Sima maneuvered around broken hunks of rubble and walls, trudging down narrow passageways to her ‘room,’ a freestanding concrete box close to the rear corner, about half the size of the bathroom at her mother’s apartment. Plastic bags and a couple blankets softened the bottom of a space she could just about lay down in straight.
She sat on her bed and untied the cables from around her calves, rubbing the sore lines the wire had left on her skin. Though they protected her feet from harm, the sandals did not cope with running well at all. Sima set them aside in the corner behind her head and curled up to sleep.
4
Murder Pixie
Commotion yanked Sima out of sleep.
She shot upright in bed, arms raised wielding an imaginary knife she’d long ago chickened out from carrying for real. Shouting echoed in the subterranean vault, voices both shrill and deep. Foggy, she curled into a defensive ball until her brain woke up enough to realize the other Outcasts weren’t punishing a thief but screaming about a corpse.
Sima rolled onto her feet and poked her head out past the cracked wall of her ‘room.’ A crowd had gathered a few spaces to the left, along the innermost wall where only shallow partitions divided separate ‘bedrooms’ like bathroom stalls without doors. Everyone congregated around Draz. Tying her sandals on would take too long, so she padded barefoot down the short passageway to the open channel at the back, lightly pushing her way into the crowd.
When she reached him, she gasped in horror at a haze of brilliant pink dye along his upper lip, residue from fumes that leaked out his nose. His face held an unnatural grey pallor, not the rich brown it should’ve been; however, the two tiny lines of blue LEDs he’d had grafted in to replace his eyebrows continued to flicker. She didn’t have to touch him to know he’d died in the middle of the night.
An inhaler of Pixie lay clutched in his left hand.
“Damn, Draz. Hope that last dream was worth it, man,” said Oema. The maybe-thirteen-year-old huffed a strand of snow-white hair off her face.
“He’s dead.” Torsten, a past-twenty guy with a black buzz cut and giant muscles, gestured at the group. “Fair game.”
The thirty or so Outcasts around her all shouted, “Fair game,” and descended upon Draz. One boy grabbed at his sneakers. A girl Sima’s age went for his jacket. Three others invaded his sleeping area, raiding plastic crates full of stuff he’d collected. Oema dove headfirst into the blankets, crawling under the dead teen to claim a small portable video game system he kept under his pillow. The instant Liz got the jacket off the body, Gordy went for the T-shirt.
Outcast rules declared ‘one person, one item’ when someone living in the Crash died. They viewed breaking that rule no different from stealing, so the frenetic mob scene of looting throttled back to a reasonably polite competition for stuff, followed by a few people trading. Soon, Draz lay there in only his underpants. No one wanted them, likely due to the unidentifiable stains. Not a soul touched the Pixie inhaler either.
As everyone trudged off, Sima shouted, “Wait!”
The other Outcasts paused, looking back at her.
“We should do something,” said Sima. “Not just leave him here.”
Murmurs of agreement swept over the crowd for a few seconds before Torrent, a seventeen-year-old boy with sky blue hair, said, “Float him.”
Sima cringed. As much as she disliked the idea of leaving Draz where he lay, she also didn’t want to touch a dead person. She did, however, stoop and pick up the Pixie inhaler with two fingers.
Oema gasped at her. “Yo, that stuff’s death in pink. A murder sprite. What you doing?”
“And the EGSF will aerate your butt for havin’ it,” said Theof, scratching his shaggy brown dreads.
“I’m just getting rid of it before one of the little ones finds it.” Sima held the inhaler out to arm’s length as if it would bite her. “No way am I gonna huff this crap.”
“Careful, yo,” said Demona. The somewhat older teen sidled up next to her, dark skin hiding her facial expression in the gloom. Neon green letters spelled ‘Super Fusion’ across her black tank top. “That stuff’ll explode like a grenade you ain’t careful.”
“I know.”
A few people repeated, “Float him.”
