There's no "Our Day", Part 2, chapter from sci-fi/post-apocalypse book series "Geryon's Code"
"It's a matter of life and death!"
The trishaw gave another short nod, showing that he heard her fine. Soon his speed doubled, even though the man seemed to be pedaling at the same pace. A few minutes later, he started humming a strange tune. Midori had never heard him sing before, and the atmosphere looked inappropriate to her, to put it mildly.
“Excuse me," she said, seeing singing as his readiness for conversation. "Maybe you know what's going on? Another riot, huh?"
“The gates have been jammed, either in the open or in the closed position” said the trishaw, after a pause. His voice was as if his vocal folds had rusted from long downtime. “The security guys who guard passages to the upper levels are trying to hold back the crowd. Oh! Can you see that? More idiots have arrived,” he pointed to a group of four men running somewhere along the tunnel. Two of them carried steel bars. “What’s even more fun is that something is going on not only in the Japanese block, but in various districts of the Underground. But what will they do even if they manage to break through? With a local access permit or without it at all… Who in their right mind would hire or accommodate them...?”
“And what about you? Do you want to access the upper levels?...”
“I’m from the Top anyway…” the rickshaw sighed. “And I barely escaped. When I have to run away from here, it’ll be hard to find a new place to stay.”
“Who do you have to run away from?” Midori asked cautiously.
“A disaster,” the man said in a tone that suggested no further talk.
The girl began to fidget worryingly, seeing no more familiar graffitis on the walls. She had never traveled so far from home. Even worse, when the bike turned again, they plunged into complete darkness: the lighting strips here were cut short or de-energized on purpose. The rickshaw turned on the front headlight, illuminating a thick cloud of dust in the air. About three minutes later, they almost crushed into a tall, unshaven man with a scarlet band on his arm. He was furiously knocking on the doors of the living quarters and yelling: “Hey there! Get your heads out of your asses! They shoot people there! Our people!.. Stop hunting dragons, you morons! The cops need to be beaten while we can do that! Babe…! Hey Baby!” he shouted to Midori. “If you meet someone, tell them that it's time to stop being cowards! This country used to be free, you, sleeping idiots!”
The girl literally sank into the seat of the rickshaw, while the driver irritably clicked his tongue and stepped on the gas even more. On either side of them, there were the doors of living quarters, small shops, and drinking pubs – nothing extraordinary. But now, in the dusty, mildew-scented darkness, Midori felt like monsters were about to crawl out of the doors. She had a strong desire to grab onto something. But all she could squeeze with fingers numb with fear were the cold metal handrails of a self-made carriage. “Maybe I should close my eyes?” she thought to herself. “I can see my dolls in every detail down to every ribbon. I can imagine my young mom… Or brother Alexander, who so fervently predicts the victory of good and convinces us to get away from the sweet captivity of the Omniverse...”
The horror suddenly subsided, giving way to violent anger, as if someone lit a Molotoff in the depth of the night. Damn Omniverse! Midori had never connected herself to it, since she didn’t have access rights. But the girl understood quite enough to see the bond between it and the substances that devoured her mother. She really wanted to find the one who came up with this terrible idea, and... She clenched her fists, trying to imagine a severe punishment. After all, it was not only her mother to be hopelessly bogged down in this quagmire. Probably hundreds of children have lost their parents in the same way… Living parents! In her school, organized by the Holy Cross Brotherhood, there were a majority of such kids – half-starved, untidy, sometimes fearful, sometimes, on the contrary, violent and angry.
“I would like the Omniverse creator to stay there for the rest of his life, being neither alive nor dead... I would like him to never see his parents and relatives. I would like him to play the same game every day so that he would hate it so much, but this game would never end, ”Midori said to herself, being surprised, but not afraid of her own cruelty.
Finally, over the shoulder of the silent rickshaw, she saw a golden spot of light. Midori checked her handheld: there was a well. And most likely, there is clear weather above, since the rays here reach so deep... A motionless figure became noticeable in the middle of the spot. It was no taller than Midori herself. “What kind of stupid idiots left a child in the middle of the street? Does anyone know that rats would gnaw it in a few minutes?” she thought.
Soon, a little man with an unnaturally skewed head and long arms was sitting on something like a little car with wheels. And a few seconds later, it could be seen that he was simply a single whole with this car: his living upper half was attached to the robotic lower one, assembled, which was visible from afar, in crude conditions.
“Oh! That’s cruel,” Midori whispered, trying to imagine what actually transformed the poor guy into a monster on wheels.
“We've arrived!” the rickshaw said grimly, slowing down the vehicle and pointing to a bright blue wall, along which a painted flock of black birds flew. The girl shuddered: the wall was behind the crippled guy’s back, which meant she would have to see him up close.
