Hacker

chapter six

Alison sat on a pristine park bench adjacent to the hospital and took a huge bite of the puff pastry. It was filled with chocolatey cream that melted in her mouth and was browned to perfection on the top. It was the best meal she had ever had. She had been sitting on the bench for most of the morning and had only interrupted her surveillance once to buy the puff pastry. She scoffed the few remaining bites down and was still hungry. Ali weighed up briefly whether or not she would have enough time to buy another but that would eventually lead to her talking herself out of this suicidal mission.

The bench and the hospital was separated by a small courtyard. It was on the verge of being desolate with only a few doctors and nurses in their uniforms bustling to the pearly white double doors of the hospital’s main entrance. They walked on stilted legs and held their bodies rigidly like machines. Or someone with a broom stick stuck up an unfortunate place, the thought making Alison smile. A blonde nurse strutted up to the doors, her nose waving dangerously high in the air. Ali leaned back on the bench hoping that the tint cloth was working it’s magic and she was suitably white. She scrutinised the blonde objectively, she hadn’t really seen much of the inner city folk before. The woman was short and portly with an odd way of walking like a duck. The nurse caught sight of Alison and sneered nastily before waddling through the door. A blue shimmering engulfed the duck woman the moment she stepped over the threshold like the light was captured in tiny particles above her skin. As quickly as it appeared the shimmering vanished. The smile instantly slipped into a grimace as the door slid shut and Alison’s fears were confirmed with it. A ward guarded the hospital. The only reason she hadn’t seen it before was because her view had always been blocked by an annoying pedestrian. She had expected some security but a ward was on another level. Lucien had warned her but she had held a small feeble hope. She had been delirious.

 Wards were designed to destroy anyone who crossed it’s boundaries without a chip. Chips were implanted in babies right after they were born when they still bleated and before their mothers held them. Trained professionals inserted the chip barely beneath the skin on the citizen’s upper arm. It held every snippet of vital information about them from their birthday to their dietary habits. Only the wealthy or influential had the rights to chips, so if you were born in the inner city there was a near guarantee you would be implanted. The idea of being monitored in such a way made Ali sick to the stomach. What was also making Alison queasy were the stories she had heard of people trying to cross wards without a chip. They ended up as puddles of red mush on the ground. Their whole being, their bones, organs, thoughts-all pounded into a big red puddle. Then again this was the reason they had hired her: to handle the technological stuff. She just wished she knew how or why she could.

She sighed and wondered what Macy was doing right now, trying to take her mind off the possibility of being turned into a puddle. Alison had been ushered out of the building quite unceremoniously yesterday morning. Macy had quickly hugged her whispering "Good luck little thief. Take care and keep a clear head" and handing her the light leaf that she had hacked that first night before rushing back to the commotion inside. The whole place had been a mad house all night due to something do to with the port. Of course Ali had not been let on in this but from what she had gathered it had been a big deal. It was a bit of a shock to find out that the rebels base was Dionysus’s Den one of the most popular pubs in the south east end of the slums. What shocked her most was the fact that the Doc had swapped his scrubs for the off-white apron of a barkeeper. She had stared at the studious doc for a good ten minutes as he served and joked with customers. It was quite a distraction as Lucien had tried to flesh out the details of their arrangement.

Unfortunately Alison’s apartment was on Bridge Side, a good two and a half hour walk away in the West End. That was a rough calculation not including that the slums were basically a rat warren full of side streets, unsavoury lurkers and random dead ends. Alison set off with a heavy heart. She was only a quarter of the way, her feet already aching when she remembered the twenty tal weighing down her breast pocket. Lucien had given her the deposit for the job before she was kicked out. Alison was so accustomed to being broke and walking everywhere that she had completely forgotten that she could now afford to hire a taxi. Ali made her way to the main street and with a sharp whistle called a taxi. The rickshaw was the slums version of a taxi, a three wheeled death trap. The driver was situated at the front and pedalled the whole contraption. A garish yellow rickshaw pulled up to the curve, skidding dangerously and spraying flecks of mud in all directions. Ali dodged it narrowly and would have began yelling at the driver until she saw him.