Chapter 1 Part 2

Sector 7 is spilt into 343 diagrams, each spanning about three living areas. Not that every living area is inhabited by humans. Most are abandoned because their owners are wandering aimlessly through the streets, attacking anyone that gets too close. Most of the older people are feral here. It’s a tough life, but some just lose it. Sector 7 is a bad place to walk alone.

Yet I do it all the time. I can handle some forty year old that’s lost his mind. It’s actually quite easy. Just hit them in the nose and they back away. Hit them again and they run off. Simple right?

Clariia’s garage is in Diagram 72, near the border with the calm educational sector, Sector 6. Diagram 18 is near the wall between us and the market in Sector 4. Feral ones love to hang around there. The smells from the market are enticing, but unattainable, what with fifty foot walls separating us from them. The walls of the outside are even taller, reaching heights of seventy-five, one hundred feet. At least, that’s what my parents told me. They even taught me how to read. I think there superb parenting is what made it so I don’t go into the idiot state of the living dead. Or worse, the feral ones. Some of my friends from childhood did that. I think two were shot trying to attack a police officer, and a third managed to climb the wall with his bare hands. He then got ran over by a wall trolley. Two others are still alive, but keep their distance from me. I don’t really know about the rest of my friends. They just vanished from my life. Such is the law of the slums: Don’t do right, and you die.

I passed the club in Diagram 30, Clubo Arcano. It’s a pretty neat place, what with good patrons that will buy anything if they are drunk enough. And the bartender is a good friend of mine. He doesn’t talk much, but he can get a rich guy punch-drunk in three shots of some low ounce beer. That takes skill.

Clubs are illegal, in a technical sense. They only reason they are around is because the rich love them so much. They lobby so much with the redcarders that they needed them to stay alive, so the whitecarder turns a blind eye. So clubs operate in the open, with no need to hide. The electric lights cost a fortune to run, but clubs still make a considerable profit. Each club has a courier. I’m Clubo Arcano’s courier. So, if I don’t sell anything in three sittings, they buy it off my hands and send me on my way.

There were some drunks just hanging around at the entrance. They jeered and laughed at me as I passed. One noticed the symbol on my courier bag and whistled.

“Hey boy! You got anything in there?” he shouted with a slur of drunkenness. I stopped and turned towards them, refusing to make eye contact.

“Give me five minutes good sirs. I have something important to go pick up that will make your lives spin round and round,” I solicited, hoping I could get away to that good find before another courier got it. Once a courier nabs the item, that item is gone. That is rule one of being a courier. Thou shalt not steal from other couriers. Rule two. Thou shalt take anything of value from thy streets and other streets and thou shall not be robbed by a fellow courier. Rule three. Anything of value on thy streets and other streets is fair game to thy competitors unless thou pickest it up.

“It better be good little boy! I’ll give you a real treat for it!” he shouted waving his hand so I could leave. I left in a brisk walk away from them, hoping his friends wouldn’t stop me. Ten minutes later I entered Diagram 18. A puddle of liquid nitrogen was sitting in the direct center of the road, stretching from building to building. It was large enough that people couldn’t jump over it, yet small enough to not be noticed for a long time. I stared at the puddle, looking for what I wanted. Ah. There it is. A small grey canister set against the electric blue of the liquid nitro. I reached for it with my diasteel tongs and latched on to it. It was in a metal case, so it was easy to grab a hold of. The magnets in my tongs snatched it easily and pulled it out of the nitro. It stuck to the metal like honey and wouldn’t let go. I pulled and pulled and it still wouldn’t release its grasp on my metal prize. Finally, I reached into my courier’s bag and pulled out a small grade Boron knife. This little beauty worked wonders with any liquid elements. Designed by the famed alchemist Vladimir von Boron, it cost three months worth of courier selling. But it definitely was worth it!

I cut through the honey-like fibers and pulled my new prize away. I opened it to reveal four syringes filled with some foul-looking lavender substance streaked with specks of grey and darker grey.

These must be those new drugs that the rich were talking about a couple weeks back. Hydrospeed? Is that the name?