Submissions sought. Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling.
Donald Maass,, literary agent and author of many books on writing, says, “Independent editor Ray Rhamey’s first-page checklist is an excellent yardstick for measuring what makes openings interesting.”
A First-page Checklist (PDF here)
- It begins to engage the reader with the character
- Something is wrong/goes wrong or challenges the character
- The character desires something.
- The character takes action. Can be internal or external action: thoughts, deeds, emotions. This does NOT include musing about whatever.
- There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
- It happens in the NOW of the story.
- Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- The one thing it must do: raise a story question.
A reminder of what you’re after here. This blog is about crafting compelling openings. Not interesting, compelling. Why does it have to meet that hurdle? First, if your work is going to an agent, you’re competing with hundreds of submissions. You have to cut through that clutter and competition with powerful storytelling and strong writing. If it’s a reader browsing in a bookstore or online, the same goes—there are scores of published books competing with yours. Yeah, you need compelling.
Sara sent the first pages of Rebel Rise, a climate dystopian story. Then she rewrote the opening page and sent that. To my mind, each of the versions has strengths, and the best one incorporates narrative from both. The rest of the chapter from the rewritten version is after the break. Remember to focus on writing craft regardless of genre. This might not be a genre for you, but you can surely judge the strengths of the opening page.
A poll follows all three versions.
Version 1 (the rewrite>
It’s fitting my story starts with blood since that is how it will end.
In the beginning, I was driving a rusted shovel into hardened desert clay by the light of a waxing moon. A crimson crust of dried blood covered my hands and arms. With each movement, that crust cracked, filling the air with the scent of iron. I took comfort in that smell, despite everything. It wasn’t the first time I’d been covered in my sister’s blood. But it would be the last. All I had left of her now were memories forever tinted red.
When the hole was deep enough, I crawled onto the sand and stepped around the stones that marked the graves of the other siblings I’d lost. At the edge of our familial graveyard was an old cart; inside, was my sister, Amice. She was wrapped in the threadbare polyester blanket I’d used as a child and she’d used most of her life. Fatigued muscles and hushed sobs had me shaking as I picked her up and lowered her into the inky blackness of the hole. I considered throwing myself in on top of her. I’d considered the same thing after digging my first grave a decade ago. And every time since. How easy things would be under four feet of suffocating sand. If it weren’t for Maureen, the last of my family, I might have done it. Maybe once I dug her grave, I’d finally give in to that desire.
The pale light of dawn rose over the eastern edge of the valley wall that surrounded me and set my aching body in motion. If I didn’t get back before my shift started, I’d be digging that (snip)
Version 2 (The first submission)
It’s fitting this story starts with blood since that is how it ends.
The blood that covers me now is hot and wet. Back in the beginning, it was dry. Suffocating. The parched desert air had sucked the moisture from it, leaving behind a crimson crust that cracked each time I drove the shovel into the earth. When I wiped the tears blurring my eyes, the blood on my hands would run again, filling the air with the scent of iron. I took comfort in that smell, despite everything. It wasn’t the first time I had been covered in her blood. But it would be the last.
All I had left of my sister were memories forever tinted red.
I drove the shovel into the hardened clay by dim lamplight. Night made darker by a blanket of smog cast the surroundings in shadow. Yellow lights of the Vinnsburg township reflected off that haze to the west but did nothing to illuminate the desolate valley I was in. My muscles screamed with the effort, and my throat—as dry as the dunes on the horizon—threatened to close. If I’d remembered to fetch water before bed, I would’ve had something to fill my canteen with. If I could do anything right, I wouldn’t be here at all. I’d be making Amice breakfast back in the hovel instead of relying on my tears to quench my thirst as I dug her grave. It wasn’t the first time caring for her hemophilia had brought me to tears. Maybe there was some solace in this being the last. The thought left me chewing my tongue until the taste of my own (snip)
Version 3, combined versions
The blood that covers me now is hot and wet. Back in the beginning, it was dry. Suffocating. The parched desert air had sucked the moisture from it, leaving behind a crimson crust that cracked each time I drove the shovel into the earth. When I wiped the tears blurring my eyes, the blood on my hands would run again, filling the air with the scent of iron. I took comfort in that smell, despite everything. It wasn’t the first time I had been covered in her blood. But it would be the last.
