From his perch on the third floor fire escape, Miljan Nedić could just pick out the sound of the second-past-noon siren. It wafted through the thick summer air that lolled about above City 17's rooftops, a moody wail pilfered from an old world police car. It was humid even at this height, where the sound carried clearest. It was so oppressively muggy, in fact, that Miljan was surprised it did not rain where the sky was punctured by the gabled turrets, ornate dormers and tilting television antennae. The siren's message (that it was now two soundings, or 288 minutes, past noon, as per base-ten Combine timekeeping) drifted off eastwards, to reverberate from the rank of towering apartment blocks that stood near the port facilities, crumbling. As usual, the gigantic speaker nestled somewhere in the gleaming ribs of the citadel let out a metallic squeal as it was retracted.
Miljan pulled the concealing trash bag tighter about himself and peered through the metal grating into the dusty street below. Like clockwork (and it was clockwork), his prey emerged from the an alleyway just as the siren died away. The scanner let out a faint noise like an electronic pigeon and began to float up from street-level towards Miljan's platform. The changing of the guard had sounded, and its patrol for that 144 minute hour was over.
Just as it had on three previous occasions, the whirring drone passed above the fire escape and headed west over the red tile roof, just skimming the surface of the terracotta. Miljan threw off his plastic cloak and followed the instant the camera was pointed away, clambering up by the drainpipe with practiced ease. He had thirteen paces to catch up and make the kill, or else the unwitting chase would dive down into the tree-choked avenue on the far side of the building and make it back to its home power station. Miljan's sandals made soft rustling sounds on the treacherous surface as he closed the gap. Two more meters, and he would pick the right moment and to his broken socket wrench into the scanner's sparkling turbine, slam its lens into the clay, and cover it with the trash bag. Then Iskander would come up through the studio skylight and deliver the coup de grâce with the ice pick.
Wait, where the hell was Iskander? He should be watching from the—
—a crow swooped overhead, pursued by a trio of harrying sparrows. Their raucous calls mingled to create an unpleasant, novel sound, and a curious circuit flickered to life in the scanner's metal cranium. Brand new off the line and unused to the ways of the world, it pirouetted on its axis to identify this intriguing, possibly subversive sound, only to discover a large, ill-fed man wearing an automechanic's jumpsuit crouching in its line of sight. Miljan dropped, or rather flung, the wrench.
"Idi u pićku mat—"
Click.
The LED flashbulb left him perfectly blind for a number of seconds, in which he lost his footing and the wrench clattered into the gutter. When the specks and shadows cleared from his vision, the scanner was gone.
"Iskander? Iskander! Get up here, kurac!"
Fiberglass shrieked in protest and moments later an olive-skinned man in a bleached shirt appeared on the roof, blinking in the afternoon sun.
"There you are, Miljan. And kurac yourself. You missed it."
"Missed it? So what if I did, you Turkish fairy? You didn't even bring the spike to do for it with."
The pair spoke in uneasy English, running roughshod over consonants to communicate at a greater pace.
"I'm not a Turk—anyhow, I heard you botch the capture from down below. Not surprised."
"You are a Turk. I know Turks, and you're damn well one today. 'Not surprised,' moy kurac..."
Iskander squatted by the edge of the roof and retrieved the wrench from the compost-filled gutter.
"Ey... let's get off his roof. What if the picture it snapped of you looks aggressive, and they review it?"
"Then," Miljan rose stiffly, "we're dead. But I don't I think I scared the shiny bugger."
"Good. Because they'd stalker me in a second. I'm not so old as you, and I don't smoke those awful fags."
"Feh! Five whole years younger."
"Five years is a long time in this town. You're practically my Serbian grandfather."
"Fine. You're a snotty little houndeye whelp. Give me the wrench so to crack you over the head with."
Iskander swung the wrench onto his shoulder and laughed.
"We just established that you can't hit anything with it, remember?"
"Kurac."
Miljan dropped down onto the concrete roof of the adjacent building and followed his friend through a shattered skylight. The room below was black as pitch to his sun-dazzled eyes.
"But I'm not surprised you missed the scanner," Iskander said from somewhere in the darkness. "They're tricky bastards. What are we up to now, eight?"
"Just seven. Seven times getting flashed and ending up with nothing but a souvenir photo. That's a lot of documentation. I feel like a goddamn... a goddamn..."
"Lingerie model. Not to worry, though. We'll catch one tomorrow."
