“Thank the gods you’re awake, I thought I’d lost you!” Johnny’s face hovered above her. “You ended up poisoned as well. I barely had time to get to you and activate my healing!”

Mai’s mouth felt as though it had been packed with cotton and every part of her ached. She had a headache that pounded, and her vision was still clouded.

Calling up her SASS she was stunned to see her stats were still low. Including her own BIO-MASS. It worried her to have such low BIO-MASS. She wasn’t sure she could use her own body to fuel the nanites if it came to it.

Then again, a while ago I never thought I would be able to kill someone, so I guess if I need to, I’ll use the nanites. She sighed, tired of the Culling, tired of fighting to survive, tired of living.

It felt good to just sit. Mai couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had just sat down with someone. Her life, even the sewers, before entering the hangar for Culling training seemed as though it had happened to someone else.

“Sorry I wasn’t there for your parent’s funeral,” Johnny’s voice startled her. She’d been in a stare, completely unfocused, brain just drifting.

“Where were you?” She tried to keep any anger out of her voice. He’d been one of her closest friends and to be denied his support at that time had hurt. At the time she’d been too wrapped up in her grief, and then trying to cope with suddenly having a little sister to support, to try and find out where’d he gone. And by the time she was in the right headspace, too much time had passed, and she’d got on with her life.

“I was on the run from the Bronze Oranges, they put a price on my head, and I knew if I’d gone to the funeral they would kill everyone there just to get to me.”

Mai blinked, the Bronze Oranges had a terrible reputation for collateral damage. He hung his head, avoiding her gaze.

“You were a gang member even then?” She tried to remember having seen any indication that he was doing something like that. But by that point, even though they were still good friends, she’d noticed a certain drawing away. A distance.

And that was the sign, she sighed, inwardly cursing herself. She’d flattered herself with the thought that perhaps he had started to fancy her and felt awkward around her. But in truth he’d been busy running with the gangs and keeping secrets from her. But still, she needed him to admit it.

He nodded. She still didn’t speak, waiting for him to fill the silence.

“I was being inducted into Slice and Dice. You remember that small gang? Run by Fat Tommy?”

Her turn to nod. She still didn’t speak. Slice and Dice had been wannabes in her mind. Not serious gangers like the ones she’d come across in her pre-Culling training.

“Well, my mum was having some trouble with them. Borrowed some money. Couldn’t pay back the interest, let alone the debt. So I joined them to pay the debt.”

That was a surprise. Johnny had lost his father in the Sector Three Uprising. Drafted, he’d been killed by an IED. Johnny had always worshipped his father, and she’d thought he was certain to join the army.

Still, Mai smiled at the memory of Johnny’s mother. She’d always been cuddly, happy to help, always cooking. That she’d been struggling was hidden well. Mai was rapidly learning that you could never take people by face value. Even if you thought you knew them.

Johnny sighed, scrubbing his face with both hands.

“My initiation was to steal a banner from the Bronze Oranges. It was going well, but a girl came out of a room just as I was leaving. She tried to knife me. I lashed out. I was panicking. Just didn’t remember that I was holding the banner pole. Crushed her skull. Stupid. She wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“You killed her?” Gasped Mai, hand over her mouth in shock.

“No, she survived,” he whispered. “But only just. Disabled from that point on. They issued a Seek and Destroy warrant.”

Seek and Destroy. Bounty hunters galore must have been tracking him for the reward. Bounties issued by gangs were in no way legal, but the rewards offered were more than enough to have even farmers and their mums getting their knives out.

Imperial law was a strange thing. Commit crimes or minor misdemeanours, lose karma, lose social standing, end up knee deep in shit for the rest of your life as you move further and further down through the levels of the city. Lose money through fines, rack up enough debt, get indentured.

But there was also a Penal Code. Every crime was given a score from 0.1 through to 10. Once someone reached a score of ten, or committed a Code 10 crime such as murder, rape, or kidnap, and the families or even the victims can issue a bounty. Once issued, the perpetrator was hunted down by warranted bounty hunters.

“Who issued the bounty? Bronze Oranges?” She didn’t know why she was asking. It was like prodding at a sore tooth or picking a scab. Painful, but she just couldn’t stop.

“She did. Once she recovered. There was a community fundraiser to get her the credits she needed for the bounty. Turned out she was really popular,” he gave a wry smile at that.

“How did you escape?” Again, prodding at the pain.

“Managed to kill the first three bounty hunters. I was also working a few angles at the same time which brought in money, so I paid the Bronze Oranges off. By that time it was far too late for me to come back home. I was in too deep.”

He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her. And she realized where he had been all this time.

“Johnny, look at me.” She placed a hand under his chin. “It’s fine. You were in a bad place. Your mum was in a bad place. You did what you needed to and paid the price for a mistake.”

