9. Specters of the Past

9 – Specters of the Past

When he walked out of the office, Hector wasn’t surprised to find Jam looming over Lemon as she shrank away. Her back was to a bar top, and she was wedged between two stools while the big thug—one hand on the bar, the other twirling a lock of her straight blonde hair—spoke to her in low tones. Hector wasn’t a genius at body language, but he could see Lemon wasn’t having a good time. Her hands were clenched into fists, and she kept darting her eyes toward the exit, leaning back uncomfortably as Jam leaned in.

A not-so-small part of Hector wanted to move silently, catch the asshole by surprise and punch him in the kidney so hard he’d piss blood all the way to the trauma doc. He bit back that hot, angry urge, though. He didn’t need a pile of new enemies—not yet. Instead, he stopped at the single step down that marked the bar’s perimeter and cleared his throat.

When Jam and Lemon looked his way—her eyes tented, hopeful; his narrowed and angry—Hector jerked his head toward the door. “Lemon. Boss has a job for you.” When Jam didn’t move, despite Lemon trying to sidle past him, Hector couldn’t stop himself from growling, “Step off, Jam.”

So much for playing neutral.

“What’d you say, runt?” Jam pushed off the bar and, glowering like a red-eyed scarecrow, stalked toward Hector. Maybe he expected him to back off or stammer some sort of apology, but when Hector just folded his arms and glared, Jam’s steps faltered.

Hector gave him an out: “Go talk to the boss about it, if you want.”

Jam stared for another few seconds, his thin lips pressed together in a frown, highlighting a white scar that ran from his right nostril to the left corner of his mouth. “We’ll finish catching up later, Lemon.” His long arm stretched out, and his fingers, tipped with sharp black nails, gently tugged at Lemon’s shirt sleeve as she hurried past.

Hector saw the revulsion twist her lips as she replied, then she was past him, and Hector followed her to the exit. His spine crawled knowing he’d turned his back on a predator, but he knew the guy was too scared, deep down, to attack him. Hector hadn’t put him into enough of a corner to force the issue. Outside, the sunlight made it feel like they’d stepped out of a surreal dream—at least to Hector.

“Ugh! What an asshole! Thanks for the excuse. I can’t hide all day, though. God, I never thought I’d miss Orin! He usually keeps that creep in line.”

Hector shrugged. “He should be back soon; I didn’t kill him.”

Lemon looked at him sideways. “For a second there, I forgot you were the one who hurt him.” She nodded toward the club’s entrance. “Was that, like, a rescue? I mean, did Grando really have a job for me?”

A train on one of the second-story tracks whistled by, blowing warm wind on them, stirring Lemon’s hair into a momentary blonde halo. Hector pulled the crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to her. As she read the note, he said, “Wants you to see what’s wrong with her.”

“Sadie? Yeah, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen her in a minute.” She looked up at Hector, narrowing her eyes. “He really wants me to go?”

“I’ll come.”

“Oh—well, yeah, okay. Still, he’s never sent me off on—”

“Said you’d get a bonus if you did a good job.”

Lemon tightened her grip on the paper, closed her mouth and, after looking into Hector’s eyes for a second, nodded. “Want to make a stop on the way? We can talk to a guy I know…about your bit-lockers, I mean.”

Hector thought about it, then shook his head. “On the way back.”

Lemon narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Hector’s fingers twitched, and he could feel the blood throbbing in his skull, but with a sigh, he explained, “We don’t know what’s wrong. Might be time-sensitive.”

She slowly nodded, then turned and started walking. Her legs were long, and Hector had to stretch his to catch up. When he was beside her, she smiled. “We’ll need to take a train; she lives out in one of the stacks.”

Hector nodded, repeating the word, “Stacks.” Even back in his old life, they’d been using the term. Megastructures filled with coffin-like cubicles they called apartments. They weren’t much worse than Lemon’s place, but they were worse—bed alcoves and toilets that opened onto communal cafeterias and living spaces. Hector hadn’t seen any true megastructures in Helio, but it sounded like the stacks were a bit removed.

They walked past the next corner, and he saw their immediate destination. A fifty-story plasteel spire with elevators on either side and a spiral staircase up the center. Dozens of train tracks converged on the spire, weaving up, over and around each other to the boarding platforms on the different levels. It was the first bit of construction he’d seen in the city that was impressive to him. Those tracks on their plasteel supports were a work of art, the way they looped and twisted, keeping thirty or more routes separate. To his eye, it was a little bewildering.

People crowded the sidewalks leading up to the spire, and the steps going up and down were packed, but the queues for the elevators were long. “Everyone’s heading toward the city center for work,” Lemon sighed, taking his wrist as she started weaving through the crowd. “I don’t want to step onto a train and then find out I lost you in this mess!” she yelled over her shoulder.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

He nodded.

She pulled him onto the steps and began to climb, sticking to the left where people moved a little faster. They passed several landings, each formed from a different color of plasteel—yellow, orange, green, purple—then they stepped out of the spire onto a blue one. Lemon pushed through a crowd, almost running, and then leaped through the open doors of a train, just as the calm, feminine voice announced, “Blue line to Eastern Districts seven, nine, eleven, and thirteen is now departing. Take hold or sit down for your safety.”

Ever at the mercy of his memories surfacing at the wrong moment, Hector suffered through a dozen flashbacks of similar train rides in his old life. Even as they washed over him, he hastily grabbed hold of one of the straps hanging from the ceiling. Squeezing his eyes shut, he waited for the overwhelming déjà vu to pass. The shuttle train rocked back and forth slightly and then surged forward, accelerating rapidly enough that Hector had to tense up all his muscles to keep from stumbling.

Cool fingers touched his neck, and Lemon asked, “You okay? Trains make you sick?”

He shook his head. “I’m good.”

His takeaway from the strange flashbacks was that it didn’t seem shuttle trains had changed much in the time he’d been out of commission. It wasn’t the first time a thought like that had hit him, and he found it a little jarring; shouldn’t more have changed in almost 200 years? He supposed some things had, in a way. Heliopolis had been a tiny company town, and now it was a bustling metropolis.

What did you expect from a train? Think it should be flying or something? He snorted at the thought.

“What’s funny?” Lemon asked.