For the second time in as many days, Mateo woke late and in pain. He looked around him, flopping around in bed like a landed fish. At least this time he was alone. The muscles of his left arm ached after his arm wrestle with the vadu, but the real pain was his right arm. There was a dark bruise around his bicep and forearm, where the tentacle had squeezed it, and a lot of pain in his right wrist and hand. He groaned and sat up, looked at the clock by his bed. It was 11 am.
He forced himself to sit up, rolled onto his feet and, groaning, stumbled to the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror.
“Wow. You look really bad,” said the boy, chirpily.
“Thanks,” muttered Mateo. He didn’t want to shave, but he couldn’t meet the fence covered in so much stubble so he lathered some foam in his palm and dragged a razor up and down his face, going slow. Somehow his face felt funny. Like he was shaving someone else who sat just in front of him in a pitch black room. He jumped in the shower, turning the water as hot as it would go. It came out in fitful bursts of sporadic pressure. He turned up his chin and let it punch him in the face. This burnt off the fog in his head, but it did little for the pain in his arms. He looked at his body. The burn marks had faded, but they hadn’t disappeared. They looked to be settling in as a series of very faint scars. The bruise was like a snake, trying to choke the life out of his arm so it could eat him. He filled his throat with water form the shower and spat. Strange thoughts.
He dug around at the bottom of a chest of drawers, found clean underwear and got dressed. Same shit he always wore: jeans, a baggy t shirt and his biker jacket. Worn inside out it looked like a plain black biker jacket and he’d blend in fine. He pulled on his boots and nearly fell down the stairs.
The bar was pretty much empty, just a few lunchtime regulars. He looked at what Sally was serving up and grimaced: rice and pale pork covered in a gelatinous film, with a small serving of watery green beans chucked over the top. He sat at the bar and gestured and she brought him over a bowl, and then a glass of water when he grunted for one. As she served it she added a flirtatious sprinkling of chili flakes and winked at him.
“Good afternoon, handsome. Rising late again?”
Mateo nodded, not looking up.
“I don’t know how you can sleep so long, honestly.”
“It’s pretty easy,” he said.
“Maybe for a young guy like you. Some of us have work to do.”
Mateo didn’t respond. He looked at his food.
“What did you get up to last night?”
“Drinking.”
“Where? Why not here? You never bring friends round.” She leaned in and put her hand on his. “I’ll do you friendly prices. You know that.”
He shrugged his shoulders and pulled back his hand. Sally sighed, blowing a lock of hair off her lips and waddled away to serve a customer as Mateo levered the rice and the pork and the beans into his mouth. It tasted primarily of salt.
He had arranged to meet the fence at 6:30, over in a bar in the Gwae. Later he had dinner with his sister. He was still a little skittish around the Gwae, worried that a Beetle working there had gotten a visual ID on his bike last night, so he figured he’d take the long way round. He shot up the J-way and took it all the way north to where it met Atica Ward, then dropped down and circled round towards Gwae. It took him three hours to get to Atica, and it would take another two to come back round to Gwae. On a Tuesday, the streets should be fairly quiet at this sort of time. He didn’t rush, meandering his way through smaller streets and byways. He was always looking to improve his understanding of Zone Six.
He passed along the border of the Groshee Enterprise Estate: a rhata industrial yard where fire-kīn worked all day and all night to support the many machines the city depended on, for production of all kinds, for energy, and on other, stranger machines Mateo didn’t understand but which the Executives paid good money for.
Driving by, he saw that the unions had finally gotten to Groshee, because outside the front gate was a crowd of almost fifty workers in their overalls, with their spouses and even occasionally children, holding placards with slogans like ‘No Free Fire’, or ‘Humanity ≠ Fuel’. As the cars drove by the picket would yell at them, imploring them to honk their horns or simply using it as an excuse to publicize their protest, but they let Mateo be, as he was on an F-bike and therefore automatically an ally. A nervous squad of Beetles stood off to one side, but they weren’t doing anything other than smoking. He saw one light his cigarette with a finger and understood. Plenty of the Beetles were rhata themselves, although it was unusual to rhata police stationed at an industrial protest. He didn’t really have time to stop and ask questions, so he just rode slowly by.
