16.1

  The rain doesn’t let up by the time we make it to the middle of the Orion Scrubland, and something tells me it won’t for another long while yet. Earlier, Fingers parked the Fragment Roamer behind a large brush of juniper and yarrow – and for a time it almost looked pretty. She was a little on edge about doing that, saying that someone could just roll up and steal it, but I explained that the chances of someone wandering that far into ghost territory were, frankly, next to zero, and that seemed to ease her worries – at least for the time being.

  It’s nine o’clock in the morning when the trucks finally pass through. They stop in the middle of the junction, and I walk straight up to the one in front, disable the security system with the T.O.K key, and yank the hauler doors open. As expected, there are stacks of Lumina inside, all neatly compartmentalised along the edges. Hell, I can smell the monkey fur too.

  A memory I sure would love to forget.

  Vander steps in first, sweeping the hem of his black trench coat quite elegantly, and Dance immediately follows. I help Fingers up next, making sure she has a comfortable spot, and then there’s Riven, still walking off her injuries like a ghoul that refuses to roll over and call it quits. I’m still not sure I made the right call bringing her along on this trip, but if she’s alright with staring death in the face, then I suppose it is, as every Paxson local would tell you, her problem.

  I take my time helping her up, and when we’re all inside, I shake the rain off my jacket and shut the door. Ten minutes later the trucks start moving again, and I watch the path playing out across my neural display. It’s still a half hour from here, especially with the speed these things are going. Makes me nervous. Very nervous. But I’m used to that feeling.

  After a period of painfully awkward silence, Riven decides to get the conversation rolling:

  “So… where’s this thing supposed to stop? I doubt Capital security are gonna be pleased if they see a group of wanted criminals sneaking out the back of a truck.”

  “There’s an abandoned factory out east,” Dance says casually, glued to his brickie. His eyes spark up, bright as opals. He digs into the front pocket of his coat and flicks out a pair of sunnies, snapping them on. “I’ll say this much – she’s not wrong about us being wanted. Our mugs’ll be splashed everywhere if Wardy-Boo’s half as clever as people reckon.” Then, as if forgetting: “It’s a dookie.”

  “I’m not sure how much she knows exactly,” I say, pulling my knees into a hug as I sit against the interior wall. It’s cramped as hell. “But Vander and me? She knew that much.”

  “Safe to say she has most of this stuff figured out,” says Fingers, putting her arm around my shoulder. “And I’m by no means expecting this to be easy. Getting close to her is gonna take some time… and I dunno if we have a whole lot of that, know?”

  “We don’t,” I say. “The first thing we need to find once we’re in the Capital is a fixer. Riven says she knows a few in something called ‘the underground’. That right, Riven?”

  She nods, clicking her teeth. “People that refused to leave after Ward wanted only the rich and the powerful to take up the streets. It’s where you’ll find most of the poor, and most of the rebels.” She emphasised the last word with air-quotes.

  Rebels. It’s funny to think that the Capital has a little bit of Neo Arcadia in it: two sides of the same unequal coin, only the poor are quite literally beneath the rich’s boots. Thud-thud-thud, you piece-of-shit undersider!

  But that’s not our problem. Not anymore. For now we just have to hope we don’t get caught, manhunt or not.

  After thirty minutes or so, the trucks come to a complete stop, and I can hear the voices of the Capital’s gate security. One says to run the trucks through the scanner, and moments later a soft blue light passes through the crevices, not to detect the contents, but rather the tags of the trucks themselves.

  The whole process takes about sixty seconds.

  When it finishes and everything is dark once again, the gates to the Capital grind open, and the trucks resume their path as if completely routine. I even catch one man mention the attack on the substation, and that Sloan Harrow’s body had been found mangled in the central loading bay. No mention of a fugitive on the run. Maybe Ward is keeping this out of the spotlight in case it digs up the real past she doesn’t want anyone knowing: that she’s a fraud, and that she’d cheated her way to the top.

  I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

  The trucks rumble on, and I watch the path play out on my neural display. Eventually it crosses the city centre and turns east on Eagle’s Lane, heading towards the abandoned factory called Trident MacroWorks. Used to design shower heads and plumbing devices about fifteen years ago, which was around the time Ward had moved in. Safe to say she’d probably killed off that business too and left it here to rot just because she could, just because that was the sort of person she was.

