by S. C. Jensen
I brought up the holoscreen on my tattler and winced at the brightness of my display screen.
0332.
I’d only have to wait thirteen minutes to see if the slug was still running. If not, I’d be safe to hoof it down the tracks toward the next station. Running down the rail of an abandoned subway was right up there with pulling off my fingernails with pliers on the list of things I’d like to do with my last days on Firma. But knowing I had an option lifted a weight off my shoulders that I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying around with me.
I continued to drag my finger light across the station, pacing out where I thought the turnstiles should be. Before long, their menacing shapes appeared in the cool, grey pool of light. I pushed against one and found it locked. I tossed the bag over ahead of me and then swung my legs up and over the gate.
A noise reverberated toward me out of the darkness.
Not the unsettling scurry of rodents, but a low, electric hum, just at the edge of my hearing. I picked up the bag and walked toward the noise, stopping every few paces to listen for anything bigger than a rat that might move in the darkness. My eyes played tricks on me, the way they do when it’s too dark. Like my brain was getting bored and had decided to just make stuff up to fill in the blank space. Weird amoebas floated around the margins of my vision. I had to swing the light back and forth constantly to dispel the feeling of something lurking in my peripheral vision.
The low, electric hum got steadily louder. It buzzed in my brain and obliterated everything else. Or maybe there was nothing else. I was so focused on sweeping my peripheral vision that I almost stepped off the ledge and onto the tracks when I came up to the slug rail. The line was live, obviously. Seven minutes until I could see if it was still running on the old schedule. The breeze coming from the tunnel was stronger here, cool and dank.
Scraping noises echoed out of the somehow deeper darkness of the tunnel. I shone my light in that direction but could only illuminate the magrail track for a few metres before it faded back into the pitch. Little rodent eyes glowed back at me and scurried back into the darkness. I leaned forward, trying to see a little farther. There was something bigger than a rat in there. I could hear it scratching along, dragging its feet. Away from me—that was a relief—whatever it was retreated farther along the rail.
The air currents shifted and sucked toward the other end of the tunnel. The slug? Something clanged and rattled in the distance, and my shoulders sagged in relief. It was coming. I wasn’t going to have to trek through the tunnels and get eaten by whatever lived in there. My eyes welled with tears. Maybe the world wasn’t out to get me after all.
My shoulder wrenched backward, and I stumbled. The strap on Gore’s bag tore and I swayed out over the edge, suddenly off balance. I swung my arms in circles and the light from the flash whirled crazily around the tunnel. In a split second of total disorientation, I didn’t know which way to step to stay on solid ground. I threw myself backward, twisting, hoping I wasn’t going to land on the tracks and get splattered by the oncoming train.
The rattling in the tunnels was louder now. I landed on my hands and knees on the slimy concrete and felt the ground vibrating as the train approached. But I hadn’t fallen in the hole. I hadn’t landed on the tracks.
I pushed myself back up to my feet and swung my light toward a dragging noise in the darkness. My bag. Something had snatched my bag. Just at the edge of my finger flash, it moved. Pale-skinned, human-shaped . . . but emaciated and completely naked. Scars and red gashes covered the thing’s body. Some of them had been hastily stitched closed with thick black thread. The thing tugged on the strap of my bag, dragging it away from me, toward the ledge at the far end of the platform.
“Hey!” I shouted, and the word bounced around the empty station, repeating itself over and over in the darkness. –ey, –ey, –ey.
The thing didn’t stop. It leaned back, pulling on the bag with all its weight as it struggled toward the ledge. It was human, wasn’t it? Some weird, homeless tunnel dweller so desperate for food that wasn’t rats that it would attack passengers in this rarely used station? It had to be human. Male. If he was human, I knew roughly how to deal with him.
If it wasn’t, I didn’t want to think about what it actually was.
I did the only thing I could think of.
