by Terry Brooks
She walks back through the door from which she entered and closes it behind her.
“Who died and made her special?” Holly mutters.
Ash doesn’t have the answer to that question, but he is pretty sure he has the answer to another. She isn’t going off to see if there is any mention of his father in the shop’s business records. She knows there is, and she is trying to decide what to do with the information. She is trying to decide whether to give it to him.
T.J. claps him on the shoulder. “Come on, fish. Let’s you and me go have a look at the world’s most beautiful street machine.”
- 6 -
Ash follows T.J. down the line of bays to the most beautiful car he has ever seen. It is cobalt blue with narrow silver pinstripes, and it gleams so brightly that it mirrors every detail of his face. It is clearly a racing machine, its big muscular body supported by four wide-tread tires tucked under wheel wells that hunch above them like powerful shoulders. It is deeply raked, and its rear tires are massive. The body is smoothed out and aerodynamic; no protuberances or sharp edges blemish its alloyed skin. The cockpit is small, space for two seats only, and the passenger side is nothing more than a flat surface. Deep padding surrounds the cockpit area on all sides. The wheel is small and heavily wrapped in dark leather. There are levers and knobs and buttons everywhere; Ash cannot begin to know what they do.
“Is she something or what?” T.J. asks.
Ash nods. “She’s beautiful.”
“Two thousand pounds of RBH thrust from an 850 Watson modified with turbo-eights and dual intakes. Runs on rocket fuel. The real deal. Goes from zero to 150 in—get this—3.5 seconds. Almost faster than your brain can think to control it. It’s been tested at three hundred miles per hour top end, though in the kind of racing we do, top-end speed is less important than acceleration and control. It’s quick, smooth, and faster than anything on four wheels.” He grins. “Come here.”
They walk over to the rear end, and he triggers a release. The engine cover lifts noiselessly. Inside the housing, the component pieces gleam as brightly as the exterior surface. The engine is recognizable, but the rest is a mystery. Components of various shapes and sizes display digital readouts and blinking lights. They give the vehicle more the look of a computer than a racing machine.
T.J. takes it all in reverently. “Ever see anything like this? Computers everywhere. Woodrow builds them. Fourteen years old, and he builds engine computers! He’s a certifiable genius. You might guess he knows something about computers from looking at him. A strong sense of self-preservation gives him good reason to keep learning.”
Ash nods, but it is Starfire that has his attention. “Who owns her?”
“Oh, fish, I can’t tell you that!” T.J. says at once. “We don’t give information like that out to just anyone. Besides, I don’t know myself.” He laughs. “Hey, want to take a ride?”
“In this?”
“No, not in this! Look inside!” T.J. points to the empty platform next to the driver’s seat. “That’s where you would have to sit. This is a racing machine. One driver, no passengers.”
He slaps Ash alongside the head chidingly, not holding back. “Over here.”
He leads the way to the office space where Jenny Cruz is hunched over piles of documents, sifting through them with studied care. She looks up quickly when she senses his presence.
“What is it, T.J.?” She sounds annoyed
Ash hangs back, wishing he hadn’t followed T.J. in, sensing he is an unwanted distraction. He doesn’t even want to go for a ride; he wants to stay and wait for his father. Intrigued as he is by Street Freaks, this isn’t where he belongs.
T.J. gives Jenny Cruz a shrug. “I thought I might take the fish out for a ride in the Flick. Can you spare us? I’ve done all I can with Starfire. She’s ready.”
Jenny stares at him. “You can go if you promise not to do anything reckless. Don’t get him hurt. I mean it. You’re responsible for him while you’re out of my sight, T.J.”
“Got it.” T.J. wheels away. A flicker of anger crosses his face as he grabs Ash’s arm. “What a pain in the ass she is.”
“I don’t think . . .” Ash begins and then trails off. Doesn’t think what? That he should go with T.J.? That he should do anything with someone who doesn’t seem to like him all that much in the first place? That maybe it’s not safe?
