Watchers

Chapter 1: A Troubled Night at the Kia Motel

The view is of a street corner, businesses along the main road and a run-down residential neighborhood on the other. The camera must be mounted high on the corner of a building, and it is equipped with both night vision and sound so it must be a newer one, from the second Benson administration. These surveillance cameras popped up in cities all over the nation almost ten years ago, part of the privatized police force's 'watch now, ticket later' policy. No one could argue that this non-interference approach to crime brought instances of both police brutality and cop killings down to almost zero overnight, so the ever-watchful eyes of the new bounty hunter-style police force was a small price to pay for equality.

It must be very late at night, or very early in the morning, because there are no cars and no activity on the main road. After a minute, the camera picks up some motion on the residential street and pivots to capture it. A middle-aged woman with stringy hair and a short skirt approaches a car parked on the street and bends over at the window, no doubt putting the watcher of the camera on high alert.

Here's an opportunity to fine a prostitute, one of the easiest ways for a Watcher to make his commission. If he is good at his job, this woman will have a drone on her within minutes and it will trail her until he gets the footage he needs.

* * *

Sasha Bright is sleeping fitfully as always, her neck bent at an unnatural angle and her knees pulled into her chest. She'd been lucky to find the old Soul with its doors unlocked and its seats already folded down - evidence that she isn't the first person to check into the Kia Motel - and lucky when it had been parked in the same spot the next night, and the next. At least until it is inevitably towed away, she has a place to sleep that's off the pavement. That's important as the nights get colder and the ground freezes, and the fact that the cargo area isn't quite big enough to lay without getting a stiff neck is of little consequence to her.

Tonight, though, she's startled out of sleep as someone raps on the window above her. She jumps and smacks the crown of her head violently against the wheel well, cursing and looking up at the source of the sound. Her heart is already beginning to beat faster, her adrenaline preparing for any number of scenarios - a Watcher's drone, another homeless person come to fight her for her sleeping spot, an addict looking to rob her of the few dollars she has - but when she sits up, Sasha sees that it's just her friend, Jane.

She wipes the sleep from her eyes and opens the door, stepping out onto the street and shivering as the wind nips at her insufficiently covered arms.

"Hey," she whispers. They have to speak quietly because of the cameras, and because this is the kind of neighborhood where someone can abandon a car for a few days or a week without anyone raising any objections, but it's not the kind that's above calling the Watchers if an early morning conversation between two vagrants becomes an irritation. Sasha has learned that people living on the edge like this tend to have very low tolerances for any extra irritation in their lives. So she whispers. "What's going on?"

Jane doesn't normally quit working until the sun starts to rise, and as Sasha shakes the last of the sleep from her system, she notices how haggard and agitated she looks. One strap of her Mary Jane heel is broken, lying limply across her ankle, and her bare legs stand out in goosebumps from the cold, but she doesn't look like she feels it. Her eyes tell a different story - there's a fire in them that Sasha has never seen before, and she wonders if Jane has gotten her hands on some kind of drug.

"I heard about a place," she says, her teeth chattering slightly as she speaks, and Sasha thinks it must be coke, or god help them both, crack.

"Yeah?" Sasha asks warily. "What kind of place?"

She wonders if Jane needs someplace to come down, and thinks with mild irritation that it would have been really nice to get a full night's sleep for once. Something always comes up though, and it's looking more and more likely that she'll be giving her nice, flat cargo space to Jane for the rest of the night while she dozes uncomfortably in the front seat and tries to be still to avoid the cameras' watchful gaze.

"It's a shelter," Jane says. "My last john told me about it, said it's a really nice one run by some preacher guy. They don't even kick you out during the day."

"They don't kick you out?" Sasha asks, narrowing her eyes. That's unlike any shelter she'd ever experienced before, and she wonders what a 'preacher guy' could possibly want with a group of vagrants hanging around all day and night.

"No, and they feed you and wash your clothes and give you access to shower facilities," Jane says, her eyes lighting up. "Indoor plumbing, Sasha. Do you even remember what it's like to take a hot shower?"

"No," Sasha says with a laugh. Her last shower involved a small handful of wet wipes and a gas station attendant banging relentlessly on the door.

"Come with me to check it out," Jane says.

"What, now?" Sasha asks. It's around two in the morning and even if this is the most progressive homeless shelter in the country, she doubts that they would open their doors at this hour, especially with Jane looking the way she does. "They're not going to let us in. We should just wait until morning."

Wait until you don't so closely resemble an addict, Sasha adds in her head, but she doesn't voice this objection to Jane.

"I want to go now," Jane says. "It sounds really nice and I'm freaking cold, Sasha. I'm tired of being cold."

"You could warm up in the car," Sasha points out. "Let's just go tomorrow, and get a couple of hours of sleep for now."

Sasha opens the car door, trying to tempt Jane away from this late-night adventure, but Jane checks the time on an ancient watch. She shakes her head and says, "Nah, I've still got a few more good hours to work. I'm heading back out."

"Okay," Sasha says. "Don't go to that shelter without me. Promise."

"Fine, fine," Jane says, waving her off as Sasha climbs back into the cargo area and lays down. It would be nice to have a real shower, and a decent meal, but the shelter will wait until morning. There's no reason to go in the dead of night, when all the Watchers are on high alert.

Jane heads back up the street toward the main road, where a small drone meets her on the corner. It flies about twenty feet overhead, following her like a puppy as she turns and heads up the sidewalk.