by Isaac Nasri
Alana draws her gaze to the swarm of drones clouding the stormy sky, zooming downward like a bolt of thunder. Passengers leaping from a MBTA bus window get barraged by a drone that detonates upon landing. Civilians disintegrate to iridescent particles as the quads combust consecutively in the area, obfuscating Alana’s view and her eyes twitch.
It’s official. They finally struck back.
Long she expected this reprisal from the Virtuals, but nothing compared to what she envisioned. Not when she and her brother were in the midst of this epic catastrophe eradicating this place, Troy’s homeland. A sense of uncertainty yet shock twisted her nerves, the reminder of what she went through these months fixating in her head.
A neon explosion erupts, snaking into the streets like a molten wave and bursting over the road. A sudden burst hits near her side, and Alana’s heart accelerates. Speeding, she whirls her vehicle swiftly on the street before hitting the brakes and witnessing Gabriel slip on the rear mirror. Alana pants and sweat moistens on her chest. She turns quickly to her brother, the latter pressing his hands against the seat and shaking. Alana rubs his knee.
“Gabriel!” she calls out. “Put on that seat belt! ASAP!”
Gabriel looks at all sides, sniffing loudly. “Where are WE going?!”
“Far out of here!” she cries. Despite attempting to maintain her panic, Alana’s face flushes to the buildings tumbling and the crimson smoke inundating the avenue. “I don’t know how long!”
Alana swears to a horizontal crack opening on the road, and debris slivers into the arising abyss. Several Bostonians fleeing from the drones slip into the chasm. She reversed her car back to the flare bellowing from within.
Exchanging glances with her brother, she advises, “Just hang in, Gabriel!” Then she gulps, enduring a grim jerk in her throat, until she says, “We got our tío Ricardo down! Got me?”
He looks anxiously at her before nodding and buckling the seat belt. Alana prevails in maintaining distance from the growing chasm and makes an abrupt turn ahead. She continues to expedite the acceleration on her car, passing through a descending traffic light. She bolts to her left from an incoming quad, and her jeep rattles to the flare-up frizzling to her right. The right window taps. The windshield to her side cracks, followed by three consecutive buzzes stinging her eardrums. Alana’s teeth bite to the ruby glows igniting in the wings of the drones. Soon the quad drones synergize, merging into a sinister substance that illuminates the interior of her car. The hair in the back of Alana’s neck mounts.
The star hurtles, and Alana comes at face with a Nissan van skidding in a circular motion. The face of a very young toddler, and adjacent to his female parent driver on the seat, beats his diminutive hands on the glass inside. She watches the child’s eyes trail at her, crying out to her behind the glass that silenced his voice, till her attention lands on numbers 5-4-5 scrolled on the mother’s chin. Alana’s throat parches to such a sight.
You don’t be deserving this.
Forcing her eyes elsewhere, she tilts, grabbing onto the wheel, and meanders as the strike makes contact with the van. Red orbs surf past Alana’s window, and a scarlet wave blossoms. Alana gulps to a blistering body, flopping against the edge of her car front. Drones rocket-like comets, shattering whatever stood alive in the state, and her heart turns dense. She does not look back. The fate of her neighborhood slithers like a mist before her eyes, flashing from the time she and her family stepped foot from the sunny outskirts of Little Havana. She walked in her scarlet graduation gown, BFA degree at hand, and posed alongside her visitor Troy behind the podium as her mother snapped the picture.
She found grounding, moments, and bonhomie in this state when it lasted. She had no idea of whatever chance Massachusetts had of recuperation, and didn’t want to know.
Troy flashes, the sole person only crossing in her head. Imagine sitting alongside her companion safely in this car, despite coming to terms with the home he’s finally lost for good. Knowing wherever he was, it was left in the air for God to tell. How can she process so much pain into one? Her eyes soak, and she blinks to fresh tears streaming down her cheeks.
