Beez jumped up from the couch to the sound of Roxie slamming the fridge door.  “Oh, I’m sorry!”  She looked genuinely unhappy to have woken him.  “Didn’t realize you were asleep out here.”

 

“Yeah, I, uh…”  Beez scratched his head.  “I must still be trying to catch up.”

 

“Do you want some coffee?”

 

“No…”

 

“Are you sure?  We’re gonna get started pretty soon.”

 

“No?  What do you mean, get started?”

 

“The whole reason I brought you here.”

 

“I’m not gonna train to get ready?”

 

“Train to what?”

 

“I don’t know… karate?”

 

“Lipstick on a cow.”  She walked over and sat down on the couch.  The coffee table in the middle of the room began to glow when she tapped the corner twice.  “So I need personnel info on four people.  All four either work for or are contracted by Long Chemicals.  There aren’t many data lines down here in The Bottom, and none of them are unprotected.  Can’t use mine either, or they’ll figure out where we are.”

 

“What do you mean when you say unprotected?”

 

“It mean that you’re gonna have to do some work and I’m gonna have to do some work.”  The gleam in her eye was a little worrisome.  The table turned into a grid, which after some head twisting, Beez realized was a map.  “There’s four not too far from here, so those are all obviously out.”  She tapped on four glowing yellow dots, and they winked out.  In the middle of the circle those four created was a green dot he supposed was where they were.  Beez knew that New York had been mostly on an island once, but he hadn’t seen the rivers and bays on a map in a long time.  

 

“We’re gonna end up pissing someone off when we do this.  There’s no way around it, so I’m thinking we go after your money box friends and keep our mortal enemies list from getting any longer.”  

 

“I guess…”  It made a kind of sense.  Sort of.  She tapped most of the remaining yellow spots, and that left two red dots.  “Go for the farther one then?”  

 

Roxie raised an eyebrow at him and thought.  “Alright, but this isn’t gonna work if you’re gonna start having ideas of your own all the time.”  

 

“I promise I’ll stop thinking completely.”

 

Roxie nodded and looked back down at the map.  She knows I can’t actually stop thinking, right?  Right?

 

***

 

When they finally stopped running, Beez stumbled over to a nearby building and leaned against it, gasping.  “Is he gonna chase us like that every time?”

 

“Not if he doesn’t hear us or smell us or see us.”

 

“Have you ever asked The Motherfucker to help you figure out a way to do that?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“Of course not,” he repeated.  

 

“You’ve gotta be careful with what you tell The Motherfucker.  Knowledge is power, so I have a policy of never telling him anything I don’t have to.”

 

“...then how did he know my name?”

 

“Nobody’s perfect.”  She started walking much sooner than he was ready for, but he was fairly certain she’d just assume he would catch up later and leave him if he didn’t try.  They crossed several blocks quietly, except for his labored breath.  

 

“Are we gonna walk the whole way?”

 

“Duh.”

 

“We can’t, like, hijack one of these cars?”  They were literally everywhere.

 

“Pretty sure they’re out of fuel, and I wouldn’t know how to drive one if they weren’t.”

 

Beez tried a few doors before he found one that was unlocked.  It was dusty inside, and the smell wasn’t great.  The steering wheel looked pretty similar to the one in his fathers car, but he couldn’t find the control buttons for his thumbs…  “What are these pedals for?”

 

“ ‘the fuck should I know?”

 

He got out and slammed the door harder than he needed to, and immediately winced and ducked when he realized how the sound echoed and carried down here.  Roxie just shook her head at him.

 

“Dumas.”

 

“They’re called Servos!  Not servings!”  She just shook her head and started walking again.  

 

***

 

Time is hard to track in constant dark.  The boy’s holographic interface told him it had only been a few hours since they’d left, but it felt much longer.  He tried navigating the system in his suit more while they walked, but the omnipresent debris presented a serious falling hazard. They stopped around what his clock told him was midday at a little shop.  The ramen he ordered was the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten.  Roxie paid by waving her hand over a machine.  She and the cashier seemed to stare contentiously at each other until the machine beeped, and then the smiles returned.  He supposed that dining and dashing was probably common.  If Roxie was right about cops not coming down here, then this was basically a lawless state.  It was amazing that any business survived at all.

 

***

 

He started calling it HI, and it immediately took to basic voice commands.  

 

“That’s gonna be the bees all over again,” she muttered.  “No thought.”

 

***

 

They came to a stop a few blocks short in the early evening.  The building they were looking for was easy to spot, as it was easily the most well lighted building they’d seen in the entire trip.  It glowed from miles away.

