by Jack Lance
As the others came to the bar behind her, she noticed the thug that had attacked them earlier notice her and smile a wide smile. His smile died as Thom put a hand on her and draped his arm gently around her neck. Thom stared him down and then ushered her toward the door to the back of the store while smirking away at the floor.
Once she was inside the soil smelling store room he turned away from her and ushered the others inside.
Jayne was still a little frozen and stood with her head bowed, hugging her paintings a little.
Thom put his hand on her shoulder again and said “Come on, lady. Let’s get you home.”
She nodded without looking and walked with him to the shop and then out onto the brighter street.
Back inside the dusty halls, Bailey walked to the opposite side of the house, and leaned out over a fire escape hanging just over the back street there.
The same faces, the cattle that had attacked Jayne in the subway stood in a quiet congregation. There was only one thing that could make them so quiet, so obedient, so controllable. Bailey smiled a dark smile, and gave it to them.
He palmed from his inner jacket pocket a strip of narcotic pills, and teased one as he reached for it.
He gave it to him and then threw three more shoulder bags of similar strips down into the grimy alley.
Bailey leaned back into the broken window frame and watched them as the squabbled over what they’d been given.
“Stepping stones.” he said so they could hear.
On the other side, on the main street, the group were now heading in a direction more favourable to Wendall Jayne; back toward the train station.
She walked with Thom now ahead of the others, and was now happy to see that they were back on more abandoned streets.
“Believe it or not, we don’t do this sort of thing a lot.” he said.
“Ok. I don’t believe you.” she said without smiling.
He chuckled and said "I'm serious. This is all a bit much for me too. We had to get Randall work. He deserves it.”
“He was part of the last escape?” she said, as if in a dream.
“Fighter pilot. Used to be a meteor miner back on the colonies.” Thom said kicking a stone along the path.
“Aaron too?”
“Aaron’s an asshole. But a useful asshole. It’s good to keep people like him on the multi-com list so far as work goes.”
Jayne stretched her eyes and said “If you say so.”
Thom tried to smile and said “Says the girl staying with Bede Sagar. They own the whole operation. They run it from the top down.”
Jayne shook her head and said “Not Bede. Not my friend.”
“Her and Aaron Bailey.” he said.
“What about them?”
“They’re an item right? You must have known that. And I hear Bailey’s building up to propose.” he said and she stopped on the path and looked at him, stunned.
Thom cringed at this and said “I’m sorry, Wendall. Maybe I’ve gone too far.”
They carried on walking back along the gaunt streets to the long metal stair leading up to the tram station.
The evening traffic flowed beside them as they passed by the highways on the way up to the lofty heights of the tracks. Jayne turned to Thom as they reached the top of the stair, beside a bridge that led to the opposite side of the tracks. Thom looked down the long stair as the others caught up the distance they had made.
It had been strange but they seemed to have gelled as friends in that short time spent together. Jayne knew from experience that sometimes you can meet a person and just click, like clockwork.
Jayne leaned back against the cold steel balcony with the expanse of the district and the morbid labyrinth of concrete and windows behind her. The winds so high up pressed against them harshly and tugged her hair madly behind her. She closed her eyes as if enjoying it and said “Mm.”
Thom looked at her a few times, trying not to show what he was thinking. He rubbed his mouth a few times as he squinted against the pressing gales.
“You should be alright from here.” Thom said, thumbing the platform on the other side. “Are you staying with the Sagars?”
“For now, yes.” she said looking at the others approaching up the last few steps. “After that who knows?”
“You don’t have anywhere else to stay?” he asked.
She kept staring down the stairwell with a cold look in her eyes and said “Border Sec raided my district. Killed everyone there. It’s a ghost town now. Raids by the other gangs make it impossible to go back there just yet.”
“You could come live with us.” he smiled, and then shied back as if realizing what he had said.
Jayne smiled at him, as if a little disgusted by the idea and said “Thanks but no.”
“As long as you are sure.” Thom shrugged and looked away.
He watched as she paused, and thought about this for a few moments.
“Actually….” Jayne said. “There is nothing else.”
Thom smiled, and Jayne, who clearly didn’t want to say ‘yes’ took a step toward him and let go a smile. He held he elbow gently as they stared warmly at one another.
The others reached them and they split up, and moved aside as they entered the platform.
Having heard what they were talking about, Fenn added “Coincidentally we have a vacancy. A spare bedroom that is.”
The others had all heard too. Farnon looked at Randall and Faye, a little worried as they walked onto the drafty platform. He leaned around the back of the skaters and said “Are you absolutely sure you have nowhere else to go?”
“I can’t stay with Bede Sagar forever. I’ll take a look. Might not be as bad as I expect.”
“Good choice!” Fenn Dore punched into his huge palm.
“Right now?” she asked, as a train suddenly emerged from the misty tunnel further along, and began bulleting toward them along the suspended line.
