He knew he had ended a life. After all his protestations, Stan had been right. He felt no guilt for the man, only sorrow for Rosetta, the woman he had assured this wouldn’t happen. Weapons fired and alarms rang out as he knelt next to her body, red streaks pouring down over the tattoos on her neck.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered as Chicken Thumbs pulled him to his feet. As he stood, he saw one more Carcer officer take aim and Moss felt his arm move lethargically, exhaustion, terror and regret keeping his body from obeying his brain. He simply watched in stunned silence as the man pointed his weapon, poised to fire death. His head exploded, blood spraying into the lighted night sky. He turned slightly to see Judy, weapon smoking in hand, give a slight nod.
Second round closing in, Gibbs informed them as they hurried to Burn and Judy.
“Here,” Burn said as he strapped a drone to Moss, metal arms wrapping themselves around his torso, clipping together to form a booster at his chest. “It’ll get you out of here.”
Judy screamed something at him and spit on the ground, but he was too sorrowful to hear or care about the insult. The slight engine on his back whirred to life.
Sticks in the wind, Seti ordered and Moss lifted into the sky. All the members of the group flew in different directions as Moss’s stomach lurched. In the solitude of the night sky, he was left with his thoughts. Issy’s face as she realized he was going to shoot her replayed in his mind before becoming Rosetta. The sound of the alarm. The blood. Stan prowling. Being shot. The drugs. The sizzle of the guard’s chest. It was too much to bear. More had happened in the last hour than in Moss previous nineteen years.
The drone shifted and buckled in the wind.
A thunderclap.
Light misting rain like hundreds of people spitting in his face before opening up, giving way to heavy rain. Every drop slapping him as if the world knew the enormity of what he had just experienced. The lights from the city grew in the distance as the burbs disappeared.
He turned his head as if to hide from it all and retched into the darkness.
Chapter 13
Moss landed in a puddle, people turning to look at him in surprise. Personal pack drones were expensive and required an even more costly registration and license. They were therefore uncommon, particularly with people as bedraggled as Moss appeared.
He slumped to the ground, crawling under an awning in front of a twenty-four-hour palmscreen repair shop. The ride had sapped any remaining strength and he leaned against the glass storefront, wrapping his arms around his knees.
A hand appeared in his vision.
“Let’s go home,” he heard Ynna say.
The word “home” rang false. He didn’t feel as if he had a home anywhere in the world. He listened to the thumping of the rain on the awning. “Moss,” Ynna said, her voice soft, almost sweet. He looked up, her wet hair glowing, her eyes big and kind. “Shit happens. We all know the risk. You did good, but we have to go. That gauze had clotting gel but that foot’s gonna be a problem if we don’t get you some help.”
He nodded, happy it was she who found him. Her jacket opened slightly as she helped him to his feet, exposing her bare breast through the mesh bodysuit. The curvature was a welcomed distraction, albeit fleeting. He couldn’t tell if she didn’t notice or didn’t care as his eyes wandered up to her face.
“We can go,” he said, his voice weak.
“I know it,” she replied, obviously resenting the implication.
“Sorry,” Moss muttered, not knowing what else to say.
“Let’s go,” she commanded.
They walked the lighted streets, both soaked completely through. Moss hated the feeling, the wetness bothering him more than the foot leaving dark streaks in the puddles. They weaved through neon-lit streets and alleys, the darkness and rain doing nothing to deter the denizens of the city from going about their business.
“This is all a pretty rude awakening for you?” Ynna asked, pulling her hair back with her hands to wring it out and get it out of her eyes.
“Yeah,” Moss answered, needing to constantly steady himself with a hand on her shoulder. “I just wish I had known.” The admission pained him.
“Why?” Ynna asked, and the question surprised him.
“I could have—I don’t know—I could have prepared,” he fumbled, wiping water from his face.
“You think anything in the burbs could have prepared you for tonight?”
“No,” he admitted sullenly.
“ThutoCo doesn’t teach classes on fighting the power,” she joked with a slight smile.
