Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (11 page)

I leaned back a little and rested my palms behind me flat against the mattress. “Everyone knew that was just false hope, though. All those campaign posters fighting for the average man. No one took that seriously.”

“I did, Jones,” Bruno burst out. “I took each and every one of those posters to heart. And what I’m saying is, Deleviv is in town now, right? He’s winning people over with promises of higher taxes for the upper class, lower taxes for us, regulated transit again, stricter laws against law enforcement and government-run military.”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But isn’t that what people want? Isn’t that what you want for the state? Lower taxes for the lower class sounds pretty damn good to me. And shit, Bruno, regulated transit? It sounds like paradise.”

“But that’s just it! Otk runs the state, right? At least for right now. Why would he want someone like Deleviv rising up and overthrowing him with the support of most of the city behind Deleviv? It doesn’t make sense that Otk would risk getting that kind of money from the likes of T8 or drug distribution in general. Otk has been known to let drug dealers slip through the cracks. People have been talking that he’s really the one with ties to the drug dealers in the city.”

I began running my fingers through my short hair. “That’s impossible. Otk can’t have any connections to drug lords.”

“I searched through all these files. Nothing is linking Deleviv to T8. They claimed they had inside information? Well, there’s no record of that I could find, and they keep records of everything, man; like I know what color food you ate for lunch fifty-six days ago.”

That was a lot to process, and most of it went over my head.

“Wait, so you think that Otk is using ENAD to eliminate Deleviv because he’s competition? He’s really the good guy and we’re really the bad guys?” I asked.

“It’s not about good guys and bad guys; it’s all about competition for leadership over the state. But yeah, if you want to label it like that, we’re basically being played like fools as Otk’s right-hand weapon against someone who might actually do this city some good.”

“They might have those files somewhere else, Bruno,” I said a little frantically. “Hidden somewhere even you couldn’t access. You can’t be right. What you’re suggesting is illegal. And immoral. What you’re suggesting implies treason.”

“It’s basically terrorism.” He looked as nervous as I felt. He was motioning in the air with his hands and arms, obviously flustered.

I just stared at him. I was having a hard time taking in what he was telling me. I didn’t know a thing about politics or who was running what or why. I wasn’t quite sure I believed him, and even if I did, what could we do about it? We’d be taken out back and shot like an old dog if they caught even a whiff of us thinking that the state was currently being led by someone enforcing terrorism.

I kept nervously running my fingers through my hair, rubbing my scalp.

“I don’t know what to do, Jones,” Bruno said, finally collapsing on the chair.

“Nothing. You can’t do anything, and you have to forget this. This is some serious shit, Bruno. Even thinking like this could get you killed.”

“I know that, but I can’t just forget this. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing we played a giant part of taking down a man who might be the best hope this city has had in decades. We’re so rotten, Jones; we’re so fucking brittle. I see children weeping on the street, motherless and alone. I see young kids doing things for money that make me want to gouge my own eyes out. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, and if there’s something we can do to stop it, we have to take that chance.”

Bruno should’ve been a politician. That’s how our city worked, though. Once you were down, you stayed down. Bruno was so smart, so likable, and his heart was gigantic, but he’d never been given the opportunity to do something right because he was born poor and recruited so young. He barely even knew what life was. He didn’t deserve this life; he deserved so much better, but he was stuck here in a kennel with the rest of us.

I sighed heavily, suddenly more exhausted than I ever remembered being. This life was starting to catch up to me, and I couldn’t run fast enough to get away. I thought for a moment about what Amdia had told me. She’d told me to run. Run far and run fast. But every time I even considered that, my legs felt like lead and my eyes turned upward to the sky. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t leave. My circuits weren’t programmed that way.

“You want to pop a Corx tab with me?” Bruno asked almost shyly. My head shot up.

“You do Corx?” I asked him.

“Life out there, Jones, it’s different. It’s harder.” I knew exactly what he meant. Sometimes even the addictions I’d developed seemed better than facing the reality of what life was like outside these white walls.

