Three Years Later

You think a guy would realize that you kind of wanted to get paid after you broke his nose. Must have gotten some pretty faulty parts from Geneco.

The long haired thief dropped to a crouch before the business man who lay in foetal position, sobbing quietly as blood-common blood- ran down his face and on to the bathroom's grimy tiles.

"Now I aint a Repo Man; there's no 90 day delinquency policy with my goods. Pay up."

Below him, the once well-ironed shirt was now incredibly wrinkled and covered in dirt. This guy was an occasional customer–not hooked, just needed it to help with the edge sometimes. The guy had run last time, and Graverobber's usual crowd had gathered, preventing him from pursuing.

"I'm sorry," sobbed the man. "Please, I can pay you back over time. I just-I don't have the money. They pulled my name!"

Seriously? That excuse was getting old. If his clients couldn't pay-and a lot of them couldn't-then they should start considering the Graverobber's convenient alternative payment plans: do him a favor and he'd do you one.

Geneco's mandated surgeries had been going on for what, two, three years? That bitch had announced it right after she graciously took over for the Mayor, who had thrown himself out a closed window fifteen floors up. How nice of her.

So the guy's name was pulled. The Repo Men would call upon him, and if he didn't have a bar code somewhere on him denoting the presence of some Geneco part in him, they'd grab him and take to Surgi-Camp. Have the money? You'd be in and out in a day. None? Consider yourself a Surgi-Camp resident. Want a little Z before the surgery? Extra money. Graverobber guessed that Amber Sweet had realized keeping the people around meant she could rob them of everything.

"I-I heard you don't have a bar code yourself," the man mumbled. "I think I know someone that could help you. He could set you up."

Graverobber's lip curled into a grimace. "Do I look like I'm a scalpel slut? Gimme a break."

"That's-that's what I mean. I just want the Z, I'm no slut-my wife would kill me. And I've heard you won't either. This guy he-"

"Do you really think the bathroom is the place for this conversation?" The drug dealer grabbed the man by his once-pristine collar and hauled him to his feet. He all but dragged him out of the Drowned Duck and into the side alley.

Of course he had heard the rumors; who hadn't? The very idea that someone was out there, somehow hacking into Geneco's computer database and adding their own bar code numbers, was crazy. Add to that the fact that they were then tattooing these numbers on people to keep them from having to go for surgery, and you've got yourself a bunch of people basically committing very complicated suicide.

So, yes, he had been keeping his ear to the ground, trying to feel out whoever those dumbasses were, because for a few credits he'd probably get a code if it kept him from getting hauled in. He was still a convict, still wanted for the illegal dealing of street Z; the Repos were probably salivating over the idea of nabbing him. So how did this guy get a hold of one of them first?

Now in the alley, the guy's breath was coming out in puffs, visible in the winter air. 'Gritty and fetid'. What poem was that from again? He was starting to forget. It was a shame he had ever given that book away. Gut reactions like that, those little kindnesses-he had never had them before and had certainly not had them since.

Graverobber allowed his client to wipe the blood from his nose before he slammed him against a wall. Nicely, of course.

"Go on."

"Um, well, he owes me a favor or two, so I think he could set you up. He charges a couple hundred creds for the whole thing, and it's pretty clean."

"How exactly do you know him?" No fucking way he was walking into some situation where he was going to get his ass arrested. If the stupid fuck openly propositioned his client, then the Graverobber was not going to go along with this.

"Well I sell him some Z," at this the guy visibly gulped. No doubt he was doubling the price-now the thief knew full well that he could afford the Z. Served him right for all but running a fucking Z charity. "But only from time to time. He's young, and kinda scared."

"So why is he in the dirty code business?"

The man shrugged, and the back of his shirt was now even dirtier. "Dunno. He's mentioned that the group-the Resistance-they've got his back, apparently. Says that they've got him covered. Graverobber, he's the real deal. I know people that have gotten codes from him, gotten pulled, and been sent on their way. They're legit, I swear."

At some point in his career, he'd become very good at reading people. It was a necessary skill, he surmised. Figuring out who'd snitch and who'd bale was important. "Take me to him."

The business man looked relived. "So my debts are cleared?" he asked hopefully.

"Once this all checks out, yeah, you won't owe me a thing." Because he'd already lifted the sad fuck's wallet on the way out of the bathroom.

***

A slight figure was perched on the end of a bed, deeply involved in whatever book it was that she was reading. A leg was drawn up, and she was resting her chin upon her knee.

There was a peculiar coloring to her, a golden sort of tint that was strange to see in a city so polluted and blocked from the sun that powder white skin was what seemed normal. The coloring of her skin had come as a delightful surprise to the woman known as "Medi", who muttered something about 'melanin' upon first seeing her. Of course, since reentering the city, the girl had needed to cover her limbs. Skin that strange color of old paper would be too much of an oddity, too easy to notice.