“Fighting the power one-oh-one,” he added and joined her in the smile.
“Right,” she chuckled and cupped her hands to her mouth, blowing into them for warmth. “You will get used to it, to all of it.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” he told her, feeling at ease with her as he had with Stan. He understood why his family liked this crew.
“I get that,” she sympathized. “But important things require sacrifice—in every meaning of that word.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “But I imagine you’ve had your whole life to ready yourself for that, I’ve had three days.”
“I didn’t have my whole life,” Ynna began but trailed off. Moss didn’t speak, hoping she would continue to talk. She did.
“I was a normal kid. Came from money, really. If you can believe it. Dad kicked me and mom out when he realized Relief Aide’s don’t talk back. He had the kind of connections which meant the law would work in his favor.
“Child support, alimony, all the mandatory minimum. Cut us out of his life with little more than a couple of bucks being transferred from some forgotten account once a month. We made do the best we could. Mom waited tables and I fell in with the kind of kids who know how to make a quick buck. Those kids made me smart, tough, taught me how to survive. I needed it, too. Mom got killed in a holdup: drunk asshole wanted to steal a pie. A fucking pie! Cook wanted to play at being a hero and mom tried to step in, some good it did her.”
“You try to go back to your dad?” Moss asked.
“Tried. But he had as much interest in being a father as I did in kowtowing to the prick who had thrown mom out. So, I got the urchins together and we robbed him. Foolish kid idea, I know it now. He had the money to get a bounty on us and I learned how Carcer does things.
“When I got out, my former friends wanted nothing to do with me, blamed me for bringing the heat down on them. I was alone. So, I got smart. Learned how to hack, steal. Learned what trucks the big companies wouldn’t miss. Got a fence wrapped around my finger so I could get the best deals.
“But he got wise when I wouldn’t put out and made a threat. I wasn’t gonna whore and when he figured that out, he finked. Got some thugs to try and learn me.
“I gave as good as I got at first, but it was four against one and eventually they got the better of me,” she said. She paused a moment, seeming lost in thought. She had seemed so tough to Moss. He had a hard time picturing anyone being able to take her on. They trudged forward, the constant rain pounding Moss down, making it harder for them to move.
She squinted at him. “Grimy found me broken and bruised as he came out of a haberdashery—as you would expect. But you might not expect that he took pity on me, bringing me to a safe house to get patched.”
She smiled then with a glint in her eye. The same glint which Stan had when he was telling Moss about his past. “That’s when I met Burn and Sandra. They honed my skills. Showed me that what I was good at could be put to use. That I could do some good in this grim fucking world.
“I wanted to help. I craved it. I wanted the men like my father, the people who valued money above all things to pay for their greed, to see that the people they treated as little more than drudges were real, could have power all their own.
“This cause, however you see it, that your family helped shape, means everything to me. To all of us. To Rosetta.” She let the name hang, eyes downcast. Moss didn’t know how long
they had known each other or what their relationship had been, but he could tell she was taking the loss hard.
“You ever go back for the fence?” Moss asked, not wanting to dwell on the death for which he blamed himself. Ynna’s head dipped slightly with the shame of it.
“Yes,” she said. “I went back for him with my new skills and a few augments. I released a fury on him I didn’t realize was in me, but—” she fell silent once more. Moss matched the silence as they stood before the apartment complex, not entering. “I had never seen Burn so disappointed.”
“Really? He seems like the type who wouldn’t mind,” Moss said and Ynna shook her head.
“No, he said petty revenge was beneath us. He explained that we were part of something bigger and to risk getting caught over a personal vendetta was just hogwash.”
“I can see that,” Moss said as they entered the building.
“Point being, I may have had more than a few days, but not really my whole life to prepare,” she concluded. Moss let out a little chuckle.
“Fair enough,” Moss said, gripping the banister hard to ascend the stairs.
When they entered the hidden apartment, Grimy rushed over, seeing the blood seeping from Moss’s foot. He gestured for Moss to move to a couch.
