Changeling

3.3

Shinoda moved into the car without waiting for Nestra, directly in the driver seat. When she climbed in the passenger seat, his seatbelt was already fastened.

That was a breach of etiquette, and a grievous one at that. Seniority meant he would decide who drives in the pair but they were supposed to agree on it as a form of respect. He’d completely bypassed that, so Nestra gave him an unimpressed look. He misinterpreted it.

“You had them handled, Palladian-san. I was backing you as a partner.”

“So is the car gene-locked or…”

“Sonna… Oh! I apologize. Oh, sorry. Please forgive me for this display.”

Nestra chuckled at how bashful the grim detective suddenly was, all red and sputtering. It felt so weird it was a little embarrassing.

It also revealed what sort of partnership he thought they had under the veneer of politeness. That… was actually fair. He was an overqualified person twice her age while she… well, she was doing her best. And he was mostly respectful.

“It’s ok, haha, it was a distracting experience.”

“Yes. I admit, I have faced users in the past over certain allegations. It has been… difficult. Sometimes. In truth, I am impressed by your handling of the situation. Are you not concerned they will retaliate?”

“Oh, they will. Mostly, they won’t come to help us. They might also let it be known. But those are bottom feeders. Scum. You don’t want to get close to them because they stain everything they touch. Give them an inch and they’ll ask for favors, the kind that ends up with them transferred elsewhere and you transferred in front of the rat squad.”

“Is your experience with your family… helping you?”

Nestra shrugged. Of course he knew who she was.

“Yeah. And my experience as someone who thought I’d be one of them. And it doesn’t hurt that they expect me to be connected. I mean, the Palladians don’t officially support me but my parents and my aunt got a reputation. It’s protected me a few times, I suppose. Anyway, enough about them. Gleams are like bad weather. Can’t do anything about them but wait.”

“Sou ka? Very well.”

The cruiser left the brand new garage at good speed under the expert hands of Shinoda who, like quite a few people she knew, never fully trusted the car’s AI. They drove deeper into Fifteen through narrow streets and crowded alleys, most of which had been avenues and wide roads before debris and sometimes even fallen buildings cluttered them into inaccessibility. The light of early morning exposed the place mercilessly as the shithole it was. Ugly concrete structures were the best one could hope for in the brutalist cityscape of post-incursion architecture but Fifteen went a step further by being abjectly poor as well. The hab blocs stood yellowed and cracked like old teeth among an ocean of detritus piles. Shinoda expertly wove between the worst trash heaps while figures watched them cautiously, huddled around barrel fires for warmth. The mood was grim. People stepped away warily when they approached, only relaxing after they were gone. Nestra spotted at least five different armed guards though they looked more like local security than ganger muscle.

The place lacked the tattooed groups standing with affected confidence or jeering. Most of the gang signs were wiped away while crews, flying drone hives, and huge, automated machines cleared debris and the accumulated trash. In a way, Fifteen was licking its wounds but the body was far from healthy.

“We should start showing ourselves at the market and move up from there. Listen to the people,” Shinoda said.

“Hope they talk to us.”

“Some of them will if only to show the others they are not afraid. Over a thousand people. Ronins will be plenty, probably.”

“And they all want to be unequaled under the heavens?” Nestra drawled.

“Hahaha. So kamo ne. I will park over there.”

Shinoda drove under an arch into the integrated parking lot of their assigned hab block. It was a large open space under the main body where the view was only obstructed by support beams. Only carcasses of vehicles remained now, every useful part long since stripped. If people could afford a car, they wouldn’t be living here. Shinoda stopped in a relatively uncluttered space in plain view, within a short distance of the market just in case they had to leg it. Nestra hoped they wouldn’t because Shinoda couldn’t leg anything for very long. And the cruiser wasn’t very safe.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. The cruiser was pretty good, hermetically sealed and it would probably be cleaned every night at the pool. She still fully anticipated every last wheel to smell like teenager piss by early afternoon. Those who tried to break stuff with stones would waste their time and those trying to trash it or steal stuff would get a very bad experience. Nestra came out cautiously, made sure she had everything strapped and released her small flock of drones made by Stib with the convenient activation of the visor command ‘Nestraguard.exe’. A really simple prompt allowed her to assign a camera to the car, just in case someone tried to open a window with a walker warhead.

