Bad For Business
paces ahead of me, passing under a pale blue corridor light. I lowered my body and pumped my legs harder, my lungs beginning to burn and sweat dripping into my eyes. He lost some speed going around a corner and I came within a few strides of him. I pushed off my next step, diving and grabbing his ankle as I fell. His limbs flailed and he stumbled forward, his face slamming into the corridor wall. The sound of breaking glass echoed as his goggles struck the wall, a bead of blood ran down his face, black like engine oil in the light.
I scrambled to my feet and kept running down the corridor. After I had cleared a few more tunnels, I stopped and folded over, gasping for air. I hadn't seen any more Razors in the tube and I wondered if Tork had been trying to bluff me—maybe hoping he could discourage my pursuit. He had been wrong about that.
03
A utility ladder led me up into a hatch and it was a difficult climb with one hand, but I managed. It had a keypad on it that didn't recognize the code I had used to get in. I drew my mobile and clicked open a tab in the faceplate that snaked out a long thin cable, a silver data port at its end. These keypads weren't wireless enabled, probably to make them more secure. I jacked into the data port and ran a macro from my mobile. It cycled through every possible combination of numbers until it found the code that worked. Hacking the hatch open this way was dangerous. It would raise an alert on the network, prompting a team of Agents or a cam drone to investigate. The macro found a matching code and the hatch hissed open. I crawled out of the hatch like a rat from the sewer.
This exit from the tube brought me into an alley near a collection of sealed dumpsters. Colored neon lights reflected from puddles in the street, the water like swirled oil paint over the sidewalk, thick with pedestrians. The sound of clacking spatulas from a noodle vendor persisted above the everyday murmur of the crowed street. I kept my damaged left hand hidden in the deep pocket of my trench coat, I needed to see Reiko to get it fixed—I doubted she'd be happy to see me at this time of night.
I stepped onto the crowded street, the light from a scrolling banner above my head casting my face into a slate of crimson shadow that I could see reflected in a shop window. A cam drone whirred over the noodle vendor's cluttered stall, a woman in a long painted scarf pointing as it crossed the street. It slowed its flight over the alley, pivoting on its axis as lights flickered at the ends of it antennae. The lens made a high-pitched groan, probably focusing behind me as I merged with a crowd of young men dressed in crisp black suits. Their voices carrying on rapidly in what I thought was Hindi.
I followed them to a crosswalk where I waited for the light to change. A long mechanical drone echoed from the street behind me before it raised in pitch, the siren from an Agent's patrol car—I didn't turn to look.
On the next corner I found a glowing sign with an animated arrow that pointed me toward the tram station. It took me a few flights of elevated walkways to reach the station, the path connected to a terrace where I could see the streets below. A layer of fog distorted the ground beneath me, people and cars moved like insubstantial wraiths and the neons lit up the fog like colored lightning in storm clouds. Pinks and blues bursting while reds and oranges strobed like lights in a nightclub, pounding some beat that went unheard.
I passed into the station and stuck a cred stick into the receiver's data port, the colored LED stripe on the stick flashed and showed me the newly lowered balance. The turnstile clicked over and admitted me to the platform—a monitor over my head snapped on and played a message featuring me. It had taken my picture as I walked in and now showed me in a variety of locations. I was under a floral pattern umbrella sipping a drink out of a coconut. Then I was pointing at a tall building with diamond-shaped windows next to a beautiful Asian woman I didn't know. In the last image the two of us were sharing a steaming bowl of octopus soup outside a bistro, white calligraphy flags of flowing kanji behind us.
An old Asian man with laugh lines and thin hair, the color of fallen snow, appeared on the screen in a slate blue suit, “This could be your dream vacation Adrian Shetler, being a Private Investigator can be stressful—book an exciting and relaxing vacation with us today. You never know who you might meet.”
The ad ended with him giving me a smile and a wink before it showed the company's name, Earthside Adventures Travel Agency. As I walked away the personalized ad snapped on again, showing another person's picture and identity.
I stood on the platform and waited for the tram, pressing my mobile to my ear as I called Reiko, “Hey, you awake?”
