Yakuza Territory – Eastern Border

...

We run, whisking through the city for so long that the moon rises above our heads. It casts a nasty glow on every route we take. "What's in the bags, Vi?" He looks at the Glimm-Screen hovering above the duffel which details the Comm-Tech. He knows there's tech in this thing, but I don' reward him with anything other than a smile.

"Not safe yet." I huff.

Based on the kōkoku sain [Translation Note: advertisement signs] painted across every home and the sirukukāten [Translation Note: silk curtains] hung in each glass-less window, it's apparent that we're still thick in the midst of Yakuza territory.

We're not far from Hinansho [Translation Note: Haven] —the wealthiest suburb in the city.

Back when the bombs hit, the government declared Lake Darling as a RED ZONE, meaning, no government business would proceed. We were red zoned because the damage from the bombs was deemed irreparable... which made our land cheap, and under-legislated.

Now, Lake Darling is the biggest industrial hive in Australia, but the companies who own the factories we work for are all private. The Government wrote the RED ZONE laws to excuse them from the cost of running places like this, but they were so well fortified against any legal accountability for RED ZONES that they forwent the ability to enact any legal or governmental intervention of law and business proceedings.

Jargon for, no rights for workers.

The only legal obligation they have is to provide a quarter-annual pop-up hospital with public access and severely discounted procedures. Severely discounted is still expensive for a slave, though.

Now the men who own the red zones answer only to themselves, which suits the government because they don't have to concern themselves with the Rehabilitation Scheme which we are most definitely owed. 

Michigan Duncans and Osamu Aikawa are the capitalist leeches who own every factory, business and housing estate within our walls. They pay the wages of every military man in the city and own essentially any government official who finds himself unlucky enough to be transferred here.

Osamu Aikawa owns Akimitsu, and Akimitsu is the ex-military man who runs the Yakuza.

Osamu made Haven to attract more workers to his factories. By building the best housing estate in the city, men started to convert from my father's gang to the Yakuza, but when everyone figured out that Haven only had enough apartments for a select few, there were riots.

I glance between the skyscrapers looming around us, then at the dull glow of light pollution in the clouds right above Haven.

Michigan Duncans owns my father, Craig Warrendale, who founded the Ghouls.

Now, Osamu pays Michigan a heavy tax for the electricity, and Akimitsu forfeits seventy percent of the RED ZONE supply drop to my father, Craig Warrendale.

So even though my family lives in one of Michigan Duncan's shitty little estates, Haven is as much my father's as it is Akimitsu Tanaka's.

I look at the lights reflecting off the clouds again, shifting the gun bag higher on my shoulder as we run.

I need to stop thinking about Dad's politics... I just get angry when I dwell. I can't believe I'm related to the bastard. I can't believe I'm the asshole who has to inherit his empire now that my big, noble brother decided to sneak out the back door and run away to the army.

Tokyo is a bigger traitor than me in my father's eyes, but I don't blame my brother for enlisting. The way I see it, Tokyo had the balls to chase a life he deserved, and I'm proud of him for it... even if he's working for the same army that put us here. Even if he's failed to make contact for the last four and a half years.

"Come," I point down a dark road, and Score follows in a lazy jog, both of us huffing gusts of cold into the night. Ahead the Ghoul territory line comes into view, and I smile through my ragged breathing. The further we get from the Haven the easier it is to breathe.

"There's always new graffiti," He remarks as we move quickly, not bothering to check for soldiers this far up the border.

Gravel crunches underfoot as we prowl through the barbwire ridden minefield; I trail my glare from shadow to shadow. "I like the graffiti in Holders Bay better though." I murmur. In Holders Bay more people have eSight, like Score and I, so there's digital graffiti everywhere.

Paintings of Ghoul Eyes and Yakuza Tora litter the rubble like poppies on a field. The street is filled with murals of the Unfinished War or the genesis of Lake Darling when we were stricken with the two deadly plagues.

You can always tell the difference between a M.A.D hospital or a D.V.B hospital... I curl my lip in disgust when I pass a chilling depiction: a scrawny man holding his entrails in his stomach, his face alive with ecstasy. The artist made his hair long and shaggy and transcribed OUR NEW JESUS across his chest.

