<b>Roo'd</b>

# Roo'd

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# Chapter #30

Fede had been almost completely useless, huddled down behind the tree. He’d pretty much known he would be. But the others had waited, which told him what he needed to know. When he got back he ignored the three of them, sitting around the fire, Cessus’s ancient laptop out and laid flat so they could look at his GPS maps. He went around the far side of the truck and hauled the back door open, got into the freight container. He left the door open and walked back to the futons.

After a few minutes the voices stopped and Marcus’s silhouette filled the doorway. He pulled the door shut behind him, locked it in place and strolled to the other couch while the truck rumbled to life. The container lurched and jumped, smoothing out after a while as Cessus got them back on some paved roads. The grind of the engine in front of them became a gentle background rumble.

Fede rubbed the smooth rubber on the edges of his gogs, thought about how long it’d been since he’d cleaned them. Not since he’d had dinner with Bark and his Mom, he figured, smiling in the half-light at the thought. The smile was bittersweet. He didn’t miss his Mom, didn’t miss the housing complex they’d lived in, the burbs where he’d grown up. But he missed the familiarity. He missed knowing there’d be food in the fridge when he woke up, empty beer bottles on the floor on Saturday mornings. He missed working towards something he thought he could trust, missed the certainty of getting into a good school. He missed not being shot at. The thought appealed to him, and he chuckled in the darkness.

“What’s funny?” said Marcus.

“Nothing” said Fede, looking at the larger man. Marcus’s head still had a crease where a bullet had grazed him, his huge arms splayed out over the back of the couch. His eyes were lost in the meaty folds of his face, but there was something about the split where his lips should be that suggested a smile. Fede was glad; for a monster, Marcus was a pretty welcoming human being. And right now, despite everything else, Fede was lonely.

“You ever miss home, Marcus?” asked Fede.

“Home?”

“Your folks, where you grew up. You ever wish you could go back?”

Marcus grinned, the interlocking mesh of his metal shark teeth gleaming wetly in the dimness.

“Yeah, I do. I miss my momma. My home, not so much, but my momma... she was a hell of a woman.”

Fede was surprised — he’d never thought of Marcus as having a mother.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Lung cancer. From the plastics they were using in the walls. The projects were full of it. Turned out the builders were getting kickbacks from the paint companies for using the shit up.”

Marcus sighed, an over-long whooshing noise like a garbage bag being deflated.

“We couldn’t afford any of the gene-therapies, so she tried chemo, and it killed her.”

Fede stared. Chemo hadn’t been used in years, not even in most second world countries. It debilitated people. It was a torture, not a treatment. There wasn’t even a high success rate; they just — poisoned you — and if you survived, maybe the cancer didn’t.

The silence stretched out, Marcus’s eyes lost in shadow.

“Made me into who I am today, though” he said eventually. “Got the same shit, but by then they had lung replacement. Couldn’t afford it, of course, but got me started rumbling, trying to enjoy myself before I kicked. I was just a dumb thug, but I’ve always been big.”

He stretched one huge three-fingered hand out in front of him, flexed it.

“What happened?” asked Fede.

“Cessus covered cloning my lungs, told me if I did him a favor he’d pay for them. I was close to dying, had lost a lot of weight. Couldn’t keep my drugs down anymore, couldn’t make any money. Twenty three and almost stupid enough not to care.”

“You were 23?”

“Yep. With an IQ to match. But Cessus had known me on the street for a while. I couldn’t figure out why he’d want to do that, get my lungs cloned for me. I’d never even worked for him.”

“What’d he ask you to do?” asked Fede.

Marcus let his hand drop to his side, looked up at the ceiling overhead. Fede heard his ribs creak as he inhaled and exhaled, slowly.

“Listen, Feed, I know you’re pissed off by how shit has gone down. But don’t be. It’s going to work out.”

Fede looked at the big man and frowned.

“Then why’s it so important you get a contract?” he asked.

Marcus spread his arms out across the back of the futon couch.

“Would you want to tell me how much I’m worth once this whole thing plays out?” he asked. “What about if Cessus gets killed? What if I lose an arm, can’t ever fight again? What if you make a million? What if you make just a hundred?”

He pointed one huge finger at Fede.

“You don’t want to have to make that decision. None of us do. We’re in this because we believe in you guys. But that doesn’t mean we want to argue about it afterwards. You follow?”

Fede said nothing.

“Well I hope you do, Fede, because we’re risking our lives for you and you’re acting like a little bitch about it.”

They stared at each other in the darkness, Fede’s breath quick, lost in shadow. Marcus heaved a sigh. He turned and rolled over onto the couch, pulled the tiny blanket over his shoulder.

“Think about it” he said.

The truck rumbled on, streetlamps overhead yellow blurs flashing through the translucent ceiling.

“What did Cessus ask you to do?” asked Fede.

The truck jumped, swaying as it changed lanes.

“He told me to go get my Momma,” said Marcus, his voice a deep rumble from the dark heap on the couch. “He told me to go get her from the hospital freezer and bury her the way she deserved.”

He pulled the blanket further up his shoulder.

“Now let me sleep.”

An hour later Marcus’s breathing had slowed and Fede had gotten back into his code, mostly filling in details and running error-checks over some of the larger functions. He was coming to the point where he was just guessing, writing code based on what he thought the data set would look like. It bugged him; it was stupid to write that way. He was starting to worry he’d never get the thing done when the truck slowed and shuddered to a stop. They heard the driver’s door thud open and shut, and a moment later the back of the freight container swung open. The roar of the highway flooded in along with Cessus.

“We got it, baby” he shouted, tossing Fede a white, cigarette-box shaped device.

“It’s an old MP3 player” he explained, fumbling in his pocket for an adaptor. “Here, it doesn’t have wireless built in.”

He walked back and forth in a tight circle, watching Fede fumble around for the wireless plugin, then toss it aside to pull on his gogs. He found the device in his Pan, opened it up and saw a big image file, a plain data file, and a database file. He flipped up one gog, lifted an eyebrow at Cessus.

“Crazy motherfucker encrypted it as a washed-out mostly-black background image on the Latin American Jewish Association of Hawaii homepage. Used standard Rijndael/CTR encryption. Safest place in the world, man - right out in the open.”

Fede knew this wasn’t strictly true; it was risky leaving anything out in plain sight. But it did mean they could get to it from anywhere without leaving much in the way of tracks, and it had been encrypted once already before it had been merged into the image. Clever.

“What’s the first-layer encryption?” Fede asked.

“RSI, but I already decrypted it all. That’s the data file. It turns out to be the database.”

“Oh fuck yeah” interrupted Fede, his hands shaking as he clutched at his chord, scanning the data. “Totally pre-orged, separated along first-take similarities.”

He looked up at Cessus, “We’re ready to roll.”

“Marcus, you mind driving with Cass? I want to watch this guy run with this shit. Maybe learn a thing or two. Spot-check you at the very least, yeah?” Cessus winked at Fede.

Marcus grunted and sat up, strolled towards the back of the freight.

“Marcus” called out Fede.

He turned.

“Um, thanks. For what you said earlier, I mean.”

Marcus nodded, and disappeared over the edge of the truck bed.

“You boys have a chat?” asked Cessus, settling onto the other couch, lenses rolling out.

“Sort of. I was being an asshole. I’m sorry. You want to code now?”

Fede heard Cessus grin in the dim light as the truck pulled back onto the highway.

“After you, my friend” he said.

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