Silver Part 2


2002

"Geez, Eddie, you look like hell." Erin poked at one of the bruises on my cheek and I batted her hand away.

"It also feels like hell," I snapped. It was my turn to sort through the clothes, something I do not enjoy, and so I was not in a very good mood. Erin, of course, was only encouraged by this.

She sat down next to one of the piles I was making and began rummaging through it. "So I heard you didn't get your task done last night," she baited. "I heard the bosses aren't too happy."

It was the last thing I wanted to hear. I'd been avoiding the bosses since the day before. "Yeah, well, you're looking at why," I said, pointing to my face. "The dock was too well guarded."

She scoffed. "Guy like you ought to be able to get around a few dock guards."

"Try five. And they weren't supposed to be there. Any of them."

She stopped for a second and looked at me sideways, then went back to the clothes a little too casually. "So . . . had the bosses told you how many to expect on that shipment?"

"Yeah—none. That's what they told me. They're usually more or less right."

"Well, they're not right all the time," she said quietly, almost to herself.

"What do you mean, Erin?" I asked carefully.

"Nothing," she said, too quickly. She found a pair of shoes and a shirt that would fit her 6 year old son and stood. "I don't mean anything by it, Eddie."

"Erin." She stopped. I hadn't been sure she was going to. "Have they been wrong before, recently? Terribly wrong like this?"

"Oh, it's just that," she said with forced lightness, "the only reason I don't look like you do right now, is they used guns instead of fists. And they were poor shots." She left then and I didn't bother to stop her.

My first thought was to wonder how Silver had known when I hadn't. My second was to wonder if he was right with what he'd suggested. My third was to wonder who was going to be next. It wasn't until my fourth thought that I wondered why.

I finished with the clothes and went to find something else to do. On the way I ran into Mike.

"Shit, Eddie, what happened?"

"Too many dock guards. Did Erin tell you what happened to her on her last task?" Mike and Erin were pretty close at that time, so I figured if she'd told anyone it'd be him.

"Yeah, she had some trouble. How'd you manage to underestimate the dock guards?"

"I was told there weren't supposed to be any. Erin said something like that happened to her, only she got shot at."

"Yeah, the building had doubled its security that night. Dunno why. She said it was odd, too, almost like they weren't really trying to hit her, but they kept trying to cut her off."

"Has anyone else had this happen?"

Mike rubbed that back of his head, his habit when puzzled. "Don't think so. I haven't, I haven't heard anything about Jake having trouble like that, and the kids seem to be doing fine. The only odd thing I can think of is the bosses asking for pieces of hair. Pretty weird, huh? I mean, what could they do with hair?"

"They asked you, too? When?"

"Last week sometime. Why?"

"Nothing. Look, maybe Erin and I just ran into some bad luck, but be careful, okay? This is starting to become a trend."

"Yeah, okay. See ya, Eddie."

He started to walk off and I called after him. "I don't suppose you've seen Silver around?"

He gave me an odd look over his shoulder. "Silver? I think he was headed that way about an hour ago." He pointed. "What do you want him for?"

"Just wanted to ask him something. See ya, Mike."

I went in the direction Mike had pointed and did find Silver. He was in one of the smaller rooms, sorting through a box of engine parts. He had rolled up his sleeves and his forearms were smeared with grease and grime. He looked up as I sat down on the floor in front of him. "This looks about as exciting as what I was just doing."

He shrugged and lifted another part out of the box. "Nobody else was doing it. What do you want?" His tone was maybe not quite as suspicious as it usually was.

"I was just thinking about what you told me last night. It looks like me and Erin are the only ones who've gotten into trouble, but Mike says they asked him for pieces of his hair last week. So why hasn't the same thing happened to him?"

Silver dropped the part onto one of the three piles around him and pulled another one out of the box. As he moved I noticed a scar running from wrist to elbow on the top side of his arm. I also saw it had several smaller companions. I guess he saw me looking because he lowered his arms behind the box as he checked over the part. "They could be using the hair to check your genetic structure. You and Erin might have something they want."

