Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1) Read online

  Sima grumbled. “Yeah, and they’ll get all the glint.”

  “Work something out.” Cassie jabbed her chopsticks into the bowl and lifted a huge bundle of noodles. “You’re not thinking the angles out properly. Charge them protection.”

  “Yeah right. Me protect little kids?” She shook her head. “I don’t wanna be a Keeper. They don’t protect the kids; they use them.”

  Older Outcasts sometimes gathered children around them, forming a personal army of beggars, thieves, and spies. Those who did that, Keepers, varied in benevolence. Enough stories about the worst ones painted all of them in a bad light. People who got a reputation for being Keepers stayed deep underground for good reason, and sent their little minions out into the world to beg, steal, and sometimes do worse.

  “Ain’t saying you go Keep. Still a kid yourself. Look, I know you’re jealous, but what do you want more? Pride, or food?”

  Sima grumbled. “I don’t want the responsibility. And kids are annoying as hell.”

  “You gotta do somethin’, girl. Ain’t got much begging left in you.”

  “I can still beg.” She held up the bowl as if to show it off as evidence of her continued ability to obtain charity, then slurped up the last bits of broth, chasing flecks of noodle, garlic or seaweed into her mouth with the plastic chopsticks.

  Cassie shook her head. “You’re about at the end of that particular O-Tube. Won’t be long before you’re gonna have to steal, whore, have a kid, or try to get in wit’ the Underground.”

  “Ack, no!” rasped Sima. “No way am I gonna do that. Don’t even say that word out loud!” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’re crazy even talking about them. I don’t give a crap about the government. Bad enough how the EGSF treats us when we don’t break the law, I’m not gonna declare war on them.”

  “Yeah, well…” Cassie shoved another wad of noodles in her mouth and chewed for a while. “If you saw how I lived now, you’d change your mind.”

  Sima’s eyes bulged. “You’re not with the Under-you-know-what…”

  “No. Wow, you’re clueless. I work for Magdalena.”

  Ugh. Sima pressed her knees together at the mere mention of that name. The woman, who must’ve had half her body replaced by plastic and metal at this point, gathered Outcasts to staff her brothel. Usually girls, but she’d take boys too if she thought they’d sell. Go figure, the one person in the area who didn’t discriminate only wanted to use people. Honestly, she only hired young, pretty Outcasts. Perhaps that counted as discrimination, even if she didn’t care about age, gender, or skin tone.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Cassie rolled her eyes, then whispered, “I get to keep like forty cows a day.”

  Sima gave her the side-eye. Only the middle-class Citizens (and the upper end of the poor) referred to physical money as ‘cows,’ a degeneration of Universal Monetary Unit shortened to MU or moo, which then, due to the small plastic discs, became cow chips—shortened to cows. Who had this girl she used to beg with become? On Sima’s best day, back when she’d been twelve (and looked like ten), she’d made about thirty-two glint. That would feed her for three or four days, so she’d been stupid and only begged when she ran out. Had she approached it like a job, she might’ve saved some and wouldn’t need to go a couple days at a shot without eating now.

  Still. She refused to turn to whoring. If she’d been willing to have sex in exchange for safety, she’d never have run away from home in the first place four years ago.

  Cassie patted her shoulder; without conscious thought, Sima moved her right arm down to protect the pocket at the front of her tunic. The older girl ignored the gesture, continuing to smile.

  “You could probably get maybe another year outta begging, but you’d make a lot more at Mag’s place. Especially if you do that face you’re giving me now.”

  “What face?” asked Sima.

  “The one that makes you look like you’re thirteen.”

  She shuddered, wanting nothing to do with the sort of men who’d be drawn to that. “Umm. I’ll think about it.”

  “Forty cows.” Cassie pushed her empty bowl back toward Amin. “Per day. Anyway, gotta go. Later, kid.”

