Hugo felt pain and woke. The suddenness of his rise to the world left him 
confused, and he couldn't remember where he was for a brief moment. There 
was no smell...his bed felt soft...then he remembered that he was still at the 
doctor's. He sat upright for a little while longer before he could appreciate it. He 
was still at Doc Ido's place...because Prof Nova wouldn't be back until 
tomorrow...and something was still wrong with him. Even as he constructed that 
last thought, he cringed. Meat hooks were digging into his anus; his own central 
nervous system was being dragged out behind him. Lights flashed in his face 
and set the skin on fire.
	"No..." murmured Hugo. He knew he was hallucinating, but it didn't take 
away any of the trauma. Trying to grind himself back into reality, he reached out 
for the anti-seizure drugs Ido had given him. "They're here, I just know..."
	His hand crept forth towards a bottle on the floor, still a good thirty 
centimeters away. The bottle fell over onto its side, without being upset by any 
means, and rolled into his hand. Blind with pain, Hugo tore the top off the bottle 
and emptied its contents--a single pill--into his mouth. He swallowed with 
difficulty. The visions didn't go away automatically, but he felt the coolness of 
the sheets again, and his head wasn't spinning as violently. On the other hand, he 
also felt the pill beginning to dissolve in the back of his throat. He worked up a 
little spit, and tried to swallow. Nothing. He would have to get some water from 
the bathroom.
	Hugo rolled off the futon and fumbled for his slippers. He considered 
getting his robe, but yellow eyes began to flicker in the darkness around him. "I 
just want to get this over," he moaned quietly. He pulled himself to his feet and 
shambled down the hall to the bathroom.
	His hand groped for the light's switch, and its yellow blast of radiation cut 
into his semiconsciousness. Hugo had to cover his eyes for a moment, afraid 
though he was of losing his balance, before he got the courage to trust them 
with the light. Ido's bathroom was small. The shower bath was on the left, the 
toilet was on the right, and the sink was in the center. The whole room was 
white porcelain and white tiling, which Hugo (in his rather upset state) had 
trouble looking at. On the left side of the sink, next to Ido's razor and his hosts' 
toothbrushes, was a paper cup dispenser. The young man had difficulty even 
pulling down one cup, and had to clench and unclench his hand to work up the 
tension he needed. The cup finally came, and Hugo turned the left knob to let the 
water run.
	The water made a pleasant sound as it gently splashed into the sink, then 
whirled around onto itself before diving into the drain with a gurgle. Hugo 
watched it flow down as he sipped the water in his cup. He wondered where the 
water would go and where the water came from. He had always assumed it was 
collected rainwater, but he didn't think that there was enough rain for the whole 
Scrapyard...he also hadn't been to school in five years, so he reasoned that he 
might have missed something in that time. Water. He found that if he 
concentrated on the noise it made the lights and the sounds in his head 
diminished. He smiled at the peace and calm he felt. He laxidazically reached 
foreword to turn off the water.
	His hand accidentally gripped Ido's razor blade, and a deep gash was cut 
into his hand.
	Hugo's arm obeyed his reflex: the blade went flying, ricocheting off the 
mirror's glass. He drew in a breath and let it out in a hushed expletive. He 
looked at the palm of his hand--then saw---
	BLOOD
	oh shit it's blood i'm bleeding oh i'm gonna die help me bro
	Hugo screamed in absolute mortal terror. For a terrible moment, he 
couldn't move. Then he slammed his hand into the basin and began washing his 
hand as hard as he could, only stopping to turn up the force on the water. But as 
hard as he scrubbed, and as high as the pressure went, the blood kept coming. It 
wouldn't stop oozing out of the wound. He kept screaming until the very 
moment Ido burst into the bathroom and clamped his hand over Hugo's mouth.
	"Hugo, what in the name of the...?!? What's wrong with your hand?" Ido 
seized the boy's wrist and twisted it around. Hugo let out a muffled yell and 
wrenched his head to the side, burying his eyes in Ido's chest. There was a deep 
cut in the boy's hand, extending from the base of his thumb to the palm; worse, 
Hugo's fingers were purple with bruises, and only the numbing action of the 
water had prevented the pain from becoming excruciating. Ido didn't know 
what to examine first, his patient's hand or his patient's behavior. "Alita?"
