DIRE : BORN

by Andrew Seiple

  Quantum shook his head. “We can't rule it out or verify it one way or the other. Not here, not now. At any rate, there's not much good to be done here, and the him arby needs us patrolling, keeping the peace. Everyone good to go?”

  Him arby? I must have misheard that.

  I started the ball rolling back to me, and a voice crackled down from the aircraft. “Hang on. Movement at eight o clock.” I froze, stopped the drone with a gesture. There was someone up there, monitoring from above.

  A tense minute, as the rubble shifted. I could hear them moving around, looking, but the lens was at a bad angle to see anything. Quantum's voice was loud and clear, at least. “Schrodinger, can we get some lights down here?”

  Well, shit. I rolled the lens around, looking for cover, and found little. This was the gutter, and... and wait. If I went down far enough, I'd find a storm drain. To hell with stealth! I bolted the ball down the street, and popped it down the first drain I found, ignoring Kinetica's shout.

  With all the casual motions I could muster, I turned and slipped into the night, past the scattered onlookers. As I walked I simultaneously controlled the drone, and tried to find a way back to the surface. Behind me I heard the jet lift off, the heroes evidently done wasting time. Good! I'd dodged a bullet there; I had the feeling that they would have asked questions I couldn't answer.

  I was so engrossed with maneuvering the drone, that I didn't notice the group forming ahead of me until they were thirty feet away.

  “Hey.” The guy in the lead grinned, white teeth in the darkness. He wore a heavy leather jacket, and an armband with a skull on it. Just like the five men behind him, and the two spreading out to flank me.

  “Nice mask, babe. You look lost. Why don't you come with us?”

  I killed the screen on the drone, and put my hands in my pockets, finding the forcefield generator. It would guard me against bullets, I knew. But slow-moving attacks like fists or knives wouldn't be stopped— they wouldn't trigger the field. My free hand crawled up to my belly, finding the butt of the pistol at my waist.

  “SHE DECLINES.”

  The group backed the hell up, surprised by my roar. It had bought me a second. I knew that if I capitalized on their surprise I could get a head start, flee the scene and possibly lose them among the rubble and backstreets.

  And yet... and yet I felt disinclined to do so. Something in me balked at running any further, since I'd done plenty of that this night. And something else within me knew that these punks were no real threat to me, unless I got very stupid.

  That said, I was outnumbered, and my force field couldn't handle it if they closed.

  Next step: Intimidation.

  I jerked my pistol free, popped the safety off, and held it pointing down. “DEPART. SHE WILL LEAVE NOW, AND HAS NO TIME FOR YOU.”

  Half of them stepped back. The other half started drawing their own guns I stood my ground. I had hoped they would switch to something the force field could stop, and they'd obliged.

  “You come on our street!” yelled the leader, waving some sort of large-caliber pistol around. “You come on our street and tell us what to do? You fucking know who we are?” He moved a step toward me, moved a few more when I kept my gun lowered.

  “NO. NOR DOES SHE CARE. SHE'S LEAVING, FEEL FREE TO DO THE SAME.”

  “Bitch, we're the Black Bloods! And you're meat!”

  By this point he was up to me, screaming in my face from a few feet away. I glared at him from under my mask, started to raise my hand, and he shot me.

  A flare of light as the force field did its job, a whine as the bullet ricocheted off into the distance, a crack as it hit a wall, and a dull thud from his head as I slammed the gun's butt into his cheekbone. He staggered back a few steps, and my foot met his groin so hard that it hurt my toes. He folded to the ground, a shriek escaping his throat as he went.

  “RIGHT. ANYONE ELSE WANT TO FORFEIT FUTURE REPRODUCTIVE POTENTIAL? COME ON. SHE HASN'T GOT ALL NIGHT.”

  Low muttering among the remaining punks, and another one shot at me. The force field flared again, and I rolled my eyes. Real geniuses, here. Still, they'd deplete the field's charge if they kept it up. Looked like there was no help for it... I raised the gun, and they started to move toward cover.

  “Hey,” came a voice from a side-alley. It was followed by the “click” of a safety, and the remaining punks froze. I knew that voice.

