The train surfaced and docked, and I took a walkway to the last known location of Kai, a hostel about ten tigs away. After getting off the main drag walkway, I had to take a tributary offshoot to a remote part of the city. I walked into the hostel café, took off my o-mask, and asked to be seated at a corner table. This was a water bar, so a waiter placed a menu before me, offering a variety of water enhanced drinks.
“I’d like a tall, standard v-water with an f-pill.”
“Would you like your pill to be gentle or strong?”
“Gentle is fine.”
"Yes, sir. This dag’s water comes from aquafer number two, so it has a slight sulfur taste. Would you like a flavor enhancement?"
“Whatever you think is best.”
"Yes, sir. That will be three diras." I allowed him to scan my card, which would alert the Council of my current position as well, and then he promptly dropped off my order.
I looked around the room at the mélange of patrons. It was a three to one mix, favoring men. Some were young and dirty looking, while others were older and wore clean clothes. More tables were empty than not. My guess was some were returning from their shift at the water plants while others were getting ready to go to work. Most plant workers did not receive the quantity of synth coupons that I did. The government thought they didn’t need them as much as my occupation required, most likely meant to chase the ghosts away that stalked you in the quiet hours between runs.
After I was served my items, I took the pill, and then I nursed my drink, waiting.
A shift change came and went. A few painted ladies took clients up to rooms above, yet I remained. Patience Jett, at least Damus wasn’t here to chew your ear off.
Why was I here? Was it because I needed to know something more about my targets? Was it because I thought he knew what Zει meant or what the cryptic she lives narrative meant? I didn’t want to believe it was for any of those reasons. It was a something that had been gaining a foothold in me over the annos, with each run that ended in a successful ending. I was getting older, and even though I easily had another half of my life to go, there had to be more to life than women, synth, and killing.
“You here for the great hunt too?” said the man who sat down across from me. Just as I always remembered him, he had a suristick in his mouth. Synth never had worked well on him.
"Is that what this is?" I asked Kai. I noticed that his skin was thinner, in addition to his hair. In contrast, the lines on his face were more profound, making a map of cracks in the ice.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked with a false casualness.
I flicked a nail against my now half-empty glass, and then I asked, "Should I get one for you?"
“They’ll bring me my usual in a few tigs.”
“This where you call home these dags?”
“The only home I have is here,” he said as he tapped his forehead. “But you’re not here to catch up with an outdated hunter, are you?”
I clenched my jaw and said, “What’s going on?”
Kai looked away, his graying hair shifting a fraction of a real later to match it. “In my room.”
He picked up his usual at the bar, and we both went up to his room on the third floor.
After he locked the door behind us, he turned to me and said, “Councilman Kull A1 has disappeared.” That was a big deal. I had no clue that it was that Kull that I had been assigned to catch as I was never one to follow politics.
“Do you have any ideas why?”
“Some think he has been kidnapped and we are waiting for a ransom.”
“I’ve read about this sort of thing. What kind of person would do that?”
He ran a hand through his hair and said, “I never said I believed that.”
“Really? Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know where he is, but something odd is happening with the bottom feeders.”
“What?”
I stared at him, and he sat down on a metal chair. There wasn't much more furniture in the room, so I sat down on the table next to him.
"I've heard things from the synth dealers."
“What?”
“Something about a girl.” I waited for him to add something, anything, but he didn’t.
“Honestly, this sounds pretty vague to me. I wouldn’t worry about some rumors about a girl. Do you know anything more substantial?”
“Word is that Kull is protecting her.”
Was this the same girl named Kore that I was supposed to find?
“What makes her so important that she requires a Councilman to protect her?”
Kai sighed and replied, “I don’t know. I don’t even have her name. All we have are some graffiti markings that the feeders have been splattering around Donkerstad.”
“What do they say?”
“At first, we thought they spelled out a name, but all the birth records indicated otherwise.”
“Who are all these people you are referring to?” I asked.
“The other hunters.”
“How many do you keep in contact with?”
“Enough to know that the markings have recently shown up in all the other populated sectors.”
“What does it say?”
“It says Zει.”
“But what does it mean?” I asked too quickly. Checking myself, I took a deep breath and then leaned back in my chair, and waited for his answer.
“So you’ve seen it too.”
I nodded.
He leaned forward and said quietly, “According to an almost forgotten language, translated it means she lives.”
“And you think this is connected to Kull? The girl?”
“Precisely.”
“Are you on a run right now?”
“Hell, we all are. Everyone is looking for Kull, aren’t you?”
What to tell him? How much to share? Should I trust him? The words of the train officer echoed in my mind, and I decided not to tell him of my nab-and-bag just yet.
“Yes, I am searching for him too.”
“Where is your dumb and deadly partner? Have they cut you loose from him too?”
“No, he is being reconditioned. He’ll be rejoining me in about a tag.