Older boys, men really, clustered around Draz and grabbed him by his legs and arms. They hoisted him off the ground and carried him to the right, following the rear wall of the Crash to a round passageway leading into the old sewer system. Out of some strange sense of community, Sima followed along. She stared warily at the Pixie inhaler until a sharp rock underfoot reminded her she left her sandals behind, at which point, she watched where she stepped.
The procession marched down one corridor into another, the boys carrying him grunting from the struggle to move dead weight. Twice, they put him down to better their grip. Each time Draz hit the floor, puffs of glowing pink vapor burped out of his nostrils. Everyone held their breath.
Eventually, they reached a passage where water still flowed. The boys shuffled up to the edge and started swinging Draz side to side in preparation to throw him in.
“Isn’t anyone gonna say something?” asked Sima.
“Like what?” Oema tilted her head, clutching the game system to her chest.
Sima shrugged. “I dunno. Seems like someone should say something.”
“Sucks to be you, man.” Theof saluted Draz.
“He wanted to float.” Demona sighed, shaking her head. “People who huff Pixie wanna check out.”
“Okay, umm…” Torrent held his arms out to the side. “If no one has anything, like epic to say about Draz, let’s just like have a minute of silence for him.”
The Outcasts stood there in somber quiet for about forty seconds before the ones holding him tossed him into the brackish water. Draz landed face down with a quiet splash, and glided off in the current, surrounded by solid lumps of brown matter and bits of trash. Overcome by a combination of disgust at the dead body and claustrophobia of the crowd, Sima shoved past everyone and ran off down a side passage. She wound through a series of tunnels and stairways to a pipe big enough to serve as a corridor. Her feet splashed in a few inches of water that trickled along the bottom, following the downward slope toward a ring of daylight at the end.
She hurried to the opening and stepped out on a narrow ledge of debris, mostly drywall slabs, plastic cups, hunks of rebar-studded concrete, and scraps of insulation. Fresh air, or at least the freshest the city had to offer, lifted her hair and her spirits (somewhat). Below her, a cliff of shredded building led down about twelve stories to a landfill. Sunlight sparkled from glass bits and twisted metal shards here and there. Numerous tiny waterfalls spilled from the exposed floors beneath where her toes curled over the edge. By the time the flow reached the bottom, it formed a brackish river of trash and mud.
The height stirred a twist of fear in her stomach. She gripped the wall at the right, her hand two inches beneath a drawing of a penis, and stood there seeking comfort from the solitude. As long as she stopped looking down, the quiet calmed her.
Draz, a boy only a year older than her had died less than thirty feet away from her sometime last night. Gone, silent as a ninja in the dark. She’d spoken to him a couple times, but she tended to avoid boys her age as they often had only two things on their mind: food and getting in her pants. Draz hadn’t been like most. He never once made a move on her or even said she looked pretty. She doubted he preferred boys; more likely, he’d been lost to some deep pit within his mind that ultimately led him to kissing the Pixie.
Knowing that could be her at any given day brought a shiver and sent her thoughts racing back to her mother’s apartment. How bad could it be? Maybe she could still go home, even if that creep would be there. It might not be as bad at sixteen as it felt at twelve. Maybe he wouldn’t even try since she’d gotten older. She debated if she could she bring herself to tolerate that in exchange for a safe place to sleep and maybe going to school again? If she
missed anything about being home, it would be school. Not that her mother ever cared at all about her grades, but Sima enjoyed learning and did well. Her determination not to end up like Mom pushed her in school. Somehow, the idea of the creep nauseated her less than working for Magdalena. Not like the man had any blood relation to her. Better one guy than hundreds paying for it. Better still not to do either, but she’d rather trade her body than become a body floating down the sewer.
Or would she?
She’d missed four years of school, so they might not even let her re-enroll. No telling if her mother even still dated that man. Sima hadn’t gone anywhere near her old home since she’d run off. Her mother could’ve moved, died, been arrested… that apartment could belong to someone else for all she knew. And even if she’d never run away, by sixteen, Mom might’ve kicked her out anyway, thinking her ‘old enough’ to be on her own.