 

“So what’s the plan?’

“Plan?”

 

“Yeah.  How are we gonna get inside?”

 

“Killing them all isn’t a plan?”

 

“For fucks sakes.  How did you ever manage to steal anything?”

 

“I was all thiefy and tried not to kill people.  I don’t see how that applies.”

 

“Can we try some stealth?”

 

“You’re gonna suck all the fun out of this, aren’t you?”

 

“Just… let me try it my way first, ok?”

 

“Fiiiiiiine.”

 

Beez had taken a few steps before he realized Roxie had fallen in behind him.  It was a little bit scary to be taking the lead, especially since he didn’t really have a plan.  It was a lot scary that she was behind him.  He’d grown fairly comfortable having her where he could see her.  

 

It was a building just like any other from the outside, with the exception of the number of lights flooding each direction.  Beez was worried by all the guards he could see in neighboring buildings, but none of them seemed particularly attentive.  You’d have to be stupid or insane to attack this place, he thought. Check and check.   The front door had an incoming and outgoing gate system with a little guardhouse in between.  The guard on duty couldn’t have paid them any less attention as they walked up.

 

“I, uhm, I need to s-s-speak to someone regarding my account status,” he stammered.  The guard looked up from his little vidscreen and stared at Beez for a few seconds before shaking his head and looking back down.

 

“Well, that was worth a shot.”  BLAM!!  Part of him thought it was funny how yesterday, when he was less concerned with getting away clean than with getting away at all, he had hardly noticed how deafening Roxie’s pistols were. Almost immediately, both the incoming and outgoing gates slammed shut.  “Through the window,” she roared, as she spun and began firing at the neighboring buildings.  Beez scampered through the shattered window into the guardhouse and up the steps.  Two guards were coming out the door as he approached the front of the building, but both of them were looking past him at the gun-wielding maniac.  In his mind, he pictured a grand move where he sidestepped them and swept out their legs, but before he could put any of that in motion, he tripped.  

 

“C’mon!” Roxie lifted him up by the neck of his suit.  Sparse gunfire ricocheting nearby put some step in his shoes, but he couldn’t help turning around to see that the two guards had both tripped on him and fallen down the stairs.  “They didn’t wake up this morning with those bullet holes, so you don’t get credit for them.  Put that suit to some use, will you?”  

 

The boy didn’t have a hard time finding the wireless network for the building, although it wasn’t connected to the data line they were after.  It had a minimal firewall, and his suit broke through it without him needing to try anything crafty.  He shut off the lights and gasped when his contacts immediately switched over to night vision.  “That’s awesome!”  

 

“Stop patting…yourself on the back and... figure... out where... we’re going!”  She had to pause her questions around bursts of incoming gunfire.   She ducked her head around the corner briefly, and then fired a few shots blindly.  The incoming gunfire lessened.  

 

“uhhh…..UHHH…….Third Floor!”

 

Roxie nodded and darted around the corner.  The boy duckwalked up to the corner, but every time he got up the courage to look, more gunshots made him rethink.  He heard gunfire traded back and forth.  Most of the guards seemed to be armed with guns that fired rapidly, but the singular, massive report of Roxie’s pistols comforted him each time he heard it.  

 

“You’ve gotta move!”  

 

“They’re still shooting at me!”

 

“C’mon, stop being such a pansy!”

 

“Yeah, kid!  Stop being such a pansy and come out here!”

 

“YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!”  Beez peered around the corner to see an enraged Roxie making a suicidal charge down the hall from an adjoining hallway.  He counted at least 6 bodies, with two more still collapsing at the far end.  She shot the last one to fall at least 15 times.

 

“They tried to trick you,” she panted as he caught up to her.  “Good job not falling for it.”  

 

“Stairs are this way.”  Roxie nodded and headed where he pointed.  Just before they hit the third floor, he noticed that the left shoulder of her duster was turning red.  “Oh my GOD, are you hit?!”

 

“Yeah, but I get shot a lot.  It’s not a big deal.”  She hadn’t even paused.  She moved slowly through the door to enter the third floor.  Ahead of them was a large open air workspace.  Along the sides were several dark offices.  The middle area was a cubicle farm, and straight ahead…

 

“That’s it there.  I need to get into that red door straight ahead.”  

 

Roxie looked around the room for a few seconds and nodded.  “Alright, go on then.  I’ll stay here and keep watch.”

