CHERRY BOMB
J.C. HUTCHINS

White smiled and sucked in a lungful of the night air...and immediately regretted it. He resisted the urge to cough. WeatherNet had said the Barrens was going to have a Good Air Evening™. By White’s reckoning, there wasn’t much good about it.
That’s the Barrens for you, he thought, as he walked down what was left of Basin Street, on his way to Touristville. Despite the sinus-wrecking air, he grinned at the thrill of being out here again. The Barrens gives the finger to the weather bots. And the megacorps, he thought. And the law, most of all.
The Barrens gives the finger to everything.
The Barrens has teeth, White thought. Chomp-chomp.
He’d been working here for only about a month and a half. The Barrens was Seattle’s relentlessly bleak, burned-out superslum. Some parts of this 200-square block area didn’t have streets at all. Most buildings were an arsonist’s wet dream. Civility was a quaint notion in the Barrens. The people who lived here? Their eyes sported the same unforgiving glint as razor wire.
A coworker had once told White that the only thing keeping the Barrens from descending into total destruction was that most residents were too tired—or too strung out—to fight. Based on the past six weeks here, he agreed with that assessment.
He walked on, crossing 159th, now in Touristville. The world brightened a bit here, for which White was grateful. He’d soon arrive at the Seamstresses Union, conduct some naughty business for the corp...and then some naughtier business with Cherry Bomb.
“Unspeakably sexy,” he said, increasing his pace.
He told himself he loved working here. The Barrens was a lawless place, far from the comforts and control of his company’s tower. This was a walk on the very wild side, a cageless zoo where the animals were always hungry. Sure, the world here was oppressively cruel...but its denizens were learning who he was. Those who didn’t know he was with a corp sensed that he was, and therefore was someone best left alone and/or respected.
That last bit; oh, how that thrilled White most of all.
He spotted the Seamstresses Union building about a block away, eyes brightening at its neon-accented façade, buzzing and pulsing like a beacon. Even when he had first come to the Barrens, White had been drawn to it.
He’d met Cherry Bomb that night, and was smitten on sight—doubly so when the six-foot-two elf had introduced herself, leaning in close enough for him to smell her hair (its color was an unusual blend of tangerine and scarlet, and smelled vaguely of cinnamon, something exotic, something that’d drive the taste buds wild) while purring in his ear, “I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for.”
And gods, had she been. He visited her once, sometimes twice a week ever since. He made sure corp business always brought him back here.
White squinted now, gazing at a woman standing near the saloon’s entrance. Was that her? Jesus, it was. Her wardrobe left absolutely nothing to the imagination: a plum-colored bandeau top, matching hot pants, garter belt, stockings and heels. Her right arm was covered with an unusual sleeve tattoo: a series of horizontal rings of varying widths, circling down from her shoulder to her wrist.
He grinned big when he spotted Cherry Bomb’s huge earphones. They were a vintage pair of Fuchi cans, in excellent shape for their age, save for the dozen or so stickers she’d placed on the earcups.
She liked to wear them while they fucked. It turned her on, she said.
Which turned him on.
He walked faster.
*
She was still standing in front of the Seamstresses Union when he arrived, in the midst of an elaborate fist-bump/high-five salute with a Japanese boy. He doesn’t look a day over thirteen, White thought.
“Richard!” she said as he walked up. They embraced, and White felt himself getting warm in all the right places already. All elves were beautiful creatures, but White thought Cherry Bomb was one of the most stunning he’d ever seen.
“Goddess,” he said, bowing slightly.
She glanced down at the half-dozen bracelets on her wrist—there must’ve been a watch somewhere in there. “Huh. Half-past seven,” she said. “I didn’t have you down until eight.”
“Yeah, I wanted to get a drink first.” He nodded at the boy. “And who’s this?”
“Richard, meet Neko,” Cherry Bomb said. “He’s my barker.” She ruffled his black hair. “Best one in the Barrens.”
“Hoi,” White said. “So what’s a barker?”
Neko glanced up at Cherry Bomb. “Is this chuck for real?”
Cherry Bomb shrugged, smiled. “Neko stands out here and...hmm...convinces interested parties to make my acquaintance.”
“I get a cut,” Neko told White.
“Ah,” White replied, embarrassed.
He looked at the kid’s shirt. On it was an image of the silver-skinned synthpop superstar Maria Mercurial. The singer’s gaze was an exquisite expression that transmitted equal parts wanton lust and disdain. You know you want me, she seemed to say, and you know you can’t have me.
“So. Uh, you like Maria Mercurial?” he asked the kid.
Neko nodded. “She’s apogee.”
“Yeah? What do you think of Concrete Dreams?”
“Gods, they’re old,” Neko said. He made a puking sound.