He was making his way down the 506, a large highway that ran all the way from one side of Five to the far side of Six, when he hit a traffic jam. In the distance ahead of him he heard a booming sound, over and over again. Sounds of that volume and intensity only ever mean one thing in Tinjouki: capes. He checked his mental map of Zone Six, which was near perfect, and realized he no longer had time to turn around and take a different route. If he was late for the fence he’d look incompetent and lose bargaining power.
He filtered through the traffic. The passengers watched him go, children crowding the windows when they saw his bike and jamming their fingers against the glass. Everyone else watched him pass with a lifeless curiosity, white collar workers in creased shirts, delivery drivers, taxis. He clicked on his radio and flicked through channels, but he saw the red tape before he found the alert station. He looked around. There was no where he could turn his bike into. He’d have to turn around and find a way to cross over to the other side of the 506. He drifted forward, knowing he needed to leave, but hoping to get a peak at the action.
“Stop. Stop your bike, kid. This is a Lumin containment zone. You can’t come any further.”
A Beetle, in pale gray-blue uniform and navy blue cap, held out his hand. Mateo pulled up in front of the red tape.
“What’s going on? Is there anywhere I can turn around?” he asked the Beetle. The man shook his head.
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“I’m afraid not. You’ll just have to wait till it has been made safe, like everyone else. It won’t be long. Small outbreak. First Response are already here. What’s your business? Let me see your face.”
Mateo pulled up his helmet and showed the man his face.
“No business, officer. Just riding through.”
The Beetle’s response was interrupted by another bang, louder this time. It came from a tall building, about half a block behind the red tape. As Mateo watched, a woman flew backwards out of the building, bursting out of the window. She drifted smoothly through the air, then started to drift slowly down, like a balloon low on helium.
She wore a plain, tight fitting uniform, a white long-sleeved leotard with the blue band of FR curving diagonally around her chest and back. She was shaven headed, as so many FR are, and from this distance featureless. As Mateo watched, the woman took something out, seemingly out of thin air, turned around and tossed it behind her. A huge purple shape expanded in an instant, ramming into her like an air bag and sending her flying back towards the building. This was accompanied by another bang. She shot back through the same window, disappearing.
“Who’s that?” he asked the policeman. The man looked over him, eyes considering his bike and his general composure. He turned away without responding.
Moments later a yellow object fell out of the same window. Unlike the FR, it seemed to be effected by gravity in the conventional manner, promptly plummeting towards the ground. Mateo gasped.
“Woah,” said the boy, in his head. “Is that a Lumin? I never saw a Lumin before. Did you?"
Mateo shook his head. The policeman glanced at him, then moved his body so that he could watch Mateo while he watched the fight. As the Lumin hit the ground, it spread out. It seemed to be made out of a kind of yellow gel. The gel moved slowly, flattening against the ground to ease impact, then grouping into a vaguely humanoid shape. It was true what they said: he could smell flowers, faint and distant, but unmistakable. There was a squawk on the radio on the policeman’s chest, and a team of rubber suited Beetles from behind a building appeared, marching in a line towards the Lumin.
The Lumin turned towards them, stumbling. It paused. A shiver passed down its body. One of the suited Beetles, the first in line, lifted his hand and a thick plume of fire poured against the ground and towards the Lumin. These were F-Beetles, highly skilled and trained rhata used to stem the flood in a Lumin attack, and popularly referred to as ‘Feetles’. It stamped its foot on the ground and a layer of gel spread forward, thin like algae on a tree. The fire gobbled it up and it dissipated. The Lumin stamped again, harder this time, and the gel rose up in thick spikes, moving towards the Feetles. The floral smell thickened. The spikes rolled forward in thick waves, rising up from the ground, and when the F-Beetles responded with a coordinated wall of fire, the gel absorbed the wave. The Beetles were locked in place, slowing the advance of the gel but not stopping it. They held their ground, sending forth a quantity of organized fire which, as a fellow rhata, Mateo found extremely impressive. These will have been skillful kīn who had spent a lifetime exercising their craft. In about seven seconds time, they would be overrun by the gel.
Then they would die.
