05:28, Fourthsol 15th M5, 2226

I don't have to scour the shade dens of Eris-1 for my thief. Two sols after the Goddess first brought us together, she sends Shiro back to me.

I haven't fed since my brief encounter with the homeless woman in the market alley three sols ago. Hunger is bending my mind but I can't feed safely with my body so wracked with paranoia. After a night beset with nightmares, my morning walk to work is a dizzying landscape filled with imaginary wardens and IndoChina Mining guards waiting to pulse my limbs to paste.

So desperate to get out of the open before a warden spots me, I miss the usual turning for my ritual walk past the Kida Biotech building. I find myself skirting around its huge perimeter, hoping to rejoin the road to the hospital later on. That's when I see him slinking out of an unobtrusive door on the back side of the huge Kida perimeter wall, and dropping into an adjacent alleyway.

Shiro.

His audacity has me stunned; he's managed to hack the door codes for the most secure building on Eris, evidently without having attracted the attention of any Kida Biotech guards. It doesn't take much to guess what Shiro is doing there; there's only one thing that he'd be stealing from Kida. Meatware code. Perhaps he's trying to fix himself.

I follow, obscuring myself behind hovs and walls. Shiro limps along; his ankle must be getting worse. He picks up speed at the end of the alleyway and hobbles across the road where vends and sim bars jostle for space with crumbling pods that must certainly be shade dens.

I expect him to disappear inside a building to find a shade dealer, but he hunkers down on a low wall that hems in a sim bar. A mist descends, not quite drizzle. A damp sheen settles on my skin and clothes as I creep closer, shielding myself behind a tall black hov.

Shiro clicks idly at a shade pen and then secretes it into a pocket, hardly bothering to be discreet in case of passers by. Under the dome's luminaires the shade-addled image I'd had of Shiro in the dim transporter cab needs a little revision. His clothes are that same mix of loud Edge colours and neutral tones popular on Earth. Pale and gaunt, with tattoos adorning bare forearms and piercing eyes that never stop moving, he looks more exhausted than two sols ago. 

That doesn't matter to my parasite heart; Shiro is every bit as magnificent as I remember.

A horrifying thought chills me as I crouch unseen behind the hov. Now that he's stolen directly from Megumi Kida herself, Shiro won't ever accept my bribe to visit the Kida labs with me; it's simply too risky for him now. The thought is followed immediately by a more distressing one: if whatever code Shiro has stolen from Kida enables him to fix the glitch in his meatware, he won't be immune to me anymore. I'd drain him like I do everyone else on Eris. I won't get to touch him again.

He sits statuesque on the wall, seemingly engrossed in his lens data. After a few moments he sighs, and looks my way. "How much is she paying you, Heems?"

My heart begins to tumble. How did he see me? I was hidden so well. I've spent my entire vampire life thinking that I'm stealthy and inconspicuous. I should have taken lessons from a professional criminal like Shiro.

I step out from behind the hov and inch forward, nestling near to Shiro on the wall. My skin tingles with the urge to be closer to him, but I daren't move. His eyes are unfocussed; some activity in his lenses is more interesting than I am.

"Nobody's paying me for anything. I just saw you coming out of the Kida building and—"

"I'm not open to deals. Stay away from me."

"I'm not offering any deals."

Shiro grunts, taking out the shade pen to fidget with. "How's Pluto?"

"Pluto?"

"Yeah. You were so urgently needed on Pluto that you threw your hov into a storm rather than take the tunnels to the Spaceport."

I'd forgotten that I was supposed to be on Pluto. Three sols after vowing to leave this Dwarf and I'm still languishing here, my fear of execution now competing with my desperation to touch Shiro again.

My silence raises a chuckle from Shiro. "Maybe by the end I was convinced you were just a doctor with a death-wish, but now you're following me. Somebody's paying you."

It's not the first time he's accused me of taking bribes, of abusing power that I don't have. I've thought of nothing but Shiro for two sols, but to him I'm just one of Eris's fraudsters, dealers and criminals. I'm the one who should be mistrustful of him; he's the thief after all. I don't know from which hidden pool inside me it emerges, but rage suddenly wells up, burning hot. "Where's my fucking hov? You stole my hov and left me to die."

The hard lines on Shiro's face soften. "OK, I took your hov. I'm sorry. But I left it safe and sound in the hospital hov bays. It's still there. And I didn't leave you to die. The wardens were coming, and the storm was calming. I had to go."

"Why didn't you take me with you?"

Shiro titters into his shade pen. "You'd rather drive with a wanted thief than be safe with wardens?"

"Safe?" I hiss.

His eyebrows rise at my outburst; it's dawned on him that I'm the kind of doctor who'd rather drive with a criminal than face the scrutiny of wardens. Shiro knows that I'm a parasite of some kind.

