Parallel (10 page)

Lucky Lou's clientele come in a variety of shapes and sizes. A little bit of everything. Unity's grand mixing pot.

In one corner guys with shifty eyes hawk their mind-altering nanites: Angel Dust, Quick Sliver, Pandora's Shame—you name it, they’ve got it. And they know you want it. Life in the Lowers isn't worth facing without something blunting the ragged edges.

I had my fix of the Quick sitting at home waiting for me. It occurred to me, then, that being there, wrapped in the drug's loving embrace, might be preferable to Georgie's company. I would have made that exodus if not for the half glass of someone's bastardized interpretation of alcohol staring me down from the bar top. Soon.

A squat metal cage sat in a shallow pit behind the dance floor. It was big enough for two fools with more aggression than brains to jump into the Stream and dream up ever more creative ways of killing one another for the amusement of Lucky Lou's patrons. Normally that's where I'd be. Fighting in the cage, getting my fix of the Stream. But seeing as how I'd be dead in less than twenty-four hours, I figured I deserved a night off.

Between pixies grinding to the fluttering rhythm of their own heartbeats and Dusters flopping around in pools of their own bodily fluids, nobody seemed overly interested in Georgie's declaration of my remaining time. That's good; few people at Lou's would think twice before resolving a questionable business transaction with the rusted end of a knife.

Yeah, I'm dead soon anyhow, but I plan to die on my own pitiful terms.

"Don't you have someplace you'd rather be?" Georgie asked, leaning in close as if he were sharing a particularly juicy secret.

"Nope."

"But you're dying."

"So are you," I said, saluting with my glass of rocket fuel before pouring a bit more of that clear liquid down my perpetually chapped throat.

Georgie flinched. He instinctively turned his forearm away from me, as if that would help him if I decided to take his time. I had no interest in that. Interestingly enough, I was probably the only guy in Lou's who could say that with a straight face.

"You don't have family you want to be with or something?" Georgie asked.

"Kid, listen up, 'cause I don't know how much longer I got 'til that alcohol starts playing whack-a-mole with my brain cells. Hell, this might be my last moment of lucidity," I said, polishing off the remainder of my drink. "You need to stop worrying about me, and spend some time figuring out how you're gettin' out of here with all that time still on your arm."

I belched to emphasize my point.

Georgie ran a handful of fingers with nails polished to a high sheen through his finely coiffed hair. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, you don't belong here."

"How do you know?"

"You're too clean," I said, "and that glass of inebriation in your hands hasn't made the journey to your mouth all night."

Georgie studied his glass. The cogs were turning. He wanted to take a drink and prove me wrong, but he didn't want to sacrifice any of the time he'd so carefully hoarded over the years. You can tell the time hoarders. The ones too terrified to live for fear of dying. The ones who work up the courage to do something real dumb, instead of only a little dumb.

Georgie had decided to do something real dumb; he came to the Lowers.

"So? I'm a citizen of Unity," he said. "I can be here if I want."

"Sure, being here doesn't pose a problem. Leaving does."

The kid pushed his stool away from the bar, its metal legs screeching against the floor. "You planning on stopping me?"

I chuckled and pushed my empty mug down the bar. It slid along gouged grooves in the wood until a stick thin woman behind the counter stopped it with one hand while her other spun a tumbler full of unknown liquid with the skill and dexterity of a circus performer. She winked and blew a kiss through puckered lips. I leaned back to be sure it would miss and turned to Georgie.

"You see that guy?" I said, hooking a thumb towards a man sitting at the opposite end of the bar. Half his face was hidden by shadows, the other half by a thin-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes. Even from thirty feet I could see the scar running from his chin to his ear.

"What about him?" The bottom-right corner of Georgie's lip twitched in an off-rhythm beat to his finger tapping the bar.

"That's Jack Dunn. You ever heard of Jack Dunn?"

Georgie shook his head no.

"Figures. You never heard of him 'cause news from the Lowers doesn't make it to the Uppers. News, like shit, trickles down. You've heard stories of what it's like down here, hell, some of them might even be true. But you don't understand the severity of your situation, because you don't really understand where you are. This ain't Unity; this is the Lowers."

I knew this because I'd once lived in the Uppers. Two miles straight up from where we now sat. Above ground with the sun.