	"Yes?" she replied from the doorway. She had on her dark blue robe with 
criss-crossed golden tree branches. It was one of the few things she had bought 
with her bounty-hunter income; and, like the others, Ido thought it was 
beautiful. He prided himself on having a child with such good taste.
	"Get Hugo's bandanna from his room. Then go see if Mr. Frenner's still 
asleep. Gonzu, is that handkerchief of yours clean?"
	"Yeah. Here." He walked into the room and pressed it up against Hugo's 
palm.
	"There, Hugo. It's all gone, see?" Very slowly, Hugo pulled his eyes away 
from Ido's chest and looked at his hand. Sure enough, there wasn't any blood on 
his hand, it was all white and clean and pure. His breathing slowed, and he began 
to withdraw from his adrenaline high. He wanted to sleep.

	"Sir?"
	"Excuse me, ma'am?"
	"How about a lube job?"
	Van was getting frustrated. It simply wasn't working out the way he had 
hoped. He had thought that they would be able to attract a lot of customers by 
the pylon south-southeast of the Coliseum. It almost worked. They were getting 
a lot of attention, but no customers. They'd been advertising themselves for 
almost a half hour and there hadn't been even a nibble. Pity Hugo isn't along, he 
thought. Hugo always has such good luck.
	"Boy--I'll take you!" A fellow in a long flowing cloak and a metal hat was 
approaching. Van couldn't see his face, but it really didn't make a difference; he 
just liked to picture the "before" and "after" expressions of his customers. That, 
and the pay, were about the only perks of the job.
	"Thank you, sir!"
	"This way, please." Danji led the group into the prepared alleyway and 
pulled out the oil bottles. The customer came next, and Tanji and Van brought up 
the rear--Tanji had a terrible tendency to snicker at the worst times. He was 
doing his best to control himself, though. The two boys set to work on the 
customer's arms. Danji applied some oil liberally to the customer's first neck 
joint, then pushed down the top of the tazerpick to charge it.
	He didn't realize, until it was too late, that his every move was being 
reflected in their customer's hat.
	"So," chuckled Zapan, "this is how you guys do it, huh?" He flipped back 
the edge of his hat. It caught on to Danji's tazerpick, knocking it to the ground. 
In an instant Zapan was on his feet, grinding the tazerpick under the toe of his 
boot.
	"Shit! It's a bounty hunter!"
	"Oh, no, we're dead," wailed Tanji. He started to stumble backwards, 
away from the threat. Zapan took no interest in him, but slammed Danji into the 
cement wall. Danji cringed. The force had pulled his right arm out of its socket.
	"Well, well, well, grand theft spinal column...that's a bounty grade offense, 
isn't it--Danji?" Danji made no reply, too stricken with terror and pain. "Isn't it?" 
Zapan demanded. To demonstrate his seriousness, he swung a foot at Danji's 
knee. The tendons shredded, and the three bones went three different directions. 
Danji screamed through his mask. Less than twenty meters away, on the 
bustling thoroughfare, nobody took any notice.
	With the scream, Van was shocked into action. He whipped out the ax 
their small group used and lifted it over his head. "Die, motherfucker!" he 
bawled, and swung the chipped blade at Zapan's head. Zapan had been 
expecting the attack. He turned to face his attacker while his right palm deflected 
the fall of the blow. Inertia carried Van foreword, falling. Zapan followed 
through on his turn with a kick to the boy's groin. Something shattered. As he 
rose into the air, Van cried out, not merely out of mortal pain and terror, but the 
instinctual anguish of castration fears realized. He rose seven meters into the air 
before he hit the catwalk overhead. Providentially, his skull hit first. The last 
thing Van ever felt was a crunch on the back of his skull.
	It was a very peculiar thing to see. For a moment the body stayed on the 
ceiling, like a flesh balloon filled with helium. Then, almost as though he was 
sitting up upside-down, his body peeled off the catwalk, leaving a smudge of 
blood and brain. Zapan couldn't help but watch the boy's fall and notice the lack 
of that flailing that so characterizes a human's need to act, even in the most futile 
of circumstances. While his target was still in mid-air Zapan jumped up to meet 
it. A single swipe of his blade and the head was in his possession. The remainder 
of the body hit the ground, bloody stump first.
