Chapter 14 – The Clone Reaper And Robo-tards
The entire district heard about Dante's bold power move by mid-afternoon, but most orphans didn't even take their eyes from the replay of Ashley's fights. By the end of the day, Ashley's incredible win had been played on screens all around the world.
Many of her old classmates were long time fans of the underground fights. They informed the rest of their peer group that apparently Ash had quit school to begin a career as an underground fighter. This of course, seemed like a logical and enviable pursuit to the average teenage male. They vividly remembered and retold Geoff's stories about his older sister.
The fights were hosted at a secret location and broadcast on an open channel, their origin scrambled by a beautiful array of hacked sub-channel protocols. Neither the footage, the date/time stamp, not even the dialogue, offered the slightest clue as to the event's location. The story wanted to be told and the lack of details only fueled people's curiosity.
District Thirteen, home to many of the most dangerous juveniles on the West Coast, also provided residency for a long-flowering computer science department. This was due, in part, to one of the science instructors having himself once been an orphan-resident of the district. With a compassionate heart and a keen understanding of what kids really needed to know to survive, he modified his classes accordingly.
The report of Dante sucker-punching Mongo with a metal spike, was indeed news, but you couldn't play it over and over again in slow-motion from any of two-dozen angles.
In addition to being captivating and beautiful, Ashley's recorded performances had an interesting sociological effect. Her tremendous upset had kids everywhere standing up to bullies, believing they could win too.
Outside, in the crisp afternoon air, after a morning of watching her fight over and over again, kids everywhere glowed with confidence. All over Angel City, bigger kids, used to bullying their juniors, found themselves outnumbered and violently confronted by docile cowards they heretofore pleasantly bruised every day of the year.
By sunset, many such bullies sported glistening new black eyes, split lips, or bloodied noses.
On the district, the linchpin of power that was Big Mo, became clearly represented in the break down of a dozen truces he'd arbitrated. The balanced threat presented by the partnership between Mo and Lethal had been the sustaining force behind several ceasefires.
The dragons and the blades exploded into warfare by dinnertime. It began when a couple of isolated dragons found themselves cornered by a dozen blades. Their bodies had been stabbed at least a hundred times each, the blades offensive signature. The dragons, following their time-honored tradition of arson, burned the blades out of their rec-rooms and dorms, taking no prisoners.
Martial law was soon declared, if only to better facilitate the emergency crews tasked with extinguishing the roaring fires. The blades simply carried the fight to the dragon’s block, plunging half the district into uproar.
The guards pursued both gangs, indiscriminately throwing them into the same holding cells, again relocating the fighting and murder from one block to the next.
The athletic complex served as the districts' main hub. The other sections were anchored to its perimeter. Together, their combined gravity drives kept them aloft and fixed in their assigned piece of Angel City airspace.
The bottom-most layer of the complex was composed almost entirely of playgrounds and forested parkland. A winding river ran through the level, replete with a waterfall and diving points.
The democratic iron fist owned the lower levels exclusively. Like many places on D13, regular guard patrols hadn't set foot there in countless months. A large number of the gang had given themselves to outdoor living and set up semi-permanent campsites on the lower level.
On this particular evening, the kids set up a fire on the exposed shoreline. They also made use of the dozen half-dozen park grills, cooking all afternoon.
Celebrating like never before, the victorious orphans bribed a couple guards and looted a cafeteria of its wealth of fruits, vegetables, high quality chicken and steak, along with a small fortune in snacks and junk food.
The barbecue left everyone stuffed.
By evening they were roasting marshmallows over a cozy fire at a bend in the river. The low rise above the river offered a perfect view of the setting sun in the distance.
Everyone settled into comfortable spots around the fire with plates of food and desert. Ashley never got the whole story of how they'd gotten their hands on an entire cafeteria's worth of food. They explained that the power vacuum had freed up lots of resources. Ashley was amazed at how well they could answer her questions without revealing anything questionable.
Tanaka had taken up security duties and while there was often a crowd around Ash and Geoff, they were always known and trusted friends. The guards stayed away. The devils, the dragons and the blades stayed away. From their vantage point on the AC, the athletic complex, the fist watched the bolt burn as power struggles gave way to murder and arson.
Ashley looked around, naming all the new names in her head. Of course, Sky and Geoff were both in arm's reach, followed by Kaz, Hambone, Rudy, Taylor, Oddball, Big Chris, Tanaka, Poison, Jones, Rebound and Rain. Outside that immediate circle were younger members of the gang, older than Geoff and mostly unknown by name, but Ash recognized their faces.
