Ch. 7 – Fifty Bucks Is Fifty Bucks

No way.

The bend in Mark’s nose curved slightly, like a crescent moon, exactly like Marcus’s did. Mark touched his nose and pulled his hand back as if he had touched a hot stove.

“That’s your own damn fault,” Tryhard said. “Why the fuck’d you bump into me? Reckless ass—”

Mark glared at him with bloodshot eyes, and yelled out, sounding a little congested. “Hey. Shut up, can’t you see I’m hurt? Would it kill you have a little respect?”

“Did you earn it? Cause all I saw were those legs of yours—”

“They can do more than play basketball, buddy—”

“Whoa, calm down, boys!” Derrick darted past Mark’s friends, who were closing in on Mark and Tryhard. “No one needs to go to the hospital today, right? Well, maybe except for Mark here—let me get a look at your face, I’m a doctor, trust me.”

Mark put up a hand to protest, but Derrick had practiced the ‘I’m a doctor’ act enough that Mark quieted down and relented to the examination. No one ever asked to see a license, so it usually turned out fine.

“How’re you feeling, does this hurt?” Derrick gingerly touched what seemed to be the point of impact.

Mark didn’t flinch away, but his eyes twitched. “It’s . . . it’s okay. I’m bleeding like hell, though.”

There was a ripple at the point of impact, which spread out via little waves on the crooked surface of his nose. Ah, no wonder his nose looked so unnatural, he had probably gotten it filled with ‘putty,’ that synthetic material that was so hot nowadays. It had become popular in recent years because it lacked many of the downsides of traditional rhinoplasty fillers. Surgically grafted fat, cartilage, or bone often were absorbed by the body, meaning you would look different over time compared to when you had first gotten the surgery. On the other hand, artificial silicone implants were rejected by the body, and thus prone to infection, shifting around under the skin, and extruding out through the skin unnaturally—silicone oil injections could migrate through and block blood vessels.

‘Putty’ was developed as the perfect solution: cheap, easily moldable, and not absorbed by the body. It also didn’t irritate the adjacent nose tissue, and was resistant to biofilm formation by foreign microorganisms, so that it didn’t encourage infections, and antibiotics were effective when the rare infection did arise post-operation. On the other hand, if you smacked it too hard, it looked like a toddler had stuck playdough on your face.

And if Mark had done surgery on his nose, he might’ve gotten his chin, or even his shoulders modded. Who knew what he would look like without his mods . . . he might theoretically even look like a grown up Marcus would. The resemblance was getting a little too close for comfort.

“You’re fine, there’s some bruising and probably a few burst blood vessels, but just ice it and rest and you should be good. But your um—” Derrick hushed his voice, “—your implant, if it was putty, it needs to get readjusted. Go to your doc and they can get it pressed if it’s still intact. Otherwise, you’ll need to have it extracted and implant a new one.”

Mark choked and coughed a bit at Derrick’s mention of putty, but otherwise just nodded his head and muttered a thank you. But as he walked over towards the bench, his leg suddenly gave out from beneath him.

Derrick struggled to steady his large frame, while Mark’s friends rushed to help him up to his feet and rib him.

“That’s what you get for showing up the rest of us.”

“Yeah, asshole.”

“You okay, Marky?”

“Yeah, I’m fine; these fuckin’ prototypes just fail at the most random times,” he muttered.

Derrick and the rest jostled forward with minimal coordination until they reached the spectator bench and sat Mark down on it. He leaned against the faux-wood backing and sighed.

“I break my nose and my leg on the same day. What’s with my luck? Now I’ve gotta find a mod-doc to fix this shit.”

“Who do you usually go to?” Derrick asked.

“The guy who installed my leg for me: him or his assistant, usually. Problem is, he’s out of town this week, and I don’t have any spares.”

“You could always just get a temporary one fitted, like we keep telling you,” one of Mark’s friends said.

