Russo smirked, couldn’t believe he had been fooled so easily. Agent Tavarez wasn’t a cyborg or an alien; he was just a normal guy with a strange veneer. Everything about him was unarguably human, from the way he nodded to strangers, to the slow pace at which he walked.
Human. And easy to follow.
13 - Deron
It took half an hour to clear security at the southern gate leading out of Easton. Even though the bus terminal was right across the street, the same uniforms that watched them get on made them get off again after a mere fifteen second trip. They had to stand beside the bus while men in black camouflage searched their belongings, which they had to leave unlocked on their seats. That wasn’t a problem this time around; neither Deron nor Sebo were carrying anything explicitly illegal. Deron hadn’t even brought a bag, instead relying on his pockets to hold his wallet, music player, and mini-palette. As they stood outside in the cold evening, Deron noticed that Sebo was shivering a little, a natural response that unfortunately made him look nervous.
“If I were any kind of courageous, I would say this is cruel and unusual punishment,” said Sebo, his teeth chattering. “Unlawful detainment,” he added.
“Good thing you’re not,” muttered Deron. It was one thing to question the behavior and motives of the police from the safety of his mind, but to make those questions public would invite unnecessary attention.
“Did I tell you about Gemma Reese?”
Deron shook his head, listened as the engine behind him changed pitch.
Sebo crossed his arms and put his chin to his chest. “I don’t understand why it has to be so cold.”
“It was fine last night,” said Deron, thinking back to his meeting with Rosalia at Gillock Pond. He didn’t like seeing her so upset, not when their reunion was supposed to be happy.
“Of course it was, because last night I was sitting in my room watching the veneer dry. But the moment we decide to trek to Paramel, it turns arctic.”
“It’s not that cold.”
“Tell that to my balls.”
Down the line, a man in a trench coat was examining the passengers, comparing their faces to the palette in his hand.
“So what about Gemma?” asked Deron.
“Quite a story, that,” said Sebo, effecting an English accent. He cleared his throat. “Twas a night similar in demeanor to tonight with the exception of not being colder than an Icelandic outhouse. Enter one Gemma Reese and her gaggle of vapid chums, all of whom have imbibed more than their fair share of spirits.”
Deron groaned at the act, prompting Sebo to shift voices again.
“Among these chums is the dark-haired vixen Miko Newton. You, ah, remember her from last year, don’t you?”
Miko’s bountiful chest flashed in Deron’s memory, making him nod emphatically.
“As we all know with dames like Miko their brain power is always occupied with the expansion of their, ah, bosoms. I believe it was this deficiency that led her to park her personal conveyance in a tow-away zone. Can you guess what happened when these future ladies of the night returned from their hobnobbing?”
“The car was gone, wasn’t it?”
“And assumed stolen, as any Easton resident who had coasted through high school on their veneer and endowments would. She rings the flatfoots and the one that shows up is a real crumb, you know? He starts talking down to her, making her read the tow-away signs, all six barrels.”
Laughing, Deron could already imagine where the story was going.
Sebo coughed and rubbed at his throat. He continued in his normal voice, “So Gemma tries to stick up for her friend and loses her shit on the uniform. And then all the girls start crying and the uniform is just standing there laughing at them and looking all smug in his veneer.” He blew a plume of hot air as a nonverbal protest against the cold. “Now, before I continue, tell me what you would have done in this situation.”
“Nothing,” said Deron, selecting the only correct answer.
“Exactly. Absolutely nothing. But evidently Gemma is far more courageous than we. The cop tells her to take it up with the towing company and this was her response I shit you not.” He paused for effect. “Well, just know that karma’s a bitch so you better hope your vest works.”
Deron licked his lips and blew an ominous whistle. In his mind, he saw the uniform’s veneer flash red and then the baton come flying out of nowhere. He winced at the familiar violence.
“Now, had that been you or I, we’d still be in jail getting backdoored by Drag Rats.”
“What happened to her?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Sebo, shrugging. “I guess all you need to beat a rap is a fine pair of tits.”
“She threatened to shoot him.”
“Right?” His eyes went wide with recollection. “I told her that and you know what she said?”
Deron shook his head.
“I didn’t even have a gun!”
“She didn’t.”
“My hand to God’s dick!”
“Having a good evening, gentlemen?” The interruption put a quick stop to their laughter. The man in the trench was much taller up close and though he smiled, he didn’t look all that friendly. On his right, a uniform stood stoically, just along for the ride and to beat any unruly passengers into submission.
“It’s a little cold for our taste,” said Sebo. “You don’t have to be out here all night, do you?”
There was a flicker at the edge of the man’s lips. “Half an hour,” he replied, glancing between the palette and Sebo’s face. “Then I switch off.” He shook his head minutely and shuffled one step over to look at Deron. “Officer Hawkins here, on the other hand, has been toughing it out all night.”
“It’s not right.” Sebo shook his head sympathetically.
The uniform didn’t acknowledge the sentiment. His face held steady in a professional but aggressive veneer. It was possible that under his mask he was smiling or fuming, but no one outside would ever know it.