	Danji was limping as best he could towards the street, but Tanji was in full 
retreat down the alleyway. Zapan made his choice. He walked jauntily to the 
edge of the alleyway and dragged Danji back away from the bright lights.
	"Heh. Just where Hugo said you guys would be," he chuckled.
	"W-w-what?"
	"The thing about people who want money," Zapan said, throwing the boy 
onto the ground by their workplace, "is that they want something that's so 
simple to get." He sat down onto the boy's thighs and kept talking. "You see, 
your Hugo wasn't making nearly as much money as he wanted. So, when I 
approached him about turning you three in, he was really eager to bargain."
	"Th-th-that's a lie!" sputtered Danji. The pain was battering at his mind, 
and he was starting to feel the world drift away. He knew he was dying, 
however slowly. "Hugo was twice the thief any of us was!"
	"Oh, come on!"
	"It's true!" The boy was mustering the energy to scream, though he only 
spoke at a normal speech level. Everything, he noticed, took so much energy to 
do...he felt as though he were swimming through concrete. "Every night, for 
three years, I've seen him bring in a keeper column, without fail! He'd never 
need your money!"
	"Hm. Well, you can shut up now," Zapan muttered, slicing off the boy's 
head with a single stroke. He leisurely rose, turned off the fiber optic video 
recorder on his shoulder, then walked off down the alleyway.

	<You, Ido?>
	<Aye, it's Hugo. He's developing a phobia.>
	<Hemophobia?[5]>
	<Once again, you are correct. He shows no symptoms of psychosis, yet>
	<I need some time, my friend. The 'nanobots' are forged, but the 
polypeptide won't be done 'til dawn.>
	<If all else fails, I'll use what drugs I have.>
	<The unknown, Ido. I fear it. We are wandering toward it so relentlessly.>

	Hugo was awake. The hallucinations weren't bothering him now. The 
house was quiet. His eyes would have been wandering around the room, but he 
couldn't see. Ido had suggested using the bandanna to cover his eyes, to protect 
him from the sight of the bloody bandage on his hand. Hugo felt like a fool. He 
hadn't ever blinked at the sight of blood, or simulymph [6], in his entire life. Why 
did he panic? For some reason, the knowledge that Alita had been in the room 
with him made everything worse.
	His mind flashed back to a night about six months ago. Van had slipped a 
live sewer rat into Hugo's lunch pail. When they sat down to eat together and 
Hugo opened the box, a giant black hairy _thing_ had jumped out at him. He 
had screamed then, and the other three had laughed. Hugo, of course, had 
gotten back at Van within a week. Tonight, things had been different for a 
number of reasons. There was nobody to "get back" at, obviously. But there was 
something more...was it that Alita was a girl?
	No, he decided, that wasn't it, because he would have felt the same 
embarrassment around Ido, or even Gonzu. Then he began to realize why. 
When he was with his co-workers, he always tried to prove something to them--
prove that he was the best one of their little group. Sure, he was working for the 
money. But Zalem was still a long distance away, and he needed some kind of 
feeling to tide him over, keep him going from day to day. So he worked as hard 
as he could, and everyone--the kids, his bosses, his day-job factory boss, his 
neighbors--respected him. The three people he was with now, his hosts, they 
were different. When he was with them--Alita, most of all--he felt exactly the 
opposite, that he shouldn't be proving anything. In fact, he somehow knew that 
if he told them some things--things that would cause him to lose his job or the 
respect of his peers--they would appreciate the act of telling. And the feeling if he 
did, both from inside and from those around him, would be so wonderful. He 
remembered the feeling. He didn't know from where, or why he had felt it, but 
he knew that it had a name.
	There was a light knock at the door. "Come in," Hugo called.
	"It's me," came Alita's voice. There was a rustle of fabric and a clink of 
dishes. Hugo heard a tray being set down beside the head of the futon. "I 
thought you might still be up. I brought some warm milk."
