Mirror: Chapter 10

Arez gazed at the ceiling, letting the hallucinatory bubbles in his vision bounce around. When he looked at the display vid, playing Adem's last game, they exploded in a swirling vortex.

"Baby?" A beautiful redhead slid up his chest and gave him a peck on the cheek, "Share?"

He lifted the inhaler to her mouth and squeezed it. She sucked in the chemical before her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she shuddered. When she came back to, she grinned, then trailed down his chest and stomach while kissing him, before stopping a bit lower.

He loved the tingling sensation her synth-skin and metal gave him, and it wasn't long before he was groaning in delight. Hard-bodies were his fetish.

Despite the sex, his mood was still a little dampened.

Last night he lost a substantial source of income: Adem. He never met a crazier Motorballer, that son-of-a-bitch rode blind. Plus, the moves he pulled off terrified most of his own crew.

"Can't be scared of what you can't see, huh?"

"Hrm?" Sarah huffed in-between sucking noises.

"Don't talk, use your mouth correctly," Arez said, pushing her head back down.

"Hrm!" she agreed.

This bimbo was Adem's sister, and he threw all his money at her, after minimal repairs for himself. And for what? She wasted the money on improvements for her looks. What she didn't spend she handed over to me with a smile and more.

What a dumbass. Chicks like these were a dime-a-dozen, hard-bodies desperate to keep a full-bio around, and if she wasn't so good at--Arez grunted and flexed, and she giggled--that, then I would have trash-canned her already. She knew the score, without an income she was working twice as hard to keep him pleased.

Wonder how long until she burns out? Fun for me, in the meantime.

When Vector died, a power vacuum was left behind. No one had the gumption or panache to fill it, but it was a big pie, and plenty of people could take a nibble. Like him, he rose up from a bookie to a drug-runner with a small crew in a year.

When the drug wore off, his eyes focused and he cussed.

"What the fuck?!"

He sprang up, grabbed Sarah by the hair, and tossed her aside. Dragging the bedsheet with him, he moved his face only a foot from the display.

"That motherfucker!"

"Who, baby?" Sarah said, crawling to him.

"Your brother!"

"He's finally dead," she said, her voice taking on a hard edge, then she filed it out with willpower, "Let's forget him. Come back, I'll make you feel good."

"He's not dead, and I want my goddamn money."

"What?" Sarah stood up and pushed him aside. Her fingers tightened on the edges of the display, moments later the color distorted and fine cracks popped across the surface.

After Adem had punched Alita, they got up and left, because it was a foregone conclusion that he was dead. He was teetering on his feet, and his body was falling apart.

He still managed to win, dragging himself over the finish line with no feet and one arm. Alita, that bitch, then coasted to him and carried him out.

"Who the fuck are you to get another chance?" she screeched, shaking the display vid harder and harder.
"Shut up," he snapped at her.

She put her hands behind her back and stared at the floor.

He grabbed his phone and dialed, "Bruno? Get Shark and Razor. No, not later, now!"

---

"I thought you said we were going to your apartment?"

Alita glanced at Adem strolling beside her. With the clothes on and his hands in his pockets, he passed for a biological man. His movements were fluid, too. His body's motions were both smooth and noisy, like a flesh-and-blood person.

Adem continued weaving through the crowd in front of the Motorball stadium, "We have to stop by here first."

"Because?"

"I keep most of my stuff here."

"Of course you do. Are you intending to race again?" Alita interrogated.

He didn't answer.

"You know that's a terrible idea."

"Yeah, well--"

A shrill voice demanded their attention, "You!"

Sarah was waiting at the entrance. When she saw Adem and Alita, she marched straight at them.

"Shit," Adem whispered.

"Where the fuck is my brother?" Sarah demanded, stomping up to Alita and shoving her finger in her face.

After a blank expression, Alita covered her mouth and laughed, "Are you for real right now?"

"I mean it! I saw you on the vid carrying him off! Where did you take him?"

"To my father's," Alita said, after struggling to get her laughter under control, "You can't be serious, right?"

"Oh, I'm dead serious. Did you take him to Ido's clinic? Where is he now?"

