by Jack Lance
"You're crazy babe." he said backed down some stairs before taking the next flight.
They played around and teased each other as they descended each rightangle in the stair, passing down by the tracks then the windy lanes of the motorway and the hollow with it's thick commuter activity of the morning.
The stair took them further to the ground street known throughout the city as 'Sagar Strand Proper' or 'The Sagar Strand'. They descended into it's bustling activity of heads and shoulders going here and there toward some precious seat they had secured for wage top ups.
They were giggling like careless school children as they ploughed into them and began heading away from the elevators and entrances into the Sagar block, and toward the lights of the strand near the center of the street. Jayne sprinted ahead and Thom unlocked the skates to race after her along the broad path. Built like an athlete, he bombed between the docile pedestrians while towering over them just enough in his height to see the top of Jayne's hair running a few meters ahead.
Without waiting for Thom she ran through the gaping front of Club Bethlehem with its huge tropical coloured sign flickering over the center of the street, just below the first of the sea of windows in the block face.
Bailey's company was in that block, but before each day he'd visit this place, a place to meet the real movers and shakers of the city, the middle-management minions of the remaining crime families.
The interior was similarly tropical but for the overall tone of dark red over dark blue waterproof canvas. Hard faced old timers were strewn through the place, with the immediate impression given of the sort of folk an officially licensed Club Bethlehem would remove with prejudice. Here they were VIP and free to mist the place with their narcotic swill.
Thom caught up to Jayne at the first of the place and skipped through each pillar and table toward the long bar at the back.
Randall came to view first around a broad pillar, and then Bailey standing at the focus of a group of various types of men and women. He was yelling loud enough to shout over the jukebox track and apparently poking fun at one of the girls and some kind of gaff she had made on a previous occasion.
"And there's no way you were right about that!" he yelled. "Those shots were water! I told that bartender myself... what are those guys doing here?"
Bailey caught sight of Thom and Jayne as they approached along the bar, and drew his friend's attention in their direction. They passed by Randall who had been standing a little outside of the group, probably to keep a better vantage point on Bailey's security.
"Gubichayan! To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"Hello Bailey. I've brought someone to meet you about the job you had left over." Thom said looking around them all to catch their eye.
"You know someone that can PA professionally? Ah hahaha! Don't make me laugh, son!" Bailey cried out and the others chuckled quietly.
"Bede Sagar will vouch for her." Thom said, trying to remain stiff and calm.
"You know my Bede?" Bailey looked to Jayne.
"We've known each other since childhood." she said wispily, trying to make herself heard over the noise of the track. "I'm on my way there now actually I could ask her..."
"No that won't be necessary. I'll talk with her later. I need to run an errand first, but then we can arrange something, I'm sure. Can you be there later this afternoon?"
"Err yeah. Have we met somewhere before?" Jayne said, trying not to lose sight of the reason why they were there.
Thom tensed up as he realized what she was doing.
"I don't know you, no. Apart from the other day when I hired Randall. You were hiding at the back."
"You don't know me from anywhere else?" Jayne pushed him, despite the crowd beside her becoming visibly irritated.
"Come on, let's go now." Thom put a hand on her thin shoulder. "Thank you for your time, Bailey."
They turned as Bailey beamed an unnatural smile in their direction.
"Later then!" he yelled at them almost inappropriately, and then turned back to the group. "Anyway, an Earth joke for an Earth bar... Doctor Doctor! I've got a cat in my ear..."
Jayne squinted back at them and their banter and then followed Thom as he rushed out of the place.
"Safe now." Jayne said as their feet met the pavement outside.
Thom turned slowly to her and kissed her before moving on and back up to the tram station.
They stood in the dark there as a train slowly snaked its way through the wall tunnel and around onto the tracks toward them.
"He'll give you the job now." Thom said grimly, as if he were having doubts.
Jayne cupped a hand around his face and said "We know what we're doing. And who knows, maybe it's nothing. We'll just keep an eye on him, right? And maybe I'll make some money in the process. My old job burned up with my home. All my arts and crafts."
"Here comes your train." Thom said as it rolled alongside them. "Please just be careful with him. He's good to have on your side but pretty brutal on the flipside."
"I'll see you later." she said backing into the carriage, and then leaned out to kiss him one more time before the doors slid shut.
They closed and Thom watched the train carry her away in the direction of the Sagar village.
Then suddenly Thom's phone began to ring, and looking down at a holo-readout over it he saw it was Fenn calling. Thom felt a chill cut through him like a knife as he stood watching the name and the ringing.
Then he decided to take the call, and opened the channel, allowing a hologram of Fenn Dore to be projected in blue negative beside him on the platform.
"What is it?" Thom said hollowly, noticing vaguely that he seemed to have been beaten slightly.
"Is Jayne with you?" he said blatantly without any garnish.
Thom sighed in a repressed way and said "No bro. She's away with her friend."
"I'm not happy with her staying here, I've decided. Maybe Mach has too, he's not sure but..."
