The neighborhood smells weird. Like garbage and wet dogs. Oppression has an odor to it. Skinny kids and skinny mutts stand on the sidewalks, watching me hurry past. The brick buildings stretch up, blocking out the sun and keeping the wind from ever really removing the dank smell of the dark alleys. All the windows from the first stories up to the fourth or fifth are either completely boarded over or layered with iron bars.
Every time we have to move, David finds us places deeper and deeper into these desolate neighborhoods. It’s safer, Serah, he claims. They won’t find us here.
He’s never told me what we’re running from. We stick to the poorest areas with the highest populations so we can blend in easier. The remains of regular cities are home to all of those who don’t qualify for an apartment in the metroblocks. Most of us are undocumented, unregistered, and, fortunately, untraceable.
The gang members are waiting on their usual corner, leaning against the walls of the nearest building and blocking the sidewalks. A few of them have huge dogs with square heads and mouths full of sharp teeth. I could duck into the alley and go around them, but they’ve seen me already. They feed on fear. If I run, they’ll chase me.
But I’ve shown these thugs I’m not the average girl. I’m taller than most of them, and my curves aren’t just from poor nutritional habits. I’ve fought for my life against a few of these men before and won.
I hold my head high and walk through the outer rings. The dogs growl and lunge on their leashes and it takes all I have not to cringe or flinch. The leader of the gang, a muscle-bound thug they call Monster, steps in front of me. “Hey, chica. What you got in your bag?”
I make eye contact. Anger is started to edge out my fear. These asses stop me nearly every day with the same questions. Three of them bear scars from wounds I’ve dealt out. I just want to be left alone. “A few half-rotten potatoes, Monster, and a box of leftovers from the garbage can at work. Nothing you’d be interested in.”
He smirks. “I got kids to feed. You think they wouldn’t like some real food from a restaurant?”
He’s an asshole. A thug. A criminal. But the gangs do a sort of a service around here. Monster’s gang watches over a horde of orphans, homeless kids who live in one of the run-down buildings. It doesn’t excuse his penchant for violence or his reputation as a murderer. It doesn’t make it okay to terrorize the innocent people who just want to find a way to survive. He makes victims, and I hate that.
“I’d be more than willing to share the few scraps I have with hungry children. Unfortunately, I don’t see any hungry kids. Just your asshole thugs and their dogs.”
He leans close, eyes narrowing. “You doubtin’ me, girl?”
“Yeah, I am. You want me to give the food I’ve earned away, I want to see the kids I’m giving it to.”
He grabs a handful of my shirt and shoves me backwards. He’s strong, strong enough to lift me off my feet and move me easily. That’s no easy feat--I’m tall, solid. My back thuds against the unforgiving brick wall of the building. The back of my head connects hard enough to make me see stars.
I’m not a victim.
He’s taller than me, but not by much. I bring my knee up, hard and fast, but he’s faster. Still, I manage to wedge my knee between his hips and mine, even if I didn’t crush his nuts like I intended. It’s enough to give me some leverage. Some space. His other hand closes around my throat.
“You’re too big for you britches, girl. I run this street. I will take what I want, and I will do with it as I please.” He lets go of my shirt and snatches the bag out of my hand. Tries to, anyway. I hang on. His face twists into a scowl. “Are you listening to me, bitch? Let go of the bag!”
The gang members are milling around, slamming their fists into their open hands, catcalling and whooping. Several of them would love to see Monster jam his fist down my throat. They would have themselves, but after I put one of his best fighters to shame, he called them off me.
He leans close, his hand even tighter around my throat. He manages to wrestles the bag out of my hand; the fabric is cheap and the handles tear. We struggle, once my hand is free, but his free hand slams mine against the wall. The brick cuts into the back of my palm. I try to shove him away, but one-handed, I’m no match against his bulk.
“If you want to live in my neighborhood, girl, you have to follow the rules too. There’s a tax here. You give us what you got, first, and then we might let you keep what we don’t want.”
All my squirming and twisting creates the weakest of openings. I’m able to smack him across the face. It isn’t hard enough to do anything more than enrage him. He thumps me against the building, once, twice, until bright colors flash in my vision. He puts his arm against my throat and leans against me, crushing me against the building with his lean, hard body. His fingers brush my legs below the hem of my too-short uniform skirt. The first time was probably an accident; the second time is on purpose.
