Writers--John

​Jon Adcock lives in Northern California. He loves alt-rock, Akira Kurosawa movies, and craft beer. Rage Against the Machine, the Black Keys, and the Warlocks are in heavy rotation on Spotify for writing inspiration. 

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Under the Twinkle of a Fading Star

My right eye was an implant. As I rode down rain-slicked streets, the portable feed traced the route in red on the implant. I followed the directions until I came to a small store on a rundown, darkened cul-de-sac. The lights in the store were still on, and Lucius was seated behind the counter. The customer area before him was cluttered with stock shelves filled with antique tech. Locked cages behind him presumably held the valuable junk.

A bell sounded above the door as I walked in. His right arm quickly disappeared under the counter, and he looked at me with an expression of wariness and distrust. He was at least 70, grizzled and leathery, with a spider web of scars on the left side of his face. His left arm was prosthetic.

“We’re closing up.” His voice was as grizzled and leathery as he was.

“Must be doing pretty well to turn down business.” I glanced around the empty store.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me. I’m doing all right. What do you want?”

“I’m going to reach into one of these pockets and pull out my portable, Pops. I’m only telling you this if you have that right hand on something other than your dick. No need to start things off with an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

His eyes never left me as I slowly walked over to him. There was a brief hesitation before he took the portable, and after he glanced at the display, his right hand snaked back into view. He scrolled through the screen with interest.

“Most of this is old military tech—cybernetic stuff. Not too easy to get anymore,” he said. “And this last item. A very unusual request.”

“You’re supposed to be the best scrounger around.”

“If it’s out there, I can get it.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“What were you? Marauder Class?”

“Nah. I was strictly recon.” I smiled slightly as he visibly relaxed.

“So, how much of you is steel and Syntha-Flesh?” he asked as he jacked the portable into the data port implanted in his right temple.

“Pops, it’s easier to ask how much ain’t.”

We reminisced for a while. A couple of old soldiers trading war stories and a few bald-faced lies we were too polite to call each other on. Finally, I told him I had to leave and got a commitment to have most of the items on the list in three weeks.

“Ghost tech?” he asked as he reached out and fingered the fabric of my jacket. “How much you want for it?”

“Sorry, not for sale. Still comes in handy these days.”

“Hey,” he called out as I started to walk out the door. “Is Jackson your first or last name?”

“Does that even matter anymore, Lucius? It’s what I answer to.”

I was state-of-the-art once, but now had more in common with those bins of discarded junk than anyone I passed on the way here. I was old tech embedded in even older flesh, and obsolescence was a bitch. I rolled the motorcycle into the street and straddled it. Like me, the bike was Pre-Burn, but it purred as softly as a kitten when switched on. Technically, the bike wasn’t “mine.” I checked it out from the motor pool a year ago. Like clockwork, an automated request was sent each week asking for it to be returned. I never got tired of deleting it.

The night was chilly, and tendrils of fog groped after me as I rode. Public transportation ended hours ago, and the late evening streets were sparsely populated. By now, all the good and conscientious citizens were snuggled under their covers, resting up for the drudgery of their jobs the next day. Few could be called good or conscientious where I was headed.

For two weeks, I’d been looking for a 15-year-old girl lost among the drunks, druggies, and hard cases of the Fester. The girl was the daughter of an old friend, and I was determined to find her. 

Little more than a drizzle, the afternoon’s rain had done little to wash the city clean. The streets were more oily than wet, and the buildings were smeared with soot and industrial filth washed down from the perpetually hazy skies. As I got closer to the Fester, the more things were dressed in squalor. In some blocks, the buildings had been razed, and the only thing left were foundations filled with stagnant water and trash. 

On a deserted side street, I parked down a narrow, garbage-filled alley that stank like piss and slapped a holoprojector on the bike. It disappeared, replaced with an image of the wall. That was as safe as I could make it. Several years before, the authorities had tried to use sentry drones to patrol at night, but the attrition rate was too high. The scavenged scrap metal, tech, and weaponry made a downed drone worth its weight in gold. People had devised various imaginative and innovative ways to swat them out of the sky. Since then, Security had given up on the Fester, resigned to let lawlessness reign between the occasional random sweep.

