Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity

by Robert Brockway

  Spared him seeing those unfocused eyes.

  Six feet away, a bright green circle glowed on the surface of the steel door: The guard’s replacement, waiting for admission. James straddled the dead man’s back, looped his arms around his midsection, and hefted the body up before him. He shuffled forward until the pair of them were practically touching the glowing orb. When the sentry’s corpse came within a few inches, the circle bisected and began a short animation, chasing itself. Awaiting confirmation from outside.

  The circle eventually caught up with itself, blinked off, and the whole wall shunted upward. The guard beyond loped wordlessly past James, still hiding behind the corpse of his coworker in the narrow hallway. Two strides down the corridor, he stopped, and slowly, curiously swiveled about.

  “Bill?” The guard asked hesitantly.

  In response, James hefted the man’s bulk to and fro rapidly. The corpse flopped from side to side.

  “What the hell? Been drinking again, buddy?” The guard stood up out of his simian crouch and took a step towards the dancing dead man.

  James abruptly released the body and pushed it forward as it started to fall. Just before it hit the floor, he lunged, pushing off the ground with one foot and the falling corpse with the other. He vaulted the deceased sentry and cracked his surprised coworker in the throat with a flying elbow.

  The man’s last words were: “Fuwhaa?”

  Prioritize, James thought: Secure escape route from the palace, find weapons, backtrack to retrieve Red and Zippy — Zippy first, better asset in a fight — find an exit from the fiefdom.

  Easier fucking said, mate.

  He felt along the wall, where instinct told him a control panel should be. A flat, angled, palm-sized piece of glass: The interface. A canted cylinder, open on one end: The feeder tube, delivering whatever raw elements the nanobots needed to build.

  Finally, a bit of bloody luck.

  One end of the tube must lead out of King Big Dick’s barren kingdom. Every feeder needs a disposal outlet for waste elements; it was doubtful even Big Dick’s impressive territory used enough resources to merit their own Recycling Station. Two: The other end would lead to the King himself, or near enough that James could find his way from there. No self-respecting despot on a budget would allow free, unregulated access to a feeder tube and its accompanying nano-machines. All feed lines were policed to some extent, sure, but any git with the right hacks, some basic hardware and an online tutorial could build a bomb and blow the whole bloody cube to hell, or just burn through the nitrate rations cooking up contraband sausages. Somebody would be watching this line, approving or denying every request. Therefore the feeder tube must go to the two places James needed to be: The king’s quarters, and the exit.

  It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t anywhere near. But it had a friend that had a friend that once knew a plan, and that was better than nothing.

  ***

  “I think you’re lost!” Zippy taunted King Big Dick.

  “I think you’re a cunt,” He spat back flatly.

  It was mock outrage though, she could tell. He was just playing a character now, thinking about something else. So negotiations were moot, then: Whatever his plan of action was, he’d already decided on it. They were going to meet their fate.

  The procession had to move single-file through the narrower corridors: The King in the center, scuttling crab-like, his great gut audibly squeaking along the polished walls as he squeezed by. Two guards took point in front of him, another behind walking backward, facing her with his weapon – a flat, square-nosed disassembler – drawn. Another guard followed behind with a gun to her back, and one more beyond him, facing the back of the squad, covering the rear. Zippy was of the opinion that there is always an opening for somebody willing to take it, but she saw nothing here: The carefully organized formation, the claustrophobic walkways, and the complete, abyssal blackness all combined to make her virtually helpless, or as near to that state as she ever could be. She could still stick the bastard in front of her, at any rate. It wouldn’t make a difference, but it might make her feel better as she dissolved into a puddle of gelatin.

  Take your little victories, she thought.

  A rectangle of light expanded somewhere ahead of the group. Wherever they were going, it looked like they had arrived. Zippy tentatively pulled at her knuckle, testing how much force would be needed to break it and free the knife. But when they emerged into the light of the empty, white room, the formation quickly broke and expanded away from her, each guard taking one of the four corners of the space, with one remaining by the King’s side. She couldn’t help but be impressed: Keep her closed up too tight in the tight spaces, keep out of her reach in the open ones.

