Max Collins - Skin Game

That had really got Bobby to thinking.

The first thing he did was stop drinking. For this plan to work, he needed to focus, to be strong. From now on the targets would have to be men who were larger than him — he’d learned that much from the first job.

A medium-sized guy couldn’t wear a small-size T-shirt, right? Same principle. And he would have to work quickly, which with his transgenic abilities would be no problem.

When he started thinking of how to find bigger men, Bobby remembered that the Manticore guards were all bigger than him — that’s why they’d had such an easy time of it picking on him.

Now, though — getting off the heavy dosage of Tryptophan on the weekend and letting Kelpy come out to shop — Bobby started thinking that he should be hunting men in uniform.

After everything the men like that had done to him at Manticore, they owed him...

... and, he knew just how to collect.

Empty of vehicles, the lower floor of the parking ramp — the building where the siege had begun — swelled with the ragtag citizens of Terminal City.

Except for the handful on guard duty, the entire outlandish contingent of transgenics showed up for the town-hall-style meeting Max had called. Though the sun was rising, the parking garage remained mostly dark and still rather cold. May in Seattle — especially this close to the water — was rarely warm. Though the morning chill had no particular effect on the transgenics, on the other side of the fence the cops were certainly huddled in their cars sipping coffee and slugging doughnuts.

With Joshua, Alec, Mole, Dix, and Luke in her wake, Max swept into the middle of the crowd, and the din of conversation died away. Dressed in her customary black, Max stood out from the disheveled if distinctive mess that was the throng. Most had shown up here with little more than shabby, scavenged clothes on their backs, and living in the hovels of Terminal City did little to improve their appearance.

They may have resembled a Halloween ball for the homeless, but their Manticore-bred military discipline still held and, to Max, they looked wonderful. The community was coming together, the rivalries and prejudices of the varying transgenics types — from ND X-Series, “beautiful” people like Max and Alec, to the ND Transhumans like Dix (a Nomlie), Mole (a second-generation model DAC), and Luke (a Mule) — forgotten, or at least put aside for the greater good. The unique populace of Terminal City did not want to spend their lives in a toxic ghost town any more than they wanted to spend them running; but this biohazard village was starting to look like a suitable alternative, at least for the short run.

Jumping onto a box so she could be seen as well as heard, Max called out, “I’m proud of all of you — we’ve taken a stand. We’ve shown we can live and work together, and that provides hope for the future — if we can get along with each other, winning over the ordinaries oughta be no big trick.”

Her good-natured sarcasm went over well, grins flashing all around in every unusual face.

“But it’s time for a reality check — time to stop patting ourselves on the back, and start dealing with the hand we been dealt, here.”

The crowd stayed riveted on her every word.

“First, although we still have running water, it probably won’t be long before they cut it off. We can smuggle in bottled water, but that’s not going to serve the needs of a community this size. Ideas?”

Lightbulb-domed Luke stepped out of the crowd. “When we moved in here, we built our own generator. We’re close enough to Lake Washington that we can build our own water system too.”

With a quick nod, Max said, “Good — how close are you to completion?”

Luke frowned. “Well... we started on design when we moved in, but—” He shrugged. “—execution could take weeks.”

Gazing out into the crowd, Max asked, “Any of you X2s and X3s got any engineering and construction skills we can tap into?”

A dozen or so hands were raised.

“Can you guys get with Luke and pitch in with the water problem?”

Some nodded, and started shuffling through the crowd toward Luke, to fall in alongside him.

Somewhere in the middle a voice shouted, “What about the cops? What about the soldiers?”

Voices erupted throughout the assembly, echoing off the cement walls of the parking ramp:

“We should attack!”

“We should go to ground!”

“Wait for them to come in — and slaughter their asses!”

The cries came fast and loud, and Max let them get it out of their systems for a while; then, finally, she raised her hands for silence.

“If we fight with these armies of the ordinaries,” she said, “we will never win them over.”

Someone cried, “Who cares?” Then followed shouts of “Fight!” and “Kill ’em!” For several frightening moments it looked as though the tightly packed throng of transgenics might turn into an angry mob.

Max held up her hands for silence again, and reluctantly the crowd quieted. Now, she had to shout to be heard over the rumblings of the crush of people. “This is exactly why they want to sweep us under the rug.”

The grumbling subsided slightly.

“They think we are animals — monsters trained to kill. That all we want to do is kill. Is that true?”

The garage went tomblike silent now.

“Don’t you have dreams? Desires? Am I the only one who wants a normal life?”

Heads started to nod in the crowd, accompanied by a murmuring of assent.

“What happens here... what happens now... is up to us. If we want to be a part of this society—”

“Why would we want to be part of that?” a voice yelled.

“Because that’s the only real option,” Max said. “We are soldiers, and we are special people, more special than those we call ordinary... but we are as small in number as our hearts are large. We are barely a city — not enough of us to form our own outcast nation.”

The truth of that hung over the chamber, an awful cloud portending an inevitable storm.

“Like it or not, we are part of this land... a land that pretends, anyway, to be a haven for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse... That’s from a song they used to sing in America. Admittedly, you don’t hear it much anymore; but those are the kind of words — words of freedom — that this country was built on.”

Faces frowned in thought as emotion fought reason in these outcasts.

“You don’t want to be part of that society out there, because the people are hateful... because they’re afraid of us, and want to kill us without even knowing us...”

Voices called out, “That’s right,” and other cries of agreement with this all too obvious notion.

Max continued, her tone doggedly rational. “Well, the only way they’re going to get to know us, out there, is if we give them the chance.”

Again the crowd quieted.

“And the only way for them to not be afraid of us is to get to understand us. That we are people, with hopes and dreams and families.”

Heads again began to nod.

Max wheeled as she spoke, connecting with them all. “The only way to get the ordinaries to stop hating is to educate them in our shared humanity... but they think we only want to kill. Is that true? Are we bloodthirsty monsters?”

Someone yelled, “No,” but the one voice seemed very small in the parking ramp.

Max’s face tightened with determination, and she racheted up the volume: “I said... is that true? ”

This time about half the crowd shouted, “No!” and “Hell, no!”