A streetlight flickered on and off on a far corner. The dark swelled and seethed at the edges of light, then rushed in to fill the void like an inky tide. A group of wannabes was gathered near it. There were five of them, all in their 20s, and their laughter and horseplay stopped when they noticed me. To a man, they each struck a pose that they thought intimidating. Something they’d probably learned from watching old vids. I tried not to roll my eyes. 

“It’s late, Gramps. Must be past your bedtime…heh...heh,” one of them said when I got closer. He was about 4 inches shorter than me, stocky, with long hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“I’m good. Took a nap this afternoon.”

“Took a nap…heh…heh.” 

“Looking for a girl,’ I reached out my arm. A foot-high holo of Toni appeared in the air over my open palm. ‘Seen her?”

“Looking for a girl…heh…heh.” 

“This will go a lot faster if you stop repeating everything I say, son.” My frustration over the last few days flared into anger.

“Didn’t just see her, Gramps. Fucked her and killed her. Should’ve heard her squeal when….” Whatever else he was going to say was cut off when I lashed out with my right arm, grabbed him around the throat, and lifted him off the ground.

“So, how ‘bout the rest of you? Seen her?” I asked their retreating backs as the one I held scrabbled and clawed at my arm. When his pawing grew weaker, I let go, and he fell to his hands and knees.

“If I thought you idiots had done something to her, there wouldn’t be enough left for Body Retrieval to bother with.” I knelt, grabbed his hair, and pulled until he made eye contact.

I walked away and left him there. I reached up and rubbed my right shoulder when I was down a few streets and out of sight. It would be stiff and sore when I woke up the following day. For the next four hours, I talked to street people and visited bars, gambling dens, and brothels. The result was the same one I’d gotten each night since I started. No one had seen Toni or knew anything about her. This wasn’t some Pre-Burn vid. There wasn’t a trail of clues like breadcrumbs leading to her, and the feeling that I wasn’t up to the job grew.

This is a tale of two cities, a story of haves and have-nots. The have-nots lived up here in the filth of Old Town, under skies perpetually hazy from the smokestacks of the city’s industrial section. The haves lived in an underground enclave in the hills outside the city. The enclave existed pre-Burn and, back then, had a name that reflected the pretentiousness of the one-percenters residing there. Nowadays, if it was called anything at all, it was called Grubville by the Townies.

Toni had left Grubville one morning three weeks ago. She was chipped, and enough infrastructure was left to track some of her movements that day. The public transportation dropped her off at the open-air market in the town center. She walked to the Fester from there, and then her chip went dark. I’ve gotten a few errant children of the elites out of jams before. Usually, it was a teenage boy with more hormones than common sense—someone who wanted a little taste of danger and thrills. An idiot I had to drag out of some drug house or brothel. This was different. Her chip going dark strongly indicated that someone had snatched her.

People see things and hear things. They’ll talk for the right price, but two weeks of showing her holo and dangling a reward had gotten me nothing.

Home was a small, two-story townhouse in a section of the city a few steps above the Fester. The floor plan was simple. There was a kitchen, dining nook, and living room downstairs. Two bedrooms were upstairs. The décor was dumpster dive/rummage sale chic. When I got home, I rolled the bike in, left it leaning against the living room wall, and looked for something to eat. Most of the things in the fridge were of questionable age, but there was a container of grilled meat I had bought from a street vendor two nights before. It wasn’t vat-grown and gave a new definition to mystery meat, but at least it hadn’t been two-legged when breathing. 

After dinner, I grabbed a bottle of booze from the cupboard and settled on the threadbare couch to read Don Quixote. I bought it and a box of other books from a vendor in the marketplace a few weeks ago. The books were old and musty, with loose bindings and yellowed pages, but they gave me an escape from reality’s harsh edges. So did the booze.

It was late afternoon when I woke up. I lay there on the couch for a while and took inventory of all the hurts. As expected, the right shoulder was a new one. The sun was making one of its rare appearances, and pale sunlight dribbled in through the front window. The light was so weak that the sun must have felt like I did. I had made good progress with my book but even better with the bottle. I finally got up and only felt half dead after a shower and a few protein wafers. 

