Dark Space: Avilon

by Jasper T. Scott

  The cab hummed with the sound of its grav lifts, while Ethan sat studying the meter. He’d logged over a thousand klicks since his official shift had ended. Counting both shifts, first subtracting the cab company’s cut and government taxes, his take home pay was 246 bytes.

  Not bad for a day’s work, but not good enough.

  Ethan sighed, running shaking hands through his dark, salt-and-pepper hair. He was high on stims—the legal kind—and he was pushing himself far past the acceptable limits. Drivers weren’t supposed to work around the clock, but Ethan had begged and cajoled his boss, negotiating until the man’s small, beady brown eyes had acquired an avaricious gleam that made the folds of fat around his neck wobble with glee.

  “On one condition,” he said. “You don’t use your cab. You’ll ‘borrow’ a friend’s without permission, and if something . . . unfortunate happens to you or one of your passengers, I’ll deny any knowledge of your reckless working habits. Naturally, since this is off the record, I won’t be able to pay you the standard overtime for any additional hours you log after you punch out.”

  Ethan sighed. Eight hours plus four hours overtime on the record, and another six hours off. He hadn’t slept in what felt like forever, and despite the stims he’d been using to stay awake, he was exhausted. His mind felt brittle, like at any moment it might snap and he would go spinning off into the abyss, unable to even remember his name.

  Alara was at home, nine months and three days pregnant, and miserable. She was desperate to go into labor already.

  The hospital she worked for had given her maternity leave without pay, hence the reason Ethan was pushing himself so hard. She’d started her job pregnant. Ordinarily no one would hire a pregnant woman, but Omnius had pulled some strings when they’d come to the Null Zone, allowing Alara to start work as a nurse’s aid as soon as they’d arrived. Now, after losing her salary, they were two months behind with rent, and they were about to have a baby.

  More expenses.

  If they didn’t pay their rent soon, they’d be kicked out and have to look for a place closer to the surface. But there wasn’t much closer they could get. They were already living on level nine of the Grunge, one of the cheapest and most dangerous areas of the city. They had to wear sidearms when they walked the streets, and it was too dangerous to let Alara walk alone. Ethan knew how to a project a don’t-mess-with-me aura, but Alara was too pretty for her own good. Even pregnant, she attracted too much of the wrong kind of attention. Before she’d become too pregnant to work, Ethan had walked her to the grav train each morning and taken time off work to walk her home at night. He’d also made sure she dressed in enough layers so as to look like a hunchbacked old lady, rather than a stunning young woman.

  It seemed like the only people living in the Null Zone were the ones too depraved and delinquent to live in the upper cities, as if Omnius had physically kicked them out rather than simply left the door open for them to go.

  Besides the sub-human Psychos that seemed to be lurking in every alley, there were gangs patrolling everywhere, guarding their turf, and all but forcing people to buy a few doses of Bliss.

  Ethan grimaced; he wasn’t looking forward to the walk home. This time of night, there weren’t any trains, and auto-buses took a long time to get to the stops. That meant he’d have to walk almost eight blocks from the cab station to his apartment building—roughly four klicks. With his credit chip filled to overflowing with a whole day’s wages, he wasn’t sure he’d like to do that. Account transfers were limited to the so-called daylight hours so that thieves couldn’t threaten you into opening your entire bank account. In this case, though, they wouldn’t have to do that; they’d just force him to transfer the contents of his credit chip to theirs and disappear.

  Ethan briefly considered running those eight blocks home with his gun drawn and at the ready, but it was almost impossible to avoid an ambush on the surface if there was one waiting for you. The mist cloaked everything but a person’s hand in front of their face.

  Making a quick decision, he put a call through to Alara using the cab’s comm system. She answered a moment later, in full video. She was lying on the bed, the comm receiver resting on her pregnant belly.

  “Hey there, darling,” he said.

  “Ethan!” her face lit up with a smile. “When are you coming home?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to have to sleep in my cab.”

