My parents managed to scrape enough money together from menial low-pay-dead-end jobs to afford a house and get me to school. I was in secondary school when the troubles started.
I once read that before the Collapse, people discriminated on ethnical heritage. Perhaps we would have fared better if that were still the case then. But everybody did everybody down there, even more so than in the higher Cities, so the distinction was becoming too hard to make.
No, the only important thing were the colours you wore. Black and white for the holy men or black and red for the organised crime. Well, at least the Mafia wasn’t as hypocritical. The only difference was that the Church called their Godfather ‘Your Holiness’; and that they were all working for the Vatican. The greatest criminal network in the world, under the control of the oldest government leader in the world, who sat on the throne of the oldest country left, while the Six Cities outnumbered the Vatican population by forty million to one. It was simply absurd.
I came home one day to find my parents dead, both shot with four bullets, one in the forehead, one in the plexus and one in each shoulder. It was the Church’s so called ‘neighbourhood warning’: when there was an area where a lot of people refused to pay the protection money, they set an example. It couldn’t be mistaken for something else because nobody used projectile weapons anymore.
I stormed back outside and ran to the first Church members I saw. They sat in a pavement café across the street, loudly laughing over a cup of coffee. I picked up a chair from the café and broke it over the head of one of them. By the time the others fully realised what was happening, I had knocked a second guy to the ground; dead or unconscious, I didn’t care. The situation was starting to look grim, however, as the other four had gotten up, taking out their guns. But I was so full of rage that the only thing I could think of was hurting as many as I could. I didn’t notice the car that stopped behind me, so when I heard four lasershots, I closed my eyes and thought ‘Hmm, dying does hurt a bit. How odd.’.
“Don’t be daft and get in, boy.”
The driver opened the passenger door while holstering his gun. I immediately recognised the black suit with the red tie as a Mafia outfit.
“I’m not asking you to join us; I’m just happy to save the life of a brash young man who hates the Church as much as we do. Now get in. More of them are coming.”
I got in. Better a live dog than a dead lion.
“I’m Jimmy, Jimmy the Eye.”
“The Eye?”
“You saw it, four shots, four kills. And the car hadn’t even come to a complete stop.”
I said nothing, choosing instead to stare at the street that flashed by.
“It’s quite impolite not to give your name now, seeing how I gave you mine and saved your life.”
I felt no sadness at that time; the adrenaline and rage were still pumping through my system. But even then did I realise that it wouldn’t be prudent to vent them at Jimmy; nor polite, for that matter, for he had rescue me.
“Tirion. Tirion Pachek.”
We stopped near one of the many shafts that were littered around the Middle and Lower Cities, providing us with the little sunlight and fresh air we got. The car pulled into a nondescript, seemingly dead end alley. Jimmy drove to the end and then pressed a button on the dashboard. Even the simplest of cars had an enormous amount of added functions, so nobody really noticed an extra knob. The wall in front of us started lowering until it had a drivable inclination; a driveway to what turned out to be the main Mafia headquarters for the district. From the deepest pits of hell into purgatory.
A few doors and accompanying scans later – retinal, fingerprint, brain, the works – he parked in the giant garage, next to dozens of other, seemingly identical, black, inconspicuous cars (Well, they weren’t all that inconspicuous, actually; a car that didn’t look like hovering scrap couldn’t be discreet in the Lower City).
“Follow me.” was all Jimmy said as he got out and put his trilby on. As far as I can tell, those hats were an archaic symbol for the organised crime, much like the cross was for the Church. Unlike the cross, however, the trilby was only worn by the upper regions of the Mafia. As such, I didn’t know whether I should feel honour or fear for being rescued by him.
I was led through long corridors of red carpet, mahogany walls and giant chandeliers; I felt in a different era. We finally stopped in front of a great double door.
“I’ll put your impoliteness down to what you’ve experienced and, therefore, I will allow you to stay for a week.”
“And afterwards?”
“That can be discussed later. You are to remain in the guest quarters; you will find everything you need and you’re free to mingle with the other guests, but you cannot go past these doors.”
“So I’m a prisoner here?”
“Only for a week, and in a golden cage. Besides, better in here than out on the streets; the Church will be looking all over for you. Yours is room 743.”
He turned around and walked away.
“Jimmy!”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
***
The man who came in to refill the coffee looked a bit disgruntled at the small heap of stubs and ashes in the middle of the table, but said nothing.
Tirion sighed once he had left. “They’re still too scared of me to even ask me not to smoke.”
“You can’t blame them, mister Pachek, after what you’ve done.”
“I know, but I want them to understand; I desperately do.”
He lit another cigarette and shifted the inhibitors around his wrists a bit.
“Are they uncomfortable?”
“Not as such, but they repress something that I miss, more than I could’ve imagined.”
They were silent for a while, staring at the inhibitors. After a while, Janes looked up.
“Weren’t you suspicious about how you were being treated?”
“A bit, perhaps, but you must understand my situation. After what had happened, I clung to any warmth and sympathy that was offered.”
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