  “D’you git your shit?” King Big Dick asked the twitchy, exhausted wreck of a human being at the terminal.

  “I got your money,” Red answered dully, “I’ve got triple, actually.”

  Red swiveled the projector hub so the King could read the display. His jaw went slack.

  “But there are conditions: We go free right now. No more games, no more of this public persona bickering. You get us all the supplies we need in the next ten minutes, no exceptions, no questions. You get us an armed escort that does any stupid thing I say, without hesitation. And you get us to an exit that opens onto the Reservoir in the next hour, or I burn this account and you get nothing,” Red said, setting his jaw forward and narrowing his eyes.

  Zippy recognized it as his ‘tough guy’ face. It was laughably ineffective. But the money made its own impression.

  “Not a problem!” King Big Dick answered brightly, with perfect, sober clarity, a jubilant smile bubbling across his face.

  “Oh, thank Christ,” the guard directly beside him exhaled, pulling off his mirrored facemask and bowling it across the floor, “this bloody outfit pinches at the crotch.”

  James fumbled around his stolen uniform for a moment, finally found and extracted a cigarette, and twisted the filter. It sparked into life. He noted the stunned expression on King Big Dick’s face.

  “Sorry, mate: I killed like half your crew. We’re good now though, yeah?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Her hand was cool and solid in his palm.

  Byron was unaccustomed to contact. He found the sensation surprisingly comforting when he didn’t think about it, and absolutely nerve-wracking when he did. So he did his level best to draw his attention away from the small patch of clammy flesh, and focused on the task at hand: He was navigating QC through what seemed, to his unaugmented eyes, to be a dimly lit patch of dock directly beneath a bank of faded and yellowed LED boards. She, with nightvision strains activated, swore that they were blinding – tiny stars, burning bright orange patches through the flesh of her clenched eyelids – and only dared open her eyes when the last perceptible ray ceded to the darkness. Then they would exchange roles, with QC towing Byron through a damp void which seemed more like a thing that swallowed light than the absence of it. The switch was not for a hundred meters more, however. And though the darkness held its own primal uncertainties, Byron would be immensely grateful for the relief. He simply could not stand being relied upon. It was much easier to just hand over the reins and be led, even if the journey meant stumbling blindly past the uncertain death that hovered one errant footfall off the path on either side, into the greedy waters below.

  In its own strange and anxious way, the darkness was comforting. Enveloped completely within it, Byron’s nerves merged the signals from the cold, the humidity, and the loss of light together into one cohesive whole, so that he thought of the dark as a frigid, dank curtain; a wet blanket thrown over the world. Being nestled ever deeper into the folds of that slick, heavy cloth, he could relax, squint his eyes, and watch the sparks of random optical misfires ignite in his periphery.

  The dark was better than this, anyway – better than the pressure of leadership. In the light, whilst taking the lead, Byron was acutely aware of the awkwardness of hands.
Should he embrace hers strongly, to provide comfort? What if she found that painful, or worse, pathetic? What if she could discern that he was putting on a show of strength, and found the gesture appalling, or laughable? Should he barely breach her palm, embracing her limply, so as to best give the illusion of confidence? Did that imply that he was so relaxed he did not need to clutch at her like a child lost in the woods? Yes, perhaps that was the proper course. Or was a middling approach prudent: Maximize skin contact with minimal force so as to give the impression of a shared kind of intimac-

  “Fuck your mother’s mouth, Byron!” QC screamed, sharply knocking a shin on an archaic spool of fiber-optics.

  “Oop, apologies, my dear! My attentions were drawn elsewhere momentarily and-“

  “Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Take stock of your fucks, Byron, and be sure to shut them all immediately, because I swear to God there’s a storm coming, you hear me? There’s a god damn typhoon bearing down on you right now with a righteous fucking fury. So you batten down those fucks, okay? You just be as quiet as you can be, and you concentrate on getting me back where I can see as fast as you can, and without bashing my fucking shinbones to pudding in the process. Or else I swear to Christ, as soon as I can see again, I will hold your prissy head underwater so long It’ll make a giant batch of asshole tea out of the entire fucking Reservoir.”

