Next month, Tor Books are due to publish The Heist of Hollow London, the latest novel from Eddie Robson; a twisty dystopia that blends Severance with Ocean’s Eleven. The publisher has kindly provided CR with an excerpt to share with our readers.

First, though, here’s the synopsis:

In games of betrayal everyone loses.

Arlo and Drienne are ‘mades’—clones of company executives, deemed important enough to be saved should their health fail. Mades work around the clock to pay off the debt incurred by their creation, though most are Reaped—killed and harvested for organs when their corporate counterparts are in medical need.

But when the impossible happens and the too-big-to-fail company that owns them collapses, Arlo and Drienne find themselves purchased by a scientist who has a job for them.

The reward: Debt paid off, freedom from servitude, and enough cash to last a lifetime.

The job: Infiltrate a highly secure corporate reclamation facility in the heart of dead London and steal a data drive.

They’re going to need a team.

*

1.

PANIC! AT THE SPONSORAMA

Arlo knew it was a stupid idea to intrude on the sponsorama but Drienne could talk him into anything. The Elite League Finals was literally the only party in town this month, she pointed out, and they could check out what tactics their rivals were using and maybe grab some free shit. Arlo could have saved time by agreeing straightaway, but by resisting, at least he got to set terms: Drienne agreed they’d spend no more than two hours in the sponsorama, take care not to break any rules, and then leave and do some actual work for the rest of the night.

The sponsorama covered several blocks to the immediate east of the stadium, a former residential area that had been flattened and turned into a commercial district a decade ago with a view to hosting events like this. Like any sponsorama, it was a fluid space—dazzling, glamorous, intense, and almost none of what you saw was really there. The area’s existing buildings had been transformed by projections: logos, adverts, demos, and endorsements swelled from them like growths, mutations. Everything you saw was connected to the Elite League Finals and its commercial partners, and anything not connected to those things was hidden from view, right down to the clothing of anyone who entered. When Arlo and Drienne stepped across the border, their clothes appeared to change into the event’s official casualwear. Drienne seemed to be wearing a bright green-and-purple tennis dress with lace-effect trim, while Arlo had a sports jacket and shorts in the same colors and style. The hang and movement were impeccable—you had to move pretty quickly before it became apparent the clothes were just holograms. Drienne tried to outrun her clothes, dashing from one side of the pedestrianized boulevard to another, dodging people who unlike her were permitted to be there. Arlo told her to stop drawing attention to herself.

The traditional global sporting event vibe was present—a mix of inspiration, togetherness, understanding between nations, all that crap. Against his will Arlo felt the need to be his very best and achieve things he could be proud of, feelings he knew came from subliminal triggers embedded in the image washes that covered almost every available surface. He’d never learned the trick of resisting them, unlike Drienne. She often mocked him when she caught him saying something that obviously came from a trigger.

Despite this, Arlo had to admit it was fun to be in the sponsorama and feel like they were part of it all. The ELF had arrived in Shanghai two weeks ago, would run through most of June and the first week of July, and Sunglow was the official retail partner of the event: therefore Oakseed employees were obliged to act like it wasn’t happening, as if they hadn’t noticed one of the biggest events on the sporting calendar was going on right in front of them. It still entirely dictated Oakseed’s strategy in the city, of course—all their brand ambassadors were spending the duration of the event aggressively targeting the border of the sponsorama, where they were still permitted to operate—but no one discussed the event itself, or even mentioned its name.

Arlo and Drienne took different paths through the sponsorama, agreeing to meet up when they were done. After twenty minutes, Arlo had managed to bag a free sample of a limited edition flavor of Dapper, Sunglow’s leading soft drink brand, a free trial subscription to their Moodboard app (which Arlo would not be able to run on any devices he owned), and a tub of vitamin supplements. He was on the lookout for some food when Drienne ran past him, grabbed his arm, and dragged him toward the exit.

Arlo would later learn Drienne had bombed three major lucer feeds, causing multiple brand violations including changing every Dapper logo to that of M:Pyre, Oakseed’s equivalent product. The Officials policing the sponsorama had noticed and were chasing her out of there. There was no reason for the Officials to suspect Arlo, and Drienne could have just left him out of it—but he would never abandon Drienne in a situation like this, even when she’d brought it on herself. You didn’t leave your partner in the lurch if things got sticky. It wasn’t part of the code of conduct or anything—your loyalty was to Oakseed, not your colleagues—but all ambassadors understood it simply wasn’t done.

