Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity (7 page)

She knew she was attractive in her own, entirely forgettable way, so she very carefully dressed to emphasize the ‘forgettable’ part. Most Blackouts walked around in elaborately threatening or provocative clothing, and they usually did so to make up for their near-total lack of survival skills. Overcompensation almost always meant ‘victim’ to anybody prowling the catwalks with a razor, looking for a paycheck or an hour’s entertainment. Her nondescript demeanor and pedestrian attire amidst the sea of spiked-pauldron wearing, ornate blade-carrying, color-shifting-aura-projecting clowns said one thing quite clearly: I am very, very bad for you.

For further clarity, QC had also cut the left sleeve of her duster back above the elbow, to show off the brightly illuminated control panel on her forearm. Though she had no access to the official strains the fights paid her to employ (and, in fact, had to tear open a patch on the thigh of her trousers to access the black market panel she
did
control), the official display served to sow one more insidious doubt in the minds of any would-be attackers.

Regardless, she found the best policy was just keeping her head down, knowing where she was going, and getting there fast. Her path took her up through the media-markets, into the looping bazaar in the South Post loading ramp, and past the countless shops, bars, and tiny lean-to apartments that lined the Blackouts’ catwalks so densely that she had to crabwalk in spots just to pass by. When her way was entirely blocked, as was frequently the case, she paid a modest fee to an urchin with dyed blue feet – the mark of the attendant caste – and they’d run off to fetch rickety baskets, pull-carts or jury-rigged rope ladders for her to traverse. At the other end, she’d find another blue-footed boy who would invariably charge her again before reeling her in, unlatching the door, or tossing down the final rungs.

When the basket she’d just crawled out of promptly swiveled and zipped back down its line without pause, she turned to check on its passengers: Four men all jammed into the tiny container together like cigarettes in a pack.

Maneuvering the crowded and ceaselessly shifting geography of the Blackouts required constant improvisation. The odds of you being able to take the same path twice were unlikely; the odds of anybody taking your exact route for any length of time were astronomically low. Which meant that these four men, whom she’d last seen following her out of the hangar doors, two full floors down, were obviously, blatantly trailing her. And while the catwalks proper were always full this time of day, it was just a matter of time before she turned down a familiar alleyway only to find it had been sealed off by the rear wall of a freshly erected noodle stand, or pirate gas den. If a jump was going to happen, better on her terms.

QC hunched low and pushed through the press, out into the central avenue. No way could she make enough time to lose them through this crowd, but she knew an empty cul-de-sac up ahead with enough room for her to scrap, and it wasn’t too far off the main strip if things went south.  She shoved past a gawky, insecure teenager with spikes for eyebrows, a broad-shouldered man with a hologram of a flaming skull over his face, and a trio of identical Asian midgets with metal claws for hands. When she finally rounded the corner, she took a calming breath, straightened her spine until it cracked, and settled comfortably down into a loose, ready posture.

The first one turned the corner, saw QC waiting for him, and froze. He made no sign of movement or aggression. He was going to wait for his buddies to get his nerve up for him. The others paused, too, upon first spotting QC, but they soon realized they were a pack again.

“You must all carry half a testicle each,” QC said sweetly, “to only manage one full pair of balls together.”

“We saw you at the fights,” the first one finally spoke “wanted to get ourselves some of that VIP treatment.”

The others laughed.

Amazing. You could save up a few weeks worth of credit and buy any number of spinal implants to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain. Anybody could call up devastatingly powerful orgasms at the touch of a button, but these malformed (sexual deviancy usually went hand in hand with a broad, fishlike facial structure, QC thought; some inbred, recessive, splay-eyed dullness of the features always on display in those sneering faces), sociopaths still went out raping on the weekends.

