Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  Thom gritted his teeth and took the car back around toward the highstreet but stopped as it filled with colony robots from either side, and the air above swarmed with hover bikes. Robots were flooding out of the shops here and the construction droids around them dropped what they were doing and took on their dual role as peace enforcement. All produced small pistols and held them at the three people in the car.

  Once they had converged together in the street a blue skinned robot pushed through the other gold bodies and ran a little toward them. The high ranking robot pointed its pistol at Thom from a distance and emotionally screamed “Get the fuck out of the car! Now!”

  At that instance Bailey began to come around in the passenger seat, and began rubbing his eyes while clawing at the seatbelt. He moaned as he swam back into consciousness and on opening his eyes he saw the face of the high ranking robot, whose clear cranium and dancing gemstones of light within were a mirror of the robot, and the clutches he had just escaped from.

  He began writhing in his seat, while half realizing that he was naked.

  “He’s coming to get me!” Bailey moaned, but stopped as an irritated Thom elbowed him in the face, knocking him back unconscious.

  Bailey slumped back down into the chair and Thom began to survey the lethal blockade before him.

  “Maybe we should…” Allstar began.

  Thom twisted in his seat and looked over the young girls shoulder, and said “One more mile.”

  He knocked the gear stick into reverse and pressed his foot down on the gas. The car wheelspun slightly before racing backward toward a group of wooden planks resting loosely on a large pile of sand.

  The car hit them like a ramp and managed to clumsily jump just far enough to hit the nearest window into the mall.

  The car toppled inward in a spray of glass and slammed back over onto the stone tiles within. Only half regaining his bearings Thom began to reverse the car through the ground level gangway, avoiding bricked fountains and the delicate niche store fronts.

  People dived out of the way on seeing this and to make sure Thom nipped his thumb a few times on the horn.

  The line of shops and balcony bridges were quite long from one side of the retail block to the other, and it took a good deal of concentration not to hit the various men, women and children that were having a lazy day out here in the midweek. Finally the main set of doors drew close but to Thom’s dismay he saw a family standing more or less in the path of the car. They were smiling and licking on small ice cream cones they had bought from a robot-run stall nearby.

  Thom began hammering on the horn but they seemed still not to notice as the back bumper of the car hurtled toward them.

  “Dopey fucking family.” Thom muttered and turned the backside of the car into the corner of the closest fountain pool.

  It cracked away much of the low wall and kicked the car up onto its side wheels. The underside of the balancing car rolled by the parents and their children, that only now seemed to vaguely notice that something weird was happening.

  Thom glanced at them through the sloped windscreen as the car rolled back through two sets of automatic sliding doors and then outside onto a pedestrian walkway.

  The walkway took a slight dip and then the car rolled down a ramp to the broad promenade that separated the outer and inner ring of blocks.

  The corner of the back bumper hit the first of the mosaicked tiles that covered the broad expanse of the central promenade, and then they continued to roll across the breadth of it. Thom steadied with the steering wheel to keep the car balanced while reversing as they journeyed between strolling couples swirling parasols and guiding their children through the garden features and stalls.

  They stopped and watched slightly stunned as the car rolled by quietly on its side wheels.

  The car rolled onward toward the opposite wall face with the huge sign of the ownership lit and shining out over the pedestrians below. Not quite a public service, it read ‘Beldin. Gambling and Virtual.’.

  The car rolled to the foot of the wall and then stopped, balanced precariously on its side and then toppled back over onto its roof.

  “Ow!” Allstar groaned as the car rocked to a stop.

  Already Thom could see through the cracked windscreen, the far side of the promenade being swarmed by the robot contingent that had found various ways through from the highstreet.

  He clipped off Bailey’s seatbelt and then shoved him out of that side door while piling out with him. Allstar crawled from her door groaning and then stood up and looked at the masses of coloured heads sprinting toward them across the wide open space. The swarm of antigravity bikes had braved the heights to fly up through the thin space between the roof of the block and the ceiling of the huge central cavern.

  Allstar turned to look at Thom, who was now hoisting Bailey over his shoulders, and shouted “Would you mind telling me why we’re doing this?”

  “Just get inside!” Thom growled at her, and pointed at a short ramp leading up to a tall glass fronted room within the block, that looked to be an emergency fire exit.

  Allstar ran for it while Thom skated behind her. They pushed up the narrow ramp and then reached the narrow but tall wall of glass set into the plastic sealed bricks. Quickly, and half motivated by the now audible clattering of a hundred metallic feet getting closer, he tapped in a numbered code to a box in the glass and then shouldered through an air sealed door.

  Allstar followed and then Thom handed her Bailey’s limp body, that pressed down on top of her causing her to fall back on the smooth plastic tiles within.

  The colony robots, headed by their blue skinned leader now sprinted up the ramp toward them, as Thom leaned hard on the air pressured door until it sealed shut.

  The robot leader stopped inches away from the glass on the other side with the rest of his army flooding the spaces behind and in the air.

  Thom looked at him eye to beady eye for a moment, noticing how the robot twitched with hunger to do its violent business, but stopped now by an in-coded jurisdiction boundary.