That's a M.A.D hospital.

"Fuckin' grim, isn't it." He gestures past 'OUR NEW JESUS' to another hospital painting—but this one is filled with sick bodies all lying in a row. Each corpse died with ghoulish red eyes because that's the tell-tale symptom of D.V.B, opaque red eyes. The disease inspired the Ghoul logo.

D.V.B hit right after M.A.D, but it's the world's biggest killer since Covid-19.

"You think that's the disturbing one?" I begin, but then I stop right in my tracks. "Fuck is that?" Jagged red writing—the Yakuza Tiger slashed over top of the Ghoul territory-tag.

THE SOLARS ARE OURS.

Score's features drop, "Solars? Like solar panels?" He screws his nose up, "How the fuck did anyone get Solars?"

"If they did, it'll mean war," I mutter.

...

We scale the innards of Moaners-Tilt, an abandoned wreck that fell a few years ago. Score creeps up the slanted pillars and beams that used to support the old parking complex.

Moaners-Tilt makes me uncomfortable. It's full of memories and Ghosts... but we have to use it tonight.

I grab a corrugated iron rod sticking out of a concrete pillar, using it to hoist myself high, but then I realise the red rust is wet and I flinch. Is it blood?

Panic grips me so I hurry to the next beam, extending my palm into a patch of moonlight where the rust marks reveal nothing but dirt.

Paranoid.

When Moaners-Tilt was still upright my brother and his friends used to skate and drink here. But the moaning that came from the walls got real loud one day, and boom.

Tokyo was inside when it collapsed—one of my best friends was crushed, though.

His name was Benji... just this skinny little kid with a mullet, two gold teeth and gang makeup. He was the funniest little shit I've ever known; God, that kid made me cry with laughter, and he was a fantastic thief.

I can still remember standing in the cold at all of thirteen years old, shivering, crying, shaking, as my father's men hauled the concrete slab up to reveal his mangled corpse. Unrecognisable.

"What's wrong?" Scorpius rubs my elbow gently, his features creased in concern.

I shake my head like it'll clear the fog, "Nothing, just remembered something." Someone.

I come to the rise of the rubble where the wreck connects to the top of the old Sofitel Penthouse Suite. Beyond the once-lavish hotel expands a breath-taking view of the Lake Darling CBD. The city's dwindling fire and electric lights reflect off the Reservoir like little glimpses of diamonds and riches, like dead memories.

Lake Darling was Darling Harbours little sister before the bombs ripped Sydney apart. Now it's the whisper of an empire. A different time.

In the other direction, you can see the city walls.

My father and his men built the walls with the rubble from the bombs, using the old construction cranes to keep the Manics out. They're nothing like the concrete mountains that encircle Newcastle.

Back at the start, we were a complete apocalyptic hellscape for three years, but then the billionaires from Newcastle got to thinking that eventually the Government would have to move back into REDZONES, like Lake Darling, so they started buying up our land for dirt, dirt cheap.

Without actual police, or actual rules, factory work is more akin to slavery.

Some people still think Manics are the only enemy... but they're just the obvious foe. The real enemy is Newcastle. The rich. The government's favourite child.

"Is that an army plane?" Score points at a set of lights that are closer than I'd like to admit. A Glim-Screen blinks into existence once it comes in range, but the holographic image only gives a description of the vessel, not who owns it.

SX-215 Air Boat.

"SX dash two one five air boat. Maximum cargo capacity." He reads from the invisible screen we're both viewing, scrunching his face like squinting might help determine who owns it.

"The Voyteks took the army base last night, surely not." I squint at the vessel, trying to discern the direction it's flying.

Score frowns, "It's big, hope they're not gon' bomb the base. Sphynx is there..." He says and I grimace, but he doesn't seem too unsettled, so we turn away, "It's an Air Boat anyway. Hardly a fleet of fighter jets. Let's eat." Scorpius brushes past me, tossing the food bag across the gap before he gestures for me to hand him the guns. "What were you thinking about?"

