Broken

A small look at a novel I'm editing.

Chapter 1

Katashi Streitman

“Citizens of New Adama, I am writing to address the growing concern over the Chromosomal Renaturing Pathogen and the coined ‘supernatural’ abilities they allow. I understand your fear, but I implore you to remember the affected are victims. They did not choose their trauma…”

• New Adama Mayor, Gloria Roads

*

Katashi licked his thumb and worked at the scuff on his black loafer. The leather sofa’s cushioning was too firm. He liked the old one better. Just thinking of it annoyed him. So did the smell in the room. Something in the paperbacks. Old leather and sweet rot. Even with the shield of Streitman United’s Historical Society, half the tomes in the office could probably earn his father a felony. Was a copy of the Bible or Bhagavad Gita really worth an empire?

He could feel himself on edge. Maybe it was the asshole at the pachinko parlor who could not take a compliment. Dusk speared the rear windows of his father’s office in paned columns. His father sat behind the mahogany desk with that same impossible posture, reading weekly reports off a tablet. He rubbed his eyes and ran a hand through his grizzled hair. Katashi found himself wondering what would happen if they ever really threw hands.

“How’d everything go today?” Ryu asked, glancing at his wrist-bound UCP—universal-connectivity-piece.

“You already asked,” Katashi said, sliding his hard soles over the redwood floorboards.

“Did you talk to Val and Xaiver?”

“They’re still in Hyland figuring out cell shipments with the Clearsteel guy.”

“Did you drop our payments?” Ryu asked, scrolling to the next page. “The Judicial office and Central Precinct?”

“Umhm.”

“Mayor Roads?”

“She had a meeting with the congregation’s senators— by the way, there’s a meeting in Pastelrock in a few days. They’re restructuring Labor Union elections planet-wide.”

His father took a long contemplative breath and looked out the window. Beyond the artificial green opulence of Lothbrok Heights, lines of commuter traffic chugged above the glowing cityscape. An ocean of sky-lancing towers, goliath holograms, and LED blimps. Floating shops, restaurants, cell-charge stations. “Want to explain what happened at the parlor?”

Katashi rolled his eyes. “Some guy was being an ass so I put him in his place.”

His father turned to face him fully, a dragon turned man. “You realize there’s a team of Planetary Investigators coming in two weeks.”

Those snoops were the bane of the United Planetary Alliance—outside of the Alliance itself. Principleless maggots. “And?” Katashi asked.

Ryu continued, “The last thing we need is to give them more to work with. You’re supposed to set an example.”

“By turning the other cheek?”

“You can’t throw a man through a pachinko machine for not sucking your dick.”

“He called me a fag,” Katashi said.

“Who will come back if they think they’re an argument away from the ICU?”

“That’s always the case. It doesn’t matter where you are.”

Red embers shone in his father’s eyes, but with one deep breath he cooled his voice. “This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.”

Katashi pressed his tongue hard to the back of his teeth. He missed being a soldier. The whole business of being underboss was acid under the skin. Too many formalities. Why couldn’t Gianna just get over her Aspergers and learn how to talk to people so he could go back to doing what he was born to do. “A single break in our foundation and everyone falls,” Ryu said.

One asshole through an arcade machine was not enough to crumble an empire.

Ryu ran his fingers through his beard, lit a cigarette, and exhaled two mushroom plumes through his nose. “If you only remember one thing after I die, let it be this, think twice before you make an enemy. The same is true for friends too.”

A knock at the door. Ryu checked his UCP for the time. “Tighten your tie,” he said.

A soft-faced guard opened the door. Katashi couldn’t remember the man’s name. Most of the newly made class looked similar and there were too many of them. “He’s here, sir.”

Ryu took a final draw and stubbed the cigarette out before a hunched old man, escorted by two guards, hobbled in. The old man wore thick-lensed glasses and a brown suit with a waistline so high it was almost comic. His hair looked like gray cotton candy. Ryu came around the desk to greet him. “Evening, Axel.”