I screamed and rushed the guy, my upgrade held awkwardly in front of me so I could keep the flash on him. The light bounced wildly with every step, but I knew the general direction I had to move. For a moment the light hit the thing directly in the face and it hissed and shielded its eyes. Human eyes? It was hard to tell. Pure malevolence twisted the thing’s face as it leaped away from the light, leaving the bag behind.
I snatched up the bag by the handles—the shoulder strap dangling uselessly onto the sludgy ground. My heart pounded through my ears, making my entire head throb. I swung the light around again, but whatever it was, was gone. I took a long, shuddering breath and listened for its movements in the dark.
Nothing but the steady rumble of the oncoming train.
Overhead lights flickered, stuttering a couple times before settling into a dim glow that illuminated the slug station in circular pools of yellow light. Rats rushed for cover. I squinted against the sudden brightness and surveyed the station. The old, smashed ticket booth and the turnstiles, the crumbling stairs. Boarded up doors that probably once held toilets, but now, who knew what lurked in the darkness behind the broken doors covering the holes in the walls. All around the toilets, scrawls of black graffiti communicated in some slang I didn’t understand. Splashes of reddish-brown paint—I hoped it was paint—covered the walls in some places, blotting out the unfamiliar words in smears like a child’s finger-painting.
There was no one else in the station with me.
The bag’s handle stung the cut on my hand, and I switched it to my upgrade, flexing my fingers to make sure the wound wasn’t stiffening up.
The train rocketed out of the tunnel on my left and slowed in a disorienting blur that made me feel like I was moving and it was staying still. When it stopped and the doors opened, two men got off. They both wore visilens glasses, carried briefcases, and wore long neutral-coloured waterproof trench coats. They ignored me completely, engrossed in whatever entertainment they had going on in the glasses, and made a beeline for the crumbling stairs.
A chime sounded, and an electronic voice came over the speakers to tell me I’d better get my butt on the slug if I didn’t want another encounter with the tunnel wraith. I hustled over to the open door to board the train. I swung the bag out in front of me and pushed through the doors just before the chime sounded again and they shushed closed behind me. The slug was as empty as the station.
As soon as the doors closed, the windows went dark as the station’s lights went back into stasis until the next train arrived. The electronic readout at the front of the train, where the station name and time should have displayed, was a dead black rectangle. The slug inched forward, slowly at first, and then picked up speed until the click and rattle of the rails disappeared into the silent, frictionless ride of the maglev tracks humming the beast along.
I settled myself onto a bench seat with the body bag beside me and waited for the next station.
The first stop after No Man’s Land was Harbour Station. Once the slug hit the regular route, other passengers boarded and the sign above the door displayed the time and station name just as it should.
Part of me wanted to get off the slug as soon as possible. The noise and crowds, which I’d been desperate for in the abandoned station, now felt oppressive. But I was going to have to hoof it to Sal’s one way or another. I didn’t like my chances for snagging a hack cab on the grid just as the earlier morning rush was getting started. Most would have been pre-ordered by shift-workers heading to the warehouse district on the far side of the Grit. I opted to stay on the slug until I got a litt
le closer to downtown.
I tried not to think about what I was going to do when I got to Sal’s place. It would be nice to be among friends again, but every hope I’d had for rescuing Tom and saving Rae had been dragged off through the mud with Gore. I did not have the knowledge or skills to get myself into Libra without the SecurIntel goon’s experience. But Tom’s broken and bloody face kept hovering in my mind’s-eye. His torn lips struggling over the words Let me die...
More and more people crowded onto the train at every stop, crushing in next to me, smelling of fried foods and damp clothing and body odour. The electronic blips from tattlers and visilens glasses and the kaleidoscopic flashing of holoscreens seeped into my brain like static interference. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to drown out the over-stimulation, but I could feel my heartbeat accelerating and my breath coming in panting gasps. The noise kept getting louder and louder until I thought I was going to choke on it.
I twisted the fabric of the duffle bag in my metal fist and clenched my teeth, wishing I could eradicate the memory of the video. I had to do something. I had to get Tom out of there. I would not let him die. Rage rushed through my body in a hot wave and coalesced into a hard, burning lump in my stomach. Price was going to pay for what he’d done.