  Slowly the robot raised his tiny black eyes up to the lit sign of ‘Beldin. Gambling and Virtual’ and then looked back at Thom and the girl buried under the naked man.

  Thom smirked at them all, while behind him Allstar retched slightly and vomited a little onto the tiles.

  Thom waved his hands in the air as if to say “Checkmate”. The blue officer took a step forward at this gesture and pressed a gloved finger against the opposite side of the glass. It kept pointing at him momentarily before turning and pointing at the crowd to disperse.

  Allstar watched them all head back down to the central promenade, some of them re-joining the stalls and work duties they had been called from during the excitement.

  “I don’t get it.” she said. “Why are we still kicking?”

  “Friends in places kid. Friends in places.” Thom smiled calmly, and lifted the body up from her.

  He carried it over to a short flight of stone steps leading up to the inner emergency exit of the small dusty place.

  There was a thick metal door and keypad, that opened with a hiss on entering the code. Thom disappeared inside with Bailey slung over his right shoulder, while Allstar slammed the door shut behind.

  He began to skate lightly through the maze of barely used staff corridors, with the young girl keeping pace. They avoided the main customer walkways that led through gallerias of various gambling and virtual reality gaming enterprises, and pressed on for a long way through abandoned corridors and up stairwells until they finally reached a fast food restaurant called Big Beldin Burgers.

  Here they’d reached the inside of a fire exit that hadn’t been opened in decades. From its window they looked across the inner kitchens at the colony robots and the odd spotty adolescent pulling together bags of unhealthy food for the throng of customers out front. When it looked like the gangway at the rear of the kitchen was momentarily clear he opened the door and rolled behind them with Bailey and
Allstar in tow.

  They reached the kitchen door and exitted quickly to a narrow space that was in view of a few of the Big Beldin fast food tables, that were luckily empty but for one little girl. To their left was a heavily reinforced door and keypad.

  Thom entered the correct code and they disappeared into an area hidden behind the fast food joint.

  Deep within the hidden place, a bare knuckle fighter stood behind a curtain listening to his opponent’s introduction. He hopped up on his toes and punched towards the floor, chewing on the bit between his teeth. He had yellow blonde hair and a muscular physique wrapped tight over a tall torso from his broad shoulders. At one time he may have been fair and even good looking, but his apparent life had long since grimaced those features. His arms snapped down at the floor as he forced his breath to panting.

  “Randall!” he heard his name from behind him, and turned to see someone he knew well enough to dislike, standing with what looked like a dead body slumped over his scrawny shoulder, its butt pointed in his direction.

  He gestured and beamed “Look what I found!”

  Randall shook his head, a little disorientated and said “I really don’t need this right now.”

  “Flyyyyyyynn Raaaaaandaaall!” the commentator’s voice yelled from within and the curtains pulled back.

  Now in view of the entire diamond shaped area that steamed with the lime green of mixed narcotics, Randall was spotted by the fighter in the ring at the center.

  Flynn Randall pointed at his friend and said “Get outa here, Thom.”

  He then turned and began hopping his way through the intense crowd beyond. A few of the closer members of the crowd saw the naked body, but knew not to ask too many questions about the illegal back-business of Beldin, Gambling and Virtual.

  A couple of staff corridors away from the combat arena Thom and Allstar came to two thin double doors with the sign “Medical Emergency” overhead.

  “Blade off. Pass, Aquinas.” Thom said, causing the wheels of the skates to melt into the rest of the fabric, turning them into regular trainers.

  Slowly, they sneaked inside.

  Within, nurses were treating a screaming fighter that wrestled against them on a bed. Thom looked at them, and seeing they were looking the other way they tip toed past them then ran toward two more doors signposted “In-Patient”.

  They entered and closed the door carefully behind.

  A thin nurse with light white hair swaggered away along the corridor, and Thom leaned at her hissing “Pssst! Faye!”

  Not hearing him she turned into the matron’s cubicle as they moved deeper into the place.

  The corridor beyond was a long ward with doors leading to large rooms on either side.

  He walked by each one, tired now and flagging, until he found one empty and entered. Together they laid Bailey gently onto the bed and leaned over him to pull the whole cover up to his neck.

  Thom stood back to look at the bruised and battered man he had brought here, to a wholey illegal establishment that could well murder him itself if it didn't find a use for him.

  He then looked to the orphan that he seemed to have picked up, then turned away sighing.

  There was a large arched window standing in the wall behind the bed that looked out over The Octagon, the centermost point in the city. Hanging from the bricked ceiling of the cavern here were glowing milky crystals that were actually made up of a billion smaller crystals, each transmitting orders to the millions of colony robots across the prison dome. There were a few such blue and red robots doing their business on the central promenades far below, that tightly encircled the hovering Cequodus Dynasty logo. The other seven blocks of The Octagon mirrored the Beldin building, although they themselves housed public services such as the Border Security police force and the hospitals. It spoke of the influence the Beldin company had here in the city that they could occupy a building on the inner ring.

  There were hundreds of windows dotting the levels of the towering walls on all sides, although none of them would see into the mirrored windows of Beldin, Gambling and Virtual.

