“Pit, Riai. I’m so happy for you. That’s the best news I heard my whole life.” Mateo sat back down in his chair. “I’m gunna be an uncle?”
“Yep,” said Riai, grinning.
“You sure?”
“Yep,” she repeated. She took a small bite out of her roll.
Sevit asked: “What about you, Mateo. You got any news? Go on, tell me something exciting.”
“Riai doesn’t like it when I talk about work,” said Mateo. He was still grinning and he kept glancing at his sister.
“Work,” scoffed Riai, also smiling
“Eh, don’t listen to her. Go on, what you been up to?”
“Oh, you know. It’s the same shit.”
“Crime,” said Riai.
“Sure,” said Mateo. “‘Cept' we don’t do any wet work and we never take from rhata. We just jack fancy cars and take something pricey. It’s all insured. I don’t see any harm in it.”
“Me neither,” said Sevit.
“Sevit,” hissed Riai. “Mateo, please. The harm in it is that you could end up in jail, or worse. Dead.” She paused, then steeled herself. “Just like Poro.”
Everyone was quiet for a while.
“Poro tried to do something, at least,” muttered Mateo, reinspecting his plate.
“Tried and what good did it do? None. And what happened? Now we have to get on without him and that’s real.”
“If everyone acted that way nothing will ever change!” gasped Mateo, not really shouting but rasping. “That’s pathetic. We’re better than that. Once upon a time, all the kīn followed the rhata. Now we’re not much more than slaves.”
“Fine,” said Riai. She placed her hand flat against the table again and tapped it lightly. “Fine. I won’t argue with you, Mateo. I know you loved him. Lets not talk about it, we’ll only argue. Actually it reminds me. I’ve got something for you. Some of his old stuff.”
Mateo brightened up. He dragged his finger along his plate, picking up soy sauce, then sucked it clean. “Really?”
“Yep. In a box, over there.” Mateo half rose to go looking when there was a flood of pain from his arms. He gasped and sat back time. Worst of all was the pain his finger. He thought back to the job last night. It had been hurting before the ride—hadn’t it? He watched Sevit prepare another roll, as tenderly as the last one. Raia was watching him with a quiet intensity, trying not to look worried.
“Yeah,” he said, flashing her an embarrassed smile. “There something going on with my fire, I think.”
“Oh?” said Riai. “What’s wrong?” She asked, her voice too calm.
“My finger, it aches all the time. Pretty fucking sore, actually.”
“You fell off your bike again!” she blurted.
“What do you mean, again? No. I never fall.”
“Yes you do.”
“That was six years ago, Riai. I was 14.”
“Still,” she said, pressing her lips together and standing.
“No,” said Mateo. Riai went into the bedroom and came back with a cardboard filing box. She put it on Mateo’s lap and sat back down. Most of the stuff in the box was crap, some sports cards, Poro’s old cap, old clothes, a pair of sunglasses. The only item of interest was Poro’s battered old journal.
“Keep that,” said the voice in his head. Mateo took it out and put it on the table.
Riai poked him in the arm, playfully.
“Have you been to a doctor?” she asked.
“No,” said Mateo. He shrugged. “I think it’s my fire channels. I’ve been riding a lot recently. Riding kinda fast.”
Riai stood and came and stood behind his chair. She tugged at his t-shirt, pulling it out of the way and laying her hands where his neck met his shoulders. Lightly, she squeezed, then inhaled a small amount of air quickly through her nostrils. Mateo felt a strange feeling flow through his body, like cold water passing down the tubes of his blood vessels. Riai let go and shrugged.
“You feel fine to me,” she said. “You’ve always had strong fire channels. They’re a little raw but nothing unusual. Take it easy speeding on your bike for a few days and you’ll feel fine. I think you should go to the doctor. Too much fire shouldn’t effect your finger.”
“I have a pore there,” he said. Sevit stood and fetched a third beer, which Mateo declined. He needed his wits about him tonight.
“Have you been using that pore particularly?” asked Riai.
“No.”
“That’s not it. Go to a doctor.”
“Fine,” said Mateo.
= = = = = = =
At 9:30 he excused himself and left, taking Poro’s old journal with him. He wanted to open it, but considering the neighbourhood where Riai and Sevit lived he figured it was a bad idea to sit on his bike reading. He took the elevator down to the ground floor, unlocked his bike, and kicked off immediately. As he rode he opened the bike locker and slid the journal down in the back.
