Recombination Read online

  RECOMBINATION

  A Seven Ecks Novel

  Book One in the Chronicles of Withmore City Series

  By

  Brendan Butts

  http://www.brendanbutts.com/

  First Published July, 2014

  Revised June, 2015

  Revised July, 2017

  Revised February, 2019

  Dedicated to everyone who has ever lived within the sloping walls of Withmore City.

  Valentine’s Day

  2104

  Prologue

  I lean back in the chair and kick my armored boots up on the desk. The flat screens along the wall in front of me show views from the pachinko parlor, massage rooms, the bar on the second floor, the rooftop above that, and the street outside.

  Deji-Pachi, whatever the fuck that means, is a Yakuza business. I am a Yakuza underboss, and I'll tell you what the fuck that means.

  It means when some baka Yak visiting from the motherland decides it's whiz ta pop off at the mouth to the King of one of Withmore City's most prominent gangs, and gets a pickaxe through the eye socket for his trouble, it's up to me to pass down judgment on the stupid mother fucker what couldn't just smile and nod at the slight--even if that stupid mother fucker is my best friend.

  Times like these make me nostalgic for the old days. I mean it wasn't all sunshine and gravy but at least I was out there, on the street, and not relegated to middle management in a legal criminal enterprise that spans the globe. I fucking hate being a little fish in a big pond.

  I joined the Yaks for all the right reasons. Well, one reason anyway: revenge.

  The rep I have, it's no surprise they wanted to bring me into the fold. I caused this organization so many gorram problems over the years it made a kind of sense they'd try to recruit me. I told 'em to fuck off right up until they offered the perma-death of one of my worst, and at the same time best-protected enemies, as a signing bonus.

  Kousen, the ever watchful bodyguard and babysitter they saddled me with when I took over as underboss of Red Sector, says something in Japanese from her place along the wall.

  She's so still that I routinely forget she is in the room. Like a piece of furniture.

  "How many times I's gotta tell you chica, I ain't speak fuckin' Japanese," I say.

  "Perhaps you should learn," She replies, switching to barely accented English.

  I wave a hand dismissively, not even looking at her, "I's already speak three languages chica, I ain't is fixin' ta learn another."

  She glares at me for a long moment before saying, "They are bringing him in now,"

  I can hear the steel in her voice and sense the note of contempt she isn't working very hard to hide.

  She knows the score of course. She knows me and the King go way back. She's probably guessed that I'm struggling with the reality of what I'm expected to do when they bring him in.

  Kousen fucking hates me, that much has always been obvious. She's never agreed with the higher-ups that about bringing me in. In her eyes, I'm not yak material. I'm just some upstart ganger, nevermind that I carved out a criminal empire rivaling that of any syndicate in the city before I retired.

  I watch on one of the wall screens as a street urchin makes her way through the pachinko parlor, attempting to sell plastic roses to the patrons. A few people take her up on her offer before the yak in charge of watching the room spots her and ushers her to the exit. Before she steps out the door she manages to sell him one of the plastic roses.

  "He is here." Kousen states.

  I glance at the screen showing the view of the street outside and see a giant of a man walking toward the entrance of Deji-Pachi. He's flanked on all sides by Yakuza armed with semi-automatic weapons. I can't tell from the vid, but I imagine the yaks all have fingers to triggers. They'd be stupid not to.

  Shit, it's Valentine's Day. Funny how that works. The journey that led me to Withmore City, to this point in time, to everything that is about to happen, it all started on a Valentine's Day.

  Valentine’s Day

  19 Years Earlier

  Chapter 1

  “Don’t be ah baka.” – Seven Ecks, (King Snake) speaking to law enforcement, Red Sector, Withmore City, 2093.

  When it became apparent to even the most stalwart of disbelievers that rising sea levels – resulting in the eventual erosion of large parts of the eastern seaboard of the United States – were not the climatologist fever dream the world wanted them to be, the country went into panic mode.

  Many coastal cities built massive seawalls to protect their populace. Where that wasn’t possible, feasible, or affordable the areas were evacuated and left to be claimed by the encroaching tides.

  Miami (part of a large swath of land that was facing evacuation) was desperate for a solution. When the Skywatch Corporation approached the slowly bankrupting United States government with a plan to save the city by building not just a seawall but an entire dome around the city, at their own expense, the plan was approved within days.

  The Miami Seadome Project was completed in 2054 after fourteen years and over 3 trillion dollars. However, the true cost of the project wasn’t money; Skywatch was granted sovereignty within the Seadome and no longer required to abide by U.S. law -- a status they took full advantage of.

  The corporation then spent the following thirty years buying up every piece of real estate that became available. Now, Skywatch subsidized everything from the police force to the school system. ‘Skywatch is our Savior’ was the first sentence I was taught to read and write.

  Miami is less a part of the United States and more an extension of the corporation itself. If you have a job in Miami, you work –however indirectly – for Skywatch.

  I don’t work for Skywatch, directly or otherwise, and I never will. Skywatch killed my parents.

