Luca (7 page)

He must look like that dog with the stick in its mouth, only Jedd’s not running off to play.

“Here,” he says, turning to hand a filter to Ricky. “The recycle plant’s working overtime tonight. You better suck on this before your lungs start to melt.”

“Thanks,” Ricky says.

“Let’s hurry.” Jedd breaks into a brisk run down the middle of the street.

There’s a slight drizzle, more mist than rain. A full moon gives the clouds a faint orange glow as if lit by fire from within. On either side, the outlines of the buildings that fill the Fringe resemble a swarm of cicadas emerging from the ground, disjointed, organic and menacing in the dark. The walls of the structures are made of packing materials discarded by the local munitions factory and look like massive jigsaw puzzles of reconstituted chemboard and hard plastic sheets of random colors bolted together at uneven angles.

Welcome to the Fringe,
Jedd thinks,
the dregs of society. The dung heap of Manhattan.

Every costal city on the planet tells the same story. The wealthy live and work in pristine high-rise cocoons close to the ocean, encased in tombs of steel and glass, protected and separated from the world they ransack, rape and destroy. Slums like the Fringe spring up on the outskirts, necessary to the smooth functioning of the System, the source of subsistence labor, eking out an existence from the dirty industry that supports wealth and privilege, living off the garbage that flows from it.

“Hey, can you slow down to a gentle jog? I’m dying back here.” Ricky pulls up alongside, breathing hard.

“I wonder if he’s still alive.” Jedd whips out his jax and stares at the holoscreen that jumps above it. “His marker is gone, and I haven’t heard anything in the last five minutes. He’s not even on the Mesh. That’s not like him. Someone must have taken his jax. And he wouldn't give it up without a fight.”

“Where is the little runt?”

“In the Tribe Quadrant, two klicks away, if he’s still at the same coordinates.” Jedd picks up his pace with longer strides over the broken pavement. “See you there.”

As he runs, his mind finds a delicate equilibrium between fatigue and euphoria and begins to wander over the ten years since he and Ricky first arrived in the Fringe, just a couple of scared teenagers escaping from the interior of the continent, a place he soon found out had a name on the coast.

They called it the
Dead Zone
, or
Zone
for short.

Months after their arrival in the Fringe, Jedd still flinched at the sound of an angry voice or cowered in fear when a hand was raised against him, a common occurrence in their neighborhood. His former existence under the iron fist of old Moses was like living in hell. It took a steady diet of entertainment and food to clear it out of his system.

Eventually, Jedd learned to relax. But the nightmares never ended.

Moses.

The name still carries an aura of awe mixed with terror.

He gave Jedd and Ricky food, when he wanted to, and meted out severe punishments on a whim. In exchange for their lives, he required strict loyalty and dictated every detail of the Family. He rarely missed a shot with his long rifle. Jedd witnessed Moses dispatch anyone who questioned his authority with the tap of a finger on a trigger. Under his dictatorship, the Family lived by raiding other tribes in the Zone, stripping them of food and water, always leaving a few survivors so that the fear of Moses would spread.

Eventually, Jedd got his fill of hate and fear. He got his fill of Moses.

On the clear night of a full moon with shadows sharp as crystal, while the Family camped close to the edge of the Zone, Jedd glimpsed the buried road that led in a straight line through the Divide, a pock-marked minefield ten kilometers across, laden with boulder-sized craters separating the Zone from the outside world.

Moses told stories about how the Divide was laid down by the people of the cities to keep out the people of the interior. Planes had dropped millions of black spheres that burrowed into the dirt and came to life when an erring foot pressed down on them. Like a face marred by acne, the Divide bore the pockmarks and pits of explosions that kept everyone but the suicidal from attempting to cross.

After a day without food, in a moment of despair, Jedd made a decision. He would risk it all to escape. After everyone had gone to bed, he grabbed Ricky and eight other kids.

All ten of them spread out and ran.

Moses was drunk and missed most of his shots, but the Divide claimed what Moses couldn’t hit.

Except for Jedd and Ricky.

With Moses’ big voice and gun booming behind them, they fled. For three days, they chased the morning sun with no food or water. And then they caught a glimpse of the City on the far horizon, surrounded by a slum. When they finally stumbled onto the filthy streets of the Fringe, it was like walking into a candy store.