“Answered, didn't I?” Something popped in the background noise, “Dammit, almost burnt my hair.”
“I need a fix, had a run-in with a gang,” I looked into the fold of my open pocket, the cut had stopped leaking coolant at least, but the thumb didn't move when I tried.
“You know the rule—don't come without Yoshi's,” She yelped suddenly away from the receiver, “Fire extinguisher, too.”
She hung up as a bullet-shaped tram car sped in along the rail and came to a silent and sudden stop. The magnetized rails hissed as they released their charge and the tram car settled on a cushion of air before lowering softly against the rail. The tinted glass doors pivoted on hinges and rotated up as the crowd pressed, someone shoving a forearm into my sternum. I worked my way onto the car and got inside as the doors swung down and locked into place. The turbine under us hummed, the car's weight shifting as it lifted onto the air cushion. The car lurched away from the platform, speed increasing until we shot from the tunnel, the last acceleration causing me to stumble and grab the ring suspended from the bar overhead.
There is a reason why the tram car has large glass windows that make up its walls and ceiling—it's the view from the rail. The streetlights beneath us sped along like weightless golden orbs that shimmered, their light reflecting off skyscrapers in long luminescent sheets that seemed to shatter as we flew by them. Once we cleared the southwest tunnel, the last ceiling above us peeled away and the dome stretched overhead. The familiar star field was scrawled in the timeless shadow of space, the curvature of the earth a faceless ball of darkened void. Even at this distance, the tiny lights of the endless cities sprawled and snaked along the dark continents like shimmering spiderwebs. They seemed delicate, as if a single breath would shatter them into motes of glowing dust.
Around me, the other tram passengers looked at glowing tablets or mobiles. Some of them fixed their attention at a holographic pane projected by a monocle headset. A pair of older men sat on the bench near me dressed in heavy insulated canvas suits with bands of reflective plastic around the sleeves and pant legs. Their conversation mainly focused on the business of collecting scrap metal in Earth's orbit, and a solar wind that could bring extra scrap into their corporation's sector of space.
They'd seen the view many times before and it was lost on them.
Judging by the absence of the sun, it seemed that we were in for another seventy-two hour night, or longer. Forecasts could predict the shifts of sunlight and shadow, but they weren't always accurate. When the sun came around again, it would be daylight for the same length of time, but that could be reduced with solar shielding. Living on a floating platform that orbits Earth has its downsides.
I stepped off the tram when it stopped near a shopping center called Golden Petals. The corridor stretched out to either side of me, paneled with storefronts and stalls with little counters and display cases. I walked until I reached a row of restaurants, passing under an animated sign with a cartoon hippo that blew steam from a plate of bao buns. Yoshi's cart was constructed of plastic piping that had been textured and painted to look like yellowed bamboo. A younger Asian man in a crisp white uniform stood behind the glass guard, his eyes focused on a grill full of steaming food. I ordered two number four fried rice plates, one with extra chili oil.
A few blocks away from the shopping center, I took an escalator up to a cluster of warehouses. I walked down the row of corrugated sheet metal d
oors until I found one with a cartoon lucky cat painted above the keypad. I jabbed the keys with the fingers of my damaged cybernetic hand and the door rolled into the ceiling.
Reiko's shop barely had walking space, it was full of tool cabinets, shelves and counters. All of which were littered with various parts ranging from gears and screws to lengths of cable and fiber optic line. A hanging rack was suspended from the ceiling, arms and legs and hands dangled from it like the bones of chrome or onyx skeletons. A few limbs were coated in a soft polymer that looked like flesh.
Reiko wore a lowered welding mask, her peroxide blonde hair sticking out the back like quills. A hand held welding gun rested in her grip, the nose of it touching a dished piece of stainless steel, a blue ark flaring between the contacts. Her white tank top showed she wasn't wearing a bra, the edge of a Japanese dragon tattoo visible along her ribs where a strap would have been. There was a blackened hole in the tank top near her sternum, the curve of one pale breast showing through it. Her clothing did very little to conceal her small frame, but as she worked, sinewy muscles flexed in her arms and chest.
A butane torch on the counter next to