by Hugo Huesca
When it was time to leave, Steve stopped me. He looked around to make sure no one was around and then he handed me a small plastic bag. The guy looked agitated and pale like he was smuggling weapons to the guerrillas and was about to go through airport security.
“It’s kinda against the rules to take the blend out of the building,” he explained. “No one really enforces rules like that, but still, if someone asks you—”
“If someone asks, I’ll tell them I don’t even know you,” I told him. He smiled with a faint, trembling expression.
Was this Steve-the-Intern’s first crime?
“Thanks,” I added, stashing the bag in my pants. “I owe you one.”
“Don’t think about it,” he said, “we have to stick out for each other around here, right?”
“Right.”
When the bus to Lower Cañitas finally arrived, I was in a better mood than when I arrived at work. I planned to tell it to wake me up a minute or so before arriving at my stop, so I’d be able to get some much-needed sleep.
I stepped inside the bus, which greeted me happily, and after my phone paid the fare automatically I searched for a comfortable empty seat.
I sat near the back and began reading about Rune’s combat and Alliances. I didn’t make it far before a shadow hovered over the screen, and over me. I looked up to see a man standing in the aisle in front of my seat. He was big enough occupy all the free space around us, filling it with oversized, impractical muscles that could only be achieved by illegal steroids.
“Cole,” the man said, and I realized he was more a guy in his middle twenties, “it’s about time we had a word.”
“Oh,” I said, as my brain finally processed all the little details and decided to send a jolt of adrenaline all over my body, “hello, Darren.”
Darren didn’t smile wickedly nor knifed me right there. He looked grim and serious. He made a gesture and I moved over to the window seat. He grunted as he tried to stuff himself into the small space the bus seat offered. He more or less succeeded, like stuffing a sausage inside the neck of a bottle.
I was trapped between him and the bus.
He looked at me with cold, dead eyes. The name of his wanna-be gang was The Ferals, but he wasn’t feral at all. He was calculating. Scheming. I had no doubt he was a person capable of murder in cold blood.
Every muscle in my body was screaming with tension, and I was using all my willpower to appear as if I was relaxed. Darren’s hands were empty, but that hadn’t stopped him before.
“I’m disappointed in you, Cole.”
“Darren, I didn’t do it,” I said, immediately. No point in feigning ignorance, at this point.
Had he been inside the bus the entire time? I should have seen him coming. I was supposed to be better than this. He had come alone, though. No other Feral was nearby, only a couple blue-collar workers on the front seats, and an office-rat a couple seats near us. He was trying very hard to pretend he wasn’t here, shrinking in his seat and looking out the window. He pretended the gray city was the most interesting sight he had encountered in his life. No help was coming from there.
“Interesting admission,” Darren said, his voice a dull monotone. “Thing is, Cole, the police jumped us seconds before you ran away from Gluttony.”
“I went to a funeral,” I said, looking him in the eye, trying to show him I was being honest. No avail; he carried my gaze, but there was no spark of recognition inside him. He already accepted I wasn’t a person, just a target of his revenge.
“So you say,” he went on, “but it’s an awfully convenient timing, don’t you think? You get too many Strikes, you claim you are getting clean. You agree to one last job, which we give to you in good faith. Suddenly, there are cops all over Gluttony, and Chimera ends up in jail. Last I heard, she’s going to be there a long time, Cole. Sadly for her, she refused to help the cops jail any more of her friends.”
I swallowed and tried not to shiver. I knew where he was going with this. Truth be told, I had no good way of defending myself. Not for lack of evidence, mind you. Darren’s idea of “reasonable doubt” involved punching to a pulp first.
“You see, sometimes you get Strikes taken off your back if you cooperate with authority. But I bet you already know that, don’t you?” He shook his head in the direction of Xanz’s skyscraper, which was barely visible in the distance as the bus zipped around traffic. “Awfully nice job you got out of a sudden, by the way.”
You learn psychology in the streets, if you pay attention. What I saw in Darren attitude, was called “dehumanizing” a person. Armies still do this today. If you think of your enemy as a dangerous, non-human entity, they were easier to kill.
