February 11, 2140
Free Trade Zone, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
"Look at it, boy."
Segun leaned back against the stained ferrocrete wall, gazing out over Port Harcourt from his jury-rigged rooftop stronghold. He'd built a tidy nest over the past few years, clearing away the accumulated detritus of decades of neglect and equipping it with scavenged solar panels, a patched geodesic shelter dome, and two folding chairs with a panoramic view of the city. A battered cooler sat between them, half-full with bottles of homebrew.
As always, the laser pistol was strapped to his thigh.
Segun gestured at the skyline with the bottle. "Dying breed, she is. One of the last of her kind, yeh?"
Tariq didn't look up. Fingers danced over a lunchbox-sized decryptor, sonic probe whining as it teased open security protocols. Segun slapped a fresh bottle into the kid's palm. "Stow the tech. I brought you up here to drink, not to play, yeh?"
The kid - not really a kid at all, growing up in the Zone - winced at the bitter homebrew. "Dying breed, boss?"
Segun laughed and swept an arm, gesturing at the cityscape saturated in the orange light of dusk. Soon, the neon signs advertising every kind of entertainment would come to life and light up the oncoming night in garish shades of red and purple. "This! The Zone, boy!" He shook his head in mock disappointment. "Damned United Earth nonsense, calling it 'unification.' Bah!" He took another pull from the bottle and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Same scam that cratered the 21st century."
"Why?" the boy asked timidly.
Segun leaned forward and sighed. "You're still green, yeh? So much to learn about how the world works." He chuckled. "Always a market for men like us. Men who live free. Men who get paid." He shook his head again and drained the last of the bottle. "Even talk of abolishing currency. Absolute madness."
He flung the bottle over the edge of the rooftop, had another in his hand before the sound of shattered glass reached them. "Job tonight. High-yield," he said, twisting the top off with a pop of escaping carbonation.
"What kind of job?"
"Kind that pays." Segun winked at the boy. "Best kind, yeh?"
"Yeh," the boy replied, and took another swig. "Best kind."
The Zone was a neon-scarred wound, fifty square blocks carved out after the Third World War had gutted whole continents. Nigeria may have dodged the nukes but not the refugees of the Post-Atomic Horror, and the starving hordes had picked it clean. Warlords built fortresses from the bones, calling it 'maintaining order.' When the UE government flexed its new muscles to bring renegade nations in line, Nigeria spat in its face.
So the Zone was born. Officially, a tax-free import hub to help stimulate economic recovery; in practice, a lawless bazaar where you could buy whatever you wanted if you had the credits. Segun thrived here. His rooftop squat hid power: a nod could vanish whole cargo containers, a whisper reroute drone shipments.
Tonight, he worked direct.
"Where we headed, boss?" Tariq panted as he ducked through the choked avenues of the Zone, struggling to keep up with Segun.
"Keep up, boy," Segun said. "Be there soon."
Tariq bit back the next question and obeyed his boss. Soon they had left the mass of pedestrians and the hologram-lined main avenues behind, trading them for dimly-lit alleys and people who kept to the shadows.
Segun stopped at a heavy warehouse door and pressed his hand to the palm reader plate. Heavy bolts retracted, the door swung open, and Segun gestured for Tariq to follow.
The warehouse was filled with crates and barrels, fortunes for whoever could take them. Segun ignored them, heading to a back office. *Knock-knock... knock-knock-knock.* The door swung open.
A rail-thin guard lowered his antique scattergun. "Package?" Segun asked.
The guard jerked his chin toward a cot in the far corner. "Bastard's been sleeping."
"Language, boy," Segun said. "'Bastard' here is paying quite the hefty fee." He nudged the blanket-covered lump on the cot with his boot. "Time to go, yeh?"
The blanket fell away, revealing a face carved by time, crowned with white hair. "I am ready," the man rasped, voice improbably deep. He stood, regal despite the setting. "I take it you are responsible for the next leg of my journey?"
"Correct." Segun's hand hovered near his pistol. "Payment first."
