Jayne hopped on her one good foot, leaning on whatever arcade games she could for support.
The marionette smiled blankly at her with pinhole eyes and a fixed smile. It looked like Burrett frozen in his cryo-chamber. With glee, Jayne ripped out the strings and tossed the puppet aside.
She sat down and got to work. She placed each dowel rod on either side of her ankle. She took the string and wrapped her ankle, around and around, until the dowel rods were pulled tight against her ankle. It wasn’t perfect, but better than no splint at all. The makeshift pressure bandage was doing its job as well.
Jayne admired her hasty, yet careful medical skills. She decided to give her ankle a chance. She lifted herself up and stepped down on it gently. The foot was numb enough from the pressure bandage to hold a little weight.
Jayne explored the counter. A row of racks upon racks displayed cheap trinkets: light up spiders, sonic whistles, decks of hologram cards, and electric finger traps. Jayne felt bad for the toys. They had been waiting years for a child to claim them, and all they got was her. She looked at the puppet with a sudden pang of guilt and empathy. She picked him up, dusted him off, and sat him upright in the case by the anti-grav yo-yos.
The puppet seemed so out of place. So old-fashioned, beyond old fashioned. Oh, well. Just another detail she couldn’t wrap her head around.
She dug deeper into the cabinet. Below the display, in a drawer, she found a cup of tokens. She rubbed one in her thumb and forefinger. It glistened to life, shining incandescent blue. They still worked.
It was time to put her nursing skills to the test.
Jayne popped four shimmering tokens into the hologram boxing game. To her astonishment, she heard the electronics beneath the platform whir to life. A projector announced the name of the game in an exploding hologram: Sucker Punch Four: Death Ring.
A bombastic voice instructed Jayne. “You may enter the ring and face your opponent!”
Jayne popped her neck and her back. She stretched and cracked her knuckles, then stepped onto the platform.
“Weighing in at three-hundred pounds, six feet and eight inches of solid muscle, the Thunder of Theron Techcropolis, ladies and gentlemen… Jack McSlammer!!!”
The hologram projected a massive beast of a human being. The hologram technology was primitive, and glitching with age, but the artificial hunk before her was no less intimidating.
Her digital opponent pounded his hand with his fist. “I hope you brought a spatula! Because when I’m done with you, you’ll need one to scrape yourself off the canvas!”
Jayne laughed at the absurd line. She imagined all the kids who must have challenged Jack McSlammer over thirty years before.
The projector located Jayne’s hands and projected boxing gloves onto her. The game projected a countdown between her and Jack McSlammer. Jayne took as much of the pressure off her foot as she could. Fortunately, this game would be all about her right hook and left undercut. She wasn’t done fighting her way out yet, might as well brush up on fisticuffs since her round-house kick was temporarily out of commission.
A bell sounded. DING DING!
Jack swung first. Jayne raised her arm and blocked his punch. She countered right and got Jack in the jaw.
Jack’s hologram glitched as her fist moved through the projection. It reanimated mid-punch toward Jayne. She deflected again and turned the block into a blow against Jack’s stomach.
Jayne felt a small electric shock on her cheek as Jack swung a mean right hook through her head.
Jayne yelped and raised her hand to her face. “What!? I wasn’t expecting that!” Jack the hologram took another swing that caught Jayne on the other side of her face, giving her another small jolt.
“Alright, Jack McSlammer!” Jayne crouched low, into a fighting stance. The pain was starting to come back into her ankle.
Jack McSlammer laughed a muted, digital laugh. “I am undefeated! Hope you have good health insurance!”
Jayne glanced over Jack McSlammer’s shoulder. She stood out of her fighting stance. “What’s that?” She pointed beyond Jack.
Jack turned. “What’s what?” The hologram looked across the forgotten arcade. “I don’t see anything.”
As he turned around, Jayne launched herself upwards into a roundhouse kick. She knew it was going to hurt on the way down, but she couldn’t help herself. It was basically her signature move. Her sprained, cut, throbbing leg whizzed through Jack McSlammer’s head. Technically an illegal boxing move, Jayne admitted to herself, but a system this old wasn’t going to notice.
