by M. D. Cooper
“Why do it if you were so nervous?”
“Like I said when I first met you, it’s pretty much expected where I’m from. Everyone else has it, so you have to get it too, or else live with a significant handicap.”
She scowled. “Being a natural human is not a handicap.”
“Where I come from, it is. You have to either keep up or fall behind.”
“That’s barbaric.” She couldn’t imagine living that way.
“It is, and it isn’t. On one hand, if technology’s available, isn’t it stupid not to use it? People can be far more productive and much better equipped to deal with a variety of circumstances.”
“I guess, but effectively forcing people to permanently change their bodies just to have a chance to live a decent life sounds like a dystopian nightmare to me.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the part that I’d agree is barbaric.” He shrugged and smiled good-naturedly.
“What pushed you over the edge? What made you leave?” She held her breath, expecting him not to answer. She was getting far too personal.
But he sighed. “My kid brother was even more nervous about the eye surgery than I had been. When he was eighteen, my parents made his appointment for him. He didn’t want to, but they made the same arguments they had with me. Unless you want to be a menial laborer, trying to scrape up a living, you need the basic mods.”
Trey paused, picking at the skin of his left thumb. “I guess he was even more scared than I’d been. Both of getting the mod and not getting the mod. He took a lethal dose of anestharitazine the night before his surgery. Being dead seemed better to him than becoming a meat machine.”
The air in her lungs froze and she found herself unable to inhale. She’d grown up wishing for a sibling, though Kippy had been a good surrogate for her. She couldn’t imagine having a brother, only to lose him so senselessly.
“I’m so sorry,” she finally managed.
“It’s been a long time now,” Trey said. “I’ve gone so far away that it almost feels like it was a different life. But I figured for his sake, I’d get out of there and go find a place where people can just be plain old humans. Then I’d try to help them, whenever I could.”
“Using your eyes as an advantage to others, instead of just a way to keep up among your people?” she guessed.
“Something like that.” He shrugged, looking down at his feet. “It probably sounds stupid.”
“No,” she denied. “I think it sounds pretty great.”
He raised his gaze to meet hers. “Yeah?”
She smiled. “Yeah. I could almost forgive you for being the reason I got stuck with a partner.”
He grinned, and he looked like his regular self again. “Nuh uh, you got stuck with a partner because your lame ass hasn’t bothered to get up to date on neighboring star systems.”
She grinned back, feeling their relationship click into place in a way it hadn’t before.
The elevator made a soft noise, alerting them to its slowdown and preparation to stop.
“Finally,” she said. “I was starting to think we’d have to use my jacket to create a shelter so we could camp out in here.”
He smirked at her sarcasm. When the doors opened, she was immediately hit by the smell of something delicious.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Come find out.” Without waiting for her, he took off down a wide passage, and then took a right into a small room.
The space was so tiny that it could only accommodate two tables, each with a pair of chairs. As Reece passed them, the amazing aromas grew stronger. She couldn’t identify them all, but she smelled warm bread, something spicy, and a variety of savory smells.
Her stomach growled.
They turned a corner to see a little counter, and a tall woman appeared through a doorway to the back. Reece craned her neck to try to get a peek at what lay beyond, but couldn’t see anything but a silver storage-rack laden with skillets and pans.
“Two specials,” Trey announced. “Two orders of fried onions, and the smoothie of the day.”
The woman smiled, nodded, and disappeared through the doorway.
“I usually order for myself.” Reece wasn’t mad that he’d decided for her, though it felt odd.
“Whatever the daily specials are, that’s the best choice,” he answered. “If you don’t like it, you can come back and order something else.”
“I’m sure whatever you picked will be good.” She smiled, but he looked unconvinced that she was OK with his order.
“It will,” he insisted.
“I just said that I’m sure it will be.”
He shook his head. “Your words said that, but your face says, ‘oh no, he’s going to make me eat bugs or something.’”
“Are you?” she asked, suddenly worried. She had not considered the possibility of bugs. Lots of places served them, but she’d never cared for them.
“No.”
“Okay, so we should be in good shape then.” She turned and leaned against the counter.
Five minutes later, the woman returned and handed Trey a sack of food. Then she returned and set two large cups on it.
“Want to grab those?” Trey asked. When he immediately began to walk out, she realized his question was more of a decree than it was a request.
She grabbed them and followed him out the side exit, which led through a narrow passage. The cold from the beverages seeped into her hands, causing an ache to grow in the center of her palm and begin radiating outward.
Trey opened a door and stepped through, then held it for her. She hustled out, looking only for a place to set the freezing smoothies down.
“So cold!” She plunked them onto a knee-high storage bin and shook out her hands.
Then she got a good look at her surroundings.
Wow.
As she stepped closer to the low balcony wall, her view of the city expanded. From east to west, she saw millions of lights, illuminating the entire metropolis. Daylight had nearly disappeared, and tall buildings appeared to her only as towers of illumination. Some had a fully-illuminated outer surfaces, and others, like the building she stood on, utilized a multitude of smaller lights, usually in a variety of colors.