  The memory angers me more than it should, though it’s not like I can help it. All I can do is push it aside – for now, and listen to the asphalt crunch beneath the trucks’ wheels.

  It comes to its final stop twenty minutes later – at least the last stop with us on it – at the very back of the old factory. It’s hot and stuffy in here so I waste no time disabling the security system once again and unlocking the back door. Out I go, feeling the cool air brush against my skin, the rain spitting harshly against my cheeks. It might not be freedom, but it’s a step in the right direction.

  The area itself is… well, it’s actually worse than I’d anticipated. The whole sky is covered in a coat of industrial smoke, so thick I can taste the embers flickering down, and the building doesn’t look so much abandoned as much as it does completely destroyed: burned, more specifically. The walls are only half there, once some distinct shade of red now muted down to an ashy grey. And the ground is all gravel with the occasional spread of glass and bone-white concrete. A single step makes me feel like I’m walking on corpses. When the others step out behind me, they’re quick to notice too.

  Everything is just so… awful.

  How did it get this bad?

  Riven tells me that the rebels underground were to blame, and it’s how they specifically earned the nickname. They burned places before Ward could make them into something evil, such as Lumina distribution rigs, and I suppose it makes sense: why hand her over property that doesn’t belong to her?

  Who in their right mind would do something like that?

  Finding the rebels would be no issue, so Riven says. Apparently there are several tunnels and old subway stations all across the Capital, and the only way into them is through people: shop owners, landlords, drug dealers – the whole kit and kaboodle. As long as you’re not a cop or undercover agent, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

  So, we head into the Capital, walking first through the rotten smog of this abandoned industrial sector, spotting more than a few homeless people on the way out – some gathered around barrel fires, others sitting beneath tarps made out of clothes – until we eventually make it to the cleaner side of the city, where we can somewhat blend in with the city folk.

  It’s not too different from Neo Arcadia in terms of structure. Where it stands out is more so the character: the megabuildings are tall, joining together wonderfully with supersized skywalks that boast adverts for salons, job opportunities, and a music hall located on the other side of town. No signs for penis pills, guns, or any of that clandestine crap you’d find scattered across N.A. And where there would normally be people dressed in punk leather, there are people dressed in neat, not-too-formal jackets and blazers. One woman flips up an umbrella at me, eyeing me quite strangely, as if to say I don’t belong here one bit, as if to say I look like a ‘walking corpse’ – the first words I’d heard when I climbed up from beneath the bridge in N.A. and decided, through sheer grit, that living was worth it after all.

  The streets are paved with metal sidewalks, and when we walk along them we’re nearly swept away by the hulk of bustling businessfolk. Riven tells us there used to be a fortune-teller that owned her own shop a little ways from here. She thinks she might still be around, because like me she apparently had quite the talent for escaping death, even by old age. She says it leads to a repurposed concourse-like market, one of the ‘underground’ areas.

  So, we let her lead the way, through the bustling city, through the signage, through the people who would rather wish you dead than spend a second treating you like a human being, until we reach a storefront called Divine Guidance. It isn’t as clean-looking as the rest of the district, but I guess it is technically better than what we’re used to. When we head inside, it’s quiet, and there’s no one behind the counter. Dance goes off checking some of the gewgaws along the shelves: statues of Our Lady, card decks, boards, perfumes, and, oddly, old burner phones, stacked in blister packs behind a rack of votive candles. You know, just in case someone had to make a quick call to God and ask Him why the hell the world was so fucked up.

  In which case He would probably say: I work in mysterious ways.

  Yeah, right.

  When Dance picks up one of the old burner phones, a voice suddenly comes from the other side of the counter. An old blonde-haired lady perks up, placing a metal container on the desk. She blows dust off of it and gives it a couple wipes. “You people are here on a journey,” she says. “I hope you’re not having too much trouble finding your way around town.”

  “Hear this sheila,” says Dance. “Nice shop you have. Get much business?”

