“Anonymity is freedom.”
“Right. It’s your birthday on Friday. You’re going to be sixteen, so it’s about time I let you grow up.” When Wrench stood up—his pistons and pumps firing—he towered over her. Seven feet four inches tall, he slumped his shoulders in an attempt to mask his true size. Another sigh, he spoke to her feet. “Now get some sleep. Tomorrow you can rest, but we have a busy day on Friday.”
Marcie stood rigid long after he’d left the room, frozen in anticipation of his furious return. But what did he have to be furious about? He’d known all along. She fell flat on her bed. A picture of Sal on her bedside table, he smiled at the camera. Marcie kissed her fingers and pressed them against the glass. “G’night, Sal.”
But her head spun. Sleep wouldn’t come quickly tonight. What would happen on Friday? Had she just lived the last night of her childhood?
Chapter 3
Nick woke to a pounding through his skull, the throb emanating in waves from where he’d landed on the side of his head. The explosion had launched him across Wellbeing Square two days previously, but after a night in hospital, they’d given him the all clear and sent him home. Sure, it would hurt for a while longer, but it had caused no lasting damage. A funky layer of fur on his tongue from dehydration forming in the night, he reached for his water on the bedside table and took several deep gulps.
Karla sat at the end of the bed, dark rings beneath her wide eyes and her face puce.
Too early for make-up, her age shone through. Forty-two, seven years Nick’s senior, she had crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes, a slight loosening of the skin around her face, and her blonde hair revealed flecks of grey under a bright light. Not that he had any complaints. This woman was well out of his league; hell, they didn’t even play the same sport. She’d always told him she didn’t mind a larger man, and his dark skin made his girth more tolerable. Like that made him feel better about himself.
Karla grew redder as if the act of holding her tongue caused her physical pain. “You’re awake, then?”
Nick frowned, sending another stabbing streak across his face. While dragging in a deep breath through clenched teeth, he touched the tender spot and said, “Huh?”
Her eyes widened.
“What’s going on?”
“You, Nick! You’re what’s going on.” Karla jumped to her feet and threw her arms wide before leaning over the bed towards him. “You snore like a hog. I have to listen to it every night, and I swear to god, if it doesn’t stop, I’m going to drive a damn knife into your skull. I have a stressful life—”
“I know, darling.”
“What do you know? You work in a shitty office job managing a handful of people. I work with the biggest and best companies in Scala City. Some would say the changes made because of my management consulting has doubled the value of the companies in Wellbeing Square.”
Nick opened his mouth, but she cut him off.
“How am I supposed to sleep next to a pneumatic drill every night?”
“I know, dear, I’m sorry. The attack on Wednesday has really thrown me out of whack. I—”
“It has nothing to do with the terrorist attack. It’s every damn night! Besides, you got thrown across the square, that was all. At least you remained in one piece. Many didn’t. You should consider yourself lucky rather than skulking around like a bloody victim. Next, you’ll be claiming you have PTSD.”
There’d only be one winner if they argued. Let her assume she knew how he felt. Very few battles were worth fighting with her. Especially when she’d had no sleep. “I’m sorry, love.”
“Don’t you dare call me love, not after the night I’ve had.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry either. Just don’t do it.”
Nick could put a positive spin on most things, but Karla had a mainline to his heart, and because he’d only just woken up, he hadn’t had time to raise his guard for the day. “You know I would stop if I could. I’d do anything to make you happy.”
Karla tutted as she walked over to the bedroom window and barked, “Clear,” at it. The frosted glass turned transparent; her jaw locked tight as she looked up at the cars in the sky.
“I can’t help it, you know. What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know,” Karla said. “Find someone who can do something about it. Go see a doctor. Sleep on the fucking sofa. Just stop poisoning my nights by lying next to me and going off like a damn pig with a chainsaw.”
“I’m trying to lose weight. I’m on a new diet.”
“Another one? Is this one of those eat as much meat as you like, as long as you don’t touch a carb diets? Give yourself bowel cancer and shit yourself thin. I’d rather you were fat than share a bathroom with that again.”
In this frame of mind Karla’s cruelty knew no bounds. Nick didn’t need to be in the firing line. The floor cold against his bare feet, he headed for the shower, tugging his oversized shirt away from his stomach as he walked. Headache or not, he needed to get ready for work. He couldn’t miss another day. It never looked good when the boss took a sick day, especially on a Friday. And if the woman who supposedly loved him couldn’t be sympathetic about it, not much chance his employer would be. Also, with zero-hours contracts, jobs were tenuous things. One minute you could be employee of the month, the next you could be out on your ear.
“Nick,” Karla said as he passed her.
Nick stopped.
Her bitter twist gave way to pity. “You need to grow a pair. You need to stand up for yourself. You spend your entire life trying to lift the people around you. Don’t be a doormat; no one finds that attractive.”
“But I understand why you’re pissed at me, and I think it’s fair enough. Also, I like to support other people.”
“That’s all well and good, but how’s it helping you? Maybe you need to find in yourself what you’re trying to give to others.”
