by Jett Lang
The cycle maintained; there was no breaking it.
For the next hour, she listened to the citizens speak and the rabble question, her eyes never shifting too far from the tiled tunnel her quarry would descend. She hoped the chief hadn’t done something stupid, or Bill, for that matter. She shook her head. No, Bill was reliable and knew how to carry out a favor with subtlety. The chief, on the other hand, she wasn’t so sure about. He had climbed the ranks, but there was always that tribal instinct to defend your own at any cost. That was the kind of thing rehabilitation stamped out of the young with ease. The chief had entered the city as an adolescent, which was the crux of her worry. That was why the city needed to pass age restrictions on applicants, she felt. It’d make her job easier.
Queen folded her arms and leaned against a pillar beside the bench. Above her, the arrival times were posted: sluggish green numbers sliding over a black, rectangular screen. In fifteen minutes her targets would be too late to board the train, and then she’d have to venture back to the processing center to convince the chief what a terrible mistake he was making.
As she contemplated the various methods of discomfort she could leverage upon the head of security, her targets came within view. The child, the woman, and the man, each one close together and holding hands like one big, happy family. Queen had to give them points for going with the heartstring angle. One lumbering guard brought up the rear, four heads taller than the hawkish man and encased in a musculature of tan, liquid armor.
“Halt!”
The happy family stopped with a clumsiness that seemed measured, awkwardly trying to regain their equilibrium as the guard patted them down. While Refugee Transportation and Refugee Clearance were run by two different government agencies, and the two agencies communicated regularly with one another to insure this process ran smoothly, that did not mean there was no overlap in procedure. Especially when it came to the checking and double checking of any potential terrorist. There had been only a few bombings in the past of high severity that she could remember. Those few cases had led to the reintroduction of physical searches, it seemed. Archaic as these were, they did an excellent job at putting the citizens and politicians in the preferred state of mind: calm.
The guard completed the pat-down, righted himself, and pulled a scanning wand from his belt. He repeated the motions he had followed before, going over each limb, inch by inch. Queen watched closely, knowing that the wand was where the real power of the city’s crisis prevention lay. It was a slim stick of grey metal and plastic derived from the technology of the larger scanners that all refugees passed through on a daily basis; any weapons, bombs, or illegal devices could be sniffed out in a single sweep.
As the wand waved over the groin of the hawkish man, he said, nervously, “Everything okay down there?”
“Be quiet,” the guard said. His wand chirped. Negative.
“Sorry.”
The guardsman continued downward until he reached the man’s worn sneakers. Still no positive reading from the wand. A deep frown furrowed the flesh of the guard’s mouth.
The hawkish man caught sight of this. “Disappointed?”
“I said be quiet.” He towered over the man. “I won’t repeat that again.”
His gravelly baritone had a dark promise to it. When he heard it, the hawkish man lowered his head. The supplication rang of mockery, which the guardsman did not appear to perceive.
“That clear for the rest of you?”
The child and the woman nodded swiftly. Bobbleheads.
Staring at them from behind his tinted glass helmet, the guard went to task scanning the woman.
That was when Queen took her leave of the bench. At the platform, she could hear the train’s distant screeching as it rounded the corner, the lights cutting through the dark tunnel. The refugees were beginning the gather around her, and she stole a glance from the corner of her vision. The guard was now escorting the family toward the platform, just a few feet to her right. Another gaggle of refugees was bunched there, but the trio was easy to spot with their towering escort acting as a waypoint.
Was the guard going to escort them all the way through Factory District? Queen hoped those were not his orders, or she’d be having a stern discussion with the chief and her pal Bill after this was over. As the train rumbled in and coasted to a shaky stop, her worry was alleviated with a realization: All the groups were being escorted. It was standard practice as of last week’s implementation of a safer refugee transfer zone, she recalled now. It’d slipped her mind during a stressful morning dealing with people such as the chief and his computer’s nigh infinite notes on policy.
Everything was okay, then. For her.