The second bedroom was set up with a rickety desk and workstation. I logged into Security and went through my daily checkoffs in the hunt for Toni: hospital and morgue admissions, arrest reports, and any results from the surveillance barnacles I had surreptitiously scattered around the Fester. The barnacles were semi-flat, 4 inches across, and would adhere to any surface. They had the added advantage of being able to chameleon to whatever they were attached to. An anomaly or a facial recognition hit would trigger an alert, and one of them had transmitted the previous night. I watched the video several times and only saw an empty street. Finally, I caught the tell-tale shimmer that indicated someone was using a scrambler field to fool surveillance. After years of vandalism of any monitoring means, the Fester was a security dead zone. Wearing a scrambler in that environment was unusual, but paranoia was probably as commonplace there as the rats. Still, it was worth a look.

The area was near Ground Zero, and most structures had suffered damage from the blast and subsequent firestorm. Blackened tree stumps lined the road, and piles of rubble 20 feet tall showed where buildings once stood. In some places, all that was left were twisted girders that reached up to Heaven like a dying man’s hands raised in unanswered supplication. The area was what a whimper of pain would look like. The building the shimmer had disappeared into was an old warehouse on the edge of the devastation. It still bore scars from where the flames had licked at it. 

When I stepped inside, I was assailed by noise and a funk composed of mildew, reefer, and unwashed bodies. Converted into a nightclub, the interior was dank, dim, and packed with people. A U-shaped bar in the center looked like it had been cobbled together from lumber scavenged from the surrounding scrap heaps. Mismatched tables and chairs were scattered throughout. A hole was cut into the floor near the far wall, and a large group was crowded around the railings that circled it. Over their shouts, I could hear growls and yelps of pain. I pushed my way to the front. A fighting ring was set up in the brightly lit basement, and two recombinants were locked in a struggle. Recoms were our bioengineered slaves, chimeras the splicers created with animal and human DNA. Both were Canis and tore into each other while the crowd around me cheered and placed bets. Not for the first time, I wondered who the real animals were.

I moved over to the bar and ordered a beer. If Shimmer were here, I trusted my finely honed detective skills would pick him out. I leaned back and observed the crowd, looking for anything unusual or suspicious. The guy at the end of the bar was bare-chested, and his entire upper body and head were covered in a spiderweb tattoo. He also had a large, realistic spider tattoo on his chest. I raised my beer and then froze as the spider started to move. It crawled to his shoulder and then down his arm to the bar. Its head was rat-like. I muttered, “Fucking splicers,” and moved down several stools. The new plan was to finish my beer, show Toni’s holo around, and then go home.

“Someone wants to see you,” a voice rumbled as a large hand slapped down on my shoulder.

I looked up. The voice and hand belonged to one of the largest humans I’d ever seen. He was at least 7 feet tall, and it looked like his muscles had their own muscles. He also had enlarged facial bones and a misshapen body, the usual signs of backroom gene mods and wet augmentation. Goliath stared down for a moment, turned around, and lumbered off. I swiveled around on my barstool and waited. Finally, after about 20 feet, he realized I wasn’t following behind like a puppy dog and lumbered back.

“I said someone wants to see you,” he rumbled again.

“Yeah, heard you the first time, but it still sounds more like a statement than an invitation.”

“You need to follow me.” His face creased up in frustration.

“Lead on.”

I grabbed my beer and followed. The bar was crowded, but people quickly moved out of the way. He was like a great white swimming through schools of minnows, and I trailed behind in his wake. Our goal was a table at the far, quieter end of the bar, with three hard cases sitting at it. It was evident that the one in the middle was the man in charge, and the other two were hired muscle. He was short, fair-haired, and had a build that had been muscular at one time but was on a downhill slide toward fat. The other two were big and beefy. In front of him was something as rare as a unicorn: a bottle of Jack Daniels. There was one glass next to the bottle.

“Here he is, Len,” my escort said, petulantly adding, “He thinks he’s funny.”

“Antagonizing Donny isn’t very smart,” Len gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. There was a jitteriness about him that had to be chemically induced. 

“Doing stupid things is one of my personality traits. I like to think it’s endearing.” My smile didn’t reach my eyes either. “So, how ‘bout cutting to the chase? What do you want?”

“Man, hostile and impatient. No wonder you old-timers fucked everything up so bad. I’m trying to do you a favor, man, so sit down, have a drink, and stop being such a dick. Hey!” This last was said to the busser walking past us. “Get my friend a glass.” 

