Tag: Cyberpunk

Short story: Christmas in the Sprawl

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Kaylee Hamir was one of the first-gen mixed kids from the Great Wall flood. She knew all about that flood, but personally more than officially. Other than marking her conception and the start of her parent’s noncommittal, faux-intimacy, she’d grown up dealing with its effects. She lived in its world, breathed its air– even if she shouldn’t have. Because of everything else, she also occasionally dealt with its trash-heap refuse. Often by being confronted with it directly.

Her first night on the street after the war had taught her that. While the corps were busy pulling up their drawbridges Mom and Dad were scrambling with the masses.

Then, madness. Chaos. Far-off thunder. Sustained.

Dad got in. Mom didn’t. They’d never been together strictly speaking, but whatever had held them ’til then, ended then. Mom fled. Kaylee with her. They ended up under old infrastructure, more damp than wet, and stinking of human refuse and waste.

Kaylee learned the hard way what corporate love felt like; nothing. There was none. Love wasn’t cost-effective.

Though it felt longer to her young mind, Mom was hooking shortly afterward. Three years later, she was being thrown out for refusing to herself. In fairness, Madame Mimi had given her a choice. Kaylee’d chosen, but it still felt like a kiss-off. Since then, she’d been street-living in hovels, hideaways, crashing on the least forsaken couches of the countless, rundown apartments.
On the drier and warmer nights, she slept beneath stars and a mostly-shattered greenhouse. The stillness of the abandoned, thirty-story mini-tower whispered cold but not bitterness. She settled the old mattress in the driest corner of the day, then she looked up, out.

On clearer nights, she could even ignore humanity’s best attempts to batter its way in. Even if for only moments, it was something.

She’d gotten lucky tonight, lifted enough from the markets to form a proper meal; hunk of precooked ham, block of cheese, half-loaf of bread. She’d have to fight rats for scraps in the morning, but she’d even have enough for breakfast.

Meanwhile, she could eat, eyeing reality through electric-and-neon polluting the lower world.

Fact was, she didn’t need to live the way she did. She could’ve easily been one of Mimi’s girls like her mother. It just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t for her.

Part of the Madame’s goodbye seemed to take as insult that she hadn’t wanted to be a whore. She didn’t, nor did she think she needed to be, but it wasn’t meant as a slight.In the minds of Kaylee’s generation some people sold wares, others sold themselves. There was no judgment, just facts. Ones and zeroes.Her mother had been one of the prototypes of that mentality, that eventually gave it cause to form as it did.

The former trophy-wife of an Arab exec, Kaylee’s father chose lifestyle over family once forced to. Her mother then, rather than rebel against the decision, coped. It wasn’t that he’d always had to balance the two, he just did. When he couldn’t anymore, he didn’t. There was never uncertainty where his priorities lie. It was only Kaylee’s young mind, rich with naivete, that felt otherwise then.

Fact was, her parents hadn’t always felt their distance, but they could. Sometimes, they did. Eventually it became more trouble than it was worth. Way Kaylee saw it, that was change. Just a thing that happened, was happening, eternally.Accept it as inevitable.

Her generation’s collective grasp on that was a social defense mechanism against repeatingthe world’s dismal state. The war had done a lot to many. Most of all, it profoundly impacted the social psyche. Kaylee and her ways were part of that. She and all the others like her knew it. That truth was as much part of their own, individual legacies as of their collective one.

At its purest essence, that legacy said only, “accept change.”

At its more complex layers, it told to accept the world not as one constant, but as subject to one constant. Change was eternal. Everything else was passing. Only context differed; from global landscape to personal routine. Change drove reality and everything apart of it.Change was the fourth dimension, that of duration. Flowing in only one direction.

The purity of the message itself contained a thesis on human-life.Why accept change? Because it is eternal, and you are not. Any thing subject to it is riding its own piece eternity, letting it constantly and rapidly change. But why? To what end?

The answer, ingrained in the universe down to the purpose of life itself, was refinement.

Refining oneself through existence among a system of constant change. Only then could each action to become an engine of change, refinement.

In the meantime, each iteration was one step closer to perfection– because of its nonexistence. It didn’t need to exist, because ultimately perfection wasn’t the point. It was the excuse, continued existence and refinement was the purpose.

