Ch. 37 – Give Me Rent

Derrick’s eyelids drooped, and the lines and lines of white text on black background swam around in his vision as he scrolled through the search results. The Temple of Pwners was an old school forum dedicated to firmware hacks, leaks of various kinds, and cracking tools. He had posted a few threads, asking if anyone else had seen integrated Beacons cause severe motor breakdown in prosthetic limbs—not mentioning Big Mike or the White Leopards by name, of course—but none of the threads had gained any traction.

There was precious little discussion on the topic in The Temple of Pwner’s old threads, and it was the same story on other forums and chat rooms.

Something about the whole incident was really bothersome. It would have made sense if Big Mike had turned on the motor control assistance feature in the Beacon, but he supposedly hadn’t.

Maybe some defect in the mod or the Beacon was allowing for signal interference where there usually wouldn’t have been?

Maybe Big Mike’s mod was also subject to external control, like Xavier Williams’s was?

Maybe . . . maybe the scary dancing banana would stop singing if he just took a bite out of it—

Derrick jerked awake and wiped the drool off his chin. A bit of saliva had dropped onto the laptop’s keyboard, which he delicately dabbed with the edge of his shirt. There wasn’t actually a dancing banana, and he was still hungry.

Either way, he wasn’t getting anything more done tonight. Derrick pushed himself out of the small swivel chair, and made his way to the front door.

The brown cardboard package sat by the door, still half-opened from when he had received it earlier in the day. Sitting on top of the bubble wrap were a pair of door stop alarms.

Once upon a time, Tony had installed a security system for the front door, but it ended up being destroyed when a car drove through their alley and crashed into the door. They’d never replaced it, but given all the people who’d tried to bust into their shop, it was high time to make it a little harder for intruders.

The doorstop was red, with a shiny metal plate on top. Derrick inserted the double A batteries, flipped the little switch in the back of the door stop, and depressed the metal plate.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—

Derrick flicked the switch back off, and dropped it to the ground.

“Ah, fuck!”

The ringing in his ears continued as he rubbed them. He had stupidly tested the alarm right next to his face, but at least it was clear that the darn thing worked. Derrick wiped a thin layer of sweat off his brow and placed the alarm up against the door.

Beep beep. A different sort of alarm came from the table filled with bills, and it was no less hair-raising. Tony’s Beacon. He didn’t carry it with him, instead leaving it in the shop so it could annoy Derrick instead. “You have: [6] overdue payments,” the Beacon chirped.

Tony had hooked his Beacon up to some electronic billing, and the ugly hunk of plastic was complaining that the payments were late.

It was kind of a dick move to bother Tony while he was resting in the hospital, but he was also the one in control of Hack Alley’s finances.

But either way, it could wait until the morning. Derrick closed his eyes, and dozed off.

#

“Wow, it’s that bad, huh,” Tony said, his voice coming in through the phone. He sounded better: not as weak as he had been a few days ago directly following the surgery.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad . . .” Derrick said. He switched the phone to his prosthetic hand, as his natural hand was starting to get sore after talking with Tony for half an hour. The shop was empty, except for Derrick.

Tony’s Beacon was inserted into an interface for the shop laptop, and the communications associated with it were displayed on the screen.

Bernard, their landlord had moved to only accepting rent through Beacon-verified payments earlier in the year. That was the whole reason Tony had gotten his free Beacon: that, and the discount on metro fare that was offered to new Beacon owners.

Each message from their landlord had gotten progressively more heated. At first, they had been sent the standard template notice that their rent payments were overdue. Then, the notices got a bit more personalized, with a passive-aggressive record of how many times they had been overdue on rent in the past. And the latest message had plenty of English in all caps, along with the Chinese.

“Has he come to the shop yet?” Tony asked.

“No, not yet.”

“It’ll happen sooner or later.” Tony sighed. “Can you do me a favor, Derrick?”

“Yeah, sure. What do you need?”

“Go to my room, I’ve got a little something stashed away in there.”

“Okay.”

With phone in hand, Derrick got up from the table full of unpaid bills, and went towards the back of the shop, and the closed door to Tony’s room. He hadn’t been in there since cleaning up, after Tony started his stay at the hospital. It was a bit of a break from cleaning up his mentor’s messes. But of course, that didn’t actually make up for Tony’s absence.

Derrick opened the door, and wrinkled his nose as the stale and foul air emerged. The section of drywall that had been utterly destroyed during the fight jumped out at him. He had cleaned up the drywall dust, but those holes would be there until they scraped together the money to get them repaired. Mr. Kim would probably be able to do the job. “Okay, I’m here. What am I looking for, exactly?”

“Something that I don’t deserve to hold on to, my boy. Look for a metal box underneath my bed. The key to it is in a paper envelope in my nightstand drawer. It’s stashed behind the drawer itself, so you’ll have to take it out of the nightstand.”

“Alright. I’ll go get it. Hold on, I’m putting you on speaker.”

Derrick knelt down and turned his phone’s flashlight on. The scent of blood still tinged the air this close to the ground, despite hours of cleaning the floorboards and furniture.

