Spoil the Kill

Chapter 1: Horribly Orange

Move-Easy has never asked me to help kill someone before. He has experts for that kind of thing. I'm a criminal nerd – I'm good with chemicals, biology, forensics. Normally, it's my job to check if stolen merchandise is genuine, or lecture knucklehead thugs on how not to leave traces of themselves at a crime scene. Sometimes I even create fake evidence to leave at the aforementioned crime scenes to help put Move-Easy's competitors in prison. But violence just isn't my bag.

I'm summoned to Easy's audience chamber, and find two other kids my age waiting for me. I know both of them. FX and Manikin; they're brother and sister. Like me, they have unusual skill sets for kids their age. FX is the younger one-younger than me – he's a hacker, a wizard with tech. Manikin is a chameleon, combining the skills of an actor, con-artist, and thief. I don't think I've ever seen what she really looks like – there's something different about her every time she shows up.

My boss, Move-Easy, could do with taking some tips from her.

You don't talk about Move-Easy's orange skin in his presence – not unless you fancy being scarred for life. Years of living underground, hiding from the law's surveillance, made him horribly pale, so he started using a sunbed. Now he's horribly orange – all the more disturbing with his gargoyle's face. The last guy to suggest he lay off the UV got beaten to a pulp with one of those scented Yankee Candles. It was the nearest thing to hand.

"Ah Scope, there you are my Little Brain," Easy greets me, puffing on a pungent cigar that sends clouds of smoke curling toward the ceiling. "Come on in, luv. Now, I've gathered this clever bunch of young vermin together to take advantage of a rare opportunity that has arisen, all of a sudden like."

He holds the cigar in his left hand. The right is fondling the gold medallion that sits in the forest of grey hair visible on his orange chest. He's wearing an expensive suit that he makes look cheap. There are three buttons open on the pale pink shirt to show off the gold. He waves me over to him, and I sit down beside him, where he likes me to be. My skin tightens at being so close to him. My fear of him never really goes away.

I'm what's known as a rat-runner, though I'm not as hard boiled as a lot of the others. Like Manikin and FX, I'm under sixteen, which means I'm not subject to the same insane levels of surveillance as adults in London. Most rat-runners are just couriers or petty thieves, underage foot soldiers – they're chosen for having quick wits and even faster feet, but are otherwise unexceptional. Some of us, however, are more specialized.

"I have a job that requires some ... delicacy," Move-Easy declares in his East London accent. He runs his hand through his slicked-back, dyed-black hair. "A task that demands your unique skills, and a certain degree of mobility. I want you to find someone, an' we 'aven't much to go on. An' this investigation, such as it is, shall start wiv you, FX."

FX is doing his best not to squirm nervously under Easy's gaze. He hates coming here. He's in his usual combats with a black t-shirt printed with a poster from some film called War Games. His curly dark hair is a bit too long to be gelled up the way he's done it, making his freckly cherub face look even younger. He seems naked without his ever-present console to hook him into the digital world. The doormen take that off him as a precaution whenever he comes into Easy's place.

He may not look like much, but FX once hacked into the Prime Minister's personal computer to win a bet. He left a virus that played a video clip of Barney the dinosaur singing the "Clean Up" song every time the PM tried to open his emails.

"You reckon you could track someone down through their MyFace page?" Easy asks FX.

"Yeah, I think so," the boy answers tightly. "MyFace has decent security, but hardly any of the users get the privacy settings right – and that's assuming they want to. Half of 'em think the world needs to know which hand they wipe their arse with. If I can get onto this person's page, there's bound to be something that'll give away where they live."