I sat down across from him. Donny was a looming presence directly behind me. After the busser returned, Len opened the bottle and poured two fingers worth into each glass. He raised his glass in a toast, waited until I did the same, and slammed it back. I took a cautious sip. 

“So, whaddya think?” he asked.

“Not sure whose bathtub it was made in, but that’s not Jack. So, I sat and had my drink. What do you want?”

“You crack me up, man. OK, let’s get down to business. Hear you’re looking for someone. I can help.”

“Yeah, I’m looking for a girl. Seen her?” I asked with my palm up and Toni’s holo slowly rotating. My arm started to tremble, and I steadied it. The trembling had begun over a year ago and was getting worse. There was a crash nearby. The busser had dropped a tray of glasses and was clumsily trying to clean it up.

“Look at that dress and those curls. That’s no Townie. So, a little lamb is lost among us wolves. No wonder Security was up everybody’s asses a couple of weeks ago. So, what? They came up with jack, and you’re Plan B? Bet Daddy Grub is paying a lot to get her back.”

“If you’ve got some info, I’d like to hear it. If not, we’re done here.”

“We’re done when I say we’re done. Have to tell ya, man, this tough guy act is starting to wear on me. Don’t get me wrong, bet you were a badass, but that was, what, like 30 years ago. You’re old now and should take it easy. Go home and put your feet up. Enjoy your twilight years. Before you leave, though, upload everything about the girl and her daddy. We’ll take it from here. Daddy will get his little darling back. Provided, of course, he pays the asking price.” He used his forefinger to slide a data transfer module across to me as he said this.

“So, here’s what’s going to happen,” I picked up the module, snapped it in half between my thumb and fingers, and dropped the pieces on the table. “I’m getting up and walking out of here. And you’re going back to whatever you do. Deal some Bliss. Sell bootlegs of Jack Daniels. Whatever. Just stay away from her and me. Do that, and you might live long enough to be as old as I am.” 

“Why’d you go and do that?” He scooped up the broken pieces. “I wanted to keep things nice and friendly like, but I guess some people can’t be reasoned with. So now, it’s gotta get…messy.”

I slammed the table forward, knocking all three over backward in their chairs. I flipped the table on top of them, grabbed the chair I had been sitting on, and swung it against Donny’s head. The chair shattered, and Donny was knocked back a few feet. He gave me a smile that let me know I was in for a world of hurt and came at me. I ducked under his punch and gave him two quick jabs to the kidneys. It was like punching a wall. A backhand caught me across the cheek and sent me reeling over the top of one of the nearby tables. Both hired muscles were on their feet and coming at me then. When one of them got close enough, I grabbed a chair and brought it down on his head. He dropped and wasn’t getting up. I threw a table at Donny to slow him down. A kick to the groin sent the second heavy to his knees. I pulled his head up by the hair and punched him rapidly. He crumpled to the ground. Donny stalked me as I tried to keep the tables between him and me. Now I knew how a mouse felt. There had been screams and a scrambling exit from this part of the bar when the fight started. Four bouncers stood nearby but were in no hurry to step between Donny and me.

“Take a look at your shoulder, Donny. Fights over. Another step, and they’ll be cleaning you up with shovels and buckets.” I held up a detonator. There was a limpet grenade attached to his shoulder. I had slapped it on before he knocked me across the room. He stopped and started to reach for it. “It’ll release in about 30 minutes. Try pulling it off before then, and you’ll paint the walls with your insides.”

“Whoa. There’s nothing personal in any of this.” Len held his hands out placatingly as I walked towards him. “I just saw an opportunity.”

“A little lesson.” I grabbed his shirt and lifted him. “Even old dogs can still bite. Listen carefully, Len, so there’s no confusion. I'll kill you if I even hear your name and hers mentioned together.”

When I got home, I skipped the book and went straight to the bottle. It was late afternoon before I finally woke up. After washing down a handful of stimulants with tepid tap water, I went through the daily checklist: hospitals, morgues, etc. No results. I sat and thought. One thing that bothered me was why she went into the Fester. Anti-Grub sentiments ran high there, and Toni was smart enough to know that. Security thought she wandered there by accident and that whatever happened was a crime of opportunity. What if that was bullshit., and she went there to meet someone? Hundreds of Townies worked in Grubville, and one could have struck up a friendship with her. I pulled up the personnel database and narrowed the search to workers who had the day of her disappearance off or called in sick that day. There were more than I thought there’d be. 

