by J. N. Chaney
The commander had been rushing them, I thought. Or they just didn’t care about their jobs.
“All units, be advised, suspect is armed and dangerous. Firearms, knives, and confirmed reports of cybernetic arms,” another dispatcher said. “Be advised, suspect still has a hostage. Last seen wearing a metal skull mask.”
“Get us some help at 1st and Silver Street, we have officers down, critical injuries,” a police officer’s voice shouted into his radio.
“Hold on, we’re sending a medical transport,” the dispatcher said. Moments later, he was diverting other units to engage the fleeing suspect.
I was keenly interested to know how this would play out. There hadn’t been any deaths besides Michaels and Olathe that I’d heard, but if they thought they could take down the stranger by force, there was going to be some blood.
Whoever this guy was and despite all of his enhancements, he struck me as amateur. Sure he got the drop on me and two spec ops soldiers, but one thing they hammered into our heads was never to create a public spectacle unless it was a last resort. Just because he could shank two assassins on a public street didn't make him anything special. I've seen kills with more finesse in prison.
Look what happened to Michaels and Olathe.
I worked the fingers of my left hand into the handcuff mechanism and exerted pressure, finding the balance between what my un-augmented wrist could withstand and the breaking point of the metal. It hurt like hell, but I was able to break the restraints.
Sitting there as though I was still chained to the wall, I waited for a reaction from my guards. The passenger looked back two or three times, but never for long. I showed him what he expected to see and he didn’t question my silence. The man had probably done hundreds of transports without an escape.
I scooted closer to the back door, paused, then repeated the process. The guard in the front passenger seat looked back through the window, saw how close I was to the door, and frowned.
“The door is locked, buddy. Don’t get any ideas,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me.
I looked down, not wanting to engage in conversation long enough for him to realize I was not only in the wrong place but that there was a set of broken handcuffs hanging from the wall near his window. The angle was bad, but if he shifted a few inches, he would see them.
The van hit a curb. The passenger yelled at the driver to watch what he was doing. I wedged the fingers of my Reaper hand into the seam of the double door and twisted. A jolt of energy surged through the cybernetic arm. My fingers punched through the lock, metal squealing like a dying violin.
I flinched in pain, wishing I’d never agreed to the arm. Or the Reapers. Or the mission to Dreadmax. Regret wasn’t my style, but I was tired and angry that I had failed Elise again.
The van came to a stop. Both men were leaning toward the radio, listening with rapt attention. Through the small barred window, I saw they were at a traffic light.
I nudged the door open and rolled out as quietly as possible. When the van started to pull away, I gently shut the door. “Bye,” I said sarcastically.
A homeless man pushing a shopping cart stared at me. He looked like I felt, broken down and old.
The other thing the transport officers hadn’t done well was pat me down. I fished a credit token out of my pocket and tossed it to the man. He held it up to his greasy beard, sniffing it with a nose that had been broken several times.
He pulled a Starbrand cigar out of a greasy pocket and offered it to me. “Got a gold band. Has to be real.”
“No thanks, it’s a fake,” I said.
He frowned indignantly, backing away from me like I had just offended him. “Well, fuck you. I don’t need your charity. That’s a damn good cigar. I never share my good ones like that.”
Knowing that I was too tired and miserable to smoke a cigar was a low point for me. “It’s a fake,” I repeated, unapologetic. “And I have shit to do.”
“Whatever, freak,” he said to my back.
The smell of cigar smoke drifted over me as I staggered into the shadows. With the clubs closing and the late night dinner crowd seated in various restaurants, the streets were quiet in this neighborhood. Maybe they would have a gun battle to liven things up.
Anything could happen in Zag City.
“X, can you help me find Frank’s place?” I asked.
“I can, Reaper Cain. He won’t be happy to see you,” X-37 warned.
I needed a place to rest and fix my arm. It twitched and spasmed. The last time it had malfunctioned, I’d been lucky. Ripping open a lock was a neat side effect of a power surge. Sooner or later, I was going to hurt myself or kill someone at random.
“You need to find a place to rest,” X-37 said. “Everything is controlled through your nerve-ware. Your fatigue is aggravating the hardware problems.”
I slipped down a side street and leaned against a wall, holding my mechanical arm with my natural arm. Squatting, I loosened an external panel and flipped up. Inside, there were controls that needed tools to be properly adjusted.
“Someone is following you,” X-37 warned.
I froze, aware that movement drew attention. It was ridiculous, but freezing like a rabbit was the best I could do in the current circumstance. If I kept allowing enemies to sneak up on me like this, I wouldn’t last much longer.
“Hello? Are you there?” a man asked.
He sounded familiar and the moment I saw his profile in the poor lighting, I realized who he was. It was Tom from the diner, the man who read technical manuals for fun.
“I see you and assume you see me. I’m not coming any closer until you tell me I should. Getting killed isn’t really what I had planned for my evening,” he said.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, standing up.
