Not nearly enough raw sugars in gyros for you. Takes too long to metabolize. What you need now is something to spike your blood sugar to combat levels.
Susan Stamm has done many, many unique things to hide her presence. But she’s on the run and wants off the planet. To do that she has to come to Eleytheria. Once an hour, every hour, a capsule is launched into low Earth orbit.
To really get far away, Stamm has to get Out There from Down Here.
So you sit and flip through pictures of embarkees who’ve been photographed at all three entrance points. One by fucking one. And these are just the ones the Port Authority computers have served up as possible matches. ShinnCo is being very generous with info and resources right now. They really want her back.
You’re sitting in a small outdoor café, eyes closed. On the right eyeball is Susan Stamm’s corp ID photo. On your left is some random face pic snapped by the Port Authority entrance machine.
Then another random face.
You reach for the sugary soda, take a long cold sip, and the next picture comes up.
Another sip of sugar water. Gotta keep the machines inside you running happy.
You flip to another pic.
Ha.
She looks thinner than the last official photo. She’s still five-nine, but now has a recently bobbed haircut and green eyes.
Four hours later you’re in the lobby of a smaller Eleytheria hotel, looking up at the atrium eighty stories above you, licking the icing off a Danish. In the background, over the hum of people, over the echoing shouts of kids screaming and waving from several floors above, comes the explosive whip-crack of a capsule being thrown into space.
There was this mugger that jumped you a year ago. Before you even realized it you’d spun, broke both his arms and a leg, and the man lay in an unconscious heap by the side of a brick façade.
His clothes were ragged, he was thin, and when you held his gun in your hand, you realized that it was unloaded.
Ballsy. And pathetic.
By going through his wallet you found out that his name was Jack Connely. He had three kids and a very attractive blonde wife. Jack had been a spacer entrepreneur of some sort, reduced to Earth living after the Pacification.
Now all the businesses could buy a ride into space. Move their offices up into alien stations, use alien services, buy alien products, machines. Not much use for small guys, you could hardly scrape together the price. But multinationals can, and now that they’re all in orbit, or beyond, the pretense of even caring about the world they originated from was thrown out.
You could have used the money you found in his pocket, his day’s take, though you couldn’t use it toward paying off your ShinnCo contract. They only accept their own in house credit.
You couldn’t even use the money to disable the shit laced all through your body. You tried that once before. Almost killed you on the table.
Instead, you sent his wallet and the money back in the mail to his family. And you added some of your own.
You’re a good person, you tell yourself.
But it’s very hard to believe when it was so easy, so automatic, to have grabbed that man’s gun and pull the trigger, right down to within a hairtrigger of firing, before stopping.
That can’t be all wired into you, right?
Susan Stamm walks through the revolving door, past a doorman, and on toward a cab. You shake your shoulders and arms, loosening up the great mass of coat around you, and step in behind her. She’s better looking in person, unlike some of the dolled-up, make-up-caked women you’ve seen in the past.
As she grabs the gullwing door of the bubbly autocab she spots your reflection in the window and turns around.
“Could we share this ride?” you say. Already you flex the muscles in your wrists, begin to raise your left arm and coat to obscure her body. She’ll fall, and you’ll sweep her up and into the autocab with you.
As the autocab rides off you’ll look like two lovers cuddling in the back.
Instead her eyes widen, hands curl into fists, and a small dart burrows into your stomach.
You’re on the ground, convulsing. Spit flecks your lips. You break into a heavy sweat. Vomit tastes like sugar water, flowing out onto the concrete sidewalk. It takes effort just to slowly roll over.
The doorman turns around.
He moves, a blur that you know isn’t natural, and hits Stamm from the side. She hits the door of the autocab, shattering the Plexiglas, and the doorman grabs her neck, turning her head to confirm her ShinnCo tattoo.
Small silver fans protrude from the back of the man’s neck. Antenna. You can see heat rising off his uniform, rippling the air around him. A timeshare. Not under his own control then—just renting his body for sudden on-the-spot jobs like this one.
You have a choice. Give it up. Let this competitor grab her, kill her, whatever.
Or.
With just a quick flex of your arms the wires spit out of your wrists and hit the back of his neck. The man spasms, lightning sparking across the surface of his skin. The antenna melt, dripping down the back of his collar. He spins around and raises his arms.
“Oh fuck,” he screams, the link to whatever controls him from orbit gone. “I’m burning. They killed me! I’m burning!”
As he staggers toward the door, people gather. Someone tries to get the doorman to sit down. Someone 911s to call this in, speaking into his pinkie finger.
On your hands and knees, eyes burning and streaming tears, wires retracted back into your wrists, you push forward into the car. You grab Stamm, pull her in with you, and barely manage to shut the door.
She’s in better shape than you, coming back to consciousness as you vomit sugar water all over her red high heels.
“Drive, damnit,” she shouts at the cab’s autopilot, and gives an address.
“Damage has been detected,” it warbles. “Failure mode initiated. A replacement cab is on its way. We apologize for the delay.”
“Shit.”
The cab rocks as she leans forward.
Your muscles fail.
Your brain goes zero.
You’re out.
There are rooms and then there are rooms. They’re square more often than not, with white walls. But this one has dirty laundry, fake wooden paneling, a giant mirror on a wall, and a small cot that you’re lying on.
A wicker chair next to you creaks. Soft hands stroke your forehead.
“You’re tough. That was supposed to kill you.”
“I feel like shit.” Every pore hurts.
“I would imagine.” A finger traces the scars all over your body. “I’m sorry. I think I may have got the wrong person. It was the doorman I should have shot, he was the one coming for me. Who are you?”
Don’t say anything.
Just shiver and turn back off. It’s easier.
You wake up hungry and naked. Disoriented. You have no internal time. The small set of numbers that usually hover in the corner of your left eye is gone.
There’s a pink bathrobe on the wicker chair that you grab as you sit up.
It takes everything you have to stand. Muscles protest, and every cell seems to ache.
“Feeling better?”
She’s sitting by the kitchen counter, hands up, watching you warily.
You nod.
“Okay. So here are the rules. Any sudden moves I fire another one of these pips into you. If your hands aren’t where I can see them, I shoot. I doubt you survive another one. So sit. Put your hands on your lap.”
The bathrobe is comfortable. You slowly wrap it tighter around you and sit. Her tone drips with suspicion, guarded overtones. The air is tense.
She points at your leg. That’s where they tattooed the small logo on you. Inner thigh. It really, really hurt.
“You’re ShinnCo.”