As Arlo and Drienne crossed the border of the sponsorama, their clothes reverted to their actual appearance. A lot of people were still milling about in the wake of tonight’s match, drinking in the local bars, so Arlo and Drienne split up and tried to disappear into the crowd, figuring two people running together were easier to spot than one. As soon as Arlo felt confident he was out of sight, he ducked into an alleyway to catch his breath and listened out for the Officials. He wasn’t sure how committed they were to clamping down on this stuff. Technically, it was illegal for two Oakseed-held mades to enter the sponsorama, but prosecuting them probably wasn’t worth it: they were only street-level brand ambassadors. The Officials could easily block Drienne’s imagery from the feeds she’d bombed, scrub her out of existence, like she was never in the sponsorama at all. Surely they had better things to do? But no, this was wishful thinking: Officials were the worst kind of securit, who defended brand integrity with quasi-religious zealotry, and the ones who got assigned to an event like this would be the worst of the worst.

Arlo felt a gentle but unignorable pressure on the back of his left hand. He straightened the fingers on that hand and his flexible backhand display instantly stiffened into a flatscreen, which displayed a map showing Drienne’s location. She’d sent him a distress ping. He reckoned he could get there in a few moments if he ran, so he ran.

A lone Official was beating up Drienne in the middle of the street, taking it at a leisurely pace, barking an incoherent lecture on brand compliance between blows. This attracted plenty of stares from the tourists passing on either side, the ones who couldn’t (or didn’t want to) pay the jacked-up prices inside the sponsorama: in other words, exactly the people Arlo and Drienne were meant to be targeting tonight. Well, Drienne had succeeded in getting their attention, and she was wearing the new second-wave summer line, at least. Some of the crowd were grabbing images and loops of the incident. The Official who’d caught up with Drienne was the tallest and most muscular of the four who’d pursued them, and Arlo wondered what had happened to the other three: maybe this one wanted Drienne to herself, but it was also possible the others were on their way here, eager to join in.

Arlo quickly removed his shirt and tied it around his waist. Lots of those stupid tall disposable hats they gave out at the games had been disposed of by fans leaving the stadium, so Arlo picked up one that was lying on the ground and put it on. Hoping this made him look like a normal fan, and sufficiently different from the guy who’d just been chased out of the sponsorama, he approached the Official. His legs shook and he hoped she wouldn’t think to cross-reference him with any security footage she’d accessed. If she recognized him he’d just have to try to talk her down. His main skill was being charming, so it might work.

“Excuse me?” he said to the Official.

She stopped kicking Drienne and turned to Arlo, irritated. “What?”

Arlo pointed in the general direction of the sponsorama. “I saw some kids back there hacking a Gazbank billboard to make it show clown porn.” He was pretty sure Gazbank was still the official financial partner of the ELF. “Maybe you could do something about it? It’s disgusting.”

The Official fell for it. She lost interest in Drienne and dashed back toward the sponsorama. Arlo looked down at his feet where Drienne was painfully trying to get up.

“Are you okay?” Arlo said, extending a hand toward Drienne.

Drienne batted the hand away dismissively. “I’m fine. She’d only just started kicking me when you got here. She started off by pushing me around, then tripped me up when I tried to run away.” She looked up at him properly. “Ha! Why are you wearing that hat?”

Arlo removed the hat and tossed it away. It had crossed his mind that Drienne’s erratic behavior might be a sign she was having one of her episodes, but as he talked to her now, she seemed herself. “You don’t need to go to hospital?”

“Fuck no,” Drienne said, clambering to her feet and flexing her limbs to check the extent of her injuries. “I could go for some noodles, though.”

They couldn’t really afford to go for noodles. Part of Drienne’s pitch for invading the sponsorama had been to score free food and save themselves some money. They were so far off target this month, and Oakseed didn’t cut them any slack just because the circus was in town. They really ought to be eating basic rations at home, in anticipation of earning absolutely nothing in terms of commission. But Drienne needed a pretext to sit down and recover, and Arlo was hungry, so fuck it. They’d just have to be really, really poor next month. Oakseed wouldn’t let them starve to death, even if it liked to keep them hungry.

“That was a really, really stupid thing to do,” said Arlo while they waited for their food, sipping on drinks: he had a highball, she had a pale ale. This was one of the little contrasts they’d established while working together, feeling it made them distinctive. The thing people always remembered about them in customer feedback was she had a Massachusetts accent while his was from England’s Home Counties. And while they were both tall and good-looking, Drienne was pale-skinned and sharp-featured while he was darker (his donor had South Asian heritage) and had an almost delicate look. He naturally came across as genial and harmless, she had something rebellious about her: when she smiled she always looked conspiratorial.

Drienne shrugged. “Maybe I felt like being stupid.” There was still street dust in her wavy orange hair, and blood seeped from a cut above her right eye. The key item from the summer range she was wearing—a fake-distressed workshirt featuring the logos of defunct hailer apps—was genuinely distressed now.

“You could have told me you were going to do something stupid before you did it.”

She smiled. “Where’s the fun in that, man?”