The next time the slug slowed to a stop, I spilled off the train with the other passengers and rushed up the stairs out of the station like I was being pursued. Rain still drizzled down on the streets of HoloCity, but night had dissolved into an early morning haze of yellowish-grey light. Smog thickened the air and light pollution reflected in the rain. The street-level air had a soupy texture, but it was fresher than the recycled atmosphere of the slug station and the network of dank underground tunnels. I breathed in deeply and tried to push away the rising panic that had taken hold of me on the train.
Sal’s Soba & Sake Bar was just on the edge of the Grit District and the more commercial downtown shopping area. We were close enough to the Grit that the pro skirts slipped like ghosts through the early morning commuters, muttering lascivious thoughts into the ears of passersby, hoping to catch a quick fare from anyone with time to spare before their shift. Tattlers pinged through the hustle and bustle of the street as the occasional fish was hooked and reeled under a back-alley awning.
Boiler cars and hacks zipped along the grid next to the sidewalks, silent and lethally fast if anyone was careless enough to fall off the walkway and onto the grid. Auto sensors would reroute vehicles if the grid sensed any foreign obstruction on the track, but even the fastest machines couldn’t save people from their own stupidity. I’d seen my share of splatters on the grid during my time as an HCPD officer. I kept as far from the grid as I could on the crowded sidewalk, crushed in next to the food carts and vending machines tucked into every narrow slice of real estate between the towering high-rise forest around us.
The food carts and vending machines rattled and wafted enticing scents into the crowd. My stomach growled again, but I knew the scents were chemically manufactured to smell far better than the swill would taste. I ducked into a side street, away from the main gridline and jogged the rest of the way to Sal’s.
When I arrived at my destination, though, my heart sank. The red awning above Sal’s restaurant drooped down over the door, torn and splattered with white paint. The front window was shattered and boarded up with mismatched bits of recycled plastic flooring. But the boards had been torn back and hung loosely over the smashed glass. The “LV” of a Lorena Valentia logo scrawled angrily across the storefront.
Revenge of the Feeding Frenzy.
When the feedreelers attacked me in Sal’s restaurant, he hadn’t been shy about letting the world know exactly what happened to anyone recording revenge feeds in his restaurant. The feedreelers had barely escaped with their lives. But it appeared that Lorena Valentia wasn’t done with me yet. And if she had Libra behind her, I’d have to be careful not to be spotted by any of her rabid swarm of followers. Great. Just as I was thinking this job was getting too easy.
I tugged at the front door, but it didn’t budge, locked from the inside. I peered through the window. Booth benches had been torn open and upholstery fluff strewn everywhere. Chairs and tables were upended and broken. The bottles behind the bar smashed to smithereens and scattered across the restaurant like a party cannon full of glitter. No sign of Sal. I swallowed a lump in my throat.
One more casualty of my mistakes.
I punched the door with my upgrade—once, twice. The metal gave a little farther each time, screeching as the lock pin strained against the beating. Third time’s the charm. I reeled back and hammered it with all of the rage and frustration I’d pent up since I gotten that fateful call from Rae. They’re coming for me, Bubbles...
Crack!
The door caved inward and I stumbled inside. My boots crunched over the debris-strewn floor. I had to kick a broken table out of the way to squeeze the body bag through the opening. I pushed the door closed behind me and heaved a piece of something in front of the door to wedge it closed. I didn’t need anyone following me into Sal’s back room.
“Sal?” I called out, not really expecting an answer. “Cookie?”
The restaurant, which had been a place of comfort and warmth to me for years, now felt cold and empty and dead. Dust rattled down with the echo of my voice and itched where it landed on the back of my neck. I sucked on my teeth and wished I had a piece of gum. Somehow in the rush to leave LunAstro I’d forgotten to grab a package of my most important coping mechanism. I peeked in behind the bar to see if there was anything left worth drinking that wouldn’t reawaken the booze goblins. A dented bottle of clear synthetic hydration compound had been kicked under the counter. As I reached down to grab it, I noticed that Sal’s trusty shotgun was not in its usual place beneath the register. The register itself yawned open, cleaned out, not a five-cred chip to be seen.