White gasped, theatrically clutching his heart. “Tanj! That’s the music of my youth you’re dissing,” he said. “But Maria’s making music with Cartwright from Dreams, you know. It’s pretty good.”
“Maybe,” Neko said with a shrug.
“She’s from here,” White said. “Seattle, I mean. I met her.”
The kid’s eyes widened. “No way.”
“Way,” White replied. He glanced at Cherry Bomb. “Private company party.” Back to Neko now. “Her skin was so shiny, you could see your reflection in it. She was really pretty. And really nice.”
“Maria Mercurial’s too cool to be nice,” Neko said.
“You can be both,” White said. “Just ask Cherry Bomb here.”
Cherry Bomb laughed. “You’re laying it on thick,” she said, playfully pushing his shoulder. “You must be in a good mood.”
“Of course I am,” he said. “You’re here.”
Cherry Bomb rolled her eyes, and he fell for her even more right then. He shouldn’t be falling for her; that was stupidmaking stuff, he knew. But there was a complexity to her, an unexpected combination of sass, smarts, and sexiness he found irresistible. She was mysterious, to be sure...but she had a verve, a flavor that defied expectation. Could a woman so thrilling be kind, too? Could you, maybe, fall in love with a woman like that?
White thought so. He didn’t know so, but he thought so.
“Come on, flatterer,” Cherry Bomb said. “Let’s go inside. I’ll take you upstairs, take off your pants, and jam your brains out.”
White laughed and placed his hands over Neko’s ears. “Not in front of the children,” he said.
“I know what sex is,” Neko said. “I’m her barker, for frag’s sake.”
“Well, in that case—” White began.
But he didn’t finish the sentence. The squeal of tires on Taylor Street made him jump. He barked a mystified “whafuck—?”, fussed at himself for swearing in front of the kid, and then spotted the source of the noise: a shitbox Chrysler-Nissan GoTruck screeching down the street toward the Seamstresses Union.
The GoTruck roared at them, and the world downshifted into a kind of slow motion for White. It seemed to happen in a forever-long eyeblink: The truck, its engine snarling like a panther, passing by...and now a mohawked ork hanging out of the passenger side window, his hands clutching an AK-97 carbine, his aim yanked to and fro as the CN beater swept past them...and then the submachine gun’s barrel blazing white, spitting fire into the crowd.
The ork was screaming something, but White couldn’t hear it over the gunshots. He did notice, however, that the shooter wore a red and gold leather coat. One of his underbite tusks sported a gold cap. Fragging surreal.
And then the eyeblink was over, and the black-haired kid beside him was spinning on his heels, an almost balletic moment—his brown eyes wide in disbelief, his mouth open, his lower lip trembling. In this breathless exhale, Neko looked like he’d been jilted somehow, wronged by an invisible force. He tumbled into White’s arms.
And then the blood came.
It sprayed onto White’s shirt and neck, gushed across his hands. What little grip White had on Neko was lost in the slick gore, and the boy slipped from his fingers. Neko’s head made a wet crack against the pavement.
Somewhere far away, Cherry Bomb screamed. White gaped at the kid, at the four holes in his Maria Mercurial T-shirt, at the bleeding meat beneath. The shredded image of Maria’s silver face glared up at him, accosting. Are you going to stand there like a fragging idiot, she seemed to ask, or are you going to save him?
White fell to his knees, desperate to do the math. What do you for something like this? Like this?
—CPR, the kid needs CPR—
Kid doesn’t need CPR, Maria Mercurial advised. Kid needs a goddamned DocWagon.
White barked a manic laugh. Is this what losing your mind feels like?
Likely, Maria said.
“Street-doc!” White screamed, still staring at the boy. “I need a streetdoc over here! Shaman, healer, whatever! Help!”
These people, Maria said, they can’t help you.
“Hhh—” Neko wheezed. He gazed at White, eyes pleading. Another wheeze. Blood slid from the corner of his mouth. “Hhhelp…”
The boy’s eyes lost focus, now looking at nothing, everything.
Cherry Bomb screamed on.
“Fuck this,” White said, frantic. “I’ll figure out how to expense it later.”
He activated the DocWagon transponder on his left wristband. The plastic glowed solid purple for an instant, and then flashed on and off, an easy-to-spot visual emergency beacon.
“DocWagon Gold Services,” a bored male voice said from the wristband’s speaker. “Confirm identity and employee number.”
“Uh, An-Andrew White, corp Sierra-5830, number Kilo-73-52038-16.”
“Confirmed. Dispatching—”
“There’s been a shooting! I need—”
“—ocWagon to your location,” the voice droned. “We value your business.”
“How long—”
Click.
An unholy sound, sick and wet and gravelly, surged from Neko’s lips. White focused back on the boy, felt for a pulse on his neck. Where was the vein? There. Gods, so small, no bigger than a string of spaghetti. No beats. No breaths.
