Son of Sedonia

by Ben Chaney

  A twinkle of silver thread flickered under his jumpsuit’s lapel. Gently, she lifted the fabric.

  “Themis,” she read aloud. Aden’s eyes snapped open.

  “AHH!” both Aden and Liani screamed at the same time. He leapt back to climb over the futon and flipped it over, landing with a crashing thud on the faux hardwood.

  “WHOA! Whoa, whoa, hey, buddy, you remember me,” said Liani, “Nice lady who fed you too many drinks last night?”

  The terror on Aden’s face dimmed a little when he saw her, though he studied the room like some kind of feral child.

  “Yeah,” Liani said, “Aden, right? Your name is Aden?”

  “I—call me Matteo,” he said, wincing. “Where am I? And why’s my head hurt?” Liani laughed, making him smile shyly.

  “You’re at my place,” she said, “My apartment. And your head hurts because you had more girly drinks than I’ve ever seen anyone order in a single evening.”

  “Liani, stay back,” Corey said flatly, gripping the curtain rod like a club.

  “What? Why?” she asked.

  “He’s an escaped convict from the Themis Colony, that’s why, now stay back!” said Corey. Liani furrowed her manicured brows at him.

  “Chipped with a gold RFID? They don’t exactly hand those out in the Rasalla District from Red Cross food trucks, Corey, now put the battle axe down.”

  Corey hesitated, then obeyed. Matteo looked down at his hand. The ring Corey had fastened there flashed in the kitchen light.

  “That’s so they can’t track you,” Liani said, holding up her hand to show hers, “Blocks your signal. Corey, where did you get these anyway?”

  “Friends,” he said. Liani rolled her eyes. Matteo scratched around the device and straightened.

  “Why am I here? What happened?” He dug his palm into his forehead, wobbled, then sat on the toppled futon. Liani and Corey exchanged glances. They walked slowly around the upturned wooden frame, and peered down at him.

  “Corey, get him some water,” she said. Corey frowned and started to say something. Liani shot him the obligatory death stare, sending him pouting on his way to the kitchen. Matteo slouched and stared at the floor through his knees.

  “Ade—mm—Matteo. Hi. Ummm, you were really, really drunk, got kicked out, climbed back in, then John Kabbard showed up,” Liani remarked, noting Matteo’s face when she mentioned the name. “And then you freaked out and tried to run. I kind of accidentally knocked you out with the door, so we got you outta there. Brought you...here!” Liani presented her apartment with an awkward flourish. Matteo gave it another cursory look, then tried to stand, stumbling a little on the crooked futon pad. Corey met him at the top with the water.

  Matteo looked, nodded, and hesitated, staring at the glass.

  “Here, take it,” Corey insisted. Matteo carefully accepted the water, then knocked it back, drinking deeply. Done, he licked his lips, savoring the taste of it. Liani furrowed her brow. Jeez kid, never seen a glass of water before?

  “Thanks,” Matteo said, wiping his mouth.

  “You’re welcome,” said Corey.

  “No...for everything,” Matteo stepped off of the futon, then stooped. He picked up the wood frame and turned it right-side-up.

  “Our pleasure. So...what did he want with you? Kabbard,” Liani asked, feeling brave. Matteo froze and seemed to go away in his head. The journalist inside Liani stirred. Ooooh, that is a sensitive subject.

  “That man hates us. Always has. My brother used to tell m—” Matteo’s breath sputtered out, choking. He tried to hide it.

  “What did your brother say,” Liani asked. Corey put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Li...”

  “Shh!” She pushed his hand away.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Matteo answered, “Everything’s different.” He noticed the light from the window, then turned. Step by step, he inched toward it as though it might hurt him, then parted a crack in the blinds. She couldn’t see what he was looking at, but whatever it was captivated him.

  “You...really are from Rasalla, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I grew up there,” Matteo said without turning from the glass, “Lived there my whole life. But my brothe—I was told I was born here.” The words hung in the room. From the silence, Corey gasped.

  “Li, what did you call him before?!”

  “At the bar he said it was Aden. His credit account came up under that name too: Aden Rin...Aden Rin-something.”

  “Aden Rindal?” The color drained out of Corey’s face. Matteo whirled.