"They don't patrol here tomorrow. We should go over to the cafe on the Prospekt; they poke around inside the deck there sometimes. Only problem, Darina Fucking Lechkova won't let us in without we bring her those nails we owe her. I wouldn't mind exposing that bitch's hideout to Civil Protection and tunneling in after they've sealed it up. Nice water main connection there."
The apartment about them was becoming visible. Four windows were boarded up, admitting thin rays of light that shone on the mixed glass shards and samizdat pamphlets decorating the floor. Iskander stooped and hefted his belongings—a Red Army satchel and a Civil Protection stun baton.
"Nah, the patrol schedules by the train station get all wonky in the afternoon, and I swear I smelled bullsquid eggs in the basement last time we were over there. I've got things to do with the garden, and you could get on Caban's good side by helping him seal his fermenting jars."
Miljan licked his lips.
"How much water is left in the jug, though?"
"A liter? Two liters?"
"Then I don't know about you, Iska, but I've had a thirst hangover for two days. We need to run that pump and get the rest of the water from the fire station cistern, or I'm going to give up and drink Dr. Breen's drugged piss. And then I'll really forget you aren't a Turk. We need that fucking—"
"—scanner battery to power the pump and the filtration, yes, I know." Iskander walked towards the stairs, gesturing his friend to follow. Miljan didn't move.
"Iskander. Give me the water."
"...Just drink half a liter."
"Who's measuring? Give me the jug."
Iskander paused for a moment, then tensely placed the plastic carton on the third step and continued on down the murky staircase. The second floor was stacked waist-high with boxes of rotting books, and at ground level the exits were blocked in with brick. He halted at the edge of a jagged hole cut into the tile floor and peered down. The roof of a van was just visible nine meters below in a subterranean parking garage. Miljan emerged from the dark shaft that was the staircase a moment later, wiping precious water from his beard.
"Much obliged, Iska. Listen though, we need to power up that rig, even if we don't catch a scanner today." He lowered his voice. "I think you should sap the juice from your baton, there."
Iskander turned.
"Be fucked if I'll... I'm not going to go back to trusting a damn knife if we get nabbed by the CPs." For a moment the two stared at each other, faces studiously blank.
"Anyways," he continued, "we can run the generator for power. There's other fuel besides petrol and I think the patch you put on the gasket will hold."
"Where is there other fuel?"
They both knelt by the opening and began to creep downwards, using rebars as footholds.
"The plant. ...Maybe."
"The plant?" Miljan dropped onto the roof of the van with a reverberating crash and shouted back up at the hole, "We picked that place over pretty clean, no?"
His companion's satchel came hurtling out of the darkness and landed on his fingers.
"U pićku—"
"There's—"
"...materinu!"
"...another couple of factory annexes we didn't check across the street... Miljan, get off the damn car so I can get down. There should be some charcoal down in the furnaces, and we can run that through the gasifier."
"Christ, that's a lot of work for some generator fuel..."
Iskander emerged from the ceiling, hung for a moment, then slid awkwardly down the windshield of the van.
"If you want to drink Combine water, that's your business. Just remember that Serbs don't have too many brain cells to begin with."
"Go fuck a eunuch, Mustafa. I'll meet you at the steam junction head tomorrow, since you need my wheelbarrow anyway."
"How early can you be there?"
"Three o'clock, I mean three sirens after midnight."
"Good enough. If we can get a few gallons of fuel, we'll have clean water for months. No sewage, no rat shit, no poison rain..."
"No radiation. Did Roman ever get his hair back?"
"Roman's dead."
"Jesus." Miljan ran his hands across his scalp and wiped them on his jumpsuit. "What a way to go."
"Not from the radiation."
"Not the radi—did the CPs bust up his place? That gramophone was always whining."
"He choked on a potato spud."
"You're fucking kidding me."
Iskander shook his head.
"This where you get off," he said, pointing at a manhole cover spray-painted with a yellow lambda. "I'm taking the west drains to the garden. Remember, meet you tomorrow, two before noon."
"Two before noon."
They parted ways, creeping along through the network of sewer pipes and broken-into cellars that was the City 17 underground. There, water and sunlight trickled down from ruined places where Combine perimeter walls had penetrated the pavement, the toes of black metal feet that sometimes went walking. Swarms of rats hunted after the headcrabs, while the citizens who drank municipal water lived listlessly above, subject to amnesiac drugs and the scanners' constant photography. Iskander ran his tongue over his lips as he walked, thinking of the streams that emptied into the Black Sea where the mountains came close. In his cousin's photos, at least, the water ran clean.