<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

Previous Contents Next

# Chapter #15

Fede couldn’t find Cass, and her comm wasn’t responding to his pings. He’d gotten what he thought must be a private address for her off the server, but she wasn’t responding to that either. Eventually he swore and scrambled into his adjacket, tabbed a security lock onto the OLED and his connection and crawled out of the tent. This wasn’t his gig; he didn’t do meatspace. Tonx had said something about Boers, which was serious shit. If Boers were involved someone was going to get killed. He swore again as he wandered, blind, through the dark of the dojo. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this; he was here to code, not run around finding people. But Tonx was in trouble. He stumbled over his shoes, sat down and fumbled with their ties in the dark. He wasn’t used to tying them on; at home he just left them on and took his legs off.

He got the shoes on and went through the door. He wandered through the shop but it was empty, the front locked down tight. The metal grating had a padlock on it, and he wasn’t going to waste time searching for a key. Instead he hustled to the private exit and down the long white hall. The door shut behind him with the jangling click-click of wired locks.

He followed the curve of the building, nervous now, unsure what he was going to do or how he would do it. His stomach had started to ache. He’d walked almost a full city block when he came to a turn, recognized a familiar side street and broke into a jog. Seconds later he was banging on the faded blue metal fire door next to the corrugated gate they’d taken the scooter through. It opened a moment later, the tiny Asian guy that’d taken Cass’s keys appearing, his face seamed into a scowl. One eye widened when he saw Fede, and he stepped back a little. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I need the bike” said Fede.

The man took off his cap, scratched the back of his head, and studied Fede.

“Anata no baka desu ka?” he asked.

“Shit” breathed Fede. He peered over the man’s head into the garage. There in the back of the room was Cass’s bike, half-lit under a desk lamp jacked together with duct tape. He pointed.

“That. I need to get a ride on that” he said.

The guy looked back at Fede from where he’d followed the direction of his arm, smiled a crooked smile. Shadows emerged from under some kind of car over to the left, oil-resistant soles scuffing against the concrete. The man turned towards the dark of the garage, called out a string of words Fede would never understand. Fede swore again and pushed his way inside.

The little guy didn’t like that, but he didn’t touch Fede. A suddenly flurry of voices rang through the garage as he walked quickly towards the bike. He’d almost reached it when a loud pop smacked the air and Fede got the odd feeling that he’d just been shot at. He looked the poster board over the workbench on his right, next to the scooter, and watched a three-inch drill bit droop, then fall clattering to the bench. He turned slowly away from the bench, his hands jumping to his ears.

Two of the little men were standing nearby with a two-foot crowbar and a three-foot wrench, respectively. Over towards the car one of them had just fitted another drill bit into the compressor he’d shot the first one from. He was smiling broadly, clearly pleased at his shot. He’d done this before. The guy Fede had pushed by stood over to Fede’s left, out of reach. He held a dented tin can in one hand, and when Fede looked at him he turned his head slightly away and smiled broadly, thick eyebrows rising into a mass of wrinkled forehead. “Yeah?” he asked again.

“Cass. I need to get a hold of Cass” Fede said.

“Cass?” asked the man. He held up his free hand to his head, thumb towards his ear, pinky finger jutting out towards his mouth in a gesture Fede’s parents would have made, a sign for old-school voice comm. Fede tapped his ear, shook his head.

“No. No answer. Cass. no. answer.”

The guy held his hand out and pretended to type on a computer. Fede gritted his teeth.

“No. No answer that way either.” Didn’t these guys understand? She’d shut off her comm lines, period.

“Listen, it’s im-por-tant. Muy importante. Very important. I need to talk to Cass!”

The Asian guy adjusted his cap and walked a large semicircle around Fede, towards the scooter. He nodded at the guy with the compressor drill and set his cup onto the counter, reached out and gently shook one of the scooter’s handlebars.

For a second nothing happened, and then a high-pitched siren howl burst out of the scooter. Fede jumped, scrambling backwards against the counter, his heart in his throat. The little man squinted and shook his head at the noise. It split off a moment later, the guy with the drill yelling and waving his hand at the one who’d touched the scooter. He staggered backwards and started swearing in fluent English as a pale grey smoke came up from the floor where the fluid from the cup had spilled. The counter was obviously immune; the yellow liquid had pooled slightly there, but a charred black smudge was growing where it was dropping onto the floor. Cass’s voice came from the belly of the scooter:

“You’re fucking with my bike and I’m about half a minute away. I suggest you get the fuck out of there before I show up and cut your head off.” Her voice rang with authority and anger, and it took a second for Fede to realize she didn’t have a visual.

“Cass, you there?” he asked. There was a pause.

“Feed? Who’s fucking with my bike?”

“Me. I couldn’t reach you and Tonx needs help ASAP. I need to get to Cessus and was going to borrow your bike.”

“Idiot” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “I thought someone was fucking with my fucking bike. Is Wang there?” Fede looked at the four men standing around him, two of them scattering cat litter across the counter and the floor.

“Um, yeah.”

She spoke for a minute or two in Chinese, punctuated twice when the guy who’d opened the door made agreeable noises in the bike’s direction. She switched to English. “Feed? You know how to drive a scooter?”

“Yeah, of course” he said. He’d ridden scooters before. Old ones. A couple times.

“I’ll meet you there, just give me a chance to get some clothes on. Cessus’s address is loaded into the helmet. And Feed, don’t fuck up my bike. It runs hot, so don’t granny it.”