  She sighs. “I’m afraid not. Not many people believe in divinity these days – at least compared to its popularity a half century ago. I’m sure you would know about that.”

  “Not that old, mate,” says Dance, placing the burner phone down on the shelf.

  “Oh, no,” says the woman. “I meant her.” She points at me with a shaky finger and a half-toothed grin. “You carry an ancient energy, as if you’re being guided by an unseen hand.”

  I furrow my brow. “Is that a good thing?”

  The woman’s smile widens, and she opens the metal box. Inside of it is a deck of cards. She begins shuffling them. “And what type of journey are you folk on?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Just tryna survive,” says Fingers.

  “Can ser dat again,” says Vander.

  “I’m just along for the ride,” says Dance. “I’ve always been a shotgunnery-doo. Sittin’ on the side, lettin’ the open air blast my face while the radio rocks me to the high heavens.”

  “Australian, I take it?” the woman says, still shuffling the deck.

  “Hope the accent didn’t give it away,” says Dance, taking his shades off and placing them in his front coat pocket. “Now, listen – we’re trying to—”

  “What’s your name, young lady?” she says, and for a moment I’m not sure who she’s asking, but I realise she’s looking directly at me.

  I point to myself. “Me? I’m…” And I think about giving a fake name, but there’s this energy about this lady that I can’t pass off. Something powerful. “... Rhea.”

  The woman finishes shuffling the cards and lays one out on the table. “The Six of Cups,” she says, pointing to the image of a woman handing a little white-haired girl a bouquet of flowers. A hum. “Interesting.”

  “White hair…” I say. “Do you… know how we can get into the underground?”

  The woman doesn’t respond, only continues smiling. She lays down another card, this one showing a dragon hanging from a tree. Her smile falters at this. Another hum. “Rhea,” she says. “Do you believe in God, Rhea?”

  I cock an eyebrow, wondering why she would ask me such a question. “I guess so. Hard to tell, though. But yes – I like to think so.”

  A final hum. The lady picks up the cards and shuffles them back into the deck. “A word of advice, Rhea: not all dragons are meant to be slain. You’ll do well to remember that.” She places the deck back into the metal container and shuts it tight.

  There’s some silence, and we all look at each other as if deciding whether this woman is insane or sees something we don’t.

  She eventually breaks the silence with two simple words: “Back there,” she says, pointing to a door in the back. “Level 0.”

  I thank her, lead the group towards the door, and before we pass through it, the lady adds something so bizarre I’m not sure I hear her correctly:

  “Where the broken things lie.”

  It rings in my head like a saying that surely means something, perhaps in some book of wisdom, but I brush it off and move forward, thinking this isn’t the time for spiritualism.

  The door leads to a hallway which in turn leads to an elevator. We catch it down to Level 0, and when it opens we meet the infamous underground we’d heard so much about. It’s certainly a dark place, lit only by the signage and the occasional murk passing through the concourse’s splintered walls. Stalls everywhere, promising weapons and bootleg tech, and the people that walk these understreets make me feel a little bit more at home: neon hair, eyes bright and glassy not with promise but with implants, and kuttes that remind me of those scavengers that tried to pick my body clean in the fall of 2100.

  We pass through this place unbothered, and Riven tells me that most of the fixers can be found at makeshift bars, a suggestion that doesn’t surprise me whatsoever. The nearest pub is a bit of a walk, but we get there in the span of ten minutes. It doesn’t have a name or sign or any of that fancy crap you’d find aboveground; it’s just a joint made of scrap material, bulked up to make it seem like something that could maintain hope even in desperate times.

  In we go, wasting no time thinking about things – it’s rather cold out here at any rate – and doing our best to avoid the patrons. Even if we’re more at home in a place as squalid as this, that doesn’t mean we won’t find trouble.

  It smells like smoke and tastes twice as bad, and if outside is too cold, this place is too hot: people are shoving on one another, playing pool, clinking drinks, and deciding if the bet was worth the broken teeth. It turns out that the sign for this place, which is no more than a piece of metal with poorly etched lettering, is inside: ‘The Inn.’ I like it. Pretty simplistic and tells you exactly what to expect. I also like that everything is mostly wood in here. It reminds me a fair deal of those cabins you’d find out in the wilderness, with fireplaces so robust they’d carry you along the throes of a violent though receding winter. And for what it’s worth, it’s cleaner than most of the outside, and it’s not difficult to understand why. There are a couple of maids mopping the floor of blood and alcohol, wearing cute little blouses like traditionalists, and one of them comes up to me, almost like a ghost, and asks me if I’m looking for a room.

