Jase gave no indication he had awoken. He listened for an absence of movement before opening his eyes to the static grey of his barely lit empty room. The sole amenity beyond the mattress left in the corner, a water heater unplugged on the otherwise bare counter. Through it, water went from a bottle into Jase’s last breakfast ration. He wouldn’t drink from anything else. The faucet was nearly sealed with calcium from disuse.

The remains of the ration’s packaging went into one of a growing mound of trash bags and Jase pried a panel from the wall and removed two laptops from the interior, then replaced the panel and retrieved two hard drives from a hidden compartment beneath the floor. Depositing them on the bed, he clambered onto the counter and removed the light fixture. From the hole he withdrew a blue card with a rook emblem imprinted on the face.

After returning the light to its proper place, Jase installed the hard drives and entered some commands into the window that popped up, then swiped the card through a reader accessory when prompted for each.

On one screen a box listed codenames of clients and prospective clients, the other screen contained identity information, access passes, clearance codes, and several other data fields fitting the “restricted” tag gracing their window. This monitor occupied many hours of his time before he pulled a flash drive concealed in the lining of his mattress and migrated the information he collected to the other laptop.

Messages came in as he sent files to the names on his client list. Additional requests and “friendly” reminders weren’t uncommon, but Jase preferred the usual payment with an occasional death threat. With a hand on each keyboard he searched through information and managed his clients simultaneously. His only frustration was he had no third arm to move the flash drive between computers without interrupting one of his workflows.

Long after he settled into the motions, through no action of his own, dialogue boxes suddenly obscured his screens. He froze, staring at the blinking cursor intruding into his virtual space.

hello jase

He ripped the hard drives out and reduced them to fragments at the head of a hammer, then listened. He was hesitant to crack open his door, glanced down either end of the hallway before so much as sticking his head out. Finding no human or humanoid figure illuminated in the flickering lights, he scurried across the hall to retrieve a red card from behind the opposite apartment’s number panel.

In the safety of his apartment he recovered another laptop taped to the side of a cabinet and logged in. Officer manifests, patrol routes, list of recent outbreaks, but nothing about an information breach nor any increase in activity in the immediate area.

Jase let out a sigh of relief and cut the connection. Though the unsolicited greeting left him uneasy, the absence of his name in the red card database meant he was still anonymous in the only way he cared about. The pulverized hard drives scattered across the counter were a more immediate concern. He couldn’t care less about what was on them. Most of it was potential evidence he would have destroyed anyways and everything he cared to preserve was backed up and encrypted, but he would need new computers if he didn’t want to use his backup laptop to broker information.

Additionally, the possibility existed the blue card gave him away to whoever or whatever breached his computers in the first place. His sense of self-preservation would not allow him to use it again, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that could suddenly appear in the trash without arousing suspicion.

The empty box of rations next to the pile of trash further impressed upon him the stagnation of his feeble living area. It was not difficult to conclude he needed to venture outside, as averse as he was to the notion.

Reluctantly, Jase shook the dust from his dresser and dressed to go out. He was about to dawn his jacket, a heavy thing bulky with extra fabric around the forearms and a high collar to guard the neck, when he heard a slow scratching from the window.

Jase opened the shutters to a silvery cat sitting on the windowsill whose meow at the sight of him was inaudible until the window was opened. “Hey there, Smudge. Still alive?”

The cat patiently let Jase pet it before attending to the empty ration pack he left at its feet, licking up the nutrient rich juices clinging to the wrapper. Jase grabbed his backpack from beneath the counter, tossed the remains of his hard drives into a trash bag along with the empty ration box and the cat’s cleaned wrapper when he noticed it watching him watching from the window.

After permitting him to pet it once more, the cat nimbly leapt from window to window, seemingly uncaring that the slightest slip up could send it falling seventy-four stories into the streets of a mega city stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.

Jase closed the window, threw the garbage bags over his shoulder, slipped the blue card into the lining of his shoe, put the red card back in its hiding place before boarding the elevator. Disregarding the perfectly good trash chute on his floor, he went up to the seventy-seventh floor to dispose of his refuse before descending to the third floor which was committed to a tram station.

Selecting a card from a small booklet of near identical tram passes, Jase boarded a tram toward the distribution center. He didn’t bother browsing the aisles of unbranded merchandise. He gathered what he needed and waited in line. A woman in front of him wasted his time trying to convince the cashier to let her go over her weekly ration limit because she had the funds. Jase kept careful track of his chip’s limits so when he came close to reaching it, he’d select a different one from a keyring he kept in his backpack, though he never used more than one in the same store.

