Runner

by Samantha Lau

  He pulled away from the trash, and tore at the bag, removing from it two dark gray jumpers and hats with the logo of some company. For once, Wei recognized the white logo, three circles representing bubbles – the logo of a Taizhou cleaning company.

  Wei grabbed the set Oren held out for him, fingers running briefly over the logo.

  “Put ‘em on.”

  He looked around, but there was no one in the alley and as it was away from direct streetlights, it was rather dark. He still hesitated, but at seeing Oren start to change, he quickly did so in turn. Following suit, he pulled the overall over his pants, but removed the bulkier jacket, keeping his shirt underneath. He was just zipping up when he felt Oren’s searing gaze on him again. The man’s eyes kept going up and down his body, lingering on his face. Wei shifted his weight in discomfort at the intensity of that gaze.

  “What?”

  Oren smirked. “You’s too pretty. Even in that thing.”

  Wei snorted, cheeks taking on a red tone. He knew he’d been designed to be beautiful but... no one had ever called him that; not outside his family. “Everyone’s ‘pretty’ in Taizhou.”

  He reached for one of the hats, but Oren grabbed it first, placing it over Wei’s head, trying to tilt it so it would cover his face some.

  “Ya just keep yo head low. Maybe they won’t notice. No, don’ hunch like that,” Wei huffed when the man pushed his shoulders back. “There, now ya don’t quite look like you’s up to somethin’. And this,”

  Wei looked up again to see Oren pull something out from the pocket of his jumper.

  “Gimme yo hand.”

  Wei extended his hand and watched with interest as Oren stuck something to his skin. It was skin-color, a little like a medical patch. A fake skin patch, perhaps? Curious, Wei reached to rub a finger over it. There was a little bump in the middle, and he idly wondered what it was.

  “Don’t play with it, ya gonna lose it. Them damn things only stick once.” Oren did the same with his own hand, then put on his hat and once again led the way.

  They didn’t head for the main doors of the police-owned building, but instead for one around the side, where it was just a little darker, near the entrance to their garage. And old styled sign, one that seemed dim in comparison to all the lights in the front, read in Hanzi ‘Employees Only’; a light over the door, shining red. Oren waved the hand with the fake skin patch over the employees only sign, and the red light switched to green, accompanied by a clank and a buzz. Oren pushed the door open and turned briefly to Wei.

  “Do as I do,” he whispered.

  “How do you know how to-?” Wei tried to ask in that same tone, but Oren snapped at him.

  “Later!” He hissed.

  “You always say that...” Wei grumbled, but they never really had time for ‘later’. He couldn’t blame Oren, though, the man was going above and beyond for him. He tried to obey and do as Oren was doing.

  They entered the building and came upon a small room with two turnstiles. A security guard was lazing behind a desk, paying no attention to them, and hardly any to the holographic screens on his desk. Across the turnstiles, an elevator. Oren went first. He waved his skin patch over the sensor on the turnstile and the bars retracted to let him through. They snapped right back before Wei could even think of following.

  Wei swallowed and waved his hand over the sensor, just like Oren had. A red light blinked, and the machine beeped.

  “Uh.”

  Oren looked back.

  The guard got up. He was a slightly larger man, no visible mods or tattoos on him. Hands on his belt, he waded around his desk like he was knee deep in water, and went straight to Wei, turning his back to Oren. Wei looked up at Oren, who took a couple steps closer, but made a small motion with his hand. He assumed that meant to just stay cool.

  “Somethin’ up?” Oren asked casually.

  “Nah,” the guard eyed the machine. He gave it a hard whack and motioned for Wei to try it again.

  Wei gave another surreptitious look towards Oren, then waved his hand over the sensor again, fast, holding his breath. The bars retracted. Wei let out the breath he’d been holding, Oren’s shoulders sagged a bit in turn.

  “Goddamn thing’s been failing.” The officer said, slowly returning to his desk. “Just give it a thwack if it happens ‘gain.”