 

Beez started to jog through the cubicles.  Just as he passed the first sets of office doors to the sides, he saw a flicker of movement.  Everything seemed to slow down.  He turned to see a grey suited man begin to aim at him, only to take a bullet in the side of the head.  

 

Head swivelling, Beez ducked a little and ran full tilt for the red door.  Another guard stepped out in front of him, and fired several rounds into the ceiling as he fell.  Someone behind and to his right got off a few shots in his direction, but Roxie’s guns put a stop to that as quickly as it had started.  

 

The boy hurtled into the red door at full speed, breaking down the doorframe and collapsing to the floor.  He heard footsteps approaching and crabwalked into a corner in a panic.  When Roxie flipped on the light with the barrel of her gun, Beez clutched his chest in a desperate attempt to stop it from beating clear out of his chest.

 

“Did you just… Did you just use me as bait?!”

 

“Yup,” she said without a pause.  “This is all computer shit in here.  Good luck.”

 

“What?!  But...”  But she was already gone.  The boy took a moment to get himself upright and surveyed the equipment.  There were a half dozen terminals, but it wasn’t hard figuring out which one had the access he was looking for.  He’d tried hard not to think about what he was going to have to do.  He knew it would be easy.  He’d left a backdoor for himself when he hacked into Long Chemicals last time, but just thinking about that brought up a host of thoughts he didn’t want to process.  

 

Personnel files.  Focus on the personnel files.  HI had all the information Roxie could provide, which was minimal but sufficient.  Getting the terminal to transfer the data to HI was the most difficult part, since the terminal was obviously designed to NOT connect to anything else around it.  All the building blocks he needed to create new connection types were there, though, so it wasn’t impossible.  All in all, it took around 15 minutes.  There was never a period longer than 2 minutes where Roxie wasn’t shooting at something, although by the sound of it, she had ranged pretty far out by the end.  

 

He spent a few extra minutes working one of the other terminals to wipe the cameras when he heard Roxie walk up behind him.  “Hey, I’m almost done in here.”

 

“You are now,” said a voice he didn’t recognize.  He spun just in time to see the muzzle flash.

 

Beez had never been shot before.  He’d never had a broken bone except for his nose once when a door slammed on it.  He’d barely skinned his knees.  All in all, Beez had led a fairly pain-free life up to that moment.  He would have been happy having never known how badly gunshots hurt.  Especially ones to the stomach.  

 

Beez immediately collapsed to the floor, his hands pressing tightly over the searing sensation.  Blood leaked out over his fingertips, and although he could see it all over his pants, he thought it was odd that he couldn’t feel that it was wet.  He trembled as he looked back up at the man in the doorway, but his eyes were drawn behind him.  “Say goodnight, ki-”

 

A fire extinguisher came hurtling through the air, tumbling end over end, and hit his would-be executioner square in the back of the head.  The man fell to the floor in a spray of blood, and Roxie was diving in almost before he hit the ground.  She picked the extinguisher back up, and proceeded to pound the man’s head over and over until it more resembled her pancakes than a skull.  Beez thought he might have thrown up if he wasn’t trying so desperately to keep everything on the inside where it belonged.  When Roxie finally dropped the can with a thud and looked over at him, she merely nodded.

 

“Sorry about that.  Ran out of bullets.”

 

“I’m dying!”

 

“Oh, you’re not dying, ya sissy.  The suit is pumping you full of all kinds of good shit right now.  We just need to get you stitched up sooner rather than later is all.”  The blood from her own wound had made a significant red stain down the front of her duster.  She reached down to pick up the dead mans gun and knelt down in front of the boy.  “Do you think you can walk?”  There were tears in his eyes when he nodded, although just standing was much harder than he thought it was going to be.  “You’re gonna be fine.  Just try not to jerk around too much.”

 

There was significantly decreased opposition as they exited the building.  Beez had managed to get all the outdoor lights shut off, so the area was almost completely black as they exited the building.  He saw at least a few guards in the neighboring buildings, but they all seemed content just to escape with their lives and watch them go.  He might have made it a mile before he collapsed in a sobbing mess.

 

“Ok,” Roxie said soothingly.  “You did great getting this far, kid.”  She reached down and scooped an arm under his legs, and he wrapped his arms around her neck.  “Hold on tight, now.  They’ll probably try to chase us once they can regroup and get some numbers, so I’m gonna run now.”

 

The bouncing back and forth was torturous.  Her free hand spent most of the time stroking the back of his neck when she wasn’t cradling him to keep her balance.  With his eyes closed, he had no idea how fast or how far they went, but he was not surprised to find out later that he passed out.