Stepping out of the shaded lot in the open was like playing a scene from an old western. The two vaqueros strode in the open air saloon while over a hundred and fifty people looked up from whatever the fuck they were doing. Nestra only hoped it wouldn’t end in ‘exit scene, pursued by lynching mob’.

The open market was large and obviously also a social hub. The scent of spices and grilling meat covered the unpleasant background stench of neglect pretty well. In fact, the market area was rather clean. Food stands were old and settled with tarps and antique folding chairs, the paint peeling off in places. Other stands sold off-brand clothes made in fabricators using custom models. Some of them showed a unique style that spoke of true effort. As for the people, they were both widely different and yet similar in some ways.

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Some of the older workers wore stained coveralls as they ate a late breakfast. Some felt more like drifters, others like artists, others were broken people hard on their luck with dejected expressions. A certain equilibrium kept the groups balanced between each other, and with an idle herd of young adults with ridiculous baggy clothes. Nestra’s instinct recognized them as a threat immediately. She would bet a Kero nut against a pistachio that they were packing heat. It was the only explanation as to why they would be caught outside wearing that.

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“What are you pigs doing here?” a short-haired dark guy asked from a stall selling tech stuff. He wore a pretty distinctive acid green ensemble that made him noticeable. Nestra recognized him from the file. He was also known for repairing and repurposing equipment.

Fate hung in the balance etc, so Nestra let Shinoda handle it. Standing here with confidence in his old-fashioned clothes, the mature detective carried a disarming, fatherly aura. Nestra wondered what wisdom he would share.

“Pig stuff, of course,” he genially replied.

A few people shook their heads, others returned to eating or grilling. There were a few low chuckles but though no rousing endorsement, it was enough for their purposes. Shinoda was in and the youth was declawed, though he didn’t realize it yet.

“Where were you fuckers a month ago,” he grumbled.

There were still a dozen people watching. Weirdly, Nestra felt like being the one to answer.

“Uh, we didn’t want to get pasted,” she helpfully replied.

The last of the tension bled out. Overhead, a squad of drones made a flyby to spew Gidung propaganda. No one gave a shit.

Shinoda walked to the nearest food stand and Nestra followed until a quick check revealed half of her drones were down. Their cameras were gray and an error message returned ‘connection jammed’. She turned to see the sneering heckler, now waving a sort of remote control with an arguably deserved shit-eating grin.

“Lost something, angmoh bitch?”

Her visor returned ‘white person’ for angmoh. Hokkien, so maybe originally from Singapore. She anticipated needing the onboard dictionary quite a bit.

Shinoda spotted the problem and he went back, which got a few glares. Nestra knew it would be easier to just let it go but her life might depend on those drones and besides, they were Stib’s gifts. And that guy was being a prick. She approached his stall while Shinoda engaged with a nice, calming sentence. The place was filled with cobbled together stuff with wires exposed. There were drones, appliances, and quite a few things that looked like defensive systems missing just the weapon. A couple of them rose when she approached and she realized they had flechette guns on them. Enough to draw blood though they wouldn’t pierce her armor.

“Nuh uh, angmoh. You don’t want to hurt your pretty lips, uh?” the seller said with a smile, then he mimicked a blowjob.

He was getting a very small crowd but most people seemed not to care much for his bullshit overall which implied they were used to it. So Nestra turned to the side and revealed a small sphere which she rotated. There was a click and a countdown appeared on the sphere’s surface.

10 9 8

The seller didn’t fail to recognize a nice standard issue police EMP charge, the kind used to wipe out drones during operations. This would destroy Nestra’s visors, her remaining drones, and that guy’s entire livelihood.

“Yo bitch, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Nice stall.”

7 6 5

“Would be a real shame.”

“You wouldn’t dare you siao girl.”

4 3 2

Nestra shrugged.

She would most definitely dare.

“Ok, stop.”

She pressed the button, leaving a red blinking 1 hanging between them.

“My partner would just like her belongings back,” Shinoda said.

“They were made by a good friend so I don’t get jumped,” Nestra agreed. “So return them or I’m wiping us both. You got three seconds.”

It took less than one to have her drones return to her control and for the seller to spread his arms around with a radiant smile.

“Heyyyyy no need to get angry lah, just playing around a little? Little hazing for you newcomers. So, we good anot?”

Nestra deactivated the charge.

“I still owe you for that dick joke.”

“Heeyyyyy come on angmoh, give Flash a break. Walao, you guys are sooo tense.”

