The Scorpion Game

by Daniel Jeffries

  ***

  Rukhsana stood in the window, bathed in bloody light. She moved her body slowly, trying to catch the men’s attention. Outside, the rain came down hard, battering the streets and slicing into the organic buildings. The red light district’s microclimate generator had failed again, drenching her section of the city with constant rain for weeks.

  A few men hustled past, handless-umbrellas or light-shields floating over them, protecting them from the stabbing rain. She hadn’t caught a fish all night.

  The little bastard was drawing her again. She hadn’t caught the little fucker, but she knew he was down at the end of the stairs, just out of view.

  She did not need this fucking stress. She tried to rub the migraine out of her skull, but it didn’t help, and it was hard to be sexy with her head hammering.

  She popped a smartpill and imagined the microscopic spiders loose in her bloodstream. Panic grabbed her by the throat. She knew suddenly, with perfect insight, how they controlled her. You have to take them and that’s how they get inside you. They fix your headache, but make it worse next time. She pinched her arm hard to stop the thoughts and the panic bled out of her. Crazy. Stupid fuckin’ nonsense. And you know it.

  She heard Venadrik at the edge of the stairs still, and it broke her thought stream.

  “I know you’re down there, goddamn it. I told you it’s sick to watch momma like that. Now get ta fuckin’ bed before I come down there and make ya.”

  She heard shuffling and didn’t know if he’d listened. Eyes closed, she rubbed her temples. It hurt bad, but the smartpills worked fast. In a few minutes the headache had dialed down to a dull throb, though Rukhsana still didn’t open her eyes because she felt dizzy.

  “I’m coming down there in five fuckin’ seconds with my hammer. I told you goddamn it. I’ll smash your little nuts off if I catch you down there again.”

  Footsteps running away.

  Shoulda never got him that damn pad.

  Rukhsana felt for her smokeless cigarettes, just plain tobacco, and kept her eyes closed. She was able to plug one into her mouth and light it without looking. She took a long time to finish the cigarette, and when she was done the headache had receded, like the tide rolling back. She stabbed it out. She opened her eyes slowly and didn’t feel any pain.

  She stood up and looked at herself in the full length mirror. The faux-diamond rub she’d brushed onto her dark skin prismed the red light and twinkled as she moved. She twirled and the holographic lingerie twirled with her, the illusion making it look like only a few strips of fluttering ribbon covered her.

  Disgusting. You look horrible. Everyone hates you.

  The long slashes on her stomach still hadn’t healed, even with the Qwik she’d bought from Kagney Lynn a few doors down. She’d been popping that shit like crazy for a week and the scars still looked huge and hideous. She needed to go to a clinic and get her genes tweaked to fix it, but she didn’t have enough credits.

  She looked at herself and hated what she saw. She wanted to tear at her face and rip out her designer eyes. The mirrored contacts she wore reflected her hideousness back at her in infinite regression.

  She heard a buzz and looked out the window quickly. Anxiety slammed into her. They’d used sonic pressure on her before. No. Fucking no. No. No. Not true. Never happened. Oh yes, it did. You just don’t want to admit it, the way they rigged up that giant sat-dish and just kept hitting you with the screaming.

  She couldn’t work like this.

  She reached for a Red Jack, her hand shaking. Her friend Kagney called it Red Cool, said it was the feeling of calm boiled down to its absolute chemical essence. She lit it with a flameless lighter and took a deep drag. It hit her system quick and raced for her blood-brain barrier. She took another fast pull and put the cigarette down in a faux-diamond tray. Its red smoke curled languidly in the still air. It had a harsh, dank smell, and she touched the scent-wall to kill it. Beach-breeze filled the small room and gradually drowned out the Red.

