War Dance

FOUR: XAYNE - 1

I could make up a thousand stories about where I was when I got the message through as to the pickup time and place. After all, that's when everything started to go wrong, so I could say something really cool; I'm the one writing this, after all. I could say that I had booked a slot at the shooting range a street out of the Great Complex Area, getting the practice in. Keeping match fit is always useful, especially with violence on the horizon. I could say that I had picked up the most wonderful girl imaginable, and had taken her back to my place for a dozen rounds of whatever it we'd be doing for a dozen rounds. Maybe I was doing something else heroic. Even just skulking in the streets like someone from a holo-cine, looking cool.

In fact, I was doing none of those things. I was, instead, trying to find somewhere to get blackout drunk.

It's not a good look, I'll admit. In my defence, the two messengers of Red Rose Hell had got me pretty worried. It was the constant talk of annihilation and apocalypse and the end of the world and Celestria's doom that had done it. It had sent one too many shivers down my spine, shivers that I hadn't shown at the time, but felt in the days after. Mindfulness wasn't going to cut it. I needed help to climb down.

My initial plan had been to go to Stormbrewers for a few, to get my head pleasantly buzzing. I didn't want to go all out at that point. Just needed something to take the edge off, and the idea of drinking alone in my place didn't hit the spot. I needed company, but not company company. I needed to be in the presence of people, people that weren't trying to kill me, because I felt that wouldn't be happening too often in the near future. I might not make it to the near future to have the chance to do so again.

The place was closed. Undergoing renovations, so it said on the sign on the front, before it fizzled and was replaced by a shimmering picture of a happy face with a thumbs up, promising that the new Stormbrewers would be your new favourite watering hole, as well as your old one. If it had ever been.

I didn't believe the happy face. That's what pissed me off the most. The idea that something stable I had needed, a quiet place out of the way that had been the same since I'd been going semi-regularly a year before, was going to change. Change was the last thing I needed.

Pissed off, I decided that only Chorus's place would do. The plan had changed. It wouldn't be a pleasant buzzing anymore; it would be an all-out bender, frying my brains to flush out the clogged-up grease and slime, ready to get lean and mean. It would take me an hour on foot; the 22-26 border wasn't too far away, but that was a hell of a walk back if you don't know your Trovations from your Torkaxions. Still, who gave a damn? The plan had changed, but that didn't mean the new one was any good.

So I set off through the night. I tried to take one or two backways that I knew of, but one of them was hosting a confrontation between a drug addict and his suppliers, knives in hand, and the other was blocked off with rusted construction equipment. So through the lights of the main streets it was. I hadn't had a thing pass my lips yet but the harsh neon stabbed needles through my eyes. My brain spiked. I've heard of people getting extreme cases of wish fulfilment before, but this was something else. Not a pre-drink psychological buzz. Sheer terror, most likely.

It's something that, as I've said before, I get from time to time. Who doesn't? HyperGP racers who have been at the game for decades and stared down death so many times they've lost count, never stop the shaking stomach the moments before the starting lights go out. A hired hand like me, although able to keep their cool in the midst of battle (under normal circumstances, of course), nonetheless gets to the edge of a breakdown on occasion. You can feel it creeping up on you until your toes are right on the edge. A breakdown, for me, can feel like a cliff edge, and I'm shaking and convulsing and all it'll take is one violent snap to send me spiralling into the abyss.

I was halfway to Chorus's place when I knew I had to do something. I swerved into a café and, after waiting behind two annoying older ladies who couldn't decide what to buy, ordered the most bland drink I could think of. Crap kofi. I've never tasted anything so beautiful in my life. You'd think caffeine would spike me up, but sometimes it slowed me down, almost sending me to sleep. I ordered a pastry to go with it, and the sugar helped to keep my alertness in decent order with the caffeine bringing me back down again. Mix shouldn't work, but it does.

I held out my hand and checked my shakes. Wasn't wobbling as much as it had been moments before, thank any gods above or below.

I'd still half the pastry left, and considered ordering another one quickly when my Core went off. Took it out and answered. Ashrore's face popped up through the air.

'Orderssss are in,' she said.

'Time and place?'

'I'll ssssend through the addressss. Arm up, Xayne. I don't think thissss will end niccccely.'

'Have they ever done that?'

Ashrore, beauty of innocence that she is, genuinely looked up and to the side like a 3d chess player trying to remember part of their opening preparation. 'One time, maybe. I'll get back to you on it.'

I tried to crack a smile but couldn't manage it. I ended the call and waited for the details to ping across. Checked my hand again, and the attack of the shakes had decided to come back. I went back and ordered another kofi and another pastry with extra synthesised cream. Couldn't stand the stuff, not that I've ever had the money for actual cream, but as I said, I needed the sugar, and they sweeten the shit to high hell.

I sat back down again and ploughed through the pastry with a grimace as I checked the details Ashrore sent through. Somehow it was in Region 26, where I had been on my way to anyway. Right on the other side, though, just off the highway. If needed, we could possibly get someone waiting for a getaway down through the Regions. Somewhere like Region 37, a dump of a place if ever there was one, would be a decent hiding place should the worst hit.

Someone had already thought of that, however. On the skreen on the far wall, a news report showed the streets near that end of 26 locked down and jammed up, thanks to some asshole hacking the Kal-Rack guidance systems in everyone's kars. Nobody moved a nanometre.

'Probably someone from Halo,' a man said to his buddy near the counter. 'Got to try and take out the competition somehow.'

'War's coming on the gadget front,' his friend with a beard worthy of legend replied. 'It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.'

I've never felt a passing conversation go through me quite like that one. I stuffed more synthesised cream into my face to plug up the vomit rising in my throat.