Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  He exhales and looks down at his feet, realizing how he sounds. Accusatory, mean-spirited, and just plain enraged. He is ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . I was just . . . I was worried.”

  She keeps her eyes fixed on his face as he trails off. “Forget it. Tell me about Holly. How’s her leg?”

  He is eager to move on. “They treated her with a regenerative tissue wrap. Said they would keep her there until she was well enough to move around on her own. Penny-Bird is staying with her. You should have seen how she cradled Holly’s head in her arms on the way here. She says she’s going to look after Holly.”

  Cay nods. “They belong together, those two. Penny with Ponce and the Razor Boys was never right. It drove Holly crazy. Maybe this time they can manage to work things out.”

  “They’re more than sisters, aren’t they?”

  She shrugs. “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “I don’t think I should do that.”

  “Then why are you asking me?”

  She engages the Bryson’s heavy drive train, and the bulky machine eases into a long, sweeping turn.

  “You know what your trouble is?” she says, pointing the Bryson back the way she had come. There is anger in her voice now. “You want to pigeonhole everyone. You like the idea of a world all nicely ordered and dependable. But that isn’t how things are. People are messy and changeable. The world is fluid; the people who inhabit it are chameleons. You want to think of everyone as stable and identifiable, but they aren’t.”

  “That’s not so,” he says. “I don’t think that way.”

  “Yes, you do, whether you admit it or not. You need to pay better attention to how things work. People hide themselves in plain sight all the time. They show you what they want you to see, but they conceal the rest. Otherwise they would be so vulnerable they wouldn’t be able to function.”

  “You seem to manage it all right.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that you don’t seem to worry about hiding things. Oh, except from me, of course.”

  He loses it. Just like that, he lets his temper get away from him. But he stares at her defiantly nevertheless.

  Cay keeps her eyes on the road, concentrating on her driving. She doesn’t even glance at him. “What’s going on here? Does this have something to do with how you see me? Have you finally decided that I’m more pleasure synth than real girl?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “I think maybe you have. Let’s lay a few cards on the table. What if I told you I’ve been with so many men I’ve lost count. How would you see me then? Pleasure synth or real girl?”

  He stands on a precipice. A wrong answer here will banish him to the edges of her life for good.

  “I’d see you the same way I’ve always seen you, right from the moment we met. Smart. Funny. Tough. Beautiful. The rest doesn’t matter.”

  “Is that so? It matters to everyone else.”

  “I’m not everyone else.”

  “No, you’re more deluded.”

  “Must be so! Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in love with you!”

  He just blurts it out, not really meaning to, but carried away by his dismay over what is happening.

  She takes a long moment to reply. “Being in love with me is a waste of time, Ash. No one should be in love with me.”

  Her face so clearly reflects a mix of sadness and proud defiance that he is almost brought to tears.

  “Why would you say that?” he asks. “Is it wrong for me to feel like this about you? When I look at you, I don’t see a pleasure synth. I never have. I see a real girl just like any other girl, only better in every possible way. I don’t care how many men you’ve been with. It doesn’t matter. I only care about one thing. Finding out how I can be with you.”

  “You can’t be with me,” she says instantly. “Not ever.”

  His temper flares anew. “No? Why not? Because you’re too busy with my uncle?”

  The words are out before he can stop them. Or maybe he wants them out, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He feels defiant and strong as he speaks them. Speaking them is empowering.

  She nods slowly. “So that’s what this is all about.” She makes it a statement of fact, a cold assessment of everything he’s been dancing around. “You saw me with him.”

  “I saw you on the vidviews. Everyone saw you. Bigger than life, there you were—with my uncle! Even though you told me you weren’t going to be at the Sprint. But I guess what you meant is you weren’t going to be there with me.”

  He is so tangled up by his emotions, he almost breaks down. Too much has happened over too short a period of time, and he questions whether any of it has been good. It takes everything he has to hold himself together.

  She still doesn’t look at him. Her eyes are fixed on the roadway ahead. Her face is troubled, her posture rigid. “You have no idea, do you? No idea at all.”

  “No idea about what? What are you saying?”

  She shakes her head. “Not now. We’ll talk about it later.”

  He decides he better leave things where they are. But he is determined not to allow her to pretend the matter is settled. This conversation is far from over.

  “Where are we going?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “Street Freaks.”

  “Street Freaks!” he exclaims. “But Achilles Pod has it in lockdown, and . . .”

  “They’ve gone,” she interrupts. “Back to wherever it is they go when they’re not out finding fresh ways to terrify people. They’ve closed off the public entry, but the building is empty. I checked it out. Jenny needs us to retrieve her computer records and storage links before someone finds a way to download the information they contain. They are concealed and encrypted, but there’s always the possibility the wrong person will find a way to hack in if given enough time. She can do some downloading and wiping off-site, but not all. So it’s up to us.”

  Ash nods. It makes sense. Those records are valuable. They are also probably revealing. If he and the others are vacating Street Freaks for good, Jenny will want to close up shop.

  “What about the Shoe?”