Try hard enough to pretend your enemies aren’t people and soon enough you will pretend you don’t hear the screams. The yelling and the pleading? Don’t worry, that’s just the steam coming out of the lobster’s shell. They aren’t advanced enough to feel any pain.
I knew watching Darren’s eyes that my only hope of surviving the next few seconds was to remind him I was still a person. Pleading wasn’t going to do the trick. But it would buy me some time.
“I know how it looks. But I didn’t snitch on you. You know me, Darren.” I’m a real person, dammit. One you know. Don’t pulp me yet.
My left hand inched around my pants until I came across a small plastic tube. I’d been carrying it since I found out Chimera was in jail. It was my life insurance.
Now, I only needed to get it out of my pocket, slowly…
“I thought I knew you,” Darren drawled, and now there was a dangerous edge to his voice. A man who was readying to kill. His right hand was near his jeans, too. I could see his overgrown shoulder tremble, slowly, with each inch it moved forward. “I thought you were brave. You understood our way of life, I thought. How things work in places like Lower Cañitas. Us, surviving together against the government. I admired you, too, you know? How you managed to survive without compromising your values. You’ve never robbed someone, haven’t you? Never blackmailed a cheating husband, never scammed an old lady.”
“Man—” I began.
“Don’t, Cole,” he interrupted, “don’t plead. Now is the time to act like a man.”
I shut up and froze. If he got a knife out, or worse, I was going to jump him and try climb over him and get away. He would stab me, of course, a lot of times. But, if I got out of the bus before bleeding out, I had a chance the police-drones would get there before Darren had a chance to finish the job.
And doctors could put you back together after a lot of damage, even if your heart wasn’t beating. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t realize I was from Lower Cañitas until after the surgeries.
Instead of stabbing me right there, he went on. “One year ago, I told my Ferals, ‘that Cole has a pair of principles, guys. You all would do well if you were a bit more like Cole Dorsett.’ Remember why? It was the week before high school finals.”
“Yes.” I did remember. We went to the same public school, all the kids in Lower Cañitas did: we had only one. Darren was already out of jail and the school agreed to take him back on probation. He was several years behind and he spent the time scamming old ladies, blackmailing cheating husbands, and robbing people. He robbed me, once, when I was coming home from school, before we knew each other. He took a backpack with my school e-reader, two burner Berry computers, and a bunch of Script sticks.
Next day, I got called to the principal’s office. Turns out, a street camera had caught the robbery. Darren was there, as well as his parole officer. They were waiting for my testimony before they put him away.
I did not snitch on him. Instead, I told them it was a joke between friends. I’d let him borrow my notes so he could study. They didn’t buy it, but they had no case. They let Darren go, end of story.
There was no nobility involved in my part. I wanted my Script sticks back, and I very much didn’t want the police seeing the interior of my backpack.
Next time we me
t, Darren returned my stuff and then we worked together every now and then when I liked the job. Mostly helped when they targeted rich people, like San Mabrada’s city council or our corrupt mayor.
“A couple of my younger Ferals are very disappointed,” Darren went on, “I’ve taught them the importance of loyalty and respect. Of family, Cole. And you spit right on those values. Sad, don’t you think?”
I could see his shoulder had stopped moving, so his hand must be clasped around his weapon now. Along with the shivering fear for my life, hot anger boiled inside my stomach. This asshole wanted to off me for something I didn’t do, and he was just at the right point between smart and idiotic to convince himself he got the right guy.
“Those are a lot of big words for a fuck who’s angry his criminal girlfriend is going to rot in jail,” I spat.
For an instant, Darren’s pupils went wide with surprise. Then it was black, murderous rage.
“I’m sorry it has come to this, Cole,” he said, as he reclined towards me. His entire body tensed, a snake coiling before striking.
“Yes,” I said, “me too.”
He was bigger, but I was faster. I brought forward the cylinder I was grasping and pressed a button on its top. It was just a cheap lighter.