"Your fee, paid in full," the man said, producing a credit chit. "Enough there to reinvent oneself."
"Yeh," Segun replied. "Didn't work for you, did it? All that 'genetic superiority', reduced to hiding in holes like this." He turned to Tariq. "Look close, boy. Last of his kind. A genuine Eugenics War relic."
Tariq's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, boss?"
Segun barked a laugh that echoed off the ferrocrete walls. "You don't know your history, boy. Serves you right, learning more about machines than people." He leaned closer and looked the man in the eye. "Tell him, Bastard. You old enough to remember the bombs? The Post-Atomic Horror? Your kind's handiwork?"
The man met Segun's gaze. "Older." He rose to his feet, his bearing not that of an old man but of a prince. "Much older. And I demand respect."
Segun chuckled darkly. "Should've guessed." He turned toward Tariq. "We are in the presence of nobility - no, royalty, boy. An engineered king." He leaned in closer to the man. "So who was your progenitor? Who spawned you, yeh?"
The man closed the distance, breath frosting the air. "Keniclius. Stavos Keniclius."
Segun froze, his hand clamped on the grip his pistol.
Keniclius smiled, a razor-cut in leather skin. "You know the name. How... unexpected." His eyes locked on Tariq. "But you don't." He shook his head in mock disappointment. "What has this world come to?"
Despite his lack of formal education, Tariq knew enough to understand that this man had once been important. Powerful. And at this moment, he was the center of Keniclius' attention.
"Allow me to educate you," Keniclius said. "Once, I was a king among kings. The first progeny of Stavos Keniclius, second only to Khan himself. Our kind brought order to a world trapped in anarchy." He glanced at Segun. "It was your kind who chose to start an atomic war, your kind who are responsible for the horror that followed." He smiled again. "Had you simply allowed us to rule, all that unpleasantness could have been avoided."
"Stay," Segun ordered Tariq, tossing him a palm-sized device. "Unlock this E-key. Gets us past starport security." To Keniclius he said, "Your 'suite' is a cargo container. Luxury." He spat at the man's boots. "Be glad to be rid of you, yeh?"
As the door slammed shut Keniclius staggered back and collapsed on the cot, his breath coming in deep, shaky gulps. "I... I will be... fine," he said. He waved his hand toward a plastic chair in the corner. "Sit. I won't bite. Not much bite left in me now." He looked at the skinny young Zone rat. "How old do I appear?"
"Grandfather's age," Tariq said.
"Try great-great-grandfather. Birthed near the dawn of the twenty-first century."
Tariq edged closer. "People don't live that long," he said as he pulled a sonic probe from his pocket and began making adjustments to the E-key.
"Your people don't." Keniclius replied. "My kind were engineered with the gift of longevity." He snorted. "Not eternity, though." He coughed, a wet, thick sound. "You fear me."
Tariq’s sonic probe whirred over the E-key.
"Why?" Keniclius pressed. "Reality? Or propaganda?"
"Don’t know," Tariq muttered. His hands worked almost without thinking, making minute adjustments to the E-key in his hand.
"Honesty. How rare." Keniclius nodded at the E-key. "You’re wasted here. Too sharp for a Zone rat."
"Segun pays."
"Money won't matter soon, not once the UE strangles the free trade zones. Places like this won't last more than a generation." Keniclius’s eyes dimmed. "No more shadows for relics like me."
Tariq leaned in. "How’d you hide?"
"Zones don’t ask questions." A bitter smile. "Lived a dozen lives. Fake IDs, stolen faces. Survival… but survival isn’t living." He stared past the ceiling, toward the smog-blurred stars. "They’re out there. My kind. Escaped on sleeper ships. Maybe even Stavos himself."
"You going to find them?"
"They’d call me coward." Keniclius met Tariq’s eyes. "Cowardice is worse than death."
"Are you?" Tariq’s voice didn’t waver.
Keniclius actually chuckled. "My, my, so direct. Wouldn't have thought that of you, given your deference to your 'boss'." He paused. "Perhaps. Better a living coward than a dead king."
