Relics of a Fractured Horizon

If I tell her the truth—that it’s one of these items pulled forward through time from the past of this city—she’d never believe me anyway.

“Okay,” she nods again, looking down at the diamond-encrusted gold. “I’ll be here.”

I fix the collar on my coat, make my way out of the little room, down the corridor with its impacted grime and out of the safe house. Out and into the world, into Horizon City and into my district, good old Grand Anvil.

These streets, as I live and breathe. All their joy and sorrow. Towering nanocrete stacks, chemical manufacturing facilities, bars, brothels. They heave and move with the neon and falling rain. I’m part of it, the machine that grinds. Some people I bring down. Others I haul up. I take my cut, align my pieces, keep the machine turning. Only now there’s something else—the scheme the ring back in the safe house represents.

Different from the world I grew up in now. A hard world, that. A hard time. When Arkwright Industries set the hope of Horizon City alight with the prospect of the Chrono-Wave reactor. It failed. For all their wealth and influence, technology and research, they botched it… well, not quite…

I pause, pull up my hood, fix my gaze down the rain-sodden street, lighting a cigarette.

“Got a spare one of those, pal?” a voice says, heavy with fatigue.

“Here.” I hold a cigarette out, the weathered old factory-drunk taking it and putting it between his thin lips. “Need a light?”

“Sure,” he says, nodding as I light the cigarette, and he looks at me through the small flame. “Uh, Vargo?” His voice shakes.

“Don’t worry, old man.” I nod and give him a wink. “Just out to clear my head.”

He raises his eyebrows, draws hard on the cigarette, then looks down at the cherry. “I know that feeling.”

Another quick nod and I carry on down the street, heading back to the warehouse where I’m building my empire. One gig at a time. Grand Anvil labour unions, underground bare-knuckle fighting, gun running, black-market moonshine. I’m into it all. And now, this new prize on the streets. Things like the ring back there.

“Change is here,” I whisper to myself as I carry on, Arkwright Industries drones buzzing overhead. A glance from the meaner bouncers on the doors of the underground bars. A look of fear or simple disgust from a few of the more law-abiding citizens who walk the streets.

A truck ghosts past, heavy tyres on the slick roads, headlights reflecting in the long puddles, ARKWRIGHT INDUSTRIES—RESEARCH stencilled on the side. Yeah, the world changed when they brought the Chrono-Wave reactor online. When the containment failed and instead of giving us unlimited clean energy to rebuild with, it plunged us into a week-long blackout. When the lights came back on? Well, no one believed it at first, but then it kept happening…temporal dilation, they called it—the Seep, its given name. A one-way ticket from the past to our time. I never got my head around what they told us in the feeds, but I don’t need to understand how it happened. Only that it did.

I turn the corner; the yard opens up. My little kingdom in old Anvil and the growing borders of Horizon City out beyond it. Men and women move in and out in the spotlit rain. On their way to some dirty deed, or back in carrying crates of whatever illicit items are moving fastest at the moment. And I plan to add something else to the inventory—a black market I’m going to open up. The illicit trade of items like the ring.

That’s the big play. Move against Arkwright Industries using their own game. One of the biggest corporations on the planet? More like the world’s biggest crooks. They seize the things that come through the Seep—Echo relics they call them. Send them to museums for the public to gawk at, but what I know and those gawkers don’t is that Arkwright Industries are up to other things. They have their own schemes too.

“How’s the head?” Jimmy asks, my brother, as he walks over through the rain and I stand, watching the bustle from the outside. “Been gone a while.”

“All good,” I say, as he comes to my side.

“The ring safe?”

“It’s safe.”

“Good,” he says as the sound of the rain and people consumes the silence between us. “Going to tell me what you’ve got planned?”

“You pull another good gig, I’ll bring you in,” I say, eyeing him. He’s not ready yet. Neither am I, if I’m honest. I got to the ring, the Echo relic, through a security leak at Arkwright and pulled the robbery myself to be sure it went down proper. It was real. It is real, and soon I’ll ramp it up—but first I plan.

He nods with the usual look of displeasure at my being in charge on his face.

Yeah, the plan. Going up against Arkwright. Playing them at their own game. What I know now is that they’re funnelling off the Echo relics, setting up an auction house on the grand streets of Memory Row. The Old Silk Exchange—where they first built their empire. They’re readying themselves to sell the past to the highest bidder and make a profit in the present.

Well, they’re not the only ones who can turn ill-fated special projects into a revenue stream. The past doesn’t belong to anyone, but that doesn’t mean stealing it is going to be easy. I’ve made my first move, and I’ll watch their next. Then I go big. Then I become king of this city.