At the end of their discussion, Phelix had explained how it would go. He had written down an address on a piece of paper and told Mateo to be there at 11 PM for the meet. It wouldn’t be Phelix, it would be another guy. Phelix was just the broker. This guy would be the buyer, or more likely a courier that the buyer trusted. Smoke was to show the guy the package. Phelix said the buyer wanted the package very much and would not risk its safety with violence or any other malarkey. The guy would toss him the money in an envelope and let him count it. Once he was happy with his 800 he would put the package on the floor and drive away. There would be no need to exchange words, remove his helmet, or generally hang around and involve himself in any bullshit.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The address was in Zone Nine, a zone Mateo had never been to at all. Phelix had provided him with a Zone Nine visa, of course. Fortunately Riai happened to live near the border and it would only take three hours to shift zones, riding above the city on the Wide West Skyway, or the WW as people liked to call it. On the paper were scribbled his instructions: where to exit on the skyway, where to turn, to meet, what bike the other guy was driving. That kind of thing. It would be about seven hours round trip. He’d arrive and leave by night and be back in the early morning.
Mateo drove through the outskirts of Zone Six, then further rimward (away from the Wall) till he saw signage for the WW, then up and onto the huge skyway. He filtered, zipping between the cars, jumping forward and drifting back as he passed through nine lanes to the ultra-fast lane on the far left—a lane used almost exclusively by lunatic bike riders like himself. Then he ran out of interesting driving and settled into the seat, rubbing his calves. The flame-ways in his legs were already starting to ache. Too much time on the bike, he thought. Tomorrow they were gunna hurt like hell—something of a theme in his life at the moment. You really weren’t supposed to drive so much on an F-bike. They were for short, dynamic excursions, not long distance. But he had to meet the guy in Nine tonight, so he better suck it up and get the job done.
His hand still hurt, particularly his finger. Regularly he stretched his arm forward, resting his forearm on the handlebars and flexing the fingers of his hand. This brought a small amount of relief. As he drove he took out the paper Phelix had given him and checked his exit point. Sitting alone with his thoughts, stuck riding a single speed, preparing to meet a stranger and do crime—it’s no surprise his mind piped up.
“How you feeling?” asked the boy. He’d sounded almost tender. It was almost as if the boy couldn't settle down on a way of being, he kept changing temperaments so often.
“Fine,” said Mateo, muttering the word into his bike helmet.
“Nervous?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A bit.”
“What you gunna do if he picks a fight?”
“Run.” Mateo passed his hand along the side of his bike, found the bulge of the plastic holster, and withdrew the steel pipe an inch. If he couldn’t run, his best bet would be to drive him down with the pipe. “It won’t come to that,” he said. “It’ll be simple.”
The boy made a hum of scepticism. Mateo felt a strange kind of mental pressure, a feeling similar to a blocked sinus, on the right side of his head. Automatically he turned that way. “Look at all these cars,” said the boy.
Mateo glanced over them. At this speed the other vehicles looked like they were crawling. It was 10 PM now and that meant mostly taxis, taking people to and from night time activity, as well as a few men and woman driving home late from strange work-shifts. He overtook a school bus full of odd, uncomfortable looking adults—inmates or the chronically ill back from a day out. Far to his right there were two full lanes taken up by long, serpentine trucks. The skyways were always full of trucks at this time, ferrying things between the zones, preparing the world for tomorrow. Mateo grunted. He didn’t want to chat with his demon.
Time passed and the sign for [Z10] flashed up by the road. He passed through the visa booth and drove another half an hour before he saw [10.8] and slipped back through the traffic, behind a truck, and down into the zone proper. Just as he took the Wonsol St. turning off of exit 8 it started to rain, a light mist. He took out the paper with directions, pinning it flat to his handlebars with his left palm and steering with the same hand. The paper told him where to go. Straight along Wonsol till he reached the turning for Kimshing, then a series of turns along nameless alleys. After a further twenty minutes of turns like this, he saw in the distance what he was looking for: the rusting, dilapidated sign for the Ghojaki Races.
