by Rachel Aaron
“Not enough,” I argued, staring at him in disbelief. “Some money is better than no money, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. You know we’re barely staying afloat. Do you really want to go through another hell-job like today’s slugfest?”
Nik grimaced. “Fair point,” he muttered, heaving a long sigh. “Where do you want to start?”
I beamed at him and pulled up my map, struggling to read the notes I’d made in my drunken research. “I don’t want to go to one of our normal auction houses. They’re technically open twenty-four hours, but professional bidders keep professional hours, which even in the DFZ means eight to five. This late on a weekend there’ll be nothing but bottom feeders looking to scoop up deals from the desperate. I won’t even need the curse to get screwed if I walk into that pit.”
“Definitely,” Nik agreed. “So you’re thinking a flea market, then?”
I shook my head. “All the big markets close at ten. I don’t want to be crushed for time, and end-of-day prices are always terrible. I don’t want a bunch of false negatives screwing up my results.”
“Then I guess we’re not going anywhere,” Nik grumbled. “You just eliminated all the markets in town.”
“Not all of them,” I said with a grin. “There’s one place that won’t just be open, it’s actually doing its best business right now. I know because I looked it up.” I turned my phone to him with a dramatic gesture. “We’re going to the Night Lot!”
Nik hit the brakes so hard, I was thrown against my seatbelt.
“Ow,” I groaned, rubbing my chest. “Dude, what the—”
“Are you serious?” Nik demanded, his gloved hand crushed so tight around the wheel I was surprised it wasn’t dented. “You want to go to the Night Lot? The one in Rentfree?”
“Is there another?” I asked, suddenly very confused. “What’s your problem? The Night Lot is perfect. It’s the biggest collection of independent vendors in the city, it trades exclusively in cash, it’s famous for being a place where you can buy and sell anything, and it’s specifically open at night. We’ll be getting there at prime time! Plus I’ve always wanted to visit, so this is great.”
“No it’s not,” Nik said hotly, looking angrier than I’d seen him since the Gnarls. “Rentfree isn’t somewhere you go for kicks. It’s the worst neighborhood in the DFZ. You’d be better off selling your stuff in a war zone.”
“It can’t be that dangerous,” I argued. “It has a giant, famous market. They did a whole episode about it on DFZ Uncovered.”
“Life is not reality TV,” Nik snapped, clenching the wheel even tighter. “Can’t you just wait until tomorrow and sell somewhere normal?”
“No,” I said angrily, crossing my arms over my chest. “This is a unique opportunity! I don’t get wardrobes full of next-season fashion dropped on my head every day. If I’m going to use them up, I want to do it in the biggest market possible so I can watch the curse functioning under every conceivable condition. The Night Lot is a perfect venue, and I’ve already got everything together.” I huffed at him. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but I’m going.”
That last part was pure drunken belligerence, but it worked.
“Fine,” Nik growled.
“Really?” Because his tone said it wasn’t fine at all.
“Of course not,” he said, glaring at the road as we changed lanes. “It’s a terrible idea, but not as terrible as letting you go alone.”
“Why are you so against this?” I asked, baffled. “We go to bad neighborhoods all the time. You sound more afraid of Rentfree than you were about the Gnarls.”
“Because Rentfree is scarier,” he said, his face absolutely serious. “The Gnarls are just magical and weird. Rentfree’s full of the sort of people who choose to live in Rentfree. They’re way more dangerous.”
That made a certain amount of sense. As the name implied, Rentfree was rent free. It was the only place in the entire city where anyone could just walk into a space and live there, no rent or lease or even walls required. You’d think this sort of limitless freedom would lead to anarchy, and it did to a certain extent, but it was also the only way a place like Rentfree could function.
If the Gnarls were the DFZ’s backstage, Rentfree was her prop closet. It was where the city shoved all the buildings and roads she either wasn’t using or was planning to move somewhere else but hadn’t prepped a landing site for yet. Other parts of the DFZ got shuffled on a monthly basis, but the buildings in Rentfree changed every day, sometimes every hour. All that turbulence made it impossible to charge for space, because who was going to pay rent on a room that might not even be there tomorrow? So, to keep a chunk of her city from going empty, the DFZ had opened up the entire neighborhood as free living space for anyone willing to put up with the chaos.
As a result, Rentfree had become the DFZ’s version of the Wild West. The free housing attracted a diverse array of people, ranging from those who couldn’t afford even the few dollars a month it took to rent a room in a coffin community to those who used the chaos as cover to build their own mini-kingdoms. But despite being an infamous gangland, Rentfree was also a mecca for independent commerce. Anyone could come into the neighborhood and set up a shop, so anyone did, creating the city’s biggest free market. There were no rules, no fees, no limits except what people were willing to pay, which made Rentfree’s Night Lot one of the most “DFZ” places in the whole DFZ. It also had the highest murder, kidnapping, and drug-use rates, which was why I’d never gone there before, but I had Nik with me now. I’d watched him take down an entire mercenary team literally one-handed just last week. Surely he could handle a few hours of shopping for the sake of science, and he was waaaaay cheaper than the guided tourist groups with their armored buses and fleets of guards that were my alternative.