Her stomach tightened as she peered down. Twelve stories into glass, metal, and a torrent of mud would probably be a fast way out, but she shied away from the edge. The sky had too much blue and too much sun to die today. And no one held a gun to her head forcing her into a brothel or a creepy relationship with her stepfather.
A soft crunch in the trash beside her announced the arrival of another person. She turned her head as a skinny tow-headed boy of about eleven crept out onto the ledge. His grey tunic fluttered in the wind, ice blue lights dancing along the soles of his black sneakers wavered back and forth in response to how much weight he placed on each foot.
“Hey,” said the boy, who she vaguely remembered as named Pim.
Ugh. Why can’t I seem to get away from damn kids? “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s dangerous.”
“You’re here.” Pim crept closer to the edge.
And this is why I can’t stand them. “Fine. Fall. See if I care.”
“You gonna jump?”
She shook her head. “No. I just needed air.”
“Cool.” He leaned forward and spit over the side.
Ick. What is it with boys?
A flash of white and pink caught her eye. She glanced over at Pim as he lifted the Pixie inhaler up toward his face. Crap! I must’ve dropped it when I ran off.
“No!” she yelled, and swatted at his hand, knocking the inhaler from his grip and sending it plummeting into the landfill.
“Hey!” yelled Pim, staring at her with surprised indignation. “What’d you do that for?”
The inhaler struck the ground and exploded with a crack like a gunshot, creating a small, pink fireball.
After a momentary glare, Pim punched her in the shoulder. “I found it.”
In a flash of rage, Sima grabbed him by the tunic, two fistfuls of fabric at his throat, and shook him while shouting, “Do you wanna end up like Draz? Floating? That crap will kill you!”
Pim’s eyes widened. For a few seconds, he hesitated, but once the fear left his expression, he snapped, “What do you care? You hate kids.”
She didn’t try to hold on when he twisted away and stormed back into the pipe, nursing wounded pride. Soon, the echoing scuff of his sneakers faded to silence. Sima sighed at the passageway, then turned her gaze out over the landfill far below.
“I don’t hate you guys,” she muttered. “I’m jealous.”
5
Homeless
Begging had kept Sima alive for four years. Sometimes, she’d approach a food counter and offer to do work in exchange for a meal, though proprietors took less pity on a sixteen-year-old than on a younger kid.
She roamed the streets looking for a good high-traffic spot to set up shop for the day. Since she hadn’t eaten last night, she swung by a few breakfast carts and counters that catered to the ‘on the way to work’ crowd, but three out of seven asked her for a handie or going down on them in exchange for food while the rest responded with demanding she buy something or get lost.
It seemed the world had made up its mind that she would be forced into doing something disgusting before she wanted to. Not that it would be disgusting when she wanted to. The act itself didn’t nauseate her as much as the commercialization of it. By some stroke of luck, wits, or karma, she’d managed to last four years on the street without suffering worse than gropes and squeezes, though there had been many close calls—like the one the other night with Pluggers.
Maybe I should find Sayed… Pretending to have a kid to take care of certainly helped her begging profits, but she doubted the boy would do that again. At the time, he’d basically been paying her for having helped him with the bullies. He didn’t need an older girl pretending to be mommy for him to earn glint begging. He had everything required for that with his young age and giant, sorrowful eyes.
She stopped by another food counter and bought a scrambled egg pita for two glint. It came with a coffee she didn’t feel terribly interested in, but since she had it already, she drank it. After finishing her food, she roamed onward, sipping the coffee until it cooled enough to chug. Much to her surprise, one of the better spots, a five-way intersection, only had a couple of teen boys trying to run a hustle selling flower-like weeds they’d found somewhere. No little kid beggars had set up shop anywhere she could see.
Wow. Guess karma likes me today.