  Cay keeps her eyes on the road as she considers her answer. “He got back before me. He’s still there.”

  “What if the black-clads make a return visit?”

  “They won’t.”

  There is an edge to her voice he doesn’t understand. “How do you know they won’t?”

  She doesn’t look at him. “They have no reason to.” She pauses long enough to glance over. “Stop talking, Ash. We’ll be in and out of there soon enough. Ask your questions then.”

  They reach the warehouse without incident and pull through the rear gates to park close to the back of the building. Cay triggers a control attached to the dash, and the doors slide open. They drive inside and slow down enough for Ash to see that Ponce’s body has disappeared and the floor has been cleaned.

  “Dumped him in an industrial waste disposal unit down the block and scrubbed the floors,” she says, anticipating his question. “There’s no evidence that anything ever happened here.”

  She drives on, triggering the ramp doors to the underground. They drive down the tunnel to its far end before pulling into the dimly lit recesses below the Street Freaks building. It looks exactly as it did when Ash fled Achilles Pod. There is no sign of entry. Nothing has been disturbed. Apparently, the black-clads did not discover the hidden trapdoor in the broom closet.

  Cay brings the Bryson Utility to a stop. They climb out and walk over to the stairs leading up to the main floor. When they exit the broom closet, he sees that all of the computers and files have reappeared from beneath the floor of Jenny’s office, everything activated, the machines humming away busily. Either a transfer or an erasure or both is in progress.

  Cay gestures. “I had Jenny set the download in motion earlier by remote signal, transferring everything to a portable hard drive concealed in the cellar
walls. Once the download is complete, we have to wipe what’s left on the hard drives. Otherwise, we risk ORACLE finding out what we’ve done.”

  The way she says it tells him that Cay has made the decision to wrap up matters at Street Freaks, not Jenny. In some way, the pecking order among the kids has changed again, and now the least likely among them has taken charge.

  Although, is she really all that unlikely a leader? This girl who not only can drive a street machine as well as T.J. could but also has the willingness to seduce the worst of her enemies in order to spy on them? She is a mixture of contradictions, and Ash is not sure he should assume anything.

  “This way,” she says, breaking into his thoughts. “The Shoe’s out in the bays.”

  They leave the office and go out into the main floor of the garage. Sunlight pours through the windows of the bay doors in long, hazy streamers, brightening the room. Hand tools remain fastened in their assigned places along the back walls. All the lifts are down, and there are no machines present or evidence of work being done. The room looks empty and undisturbed.

  It isn’t.

  Halfway down the length of the room, directly in the center of Bay 3, the Shoe hangs from a rope. Ash knows it’s him without having to take a second look. The brightly colored, well-tailored blue and silver is immediately recognizable. His arms hang limply at his sides, the toes of his soft-soled boots point down. One end of the rope that suspends him is attached to an O-ring embedded in the ceiling. The other is looped about his throat. His head angles sharply to one side; the neck bones and cartilage have given way.

  His face is indescribable. A death mask of pain and misery contorts his features. His end was clearly difficult, slow and agonizing, filled with suffering.

  A chair lies beneath his feet, tipped on its side. It appears the Shoe stood upon it and, after putting the rope around his neck, kicked it away.

  “That’s how I found him when I arrived earlier,” Cay says softly. She shakes her head. “Cyrus must have found out what the Shoe tried to do about you and didn’t much like it.”

  Ash stares, unable to turn away. He feels Cay’s hands grip his shoulders, and she turns him to face her. “Look at me. Ash, look at me. I don’t want you going into shock. I need you.”

  He realizes his eyes are unfocused, staring at nothing. He meets her gaze. “Why would he kill himself?”

  “He wouldn’t. It’s meant to look like he did. It ties everything up nicely for certain people. Despondent over the death of his driver, the crash of his prized car, and the collapse of his business, the Shoe kills himself. Too bad, but life goes on.”

  He nods, numbed by the casual dismissiveness the killing represents. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him that way. Shouldn’t we take him down?”

  “If we do, we reveal that we’ve been here. It also opens up the question of how we got in. Better if people think we never came back at all. The Shoe is dead. It doesn’t matter what becomes of him now.”

  She leans into him, the look in her eyes dark and dangerous. “The Shoe overreached himself. He played a game he was not suited for. He always did think himself smarter than anyone else. But your uncle knew what he was doing. I tried to warn him; I told him to back away. He just smiled and insisted everything would work out. And I think he really believed that. But after the debacle with Starfire, it was just a matter of time until Cyrus settled accounts—first with us, then with the Shoe. I told you before. Your uncle isn’t anyone to play games with.”

  “How do you know all this?” Ash asks hesitantly.

  She gives him a look. “How do you think?”

  “But didn’t my uncle know who you were?”

  “He thought he knew who I was. He made some assumptions about who I was. Big difference. Don’t ask me for an explanation just now. Maybe later.” She backs away. “Come into the office with me. We’ll wait there for the downloading to finish.”

  He does as she asks. There is a lot going on that he doesn’t understand, but he knows he must be patient. He is horrified by what has happened but oddly resigned as well. They are all pawns in a much larger game, one that none of them fully understands. They are all at risk of ending up like the Shoe.

