Chapter Fourteen – Opposites Distract

Chapter Fourteen – Opposites Distract

“It’s an accepted fact that the average American diet was worsening year-by-year, but I think it really took a hit the day the FDA merged with Nars-Mestle.”

–Chef Boy Kardi, last aired episode of his cooking show “Proper dishes,” 2034

***

We walked down the centre of the road, mostly because it allowed us to keep an eye on everything and if something ambushed us, it would give us more time to see it coming and to react. Also, it was strange and novel to walk down the middle of the street.

“You ever been to the museum?” I asked.

“Do I look like the museum-going sort?” Manic asked right back.

I shrugged. “Hey, don’t knock museums. I became a samurai in one.”

“Wow,” she said. “Talk about nerdy.”

I blinked. Did she think I was that kind of girl? I… didn’t care that much about the impression she had of me, but it still stung a little that she didn’t think I was a punk. “Yeah. I was with the other kids from my orphanage. It was this big PR stunt thing. Then aliens came pouring out of the sky, crashed through the ceiling and things kinda went to shit from there. I ended up with a pipe through my chest.” I tapped the spot. “Anyway, it turned out alright in the end.”

“Huh,” she said. “Don’t have as much of a story as that.”

“Really? Far as I know, most people that get picked to be samurai get a shitty start. It’s fine if you’re not ready to talk about it, though.”

She scoffed. “I didn’t get run through or anything. Me and a couple of… acquaintances all discovered that our go-to aug-doc was fucking with us.” She touched her exposed stomach. “He sold us these colon-integrated stim injectors. CISIs, you know? They can give you a long-lasting hit of something fun if you activate them. You can load yourself full of Ziggy, or Propi or your opioid of choice before a fight. Gets your heart kicking to the beat and with the right cocktail you can’t bleed and you’ll keep going for a minute after you’ve died.”

“Something wrong with the installation?” I asked. I’d never been able to dream of affording that kind of self-modding. Not to mention, the orphanage was liable to rip anything too good right out of me to sell it off.

“Worse. He did good work, but someone from a band I know started running the numbers and it turned out three or four of us had the same serials on our CISIs. Which, yeah, that’s not possible. Turns out he hawked out these cheap-ass Chinese knock-off models. 3D printed, backroom shit. So we went off to kick his ass.”

I nodded along. I was already iffy about modding myself any more than I had. It was… I don’t know, just kind of squicky. I didn’t mind the eye, or the arm, but that was because I needed it. The internals were pushing it. I might give in one day, but I’d put it off as long as I could. Her story was like a lesson on why it could be a bad move.

“Where do the aliens come in?” I asked.

“Oh, when we drove out to his place, it’s near the river, we found it getting hit up by aliens. The others fucked off, but he had clients in there, you know? Mostly local whores and shit, but… yeah, they weren’t going to last. Bummed a shotty from a friend of a friend and ran in.”

“Big fucking hero, huh?”

She snorted. “Yeah, sure.”

I checked a map of the city while we chatted. The museum of Natural History was only a block down from where we were. “Just around the corner,” I said. “You know the place at all?”

She made a vague so-so gesture. “A little? Driven past it enough times. Been living in this shithole city for five or so years now.”

“Where were you before?” I asked.

“Mega-city York,” she said.

I whistled. And she was calling this place a shithole? Then again, I couldn’t complain too much, this was about as far from the place I was born as I’d ever gotten. “Well, Myalis thinks there’s a hive in there. I think we ought to check it out because something’s not right about this incursion.”

“What’s not right about it? Aliens show up every few hours, we kill them, then more show up.”

“That’s the thing, we should be seeing a lot more. Maybe only a dozen show up on day one, but by that night there should be three dozen, and by the next morning it should be a hundred or two. Just a few little bands of low-tier models? Over days? Just got this feeling that something weird’s going on.”

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She linked her arms together behind her back, then stretched until her spine popped. I tried not to stare at her chest. I didn’t need to. I had a perfectly starable chest back home.

“I’ll go in first,” I said. “Stealth’s kind of my gimmick.”

“And you’re going to leave me behind?” Manic asked. She sounded a bit peeved about it.

“Hey, if you want to come, feel free,” I said. “But I’m not big on babysitting.”