Thom cut him off sharply by saying "She's to be working for Bailey as of today. He’s plotting another escape, I know it. That's got to be what all this scheming is about. They aren’t going to cut us out this time. Fate gave me Bailey, and the fortune we got from South Syndicate. And now fate brings us this lovely girl, who coincidentally gives us an arm into Bailey’s inner doo wap? I think Bailey is playing us to get closer to Jayne, and probably thinks we're too dumb to notice. I'm going to fuck him at his own game.”
After a moment's thought, Fenn nodded gruffly.
"So be it. Let the lovely Jayne fill his senses, and together we'll open a door."
Pills.
A huge juggernaut rolled by, and Bailey had to pull Randall back to avoid him being caught by its jagged sides.
“I’ll be alright.” Randall said defensively. “I’m just a little…”
“Just stay behind me. Watch and listen. There won’t be any fights, and even if there are I won’t need your help.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Randall said, recalling the fight they’d had in the old syndicate.
“Just stand there looking tough, is all I need.”
Randall didn’t know what to make of Bailey. He was half his size and weight, and didn’t look like the kind of person that would hold up in a fight, and was going to look completely out of place in the place they were headed to.
They had parked their car in an underground lot of a city block hat had been converted into a drop-in ghetto in the adjacent district to their destination. Now they made their way through a torn down mid-section of the towering block, with it's shattered hanging toward them precariously on either side. At every level and across the rubble in between the place was littered with pumped gang bangers. They all seemed to recognize and shy from Aaron Bailey, suggesting that he had had dealings with them too, or perhaps just with their Old Gang masters, the Fincle twins.
And then, once through the gap in the block Randall caught sight of those twins, two huge effigies of them standing from ground
to roof in the confines of the cavern. They were huge bronze statues standing central to the entrance to their destination, with older statues of previous leaders of the syndicate surrounding them at either side along the wall.
Randall's gut clenched up as he solemnly walked toward the two towering figures, and all that they represented just beyond them.
There wasn't so much activity at this particular entrance, so they made it unhindered to the tunnel leading to Old Gang Central, between the enormous heels of the two statues.
Old Gang weren’t just the oldest, but filtered from the worst of all those brought to the colony over the years, they were the most notorious. They had concentrated their industry to the turnover of drugs on a massive scale. OG Central was located in the old city center, that had been abandoned and relocated to the center of the city some time during the original life of the colony. It was situated at the north dome wall, within the northern slum districts filled with narcotic-starving junkies. It were these junkies that spread out over the length and breadth of the dark city by day and night mugging and plundering the standard inhabitants for anything they could to sell, or trade for more narcotics.
The entire syndicate life cycle revolved around the culture and perpetuation of drug taking on a massive scale.
As they left the wastegrounds and approached the gaping tunnel to Old Gang Central, they felt the music before they heard it. The rhythmic vibration of the ground and walls was inhuman in its energy.
“I brought these.” Bailey said and threw a bag in the air to Randall, who only just realized in time and caught them. “They'll shield against most types of frequency buildup.”
He picked from the small bag a pair of earplugs, and having already gathered that he was going to need them, pushed them deep into his ear holes.
Bailey made a gesture as if to say, push them right in, probably so they couldn’t be seen by the minions of Old Gang.
Randall followed Bailey through the tunnel and onto the outer main street of the notorious district. It was basically the same as the outer roads of the metropolis but for a few glaring irregularities.
The place was in darkness for one thing with the artificial sun lamps in the bunker ceiling having been torn down or smashed. There were dim lights from the archaic lampposts along the street level, but most of the light came from the insane party nearby.
The black face of the metropolis block towered over them, one of the four that surrounded the derelict grounds where the party was raging. The ground floor of this block was stripped to the forest of supports, and through it the flickering laser light pierced through to the street.
Randall followed Bailey along the path just before the gaping pit into the foundations of the building, and stopped just before the turn in the road where the next block began. It’s bottom floor was still intact, and here he noticed there was a gentler bank down into that dark place.
“You’re not seriously considering going in there?” Randall pointed down in into the pit.
“Come on. Get your hands dirty.” Bailey said as he started to step carefully down the dusty bank.
Randall could just see in the dark recesses of the floor moving arms and legs reaching up into the flickering red and green light.
He followed reluctantly, and still a little shaky from his ordeal. Maybe this wasn’t the sort of work he should be doing after all.
Darkness surrounded them and then they were creeping through the dangerous maze of jagged metal and clay potholes. Crouching, they edged their way under the huge building toward the blood red light that danced madly from beyond the supports.
Suddenly someone lunged at Randall from behind an old empty fusebox. They didn’t say anything but they were starving for their drug, whichever it may be that had ensnared their existence.
He slapped away the person’s hand in the darkness and lurched back.
“Fuh-king Nara!” Randall shouted out, and Bailey waved for him to follow in his direction.
They made it through to the other side and then up another bank, this one more heavily worn in by footprints.
