Tin Man Blues (1/6)
dawn / morning / midday / afternoon / evening / dawn redux
banner by acquiescence_
(10)
The warning siren of the railway crossing calls to Jensen from loam-filled somnolence. Roaring out of the shadows leaving ringing ears in its wake the train races the pale crimson fingers stretching impossibly long to cradle the sky. It's hard to breathe. The air dry and scratchy, already shimmering with the promise of suffocating heat.
Hard gravel digs into him, shifting sharply under splayed fingers as he sits up stiffly. Head noisy and hurting, he dry heaves, stomach roiling rebelliously. Jensen swipes the back of his hand against his mouth and grimaces at the prickly rasp of stubble and the sour taste of blood and bile. His ripped jeans itch uncomfortably with old sweat and his t-shirt streaked with grime and gore sticks to him. His boots are missing.
Jensen blinks rapidly to clear the scratched film quality of his vision. It does not work. And neither does a scrub of the eyes. Through the grainy blur Jensen can make out an old woman standing next to the flashing train crossing. It is just the two of them; rusting iron and air separating them from a ten thousand feet fall.
Bare-footed, brown and craggy as parched earth, the old woman looks out of place back-dropped by the city’s steel-lined arteries that weave their way up and between the skyscrapers and support columns. Her cracked lips move but all he hears are the silent echoes of the train's passing challenge. Jensen ignores her. Just another homeless haunting the city.
It takes Jensen two attempts before he’s swaying unsteadily on his feet and dusting himself off. Nothing is broken except for abused muscles and joints straining and creaking in protest and pain, and the uneven cross-stitching of last night's memories with a head stuffed full of wool and sheep.
(9)
02:11
Pretty pretty girl
Sapphire eyes, ruby lips
and ivory skin.
Despite the heat Jensen shivers, uneasy at the obvious lack of bass heavy noise and gyrating bodies. With its stark fluorescent lights and abandoned machinery the factory is harsh and indifferent as the deserts which hound the city's borders. Not the atmosphere of revelry he expected. His 3-inch platform boots echo hollowly on the concrete.
The crest stamped onto the equipment mark this building and its contents properties of the High Blood. Even after a spit and a polish with his sleeve Jensen can’t make out which House. Too dirty and worn.
He and the girl should not be here. They are trespassing. Jensen has no desire to encounter the security bots. He’s registered as a High Blood, but there’s a good chance the bots are still programmed to terminate any unauthorized visitors.
Jensen pauses and squints. Unfamiliar sigils adorn the walls; arcane in form though the paint is fresh and smells of, iron, Jensen thinks. Turning, Jensen’s apprehension kicks violently into fear. In the girl’s perfectly manicured hand is a bone blade, rune-etched and as cruelly savage as her smile.
He was careless.
He recognizes her now, Katie, a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. If he survives this, Grandmother will be proud.
Pretty pretty girl
with burnished chimes in her hair
sweet trinkets gleaming.
She hunts him. Deeper into the factory he bolts, looking, searching; he’s not stupid enough to face her head on. Katie is the most vicious of the pack.
It works in the movies Jensen likes to watch: the desperate lunge for a button, reawakened meat grinder noisily devouring the monster. But that sort of dumb luck only happens in B-grade horror, the world of suspend your disbelief.
Instead Jensen finds a room full of the dead with the walls covered in the same strange signs he saw earlier. Katie’s baying laughter nips at his fleeing heels; hide and seek amongst thousands of strung up corpses. Generation upon generation preserved and re-assembled into human intravenous drips, their flesh and blood stolen to fuel the ravenous city. If Jensen had the breath to spare he would laugh and laugh because those crazy rebels were right all along.
Boots in hand, Jensen silently creeps his way through the rows of hanging bodies and straight into Katie. He uses a boot to deflect her slash. The blade cuts through the leather before catching on a steel buckle. Jensen shoves the five-pound boot into Katie, trying to gain some distance. She’s quicker and slams the lower palm of her other hand into the underside of his chin, snapping his head back.
Jensen’s swallowing too much blood before he realizes Katie is pulling the knife out of his chest. His boot drops and his fingers spasm uselessly over the wound. He stumbles back leaving dark red handprints on the bodies he uses to keep himself upright. They sway with him.
He’s dying.
The bare lights above are too bright, too close. Jensen can hear a low pitch drone like the dry rustle of leaves and underneath it Katie chanting something, her voice soft, melodic and completely foreign.
All the corpses have their heads turned towards him. Their eyes are dark and fathomless.
Katie steps in close for the final blow. Sorry Jeff, I failed is all Jensen can think. His legs give out and Katie misses. Sharpened bone arcs overhead to bury itself in the skull of a dead crone. Empty eyes snap open, maw expelling stale death and vengeance.
Katie does not stand a chance.
Pretty pretty girl
scattered jewels and broken bells
not so pretty now.
(1)
[it begins with]
“I have a job for you.”
The Baroness does not deign to look at Jeff, standing at strict attention, as she reads the day’s news on the ceiling-to-floor holoscreen.
Collins is seated opposite Jeff, stolen data drive sitting between them, and appraises him with cool intent, blue eyes determined.
“You will get close to the boy, tie his loyalties to us. Use any means necessary.”
With a minute flick of the Baroness’ fingers the next news report loads and Jeff dismissed. Jeff bows and retreats.
The two stand. Collins claps Jeff on the back in goodbye and in good luck.
Jeff hates going down to the third plate, let alone past P-1 to the lowest level of the city. The Parliament has little interest in the Ground Zone and it is the only area still reliant on the obsolete steam engines for electricity.
Over the centuries the desert has encroached into the city borders and forced expansion upwards. From P-3 down the city is buried under sand and is a maze of redirected train tracks and structural supports and sparking force fields that keep the desert and vermes from claiming the lower levels.
