“Remy St. Claire, and Josephine O’Malley, why, it truly is my pleasure to see you. Why don’t y’all have a seat and my boys will rustle us up some drinks. Tanner, go and fix our friends something from the bar. Go on, now.” Happy Jack sat behind a large wooden desk engraved with vines and trees polished to a dark shine. He claimed he’d procured it at great expense from the old governor’s office. War eagles inlaid with gold nested in the engraved trees upon the top. Remy was inclined to believe him.

The man himself was dressed in a fine white suit with a wide-brimmed hat much like Remy’s own but also a crisp white. He held a glass of a brown liquor in one hand and rapped his fingers along the war eagles on his desk, a thick smoldering cigar held between fingers..

“Now, I am sorry about taking your Vascs. Safety and all. Mel seems to think I’m reckless with my health. She won’t let me even sniff at that real cheese anymore, let alone let folks such as y’all walk in with working Vascs, you understand. You’ll get them back, of course, I’m no thief.” Happy Jack drawled his words out, like a jar of molasses spilling across a table.

Just spit it out, man. Remy had always hated the accent.

He and Josie took seats in high backed chairs across the desk from Jack. Behind Jack, narrow slits let in dim artificial light that struggled through the swirling haze of Jack’s cigar. The smoky light was regularly broken by a slow twirling fan blade. Remy scratched at his left arm where he had worn his Vasculator. He had grown used to the near constant dull thrumming just above his wrist.

“I hear I owe you for the other night, Jack. Thanks for that.”

Tanner came back with two short glasses of brown liquor surrounding a single large ice cube. He set them on slate coasters in front of Remy and Josie and returned to his place at the side of the room, lounging on a couch where he could have a clear shot at either of them if they tried anything too sudden. Jack nodded and swirled his own glass slowly.

“Much obliged, Remy. Our interests aligned and I’m pleased as punch to have been of service. I’ve always taken a shine to you, Remy, even if some of my boys think I’m too soft. Shine or no, I don’t take debts lightly. A man’s word is his bond, after all and so, as I know you’re a stand-up gentleman, you’ll repay me in a fitting manner.” He raised his glass in a mock toast and sipped.

Happy Jack was full of shit. The accent, look, everything was just that, a look. Remy didn’t begrudge him that, it was a signature of sorts, but it wore on a man. Playing a southern gentleman who said “I own you now” in pretty words was especially crass, even for Jack.

“Maybe I can even the score today and we can go back to just being friends, eh?” Remy pulled the stack of Colin’s papers from an inner pocket and dropped them onto the desk. He noticed Jack tense as his hand disappeared into his jacket. Remy smiled. Jack’s discomfort made his own more manageable.

“What’s that, then? I’m afraid my eyes aren’t what they used to be.” Jack reached for the papers and unfolded them slowly.

“Found that beneath the Sapphire Lounge. If you hadn’t come by, I would be dead, so I figure you own this as much as me.” He took a sip to wet his tongue. The drink was good. He’d tried bourbon before at the School House but Luis’s booze was gasoline compared to this. It might actually have been gasoline knowing Luis. He continued. “Warehouses, drop points, what he’s paid to each judge, so on. Lawyer records.”

Jack barked a low rumbling laugh and his namesake grin sprawled across his face. “Well, my pappy always said that if you had a room of lawyers covered up to their necks in concrete, you didn’t use enough concrete. What happened to this guy, then? This, Colin Adelaide, is it?”

Remy shrugged. “I just have the papers. No one, no one that’ll talk to me at least, seems to know where he is. The last dated papers aren’t complete. They’ve been blacked out in spots, but it looks like he was exchanging letters with a company called Denominator Incorporated. Heard of them?”

Jack’s smiled faded to a soft frown. “What was that name again, son?”

Fuck you, Jack, you’re the same age as me. Well, maybe. Fine suits and dim lighting could add or take away a dozen years.

“Denominator Incorporated. I couldn’t find much on them. Mean something to you?” Remy watched Jack read through a couple pages, his frown deepening.

Bad eyesight, my ass.

“Well, if I wasn’t such a trusting man, it would seem like JD’s trying to cut us out of our arrangement.” Jack flicked his fingers in the air and Tanner came to his side. Jack whispered into his ear and Tanner scuttled out of the room.

“What arrangement? What’s Denominator do?”

“Vascorp.” Josie leaned over and whispered. “It’s one of their fronts.” Remy turned to her and scowled.

“Why didn’t you say that earlier?” He whispered back through tight teeth.

“I didn’t read all the documents, that was your job. You should’ve asked.”

Impossible woman. He shook his head and turned back to Jack.

“Well, that’s what’s in the documents, at least. You can have them. All of them. Do what you want with them but we’re square, alright?”

Jack considered him for a moment, tapping a long finger against his lips. Finally, he nodded and folded the papers once more.

“Well, I reckon that’s a fair bargain, Remy, but I do require one other service from you, if you’ll oblige me, of course.”

Of course.

“And what’s that, Jack?” Remy sighed.

Just shoot me and get this over with.

“You also will race the Beltrider this year as a freelancer.”

Remy’s heart stopped.

“No way.”

“Yes,” Josie replied at the same time. He turned to her with wide eyes.