Jack McSlammer crashed onto the ground, but so did Jayne in actual, non-hologram, reality pain. The hologram summoned a referee out of nowhere. The ref counted out, “One… Two… Three!” The hologram made the motion to raise Jayne’s hand. “The Champion!”
The sounds of a cheering crowd and victory music. Jayne’s foot hurt worse than before. But the pain felt good now.
The machine shut down. In the silence Jayne realized how exhausted she was. No matter what the risk, she had to get home. If anything, not returning was even more dangerous.
Emboldened with the feeling of victory, Jayne collected herself and ventured once more into the streets of the lower levels, intent on working her way back up to the friends she missed.
+++
Dead Man’s Row, L30, Theron Techcropolis, Amaros
“In July of Federation Year 3106, The Cerulean Hill Mob occupied these three blocks
of Market Street in a final defense during Theron Police’s indiscriminate raids
on suspected criminal syndicates, now known as the Thanhauser Busts. After
one month of occupation, the residents on Market Street took defense into
their own hands and fought the Cerulean Hill Mob over a 13-day long war localized
on this street alone. This Plaque commemorates the 37 men and women who died
defending their homes and families from the threat of organized crime.
Theron Techcropolis Preservation Society, Historical Site of Interest #2101”
Everyone knew about the Market Street Mob War in the vague sense that some historical events permeate all aspects of culture. Jayne didn’t learn anything new from the plaque, which she strained to read in the dark, artificial night of a lower level.
The plaque didn’t mention it, and never would, but the street earned the name Dead Man’s Row during the conflict. Market Street was a center for business and commerce – it was the reason the Cerulean Hill Mob chose the location – the city would never risk destroying one of its major economic centers. Plus, the Cerulean Hill Mob had the entire 30th Precinct on a generous payroll. This bit of complicated information was left off the plaque as well.
But the residents, mostly working-class merchants who lived at the far end of Market Street, had their own code of the streets. A code of violent pride.
Passing through became so dangerous that the section soon earned the name Dead Man’s Row. Even now, it was almost impossible to avoid the three-block battleground if you wished to do business on Market Street.
Jayne would have felt more at home on this street then as opposed to now.
She looked up at the towering apartment building rising into the next level. She read the massive banner hanging on its side. DEAD MAN CONDOS – SCENIC VIEWS OF HISTORIC DEAD MAN’S ROW – PRE-LEASING NOW.
Streets once stained with blood would soon be lined with kava bars, luxury hover cruisers, and boutiques with Galdarshian Pottery behind glass marked “ask for assistance.”
Until the elite of the upper levels completed monetizing the lower levels, Market Street L30 clung to that vague air of a potential threat. For Jayne, that felt like home.
Jayne’s ankle hurt more with each step. The splint was holding up, but she’d retied the pressure bandage a dozen times. Climbing through each level stretched and strained the deep wound in her thigh. It was a shame she didn't have a suture to better close the wound, but she would have to
make do with what she had. She bled and left a dotted red trail in her wake.
Better to keep walking. Better to deal with it, Jayne told herself. Standing still, desperately tying off a pressure bandage on the side of the street isn’t exactly low-profile.
Better to keep walking. Better to deal with it.
Jayne turned the pearl in her earring. She scrolled through every frequency Merry had ever used. All dead. She picked up a fuzzy radio station playing oldies. She picked up a late-night talk show musing on the paranormal.
Jayne had heard somewhere that the quickest way to gain someone’s affection was to repeat their name often during conversation. Not always true.
“Got a positive match on the blood sample from L27. Looks like Jayne Austin is moving up.”
The voice was nasally and erudite. Jayne guessed he was in forensics. Certainly not the voice of a street cop.
But the reply was gruff and thick-necked. “Copy on that. Calling a one-eighteen on her then. We’ll expect her at maintenance routes between levels.”
“Sounds like a plan, and we’ll keep you updated on our end.”
There was that feeling of impending threat Jayne was looking for. Without the maintenance route, she was stuck.
