Even though I paid rent for my office, I knew I'd be responsible for the cost of the damage.
I passed under an amber streetlight, my reflection showing against the darkened window of a screen projector store. My black hair fell around my face, limp in the rain but still shaggy and uneven. My inset eyes were shadowed by the light and rainwater dripped from my narrow jaw. Behind my reflection, a screen projector clicked on, the attached camera probably noticing my face. A white band of light became a rectangular holographic panel that glowed in the darkened shop.
The frame darkened, showing footage of New Independence as seen from space. Earth was a huge azure sphere with wisps of cottony clouds over its surface—the endless super cities were shadowy black streaks that stretched over the continents. New Independence hung motionless in the star field like a crystal snow globe, a ribbon of earth's cerulean light reflecting across its side. Inside the glass dome, towers and skyscrapers rose nearly to its top and the streets at the base wove together in a network of lanes and highways.
The female voice came over the image in a pleasant reassuring tone, like a realtor trying to sell a house, “New Independence is among the oldest orbital habits in the solar system. Over three and a half million people call it home, some of which still commute to their jobs on Earth. Hydroponics and irrigated soil beds create a stable supply of fresh food and other resources. See what you can do to join the millions of people already living in—the City in the Sky!”
As I turned away from the shop the screen faded again to a white panel before disintegrating completely. A dancing citrine light spilled over the pavement from a nearby cul-de-sac. I found the opening between two abandoned electronics stores, both walled up with sheet metal and plastered with several layers of graffiti. The newest tags were some kind of monochrome digital pattern, like a pixelated fish skull in profile.
Long shadows stirred near the back of the alley, a handful of figures stood around a bonfire—their silhouettes projected like giants against the crumbling cement walls. The fire was built into a fifty gallon drum, flames flickering through rusted holes in the sides. They mostly wore tattered coats of dingy colors, pants of thick cloth with darker patches sewn into the knees.
I stepped between two of them and lowered my face to the crackling fire to light my smoke, it smelt like burning plastic and soy fiber, “You see any Agents in the tunnel today?”
A man that stood a head length taller than me got his face next to mine. His wide nostrils flared and his lips peeled back showing his teeth, the dancing firelight touched his mocha-colored skin and the yellowed whites of his eyes, “What are you doing here—trying to take my creds? I could break you, little man.”
“Settle down, Crispen,” A short man in a long coat that was too big for his small frame stepped toward him, greasy hair the color of pinto beans, and offered Crispen a crumpled plastic bottle—something murky the color of transmission fluid sloshed inside, “Have some of this, it'll take the fight out of you. Sorry about that Adrian, Crisp here gets testy without his Grav fix.”
Gravulentatine had been originally used when New Independence was first established, a counter to the effects of gravity sickness. The sickness itself having been brought on by exposure to some unknown form of radiation. After the sickness had been quarantined and treated, the drug had been taken out of production. Street labs now make their own form of it, although not as pure as the original recipe, it gives the junkies something to curb their cravings—if only a little.
I took a drag off my cigarette and held it in for a moment before letting it out, “Whatever Damien, I'm going up today. You see anyone or not?” I took a cred stick from my pocket, a short black cylinder with a data port on one end and a white LED stripe showing it held twenty credits.
Damien took the stick, checking the display for the exact balance, “Nope, no Agents today. There were some Razors in the tube this morning, but I think they cleared out.”
The Razors were a gang from the next sector over. This was outside their territory and I wondered if they were planning another turf war. They got their name from the long straight knives they carried, slender fiber-steel bars that they took from wrecked military vehicles in the junkyard. After a few hours of grinding the bars against a slab of concrete, the knives were sharp enough to cleave body armor like tissue paper. I'd seen it first hand and I didn't want to see it again. I wanted to know more about what the Razors were doing here but I didn't have the creds to buy it out of Damien. It seemed the price of information had gone up—again.
