Chapter 1
The old wage slave was staring at two fingers of biscuit-brown rye on the rocks. He spent his last three stamp-holes on this rheumy palliative. His words were a wheezy slur. No one listened.
Avner Lusk fixed his attention on the paunchy barman, patience running thin. The wage slave was trying to seize Avner’s attention for himself. Avner’s sharp elbow deflected the man’s pawing, but the old drudge was persistent, and bleated to any ears that may hear him. The bushy-browed barman, meanwhile, had shut him out a long time ago. Only a request for a refill, along with the necessary coin, could seize the proprietor’s attention now.
Avner was focused on the barman, and he on Avner, though the barman dared not look Mr. Lusk in the eye. Instead, he kept one eye on his work and another eye on the till.
“I won’t ask again nicely,” Avner warned the barman.
“I don’t know how I can be any clearer,” replied the man behind the counter, hands trembling as he rinsed soapy tumblers. “Mr. Lamm collected two days ago.”
“I don’t care what Mr. Lamm did. I’m here now. Tonight. Pay me.”
“Does this look like a bank?” said the barman. “There’s no hidden roll here. I can’t give you money I don’t have.”
“You tell ’im, Vay,” croaked the old wage slave, still looking hard at the drink in his hand. The anticipation was killing him. But if he took the long slug he craved, he’d find naught but dripping ice cubes filling his glass afterward. He couldn’t handle that kind of loneliness right now.
Avner ignored the old man—this time. He calmly reached across the counter, grasped the damp towel that the barman was holding, and pulled it toward him. The barman didn’t resist; he was too surprised to hold on, and knew better than to scuffle with Avner Lusk. Avner noisily blew his nose into the towel and handed it back. The barman hesitated, but saw the pointed look in Avner’s eyes, and wisely took it without a word.
“Open the cashbox,” Avner ordered.
“I already told you—”
“I know what you told me,” interrupted Avner, voice slashing with a serrated edge. “Let me see with my own eyes.”
The barman chewed that over with a pinched, crooked mouth for ten heartbeats before he moved to action.
Hearing the bartender fiddle with the till latch on the concealed shelf underneath the bar top displeased Avner. “On the counter,” he commanded sternly. “Where we all can see it.”
The little tin canister came out into plain view. The barman lifted the latch. The lid then flipped open, revealing a small, wrinkled pile of harrier notes and breach-punched coins of various size, hue and brilliance. The three stamp-holes that the old fellow bought his latest drink with rested on top. Before the barman had a chance to handle the currency, Avner leaned across the counter and seized the box for himself. He unceremoniously dumped the contents onto the waxed bar top, flicked away the small, low-value pieces, and finally swept the rest into the wide pocket of his overcoat.
The old customer watched it all, his dim eyes brightening with murderous focus as he realized what was happening. He clumsily pawed at Avner’s sleeve and slurred, “Feller like you ’kin afford to buy ’nutha feller a drink, hmm?” Realizing that his nursed tumbler was still plenty wet, he tipped it back in a flash, then held out the glass toward Avner, ice clinking suggestively.
Said Avner to the barman, “And a bottle of Esshavlis for the road.”
“This isn’t right,” the barman complained.
“Did I ask what you thought about it?” Avner slapped a hand onto the bar top twice. “Now, c’mon.”
Hiding his sour face, the barman turned and reached for the half-full Esshavlis bottle, violet and lamp-shaped, on the top shelf behind the bar.
Avner tutted cheaply and sneered, “From the cabinet, shot-shiner. New one. Seal unbroken and filled to the brim. I don’t take leftovers.”
The old wage slave disliked being ignored, and did a little ignoring of his own in the realm of common sense. He groped at Avner’s sleeve again, gracelessly pinching and pulling the fabric. Avner responded by sharply kicking the legs on the customer’s barstool. The stool flew back and the old man dropped like a sack, cracking his chin against the brass rail. When he hit the floor after, the old fellow grunted dumbly, but made no vociferous cry of pain or alarm. He was too dazed and numbed to react predictably. Considering the aggressor, it was this accidental wisdom that saved him immediate further distress.
“Ah, watch it, would’ya?” griped the barman. “You’ve cleaned out the till. Leave my customers alone.”