Darren’s shirt caught fire like it was covered in gasoline. That’s what a cheap, plastic-threaded knock-off does when exposed to a flame.
For an instant, the world froze. Darren looked at me, I looked at him. I realized I was trapped between a wall and a burning giant. He realized he was on fire.
We both reacted as well as you could expect, under the circumstances.
I lunged against the front seat, trying to climb it before the flames reached my own clothes. Darren roared in fury and pain and tore the shirt right off his torso, just like in a cartoon. I could smell the hair on his arms and chest burn as he did this, and I felt a stinging pain on my leg as I stumbled over the front seat and fell on the bus’ floor. I saw blood on the green and blue seat. Somehow, Darren had managed to stab at me while tearing his shirt off. He was much faster than I’d anticipated.
As I limped over the aisle, trying to gain as much distance between us as I could, he stomped over the burning remains of his shirt, as coils of black smoke rose all around him. He looked like a demon, and roared like one, too:
“You set me on fire! I’m going to kill you, Cole! And I’m going to hurt you before I do!” The rest of the things he said you can pretty much guess. Lots of things involving entrails and hacksaws.
I passed the blue-collar workers, who right now were pretending they didn’t exist, while at the same time making sure the fire didn’t spread all over the bus. It wouldn’t, Darren had done a pretty good job at extinguishing it before it caught fully over the remains of his shirt. He stomped towards me. In his right hand was a bloodied knife. Some of that blood was his: in his rampage, he had managed to cut himself on the chest. A long, bloody, superficial cut that covered him in blood. He was straight from a horror movie.
“I’m going to get you now, Cole!” He yelled, as he charged.
The streaks of black smoke reached the bus sensors, then.
OH, DEAR! IT APPEARS YOU HAVE ACCIDENTALLY STARTED A FIRE, COLE! The bus exclaimed as its software analyzed the video feed. EVERYONE, SAVE YOURSELVES! DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL STAY HERE AND TRY TO CONTAIN IT! GO, NOW, RUN!
The bus slammed the brakes and I immediately flew against the floor, rolled over myself, and hit my head against the hard plastic of a seat, hard enough to make me see stars. Hot blood trickled down my forehead and dripped into the floor.
For a second there, I’d forgotten what real pain felt like. There’s no red screen in real life, just adrenaline and the vague notion of someone putting your brain into a blender.
I got up, stumbling. The office worker had already left the bus, running for his life with his portfolio. The two blue-collars were braver: they saw the fire was already over, but there was still a fight going on inside the bus. Darren had fallen flat on his back and the knife had slid a few feet towards me. He was too big to get up easily, so the workers stepped over him to get to the back door of the bus.
Darren roared incoherently and for a second, I thought of rushing towards the knife and ending this ridiculous shit. Then he got his bearings and pulled himself up.
I turned around and ran for my life.
“You set me on fire, Cole!” Darren yelled behind me. I didn’t turn around, but my leg hurt with every step. The wound was right across my calf. If it had been slightly lower, it could’ve gotten my ankle. “You’re going to regret this!”
“I already do!” I shouted back.
I’M GLAD YOU ARE SAFE, COLE, HAVE A GREAT REST OF THE DAY the bus shouted as I jumped out and into the street. As I quickly limped towards the safety of the alleyways nearby, I could hear it encouraging Darren. LET’S GO DARREN, YOU CAN DO THIS! GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! YEAH, GOOD JOB! —IT SEEMS YOU ARE ACCIDENTALLY TEARING APART MY UPHOLSTERY. DON’T WORRY, I’LL FORGIVE YOU—
I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I was sure Darren didn’t plan on being as forgiving as the bus, if he caught me.
I couldn’t go back to my apartment, not after setting Darren on fire. He’d have the place cased out with Ferals for sure. Instead, I called Van and told her to stay indoors for the day and tell Officer Harrison to give the neighborhood a pass a couple times. The Ferals were good enough to avoid the police, but at least they would be forced to disperse.
