by D L Young
The two had grown up in the same Harlem hiverise on East 134th, which made them turf brothers, turfies for short. For some—and Maddox included himself among these—the connection had little meaning. The fighter was his friend, not because of their common roots, but simply because Jack was everybody’s friend. For the fighter, though, the turf bond was thick as blood, and he wasn’t about to let a homeboy walk into one the City’s dicier areas without someone watching his back.
After a two-hour ride on a teeming, sweaty subway car, they finally emerged from the station, squinting in the bright afternoon sun. Maddox hadn’t been to the Bronx in years, and he’d forgotten how much of a barren dump it was. There were no hiverises. No towering holo ads. And only a sparse scattering of hovers moved about overhead. He was only a handful of miles from Manhattan, but it felt like a different world. Different meaning bad.
A lawless sprawl of crumbling brick homes and dilapidated public housing towers from the previous century, the Bronx was perhaps the world’s largest squatter’s village. Police entered the borough only on rare occasions, usually when some newly elected politician or police chief wanted to make a “tough on crime” statement, inviting the press along for a raid on a pharma fabber’s lab or human smuggling operation. The rest of the time, the Bronx was left alone to its own anarchy and squalor. Not the kind of place you visited unless you absolutely had to, Maddox reflected. Which pretty much summed up why he was here.
“This way,” Maddox said, gesturing west. “A couple blocks, if I remember right.”
A minute later they found the entrance, a rusted metal archway that read BRONX ZOO. A long X was spray painted through the two words, and underneath, in stylized multicolored script, someone had relabeled the sign FABBERTOWN. Maddox and Jack passed under the archway.
As the name implied, the sprawling grounds of the old zoo, with its empty cages and abandoned holding pens long since overgrown with vines and weeds, was a vast commercial bazaar, specializing in fabbed merchandise of every imaginable, and mostly illegal, variety. You could, of course, find illicitly fabricated narcotics and guns and wares elsewhere in the City. But no place had the scale and diversity of selection you found in Fabbertown.
The grounds were subdivided into informal cobbled-together sections where vendors with similar offerings clustered in groups. Maddox and Jack entered Fabbertown at its southernmost section, an area dedicated to pharmaceuticals. A jumbled mass of tents and tables greeted them. Hundreds of improvised stalls and kiosks filled the treeless expanse. Though it looked more like a refugee camp than a shopping bazaar to Maddox, the place had the familiar buzz of a marketplace. Vendors barked their pitches at passersby, and people milled about with the slow deliberation of shoppers in no particular hurry. There was a faintly chemical smell in the air, the kind of odor Maddox associated with narcofabbers.
Holding his gear satchel tight to his body, he reminded himself this was no Midtown plaza market, where families shopped without worry because rhino cops were stationed every half block. Here it was dog-eat-dog. No cops, no law and order. Getting ripped off by a vendor wasn’t the worst that could happen to you here. Not by a long shot. Fabbertown was notorious for sudden outbreaks of violence, so Maddox and Jack knew they had to watch their step. The free, unregulated market. It could be a nasty place at times.
The pair snaked their way through the crowded space, ignoring the desperate waves and pitches hollered in their direction. Fabbers the size of tiny ovens sat atop vendor displays, little holos floating above them. Some were words, making outrageous claims. MIRACLE CANCER CURE! and GROW YOUR HAIR BACK TODAY! Others were simply animations or icons, for the illiterate among the shoppers. A cartoon woman swallowing a pill that made her eyes pop wide open and her hair stand on end. A shirtless man flexing through a series of bodybuilder poses, his swollen pecs and biceps rippling. The lower portion of Maddox’s specs cycled through a series of one-time discounts and today-only offers as he passed through a succession of short-range broadcast cones.
“Where can I find hover parts?” Maddox asked an old woman. She stood behind a fabber with a holo that read FOUR-HOUR HARD-ON.
She stared at him blankly. “Fifty,” she answered.
