Bitstream

12.1

May 2056

"Don't you think you've had enough?" the bartender asked.

"Just one more," Rhea slurred, trying – and failing – to stifle the hiccup. "That's all – really. Then I'll be done for the night."

The bartender, Muich (pronounced 'mooch', for those that couldn't read German), looked at her appraisingly before grabbing another bottle of Spitz. She'd been drinking so much that he actually began to look handsome, though that could have easily been the effect of those awful purple LED lights.

"You've been drinking a lot tonight, Rhea," he said, popping the cap. "Everything okay?"

"Just give it to me," she snapped.

"Alright," he said sharply. "But I'm chargin' you extra. Forty eddies."

The charge pinged up on her neural display, brighter than it normally would have been. She fumbled through the menu, backed out of the tab twice, then finally transferred the funds. The account balance dwindled. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. She snatched the bottle, waded through the crowd. People bumped her shoulder. She didn't fall. Not yet.

It was always just one last bottle. That was what Rhea told herself, every time. But the last bottle had become the next, and then the one after that.

At night, she'd crash on the couch thinking of her mother, so drunk she'd almost see her: a ghostly shape staying just long enough to make her heart ache. She'd close her eyes, wait, drift off, and wake with the kind of headache that felt like someone had poured sand into her skull and shaken it around to see what stuck. Nothing stuck, of course. Nothing ever did.

She'd been unemployed for so long that even her thoughts had stopped moving. They just sat there. Every day was hell. The neural HUD would switch on in the mornings with nothing but spam and unanswered messages. People she used to work with had stopped calling months ago. Even the bar crowd barely looked at her now; they could smell the rot of failure under the cheap perfume and the alcohol sweat.

And maybe that was the way of things. Because there came a time in every woman's life when failure felt inevitable, when she woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror – oh, that blasted mirror – and saw not herself, but some cracked reflection

(i think i remember now)

of everything she'd once hoped to be, every promise and possibility rotting in the corners of her eyes, and she'd feel the weight of every wrong turn pressing down, where it hurt, and there would be no escape, no breath, just the realisation that the face staring back wasn't hers anymore, but a stranger's, a tired stranger with the same bones and the same skin but none of the light, none of the fire, just that blank hollow stare that whispered you lost, you're done, you don't get to be anything anymore.

But for what it was worth… the world kept turning, didn't it? Didn't give a damn if she drowned in her own spit or crawled out of the gutter: either way, sunrise came, bills came, the silence came.

But she could always move back into her father's place. That was an option. Because finding a job out here in this cursed town, in this rotting city, was just downright fucking impossible.

She'd tried applying for bar shifts, dock work in the metropolitan area, even those humiliating customer service gigs where you sit under a single bulb and smile with all the vigor and all the desperation and all the hollow plastic cheer you can scrape from the bottom of your soul.

Nothing. It had been six months. Six long, excruciating months. She even had to draw for welfare – like that helped.

But drinking helped. It kept her mind steady, kept her from thinking too hard about the walls closing in, kept her from counting the days, the hours, the minutes since she'd last felt like a real human being and not some useless husk waiting to rot out in the sun. It dulled the edges of what she knew to be true: that there was no ladder left to climb, no door left to knock on, just a long hallway of locked rooms and her own voice echoing back, telling her to shut up and drink because that's all there was now.

And the fights, too. She'd gotten into more brawls while intoxicated than she could possibly count while sober. People didn't like the fact she used to be a cop, especially not those rebels. Those hired goons working directly for

(what is her name? i know i remember it)

[Redacted] because she'd played everyone who put trust in her. She should have known. That woman was a treacherous piece of work the minute she offered her father the job. This was a game to her, a way of abusing people's fear to gain power and control. Someone had to stop her. Someone had to march into her headquarters and put things right.

The music in the bar thumped: a cheap synth-disco track, bass heavy enough to rattle her teeth. Or maybe that was just her jaw clenching. Her bottle was half-empty, her temper full to the brim. She pushed through the crowd, neon strobes cutting the room into slices of blue, red, violet. Someone muttered something behind her – copper bitch – and that was it. She turned, fast, swinging before she even thought about it, her fist cutting the air.