Jayne’s stomach howled. It echoed down the empty street. The last thing she ate was half a bottle of tequila.
“Excuse me?”
Jayne pivoted to face the stranger with fists up and ready. She instinctively slid into her low and powerful fighting stance, putting all her weight on her bad foot. She lost her balance and fell.
The stranger crouched to Jayne and offered his hand. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Jayne shrugged off his offer of assistance. She helped herself up and came face to face with a broad, well-toned chest hidden behind a t-shirt. She looked up at the most handsome man she had ever seen. She immediately promised herself that she wouldn’t tell Cameron about this guy.
The handsome stranger stepped back and took all of Jayne in. He wasn’t put off by her bruised and bloody body. “Weren’t you in the Black Hole earlier?”
Jayne squinted with one eye as if to focus better on this guy. “Who’s asking?”
The stranger held up two fingers. “Two sunrise surprises?”
The dirt, grime and blood caked on Jayne’s face moved out of the way to make room for her huge grin.
+++
Tom slowed the lift with the touch panel strapped to the iron railing. He manually lined up the grated platform with the concrete floor of his warehouse studio.
The lift came to a stop, and the metal gate swung open. “Welcome to the lighthouse!”
Jayne limped out of the lift into the high-ceiling room. It ran the entire length of the otherwise unoccupied building. In the morning, the wide windows would allow the artificial lower level sunlight to pour in. Jayne hoped she would get to experience that.
Jayne turned to Tom, who hung up his jacket and keys on a nail in the wall. He undid his boots and slid into slippers. “It’s always a work in progress, so I’m sorry it’s a little messy.”
Messy was an understatement. The bed in the far corner was a telltale sign that someone lived in this junkyard.
Jayne scanned the dozen tables scattered throughout the dark studio. All of them were covered with cannisters, tubes of glass, acetylene torches, and basically every power tool she could think of. She started to worry this guy might be a sadistic sociopath. A sadistic sociopath who made a damn good cocktail, that is.
But Jayne started to suspect Tom was actually one of the many artists flocking to the lower levels for the cheaper cost of living. While the lowest of levels, anything below L10 and most of the teens remained entirely uninhabitable due to the settling smog, an enterprising bunch of artists and ingenious homeless had begun improving sections of levels on the low twenties. They had engineered makeshift filters and diverting air vents.
They were helping themselves, for now, but their work was only laying the foundations for big businesses looking to corner that hip lower-level demographic.
For now, however, Tom lived cheaply.
Jayne returned to her first assumption of Tom as a psychopath, and made a joke at his expense. She wasn’t ready to get too comfortable with him. Not yet, anyway. “Before you start performing your sick experiments on me, do you have a place I can sit down?”
Tom slapped a palm on his forehead. For being such a hunk, he was acting like a dork. “Of course! I’m so sorry. I don’t have company over a lot, and I… Need to find a chair. Hang on!”
Tom disappeared into a dark pile of junk at the opposite end of the studio. “I think I found one last week at the dump. It’s… not fancy or anything, but it’s…” He pulled out the bumper to a hover cab and tossed it aside with a clang that echoed deafeningly against the high ceiling.
“Could I just go lay down on the bed?” Jayne was rarely so forward, but her ankle wasn’t usually in this much pain.
With the cacophony of metal collapsing onto itself, Tom succeeded in forcing free a metal folding chair. “Ta-dah!”
Jayne nodded. “Why couldn’t I have been taken refuge by an interior designer?”
Tom laughed as he unfolded the chair and set it down for Jayne. “I know, I know. I’m not organized. I’m working on it, but I keep getting new stuff.”
Jayne sat down. “From the dump?” The folding chair felt like a throne. She had never felt relief as great as taking weight off her ankle.
The playful criticism flew right over Tom’s head. “Yes. It’s why I live in the lower levels – great junkyards. And it’s cheap. Well, free. Please don’t tell anyone I live here. This building is technically condemned.”
Jayne nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets.” She lifted her leg and rested her foot on the nearest work bench.
