29 – An Idea

Tony’s head was throbbing, and it felt like Beef was doing his best to hit every pothole in District Seventeen. Hanging onto the cargo strap with one hand, he reached up and probed the back of his head. Something had hit him during that final, chaotic throwdown, but he wasn’t sure what. It was part of the reason he’d been digging through those crates full of nightmares when Addie found him; his nanites were starved for Dust. In the old days, they would’ve dealt with a concussion in seconds.

The truck lurched to a sudden stop, and Tony clutched Addie’s shoulder reflexively, though she had a good grip on the cargo strap now. She didn’t seem to mind; in fact, she leaned into him a little more. Tony thought they were probably at a red light or something, but then one of the other bangers said, “This is you two. Beef says we’re just a block from your store, Addie.”

As Tony bent to lift the rolling door, hoping it wasn’t latched on the outside, his head throbbed with the pressure. He gripped the pull strap and tugged while Addie replied to the banger, “Hey! I didn’t realize he kicked me out of the group comms.”

“Jobs over, doll,” one of the other bangers sneered.

Addie wasn’t having any of that. While Tony noisily lifted the door and a streetlight illuminated the truck’s interior, she glared toward the back, clenching her hands into fists. “Don’t call me doll, Lester! I know where your grandmother lives, and I’m sure she’d like to hear about it.” Lester, whoever that was, didn’t reply, but Tony heard some muttered grumbling. He straightened, pausing a moment until the stars stopped twinkling in his vision.

For a minute there, he’d feared the Helldogs were going to take him somewhere to do something just as bad or worse to him as what the Black Jades had planned, but all he saw outside the door was a quiet, empty street. He hopped down, then held a hand up to Addie. She looked like she might refuse his help for a second, but then she took his hand and jumped down beside him. Tony looked into the back of the truck and waved. “Thanks again, Helldogs.”

“Get melted, corpo-rat!” one of them called, and the others broke into laughter. Shaking his head in amusement, Tony reached up and tugged the strap, rolling the metal door down with a crash. The truck rumbled as it trundled away, and he was left standing alone with Addie.

“They’re idiots, but as far as bangers go, I prefer their sort.” Tony turned, spotting Bert’s store down the block, the lights still bright. He was probably waiting up.

Addie frowned, folding her arms. “Their sort?” Tony groaned inwardly. Did she think he was insulting them? Clearly, the connection between her and Beef ran deeper than Tony had guessed.

“Yeah—violence, robberies, maybe some dealing on the side, but you get the feeling they actually give a shit about their neighborhood. Groups like the Jades, though? Addie, they were up to some truly evil stuff.”

She nodded. “I know. There have always been rumors, but…” She trailed off and started walking toward the store, and Tony kept pace.

“But you’d hoped it wasn’t so bad?”

“Yeah, I’d hoped.” Addie turned and squinted into the distance. “I thought the Helldogs were gonna burn the place. Wouldn’t we have heard the fire drones and trucks?”

“I don’t think that was gas they were spraying around. Probably BEEB.”

Addie squinted up at him. “What’s that?”

“It’s a chemical and bacteria compound. I forget what it stands for, but basically, it wipes out organic material or alters it so much that no one would be able to get DNA or anything out of it. The Jades had barrels of the stuff in that warehouse.”

“The Helldogs were covering their tracks, huh? What about you?”

Tony shrugged. “They sprayed that BEEB all over the place. I didn’t bleed—I don’t think—and when I spat, it was into a puddle of that stuff. You didn’t see it sizzle?”

“What about prints and—”

“Addie, they already knew I was there. I’m sure the Jades are gonna want revenge, but the scene in that warehouse says gang hit, not escaped prisoner. Hopefully, they’ll just think I got away in the confusion. I saw one of Beef’s boys in the office, and I’m guessing he corrupted the surveillance data, if there was any. It’s not like criminals tend to keep recordings of the kinds of activities that took place there.”

“I guess.”

They were halfway to Bert’s shop by then, and Tony pointed toward it. “Did you let your dad know you were all right?”

“Yeah, soon as we were driving away. He was relieved, of course, but I could tell he was still upset that I…went after you.”

“Yeah, shit.” Tony sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair and grimacing at the crustiness of the dried blood and then wincing when his fingers brushed the knot on the back of his head. “I better start looking for my own place.” It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought, and he didn’t want to say anything, but he figured it might be easier now that he’d found not just his bit-locker in Troy’s coat pocket but two others besides. He didn’t know if they had anything on them, but he’d bet they did. Bit-lockers weren’t commonly used outside low-income areas but made for excellent trust-less and untraceable means to pass around bits for criminal enterprises.

“He won’t blame you—”

“Yeah, but there’s no denying I’m trouble. Especially now. Troy might be dead, but Maisie’s alive, and I’m sure there were members of his crew who weren’t at the warehouse. People are going to want me dead. I don’t mind helping your dad around the shop during business hours, but I ought to find a place to sleep where I won’t bring trouble your way.” He’d slowed to a stop while they spoke, standing just one building down from Bert’s store. He didn’t know if Bert would be there, and he wanted to get some things off his chest while he and Addie were alone.