  After enduring several hours of such creative obscenities, Byron began to find the tirades rather endearing. Peculiar urges arose within him whenever QC began composing her sonnets of filth and squalor. He wanted to soothe and placate her, even though she requested absolutely nothing of him beyond his self-inflicted death, or for him to fornicate with himself, his own mother, for his mother to fornicate with herself, or for them all to join together in an unholy orgy of incestuous self-molestation and suicide.

  “We have arrived,” he stated grandly, then carefully brought QC to a stop, pointed her head away from the light, and stepped in line behind her.

  He felt her unlatch her free hand from over her eyes, and something in the quality of their grips altered subtly. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, but Byron swore he felt a quantitative change in palm contact when their roles were swapped: He was happier when he was led; she was kinder when she was leading. It was for the best, really. Byron fell into the nervous, shuffling gait of the newly blind, and attempted to silence the unceasing monologue of doubts that plagued his every waking, sober moment.

  O, the Gas, the Gas! His kingdom for some Gas! Or rather, his kingdom for any drug at all right now. He’d even take a barbaric amphetamine or the thick, syrupy haze of an opioid. Regardless of the method, to simply not be Byron was the central driving motive of Byron’s entire existence.

  “Step up and forward here,” she said, pulling him along.

  He obeyed, though his foot contacted a shallow ledge, and he barely managed to haul himself up it.

  “See that?” She continued harshly, “that’s how you lead a blind motherfucker without bashing their knees to a god damn pulp, Byron.”

  She wrenched his hand down and pushed back against it: “Wait. Stop.”

  They froze.

  “People ahead,” her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, and she yanked him down into a low crouch.

  Byron doubted very much that ducking was a necessary maneuver, in this darkness, but QC at least could see perfectly, and her instincts operated under those parameters.

  “Maybe they’re friendly?” Byron ventured gently.

  “Nobody’s fucking friendly down here, Byron.”

  “A point,” he conceded, “Can we go around them then?”

  “Yeah…yeah, I think so: There are two of them off to the left here about fifty feet up. They’re on some kind of flat little boat tied to the side of the pier. I think they’re sleeping. We’ll go, but you stay flatter and quieter than roadkill, you understand? It’s dark now, and I can see fine. But if they get up and switch on some lights, we’re fucked. Ready?”

  “Not really,” Byron muttered, but she paid him no mind.

  Byron did his best to be both stealthy and fast, while utterly blind, on a rickety dock, and huddled up into a shuffling, duck-like waddle. But he could not will his legs to relax – the Gas cramps coming on again - and they burned unbearably with every mincing half-step.

  “How close are we?” He whispered nigh inaudibly in her general direction.

  She squeezed his hand sharply, viciously.

  “Ow!”

  Another squeeze. He felt her turn.

  “Quiet! Fuck! They’re right there!” She rasped, so quick and hushed it was almost lost in the shifting, rhythmic creak of boat against pier.

  He felt his face flush with chided embarrassment. They waddled on in terse silence for another half-dozen paces, before the sharp, searing snap of light. QC screamed. She released her grip on Byron instantly and used both hands to paw at her eyes. She knelt on the ground, hands to her face, and rocked there, moaning. A spotlight was shining directly on the pair of them from a space in the darkness a scant few meters to the left. Byron’s eyes were rapidly adjusting, but not rapidly enough. He put himself between the girl and the boat, and tried his best to look intimidating. This consisted of puffing his chest out and furrowing his brow; a posture even Byron knew read less of ‘anger’ and more of ‘gentle paternal disappointment.’

  “Two rats,” one voice said flatly.

  “One rat, one lass,” said another, long and mean and thickly accented.

  “Nah, looks like two rats to me. Ain’t much of a lass.”

  “I like ‘em little. You know.”

  “I say,” Byron spoke loudly, trying to make up for the quiver in his throat with sheer volume. “Hold your tongues! You are in the presence of a lady.”

  “Oh ho! We was wrong.”

  “So wrong.”

  “You see that? What is that?”

  “That’s a high class motherfucker, right there. That’s what that is.”

  “Maybe we ain’t got no rats here at all.”

  “Looks like one lass, one purse.”

