A beefy, Asian man holding a classic revolver asked, “they see you?”
“Kid was smart, covered his face and the other was slumped,” Burn explained.
“Good,” the man said as he hurried over to pick up Gibbs.
For a safe house tucked in between tenement apartments, the space was rather large, though nearly all of it was full of equipment and computers. Cords and power cables snaked around the floors, up the walls and were even taped to the ceiling where many hung slack—the tape having failed under the weight.
Another person eyed them suspiciously from a bank of cots. They were little more than metal frames with canvas bolted to the wall on one side and held flat by rusted chains on the other.
“I need a couple of reloads,” Burn said to the person on the cots, who jumped down despondently, eyeing Moss the whole time. He stared at the slight frame, nondescript baggy clothes, facial features which Moss considered both masculine and feminine and those angry eyes. While one side of their head was shaved, the long hair which cascaded down the other was dyed jet black with white stripes. Moss wanted to say something, justify his presence, but could not muster the words.
A plump, pale, Caucasian girl with tattoos covering her face approached him. Bisected at the nose her face was striped with what Moss took to be code and the other half, hieroglyphs. She wore a maroon shirt, black leather skirt with purple lipstick and eye shadow.
“Rosetta,” she said, extending a hand, inked in a language Moss did not recognize. He shook it but before he could speak, she asked, “you Moss?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking over her shoulder as Gibbs received an injection.
“You have something for me?” she asked kindly, as though speaking to a lost child.
Moss hesitated. “Um...”
“She’s the one to give it to,” Burn announced as he peeled his jacket from his shoulders. Moss pulled the data chip from his pocket and handed it over. He felt as if his entire purpose in this had already come to a close, and that he had got his friend shot for nothing.
“Thanks,” Rosetta said with a broad smile before turning and scurrying over to a computer sitting on a desk cluttered with repair supplies, paper coffee cups and action figures. She inserted the chip into a reader and began working. Burn sat on a couch as the work commenced on his implant. Moss stood, not knowing what to do. Feeling utterly useless, he made his way across the room to where the man in the suit was pecking at a screen, programming a handheld medical assist bot to remove the bullet in Gibbs’ arm. The large man turned at his approach, holding up his hands to stop Moss.
“Your friend is going to be fine,” he said with a hint of a drawl. “But let Grimy do his thing.”
“Thank you both,” Moss said, his sincerity not lost on the man who towered over him.
“It’s what we do,” the man said. He wore tight black pants, through which Moss could see the outline of his large penis and a purple mesh tank top through which the words “100% BEEF” was tattooed across his broad chest. He caught the look. “I’m all man,” he said, continuing when he saw Moss’s confusion. “No augments, no implants, nothing. Don’t take stims, don’t smoke, don’t drink coffee, nothing. Parents had me au natural. I was born in a bathtub—all human ever since. Don’t judge all you folks with your robo-parts, just ain’t for me,” he concluded, clearly having given this speech many times before. He ushered Moss to the remaining couch, and they sat.
“You get sick a lot?” Moss asked, having always been told that people without genetic inoculations rarely survived past infancy.
“Used to. Got called, ‘sniffles’ as a kid cause’a how much I got sick. But now? Never. My body handles that shit. Nothing you can do in a lab which the human body can’t do better.”
“Not Sniffles anymore?” Moss sheepishly joked.
“Oh, no! They call me Ferocious Stan on account of my short temper,” he said and shook Moss’s hand in one of his strong, massive paws.
“You don’t mind the name?”
Stan grinned. “Nope. I know how I get. Comes in handy in a scrape.”
“I’m Moss,” he said, and just as with MOSS II, he wished he had come up with a better nickname.
“Like lichen?” Stan asked with a cocked eyebrow, and Moss smiled slightly.
“You know, I’ve never heard that one before,” he admitted.
“Got a ferocious wit too,” he said. Moss chuckled.
“Does it make it difficult to do things?” Moss asked, genuinely curious. They were so dependent on technology in the burbs that he could not imagine living without.
