steep embankment, emerging in what used to be the grounds of a public park. Once there had been a line of trees to screen off the area from the noise of the freeway, but all of them had been cut down for firewood, with lines of ragged stumps protruding from the yellowing, piebald grass.
The park was choked with people, hundreds of the homeless packed into a makeshift campground built out of discarded packing materials, the shells of stripped vehicles and ragged sails of plastic sheeting. Groups of them clustered around oil drum fires, while others stayed concealed in the deep shadows that fell in the gloom. There were no working streetlights, many of them cut down like the trees and others torn open at the root so power-snatchers could tap into the city’s electrical grid.
Wary faces caught sight of Jensen and Stacks, some seeing strangers and electing to turn away, others measuring them with rapacious, threatening gazes.
“Didn’t we just leave this party?” muttered Stacks.
“No guards here, though,” Jensen said quietly.
“Wanna bet?” The other man nodded toward the gates of the park, where a police cruiser slowly rode past, a cop in the passenger seat using a handheld spotlight to cast a beam over the faces of the dispossessed and desperate.
“Hey,” said a voice, and Jensen felt a tug on the hem of his jacket. He looked down and saw an emaciated young woman with an athlete’s recurved cyberlegs splayed out beside her. The legs were Kusanagi models, he noted – a high-grade brand, not that it seemed to matter here. The woman held up a crumpled disposable cup, gesturing with a stub where her other arm should have been. It ended at the elbow joint in a cluster of bare metal connectors and trailing wires. “You help a sister out? Spare some change or a little nu-poz, yeah?”
Jensen’s lips thinned. “I can’t do anything for you.”
The woman turned her attention on Stacks. “How about it?”
Stacks hesitated, his expression tightening. “I… I don’t have any pozy on me, girl. I’m real sorry about that.”
“Then fuck off,” she snapped, her expression turning spiteful.
“Look, I—” Stacks started to say something else, but Jensen pulled him away.
“You heard the lady. Come on. Keep walking.”
“Yeah, you better!” shouted the woman, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Don’t come down here and pretend you’re better than us! Goddamn wrench!” She hissed, flinching in pain with each step she took after them, finally tottering to a halt.
Jensen had seen the effects of neuropozyne withdrawal before, and it was always an ugly, sorrowful sight. Part of the forced bargain anyone with human augmentations had to make, synthetic anti-rejection drugs like neuropozyne were a necessary evil. Anyone who had an implant or a cybernetic limb was subject to a condition known as DDS – Darrow Deficiency Syndrome – where glial tissue would slowly build up around the interface between the augmentation’s electrode pick-ups and the implantee’s nerves. Neuropozyne kept those connections working, but without regular doses, augmentations would start to misfire and cause severe pain, seizures, and in the worst cases, systemic nerve damage. The drug’s availability had always been controlled, and it had always been costly, but in the wake of the incident Jensen had to wonder how much harder it had become to get hold of it. There were few alternatives, with poisonous ‘street’ versions cooked up by criminal gangs and hazardous untested variants like riezene taking more lives than they saved.
Stacks was asking himself the same questions. “Everyone here,” he began quietly, “Jensen, they’re all augs like us. A damn mech ghetto, is what it is. All these poor bastards, every one of them has to be hurtin’…”
“We need to keep moving,” Jensen insisted, pushing Stacks in the direction of the park gates. Across the street was the metro station Pritchard had mentioned, above it the
The park was choked with people, hundreds of the homeless packed into a makeshift campground built out of discarded packing materials, the shells of stripped vehicles and ragged sails of plastic sheeting. Groups of them clustered around oil drum fires, while others stayed concealed in the deep shadows that fell in the gloom. There were no working streetlights, many of them cut down like the trees and others torn open at the root so power-snatchers could tap into the city’s electrical grid.
Wary faces caught sight of Jensen and Stacks, some seeing strangers and electing to turn away, others measuring them with rapacious, threatening gazes.
“Didn’t we just leave this party?” muttered Stacks.
“No guards here, though,” Jensen said quietly.
“Wanna bet?” The other man nodded toward the gates of the park, where a police cruiser slowly rode past, a cop in the passenger seat using a handheld spotlight to cast a beam over the faces of the dispossessed and desperate.
“Hey,” said a voice, and Jensen felt a tug on the hem of his jacket. He looked down and saw an emaciated young woman with an athlete’s recurved cyberlegs splayed out beside her. The legs were Kusanagi models, he noted – a high-grade brand, not that it seemed to matter here. The woman held up a crumpled disposable cup, gesturing with a stub where her other arm should have been. It ended at the elbow joint in a cluster of bare metal connectors and trailing wires. “You help a sister out? Spare some change or a little nu-poz, yeah?”
Jensen’s lips thinned. “I can’t do anything for you.”
The woman turned her attention on Stacks. “How about it?”
Stacks hesitated, his expression tightening. “I… I don’t have any pozy on me, girl. I’m real sorry about that.”
“Then fuck off,” she snapped, her expression turning spiteful.
“Look, I—” Stacks started to say something else, but Jensen pulled him away.
“You heard the lady. Come on. Keep walking.”
“Yeah, you better!” shouted the woman, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Don’t come down here and pretend you’re better than us! Goddamn wrench!” She hissed, flinching in pain with each step she took after them, finally tottering to a halt.
Jensen had seen the effects of neuropozyne withdrawal before, and it was always an ugly, sorrowful sight. Part of the forced bargain anyone with human augmentations had to make, synthetic anti-rejection drugs like neuropozyne were a necessary evil. Anyone who had an implant or a cybernetic limb was subject to a condition known as DDS – Darrow Deficiency Syndrome – where glial tissue would slowly build up around the interface between the augmentation’s electrode pick-ups and the implantee’s nerves. Neuropozyne kept those connections working, but without regular doses, augmentations would start to misfire and cause severe pain, seizures, and in the worst cases, systemic nerve damage. The drug’s availability had always been controlled, and it had always been costly, but in the wake of the incident Jensen had to wonder how much harder it had become to get hold of it. There were few alternatives, with poisonous ‘street’ versions cooked up by criminal gangs and hazardous untested variants like riezene taking more lives than they saved.
Stacks was asking himself the same questions. “Everyone here,” he began quietly, “Jensen, they’re all augs like us. A damn mech ghetto, is what it is. All these poor bastards, every one of them has to be hurtin’…”
“We need to keep moving,” Jensen insisted, pushing Stacks in the direction of the park gates. Across the street was the metro station Pritchard had mentioned, above it the
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