He tilted Neko’s head back, opened his mouth. Pinching the kid’s nostrils closed, White pressed his lips against Neko’s bloody ones and exhaled. The chest rose. He placed a single hand on the kid’s sternum and started the compressions. On the sixth press, one of Neko’s ribs snapped—it was as effortless as popping your knuckles, good god, they’re so fragile at this age, he’d pressed too hard—and that’s when the world went blurry. Tears overtook White’s eyes.
“Won’t,” he said, dragging a shaking palm across his eyes. “No…”
Neko stared into the night sky. The reflection of the Seamstresses Union’s neon façade glittered in his eyes, the only life there. And now, more colors flickering in the boy’s eyes—red and blue, a back-and-forth staccato strobe.
The DocWagon snarled to a stop beside the sidewalk. A team of three descended from the vehicle; one—a bald dwarf with glowing silver orbs where his eyes should have been—yanked White away from the boy. The other two, humans, eyed Neko’s ravaged body, then glanced back to the dwarf.
“Kid’s not corp,” one of them reported.
“Kid’s not corp,” the dwarf repeated. He turned to White. “No coverage, no ride, no resuscitation.”
“Bend the rules. Just get him help. This is my fault,” White said. He tugged a credstick from his bloody slacks pocket. “I’ll make it worth your while. It’s certified.”
“Certified,” the dwarf repeated. “All right. Here’s our price.”
The price was high. The medics put the kid in the DocWagon, told White they’d take Neko to Redmond General (if he survived), and drove off. White and Cherry Bomb stood on the sidewalk for a long time after the ambulance’s taillights faded from view. They clung to each other, shivering.
*
Whoredom is in Seattle’s DNA.
More than 200 years ago, when gold fever consumed the minds of many a frontiersman and -woman, Seattle attracted especially great interest. Its geographic location made the city an ideal hub for folks passing through from northward locales now ruled by the Athabaskan Council, or southward cities inside today’s California Free State. Many of Seattle’s businesses catered to these transients, and many of these transients had a hunger for the comfort and company of the female variety.
Brothels abounded, many of which emerged “below the line”—meaning south of Seattle’s iconic Mill Street—but the city’s government soon cracked down on sex workers with an ordinance: Soliciting prostitution was banned, and residents loitering on city streets required proof of employment. An affiliation with a professional union would suffice.
No activity inspires more entrepreneurial ingenuity than sex, and so the Seamstresses Union was invented. From torn shirts to broken hearts, Seattle’s working ladies became card-carrying union girls, tending to mending of all kinds for their gentlemen (and, sometimes scandalously, lady) clientele. Madams made out like bandits.
The profession lives on here in Touristville’s Seamstresses Union brothel
and saloon. The place is almost as old as the city itself. Its interior is a paradox of sorts—a dimly lit, creaky combination of furniture from centuries-gone-by (including an upright ragtime piano), and far newer signage and entertainment accoutrements. Especially interesting are the circular velvet-covered FourPlay stimsofas.
The Union’s owner, a spectacularly-endowed bulldozer of a woman nicknamed
“Madam Sinful,” takes good care of the place. Upkeep’s a bitch. The roof sometimes leaks when it rains—and it’s almost always dumping on this shithole metroplex—but as the thousands of satisfied testimonials on Touristville’s Yelpsquare Network will attest, the Seamstresses Union is the place to visit if you’re aiming to earn the sleepy-eyed grin of the soused, or the thigh-sore swagger of the well-fucked.
The place was usually abuzz with drinkers and johns and plenty of regulars—fixers, street samurai, deckers and mercs who are quite good at what they do, and tolerate very little drek indeed. But not tonight. The place was practically dead.
Drive-bys—especially those that leave 13-year-olds bleeding out on the sidewalk—are bad for business, even in Touristville.
White sat in a booth near the bar, alone. He wore a clean set of ill-fitting secondhand clothes, a gift hastily given to him by Sinful herself. (“Shower’s in the back,” the raven-haired madam had said as he’d entered the brothel. “Slot and run, before you track in any more blood.”)
Before Cherry Bomb had left to brief Madam Sinful on what had happened, she’d brought White a rocks glass and a bottle of ShouldFord Reserve — a synthohol salute to some bourbon once made in the UCAS. White had tried to pour some, but had quickly given up. His hands seemed like palsied things, wracked with the shakes. Half the bottle would’ve wound up in his lap.
And so he sat here, staring at the empty glass, staring at the dings and scratches in the table’s aged wood. In his mind’s eye, Maria Mercurial’s shredded, blood-soaked face glared at him from Neko’s T-shirt. You were right, Andy-boy, she said. The Barrens has teeth. Chomp-chomp.
Neko now, neon light buzzing in his dull eyes: “Hhh… Hhhelp...”
