“Tubepol picks me out of the crowd.
‘That’s an awful big gun you’ve got,’ he tells me. Runs his lasers over me.
Rattles a model off at me, asks me if I cut the mounting lugs off it.
‘No officer. That’s illegal officer. I would never, officer.’
‘Besides, I can handle her all on me own, look, I can show you!’
‘Move along, citizen,’ he tells me. ‘Keep it slung. Brandishing is a crime.’”
My heart was racing in my chest so hard I thought it might explode. I was wheezing and panting as I tried to look casual. Casually dripping sweat from every pore.
I was waiting in line to cross the border into 5-3. The line was short currently and moving quickly. I had my sweat-soaked meat and bone face out to try and throw people off my identity.
I don’t know what I’d done to get the brand, but I couldn’t stay in 6-3 with it. I wouldn’t survive the night if I did. Getting marked as a rat by any street gang was a death sentence, and that was if you were lucky. Five large in chits for my head or CID, no questions asked. I had three large in my account before everything went down. U-Med would have already taken their pound of flesh, leaving me under a grand. There was drok I could have pawned, before my place got torched.
Fuck. FUCK! My deck!
The thought of the amount of blood, sweat, and tears that went into grinding the credits and putting everything together, just for it to go up in accelerant smoke, just about brought tears to my eyes.
Elevated voices behind me. I risked a brief glance as the line moved forward.
Three more people.
Half a dozen 6D walking down the line, rattlers out and mean-mugging.
Two more.
The 6D posted at the checkpoint strolled over to find out what’s up.
One more.
Pointing. I’d been spotted. I grit my teeth. The status light on the scanner turned green as the person in front of me passed through. I darted in.
A warning tone from the scanner sounded. I was moving too quickly. I forced myself to slow for the next two steps through the field, then I exited out the other side. The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding came out in the form of an explosive exhale. Safety.
The transit tunnel between sectors crossed through the sector wall. Checkpoints were automated, one for foot traffic, one for vehicles. The ends of the tunnels were capped by the scanner fields. I walked past one of the flush-mounted meter-wide armor plates that the autoguns rested under. The small autoguns. The big ones were under the three-meter plates, further in the tunnel.
The innermost twenty meter stretch was marked out by day-glo orange paint that was regularly reapplied to be as fresh and visible as possible. Inside that painted zone was the gate. The same kind of gate between each sector, and supposedly, the ones that allowed ground entry into and out of the city itself.
A hundred million kilograms of hydraulically-actuated hardened steel each. Capable of sealing in thirty seconds, equally capable of shrugging off knocks by H-bomb or Convergent. Or so we were told.
The thought of being caught in one and squished like an insect always put my nerves on edge. That was vid material though. There hadn’t been a reason to close them in my lifetime.
My mind wandered as I traversed the tunnel. The neon colors of 5-3 greeted me from the opposite end.
Every sub sector had a dedicated purpose. For home, it was consumer goods, and so, we became the unofficial commerce sector of X-3. Why ship things everyone needed if you didn’t have to? The rest came naturally over the course of the century-plus since founding.
For 5-3, it was protein vats. The bulk of all the protein consumed in X-3 originated from 5-3. Each quadrant was self-sufficient by design and in theory, but Ark 3 had yet to experience the need to stress-test those designs on live.
Every sub sector had its own texture. A look, a feel, smell, flavor, society, culture, dress code, and more, all bundled up together. 5-3 was the stinky vatfarm place, but only to foreigners. To natives, and quite a number of tourists, it was something else entirely; the place to be for nightlife and the sex industry.
The sex industry had The Peacock Society, which shared a hard border with 6D, emphasis on hard. There were decades and oceans of blood between them, beyond just the big metal gate. This was the closest I was going to get to a sanctuary at the moment.
I stepped through the scanner field, wiped my face with my palms, and my palms on my pants. Then I turned my face back on. I picked a different one that I hadn’t used before; it was one I was toying around with but hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to use. Smoky eyes, tawny hair, and brightly-colored lips. Straightening my jacket, I rested a palm on my puncher, and the pulse pattern indicated identity confirmation and readiness status.
It was eager to bark for me. I just had to do better about remembering it existed. The tension bled out of my nerves, but only marginally. In passing, I was reminded of the bone-deep weariness suffusing my entire body. Adrenaline had warded my exhaustion off, but sprinting around after surgery had left me even more sore than I had been before, and my legs were wobbly. I needed sleep.