Axel shook his hand nervously and bowed. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Streitman.”

“Please, sit,” Ryu said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. It was intricately carved in a floral Japanese style, close enough to nationalist contraband to make it illegal. Ryu gestured for the guards to leave. “Surprised to hear from you, Axel.”

The old man wrung his liver-spotted hands as he sat.

“How’s your wife been? I haven’t been down to the shop in awhile but I’ve been dreaming about your tebirkes. If you ever want to expand, I’ll happily listen to a proposal.”

The old man licked his cracked lips and nodded.

“I’m assuming that’s not why you’re here,” Ryu said.

“No.” Axel took a handkerchief from his inner pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. In a low croak he said, “You know my boy, sir?”

Ryu nodded. “Henry’s a good lad.”

“He is… He’s also in the hospital.”

It was a miracle the fossil even had a son. Katashi assumed his balls had been filled with powder for decades. Sometimes medical tech went too far. Ryu waited for him to go on—

“The other night he was walking his sister home. It was late. They had a busy day. Piano, tutoring, calligraphy...” He cleared his throat and sent himself into a violent fit of coughing.

Ryu called for some water but Axel shooed away the inconvenience. Still, Katashi’s father nodded for the young guard to get it anyway. “So they were coming home?” Ryu asked.

“Some men followed them. Breakers. I always tell him, keep your head low and move.”

Katashi could not help but feel ashamed at the geezer’s meekness.

“He didn’t even have anything to take. They did it for fun.” Ryu remained unmoved, even when the old man began to sob, “He’s been in a coma for over a week. Those bastards beat him to the bone. If he ever wakes up, he’ll need a cane. Fifteen years old, sir. He can’t even drive…”

“Did you file a report with the police?” Katashi asked.

“They said with the backlash towards breakers, they can’t be seen harassing them for something as ‘weak as anecdotal evidence’. As if a child in a coma is an anecdote.”

Ryu waited some time before he spoke. “What is it you want, Axel?”

“They’re with them, sir. The Buseojin. Everyday more, selling out of Martin’s park.”

Katashi felt a flutter in his stomach, a violent hope. He hated plenty of people. Fakes, con artists, prudes, zealots, morons; but breakers were something special. Not just for the way their powers went to their heads, but for the twisted heads themselves.

“I’ve always believed in handling things myself,” Axel said. “Unfortunately time has turned its back on me… I can’t let someone else endure what my son has. I can’t let it go.”

Not as a question, Ryu said, “You understand what a debt means. Is that what you want?”

The old man nodded sheepishly. A softness came to Ryu’s voice as he asked about the breakers. Early twenties. Selling drugs. Eccentric styles. Constant harassment. Ryu nodded in consideration. “Don’t worry yourself about them. And your son’s bills, I’ll see them handled.”

Axel tried to object before Ryu waved him off and assured until the problem was handled, his safety would be assured. “Jack.” The fresh-faced soldier opened the door. “See to it my friend Axel makes it home safe, and keep an eye on his street tonight.”

Young Jack took Axel’s empty glass and helped him out of his seat. The old man turned at the door, perhaps more broken than when he had entered. “You’re doing God’s work, sir.”

Silence filled the room when the door shut. Katashi reached into his coat for a smoke. He would have preferred a joint—or something more. The thought of tying off sent a shiver through him. “I told you,” Katashi said, sparking his lighter. “We should’ve moved on them earlier.”

“If you don’t observe, you don’t learn. Send Drake’s crew to the park tonight. Have Sammy oversee. Tell them to send a message back to the Buseojin. But no bodies.”

Katashi bit his lip and decided not to argue. Better to ask for forgiveness. He flicked ash from his jacket, bowed, and after passing through the door, smiled.