Tom opened a cabinet hanging on the wall and grabbed a first aid kit. He walked over to a rusty sink and filled a glass with water. “Here, let’s get some light in here.”
He took out a tablet and swiped upward. In an instant, the studio was bathed in the soft glow of neon. Blues and pinks, reds and purples. The ceiling was covered in neon tubes that twisted and curled in intricate patterns. “I mainly make neon lights. Like as a side gig with bartending. It’s a dying art you know?”
Jayne looked across the ceiling, following the maze of gas-filled tubes. “The Lighthouse?”
“Exactly! I came up with that myself. Because of all the lights.”
Jayne humored him, charmed by his clueless enthusiasm. I could get into dumb guys, she thought. “Brilliant name, Tom.”
“Alright, I’m going to help you. But you have to tell me… what the hell happened to you?”
Tom seemed a little aloof, but Jayne figured if he’s been living off the grid this long, avoiding detection, he must be trustworthy. “Deal.”
Tom cut through the splint. “Okay, now take that boot off.”
Jayne did her best to speak between deep breaths as she loosened the straps on her ankle-high boots. “First things first: I’m a for-hire spy.”
Tom bobbed his head back and forth, mulling it over. “Okay.”
She groaned her story through gritted teeth. “I was on an assignment. Tailing a man in black… Agh!” The curve around the heel was the worst. “It was a set up. He had information. About me. Information that can really screw me over…” The boot tugged on the sore tendons and torn muscle. “Aagh, fuck this!”
Tom frowned at Jayne with a pure and empathetic gaze. “That really hurts, huh?”
Jayne glared up at Tom. “No, it’s fine.” Then she yanked the boot off. It felt like a grenade exploded inside her foot. The pain knocked the wind out of her. She could only manage short, sharp breaths.
Tom immediately stuck a needle into her lower calf.
Jayne’s pain skyrocketed. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU—"
Tom pushed the plunger down to the end of the syringe and removed it from Jayne’s leg
. “My hobby isn’t exactly safe. I get hurt a lot, so helps to keep a wide variety of anesthetics around. Go on…”
Jayne felt the pain die. It’s what she had been waiting for all night. “My man in black framed me for murder. Cops are after me. I spent two hours in motel laundry. I learned all about junkcore music. I fought a hologram. And now…” She looked around the warehouse. “Now I’m being held hostage by a mad scientist."
Tom shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m not a scientist. And I actually rarely get angry.” Tom handed her two capsules and the glass of water. “Take these for the swelling.”
It was a medicinal-grade anti-inflammatory. Probably illegal. Within seconds of swallowing the pills, the blood left her ankle. The ankle almost went down to its normal size.
Tom fixed a proper splint around Jayne’s ankle and wrapped it tight and secure. “So, you’re a criminal?”
“No! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I was framed.” She remembered her intrusive thought, the old men playing chess. “I think… I’m a pawn in someone’s game.”
Tom gave Jayne a cheeky smile. “I’ve been in relationships like that before.”
For the first time Jayne laughed at him intentionally.
He brushed some bio-sealant on her cut and covered it with hardening gel. “The pain’s going to come back in a couple hours, but you won’t get an infection and that ankle has a much better chance now. Oh! I have some cake.”
Jayne could not keep up with this guy. The hottest bartender she’s ever met is a total spaz. He ran over to his refrigerator and took out a slice of chocolate cake wrapped in a napkin. “This is the best cake I ever had. I stole it from work.” He gave Jayne a grave look. “Please don’t tell anyone I stole a cake from work.”
“At the risk of incriminating myself by association, your cake is safe with me.”
Tom sighed in genuine relief. “Oh, man. Thanks. Here!” He handed her the cake. “I don’t have a plate or anything. Or any silverware. I’m sorry. But it’s really good!”
Jayne bit it into it. Holy shit, she thought. This was the best cake she ever had. Although she was so hungry she’d eat anything. She’d eat rancid meat and be thankful. But the cake was moist and rich. She moaned in pleasure. “Thank you.”
Exposed (Interplanetary Spy for Hire Book 2) Page 5