“Friends call me Tom. Elise told me about you. Seems like you’re having a rough time. I was trying to follow the men who took her and saw what happened to you.” He laughed shortly. “Still can't believe you just gave up to the cops.”
“It was a strategic decision,” I said dismissively.
“It makes sense now. Creative thinking isn’t really my strong point. I fix things, and from what I’ve seen, you need my help,” he said.
“It’s a little too coincidental that you show up right when I need you,” I said.
“Actually,” X-37 said, “I’ve been reviewing images from the diner and what he has said so far. I’m actually surprised it took him this long to approach you. My records indicate he spotted your arm the first time you went into the diner and probably knew something was wrong with it then.”
“How do I know you’re not the one causing my arm to malfunction?” I asked.
He shrugged and took a step closer. “I can’t see how I would do anything to your arm without some sort of control device. Do you mind if I step in from the street? If a cop sees me, they’d be likely to come investigate what I’m doing here this time of night. Might be different if I was dressed for the town, but all I got is this.” He pulled on his jumpsuit top near his name tag.
“Suit yourself, Tom. Do you have some tools?” I asked, eyeing a bag he kept slung over his shoulder.
“Just my work stuff. Real basic,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“If you really want to help me, let’s go back to your shop and see what we can do,” I said, hoping his fondness for Elise would translate into helping me save her.
“I don’t have a shop,” he said.
“You have an apartment or some type of domicile?” I asked, expecting him to say where it was.
He shook his head. “No, I mostly just stay at work or the diner then try to sleep someplace out of sight. I fix gear for some of the cops on my beat and they don’t hassle me too much.”
My assessment of the older man changed. He wasn’t as elderly as I had assumed. Living on the street had given him a harder edge. He was probably in his mid-fifties but just looked significantly older. When I really paid attention, I saw the s
igns of wear on his clothing and realized his tool bag probably had a change of clothes and maybe some basic grooming supplies.
“Let me take a look at what you have there,” he offered, nodding at my arm.
I thought about it for a second, then motioned for him to follow me toward a trash dumpster that we used as a makeshift bench. I stretched my arm across it, and he took a look, whistling softly.
“I won’t be able to do much. My expertise is in mechanical things, not computerized systems or a complicated nerve-ware nexus,” he said. “I think I can tighten up some things that have been banged around. Maybe solder this connection point here. How long has this been damaged?”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked, ignoring the inquiry.
“Can you answer my question first?”
“That happened before I came to Greendale,” I said, nodding at the section of my Reaper arm he was examining.
I waited for him to answer my question.
“Elise has helped me out several times. Makes me a bundle of food she pretends Jimmy doesn’t know about,” he said.
“Do you fix things for Jimmy?” I asked.
“Sure. All the time. He offered me a job, which I took for a while, but there wasn’t enough work. Mostly I was his janitor. Where I work now pays real money,” he said.
“If you have money, why don’t you have a place to live?” I asked.
“I’ve been saving up for something,” he said. “I’ve got some debt I have to repay, then I’m getting a ticket off Greendale, which ain’t cheap neither.”
For a mechanical engineering genius, he spoke slowly and often reverted to uneducated street language.
He worked quietly on my arm for several minutes and I was surprised to find immediate relief.
“How’s that?” he asked.
Tension I hadn’t realized was there slipped away from my shoulder where the arm attached. “Feels great,” I admitted.
“It won’t help with the power surges you seem to be experiencing. I saw you go down when those two assholes attacked Jimmy’s place. I know you were trying to stand up, but something was shocking the shit out of you,” he said. “What I fixed was something else. Your servos were seriously out of alignment. Very inefficient. The muscles in your shoulder and upper back and probably your chest were having to compensate.”
“You’re a doctor now? And a physical therapist?” I asked, instantly regretting my tone.
He laughed it off. “I read a lot.”
“You’re helping me because you want me to help Elise,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s about it,” he said. “I’ve got mixed feelings about it, though. You’re probably going to take her away and I won’t like that much.”
“Maybe we can work something out,” I said. “But right now, I need to find a place to rest and give my neural interface a break. You don’t have an apartment and I’m not interested in sleeping under a park bench.”
If he took offense, he didn’t say anything. I had hoped that he had someplace I could sleep for a few hours instead of imposing on Frank and his family. But I needed to check on them anyway.
“Take care of yourself, Tom,” I said.
“Are you going to get her back from that monster who grabbed her?” Tom asked.
“Yep.”
“How are you going to do that?” he asked.
“Most of my plans involve killing a lot of people,” I said.
He went pale and backed away. “Just take care of her. Greendale isn’t a good place for her. You can’t understand how hard she works to stay independent. Mister Gold tried to make her part of his harem before she roughed up the men who came to take her.”
“You saw that happen and didn’t do anything?” I asked.
“I’m not a fighter. I was getting ready to tackle one of them, maybe buy her some time to run away, but she just kicked one in the balls and punched the other guy. Broke his fingers. Threatened to rip his face off like a Reaper,” Tom recalled.
