Rescue, part 1.

I spent the rest of the day hiding from the runners, ducking into dumpsters and hiding under cars whenever I heard footsteps come near. That sort of routine had been beaten into my brain already from my time in the egg trade; it was only a matter of slipping back into that old frame of mind. Judith found me much later, sitting on top of a demolished cardboard box in a dumpster.

“What the fuck happened to you?” She wrenched the top of the dumpster off, ripping it open as if it was a piece of tin foil. Her black face peered down at me and her eyes were narrowed.

I swallowed and hoarsely spoke—my throat was dry from lack of water. I’d used the single bottle of water I’d brought to rinse out the burns on my hip, which was pointless now that I was hiding in a garbage pail. “Not planning…hello Judith.”

“Can you walk?”

No. I chewed back the retort and tried to get up. “Umm…I don’t know.” Judith made a small noise of discontent and grabbed me, lifting me up out of the dumpster as if I weighed nothing. As I had predicted, my hip screeched with pain and I winced, balancing on the uninjured leg. “Thank you…”

My rescuer towered over me, at least a foot taller, if not two or more. Judith’s voice was underlain with a growl, though her face betrayed no expression. It was as if someone was standing behind her, speaking with that rough voice while she stood there, seemingly unperturbed. “Who did this to you?” Her antennae swished a bit and she glanced at my blackened plating.

“Just some runners. I pissed them off…it was my fault.” It was my fault—if I had taken the time to at least cover up the Blue Fly logo, I wouldn’t have been burned. Of course, they would have cornered me for the absence of a tag as well…damn. I guess I shouldn’t have ventured out on this wild goose chase at all.

Causally, Judith lifted up a lapel of the overcoat she wore to reveal the shiny metal of a shotgun barrel. Immediately I hissed and looked around to see if anyone was watching. “Put that away! Put it away, before anyone sees! They’ll kill you!” She couldn’t be serious…she wasn’t actually intending to take revenge. No—this was a backup weapon, in case something bad happened. It had to be, because nobody in their right mind would go up against a runner or a dealer.

Judith snickered and smoothed the fabric of her jacket out. “I’ve been in worse places.”

“Maybe…but they’ll still kill you. They’ll rape you, take the gun, and blow your brains out.” Trying to ignore the stabs of pain from my roasted, heat-warped plating, I hobbled off further into the alley. “We’ve got to hide—”

I was stopped by Judith’s tight grip on my shoulder and pulled back like a mouse being tugged out of a hole by its tail. “What fucking side are you on?” She sounded disgusted with me, and her mandibles splayed out ever-so-slightly with each word.

“The side that doesn’t get me raped.” I wrenched my shoulder free from her grasp.

Calmly, Judith took out the shotgun and tapped it against my chest, knocking at my sub-arms with the barrel. “It looks like that would be my side.” She snarled. “Now get it through your fucking shell plates—it’s either you or them.”

Memory briefly overlapped with reality; as if in double exposure, I saw Sirius standing there, a crowbar in his hand and safety pins in his mandibles. The pain in my hip and leg was from a pipe, and the distant honking of cars was the ringing of telephones. You ain’t got friends here, Rigel. You just got people who haven’t conned you yet. You get over before they get over, or you won’t last a night. Hear me?

“Do you want to run away like a scared little prawn, or do you want to fight for your freedom?” The brief image melted away and it was Judith again, the shotgun now cocked and ready.

I sidestepped it. “I want to stay alive.”

“You're afraid. You're weak. You won't take revenge for yourself! Your kids are fucked if this is how you defend them.”

Easy for her to say. She had training, experience with ‘warriors.’ The egg trade had no rules, no matches, no wins. Just losses, and the occasional chance at delaying your loss and pain. “You don’t get revenge here. You just dig yourself a deeper grave.” I felt my mandibles splay out. “And leave Jill and Jack out of this.”

Judith’s voice was cold and furious. “You never give in. You never submit. You fight! That is how you live, Olo.” When I said nothing she lowered the gun and flicked the safety on. “You know, maybe your kids are better off with you dead. Perhaps I should take over as their parent. Because you are obviously too weak...to protect anyone.”

Judith, taking care of Jill and Jack. Just a month or so ago I would have denied that and protected them all the more, but now…she was right. I was weak and unable to protect them, whereas she…she wasn’t a call-prawn. She was better than me. It made sense.

“Yeah. What are you going to do about it? I’m going to take custody of your kids and you’re going to stand there looking sad…”

My eyes widened, but everything just seemed dimmer. “It would be better.”

Judith looked confused for a millisecond, but quickly masked the expression with a bitter tone and a flicking of her antennae. “Oh, that's great then. I'm going to be able to start them on their military careers early then. Private third class Jack and Jill. Two good little soldiers, but remember that if they make any mistakes…” She pantomimed smacking something, backhanding the air and grinning. “…they get hit like the rest of the recruits.”

