A/N – This shortstory takes place beforethe novelGreyzone.

The parts initalics takes place two months before Greyzone begins.

The parts in plain text takes place thirteen months before Greyzone begins.

And English still isn't my first language.

&&&&&&&

Changing Perspectives

(There is a bar desk, behind it a petite woman with chocolate coloured skin and dark hair. On the customer side, people sit on the few rattling high stools, lean on the counter, imbibe the alcohol of their choice. Among the clientele, an odd pair. The woman is short, always shorter than you remember her to be. Her arms are covered in black tattoos, geometrical shapes, from her fingertips to her shoulders. The man is tall; his dirt-blond hair in a long braid down his back. On his forehead, the telltale sockets of neural implants.

They drink here often. They are the reason for why this bar does so well. Every once in a while, they might tell a story or two. You never know when or how. Some of the customers come here every night, hoping that this will be the night the pair decides to tell the story everyone is itching to hear.

Someone jokingly asks the Question. “How did it begin?” The man and the woman exchange a glance. A brief conversation with no words. Words are not needed between them. Usually, there would be no Answer, but for some reason, today is not usual.

The blond man orders another beer, twists the cap of the bottle, lets his eyes get lost in the past. Then he starts to talk.)

Grey, grey, grey. Clouds overhead, hanging over the rooftops, mixing with exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, steam from air vents. There are no bright colours in the Dive. Even the blinking neon signs are muted, screaming out their messages in hoarse whispers. There are no clear voices in the Dive. The whole zone is nothing but coughs, rasps, whines and whimpers.

Some would even say that there is no life in the Dive, only a kind of desperate existence, a dog-eat-dog world, where no-one cares about anything else than themselves.

( “You’re a piss-poor excuse for a poet, Chapelle.”

“Shut up, Cee, I’m trying to tell a story here.”)

The streets are always wet in the Dive, your feet are always cold, your boots are always dirty. Discarded newspapers litters the ground. The wind makes them dance around, flips their pages as if they were read by an invisible person. Finally, they end up in the drain, transformed into a soggy mess, forgotten just like yesterday’s news.

There are old oil drums where fires are burning. The street people huddle around them, trembling hands searching warmth from the flames. They have their own little society, united in their freezing misery. Newcomers are viewed with suspicion, especially newcomers whose clothes are a little too new, whose hair is a little too clean, who look like they have at least a couple of euros to their name.

There was no place for me around the fires that first night in the Dive. The Dive, the Greyzone, the oldest and largest of the European Union’s freezones. This is where the outcasts end up, the ones with no place in the world. The criminals, the rebels, the ones who just don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.

And then there was me. A rogue cyber agent with nowhere else left to run. You have to be pretty damn desperate to turn to the freezones. Once you’ve entered, there’s no way out. You are a non-person, a non-citizen, a non-being, at least as far as the government is concerned. Of course, for us cyber agents, it’s not that much of a difference.

The first rule for making it in the Dive is to have contacts. Just finding a place to sleep is a challenge. Finding somewhere dry and warm is almost impossible. I didn’t know a soul, and was starting to feel pretty miserable.

There are more bars in the Dive than anywhere else in Europe. I hesitated in front of one of them. Bars usually mean drunk people, and drunk people usually mean trouble. Trouble was not anything I had energy for that night, so I stood outside the door for a good five minutes debating with myself whether or not I should go in.

The lack of loud voices from inside, compared with the relative warmth streaming out of the door helped me make up my mind. I shook the rain off my coat and walked in.

The room was small and there weren’t that many customers. Two old men sat in a booth with a chessboard set up on the table. In one corner there was an antique arcade game surrounded by a group of youths. Music played from a number of speakers under the roof, but the volume was turned down so low I could hardly make out the lyrics. Around the walls were a number of interesting candlesticks. It was just your usual wall-held candlestick, if not for the small mirror behind each and every one of them. The flames reflected in the mirrors and helped to light up the room. A clever system, good for saving electricity.

As bars go, this one looked quite ordinary. Behind the bar desk, there were shelves for hard liquor and reasonably clean glasses. There was one tap for beer and one for cider. There was a loudly humming refrigerator for bottled drinks. There was a coffeemaker with a half-full pot on the plate. There was no cash machine, but then again, the owner of this fine establishment wouldn’t have to pay any tax on his or her incomes. The bartender probably had a cashbox and a baseball bat under the counter.

On top of the counter, there was a glass jar for tips. It was almost full of small change. Either the customers were unusually generous, or the bartender was unusually well liked.

I had only a few euros and knew I ought to save them, but right then I couldn’t bring myself to care. I sat down at the counter, ordered a beer and counted my cigarettes. There were only three left, but I lit one anyway. The day I can’t even bum a smoke from someone is the day I lie down and die.