Accepting the constant of change allowed one to continue discerning the variables of life’s equation. That was the whole point to the take-over, the war, its aftermath. A force– people, couldn’t be constrained. Shouldn’t be. Not just for their own benefit, but everyone’s.

Even the uneducateds like Kaylee knew that, because that was the point too; imprinting an ever-lasting record on both individual and collective human psyches.

Yet here she was. Alone and profoundly feeling it. Then again, she’d done it to herself. In that way, it was neither good nor bad. It just was.

Few cared about holidays. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone celebrated, let alone Christmas. Shameful memories of rabid consumerism still wounded the previous generations. While Kaylee’s was still too young, too scattered, to have yet formed any conceivable culture. It’d take longer than usual for them to get there, too.

Picking up the war’s pieces wouldn’t be easy, but they knew damned well not to rush it. If you rushed it, before long you ended up like all those corp-execs; bound to sacrificial altar of Human social-evolution. By that point, all you could do was hope to go gracefully. The idea was, never let it get that far.

She bit a hunk off her bread and chewed. She stared up, out, thinking.

Broken glass perfectly centered a line of stars through the missing hunk of window. She’d learned the hard way that it flooded the room anytime it rained. The first time she slept-in on a rainy day was also the day she learned to chuck the mattress just inside the roof-access too.

Change was a constant, after-all.

The best way to cope with change, Kaylee’s generation had learned, was through contingencies, redundancies, rigid logic-structures for support when needed. Ideas and systems engineered with switches, gates, walls and moats. All of them, too, built around digital principles dominated by duality. One and zero. On and off. In/out. The standby state was persistent, guaranteed, and because of that, moot.

Kaylee sighed. The weather was perfect. Cold, but neither bitter nor windy. Kaylee guessed this was what they’d meant by global warming. Too bad the planet was fucked now. They might help it recover in time, and she certainly saw no reason not to, but human focus had turned outward again. She felt it herself through the broken window.

A nearby scuff gave way to the roof-access door easing open. Kaylee froze. Part of her was ready for a fight from the desperate, post-war refuse. The rest of her was stunned; astonished anyone would bother to climb thirty floors for nothing. It took the girl in the doorway six, eternal seconds to find Kaylee in the darkness.

Kaylee sized her up, gauged her for threats. She was small, more than Kaylee. Long clothing hung off her enough to bulwark against the warmth, but not hinder her in fight or flight. Kaylee guessed she was armed, too, but unlikely to draw a weapon if it weren’t drawn already.

She was a streeter, and streeter’s lived by a certain style of thinking.

Months of street-living had thinned and leaned Kaylee considerably, but she didn’t have the same look or mentality as a streeter. This girl was street, through and through. Kaylee’d been plump in childhood from Madame Mimi’s good graces. It still showed in her lean-toned muscles, formed well despite recent scant nourishment.

Like most streeters, this girl had none of that. Daily fights for survival and sustenance had pulled any exposed skin taught. Her clothing was something between armor and all-weather gear. Each component cherry-picked as diamonds in the rough from the ruined chaos. The tatters said she’d fought every day of her life. And won. Likely, from an early age.

Yet her caution was almost apologetic, as if conveying she knew she was interrupting, but needed to anyway. Those extra seconds were enough for Kaylee. She took a chance.

“Occupied.” The girl homed on the sound. “Here.” Kaylee said to relax her.

The girl appraised the room’s remainder with a feral sweep. Viciousness pointed her features and firmed her spine. It flashed, relaxed back into human easiness.

“Got room?”

Kaylee almost said no. It was gut-reaction. The food weighed her hand, its purpose moreso.

“Just you, right?”

The girl half-nodded, knowing Kaylee saw it perfectly despite the darkness. She motioned her in and over, began tearing bread. The girl did another, feral sweep. She slid in and around the door, closed it as quickly and quietly as possible; an obvious manifestation of lethal paranoia.

Kaylee offered her a piece of bread and the Girl’s eyes lit up. She hesitated, “You’re not going to rape me, are you?”

The girl’s spine loosened with uncertainty, eyes on the food. “If you want.”

She shrugged, “Nah, not my type.” She offered the food, let her settle. “Kaylee, by the way.”

