18 – A Sad Story

Maisie looked at Tony as he approached, and her glare fell away. To his surprise, she didn’t make any remarks about Addie but instead offered him a big red cup of water. “Thanks.” He drank it in three gulps.

“Thirsty!” She laughed, turning back to the table and nudging past another fighter, a “barebones” woman with a perfect V-shaped back. A drip of blood fell off Tony’s eyebrow, distracting him, and when he looked up, Maisie was there with a full cup.

“Thanks again.” He shrugged, almost apologetically, as he gulped half of it, then slowed to a sip. “You think they have glue at the first aid station? I don’t think the blood-stop is cutting it.”

“I was going to suggest that!” Maisie grabbed his elbow and guided him through the crowd to the blue-and-white booth where a couple of volunteers were treating minor injuries. Tony and his self-appointed escort had to wait outside the holobarrier—flickering, neon-green lines projected from plastic stanchions to keep people from crowding—until one of the seats opened up. Still, it only took a couple of minutes.

Tony squinted around the big gym as he sat down, looking for a clock. “How long ’til the final round?”

Maisie smiled. “No PAI?”

“Nah, I got my data port jacked and my poor little AI with it.”

“Oh? ‘Poor little’? You must have had a good one to think of it like that.”

“Yeah. She was with me for a while—a LucidMinds model.”

“LucidMinds?” Maisie’s dark eyebrows shot up, and Tony smiled, liking how they contrasted with her bright pink, peach-fuzz hair. “Pricey!”

“Tell me about it.” He groaned, trying to push the thought out of his mind.

A young guy in well-stained scrubs stepped out from behind a portable curtain barrier and looked at Tony. “Shit, man. You sure you don’t need a trauma center?”

Tony looked down at his left arm and hand, noting the bloodstains, even on the tape that had been under his glove. He guessed his face and head looked pretty damn terrible. Judging from the medic’s expression, it wasn’t any surprise that Addie had been freaked out. “I’m good, doc—just need some glue in these cuts so they heal up.”

The guy frowned, but he stepped closer, peering at Tony’s forehead and then using his gloved fingers to gently probe Tony’s scalp, pulling his stiff, blood-clotted hair this way and that to discover the other lacerations. “I keep telling Golden he needs to get a doctor in here for these things. Human flesh and bone aren’t meant to be pounded on by mechanical fists and knees!” He sighed heavily and then turned to his equipment cart. “I think you’re right, though. I’ve got some FleshMend in here that’ll close up those lacerations without much of a scar.”

“Sweet.” Tony was eyeing Maisie. She stood to the side, arms behind her back, sort of bouncing on the balls of her feet as she looked around the gym. “You gotta be somewhere?”

“Hmm?” She jerked her head around to face him. “Oh, um, no. I just have a lot of energy. I’m always bouncing. Is it irritating?”

Tony, careful not to split open his lip again, offered a slow-motion smile. “Nah.”

“So, you’re friends with Addie, huh?”

Tony braced himself, getting ready for whatever drama existed between the two women. “Yeah.”

Maisie nodded. “She’s pretty cool. I’ve known her for a while.”

He would have given her a double-take, surprised by the comment, considering the death glare she’d been shooting Addie’s way earlier, but the medic moved in front of him and began scrubbing one of his cuts with an alcohol pad. Tony winced, and the guy chuckled. “Stings, huh? Someone filled your cut with blood-stop. You know that stuff mixes with your blood and coagulates. It’s like tar. Sorry, but it’ll come out after the alcohol permeates.”

To distract himself, Tony continued talking to Maisie. “Did you two go to school together?”

The medic scrubbed again, grinning as Tony sucked a breath through his teeth. “It’s coming out. I’m going to go ahead and put alcohol in your other cuts to start the process. Just breathe through it, buddy.”

Maisie moved around the side of the medic so Tony could see her as she answered, “No, but I worked at her dad’s store for a little while when I first moved into the district. That was a few years back. He really gave me a hand when I needed it.”

Tony cussed as the medic began dabbing an alcohol applicator into his other cuts. When he thought the torture was almost over, he squinted at Maisie through his watering eye. “No shit?”

“Really!” She nodded. “Why do you ask?”

“Because Bert’s helping me out the same way right now. That’s how I met Addie.”

“Oh!” Maisie’s eyes lit up, and her dimple reappeared. “So you’re new, new.”

“Yep, just trying to make some bits here; otherwise, I’d be hanging out at his shop, sweeping the sidewalk or something.” The medic pinched the cut over Tony’s eyebrow together while he used another applicator to spread a thin bead of nanite-enriched glue into the wound. Thinking about the cut got him thinking about the fight, and he remembered he’d never gotten an answer about the time. “Hey, you never told me what time it was.”

