The boy, and his deadly cargo, slipped unnoticed into the mass of people slowly milling through the main thoroughfare of Sun City.

Standing like a canopy of trees, the adults talked, bartered, and swatted at flies. The heat and humidity in the belly of the slums was oppressive. The men were often bare-chested, with only simple colored dhoti wraps around their hips. The women wore vibrant saris that glimmered despite the cheap cloth.

Here and there, people were savagely bartering and gesturing at their glowing knock-off datapads. Shesh strode on. He pushed through the masses, using the palm of his hand to put pressure on the hips of taller people in his way. They paid little heed, mindlessly making a bit of room for him to squeeze through.

He knew he looked like any other hollow eyed child and would not draw anyone’s attention. All about, there were other children hustling and working. They begged, picked pockets, and tried to sell handmade trinkets. They were unknowing camouflage, with their thin brown bodies that supported heads which seemed too big for their necks. They scurried like gangs of monkeys around the legs of the grownups; engaged in their own “market” of thieving, trade, and bullying.

Shesh unconsciously checked his pockets with his free hand, even though he had nothing for the other kids to steal. His precious payload was making him overly nervous. He quickened his step and made it out of the marketplace in a matter of moments.

After more winding metallic tunnels of slum shacks, a rusted ladder, and a quick tromp through a stream that was mostly garbage and sewage; he arrived at his destination.

Shesh stood in an empty lot that was hemmed in on all sides by high Duracrete walls. It was filled with refuse. Trash. Detritus, that even the resourceful denizens of Sun City could not re-purpose. It was piled so deep, the boy could not rightly say if he’d ever seen the floor. The abandoned space acted as one of the many dumps that served those living hundreds of feet above, in the upper levels of the slums.

Before him, was a solid wall that had been pasted over with a giant poster, some years before he was ever born. The image featured the heavily graffitied visage of Shiva. Blue night-time was depicted with rolling purple mountains, and in the foreground, sat the azure deity.

He held his pink palm toward the viewer in a passive gesture. Coiled around his neck was a golden King cobra. It gazed into the distance. On the god’s head, nestled in a crown of matted hair, was a tiny golden crescent. That shape, Shesh’s mother once told him, represented the moon. He half-remembered, it symbolized the cycle of creation, or something stupid. Grownups were always coming up with nonsense.

Most of the image was hard to read, courtesy of simple decay, phosphorescent tags, and lewd graffiti splashed across the wall. Shesh had made his own contribution; scaling the wall to paint the cartoonish vulva that replaced the third eye on the god’s smooth and peaceful blue forehead.

The abandoned painting of Shiva sat watching over the small lot, which may have once been a restaurant parking lot, fifty or sixty years ago. Sharp wreckage, foul smelling layers, and picked through electronics hid the tarmac several meters below.

Shesh climbed toward the wall that bore the god. There was a large stack of grey looking garbage. It seemed like a tiny mountain against the wall. Closer; he disturbed a couple of skinny, ill-tempered dogs. They snarled and dashed down the pile, streaking into another dark alley. He could feel them watching from the shadow.

Shesh crested the peak of the trash pile. He slid a piece of particle board from it. The makeshift door revealed a small entryway into a downward slanted tunnel. The sheet of wood had cleverly been tied with netting so that junk hung and stuck to it very naturally.

Glancing about the landfill, he moved the grenade from his dirty white shirt, to a pocket in his frayed shorts. After another paranoid look, he climbed down into the opening with well practiced ease. His small hands reached out of the hole and pulled the trash laden cover back into place.

The vandalized god Shiva held court over the silent junk-heap, once again.

Shesh squeezed along the inside of the wall that featured the tattered Shiva. He made sure to tuck his belly and arch his back to dodge the nails and spikes driven into the stonework. After a few years of practice and a couple of jagged scars, he’d become very adept at maneuvering quickly in narrow spaces. The children had strung up very dim lights inside the narrow wall space and it made the going a little easier.

He finally reached the end of the hollow wall. Shesh had arrived at the true entrance of the Mahi Durg; a half meter wide hole near the floor where the crawlspace in the wall ended. Maybe it had been a vent for the wall from so many years ago? He wasn’t sure.

