tthhee oddiissee Chapter 19

 

“Whoa Krodin, check it out,” Urgis said, pointing out the sleek black motorbike setting next to the wall.

“Damn, vintage. Pretty beat up, though. Why’s it so big?” Krodin replied back.

“You thinking of riding it? I don’t think even you are tall enough for that thing.”

“Never know until we try.”

A mischievous smile came across Urgis’s face. “I like the way you think,” he said, taking a keyjammer out of his pocket.

“Idiot should’ve known not to park such a sweet ride in a crappy neighborhood like this, ain’t that right, Krodin?”

“Damn right.”

Urgis got to work, sticking the keyjammer in the ignition.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Ro said, popping around a corner to see the two young punks hijacking the motorcycle. There was a tall, lanky guy and a smaller, more densely-packed guy. Both of them were wearing red overalls and white long-sleeve shirts with red-dyed hair. Ro estimated than neither of them could be more than around 16 years old.

Urgis and Krodin looked back to see Ro, standing at his normal 8-foot frame, wearing a tight, black leather jacket, zipped up just enough to show off his pecs. He had bulked up considerably since leaving Nok, cutting an imposing figure. He currently had the silver star resting across his shoulder, and his face was splattered with blood.

The short one popped down from the ignition. “The fuck you want?” he said, angrily.

The tall one was much more cautious “It’s his bike, Urgis.”

“Your friend is quite perceptive,” Ro said to Urgis.

“Yeah, and you’re not! You should’ve known better than to wander around the turf of the Nebraska Boys.” Nebraska?

Ro ran a hand through his short-cropped hair, taking a cigarette from behind his ear and lighting up.

“Never heard of you.”

“Yeah, I well I ain’t heard of you before either, fuckface!”

Ro took a long drag on his cigarette. “You sure about that?” he said through a puff of smoke as he approached them, towering above the two. “Think hard.”

A look of terror came across the tall one’s face when he recognized who he was talking to. “Black Zero,” Krodin said under his breath.

“Just ‘Zero’ is fine,” Ro responded.

Urgis forced out a laugh. “So what? I’m supposed to be scared? It’s all stories. What, you’re gonna hit me with your big fuck-off hammer?!”

In one swift motion, Ro spun the silver star around in his hand and slammed it into the underside Urgis’s jaw with a sickening crack and a spray of blood.

“Yep,” Ro said as Urgis fell to the ground, holding his face while blood squirted out between the fingers.

Ro held up the hammer with the head resting on Krodin’s chest. Krodin immediately put his hands up. “How about you? Feel like trying your luck?”

“N-no, sir,” Krodin barely got out.

“Smart choice,” Ro said in response. He went over to his bike and ripped out the keyjammer, tossing it onto Urgis as he writhed on the ground.

“Keep the toy.”

Ro started up the bike and was quickly on his way. He had wasted enough time dealing with the punks, he needed to put as much distance between himself and the hired muscle. Luckily, Ro had spent enough time in Conkreet to understand the city the way that few others had. It was a brutalist maze of concrete and steel that even life-long residents could easily find themselves getting lost in if they weren’t careful, and Ro knew every inch of it.

Ro speed through the streets as fast as a bullet, weaving in and out of the various concrete pillars that lay before him, speeding down alleys and taking right angle turns at breakneck speed. Few could keep up with him, but the protection he kept running into had started picking up a few skills, and sure enough, a few of their cars and bikes started heading his way. When Ro first got into this business, he had questioned why they would keep pursuing him after he killed his hit. But now that he had made a name for himself, each security company was eager to be the ones who finally brought him down. Not that they would’ve had much luck.