“They’ll report us. They have no sense of humor about this kind of thing.”

Drienne shook her head. “So what if they do? Everyone does it. They do it to us, we do it to them. It’s not in anyone’s interest to start a bunch of legal shit over something this small.”

“I don’t share your confidence, dear.”

“You won’t get in trouble,” said Drienne as their food arrived. “You didn’t do anything.”

“Pardon me for being concerned for my friend. You still haven’t said thank you.”

“For saving me from the Official?”

“Yes.”

“I did say thank you. Didn’t I?”

“No.”

“Okay, thank you.” She laughed. “Can you believe how easily she fell for it? Moron.”

“Right, so it wasn’t my brilliant ruse that got you out of it, it was the fact she was stupid. I notice you failed to outwit her.”

“Yeah, well I’m stupid too, as you already pointed out.”

“That’s not what I said. I said you did a stupid thing.”

“People like you and I don’t need to be clever, Arlo.”

“You and me.”

“What?”

“People like you and me. You wouldn’t say ‘People like I don’t need to be clever,’ so you wouldn’t say ‘People like you and I—’”

“Whatever—what I’m saying is our lives would be much easier if we were stupid, like that Official. Her life is simple. There are rules, and if someone breaks the rules, she beats the shit out of them.”

For a few moments they ate in silence. Arlo understood Drienne’s actions now: being clever didn’t do her any good, so she asserted herself by being stupid. He understood, but that didn’t mean he considered it a good idea.

Drienne got a note, which she read from her backhand with a puzzled expression. Then she got her slate out and opened a window on that. Then she cackled loudly. “Well, noodles are on me.” She mirrored her display to Arlo’s backhand so he could see it too: multiple feeds showing Drienne being beaten up by the Official, all the grabs made by passing tourists. The Oakseed sweepers had already tagged it, highlighted the clothing, and linked it to the storefront. Some of the loops had really nice arty filters, and Drienne looked very beautiful as she took her beating, so it all looked quite constructed, and most people probably assumed it was, if they even cared about the difference between artifice and reality. It hadn’t viraled or anything but it was getting around, and meant Drienne would certainly hit her target this week, and management wouldn’t take any action against her for her earlier violation, because almost anything was permitted if it made enough sales.

“That wasn’t your plan all along, surely,” said Arlo.

Drienne just raised one of those dark eyebrows at him and ostentatiously paid the bill.

In a spirit of exuberance at Drienne’s accidental success, they hit the clubs, where her success multiplied: people who’d seen the loops in the local feeds recognized her and wanted to talk to her. She made further direct sales off of that, and Arlo even managed to make some just from being in her orbit (some of the loops had included his heroic intervention, but most people hadn’t watched that far before either buying the clothes she was wearing or swiping to something else). They split up for a while, working different floors of a club with a coral-reef theme. Arlo latched onto some dissent among people who were furious about how the ELF had taken over this part of the city, preventing them from going to their usual haunts, and he encouraged them to direct this ire at Sunglow. They were an easy target: a few decades ago they’d been the hipster brand, the cutting-edge nonconformist brand, but today’s young people, who’d grown up with them as a dominant presence, saw them as no different from the others, and today’s young people were right about that.

For Arlo and his colleagues, Sunglow was synonymous with the accelerated growth experiments in their cloning process, which they’d hoped to patent and sell to the other mega corps, making huge profits. But it had badly backfired, producing a whole generation of mades with genetic flaws that lurked inside them like time bombs, causing them to suddenly, horrifyingly deteriorate. Arlo had only been four years old, still being raised in an Oakseed nursery in England, when his carers told all the kids the unvarnished truth about what was happening to kids in Sunglow’s nurseries, the point being to underline how lucky Oakseed’s mades were to have been produced by a company that raised them properly rather than trying to cut corners. One particular detail—about the Sunglow mades bleeding everywhere as their skin lost cohesion—stuck in Arlo’s mind, and he had nightmares about it for years. (He still wasn’t sure if that was true or if the stories had been embellished, but the fact of the experiments was not in dispute, nor that they had failed.)

It was part of Arlo’s job to trash Oakseed’s rivals, but when it came to Sunglow, he actively enjoyed it, and he had some success in spreading the idea that buying from Oakseed in preference to Sunglow was a protest against the ELF itself. Footage of him saying this made its way to a couple of mid-profile feeds: a lot of people mocked his claim but it was all reach, it was all good. At this rate, he and Drienne might even be able to take a day off this week.

Arlo met back up with Drienne around 3:30 a.m, finding her in a corner alcove shaped like the open mouth of a whale. She was drinking directly from a bottle of fortified champagne.

“Steady on,” he said, “don’t spend it all straightaway.”

“Oh god,” she said as she poured him a glass, “I didn’t pay for this.”

