Ok. I have edited, re-edited, re-re-edited, & re-re-re-edited this chapter but I need to stop because this process could be never ending. SO...Here it is. Any final feedback is good, though unless it's show-stopping, might not be heeded :-)
***************************************
- 1 -
Three
hundred years ago, human bodies were merely functional. Adequate. They were
just as nature designed them. Boring. Then we came in with technology and made
them remarkable.
Memoirs
of A. St. Claire
The
man with the handlebar moustache and plush burgundy waistcoat stood in the
doorway of the cyber cafe.
What
does he want? Samson thought,
cocking an eyebrow in half-hearted interest, his mind more focused on the man’s
fast-food bag. He was so hungry.
Life
on the dirt-smeared streets of the slum city had been more difficult than the
teenager had anticipated. While he was free from his mother’s heavy
hand, this freedom was accompanied by the sharp knife of hunger that constantly
sliced beneath his ribs. Newly-found independence tasted like the squalor of
the abandoned warehouse where he sheltered with other homeless children. In the
midst of these disenfranchised youths, no sense of solidarity arose, no kindred
spirits. The bitter winter left them shivering, fighting over the meager scraps
of food or combustible material.
He
never imagined that hunger would stalk him like a predator. The upset of a
grumbling stomach was an all-too-familiar feeling.
A
year on his own had made him lean, gaunt, and desperate. His meals mostly came
from dumpsters: greasy, overcooked protein from the one-star Asian restaurant,
soggy sandwiches that were barely edible when fresh, and half-rotten fruit
crawling with insects he couldn’t even identify; it was nourishment that stank
with the rancid fumes of yesterday’s garbage.
Some
days, no matter how hungry he was, he just couldn’t stomach it. Sadly, begging
for the mildly stale remnants of a stranger’s half-eaten hoagie or the
occasional mystery-meat kabob was barely better than the refuse. At least that
stuff didn’t smell rotten…
No.
You are smart, he told himself, You are better than garbage.
Sam
had always had a talent with data: computer navigation was like a sixth sense
to him. Most of his free time had been spent in dingy cyber cafés. A haven
where he escaped the world: crouched over an ancient typepad, hunched in a
cheap fiberglass chair, with eyes straining at a dimly lit LED.
He
was slowly filling a fraudulent banking shell with real money – money that
could only be spent outside of the city walls. Traveling in the security
networks of big corporations, he stalked through the underground tunnels of
their cybernet space. Worming his way into firewalls and secure shields like a
cockroach made of bytes, he scrounged for scraps of cred that he put into in
the virtual market. Win. Lose. Win. The CORPs never caught him. He
couldn’t risk getting caught.
He
snagged only bytes at a time. A little here. A little there. Keep a low
profile. Don’t get noticed. Can’t get caught. The teenager didn’t
fancy spending the rest of his short life on the inside of a CORP prison,
serving time for a severely punished transgression.
He
had too much to lose. Had to make money, not for food, or clothing, or mech
mods. It wasn’t for him but for Charley; to get his sister out of this
hate-filled shitthole of a city. To a real city. East, west, north – he didn’t
care. All of them had promises, potential. A real life.
The
man, who had, in their first encounters only observed him, began to speak. The
cybercafé was empty, even the proprietor had gone for a smoke break. “You are
not an easy kid to track down,” he said.
“What
do you want from me?” The teen asked, tones of curiosity vying with hostility.
The
man took a drag of a long, mud-colored cigarette and handed Sam a data chip. “I
need you to hack a shopping mall’s security system and snatch the locked files.
Payment is ten-thou.”
“Hack
a system?” The teen asked incredulously, eyes bulging at the offer, “That’s it?
You followed me around for months just to ask me to hack something?”
“I
needed to see if you could do it. It’s not as easy as you might think, kid. And
trust me, you weren’t my first choice for the job…” The man trailed off. His
business-like demeanor returned quickly. He explained, “It’s an AI security
system. Makes what you’ve been crawling through look like a toddler’s game.
This takes Skill.”
“Oh,
I got skills,” the boy responded arrogantly, a strong desire to comply
with this man’s request suddenly smoldering in the hollow of his abdomen even
though he only had the vaguest idea what an AI system was.
The
man barely smirked and cocked his head. Nonetheless, he tapped a metal plate on
the chip. There was one line of text:
JR. Avenue 5. Independence Plaza.
“This
is where you can find me to deliver the goods. Payment upon delivery,” he said,
nodding.
“I
haven’t given you an answer yet!” The teenager called after the gentleman who
was striding purposefully away.
He
paused, looked over his shoulder and said, “You didn’t have to.” His smile was
arrogant. Knowing. “Your face said enough.”
*
* * * *
The
mall’s computer was ancient. The teenager made a face. If the ones in the
Internet café were 2220 models, this one must be from the mid-2000s. The server
room hummed gently, the warm air heavy with sonic vibrations carrying waves of
data. Colored LEDs blinked ominously, like so many eyes, watching him.
