Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (2 page)

Moderately satisfied with my work, I pulled the blue comforter over his body before slowly closing his open eyes with my gloved fingers.

Chapter Two

I woke up to a throbbing pain in my left arm. I knew what that meant, but it seemed too surreal. I sat up in bed. Everything appeared to be the same, felt the same—the same sweat that was always there dripped down the back of my neck. I felt sick to my stomach, and not just because of the drugs I’d taken the evening prior.

My arm ached, so I grabbed it and squeezed the flesh tight, unable to help myself or alleviate the pain buried deep in the muscle tissue. I was ready and unprepared at the same time. I’d been waiting for so long to feel that pain, and when it had finally come, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself next.

Shaking my head, I got out of bed, walked over to the far corner of my room, and punched one of the wooden floorboards with my bare hands. It hurt, and splinters peeled back the skin on my fingers, but it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as my arm. Underneath the broken floorboard was a tiny box that I hastily retrieved and unlocked. Inside was a beeper with a ten-digit number on the display. Beepers were clever because no one ever thought to track them anymore; they were practically relics. Taking it with me, I made my way over to the giant tablet embedded in my bedroom wall. I entered a prompt, unlocked the screen, placed my left hand on it to scan my palm for recognition, and then entered the ten-digit number on the beeper when asked.

J, Report in.

Take nothing.

Simple enough. There wasn’t anything worth taking from this place anyway, except maybe the Corx, but I knew that wouldn’t go over well where I was headed.

The tablet’s screen turned black, and I knew it was dead—completely wiped. At least it saved me the trouble. Dressing quickly, I threw on a pair of socks, blue jeans, a long-sleeve green shirt, and my favorite black jacket. After lacing up my boots, I stood in my living room, taking in the place that I’d called home for seven years. Seven years spent waiting to go back to the place I’d left long ago. I didn’t feel emotionally attached to any of it. I didn’t have any pets or pictures or friends I was leaving behind, except perhaps ZeZe.

ZeZe had been the closest thing I’d had to a friend these past few years, and that wasn’t saying much. She was my employer, a fellow hired hand who provided me with enough jobs to keep me working and keep me fed. A moment of regret ran through me for leaving her. She’d be able to find others to do her work, but none who were as good as me, and we both knew it.

I didn’t think they’d want me to call her and tell her I was leaving, and I knew if I told her where I was headed, she’d be killed. Still, I couldn’t leave her completely unaware. After all, she might assume me dead and mourn my pathetic life. Though that wasn’t likely.

Retrieving the earpiece from the side table next to my bed, I shoved it into my ear and pressed the side button.

“Call ZeZe,” I said, and then it began to dial.

“You’re eager this morning,” she answered quickly. I doubted she’d been asleep, even at such an early hour. She hardly ever slept. Her job was her life, and her job required a lot of her time.

“I’m going to be unavailable,” I told her.

“For how long?”

“Likely indefinitely.”

“Well, you’ll be difficult to replace.”

“I know.”

“But I take it you really don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Not at all,” I said, smiling a little. She could read things extremely well. Even though I’d never mentioned anything of the sort to ZeZe, I imagined she had a relatively good idea of what kind of person I was and who I really worked for.

“See you around, J,” she said before hanging up.

I took the earpiece out and tossed it on the ground.

Unable to help myself, I spared one last glance at the Corx on the living room table. It likely wouldn’t be out of my system by the time I got there, and I knew they’d be testing me. Maybe they wouldn’t care. They’d been keeping tabs on me over the years; they had to know that I liked to use a few recreational drugs.

My fingers twitched. Without noticing it, I’d crept closer and closer to the table. I kept staring at the little pink tabs lying flat on the surface. They were calling to me, beckoning to me. It would be a waste to leave them here for some druggie to wander in and take. Without another thought, I took a tab and popped it into my mouth and washed it down with the stale water that I’d left sitting on the table.