  “Sure thin’,” Oren said, motioning for Wei to follow. “C’mon, we’s late.”

  Wei hurried alongside Oren, allowing the man to usher him into the elevator. He let another heavy sigh as the doors closed.

  “What now?”

  Oren smacked the topmost button. “Almost there.”

  The elevator started moving up, first smoothly, then gaining speed, making Wei’s stomach feel funny; and yet the feeling caused him instant relief. It was something familiar, something he was used to. Almost, not quite, like being in one of the speed-elevators back home. He reached out to squeeze Oren’s hand gently, unable to hold back a small, nervous smile. He hardly registered the surprise on his face.

  The old security footage Wei had seen on the screens had not prepared him for the sight that greeted him when the doors slid open to a waiting room that spanned almost the entirety of the giant floor. Holographic screens throughout signaled numbers and names and presented people with constant entertainment as they waited. Unfortunately, no two screens were showing the same thing, and the dissonance of sounds gave Wei an immediate headache, along with the incessant background noise of people talking. Benches and chairs were spread in disarray, pushed aside by squatters who had been waiting so long, they were now outright living there, and had little tents and sleeping areas set out. Trash cans were overflowing with waste, littering prevalent even away from them. On the far side was a small cafeteria that could hardly keep up with the line of people waiting, and a set of doors leading to the public bathrooms, which had a line of their own. Wei didn’t dare guess as to the state of those.

  Yet more people waited in line at the desks next to heavily guarded turnstiles, the policemen behind the desks were protected by thick security glass. Beyond them, an area devoid of people led to a few sets of also guarded elevators. It seemed to Wei like the entire police force was spread between the entrance to the building and this floor.

  People seemed to be arguing loudly with the guards behind the desks.

  An old man wearing a janitor overall and a red handkerchief tied to his arm came to them as soon as they stepped out of the elevator.

  “There ya’are!” he said, “Ya think this stink’s gonna clean itself up?”

  Oren looked back at him, his gaze a silent question: was he ready for this last stretch? Wei nodded, a barely perceptible move.

  “C’mon now! Let’s get yer mops!” The janitor motioned for them to follow.

  Wei and Oren followed him towards a room near the bathrooms. Just in case, Wei held his breath as they walked past them. The janitor unlocked the door by waving his hand in front of a small panel.

  The janitor’s closet, as it turned out to be, was more of a large general storage area. Boxes of office supplies were mixed in with cleaning supplies, and other things: Lost and found items, worker’s belongings left behind for the next shift. Wei didn’t have time to observe in detail for the man led them towards the back.

  “Okay, here we are,” he said, suddenly dropping his accent. He turned and pushed some boxes away to wave his hand in front of a hidden sensor. A panel slid in the wall, revealing a maintenance passage wide enough to fit one person at a time, with a ladder going all along the length of it. Both Oren and Wei instinctively leaned in to look just how far up and how far down it went. They bumped heads in the process and exchanged little glares. Oren leaned in again to look first, then let Wei do likewise. He could not spot neither beginning nor end.

  It was one thing to look down at the clouds from behind the safety of security glasses and windows of pods, but this... just like with the ledge before, Wei found himself swaying a bit again. Oren�
��s firm grip was on his shoulder at once, pulling him back to safety.

  “Come on boy,” the janitor motioned him to the ladder.

  Wei licked his lips. He took off his hat and wiped his brow. He looked at Oren, who smiled and nodded.

  “Ya gon’be okay,” he encouraged with another one of those tight smiles. Wei didn’t like those, he wanted to see his honest smiles again.

  “You’ll be right behind me, right?”

  Surprise flashed in those mismatched eyes, and for the first time, it dawned on Wei that maybe Oren wasn’t going to be coming along too. He frowned. Oh, in the back of his mind he’d probably known this, but he hadn’t really accepted it.

  “I can’t,” Oren said, though he seemed to hesitate.

  “He can’t,” the janitor agreed in turn. “Guys like him don’t belong up there.”

  Wei glared at the janitor and turned back to Oren. “But you have to come.”