“Rough night?” asked the bartender as she brought me my beer, an ashtray, and a smile. I smiled back. Common courtesy. You win more friends with a smile than a frown and all that.

( “You’re sooo funny.”

“What? It’s true.” )

“You could say that”, I answered, opened the bottle and tasted a mouthful. That first sip of beer is the closest to heaven a human being can come and still be alive. It was good beer too, not that watered down piss you get in some places.

“You new around here? I haven’t seen your face before”, she said, and started to wipe off the counter in front of me. It was actually perfectly clean before, and I knew she was trying to pump me for information. Why, I had no idea, but I was too tired to do anything else than answer.

“Yeah, I’m new.”

She smiled again. Pretty smile. Pretty woman. Dark skin, dark eyes, dark hair. Bright white large teeth. Probably African descent. “Welcome to The Corner then. I’m Aleesha Wakani. Most people call me Leesh.”

She looked expectantly at me. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I ought to give her a fake name, but something told me it would be better to be honest with this lady. “Christopher Chapelle”, I said. “Most people call me Chris. Or Jackass. Take your pick.”

Aleesha-Wakani-most-people-call-me-Leesh laughed and wiped away some more imaginary dirt from the counter. “I think I’ll go with Chris for now. You a cyber?”

She pointed at my face, at the jacks on my forehead. No use denying those. What was I supposed to say? ‘No miss, just a few small things I had installed so I can play video games better’.

“I used to be”, I admitted.

She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you could quit.” No accusation, just a calm observation with a little hint of curiosity. I was grateful for that.

I shrugged. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Leesh didn’t prod any further. Don’t ask, don’t tell, that’s the policy in the Dive. Most people end up here because of something that happened in their past. If you want to stay out of the shit, it’s a good idea to keep the hell away from other people’s business.

We chatted for a while. I asked her if there were any chance of finding somewhere to sleep. She told me about an overnight shelter a couple of blocks down where I might get a bed if I was prepared to do some chores for the lady who ran it. I asked her if there were any chance of finding a job. She laughed at me and asked if I thought she looked like a career counsellor.

I asked if this place always was so calm. She told me, very pointedly, that people who were looking for trouble did well to look for it somewhere else. I was beginning to get quite sure about that baseball bat.

Then the door opened and someone came in. Leesh promptly abandoned our conversation and started to rummage around under the counter. She came up with another ashtray and a few pieces of paper that she brought over to the far end of the bar desk.

I turned around to get a look at the person who just walked in. It was a woman, dressed in an oil-flecked overall. As she walked up to the bar desk, she wriggled out of the sleeves and tied them around her waist, revealing the most fascinating tattoos I’ve ever seen. It was an intricate pattern of circles, triangles and squares that begun on her fingers and snaked up over her arms, disappearing into the sleeves of her t-shirt.

Her eyes were blue. Her hair was brown, reached her cheeks, and was dyed in a muted shade of purple in the ends. It looked like she’d dipped her head in a bucket of paint, like some retropunk reject.

It was hard to tell her age. People in the Dive often look older than they are, and she was no exception. She moved with a kind of laid-back purpose that made my every synapse, both real and artificial, scream at me to watch her carefully. In my line of work, you learn to read people pretty damn well. She looked a small ball of pent-up aggression.

( “Your metaphors suck, Chapelle.”

“Hey, I’m telling the story!”

“You’re fucking up the story, ‘s what you’re doing. Now it’s my turn.”

K.C.

Walking through the door of The Corner, I never know where I’m gonna go next. It’s the charm of this place. Fuck phones, fuck e-mails, fuck meeting calendars. The Corner is the only agenda I need.

It’s easy. You need something done, you need someone found, you want someone to know something? Just go down to the Corner and give this nice woman behind the counter a message. Have a beer while you’re here, I can guarantee it’s free from the kind of body fluids that has nothing to do in a drink.

This evening was no different from any other evenings. I came from the workshop, in half a mind to go home and spend the evening with me and myself, but the Corner is one of those places you just don’t walk past. You have to drop in and see if anything’s happening that might concern you.

Leesh knows me pretty well. My drink was already at my usual place on the counter, an ashtray neatly placed at the side.

“Got anything for me?” I asked as I sat down and lit a cigarette. Leesh handed me a wad of notes, scribbled on the back of napkins and scrap paper.

“The usual. Rico wants you to drop by when you have a moment. There’s a note from Misha and Takedo with the details for their next run. And Charlie sent some kid to tell you that if you don’t get in touch soon she’s, I quote: ‘gonna kick your arse so hard you’ll have shit coming out your ears’, unquote.”

I snorted, put that particular note in the ashtray and set fire to it with the end of my cigarette. “She’s got shit coming out her mouth. ‘Sides, I could take her any day.”

