Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (12 page)

“This needs to change,” Bruno said softly, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. “This city needs to change. None of us can go on living like this for even another second, Jones. We’re so hollow and so empty, we sometimes forget that we have a choice and every morning we wake up is another chance to make things right.”

I nodded, still watching the girl. I wished I could cry. I wished I could fall to my knees on the pavement and weep for the girl and the life she’d had, and the even harder life she was going to have. I knew I couldn’t, wasn’t capable, but if Bruno had asked me what I wanted in that moment, that would’ve been it. I was so selfish.

Bruno gave me a pat on the back, then started walking again. After one last look at the girl, I followed him.

We ended up in an Asian part of the slums, outside a bar with unfamiliar characters on the glowing sign. The windows of the bar were blacked out with spray paint, hindering nosy onlookers from sneaking a peek or two. The door of the bar was practically ancient; it didn’t have a keypad or any cameras, at least not any I could see. Car alarms were going off, and some woman was screaming at the top of her lungs at a man across the street. The streetlight on the corner was dying, like it was about to flicker its last flicker and topple over, crushing the screaming woman. The place was dark, run-down, and sketchy: the kind of place where huge back-alley drug deals were made. This thought made me nervous and excited at the same time.

“Listen,” said Bruno, turning to me. “We’re going to meet someone here. His name is Song. He’s an ex-ENAD soldier. He lives off the grid, so once this meeting is over, we never even met the guy, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed hesitantly. Without meaning to, I reached one of my hands down and traced the top of my Tsutari with my fingertips. It felt comforting to me, like someone patting me on the back and telling me that everything was going to be all right.

“Seno says the guy might be a little messed up. He’s seen some shit in his day, but he’s a legitimate source of information,” said Bruno.

“Wait. You got this guy’s contact info from Seno?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I don’t trust Seno. There’s something off about that guy. Plus Tanis told me a pretty fucked-up story involving those two and another girl named Zoey.”

Bruno shrugged. “I don’t know, Seno seems like a decent guy to me. I’ve never noticed anything shady about him.”

“Just watch your back around him, okay?” I asked him.

“All right, Jones, but I still say we can trust him. He’s been a decent guy to me so far.”

I had nothing to add to that, so I remained silent.

We pushed open the door to the bar and walked inside. There weren’t many people there, just a few men drinking cheap, translucent beer and watching whatever match was being played on the screens around the bar. The inside was old and run-down, just like the outside. It was lined with electronic VLT machines built into the walls that had sticky screens from all the drinks that had been spilled on them. The floor was pale concrete layered with filth, and had probably never seen the good end of a cleaning bot or even a mop. Each of the walls had screens on them, each playing different stations to suit whichever poor men spent their afternoons in this hole of a place. The bartender was a pretty girl who was more machine than woman. Half her face was covered in a metal plate, and when she smiled at us, only the flesh part of her lips moved.

Bruno walked over to a table at the far corner of the bar that was mostly vacant except for one man sitting at a table, hunched over an almost-empty glass of alcohol. We had a seat at the table with him, and he didn’t even lift his head. He reeked of alcohol and cheap smoke, and the exposed skin of his hands was covered in dirt. He was definitely thinner and a lot less healthy than any ENAD soldier I’d ever seen, with his bones noticeable through his skin, and his once-dark hair thinning and greasy.

“I’m not talking unless you brought the stuff,” he said to us quietly. “And don’t even think about threatening me. There’s nothing I have that I value. Not even my life.”

I couldn’t believe this man had ever worked for the state. He was diseased and weak, nothing at all like a soldier.

Bruno grabbed something out of his pocket and set it on the table. It was a little glass vial of liquid that had a metal top like something I’d seen before in the lab at the facility.

“A lot of Pentrox I got off of Kavric, confiscated and kept at the facility,” Bruno said, leaning over to whisper to me.

“What? Why would Pentrox be kept at the facility? It’s illegal to possess, and the law states that it needs to be destroyed immediately after it’s found,” I questioned.