  Oren pursed his lips. His gaze lingered in Wei’s green one for a long moment, until finally, a little suddenly, he turned away. Wei frowned, was he turning his back on him? But no, Oren’s focus had shifted entirely. His stance was tense, and he seemed to be focused on something else. He hadn’t turned away on him, something had distracted him

  “Come on now,” the janitor insisted, losing patience and tugging at Wei. “There’s no time. Someone might come and-”

  He never finished that sentence. An explosion shook the entire floor.

  Several things happened at the same time. Lights went out, then flickered on and back off several times, before finally going out again. A couple red emergency lights came on instead. Outside, people cried, screamed, yelled; blaring through speakers the police requested everyone remain calm and slowly head to the exits. One of the shelves on the side, full to the brim with supplies, tilted dangerously towards them. Instinctively they all backed up in different directions, Oren was the luckiest. The shelf missed him by a hair, falling instead right on the janitor who had been too slow to move out of the way. He cried out in pain.

  Wei had jumped back in a rather unfortunate direction – right towards the open panel and the infinite ladder. He gasped when he felt his foot slip right on the edge of the maintenance shaft and started falling back towards the hole, arms flailing, hands seeking for purchase.

  Two things spared him: hitting his head on the rungs of the ladder of that narrow shaft, and Oren’s reflexes. Wei saw it all happen in slow motion, Oren jumping over the fallen shelving unit, lunging for him, reaching out, grasping the front of his overalls... A shuddering breath escaped his lips. Things seemed to come back to real time. Oren pulled at him and Wei used his help to grip to the ladder rungs with both hands and climb to it.

  “Go,” Oren said, turning to check on the janitor. He leaned in as if to listen to something the man said, though Wei couldn’t tell if the other was alive at all, or if Oren was just checking his breathing.

  “Come with me!” Wei asked, breath hitching as panic rose again.

  Oren looked back at him, then towards the door, and once more back at him.

  “Come with me, Oren!” Wei pleaded. What was there for him? Who knew what awaited beyond those doors? What if they blamed Oren? What if those people chasing them found him? “Please!”

  Chapter 10

  “Please!” Wei called.

  Oren pursed his lips. He wasn’t stupid. He knew if he stayed after the explosion, if he didn’t manage to sneak out, someone was going to find him, was going to blame him for at least part of this. He had no reason to be there, after all. He would never see the streets again... But what could he expect up there? He didn’t belong there; they would surely not allow him to stay.

  A second explosion, this one closer, shook everything again.

  Wei cried and clung to the ladder.

  Oren had been too close to the shaft. His foot slipped, but he grasped to the threshold and managed to regain his footing. He looked back at the janitor, now either dead or unconscious. The man had mumbled a string of numbers and letters to him. He wasn’t quite sure what it’d meant. Wei’s face, open and hopeful, worried and scared, stared back at him when he turned back to him.

  “Move it,” Oren finally said, reaching for the ladder. He saw Wei’s expression brighten before he quickly moved up. Climbing fully on the ladder, he followed, listening to the hiss of the panel closing behind them and drowning out the sounds of screams.

  They climbed up and up in silence for a good, long while. Oren observed the walls of the shaft carefully. There were markers there, strings of numbers and letters. He didn’t understand their meaning, but he recognized the format, the same one the janitor had told him. Oren understood the message then: the floor it’d be safe to get off on. He had no idea where the clouds began and ended, it could have been one floor or ten, for all he knew, so he was thankful for the man’s foresight. He wondered if he was alive, if he should have stayed to try and help, if he should have-

  “How much longer?” Wei asked, panting a bit.

  Oren looked up. His enhanced arm chose that moment to again send his fingers into a twitch that nearly made him lose his grasp. He grimaced. That hadn’t happened for a while now, he’d thought the circuits had settled... Shit. He was probably overexerting himself.

  “Ain’t long now,” he lied, because Wei sounded tired. He was too. If he’d known they would do a marathon ladder climbing session, he might have risked a small break before heading there.