In a quiet moment, Ashley cleared her throat.
The circle hushed.
Ashley leaned forward.
Heads turned toward her.
"What's the deal with this place?" she asked. "Why is it so un-fixable?”
"That's easy darling," Oddball replied, "Negative Turnover.”
"No doubt."
Others nodded and murmured affirmations.
"A bad pastry?" Ash grinned.
Their smiles faded.
Jones leaned forward. "No, girl. Here's what it is. We got ten kay in the mix, right? That's just about all the damn time. That's ten thousand”
Ashley was listening.
Everyone was listening.
"Fifteen-hundred citizens, here, every night, twenty-five hundred during the weekday and eighteen hundred on the weekends. Now let me introduce you to turnover…”
"Best explanation I ever heard," Big Chris interrupted.
Jones shot him an evil eye, but smiled. "Citizens have a balanced turnover, they come and go, but their numbers always stay the same. That's balanced, equal.”
"For us, it's negative. Kids come in about one a day, average; half that leave, maybe less than. That's negative turnover. That's why you can't change shit here. Harder you try, sooner you're in the negative.”
Oddball spoke up, "Turnover is a motherfucker. Kids vanish and it ain't cool. We know lots of zeros escape. But we also know some get poached.”
"Paramilitary teams come in at night," Chris affirmed. "Sometimes the guards work with them.”
"And if you bite it in conditioning, it's a hard landing after a long fall," Jones added.
"Plus the old fashioned suicide too.”
The kids were quiet for a second.
"Tell her about the witch," Poison said.
"That's just a horror story to scare little kids," Chris asserted.
"Fuck you!" Tanaka's girlfriend, Rain said, sitting up. "I saw her!”
"And then we never saw Jesse again," her friend, Poison, added.
"Yeah, yeah," Chris waved them off. "Heard all about it.”
Rudy, chimed-in from beneath his hat, "I saw her too, Chris. That psycho-bitch is for real. I didn't se her stealing no one, but she was one hundred percent kay-ray-zay.”
"From the man in the hat," Chris retorted.
"What about my hat? Ass-hat.”
"What about robo-tards and the clone-reaper?" Oddball asked Chris.
"We may as well tell her all our secrets, if she's One Of Us.”
"One Of Us! One Of Us! One Of Us!" Half a dozen kids laughed.
"No one's in a group
that includes you, Odd," Chris laughed.
"I am wounded to my depths by your stinging rejoinder," Oddball smiled.
"Robo-tards?" Ash asked. "Do I even want to know?”
"I want to know," Geoff said, "tell me.”
"Where's Drews?" Tanaka asked. "Should let him tell his own story.”
"I can do the reaper half, that's easy," Chris offered.
Everyone quieted down and Chris re-positioned himself, sitting a little higher; the firelight playing across his features as the last of the sunlight faded from the sky.
"Basically, here's the deal on District Thirteen. You gotta watch your shit, you gotta watch your six. You don't look anyone in the eye if they ain't in your set, and sometimes, not even then. A good rule of thumb is the Arm's Reach Rule.”
Several kids laughed and joked. "Oh, shit. Here he goes.”
Chris smiled. "Considering how those jerk-off citizens like to swing their gay-ass little batons around, this one carries special weight here.” He waited for the crowd to settle a little more.
"Here's the deal. If it ain't in arm's reach, it ain't a problem.”
Oddball and Jones knocked their fists together.
Several kids seemed highly amused, but Ashley didn't really get it.
Chris waved his hands, quieting them down. "Okay, okay. The story of the clone reaper goes like this...”
"If you see yourself, out in a crowd or in an abandoned hallway... Within a couple days, you disappear... or die in some horrible way.”
Everyone was quiet in the lee of his words. Digestion and the setting sun worked their drowsy magic on the children.
"I, myself, don't know anyone that's happened to," Chris followed up.
Ash looked around at the gathered kids. Their faces confirmed their belief in the myth.
"It's not that we believe in it," Poison says, "but, I dunno... “
"Do you know people that has happened to?" Geoff asked.
"Yes," Poison answered, her gaze fell to the ground, unwilling to elaborate.
Dante stood next to Mo's bed, reading from a clipboard, outlining his next few operations. Severely doped up, it was obvious that Mo understood none of what Dante was telling him.