Leesh shook her head, but she was smiling as she did it. “I hear you. Mrs Wachowski’s complaining that her heater is making ‘funny noises’…”

“That’s because it’s an old piece of crap and she keeps using it to dry towels on.”

“…and there’s a new guy sitting over there admiring your tattoos.”

I turned my head, slowly. Met a pair of grey eyes. They shied away immediately. Not very subtle. What caught my attention was the jacks on his forehead, one over his right eyebrow and one on his right temple. Bad news.

“Cyber agent?” I asked Leesh. “Here in the Dive?”

Leesh glanced over at the mystery man, and then back to me. “He told me he quit. I translate that to mean he did something the Cyber Division didn’t like and now he’s on the run.”

Yeah, fat chance. Like the Cyber Division would ever let go of an agent. “Don’t want any cybers here”, I said. “He armed?”

“I’m not in the habit of body-searching my customers”, said Leesh sourly. “Bad for business.”

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t mind body-searching him”, I teased. Leesha blushed. She had apparently been entertaining those thoughts herself.

I finished my drink, jumped off the stool, and went over to the guy, sizing him up on my way.

Tall. Like, really tall. The kind of tall that would have me staring up his nostrils if he stood up. Long blond hair, braided in the back. In need of a wash, but that described half the population of the Dive. His clothes had seen better days, and so had the rest of him.

He saw me coming. Looked like he’d rather be somewhere else. I didn’t blame him. I’d rather seen he’d been somewhere else too.

“You’re new ‘round here”, I told him when I got closer.

Small nod, but his expression told me he really wanted to answer something along the lines of ‘duh!’. He didn’t. Smart man.

“You carrying a gun?” I asked.

Wary eyes, tense shoulders. “What if I do?”

“Guns aren’t allowed here. Zone rules.”

He took that in, a little confused. They always are at first. The freezones aren’t supposed to have any laws. That’s what makes people come here. For us who tries to make this place work, however, it’s necessary to set up some rules. Sure, you don’t have to follow them. But if faced with the choice of following my rules and live, or break them and die, most people would take the option that includes staying alive. There’s a fucking good reason for the rules, and everyone knows about it.

“If I’d had a gun, I would’ve pawned it a week ago”, said the guy.

“Sure you would”, I shot back. “What’s your name?”

“Chris Chapelle”, he said. “What’s yours?”

Bold as brass. I couldn’t help admire that, at least a little. If he hadn’t been a cyber, he would’ve fit right in here.

“I’m K.C. Davis”, I said. “I’m one of the zoneguards, and I’m also the one who’ll be kicking the crap out of you if you stir up any trouble.”

The brave fucker actually had the stomach to look me up and down, like he was trying to determine if I was good for my word. I gave him the most poisonous glare I could muster. Being as short as I am, you’ve got to put it all in the eyes. He backed down.

“I’m not here looking for trouble”, he said, and then added under his breath “At least not actively…”

I believed him. I was also reasonably certain he wasn’t here under cover. A cyber agent on a mission doesn’t act so…human. Of course, that was no reason to trust him. Mission or no mission, a cyber in the Dive was bad news. Even if this one might not be a threat, I could expect his creepy buddies to turn up any second.

He finished his cigarette, smoked it all the way down to the filter, like you do when you’re almost out and don’t know when you might get your hands on some more.

“What would happen if I was packing?” he asked, without looking at me.

I looked him over again, looking for any sign that he was carrying a gun. Hard to tell, with the bulky coat he wore. His clothes were loose, hanging around him like rags, like he had lost quite a lot of weight during a short period of time. Well, I wasn’t going to body search him either. I was pretty sure he was just trying to test me, so I answered:

“For starters, you wouldn’t live long enough to regret lying to me.”

Another small nod, accepting. Then:

“You haven’t got a smoke to spare, have you?”

He shot me a smile that could probably be described as ‘charming’ by someone who cares about things like that. I was ready to re-evaluate my earlier assessment. Maybe not that smart after all. This guy had a hell of a death wish. Or hell of a lot of guts. Whatever it was, it made me curious to see if he’d be able to hold up against the Dive.

I tossed him my half full packet. He caught it out of the air, slid one out and lit it, in one single smooth motion.

“Thanks”, he said with a wink.

“Jackass”, I answered. For some reason, it made Leesha start to grin like an idiot behind the counter, and I decided that was my cue to leave. It had been a weird evening, and I almost looked forward to having another tangle with old Mrs Wachowski’s heater. That one I could usually fix with a good hard kick.

(“So you’d rather spend time with Mrs. W:s heater than with me. I think I’m a little hurt.”

“That heater and I have a long and constructive relationship.”

“Whatever. Leesh, another beer please! I think it’s my turn to continue…”)

When you’re homeless, you never really sleep. You might be able to doze in a corner for a couple of hours, but you’re freezing to much to fall asleep for real, and if you did, you’d probably wake up the next day and find yourself frozen to death.