Then chaos. Chairs scraping. Glass breaking. A man with a mohawk lunging. She felt her knuckles split, warm blood blooming over her skin. The lights went fuzzy, and then a large fist knocked them out completely.

Rhea woke up in the middle of the scrublands, tossed up in some garbage heap, her head ringing and her optics glitching. She would have been naked if not for the white vest and jeans. No idea where her shoes had gone. Someone likely stripped all the expensive bits and left her with just enough to avoid hypothermia.

She coughed, pushed up on her elbows, and let out a low, guttural moan. When her vision cleared, she could see that it was nighttime, and cold. She shivered, brought herself up to her feet, and realised that the garbage heap had been six feet deep. It was as if someone had tried to bury her. Above and in the distance, she heard sounds: laughter, fire crackling, the slow burn of guitar, and voices speaking a language she couldn't understand. Probably English. She stepped onto an exposed pipe and hauled herself up. When she reached the top, she could see a camp of some sort. There was a fire, and there was also a series of large trucks – or at least, she thought they were trucks, but many of them had functional interiors. One had a bar, another a crude bunkhouse crammed with mattresses, and a third had its sides blown out and replaced with glowing panels. Some half-baked arcade, maybe? Or was that a lab?

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There were also people. Four of them. No, five. One sitting on the steps leading up to the bar truck, playing guitar.

But then she noticed the flags on the sides of the trucks: a snake eating its own tail.

Wait... flags...

Oh no… this wasn't just a camp. This was...

A gun cocked behind her.

Shit.

"Hey stranger." It was a woman's voice. "A little far from town, aren't you?"

Rhea raised her hands slowly before turning to face her. It was hard to make out the woman's face in the dark, but she had crimson hair, an obsidian visor, and a cotton jumpsuit with beltwear and a leather overtop. She was also quite pale.

"Listen," Rhea said slowly, very slowly indeed. "I had a little too much to drink. Got in a fight. Next thing I know… I wake up here."

"Mm-hm." The woman tilted her head. "And you just happened to stumble right into my camp?"

Rhea's throat tightened. "I didn't even know this was a camp. I swear, I'm not—"

"Not what?" The woman's voice was calm, too calm. "Not a cop? Not Syndicate? Not some dumb luckless tourist who thought they'd take a stroll through the scrublands in the middle of the goddamn night?"

"I told you, I'm just—"

"Just lost. Sure. Everyone's 'just lost' when they're pointing a gun at their back." The woman adjusted her stance, the barrel of the weapon now steady on Rhea's chest. "So, let me make this simple, stranger. You're gonna tell me who you are, why you're here, and why I shouldn't drop you in that garbage heap you crawled out of. Sound fair?"

Rhea took a moment to respond, to scrape together the right words, but nothing came – nothing that could fix this. The woman was a gang member, and she'd seen her face. Rhea was as good as dead.

At that moment, she let her arms fall.

"What are you—?" the woman started.

"If you're gonna shoot me, then get it over with."

Silence. So much silence. Only the crickets possessed the necessary nerve to keep talking.

Then, a chuckle. "You've got some mouth on you. That how you talk to everyone holding a gun to your chest?"

Rhea's lip curled. "Only the ones who waste my time."

The barrel didn't move, but the woman tilted her head again; it seemed to be a weird tic. "You either got a real big pair of balls, or you're drunk off your ass."

Rhea stayed quiet.

"You do smell like you've been drinking… so I'm willing to bet you're not entirely a liar."

"Thanks," Rhea said. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all year."

A beat. The woman lowered the barrel an inch but didn't let her guard slip. "What's your name?"

"Rhea," she said, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow.

"Hm," the woman said. "You're the… daughter of Viren, aren't you?"

Rhea didn't know if there was a smart way to answer that question, but she figured honesty was the best way to do it. "Yeah," she said, her heart skipping. "But as you can probably tell… nowhere near as successful."

"Why?" She chuckled. "What do you do?"

"Nothing," she said. "Unemployed."

The woman nodded. "Figures. You've got that look about you."

"What look?"

"Just that look." The woman offered her hand. "Cierus Marlow."