I shrug my bags off my shoulder, turning away from the flying lights so I can gaze at the city, but the view is twinged by sadness. "Uh, just stuff from when I was a kid," I admit, hopping the gap as I pass him the bags.

Score nods lightly as we walk to the edge of the old roof-top pool. There's never been water in it, so we filled the deep end with mattresses and other shit to sleep on. One winter we covered the top with a deck of wooden planks to protect us from the wind, and view of potential squatters.

I walk ahead, sitting so I'm gazing at the CBD as I unzip the food pack. My limbs move so sluggishly that I feel like I'm dragging myself through a river of cement. "You want gnosha or cat-tail?" I mutter as Score sits beside me, landing on his ass with a lazy grunt.

Gnosha is just dried meat, but cat-tail is a dried sausage that's crunchier than gum leaves. It's not really made from cat-tail... but when times are rough you never know.

"Gnosha," He unzips the first gun bag, his eyes bulging.

I chow into a chunk of Gnosha, "Told you."

He barks a laugh, "I'm sorry I got so fucking sassy. This is our ticket," He picks through the bag nimbly, doing a quick stocktake, "With this there's no need to pay a Tixit to get us through the REDZONE."

"You wan' buy a ute instead?" I glance at him, silently hoping he'll agree to a slight delay so I can see Elias before I go.

"Yeah, if you're happy to drive through dead head territory. Bro—. Oi fuck, there's a comm-tech!" He beams, turning to show me, but before I can look he returns to the bag. "You happy if we meet at Bondi Road next sun up? Had my eye on this mad Hilux from before the war, vintage, but good, and wit' this it's," he realises I'm already smiling in agreement, "—fuck I love you sometimes." He wraps an arm around me and pulls until I'm flush against his chin, kissing the top of my head briskly before he returns to rummaging through the gun bag.

"Sometimes?" I smile at his electric expression, watching him as I chew.

The corner of his lip tugs. "Have your moments."

I click my tongue in dismissal, devouring another morsel of Gnosha.

"So you're happy if we leave Saturday morning?" He asks.

"Yeah, I can say goodbye to Elias on Friday night, maybe say bye to his kid," I take another piece of food. I never knew hunger until I left the warm embrace of my father's gang.

"You ever gon' let me meet him?"

"Elias or Ibis?"

"Elias." He rummages around in his pocket before pulling a pack of army cigarettes out. "Is that the kid's name, Ibis?" He grins, handing me a dart. I smile at him in thanks, holding it between my lips as I look for the white lighter we stole.

"Yeah, like the bird," I say around my smoke.

He laughs, "Like a bin chicken?" He puffs on the cigarette, getting it to glow before he passes me the lighter. [Translation Note: Bin Chicken - Australian slang for an Ibis Bird]

"Yeah, we call him Binnie."

"Binnie," Score chortles away, "how old is Elias if him kid is eight. I thought he was old as me and you."

"He's twenty two," a year and a half older than me, and six months older than Score.

Score raises a brow, "So he was fourteen, shit how old him baby mama?"

I snicker, amused by how quick his brain quizzes out every possible question, "She was sixteen when she had him."

His lips twist, impressed that E scored an older chick, "I like this Elias bloke already."

"Yeah, he'd like you. Soon as him got his head around the Manic thing," I grin out of the corner of my mouth. I turn to the plane behind us, squinting irritably, "Is it getting closer?" I ask.

"It's louder I reckon." He ignores it, turning back to the city, "Bet Holders Bay will look better once we find a spot like this."

Holders Bay does look better. We spent last summer there, living it up.

I pull a drag, "Bet."

"The slaving is gon' be shit though," He scratches his cheek, "It's alright but, cause we got guns now..."

"How come Dinga was there tonight?" I mutter, and he glances at me.

"You noticed too?" He scratches his chin, trying to be casual despite the uneasy flinch of his brows, "Sus that the Heratix would order an anonymous hit on their own drop. Hope we're not gon' get wound up in some conspiracy."

