I love revisiting old ideas. Sometimes it gets me excited for that idea again and other times, I end up scrapping it. Lol but this certain one has me excited about it. 😏
I'll give ya a hint, these 2 are in it:
Lee Bodecker
And Ransom Drysdale
(Ransom ends up working for Lee, but in what way? Hmmm?)
So I had an idea the other night, and thought it would be a good time to make use of the Start With This podcast I began listening to last year (and never acted on...). This is a very rough first 2,000 words. The idea isn’t fully formed yet, all I know is it’ll be a bit of a blend of cyberpunk and fantasy. We’ll see where it goes, I guess.
Untitled
“Come to a ’borg fight.”
Two tickets were slapped down on the table. Raising his eyebrows, Seth flicked his eyes up at the intruder. “Now?”
Casper grinned sharply. “Yeah, now. I just made a juicy trade for these, and I’ll be fucked if I let you ruin the moment with your anti-social bullshit.”
“I’m not anti-social,” Seth scoffed, refocusing his attention on cleaning his handgun.
“Right, yeah,” Casper drawled. “’cause your guns are such great talkers.” He picked a ticket up and tossed it loosely at Seth’s face, the plastic clattering when it bounced off him and onto the floor. “Shift your arse, first fight starts in ten.”
Sighing through his nose, Seth picked the ticket up as Casper made his way to the door. “Who’s there?”
“Huh?” Casper sniffed, scratching at his chin. “Think the headliners are Metallicos and –”
“Not talking about the fighters, Casp.”
He scowled, hands going into his trouser pockets. “Who says anyone’s there?” he grumbled, then jerked his head to the side. “Get moving before I drag you there myself.”
Unwilling to get into an argument about it, Seth relented, quickly tidying away his cleaning things and stowing the handgun parts somewhere out of sight. He scooped up the tickets and his jacket, inspecting the digital faces. “What did you trade to get these, then?”
Opening the door, Casper grinned. “A pound of flesh.”
“Fucking hilarious.”
“Alright, alright!”
The streets outside were wet and dark, filled with people heading home for the evening or already hunkered down in the least-flooded spot they could find. Casper and Seth joined a stream of excited foot traffic heading in the direction of the Cages, the basement club-come-fighting ring that somehow managed to avoid being shut down by the authorities despite putting minimal effort into hiding its slightly illegal entertainment. Seth tugged his jacket collar closer around his neck, head ducked against the cold and to better hear Casper as he told the tale of the traded tickets.
“So you know that data stick I found in that dead guy’s head last week?”
He wrinkled his nose faintly at the memory. Casper hadn’t even bothered cleaning the gore off it before he’d shoved it in Seth’s face to show him. “Yeah?”
“Right, well I mentioned it in passing to Scuzzy the other day, and he said he knew this bird who was looking for random data sticks. He asked me what I’d want in return for it, and I said ‘Scuzz, you get me two tickets to Cages, the brain stick is yours’, and now here we are.”
Giving him a sceptical side look, Seth said, “And you don’t think Scuzzy’s going to come demanding repayment when he realises you’ve traded him a piece of junk?”
Casper waved a hand. “He never said this girl wanted working data sticks. I mentioned the rotting brains shit and he didn’t bat an eyelid, anyways.”
“Did you tell him we’d tried reading it?”
“Seth boy,” Casper tittered, slinging an arm around Seth’s shoulders as they walked. “Scuzzy never asks shit that don’t need asking; he wanted a data stick, he got a data stick – I got my tickets. Case closed. Now get that other stick out your shitter and just enjoy yourself, yeah?”
Seth snorted. “Your way with words is making dead poets turn in their graves,” he said, and Casper clapped him on the back.
They made it to Cages midway through the first fight. Casper pushed their way through the crowd surrounding the caged ring, searching for someone, Seth suspected. He followed his friend nonetheless, mildly pleased when they diverted over to the bar – less so when Casper tried to order for them both.
