Trafficking

***

It is easier then people think to get into the city, especially after dark. Thanks to well-placed propaganda from law enforcement officials and veiled threats from person to person, the citizens of the City have grown to fear leaving and coming from the city without proper precautions; a pass, purchased months in advance, or enough money to bribe your way in. I need neither; making friends with the gate is not too hard, especially when they have an addiction or two. The only difficult part is ditching the stolen car and returning with your own, which makes you vulnerable. If the right people are not at the door, it is next to impossible to avoid a confrontation. Luckily, I know a lot of people.

Still, it is always nerve wracking entering the city with hostages. It is getting easier with time, and I am great at smiling. The cold steel in my heart is invisible to the well-trained eyes of the gate.

I approach the main gate, stuck behind two other cars also making their early morning run. I am recognized by one of the gate, an attractive female who used my services and owes me a favor, but she does not approach me. We could not know each other.

The caravan in front of me, packed with people, houses illegals. Even I can tell.

It will take awhile.

I strum my steering wheel with my fingertips, wishing for some music. Unfortunately, the CD player no longer works and I am not interested in listening to political propaganda on the radio. Instead, I simply roll down my windows and let the last of the country fresh air drift through my car. There will be no more clean air in the high walled confines of the City.

What I really need is something to eat. It has been over a day; I do not like to eat when I am making a run; now that I am almost done and practically home, I am suddenly starving.

"Hey," the gate guard murmurs, leaning against the passenger door. She had approached when I was deep within my own thoughts. She smiles, and it is radiant. Blonde, big smile, wide, blue eyes, and body hugged by formfitting black leather with the official emblem stamped over one pert breast. She is playing it casual, but there is recognition in her eyes.

I smile at her, thankful. The caravan is being searched in front of me, the illegals being weeded out. It would have taken hours.

"Do you have your pass?" she asks, reaching out a gloved hand. I hand her my license, a fake, and she looks it over longer than necessary. She then hands it back to me and leans away from the car. "He's clear!" she shouts to the other guard, who simply waves his hand, preoccupied with checking the illegal's tags. She turns back to me and nods. "You're free to go."

"Thanks," I say as she backs away from my car. She nods curtly. We are even.

I pull away from the caravan, avoiding the groups of people huddled and crying on the ground, and weave through the trail of cones until I reach the main gate. I am waved through again, thanks to a heads up from the guard, and I pass through the towering gates that guard the main entrance into the city.

Like any of the larger cities, this one is fully secure from the outside; towering walls, armed guards, and only two entrances. Letting people out is less a problem then letting them in; there are too many unregistered illegals roaming the outskirts, avoiding taxes and other benefits the city has to offer. The microchips planted in our arms let the guards know whether we were born here or not; the gate would never had allowed me past, and the physical license lets them know if we are criminals. Thankfully, the chips disintegrate on remote, so if the person goes too far out of their jurisdictions they cannot be let back in; avoiding taxes by roughing it is a common problem that the City choose to fix by making the chips mandatory by birth. It keeps the water clean, the schools good, and the public safety secure…if that is how you want it.

Faking a microchip is impossible. If you take a micro chipped person outside of their jurisdiction, the chip disintegrates and you end up fucking up each other's lives. Cut it out of your arm yourself, it is gone. Cut off your arm, it will disintegrate without brain function. Replicated ones don't have the imprinting government ones have so they are noticeable immediately. In other words, they are impossible to fake.

Luckily, they are basically a permanent birth certificate. Records and credit cards are a separate, less expensive chip that are far more common. The government wants to add them together but for now that is too expensive as everyone would have to be chipped all over again.

I was born and raised in the City, tagged and registered. My chip and ids do not match up, however, but that is no matter, for now.

I drive my car down the busy street, entering traffic. No matter what time of day or night, the main highway is always packed. Vendors walk up and down, between cars, peddling barbequed meat, bottled water, and the freshest fruit possible. It smells delicious, wafting into my car with its spicy scents, but there is no way I am going to trust the food. I have seen where they get the food from; I am not going to risk it.