Chapter 16
“Coach,” Troy says repeatedly as he drifts. His words slip like a whisper, almost having no end, and his heart cripples with the density of his affliction. Regardless of what slipped out of his mouth, nothing was going to alleviate or revive the coach he lost. Lu stepped out from the university a year after Troy graduated, lost in the shadows, but that reunion was met to not only an imploding body but a home that possibly descended with it. An image he will find inevitable to escape from. As vindictive as Lu’s actions were, ensuring the demise of the state Troy grew up in, it would be nonsensical for Troy to harbor any anger. What was the purpose? It wasn’t as if the lives lost would’ve owed him their recognition either way. Lu had a child he’d no longer see thanks to them again. His coach had a point; Troy and Lu were “outsiders.”
The rain in Manhattan drizzles, drenching Troy in soak. His skin crawls to the gelidity constricting in his veins, and he sneezes. The directions leading to the designated address on his phone screen dims, and he seals the dying phone away. Thankfully he was able to write the address on a sheet of paper zipped in his bag. His nose twists to the aroma of uric acid lingering in the city’s environment, and Troy holds his breath.
Goddamn. New York City just never changes.
Troy hadn’t stepped foot into New York for a long while and wanted no part of that memory. For all the people’s fawning, he couldn’t imagine himself sheltering in a derelict bedlam like New York. If it weren’t for Krueger, where he was four minutes away, this place would be the last area for him to cross ties with, much less tour. Unfortunately with everything he’d lost, Troy had little to choose, whatever he liked or not.
Strolling on the sidewalk, Troy gazes downward at the concrete, kicking the empty soda can with each step he takes. He diverts his eyes away from sirens wailing past. He shivers, fist clenched in his pocket, and his vision hazes to the combustions echoing in his ear.
The storm cracks, and that’s when Alana flashes. He endures a flood swallowing from within. How distant he’s been with her over these last months, cutting away whatever chance of bonding that could’ve been shared. Troy’s been like the clouds she could never reach since sentiment hit nationwide. Now the burden catches up to him like an arrow pierced into his ribs, and the thought of her imminent loss taints him from inside.
So much loss in one day…it’s insane.
Startled, he kicks the can abruptly to a squad of giant rats that scream into the road’s sewers. One of the rats stands still, glancing at him oddly, as if attempting to analyze the cyborg’s heart before scurrying off.
Troy’s disruption exacerbates upon hearing jeering a few feet across him in a dark alley. He storms close, and once his vision sharpens through the rain, he gasps. Within the alley space he spots a crew of hecklers stomping their foot simultaneously at what appeared to be a pedestrian, until he spots one of the heckler’s cleats resting on a visible bionic ankle.
Troy reaches in his holster, drawing out the pistol. His grip shudders on the handgun as he aims, witnessing the chants and outcries he endured for so long sweep at him like a chain of episodes. The shot firing into his car window snaps, followed by the voice of the heckler inside the train seething like a hot lead into his ears. Crossing a finger on the trigger, the pain and numbness because of what he lost fluctuates, and his pupils ignite to what he’s reminded of.
One of the assaulters mocks, “Can’t run now, muthafucka! We own these—”
The shot fires twice, and the orotund sound echoes into the rain. Troy positions the pistol’s muzzle upward, and he glares at the assaulters stepping back, murmuring hesitantly among themselves.
The crew bustles from the alley, and one of them with sagging pants and dreadlocks pats dastardly at his body. They don’t even set second glances at the instigator across them as they dash cravenly. Shoo
ting a cold glance at the assaulters disappearing in the rain, and trying to maintain his stance, Troy rushes across the street. Inside the damp alley, his foot splashes at a shallow pool of water lurking from the stairs above. The Virtual’s nose burns to the noisome whiff leaching from the garage bin, and the trash bags inside shift. He gulps to a fellow female cyborg, resting unconscious and supine on the ground. Blood and dark imprints obscure like mud on her face, and her turtle neck shirt rises halfway, exposing her navel. Her pants stain on the side. Troy bends, resting a hand on her chest, and a zap circuits up his arm.
Can’t believe they go this far.
The pulses fall faint to his ear. Lowering to retrieve the car keys, Troy raises the beaten Virtual’s arm around him. He reaches for his cell phone, only to groan upon a sudden dark screen. He had too much burden in his hands to pass behind the street’s shadows and let other brethren suffer so like this. No. If this was the best he can do to compensate, then so be it.
