by Ben Chaney
Running up one final stairwell, the group emerged onto a flat, concrete rooftop. The Pulsar HVX sat wrecked at the end of a savage gouge in the concrete. Jogun sprinted up to it, meeting the several other gang members who were already tearing it apart. At the rear of the hull, Jogun recognized the radioactive symbol. He cringed as the Cutters yanked out the canisters of Helium-3 and tossed them to the waiting Runners. Nothing happened. He sighed. No meltdown today...
Jogun got to work. He and two others forced open the trunk with a hydraulic hiss. Revealed pay-dirt. Groceries. Laughing and whooping, they rifled through the treasure and filled their satchels. Jogun caught glimpses of detergent, potato chips, soap, shampoo, ground beef, and...fresh produce! He took care not to open that bag too wide while he took his cut from it. The others didn’t seem to notice. Boomer was too busy stuffing his face with tortilla chips, and Porki chewed on a frowning mouthful of toothpaste. Spat it out in a soggy lump.
The Cutters torched panels from the hull while three senior T99s drew pistols and surrounded the cockpit. Suomo, the ranking member, waved his long lean arm for a Cutter to pop the driver’s-side hatch. It swung open with a flick of the crowbar. A spongy, yellow-green material crumbled out the door. Suomo checked inside, then relaxed with a metallic smile.
“All clear!” Suomo called to the group. Jogun took out his crowbar, pulled his satchel drawstring shut, and trotted over. Met Suomo at the door.
“Cheap-ass foam,” Suomo said, holstering his pistol, “Did the job for us. Jo, go on and pop the other side.” Jo looked inside. Stalled. A family of three sat partially encased in their seats. Hollow stares from the husband and the eleven-year-old boy in the back seat told of instant death. The wife slumped over the dash, her face half-buried in foam.
“Well do it quick, fool! Better believe the Robos gonna be here any time!” Jogun ran around to the other side, pried the door open, and climbed up just in time to see Suomo reach into the foam on the driver’s side. The husband’s harness straps zipped back into the seat, Suomo grabbed the arm, and yanked the corpse out into a crumbling heap of dry foam. The senior Nine started rifling through compartments without a second thought. Jogun reached in. He grabbed the dead wife by the shoulder and eased her away from the dash.
She gasped and flashed her eyes wide open.
“SHIT!” Jogun stumbled out of the ship. The woman groaned, pulling a shaky hand from the foam to touch the gash on her forehead.
“A live one!” Suomo shouted, “Go ahead wit it, Jo.” Only one thing that could mean.
Jogun swallowed hard. His heart raced. All eyes watched him as he pulled out the nine millimeter and climbed back up into the ship. He found the woman struggling to keep her eyes open. Her light-brown hair was stained yellow-green, clinging to her scarred, middle-aged features. She looks like...like Her... Twelve years ago, and her face still haunted him clear as yesterday.
“Today, Jo!” Suomo said. Burying the memories, Jogun raised the pistol. Looked down the sight at the woman’s head. His breathing quickened. His arm trembled. Awareness gathered in the woman as her eyes rolled toward the sound of the clicking hammer. BANG! Red splashed against the sick-colored foam. Her head returned with a thump to the dash. I’m sorry... Jo pinched his eyes shut and pulled her out of the cockpit. Cheers and applause erupted outside.
“Yeah!”
“GOT that city-bitch!”
“That’s the shot, Jo-Gun!”
Jogun flicked the safety on his pistol, stuck it in his waistband, and climbed into the Pulsar’s backseat. Just get to business. Don’t let ‘em see you sweat. He scooped foam out by the arm-full, digging for the center console. Suomo climbed into the driver’s side, leaned over to Jogun, and slapped him on the back. Jogun managed a nod then continued working. He kept his attention fixed on the console and away from the boy’s body next to him. He looked away as that corpse was unhooked from its harness and dragged out.
They picked the wreck clean within a matter of minutes. First the factory stereo and speakers, GPS, head-rest monitors, yards of fiber optic cable, and anything with a circuit board. Then the heavy lifting. The seats, undamaged glass, polyurethane interior paneling, and the carbon fiber hull came out in crudely cut sections, tossed into piles on the roof to be carried off by the Runners.
Jogun, with full satchel in tow, stepped out of the skeletal remains in time to see the kids arrive. Despite their long pursuit, they had lost no energy. They pestered the Runners for closer looks at the loot. A few ran to the piles, picked up all they could carry, and followed behind their elders. A tiny kid arrived dead last. His tiny body heaved with each exhausted gasp. Matteo! Jogun sprinted to him, and crouched down.