I went downstairs to get the bottle and finished it while scrolling through the files. Townies were heavily vetted before they were allowed to work around the elites, but I cross-referenced each name with Security just in case. Two hours later, I was still looking. Finally, something nagged at me, and I scrolled back up and stared at the ID photo of Jeremy Sloan, a 17-year-old worker. Sloan was a good-looking kid with dark brown eyes, light brown skin, and a 1000-watt smile. Something was familiar about him. It finally dawned on me that he was the busser from last night. He also worked in one of the residential dining halls up the hill.

Four nights later, I sat on a bench across from the public transportation terminal, waiting for Sloan to arrive after his shift in Grubville. The surveillance of him over those last few days had been fruitless. All the kid did was work and sleep. Searching his apartment turned up a scrambler hidden under his bed, but nothing to tie him to Toni. I didn’t want to hand him over to Security if I wasn’t 100% sure. People who went into their basement interrogation rooms usually didn’t leave them. 

Down the block, two indentured workers painted over anti-Grub graffiti sprayed on the front of a building. That kind of anger and resentment was once rare, but times had changed. Lately, a generalized discontent had spread as more have-nots questioned why they were supposed to be content with scraps the haves let drop from their table of plenty. Strikes and acts of industrial sabotage were common. The city was calm like a bomb.

The transport came into view. It carried over 50 workers and was pulled by bioengineered draught animals. After they entered the terminal, the draughts yowled and steamed in the cool evening air as the workers disembarked. Restless and irritable, the draughts seemed to know this was their last run of the night. After this, they would be taken to the kennels in the following block to be fed and put to bed. The draughts were large and hairy, with thick black tongues that lolled out of their mouths as they fidgeted and panted. They gave off a smell like newly mowed grass. Sloan was one of the last workers off. He joined the queue at the fenced, secured property area. A simian-like recom was on duty there and carefully checked the workers’ tickets as they retrieved their bikes and scooters. Sloan finally got his scooter and rode off. 

A tracker was hidden on his scooter, so I waited a bit before following him. A street map was fed to my implant, with Sloan’s route traced in red. The city’s streets were their usual chaotic mess. Scooters sped and weaved among the public vehicles and the beasties that pulled them. Pedestrians impatiently waited on the street corners for a break in the traffic. The more daring ones would offer up a prayer and dart across. Creative profanity was the soundtrack to a near accident ahead of me. As I rode, my motorcycle got more than a few envious looks. Pre-Burn tech was in diminishing supply, and the bike still looked good for all its rust spots and scratches. I wished I could say the same about myself.

The looks eventually became less envious and more menacing. When I was in the heart of the Fester, a mile from the previous night’s bar, the red tracing that was Sloan’s route stopped moving. I cruised slowly through a residential area filled with abandoned or partially demolished townhouses. A fire had raged through here, and a long stretch held little more than blackened husks. The tracker’s signal came from a townhouse near the end of a long row of mostly intact homes. I rode past, parked in an alley a few blocks away, and ghosted. The stealth tech I wore was Pre-Burn, and I faded from view like a Cheshire Cat. During the day, anyone looking close enough might see a slight distortion, but I was completely invisible at night. One of the houses on the block was a Bliss house, and eight addicts were sprawled on the front steps, surrounded by empty vials. A baseline dog was crouched near the feet of one of them. As I got closer, the dog’s hackles went up, and he started to growl. 

“Rico, shhh.” His emaciated owner reached out and touched the dog’s head affectionately. He settled down but still gave a slight growl as I passed. The dog was in better shape than his owner and would probably outlive him. Bliss years were hard years, and the owner was just another junkie with tombstones in his eyes.

The tracker’s signal came from what seemed like a nondescript house, but its differences stood out as I got closer. All the windows were barred, and the door was heavy and solid. The place looked like a prison. I used a pen-sized laser to burn out the lock and open the front door. Sloan’s scooter was just inside, leaning against a wall. There were voices from upstairs. 

