Chen jerked to a halt. He turned toward Pita. "I’m sorry." Wrapping his massive arms around her shoulders, he hugged her close. She felt Shaz and Mohan touch her back with gentle fingers.
Bitterness gnawed at her with sharp teeth as her mind flew back to when she’d first begun to goblinize. She’d hidden it from her family for a week, mumbling into her hand to conceal her expanding canines and wearing baggy clothes to hide her sudden growth. Then her sister had caught her in the bathroom, shaving the curly brown hair that had started to sprout from her shoulders. The next day, Pita came home from school to find the front door locked and her clothes jumbled into foamboard boxes on the lawn. Her old clothes. They’d saved the good ones for her sister.
She’d wound up in downtown Seattle without a cred-stick. Like so many kids before her, she decided to sell the only thing she had. Herself. She hadn’t been prepared for the jeers, the mocking laughter. Fleeing down an alley, she’d run head-first into Chen, knocking him flat on his ass on a broken bottle. Later, she’d discovered the blood on the seat of his pants. And found out why he gave her the nickname Pita. From that day on she answered only to it, instead of to Patti, the name her parents had given her.
Now he tipped her head back and kissed her cheek. "Hey, there, Pain In The Ass. Null perspiration. We still got each other, don’t we? That material drek is just stuff, eh?"
"Just stuff." Mohan echoed.
Beside him, Shaz was making a low, throaty grumble. "Fragging goons." he growled, his voice cracking. "Why can’t they leave us alone?"
Just up the street, a patrol car was rounding the corner. Its blue light washed the buildings in rapid sweeps, chasing the shadows from the streets. A voice crackled out over a loudspeaker. "This is Lone Star Security. Freeze."
"Leave us alone!" Shaz shouted. Suddenly stooping, he scooped up a broken piece of concrete and hurled it at the patrol car. It bounced harmlessly off the armor plating with a dull thunk. The car braked to a screeching halt, and the front port slid open. The dark tube of a gun barrel poked through.
"Frag it!" Pita yelled. "Run!"
Chen was still turning to look at the car when the first of the shots ripped the night. Pita had barely begun to run when she heard the wet meaty sound of bullets hitting flesh. Chen grunted in pain.
"Run!" Shaz screamed.
Behind her, Pita heard another burst of gunfire. Mohan groaned, and then Shaz began to scream. "Mohan, get up! Get up, frag you! Get—"
The automatic weapon opened up a third time, just as Pita reached the corner. A spray of concrete dusted her jacket as she rounded it. Gulping back sobs, she pounded down the block. Somewhere behind her, she heard an engine rev and the squeal of tires. Lone Star Security was going to make sure there weren’t any witnesses.
Pita rounded another corner, feet skidding to find purchase on the pitted sidewalk. The blue flash of the patrol car’s lights washed her shoulder as she leaped into the shadows. Feet pounding, eyes blurry with tears, she gulped in great lungfuls of air and ran as hard as she could. Around another corner. Over a parked car and across an intersection. Down a side street. And at last into an alley. Spotting a rusted fire escape ladder she leaped, caught the bottom rung. The ladder creaked in a slow descent and she scrambled up it, hand over hand. She could hear the patrol car getting closer, coming down the side street.
With a shrieking groan, the ladder gave way. Suddenly Pita found herself tumbling. She grabbed for a handhold, missed—and fell into an open dumpster. Squishy bags of garbage broke her fall and a rank smell filled her nostrils. The ladder clattered to the ground beside it. She was just about to scramble out when she saw a blue flicker on the dumpster’s open lid. Deciding to stay put, she eased bags of garbage on top of her, burrowing deeper into the pile.
A bright light swept across the alley, searching its shadows like a sniffing dog. Pita heard the thud of a car door, the footsteps of an approaching cop. She crouched rigid as death, trying not to breathe.
Please,
she begged whatever fates would listen.
Don’t
let
him
find
me
.