“Yeah, I know. You have any?” I asked, and he nodded, reaching in his pocket. He pulled out two pink tabs and placed one in my open palm.

“Paid one of the guys in the lab,” Bruno said.

“Yeah? You and what money?” I laughed. He shot me a look that just made me laugh harder. I was giddy with excitement. It had been too long since I’d been high, and I missed the feeling of feeling nothing at all.

We each took our tabs and sat back, me on the bed and him in my chair.

“They’ll kill us if they find out we’re getting high in your room,” Bruno said.

“Yeah, but somehow it still seems so worth it.”

I held my hand out straight in front of me and watched it pulsate and change. I knew it wasn’t really changing, but it felt like it was. I felt like everything around was altering. Slowly, as the time passed by, things started becoming less terrible. The memories I had of Carver bleeding to death on the floor of T8’s dirty apartment weren’t so bad. It was covered in a light fog, glazed over by something warm and soft.

“What did they make you do?” Bruno asked quietly, staring at the ceiling.

I took a few moments to think it over before I answered. “Shoot Carver.”

He sighed and ran a hand over his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

“If I was put in the situation again, I wouldn’t take the shot. I know I wouldn’t take the shot.”

Bruno slowly lowered his head, his gaze finding its way to mine. “Are you sure? They design those programs to embed it into your brain, whether or not you know it’s there. I don’t think you’d know unless the situation happened again. That’s how it works.”

“I just know,” I answered instantly. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I felt like I was made of fog, thick and barely transparent. My eyes seemed to close on their own as I leaned my head back against the wall of my small room. Everything in my world kept swirling and turning around me, but somehow I managed to keep my footing, even as I drifted off someplace else.

I didn’t dream that night, and I didn’t remember Bruno leaving. He might’ve stayed the night and left in the morning, but I didn’t remember. I just remember slowly sinking into sleep, dreaming and thinking of nothing.

The next day during training, I was feeling sluggish and hungover. Corx never left a lot of residual side effects, but that mixed with the late night and early morning hadn’t helped my body any.

I’d been in target practice in one of the gun ranges when Bruno practically poured into the room. He was antsy and fidgety, like he’d just discovered the secrets of the universe. His face was flushed, and he frantically searched around for me, even though I’d seen him the moment he set foot into the room. He was hard to miss, being that big and looking the way he did.

I pulled my earmuffs down so they rested around my neck.

“Someone chasing you?” I joked.

“What?” Bruno stopped and checked behind him, then back at me. “No. I need to ask you to do something with me.”

“Well, what is it?” I took off my protective eyewear.

“I can’t tell you,” Bruno replied.

I laughed. “Then how will I know what to do?”

“We need to sneak out of here. Like, right now.”

That stopped me cold. He was dead serious. He had a completely panicked expression, with maybe a hint of excitement. I glanced around to make sure no one was watching us. The rest of our team was there, sans Carver, but no one paid us any attention.

“Here, the gun range, or here, the facility?” I asked.

“Here, the facility,” he replied softly.

“And how do you expect we do that without anyone noticing? We have GPS chips in our skin, Bruno. You know that.”

“They won’t check them if no one notices we’re gone. And we won’t be gone long, I swear. I have a way to get us out of here, quietly, but we need to go now.”

I liked rules. I liked regulations and laws and people who enforced them. I’d never been the kind of person who marched to the beat of his own drum, but when Bruno eyed me like I was his best and only option, it was hard to say no to him. I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship, but more than that, I wanted to make sure that he’d be safe. If Bruno wouldn’t tell me where he was going, then I could at least go with him to make sure he didn’t get into trouble—and if he did, at least he’d have backup.

So I set my goggles and earmuffs down on the side table and nodded to him. His smile was gigantic.

“We’ll be quick, okay?” Bruno said

“Right.”

We casually left the room, trying to be subtle about leaving. Seno was watching us out of the corner of his eye, and I wondered if he’d been listening in to our conversation, even though we’d talked in hushed tones.