  She looked at herself again and smiled. Almost instantly, the lights started to trail and she felt a perma-grin coming on. She looked up at the red glowglobe, and it seemed to move in a slow, mazy motion. She closed her eyes and let the dreamy hypnotic feeling of the Red Jack wash over her and make her perfect again, the pressure sliding away. After a few minutes, the Red fully kicked in, she opened her eyes and laughed. She looked good. The scars on her stomach looked blurry and blended now. And she’d forgotten her pigs liked the cuts, wanted to give her more. The cuts were a call sign that sang, siren-like to the men who came to see her. The rich pigs came to see her because she let them do what the high class whores up in the clouds wouldn’t.

  “Heeeeerrrrrre, piggy, piggy, come get what you want, little piggy poo,” she chirped.

  Ah, there it was. There was what she needed. The Hum. The Red always unlocked the humming. It came on like a wind blowing inside her and made her hungry again, hungry the way they liked it. She licked her lips and rubbed her hands up and down her body, loving the way they felt on her skin. She closed her eyes and moved to the soft Hum as it slowly got louder, and let its rhythm guide her body, make her hot and hungry. The Hum would bring them to her, she knew, even in the rain.

  She opened her eyes and there was a man standing there. He had two servos on either side of him, dressed in all-white servants’ gowns. She smiled.

  “Hey there sweetie, come on inside,” she said. “It’s all wet out there.”

  ***

  Her pig wore a jewel-crusted bracelet and had a gold saber stamped on the white of his right eye, the crest of the Vandrel Dynasty. His hair was brushed silver and he had the gorgeous body of a twenty-five-year-old. He said he’d just got rejuved. They stood in her bedroom.

  “Anything?” he said again.

  “That’s right, honey. Anything that don’t kill me. I ain’t got relife insurance. Just 20,000 credits. I know it’s a bit more expensive than the other girls, but they won’t let ya do what I let ya do.”

  “I can beat you? Cut you? Whatever?” he said.

  “Oh yeah, honey. That’s why I cost a bit more. Is that what you like, baby? You wanna hurt me?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  He punched her in the face. His servos turned their backs.

  She fell back, hard, and he was on her. She’d taken four Numbs but it still hurt. He flipped her over. The Numbs short-circuited most of her nervous system, so she felt the pain somewhere far away, an echo of pain, but she felt it. He took a huge hunk of her hair and dragged her over to the bed. He picked her up and slammed her into the wall, then pushed her down. That hurt even with the Numbs.

  One of the servos came to him with a golden tray of instruments: fission knives; hooks; ropes; pincers. He started with the ropes and strung her up like a trussed pig, her hands behind back, bound to her feet, her legs bent at the knee.

  He was looking at his tray when he saw a little boy in the mirror. The kid was standing in the doorway.

  “What the fuck is this?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing. Salaris, go to your fucking room right now.”

  The kid just stood there.

  “Salaris Venadrik, I told you never to come in here. Didn’t I? Now go back to your room now.”

  “Hey, fuck-face, you heard your mom. Get the fuck outta here,” said the pig.

  “Hey, you don’t talk to my son like that. I fuckin’ talk to him that way, not you,” she screamed.

  “Listen bitch, this is fucked up. I can’t do this with the little prick watching.”

  “Then get the FUCK OUT,” she screeched.

  “Whatever slut. I ain’t paying you for this.”

  Salaris turned and ran. The pig left without paying her, leaving her tied up. Rukhsana felt the tears and tried to hold them in. Never cry.

  “Do you know how much money you just cost me little man?” she screamed.

 
***

  “Look, Sally,” she said.

  She held out the crystal flower. Little Salaris Venadrik took it and stared at it. It caught the light as he twirled it.

  “Tanks, momma,” he said.

  She smiled, feeling good today. It was Monday and she didn’t have to work. She’d spent the morning obsessively peering through the front curtain to see if anyone was out there setting up sonic amplifiers to torture her. She hadn’t seen anyone all day though and gradually she relaxed. When she realized she’d been standing there that long, staring at nothing, she had a moment of clarity, long enough to take her prescriptions. Not long after, she was strong enough to pull herself away from the window. She swore to herself that she’d start taking her pills more regularly or get an auto-drip insert.

  Two hours later, she felt clear and calm and powerful enough to go out in the driving rain and find the little crystal flower for Salaris.

