Ch. 18 – One on One

“My name’s Theo, by the way. It’s nice to meet you,” the White Leopard said, smiling. He had just a bit of a Shanghainese accent.

“. . . Nice to meet you too.” Just ignore him and keep going through the ABCs. Derrick stood at the patient’s head again and watched for even chest movement while the patient was breathing—

“That’s a nice hand you’ve got there.”

“Huh?” Derrick glanced down at his gloved prosthesis. It was fully covered, and he hadn’t mentioned anything about it since this Theo guy had come into the room.

“Oh yes, it’s the right hand. You use it so naturally, I had forgotten which side it was on. It caught my eye right when I saw you. I’ve seen many nice mods before, and they’re all very expensive. I was surprised to find one this nice in a shop like this, no offense.”

“Thanks . . . .”

“How long have you been working here, Derrick?” Theo was leaned forward in his chair, head resting on his palm. He had an easy grin on his face.

“Could we save this for later? I’m monitoring the patient.”

Theo sat back up, shrugged, and crossed his legs. “Sure, sure. Don’t mind me, I’m just talking out loud.”

Derrick took a deep breath and looked back at the patient, trying not to pay attention to Theo at the edge of his vision.

Chock. Click. A sharp sound came from where Theo was sitting. What now? The White Leopard had lit the cigarette he had been playing with and held it between his teeth. Thin curls of smoke floated out of his mouth, and the acrid smell of tobacco and toxic chemicals permeated the air.

“Hey, you can’t do that here! Could you put that out please?” The overhead intake fan that ran to their aging air filtration system would help remove at least a little smoke from the air, but this was just too ridiculous. And if Tony found out that someone was smoking in his operating room . . . Derrick probably wouldn’t be able to stop him a second time.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were talking to me,” Theo said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I thought you were busy with the patient.”

“What do you want? We’re saving your boss right now, can’t you smoke outside or something?”

“So how long have you been working here, Derrick?”

The same question. Ah, so that was his game. “A while now; long enough to learn the ropes. And I learned that it’s definitely not good for patients to be breathing in cigarette smoke while they’re recovering. Could you please put that out?”

“Of course.” Theo took a long drag, and sent another puff of smoke into the air before reaching into his pocket for a small, cylindrical container, which he stuffed the still smoldering cigarette into. He smiled, looking Derrick in the eyes. “So you’ve been working here for a few years, huh? How many operations have you performed? Or are you just Tony’s assistant?”

Derrick inhaled deeply, glancing at the multi-parameter monitor. This wasn’t going well at all; he couldn’t focus on the unconscious patient in front of him while this gangster was asking probing questions, and threatening to fill the room with cigarette smoke. “You know, I’m confused. I thought you guys wanted to save this man? Why start smoking just to get me to talk about my work experience? And why keep distracting me when I’m monitoring your man?”

“He’ll be fine, you put that tube in his throat, right? He can breathe in the oxygen, no problem. He’s a tough man.” He pointed a thumb at himself. “I’m a curious man. If I meet someone interesting, I want to know a bit more, that’s all.”

“Okay. I’ll be glad to answer these questions after I make sure the patient is fine.”

“He seems fine enough to me. Are you sure you’re not making excuses?” The patient seemed hemodynamically stable at first glance, true, but he had just had a major surgery, and his condition could change at any minute, especially if there was something they had overlooked.

“Theo, please, I just want to focus on my work. I’m sure that would be good for you too—wouldn’t your friends out there be mad if the patient runs into trouble while you’re watching him?”

“Don’t worry about them. You’ll do fine, you seem like you know what you’re doing.” As if on cue, laughter roared from the shop, muted by the thick door to the operating room. “If anything happens, I’ll take your side, make it seem like it wasn’t your fault; just make up a good excuse.”

Derrick grit his teeth. Why was Theo so curious about him? Did he know who Derrick really was? Was he hunting the kid who had blown up all those White Leopards, so many years ago?

“How about this?” Theo said. “Let’s keep it simple. I’ll ask simple questions, and you tell me ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“And what if I don’t answer?”

“Well then I’d be upset. I’ve been very nice to you so far, don’t you think?”

And if you get upset, then what? You gonna shoot me to death? There seemed to be no way out of this besides waiting for Tony to get back; but the man was prone to making tense situations even worse, especially when the White Leopards were involved. “Okay, fine. What do you want to know?”

The White Leopard sighed and leaned back in his chair, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Perfect, thank you for cooperating. Also, let’s keep this talk between you and me, okay?”

Oh, shit. A gangster talking like that while his buddies were in the other room? The whole setup screamed of gang infighting: much more dangerous than turf wars. When gangsters couldn’t trust anyone, they shot everyone. Derrick’s heart was pumping in his chest. Gang infighting was dangerous for the community, yes, but it also guaranteed that gangsters would die, and that was a very interesting prospect. If only they would all off themselves.

“Have you performed many operations on your own?”

“No, not many.” Derrick had serviced and repaired loads of mods independently, but had only cut open patients a handful of times, and those were under Tony’s direct observation . . . except for once when Tony was out of town and a customer’s mod had gotten infected, and that had ended terribly for everyone involved.

“Do you, or your boss, know how to install eye mods?”

Eye prostheses? Why was he asking about those? Theo’s eyes seemed fine, and none of the White Leopards that busted into their shop seemed to be missing an eye.

