10. Rusters

10 – Rusters

They rode in silence for a few minutes, and Hector saw apartment stacks take shape through the haze. They weren’t the biggest megastructures he’d seen, not by a long shot, but they were still large—rectangles of blue-gray plasteel, twice as tall and wide as the towers back toward the city center. He could see solar-active lettering on the nearest two: HS11 and HS7. Looking at Lemon, he asked, “HS?”

“Housing Structure.” When he just nodded and zoned out again, she asked, “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on with you? Why’d you want me to look up that little history lesson?”

Hector didn’t answer, and before Lemon could push the matter further, the train began to slow, and the pleasant voice announced, “District Seven Station approaching. Please brace for deceleration.” As the brakes hit, Lemon leaned into him, and for a second, as the warmth of another body tickled some instincts in his primal brain, he almost forgot who he was. He almost enjoyed the moment. Then the train stopped, a chime sounded, and the doors opened.

“Come on!” Lemon jumped up and pushed through the light crowd to the doors. The platform wasn’t nearly as crowded as the one back in the city center. Lemon led the way to the stairs, and Hector followed her down to the street. For the first time, he saw vehicles other than trains. Cargo trucks maneuvered the narrow lanes for the most part, but there were smaller personal vehicles humming past as well.

“Why no cars back in the city center?”

“No streets!” She laughed, shaking her head like he was being funny. “There are cars, though—tunnels stretch out to some districts. They park down there in the roots.”

Hector nodded, following her down the wide sidewalk toward the stack labeled HS7. It was maybe a mile ahead, blotting out most of the skyline.

“So, you’re really okay?”

“Yeah. It passed.”

“Why’s your system messing with you?”

“I applied some potentia.”

“Really? Will it make you younger? They told me that was the main ingredient when I got a treatment.” When he didn’t bite, she added, “Saved for five years to take off ten.” She smiled brightly. “What do you think?”

He inclined his head. “Good investment.”

“I’m already a quarter of the way toward my next treatment, too. Might actually get ahead and save up for a vacation.”

“But your rent?”

She sighed. “Some bad choices at a club party last week. I could go into my savings, but I made a promise to myself.”

Hector watched a large truck with three massive tanks on its bed roll by. They were labeled with explosive warnings, and he marveled at that—the fragility of everything.

“So will it?”

He looked at Lemon, running their conversation through his head to see what he’d missed. After a second, he found it. “Make me younger?”

She nodded, arching an eyebrow.

He wasn’t in the mood to describe how gaining levels in his aura system would allow his skin to improve in, effectively, every way imaginable—from strength to speed to more powerful aura abilities. “No.”

“But it makes you sick?”

“Just while it’s processing the potentia.” His tight diction might have given the hint that he was tired of talking, because Lemon looked back toward the stack and lengthened her strides. They passed a large group of teens, many of whom called out to her—nothing overtly lewd, but quite a few invitations for drinks, walks, and “hanging in the pod.” Perhaps it was the smoldering anger lurking in the depths of Hector’s eyes that kept their advances from straying into verbal assault.

The stack filled nine city blocks, and nearby were some dedicated outdoor areas—concrete picnic tables and four ball courts with no goals and graffiti instead of boundary lines. Not a single kid was out on the courts, but then, for all Hector knew, they were in school. The thought piqued his curiosity, and he asked, “Kids in school?”

Lemon nodded. “Imperial Civic School. One of the few things the PKs seem to care about. I think the stacks have schools on multiple levels.” She nodded toward a looming figure at the top of the steps before the stack’s front entrance. “Speak of the devil.”

Hector looked up to see his first Heliopolis Peacekeeper. He quickly looked down, not wanting to have his retinas scanned. He had no idea if his new skin had any sort of record or if he was even supposed to be on Mars, so he figured it best to keep a low profile until he’d done a little research…or changed his eyes out.

The peacekeeper wasn’t tall, but he was physically imposing—broad shoulders, heavy, scuffed ballistic armor on his torso, and a dark helmet with a matte-black visor. His gear was marked with unit insignias, such as his rank designation, and personal markings like a row of skulls and blocky white letters that read, “STAND BACK.”

Hector could feel the peacekeeper’s scrutiny, but he kept his chin ducked and walked quickly beside Lemon through the yawning hangar-style doors that led into the apartment block’s ground-level courtyard. It felt like the temperature dropped a dozen degrees when the peacekeeper’s visor turned back toward the street.

Hector looked up, taking in the scene inside the courtyard. The high walls of the stack stretched up, adorned with open-air concourses that were obscured by advertising panels, no doubt installed after construction to defray costs. The end result was vertical walls of holograms and flashing crystal-glass screens that displayed all manner of products. Whether the ads were for shoes or guns or cybernetic prostheses, it seemed the old adage still held true: sex sells.

Hector stopped in his tracks, his neck craned like a tourist as he looked up on all sides. He’d been struck by the thought of what it would be like to grow up in a place like that. The pittance of sunlight that trickled down from the tiny gray-blue square of sky couldn’t compete with all those LEDs and photocells.

