I Clean Gods to Pay the Rent

0003 The Second Visit

    Scrambling out of bed at midnight, hauling his sister — her face shading toward purple — to the hospital on his back, and enduring a good dozen-plus hours of chaos afterward, Cassius sat bleary-eyed at the edge of a filthy hospital cot with the sunset at his back, watching his sister, who had finally stopped choking. In a low, complicated voice, he asked:

    "Mira. Tell me the truth. When did you stop taking your medicine?"

    He so rarely used her name that the pale, thin girl on the cot flinched. She knew: her brother might look calm right now, but inside he was probably mad enough to lose his mind. Head dipped, she came clean:

    "About... two months ago?"

    Two months ago...

    Cassius did the math, and his fists clenched hard, nails — still edged with grime — digging into the meat of his palms.

    Two months ago was the day he turned sixteen. The day he came of age.

    That was when the War Office's pension officer showed up right on schedule for his follow-up visit, announced that he was officially an adult, and — under some so-called new policy — forcibly cut off the survivors' pension that was supposed to run until he turned twenty-two.

    A rare afternoon in this city: no waste-gas clouds, no dust haze, just clear, warm, brilliant sunshine. And inside the four walls of their little home, it was colder than a midwinter ice field.

    When the War Office, scrambling to balance its blown budget, decided to plug the hole with military funds by seizing the survivors' pensions, that one cold decree shoved a household that had been barely holding together straight to the edge of the cliff...

    The memory finished playing. Cassius bit down on his back teeth, silent, the knuckles of both hands gone white.

    Right. A quarter of the pension money was gone, but the household's spending had barely dropped these two months — the food on the table had even managed to stay about the same... God. How did I only see it NOW?

    "Cass."

    Watching her brother sit there, head bowed, saying nothing, the girl on the cot — thinner-looking by the day — went quiet a while. Then she turned her face slightly away and murmured, in a voice so light it might have scattered on the wind:

    "Maybe... you should just stop worrying about me?"

    Cassius's whole body jerked. His head snapped up, bloodshot eyes blazing, and he roared:

    "You're talking nons—"

    "Cass!"

    She forced her volume up — and the effort tore a violent coughing fit out of her. Grabbing his clenched, vein-roped right hand, the thin girl fought to even out her bellows of a breath, then pleaded as gently as she could manage:

    "I've done the math, carefully, these two months. Even with my pension gone when I die, if you don't have to buy my medicine, the two little ones' pensions plus some day-labor will stretch far enough to carry them both to adulthood.

    "And — my registered age is a year under my real one. So after I get sick... after I'm gone, you just avoid the patrols, sneak out at night, put me in the Stirling's waste channel outside the walls, hang my old dresses on the rack at home so it looks like I'm still around, and we keep drawing the War Office pension for two more years.

    "Cass, listen to me. I've already gone around and asked the families in Slow Fuse Lane. They're all willing to help cover for us. As long as they back you up, the War Office's pension officer will never— Cass? Cass! Where are you going?"

    To kill somebody. I'm going to kill somebody!

    Even as Mira's plan registered, a horrifying realization washed over Cassius, shaking him to the bone: for one instant — one single instant — some part of him had actually agreed with her. Three years in this world, and he'd started getting USED to it!

    As if a second Cassius — numb and frozen cold — were sprinting at his heels, trying to swallow the barely-still-warm one whole, he broke into a dead run without meaning to, scalding blood flooding his head in a single pulse.

    He bowled over a medicine cart on his way out, bent down mid-stride to snatch a blood-smeared scalpel off it, and lurched out of the hospital, tearing toward the Department of Roads three streets away!

    If it wasn't for those bastards at the Department of Roads rubber-stamping an alchemy plant right next to a residential block, Mira never would've breathed the leaked waste gas and gotten sick!

    If they hadn't been in bed with the plant — thick as thieves — and signed off on that "no contamination occurred" report, there'd have been compensation, and money to treat her!

    If the War Office hadn't stolen what was theirs, the double survivors' pension their machinist parents had left behind would've been more than enough to raise all three of his siblings to adulthood!

    And one more thing! If this godforsaken world weren't rotten to the bone, I wouldn't be down here clawing for my life — a man ought to at least get to LIVE like one!

    ...

    Scalpel clenched in his fist, blood pounding in his skull, Cassius tore through three streets and reached the Department of Roads in the blood-red sunset — the same plaza where yesterday he'd stood in line, livestock at auction.

    The kingdom's official end of shift was still an hour out, but the department's clerks were already streaming out of the brightly lit building, laughing and chatting as they passed the ragged figure of Cassius.

