You ever get the feeling like you forgot something important?
I swear, I’ve had it a million times by now.
I mean, I assume I have: I don’t really know anymore.
Still, this can’t’ve been the first thing I sold to make a payment. Nobody gets this desperate without trying every other option first.
I was a citizen here in Gwangseong. I must’ve been, because that’s about the only reason for it to be worth it for someone in as bad a spot as me to sell their identity. If I was already undocumented, I’d be missing more of my body and less of my soul.
Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been an option. Citizenship is supposed to be nontransferable: Once you have your citizenship, it’s yours for as long as you’re “you”.
Fortunately or unfortunately for people like me, it’s not out of the question to give that up too.
We’ve had the technology to trade bits of ourselves for half a century now: If you have the right black-market connections, you can pay someone to take some poor schmuck’s papers, memories, and enough of their personality to pass inspection, and just like that, you’re the proud owner of your very own citizenship.
I was one such schmuck, and unfortunately, whoever did the job knew enough of what they were doing to keep my debt tagged to me, instead of letting the buyer end up with a nasty surprise. Now I’m out a citizenship, out an identity, and I still don’t have quite enough money to make my next payment.
Can’t all be bad though: Whoever shut this warehouse down did it fast enough to leave things behind, and recently enough that I might actually find something worth selling in here.
I’ve just crept in through a small break in one of the doors—probably made by whoever got here before me. I saw them leaving with a full bag, so it should be safe until they get back. Even when they do, they didn’t look much bigger than me, so I should be safe enough.
Inside the warehouse are racks and racks of movable shelving, lit by the bit of moonlight from outside and not much else. Once word gets around, a bigger team will probably bust in and grab it all to sell for scrap, but for now, the place belongs to rats like me.
I move carefully from shelf to shelf, scanning quickly for anything worth keeping or selling. Some of these companies like to leave behind a bot or two to tag people like me—or if you’re really unlucky, another scavenger might leave something worse to keep you away—so it pays to keep your eyes out while you’re searching.
Still, unless someone left something here to catch me out, I should be gold for as long as I’m alone: These cheap shipping warehouses all have the same security, and it clearly hasn’t been upgraded in years. One of the first things I bought when I had the chance was a set of security keys and an alarm jammer. They won’t do me much good anywhere people actually care about, but in a place like this? It’ll get me in, and keep anyone from noticing before I’m out again.
I’m started out of my contemplation of industrial security failures when I see a comm lying on one of the shelves. Score! Either this warehouse was for higher-end shit than I thought, or someone forgot this when they were leaving. Either way, it’s clearly a higher-end model: it’ll fetch a decent price at a fence—or if it’s unlocked, I might even be able to wipe it and keep it for myself.
Humming quietly to myself, I pocket the device and keep moving along the shelves.
Lots of them are empty, or filled with scrap that isn’t worth it for me to haul away, but occasionally I see something worthwhile. The comm was rare find, but there’s still plenty of cheaper stuff worth grabbing—like the box of small ink-display modules I shove in my backpack, or the bag of gummy treats I shove in my mouth. I even spot a box of shotgun shells—I don’t have any use for them, but they’re worth their weight, so into the bag they go.
As I’m packing some batteries into my pockets, I hear a quiet scraping sound by the door.
Instantly, I’m frozen silent behind the nearest shelf, listening for more sounds. Are the other rats back? Fuck, I should’ve been quicker.
The scraping sound doesn’t repeat, but after a moment, I hear a footstep.
Double fuck. Hard soles means there’s no way it’s a rat: even the greenest blank knows not to wear hard soles to a place like this.
A quiet flash of static confirms it: some cop must’ve found this place early.
Shit. It can’t’ve been more than 30 minutes since the door was broken—and in this part of town? My luck usually sucks, but this beats the usual by a mile.
My eyes dart around the area of the warehouse I can see from where I’m crouched. The shelves and the low-light obscure some of my view, but I can see well enough to be pretty sure there’s no easy exit except the way I got in.
Damn! I can try to wait it out, see if it’s stupid enough to leave without doing a full sweep—but if it doesn’t, then I’m screwed. My other option is to try to evade it long enough to get around it and back to the entrance.
…Or, a third option…
I search my pockets for something to use as a distraction. I could just throw something, but that’d take too much motion, and it might see me.
My fingers brush against the batteries I was just packing away. Most of them are larger, specialized prism-shaped packs, but a few are smaller cylindrical cells, and my hand grasps one of the latter.
I crouch down further, draw my arm back—breathe—and set the battery rolling fast down the row of shelves, its slight whirring sound quickly followed by a quiet thud and a cascade of sharp clinking noises as it bumps into the crate of lightbulbs at the end of the row.