  We were a lower-middle-class family, struggling just above the poverty line and neither of my parents had ever been able to afford a clone. There was no warning, but I could tell that my parents had expected this day to come ever since the first kid from my vaccination group had been taken.

  A knock on the door, my mother answering, then gunshots. Get your backpack. Don’t think, don’t stop. Keep crawling, Sev. Get out of the vent on the next floor. Move. Move. Fire escape. Get to Sasha’s house. Get money. Get out of Miami.

  Chapter 2

  I left Sasha and her parents standing in the embarkation lounge; they weren’t waving. Tears were streaming down Sasha's cheeks and I had to look away before my own eyes could betray the fear and sadness threatening to consume me.

  I had to be strong for Sasha. She had grown up a lot in the past few years, but I knew inside that she still thought of herself as the unpopular blind girl. The perfect target for bullies. Before I left the lounge for the ferry to the mainland, I promised her that if she waited for me, I'd be back and we would be together forever.

  Standing at the stern of the boat in the midst of a crowd of tourists, watching the rolling tide of the ocean and the slowly receding outline of the Dome, I wondered if I'd be able to keep that promise.

  Empty words and you know it Seven. You’re never coming back.

  The boat was large and filled with vehicles and people. Some were businessmen and students on their way home from work or school. Some were obvious drifters, with grime-stained clothing and unshaven faces. I slid my hand into my pocket for the fourth or fifth time since I'd boarded the boat, making sure the wad of cash was still there.

  Sasha's parents had pulled nearly a thousand dollars from their bank account and handed it over to me on our way to the embarkation lounge. I tried not to accept it but my denials fell on deaf ears.

  A thousand dollars wouldn't get you very far these days. Her parents knew what I was running from a
nd they seemed to think I wouldn't get far without it.

  They told me that when I got to Cooper City, where all the ferries from the SeaDome disembarked, I could get on a bus and head north to Boston. Skywatch didn’t have much hold in Boston, unlike other cities along the East Coast. Boston had built tidal walls at the expense of taxpayers and hadn’t sought out any corporate help.

  I brushed two fingers against my cheek and looked up at the sky in wonder. It was beautiful. The stars were just beginning to shine and I couldn't believe how many of them there were. Wondering idly if anyone had ever counted them all, my thoughts began to drift back to Sasha.

  The way she had kissed me in the lounge just before I'd left had sent shivers down my spine and melted some of the ice that had settled around my heart. I was going to survive on the mainland and no one was going to stop me from getting back to her.

  Yeah right, Sev. Keep telling yourself that. You’ll forget about her soon enough.

  The clouds above the boat parted and a pale white light seemed to illuminate the surrounding ocean. I looked up, wondering if it were possible Skywatch Corpsec had mobilized a helicopter and began following the boat with a spotlight.

  That was when my eyes fell on the moon for the first time. I'd seen pictures and video of course, but that hadn't done it nearly enough justice. It was so white, whiter than I could have imagined.

  Dark splotches sat in stark contrast to the almost blinding white, and I knew that must be where the mining facilities of the ZMI Corporation were kicking up lunar dust as their workers drilled and shoveled their way to one or more precious mineral deposits.

  Twenty years ago when the ZMI Corporation had bought the Moon from the US Government, analysts had said it was the biggest mistake the Corporation had ever made. The U.S. Government had taken the two trillion dollars ZMI was offering with a smile and then basically laughed in their face.

  Five years later when ZMI finally had its first factory up and running on the Moon, and the precious metals and minerals had started rolling out, those laughs had turned to sobs.

  The U.S. brought ZMI to trial in U.N. courts soon after, claiming ZMI had intentionally sabotaged the previous U.S. led mining surveys. The U.S. had lost spectacularly. Since then, the ZMI orbital facilities had only grown in size.

  After ZMI's success with its Moon mining operations, the small colony on Mars founded in the late 2030s grew exponentially as corporations and venture capitalists poured money into further efforts to colonize and exploit the world.

  Now the moon had a population that rivaled Miami's. Almost 2 million strong. Mars was slowly catching up with about half that and immigrants leaving every day to stake their claim on the Red Planet.

  Space wasn’t for me though. Something about metal and plastic being the only things separating a person from an eye-popping vacuum turned me cold inside.

  As we neared the shore, I once again put my hand in my pocket to grasp the wad of money. Its texture in my hand offered a measure of reassurance. No matter what happened, even after the bus ticket, I'd still be able to eat for the next week or so.

  The crowd started to move to the other end of the boat as we began docking and I moved with them. I was jostled from side to side as the crowd moved toward the exit ramp and everyone tried to leave the boat at the same time.

  The voice of one of the boat’s workers could be heard over a loudspeaker telling everyone to form a line and prepare to go through security.

  I'd heard adults that traveled outside the Dome for business complaining about the mainland security before.

  "It's too slow," one would say.

  "What's the point, anyway? We're citizens," another would reply.

  The throng of people finally settled on not being the first off the boat and formed a line. I tried catching my first glimpse of the mainland, but most everyone was taller than me and it was dark out even with the moon. All I could make out was the line of people heading down the ramp onto the docks and up to a fenced off area flanked by buildings on both sides. I assumed this was where you had to go through security.

