Prologue
IT takes roughly twenty-three million, six hundred and twenty five thousand Joules of concentrated light to kill a man.
The millions of neon lights on the great skyscrapers of Verdenstrum weren’t quite that bright, but by God, they were trying.
The streets and alleys of the city were narrow and compact, and there was always a great crowd upon them, pushing and shoving one another to get to whatever massive building they were headed to a few minutes faster. Occasionally, one of the mob would be shoved off the pedestrian lanes, into the ones reserved for the city’s vehicles. The crowds might stop and gather around, but the cars themselves, sleek, small, and entirely driverless, never did. Their motion was the inevitable heartbeat of the city, as guaranteed as the shimmer of a thousand kicking, holographic legs and flickering neon bottles. Of the thousands of things that can stop a heart, blood cannot.
Today was late summer – not that anyone in the cities could tell the difference between seasons - and a man wearing a grime-bitten suit, charcoal black save for its long, ivory coat was pushed and shoved within the throngs. A fringe of his coat was left up and the edge was bitten off, kept due to neglect or preference. Shorter than the average the man held measly features and with nothing more than a few streaks of grey in his poorly-combed black hair. Even the stark white contrast of his suit was unremarkable, indistinguishable in a crowd topped with thousands of identical cliques.
Drab gray and black suits bustled against upturned furs and studded leathers alike on Verdenstrum’s roads, sensible brown haircuts hidden beneath pops of fuchsia and chrome. There was the slightest trace of a tingle in the man’s earlobe, ringing out about the torrential din of blaring advertisements. He raised a single finger to his earlobe and joined his voice with the conversations of a thousand others.
“Can it wait, Wes? I don’t have time unless it’s important.” The rush of blazing cars and enticing offers filled his ears for a single second. Then, instantly, they vanished, a haphazard voice grating against the inside of his mind, demanding itself to be heard.
“I hadn’t spoken yet.” Another unbearable pause for a single beat passed before the man continued. “Does not one ever call you?”
“No, fuckin’ including you.”
“Yeah, well, this is an exception. Some asshole’s GOD just came back on the grid. Looks like he tried to disable it, but couldn’t get every failsafe. And guess whose GOD tells me is right next to him?” An older, hoarse voice said.
“I’m not on duty, Wes. Would it kill you to send someone down?“
“Stop being such a pansy. Brown hair, young, likely still has a bag on him.”
“Fantastic description! Brown goddamn hair. I’ll just go ahead and stop every single – “ The man cut his words short as his still-sharp gray eyes saw a gray messenger bag, stuffed to full, and a shock of brown hair underneath a somewhat ragged, upturned gray hoodie. The plain colors stood out in contrast against vibrant purples and drab blacks – at least to his eyes.
“Fine. Just let me take what pitiful hours off I get in peace after this.” the man offered, his anger short-lived and subdued. For the first time, he stepped forward with intent, his eyes suddenly focused and sharp. Pushing a stranger out of his way to an aggravated cry, the man pulled a small, beat-up black handgun from his coat that, in spite of how average it was, failed to overtake the raw mediocrity of its owner. The flow of humanity down the lane jolted out of the way as the man’s weapon was raised, but did not run, instead forming a distance between themselves and him so as to watch what would happen with morbid curiosity, a growing confusion that spread like a plague throughout the masses. The blaring advertisements from video screens attached to the nearby skyscrapers and sounds of vehicles raging past in the adjacent lane drowned out the noise of the two, but a sudden circle of immediate silence allowed for the man’s shout to be heard, just barely.
The hooded man’s head snapped to the side, small, gelatinous eyes flickering over the other. An oxygen filter covered his mouth and the brim of a nose, heaving slightly with its motions. He faltered with a split second of hesitation as the coat-clad man burst towards him, then, from his stillness, jerked forward, as though his strings had been suddenly pulled. He made no attempt to somehow rush through the solid wall the curious mob had formed Instead, in frenzy, the man jolted to his left, throwing his form onto the rush of the highway and the blurry figures of slick cars. His movements had no grace to them. They were the sloppy and frantic maneuvers of a creature caught off-guard. No force but desperation threw his body to the side as car blazed past, unfazed and unfaltering, The white-coated man pressed into the lane to a crescendo of screeching tires, the automated machines of Verdenstrum’s cars halting in a sudden recognition. A hand shot out to grab the scarpering animal by the back of his hood, the fibers snapping as he struggled to escape. Before the man could take his next suicidal leap into the second lane of five, he was slammed down, his elbow denting the red hood of a gorgeous, svelte car as the force of his body smashed against it. Breathing raggedly, his frantic kick of escape was unmet, held firmly down by grimy, unrelenting hands.
Locked in place, the two men were held face to face, pinned in the middle of the street between halted cars and shouting pedestrians. The brown-haired man’s eyes were as ragged as his torn and gaunt features, left staring up at his captor frozen. Both men were left oblivious to the shouts and cries of both drivers and pedestrians as they met, prisoners of the moment. The white-coated one broke the stare.
“Give me the bag.” The other seemed almost incomprehensive of this simple request, his arms merely hanging at his sides as his wild eyes struggled to focus on the worn barrel of the gun in his face. An aggressive jerk from the white-coated man snapped him out of his daze, struggling to work off his messenger bag and offering it up, grabbed instantaneously out of his hands. The gunman’s single free hand unlatched it effortlessly, a handful of hexagonal filters marked with a thin, coiled green dragon forming the shape of an ‘S’ spilling out from the force of opening. The white-coated man’s expression turned to one of amazement, taking a confirmatory glance inside the back before training his eyes back on the younger face before him.