The house was dark, and I switched to night vision as I descended the stairs. The voices came from a room at the end of the second-floor hallway. They were muffled, and I couldn’t hear what was said but could tell a man and a woman were in the room. I waited outside the door for a moment and then kicked it open. Sloan was in a chair but jumped to his feet when the door flew open. Sitting on the edge of the bed was someone dressed in men’s coveralls with close-cropped hair dyed black. A determined effort had been made to disguise her, but it was Toni. I un-ghosted, and Sloan rushed me. I ducked under his wild swing, hit him in the kidney, and followed it up with a straight right to the chin. He staggered, and an open-handed thrust to the chest slammed him into the wall, where he hung pinned. Toni leaped on my back, and I dragged her off with my other arm and dropped her on the ground.

“Toni, it’s OK. I’m here to help. Your father sent me,” I said as she scooted backward until she was up against the far wall.

“My father?” I wouldn’t have thought so much anguish could be poured into such a small word.

“Her father is the one she needs saving from,” Sloan said as he wiped at the blood that trickled down his chin. 

“I’m not going back.” She pulled a knife from her coveralls and held it to her throat.

“Toni….” Sloan started to say.

“I’m not going back, Jeremy. He’s never going to touch me again.”

Her words were like a punch in the gut, and what they implied made me sick. I stared down into eyes filled with pain and desperation. More pain than anyone that young should feel. 

“I thought you were in danger, Toni. I promise you won’t have to go back.” I let go of Sloan and slowly walked toward her, holding out my hand. “Give me the knife. I only want to help you.”

“I’m not going back,” she said, wracked by sobs. “I’d rather die.”

“Do you remember me? We met when you were little.” I crouched until I was at eye level with her. “I had a daughter, and I’ll make the same promise to you I would’ve made to her. Whatever it takes. Whatever I need to do, I’ll protect you. Now give me the knife, and let’s talk.” She hesitated and then handed the knife to me. I looked over at Sloan and asked, “You OK?” 

“I’ve been hit harder,” he said with teenage bravado.

“No, you haven’t.” I straddled the chair and motioned for the two of them to sit on the edge of the bed. “So, what was the plan? She runs away and spends the rest of her life in this shithole?”

“Jeremy has family in one of the farming communities. We’re going there.” Toni wiped her eyes with her right hand. Sloan’s fingers were entwined with her left.

“You’ll need a fake identity chip, and both of you need travel papers,” I said.

“Those can be bought on the black market,” Sloan said.

“Yeah, they can, but I’ve seen where you live and what you ride, and you don’t have the credits. By the way, what’s with this place? Bars on the windows and a front door like a bank vault? How’d you find it?”

“I know people in the Movement. This is one of their safe houses. So, what? You thought I was some Townie perv keeping her captive?” 

“The thought crossed my mind, son.”

“You suck at judging people,” he said after an angry silence and asked, “How’d you find us?”

“The scrambler. Get that from your friends?”

“Yeah, I use it whenever I go see Toni.”

“A little advice. Never act like you have something to hide.”

It took some convincing, but I got Toni to come with me and stay at my place while I figured out what to do. We rode through deserted streets, Toni perched on the back of my bike with Sloan following behind on his scooter. Once back home, I rooted through the cupboards and found enough miscellaneous foodstuffs to make us something to eat. As we ate, Toni haltingly told me about the ugliness behind the façade of a seemingly normal family. Afterward, I gave her the upstairs bedroom and let Sloan crash on the couch. I grabbed my book and a bottle and went upstairs to read in the office.

After reading the same page three times, I put the book down. It was 2 A.M., time for a reality check. I didn’t know what to do with her now that I had her. Even if I helped, there weren’t enough credits between us to get her out of the city. She couldn’t stay here forever, and there were people far more dangerous than Len around. Eventually, they’d sniff around if Samuel dangled that reward long enough. 

Of course, there was another option. I could have Security here in twenty minutes. Toni’s father, Samuel, would be in my debt, and I’d have a fattened bank account as a reward. It wouldn’t even be the worst thing I’ve done. Over the years, the shades of grey I was comfortable with had gotten darker and darker. In that time, I’d probably forged a length of chain to rival the one Marley’s ghost had dragged around. What was another link added to it? The first rule of Old Town was “take care of yourself.” Maybe it was time to follow that rule again. Eventually, trying to be Don Quixote would get me killed.

