Chapter 2
Somewhere in Beta Sector an apartment hummed to life as Damian and Jenson awoke to the gentle, cascading whoosh of a waterfall.
"This is your new alarm, seriously? Absolutely. Pathetically. Lame." Damian groaned himself awake, but Jenson didn't even flinch.
"Really? You're going to fault a guy for having originality in his tastes and changing it up? Don't be a hater, dude. Shut up and make us some breakfast. If you're going to be a guest, at least make yourself a useful one."
Jenson padded bare-chested and barefoot through the bedroom to the stand-up shower stall, closing its glass door behind him. It fogged up almost immediately as steam hugged the ceiling. Damian heard a sigh of contentment from his co-worker as the water sprayed for all of 60 seconds – half of what the water system would allow during any 24-hour period.
As Damian brushed his teeth in the sink which was wedged tightly between the shower stall and the wall, his mind wandered. It had been one week since his agreement with the mystery girl. Through sheer force of will he had kept away from his own apartment, letting her stay at his place to the point where he had nearly worn out his welcome at Jenson's.
Jenson could be an ass, but he had Damian's back. They'd fought their way out of their share of scuffles in the past year at the club. Prevented more than a few concussions that way. Twin Galaxies attracted its share of scum and other types for whom scum seemed a generous compliment, and it didn't help that the club's owner was a major underworld figure. But the upside of it was that the bouncers were like a brotherhood. Often they carried themselves more like an elite security force than the young, testosterone-filled bruisers they were underneath.
"Look, my friend, I get that you have an eye for Mystery Girl. But is simply giving her the key-print to your apartment really the way to show it? That girl has one word written all over her, and it starts with a capital T."
Damian slammed his hand on the stall's surface. "None of that. I already violated her trust by telling you about her. You could at least be a little charitable."
Jenson stepped out of the shower, toweling off before putting on his gray-black body-suit. "You're misunderstanding. That's my whole point. The girl needs help, not another handout. If you check up on her, she'll know you actually care. And if you do it sooner rather than later, you'll actually have a chance in hell that she'll still be there, and that you can do something to help her before she gets herself killed."
Damian threw some biotech-improved bread slices in the toaster and turned on the coffeemaker on top of the fake marble counter. He drummed his fingers impatiently. "So…let me see if I understand you. You think she's Trouble, but that I should be like a moth heading towards the flame?" He didn't mention the other objection which loomed like a 900-pound mutant in the room.
The girl's an illegal. I can get exiled from the sector just for harboring her. More importantly, I could get a hefty reward for reporting her at the nearest Bot Station. So why haven't I?
Jenson was his friend, but Jenson was also a total sap. It made sense for the romantic pea-brain to think Damian could somehow save the girl. But what could he realistically do? It was easy enough to visit a lower sector, but all of the sectors underneath Beta were vicious. And Alpha? That was like praying for rain in a tunnel. Which left one option.
"I haven't exactly been reciting poetry, Jenson. I've been doing some research."
Jenson leaned on the counter beside him, swiping two mugs and pouring two helpings with a grace that disgusted Damian this early in the morning.
"Damian, I've been patient. I know you've been going 'out' each morning after work. Have I said a peep about it? No. But now I'm getting impatient. So spill…what so-called research?"
When Damian sullenly took a sip of coffee and refused to meet his friend's gaze, Jenson bumped him in the shoulder. "Fine, I'll sweeten the pot. I have a secret of my own, and it's pretty heavy. You tell me your secret, I show you mine."
Damian inhaled the toast, barely tasting it in the midst of this intriguing development. Could this be the same "Always-By-The-Book Jenson" that everyone at the club relentlessly teased? If Jenson had secrets, then two-headed mutants were sexy love magnets. Secrets?? The hell he did.
But Damian found himself humoring his good friend. He shrugged. "All right, you want in…fine. I've done a little digging on what it would take to get her fake identity papers to live in Beta."
Jenson's eyes widened. "Dude, people in that line of work lead only one kind of life, and they tend to be three things: ugly, brutish, and short. You'd have to go at least...at least Inner Fringe Sector for that stuff. The syn bosses will send their guys to Beta to put the heat on someone, but they don't do business here in Beta Sector. You know that. You're more likely to get yourself killed than to actually meet anyone down there who's acting in good faith!" Jenson was almost shouting.
The criminal syndicates could rot for all Damian cared. He still owed this girl a debt and there was something more to it, though Damian didn't feel like examining his own motivations too deeply. He felt what he felt, reasonableness be damned.
"You'd be surprised what an enterprising, curious person can find out with a little persistence."
Jenson groaned. "Have you been talking to those gen-freaks again?"
