Addicted to Ruby and the Rix - Part 2

“Ruby’s still not back.” Robbie stands in the living room doorway, staring across the half-empty room at the figure slouched on the couch.

“Yeah, what’s it to me?” Traps says, pouring the last crisp crumbs into his mouth before tossing the packet towards the slowly growing rubbish heap in the corner.

“Well, it’s been eight hours. Something’s wrong; we need to go find her.”

“You go then. And I’ll just have to keep this hit for myself.” Traps holds up a little golden vial. The weak lights of the living room disappear into it, absorbed by its sunlight glow. Saliva rises in Robbie’s mouth; he can almost feel the Rix slipping into his veins like silk, soothing the burning in his lungs, calming the itching of his skin. He steps forward, lifting a hand involuntarily, and Traps snatches it back to his chest like a child hoarding sweets.

“So, you going out to play hide and seek, or you sticking with me?”

“Where’d you get it?” Robbie says, running a hand through his long, matted blond hair.

“Picked up a new batch from the Mechs after we told them about the THV bunker we found in Parson’s Green.”

Robbie chews on a hangnail. Ruby’s been gone for too long. Something’s not right. But man, he wants Rix.

“Your call,” Traps shrugs, lying back and pulling from his pocket a palm-sized IV bag.

Though that gleaming bottle of gold still winks in his mind’s eye, Robbie tears himself away. Find Ruby first. Then Rix.

He shoves his way out of the dilapidated house and onto the street. It’s cleaner out here on the pavement. In their slum of a house beer bottles, crisp packets and cans of caked beancorch are piling up in the corridors and no one seems to know what to do with it.

A Mech walks past Robbie, dead eyes straight ahead, like he’s not there. Robbie used to freak out every time one came near him, sure they’d lift a pistol to his skull and force him to take the chip. A couple of his crew did get taken once—the Mechs hadn’t got the memo that they were Flesh Hunters now. Robbie had thought the Mechs all worked with one brain, one super mind that moved them like puppets, but Traps said it doesn’t work like that.

“They’re like kids, see. There’s one big AI that made them and then gave them their own brains. Their own… what’s the word?”

“Autonomy?” Said Twigs, the only one who actually finished school.

“Yeah, autonomy. They ain’t all connected. So when those dipshit bastards picked up Twitch and Joey, they didn’t know they were part of our crew. But now the big boss gave them an upgrade.”

Robbie still hates the Mechs. Hates the way the chips turn their eyes to the flat of a TV screen. He saw it happen to his mum after the Switch. That morning, when he stumbled in half fucked from booze, she didn’t give him the usual look. The one that’s both pissed off and trying not to laugh. She didn’t prod him towards the shower with a wooden spoon and lecture him on having the decency to be home early enough to make her breakfast. She didn’t roll her chair to the window and shove it open while calling out for all the neighbours to hear, “Christ Robbie, you stink worse than a junkyard’s arsehole.”

No. Her lips turned up into a thin, placid smile, and she said, “Are you having trouble with your chip? A nurse will be arriving shortly to assist you.”

No more Rita Driscoll.

Robbie hates Mechs.

Traps said Ruby and Twigs went out hunting. Robbie taps his fifth message out on his watch.

Ruby answer would u im getting worried

The calls keep dying without getting a chance to ring.

He turns his feet towards Parsons Green. Maybe they’re out there, lying low, hoping one of the THV tries to pick up supplies left at the bunker.

London glistens under the sharp glare of the sun. Sweat beads on his forehead, makes runnels down the middle of his back. His shirt starts to cling, making him itch all over again.

He shoves trembling hands into his pockets, trying to suppress the shakes that are starting to snake up his arms.

Just pop a little baggie in the vein and whoosh, all this would go away. Sunlight clear. That’s what the world becomes. He could turn back. Traps might have some left.

A stream of Mechs exit an office building to his left, talking in that quasi-human way: the more realistic the upgrades make it, the eerier it becomes.

“The Republic of Scotland. It lacked economic logic,” a tall, lithe, blond-haired Mech says. Robbie wonders if the guy was a model before the switch. He sure doesn’t look like an investor.

“Yes, but the numbers have changed dramatically since that scenario was last drafted.” The woman beside him is nearly a foot shorter, with pimpled skin and frizzy hair. But she doesn’t gaze up at him with those doe eyes you used to see girls get.

Do Mechs get boners? They’re still in human bodies and a hard-on is a chemical thing, right? At least that’s what his Ma said after she found him halfway through a tug and he nearly climbed out the window and never came back.

So if they’ve still got a human body, Mechs have got to have a sex drive.

The thought of sex tugs his mind back to Ruby. Not that they’ve done it. He’s thought about it, mind. More than he’s proud to admit. She’s only fifteen, and it doesn’t feel right; he might be a jacked-up junky, but a kid is still a kid.

Fuck, Ruby, where are you?

He tries his watch again, but nothing.

What if another team of Flesh Hunters have found her? There are good junkies and bad ones. But when the side-hustle is to hunt down the last members of the human race, you can imagine which kind that would appeal to. There aren’t many good ones left.

As Robbie turns down a cut-through so narrow his shoulders brush the sides of brick walls, the shakes are traded for a stabbing pain in his gut. He bends over, hand pressed to his belly, and vomits. Yellow and brown mingle in a watery puddle on the ground. At least he missed his shoes. Raking his nails across his scalp, he straightens, wipes his mouth. Got to keep moving.

What if the THVs got her? They wouldn’t kill her, right? Coz she’s still human and they only kill Mechs. So at least she’d be safe there. But how would he ever find her? They’ve got bases hidden all over the country. If they moved her out of London, she’d be gone forever.

As Robbie steps back out onto the main street, a camera on the corner blinks down at him. Mechs have cameras everywhere, surely they could track her. Except, what if it’s the Mechs that took her? He’d heard about what they’re doing to the THV in their medical centres. It’s the same place they pick up Rix and Robbie’s seen through the windows. No screaming. The Mechs don’t go in for torture. Just experiments. Cutting away at a different piece of the body each time. Fuck knows what they’re doing it for.

Robbie starts hoping the THV have got her.

His watch pings, sending vibrations up his arm, lighting a little spark in his head.

Unknown: Got your girl. Bring Rix or I’ll send pictures of what I do next.

Shit.

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