1.1
I don't reckon I'll see him again, or I hope I won't, or both, I'm optimistic some of the time. But then next time I talk to Kisame – he's a shark guy, voluntary beta gene-freak like me – he tells me he's got in on this job and they could use someone with my skills and next thing I know I'm on this contract and it's not really a job so much as like ... a sort of all-engulfing thing that pays your bills and covers your tracks as long as you do the jobs they give you.
It's alright, really, to begin with. At first I'm just doing these little odd jobs here and there on my own that're maybe just a little bit more illegal than the stuff I usually do – well, not really more illegal, but the kind where the admin would actually care instead of your bottom-level street crap where no-one's seriously gonna give a damn if some ex-lab lowlife took out some guild boss for another guild boss, yeah? Not that I mind. Like I said, it's alright, yeah. I'm only really talking to Kisame about it, that's all the words I have about it with anyone except the briefs from the boss. It's kind of weird talking to Kisame about it, too. He's sort of .. what's the word, like ... recipient? retaining? Whatever, he won't say much. I catch him at Bright Oryx one evening, the day after I take out the reservoir down Bile. There's this other guy with him, black hair, same age as me or a bit older – either that or like two months old, 'cause for the fourteen point six seconds I see him before he leaves he's got that sort of flat, I-don't-care-about-you thing going that people like in androids and humans can't pull off that easy – but nah, he's real, my other eye's not giving me any feedback off him, no implants, nothing.
Anyway he leaves, and when I ask who he is Kisame ignores it at first and just says hi and grins – which is alarming if you've never talked to any real proper twistgenes before. He's got sharp teeth – not just his canines like the trendy mid-level night kids get done for their fifteenth birthdays. He's got all of them, yeah, they're all sharp, and serrated. Like a shark. If you really pay attention you can tell him being blue is more than just a dye job, but most people don't pay enough attention to tell things like that.
"Hey." I look over to where robot-guy who isn't a robot went, but he's gone already. "Who was that? Don't think I've seen him around before, yeah."
And then he gets all ... short with me. It's weird. All he says is "Colleague." Not as if that's all I need to know, but like that's all I get to know. He's leaning on his sword, too – he calls it Samehada. It looks like a cross between a chainsaw on trip and some kind of fucked up blue pineapple. It's bio-engineered, so it spazzes out if anyone tries to use it except him, and if you shank it, it bleeds, but I only ever saw that happen once, and the guy who did it ended up in bits you could pick up with chopsticks. The shift of his grip on the hilt now is honest to Jah kind of threatening, like he's thinking about giving up on the hufu. I mean, don't get me wrong, I know he's a box-square psycho, yeah, but I've known him long enough to think he wouldn't beef on me just for asking questions or something, but then he hasn't hardly answered any of my questions about this job. Like I said. It's always, stick at it, or, the money's good enough, right? and sometimes he looks kind of uncomfortable. So I'm starting to think maybe he's realised he's roped me into something I'd be happier not a part of, and I say so.
He just shrugs, not quite defensive because he doesn't really do that, and says, "Wait and see."
Wait and fucking see.
What the hell is that.
So I tell him, fuck this, and I tell him I'll find some other work, but privately I'm regretting it 'cause damn if the money isn't good, and it's all very well getting paid to demolish stuff but most of the time they expect you to bring your own explosives. I mix them, yeah, I wire them, I brew them, but that doesn't mean it's cheap to get all the bits I need to do that. I remember a few years back Kisame asked me why a kid with no morals and a decent hand for a knife wasn't just taking quick shank-and-run assassination crap 'cause there'd be more jobs and you only pay for a decent knife once. Even if he'd been right and specialising didn't end up getting me further, I wouldn't've cared. An explosion's something special, and if the leftbrain idiots who think it's just a means to an end want to pay me to make my art, then that's fine by me, yeah.
Never much liked hand to hand stuff anyway. I don't like getting blood in my hands, it tastes rank.
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I'm halfway home when I get the next job in my inbox – I'm in the middle of crossing the road and it pings in my head, that tiny little whirring starting up half-in half-out my skull. I'm used to that sort of thing, well used to it: if that trike hadn't been going like two hundred kph or something it wouldn't have even come near me, yeah. As it is it I only just feel the slipstream tug at my jeans. Feels good, that, that almost-got-me. I'm at the first island now. I figure I'll check the job when I get to the other side of the road, but it keeps flashing or bouncing or whatever, I dunno, it's inside my head and I never found a word for that. It's kind of distracting. Three people swear at me. One girl in the sixth lane whistles when I land on the roof of her car, but I'm off before I can get a look at her or anything.
The job's an easy one, going by the brief, but big. Noticeable. This uptown conference hall's gonna be full of some organisation that the boss thinks would be better off in pieces.
I want to say no, just to prove to Kisame what's what, but I know the hall. I used to stare at it, when I was a kid. It's one of those old neonaissance architectures that's got more statues than doors, but not, like, too much, yeah? A lot of that stuff they get it wrong or something and it just looks stupid, too many angels and dragons like some stone infection or something. But not this one. This one's kinda pretty. Worth destroying. Yeah. And the thought of being able to blow the place up and have it covered so I won't get taken away for it ... I can't say no, yeah.
It eats me for the next few weeks. I don't think about telling anyone screw it when I'm putting together the bomb – I got better things on my mind, yeah. How it's gonna look. How it's gonna sound. How the fire's gonna sear the air and just for a moment that pretty building will be art. Perfect. Couldn't turn down an opportunity like this.
All I'm thinking, when I'm standing on the spire of the Lucas Building waiting for the right time, is that next time I see Kisame, he's gonna laugh at me – but then twenty forty-seven thirteen comes and I set it off ... for a split second my other eye flashes a pulse of red through my brain, and then the next split second the bomb goes off.
There's not words for it. "Beautiful" doesn't do it justice. It never does. I can't find any words that say what that moment of fire and noise is like and how perfect it is when it tears through the stone angels, to think, I did that, and I don't think any words exist. It's art. Sublime, yeah? It's above that. Transcendent or whatever. It's over now anyway, so it doesn't matter any more.
Normally I'd stare at the aftermath for a moment, 'cause there's something like art left in the rubble and the scattering, but there's cops wailing in the distance and that YOU HAVE BEEN PRESENT NEAR THE SCENE OF A CRIME YOU MAY BE CALLED TO WITNESS message flashing in my other eye, so I leg it, and hope that the boss holds his promise straight and I don't end up in questioning.