I nod in reply, chewing my lip as I watch the horizon. Beyond the walls expands a jungle shrouded by the black of night.

He pulls his phone out, opening the CITE.K portal.

user: scorpion

He enters his pass, and it takes him through to the underground platform. CITE.K allows people to get past the digital syphoning algorithm the politicians in Newcastle use to monitor the internet for Gang and Criminal enterprises.

Before the war, they put WiFi in the sky. No matter how many bombs they unleashed, they could never truly take down the technological age.

CITE.K is where you go to buy anything illegal, or, where powerful men list illegal jobs which hitmen like Scorpius, and now I, take. It's hard to describe crime, though, because the government rescinded all rights to implement law over any jurisdiction declared to be a REDZONE... meaning, any acts of lawlessness in a city like mine, are legally sound.

Scorpius mulls through the webcite, chewing his cheek as he focuses, "Yeah, look. Wolf just sent me this."

He shows me a job quote describing the Drop we just Hit. "It's encrypted, but Wolf is in charge of listing Heretix hits, drops, you know... all the shit they don' wan' handle themselves."

"He gave us the Hit quote though." I take his phone and scroll, trying to discern if we just pulled a Heratix Hit on a Heratix Drop.

Score rubs his face like he doesn't like the wasp nest we jus' stepped in. "Yeah. The zecs," executives, "told him to put us on a job against your father for initiation... I figured they wanted to test your loyalty but Wolf only just found out it was their own Drop we were hitting."

I grimace, "So they took my dad's money and stole the guns back?" Bastards.

Score's eyes narrow, casting his attention at the pile of five megalithic duffle bags. "Only thing that made it so easy was because them guards fucked off for their fight." I whistle, shaking my head. That was the biggest stroke of luck I think I've ever seen.

"Fuck I feel bad about that dog though." Scorpius's features pale, his eyes going distant like he's not sure if he's gon' spew at my feet.

Guilt gut-punches me, "figures Crip put them through hell already, too." I murmur in agreement.

Disliking the prickle in the air, or the unravelling facts of what our mission really was, he moves on quickly, "Yeah, regardless, this is our in. We're Heratix now. We won't have to deal with the Manics which will keep me away from my old crew."

I nod my assent, peering at him out of the side of my eye, "You gon' miss them?"

He glances away, "... I was hanging with Gypo and that the other day." Scorpius admits.

That can't have been good. "How was it?" I talk around a mouthful of smoke, trying to sound neutral.

"Iffy..." He mutters, glancing at me with a sombre face.

"Iffy?"

"They were fucking with Gasso."

I open my mouth, half of me about to lecture him on why Gasso is so damn lethal, or why I'm not going to judge. But I quickly shut my mouth and remain silent, waiting for him to spill whatever is on his mind, but he bites his tongue.

Confused, I give him a gentle frown. We both know I was two seconds away from a level ten lecture.

"Vi, you have to understand. Pain feels better than..." He pauses, looking for the right word, "sex." Mutated Hyper-Analgesia, a symptom of M.A.D: the abnormal relationship with pain. Manics either can't feel it, or it hyper-stimulates the brain into euphoria. The ones who can't feel it usually die before they get to adolescence. "Gasso hurts so fuckin' good..." he shakes his head, "I froze tonight because I saw a fucking puddle and I'm only half manic." He swallows, "I don't got none of the monsters in the brain like they do, so don' judge me if I say I get it when I see them fucking themselves up."

"I'm never gon' judge you, Score," I murmur. Still, he glares at me defiantly, like he's about to say something that I can't forgive him for, but I already know that I'd forgive him for anything. What is he getting at?

He raises his voice over the sound of the airship in the distance, "Gypo started on."

"Huh?"

"He jus', he jus' kept saying it'd stop me thinking about 'lilah'd," he tries to make his voice sound happy when he uses her nickname, but my breath catches.

That's the first time he's mentioned Delilah since she died. My stomach churns. I don' miss that time. I don' think of it none either.

