I smiled at the merc, "So nice to see you again,"
The merc looked me over once, then apparently satisfied, turned and nodded back outside. Plex backed out of the room, never taking his eyes off the merc. Malak sneered at me and followed.
The door shut behind him and before it had even beeped, I had my ear pressed to it again.
I stood there in silence and darkness, listening.
"Get to the deal," Malak said.
"You pay me a bunch of money, and I get you your brother back." The merc said, his voice silky smooth.
Plex started laughing and I could almost see the look Malak must have cut him because he choked down his laughter real fast.
“Explain,” Malak said.
"See, Lucas is never going to really go through with any trade. He wouldn't risk it. His plan is to set up a meeting, confirm the kid is there and then kill anyone you brought with ya. Then kill you. Then kill your brother. I may be getting the order of all that wrong, but you get the gist."
So I had been right all along about the plan. There was no way any real trade was going to happen. If the Merc hadn’t shown up looking to make some extra money on the side, Malak would have walked right into a trap.
"I thought you were getting to the part I didn't already expect baka."
I had to choke back a laugh of my own. Malak had expected the betrayal. Of course he had, he was a ganger and I would have bet this was the kind of thing they had to deal with all the time.
"That's the part where you pay me a bunch of money." The Merc said with a chuckle.
"To do what exactly?" Malak’s voice contained none of the humor that the Merc’s had. He was deadly cold. I didn’t blame him, this was Zenny’s life we were talking about here. The way the Merc was telling it, Lucas planned to put a bullet in his head at the earliest possible convenience.
"Well, I go back to Lucas, tell him the meet’s a go, he takes my guys and they go set up at some obscure location. They won't bring your brother right away, not until they confirm the kid’s with you. Just in case you're planning something too, yeah? They'll have a cursory guard back where they’re keeping 'em, and they'll be the ones to bring 'em along if need be. Or to set up a telepresence call to confirm with you that he's actually alive."
"So why don't I just beat the location out of you right now? Save myself some flash." I heard knuckles cracking as Malak said the words.
"’Cause if you do that, your brother will die. You think I'm in this alone? I just decided to build up a merc biz and then betray all my employees?"
"Sounds about right to me, chum." Malak said, “That’s all it is to you. Biz. You got no idea about family, loyalty. If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”
"That’s right, maybe I don’t. Except that the guys who work for me? They're mercs. I betray them and they'd find me eventually. Then they’d kill me, really dead, ya scan?"
"So they're in on it too then?" Malak asked.
"You bet. You won't even have to fight. They'll just turn 'em over to you. Then you can leave, and we can say he escaped. Or that you somehow found 'em. Doesn't really matter. Our rep will take a little hit, but that's what you're paying for. And no more of your guys gotta die."
Malak chuckled, "No more of your guys die either, huh?"
"Clone policies are expensive these days." The Merc replied matter of factly.
"Yeah, ain't they? Why don't you come up to my office and we'll talk price. I think we can make a deal."
"As long as you put a high monetary value on your brother’s life." The Merc replied, his voice trailing off as he moved further away from the door.
I heard three pairs of footsteps as the group left the torture room. I'd hoped that Plex would stay, that he would come in and I could grill him a bit on what was going on. No such luck. I waited in the darkness for what I guessed to be half an hour, though it might have been less, before giving up and climbing back into bed.
I forced myself not to analyze the situation, to let sleep come. If this was going to go down soon, I would need my strength.
Especially if I was going to convince Malak to bring me along.
*
I woke up when Plex came into my cell with breakfast. A plate of what looked like a breakfast version of the same thing I had eaten last night. I say breakfast as everything on the plate was coated in the thick syrup you would commonly reserve for pancakes or waffles. Nothing on the plate even remotely resembled either.
I sat down on the couch and picked at the food with considerably less enthusiasm than I had the night before.
"Things are moving fast. The boss and that merc Childress worked out a deal."
"So that's his name?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Plex seemed surprised that my first question hadn't been about the deal Malak and Childress had worked out.
I chuckled into my food, "I was listening, Plex. Through the door. I heard pretty much everything."
"Oh," he said, sounding deflated. Apparently, he'd been excited to tell me what was happening. I couldn’t help but feel like Plex was starting to like me, despite the situation.
"Well, it's going down right now." And he smiled, knowing this at least, I wouldn’t have known.
I almost choked on the mouthful of food I'd been idly chewing. I gulped down some water from the cup Plex had placed at my feet and looked at him with wide eyes.
"Right now? They already left?" My heart was beginning to race. No way I had expected all this to happen so quickly. I hadn’t had a chance to even talk to Malak. I thought he would come to at least get more information, to see if Childress could be trusted. Not that I would have been able to tell him much about the Merc, but still.
Plex nodded and tapped his temple, "They're on the train now."
"So the merc, Childress, told Malak--”
"The boss," Plex interrupted.
“Yeah, yeah. So Childress told the Boss where to find Zenigra?"
If Plex was telling the truth, and I saw no reason for him to be lying, then Zenigra might be free soon. If he was free there was no way he would let Malak turn me over to Lucas under any circumstances. Or torture me.
