The Guy That Sweeps The Chikit Sweepers

The passages filled with the sound of VisAge-issue boots pounding through debris and sloshing through puddles, all the caution of before replaced by the chaos of pursuit. The alleys veered this way and that like corridors in a listing ship as Rinako skidded around corners trying to keep up. A ship taking on water she thought, seeing the rain running down the walls. The lights from their breakers flashed all over them casting monstrous shadows of their forms as though they were in some twisted Kageboushi play. Numbers flashed all over her visor but there was no time to look.

‘Look, I really don’t want to see one.‘ Her voice crackled over the helmet’s comms.

After a pause Kurama’s came back. ‘Sure.’ He was keeping pace about ten meters ahead of her, a silhouette in motion behind the sheets of rain that fell between them like gauze curtains in some imperial chamber. The blue triangle of the holo-map projected just above him. Every few seconds he would vanish suddenly, this being her warning that a turning was approaching.

‘I mean it’s better all round when they’re not, right. When it’s a false alarm, like, errr, like that anomaly thing you were saying…’

‘That’s right.’ This time the pause was a bit longer. She squinted ahead. Kurama’s silhouette had become fainter. She could just make him out as he turned into another alley.

‘I mean who’d want to see one? Really.’ She was talking to herself now.

Every time he disappeared she felt a plunging sensation as though she were an astronaut cast adrift from her ship. How was he so fast? A surge of relief shot through her as she swung round the corner and his figure was there again, like the outline of a familiar island.

‘How far is it?’ She said into her helmet. She became aware of her own breathing, hard and uneven as she ran. It must be on the move, it was only a few alleys away when Skit (—sigh..) encountered it.

Nothing but static came back on the comms. The helmets were the only thing keeping them in contact. It was strange feeling so cut off from someone so close physically. It made her think of the thousand other cities just beneath her feet, behind the walls, all around them yet completely invisible. Perhaps right now she was running through a busy market, or someone’s front room, just a fraction of bandwidth away.

A burst of static.

She winced in pain and clutched her head. A second later the passage was lit by a flash of lightning. Around her the walls seemed to flicker momentarily. Then more interference over the comms. She thumped the mute switch on the side of her helmet but it continued.

No not now—

The speakers inside her helmet exploded like a dam bursting.

***

‘Pay no attention to these goons.’ The chief said as he escorted her through the wolf whistles and dog barks of the main office. An officer tying his shoelace against a chair stopped whatever story he was telling his colleague to crane his neck at her as they passed. ‘Excuse me, Officer Takemi.’ They stopped beside a curly haired female officer chewing gum. ‘Would you know where officer Kurama is?’

The female officer eyed them up and down. ‘Offic—, ‘ then with a look of recognition, ‘Oh you mean Merl, he’s out back. Mind the shit everywhere.’ She called after them.

A warm sensation flooded through Rinako. However filthy it might be, it was a filth she’d grown up with from the first day her grandpa took her in to work and sat her on his lap like some trophy to show his colleagues. The most brow-beaten, sweat-stained cops would gather and become as sweet as angels when she was around, bring her sweets and stand her up on a chair, listening to her stories. She understood now that she had been a window, a way out of some place they were all trapped in, though they crouched and knelt right beside her. She looked down to hide the smile that had appeared from nowhere. It was her filth.

‘Ok, this is your—‘ The chief shoved open a splintered looking door at the back of the office.

‘ENFORCER-PROBATIONARY FURUKAWA REPORTING FOR DUTY, SIR!’ Interrupted Rinako. She stood upright saluting… what appeared, once she had lowered her eyes from the opposing wall, to be a pile of newspapers and beer bottles behind a desk.

The chief was looking somewhat taken aback by her entrance. ‘Yes, well…’

‘Good… fucking… grief…’ came a voice from the pile of newspapers. ‘I told you I don’t need a partner, and you sent me the announcer-bot from Shinjuku4.’ The newspapers - betting sections, she noticed, with untidy red circles around some of the entries - fell away and from behind them emerged the dishevelled form of a half-uniformed enforcer slumped in his chair. By the look of him he was in his 30s, somewhere, though it was well hidden beneath lines and dark rings on his face that belonged to a man far older. The green dot of a light-stick floated around his mouth as he spoke.

‘Yeah, well, you won the lucky dip, Kurama. Besides, might just do you some good, you ain’t exactly pulling bonus numbers. Now do as you’re told and show her around. You never know, I might not fire you this month.’ The chief’s expression switched suddenly to an ingratiating smile as he turned back to Rinako.