"Really got under my skin, 'cause what gave fuckin' Gypo the idea that he could start pretending to give a shit about her. Anyway, things were getting antsy but then Spack showed up," Score grins at the mention of the middle-aged Manic who don' seem to know how to leave him alone, "and he got so angry at me, more cause he seems to think what's mine is his and 'how could I be using gasso without giving him a hit'," but also cause in Spack's head Scorpius is like, his kid." "Anyway yeah, it was iffy. And I don' think Spack and Gypo can be in the same room no more, cause the second Spack wised onto Gypo's little plot they ripped into it. Which means I'm caught because if Gypo get's his boys, the ol' fuck is tickets... so it's probably good we're going. Don' feel bad about leaving the ol' cracker, not one bit." He sucks on his spent cigarette at the end of his speech, letting it burn him, letting it mess with his head.

M.A.D. makes pain hurt so good, but when I rub his arm, Score flinches away from the dart at his lips like I somehow jerked him out of it. We remain silent for a long moment. I mull through my thoughts, tossing over what I should say.

He's normally jovial, hell normally we spend the evening joking about or discussing jobs.

Fed up with deliberating, I look at him out of the corner of my eye, the glow of the LEDs from Haven casting the night behind him in a dull glow. Comparatively, Scorpius's features are consumed by dark, and his mane of blonde hair seems outlined by silver, like the sky itself is tracing his silhouette.

"Come here," I pull a drag of my cigarette, "Come here. Look at me, yeah?" I pull his face, "Spack is gon' be fine. He's a fuckin' cockroach, a tiff with Gypo is like, water over his shoulder by now. An', an' if you're worrying about Gypo getting his hooks in Sphynx and all that," like he did with Delilah, "then stop, because no matter how much you care, it's up to them if they wan' fuck with the hard shit. Dad sells masks and needles and crystals to the kids I grew up with, an' of course it terrifies me that Elias will get his dumb ass wrapped up in it now that his Nonna is gone, but I know him. You know them... and, look it's hard, but you know the only thing you're actually responsible for is you." I stop to smile slightly, "And me, a bit, because you have the password to my trading account and if I'm not around you're responsible for making sure none of my stocks go bust. So, no, I'm not ever gon' judge you, never Score. But you're right, we need to get to Holders." I hold my dart to his lips, brushing his mop of curls aside to reveal his hard glare.

"I can hack into your eye too. Miss ghouls for life edit sike."

I laugh, rolling my eyes. My password is so stupid.

His brows soften as he looks at me, inhaling the smoke gently, before he exhales it through his nose, "You better stick around to look after your own stocks, Viper."

I wipe at his black greasepaint, making sure the smudge at least emphasises his eyes. "Don' do Gasso, fuckwit. An' fix your fuckin' make-up bro, how you gon' let Elxi see you if you look like you been back washed by a tribe of Zeros."

He laughs, "Back washed by a tribe of Zeros, is that, is that an innuendo, cause I don' think I even wan' know—." We both go silent when lights ignite our roof in a wash of blaring white, the air boat impossibly close.

My heart drops out of my ass when it thunders at us, and I grab my helpless little handgun, but Scorpius takes my wrist tightly, "Wait look. It's one of them hospital transports, see it don' got no gun dock." He shouts over the noise as he points at the belly of it when he realises the jet is going to fly right over our heads. The body of the air boat has a huge Red Cross painted on it.

A gust of wind hits us and my hair starts whipping with the pulse of the propellers.

An incredible noise swamps us as the plane gears down, "No fucking way," I shout, looking up at it in awe when the massive airship whisks right over our heads.

We spin to watch it go but my initial awe is quickly swallowed up by putrid dislike... fuck the army. "What is the hospital doing here? It's a month early." I prickle.

"It's never early," Score utters. "No like it's for real illegal for it to be early. REDZONE laws, and shit...?"

Discomfort prickles my skin, "First the Heratix sell my dad all these guns, then they order us to steal 'em back. Graffiti about Solars... then that," I jerk my chin at the receding ship as I pull my last drag before I flick the butt at the giant vessel, neither of us watching as the ember tumbles off into oblivion. "Fuck is goin' on?"

...

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All my love!

CVILYN

CAILYN