"There's a spy in the sky, there's a noise on the wire, there's a tap on the line; for every paranoid's desire: there's always someone lookin' at you." ~The Boomtown Rats, "Someone's Looking At You"
Unlike other Better Living Industries employees, Airi remembered vividly what her life had been like before her indoctrination. She remembered the times she'd coordinated raids on the patrol units she now directed, when she had Zonehopped freely without a care or worry in the world, excepting the toxic fumes in the air that, in spite of her company's treatments and special oxygen tubes to prevent "Zone Sickness," scared the life out of her. But most of all, she remembered that her name had been NewsAGoGo and that she had once had friends.
She didn't resent BLI for kidnapping her; she knew that they had to get more Exterminators somehow, after all, and they had been nice enough to get her a good job and even a specially engraved katana that was completely shi- wonderful. She didn't mind that they had faked her death, though she knew all the worry it had caused the remaining Killjoys.
But when they captured one of the Killjoys she'd once known, brainwashed him (the only word for his total lack of usual feisty, in-your-face attitude), and made him work in the same office as her, no matter how many times they said that the aftermath was secondary, she thought that was going a bit far.
And after the raid by none other than the Fabulous Killjoys her office was trying so hard to track down, when Korse had berated her for "letting them get away" even though it was his own damn fault for not having Exterminators that could actually hit the broad side of a warehouse, her friend was dead.
He was reported a "casualty of war and a victim of terrorist violence," though Airi had seen the look of shock and horror on the Killjoy leader's face when he unmasked the Drac and found someone he knew, but by then it was too late: Party had already pulled the trigger, and the man had instantaneously died of internal combustion. They had buried him a few days later in the desert, but without a funeral service because religious beliefs were not allowed- "strongly discouraged," they'd said, but Airi knew what they meant.
Secretly, she had visited the place and, technically violating about seven different rules of her contract, said a traditional Japanese prayer for him. And she had returned to work with eyes as dry as always, and set herself the task of figuring out Andrea.
She had known from the start that Andrea was not like the other Exterminators: the woman moved, talked, and acted faster and more deliberately than they did in their clouded stupors of dependence. They needed BLI to tell them what to say, think, feel, and do, but not Andrea. It was obvious that she wasn't taking any of her medications, but the question was, why?
Airi found the answer one day while driving out to an outpost in Zone 4 to make a routine security check. She was flipping absently through the radio channels when she heard a familiar voice. She froze in shock, listening intently to the radio. It was undoubtedly Andrea; Airi had heard her voice far too often, as she was the most talkative one in the office, to not recognize it.
"I gotta burn rubber for now, motorbabes, but I'll be bringin' you some more sounds to live by soon enough. DJ Hot Chimp, signing off."
The rest of the mission went by in a blur. Airi was just going through the motions, her mind on her discovery. She'd known that Andrea ran a mock radio station for a while, but nothing more than that. This was huge. It changed everything Airi had thought about her co-worker.
The next week, she'd recorded a series of vocal bits in her native language, the sort of things she would've said had she still been running a radio station of her own. She'd translated it, too, and given both to Andrea as casually as possible. Airi knew that this was also against the rules of her contract, but she figured that no one would get it if it was in another language, and besides, she knew that Andrea- please, please let her really be Hot Chimp- would keep it safe. Anyway, she could always pass it off as a trap.
And now, here was proof of all that Airi had hoped for, sitting in front of her and fidgeting with her ring under the table. She'd thought that DJ Hot Chimp would have an answer for any question, a way out of the seemingly unwinnable situation Airi had trapped her in, but evidently not. So Airi pulled up a browser window on her computer, and with a few keystrokes, turned off the security feed for the room.
"I'll make this quick," she said, and the barely contained excitement in her voice made Andrea look up in confusion and worry. "I can only disable the cameras for a little while."
She smiled, honestly this time, and continued, "Hot Chimp, you are in dire straits, aren't you?" The woman gave a tiny smirk at the sound of her third alias; Airi took it as a confirmation. "If I were you, I think it'd be best to take my new motorbike"- she pulled the keys from her pocket and set them on the table between them- "and go make sure my husband's okay."
Hot Chimp looked stunned by this sudden turn of events, but replied sensibly, "Right, so you can ambush me? You already know I'm a Killjoy, and I'm sure you know the location of my hideout. Why should I trust you?"
She had a very good point, and Airi decided to risk it. "You were friends with James Euringer once."
Hot Chimp frowned at the change of subject, but answered, "Yes, I was in a band with Jimmy before all of this." She glanced around, indicating the office, the whole building, the state of the world. "We were on the run together for a while, too, but then he was killed," she explained as her face fell. "Why do you ask?" Hot Chimp's irritation had returned in full force.
"I was just remembering," Airi said. "I was thinking about how, on his death certificate- " she bypassed the momentary sting she still felt "- they spelled his Killjoy name with a y, not an i. Cherri Cola would've killed them for it." She waited for her words to take effect.
A moment passed in utter silence, and then Hot Chimp gasped, "News? Is it really- but, it can't be- I-wha-you're alive!"
Airi nodded at her old friend, and, feeling sad that they didn't have time for a proper reunion, said, "Time's running out, Hot Chimp. You have to go save Party, you know."
"Right, right," she said, and pocketed the keys on the table, full of a new energy. "But wait, we still have the rest of that interview thing. If I recall correctly, you had checkmated me."
"Keep in mind that Korse and the others would put nothing past the Killjoys."
She switched the camera feed back on (she'd blame the blackout on faulty wiring later; it had happened often enough for real) and said, "Sorry, we lost the security feed for a second there. Could you repeat that?"
Andrea responded with the most excellent lies Airi had heard today, blaming the "enemy terrorists" for the attack and her clingy ex-husband- "that creep," she shuddered with perfect timing- for the whole ordeal.
Hot Chimp waved on her way out, and, even though it went against everything BLI stood for, NewsAGoGo smiled and waved back.