Mostly you just walk, try to keep warm, and you smoke, because you sure as hell haven’t got any money for food. The nights are long in the Dive, long and dark and cold. You try to keep out of the way from the other nightwalkers, the shapeless shadows who shuffle through the alleys. You don’t talk to them unless you’re really brave or really desperate or really lonely. If you’re lucky, they’ll let you borrow a smoke, but they might just as well gang up on you, kick in your ribcage and steal your boots and your coat.

I didn’t talk much to people that first week in the Dive. I didn’t know who I could trust, and most people I met didn’t trust me, on account of these goddamn jacks on my forehead. I had followed the lovely Aleesha’s advice and asked for a bed at the shelter, and I had slept there the first night, on a mattress on the floor, in exchange for scrubbing windows that were so grimy that I doubted anyone would ever see anything through them again. The next night, a seventeen-year-old girl with an eight-months-pregnant belly had turned up asking for shelter, and who was I to deny her a dry place to sleep? It was the streets for me after that. By the end of the week, I was ready to kick myself for being such a chivalrous moron, and I vowed that if I got hold of another place to stay, I wouldn’t let go of it if the entire maternity ward on St. Bridget’s turned up crying on the doorstep.

Like I said, I didn’t sleep much. I had run out of money after three days, spent them on smokes and coffee mostly. Coffee to buy me a few minutes’warmth, and cigarettes to keep the worst hunger away. I’ve never been much of an eater, but I don’t like to starve either. I had found a couple of places I weren’t kicked away from too often. Some doorways I could nap in during daytime. A café, where the owner was decent enough to turn his back if guests happened to leave something on their plates. And The Corner. The glorious, fabulous, life-saving Corner.

I didn’t hang out there all the time. I was afraid that Leesha would grow tired of having me sit in a booth looking like a pile of shit. But when the rain was pouring down, or the temperature went below zero and I thought I would freeze my nuts off, I would glide in and try to melt into the wall. From time to time, Leesha took pity on the miserable character that was I and gave me free coffee. Otherwise, I’d just sit there and keep to myself, when I wasn’t trying to bum cigarettes from nice-looking people.

Without The Corner, I would’ve been dead pretty soon. I know Cee thinks I’m a wimp, but she grew up on the street. Take a guy who’s used to three meals a day, a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in, and throw him out over the edge with no safety nets. You won’t get a happy ending. I’m telling you, if I’d been out on my own much longer, you would’ve found me searching trough the trashcans for something to eat, and the Dive trashcans pretty much consist of toxic waste. I wasn’t quite that desperate yet, but I was quietly beginning to wonder if it really would be that bad to fall asleep one of those cold nights and don’t wake up again.

That’s when the migraine literally knocked me off my feet.

I didn’t get them often, and before I had had meds to keep them under control, at least if I took the damn pills before I reached the throwing up and passing out stage. I have no idea where the migraines come from, probably all the junk that’s stuck inside my head. The human brain was never intended to share living quarters with a shitload of electronics.

I had been feeling funny for a couple of days, but not paid much attention to the fact. A man who lives on coffee and cigarettes for a week is bound to feel ill. It wasn’t until my sight began to blur that I started to wonder if that nausea I had felt for the past day might be from something worse than just general lack of food.

It was raining. For some reason it always seems to be raining in the Dive. That day it was the icy kind of rain, like prickly needles on my skin, and the cold seeped through my coat and my shirt and left me frozen to the bone. Add to that a pounding headache that made even my hair hurt. My brain felt far too large for my head, and my eyeballs itched like crazy. I wished I had actually been in possession of that gun. A bullet through the temple felt like a really good idea. It couldn’t possible hurt any more.

It was, again, The Corner that saved me from a grisly death in the gutter. Well, technically you don’t die from a migraine, even though you wish you could. But I was pretty damn helpless and just a step from collapsing in a heap somewhere. The predators of the Dive would’ve been quick to take advantage of my sorry state. They weren’t welcome to The Corner, so I took my refuge there sometime into the afternoon. By then, I was too far gone to care about appearances. I staggered through the door, doing my best not to puke on Aleesha’s floor, and more or less fell into an empty booth where I curled up and tried to shut the rest of the world out.

Some useful things to know about migraines: Loud noises make them worse. Blinking lights make then worse. Strong smells, changes in temperature, sudden movements, all those things comes together to make my existence a living hell. You can probably figure out why a bar is not the best place to be during a migraine-attack. I honestly don’t know how long I spent crumpled against the wall in that booth. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours. I was more or less delirious with pain. I wanted to throw up, but had nothing in my stomach. All I could do was to curl up and whimper and curse whatever ill fate had brought me to the Dive.

(“You finished whining?”

“You have no idea how it feels, so shut up.”