“I can’t go back to that shit! Once you’ve worn the premium stuff, nothing else feels right. I need to get this fixed. Hey, can someone give me a ride? Oh, and uh”—Mark nodded at Derrick—“thanks for checking out my nose. You even carried me over and stuff, I appreciate it.”

“Well, actually . . .” Derrick began, grin on his face. Here were a bunch of guys wearing expensive looking mods, and their regular mod-doc was unavailable. If Derrick didn’t take this chance to make a buck, he was throwing money away. “I’m a mod-doc myself. That’s what I meant earlier. I can take a look at your leg if you front me some cash. Don’t worry about the nose, though, that’s on me.”

“Shit, sounds good to me. How much do you want?”

“Let’s say it’s fifty bucks for the consult, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”

“Alright, deal. You’re name’s Derrick, right? I heard your team shouting it.”

“Yeah, and you’re Mark, I’m guessing?”

“Yup.”

Mark and Derrick both held their phones out close together, and confirmed the payment. A large arrow flew up from Mark’s screen, jumping over the gap, and reappearing on Derrick’s screen, and the fifty bucks transferred over.

“Alright, let’s get started. If it’s simple enough, I can do the repair right here and I won’t need any fancy tools. Can you take your shorts off, please? I know we’re out in the open, but it’s all just guys here anyways.”

Mark took his shorts off, and they propped his malfunctioning right leg up on someone’s backpack. The chrome finish was surprisingly scratch-free, despite the heavy collision, and scraping around on the asphalt. It must have been coated with some special material, from one of the big names. Though, now that Derrick was looking closely, there didn’t seem to be branding, or any sort of manufacturer’s mark on it. Mark had mentioned earlier that it was a prototype . . . .

“Where’d you get this from?”

Mark laughed. “Well, long story—”

“—A buddy of ours,” Mark’s friend interrupted.

“Yeah, someone you don’t know.”

“Jeez, cut it out guys,” Mark said. “He’s fixing my damn leg; he probably wants to know the model number or something.” He shrugged his shoulders, as if apologizing. “No luck there, though. It’s a prototype I got from a friend. I’m pretty sure they haven’t released any info about it.”

“Can I give him a call? It’d be helpful to talk to the developer, since I don’t know anything about the mod.”

Mark and his friends looked at each other and grimaced. “Probably not,” Mark said. “He’s . . . probably offline for this job.”

“Huh. Well, that’s fine. Guess I’ll just play it by ear,” Derrick said. He had figured the prostheses weren’t available on the market. They were high-end, and the two protruding stabilizers suggested it was either a next-generation sports model, or something for police or military use. “Here, let’s get this off your stump. Can you take it off for me?”

Mark grunted as he leaned over his prosthesis and undid the lock and clamp that secured it to the rest of his limb. It slipped off, and revealed a titanium rod sticking out of his stump, with a rectangular knob at the end of it. Mark’s prosthesis was osseointegrated, meaning the titanium rod attached directly to the prosthesis: no socket or padding required. The rod was in turn chemically bound to the calcium in his bones, making for a solid connection. Amputees without osseointegration wore a socket: a well-padded interface that they stuck their stump into, and upon which the actual prosthesis attached. The socket fight snugly, but was still loose enough that a stump could pop out of it. These amputees might get friction burn if their prosthesis hit something and shifted suddenly, the padding rubbing their skin raw. But in Mark’s case . . . .

“Does anything in your leg hurt?”

“Nope, I’m fine, except for my nose.”

“Great. Pay attention to it in the meantime, and see a doc if you feel something’s not right. The impact might have traveled directly up to your bone and caused a small fracture that might go unnoticed. These usually heal by themselves, but they can get worse.” Osseointegrated bones could break, just like any other bones, after all.

If Mark didn’t feel any pain, his leg might not have bore much of the collision, or maybe the impact dampeners at the junction between his stump and prosthesis were very good.

