Fading Lights

The words he searched for did not exist, and yet he desperately grasped for them all the same.

Vile, repulsive, horrific and satanic were all words that bubbled to the surface of his mind, and yet they all popped and dissipated from their own insufficiency as the smell tinged his nostrils and made his eyes water. He could not tell how long the body had been sitting there marinating in the filth of the city, but it was long past the point at which it should have been cremated and stuffed in a box like everyone else. Even without the stench of human decay polluting the tunnel, the eerie stillness of poorly filtered air was nigh unpalatable. Perhaps if he had been born on the surface he would have choked, hacked and wheezed at it’s stench of stale decay but, like so many billions of other wretches he had never seen the light of the sun, let alone breathed fresh air. Maybe if he ever did it would have killed him from shock, but that was not a problem he would ever need to worry about. From filth he came, and to filth he would return. Sooner than he would have expected. 

Rather flaccidly he raised his arm to his nose in an attempt to protect it from the stench, though just looking at the dull eyes and discolored skin seemed to invite the smell through his dilated brown eyes. Without a moment’s hesitation he scurried away like the rats he shared the tunnels of the Undercity with, the rodents probably better fed than his scrawny self. Rats didn’t need credits or valuables to get fed.. they just took it. He’d tried that once of course, and had earned a broken nose for the effort. His nose still bent to one side as a reminder of what defying the system would get him. He thought it was about a sector’s worth of scurrying before he dared to remove the limb from his face, the reinforced steel blast doors that divided the Undercity like a chess board apparently enough to rid him of the stench. Corpses were nothing new to him of course, but it was always different when the stiff used to be a friend. At least he thought of her as a friend, though he had a horrible gut feeling that the affection was one sided. All the same, it seemed that her not-friend was the only one who cared enough to do anything about her demise, at least from where he was standing.

He wasn’t quite sure what that something was going to be, but his mind was filled with an uncharacteristic eagerness to act once the meagre shot of adrenaline had run it’s course and his mind had run dry of energy to try and describe the horrid stench. As he slipped into his apartment his mind was wracked with questions that he had few answers to. As with most things in the Undercity his apartment was a cold, utilitarian thing that no amount of posters or light strips could make it feel like anything more than a luxurious coffin. The bed that was folded up into the wall offered him a rare bit of space, so much so that he could lie down straight on the cold metal floor and stare up at the ceiling. Just above his eyeline sat a tired white light, the grime on it’s cover making it look closer to grey and the light duller as a result. He dare not attempt to clean it though, lest he accidentally nudge it from it’s delicate mount and ruin his chances of illumination in that luxurious coffin. The terminal that was embedded in the wall blinked it’s little red light, calling his attention to the practically ancient piece of computing. A message from Badger stared him in the face once he had switched it on, and suddenly an idea came to him. 

The maintenance tunnel that was their usual meeting spot was dark and dreary as it always was, it’s shadowy interior devoid of the usual sterile white lighting that marked most of the Undercity. With how dark it was, there was little to see besides the occasional cloud of steam that vented from the pipes, from which Badger appeared like the villain in an old Noir film. He even had the same reveal of his face as he stepped out of the steam, his face cloaked in shadow and dramatically revealed as he stepped closer. They did their usual show of caring about one another’s personal lives, engaging in the arbitrary couple of minutes of small talk before they approached the matter of the day. Usually it would have been a few more minutes before business discussion began, but there was one more corpse on his mind than usual. The mention of the dead girl did little to phase Badger, at least until he went into further detail. Badger’s poorly sculpted eyebrow perked up, though he denied knowing much besides her being a working girl and having come up short on payments. Badger seemed uninterested in divulging much more than that, though whether he avoided the topic because he was ignorant and didn’t wish to be seen as such, or because he didn’t want to divulge any more? That was something that he couldn’t quite discern. At the mention of the girl there was a tension growing between the pair of them, and he was suddenly hyper aware of the poorly concealed shape of a pistol in the waistband of Badger’s trousers. It was always there of course, just itching to be used.. but as the hair on the man’s arms stood on end, it was suddenly staring him in the face, and the hand of Badger resting on his hip suddenly felt like a threat concealed almost as poorly as the firearm. The pair of them talked for a few moments longer before business was performed, and the pair of them parted ways. The man could feel Badger’s stare burning into the back of his skull as he walked away, and even as Badger disappeared back into the shadows and he was long gone, a terrible anxiety clung to the man like the stench of a skunk’s spray. 