The streets are lit with dimmed lamps, leaving the buildings above drenched in darkness and the ground below claustrophobic with hazy light. Stars are impossible to see, and even the moon looked forgotten. Cars, chocked in dust and dirt for washing a car is an expense no one wants to pay, hum quietly, fueled by electricity. In front of me is a sea of dark red, crawling slowly forward.

Honking, thank god, is forbidden, so the only sounds are the vendors calling out and the occasional frustrated shout of a driver running late.

My street is up and around the corner, not too far from the main gate. It would not exactly make sense to have me driving through town where the occasional blockade is set up. We try to keep our arrangements as quick as possible, and as discreet.

I finally have an opening and put on my blinker, pulling towards the right. I slowly drive my car through the sea of people, weeding through them, earning a kick or two to my bumper but if I just sat there and waited I would never get anywhere.

After pushing through the people there is a clear opening and I can drive smoothly, unhampered by crowds, only the occasional jaywalker. This side of town is the least crowded, for people want to keep as far away from the gates as possible; the occasional riot, though few and long past, has made this side of town bleed. Therefore, it makes a perfect hideout for people like me and my employers, where no one is around to bother us.

I pull into a side garage, driving my car down the ramp and into the parking areas. I go down four floors, where the sickly illuminating lights give the area an eerie glow. I park near an unmarked door, the light above it flickering menacingly, and get out of my car. The camera, half hidden by the low light, hums slightly as it focuses on me. I do no approach the door.

After a couple moments the door clicks loudly, the sound of a bolt sliding out. The clinking sounds of chains grate against the steel and finally, the door opens. A man steps out into the open, wearing clean white clothes and an unmarked surgical robe. A blue surgical mask hangs around his neck, but his face is bare. Thirty something and unremarkable, I will forget his face as soon as I leave.

He nods at me and I nod back, leaning against my car. He pulls out a remote and the floor below me begins to shake. I remain calm as my car and I sink downwards into darkness, pitch black. A decoy slab of cement slides above my head, concealing the hole in the parking lot. I am left in complete darkness.

The ramp finally comes to a rest with a hiss, and I wait. Minutes pass before the lights flicker on and I am in a dirty, makeshift room, packed with boxes, a shelf stacked with tools of all kinds, and a computer monitor. There is a single door with a speaker next to it.

I approach the speaker. "Jacen," I say, holding down on a button. "Orion sunrise, stocked."

There is a cackle from the speaker, and then, "Come in."

There is a loud beep and the electronic unlocking of the door. I reach out and pull the door open, stepping inside the corridor. The corridor itself is a huge contrast to the dirty room I just exited. Bleached white, floor to ceiling, the whiteness of it all hurts my eyes. Ceiling lights stretch from one end of the corridor to the other, blindingly. The only color is the dirty footprints that trail from the room I am exiting before blending with the white.

I know I stand out. My outfit is midnight black and armored, fully encasing my body. I feel like a blight in the pristine room.

The door I need is at the other end of the corridor. I slowly approach it, my boots squeaking against the floor. I am not nervous; I have made this trip many times. I am just...uncomfortable. I feel bad, but at the same time I know I have to do it and if it were not me, it would be somebody else, and they definitely would not be as nice. In a way, I am doing these ladies a favor.

The door is unlocked, so I open it and step inside the room. Circular, plain, there is a simple desk and nothing else. A single monitor is slightly raised in the middle of the table, a touch screen. No one is sitting at the desk and never is. Opposite the door another stands, its mirror, and I know this one is locked.

I stand awkwardly, waiting for Sam to appear. I am still not a hundred percent sure what to call him; boss, employer, colleague, friend? I think he likes to keep me waiting because it always takes exactly five minutes for him to open the door. As I stand there, shuffling from foot to foot, my stomach grumbles and I am reminded again that I am starving.

"Hungry?"

I jump at the sound of his voice, my brain floating off in nowhere land. "That bad?"

He crosses the room, looking relaxed in gray flannels, slippers, and a simple tee. He has five o'clock shadow, and his hair is askew, like he had been sleeping. He grins a movie star grin and shrugs. "I could hear your stomach rumble through the door. Did you leave your car unlocked?"

"Of course."