Lifting the threadbare bed skirt up with a hand, he fanned away the cloud of dust that he had kicked up, and laid on the floor. The light from his phone shone into the darkness, and it glinted on what looked like the metal box Tony had described, which was buried deep in the center of the queen sized bed, behind some dumbbells and old plastic water bottles. Jamming his face uncomfortably close to the musty old mattress, he reached out in the box’s general direction and gripped the top of it. Paint flecked off its surface as Derrick dragged it towards him and out from under the bed. Rolling over to relieve the pressure on his rib cage, Derrick placed the metal box on the floor. It was an old lunchbox tin, probably from long before Tony had even been born. Despite the paint flecking off, it was otherwise intact and sturdy looking. Many loose items clattered around inside the box as Derrick turned it over.

There was a small padlock fixed tightly around the latch. The padlock certainly hadn’t come with the lunch box itself, being as it was a miniature business lock, specifically meant to secure small containers.

“Okay, I’ve got the box. I’m gonna go find the key now.”

The envelope containing the key was right where Tony had said it was.

“You got them both?” Tony asked. “Man, oh man. I never thought I’d have to do this. Open it up, and tell me what you see inside.”

“What exactly is this, Tony?”

“You’ll see soon, my boy. Open her up already.”

Derrick undid the lock, and pried the handles apart. The edges of the box scraped against each other—it definitely felt like they hadn’t been opened in a while—and the box popped open, spilling luxury watches, and rings, and diamonds onto the ground.

“What?” Derrick said. “You’re going to sell all this? Where did you get them?”

“Just some shiny things I’ve come across over years and years of minding over this shop,” Tony said. “Now that we’re in danger of losing the shop, I figure it’s high time we use them. That’s what I’d kept them for, anyways.”

“Were they gifts?” Derrick asked.

“Yeah, some of them.”

The phone line went silent.

“. . . I can’t let you pawn these off, Tony,” Derrick said. He scooped up a luxury watch, and placed it back inside the box. How many years had it taken to accumulate all of these? Tony had worn some of these pieces, every once in a while: when he was trying to look suave for a woman, or impress a supplier—back when he was still seeing those. But he only ever took out one piece at a time, and always made sure to put them away when he got home.

“I don’t want to give those White Leopard bozos an excuse to bother us anymore,” Tony said. “If we get another eviction notice, Bernard is going to piss his pants and call them in.”

“Wait, I can pawn something off too,” Derrick said. The gold chain that Mr. Kim had just given him. It probably wasn’t worth much, but—

“Slow down, my boy. We can get through the month if we just sell a few of my things. I know there are some pieces I don’t wear anyways.” Tony’s voice cracked at the last bit. He sounded somber, suppressed even.

“. . . Okay. So you want me to stop by the pawn shop?”

“Yeah. Sometime this week ought to do it; that’d be soon enough to satisfy Bernard. You can bring my Beacon to the pawn shop so that the money goes to my account, and then I’ll send the money over to him.”

“Are you sure, Tony? I’ve been doing some jobs recently. It’s not enough to pay rent yet, but I can do some door-to-door to see if I can convince anyone to move their appointment up. A few of our patients haven’t come in for maintenance in years—”

“It’s okay, Derrick.” The sound of a bed creaking came through the speaker. “Ah, fuck,” Tony said, his voice muffled. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Thanks. Yeah, Derrick. I’ve checked our books. I’m proud of you, for charging our ole’ grayhairs a reasonable price. But that’s not enough on its own. Don’t worry about it, okay? Let’s just get through the month.”

“Okay, Tony. I got it,” Derrick said. He leaned back and wiped his cheeks so the tears wouldn’t fall onto Tony’s bling. It wasn’t fair.

“Good man.”

“So, which pieces should I pawn off?”

They deliberated for a few minutes, with Tony changing his mind a few times before finally settling on the pieces he wanted to pawn off.

“Okay, I’ll go ahead and put them away. Do you want me to take a picture of them before I go to the pawnshop?”

Tony coughed and then laughed. “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Hey, why don’t you wear it and take some selfies, just for fun? Do a little mean muggin’ with this bling before we lose it for good.”

Ugh. Selfies. Derrick cringed whenever he switched to the forward-facing camera. But if it was to cheer Tony up even a bit . . .

Derrick put on the rings, a necklace, bracelets, pins, and other ostentatious jewelry, and struck a few poses for the camera. He grinned. How silly would Tony look if he had worn all of this at the same time?

“Derrick, I should’ve given these to you a long time ago,” Tony said, cracking up at the pictures Derrick had sent over. He sighed. “Alright, I’ve had my fun. Thanks, Derrick.”

“Sure thing, Tony. Sorry you have to pawn these away.”

“Eh, there’s no use griping about it.”

“Yeah, true.”

They said their goodbyes, and then Derrick hung up and put the items to be pawned into a small bag.

But when would he take them over to the pawn shop? There was still time in the day, so leaving immediately was an option.

As Derrick debated whether or not to eat something before leaving, a knock came at the door.