*

The glow of New Adama cast an iridescent stain across the driver-side window of the airship. Towers and tenements stretched so far that it seemed steel and glass and neon had devoured the world—which it had. Low cloud cover hung above them like a sheet of steel, lit dully by the city’s glow, swallowing the trails of ascending traffic. His eyes drifted down to the weaving train tubes between the towers. Now and forever they reminded him of Hamster Paradise, the rodent amusement park he had built as a kid—which through sheer size and neglect had, in time, become Hamster Graveyard.

The unregistered coop piloted itself through the executive lane between buildings while Katashi’s attention shifted to the high-rises downtown, most specifically the Macro Building. Three hundred stories of vegetative office space. A spear of architecture lit by green spotlights on its corner juts. The buildings around it sloped down through acidic fog and then rose again, and down again, until the whole city formed an undulating wave around that crowned tower.

For every action there’s retribution. Brutality sends a message. And how did his shoes keep getting scuffed.

“I swear to God, Sammy,” Drake said from the back seat, playing with his spit curl. “If you don’t start breathing through your nose I’mma fucking strangle you.” He kicked one of the kids for more leg-room.

The buttons of Sammy’s shirt stretched over his belly as he drew another wheezing breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t hear you over the whiny bitch in the backseat.”

“I can’t do it, Kat,” Drake said. “He’s got no respect for himself or anyone else.”

“Just shut up, Drake,” Katashi said, turning his eyes to the city below. Groundcruisers swept over wet streets while pedestrians moved in faceless LED-lit conglomerates. Regardless of the countless shelters—most in the district funded by their family—the sidewalks were lined with linked camps of homeless. His thoughts turned with the ascent of a green rocket clawing toward the atmosphere. People were dying to leave, no matter the circumstance, no matter if the colonies or orbital stations were any better than what was here. It made him wonder what it would be like to watch the rainbow arch of an incoming nuke. As long as he died in a pair of crocodile-skin boots. Katashi ignored Drake’s indignant muttering and looked back at the two twenty-something recruits from Drake’s crew. Like most young men they wore skin pompadours.

“You two ever fought a breaker?” Katashi asked.

One nodded, the other shook his head. Neither were ready.CRP—Chromosomal Renaturing Pathogen—was supposed to be organic, yet every day brought new stories of the infected pressing against the edges of space and time and dimension. Time skipping. Lava shooting out the ass. X-ray hearing. He’d once seen a woman turn into a goddamn truck.

Sammy looked back as far as his neck allowed. “Where’s the big one?”

“Clipped,” Drake said. “Six years until he gets a chance at parole.”

Sammy wheezed a breath of smoke. “No better test of character.”

Katashi knew he would not make it. No one had the stones to take time anymore.

“You know what,” Sammy said, pulling down the passenger mirror and patting his thin hair in the reflection. “I think Mayor Roads likes me. You see the way she looked at me.”

Drake shrugged. “I heard her favorite food was salami. You got the shape and smell.”

“Drake,” Katashi said in a sharp voice. “How about you shut the fuck up.” Drake’s lips went tight and gray. It was hard for anyone to be reprimanded by someone younger, even if it was only by a few years. “I don’t care if Sammy’s your uncle, this man’s a Captain. Speak with respect. If I have to bring this up again, I’m taking your balls as payment.”

Sammy’s gaze softened. “I don’t mind, Kat. He’s just a bit on edge since his son—”

“I don’t give a fuck what you mind,” Katashi said, too sick of all of them to even look.

The airship pulled onto Veer’s street on the west side of Martin’s Park—a vast stretch of artificial trees and sewage-coated paths. Murky water sprayed beneath the thrusters as they dropped into a no-parking zone at the curb. Flickering neon signs painted the block. VR cafes. Droid brothels. Sensory-deprivation apartments. Gambling joints. Indoor gun ranges. Drug lounges. Ramen, borscht, pho, pupusa shops. In a world that no longer allowed nationalism—the fourth global war proving the last straw for that dying camel; thanks Canada—the fact that cultural cuisines were still allowed felt a little incongruent, but what was consistent?