But he’s not going to admit it. Not to T.J. He trudges along in silence, through the garage and out a back door into a storage lot full of damaged street machines, all sizes and shapes and in all sorts of condition.
He gestures. “You work on these? Rebuild them?”
T.J. laughs. “Naw. This stuff is junk. It’s just for show. We want people who don’t know us to think we work on junkers. But you saw Starfire. That’s what we really do. High-end street machines built for racing. And a few other things,” he adds.
Ash glances over. “What other things?”
“Oh, this and that. Over here, fish.”
He steers Ash toward a low-slung two-door power ride tucked back behind the wrecks and uses a handheld pulse key to open its doors, and they both climb in.
“This is the Flick,” T.J. announces, depositing the pulse key in a compartment in the center console. “She’s mine. Built her myself.” He pauses, glances at Ash, and shrugs. “Well, the others helped too. A little. I couldn’t do the computers without Woodrow, couldn’t pay for it without the Shoe’s credits, and couldn’t design it without Jenny. Couldn’t do some of the heavy lifting, either, without cyber-girl.”
“You mean Holly?”
“Yeah, Holly. Let’s go. Buckle up. Here, put on this helmet. If I let something happen to you, hard telling what Jenny might do to me. So you do what I say, all right? Power up, Flick!”
The engine starts immediately, voice activated. Once T.J. has her running the way he wants, he puts her in gear and ushers her through the lot to the front gate at a speed that doesn’t quite break the sound barrier but causes Ash to jam his hands against the dash to brace himself.
“What a wussy little fish!” T.J. crows. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Ahead of them, the spikes begin to retract. T.J. revs the engine until it is howling. As soon as the spikes are all the way down, he puts the vehicle in gear, floors the power thruster, and they rocket through the gate as if shot out of a cannon. Down the raceway fronting Street Freaks they fly, tearing ahead so fast they catch and pass other vehicles almost before they know what’s happening. T.J. never once lets up on the thruster. The Straightaway only goes in one direction, but this doesn’t lessen the feeling of insanity that marks the experience. If Ash thought the taxi driver bots were crazed, then T.J. is insane. He howls and whoops and bounces around in his seat as he drives. Ash is certain they are going to crash. His heart is in his throat and his hands are glued to the padded dash as Ash waits for it to happen.
Finally, at the far end of the straightaway, T.J. rips past checkered signage that marks what appears to be a finish line.
“There you go!” he exclaims jubilantly and reaches over to give Ash a friendly shove. He slows the Flick to a crawl. “Whoo! That’s what real racing is like! That’s what real driving is all about!”
Ash exhales slowly. “Real racing, huh?”
“Oh, come off it. You loved it!”
Truth is, now that it’s over, he has to admit it was sort of fun. All that power vibrating through the car, all that speed reducing the landscape to flashes of color and stretched-out images—it was exhilarating. It reminds him of racing in Africa. He had forgotten how much he loved it.
But that was when he was driving. What he doesn’t find so easy is the idea of putting his life so completely into someone else’s hands. Or entrusting it to several thousand pounds of composite materials not directly under his control, if you preferred to look at it that way.
“I used to do some driving,” he says quietly.
“Sure you did.” T.J. is dismissive. He
barely spares him a look. “But this is different.”
T.J. turns the Flick into a parking lot that is virtually empty and parks it facing a river. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers it. When Ash shakes his head, T.J. takes one and lights it with a tiny torchpin.
“I wouldn’t go swimming in there, if I were you,” he advises, gesturing toward the river.
“How can you breathe the air in the Zone?” Ash asks, brushing at clouds of exhaled cigarette smoke. “Doesn’t it bother you? Or are you immune?”
T.J. gives him a look. “I’m immune to everything. I never get sick. If I get injured, I heal overnight. I’m Superman.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, fish,” the other says, putting added emphasis on the last word as he leans close and blows smoke in Ash’s face, “that I am perfect. That’s how I’m tweaked. I was genetically altered while still in utero to be a superior male specimen. Ta-da! Tommy Terrific! I was created to be the perfect athlete and trained to be the perfect soldier. I was one of the first of a new generation of protectors genetically manufactured to serve the greater needs of the United Territories. I was the prototype for what was to be a new army.”
