THE VENTS IS GOING TO HELL. With no one left to hold the reins, the tenuous threads that once bound the undercity in peace all begin to unravel. Driven by hollow purpose, I wander like a ghost from the intra-crust lifts down barren concrete towersides, where I am greeted not by crowds and a pulsing technological beat, but the panic of a people trapped in a burning building. Roaming packs of Venters smash into storefronts hunting for any supplies they can find. Others flee burning blocks on a rush towards the Shocks, knowing they will never find shelter in the overcity. Looters spring on the chaos by scavenging on the carrion that earlier street warfare between Dynasty and the last of the rebellious gangs left behind. Trash fires roar in the shadows of bombed-out buildings. Boarded over and blasted-open windows leer at the street like pointed rotten teeth. I pass the same street where I made a fool of Carto Bask. Outside, half-smeared by runoff, the electronic paint where I left my mark. A street so loud I needed my headset to drown out the noise, now so quiet I can hear my own steps.
Further down, ash-covered Dynasty enforcers barricade checkpoints at prominent bridges and crossings between the blocks. Open conflicts between them and the remnants of the Eight’s loyal fighters rage throughout the layers when I peer over the edge; eight or ten different classes explosively smashing into each other at a time, nearby allies and enemies adding to the fray as they’re drawn to the lights. That theVenter patriots still throw themselves into the syndicate, dying to the last rather than breaking and fleeing to the sewers in ones and twos, tells me that Krey still lives and leads. Only my old friend could inspire that kind of fanaticism.
The upside-down superstructure of the city shudders as a kind of battle most people never experience tears at it from the inside out. The only glorified combat in our world is one against one, a gladiator show. I steer well clear of the scattered conflicts as I press on to the lower layers.
Smoke, not smog, chokes the air as I return to the home block of the Rock Bottom. An ashen blizzard billows through the chasms and streets. Soot stains the towers black. All the neon of the Vents might be gone, but in a sick twist of fate, the lights are no longer needed. The glow of an undercity sun burns ever on the horizon. All the puddles of runoff have evaporated, revealing the true surface of the streets, porous and cracked like a desert mesa. Clustered vines of power wiring and data transfer cables carry electrical wildfires across the layers in leaps in bounds, consuming homes and lives at the whim of the hellish wind. No one will come to put them out.
The famous club is dark and broken as I approach. Krey’s rebels no longer bar the front doors. Those have been thrown open from the inside and left to creak as they please. Faint neon leaks from the interior, Neopop ambiance all drained away. A ghost town saloon, no one left to care.
I pause on the first step up, wincing at the ache in my gut, examining the entryway for traps. Vaguely, I’m aware that I can’t remember the last time my stomach growled. Like it’s forgotten how to be hungry. There’s no ozone scars of a firefight marking the front façade, nor the signature cuts and chips a Duelist’s blade would leave. Dynasty didn’t find the others. They cleared out, probably right after I left to go after the Executor. Not a body left behind.
Except one.
She’s slumped over the bar. Bottles of raw liquor around her elbows. Shattered glass behind the counter. Shimmering white hair sullied by grime, limply curtaining her face. A tall girl, full-bodied, nothing filling her now, just the husk that’s left behind when half of your life is violently torn away. I know the feeling all too well. But this one, this one is only my fault.
Lain hears the sticky sounds of my arrival as I limp across a floor glazed by shots and spilt beer. Her head twists in my direction. Red-rimmed eyes, tear-streaked soot-stained face, teeth baring in a snarl as she realizes that it’s me. That I didn’t die. That her Matthias did it in my place. Her fingers curl into fists.
She staggers up drunkenly, strides forward to meet me halfway, and punches me so hard in the face that I can’t even remember the moment it takes my body to slam into the counter. My nose breaks again in a crunch of cartilage. I let her hit me, rolling part of the force away. But she grabs my borrowed jacket by the collar and hauls me up onto my tiptoes, staring down at me, second fist raised for a facebreaker, hate in her eyes. She holds me there, an inch away from pulling the trigger on that punch. So horribly angry and wrought with grief, crying even as she shakes her head, knowing why I don’t struggle against her grip. Because I know it’s my fault. She can hit me all she wants. I earned anything.
I hang limply from her hand till she finally throws me against the counter.
“You have a lot of balls coming back here,” she snarls. “What do you want, Mori? You always want something. Haven’t you taken enough?”
Her words cut worse than a second punch ever could. A different me would have responded kind for kind, anger for anger. I can’t meet her eyes now, a bitter grimace on my face. “I don’t know how to contact Volt. You do.”
“Volt.” She repeats the merc’s name. “He made it out?”
“I don’t know. But if he did, I need to ask him a question.”
She sneers at me. “Planning another suicide mission? Get the fuck out of my sight, cocksucker. Go get yourself killed.”
“That’s the idea,” I say, flinching when she reels back and takes a dangerously long drink straight from a bottle of vodka. “Just give me his contact info. I’ll do it myself.”
“The fuck you will. I’m not letting you get someone else killed. You’re no better than Krey, and he’s insane.” She slams the bottle down. “Nah. You’re worse. Because you’re not crazy. You just think you can save the whole damn world, and that pretty little tongue can make a lot of people think they can, too. People believe in you, and they pay the price.” Lain stares me right in the eye, mouth wrinkling bitterly. “I hope no one ever fucking believes in you ever again, Mori.”