"I don't like you, and I have no reason to tell you."

Sarah snatched Alita's jacket, "Listen here, bitch--"

Very calmly, Alita gripped Sarah's wrist, which was covered in expensive synth-skin. She made no martial arts moves, or anything special. All she did was give a tight squeeze.

Sarah wailed and dropped to her knee.

Alita grinned, though it looked more like a wolf snarling, then her eyes fluttered between Adem and Sarah before releasing her.

He wasn't acting to stop it, but he didn't look happy about it, either.

"I keep the arm next time."

After a moment to compose herself, Sarah stood up, fixed her hair, and left without a word.

"Looks like we dodged a bullet," Alita smiled.

Her smile dropped when she saw Adem's frown.

When they got to his pit, it was a mess, and the machines were ripped apart. Through the walls, Alita could hear the bass drums pound and the cheering of the crowd.

Everything of value was gone.

"Sarah and Arez probably happened," Adem answered preemptively when she gave him a look.

He moved through the devastation unfazed. After uprighting a tool locker and prying it open, he pulled the top shelf completely out and removed a thick folder taped to the bottom of it.

Inside the folder was a roll of credits and a stack of sketches.

"I thought you were giving all your money to your sister?" she said, peeking up over the edge of the folder as he flipped through it, inventorying its contents.

Adem said, "I always kept enough behind to start over, should the worst occur."

"And I thought I told you not to draw me?"

He snapped the folder shut, "Yeah, well, these got me through some tough times."

"How so?" Alita asked, trying to tug it back open with a single finger.

"I didn't have an instructor, so I had to learn martial arts somehow."

"Oh, really," she rolled her eyes and dropped her hand, "Let's go to the apartment."

---

Alita looked up at Adem's apartment building, squinting her eyes with scrutiny. One of the windows on the third story looked like a fire torched the inside of the room. Boards covered most windows and wires dangled, where no wires had a right to be.

"Well, it's... something," she shrugged, wincing with the unspoken apology.

"It's a trashcan," Adem said without reservation.

While walking up the flights of stairs Adem explained, "I slept in the Motorball pit most of the time, I used the apartment for storage."

"Why do it in reverse?" Alita asked as Adem held the third story door open for her.

"Bad memories."

The first thing she noticed about the apartment was the smokey smell, coming from the bedroom. The second thing she noticed was how cluttered it was. Every table and counter held spare cheap cybernetic parts that matched Adem's discarded second-hand body, most were so banged up that there would be no money gained in selling them.

Alita tried not to think of Hugo's apartment. When she failed, she focused on the difference between the two. He had no stolen parts, and she knew this because none of them were worth any money.

The third thing she noticed was a holocard, with Sarah's face on it, back when she was still blonde and geniuinely smiled. Alita couldn't tell if it was from the time she had her legs replaced.

"Adem, what happened?"

"Sarah had a cybernetic rejection. An infection after that started to eat away at her body."

"I know her story, Ido told me. But what's yours?"

His back was to her while he leaned on a cabinet, "I lost my body in a fire."

"The bedroom fire?"

He didn't answer. So, she went and looked.

The damage to the room wasn't as extensive as she imagined, seeing it from the outside. Only the wall by the window was singed black, limited to a square shape where the bed used to be.

"You're not telling me everything," she called out.

"I said all that needs to be said."

She stomped out of the bedroom, "Adem--"

He cut her off, "--It's easy to forget what pain is when you're a cyborg. We constantly get disassembled and reassembled. In sports, we crush each other's limbs and crush each other's heads and the crowd cheers for more. But when you're a bio the pain is real, it means something. So when you're on fire, and your skin is boiling off, the pain is so bad it drives you insane. It becomes a memory you never want to remember."

After a moment he looked at her, "When I tell you I don't want to talk about it, I mean I don't want to talk about it."
Alita crossed her arms. Seconds ticked by silently before she looked away.

"Alright," she relented, "But... You can't stay here."

She leaned on the wall beside the door until she caught his eye, then tilted her head with a smile, inviting him to come back to Ido's with her.

---

Outside, a cyborg with a fin on his head made a call, "Yeah, she's here, boss."