Chapter 16

  The Red Light District shone with crimson, which was just really a sort of horney red. Neon light and blazing signs invaded your eyes, fighting out the sun during the day and replacing it during the night. Hotels littered every part of it, along with restaurants, clothing stores, and all types of shopping accommodations.

  You could live here and some did. Gambling houses were nearby along with the brothel sectors. And roaming gangs of Minor Rank wishers discouraged any acts of extreme violence and generally kept the peace. It was strange. This was the center of crime in the city, but the crime was done in a controlled way. They broke just enough laws to entice regular citizens with what they couldn’t have anywhere else, but broke them so gently that the officials of both the Heroes Union and Oak City found it not worthwhile to pursue them.

  It was the center of sin, the home of debauchery and an extremely political space.

  When looking at a world full of superheroes, one had to ask the question, why is there crime? If you have people who could run all over the earth in a few seconds, how could they allow crime to exist? If all the Major S’s worked for about three hours a day to clean up crime in a single city, life would just be much easier for everyone.

  This was a common question, and one everyone asked at one point or another.

  And there were two parts to that answer. One was that they were protecting us from other threats. Paragon, Kenetic, The Lioness, and even The Wolf were often off-world fighting some other threats the general public didn’t know about. There were a lot of theories on that stuff.

  We already knew aliens were real, though we didn’t have any major contacts with each other, we knew they had wishers too. One theory was that we were at war with them and we didn’t even know, which seemed unlikely because we had seen delegations from both sides and the Glavinor, the Mars colony, held a small group of them there.

  Another theory suggested that they were lying about their power and just hiding so that no one would ever know how weak they were. What we did know was that they were off in space doing something most of the time and we never really knew what. The various governments of Earth paid them money for it and were eager to work along with them.

  The second, but much more palpable, reason was politics. Most people didn’t want to be ruled by wishers, not even other wishers. So unless threats of certain levels were shown within the city, wishers of certain levels wouldn’t be allowed to act.

  It was stupid in a way, but it made sense at the same time. You didn’t want people you couldn’t control enforcing your rules. No one wanted all powerful cops, law enforcement so powerful that they could ignore the law.

  The State of Valentine, the only wisher ruled state in the world, was a prime example of this. So wishers stayed out of positions of power and governments tried to rely on themselves and Minor Ranked wishes for their enforcement of most crimes.

  That was another problem of the Hero’s Union. It was too limiting in its politics. Heroes had their regions and heroing outside of them, at times, was a punishable offense.

  The Red Light district took advantage of all of that politics.

  It was inarguably the highest concentration of wishers in all of Oak City, but it was also filled with non-wishers. Now, mix that in with Minor Rank wishers being hard to identify, and the privacy laws surrounding all masked individuals and you had a cobweb of legal redlines and wires to cut through to arrest anybody.

  Was it governed by the city? By the Heroes Union? If someone was arrested could they be unmasked or would that violate their rights to privacy? You could unmask someone in the city proper if you reasonably believed they weren’t a wisher, but here where wishers walked around every corner you had a reason to believe they were a wisher and had to respect their mask rights until a Union Rep clears them. It wasn't lawless, but enforcing the law required extreme circumstances like murder or a shoot out. A lot of the small powers of the police like probable cause and other stuff just didn't cut it here.

  And this section of the Heroes Union fought with the local government all the time. Jurisdiction, laws, and ability to enforce them was a very complex thing. The brothel district, for example, was a swath of private property held by a corporation formed by Nightwalkers who were registered by the Union.

  Now that might not sound like a big deal but if city cops entered that district even just to patrol, that gave the corporation enough rights to bring up a lawsuit against the city.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It was all convoluted and that was sort of the point.

  I walked through the messy district and to the more product oriented area of the Red Light District. You had strange figures hanging at the corner, some of them trying to wave you down, others waiting for someone they knew.

  Drugs were common here. Since the advancement of medicine, physical addictions weren’t much of a problem anymore. They could be cured with treatment or a couple of injections at a clinic. And that meant that anything that wasn’t EJ was seen as a recreational high.