He pinned Tariq with his gaze. "What are you? Too smart for Segun’s leash. I see it - the hunger to know not just the how, but the why." He nodded at the E-key. "Knowing why things work? Useless here. This place will bury you."
"Thought you said the Zone was dying."
"It is, and it will drag you down with it." He raised his hands in mock defeat. "But the affairs of the Zone are no longer mine to bother with. They are yours, and soon you'll need to decide."
"Decide what?"
"If your loyalty is worth what it will cost you."
Raised voices echoed through the door, and a moment later Segun burst in. "Transport's inbound. E-key, boy?"
Tariq handed it over. Segun pocketed it, shoving Keniclius toward the door. "Exit stage left, Bastard. Your chariot awaits, yeh?"
Keniclius paused at the threshold. "Remember, Tariq."
Then he was gone.
Segun tossed Tariq a credit chit. "Go burn that, yeh? Have some fun." He turned and followed Keniclius out the door, leaving Tariq alone.
Tariq waited, counted breaths until Segun's voice had faded, then slipped into the night. He thought about going back to Segun's rooftop stronghold, or maybe spending some of his credits on cheap booze around his usual haunts.
Instead, he made his way toward the spaceport.
Perched on a cargo container, he watched ships tear holes in the smog-choked sky, a bottle of cheap beer dangling from his fingers.
If your loyalty is worth what it will cost you.
Tariq tilted his head back. Beyond the neon, stars pricked the gloom.
Half a kilometer away the Ganymede transport lifted off, slowly crawling its way into orbit. Keniclius was in her belly, in a container just like the one Tariq sat upon, headed for his new life out there.
This place will bury you.
Maybe it will, Tariq thought. He sat up, drained the last swig from the bottle, and flung it away, listening to the sound of shattering glass a moment later. He hopped down from the container and started walking back toward the life he knew, toward Segun and his rooftop and the life of a Zone rat.
Or maybe one day, Tariq Amara will fly out there among the stars.
End
Free Trade Zone, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
"Look at it, boy."
Segun leaned back against the stained ferrocrete wall, gazing out over Port Harcourt from his jury-rigged rooftop stronghold. He'd built a tidy nest over the past few years, clearing away the accumulated detritus of decades of neglect and equipping it with scavenged solar panels, a patched geodesic shelter dome, and two folding chairs with a panoramic view of the city. A battered cooler sat between them, half-full with bottles of homebrew.
As always, the laser pistol was strapped to his thigh.
Segun gestured at the skyline with the bottle. "Dying breed, she is. One of the last of her kind, yeh?"
Tariq didn't look up. Fingers danced over a lunchbox-sized decryptor, sonic probe whining as it teased open security protocols. Segun slapped a fresh bottle into the kid's palm. "Stow the tech. I brought you up here to drink, not to play, yeh?"
The kid - not really a kid at all, growing up in the Zone - winced at the bitter homebrew. "Dying breed, boss?"
Segun laughed and swept an arm, gesturing at the cityscape saturated in the orange light of dusk. Soon, the neon signs advertising every kind of entertainment would come to life and light up the oncoming night in garish shades of red and purple. "This! The Zone, boy!" He shook his head in mock disappointment. "Damned United Earth nonsense, calling it 'unification.' Bah!" He took another pull from the bottle and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Same scam that cratered the 21st century."
"Why?" the boy asked timidly.
Segun leaned forward and sighed. "You're still green, yeh? So much to learn about how the world works." He chuckled. "Always a market for men like us. Men who live free. Men who get paid." He shook his head again and drained the last of the bottle. "Even talk of abolishing currency. Absolute madness."
He flung the bottle over the edge of the rooftop, had another in his hand before the sound of shattered glass reached them. "Job tonight. High-yield," he said, twisting the top off with a pop of escaping carbonation.
"What kind of job?"
"Kind that pays." Segun winked at the boy. "Best kind, yeh?"
"Yeh," the boy replied, and took another swig. "Best kind."