It wasn’t until after he’d left the maintenance tunnels and made his way half a dozen sectors away that he started to shed the stench of anxiety that clung to him as the red lights of, well The Red Light District. Really it was just one of the countless red light districts, but this was the only one he knew of that took the name quite so literally. According to Badger, the girl had worked there before she died, and the man intended to find out whatever he could about her. Anything, from a comm frequency, to a name, or even a last known address would have been enough for him, though as he made his way through the crimson tunnels the only thing it seemed like he’d get was laid. Even then, he couldn’t spare the credits. Badger wasn’t exactly a wealthy, or generous man. If he was, he wouldn’t be living down here with the rats and the molemen. 

A woman who was more metal than flesh locked her gaze on the man, approaching with a sway of her mechanical hips and a raised eyebrow. As she ran her chrome fingertips over his shoulders, all he could think about was how much all those augmentations must have cost. Either she had a very wealthy sponsor, or she’d fallen a long way to end up down here. Either option didn’t appeal to him, and so once again he scurried off like a rat, without a word. He thought she heard her utter something crude about his genital size, but he wasn’t sure. He probably deserved it anyway. 

Eventually he managed to dodge enough working girls of varying compositions to make it to Maiden’s Play, the last place Badger had told him she’d worked at. Something about the name made him feel unsettled, and once he walked inside it was only worse. After he’d managed to talk his way past the enormous bouncer, he was greeted by a woman who appeared to be some variety of asian, dressed in a school uniform that clung to her body like it was sewn onto her. He barely even heard her ham fisted attempts at seduction as he looked around and saw much of the same. Maybe a dozen women, of varying sizes, shapes and ethnicities wandering around in school uniforms that looked like they would burst off their bodies if they ever exhaled too hard. He couldn’t imagine why someone would want to work in a place like this, though he might have if he had been given the chance. The asian woman tapped him in the middle of the chest, snapping him back to here and now of the present “Sir?” she asked, an eyebrow raised in what have been either confusion or annoyance. His eyes had been wandering, perhaps she was just upset he wasn’t looking at her. Being called ‘sir’ did cause the corner of his lips to curl into the slightest of smirks though.. so maybe it wasn’t too bad. He inquired about the girl, though as soon as he started he stopped on account of how little he actually knew about her. The name he knew her by was Alex, which he almost certain was a fake, and as he looked back all their conversations he realise they had been lacking in any sort of depth. Eventually he defaulted to simply describing her physical appearance, from back when she was still breathing. The overgrown school girl listened, more interested in the potential payday than finding the girl, but she listened all the same. They were good at that, and he always thought they weren’t given enough credit for it. 

Apparently Alex was actually Jane, and Jane hadn’t been seen for what she guessed were four days at least. That seemed to track. She seemed reluctant to say much, her posture visibly stiffening before she told him the girl’s name. That probably should have tipped him off, and so should have her suddenly nervous fidgeting, but instead he was so elated to finally find something he wasn’t paying the attention he should have been.

The man didn't even question when the woman ushered him into a private room, without so much as a whisper regarding credits. He was riding a high, a moment that would have barely registered as a speedbump in most other people's minds was a grand mountain in his, perhaps the first organic dopamine hit in his life of grey nutrient gruel and synthetic mood stabilisers. She flashed him a hollow smile as she slinked out of the room with promises of 'the best night of his life', though even he knew that wouldn't have been a high bar to clear. It was perhaps ten minutes before she returned, though it barely felt like ten seconds to him. 

She smiled at him, it was an attempt at a genuine glow despite the fact it was as synthetic as her pearly white, perfectly aligned teeth. He melted into her as she nibbled on his ear, and ducked on his neck. She was stiff and robotic like a puppet on a string, and before the minute was over she revealed why. She said she wanted to go over to his place, get away from this and enjoy a night to themselves.

Like the fool he was he followed her out, slipping out the back alley of the club, where they were greeted with a shadowy figure. Thin eyebrows and a face cloaked in dancing shadows emerged from the darkness, bearing the likeness of Badger. The pistol was not concealed this time, instead boldly wielded as if placed in his hands by the Lord Himself. With similar conviction was it raised, and without hesitation was it unloaded at the pair or them. The girl fell first, her pretty brain painted across the grimy alley way, the warm crimson peppered with shards of metal and pieces of respiratory filter. He barely had time to register her demise before his own followed, his chest and lungs burning hotter than the surface of the sun as the world around him spun and grew dark. The arterial spray from the hole in his neck was the final sound he'd make before hitting the ground like a sack of meat, neither hope nor metal present in his fresh corpse. 

His last thought was of Alex, or maybe Jane. She hadn't thought of him at all.