Molerat

The Roman Stacks - Faela

The Roman Stacks universally lacked one thing across its miles and miles of stacked shack housing on the edges of Vargos: comfort. The ground was a mix of shattered asphalt and sand. The heat was unbearable due to a mix of power plants, exhaust pipes, and desert climate conditions. The place was packed with people living on top of each other, in the realest sense of the phrase. The streets and alleys were so tightly knit in most areas walking beside another person would feel crowded. And most of all no city infrastructure to speak of. The place, quite literally, was a collection of shacks, warehouses, and buildings mashed together so tight a deep breath was considered luxury by those that lived there.

Faela wrapped a dirty rag around her hand and sent her fist through the remains of some glass in a warehouse window in the tight section of the stacks no one had lived in since local thieves and dealers had made the area a sketchy zone for anyone not involved in the game. It was a dangerous place to be, but it had one feature almost nowhere else in the Roman Stacks had: solitude. Unless someone was on the run and using the place to hide out or a big deal was taking place there was no chance of someone stumbling on her there.

She wormed her way through the window and rolled on to the concrete a few feet below. The warehouse was cold inside, another luxury in the stacks where the desert heat was a constant presence like it absorbed all the heat around the city so the inner districts of Vargos could feel bearable. Industrial pollution was the cost of doing business in turning Vargos from the collection of business parks it was in the early 2000s to the megacity every resident took for granted in the 2100s. Faela leaned back against the cool brick of the wall and shut her eyes, breathing in and out in a slow tempo to calm her nerves. She’d never had to do this where she lived, where snitches paid the price even if you were the most careful person alive when it came to getting caught up.

Thundering knocks at the steel door wrestled her from her brief respite. She turned her head to the large sliding steel doors and let out a final sigh before walking over and unlatching the rusted lock. She slid the door sideways and was greeted by two figures in full police uniforms. Her eyes widened and she nearly knocked them over yanking them by their vests into the building before sliding the door shut again. It was a hot day with sun rays coming through the holes in the wall and the windows but the heat wouldn’t keep every Roman Stacks resident away. It would only take one to see her and label her a snitch.

“What the fuck are you doing? Full uniforms here? No cops come here, ever. Seeing you is like seeing a ghost here. You guys don’t learn a thing in the city do you?” She spat at them. The two looked at each other and snickered before the shorter woman spoke up. This was Detective Smart, a clean-bodied cop in the business of making the illegal cybernetic trade in Vargos a dangerous one to engage in. Faela didn’t recognize her partner, a tall and broad bald man with dark skin and his eyes replaced with Sino-model cybereyes and both arms shiny with chrome. Faela assumed he was the muscle to make up for Smart’s small stature; odd since Smart never seemed to need backup, not with Faela’s tiny frame at least.

“Relax Faela, this is the last meeting anyway after this you’re free and clear.” Smart whispered through a chuckle, a cigarette dangling between her lips. She lit the thing and took a look around the decrepit warehouse with a grimace. The tall cop didn’t take his eyes off of Faela.

“Really?”

“No, of course not.” Smart said with venom, her expression going from comfortable to serious like a flash. “I own you. I say ‘jump’ and if you say anything other than ‘how high’ and we have a problem,” Smart growled, the tight red bun in her hair still as a statue as she loomed over Faela. She was only eighteen but she’d been feeding Smart information on the cybernetic trade running through the Roman Stacks for two years straight. Because the district was more of a lived-in dump than an official section of Vargos, it made for easy territory to set up cybernetic shipments into the city. Unfortunately for them Smart knew that too and unlike most in her department she had no problem slumming it to get convictions or verified kills.

“Cheer up, Faela. I can at least tell you Carmen went down last night. She and her local boys all got pinched with illegal chrome last night trying to get through the checkpoint entering downtown. So consider that a win.”

“Not really a win for me, Detective, they’re all locals. Their families are going to wonder who tipped the cops off. At least five of those boys are from my block.”

“A block of hundreds of other shit stains on the city like you Faela, you don’t stand out girl. Why do you think I picked you?” Smart flicked the cigarette into Faela’s face. She felt her cheeks go crimson and her fists ball up. She had no chrome, no guns, nothing. She was as vulnerable as they come in the city and caught between a district with no hope and the law with no mercy.

“When am I done? I can only give information for so long. And you said you’d move me out of here. I’d take the Sprawl. Any place on Earth is better. Dana, please I have to–” Smart threw her hand up, stopping Faela in her tracks.

“No first name. You don’t know me like that. I’m not your friend, I’m your master.” Faela’s blood boiled. The tall man’s brows furrowed as he stared her down with red irises encompassed by steel.

“Yeah? And what happens if you lose me? Go ahead and grab another person from my neighborhood but Carmen’s already caught, you’re going to need to look elsewhere in the district for illegal chrome and I’m betting they won’t be so docile when they see uniforms come around.”

“That a threat?”

“It’s a promise, detective. You’re in one of the worse-off places in the Stacks. Here? No one has the muscle or the iron to put down cops. But there’s other areas that make it a sport. You want to try fishing around for a whisper there?” This was new territory for Faela. Smart was tough every time they’d met but she was prickly this time. Prickly enough that Faela needed to negotiate some insurance.

Smart furrowed her brow and sucked her teeth. Faela didn’t want to get over confident but she could tell the detective knew she was right. The rules of the Roman Stacks and the rules of the rest of Vargos ran inherently at odds with one another. If Smart wanted to continue her rise in the ranks of Vargos PD, strong-arming her way through the Roman Stacks wasn’t going to bear fruit.

“What do you want then, Faela?”

Faela had thought about it. It was what she was prepared to beg for if she had to on her way to the meeting. She knew there was no way Smart would move her out of the Stacks, it would remove Faela’s utility in full. But she could ask for the one thing everyone in Vargos had that those in the Roman Stacks could never get.

“Know someone that could teach me to read?”