“Being tech-free? Yeah,” Stan admitted. “I carry an old-style phone I program like a palmscreen, but it does make life harder sometimes.”
Moss liked the young man, feeling at ease talking with him, but it struck him that he only seemed a few years older. As had Ynna. Looking around the room, the whole lot of them seemed to be under thirty.
“What you see?” Stan asked, watching his eyes.
“You’re all… well… young,” he observed.
“You got that right,” Stan said with an infectious smile. “We are. Not all groups are like us. Some are older, been at this for years, but others…” he trailed off, examining his compatriots. “Sandra brought us all together. Each one of us was on an—well, let’s just say an unideal path. She took us in, gave us homes and showed us we could be part of something.”
“What?” Moss asked, wanting to know everything about both his grandmother and the purpose she lay before them.
“You’ve only been away from the burbs a few hours?” Stan asked.
“Yeah.” Moss felt as though he was admitting.
“Well, it’ll be hard for you to see, but you’ve been part of some bad shit for a long time. We all know your family wanted you out, but it may be a while before you understand why we do what we do.”
Once more, Moss felt like a child. A memory flashed for a brief moment, his father saying, “this is tall talk,” before ushering him from the room. His father, this man who he no longer felt he knew at all, and about whom so much had been made, had made him feel then just as he did now.
“I’m beginning to understand,” Moss said, but even to himself, the words sounded shallow.
“I’m sure,” Stan said and put one of the giant hands on his shoulder.
“What was Sandra—what was my grandmother like?” he asked quietly. Stan chuckled, lost in memories.
“Hard,” he said with a smile and pounded his fist against his palm for effect. “Not the type of person you wanted to run into in a dark alley. But under her ass-kicking, ball-busting exterior was a good woman. She helped me when I was lost. Lighted a way in dark days.
“I played ball in school, helped me to get big and tough rather than sick. I got good. Real good. Even got a contract from the Miners FC. But as happens, I tore my ACL.
“Easy fix right? But I didn’t want the drugs, the mesh where my body should be. So, I tried rehab. Old fashioned stretch and lift rehab. But my body never quite came back.” He hung his head in the miserable memory. “I got cut. I got mad. Living with rage the way some live with booze. Couldn’t get right. Started fights just to finish them. Sometimes they finished me though.”
He fell silent for a moment before Moss saw a slight glint in his eye. “Then I met her. She showed me that I could still make an impact in this world. As I said, she did that for all of us.”
“I didn’t really know her,” Moss said, wishing more than anything that he had. “Turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about my family.”
“That’s hard. I still spend every Sunday night with my family,” he said, not considering his words. “Sorry,” he adjusted.
“It’s all right,” Moss said. “I think I’ll get to know them better by getting to know you all better.”
“Right,” Stan agreed. “Let me make introductions.” Moss glanced around the room as Stan pointed. No one took note. “You met Rosetta on the way in, s
he’s better with computers than most.”
“Okay,” Moss said.
“Working on Burn’s back is my partner, Judy. Former Carcer fixer. Before you ask some dumb-fuck bub question, the pronoun is ‘they.’ You follow?” He did and had no interest in finding the ferocity, so he turned the conversation.
“Everyone has a role?” he asked.
“Exactly, just like in your video games,” Stan said knowingly. He was more right than he knew. Growing up playing games together, Issy, Gibbs, and Moss had always built purposeful squads with Issy playing as a tank class, Gibbs as a healer and Moss picking up a more leadership role: picking up high charisma or intelligence, depending on the game.
Breaking Moss out of his thoughts, Stan continued, “Most groups of us try to have enough diverse skills to get us out of a jam.”
“Makes sense,” Moss said.
“Now, over there,” he said, and pointed to the man in the suit. “That’s Grimy.” They both watched as Grimy watched the bot delicately remove the bullet while simultaneously clearing blood away and adding cream. The mechanical arms and tendrils worked in perfect fluid motion—a meticulous ballet of healing.
