Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Part 1

His fingers shook as he reinserted the card into the 'Credit Box'.  The absurdity of the name was lost on him in the moment.  Later, when he wasn't quite so hungry or desperate, he'd have a good laugh about it, but at that moment he was preoccupied.  The people walking behind him made him nervous, and not just because he was trying to steal in broad… well, there isn’t exactly daylight in The Bottom.  In full view.  Their appearances shocked him.  He had only been down below for a week, but it had been one horrorshow moment after another.  Even his dreams had been terrifying.  

“C’moooon,” he pleaded.  The way his stomach was gurgling made it sound like he was digesting himself.  He wasn’t certain that was impossible.  “C’moooon!”

“At’s not gonna work," said someone behind him.  

Beez jumped as he spun around.  “OhOkthenI’lljustbeonmyway!”  The nearest one reached out to grab the collar of his jacket.  Beez tried to dart away, but he wasn’t quick enough

There were four of them.  If he hadn’t been so distracted, he might have seen them coming, but now they had him surrounded.  One stood a few feet away to either side of him.  The other two were directly in front of him, one behind the other.  Their light gray uniform-suits bore the same corporate emblem as the ‘Credit Box’.  

“Nuh uh!  Don’t tink so.  You’ve knocked a few of dese over, but at’s done now.  You’re comin wit us.”

“W-w-w….Where?!”  He tried grabbing at the man’s sleeve, but he might as well have tried to claw through steel for all the good it did him.  “Nooo!  Lemme go!"

“You didn’t just tink you could steal and get away wit it, did you?  Even down here wit de animals, dere’s-”

“Let him go!”  Everyone turned, wearing some degree of shock, as a dark-haired young woman walked into the middle of their confrontation.  She was wearing a brown duster over a dark purple bodysuit, and her eyes seemed too wide to Beez.  Like The Joker...

“Who are you?” The first one said.  All four of them began to slowly reach towards their hips.  The woman pulled down her brow and drew up her lower lip in confusion.  The boy blinked, and nearly missed what happened next.  

She drew two pistols from within her jacket, firing a shot at the man to Beez’s right and another shot at the man behind the one holding him.  Without letting go of the boy, the central man also tried to draw his gun, but the woman slammed her fist down on his wrist and stepped up behind him. The fourth man, on Beez’s left, tried to get off a shot, but only ended up hitting the central man when she dragged him into the line of fire.  Then she reached up under her shields shoulder and fired two more shots.  In the span of six seconds, she had dispatched all four.

“Damnit, I had the whole thing planned out,” she snarled.  “I was gonna say Let him go.  You were gonna say You didn’t say the magic word.  Then I was gonna say Bang Bang.  Then you were gonna look at me all surprised and confused and THEN I was gonna shoot you!  Thanks for ruining,”  she kicked the unmoving body at her feet, “my entrance!”  Another kick.

Beez stared around his feet at the scattered bodies and pools of blood, and screamed.  The woman, guns still in hand, held the butts up to her ears and winced.  

“Jebus, kid!  I had a lot to drink last night!  Keep it down!”   If he’d eaten today he was sure he’d have thrown it up, but instead he just dry heaved for a few seconds.  There was blood spatter on his jacket and, if the warm-but-rapidly-cooling feeling on his face was what he thought it was, all over his cheeks as well.  The woman squinted and pinched the bridge of her nose.  

“Sloppy of them not to bring backup.”  As if to answer her, a shot rang out.  The woman’s bangs bounced and flailed in the wake of the near miss, and Beez dropped to his knees as the concrete wall beside him spewed chips.  Without opening her eyes or removing her hand from her nose, she raised her arm and fired once.  Beez had just spotted the shooter running towards them, and screamed again as the man toppled backwards.  The streets, which had been bustling if not technically busy, had emptied in a hurry.  

“E Minus,” she said at the man she’d kicked.

“Is th-th-that your n-n-name?” Beez hadn’t quite stopped cowering, but he felt that looking this woman in the eye was best done from a defensive stance.