He springs off the wall, too sprightly for someone who looks like they're at death's door. "Now you know where your hov is, leave me alone. And I'll leave you alone."

"Wait!" I follow him easily, wincing in sympathy as he drags his battered ankle behind him. "Can I have your lens number?"

He doesn't stop.

"In case your ankle gets worse. Or if you get ill. I can keep it all off the medical reporting system. Nobody would know."

He stops. "How much, Doctor?"

I skid to a halt behind him. "How much?"

"How much will this off-record medical care cost me?"

"Nothing. I'm not a corrupt doctor."

Shiro juts a chin at a distant lump in a doorway. A homeless ex-miner in Eris purgatory beds down under a nylon tarp. I don't need to approach them to guess that their meatware has very recently failed them, leaving them radiation-sick.

"Everyone's bribing doctors to keep medical care off-record."

"I wouldn't abuse my power like that," I lie. As soon as I got access to Eris's medical database, I did just that. I accessed Ying's medical records to check that she'd recovered from her coma, and I checked that my foster parents were healthy. Jaya's recent request that I visit their sick partner may not be in exchange for money, but it's off-record all the same. I'd feel somewhat superior to those corrupt doctors who apparently blackmail sickly miners if I didn't steal my patients' energy.

"Anyone in your position would abuse their power. This Dwarf isn't about being fair. It was never a way to give the poorest people on Earth a chance at prosperity. It was just another way to exploit them."

Shiro's eyes are bright with indignation. He's right. Just as they'd been neglected on Earth 150 years ago, those who left the planet to join the ranks of the Edge's mineral miners and factory workers are even more neglected here. Edgers have access to a pitiful handful of medics between us, most of whom arrive on short assignments from Earth, set bones and administer pills on Dwarfs for a few months, then disappear back into the Pinhole before they get radiation-sick. And it's not as if the Edge brings a life of plenty; mines and factories barely pay enough for a day of toil and a night of subscription-purchased life in the metaverse.

"Let's keep out of each other's way."

"You can barely walk. At least let me check your ankle again."

Shiro begins to hobble towards the orange glow of a bar. "No."

"Then take my lens number and call me if your ankle gets worse. Please."

Shiro stands pensive for a moment, as if assessing how much of a threat I am. He gives a nod. Before I have the chance to send a lens-link request, he raises his palms. "No. Not lens-to-lens. Read out the number."

"Fine." I recite the sixteen-digit string.

Shiro hunches his back, his gaze distant as if he's painstakingly keying each digit of my lens number into his lenses. It doesn't surprise me that hackers are paranoid of lens-to-lens comms. "Now, tell me what you really want."

"I don't want anything." Another lie.

I want to bribe him to come to Kida Biotech to help them to cure my meatware glitch. And, of course, there is the other thing I want. I want to be close to him. Perhaps we could be friends. The thought makes me smile.

"Actually... can I see you again? We could go to a bar... or..." A rush of excitement swallows my words.

Shiro's eyes look earnest, either with concern or pity. "Heems, listen. What happened on the 'porter... We thought that we were going to die. Let's forget about it."

His words sting, killing my smile. I look up at him with wide eyes. "I won't forget about it."

"You will. Trust me, sims are better."

"You don't think that."

Shiro's eyebrows undulate, a request for clarity.

"You told me that it would feel way better with you than with a sim, and it did."

"You were so nervous. I was just saying things to help you to relax."

Of course. Sweet whispers uttered in our seemingly final moments didn't need to be truthful. I shouldn't have expected our encounter on the 'porter to be anything other than a very pleasant near-death experience for Shiro.

"Listen, Heems. Go and design yourself a new sim. Have some fun. Maybe even one who looks like..." Shiro glances downwards, taking in his skinny frame, "...an attractive version of me. You've got my permission. You'll get over this in a couple of days."

My smile returns. He doesn't have any inkling of how precious he is to me. His meatware has the potential to save mine. I could never in a million years design a sim as good as Shiro. And I'd never want to. "Thank you, but I won't do that."

"Goodbye, Heems."

"Wait! One more thing! IndoChina's Head of Security wants you charged for stealing the 'porter. She's given the wardens a shoot-on-sight order on you. Lay low."

He laughs. "You ever heard of a warden not shooting on sight? I'm surprised they didn't pulse you out of boredom on that 'porter, fucking sadists."

He disappears into the rabbit warren of shade dens and sim bars. Whatever crazed mission I'm on has been neither a total success, nor a failure. Shiro has my lens number. If his torn ligament doesn't heal quickly, he'll have no choice but to find me for secret medical treatment.

Vermin, vampire, parasite that I am, I pray to the Holy Family that Shiro's ankle gets worse.

 


lisa_london_ "Where is Araminta Green?"