Page 26 of Hot Ghost Summer

“So, I just… go home?”

“Straight home.”

“With this box.”

“Yes.”

“And I wait?”

“You wait.”

“Can I… go t’ his funeral?”

“Whose funeral?”

“You know…?” I’m thrust forward again, and surmise that Theo means to attend my funeral.

My funeral.

Oma will want my body back home—it’s tradition. We have rites and rituals for the deceased. Except there isn’t a body…

Does this mean Gerald has no intention of notifying them? The way he’s palming off my possessions on Theo, telling him to stay home and stay quiet suggests… not.

He isn’t going to tell anyone. He’s going to cover it up.

Outrage, hot and fresh, pours through every wire and overheats my microchips. Too unstable to be contained, my components vibrate and my camera, still pressed up against the box, emits erratic flashes of polar-blue light.

“What was that?” Gerald’s urgent voice barely registers over the crackle of my loud static energy. “Don’t you hear it? Like a listening device…”

“Um, no, but Hollis’s phone has been—”

“I need to go! Not a word, Theo.” And the door slams shut.

Out of control, and uncaring of Gerald’s long-term paranoia, my torchlight grows brighter until it consumes me entirely.

For the second time in as many days, I am lost to it.

nine

Technomancer

Hollis

Abright green light flashes at one-second intervals in the centre of my awareness. A mechanical pulse that beats like a heart against the dark. Every flare acts as a heavy piston that drags my fractured neural network back online. Voltage like fire rushes through my wire veins, kicking dormant circuits back to violent life. Names and shapes bleed into focus through a digital lens as facts return with each measured blink.

Battery level: eighty-two percent.

But how? I was almost out of power at the ExorSquad office.

My user interface finally loads, and I notice the electrical charging symbol in the top-left corner. I’m plugged in. Someone plugged me in!

I activate my camera, but don’t recognise where I am. Diverting energy into the graphics processing unit enables a more enhanced render of my environment: Theo’s flat.

The table and chairs where he ate stolen Thai food last night are set across from me now. A heavy-looking fire door is situated just to the right, but the view to my left is obscured by something large and grey.

I centre my camera lens on it. Closer in proximity than anything else, it has a familiar bevelled edge and isn’t grey at all, but silver. A laptop, perhaps?

No, not a laptop—my laptop!