  “Jesus, yeah...good guess,” Liani said, cocking an eyebrow at Corey.

  “Around eighteen years ago, a well-liked district attorney and his family crashed their transport in the heart of the Slums, killing all three of them. It was chalked up to mechanical failure, but never confirmed since all possible evidence was cut up, carried away, and scattered immediately by the locals. That far out, the first responders barely had time to dispatch, let alone find anything once they got there.”

  “Oh my god, are you talking about Alan Rindal?! The freakin’ conspiracy theory? Tell me you’re joking,” Liani said, hoping he was. But out the corner of her eye, she noticed Matteo facing them. Quiet, focused, and still as ice. Her comforting doubt slipped through her fingers.

  “Keep going,” Matteo said, staring a hole through Corey.

  “Right...um...Rindal was saying some pretty radical things to the press in the days leading up to the crash. Basically went from hard-line party man to whistleblower overnight, going after corruption in every tier of the state. Company man gets a conscience.” Corey shook his head. “It wasn’t a secret he’d made some damn powerful enemies in the process: the Prescott Group, Virton, shit, even the World Bank wanted to shut him up. Most of us, to this day, think someone did. Murdered him, his wife, and newborn son. Alan, Patricia, and...Aden,” Corey finished, looking squarely at Matteo. Shaking now, Matteo lowered himself to the floor. The poor kid looked like he was about to short circuit. Though, something Corey had said itched in Liani’s ears.

  “Wait, what do you mean ‘us?’ These shadowy ‘friends’ of yours?” Liani asked.

  “It’s a movement, Li, and it’s been building for years. Doesn’t exactly pay the bills so I never got in too deep...but I know a guy. He’s connected. Kind of a weird cat, but he used to feed me leads all the time when I was still just an indy blogger. I think he can help us out.” Corey stepped around the coffee table and reached for his backpack.

  “How?” blurted Matteo. Corey stopped and grinned at him.

  “You want answers, buddy? They’re all in your head. You’ve been set to record since the day you got that chip.”

  37

  Answers

  MATTEO FELT RIDICULOUS in the new clothes they’d given to him. The long-sleeve, shiny, mesh shirt-thing shrink wrapped his upper body and chafed his joints pretty badly. Over that, they stuffed him in a thick, puffy vest with an equally puffy collar that almost buried his head. Probably a good thing he had trouble seeing his legs over the collar. Whatever kind of boots they’d strapped him into made him feel like he’d jumped calf-deep into wet concrete. Sitting in the backseat of Corey’s bulky hover-van, he scratched at the bunched fabric in his arm pits and retreated back into his mind.

  Matteo was still trying to make sense of what Corey had said. He knew you had to have a chip to get into the City, but the rest had been a mystery.

  “They’re like little computers,” Corey explained simply for Matteo to understand, “and everyone has a color based on their class. Mine and Liani’s are blue because we’re from Inner Ring, a few levels out from the Mesa. Yours is gold. Either the chip or you, or both are from the Mesa itself. Some call it Center Ring, and it’s the tippee-top. Home to the richest, most powerful bastards in Sedonia City...no offense. Anyway, that chip combined with the top-shelf nanotech you were injected with at birth made you just a little more than human. You’re sharper, more observant, q
uicker to react, and you have a memory like a steel trap, all thanks to these microscopic gadgets hooked onto your neurons.” He saw Matteo’s blank stare. “The building blocks of your brain. Now, we all have the same kind of memory storage in us, but it’s illegal to access it directly without a court order...it’s not exactly productive for society if everyone can live in the past for real, right? But if you commit a crime, out comes the memory to convict you. If you’re killed, your memory is your witness.” Corey’s friend, Illyk, was the man to see about ‘getting access.’

  Matteo blinked and shook his head. He realized all of it was true. The entire conversation had just played back in his head. In detail. He’d always been able to do that. Jo would frown at him when he’d recite the exact words of a broken promise Utu would give him shopping lists without writing them down, and laugh deeply when Matteo came back with every last item. And in the Pits he’d had a mental catalog of which objects were valuable, which were useful, and which were dangerous. There had to be thousands.

  Growing up, it had been just one more thing to get him called a freak.