Maddox sighed. Jesus, just for directions? He felt a tug at his sleeve. Looking down, he saw a grimy-faced kid peering up at him. “I’ll tell you for twenty.”
Maddox laughed inwardly. The free market. It was never free, but it was often discounted. The lady tried to shoo the kid away, but it was too late. Maddox had already reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty. As the kid went for it, Maddox snatched it away. “When we get there,” he said.
***
The kid led them through a dense thicket of trees that opened up into another clearing, this one much smaller than the one near the entrance, but with a similar cluster of shoppers and merchants. The nearest vendor stand had an oversized fabber, roughly a meter square. The kind of device used to fab spare parts for industrial machinery. Above it, a holo of a hover engine slowly rotated.
This was the place. Maddox paid the kid and he scampered away, disappearing into the foliage, bare feet crunching over fallen leaves.
The shoppers here were mostly hobbyists who worked on their own hovers. There were tinkerers, who simply enjoyed making little, personal modifications to their vehicle. Adhesive light arrays for a glowing underbelly. Faux leather steering columns. Then there were racers, who were less concerned about looks than performance, searching for aftermarket wares like dogs sniffing out a trail, looking for anything that would increase thrust, improve aerodynamics, or reduce vehicle weight.
Scattered throughout the crowd were security guards, patrolling and brandishing automatic rifles. Hired guns contracted by the vendors to keep an eye on things. A few wore full body armor, but most had only a piece or two. A helmet but no chest plate, or only leg armor only. One of them—a man with no helmet and dark wraparound specs—did a double take in Maddox’s direction, then turned and hurried over, striding directly at him. Maddox swallowed and glanced around. He was more or less in the center of the clearing. No place to run or hide.
The guard pointed at him. “Hey, you there.”
Maddox backed up a step, bumping into Jack’s chest.
Jack looked over, spotted the man approaching them. “Aw, hell,” the fighter said, his voice falling in disappointment. “Sorry about this.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Maddox said, already turning to leave.
Jack grabbed his friend’s arm, stopping him. “We’re fine,” he said. “Let me handle this. Won’t take a minute.”
Maddox anxiously pondered what exactly wouldn’t take a minute. Jack wasn’t armed, and the guard carried a rifle and a holstered handguns on each hip. And those were just the visible weapons.
The guard stopped a couple meters away, looking them up and down for a moment. Jack stepped in front of Maddox. Removing his specs, the guard revealed a wide-eyed expression of disbelief.
“Natural Jack Kadrey,” the man said, “as I live and breathe.” His face glowed with awe, the expression of a kid meeting his favorite pro soccer player. “I seen you fight that Mexican a couple years back.”
“Salvador Arguello?” Jack asked.
“That’s the one,” the guard said, snapping his fingers.
Jack shook his head, smiled. “Arguello was one tough hombre. Took me into some deep water that night.”
“You knocked him down five times,” the guard said, fawning.
“The problem was he kept getting up,” Jack laughed. He rubbed his knuckles. “My hands were sore for a week after that fight.”
Maddox let out a breath of relief. The guard handed his specs to him. “Hey, man, can you take a pic of us?”
Jack shrugged an apology at Maddox, then turned to the guard. “Sure,” he said brightly, “he’d be happy to.” After he’d posed with the man, Maddox heard him ask casually, “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know a kid around here named Tommy Par
k, would you?”
The guard pointed them to the far edge of the clearing, where a kid named Tommy had a stall. Still starstruck by Jack, he offered to show them the way, but the fighter kindly refused, shaking the man’s hand. “We’ll find it, brother. Thank you so much.”
Maddox and Jack left the guard and headed toward the clearing’s edge. “So much for staying under the radar,” Maddox muttered.
Jack chuckled. “Sorry about that. Gotta stay on the public’s good side, you know. They buy tickets that pay the bills.”
Maddox blew smoke, not bothering to state the obvious. Jack loved the attention, lived for it, basked in it. The man had never met a stranger.