Jedd and Ricky both began working at the only jobs available, building illegal structures in the endless slum. It bought them a leaky roof over their heads in Ms. Murphy’s boarding house and enough recycled food to fill a teenager’s belly, almost. There was plenty of work. The Fringe was growing like a fungus, swelled by rejects from the City and, rarely, stragglers from the Zone. Decades before, the slum had spread to massive proportions, sprawling for miles, covering all the empty space and absorbing any structures already in place, fed by an endless supply of cheap building materials from the fab plants that ringed the City.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Jedd brings himself back to the present. He glances behind.

Ricky is fading into the darkness, unable to keep up. It’s been the same story since the day Ricky walked into the Fringe and discovered the Mesh and his natural aptitude for all things connected to it. Too little time working out, too much time exploring the nether regions of the network that unifies all information and objects on the planet.

Not that Jedd’s complaining.

Ricky has a knack for finding his way past all but the most highly encrypted security walls, an intuitive understanding of the lay of the land inside cyberspace.

A handy friend to have when you’re dealing with tech.

A gentle rain begins to fall.

Jedd stops to check his jax, only a hundred meters from Joey’s last position, but there’s still no sign of the kid. Raising his eyes to the sky, Jedd lets a cascade of tiny drops wash his face. When his eyes sting, he wipes his forehead and brings his hand away. An oily film clings to his fingers.

Just as he’s about to wipe it away, he hears a faint roar, like a far-off crowd cheering a back alley rollerball game.

Following the sound, he slips down a narrow street of broken pavement, running his fingers along both walls. A web of wires and cables snake inches above his head. He dodges rats the size of small dogs and races past the back door of a Chinese noodle shop reeking of garlic and cumin. Jedd sprints through puddles until the path finally opens onto a wide street.

Then he hears the chanting, coming from an open square fifty meters to the right.

Make him pay! Make him pay! Fifty dollars every day!

In spite of his efforts to relax, Jedd’s body stiffens and his fingers wrap tighter around the metal tube in his left hand.

Taking a deep breath, he walks forward, eyes on the crowd.

Most of them wear orange jerseys with black numbers painted on the back. Here and there among the crowd, he spots the massive arms and shoulders of bodies with illegal tissue grafts. Faces painted red. All body hair carefully removed.

Chemheads.

Strung out on cocktails of near-lethal drugs that keep the grafts from dying and sloughing off, the unfortunate side effect is that they live in a hyper-aggressive stupor, leaving a trail of death and mayhem wherever they go.

Oh yeah, and they’re all female.

Welcome to the Tribe.

Hugging the shadows, he slips the metal tube down the back of his shirt so the tip is just protruding above his shoulder. Then he walks forward to see what kind of trouble Joey is in tonight.

Joey is standing in the middle of a ring, surrounded by the chanting chemheads.

Make him pay! Make him pay!

A large specimen of humanity stands next to Joey, holding him in the air with one fist wrapped into the front of his shirt. His whole body squirms, feet swinging freely below.

“You got ten seconds to give it back, kid.” The bright orange eyes of the woman display double black dots in the middle, like figure eights. She lifts Joey higher off the ground and stares up at him, the top of her shoulders just grazing the bottom of her earlobes.

“I didn’t take it,” Joey says.

With the fist pressed into his chin, his words are a whisper an octave higher than normal. Mimicking falsetto voices ripple through the ring.

The woman looks around and raises her other hand. The chanting stops. She faces Joey, who still hangs from her fingers.

“They call me Fuse, as in short. Any idea why?”

Joey looks down in bewilderment, shaking his head.

“Because when people light me up, things explode real fast. And they say you took it.” Fuse points at two burly Tribe members standing a couple of meters away. “They say they saw you grab the vial and run. It’s expensive stuff. Street value at least 2,000 IMUs.” She shakes her fist, and Joey’s whole body shivers again, like a fish dangling by the gills.

“Search me.” Joey’s voice is a near-silent croak. “I never took nothing.”