Stan tore his gaze away first and took up the conversation again, “Grimy does most of our patchwork. Former vet. Veterinarian, that is. Not the other one. Not like Sandra. I don’t think he’d hold up too good in a fight.”
“He’s called Grimy ironically?” Moss questioned and Stan tapped a finger to his nose.
“The man’s fastidious. Never seen a person who likes things so clean. He says he “likes things a certain way”, but I think he’s a little crazy,” he said loudly enough for all to hear. Grimy looked over his shoulder at them.
“Laugh now but I’m sure you’ll be happy when you do not get an infection.” Grimy scowled. His voice was deeper than Moss had presumed based on appearance.
Stan laughed. “Guess you got that right.” Moss chuckled and was surprised by how light the mood was in the room. A group of young people fighting a giant company who no doubt had bounties on all of them, with one-person bleeding in the corner and another who had recently killed a person getting repaired and none of them seemed bothered. “When we get you fixed with an earpiece, you’ll meet Seti, our Aussie eye in the sky. Never met her outside of VR but she keeps tabs on the goings-on. Helps keep Carcer out of our face.”
“Oh,” Moss said and caught himself looking up before shaking his head of the foolishness.
“And you know Burn.” Stan pointed to the man in question. Burn was engaged in a hushed conversation with Judy.
“Right,” Moss said before adding politely, “seems nice.”
Stan laughed and whispered, making sure Burn was not listening. “No, he doesn’t, but I’d rather be led by a competent asshole than a kind idiot.”
“Sure,” Moss agreed, thankful for everything Burn had done for him so far. “What about Ynna and Chicken Thumbs?” Stan’s face grew dark.
“Right,” he said, hanging his head. “Ynna is a jack of all trades. Tough like Sandra, clever as Burn and skilled as Rosetta and Judy.”
“Not as strong as you?” Moss joked.
“Nah, no one is,” he said with a bright grin.
“I notice you didn’t include me in that list,” Grimy put in. “No one compares to me, either.”
“You just ain’t good enough at anything to count,” Stan fired back. “Little bits of yours do all the work.”
Grimy dramatically put his hands to his chest. “My delicate psyche,” he mocked before turning serious. “While you may think modern medicine is simply dropping a bot, human guidance is still paramount to the success of any operation.”
“Like us with our drudges,” Moss helped.
“Precisely,” Grimy said with a tip-of-the-hat gesture. “I’ll be interested to hear how you describe our illustrious Chicken Thumbs,” he said to Stan, who shook his head and turned to look at Moss.
“Here’s the thing about CT,” he began, considering his words. “He wants it. He wants to be good, and he works hard to help. He’s not naturally gifted the way some people are here, not some wonderkid who was in vet school while most kids his age were drawing with crayons.” He shot Grimy a withering look. “He’s just a normal guy who wants to help. I admire him for that. He and I both worked hard and now we are part of something.”
Grimy snorted a laugh and Moss found that he was hardly listening, more concerned at that moment about his friend covered in blood on the couch. He took solace that Gibbs looked all right now, rhythmically breathing while the bot skittered over his body, checking for further injuries.
Moss felt the weight of guilt upon him. He had been so distracted by the people in the room, the stories of his family and his own role that he had nearly forgotten that his closest friend had been shot for coming along. For helping when there was no reason for him to have come along. He could feel his eyes well up as the overwhelming shame took over. The two men took no note and Grimy said, “the difference, Stanley, is that with your hard work you became something more than you were. Chicken Thumbs may want for greatness, but his capacity is limited.”
“I think he’s gonna surprise us all,” Stan said.
“Assuming he’s still alive,” Grimy stated, before noticing Moss’s look. He glanced down at Gibbs. “He’s going to be fine,” he said. “This is a rather mild injury, all things considered.”
“He got shot for me,” Moss explained.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have fucking brought him,” Judy scolded, and the words found their way like an arrow into Moss’s soul.