“Dammit Matteo, when I say stay, you stay!” said Jogun. He glanced back, scanning behind him for traces of the bodies. Gone. They were carried off too. Jogun tried to block thoughts of what they’d be used for.
“I—I wa—” Matteo struggled.
“Slow down man, like we practiced,” Jogun pursed his lips, drew in a long, deep breath, and exhaled. Matteo nodded and obeyed. Jogun pressed a hand to Matteo’s stomach and pushed against the pressure of each breath. The boy’s breathing slowed, accompanied by shrill wheezing.
“You good?”
“Y—yeah. What’d you get?”
Jogun furrowed his brow.
“Never mind what I got, boy, you need to learn how to listen! This ain’t no place for you!”
Matteo frowned at the remark. He looked at the kids with armfuls of cable and hull fragments. He huffed through the wheezing.
“You ain’t like them,” said Jogun. Matteo shot him a dirty look.
“C’mon, I didn’t mean...I just—whatever. Sounds like you need to head down to the Doc for a refill.” Jogun tapped the inhaler tank in Matteo’s hood, stood up, and dug into his satchel. Pulled out a ripe clementine orange.
“This should be enough…‘specially with the seeds,” said Jogun. Matteo held the alien object close, studying the texture and shape, “Don’t even think about it. Not one bite, understand?”
Matteo rolled his eyes. Nodded. Jogun’s ears perked up at a rising sound in the distance. The other T99s did the same. The distant, familiar thrum of hover engines echoed across the slums. Getting louder every second.
“Five-O! Get the fuck out!” shouted Suomo. The gang exploded into a frenzy, holstering cutting torches, bagging remaining scraps, and securing their satchels for escape. Jogun stooped to Matteo.
“Get to the Doc, and be home before dark!”
“Will you—”
“NOW!”
Matteo shuddered at the command, and hobbled to the fire escape. Jogun watched his little brother go as he tightened the satchel straps. Be safe, little man... With the gunship seconds away, Jogun broke into a dead sprint across the rooftops.
The IG-6 gunship, a repurposed military relic painted EXO blue, pulled its nose up as it reached the crash site, blasting the rooftop with a breaking thrust. Vet pilots called them FFT’s or ‘Flying Freight Trains.’ The force of the hover engines floored a few T99 stragglers as seven EXO-Cops dropped to the roof like lead weights. Sergeant Kabbard and his men stood tall in the urban camo Augmentor gear on their arms, legs, and partial torsos. Each EXO drew his weapon and formed the first-response perimeter. Through his visor, the Sergeant’s steel eyes took a quick survey of the scene.
“Davis! Leitmeyer! Ruiz! Olin! Legs on! Pick up some trails and run ‘em down!” The four officers nodded in their tight-fitting helmets, and crouched. Each turned dials on their upper right hip, triggering the crescendo of a high-pitched, electronic whine. Four audible clicks snapped at full charge and each officer bolted in a different direction. Their bounding, inhuman strides cleared rooftops at a time.
“Shima and Mason, you’re with me. Switch to spurs.” Kabbard pulled the barbed stun pistol from his shoulder holster. Shima and Mason followed suit, converged on the recovering T99s, and fired stun spurs into their backs. Short convulsions follow
ed by deathly stillness. The three fanned out to secure the wreck. Kabbard double-tapped a hotkey on his temple, dousing his vision in electric blue. No movement or body heat signatures appeared inside the wreck.
“Sound off!” Kabbard shouted.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
Kabbard retracted his visor and glared at the stripped skeleton of the wreck. Ground his teeth. Another failure to add to the list.
“We were dispatched what, six minutes ago?” asked Shima, “How the hell could they have done this so fast?” The mouthy rookie lifted his visor. The sharp, bird-like features gave the kid a shifty look. Kabbard didn’t think much of him. Too much of a taste for violence and cool gadgets. Mason, the fatherly elder vet, was all too happy to offer a sagely answer.
“You saw the prelim scans coming in. There were kids up here. They do this kind of thing from the second they can hold a blowtorch,” Mason grumbled, squatting to inspect the torch-cuts on the mutilated rear-end. Ahead, Kabbard leaned into the cockpit. Fucking mess. He found it difficult to focus on any particular thing in all the twisted metal and shredded plastic. Only a wet, crimson smear on the passenger side caught his eye. His boot nudged a bullet casing on the ground by the frame..