“You’re…” Addie seemed to be struggling for words, and she looked away, probably traumatized by everything she’d gone through because of him. In the truck, she’d explained about falling asleep in the AutoCab, so she’d obviously been struggling even before rounding up a pack of bangers to come and rescue him.

“Listen, I’m really damn sorry you had to go through all that. I mean, I know you didn’t have to—you did it for me, and, shit, that’s a hell of a lot more than most of my old buddies would do.” Tony watched her face as she continued to look up, maybe focusing on the NGT building in the distance. She didn’t smile or scowl; he couldn’t read her at that moment. Luckily, she saved him the trouble.

“Tony, I think of you like a friend. I don’t do that easily—make friends—and there’s no way I’m going to sit around wringing my hands when I hear one of ’em is in trouble. My grandma, my mom—they fought for things they believed in. They walked toward the fire, you know what I mean?”

Tony nodded, touched by the passion in her voice. “Yeah, I know the type, and I respect the hell out of people like that. I respect you, Addie. I just, well, I know how you feel about killing, and that wasn’t a pretty scene back there. Worse than what happened to you and me in the alley, you know?”

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“I’m still coming to grips, Tony, but it helps knowing how awful the Jades were. If…if we stopped them from harvesting more people, then it was worth it, right?”

Tony nodded, wanting to help her grasp onto that rescue line; it could keep her from drifting into dangerous waters—self-loathing, guilt, and other triggers for lovely existential crises. “You’re damn right it was. Ads, I don’t want to tell you the kinds of things I saw in those medical crates, but—Yeah, let’s just say it was worth stopping those assholes.”

“But there are more like them—more Black Jades and other gangs just as bad.”

Tony sighed and shook his head, idly scratching some dried blood off his knuckles with his thumbnail. “Ain’t that the truth, and sister, if you think banger gangs are bad, you ought to see what corpos get up to.”

Addie nodded, turning toward him again, locking eyes with him. He saw the tears pooling in hers as she spoke, her voice thick with emotion. “Well, what do we do? Bury our heads?” He knew what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to tell her she was doing the right thing with her journo activities—her news site. In a way, he supposed she was on the right track, but he couldn’t help thinking with his old, solo-operator mindset.

“We can do a hell of a lot more than that.”

“What do you mean?” The dam in one of her eyes broke, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Tony wanted to reach up and brush it off, but he was filthy—literally and figuratively. She was so damn pure of heart; he honestly felt like he was too close already. He was like a blood-soaked hunter standing near a white fawn. Honestly, the best thing he could probably do for her was disappear. That wasn’t what he said, though.

“You and that drone—sniffing out trouble. You could do a lot more than report on the rumors. We could do something about it; the corruption, I mean.”

“How? People see my reports and get outraged, but nothing ever happens. The corpos don’t care about us! We just survived a firefight in a warehouse, and not one corpo-sec drone showed itself. There was no mil-sec response, nothing.”

Tony nodded, only half hearing her. His mind had begun to chase a wild idea, and he had more he wanted to say. “You realize you just pulled off an op, yeah? You got the intel, gathered the muscle, and provided overwatch with that damn clever drone of yours. Honestly, if we were in ’Hattan, I’d hire you myself. Look, I know your dad needs help in his shop, and we can do that, but, Ads, if we start pulling off operations, we can make enough money to hire someone else to work there. There are a lot of bits to be made in the game.”

“An op? Like, you know, runners do? Is that what you mean by the game?”

“Sure. Runners, operators—call ’em what you want, but you could be one. You’ve got the juice for it. If I could, I’d back your application and get you a bump in rep, but I’m sure my old license got burned. I’ll need to start from scratch, too.”

“You mean, like, legit operators? How would that work, though? I find something wrong happening, then what?”

“Well, I see it working like this: take your story about the Royal Breeze Apartments, for example. Right now, you’re doing some investigating. That part doesn’t have to change. You interview people, get footage—all that good stuff. Then, when you figure out what’s going down, we put a plan together and do something about it. We can bankroll our, um, charity missions by doing legit work around the district. Even if we put out the bits, we’ll still get paid for warrants. Shit, if we build up our rep, we can start working outside the district—make some real bits.”

“I don’t want to abandon people here, Tony.”

“I didn’t say that! It’s a long way down the road, anyway, but, yeah, the more we make, the more connections we establish, the more we can help people, Ads.” Tony was grinning with enthusiasm, and he turned to take a few steps, pacing toward Bert’s and then back to Addie. He punched his cybernetic fist into his other palm for punctuation as he exclaimed, “Goddammit! Why didn’t I do something like this when I had the chance? Why the hell did I get tied up in contracts with a fucking megacorp?”