“Don’t worry,” said the man, “I’m sure he gets hazard pay...” His sentence trailed off as he took in Deron’s face. The moment of shock was plainly visible, regardless of how brief it was. “What’s your name, son?”
“Deron Bishop.”
The man looked away, did some quick tapping on his palette. “I see you were recently released from Easton General. Just yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to Paramel for some run and gun action,” Sebo explained. “He’s been bed-ridden for three weeks.”
“It’s a shame you haven’t pressed charges against your attacker.”
“My head’s fuzzy,” admitted Deron. “All I remember is Sebo’s jacket.”
“Did you assault him?”
Sebo raised an eyebrow. “Let’s see. I’ve shot him, exploded him, set him on fire, pushed him out a window, decapitated him in front of his teammates, and even questioned his hygiene. But no, ours is not what you would call a physical relationship.” He put his hand on Deron’s shoulder.
“Alright, boys, keep it in your pants.”
Once the man had moved down the line, Sebo said in a low voice, “You see, that’s how you handle a uniform.”
“That guy’s not with the police.” Deron kept glancing down the line, watching the tall man go about his business, whatever that was.
“No, but the one that was. Yes sir, no sir. Notice that I didn’t threaten to test his bulletproof vest.”
“Sebo, that was a haiku,” said Deron, absently.
Sebo pursed his lips thoughtfully. “No, no it wasn’t.” Something clicked behind his amber eyes. “We have just wasted, ten minutes of our lives; what, do you think that means?”
Deron ignored the stilted speech and said, “I wonder who he’s looking for.”
“Criminals, con artists, synth pushers, people on the lam.”
At last, the inquisitor stopped in front of the bus driver and Deron was surprised to see him get the same treatment
as everyone else. After a few moments of inspection, the man slipped his palette into his leather jacket and began walking back down the line. He stopped in front of Deron and extended a business card.
“When you remember,” he said, his eyes exploring Deron’s face again.
Deron took the card with a gracious nod of his head. He eyed it for a moment, saw the man’s name was Memo Ruiz, Special Agent for the Consolidated Easton Territory. That put him above the uniforms, above local government. He was part of the agency responsible for keeping Easton safe from whatever dwelled outside its borders. They were the ones who built the walls, trained the guns, and set up the roadblocks.
Slipping the card into his back pocket, Deron tried to ignore the stares from the other passengers as they filed back onto the bus. He knew from rumor that agents didn’t have much interaction with the locals and evidently, they didn’t hand out their cards to just anyone.
“Are we not going to discuss the absurdity of what just happened?” asked Sebo as he unraveled the earbuds from his music player.
“We could just ignore it,” replied Deron.
The engine revved up to a soothing electrical hum. Under the bus, hydraulics hissed as they lifted the chassis into its travel configuration.
“How did he know you were in the hospital?” In his hands, Sebo’s music player came to life. Its display was a miniature palette that he could use to browse through his songs or select playlists. When idle, it showed a photo stream of album art and stills from music videos.
“He’s an agent. Maybe he has access to medical records.”
Sebo chuckled. “What I wouldn’t give for ten minutes alone with his palette.”
Deron nodded in agreement and slipped his own earbuds into place. He selected a playlist of old ambient cuts that went along with anything, especially the recent feeling that life was just a movie and with the right soundtrack, anything, even a mundane bus ride, could take on higher meaning. A soft pulsating beat filled his ears, something low on the clef, joined later by a casual tapping of a cymbal. As the bus rolled through the gate and into the outland, the music swelled, creating the perfect traveling music.
The land beyond Easton wasn’t much to look at; it was mostly undeveloped, owned by the government for future expansion of the city-states. Ostensibly, people couldn’t live there or even visit. The bus would not make any stops between Easton and Paramel and if it did, the militarized SUV trailing them would ensure no one disembarked. Locking down a good reason for the quarantine wasn’t easy, not when the info on the network disagreed with the info in the textbooks. The official story was that of governmental providence, but the conspiracies told stories of nuclear fallout, of wars that began and ended long before Deron was born.
A small display in the lower right-hand corner of the window showed their speed, estimated arrival time, and the current time. It was dark out, with the moon barely visible through the clouds. It reminded him of Rosalia and he thought about what she was doing at that moment, how she was coping with being abandoned so easily. She had told him not to think on it, that he needed to spend time with Sebo and blow off some steam in Paramel. That was all well and good, but Deron wanted to be back in his room or back at Gillock pond—either way, with Rosalia nearby.
Deron looked over at his friend who had shut his eyes and was nodding to a syncopated beat. They would have a blast in the run and gun tonight, he was sure of that. And even if Sebo spent the entire time babbling in his run-on sentences, at least it wouldn’t be time spent alone. He suddenly remembered the new map pack for Destined 4 Death that Sebo had been talking about three weeks ago. That was a long time in the gaming scene. Depending on who they played, it might not be the cakewalk they were expecting.
For the first time in a while, Deron thought of violence and felt anticipation.