  “You forgot to transfer again,” she said.

  “It’s been a hectic day.”

  “All right . . . I guess. I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too, Kiddie. How’s the baby?”

  “She’s fine. Too comfortable in there.”

  “Can’t be long now. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, Kiddie? I love you.”

  “You’d better see me tomorrow,” she warned.

  “If there’s any kind of emergency, you give me a call right away, all right? I’ll come get you and fly you to the hospital myself.”

  “Okay. I love you, too. Try to get some sleep, and make sure you find a safe place to spend the night.”

  “I will.”

  The call ended, and Ethan pushed the throttle all the way up, roaring out of the alleyway. He was still far too pumped with stims to go to sleep. A night-cap was the only way he was coming down now. Maybe two.

  He gunned the cab’s thrusters and headed for the surface. Once there, he joined the traffic on the ground, slicing through the fog at top speed, using sensor overlays on the HUD to see his surroundings. Buildings were shaded green, cars and pedestrians red. He was so exhausted that everything was just a blur to him, and he found himself dodging obstacles automatically, his hands moving the flight yoke before his mind even registered why.

  He was headed for a bar in Thardris Tower. It was one of the safer buildings in the Grunge, because it went all the way up through all three cities, and it had drones standing watch at every entrance and exit. Thardris was the Grand Overseer of Avilon, and any building that bore his name couldn’t be left unguarded, to be ransacked by criminals.

  Ethan pulled into the parking lot, driving down into the first sub level of parking. He found that level full and had to descend three more before he found an open space. He snatched his credit chip from the driver’s side of the meter and grabbed the car’s ignition stick.

  Ethan breezed through the parking lot to the lift tubes. While waiting for one of the lifts to arrive, he debated between the ground level bar and the one above the city’s more decent, mid-level streets. He decided on the latter, since security would be tighter, and he was unlikely to get pick-pocketed if he accidentally fell asleep at the bar.

  The lift shot straight up to level 25. Striding through the bar, Ethan gazed up at the dome-shaped ceiling. It glowed a deep, twilight blue and shone with bright, twinkling lights that were meant to be stars. During the day, it was a dazzling, clear-sky blue with a bright orb shining down from the center that was meant to mimic the sun. The bar was full of cascading waterfalls and green, growing plants. The music was instrumental and ethereal, making Ethan forget for the moment that he was in the Null Zone. It was the most relaxing place he had found to date. After a few beers here, he always found he was in a better mood to go home.

  Stepping up to the bar, Ethan jumped up on one of the barstools and slapped his credit chip down on the counter. He signaled to the bartender and the woman came over to take his order. He asked for a Goldstone Ale, the cheapest drink on the menu.

  The bartender frowned at that.

  “Make it a pint.”

  She nodded and wordlessly slipped Ethan’s credit chip into her scanner. After scanning it and charging the necessary amount, she handed it back, shaking her head. “You’re the only customer I have who walks around with half a kilobyte on him and then orders the cheapest drink on the menu.”

  Ethan scowled and snatched his credit chip back from the bartender. Looking around carefully to make sure no one had overhead that, he said,
“How about you pour my ale and mind your own business.”

  The bartender, a woman who called herself Crow, of all things, narrowed her eyes, crinkling the skin around them into a bird’s nest of crows’ feet. Ethan wondered briefly if that was how she’d got her name. “Comin’ right up, boss.”

  Ethan’s drink slid across the counter a few moments later. He took the frosty mug in both hands and took a big sip of the frothy golden brew. He set it back down and sighed, letting the day’s stresses and stims melt away. He shut his eyes for a moment, just to rest them.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he started. His eyes flew wide, his heart pounded, and his hands tingled with a fresh shot of adrenaline. As if I haven’t had enough stims for one day . . .

  He turned to see who it was. The woman sitting next to him smiled, flashing a perfectly white, perfectly straight set of teeth at him.