I ran a thumb along the ridge of the silver ring hanging from a chain around my neck, rolling its smooth edges between my fingers. A reminder of life before this. A reminder of Diana.

The kid's head swiveled back and forth, studying the bar—and the general caliber of man therein—as if seeing it all for the first time. He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing. "So, who's Jack Dunn?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but somebody beat me to the punch line.

"He's the guy that's gonna kill you," a deep voice like rolling thunder called out from behind the kid.

Georgie spun so quickly his ass cheeks slid off the stool and he flopped to the ground. A man, not ironically named Boulder, towered over the kid.

"I think you made him piss his pants, Bo," I said, looking into the giant's eyes. The two pinpricks of black were the only point of weakness on a body stacked haphazardly with nanite-infused muscles.

"Why's he going to kill me?" Georgie whimpered from the ground.

"He wants your time," I said.

"Well, too bad. He can't have it." Georgie tried faking confidence, which might help in some places, but Lucky Lou's wasn't one of them. "I have the best insurance money can buy."

"Won't help."

"Why?"

"He's an Intuit."

Georgie's face went through such an extreme color change that I figured cosmetic nanobots hiding beneath his skin must have been responsible. Either that or he finally realized the desperate nature of his predicament. Possibly a combination of both.

Insurance be damned. An Intuit like Jack Dunn would only need a couple minutes tromping through Georgie's nanocomp to hack the kid's Time Bank account and drain it. After that, Georgie could say goodbye to all those years he'd carefully collected, 'cause he'd be staring at his final ten minutes. A parting gift thanks to the Safeguard. A safety protocol only one Intuit had ever managed to crack.

Ten minutes ain't much time, though. Just enough for panic to really grab you by the balls.

Bo ignored the Uppie at his feet. "Boss wants to see you, Tom."

"Oh?" I pivoted in my chair and glanced past Bo's prodigious bulk. At the far end of the bar Lucky Lou leaned against the second-floor railing overlooking the current Stream fight. "What's he want?"

"You know how it goes." Bo shrugged with the indifference of a man just doing his job. "I'm the delivery man. He tells me to come get you, I come get you. Now, you good to walk or am I carrying you?"

"That won't be necessary." I stood quickly, causing my barstool to tip past the point of equilibrium and clatter to the ground.

I stepped over Georgie, still sitting on his ass, and headed towards the mass of human biowaste writhing on the dance floor.

"Wait!" Georgie yelled. I turned, if for no other reason than pity. The kid, now standing, trembled with the reality of his predicament. "What do I do?"

Bo quirked his eyebrow and tilted his head knowingly.

I sighed. "Can you get him an escort to the top?"

"Sure." Bo sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of a hand covered in cheap back-alley tattoos. "But it'll cost you."

"You heard the man," I said, turning to Georgie.

"I can't..." Georgie started. "My dad can't know I'm down here. He watches my accounts. He'll kill me if he finds out."

I pointed to Jack Dunn. "That guy is probably gonna kill you first."

Georgie made a pathetic sound like a puppy being kicked. I didn't know I had any heartstrings left to be tugged, but somehow that noise found one.

"How much to get him to the Middle?" I asked.

"10,000. Or six months. Your choice."

A steep price for saving Georgie's ass. Then again I didn't want this kid's death hanging over my head if somehow I made it to the pearly gates and they were looking for a tie breaker to decide my fate. When you're getting ready to die, you start thinking about these things. You start hedging your bets.

"Fine." I extended a hand, which Bo happily grabbed.

BLINK.

I activated the nanocomp buried in my brain. It flickered once as though someone was testing a light switch before a torrent of high-speed data blazed through my temporal lobe. My fingers tingled and my heart triple kicked before the microscopic nanobots scurrying along my neural highway could compensate.

Connected to Lucky Lou's subdivision of the Stream, I probed the private network created between Bo and myself, pinged his nanocomp, and transferred Georgie's babysitting fee—three fights' worth of money, though it wasn't like I could take it with me when I was gone anyhow.

When I blinked out of the Stream Bo was smiling and Georgie only looked like he’d been crying a little.

"Do me a favor," I said to the kid, "don't ever come back down here."

Having padded my pocket with a little extra karma I turned and headed for my meeting with Lucky Lou.

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