“Laura.”

She passed over the hunk of cheese, “Merry Christmas, Laura.”

She laughed harder this time.

Short Story: Six-Leggers

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

She was running. Faster than she thought possible. She might’ve been small, agile-looking, but at heart, she wasn’t. At heart she was a lazy-ass couch-potato, something vaguely organic growing from one side after months of stagnation. Often enough, beneath her festered a lukewarm indentation from her time there. Now, it was aching, pain, exertion. Blitz was running like hell, and faster than any human had a right to.

She’d pissed off exactly the right people at exactly the right time in exactly the right way, so she started running. Problem was, something had gone wrong. They were running too. Faster than she’d anticipated. So fast, in fact, it was obvious they were no longer human. They’d never been human, she knew now, but whatever they were, she wasn’t about to stop to find out.

She threw herself down an alley, took it as fast as her gait allowed, power-slid across a puddle to face its open side. A fence half-way through inexplicably barred her way to the far-end of the alley, its freedom. She swore under her breath, hoping her boots fit the chain-link without a struggle. Even now the galloping six-legs charged her like the low rumble of a Maiden bass-line.

If hell was real, she decided, its minions were vacationing Earth-side.

She leapt at the fence, scrambled up it, caught her first bit of luck in the perfect fit of chain-link.

Blitz could smell them now, didn’t dare look back. They reeked of rotted sewage hinted with days-old corpse. She guessed the human suits they’d shed had hidden the smell too. Otherwise, she’d have stayed the hell away from them to begin with.

She clambered over, snagged her pants on rattling chain-link and leapt for the ground below. She landed with cool air on the small of her back. The fence had taken more than its share of her pants. She couldn’t care less about it, wouldn’t have missed a beat if suddenly ass-naked.

This was Dover’s fault. Stupid bitch. She should’ve never cooked up the scheme, never involved Blitz. Then again, Dover wasn’t busting ass down four-thirty-third street with the creds and six-legger demons. Blitz wondered if she’d ever go back to that shit hole now, but knew that was just anger talking. If she survived, she’d be back, and with Dover’s cut– less now, but her’s all the same.

It was really Yuki and Kris’ fault. Anger aside. They’d done the scam, bragged about it over beers. How the hell was Dover not supposed to try running her cousin’s scam? It wasn’t even really a scam, just a misdirection. It was only the fault of the stupid six leggers who’d put their money where their mouths supposedly were. How could they have expected not to get burned in a place they hardly knew?

Fact was if it hadn’t been Blitz– and Dover covertly– that burned them, it would’ve been someone else. They were wearing suits for fuck’s sake. No-one wore a suit this side of town unless looking to get taken for a ride or packing enough heat to fund a small army. Blitz decided, if she ever got to stop running from them, and wasn’t being eaten by them, she’d have to explain their obvious mistakes.

Then again, that also required facing them without screaming. Enlightenment wasn’t looking good for them.

She raced out into roaring traffic, completely unfazed by it. Headlights swerved and weaved on both sides of the street. Horns blared protests. She passed onto sidewalk, sprinting away from screeching tires. Something heavy thumped metal. Glass was crunched and crushed. One set of galloping legs clambered into a wrench of metal. Screams and horns said one was dead, the other still chasing her.

Even beneath the street noise she heard it, felt it; a rider from hell galloping in charge across a battlefield of blood and fire.

This couldn’t have just been about their money. There was no way. Between Blitz and Dover, they’d made a little over a G hustling through-out the night. Only a couple hundred of it was the hell-riders’ though. If only she could get away, get back to the bar, reach the range of Dover’s double barrel. She’d wanted to keep Dover out of it though, wanted to handle it herself. Do the job like a pro.Not possible now.

Dover ran the bets, upped the numbers, made the stakes look good against Blitz’s skills, and for a few hours, the dough and odds piled up. Then, when the time came, Blitz’s skills took over.

Kris and Yuki had run the scam at the Arcade in Jackstaff. Why couldn’t she and Dover run it at the Circuit Board in Seattle? Each of them do their part, form a whole, and make bank. Like pros. Not possible. Not now.