“Best view of the city right here,” he said.
“It’s incredible.” She stared, feeling like a kid witnessing a magic trick. The balcony bowed outward, so that the walls stretched back behind them and out of view. They had a nearly one-hundred-and-eighty-degree vantage point. “So why are we the only ones here?”
“Well, it’s a small space.” He waved at the walls surrounding them on three sides. “It could accommodate maybe four more people comfortably. Plus, it’s dingy. Nobody here wants to be seen someplace so run-down.”
“Why not clean it up, then? It wouldn’t be hard to get rid of the storage bins and clean the walls and the ground.”
Trey grinned. “But then people would want to come here, and it would be crowded.”
“You mean it’s kept this way on purpose?”
“Yep. The only way for the poor people here to have anything decent is to be sure nobody else wants it.”
The building’s exterior lights provided just enough illumination for her to see the admiring look on his face.
“Does it belong to the people who run the food shop back there?” she asked.
“It’s part of their rented space, yeah. So they could fix it up and make it into something that would draw customers. But then it would get someone’s notice, and then they’d find their rent raised to something they couldn’t afford, and another vendor would move in. So they keep it kind of a secret.”
“But you know about it,” she pointed out. “And you’re not even a local. Why would they share this with you?”
He shrugged. “I helped them out once. They were getting robbed repeatedly. Law enforcement doesn’t get someplace like this quickly.”
“So you caught the thieves and they shared their food and views?”
“Something like that.” He smiled. “Let’s eat before the sandwiches get cold.”
Unlike the indigenous people of Usra, Reece had no problem eating someplace with no pretentions of being fancy. In fact, she preferred the opposite.
“This is delicious,” she managed to say between bites. “What is it?”
“Some different local foods. Nothing too strange.”
She shrugged. “As long as it won’t make me sick, I don’t really care about strange. Especially if it tastes this good.”
“That’s what I like about you,” Trey said, standing next to her as they looked out at the city.
Reece prepared herself for him to make a joke at her expense.
“You live in reality,” he continued. “You just want to keep your head down, make a living, and take care of those you care about.”
She stopped chewing and looked at him in surprise. That actually did describe her, and he appeared to think those qualities were admirable.
“Really?” she asked around a mouthful of sandwich. She took a long sip of a watery but delicious fruit-flavored smoothie to wash it down. “You think that’s a good thing?”
“Compared to what I’m used to…yeah. I think it’s a very good thing. And maybe that means I found the right place when I ended up on Akon.”
“So…you’re saying I’m validating your life choices? That’s kind of heavy. I’m not sure what to do with that. I’m not a very deep person.”
“Just eat your sandwich,” he said dryly.
Although he seemed to be getting rather bossy, the food was so good that she didn’t mind complying.
After they’d eaten everything, they lingered, looking out at the city.
“So this is the kind of thing you do for fun?” she asked.
“Given the location and the amount of time we had, yeah, this is what I came up with. It’s not a rip-roaring good time, but it’s nice, right?”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It is. I’m glad we came.”
They stood in silence for a long while, watching over the city. Finally, Trey asked, “Ready to go?”
“I guess. I’d rather have this view than sit in a tin can headed back out into space, but I don’t want the slightest risk of being late and missing the flight.”
He gathered their trash. “Right. We still have five hours. I just want to stop off at a bodega and grab some fresh fruit for Dex, then we can get back there.”
He disposed of the trash at the tiny diner, then they embarked on another incredibly long elevator ride. This time, their journey was punctuated by a number of stops to pick up and drop off other passengers. After the tenth stop, Reece began to feel somewhat stabby, but she managed to remain polite to her fellow riders. The building’s lack of sufficient express elevators was not their fault.
She kept reminding herself of that, over and over, particularly regarding the lady who kept making a loud sniffing noise. Judging by Trey’s tight expression, he was struggling too. That made her feel a little better because, secretly, she suspected he had more patience than she did.
The arrival at the ground floor—and subsequent exodus from the elevator—felt like a hard-won victory. As she stepped into the building lobby, and then out into the night air, she felt the full pleasure of personal space and fresh air. They seemed like such minor things, until they were unavailable.
“Can we walk a couple blocks?” she asked. “I don’t fancy hopping right back into another enclosed space.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “I don’t mind stretching my legs. It got kind of stifling in there.”
“Yeah. And that woman who kept sniffing. I don’t know what it is about that kind of repetitive noise that makes a you go from perfectly calm to wanting to brain the person within a span of minutes, but I bet if it could be used as a means of warfare, the side that mastered it would win hands-down.”
He laughed. “I kind of wanted to give her a handkerchief and a smack myself. And not in that order—not that I’d actually do that.”
“Fantasizing about it is a means of preserving your sanity. Believe me, I know.” Reece chuckled.
