ABC - Penance

Eat, My Pussy, Unity Townsite

“Afternoon, Miss” called a woman from the counter. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, even after I removed my glasses. The woman in question was a sturdy Asian girl, Chinese I guessed, pretty in what people called a handsome way, with long black hair coiled into two tight buns on the side of her head.

“Afternoon” I responded when I took my filter mask off and walked towards the long counter she was perched behind.

“Howdy” drawled another voice, deeper and with a Northern Block drawl to it. My eyes flicked to the furthest end of the serving counter, registering a tall, muscled guy seated on one of the tall stools. As I focussed I amended my description to a tall, muscled woman, her pale white hair held in a long braid down her spine.

“Hi” I added and gave her a friendly smile. She turned to face me, her gleaming left eye and metal right arm tagging her as an Enhanced. With easy grace she stood up and approached me, extending that powerful looking arm for a handshake.

“Luisa” I said by way of introduction, gripping the heavy articulated fingers of her right hand.

“Bobbi” she replied in that gorgeous drawl and tilted her head to the woman behind the counter. “That’s Mabel, she owns this place” Bobbi released my fingers and returned to her stool, picking up a pair of chopsticks. “I can recommend the Szechuan Beef, or whatever the hell animal she cooked up today”

Mabel gave a good natured glare at the big woman and invited me to take a seat. I perched myself on a stool and ran my eyes over the hand chalked menu on the wall behind our host. It was a mix of Chinese food with a smattering of Northern Block variations, mostly dishes that increased the protein and cut back on the heat.

“Is it real beef?” I asked Mabel. She nodded eagerly in reply.

“Yes, half and half” she answered me, making Bobbi snort as she swallowed another mouthful from her bowl.

“She means half real beef and half textured protein” the big woman explained. “Tastes as good as one hundred percent dead cow but it is a lot cheaper”

“Fine by me” I said easily. “I’ll take a bowl and a beer thanks”

Mabel fished a cold beer for me from her chiller, letting me pop the can open myself. She then busied herself at the wok, banging and scraping away with that distinctive sound of Chinese cooking. It wasn’t long before the hot and savoury tang of frying meat, spices and onions filled the small eatery.

“Hey, Mabel, hit me up with another bowl while you are at it!” called Bobbi. She stood and dropped her empty bowl over the counter onto a work bench that ran along the inner side. I took the chance to run my eye over her form, in a purely investigative manner of course.

Bobbi had the look of an ex-soldier, Enhanced by choice rather than combat injury. Her arm was definitely military grade, the eye too I reckoned, so she had to be Registered to flaunt them openly here in a Camp town.

“Admiring my arm, Luisa?” Bobbi said, still standing and hunting for something on the hidden bench. Mabel yelled at her in Chinese and threatened her with a long metal spatula but the other women finally found what she was after. She flourished a bottle of deep amber coloured booze and sat down again, unscrewing the lid and pouring a generous measure into a small glass tumbler. I was offered a shot but I politely declined, nursing my beer instead.

“It’s a fine arm” I agreed. “Did you serve in the Army?”

“Nope” she replied without rancour. “Seals. I did eight years of duty, had these babies fitted at government expense, then bailed for calmer waters”

“Seals? So you served in the Northern Block?” I enquired.

“Yeah, but after I asked permission to transition my commanding officer got a little twitchy” she continued. “They don’t really like my kind in the North, so I made my own informal discharge and headed south. Long story short, I ended up with a Freelancer crew here in the Zone”

“She’s one bad bitch” Mabel told me, handing over a bowl of steaming beef and vegetables, with a second bowl of white rice. “You should watch out for her”

I dug into the spicy beef dish, turning a shade of red when the heat kicked in, then dowsing the fire in my mouth with a swig of beer.

“Holy shit that is good!” I praised Mabel and she beamed at me with pleasure. I dove into the bowl once more, mixing in some rice and shovelling it into my mouth. Mabel delivered another bowl to Bobbi and we ate in silence but for the clicking of our chopsticks.

After we had finished, I asked Mabel why she was so quiet in her eatery at this time of day. With food that good she should be at least as busy as the other places I had seen.

“It gets a lot busier at nights, especially over the weekend” Bobbi told me while Mabel cleared our bowls. “This place has a reputation for a certain type of clientele and the locals tend to stay away”

“What type of clientele?” I asked easily. I had a suspicion based on the name of the place, but I could have been wrong.

Bobbi laughed and took another shot of liquor. Her artificial eye gleamed at me in the reflected light, shining in the dark corner where she sat.