There was no way around it. Blitz was on E when she’d started. Short of giving back the couple hundred, she saw no way around making the wide bank back toward the C-B. Hoping she’d catch the last six-legger up in the panic of traffic, she sprinted back through it traffic; back toward the C-B and the way she’d come.

Galloping and screeching said the drivers and six-legger were prepared his time. She missed her chance to end things that way. No matter, she had a plan now. One she knew even Dover’d be prepped for, so long’s she knew ahead of time.

Panting for her life, pumping her legs, Blitz dialed her HUD-comm. Dover answered. She panted out a few words with spittle-laden exhaustion. “Comin’ back hot. Be ready!”

The comm cut. She angled back, around the block. The C-B was close, mid-way down. She’d have to play it right, else the six-legger’d grab her at the door, do fuck knows what. In fewer than rightful steps, she was there, half-fumbling the door grab.

Panic took over. Her center of gravity shifted. She was on her back, on the ground, eyes clenched shut in defense as something ranciddripped drool and breathed steam. She felt it reel back, ready to lunge. The air pulsed.

The legger exploded backward from a roaringblast. Screeches shredded the air. Blitz scrambled back. Buckshot tore through legs, severed them from the carapace.Dover’s double-barrel cracked open, ejected the pair of spent shells. Two more slipped in. The gun snapped shut. She let the beast have it again. First, with one barrel. Then, with the other.

It stilled into silence as she cracked open the barrel and reloaded again.

Blitz swallowed hard. “Th-Thanks.”

Dover offered her a hand. “Just protecting my investment.”

They stood, staring at the creature, wondering what the hell’d just happened. Dover decided she didn’t care to know, about-faced back for the bar. Blitz took a moment longer to watch the beast, shuddered at its reality, then hurried in after Dover, glad she was no longer on anything’s menu.

Short Story: The Princess and the Brain-Hack

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The children gathered round in a crescent as he sat before a dingy, concrete wall, twice as ancient as him. His steel-grayed hair and piercing, ice-blues were accentuated by sagging cheeks and creases. Like him, the room was drab, with a sort of accumulated dust that could only come from having lived history.

Whether he’d played a major role in that history, or would still, was just one of the fascinations the younger children speculated on. The curious, old-man before them was no mystery to the older children. They knew the truth of course, but the others were too young to learn it. They had to be protected from grisly realities to ensure they didn’t become cold humans that made them.

The old man’s eyes pulled tight. His mouth drew a smile, “You wish to hear a story, no?”

A curious, Nordic accent mingled with his French. The children’s heads nodded, as they chorused “Oui” in a collective sing-song. He chuckled to himself.

“I know only one,” he said firmly to quiet them down. “But I shall tell it as though I lived it.”

He made small gestures with his hands and the bright LEDs overhead dimmed until only one remained above, at half-power.

“It begins with a princess in a tower, toiling away at tedious work,” he said. The children readied themselves in anticipation. “The most beautiful princess in the tower worked day after day, slaving for masters in fine silks. These masters were wealthy beyond any in the land, past or present. Yet despite all their wealth, they enslaved everyone in the land to do their bidding, increasing it each day, each moment; the princess included.

“Allowed as she was to return home each night, the Princess was forced to return each day, toiling as before, lest her masters grow angry and imprison her.

“So night after night, the Princess returned home, unaware of her masters’ wicked plans for her and others like her. She was a beautiful tool, they said, to be used for evils when needed, and discarded like after. She and all others like her were regarded this way; some were so wholly faithful to their masters, they felt the same. Thus day after day they toiled, enslaved, only to believe themselves safe from the treatment during the night.

“Then one night, the Princess’ wicked masters cast a veil of confusion about her mind. In her state, she knew not who she was, and her masters took advantage of this. They sent her out to do evil only to have her return the next morning, none the wiser of her actions. So powerful was the confusion, they were able to continue the madness months before she could begin to suspect it.

“But before then, her masters had found her capacity for evil was beyond any other’s. For, in truth she was a Princess, and princesses have their own power. With her, they brought destruction to many of their enemies. Through them, the Princess stole, deceived, even murdered under her wicked masters’ veil of confusion. Yet each morning she awoke, utterly unawares of her wickedness.”

The old man’s face sank into sadness, his voice with it. It seemed as if a thousand, terrible memories befell him all at once. Even to their young hearts, it was a cutting pain to see someone of such renown feeling such dread.