He nodded his head curtly and then asked, “Do you want to work together until he comes back?”
I considered his offer, and since it would look suspicious for me to decline, I replied, "Yes, but only until Damus returns." I did not need Damus reporting me for infringement.
Kai seemed to relax, and then he asked, "So you haven't observed anything odd in sector one?"
"Not really. I've been on a run for the past mes tracking down a scientist who was losing his hearing. Besides, it isn't as if I live in Kinnopolis." The members of the Council lived most of the anno there. Every new edict was made there, but I did not even keep track of who was currently in the Council.
“If you live here, you probably know more about Kull than I do. Isn’t this the sector he represents?”
“I’ve been here only a few dags actually.”
“When did you get the assignment?”
“About four dags ago,” he answered. “I was called off of a run to come here.” I had only been assigned the run a little more than a dag ago.
“I saw on the oculus that just about everyone has been called in for the hunt. Have you been in touch with any of them?”
“A few, but they didn’t know any more than I did.”
We both sat there processing our exchange. Then I asked, “What is so special about this girl that it would make a Councilman turn his back on the government he helped to support?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
“There has to be more than just protecting this girl. What are the theories about her?”
He got up and began pacing back and forth in the tiny room. He turned and eyed me speculatively, but then he finally said, “There aren’t many. Some say she is his lover, but she is dying. He couldn’t allow her t
o be eliminated, so he decided to use his influence to give them a head start.”
I considered the nab-and-bag order and seriously doubted that she was dying unless she was to be the bait to capture him. I considered telling him about my run but decided to wait a little longer.
“Do you think he is here?” I asked.
“He knows his own realm best. He did campaign in every back ice hole here before he was elected. If I were him, this is where I would be.”
“No clues yet?”
“It’s just a matter of talking to the right people.”
“And you know these people?” I asked him. “I thought this place wasn’t your home?”
He walked over to me and boxed my ear. “You’ve grown sloppy. Try to listen more carefully.” Then he went to a chest of drawers and took out a shirt and threw it at me. “Put this on.”
“What is this?” I asked as I examined its odd material.
“What’s it look like? It’s a shirt. Put it on, or you can’t come and play with the big boys.”
What did that mean? Then he walked back to the door and turned his head before saying, “Are you coming?”
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
We picked up a coat and some boots for me to use at the front desk, and then we took a transport vehicle that was little more than a hunk of welded pieces attached to an MI drive. I had almost forgotten how bad of a driver Kai was… almost.
We wove around transport vehicles illegally, but the cogendi ignored us. This vehicle was registered to Kai, so they rightly assumed we were on a hunt. As we flew through the town, the snow fell freely from the navy blue skies that still held a haze of the storm that blew through earlier. On the horizon, where the cloud cover thinned out, I could see the magnetosphere’s golden aurora flickering eerily.
We drove onward, deeper into the dark recesses of Icharus. The wind buffeted our ride as shadows resolved themselves into people or metal beams and pipes. We passed by a water farm and a construction site until the shadowy buildings fell further and further apart.
Once we passed a plant's makeshift residential area, we approached the side of a glacier. We sped along a sheer cliff for many tigs until he finally stopped. After getting off, I looked over the side of the glass. I didn't see anything but ice.
“So why are we in the middle of nowhere?”
“Take off your mask,” he told me. “You won’t need it here.” Then he leaned against the vehicle, waiting. There had to be more to our little layover.
Despite it the freezing temperature, my oculus still worked, but after checking it, I observed that nothing was showing up in the immediate vicinity. I decided to ditch the instrument and use some old-fashioned sleuthing.
I stepped away and started stomping my heavy boots in the snow. I wasn’t sure how deep it was, but I couldn’t for the life of me see anything but the glacier. After pounding the earth for several more tigs, my boot hit something hard.
“Lucky strathole.” Kai knelt down, cleared the chunky layer of snow, and knocked on the metal lid. We waited, but nothing happened.
“Is someone supposed to answer?”
“Fracking doogle.” He walked over to the vehicle and removed a bar. “If he’s in there, he’s not going to be happy we’re here.”
“Who is it?”
“He is the best implant remover in Torva. If I wanted to remove my implant, I would come here.”
He speared a metal bar he had retrieved from a knapsack into the lid and pried it off. A swath of steam rose up, and he said, "Now or never." Then he jumped into the hole.
I stood back and marked the location in my oculus, under my private encrypted setting. Then I looked down into the dark hole.
“You all right?”
Silence.
“What the frack,” I said before I followed him down into the black snow and ice.
Chapter 5
“Over here and keep quiet.”
I turned to the left and followed his voice. I was in some sort of maze of salvaged pipes, most likely stolen from one of the water farms. I heard Kai’s steps up ahead, so I followed him down into the earth. Our footsteps echoed in the air, making any sort of a surprise entry impossible. At times, I even had to crouch down, as the adjoining pipe was not of a large enough diameter to accommodate my height. It was also damp and moist, making the overall experience unpleasant.
