Musty air, swirls of smoke and liquor breath. I land in a splash of one inch deep water. 

A long metal table runs down this damp room, stacked with weapons, bullets, food and drink. Zorikan’s men holler and shout, clashing their mugs and clapping each other on the shoulders. The bear sized man, Ursa, is howling in laughter, hunched over a card game splayed on the table. A tiny, green haired girl is grinning devilishly, collecting cards from him. 

Deqar sloshes through the shallow water. He wears only his vest, revealing his thin, tatted, wiry, saggy body. His black jeans are far too skinny and his boots far too big. “What did I tell ya!” he slurs, throwing his hand on the table and pointing at me. “Pay up!” 

Rieka sighs, tossing three credits to him. 

“That’s right! I knew you’d come back, grimy little shit,” Deqar grins, slouching into me and grabbing my face. 

I push him off and follow Rieka. She dodges through, heading down the long, damp space. It’s illuminated by dirty, flickering yellow tube lights. At the end of the long room in an area elevated by a about a foot, and covered in old carpets and bean bags. I spot Varan stretched out, something taped around his elbow that lead to a vial of bubbling blue electric fluid. Another, a woman with massive arms and grey hair was on the other side, curled up against the wall, a pipe slowly slipping from her hands. 

Rieka takes her shoes off and climbs into a free spot. “It’s the only place that isn’t wet,” she states. 

“I can tell.” 

Varan lifts his head in slow motion, his red eyes barely open. “Yo… there’s no way man… Kallix you made it… bro…” 

I nod. “Hey man.” 

“Bro… get in here man… get some of this…” he gestures at the blue vial. 

Rieka looks up at me as she’s lighting a joint. 

“I’m good, brother. You enjoy your… blue lightning.” I sit down next to him, as Rieka hands me the joint. 

“Ah damn… next time then… this shit is peak…” he trails off, slumping back. 

I draw from the joint slowly. It’s been hard to get weed without stealing. And it’s hard to keep it or the rolling papers dry when it’s raining all the time and you sleep outside. Weed makes you warm. Or at least it pretends to for a while. I had stopped smoking because it made me want comfort. It makes me enjoy the dozens of pillows on Tauren’s bed. It made me appreciate and seek out fast food. Made that shit delicious. Nobody should want comfort. Nobody deserves it. If we had embraced the fact that we don’t have to be fucking comfortable all the time, maybe we wouldn’t have digested the land to uphold our comfort. Weed makes you think. Or, it can make you think that you’re thinking. I can’t tell the difference. 

Tauren deserves comfort. I’m glad she has that many pillows on her bed. 

“What are you thinking about?” Rieka asks. 

“Killing Zorikan.” 

“Right. Do you have to hold the joint the entire time you go about that or…” 

I realize its been burning in my hand. “Sorry,” I mutter, passing it back to her. 

With the joint between her lips, she takes her hood off and undoes her ponytail. Finally. Fucking finally. I see her hair, frizzled and matted from the day but entirely perfect as it tumbles free. It’s not as long as I thought it would be. Damn, I want to pull it. 

“You have very bad control over your eyes,” she says. 

I nod.

“You would mess up any undercover mission. You can’t hide anything behind that face.” 

“Zorikan planning to send me undercover?” 

“Nobody knows what the Shark is planning.” 

“Then I see no problem, then. I haven’t fucked up a mission yet.” 

Rieka smokes, indifferent to my jab. Her forearm is bandaged from where she’d been cut during the escape.  

“I didn’t help you. When you were going to fall off the roof while we were escaping, I just watched. I didn’t help.” 

“I know.” 

“You don’t care?”

“You had no obligation to help me. Your job was to get a canister. That’s where you fucked up. If you’d thrown it and escaped but the rest of us were caught and killed, then I would be pissed.” 

“Pissed? You’d be dead.” 

“I’d be pissed I wouldn’t get to watch Zorikan beat you into a sack of cartilage.” 

I laugh. She hands me the joint back. “No, that isn’t really his style. He’d engineer some ungodly torture method, never before conceived by the human mind, like he did with my dad.” 

“He’s torturing your dad?” 

“You didn’t know?” 

Rieka chews on the inside of her cheek. I like the way her lip twists when she does. She has the faint black stains on her lips, like she’s been smoking for decades. “It’s a good form of leverage,” she says eventually.

I shrug. “Good thing he doesn’t know me that well.” I notice that the Swifters are drinking, smoking and injecting, but eating none of the pile of canned rations stacked on the table. “You all waiting for that tasty bread, is it?” I say, eager to change the topic before I give something away about myself that Zorikan can use. 

“We meditate on an empty stomach.” 

“Dumb.”

“It’s not, really. Much of the conscious force in your body exists in your gut. The human microbiome is vast and complex. When you’re digesting, all that energy is away from your cognition. It messes with your focus.” 

“Must be why I’m so locked in. I do everything on an empty stomach. Drinking’s the best.” 

“You’re insides must be pickled by now. So much alcohol to such little… you.” 

