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.Walked up into the city.Cries was red.Everywhere.Bathed in that light.” Softly he added, “That day, I promised myself I’d never be too poor to leave the aqueducts.” In his normal voice, he said, “I started planning the Black Mark that night.”Strange the effect of that light.It prodded me into uniform and him into crime.Ultimately, it had pushed us both toward what we wanted.Jak stretched in the evening’s light, long and lean on the blanket.Nice.Then he sat up, rubbing his neck.I didn’t want to get up, but I still had work to do.I sat up too, and grabbed the clothes I’d been wearing earlier, before the sunset distracted us with its sensuous light.We dressed in silence, but as we stood up, I said, “Jak.”He finished fastening up his trousers.“Yah?”“What does Dig sell now? Still funk, dot-dope, bliss, and hack?”“That’s right.And node-bliss.”Node-bliss? “You mean bliss?”“It’s different than the usual.Softer.” He grunted as he tugged on his black pullover.“Hell, it’s so soft, you can’t feel it at all.”It didn’t surprise me.Bliss was one of the less addictive drugs.Kids used it above-city.Illegal, yes, but less serious than the hardcore monsters like funk or hack.I pulled on my shoulder holster with its pulse gun.“Never heard of node-bliss.”“Doesn’t do shit for me.”“You tried it?”“Yah.” He shrugged, all decked out in his dark leathers.“Whisper says it makes people go crazy, but I didn’t feel squat.Nothing.Scorch sold it.Now that she’s gone, probably it’s gone, too.”Scorch? That was odd.I would have thought the cartel would stop her.They made fast work of anyone who poached on their territory.Hell, they were about to make fast work of each other.“Dig and Hammer Vakaar are going to war,” I said.Jak had been looking at the sunset, but now he turned with a start.“Say what?”“Dig has Scorch’s guns.” Probably Scorch’s node-bliss, too, whatever that was.“She’s going to kick Hammer’s ass.”The light from outside cast a red glow across Jak’s face.“Not good.”“Yah.Majda knows.”Anger flared in his gaze.“You turned in Dig?”“No.I just told her the cartels had the guns.” Quietly I added, “They have to know, Jak.All hell is going to break out down there.We need to get people to safety.”“The dust gangs will fight.”“We need to stop them.”“Stop them?” He snorted.“I don’t think so.They’re warriors.”I scowled at him.“They’re kids.They should be worrying about going to proms or whatever, not which side of a drug war they’re going to fight in.”“Oh, fuck that, Bhaajo.”“No, I don’t want to fuck that.” I smiled slightly.“Anyway, we already did, you and me.”He laughed and touched my cheek, the barest scrape of his rough fingertip.“Yah.”Gods.If someone could bottle his sexuality and sell it, she’d make billions.But I couldn’t let him distract me.“We have to warn the aqueducts.“Why?” He dropped his arm.“It’s not our war.”“It’s our code.Protect our own.” The interconnected ties in the undercity should have kept that mother from dying alone with her baby and small son.The authorities above-city didn’t care.If the Chief Takkars had their way, they would wipe us out like an infestation.The aqueducts survived because we lived by a code.Protect.Every gang, punker, rider, and crime boss knew that code.“I’m going down tonight,” I said.“See if I can warn people.You come?”It was a moment before he answered, but finally he said, “I’ll pull together what I can.Meet me at the foyer exit from the Concourse, three hours.”I nodded.“Three hours.”* * *During my previous searches of Scorch’s operation, I’d looked for the guns or clues to what happened to them.Today I was searching for drugs.I walked the tangled pathways of the Maze methodically, looking for anything out of place.Eventually I neared cave where Scorch had stored the guns, also the place where I had given that dust gang a tykado lesson.Max, I thought.Is anyone in the cavern up ahead?No one, Max thought.Then, Yes, they are.Then, No.Which is it, yes or no?It’s hard to tell with all these rock formations.They cast sensor shadows.Do you think that dust gang will come back?It seems unlikely.I had to agree.Trust didn’t come easily here, and regardless of my origins, I was a stranger, a novelty that spurred them to ask come for one tykando lesson, but I doubted it would go any farther.Have you ever heard of node-bliss? I asked.You mean phorine? It’s a prescription medicine.I had never heard of phorine, either.What does it do?It’s a neural relaxant.Apparently it doesn’t show up in routine exams.That sounded odd.Why not?To detect its use, you need to compare the user’s neural map with their map when they aren’t affected.Max paused.I imagine that is a rather involved process.Jak said it didn’t do anything for him.I don’t have any effects listed for it.So what’s the point of the stuff?I can’t say.I don’t have any details.It sounds like a scam.That would be like Scorch, to sell useless junk while she convinced her buyers they were doing some high-powered “neural relaxant.”Bhaaj, Max thought.You asked me if anyone was in that storeroom.That’s right.I was almost at the entrance.Are you picking up someone?Yes.Max thought.They are gathering.They? Maybe all four had come back.I walked into the cavern—and stopped stock still.They stood waiting by the walls, the outcroppings, in front of me, children ranging in age from about six to young teens.Even as I counted twelve of them, a girl jumped down from a hiding place in the back and a young man stepped out from behind a ragged rock wall.The water-bottle girl stood in front with an older boy and girl, both about fourteen.The older girl was a leanly muscled with lighter hair, brown more than black, that barely touched her shoulders.I recognized her, though it took me a moment to remember why.She had stood with the Oey dust gang that day thy had let me pass in the canal.I remembered them in particular because their gang had include a cyber-rider, which was rare in the aqueducts, the youth with the Oey cyber-tracings on his arm.She nodded to me, a gesture I had used at her age, acknowledging our fight Trainer.The older girl spoke.“Ready, all.”The group called out their answers.“Ready, all!”Well damn.Ready, all meant they were ready to train.They stood waiting for my response.How the blazes did I answer? No simple Sure, I can show you a few moves would work here.If I accepted this unexpected trust they offered, I was agreeing to do more than teach them tykado.I was offering leadership.I couldn’t make that promise, not when I had a life elsewhere.If I worked with them and then left Cries, it would betraying their trust.They had no idea they were asking me to make a much bigger decision, one that would tear apart my life.You can never go home: I had known, absorbed, lived that maxim for decades.I couldn’t stay on Cries.And yet…was it possible that here in front of me stood the glimmering of an answer to the broken pieces of the undercity.Like the light before dawn, a fledgling solution was coming to me.That solution, however, demanded a sacrifice I couldn’t make.I meant to tell them I had to leave.But somehow when I spoke, different words came out.In saying them, I made a decision, one that until this moment I hadn’t realized I intended.“Small ones here
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