“It’ll be fine,” I told him, flashing him my best drunken smile. “This is going to work great! You’ll see.”
Nik made a noncommittal noise and focused on the road.
I kept smiling at him anyway, holding my phone up so he could see the screen. “Sibyl,” I said cheerfully. “Directions to the Night Lot, please.”
There was a long pause, and then my AI’s voice sounded over the speaker.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I off mute now?”
Nik arched an eyebrow as I snatched my phone back. “Would you stop it?” I hissed into the mic.
“Why should I stop?” she asked flippantly. “I’m not the one who muted the literal voice of reason.”
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not,” my AI snapped. “I can read your mind, remember?”
I rolled my eyes, and Sibyl sighed, a purely dramatic sound since she had no lungs. “Opal,” she said in a voice pitched just for my hearing this time. “This is a bad idea, and not just for all the very good reasons Nik just listed. It’s late, and you’ve had a long and stressful day. You’re also still drunk. Now is not the time to experiment with dragon magic in Rentfree!”
“Nonsense,” I said. “Being drunk makes it less scary, and I’ll sleep better when I have some answers.”
“At least wait until your father goes back to Korea,” she pleaded. “Seriously, he’s right across the river. Do you think he won’t notice you messing with his magic?”
I set my jaw stubbornly. “If he didn’t want me messing, he shouldn’t have put it on me.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t come down on you for trying,” Sibyl said. “I’m actually really happy you’re taking a scientific approach to a problem for once, but it’s my prime directive to think about your well-being. Your mom just warned you that your dad’s in town precisely because his enemies know that you two are having problems. Rentfree’s dangerous enough for normal people, but you’ve got a target on your back. If someone was looking to grab you, you’re giving them a perfect chance.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” I said angrily. “Hide at home? I’ve got stuff to do, and I’m never going to get it done if I
keep wasting my time being afraid. Which, by the way, is exactly what my dad wants. Why do you think he let my mom make my apartment so nice? He wants me to cower under all those throw pillows like a mouse in a hole until it’s time for him to swoop down and scoop me up!”
“You’re not wrong,” Sibyl said. “But I have to say these things, Opal. Your dad compromised me once into giving you bad advice. I’m not going to let you walk into a trap again without saying something.”
I smiled. “Thanks for caring, but my mind is made up.”
“I know,” she said sadly. “And I’m your AI. Caring about you is my prime directive.”
That should have cheapened it, but I was too short on friends to worry that my best one was programmatically compelled to love me. It was good to have a voice of caution even if I did have to mute her once in a while. Right now, though, I was dead-set determined. Sibyl must have felt it in my thoughts, too, because she brought up the map to the Night Lot without another word, putting the directions on my phone’s screen and turning the brightness to max so Nik could see them too.
***
The drive into Rentfree was even more interesting than I’d hoped. While the specific location jumped around, the neighborhood was always in the north of the city on the shores of Lake St. Clair directly under the Financial District, a section of the Skyways that was so dense that the elevated bridges overhead formed a complete ceiling. Two decades ago, this area had been known as the Pit and had been infamous for being the place where Algonquin’s great wave had first crashed into Detroit, drowning millions and leaving a giant magical pollution zone famous for its ghosts. There were still a ton of rumors about it even now, eighty years later. If the Pit still existed, though, the DFZ had hidden it away long ago. These days, modern Rentfree was no more haunted than anywhere else in the city, but it was definitely crazier.
“Wow,” I said, rolling down my window for a better look.
Ahead of me, the normal Underground with its practical, squat cement buildings that ended just below the Skyways gave way to a wall of pure architectural insanity. Buildings of every style, height, and stage of completion were crammed together like children’s blocks. They leaned on each other like drunks, sometimes blending together halfway up to form entirely new floors. Several were way too tall to actually fit beneath the vault of the Skyways, so their bases had been sunk deep into the ground, which curved sharply downward, creating a chasm so deep it created its own microclimate. When I rolled down the window, I could feel the damp, cold wind blowing up out of it, bringing the smell of wet metal and decaying plastic from the depths.
I’d never seen anything so insane, and I’d seen some crazy shit. But just as I was getting hyped for an exciting drive down the side of an urban canyon, Nik turned us off the main road into one of the brightly lit, razor-wire-lined parking decks that clung to the edge of Rentfree like fungus on a well.
“Hold up,” I said as the auto-ticket counter handed him a spot number with an absolutely ludicrous hourly rate. “You’re paying for tourist parking? Are you sick?”
“Trust me, this is the cheapest place.”
“But there’s a five-dollar lot right over there,” I argued, pointing at the big gravel field full of cars I could see through the gaps in the deck wall.
“Just because they don’t charge a lot doesn’t mean it’s a deal,” Nik said as we drove up the ramp toward the top deck. “They can afford to only charge five bucks because if you park there, your car’s going to get robbed. The deck’s expensive, but it’s a lot cheaper than a new windshield.”