I allowed myself one last look at the apartment. It was always hot and muggy, the musty air drifting in from the outside world and mingling in my apartment, creating a washed-out sepia look. It was a modest, decent living space. Clean, stark, detached. Nothing fancy, everything basic and plain, which worked just fine for me. There wasn’t a single possession I had that I’d miss.

I left my apartment and shut the door behind me. I didn’t lock it or worry about my fingerprints or DNA all over everything. While I’d been trained to leave virtually no footprint in the places I’d been, if I did, it wouldn’t matter. My prints and DNA weren’t in any data bank.

Walking was the best option, even though I knew it would take me around two hours to get there without running and drawing attention to myself. I didn’t own a car; cars had to be registered to a name, and the fewer things I had my name on, fake or not, the better. So I trekked down the busy streets, lights glowing everywhere, trying to distract people from the filth they lived in. I hoped it worked for them.

It was raining, as always, but still hot enough to make me sweat a little as it beat down on my skin. The city always felt alive and dead at the same time, busy with people, but gritty and cold in an unfamiliar way. I’d seen what the sun looked like before, in movies or some old articles you could find online. I’d even seen pictures and images of grass and trees and flowers and ocean. I’d had a good education, which allowed me to know enough about our ancient society, the culture, and the agriculture that had been here before us. I’d learned about peoples and civilizations that were so different from ours, it could make a grown man’s head spin. Still, it was hard to imagine giant things like oak trees being buried deep within the soil that the pavement currently covered.

No one gave me a second look as I walked down the street and headed toward my destination. Everyone was too absorbed in their own sad lives. I kept my hands in the pockets of my jacket, my eyes down but paying close attention to the people around me. My shoulders touched other people’s as we all wandered along the streets. No one had anywhere to be. Everything moved slowly.

I headed to an old cyber café—a place for people to hook into virtual reality and forget their lives for a few hours. It was called CyberExtremeCafe, and the bright, glowing sign on the front of the building never let anyone forget it. It wasn’t only the rich who could tune in to virtual reality, but it definitely wasn’t in the budget for the poor. There was a microchip that had to be embedded into the user’s brain, relatively painlessly, or so I hear, and another, bigger chip placed into the right shoulder. The cables hooked in through the users’ shoulders, and they would sit slumped in chairs for hours, digital goggles over their eyes, living in another reality for a while. Another existence. When thinking of it as a different universe altogether, it really didn’t seem so bad. I’d considered trying it from time to time, but being completely out of commission for that amount of time caused me enough anxiety to disregard the thought. Still, I understood the allure of a different life. Maybe even a better one.

The cyber café wasn’t where I needed to go. What was beneath the building however, would really raise a few eyebrows if anyone knew it was there.

Walking in through the side door, everything was just like it had been the last time I’d seen it seven years ago. It was small, with digital signs hung horizontally along the walls, a main operations captain standing at the little kiosk in the center, and multiple chairs scattered about the room, each with its own box of wires and cables nestled right in next to the chair. It was cleaner than I remembered, with more neon signs and billboards lining the walls below the screens.

The kid behind the kiosk desk gazed up at me and then immediately darted his eyes back down to his tablet. The staff here was paid well to keep their mouths shut and their eyes down. That and probably threatened with their lives. I walked to the back door and down the long, narrow hallway. Third door on the left. I opened it and went down a small flight of stairs. There was a giant metal door at the bottom of the staircase that reminded me of those bank vault doors I’d seen in old films from back when money was actually made of paper and coin.

Next to the door was a small screen. I placed my palm on the screen and then used the eye scanner, speech scanner, and, last, a long needle operated by a machine for a blood test. I stood there and waited for the door to open, trying not to let my leg twitch. The singular Corx pill hadn’t really done enough to take me to my happy place or to see ghosts of lovers past, but it had taken the edges off all the sharp corners. I probably looked impatient to the cameramen watching me, but I kept telling myself not to be. This wasn’t unfamiliar to me, so there was no reason to rush. I didn’t have a single choice of my own to make past this point. Not that I had any before.