A chunk of something rattled down from the floor above and fell through the rafters, landing in a cloud of dust near the swinging door that led to the kitchen. The ceiling in the back corner of the room had been blown apart and burned. From the look of the scorch marks on the walls and floors, the crew that attacked Sal’s place was armed with nothing more sophisticated than bottle bombs and homemade bangers. The fact that the shotgun was gone probably meant that Sal hadn’t let the place go down without a fight. Unless...
Another chunk fell from the floor above.
I tucked in close to the wall with my back pressed against the mirror behind Sal’s bar and tilted my ear toward the ceiling.
Nothing.
Then something slid across the beam and more plaster rained down on my head.
Someone cursed.
“Sal?” I said again. But I hoped to the HoloGods of Advertising that it wasn’t Sal up there because there was no way the crumbling ceiling could hold his weight.
When a long, tarnished barrel poked down out of the hole and pointed at my face, I changed my tune. I’d much rather have the fat man fall on me than get my noodle blown open by someone who didn’t know how to operate a shotgun. And by the way the barrel was swaying around I didn’t think this particular bandit had completed his firearms safety course.
I tossed the bag onto the floor as far away from myself as I could manage and watched the gun swing toward it. I crouched down, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest, and ducked out of its range. Slowly and carefully, I swung myself up onto the bar, one leg at a time. The only sound was my attacker’s ragged breathing from up in the rafters. I lay still and watched the way the gun moved. Whoever was up there seemed to be limited in how far they could aim without falling through the hole in the ceiling. They kept the gun trained on the bag, not on me. They couldn’t see me. I shuffled as quietly as I could down the bar, reached out with my upgrade, and wrenched the shotgun down out of the hole.
A sharp cry was followed quickly by a crash of plaster and a body dre
ssed entirely in black fell out of the hole and landed on its back on the broken glass below the bar. “Ugh,” the man said. “What the—?”
“Whoopie-daisy,” I said, and flipped the gun around so that it pointed straight at my opponent’s covered head.
“Don’t shoot!” the man said.
“Shouldn’t play in construction zones.”
He groaned, rolled onto his side, and gingerly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. “Ow! Geez, did you have to—” He stopped short when he looked up at me, a cockeyed homburg hat obscuring one eye.
Relief flooded through my body to replace the adrenaline. “Dickie?”
“Bubbles?” Dickie Roh scrambled up to his feet and brushed at the shards of glass embedded in the knees of his black pinstriped suit. He straightened his hat. “What are you doing here? Where’s Rae?”
“Long story.” I jumped off the bar, left the shotgun on the counter, and pulled him into a tight embrace. “Bad story. I’m so, so glad to see you’re okay.”
Dickie squeezed me back, then said, “I’m glad to see you, too, Bubs. But you’re making me nervous.”
He held me at arms length, his round cheeks pushed up in an uneasy smile. His black eyes were carved, crescent-moon slices beneath faint eyebrows. With a genuinely happy smile his eyes disappeared completely into his cheeks like a caricature of a gleeful child. Now, worry lines creased his forehead and his grin. He said, “I don’t think you’ve voluntarily hugged anyone since . . . ever.”
“Shut up,” I said and squeezed him again. “Where’s Sal? What happened here?”
“Long story,” Dickie said, and winked at me. “Not so bad, though. C’mon, I’ll take you to him.”
Dickie grabbed the shotgun off the counter and propped it on his shoulder with his fingers, thankfully, far from the trigger. He spun on his heel, crunching glass beneath his foot, and jumped over the bag I’d dumped on the floor. He pushed his way through the swinging door that led into the kitchen and beyond the kitchen to Sal’s real business. I scooped up the body bag and followed him.