  I answer her firmly, that yes we are, and make no mention of a fixer. She tells us we won’t be able to get our own rooms individually, because there are only two left, so we decide that it makes sense to divide them between the girls and the boys. Me, Fingers, and Riven get one room; Dance and Vander get the other. Luckily there are spare beds so they don’t have to worry about sharing the same. And when we show up to the rooms, they’re not too bad, if not rather small: a single holo-TV hanging down from the ceiling on a triangular display, two beds (Fingers and I can share one), and a carpet that smells strange though not like anything specific.

  We didn’t carry much with us on this trip – it’s not like we were gonna carry luggage during Operation Trojan Horse. The only thing I made sure to keep was my visor, and in a place like this, where everyone is packing implants and tech dangerous enough to flag any scanner under Ward’s all-seeing eye, I have no issue stepping out into the bar area and giving everyone a scan. I find all sorts of people: retired cops, CEOs of companies that went bust, and the odd crook, but after a while the word ‘fixer’ pops up on my neural display. His name is Jonas Redd, and he’s sitting alone at the corner table, holding a beer mug with both hands, his eyes wide and his face looking… out of it.

  I walk over to the table and ask: “Is this seat taken?”

  He looks up at me, contemplative, and then takes a sip of his beer before lowering his gaze once again. He doesn’t say anything to me at first, only looks around before asking the age-old question: “You a blue?”

  And I can’t help but see the irony in it. I had been a blue – a long, long time ago. I sit down across from him. “I look like a cop?”

  “Cops look like all sorts of things in this city,” he says.

  I chuckle. “And if I was, do you think I’d be required to tell you that just because you asked?”

  “So you are a cop?”

  “What? No. I’m disabled – see?” I gesture to my missing arm. “Hard to catch crooks like this, wouldn’t you think?”

  He takes another sip of his beer. He swirls it around in his mouth, holds it, swallows, then asks, “What do you want?”

  “You’re a fixer, right?” I ask.

  He glares at me. “What do you want?” he asks again.

  I let out a sigh. “You know – you’re not being easy here. I’m pretty experienced with this sort of thing.”

  He looks around some more, takes another sip of the beer, and leans in closer. “Alright listen: if it’s a job you’re after, I’m flat out of ideas. I have enough problems to worry about other than helping someone piss off Calyx Ward even more.”

  “Piss off Calyx Ward?” I repeat slowly, then cock an eyebrow. “You’re wanted, aren’t you?”

  He ignores this. “I told you already: I’m flat out of ideas.”

  “Alright,” I say, leaning back. “You know, I’m wanted by Calyx Ward too, right? I killed her chief logistics manager: Sloan Harrow.” It’s a rather bold thing to say out loud, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

  “Sloan Harrow?” he says. “She’s dead? When?”

  “Earlier this morning,” I say. “I have her logistics shard right here. Or – at least, a copy of it.” I reach into my pocket, pull out the shard, and slide it across to him on the table.

  Jonas presses his neural port, causing his left eye to glow blue, and he gives it a quick scan. He hands it back to me, as if holding it for too long might get him caught. “Jesus,” he says. “I didn’t even know she was killed. You killed someone like that?”

  “Well,” I say, “her robot did most of the work, but yeah – I had a pretty big role in the whole thing. And now I’m out to kill—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he says. “You’re like the last girl. Want to kill the queen. You all end up the same: dead, and now it’s worse, because after the last job they have units actively looking for me. So forgive me if I’m a little on edge. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Who was the last girl?” I ask, skipping everything else.

  “I don’t shake hands and tell,” he says. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, where Ward’s located for one,” I say. “I have a team – we’re pretty good at this sort of thing. I just need some leads to put together a plan.”