How could she understand? She’d not lived his life. School had been rough. Other than Bruce, he’d had no friends. The Wellbeing app had changed that. People actually cared about him now. They thought about him when they were apart. Life felt much better when he loved people and they loved him back.
Nick had lived in several homes as an adult. Whenever he moved somewhere new, he upgraded the showers by turning them into wet rooms. “Full power. Hot.”
The whoosh of rushing water came from the other side.
A song from a long time ago, but he needed it this morning. “Happy,” he said, “by Pharrell Williams. Open the door.”
The song’s punchy intro flooded through the opening doors on the back of a cloud of steam. It turned to condensation against his exposed torso, lifting gooseflesh on his skin. No mirrors in the shower. He didn’t need to be looking at himself.
Melting beneath the hot rush of water, Nick said, “Wellbeing app.” A thirty-centimetre-square screen lit with the familiar red writing on the yellow background. Despite the need to check for lifts the second he woke up, they were always better in the shower. The fog of sleep gone, Karla’s rage behind him, and partaking in one of his favourite pastimes—cleaning himself—nothing could burst his bubble in here.
A bar graph appeared on the screen. He bounced to the beat running through the six speakers. He’d set the app’s voice to female a long time ago, her sultry tones helping lift his mood. “Well done, Nick, you’ve received more lifts today than yesterday. You must be doing something right in your life.”
If only she’d said that to Karla.
“Would you like me to clean up the sound? As a premium user, you have that option.”
“Of course,” Nick said. They had to have this conversation every day. The app liked to remind him of the value of his subscription.
“Would you like me to play all your lifts from yesterday? Even the ones you’ve heard?”
“You know the drill.”
“Very well. You have seventeen lifts from yesterday. Please remember you can now s
ave as many as you like. If you reach the new threshold allowed for our Wellbeing premium users of five hundred, you can pay a small amount to store more. You currently have space for another three hundred and eighty-three lifts.”
Adam’s voice came through the shower first, loud enough to hear, but not so loud that it drowned out the music. “Nick’s so funny. I hope he’s okay after the terror attack. I can’t wait to see him at work.”
The start of a smile lifted Nick’s heavy features. Jane came through next. “… such a wonderful boss. I couldn’t ask for anyone better.”
Bruce. “He’s a great cricketer. When he connects with a ball, he sends them into the stratosphere …”
Angela, one of the older women in accounts. “Nick always works hard to make his team happy.”
Then finally Karla. The softness of the voice he knew so well, it wiped away their morning’s interaction. “Nick makes me feel great. He really looks after me and cares a lot. I love him for that. He’s one of the most considerate people I know.”
Karla hadn’t meant what she’d said that morning, and she had every right to be fed up. Who enjoyed sleepless nights? As the rest of the lifts came through, the scalding water crashed down against the top of his head, and he relaxed into its warm embrace.
Chapter 4
Marcie leaned her forehead against the tiled wall. The water—turned up so hot it stung—crashed against the back of her neck, running around her front, her skin buzzing from the boiling stimulation.
Another bang on the door and Marcie smiled. Let him wait.
“Come on, sweetheart, we’ve got things to do today.”
After she’d dragged her shower on for another five minutes, Marcie stepped out, quickly dried off, and got dressed, strapping her knife to her belt. She had to find the door by feel, the thick steam swirling around her waiting dad when she opened it. “Have you been there all that time?”
“I’m trying to be patient. Come on, let’s get a move on.”
Following him to the top of the stairs, Marcie said, “Where are we going? It’s not even six a.m.!”
“It’s a surprise, darling.”
Sure, he had kind words. He always had kind words. But what were words when he kept her cooped up like a damn prisoner in her own home? He’d locked her childhood away and guarded it with the best the Blind Spot had to offer. Although, she’d doubted their credentials until he admitted they knew she ran through the city.
A gate at the top of the stairs, Wrench unlocked it. The obsoletes weren’t allowed anywhere near Marcie. Were it not to honour her mother’s dying wish of not blaming all of them for the mistake made by one, he would have fired every one of the displaced people and outlawed them in the Blind Spot. But they were refugees from Scala City, and what would it do for their cause to be forced back out there? They’d simply perish beneath Obsolete Bridge with the rest of their kin. The gate had been an inelegant solution to both honour his dead wife and protect his daughter.
The slam of Wrench’s heavy steps boomed through the house, the obsoletes scattering away from them like cockroaches avoiding the light.
Just one remained in the kitchen. Arthur had been with them since Marcie’s birth. Even Wrench trusted him. Hard to tell his age on account of being bald like every other obsolete, the skin on the old man’s face hung like it no longer fitted him. While wringing his hands, the obsolete hunched over the gesture and addressed the floor. “W-w-would sir and madame like some breakfast this m-morning?”
Tension turned through Wrench’s thick frame like a tightened golden bolt. Trust and forgiveness were two very different things. Arthur could never atone for the heinous act of one of his kind, no matter how much Wrench trusted him. “No, thank you.”
As Wrench led Marcie from the house, Arthur visibly relaxed.