Troy gives a reassuring gaze to his fellow Virtual, whose eyes remain closed, before gazing at the rainfall pouring on the dull traffic outside. Several more sirens reverberate; meanwhile, the car lock jiggles in his hands.
***
A thunderous scar rears its head like a fork on the narrow neighborhood of townhouses at East 101st Street, and the rails screech to Troy’s left. Stepping foot, shivering, Troy knocks on the red gated door three times while the stringent raindrops shower over him.
“Troy Levi!” he says aloud. His voice vibrates through the chill in his veins.
He catches a resident peep from the window curtains before vanishing. The door cracks open, and Troy jerks to the robed human ushering him inside.
“Step in. Step in,” she says quickly, snorting. Her round glasses glimmer. “I was worried there—and oh goodness you’re a mess.”
Troy stumbles inside, and the mood around him transitions, greeting him with a warm arm as Krueger veils the window with a dense curtain and turns on the lights. He grimaces to a blue beam flickering at him from the eye of a pallid quad drone, and it hovers down on the surface of a computer desk. Water drips on the wooden tiles on the floor, and he wipes the moisture from his eyes. His mind swirls to the scent of cocoa roaming in the room, drawing his attention to the vaporizing steam billowing from the kettle on top of the kitchen stove.
It’s like before.
“Take a seat, will you?” Krueger advises as she turns off the stove ignition. Pouring the steaming water into two white cups, she repeatedly clamps on her teeth. The sound judders from a distance. “Fresh coffee should do it.”
“I’ll be okay, Krueger,” Troy rebuffs, taking a seat reluctantly at one of the leather sofas. He scans the gamut of coffee packages arranged at the wooden kitchen table and shelves, resembling that of a minuscule café. He’s never been too fond of coffee, ever since the time he almost belched to the sour stain in his tongue. The lamp dangles above, and its spikes twinkle. Mortified, his rear dampens on the spot.
“It’s cold, Levi,” she implies. “I know coffee’s not your—”
Troy gives her a questioning gaze, but Krueger shrugs it off.
“I may have left Boston, but I STILL know how your brain functions. Not all coffee’s out to give you some heart attack.” Krueger pours a dose of dairy powder and stirs one of the cups. “Nothing too lightly to take on your condition. Sounds like you’ve been through some hell.”
Troy sighs, waiting for Krueger to arrive with the hot drinks. His temple aches, hearing Lu’s final words echo. Whatever comfort he relished upon stepping inside vanishes, plunging him into a vortex that dragged him onward, forcing him to relieve everything up to now. His vision turns hazy, as if on the brink of collapse.
Maybe it’s best if I take the sip.
The pearls fused with her giant necklace jingle as she strolls with the coffee cups in a scrupulous fashion. She sets them down on the round table, and a silver streak betrays itself within her black hair hanging. Minor wrinkles cross underneath her eyes, giving semblance to someone who’s reached her mid-forties, a detail Troy never saw when the two first met years ago. Despite this, age didn’t seem to disfigure her slim shape.
Displaying an amicable smile, Krueger slides the coffee toward her former patient. Troy sniffs, and his mouth moistens to the smoky aroma of the coffee. Krueger takes a sip before mentioning, “Try taking off the gloves—” She clatters her teeth like a cackling skeleton and grimaces. “My. My. My apologies. But do take those off. After all, it’s only us inside.”
Troy grunts.
“So…how did you make it?”
The cyborg removes the gloves before reaching for the hot cup. Sipping, he blinks to the sting in his tongue. Soon the sourness wanes, altering into a sapid sweetness surfing like a wave into his stomach. The blood streaming in his veins warms. Looking right into the SMART technologist’s small eyes, Troy informs everything that happened, starting from the day he was evicted up to where he’s at now. His blood boils with every word and memory spoken without a second thought. The inferno growls inside his heart as he attempts to placate the fury and emotion building in his tone.
