Day
IT’S GODDY HOT EVEN THIS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON. I limp through the streets along the rim of Alta and Winter sector, along the lake and out in the open, lost in the crowded shuffle of other people. My wounds are still healing. I wear the army trousers our caretaker gave me with a thin collared shirt Tess found in a garbage bin. My cap is pulled low, and I’ve added to my disguise with a bandage patch over my left eye. Nothing unusual, really. Not in this sea of workers with factory injuries. Today I’m out on my own—Tess is keeping a low profile several streets down, tucked away on a hidden second-floor ledge. Never any reason to risk both of us if I don’t have to.
Familiar noises surround me: street vendors call out to passersby, selling boiled goose eggs and fried dough and hot dogs. Attendants linger at the doors of grocery stores and coffee shops, trying to win customers over. A decades-old car rattles by. The second-shift workers are slowly making their way home. A few girls notice me and blush when I look at them. Boats chug around the lake, careful to avoid the giant water turbines churning along the edge, and the shore’s flood sirens are quiet and unlit.
Some areas are blocked off. These I steer clear of—the soldiers have marked them as quarantine zones.
The loudspeakers that line the roofs of the buildings crackle and pop, and JumboTrons pause in their ads–or, in some cases, warnings about another Patriot rebel attack—to show a video of our flag. Everyone stops in the streets and goes still as the pledge starts.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the great Republic of America, to our Elector Primo, to our glorious states, to unity against the Colonies, to our impending victory!
When the Elector Primo’s name comes on, we salute toward the capital. I mumble the pledge under my breath, but stay silent in the last two passages when the street police aren’t looking my way. I wonder what the pledge sounded like before we went to war against the Colonies.
When the pledge ends, life resumes. I go to a Chinese-themed bar covered in graffiti. The attendant at the door gives me a wide smile that’s missing several teeth and quickly ushers me in. “We have real Tsingtao beer today,” he murmurs. “Leftover cases from an imported gift sent straight to our glorious Elector himself. Goes until six o’clock.” His eyes dart around nervously as he says this. I just stare at him. Tsingtao beer? Yeah, right. My father would’ve laughed. The Republic didn’t sign an import deal with China (or, as the Republic likes to claim, “conquer China and take over its businesses”) just to send quality imports to the slum sectors. More likely, this guy’s pretty far behind in paying his bimonthly government taxes. No other reason to risk slapping fake Tsingtao labels on bottles of his home brew.
I thank the man, though, and step inside. This is as good a place as any to dig up information.
It’s dark. The air smells like pipe smoke and fried meat and gas lamps. I bump my way through the mess of tables and chairs—snatching food from a couple of unguarded plates as I go, then stuffing it beneath my shirt—until I reach the bar. Behind me, a large circle of customers are cheering on a Skiz fight. Guess this bar tolerates illegal gambling. If they’re smart, they’ll be ready at any minute to bribe the street police with their winnings–unless they’re willing to admit out loud that they’re making tax-free money.
The bartender doesn’t bother to check my age. She doesn’t even look at me. “What’ll it be?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Just some water, please,” I say. Behind us I hear a huge roar of cheers as one of the fighters goes down.
She gives me a skeptical glance. Her eyes immediately shift to the bandage on my face. “What happened to your eye, kid?”
“Terrace accident. I tend cows.”
She makes a disgusted face, but now she seems interested in me. “What a shame. You sure you don’t wanna beer to go with that? Must hurt.”
I shake my head again. “Thanks, cousin, but I don’t drink. I like to stay alert.”
She smiles at me. She’s kind of pretty in the flickering lamplight, with glittering green powder over her smooth-lidded eyes and a short, black, bobbed haircut. A vine tattoo snakes down her neck and disappears into her corseted shirt. A dirty pair of goggles—probably protection against bar fights–hangs around her neck. Kind of a shame. If I weren’t busy hunting for information, I’d take my time with this girl, chat her up and maybe get a kiss or three out of her.
“Lake boy, yeah?” she asks. “Just decided to waltz in here and break a few girls’ hearts? Or are you fighting?” She nods toward the Skiz fight.
I grin. “I’ll leave that to you.”
“What makes ya think I fight?”
I nod at the scars on her arms and the bruises on her hands. She gives me a slow smile.
I shrug after a moment. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those rings. Just taking a break from the sun. You seem like nice company, you know. I mean, as long as you don’t have the plague.”
A universal joke, but she still laughs. She leans on the counter. “I live on the sector’s edge. Pretty safe there so far.”
I lean toward her. “You’re lucky, then.” I grow serious. “A family I know had their door marked recently.”
“Sorry t’hear it.”
“I want to ask you something, just out of curiosity. You heard anything about a man around here in the last few days, someone who says he has plague meds?”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Yeah, I heard about that. There’s a bunch of people trying to find him.”
“Do you know what he’s been telling people?”
She hesitates for a moment. I notice that she has a few tiny freckles on her nose. “I hear he’s telling people he wants to give a plague cure to someone—one person only. That this person will know who he’s talking about.”
I try to look amused. “Lucky person, yeah?”
She grins. “No kidding. He said he wants this person to meet him at midnight, tonight, at the ten-second place.”
“Ten-second place?”
The bartender shrugs. “Hell if I know what that means. Neither does anyone else, for that matter.” She leans over the counter toward me and lowers her voice. “Know what I think? I think this guy’s just crazy.”
I laugh along with her, but my mind is spinning. I have no doubt now that this person is searching for me. Almost a year ago, I broke into an Arcadia bank through the alley that runs behind it. One of the security guards tried to kill me. When he spat at me and told me I’d be cut to pieces by the bank vault’s lasers, I taunted him. I told him that it would take me ten seconds to break into that vault room. He didn’t believe me … but the thing is, no one ever believes what I say until I actually end up doing it. I bought myself a nice pair of boots with that money, and even shopped for an electro-bomb on the black market—a weapon that disables guns in its vicinity. Came in handy when I attacked an air base. And Tess got an entire outfit, brand-new shirts and shoes and pants, and bandages and rubbing alcohol and even a bottle of aspirin. We both got a good amount of food. The rest I gave to my family and other Lake folks.
After several more minutes of flirting, I say good-bye to the bartender girl and leave. The sun’s still in the sky, and I can feel beads of sweat on my face. I know enough now. The government must’ve found something at the hospital and wants to lure me into a trap. They’ll send a guy to the ten-second place at midnight, and then place soldiers along the back alley. I bet they think I’m real desperate.
They’ll probably also bring along plague meds, though, to tempt me out into the open. I press my lips together in thought. Then I change the direction I’m walking. Off to the financial district.
I have an appointment to keep.