The door clanked opened and I stepped forward. The halls were the same, light gray walls with too much overhead lighting. A man dressed in a suit eyed me over once and then escorted me down the hallway to one of the other rooms. I noticed he was carrying a gun, even though that wasn’t standard issue inside the facility. I speculated that he brought it along with him as a safety precaution, but I shrugged it off. As if he actually stood a chance against me.

He unlocked the door with the scanner implanted in his wrist and then ushered me inside. The room was small and bright with a little red light above the adjoining door. I removed all my clothing and waited for the light to turn green. Immediately after it had, I proceeded through. Another thing I’d always remember about this place—the numerous doors. I wasn’t sure if it was a security measure or for privacy. Likely both.

The tile floor was icy on my feet, but I stood perfectly still and closed my eyes. The water and whatever disinfectant they’d laced it with sprayed over my naked body, sending a chill up my spine. It smelled like chemicals and caused my skin to tingle. I can’t say it made me feel any cleaner than I had been before, just a little more raw.

When the spray stopped, another door opened and two women came in. One handed me a towel and the other set a case down on a metal table in the corner. I dried off as best I could before they each reached out to me with full syringes. I held still while being poked and prodded and injected everywhere from my neck to my hip to my ass.

When they were done, one of the women took a thin pair of pants from the underside of the metal table and handed them to me. They were white and fairly see-through, not that I was modest. They were the type of disposable clothing people used to be given at hospitals and treatment centers. I slipped them on and made my way through the other side of the room. Another small hallway, darker than the previous. There were around twenty doors with lights about the frames—all red except for one. The one lit in green was for me. It clinked and locked behind me. The room couldn’t have been bigger than the size of most standard washrooms. Worse than a prison cell—smaller and darker without natural light. There was a toilet in the corner and a thin cot on the floor. I was in one of the holding rooms.

A metallic voice came over the intercom. “You know why you’re here—in this room specifically?”

I wanted to play dumb, but I was smarter than that. “Yes.”

“We may not have had to go through such extensive precautions if you hadn’t developed a drug problem or kept the company you did.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“Is your drug addiction significant enough to make you compromised?”

“No.” I hoped that wasn’t a lie.

Then everything was quiet and stayed that way. I sighed.

The room had two glass windows I knew to be two-way mirrors. They could have stuck around to observe me, or they could’ve left. I didn’t care either way. I sat down on the cold ground, wearing nothing but the thin pair of pants they’d gifted me, and waited. That was just how things worked when you were a soldier for ENAD.

ENAD was a division of the state that was implemented some sixty years ago. ENAD stood for Enforced Necessary Arms Division, and that’s exactly who and what we were. We were the biggest, the best, and everything we could do was over the top. I’d been injected with more microbots and gene-altering formulas than I could remember, all to make me the perfect soldier. And I wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but I was closer than a lot of the people out there sleeping on the streets.

The state treated us like dogs, which we were. We were rottweilers, starved and half-deranged, waiting for someone to let us off our leashes. Our division was classified, meaning the public didn’t know we existed. I was never sure why since I didn’t think they’d give a shit if we were around doing the state’s dirty work or not. And everything that the state wanted us to do, we did without complaint. They were the hotshots—the big dogs in town. Basically just a bunch of rich politicians and white-collar workers sitting around desks all day, patting each other on the back. Sometimes other soldiers complained about our standing within the state, like they mistreated us. Truth be told, I didn’t give a shit if there were richer, more powerful higher-ups sitting around getting lap dances from beautiful men and women. I only cared that I had a place to sleep and food to eat.

I knew I was a dog to them, but at least I felt like a pet.

The state sent us on frequent missions, doing whatever was voted as necessary for the well-being of the city. I wasn’t any good at politics, and I doubted many of the other soldiers were either, so we didn’t give a second thought to the missions we were sent on, not that ENAD gave us any of the details. The state gave our superiors our missions, and we followed through, for the betterment of the people.