“Oh!” Maisie leaned closer. “You’ve got twenty minutes before the final.”

The medic tsked. “You’re fighting again? Why do I bother?”

Tony found his plaintive question rather amusing and gave up a chuckle. “Relax, doc, I don’t intend to let this next guy pound on my face so much.” The man didn’t respond; he just hummed as he continued working on Tony’s cuts. Tony turned to Maisie, “So, what’s your deal?”

“My ‘deal’?”

“Yeah, I mean, I like having someone to talk to and appreciate you showing me around, but was it all about, you know, your uncle’s situation?”

“Um, no!” Her pink irised eyes narrowed and darkened dangerously. “If it was, why would I be standing here watching you get nursed—”

“Hey!” The medic scowled at her. “I’m a medic, and I’m not ‘nursing’ him. You know what that means, right? You see any milk leaking through these scrubs?”

Tony snorted, but Maisie wasn’t amused. “You know what I meant! Is there something wrong with nurses?”

The medic sighed, shaking his head. “Nah, I’m just a smartass.”

Maisie rolled her eyes and looked at Tony. “Anyway, should I go, then?”

Tony shrugged. “That’s up to you. I was just curious.” He’d dealt with enough hotheads to know better than to take the bait when things got turned around on him. He hardly knew Maisie and didn’t see why his question should have offended her.

“Well, I thought we could hang out for a few minutes. I want to see your fight.”

Wincing, eyes watering from the medic’s ministrations, Tony looked up at her and had to smile again. She was damn cute the way her dark brows narrowed over those bright eyes as she looked up at him. “Cool. Like I said, I enjoy the company.”

The medic slapped his shoulder. “Okay, Romeo. You’re all set. Try not to get my work ruined, all right?”

Tony smirked at him, arching an eyebrow. The man just shrugged and winked, reaching up to rub his five o’clock shadow. He seemed like a decent guy, so Tony lightly punched him on the shoulder and held out his hand. “I’m Tony, by the way.”

“Benji.” He shook Tony’s mechanical hand firmly, and when they released, Tony went in for a fist bump, and the guy’s response was perfect and automatic.

“My man.” Grinning, Tony nudged Maisie with his elbow. “Let’s go chill in the corner of the mat, there. I can stretch, and you can tell me about this place.”

He led the way, and she followed. “This place? The gym?”

“Sure, the gym—whatever.”

When they sat down, Tony made some half-hearted attempts to stretch—he was never big on stretching and was already loose. Maisie fidgeted, and the awkwardness of silence loomed, so he figured he could try to get to the bottom of her glare toward Addie earlier. “So, you and Addie are still friends? You keep in touch with Bert?”

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“Um, I say hi to Bert now and then. I sold a data deck in his shop a few weeks back. Addie’s not cool with me, if you want the truth.”

“Why’s that?” Tony stretched out his leg and reached for his toes.

Maisie, smiling coyly, pressed her much smaller foot against the bottom of his, tapping lightly as she replied, “It’s kind of a sad story.”

“Oh, if you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s all right. If you’re friends, you should probably know this about us. She had a good friend in the neighborhood—a kid she grew up with. Well, when I moved here to live with my uncle and help out with my grandma, Bert gave me a job, like I told you. I met Addie and this boy there—Simon.”

“Yeah?” Tony prodded, doing what he knew just about everyone appreciated and he found exceedingly easy: listening.

“I thought he was cute, and I started flirting. We went out a few times.”

“Addie didn’t appreciate it?”

Maisie drew in a deep breath and blew it out, shaking her head. “She was cool about it. The trouble started one night when I wanted to go out to one of the thumper clubs down closer to the NGT building. Addie heard us talking and said we shouldn’t go down there on a weekend—too many bangers, she said.”

Tony nodded, switching legs. “Yeah?”

“But I wanted to go! I hadn’t been out dancing since moving to the Blast, and Simon was so…fresh, you know? I wanted to see his reaction to the scene at Fade Lady’s.”

“That a club?”

“Oh yeah, you’re new!” She giggled and tapped her toes against his foot again. As she started talking again, though, the humor left her eyes, and her smile fell away. “So, I talked him into it, and on our way home that night, bangers jumped us. Took Simon’s data deck and his new shoes. They could’ve left then. He gave ‘em up—wasn’t trying to fight or chase. He was even on the ground, you know, ’cause he sat down to pull off his shoes? Anyway, one of them hit him on the side of the head with a pipe. Knocked him out so hard that he never woke up again.”

“Jesus.” Tony, mid-stretch, reached out with one hand to grip the arch of her foot and gently squeeze it. “That must have left a mark.”

“A mark?” She arched her right eyebrow.

“In here.” He pulled back his hand and patted his chest. When Maisie just sniffed and nodded, looking to the side, he resumed stretching. “Addie held a grudge?”