After refilling my glass, I went to Toni’s room. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open, stood in the doorway, and watched her sleep. I could make the call, have a nice payday, and earn the gratitude of someone powerful. Someone who was also a dangerous man to cross. Or I could risk everything, with no reward other than to be able to like the person in the mirror again. I drained my glass, stepped out of the room, and softly closed the bedroom door. Like I told Len, doing stupid things was one of my personality traits. Bring on the fucking windmills.

The next night, I was on the road to Grubville. In the distance, like paint spilling across the canvas of the night sky, storm clouds roiled and advanced. Due to the curfew, the road was empty, so I left the headlights off and opened the bike up. The darkness flowed over and around me as I rushed through the night with only my thoughts as a companion. Eventually, high-pitched whines told me I wasn’t alone anymore. I was flanked on either side by one of the sentry drones, and a third dropped in front of me. Eight feet long and resembling mutant mosquitos, the drones were let loose at nightfall like the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. From dusk to dawn, the area between the city limits and Grubville was a kill zone for anyone without authorization. My ID chip was pinged, and I tried to relax as the seconds ticked. My security certificates were valid, but the drones were Pre-Burn, and their AI tended to be cranky. Finally, with a sound almost like disappointment, the drones sped off to look for other prey.

Ahead, glowing like the proverbial shining city on a hill, was Grubville. It took an extensive support structure to keep an entire city under your boot heel, and the hillsides were spotted with buildings that kept that boot pressing down. Floodlights throughout the compound held the night at bay, and the darkness paced at the edges of light and waited. I turned onto the road that wound up the hill. There were a few workers still about, but they ignored me. The drones would have left me smeared on the highway if I didn’t belong there. On the right, I passed the sprawling Security compound where I used to work. I quit in a crisis of conscience a couple of years before. Toni’s father, Samuel, had pulled some strings and ensured my access and security credentials were kept valid and up to date so I could do the odd job now and then. I owed him. Near the top of the hill was the north entrance to Grubville. 

There was a remnant of an old public parking lot nearby. Its asphalt was sun-bleached to a sickly grey, with knee-high weeds thrusting up through the heavily eroded spots. I left the bike there. The heavy blast doors to Grubville reached up to the sky, a monument to avarice and selfishness. I walked between them and entered the wide corridor that led to the elevators. The echoes of my footsteps mingled with the sound of faint growls that came from ahead. A trio of recombinants was on guard at the security screening station just before the elevators. Their human handlers were nowhere in sight. During the day, dozens of guards screened the Townie laborers, but only a skeleton crew was assigned this late at night. 

Tall, stocky, and densely furred, the recoms opened their muzzles and smiled their toothy grins. Their growls grew louder the closer I came. My chip had been pinged, and my clearance was known. They must have been bored and wanted a little fun at my expense. The sniffers that worked security with the guards mewled and swarmed around my feet. I did my best to ignore them as they pawed at me and shoved huge noses into places they shouldn’t go. For them, I was probably an exciting novelty after a long day of searching the Townie laborers for contraband and explosives. Finally, one of the guards barked a command and cuffed the more inquisitive ones who were slow to heel.

“Pass!” the largest recom stepped forward and held out his hand, his claws fully extended for a little extra intimidation.

“You know I don’t need one. Gonna let me by, or will we have a problem?”

His grin grew more expansive, but there was no humor in it. His teeth were long and sharp, and he did his best to let me see them in all their glory. The skin around his obedience collar was chaffed and raw. We stood there in a stare-down for a few moments before he reluctantly stepped aside and let me pass. As the elevator door closed, I glanced back and made eye contact with the guard. His muzzle wrinkled in one last snarl, and I blew a kiss. To be honest, I did sympathize. If I were a slave, I wouldn’t pass up the chance for a bit of payback on one of the slavers. 

I took the elevator down to the park level. The artificial sun was dimmed, and only a few indentured workers were in the park. They were busy emptying trash cans and cleaning the public restrooms. I sat on a bench in the playground reserved for resident workers, nodding to an indentured who was picking up litter around the bench. He was collared, but unlike my friends upstairs, his collar would eventually come off. 