“Then came a night when the beautiful Princess could no longer sleep. Her masters watched her carefully, but allowed her not to do evil. Then another night passed similarly. She twisted and writhed in sleepless agony. More time passed. The Princess worsened. Each night she suffered amid more nightmares than before. It was then that the Princess’ family began to take notice.

“Where, by day she had always risen and worked with promptness, now she slogged on, too tired from the sleepless nights. Indeed, everyone whom joined the Princess each day in the tower saw the same change.

“It was, the Princess said, nothing to be concerned for.

“But her younger sister, just as beautiful and even more stubborn and less-mannered, insisted she visit an enchantress to put her mind at ease. There, the sister said, she would be put into a deep sleep of living dreams, and forced to face the ills haunting her dreamworld and keeping her from sleep.

“The sister however, also kept secret her own fears; fears seeded by rumors of others whom had shown the same, worsening symptoms as the Princess, and were said to have been subjected to a great confusion then used for evil in the night. Suspecting the Princess was also a victim, the sister kept quiet for fear that the Princess’ masters might strike them both down before they could learn the truth.”

The old man’s tone turned empty, unfeeling, yet it infected his story with more life; “So thus the Princess was taken to see the enchantress. There, she was put to the deep sleep, and for a long while, did not stir. Then, under the careful guidance of the Enchantress’ words, she soon began to navigate the dreamworld.

“It felt hollow, the Princess remarked, filled with memories that appeared her own, but which broke her heart and tortured her good nature. She watched as bits and pieces of past nights began to return. One upon the other, wickedness and evils stacked and fitted back in place as though a shattering mirror played in reverse.”

He took a deep breath to warm himself against terrible emotions, memories. No doubt he’d drummed them up to better instill the tale’s importance. He steeled his nerves with an encompassing glimpse of his audience; they were captivated, thirsting for the tale to continue.

“When the Enchantress’ deep sleep broke, the Princess awoke shaken. The veil of great confusion her masters had imbued broke too. She found her memory filled with all the evils she’d done unknowingly in her masters’ names.”

The otherwise indifferent face became embedded with a deep frown. “So the sister began to tell of the evil and wickedness by the Princess in her masters’ names. By doing so, she sought justice against those who’d stolen her sister’s mind, tarnished her innocence. All the while, the Princess grew more distraught, fearful of what she’d done; that her masters might use her again in such a way.

“Alas, the masters had other plans. They commissioned an conjurer to kill the Princess to protect themselves, fearing her story might rile the peasants of their kingdom on whose complacence they relied on for their wealth.

“So, under cover of night, the masters schemed. The conjurer-assassin went quickly to lay a trap for the Princess. Upon rising, he planned, she would once more make to toil away in her masters’ tower. Instead, he would spring a trap, swallowing the Princess in a great ball of fire. Sure enough, when the Princess rose again, she stepped outside only to be instantly swallowed by the great fire. It then disappeared with her, never to be seen again.”

He watched the children carefully. Some faces ebbed on tears. Others were still enthralled, sensing the story wasn’t over. A few children though, were the most captivated, yet least affected. They had, he knew, something more special about them; a type of imagination distinguishable by the very look on their face. Indeed, these children were unknowingly the group’s greatest thinkers.

The old man continued, “With the Princess’ death, her masters’ kingdom was up-heaved. Peasants rebelled against in outrage at the Princess’ death. All over the kingdom they wreaked havoc on the lands and possessions of the masters.

“But alas, this too was not meant to last. The masters set loose great, fire-breathing dragons whom smote the land wherever the peasants rose. For fourteen days and fourteen nights, upheaval passed, then the fire-breathers came and quelled the chaos. The Dragons appearance may have subdued the people, but their thirst for justice remained. Indeed, none so boldly ruling by fear can hope to forever contain such deep unrest.

“Through two years of toil and worsening wickedness from her old masters, the world mourned the Princess’ loss. During that time, small groups worked in secret to exact revenge on her masters in her memory. By ways sabotage and subterfuge, the avengers destroyed and thwarted, or deceived and cajoled against them in the Princess’ name. It was not enough, for the land remained in the darkness of the tower’s great, looming shadow.