That seemed excessive to me. There were a ton of cars in the free lot, and the few that looked busted could have been that way when they came in. But there was no advantage to starting a fight. I needed Nik if I was going to do this just like I needed him for everything else in my life these days, so I plastered a cheerful smile over my face and kept my comments to myself as he parked us at the ass end of the deck’s top level, the cheapest spot.
“There,” he said, getting out. “Now at least we’ll have somewhere safe to run to.”
“You really are afraid of this place, aren’t you?” I said, grabbing my black trash bag of fashion out of the back seat.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, double-checking the door he’d just locked. “I’m cautious. I used to do a lot of work in Rentfree. I know better than to underestimate it.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if that work had been on the stealing cars side or the protecting them side, but again, not the time. Even drunk, I knew better than to poke the bear I was riding on. I was far more excited about actually getting into Rentfree in any case.
“It looks just like it does on TV,” I said excitedly, running to the edge of the deck, which was almost falling into Rentfree’s cliff. The tilt was a bit dizzying, but it made for a great view down into the vortex of confused buildings, several of which were moving as I watched. They were all piled on top of each other, too, which was a new one on me.
With the exception of the superscrapers whose height demanded foundations that went into the bedrock, buildings in the Underground tended to stop at the actual ground to make room for all the sewers and old train lines and other stuff the DFZ kept below her surface. Apparently, though, the structures here weren’t bound by such logic, or even by physics. Just like in the Gnarls, the stuff in Rentfree seemed to do whatever the hell it wanted, with buildings stacked as far down as I could see. Even the roads didn’t play fair, snaking up and down and sideways between the structures like a roller coaster.
“That is so cool,” I said, digging out my goggles and putting them on top of my head before leaning over the edge of the deck so Sibyl could get a picture of the chasm. “How far down does it go?”
“It varies,” Nik said, pulling me away from the edge. “Come on. The Night Lot shouldn’t be far.”
“Does it move, too?” I asked excitedly as we started toward the stairs.
“Everything here moves,” he said. “But the Night Lot’s always near the entrance. Gotta make it easy on the customers.”
That made sense. What was the point of a giant market if no one could find it? My map was certainly no help. The city didn’t even bother updating the roads here. There was just a big circle marked “Rentfree” with a list of attractions and advertisements for the tourism companies who’d be happy to show them to you for a fee. Some of the prices they listed were positively criminal, making me even happier that Nik had agreed to come along.
“Here,” he said, shrugging out of his coat.
Before I could ask what he was doing, Nik dropped the coat on my shoulders. The armored black leather was so heavy, it almost knocked me over. It was also warm from his body, which would have been pleasant if the temperature hadn’t already been in the upper eighties.
“What’s this for?”
“To hide your outfit,” he grumbled, pulling off his gloves since there was no point hiding his artificial hand now that his entire fake right arm was on display below the short sleeve of his ubiquitous black T-shirt. “You’re begging to get kidnapped walking around like that.”
The ruffled designer silk did stand out. The sidewalk in front of the deck was packed with tourists with their DFZ merch T-shirts, fanny packs, and water bottles waiting for the next tour group to start. By contrast, I looked like I’d fallen off the Skyways, which was ironic since any one of these tourists probably had more money than I did given the price of guide tickets. Still, it was never good to look like you had money to burn when you were trying to sell things, so I dutifully put my arms through Nik’s coat and zipped it up, hoping I wouldn’t sweat too much as we walked under the tall arch made from welded metal scrap that was the official entrance to Rentfree.
My vision filled with pop-ups the moment we crossed the line. I wasn’t even wearing my goggles, but it didn’t matter. The tiny mana contacts Sibyl used to whisper into my earbud seemed to be enough for this level of weapons-grade advertising. There were
so many that I actually had to stop walking and bat them all away so I wouldn’t fall down a storm drain. It was mostly the usual stuff—drug bars, gambling parlors, VR sex pods, all the normal vices—but there were definitely some new ads that seemed unique to Rentfree.
“What’s a brain farm?” I asked Nik as Sibyl scrambled to find an ad blocker strong enough to keep my vision clear without taking me off-line.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” he replied, his eyes darting over the loud crowd of excited tourists and pushy local promoters who swarmed over them like flies. “It’s a room full of beds where you lie down and go into a medically induced coma so strangers can use your brain over the internet. Same idea as cloud computing, except with people instead of servers. Really popular with cerebral-implant cyberware users.”
I gaped at him in horror. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Because shunting your brain’s repair cycles off onto someone else means you never have to sleep.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I meant why would you sell your brain to strangers?”
“Because it pays a decent hourly wage and doesn’t require you to do anything except lie there,” he explained with a shrug. “It’s not a bad deal if you need cash and you’re not doing anything else with your brain.”
I was appalled. Selling your body to strangers was one thing—people had been doing that since the beginning of humanity—but selling your brain? Just the thought made me feel violated but also incredibly curious. “So do you dream the stranger’s dreams, or does the person paying to use your brain get yours?
“I don’t know,” Nik said. “Part of the contract is that you don’t remember anything that happens while you’re being farmed, and I don’t have any implants in my brain, so I’ve never tried it from the buyer’s side.”
The way he phrased that caught my attention. “Have you tried it from the nonbuyer side?”