"The proper term is 'genetic freak' or 'alt,' and the answer is yes," Damian growled. "They've already given me directions to a place where we can do the swap. They've even made an approach on my behalf. I've proven that I can pay. All I need to do now is give them the signal."
Jenson sighed, rubbing the stubble on his chin. "I'm listening."
After Damian outlined his plan, Jenson nodded in all the right places, but he sighed twice as often. At last Jenson ran a hand over his buzzed hair and shook his head. "You're lucky that I'm almost as crazy as you are. I'll go with you, on one condition. Get cleaned up first...then I'll show you my secret."
Damian hopped in the shower for his 60 seconds, scrubbing ruthlessly with shampoo and soap before toweling off in record time. He shrugged into another gray-black body-suit as his friend wagged a 'come here' finger at him.
A minute or so later Damian's jaw had dropped away. So much for the friend I thought I knew. Damian was looking at a long folded-out work table that Jenson had hastily erected in the living area. It opened onto the adjoining kitchen, completing the second half of the apartment next to the bedroom. Damian's friend had pulled from the kitchen pantry not food…but two full exosuits. They looked horrendous. The metallic overlays had been bashed and dented into oblivion, then retrofitted and resurfaced.
"What the…" Damian honestly didn't know what to say.
"I'd like you to meet 'Vuldemort' and 'Dumbledoor.'"
"Where'd you come up with names like that?"
"They were noble politicians back on Earth. I heard a couple of guys at the club talking about them. Anyway…pay attention." Damian knew that most of the history of Earth was just a memory, or a memory of a memory of memory, but he didn't bother trying to correct his friend.
The two exosuits were about the same size, but examining Vuldemort more closely, Damian saw a tiny pinprick which shimmered on the underside of the breast-piece.
"Bleed me dry. Is this what I think it is?" Damian hissed.
"Yep, this baby's a reworked B-grade exosuit, courtesy of parts salvaged by yours truly. I can dumpster dive with the best of them. Oh, and yes, that blue sparkly is a force field converter crystal. Anything tries to invade your personal space, it's getting repelled in a major way."
"How did you get it?" Damian asked in awe.
Jenson chuckled. "Don't get too excited. A friend's neighbor passed away. You know how it goes…sometimes deaths take a while to get reported, and people on my friend's housing block tend to keep to themselves. He happened to mention it and I may or may not have used one of these B-grade retrofits to creatively 'open' the door. Knew I didn't have much time to take anything, so I nabbed the only really valuabl
e thing I laid eyes on. It was tucked away between the cooker and the spice rack if you can believe it."
Damian wanted to swear, but instead he gave his close friend a stare of newfound respect. "I can't believe the same guy who won't shave the price of a single drink for a sexy girl in the club has the balls to break into an apartment and steal something worth more than our annual salaries combined. Who the heck are you?"
Jenson shrugged. "You have your hobbies, I have mine. The exosuits at the club have saved our lives countless times, but they'll never be ours. These babies are my pet projects. What else am I going to do, stuck in a system degrading faster than you can say 'garbage,' where the future is leading who the hell knows where?"
"When were you going to tell me about them?" Damian accused.
Now Jenson's smile grew beatific. "Vuldemort was going to be your big, nasty present when you hit your 20th. Guess what? We're celebrating your birthday early. Now here's my condition, as promised. We do this crazy, shady deal for your Mystery Girl only if you wear the suit. You wear Vuldemort. I'll go with Dumbledoor here, and besides, he'll do in a pinch as long as I don't take too many direct hits."
Damian nodded as he took one final gulp of coffee and stepped into his boots. He took one last scan of the Vuldemort suit with its pock-marked surface and cascades of dark streaks, alloy impurities left over from the mother of all repair jobs. It was a miracle the thing held in one piece, yet whoever had brute-forced the retrofit had known what they were doing. It looked sturdy as a rock.
"One last thing before you go flirt with your Mystery Girl and tell her the idiocy we're prepared to do for her," Jenson finished. "Keep in mind, my buddy who did the retrofitting and repair said that these suits aren't as stable as the certified 'Pure-B' exosuits manufactured in our Sector. In other words, this isn't your license to play hero."
"Got it."
"Number two, the sparkly on your exosuit has been degrading over time. My snooping didn't yield much useful info besides how to install them, but here's what I do know. Not even one of those crystals has been officially released from Alpha Sector in the last sixty plus years. That means this thing is probably old. How long its force field will last when triggered, that's a crap shoot if there ever was one. Could be an hour. Might be 10 seconds. Got it?"
Damian nodded. "Do you also plan to give me a tutorial on fire safety or can I go now?"
"Actually, there is one more thing."
"What?"
"Tell your Mystery Girl that if we get her those papers she owes me a kiss on the cheek."