  Heroin, meth, and a whole host of strange chemical mixtures were being sold here. Of course you could overdose, and that meant that items were still regulated and banned, but the legal consequences were bearable. Fines and a trip to a clinic and you’d be free to go.

  I turned into an alley. There were a lot of the alleys around this place.

  Most of them were safe. The brothel queens, gambling lords, and drug kingpins kept it that way for the most part.

  They wanted the Red Light District to be the place where regular people go to engage in actions they would normally never engage in. As for crime, well everything here was a crime and the criminals that allowed it wouldn’t allow you to get in their way. So violent crime was relatively low compared to other parts of town. And all the crime that was violent was done in a very professional way.

  I hated it here.

  But it was said that this area had its own Major A or even S guarding it and that made it even more of a hassle to take down.

  A man laid slumped against the corner, pupils dilated and seeing into another realm of crazy. I ignored him and went over to the door a few steps down.

  Then I knocked.

  “Who is it?” A raspy voice yelled out.

  “Peanut butter,” I replied.

  “Peanut butter with what?” It asked.

  “Honey and not jelly.”

  There was a small silence before the man unlocked the door and stared me down for a second.

  “Ah, Maverick, what’s up? Need a reup?”

  I nodded. You needed a name around here as well. Something fake, but also something recognizable.

  “Well come in. I got a new batch of something nice, just came in. I’ll give you a sample.”

  I rolled my eyes as I stepped inside.

  Philip was a drug dealer. He had a whole host of drugs in his repertoire, but I came to him for one thing and one thing only.

  Pain killers.

  “I don’t need anything new,” I told him.

  “Aw come on man, you haven’t even heard of what this does yet. Give me a moment to show you,” he replied, waving his hands frantically.

  He had white skin and messy brown hair. And his pupils were dilated, always dilated. But he worked well enough for what I needed and even better than was his consistency.

  He was also clean and took pride in his product, which made him better than most of his peers from my experience.

  “You haven’t been doing your recent deliveries,” I mumbled as I looked around the place.

  “Oh yeah man, no market for that old stuff anymore. You know you’re the only one that buys painkillers and uses them like that? People want to get high, not function on drugs. You should go see a doctor for that kind of stuff.”

  I frowned.

  “But,” he added. “I got just the stuff man, come here and check this out! Its called the Blue Goddess.”

  I went over to the table and studied it. It was filled with dried flowers of some sort. Not weed, because I knew weed and this wasn’t it. It had a light blue color and the corners seemed to almost curl out into itself.

  “No,” I stated.

  “Come on dude, this is that good stuff. It gets rid of pain and the high is incomparable.”

  “No,” I repeated again. Then I went out the door.

  He was trying to turn me into an addict. That was a new drug, one synthesized by a wisher of some sort and new drugs didn’t have cures yet. Opioids and amphetamines had cures and regardless of how they were mixed we could eventually find cures for their newer chemicals.

  But if a drug was new enough, it would turn regular people into addicts. And it would take some time before the government knew what was happening and was able to focus on creating a cure for that specific addiction. It might take a year or only a few months, but in that time, an addict would spend all they have on that product and worse, maybe start seeking a better high.

  That rat.

  Just before I could open the door, Philip put a small bag in my pocket.

  “Here man, a free sample. Its non-addictive stuff, I promise, just give it a chance, alright?”

  I left the building and slammed the door as I did so.

  I gave one long look at the poor bastard riding high on the ground.

  He was probably on this stuff and he was definitely loving it.

  I sent a message to Mike.

  Me: New synthesized drug on the market, super addictive. It’s called the Blue Goddess How much would the union pay for a sample?

  Mike: We already have some samples, do you have a whole flower or just some dried up leaves?

  I took out the clear bag and stared at it in the dim alley light and a whole flower stared right back at me.

  Me: Big old flower.

  Mike: Jesus kid, you are on a roll lately. Seven grand.

  Me: Ten.

  Mike: Fine. Just bring it quick.

  Well Philip, thanks for the free sample.

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