A flashlight clicks on, and I hear footsteps moving toward my distraction.
I quickly crawl around to the far side of the shelving unit I’m behind, and wait to see the light’s source move past my hiding-place.
Sure enough, the footsteps and the cone of bright light continue past my row, and I quietly scamper around the side of my cover—not a moment too soon: The moment the pig sees my distraction and its accompanying lack of an obvious cause, it begins panning its flashlight over every nearby surface—including my previous hiding-spot.
I suppress a sigh of relief, holding my lungs still with the rest of me as I wait for it to turn away and keep looking.
The moment it’s turned away, I quickly move toward the exit—on all fours, for balance—making sure to stay out of the cop’s field of view as much as possible.
I’m nearly to the door when the light flashes over me, my crisp shadow becoming the only gap in the cold white light now highlighting the door in front of me.
Fuck! I give up on staying quiet and rush through the gap in the door, letting it clatter behind me as I grab the nearest wall and use it to pull myself around the corner and away from the harsh light still shining through the gap, running hard toward the nearest alley.
I can hear shouted warnings from the pig behind me—probably more for the benefit of its recording than to actually stop me running—followed by the relative silence of what must be it alerting the rest of its patrol over radio.
I keep running, just managing to dash around another corner as the warehouse door crashes open behind me, the pig’s flashlight scattering its harsh rays around and through the rows of buildings around us as I frantically rush to put more distance between me and it.
I can hear clattering footsteps coming from a few more directions now—my luck with the positions of the rest of the pig’s patrol is apparently just as shit as it has been for everything else tonight.
I continue my dash around and through the cramped alleys, looking and listening for any hint that I’ve been cut off or surrounded.
Thankfully, the patrol doesn’t seem to have a good idea where I am, and I manage to raggedly pant my way far enough away from them that I can finally put a little effort into staying quiet—and when you’re kitted out as a rat, a little effort keeps you very quiet.
Now quietly jogging down an alleyway, I can hear the pigs’ clacking footsteps and occasional shouts fade behind me into the maze of alleys that makes up the northern warehouse district. With any luck—If I can make it to my fence, I should be able to get rid of my haul and lose all connection to the break-in—save, of course, for some shiny new won padding my account.
The dark streets are a bit peaceful this time of night, now that I’m far enough away from the patrol and their noise to appreciate it.
I got a bit turned around in all the running, and I don’t think I recognize this area, so I pull out my comm—not the one I just found: no way in hell I’m powering that thing on until I’ve had a professional look it over—and open its nav menu.
Looks like I’m actually not too far from home—which would be nice, except my fence is, so I’ll have to either walk a ways to get there, or else catch the train. The trains here aren’t too expensive, but with my situation as it is, every bite into my account may as well be taking some of my flesh with it.
Still, it won’t make too big a dent in my haul from tonight—and with all the unexpected running I’ve been doing, I could do with the rest—so I reluctantly make my way over to the nearest stop, sit on the covered bench, and watch the street while I wait for the train to get here.
There’s a slight drizzle starting to come down, making a halo around the occasional flickering neon sign—the rain here isn’t too toxic, but it’s still wet, so I’m glad for the shelter while I wait.
For all its flaws, this city is still beautiful at times like this. The distant sounds get muffled by the rain, the annoying adverts and logos start to glow and blur, and it all starts to feel like some sort of beautiful, surreal dreamscape.
Still, as the train pulls up and I swipe my card to get on, I can’t help but hope the rain lets up before I get there: I don’t have an umbrella on me, and I hate getting wet.
The train isn’t too crowded this time of night, and nobody gives me a second look when I get on—ratkit looks pretty nondescript, and it’s not like half of these people even look particularly awake. Besides, it’s not like any of them would care anyway, so long as I’m not going for anyone’s pockets.
The guy across from me looks pretty out of it. I can’t tell if he’s on something or just dead tired, but either way, if I were in the pickpocket business, he’d be a dead easy mark.
Maybe I should try it out? I do need the money.
It just seems so shit to steal from random fucks on the train like that, though. Most of them are close to as broke as me, and it’s not like anybody carries cash these days: I’d be taking their stuff to pawn. Even if I don’t get unlucky and grab something with a tracker in it, that’s the type of shit that hurts way worse to lose than the money it’s worth on the street.
I guess we’ll see how I feel when it comes time for my next payment.
That’s the end of my time for contemplating worse lines of work though: my stop is up next. I swing my way out of my seat and over to the doors, holding onto the rails on either side of me as I wait for the train to come to a jarring halt a block or so away from my destination.