On the prosthesis, there was a small panel underneath the back of the knee. Derrick dug into his gym bag to pull out the toolkit he took everywhere with him—just in case he needed a tune-up on his own arm. A tiny allen wrench was thin enough to pop the panel open, exposing a stack of parallel rings. The rings had ridges, and little sockets you could fit a tool in, probably to help with turning them, so you didn’t have to stick your fingers in.

“Huh, the adjustment is surprisingly . . . manual for new tech.”

“What do you mean?” Mark asked.

“Ah, nothing. I guess it makes sense if it’s a prototype. See this tiny stack of disks in here?” Derrick held the prosthesis up so Mark could have a look. “I’m guessing each disk is a master control for the stiffness and damping of flexion and extension. How hard it is to move your knee, basically. I’m not sure how, but it probably got knocked out of calibration when you bumped into Tryhard back there.”

“Tryhard?” Mark said, holding back a laugh.

“Whoops, yeah,” Derrick whispered. “That’s what I call him ‘cause I forgot his name. I’m not saying tryharding is a bad thing, but it definitely fits him.”

The two shared a laugh.

“I can tune it for you, since it doesn’t require any special tools. As for the price . . .” These guys were loaded, so it was fine to ask for more, even if it was an easy job, right? “Three hundred bucks sounds fair.”

“Yeah, alright.”

They transferred the money again, and Derrick got to work, adjusting the dials, figuring out which did what, and then having Mark try to stand up and see how the leg felt. After he had gotten a good look, it was easy enough to adjust the dials when the prosthesis was attached, so he didn’t have to keep taking it off and putting it back on.

“So, have you had these for a while?” Derrick asked.

“This pair? Only a few months. But I’ve been wearing other prototypes for years now, ever since I moved back to this area.”

“Oh, you grew up in the city?” He couldn’t be Marcus then, right?

“I grew up in Chinatown, actually, a bit away from here.” Shit. Just like Derrick and Marcus had. “How about you? You grow up here in the city?”

“No. Uhhh, I moved here for work.” Derrick cleared his throat, which was growing dryer by the second. “I, uh, grew up on the West Coast.”

“Hey, I actually moved in from the West Coast, no kidding! Which city?”

“Oh, you know, I moved up and down the coast: not really in one place all that long.”

“Gotcha. It’s funny; these mods were the whole reason I moved back. There was a bunch of gang violence in Chinatown when I was a kid, and so my family decided to move to the West Coast. But, I got hurt in a shooting, and eventually lost my legs from the complications after we moved.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah it really sucked; back then, consumer prostheses like yours were shit to use. I struggled with them for a while, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that I got these. Someone from my hometown reached out to me, and offered to let me have this pair of legs if I did some work for them.”

This was Marcus, it had to be. He was there in the building with Derrick that day, when the fire started. And the shooting started. And the killing happened. Tony had told Derrick that Marcus had gotten hurt and had moved away, but not where he’d gone. Who in the world offered to give him these expensive prostheses? Derrick had no idea. But there was one way to know for sure if this was Marcus: something that stuck out about him, that a surgery wouldn’t hide.

Derrick furrowed his brow and pretended to spot something near Mark’s ear. “Hold on, you’ve got something in your hair.” He reached out and made the motion of flicking something away, hitting Mark’s ear in the process.

“Ow! Ah—achoo!” Mark let out a thunderous sneeze. There it was; Marcus had always sneezed when you flicked his ear, as if it triggered his allergies or something. “Watch it, you hit my ear! Achoo!”

“Sorry about that. Here, I think this time you’ll be good. Try standing up and walking around.”

Mark got up and took a few experimental steps, and then leaped five feet up in the air. “Feels good, almost as good as new. Job well done, Derrick.” He stretched and scratched his neck—just like how Marcus would do it.

“Glad to hear it. Thank you for hiring me for the job.” That three hundred and fifty dollars wasn’t a lot, but it was more than he had this morning.