She touched the two rough pads on the insides of her gums with her tongue, then pressed it hard against the roof of her mouth until she felt a click. A peculiar leaden weight filled her salivary glands. It was a random disassembler -- her one and only legally purchased strain -- activating. She’d splurged for the high end tech and opted for the Sacrosanct Strain: Immune to pollution from other nano-bots, self-sustaining, and with online access blocked to deter hackers. It wasn’t blackmarket, or leftover from the fights like her other ‘tech, so the disassemblers could always be counted on to do their job. And their job was to savagely rip apart the atoms of any living structure without her DNA. It took hours to do any serious damage, but they kicked on the second they contacted foreign flesh, and she’d heard the pain was as instant as it was unbearable.

She let the leader get in nice and close. Let him see the mock fear in her eyes, and gave him an expertly crafted lip tremble that let him know, without question, that he was in charge now. He leaned in toward her face with a smug sneer, and she spat a hefty gob of disassembler-laden saliva directly into his half-open mouth. His eyes went wide with rage, and he reached out to backhand her, but then the ‘bots started in on him. He tried to scream, but only managed a hacking gasp before keeling over and seizing on the ground in agony. She saw the others pass a look of confusion around. The bigger one, with a face like somebody drew a grotesque caricature of a human head on the back of a shovel, stepped forward and reached for her. She grabbed his hand gently and raised it to her lips. He was too confused, slow, or excited to resist. She nimbly licked his palm.

He screamed like a child, high-pitched and completely without reserve.

The beginnings of a stifled laugh escaped her, but she caught it and put on her meanest scowl instead. The remaining two started to comprehend. One up and bolted, disappearing in the streaming crowd of the avenue behind him. The other pulled a small sliver tab from his jacket, twisted its base, and smiled meanly as it telescoped outward into a millimeter thin, foot-long blade. The pair of them stood at odds for a moment, both contemplating the list of potential attacks and preparing their counters. QC took the initiative, and slowly, methodically lifted two fingers up and off to one side. She twitched them a little, like bunny ears. He glanced over at them, puzzled, and she spat directly into his open eye.

That damage, at least, was going to be costly.

She stepped over the man with the blade, who was now locked into the tightest fetal position she’d ever seen, around the leader, still tearing at the inside of his mouth, trying to pull his own tongue out with his fingers, past the sobbing giant, rubbing his hands bloody on the ground, and back out to the avenue. She fell in step behind an overweight woman in a black trench coat. The back of her jacket displayed a looping animation of the woman herself, stomping on the crotch of a cartoonishly bleeding punk.

Fucking amateurs.

When she arrived at Red’s apartment, she casually hip-checked the spot in the faulty control-box that opened the security door, and stepped inside the bare flat without issue. Red hadn’t even bothered to customize the sad little unit; he just purchased the default settings and started sleeping in it. The molded furniture -- bed, chairs, couch, center table, kitchen bar and appliances -- all flowed out from the walls and floor in one seamless, unbroken piece of plastic. There were perhaps a handful of items in the entire dwelling that were not factory stock: A row of photo frames on the bar, a pair of torn grey jeans thrown on the floor, a single empty glass on the table, and a pale, gangly boy, giggling to himself on the living bench. He made a feeble slapping motion at the air when she first opened the door, then passed out.

“Do you know what this does?” James asked Red, nonchalantly waving the blender at his nose.

Red stared down the length of the hollow cylinder, transfixed. There were two sets of spinning blades at the base, and he could just make out the tiny nubs of nano-factories ringing the interior.

“It blows things up,” Red surmised, finally recognizing that a response was required of him.

“Exactly!” James practically clapped for him. “It’s really quite fascinating. The whole thing revolves around a brilliant little medley of express assembler ‘bots…”

“You mean disassemblers,” Red corrected automatically. He didn’t know much about weaponized nanotech, but he knew that ‘disassemblers’ were the bad kind.

“Nah, mate: Assemblers. The little blades down here at the bottom? They’re not weapons or anything, just plain old fans. See these?” He rubbed his finger along a row of nubs just inside the barrel, “These are the factories. They build and store the strains I use. Those holes around the tip are nozzles – just high powered squirtguns, really. They aerosolize the ‘bots with water molecules as they exit the barrel. Gives ‘em some weight; something to latch onto when you launch the buggers, otherwise they just disperse in the air. This little beauty in my hands actually sprays two strains of nano-bots -- one that grabs an extra bit of oxygen, and one that grabs an extra bit of carbon. And when they land, they start splicing them into your skin. Then she fires out a measly handful volts. Barely enough to hurt, really. That’s all she needs to turn a bloke into a bomb.”

