with his good hand stuffed deep in his pocket, Timmy with the same amiable air that was his default. Erich was weeping silently. Above them, the transport ship was gone, the golden exhaust plume now only a streak of smoke against the sky.
    â€œI’m dead,” Erich said. “Burton’s going to fucking kill me. They got my deck. They got everything.”
    â€œWait a minute,” Timmy said. “ Everything everything? Burton’s stuff was on the—”
    â€œNo. I’m not stupid. I don’t store records of how I keep Burton clean. But I didn’t wash it down after the setup. I was going to do it after we were done. It’s going to have DNA on it. Shit, it may even have fingerprints. I don’t know.”
    â€œSo what if it does?” Timmy asked with a shrug. “You’re not in the system.”
    â€œNot now,” Erich said.