*tap*
*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*
Skills
indeed, the teenager thought angrily, still fuming at the man’s smug smile
from a few days ago, This bastard’s complicated as shit. He scowled at
the screen.
Maybe
he had gotten in over his head. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his t-shirt
was becoming damp under his arms. No, he thought, it didn’t really
matter. The money was too good, enough to get him and Charley out of the slums.
To get to freedom.
*tap*
*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*
The
lines of code taunted him. Flashing their glaring green deep into his strained
retinas. His stomach growled. It’s just a shopping mall! He railed to
himself silently. What could be on here?
*tap*
*tap* *tap* *tap* *tap*
An
AI system, the man had said. What was an AI system? It couldn’t be a new
software because the boy knew all the security systems. However, he’d
never heard the term before. Maybe it was an old word? An antiquated security
system? Maybe that’s why it was so hard to crack?
*tap*
*tap* *ta—
He
was in, he stared wide-eyed. The files suddenly were zipping themselves onto
the storage device. Bits flashed by in a whirr: zeroes and ones. Replicating
with the precision of high-speed data, submitting to his hand, no longer
taunting him, but almost screaming.
Screaming...
Red lights flashing. Something had triggered an alarm. How, though? He
had been so careful!
Shooting
to his feet, he yanked the chip out of the mainframe just as a boring-looking
man strode almost casually into the office. The man’s eyes, however, were not
boring. They were dark, and angry. And they were looking straight at him.
Fuck!
He ran like hell.
*
* * * *
The
mall was a hub of activity at this time of night. In the center of it all, sat
a woman in her early thirties, with the chestnut brown hair and olive skin of a
mediteranneo, nursing a dark brown beer. She was wrapped in black leather pants
the shade of an octogenarian’s favorite easy chair, worn in just the right
places, and a dingy white tank top under an equally loved leather vest.
The
electrical humming of cold fluorescent lights could almost make her forget that
the sun had long since set and all sensible people were in their homes, their Virtua-visions
blaring some obnoxious live broadcast. Garishly colored storefronts looked out
into the atrium, silently hawking their wares of manufactured diamonds and
cheap plastic toys. On one side, nothing but top-of-the-line sex toys, the
cylindrical outlines of countless male members shivering a welcome to all who
were brave enough to cross the threshold of their inhibitions. And on the
other, a front of a more sinister nature, where tatted rat boys hunched over
too-white operating tables offering up the newest in body mod trends.
Here,
some juiceheads sat at a table bristling with folds of muscle so large that
they barely looked human. And over there, fashion sisters, their frozen smiles
and stretch-tight skin the result of too many trips to the laser salon. A
schizo trolled the floor in faded hospital gowns, begging for credits or junk
or whatever you had on you, deftly weaving between the tables too fluidly. A
pair of security guards rolled slowly back and forth on one-wheeled scooters,
their lurid uniforms thinly disguising the mods encompassing their limbs that
pulsed with the synthetic rhythm of black motor oil.
The
woman carried no weapons here, as was the rule of all serious establishments. Not that it would matter, she thought, moving
her dark glasses over to the juiceheads. Many were themselves weapons these
days. However, it still felt strange, Mara thought, to be away for so long from
her anlace – a rapier that was part robot and rarely ever left her side, though
she carried it more for comfort than safety. She glanced coolly around the
room, trying to project the demeanor of the stoic calm that she could barely
hold on to.
The
twins had told her that he would be here, on this night, getting into
more trouble than he’d ever bargained for. She trusted the twins, they weren’t
programmed to lie and even if they’d tried, she had other ways of keeping an
honest cyborg honest. They lived in the alleys and had enough street cred to be
in the know for just about every interesting pair of feet that crossed their
patch of asphalt. But Mara had more street cred, and she’d pulled some strings
and flexed a few muscles – the right muscles – to lead her to this frozen heart
of commerce in the Sink.
The
boy was only fourteen and much too young to be pulling off a heist of this
magnitude. Mara could only guess how he’d planned it, how long it had taken him
to devise a strategy that would actually lead him to this very spot on this
very night. And she wondered even harder how he had expected to escape...unless
he wasn’t aware of the danger he was in. That’s where she would come in.
Clenching her teeth, she forced herself to trust that the right opportunity
would present itself.
A
commotion arose on the second floor balcony. Mara looked up through the tacky
indoor skylight to see an achromatized pipe banister quiver in response to the
sound of slapping feet. Her vantage point was such that, across the cafeteria,
she could only see a corner of the long hallway with its custard-yellow walls
scratched and faded from years of apathy. An adolescent with shaggy hair the color
of sand was barreling toward the banister, heedless of bodily harm, eyes wild
and breath pounding in and out like a bass drum. Following behind, almost
unhurriedly, was a rotund, balding man in an obnoxious band T-Shirt from a
decades-forgotten rock group. He wore an expression of boredom as if to
indicate that he had already seen the attraction and had found it lacking.