Rhea shook it firmly, but not too firmly. She didn't want to give off the wrong idea. "Nice to meet you, Cierus."

Another chuckle. "No it's not. People don't like to meet me."

"Right," Rhea said. "A gang."

"That's correct," Cierus said. "You're in a very dangerous place, Rhea… but, that said, I know when to give a girl a break. Looks like you've been having a hard time."

That was the last thing Rhea had expected her to say. To be perfectly honest, she thought she'd have been shot by now. She supposed there was some luck on her side, after all. "I… appreciate that. Like I said, I just had too much to drink. I'll be out of your hair. Don't even have any weapons on me." Except, of course, the mantisblades, but she didn't feel it was necessary to mention cop-blades so soon.

Again, in case she got the wrong idea.

"No," Cierus said, "don't be ridiculous. Don't want you walking the whole way back to town in the freezing cold." Her voice rose a little on the last word, making her statement into a polite half-question. She wasn't as tense as she had been before, though she did keep tilting her head, for whatever reason. "We got a spare bed. Come on." And it wasn't up for debate.

Rhea was staying the night.

She followed Cierus up to the truck camp, listening to the guitar music grow louder. The man up on the perch, just sitting there with his hands tipping through the guitar wire apathetically, looked over at them as they approached. He was a black man, had white, braided hair, and a pair of leather suspenders holding up deck pants that certainly didn't need them.

"Who's the greenhead?" He stopped playing the music, and the others stepped up from the campfire.

"Just the daughter of Viren Steele," Cierus said nonchalantly.

The man's eyebrows shot up. "The Viren Steele? You're shittin' me."

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Cierus replied, her tone flat but carrying that edge of authority that silenced the camp for a moment.

Rhea folded her arms, uncomfortable. "Yeah, well, don't get too excited. I'm not exactly living up to the name." She'd made that statement already. She thought maybe it would have a different effect the second time around.

It didn't.

The man with the guitar smirked, showing a gold tooth. "Guessing daddy didn't send you here to make friends?"

"No," Rhea said, glaring. "Like I told your boss, I just had too much to drink and woke up in the wrong place. End of story."

"Boss, huh?" Cierus chuckled quietly. "I like that. Has a nice ring to it."

One of the other campfire folk, a wiry woman with cybernetic legs that hissed softly, stepped closer, sizing Rhea up. "She doesn't-szzzzzz look like much." She spoke with a strange snakelisp. "You sure-szzz she's who you say-szzz she is?"

"She's who I say she is," Cierus said.

The woman with the snakelisp tilted her head, lips curling. "If she's Viren Steele's-szzzz kid, why not just put her down-szzzz? Tie off loose ends."

"Because I said so." Cierus didn't raise her voice, but the campfire folk went quiet nonetheless. "She's a bit down on her luck. She'll be staying with us for a while."

"For a while?" Rhea said.

Cierus glanced at her, visor reflecting the firelight. "What, you got a better place to be?"

Rhea opened her mouth, then shut it again. She didn't, unless you counted the garbage heap she'd crawled out of, or the apartment waiting on an eviction notice.

"That's what I thought," Cierus said, turning back to the group. "Get her a blanket, and something that won't smell like piss."

The man with the guitar snorted, plucking a single discordant note. "What, you're adopting strays now?"

"Only the ones that bite," Cierus said, and sighed.

Rhea frowned. "I don't need charity. That's not what this is about."

"Good," Cierus said, finally holstering the gun. "Because we don't give it. You'll earn your keep while you're here."

Rhea's stomach tightened. "Doing what, exactly?"

Cierus tilted her head again. "We'll see. You've got Viren's blood. I'm sure you're not useless."

"Thanks," Rhea muttered.

Cierus smirked, the faintest upward curve of her lips. "Don't thank me yet."

So, she spent the night with these mysterious scrubland folk with their snake-marked trucks. Before drifting off to sleep in the spare bunk, Rhea lay on her back and stared up through the ceiling window at the stars. She couldn't remember the last time they'd looked that bright, that clean – certainly not in the past six months. Whatever waited for her beyond tomorrow, for one brief moment, she was just glad to still be breathing.