02
I found a rusted door in the corner of the alley and pushed it open, the steel scraping powder from the concrete walls of the abandoned building. A shaky ladder took me to the next floor where a group of grease-stained PVC tents and corrugated sheet metal shacks lined the walls of the cement warehouse. A group of figures, dressed much like the men I'd seen outside, were picking through wrappers and boxes from a trashcan, the lid to which had been pried off with a piece of rebar and a broken concrete slab. One of them huddled against the cement wall, his arms tucked in tight to his body and his head lowered into his stained hooded sweatshirt. His shoulders were quivering and his muscles twitched, like a feral animal reacting to every sound. I suspected he was entering the final stages of Grav poisoning. If he lived through the next few days, his companions could be in trouble.
I stopped midway through the shanty thoroughfare, maybe I could check on him, make sure he wasn't going to be a danger to anyone else. I took a few steps toward him and something buckled under my combat boot. I'd crushed a can of processed meat, the kind grown in a lab and treated with ammonia to discourage bacterial growth. He had probably hurled the can against the floor. He must have been worse than I'd thought.
He made some motion with his open hand, like he was petting the wall. As I got closer I could see he was scratching it, his fingertips bleeding and leaving dark streaks. A chip of concrete scraped under my boot and his body lowered and tensed.
He sprang at me, flailing bloody fingers toward my face, ragged nails swiping for my eyes. A steel chain rattled and snapped behind him. I flung my left arm up to shield my throat, but he never hit me—something restrained him. Under the hood, his face was stretched back and his eyes were wide and crazed, teeth snapping like a wild dog. A rusted chain kept him tethered to the wall, one end looped over a piece of bent rebar and the other welded to a coupling around his neck.
Someone had the foresight to restrain him before his mind had completely deteriorated but they hadn't the strength to fix him altogether. Maybe he'd done it to himself. It wouldn't be long until he became a Fiend, a creature with absolute absence of reason or higher brain function. When that happened, someone would have to put him down. I wondered if they would call me to take care of it.
I left the camp. There was nothing I could do for him now and I didn't want to dwell on it. A crumbling set of concrete stairs with rebar showing took me up another level of the derelict tower. Many of the walls were missing on this floor, long opaque sheets of plastic hung in their place. They flapped like flags in the artificial breeze, the scent of dust and coolant from the city outside. I pulled a sheet of plastic away from the opening and stood on the ledge. The cigarette in my mouth had long been a stub and I ground it out on the concrete.
Some neons from the street persisted in the night, painting sheets of colored light that scintillated over the brick paneling. A row of streetlights winked beneath me, some of the lighting coils were dark, probably missing or broken. The dome isn't visible from the slums—instead, the view is dominated with an uneven steel ceiling. Vents spewing steam and exhaust while large fans spin and circulated oxygen. In some places, round portholes with keypads jut from the riveted steel, service tunnels that lead to the next set of levels.
A tiny reflective sphere hung in the distance, bobbing through the air toward me. It's flightpath was erratic, stopping to descend for a moment before returni
ng to its course. As it came closer, I could make out the fan of antennae on its back. It's body was a dome camera about the size of a basketball, the lens inside darted on its axis, twisting and focusing. The air vibrated with the hum of its stabilizer field as it ascended to my level, focus ring spinning and narrowing on my face—scanning my identity.
The tinny distorted voice came from an unseen speaker with the uneven rhythm of computer-generated speech, “You are in violation of curfew in Sector Zeta-Niner, please return to your domicile.”
I reached into my pocket and drew a hand held device like a small envelope with a dark metallic coating, clicking the screen open as I did so, “Maintenance protocol gamma seven, clearance one-four.”
The cam drone hovered in place, it's running lights went dark and the lens contracted until closed. It remained in the air just an arm's length away while I tapped into the amber grid on my mobile. I found the hacked maintenance routine I had written for these robots and keyed into its wireless signal. It asked for a password but the routine accessed the log and entered the last password used. I was in.
I thumbed through the most recent frames of the video, finding