‘Yessir.’ Kurama gave an elaborate salute from behind his stack of betting slips and newspapers, ending in a flourish from which, as the door closed behind the chief, one finger slowly extended. ‘Asshole.’

He inhaled deeply. ‘Alright, alright…’ he said and held out his hand, tapping plumes of green light into a stained vacuum-tray on the desk. ‘Let’s see what we got.’

Rinako hurried over and handed him her record plate.

He took it, frowned and started reading. She started to feel self-conscious as he looked it over, as though his eyes were somehow roving her body. Not once did he look up as as he read, his heavy boots up on the desk, the little green dot bobbing up and down before making its occasional trip to the vacuum-tray.

‘Central Academy?’ He asked after some time.

‘Yes sir.’ She said.

He nodded, seemingly impressed. ‘Seems you did pretty well there.’

She went to speak but finding she hadn’t the words to say, closed her mouth and waited instead.

‘Top grades all round, outstanding in Theory…’

She felt a sense of pride warming her. The green dot floated down again, this time disappearing entirely.

‘So what did you do?’ He said after a pause.

She looked at him, confusion on her face.

‘Burned down the barracks? Slept with the director’s son?’

‘Sir?’

He stuck out a leg and kicked the door open. The noise of the main office rose up from outside.

‘Takamoto!’ He shouted. A small bespectacled face stuck out from behind a huge Neolithic looking monitor on the other side of the office. ‘How did you end up here?’

‘Hacked a union account, Merl, not my fault—‘

‘Hitachi!’

Now a woman’s voice strained from out of eyeshot. ‘Ahhh, it was that idiot Yasuhiro in Transfers, tried it one too many times so I sent his wife the mails.’

‘I electrocuted a sky-scrubber—‘ volunteered an officer sitting on the edge of a desk near the door with a disposable coffee cup in his hand. The gum-chewing female officer from earlier sat behind it altering her nails.

Kurama kicked the door shut, the voice continuing unintelligibly beyond it.

He spread his hands. ‘—Look… this is a Prospr squad. We work the bounties the contracts don’t want and VisAge keeps us in soba and light-sticks—-we’re the lowest rung of the food chain, right next to chikit sweepers and…’ he scratched the three days worth of stubble that covered his jaw, ‘—the guy that sweeps the chikit sweepers.’

She kept looking at him.

‘You did something. You might not know it. But you did something.… I mean, you must have have shot the instructor or something with a background like that.’ He looked back at her. ‘Did you shoot the instructor?’

‘I.. applied, sir.’

There was a pause in which he remained motionless, as though waiting for this particular sequence of words to assemble meaningfully in his mind.

‘You.. applied.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘For Prospectr assignation.’ He was scratching his head and turning away.

‘Yes sir, my grandfather was a—‘

‘You applied to be a Prospr.’ He sat back in his seat.

A strange feeling was now mingling with her previous sense of pride. ‘Sir.’

‘And you are aware that Prospectrs are regarded as… you’re aware how we’re regarded? Among the rest of the corps?’

That strange feeling had now positively taken hold of whatever party it was that was going on inside her. ‘Yes sir.’

‘I see.’

She remained standing as he returned his attention to her record, this time more studiously. The green dot did not reappear and the only things met by the soles of his boots were the dirty floorboards beneath his seat. Time seemed to slow to a standstill.

After a few minutes something stopped him. Rinako stiffened.  ‘Are you recovered now?’

She felt a sharp cold sensation inside her. ‘Sir. It does not affect my ability to-‘

He interrupted her. ‘No, I just mean, you're ok?’

It took all of her strength to remain calm as her mind leaped about like a pool of frogs. ‘Yes sir.’ She squeezed her eyes, waiting for the barrage of questions, amassing the defences she had composed against them—-

His eyes remained on her for a moment… but then he just nodded and flung the holo-plate noiselessly against the desk.

She turned from the wall again and watched wide-eyed as Kurama walked over to a ancient wooden hat stand and pulled an equally ancient leather jacket from it.

‘You can stop with the sir.’ He said as he brushed past her, the end of a bright red lollipop disappearing into his mouth. ‘No-one else ever calls me that, don't see why you should start.’

Rinako remained facing the opposite wall. It had become quite familiar to her now.

‘I—‘ she paused. ‘What should I call you?’

He pulled the lollipop from his mouth. ‘Well, Kurama is my name so I guess that wouldn't be too bad a place to start.’