Don’t
let
him
see
me
. Her ragged breathing seemed to echo loud inside the dumpster, giving her away. She heard the footsteps approach, saw a flashlight beam linger on the open lid of the dumpster. She closed her eyes, focusing every effort of her will on becoming motionless, on becoming invisible. It was too late now to move, to worry about whether the trash covered her completely. She heard the faint rasp of the cop’s gloved hand on the lip of the dumpster, saw a flash of light sweep across her closed eyelids. Any second now, the cop would point his gun and . . .
No. She forced the image out of her mind.
He
doesn’t
see
me,
she chanted, over and over like a mantra.
He
doesn’t
see
me
.
The flashlight beam swept away, leaving her in darkness. Pita heard footsteps departing and the slam of a car door, then the soft purr of the patrol car’s engine as it motored slowly up the street. Relief flooded over her in a cold, shivering rush. She wasn’t sure who to thank for protecting her, but someone or something must have been listening.
At last she allowed herself to cry. Shaz, Mohan, Chen. She hadn’t seen them go down, but what she’d heard behind her as she ran from the cops hadn’t sounded good. Instead of trying to help them, she’d run away. Turned her back on her friends and bolted. Her stomach clenched with guilt. Gnawing her lip until she tasted blood, Pita at last heaved herself out of the dumpster and jogged cautiously back in the direction of her friends.
Carla leaned over the shoulder of Wayne, the on-line editor, watching as the letters on the trideo monitor did a slow reveal: "H . . . U . . . M . . ." Gradually they spelled out Humanis Policlub, then turned from black to silver and oozed bright drops of red. Behind them, a man’s face resolved itself. His forehead was puckered into an angry frown, and his white teeth gleamed in a feral smile against his dark skin. His hair was neatly clipped, his face clean-shaven.
"Special rights for metahumans?" The man’s nose flared. "I’d sooner give special rights to a ghoul. They’re animals. Subhuman. Oh, I know, some say that metahumanity was always part of the gene pool. But that’s nonsense. It’s bad magic at work. These people have impure thought processes. That’s why they goblinize when they hit puberty."
Wayne
shook his head and keyed in an edit command. "This guy’s argument isn’t even logical. What about the kids who are born meta? Babies with ‘impure thoughts’? Gimme a break."
Behind him, Carla laughed. "The public doesn’t want logic." she answered. "Just infotainment."
The screen dissolved to a close-up of Carla’s face. The on-screen image asked a question: "And what does the Humanis Policlub advocate as the solution to the ‘problem’ of metahumans? More brain-bashings?" Wayne’s fingers flicked across the keyboard, pulling in a series of one-second clips of some of the recent bash victims. Then he froze the screen.
Carla studied it a moment. "Toss in the ‘bash back’ quote from the Ore Rights Committee piece we aired yesterday, and wrap the piece up with a five-second clip of the Los Angeles Meta Madness concert. The part where the lead singer leans into the lens and spits on it, then screams, ‘Frag the securi-goons. Madness must rule.’ That ought to stir something up."
Wayne
looked uneasily over his shoulder. "You sure you want to do that?"
Carla smiled. "The only way I’ll ever get noticed by the majors is if I get down ’n’ dirty and prove I can muckrake with the best of them."
As her editor worked, she watched her image on the second monitor. Long black hair pulled back in a single braid, dark hungry eyes. The right eye tracked a fraction of a second faster than the left; hidden behind its iris was a miniaturized cyberoptic camera. Subdermal fiber-optic cables one-tenth the diameter of a human hair carried the images it recorded to a data display link implanted behind her right ear, next to an audio recorder. A datajack just below it had allowed her to download the images that Wayne was manipulating. The shots of herself, repeating the questions she’d asked earlier, had been mixed in later.
Two years after her surgery, Carla was still getting used to her new face. Wider cheekbones, a slightly flared nose, and melanin boosting had shaped her into a passable replica of an Indian. The Native American Broadcasting System actively denied any racial bias in its hiring practices, but one look at its anchors told the story. Someday soon, Carla hoped to leave KKRU’s nuyen-pinching behind and move up to NABS. Their producer had promised her a slot if she could demonstrate to him that she had what it took to "play hardball with the big boys." By that, he’d meant the ability to do tough, investigative pieces—the kind that probed deep into the dark underbelly of the corporate beast. "Show me something worthy of NABS, and I’ll give serious consideration to your application." he’d said.