My handy was dead, and that was a problem. I’d fix that tomorrow. Rummaging in my pockets yielded my keyring, a couple of datalinks, three ginger candies in their wrappers, a tab from a Blast! with string wrapped around it and a couple of assorted chits. The colors weren’t so great.
Two hundred and thirty credits. More than I’d usually carry in chits, I only had them because of cashing out my tip jar at work before I left. I licked my teeth and considered. 5-3 was predatory as fuck about space rentals. If you didn’t live and work here, or have connections, you weren’t living here for anything outside an hourly rate. A cube was out of the question. They’d want a week up front, and I sure as hell couldn’t afford it.
I sighed. It was going to have to be a coffin, and I fucking hated coffins. But not here, not at the border. The battery on my wrist slate was in the red, but it’d have to do. Wire frame maps guided my trudging steps.
5-3 was hot. Not the hottest sub sector, but it was up there. Biological growth at the industrial scales the city demanded generated significant heat. A convoy of tanker trucks rolled past me, probably filled with liquid nutrients bound for 4-3. The tipsy, laughing, and flushed masses on the walkways bumped and jostled into me. The hand of a dip grazed mine in passing, and I chuckled to myself. I didn’t have shit to steal, and I was rolling the few chits I owned around in my other hand. It was complimentary, in a way. Someone thought I looked nice enough to be a tourist.
I zoned out and let myself simply absorb and exist in motion. In the distance of the main avenue I was walking down, you could see the understated architecture typical of Tokh engineering rising vertically into the sky. The Deepwell I was looking at was more visible than most, because the edge of every line was lit with color-shifting LED. The entire thing looked like a much louder version of my wireframe maps.
Say what you will about the lizards, but they knew how to build things big while retaining a distinctive aesthetic.
Club music leaked from venues I passed, more felt than heard. People would dance at the big ones around the clock. The drugs and drinks—not always separate—helped keep people on their feet, entertained, and spending. I’d been before, and they earned their reputations. 5-3 knew how to party well enough that it attracted tourists. It only made sense that the vat workers were renowned for their entertainment. You had to have some way of offsetting the work.
I turned twice and walked another six blocks before I reached my destination. I was basically in the heart of the red light district. Every window an advertisement for new experiences, every figure on the street an open invitation. Scents, personal lighting, clothing—or lack thereof—and cybernetics designed to stand out and capture the attention. Skin in every shape, hue, and texture.
There was a place I’d stayed before with Cee. Only mostly a love motel; they had overnight pods and coffins that had been decent in the past.
A fat, old, greasy man with a severe widow’s peak pulled back into a tight silver ponytail sat inside a bulletproof polymer booth that extended out of one of the walls. The doors behind him were opaque, and the name tag on his shirt said “OWNER.” He was scrolling a dataslate and never looked up as I approached and came to a stop in front of the booth.
“Hunno a night for pods. Seven-five a night for coffins. Money in the chute. No refunds,” he announced without ever addressing me.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve been here before.”
Glassy, bloodshot blue-gray eyes looked up at me. They lingered a moment too long on my color block.
“So? You got a death wish, lady, or are you just extra thick?”
The fucking patch isn’t removable, and I don’t have anything on me to cover it with.
I shook my head. “No, bad night. Real bad. Anyway. My handy’s busted, or I’d tap in.”
He held his gaze.
“I um, I’m trying to say I know that’s not the—”
“The what?” He cut me off.
I shifted my weight to my other leg. I think he glanced at the bullet holes in my shirt and pants, but I wasn’t certain.
“I don’t got a lot left, can I have the local rate please?”
He reached forward and pressed a button on the panel in front of him. A sprayer nozzle with a trailing hose dropped out of the overhang above the booth and rotated on its gimbal to face me. I froze and raised my hands.
“This look like the complaint department to you? You pay and stay, or you get the hose and piss off with your sob story!”
I held one hand up and reached—slowly--into my pants pocket. His finger didn’t leave the panel, and his eyes tracked my hand closely. I pulled out my slate with the huge chunk carved out of it from a bullet and showed it to him. He squinted at it.
“I’d like a two-day coffin, just so I can… figure my shit out. Please.” I put a hundred chit on the small ledge in front of the booth.
“Aiya, shazi! Are you deaf? Money in the chute!”
I nodded quickly and dropped it into the cone surrounded by painted arrows. A thumb stick popped out a moment later. I took the key for the coffin quickly.
A drawer slid out under the ledge a moment later, scratched to hell and back, but resting on it was a square of repair tape. I gulped and looked up at the owner. He studiously ignored me to focus his attention back on his dataslate.