When it’s finally done trying to throw me and every other passenger aboard off our feet, I slide my way out the train’s doors and into what is unfortunately an even rainier night than before.
Whatever. I’m nearly to my fence’s—Hyejin’s: she’ll want me to use her actual name—shop. Once I have this dealt with, I can go back home and finally sleep away the rest of this miserable night.
The rain is cold and wet and smells faintly like gasoline, like it’s picked up the fumes from the air and is returning them to the earth. For all I know, it has and it is—some corpo-engineered smog-trapping rain. If it is though, it’s been that way as long as I can remember, and it doesn’t seem to have helped.
By the time I’ve walked the rest of the way to the building, I’m soaked. When I got on the train, I was still overheating from the chase, but now I’m cold enough to miss it.
The shop is in a run-down old building, close enough to the highway and the train tracks that the noise must keep the rent pretty cheap. I still wouldn’t want to live or work here unless I absolutely had to, though. Either she likes it, or she’s even cheaper than me.
Unfortunately for me and my never-ending night, it looks like I’m the only one of us putting up with the noise tonight: the shop’s door looks broken in, and there’s caution tape around the building. Looks like I’m not the only one having trouble with the pigs tonight.
The pigs raid shops like hers all the time—they’ll never find anything worth charging over, but it means disrupting their business for a few days, so I guess it’s worth it to them. Makes them look like they’re doing something, anyway.
I sigh and turn away from the building, already dreading finding another fence on short notice. Relationships are important in this business, and even if I can get to one soon, they’ll probably pay me a worse cut than I’d’ve gotten here.
“Psst! Over here!”
I turn to see a kid dressed similarly to me, leaning out of a nearby door and gesturing my way.
A crier? Fuck, maybe this’ll be okay after all.
I trudge my way over to the boy, hoping he’s about to be as helpful as he seems to think he is.
“You need a fence, right? I know a guy: new here, just set up shop.”
Oh fuck yes.
Normally, finding a new fence means dealing with a worse cut until you can build trust with them. A newbie though? He’ll need me as much as I need him, and that means I might actually get a better deal than I would’ve here.
Hell, if I can make a good impression, I might even be able to keep making more off him, as he grows his business and I stay a long-time supplier.
“Hell yeah kid, tell me more.”
“He’s just down the tracks; end of 16-gil. Dohyun. Great guy—just tell him Yi-Min sent you, okay?”
Oh good, and the kid knows what he’s doing, too. Telling me where to find a fence is useless unless I have a name to give—and introductions from a crier are the surest way for that crier to get paid.
I thank Min and hurry my way back toward the train tracks. I know night is open-hours for most fixers, but I don’t want this one to last any longer than it already has—the rain is picking up again.
I wander along beside the tracks, counting the numbers on the street signs as they increment, street by street.
The street in question is apparently a few blocks down from my old fence’s spot—I guess this Dohyun guy is hoping to take over while Hyejin is out of commission. I’d be suspicious that he tipped the cops off, except they already raid her shop every few months: there’d be no point.
I’m just at the street now, but given my luck, of course some drunk idiot crashed his cycle into a wall, and now the pigs are grabbing him. No way am I walking past those fuckers with my haul.
I turn back, and hurry down 14-gil. I should be able to cut around to the end of 16 from there, and avoid the pigs and their stop completely.
The street is dark, and would be quiet if not for the rain. I should’ve seen if that kid had an umbrella or something: I’m soaked, and at this point, freezing.
I’m nearing the end of the sidestreet when I have to stop and swear. It’s an old residential street: there’s no connection between it and the next one over. I’d’ve seen that if I’d checked my nav, but of course I had to hurry.
Fuck it. The building at the end has a fenced-off yard behind it: if I hop that, I can get to 16-gil now, and finally be done with this awful fucking night.
I hop up and grab the edge of the fence—slipping in the rain on my first two attempts—and haul myself over, using the pitted concrete wall of the building for leverage.
It’s one of those awful slatted wooden fences these places like to pretend are “fancy”—because apparently the best security they can afford is the hope that a would-be trespasser might get splinters, breaking in. Thankfully, this one is old and sanded-down by weather, so my hands remain unpunctured, if a little raw.
I slip over the edge of the fence, landing well but slipping on the wet dirt. I manage to catch myself on my hands, but after the ordeal the climb put them through, I almost wish I hadn’t: I’ll have to disinfect them when I get home.
I pull myself to my feet, wiping my hands clean-enough on my dark pants, then stop as I my brain finally catches up to what my eyes are seeing:
A body, lying face-up in the dirt; rain falling directly into its still-open eyes and trailing down to mingle with the faded-but-spreading pool of blood below.