Slumrat Rising

“Mr. De’Ponte! Sweet ride, that new?” The Green Tiger boss ran over to greet the “big shot.”

“Just out of the shop! The stock interior was trash. Daddy needs his upgrades.” De’Ponte’s smile was bleach white, with a blue tint to his mirrored sunglasses. A crisp white shirt tucked into sharply creased slacks. The tattoo of a one-legged crane seemed to shimmer and move on the side of his neck, almost flying out of his collar. The red blaze on the top of the bird’s head looked like an actual strip of fire.

Truth desperately tried to remember what he knew about gang tattoos. There was a whole hidden language there. Apparently, you could read someone’s resume just by looking at them in the bath, including career goals, mentors, and professional certifications. He looked at the bird a moment longer, wracked his brains, and concluded that he had no goddamn idea what, if anything, it symbolized other than De’Ponte’s membership in the One-Legged Bird Ring.

It had been a while, and even when he was a bodyguard, he hadn’t cared that much. He worked for Starbrite. Petty gangsters were beneath him. Besides, they were smart enough not to push. His clients made them a lot of money, after all.

“She’s a beauty. A real beauty. What kind of leather is that?”

De’Ponte giggled, his smile suddenly going a bit sickly. “Custom. Not unique, but a very special, very supple set of hides stitched by some very in-demand experts. Hundreds of hours of massaging the best oils and conditioners into the skins. Is that the shipment?”

“Yes. All accounted for.”

“Great. Now, just so I can tell the Old Man I checked-” De’Ponte flicked a little talisman over the piled-up drugs. It seemed to recognize them as it fixed itself directly above them and started showering them in blue-green flecks of light. After a few moments, the packages also started glowing. Mostly blue, but with a tinge of green. DePonte tisk’ed.

“I swear, Hoxante is cutting their shit more and more. Used to be you could get the pure, you know? Now? Got to be ten percent baby laxatives, and who knows what else they slipped in that can spoof the talisman.”

De’Ponte’s perpetual grin turned feral. “Glad I didn’t pay for it.”

“That does help.” The Green Tiger boss agreed. “Will this all fit in your trunk, or did you want to get it picked up in another vehicle?”

“Oh, Hell no! That’s not going anywhere near my sweet baby. Load ‘em back in the wagon and follow me. I got a spot outside of town. You guys can unload there.”

“You have a spot just out of town?” Boss Tiger tried to sound casual about it, fooling no one, including De’Ponte.

“Easy, easy! Pick up and drop off only. We are shifting locations all the time these days. Spot checks on the road, checkpoints all over, actually. And not just the cops. The situation is… changeable. Things that have been settled for years coming up again. Lotta old debts being collected, and nobody’s offering credit for nothing. Speaking of.”

De’Ponte reached into the passenger seat and pulled out a brick of wen. He tossed it to Tiger Boss, who grinned. Then frowned.

“And a little extra for our two delivery boys. Lukka and Del, right?” The mirrored shades didn’t show his eyes, and the grin was fixed, rigid, as he stared at the two.

“Yes, Mr. De’Ponte.” Lukka nodded. It was a cool day, but Lukka had popped a sudden sweat.

“You made good time. No detours, no delays, why, other than testing a couple of bags, these are completely untouched.”

“That. That was our job, Mr. De’Ponte.”

“Yes. It was. And now you are being rewarded. See? It’s good to be obedient.” De’Ponte tossed them a machete each. They looked thankful but confused. De’Ponte looked back over to Boss Tiger.

“While these guys are handling the delivery, you have a new line of business to set up.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“You are all probably wondering what’s going to happen with the Denizens at the end of the month. Especially subtype criminal.” He slowly shook his head, tsking in disappointment. “What a shame you didn’t better yourselves when you had the chance. Oh well. Now you have a new opportunity.

“You see, Denizens are not reliable enough to have bank accounts and therefore not reliable enough to handle credits directly, especially given the global emergency. So in a week or so, an announcement will be made. The Government loves all its people, even the Denizens. They love you so much they are going to pay your rent and buy your food. Even pay for your medicine. Really, they will!”

Nobody was smiling. The smarter ones were trying to hide how scared they were.

“Of course, in a crisis, we all have to work together, and “we” simply cannot afford any slackers or parasites. So, naturally, these incredible benefits come with work requirements. Approved citizens will be allowed to post jobs, Denizens take the jobs, and should the work meet the standard required, you will get a nice little charm stamped on your arm. So many stamps, your rent is covered for the week. So many stamps- you are allowed so many grams of millet or vegetables. All very fair and transparent. You can just check your arm and see how you are doing. So much easier and safer than counting wen, right?”

The gangsters got it. They were looking sick.

“Now, obviously, there is the potential for abuse here. What if some poor, innocent Citizen was kidnapped by those lazy Denizens and forced to give out unlimited stamps? The whole system would collapse, dooming us all. Therefore, only people with a proven level of strength will be permitted to approve stamps. Level Three and up. High Citizen and up. Magistrates and Police Captains and up. C-Tier and up. You can guess the rest. And since those people can’t be bothered to manage every little problem, they are allowed to delegate to trusted third parties with a proven ability to protect themselves.”