  “You can’t get close to her,” he says, finishing off his beer in a single chug. “It’s impossible, even for you and your special team. I’ve seen armies try to take her down – and you don’t look like you’re packing anything even remotely strong enough to cross her front line of defence.”

  “I figured. But you had a client before me that wanted to kill her. What did she do? How did she fail?”

  “I just told you: I don’t shake hands and tell.”

  “I’m not asking for names,” I reply sharply, taking my visor off and staring at him intently. “You had a method: what was it?”

  “Seasonal,” he says. “She travelled through the flooded underground substations to make it to the Pavillion Complex. She was strong – wiped Ward’s first line of defence but was killed in action. Lucy was too – eventually.”

  “Lucy?” I ask.

  “My employee,” he says. “Point is: that idea won’t work anymore. They already solidified the gap and they know my name. They’ll know yours too if you even think about going after her.”

  “Well, they already do,” I say. “That’s why I’m on a time constraint. If you can’t help me, who can?”

  He stares at me with those sorry, hollow eyes, looking like a man too scared to step out of the shadow. But the door to the pub creaks open quite painfully, and it’s at that moment when I understand that sometimes it’s the shadow that steps into you. Entering the pub is a pair of officers, though they don’t look like anything outside the Capital walls. Hell, they’re not even blue. The officer in front, who is about as tall as Cormac had been back when he was still alive (upwards of six-foot-six), doesn’t wear armour at all but instead has this strange spiderweb-like texture. It’s hexagonal in design, dark as midnight, and his face is completely covered by it. The other officer, who is much shorter (though quite a bit wider), is covered in heavy military armour. He stands in front of the doorway, blocking it entirely, and he strikes an enormous two-handed baton to the floor. It looks precisely the same as the electric batons the force carried back in 2055.

  The entire pub goes quiet, turning towards them with distinct hatred. I hear the whisper of a name that I remember quite horribly: “Adam Smoke.”

  Is this him? The same Adam Calyx Ward threatened to send after Sloan Harrow?

  The man who burned my father alive.

  Shit.

  I pull my jacket hood up, realising they’ve probably found me already and I need to alert the others so that we can find a way out through the back, but as I step up Jonas grabs my arm. I look down and see him sliding a small card across the table.

  “Take it,” he says in a low voice. “Say Jonas sent you.”

  I nod, take the card, and walk away from the table, making sure to avoid eye contact with Adam. I manage to avoid his attention, but the officer behind him with the baton: he’s looking directly at me. And although his face is entirely covered up by that knightlike helmet, I can tell he knows exactly who I am.

  I turn away, keep my hand stuffed in my pocket, and keep walking towards the rooms. When I get there, I hear Adam speak finally:

  “You didn’t think you’d get away that easily, did you?”

  I freeze in place, realising this is it: the end of the line.

  Death.

  All of this – for nothing. To be caught within hours of arrival.

  But I’m not going out this easy. I reach into my pocket, sneak the visor over my eyes, and snap my head back, ready to run a short-circuit on Adam Smoke. But… he’s not facing me. He’s not even looking in my general direction.

  Adam is looking at Jonas.

  “Please,” weeps Jonas. “You have it all wrong.”

  Adam Smoke wastes no time walking up to Jonas. He brings back his arm, and in some horrifying twist the material of his suit melts and transforms into a sharp, symbiotic blade.

  Shtkkk.

  Adam pierces Jonas’ skull with the armblade, killing him instantly and causing grey matter to spatter the walls.

  “What the fuck?” one of the patrons shouts.

  “Fucking corrupt cop!”

  “Bastards!”

  Adam retracts the armblade and turns towards the patrons. “Corruption? Do you really think the people trying to rid this world of the vermin are the corrupt ones? You’re lucky Ward still lets you breathe. Be thankful it’s not your skulls painted against the walls, because believe me, oh my: that can be arranged.”

  The entire place quietens down at that.

  And all I can think is: What a psychopath.

  I take my visor off once again, just in case it starts drawing attention. And to my horror, when I look over at the officer standing at the doorway, he’s still staring directly at me, not saying a word.

  I skulk away, back into the inn’s rooms, ready to follow wherever this card leads me, hoping the past doesn't put a blade through my skull too.