  After another playful shoulder punch, the nineteen-year-old slid off her stool and walked away with the crowd. Sima looked away from her almost-friend, staring down at the little bit of brown liquid at the bottom of her bowl. It made no logical sense to prefer begging or potentially starving in the street to letting men pay to use her body like that. Especially for so much glint, not to mention food and a place to sleep. Perhaps a girl like Cassie lacked whatever Sima had inside that recoiled at the mere notion of it. For that girl, sex had become a mundane task, a simple way off the street.

  But no…

  Sima was not that girl. If she ever trusted someone enough to become intimate, it would be for love—if such a thing even existed anymore.

  2

  A Use for Urchins

  Her belly full of warm soup, Sima returned to her spot across the street and again adjusted her clothes to hide her true age. She sighed at her sad excuse for shoes: sandals made from the scavenged soles of a man’s boots tied to her feet with old power cables. The sneakers she’d run away in had long since ceased to fit.

  She decided against taking Cassie’s suggestion to find that nest of little kids who’d become too scared to beg on their own. Children weren’t her problem. She had herself to watch out for. Just being around kids made her angry, mostly out of jealousy. They needed to eat too, so she didn’t begrudge them what they could beg for, but that didn’t mean she had to play nanny.

  People should have to take a test or something to be allowed to have kids. She scowled, thinking of her real father. She didn’t even remember his name, only that he belonged to either the upper middle class or the lower end of upper class. How her mother met him, she couldn’t explain. Though her mother was a Citizen, she occupied the lower end of that social stratum. Sima existed for one reason—a ploy to guilt the man into marriage. Surely, had her father not been well off, Sima’s life would’ve ended after only a few weeks in the womb. Unfortunately, her mother had overestimated the man’s humanity and underestimated his contempt for the poor. When the man left her, somehow that became Sima’s fault. Mom resented Sima for her failure to be a successful trap. Though her mother had never been physically abusive, she’d offered her daughter about as much affection as she did her desk lamp. As soon as Sima could fix food for herself, their relationship had devolved into basically roommates, without the affection of even distant relatives.

  Once, she’d had the idealistic dreams of a little girl that she’d find her father and he’d welcome her with open arms into a wonderful world of comfort. Alas, she’d tried to contact him on numerous occasions years ago, but he’d never replied. She didn’t even know what Block he lived in, or if he even remained in this district.

  Probably married. Maybe he has ‘real’ kids and doesn’t want me.

  One hour slid into the next as she observed the crowd. Occasionally, someone mumbled in another language she couldn’t follow, but most spoke GANSEC, the official language of the Earth Government. When she’d been in school, her language teacher went over the history, explaining how it had come about as part of the treaty process outlining the End of Nations. At the time, the Earth Government required all people, Citizen or not, to become at least capable of simple conversations in the new language, derived from Chinese, Spanish, English, German, Arabic, and Norwegian. Though, that had happened long ago, almost two centuries. Sima’d never known any other tongue. Her mother had sometimes spoken Arabic with Sima’s grandparents, but never bothered teaching her any. Hell, the woman barely wanted to provide food.

  Whenever anyone in the crowd made eye contact, Sima would approach, slinging one of her well-rehearsed lines. One or two parted with a little glint, but most ignored her. Every so often, she’d have to duck someone taking a swing at her or trying to shove her to the
ground. In three hours, only two people parted with chips. Cassie’s taunting words kept circling her thoughts, like buzzards waiting for the last breath. Perhaps she had reached the point in her life where she could no longer rely on ‘being cute,’ and would need to do something else.

  Eyes closed, Sima leaned back against the grungy wall, trying her best to ignore the stink of the city—a brine of chemicals that settled on her tongue with the flavor of dirty metal and swamp. A nest of black, flexible hoses hanging like dreadlocks from some giant, boxy machine at her left undulated with whatever fluid coursed through them.

  She pondered potential futures.

  Option one: find a job—but she had no skills and only a sixth-grade education.

  Option two: work for Magdalena—but she’d prefer starvation to selling her body.

  Option three: crime, specifically thievery—but she’d have to steal from people only slightly better off than her, and that didn’t seem fair. Not to mention, the security forces were unduly harsh on Outcasts caught committing crimes.

