Chapter Three—Leads

They landed in the lower district number 93. The Corvo Onatta’s engine whined as the motor came to a stop.

“Maybe we should get the seats redone,” John said. “These neon yellow highlights are starting to hurt my eyes.”

“What?” Kyle asked indignantly. “Hells no. Wear some shades.”

John scoffed. “I’m not going to wear shades in the car.”

“Then yellow accents it is.”

They stepped out. Kyle glanced about. This place. Was. A shithole.

“Why do you get to decide?”

“Because,” Kyle said, circling the car to join John on the other side. “It was my decision, remember?”

John signed.

“Hey,” Kyle said. “Let’s get May on the line and see if she can help us out with this thing.”

John gave the other man a sideways glance.

“I swear I won’t do anything to annoy her.”

“Let’s check this lead first,” John said. “If we get nothing, then we can call May.”

“I can continue to comb through the holo-net for potential leads,” Lexa said, her voice coming from their wristlets.

Originally it had been Kyle’s idea to patch her into their personal subnet. She was a sort of digital assistant, or holo-babe-sidekick as they had taken to calling her during that Chylaxium job. That continued for a while, but Kyle quickly became disenchanted with the hologram.

After she decided to have a damn personality!

“What?” John asked. “There’s a ‘look’ on your face.”

“There’s no look.”

“If you say so.”

“All right,” Kyle said. “Let’s do this thing.”

Kyle lead the way, wearing his thick-treaded sneakers, black pants with yellow inlays and a black leather jacket, also with yellow inlays. He loved hoods, so of course there was one of those.

But the Jacket was great. It came equipped with fiber power, the lightweight energy reserves could keep his electronics active for days without needing to dock at a physical outlet.

As for his shirt, it was a simple T-shirt printed with his favorite metal band, the Screaming Anarchos.

Kyle glanced behind. “Keep up, man.”

“I am,” John said.

As for him, he was dressed much more… less fashionable, with tan trousers, leather ankle boots and a long sleeved jacket with the sleeves pulled up to expose his bare forearms.

So simplistic.

“All right,” John said as they moved toward a fence and some metal roof panels. “There’s some shanties down here where I think our guy’s at.”

Above them were several crossing bridges. It was loud, and the river was murky. They barely had a view of anything worth seeing in Life City from here, but once they went down the stained stone steps to the waterfront where the shacks were, Kyle was able to get a glance of the neon lights further up the river.

Not that he cared.

It was always interesting how the rich and the powerful lived behind walls while the desperate groveled almost literally at their doorsteps.

“Mr. Hano,” Lexa chimed, “lives in shanti, number 436.”

“Four thirty-six,” John repeated. “All right.” He glanced up toward the shanties.

There were some disreputable looking fellows standing next to a garbage fire. One had his head down, his left hand clutching at his upper right arm. Junkies, no doubt.

And everyone looked disreputable in here, but especially these guys.

In the mix were mothers hanging laundry, children running about with sticks and toy guns. They seemed happy, for whatever “happy” meant in this squalor.

A part of Kyle wanted to hate these people for being like this, and though it was surely the fault of some of them, it was mostly the fault of the political and corporate environment thrust upon them through no choice of their own.

“Four-thirty,” John counted. “Four thirty-one.”

“Yep,” Kyle said. “It’s right up here.”

“You seem quiet,” John said. “Are you all right, Kyle?”

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “I’m fine. It’s just… this place, you know?”

“Yeah.”

John walked up the wooden steps to the dwelling, which was little more than a box with various sheets of disparately-painted metals. At one time, maybe thirty years ago these shanti shacks had been shiny and new—part of Life City’s echo living initiative. He knocked on the door.

“Man,” Kyle said, glancing about with his back to the door. He wasn’t going to let one of these losers come up behind him so he could get a shiv or a knife in his back. “This place sucks.”

John said nothing, knocked again.

Suddenly there was a loud noise. It sounded like a—

“He’s making a run for it,” John said. “Look!” he pointed as Hono, wearing grey trousers and a blue jacket that had the sleeves ripped off, climbed up the embankment behind is crap hole to make an escape.

“Are we gonna—“

“After him!” John called. He was already a dozen paces ahead of Kyle, running left through the shanti town to cut Hono off.

Kyle sighed heavily. “Here we go!”