“Please do not mind Flash, boss,” the food stand guy behind them said. “He’s just an idiot. Good guy though. Don’t buy his rice cookers.”

“It was just one time!”

With the crisis averted, Shinoda was left talking to Flash which left Nestra with a choice. She could play second fiddle in an exchange with someone who’d tried to nab her stuff. Or! She could ‘interrogate’ the other guy who happened to sell skewers of grilled meat and shiitake mushrooms drenched in chili oil with, if her nose was right, some cumin.

Obviously, they could split to cover more ground if they were just a few meters apart. The food seller was a short guy wearing an actual apron and a white hat. His nose flared, smelling a good deal with the same accuracy Nestra smelled diced garlic.

“Lay ho! Hello! Welcome to my stand. I am old Lin. Meat? My best stuff. Try one!”

Nestra grabbed the thin wood piece and chomped on the offered piece of meat. It was pork, very tender, unnaturally so. No mana but enough calories to achieve happiness.

“You like? Is my juiciest rat,” the guy said with a nice, wide, gotcha smirk.

“Oh good. And here I was afraid it might be vat-grown pig.”

“Hah! You have good tastebuds. Skewers? Four creds for meat. Two for mushrooms and one for momo bread. Crispy and nice.”

Nestra ended up with a nice spread for twenty creds, reduced from twenty-two because she was such a pretty gweilo (another term for white people, there were quite a few of those) and also because she made Flash shut up. That was apparently worth something here.

“So, why you are here Leng Lui? Racket? Please say no.”

“We’re just supposed to show ourselves and help when needed.”

“You and what army?” her cook replied with naked disbelief.

“No army unless we get jumped. I’ll let you on a secret,” she said, leaning forward.

“Really?”

“We don’t actually expect a lot of people to ask for our help.”

“Ooooh, very smart, very smart. Yes. Because you cops are useless?”

“I mean, we got to build some trust first. Anyway, I should leave. Nice food.”

Shinoda was done telling Flash he was impressive for breaking decent encryption that fast. The young asshole was positively preening. The two strangers in a semi-hostile land regrouped and moved on.

The trip through the market remained uneventful. Most people were not quite as welcoming as old Lin had been but they provided service, most of the time.

“That smells quite nice,” Nestra told a lady selling naan she stuck to the inside of a bell-shaped oven.

“Yeah but smelling is all you’ll do. I don’t do business with pigs,” the lady replied with a calm expression that said the only way Nestra would taste it would be theft and battery. Nestra shrugged. Not a surprise.

Except for that one incident, they were mostly just tolerated as they moved through a crowd that gave them a wide berth. Only the most confident people asked them questions.

“So you guys think you’re here to stay?”

“Are you going to try and tax us?”

“What are you going to do about trash collection?”

“When’s the hospital coming? We were told there would be one?”

Obviously no one trusted them farther than they believed they could throw them but at least there were no overt shows of hostility, and they reached the end unmolested. Shinoda pointed to a set of wide stairs and the long trek up began. Long, because Shinoda was taking his time since he could not afford to run out of breath. And also because the place was a maze.

What reports failed to say was that many of the hab blocks’ corridors were obstructed by very deliberate blockades, not piles of trash but welded bars, corrugated steel amalgams and, in one case, an actual wall made of concrete blocks cemented in place with surprising professionalism. Some of the passages ended with locked doors and others with concerned guards who were more than eager to point the way up.

“There are elevators but they are limited to the manufacturing levels. They have jury-rigged security access. We will not take this path very often,” Shinoda explained as a way of apology though Nestra didn’t care.

The place was messy and fascinating and also some of the graffitis were frankly impressive. The ones without dicks, that is.

“They’ll let us use them?”

“I will ask politely. Please do not override anything unless there is an emergency.”

“Sure,” Nestra replied. “Not that I’d know how to do it. That’s Stibs’ domain.”

“The friend who gave you the drones?”

“Yes.”

“Her setup is very impressive. We are lucky she refused to join a corporation. Are they deployed now?”

“All the time, yeah.”

They reached a long corridor overlooking the central courtyard. Some of the railing was missing. Shinoda slowed down.

“So, are they telling you what I suspect?” the detective asked.

“Five of them. One’s running ahead to corner us.”

“The baggy clothes groups that followed us at the market?”

“Yes. I’m seeing weapons.”

“I wish to talk to them.”

“Sure.”