I

Initiation

It was months of research and work before she was ready. She got their attention by using a school console to send a little program she'd developed herself over to the boss's omni-tool. Fritzed all Lopez's tech out, then popped up with a little animation of her laughing and waving, with a simple text message scrolling across the holo-display over and over again: "Hi. I'm Beth. Can I come play?"

She'd chosen the Tenth Street Reds. They were established enough that they didn't feel the need to prove themselves in the gang wars so much but not so established all the new gangs wanted to take them on to get respect and territory. Took men and women and treated them both the same, or so the word was. They had their fingers in a little bit of everything without monopolizing any one trade. Drugs; the nastier, illegal gambling; skycar theft and salvaging; hacking; personal protection for some of the baddies that could afford it. Everything but people. The Reds didn't deal in human trafficking or prostitution of any kind, and the boss, Tony Lopez, came down with all the power he had to bear on any Red that broke that rule.

But the main reason Beth had decided to get the Tenth Street Reds to take her on, the number one reason, was that on the survey of ex-bangers she'd run with hearsay and careful, careful interviews, along with all the other stuff she'd been doing, she'd run into more Reds that had retired out of the gang without any trouble than from any of the others. Her chances of getting out after she'd got in were better with the Tenth Street Reds than they were with the Comets or any of the others.

Two days after she'd sent the program, she caught them following her from the intermediate. There were just two at first. Beth looked directly back at one of them, grinned, winked, and kept going, stomach fluttering with nerves. One of them made a call, and then there were three, then five, then eight. Beth walked into a back alley, took up her stance, and waited.

Lopez was a stocky man in his early thirties with a sly, deceptive, dimpled smile and thick, curling, black hair. He had a gun in the back of his waistband and wore a leather jacket, but otherwise he didn't look at all like a banger and neither did his crew, which was probably, Beth reasoned, why his gang mostly flew under the radar of the cops. The men and women with him, hard-faced and silent, ranging in age from a kid just a couple years older than Beth to a man that looked to be in his forties, and dressed to allow freedom of movement, fanned out to circle Beth while Lopez stood opposite. His omni-tool still flickered with Beth's program, and Beth allowed herself to smile.

"Beth, huh?" he asked. Straight to the point. Beth could handle that.

"Beth Shepard," she replied. Her mouth was dry.

"Beth Shepard. Little Beth. You gonna tell me what the hell you've done to my omni-tool?"

"No," Beth said, more bravely than she felt. "But I'll shut it down for you, and if you want, I'll do it again for you. To someone else. Or I could do something else. Hack somebody's account, maybe, or shut down somebody's security. Or build up your security so nobody can hack it."

Lopez gave her the once-over. "What are you? Nine?" he scoffed.

Beth bristled. "Twelve. They'll never see me coming. You didn't. And none of your people did, either, or could stop me, or you wouldn't be here, would you?"

"This isn't a game, little girl," Lopez said. "Go back to your parents."

"Don't have any. Nothing holding me back."

"Yeah, 'cept a fart would blow you away," snorted the youngest of the ones Lopez had brought with him, a tall, red-headed girl of about sixteen with a scar on her cheek. "Lopez, she's just a stupid kid. Forget her. Grab another omni-tool off the ones we lifted last week."

"Kid, yes, but hardly a stupid one, I think," Lopez murmured. "Still," he said. "Stace is right. Go home, Little Beth."

Lopez stood aside and extended his arm, offering her a way out of the alley, but Beth didn't move. "You need me," she said, folding her arms across her chest.

Lopez looked at her for a long moment, and looked around at the guys he'd brought. Some of them looked impressed, but mostly, they looked doubtful. Some, like Stace, looked annoyed. Lopez shook his head then. "I warned you," he said, and signaled the crew. "Teach her a lesson."

Beth used everything she'd ever learned in years of schoolyard fistfights against groups older and bigger than she was, and it wasn't enough. There were seven of them, all full grown and experienced, and she was still little, like they said, and all on her own. She kicked and clawed and punched and bit, but the fists were too big, too heavy. She staggered under the blows, fell. The blows slackened off at once. The idea was to punish her for wasting their time and trashing Lopez's omni-tool, not kill her. Beth staggered back to her feet and put her fists back up before they'd had a chance to back off.