The rickshaw stopped twenty meters before the well. The driver told Midori to stay in the seat, while he ran up to the unfortunate cripple, who was half asleep and half dead. The man rolled him out of the sunlight, removed his jar from the belt, tilted his unpleasantly swollen yellowish face, and splashed him with water. The stranger groaned, cleared his throat, and burst with a number of dirty words.
“Watch your language, my friend!” the rickshaw said, nodding at Midori. “Here’s a lady with us!”
“Bro, I’m sorry,” answered the cripple, then got the jar from his savior and took two long sips.
“Just imagine! I’ve decided to take a sunbath. And then, suddenly, my cart stopped listening to me. It stopped moving – neither here nor there. And then I passed out. My brother had to go on business in the morning. He’s still somewhere around.”
“Do you live in the block forty five?”
“Yeah. Are you here for some “vitamins”?”
At first, Midori didn’t believe what she had heard, but then, without waiting for the rickshaw's permission, she jumped up from her seat, built up her courage, and approached the men. The cripple’s eyes became round like saucers; and in the first seconds, the girl didn’t understand why.
“So… Do you mean that I need to talk to you?” the girl asked instead of greeting. “I need red syringes to urgently exit from the Omniverse.”
"You must be Ms. Makoto’s daughter…" the rescued man said in confusion. Did she really look this much like her mother?
“Ms. Makoto, who crumbles to dust from your drugs and games,” Midori confirmed in an iron voice.
"I'm sorry, baby," muttered the cripple.
“Sorry? You don’t give a damn about it. You only think of yourself,” Midori said in disgust, withholding the harsher words. “So where are your drugs?”
The cripple nodded at the wall with the birds, in which the half-open door could be seen.
“If you need this, then wheel me inside,” the man showed a glove with wires connected to it. With its help he controlled his lower part. “That thing doesn't work anymore.”
Midori shook her head and with great difficulty pushed the poor fellow towards the door. The cyclist didn’t stand aside and helped to push the cripple into the room, and was going to go along with him and Midori, but…
“Wait outside,” snapped the dealer.
“Hell no! I'm in charge of her,” the cyclist replied without raising his voice.
Just a half a second later, there was a flash-like movement of the hand, and the barrel of a small, but real pistol aimed at the rikshaw's stomach. Judging by the way her companion's face changed, the girl realized that the gun’s safety was taken off. The cripple must have been training this trick for months.
“It’s OK, sir,” the girl said to the rickshaw, and stepped into the dark room, stretching forward her hand with the handheld. It seemed that she was about to hear the hungry cats scratching at her heart.
“Lock the door,” the dealer ordered hoarsely, without hiding the gun. The girl didn’t dare to argue with him. Then he moved forward, pushing his hands against the walls and furniture.
An acrid chemical smell that was similar to the one of spray paint, hit her nose. There were a lot of glittered dishes: laboratory vials, test tubes and flasks mixed with glass jars and bottles, pot-bellied aquariums with round walls, each of them having something inside – either alive or dead. The owner took out a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened another door. His face, still not old and similar to the muzzle of a guinea pig, became distorted in frustration, since he didn’t want anyone to go so far into his property. But now when the mechanical half had become a useless heavy anchor, he had no choice but to command the girl to roll him over to the freezing chamber at the other end of the room. Two sleeping bags laid here on the floor.
“I hope his brother won’t show up before I leave,” flashed in Midori’s mind. She had already noticed that the freezer and the shelves and low laboratory tables were positioned so that the cripple could easily reach them. It meant that it was he who made the drugs, and his brother just did the homework by performing the roles of a security guard and a courier.
Finally, a foggy cold red syringe with a needle covered with a plastic tip lay in Midori’s hand, then in her pocket. That forced the girl to forget for a second her disgust for the drug manufacturer. Mom will live, and the rest didn’t matter to her.
“Refrigerator is powered by the standby generator,” the cripple said. “And what will happen next?”
The girl extended her hand with the handheld for the invalid to withdraw money from her electronic wallet. But his own gadget didn’t work, as well as his “car for movement”. Only a fool would talk about a coincidence. For a few seconds they looked at each other. A thought flashed through Midori's mind telling her that she had been afraid of non-existing monsters in vain.
Taught by the bitter experience of survival at the lower levels, she prepared for the “let me touch you” offer. There were tons of such bastards, even with “real legs”. Unfortunately, the front door was closed, and the rickshaw couldn’t enter without a key. Besides, could he really be waiting for her outside?
“You’ll have to leave your handheld here,” the crippled man grinned.
“It isn’t mine. It belongs to my mom," said Midori.
“You do understand that you won’t leave here without paying, right?”
In the darkness, the cocked trigger clicked, and the barrel of the pistol rested on the girl's ribs.