  “Faye!” he heard a woman screech angrily behind him. He turned on his heel like a gentleman and smiled at a woman with thick, red dyed hair. She wasn't smiling back and had the look of a girl that meant some bad business.

  “Your weird friend is here again.” she shouted down the corridor while glaring at him.

  “Nice to see you too, Scarlet.” Thom smiled.

  “Get fucking stuffed.” she replied and marched away along the corridor, to be replaced by Faye a moment later. She was a slender lady of medium height and a sharp pale complexion, offset with the lightness of her white hair and the darkness of her purple lipstick and makeup. The bright blue of her eyes seemed to melt into the cold white, with the piercing gaze of her pupils seeming to penetrate all and everything within the room. The name on the badge pinned to her nurse’s uniform read “Faye Scotia”, a name he knew too well, but despite their friendship he couldn't forget the place and company he was in.

  She stood in the doorway for a moment looking at the skate punk in his oily work overalls, before nodding at the bed.

  “Who’s this, hm?” she said, and walked around the opposite side of the bed.

  “Dunno. Found him out back of some units. Looks like he’s had a good kicking.”

  Faye reached over Bailey and moved a device over him, producing a low hum like a moth wing. As it passed each swelling and bruise they grew back to normal.

  “You can’t bring every poor mugging victim here, Thom. This isn’t a charity. Far from it.”

  “But look…” Thom smiled, then reached down and pulled back the covers.

  He pulled gently on Bailey’s shoulder tipping him on his side so Faye could see his back.

  “My word.” she said and held her hand over her mouth. “Birth marks jet black, all the way across? Freakish…”

  “Mean’s he’s strong. I thought you’d be interested. Could be worth a bit of money, nai?” Thom smiled and rolled Bailey back onto his back.

  Faye began treating the wounding on his chest and arms with her pocket device.

  “It’s true there’s some evidence to suggest a link between thicker Lantis birth markings and physical prowess. Officially, it’s still only a myth.”

  “Might be a good selling point though, right?” Thom said. “And if I’m honest, I don’t think that blood on his hands is his. He already won one fight.”

  Standing up straight, Faye looked down at Bailey and said “You did the right thing. Leave it with me. I’ll bring the Beldins down to have a look.”

  “Well alright.” Thom grinned and stepped around toward her. “I know you won’t rip me off. You aren’t as dumb as you look… unlike that boyfriend of yours.”

  “I hope he’s alright.” she said biting her thumbnail.

  “He’s too stupid to get hurt.” he said smiling down at her arrogantly.

  “Well that’s very sweet of you.” Faye smiled momentarily. “Now, get outa here. I’ll call you when I get a price.”

  "And you'll get your cut don't worry. Seventy thirty sound good?"

  "Sounds... great, Thom. I'm not going to rip you off, Thom. Just leave me to it." Faye said shaking her head slightly up at him.

  "Incentive don't hurt." Thom smiled slyly as they left the room together and walked around to the matron’s cubicle. "Made a little stink on the way in here. I’m going to need a hack and erasure from the police warrant board."

  The words drifted off along the corridor, and once they were out of sight and sound Bailey opened his eyes and looked at the door.

  I couldn’t have planned this better.

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t.” Bailey said in a low voice.

  Beside the matrons cubicle was a wide entrance, and a holographic book to be signed by visitors.

  Thom reached down and signed “Thom Gubichayan”.

  “Here’s lookin’ at you, Scarlet, ya stupid little freak." T
hom waved creepily through the window at the girl, who grimaced and shook her head.

  With that Thom glided down the causeway leading to the public exit to the clinic. Faye watched him and the young girl until they disappeared into the light of the Beldin galleria.

  "What a waste you are, Thom." she muttered, as if to herself.

  Lost and Guidance.

  “Keep it up Erik. Hit it!” Barton Beldin snarled encouragingly at a tall well built man with a tall spiky Mohican hairstyle, attacking a padding enforced robot in the gymnasium. Faye stood waiting in conversation.

  “Well, how about it?” she said. “Have I ever let you down?”

  “Yes.” said Barton.

  “Well I won’t this time, ai?”

  “Hit it!” Barton yelled, as Faye flinched slightly with every plastic slap echoing in the tall hall.

  She glanced momentarily as Erik Luminaire jump-spin kicked the side of the de-networked colony robot before continuing to aim punches through its guarding arms.

  “I’m just asking you to take a look. There’s something a bit special about this one.”

  “Like what.” Barton eyed, having just lit a cigarette in his mouth.

  “You kind of have to see it. I’ve never seen a Lantis birth pattern like it.”

  “Black is it? Ok, I’m a sucker for those old granny tales.”

  Erik stopped his assault on the robot and turned to the two, and yelled to them “Why bother? I mean, we’re escaping right?”

  “Faye isn’t coming, Erik.” Barton said. “And try not to yell about it, even back here!”

  “Sorry, but… Why aren’t you coming, Faye?” Erik said, with a hollow look across his face.

  “I’ll help you as I can. I’m just pulling out, is all.” Faye said looking away.

  Erik looked at her not knowing what to say, then Barton tapped her shoulder gently and said “Come along. Let’s see if we can make you a little money.”