A woman steps forward out of the ring. She’s got a bright green face with a thick black line running down the middle from forehead to chin, dividing it neatly into two halves. “I saw it.” She belches loudly. “The little filth slipped into the Teepee, grabbed it and ran. He had it in his grimy little hands.”

Fuse cranes her neck around and looks squarely at Joey. “That’s going to cost you a kidney.”

“I only got one left,” Joey screams. “Gave the other to my mother.”

The crowd laughs.

“Put him down.” Jedd steps forward from the edges of the ring into the center. He speaks in a firm voice, devoid of hesitation. “There's been a mistake.”

Fuse tightens her grip on Joey and turns. “Let me guess. You’re his mother.”

More raucous laughter from the Tribe.

Jedd shakes his head. “His parents are dead. I’m his . . . guardian.”

“Really? You aren’t doing a very good job of guarding him, are you? Which makes you responsible for what he stole.” Fuse looks around the ring for approval and finds it in vigorous nods.

All eyes turn to Jedd. Knuckles and spines crack. Hands clench into fists.

“I’ll gladly pay whatever the damages are . . . if you can prove the crime.”

“What do I look like, a lawyer?” The woman releases Joey.

He drops to the ground and lands on all fours, like a cat.

Two large bodies grab him by the shoulders.

Fuse takes a step closer to Jedd, puckers her lips and spits a wad of green goo on the pavement. “The Tribe says he took the vial. That’s all the proof I need. Give me the 2,000 IMUs, or I kill the kid. And you.”

A smirk slides across half Jedd’s mouth. “You’re asking for a lot of cred. A month’s wages.”

“You got the money or not?”

The ring closes in. Carbonite bars and chains slip out of pockets. The Tribe beams as if they are one entity. Jedd senses their bloodlust rising up.

“Wait just a minute, ladies. Please.” Jedd raises his arms, palms up.

“We could have a lot of fun with you.” Fuse grins wide enough to show her green teeth and sweeps her eyes over Jedd from head to toe. “A fine specimen of masculinity.”

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. Just give me the boy, and I’ll come back with the money.” He notes the exact position of the two women holding Joey, the way they are leaning casually to one side, most of their weight balanced on a single foot.

A couple of blasts from the stunner on his back should take care of them. As for Fuse, he’s seen her kind before. Huge upper body. Skinny legs. A well-placed kick to the side of the knee should shatter the joint.

The others are a problem. Assuming he’s counted correctly, there’s close to fifty of them. More are probably on the way. The Tribe isn’t known for being nimble on its feet, but if one of them lands a solid blow with a chain or a club, it could get ugly.

Where’s Ricky, anyway?

Jedd senses the Tribe on the brink of converging. He looks at Joey, finds his eyes and winks.

One, two, three
—

Slowly reaching over his head, Jedd’s fingers stretch out to find the stunner, poking out of his shirt behind his neck.

Only there’s nothing there but empty air.

“Looking for this?” A woman on Jedd’s right smiles broadly to show a half dozen blue teeth. The rest are missing. She holds the stunner in two hands and snaps it in half over her knee, letting the pieces fall to the ground.

“Your plan just failed, Loverboy.” Fuse slips a long dagger from under her shirt and steps closer. “Watch carefully.” The point comes up and slides down her cheek. Beads of blood form like bubbles on the pale skin.

Jedd’s eyes peel open when he sees it’s green. Before he can react, there’s a sting in his neck. Must be a bug. The massive Fringe variety. Reaching a hand up, he scratches the bite. And rubs against the dart.

“Got it from the Peruvian Mafia. It’s called Numb-All.” Fuse motions to the side with her chin. “Works in seconds. Doesn’t last long.”

Following her gaze, Jedd sees a short woman standing with a blowgun to her lips. A wave of relaxation rolls over him. He tries to look back at Fuse, but his muscles don’t get the message. He can’t move.

“Don’t worry. It won’t kill you. In fact, it’s harmless. Helps to keep you still for a few minutes until we get this all sorted out.” Fuse takes a couple of steps to the side, coming into Jedd’s view. “We want you to be
alive
. Makes it much more fun. Should be worth every penny of the 2,000 IMUs the little filth stole from us.”

“Give him to us now, Fuse!” A deep voice from somewhere behind Jedd bellows. “We like ’em fresh.”