All I had left of my sister were memories forever tinted red.
When the hole was deep enough, I crawled onto the sand and stepped around the stones that marked the graves of the other siblings I’d lost. At the edge of our familial graveyard was an old cart; inside, was my sister, Amice. She was wrapped in the threadbare polyester blanket I’d used as a child and she’d used most of her life. Fatigued muscles and hushed sobs had me shaking as I picked her up and lowered her into the inky blackness of the hole. I considered throwing myself in on top of her. I’d considered the same thing after digging my first grave a decade ago. And every time since. How easy things would be under four feet of suffocating sand. If it weren’t for Maureen, the last of my family, I might have done it. Maybe once I dug her grave, I’d finally give in to that desire.
The pale light of dawn rose over the eastern edge of the valley wall that surrounded me (snip)
My thoughts
The opening one-sentence paragraph just didn’t work for me. The narrative space can be better used, IMO. The revised version lost the immediacy and sense of being in the experience of the character that the original submission had. I liked the opening of the original submission with sensory details and action that put me right into the story. But the rewrite’s narrative after that point served up necessary setup in a way that still managed to raise story questions.I didn’t deal with line editing of any of the versions, just wanted to get the story off to the best start. Your thoughts?
TweetSubmitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2023 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2023 by Sara.
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Continued:
. . . last grave much sooner than expected. I gripped the shovel with two blistered hands and hurried to fill the hole while chasing away thoughts of how Amice deserved better than a haphazard funeral under the cover of darkness. But in the townships, if you wanted to bury your dead instead of watching them be ruthlessly incinerated in the back of the cremation truck, you had to move fast.
What she really deserved was a better big sister. Someone who could have saved her.
I patted the sand of her grave flat then tossed the shovel into the cart. The sound echoed off the valley walls and sent dark shapes moving against predawn gray—hungry feral dogs drawn in by the scent of blood. Those mutts trailed me as I moved through the dunes toward Vinnsburg. It wasn’t until I descended the hill into the township that they finally gave up the hunt and disappeared back into the desert. The shuffle of bare feet against slick earth and the smell of coal fire met me as I weaved between mud hovels and made my way to the river. An old woman with skin like leather and three malformed fingers on each hand stared at me as I approached the water, once a flowing river, now a series of stagnant puddles. The woman took one look at my bloodied clothes then grabbed her basket of half-soaked laundry and hurried away.
I stepped into the shallows and fell to my knees. Wisps of red curled from my blood-soaked hands like stringy smoke from the factory stacks. I cupped those hands and splashed the fetid liquid over my face. A waterfall of crimson rained down in the golden light and sent the glassy surface rippling. Once it stilled, I was met with a familiar reflection. Wide, blue-green eyes I made a point to avoid stared back at me asking how it was I had lost her. How I had lost them all. I brought my fist down into the water, scrambling my reflection. Before the ripples could settle, I jumped to my feet and hurried for home.
Exhausted souls in dingy jumpsuits pushed past me as I navigated the thin alleys between the hovels. That crowd would be at its thickest in ten minutes time. Despite my rush to join them, I forced myself to stop in front of the corrugated metal sheet that marked the entrance to our humble mud hut and breathed away the last traces of anguish. In Vinnsburg, those who spent too much time mourning the dead were destined to join them.
When I opened the door, Maureen was standing at the thick plastic cook counter separating prickly violet flowers from leathery stems with razor spines.
“It’s done?” she asked, regarding me with the same steady stare that had guided me through the years. Time had adorned the area around those eyes with wrinkles and liver spots, but it had—miraculously—done nothing to dull that resolution.
“It is.” My gaze fell from her eyes to the floor as I stepped into the hovel.
“Sindri, your shoes.”
