Page 3 of Ruined Omega

“Anyway, if you ask me,” he says with an almost theatrical finality, his rubbery upper lip gleaming with perspiration, “I say we ought to drop a nuke on that godforsaken shit hole. Hell, drop fifty nukes! Just level the whole God damned Quarantine Zone and be done with it.”

“But what about the people who live there?” I ask.

“The Alphas?” Martin snorts. “They’re not people, sweetheart. They’re animals. Dirty, filthy fucking animals.”

To punctuate this profound assertion, Martin slouches back in his chair and eases a deep belch out of his bulbous throat.

Yuck.

I don’t know what disgusts me more, Martin’s table manners or his opinions about the Quarantine Zone. Actually, that’s not true. The latter bothers me more. Way more.

I’ve got friends living in the Zone. And they’re not “animals” as he says. They’re human beings. But of course, I can’t say any of that out loud. Martin doesn’t know the details of my recent past, and I want to keep it that way.

I force myself to take a deep breath and another sip of wine.

Silently, I make an agreement with myself. Later, when Martin inevitably offers to drive me home, as I’m certain he will, I’ll just politely decline, take the late train back to my sector of the city hive, and that will be that.

Even just making that small, silent decision feels good.

***

But somehow, less than an hour later, I find myself riding across town in Martin’s hulking, luxury SUV. The rich leather upholstery creaks as I shift my butt uncomfortably in my seat. The cold air conditioning ghosts over the bare skin of my chest, arms, and legs, reminding me of how exposed I am in this stupid dress.

Outside, it’s starting to rain. A few sparse drops pitter on the windshield.

I’m not sure exactly how this happened. Part of it is that Martin defied my expectations. Instead of politely offering to drive me back to my place, Martin brusquely insisted. And me being the wimpy little pushover that I am, all of my fake decisiveness went out the window, and I gave in, as I always do.

But Martin’s insistence wasn’t the only factor, if I’m going to be completely honest.

There was also the thought of the seven long blocks from the train station to my loft, which is situated in a bad neighborhood. There are a lot of broken streetlights that haven’t been fixed, a lot of dark alleys, a lot of places for a stalker to hide and ambush me on my way home.

There I go again, getting all paranoid.

“I can’t believe you gave that dirty bum your food,” Martin grumbles as he steers through traffic.

He’s talking about a few minutes ago, when we exited the restaurant. There was a homeless woman outside on the street begging for spare credits. Martin practically flew into a rage at the woman, threatening to call the police, saying that she was accosting us, accusing her of being a nihiloxin user.

But I wasn’t so sure. The woman didn’t have the appearance of a nihiloxin addict. The obvious signs—pale skin, dark circles around sunken eyes—were all missing. And besides that, her face seemed oddly familiar.

There are many more homeless on the streets these days. It’s because of the collapse of SynerGen.

Yes, SynerGen was a corrupt corporation run by evil individuals, but it was also a big company that employed good people too—people who had no idea of what was really going on behind closed doors. Those people lost their jobs too, and because of the stigma associated with SynerGen, many of them are still struggling to find new employment.

Was that why that woman’s face looked vaguely familiar?

Was she someone who used to work at SynerGen?

In that moment, I experienced two strong emotions: The first was a sense of sympathy for the woman. I couldn’t help thinking that could just as easily be me. The only thing keeping me going these six months has been my savings, and those are running out.

The other emotion I felt was a sharp pang of guilt. If my suspicions about her were correct, my actions as a whistleblower had ruined this woman’s life and put her on the street.

Giving her my half-eaten to-go box of pasta and shrimp was hardly a repayment.

“That damn spaghetti cost me eighty-seven credits,” Martin mutters, shaking his head. “Besides, what was that filthy bottom-feeder doing in the upper tiers of the city anyway? It’s illegal for bums to be up there, and for good reason.”

I roll my eyes silently and look out at the increasing drizzle.

The city hive is actually more like five or six cities, each one built on top of the others. The highest tiers are where the wealthiest live. The streets are kept clean, there are a few trees lining the sidewalks, and you can even see patches of sky between the towering skyscrapers—not that the sky is much to see, just a brown haze of smog.