Now White, on the sidewalk, passing his credstick to the dwarf: “This
is my fault.”
“Hey.”
White flinched and looked up. It was Cherry Bomb. She slid into the bench across from him, setting her own glass on the table. She looked very different now.
The clothes she’d worn before the shooting were gone now, replaced by a plain white T-shirt and jeans. Uncomplicated Kong-Wal Mart fare.
Also gone were the two black headbands that helped lift her tangerine-scarlet hair to give it its sexy, untamed look—a style that made her appear even taller than she actually was, and drew attention to her pointed ears. Her hair was down now, brushed straight. It cascaded past her shoulders, nearly down to her hips.
She’d also washed off her plum-colored mascara, lipstick and onyx eyeliner. Without the makeup, her brown eyes seemed smaller. And sadder.
She hadn’t lost those sticker-covered Fuchi headphones, however. She wore them like a necklace; the phones’ massive earcups rested on her collarbones.
“Hey,” White said back. “I...I didn’t think you’d come back.”
Cherry Bomb opened the bottle and filled their glasses. She took a long pull from hers, winced, then topped it off again.
“Why?” she asked.
“I thought you...you know. Would have other, ah, clients. To take care of…”
Cherry Bomb frowned. She leaned forward, as if to tell White a secret. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
White brought the glass of bourbon to his lips. The shakes were still there. Not as bad, though. He sipped.
“Okay,” he said.
“Do you still wanna get laid?” she asked. “After what happened tonight, are you actually jonesing to take me upstairs, bend me over, and do me the way you like to do me? Maybe even get a little...mean? Pull my hair? Tie me up?”
White nearly choked on the booze. “I—what? No—goodness, no!”
Cherry Bomb leaned in closer still.
“So what makes you think I’d want to do that?”
White opened his mouth, then closed it. “I...I’m sorry,” he finally said.
Her expression softened as she leaned back in the booth. “It’s okay. The world...it’s all fucked up. Fucked up more than usual, anyway. So I’m taking the rest of the night off.”
White blinked. “Why are you spending it with me?”
Cherry Bomb shrugged. She gazed at her glass for a moment, then back to him.
“Maybe because I need to,” she said.
“Because of what happened,” White said.
“Maybe, yeah.”
“He was important to you,” White said. “Neko. I could tell. What was he like?”
Cherry Bomb narrowed her eyes. “Don’t do that, please. Don’t speak about him in the past tense. He’s not dead.” She tapped her sticker-covered Fuchi headphones. “I called Redmond General before I came over. He’s in critical, but he’s alive.”
White eyed the headphones. “You’ve got a portable phone in those things?”
“Custom job,” Cherry Bomb replied. “From back when I had more money than sense. The good old bad days. Another life. High-end, though. Great signal.”
“No wonder you never take them off.”
Cherry Bomb looked away. “They’re the fanciest things I own.”
White sipped his bourbon. “Present tense, then. What is he like?”
Her expression brightened. “A helluva handful. Helluva barker, though. He’s one of those people who...” She paused, considering something. She leaned forward again. “Do you...do you have a secret heart?”
“I don’t know what that is,” White said.
“Right. Okay. So...so this is all in my head, like a jumble,” she said. “I don’t talk to people about this stuff. Indulge me.”
“Okay.”
“So...so this world is rotten,” Cherry Bomb said. “This world is out to get you and me and everyone else. It’s a goddamned conspiracy. It wants us hurting. It wants us dead. If the weather doesn’t geek us, the thrill gangs will. If the thrill gangs hose it, it’ll be the syndicates. Or whatever. Point is, this world shits on us every day. It’s a cruel thing that aims to break our hearts... and it does. Every single day, it does. This world is a fucking heartbreaker.”
In his mind, White saw Neko’s face, watched the trail of blood slide from the side of his mouth.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“So I say let it,” Cherry Bomb said, “‘cause if I’m not hurting, I’m not caring. And if I’m not caring, I’m not living.”
“That makes a strange sort of sense, I guess.”
“But there’s a heart inside my heart,” she continued. “That’s my secret place, the place that doesn’t take a beating every day, that’s safe from all the punishment and the poison. My secret heart. It’s the place where I...I dunno...I have conversations with myself. About people. It’s where I look at them as...well, as people, I guess. Real people.”
“Not pieces on a chess board,” White whispered, nodding. “Not as wheels and gears in some—some elaborate machine.”
“Or tools in a toolbox,” Cherry Bomb replied. “Or rungs on a ladder.”
He looked into her brown eyes. Gods, she was beautiful.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I understand.”
She smiled, relieved. “Okay. So in my secret heart, Neko is one of the good ones. I just know, know in my bones, that he can make it out of here. He’s smarter than he looks. He’s smarter than anyone around here has any right to be. He deserves something better than the Barrens.”
