Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

I headed out to the street to try and get a sense of what happened.

As soon as I stepped outside, I saw two men dash out of Ray’Ziel’s building and go running down the street. I hesitated for a moment, as there was no way anyone should be standing, let alone sprinting, after being inside that blast zone. I was a dense mutant clear across the street and my head got rung so hard I would have a tough time counting backwards from three.

But I took off after them.

As a person, I was not cut out for dancing. Or higher mathematics. Or appreciating minimalist artwork—really, where’s the rest of it?

Or running.

The running part was obvious now, because these guys were fast, and I was not. They were tremendously fast considering they should by all rights be dead. If this was part of their daily exercise routine, I’m not sure I wanted to catch up to them.

They were about two blocks ahead of me and pulling away with each wheezy breath I took. They were too far away for me to use my gun, especially considering I hadn’t brought it with me.

They took a turn down an alley and I knew I had them. It was a dead end, due to Belvaille’s constantly shifting landscape. Nobles were always knocking down buildings and putting up new ones that were 95% the same as what they had just removed.

My big concern was what I would do to these guys when I reached them. I certainly wouldn’t challenge them to a race. My lungs were burning and my knees and feet ached. Because of my mutation, I didn’t usually worry about getting into fights. I could scrap my way out of most jams. I just couldn’t jog my way out of them.

In the alley I saw they had slowed down ahead of me and were looking for ways out. At the very least that told me they didn’t know this city. Or at least didn’t know it like I did.

They were about a block ahead now and I slowed down as well, mostly to recuperate and organize my thoughts. I didn’t want to come up on them sweating buckets and too winded to speak. I wouldn’t look like a very challenging opponent.

Not that I knew these guys were violent. Maybe they just happened to be there when a bomb went off. Happened to survive. Happened to think it was a great time to go for a run.

I mean, it didn’t seem especially likely, but I suppose it was possible.

The guys were big. Very big. I’d say about my size. I was a large person. Taller than average. I also weighed thousands of pounds because of my mutation. I didn’t look anywhere near that heavy—except when I was running. I was strong, but decidedly underpowered compared to my frame. Mutations weren’t universally good things.

The men’s clothes were wrecked. Scorched, torn, and blown away. So that told me they were in the explosion itself. Or maybe they ran so damn fast the wind burnt off their clothes. They were rugged guys, muscular in face and body, and looked similar to one another in appearance. As if they were brothers a few years apart. Neither of them had any hair. Their heads were completely bald. I wasn’t sure if it was genetics or because they shaved them to gain aerodynamics.

“So…” I began, as I got close enough for them to hear.

They turned to look at me briefly. Each then took a couple steps and jumped.

Up.

The alley was an alley because it was blocked on two sides by buildings and on the fourth side by a sheer steel wall about twenty feet in height. They hopped over that wall like they were walking up a stair.

They hadn’t even squatted down much or flung their arms or got a big running start. No, just, boop, over the wall. I stared up at it, dumbfounded. There were no wires or ropes or footholds or springboards. They had leapt over it without effort and with room to spare.

These guys were the greatest extreme athletes in the galaxy or something weird was going on.

As I was feeling around the wall looking for some trick and wondering if the blast had knocked my eyeballs loose, Garm came into the alley behind me.

“What did you do?” she accused.

I thought she was referring to my sweatiness and the fact I was out of breath.

“Nothing, I was chasing some guys.”

Garm was the former Adjunct Overwatch of Belvaille long ago. She had been involved in all kinds of crime while simultaneously being our liaison with the Colmarian Navy. Then she was a labor organizer. Now she had returned to her roots and was the leader of Belvaille’s elite Quadrad assassins.

Quadrad were born to be assassins. Trained from birth. There had been a whole planet of them at one time, but it was gone, obliterated in the civil war. Now all the remaining Quadrad seemed to have congregated here on Belvaille.

Under Garm’s leadership.

Garm was a looker. All muscle, short-cropped black hair. She had a mutation where she didn’t have to sleep. It left her constantly jittery, which was misleading, because she was a mountain of control.

I had dated her for a while as well. Before she had been put into suspended animation for a half-century.

“Did you murder the City Councilman?” she yelled.

“Me? No, I was working.”

“Working? Working on what?”

“Wait, what are you doing here?” I asked.

It struck me as incredibly convenient that the Quadrad chief happened to be hanging around when the biggest assassination in Belvaille’s history had taken place. That was assuming Ray’Ziel was truly dead, which wasn’t much of an assumption.

She recoiled and quickly recovered her composure.

“Nothing. But tell me honestly, did you kill Ray’Ziel?” she asked.

“Nothing? You were just waiting by this alley when you saw me run in? And just guessed that a City Councilman might have been killed?” I accused back.

What was her angle? Garm and I had very different motivations, especially in recent years. I was never fond of assassinations and whatever else she did. She was never fond of poverty and whatever else I did.

We heard the sirens of the District’s security forces.

“I won’t say a word if you don’t,” she bargained.

“Why should I protect you?” I asked her.

“I’m trying to protect you . You were caught leaving the scene!”

“Caught by you? Who is going to believe what you say? You’re a Quadrad.”

“And you’re a fat mutant thug with like a four-hundred-year history of doing stuff like this,” she said rather unkindly.

“I was following those two guys.”

“What guys?”

“They jumped over this wall.”

Garm looked up at it, then at me.

“That’s your alibi? You better come up with something better than that.”

“I don’t need an alibi!” I said.

The sirens were getting closer.

“You don’t have to convince me. Look, we shouldn’t be seen together. Take my advice and keep your mouth shut.”

She ran off, leaving me more confused than ever.

“Yeah, well, maybe I won’t!” Was all I could come up with.

I headed back to my place trying to figure out what just happened.

Should I call his wife, Malla?

Did I complete the job? Was that what she meant by report anything dangerous? What was Garm doing there?

And who were those wall jumpers? Even if they had placed the bomb, it seemed a pretty bad idea to want to be in the same building when it went off. Even if they could survive it, which was miraculous, they would have to leave the area. Why not just put it there ahead of time?

There were a lot of unusual beings in the galaxy. The old Colmarian Confederation had like 50,000 distinct species. Yet I didn’t know of any that could handle what those guys did.