Every trip through the Blind Spot reminded Marcie why she hated the place. The garish mess of neon signs, the johns from the city coming to have sex with every kind of cybernetically enhanced being she could imagine—and some she couldn’t even make sense of. Slack-jaws wandered aimlessly, many of their faces blurred by their anonymity masks. The ones who hadn’t yet covered themselves showed how they’d earned their nickname, their chins falling into a pendulous swing with every movement. They needed to sober up enough to remember to wear their masks; some of them to simply activate them, the transparent faceplate ineffective unless it had been switched on. Those who tried to leave the Blind Spot without masking their identity would often get a final reminder from the guards on duty. The city knew what happened, and they tolerated it as long as those partaking in the sins on offer made an effort to hide their identity.
The buildings lining the streets stood no more than three stories tall. They bore the markings of previous ventures before they’d arrived at their current—and most likely next temporary—commercial endeavour. At least one shop owner hung from every doorway, hoping to catch a Scala citizen and relieve them of a few of their credits. The hustle was real in the Blind Spot.
Scala City, no more than half a mile away, might as well have been on a different planet. A deep breath of the cold stale air, Marcie fought against the need to cough, pulled her shoulders back, and returned her attention to Wrench.
At home, Wrench was her dad: a broken man who tried in his own twisted way to do right by her. On the streets, she now walked beside the boss of the Blind Spot. The one who kept the egos in check and cut the fingers from hands who reached out too far. His heavy feet slammed, his gait swinging from side to side. He’d roll right over anyone who stood in his way.
Yet, buried beneath the gruff exterior was a man who’d played with Marcie back when they were happy. Before her mum had died seven years ago, he used to throw her up and catch her in his huge arms. They’d laugh and dance, sing and joke. And then the joy left their house, hitching a lift on the back of her mum’s repeatedly stabbed corpse.
A loud crash to Marcie’s right, her eyes clicked as they shifted to scanners to assess the risk. A man scuttled away, clearly startled by her dad. She smiled. But she also understood. Sal would often tell her what her dad did to those who stepped out of line. And were she not related to him, maybe she’d shit herself in his presence too. Were she not related to him, she would have moved to Scala City a long time ago. Although, despite the harsh punishments he dealt out, they were always justified. He had zero tolerance in his aim to maintain harmony in the Blind Spot and keep the citizens and tourists safe.
Many in Scala City and the Blind Spot had cybernetic enhancements. The only difference being those in the city hid them. The open display of modifications in Scala City lacked class and, although not illegal, invited scorn and mistrust. They created the ultimate glass ceiling by restricting social mobility. Cyborgs were freaks. End of story.
Since the crashing sound had startled her, Marcie’s eyes worked overtime. They picked out every person and assessed the risk. One or two were highlighted in amber: the most likely to attack. But as Wrench drew closer, the amber turned green. None had flashed up red yet.
Marcie drew a breath but held onto her words. With his deep frown, thick jaw, and wild red cyborg eye, she had to remember she walked the streets with Wrench, not her dad. She’d find no conversation here.
A red-light district on their right, a street filled with drug dealers on their left. At least those who’d been freaky with machines left the place smiling. Many of the slack-jaws wore a glazed stare that ran a twist through Marcie’s heart. Who wanted to feel so numb? But as long as they continued to bring the credits and thought they were happy, who cared?
They’d been silent for too long. “For my eighth birthday, you gave me better eyesight.”
At the mention of it, the mechanical sphincter around Wrench’s red eye shrank and grew again: twenty-twenty vision, one hundred times zoom, and every type of sight he could need—night, X-ray, infrared … She had the same advantages with a much more aesthetically pleasing fit.
“For my tenth birthday,
” Marcie continued, “you gave me a metal skeleton that grows with me.”
Heavy steps and the hiss of hydraulics—again, something he’d tried on himself before fitting his daughter with a better and more graceful option—the twitches of a thousand adjustments per second ran through her, but she could still pass as normal should she need to.
Close to a group of Blind Spot pimps and drug dealers, they spotted Wrench and vanished into the shadows. “For my twelfth, you put a microprocessor in me.” She reached up and felt the very slight scar at the base of her skull. “For my fourteenth, you enhanced my muscles and tendons. I can jump higher, run faster, and punch harder than most people in the city and the Blind Spot, even with all the cyber-freaks in here.”
Wrench continued to stare ahead.
“For my fifteenth, you updated my OS. I can now see heat signatures, X-ray, infrared, and augmented reality. That last one took a bit of getting used to.”
Wrench took a sharp left and Marcie followed. A darker alleyway than most, the glow of neon from the main street cast a multicoloured splash that did little to penetrate the shadows ahead.
The alleyway grew tighter, the close walls amplifying her dad’s footsteps. They came to a wall at the end with a metal door. Windowless and covered in rust, no one crossed this threshold without permission. Someone screamed on the other side. A woman. Marcie’s throat dried, and twitches shimmered along her arms and legs.
Wrench bent down and lifted Marcie’s hands in his own. He spoke over the screams. “I love you, princess. You know that, right?”
Heat swelled through Marcie’s face. For once she had no words. She nodded.
“I gave you all of those enhancements only after I’d tested them on myself. I had to trust they wouldn’t harm you.”
The Blind Spot Page 3