Dante ignored the foam at Mo's lips as long as he could. Finally, he got a piece of tissue and wiped it away.
Disgusted, he left the medical ward.
The Governor, Mrs. Agatha Dorchester Maime, lived aboard the old Victorian style orphanage, anchored at the district's northwest corner. She occupied the penthouse suites, three of them, by herself. The governor was an avid cook. She hummed in her kitchen as she prepared a new recipe.
A terrified child cowered, tied up in a tiled corner, over a drain. Whenever the girl became lucid, she would cry and scream into her gag, often going horse, staring at the bandaged stumps where her legs should be. Usually, Governor Maime relished these kinds of cries, but this had gone on too long, even for her.
At the moment, the child was awake. Cooing, as if with a baby, Governor Call-me-Auntie Maime, raised the instant camera and snapped a photo of the young orphan. She leaned in with a massive steel scissors and snipped a lock of hair from the horrified child’s brow.
Doctor Mallus drifted through the ward and looked at medical charts. He walked up to a little boy, smiled and double-checked the chart.
The boy was connected to an IV. The doctor removed a syringe from his pocket. He inserted the needle into the port on the IV, depressed the plunger and removed it, smoothly.
He waited.
Over the next twelve seconds Dr. Mallus watched the child suffer horribly then die. He wrapped the syringe in plastic and slowly wandered away in his silent hospital sneakers.
Later in his office, the doctor removed the needle from the syringe and stuck it into a white foam cactus sculpture on a shelf. The white sphere was half-filled with needles. Dozens of cacti line the walls and shelves of the closet, all together bearing hundreds of needles.
Across town, a gardener planted a flower. He was thick, quiet and nearly featureless. His eyes were narrow and small, as were his lips and nose. His hair was nondescript, brown and cut close to his head.
A manmade irrigation system ran under the flowerbed among the dirt. Below the irrigation system, a low room held several large clear glass enclosures. The roots of the plants above wound down into the enclosures, each of which held a human corpse. On the wall, a chart explained which corpse produced which flowers.
On the campground level of the athletic district, the sky was dark, punctuated by stars and the moon, obscured by the smoke of the campfire.
"There are some theories on the clones," Oddball explained. "The most convincing are the head-pennies and the robo-tards. Have you heard of head-pennies?" Oddball asked Ash and Geoff.
"I've heard of them," Geoffrey replied. "They say it's harmless.”
"Just a terillium build-up between the base of the skull and the first vertebrate. Just a side effect of life in the anti-gravity world, right? Supposed to be harmless." Oddball laughed. "Did you know they think there's a way to read the electrical charges that are naturally stored in the metal? I saw it on Science World. They think they can decode it. We're talking visual data, aural data, digits and codes. Lots of codes, text, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts. Did I say Passwords?” Oddball was on a roll. "Your entire memory, everything, you're whole life, back to front, is stored in there, waiting to be downloaded onto someone's system. Right now, it works with some people, not on others. They say all they have to do is fine-tune it.
“You see what could happen? Guy gets killed, skull ripped off, robber downloads the combination to the family jewels.” Odd leaned forward and lowered his voice. "So if Science World is doing episodes on this shit, is someone going to tell me that the Gee-Oh-Vee ain't already got a handle on this hot po-tay-toe?”
"And where better than to experiment, than on Pirate Island, full of cast off zeros?" Oddball laughed, "Hiding that shit in plain sight.”
"Elementary, baby." Jones said.
"This is also where clones come in," Chris interrupted.
"That which can be downloaded from - must also be able to be uploaded to. That's just logic.” Oddball tapped the side of his skull.
"Was that in the show, the uploading?" Ash asked.
Odd shook his head. "I don't know, I didn't see the whole thing.”
"Anyhow," Chris explained. "The robo-tards are true, and they're fucking weird for sure. When we were just kids, me and one of my friends, Drews, he's a lawyer now... Anyhow, we discovered this special-ed wing while looking for an open port where we could get picked up by the auto-taxis. The rules were a little more lax back then and we were making runs out to Spring Dale Mall, fetching Cinna-bons and Mega-Warriors and shit, making mad cash.”
"Ha! Mega-Warriors!" Ash laughed.
"Like I said, mad cash," Chris asserted. "Remember Captain Savage and the Marines of the New Republic!”