  Option four: she could try falling in with one of the gangs—but they’d surely take her body and she’d wind up on drugs.

  Option five: join the Underground (or Separatists as Citizens called them)—but that may as well be suicide, plus she didn’t care about politics. The Earth Government was so corrupt it had embraced duplicity as a form of procedure. No amount of ‘change from within’ would fix that. The Underground knew this, so their solution had become ‘burn the cancer out.’ But a couple thousand Separatists against the EGSF… yeah. She’d rather leap in front of a speeding gee-vee.

  Option six: (which wasn’t really an option at all) Go into the demolition zones and try to find abandoned tech that someone might buy. She didn’t care if the rumors of danger had been made up or not. Despite scavving representing the most legal of her options, she’d sooner work for Magdalena. Even if it cost her all sense of self-respect, she’d still be alive.

  A sick feeling spread across her stomach, churning the essence of hours-ago ramen into her throat. Of those options, the only one that even approached plausibility kept circling back to Magdalena. Her hang-up there came from a deep, inner revulsion, not some practical matter such as fear of death or incarceration/torture. Could she set aside her dignity to continue to exist? After a week or a month working for that woman, would she even want to continue to exist? She shuddered at the memory of her mother’s new man sliding his hand up her dress and touching her butt while she’d been fixing her dinner one night. He’d come out of nowhere, sidling up behind her while she worked at the kitchen counter, his body trapping her with no way to escape the fingers sliding over her skin.

  Sima hated him at first sight. Even at twelve, she understood the meaning behind the way he looked at her whenever Mom wasn’t around, and the way he often touched her arms or back at every opportunity. Or how he ‘really needed’ to use the bathroom while she showered. And that moment, the two of them alone in the apartment with his hand up her dress, had been her breaking point.

  Terrified and stunned, she’d remained still as a statue while he squeezed her bottom and whispered awful things at her ear, awful things he wanted her to do with him. Fortunately, he left her at the kitchen counter without doing worse. Perhaps he’d sensed her hesitation, or maybe he simply feared her being within arm’s reach of kitchen knives.

  Head bowed, Sima tried to hold back tears at the thought. She’d told her mother about what he’d done, but the horrible woman had accused her of trying to steal her man. That night, she’d run away from home with only the clothes on her back, and of those, only her tunic remained. Her baggy pants, she’d found in the trash, same for the wretched shirt she wore under the tunic. If she sold her body for Magdalena, she could buy new clothes and real shoes, have a bed to sleep on and a roof over her head. But, would it be worth the nightmares?

  The sudden, rapid patter of small footsteps snapped her back to reality. A barefoot boy in an olive drab tunic way too big for him darted out of the crowd, heading straight for Sima. He couldn’t be older than six, and at first, she assumed he’d stolen the tunic since it looked new. But it soon became apparent that he fled not from an angry shopkeeper, but a trio of bigger boys who all looked at least twice his age.

  He crashed into her, clinging, and yelling, “Saeiduni min fadlik!”

  Sima smirked, palmed his head, and shoved him away. “I don’t deal with kids. And I have no idea what you said. This is my spot, go find your own.”

  The force of her push knocked the boy to all fours. His pursuers slowed from running to walking. Between ten and twelve, none of them looked keen on getting into a fight with Sima. Fortunately, her tunic concealed her scrawniness, or even boys their age might think they could take her.

  “Please, help,” said the boy, switching to GANSEC. He scrambled to his feet and clung to her again, hitting her with a wide brown-eyed stare. “They’re gonna hit me and take all my stuff!”

  The older boys hovered a short distance away, eyeing the kid like dogs after a scrap of meat.

  “So, run faster,” muttered Sima.

  One of the older kids smiled.

  “Please!” whispered the little one. “I’ll give you half my glint. Don’t let them steal my stuff.”