White slid his hand across the nicked table. He turned it, palm up, an invitation.
“He’s not the only one.”
Cherry Bomb eyed his hand. “Maybe not,” she said. She shook her head.
He withdrew it.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“You know my name,” Cherry Bomb said.
“Your real name.”
Cherry Bomb reached out—and for a wonderful, fleeting moment, White thought she’d reconsidered, that she’d connect with him, hold his hand—but her fingers wrapped around his glass of bourbon instead. She pulled it away from him.
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m the farthest thing from it,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Drig, come on,” Cherry Bomb said. “Are we really going to do this? What do you think this is, a bad trideo of some ‘opposite day’ Lady and the Tramp story? You’ve already wooed me. Are you here to be my friend? Are you here to save me? I have friends. I don’t need to be saved.”
“Wait? I wooed you?”
“What? Jeez. I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”
“When did I do that?”
Cherry Bomb sighed. “When you called the DocWagon for Neko, you idiot. I can’t think of a single good reason why any wageslave would call his company DocWagon for a gutterpunk nobody.”
“He’s not a gutterpunk nobody. You said so yourself.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know that when you made the call. Why’d you do that?”
White looked away. He reached across the table, taking back his glass.
He downed the contents in one gulp.
“Who said I’m a wageslave?”
“Nice deflection,” Cherry Bomb said. “Your palms are as smooth as my hoop, honey. So’s your face. You may not be living large, but you’re living. People in the Barrens are surviving. Big difference. The Barrens wrings people dry. You’re...soft.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t get me wrong—it’s nice,” she said. “Soft is nice. You’re nice. But soft isn’t from around here, and neither are you.”
“I...I lied to you,” he said. “The first time we met.”
“Another deflection,” she replied. “Well done. We met weeks ago. I wouldn’t remember.”
“I told you my name,” White said. “I said it was ‘Richard Long.’ That was a lie.”
Cherry Bomb snickered. “I see.”
“Andy White,” White said. “That’s my real name.”
“Nice to meet you, Andy White.”
“Likewise. So what’s your name?”
Cherry Bomb crossed her arms. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Don’t you get it? Hasn’t this sunk in? You’re in the Barrens, Andy White. The nuke plant went tits up years ago. The earth itself got pissed and puked radioactive ash all over us. The people who grow up here? We’re predators. Hunters. Everyone’s got an angle. Everyone’s on the take. Everyone’s looking for a way up, and we’ll step on anyone to get ahead. It’s in our blood. We’re all such good little liars.”
“It can’t be that bad,” White said. “You can’t be that bad.”
The heavy clack-clack of approaching heels on the Union’s wooden floor startled them. Madam Sinful approached with an armful of clean, pressed clothes. They were White’s, the ones that’d been soaked in blood from the shooting. But now he couldn’t spot a single stain on the fabric.
“How’d you do that?” he asked.
Sinful offered a smirk and placed a leather-gloved hand above the gulch of her cleavage. “Well, we are the Seamstresses Union,” she said. “Mending clothes remains a specialty.”
White shook his head, amazed.
“Is everything okay?” Sinful asked them. She turned to Cherry Bomb. “Do you need anything?”
Cherry Bomb shook her head. “I’m good.”
The madam nodded, and left.
White eyed his clothes. “How in the hell did she do this?”
Cherry Bomb poured another finger of bourbon into his glass. “Where was I?” she asked.
“You were schooling me,” White said.
“That’s right. I was,” she said. “Look. Chip truth. Things like ‘loyalty’ and ‘trust’ don’t exist here. There are two kinds of people here: the opportunists and the exploited, and that’s it. When people get cozy with you, it’s ‘cause they wanna social engineer you, ‘hack’ you for personal information. And what happens to that info? It becomes blackmail material, or content to sell. Every scrap of information is precious. Every goddamned syllable. Even a whore’s name.”
“You’re not a whore,” White said. “At least, not to me.”
Cherry Bomb shook her head, her eyes wide. “You’re living in a fantasy land, Andy White.”
“The one in my secret heart, maybe,” he replied.
She smiled. “That was sweet. You’re a lot sweeter than you oughta to be, you know.”
He smiled back. “Because?”
“Because you work for a corp.” She raised a finger. “Hold that thought; I’m calling the hospital.”
Slipping the Fuchi headphones over her long ears, Cherry Bomb tapped a button on one of the ear cups. “Phone. Command: redial,” she said.
White sipped his drink as Cherry Bomb inquired about Neko’s condition. A moment later, she killed the call.
“Still in critical,” she reported, tugging the phones from her ears. “The bullets were treated with Teflon, they said. Poor man’s armor piercing. Caused a lot of internal damage.”
“Hhh…” Neko said on the sidewalk. “Hhhelp…”
“Just get him help,” White said to the DocWagon dwarf. “This is my fault.”