“The Beltrider? Don’t you think a bullet right here would just be a quicker means to that end?”

Jack held up a hand before Josie could respond.

“Well, Remy, I’ll be frank with you, because I know you’d do me the same courtesy. You’re going to say yes here because otherwise I will be giving that bullet you asked for to the both of y’all and I’d rather Tanner not spend the afternoon cleaning my rugs.”

The Beltrider. He’d never even been in a speed-skiff, let alone a combat model. He glowered at Josie. Going places with her was like juggling hand grenades with no pins.

Remy rubbed his face with the palm of his hands and tilted his head back.

“Well, I guess you have a team then, Jack. You providing the skiff?” He sure didn’t have the money to buy one fresh and it would take weeks to build one. Weeks they didn’t have. Jack smiled back broadly, insufferably.

“Of course, I am not just sending you out here to die, you understand. Now, as to the why, I think you’ll understand your role more clearly once the race is underway. I trust your instincts, son, even if I do have to pull you from the fire once in a moon.” Jack stood and turned to place the stack of stolen papers in a drawer at the side of the room. Remy knew a dismissal when he saw one.

“Thanks for the hospitality, Jack. As always, it’s been a treat.” Remy slammed back the drink, no sense for good booze to go to waste, and turned to leave. Josie was at his elbow. Remy held back his exasperation enough to hold the door for her first. Jack chuckled, gesturing at the pair with his thick cigar.

“Remy, I do envy you. A woman like Josephine does a man like you some good. You are as skittish as a bullfrog in July. Woman like that is soothing to a man’s soul.”

What the fuck was a bullfrog?

Soothing was certainly not how Remy would describe any of his experiences with Josie.

“Do you want her? I’m open to offers.”

Jack shrugged and laughed again.

“Oh no, I’m afraid a woman like that won’t be held back by the likes of us sinners. It is better to watch a fire from a far than be burned up in her path, don’t you think?”

Remy shut the door behind him and sulked out. He’d been thinking the same thing.

***

The Beltrider was one of the oldest traditions of the undercity. Drugs, weapons, and violence were hallmarks of the organized gangs struggle with each other but they’d realized soon after the revolution that it was simply much more profitable to split up the pie. So now, they tried to get along most of the time as opposed to just fighting on the street one day and hoping not to get shot the next. Sure, there was occasionally flare ups - Jack hitting JD’s crew on his behalf being a glaring example - but it was too profitable to go back to open war. More recently, JD and Happy Jack used it to see who had first crack at Vasc transit.

The rules were simple. Two people per skiff, three laps around the old Madison expressway, one winner. Sabotage, foul play, and mischief was generally encouraged, particularly by new faces trying to make a name for themselves. Jack himself was once a freelancer skiff pilot, building his syndicate after a surprise win some twenty years back.

“I assume you’re driving, eh?” Remy asked Josie over a dinner of cheap and generic Asian cuisine with too much sugar. He was having replicated chicken in a sticky sweet sauce while she picked at a fusion plate of Asian flavors and spicy South American rices.

“Well, you’re not driving, that’s for sure. Jack will give us something decent if he’s bothering to put us in there at all. It’s going to be on you to keep them distracted then.”

Remy pushed the reddish chicken blobs around his plate. “Oh yeah, I’ll sing a little number and flash jazz hands. It’ll be a treat.”

They ate in sullen silence with the television on mute. The news was dreary enough to watch and they didn’t need those words to further detract from the mood.

“Have you ever tried a Displacer?” Josie asked quietly. He shook his head and she pulled her duffel bag closer. She flicked through a large plastic case and tossed him a chip with a box and a second distorted box next to it.

“It’s a bitch to load so you should do it a day or so before actually trying to use it. Might save us if you can use it when it counts.”

Remy flipped it over in his fingers. Displacement was hard. Harder than focusing a burst of lightning and much harder than trying to push something with wind. He’d never tried it before but he’d always wanted to try one. He should’ve known Josie would know where to get one.

“Jesus, Jose, what else do you have in there?”

She shrugged. “Nothing much that’ll help in the race. Shade, Gills, various flavor and voice modifiers, Hibernation, Quants, etc.” Josie trailed off.

It was enough to put her away for a few lifetimes if they weren’t registered - the Shade alone would be a lifetime or more - but they wouldn’t be a big help on the Beltrider.

“What will you be loading? Volt?”

“I’m actually thinking Quant. With the speed we’ll be going, I think the extra mental calculations will help us not end up splattered on the wall of a burnt out factory. Plus, it’s low-drain and I could swap into something else for an emergency. My system has always been pretty good for that.”

“Mmmmm.” He nodded, fingering the Displacer card. It was a good idea. A Quant-enhanced pilot would be almost as good as pure AI and in a race like the Beltrider, a lot better at being proactive when needed.

“So we’re trusting our weaponry to whatever Jack puts on our skiff, eh?” He asked.

“Guess so.” She nodded.

They finished dinner just as the news ended and Remy cleaned the plates from the living room table. He pulled a beer from the refrigerator and settled onto the couch. Josie joined him with a beer of her own. Remy grabbed a fortune cookie off the table and cracked it open to read his fate out loud.

“Your worth will soon be seen.”

He laughed to keep down the bile rising in his gut.