The Blind Spot

by Michael Robertson

  A sidestep to get away from a woman carrying a baby, she shook her head. “I don’t know. But I can bet who’ll get the blame.”

  “Why is someone trying to start a war between the city and the Blind Spot?”

  Marcie shrugged. “The million-credit question. Maybe with both of them weakened, it will allow someone else to step in. Maybe another city is doing this to us so they can put us on our knees.”

  “You think?”

  “Dunno, but it has to be connected with earlier today.”

  Because she didn’t want to say it, Sal did. “The woman with the surveillance equipment?” As she stepped closer to the ruined building, Sal said, “Be careful.”

  The front of the cinema had already been destroyed. There wouldn’t be a second bomb here.

  Then she saw it, Sal gasping where she couldn’t. Not with every sound being recorded. At the edge of the rubble, close to where she stood, Marcie only had to drop down and reach out to grab it.

  “Hey, kid! You in the glasses.”

  Marcie’s blood ran cold. A man pointed at her. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s past curfew.”

  Now he’d brought attention to her … “Damn it,” she said.

  “Get out of there now, Marce!”

  A blue light flashed, the whoop, whoop of a siren cutting through the panic.

  Marcie slipped the thing into her pocket and joined the mass exodus.

  But the man who’d pointed at her didn’t give up. Over six feet and broad shouldered, he blocked her path. “Youths have no place on our streets. We let one get away with it and we’ll be overrun with gangs in no time.”

  More power in one wrist than he had in his entire body, she slammed an open palm into his stomach, dropping him where he stood.

  The commotion distracted the police long enough for her to duck back down the alley she’d stashed her suit in. Pressed against a wall, she quickly dressed and jumped at the opposite building. Hitting each window with a tonk on her way up, Marcie reached the roof she’d been on just minutes before.

  “You’re insane!”

  When Marcie landed on the roof of one of the shorter tower blocks nearby, she opened her palm to look at the gold bolt she’d recovered.

  “One of your dad’s? How did that get there?”

  Marcie stashed it in her pocket and dragged in a deep breath of the mint-scented air. While clamping her jaw, her heart racing, she said, “That’s exactly what I intend to find out.”

  Chapter 20

  Before he entered the shower, Nick set the temperature a few degrees higher than yesterday. He moved his head from side to side as if to touch each ear to each shoulder. Twinges streaked down his back, his body reminding him he didn’t have the physique to run away from a collapsing cinema and not pay the price for it. Even when playing cricket, he didn’t run. He bowled well enough to be included in the team, and with a match later that day, he had to try to work some of the aches from his body.

  The heat from the shower sank into his muscles, already loosening some of his tension. It didn’t help that he’d spent the night on the sofa. But he had to give Karla a better night’s sleep after the shake-up they’d both had. If it weren’t for her indecisiveness, they would have been inside the building when the bomb hit. What then? He shook his head while the hot water smothered him.

  A touch of the screen brought the yellow and red Wellbeing app to life. Nineteen lifts! Two more than yesterday. “Today’s going to be a good day.”

  Several quick taps, Nick queued them up how he liked to listen to them. Adam first. “I’m not surprised Stuart let him go home early, he works harder than anyone here. If anyone deserves it, he does.”

  Several more lifts from Adam. Eight came through from Jane, followed by a couple from Bruce. The waiting staff at the restaurant last night responded to his incredibly generous tip with a host of platitudes. Several more people from work, but none from the new boy, Graham. Not surprising. Then the final one. Karla this time. Always best to save his love until last.

  “I do love Nick.”

  The words came through the speaker like a car crash. She’d said something nice, which was why Wellbeing played it, but she’d said more, and Wellbeing had decided to leave that part out. He played it again.

  “I do love Nick.”

  It seemed like only one word could follow that: but. One more time.

  “I do love Nick.”

  Who had she said it to? “Wellbeing app,” he said, the screen’s light dimming as it listened to him. “Clean up the audio and lift the sound of the voice in the background.”

