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Dreg City looked like the seventh orb of Hell.
Which, to be honest, was a step up from the previous day.
And most days before that.
Yeah, the sky grid still projected a hazy shade of toxic green that probably wasn’t great for the health of Dreg City citizens, but it wasn’t neon toxic like last month. Plume-assisted dust storms, which killed an average of five each strike, had been light to non-existent recently. And, in terms of general street ambience, most of the Graphene-9 fun whip hawkers had gone home already, so there were no feral screams of ‘BIG LASH, BIG PLEASURE!.’
Thank gods for that, thought Chio, stepping over the plastic-covered lump outside the DLT exit, heading south. And not just for noise reasons. It also left the street clear for her and the seventeen zip-bags of pink crack in her jacket pocket.
Not that it would be easy selling today, with her head the way it was.
She reached up, adjusted the cloche hat, checked the edges to see if any blood was leaking out again.
Jun kut Kenji
She'd told him there was too much scrap metal lying around, and still he went ahead with it.
You’ll be fine, just avoid the sharp stuff.
Sure, in an un-repped fight, on an old factory site. Just avoid the actual shit I’m standing on, the shit my opponent may use to whack me on the head. Thanks Kenji. Great advice.
A pod-bike whizzed past, the exhaust breeze knocking her cloche hat clean off. For half a second, the people nearby got a clear look at the blood-stained bandage underneath, before she managed to cover up. Then the cops zoomed by and knocked it off again. Jun. She should’ve expected that. A rider going that fast had to have a tail on them. A tail that would soon run the speedster's vehicle off track and paralyse the poor bastard inside. That’s how it usually went when the pod-bikes were speeding. Crippled then sued afterwards for not swerving out of the cops’ way.
Firmly reattaching her hat, she blocked it all out - the traffic, the food stalls, the wandering old people in acid-rain slickers, the ennui vibes - and focused instead on Lucky Luck Plaza up ahead. A prime hunting ground for all shifters. If she got lucky [luck], the asteroid sales reps would be floating around the entrance, trying to headhunt idiots who didn’t know what an asteroid was. It was tough work, standing around a plaza all day, trying to engage strangers who didn’t want to make eye contact with you, all for a commission of 2% that would eventually get chiselled down to 0.2% by the sub-brokers.
But then she’d turn up, shaking a zip-bag of baking powder dyed pink, promising them a reflex high of at least eighteen minutes…how could they possibly refuse?
Of course, her commission was pitiful too. Never enough to get her on a shuttle off Triton. Not even enough to pay the waiting fee to stand in the queue to buy the ticket. Which is why she had to get her head cut to pieces on old factory sites, fighting other shifters and gamer clerks who also wanted to get on that ludicrously priced shuttle out of here.
Gods, this moon was awful.
She looked up at the sky, Neptune hanging like a bored, blue uncle high above. If she’d just moved into selling re-animation insurance to the elderly…then she would’ve been back in the inner system already.
That’s what she got for being ethical.
Moving inside Lucky Luck Plaza, she spotted an asteroid rep who looked like his face was about to drop off from raw ennui and made a beeline for him.
‘Tough day?’ she asked, pulling a pouch of pink from her jacket pocket.
‘I started ten minutes ago.’
‘Oh.’
He dipped his face down to the turd brown flower motif on the floor, then managed to pull it back up enough to examine the zip-bag in her hand. ‘Is that really pink?’
‘The pinkest.’
‘Cos the last one I bought didn’t do much.’
‘Happens sometimes.’
‘Hmm. I heard some of you guys just use baking powder and colour it pink.’
‘Pure moon myth. You want some or not?’
The guy sucked in a deep breath, so deep that it felt like he was hoovering up half the plaza’s air supply, then let it out as a gradual drip. Finally, he said yes, handing Chio his GAMX card and taking the zip-bag.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Scanning with her ring, Chio asked if he knew anyone else looking to buy, and then added, ‘what’s wrong?’ when she saw his face had morphed semi-eldritch.
He answered by throwing the zip-bag at her face and sprinting over to the air-pod.
‘The hell?’
Couldn’t be the cops, she thought, turning round and seeing immediately that it was the cops, five of them, all with the same where’s the immigrant face sketched on.
Run you lump shot through her frazzled brain and she half obeyed, moving quickly to the fountain in the middle of the plaza and crouching behind the For All Who Want To Know hologram.
‘Third biggest fountain in the Kuiper Belt,’ it boasted in mostly cracked static, orange skin buffering.
‘Shut up,’ she muttered back, peeking out from behind the stone wall to see how the cops were doing.
Pretty good, it turned out.
One of the other asteroid reps had pointed her out and now all five were on their way over, which meant she had no choice but to run again. Or hope that the hologram was feeling oddly protective of her.
She looked up at the grinning light man, eyes as refugee-like as she could make them.
‘The little jets of water spurting out in the middle of the fountain are primarily comprised of recycled stomach bile from failed clones. Just another of the many ways Triton Council looks out for the environment.’
Okay, definitely not protective.
Jun.
What next? What was the play here?
