Chapter One

1780 Words
Pickpocketing was one of the most entertaining pass times I had come to enjoy. People were so lax with their belongings. Of course some sneaky thief would swipe the valuables from open purses. Food chips and identity cards were all the rave now and they sold for a hefty amount of credits. Hackers were my best customers. They bought the little electronic devices, hacked into them and created new identities for the criminals. And maybe just a wealthy teenager looking to get into a club or buy alcohol. To whom and for what they sold it bothered me little. As long as I got paid, I was happy. I had sold my own identity card many months ago and without an identity, we weren’t allowed into the enclaves. It also meant we couldn’t be tracked. So if you were like me and knew every nook and cranny of the polished metropolis called the Empire, it was close to impossible to be detected. As long as you avoided the hovering drones and patrolling Helmets, you were pretty much invisible. I had only had the pleasure of encountering a Helmet once before. It was just over a year ago and a month after my twentieth birthday. I was stupid back then and didn’t cover my tracks, I relied on others to have my back. They didn’t and I ended up running three miles into the forest before the heavy footsteps behind me had faded. It was the most terrifying moment of my life. In that moment I had decided that I would trust no one ever again. Not with anything as delicate as survival in this horrid dystopia. It has been a hundred and fifty years since the takeover, when powerful people had built walls around cities and ordered trackers to be planted in every living soul’s neck. My generation knew nothing more than that. They didn’t know it was wrong. But I did. My grandmother used to tell me about the world before the walls. Before society had divided us and when we had a free will to say what we wanted, do what we wanted. I had dreamed of that world for far too long to accept this retched place as my home, as my future. They had killed my nanna for what she had preached, and she had died preaching that very same sermon. The world was ruled with an iron fist by the wealthy and us poor folk could do nothing about it. It was the ultimate division between our economical status and slowly but surely, they were killing us all. Discarding the riff raff like trash. When the Emperor and every single one of his successors were assassinated and the Imperials took matters into their own hands; s**t just got worse. The world was in chaos, and us riff raff? We were the strings they so mercilessly cut. We were the ones who had to suffer under heavier taxes to cover the funeral and lavish ceremonies we weren’t allowed to attend, the shift of power afterwards and the imbalance in the economical state of the empire, and we had to clean up the streets after the wealthy had had their show of superiority. That had happened several years ago now, and no one had bothered to lower the taxes back down again, while the elite silver-spoons barely paid any taxes anymore. I didn’t bother covering my hair with my hood. My chestnut curls were common enough not to attract too much attention. In fact, covering anything above my shoulders would have been suspicious. The Imperials wore nothing to hide what they were. Their hair was pulled back out of their faces, their chip codes visible in their necks for all to see. My own fake code was stamped right below my ear. Damned thing had taken me thirty minutes to perfect in the mirror shard I kept at home. Home being an abandoned minivan just outside the city limits. Far enough out of the city to avoid detection but close enough so the bandits won’t try their luck. If they did, well, I had gotten the van up and running a few weeks ago. I could just leave. I could just pack up and leave. But the best buyers were in the capital. Who knew where I would find high paying customers like these again? I spotted an open handbag, strode over as casually as I had patrolled the streets, and snatched the visible ID card. In this line of work it wasn’t about how much you stole, it was about how much you could steal while remaining undetected. That chip made six tonight. I grinned with glee. I guess I’m having a hot meal tonight and maybe, just maybe, I could afford a cup of molten chocolate. I deserved it on a frigid night like tonight. With the image of a steaming cup of liquid heaven in my brain, I made my way through the sewers to where Glitch had made his headquarters. It was filthy and stank of muck, but it was well hidden and a damn pain to get to. In all aspects, his hideout was perfect. Much better than mine. But the smell, oh gods, the smell. It was absolutely ghastly. To be perfectly honest, Glitch didn’t smell much better either. I wasn’t sure when the last time he had a bath was. Or whether he saw the sun at all, but Glitch made up for his lack of social skills and bad hygiene with his smarts. I have never seen a man decrypt and override an entire motherboard as fast as he could while eating pizza and occasionally slurping a soft drink. Where he got his sustenance from, I did not know, but he was in good shape considering every time I saw him, he was eating some form of junk food. Tonight, he gnawed on a short rib when I pushed aside his makeshift door and bright LED lights greeted me. A neon that’s what she said sign was mounted above his leopard print waterbed and a bottle of lotion sat on his bedside table which consisted of a wooden plank on a cardboard box. The rest of his pad was pretty basic. Concrete floors, carboard boxes stacked against the wall, floor to arched ceiling, to block out the cold. A ripped leather couch was pushed in front of a flat screen television and a half eaten bag of Cheetos. Those were discontinued ages ago. I gagged to think how stale they must have been in. I found Glitch at his computer typing away frantically at his keyboard. He had tried to teach me things a million times but it never stuck. Something about connecting power cables to overload drives if you wanted to avoid frying your front panels and save your motherboard. Or shouldn’t you do that if you wanted to save your motherboard? Honestly it was all Latin to me. I could barely write or read myself and he expected me to understand what a motherboard was? I told him as much, but Glitch was nothing if not persistent. He swivelled in his seat, duct tape fixed, horn rimmed glasses dominating his freckled face. He was attractive I assumed and with a proper groom and about seven baths, Glitch would actually have been hot. He smiled at me with childlike enthusiasm. “What have you got for me this time, sticky fingers?” He peered behind my back to where my backpack hung, as if being able to see into it. “Nothing you didn’t ask for, red.” Instinctively his hand went to his carrot coloured locks and grinned at me. I shook off my bag and dug in the front pocket until I found the ID cards. “Locksleigh, you are a goddess!” Glitch all but squealed in excitement. I handed then to him. “I know.” I replied, shrugging. “Okay.” He said, setting down the cards on his desk next to his mouse and swivelled back towards me. I had a feeling he enjoyed doing that more than he was supposed to. “Why does it look like you’re about to tell me I’m pregnant?” “Ew, no! Kids are gross.” He shuddered. “No, I have a job for you.” “I’m listening.” I swung my bag over my shoulders again and crossed my arms. “There’s a shipment of ID cards heading this way.” “You want me to rob a ship?” “No, i***t. There’s an envoy that will be transporting the cards to the Capital. Log in the road, steal the transportation vehicle. Couldn’t be easier.” “Sounds easy enough.” “There’s a catch.” I groaned, Of course. There was always a f*****g catch. “What is it?” “It’ll be coming through the forest.” Glitch was either high or crazy. I was rooting for both. “But that’s bandit territory.” “Then you better get to it first.” “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me if they catch me stealing their loot?” No. No I wasn’t even considering this. It was mad. Suicidal even. “It’s not their loot. It’s the Imperials” “If it’s in their forest, Glitch, it’s their loot. I’m minor enough for them to leave me be but if I stole from them? I’d end up like Edith.” Her name left a bitter taste in my mouth and the emptiness in my heart where she once was ached. “Edith was a fool. You’re not your sister.” Glitch’s tone was firm. I’d never heard him so serious in all the time I had known him. “No.” I said softly. “I know who to steal from and the bandits aren’t on that list.” “This will set us both up for life, Leigh.” He sighed. “No more stealing after this. You can afford an apartment, f**k. You can afford an entire building. Just… Just promise me you’ll think about it?” “Yeah.” I relented. “I promise.”
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