  Sima glanced down at the kid’s round, brown face and wild hair. Wow, he’s really scared if he’s offering to pay me. She argued with herself between the ease of making a little glint and feeling crappy for extorting a six-year-old. While she hadn’t lived in paradise at that age, her crummy home life had been far better than the street, at least before that man started visiting. Still, having a child that close would virtually guarantee she’d not make another bit of glint all day.

  He clung tighter, evidently sensing the disinterest in her eyes. “Please! We can help each other.”

  “Oh?” She folded her arms. “How can you possibly help me?”

  “I’ll pretend to be your kid. Tell people you gotta feed me.”

  Having a little boy clinging to her felt about as welcome as a smear of animal waste on her tunic, but as distasteful as she found it, being covered in child beat going to Magdalena.

  “Okay, fine.”

  The three boys shot her sour looks and wandered off back into the crowd. They probably thought she carried a knife or something, since most Outcasts her age did. Little did they know she feared the EGSF too much to let them catch her with a weapon. They’d probably arrest her anyway if she so much as made eye contact with one, but better to be arrested without broken limbs.

  “Faqat ’akhbar alnaas bi’anani abnak,” said the boy.

  “What?” Sima blinked at him.

  He stared up at her in shock. “You don’t speak Arabic?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I already told you that.”

  “Your father didn’t teach you?”

  She grabbed his tunic at his chest and lifted him up on tiptoe, ready to throw him into the crowd, but a mere two seconds of looking at his pitiful stare defused her rage, and she set him down. “No. I’ve never even seen him.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” The boy kicked his toe at the ground. “Mine taught me a little, but he died. So did my mother.”

  Sima narrowed her eyes. “Is that a line or did they really die?”

  He raised a hand. “Swear. I only make stories for ’Zens. My name’s Sayed. What’s yours?”

  “Sima.”

  He grinned. “Okay. You gotta stop looking like a girl and be a woman.”

  With a sigh, she shifted her stature, standing upright. Sayed rubbed his chin, studying her unimpressive chest. After a moment, he shook his head then scampered over to the nearest ORC from which he pulled out some trash paper. He trotted back over, offering it. “Here. Make your boobies bigger.”

  Blushing, she took the papers, wadded them up, and tried to get them to stay put under her shirt. After some adjusting, she felt ridiculous, but did appear more adult. She couldn’t do much about her youthful f
ace though.

  “No one is gonna believe I’m your mother,” she muttered.

  He wrapped himself around her left arm and stared pathetically at the passing crowd. “They will if you sell it. If the ’Zens don’t believe, I’ll be your little brother. We share glint half and half.”

  Sima’s jaw tightened in resentment at the implication she needed a little kid to help her beg, but it only bothered her because she believed it. “All right.”

  For the rest of the daylight hours, Sayed stayed at her side hamming it up for the crowd. Whenever a gee-vee came by, he’d yell, “Mommy” and cling as if frightened of it—or when a person in nice clothes gave them dirty looks, he’d overact being terrified. Sima had trouble selling the whole ‘mother’ thing for a while since she couldn’t help but think of her mother, and how much the word ‘mom’ had become something of a swear. Eventually, she found the acting easier—certainly putting up with a small boy holding her hand beat working in a brothel. For a while, Sayed pretended to be sick, coughing and shivering, and Sima worked the passersby with lines about how she couldn’t feed him enough to keep him healthy.

  By the time it became dark, they’d raked in fifty-three glint. Done for the night, they retreated into an alley to divide their earnings. She knelt by two piles of twenty-six chips, holding the stray.

  “You can have it,” said Sayed, “for protecting me.”

  She’d been thinking of taking it just because the boy couldn’t do much about it, but she’d also been considering giving it to him because he was only six. As much as she resented kids for the easy time they had begging, he didn’t exactly ask to wind up an Outcast. His telling her to keep it made her angry with herself for wanting it and angry with him for not being greedy, because that made her feel like a bitch. Sima would’ve kept the stray chip if not for how damned pathetic he looked. She sighed and dropped it on his pile.

  “You need it more,” said Sima, her voice mostly sigh.