by Alex Nast
I look back and look away, debating in my head. Stay or go, stay or go.
"Shit," I mutter to myself. I take one last look at freedom, then I go hurrying after Felix.
6
Felix has only been gone thirty seconds, but I can't see him anywhere outside. He must have found his courage somewhere and gone straight in to get the job done quick. I hurry back in to the building, looking around every corner, just to make sure that Victor isn't lurking somewhere, waiting to snatch me up and zip-tie me to the pipe again.
Shit, what am I doing. I should be halfway across the city by now, disappearing back in to my world. I don't do this, I don't care about other people. They don't care about me, they just see a beautiful face, a way to cash in and get out of their shitty lives. Other people don't want anything from me but to use me. I kill them. I survive.
I'm regretting coming back already. Felix had better be worth all this.
Then I spot my knives sitting on a crate where Victor left them. I sneak over and grab them, putting the one back in its familiar spot in my boot, the other in my hand. I feel a little bit more whole.
I look at the door one more time, knowing what the smart move is. Then I keep doing the stupid thing. I move forward, deeper in to the building. I peak around the corner but it's just a hallway. No Victor. No Felix. I slip down the side, making sure not to step on anything that might make noise, keeping my back to the wall, checking behind me. My senses are all turned up to eleven, but there's nothing. I'm alone.
I keep going, to the end of the hallway, part of me wanting to prolong the moment before I find them and I have to act, have to put myself in danger.
Finally I hear something. A struggle. A muffled scream of pain and hurt. Victor wouldn't scream. Victor would die cursing and grunting and biting like the animal that he is. He wouldn't scream.
Last chance to turn back, I tell myself. I consider it for a moment, really consider it, then curse myself out and keep going. The words 'You're going to get yourself killed' playing on a loop in my head. I hate Felix in that moment for his weakness, for getting himself in to this situation and not being able to get himself out of it. For needing help. Relying on others, needing others, that's weakness. I hate him for his weakness but he saved me when he really shouldn't have.
Closer and closer, the sounds getting louder.
"Where did she go?"
"I don't know," Felix wails, coughing.
"Bullshit!"
I hear another blow land. Sounds like Felix's attack went about as well as I thought it would. I Peak around a corner and there they are. Felix in the fetal position on the ground, Victor looming over him, his back to me. There's a laptop, not a shitty old one but a new one, set up on an old metal table, along with a few crates and supplies scattered around the windowless room. A cot shoved against one wall. Victor mentioned a wife, but it looks like he spends some amount of time living here too. Maybe when she gets sick of him and throws him out. Or maybe when he beats her and he doesn't feel like looking at her bruised face anymore, he comes here.
Victor has his back to me but even so, how am I supposed to save Felix? Victor will hear me before I get across the room, and as soon as he has his hands on me I'm done. He has a hundred pounds on me, easy. Years of training on me. I have no illusions that I'm a great fighter. I'm quick with my knife and I don't hesitate. Those are the reasons I'm alive. That and knowing when to run away.
"Word for word," Victor is saying to Felix, "tell me exactly what she said."
I look further around the corner, and finally see something that might work. The stun gun that Victor used on me, reloaded and ready to be fired again. He's a big ugly brute but well trained. He takes care of his tools. And oh would I love to use that thing on him, watch him squirm on the ground, helpless.
Felix spots me, and his eyes go big as saucers. Shit, he's going to give me away, the idiot.
I see Victor's body language change, I see him see Felix, looking at whatever is behind him and I know that slipping away isn't an option anymore. He's about to turn around, about to see me, run me down. If I run he'll only catch me. I lunge around the corner of the room, not bothering to be quiet anymore, not looking at Victor, concentrating on the stun gun.
I hear Victor curse, but I still don't look. I grab the gun.
How does it work? Panic grips me. He's going to get me. I hold it like a normal gun and turn. The moment is happening in slow motion. Victor is lurching towards me, Felix forgotten and still laying uselessly on the ground.
I point the stun gun at Victor and pull the trigger back, hard, not knowing what to expect. The gun fires. The two little prongs fly out and hit Victor in the shoulder, and he goes down.
The world speeds back up to real life speed. I remember to breath.
I let go of the trigger, and the electricity stops. He's still crawling towards me. I squeeze the trigger again, hoping, and more electricity is pumped in to Victor. But he's not clenched up on the ground like I was, he's still coming towards me. Crawling slowly, jaw clenched, but still coming, no matter how tightly I squeeze the trigger. What crazy body mods did the military give him? I know exactly what it feels like to have that electricity coursing through me. Victor is bigger than me but there's no way he should be moving. Every muscle in his body should be clenched hard as a rock.
"Get the fuck up," I scream at Felix, who is still on the ground for some reason, like he's expecting me to carry him out of here, and finally he struggles to his feet.
I shove my good knife in to my belt and grab the one in my boot, the smaller one, finely balanced, and hurl it at Victor like I practiced when I was younger until my fingers bled. It buries itself in his lower back, below the ribs in the soft muscle. He just grunts.
Finally, he stops, curls up on his side on the ground. He's trying to reach the knife and pull it out but his fingers aren't working so well. I know the feeling. He's still a little bit human then.