“Sir!” Shima called from the opposite side of the ship, “I got three RFID chips here, minus three civvies! By the look of ‘em, they were carved outta the vics’ forearms right here...nasty shit! Sir.” The rookie pulled out a plastic bag, dropped the bloody, square-inch microchips inside, and handed it to Mason.
“Must be gettin’ wise...” said Mason, passing the bag to Kabbard.
“Won’t be trackin’ ‘em that way anymore,” said the Sergeant. He studied the chips. Bits of flesh clung to the tight circuits. Dark blood pooled in the bottom of the bag. All that was left of three more innocent lives. Twenty years on the force...five Governor commendations for valor...two holes in my shoulder, one in my hip, and one in each leg. None of it makes a damn bit of difference... Anger flickered inside of him, but had scarce little fuel to burn. Empty.
“Think they can pull the mem logs?” Shima asked.
Kabbard ignored the question. He pressed two fingers to his throat just beneath the jaw. Felt the familiar pop there.
“Pursuit Team, we’ve got civilian casualties,” he paused, hating the words, “Find me at least one of these shitheads, and put the blue octopus on ‘em. Can’t let this go without a message.” He released his fingers and turned from the wreck, walking straight toward one of the unconscious T99s.
“Blue octopus?” Shima raised a thin eyebrow.
“Yeah. Four cops. Eight arms...” Mason buried a fist into his meaty palm. A tight grin stretched over Shima’s face.
Kabbard pulled out a stun pistol and pressed a button on the side. A dual-pronged barb flicked out of the grip. He stooped, twisted the T99’s head to the right, plunged the barb into the base of the neck, and squeezed the trigger. The skinny gangster seized, shocked out of the stupor. Kabbard waited calmly as the thug shook his head and looked up at the three EXOs.
“The fuck you want, robo?” asked the gangster.
“Oh yeah, we’re a hard ass, aren’t we?!” Kabbard stood with the buzz of servos. Planted the armored toe of his boot in the scumbag’s ribcage. Once the coughing died down, Kabbard knelt.
“Names and whereabouts,” Kabbard said, “The pain stops when you tell me.”
2
Prayers
MATTEO CRADLED THE orange in the belly pocket of his hoodie. The faded-yellow pullover was so baggy on him, no one would see anything bulging from the pocket. Not that anyone would think to find food on a scrawny kid like him anyway. All the same, he kept his head down through this part of Rasalla. So near the Falari Market, the streets swelled with the poor and starving. One whiff of his precious cargo, and they’d swarm him.
Dusk had settled over the Slums, casting scary shadows into the alleys flanking the street. Matteo’s heart pounded against his ribcage. Detailed scenarios of desperate, violent thieves came to mind without permission. He shook his head and tried to focus on his route. Right at the Alati Shuttle House, walk two blocks, and left into the Temple of the Wheel. The wheezing was getting worse. He freed a hand from the orange and pinched the release on the tube. The medicine trickled in. Starving noses nearby caught something strange as he passed them. Matteo slipped his hand back into the belly pocket and sped up. Hung a tight right around the Alati House, a salvaged medical shuttle turned hospital that signaled the start of the Healer’s Quarter.
“Healing” came in many forms. If you had the cash to spend or the goods to trade, you could buy anything here from antibiotics for an infection to the best highs in the Slums. Witch doctors and surgeons worked as neighbors. Lines between pusher and pharmacist blurred. They ignored Matteo, barking over his head to the shuffling crowd. He squeezed unnoticed through the queues of sick and wounded and came out at a T-junction. Took a left. Then the second right.
A twenty foot tall, circular metal gate spanned the path. Strings of lights wrapped around the red painted frame, making it glow like a warm hover coil. Matteo smiled. The Temple’s smells of honeyed melon incense and fresh-grown herbs always felt like a greeting. Breathing was easier for a moment. Past the gate, high rafters loomed above him with multicolored prayer flags hung in long, drooping lines. He wondered what each of them said...and if God really listened.
Matteo wove through the silent evening patients to Doctor Utu’s clinic. It sat at the bottom of a stack of cinder block apartments. The gray concrete peeked through the ceremonial mural and hand-woven draperies decorating the walls. The evening torches were lit, filling the air with their cinnamon-spiced kerosene. The Doc could afford it. If a T99 or his family needed care, any self-respecting member sent them to Utu.
