The Jammer and the Blade

by Edwardson, DJ

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Just Reward

  Li li parted the string beads covering the doorway and came up behind her sister. She lay her head gently on her sister’s shoulder and stared down at the little baby Sun li held in her arms.

  “He’s so beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes he is,” Sun li replied gazing down at little Matthew. She finished tucking the baby into the spare tea crate they’d taken from the storeroom. “Something perfect in the middle of a terrible mess.”

  Li li lifted her head and anxiously searched her sister’s face. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “Who? Father or Matthew?” Sun li asked.

  “Both of them, I guess, but I was asking about Father. He’s barely opened his eyes since you left.”

  Sun li’s hand passed over her face. It felt like the room was pressing in on her. Everything had gone wrong. She had no hope of getting the cure that would save her father.

  “He’s going to make it,” Sun li answered, trying to hold herself together. “I don’t know how, but I’ll get the flowers.”

  Li li closed her eyes and covered her mouth. Her breathing started to come in short, tearful sobs.

  Sun li leaned over and kissed her on the side of her head. “I need you to take care of him until I get back.”

  “No, don’t leave me,” Li li begged. “Not again.”

  “If we’re going to save father I have to go back into the city,” Sun li explained, putting her arm around her sister. She wanted to cry too, but she was too angry. She hated this illness, hated her family’s poverty, hated that Math and Constance were dead, but most of all she hated that men like Brit could use everyone the way he did and get away with it. She had to find him.

  Sun li glanced over at Zhang who was dozing off in the corner, oblivious to the sorrow and rage boiling inside of his two older sisters.

  Sun li whispered in her sister’s ear. “I need you to be strong. For Father, for Zhang, and for little Matthew.”

  “Oh Sun, how can I?” Li li moaned, “I never told you this before, but every time you go out into the streets I’m afraid you’ll never come back.”

  “Then pray for me, Li li,” Sun li urged her. “And pray for Father. Above all, do not forget to do that.”

  Li li struggled for a moment to accept what Sun li had said, but then she nodded, wiping the tears from her face along with her runny makeup. Her sobs faded to a low whimper.

  Sun li kissed her on the forehead.

  “I know you can do this,” she said.

  She glanced at the baby one last time. All she could see of him was his little face peeking out of the blankets. They had only been home for a short time, but with the little milk she had given him she already thought she saw a bit more color in his cheeks.

  She stroked his face.

  “I’ll come back soon with the flowers,” Sun li said quietly.

  Li li embraced her tightly, her small frame trembling. Then Sun li pulled away. As she turned into the shop and hurried towards the door she could hear her sister’s sobbing grow louder once again.

  * * *

  Sun li raced down the steps to Cheddar’s pad, her glaives flaring. She did not bother trying to hide her presence. She wanted him to know she was coming, she wanted him to be afraid. She didn’t care if he was the most well-protected undersider in all of Bracken, she was going to get answers and nothing was going to stop her.

  The chamber was dark again, but two weak lights hung in the back, illuminating the outline of a door. As Sun li made for it, however, she spotted two large shapes off to either side. She turned to face them, crouched and ready to spring if they moved.

  Two men stepped forward into the bluish light cast by her flickering blades. Both of them had locus pistols trained on her, long sleek black things that hummed with a blue glow on the tip, ready to fire.

  “The big cheese isn’t accepting appointments today. He’s all booked up,” said one of the men, a hunched over figure with metallic plates covering most of his torso.

  “I didn’t come here for a fight,” Sun li told them.

  The hunched man snickered. “You’re a blade. That’s all your type knows how to do.”

  “I just need to ask Cheddar a few questions.”

  Perhaps Sun li’s response and lack of fear was more intimidating than any bravado she could have pulled off. Both of the men shifted where they stood and gave no reply. They had no weapons that would be effective in a fight with a blade and they must have known that.

  “I see he wasn’t counting on me coming back. Otherwise he would have hired different bodyguards,” she said. She took a quick step towards them, brandishing her blades.

  “Cheddar, she’s not backing down,” said the other man, a slightly taller and more wiry type. Both his lower legs were encased in run down looking metal tubes.

  She didn’t hear Cheddar’s response but she didn’t have to. They began peppering the area around her with pulser beams. Sun li’s blades absorbed them all as she rushed at the two of them. The man with the augmented metal legs leapt to the side, springing like an insect just as Sun li got within striking distance, but the other was not so quick on his feet. She sliced his pistol in two and then took a swipe at his neck. The man tried to duck, but her blade followed him, stopping just before it touched his skin.

  Sun li maneuvered between the two men, a blade pointed at each of them. The wiry man had stopped firing, no doubt seeing that it was doing no good. He also ran the risk of hitting his companion if a stray pulse somehow did manage to make it past her blades.

  “Now, let me talk to Cheddar,” she repeated.

  A panicked look passed over the faces of the two men. Then the short one nodded. “All right, the boss’ll see you now.”

  The door slid away and she walked past the two men, keeping one blade pointed back towards them as she went.