“This was my fault,” White now said to Cherry Bomb. “I’m the reason Neko was shot.”
*
Whoredom was in Andy White’s DNA, too.
He was a third-generation employee of the A-rated Telestrian Industries Corporation, headquartered in Tir Tairngire—the elven “Land of Promise,” formed in great part by the money and might of Telestrian Industries’ current CEO, James Telestrian III. In an unusual twist in any corp’s history, Telestrian Industries was founded in the 1980s by humans, but thanks to the “spike baby” elvish birth of James Telestrian III in ‘99, the corp now had clear, deep, and some say dangerous connections to pro-elven interests.
Telestrian Industries is notorious for its aggressive (and, no shock here, often illegal) business practices, especially when protecting the company’s core agricultural businesses. It’s a major player in the genetically-modified food industry, producing many of the high-yield GM crops and patented biologicals that—after sale and further modding by other megacorps—become key ingredients in such mainstream products as nutrisoy, AdrenaLynne’s branded energy drink, NearSteer synthsteak...and even fuels like Bioctane-8.
Like his Telestrian-employed parents, Andy White grew up sucking mightily on the corporate teat. His education, housing, physical and mental well-being...to say nothing of the media he consumed, clothes he wore, how he perceived the world beyond the company’s tower, and even the company woman he married...were all provided by Telestrian Industries. Life in a corp requires a special breed of boardroom shrewdness. White learned that too, though he wasn’t very good at it.
Whoring was what White was bred to do for Telestrian Industries; like his grandparents and parents, he was a Seattle-based salesperson for the company. He negotiated distro deals with companies representing the interests of AA and AAA megas, all of which needed Telestrian’s products to make their own. Salesmanship was his craft, but not his passion...and so, when the beguiling blonde secretly representing Yakashima Technologies swindled him on a multimillion nuyen deal for GM cacao beans two months ago, even White himself wasn’t entirely surprised.
The only thing that saved White’s career — and perhaps even his life — was that he was a third-generation Telestrian employee. His comfortable internal sales job was gone, however. He was banished to the Barrens, forced to work in the field office on River Street with the dangerous unwashed masses, the people Telestrian Industries always needed for its off-the-books dirty work.
Weeks ago, dirty work had first brought him to the Seamstresses Union. That was when he’d first met Cherry Bomb. And, in addition to tonight’s thrilling rendezvous with the elf, dirty work had brought him to the brothel this evening. He’d scheduled a Mr. Johnson meetup with some shadowrunners to hack a competitor’s research mainframe. These men and women had appropriately savvy credentials, save for one bloody blemish: they’d crossed the Crimson Crush weeks ago in a deal gone bad.
The ork shooter in tonight’s drive-by had been wearing red and gold, Crimson Crush colors. They’d been gunning for the runners, White was almost certain of it. Maybe the runners had sold White out, and the gangers had been gunning for him. White didn’t know, and—sitting here, downing synthetic bourbon in a two-centuries-old whorehouse, confessing his sins to an elven goddess—he didn’t much care. The runners weren’t here to ask; they’d likely bolted after the bullets started flying.
But it was inescapable. This was White’s fault.
He’d practically loaded those Teflon-coated bullets into the AK-97’s mag, aimed at Neko, and pulled the trigger himself.
*
“You’re a son of a bitch,” Cherry Bomb said.
White knocked back a bitter slug of bourbon. “I know,” he whispered.
“No. You’re a naive son of a bitch,” Cherry Bomb said.
“I know.” White felt the tears well up. He didn’t try to hide them. The world was a fucking heartbreaker, after all. “Wageslave. Sarariman. Soft. ‘Soft is nice,’ right? But soft isn’t from around here.”
His hands were shaking again. He wiped the tears away.
“Can you believe that I actually didn’t mind the demotion?” he said finally. “When I screwed up that Yakashima deal? Sometimes I wonder… I wonder if I wittingly blew it. You know, like I knew the deal was bad in my, ah, my ‘secret heart,’ and I went for it anyway. I wanted to come here, see. I’ve wanted to be here for as long as I can remember.”
Cherry Bomb leaned back, incredulous. “The Barrens? You’re kidding.”
White shook his head. “Not the Barrens per se, but ‘here,’ meaning anywhere but ‘there.’”
“The tower,” she said. “The corp.”
“Yeah.”
“That is some wrongheaded shit, Andy White. The corp is safe.”
White served her a joyless smile. “And sterile. And soulless. And miserable. I’m in an arranged marriage with a woman I can’t recall ever actually loving. It’s been so long since we’ve slept together, I...I can’t remember that, either. We did our duty. We had a kid. Tyler. He’s Neko’s age. Good boy. Kind heart. And that kindness is getting squeezed out by the corp. I can see it in his eyes. He’s becoming...uncompromising. He’s being indoctrinated. Just like I was. Just like the rest of them.”