Carla was determined to do just that. And soon. Her exclusive interview with the leader of the local Humanis Policlub chapter was a good start. But it would take a bigger story than that to prove herself.
On the trideo screen, the Humanis Policlub leader was droning on. "We do not advocate violence." He favored the camera with a sickly smile. "Just segregation. Metahumans belong with their own kind. They’re not happy in the general society. Those of us of pure stock make them feel inferior. And we don’t want them mixing with us. Can you imagine one of those rabid, hulking orks, dating your daughter?" His mouth curled as if he’d eaten a spoonful of warm drek. "Or your son? Do you really want a goblinized grandchild?"
"And cut." Carla said, stabbing a finger against the on-screen menu. "Add a clip of those three ork kids that were bashed the other night, and fade with some Meta Madness music. Then patch in my usual sign-off and the station call letters and it’s a wrap."
Stretching, she looked around the editing booth. Someone was tapping on the glass window. Opening the door beside it, Carla stepped out into the studio. "Yes?"
Masaki, one of the other reporters, jerked a thumb at the monitors that lined one end of the newsroom. One of the screens showed a view of the front entrance of the KKRU building. A young ork sat on one of the synthleather lobby chairs, hands clenching the fabric of his jeans. The kid’s eyes darted nervously around the room.
"Some ork kid claims to have a hot story. Won’t talk to anyone but Carla Harris, ‘ace snoop’ for KKRU Trideo News."
Carla stifled a yawn. It had been a long shift, with three hours’ overtime. "Did he say what it was about?"
"She." Masaki shrugged. He was overweight, and spoke with a wheezy voice. A graying mustache and beard framed his soft mouth, but his cheeks were
clean-shaven. "The kid muttered something about your
series on Humanis Policlub. When I pushed for more, she froze up. Hard to tell if she’s got anything worth saying. But there might be something there."
Carla snorted. "Trying to steal my story, eh, Masaki?"
He grinned at her. "Can’t blame a snoop for trying."
Carla walked down the hall toward the lobby. Pausing before the reception area’s tinted door, she put her cybereye in record mode. The kid was probably just another Streeter, vying for her fifteen seconds of fame. But it didn’t hurt to shoot a little trid, just in case.
"Hi, kid." Carla crossed the room with smooth, graceful strides, intending to settle on the chair beside the ork. But halfway across she caught the odor that clung to the kid. Had the girl been sleeping in a trash heap? Wrinkling her nose, Carla chose a chair a couple of meters away. Her cybereye whirred as it telephotoed in on a tight head shot, then automatically focused.
The girl visibly started at the greeting. Synthleather creaked as she leaned forward, resting on the very edge of her seat. The toes of her sneakers were poised on the polished tiles of the floor as if she were a sprinter preparing to run. Carla leaned forward in her best reassuring pose. "You got a story for me, kid?"
The ork wet her lips and glanced up at the videocam that monitored the lobby. "Not here." she whispered.
"Before I’ll let you in the studio, you’re gonna have to convince me you’ve got something." Carla prompted.
While the ork chewed her lip, trying to decide whether or not to talk, Carla let her camera pan the girl. It was hard to tell how old these ork kids were. They bulked up quicker than normal children. Carla guessed the girl was in her mid-teens. A street waif, by the look of her torn clothes. And by the smell of her. Carla half rose, as if tired of waiting.
"Wait!" The girl cracked her knuckles with nervous
twists of her hands. Carla groaned inwardly. If the
interview really cooked, she’d have to edit the noise out later.
"That story you did, on the three orks that died." The girl’s lip quivered for a moment as she sucked in a deep breath. "Those were my friends."
"Sorry to hear that, Miz—"
"Pa . . . Pita." The girl answered.
"No last name?"
Pita shook her head.
"And you want to make a comment on their deaths?" The girl nodded.
"Sorry." Carla answered. "Old news. They died two nights ago. We gave it a thirty-second spot. Quite a long piece, considering the fact that it was the tenth Humanis Policlub bashing this year. Only the fact that their blood was used to paint the slogans made it newsworthy at all."