  The new room she entered was at least three times the size of the one she’d been in before. It was loaded with all manner of furniture and other amenities, but most of it was levitating plastic which told Sun li that Cheddar was not quite as rich as his holographic smile might have led her to believe.

  Cheddar hovered in the middle of the room, dressed in a gaudy red robe that flowed down over the sides of his lev platform making him look like a giant inverted top.

  “Chay girl,” he said in expansive tones. “You’re back ahead of schedule. Where’s the jammer?”

  “That’s what I came here to find out. You’re the only one who knows where he is,” she replied, anxious to get the conversation over with.

  “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” he said, “but even if I did, what makes you think I’d tell you? I mean, we’re not exactly chums,” He flashed his dazzling smile at her.

  “Where is Brit?” Sun li repeated, walking towards him.

  “You tell me,” Cheddar replied. “You’re the last one who was with him.” Though Sun li was all but certain he was lying, she couldn’t be sure. It was possible Brit had gotten held up on his way back.

  “Don’t try to play me,” Sun li told him, “I don’t have time for this.” She continued towards him.

  Cheddar waved his hands in the air defensively. “Now no need to go flipping your watts. Let me guess, he tried to stiff you on the job, right? And now you’re all yanked because you didn’t get paid. I’ve seen this happen with jammers a thousand times.”

  “This is not just about money. This is about him not being true to his word.”

  “A jammer? True to his word? What world do you live in?” He laughed.

  “One where people try to do the right thing,” she said, advancing until she was only a step away from him. She raised one of her blades and pointed it at his expansive midsection.

  “And slicing up a poor, crippled undersider is the right thing?”

  “No, it’s about saving my father and making Brit pay for what he did to two innocent people.”

  She brought her blade down through
the edge of his lev. The floating chair began to rotate slowly while Cheddar swiped at some glass panels on the arm.

  “Ah, Chay girl,” he whined. “Now look what you’ve done. I just had this thing re-calibrated.”

  She took another slice out of the lev as it spun by, ripping the hem off of Cheddar’s gaudy cloak.

  Cheddar grunted in frustration and caught himself on a nearby chair to stop the spinning.

  “All right, All right,” he said. “I guess if Brit tried to stiff you, Deliverance would want to know about it.” He scratched his chin and cast his visored gaze towards the ceiling, thinking. “Word on the street says he’ll wash up in the Ivory Junket. Look for him tomorrow. That’s when Deliverance is supposed to tie things up with him.”

  The Ivory Junket was not a place Sun li had ever had occasion to visit. It was full of slick and expensive shops. It was the only place in Bracken that wasn’t mostly falling apart, but it was known for its significant Delegation presence which was why most people in Bracken avoided it.

  “Why would Deliverance choose that place? It’s crawling with soldiers.”

  Cheddar adjusted some controls on the arm of his chair and it slowly floated down to the ground.

  “Good question,” Cheddar said, “but I don’t have the answer. Maybe Deliverance has a connection there or maybe they just figured that would be the last place anyone would ever expect someone to make a drop.”

  “Where in the Junket?” Sun li asked.

  “The alley behind SloJams,” he replied.

  Sun li bowed. “Thank you for your help, Cheddar.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Now get yourself gone before you mess up any more of my pad.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Slow Jams

  The alley behind SloJams reeked of decaying foodstuffs. Sun li was surprised to find such awful conditions hidden behind the elaborate blanched facades of this otherwise affluent section of the city. But even though the piles of rot and rubbish reeked, they did give her the perfect place to hide while lying in wait for Brit.

  Having arrived just after sunrise, Sun li was sure that she had plenty of time before the exchange took place. Because of that she was loath to insert herself into the festering mess. She could have tried to hide herself in the shadows until the orb was a little higher in the sky but she couldn’t risk getting spotted. A Delegation auger with enhanced vision might pass by and glance down the alleyway. There was also a back entrance to SloJams that someone was bound to come out of eventually.

  So in she went. Inside her rancid prison it was even slimier than she had expected and the smells twisted her stomach into more contortions than a Chayan acrobat. But as time went on she built up a resistance to it. The experience reminded her of one of the teachings of the Code: familiarity with evil deadens our awareness of it.

  She passed the entire day buried in that filth. Twice workers from the restaurant issued from the back door to heap more refuse on her but there was no sign of Brit. By the time the orb faded and the two moons rose, she was hungry and stiff and thoroughly miserable. She was beginning to think Cheddar had played her.

  Still, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the alley. This was the only hope her father had. If she didn’t find Brit he was as good as dead.

  The sounds of the city from beyond the alleyway did not diminish with the coming of night; if anything they increased. Since there was no lockdown, the people were no doubt taking advantage of their extra slices of freedom. From inside the restaurant Sun li could here the “slow jams” the establishment had been named for. The subtle, syncopated rhythms and lumbering melodies made Sun li sleepy, but she forced herself to stay awake by rehearsing in her mind what she would say to Brit when she saw him.