“Gee,” Cherry Bomb said. “Things are tough all over.”
He sighed. “I’m a stupid romantic. I thought this was...a power trip, maybe? I come here, get respect, maybe go native. I thought things might be better. Better for my heart, I mean. The part of me that makes me ‘me’ — not the thing they want me to be. The old timers say, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ Well here I am, all alone again.”
“Is she a bitch?” Cherry Bomb asked.
“Who? My wife?” White said. “No. She’s. She’s just...uncomplicated.”
“You mean she’s stupid?”
“No. She’s quite clever, actually. She’s a division manager, helps oversee R&D. Second-gen. She just lacks, ah, complexity. She really is a rank-and-file company girl. She swallows whatever the bosses serve her.”
“So do I,” Cherry Bomb said.
“Crass,” White said. He grinned. “You’re complicated, you know.”
“Yeah. I’m a frickin’ Rubik’s Cube,” she replied.
“No. You really are,” he said. “To me, anyway. It’s nice. I like you.”
“I...I think I like you too,” she said. “Maybe.”
He glanced at the sticker-covered headphones resting on her collarbones.
“What’d you do? Before this?” he asked. “Before the Seamstresses Union, I mean. Back when you got those. You said they were ‘the good old bad days.’”
Cherry Bomb flinched. “They were.”
“You said it was another life.”
“It was.”
She wasn’t looking at him now. She was staring at the table, past it. Looking back in time, perhaps. An expression flitted across her face for an instant—if White had blinked then, he would’ve missed it—and then it was gone. But the revulsion in her eyes had been unmistakable.
No. Not revulsion. Horror.
“Was it bad?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“But the money was good,” he said.
A tear slid down her cheek. “Yeah.”
He reached out to brush it away. His hands weren’t shaking anymore. She didn’t stop him.
“They’re uncomplicated too,” she said finally.
“Who?”
“People. The people in my life, I mean.”
“You mean the people who come to the Seamstresses Union?” White asked.
Cherry Bomb glanced around the saloon. “This? This isn’t my life, Andy White,” she said. “This is what I do to pay for my life.”
He smiled. “I understand. And yet…”
“Yeah. And yet,” she said. “When I was Neko’s age, I couldn’t tell you how many of my friends wanted out of the Barrens. We all had plans, man. We had dreams. We weren’t going to be like our parents, and their parents. We were going to get out. We’d fight and fuck our way out if we had to, but by gods, we’d be free.”
“I can obviously appreciate that,” White said.
“You know how many of us have those plans now?” she asked. “Exactly one. Me. My friends from back then — those who haven’t been killed or OD’d, or haven’t offed themselves, I mean — they’re still around, still in the Barrens. They lost the hunger. They gave up.”
“Indoctrinated,” White said. “But not you.”
Cherry Bomb gazed into his eyes. “Not me. And not you.”
He smiled, raising his glass. “Nope. Not me, either.”
She raised hers. They drank together.
“And so here we are, we refugees,” White said, “hearts broken by the rotten world, and lonesome as hell. The weather’s for shit, but I rather like the company.”
“Me too,” Cherry Bomb said.
He leaned toward her. “Confidentially, I’d rather be visiting Winter Wonderland in Denver. It’s an approved resort. Dinner and drinks are comped by the corp. We’d eat like pigs.”
She laughed. “You ski, company man?”
“Hell no. You?”
“Do ski boots come with stiletto heels?”
“Nope.”
“There’s your answer.”
He held out his hand to her once more. This time she took it. Their fingers intertwined, tender.
“You should call the hospital,” he said. “Maybe he’s out of critical.”
“In a second.”
The moment stretched for far more than that. Blissful.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “You never could’ve known.”
“Maybe,” he whispered. He glanced down at the slender, ringed hand in his. “Jesus. I missed this.”
Cherry Bomb closed her eyes. “Me too.”
They sat there, safe and silent, for another heartbeat—and then another more. She opened her eyes.
“My name is Caroline,” she said.
*
He left ten minutes later, face pale, stunned to the marrow. Neko was dead. Cherry Bomb had made the call and relayed the news, and White had wept, drank a mouthful of booze, and wept some more. It wasn’t right, he’d said. It was his fault, he’d said.
No amount of convincing or comfort she offered could change his mind. Not tonight, anyway.
He told her he’d be back. He needed to come back, to see her, to be with her. She was his salvation, he said.
She told him she liked him, that he was a decent man — a good man — and that she would be here for him.
And then he was gone.
And then a moment later, the black-haired boy was sliding into the booth, sitting where White had just been, grinning a fool’s grin. His eyes glittered as he sized up the bottle of bourbon.
It was Neko. Back from the dead.