“At first. I mean, she was torn up about Simon. They grew up here, you know? But his mom sheltered that boy. So much! Like, more than you’d think possible in a hood like this.”

“Yeah, but Addie?”

“Oh, right. She didn’t talk to me until after the funeral. She found me, then—over at the park on Holt? Where all the gum-boys hang out?” When Tony just shook his head, indicating he had no idea what she was talking about, she shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She found me, and when I thought she might try to stab me or shoot me or something, she just hugged me and passed me a note.”

“So…you guys are good?” Tony didn’t have to feign confusion.

Maisie shook her head, and her voice got very small. “It was a note from Simon to Addie. I mean, who writes a note anymore, you know? To be fair, Simon didn’t have a PAI—his mom wouldn’t let him on the net. She was one of the OGs—one of the folks who were living around here during the real deal, the actual Blast. She—”

Tony chuckled. “You’re killing me, sis. What about the note? Why isn’t Addie good with you?”

“Right.” Maisie smiled, but it looked half-hearted as she tapped Tony’s foot again with her toes. He suddenly had the feeling that her meandering tale was her way of avoiding a painful subject. He almost changed the topic, trying to let her off the hook, but she started speaking again, “The note was a confession to Addie from Simon. He was telling her that he’d always had a crush on her. I don’t know if he ever gave it to her or if she found it, but, well, I thought it was pretty mean of her to give it to me.”

Tony’s brows narrowed. “Um, yeah, actually, that does sound pretty mean—”

“But,” Maisie interrupted, “I thought maybe I was looking at it wrong. I mean, she hugged me. I don’t know when Simon wrote that. Maybe she rejected him. Maybe she was feeling guilty ’cause she chased him to me, and I’m the one who got him killed. Maybe she just wanted me to know that she was hurting too, that she’d lost something when Simon died, something more than a friend. She’d never admit that to anyone, though, I bet.”

“Hey,” Tony reached out and squeezed her foot again, “don’t say it was your fault. Did you hit Simon with a pipe?” Maisie sniffed and looked away, shaking her head. “That’s right. It was that asshole’s fault. Jesus, have you ever talked to someone about this?”

“Sure. My uncle, my cousins…” She forced a chuckle, sniffing again, then looked at Tony, shaking her head. “I’m fine. I just haven’t thought about all that in a while.”

Suddenly, Tony heard his name, and it shook him out of the focus he’d fallen into, listening to Maisie’s sad story, “…Tony S, report to the fight table to check in! Final round starts in five!” It was Golden’s voice. Tony jumped to his feet and looked down at Maisie. “Catch up with me over at Bert’s sometime soon, will you? I told Addie I’d hang after the fight. ’Kay?”

“Oh,” she grunted softly as she hopped off the mat. “Really? I was hoping we could—”

“I would. Seriously, you’re cool as hell, but I don’t wanna be a flake.”

Maisie’s lips pressed into a thin smile, and she nodded once. “Well, yeah, sure. I’ll come by with the money my uncle owes you, cert?” She held out a fist.

Tony grinned and bumped her knuckles. “Certified.” With that, he jogged over to the table, shaking out his shoulders to loosen up. One more fight, and he’d have a little stack of bits in his pocket. “Let’s just make it quick,” he muttered, pushing through the crowd, “I’m sick of getting punched for now.”

***

Addie sat a few buildings down the street from the gym on an old, battered plasteel picnic table Mina Yoon had set up to sell her gimbap rolls. She’d sold out hours ago but left the table. Addie leaned forward, tracing some of the names carved into the not-plastic, not-metal material. Plasteel was sturdy, insulative, and cheap to produce, so a lot of things were made out of it. Some of Tony’s arm was plasteel—

She clicked her tongue, interrupting her thoughts, irritated that her mind was chasing stupid tangents. The only reason she was thinking about plasteel was so she wouldn’t have to think about how she’d reacted to Tony earlier—how she’d felt when she saw Maisie. “And so I don’t flick to my drone feed.” She didn’t like watching the fight, even if Tony hadn’t gotten hurt yet.

She might not be focusing her full attention on the feed, but she was keeping a fraction of her attention on it. The two fighters were mostly dancing around—both guys pretty fast, and it was clear that neither one was eager to get hit with one of those mechanical arms. “God, why don’t they just, I don’t know, have an arm wrestling match or something?”

“Addie, you can just call me JJ. Also, I’m afraid I cannot answer that question.”

The stupid old joke got a snort out of Addie, and as she lay her head on her arm, idly watching the crowd walk by, her lips curled into a small smile. “JJ, I wish I knew your previous owner because I swear you’ve made me laugh with that one a hundred times. I owe him some thanks.”