He reached the capacity of his pack before using up his chips. When that happened, he found an electronics store and bought replacement laptops. The clerk tried to sell him on the newest models with limited time deals and discounts, but Jase disregarded anything other than what he came for.

He passed two peacekeepers on the way out, their presence being odd in an electronics store, but Jase knew better than to draw attention to himself by paying them any. Before the automatic door shut between them, he overheard one of them inform the clerk they were going to inspect any recent transactions.

Rather than find the nearest transit station, Jase turned sharply down an alley. He ripped an identity chip from his keyring and dropped the rest down a drain. There were three cell phones in his backpack, he tossed all of them down pipes and gutters as he passed them. There was no excuse if he was caught with this much food on him at once, but the punishment for throwing away rations was worse than unlawful stockpiling.

He rounded a corner right on time to hear the plastic like clunk of peacekeeper boots at the end of the alley. If he was not calm he did not show it, his eyes darted from beneath half-closed lids between park benches, display stands, open vehicles, anywhere at the edge of security camera coverage he could inconspicuously drop his backpack and claim reasonable disassociation if it was found.

His lapse in focus on the path ahead of him led to a head on collision leaving him looking right into the visors of a squad of peacekeepers.

“Excuse me, officers,” Jase mumbled in a semi-authentic bored tone.

“Wait,” one of the peacekeepers commanded, his voice bearing static from his helmet’s speaker.

Jase knew what was happening. His face must have just been uploaded to the city’s search network. If that was the case, there was no getting away. He let the few seconds the facial recognition required run its course and came quietly when ushered into a squad car. They didn’t need to cuff him. Jase knew better than to resist.

The peacekeepers led him by cuff and collar into the precinct, the only place an on-duty peacekeeper could be seen without their helmet and the last place a law-abiding citizen wanted to see if they wished to keep their rights.

When it was their turn at the processing window, Jase’s peacekeeper separated his computers, emptied his backpack of its contents, and emptied his pockets. The attendant on the other side of the window plugged Jase’s identity chip into the computer and a name that wasn’t his popped up.

“You’re a long way from your home district, Mr. Tarkovsky,” the attendant droned.

“The distribution center was busy,” Jase replied with disinterest prompting a shove from a peacekeeper for belligerence.

“The suspect is implicated via anonymous tip in the forgery and use of false identity chips and suspected identity theft. Aside from a quantity of rations exceeding his household stockpiling limit nothing suspicious was found in his possession.”

“We’ve been getting a lot of ‘tips’ today,” the attendant sighed. “All the holding cells are full. Put him in a quarantine cell to await processing.”

The peacekeepers gave a militaristic affirmative and took Jase to a wing of the precinct separated from the rest by a glass wall. The plexiglass cubby they shoved him in was only just large enough to fit a body laying down. After indifferently waiting for his cuffs’ removal and noting the pop of his ears once the door sealed shut and depressurized, Jase slumped into the bench extending from the back wall to await his turn for processing.

Across the lobby he spotted the holding cells he would have occupied had he been caught earlier. There was barely enough floorspace to contain its current occupants. Part of him thought to appreciate sitting in his airtight bubble rather than mashed in with thieves, assailants, and perpetrators of sexual misconduct, but given a choice, he'd rather be anywhere else.

Looking through the transparent walls of the cells, the few occupied contained citizens near death. Usually victims of violent crimes awaiting transfer to a medical facility and elderly individuals apprehended for refusing to admit themselves to a home for orderly disposal.

The old man huddled in the corner of the adjacent cell looked at Jase between coughing fits like an intruder, young and healthy as he was. Jase disregarded his gaze but noticed the red spatter on the old fellow’s hands and wall. Without getting up, Jase tapped on the glass between him and the watchman’s desk.

The watchman glanced up from his digital book and turned on the intercom in Jase’s cell. “What do you want?”

“This guy’s started hemorrhaging,” Jase drolly replied, motioning with his head toward the adjacent cell.

The watchman shifted forward in his seat to look in, then hit a button on his control panel and went back to reading. A few minutes later, three peacekeepers in hazmat suits arrived. Two of them loaded the old man onto a gurney and sealed him in a body bag, then the third disinfected the cell with a combination of a chemical hose and a UV light, finishing it off with an alcohol fire Jase felt through the plexiglass.

The old man was in a coughing fit the whole way to the elevator now that there was no need to conceal his condition. At least Jase didn’t have to listen to it. Not much sound made it through the cell’s walls. With that in mind, Jase tapped the glass again and pointed to his ear and then a monitor across the room displaying city wide news. Deciding it was the best way to be left alone, the watchman relented.