“There he is,” Maddox said, spotting Tommy behind a folding table littered with small bits of machinery. The kid hadn’t changed much since Maddox had seen him last, nearly a year ago. Still the skinny, fidgety teen runt he remembered. Smart eyes that didn’t miss anything, the kind of heightened awareness predatory animals and street kids had.
The kid’s attention was focused on a ponytailed man standing in front of the table, his arms crossed as he eyed the wares scattered on the tabletop. The timeless pose of a skeptical shopper.
The kid reached for a long cigar-shaped part, lifting it carefully, as if it were some fragile, invaluable work of art. “You see this injector?” he asked the ponytailed man. “Just last month I sold four of these to Abel Martinez.”
The man made a disbelieving face. “Rocket Martinez?” he scoffed. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Tommy held up one hand. “Swear to God, mister. You ever see him race down at the old fairgrounds?”
“Once or twice,” Ponytail said.
“He’s a homeboy,” Tommy said, adding more bullshit to what was already a fairly large pile. “We’re from the same block downtown. He gets all his aftermarkets right here.” Tommy waved his hand over the gear atop the table with the reverence of a jeweler showing off his personal treasure of precious stones, as if the pieces were something far more valuable than the salvaged or stolen junk they actually were.
The kid half-turned, gestured to a fabber on the ground behind him. Behind the device’s thick glass, a light slowly pulsed. “Everything fabbed here is my own personal design. You won’t find them anywhere else. You want your machine to run like Rocket’s, you’re in the right place.”
Maddox and Jack stood a short distance away, watching as the ponytailed man took the injector and examined it, turning it over in his hands, feeling its weight. A few moments later, he reached into his pocket, pulled out some bills, and handed them to the kid. As the man wandered away, Maddox and Jack approached the table.
“Nice sale,” Maddox said. “He didn’t look like the buying type to me.”
As the kid recognized Maddox, his surprised expression quickly reshaped itself into an annoyed frown. “What do you want? I’m busy.”
Great, the kid was still pissed at him. “Holding a grudge isn’t very professional, you know.”
“No grudges here, salaryman,” the kid said with a cold smile.
“So how’s biz?”
“Better than it was with you,” Tommy said. “Can’t get fired when you’re working for yourself, you know.”
No grudges, sure. Maddox dropped his cigarette to the dirt, crushed it under his shoe.
“It was just business,” Maddox said. “Nothing personal.”
The kid laughed sarcastically. “That sounds about right. Nothing’s personal with you, is it?” He flicked his chin at Jack. “So, what, you need a bodyguard now?”
“I’m just a friend,” Jack said, suppressing a smile, clearly amused by the kid’s grit.
“Didn’t think Maddox had any friends,” the kid said. “Only customers.”
Jack laughed. “Damn, Blackburn, what did you to this boy to make him love you so much?”
Maddox gave the fighter a you-don’t-want-to-know look, then turned back to the kid. “Water under the bridge, kid. Get over it already.”
The kid glared at Maddox, not saying anything. Around them the marketplace buzzed and churned.
“You really design all this stuff yourself?” Jack asked, trying to break the tension by switching topics. The kid rolled his eyes, then squatted down and opened the fabber. He removed a small battery-powered light from inside, the kind a parent leaves in the room of a child frightened by the dark. It pulsed slowly, mimicking the glow of a fabber’s printing nozzle. The light made for a convincing illusion. The kid turned it off, replaced it inside the device, and stood back up.
“Sure, I design it all myself,” he said, kicking the side of the dead fabber. “With this piece of shit I found on the side of the road.”
The fighter laughed, clapped his hands. “I love it. You had me fooled. Good con.” The kid’s icy front thawed a bit, the smallest hint of a hustler’s smile touching his face. Natural Jack could charm the devil himself.
“You heard from the Anarchy Boyz lately?” Maddox asked.
The kid’s smile vanished. “Why do you want to know?”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
The kid stared at him.
“It’s important,” Maddox urged. “Your turfies are in some very deep shit.”
Tommy licked his lips, looked around warily. “Is this about that bombing downtown?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
Maddox and Jack exchanged looks. Maddox leaned forward. “Yeah, it is.”