“Joined the club?” Gibbs mocked in a whisper, glancing toward Stan laying on one of the cots, one massive bloody paw hanging over the edge.
“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” Moss said with a pained smile as he moved through the room, blood and water dripping and pooling on the floor.
“You all right?” Gibbs asked, sorrow in his eyes.
“Yeah,” Moss forced, pulling the soaking trench coat from his body with great effort.
“Liar,” Gibbs said, and one corner of his mouth turned up.
“Yeah,” Moss replied.
“If you two could keep the prattling to a minimum,” Burn said from a dark corner, gripping a bottle, his face momentarily illuminated by the flare of a cigarette.
“Sorry,” Gibbs said. Moss had not even noticed him.
“Don’t mind him,” Grimy said as he cut away at the wet bandage. “He gets morose after a job.” Moss stared at the cables dangling on the ceiling. Dust covered their tops and spider webs undulated slowly. “This is pretty bad,” he heard Grimy say, though he didn’t look down. “I can patch it but may be better to take him to see the Ferrier.”
Moss glanced over as Burn rose and entered his field of vision. He could barely make out the old man’s grizzled face under the brim of his hat. “You want an upgrade?”
“What?” Moss asked.
“New foot, maybe two for good measure,” Burn stated.
“He’s more machine now than man,” Gibbs said in a tone Moss recognized as an impression.
“Um—” Moss began to answer but the door to the apartment slammed open.
Judy snarled, moving toward Moss. “You piece of shit!” Ynna moved between them quickly, holding up a hand.
“What?” she asked though Judy’s angry eyes were fixed on Moss.
“His fucking girlfriend got Rosetta killed. I told you we couldn’t trust them,” Judy said, pointing an accusing finger at Burn.
“What do you mean?” Ynna asked, trying to calm her friend.
“Stan said the other bub set off the alarms!” Judy hissed.
“No,” Ynna said, the word ringing out like a shot and Moss’s face wrinkled with confusion.
“What would you know about it?” Judy seethed.
“More than you, I was in the fucking room, Judy!” Ynna said, her voice raising. “A guard pressed the alarm button before I could take them all down.”
“What?” Moss asked in horror, guilt coursing through him. Judy stopped to listen as well, taking a deep breath. Stan peered over from his cot.
“I couldn’t get them all down in time and one set off the alarm when I got to CT. I watched him press the button myself. About the same time though, the cell doors unlocked. When I saw you guys, I assumed it was you who hacked the doors,” Ynna explained as Moss’s hands went numb.
“No,” Moss uttered. He didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it. Visions of her face as he raised the weapon played in his head. He had betrayed her, not the other way around. He had shot her. To protect her, he tried to rationalize. Stan wouldn’t have given her time to explain as soon as the alarm had gone off. He would have killed her. Gibbs moved over to Moss.
“So, what happened?” he asked as Judy and Ynna continued to bicker. Moss explained the series of events as he had seen them. “You did what you thought was right,” Gibbs assured him, but his words lacked conviction.
“She’ll never forgive me,” Moss whimpered. “She shouldn’t.”
“She will,” Gibbs said. “She knows you.”
“I don’t,” Moss said, all the guilt and confusion he had felt in the past few days finding a home in two words.
Burn, who had been watching the whole thing unfold in silence, turned and spoke to Moss again. “Let’s get you to the Ferrier,” he said.
“That would be best,” Grimy agreed. Moss knew he had been listening while pretending to focus solely on his foot.
“Yeah,” Moss agreed, more interested in leaving the room than the prospect of a prosthetic. They left the room in a hurry.
“I know what you are thinking, young’un,” Burn began, and Moss listened in sullen silence. “We needed to come. You have to understand that. The second that button was pressed, Ynna was up a creek and if we hadn’t come, we’d have lost two instead of one.
“You’re gonna feel the pangs of guilt, I know it, but Ynna and Chicken Thumbs are breathing now because we came. Carcer moved when that button got hit. You made a tough call and it was the right one so don’t sit in sorrow.”