"He told him the area. Childress said he needed to go along, to make sure that his guys wouldn't think the Boss had just beaten the location out of 'em." Plex chuckled at his own words, “Makes sense.”
"He couldn't have just called?" I asked.
"Nah, said it had to be in person. Could’a had a gun to his head or something, ya know?”
I nodded and began to shovel the remaining food into my mouth as quickly as possible. When I was done, I turned back to Plex.
"So, they're on the train? Why didn't they drive?" I asked.
"Not enough cars, mano," he said and chuckled.
"How many people did he bring?"
Plex laughed again. He was sitting on the floor in front of the couch again. And he was enjoying himself. I could tell that he liked having information to share that I didn't already have.
I chided myself for not letting him speak his piece earlier. Seemed Plex prided himself on being in the know more than I had realized.
"How many?" I asked again.
"Everyone," Plex said. "He cleared out pretty much the whole tower. I mean, there are a few people here, mostly kids, keeping watch. Just in case the EIB's realize most of the gang is gone."
"Jesus, he's not kidding around, is he?"
"Malak ain't one to take chances. If there's going to be trouble, he's going to be ready."
"Apparently," I said. I should have felt relieved, Zenigra was about to be rescued. Instead, I just felt uneasy.
“I sat in on the whole planning meeting. Childress wouldn’t let the Boss out of his sight, said he didn’t trust him not to try and plan something behind his back. Childress went over what Lucas’s plan was. Chummer really wanted to take you alive. Malak told Childress that was stupid and that Lucas should’a just planned to kill ya.”
I gritted my teeth at the thought
of what Lucas would have done to me if he had taken me alive.
“All the trouble I’ve caused him, guess it makes sense he would want to torture me before he killed me.”
“I guess,” Plex said with a shiver. For all the bravado I’d seen Plex show since meeting him, it was obvious he wasn’t on board with any torturing.
Parli on the other hand, well, he had had some plans for me. Just another thing I had Zenigra to thank for getting me out of.
"Am I still a prisoner, Plex?"
"Prisoner? Nah. I mean, I got orders not to let you leave the tower, but if you want to stretch your legs, I'll give you a tour."
I put down my plate and stood up.
This time when we walked out the door into the Dungeon, Plex didn't look over his shoulder as often.
*
Half an hour later, I'd seen most of the important parts of the Snake base. The kitchen, the weapons room, a few of the apartments that different gang members slept in. The building's exterior hadn't fared very well over the years, but the interior was kept cleaner than I would have thought possible for a gang base.
Most of the important parts of the base, as Plex had called them, were on the lower floors. My room had been on the 8th floor, one of the lowest habitable floors. Most everything below was under water.
Now we were walking up the stairs toward what Plex had called the Command Center. It was on the top floor. The 40th.
I was relieved to learn that the elevator wasn't functional and waved away Plex's apologies at us having to take the stairs
The elevator in my parents' apartment back in Miami had been a claustrophobics worst nightmare. It routinely broke down and stranded whoever was inside it for hours until the management company could be contacted to send a mechanic out.
Most everyone in the building avoided it like Ebola. I’d been stuck in it one time when I was twelve, for almost eight hours. I’d chanced taking it up to my parents' apartment because I’d had two bags full of groceries I wasn’t looking forward to carrying up thirty-two flights of stairs. Big mistake. Now I avoided all elevators whenever possible.
"Trust me, man, it ain't no thang," I said.
Plex just laughed at my obvious relief.
When we got to the Command Center, I was happy to notice that I was in no further pain from the beating of the day before. Inside, there was a young boy, no older than ten, sitting in front of a wide array of monitors. Each showed a different view of various parts of the building, both interior, and exterior. At the desk in front of the boy was a keyboard, collecting dust.
The monitor directly in front of the boy, who Plex introduced as Mez, had code scrolling across it.
"Grid back up?" Plex asked when he noticed the scroll.
"Yep," Mez replied, "Lynch fixed the connections earlier."
Mez had a pair of goggles sitting on his head, throwing his dirty blond hair into even more of a matted turmoil than it already was. He was pale and I wondered when the last time he saw daylight was.
"How's the node security looking?" Plex asked.
"Eh. It's up. Nothing special though. I'm trying to lay on some added security, keep the EIBs from getting in without some serious ware." He moved his hands through the air in a complex gesture. That was when I noticed the gloves he wore. Interface gloves, used instead of a keyboard. They were tied to the goggles on the boy’s head. The goggles were interpreting the code scrolling across the monitor in front of him.
Mez's hands flew through the air, grabbing and pulling at data streams I couldn't even fathom.
I'd never been more than a recreational Grid user. Back when I had time for things like recreation.
"There. That should hold 'em until Lynch can get back and install something heavier."
Mez pulled the goggles off his head and ran a finger through his hair, attempting to smooth it down. It didn't seem to want to cooperate.
Now that I could see his face, the kid looked gaunt. His eyes were sunken, with dark splotches below them. He had a frail build. From what I could see, his body lacked any real muscle. He reminded me of the Commonwealth of Canada kids they show on TV when the charity organizations ask you to send your money in to help feed those in need.