Bruno practically dragged me down the long, white hallways of the facility, through one corridor and into the next. We came to the medical branch of the facility, and Bruno leaned up against a door frame I didn’t recognize and punched a code into the keypad next to the door. The door opened and Kavric was standing there in his lab coat, smiling the same way he usually did. He motioned for us to come inside, so we slipped in past him and the door closed behind us with a quiet beep.

“You only have around two hours to get there and back,” Kavric said to us.

“That should be plenty of time. And you’ll cover for us if anything happens?” Bruno asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ll tell them you were just in the medical ward and must be in your rooms or training. If someone goes to look for you, by that time hopefully you’ll be back. I can’t stay to watch the door longer than two hours.”

Kavric turned and walked to the back of the small room. It was around four times bigger than an isolation room, and it didn’t have any furniture in it. There were old computers and dead electronics stacked up around the room and against the walls. There was also old digital equipment that hadn’t been sold in the state for years.

The back of the room held a door. Kavric punched a code into the keypad, pressed his fingertips into the gel above the pad, and waited for the little light to flash green and for the door to sound. It beeped, then clicked open, and Bruno grabbed it and began to slip out.

“Two hours, remember,” Kavric told us one last time. I wasn’t sure I could forget.

The door shut tight behind Bruno and me, leaving us in near darkness. We were in a hallway, long and narrow, that seemed to have a slight incline to it. We walked up the passage, our hands running against the cool metal of the walls, not speaking. Eventually when the walkway came to an end, there was another door with a handle on it. A door knob, which was odd because of the lack of security.

Bruno twisted the knob slowly, opening the door and letting the outside light slowly spill into the hallway. When we exited, we found ourselves outside the cybercafé, coming out of a door that was labeled
Staff Only
. The door was next to a garbage bin, trash littered all around it. The bright light from the shop flickered at us, reminding us how close we were to home.

“This way,” Bruno said, taking off away from the cybercafé. I followed him closely, always checking behind me to make sure no one was following us.

We crossed the street, barely avoiding a speeding car that wanted to take us out at our kneecaps. I knew Bruno was leading us farther downtown, deeper into the worst parts of the slums. Instead of the cybercafés and electronic stores we’d passed closer to the facility, we began passing by abandoned, crumbling buildings that had Chinese lanterns strung up around the outside roofs, and decrepit robot warehouses with windows covered in dust and foreclosure signs.

“Going to tell me where we’re going yet?” I asked.

“We’ll be there soon,” Bruno replied.

We walked by an alleyway—the sight alone stopping me in my tracks. There was a young girl, probably around fifteen, sitting on the hood of a rusted old car, holding a sleeping baby, tears running down her face. Half her head was shaved; the other half was a bright purple color, more faded at the ends. She was wearing men’s boots that were so big, they barely hung on her feet, and small black leggings with so many holes through them, I didn’t know how they even held together. Her jacket and shirt were laced in tears and ratty, covered in dried blood around the collar and dirt marks around the edges. The baby was wrapped in a blanket that was of better quality than all of her clothing put together. She noticed me looking, and she pulled the child closer to her chest, to hold it tighter. The young girl didn’t stop crying though; she stared at me shamelessly, allowing her big tears to pour down her pretty, young face and drip onto the fabric of her shirt.

It never got any easier. Some things in life got easier with age, like needles or heartache, but not this. This was one of those things in life that ripped people’s guts out every time they saw it, and it would until the day they died. There was nothing I could do for the young girl or her baby, nothing I could give, and no comfort I could offer. The helplessness of her pain was completely heartbreaking, for me and for her.

I didn’t give a shit about the city; it could rot for all I fucking cared. The buildings could collapse and the dilapidated, dead railways could burn to the ground. The gutters could overflow and the electronics could die, lining the streets with shattered glass from broken bulbs from previously lighted signs. I was born and raised to be selfish, created and molded into this person who barely gave a damn about people dying around me. It was harder not to care about the helplessness of it all, though; hard not to care about the impending reality of complete and total desolation.