“What?  No!  A’s are good, D’s are bad, so E’s must be worse, right?”  He felt his head tilt to the side as he tried to make sense of what she’d said, but it just... it didn’t.  “I mean, they did bring backup so they can’t get an F, but they’re all dead.  D is probably too generous.”  Nope.  None sense.  “We’ve got about 2 minutes until someone notices that these guys aren’t responding.  Then we’ve got another 2 minutes before the backup for the backup shows up, so why don’t we get the niceties over with.  I’m Roxie.”

“Beez.”

“Where?!”  She cried as she spun, guns drawn and pointing erratically.  “WHERE ARE THEY?!”

“No!  That’s my name!”  

Her eyes were wild when she turned back to him.  “Don’t.  Joke.  About.  Bees.” He’d never seen purple eyes before.  He’d never seen a lot of things before he came down here. 

“No, that-that-that’s just what everyone calls me!”

“Well what am I gonna shout when we see a swarm of bees?!  You’re just gonna think I’m calling your name!  You didn’t think this through at all, did you?!”  He had no idea how to respond to that.  After few quiet seconds, she added “You’re Brandon Zimmer, right?”  

Beez nodded slowly.  This was turning into the craziest day of his life.  8 days ago, that wouldn’t have been that hard…

“Oh!  Oh, I get it!  B Z!  That’s clever!” Roxie laughed for a moment, but then her face turned extremely serious.  “Or is it?”

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“Were those cops?”

“Who, these assholes?”  She pointed her gun down at the one at their feet and arched an eyebrow at him.  “Naw, these are just squibs.  Blues don’t come around here.  I’d be in real trouble if I shot a bunch of Blues, but squibs can be just as bad in their own way.  They have a nasty habit of shooting first and asking questions later.”

“...but...didn’t you…”

She bowled right over him.  “Now, I know why I’m looking for you.”  The way she pointed her gun at him, if only to indicate who she was talking about, was putting a few new stains in his already dirty clothes.  “The question is, why were they?”

“I was… stealing…”  

Roxie kicked the man over onto his back to take a long look at the logo on the breast of his jacket, and then looked behind Beez at the Credit Box.   Then she looked around at her body count with a furrowed brow.  “Kind of a lot of firepower to send after one little hacker, isn’t it?”

“This… wasn’t the first one I cracked.”

“Ooooooooh!  A repeat offender then, huh?”

“Y-y-yes?”

Roxie grinned and shook her gun at him.  “I knew we was gonna get along.”

Beez took a shaky step to the side, trying to evade the barrel of her gun without betraying how terrified he was.  “Why are you looking for me?”  His voice cracked several times, but he was proud that he hadn’t stuttered.  

“Because I need a hacker, of course!”

"Could you please put away your guns?!" 

Roxie blinked and shrugged, but the pistols stayed in her hand.  "Can't.   They’re gonna be here soon.  I'm gonna need these babies."

"More of them are coming?!  We've gotta go!!"

"If we leave now, I won’t get to shoot them..."

Beez just blinked.   

"It's really not that complicated!"  

"They want to kill us!"

"Maybe, but I'm gonna kill them."

"Pleeeeeeease!!"  He grabbed at her sleeves and tugged.

Roxie scratched at her temple with the barrel of one of her guns, but step by reluctant step, she began following him.  "You owe me some violence."

"Sure!  Whatever!  Let's just go!"

Just as he was rounding the corner, he saw two men run up to check on the bodies they'd left behind.  

"Oh hey!  Guys!  We're goin this way!!!"  She even waved at them.  At that point, Beez stopped trying to pull her and just ran.  "Yeah, you should probably get a head start,” she yelled after him.  “I’ll catch up in a few minutes!”

The boy darted around every street corner he could find, serpentining down alley after alley before collapsing in a doorway.  The sound of gunfire and laughter had faded with each turn, but fear spurred him on.  The door beside him was mercifully unlocked, and he scampered inside.  Up three flights of stairs, he flew. The walls were covered in layer upon layer of graffiti, to the extent that he guessed it was all indecipherable nonsense even to the residents.  He leapt over several unconscious bodies and finally ducked down a hallway seemingly headed to nowhere.  He grabbed two bags of trash and made a little pile he could hide behind.  Only then, as he wiped the stray blood from his cheeks, did he start to cry again.

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