No exits, no allies, no weapon. Just sixteen bags of incriminating evidence on her person. Didn't matter that it was technically baking powder, cops never gave a shit about that, they'd just throw it in the trash and sub it for a real stash that-
Her brain cut her off, slotting in an image of falling pink snow. Then added 'THROW THE BAKING POWDER IDIOT' in giant neon capitals when she still wasn't moving.
No.
Don't do it, Chio.
Do not do-
'Sorry, Sataan...but when the devil's at the door...'
Taking the largest zip-bag of pink baking powder out from her pocket, she cut open the top with her nail and threw it discus style across the floor. Her aim was pretty generalised, but as luck would have it, the zip-bag landed next to the industrial fan shop window display and burst up and outwards over the surrounding shoppers.
Some people wailed, others licked their lips, while Chio darted out the other side of the fountain and over to the loop corridor running round the back of the plaza.
Far as she remembered, there was an exit, and she was right, but there were also two more cops, holding their earpieces in and shouting that they’d spotted someone in a weird, black hat running suspiciously.
Okay, that’s probably me, she thought, turning left and taking the stairs three at a time…then getting tired on the second flight and changing to one at a time.
On the second floor [or the first if you were a pedant], there was a long line of ice-boot rental shops and the complementary toilets, one of which had to be female.
Shoving the door open with full weight, then apologising to the person bleeding on the floor behind it, Chio dived into the cubicle at the end and started reaching for the window. Then thought, jun, unlocked door, and ran back out. Luckily, the cops were only just coming up to the top of the stairs, so she prodded the bleeder into the corridor with her foot, flipped back and, spitting out another jun, jabbed at the lock pad.
Almost undone by high stress idiocy, she thought, waiting for the light to turn red. For the seven hundred and forty-ninth time. Jun kut sei. Never would’ve happened to Trig. Or Sataan. Or Sag Face. Or Heidegger. Or Kenji. Or EK-A274.
Stop. No comparisons. Focus.
Her knuckles prodded her temple, while legs took the rest of her body back to the end cubicle, the loyal window.
One floor up, not too bad. Hopefully someone’s left an old mattress out there for me to drop onto. Or one of those mini bouncy castles that paedophiles used to carry outside colony school playgrounds in the old days.
She pushed the window forward and peered down.
Jun. Nothing.
No, wait…worse than nothing. Someone had put a spike strip down there. Gods, who would do that?
There was a loud banging on the toilet door, followed by a soft knock from the designated good cop. ‘It’s okay, we’re not looking to hurt you. We just wanna talk.’
‘About the bleeding woman you just assaulted,’ added bad cop.
‘Ignore my partner, the victim is not seriously hurt.’
‘Lot of blood, lot of sobbing. Not looking good for you, girly.’
‘Really, don’t listen to him. All we want to do is talk with you. Have a nice little chat.’
Yeah, chit chat, good idea.
Chio took out her phone and called Sataan for an emergency pick up, as per the agreement between them.
No answer.
Probably busy dyeing a fresh batch of baking powder. Or staring at pre-haze Mercury Jill pics again.
Jun, what do I do here?
She looked out over the top of the cubicle door and scanned the toilets for some kind of hidden exit. Window was out of the question. Sink was tempting as a weapon, but had tier-2 AI, could be difficult to pull out from the floor.
Another series of bangs on the door.
The bad cop of the duo, or however many were out there, warned her that if she didn’t come out in thirty seconds, he would come in. ‘I’ve been in female toilets before, I’m not afraid.’
Chio lifted off the cloche hat and wiped the bandage with her Pluto Kia jacket sleeve. No blood leak but a fair amount of sweat. Her armpits too. Gods, was there no air-con in here?
She looked up and said ‘ah’, seeing a large and definitely Chio-friendly ventilation grid. Putting slightly shaky fingers on the edges, she pulled on it as much as she could without ripping her skin off.
‘Hey, this door still ain’t opening,’ shouted the bad cop.
‘In your own time, young lady,’ added the good cop.
Click-click-clack went the latches on what sounded like standard issue EM-28’s.
Yup, at least one of them is going to shoot me, Chio told herself, finally getting the grid down and then…
‘What the…’
In place of the ventilation shaft was something bizarre; a swirly green thing, just hovering there in the ceiling space, spinning in an inward-leaning spiral just like those old time travel cartoons.
‘Five seconds and we’re coming in,’ shouted the bad cop.
‘Please make sure you’re fully clothed,’ added good cop.
How about fully disintegrated by a Nietzschean void, she screamed inside her head as the green swirly thing flashed three, four, seven pulses of heaven-white light and then, like a magnet that had never heard the word NO, sucked her up into and beyond the toilet ceiling.
Three seconds later, the toilet door broke off its hinges and the bad cop rushed in, firing his EM-28 into two of the cubicles.
Those doors broke too.
As did the teenage girl playing Mars Rush on her phone.
‘Juuuun, what’s she doing there?’ asked bad cop to the flush button behind the corpse.
‘You idiot.’
‘What?’
‘She was unarmed.’
‘How was I supposed to know that? Black magic?’
‘Just go and get the spare crack bag,’ replied good cop, shaking her head. ‘And this time, not so much on the nose. Last one you did looked like they’d been dipped in candyfloss.’
From the ceiling above and to the right came a faint whooshing sound, followed by a pop that only a dog with robotic ears could hear.
Then nothing.