“Call it a good faith offer.”
That easily, Bobby had a new Tryptophan supplier. After the first couple of transactions, he never saw or even talked to the guy again. They had a prearranged drop site. Bobby went there, collected his pills, left payment in an envelope, and went about his business.
Having already gotten his goals clear, he now needed a plan. The first shopping trip had been an accident. Bobby had been on his way home from a bar. Too many drinks mixed with the Tryptophan had him feeling no pain and had dulled his senses enough that he could barely walk a straight line.
Two blocks from the bar, a guy fell in behind Bobby and — when Bobby turned down a particularly dark street — the would-be assailant made his move, up fast from behind, arm outstretched, knife waving frantically in a shaking hand.
Even completely stoned, Bobby had heard the guy coming. Too wasted to blend, however, he simply turned when the attacker got close, broke the man’s hand, twisted away the knife, knocked the guy to the pavement, and then rammed the blade into the man’s carotid artery.
Wrecked as he was, Bobby still managed to see his plan coming together. It seemed so clear he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. Although the mugger was smaller than him, he still liked the idea and did his best with his new project.
The mugger had even supplied a knife.
Looking back, that first shopping excursion had been a complete botch. By the time he was done, the material had been so tattered that it was worthless. He’d left the body in an old warehouse near his place. It was like the guy simply disappeared. No news reports of a missing man on either the TV or the radio. No one seemed to be looking for him and no one seemed to care if the guy ever turned up.
That had really got Bobby to thinking.
The first thing he did was stop drinking. For this plan to work, he needed to focus, to be strong. From now on the targets would have to be men who were larger than him — he’d learned that much from the first job.
A medium-sized guy couldn’t wear a small-size T-shirt, right? Same principle. And he would have to work quickly, which with his transgenic abilities would be no problem.
When he started thinking of how to find bigger men, Bobby remembered that the Manticore guards were all bigger than him — that’s why they’d had such an easy time of it picking on him.
Now, though — getting off the heavy dosage of Tryptophan on the weekend and letting Kelpy come out to shop — Bobby started thinking that he should be hunting men in uniform.
After everything the men like that had done to him at Manticore, they owed him...
... and, he knew just how to collect.
Chapter seven
Passing in school
Empty of vehicles, the lower floor of the parking ramp — the building where the siege had begun — swelled with the ragtag citizens of Terminal City.
Except for the handful on guard duty, the entire outlandish contingent of transgenics showed up for the town-hall-style meeting Max had called. Though the sun was rising, the parking garage remained mostly dark and still rather cold. May in Seattle — especially this close to the water — was rarely warm. Though the morning chill had no particular effect on the transgenics, on the other side of the fence the cops were certainly huddled in their cars sipping coffee and slugging doughnuts.
With Joshua, Alec, Mole, Dix, and Luke in her wake, Max swept into the middle of the crowd, and the din of conversation died away. Dressed in her customary black, Max stood out from the disheveled if distinctive mess that was the throng. Most had shown up here with little more than shabby, scavenged clothes on their backs, and living in the hovels of Terminal City did little to improve their appearance.
They may have resembled a Halloween ball for the homeless, but their Manticore-bred military discipline still held and, to Max, they looked wonderful. The community was coming together, the rivalries and prejudices of the varying transgenics types — from ND X-Series, “beautiful” people like Max and Alec, to the ND Transhumans like Dix (a Nomlie), Mole (a second-generation model DAC), and Luke (a Mule) — forgotten, or at least put aside for the greater good. The unique populace of Terminal City did not want to spend their lives in a toxic ghost town any more than they wanted to spend them running; but this biohazard village was starting to look like a suitable alternative, at least for the short run.
Jumping onto a box so she could be seen as well as heard, Max called out, “I’m proud of all of you — we’ve taken a stand. We’ve shown we can live and work together, and that provides hope for the future — if we can get along with each other, winning over the ordinaries oughta be no big trick.”
Her good-natured sarcasm went over well, grins flashing all around in every unusual face.
“But it’s time for a reality check — time to stop patting ourselves on the back, and start dealing with the hand we been dealt, here.”
The crowd stayed riveted on her every word.
“First, although we still have running water, it probably won’t be long before they cut it off. We can smuggle in bottled water, but that’s not going to serve the needs of a community this size. Ideas?”
Lightbulb-domed Luke stepped out of the crowd. “When we moved in here, we built our own generator. We’re close enough to Lake Washington that we can build our own water system too.”
With a quick nod, Max said, “Good — how close are you to completion?”
Luke frowned. “Well... we started on design when we moved in, but—” He shrugged. “—execution could take weeks.”
Gazing out into the crowd, Max asked, “Any of you X2s and X3s got any engineering and construction skills we can tap into?”
A dozen or so hands were raised.
“Can you guys get with Luke and pitch in with the water problem?”
Some nodded, and started shuffling through the crowd toward Luke, to fall in alongside him.
Somewhere in the middle a voice shouted, “What about the cops? What about the soldiers?”
Voices erupted throughout the assembly, echoing off the cement walls of the parking ramp:
“We should attack!”
“We should go to ground!”
“Wait for them to come in — and slaughter their asses!”
The cries came fast and loud, and Max let them get it out of their systems for a while; then, finally, she raised her hands for silence.
“If we fight with these armies of the ordinaries,” she said, “we will never win them over.”
Someone cried, “Who cares?” Then followed shouts of “Fight!” and “Kill ’em!” For several frightening moments it looked as though the tightly packed throng of transgenics might turn into an angry mob.
Max held up her hands for silence again, and reluctantly the crowd quieted. Now, she had to shout to be heard over the rumblings of the crush of people. “This is exactly why they want to sweep us under the rug.”
The grumbling subsided slightly.
“They think we are animals — monsters trained to kill. That all we want to do is kill. Is that true?”
The garage went tomblike silent now.
“Don’t you have dreams? Desires? Am I the only one who wants a normal life?”
Heads started to nod in the crowd, accompanied by a murmuring of assent.
“What happens here... what happens now... is up to us. If we want to be a part of this society—”
“Why would we want to be part of that?” a voice yelled.
“Because that’s the only real option,” Max said. “We are soldiers, and we are special people, more special than those we call ordinary... but we are as small in number as our hearts are large. We are barely a city — not enough of us to form our own outcast nation.”