He leans back in his seat, lip curling. “Of course, I wasn’t given a choice about this, was I? No one stood up for me. I didn’t live in a highrise in the Metro.” Again, a deliberate taunt. “I had a surrogate who carried me to birth, and then I was given over to the tender, loving care of the scientists who had manufactured me and the military establishment that had requisitioned me. Along with some other flesh-and-blood puppets created for the same purpose. Funny, thinking back on it. I never knew the names of my brothers-in-arms. We were given numbers. I was twenty-five. Number twenty-five. I never found out what happened to the other thirty-nine after the grand experiment failed. Classic, huh? Never found out.”
His voice drifts off. Ash waits a moment and then says, “So what part of this grand plan didn’t work out?”
“I didn’t work out, fish! That’s what didn’t work out. Me, myself, and I. A frickin’ failure! Told you I was tweaked. Well, it’s how I’m tweaked that’s the problem. Not that the geniuses that made me would accept any responsibility for it. Not that they would ever admit it. The others at Street Freaks, they don’t think it matters. They’re different too. But not different like me. No metal parts in me. No artificial pieces. Just a stew of steroids and additives and toxic potions and scientific swill! All flesh, blood, bones, and iron determination, and all of it a frickin’ mess!”
He shakes his head. “Now, Holly? Holly’s another story. Born to real parents, raised by real parents. An ordinary girl who suffered an unfortunate accident and an even more unfortunate recovery—one that required she become slightly reimagined by her helpful neighborhood mad scientists so she could break iron and bend steel!”
He slams the dash with his fist, causing the entire vehicle to lurch. “Did you look at her closely, fish? Do you know what she is? Well, you know she’s not like anyone else, right? A whole lot not like anyone else! She’s a frickin’ cyborg! You know what a cyborg is? She’s human—flesh and blood and bone—but she’s had some replacement work done with metal and plastic components. A lot of work, actually. She’s been rebuilt from the ground up to be what she is—as much a creature of inanimate material as of human tissue. The accident tore her up. She was still alive, but there wasn’t much left to save. So her parents gave up on her. Gave her over to science.”
His eyes fix on Ash. “Can you imagine that? Her parents abandoned her! What sort of parent does that? They listened to the doctors who said she was going to die, and they let her go. They listened to all that bullshit, the jerks! Then the doctors gave her to the mad scientists who wanted to experiment on her. And they did too. Boy, did they ever! New arm and leg, part of her body, piece of her head, a few new organs—all replaced with composite materials. They recreated her, and when they were done, they had something of what those other wackos had envisioned for me. They had the perfect fighting machine. They also had one angry girl.”
“She’s awfully strong,” Ash agrees.
T.J. looks away. “You don’t know the half of it.” He sighs wearily. “Okay, I’m done talking. I just think a fish like you ought to know a little about what being ‘tweaked’ means. You come into the Zone, you ought to know. Put your helmet back on. Flick, power up!”
The engine springs to life, growling ominously in the stillness of the afternoon.
“Hey, I wasn’t making it up about the driving,” Ash says suddenly. “The kind you do. Racing.”
T.J. glances over. “Yeah, so?”
“I just wanted be sure you heard me.”
“Just don’t talk to me, okay?”
They return to Street Freaks in silence, T.J. driving a different street now at a much slower speed and not looking at him. Ash has questions, but he doesn’t think this is the time to ask them. T.J.’s demeanor suggests he shouldn’t. Besides, he will probably be out of there by day’s end, so he doesn’t see much point in asking anything more about any of these kids. His father is probably waiting by now, or there might be news of his whereabouts.