There was another bang. Mateo glanced up. The FR from before had appeared in the air. Mateo watched as a purple airbag faded and another sprang to life above her. The FR was shot towards the earth. She landed between the Feetles and the Lumin with a crash, in the middle of their fire. Her landing extinguished the fire in an area around her, presumably with the force of the air pressure. She gestured and, with another crack, a balloon formed around the gel, contracting rather than expanding this time. The gel was removed and a compressed ball of purple matter now floated between the FR and the Lumin, which with a flinch withdrew its gel.
The Lumin had shrunk, although only by a modest margin. It reached up with a hand and, casually, pulled open a rent in its gelatinous chest. Out of the rent poured pure, brilliant, yellow light. It was the colour of the most basic yellow, of yellow paint. The beam of light hit the purple ball, glancing off it. The ball shot off to the side, bounced against a building, and flew into the hand of the FR. Simultaneously, the yellow light was redirected towards the left most Beetle. It passed over him for a moment before blinking out. The Beetle started to scream. Somehow the sound of it was louder than the expressions of the FR: the sound of pure, unadulterated suffering. He dropped to his knees, clawing at the mask of his suit. Mateo had always had good eyes, but he was still impressed when from this distance he could see the small droplets of yellow gel beading on the surface of the figure’s suit.
Again, two things occurred at once. Firstly, the next Beetle in line, having frozen for a moment, turned around and bathed his peer in fire. As this happened there was the sound of a screaming animal, perhaps that of a bear. A second FR had appeared a few meters from the Lumin. Like the other, he was clothed in the uniform of FR: white with a blue sash; but his was loose and flowing as a robe whereas the first’s was form fitting like an acrobat. In his hand was a spear the length of a bus. He held one end of it lightly. The other pierced the Lumin through the chest. With a flicker, the spear shortened to an ordinary length. The man jumped, four or five meters into the air, and again the spear flickered, extending faster than the eye could track. The Lumin was pinned to the ground, still screaming. Around the neck of the figure Mateo could see a bright scarf, flickering with a peculiar gray light. Then he fell to the earth, leaving his spear where it was.
The second FR gestured and the ball in her hand flew above the head of the Lumin. She gestured again and it unfurled and expanded, wrapping downwards. The spear withdrew at the perfect moment and the purple fabric successfully cocooned the Lumin. The female FR gestured a final time and the fabric contracted as it had before. There was an empty, popping sound. It was very loud and yet somehow negative, as if it sucked the noise out of the area for a moment.
The two FR approached the sack of purple fabric. Now, the Beetle squad had circled the infected member and all of them were dousing him in fire. The FR waved her hand dismissively and the purple fabric faded, slowly. It was slow enough that Mateo could see what was beneath. A skeleton, similar to that of a bear or a huge human being, of black bones. As the fabric finally faded out of existence, the bones shattered to dust and melted into nothingness. Of the yellow gel nothing remained. It no longer smelled of flowers.
The male FR approached the Beetle squad and spoke with one of them. They stopped their fire. In its wake was revealed the corpse of their colleague. No trace of the yellow gel could be seen on his suit, but by the posture of his body he was clearly lifeless. One of the suited Beetles shook their head. Another knelt by the suit and started fiddling with it. There was a squawk on the radio of the uniform standing next to Mateo. The man looked at him finally. Both had been totally absorbed in the fight.
“Well, you got your show, eh? What are you, one of them sick fucks that drives around chasing capes?”
“No,” said Mateo.
“And what’s your business?”
“My own,” said Mateo.
The policeman bristled.
“Wanna sleep in a cell, fire rat?” He fondled the lip of his blue cap, pulling it slightly deeper over his forehead like this would imbue his words with the authority of the badge on its peak.
“That would not be my preference, officer. Just don’t love being quizzed by any stray lawman for taking a ride on a nice day. I’m going to see my sister.”
The Beetle looked him up and over. There was another squawk on his radio. He took out his pad and made a point of very conspicuously writing down the plates on Mateo’s bike.
“Fine. You can go, we’re opening the 506 up. But I’ve got you’re plates right here,” he slapped his notepad against his palm, as if it was the very law itself. “If you’re seen at another attack you’ll be taken in for questioning.” He paused for significance. “Don’t be there.”
The words fell flat on both their ears. Mateo nodded politely and told him yes sir. He adjusted his position on the bike and cracked the knuckles in his left hand while he waited for the Beetle to cut the tape and wave signs at the waiting cars. Then he pulled down his helmet and vented fire, zooming forward.