    "Mr. Gilbert's troupe comes to Smoke City next week — his breakout opera, at the Cross Concert Hall. You in?"

    "I'm not cultured like you. A circus, maybe. Opera? Pass. Wait, why are you asking me? Where's your wife?"

    "Her? She loves opera, sure. She loves pretty handbags and shoes more. And the department-store sales that day."

    "That explains it. Ha! Well — good luck to your wallet."

    Opera. Circuses. Handbags. Department stores... If I didn't hear them talking, I'd almost forget — this isn't a world of bare poverty. Not everyone is drowning.

    Listening to the well-dressed clerks laugh their way past, Cassius slowly lifted his head, two bloodshot eyes fixing dead on the brightly lit building in front of him.

    Mira was right. Letting her sickness drag the whole family down was the losing move; the correct play was to give up on treatment, watch her die, dump the body in that sewer river full of filth and slop, then "scam" two more years of War Office pension and raise the two little ones. But...

    I'm sorry. I really can't do it anymore...

    Three years of leaving before dawn and coming home after dark, only to watch life not get better but slide toward the abyss — Cassius pressed his cracked, bleeding lips together tight, tasted the salty iron rust in his mouth, and strode toward the Department of Roads building.

    Shift change at the Department of Roads — the easiest time to slip inside. First stop: second floor, the son of a bitch who rubber-stamped the alchemical reagent plant. One cut, straight through that grease-packed belly.

    Then up to the fourth floor in the chaos — the scumbag who falsified the plant's report, the reason the family never saw a copper of compensation, the reason there was no money for Mira's treatment. Take him down with him! Let these damned—

    *Thump.*

    "You blind? Watch where you're going?"

    One glance at the skinny young man he'd knocked flat, and the heavyset man rounding the corner frowned, brushed the dust off his coat-front with obvious disgust, bit into the cheese-loaded burger in his hand, and strode around the fallen Cassius without another look.

    Climbing back up, half-dazed, Cassius squinted at that somehow-familiar retreating figure and went still.

    That was yesterday's fat bastard. The one "picking livestock."

    Staring after the brutish man — that greasy, hateful fat face tearing huge bites out of a double-decker burger — Cassius felt his brain buzz and white out.

    As if something inexplicable had taken the wheel, the rage about to blow the top of his skull off finally found its perfect outlet. It dyed his bloodshot eyes scarlet and drove his legs after the man, scalpel clenched and cold in his fist, stumbling as he ran.

    If he'd passed me yesterday, maybe I wouldn't be this desperate now! If he'd passed me yesterday, maybe I could still have saved Mira! If he'd passed me yesterday—

    "Daddy"

    Just as Cassius closed the distance, just as he was about to do something, a bright little voice piped up beside his ear.

    At that call — clear as a wind chime — the arrogance and coldness smeared across the fat face ahead melted instantly, the tiredness wiped clean away.

    The man sucked in his bulging belly, squatted down with some effort, and spread his arms wide, grinning, for the little girl sprinting toward him.

    "..."

    Watching the girl run past him laughing — diving into the man's arms like a fledgling to the nest — Cassius slowed, then stopped. A little lost, he turned his head, and there, a short way back, a plump middle-aged woman stood gazing this way, her smile gentle and soft.

    Even in a garbage dump of a world like this one, the look in that woman's eyes as she watched father and daughter still brimmed with a happiness you couldn't help envy... and it was exactly, exactly the smile Mira had worn at dinner last night.

    "..."

    "Dammit."

    He didn't know what he was cursing. The words just mumbled out of him, and his right hand went slack. The bloodstained scalpel clattered to the flagstones — loud enough that the fat official's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

    He ignored the sickeningly happy family of three entirely, spat once more at the polished flagstones underfoot, and, calm again, Cassius turned away, walking his signature heavy-footed walk toward the Oddity Cleanup Bureau sitting in the shadows.

    Cutting down his enemy and dying for it would've been satisfying as hell. But sometimes, no matter how bad a man wants to die, he's got to stay alive and make it count... at the very least, go out for something worth more.

    Standing before the Oddity Cleanup Bureau's black, heavy front door, Cassius was silent a moment. Then he reached out, gripped the brass handle polished shiny by a thousand hands, and shoved it open.

    He remembered what the red-haired interviewer had said at this hour yesterday: the Oddity Cleanup Bureau sits outside the Police Department's official roster. And by the rules of that kind of field service, if he died in the line of duty, the family would be left a fat survivors' pension.

    So if fate insisted that one of the four of them had to die first, so the other three could cry their way onward... then let it be me!