The train doors slid open, an odor of urine and some sort of floral scent mingling and drifting out of the lighted interior. She moved with the crowd as they milled in under the watchful eyes of the guardsman. A sensual female voice over the loudspeakers spoke: “Welcome to New Paradise public transport vessel 03-R. Please find a seat in an orderly manner. If you are having trouble finding a seat, please direct your attention to your assigned escort.”
While the recorded woman started repeating the message, Queen shouldered through the dusty men and women for a center-aisle seat. Attaining it with minimal disquiet, she sat and waited for the trio to find their own seating arrangements. She knew the guardsman would place them in the middle of the train, reducing the chance that they may try flinging themselves out the doors. They wouldn’t; this batch wanted to live. But procedure was procedure. Queen had heard of incidences like that in the past, but they were such rare occurrences that she wondered why it was a standard in the training. The people who attempted the jump always ended up dead, unable to survive the speed at which they hit the wall. Second thoughts could be fatal.
The real issue was inconvenience. Cleaning up the mess cut into scheduling, and that could not be abided. Regardless, a few dead idiots made the whole city a better place, in her mind. Let the fools die and the IQ of the population rise another notch or two.
The trio’s guardsman finally located three unoccupied seats for his charges. These seats were separated from Queen by only four other people – far too close for her comfort. She pulled her hood forward, black strings dangling along her chest. Her peripheral vision sharpened on the man, woman, and child, the last being the nearest to her.
Speaker lady chimed: “This train is bound for Factory District. One minute until departure. Please find your seat in an orderly manner. If you cannot locate a seat, please direct your attention to your assigned escort.”
A couple of men remained standing in the very front of the car, and their guardsman was hurriedly scrunching refugees to find room for them. The number of refugees matched the number of seats precisely; however, the average width of the seat did not necessarily match up with some of the larger members of the packs. Though, with a bit of forceful persuasion from a man twice the size of any other on the train, space was found. An apologetic chorus fluttered through the rabble.
“Stay like that,” the guardsman said. “I don’t want to have to move you people around again.”
“We understand, we understand,” one of the males with a scraggly beard replied, his words sluggish but clear, as if his life depended on the correct pronunciation.
The male refugee settled in; the train started to move. Beside her, the hawkish man and his two accomplices sat perfectly still. They stared out a window at the polished steel tunnel that was becoming darker and darker.
“Fifteen minutes until arrival,” the disembodied voice announced. “Please remain seated for the duration of the journey.”
※
After disembarking from the train, she navigated through the shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic surrounding the arena betting parlors, where rough-faced stiffs came to unwind and gamble away their shift money. These legal facilities were strategically located along the outer wall of the Factory District. The morning crowds suffered from an obnoxious dichotomy
– complacent upon winning and hostile after an ill-placed bet. For those unlucky many who could not afford ringside seats, wide-screened and caged-in televisions were placed above the outdoor bookie windows. There were no chairs, so people either sat away from the crowd or stood amid them.
Queen’s quarry, without escort since exiting the station, stopped to observe the nature of the day’s blood sport. On the four outside screens she witnessed an allegedly reigning champion (a carved and barrel-chested man) eviscerating packs of cybernetically-enriched beasts – oasis crocs, zoo lions, and one enormous desert bear. The bear gave the gladiator trouble, the small, circular arena closing in around him at ten second intervals. Over time, he ran out of places to retreat, and won out only when the beast stood to its full nine feet and exposed its underside. A razor-spear straight through the heart brought the massive creature tumbling forward. Blood splattered out onto the champion. The bear’s claws raked at the sand for several desperate moments. Then it stilled.
The crowd outside whipped up into frenzy: a mixture of disappointed booing, groaning, and celebratory shouting. Those who had bet big on the warrior stepped forward to claim their earnings. Bookies scrambled, their nimble hands counting out hundreds of credits worth of plastic funds. Contrasted with the grim-faced gladiator, the men and women profiting from his success grinned with absolute radiation, rushing to slot their winnings into banking kiosks for later misuse. One man with a crystal phone took snapshots of his cards and dialed friends. Loud, obnoxious gloating followed.