“I think he was done anyway,” shrugged Avner. He held out an open, expectant hand toward the barman. After a moment of sullen silence, the barman forced his arm and handed over the fresh bottle.
Hands fumbling, the customer on the floor struggled to understand what had just happened. He tasted blood in his mouth and tried to wash it down, but there wasn’t even ice left in his glass now. So he just protested with a long, wordless reverberation.
“They’re elbowing him out of his mill job,” the barman explained. “Sarann Brothers. Hiring on cut-rate cellarshifters, tally-and-half count. Newest and oldest hires are being clipped to make room.”
“Sad story. Got a hankie handy?”
Helpless, the barman could only beg, “Leave it and scram. Please.”
“Lemme give you a free bit of entrepreneurial advice, pal.” Avner’s pronunciation of “entrepreneurial” was atrocious. “Improve the grade of clientele you host in this dive. If this old bungler can’t compete with cellarshifters, he never deserved the job in the first place.” He patted his coat pocket. The jangle of coins was muffled. “Maybe then I wouldn’t need to clean you clear out when I come by?”
“What do you know about a hard day’s work?” the barman muttered under his breath.
While Avner laughed at that, the man sprawled out on the floor dared to tug on Avner’s pant cuff. When Avner looked down, he saw bloody teeth broadcasting an idiot smile. “’Kin y’help me up, boss?”
Avner grinned back and said, “I’ll do you one better, buddy.” He cracked the seal on the Esshavlis bottlecap and twisted it off. “I’ll buy you that drink you wanted.” Then he tipped the bottle gently so that an ounce or two poured out, splashing onto the wage slave’s face. The old man sputtered and gagged, eyes clamped shut. “Bottoms up!” cackled Avner. The punctuation to that toast was a kick across the man’s jaw with the same force that he had used to thump the barstool.
The barman shook his head despondently, but said and did nothing more.
Addressing the barman, Avner said, “See you ’round, Vaymerrin.” Cap screwed back on, Avner tucked the bottle into the folds of his coat and ambled out through the pub’s front door.
A cool wind greeted him outside, brisk enough for Avner to turn his head but not so icy as to send him pulling his coat tighter. Winter was fast approaching; Avner had heard it said that it’s always at least five or ten degrees colder outside the city in the winter, and hotter in the summer. He believed it, even though he had never set foot outside of the city his whole life. Same as most everyone else he bumped elbows with every day. The walls around the city were to keep people out; no one complained about being stuck inside, though.
His shadow seesawed through three pools of lamplight on his way to the Burrison Sandpiper sedan parked curbside. It was the only car on the street. Exorbitant cost and limited quantities made automobiles an exclusive commodity. If someone didn’t absolutely need one for his or her trade, or wasn’t lucky enough to inherit a restored classic from a past generation, said person would need a sackful of harrier notes to ever even afford the first payment. Avner didn’t own one himself, of course, but Calvin Brubaker did, and it was Calvin waiting impatiently in his seafoam Burrison for Avner to get in.
Avner’s backside slid across the cloth seat cover behind the driver’s seat, and before he even had the chance to close the door, the driver was glaring back at him. “Took you long ’nuff,” griped the driver, the very same Calvin Brubaker. “Well?”
“Peanuts,” replied Avner, slamming the door. “But pooled with the last three stops, it’ll serve.” He fished out the Esshavlis. “Don’t need to buy drinks now, though.”
“Waxhead, we didn’t need to in the first place,” Calvin scorned. “The jingle-jangle ain’t for getting in and feeling flow. They give us all the drink we need, grah-teese. The money’s for the long-legs. They need a little shiny distraction before you can slide into the ’vide, feel? Bills spread out as wide as the sideway smiles under the dresses.”
“Never seen one smile before,” chuckled Elton, sitting in the passenger seat.
Avner hid his displeasure from Calvin’s insult and unscrewed the bottlecap for a slosh.
“What’re you doing?” Calvin turned crossly in his seat and glared.
Avner gaped at Elton and back to Calvin. “What?”
“Pass it forward!”
He did so with a grouchy sigh.
Calvin took a long guzzle, slobbering on the thread. “Give Elton the cash.”
“There’s not much,” sulked Avner. “Like I said.”
“Do it!”