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All she wants is to hurt me as bad as I hurt her. And it’s working. More than I know, more than she knows as she twists the knife as deep as possible. But I don’t stop her. I just take it on the face, flinching more with every word. ‘Cause she’s right. And the only thing stopping her from spitting on me and walking away is how terrible I must look; a haunted shell of a smirking girl who no longer smiles. Tiny and insignificant.
Rapid gunfire echoes in the distance before the telltale roar of a flame Elemental melts the noises into nonexistence. After a long moment, Lain pulls out her JOY and opens a projector screen. The light casts her hollow cheekbones from beneath in slowly dimming cyan. “That all it’ll take to make you leave? A text? I’m trying to scrub you and your fucking puppy dog eyes from my memory. The sooner, the better.”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “That’s all.”
Lain takes another sullen swig and lurches down onto a barstool. Through her dirty hair, I see the fresh tears that trickle down her eyes as another memory hits her. She drinks again. “Spit it.”
“You said Volt worked for Dynasty. I need him to send them a message. Let the Armiger know that I’m not dead yet, and I’ll be waiting at Ulysses’.”
“Ulysses? Might as well invite the Armiger to the Metro Blockhouse while you’re at it.”
“Ulysses gave them Sarah. Gave us up, too.” I stare lifelessly at a half-empty tumbler on a nearby table. “I told her I’d put a bullet in the bastard that killed her.”
“One last job. Just like your old lady.” She fires off the message and throws her JOY into a trash can. “Whatever. You’re dead meat. The Armiger’s already outshot you three times.”
I grab the tumbler and pour it out on the floor. The liquid splash is the only sound in the club until I start digging into the ice chest behind the bar. Two cubes first, then the liquor, make it a double. They don’t have the last ingredient, so I finish it off with red-orange punch; same color as my hair.
“Her gun really worth dying over?”
“Got nothing else to take the spot,” I whisper.
I squeeze my eyes shut and throw my head back.
“I’m glad you know what you did,” Lain eventually says. She shakes her head, pours a shot, drains it, and stands. “You’re gonna carry that weight.”
A tiny flask of Shatter glimmers in her hand.
“I hope we never see each other again, Mori.”
The last time I see Lain, she’s alone on the cracked front steps of the empty club, jacket fluttering at her waist, staring up at a sky she can’t see while the city burns around her. By the time I finish my drink and head for the manager’s office, there’s only an empty circle in the ash where she stood.
-
Sarah once said that you could tell a lot about a person not by what they take with them into battle, but what they choose to leave behind. The manager’s office looks barely touched since last I was here. The high leather chair’s pointed in a different direction, the shutters to the street are open to let in the street light, but it’s got the same trademarks of clutter Krey always left behind. Never one to plan, never one to clean his messes until he absolutely had to; we never made it as roommates. Not that I was any better.
Half-shaped metal chunks clutter the heavy oaken desk beside an oldTech bullet press. That severed hand, still impaled, not yet rotting. Behind it, the game of solitaire played to completion. Well. Not quite.
He left my stuff on the suite bed. A bundle of a spare JOY and Sarah’s clothes that Matthias rounded up are all thrown in a loose pile, the near-destroyed 6-Teba resting extremely carefully on top. I cradle the gun in my one good hand. The other’s wrapped up and immobilized with griptape. Only need one hand, though.
With practiced ease, I flick my wrist and pop open the empty hole where the hexagonal ammo cylinder will go. The battered gun creaks from the stress. Cracks cascade from the tip of the barrel all the way through the black metal frame, multiplying like timelines with every millimeter. It’s long past its time. But like a loyal old dog, the revolver knows its duty, and it refuses to stop guarding me until the last word.
How many more shots can it take? I thumb in the ammo cylinder and flick my wrist to lock in the chamber. Maybe just one.
I peel off what remains of the Iros’ garments and leave them on the floor. Retreat to the washroom with those clothes. Tap the touchpad by the door; the lights don’t work. As if in answer to my unasked question, the last of the neon signs outside slowly begin to fade. Power’s going out across the Vents.
The stranger’s jacket, I leave hanging from the back of the big chair. Everything else I pull on in front of the grimy mirror. Watching myself, the myriad of bruises and cuts. She’s a stranger, that person in the glass. Small, gaunt, pale. Eyes haunted. No longer smirking and confident. Always wondered when I’d know I wasn’t a kid anymore. Thought it’d be when Sarah finally stopped treating me like one. Ulysses had his own answer. In the end, I think he was the more right of the two of us.
I jog up the leather-plated pants, strap the holster around my left thigh. The 6-Teba slips perfectly into its worn-down sheath. I can’t use the shirt; too tight around the wounds. Grab a bloody white tee instead, tie it in a knot above my waist. The tattered, single-shoulder cape wraps around my collar. Full back with the hood down, one of Sarah’s, fur on the shoulders, draping to my calves. Tall boots last.
The reinforced heels make faint metallic clicks as I walk exit through the suite, slowing when I near the desk. Krey’s solitaire game is almost finished. Just one piece missing. Before I go, I reach into my back pocket, feeling for the familiar edge of a playing card. I slip out the ace of spades, flick it into the last open space in the center of the game; atop all the other cards. And I don’t look back.
Wherever he is, I hope he understands.