  They sit in chairs across the desk from each other, listening to the computers work their magic, staring off into space.

  “The Shoe was the only real parent I ever had,” Cay says after a time. “He was kind to me. He took care of me. He did that when no one else would. Everyone else just wanted to use me. But he cared about me in all the ways that mattered.” She paused. “He loved me. He never asked for anything from me. Not once.”

  “But you couldn’t save him, could you?”

  She shakes her head. “Didn’t find out quickly enough to do anything about it. Found out Achilles Pod was coming for the rest of you, so I was able to do something to help you. But not him.”

  “You were with my uncle?”

  She sighs. “Would you please stop asking questions when you already know the answers. Stop tiptoeing around, why don’t you ask me what you really want to know.”

  But he can’t do that. He is afraid of the answer. He knows hearing her give it will be too much for him to bear. He has to hope that what seems obvious isn’t.

  She is angry now, and he backs off from further questions about his uncle and her. He can barely stand to think about it, but he has to assume there is more to this than he knows. He has to believe in her if he wants to get through this.

  The minutes crawl by. It is taking longer than expected to download the contents of the last computer. Cay wanders over to the front doors of the building and peers out at the Straightaway. Traffic is heavy, and night is coming on. There are no lights on inside the building; Cay has been careful to do nothing that would attract attention. Even the computer screens have been dimmed to black. As she stands at the door of the office, the hum and click of the computers providing a steady backdrop to her meditations, Ash watches her. He wonders again at the contradictions she represents. He wonders again about her life outside Street Freaks. She is a pleasure synth spending time with powerful men. She is mercurial and secretive, and she refuses to explain herself. She is older than the sum of her years; she is experienced and tough.

  But sometimes, like now, she looks so young.

  “No sign of Achilles Pod,” she says as she walks back. She enters the office and checks the progress of the download. “Good. We’re almost done.”

  Ash moves up beside her. “Too bad we can’t get more of what we need out of BioGen. If they’re behind all this, then that’s where the answers probably are.”

  She shrugs without looking up. “Maybe not. Maybe they’re someplace else.”

  Someplace else.

  Her words fade, but as they do, they trigger a faint recollection. Images from his dreams abruptly recall themselves. As if a door into his mind has opened and a past he has forgotten is glimpsed, he hears a voice—his father’s voice—speaking to him.

  One day, you will need this information. So I am hiding it somewhere safe, someplace no one will think to look . . .

  The words fragment, the sentence unfinished. Where is this coming from? A memory, suddenly recalled.

  Someplace safe? Where?

  He looks over at Cay, startled. “I had a dream last night. At least, I thought it was a dream. But now I think maybe it was a memory.”

  “A memory?”

  “About something that was done to me. By my father.”

  She gives him a puzzled look. “Can you describe this memory?”

  He tells her about the medical facility, the long hallway with the closed doors, the faceless medical man in white, the examination room, and the way he felt afterward as he was being guided back down the hallway. He repeats the words that were spoken to him, the ones he has just now remembered. Words that until now were hidden from him.

  “It was my father, Cay. I’m certain of it.”

  Cay shakes her head. “I don’t know, Ash.
Your own father performed surgery on you? And you’re just remembering this?”

  “I know. But I have an idea. What if remembering now has something to do with my not taking ProLx? You said the lab tests on my DNA revealed traces of a suppressant in my blood. What if that was the purpose of the ProLx? What if it was intended to suppress my memories? And now, because I’m not taking it, it’s not happening anymore.”

  She shakes her head. “But it would have to be a selective suppression, or all your memories would be gone. How could that be possible? No one makes a drug that does that.”

  “No one we know of. But what if my father did? He invented Sparx, didn’t he? Why couldn’t he have invented this? How big a jump is it to go from targeted mood enhancers to selective suppressants?”

  He exhales sharply. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I can’t help thinking maybe it isn’t. This dream—it wasn’t like real dreams. You remember real dreams for a little bit, if at all, and then you forget them. But this dream, it’s still there, clear and sharp. Like a memory would be if it were important. I think it really happened . . .”

  He trails off, sudden flashes of other memories coming back in flurries and then in waves. “Wait a minute, I’m remembering something else . . . a lot of . . . words and images . . . just sort of exploded from nowhere . . .”

  He buries his face in his hands, his palms pressing against his eyes. He is right on the edge of remembering everything, so close he feels as if he can almost touch it. He lifts his head and looks at her.

  “He told me what he was going to do.” He can hear the

  disbelief in his voice. Can hear the hesitation as he struggles to find the right words. “He said it would be necessary to suppress my memory of what he was telling me. Not wipe it clean—just hide it. Keep it from being discovered. Surgery would be necessary. Not a dangerous procedure, he said. Just a tweak.”

  He startles himself, realizing what he has just said and what it means about him. T.J.’s words come back to him. How was he tweaked? He wasn’t, Ash had replied. But, in fact, he was. Just not in the same way as they were.