In spite of the elevator ride, she liked this city. It had all the exciting things she liked in a downtown—bright lights, lots of bustling people, and yet clean, fresh air. Cities that stank of too many people crammed into too small a space were the worst.
She enjoyed deep breaths, occasionally picking up a scent of something sweet or a combination of savory aromas. Too bad she wasn’t hungry, because it smelled like the locals had more terrific offerings.
She was enjoying a lungful of something that smelled like cake or pastry when a tall guy walking the other direction bumped her shoulder hard. Almost like he’d aimed for her. A lot like a pick pocketer would, especially if working in a team.
Town to town and planet to planet, that game never differed much, and she’d seen it everywhere.
Though they hadn’t taken anything from her, her shoulder smarted from the impact. She stopped and turned.
The guy’s group numbered five. Three men, two women, no obvious weapons. That didn’t mean they didn’t have them, though. She wondered if they’d noticed hers, or if they’d been concealed beneath the length of her jacket in the darkness.
“Hey!” she called out.
“You got a problem, off-worlder?” the one that had bumped her turned and sneered.
Reece glanced at Trey. His eyebrows rose slightly, indicating he’d go along with however she wanted to handle this.
Good.
Other pedestrians were moving away, keeping clear of a possible confrontation. Reece supposed that made sense, in this place.
“Yeah,” she answered. “You owe me an apology. I may not be from around here, but I’ve never been to any planet where it’s acceptable to bash into a stranger on the sidewalk and continue on like nothing happened.”
The guy laughed. “Are you the etiquette police? It’s a busy sidewalk. You got bumped. Don’t be so sensitive, princess.” He turned away and started to saunter off.
Though the ‘princess’ bit irritated her, she smiled. “Where’s the second group?” she called.
The group stopped again, swiveling toward her and Trey.
“What?” the guy asked, sounding less sure of himself.
“You just marked me,” Reece said. “Whoever’s watching knows that you’ve chosen me as a target. Now, it can’t be for an abduction, because I’m not connected to any families. So it’s got to be a good old-fashioned robbery, or just a beat-down or murder.” She smiled pleasantly. “Which one is it? My friend and I would like to plan our evening accordingly.”
Trey sidled closer to her and asked in a low voice, “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yup. Consider it research, to see how something like this plays out here in Eashira.” She kept her eyes on the group of five, who seemed to be conferring. “They’re low-risk nothings. Not even thugs.”
“And you want to teach them a lesson, is that it?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. Don’t you?” Since he had his eye on the group, she glanced quickly at his face.
“Kind of. They might have targeted some innocent person, instead of you. Roughing them up a bit might make them think twice about it next time.”
“Wait, so you’re saying if it’s just a minor assault on me, that’s not worth taking them to task for?” By this point, she’d begun to wonder if they were just going to walk away. If the thugs were going to rise to the challenge of a fight, they wouldn’t have given her and Trey all this time to have a conversation.
Trey was saved from answering, because finally, the guy yelled back. “Go home, off-worlders, and take your stink with you. Your kind isn’t wanted here.”
“You worthless pissants!” she yelled back. “You’re not even good for a fight. Run away, then. Go back to robbing children and grannies!”
She snorted. Lame. She’d been all worked up for a fight, and they were just going to back down.
Typical.
But then the group let out a yell and rushed them.
She grinned at Trey and planted herself, letting them come to her.
He shook his head with a slight smile. “You’re nuts.”
“You love it.”
“We’ll see.” He didn’t have time to say more as one of the women and two of the men came within striking distance.
She focused on the two advancing on her—the other woman, and the guy who had bumped her.
Reece aimed for the softer target first. She throat-punched the woman, dropping her to the ground. That left her and Mr. Stupid.
In her peripheral vision, she could see that Trey had dropped one of his attackers, too.
She tested out Mr. Stupid’s skills by throwing a quick jab at his face. He blocked it, showing at least some ability to fight. A shame—for any others he might try to run this scam on.
He made a grab for her, but she twisted to the side, and slapped his arm down. Then he swung a fist at her face, but she stepped aside for that, too. If he were a bounty she was hunting, she’d have stepped in, grabbed that fist he’d thrown her way, and pinned it behind his back.
But she wasn’t trying to apprehend him.
She peppered him with a few jabs, making moderate contact, and mostly just pissing him off.
When the woman on the ground started to get up, Reece gave her a quick kick to the ribs to convince her the ground was a better place to remain.
As she began hitting Mr. Stupid in earnest, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye—from Trey’s direction, but further back. The realization flowed through her mind in an instant: Trey was about to finish off the guy he was fighting, and someone was coming up behind him.
To hell with this.
She stomped on Mr. Stupid’s foot with the hard sole of her boot. It was a dirty trick, and one she rather liked. When his weight came forward to take the pressure of his injured foot, she delivered a perfect uppercut to his jaw, knocking him senseless. A quick right cross dropped him to the ground.