“I’ve seen you comatose with one of those things often enough to have a pretty good idea. I’m just sayin’, you weren’t much aware of what happened next, so I’d better take over.”

“Point. Go ahead.”)

K.C.

The Dive runs on debt. There is always someone who owes you something. There is always something you owe someone else. Every single person in the Dive walks around with a little heap of mental IOU:s they have to keep track of. You have to pay your debts, or you’ll loose whatever respect people have for you. You don’t make it very far in the Dive without respect.

I try to keep myself on the plus side of the debts. I make sure I always have more favours to collect than I owe to others. It’s one of the reasons for why I’m a zoneguard. As long as people are indebted to me, I have their support.

But then there are debts that can never be paid in full. Almost everyone has one. Those are the debts that make you vulnerable. I have a few, most of them to people who are too nice to demand that I pay them back.

The biggest of my debts is the one I owe Rico. Most people wouldn’t think that a mug of coffee and a chunk of bread in a warm flat would be worth that much, but it was. It was, because they were given freely, with no strings attached, to a half-feral nineteen-year-old girl fresh out of prison. It was, because a bear-like Mexican doctor was the first person for more than a decade to offer that girl something without asking for anything in return.

Rico would never ask me to pay him back. He’s too good, too decent a person. But the sneaky bastard knows very well, that because of that, I have to pay the debt to the entire Dive. He knows, that the coffee and the bread he gave me five years ago forced me to become the best zoneguard I could ever be.

That evening when I stepped through the doors to the Corner, I had no idea that it would be my day to pay another little part of that debt.

I walked in, got my drink, lit my cigarette and got to talk with Misha and Takedo, the best damn smugglers in my part of the Dive. They had just finished a successful run, bringing in some stuff we really needed, and it was as good a cause as any to celebrate a bit. I bartered with them over the price on some pipes, mostly for fun since all three of us knew I would get them for the price I wanted.

‘Leesha gave me my messages, the usual stuff, plus another pissy note from Charlie that she wanted to see me. I burned that one too, not in the mood for playing her games. Then ‘Leesh motioned to the far end of the room.

“You cyber’s back there”, she told me. “He doesn’t look so good.”

“He’s not my cyber,” I answered. I’d run into the man a couple of times the past week, exchanged some words, and he’d begged more cigarettes from me than a man with any shred of dignity would think of doing. I sort of liked him, at least I liked his attitude, and the way he’d managed to stay somewhat cheerful even though he was so obviously down on his luck.

So I went to check him up. He really didn’t look good. Even thinner and dirtier than the last time I’d seen him. He was curled up in his seat, pressed against the wall, and he was clutching his head like he was trying to claw his brains out. He was almost shaking, his face pale and covered with a thin sheen of sweat. Not a pretty sight, I tell you.

He didn’t answer when I talked to him, didn’t seem to be aware of what was happening around him, and the only sounds he made was a kind of low moaning that I couldn’t decipher into something coherent.

When I’d been trying to get contact with him for a couple of minutes, I lost my patience, grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

“Hey, you on drugs or what?” I asked. What else was I supposed to believe? It’s easy for the street people to fall into that trap. I’ve been there myself. Pretty damn depressing to watch, no matter who it is.

I finally got a response, a hand swatting weakly at my arm, so I continued.

“What the hell are you on? Listen, you can’t go trippin’ in here, you’ll scare the customers away.”

I almost shouted the last into his ear. His face did a strange twitchy thing, and he looked like he was going to puke. He pressed himself even harder against the wall, and his lips moved. I had to lean down to catch what he was saying.

“G’way…”

By then, I’d pretty much had it with the guy, and prepared myself to haul him out of The Corner and deposit him someplace where he wouldn’t be in the way for ‘Leesha’s business.

That was when Misha tapped my shoulder.

Misha, or Michail Petrov, is another of the people I owe, and another of the people who are too nice to demand I pay the debt. He’s six feet four, built like a brick wall, and once used to work for the Russian mafia. That was before he met Takedo, then a hit man for the Yakuza. Neither of their employers approved of the relationship, and they both ended up in the Dive, because this is where you come when you have nowhere left to run.

The reason I listen to Misha has nothing to do with his size or his former occupation. He doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s worth listening to, I’ve leaned that after many years of experience.

This time, what Misha had to say was: “I don’t think he’s high.”

And I stared at him, probably looking very dumb, and said: “What?”

And Misha said: “My mother used to have bad headaches. He looks almost like she did. He’s not on drugs, he’s sick.”

And I took a closer look at the cyber, and noticed those little signs that you learn to notice in my job. The difference between a person strung out on drugs, and a person in serious pain. I came to the conclusion that this guy belonged to the latter category.

“So what do you do ‘bout it?” I asked Misha. I’m no fucking medic. I know how to cause pain, not make it stop.