  “HELLO ROY.”

  The old man nodded to me, never taking his squinting eyes or the point of his gun away from the black-jacketed youths. “So. You boys are in what we used to call a crossfire ambush right now. She's got the east, and I've got her flank.”

  One of them, a Hispanic kid with a ton of rings on his hands, shook his head. “This ain't your business, Roy.”

  “She's one of mine, Caso.”

  “She's on our turf, old man.”

  “Just out seeing the fireworks. We're only a street or two away. You know we got nothin' worth taking. Nothing worth the bullets that'd come your way.”

  They shifted.

  “SHE DOESN'T REALLY NEED YOUR HELP, ROY. SHE CAN TAKE CARE OF HERSELF.” I lowered the gun, started walking toward the end of the street. The two punks in my way backed to either side, step by step.

  One of them sneered. “That mask looks kinda nice, Roy. Maybe we'll come take it tomorrow. In the night, when no one can see. When no one will come when you scream.”

  Roy shook his head and came out of the alley, keeping pace with me as I walked, covering the nearest ones that were packing heat. “You do that, you might wake Sparky up. He has flashbacks somethin' fierce, might think you're all Krauts. Horrible death, electrocution.”

  One of them glanced between me and Roy, reached into his jacket and took a step toward Roy... and flinched back, screaming as I suddenly ran at him and roared.

  “GET LOST!”

  I moved back, and we were out of the group, walking back under the highway. I noted absently that traffic up above had slowed, shaping up into a massive jam for as far as Icould see. All that from a quick glance, as I moved my gaze back to the youths, watching them over my shoulder as we departed.

  Another of them grinned toward me, made a gesture that I doubted was a salute. “This ain't over. Times change, old man. City's dark, it's the end times, and the Black Bloods rule the night.”

  “You started this shit with one of mine,” Roy said, facing them fully and backing up a tad slower than I was moving. “Sangre tells me we got troubles, I'll buy it. But you forced this, Caso, you and the new eunuch over there. So I don't think he'll be too sympathetic about your fuckup.”

  They were silent then, as they watched us go. I didn't relax until we had descended the steps down to the beach, and were out of a direct line of sight. Somewhere along the way my screen-inside-a-screen view of the ball drone gave me the option to shut it down to conserve power, and I took it. I could always retrieve it tomorrow.

  Flicking the safety of the army pistol back on, I tucked it away as I glanced over to Roy. He shook his head, and put his pistol back into its own holster.

  “Don't take this the wrong way, but you might have just brought some shit down on us.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it as I remembered that I hadn't found the volume control for the mask yet. I pulled it off my head, and glared at him. He glared back, then looked away.

  “Scavengers, yes? They saw what they thought was weakness and went after it. Their choice, not Dire's.” A beeping from my pocket reminded me that the forcefield was still on. That sound indicated a diminishing charge. I reached in and turned it off.

  “Yeah, you're right, but that don't matter much to them.” Roy sighed, ran his hand over the back of his head. “This'll cause us trouble, so we have to figure out what to do.”

  “You could have left her. Dire could have taken care of herself.”

  “No I couldn't. If I had you would've had to shoot someone. Then it'd be blood on the streets, and it'd be worse for ev
eryone. The Black Bloods take that shit serious. This at least was pretty private, and no permanent harm was done. Little bit of a loss of face, and they might take it out on us, but we probably won't have to hand you over to make'em happy.”

  “You'd do that?” I asked.

  “Hell no. I know what they'd do to you.” He kicked an empty bottle across the beach, watched it shatter on a rock. “Fuck it all. Wasn't a good neighborhood before those gangers showed up, now it's worse. They're evil plain and simple, and no one gives a shit.”

  I frowned. “Police?”

  “Underfunded, overworked. Call them and wait half an hour and maybe they'll show.”

  “There were heroes at that collapsed building. Tomorrow Force.”

  “They don't come round here unless there's other costumes involved. And they don't stick around. Heroes show up, the Bloods run'em out or hide until they're gone. Heroes leave sooner or later, Bloods come out again and anyone who ratted them out or talked bad about'em disappears in the night.”

