Drones Read online

  DRONES

  By Rob J. Hayes

  A Mystique Press Production

  Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 Rob J. Hayes

  LICENSE NOTES

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  Meet the Author

  Based in Derbyshire, UK, Rob spends most of his days either madly typing his next novel, or staring out the window at the beautiful scenery. He’s the author of the award winning The Ties that Bind trilogy and the critically acclaimed Best Laid Plans duology.

  Bibliography

  The Ties that Bind Trilogy

  The Heresy Within

  The Colour of Vengeance

  The Price of Faith

  Best Laid Plans Duology

  Where Loyalties Lie

  The Fifth Empire of Man

  It Takes a Thief… Series

  It Takes a Thief to Catch a Sunrise

  It Takes a Thief to Start a Fire

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  DRONES

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 1

  Fear: Coursing. Pulsing. Crushing. Fear is a best seller, not just for me, for all us Drones. It gets the blood pumping, the adrenaline flowing. More than any other emotion; fear makes you feel alive.

  The world rushes past in a blur. Glass and concrete buildings. Skybridges. People staring, pointing. Gone in a flash. The wind whips my breath away, makes it hard to suck down air. Below, I see the roads and cars and pedestrians all rushing up to meet me as quickly as terminal velocity. Hard to hear anything over the sounds of the wind and my own racing heartbeat, but I hear the alarm. My PD reads my altitude and tells me it’s time.

  I pull the cord on my parachute and feel the rush as it catches on the air and tugs at me, slowing me down and pulling me upright. I start to drift, letting the chute and the wind take me where it will. The uncertainty is all part of the experience. Not true powerlessness, but then not everyone wants it pure.

  I float down the last couple of dozen feet towards a road, busy with cars all trying to rush and no one getting anywhere any faster. Horns blare out and people shout at each other to move, some start to shout at me.

  My feet touch down on the bonnet of a little red Jasper, a town car that flooded the market two years ago. I take one more step, then down onto the road, bumping into another car. All it takes is another hard pull of the cord and the parachute retracts into the pack.

  My heart is still pounding. Blood rushing and adrenaline with it. I can see my hands are shaking. I can still feel the fear of falling, my feet on solid ground does nothing to purge the memory. If I close my eyes, I still feel like I’m plummeting to the ground.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man driving the little red Jasper opens his door and steps out. His face is as red as his car and his frown is as deep as the blue of his suit. He’s shouting. Anger. Anger is a poor seller. There’s too much of it in the world already, it’s too easy to come by.

  I give the man a little wave and turn away, already picking my path through the slowly moving traffic. Horns blare out, there’s at least a meter in front of the Jasper and the people behind don’t like that he hasn’t closed the gap yet.

  “Who’s going to pay for the damage?” the man shouts after me. I ignore him and he doesn’t chase. Can’t risk leaving his car unattended.

  My heart is starting to slow back to normal, but I’m still grinning. The fear of the fall. The elation of feeling that adrenaline surge. Relief of finally being terrestrial again. I school my features, removing the grin from my face and replacing it with a blank stare.

  I pass through the standing cars onto the nearby pavement. The streets are packed, jammed with a herd of people in constant motion, all rushing to get to somewhere. Some of them saw my landing, some even comment, asking me questions I don’t bother to answer. Most of them never even looked up from their PDs, too busy scanning social media for the latest news on their friends, or travesty from around the world. I disappear into the crowd. Lost amongst a sea of faces.

  By the time my PD clock reads 9am most of the crowd is gone. Doesn’t mean the streets are empty, not by any stretch. The cars move a bit more freely now, but they still flood the roads. People delivering things, or late for work, maybe some rich folk just out for a drive. Perhaps even some gangers looking for trouble, though probably not so early in the morning, and rarely not so far from Mextown.

  The sun shines through the forest of high rises, reflecting off windows and sending shards of light in every direction so it’s near impossible to tell which way is east. Then there’s the billboards. Downtown New York has a billboard on almost every building, some have one on each side. Runaway consumerism.

  They’re impossible not to see and that’s the point, really. Even those hooked on their PDs look up occasionally. Sometimes they’ll see a video of man with chiseled abs pointing at his briefs, sometimes they’ll see an action-packed short telling them Sprint is releasing a new flavour of sugarless energy drink.

  Today, it’s all about Me.com. Social media’s heaviest hitter is releasing a new PD, Epicurus. Discount prices for anyone not already hooked in. I don’t remember the last time I met a person who wasn’t. Epicurus has biometric security as a standard, and a bunch of other features that are likely useless. I don’t care about the advert. I have one already. Picked it up on the first batch. I don’t have a lot of friends, actually I’m not sure I have
any, but Me.com serves a purpose.