Only after Avner slapped the fistful of notes and stamp coins into Elton’s clammy palm did Calvin finally punch the gearshift and roar off down the street. Oscillating globes of electrical light gleamed off the vehicle’s glassy paintcoat as it raced over moldering blacktop. Calvin Brubaker ignored all posted limits and traffic warnings, and the car careered wildly through every intersection they passed. Most of the goose-eyes in uniform were wise to Calvin’s mint-green Burrison Sandpiper, and dared not light up sirens when they spotted it zooming or screeching past. Of anyone who dared pursue, only a wetlip rookie would be stupid enough not to cut their losses, apologize for the mistake, and wish Mr. Brubaker a pleasant evening after the stop. Calvin wasn’t the kind to stop anyway; let the merry chase begin, and civilian casualties be on their hands.
The driver chose the scenic route. They were but five blocks from the Ardhman Loop that circled around the entire city; specifically, one of the three tunnels on said turnpike that cut under the wall against the shoulder of the storm barricade. Calvin took the turn and pulled up to the tollgate at the tunnel entrance, but instead of the passage fee he extended a middle finger. The operator glared at the Calvin and shook his head so faintly it looked more like a shiver. Nevertheless, the operator pulled on the lever and permitted the car passage without payment. Calvin thanked the toll-taker by revving the engine and peeling out so loudly that the gale-exhausted windows of the booth rattled like machine-gun fire.
Calvin relished taking these tunnels for several reasons, none more so than the simple pleasure of gunning it for the exhilaration of pure, roaring speed down a tight, brick-lined burrow. Even more exciting is when the rain leaks down the shabby brick walls and pools at the lowest point. Cleaving standing water with a snarling sedan is a simple pleasure, to be sure, but a pleasure it still is.
Once the Sandpiper cannoned out the other side of the tunnel, they were airborne for about a second before slapping back down onto the cracked road. Wrenching the steering wheel left, Calvin directed his car through an empty lot beside a sleeping food-processing factory, taking a shortcut back to one of the main boulevards that intersected the city. The joyride portion of the evening was spent. Now it was time for bodily euphoria.
Spotting a cigar-shaped rustline transport steaming down the road, Calvin piloted his car recklessly close alongside. Avner’s hooded eyes emerged and peered up against the tinted windowglass. He could faintly see the shabby passengers through the glare against the transport’s rimmed, porthole-like windows; each figure unkempt and hollow-eyed and crestfallen, some outright cadaverous. These were not the faces of weary workers at the end of a brutal shift. They were expressions of human ruin, of lives on the terminal brink, survivor’s instinct the only thing repelling them from the void. These were the ones that were destroying the livelihoods of folks like that old drunk at the bar. Ones that took each blow in stride, suffering ignominiously, for they had no citizen rights. There were but three choices for them, and they chose waking despair. The other two were death, or to surrender once more to the direlands.
Keeping speed with the transport, Calvin made the car caterwaul noisily by pounding on the horn. His chin lowered while craning his neck for a better look at the tarnished aluminum barrel of the rustline. After hollering contemptuous barbs at the cellarshifters that probably weren’t even heard, Calvin peeled away in base, prideful satisfaction. A moment later, the rustline vanished down a poorly-lit tunnel ramp cut into the pavement that took the workers back to their subterranean dwellings.
Avner didn’t know why Calvin loathed their kind so much; Avner had no use for them either, but it was a peculiar outrage that exploded in the pack ringleader whenever their kind were seen or even suggested. Just two nights back, Calvin jumped into a blind rage at a charity collector that stood outside a bodega entrance. She was doing nothing more than sweetly begging of foot traffic for contributions toward the preservation of the warrant laborer network—souls that were permitted entry to the city, out of the direlands that lie beyond, living underground in wretched squalor, working for pigeon pence, and rarely ever bothering the free citizenry. They had never done anything to directly affront the spoiled son of Bruce Brubaker. Yet still Calvin found them despicable, as low as the lowest of beasts, and fit for the most thuggish of denigration.