  The lights of Cooper City were just visible past the checkpoint. I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as the line moved slowly forward. About fifteen minutes into the wait, the man in front of me began to grumble loudly to anyone who would listen about how ridiculous having a security check just to get into the mainland was. His clothes were covered in grime and his face, not much older than mine, was covered in smudges of dirt.

  I figured him for a Drifter, heading out to the Switchgrass plantations.

  "Can you believe this?" the man called to me, over his shoulder. I shrugged back at him.

  "Treating us like we're scum or something. Probably would have decided to strip search us all if Skywatch would let 'em hassle their shirts like that."

  "Shirts?" I asked.

  "Yeah, shirts. You some kind of new fish or something, kid? Salarymen, wage slaves A whole bunch of them work over in Miami during the day but live on the mainland."

  "Oh," I replied. The man was shaking his head now as if he'd expected more of me.

  "Yeah. Screw 'em." I said trying to match the man's angry tone.

  "Goddamn right. Make it harder every day for an Ace to get around. Act like they don't need us, but they do. Nobody else to tend their crops."

  We were almost at the front of the line when the man fell silent. He probably didn't want the guards to hear him trashing them. A security guard stepped up to the man in front of me and held out his hand.

  "ID?" The man handed it over to him and the guard looked at the ID in his hand, then up at the man’s face. The man grinned at him. Then the guard gave a nod to the tech operating the metal detector, who nodded. The man and the guard stepped through the only break in the fence. It was an archway like metal detector wide enough for three adults to walk through side by side at the same time.

  The guard didn't wait for the tech operating the metal detector to give him an all clear. Instead, he just handed the man his ID back, walked back through the arch, and up to me. I scrambled to pull my ID from my pocket before the guard reached me.

  "ID?" He said, his tone bored.

  I handed over the ID. It wasn’t me, but it was a kid from my neighborhood that I looked enough like to pass as. The guard motioned me toward the arch and I started walking. We walked through together and the guard looked over at the tech this time. The tech nodded.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. "You carrying any weapons, needles or contraband?"

  "No, sir," I said. I tried to turn around and face the guard, but the hand on my shoulder held me firm.

  "Step this way." The guard said. I felt a push on my back and I started moving forward.

  A large white square about the size of my parents’ closet had been painted on the concrete and with the guard’s hand on my back, I stepped into it.

  "Don't move."

  The guard gave the tech another look and the painted white lines began to rise, enclosing us. It took only a moment for us to be completely surrounded on all sides by the walls.

  "Empty your pockets and drop your bag."

  Still facing away from the guard I slipped the backpack off my shoulder and began putting the contents of my pockets on the ground. My wallet, my ID, some folded notes and papers from school, and the money Sasha's parents had given me.

  Behind me, I could hear rustling coming from the guard and then something else dropped into my pile of belongings. I looked down and saw a plastic baggie. Inside the baggie was a glass vial containing a yellow liquid that seemed to glow. I stood rooted to the spot, staring at the baggie and its contents, trying to think of something to say. Outrage burned through me.

  "Well, well," said the guard, "that looks like V-202. You know the punishment for trying to import V-202 onto the mainland, kid?"

  Finally, my outrage was starting to outweigh the shock of what was happening and I tried to turn around again. The guard increased his grip on my shoulder and s
hoved me forward. I just barely got my hands up in time to stop my face impacting the wall.

  "I asked you a question. Answer it."

  "It's not mine."

  "That's not what I'm going to tell the cops when they come to get you." The guard said, his voice dripping menace.

  I shook my head in frustration.

  "What do you want?" I realized then why so many people dislike those that wield a uniform and a position of power.

  "Well, it's like this. We can call the cops on you and they can haul your ass off to jail."

  "No!" I interrupted, I couldn't go to jail. Skywatch would find me easy when they ran my fingerprints. The shock was wearing off and my heart rate was picking up. Sweat started forming on the palms of my hands and I restrained myself from wiping them on the front of my shirt, wary of moving for fear of setting the guard off in some way.

  I tried to figure out what the guard could possibly want to frame me for and then it hit me. Skywatch must have already found me and had these guards in their pocket. I tensed my body, looking around for an opening, some way to make a break for it. I felt like an animal, trapped in a cage.

  Then, the guard chuckled and continued. "Or, you can pay a little fine and be on your way."

  I let out a long, slow breath. So it wasn't Skywatch after all, just some greedy guards wanting to get paid. I knew I didn't have much of a choice. If I refused, the guard would probably take the money and have me arrested anyways. The feeling of being trapped grew.

  "I'll pay the fine," I said, defeated.

  The guard’s grip on my shoulder relaxed, then fell away so I could turn around to face him. He must have been about 30 and his face was split into a wide grin as he regarded me. His uniform was a dark blue, almost black. One of his hands was resting on a billy club slung from his belt.

  "Smart choice, kid." He reached down and picked up the baggie and my wad of cash. Turning away from me, he touched a finger to his ear, "This one's all clear."