The Blayze War

by D L Young

  So many things he didn’t know. So many things he wanted to know.

  She’s a good one, boyo.

  I know, Roon. I know. But it’s not that simple.

  Or was it that simple? People did that sort of thing all the time, didn’t they? Ran off together. Settled down. Had kids. Got a dog. Maybe it was a simple thing, just something he couldn’t do. A kind of flexibility most possessed, but he simply couldn’t bend that way.

  And like he’d told her, what would he do with himself outside the City? He pictured himself disappearing, fading more and more the further away he traveled. Was it childish to think he couldn’t live anywhere else? Was it simply anticipated homesickness? Or was the feeling spot-on, and he was such a creature of the City’s canyons and superstructures that he was incapable of living anywhere else? Like some salamander adapted to live in only one ecosystem. If you removed it, it couldn’t survive.

  He moved to the window, gestured it a little more transparent. The view of the City from this height, at this hour, was really something. The kind of image advertised for tourists. The first touches of dawn kissed the mountain range of hiverises, their facades reflecting a warm, golden glow. Hover traffic zipped briskly along the stacked transit lanes. No slow-moving knots at this early hour. Far below, walkways churned with a thick flow of pedestrians, a multicolored river illuminated by holo ads like water reflecting light. The blues and reds and greens of early morning. Towering coffee mugs. Donuts. Noodle cups. A drama feed star peddling some “European hangover cure” packaged in tiny single-swallow bottles. That was a new one.

  He darkened the window again. Beatrice still slept. He padded to the bathroom and slid the door shut. Opening the tap, he splashed water on his face. He looked at his reflection in the mirror as he dried his cheeks with a towel.

  “I hardly know her, Roon,” he whispered, but the ghost in his head didn’t answer.

  This business with Dezmund. It was no small thing. And though Beatrice believed otherwise, Maddox didn’t think leaving the City would be enough to resolve it. If Dezmund really wanted him out of the picture, geography wouldn’t matter. Living abroad, Maddox might be harder to find, but not impossibly so. And the idea of living in a strange new land, constantly looking over his shoulder, was less than appealing.

  But there was more to it than that. If he ran out of the City like a dog with his tail between his legs, he’d never be able to live with himself. He wouldn’t go out that way. Beatrice would laugh at such a notion, no doubt. Street bullshit, she’d say. Cred and rep and all that junk. Whatever he thought they mattered on the City’s streets, beyond them those notions were meaningless. Currency with no value.

  And maybe that was true. Probably was. Still, that didn’t mean he could leave it all behind like it meant nothing. Like it wasn’t part of him. He had to settle things first. Then maybe after that, when his accounts were balanced again, he could think about taking a different path. But not now. Not while he was hunted.

  A hotel robe hung from a hook in the door. He put it on, padded into the bedroom, and fished his cigarettes out of the nightstand, careful not to wake up Beatrice. Heading out for a smoke on the balcony, he found Tommy seated in the kitchen, finishing a plate of leftover noodles from last night’s dinner.

  “She still asleep?” the kid whispered.

  “Yeah,” Maddox said. He pressed the button on the coffeemaker.

  The kid slurped up the last of his noodles. “I was just leaving.”

  “Okay.” Maddox removed a cigarette from his case. “Sure you have enough cash?”

  “Yep.”

  “Want to go over everything again?”

  Tommy gave him a cold look. “It’s not exactly complicated.”

  The kid had a point. The plan they’d discussed while Beatrice had been shopping wasn’t complicated. Still, Maddox thought he caught something else, something beyond curt teenage annoyance. Like the kid still was still pissed at him, still hurt and resentful from yesterday’s harsh exchange, when Maddox had doubted Tommy’s loyalty. He knew the kid thought of him as more than a crew boss and mentor. Questioning their bond, their friendship, had stung the kid deeply, more than Maddox probably understood, he admitted inwardly. He knew if Rooney had done the same to him once upon a time, it would have crushed him.

  They sat there at the breakfast table. Maddox drank coffee and tried to think of something to say, something that would lessen the uneasiness between them. He wasn’t good at that sort of thing, so they sat there quietly for a while.

