Thomas and Piotr had arrived at Edith Matria’s Home for the Wayward. “Is she home?” Thomas asked, looking inside through the front window and seeing no sign of her. Nothing.
“I’m not sure. Today is Quilting Day, after all,” Piotr answered as he opened the door and walked inside. It was dead silent. Even the air was still. Nothing seemed to have been touched in days. Piotr stepped into the kitchen as Thomas went upstairs.
“Hey there’s no sign of Sauro either,” Thomas proclaimed as he cautiously walked downstairs, his eyes widening as he saw Piotr staring down at something in the kitchen, just outside of his field of view. “Oh . . .”
Thomas saw Edith lying dead on the ground. She was days decomposed and had a massive hole in the top of her head, which travelled down her entire body and out of her left foot. “Did Sauro do this?” Piotr asked in shock.
“No. No . . .” Thomas looked away. “It’s going to rain again tonight,” Thomas said ominously as he stared outside.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
So, he’s back, huh? Thomas thought. “Somebody always dies when it rains. Are you familiar with the Rainmaker Gang?” Thomas asked.
“Of course, I was in the Krokodil Crime Family for many years. They control Neonight’s weather, yes?”
“They do a lot more than just that. There’s liquid water above Neonight, right? Which means it’s always going to rain, it’s just a matter of deciding when to let the water through.” I didn’t think he was going to get so reckless with his abilities. He might be able to destroy everything.
* * *
“Phantrana, are you listening?” Thomas asked, sitting on top of a building in his suit, his legs casually dangling off the edge as he observed the foot traffic below him. Suddenly, the world went dark.
“Should you really be hanging out on top of buildings? How did you even get up here? You don’t have flight powers or anything,” Phantrana boomed, voice echoing through the darkness.
“I took the stairs. Phantrana, you know I’ve been sent by the Krokodils to kill the Rainmaker Gang in exchange for my friends; lives, right?”
“I know everything about your life that you do—and more.”
“Okay well if you’re so smart, I’m feeling some reservations about this being a moral decision. I told myself a while ago that I didn’t want to do this anymore, and now I’ve been roped back in. I know it was to protect my friends, but I also lied to them. I told them I was working at MarsDonald’s, which was a good on-the-spot lie, but I lied anyways.”
“People don’t work at MarsDonald’s unless they’re technicians for the robots.”
“That wasn’t really an answer to my question.”
“I guess I’m just wondering why you care all of a sudden. You asked about moral questions, but you didn’t seem to care too much about if you were moral—not until Robert Engels. You also asked a lot of weird questions about Civ reproduction, but that was mostly in your late teens.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“I guess being asked to kill an innocent person showed me the kind of work I was doing. Also, it was a matter of scientific inquiry. Most people don’t have access to that kind of information, and I was doing my due diligence for the scientific community.” The two were silent. “Sooo . . . am I moral now?”
“I thought you were going to ask another question about ‘the eggs.’ ”
“Just answer the question.”
“Thomas, I am amazed at your progress. Not because you’ve come extremely far—you’re still working the same job and killing people—but because I didn’t think you could get over that first hump of even giving a shit if you were a good person.”
“But you said ‘Oh I know everything about you and still think you’re good’ or whatever!”
“That wasn’t a lie per se, it was more like encouragement. And even if you were a good person, you also don’t give a shit about a lot of things. And I can’t take full responsibility for your transformation.”
“Aw thanks, I—”
“Your friends are really something.”
Thomas looked down in dejection. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Yup and it was really funny watching your face. We Civ Beings have evolved beyond the need for ‘faces,’ so I’ve forgotten how funny it is to watch them.”
“Well, thanks for the encouragement, I guess.”
“Don’t give up now, Thomas. I know it feels as though you might have done a lot of work to get to this point, but you still have a long way to go. Like a journey of ten thousand steps kind of deal.”
“So, I have to take 9,999 more steps until I actually get to where I need to be? The important ones?”
“The last step isn’t the most important one. And it isn’t the first one either.”
“What is it then?”
“The next one, Thomas. Always the next one.”
And the view of the bustling streets of commuters and families returned to Thomas Finn. “Man, that was dramatic as fuck. God, maybe I should try to give a cool one-liner some time.” Thomas opened up a file on his unit. Thomas was supposed to infiltrate an underground rave and assassinate the DJ, a known member of the Rainmaker Gang. Seemed simple enough. He had decided to wait until after the rave to make his move in a position with fewer witnesses, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do a little “recon” and enjoy himself.
Thomas walked beyond the Neonight City limits through one of the tunnels on the outskirts. The neo-futuristic mechanical aesthetic of Neonight quickly vanished into a naturalist cave system as Thomas walked through a small tunnel about the size of a large doorway. He didn’t like leaving the city behind, and he flashed back to his vigilante days where he spent all of his time trudging through empty rock fields and boring grey tunnels until he got the shit kicked out of him by some gangster in a random warehouse at the top of some subterranean mountain. Despite this being the natural place for a rave, Thomas couldn’t help but feel uneasy as he moved through the dark, rocky tubeways that had been specified. If he hadn’t been given directions, it would have been easy to get lost out here. Endlessly trapped wandering a series of unending, identical caverns.
Forward, left, forward, right, forward, up, leftmost, middle-right, down, forward, forward, turn around. Thomas had attempted to commit it to memory, and he had brought a bottle of Chorus with him in case he forgot it. Thomas was sure he’d never find his way through here, constantly checking the directions as the tunnels narrowed, anxiety and claustrophobia gripping and threatening to crush him. God how the fuck did so many people get through here? Thomas thought. He was already running late, frequently getting turned around, tired from all the walking, and deeply nervous. Finally, he made the last turn-around and saw a massive open cavern, a natural dome of rock carved out by time itself.
And it was filled with people. Every square inch of rock was covered by some sweaty nineteen-year-old in what was practically BDSM gear. Loud dance music was playing, echoing through the acoustic stalactites that hung overhead. Loud bass and heavy synth echoed all around, causing the interior of the humongous natural coliseum to vibrate. Thomas was currently overlooking them, standing on an entryway ledge over the crowd as they danced away mindlessly. Despite dressing in a similar aesthetic, Thomas didn’t particularly care for this style of music. It’s stupid that people are listening to music from a hundred years ago that was all about emulating the future even though they’re in the future those artists were trying to emulate. Just listen to music now! It’s more accurate, Thomas thought.
Across the mosh pit of sweaty “dancers,” Thomas saw DJ Violet Rain, known member of the Rainmakers and Thomas’s current mark.
* * *
DJing as a profession nowadays wasn’t much more complicated than letting an AI pick and mix the songs for you. It was more based on performance—the aesthetic. Violet was dressed in a long purple dress with a robotic mask on her head. A tried and true style, but one that the literally mindless crowd seemed to be invested in. And it allowed her to communicate with her co-workers on her Unit while working. “Is everything in position, Violet?” a serious female voice on the other end asked.
“Yup! Purple Rain has already been activated. I’ll send them out once I’m finished playing this set. There’s no hurry, right?”
“There absolutely is a hurry. If that . . . thing . . . escapes the underground and gets into Neonight, we could be screwed. That’s why we need your little army to split up and search the place. And did you manage to catch the hitman in your Civ?”
“What hitman?”
“Apparently, Hudson told us that somebody’s coming after us. Someone sent by the Krokodils. I wouldn’t worry about it. They probably won’t make a mess for us. Just get searching, Violet.”
And with that, the line went dead.
“Rude. Not even a goodbye,” Violet said. Then, she saw someone across the length of the pit—a tall man in a strange outfit, holding a gun. “I’ll take care of the assassin first.”