  After another while, he heard a small yelp from above. He looked up in time to see Wei’s foot slip from the rung and hit him full in the face.

  “Fuck!” He wrinkled his nose, trying to regain some feeling.

  “I’m sorry!!” Wei tried to look down.

  “Don’t look down!” Oren grumbled, though the boy had sounded so contrite, he couldn’t quite help being a bit amused too. “’S fine, just keep going.”

  Wei made a small indistinct sound but obeyed and moved on. Oren followed him, still close despite the risk of being hit in the face again. Wanting to distract his companion, he said. “Ya kno’, there’s a reeeaally nice sight of ya bum from down ‘ere.”

  “Shut up!” Wei squeaked.

  Oren chuckled. “Betcha wishin’ you’d gone second now.”

  “Shut it, Oren.”

  “See, already we closer to ya home and ya getting’ all bossy on me.”

  He heard a soft huff. “Says the one that’s been ordering me around since I fell.”

  “Kept ya alive tho, didn’ it?” Oren said fondly. For a moment, he thought Wei wouldn’t answer.

  “Yes,” came the soft answer. “Yes, it did.”

  Oren’s gaze fell on the next floor marker and he sighed in relief. “Almost there, bǎobǎo. Jus’ two more.”

  Though it was only two floors away, time continued to stretch. Exhaustion was playing a great part in it, Oren knew, trying to focus on not losing his grasp on the rungs. One foot, then the other. Up, and up, and up.

  “Is this it?” Wei called, coming to a stop.

  Oren looked up again and came to a stop too.

  “Think so.” Boy, was he glad this was coming to an end, sort of. At least as far as Wei went, he’d be safe with his parents. Right then, Oren didn’t even care if he’d end up in jail – so long as he could lay down and sleep for a while, he would be happy. How long had they been climbing up? It had to have been hours. Even for a runner, Oren was about near his limit.

  He watched Wei look around and over every wall for a way to open the sliding panel.

  “I can’t find it.”

  Wei was panicking again. He could hear it in his tone, the way his voice went an octave higher, how his chest began heaving again.

  “Move up.” He ordered, and when Wei had, he shuffled up the ladder until he was level with the marker. It was the right one.

  He looked around to try to find a way to open the sliding panel. There was no keypad, display, panel... nothing that would indicate anything could
be opened. It took him a good five minutes, and Wei incessantly asking if he saw anything yet, for him to find it. Just a nook, on a rather uncomfortable spot behind the ladder, where he could stick his fingers, and use that to pull at a lever that had been so flat with the wall, it looked like part of it.

  Just as he was done pulling at the lever with his normal hand, the enhanced one twitched again and this time he did lose his hold on the rung.

  “Hah!”

  Because his feet were firmly on a rung, rather than slip down he fell backwards. Thankfully the passage was too narrow to fall into it that way, but he instead fell back against the panel as it slid open, and then to the ground, foot catching with the ladder briefly and causing some more pain as it twisted, before it came free on its own.

  “Oren!”

  His back hit solid floor and he opened his eyes to the dim light of clear daylight streaming far through the end of the dark corridor he was in... and the shadows of two men dressed in white and cream, aiming guns at him. Panting, he held his hands up slowly.

  “Oren! ...Oren?” Wei hurried down the ladder.

  “These your friends...?” Oren tried slowly, not taking his eyes from the guys with the guns.

  One of the guns lifted from Oren to Wei, sending Oren into action. He tried to get up and instinctively reach for the gun aiming at Wei. The other man hit him with the butt of his gun and quickly aimed at him again, giving a very emphasizing wave of the gun to indicate for him to stay put.

  “Stop, please.” Wei called, slowly coming out of the maintenance shaft and into the room, hands lifting. “He’s helping me. I’m Zhao Wei.”

  ***

  The man who was aiming his gun at Wei lowered it, trusting his partner to keep them in place while he lifted a small hand scanner. He aimed it at Wei’s face, running his biometrics through it. He nodded to his partner and turned back to Wei.