Heavy, fair-skinned and mustachioed, he hardly even resembled one of the saturnine Brubakers. Granted, his mad-dog brother, Eddie, was even more emotionally ballistic, but Calvin favored almost no physical feature of either of his parents. Some whispered that he was birthed from the slippery loins of one of the gold-digging sluts always circling in Bruce’s company, perhaps the slim overdose victim squirreled away in a hole behind Acsavis Compound’s landing pad, or even the addle-headed woman that “fell” through a plate glass window on the third floor of the Brubaker estate and fatally landed on the tarnished tines of a gardener’s rake, pruning saw through her skull. Accidents happen, as Calvin would shrug whenever someone mentioned the incident, suggesting that the young man had no similar suspicions about his parentage. But Calvin’s inclinations toward family interests tended to only extend about as far as handouts would allow, which wasn’t especially far.
They’d made four stops that night, to various establishments under Calvin’s father’s protective wing, and Avner had squeezed each of the owners dry. Whether the vendor had just paid their dues or was scheduled to do so shortly, it didn’t matter—Avner wasn’t a collector, and Calvin wasn’t on the levy stripe. They considered it fair usage to do their banking through any avenue they liked. Despite his wealth, Calvin’s father didn’t open the purse strings freely, and Calvin was sick of begging and borrowing from flesh and blood. His piggy bank could be found in every storefront wise enough to know it was better to struggle under Bruce Brubaker’s thumb than to risk catastrophic peril in its absence.
Calvin recklessly took the hard turn onto Austin Street, nearly sideswiping a working girl standing at the corner streetlight in front of a shrine for the Order of the Third Paragon. He laughed while watching her stagger away on her six-inch heels. Avner was less amused, mostly because he spilled a bit of Esshavlis that was finally back into his possession after Calvin and Elton finished passing it between themselves in the front seat during the entire tunnel passage. Avner became even more unamused when he put the bottle top to his lips and tipped it back right when Calvin slammed on the brakes to park in front of Club Scarlit Perfikt.
Stragglers and party hoppers studded the sidewalk in front of the club, and nearly all of them turned to take a gander at the automobile that had come roaring up. Their anxiety turned to curiosity when they realized it wasn’t a patrolman rolling dopers and rentdolls; instead of worrying if they needed to split in a snap, they wondered what bastion of the community was favoring them with his or her appearance. They soon knew disappointment.
The three inside that miracle car piled out into a cherry-red bath of neon light that burnished rosy faces and sandblasted magenta teeth. Calvin struggled to stay vertical after exiting, while Elton’s ugly mug only turned heads away from him. All interested parties shied away from the three hoodlums as they stretched their legs and checked their bearings. Elton muttered something, but it got lost on the way to Calvin’s ears due to the supercharged rock music spilling out from the building entrance, bass thump reverberating against the pavement. Avner looked east as he walked around the car; he could see the spalls of twinkling light through the polluted air against the edge of the Redthorne Gangway on the city wall. He’d heard that the stars shone bright beyond the city, on the dire side of the wall. One day he’d like to see them. But he never wanted to actually set foot in the bleak. Never.
Calvin dragged out his gas mask-styled vapor-helm from the car before shutting the door. The tubing was tangled, and the plug shell was cracked, but the mask piece was custom-made, onyx, shiny. He didn’t even bother concealing the illegal device as he marched toward the club entrance. The bouncer knew Calvin’s face and looked the other way while permitting him and his crew access ahead of the line. A few fools who hadn’t seen the lead gatecrasher’s face complained loudly, but the doorman ignored it. They never knew how lucky they were that Calvin and his boys did the same.
Beneath the crash of the stereo guitars, Calvin pushed his way through the sweaty crowd to the almond-shaped bar counter sitting just off-center in the clubroom, which had been converted decades ago from a rundown tax office. He made his face visible to the nearest mixer, pointed out his two compatriots, then jostled back to the far corner for a seat in the VIP section. Elton followed Calvin to the table, leaving Avner to do the heavy-lifting. Avner shouted over the music to the mixer that bottles of Luz and Demings were to be sent over, and they should be accompanied by no less than four glaze-ready females of various stocks and ethnicities. Calvin had no set type, and liked to scour the menu if one of them didn’t lightning-strike his tongue and pelvis at a glance.
