Page 3 of Repossess My Heart

I turn around.

The stale air of the Below whips my hair around as I near the upper levels of my building. I know if I don’t look away now, I could miss my jump. End up stuck traveling around for hours on this platform, but I can’t look away. My eyes are glued to the vomit green color of a reporter bot. Ones that stalk the walkways, alleys and streets looking for people like me. Its eyes flash with light, recording… reporting everything as I turn away, barely jumping in time to hit my level of the building. I don’t feel it this time, the strain in my muscles or the burn in my palms as they grip onto rough hosing. My boots barely find purchase on one of the smaller pipes as I scramble over the ledge.

It could be months…

I could have months before anyone reviews the footage. Years maybe before anyone opens the report.

I have time.

I am so fucked.

2

A Killer

Nine

My holo screen blimps up from my wrist implant, lighting the darkened room as I click out of the surgical simulation, freeing my vision. It takes a moment, a few good blinks before I see the room in front of me clearly again. The large, tinted window wall overlooking the Below. Smog from the city could almost be mistaken for the clouds from Above. Only instead of evaporated water our clouds are filled with toxins, poison and the Arizide fumes that escape from the factories. The fumes Officials turn a blind eye to, because if everyone is high, everyone is complacent. Druggies plied with their fix rarely rise up. My muscles stretch in that good, painful way as I move for the first time in hours, heading towards the windows. The holo display still illuminating the room from my wrist. The glass of the windows is cool to the touch. It’s always cooler up here. Neon lights flutter outside the windows, the lower ones, the ones for the vermin below float just underneath the smog. I turn my eyes towards the woman on my slab, my new collection.

Obsession until the moment the light leaves her.

Round umber-colored eyes and the perfect shade of smooth bronze skin to match. Like she was kissed over by the sun itself. She’s fucking gorgeous. My eyes narrow on hers, barely noting the looping video of her uncoordinated escape from the narc bot. No, my eyes are fused to hers in the small, slightly out-of-focus picture.

Her eyes are beautiful, no doubt. Umber laced with golden thread.

Beautiful and empty.

That annoys me.

I hate it when their eyes are empty. It’s boring. No fun to kill at all. Much less add to my collection.

My lips curl up in disgust.

“You’re going to have to make a much more exciting face than that.” I mumble under my breath.

“Man, kill the light.” Six calls from the other side of the room, his mechanical eyes still hazed over milky white. The gaming headset implanted in his temple.

“Why kill the light when I could run you through instead?” I murmur only half paying attention as I swipe a Mig card off my coffee table, thoughtlessly positioning it between my fingers before I flick it. It cuts through the air in the blink of an eye, slicing the side of his face before embedding in the thick temporal wire that now hangs limp from the headset.

A loud hiss leaves his throat as his hand grasps at his defined cheekbone, blood welling to the surface. “The fuck Nine?”

“I have a collection. Time to go.” The words leave me absentmindedly as I shift the plates in my arm. The gears soundlessly churning, obeying my commands.

“This is why none of the others fuck with you, man.”

I nod, ignoring him. My implants storing every bit of the limited information in her file.

“She’s hot.” He remarks the slight tinge of copper in the air fills my nose before he wipes the blood away on his sleeve. Yellow and blueish glow from his implanted eyes leer over my shoulder openly appraising the woman on screen.

I make a non-committal sound, glaring again at her eyes. “Her eyes are wrong. It’s… off-putting.”

He’s already halfway to the door before he laughs. It’s a jarringly loud cackling sound, “Fucking creep. If you don’t want her, I’ll take her. Judging by that price, she’s been MIA for years. Maybe we could have a bit of fun before I have to open her up.”

“No. She’s mine.” I pause, dismissing the holo display with a flick of my wrist. Taken aback by the venom in my own voice.

It’s the eyes… nothing else. The emptiness stands for everything that hurts. Of course I’d want to rectify that.

Six nods his hickory-colored locks piled high on his head; his eyebrow raised. I swoop down, positioning another card, flicking it between my fingers. The thick cardstock passes between them so smoothly it looks like waves in the ocean, “If you need backup…”

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