14 - Ilya
The tram rocked lazily as it adjusted to the flow of traffic heading down Parker Avenue. Ilya found it fascinating that such a bulky vehicle could drive itself through crowded streets without running anybody over. More than that, it stopped only when there were passengers to pick up or when somebody wanted off. It should have taken a human to figure that out, but somehow the software in the tram did it with infallible accuracy. Most riders took no notice, and Ilya thought that the absence of a real driver made them less inclined to fool around when getting off or on. Distrust of the onboard sensors resulted in people finding their seats quickly, lest the tram start moving without them. It made for a marvel of automated efficiency, but there were still some things that the tram’s artificial driver couldn’t detect.
Graffiti, for one, like the crude veneer someone had reconciled on the partition in front of her. It was arguably obscene, though so poor in composition as to be laughable. It was likely the work of a pre-teen, a kid going through the public reconciliation phase that was pretty much a rite of passage for Easton residents. Ilya thought about undoing the work, but there was a connotation of civil disobedience in the wildly exaggerated breasts of the stick figure and she figured it would be wrong to silence nonviolent protest. She let it remain, but not without her mark.
Touching the corner of the partition, Ilya reconciled a shaded fold with a three-dimensional effect that made it look like the backing was coming loose. Behind it, she colored in a blue-white background and then an angel with a smile that showed its appreciation if not outright endorsement. It looked out of place, but the juxtaposition made the image stronger—the fighters and the spectators together in one place.
Sitting back in her seat, Ilya turned her attention to the passing shops and restaurants with their internal lights playing off the glow of the sidewalks, an effect that grew more intense as the sunlight faded. It was nearing eight, which on a Saturday night meant lots of customers for the parlors and cafés sprinkled amongst the locally-owned businesses. Perrault’s was lit up for the weekend crowd; Ilya recognized a few faces from school sitting at the small tables that bled out onto the sidewalk, sipping their faux coffees and vitamin-enhanced smoothies. It was the kind of thing her grandmother would scoff at, that Babushka would call an idle existence. Avoiding that kind of behavior came naturally to Ilya, the byproduct of some ill-defined prejudice locked away in her DNA.
A trio of newly teen girls got on when the tram stopped at Trinity; they shared a two-person bench a few rows back from Ilya. Their conversation was what she expected: shallow obsessions and useless gossip, nothing geared towards real problems. It was just like the graffiti, meaningful only in a certain light, only to the person that created it. That was a better time, thought Ilya, before reality brought gifts like loneliness, attraction, and mortality. Once recognized, those issues seemed to dominate her daily thoughts.
That was why, when the instant message popped up on her palette an hour prior, she gladly accepted the invitation to a night out. With dinner done and no plans for the night, Ilya had already changed into comfortable clothes and settled in her grandmother’s rocking chair with a palette in her lap. Going out would have been something different, a borderline cliché, but the idea of forsaking something for its conformity seemed in itself too conformist.
That it was okay to be different never even occurred to Ilya. It was an accepted fact that didn’t require debate, internally or externally. Choosing to get dressed and hop on the tram was just as valid an option as remaining in the rocking chair, reading for a couple of hours, and then turning in before the clock struck ten. The more time she spent watching the world scroll by outside the tram, the more confident she became in her choice. There was so much to see in Easton, so many pretty veneers going about their lives in a world that celebrated ostentatious artificiality. It was a strange paradox, like rats in a well-decorated maze.
Parker Avenue split right after Browning Road, as if the Tsugumi Galleria had always existed and the road forced to go around it. The shopping center was a squat three-story building that, thanks to an animated veneer, made a fitting cap for a street dedicated to commerce.
It was there that residents could find the legacy chain stores, the once-great giants that the city had forced into small pens to keep them from overtaking local businesses. At least Victoria’s Secret still had a varied collection.
There were two stops on each side of the mall and when the tram paused at the second one, Ilya disembarked.
It had grown colder throughout the day and with the sun finally gone, she was starting to feel the chill in her bones. Her shirt, though long-sleeved, felt thin against the constant breeze, and the loose bottoms of her jeans fluttered constantly as she made the short walk to the entrance. The double-doors parted for her automatically and once she passed the second set, a blast of warmer air enveloped her. The activity inside, the noise and the sparkling veneers, distracted her and for a moment, she forgot why she had come. There was so much going on, so much liveliness compared to the laid back aura of Café Perrault.
The smell of pastry reminded her of the instant message.
Fountain in front of the Cinnabon.
Ilya caught the scent on the air and followed it to the left. Merging into the crowd, she listened to the many voices around her, all talking at once about nothing.
Her date was sitting alone on the edge of the fountain, spaced evenly between a couple eating pretzels and a man reading a palette. Thinking herself unobserved, her face had a blank look on it, one that could approach sadness if the right screws were turned. The ponytail that she wore at school was down; one side of her hair hung by her cheek while the other disappeared behind her shoulder. Unlike Ilya, she had been smart enough to bring a jacket, one of those white half-trenches with wood-colored buttons on the pockets. It would have made a good picture with the water falling in the background. Ilya concentrated on the details, resolved to reconcile it later when she got a chance.
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