  We moved past the old showerhouse, back toward the tents.

  I frowned. “What purpose do the Bloods serve?”

  “Themselves.”

  “They have no function within your societal structure?”

  “You got a weird-ass way of talking.”

  “She is asking whether or not they do anything beneficial for your group, this area, or the other cultures within.”

  “Oh. Well, no. They sell drugs, but I wouldn't call that good. They keep other gangs out, but most of the other ones are better than they are. Still assholes in their own unique ways, but not as bad overall. No, they're pretty much bad for the Brownstones.” Roy looked at me again, shook his head as we approached the women's tent. “Look. Get some sleep. They won't come tonight, not after I dropped Sangre's name. We'll talk it over tomorrow, if it needs talking.”

  I nodded, moved to the doorway, and paused.

  “Why did you follow Dire in the first place?”

  “I heard a gunshot up the beach, then saw you walkin' away from there. I was suspicious so I followed.”

  What? I'd used a silencer—

  No. No I hadn't. I'd used a makeshift noise baffle, and evidently it hadn't worked as well as I'd hoped. Probably would have worked better with a smaller caliber gun. I'd remember that for the future. Roy continued, as I mused.

  “And you got the look of someone who doesn't belong out here. You look soft. I kept an eye on you, figgerin' something was up, that maybe you were a criminal trying to lie low, or a spy of some sort for some reason or the other. When you snuck away I followed. Then you put that weird mask on. Didn't know what to think.”

  I chuckled. “For the record, neither does she. Well, for what it's worth, thank you for the assistance.”

  “Hey. Woulda been wrong if I didn't help out. Besides, if I let them take one of mine, I look weak, and you never want to look weak to enemies. But you're welcome. We'll talk in the morning.” Then he was gone, back to the campfire, and his friends.

  I found my little enclosure and secured my belongings under the sheets, then I curled around them and let myself relax. Sleep found me in short order, and I didn't dream.

  CHAPTER 3: Fixing Facilities and Fighting Fools

  “The advantage of this approach, is that you're going in as a virtual unknown. Keep your intellect hidden and downplay the fact that you're a supergenius, and you'll have ample time to set up shop and figure out who the players are.”

  --Excerpt #47 from the Dire Monologues

  I woke in the pre-dawn light, night's darkness replaced by gray nothing. For a minute I lay there, taking stock before I tried my treacherous memory again. Nothing. At least I felt a little better. Though I was quite thirsty, and my bladder ached something fierce. I remembered Joan's words, and padded outside, looking for the port-a-john. After doing my business I hastily returned to the warmth of the tent, shivering under my clothes.

  A few people nodded to me as I passed, and more scrutinized me with no particular emotion. Most seemed to still be asleep.

  I could use this quiet time.

  Returning to my partitioned section, I pulled open my backpack, and started pulling out the tools and toys I'd taken from my lair.

  The force field generator was down to half-charge. The universal remote was still at full. The mask... didn't seem to have a charge indicator. I tried feeling around on it for buttons, switches, anything. Nothing.

  How the devil was I supposed to figure out the interface for this thing? I could wear it and try random actions and commands, but if it was going to make my voice shout every time I said something, that would draw a hell of a lot of attention.

  I puzzled over it for a minute, then slapped my forehead as the solution occurred to me. I had a universal remote!

  I pointed the remote at the mask, and hit the most-likely seeming button, a green key. The inside of the mask lit up like a black screen, as green words appeared. Lots of green words. Pointing the remote at various words highlighted them with a lighter shade of green, and hitting the button on the remote turned options on and off.

  After some fiddling, I found that I could turn the mask into the equivalent of a tablet computer. The inside layer of it was touch-sensitive. I also found out that it was down about an eighth of its charge. I'd have to find a way to recharge it as well.

  I had a lot of fun little toys, but they all took power to run. It looked like all of them were set up to pull power from the direct broadcast grid of the city, but the “no connection” icons on each of them told me that the grid was still down. So what did that leave? Generators? Batteries? I didn't have any of those. Were those things available in the camp? I didn't know. Thanks to my memory loss, I had no knowledge of the area, the local economies, or how affordable those items might be.