“Two double cokes please, love!”
“One single,” Seth cut in before the bartender went to make them.
“What you playing at? A fucking single?”
“Doubles aren’t worth the shit they’re made from.”
“Wanker,” Casper threw back at him. “You’re supposed to enjoy yourself tonight. This is a treat!”
“For you, maybe,” Seth said, turning to cast his gaze over the crowd. Most of Cages’ clientele were hard-line cyborgs or cyborg wannabes, or people who just enjoyed the thrill of underground cyborg fights. The two contestants in the cage were in the throes of their battle, pacing around each other for a momentary reprieve. One guy had a cybernetic leg, the technology exposed from his foot all the way up under his shorts, likely ending at either the top of his thigh or his hip. His opponent displayed a mechanical forearm, the hand replaced with a wicked looking shiv, already decorated with a metallic red, the same colour cut across Cyber Leg’s ribs. Their skin was almost as shiny as their enhancements, sweat-slicked and glistening under the show lights, blood and bruises adding quick flashes of colour. Judging by the shapes and number on Shiv Hand’s torso, Seth deduced the cybernetic leg had something of a power kick in it – and sure enough, when Shiv Hand darted forward to draw his enemy into a spar, Cyber Leg spun out to the side and kicked the cybernetic up, planting his foot into Shiv’s side with enough speed and force to break bone. As it was, Shiv Hand merely cried out and staggered back, a flash of metal visible between a new tear in his flesh.
The crowd roared.
A glass nudged his arm, and Seth turned to accept it. Casper leant in to shout down his ear: “Donnie’s here!”
Seth groaned, the noise lost under the cacophony. Still, Casper gestured for him to follow, and after discerning that he definitely had a single coke, Seth did.
Luckily, Casper and Donnie kept to themselves, and Seth turned a blind eye to whatever ‘business’ discussion they were having. The fights held little entertainment value for him, the only point of interest being the various enhancements on show – one woman had a reinforced exo-spine, another man had shock-absorbent wrists with cybernetic hands, the metal on display at his fingers like knuckle dusters, and someone else had lens-eyes, possibly analysing opponents during fights. Seth found it morbidly fascinating.
Almost two hours passed before he suddenly registered a pressure at the base of his skull. He let out a breath, the club’s sounds already fuzzing a bit at the edges, and grasped Casper’s shoulder. “I’m going outside,” he said, alarmed by the way he had to force the words out. “Casper.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Going outside,” he all but slurred.
“Right, whatever,” Casper said, and turned back to Donnie. Seth cussed him out in his mind, then tuned his efforts into getting through the thick crowd and back to the club entrance. He needed somewhere devoid of people, just a space to himself for a short while. His vision was blurring before he reached the doors, and he staggered out onto the street with less grace than a drunkard, barely making it around the corner of the building before falling sideways against the grimy wall and sliding down fast. He was unaware of meeting the ground.
An explosion was tearing through the ceiling, dust and debris raining down at a snail’s pace, the glow of billowing fire and smoke visible through splinters. There was a sense of falling backwards, avoiding something – or the someone falling forwards, dark hair obscuring his face, arms raising to shield his head. Just his? Or perhaps both of them... A wave of heat preceded a dull, growing roar, like thunder approaching in a storm-ridden sky, and the fire cloud pushed through, shaking the world with its anger – or was that even the fire’s?
“Hello?”
Ruby watched the young man slumped in the alley. He hadn’t responded to her attempts at getting his attention, likely higher than a skyscraper, but as she called out to him again his brow shifted into the beginnings of a frown. Crouching, she cocked her head, waving a hand in his face. “Can you hear me?”
A few seconds later, he nodded once, the movement sluggish and almost involuntary. His eyes remained unfocused.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked, making each word clear. Another slow nod was all the response he could seemingly manage. “Did you come here alone?” This time, he blinked, managing a lopsided head shake. There was more effort put into that gesture than the nod, though.
“Are we doing this deal or what?”
