The city was awake with noise. Mist colored the sky, brightly set in greyish white by a noonday sun struggling to peer through the smokey clouds. The Lowdowns were lively. Cars bustled in lines, running like ladybugs over the orderly streets. From here, the buildings looked like matchstick boxes.

Oldtown stretched from the southwest, near Maxway 50, the southbound route out of the city, up to the northwest; it curved around the western border of the city, ending right up against the Industrial Zone. Oldtown, or warzone as everyone else called it, was the definition of destitution. Abandoned apartment buildings sat empty, or taken over by squatter gangs, broken down industrial warehouses rotted in disuse, and complete residential areas were forgotten and built upon, paved over by super highways crumbling and cracking.

The city also ran deep underground, layer after layer, for god knows how long. Remnants of super skyscrapers acted like support beams for the crumbling city and poked up from the ruined concrete and ash-buried roads. They were mostly hollow now, at least the tallest ones, resembling sharp stakes more than actual structures.

I couldn’t tell you what this building used to be. The inside floors and outer walls had all collapsed, caving down on top of themselves far below in a gigantic pile of ash, rubbles, and metal streetside. Only partial concrete floors and the metal skeleton frame remained. However, that made it easy to climb through.

At the top, where the air was thin, and the wind blew frigid breezes, there was a flat piece of concrete flooring left from before large enough to walk around on comfortably. It was sturdy too, so I hoisted up an old squeaky couch and a small table. This was where I read comics and mags, ate, sometimes slept, and enjoyed whatever else I could hoist up. Up here, I was far, far away from the chaos below. And it’s where I was that day, when Mackie climbed up to greet me.

With a grunt, and a stumble of concrete, my peace was interrupted.

“Hey there boy,” he said waking me to my disappointment. It had been months since I'd seen Mackie, and this wasn’t the time for a reunion. Not here in my happy place. Mackie was not known for bringing joy. Nah, he was here for something.

I kicked my legs off the corroded metal bed table, my footrest, and closed my “Classics” mag. Before I said anything, I hid it under the couch cushions.

“Mackie,” I acknowledged.

“Damn. You can see everything up here.” He walked over to the edge and looked down. A shudder visibly ran down his spine.

A sick feeling in my gut started to bubble up. I’d been doing fine so far. Little cash grabs here, some odd jobs there. Cash was coming in. I’d been scrounging just fine. Now, Mackie was here to pull me into some bullshit job that was a fifty-fifty if I’d make money or lose some. I swore to resist his offer, but somehow he always pulled me in.

“Damn it’s cold up here,” he continued, walking over and plopping down on the couch next to me. I stiffened up and laid my head back, my thick black rimmed sunglasses covering my eyes. There was another reason I wasn’t in the mood for this.

“That’s why I wear a jacket up here.”

“Yeah, I see that, always with this fucking coat. What’s with this old thing? Your mother give it to you? Come on, give me some cover.” I’d been wearing it like a blanket and Mackie pulled at the edges.

“Fuck off. Bring your own next time.”

“Yeesh. Touchy subject. I'm sorry." He exaggerated, letting go of the coat. Mackie started fiddling with someone on the metal table, a metal keychain a girl in Lowdowns gave me a long time ago, not that I'd tell him that.

"What do you want, Mackie?"

"What’s your deal? Huh? Haven’t seen you in, what… four months. I climb my ass up here and I don’t even get a hey?”

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“Hey.”

“Oh, I see.” He leaned over and pushed up my sunglasses. The hazy sunlight burnt my eyes. I’m sure my pupils were the size of golf balls.

“You’re high as fuck, Amigo.” He let the sunglasses slip back down. Well, I guess I wasn’t doing as well as I’d said. Here in Oldtown, everyone had vices, had something bad they were hiding. You needed vices to live here. All the smart people either died or left, and the rest of us just got high instead.

“Nah, I’m coming down off one… hard. My head is killing me.”

“Shit. I know what you need. Here,” he pulled out a modified inhaler, gold painted and grimy. A thick smudgy thumbprint stained one side.

“This’ll pick you up after that downer.” He held it out to me. I weighed taking it versus not.

What was in it besides Masipol, or “mace” as it was called in the street. It was a highly addictive upper, akin to old-school cocaine, except made from completely synthetic materials. Crazies streetside put more than mace in their inhalants. An upper sounded good right now, but...

“What’s in it?”

“Mace.”

“...”

“That’s it, I swear.” He chuckled. If my head wasn’t hurting so bad, I would’ve refused. Instead, I sucked in whatever stimulant concoction was in the little bit of plastic. Instantly I started coughing, my lungs burning, my head spinning. The world turned purple through my sunglasses for a full minute before I recovered.

“Woah! Haha. There he is.” He patted me on the back, kicking out another set of coughs and taking his inhaler back. He leaned over. “Come on, now. Focus up. I got business to talk about.”

“Here we go.” I wasn’t back, but the meds propped me up a bit.

“Hey, this one you’ll be interested in. Big fucking money.”

“The last one was 'big fucking money'”, I mocked, “and it cost me more in bribes for passing warrants than what I earned,” I spat, leaning forward and grabbing a piece of leftover food from the kickstand. It was stale and smelled like the bottom of my shoe. I spit it out, desperately hungry.

“No, not this one. This one is fucking big time. We’re talking a score real gangsters go after.” He leaned in, “Three hundred thou a piece.” I nearly choked on spit.

“How the fuck…”

“You know me. I know my shit. Only problem is, we gotta knock over a bank.”

“Great,” I said to myself under the call of the motorcycle engine. I was stuck on the back of some junkie asshole’s motorbike desperately afraid to touch him in case he gutted me for it. Each bump and pothole had me scrambling in my seat, holding on for dear life.

It was just me and Mackie and our two escorts. The gang had parted with us, going their own way. They had a job to do: starting a riot downtown.

We paused beneath an overpass. Cars passed overhead. The dull roar of tires on pavement blended in with the city noise. The causeway was protected on either side of the street by rotten chainlink fences. A vagrant's tent glowed with dim lantern light somewhere in the night beyond.

My driver stopped by the side of the street, scraping me off the back of his ride before his wheels stopped turning. Mackie on the other hand was gingerly let off, the woman grabbing his ass on his way.

“Bank’s four blocks north of here. What do you say, Sleeper? You think we can find something here?” Mackie said meeting up with me.

“I’ll have to look around, but sure. There’s a residential area back behind us. Somewhere up ahead I bet we’ll find some offices with cars parked out front.” The bikers stayed and listened for a minute. It was clear we both assumed they'd leave but as we were walking away down the street, suddenly they shut their bikes off. We turned to meet their gaze.

“Qué pasa, amigo? Where are ya’ll going?” The skinny man looked at his partner curiously, unsure, as if they were letting prisoners go.

“Rigger said to take care of you until we get to the bank,” the big woman said.

“We got it from here. We’ll meet you there.” Mackie was trying to stay diplomatic. I was not so pleasant.

“You did your job. Let us do ours, yeah? We don’t need bikers chasing us around, blowing our cover while we try and jack cars.”

“Oh-ho.” The big woman laughed boldly like she was about to say something. Mackie chimed in before that.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. We can take care of ourselves. We’re big boys.” He winked at the big woman. She laughed to herself, shaking her head before she revved up her engine. The skinny man, staring daggers, started his bike too, and together they stormed past us off into the night. Their bikes were finally in the distance by the time Mackie and I made it to the office complexes.