“Not what you’re thinking, Luisa” she laughed. “Mabel flies the rainbow flag with pride but this is a place where Freelancers and Mercs like to relax. People like me and I am pretty sure like you”

Well, I was wrong. Still, it was nice that my assessment wasn’t totally off base.

“Sorry to tell you Bobbi, but I am not a Freelancer” I told her, finishing the last of my beer.

“Of course you aren’t” Bobbi answered with a small smile on her lips. “So maybe you came in here looking for something else?”

I met her challenging gaze, noting how she opened her thighs towards me, the muscles straining against the tight denim jeans she was wearing. I kept my eyes on her face, barely able to stop my eyes dropping to the tight V of her zippered crotch.

“I just came here to eat” I said.

The tension broke when Mabel laughed out loud, Bobbi joining her and soon enough we were all best of friends once more.

=====

“Why are there Freelancers in a Camp Town?” I asked Bobbi, genuinely interested. I was drinking my second beer, seated on a stool beside the woman as she sipped from her own tumbler of cheap Whisky.

“Mostly contract work for the Warden” she explained unhurriedly. “They hire my crew for Counter Intrusion runs, occasionally a prisoner recovery mission. There are three crews that are based here in Unity, but the other two are out of town at the moment”

“Counter Intrusion?” I said enquiringly.

“Yeah” Bobbi drawled. “Not everyone is happy about their loved ones being sent to a Labour Camp. Sometimes they hire a team to get them out, which is where we come in. If the Warden’s AI gets wind of the attempt, he hires us to stop the raid. That’s Counter Intrusion. If they manage to get the prisoner out, he sends us to find them and haul them back. That’s what we call a Recovery mission”

“Hmm” I replied, swirling my mouthful of Chinese beer in a thoughtful manner. “Sounds like a risky job either way”

“It is” Bobbi agreed. “The bean counters in the Warden Corps decided it was still cheaper to hire us Freelancers as needed, rather than keep a dedicated Strike Team on standby”

“I see” I told her. “Have you ever been tempted to work the other side of the fence?”

Bobbi fixed me with her artificial eye, the metal and Ceramiglass orb cold and unyielding.

“That would be a betrayal of the trust the Warden places in me” she said smoothly. Then she clapped her meat arm around my shoulders and hugged me like I was an old bosom buddy. “Besides, I am from Texas. We don’t believe in fences!”

=====

I finally staggered out of Mabel’s place close to three in the afternoon, only after I solemnly swore to meet up with Bobbi’s crew later in the evening. My phone rang almost immediately and I answered once I was a good dozen meters down the road.

“Whassup?” I said to Ghost. I may have accidentally drunk some of Bobbi’s booze as well, not enough to impair me but I was definitely a jolly little woman right then.

“I hope the Intel you gained was worth the time” he spoke coldly through my phone.

“Actually, it was” I responded and walked the last meters to the crossroads. “I discovered some interesting facts about how this town operates”. My voice had lost the slurry drunk tones and I lifted my eyes to scan the horizon.

I spotted Ghost seated on the roof of a diner opposite my position, with one of the palm drones hovering over my head and about ten meters back. It would be foolish to fix my gaze on him so I let it wander, taking in the sights of downtown Unity.

The stores and eateries I could see looked relatively clean and maintained. Trash was there, blowing about in a mild breeze, yet nothing like the piles of crap you saw in the Spit. People were wandering up and down the street frontages, wearing mostly cheap clothing, smiling and chatting as they went.

“This town is some kind of urban fantasy” I said to my partner, holding the phone close to my face. “It looks too good to be true”

“Not all of the Zone is as bad as Spitfield” Ghost reminded me. “You haven’t spent much time in Pan City, have you?”

“No I haven’t” I confirmed a little spitefully. I could have gotten a Travel Pass into the massive metropolis without a problem, my position as a member of the Police Auxiliary giving me that right.

Except my Papa had never been allowed a Travel Pass once his construction working days were over, so I decided if he wasn’t good enough for Pan City then it wasn’t good enough for me. They could take their fancy towers and clean swept streets and blow them out their shiny asses!

“Anyway, I feel there is something more to this place” I continued to Ghost. “I am going to nose about for a couple more hours. You can go back to the motel if you want”

“That’s Okay” Ghost answered. “My drones need a recharge but I’ll follow you myself”

“Thanks” I replied with a smile. “I like it when you watch me”

“You are a sick person, Alvarez” he said and ended the call.

=====

I crossed the main street, following the road west away from the crossroads. The central strip of Unity looked vanilla to me, clean and well ordered. What I wanted to see was if it had a darker side, the kind of underbelly that I sensed in the air.