Sorbe Malcolm held his arms wide and yelled “Hey, arrest us... we like to stay active.”
Farnon shrugged since it wasn’t really his problem, and left over the bridge with Randall and Faye without much of a goodbye. Jayne watched them go and then turned away, feeling the slight sting of being alone.
The gang skated to where the carriage doors typically stopped as the shark-nosed train pulled up to their platform, and let out a massive hiss of steam from fusion engines. They entered the tram cabin making just enough noise to irritate some of the other passengers, while Jayne sheepishly followed.
The Masterplan.
The gang reached their district a half hour later with Wendall Jayne in tow, and she looked at the place she'd been brought through the half steamed carriage windows.
They exitted the train to an old enclosed station that looked out from it's height over an outer industrial cavern. There were several factory units spewing filthy smoke toward the extractors at the ceiling and walls, with its smoky afterwash making the air on the platform almost unbreatheable.
It was far from what she had expected and a lightyear from what she was used to back on the colonies, but in the absence of a real home now she had little other course of action but to follow.
They avoided a broken glass antigrav lift, that sat at an angle in the floor at the side of the stairwell, and looked to be almost sucking them down its bare gaps to the drop leading to the grimy motorways below, and further the street level.
They walked down the square spiralling stairwell past the drafty traffic of the motorways to the ground. Taking a shortcut down a steep gravel bank to a sliproad system leading up on either side to the motorways above, they came then to the first of the streets.
They walked by the end of the street cordoned off by bollards and a line of tall street lamps. On the first tall wall that lined either side of the street she saw a large graffiti mural in pink and green reading “Wikid Business”.
“Is that the name of your gang?” Jayne said pointing at it sheepishly.
Fenn
came back to her as the others walked ahead, and said “Turf tag, yeah. You need to stay within the limits of this street. We keep things pretty calm around here but... well you know.”
“Yes fine.” she said squinting slightly, not really interested in the petty territorial goings on that she had to date managed to avoid.
The sound of a large pack of dogs barking had gotten louder as they moved away from the motorway roads, until at the first gate to a factory, she heard them scratching beyond the red brick wall.
The factory was one of a few along the outer dome walls, with the others sitting here and there along other lanes, leading up the gentle incline to the first of the actual city. If anything were to keep them safe here it was their distance away from that world of infighting.
The gang opened the front gates with a hacked biometric key and began babying what she saw to be tall desert jackals from the equator regions of Lantis.
“It’s ok if you’re with us.” Fenn put a hand on Jayne’s slightly shaking shoulder, and realizing this said. “I’m sorry. We’ll be inside in a second.”
Jayne nodded and followed them around the left side to a code-locked entrance normally used for factory workers.
The dogs ran away as the group waited for the doors to be opened.
“How did you…” she began, pointing a finger around the place.
Fenn stepped in front of her and walking backward toward the doors said gently “It’s a long and dull story. It’s all safe, trust us.”
The door was opened and they each walked into the corridor inside. The tall corridor ran around the outside of the larger space that would typically be used for factory production, but craning her neck to look through an open doorway, she saw that the place had been completely refitted. No doubt utilizing colony terraforming technologies such as nano-dust and a dust-cleric book for control, they would have redesigned the interior on paper, and let microscopic robots do the measurements and heavy work. Such ancient technologies were hard to come by in remote places like exile colonies, but there would be no way for a group of scrawny young men like these to do it all on their own.
She followed them into the main space that they had recreated to be a huge living room, come sports center come dining room. There were professional grade kitchens at the far back, along the wall and a breakfast bar to enclose it away from the rest, but all in all it was one room.
There was a huge fridge, and equally huge cooker that she thought she could make good use of. They seemed to have mastered subsistence level and branched out here and there into the finer lifestyles as they seemed to have judged, with the central living area custom designed for video games and holo-entertainment. The Frizball court and hoops at the front most part of the hall were an extravagance.
Curiously, there was a sign just before the court reading “No skating in the house!”
"How the hell did you f... uh?" she stammered as she began to truly weigh up what she was looking at.
“Like it?” Sorbe yelled to her from the kitchen. “Of course you like it!”
Jayne shrugged and looked away.
“I’ll take you to your room.” Mach said holding out a hand, and she walked over to him.
There was a spiral staircase just before the kitchens on the left that led up to what would have been a series of managerial offices in a normal state of affairs. Each office had now been converted to a bedroom with the same terraforming dust.
They went upstairs and Jayne found it to be a very warm area.
“Just here.” Mach gestured for her to come to a door at the far end of the corridor.
Jayne slowly walked past each of the rooms, surveying the insides of the ones that were open. They were all pretty lived in and she counted up to the number of members they had in their gang. The remainder of the rooms were filled with random items and furniture.
The rooms were huge, and so was the excess amount of things they seemed to have accumulated, she hoped by legal means.
