Church drove the big dark Augustus through the late afternoon pouring rain, what little sun there was left reduced the landscape to dark greys splattered with the multicoloured neon of advertisments. Serravalen was busing herself in the backseat combing her wet shoulder length hair so that it was flat against her skull, apathetic to the radio calls of a bombing in Downtown and news flashes on the plasma screen TV mounted in the front dash.
Their silent partner dialed up a dose of drugs in an air hypo, stripped off an arm of his plain black deathsuit and injected them into his vein before leaning morosely against the passenger side window.
"So its come down to chronic drug abuse too?" Serravalen chirped from the back seat in a relatively smug tone. "Its White Noise. Ive been on it for 3 years", Sandy growled back not bothering to raise his head. There was an uncomfortable silence from the 3 ebb users as they recognised what the chemicals blocked out.
"It dosent work anymore", Sandy mumbled watching the people in the street shuffling along in the rain as they whisked past.
Red raincoat, yellow raincoat, grey raincoat.
Blue umberella, black umberella, white umberella.
Boy, Girl, Stormer, ebon
His mental conditioning enabled him to memorise them all in all their combinations and even some of the sex, eye, hair colour and make a statistical combination of what people wore on the street. It was a more or less useless skill for most people but it was all up there floating around, even if he couldnt remember it all Church could extract it and burn it onto a disk so it could be watched like a movie. Lately the White Noise blocked her efforts to do these ebb tricks so he was running on goodwill and trust.
Red Raincoat, grey raincoat, yellow raincoat, dark blue raincoat
Blue umberella, white umberella, black umbrella, no umberella
Boy, girl, shaktar, ebon boy
By the third block he did the calculation and realised that there was an ebon boy with no umberella and a blue raincoat on every street intersection far too frequently. That didnt match up considering they where 1% of the population at most and at least one of them would have walked outside with an umberella in the eternal rain. Ebons where weird but they werent that weird.
He waited until the next intersection and sure enough there was an male ebon with no umberella and a blue raincoat, smiling at him as the Augustus blasted past. Sandy closed his eyes and didnt look out the window, death count from a fire in downtown was climbing up to the 1500 mark with at least 4000 that would be homeless as a result of the fire. Footage on TV showed SLA fire trucks surrounding the building and pouring thousands of litres of water every minute into a 56 story tenement block. Some of the inhabitants choosing to leap and take their chances with gravity rather than be incinerated alive. The Shivers and fire crews began to clear away the onlookers as the 'meat bombs' as they where called by the press, began impacting at terminal velocity on the road.
The Augustus pulled up at a red light just in time to see live footage of a Thirdeye reporter get blown clean off the top of a press van he was standing on as a human being from above landed on it and turned into a pinkish, grey mist. In disgust Church flicked the channel, the next one was weird furry animals doing what weird furry animals do in the jungle until joined by a man in a zip up rubber suit and a cattle prod, "oh for the love of...", Church flicked the channel to the 5pm shares report.
Serravalen leaned over the backseat to try to change the channel to the news and received a slap on the wrist from Church, "my car, we watch shares" this went on until they where reduced to giggle fits as Serravalen tried to change the channel repeatedly, waking Sandy up in the process.
The Ebon boy leered at him from the sidewalk, sharp dentures lined the inside of a mouth that was far to big for his face. Sandy exploded in a fit of activity in the front seat, dragging Serravalen halfway over the front seat. Tearing her blouse, elbowing her in the eye and stealing her gun which elicited a girlish scream of pain that froze Church with fear.
The 17mm Longslide's report filled the street with screams as the 2 foot muzzle flash illuminated the street like a dancefloor strobe. Five shots later the chamber closed with and audible click in the near silent street, pedestrians scrambled for cover as parts of a black granite fascia rained down from the dinner plate sized impacts left in it by the HEAP rounds.
Church could only wonder why nobody got shot, watching Sandy stand there in the pouring rain outside the shot up Dept of Mobile Artillery with an empty gun. Later she would ponder the irony of such a scene but for now she was trying to wrestle Serravalen as she screamed, cursed and hauled out a 12.7mm derringer and was trying to aim at Sandy.
"Fucker hit me!"
"Shuttup and put that away, Sandy get in the damn car!"
"Fucker hit me!"
"Sandy get in the car! Now!"
Sirens could be heard comming closer and an ebb communication message ripped through Sandy's mind to turn around and get in the car. He looked at the spot where the ebon had been standing and saw only holes, turned around and despondantly climbed back in the car. By this stage Serravalen was reduced to tears in the back seat and Church drove off in a hurry skidding the tires across the slippery road. Two minutes later Church pulled the car over to see what was wrong with Serravalen, she wasnt normally that quiet or maybe she was scared so Church turned on the interior lights. Something had ripped open her lower throat hitting an artery, tearing the skin and deathsuit underneath, clean as 4 razors had cut through cheesecloth. It was so sharp and clean Serravalen hadnt even noticed and was more concearned with her bruised eye she couldnt see through and was quietly bleeding out in the back seat. Without saying a word Church climbed in the back seat with an ebb medkit and began to fix the wounds so Serravalen wouldnt bleed to death as she sat in a pool of her own blood too weak to help herself.
"Hell, why did you cut her?"
Sandy hadnt even noticed the ebb razor claws he'd spawned until he looked down at his own right fist covered in blood, "I, I didnt mean, I didnt do that!"
"She will live, just needs rest", Church closed off the wounds and healed most of the damage except for the blood loss while Sandy still couldnt conceive how he'd grown the claws and nearly killed the woman. "Im sorry can I go home now".
The ebon nodded, he saw the fear in her eyes as she drove him in silence to his apartment block, dropped him off. "call me if you need me".
It was surprisingly charitable of her considering all he'd done to ruin their day, "happy new years."
"yes, say hello to you husband for me, sorry for everything"
Church managed a weak smile and drove off home leaving him at the side of the road near his apartment block. As the lights disappeared into the mist the small figure in the blue raincoat laughed silently with a big grin on its face before waltzing around the corner.
"Happy 691SD you little prick," he stumbled in out of the freezing rain to his apartment, it was time for a drink.