James rocked back on his heels and let Red digest the information.

“There are easier ways to kill a man, of course. And there are even better ways to blow his arse to atoms. But this one is mine. I designed it. Nobody murders the same way I do. That’s a point of pride for me, mate. I’m telling you this because I need for you to understand: That’s how bored I got with killing folk -- I had to design and construct a whole new type of weapon to do it with, just to keep meself interested. That bugger out there? He was totally encased in industrial impact coating. You’re totally encased in what looks like a secondhand polyester jacket, ten years out of fashion. We got an understanding?”

“Yep,” Red replied instantly, “This is Don’t Do Stupid Stuff 101, and I’m taking notes.”

“Ha!” James straightened his tie in a charmingly anachronistic gesture of finality, “I’d bet nobody lists ‘courage’ amongst your vices.”

He nodded his head at an ovular lid that looked to be lifted from a public recycling tube, secured to the wall with bonding tape. When Red obediently pushed at it, a three foot section gave way and fell back, loudly oscillating on the steel floor beyond. He bent to the portal and, the barrel of James’ weapon thrust unkindly into his rear, crawled through.

The short tunnel exited into an apartment, similar to the basic unit that Red owned: A shipping container filled with molded living space. But this one, already quite a bit smaller than Red’s modest home, had been further divided into a half dozen separate abodes. Areas half the size of Red’s Kitchenette held entire households. Hanging closets, folded cots, stools, and even an ancient, tarnished kettle all hung just above his head, completely suspended on bent wires. A pair of waist-high yellow ropes delineated a public walkway through the complex, barely a foot across at its widest point. The path terminated in a jury-rigged ladder, comprised of three pairs of staggered hand-grips, apparently pilfered from shopping carts.

Beyond, they climbed through a shattered windshield into an airship cabin that had been divided in two, straight down the center: One half served as a bar; the other, a row of cramped hotel lodgings. They ascended a rope ladder strung from the shattered exterior of a catwalk wall, stepped over two residents passionately screwing in the public aisle -- the man’s feet lodged against the base of a chair in one apartment, the woman’s head lost to view in the interior of an oven in the unit next door – and ducked through an immense, pockmarked cooler. 

The claustrophobic tunnels, unsteady footbridges, and narrow walkways all blurred together. Though his body was repeatedly contorted in ways both painful and, he suspected, physically impossible, Red still managed to lapse into a hypnotic state for most of the journey. Focus Fugues were commonplace in his line of work, as was constipation, headaches, light sensitivity, muscle pain and nerve transposition. 

Red had precautionary measures in place for most of it: He’d had his eyes tinted to take the edge off the brighter lights (though now he had some difficulty reading OLED signs at a distance), subscribed to a stool-softening ‘feed in his morning dose -- one of the few legal Rx channels he actually paid for – and the muscle pain was countered by a moderate dose of pure THC that he siphoned from an alternative medical clinic up in the Penthouses, and subsequently rerouted into his tapwater. He took the standard amphetamines and nootropics for productivity, like nearly everybody in the Four Posts, but that didn’t help with the fugues. So he’d also picked up a few psychological workarounds: Cognitive memes he’d read about on forums and message boards. Some of them even worked.

Occasionally.

Picture a brown cow in a green field. Envision the grass in exquisite detail, each blade wavering in the slight breeze like the raised swords of a tiny, victorious army. The cow is a deep, chocolate brown; its glossy hide shining in the cool spring sun. An oak tree stands behind it, with a swirling gnarl in the trunk. The spiraling oblong knot has been weathered grey by exposure. There is a frayed rope tied to the largest branch, leading nowhere. Hear the wind rustle the leaves. Feel it stir the hairs on your arm, the tingle like-