Felix takes a wide berth around Victor, well out of his reach.
"You have to kill him," Felix pleads.
"I'm not getting anywhere near him." Victor is pawing at my knife in his back. I could probably bury my second knife in him with a throw. I might even hit something important. But then I'd have no knife. And Victor would have two knives.
"There has to be something in here that we can use to kill him."
Felix is determined, I'll give him that.
"Felix you almost died coming back here. I almost died coming back for you like an idiot. Fuck you if you think I'm sticking around one second longer."
I hurl the stun gun at Victor, it's almost useless against him anyway, and it hits him in the side of the head, drawing a satisfying trickle of blood. He barely reacts though. He's still groping at the hilt of my knife, singularly focused. He probably knows how to throw the damned thing better than I do. He's never going to stop coming after me.
Maybe I should kill him. I take a brief look around the room. There are the crates of supplies, but no weapons laying out in the open. There's the bed, not much use, and the laptop and metal table. I suppose I could try and bludgeon him with those, but it's barely a plan. And every second I sit here I know he's getting closer to pulling my knife out of his back and killing me with it. I don't want to be killed with my own knife. I want to be as far away as possible from him. I run, that's how I stay alive. And there are millions of people in New Seattle. So many anonymous faces wearing rags, with scarves tight around their faces to keep the dust out of their mouths. Odds are he'll never find me again.
"Stay if you want," I tell Felix, "you saved my life and now I saved yours. As far as I'm concerned we're even." And I mean it. Whatever debt I felt towards Felix, whatever force it was that compelled me to set foot inside the building again, I don't feel it anymore. Risking my life and almost getting myself killed has helped shove my conscience back inside its cage again. I'm free.
I slip out the door and start walking quickly down the hallway, back towards
the dying light of evening. I just want to slip back in to the cracks and crevices of the city and disappear.
"Wait," I hear Felix calling behind me, "I need your help."
I don't hesitate, don't stop, just keep walking.
7
"Wait," Felix says, pleading now that he can see I have no intention of waiting. "My family isn't safe. I need to get them somewhere safe but I don't know what to do. Please."
"I told you," I say over my shoulder as he limps along behind me, "I saved your life. I don't owe you anything else."
He keeps following anyway though, clinging to whatever hope he sees in me.
I don't want the responsibility of being his hope. And I don't want to be constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when he comes to his senses and decides to turn me in to the Tower for the cash. Victor wouldn't be able to touch him if he lived in a Tower apartment. Sooner or later that thought will occur to him.
I turn around. "What do you think I can possibly do for you? I live on the streets, I don't have a home. I don't have money. I don't have anything! What you see on me," I sweep my hands down my body, "this is everything I have. You want to live like me? You want your daughter to grow up to be me?" I don't say the words, but they would be dead, or worse, in no time. Felix is too weak for my life, it's written all over him.
"What about your sister? Can't we stay with her, just until we figure something out?"
Shit, my sister... "Felix I made her up. She doesn't exist." I don't bother trying to sugarcoat it.
"What... I-"
"I'm not a good person!" I snap at him. I just want to leave and he keeps looking at me like a lost puppy. "I would have said anything to get you to let me go. I made her up. And it worked, and you know what, I don't feel bad about lying to you. I've done much worse to survive, and will do much worse. But you would never have thought to make up a sister, would you?"
He stares at the ground, angry and hurt but not willing to tell me to go to hell. Still thinking he needs me too much to burn down the bridge between us.
"You think I'm a horrible person for making her up, I can see it on your face, but I'm alive. You just..." I laugh a little at him, "you just don't fucking get it. And I'm not going to waste my time trying to teach you. I don't owe you anything anymore. Goodbye Felix."
I turn around and start walking away again, hoping that I've broken him enough that he wont follow.
"I can get you out of the city. Past the checkpoints."
"Why would I want to leave the city?" I don't stop walking. I shouldn't even have bothered to respond. Getting out of the city is not easy though.
He hurries after me again, my lost puppy. "Come on, you know Victor is never going to stop looking for you."
I turn around and walk backwards, not willing to stop, "he's one man, and there are a million people in this city that dress in rags and cover their faces. I'm a needle in a haystack."
But Felix is already shaking his head, "No, Victor already put the word out to buyers. He uploaded the data from the camera as proof. And when he can't produce you..."
Felix doesn't finish the thought. He doesn't have to. I had no idea the camera's even collected data. I figured I was just a story that Victor would tell. A story that no one would believe. But if there's proof, every Body Hunter in the city is going to be looking for me. Every Body Hunter working the outskirts will come in to the city. Every asshole with a dream of living in a Tower will be pulling scarves, looking for me. Victor will try to keep it all a secret for however long he can, but when his buyers realize he doesn't have me anymore they'll put their own people on it.
I need to get out the city. Now.
I stop walking.
"You're lying. After I just told you that I lied about my sister... you're just doing the same thing to me."
"My job, I bury dead bodies. That's where I got the callouses that you noticed. And where are bodies buried?"
I frown, "come on, they really bury bodies outside the city? Don't they just burn them?"