"Like what? Shit, that's just . . . I don't know, it's just wrong."

He put the part in one of the other piles—the piles looked like "sellable," "fixable," and "trash"—and took another out of the box. Because I was watching I saw several similar scars on his other arm. This time I know he saw me looking because he shot me a suspicious glare and hid his arms again. "I don't know. It could be almost anything. With you they didn't have time to do any testing before your task so maybe it's not that at all. I might know more if I could get a look at the equipment they've been getting, but I don't know where they've put it."

"This still doesn't make any sense. Why get genetic stuff from us and then set us up to get killed? What would that get them?"

He looked up and fixed me with those weird silver-grey eyes of his. "Or maybe they're not trying to get you killed. If those guys on the dock had wanted you dead you would be. At least one of them had a gun."

"What? Why didn't they try to shoot back at you, then?"

"He did. I shot the gun out of his hand when he pulled it out."

I couldn't respond to that for awhile. I was too stunned. I guess having him shoot within inches of the top of my head hadn't quite driven home just how good a shot he was. I blame it on having been hit in the face several times right beforehand.

He—thankfully, because his eyes still gave me the creeps—looked away as he pulled the last part out of the box. "Look Eddie, I'm still trying to piece everything together. It doesn't help that I'm missing some big pieces." He sorted the part and started to brush some of his silvery hair out of his face. He stopped and jerked his hand back, glaring at it, but not before leaving a smudge of grease on his cheek. He rubbed his cheek against his sleeve (which only smeared the grease) and stood. He lowered his arm quickly, but I still saw several scars on the underside. "I'll let you know if I find out anything." He left, still trying to keep his forearms out of my sight.

I think I spent as much time that day trying to puzzle out Silver as I did trying to puzzle out what was going on with the bosses. I knew nothing about his past, but everyone on the streets is pretty close-mouthed about stuff like that. I know I never talked about it. But with Silver it was more than his lack of a history. There was his obvious strangeness—his silver hair and eyes—and then there was the strength and unbelievable aim he'd shown the night before. And then top that off with the scars I'd just noticed, which were too precise to be from knife fights. Any way you looked at it he was just an odd kid and I didn't know how to take him. I didn't know why I was trusting him.

The rest of the day was uneventful and I won't bore you with it. That evening I was outside seeing to some of the younger kids (the youngest usually came back not too long after dark) when something light bounced off the top of my head and landed on the ground. It was a crumpled up piece of wrapper. I looked up and saw Silver leaning over the edge of the roof.

There were only a few of the kids left so I sent them inside and went over to the fire escape. There's a dumpster under it that makes it easy to get to. On the roof Silver was sitting with his back against one of the ducts and eating a piece of dark chocolate, which explained the wrapper. "What's up?" I asked him.

He pushed his baseball cap back and gave me a measuring look. He still had a bit of grease on his cheek, which I noticed because I was avoiding his eyes. "Did you know that Mike is genetically at risk for cancer?"

"What? No. What are you talking about?"

"I did some snooping and found a genetic analysis with his name at the top. It said he has a hereditary cancer gene. I found a file on Erin, too. She has perfect health, genetically. I also found a folder with your name on it, but it was empty. I couldn't stay long enough to search for your file, if there was one."

"Where the hell did you find all this?"

He looked down and dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. I found myself looking to see if he was still carrying his blaster, but I couldn't see it in that pocket. "I told you, I did some snooping." He lit a cigarette and I found somewhere upwind to sit. "Upstairs in the back offices."

"Those are always locked, aren't they? And alarmed?"

"Uh-huh. Pretty good locks, too, although not the best of alarms. I found some other interesting things in there, besides the genetic files. They have a gene-tracker, for one thing. Pretty sophisticated little machine, even being a few years old. It made all those printouts I was looking at."