At the farthest end were two more bedrooms, and she turned to look in the one she was being given. Both bedrooms were at the back wall of the factory, and would have been considered the best of the bunch if the view had been of somewhere better.
“All yours.” Mach said and patted her back gently.
He left, making his way to the stair and down to the lighter living hall below.
Jayne sighed and looked around the place in the low light. The endless hissing of traffic along the motorway close by seemed already to be fading into her peripheral hearing.
“I feel cold.” she said quietly, rubbing the palm of her hand against an eye made sore by the factory smoke outside.
She stood a moment looking her room over, then heard spunker music, which was a fusion of space influence and funk, begin beating against the walls and floor. It was immediately turned down to a more tolerable level, but she wondered how long this would be the case.
She walked inside and found it to be an average sized room with a close ceiling and with an unused bed in the corner. It had been quite well maintained, not that some nano-clean wouldn’t polish it up. The ceiling was low and slanted slightly to the side, it being the end of the roof of the old factory. On the outermost wall there was a window looking out over the district, and a rocking chair that had been placed before it to soak up the grotty view.
She wondered who’s room it had been, and if it had been a gang member who had died, but for now she had to think of herself.
She sat on the bed and lay her square bag against the side, then dropped back to lie against the pillow. Sighing slowly she studied the plastic ceiling above.
Her multi-communicator began to hum and she slowly took it to her mouth.
“Bede.” she said.
“Wendall? Are you ok darling?”
“I am. I think I found a place to stay. It’s District South… err… five.”
“South is bad, Wendall. Are you sure you don’t want a place here in ES village? It’s no trouble…”
Jayne craned and listened to the low throb of the music below, and said “We’ll see. I’m fine for tonight anyway. I’ll come visit first thing tomorrow ok?”
“Call me if anything goes wrong. I’ll come straight to get you.” Bede said, now with a note of worry.
“Ok friend. Bye.”
She put the phone back in her coat pocket and closed her eyes.
It was still early evening and it was only a matter of time before lying there would become dull. Jayne was tired but was in a funny mood, and got up.
With her bag of paintings in hand, she walked out of her room and back along to the top of the stair. She was about to go down to join the others when she noticed a shorter corridor leading away to the side, and what felt like a cool draft coming from it. Stepping lightly she walked along and up another short stair that led up to an old fire door, that itself was standing open onto the roof.
She walked outside in small steps and across the tarred floor of an enclosure at the corner of the roof, surrounded on both sides by high chain link fencing. At the fence she stopped and looked out over the jumble of rooftops of the other factory units and their towers. Here at the edge of the city they were beyond the outskirts of civilized places, and just out of reach for her to feel a sting of loneliness.
She sighed at her predicament and realizing she had nowhere else even she wanted to go stared on at the industrial landscape, and the slow pouring of smog up from it.
“Pretty rough deal.” she heard words from behind, in the laconic tones she recognized as the young man called Thom. “They won’t let you hold your head up high in this place, right? Even a pretty little head like yours.”
Lazily, she turned around to see him lying on his front just behind the lip of a ventilation fan. Since he had been out of sight she hadn’t noticed him there, although it occurred to her she maybe should have considered that someone had opened the door first.
“I’m past caring.” she said giving him a dazed look.
>
Thom looked past her at the other factories and said “Yah.”
Jayne kept staring at him as he lay half naked but for his work pants, apparently taking a moment alone in the place before returning to his little life. Thom got up and hitched around to sit on the ledge beside the slowly spinning fan.
“I miss my city.” he said quietly. “I used to love this place. I’ve started to hate it. It’s a prison after all.”
“That’s right.” she said, forcing a smile.
"Who the hell are you, Wendall Jayne?" Thom said suddenly catching her off guard.
"Er... haha." she spluttered slightly then shook her head calmly and said "I was supposed be on a date about now, believe it or not."
"That's not hard to believe, I mean look at you." he said, and she smiled slightly before carrying on.
"It's been a while for me I guess. Maybe I was too hard on the guy. I blew him out pretty cold."
"It's your choice. You must have had your reasons." Thom said swinging a leg slightly.
She paused for a moment looking down at her satchel of paintings.
"I'm not so experienced with romance and men. I'm not that old really. Most people here are hundreds of years old, left here to die out with their age stabilizer unplugged. I'm not like them I've only lived 35 years."
"You're just a kid." Thom smiled. "Yeah I'm the same. I'm only 29. Sent here when I was 25."
"Wow. That's a coincidence, isn't it. Nice to meet someone with the same problem as me." she said looking down, as Thom got up and came to the fence beside her.
"Yeah, naivety. That's always been my problem. I wouldn't be here otherwise."
"Well, I don’t want to talk about that. I've kept my rap a secret for a long time now. Only me and Bede really know about that."
"Well sister, I try to keep my own as well. But us boys have become like brothers. We've gotten to know each other quite well now, and now we have a sister too... I was sent here for mass murder believe it or not." Thom said then looked at her and said "I was innocent of course."