The scene of Old Gang proper descended to view as they made it up the bank. Randall hadn’t seen it for a long time, and even then things had changed. Himself mainly, he was a few years older now, and now he seemed to be feeling the place as it was intended.
The threat permeated the whole; these weren’t decent men and women, and they knew it, and wanted the rest of the prison to know it too.
Thousands of drug pumped junkies leaped up and down to the hideous racket. To all sides was this mass of jumping flesh, most of them topless, packed between the encircling buildings and the towering dome wall. At the far side was the church wrapped in the dim blue haze of a forcefield, and behind it along the base of the dome wall the mutilated rail track reading ‘Old Gang Central’. The words were lit up from below like the stage of some demonic music concert.
There were two points over the back of the words where giant planks of laser light were being swept and flickered to the music. They bathed and stroked the top of the crowd while over the whole thing giant transparent holograms came and went; one of a giant cartoon bunny walking in slow motion and then a young girl body popping. The trippy light show alternated as the music mix played on resulting in quite a potent combination of experiences, especially to the smashed crowd.
Bailey immediately made for a small gap in the bodies.
“No.” Randall pulled on his sleeve, and Bailey turned to look at him with surprise.
“Come on, don’t freeze up on me now.” Bailey said shaking his head. “If I sack you out of this job, who else is going to have you now? Don’t put me in this position.”
Randall grunted and followed as Bailey began wading through the crowd, and underneath the first of the giant holograms. He pushed his hands into his coat pockets as he did and straight away found the back of his wrists deflecting pick pocketing fingers.
They walked for a while until the ground became slightly uneven where the old centermost buildings used to be, before they had been flattened. They walked by one of the giant central steel girders that still remained to hold up the cavern ceiling.
At either side they had drawn closer to the two huge speakers that throbbed at either side. They leaned forward over the crowd so to fully immerse them in the dreadful experience.
It wasn’t spunker, it wasn’t sugalectric. Just raw sound. A beat, then a base, then an amateur melody somewhere in the background.
They had passed by a few small, crooked tents, each concealing from surveillance a homegrown black market, but only for the sale of drugs, and with the surrounding party as its constantly running commercial. So many had fallen so easily, and now the whole place was packed out regularly, with most risking their lives here for a turn within the tents.
“Through these!” Bailey yelled at Randall, who only just made out what had been said.
He followed Bailey through the last of the wasters toward the abused church. He mused on the notion that it’s not like there wasn’t some merit to living like this, as you would always be part of something happy and alive, but to Randall, it all sounded more like death.
He waded through the sporadic pockets of the remaining crowd behind Bailey, feeling the blistering of the sounds on either side. Nobody paid them much attention being wrapped up in the injurious moment as they were.
Bailey made for the glowing barrier that encompassed the church, that seemed to be packing enough punch to keep the crowd back at a wide birth.
Suddenly, through his vibrating vision Randall noticed that a group of three large men were now approaching Bailey on the empty gravel. He watched as one pushed Bailey back a few steps and his heart began to race as he instinctively lurched forward to back up his new boss.
One of the men snarled at him and swung at Randall, and as he moved to block it Randall found that he was too slow. They were clearly good fighters, and Randall took the strong blow to his face and staggered a few steps
behind Bailey, now feeling that they may be in some serious trouble.
Randall, who was doubled over slightly shook his head hard to shake off the dizziness. Once it was near tolerable he looked around at the shorter figure of Bailey standing under the loom of the largest, a massively muscled man. The other two were already lying on the ground at their feet.
Randall’s eyes blurred for a moment as he saw Bailey’s hand flash up just before the face of the big guy, not touching him but making him instinctively pull away slightly. Randall shook his head again to clear his sick vision, and in the moment of doing so must have missed the start of their fight.
Looking again, somehow Bailey had bust the big man’s nose and now had grabbed him by his low cut top while kneeing up at the undercarriage of his ribs. As the man yelped out Bailey pulled on the man’s shirt again and brought his head around from the side and butted him with a dangerous force on the underside of his nose. He clasped it and staggered back while Bailey effortlessly jump spin kicked him hard toward the oily forcefield.
He lay back against it and straight away became gripped in a nasty set of electrical fingers, that whipped like lightening down and up his huge torso. He cried out and fell forward into the dirt beside his groaning friends, and very slowly they tried to crawl away. Bailey pointed at him as he passed and shouted “I want my money, creep! You don’t get rid of it that easily!”
Looking alive, Randall made to catch up as Bailey walked casually through the forcefield passing it's barrier harmlessly. Bailey reached a hand back through to grab him and pulled him through into the church grounds.
On the other side Bailey muttered “I’ll need to get you DNA cleared for these barriers.”
It was deathly silent on the other side. As Randall took out the earplugs and strained his ears he only just heard the commanding voice of a sermon giver coming from somewhere within the church.
“You know something Randall…” Bailey said taking the earplugs out himself. “I really like churches. Come on.”
He skipped across the loose gravel outside and up the old stone steps, and under a carved sign reading “Church of the Naturalistic Mind”.