Bruno gave me a sad look, then turned back to the man sitting on the opposite side of the table. He’d already grabbed the vial and shoved it somewhere no longer visible to us.

“My name is Song,” he said. “At least, that’s the name they gave me years ago. I don’t remember my real name, but then again, I doubt either of you do.”

Neither of us said anything.

“The information you want to know, the reason why I was kicked out of ENAD and thrown out like I’d committed some cardinal sin, it can be very dangerous information to have. You understand that, right?” Song asked us, still staring down at the almost-empty glass he cradled between his hands.

“Yes.” Bruno replied for both of us.

“It’s true that ENAD was established years ago because riots were starting and the state wanted a way to control them without jumping through the million fucking hoops previous politicians had set up. What you don’t know is that ENAD wasn’t endorsed by the state as a whole; it was brought to fruition by the political leader at the time, Craven.

“What we’re led to believe, as soldiers, is that we work for the state, for the better good of the city, to help clean up the scum and clean up the streets in the process, when really we are scum working for scum, and all we ever do is spill more blood on the streets than is already there. We’re bought and paid for by the political office, not taxpayers.”

“Bullshit,” I snarled, slamming my fist on the table. “And if you refer to me as scum again, I won’t hesitate to drive my fist through your face.”

Song just peered at me like he’d expected my outburst. The sides of his lips curled slightly, as though he knew something I didn’t and wanted to rub my nose in it.

“In your case, Otk pays for you as his personal little army that he can throw whichever way he pleases, to use you against whoever he wants. One day it might be his opponent, the next some card shark who beat him in a game of poker the night before.”

I stared straight into his eyes. “You’re lying.”

“I am? Please, tell me how that’s so.”

Oh yeah, this guy used to be an ENAD soldier, all right. Only an ex-soldier would have the balls to mock to me to my face.

“I’ve taken down thugs, mobsters, murderers, rapists, thieves, and radical violent activists alike. Never once have we been ordered to go after Otk’s fucking maid who forgot to clean behind his damn stove or his daughter’s boyfriend that Daddy didn’t like,” I growled at him through clenched teeth. My fists were clamped so tight on my thighs, I might’ve been able to break my own fingers.

And the prick had the audacity to chuckle and look back down at his beer.

“Right. You keep telling yourself that, soldier. Any rights as a human being you might have once been born with, no matter how poor or broken you were, were stripped from you the moment the state decided you were their property. Bottom line is, you’re soldiers all right, but personal soldiers for Otk and his almighty hand, eliminating whoever he sees fit. This isn’t a democracy, soldiers, it’s a dictatorship.”

I was about to interrupt Song again, but Bruno hushed me with a look. I folded my arms over my chest, sat back in my chair, and let Song continue.

“He keeps you calm with injections—an ENAD-manufactured version of Pentrox. It’s not as heavy-duty as the real deal, but it’s a lot cleaner and keeps people more alert. It’s one of the most potent drugs I’ve ever experienced, but that’s just the kicker, isn’t it? You don’t even know you’re on it, and you barely feel it in your system at all, especially since you’ve been taking it all your lives. The only time you really notice the difference is when you’re off it, like I am, and start to go through withdrawal.”

“Wait,” I said. “That can’t be right. We were out of the facility for seven years. In those seven years, sure, I had my weekly medical check-ups and vaccinations with the medical staff of the state, but there’s no drug strong enough to last in us for an entire week, especially with metabolisms like ours.”

“Right,” said Song. “But you think you weren’t being watched, monitored, influenced when you were away from
home
for those seven years? Smarten up, boys; they knew where you lived, where you slept, who you fucked, what you ate, where you ate. Did you do your own grocery shopping, or did you have food delivered to you while you were living on your own?”

Bruno and I both leaned forward in our chairs. Song had to be full of shit. It was impossible that what he said was true, or at least improbable. What were the chances that we’d been raised our entire lives just to be some politician’s lapdog?

No, he had to be wrong; he had to be stringing Bruno and me along. Something this deep and this big couldn’t have gone overlooked for such a long time. Not unless it was covered up deeply, and the only people who knew about it were in on it.