“My mother had medication. When it didn’t help, she had to lie down until the headache went away. I don’t think this is a good place for him to be.”

I looked around The Corner. Nice place as it is, I had to admit that Misha was probably right. There was lots of noise, lots of customers talking in loud voices, lots of clinking glasses, ringing and rattling from the arcade game. It was enough to give me a headache some days, and from the look of it, the cyber was really suffering.

“So…” said Misha, uncertainly. “What do you want to do?”

Dear Misha, always needing someone to take charge. He’d be a good zoneguard himself if not for that particular weakness. Takedo is the one who wears the proverbial pants in that relationship, even though he’s nine inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter.

I thought for a moment, then I said: “Let’s take him to my place. It should be calm enough this time of the day.”

Don’t ask me why I did it. I’m no the one to pick up strays. I still wonder what I would’ve done if some little detail had been different. If the weather hadn’t been so goddamn awful that day. If Charlie hadn’t been in one of her psycho mindfuck moods. If Rico hadn’t chewed me out that same morning for not letting people get close to me. If I hadn’t had that ancient debt nagging at me. Someone once took care of me when I needed help.

We got him home and dumped him on my bed, and then Misha went to get Rico. I sat on the edge of the bed, watching the cyber. He was more or less unconscious by now. He’d tried to throw up twice during the time it’d taken to get him home, but nothing had come up except for clear liquid. Even though it wasn’t my concern, I silently wondered how long it was since he’d eaten.

Rico knocking on my door woke me from my thoughts, and I went to open. He easily fills the entire doorway, and he almost has to bow his head to get in. Misha loomed outside, but I sent him back to The Corner and Takedo. My pad isn’t big, and it gets crowded real fast when there are too many people there. Sometimes I wonder why I have so many large friends.

“Good evening, loca. Misha said you needed me.”

Before you say anything, Rico is the only person on earth who’s allowed to call me loca. Yes, I do know what it means. That’s why he’s the only one who’s allowed. He’s earned it.

“Not me, the guy in there.” I tipped my head towards the alcove where I have my bed. “He’s sick. Some kind of headache.”

“Yes, Misha told me that much. It sounds like a migraine.”

Rico walked over to the bed, hesitating just a little. “This is the cyber agent I heard about?”

“Yeah”, I sighed. ”Anything you can do? I can’t have him here all night.”

Rico has this thing he does with his eyebrows. He kind of quirks them. Now he did. “Then why did you bring him here?”

I didn’t even answer that one. He knew damn well why. However, Rico didn’t press the matter. He turned his attention back to the man who was passed out on my bed and did his doctor stuff. Like I said, I’m not a medic. When he was finished, he turned back to me, looking smug.

“You do not have much choice about keeping him here, loca. He will need to sleep it away. We should pull the curtains shut, he needs dark, calm and quiet.” He gave his patient a glance and a frown. “Some food too, when he wakes up.”

“I don’t run a fucking shelter here”, I said. Sure, I knew I’d already lost the fight, but I didn’t want to look like I was giving in. Rico knows about my little peculiarities, so he let me rant while he pulled the drapes shut around my sleep-alcove and turned off the precious electrical light I had lit earlier.

By the time he was finished, I had resigned myself to the situation and set about making coffee for us. Rico sat down at my table and lit the candles. Electricity is always in shortage in the Dive.

“What do you think he is doing here?” asked Rico, nodding towards the bed and the sleeping cyber.

I shrugged. “No idea. He told ‘Leesh he quit. I don’t know.”

“There are rumours”, said Rico, the worst gossip in the Dive. “People say the Cyber Division is preparing to take us down.”

I shook my head. “Nah. They wouldn’t send just one cyber, and they wouldn’t leave him in a shape like that. I think he’s just like the rest of us, at the end of his rope.”

“He might be useful to you”, said Rico. I could see in his eyes that he was already making plans for how to help his unfortunate patient. If there ever was a man with too big a heart, it’s Rico Alvarez. I keep worrying it’ll get him in trouble one day. “If he gets somewhere to stay and something to do.”

“And what am I supposed to do with a fucking cyber?” I asked, regretting the words as soon as they flew out of my mouth. What had Rico been supposed to do with a tattooed girl who preferred fighting to talking? Once again, my debt to him, my debt to the Dive. “Maybe I can use him”, I continued, softer. “We’ll see when he wakes up.”

“Good. I think it will end well for you both.”

I said something testy about predictions and old women, and we drank our coffee by candlelight, not knowing that this time, Rico’s prediction really was going to prove itself true.

(The woman’s eyes are lost in the past, the candlelight of the present flickering over her skin. It happened many months ago, the thing they talk about, but she can still recall every detail, like it was yesterday.

The man’s fingers sketch a ghostly trail over her arm, it draws a distant smile from her lips, and he continues the story.)