With a muttered apology, I backed to the doorway and yanked off my muddy boots. As a kid, I’d fantasized that my real mother was alive to raise me. I’d imagine she was warm and lenient. Now that I was an adult who’d helped raised many of my orphaned siblings, I had greater respect for Maureen’s stringency. Caring for the discarded children others deemed unworthy was not a job for the warm and lenient.
With shaky hands, Maureen slid the purple flowers into a ceramic bowl, then limped over to her cot and lowered herself carefully to the threadbare blankets. Her and Amice’s cots and my worn mattress occupied the far end of the room. Opposite them was the kitchen—kiva, extruded-plastic counter, empty basin, and smattering of rusted pans. Between the two was an old table, paled by sunlight and warped by desert air. Most of the chairs that used to surround it were now stacked against the far wall, a coat of dust covering them like a shroud.
I walked to my mattress and pulled my jumpsuit from the pile of clothing next to it. The hardened clay floor between my bed and Amice’s was damp, the scent of soap and blood heavy in the air. “I told you I would clean that up.”
The pool of crimson that had leaked from the tiny cut in my sister’s head had disappeared. Now the only visible evidence of what had happened the night before was the pink stain on my sodden night shirt. I peeled it from my sticky skin and tossed it into the corner.
“Are you going to be all right today?” Maureen’s eyes were pinned to me as she weaved a bundle of phragmite reeds between her hands and stitched them together, her fingers deftly twisting the grass to shape. With enough practice, you didn’t need to look to braid the perfect mortuary wreath.
I exchanged my soaking underwear for a cleaner pair. “I’ll stop by the pawnshop after my shift, see if Vec has any extra work,” I said, instead of answering.
Her hands stilled. “No, you won’t.”
Somewhere in her expression was a clue to her objection, but I couldn’t look her in the face. Not after what had happened. “Amice didn’t bring in a lot with her disability checks, but we won’t be able to afford your treatments without them. We need the extra cash.”
Her fingers, twisted and bulging at the knuckles, carefully pressed each thistle flower into the wreath. “I don’t want you going anywhere near Vec or that shop.”
So, it wasn’t about me taking extra work on top of my fourteen-hour shifts. It was about who the work was for.
“Vec only stole those computers because he needed a way to pay for his brother’s surgery,” I said. “It’s not like he had much of a choice.”
Her stare darted from the purple flowers, landing heavy on me. “You always have a choice.”
“Right, of course.” She had no idea what I’d ended up doing for Vec the last time we needed extra money. I thought I was doing the right thing. Maureen wouldn’t think so. Maybe it was best I stayed away. “I’ll see if I can cover some extra shifts at the plant, then.”
As I pulled on my jumpsuit, that iron smell found my nose again. Somewhere in the mess of oil stains and coal dust that had my white jumper looking more like the perpetual black clouds that hung above town was another splash of Amice’s blood. I couldn’t escape her death any more than I could escape Maureen’s stern gaze.
“You work too hard, Sin.” That gaze softened as it fell to the finished wreath sitting on her lap.
“It’s the only thing I’m good at.” I forced a smile as I pulled at the door latch.
“Wait,” she said, hobbling to her feet. “You need something in your stomach.”
The crowd of laborers outside was getting thicker, but it would take longer to convince Maureen to let me leave without my breakfast than to wait for her to make it.
“I’ll take the wreath to her grave after my shift,” I said, latching the door and settling against it.
She began readying the kettle with the water she’d brought back with the thistles. The purification tablets had transformed the green tint of river scum to an unsettling neon blue. “A trip into the desert isn’t going to kill me.”
I considered the northern wind that’d come in with the first rays of dawn. “Today it might. That storm is finally coming.”
She glanced through the foggy plexiglass window as she filled two cups with dried knapweed and bind root. The kettle was already screaming by the time she acknowledged I might be right about the incoming tempest.
I considered adding that she also needed the rest but chose silence instead. The cancer had reduced her to a shell of the person she once was, but she’d never admit to it, no matter how much it shook her nerves or left her face tensing in pain. I took the tea she offered and sucked it down, ignoring the sting as the bitter water scalded my throat. I needed to get to work. I needed to get out of that hovel before the smell of iron consumed me. Just as I set the empty mug down and turned for the door, a sob seeped into the air behind me.