Catching up with the crew, Avner found Calvin lounging on a curved bench seat, already strapped in to the vapor-helm respirator. Calvin had belted down enough of the Esshavlis and an unmarked distilled legacy pilfered from his father’s cabinet this evening to need no further liquid disorientation, so he settled in with a moist gas feed. Avner preferred the hooch, but he hardly got even a taste of Bruce Brubaker’s good stuff in the car. That unlabeled jug of the legacy was a treasured item. It dated back before the Divergence, before the Scourging, before the Cataclysm rocked the Earth. Be it antique spirits or classic automobiles or anything else, relics of the past were sought with great anticipation in the city, and the lucky ones often had to spill blood or break bank to hold onto them. City industry still mass-produced liquor, and crates were imported on the intercity rail from across the country, but it just wasn’t the same.
Avner sat down on the refurbished leather seat to Calvin’s right. Elton was in a relaxed, almost vulgar, pose to Calvin Brubaker’s left, flicking his tongue between his teeth, as was his habit. Calvin pulled the vapor-helm off to slur a few words, but then affixed the device again to descend further into the ether. He wasn’t much more malleable in this state, but at least he was less prone to violent outburst. There may have been a certain joy in Avner’s heart when he knocked that old bastard to the floor at the last bar they visited, and satisfaction in the sound of his shoe glancing off the cretin’s weak chin, but that was collecting an adversarial bill, a paid due. The drunk had it coming, and a man should take pleasure in his work. Most of Calvin’s victims, however, suffered because of their crime of peripheral existence.
Service at Club Scarlit Perfikt was prompt, and before the next noisy song could even commence, a trio of slinky, young women in secondhand skintights slithered through the swarm, two carrying bottles and the third holding a tray of jade-colored glasses. Avner was pleased with the club’s provisions—even the least attractive of the three would still turn groggy heads, and Calvin’s mental recognition was far beyond discriminating or fussy at this point in the evening. Elton was not so easy, and sniped to Avner about the number. There should always be a minimum of four supplied to this party of three, so no one would have to settle for the least appealing of the bunch, and Calvin had rights to a pair if it tickled his fancy. But when one of the women leaned over to pour Elton a drink and the milky flesh heaving up over the swooping neckline of her dress threatened to spill right out, he quickly lost interest in such grievances.
“Join us for a drink, ladies?” Avner asked loudly, smirking. He glanced sidelong at Calvin, whose glassy eyes neither approved nor dismissed, and decided that silence was endorsement enough.
“Absolutely,” cooed the one in a sparkly silver number. The other two acted the part professionally, giggly and enthusiastic as they slid in close at the table.
A flurry of chemicals, perfume, intoxicants, sweat, skin, and hammering music followed, midnight now far in the rearview. It was an unwritten rule that Calvin Brubaker never stayed at a joint all the way to close—he insisted on the nightlife image that he always had a better place to be—so Elton needed to be the one still-clearheaded enough to warn Calvin that it was time to move on. Calvin had already bulldozed and flushed the number in the silver dress, and was now working his fingers deep into the softer parts of the strawberry blonde that had initially been Avner’s target. Avner had been nursing his resentment over the last hour, but even the lubrication of alcohol wouldn’t allow him to spit it out. Being the ringleader, Calvin could easily replace Avner with another hooligan flunky working for the Brubaker Syndicate, and Avner was far too comfortable in his role now to allow that to happen.
Bleary-eyed, Avner became alarmed by a sudden outburst from the ringleader. Avner hadn’t been listening to what Calvin was garbling to the blonde a moment ago, but her response displeased him enough to send him flying into a rage. Elton surged across the table in a flash. Avner couldn’t tell if Elton did so to separate Calvin from the girl or to join in on the outrage against the bovine bimbo. Blinking through dull-minded bewilderment, Avner only noticed two things: a glass smashing into the blonde’s cheek so hard that it shattered, and how terrifying Calvin looked right now, up on his feet and roaring with the vapor-helm mask still covering his mouth. It was something weirdly towering, fascist and alien, and for a moment, Avner actually feared that Calvin’s violence would soon turn toward him.
No one working the club dared come forward to confront Calvin Brubaker about the scene he was causing, and the young lady crawled away on her hands and knees without saying a word. It wasn’t even clear if she could say an intelligible word right now anyway, judging by the stream of blood dribbling from her deeply-lacerated mouth. When her left wrist slipped on a stripe of that blood and her body hit the floor, Calvin made a deep, gurgling sound behind the mask. Avner couldn’t be certain, but he guessed that Calvin was chuckling at what he witnessed.
Elton gently nudged Calvin. The thrashing music had faded out just a moment before, so he did not need to speak loudly when telling him it was time to fly.