Jack—Jill—hit? They shouldn’t be abused; if this was where this was going…I didn’t know what to think. I responded with the first thing that came to mind. “Don’t fucking say that.”

She ignored me and instead snickered, something like glee in her voice. “Jack and Jill went up a hill I told them not to go up. Jack gets smacked down and Jill gets put in her place.” Laughing, she turned and began walking away. “I like it.”

No—I numbly snatched up a half-empty bottle of booze and broke it against the wall near me. The wet glass slid in my grasp, but I didn’t tighten my grip as I held it out as a makeshift shank. “Shut the fuck up. You can beat the living shit out of me—rape me if you even want to—but you never talk about Jack and Jill like that.” It was true; I couldn’t care less at this point what happened to me, but if it determined my children’s well-being then maybe I should start caring. I would never let them be hurt.

The other poleepkwa nodded slightly and the cold tone leached from her words. “Good. Now, are you fighting the dealers or not?”

Fighting the dealers? Impossible. You couldn’t kill Blue Fly, or a runner, without signing your own death warrant. They were stronger, more equipped, and more versed in street-smarts then I. Vaguely I noticed that I was making tiny, choked noises and shuddering.

A hint of encouragement reverberated in Judith’s voice. “You've already got a weapon. You've got inspiration. And I know how to signal the dealers. Heard a call prawn do it when I was searching for you. She gives a low whistle, the signal.” She twitched her mandibles and made a loud whistling noise. “Now they’re coming Olo. Your friends. Time to figure out if you're worth the life you've been given.” She stepped back into the shadows and vanished from view.

The runner ducked into our alley before I could say anything. She scanned the dark alley and raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “’Sup, squiddie? Finally decided to make things golden?”

There were only a handful of options right now. I could cry out for Judith to help me, but she would most likely stay hidden and that would only alert any other runners to my presence. I could try to overpower her, and get shot—the small lump of a salt-and-pepper gun could be seen at her waist. Unlikely that she had any big bullets in such a tiny gun, but even a small bullet could cause big trouble if you got hit in the wrong place.

Which left only one option, if you could call it that.

“Y-Yes. I have…” I limped towards the runner, dropping the bottle and hunching over. I tried to make myself look even smaller and weaker as I crept closer to her. “I-I’m small, but I’m experienced. I’ll sell for a lot. Just—”

“Shut it, grillo.” The runner held up a hand in a combined fuck-off/shut up gesture. “You’re gonna come with me, get Oro’s tag, and then we’ll bring you to the breaker. ¿Entienda?”

I was within range. I reached out and grabbed her, yanking her to the side and hissing as my hip screamed. She reached for the gun—it fired, but I felt no pain. Her neck was closer, so I grabbed hold of it and pushed my hand forward, dashing her head against the wall where the stain of beer from that bottle still dripped down. Breaking the skull wasn’t like breaking the glass, though…it took a few blows for her to stop moving. I stepped back and turned away, bile rising in my raw throat. What had I done?

“Great, Olo. Half the fucking neighborhood could hear that smack.” Judith mumbled from my side. I whirled; she was standing next to me with an irritated expression. “Let’s hope they didn’t…”

“What the hell?” The other runner was here now, along with several others.
Still reeling from the crack of bone on concrete, I snatched up the pepper pistol and pointed it at the small group. I had no clue how to use it, but maybe the bluff would do the trick. “Clear out—clear the fuck out, now!” The New York slang came naturally and I whispered to Judith: “The neighborhood won’t care. if we can get over on these guys, we’ll…we’ll be clear.”

“Alright.” Judith drew her shotgun and blinked. “I’d listen to the prawn if I were you.” She cocked the gun and pointed it at the nearest man’s head.

“You can’t fucking get us all, grillo.” They drew their own weapons, and for some reason I was reminded of Act 1, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet. ‘You bite your thumb at me, sir?’ ‘Draw, if you be men!’

Judith snarled at that. “Slavers! Fucking die!” She fired, clipping the first man’s shoulder and moving on to the next one. Somebody flicked their safety off; she threw the gun at them. It knocked them down and he lay still on the pavement. While one of the still-standing runners took off running, his partner aimed and fired at Judith.

“No—” She didn’t need my warning. Judith leapt up into the air and avoided the rounds, landing catlike in front of the lone man. She crunched down on his head, mandibles scratching at the flash and cleaving bone; blood sprayed lightly on the wall and the stench of death spread out like a fog. As a last gesture, Judith simply grabbed the man’s wrists…and ripped his arms out of their sockets. Simple as that—he could have been a paper doll. The corpse fell to the ground and made an awful thudding noise. No, that wasn’t paper. That was flesh, torn, bloody, dead flesh.

Judith wiped blood from her face and smirked at me. “That’s how you kill humans, Olo.”