  “I do love Nick.”

  The person in the background said, “Then how—” before the audio cut off.

  “Play again.”

  “I do love Nick.”

  “Then how—”

  What were they talking about? Did the then how have anything to do with him? Bruce and Karla were together, but he knew that. He’d walked in on them planning his surprise party.

  Pharrell Williams continued to tell Nick how happy he felt. The chirpy beat bounced off the hard walls. Why had she been wearing her leather trousers? Why were they undone at the back?

  Scala citizens had a procedure for this. A way of protecting their sanity. Too many people had lost the plot from overanalysing lifts. “Wellbeing app, please delete all my lifts from today.”

  The female voice, more sultry than Karla had ever been with him, said, “Are you sure?”

  “Just do it.”

  A bright white light burst through the screen like a camera flash. “You have no more lifts for today.”

  Nick leaned his head against the hard wall, the near scalding water crashing against the back of his neck. What had they been talking about?

  Eggs were allowed in his diet, so Nick took two boiled ones from the fridge while the coffee machine made him a steaming mug of bitter black medicine. While he chewed, the rubbery texture lifted the suggestion of a heave, the dryness of the crumbly yolk sticking in his throat. He chugged it down as Karla walked along the hallway. To prevent himself saying something stupid, he turned on the television.

  Footage of the ruined cinema dominated the huge screen. The area had been cordoned off by police. It then flicked to three people in a television studio. Two men and one woman.

  One of the men—oriental in appearance—wore a fitted pinstriped suit that hugged his slim form. They never put fatties on the TV. Especially not at breakfast time. He said, “It has to be the Blind Spot.”

  The woman—as well dressed as the man—had pale skin and a tall pink afro. “Now, we shouldn’t be so hasty.” Obviously there to provide a counterpoint, she added, “A war with the Blind Spot would be disastrous for the city. I don’t know about you, but I want to reserve judgement before we’re certain. I can’t get behind a movement that will result in my digital identity being completely erased unless there are no other options. I’ve worked hard for this life.”

  Karla entered the room and Nick flashed her a tight-lipped smile. If she noticed, she didn’t show it, her focus on the TV. She’d already showered and dressed.

  “Do you have an early meeting today?” Nick asked, her face made up, her perfume overpowering the freshly ground coffee.

  The other man on the TV pressed his finger to his ear. “I’m being told we have some new footage coming in from last night. It’s not the best because it’s from the Kubrick Tower’s private drone. The one outside the cinema watched the people escaping rather than the building.”

  The cinema appeared again, although this time from far away. Hard to tell, but it looked like a girl approaching the building. She bent down as if to tie her shoes. When she walked away from the wreck, what looked like a man pointed at her. Nick winced when she dropped him with one blow before running off into the night.

  The camera pulled back into the studio, and the suited oriental man spoke first. “Well, if that isn’t evidence that the Blind Spot had something to do with this, I don’t
know what is. No way should a girl of that size have the strength to drop the man like she just did.” The man punched his open fist. “She must be cybernetically enhanced. We cannot tolerate their kind in the city. I bet she either planted the bomb or came to remove any incriminating evidence.”

  A close-up of the woman with the pink hair, she shrugged. “I wish I could disagree, but watching that footage makes it hard to see past the Blind Spot being behind this.”

  The camera moved to the third man. A tall and slim man with brown hair and an orange fake tan. He smiled while pressing his finger against his ear again. “I just want to add that we’re simply expressing our opinions. We don’t speak for the government or for ZNW News. We are merely speculating. But until the government break their silence on this issue, speculation is all we have. We and ZNW News would love to give them the platform to respond. From our perspective, it seems hard to deny the Blind Spot’s involvement in this.”

  Nick jumped when Karla finally spoke. “They clearly did it.”

  Nick turned the television off.

  “We have to go to war with them,” she said.

  The lift in the shower had rendered Nick mute. If only he could have removed it from his memory as easily as he removed it from the app.