Addie wasn’t exactly bouncing with excitement, but her eyes had gone distant, and Tony could see she was thinking things through. She slowly began to nod, then looked at him again, the tears gone from her eyes. “What if the thing we figure out is something horrible a corporation is doing? What if, for example, it’s Boxer? We can’t do a job against them, can we?”

“Forget who they work for—Boxer or some other corp—they’re still people. We go after them. If we have evidence they’re doing something awful like the shit Black Jade was doing, then we can get warrants issued through the Writ Courts. Even the Blast has one, right?” Writ Courts were independent judicial authorities established by the ECC—the most prominent corporate consortium on the planet. Ostensibly, the Writ Courts were meant to provide justice to people regardless of corporate affiliation. In reality, they were a way for corporations to force each other to at least put on a façade of honest business practices.

“Yeah, but it’s a joke. I’m pretty sure Boxer owns the judges.”

Tony chuckled and shook his head. “It might seem like that, but I’ll bet there are at least a couple of judges on the payroll of their competitors. We’ll have to do a little digging into ’em before we go after anyone affiliated with a major corp.”

Addie chuckled and shook her head. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Tony. I’m not sure about any of this.”

Tony smiled and shrugged, turning toward Bert’s shop. “Sure, I get it. It’s a lot to think about. I’m telling you, though, Ads—we could do a lot of good.” He’d almost said they could make a lot of bits, but he didn’t think that would motivate her. He wasn’t lying, though; they could do both. “I’m wired. Gonna grab my stuff and jog down to the gym. What time is it?”

“A little after two. Tony, if you want a shower, you can come up—”

“Nah.” He waved her off. “Thank you, Ads, but I won’t sleep tonight. Not possible.” He was only half lying. Of course, he didn’t want to track his bloody beat-up ass into Bert’s home, but he also wanted to get a workout in. He was wound up to the point that he felt like he was vibrating. Part of it was the wild night he’d had, but more than that, he was excited. He’d meant what he’d said to Addie. They could pull off some serious ops, especially if she continued to improve her skill set.

He felt like he’d been sleepwalking ever since he woke up in the Blast, half-dead and missing some body parts. Now, he felt like he had a real game plan—like he could see an actual future for himself again. Before, when he allowed his mind to drift outside the present, he’d fixate on the past and his betrayal. Then, he’d catch himself thinking about revenge and force those thoughts back into hiding. Now, he had something tangible to think about, and—goddammit if he was being a sap—something hopeful to grasp onto for a change.

Addie punched the code into the door, and it beeped and clicked unlocked. Tony followed her inside and, when they saw Bert wasn’t there, she turned to him. “I’ll think about what you said. You’re not just being—”

Tony grabbed her hand, squeezing it. “I’m being dead serious, Ads. Let’s get our operator licenses. Let’s start making a difference.”

She nodded, then she glanced toward the storeroom door. “You’re sure you have to go out again?”

“I’ll put my comm chip in. Ping me as often as you want. I promise I’ll keep my head on a swivel.”

That got a smile out of her, and she gave him a quick, solemn nod. “Okay, then. I’m going to try to make my dad feel better about not being able to help me. Tony, I’m glad you’re okay. I just…I just want to make sure I really know you before we commit to working together—I mean, for real.”

“Yeah?” Tony felt his heart rate quicken. “What do you want to know?”

“Um,” she pulled his hand closer and gripped it with her other hand, too, holding it firmly with both her thumbs in his palm, “Is there anything you’ve done that you’re ashamed of? Anything you wouldn’t tell me about?”

Tony doubted she had some mystical ability to see if he was lying, but he didn’t want to lie to her, anyway. He answered immediately, “Yes, I’ve done things I’m ashamed of. No, there’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you about.”

“Will you tell me how you ended up in the Blast?”

Tony hesitated for a second, but then he nodded. “I will. Addie, I’ve been hiding from those memories because I was afraid of where they’d take me. If…if you’ll help me do things that matter, I can face that shit.” He immediately felt guilty, laying that on her, but he was being honest; the truth was that Addie was good, and he…well, he knew what it meant to do things right—good—but he’d gotten way too used to just doing whatever it took and, yeah, maybe looking the other way a little too easily. He needed her to help him get back what he’d given away.

Addie squeezed his hand, her fingers cool against his flesh but still eliciting tingles, keeping his heart quick. “Let’s sit down and really talk soon, okay? I promise I’ll think about your idea, but right now, I should go and talk to my dad.”

Tony nodded, afraid to blink, not wanting to be the one who looked away first. He stared into those big blue eyes and felt a hundred conflicting emotions—thought a hundred conflicting thoughts. Prominent and loud among them was a sneering voice that reminded him she’d be better off if he left and just kept walking. He swallowed it down. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s already morning, but I’ll be down in a few hours.” She smiled, let go of his hand, then turned away, walking to the storeroom. Tony let out a pent-up breath and followed her. He needed to get a change of clothes. He might not be sure about much, but he was damn sure he needed a good, hard run and then a long, hot shower.