The sulking majority dispersed into the streets, bound for the rising disappointment of a new day.
So, too, did the trio. Momma, papa, and child locked arms with one another as they threaded through the masses. Ahead of them, where the checkpoint and acclimation zone began for Factory District proper, refugees and workers, in two lines, were filtering through. Many refugees stood between Queen and her prey, but she could see every move the family made, their cautious inspection of the advancing crowd.
It’d not been that long since she had visited this checkpoint. The crowd could have been composed of the same poor-complexioned, coffee-lusting faces, tired expressions written in the lines around the mouths and eyes of factory workers and those-to-be. Fifty stories of hardened black steel lorded over the crowd, cast a great shadow that shaded the recesses of their skin. Far above, one of the domes which divided the city from the reality of desert temperatures and the pollution within Factory started to prickle with a soft morning light, yellows and reds comingling. She passively absorbed the spectacle, and the line moved forward, until the family was finally at the front. A guardsman dispensed appropriately-sized masks for the three of them. And a booth attendant in a tan uniform slid each of them their CID cards.
“These are only temporary citizen identification cards. Remember to have your job officer validate the back and front.”
“Does my employer give me the permanent card?” the hawkish man asked, grappling pitifully with the dialect.
“That’s right, sir,” the attendant crackled over the speaker. “They have to fill out all the forms. You just sign your name and temporary CID number when the time comes. Now, let’s move this line along. Next! Come on, people! We don’t have all morning.”
The line shuffled in; the family was ushered through. Once the trio was out of sight, Queen shouldered her way to the very front of the line. She waved her CID card at the guardsman on duty. He signaled her on, fast-tracking her through with a motion to the refugees in the leftmost line. Before she could slink past the checkpoint, the guardsman, a short and distinctly human man, had his hand on her arm. The pressure told her he was augmented.
“What’re you doing in this line? Citizens on the right, outlanders on the left.” Stern. What the job demanded.
She kept her hood shadowing her features. Her prey was departing. “You’ve been informed, guardsman. If you haven’t, your chief is doing poor work.”
“He told me to look for you, but this is my jurisdiction. I don’t care for this business.”
“You should care; I’m making your day smoother. Let me in there and I’ll handle this.” She favored the man with a sidelong glance.
Though his voice was low from the start, it lowered further. “You don’t tell me how to run my post. You got that?”
She became motionless, ready to break him if necessary. “I got that.”
“No one in security wants to be a part of this. No one.” But he released his grasp. “I’m only letting you in there to reduce the collateral.”
“Then you’re wiser than your chief.”
“It doesn’t take much to be wiser than an outsider. Now go and do what they paid you for,” he said. For someone manning a checkpoint, the guardsman appeared as versed on her task as the chief of security himself. She’d have to make note of this man in her report. A possible asset or a troublesome disgruntlement in need of liquidation. But that was for later consideration. The refugees around her were growing restless. The disturbance in the flow of ritual brought out ancient mutterings and curses.
Queen went ahead, the laser-gate flashing out of existence. She found herself in a large anteroom, grey and dirt-ridden from the daily affairs. Behind her, the laser grid reactivated. An angry heat forced her farther into the anteroom where the gathered masses were being filtered, group by group, into the clear, circular doors of the acclimation chamber. To her right was a dark, grated divider, through which she could see the workers donning their masks and filing into their own acclimation cylinder. The doors slid closed at their backs and the chamber filled with white smog. Then the group stepped out into the Factory District and the next cluster of laborers took their place.
The procession on her side was bustling along. The refugees showed a bit more jump in their step, a certain willingness to get to their new careers in this vast and mesmerizing cityscape they had been living outside of for so long. Now they were within its hallowed halls, herded around like the sacred animals they were. Ready for the grinder. Ready for their lengthy shifts and gambling debts to begin. Some of this herd would be denied employment to maintain the guise of the city’s exclusivity, but she knew the lifeblood of New Paradise was in its people as much as its product. There was a reason the city opened its arms to the desert, and one did not need to look far to see that these desolate bodies, hardened by desert living and turned naturally toward labor, held the market in sustainable manpower.