  Sweat poured from his forehead as heat radiated up from inside the vest. He tugged at the collar. Illyk can get ‘access.’ The thought of digging up every fucked up detail of his life for all to see made him ache. Liani turned and faced him from the passenger seat.

  “Nervous?” she asked. Her feline-green eyes glistened at him as she smiled. Matteo’s pulse raced. The mop of shiny red curls draped over her shoulders, just hiding the curves of her chest.

  “Nah...” he said, shaking his head, “Nah.”

  “Good, good. New outfit’s cute on you! Cuter than it was on my ex anyway...you like it?” Matteo wiped his forehead then rubbed the sweat on his mesh pant leg. Nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s great,” he said, puffing his chest, “Great outfit.”

  “He looks like a marshmallow in combat boots,” Corey scoffed. Liani punched his arm.

  “Ahh! Shit, Liani, I’m driving!” said Corey. Matteo smiled, escaping the quicksand of his thoughts. He pulled the vest collar down further to get a better look out of the half-canopy window.

  The buildings had gotten shorter. Blockier. Where the downtown ones were sleek and beautiful, these wore their guts on the outside. Complex networks of pipes and bits of worn machinery seemed to both decorate and entangle the neighborhood. Not so much flying traffic out this way either. There were a few transports and freighters humming in their aerial lanes, but most of the movement happened on the hanging train system. The Superway. There had been a blurb about it in one of Utu’s magazines. The tracks wove through the City like veins and arteries in a massive body. Train cars slipped along the rails at ridiculous speeds, stopped for passengers, then took off again like a gunshot. Matteo instantly wanted to ride one. Yet the further they went, even the train stops seemed fewer and further between.

  “Jesus, Corey,” said Liani, “How deep in the sticks are we going?”

  “These guys live as far on the edge of the grid as they can, Li. They don’t exactly want to be found,” said Corey.

  “And you have found them before...right?”

  “I...um...not exactly.”

  “Oh this should be good,” said Liani, leveling a stare at him.

  “I managed to trace my contact’s IP back through a couple dummy servers he’d set up. Rather badass of me considering these guys don’t fuck around with security,” he grinned at Liani as she rolled her eyes. “Naturally, the signal dead-ended before a specific location came up, so all I could get was a district tag.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’ve gotta stop in the neighborhood and ask around.”

  “Perfect,” Liani said.

  The squat apartments and dingy storefronts finally gave way to the Outer Ring, a skeletal, tangled landscape of power plants, towering steam vents, loading docks, shipyards, and warehouses. As a kid he’d assumed the smoke rising from just beyond the Border was some sort of curtain, meant to stop him and his kind from looking in. Maybe the City kept monsters there.

  Corey flew the van over the belly of the beast and dipped down into one of its gaping mouths. They landed on a round, concrete clearing amidst all kinds of other parked vehicles. Most had wheels though. Cars, trucks, vans, even bikes. Matteo fiddled with his harness, excited for a closer look but more eager to get the hell out of the van. Flying had been more fun when he wasn’t hungover.

  “Okay, here we go,” Corey said as he popped the seal on the van doors. “We’ll start in that power station over there. My guess is they use the interference given off by the transformers to help block incoming Wi-Fi.”

  “We’re guessing now. Awesome,” said Liani.

  The complex felt unfriendly right away. Workers with tattered jumpsuits, dirt-streaked skin, and suspicious eyes kept their distance. They milled through the maze-like facility with exhausted, silent purpose. Grating metallic sounds of sparks and heavy tools rang out, underscored by a low electric hum. Matteo’s palms started sweating. For a moment he thought himself back in the twisted stomach of some wrecked sky-freighter in the Pits.

  Corey had a hard time approaching the workers, let alone talking to one. Either they ignored him completely or pretended not to hear him over the noise. After half an hour of this, he finally dropped the excuse-me’s.

  “We’re looking for Illyk!” Corey shouted above the din. Several men stopped what they were doing and glared. Liani grabbed Corey’s arm and clung tight. A stocky, brick house of a worker stepped toward them. Seemed like out of nowhere.

  “We don’t know who that is, bud. You guys ain’t safe in here without gear. You should leave before some kind of accident happens.” The man nodded to the way they came in, then turned his back on them.

  “We, uh,—” Corey coughed, “We have something he’d be interested in. Worth his while.”