Maureen was staring into her own steaming cup of bitter tea, her eyes glossy and her breath ragged. “She was the last one.”
Her words were almost inaudible. And yet they cut through me and left me feeling the way I had so often as a child. When her attention would be too preoccupied with one of the other orphans in her care. Or when the table was too full of needy mouths and I, never the neediest, would take my seat on the ground. But that’s not what she meant. I was the last one alive. But Amice was the last baby born. Not just into her care, but in the entire township of Vinnsburg. I had watched Maureen’s will to live wither since the day Amice arrived on our kitchen table covered in vernix and screaming her head off.
Now she was gone and no new babies were coming to take her place.
“I should have doubled her clotting factors,” I said. The words came out with a tremble of emotion I thought I’d buried along with her body. They were met with a suffocating silence. It had been fourteen years since the sound of baby babble had echoed off the cracked walls of our home, but somehow, the absence of those coos had never been so evident. “I heard her hit her head. I was checking her every ten minutes, like I always do when she gets hurt, and then….” The night before was a blur punctuated by exhaustion from a fourteen-hour shift. “I fell asleep. Jesus, how did I let this happen?”
“This isn’t your fault.” Suddenly, Maureen was in front of me, looking as formidable as the woman who had guided my every decision as a child. “The medications don’t always work in people who’ve lived with hemophilia for so long. This wasn’t like Mateo. It wasn’t your fault.”
Those words were meant to soothe. Instead, they cut deeper.
“So, is it like Jemmy, then?” I asked, my tone harsher than I meant.
We all knew whose fault Jemmy’s death was. The only difference between her and Mateo was how old I’d been at the time. No one was cruel enough to blame a seven-year-old.
I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I could have done more for Amice. I should have.
Maureen wrapped her thin hand over my shoulder. “We can’t save them all.”
I glanced around the empty hovel. “We didn’t save any of them.”
Her arm snapped to her chest as her face crumbled. I had dug more graves than any one person should. But Maureen had been burying orphans long before I was old enough to help.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rushing to her side. “I didn’t mean that. You did save them. You gave them a life they never would’ve had. You saved me.” Whether she regretted it or not.
I helped her back to the cot and sat beside her as the crowds outside continued to grow.
She laid a frail hand over mine. “Don’t worry about the extra shifts. You’re right, they’re all gone. And you’ve done all you can for me.”
She was wrong; I could do so much more.
I threw my arms around her and squeezed her against me before pulling back to meet her eyes. “You’re not dying, okay? People with this kind of cancer have been cured.” I rose to my feet and moved for the door without removing my gaze. I hadn’t done enough to save Amice. I wouldn’t make that mistake with Maureen. “You’re not giving up.”
I could save her. I just had to find a way to afford a cure.
I managed to get to the OxyCorp plant just as the shift whistles blew. Now all I had to do was make it through the day without letting the sleepless night or raging sorrow interfere with my performance. I had traded my burgundy coal chuckers’ jumpsuit for a white technicians’ jumper a year earlier. The tech job was easier, but it required a literate employee, which translated to a higher paycheck. Not high enough to purchase the genome therapy I’d need to cure Maureen, but it was start. The bonus my supervisor had promised would get me even closer. But to get it, I’d need to keep all twenty-four laser pods operating simultaneously for the entire shift. Apparently, the OxyCorp CEO flying in required us to double our output, even if it meant putting the entire plant at risk of exploding.
I breathed in the burnt chemical scent of the control room, let the throbbing of the laser pods center me, then set my focus on the hundreds of flashing screens and ticking gauges that made up my workstation. The elaborate control panel occupied the entire lower half of the room. Through the thick windows above it, I could see all twenty-four white domed laser pods that made up my sector. Each of those rounded buildings housed a high-powered laser used to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. At the end of the snaking black tubes that extended from the plant into the desert were beautiful cities with clean air, living trees, and citizens free of black lung and hypoxemia. I had promised Amice we would see them someday. If those islands of paradise weren’t surrounded by scorched earth and desperate souls, I might have taken her before it was too late.