“Ronald Westlake lived in District Fifteen, but when he passed away, I was pulled. I’m afraid I don’t know what happened between then and when you activated me.”

“I know, JJ. I just wish things were different.” Addie shifted the focus of her drone to the crowd near the ring. There was Maisie, cute as ever, staring with rapt attention at Tony while he fought, her fists clenched in nervous anticipation. Addie watched while she flinched and winced, reacting to the fighters’ moves, then sighed heavily and focused the drone on the fight.

Malik did some kind of a stutter step and then kicked up at Tony’s head. Tony blocked it with his mechanical arm, then, almost like a dance move, he stepped to the side of Malik’s hip, squatted, bracing himself on his other hand, and swept a leg through Malik’s other knee, sending the bulky fighter to the mat with a reverberating thud. Tony hopped up and bounced back, watching Malik with a crooked grin as the other fighter clambered to his feet, a little wobbly.

Addie didn’t know enough about fighting, to be sure, but it felt like Tony was playing with Malik. Why hadn’t he tried to finish the fight when he took him down? Now, he was dancing around him again, dodging and blocking attacks that looked more and more desperate. Addie zoomed Humpty’s powerful primary lens in on Tony’s face, marveling at how much better he looked than when she’d seen him earlier.

The bandage or tape over his eye was still stained with blood, but the gash over his good eye was just a thin line now, and it wasn’t bleeding at all. The blood that had been leaking from his nose, his split lip, and soaking his hair—all gone. He must have rinsed off, and, Addie supposed, his Dust-tech nanites must be good at clearing up bruises. Dust-tech. The word brought her thoughts around to Dust, and suddenly, she was seeing Zane in her mind’s eye and feeling a different kind of frustration.

Frustration. That was a good word to describe the turmoil in her chest, the weird little flops her stomach kept doing when she thought about Zane or Tony getting beaten up or Maisie hugging Tony before Addie had even really gotten to know him. How had she already gotten familiar enough with him to hug? Among all the people in the Blast, how had he gotten to know Maisie in the thirty minutes Addie had left him alone? “It’s like I’m cursed.”

“Would you like me to search the city net for remedies?”

Addie smiled. “Do you believe in curses, JJ?”

“Should I not, Addie? When your mother—”

“Hush, JJ.” Addie knew what he was going to say. She’d spoken to JJ plenty about curses over the last few years. Her grandma’s death, her mom’s, her dad’s withdrawal, Simon’s death, her “fading”—they’d all added up plenty in her mind to qualify as a “curse.” Now, here she was, starting to make a new friend, and he was somehow, against all probability, getting mixed up with Maisie, the one woman in the district with good reason to hate Addie. “Why’d I give her that note?” For once, JJ knew to keep his mouth shut.

A change in the tenor of the crowd’s cheering brought her attention back to the drone feed, and she saw Tony laying into Malik—a combination of punches that left the bulky fighter stunned, teetering slowly to fall to the mat. The referee blew a whistle and made a cutting motion with his hand, indicating the fight was over. Addie smiled when she saw Tony’s face—relaxed and smiling. He was sweaty but not breathing very hard. “Well, I missed it, I guess, but I have the whole thing recorded. We can watch it later—maybe with Tony. He did say he still wanted to hang out.”

She sat up, watching the crowd slowly disperse as people realized it was the last fight. In her drone’s feed, she watched Tony get jostled, slapped on the back, picked up, hugged, and then threatened—as he cleared the crowd, walking toward the table Golden sat at, some members of Malik’s gang, the Cold Boys, poked and shoved him saying he better watch his back. Tony took the threats in stride, shrugging and waving in that irritating, flippant attitude of his, then walked over to the table where he retrieved his shoes and collected his reward from Golden.

Addie trailed him with her drone as he started away from the gym, but when he turned the wrong way, she buzzed Humpty in front of him, and he grinned, tracking the drone with his silver eye as Addie led him to her. “Congratulations!” she said when he approached.

“Hey, thanks.” He was in the middle of putting this tracksuit jacket on, and he paused to zip it all the way up so the collar hugged his neck. Then, he came around the table and sat beside her. “This is a cool spot, but how about we grab a bite? I’m starved.” Before Addie could respond, he pulled his bit-locker out of his pocket and grinned. “I’m buying.”

“Feeling flush now?”

“Yeah, and I don’t even know how much I won by letting that other guy beat me up for a while.”

“Wait, you let him?”

Tony’s grin widened, and he winced, reaching up to touch his split lip. “Dammit.”

Addie mock-punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t let people beat you up, dummy!”

Tony winked his eye, offering a much smaller smile. “I’ll try not to make it a habit. So? Hungry?”

Addie’s smile was bright, and she knew her eyes reflected it because she felt happy in that moment. “Yeah, Tony. I’m starved!”