  “Show me what you drew today,” she said.

  He looked up at her with fear in his eyes.

  “It’s all right. Momma won’t yell at you today. You gotta trust me. Momma loves ya. I swear it.”

  He ran off and came back with his smartpad. He still looked afraid, but he showed her, running his fingers over the screen. The drawings flickered by one by one.

  She took a drag of Red. She closed her eyes and pet his head. He put the smartpad down and hugged her leg.

  “Just remember what momma said: you can’t trust anybody but me, okay? Nobody’ll love ya the way I love ya. Everyone else will hurt you if you let them.”

  He squeezed her leg tighter.

  ***

  Rukhsana opened the door warily. Someone had been buzzing the door screener non-stop. With the door open she could hear the dying buildings wheezing outside. The withering rain still streamed down. Through the haze the rain kicked up, she could see the disease-rotted walls of the building across the street, the wall’s skin covered with purple sores like a bad herpes breakout. A man stood there.

  “What do you want?” she said. “I don’t work today.”

  The man outside had bright silver skin and a bald head. He stood a few feet back from the door, unlike the usual pigs. There was something strange about him. She wondered vaguely if he knew about the sonic pressure, but the thought slipped away before it had a chance to take hold of her.

  “I’d like to pay for an hour of your time,” said the smiling silver man. She could see her reflection on his skin, bent and warped like brushed aluminum.

  She laughed. This guy wasn’t a pig, she was sure of it.

  “Oh yeah, what for? I can tell you ain’t into what I offer.”

  “No. But I’d like to pay you anyway, if you’ll let me.”

  She squinted at him.

  “Really?” she said. “You’ll pay me anyway? For what?”

  “Just to talk.”

  She thought about it for a minute, then said, “Your credits, you wanna waste ’em.”

  He ended up staying for two hours. He’d come to talk to her about the Deos religion. He came from a branch of the religion called the Legion of the Light. It was a true fix for pain, he said, a true path out of suffering. She hadn’t bought it at first, but she’d listened. It was her day off and she had nothing better to do. But his words slipped slowly under her skin and she started to listen more closely.

  An hour later she was ready to try his interactive Bible. He’d told her that the Prophet Amadeo had recorded his whole life on his nanonets, everything from his thoughts to his feelings, everything he saw and felt and experienced. She could jack in and experience it just as he did. The Legion of the Light had cut Amadeo’s visions and teachings down to their true meaning, he said, unlike some of the other sects that perverted and disgraced his message. This was freedom. This was a way out of the Red Light district.

  He pulled out a tiny Reality Player. Stamped on the side was a phrase: ‘Out of darkness into light.’

  “You do have at least a cranial jack, right missus?” said the silver man.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What kind?” he said.

  “I don’t remember—”

  “Doesn’t matter, this should fit, unless it’s a hundred years old. Lay down.”

  She lay down on her bed. He handed her the nervewire connected to the player. She looked at it for a minute and then jacked in.

  It felt suddenly like she was diving into brilliant light and floating. All through her body, she felt a stunning warmth and power. It was like the Hum, magnified a million times. She wanted to sink into the warm light forever. She curled into the feeling, like an old world junkie taking her very first hit of heroin.

  ***

  The silver man, Bascomb, came every day after that for the next two weeks. He wouldn’t leave the player with her, but he promised to bring it back if she’d let him talk to her. Rukhsana listened to him, hungry for the player and its visions that were better than any drug she’d ever done. His words were mellifluous, hypnotic. She wanted the life he promised, wanted to be free of her life.

  Every time after he talked, he let her jack in and stood over her, while she lay in bed, catatonic. After an hour he’d yank the nervewire out of her neck and leave, even though she yelled and clawed the bed.

  At the end of the two weeks, just as he was leaving, he turned back to her and said, “There’s a way you can have the player every day.”

  She shut up immediately and listened.

  “You’ve only been pretending to hear me. Inside you’re still an unrepentant whore and drug addict,” he said.