  But it’s not about social media for me. The PD is useful. Acts as a phone, as a calendar, as a watch. Helps me schedule my activities, helps me research and refine my techniques. There’s a market for dirty emotions, but pure emotions are where the real money lies.

  Chapter 2

  Pride: Contentment. A warm sense of achievement. An easy sell, though not a big market. People like feeling as though they’ve done something with their day, something more than earning money for big corporations.

  Stopping off at the gym is part of my daily routine. It keeps me in shape, lets me participate in the activities that earn me the expensive emotions. It also gives me a sense of pride. People like that one. Lots of men and women don’t feel they have the time to look after their bodies properly, but they have time to experience how it feels to.

  I shower quickly, washing the sweat from my skin. A good long shower can be worth a bit itself. Pleasure and relaxation. But I don’t have the time in the morning. An alarm goes off on my PD and I turn my arm over to look at it. The time reads 10am. It’s a good thirty minutes over to Pascal’s workshop and I need to get there quickly. Pride fades all too quickly.

  I still don’t quite understand why some emotions fade more rapidly than others. The positive ones especially. Negative emotions can keep for days, even weeks. I know from personal experience some can keep for years. Some keep forever. Positive emotions fade away like ashes in the wind. They need harvesting swiftly or they become diluted and worthless. Nobody wants their pride tinged with an indescribable melancholy.

  Pulling tight on my shoe laces, I look up as another man saunters into the changing room. He’s a muscle bound slab of meat with a neck even thicker than his head. Julios is the man’s name and I see him at the gym everyday. Everyday and all hours of the day. Might be he’s a model, stays in that kind of shape to pose for adverts or calendars. Might be he’s security for a firm, maybe even a gang. They like those sorts of guys, thick with muscle and no idea how to use it. Very intimidating, but ultimately useless. I know a dozen smaller men and women who would break Julios in two.

  Contempt is another poor seller. Worse than that though, it’s a useless emotion and one I don’t want to feel.

  The man nods at me and I nod back, a simple signal of respect, even falsely given. Friendliness. He heads off to the shower and I finish tying my laces and grab my pack from the locker.

  My PD vibrates as I leave the gym. I turn over my arm to see an incoming call from Summer, her smiling face staring at me. An old picture taken a few years ago at her fourth birthday party. Her hair was still long then, long and wavy just like her mother’s. She’s missing a tooth.

  I let the call go, ignoring it, and flag down a passing taxi. Johnnie’s cabs, an auto-driver. Some people choose auto-drivers because they think it gives them a measure of privacy. They’re wrong. More cameras in an auto than in a manned taxi. There’s no end to the videos on the net of what people get up to in the back of autos.

  My PD stops ringing as I climb into the back of the taxi and the screen in the back flashes on, asking for identification and pre-payment. I pull my cred card from my wallet and press it to the screen.

  “James Garrick.” I declare.

  The screen changes, flashing through the processes. After a few moments it changes again and asks for a destination. Pre-pay autos are great for long trips, one price no matter the distance. Pascal’s workshop isn’t a long way away, but I like autos for the feeling of privacy they give. Even if it is false.

  “The corner of Lexton and Arland,” I say and settle back as the wheel turns and the taxi pulls away. Strange that autos still have steering wheels. I guess it’s because of a sense of security it gives to the passengers.

  My PD dings and I look at it to find a voice mail waiting from Summer. I stare at the screen for a few moments, feeling nothing, but thinking I should. Knowing I should. Then I put the earpiece in and press play.

  “Happy Birthday, Daddy!”

  A few moments of silence.

  “I have an earring now, see?”

  “It’s voice only, Summer. He can’t see it.”

  “Oh. My friend, Alice, got one, so I asked mummy and she said I could.”

  “I also said a quick message, Summer.”

  “Sorry. We’re going to the pool. I love you, Daddy!”

  The earpiece crackles a bit. I guess Summer is handing the phone to Susan.

  “Happy fortieth birthday, James. Your daughter misses you.”

  The call ends abruptly. I take the earpiece out and slot it back into my PD. I know I should feel something. Affection maybe, joy that Summer had thought to call me. I don’t feel either of those things. I’m not even sure I can anymore. Shame. I can still feel shame.

  Pascal’s workshop is in one of the affluent areas of the city. He’s surrounded by a few shops, conveniences mostly, and a lot of flats. It’s the perfect location for his operation. His clients get their fixes without having to go further than the end of the road. Well, some of them anyway. He has a lot of clients and people come from all over to buy from him. Comes with the reputation of being one of the most reputable dealers in New York. Probably one of the most reputable in America.