“I tried to stop him,” Moss muttered weakly.
“The kid’s friend got shot Jude, cut him some fucking slack,” Stan defended.
“Someone here needs to speak the truth,” Judy said, eyes narrowing at Moss.
“Don’t you think he’s had enough truth for one day?” Grimy said, gesturing to Gibbs.
“He’s going to need to toughen up quick and all this coddling isn’t helping matters,” Judy argued, Moss watched the scene unfold, wide-eyed and miserable.
“Yeah, but—” Stan began.
“Enough,” Burn bellowed, rising to his feet. “Judy, let’s you and I go for a drink. Stan, get Moss set up on a cot.”
“Maybe read him a bedtime story too, hon,” Judy mocked as the door opened and they exited hurriedly.
“I’m not,” Moss began, ire rising within him. “I’m not a fucking child!”
“I know.” Stan nodded and smiled in a way that made Moss feel worse.
“Tomorrow, can you teach me to fight?” Moss asked, affecting as tough a tone as he could muster.
“Not really how it works,” Stan said. “Learning to fight takes years of training and conditioning, you don’t simply watch me punch a guy and mimic it.”
“Teach me to shoot then,” Moss pleaded, and Stan nodded.
“All right, but you should get some rest. If we get this decrypted, we may need your help sooner than later,” Stan told him. Moss nodded and stood, not making his way straight to a cot, but to Gibbs. He watched his friend lay there, doing nothing. But he was alive.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not for his friend, but for himself. He gritted his teeth. This would not happen again. He would learn to fight, to protect himself and those he cared for.
He turned back and slumped onto a cot. The room was bright and loud and completely unlike where he normally slept. And yet, he did.
Chapter 9
Moss opened his eyes, rubbed his implant and for a moment, wondered where the sound of the sea was. The rotted wood which greeted his vision reminded him. He was not in his hex. Not in his burb. He was somewhere else altogether, doing something which he didn’t understand, for reasons he was only beginning to see clearly.
He rolled over and the room was dark and mostly quiet. Rosetta still faced the bank of screens, transfixed in her work. Gibbs snored quietly and there was an impression of a body in the cot above him, sinking
low over his head. He blinked and a coffee mug appeared before him, steaming with an unmistakable aroma. Moss had never tried the stuff before, but his head hurt and nothing else was normal, so he figured to give it a shot. He reached out and grabbed the mug as he realized it was Judy who was offering.
“Thanks,” he whispered as the steam from the mug filled his nostrils. He had always enjoyed the smell of coffee when he had passed the cafes but never enough to walk in.
“No problem,” Judy said. “Sorry about before. Not a great first impression.”
“Nope,” Moss agreed, and Judy laughed, zebra hair falling in front of their face. Moss noticed all the freckles Judy had, never having taken the time before to observe.
“It’s simply that I don’t know you and don’t know why everyone is so quick to trust you simply because of who your family is.”
“Fair enough,” Moss said and meant it. He knew these people had no reason to trust him yet and did not really begrudge them for saying so, though he did not like it either. “It’s a two-way street. I don’t know any of you people either and I pretty much have to just go with it, also. I mean, I’m pretty sure I gave up my whole life for this because someone told me they knew my parents.”
“I hadn’t thought about what you gave up to be here, or what you risked. I am sorry,” Judy repeated, and Moss wondered what Burn had said to inspire this turnaround. “Maybe we can both learn to trust each other—together?”
“I’d like that,” Moss said and extended a hand, which Judy shook.
“You ever have coffee before?”
“Nope. Am I going to like it?”
“Probably not,” Judy said, eyes kind for the first time since they met.
“You ever met anyone from the burbs before?” Moss asked.
“Nope. Am I going to like it?” Judy parroted and they both chuckled quietly. Moss took a sip of the dark brown liquid and winced.
“Where do you acquire that taste?” he joked, but before Judy could answer Burn stepped into the light.
“You two about done mending fences?” he asked.
“Yes,” Judy said.
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