He met her eyes, tears glistening in his before they started spilling down his cheeks.

“I missed you so much the day of the funeral, but if you’d just let me know, I would have been better. Not saying I wouldn’t still have been crushed, but at least I would have known.”

“Yeah, there is that,” he half laughed, half sobbed, wiping away his tears.

“You could still have come back.” She leaned towards him.

“No.” A hard look came into his eyes, “I couldn’t. Being in the gangs had changed me. I was a killer before I joined the Culling. And once you’re in a gang, you’re in for life. Or until you join the Culling.”

His tone was cold, face blank. All remnants of her Johnny wiped away as if he was just a dream. Or a memory. Even the tears had gone. It was as if they had never happened and the change in emotions was shocking.

“So why did you join the Culling?” She tried to keep the sadness, and trepidation out of her voice. The change had put her on edge. It was as if she was talking to two different people.

“I killed more people than I could afford to pay for. A power grab that went spectacularly bad. Hear about the Quad Two bombing?”

Mai gasped, hand rising to cover her mouth. It had been all over the holonews. No-one had ever claimed responsibility, but most had blamed rebels for it. And now she knew. Her former best friend was a mass murderer.

“Yeah, you heard,” he chuckled sourly, eyes hard. “It was supposed to remove the gathered heads of the Twenty Ones, Snake Eyes, Jesters, Cyber Ninjas, and a few other minor gangs you won’t have heard of.”

He sighed, tipping his head back, eyes closed as he searched through his memories.

“I didn’t place it. Just ordered the hit. Killed the guy who did it though. The idiot placed it next to a gas pipe. When the bomb went off, so did the pipe. Ripped through the hab block and wiped out over three hundred people. He’d royally fucked up and I thought killing him would cover my tracks.”

“So you ran?” Her throat felt tight as she spoke. Mouth dry. Heart hammering. She couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“So I ran.” He held out his hands. “Story of my life. I was looking at around fifty million UC of debt. My people were being slaughtered. First thing I did was dissolve the gang, second was run to the nearest Culling station and sign up. Been in holding barracks for the last six months waiting for it to start. I was one of the first to join this iteration.” The bombing had been almost two years ago. She couldn’t imagine being on the run for that long.

Mai couldn’t reconcile this Johnny with the Johnny she’d known. She decided to change the topic of conversation. Move onto something easier. “Remember how you and your mum would come around for Ascension Day? She’d cook those amazing sweet buns and my dad would get holofireworks.”

Johnny chuckled, but the laughter didn’t reach those hard eyes.

“Those were good days Mai. Good days. I really respected your father. He was good to me. Tried to keep me on the straight and narrow. Always fair.”

Mai smiled. It was her father down to a tee. In everything he did, he tried to treat people with respect, and tried to understand them as a person rather than as a criminal. Police weren’t usually respected on their level, with most taking bribes or protection money to supplement their salaries.

Not my dad, she thought with pride. He dealt with people so fairly that he was respected not only on their level for the first five quadrants, but also the ones directly above and below.

“‘How’d you end up in the Culling?” Johnny asked, steering the conversation away from himself.

“I kinda messed up too,” she admitted. “Couldn’t play the game. Couldn’t be the perfect citizen. Couldn’t keep my damn mouth shut and my fists to myself. I was indentured. Sent to the sewers. A mogwai killed my friend. I just snapped and ran for it. They were just about to catch me when I saw the Culling station and signed up. Thought it was my best chance to get back to my sister.” Mai wrly remembered that she had nearly been the last contestant to sign up. Thank the gods I hadn’t been the one after the last.

“You thought that entering a competition where one million people try to kill each other offered better chances than working in the sewers?” laughed Johnny, slapping his thigh.

“I was full of adrenaline at the time and didn’t really stop to think,” she replied through gritted teeth. “That, and I’d lost a really good friend.”

“Sorry, don’t mean to be rude but damn,” he avoided her gaze once again, rummaging through his backpack. “Fancy a protein bar?”

She took it, not saying anything as she unwrapped it and took a bite. His sudden mood swings uneased her. It saddened her. He’d been a memory she’d held onto. The friend that had once been as close as a brother to her. The friend she had thought had betrayed her at her time of need. Bittersweet and contrasting memories.

But now he was back, and it was as if all her memories were a lie. Had he always been like this? Cold, calculating, mercurial, hiding his true self? Or had the circumstances changed him?

“We’re in this together, to the end?” He held out his hand, the smile on his face just like the one she remembered. Only his eyes weren’t smiling. And she thought she detected a bit of a question rather than a statement.

“Until the end. Top one hundred all the way.” She took his hand and shook it, hiding her unease behind the biggest smile she could muster.