The asphalt stopped and the street turned into a wide alley. Red containment tape lay on the ground at the entrance, suggesting the place had once been closed by the Beetles. It was impossible to tell why: it could have been a Lumin excursion was likely, but it could have been a Strange Event or Mantled bickering. Maybe the Races had just gone out of business and no-one had bought the land. The alley was dark, without streetlights, and it was littered with garbage. Mateo slowed his bike to a crawl, puttering along and scanning the walls. He wiped his visor, staring into the gloom ahead of him.
The end of the alley split into two large booths with wooden entry barriers. Behind them he could see the large oval of the race tracks, with the iron fence running through the middle and rows of seats rising up on the far side. He stopped his bike at the barriers, hooked his index finger around the bone pendent he wore and muttered to himself, peering around. No-one was here.
He shoved up the barrier and drove under it, letting it drop behind him. He adjusted his footing on the fire mounts and the small amount of flame leaking out of the bike vanished, dropping him into as much darkness as you could ever get on an F-bike. He drove to the entrance of the race tracks, stopped and looked. The oval was surrounded by tiered seating, mounted wooden folding chairs which had split or rotted away. The racetrack was open to the night sky, with an oval half-roof running the circumference of the building to cover the seats. The clouds were low tonight, hanging oppressively over the grounds. Directly to his left and right were large booths where the betting slips had been sold. There was a covered hanger on the far left, where the handlers would have socialised and where the dogs were kept before being led out to race, and of course on the race track a series of poles which the dogs were tied to before the handlers released them. The clock on his bike said 10:54.
Again he wiped his visor. This only smeared the rain, so he lifted it. He did a lap of the grounds, driving besides the lowest seats, squinting into the wind as it shoved the rain into his face. He lapped the grounds twice. On the third lap there came the tell tale gurgle of a combustion engine. He whipped the bike around, skidding to a stop. A single headlight floated by the entrance, pausing just as he had. Mateo had his headlights off, and the kinetic coils of an F-bike are far quieter than the racket a combustion engine makes. He drove up to the centre fence and pointed his palm at the sky, squeezing off a single, short burst of fire. The fire flashed around him and died. The combustion engine muttered and the headlight bobbed closer. When it reached the other side of the fence it stopped.
Mateo couldn’t see shit, only the white light of the headlight, illuminating the iron fence, the dried, cracked mud of the ground, and him, silhouetted. Then the headlight winked out and everything went dark. It was that rich, purplish kind of darkness which only falls if you’ve been staring at a bright light and it goes out. It had a thickness to it, and a creepiness. Shrouded in this darkness, the courier spoke.
“Have you brought the item?”
The voice had a nasal quality to it, and a wetness, as if it had travelled up from deep in the throat. It was neither deep nor high and was only remarkable for being strange and for sounding so fleshy and organic. Mateo felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand up. He adjusted his grip on the handlebars. There was a feeling of alarm coming from the boy, but the figment remained silent. Mateo nodded.
“Show me,” said the voice, almost tenderly. Mateo’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness now and he made out a small, helmeted figure hunched over the long handlebars of a combustion bike with huge wheels. It wasn’t a model he recognised. Mateo stayed sat on his bike a moment longer. The courier didn’t move. There was nothing to do—he had to show him the package before he got the money.
He jumped down from the bike and in a quick, nervous movement unlatched the seat locker and pulled out the medical box. You couldn’t make out much of it in the darkness. It just looked like a box.
“Bring it closer,” instructed the courier.
“No.” Said Mateo, immediately.
“Hmm. But I must show it. Hmm. Fine. Stay there.” Even as he spoke, the courier slipped off his large, strange motorbike and onto the ground, approaching the fence. On his feet he looked small and unthreatening. He fidgeting for a moment at the chin strap. With one hand he pulled off his helmet, struggling with it, while in the other he threw an envelope at Mateo’s feet. Mateo glanced down at it. There was a clunk as the courier dropped his helmet on the ground.
“You have broken the seal.” The voice had changed. Now it was cold and empty. Mateo glanced up at the sound of it. The courier stood just a few steps away now, on the other side of the fence. He had a weathered face, with bright blue eyes and thick hair, yet set with deep, folding wrinkles. His mouth was a yellow grimace.
On his forehead was a huge, bulbous eyeball, twitching around restlessly with a disturbing autonomy. It looked right at Mateo. In its static silence, it seemed to scream. The courier raised his hand, opening it, and in his palm there burst to life a ball of strange, crinkling light.
“RUN.” Screamed the boy.