She missed the sun. If someone were to ask her, that would be the first thing she would say. Then the breeze, and the sound that it made when it whipped through the trees. And this time of year? She missed the wide, white expanses of the cabin's property, blanketed in snow.

Someone was climbing the rickety stairs outside her bedroom, the old wood audibly protesting weight upon them. She tucked a slip of paper into the book and placed it back on her bedside, already standing when her door opened.

"Christ, you've got good hearing." Brian wiped at his nose. He didn't do very well in the cold, the poor guy. Even a few minutes outside would leave him teary-eyed, red-nosed, and dripping. "Just had a meeting, but I came to see if you take a walk with me. I'm headed to the shop."

"Fred's got a shit load of work for me, to be honest. And he wants to spar with me before I leave tonight on the raid. Sorry."

He was a sweet boy. But a boy, nonetheless. And she didn't have time for boys or things like that. There was a time she figured she'd end up showing him a good time one night and then moving on, but he was the sort of guy who'd continue to make cow eyes at her afterward, forever sulking. Not needed. Not wanted. Not going to happen. They could be friends, she had told him, though he had not been happy about it.

"Oh," Brian said, and ducked his head for a second. "Right. Well, I've got to get back to the shop. Business, ya know..." And off he went, tripping back down the stairs.

Ana slipped on her shoes and went to find the cleaning supplies-there were eight other people that lived in the old house, and bathrooms did not clean themselves.

There would be a supply run later, and if Fred said she was on it, well her ass would be there. She owed that guy everything. Three years ago, she would have died if that giant hulk of a man hadn't saved her. 'Anastasia', he had called her. It meant 'resurrection'.

Ana leaned over to reach into a low cabinet for a bucket and the cleaning supplies in it. As she did so, a charm on a long chain slipped out from its place tucked into her tank. It was a small, black and white cameo. When she was younger, in another life, she had worn it on a black ribbon around her neck.

After noting, she tucked it back under her shirt, and armed with cleaning supplies, went about her job.

***

Inside the vault, the large portrait of the Wallace family swung back in on itself, and from behind it a slight man appeared. He bore a great resemblance to the man in the portrait now behind him, but only as far as bone structure and general facial characteristics went. The man in the portrait seemed to have a sense of pleasantness to him, a sense of intelligence and kindness that usually meant a career in the medical field. This was not the case for the man now in the mausoleum.

His face was a great deal more aged than it needed to be. It was hard to tell his age; his face seemed that of an old man who had lived a harsh life, but there was a sharpness to his movements, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

Nathan Wallace had changed a great deal since his brush with death. Geneco had taken everything from him, but they had also saved his life. Because of this, he had continued to work for them. History had a way of repeating itself, he thought from time to time bitterly to himself.

But he was no longer simply a Repo Man-he was the head of the entire training program for the Geneco Security Team. By combining the Repo Men with the Largo family security detail, Nathan and Amber Sweet had bred a fear-inducing team that could be dispatched for a myriad of reasons. They were efficient killers, and they were very good at what they did. This was mostly due to the cold-blooded, ruthless leader of their group.

It was only the Largo family who knew his real identity. Most of the time he was only referred to as 'Sir' by the trainees and guards alike; the idea of not respecting him was out of the question. There were rumors that he occasionally gutted a trainee for not responding to his questions promptly, and that he drank the blood of his victims. Only one of them was true.

He kneeled to place flowers at the grave of his wife and his daughter, and looked up at the portrait of the three of them above. If only they had been reunited in death. Instead he was forced to live each day, a sort of torture that was too extreme even for his standards.

Amber Sweet had been good employer thus far, though she was still a slut in every way possible. The few times he had fucked her had left him feeling tainted in a great many ways. But his boss got what she wanted, regardless of cost.

He recalled the most recent time, how, with a silk sheet wrapped around her, she had sprawled out next to him in the bed, smoking a cigarette with cool indifference. The sheets were marked with drops of red; she had dragged her nails down his back with a fierce vengeance, and she had just come from surgery.

"I never told you who set that fire, did I?" she asked casually, blowing smoke out to watch idly as it spread above the bed in a gradually thinning cloud. "Some of those fucking rebels, can you believe it?"

Nathan did not answer, but the information continued to stay with him from that day on. He continued to oversea the Repo Man training, more vicious and heartless than ever.

Those Resistance members had taken the last thing that had made him human, and someday he would let whoever was responsible for his loss see the monster that they had made. And he was make them suffer.


Notes:

2084 Words

"The Bad Old Days" by Kenneth Rexroth

More poetry in later chapters, I promise!