Memento Mori

2.5 - STREET RAT'S SECRET

MY BARGAIN WITH NERO guaranteed his temporary support, but I'm no fool. We struck a deal that could be wiped out just as quickly as it was made. The less he thinks about me, the less people who know my full intentions, the better. So with Lain and Matthias' help, I steal out of the gangster's hideout through a razorblade alley filled with vending machines that bleat pale light and scratchy advertisements over pools of acidic runoff. Trash in the corners, empty bottles scattering like rats underfoot. That familiar sheen of grime over it all. A jungle of fiber optic cables makes a dark canopy over faded posters advertising famous Electric Town fights ten years out of date. Most are championship battles. Different challengers, same silver-haired champion every time. The old bastard king who won't lift a finger for the Vents.

I make sure to flip the old man off before I exit the alley. The small comfort of rebellion helps push me back into the state of mind I need to keep moving. Focuses my wandering thoughts away from the thing driving them, towards the destination. Sarah always said I had an angry spark inside me. I feed it now, filling myself with the attitude the Armiger stole. The daredevil passion, the rebel's heart, now infused by memories of Sarah's confidence as I try to take her mantle in spirit.

I find Lain and Matthias waiting on a jury-hacked Shimano Industries autobike cooling its jets two corners from the hideout. Crook an eyebrow at the bike as I approach. A small vial of now-familiar Shatter slips between Lain's fingers when she sees me, waving temptingly in the ambient neon light. I answer by lifting up a canned energy drink. I've been running nonstop for over a day straight, without food for half that. Add in barely escaping the most lethal gunfight of my life, the morass of near misses I'm dragging along with... and yeah. Shatter would help push the consequences off for a few hours, but I'm still not quite over how much I was puking earlier. A liquid sledgehammer of caf will blot out the exhausted fog in my brain and the lead in my bones. Enough keep me on my feet until tomorrow, at least.

"Sure you don't want a hit?" Lain deposits a single drop of Shatter on the tip of her tongue, shivering with her eyes closed. "Whoever invented this stuff knew exactly what they were doing."

I chug the rest of the caf and toss it atop a heap of trash piled against a nearby storefront. "We're going straight into the fire. I need my head on straight." I saddle up behind her, wincing again at the pain in my hip. "Besides. I promised Sarah I wouldn't do anything harder than she ever did."

Lain eyes the burn marks slithering out from beneath my borrowed singlet. "Easy to say when there's nothing on the line. Everyone's got rules they won't break until they do. Yours didn't stop you in the Orange."

My face burns. I refuse to meet her gaze, instead focusing on passing Matthias the directions to our next destination. "That was different. Do or die."

"Life or death, good or evil, survival or extinction. Different excuses, same answer." The bike hums to life beneath us. "Everyone's got a price. Better to know yours than pretend it doesn't exist."

-

We hide our ride in the quiet heart of a residential block that slumbers eerily free of gunfire and gang violence. Shockingly so. It reminds me of Sarah's streets. Some of the calmest in all the Vents, home to people who believed in dreams like hers. Even had a school. Not a great one, but even a bad school is better than the rest of the Vents. Funding Venter education is the shit-bottom priority of things the Champion and the pro leagues spend our taxes on. Why arm your already exploited lower class with knowledge when you could instead be building a shiny new training complex for Concordia University, pride of the capital? People will look over the skyline and see that building every day. Can't say the same about education.

As strangely calm as this block is, I've got no delusions about it or the alley we stored the bike in. It'll be gone in an hour, and dodging the Shimano Industries collections teams who come to break kneecaps will be someone else's problem, not mine.