"Whoa, wait a minute, Silver. You're saying that you managed to get into the back offices, which the rest of us wouldn't even think of trying, without the bosses knowing—I assume it's without them knowing?"

He gave me an annoyed look. "Of course it is. I disabled the alarm."

"Right. And back there, they have this incredibly expensive machine, and genetic printouts on me, Erin, and Mike?"

"Yeah. Not just you, though. There's one on Jake that I only got a chance to glance at, and they have ones on Tori and Surge." Tori and Surge were sixteen and fifteen, respectively, the oldest of the kids under twenty. "I also saw some shipping lists. It looks like most of what's been coming in has been going back out again. They were fairly local, though, and all places the bosses own. I didn't stay very long, but I did see on the shipping list what they've been shipping out." He took a long drag on the cigarette and shook his head. "I don't like it, Eddie." There was a tone in his voice I had never heard before. He was scared, I realized, but there was also something else. "It was equipment and data—probably from stuff they've been having us filch—and all of it had something to do with genes, genetic manipulation and the like." He paused again for another lungfull of smoke. "There were marks on Erin's printout, but I couldn't make sense out of them. I think they were referring to another sheet that I didn't have. The only marks on Mike's were next to that cancer gene. There was an arrow pointing to it, and next to that the word 'unusable.'"

I was getting pretty scared by this time, and I don't like being scared. I guess "unusable" and what it implied was what finally set me off. "How the hell do you know all this?" I lashed out. It wasn't fair to Silver but he was the only one there, and he tended to give me the creeps anyway. "How can you understand this about gene-maps and shit? You're a fucking thirteen year old street kid! How. . . ."

He'd been looking down, hiding behind the bill of his cap, but he looked up at me then, and something in his gaze made me stop. I had never seen him look hurt before. "I wasn't always a street kid, you know," he said softly. He looked like he was going to say more, but he made a disgusted noise and turned away, looking out over the city. "I also didn't have to do any of this," he continued, a bitter note in his voice. "I didn't have to warn you. I didn't have to go looking for more information. I'm nowhere in their files."

I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my eyes. Or I started to. I had to stop because the pressure made them hurt. "Ah, shit, Silver. I'm sorry. I just don't understand any of this. At all. And—especially with last night—I'm fucking scared." I looked up just in time to see the startled look on his face before he turned away again. "I know you didn't have to do any of this. It's weird to have someone else looking out for me. I'm not used to that anymore."

For a long time Silver just sat and smoked, not looking at me or much of anything else. Eventually he started speaking again. "Eddie?" he started, almost timidly, which surprised me. He was a quiet kid but I wouldn't have called him timid. "How long have you been on the streets?"

"Damn. . . ." I sat up and stretched my back. I had to think about that one. "Ten years," I finally answered. "Just about ten years. Shit. I can't believe it's been that long."

He turned and watched me again, but for some reason it didn't make me edgy. Maybe it was because there wasn't any of his usual suspicion this time. "You must lose track of time."

"On the streets? Hell yeah. I can't think of anything but 'today,' you know? I don't know how else I'd make it."

"How'd you end up here?"

"Everything just fell apart one day, when I was about your age. The next thing I knew I didn't have a home." That was about all I was willing to say. I think I said before that I didn’t talk about my past; it was because I didn't like thinking about what I'd lost. "It doesn't really matter anymore. What do you think I should do about the bosses?"

He took a last drag and then ground out his cigarette. "I don't know. I guess just be careful for now, unless you want to leave altogether. That might be safest."

I shook my head. "I've nowhere to go." I stood up, but stopped and looked back down on him. He seemed pretty small without the don't-mess-with-me attitude he usually had. Pretty small and pretty young. "How'd you end up here, Silver?"

He didn't answer for so long that I thought he wasn't going to and I started to leave.

"I didn't like how I was being treated," he called after me, his voice and manner guarded again, "so I left."

It sounded like the typical runaway story, but there was something about Silver himself that made me think there was much more too it. At the time I only nodded and left him alone, as he seemed to want to be at the moment.