The story challenges the boundaries of stories. Romance blossoms between a daring smuggler and a swordsmith, while difficulties they encounter include a dystopia and a mechanical cat.
The sky was toxic orange, overcast and glowed like a banked fire despite the late hour. Light pollution was ubiquitous, universally accepted, and no longer remarked upon. The only place darkness reigned was beneath the covers and within closed closets. The moon had become a thing of legend, and the stars were rumored to have long ago died out. Yuri wiped the back of his sleeve across his nose, and then, hitching his backpack, stepped out from the doorway into the umber lit evening.His first run. The trick was not to fall into a regular walking pattern. If your face was lowered, the cameras would focus on your gait, and seek to match it to your file. By placing a small pebble in one of your shoes, you could confound their sensors, and force them to rely on your fake ID signal. Tonight Yuri was masquerading as Thomas Efrit, a Level 5 citizen. The ruse wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but should be enough to fool the camera systems. Fool them for a few hours, perhaps, but that was all he needed.
Yuri threaded his way through the busy streets, keeping his head down, gait uneven. He crossed through Blackfriars, and then reached the area where the
Fifteen minutes later, heart pounding, he reached the right building. There were less cameras here, but still his nonchalance was feigned when he knocked on the door, pressing his palm momentarily against the smart surface so that it could read his fake ID, the information laced into his subcutaneous layer earlier that evening by his home made chemistry kit. The door glowed subtly about his palm, and he dropped his arm to his side. The die were cast. Time to see what came up.
Two minutes passed before the door cracked open. The longest two minutes of the day thus far. Without a backwards glance Yuri slipped through the door and into the hallway beyond, the interior of the building constructed on the antiquated models of long ago. A woman was standing before him, her dark hair pulled back into a rough pony tail, her mouth set in a frown.
“Who are you?”
“Yuri,” he said, ducking his head quickly. “Matteo couldn’t come. He’s been Detained.” The woman’s frown grew deeper, and then she took his palm and before he could react she jabbed a syringe into the flesh of his hand and drew it back out just as quickly.
“Just a precaution,” she said, smiling humorlessly at him. She ignored him then, shaking the syringe several times before raising it to look at the LCD that ran along its side. Yuri eyed the hollow of her throat, noted the sweat the was cooling on her skin. He tried not to look at the swell of her breasts beneath her black sweater, barely succeeded.
“Yuri Kolchenko,” she confirmed, lowering the syringe. “Your first run?”
“Yes,” he said, decided on the spot to abandon all pretense, the lies he had prepared to impress her. He knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t have bought them. “But I’m not worried.”
“You should be,” she said, turning and leading him further into the house. “But perhaps in this case ignorance is bliss. Come on.”
“What’s your name?” he asked, tripping after her and then following her through a door and down a flight of stairs into the darkness below.
“Vic,” she said without looking over her shoulder. “You can call me Vic.”
“Vic,” he said, testing it out. “Nice to meet you, Vic.”
She didn’t respond, instead stepping out into a large basement which lit up as she walked into it. Yuri gave his customary look around for a camera lens, didn’t see any. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though.
A forge dominated the low ceilinged room, and made of the air a hot, blasted thing. Deep crimsons smoldered in the heart of the pressure furnace, and the wall was hung with hammers, tongs, and other more obscure tools. No swords were in evidence though.
Vic strode over to a bank of monitors and crossed her arms as she stared at each in turn. Wandering over, Yuri saw that they covered different streets around her building. Avenues of approach.
“You’ve hacked into the cam network?” he asked, impressed.
“Hmm,” said Vic. “You sure you weren’t followed?”
“Followed?” Yuri felt a surge of adrenaline and mild panic at the very idea. “No, I don’t think so. The fake ID is good, top quality, stolen just thirty seconds before I began using it. And I kept my biometrics hidden. No reason I should have been—“
“Then what’s that?” asked Vic, stabbing a finger at one of the screens where a small shape was walking sinuously on four legs down the center of the street.
“That’s a… that’s a cat?” Yuri felt his heart plunge into his shoes.
“A sniffer cat,” confirmed Vic, voice grim. “If it finds us, if it keeps to your trail…”
“Shit,” said Yuri, bunching his hands into fists. “Shit shit shit. What do we do?”
Vic turned to him, and instead of looking angry she seemed tiredly amused. “If there was a sniffer cat out there, than there was little you could have done to avoid it. What do we do? I’m going to have a stiff drink. If it finds us, we’ll try to take it down, and then we run.”
“Run…” said Yuri. His first job and a sniffer cat had picked up his trail. That was impossibly bad luck. He watched Vic move over to a shelf where she opened a bottle and poured two fingers of a liquid the color of cigars into a tumbler. And then into a second.
“Come on, kid. You’re going to need this if things get hairy.”
Yuri walked over and took up the glass. “What is this?”
“Irish whiskey.”
“But that’s…” said Yuri, and then trailed off when he realized how stupid he must sound.
“Illegality doesn’t bother me much,” said Vic, her smile reappearing. “You sure you ready for this kind of work?”
“Yes! I mean, I think so. I don’t know.” He felt his face burn, and Vic laughed, and her face became strikingly attractive. She had a wide smile, bright white teeth. She clicked her tumbler against his, and they both drank. Warmth and fire and smoke washed down his gullet, and he tried not to cough.
Vic had turned to the screen. The sniffer cat had moved into another camera’s view, and was now pacing back and forth before her door, seemingly uncertain. She set her tumbler down and leaned over to open a steamer trunk. Reaching down, she pulled out a cloth wrapped object, long and heavy, and handed it to him.
Yuri took it and unwrapped the oiled cloth. The blade was brilliant in his hands, like a shard of lightning. Light and pliant, it seemed to thrum through the flesh of his hands, resonate in his bones.
“Easy,” said Vic, catching the look on his face. “You just watch my back with that.”
“No,” said Yuri, and wrapped the cloth back around the blade. “I’ve got another idea.”
“Oh?” asked Vic, clearly dubious.
“I’m going back out. I’ll cross a street over, let it catch sight of me. I’ve not been out of its sight for more than a couple of minutes thus far. I’ll draw it away. Send someone else to come pick up the swords next time.” Vic was eyeing him appraisingly. “There’s no need to expose your operation,” he said, feeling both doomed, excited, and numb all in one.
“You realize what will happen if it decides to move in on you,” she said, voice level.
“I don’t care. I knew this was serious when I volunteered.” He raised his chin. The whiskey was burning in his stomach. Made him feel like running, like kissing Vic on her generous lips.
She simply looked at him, and that was all the permission he needed. Turning, he strode toward the stairs, and turned as he gained the first and looked over his shoulder at her. “Nice meeting you, Vic,” he said.
“Don’t do this, Yuri,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“True. But who knows. I might get lucky.”
“Ha,” she said, and her eyes gleamed. Perhaps she was feeling the burn of the whiskey again. “You come by another night, and we'll discuss the odds of that.”
Yuri blinked, and it took him a moment to understand what she meant. Then his face burned all over again, and she laughed at the sight of him. “Wish me luck,” he mumbled, managed to flash a grin at her, part disbelief, part panic at the prospect of hitting the streets again, and began to make his way back up.
“Luck,” he heard Vic say below, and then he was heading out the back door, and back into the street. He lowered his face automatically, fixed the hitch into his gait, and began to stride down the street. He’d hang a left past the sniffer cat at the next junction. The sky was a dull lambent orange above him, and the crowds had thinned out. Time to play at cat and mouse, but all he could think of was Vic down below. New motivation, he reflected with a rueful grin, to make it through the night.
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