Tribulation

1: My Fix

"Order up." The fat man sang to the crowded, smoky bar room before he noticed me. "Alex m'luv! Where 've you been?"

"Out and about, you know the usual." Meaning that he didn't, and shouldn't, want to know.

"Usual m'luv?"

"Of course." I grinned as he handed me the large black can and a glass of ice. The can opened with a familiar pop hiss, and gurgled as I poured it into the glass.

"You know Alex," he confided to me as he polished glass that didn't need polishing, in a facade he hardly needed to apply. Sam wasn't really a barkeep, not in the traditional sense. He was more of a drug dealer. "Your fix is one of the hardest to find."

I stared into my green energy drink. People didn't want to go up anymore, they wanted to be soothed. Bubblies did that. "You don't know how much I appreciate it."

"I don't Luv, but I've got an idea."

I grinned at him from across the counter as I settled onto my stool and sipped the bitter drink. Sam dealt with Bubblies for the most part, the government's drug of choice. Of course, his bar wasn't the most legal because that wasn't all he dealt. Sam was a dealer in rare fixes, he was the only bar in a fifty mile radius where you could get a beer not to mention an energy drink. He dealt with antique pleasures, pleasing that small group of people who didn't crave Bubblies, or were afraid to use them.

"Staying long?"

"Awhile." I admitted, drinking deeply. "I have some unfinished business to clear up."

Sam nodded, he knew enough about my business to know that he didn't want to hear more. "Price on your head's gone up." He informed me casually.

I glanced up at the posters behind him. He serviced a number of runaways and criminals, like myself. His bar was considered nuetral territory. You couldn't use it as a point of reference when snitching, and in turn you could also get a head start when being snitched on. Sam kept the Wanted posters up partly because it was his legal duty, however it was mostly because his less legal customers got a kick out of seeing their faces up there. I chuckled in appreciation before glancing at my most recent ad. I thought it was a good picture, at the very least I had a mischevious, almost omniscent look in my eyes. Anyone who looked that cocky deserved to be turned in. I glanced at the price. I was worth, alive, more then 750,000 dollars. I was the most expensive bounty in the bar. I sighed and took another deep swig and looked in the mirror behind Sam. He meandered further down the bar to leave me alone with my thoughts. I couldn't see the criminal in the mirror. I saw a slightly bemused, red headed teenager with brown eyes that hinted that there was something else, something dangerous about this girl. I shrugged my shoulders and downed the rest of the glass. I set my money on the counter, grabbed my fix and blew Sam a kiss goodbye. He laughed and waved me out of the door. I stepped out of the warm building and into the cold, damp, night streets. I shrugged my shoulders into my coat and tightened the scarf around my neck.

The night was black, and the sky was studded with diamonds. This used to be our favorite time of day. I kicked a pebble and moved down the dark alleyway. I'd learned long ago it was best not to think about Us, not that I didn't make it hard on myself. I tugged at my scarf, my trademark, even that came from him, and the only time I took it off was when I was facing Them.

Them.

The King's Guard.

The Wasengad.

The only sound was the echo of my footsteps. By now most folks were behind closed doors, snuggled into their own personal delusions. Their personal utopias, in pill form. Bubblies were a depressant and hallucenogenic. They tricked your mind into thinking that world was perfect, that your life was the best. Bubblies were a big, fat, lie. But most people were okay with that. They'd be okay with anything as long as they got their few moments of bliss.

But I was privy to information that might just change their minds.

Bubblies were more than a drug. Laced into their form were nanites. Those nanites embedded themselves in your innards, and if that wasn't a pretty enough picture, once they were digested they would never leave. The nanites were powerful, each one was coded to a certain Bubblie purchase, and all Bubblie purchases were well recorded, filed and sent to the Wasengad. The Bubblies let them find you. They could also be used to incapacitate you. Even one dose of Bubblies would leave enough nanites in your body to deliver a mild electric shock, not enough to kill you, but enough to incapacitate you. And the Bubblies used by the Wasengad for their various uses, went one step above.

I felt a drop of ice on my nose and groaned audibly. Rain was not necessary, and frankly, it was going to ruin my night. I pulled at my scarf to make sure no drops of rain would go trickling down my neck.

A small chirp drew me out of my reverie. I ducked underneath an eave and let a small mechanical figure clamber out of my messanger bag. My BT model 4, kind of. I'd rebuilt Beth when I was younger. She could mimick human experssions and had a basically unlimited information processing system. She chirped again, before pulling out a small tablet from my bag and plugging it into her side. It was a map of the city, the stationary green dot was us, and six red dots, led by a neon blue dot showed that trouble was on the way. A legion of the Guard was approaching, very quickly.

"Thanks Beth." I muttered as she ducked back into my bag. Any potentially harmful entity was red, so I wasn't suprised a group that large was approaching. But there was only one blue dot in Beth's system. And curse it all, he had to be the one leading them, tempting me to stay and face them.

I sighed and steeled myself for my upcoming trial. I couldn't pass this up. This was a large part of the reason I was here afterall. I pulled my scarf away from my neck and tucked it into my bag. I might as well allow the mark to show. Thanks to him I'd been marked by the Guard, given my own individual barcode, tatooed to my neck in the fashion of another century. If I was to face them I wanted there to be no mistake about who I was. Alexandra Marie Nelson, red headed bane to the King. I loosened the knives I had placed on my person, anything of higher technology was usually unreliable with the Guard. I withdrew one and flipped it experimentally, I caught it smoothly. With the Guard it was better safe than sorry.

I could hear their boots now, thumping in an unbreakable militial rhythm towards me. He would know it was me by know. He was smarter than most of them.

I could see them, robed and dark. Shadows shifting nearer and nearer. My own personal nightmare coming just for me. He saw me, and ordered his troops to halt before approaching alone.

"Hey Hun." He grinned at me, ego was radiating off him like radiation. He hadn't always been like this. But the Guard did that to you. Bubblies did that to you.

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