"That all you got?" she gasped, tasting blood from her nose and hearing the ringing in her ears. Her knuckles were red, and she thought maybe a couple of her ribs were broken.

Three of them hesitated, stood back. Stace was one. The other four came at her again. Again Beth fought them, battling just not to drown in pain, just to keep standing. Her arms went every which way, but didn't stave off the blows, like rain. She cried out as one twisted her arm and dislocated her shoulder. She fell to her knees.

Again Lopez's Reds fell back. A few feet away Beth saw Lopez watching her. She climbed to her feet again. "Just stay down, kid!" Stace yelled. "Stay down!"

"I . . . I could . . . I could do this all day," Beth ground out from between clenched teeth.

Now only one of them came, a big, towheaded man with dirty teeth and an ugly smile. He, alone of them, was enjoying this. He came down with the edge of his hand on Beth's dislocated shoulder, and Beth screamed. He aimed another punch right at her face, but Lopez whistled sharply, and Beth's attacker held, then stepped back.

"Enough." Lopez walked forward again, touched Beth's face gently, assessing the damage. Beth winced. "You got guts, Little Beth. I'll give you that."

"Well, thanks," Beth managed through a bloody mouth. Her tongue was bleeding more than her split lip, from biting it to keep off the tears. "Out of gratitude for that, I'll even—ah!"

She cried out again as Lopez shoved her arm back into its socket without warning.

"I'll even give your people their stuff back."

"What . . . ?" Lopez stared at her in consternation.

Beth took a breath, and reached into her pockets, and produced the credits, IDs, and keys she'd managed to lift off the crew in the struggle. Learning to pick pockets, and under duress, had taken Beth even longer than developing the omni-tool hack and researching the local gangs.

Lopez looked, and stared. Then he laughed. "Guys, take a look at this." He took the stuff from Beth and passed it around. There were murmurs of disbelief, shock, approval.

"Son of a bitch!"

"While she was . . . Hah!"

"She got you, too, Sam?"

Lopez shook his head. "Well, Little Beth. Welcome to the Reds."

Six of the seven murmured assent. All except that last guy, the big guy. He stared coldly down at Beth as the others welcomed her with varying degrees of enthusiasm or disbelief.

And Stace said her welcome reluctantly, and as the crew dispersed, after Lopez gave her instructions to base and orders to show up in a few days once she'd healed up, she stuck around. "I've got a sister your age," she remarked, leaning up against the brick wall of the alley, arms folded. "If she ever set foot near the bangers, I'd kill her. I'm here so she doesn't have to be. Kid, why didn't you just stay down?"

"Can't," Beth said through a swollen jaw getting worse every second. "I don't have a sister."

Stace sighed. "Well, we can certainly use you. Old Lukas is about twenty years out of date with tech. You'll meet him later, I guess. Come with me. I'm pretty sure Jim broke some of your ribs with one of those hits. I heard the crack. Let's get you to the clinic." She stood, jerked her head for Beth to follow.

"No!" Beth cried, much more vehemently than she intended. Stace stepped back, surprised, then looked down at Beth with narrowed eyes. Beth breathed, then spoke again, making an effort to keep calm this time. "No. I'll take some meds at the home. I wouldn't be able to move if one had pierced something important, and I've had broken ribs before. I know what to do."

"Some reason you don't want to go to the clinic?" Stace asked.

"I . . . I don't like doctors," Beth lied. The nearest clinic was East Sixteenth. She didn't want to risk running into Joan Redding the night her Shepard had joined a gang.

A/N: Welcome to Part Two of The Disaster Zone! If you're here from Part One, Nobody's Child, welcome! If you were a fan of the original fic, welcome back! If you're just now discovering me, you're welcome too. Head on over to my profile and check out Part One to read about Beth Shepard's early childhood.