“Probably why I can’t get sick. I sterilized myself from the inside out.” 

“You look like you have the plague.” 

“I might.” 

Someone begins slamming their metal cup against the table. “Shark’s coming! Everybody up!” 

Rieka shoots to her feet and pulls Varan up after her. I stay seated, watching as the clamor stills and all the Swifters move to the table. They sit, ashing cigarettes and finishing mugs. I stay where I am, comfortable in the pillows. 

His descent is slow. Each rung of the ladder echos as he climbs down. The last distance he jumps, landing with a splash that sprays those at the front of the table. 

Hixa, the stone faced woman with an eye-patch, the one I’d seen at the Pink Links, stands, rigid. They praise themselves for their freedom and yet they stand at attention like fucking cops. The irony is poisonous. “Good to see you, Shark. We’ve got a full house today. Everybody’s in, even Braxxet, she is healing well.” 

A girl nods from the middle of the table. One of her arms looks like it had been shoved halfway through a meat grinder. 

Zorikan wipes splashed water from his chin with the back of his hand. “Good to hear. Tyclon?” 

“He is in recovery still. We’re sending him cold turkey. He’s three days in and doing alright, but his hands are still shaking. He wont be able to work for a while, I expect.” 

“Keep monitoring him. We won’t find another mechanic with his clearance. Eresek and Oresek should’ve brought in some morphine from their raid on the hospital. Use that if you have to.” 

Hixa nods. 

I notice, hanging from Zorikan’s belt, is one of the bread canisters. 

He steps forward to the head of the table. Then, he steps onto the table, crouching down and knocking a bottle off to the side. He pulls out the canister. “I’d recommend you hold your breath.” He twists it open and out hisses a glittery white fume. 

My neck spasms at the site. The claws of my ache churn at my left shoulder. They always said one hit would fix me forever. I would rather kill myself than end up like my parents. Let my dick get split by the Sky Rail rather than take a hit of Bansilin. 

Zorikan twists it shut. “Well done Rieka, Deqar, Varan… I thought it was the case, but now  we have proof. Bansilin. There is a factory underneath the Oakdust Bakery. This is no longer disgraced doctor’s trying to earn their vices. Not even cartels like Led Claw with abandoned warehouse kitchens. This is mass production.” 

“How the fuck are they covering this legally? The police are blind but this is something else. They’ve been bought, right?” Deqar asks.

My brother can’t be bought. 

“They haven’t been bought,” responds a brown skinned woman with narrow eyes. Her lips are tattooed and her tongue is forked. 

“Yes, Skarisa’s right. This is far worse,” Zorikan continues. “Cloud and Air acquired Oakdust  legally last week. I’m more than certain a bill will be passed that will allow medicinal use of Bansilin. A factory this size takes years to build. They’ve been planning this. We are weeks away from Bansilin being in pharmacies, being prescribed to children…. The self suffocation of our consciousness will be commoditized. Suicide of the self sold at a fair price. Why force the soul out of a human when they can pay you to take it.” 

There is murmuring. Cursing. It seems I haven’t been noticed yet, so I say nothing. Cloud and Air. Corporate production of Bansilin. That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. What was that fuckhead Wesleyas on about? 

“We have options,” Zorikan continues. “This is a massive attempt of the oligarchy to swallow the compliant class. Such a big step leaves opportunity for obstruction. For mayhem. The hand of order sees only one scale and responds to only one pressure.” He looks across the table, crouched like a vulture. His pale eyes glide. Can he see me? Is he blind or wearing contact lenses? His eyes shut, and his hands come together in the same form that Rieka and the others had done before the robbery. Thumbs, index and pinky fingers touching at the tips, middle and ring finger folded against each other. 

Across the table, like a wave, each Swifter straightens their posture and assumes a hand sign. Some the same, some different. I hold up my middle finger. 

There is silence. It’s blaring in my ears. I hear a faint dripping. The hum of electricity. The smell of smoke and sweat is heavy. 

I realize that Rieka left her half smoked joint next to me. I grab it, light it and take a puff. The click of the lighter is a gunshot against the quiet. I close my eyes for a moment, but I only see Chelsi’s crying, desperate, makeup smeared face. I open them again. 

Zorikan is staring at me. He’s motionless. 

I get up, still smoking, and splash into the inch of water on the ground. I slosh towards him, walking beside the table. Swifters flinch at the noise but don’t open their eyes. I stop, and blow smoke in his face. 

His eyes don’t even twitch. Is he looking at me, or through me? “Forget to say hello?” I ask. 

He takes another breath, then relaxes his hands. Something moves behind his eyes. “Kallix. It’s good that you’re here. This broadens our options. No… actually it narrows them.” 

Hixa opens her eyes and takes a deep breath. She scowls at me. 

Others along the table break from their hand trances. 

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” I ask. 

Zorikan holds his hand up, telling me to wait, like a dog. He pauses until the last of the Swifters have opened their eyes. “I didn’t need you for that job, Kallix. That was a primer. I wanted to see how you work. This next job, however, you are the key element.”