"It's those Christian sects, some kind of tradition. They pay good money for the privilege, and whatever keeps us poor and desperate people happy, the Towers are willing to indulge."
I should never have told him about my sister. I have no idea if I can trust him now. He seems genuine, but maybe he just made it all up. It seems unlikely, it's too good of a story to make it all up right there on the spot. I'd know. Making up a good story on short notice is a skill. I've used my fake sister on a half dozen people, I definitely didn't just make that up on the spot.
"You and my family ride in the back with the dead bodies," Felix continues, taking my silence as acceptance, "I drive us past the checkpoints. They know me so well by now they hardly ever inspect me, I just get waved through."
"So what, we just need to get to your place before Victor does?"
"Ya," Felix says, nodding, smiling.
"I don't get it, why do you even need me? You could do all this without me."
He looks like he's going to cry again all of a sudden. "You're right, I don't know how to survive. Not really. Certainly not outside the city. The stories you hear sometimes... cannibalism, mutated animals, toxic food and water. I need you. So if I get you out of New Seattle, you help me and my family survive." He shrugs, "and maybe we can make it to the Free City."
A plausible answer. It all fits together so easily, like it might actually be the truth. But anything this easy is a trap. Has to be. "Does Victor work with anyone else? Is there any chance someone will be waiting for us?"
"I don't think so," Felix says. "He told me he normally works alone, but he had a new routine to try running on people he thought might be nines, which is why he needed me."
"And you said he doesn't know where you live?"
"No he doesn't know," Felix says quietly, "but he can find out. I saw on his laptop, he has access to Tower records. They have records on everybody. Victor said they have tiny little robots everywhere, too small to see, listening to everything, watching everything. They probably even know who you are."
Is it true? I look around before I can stop myself. There's no one of course, we're alone, but Felix said too small to be seen. How could they know who I am though? If they knew who I was, what I was, I'd have been caught ages ago.
"Did you actually see any of these camera feeds? Can Victor see us right now?"
Felix just shrugs.
Useless.
Probably not. Nobody knows what technology the Towers have, but they wouldn't give someone like Victor too much power. Once they realize I'm no longer in his possession though...
More reasons to get far away in a hurry. I can't see any downside to going along with Felix. There's no way he had time to set any kind of trap. No way he's working with Victor. Easier for them to just grab me back in the building.
"Okay," I say to Felix, "but let's hurry up and get this done."
But in my mind I get ready for a trap. The less I trust other people, the longer I stay alive.
With Felix limping we slowly make our way across the city to Felix's neighborhood. Healthy, it would take an hour to get there, but with the way Felix is gingerly limping along it's taking us twice that. Every second wasted is an extra second that Victor has to pick himself up off the floor, bandage himself up and come looking for us.
"We can't stop," I say when Felix stops. Again.
"I just need a second," he says, grimacing.
"Fuck your leg. When Victor beats us to your house and murders everyone he finds are you going to give a damn about your leg?"
He doesn't look happy, but he gets up and starts limping along again.
"We should have killed him," Felix says behind me.
I look around hurriedly, making sure there are no soldiers within ear shot. We're walking down a wide street, built for cars but there are few cars left. Now the streets are packed with people. I don't see any soldiers though, just a lot of people with their heads down, minding their own business.
"Don't say anything about killing out here," I hiss at Felix when he catches up, "you want to get overheard by a patrol and have your fingernails pulled out for information you're welcome to it, but don't get me involved."
"Sorry," he says, looking around now.
He doesn't even know to not talk about killing someone where the wrong set of ears might overhear. He's going to get me killed. "No more talking. Just walking."
He nods tiredly and starts limping along behind me in silence.
It takes us three hours in the end, even with me filling Felix's head full of visions of his family lying in pools of blood, but finally we make it.
He lives in a run down apartment in a run down part of town. Like a thousand other buildings. Sometimes when I'm huddled up in an alleyway at night I think about how great it might be to live in a real apartment, but I secretly suspect that I would grow to hate it. There is a freedom to living on the streets. I'm never tied down by a place or a person, have nothing to defend or possess but my own self. Living in an apartment would make me crazy. Like caging a wild animal.
Or maybe I'm just lying to myself to make my life bearable.
I make Felix wait for a minute before we go in, across the street from his building, just to get a feel for the place, I need time to see anyone that doesn't belong. Which, after insulting and berating Felix every time he dared to stop and rest his leg, he doesn't appreciate. But I'm not risking my life for him anymore. I can always find my own way out of the city. Probably. He's just my best option.
"I'm going in," Felix finally says, and walks away from me.
I take one last look around, watching the faces in the crowd to see if anyone picks Felix out like they were waiting for him. But no one does. I take a deep breath and follow Felix in to his apartment.
We wind our way up three flights of stark concrete stairs, worn in the middle from a thousand other feet, and finally to his door.
But the door is busted open. Instantly my knife is in my hand. Victor beat us here. Somehow he dragged himself up off that floor, found Felix's address beat us across the city. He's waiting inside, or down on the street, or in another apartment. My eyes dart around, my mind reeling. How could I have been stupid enough to come here. And now I'm trapped.