“Thank you,” I said, and slid the square out of the tray. It clanged shut the moment my fingers were clear.
I took the piece of tape and snapped it between my fingers, then placed it over my color block. It bonded to the fabric instantly, covering it with matte black. Glancing at the key, I walked around the corner and found the coffin I’d been issued. It was thankfully at ground level and only one layer up. I stuck the key into the slot on the door and pressed it in until it was flush, and the door slid down a few centimeters, then rotated open. I slid my boots off, set them in the cubby just inside the door, then grabbed the taped handlebar over the door and slid myself into the coffin.
The door shut and locked itself when I was inside.
Coffins came in standardized sizes and were issued by volume. You get what you fit in and nothing more. They varied by manufacturer, but there was a standardized set of basic amenities: a mattress pad, lighting, filtered climate-controlled air, a smart multimedia system, and a dispenser for water rations came with all of them. Nicer models had extra features; this was not one of them. It was clean, and everything worked, which matched my somewhat foggy memory of my last night here.
I pulled the empty pouch I’d been drinking out of earlier and dispensed some water into it. My eyelids were already drooping while I dug out the handful of pills I was supposed to take, and I washed them down with the pouch. I selected afternoon showers on the media system and plugged a pair of datalinks from the wall ports to my wrist slate and collar so they could charge.
The sound of raindrops falling on polycrete filled the air.
***
I was woken up some time later by a constant, insistent throbbing sensation in my skull.
Smacking my lips, I opened my eyes--
Too bright!
My mouth felt like dried-out synthleather, and I croaked out a command for the lighting. At the lowest setting, it was at least tolerable.
I drank two full pouches of water before I felt any sense of relief. I was almost soaking wet with my own sweat, too. There wasn’t space to look, so I felt around with my fingertips. My thigh and flank felt beaten and tenderized mycoprotein, but they weren’t particularly sensitive or painful. A glance at the entertainment display told me that the better part of a day had passed while I was sleeping. I drank another pouch of water and debated the merits of getting another slate. I felt like I’d been run over a few times by a truck; flat, nearly two-dimensional, and covered with treadmarks.
More pills, a bit more water.
It can wait.
I was a little surprised that I didn’t feel like I needed to hit the stalls, but I was moist from head to toe, too. I set an alarm on my wrist slate for tomorrow morning before the checkout time. A helpful reminder of my remaining time was counting down on the coffins display.
I needed more sleep, so I slept.
My alarm didn’t wake me, but the door buzzing next to my head certainly did. I had two minutes to vacate before the rammer ejected me with the precise amount of force required to dump me headfirst on the pavement outside.
“I’m going, fuck!” I yelled. Working quickly, I stashed my cables, ate another handful of pills, and managed to drink two pouchfuls of aquacola before the door opened. I wasn’t still soaking wet and felt marginally better, although my headache was still present. Maybe marginally worse. I wasn’t soaking wet, but I was crusty. Outside the coffin, I stepped into my boots and turned my face on.
Holy damn, these painkillers are strong!
I wobbled out of the love motel and into the street. The ever-present lighting of the red light had these cryo star and halo effects going on.
I tried to find a slate shack, but wasn’t having much in the way of luck. The painkillers were kicking my ass; everything was swaying like on an old-timey boat.
I bumped into someone, and they shoved me.
It took me longer than I’d care to admit to get back upright.
Some time later, I was feeling a touch hungry, only to find out my chits had gone missing at some point. I double-checked and—my puncher was still where it belonged.
I should just head… Fuck, man, my place.
I needed a place to rest for a moment, and I’d been turned out of a cafe full of girls in cute dresses and a stool at a vendor booth already.
I wish I had some cute dresses…
An alley was mostly light-free, which was good, because lights sucked right now. I sat down and rested my back against the building. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was an improvement. Things weren’t spinning around nearly as hard right now.
I had a gas bubble and went to burp, but threw up on myself instead. I used half of my remaining water to wash it off my shirt and drank the rest.
***
I woke up to someone rummaging in my pockets. I cracked my eye to see a younger kid. You had to watch out for the kids. I pulled and put the face of my puncher against their chin.
They stopped what they were doing and laughed nervously.
“Ey, ey, soz, lady! Thought you was zeroed out! Can’t tell with the mask, you know!”
I went to talk and hacked out a cough. “F—fuck off. M’not dead.”
“Course not. You know how it is. Can I go?”
“Yeah. Get out of ‘ere.”
They took off, and I closed my eye. My head hurt, like my brain was in a bench vise and someone was cranking away at it. I kept my hand firmly closed around my puncher in the event the kid returned.