It’s claustrophobic and boiler room hot from the jets of steam that hiss out from the ground vents at regular intervals. Jeff’s constantly wiping sweat from his brow. But professionalism stops him from pocketing his tie and gloves, shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
All Jeff sees when he tilts his head back is the dazzle of artificial lighting and the underside of the metal plates that stop MCG folding in upon itself from the weight of the upper levels.
It messes with his sense of time.
Lindberg tells him with scandalized awe in his voice that for the right price there’s a bordello here that caters to any whim, no matter how depraved. Fetishes that even the exclusive high-class escorts of P-7 would not touch.
Looks like the late Lord Ackles had some pretty fucked up tastes.
With a light tap Jeff rotates the headshot shown in the inside of his eyeshades. DNA had come back positive now it’s all a matter of collection. Lord Ackles’ son, Jensen, must take after his whore mother with his dirty blond hair and green eyes. But in the facial structure, the strong jaw line, the classic arch of the cheekbones, Jeff can see traces of Lord Ackles.
Another tap to the side of his eyeshades and two other headshots are brought up. Rob Benedict and Emily Perkins. Expectant parents who want to move up in the world. Jeff cannot begrudge them that. While the Zone is mainly exempt from the harsh laws and tight control of the ruling High Blood, autonomy does not provide good education or safe neighborhoods for children.
The two found an opportunity and grabbed it with hope and desperation. Unfortunately for them it is simpler for the Baroness to have them killed than to pay and relocate them to P-4 for the information they provided on her illegitimate grandson.
She’s a frigid bitch that one.
A bloody nightstick and two double taps later Jeff walks away with the address of a bar in the Zone’s Commerce Sector. Behind him people scramble to put out a fire before it sets the whole apartment block alight.
Jeff feels like a tourist; unlike the regimented order of the plates the Zone is not divided into distinct districts. Where the Academic, Commerce and Entertainment Sectors should be is a chaotic black market of narrow twisting alleys. Laundry hangs above tiny street stalls that sell anything from colorful clothing and scuffed furniture to contraband cybernetics and military-grade augments.
Jeff has already been approached twice by vendors touting, he’s not entirely sure and his scan fails to recognize it, some sort of exotic bird from the desert. He even finds a stretch that specializes in rare miniature fruit trees. It would be an overly expensive expenditure, but Jeff thinks he might come back for the hybrid peach-mango to add to his collection.
The crush of people and garbled shouts press down on Jeff, making his leather gloves strain with the itch to snap the bones of those who veer too close. The Baroness should have assigned Ferris to collect Jensen; she handles people better and whenever she gets a day off she’s down here haggling with the best of them over the prices of the latest cyborg weapon upgrades. Even with the map Lindberg sends to his eyeshades Jeff’s having trouble navigating the sprawling market. And no one’s talking; the scorn in their eyes and the curl of their lips clear messages of what they think of Jeff’s uniform.
Jeff finds the bar nestled between one of the massive concrete columns that support the upper plates and a burnt-out train car converted into a ‘netics shop. Out front a young man with an electric blue mohawk and darkened aviator goggles is busy patching an old man’s leg. The flash from the blowtorch reminds Jeff of sparklers the kids light on festival nights. The cyberchanic is good: clean weld lines, minimal nerve contact and inventive use of junk parts. He catches Jeff watching and grins round his half-smoked cigarette.
It’s a fire hazard waiting to happen.
The bar’s antiquated neon sign should have read The Roadhouse, but it is a flickering mess. The a, d, u and e have long burnt out. No fancy digital screen to advertise bands or drinks here. Instead, the bar’s entrance and windows are a collage of leaflets, peeling and scratched. The newest flyer is for a band with a tomcat as its lead singer.
Jeff shakes his head at this and promptly walks into the bar’s door. Fixing his eyeshades Jeff steps back and brusquely waves his other hand to engage the motion sensors. The cyberchanic yells to him over the sudden roar of a nearby steam geyser, “You’ll want to pull it open yourself. Chris is a cheap bastard.”
Jeff flings off a bastardized salute in thanks and enters. The Roadhouse could have been a classy place; a homage to when people breathed and lived the film noir that had a revival in the cinemas a handful of decades ago. Jeff’s impressed. The bar’s interior uses wood, real wood that’s rough smooth and catches on the pads of Jeff’s gloves. It would not have been easy or cheap to have come upon. Old theater bills hang framed on the walls and there’s a small stage with a see-through baby grand.
It’s a welcome change to the mimic-synthetic compound used by the P-6 and P-7 establishments that favor modern holographic signs, cyber sleek designs and beating techno-colored strobes. Jeff can imagine enjoying a cold one here on his rare nights off.
But the dim lights and the blue smoke from the patrons’ cheap cigars can’t hide how tired and worn the bar looks. The pool tables’ green cloth need to be replaced, the red oak bar top re-varnished, and the tears in the dark leather booths mended.
Yet the place is blessedly cool and the country music drifting from the decent sound system is a welcome balm to the hubbub outside. Moreover, the draft the bartender taps and slides over without once letting his eyes stray from the hyper engine race on the flickering holoscreen is cold and not half bad. Bitter smooth and settles the furious pulse of ever-present frustration to a low thrum.
Jeff’s finishing his beer and debating whether he’ll need to spill blood to get the bartender to tell him where Jensen Ross is when the cyberchanic hops onto the stool next to Jeff. Two sharp raps of the knuckles, “The usual, Chris,” and with a jerk of his thumb, “Get one for him too.” The cyberchanic pushes up his aviator goggles and flashes Jeff a flirty smile, “Haven’t seen you here before. I’m Jensen.”
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