  “We let rats go: Ain’t good eating, ain’t good pay, ain’t good fun. We take lasses,” the first voice said, oscillating fluidly now. Moving. Stepping off the boat, Byron realized.

  “We cut purses,” the other finished.

  “Run, shitbird!” QC screamed, reaching out one hand to plead with the open air.

  What few withered and useless instincts that remained in Byron’s neglected body wholeheartedly agreed with QC. But his rational brain interjected: It politely abutted the idea of him and QC stumbling through the cluttered dock pathways, in the dark, while large-sounding men with boats and searchlights pursued them, up against his own craven impulses. Miraculously, desperately, Byron opted not to hide in the dark this time.

  Instead, he reached down and grasped a long, thin length of nanobar at his feet. It was perhaps two and half feet, and solid, but still rather lightweight and springy – one small strand of the massive retaining webs that kept the city above from collapsing in on the empty dome of the Reservoir. Byron had never taken any of the defense classes his father pushed on him. He had no defensive nano-strains; he had no strains at all, actually, beyond a basic credit rig and a high end Rx induction setup (nanotech tended to obfuscate the Gas, occasionally cutting the trip short or landing him too far into the timeline). He had, in fact, done absolutely nothing but spend his entire adult life biographing his beloved Lord. And so Byron adopted the only combat posture he knew, from years of watching bloody battles and playful sparring; he adopted a fencing stance.

  “Think he want to tangle.”

  “Ha! Nah, he just want to dance a little.”

  The two voices laughed harder when Byron moved his body to en garde. He raised the bar in front of him and saluted, by reflex.

  “Looks terrible scary, don’t he? Think we should give him what he wants? Think I give him the tangle.”

  “Maybe I give him the dance.”

 
; One form stepped forward toward him, and Byron’s heart soared: The light was directly behind the man now. His every movement was broadcast crisply and clearly by his looming silhouette. Without thinking, Byron had already sidestepped the attacker’s oafish charge, and brought the whip-like bar down on the back of his knee as he passed. Byron turned quickly, using the momentum to fling his arm out in an arc, and contacted. The man had fallen into a crouch after the initial attack, and the slash engaged his skull. The hit landed solid, there was a nauseating kind of suck, and the obstacle yielded in a horrid way that made Byron quite certain the man would not be rising again.

  “Byron!” QC had picked up the sound, “Oh shit! Oh no!”

  Byron did not respond. He kept his gaze on the other form behind the light. This one was bigger. It moved slower, more cautiously.

  What few fights Byron had participated in throughout his objectively boring life were all via the Presence strain of gas, and he simply did not have enough training for the moves. They came slowly and sloppily, he knew. The real Lord Byron would have mocked him for an imprecise child, but the muscle memory was there, as long as he didn’t focus on it. The movements seemed almost to function on their own, if only Byron could keep his own panicked thoughts from intruding. He pushed down fleeting seconds of intense anxiety, the flawlessly logical doubts as to the inadequate levels of his own martial prowess, and the pronounced sense of embarrassment he felt at attempting to pass himself off as a warrior before this stranger. But he did not let it take: Byron shoved all higher functions violently away, and stared impassively toward the light, blank and waiting.

  There was no blind charge this time, and the man’s silhouette revealed something wicked and serrated in one hand. He circled Byron slowly, trying to put him in front of the light. But for every step the assailant took, Byron responded in turn. They jockeyed for position in this fashion for a few tense moments, but then the form conceded the better ground to Byron, and attacked regardless. He came in with a long, slow overhead strike, but something about it did not ring true: There had been too much careful positioning to be followed by such a clumsy stroke. Byron identified the feint for what it was, and responded with a false of his own: He flicked his wrist up to feign a block, keeping his forearm down. When the man suddenly twisted and reversed his blade to bring it in low, Byron enveloped it with his own bar, and flung it aside. The knife slapped against the dock and skittered away into the water with a plop. The bar reverberated in Byron’s hand, softly thrumming. The form froze for an instant, as if in shock, and Byron took the opportunity to execute a Passata-sotto, lunging with full force, one hand on the dock for support. He had expected his attacker to be thrown off guard, and was already moving into position for a Fleche to place the light at his front again, but instead, the shadow simply stumbled and went down into a heap.