“My mom paid in full. And even too much,” Midori said as firmly as possible, feeling a traitorous trembling all over her body. But at the same time, she decisively stepped back. “How much does it hurt when the bullet enters the body?” she thought.
“I didn’t get anything for this syringe!” shouted the cripple. “Hell! Give me the handheld, stupid sheep! Without it, I won’t live, just like your mother – without a "catapult"!...”
That was the name of the red liquid! It seemed that with the help of this thing, a person could leave a falling plane. So Midori had to do something. But so far, there was just one more step back.
“Say goodbye to your mommy!” the dealer threatened again. “My brother will throw your dead body into the cesspool and that will be the last time we all see you!”
Biting her lip, Midori took a third step back, but suddenly her head and back rested on something obviously alive. She squealed in fear. Having turned around and lit up that place, the girl saw the same bearded tall man that knocked on all doors, calling people to rebellion. Now the trouble was unavoidable.
This time the bearded man didn't say anything. He seized the handheld with his wide paw in just one motion, then grabbed Midori's shoulder with an iron grip and dragged her across the room like a rag doll. The girl's entire short life ran before her eyes, but it all ended as soon as it began. The dealer’s brother opened the door and pushed the girl, numb with fear, into the street. Even the emergency light was no longer on; only a faint stream of sunlight still flew into the shaft.
Rocking on her feet, with her head spinning and her chest flattened with horror, Midori, who was already preparing for death or something more terrible, went down on the sidewalk like a boneless heap and burst into tears. Suddenly, thin, veiny, but strong hands picked the girl up and put her into the already familiar seat. Sliding past the well, the bicycle plunged into pitch darkness. And although the headlight still lit up the space around – brightly and quite far, it was very difficult for Midori to calm down, and the squeaky gnashing of the pedals was painful, like a needle prick.
“You’ve waited for me,” Midori murmured through her sobs. The horror inside her didn’t back down. Now she was at the mercy of this man, not knowing what he was about to do next.
“But why?” she asked.
“I’ve decided to secure you a bit. I and those guys are backed by the same gang known as the Hammerhead Sharks. And if they hurt you and I complain…”
“They’ve grabbed my mom’s handheld!”
“And what about the money?”
“They failed to withdraw anything,” Midori sighed.
“I suspected that. But… Have you taken what you came for?”
The girl checked her pocket. The “catapult” was there.
"My name’s Midori," she said, as if it could guarantee her protection. “What’s your name?”
“Nite,” answered the man.
"Sorry! Is it “night” like the time or “knight” like the man who slays dragons?" Midori asked.
“It's up to you, because I'm a knight of the night,” the cyclist's voice softened.
“It's gone darker...”
“I wonder why they hadn’t cut us off earlier. Who in their right mind would waste energy on the third-class people?”
“I don’t understand…”
“Nevermind. The Underground will stay in the dark while the accident is being fixed at the upper levels,” the man's voice became cold and muffled again.
“Then how will we find the way?”
“Trust me, girl. I'm like a bat, I wil sense it. If you're scared, sit behind my back, so you can hold on to me.”
The girl refused. Because of the darkness, the way back seemed unbearably long. This time they met a group of people only once, the rest, apparently, were either scared away by the darkness or caught in their artificial sleep like Mrs Makoto.
By Stefan Djukic https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6ayL0V
"By the way, you've already got your revenge," the rickshaw said cheerfully. “For that cripple, the machine replaces not only his legs, but also some internal organs. Now that it doesn’t function, he won’t last long.”
“It serves him right,” Midori croaked.
Having found the door of her block, Midori became worried about the fact that she had nothing to pay Nite.
“Maybe you have a palm scanner… We can use my mother’s hand.” she said when stepping at the threshold.
“Next time. Greetings from brother Alexander, girl. You’d better not stick your nose out of the block for the next two days,” the rickshaw said. Then he jumped on his bike and dived into the darkness with a clang. The beam from his headlight still glided along the deserted street for some time like the “flashlight” of a deep-sea fish in the depths of the sea.
“He knows Alexander!” Midori thought in surprise. “Why did he mention it only now?”
She turned the key in the lock, took a candle from her pocket and lit the fuse with the lighter. Her mother was in the same position in which the girl had left her. A helmet covered half of her face. Long uncut hair hung from the chair to the floor, like frozen jets of dirty water. Sighing heavily, Midori put the candle into the cup, removed the cap from the syringe, and blew out a short fountain from the needle.
“I won’t miss the vein…” she thought. “I need to stop being a chicken!” She put the candle closer to her mom, turned her hand and slowly pushed the needle under the barely warm skin. Then she pressed the “Disconnect” button on the helmet and pulled her mother’s head out. Fortunately, in order to connect it was enough that the contacts on the helmet touched the player's neuroports. But according to Ms. Makoto, twenty years back, the omniverse navigators inserted the connectors right into their skulls.