  The taxi drops me off a short distance from the workshop. Always a short distance. Pascal doesn’t like us Drones coming in the front door. He works out of a modern apartment building. Owns the whole building. It’s mostly empty, a front for his business, but some of the apartments are given over to Drones or his own security. I prefer a more comfortable living arrangement, but then not all Drones make as much as I do.

  I pass the building and go straight to its neighbour. Up a few steps and I press the button for apartment 18A. It takes a few seconds for the intercom to buzz and I spend it staring into the little camera. Pascal has people in 18A who know all his Drones by face and name. I’ve never seen them, but I know they’re there.

  I pull the door open and walk on through, going straight to the elevator. It takes a few moments to arrive and an old lady with hair as gray as static is buzzed in behind me. She’s carrying a bag as big as my backpack on her arm and an umbrella. I check my PD quickly, but there’s no chance of rain today.

  When the elevator arrives, I stand aside and let the old lady in first. She doesn’t so much as glance at me, let alone thank me. Annoyance. We all grow up being told about manners and courtesy, but no one really believes in those things anymore. Some days I struggle to believe anyone ever did.

  I follow the old lady into the elevator and see she’s pressed for the third floor. I press for the twenty-second, the penthouse, and step back to stand against the elevator wall. The old lady smells of dust and peppermint. She turns and gives me a sour look, before going back to staring at the doors as they close.

  She gets off on third, never bothering to look back again. Alone, I ride the elevator up to the twenty-second and step off, turning right for the stairs and up towards the roof.

  Opening the door to the rooftop, I squint for a moment against the sun shining down on me. The air tastes a little fresher up here, it’s a nice change. There’s a small walkway set up from the roof of this building over to Pascal’s. I cross quickly, purposefully not looking down. You wouldn’t think it would bother me too much after my morning sky dive from the tallest building in the city, but acrophobia doesn’t really discriminate. High up is high up, no matter how high up it is.

  The door leading down into Pascal’s building has a heavy duty security camera mounted above it. I stare into it and wait. After a few moments I hear a click and pull on the handle to find the door unlocked. I pass through quickly, letting it swing shut behind me.

  The elevator in Pascal’s building doesn’t work. It’s never worked. I think he’s shut it down on purpose. Pascal is skittish by nature, he likes to be in control. I think forcing people to use the stairs is part of that. It also helps with security. If anybody breaks in, they’re forced to climb ten
sets of stairs to get to the doctor and he’ll be long gone by the time they do.

  I pass a couple of heavies Pascal hires as security. They nod to me but say nothing. Drones aren’t really known for lively discussion. A few of us can carry a conversation, usually those who specialise in belonging and companionship. It’s a thin line for them to walk, keeping enough back to properly empathise and relate. I’m not one of them.

  I hurry down the stairwell to the tenth floor and I’m stopped at the door. Two more security guards, a burly man and a woman with shoulders as broad as my own, halt me and give me a quick look over and pat down. These aren’t street thugs, they’re ex-special forces. Well trained and willing to do whatever is necessary to protect Pascal. Each of them carries a pistol, a baton, and hand cuffs. I wait patiently while they do their job.

  “Sorry, Garrick,” the woman says as they search me. “Can’t be too careful. Boss’ orders are even the most loyal of Drones or customers gets searched.”

  I don’t respond. I don’t think she expects me to. Still, the extra security measures are strange, even for someone as paranoid as Pascal.

  Once they’re done, I head down the hall and wait at the door. The entire floor has been re-designed as a workshop for Pascal. This is where he does his work. This is where he frees me from my burdens.

  Chapter 3

  Relief: Flooding. Calming. Relaxing. I used to think relief would be a good seller. I was wrong. No one wants it. It’s not exciting enough.

  Pascal opens the door to his workshop and smiles at me. I don’t return it. I’m not even sure what he’s really hiding behind the smile. Maybe happiness, or excitement at the money he’s going to make from the things I’ve put myself through. The smile soon drops and Pascal waves me in.

  Another guard sits inside the workshop. This one I know. She’s no security tough. She’s an assassin. A trained killer and damned good at her job. Her name’s Kendall, and she used to work the station and the colonies on the Moon. I know her because, for a brief period of time, she was tipped to be trying to kill a client I used to protect. She’s gained a few years and a few wrinkles since I last glanced at her file, but there’s no mistaking the dark glint in her eyes. She’s still a killer. I give her a respectful nod and she returns it.