"Good, because I just sent for the women." He passes me a clipboard with a bunch of letters on it that I never bother to read. I sign at the bottom, using my first name only. He once told me that he liked to keep track of who brings whom, but I think he just does it to keep the mood professional. Like what we are doing is not totally barbaric. "Everything went alright?"

"No less then usual. A couple detours..." I hand him the clipboard back. "Jessica was interesting."

He winces at the use of her name. "Elaborate?"

"She suspected something right away."

"You confronted her?"

"I had to. Like I said, detour. She seemed suspicious."

Sam frowns. "But no complications?"

I am being dismissed. I can tell. "No...no complications."

"Good," he says, moving to sit at the desk. The door behind me begins to open and I step aside. The three girls, still unconscious, are wheeled by on separate stretchers, pushed by men who look like surgeons, made anonymous by masks. My hands grow clammy as I watch them get wheeled away, knowing that they are not going to be coming back out. Blinking away the discomfort, I join Sam at the desk, leaning against it. He picks up a pair of glasses and places them on his face, his features bookish yet charming. It is hard to believe he does what he does.

"What is it this time?" I ask. Sam touches the computer screen, his movements almost artistic. "Organ transplants...?"

He rolls his eyes and glances up at me, mildly annoyed. I grin roguishly at him. "Yes, probably," he says, voice laced with impatience.

My eyebrows rise up. "Bad market?"

"Yes," he answers simply. He pushes back his chair and stands. "Come on, let's go get your payment."

I follow him closely as he leads me from the room and once again into the corridor. I feel garish against the light while he blends like he belongs. There is a door along the corridor, unmarked, and I wonder how they can tell the difference between any of them. He pushes it open and we walk inside and then I see it.

Crates and crates of the stuff line the room. Little jars, glowing an unnatural blue, gave off their own lights. I have only one left in my car and was beginning to be nervous about whether or not I would be getting any more in time.

I walk forward and grab a bottle, holding it in my hand. The bottle feels warm in my palm.

‘It’. The stuff I told Jessica I have. The elixir.
"You can have three," Sam says, standing beside me. "One less then last time."

I turn to him with a frown. "Why, did I do something wrong? What did I do?"

Sam looks at me with a look different than his others, more caring than indifference. "Because we need to get you off of it, Jacen. I'll give you money in exchange for the other."

I look at the stuff in my hands, could already feel its pull. "I don't need money, Sam. I need this." I shook the bottle, watching it morph from the dark blue to a brighter teal color.

"I can help you, you know," he says softly. I do not look at him, do not want to feel his accusatory gaze. "We have stuff here that can help you off of it. Make you stronger, even better."

"We both know that isn't how it works. I won't be able to go a day without it," I open one of the bottles, taking only a small shot. The liquid burns down my throat painfully. I wince, and then close it. "Without it I'd...I'd lose myself."

Sam leans against the wall, appraising me. It makes me uncomfortable, so I cross my arms defensively. "I know others. Once the get off it they calm down, find their centers. They're able to calm themselves through meditation and stuff. You could do it, too."

"They're not just like me," I argue. "Being half is one thing, being me is another."

"Which is why we'd do it slowly, and I can help you."

"No," I say. "I'm not ready, anyways."

"Are you in any pain?"

I roll my eyes. "Of course I am," I grumble. "But what else am I supposed to do?"

"Well, you haven't let me see them so I can't exactly help you. If you would just show me I can come up with something better for you. Binding them against your back can potentially permanently damage them. If you let me see them, I can measure them and build you something that can at least conceal them better. I'm surprised you look halfway normal with a jacket on."

"It's fine. I'm used to it," I say. "Besides I haven't shown anybody, ever. I just...I can't do it, you know?"

"No, I don't know, because I'm human."

Good point. "Look, I have to go. Three is fine, I guess. But we have to talk about this next time. I don't want you to just...start taking it away from me. I can handle three but two won’t be enough."

"At least look into the treatments for me, ok?" He leads me out of the room and presses and handful of dollars into my palm. "I can help you, you understand that right? What I do here is as much for others as it is for you. I can help you."

I simply nod, walking away from him, and head for my car.

***