Matteo approached the front door and brushed a hand over the hanging beads. He loved the sound. Parting them slightly, he peered inside.
“Be with right with you, Mister Matteo!” said the Doctor in his rich, laughing tone. How can someone sound like they’re smiling? Copper candle-light flickered all throughout the room, interrupted by the cool glow of the exam lamp. Painted prayers in English, Arabic, and Chinese snaked around the entire space, playfully overlapping the shelves. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Matteo furrowed his brow, thinking. Filing the phrase away for later, he hopped onto a painted stool by the door and turned attention to the Doc.
“Almost...” Utu said, crouched beside the prosthetic leg of a reclining patient. The Doc stroked his round, lightly bearded face. He wore a loose, white linen robe and his natural paunch swayed underneath. He peered at the new leg. A curved strip of homemade carbon-fiber cut to shin length and socketed into a metal cuff below the man’s knee. Utu adjusted the cuff with caramel-colored hands then lifted the leg to bend at the knee. Repeated the process.
“There,” the Doctor said, “Try to stand.” The large man lurched forward and pivoted in his seat to face the doctor. Matteo tensed. It was Raia’s dad. The man had lost the leg in the Pits to a falling scaffold...it didn’t make him any nicer. Too many good nights’ sleep were interrupted by his drugged out screaming.
Utu stretched out his arms and beckoned to the man. Raia’s dad planted his real foot, and with a shaky heave, put weight on it. Utu braced him under the left shoulder.
“Now take your time and shift,” Utu began gradually withdrawing support, “to the new extension of your body.” The man dipped and wobbled for a moment before finding balance. He tested the weight.
“Chafing? Discomfort?” the Doctor asked. Raia’s dad pursed his lips and shook his head. Utu bowed and turned to the shelf behind him. He plucked a small frond of leaves and held them over a candle, scorching them. White smoke wafted from the crackling leaves.
“What was taken, let it thus be restored...through this joining of flesh and invention,” the Doctor intoned, tracing the prosthetic with smoke. He straightened and extinguis
hed the leaves in a bucket of water. A crutch made of welded pipe and sewn bits of upholstery leaned against the wall. Utu picked it up. Handed it to the man.
“Use this for one week as you get used to the balance. After, try walking as often as possible without it. Short periods at first, working your way up to longer ones. The muscles will ache with the new movement, but be sure to come see me if you have trouble. Okay?” the Doctor smiled up at the thick man.
The man grunted, touched his palms together, and bowed his head. Utu mirrored the gesture.
“Namaste,” said Utu. The man turned, crutch under his left arm, and hobbled carefully toward the door. Matteo dismounted the stool and held the door beads aside. Though ignored, Matteo lowered his head in respect, then turned to see Utu beaming at him.
“Such a boy from this neighborhood...It does my heart good! How may I help you this evening, my friend?” asked Utu.
“Just a refill,” Matteo rasped, taking out the orange and handing it to Utu. The Doctor accepted it, but seemed not to notice. His bushy eyebrows arched at the scratchy voice.
“And then some.” said Utu, “Come! Have a seat.” He wrapped the orange in a cloth and set it aside. Flipping around, he lowered the patient chair, and patted its cracked vinyl seat. Matteo climbed on.
“Let’s just take this out and have a listen, hmm?” Utu reached around Matteo’s head, gripped the plastic tube between gentle thumbs and forefingers, and removed it. Matteo fidgeted. He remembered Oki ripping the tube from his nose. Everyone laughing. The wheezing started as Utu set the empty canister aside, picked up a tarnished stethoscope, and fixed it to his ears. He exhaled on the metal pad and reached through Matteo’s cutoff hoodie sleeve. Placed the pad there. Listened. Moved it and listened again. Utu sighed.
“My friend, what have you been doing?” Utu asked, setting the stethoscope aside. “Let’s see...” The Doc scanned the shelves in the room then focused on a door in the corner. “Ah,” he said. He crossed the room in a flutter of linen and opened the door, spilling white light into the room. Matteo leaned and squinted to see what was inside. Green plants of so many shapes and sizes. A broad leafed one with gold blossoms. A sparse, spindly one with red berries. The Doctor entered the closet and knelt beside a bushy one barely larger than Matteo’s orange. He plucked a few coin-sized leaves from it, exited, and closed the door. It took a moment for Matteo’s eyes to readjust to candlelight. The Doctor picked up a wooden mortar and pestle and started grinding the leaves.