Midori's nose caught a stale odor. Her mom needed to change disposable underwear (that was worn by all the players who hung in the Omniverse for hours). Of course, Midori needed a nap herself: as soon as she came home, she felt so exhausted, as if she had worked as a rickshaw all night long. The girl left the candle burning, so that her mother, when waking up, wouldn’t find herself in the complete darkness. It also provided some calmness for herself. There were too many impressions of driving through the de-energized streets – probably enough for the rest of her life.
Midori knew that when her mother came out of artificial sleep, she would want to sleep for real. She would lie on the mattress next to her and hug her. This happiness was worth all the unpleasant adventures. The girl rested her buzzing head on the soft surface of the mattress and pulled her knees up to her chest. She tried to imagine her body rock on the ocean waves. Before she was able to do it, her consciousness faded away.
She didn't know how many hours she spent sleeping, but when her eyes opened, there was the same viscous darkness that would tear anyone apart into molecules.
“I must be still sleeping,” the girl muttered, and pinched her leg hard. The pain erupted and soon went out, but it didn’t help to disperse the darkness. Trembling, Midori extended her hand to the side. Empty…
There was no one next to her. Either her mother, having woken up, immediately left somewhere, or she never got up. Trembling and dropping large tears of horror on the floor, Midori forced herself to get up and take a few steps around the room until she finally touched the chair. Mom was still here, her hand was icy and unnaturally hard. Even a slight pulsation under the skin was absent.
Having realized what it meant, the girl screamed frantically and hoarsely – as if she wanted neither more nor less than to burst the eardrums of the disgusting half-human and his evil big brother, as if such a terrible howl was the only thing to ward off death. But it was too late: death managed to carry away the only dear person she had on the Earth.
Midori wailed until she lost her voice, but was unable to chase away the nightmare. Finally, having understood the futility of her efforts, the girl found a drawer and took out another candle. Trying not to look in the direction of the chair, the girl reached the door and ran out into the street, where nothing had changed. The same prickly gloom, the rat's fuss at the very feet and a suspicious noise, in which she could now clearly hear gunfire.
“It shouldn’t be like that!...” she argued to an invisible someone. “I tried to be good, I wasn’t a coward, I’ve done everything necessary, I have even found a vein correctly!... Why, Lord?...”
“It’s not about “Why?”, it’s about “For what purpose". And don’t hope to get a quick answer,” a calm, warm, and most importantly, familiar voice suddenly said.
A tall, fair-haired figure stepped out of the darkness. The man wore a long dark gray coat with a lowered hood and an eight-pointed cross fringed by a white line on the sleeve. A couple of seconds later Midori recognized a face with soft angelic features, completely alien here, in the Underground, in the abode of "scum of humanity" (this was how people here often called themselves). With his plump, almost feminine, lips, almond-shaped green eyes, and a warm candid smile brother Alexander seemed to be the incarnation of peacefulness and beauty. But a creepy tale about mobsters who once attempted to stab him, as well as about what happened to these unfortunate ones, had been circulating in the Underground for years.
“Why am I alive and she isn’t?” Midori asked, choking on her tears.
“You weren't destroying your heart, liver and kidneys for several years in a row.” Alexander suddenly sat down to be face to face with the girl. “And it doesn’t matter how brave you were…”
“Was it the “knight of the night” to tell you this?”
“Yes, of course. In the Holy Cross Union, we know everything about each other.”
“That’s why he didn’t take the payment...” the girl sighed, wiping her tears. “What should I do, brother Alexander?
“First of all, you need to calm down. You know… Your mommy isn’t dead. Her immortal soul is now free. Second, you should come with me.”
“Where?”
“Up. And I promise: you will see the sun in just a couple of days. You and all who believe.”
The girl opened her mouth to ask a question, but brother Alexander didn’t give her such an opportunity.
“Midori, lights won’t be turned on. There is no more water in the pipes because the pumps don’t work. Sewerage… Can you feel a bad smell here? The stairs to the top are filled with people and littered with dead bodies. Soon, this place will turn into a one large grave. I know the way out, I will lead you and other believers.”
“But my mom…”
“Don't be afraid, we won’t leave her to rats…”
He entered the room, letting the girl light his way with the candle, and stopped in front of the remains of Ms. Makoto. Slowly crossing the deceased with his large but graceful hand, he whispered a short prayer in Latin, and Midori's arms folded on her chest by themselves. As soon as she finished her prayer and kissed her mother the last goodbye, Alexander carefully covered the body with a blanket, took a spray bottle from his coat and thoroughly sprayed the corpse. Two seconds later, flames embraced them under Midori’s tearful eyes.