“You have uses, girl. We could take what we want. All of us, and you’d be lucky to live through it.”
His threat makes me go cold with fear. I’ve seen the female victims of gangs before. I hadn’t seen it yet in this neighborhood. The last part of his statement throbs through me. You’d be lucky to live through it. His hand is hot on my thigh. Anger pulses through the paralyzing fear.
“You’d have to kill me first,” I gasp. “I’d fight until my dying breath.”
To my surprise he smiles, even if it is just a bigger version of his smirk. “Good thing I think you have more uses than that,” he says. “You have a real job. You’re smart, and you’re better in a fight than half of these assholes. Me and you, we’re going to come to an agreement.”
The fight is building back up in me. I’m no warrior, but I’ll defend myself to the last. He must see that in my eyes. His arm presses harder against my throat, making it almost impossible to draw in air. I abandon efforts to push him away and claw at his arm. He grabs my wrists in one hand and them down.
“We’re going to come to an agreement,” he repeats slowly, firmly. “It’s easier if you just say yes.”
I won’t. He knows it. As darkness swirls into my vision and my lungs scream for air, he sighs. Tunnel-vision narrows my eyesight to just him, this monster looming over me. His eyes flash.
Even through my panic, that strikes me. His eyes flashed. As if lit from within for just a fraction of a second.
I don’t have the strength to fight anymore.
I don’t have the will.
I don’t…
It surges forth, a blinding wave of heat and anger and the purest will to live.
This asshole won’t make me a victim. I surge against his arm. He’s surprised, surprised enough to flinch. “What th--“ he begins. He’s staring at me, questions all over his face.
He slugs me hard in the stomach. I gag and heave, and if I’d had anything to eat all day, I probably would have thrown up all over him. The pain radiates through my entire torso.
Monster grabs the lapels of my tacky old-fashioned waitress uniform and rips it apart, baring my chest and my shoulders. He’s so strong the fabric tears and slides down my arms.
I don’t know exactly what I expect. I’m so fuzzy from the pain and still trying to recover enough oxygen to think straight. He clamps his hands down on my shoulders.
An unexpected heat surges through my skin from inside. It greets the warmth his hands exude.
Information I can’t process assaults my mind. I can feel it coursing through my arms and legs, following the rush of blood through my body. My skin tingles and my ears ring. I can’t take it!
Monster barks an order to his men. They scatter. When we’re alone, he backs up and stares at me, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Who the hell are you?” he demands. “You’re wired, but your interface is blank.”
I sink to the filthy sidewalk and slump over. Patterns and symbols scroll through my vision, so fast I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing. My stomach hurts and my throat throbs. He nudges me with his heavy boot, then squats in front of me. “Come on, you’re tougher than that. Get up. I want answers.”
The numbers. The letters. I can’t blink them away. Even though he isn’t touching me, my shoulders burn. I’m aware of other spots of heat, blazing away. One on the back of my neck. One on either shoulder blade. Four down the length of my spine, one on each hip, above each knee, and one on my forehead.
I pull my hands away from my stomach and stare at my hot palms. Lines glow faintly blue beneath my skin, like the circuits in a computer.
Abruptly, the heat vanishes and the diagrams on my palms blink out of existence. Dirt and gravel is imbedded in my skin. Tiny spots of blood bubble up from a scrape down the side of my right palm.
Monster reaches down and grabs a handful of my hair and hauls upright. The pain makes me cry out. I look up and realize his eyes are alight, and his forehead is glowing with one of those circuit-things I saw on my palms.
His hand loosens, threads through my hair until he cups the back of my head almost gently. The bruises he left moments earlier when he slammed my skull against the wall sing out in pain.
“Who are you?” he asks again, softer. His voice has lost some of the fearsome edge. For a split second, I can almost see him as a normal man, one undamaged by poverty and violence. His eyes narrow and he shakes his head slowly. “You don’t know, do you?”
It’s all I can do to shake my head.
He mutters a curse and stalks away. He stops and sweeps my bag from the sidewalk. One potato rolls out and into the gutter. He glances at it, back at me, and then keeps walking into the deepening shadows. He turns the corner and he’s gone.