Ro had enough experience with the chase that he knew exactly how to move to weed out the weaker drivers, making them crash into various buildings and other cars, but there were always some who persisted. Of course, none were going to survive the Mixway. Ro popped through an alleyway, and landed around 10 feet onto the blacktop below, swarming with cars going at much higher speed, lining the packed layers of roads in the center of the city. Only the few bikers who were left could even make it down after them, some of them wiping out right when they hit the blacktop. It wasn’t long before Ro’s expert weaving, up and down the layers, through and around, and utilizing oncoming traffic as much as possible, that they were almost all wiped out.

To his surprise, there was still a biker keeping pace with him, right behind him. Whoever they were, they were almost as good as he was. Ro weaved around a few more cars, dodging them within an inch of his life each time, hopefully setting up a take down, but it wasn’t meant to be. Ro would be kidding himself if he didn’t expect that they would eventually hire someone with skill, but he didn’t think it would be so soon. But Ro had another trick up his sleeve just for the occasion, jerking the front of his bike up and angling his bike over the safety barrier. There were some crazy riders out there, but Ro was the only person that would have jumped off the side of the mixway.

Laid out below him was the entirety of the tangled highway system as he fell for a good 40 feet downwards. Seeing the interwoven roads that rose, fell, and interconnected with each other in such an intricate lattice pattern briefly brought a moment of awe in Ro. Whatever engineers made this thing were talented beyond anyone else to create so much roadway in such a small underground section of the city, all of it centered around the mysterious concrete pillar in the center of it all. It was in that moment that he wished he had been slightly more strategic in his jumping off point, as he never meant to fall as deep as he did. He wasn’t exactly hitting the bottom of the mixway (that would’ve been a few hundred feet), but it certainly made for a rough landing.

Ro hit the pavement with his bike with a hard thud and was almost surprised to find the bike and himself were still in working shape. Ro didn’t have to look back, he knew his pursuer wasn’t after him anymore. He was more concerned about the route ahead, terminating in a large concrete wall, blocking the tunnel that Ro was hoping to use as his way out. Try as he might, he couldn’t steer his bike, it was jammed, and the brake lines had somehow jostled loose in during the landing. He could only brace for the impact, head-on, into the concrete wall. He ducked his head down behind the bike as best as he could as he awaited the horrible impact, a feeling he was not unused to.

Ro awoke, in pain: an experience that had become increasingly familiar to him.

“Hello Zero,” Nina said with a groan. She was a woman in her mid-20s and goat horns coming out of her forehead.

“Hey Nina. What’s the damage?”

“In my opinion?” She started. She then slammed the bones in Ro’s left leg back into place while he let out a scream in agony. “Not enough.”

“Y’know,” she started, taking out her molecular scalpel. “I’ve got other patients who need me more than some 8 foot tall asshole who plays hitman every week. I’m starting to resent that ID card tells them to send you here every week”

“Sorry, but you’re the only doctor I’ve met who does things properly.”

“Sure,” Nina said stabbing the scalpel into Ro’s leg, making him let out a groan. “Use whatever excuse you want.” She then made an incision which opened up the leg and exposed the bone.

“No anesthetic?” Ro asked.

Nina started shaking up a can in her hand “I’m not wasting that stuff on you. You should be used to it, by now.”

She sprayed the formula onto Ro’s bones, filling in the cracks therein. Ro let out another painful noise.

“I can see why you’d think that, but it’s still not the best part of the job,” he said.

“You call this a job?” she said, using the hot suture wand to seal up Ro’s skin. “I call it suicide.”

“It’s what I’m good at,” Ro said, somewhat wistfully.

“Whatever you say, Zero,” Nina said, moving on to his right forearm, setting into place with another crack and grunt.

She sliced open the arm as well “All I’m saying is that you can do some good with your skills, if you really felt like it.”
“What, like being a clown for kid’s birthday parties?”

“Very funny,” she said, spraying both the radius and ulna bones. “I mean, you could be doing security for Jonas’s campaign.”

Ro groaned dismissively. “Sorry, but I’ve done enough work for con artists.”