“What the hell were you thinking, kid?”
Fearful, shaky features struggled to speak coherently, half-muffled and garbled words coming out in one singular rush.
“I- I was – I just thought - ”
“No, you didn’t. Your GOD’s still active and tracking. You were never gonna make it out of the city with these. You don’t steal from Inasos.”
The man’s chest, held nearly against the barrel of the gun, heaved in frenzy, contracting and expanding two or three times each second as he spoke. “What – No! That’s not possible! I spent – I spent e-everything I had to get my GOD out – “
The white-coated man laughed, his eyes open. Both the laughter and the words that followed it were sullen, and thoroughly empty. “It doesn’t work like that. The moment that little chip’s in your head, it’s your life. Cradle to grave. There is no getting out.”
The explosive jarr of a car’s horn caused the younger man to jolt his head back, left pinned against the vehicle’s hood. The white-coated man spoke as the other stared, wide-eyed, at the waiting driver, barely visible through deeply-tinted glass. “Now get the fuck out of the street.”
At that, the pressure holding him down was released, the brown-haired man stumbled to the side, nearly falling into the parting crowd on the overstuffed sidewalk. The white-coated man leaned down to place what few filters had tumbled out back into the messenger bag and shut it closed, then stepped out behind his captive. As soon as his foot hit the paved concrete of the sidewalk, the first roar of a car came crashing through, its bumper hitting the edges of the man’s coat as it ignited.
“Why don’t you just shoot me now, huh?” The stumbling man demanded. “It’s what Inasos is gonna do anyway, dammit!” Placing the messenger bag gently on the ground, the first man pulled out a pair of two circular black discs, and moved to place them around his hostage’s wrists, who merely looked at the gun. When placed, the two tightened and clipped together, restraining his hands.
“I’m not a corporate cop.” The white-coated man said grimly. “And you’re not about to be shot for theft either way. Man up and serve your sentence.”
The other openly scoffed, a sharp, jagged heave against his chest and mask. “That’s not what I meant! You think I’m ever gonna get to see the sun again? What was I supposed to do, wait on the streets until I finally fucking starve!?”
“Honest work.” The policeman shot back coldly.
The moment of cold silence between the two was filled instantaneously by the seductive tones of nearby speakers, both mounted and walking. Within seconds, the disturbance of the two had been forgotten, and the amorphous crowd reformed itself.
The two began to walk, led by the man in the white coat as he offered a short, disgruntled mutter. After perhaps twenty minutes of bustling through the crowd, the restrained man stopped from running by the constant threat of a barrel pressing against his back, a sudden tug at the back of his neck sent him to a sudden stop. The handcuffed man gave a blank glare up at the jarringly enormous skyscraper in front of them – utterly indistinguishable from the thousands that surrounded it in every dimension, enormous, unassailable blocks of neon-painted concrete. Nearly every inch of surface of the monstrosity was coated in video screens playing various advertisements and shows, or bright neon lights and lines to draw the viewer’s attention, their messages and symbols becoming steadily more invisible, grey stone beginning to shine through as the great tower began to touch the clouds. In fact, all that separated this great block of stone was the number that sat above its unadorned doors in harsh white font: ONE OH SEVEN.
The slightest hint of connecting rails between the towers could be seen near at the top of the clouds, almost hidden from the naked eye. With a shove, they separated from the pedestrian lane onto the skyscraper’s pathway, connecting onto a single wide set of glass doors. Aside from its numerical label, the only other ornament at the monument’s base were two tightly-closed garage doors, large enough to fit in a truck.
“Hey – my GOD’s still active, then?” A great blue shield hung over the two men as they entered the lobby, faced down with a small handful of high, cold desks. “So that doc fucked me over? Why?” The man in the white coat gave a listless shrug, pushing his coat open slightly to show the hint of a flickering, holographic badge, the sea-blue edge of a bird’s wingspan half-revealed. One of the lobby’s attendants, her face pursued and wrinkled behind inches of dark glass, pressed a button to the side of her desk at the sight. A single, severe metal door to the far left of the building buzzed gently at it.
“Fuck him! FUCK HIM! He ruined my life for what – fun!?” Again, the other man shrugged, his own voice tightly controlled.
“You did that to yourself.”
“Fuck off! Just listen to me!” The thief demanded. His captor didn’t offer a response, pushing open the door to a row of elevators set against unpainted concrete, the hallway running down their length narrow and suffocating.
“Listen. I met this guy at three-oh-two, twenty-third floor, room – fuck. Room 2343. It’s… a lot nicer than the other ones. Is this going to get me some time off?”
“Maybe. It’s not up to me.” He paused for a moment, the thick, stagnant air making speaking difficult. “But I will go see that doctor of yours.”
“Hrmph.” The other man’s scoff turned into a hack, choking through his mask. “H-grh. If you’re going to be my avenging angel, I want to know the name on your tags.”
The white-coated man pushed a button for the elevator, staring away from his capture as he spoke. “Just Lucky.”
“Hah! What, you think giving yourself a nickname makes you schway? Why do they call you Lucky, huh?” ’Lucky’s eyes kept their focus off the other man as they both stepped into the lift, gun and bag both raised. With the bag in hand, he silently punched a short set of numbers into a keypad on the elevator, hitting a final button to ring it green in confirmation. Only then did he turn his eyes over to look at his companion, beady, pitch-black orbs that locked onto him with the empty solitude of a man speaking only to himself.
“Ever see one of those shitty ancient gangster movies where they call the seven-foot nothing bruiser ‘Tiny’? It’s kind of like that.” With that, the elevator shot upwards, its climb sealing fate to a course.
