1

An eight-bit tone broke the silence of the room and High-Side searched the darkness for its source. His fingers found the comm and the tone ceased. He was damp with sweat and smelled of exhaust.

‘Kid?’ The voice was faint.

He placed the comm to his ear. The cool metal casing like static on his skin. ‘Yeah.’

‘You up?’

‘Am now.’ He rolled over and opened his eyes but could see only shadows without depth and the dark pulse of the ceiling fan. The heat of the room had been a vague presence throughout an unsettled sleep and was now intolerable. ‘Fuck me, Kaiser. At least wait until the sun’s down before you call.’

‘Sun’s plenty down,’ said Kaiser.

‘Aint down enough.’ He closed his eyes.

‘You in one piece?’

The snarl of a phantom engine filled his ears. The snap of a bone. ‘Yeah,’ he sighed. He kicked his legs from the damp sheet and sat on the edge of the bare mattress.

‘Glad to hear it. Five for five?’

‘Easy drops,’ said High-Side.

‘Even the last one?’

‘Particularly the last one.’

Kaiser grunted. ‘Rax has been singing a different tune.’ His voice was rough like he needed to clear his throat. ‘Says you aint makin the next sunrise. The last one musta been choppy.’

High-Side sniffed. ‘Wasn't nuthin special.’

‘That's not what I'm hearing.’

‘Then you need your ears checked.’

‘My ears is fine.’

High-Side tossed the cloying sheet away from him and stale air moved a heavy canvas hung against the wall. Light drifted from beneath it like golden vapour. ‘How many drops for tonight?’

‘I was thinking I'd give them to Teo, after this Rax business.’

‘Get fucked. ‘You and Rax.’

Kaiser laughed.

‘While we’re at it, fuck Teo as well.’

‘Maybe you should take the night off,’ said Kaiser.

‘Night off? I made all my drops.’

‘Sure you did, but that was last night. Blow your streak tonight and nobody’ll pay a premium for Mr Ninety-Nine Percent.’

‘Spare me the lecture.’

‘A rider that makes most his drops don’t sound the same as a rider that makes all his drops. I’m only thinking about your reputation.’

‘I bet you are.’ High-Side stood and paced in the dark. ‘So how many?’ He searched the bare concrete sill for a pack of cigarettes he knew was there.

‘Two.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Aint a joke.’

‘Two drops?’

‘Yeah, Kid.’

He found the pack and the burner. ‘What am I being punished for?’ He pulled back the canvas and warm air and light surged into the little concrete room.

‘You aint even heard what they are.’

He squinted in the glare. ‘It don’t matter what they are. There’s one, and there’s two. And that aint enough.’ He pulled a cigarette from the pack and lit it. Below the open hole in the wall a man-made range of shacks and hovels saw-toothed down a rocky red gulley. Ramshackle homes writhed in a smoky haze kicked up by foot traffic and trikes and pedicabs. The air was thick with an unceasing chorus of arguments, four-stroke generators, laughter, lovemaking, and crying children.

Kaiser remained silent. So did High-Side. Their patience duelled.

‘What are they, then?’ said High-Side.

The sound of keystrokes rattled out the comm. High-Side waited. He was shirtless from the stifling heat and pushed his dark hair from his face and rubbed the stubble on the back of his head. Sweat formed like evening dew on pale temples and the sun sank behind the silver line of the horizon.

‘One is easy shiny,’ said Kaiser. ‘Couple K of the good stuff.’

‘Who's the keeper?’

‘The Rat.’

High-Side nodded and puffed on the tobacco analogue; the organic-culture was grown behind The Wall. The nicotine high was costly but High-Side's syndicate smuggled packs into the Barrens by the kilogram - Silver Clouds, a premium brand. He refused to pay market rate. He would rather quit.

‘And the other?’ said High-Side.

More keystrokes.

‘Fuck,’ said Kaiser.

‘Fuck?’

‘Yeah, fuck.’

‘That a keeper or a drop?’ said High-Side.

‘Damn near forgot.’

‘Forgot what?’

‘Aint no chance you’re having the night off.’

‘Go on…’ High-Side and sweat a little more and took a deep pull of his cigarette.

‘This one’ll make your month. Proper heavy,’ said Kaiser.

‘What are we talkin?’

‘Come by the Hub, I need to smooth out the edges with you. I’m still waitin on the final deets.’

‘Sounds like slippery shit to me.’

‘Patience is a virtue.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means, be patient you little prick.’

‘You know what,’ High-Side drawled. ‘I’ll take the night off. Time’s right I test ride a new syndicate.’

‘Don't bust my balls. If you don’t want it, Teo can run it. He’s almost as reliable as you.’