I curl up tight and cover my face with my hands. I have to get up. Lying on the ground in a ripped, short dress is asking for trouble. I push myself up on my hands and knees and use the wall as leverage. I make it to my feet and stagger to the gutter.
The potato is almost completely submerged in nasty water. The sewers have been blocked for decades, so they constantly overflow, if they drain at all. I pick the potato up anyway.
It’s food. David and I haven’t had anything to eat in a couple of days. Hunger isn’t anything new to us.
Our apartment is a few blocks down. We are the only ones living in this particular building. It’s only got two stories, and it’s huge. We guess it must have been a department store once, forever ago. The building is shaped like a half-circle. The downstairs is full of broken mannequins and metal racks, and a big U-shaped counter takes up the center of the room. Rotting piles of clothing lie all over the place. Rats have run of the place. Upstairs, it’s empty space, with foggy, cracked windows following the curved exterior wall all the way across. There’s a balcony out there, but it’s too rotten to do much more than look at. David insists we travel light and live efficiently, so we sit on folding camp chairs and live out of boxes. We have inflatable mattresses for beds. We cook on a small electric hot plate. This place had a couch and a couple of chairs already when we found it. It’s one of the first places we’ve lived where we had chairs.
The only thing we possess that David won’t ever, ever leave behind his computer. If the gangs knew we possessed something like that, they would kill us without a second thought. David’s computer is off-limits to me, even. I don’t know what he does on it, but he spends all day hunched over the keyboard in the darkest room in the building.
I make it home and stumble upstairs. David sees me and freezes. “What happened?” He rushes over and tilts my face this way and that, grimacing at the scrapes and bruises. My ripped dress hangs open. I’m tired of holding it shut. “Serah, what happened?”
I reach into the pocket of my dress. “I got a potato.”
He takes it and throws it on to the couch. “I don’t care about that.” David is a handsome man, tall and broad-shouldered. He wears his golden-blond hair shaggy and just a little too long. He favors t-shirts and blue jeans, and I’ve never seen him without his crooked, gold-framed glasses over his deep blue eyes. He and I look enough alike to pass as siblings when it’s necessary.
He leads me to the chair and pushes me down gently. “Did someone--“ He’s looking at my ripped uniform.
“No. It was just a scare tactic.” I don’t tell him about the way Monster grabbed my shoulders, the questions he asked me. If I mention anything about a stranger’s odd behavior towards us, we move. Immediately. I don’t necessarily want to leave this run-down city. I have a job in a better part of town, just a few streets from a metroblock. A real job. I even have something of a friend. One of the other waitresses shares her lunch with me on occasion and we exchange gossip whenever get can.
I’m an adult. I can leave David anytime I choose, or stay should he decide to leave. I don’t need a guardian any longer. Having someone who wants to take care of you and loves you is something becoming more and more rare. I’m reluctant to lose our relationship.
“Who hurt you?”
I sigh and lean back against the cushion. “I ran into Monster’s gang again. I had some more potatoes and Tony let me take home a take-out bag a customer left behind. Monster wanted them and stupid me decided to fight for them.”
David gets water and a clean t-shirt. He helps me put the shirt on. I’m so sore, and I know tomorrow it will be even worse. Gently, he cleans the scraps on my face and arms, and helps me to bed.
As I try to sleep, I can’t help but think about the strange things Monster said.
You’re wired. Your interface is blank. Who are you?
He didn’t want to simply know my name.
He wanted to know who I was.
Outside my room, David is still up, on his laptop computer in his room. The light from the screen is soft, but bright enough to shine across the hall and under my door.
I drift towards sleep. David’s quiet voice draws me back to consciousness. He’s speaking to someone.
I have to strain to hear him. Even as I think about it, my hearing enhances and I can hear him as if I was in the room with him.
“She’s becoming aware,” David says.
Me? Aware? Aware of what?
The circuit pattern on my palms. The heat in my shoulders, the way it spread through my body. The way the symbols tracked across my vision and filled my head.
Most of all, the way Monster looked at me like he’d seen a ghost.
I held my hands up in the dark, palms toward me, and focused on bringing the patterns back to the surface. The only thing that appears is a headache. I roll over and pull my only blanket to my face. I’m too tired to think about anything else. Tomorrow, I’ll figure it out.
And if I can’t, I know who might be able to tell me something.