But if this man really was Marcus, Derrick didn’t want to stick around and find out for sure: not right now at least. He wouldn’t know what to say to him, or how to apologize for leaving him alone in that burning building. “Well, I’m out, guys. Had enough basketball for today.” He grabbed his water bottle and headed off the court. His heart pounded in his chest; Derrick was running away, just like years before. Without the action and tension of basketball, the breeze chilled his sweaty body. He jammed the button for the elevator and took a deep breath. There was still an hour before Nathan would come from the hospital with the sterilized cochlear implants, so there was time to kill. He could go and find another court to avoid Mark, but he wasn’t in the mood to play anymore—

“Me too, I’m out,” Mark called out from behind him. He and two of his buddies from earlier were also heading for the elevator. “Fuck you,” he said, holding up a middle finger to Tryhard. “Well, who knows? Maybe if you’re not an asshole next time, we’ll get along.” He received a middle finger back from Tryhard.

The elevator door dinged, and they all got in. Layers of buildings obscured the skyline as the elevator moved back down to the ground floor.

Mark took bits of bloody tissue out of his nose, and flicked them into the trash bin. “I should probably go rest, but we’ve been sitting here for a while, who’s hungry?” Mark’s friends all agreed they were hungry. “How about you, Derrick? Wanna come eat with us?”

“Nah, I’m good. I should probably head out, I’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Oh, no problem then.”

The tension was thick.

“By the way, that’s a nice arm you’ve got there. I thought it’d be dead weight on the court, cause it wasn’t a specialized model. But you had some moves, man. Sort of remind me of my friend from back in the day.” There was an odd tension, and Derrick could feel Mark’s friends staring at him, even as they stood there quietly, pretending to check their phones.

“Thanks, thanks. Shoot, I actually forgot something up there.” Derrick hit the button for the next floor down. “I’m gonna get out and go back up. My bad.”

“No problem. Hey, before you go: I’ve got an offer for you. You remember when I was talking about who gave me these legs, right—”

“—You sure about this, Mark?” one of his friends said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, T said we weren’t recruiting yet.”

Mark waved them off. “It’s fine, I know what I’m doing.”

The elevator slowed to a stop at a lower level branch of the Tree Cage, and Derrick squeezed through the doors right as they opened. “Hey, sorry, I’m in kind of in a rush. I’ll see you around the courts, maybe—”

“—Whoa, slow down!” A heavy hand pressed down on Derrick’s shoulder. Mark smiled as he held the elevator doors open with his other hand. “I figured you’d you want hear this before you leave.”

A stray basketball bounced off the chainlink fence near the elevator, and a spectator tossed it back toward the court. Derrick pulled Mark’s hand off and took a few steps away for good measure. “Alright, what’s the emergency?”

“I knew you’d come around. Like I was saying, you’ve got a nice arm, but it’s still consumer-grade. My legs, though,” he said, stepping out of the elevator and putting one of his legs forward so that it gleamed in the daylight. “You can have something like this too.” He leaned in close and whispered. “My friend that I was talking about earlier, you probably haven’t heard of them if you’re from the city, but he works with a group of people called the White Leopards—”

Fucking hell.

“—Hey, I really gotta go.” Derrick pushed the up button and sidled over to the other set of elevator doors. “It was nice meeting you—”

“Hey, you too, man. Here, in case you’re ever interested.” He held out his phone, and tapped the screen, and it showed a flashing arrow, pointing towards the top.

Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have Marcus’s information, if it was ever safe to reveal himself, and he found the guts to apologize. But it could never happen now, when the White Leopards were still terrorizing Chinatown. Besides, if Marcus was in deep with the White Leopards, maybe Derrick could doxx their members using that information. Derrick took his own phone out and held it near Marcus’s phone, and they transmitted their contact info. Well, Marcus got Derrick’s fake information, spoofed via the same method that he used to contact Nathan.

“Anyways, think about it, Derrick. You get top-tier mods, and you get paid on top of that. The job’s not bad, either. Lemme know!” Marcus hopped back in the elevator, and waved at Derrick as the doors closed.

What a fucking day.