  “All right, then,” Tommy finally said, standing up. “I’m out of here.”

  Was it Maddox’s imagination or was Tommy taller now? No, of course he was taller. At fifteen you were still growing. And Tommy was the picture of fifteen, all elbows and knees, that scrawny neck and bulging Adam’s apple. Even in the new, fashionably adult outfit Beatrice had bought for him yesterday—a smart sport coat with matching trousers—he was still unmistakably adolescent.

  Tommy lifted his chin at Maddox, the curt wordless gesture the kid used for both hello and goodbye. Then he threw a satchel (also a gift from Beatrice) over his shoulder and left the suite, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  ***

  Minutes later Maddox sat on the balcony in the chilled early-morning air. He recalled his own balcony from his corporate days at Latour-Fisher, the tiny wedge of concrete jutting out from his condo, barely large enough to fit one person. This one was five times that size, with a large wrought-iron table and cushioned chairs. He leaned back in the soft padding and took a long draw on his cigarette. The sounds of the City were muted this high up, a distant hum punctuated by the occasional police siren. Even the transit lanes were quiet, the telltale turbofan whine subdued thanks to noise dampeners embedded in the balcony’s three-sided enclosure.

  He should have said something to the kid. Why hadn’t he said something?

  “Don’t we look comfortable?”

  Maddox started at Beatrice’s voice behind him. He turned and saw her in the doorway in her tank top and boxers. “You could fit my whole apartment out here,” he said.

  “The Trade Minister likes to travel in style,” she said, stepping outside. “When the general public picks up the tab, these highfloor government types never look twice at the price tag.”

  “It’s a crime,” he said.

  She sat next to him. “And crime pays, doesn’t it, salaryman?”

  “Sometimes it does.”

  She crossed her arms, rubbing her bare shoulders. “Cold out here.”

  “A cigarette will warm you right up,” he said.

  “Right,” she snorted. “I’ll take tea, thank you very much.”

  He started to get up. “I’ll have the bot heat up some—”

  She grabbed his arm. “It can wait,” she said, and he sat back down. She took in a small breath, like she was about to speak, but then didn’t say anything. He knew what she’d been about to ask him.

  “I didn’t change my mind,” he said. “I need to stay here and take care of things.”

  She nodded, seeming disappointed but not surprised. “I want to take the kid with me,” she said. “There’s no reason he has to be mixed up in all of this.”

  “He’s not here.”

  She sat up straight. “What? Where is he?”

  “On his way to a safe house,” Maddox lied. “He just left.”

  She clearly didn’t like his answer. “You let him go, alone?”

  “He knows how to take care of himself.”

  “What if he goes and tries to get some payback on his own? You know how he is.”

  “He’s not stupid,” Maddox said. “He knows that would be suicide.”

  Beatrice removed the specs hanging on her shirt collar and put them on. He could see her pulling up her reservation on the lens.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Changing my reservation again,” she said.

  “I thought you had a job to get back
to.” She’d told him as much last night. She’d also mentioned that her Canadian employer, the regular corporate gig that made up most of her income, hadn’t been very happy about her delayed return.

  “I do,” she said, “but it can wait. Safe house or not, I’m not going to leave him here with a target on his back. I’m taking him with me.”

  He reached out and removed her specs.

  “Hey!” she blurted.

  “Didn’t you tell me employer was pissed you were going to be late?”

  “They were, but—”

  “But nothing,” Maddox interrupted. “You push back your date again and they might drop you. Don’t give them a reason to go with someone else.”

  “It’s a job, salaryman. There are lots of others out there.”

  “Look,” Maddox said, “you told me it’s a good gig, yeah?”

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Pays well?”

  “It does.”

  “Then there’s no reason to screw it up, is there?” Before she could protest again, he said, “Look, I’ll put the kid on a plane and send him to you tomorrow, all right? Maybe it is better that he’s out of the City. I was going to catch up with him at the safe house after you left. I’ll send him your way tomorrow. Nothing’s going to happen to him in the next few hours.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ll keep him out of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll send him right to me?”

  “I will.”

  “Promise me,” she said.