“Who did?”

“Refugee from the sponsorama, been getting bullied by his boss all week. Just wanted someone to listen to his grievances and revenge fantasies and so on and so forth.”

“And he didn’t stick around to drink the champagne with you?”

“He stuck around to drink the first bottle but he was already blotto when he got here. When the second bottle arrived, I suggested to his friends they might like to take him home before he did something he’d regret.”

“Did he buy anything except the champagne?” Arlo asked, sipping it. It tasted sharp and sour and he didn’t really like it, but it seemed to fit the occasion.

“He works at an elite sporting academy out in Guangzhou? I think he said? And they might be looking to move their uniform contract, so I took his card.” She produced the card, a brashly designed item with an animated image of its subject on both surfaces. “Do you want to pass it up the chain, or shall I?” They often shared tokens like this if either of them needed a boost—if the connection bore fruit there’d be a commission for whoever brought it in.

Arlo shook his head. “I’m good. You pass it on.”

“It’s probably bullshit anyway,” said Drienne, putting the card in her bag. “How’d you get on? Okay?”

Arlo told her about the rhetorical spin he’d played on the anti-ELF guys, which he knew she’d enjoy. These were always the best times, the closest he ever got to relaxing. Their apartment was full of prompts to go out and work, and when he did go out he often felt sick and miserable and angry he couldn’t find more sales and promo opportunities. But if they hit their targets they could grab an hour or two, late on, and act like they were still working, but in their minds they’d clocked off. Often those hours went by all too fast, but sometimes, just sometimes, it felt gloriously languid and unhurried, and he could forget about targets and commissions and kid himself they were real people.

Just as Arlo had started tapping into this feeling, an urgent note rattled his backhand, telling him he had to leave immediately. It would continue to intrude into his senses in every possible way until he obeyed: there was no point trying to ignore it and do something else.

“What is it?” said Drienne. “Where are you meant to go?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“It’s not about our trip to the sponsorama, is it?”

“I don’t know, Dree, it doesn’t say.”

“What does it say?”

“I have to go outside, and there’ll be a car. That’s all. Have you got one?”

“A car?”

“No, a note.”

“No.”

“It can’t be about the sponsorama. They wouldn’t talk to me and not you.”

“Maybe they want you to dish the dirt on me, and then they’ll question me afterward.”

“I doubt it’s about that.” He finished his glass of champagne, noting how much was left in the bottle: he used this information to judge how drunk Drienne would be by the time she got back to the apartment. He’d probably find her cross-legged on the floor, singing along to her animatronic budgerigar again. He wished she’d install some new songs on that bloody thing. There was one called “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and she sang that every time she got drunk and it drove him insane.

“What could it be about, then? At this time of night?”

Arlo had no idea. Most people, he supposed, would assume it was a family emergency. But Arlo had no family.

In a sense, though, it was a family emergency.

Arlo walked out of the club and directly into the company car he’d been told would be waiting. He hadn’t expected it to be one of the good company cars, but that was exactly what he found: a spacious saloon with reclining seats and a minibar. At first he was delighted, then it struck him they would never send this car purely because they wanted him to enjoy the ride, and after that he couldn’t enjoy the ride because he was wondering why they had sent this car. Figuring he may as well take advantage of the facilities, he opened the minibar, which triggered an instruction to drink no alcohol.

“I’m already quite drunk,” he told the car. “Is that a problem?”

The car suggested he drink an M:Pyre energy shot to sober himself up.

“Where are we going, anyway?” he asked.

The car ignored him. This was also not reassuring. Arlo tapped his backhand and brought up a map, trying to guess. Their route was taking them up a flyover that went directly through the sponsorama, so the car couldn’t possibly be stopping anywhere round here. It drove fast down empty priority lanes, passed over streets thronging with sports fans, still up and enjoying the carnival atmosphere. It occurred to Arlo he didn’t even know who won the match tonight. No one in the sponsorama had been talking about it.

The car began to slow, turning and heading down a ramp, before stopping in a well-lit bay—an ambulance bay. He was at a hospital. There was nothing wrong with Arlo’s health; if there was, his slate would have picked it up and told him to get it treated. Which could mean only one thing: He was here to be reaped.

It was all over. He’d never go back to the apartment again, never see Drienne again, never hear her singing along to that budgerigar. Those noodles were the last meal he’d ever eat, that champagne was the last drink he’d ever have. The force of this realization hit him and he started to panic and cry.

Two orderlies waited by the door of the car when it opened, poised to grab him. Arlo supposed some people tried to make a run for it when this happened. But what was the point?

*

Eddie Robson’s The Heist of Hollow London is due to be published by Tor Books in North America and in the UK, on October 30th.

Also on CR: Annotated Excerpt from Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

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