“Hurry that line up!” called a helmet-covered director, his chin shaven cleanly beneath his black visor. He stood near the circular glass and metal door that led out to the smog-laden streets of Factory. “Masks will be fitted here. Do not attempt to readjust or remove them after you have been fitted. We are not responsible for what happens to you if you do not abide by these instructions.”
“Why do we need these anyway, man?” A male voice. Young. Grating.
The director grinned. “We need live workers, boy. Living bodies give the best results for long-term production, research has found. Now, if you’re all done with the questions for the day, let’s get that mask on and see if you got what it takes.” Likely, with that outburst, the director would make special note to send the youth back to the desert.
For his part, the young man took the remark in stride. A woman with very white and very feminine hands adjusted his facemask. It was done with an apologetic gentleness. A smile was on the woman’s thin lips as she watched the eyes of the youth, his expression made unreadable by the mask.
“Step it up, people, step it up! Your future bosses will not be as patient as I am.” The director laughed harshly. A sports coach laugh. “Hustle, hustle. Margret there won’t manhandle you too bad, will you?”
“No, sir,” the white-handed woman said. And to the scolded refugee: “You’re done. Step into the next chamber and wait for your group.”
The line proceeded. The young man moved into the cylindrical acclimation chamber, and Margret hastened her pace significantly. It did not
take away from her tenderness. A few heads back, Queen watched as those white hands brushed over the hawkish countenance of the man she was pursuing, then over the short, trimmed hair of the woman, and finally the ruffled locks of the boy. The boy smiled up at the white-handed woman in that unassuming manner only children can manage. There was something off about the kid, about the whole family.
Her legs moved automatically with the procession, in tune with their movements to such a degree that she became fully conscious of her place in line only after those white hands were fitting her for her own mask. Queen blinked several times. Her augmented vision returned to its proper depth.
Margret mistook this as sleep deprivation, whispered, “We do make you get up far too soon for these procedures. I’d change it if I could.”
“I’d really appreciate that.” Queen’s voice was muffled and airy against the respirator. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman crack a small smile. One more tightening of the straps and the gasmask was snug. Margaret tapped her on the shoulder and cued her into the chamber with the rest of the refugees. Her three targets were now glommed together. They looked out to their presumed future.
“Alright!” the director bellowed. “Last one is in. Close her up, Margret! Day isn’t even half through.”
Cold air washed in as acclimation was sealed behind her. White smog flowed out of vents from above, the pollution sinking into her clothing. She was thankful that she had brought her worst clothes for this job, and doubly grateful that the immigrants were slowly being enveloped. Their tattered clothing and unclean bodies fogged. Everyone in the chamber became a grey outline. She wished to take her targets right then and there, but the risk was too great. There needed to be no witnesses, no collateral. She’d have to go farther in, wait for the crowd to disperse to their various routes. Then she’d strike.
The door ahead of her rolled open, and out with the smoke she went.
※
The Factory District: the well-maintained abode of the working poor. This façade of stacked apartments and inviting pubs did little to detract from the suffocating aroma of the chemical plants. White haze reduced visibility by fifty percent on a good day and eighty percent on most others. Ground-based vehicular traffic was strictly off-limits; only the glint of managerial hovercrafts and jetbike joyriders were seen overhead. Masks were assigned by employers and mandatory for survival. Higher paid plant managers could opt for respiratory filtration surgery and permanently forgo the breathing apparatus, much to the envy of their workers. With that implant, a person could sit in a room of cyanide gas till boredom struck. Queen should know: She demoed the latest model two months ago. She caught up on her reading for a good five hours on that day, until the laboratory goons finally heaved her from the chamber’s recliner.