Several of the boys burst into song, a few lines of an ancient song that had long ago been converted into Marine Chant, hijacked from an ancient ballad and inserted into the theme of a show:
"If you see me coming, better step aside,
“A lot of men didn't and a lot of men died!
“I got one Fist of Iron, one Fist of Steel.
“If the left one don't get you, then the right one will!”
They burst into cheers and laughter. Cries of "Iron Fist" shouted into the darkening twilight.
Deep in the back rooms, at the far end of the bolt, was the morgue. Lethal's post-autopsy body lay on a table. Morgenstern stood, holding a communicator to his ear. Someone knocked.
A thin, disabled man, Dr. Cedric Bergstrom, opened the door and limped across the crowed room. He carried a leather doctor's bag, clutching it to his chest, as he awkwardly worked himself past the sheet-covered bodies. He looked sick, drawn.
"This better be good." Cedric sounded rushed.
Morgenstern laughed
at the irony of Cedric trying to hurry. He gestured to Lethal's sheet draped body.
Cedric dragged himself over to the table and pulled back the sheet.
Morgenstern was still messing with his comm. unit. "Allow me to introduce Robert Leland Kidd," he said, over his shoulder.
Cedric looked over the cadaver, he traced the faint autopsy scars with a bony finger. "Superficial autopsy?" he asked.
"Not at all. I was in there for quite a while. Gave him a full overhaul, top of the line upgrades. Recovery rate's astonishing." Morgenstern pointed out the cables running from Kid Lethal's hands. "He's only been plugged in for about eight hours.”
Cedric produced an electro-magnetic scanning-suite from his bag, helmet, goggles, and hand-held focus controls. He donned the headgear, triggered the scanner and jerked as if struck, shaking his head in disbelief.
He checked the settings on his equipment. All correct.
He put the goggles back on.
Lethal's body glowed with a solid blue luminous life-energy.
"What? What is it?" Morgenstern asked.
"It's like looking at live electricity, living nitroglycerin! He's on fire, marking well above two hundred! I'll have to re-calibrate." Cedric pulled the helmet off and messed with the controls. "I've never had to recalibrate before," he mumbled to himself with astonishment.
Morgenstern stepped closer to the table.
"A fucking static shock and we've got a walker! Talk about a diamond in the rough," Cedric beamed. "He might even be able to talk!”
"Over two hundred? You're sure?”
"Maybe two-twenty, two-fifty!” Cedric looked up at the giant pathologist. "He was right under your nose, all this time? You're slipping, my friend.” Cedric turned back to his inspection. "So blue," he said, staring through the goggles.
"He's blue?" Morgenstern asked.
"Bright. Who did this to him?”
"A girl. A slip of a girl.”
Cedric whispered to himself, "Standing on the shore, glowing like an atomic fucking bomb and doesn't even have two pennies to rub together.”
Kid Lethal, in his recently recharged mind, stood in the pit, staring at his blood soaked hand, the moment before he fell.
The kids huddled around the campfire; it crackled and laughed, taunting them. Chris kicked at it and fed it a couple more logs.
Poison and Rain had gone for blankets and now returned, passing them out to everyone. Ashley suspected the girls had full proper names, like Skylar Macbeth, but she didn’t know them. After all, she was Ash.
She laughed to herself. She fit right in here, these kids were all like her; they were all on their own.
Suddenly she felt the slightest twinge of remorse for having elbowed Dante in the face. Then she remembered his little speech about gang-raping her and put him out of her mind.
Chris continued, "So anyhow, Me and Drews, we found this wing, half a dozen ports, no guards. It's down on the north-side of the old orphanage. It's stuffed: five floors of retards. It's the special-ed wing. And out in the back, way-way-way-back, there was this attached wing. We could see it when the taxi would pick us up and drop us off. It was bolted on, behind where the ports were, invisible to almost everything.
"Every time when we came back, we saw this thing. Drews got all curious, wanted to go down, see what’s what. So, we thread our way down, and it took a while, cause we had to dodge a dozen wired checkpoints.
"We're climbing through ceilings and shit and all he kept saying was, 'Anything this secret has to be worth seeing.' So we kept going.
"Sure enough, we get in and it's handicapped kids all upgraded with military bio-mech-tech. We came back and the name robo-tards stuck. PDQ, we realize we have to go back for some snaps or be called liars every time we opened our mouths.
"So, we grab some camera gear and go back. We get in cool and smooth, We take tons of pics and even get a grip of video. On the way out, everything's quiet, only this time, they're waiting for us. Caught us red-handed, caught us deliberate. Took all our gear and we got a month of conditioning.”