The background buzz of the connection clicked off and Wang (Fede assumed it was Wang) handed him the keys. It took him a few moments to figure out how to disconnect the lock, longer to get the helmet off the hook and onto his head. It was tight, crushing his ears, but Fede was grateful to discover a familiar interface appear on the inside of the helmet’s faceplate. He wheeled it out the door, turned it on, and saddled up. He managed to get the helmet synced to his map data, the route charting itself to the address Cass had listed under Cessus’s name. He slowly twisted the throttle. The bike screamed at him as he edged on the clutch, vibrating angrily. Fede ground his teeth under the helmet, rolled out onto the mostly empty road, tried to take it up to speed. He never got there; the bike wasn’t happy at less than full bore, and even at halfway open Fede was lucky not to take out a lamppost. By the time he arrived at Marcus’s the bike’s heat readout was approaching redline, the aftermarket pipes hazy in the heat radiation. It stank of frying plastic, but he’d made it.

Fede dismounted, turned to see Marcus filling the doorway, arms folded, eyes glinting in the deep folds of his face.

“Welcome back, Feed” he said, his voice deep. “Cass called. What’s the problem?”

“Tell you inside” said Fede, jogging up the stairs and past Marcus. “The bike okay there?”

“It’s fine” called a voice from inside. It was the voice Fede had heard when he was here last, from upstairs.

“Cessus” said Fede as he walked in, entered the broad, couch-filled living room. At the far end was a tall black man sprawled out in a gleaming white terrycloth bathrobe, legs spread out in front of him. He had tiny round spectacles perched on the bridge of his long, sharp nose, a huge mane of thick dreadlocks sprouting from his head. In the fingers of one hand he held a tall blue bong, gently considering its gleam in the light. The room was rank with the smell of hash. Fede looked closer, realized his glasses weren’t glasses, they were implants. There was nothing connecting the lenses over his nose, and the arms disappeared into the side of his head. As he watched Cessus smiled and revealed a neat row of clean white teeth. The small round lenses in front of his eyes rotated away from his nose, flipping towards the side of his head, sliding slowly into place alongside his temples. He released a huge cloud of smoke, choked, started giggling, stamping his feet as he struggled for breath.

“None other” he choked out, laughing, red eyes peering fiendishly at Fede. “What I can do you for?”

“Shit” breathed Fede.

“Take a seat” said Marcus, guiding him with one huge paw into a couch next to Cessus. He turned to the other man. “We secure here?”

“Sure” said Cessus. “I plugged the holes when you got me up. Costs, but what price liberty?” He smiled again at Fede, winked.

“Okay. Feed, why don’t you tell us what Tonx needs. Cass mentioned Boers, which is bad news. What’s the situation?”

Fede told them what he knew. Tonx had said to trust them, and he didn’t see that he had any other choice.

“Tonx told me to tell you our man used to work for the mouse” he said to Cessus when he was done. “He said that’d mean something to you.”

Up until then Cessus had been basically horizontal, taking the occasional toke but otherwise looking bored. As soon as Fede mentioned the mouse he sat bolt upright, turned a snarling jeer at Fede.

“Booyah!” he screamed, hurling the bong across the room. It shattered against the opposite wall, glass shards raining on an unused couch. “Fucking stealing from Disney, are we? Booyah!” he jumped at Fede, arms waving, his bleary red eyes wide. Marcus sighed gently and reached up with one huge arm, grasped Cessus’s shoulder with his hand and shoved him back onto the couch. “Christ” he cursed softly, getting up and fetching a broom and bucket.

“Disney?” asked Fede.

“That’s the mouse, man. Your Bro knows. Booyah!” said Cessus, disentangling himself from the couch and the tie on his robe. “You got stats on their local?”

“Yeah, of course. What are we going to do?” said Fede.

“We gonna lock ’em down, my friend. Easy-cheesy.” Cessus peered carefully at Fede, “Marcus says you know comps. What’s your specialty?”

“Code, I guess” said Fede self-consciously.

“You a script kiddie?” Cessus asked, squinting at him from one eye.

“Fuck no” frowned Fede. “I write my own scripts.”

“You understand networking protocols? Mostly?”

“Mostly” agreed Fede “I can read log files and make sense out of them.”

“Good enough” smiled Cessus. “We’ll invoke Pan and drop them after Alice. But first!” he stood up, his robe falling open to reveal two long halves of a flaccid, split penis, “we get dressed!”

Cessus tore out of the room, the sound of his heels hammering against the stairs as he took them two at a time. Marcus grunted, rising from where he had been sweeping up the remnants of the bong. “He’s crazy, but he’s good” he said.

“That’s your brother?” asked Fede. He didn’t know what to think; Cessus’s bizarre performance had left him reeling.

“We’re all brothers here” said Marcus. “Cessus and I go way back.”

He turned and walked into the kitchen, emptied the broken pieces of glass into the trashcan. He reemerged carrying an unmarked spray bottle full of green cleaning fluid. The room stank of bong water, a long brown stain fresh against others, Fede noticed. Marcus nudged the couch with his foot, causing it to jump towards Fede, bunching up carpet as it went. “Ignore what he says and watch what he does” Marcus advised. “He really is brilliant. You could learn a lot from him.”

He finished spraying down the wall and splashed a liberal dose of the fluid on the floor behind the couch, hooked its edge with his foot and pulled it back into place. “You want some tea?”

Previous Contents Next