Meanwhile, I limped my way to Accolade Square, a nearby district halfway to Lower Cañitas. It was a tech marketplace which surrounded a barely maintained park where middle-class families liked to hang around on the weekends. On a Saturday morning, you’d see the park’s paved roads filled with street vendors roaming among the crowd in their colorful carts, selling fruit (or fruit-like synthesis), junk food, children’s toys, and even paintings made by survive-by-the-day art graduates. If you crossed the street you’d get to the tech-market, a ragtag bunch of stores and local vendors. The explosion of bright, colorful light-beams and rowdy holograms the tech-market launched daily was a main attraction at the park. I suspected the locals tried to draw away attention from their filth-encrusted floors by using a lot of cheap neon holograms and second-hand drones.
By night, on a workweek, the more reputable stores were closed and the hologram show was mostly over. The only ones left open were my kind of store.
I arrived at the streets by the park while looking all the way over my shoulder. The last thing I needed now was to get mugged.
Since the coast was clear, I found an alley near the closed tech stores and fumbled my way into the darkness. The alley was littered with trash and rotting synthetic meat. I went up a rusted stairway which creaked dangerously under my weight. One of these days the thing was going to fall off with me on it, I just knew it.
The door to Roscoe’s was waiting for me on the third floor. It opened with nightfall and closed at the first signs of sunlight. The rusty hinges whined as I pushed my way in, glad to be away from the swinging stairway.
The store was badly lit by ultraviolet light and glowsticks hanging from the ceiling. Rows upon rows of gutted hardware were displayed along the walls. Nanochips and old microchips, parts of converters and solar arrays, computer parts, old radios, even signal-blockers from the army surplus. That’s the stuff I recognized, but I was sure Roscoe kept a stash of military-level gadgets in the back.
The man himself waited for me behind the shop counter, which was littered with hardware debris. He was focused on his desktop computer, but looked up as he heard my steps. Roscoe Orville was a twenty-something young man with a face scarred by a zit-filled adolescence. Long, greasy dreadlocks were tied up in a ponytail that reached the lower back of his Anonymous t-shirt. When he saw me near, he smiled, exposing his yellow teeth. He was wearing goggles over his mouse-like face.
“Cole, my man! So good to see you! Why are you bleeding all over my carpet?”
> My blood was probably one of the least toxic substances on said carpet, but I just shrugged. “An old friend jumped me after I left work.”
“You’ve some taste in friends,” he said. “I’ve got some baby-wipes in the back, let me go get them real quick.” He walked into the back, behind a plastic curtain near the counter. He was back seconds later with a sealed baby-wipes package, which I gladly accepted.
“So, I need a place to crash,” I said, as I cleaned the crusty blood of my forehead and checked the slash on my calf. It was just a scratch, but the trousers were going to need a visit from the tailor.
I told Roscoe what’d happened and he agreed to let me crash on his futon for the night.
“You set a man on fire?” was the first thing he asked when I finished my story. “In cold blood, just like that?”
“Look, I didn’t plan to set anybody on fire,” I said. “My plan was using it to set fire to a seat or something if Darren and his friends came in, so the bus would stop and I could run away. Not my fault he ambushed me from inside the bus.”
“Then you decided to set him on fire,” Roscoe was very amused by the situation. “You know what happens to a plastic shirt if it’s on fire more than, say, three seconds, right? It melts. All over the skin.”
I shuddered. Darren had been fast enough to avoid that, but still, I could’ve easily killed him. I wasn’t thinking straight back then, only about my survival. “Still, he was the one who wanted to stab me. Have you seen a knife victim? They don’t look as clean and happy as you see in the movies. You can see the fat under the skin in a knife wound.”
Roscoe made a vague nod with his head towards his computer, which was a Frankenstein amalgamation of different parts, some of them illegal.
“I’ve seen some war videos, so yeah, I think I’d have done the same in your place,” he said.
I sighed and looked for a trashcan to dispose of the bloodied wipes.
“I know a Shaman in a shack nearby,” Roscoe added. “He deals with evil-eyes and stuff. You want me to give him a call? Because your bad luck is really something, my man.”