***
“Well, well, well. What’ve we got here?”
“Looks like someone took a shit and nuked it. Smells worse, somehow.”
“They are fairly ripe, aren’t they?”
I worked a swallow and cracked an eye. My lids were sticking together. Something bumped against my lashes. A fly, maybe. Everything hurt. Even breathing took effort. I didn’t have words for what was happening inside my skull.
Two girls—no, two women were standing several paces back, near the opposite wall of the alleyway. Everything was wavy.
One had a string bikini top on, shiny gold with black patterns of some sort. Ink, good ink, I thought, from the neck down. Some chroma-shift, some glowing and moving. A vine in neon teal. She had on a hooded crop top and hotpants, both black. Net stockings in a gold that matched her bikini, shiny and metallic. Sleeves pushed up to the elbows, metallic fingernails. Muscular, with hard abs and defined legs.
I blinked my eye a few times to try to clear my vision a bit. I liked what I was seeing. She had rainbow-colored hair in spiky chunks pointing in every direction, and a garrison cap on her head. Three pins I didn’t recognize, three gold dots in a row, and a silver bar. One more pin, which I did recognize. A neon-pink peacock’s feather.
Oh…
My eyes dropped lower. Black webbing showing under the jacket, around the collar, with a reflective chevron pattern on the straps. Two holsters, two guns. Zero attempt at concealment. A metal-framed puncher with a wood grip on the left side, and a full polymer on the right side, in bubblegum pink.
A heavy. No doubt about it.
It’s been a good run, I guess.
I glanced over at the other figure. A high-neck bodysuit that was so thin and skintight you could probably see a pimple through it, in bright violet. Slightly shiny, but not nearly as much as the metallic fabric of the other one. The piping on the edges of the bodysuit glowed electric blue. She had a curvier figure, much more of an hourglass. Her choice of clothing, including the knee-high stiletto-heeled boots, wasn’t what drew my eye.
She was Sul’vari, with red skin, black hair, a spade-tipped tail, and shiny black horns. Round, and nearly black glasses in a very vintage style were perched on her nose. Fitted wings on the arms of the glasses shielded the eyes, but you could see the orange glow of her eyes through the dark lenses.
A User, of course, as with all Sul’vari. The glasses tinted the glow of her eyes somewhat, but she was fire-aspected, I was certain of it.
“Careful, they’re armed,” the shorter and more loudly-dressed of the two cautioned the other.
“I noticed. Well, what do you think?” The horned woman asked her companion.
“Think they look like someone with digits the neighbors are looking for. Looks half-dead already. Could send ‘em the rest of the way there.” She reached for her polymer puncher.
I tried to lift mine, but the best I managed was twitching my forearm and dragging the plastic across the pavement a few degrees to the left.
The Sul’vari placed a clawed hand over the other’s, pausing her mid-draw. She licked dark lips and smiled, bright white teeth and fangs gleaming in the dim alleyway. “No, I don’t think so. I think I want to keep them.”
The other woman slapped a palm to her forehead and groaned loudly. “You can’t be serious right now,” she complained.
“Humor me? Help me carry them back to my place?”
“I’m not cleaning up after you when this turns into a mess, or you get bored with this one, Vael.”
I coughed and closed my eye. Being kidnapped was dubiously better than my present circumstances.
I heard giggling, and it looped endlessly, haunting wild, nonsensical dreams.
Several times, I felt half-awake, hearing voices and sounds, being poked and nudged, flashes of light, but it all blurred together into one extended dream slash nightmare.
***
I smacked my lips and wiped some drool from my cheek. I was seriously groggy and still had the just-woke-up tingling partial numbness in my limbs. Still yawning, I climbed out of bed in a room I didn’t recognize. What I did recognize was the adjacent room with toilet facilities. I had to go, badly.
Unusual sensations greeted my barely cognizant self. Something about my perspective was off, things weren’t quite where I expected them to be, and I felt… Bouncier? Unfamiliar weight shifting when I moved.
I slapped the light toggle inside the doorway and closed the door, then froze mid-turn.
I blinked rapidly.
So did the dark-haired, smooth-skinned woman in the mirror. She brought a trembling hand to her face and touched her full lips.
I felt fingers much softer than I was familiar with on my lip.
I swallowed and blinked out a tear.
That wasn’t the most shocking part, somehow.
No, it was the light amber-colored eyes.
Ever-so-faintly luminous eyes.
The woman in the mirror opened her mouth when I did, and we both screamed.