The Zone was a neon-scarred wound, fifty square blocks carved out after the Third World War had gutted whole continents. Nigeria may have dodged the nukes but not the refugees of the Post-Atomic Horror, and the starving hordes had picked it clean. Warlords built fortresses from the bones, calling it 'maintaining order.' When the UE government flexed its new muscles to bring renegade nations in line, Nigeria spat in its face.
So the Zone was born. Officially, a tax-free import hub to help stimulate economic recovery; in practice, a lawless bazaar where you could buy whatever you wanted if you had the credits. Segun thrived here. His rooftop squat hid power: a nod could vanish whole cargo containers, a whisper reroute drone shipments.
Tonight, he worked direct.
"Where we headed, boss?" Tariq panted as he ducked through the choked avenues of the Zone, struggling to keep up with Segun.
"Keep up, boy," Segun said. "Be there soon."
Tariq bit back the next question and obeyed his boss. Soon they had left the mass of pedestrians and the hologram-lined main avenues behind, trading them for dimly-lit alleys and people who kept to the shadows.
Segun stopped at a heavy warehouse door and pressed his hand to the palm reader plate. Heavy bolts retracted, the door swung open, and Segun gestured for Tariq to follow.
The warehouse was filled with crates and barrels, fortunes for whoever could take them. Segun ignored them, heading to a back office. *Knock-knock... knock-knock-knock.* The door swung open.
A rail-thin guard lowered his antique scattergun. "Package?" Segun asked.
The guard jerked his chin toward a cot in the far corner. "Bastard's been sleeping."
"Language, boy," Segun said. "'Bastard' here is paying quite the hefty fee." He nudged the blanket-covered lump on the cot with his boot. "Time to go, yeh?"
The blanket fell away, revealing a face carved by time, crowned with white hair. "I am ready," the man rasped, voice improbably deep. He stood, regal despite the setting. "I take it you are responsible for the next leg of my journey?"
"Correct." Segun's hand hovered near his pistol. "Payment first."
"Your fee, paid in full," the man said, producing a credit chit. "Enough there to reinvent oneself."
"Yeh," Segun replied. "Didn't work for you, did it? All that 'genetic superiority', reduced to hiding in holes like this." He turned to Tariq. "Look close, boy. Last of his kind. A genuine Eugenics War relic."
Tariq's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, boss?"
Segun barked a laugh that echoed off the ferrocrete walls. "You don't know your history, boy. Serves you right, learning more about machines than people." He leaned closer and looked the man in the eye. "Tell him, Bastard. You old enough to remember the bombs? The Post-Atomic Horror? Your kind's handiwork?"
The man met Segun's gaze. "Older." He rose to his feet, his bearing not that of an old man but of a prince. "Much older. And I demand respect."
Segun chuckled darkly. "Should've guessed." He turned toward Tariq. "We are in the presence of nobility - no, royalty, boy. An engineered king." He leaned in closer to the man. "So who was your progenitor? Who spawned you, yeh?"
The man closed the distance, breath frosting the air. "Keniclius. Stavos Keniclius."
Segun froze, his hand clamped on the grip his pistol.
Keniclius smiled, a razor-cut in leather skin. "You know the name. How... unexpected." His eyes locked on Tariq. "But you don't." He shook his head in mock disappointment. "What has this world come to?"
Despite his lack of formal education, Tariq knew enough to understand that this man had once been important. Powerful. And at this moment, he was the center of Keniclius' attention.
"Allow me to educate you," Keniclius said. "Once, I was a king among kings. The first progeny of Stavos Keniclius, second only to Khan himself. Our kind brought order to a world trapped in anarchy." He glanced at Segun. "It was your kind who chose to start an atomic war, your kind who are responsible for the horror that followed." He smiled again. "Had you simply allowed us to rule, all that unpleasantness could have been avoided."
"Stay," Segun ordered Tariq, tossing him a palm-sized device. "Unlock this E-key. Gets us past starport security." To Keniclius he said, "Your 'suite' is a cargo container. Luxury." He spat at the man's boots. "Be glad to be rid of you, yeh?"
