“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 rumbled 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 chain link 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?” 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 walked down the street, they suddenly shut their bikes off. We turned to them.

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

“We’re supposed to take care of you until you get a car,” 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.

Luckily the streets were empty, at least of people. The sidewalks were cluttered with different types of vehicles parked bumper to bumper. Some looked like they could fly, but most had wheels. We eyed out prospective vehicles with quick steps, anxious and constantly looking over our shoulders.

“If we get nabbed jacking a car, I’m never talking to you again,” I whined as we passed a set of beaters.

“I think it’s exciting. My blood is pumping right now.”

“You are crazy, you know that? Remind me why we’re messing around with gangers, again. Huh? We spent a lot of years dodging these assholes. They used to put our faces in the dirt, stomp us, fucking worse than that…” I couldn’t even mention some of the things I’d seen. They were too terrible, too horrible for words, even for Warzone. Gangers were the scum of the earth.

“Now you’re hanging with them or what?” I spat out.

“Nah, you know how it goes. Just fucking with them to get what I want. That’s what anybody else would do.”

“You know they’re gonna kill us after this, right?”

“That’s why we got a good driver. We drop their bags, and you and I take our cut and get out before they even have a chance.” That annoyed me. Mackie was always so enthusiastic.

“You’re dreamin. Playing games that’ll get you killed. Us killed.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be a pussy. Besides,” he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. He was so hefty and strong that I couldn’t push him away even as he pulled me close, “I’ll protect you, baby.”

I ripped away from his grip.

“Fuck off!” I hated when he did that shit. He was always fucking around with me. I whipped around to meet his gaze, surprising him.

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“You really don’t get it, do you? You’re always so high you don’t know what’s real and what’s not. Well, maybe you haven’t noticed but we’re living like rats.” My words startled him. And strangely enough, they seemed to sink in.

“I don’t know why you keep coming back to me. Maybe you like me. Maybe you think I’m your friend. Well if I’m your friend then do me a favor and stop dragging me into shit like this. And lay off the fucking drugs. They’re frying your already sizzled brain.”

“Hey, I’m no junkie. Alright?” It seemed like he was asking more than telling, “And you’re one to talk, always asleep on Zennies.” Zennies was slang for a medication I abu– used.

“Yeah?” I cut him off, my voice echoing into the street, “Then it’s ironic that you’re the one dreaming. Wake up and smell the shit. We live in a dump, and I for one don’t intend to die here. Maybe it makes you laugh, maybe you think it's just a silly thing I say, but I’m getting out one way or another. And I won't let you keep me here. So wipe that stupid smile off your face and act like this matters. For fuck’s sake.”

My anger subsided a bit in the awkward silence that followed. Mackie walked behind me with his hands in his pockets. If it were a couple years back I would’ve felt bad for him. But he was always chasing a high I didn’t want to follow.

After a while, we came across a decent looking ride parked in an alleyway. It was an ‘81 Convert Charger with dark green racing stripes, not the newest model but that was even better. Harder to track.

The car was parked in the alleyway too, instead of the street. The perfect scenario. Not necessarily speedy over long distances, but quick in small spaces, the Charger was perfect for a city escape where we could maneuver around the chaos of Lowdown.

“Yo," I said, nodding my head to Mackie who sulked behind me with his eyes open for cops, "There’s one in that alley right there. Keep a look out. You see anyone in those windows?”

“No.” Despite his mood, Mackie was still on it. His head was on a swivel. The man knew the procedure like it was baked into his bones. One thing was for sure, he was good at pulling crimes. We both were. We’d been born in the bowels of Warzone, after all.

It took me a full minute to unlock the door. I did it old school with a pin and needle through the keyhole. When I finally cracked the driver's side open, I was hit with smells of leather oil, and plastic. The car wasn't new, but the interior was clearly taken care of.

The Charger series was built with a secure bolt over the dashboard and mainboard computers. A secure bolt was a physical piece of metal banded over the circuitry plugins, ports for cords or cables, and so on, that physically stopped anything from connecting to it through the car’s internal ports. Nothing serious but annoying. It stopped hackers from plugging in their devices, or people like me who had equipment built for jacking into cars. Fortunately, the fool had left his off.

The dashboard and mainboard of the car were a mess of electronics: screens, wires, keyboards and knobs. They were mostly useless to me. A lot of it was gear for honing in nav computers, listening in on secured radio frequencies and other bobs and bells car salesmen sucker car buyers into getting. But all of that wasn’t enough apparently. The poor sap had been plugging in some kind of device into the car radio ports, probably a police scanner, and instead of unplugging it when he parked the car and securing the bolt, he left the device plugged in with the secure bolt undone. All I had to do was unplug the scanner. Poor sap...

To get the Charger started though, I needed my wirejack. This thing was a handy little tool, of course illegal for citizens to own. It was a handheld black box with a screen on its front, a plastic grip handle, and three cords hanging out of the back used for a variety of jack in techniques. It was nothing fancy, loaded with only subroutines and programs for very specific tasks. Its memory wasn’t very large either so the device had to specialize in one thing. Mine was for jacking into vehicles.

Hackers, or Hacks, had all kinds of equipment for this kind of stuff. I bet a hack could get this car to speak Japanese if they wanted it to, and using only the car computer too. But I wasn’t any kind of Hack. Luckily, if you know the right people and have the right cash, they can set things up for you like this wirejack.

Some wirejacks can unlock doors, or hack computers, upload viruses, track locations, you name it. A part of me got jealous thinking about how skilled a hacker was. If they’d applied their knowledge to something productive they might go somewhere in life.

But all the hackers I knew were junkheads, or burnt out wirerunners looking for quick fix downers to soothe their aching nerves. I got my wirejack from a skinny, jumper chick in LowDown.

Jumpers were normals once, people with normal lives, jobs in an office, or parents who had normal jobs. Then, for whatever reason, the normal starts to hang with the wrong crowd, or takes an interest in an unsavory lifestyle and soon enough winds up in a Lowdowns gutter, hence they “jump” off their high ledge down here with us.

Her parents were commuters to Nortron, a tech company near midtown. Had a good life, good money. She just decided one day she’d rather be in with the street rats than go to school. I'll never understand people like that.

But, I got this thing from her five years ago, and it's never let me down once. I tuned it to the right channel before initiating the program. The little box chimed as the hack commenced. A rough buzz shook the wirejack in my hand, a tickling sensation that went up my arm. Then, the car started. The engine revved, growling in the alleyway.

Mackie hustled to the car, jumping in the passenger seat. His weight shook the vehicle.

“Fuck yeah. This thing is sweet. Wish we could keep it after.” I did too. It was one of the nicest cars I’d ever jacked, even with holes in the seats where the cushion bloated out. But keeping a hot ride like this was a no-no. With all of the electronics inside, it would take less than a day to find the damn thing if we didn't scrub or chop it.

“Let’s head up this street onto the highway, and see how fast this thing goes,” Mackie said. That was a stupid idea, but I kept that comment to myself. I was curious how it would do too. Kicking the Charger into gear, I slid out from the alley, the engine roaring.

It felt good. The response was smooth. This thing was top-notch.

We sped down the street, skidding and peeling out at the corner as we rushed toward the highway. The choking smoke left behind wouldn’t even have time to dissipate before the sound of the vehicle drifted off into the chaos of the night.