*
“Can I have some?” Neko asked, reaching for the bottle. “I can take it.”
“What’d Sinful say?” Cherry Bomb asked.
Gods, she was tired.
Neko crossed his arms. The blood covering his shredded Maria Mercurial T-shirt was completely dried now — something that would’ve been impossible in such a short amount of time, had it been real blood. Which it wasn’t. Cherry Bomb noted the four holes in Neko’s shirt. The fauxflesh beneath was bright pink, healing nicely.
“She said I’m not old enough,” the boy replied.
“But what does she know? Gimme.”
“No way,” Cherry Bomb said. “She’s the boss.”
“Good girl,” a husky voice cooed.
Madame Sinful squeezed into the booth beside Cherry Bomb. She frowned at Neko, imperious.
“Pay attention, kid. Listen to Cherry. She knows the score. She’s got her role down-pat.”
“Role. I don’t get it,” Neko said.
“That’s because you’re a 13-year-old shithead,” Sinful replied. “Look. This, all this around you? It’s theater. It’s showbiz.”
“It’s a whorehouse,” he said.
“It’s entertainment,” Sinful said. “We’re in the business of getting people excited, giving them what they want, and getting them off. We’re in the happy-making business, and everyone’s got a role. Madam Sinful’s the director, and I give everyone their lines. And your role—”
She pulled the synthohol far from Neko’s reach.
“—doesn’t include drinking the booze.”
Neko stuck out his tongue.
Cherry Bomb pointed to Neko’s chest. “Your implants. Only four of them went off this time,” she said. “What’s wrong with ‘em?”
Neko shrugged.
“Get them looked at,” Madam Sinful said. “You’re no good to us if your chrome’s going bad.”
“Who’s going to fix them?” Neko said.
“You are, with your hard-earned cash,” Sinful said. Her hand dipped beneath the table and emerged with a credstick. She tossed it to the kid.
“At least the HeartStopper and IronLung ’ware worked,” Neko said, sliding out of the booth. “That old bennie was freaking the frag out! Didn’t expect him to know CPR for kids, though.” He rubbed his chest. “That hurt.”
“That’s ’cause he has a kid,” Cherry Bomb whispered. “Tyler.”
“How very intriguing,” Madame Sinful said, eyeing her. “Did the DocWagon crew give you any static, Neko?”
“Nope. One of them, a dwarf, almost whizzed himself when I sat up on the gurney inside the ’wagon. I told ‘em I didn’t need to be zapped. I just wanted them to fix my busted rib. They let me out a few blocks away.”
Madam Sinful nodded. “The runners who’d tipped us to the meet cut out the back during the ‘shootout,’” she said. “I took care of the Crimson Crush shooters, too. They’ll all be back to spend the nuyen I gave ‘em. When you pay well, they always come back.”
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Cherry Bomb muttered.
Madam Sinful smirked. “Indeed. Now buzz, kid. We’ll call you when we’ve got another performance to do.”
Neko left.
“So my dear,” Sinful said. “Was the destination worthy of the journey? Did we learn muchly about our john in shining armor? I bet big on this one.”
“Yeah,” Cherry Bomb replied.
“Wageslave, obviously,” Sinful said. “Let me guess: Brackhaven.”
“Telestrian Industries.”
“Ah. Interesting.”
“Based in the field office on River,” Cherry Bomb reported, her voice monotone. “Still lives in the tower. Has a kid. Wife’s a player in product R&D. He’s third-gen. Great knowledge of the business. Sales. A deal-maker.”
Sinful smiled. “Promising.”
“He likes me,” Cherry Bomb said.
“Very promising,” Sinful said. “Telestrian’s getting bigger every year, you know. People gotta eat...and they’re making plenty of the ingredients. Those ingredients are secret. Secrets are very valuable.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me more later. He’s someone we can keep milking,” Sinful said. She nudged Cherry Bomb with her elbow. “You’re my best performer, you know. You really get ‘em talking.”
“It’s a gift, I guess,” Cherry Bomb said.
“That it is, my lovely thing,” Sinful said. “I heard what you said to him, when I brought back the clothes. ‘Everyone’s got an angle,’ you told him.
‘We’re all such good little liars.’”
Cherry Bomb nodded. She stared at the scratched table, saying nothing. “I’ve never met a better liar than you, Cherry,” Sinful said. Her voice went impish, mischievous. “You’re positively pathological. You lie right through those pretty white teeth any chance you get. How many did you tell tonight? Could you even keep count?”
Cherry Bomb didn’t reply. She stared on, at the table, where White’s hand had been. Where their hands had been.
“Get some rest, darling,” Sinful said.
She slipped out of the booth and left.
Cherry Bomb placed her hand on the wood.
“Just one,” she said finally. “Just one lie.”
She closed her eyes.
“I didn’t tell him my real name.”