The ship’s trunk popped to reveal a small arsenal. The new guys chose stunner sticks. Drake took a chain-wrapped bat. Sammy hefted the electrified knuckles. Katashi slid the hunting knife into his side holster beside the fermion pistol. All of them swapped their designer belts for titanium nanotech. Who said the army was good for nothing

“Boss,” Drake whispered, gesturing across the intersection. Parked opposite the street, staring from within a black-and-white NAPD airship, were two bewildered officers. Katashi tipped an imaginary cap. Groundwater splashed against their thrusters and the vehicle lifted off.

Midnight cold lay over the narrow concrete paths between plastic trees and faulty lights. Teens scattered on sight through the park. Katashi remembered those days, though not with much nostalgia. He’d never wanted to be young. He took a pocket drone from his jacket and spoke into his UCP. “Scan for thermal signatures. Groups of three through six.” The small disk device shot off in a muted buzz below the treeline while its feed illuminated his wrist.

Vagrant camps crouched in the shadows—with a disturbing amount of grunting. The trees hissed in timed bursts of scented oxygen release. He checked the drone feed and zoomed in on five luridly dressed pre-teens smoking around a pitcher’s mound. Their breath turned to pale steam in maybe the last true cold of spring. His UCP buzzed again. A man and woman in a tree.

“Excited to see your brother?” Sammy asked, his walk almost a waddle—he didn’t understand how, even with mandatory training Sammy remained fat.

Katashi loved his brother, but a man was defined by where he placed himself in the world. Even if Hanzo said he had committed his rotating wheel of higher education to medicine, any day now the word would come that he’d changed his mind again. “Eventually he has to give himself to something. Even Gianna—” mute and dumb, he thought, “knows what she is.”

Hard-soled footsteps were the only response. Katashi’s UCP buzzed. The feed showed five men around a picnic table, lit by the orange tips of cigarettes. One with algae-green curls. Another with blond spikes. A bald third. The fourth wore an ass-long black ponytail. The last was a hunched teen with a brown comb-over. “This way,” Katashi said.

The blended smell of sweet tobacco and synthetic marijuana thickened the air. The chatter died. Ten dull eyes watched their approach. Katashi felt an anxious knot in his chest, but more than that he felt the violent thrill. Something holy in the silence, the smell of blood waiting to be spilled, the only therapy anyone needed. “Evening lads,” Katashi said, hands in his pockets.

The one with blond spikes said, “What the fuck do you want, pretty boy?”

“You hear that?” Sammy said, clapping his stomach. “He thinks you’re pretty.”

“What can I say,” Katashi said, straightening his jacket and feeling his jawline. “I’ve got a solid skin care routine and a good barber.”

“Damn good,” Sammy said.

“Damn good,” Drake echoed.

The five men looked to the recruits’ clubs and Drake’s bat. Moments like this were undervalued. In them lay the whole question of character. How you stood. What you did next. “You all believe in community service?” Katashi asked.

“What do you want?” the algae-green one said.

“To know your thoughts on community service. Us,” Katashi said, “we’re big fans. We hand out turkeys, donate blankets to the shelters, shop local… we also rip the dicks off of guys who beat kids into comas. You know anyone like that? Cue ball? Green top? I can already tell by the stupid look on Blondie’s face that he’s gonna say he doesn’t.”

Four stepped forward, though the teen stayed a little back.

“I’ll give you guys one chance,” Katashi said, the flutter in his stomach growing stronger. He kept his hands crossed behind his back, hovering near the grip of his fermion pistol. “I heard you’re crewed up with the Buseojin, or whatever the fuck you call yourself. So go back to your boss and tell em’ to find a new city.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the bald one said.

“If you had any idea what you were doing, you’d know already.”

“...”

“Maybe this will help,” Katashi said, activating the belt.