Except for the steady hum of the ventilation system, it was quiet and peaceful. It had been over a year since I’d last been here, and I’d forgotten what it was like to breathe air that didn’t have a taste to it. When I lived here, I would visit the park on Sunday afternoons and watch the kids play. Pre-Burn, I used to bring Amy to parks like this when I was home between deployments. As she played, her laughter would brush lightly across my heart like the breath of love. Samuel entered the park, and I got up to greet him.

“Thanks for meeting me here.” I shook his hand. Samuel was short, fat, and white. He personified why “grub” was an epithet for those who lived here.

“You were mysterious in your message. Did you find out something about Toni?”

“Yeah, that’s why I wanted to talk to you in person. She’s not in the city anymore. The best I could get was that she met people in the Movement, and they smuggled her out, probably to one of the coastal communities. It wasn’t a kidnapping. She ran away.”

“How long ago did this happen?” His face was flushed crimson, and his voice was tight. I’d known him long enough to tell he was seething with anger. 

“Just a few days after she vanished. Any idea why she’d run away?”

“Why? Because she’s a teenager and a spoiled brat who doesn’t appreciate what she has and what I do for her.”

“She’s out of reach, Samuel. I wish I could have done more to help.”

“She’s not out of my reach. I’ll find her and drag her back if I need to. I want names, Jackson. Anyone who helped her or even might have helped her. They’ll be lucky if the collar is the only thing they get.” They say the eyes are windows to the soul. The curtains parted slightly, and I saw something ugly and possessive.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have better news.” I pulled off my gloves. “You’ve been a good friend, Samuel. I appreciate everything you’ve done over the years.”

“Your old job is still there if you want it. You’re, what, riding shotgun on trade caravans these days? What a waste.”

“Yeah, but at least I can sleep at night. I’ll send you that list of names in the morning.’ I shook his hand. As he turned to go, I added, “I kept one of my promises to you. Someone hurt Toni, and I made sure he paid for it.”

“Good.”

I sat back on the bench as he walked away. Always have a Plan B. The old scrounger, Lucius, was as good as his reputation. If it was out there, he could get it, and what he got for me was a nasty little variant of the old Novichok nerve agent. Absorbed through the skin, it attacks the circulatory system and causes heart failure in a few hours. I pulled my gloves back on. Syntha-Flesh had its advantages. 

By now, the artificial sun wasn’t much brighter than a full moon. I turned just enough to watch Samuel leave. I’m not sure why I did that. Maybe I half expected to glimpse what was in store for him. Perhaps a shadow, darker than the rest, stalking him through the trees. Or a flash of artificial light reflected off a sharpened scythe poised to harvest another soul. There was nothing. Just a man who didn’t know he was already dead, walking home to his bed and oblivion.

I sat for a long time before finally taking the elevator back up. A man and a woman were at security screening with the recom guards. The handlers were disheveled enough that I could guess what they had been doing earlier. The guards behaved themselves on the way out. 

The rain started just before I hit the city limits. It was a few drops at first and then became something that would have encouraged Noah to build that ark. I rode through flooding streets, stung by a cold, lashing rain that seemed sent to purify the world. A few miles from home, I stopped at a bar owned by a friend. Trash, dead rats, and empty Bliss vials swirled in a nearby gutter until they disappeared down a storm drain. I pulled off my gloves, dropped them into the gutter, and raised my face and hands to the turbulent, storm-wracked sky. One of the Psalms seemed appropriate: Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin.

William was behind the bar when I walked in. He was thin and wiry, with skin that was dark and glistening. He had been my boss on the caravan runs and was still one of my favorite people. The only other person in the bar was a passed-out drunk at one of the corner tables.

“Slow night, Boss?” I asked.

“Shit, most people have more sense than to come out on a night like this.” He tossed me some clean bar towels to dry myself off.

“What can I say? I miss your company. And I need a drink.” 

“You need a drink? What happened to all the bottles I sold you a couple of weeks ago?” he asked as I sat at the bar.

“Guess I drank them.”

“As a business owner, I appreciate all the credits you’ve given me. As your friend, Jackson, what the fuck?”

“Yeah, I know. I was doing one of my side jobs, and I guess it dredged some stuff up. I’m off the booze tomorrow. For tonight, though, open a bottle and get two glasses.”

“So, what’re we drinking to?” William asked as he poured a generous amount into both glasses.

“The dead.”

“Don’t think I have enough bottles for that.”

‘Guess the one will have to do.”

​

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