“Interesting,” X-37 murmured.
I told him the location of the spaceport where the Jellybird was parked. “Look for me there. If I can help you, I will. You tell anyone about my ship, however, and I’ll pop your head off with this.”
I opened and closed my left fist.
His eyes went wide, then he laughed nervously. “Sure glad I tuned it up.”
He glanced at his feet nervously. He was still looking down when I slipped away.
I thought about Tom and the things he had said as I moved into Frank's neighborhood. He clearly had a rough life but seemed focused on what was essential. The man obviously cared for Elise, respected Jimmy, and desired to learn new things. I'd seen his type before, the perpetual problem solver.
There was a good chance he had received his training from the Union military, probably the Corps of Engineers on some minor planet. If I had things to do over, I might've found someone like him to look after Elise in the first place. Maybe he wasn’t a fighter, but he was smart and had his heart in the right place. At the very least, I could have helped Frank and Jimmy.
It didn't matter. Greendale was too hot. There was a contract out on Elise and the Union knew where she was. I had to take her someplace else.
Whether she wanted to go or not.
The lobby of Frank’s building was empty. I wondered where the attendant was, but decided it was simpler this way. The door was still wedged open so that anyone could have free rein of the building.
That didn't make me feel good, knowing Michaels and Olathe could have come here and killed them all.
I knew I should feel better now that the two assassins were dead. But I didn't. “X, I'm about done with the city and this planet."
"Then perhaps you should expedite your trip to see Frank and get yourself put back together," X-37 said.
22
X-37 was right. Frank was more than mad, he was downright furious. It wasn’t every day I saw a man trembling with righteous anger, actually shaking with the effort not to lash out. His inability to control his emotions made me uncomfortable and I wondered if he I thought he was embarrassed.
“I’m sorry about Elise,” he said through gritted teeth. “But after hearing the threat you made to those men—who the news said were dead, by the way—and watching you turn downtown Zag City inside out, I can’t have you around my family. You promised to stay away.”
Frank’s voice trembled and I could hear the fear in it. Despite his fear he didn’t back down and his eyes glinted with anger as he faced me. The fact that he knew what I was, what I was capable of, and what he believed I had done today but still stood up to me earned him my respect.
I held up my hands in a gesture of peace.
“I just need an hour to put myself back together and some privacy,” I promised. "I wouldn't have come here if I had any other choice. And I didn’t do any of what you saw on the news. You know there’s a contract on Elise and it’s attracting a lot of attention."
My words didn’t seem to have any effect on Frank and he didn’t move from the doorway. “Are you not hearing me? Get the fuck out of my building.” He jabbed an angry finger down the hall.
Behind him, his wife was just as angry. I had only paid fleeting attention to her before, noting that she was average height, with dark hair and eyes. She stood with her arms crossed and her jaw locked, but I felt a twinge of hope when her eyes seemed to soften at my sorry state.
“I told you not to get involved with this guy. But look at him. We can’t turn him out. That’ll draw more attention than just letting him do what he needs to do and leave.”
I didn’t say anything.
Frank glared at me as he thought it over. “Give me your word that as soon as you have Elise you’ll leave and never come back.”
“You have it,” I said, nodding curtly.
After a long moment he stood aside enough to let me inside.
What followed was an awkward exchange of time during which I sat
across the living room from his kids, each of them watching me with wide eyes while Frank and his wife cooked food and argued in the kitchen.
After an uncomfortably silent dinner I slept in the video room in Frank's good chair and fell into an exhausted sleep.
When I opened my eyes the next day, I didn’t exactly feel like a million credits, but definitely better.
Seeing Frank’s family in their tiny apartment had put things in perspective. He didn't have time to take care of Elise. He certainly didn’t have the ability to fight off contract killers and Union spec ops soldiers. Or rogue Reapers. We’d been friends a long time ago when we both thought hard work paid off and nothing mattered more than honor. Knowing I’d been responsible for putting them in danger affected me deeply and I left Frank's apartment building with unusual carelessness.
I ran through the events since I first saw Byron Thane. I was sure the stranger wasn't my old semi-rival. None of us had been forced to give up both arms.
In my battered state, with all of my internal gear in revolt, I wasn't making good decisions or thinking clearly. I invented a dozen scenarios where Thane survived and dragged himself to safety to rebuild himself and plot revenge.
Laughing crazily, I wasn't sure why I found any of this funny. I used a wall for balance, moving slowly and wishing I had let Tom show me a good bridge to sleep under.
The neon lights and fireworks of the Zag City entertainment district had annoyed me, but this neighborhood was far more intimidating. There was only one streetlight on the corner. It flickered and hummed loudly.
I heard voices arguing from a window but couldn't determine the direction. A trash truck accelerated and decelerated down alleyways. The sound of drunken laughter and bottles clinking drifted on the night air.
"Are you with me, X?" I asked.
"I am here, Reaper Cain," X-37 said, the connection strong, steady, and reassuring.