“Zero, come on. He’s an activist and has great policies. He’s promising to finally take down Dexetrio,” she said while sealing up his arm.

“Yeah, bullshit. I’ve seen enough of these people come and go to know better.”

“No reason to be so cynical.”

“There’s plenty of reason, Nina. I’ve been around the block a few times, now. The second that guy gets in office and he learns how the game is played, all those promises melt away.”

“Sue me for hoping.”

“Hope all you want. If he was a real threat to Dexetrio, they would’ve killed him by now. The know he’ll play ball, and if they did kill him, he’d only end up being a martyr. You can’t trust a guy that his supposed enemies don’t even bother with.”

Nina got out a large needle, taking off the cap. “Like you’re so moral, Mr. Killer.”

“At least I don’t have any delusions.”

Nina drove the needle into Ro’s chest, making him arch his back in pain.

“And now you don’t have any broken ribs, either. Look, just promise me if a contract does come your way you won’t take it.”

“I don’t work with pharma companies. Personal reasons.”

“A small piece of mind, to be sure. Get out of here, Zero. I’ve got other patients to deal with.”

Ro jumped off the bed to his feet, shaking his leg. “Fuck, I can’t get used to that feeling.”

“Live with it. Your bike’s outside in the usual pile.”

Ro opened the curtain to see the dozens of other cots that were occupied with other patients, including a familiar-looking red head in overalls. Ro made sure to pass by Urgis’s cot while he left. The kid winced at the sight of him, and Ro did his best to act like he didn’t notice him. He always thought it was funny.

Ro went out the entrance to the building to find his bike in a pile with a tarp underneath, just like Nina said it would be. Ro proceeded to take the corners of the tarp, bundled it all up, and fling it over his shoulder. He would work on fixing it tomorrow.

“What a monster…” Ro could hear someone say under their breath.

Ro turned to see yet another familiar face in another pair of red overalls. He started to approach Krodin.

“What’d you say?”

“Uh, I didn’t.”

“Sure you did.”

Ro was now looming over Krodin. “Why don’t you repeat it?”

“I… I said, you were a monster.”

“That’s what I thought you said.” Ro slammed his hand against the wall Krodin was leaning against and leaned over him, nose almost touching his, looking him right in the eye. Krodin was shaking and clearly terrified.

“You know what the truth is?” Ro asked.

“W-what?” Krodin barely got out.

“I am a monster,” Ro just let out in a whisper, before leaning back.

“Not that you seem to mind, judging from that bulge in your pants,” Ro teased.

Krodin turned nearly as red as his overalls, and looked the other way.

“See you around, smart guy,”Ro said as he walked away.

Ro head back to his concrete box. It wasn’t as bad as squatting next to the railroad, but it wasn’t as good as renting with Leon. His furniture was much more utilitarian, able to replace or ditch it at a moment’s notice. He just needed somewhere to rest his head. He put his wreck of a motorcycle into the corner of the room, he’d get to working on it when he wasn’t so aching so much. Ro decided to simply laze around on the tethered. He did a quick check on the news, finding the usual sort of thing. They were making yet another Arro movie which Ro knew he would see despite always telling himself he wouldn’t. He was just about set to dial up a horror movie, but a message came to him before he could.

>got a new one for you. big money

details

>how would you like to make history

i’ve made enough history.

>900,000 kronar’s worth of history?

damn. who

>jonas

parker?

>that’s the one

who’s paying

>i shouldn’t say

but you will. i didn’t think dex was interested

>they aren’t. just someone trying to make a statement

that’s one hell of a statement. what’s the angle

>i don’t know, man. you taking it?

no. promised i wouldn’t

>not even for 900k

don’t act like you can’t find someone to jump at that price. i’m sure you’ll do fine

>you know it. don’t let this get out, okay

you think i’m stupid or something

>ha ha. bye, guy

Ro changed his mind, shutting down the tethered. Something big was about to happen, and he wanted to be prepared for it.