After traveling for about fifteen tigs, the pipe opened up into a cave system that was deep underground. I listened to Kai's foul mouth swear words that I mostly had never heard before now. His temper was growing as large as his ego was in his old age. Even though the dampness was making my skin feel clammy in the slowly warming air, I thought better of complaining to him.
“Where are you, old man?” Kai called out in a particularly large cavern.
“I’m busy,” I heard a crotchety voice echo throughout the room. Where had it come from?
“It’s me, Kai.”
“You’re not alone,” the discombobulated voice echoed.
“No, I brought a friend with me.” He then turned to me and asked quietly, “You are a friend, right?” Kai was crazy, had always been, but I was even crazier for following him into this madness.
“Yeah sure,” I shushed at him.
Out from a chimney dropped a wiry man. His posture was stooped, and his skin was more creased and wrinkled than I had ever seen anyone's before now.
As I approached him, I asked, “Does he have a disease?”
“I’m as healthy as a horse,” he answered before laughing, which quickly morphed into a coughing spasm.
“He’s just old, aren’t you old man?” Kai said.
“You’re catching up fast to me,” the elderly man quipped.
“How old is he?”
“Doesn’t matter how old he is, it’s what’s up here that counts,” he said as he thumped the back of my head. Then Kai zeroed in on the old man and asked, “Have you found her yet?”
“Still working on it. Have you any news?”
“Only that he’s been assigned to locate her, standard nab-and-bag, only kill if necessary,” Kai answered.
“How did you know about that?” I asked.
“Besides tapping into your oculus signal, the train officer reported your whereabouts to me. She also knew you were asking about her.” Kore Β2 was Zει.
The officer was a little obvious, but my oculus was another thing altogether. “How did you tap into it?” I asked in an accusing manner.
“I could waste time explaining it, but time is of the essence boy.” I was hardly a boy anymore, but I did what usually did and kept quiet so he could talk. You never learned anything by doing all the talking or irritating the fountainhead.
"Does anyone else know he's here?" the old man asked.
“He’s camo’d well enough now, but on to more important things. I’m ready to go underground now. Do you have the body?” Kai asked him.
“Yep. Real pity they don’t keep better pictorial records. When do you think they will learn better?” the old man asked, before blowing his nose.
“Once the truth is revealed, people will have some real choices to make.”
“What do you mean? What is going on?” I asked.
“Should we remove his while we are at it?” the old man asked.
“No. He needs to be fully activated and connected to resources the government can only provide.” Kai began taking off his shirt.
“Leave your shirt over there until it’s removed, and then head over to the operation room.”
“I’m going solo tonight,” Kai told me while smiling and waggling his eyebrows. “Frack. I’m can’t believe that I am having second thoughts old man,” Kai said while laughing, but I noticed that he did not miss a step as he headed towards an aven on the wall of the cavern past a small rimstone pool.
I saw him climb up, followed by the elderly man. He turned around and asked, “Aren’t you coming?”
I frowned but replied, “Yes.�
�
I followed them up into another room. It was smaller and whitewashed. I walked up to the wall and touched it with my finger.
“It’s germicide. Put on your o-mask and stand over there,” the old man indicated to the periphery of the room. In the middle of the room was an o-table. Connected to it were many thick cables that led to the far side of the room where there was a wall full of electronics.
Kai had taken off nearly every article of clothing minus a pair of thermal pants, identical to the pair I wore underneath my coat. He handed me his wad of clothes and told me, “Once I’m done here, you’ll need to take the body back to the hotel.”
“The body?”
"Yeah, the one we're going to put the implant into."
“What the frack?”
“Listen, I need to go underground, or else they’ll be sending you to kill me soon.” He touched his chest and said, “I’m not well. Besides, there is no way Kull would ever allow you to come within a k-lo from him without my help.”
“Wait. What is about to happen?”
“Do you want the honors?” Kai asked the old man.
“Sure. Hop on board the Nage Express.”
“Nage Express?”
“That’s an old expression, well the express part is at least. Nage is my name, and I am a bit of a crazy train.”
Kai laid down as instructed and he said, “Hurry up. Time is the only currency worth a frack on this planet.”
Nage went over and positioned an arm of a machine over him. I walked up and asked, “What is this?”
"It is something that our ancestors used in the great Ark, and something the upper echelon of Kinnopolis citizens still use to keep them off the extermination lists. There are only a few in existence on this damned planet, and I just happen to have one of them."
“How?”
“One of my ancestors, seven generations back, brought the blueprints with him. That was back when they were hopeful that we would terraform this world into a new Earth in a generation or two.”
“Earth is a myth,” I muttered under my breath.
“Not true.”
“Does it really matter?”
Nage looked down and sighed. “I guess not.”
Icharus_ARC Series Page 3