  A part of her thought that maybe it would be best to say nothing at all. As a Jammer, he would be hard enough to kill as it was. If she let him talk he would only try to make up some excuse for what he had done, stalling, if possible until Deliverance arrived. And from what Brit had told her about their leader, the Doctor, she knew she couldn’t trust them either. Perhaps it would be best to just cut him down from behind and take the rubricon. She was sure a device like that would fetch a high price in the underside.

  But she was not ready to break from the Code to that degree. Revenge was one thing, but cutting down an unarmed man from behind, that was what undersides did. She was not about to sink to that level.

  Still, with so much time to run through the possible outcomes in her head, she began to realize that there probably would be no way for her to collect her payment from Brit without defying the Code.

  The longer she thought about it, the more she realized that she really had no business being in this dark alley. And yet she had come too far to back down now. Sheer momentum kept her on her chosen path.

  Around midnight it began to rain. A light drizzle at first, but then the sky turned darker and it started to come down more steadily. The dampness sank through the pile of rubbish, coating her skin and clothes with the slimy residue of liquefied filth. She worried about exposure to endyne from the precipitation, but not all rains were laced with it and these drops were still relatively small. Besides, Brit had to be coming at any moment.

  The music from inside the club died away and all grew quiet in the back alley. The musicians must have taken a break.

  Not ten clicks after the music had stopped a short man in a gray windbreaker stole into the alleyway. He tried to keep to the shadows, but he moved like he had bricks on his feet and made almost as much noise.

  Sun li hesitated half a moment, just long enough to choke back all the voices inside her telling her not to go through with it, then she sprang from the pile of waste, her blue blades flashing.

  In a heartbeat she closed the distance to the jammer, but when she arrived there was nothing there. How Brit saw her coming with his back to her she had no idea, but he was a jammer after all. Frustrated, she flicked some of the filth from her eyes, blaming the slimy scraps for slowing her down.

  She spotted a flicker of movement off to her right.

  Brit must have thrown himself to the side to avoid her at the last possible moment. She turned and leapt on top of the dark figure, slamming her foot into his chest as he tried to scramble away.

  “You’re not leaving until I have what’s mine,” she said in a low voice, struggling to master her emotions. She could not let her anger take control or she would fail.

  “You lived to track me down,” Brit remarked, struggling to get the words out under her crushing boot. “I must admit this outcome is not one I had anticipated. You are a very determined girl.”

  Her glaives sprang to life, sending flickering lights along the alleyway walls. She brought them to rest on either side of his throat, inches from his flesh. “You have no idea,” she replied, “Now give me the flowers, the money, or the rubricon. I’m not particular. But I will not ask twice.”

  Brit held up his hands in a sign of surrender. She took note of the fact that the mantid gun he’d used on their mission was no longer on either of his wrists.

  “Fine. But you’ll have to let me at least stand up so that I can get the device. I have yet to be paid so you’ll have to settle for that.”

  Brit rose to his feet, clearly shaken.

  She kept one blade next to his throat while the other followed his hand as he fumbled in his jacket. But something told her that his display of fear was an act. The coat was too tight around his body for the rubricon to have been hidden inside it. Her eyes flicked down towards the bulging satchel at his waist and then back up to the pained look on his face. His mouth was twitching.

  “Or you could just wait until the Doctor—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish pulling out whatever it was he was searching for. Code or no Code, she knew that look. She sliced her blade through his exposed neck and flinched in anticipation of the gruesome sight she expected to see. She had never actually killed anyone before.

&n
bsp; Her eyes went wide as her blade winked out of existence.

  Brit laughed, a joyless sound that echoed through the alley like water gurgling down a drain. His arm shot out and Sun li felt something prick her arm. He was pressing a small canister against her skin, enveloping her in a locus energy field which froze her where she stood. She couldn’t move her head or any of her limbs and yet she did not collapse onto the ground. Static neutralizers, that’s what these things were called. She had seen the Delegation use larger versions of them for crowd control when riots broke out, but it was rare that an undersider would have access to a working one.

  “I took the Gray Man’s energy dampener,” Brit said smugly, “Not a very likely outcome. So it’s understandable that you didn’t see it coming.”

  He gave her a long, triumphant look as he reached out and passed his hand through her other blade, extinguishing it.

  “Now the question is, do I have enough time before the Doctor gets here to gut you and clean up the mess?” Brit wondered aloud.

  The music from inside the club started up again. The new song sounded nothing like the slow, subtle rhythms from before. It was much faster now and louder as well. Percussion and bass dominated everything. It sounded almost like it must have been an entirely new set of musicians.

  “So what’s this about a mess?” came a voice from down the alley. Sun li was facing the opposite direction so she couldn’t see who it was, but the voice sounded tired and aloof at the same time, as if the person it belonged to was terribly bothered to have had to speak.

  “Doctor,” Brit said, glancing past Sun li. “You’re early.” He kept the neutralizer touching Sun li’s arm. If he released it, the field would disappear and she would be free.