Damn charities. Always laying a guilt trip on you when you least expect it.
"So you're Seven, huh?" Mez said, looking up at me. He didn't stand up and I wondered if he would even be able to. He looked so small and weak.
I nodded.
"Looked you up, ya know. You're from Miami, right?"
I nodded again, furrowing my brow, "You looked me up?"
"Yeah, sure, birth records, school grades, fingerprints, retinal scans, all that stuff’s on the Grid."
I raised my eyebrows, "You hacked in?"
"Sure," he laughed, "it was easy."
"No way," I said, impressed.
"Splat job corpies and their weak sauce security ware," he grinned at me.
Almost everything about a person was on the Grid these days, but it was scary to think that a ten-year-old who had obviously had no real schooling in his life was able to access such sensitive information. Then a thought occurred to me and I smiled.
"You find any medical records?" I asked.
"Yeah, sure, from when you were born. An ER visit when you were like 11 or something."
"Nothing else?"
Mez shook his head.
"I miss something?" He asked, looking annoyed.
"Nah," I said, shaking my head.
Mez shrugged and put his goggles back on.
"You wanna see the roof? It's pretty cool. There's a pool up there and everything."
"A pool?"
"Well, what's left of the pool. It's not full of water or anything. Sometimes it gets some rainwater, or snow. In the summer, some of the boyos like to skate in it when it's dry."
"Sure, sounds good to me. I could use some fresh air. It feels like I've been inside for days."
"You get used to it after a while," Mez said.
We headed out of the Command Center. I glanced over my shoulder but Mez was already lost in another data stream.
As we walked up the stairs to the roof, Plex stopped short and cocked his head.
"What is it?" I asked, my heart skipping a beat. News about Zenigra, it had to be.
"Prolly nothing. Lost contact with all the Snakes on the train. It happens sometimes. They're prolly just in a dead zone."
"A dead zone?" I furrowed my brow, “I don’t like that sound of that.”
"Heh, not that kind of dead zone," he said, and started climbing the stairs again, "a tunnel most likely. The trains go underground in different places and we lose signal. "
"Roughly how many Snakes does the boss have with him?" I asked.
We reached the roof and Plex punched in a code on the door and swung it open.
"On the train? A hundred or so. Some of 'em were talking, laughing at the corpies getting off early ‘cause they didn't want to be on the train with them." Plex said, he didn’t sound concerned and that was good enough for me.
"I bet," I said, laughing, “There was a time not long ago that I wouldn’t have wanted to be on a train filled with Gangers either.”
The air was chilly as I stepped out onto the roof and I suddenly wished my Du-Wear hadn't been 'divided' up by the Snakes. I wrapped my arms around myself and walked out into the bright sunlight. It was about Eleven in the morning, and the sun was high in the sky. There was a scattering of puffy clouds but nothing that hinted at rain in the near future.
I followed Plex to the center of the rooftop, where we sat down on the edge of the pool. It was as graffitied as any of the walls I had passed with Zenigra on our trip from the bus station. The only difference was that the pool was covered exclusively with Snake graffiti.
"The Boss doesn't let us tag the inside of the building. Says the fumes give him a headache. So we tag the pool when we don't want to hit the streets. There's a lot of history on the walls of this pool. All the previo
us King Snakes left their marks."
I nodded, gazing at the mass of graffiti. It wasn't as dense as the walls on the streets had been. That was something I hadn't noticed at first. It seemed that each artist had taken care not to write over anyone else's tags. Though, as space had grown scarce, the tags became small, or more curving, wrapping around other tags like the snakes the gang was named after.
I lay back on the concrete, deciding that keeping low would reduce the considerable wind that was blowing against me.
Laying there, looking up at the sky, it was easy to forget that I had some sort of bacteria in my body that was responsible for the things I was able to do. That I was awaiting the outcome of the rescue of my best friend from certain death. It was easy to forget the beating I had taken the night before. It was easy to forget that my body was only two days old. That I had been murdered. That I had been forced to leave home when Skywatch had murdered my parents and forced to work on Plantations after being robbed by corrupt immigration officials.
I let myself forget all that and just lay there. It was silent, besides the wind. Plex seemed to realize I didn't want to talk and remained silent, gazing at the graffiti in the pool.
Right then I didn’t feel hunted. I didn’t feel abandoned or persecuted or in imminent danger of being killed. I just felt like a normal kid who had climbed up to the top of a partially submerged building. So many not that normal, but still.
The sun felt great against my skin, and now that it was beating down on me, the chill I felt from the wind was fading. It made me miss the plantations. There was something to be said for working hard under a hot sun, getting things done, feeling part of something. I felt at peace for the first time in a long time.
Then, slowly and corrosively, a thought, not yet fully formed, began to eat away at my peace. At first, I ignored it. Pushed it away. Hung on to the peace I was feeling for the first time in so long. It only pressed harder. Ate faster. It wasn't long before I gave in.
Something wasn't right here.
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