Bruno had the same blank expression on his face that I was sure was on mine.

Something pulled tight in my chest. I wanted something. I needed something. My head was spinning, and I couldn’t remember that last time I wanted a hit of Corx so badly.

I stood up from my chair at the same moment I watched Song pass a piece of paper across the table toward Bruno. I walked out of the dingy bar and sucked in deep breaths of air the second I was out the front door, not that the air in the slums was particularly refreshing. I ran my fingers through my hair, looking around for something, but I wasn’t sure what.

It was minutes later when Bruno came out and stood next to me.

“You okay, Jones?” he asked.

I just nodded in response. “I could really go for some Corx right now,” I replied, trying to make it sound like a joke. The truth was I itched. I had that lingering feeling under my skin, that feeling that told me I’d feel so much better, everything would be so much easier, if only I was flying a little higher.

“You did that a lot these past few years, huh?” Bruno asked. I just shrugged and ran my hands over my face. My skin was hot and sticky with sweat.

“What did Song give you?” I asked Bruno. “On that piece of paper?”

“Log-in information. Apparently there’s enough shit here to blow this thing wide open.” He waved the piece of paper at me, a serious expression on his face.

“Bruno—”

“Jones, you can’t stop me. People have the right to know. If what Song said is true, and I believe it is, then people have a right to know. People like Otk need to be stopped so this city has a chance to survive.”

“God!” I yelled, throwing my hands up in the air. “Fuck, okay. Fuck. I need a hit of Corx. We have a bit of extra time before our two hours is up. It’ll be easy to find in this area of town. Do you have any money?” I asked.

He sighed deep and nodded. “Just enough credits for a hit or two.”

“Good enough,” I replied and started walking.

It only took me around ten minutes to wander into an alley, with Bruno tagging behind, and find a Corxed-out woman to sell me two tabs. She was selling them cheaper than most people I’d purchased from before, probably because she was on the brink of death. Bruno keyed his code into his small tablet on his wrist and transferred the credits while I pooled saliva on my tongue and then swallowed down both tabs at the same time.

By the time we were back at the facility, knocking on the same door Kavric let us slip out of earlier, I was feeling a lot better about the whole situation. Kavric took one look at me and sighed, telling Bruno to take me back to my room and that he’d tell Corp and Carver I was ill.

That night I slept heavily, dreaming of a poor, crying girl sitting on the hood of a beaten-up car, holding a young baby with pale-blue hair.

Chapter Six

“Ko, position?” I asked through the microphone embedded in my mask.

“Target in sight. Following a few feet behind,” he replied.

We’d been working on a mission for the past three days, which involved tracking down and following a suspected associate of Deleviv who went by the name of Kevin Dry, Person Number 121-1153-6. He was suspected of supplying Deleviv with insider information. Even though most work was done on computers, making it traceable, the smartest people always worked with tangible things. Things that could be destroyed.

He was a middle-aged man, thick around the middle, with a liking for young girls—cyborgs in particular. While he seemed to like his girls young, they weren’t young enough to be considered illegal. Past that, Ko and I hadn’t dug up any useful information on him. He liked to eat at the same Chinese food joint for lunch every Tuesday and Thursday, and had a secretary named Karen who thought he was a pig. We hadn’t seen him make contact with anyone in our database who had any connections to Deleviv, but he could’ve just been really good.

I was on a roof adjacent to his apartment complex, using binoculars to look through his bedroom window. He was sitting on his bed in nothing but his green boxer shorts and white T-shirt, watching some program that made him laugh so hard he started to choke on his own spit.

Ko had followed him into the building and watched him stagger through his apartment door.

“He’s boring. I’m coming up to the roof with you,” Ko said through the speaker.

I waited for him, enjoying the nightlife noises of the city surrounding me. Car horns, distant talking and yelling from people on the street, and the lights of the billboards overhead making a subtle buzzing noise while a few of the more expensive ones produced sounds for their advertisements. I took off my mask and set it to the side, enjoying the feeling of warm air swirling against my skin. If I was going to be bored out of my mind, I might as well try to enjoy the weather.