Nanobots rolled from his belt in a dark wave and plated him in a form-fitting suit of alloyed armor with the Streitman’s trademark kabuki helm. His men followed suit. The boy with the comb-over’s eyes flashed with recognition as Katashi drew his fermion pistol and fired a charge round through the boy’s head.

You don’t take chances with breakers.

The crack shook the breakers still. Katashi put the next shot through Blondie’s knee as the man’s fingers split at the middle and opened into ten small crocodilian mouths. The energy round flashed. The lower leg severed and he fell screaming.

Ponytail bared his teeth and swelled to twice his size, a great black yeti-type beast with a hooded neck. Cue ball’s pale skin hardened with a layer of coiled granite. Green-hair flexed a thicket of serrated blades through the skin. The recruits charged. The black steel of their stunner sticks flashed dully in the moonlight. Green-hair guarded the first blow with crossed blades from his palms, but dropped with a sharp crack to the skull. Their stomps came down in a rhythmic and merciless beat that split flesh and skull.

Not bad, Katashi thought.

Drake pulled back and swung the chained bat, crashing off granite forearms with a spray of sparks. The stone-skinned breaker reeled from the force, and with the second swing though the skull, Katashi figured he was dead. If he’d had any commitment there was no question Drake could have made it to the majors.

Sammy’s knuckle-dusters cracked the big-foot’s ribs with small flares of electrical discharge while Katashi buried his knife in the opposite side. The beast roared and snatched both of them by the throat. Held aloft and strangling, the force of that grip drives the veins up through the skin. Spittle flew in desperate gasps. The beast growled through a maw of black fangs. Stars drifted across Katashi’s vision.

With gritted teeth and a failing sense of himself, Katashi jammed the knife up through the creature’s elbow. Hot blood splashed his face and he dropped hard to his knees. Above him sounded a storm of dull impacts. Thuds. High-voltage buzzing. He blinked through the stars and saw the recruits driving the live ends of the stunner sticks into the beast’s back and chest. He also saw—through the foam running down the cowl—the current working its way into Sammy through the hand still locked around his throat.

At last Sammy dropped in convulsions on his side. Katashi stood, set himself like a sprinter, and drove his foot hard into the Bigfoot’s testicles. It was a strange and hilarious squeal. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Drake step into a swing. The arc of the bat crashed against the back of the monster’s skull with a fatal crack. He fell supine, eyes wide, consciousness gone. Crimson life poured from the split. In lieu of the shuffling feet and grunts and blunt impacts, what remained was hurried breath—and Sammy’s wheezing.

The bone-deep thrill began to leave him and Katashi drowned back into himself. “You alright down there, Sammy?” Katashi asked.

His teeth chattered with residual current. “I feel it in my balls.”

“Not as much as this guy,” one recruit said, pointing at the limp yeti.

“Good swing, boss,” the other said.

Katashi spared an uneasy glance at the youngest—maybe seventeen—sprawled out and staring up at the stars with wax eyes. Then he turned to the only one still awake, snow-pale and clutching the cauterized stump of his knee. Katashi knelt beside him and tipped his chin up with the point of the knife. The man’s eyes trembled white in shock. “You’re lucky,” Katashi said. “If it was up to me, I’d be chopping you and your friends into pieces. Remember my father’s kindness. In return I want you to tell whoever the fuck you work for that the Neon District is off limits. We see you or anyone who looks remotely related to the Buseojin, we’re gonna hang em’ under the Nobel Bridge.”

He stared back with hateful, pathetic eyes.

“I’m gonna send some friends to check here in a few hours. You better be gone.”

Katashi kept a close eye on the man’s hands. He knew better than to lower his guard.

“Adios, Handsome,” Katashi said, kissing the man’s forehead.

He stood and holstered the knife and let the armor fall away. A disappointing peace settled over them. The eternal question of what now. His stomach growled. “Who wants a burger?”