Episode 8: The Redline

(Opens with the sound of a village, shouts, haggling, rain, animals, walking, Rew Widows voice comes over the top)

Red Widow: (Echoey) Lillon 51 H. A dwarf moon at the edge of the galaxy. A once penal colony, left lightyears behind, a tech desert and mountainous, inhospitable pit of sqaulor.

Tread with care and make none of your updgrades or biomods known. Heavens grace, one of your pinky fingers sold to the right Flesh Wolf could buy a person a home there. An arm, a leg? Well now we're talking about being set for life. Oh, and once youre there, don't think about running. We will find you. . .

(Door opens and:

Guide: In with ya.

Sound of Kal going in, the door closing behind him and locking. They move about the room.

Guide: This way. Its a crime, punishable by death to go into the DMZ. Not that anyone survives it (laughs). Turn around. (Sound of Kal turning). And cover the eyes—

Kal: Is this really necessary—

Guide: Double yes. Both hands!

Kal: (Sigh, sfx of covering) There.

Guide: Mhmm (Drawer opens, paper rummage, switch fliped, noise of door unlocking, walking, opening, and fading foot steps, calls froma distance) Hey hey this way.

Kal walks a bit. . .

Kal: (trips) Ah! Shit, bro! I can't see anything worth a luum.

Guide: Blind-blind (sighs) Take my hand, this way. . . Hope you can handle this—

Red Widow: Fourteen days in the tank (fluid starts to fill the tank) water carries memories, information. Everything you need to know when it comes to survival will be saturted into your cells, into your nueral networks, you might feel a sense of claustophobia (water makes her words faint) Be assured. It will fade-fade.

---Return to present- something opens and the wind and rain howls within.---

Guide: Used to be a smugglers tunnel during the war. Looks like a rock from the outside. Peices a eight to be made when men are fighting and dont have coffee, cigs or whatever. Here.

The compass and map he hands me feel foriegn in my hand. True plastic and paper. No lights or beeps from this old world tech. The exact type of equipment the drones patrolling the DMZ cannot sense. Pocketing them, I touch the gun hidden at my waist. Its lighter and more compact then I would have imagined but no less deadly. Each laser round encaspulating a bacteria that gobbles metal in minutes. Useless against organics but perfect against machines—though I supposed it had enough heft to be used asa bludgeon.

"Now look here," my guide says, pointing to a steep ravine leading into the gully below. "There is a series if yellow plastapaint below. When you get back make sure you pass through the "X." Then I will know to open the way for you. Make sense-sense?"

I nod, my breath a steaming fog of vapor in the cool night air. The guide looks like most his kind from this Lillon 51-H. Pale and hairless, with spiraling tattoos twisting and shimmering along his scalp. His lips stand out, pink, and bulging like the lips of a puffer fish. He smiles, revealing faintly present scales along the flexion of his neck. I shudder. Eager to finish the job. To finally be free.

"One more thing," the Guide says as I take my first step into the unknown. "If I were you I wouldn't come back if you can't do the job. Far better-better to die out there than with his Eminence." I say nothing. What is there to say. Trailing into the unknown, into those mountainous slopes, curling with cloud, radiation, and droning Husktakers, I prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I faintly hear the Guides cackle on the wind, "Welcome to Redline he laughs, the tunnel shutting behind me.

Emog: (Echoey) One last thing Kal. There might be a girl. In a hybechamber. Asleep. If her vitals are good, I'd very much like her back. You will be outfitted with a tranq to keep her under-under. Now this makes no difference on our agreement. You get my drugs back and your freedom is all yours, no one, and I mean no one will know you from an Organic. But! Bring this girl back and I promise you will have nothing but a life of ease for the rest of your days.

Kal: I'll try. Whats her deal?

Emog: Nothing yet. A hopeful expiremnt if you will.

(Return to present- hicking in the wilderness)

Nothing yet. But a hope for my freedom.