His thoughts return to the events that led to his flight into the Red Zone, and he is immediately depressed anew. He sees Faulkner being blown apart. He recalls the sound of weapons fire and explosions, the smell of smoke and ashes and scorched metal, and the sense of fear he experienced on looking at the long drop to the street below as he stood on the ledge outside his sky tower home.
Why didn’t his father prepare him better for what might happen? But he realizes almost immediately that his father couldn’t be sure how to do that. He was probably hoping all along that none of this would ever come to pass, believing that if he were careful enough . . .
But he hadn’t been careful enough, had he? They’d found him out. Whoever they were.
At the gates, as the spikes lower back into the composite, T.J. says, “Look, fish. I said too much back there. I usually don’t do that. My life is good. I don’t have room to complain.”
Ash shrugs. “I think maybe you do.” He pauses. “But could you stop calling me fish?”
T.J. laughs. “I’ll think about it.”
They park the Flick where they’d found it and walk back inside the building. As they pass the office where they’d left Jenny, they find everyone crowded around her desk looking up at a wall-mounted vidview. A live report is being broadcast. A picture of the BioGen building is being shown, and a newscaster is standing in front of it, speaking into a vidcam.
“. . . investigation continues into the terrible incident that took place earlier today at the offices of BioGen, where prominent scientist and biogenetics engineer Brantlin Collins . . .”
The stricken faces of those gathered turn toward Ash, and he doesn’t need to hear the rest of what the newscaster says to know what has happened.
“. . . apparently Collins fell or jumped from the roof of the building in front of which we are standing. Although the authorities are offering no official comment on the cause of death at this time . . .”
He tries to shut out the image that immediately comes to mind, tries to make what he is hearing not be so. He feels himself go cold all over.
“. . . the prevailing opinion of those investigating the incident suggests that the most likely cause of death was suicide . . .”
“No!” he shouts, unexpectedly furious at the suggestion. “My father would never kill himself!”
“. . . shocking loss of a man whose contributions through research on genetic deficiencies in the human body resulted in the development of supplements to and replacements for damaged organs. Perhaps his most recognizable achievement was in the development of genetic tracking, which led to the production of mood enhancers, commonly known as Sparx, which are now used almost universally . . .”
“This is wrong. It’s a lie! He wouldn’t do that!” Ash spits out the words as if they were poison, impassioned beyo
nd reason. He never believed his father was at risk, and now that he is gone, Ash just flat-out refuses to believe it was suicide.
“. . . while an investigation continues into this tragic event, one thing remains clear. The world, and the United Territories in particular, have lost a talented biogenetics pioneer whose research into the nature of the human species has changed our lives for the better. Brantlin Collins, dead at the age of forty-two. Allen?”
Jenny Cruz points at the vidview, and the screen goes blank. “I’m sorry, Ash.”
Murmured condolences immediately issue from the rest. Holly moves over and wraps one arm around him in a brief hug, and in an incongruous and surreal moment, Ash finds himself trying to decide if her metal-and-composite arm feels different than his own.
“This isn’t right,” he says. “He wouldn’t do that. Not my father. He wouldn’t.” He cannot leave it there, refuses to permit it to take on the trappings of truth. “If he’s dead, he was killed.”
“That’s a big jump you just made,” T.J. says, the doubt in his voice unmistakable.
“No, it isn’t. My father said he was at risk, and this proves it. He said there were people who wouldn’t like it if they found out what he was doing. Why couldn’t it be BioGen he was talking about? That vidview he sent me this morning? I saw the look on his face. I heard how he sounded. He was really scared.”
T.J. shakes his head. “What could he have done that would get him killed? That’s pretty extreme, even for corporate greed-heads. You sure he wasn’t just depressed about something?”
“Maybe he just fell,” Holly says. “Accidentally, I mean. People fall accidentally all the time. Off bridges and porches and ladders and everything.”
“Off the tops of buildings they work in?” Ash asks. He rubs his eyes. “I have to figure out what to do.”
T.J. shrugs. “Well, you can stop waiting for your father.”
Holly wheels on him. “Shut up, T.J. Do you have to be such a dick all the time?”