  “If you just came here to sleep, you probably should have picked a booth,” she said, nodding to the adjacent wall, lined with booths. Each one had its own cascading fountain, and potted blue-flowering tree.

  “I’m sorry?” he said, lifting his mug for another sip, and studying her unusual eyes. Alara’s eyes were the rarest color he’d ever seen—a rich violet—but this woman’s were easily a match for hers, a deep, vibrant turquoise, the color of a tropical sea. Long, silken dark hair also reminded him of his wife’s.

  Ethan frowned, realizing from that just how much he missed Alara. He offered the stranger a grumpy look. “Do I know you?” His sarcastic tone was intended to scare her off. A young, pretty woman like her, alone at a bar like this one, and talking to an older man like him . . . she was either after money or a good time, and he wasn’t prepared to offer her either.

  “You fell asleep,” she explained. Her voice was soft and musical, her tone seductive. “I had to wake you up before you fell off that stool.”

  Ethan grunted and looked away.

  “Not much of a talker, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He took another sip of his beer. Rather than waste his energy on a reply, he raised his left hand and waggled his ring finger at her.

  “So? Married men can’t talk to strangers?”

  “Not the pretty ones.”

  “You think I’m pretty? You’re going to make me blush.”

  He glanced her way and found her smiling coyly. She fluttered long lashes at him.

  Ethan grunted again. “My wife would kill you.”

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  “Damn right I do. And we’re about to have a baby, so you can run along now and find some other sugar daddy. I don’t have any sugar, and I ain’t your daddy.”

  “No sugar? That’s not what I heard the bartender say when you ordered that ale. . . .”

  “You heard that.”

  “The whole bar heard—don’t worry, old Crow’s just sore because you’re a lousy tipper.”

  “How the frek would you know that?” Ethan demanded, looming over the bar toward her. “You been stalking me, girly?”

  “I saw you in here last night. After you left, the bartender was complaining about patrons like you to anyone who would listen.”

  “I can’t afford to be generous. I can’t even pay rent.”

  “No? Then how did you get five hundred bytes on your chip?”

  “Maybe I stole them from a little girl like you.”

  The woman laughed prettily as her drink arrived, a glowing green concoction in a martini glass. She took a modest sip and then turned back to him with a blissful expression. “You’re too young to be so bitter, Ethan.”

  Ethan started at that. “How do you know my name?”

  “Maybe I stole it from your Lifelink with my ARCs.”

  “I’m a Null. I’m de-linked. And you’re not wearing ARCs.”

  “You really think that Omnius de-links us before sending us down here? You’re more naive than you look, Ethan.”

  “How do you know my name?” he insisted.

  “I’ve taken a ride or two in your cab.”

  “And I told you my name?” He fixed her with a skeptical look.

  “It’s on your meter along with your license. Helps us passengers make sure we’re riding with a registered cabbie and not a thief who stole a cab to make abducting and robbing people easier.”

  Ethan nodded, half draining his mug before setting it down again. “Most people don’t pay attention to details like that, much less remember them.”

  “I’m not most people,” she said, still smiling.

  Ethan eyed her carefully. “I don’t remember you.”

  She shrugged. “I have a good memory.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” he said.

  “I got bored of eternity. You?”

  He smirked at her. “Don’t you think I’m too old to have dipped my feet into Omnius’s fountain of youth?”

  “Old yes, ugly no. You’re quite easy on the eyes, Ethan. Maybe you’re just making yourself look old so you won’t attract too much attention.”

  He waggled his ring at her again. “Careful there, girly.”

  “I’m a bit too old for you to be calling me, girly.”

  “Yeah? Well, you don’t look it.”

  “Not many people do these days.”

  “Omnius does like to turn everything upside down, doesn’t he? Old becomes young, ugly becomes pretty, and wrong becomes right.”

  “You’re not a fan.”

  “You’re a Null so obviously neither are you.”

  She leaned conspiratorially close and whispered. “So what are you doing about that? Sitting at a bar, drowning your sorrows with cheap ale? Sounds like you’ve given up.”