Sighing aloud, he takes the dead phone from his pocket, setting it down abruptly on the table.
“Coach Lu was someone that taught me a lot of principles then,” Troy says in a grim tone. “Tried saving him, but you can just tell…all the goddamn horror that went down these months…it really fucked him up in the worst way imaginable. I had little to offer to stop it.”
Krueger rests a hand to where his fist clenched, and her expression turns sullen.
“Some people you can’t save, especially those you adulate,” she says. “My son, a Virtual, I uh…”
She holds her breath. Troy follows her gaze trailing at a nailed portrait of a young man on top of a piano stand. He held the same diminutive eyes as his mother.
She nears a hand underneath her spectacles, but Krueger holds it in place before she can even dab at her eye. Whatever motion she attempted fell mute as she sat pensively, emotion too heavy for her to shed a tear.
Krueger’s teeth clench in repetition. Breaking her episode, she continues, “Apologies. Since rioters killed my son Richard from a distance, I’ve been in this hermit position for a long while.”
Troy shakes his head. “The suffering seems to have no end. Now I have this big question that’s been on my mind.” He sips on the coffee, feeling the slight adrenaline rush from inside. “How do we achieve solace?”
The question dances in his head, and he cogitates. Solace, strange a concept that any Virtual would deem nothing more than a fantasy, something that’s been denied to him since the post-Drug War. It’s been something he strived for long in shaping Latin America, but he has only seen an obscure shadow. As abstract and fantastical the idea was, Troy was determined to find it, for the sake of his dwindling well-being.
A minute of silence lingers between them. That’s when Krueger, straightening her glasses, states, “Before I go on, I’d say it's best you keep out of public sight. Not so sure about the other states, but here in New York…gangs happen to wield an iron fist in the areas.”
Troy raises an eyebrow.
Krueger looks over to her shoulder nervously before hasting and sipping the coffee.
Her voice becomes whispery as she says, “Levi. We SMART reps. Since outrage took over, we’ve been barred from work. But hitmen… they’ve been on foot, hunting us for execution.” She bites her teeth. “Our names, confidential information...it’s in their hands now. Snipers can be anywhere in the streets. The same ones that killed my son.”
Troy glances at the windows in the room and the barrier cloaking whatever glass stood. Not a tinge of light, minus the lamps, reflects on the walls. What a coincidence, he thought. He would’ve chosen the same route. He flashes back to the group of men he started from the alley and the wounded Virtual secured in his hand. His teeth clench at the swift reminder. He could’ve done otherwise and fired rounds at each of t
hose outlaws, but the resistance took him by the wrist, admonishing what stood reigning against him.
“Now on to your question,” she continues. Krueger leans, crossing her arms. “Solace…or peace, is something Virtuals—even humans fail to achieve at a large scale, despite their intentions. The Cold War. The Drug War...it goes on. But with what’s trespassed, our nation's stepped foot in a much more inevitable conflict.”
“I’m not too keen on that.”
The two of them flinch to a fierce boom outside. The cups quiver on the table. A disquieted Troy exchanges glances with Krueger, who raises a hand on top of her head.
She drops her mouth. “Jaguars of Apollo struck. The moment your coach wiped the landscape of Massachusetts was the SAME time the Virtual PMC struck the DMV today.”
Goddamn.
Troy cradles his arm, shaken by such news. He assumed closing all ears to the media has made him oblivious to what surrounded him. The conception of Lu acting alongside the PMCs was nonsensical enough, but there was something much more parlous to him. The Jaguars of Apollo, transitioning from allies to formidable enemies, hit him like shockwaves. That February capturing the moment they intervened in the kill zone seems so recent, unlike before. His own fellow Virtuals, he pondered. What have the nation’s regulators and humans situated themselves in? Was the ego of his nation too great to foreshadow the consequences? If this was true, then the consideration reassured that his safety as a cyborg was far from assured.
“It’s easy to lose hope,” Krueger says imminently. She looks down at her coffee, engulfing it. “Despite this, Richard’s death and the law passed gave me insight. With what I’ve been working on, solace isn’t as distant as I thought.”
“What is that then?”