  He looked at her the way you look at a smashed bug.

  “That’s not true, brother Bascomb. I’ve heard everything you said. I listen real good. I want the Prophet’s Light.”

  “Would you be willing to give up this hideous life, an abomination unto God, and come with me? Can you commit yourself fully to the Prophet’s message?”

  “Yes I can,” she said. “What do I gotta do?”

  He stood looking at her for a moment.

  “God despises disgusting whores. He loathes drug addicts. He loathes drugs of all kinds. The body is a temple. No prescription medicine has ever passed through this body you see standing here. No street drugs. No alcohol. But your body is a disgusting mess that must be cleansed.”

  “No drugs at all?” she said, suddenly hesitant. “Not even prescriptions?”

  “This is God’s way, the natural way. Maybe I was wrong about you. Perhaps I’ve just been wasting my time. Tonight is the last night I’ll come to see you. If you want the Prophet’s Light, it’s time to make a change. A real change.”

  He turned to leave.

  “No wait,” she said. “I’m ready. I believe.”

  A day later, she’d packed up a few of her and Venadrik’s things in a small bag, leaving most of it behind, thinking of the Center for Purging and Purification, where she would go to be healed and to begin a new life with God. She took Venadrik’s hand and stepped out into the slashing rain.

  Bad for People

  2458 Orthodox Western Calendar

  5156 Universal Chinese Calendar, Year of the Dragon

  The Farm, One Police Plaza, Snowstorm Clan Roving Starship Settlement

  The media frenzy around Senator Turnbull’s death was going at full tilt, with mediaheads everywhere talking about it. Quinlin’s monitor spiders released like a cloud of dandelion seeds into the winds of the nets, hunting down anything that mentioned his death. No one had officially linked the Turnbull death and the Gilead attack.

  For the rest of the day and into the night, Quinlin forked his mind, his backbrain running thirty virtual instances of himself so he could look at the problem from multiple angles. He smoked joints of an orange drug Hoskin didn’t recognize. Quin had always done drugs regularly, like most techies, but lately he’d been doing a lot more than usual.

  Quinlin’s vSelves broke down the videos of th
e Gilead murder again and again, looking for anything they’d missed, freezing frames, taking snapshots, breaking off bits of video for analysis by his backbrain. He kept the video snippets off the department smartcores in favor of his and Hoskin’s own private arrays to prevent leaks.

  Hoskin worked at the problem manually, paying full attention to each clue. He focused intensely on his mediawall, flipping through everything over and over and over. Finally, bleary eyed and exhausted, after he didn’t know how many hours, Hoskin stood and stretched. It had gotten very late.

  Quinlin blew a stream of orange smoke, his head lolled back, eyes closed.

  “Hey, ease up on the shit,” said Hoskin.

  Quinlin looked at him, his eyes slightly glazed from the drugs and intense vSelves flood.

  “What?” said Quinlin.

  “Ease up on the fuckin’ drugs.”

  “I’m cool. Just giving me a little something extra.”

  “Just go easy, goddammit. I’m heading out.”

  He headed out to his cruiser, stealthed and took off. The media was still camped outside The Farm, as if holding a vigil with harsh artificial lights instead of candles.

  Quinlin appeared on his innervision almost as soon as he took off.

  “Trouble.”

  “What?” flashed Hoskin.

  “I’m seeing rumors, mostly on the different Dynasty darknets, where the younger Dynasty family members go.”

  “About?”

  “Just gossip now, but word is spreading that Gilead’s secure store might have been compromised.”

  “If it was our killer that took out the secure store backup, how would he do it?”

  “If he could get into that blackbox he could get the keys to their offsite backups. Not sure how he’d do though. Those boxes got heavy encryption. Probably an exploit. Maybe a zero day? A good hacker has a bunch he finds on his own and never reports. I got a few. Blackboxes aren’t known for them though. Only a dozen or so over the years. If he got one, he’s good. Real good. And if he did get in he could just write up a script to search out certain types of memories fast. That wouldn’t take long to find the backup keys.”