  “I promise.”

  She turned it over for a while, then finally nodded. “Okay, salaryman.”

  She stood and went back inside. A moment later he heard the faint spray of water from the shower.

  As he twisted out his cigarette in the ashtray, the second-guessing began. He’d told many lies in his life. Big ones, small ones. He’d lied to friends, lovers, cops, clients, even to Rooney on occasion. He couldn’t remember any of them unsettling him as much as the ones he’d just told Beatrice. But he’d had to do it. If she knew the truth, she wouldn’t leave. It was for her own good. She had a life to get back to. A good life. But the more he told himself that, the more it sounded like…like he was lying to himself as much as he was lying to her.

  14 - New Fulton

  There was only one hiverise in Hunts Point, a small peninsula jutting out from the South Bronx into the East River, and its name was New Fulton. Home to over a hundred thousand, New Fulton was referred to by most of its residents as simply NF, an abbreviation that took on a variety of pseudonyms. The young frequently used Not Fun. Teenage boys who couldn’t get laid called it No Fucking. On the ground floor there was a mystic who read tarot cards, an old woman who called the place Never Forever.

  Most of the City’s hiverises had come into being over the last century. Standalone buildings of the previous era had slowly grown into one another, daisy-chained into huge megastructures connected by hundreds of improvised tunnels and corridors. Over time ten, twenty, or more standalones might come together, like the fused vertebrae of some enormous creature, forming the self-contained worlds referred to as hiverises, each with its own unique identity. NF was the rare breed of hiverise that had grown out of a single building: the New Fulton Fish Market. A warehouse-like structure of some 400,000 square feet sitting on the tip of Hunts Point, the original facility had once housed one of the world’s largest seafood wholesaler operations. The long high-ceilinged building had once been filled with iced pallets of tuna and lobster and crab, teeming with busy buyers and sellers and forklift drivers. That era was long gone, an artifact of the past that now only existed in historical feeds and library archives. The fish market had long since been subdivided into thousands of tiny residential units, food kiosks, and merchant stalls. Over time the building had tripled in size, growing haphazardly upward and outward, its irregular roof reaching six stories (seven in some parts) and topped with chimney-like projections sprouting skyward several more stories. The residents called these projections “the Towers,” where the rich—or rather, rich by a hiverise’s impoverished standards—made their homes. Local crime bosses and slumlords, for the most part.

  As he made his way down Halleck Street, Tommy’s old stomping grounds slowly rose into view. NF. No Fucking. Never Forever. His birthplace. The crowded, teeming hiverise he’d called home for most of his fifteen years. Tommy Park’s turf.

  He knew its real name, of course, but like everyone else he rarely used it. It struck him as absurd that such an ancient dump had the word “new” as part of its name. He’d noticed that about the hiverises in Manhattan, too, how the names often had nothing to do with the place itself. Like the ones called Paradise or Supreme or The Royal Arms. He’d been to Paradise and it was anything but, and Supreme was about as sketchy and low-rent as anywhere in the City. He’d never visited The Royal Arms, but from its name alone he was sure it had to be a royal dump.

  The East River was hidden by the looming seawall just beyond the hiverise, but he could hear the churn of its high tide, feel its wetness in the air. He could smell it, too, its briny stench hitting his nose. It smelled like home, and it triggered a memory of the first time he’d actually seen the river. He was ten years old, and he’d finally summoned the courage to scale up the face of the seawall. He’d been the first of his playmates to make the perilous five-story climb up the old workers’ scaffold, an ancient rusted-out framework, more of it missing than there. When he’d reached the top, he’d flexed like a pro wrestler to his turfies far below and dared them to do what he’d done.

  How long had it been since his last visit to NF? A couple years? Three? The place really looked different now. What had changed? It was the roof. Yes, that was it. Another tower had been added on the west end. Maybe a new syndicate boss had moved in. He’d have to ask his turfies about that.