“Yes, my boss does.”

“Have you or your boss installed any eye mods recently?”

“No.”

“Repaired them?”

“. . . No.”

The room fell silent. God, when was Tony going to get back?

The chair creaked as Theo leaned back into it. “Good to know. Can you do me a favor? Before I leave, I’m going to give you my contact information. Let me know if you come across any eye mods in the future; I’ll give you a reward for the information.”

What in the world was this Theo fellow trying to drag Hack Alley into? Illegal mod trafficking? There weren’t any well-known illegal eye mods, at least that Derrick knew of. Either way, there was only one good answer to Theo’s request.

“Okay, I’ll let you know. We rarely see them though, just for your information, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“Fine. That’s fine, hahaha.” Theo’s laugh was strained, but his tone turned cheery as he dove into another topic. “So do you like your job here?”

Hack Alley: a mod shop with a moldy shower, an alcoholic boss, and a pile of debt. “Yes, I like it.” It sucked, but it was home, and Derrick didn’t want to come off as the shit-talking type; that pissed people off.

“Do you think it could be better, though?”

“Well, yeah . . . I guess.” The questions seemed like a mind trick: the “yes-ladder,” where salesmen got prospective buyers to keep saying ‘yes’ to a bunch of inconsequential questions. By the time the salesman offered up the product, the buyer was already psychologically primed to keep saying yes, and was more likely to end up buying whatever overpriced shit was for sale.

“How about working part-time for us? We’re always looking for good mod-doctors.”

“Uh, no, I—” Derrick heart jumped, and he choked. Someone else had asked him the same question just this morning! Mark, the guy from the Tree Cage who was probably Marcus from way back when! He had tried to get Derrick in contact with his friend in the White Leopards . . . and Mark’s buddies mentioned a recruiter or something, whose code name was ‘T’!

“Are you alright?” Theo said, as Derrick walked away from the operating table to avoid coughing on the patient. Theo was well-dressed, and seemed to be leading this group of Leopards, along with the other man in the suit who liked to scream. T for Theo, it made sense. Theo might have been the White Leopard who offered Mark his fancy pair of leg prostheses.

The door to the shop opened, and Tony stepped in, a smile on his face. “I’d have beaten you if I didn’t just finish a surgery!” he yelled back into the shop. A booming laugh came back in response, from a deep voice that must have belonged to the giant man with the exoskeleton. Tony was always able to have a laugh in the weirdest situations.

Theo opened his mouth to speak, but merely nodded at Tony as he came in.

Derrick cleared his throat. Perfect timing, now he didn’t have to respond to Theo’s recruitment offer. “Welcome back, Tony. The patient’s been holding on.”

“Wonderful job, my boy. Ah, yea, the monitor’s looking good. You go ahead and take a break, I’ll measure his blood glucose.”

“Alright, thanks Tony.”

Derrick avoided Theo’s gaze as he stripped his gloves off. He clenched and opened his hand prosthesis. It was running low on charge, but would still work in a pinch if he switched it to low-sensitivity-low-articulation mode, a sort of power-saving setting that made it more like the dumb hand prostheses of the past.

His throat was sore, and even dryer after that coughing fit, so the drink of water he had been holding out for would be heavenly.

The door to the shop seemed heavier than usual, and the smell of blood on the other side was heavy as well. Derrick stepped over several pairs of shoes and socks that had apparently been laid out to dry. The White Leopards were strewn about the floor; some seemed asleep, others had a dazed look about them, and still some were alert, pacing around the shop, or peeking through the blinds into the dark night outside. Many of them cradled guns close to their chest.

Derrick sidled past some Leopards into the kitchen, and filled up an old plastic cup at the sink. The metallic-tasting tap water soothed his throat, and sloshed around in his empty stomach. Surgery always made Derrick hungry. But, seeing a bunch of White Leopards in their shop made his stomach uneasy. A look around the shop, just to make sure they weren’t breaking anything, would probably help with that.

The giant of a man, who had broken down the door only hours ago, was crouched on the ground. His large twin shields were sitting against the wall—they looked like tiny doors themselves—but he was still wearing his exoskeleton, save for the segment that would have covered his right arm. He held in his hands a broom and dustpan that was usually kept in the corner of the shop, and was sweeping up fragments of the broken parts that he had stomped on when they had forced their way in.

He looked up at Derrick and grinned a—mostly—toothy smile (he was missing a few). “Your boss is pretty strong, buddy.”

“Huh?” The very thought seemed absurd, coming from a man who looked like he smashed boulders for fun, and who demonstrably de-hinged doors for a living.

The man put an arm on his knee for support, and then stood up, blotting out a portion of the fluorescent ceiling lights as he towered over Derrick. It wasn’t just the exoskeleton; he was actually wide, and very muscular—built like a laborer rather than a gym rat. “We were having an arm wrestling match—I was bored out of my mind just waiting here—and we put money on it.”

“I’m guessing you won?”

There was that booming laugh again; it reverberated in Derrick’s chest. “Of course! I mean, look at me.” He flexed his bicep. “He made me sweat, though. Seems like a good guy, and I felt bad about breaking your stuff, so . . .” He gestured at the pile of broken parts on the floor. “Decided I’d try to clean it up.”

“Wow, thanks for that.” A gangster with a conscience, weird. “. . . How about the door though?”

The giant shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know how to fix it. Sorry.”

Figures.