	"Thank you," said Hugo. He held out his hands, and felt fingers press a 
warm mug into their palms. He blew on it to cool it down, then cautiously took a 
sip. He could taste that it was whole milk, and there was something else mixed in 
with it--ginger? cinnamon? It was rich and sweet. Hugo felt it coursing down his 
throat into his belly, warming his every vein as it moved. He took another sip, a 
deeper one, and as it moved it spread a glow through the void inside his body. 
He drank full this time, and it tasted like heaven and hope in a single fluid, and 
he wished that the moment might never end.
	But end it did. He took the mug from his lips. He was an invalid in a 
stranger's house talking to a girl too good for him. He handed her his cup. "Alita, 
what time is it?"
	"It's about four."
	"You're up at four this morning, you must have been up at least this early 
yesterday, and you were with me the whole day! Why do you keep doing this to 
yourself?" Alita would have answered him, but Hugo went on. "Alita, I was 
thinking before you came in. I haven't got any close friends, I haven't got any 
family, I--I feel so alone!"
	"Oh, come on Hugo, you've got friends. I told you, those three guys from 
work came to see you, they gave you that nice card..."
	"Them?" Hugo's voice was starting to break. "I can't talk to those guys. 
They think I work my ass off just to get ahead. I haven't talked to them like I've 
talked to you, and Dr. Ido, and Gonzu." Alita was watching Hugo with concern. 
He was under emotional strain, which wasn't too odd, but his behavior struck 
her as unusual. He was caressing his left hand, the one he had hurt, but not along 
the line of the cut or where he had broken his fingers. Instead, he was dragging 
his fingertips across his wrist, where he had that peculiar scar. Hugo was 
continuing. "I feel like you all are doing so much for me--you've let me stay over 
here, Doc Ido won't let me pay him until I get better--and I'm not doing 
anything for you. Why are you doing this for me?"
	Courage rose in Alita's heart. She took Hugo's left hand in her hands. "I'm 
in love with you, Hugo," she said.
	Love. That word had lain quiet for so long in Hugo's spirit it tore him to 
resurrect it. Brutally and wonderfully, images of his brother rose in the young 
man's mind. The smile...the personality...the times they had shared together. 
Then, Alita's image came into focus. He remembered how her face shone when 
she laughed. He thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
	He let out a sob and slumped foreword onto Alita's shoulder. He tried to 
say "I love you, too", but he couldn't quite complete the idea, and finally couldn't 
do anything more than cry as she patted his back and gently rocked him back 
and forth. After a few minutes, he felt all his energy had been wrung out of him. 
"A-A-Alita, please, don't-don't go. Stay right here with me."
	"I won't leave you, Hugo."

	"Kiww confiwmed...wemoved fwom wist...bwah bwah bwah..." Cylinder 
10 tapped out a few commands on a keyboard. Then, with a grinding of gears, a 
pair of yellow-and-black-striped semicircular doors swung open next to it. The 
pair of heads rolled off towards parts unknown in the depths of Factory 33. The 
doors clanged closed. The cylinder rotated at its base towards Zapan. A stack of 
chips emerged from the base and 10 pushed them forward. "You have eawned 
60,000 chips fow the two of them."
	"Hm," Zapan grunted. He scooped up the chips and absently put them 
into a satchel at his waist, then leaned forward on his elbows. "I'd like to request 
an Inquisition."
	"I see. Do you have the wequiwed statement?"
	"Yeah." Zapan brought out the video cartridge he had recorded. A 
recepticle popped open next to the cylinder. He inserted the cartridge. There was 
a whirring of the machinery. Somewhere in the building, it seemed that the hum 
of machinery had changed in timbre.
	A moment later Cylinder 12 emerged. "So, do you know who 'Hugo' is?"
	"Yeah." Zapan knew perfectly well who Hugo was. "He's a co-worker of 
theirs, does some turbine maintenance."
	"Powew empwoyee--that would be Factowy 21...Gwoovy, we do have a 
'Hugo' who wowks thewe."
	"Check." 12 looked at Zapan. "F44-269, you are given Inquisitory powers 
to bring Factory 21 employee number F21-349 to this Factory for interrogation 
and judgement." A printout emerged from the cylinders' base, with the 
traditional holographic seal. Zapan eagerly snatched it. "You can use any and all 
powers at your disposal to get him over here."
	"OK...I'd like to request a FacLaw unit."