The thought brought tears to my eyes. I wiped them away and concentrated on the receiving metrics for the carbon monoxide tanks. The numbers blurred to gray shapes as more tears pooled. I lifted my head, took a breath, and reminded myself that it was too late to cry for Amice. I forced my eyes shut until the swelling in my sinuses receded. When I opened them again, a familiar face materialized from the blur. A digital frame hung above the door, just as it did in every room of the plant. That perfect, chiseled face had been staring down at me for the better part of my twenty-eight years on earth. He didn’t invent the method for turning CO2 into O2. That had been done long before the Climate Collapse. But Alexander Garrik—who was now the president of the United Nations of America and the CEO of OxyCorp’s parent company, Liberty—had come up with the process for the mass production of oxygen.
His face was plastered across the plant as a reminder that everyone, including us dirty, impoverished proles, could someday come up with a genius invention that would propel us to the top of the world. Of course, Alexander Garrik wasn’t a prole, and he wasn’t exactly poor when the idea found him, but that wasn’t meant to take away from the message.
I had just turned from that gen-E face when my eyes landed on another, but this one wasn’t a photo. He was making his way across the catwalk just outside the bank of windows. Him and two other men were moving toward the helicraft pad on top of the building. My supervisor was leading the pack, his thick hair gelled up into a high wave above his brow and his neatly stitched royal blue polyester suit glowing in the midday sun. The man at the back had a similarly gaudy hairstyle and an obnoxious crimson pinstriped suit. We called them tratts, these traitorous proles who were willing to sell their souls to the elite for a higher paycheck. I understood why they did it. But I couldn’t comprehend how making slightly more money than the rest of us rats instantly turned them into flamboyant pawns with no memory of their roots.
But at that moment, it wasn’t the tratts that drew my attention. It was the man walking between them. His perfect mahogany hair was rolled into fat ringlets that framed his face like a lion’s mane. His suit was deep black and tailored to fit every angle of his formidable frame. His tie, a thin silky fabric that glinted in the sun, perfectly matched his cobalt eyes. The color of those seemingly glowing orbs teetered on the far edge of what nature could create. Like Garrik, every detail of his flawless face and bespoke eyes was as carefully curated as the clothes he wore. It was somehow simultaneously mesmerizing and stomach turning.
Bright eyes. Privs. Petris. I had heard plenty of names for them in my life, but the only term Maureen ever allowed us to use was “gen-E.” I always felt it was much too formal a term for such a mystical thing. Not that we had a lot of opportunities to put the term to use. The elite rarely came around the townships. When they did, they arrived by helicraft and never stayed for more than an hour. I had caught glimpses of them before, I had stared at the photo of Alexander Garrik’s synthetic face plenty, but this was the closest I’d ever been to a gen-E in the flesh. The symmetry of his face. The manufactured perfection of his body. It was fascinating. I wanted to know how it was possible to blue-print a person. I wanted to see the tech that pulled the DNA from an embryo and stitched it back together to create the perfect human specimen.
The three stopped at the bottom of the stairs at the far edge of the bank of windows and turned in my direction. Those striking blue eyes locked on mine and sent me scrambling for anything else to look at. I fell back into my chair and began methodically twisting dials and checking gauges. By the time I looked up again, that gen-E stare was turned to the sky. I followed his gaze to an undulating, black-green mass of clouds coming out of the north. I had been right about the storm after all.
Ten minutes after the helicraft ushered the gen-E away, the first ice boulder crashed to the ground, sending ice shards splintering across the parched clay between laser pods three and four. The hail followed, clattering against the metal roof a story above me and thumping off the blast-proof windows. I welcomed the noise. Scenes from the night before—waking to find Amice on the ground covered in blood, her gray face staring up at me from my lap—had been playing at the back of my mind all day. The thundering hail crowded out those thoughts and helped me focus on keeping the pods’ outputs steady.