The kid nodded, his features knotting with worry. “I saw something on the feeds about it this morning. Didn’t catch all of it, just heard something about a biker gang. So I tried to call my turfies to see if they knew what was going on, but nobody answered.”
“You called them?” A stab of dread jabbed Maddox in the gut. “When?”
“About half an hour ago,” the kid said.
Maddox turned to Jack. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Jack didn’t respond, his attention fixed on something in the crowd. On some woman, Maddox assumed. “Jack,” he repeated, “you hear what I said? We’ve got to—”
“We got trouble, Blackburn,” Jack said, slowly nodding his head toward whatever held his gaze.
Maddox looked, saw a pair of cops in rhino armor at the opposite edge of the clearing. They held automatic rifles and stood next to a woman’s merchant stall, their visors down, faces hidden. The woman was saying something to them, nodding emphatically. Then she pointed in Maddox’s direction and mouthed the words right there.
Time slowed to a near stop as the cops broke into a run, coming straight at them.
6 - Off the Grid
Fearing a raid, the Fabbertown crowd dispersed in all directions the same way cockroaches scrambled for cover in a dark room suddenly flooded with light. Jack yanked on Maddox’s arm, pulling him away. The fighter was saying something, shouting, but Maddox couldn’t hear him over the blood pumping in his ears and the panicked cries of the marketplace.
Maddox and Jack fled into the nearest thicket of trees. From behind them came the tinny amplified voice of one of the cops. “Last warning, citizen!”
There hadn’t been a first warning. There was never a first warning. Maddox, like anyone who’d grown up on the City’s valley floor, had heard the phrase shouted countless times. Usually followed by gunfire.
Maddox ran faster, dodging trees and ducking under low-hanging branches. Jack trailed close behind. Ahead of them, Maddox spotted Tommy darting through the undergrowth.
“The kid!” Jack shouted. “Follow the kid!”
“What?” Maddox protested. Before he could say anything more a burst of gunfire cracked the air. He flinched, then lowered his head and crouched, trying to become a smaller target.
They ran. The trees grew more densely packed together, slowing them down. Maddox held out his hands to keep branches from scratching his face. They were still chasing after Tommy, and somewhere in his mind Maddox realized why Jack thought that made sense. The kid knew the area, probably knew how t
o get away.
More shots from behind them. A tree trunk next to Maddox exploded into splinters. He weaved his way through the thickening maze of leaves and branches, expecting to feel a bullet strike him at any moment. Then the thicket abruptly ended and they burst upon a large clearing. It was a section of Fabbertown dedicated entirely to food stalls, also emptied of people after the shooting started. Smoke still rose from a taco stand’s grill.
“There!” Jack said, pointing. Tommy cut between a pair of stalls and disappeared into the thick trees beyond.
“No,” Maddox said, panting. The trees were slowing them down. He spotted a footpath to the left. It looked narrow and winding enough to give them cover, but clear enough of obstructions that they could move at a flat run. They might be able to put some distance between themselves and the cops, whose bulky rhino armor limited speed and mobility.
Maddox pointed. “Look, there!”
Jack peered over, nodded. “Let’s go.”
They bolted for the path, scrambling across a wide expanse of flat dirt. Easy targets, Maddox thought uneasily. As they hit the opening of the footpath, shots rang out. Maddox flinched as he sprinted around a wall of shrubbery.
“Go, go, go!” Jack cried.
Maddox didn’t need to be told. He ran as fast as he could down the winding pathway, ignoring the heavy weariness spreading in his thighs, the burn in his lungs. The path made so many confusing turns and loops they might have been going in a big circle for all he knew. But they seemed to be putting distance between themselves and their pursuers. The amplified voices from behind were still shouting for them to stop, but the sounds grew more distant.
Abruptly, the path exited into another large clearing. Like the previous one, abandoned merchant stalls stood throughout the open space. Maddox and Jack paused, scanning the perimeter for another path. Maddox searched desperately as he took large, gulping breaths.