I woke up in a different place than I’d passed out. I hate when that happens. It’s damn confusing.

Now, it sounds like I’ve got a habit of waking up in strange places with no recollection of getting there. Actually, it doesn’t happen that often, but it’s not a good feeling nevertheless.

There was greyness, that’s the first thing I noticed, and also the fact that it was day greyness instead of night greyness. Day greyness is lighter, more transparent. The sun never reaches the Dive. Day greyness is the best it gets.

The second thing I noticed was that I lay on something soft, a completely novel experience. It was so long since I’d slept in a bed that I just lay still there for a while, breathing in the softness, enjoying the touch of sheets against my skin.

Then, thoughts began to wander through my cotton-stuffed head, some small but very important questions. Whose bed was this, and how the hell had I ended up here?

A quick check told me that I still had my jeans and my shirt on. The boots and the coat were gone, and that brought a touch of panic. There was no way I could find another pair of shoes, and even though the coat was ragged and dirty, it was at least warm. Besides, everything I owned was in the pockets of that coat. It wasn’t much, but I doubted I would come by a pair of prescription glasses and a case of cyber-gear in this place.

I studied my surroundings, still a bit too muzzy in the head to realise the weirdness of the situation. The grey filtered through a curtain that must’ve been red once, but now had a kind of bleached orange-pink colour. There were small fake-mirrors embroidered on it, most of them black with age. The softness underneath me was indeed a bed, surrounded by beige-grey walls. There were drapes hanging off the walls too, worn and torn, and not the least colour-coded, but they had probably been beautiful once.

There were walls on three sides of me, and then there was the curtain. Daylight behind it, and I came to the conclusion that my questions might be answered if I took a look on the other side.

I sat up, shivering, wrapped a blanket around me and got to my feet. Then I ended up on the bed again, light-headed, uncertain about what had happened. My hands were actually shaking, and I felt weak like a newborn chicken.

That was when I heard a voice from the other side of the curtain.

“You gonna stay in there the rest of the day or what?”

Right then, it sounded like a pretty good idea, but I figured the owner of the voice wouldn’t like it as much as I would. I made another attempt of rising, and managed to get more or less upright without passing out again. From the other side of the curtain, I smelled coffee and cigarette smoke, and I could die for both those things.

I pulled the curtain aside, revealing a room. It was… neat. That’s the best description I could think of. There was a bookshelf, filled to the point of explosion with worn paperbacks. There was a bulky three-seat couch in a faded shade of blue. There was a counter, a small refrigerator, and a set of hotplates. There was a wooden table and three mismatched chairs. Everything was clean, and well…neat. I noticed my boots on the floor under one of the chairs, and my coat hanging over the back of it. On another chair sat my saviour/captor, I had yet to figure out what. The zoneguard with the retropunk hair, the scowl and the fascinating arm-tattoos.

“Look who’s risen from the dead”, she said. I wondered what time it was, and whether or not it was too early for sarcasm.

It took me a while to take in the room and the woman, and I must’ve looked quite stupid. The coffee-and-cigarettes smell apparently came from her. There was an ashtray on the table, and she had a dark-green mug in front of her.

She was waiting for me to say something. I couldn’t come up with something clever, so I just settled for: “Where am I and how did I get here?”

That made her smile. “You’re at my place, and Misha carried you here, after you tried to puke on his shirt.”

“Oh.” That was interesting information. I dimly remembered someone shaking me and tugging at me, and screaming in my ear. “Who’s Misha?”

“Friend of mine. You’ve probably seen him. He hangs out at The Corner. Big Russian guy.”

It sounded familiar, even though I couldn’t put a face to the name. The woman looked me up and down. “Before I’ll even consider feeding you, you’re gonna have a shower. No offence, but you kinda stink. Bathroom’s through that door. Rico left some clothes, but I doubt they’ll fit your skinny ass.”

Shower. Food. I must’ve died and came to heaven. I didn’t even bother to inquire about the identity of this ‘Rico’-person; I went straight for the bathroom.

That too was very small and very neat. I stripped, noting in the process that I really did stink, and stepped into the shower. It was bliss. You don’t realise how wonderful hot water is until you go without for a week. I stood under the spray for five minutes, eyes closed, just feeling the grime and the sweat wash off my skin. I found shampoo and washed my hair, had to wash it three times before it felt clean, and after that I just stood there until the water began to turn cold.

I dried off, decided that I could get the knots out of my hair later, and then came to the conclusion that Rico, whoever he was, had to be a giant. The clothes were okay length-wise, but the trousers were far too wide and the t-shirt hung off my shoulders like some kind of poncho. I didn’t even bother with the underwear. There was a razor, but I didn’t trust my hands to be steady enough to handle sharp objects near my neck so I left that for later as well.