I had just settled back into my tasks when a scream broke through the haze of sound outside. Hail chunks the size of river rocks and ice boulders as large as fists pummeled the ground. The wind whipped the smaller pieces, twisting them into a cyclone in the tight space between the L of the building and the closest laser pod. In that tornado of ice and sand, was a sheet of metal, something that had been torn off the roof by the tempest. It slammed against the building and crumbled, sending shrapnel whirling in the wind. A piece of it lodged in the safety glass just feet from where I was standing.
Another scream.
A figure clung to the outside edge of the building in the chaos below. I was halfway down the stairs before I managed a coherent thought. And already out the door and racing through the whipping debris before I considered the recklessness of my actions. I grabbed the wailing man and yanked him to his feet. We stumbled through the battering hail and threw ourselves onto the rubber tiles of the hall as the door slammed shut behind us.
I rolled to my back and yanked a splinter of metal from my calf before sitting up. “You okay?”
The man—just a heap on the floor beside me—groaned before raising a metal arm into the air and flashing a thumbs up. “Almost lost another limb,” he mumbled.
I recognized that homemade prosthesis. “Lodo?”
He pushed himself up and looked at me. The side of his face was bleeding and there were welts down the twisted stub of his one real arm. “Sindri?” A smile formed between two tawny cheeks.
“I thought they transferred you to Bend?”
He nodded. “Just transferred me back a week ago. They’ve got me retrofittin’ some ‘bots. These ones definitely came from the lowest bidder.”
Welding, a skill that was self-taught, had gotten Lodo further than most proles could ever dream, and certainly further than any other unwhite I knew. Judging by his jagged teeth and sunken eyes, he’d used that money to take his weekend drug habit to the next level.
“They’re trying the AI robot thing again?” I asked, as I got to my feet.
“Yep. Got some fancy new tech Liberty is beta testin’.” He pushed a bloody lock of half-dreaded hair out of his face and let his eyes wander down my body before meeting my stare again. “You look good, Sin. Then again, you always have.”
“Don’t,” I growled.
“You know, most gals like when you tell them how beautiful they are.”
As he hobbled to his feet, I turned toward the stairwell. He was only a step behind me by the time I reached the top.
“And you’re more beautiful than most.”
I spun around. “I said, knock it off.”
The ferocity of the movement surprised him and sent him stumbling down two steps before he caught the handrail with his robotic hand.
“Alright, alright. I’m sorry. I’ve missed you’s all.”
I couldn’t say the same. The dark teen years I’d spent revering addicts for their ability to exist in the moral gray were long behind me. Something about putting yourself first—your desires above others, above the law—it seemed so inspiring at the time. It wasn’t. It was pathetic. And dangerous. If I’d been home instead of chasing some fucked up desire, baby Mateo wouldn’t have been alone when the storm shattered his window and the frigid wind overwhelmed his tiny body.
People died when you put yourself first.
I ignored Lodo and set to checking the valve levels. So far, the storm hadn’t ripped open any feeder tubes or damaged any valves. And, miraculously, all twenty-four pods were holding steady.
“How’s your family?” I asked once I had completed my inspection.
“Momma died a couple years back. Just lost Johnny last month.”
Lodo’s younger brother had been born with the same limb deformities and an even bigger hole in his heart. No one expected him to live past twenty.
“How about Leek?” I asked.
“Joined the military, can you believe that?”
“Your brother?”
I didn’t realize America still had a military. The Last War had ended thirty years ago and the few remaining intact governments on earth all existed under the same red, white, and blue flag. What was left to defend against? Scorched land and valleys of sun-bleached bones? As far as I knew, there wasn’t anything left of the rest of the world but sand and saltwater.
“He got caught stealin’ scripts. It was the jarheads or the Hired Police Force, and my brother ain’t no goon. He’s down in the southlands now, protectin’ the oil rigs from marauders. How ‘bout your fam?”
I pretended to be busy dialing in settings. “Dwindling. As of last night, it’s just me and Maureen.”
“Shit. Amice?”
I nodded.
A heavy, metal hand settled on my shoulder. “She, um… she took a lot of meds, didn’t she?”
I turned, shrugging off his touch. “Why the hell would you ask that?”