Calvin pulled off the vapor-helm mask, blinking numbly for a moment, as if he temporarily forgot where he was and what had just happened. The skin and hair around his mouth was moist, streaked by dark tar lines, smudged with the silver-dressed girl’s ruby red lipstick. Spotting the broken woman on the floor caused a dawning realization, and all was right again in Calvin’s personal world. He stepped out from the C-shaped bench seat and vainly adjusted his collar. He gave a subtle, wordless signal that he was heading out now.
The blonde girl had stopped her exhausting scrabble away; Avner could see her shaking and sobbing, though, so he didn’t worry she’d lost consciousness yet. Right before the next song kicked in, and the nearest distracted patrons wisely returned to their own business, Avner murmured, “I liked her.”
After licking his dirty moustache, Calvin smirked, “Well, you can have her now.”
The last part of the statement was drowned out by a blast of distorted noise, but Avner didn’t require verification. He just stared sadly at the twisted body on the floor. Calvin decided to appease Avner with a gesture of generosity. He stuck his hand into Elton’s jacket pocket and tossed a handful of coins onto the tiles around the blonde’s matted hair. Avner didn’t say a word about it, and followed Calvin and Elton out to the street.
As the doors closed behind him, Avner spotted a pair of drunks lurching down the sidewalk, and another couple vanishing into the shadow of an alleyway across the street. Turning his head right to look for Calvin’s car, Avner was surprised and disgusted to see a wretched fellow on hands and knees not five feet from the sedan, slurping up water pooled in the cracked gutter. The vagrant must have had a deadly thirst; it was highly improbable that the water on the street had drained from a city pipe. No, that was a slough of fallen rain—foul, acidic, and toxic in a heavy dose.
Avner rushed toward the derelict dullard, anxious to get rid of him before Calvin caught a glimpse of the miserable creature. Calvin would have relished the opportunity to assault such a fool on principle, but to see one operating his or her imbecilic trade so close to Calvin’s personal property was likely to send Calvin into a savage rage that could easily turn fatal. The last thing Avner wanted to do was spend the dwindling night hours in police custody until Calvin’s father made the necessary monetary contribution for his son’s release.
Catching the toe of his shoe on a loose chunk of sidewalk cement, Avner’s head turned while he regained balance. Something he saw in his snapshot backward glance caused him to hesitate, though. A tawdry, makeup-smeared woman was hobbling away from the club, hand dragging against the brick wall for support. A man in a faded grey longcoat and threadbare bucket hat was pacing toward the club, his back to Avner. Distracted by shared whispers, Calvin and Elton lingered just past the doorway, separated from this man by the bouncer standing between. But then the bouncer’s eyes lit up, speaking wordless, treacherous recognition toward the man in the longcoat, and the doorman swiftly ducked into the shrinking space of the closing club door. Avner’s chest swelled in panic, but he failed to produce a sound of warning.
Two loud gunshots rang out. Calvin dipped backwards, chest ruptured by a ragged, red puncture at each breast. Stunned, Elton struggled to catch the ringleader from behind. There came a third blast from the obscured firearm. Avner couldn’t see if Calvin had been plugged that time, but Elton dropped Calvin and reeled back, too astonished for a rational response.
The man in the longcoat and bucket hat held out his right arm and waved it to his side. Avner saw a smoking gun clutched in that extended hand. The man opened his fingers and let the gun fall to the pavement. Avner didn’t hear it land; his ears were still ringing from the gunshots. But he saw the man’s face as the attacker turned away from Calvin’s fallen body, a gust of wind spreading the coat tail. Avner stared at the man, and the man stared right back. The stranger’s eyes were behind eyeglass lenses, which only made them seem larger. Avner didn’t see ice or fire in those eyes, the intensity that accompanies the harvest of murder. What he saw instead was the chaos of hysterical terror. Then the attacker took off, shoving past Avner and sprinting eastward down the street.
Avner Lusk couldn’t decide whether he should give chase to the assailant or rush to the ringleader’s side. Either choice would have been reasonable given the astonishing situation. But instead he froze and did nothing. He proved himself as useful as the desperate vagrant in the gutter, who paused his distraught undertaking only long enough for the echo of the gunshots to dissipate before his parched tongue again struck concrete.