  Karla put her headphones in. Several taps on her smartphone and she smiled. The same routine every day, she listened to her lifts in private.

  Maybe she knew Nick watched her at that moment, maybe not. Maybe she didn’t care. Her smile stretched from her mouth to her eyes. She hadn’t turned those eyes on him in a long time. Who spoke to her at that moment? Bruce? No, it couldn’t be Bruce.

  A horn sounded outside and Karla pulled her headphones out. “It’s Bruce.”

  Half an hour early.

  “Let me go and get it,” Karla said and ran from the room.

  She hadn’t ever run to meet Nick. The second Karla left his sight, he darted over to her smartphone and pressed the screen. She hadn’t locked it properly. His heart sank. The screen read Bruce.

  Sick to his stomach, Nick returned to his seat, pulled his shoulders back, and forced a smile at Bruce and Karla when they entered the kitchen. What else could he do? He’d not actually heard anything. It could all be in his head. But the way they were with each other … Bruce was more connected to Karla than he’d ever been.

  “Hey, buddy,” Bruce said. “Karla invited me for breakfast before we go to cricket. I hope that’s okay?”

  His throat so dry he couldn’t speak, some of the egg still stuck in it, Nick simply nodded. He coughed and hooked his thumb in the direction of his bedroom. A third wheel in his own home, he said, “I’ll go and get my stuff, then.”

  Chapter 21

  The fog of sleep cleared the second Marcie woke. The message scrolled across her vision. Only her dad had the codes to send her messages. EMERGENCY MEETING AT THE TOP TABLE NOW!

  “Shit!” Marcie sat up. The message had been there for nineteen minutes. “Shit!”

  Fortunately, her cybernetic limbs did most of the work, standing her up, throwing her clothes on, and taking her from the room. She felt the bulge in her pocket. The golden bolt from the cinema. When she’d gotten home last night, she’d spent some time looking at it. Definitely one of her dad’s. It even had the small engraving around the outside. The repetition of her and her mum’s initials. MH JH MH JH MH JH. But how did they get it without him noticing? It had to be someone close to him. As close as the top table?

  The cage door at the top of the stairs hung open. Now she’d turned sixteen, she could look after herself. Although, apparently she couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning.

  The thunder of her footsteps slammed against the wooden stairs, and although the staff of obsoletes watched her tear through the house and burst out of the front door, none of them got in her way.

  A series of automated adjustments in her lenses helped Marcie manage the glare from the morning sun and the even brighter glare of neon as she broke into a flat-out sprint.

  The morning after filled the streets with a lethargic mess of post-coital johns and slack-jaws finding their way home. Many more were just entering the Blind Spot. A veritable minefield of unpredictability. Her eyes fed last second adjustments to her microprocessor, guiding her on a mazy path towards the meeting room. Were the tourists not so protected, she would have slammed every one of them out of her way.

  No matter how ominous, at least the dark alleyway gave her a clear route to the metal door at the end. Marcie slammed three heavy bangs against it, gathering herself as she fought to regain her breath. When Frankie opened it, her heart sank.

  The ridge of his thick brow hooded his eyes. “About time!”

  Marcie stared at the floor as she walked past and headed upstairs to the top table.

  The only empty seats at the table belonged to Marcie and Frankie behind her. Wrench stared at his daughter for several tense seconds. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Instead of apologising, she returned the hard glares from every member. Which one of them knew about the bolt? It seemed like a stretch to think the Monk would have done it. Why would he want to start a war? He sat at the top table as the moral compass, the one who helped ensure the well-being of the Blind Spot’s residents and adopted obsoletes. A man who cared little for material wealth, what would he gain from tearing the two districts apart?

  “Well?” Frankie barged past her and took his seat at Wrench’s side. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Marcie traced the outline of the gold bolt in her pocket. If she revealed it now, they’d focus more on reprimanding her for being out in the city. Wrench and Frankie might have known she did it, but even they would turn on her. Was now really the best time to be taking Sal sightseeing? What if she got caught? “I’m sorry.” She dropped her gaze. “I overslept.”