“Even today that shadow persists, but something unknown to the Masters in the tower is that the Princess yet lives! For two whole years, a great sorcerer worked in secret with her sister to resurrect the dead Princess to lead the people against her old masters.”

Faces around the room seemed in disbelief, or indeed astonishment, but the old man could see the few he’d mentally noted before working something out. He suppressed a smile to ensure he finished appropriately.

“Upon returning from the dead, she immediately began to lead the people in hopes of one day liberating those still toiling as she once did. It is said, even now, she trains avengers in growing numbers. As well, it is said she slept so long in death, she trains and plots day and night without interruption. Such is her will.”

His head gave a small, slight bow, “And that is all there is to tell… for now.”

The children clapped excitedly, already wishing to hear it again. Only those few he’d mentally noted seemed satisfied, having obviously worked out something the others hadn’t. The children disappeared soon afterward.

A middle-aged woman approached, her body gleaming with battle-scarred black and chrome, bionic limbs in place of natural ones. Renee Lemaire was every bit as beautiful as the story told, however wisely worded for children’s ears. She was tall, well-muscled where not augmented, and had a wily cunning from years of fighting Corporate “masters.” She had the look of a warrior Goddess and loving mother.

She approached, “You have the list?”

“Oui.” He handed over a touchscreen data-tablet. Across it were a few names, “Those are the only I saw in this group. Perhaps one day we’ll have more effective means of pinpointing them.”

She eyed the list, “You’ve never been wrong before, Sven. Not once. I trust you to find them better than any other method.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, leaning tiredly on a table to look at her. “But I am an old man, Renee. And none of us can escape death forever. Not even you.”

She gave a bittersweet smile, “You know what they call it, the older ones?”

“The story?”

She gave a nod. “They call it the Princess and the Brain-Hack. Eventually all of them call it that. They don’t get it at first, but at some point, it always gets around that it’s a true story. My story.”

Sven thought carefully. “Are they aware it is a test?”

She shook her head, “A few, but critical thinkers are too precious to let that secret slip.”

He softened severely, then a throaty laugh emanated from him. She sensed its cause and laughed with him. The Princess and the Brain-Hack. She had to admit, it had a certain ring. Maybe one day it would even have an ending; after she finished burning the Corps to the ground. Until then, she didn’t mind being a beautiful Princess with a cause so powerful death couldn’t keep her from it.

She smiled. After all, she was Renee Lemaire; myth, legend, formerly brain-hacked princess, and evermore a rebel.

Short Story: Sprawl-Blue

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The sky was that special kind of blended deep-blue only found against the foreground of metro sprawls. The kind of blue where countless neon lights mix it with old-time incandescents, radiating their offspring for miles. While their multitudes fuck to make the paint, they bounce and rebound off the gloss-coats of high-end, self-driving cars.

And at a distance, it all forms that thing loosely termed “Humanity.” Progress. Civilization.

Most call it “sprawl-blue.” Not just ‘cause that’s what it is, but ‘cause it perfectly encapsulates life in a sprawl. It rolls off the tongue easier than sweat along a belly-dancer’s undulating navel. It even gives a bit of the taste of it. Copper, like blood. Hints of irreverent neons. No-one knowing could deny sprawl-blue’s as much a way of life as Junk or The Net.

Personally, Carly didn’t care for either of the last two. She was just a girl trying to make her way without being fucked for her money. In a sprawl, if you didn’t do it for yourself, you sure were getting fucked. Carly didn’t like getting fucked. She liked fucking. She liked to get her hands dirty. Slake her blood-thirst. Seel the adrenaline rush of gun and fist-fights. Most of all, she loved control. Being in control was better than cumming on X.

It started young: a taste of power from being the smartest street-rat in the pack. All the others looked up to her. Boys. Girls. It didn’t matter. Carly was Alpha-bitch. Queen. Empress and Matriarch. Everyone followed her. Those that didn’t, got far outta’ the way– or, on the wrong end of her pack.

She’d started with drugs. At eleven. Stumbled onto a deal gone bad and found a few kilos of grass, X, and Junk. Got her start with it. Made bank. At fourteen she was running guns like a bike-messenger to parcels. Literally. She and her people were decked out in street-rat clothes, looking as pathetic as possible. Were it not for Carly’s cunning, they’d have been that way. She earned herself street-cred, and eventually, control of territory.