Moss felt the truth of his words. He knew Burn was right but the image of Rosetta dead, stared at him every time he closed his eyes.
“And your friend,” Burn added. “You shot her to save her. Timing fucked you, no getting around it. But I’ll work with you to get her out, if’n she still wants it.”
“Thank you,” Moss said, taking some small solace in that idea. He imagined her waking up, feeling the betrayal Moss had felt when he thought she turned on the alarms.
“One leg, or two?” Burn asked and though Moss knew it was a tactic for distracting him, he was grateful.
“Just the one, I think,” he answered.
“All right,” he said, hailing a cab electronically which descended out of the rain almost as soon as it was ordered.
“Is it safe to fly so soon?” Moss asked.
“Should be,” Burn answered. “Lots of traffic at night and we are heading away from where we came,” he explained.
“That’s good.” Moss breathed a sigh of relief.
“Not all good news,” Burn said, lighting a cigarette in the confinement of the cab as it took off. “We all wore scrambling outfits to hide from the cameras but ThutoCo techs will be working with the footage. They’ll figure it was us before too long and they’ll set a new bounty. It’ll be harder to make our next move.”
Moss nodded. He knew his life had changed, knew he had killed a person, become a criminal, but the reality of spending his whole life running and looking over his shoulder terrified him.
“Why didn’t they warn me?” Moss asked and when Burn didn’t answer, he continued. “My parents, my grandma, someone? They could have left me a message somewhere so I could know what to do, what my place is. I feel like I didn’t know any of them at all—like I’m chasing shadows. No, worse: like I’m chasing shadows in a dream. I mean, my dad left you a message but not me, that’s hard.”
“I say he didn’t leave you a message?” Burn asked suggestively.
“No, but I just assumed,” Moss started but Burn held up a hand, ash cascading down his hand.
“You assume and you prattle, but I need you to listen and hear,” Burn said. “You got caught up in this and it’s been moving f
ast. It won’t always be that way and in the downtime you need to be smart, watch the world, wait for opportunities. You have a long way to go and I’ll help you get there, everyone back there will. Even Judy, despite how they treat you now. This crew, we are a family.”
“I understand,” Moss said.
“Now, you want to see what your dad said?” Burn asked, his one eye piercing Moss.
“Yes, please,” Moss answered, trying to sound calm unsuccessfully.
“All right,” Burn said. “You want me to project it here? Means you won’t have privacy from me.”
“You haven’t watched it?” Moss’s eyes went wide.
“Weren’t mine to watch,” Burn said.
“It’s okay,” Moss told him, so happy to know that there was a video that he didn’t care who saw it. Burn tapped at his palm and once again, the face of Moss’s father was before him.
“Hey Mossy,” he said, turning from the camera bashfully. He was much younger and less frazzled than in the other videos. “Seems trite to say this but I guess if you’re watching this it means they got me. I’m sure you have a million questions and they will all be answered in due time. But know that your mom, grandma, and I have always been proud of you and know you will continue to make us proud.
“If you are watching this, it also means you got out and found Burn. He may seem like an asshole, but he is a good man and will help you any way he can.”
At this, Burn smiled almost imperceptibly under his beard. Moss had never heard his father swear and it was unnatural to Moss’s ears.
“He and your grandma helped me get free and it brings me great joy to think that they have done the same for you.
“ThutoCo is evil, kiddo. You may be grappling with that but trust me when I say it. More than making willing slaves of their employees, they have plans to do worse and I’m helping them. That’s why I need to do what I’m doing and why you need to find a different life. The corporate path you left behind was helping to oppress the world and working with Burn can help to free the world instead.
“I wish I could have told you this in person, that I could have explained it to you and helped you to adjust, but I’m too deep and you are still so young. I look at you now and I can’t bring myself to corrupt you with the truth. I hope you understand and don’t hate me for it.”
Into Neon Page 13