  Frankie’s tut went off like a thunder crack. “I knew having a teenager at the top table was a bad idea. Next, instead of cooperating, she’ll be running up to her room, slamming the door, and telling us all she wishes she’d never been born.”

  No one else would have gotten away with such an attack, and from the glare Wrench threw at his best friend, he trod a thin line.

  Marcie counted her dad’s bolts. Nine in each leg. They were all still there. So who had made the replica in her pocket?

  Although Frankie now held his tongue, he snarled open disdain at her. She’d encouraged his boy to have unrealistic dreams, filling his head with nonsense about Scala City and a life they’d never have. Sal meant the world to him. If only he could see inside Marcie’s heart. Sal meant the world to her too.

  Bang! Wrench slammed his closed fist against the wooden table. He had the power coiled within him to crack the thing in two. “The reason we’re here is there’s been another attack.”

  An animalistic snarl, Shank twisted where she sat. “No doubt they’ll try to pin it on us.”

  Wrench sighed. “Hard not to when they have this from last night.”

  The footage might have been taken from far away, but Marcie couldn’t deny it was her. Her body sank and her stomach tensed while it played out on the far wall. “Damn!”

  “What the hell?” Pierre the Credit said. His black eyes gave nothing away, his gruff accent contradicting his immaculate presentation. “Is that you?”

  “And it’s all over the news,” Frankie said.

  Marcie winced, the collective attention levelled on her shining brighter than the Blind Spot’s main street. Pierre the Credit, the Monk, Shank, Jean Rodrigo, Wrench, and of course, Frankie. But Frankie stared at her like he knew something else. Had Sal told him about the bolt? As the footage of her played out again, she said, “There’s no way they can identify me from that.”

  “Maybe not,” Wrench said, “but from the way you hit the man, you showed them where you were from. And what did you pick up?”

  Of all the people there, she trusted her dad. Maybe they had a rat amongst them, maybe not. But until sh
e knew for sure, she’d keep her mouth shut. “Nothing.”

  “You just wanted to get on Scala City’s news reports?” Frankie said. “Give them a reason to be suspicious of the Blind Spot?”

  “They don’t know who I am.”

  “And what? You’re trying to change that?”

  Organic eyes might have welled up with the tightening of her chest, but Marcie’s red lenses never let her down. Instead, a sharp pain shot through her temples. Sore, but better than crying. “I thought I saw something, but there was nothing there.”

  The parts of his face that remained organic turned a deeper shade of red, and Wrench balled his hands into fists. He leaned his elbows on the table, hunching over it. “You exposed yourself for nothing?”

  Frankie spoke again. “If you thought it was hard to leave the Blind Spot before, she’s just made it a million times harder. None of us can leave here now.”

  But something in the man’s glare didn’t sit right. Was he pleased she’d screwed up? Did it benefit him to keep everyone contained in the Blind Spot? Marcie said, “Like you could leave here anyway. The attack in Wellbeing Square already made sure anyone with any sign of cybernetic enhancements remained in the Blind Spot. You can’t blame me for that.”

  Jean Rodrigo reached over and laid a hand on Marcie’s arm. “As much as I don’t approve of what she did last night, she’s right.”

  The maternal care she so missed, Marcie’s cybernetics shifted beneath her skin. Even the machine part of her longed for a mum.

  “We couldn’t leave the Blind Spot before now,” Jean said. “Certainly not any of us with obvious enhancements. They were already blaming us for the attacks. Also, they used air grenades to blow the cinema up last night. Air grenades are synonymous with the Blind Spot. If the city wanted more of a reason to blame us, they had it before they saw Marcie.”

  Shank snapped her hands forwards, catching a long knife in each. “Yeah, but she’s just made them certain.”

  “Watch yourself, Shank.”