He raised his arms, attempting to quell the fury burning through my words. “Hey, no reason. I was just thinkin’ maybe I could sell them. Split the money with you.”
I forced a laugh. “Oh, so you want to end up a jarhead like your brother?”
“I won’t get caught.”
I waived him off and turned back to my work. “No one down by the riverbend is going to buy vasopressin and blood clotters.”
“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout no township pusher. I’d go to Misrup. You can sell anything in the city. And they pay pretty good money, too.”
I looked up from the twitching gauges. “How much money?”
“Got two grand from Johnny’s heart meds.”
A crack of thunder rumbled through the building, sending the lights flickering and pulling Lodo’s attention to the windows.
The last time I’d looked into gene therapy for cancer eradication, the cheapest treatments started at fifteen thousand. Lodo’s method of getting paid would get me to that number a hell of lot faster than a mediocre paycheck and the occasional bonus.
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “It’s not right. And it’s illegal.”
“You’re right on the second fact. Not so sure about the first.” He stood with his back to me as he watched the storm rage outside. “What’s not right is havin’ to take those meds to Rx Collections just so they can trash them and give you nothin’ in return. At least if you sell them, someone might get to use them. And for a helluva lot less than what those pharma giants sell them for, too.”
As a jade addict, I’d expect Lodo to know that the only thing those scripts would be used for was making dirty drugs to get people like him high. “Regardless, it is illegal.” And I couldn’t do anything to help Maureen from behind bars. “What do you need the extra money for, anyway? I thought your welding gig paid well?”
“Sure. Right now.” He turned and meandered toward my console. “But once all those AI ‘bots are up and runnin’, I imagine I’ll be out of a job as sure as everyone else here.”
“I thought you said the robots were crap?”
“They are, but the AI is prime. Too damn good, really. It’ll be takin’ all the jobs soon enough.”
I sank into my chair.
“Did you see King Bright Eyes was here?” he continued. “That means they’ve already started integratin’ all the computer systems. Bet they start cannin’ people next week.”
If I got laid off, a cure for Maureen was out of the question. I’d have a hard enough time just keeping us both alive.
“Which, uh, has me thinkin’.” He walked up beside me and set his metal hand lightly over mine. “Since our days are numbered and all, what do say we make some good memories in this place before we gotta leave it?”
His cold fingers traced along my wrist. They danced up my arm until they were tickling the outside of my breast. Addict, tratt, goon, pawnshop owner—it didn’t matter what they were. Men only saw one thing when they looked at me.
I pushed his hand away and turned to my monitor. “You should leave, Lodo. I need to get back to work.”
He was about to try his luck again when the door to the control room hissed open. Lodo jumped to the side as my supervisor stepped in. Two oversized HPF officers with Kevlar vests and tactical belts walked behind him.
The goons stopped just inside the door, their attention snagging on Lodo. It was common for those in black welder’s jumpsuits to move freely through the plant. But the color of the uniform did nothing to hide the pigment of his skin. An unwhite on a supervisor floor was always a rare sight. My brother, Finny, who had skin a hundred times darker than Lodo’s, had dealt with the same treatment for years after becoming the first unwhite allowed to live in the employee barracks. Finny was one of the hardest workers I’d ever known, but us landing that apartment had more to do with Maureen’s standing in the community than anything.
After a tense, wordless exchange that sent Lodo melting behind my chair, the two officers turned their gazes on me. To avoid those antagonistic glares, I lowered my eyes. A mistake, I realized when I saw the guns holstered on their hips. Every muscle in my body seized. An image buried deep in the past threatened to make a rare appearance at the front of my mind. If I hadn’t been sitting, I would’ve fallen into the fetal position at my supervisor’s feet.
I looked away and forced a calming breath through a constricting larynx. My supervisor, who’d been out to get me since I’d turned down his advances months ago, seemed pleased by my discomfort. He pulled out an ominous white box—the shredder that would destroy my employee badge after he told me the news—and stepped toward me.
As he approached, Lodo leaned over and whispered, “I may’ve been a bit off ‘bout that timeline. I knew we should’ve done it when we had the chance.”