Ruby shot a glare up at the man looming over her. “In a minute,” she said, tone clipped. “Let me help him first.”
She didn’t miss the way Scunthorpe’s eyes widened as he looked at the young man before her, or his attempt to cover the fact. “It’s just one more street druggie. Probably wandered away from a den or something.”
“So?”
“So leave him and give me my damn money.”
“You’ll get your money once I’ve called him an ambulance,” Ruby said, but as she reached into her pocket for her phone, cold, weak fingers tried to grasp her wrist. The young man was looking at her now, his gaze still not quite focused, but considerably more aware than he had been a moment ago.
“No,” he grunted - or made a noise that could have been the word ‘no’.
“Yes,” she countered, taking out her phone despite his protest. “You need one.”
“Be fine.”
“Fine is not how I’d -”
“Five minutes,” he mumbled.
Before she could deny him even that, Scunthorpe had squatted down next to her, his back angled towards the unwell man, the data stick he’d promised her in his hand. “Here,” he snapped in a hushed tone. “Take it and give me my bloody money.”
Ruby eyed the stick curiously. It was fairly plain, a simple grey strip with an old, twenty-first century port at one end, a bit rusty-looking but not enough to stop it functioning. What really caught her attention, however, was the tension running through Scunthorpe’s whole body. “What’s wrong?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, a vein bulging by a temple. “Don’t push me, girl,” he snarled. “Money, now.”
Meeting his wild gaze levelly, Ruby fished in her coat lining with her free hand, pulling out a thin stack of currency chips. “Don’t call me ‘girl’,” she warned before offering them out to him. Without another word, he took the chips and replaced them with the data stick, springing up and away in a heartbeat. She couldn’t help but scoff at his hasty retreat – the amateur hadn’t even checked the value of the chips.
Unless he was in too much of a hurry to care.
Pocketing the stick safely inside her coat, Ruby turned back to the man in front of her. He wasn’t so slumped against the wall as he’d first been, now leaning forward a little, one arm braced behind him, eyes moving between blinks. That was a good sign, but she still raised her phone up, saying, “I’m getting that ambulance for you now.”
“I told you,” he said, his words no longer slurred or mumbled, though still faintly laboured, “I don’t need one.”
“Forgive me for not being convinced.”
“I haven’t taken drugs.”
“I wouldn’t judge you if you had.”
“I don’t,” he insisted, finally making eye contact. He had interesting eyes, a deep amber colour, like the glowing orange of a fiery sunset, bordering on blood red –
“Your nose is bleeding.”
He dabbed a finger at the blood at the top of his lip, unfazed by the information. “Yeah, that happens.”
She eyed him critically. “This has happened before?”
“It’s nothing new,” he answered, sounding almost perfectly fine now. He made to stand up, even when Ruby tried to keep him sat down, so she relented and assisted him in getting to his feet. When he was upright and not wobbling, wiping at the seat of his trousers to dislodge the mud that clung to him, she wondered why Scunthorpe had clearly been so agitated by him.
“What’s your name?”
He huffed, glancing up at her from under his brow. “Do you really need to know that?”
“I suppose not,” she said, folding her arms. “But I’m curious how you know Scunthorpe.”
“Scuzz? Friend of a friend is all.”
“Hmm.” Taking a gamble, she took the data stick out from her coat and held it up. “Recognise this?”
The way he stilled at the sight of it was a dead giveaway. “You’re the lady after data sticks?”
“Maybe.”
He gestured at it loosely. “You’re wasting your time with that one. It’s a dud.”
She chuckled. “Trust me, this is not a dud.”
“We tried it,” he said. “Couldn’t read it. I think it’s corrupted.”
“And if I knew how to get past the corruption?”
An eyebrow twitched. He took a second to wipe at his nose again, blood on his jacket sleeve. “Good for you, I guess.” He was looking at the stick.
A slow smile spread over Ruby’s lips. “Want to find out what it says?”