"You never went back?" Ash asked.
"After a month of the Big C, you don't leave your bed for six weeks.”
"What's conditioning?”
"Torture designed to make you more cooperative,” Oddball answered.
“I tell you, after that, I didn't even think about it. No one asked me about it. Took me almost a year just to talk to Drews again.
“But now-a-days, everyone's heard about it, some went In-Search-Of. Some came back, some didn't. All I know is, I've never seen a photo. Not even the ones I took,” Chris said.
The fire was burning low.
After a long silence, Ashley asked, "Why don't you guys escape?"
"Because escaping is the easy part," Chris answered.
"It's tough out there, if you ain't a citizen," Jones said.
"No shit, Food ain't free,” Rebound agreed.
"Even bad food is better than going hungry," Oddball contributed.
"We all done our time in the street," Tanaka explained. "This is better and worse. The devil you know instead of one you can't see coming.”
The kids murmured affirmations and slowly drifted off to sleep.
Ash noticed that Geoff had stayed quiet most of the night. She couldn't help but think that he was more than a little afraid.
Those were her last thoughts until morning.
Far from the orphans, Angel City traffic drifted along, overhead, to the sides and below the district. Beyond the traffic, the stars could be seen, if one looked hard enough.
One of the glittering traffic stars; pathologist Morgenstern let the computer navigate his black sedan, flowing along with the current. He fiddled with the radio, scanning the frequencies for something interesting. It was a drum solo he settled on.
In the district's security command center, Warden Keller sat in a central chair. The wall before him displayed five hundred and twelve camera feeds from all over the district. He watched the emergency response crews suppress the fires while the guards suppressed the zeros who caused them.
A young lieutenant entered and saluted. "Reporting as ordered, sir.”
The colonel ignored the salute and gestured to the big board. "Look at this, lieutenant. Madness! Chaos! What are we going to do?”
"Call in the Ultra-Force, sir?”
"We are the Ultra-Force here, son.”
"Yes sir.”
"Lieutenant… Werther, is it? You’re with the judge advocate's office? You're an assistant-prosecutor?”
"Yes, sir.”
"Son, I need you to build me a case against Ashley Fox. I want a warrant, with solid grounds for arrest. Schedule the hearing for Tuesday morning. Deliver it all to me here, before dawn. Understand?”
"What's the charge, sir?" the young officer asked.
"You know who I'm talking about? You saw the fights?"
"Yes, sir. Everyone’s seen them.”
"I want her charged with the murder of Robert Leland Kidd. And lieutenant, make the premeditation stick.”
"Yes, sir," Werther answered.
It was after midnight when Morgenstern anchored his car at the service entrance of an upscale estate. He bounded over a gate and into the grounds. He heard the dull roar of construction machinery. Something loud and heavy was running somewhere on the property.
The ex-soldier silently moved along the side of the house and through the back of a beautifully sculpted garden. He found an unlocked door and slipped inside.
Morgenstern moved through the first floor of the house. Most of the large rooms were open, the stone decor flowing seamlessly from one into the next. He smiled at the traditional household objects rendered in varying shades of light pink to dark-red stone.
A large group of glass doors opened onto a large outdoor patio, replete with cement mixer and brick-making tools. Ahead of him, an older man worked the noisy cement mixer. His back was to the house.
Several large black plasti
c bags were clustered nearby, filled with blunt, wet looking objects. Human limbs protruded at awkward angles from the bag closest to the resident. The man fed the cement mixer with body parts from the bags.
Morgenstern stepped quite close and set an envelope on the stone floor. Over the sound of the cement mixer, the owner had no idea he'd been so thoroughly compromised.
Morgenstern enjoyed the moment and silently moved over to a nearby picnic table. He took a seat and made himself comfortable.
After watching the resident feed three arms and two legs to the mixer, Morgenstern checked his watch and cleared his throat.
The mason sat up straight; he turned slowly to face the intruder.
The leather-clad giant seated at the picnic table raised his finger to his lips. He then gestured to the envelope on the floor.
The mason picked it up. He opened it and removed the flat square piece of paper.
You are cordially invited for an evening of conversation and refreshment amidst a gathering of your peers.
A date, time and address lined the bottom of the invite.
The stonemason looked up, but Morgenstern had already let himself out, not a terribly difficult trick, over the sound of the cement mixer.