  “You?” the worker asked, laughing the question.

  “Yeah, me. He used to help me run a blog back in the day,” Corey gulped and glanced at Liani, “‘Engine of Vengeance?’” The worker squinted at him.

  “Nerd,” Liani snickered under her breath. A booming laugh from the worker startled all three of them. The spectators all around seemed to relax.

  “Shit yeah! I used to check out EoV all the time! So...you must be TruthHammer! You’re a real wise-ass, bro,” the man chuckled as if remembering an example. Liani laughed out loud.

  “TruthHammer?!”

  “Told you, I’m a badass,” Corey said sheepishly. Matteo heard the click, saw the handgun.

  “Whoa—” Corey started.

  “Sorry, T.H., just a precaution. EoV went dead five years ago, and that’s plenty of time to turn Fed. Give me the rings and show me the arms.” Corey frowned, then took his off. Nodded to Matteo and Liani who both followed suit. Matteo watched as his two new friends held out their left forearms. The worker took out a local profile scanner and touched it over their chips, triggering a quick beep.

  “Hm,” the man said, reading as he stepped to Matteo. Matteo turned his arm over and hesitated, looking at the skin. He remembered Themis. Being pinned to the ground and forced to submit to a similar device. He looked at Liani.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “It doesn’t hurt.”

  Matteo nodded. Stretched the arm out for the worker. Reading the profile, the worker’s eyes went wide.

  “Yeah. He’s what’s worth your while,” Corey said, “calls himself Matteo, but, as you can see, the chip’s got a different name.”

  “He follows me. You two stay here,” he said, turning away.

  “Wait, what?! No, man, we’re—”

  “You’re Media, or at least you were. We can’t risk you leaking anything that we’d rather keep tight,” the worker tapped a finger on the side of the gun, “No arguments.”

  Matteo stole himself, putting on the toughest scowl he could. But truth was, every inch further into the complex they went, his nerves screamed. He buried the thousands of questions for
the moment and refocused his mind on their route. A long forgotten lesson from Jogun surfaced right on cue. ‘When in doubt, know the way out.’ The voice was so vivid in his head. Heard through the new knowledge of his hidden talents, it dropped a lead weight on his shoulders. Still, he did his best to take the advice.

  He found the pattern in their path. Thick black cables hung bracketed to the metal frame walls. Some kind of hard line setup for both power and networking, not all that different from some of the rigs used around Rasalla. The EXOs could tap into Wi-Fi signals too easily. The cops had to find a local hard line before they could hack in. Why would anybody on this side of the Border need to hide like this? The people of the City were all supposed to be rich, fat, and comfortable, living in beautiful apartments that look down on the rest of the world. Do the EXOs raid here too? In their own City?

  Another turn and the two of them arrived at a small clearing in the structure. In the center of the cylindrical chamber squatted an older model IG-6 military transport. Matteo flinched as years of programming begged his legs to run. But this one was rusted. Sleeping under a camouflage net to hide it from open sky. A ring of dried mold surrounded its base and crept up the hull, showing him it hadn’t moved in a long time. The black cables wormed their way up to modified ports all over and around the ship, spread over the platform like thick noodles. The worker stepped over the cables toward the ship. Matteo hesitated. Heard the familiar click.

  “No turning back now, I’m afraid,” said the worker, holding the gun for Matteo to see, “C’mon.” With every step, the decaying ship grew. It loomed over the two of them as they approached the hatch door under the nose. A surveillance camera next to the hatch buzzed as it focused on the two of them.The worker grinned up at it, showing his crooked stained teeth.

  “It’s Simon, open up,” he called up to the camera, “Got a special guest who’d like to...uh...reminisce.” The hatch bolts popped and the door squealed open on rusty hinges.

  It took a moment for Matteo’s eyes to adjust in the dim blue glow of the inside. Flickering monitors lined the stripped bulkheads, outlining seated figures. They swiveled in their chairs to look at him, then turned back to their work. Whatever that might be. A thin figure descended from a ladder in the ceiling and jumped down, landing with a thud on the metal floor. The hot cherry of a lit cigarette swayed from side to side in the twilight as the figure walked over to greet them. A monitor brightened, lighting the mystery man’s face. Just a kid?