‘Almost,’ said High-Side. ‘How much is it paying? This shitty job.’

‘Too much.’

‘How much?’

‘A hundred grams.’

‘I hate to break it to you, but that aint a month maker.’

‘It doesn’t pay in forty-seven, Hot-Shot. The job is a seventy-niner – first place. The heavy stuff.’

High-Side choked on his cigarette.

‘Thought that would shut you up.’

‘If I'm getting the golden tonne,’ he strained, coughed. ‘How much are you making?’  A smirk grew across his face that Kaiser could hear.

‘None a your damn business.’

High-Side nodded. ‘Who’s the golden gatekeeper?’

‘Monk.’

‘Monk’s a fuckin idiot.’

‘Well, it's his sector.’

‘Sector Twelve,’ said High-Side. ‘Never smooth. Monk or no Monk.’ He paced back into the shade and relative cool of the room.

‘You’re the rider,’ said Kaiser. ‘Gates and sectors is your problem to solve.’

‘Anything else I should know?’

‘Yeah, keep an eye out for Rax. I don't want him or his grubs to fuck this one up.’

‘See you in a bit,’ said High-Side and ended the link.

He paced to the windowsill and ashed his cigarette on a black stain where many had been ashed before. Out to the east he could see the sparkling fringe of the walled city. The demarcation. A palisade of concrete and iron, too high and perilous to climb and too guarded to traverse. Behind The Wall hung the Citadel’s steel and glass towers in the deepening twilight sky. The geometries aflame in the setting sun. Besieging the city sprawled the waste of its birth. The Barrens. An urban mould that mutated and fed off the city at its core and out of the grey mycelium came the far-off cry of engines. Riders were on the move. Their twilight migration underway.

The comm flittered with a happy melody and High-Side answered.

‘You still in one piece, mi Amigo?’ said Shen.

‘You’ve heard?’ said High-Side.

‘Nothing but.’

‘Let me guess, I got a date with the chop-shop, bike and organics?’

‘Only if Rax aint hungry.’

High-Side paced to the condenser unit mounted on the wall across from his bed. The unit hummed and rattled, and he checked the water level. It read three litres. It could draw ten from a day of cycling atmosphere if conditions were right.

‘Still coming at dawn? I’ve got the RAM for your bike,’ said Shen.

‘Sure,’ said High-Side. ‘Unless I’m pulp.’

A tin cup hung on a bent wire from the condenser unit. High-Side filled the cup and swallowed half a litre of tepid water that tasted like iron and smoke.

‘You’re not worried, are you?’

‘You think I should be?’ He filled the cup again and downed it.

‘Rax doesn’t have two brain-cells to rub together.’

High-Side smacked his lips and wiped his mouth on his wrist. ‘Not his brain-cells I’m worried about.’ He opened a storage locker bolted to the wall beside the condenser.

‘If you get hemmed-in, let me know.’

‘Appreciate it,’ said High-Side.

‘See you at dawn?’

‘See you at dawn.’

The comm ended.

Inside the locker vacuum-sealed ration packs were stacked to one side. Their rippled silver foil glimmered in the waning light. Below them sat a box of 9mm rounds for High-Side's ancient SIG. He pulled the weapon and placed it on the mattress. In the largest compartment, stacked row after row, were neat little ingots of gold, silver, and copper. The Barren's currency. Reward for labour, risk, and frugality. He revelled in their cold gleam. In the sight of their neat arrangement and rough finish, heavy with potential. A means that had become an end.

He removed a grey shirt from the locker and slipped it on. He took his jacket hung from a bolt in the wall and zipped it up. The sleeves and back and neck were lined with aramid fibre plates, and the front adorned with scuffed steel buckles. He stepped into his trousers and tucked them into his boots. He stuck a ration pack in his breast pocket, the SIG in his belt, locked the safe, and exited the one room dogbox that was his home.

He closed a heavy steel door and it groaned and sealed with a worn set of rods that sank into the concrete wall. The hulking yellow bulkhead was potted and graffitied and rusted. Shen told him it had come from a ship. High-Side had never seen a ship. He had never seen the ocean. And every time he passed the threshold he wondered how something made of steel could float. It took Shen and three of his guys to lift the door into place. Shen was a scrapper. A trader in junk and refuse and waste that he and his crew transmuted into the new and useful.

High-Side descended a crumbling set of bare stairs with no balustrade. The building used to have ten storeys, but the top had collapsed. The rubble cascade down the back side of the building in precipitous heap and formed a barrier that blocked most of the heat and sand and hot winds that blew it from the Dead Earth. What remained of the building was too decayed, too ruinous, too wasted for other inhabitants. Entropy had prevailed as it always did.