Chapter 22: Carrasco

Carrasco swam up, slowly breached the surface of the water, just enough that his eyes were no longer submerged.

He examined the river bank. It wasn’t the most ideal spot to reveal himself. There were a handful of fishermen within his vicinity. However these fishermen were stretched across the length of the river on their tiny rowboats, they couldn’t be entirely avoided.

‘More importantly though no drones in sight.’

The skies were clear, light blue with a hint of twilight orange creeping in.

Carrasco made for the river bank. He would’ve preferred exiting under the cover of night but he couldn’t delay surfacing any longer. He was nearly out of oxygen.

He peeled off the half mask as he came to shore, a miniature breathing mask with the tiniest of oxygen reserves. However it had been enough to ensure his escape.

After evading Veiss, he’d fled to his safe house and recovered his vintage Gunners backpack with the astra and his other possessions stored inside.

Fearing the agents had covertly followed him. He used one of his emergency exits, escaped underground via one of the old hyperloop tunnels that lead to the Olifants River. Collapsed the tunnel on his way out ensuring he wouldn’t be quickly followed if he was indeed still being tailed.

A genius contingency, even by his high intellectual standards.

His soaked suit stuck to his skin, his backpack was heavy with damp, the smell of fish assaulted his nasal and his every step left a trail of wet. He didn’t bother drying his clothes. His first priority was getting out the open.

“Another jumper,” said an old fisherman.

He glanced over his shoulder and considered them.

“Too bad he’s alive.” Another fisherman twitched disappointment, scratched at his neck, glared at him like a walking payday.

The longer he regarded the fishermen and the more he focused beyond his own damp. He realized the foul stench in the air wasn’t just fish. The fishermen were blotted in dirt and wore clothes too torn to be called rags.

Carrasco cringed.

‘I’m surprised their stink doesn’t chase the fish away.’

Many of them held fishing rods with shaky hands and irritable expressions.

‘Junkies.’

They were common in such slums. And Newtown – his destination – was the motherland of all slums. A baking, dusty, overcrowded squatter camp.

He’d have preferred to lay low in a 10 star hotel. But those places were too damned expensive.

‘And required identification.’

His plains to hide in plain sight had been ruined. So the slums would have to do.

“Bind your hands and legs next time,” one of them said. “Makes it harder to have second thoughts if you survive the fall.”

“Strapping a weight to yourself would also work,” another said.

“Idiot! Then he’d sink to the river bed.”

“Oh,” the fisherman gasped in realization. “Forget what I said about the weight.”

This drew some chuckles from his brethren. Carrasco stared at them, awed by their blunt manner of conversing.

He turned to the gigantic Olifants Bridge – Joining the Central Metropolis and Newtown District – in the distance and realized what they meant by jumper.

‘All so they could relieve the poor souls that wash up of their possessions.’

Desecrating the bodies of the dead was an action out the bounds of his imagination.

Carrasco shook his head.

‘Too little profit in scavenging.’

He respected the hustle but they’d stay bums their whole lives at this rate.

‘But then again not everyone has my genius.’

His white sneakers squished as he trudged on with heavy wet footsteps. He trekked inland across the trash covered plains, aimed at the Newtown houses in the horizon of the low sun.

‘If tin shacks qualify as houses.’

The Newtown infrastructure was pathetic. The district was housed with simple square structures made from thick sheets of tin.

Well, the competently built ones were square and symmetrical. There were also many disfigured ones, tilted ones that seemed on the verge of toppling should a strong enough wind sweep through. The slums were littered with the tin monstrosities as if it was the fashion here. The shacks in the centremost most hills of Newtown weren’t as disorderly. They were built from large ship crates which he reckoned was sign of wealth here.

The shacks were stacked randomly and too tightly to each other, leaving no space for roads, electrical cables or any kind of sewage system. Not that the federation would bother cultivating this place. They wouldn’t waste the money.

‘After all, money is too precious, too liberating.’

Despite the disorder of slum, from this vantage point he could appreciate how Newtown seemed like one continuous structure, forming a great spiral pattern of rusted metal.

Not long into his journey. That rotten smell of fish was replaced with another.

‘Decay.’

Carrasco’s sharp senses were quick to isolate the smell and his eyes shook at the sight.

It wasn’t just decay he smelt. It was death.

On his far left. Bodies were carelessly heaped. All stripped down to their under garments, some unlucky ones even further than that.

‘Jumpers,’ first came to mind.

The slummers weren’t savages but they sure as hell weren’t sentimental.

Carrasco chuckled at his own genius.

If no one was looking for these bodies here, no one would look for him here.

The slum’s lack of surveillance and policing was even lower than he initially thought.

He’d failed to swap identities, so his plans to hide in the central metropolis had been ruined but the Newtown was shaping out to be a great hiding place.

A stinking hiding place but a great one nonetheless.

‘It’s only temporary,’ he reminded himself. ‘Because the lockdown can’t go on indefinitely.’