As the door slammed shut Keniclius staggered back and collapsed on the cot, his breath coming in deep, shaky gulps. "I... I will be... fine," he said. He waved his hand toward a plastic chair in the corner. "Sit. I won't bite. Not much bite left in me now." He looked at the skinny young Zone rat. "How old do I appear?"
"Grandfather's age," Tariq said.
"Try great-great-grandfather. Birthed near the dawn of the twenty-first century."
Tariq edged closer. "People don't live that long," he said as he pulled a sonic probe from his pocket and began making adjustments to the E-key.
"Your people don't." Keniclius replied. "My kind were engineered with the gift of longevity." He snorted. "Not eternity, though." He coughed, a wet, thick sound. "You fear me."
Tariq’s sonic probe whirred over the E-key.
"Why?" Keniclius pressed. "Reality? Or propaganda?"
"Don’t know," Tariq muttered. His hands worked almost without thinking, making minute adjustments to the E-key in his hand.
"Honesty. How rare." Keniclius nodded at the E-key. "You’re wasted here. Too sharp for a Zone rat."
"Segun pays."
"Money won't matter soon, not once the UE strangles the free trade zones. Places like this won't last more than a generation." Keniclius’s eyes dimmed. "No more shadows for relics like me."
Tariq leaned in. "How’d you hide?"
"Zones don’t ask questions." A bitter smile. "Lived a dozen lives. Fake IDs, stolen faces. Survival… but survival isn’t living." He stared past the ceiling, toward the smog-blurred stars. "They’re out there. My kind. Escaped on sleeper ships. Maybe even Stavos himself."
"You going to find them?"
"They’d call me coward." Keniclius met Tariq’s eyes. "Cowardice is worse than death."
"Are you?" Tariq’s voice didn’t waver.
Keniclius actually chuckled. "My, my, so direct. Wouldn't have thought that of you, given your deference to your 'boss'." He paused. "Perhaps. Better a living coward than a dead king."
He pinned Tariq with his gaze. "What are you? Too smart for Segun’s leash. I see it - the hunger to know not just the how, but the why." He nodded at the E-key. "Knowing why things work? Useless here. This place will bury you."
"Thought you said the Zone was dying."
"It is, and it will drag you down with it." He raised his hands in mock defeat. "But the affairs of the Zone are no longer mine to bother with. They are yours, and soon you'll need to decide."
"Decide what?"
"If your loyalty is worth what it will cost you."
Raised voices echoed through the door, and a moment later Segun burst in. "Transport's inbound. E-key, boy?"
Tariq handed it over. Segun pocketed it, shoving Keniclius toward the door. "Exit stage left, Bastard. Your chariot awaits, yeh?"
Keniclius paused at the threshold. "Remember, Tariq."
Then he was gone.
Segun tossed Tariq a credit chit. "Go burn that, yeh? Have some fun." He turned and followed Keniclius out the door, leaving Tariq alone.
Tariq waited, counted breaths until Segun's voice had faded, then slipped into the night. He thought about going back to Segun's rooftop stronghold, or maybe spending some of his credits on cheap booze around his usual haunts.
Instead, he made his way toward the spaceport.
Perched on a cargo container, he watched ships tear holes in the smog-choked sky, a bottle of cheap beer dangling from his fingers.
If your loyalty is worth what it will cost you.
Tariq tilted his head back. Beyond the neon, stars pricked the gloom.
Half a kilometer away the Ganymede transport lifted off, slowly crawling its way into orbit. Keniclius was in her belly, in a container just like the one Tariq sat upon, headed for his new life out there.
This place will bury you.
Maybe it will, Tariq thought. He sat up, drained the last swig from the bottle, and flung it away, listening to the sound of shattering glass a moment later. He hopped down from the container and started walking back toward the life he knew, toward Segun and his rooftop and the life of a Zone rat.
Or maybe one day, Tariq Amara will fly out there among the stars.
End