When I came out of the bathroom, shaky but clean, the woman at the table looked me over again, more amused than sarcastic this time.

“I was startin’ to think you’d drowned in there”, she said. “You’re sure as hell drownin’ in those clothes. Sit down and eat. I can’t cook to save my own life, but at least it’s warm.”

In front of the only empty chair, there was a plate with unidentified objects on it. As I got closer, I could discern baked beans, from a can, and some kind of meat, also from a can. Beside the plate was, oh thank dear God, a mug of coffee. I could’ve inhaled the food in half a minute, and she must have seen it in my eyes or something, because as I sat down and picked up the fork, she told me, still with that amused look on her face.

“Don’t eat too fast, or you’ll be sick.”

She sounded like she was talking from experience. I did my best, I really did, but I was so hungry that I hardly felt what it tasted like. Maybe it was just as well. Like everything else in the Dive, the beans looked grey and the meat looked grey. The only thing not grey was the coffee, which was black and hot and loaded with caffeine. She watched me while I ate, not saying a word, and I didn’t try to strike up a conversation either because I was too busy chewing.

When I was finished, I put down the fork, made sure I hadn’t got any stains on the borrowed t-shirt, and drank the last of the coffee. I was beginning to feel almost human again, full and clean. The only thing missing now was a smoke, so I reached over to my coat; reasonably certain that there was one or two left in a crumpled pack somewhere. I found them, together with my glasses and my cyber-gear, and put it all on the table. I’d left the gear out of my sight so I’d have to check it out; make sure no one had tampered with it. I’d learned that lesson from Cain. The woman on the other side of the table studied the little metal-case, and then the holes on my forehead.

“Did it hurt? Putting it in?” she asked, taking me completely by surprise. I opened and closed my mouth a couple of time, probably looking like an exceptionally stupid carp or something.

“I don’t remember”, I blurted out.

Her eyes narrowed, and then she shrugged. “You look better than yesterday.”

“I feel better. Thanks. I owe you.”

She started to grin. “You’re beginning to understand how this place works, mister. Yeah, you sure as hell owe me. The question is, are you gonna pay me back, or someone else?”

I didn’t understand that one, and it was more confusion than I could handle right then, so I lit my last cigarette and opened the case that held my cyberpack, and the uplink wires. They looked all right, but I’d been tricked into thinking that before so I thought it’d be best to run some diagnostics just to be sure.

The cyberpack is thin little box, four inches wide, shaped to fit on my forehead. It contains the tech and the databases I can’t handle having permanently stuck in my head. Now I put it on, jacked in and started to run through the systems to control there was nothing there that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“That’s disturbing, you know”, said the woman on the other side of the table and lit her own smoke.

“Try being on my side of the fence”, I answered. I know everything about disturbing. It’s hard to adapt, especially when I’ve not been linked up for a while. There’s the world outside your head, and then there’s the world inside your head, and the world inside is suddenly much much bigger than the one on the outside.

I ran my tests and then logged off, confident that everything was in order. Miss tattoos-and-attitude kept looking at me, thankfully more curious than disgusted or scared.

“So. You have a computer in your head.”

“Sort of.” I could’ve explained the technology, but I honestly didn’t know how much of it she’d understand, so I decided to save it for when she specifically asked.

“What can you do with it?”

“Pretty much everything a normal computer can do.”

“Could be useful.” She paused, still looking at me like I was some kind of freak on display. “You don’t have anywhere to stay, have you?” she asked then.

“If I had, do you think I would be sitting here?”

A smile. “Probably not. Tell you what. You do some work for me; you can stay on the couch for a couple of days ‘til you get back on your feet. How’s it sound?”

It sounded unbelievable. I didn’t tell her that. Instead I asked: “What kind of work?”

“Carrying stuff, mostly. Misha and Takedo’s gonna need some help getting their shipment out. You can play errand boy ‘til I figure out what you’re good at. Well, what do you say?”

Well, what the hell was I supposed to say? For a roof over my head, I could’ve sold my soul. I reached out my hand.

“Deal.”

(Back in the bar, the black woman behind the counter puts another couple of drinks in front of the story-telling pair.

“And exactly how long did those ‘couple of days’ last?” she asks, smiling, because she already knows the answer.

The woman with the tattoo’s shrugs. “Eleven months, give or take. Haven’t gotten rid of him yet.”

The man with the braid grins. “I grow on people.”

“You’re a fucking nuisance, ‘s what you are.”

“Well, that’s why you keep me around, isn’t it?”

The story is over, the listeners can tell. Their curiosity is not entirely sated but, as with all good stories, they do not want to know everything at once. They order their drinks, they listen to the man and the woman and their friendly banter, and some of them silently wonder how much of the story was true, and how much of it was part of the legend that surrounds the zoneguard and the cyber agent of the Dive.)