Boss Tiger suddenly smiled.

“See. You get it. By AMAZING coincidence, the One Legged Bird Ring has a surprising number of High Citizens and even a few powerhouses of our own. We have very… productive… relationships with certain corpo types. Contacts mean contracts. And since we certainly aren’t paying any of our people to jerk off in this nameless shithole, we are going to subcontract.”

“Whatever you need. Say the word, and it’s done.” Bos Tiger cracked his knuckles. Del and Lukka looked down at the machetes in their hands. Looking a little sick and a little thoughtful.

Truth just looked grim.

____________________________________________

They were speeding through the countryside in De’Ponte’s little chariot, wind whipping through their hair. De’Ponte didn’t know he had a passenger, or that he had been demoted to driver, but such is life when you have been conscripted into a revolutionary army. Truth stroked the leather of the seat. It really was kid-glove soft and supple. Maybe custom was the way to go. He had never owned a chariot before. Actually the only vehicle he ever owned was his two-wheeler, and even that was on the basis of possession being ten-tenths of the law in the Free State.

There was a little mirror of polished stone on the dash, displaying the speed of the chariot and pointing to the destination. He hadn’t seen that before. Another custom feature? The mirror suddenly flashed green five times.

“Shit.” De’Ponte grumbled. He pulled over to the side of the road. “Just got it too. Fucksake, not even used yet.” De’Ponte hopped out of the chariot and walked around to the tiny boot. He popped it open. Truth followed, curious.

There was a young woman inside. Naked, handcuffed, gagged by a spell. “Sorry girl, inspection up ahead, so we don’t get to play. Well, I’m sure you will make some local shitckicker farmers very happy. Briefly.”

De’Ponte must have activated a spell, because bright sparks of light appeared at her temples and she started convulsing. A long moment, then it stopped. Truth could see it plain- her mind was gone. Destroyed.

“At least Level Zero’s are cheap.” De’Ponte hauled the comatose woman from the trunk and lifted her over his shoulder. He looked around, found a convenient stretch of ditch covered by a bush, and dumped her. He snapped a charm which quickly enveloped her in an orange light, then another over his trunk. Truth recognized them- tools to remove your traces.

“I hate not getting to play with my toys.” De’Ponte grumbled. He got back in the chariot, slamming the door behind him. He peeled off in a cloud of sulfurous smoke. Truth stayed behind.

Truth looked over at the young woman. There was a trickle of blood coming out the girl’s ears. Her eyes were bloodshot, the little vessels ruptured. She stared unblinking up into the steel blue sky. Unresponsive. Not noticing or caring about the insects crawling over her eyes. She was breathing, he could see that. But that was pretty much all she was. Breathing meat. Whoever she had been was killed in the boot of a gangster’s custom chariot. He didn’t even take the manacles off before he dumped her.

He turned up the road and started jogging along behind De’Ponte. He would catch up soon enough, but wanted some flexibility about how he was going to approach this checkpoint. Wouldn’t do to get his first revolutionary martyr caught so soon.

Truth was running the Scales as hard as he could, trying to be as unnoticeable as possible. Checkpoint could mean almost anything, after all, so… Truth came to a dead halt as he rounded a corner. Two big Army wagons had set up, blocking a lane each. You could sort of zig zag between them. Slowly. There were conscripts on either side, running talismans over the carriages passing through. Others directed traffic, or manned the heavy needlers covering the road.

Truth looked up. He couldn’t see them, but he knew damn well there would be spell-birds circling waaaay up, but with enchantments that could read your fingerprints if you waved at a cloud. Everything they saw would route into a control center- first in one of the wagons and, second, copied to a home base for review.

They should have no hope of spotting him. Never mind the Level One conscripts doing their national service. He could steal their underpants and they wouldn’t notice. But something in this checkpoint was making him nervous.

He pushed some extra energy into the foresight portion of Incisive and got ready to sprint through the checkpoint. Sudden alarm flared hard. That decision would be far to dangerous. Truth dropped it at once, and opted for a higher degree of stealth. He dropped into the ditch next to the road, and started crawling.

It was only when he got within a hundred meters of the trucks that he spotted them. Like him, they blended unnaturally well. Human shaped. He would have thought them human, but their bodies were too uniform, too androgyne. Sexless things dipped in some latex coating, then again in some potion or enchantment that gave them camouflage.

At some point they must have been something like a human, or perhaps a sort of golem. Where the eyes should have been were hollow bowls. The holes in their heads faintly glowed with enchantments. He could see four of the watchers on this side of the checkpoint. He didn’t know what they were, or what they were seeing. For all that, he could almost feel the sweep of their eyes as they observed the checkpoint. Seeing beyond what humans could.

Truth spent a “fun” forty minutes carefully skirting the checkpoint. He had to run like hell to catch up with De’Ponte before the little monster reached the city. It was unfair. The “people” were less than ghosts. Only the monsters were real.

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