Mara
stood up and downed the last of her lukewarm ale in one frenzied swig, gagging
as the grainy dregs slid down her throat. She looked up and froze. The kid had
made it to the banister and reached out to it with one desperate hand, vaulting
over as if he were at a track and field event. Scuffed boots with frayed laces
kicked wildly. He seemed to hang in midair, his left leg tucked under him, his
right thrust out, grabbing at an ethereal purchase that only he could see. The
man held out his hand where Mara could see a shiny metallic square on the
inside of his wrist. He flipped that wrist toward the sandy haired acrobat and
one rectangle broke off and flew with unnerving speed.
*
* * * *
Samson
was frozen, literally frozen. No, he hastily corrected himself, not
frozen. He was in the air, floating…or falling incredibly slow. His boot
had scraped off a layer of paint from the banister and it puffed out behind him
in a small cloud. Below was a glass “skylight” – one of those tacky creations
that had been popular during the decade before he was born. Even though it had
never been subjected to the elements, years of smoke, dust, and dead insects
had crusted its edges, giving Sam a blurred, cinematic view of the first floor
cafeteria.
The
patrons paid little attention to him, too wrapped up in their coffees, booze,
or the undoubtedly witty conversation with their modded-up, super model dates.
There was one exception, dressed in all black, she stared openly at him with a
startled frown, lifting her dark glasses away from her eyes. A heavy beer stein
was clutched in her white-knuckled fist. Sam’s confused expression met hers and
held her within the trance.
Sharp
stinging on his knee was the only indication that he had crashed through the
bug-smeared skylight. He barely felt even that pain as glass fragments gently
twirled around his face, falling like weightless snowflakes toward the
yellowing linoleum. A hair-like wire glittered at the corner of his vision,
lazily undulating like a serpent. What was that thing?
The
dark woman had moved. Arm arched behind her back, she launched the mug in his
direction. It gracefully slid past his ear as the aroma of spoiled barley
assaulted his nose. Closer to the ground now, he felt his left leg tucked
sharply into his chest, and his right leg…he wasn’t sure.
Something
was on the floor below him, it looked like a limb. A leg. His leg? He
shook his head. He was in shock, he told himself, gazing at the eerily-familiar
boot toe, resting in a pool of blood. His blood?
Everything
is too clear, he rationalized, I’m fine. Red droplets surrounded
him, mimicking large jewels or small marbles. He could see the surface of each
one dimple and shift as the circular shapes became amorphous. There was too
much red around him, he thought, as the metallic tang shot through his taste
buds. His chest fluttered as he forced himself to breathe.
His
left leg was tucked underneath him, but his right…the floor reached him.
*
* * * *
The
boy’s face changed from an impetuous grimace of rebellion to a frantic O
of surprise as his right leg plummeted to the floor. The rest of him followed
in a pallid heap of shock and fear. The silver rectangle recoiled into itself
and a faint iridescent thread shimmered in the artificial light. Razorwire.
Mara had chucked her mug at the assassin with a force disproportionate to her
size. It crossed the linoleum desert of the food court, and shot straight
through the broken window into the man’s face, shattering into a hundred
unforgiving shards of glass. The assassin clutched at his eyes, but slowed only
a little.
Digging
into her pocket, Mara pulled out another item. It was the size of a strawberry
and gunmetal grey. Rolling it between her fingers, she held her hand out flat
and the little ball floated imperceptibly over her palm. Pulling her arm back,
she whipped it at the assassin with blinding speed. It flew true, past the
falling boy, through the hole in the shattered skylight, and directly into the
assassin’s chest.
An
explosion followed: noxious green-yellow gas blossoming from the rift between
the two halves. The gas enveloped the assassin in a clinging, stinking cloud
more tangible than ethereal. He roared out in rage, his flailing, ducking
figure obscured by the squall. That should keep him busy for a while…She
thought.
She
rushed over to Samson, who was curled up on the floor in a convulsing heap,
blood pooling around him. Ripping off a piece of her shirt, she tied a
tourniquet around Samson’s leg, the crimson spreading over it so quickly you’d
think it animate. Then she flung the now-unconscious adolescent over her
shoulder, and barreled out of the modish jungle. Juiceheads, fashion sisters,
rats, schizos and security guards looked on with only mild curiosity as if a
young vagabond being maimed by a highly trained, but innocuous-looking,
assassin happened every day.
Mara
pounded through the streets, carrying the teenager as if he were a sack of
rice, before flinging him into the back of a low-flying, rusted transport.
“Where
to?” A slight voice echoed quietly from the front.
“Back,”
Mara replied tersely, climbing into the passenger seat.
The
young pilot’s eyes grew wide as he saw Mara’s blood-spattered appearance.
“That
bad, huh?” He grimaced and began to turn around.
“Don’t…”
Mara put a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t turn around. Just fly.”
As
the transport rose into the air, the pilot’s voice was heavy, “Back it is.”
Mara
really hated violence.