There were a couple more stores on this side, places selling household electronics and furniture. Next to that was a Jack Inn, one of the Zone-wide chains that offered basic Enhancements and maintenance services for the upgraded cyberware of their clientele. I paused to look in the open front door, seeing a guy at the front counter with artificial eyes talking to a young man with a metal left hand, examining the finger articulations.

I could hear the sounds of a power tool in the back of the shop, biting into something wet and squishy. The pair at the counter seemed unfazed but my stomach did a flip and I hastily moved on. Even if I was not an Awakened, I wondered if I would ever have the balls to cut my own flesh away to replace it with metal.

The next cross-road showed a series of multi-storey apartment buildings, running to my left and right. These were the accommodation blocks for the Camp employees, the Warden Corps and various service personnel like cooks and cleaners.

Each building had a ground floor parking lot built beneath the apartments. I wandered down the side street, making sure my mask and glasses were back in place. Cameras watched from the corners of the apartments, some fixed and others traversing to either side in a set sweeping pattern.

There was the odd piece of trash marring the streetscape, making me wonder why the place was so clean. Then I saw an automated street sweeper rolling towards me from the other direction, beeping loudly to warn the pedestrians like me it was coming. I crossed to the opposite side of the road to let it go past, watching the methodical way it’s rotating brushes pulled in the scraps of plastic and empty cans, sucking them into a hopper on its back.

A pair of walkers greeted me as I strode along the pavement so I nodded politely in response. They looked fit and had short trimmed hair, man and woman both. I pegged them as Warden Corps and turned to observe them enter one of the apartment buildings.

Unity was still showing me its respectable front, so I cut through a service alley to the next side street. This was the second last side street, with one more visible beyond down the continuing alley. I took a punt and kept walking and arrived at the street that lay furthest from the town centre.

This street was lined with low, cast concrete buildings and pre-fab structures made from bonded plastic sheeting. Fast and easy to erect, durable enough for dwellings only expected to be used for five to ten years. They looked much older than that, with the paint peeling from the walls and the roofs covered in green moss.

The majority of the buildings looked like dwellings, with unkempt garden beds overgrown with weeds at the front and beaten up electric cars and bikes lurking under open sided carports. A few that I passed had colourful children’s toys scattered in the narrow yards and I saw a trio of children approach me from the main road, dangling school bags from their shoulders.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were kids living in the Camp Town. There had to be families living here, some working in the Camp and others running the various businesses of Unity.

They eyed me warily as I strode towards them, edging to the side of the footpath to give me room to pass them by. I stopped a few steps short of them and lowered my filter mask, a vain attempt to look less threatening.

“Hey Mister” the tallest kid said, a boy with dark skin and pitch black hair who stood boldly in front of the other two. His companions, a pale skinned girl with long red hair and a small boy with freckles and a full on ginger mop, crowded behind their protector.

“Hey, kids” I replied casually. “I’m a bit lost in your town. I was looking for someplace a friend told me about. Think you can point me in the right direction?” I tried a friendly smile but that just made the biggest boy more alert.

“What kind of place?” he said coldly.

I pulled my wallet from a back pocket and fished out a Five Panda note. The plastic money was a bright splash of colour in the drab environment and I saw three pairs of eyes lock onto it like a sniper scope.

“The kind of place adults like to go and spend lots of these” I suggested. It was a gamble, pardon the pun, but I knew there had to be something hidden on these back streets. The kids were locals so they would know every nook and cranny of the town, especially those places forbidden to them.

“You mean Morituri’s?” the eldest boy said. A thrill of excitement ran through me at his words.

“Yeah, that sounds like the place” I replied casually. “Is it close by?”

He nodded and pointed to the far end of the road we were on.

“It’s on the other side of Access Road” the boy explained. “Right at the end of this road on the edge of town”

“Thanks” I said and proffered him the note. He looked at my face, eyes still hidden behind my dark glasses.

“Keep it” he told me and turned away, ushering the other children in front of him like a protective mother hen. I watched them go with a confused look on my face, then tucked the note back into my pants.

Just as they were nearly out of hearing, I heard the youngest boy ask the eldest why he hadn’t taken the Pandas.

“If he’s looking for Morituri’s, he needs the money more than us”

I continued my walk, heading for the main road and this place that lay on the other side. A place with a name immediately familiar to anyone who had fought in the arenas. It was part of an ancient phrase, spoken by the Gladiators before they fought and shed their blood in the sands of the Roman Arenas.

Avē Imperātor, moritūrī tē salūtant it went, which meant “Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute you”

The town of Unity had revealed her dark side to me at last. Somewhere ahead of my wandering feet there was an Arena, where men and women fought for the entertainment of the masses.

I was a stranger in this place, yet for some reason I felt like I was coming home.