  But it wasn’t only the roof’s profile that struck him as different, as changed from his memories. The place looked smaller now too. It was strange to think of a hiverise as small. No hiverise was small. But still, that was the vibe the place gave him. It also felt safe, and this struck him as even more laughable than thinking of it as small. NF wasn’t anywhere near safe, never had been. Maybe it seemed that way because of all the hell he’d gone through since he’d left here. Like the way a filter app in your specs changed the way you saw things. Maybe that was what was happening now. Or maybe it was the other way around. He’d grown up with a filter in place, and only now was he seeing things without it. He laughed inwardly at his own thoughts. He sounded like some cheesy head shrinker on the self-help feeds.

  He spied the old radio tower, a makeshift aluminum frame erected decades ago by some pirate broadcaster. Tommy used to climb up to the tiny landing near the top, barely large enough to sit on, and watch the sun disappear into the City’s great canyons. He’d dream of one day leaving NF and making his mark as a data thief.

  Reaching the end of Halleck Street, he stepped onto what was once the fish market’s parking lot, now a flat expanse of undergrowth that had slowly reclaimed the space, creeping out of gaping cracks in the ancient concrete. He stopped suddenly, hearing something. A faint buzz at first, the sound grew steadily louder. A motorbike’s engine.

  Tommy smiled. He couldn’t see them yet, but he knew what he was hearing. He picked out three—no, four motors. In the next moment he saw the first Anarchy Boy, a streak of red tearing around the side of the hiverise. Jaybird. Even at a distance, the way he leaned over the gas tank was unmistakable. Tommy had once told Jaybird he looked like he was constipated, the way he was always hunched up with his ass sticking out.

  Three more riders appeared. Z Dog, Girlie, and Snatcher. Z Dog still had the green mohawk, but it was a bit longer now, flapping behind him like a flag in a strong wind. The four riders converged on him and hopped off their bikes.

  “Bruuuh!” Z Dog cried, punching Tommy’s shoulder. “Good to see you back on the turf.”

  “Tomm
y Thai,” Snatcher said, grinning, using the old nickname. Tommy’s heritage was Korean, but he’d earned the moniker from his insatiable love for Thai noodles. His turfies had known him to eat nothing else for stretches of days.

  “What are you doing back here, TT?” Girlie asked. “Trying to get us in trouble again?” she joked.

  “Nah,” Tommy said. “Nothing like that, G.” He couldn’t help noticing Girlie’s skinny, boyish frame had changed since the last time he’d seen her. She had curves now. Good ones.

  “I’m up here,” she said, pointing to her face. Tommy felt his cheeks flush as he realized he’d been staring.

  “So you just here slumming or what?” Jaybird asked.

  “Or did Mr. Big Shot Datajacker get homesick?” Snatcher added.

  “Biz,” Tommy said. “Here on biz.”

  “Biz that’ll get us thrown in jail again?” Z Dog said. Tommy wasn’t sure if Z was joking or not.

  “Hey,” he shot back, “we got you out, didn’t we? Got the charges dropped too.”

  Z Dog grinned, but there was no humor in it. “Dangerous company you are, Tommy fucking Thai.”

  Tommy stepped forward. “Playing in the big leagues make you nervous, bruh? Stealing handbags from old ladies more your speed?”

  Girlie, Snatcher, and Jaybird erupted in laughter. Z Dog stared blankly at Tommy, then after a few moments his face broke into a grin, this one genuine. He shoved Tommy playfully and said, “Salty fuck. You were always a salty fuckity fuck.”

  “So give it up, TT. What kind of biz?” Girlie asked.

  “I’m looking for somebody,” Tommy said. “She’s a turfie, but older than us. Goes by Blayze. Any of you seen her around here lately?”

  All four Anarchy Boyz looked at each other knowingly.

  Z Dog lifted his chin at Tommy. “Funny you should ask, bruh.”

  ***

  Hiding out in a hiverise had pros and cons. On the upside, the vast complexes always had plenty of long-forgotten spaces no one used. Abandoned workshops or offices or even entire floors. Every hiverise brat who’d ever played hide-and-seek could tell you there was no shortage of places you could disappear into. The downside was those places were usually abandoned for a reason. Too many rats. No power connections. A dangerously sagging floor. The deserted nooks and crannies of a hiverise were often so forbidding, even squatters avoided them.