Sima positioned herself at one of the points of the intersection and fluffed her tunic to conceal her breasts and make herself appear younger. Some Outcasts faked missing limbs, but getting caught doing that a couple times tended to stick out in people’s minds. Not as if the crowd walking by changed much from day to day. Sure, the occasional visitor from another Block would always happen, but by and large, any given area had roughly the same men and women going to the same jobs day in and day out. A scam artist would soon run out of luck, or have to move elsewhere.
An hour later, she’d made eighteen glint with her usual sad-eyed ‘Please help me’ routine. After four years, she’d worked out the best targets. Older men responded to her the best, especially the ‘socially aware’ types who felt an innate sense of pity for someone in her position. If conversation ever lasted long enough, she’d always say her mother kicked her out after she refused to go to bed with the new boyfriend. The tale always garnered sympathy and a few extra glint, and didn’t quite feel like a lie.
“Sima!” shouted Cassie, jogging toward her.
Ugh. She tugged her hood up, about to walk the other way, not interested in hearing yet another sales pitch for Magdalena’s, but the older girl had an uncharacteristic expression of urgency, so she waited.
Cassie pushed and weaved among the pedestrians on the opposite side of the street until breaking free at the corner and running over between a pair of rumbling gee-vees. “Sima…” She stopped, out of breath, and leaned on the wall beside her.
“What?” asked Sima. “Why do you look freaked?”
“They’re gone!” yelled Cassie. “All of them.”
Sima tried to make eye contact with a guy in an expensive suit, both his arms shrouded in holographic displays, but he averted his gaze after one brief glance at her. Grr. With Cassie here, he thinks we’re either pickpockets or prostitutes. Gotta be alone. She sighed at the sky. “What. Who’s gone?”
“Remember yesterday when I”—Cassie gasped for air, and took a few seconds to catch her breath—“told you about that group of little ones who were scared to beg?”
“Yeah.” Sima folded her arms.
“Well… I kinda felt bad for ’em, so I went there this morning to play big sis.”
“Easy for you, since you got a ‘job’ now and don’t need money.”
Cassie grabbed her arm. “Hey. Easy on the cattiness, ’kay? Something happened to those kids. I found their nest and it was cleared out. Not one kid remained.”
“Maybe they moved?” Sima pulled her hair off her face and held it against her chest.
“No… I ran into Ollie across the street and he told me the EGSF like raided them. Straight up rolled in with armored gee-vees and everything. The cops hauled them all off.”
Sima gasped. “They arrested children outta their beds? For what?”
“No, that’s the really tweaked up thing!” Cassie’s blue eyes bulged. “They didn’t like ‘arrest’ them at all. No restraints or anything. Walked ’em out like they was takin’ ’em to school or some crap like that. Ollie said none of the kids was cryin’ or looked upset.”
“Whoa. That’s kinda scary.” Sima folded her arms and leaned on the wall. “EGSF rounding up Outcasts, especially little ones? I wonder what kinda BS story they used.”
“Pff.” Cassie pulled on her arm. “No idea girl, but your butt is too old for this begging stuff. Come on and talk to Magdalena.”
Sima shuddered at the rumors. Depending on who she talked to, the Outcast Madam had a robotic spider for a lower body, or long metal claws, wild black hair made up of stinging cybernetic filaments… and the worst, her eyes. “I dunno. Those purple eyes creep me the hell out.”
“Yeah. I hear she can see in the dark with them things. I’m sure she’ll take me on.”
“What?” Sima shot her a look. “Didn’t you say you already worked for her makin’ like thirty a day?”
Cassie waved dismissively. “I said that’s about what we can expect. Was tryin’ ta get you to go with me, but after seein’ them kids vanish, I’m gonna do it myself if I have to.”
“I’d really rather not be a whore,” muttered Sima, ashamed of herself for even saying that word.
“What do you think?” asked Cassie.
Sima glanced left at a pair of pale, bare breasts wobbling in her face, Cassie having lifted her shirt to show them off. “Gah!” She looked away, mortified.
A rustle of fabric preceded Cassie laughing. “Wow, I’ve never seen someone blush so hard. You’re kinda dark so it’s weird.”
Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1) Page 4