Pratik had named their hideout the Mahi Durg. He was the “Big Brain” in their gang and said it was named after some old fortress.

Shesh thought it was a pretty pitiful fortress, but, in fairness, it was an exceptional hiding place. The way was impassable for anyone larger than a fourteen year old to shimmy inside the wall. Besides, the entrance in the trashpile was really well concealed.

Shesh smiled. That was his doing. He might not know as much as Pratik, but he had his own talents.

He leaned close to the heavy tamarind colored plastic tarp that lay across the hole.

“Let me in,” he whispered.

The quiet voices that were bubbling in the quick round tones of Bambaiya Hindi stopped abruptly. There was a small click and quiet hissing sound. Shesh slid the tarp to the side and eased down into the small room. When the other children recognized him, their voices and giggles immediately continued.

He reactivated the “doorbell,” as the gang liked to call it. It was a simple trap. A thin wire woven through the bottom of the heavy brown tarp. It attached with a carabiner to a small switch that operated an air compressor nestled against the wall. The machine’s output was fitted with a long tube filled with metal shavings and heavy weight motor oil. Not deadly, just really unpleasant.

The taped up remnants of an old cricket bat, leaning against the trap was their coup de grâce.

Sana, the lone girl in their motley organization, had a gift with machines, and the doorbell was one of hers. she was standing at the opposite wall, digging around in one of the several dirty plastic bags looped to a pipe. They contained scraps of clothing and a few tins of vegetables or seasoned crickets in oil.

Three other children were rolling around in a dogpile that filled most of the floor in the broom closet sized room. Azizul, Pratik, and Basir were wrestling. Pratik, clad in a dingy white sleeveless top and earthy looking trunks, was laughing and tugging on Basir’s ears. Basir was struggling to get free, but no match for Pratik’s wiry strength. Pratik had locked his legs around the larger, but slower boy, and held onto Basir’s ratty polo shirt to keep him from reaching back and sinking a slower, but powerful fist into his face.

Azizul, “The Map,” had his narrow back pressed against one of the pebbled walls and pushed into the wrestling boys with his slender legs. He kicked both of them playfully. In the dim digital blacklight, his eyes and teeth were ultra bright. The random patches of super pale skin that spread over most of Azizul’s body glowed brilliant blue. They looked like random lakes, surrounded by dark chocolate land.

“Such big ears,”Pratik teased, as he pulled Basir’s, admittedly rather large ears. “Are you a dog-boy? Can you hear the flies buzz in the Arcology? Maybe Basir-Big-Ears has fleas!?” Pratik crowed into the cup of Basir’s ear. Basir just grunted and twisted his head, trying to shake Pratik off. He didn’t normally speak much, and got even quieter when being teased.

“Stop it, you swollen ass,” said Shesh. He put his foot on Pratik’s shoulder and pushed the other boy off his victim. “Look what I have here.” Pratik rolled to his knees and shot Shesh a dirty look.

Sana turned quickly from the plastic bags. She had squirmed into a holey yellow tee-shirt with faded pictures of unicorns mounting each other. She was young, and like the others, wore the round innocent face of the prepubescent.

Unlike the rest, she had a milky eye; lost to an infection a few years before.

“You got it?!” she asked, with excitement.

Shesh shooed the other kids aside and dragged a small crate to the center of the room. They circled around as Shesh gingerly placed the grenade on the box.

Sitting in awe of the deadly device, they peered closely; small noses mere inches from the explosive.

In the black LED light, the cricket ball sized grenade looked like a black hole that absorbed all warmth. Basir pulled out a little key chain that looked like a cartoon mouse. As he squeezed, a little diode sputtered and dully shone over the deadly object on the table.

Maybe twenty-five centimeters tall and perhaps eighteen at its widest; the grenade was oblong like an American football, with blunted points. The sides were pebbled with a deeply engraved hexagonal pattern. It was crowned with a small rectangular shape; this sprouted a long dangerous looking crescent of metal that hugged the curve of the center mass.

Shesh thought of the moon.