  “I’m tired of fighting. First the Sythians, and now this krak? Frek it. I’ll just be happy if I die of natural causes.”

  “I don’t believe that. When you’re done with that drink of yours maybe you’d like to join me in my car and I can drive you around for a change. We can discuss ways that you could better live your life, rather than sit around here talking about ways that it might end.”

  Ethan cracked a lopsided smile and shook his head. “Nice of you to offer, but I don’t think you want to see my wife when she’s angry.” He drained his mug and hopped off his barstool.

  The young woman grabbed his arm in a surprisingly firm grip, stopping him before he left.

  Ethan eyed her hand. “Let go.”

  “No.”

  “Let go, or I’ll break it.”

  She let go and treated him to another pretty laugh. This time there was a brittle edge to it. “You really are a piece of work, Ethan,” she said.

  “Said the woman hitting on a married man.”

  “Relax. I’m not trying to get inside your pants. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Really. How’s that?”

  She nodded sideways, indicating a corner booth in the bar. A pair of young men were sitting there, sipping cheap ales, and eyeing him. When they noticed him glancing their way, they averted their eyes and pretended to study the depths of their drinks.

  “I think they overheard how much money you’re carrying on that cred chip.”

  “They’re skinny as frek. I might actually enjoy the chance to take my frustrations out on something other than my pillow.”

  “You might want to look again, Ethan. See the way they’ve shaved their eyebrows?”

  “They’re a dozen meters away, and you’re asking if I can see their eyebrows?”

  “They don’t have any. That means they’re White Skulls. Below level 10 the Grunge is their territory, Ethan. They’ll rob you, stab you, shoot you, and drop you down a garbage chute before you can even throw the first punch.”

  Ethan snorted and patted his sidearm. “They’re welcome to try.”

  “That’s Peacekeeper issue, isn’t it? They gave it to you when you came down here. You ever try to use it?”

  “Why?” he asked, his eyes narrowing s
uspiciously.

  “Nothing, just that I hope you’re a good shot. It’s only good for two. Suppose they have a friend waiting in an alley?”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  Ethan left, not bothering to leave a tip at all this time. There was something unsettling about that young woman’s turquoise eyes. He could have sworn he’d seen her somewhere before, but then again, she knew him from his cab, so he supposed it wouldn’t be too strange if he recognized her, too. It was hard to miss a face like hers.

  By the time Ethan reached sub level four of the parking garage, he became acutely aware of just how far he’d parked from the nearest entrance. His hand drifted to his sidearm and remained there, resting on the butt as he glanced around, his eyes wide and darting through the shadows. He wondered if that young woman had just been messing with him, or if his sidearm really was next to useless. . . .

  It took him a few minutes just to catch sight of his car. Then came a sudden crunch of gravel, and two young men melted out of the shadows. They weren’t the two he’d seen in the bar on level 25, but they didn’t have any eyebrows. White skulls. The ones in the bar had been spotters, and these two were their accomplices.

  Ethan drew his sidearm.

  One of them laughed and spread his arms wide, presenting his chest as an open target. “Go ahead! Shoot!”

  Ethan pulled the trigger and a dazzling blue-white bolt of light zapped out, hitting the young thug in the chest. He sunk to his knees, grinning and shuddering with involuntary muscle spasms. Behind him, his partner in crime likewise opened fire, and Ethan got to appreciate firsthand just how hard it was to resist a stun blast. He wasn’t grinning. His legs turned to jelly and he flopped backward and fluttered around like a fish out of water. He lay gasping and blinking up at the shadowy gray ceiling of the parking garage.

  As the spasms began to fade, two pale faces sans-eyebrows appeared looming over him. One of them hefted a much bulkier version of the pistol Ethan wore and pressed the barrel to his temple. The other one raised a finger to his lips and grinned. He was the one Ethan had stunned.

  How the frek did he get up so fast? Ethan’s own muscles were still immobilized, his brain screaming for them to respond.