  Given the fact that the tents weren't lit up at night, I rather doubted that these items were available. It was a basic human urge, to dispel darkness, to illuminate the unseen. That we weren't doing it meant that it was infeasible.

  I knew that. How did I know that? I rubbed my forehead, wondering at the limitations of my amnesia, wondering what had been done to my poor, abused brain. When it came to technological matters I almost seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of things. I knew what police were and I understood that homelessness on this scale was an indicator of serious social problems. I got concepts in general. Broad strokes were easy. I knew what tablet computers were. I knew that the city ran on a broadcast-energy network, a basic Tesla model that had been around for decades. But what I didn't know could fill volumes.

  I hadn't known which city I was in. I didn't know which war Roy was talking about, or who Tomorrow Force might be. I knew what books were, but I couldn't remember ever having read one. I couldn't identify the major scientists or leaders of the past century, or the one before that, but I could call to mind scientific theories and laws with names attached to them. It was all very frustrating.

  I heard footsteps approaching, so I put everything back into my backpack, forcing the zipper shut again as I looked over my shoulder.

  “You. New one.” An unfamiliar female voice.

  “Yes?” I returned. The woman took it as an invitation, and moved the partition's entry cloth aside with one arm. A blonde woman somewhere around my age, vaguely pretty, but sturdy and taller than me. That seemed rare. I was taller than most other women I'd seen around here, and she had several inches on me. One of her eyelids was slashed with an old scar, and the eye didn't quite follow the gaze of its twin. That scar and a few others on her face seemed to bear testimony to some past trauma. She wore a purple coat that was too tight on her, and a big, striped scarf.

  “Joan is want to speak with you.” Her voice had an accent to it.

  I remembered what I had been told. “You are Minna?”

  “Yes.”

  I rose and followed her. She stopped to check on a couple of other partitioned areas as we went, at one point querying a small blonde girl wit
h some rapid-fire torrent of words I didn't understand. The girl answered back, and Minna tousled her hair with one hand. In another room, she grabbed a bottle of water out of a styrofoam cooler, looked at me, and handed me another when I nodded and stretched out a hand. It was cold and sweet and good. Minna just grunted when I thanked her for it.

  She led me outside. In the light of the rising sun, the camp was a lot smaller then it had looked last night. Perhaps about twenty tents, the smallest set up for a single person, the largest half-again the size of the one I was rooming in. As far as permanent structures went, there were three or four scrap-metal shacks, and that showerhouse over at the edge of things. A black spray-painted skull was drawn across the wall of it, with red paint weeping from the eyes.

  “Hey! Miss Dire!” Ah, there she was. Joan waved from her spot near the smoldering burn barrel in the center of things. Sparky was next to her, smiling absently toward the sky, eyes shut as he reclined in his chair.

  I noted that he had his grounding mechanism up. Probably wouldn't do to touch him right now. I found a seat next to Joan instead, crossing my legs and settling on the cold ground.

  She looked over at me, chewed on her lower lip for a bit before she spoke. “Roy told me what happened.”

  I nodded. “For what it's worth, Dire has no wish to bring trouble down upon you and yours. Thought it over this morning, decided she can leave if you wish.”

  “No. They wouldn't believe us if we told them you'd run. And you're probably pretty safe here. I don't think they'd mess with Roy and Sparky over hurt feelings. Not without something on the line.”

  “How about hurt testicles?”

  Joan barked a laugh, and Minna joined in. It was harsh and raspy, as if the younger woman's throat had been damaged. Their breath puffed out in the cold like smoke, and I pulled my sweater a bit tighter around myself.

  “Eh, it's okay,” Joan said, sniffing. “They'll take it out on someone else. Probably. So... Roy said you had a mask? Can I see it?”

  I flicked my gaze over her, glanced at Minna, who stared back with no real expression on her cut face. Joan smiled, and the expression seemed honest enough. I unzipped the pack and showed it to her.