“Level 121,” Lemon said, gesturing toward the nearest bank of elevators.

Hector grunted and followed behind. The elevators were metal cages mounted against the open courtyard wall. As Lemon handled the control panel of one, he moved to the back and looked out, watching the hive-like interior as they were carried up into the heart of the stack. Each level was open to the courtyard—at least in the gaps between advertisement panels—and he could see the people moving to and fro down long, dimly lit corridors.

The walls of the levels they passed were all painted a different color with an accompanying pattern—red with white circles, blue with green squares, yellow with black stripes, and so on. He supposed it was a way to give the people on those levels a way to build a shared identity. Most of them were painted over with graffiti and murals, though. In those murals he saw angels and demons, heroic figures standing against peacekeepers, and other such iconography.

When the elevator stopped and the door rattled open, Lemon started to step out, but Hector grabbed her arm, stopping her short. He’d seen something—a flicker of shadow out of the corner of his eye—and that, accompanied by a low, deep chuckle from the other side of the hallway, had triggered some innate sense of caution. The doors started to slide closed, but he put his hand between them and they slid open.

“What—” Lemon asked, but Hector met her eye and shook his head. He cautiously peered out to the left, looking for the shadow he’d seen. A hulking figure stood there—more metal than man, with exposed wire, mixed-alloy plates, and grease-stained circuitry covering most of his body. Hector barely had time to register the guy before a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and yanked him out the door.

He felt the strength in that grip and knew better than to plant his feet and resist; all he’d accomplish would be to set himself up to be blindsided by the big scrap-rat. Instead, he went with the pull, taking in the situation as he moved. It was another ruster who gripped his shoulder—jagged wire fingers whirring and clicking as their little servos strained. The man was tall and thin, his face more alloy than flesh. His black lips parted, exposing teeth filed sharp and electrum-plated.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Hector had seen enough. If their appearance weren’t enough, the man’s grip on his shoulder sealed the deal. Faster than most aura users could begin to open their pathways, he fired off his strength boost—just three aura, as his new skin seemed to handle that amount just fine. The aura propagated through his cells, and the hallway brightened, the shadows falling away as his body erupted with a flickering red glow. The ruster’s eyes widened, and he frantically swiped his other hand at Hector’s face—long, hooked, metal digits looking to peel the flesh from his skull.

Hector’s heart hammered, his muscles swelled, and he drove with his legs, twisting his hips as he delivered a brutal right hook to the ruster’s polymer chest plate. The movement took him under the ruster’s swipe and the punch made any further attack unlikely; the polymer—no doubt installed for easy access to cybernetic organs that required regular maintenance—crumpled under the pressure of the blow, bowing in and transferring the impact directly to said organs. Things cracked under Hector’s knuckles, fluids sprayed out the seams of the cyborg’s torso, and he collapsed, seizing violently.

Meanwhile, Lemon screamed, and Hector leaped to his left, using his momentum to whirl, rotating on his left leg, as he delivered a roundhouse with the right, smashing his foot and shin into the big scrap-rat’s ribs. Hector didn’t have eyes in the back of his head and he didn’t have any kind of second-sight; he’d just been in a thousand fights and knew that was where the guy would be. His strength boost was still active, and that kick would’ve probably killed the guy if his ribs hadn’t been made of something far too damn hard.

Hector felt something pop in his foot, and almost instantly, his boot felt too tight. The kick might not have killed the guy, but the force had been good enough to drive him off balance, and Hector was adept at ignoring pain. He bent his knees and leaped, launching his lithe, muscular body onto the barrel-chested scrap-rat’s back.

As the would-be mugger stumbled precariously toward the railing and the thousand-foot drop to the concrete below, Hector wrapped an arm around his head as he scraped his fingers along the plasteel neck-plates at his throat. Plasteel was a wonderful material for all sorts of applications. It could be molded into any shape imaginable; it was corrosion-proof; it was flexible; but it was also easy to rip out of its housing when it was a fraction of a millimeter thick.

Even without his strength boost, Hector could have taken that plasteel off. With his boost still firing, though, his fingers dug through, hooked around some tubes and wires, and then yanked everything out in a spray of sparks and blood. The scrap rat fell to his knees, and Hector stood, watching as he slowly collapsed, a large, dark puddle forming on the concrete.

He turned to see Lemon standing in the elevator, holding the door open with one hand while she stared at Hector with wide eyes. “What the hell?” she gasped.

“Just a minute.” Hector squatted beside the big mugger, put his palm on his back and felt his aura system trigger, collecting the potentia that was stirring in the soon-to-be-corpse.

//3 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 9.//

Exhaling slowly, trying to calm his racing heart, Hector limped over to the other body. As he leaned over, he noted many faces peering out of doors, watching with spooked eyes as he put his hand on the guy’s oozing chest. He felt the hot rush of potentia, but it was brief.

//2 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 11.//