It came with blood. Serious cost. Her first turf war left her limping every time it rained. It drew suspicion anytime she was around the “real-world” straights. That term alone always made her laugh enough to forget the limp. The real world was no different from the so-called “shadow world.” Both survived, and thrived, on power, control.

But both worlds had started to take their toll. On Carly. On people in general. Now, at twenty-two, Carly’d seen more than most people three times her age. Double that for straights. She still limped when it rained, was blind in one eye, and had the accompanying slash-scars across her face. Random hunks of meat were missing from her body. Others were fused shut, grotesquely mottled from burns, bullet-wounds, stabbings. Each was a prize of the Sprawl-blue coloring the background of every memory of every night of her life.

She stood center-stage in the middle of a storage warehouse. She was leaned forward, hands on a pallet of bags of cement. Various construction materials and pallets were laid out in seemingly random points about the floors. Elsewhere, were giant rolls of goods. Filled shelves. Everything there waiting to be shipped.

Carly’s people were formed around her, armed to the teeth. They awaited her order to throw themselves into the fray, if or when it came. They’d jump in front of bullets for her. It wasn’t for lack of survival instinct. Carly just had a way about her. A certain charisma. As a child, sheer arrogant confidence had backed it up. Since then, its spine had been reformed by bloodshed, survival. She was the only reason any of her people were alive today.

But Carly knew she wouldn’t live forever. Nor would her people. Or their ways. That’s what tonight was about; survival. Carrying on after the loss, insurance and assurance, that the world could survive no matter what happened to the “shadow people.”

The sprawl had been divided too long. The various gangs at war too long. They’d fought for territory for generations. The battles always ended with less people. Less land. More damage. Carly was no different. The only thing separating her from her enemies were the imaginary lines they’d collectively drawn– for survival’s sake.

Carly knew that. Her people knew that. Most of all, their enemies knew that.

She’d called a meeting, a summit of sorts; all of her gang, all of the other gangs. The collective armies of over a dozen warlords, mafioso, and G’s were en-route to sit down in their massiveness. Carly had managed it with exorbitant gifts. Neutral messengers. Peaceful letters. It was time for a sit down– a parley. Pow-wow. They needed co-existence, she said. If not for themselves, then for all the lost.

It had taken time, and doing, but eventually Carly’d convinced the gang-leaders to meet. It was time to end the wars, to unify the people against their true threats. The elites. Aristocrats. Politicians. Police. In effect, the so-called “Real-world establishment.”

“It is time,” she’d said. “To emerge from the shadows and retake the day.”

The first to reach the meetings were the Asian gangs– Yakuza, Triads, the like. Punctuality was their way. And scoping out the competition, laying in wait in the event of ambush, was the other gangs’ way. With the obvious recognition that no slaughter was about to take place, the Mexican gangs came next. They had to be macho, show they weren’t afraid. Then, the black-only gangs. The white-only gangs. The Italians. The Irish. So many that the warehouse was packed. Standing room only.

Carly’s heart swelled with tension and pride. So many opposing colors together. Even as the last gang-leaders led their people in, she couldn’t believe what she’d achieved. She smiled, lifted her arms wide in a V, and projected her voice.

“Thank you all for coming. You know why we’re here. To ensure the safety of our city. Our people. Our families. There’s only one way to ensure that happens. That is why I’ve brought us all here today.” She lowered her arms as something slid subtly from her sleeve and into her hand. Nobody noticed. Even her own people were oblivious.“We’ve all become a blight,” she said to suddenly confused looks. “We’re a plague. A cancer on this city. I aim to cut that cancer out!”

The obvious trap’s recognition appeared instantaneously across hundreds of faces. A single heart-beat separated it from the explosion. In a blink, the warehouse was in flames. Bits and bodies were thrown about. Blood and chunks strewn everywhere. Carly was blown clear through a metal wall. Her torso was lacerated, organs and bones pulverized by the explosives disguised as cement bags.

Her last breath made her arm go limp. The charred detonator rolled from a hand. Her eyes fixed up on the sky, that never-ending, ubiquitous, sprawl-blue.