Cyber Witch

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Your assault and attempted murder of a valued client of Yoshida, suggests you’ve become stressed. This is most likely because of the ongoing combat with IW gangs you’ve been asked to take part in with the mercenary groups in Buenos Aires, and the loss and feelings of grief for your partner and roommate, Yumi. We feel a different assignment is necessary, one with fewer responsibilities and away from anything that may remind you of Yumi.”

  “My family lives in Buenos Aires!”

  “We are aware of that and will ensure your new assignment will be within the borders of the Alliance of the Americas.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Please remain still.”

  “Answer the fucking question!”

  “Please remain still; we need to install your new AI assistant.”

  Estrella wanted to say more, but she felt her motor functions seize up, as her neural network underwent a brief reboot. Her new AI had been successfully installed and synced with her brain and cyberware. New status screens populated her vision, a text crawl of numbers and computer code rained down.

  Greetings Estrella, a voice in her head said; it had a British accent. It was a nice touch by whoever programmed it. My name is Geoffrey; I will be your new AI.

  Great, maybe you can tell me what the fuck is going on.

  You hacked your previous AI, removing its ability to restrict unprovoked violent acts toward humans. With that protocol gone, you assaulted a client of Yoshida who had your body on lease for their business. You also assaulted another man under his employ. Both were human, and that is unacceptable, you were repurposed to protect humans, not harm them. Yoshida believes this is a result of stress and will transfer you to a new city to assist their law enforcement combat unregistered imaginary witches and warlocks.

  No, no, my family lives in Buenos Aires.

  I understand, but the Yoshida Corporation has made the decision.

  What about Yumi?

  I am unfamiliar with that name.

  Lee Yu-Mi, she was an RW like me.

  Scanning. Ah yes, Lee Yu-Mi, she is listed as killed in combat. They will harvest her cyberware parts as they are corporate property.

  That’s the problem, how are you going to bury a woman who had almost half her human body ripped out to get augmented?

  What remains of her body will have to be laid to rest.

  That’s fucked up man! Bury her with her parts. Don’t let her family's last memories be a woman missing her bones, arms, and—

  It is company policy to harvest all cyberware from fallen RWs unless a third party is willing to purchase them for a proper burial. Are you offering to pay for that? They are very expensive.

  After the botched job, Ricardo withholding Yumi’s cut of the cash, and Estrella giving the last of her money to her aunt to pay rent, her answer was a reluctant no.

  After a lengthy diagnostic and various tests of Estrella’s cyborg skeleton, left arm, and AI were completed, she was forced into the processing chamber. The chamber was dimly lit and populated with a dozen naked men and women like her, all of them featuring synthetic left arms, data ports on the sides of their heads, and dots of silver covering their right arm. They were real witches or warlocks, some were new recruits, and others were like her, undergoing upgrades for a new assignment.

  Nobody was ashamed at their full-frontal nude form as they all featured bodies the advertisements of the nation told people they should have. Body modification and genetic retuning was big business. The naked men standing around her had penises no shorter than six inches, while the women had breasts swollen to a C cup or larger. Everyone had to have the perfect body according to the media. If you didn’t have one, then ads harassed you daily until you spent money to get it, after that they hounded you to buy sexy clothes and shoes to show it off.

  Estrella, along with the men and women, were asked to stand on a conveyor belt which carried them deeper into the facility. Robotic arms ahead lowered, while red laser scanners took slow detailed analyses of their form and cyberware, casting gridlines of red over the naked group. Once completed, new robotic arms moved forward, pricking the arms of everyone, and injecting a silver-colored fluid into them, nanites, the powerhouse of RWs.

  She got her injection of life-support nanites when it was her turn. A crawl of computer text over her eyes confirmed the injection was a success. The tiny robots traveled throughout her circulatory system and went to work, ensuring her body continued to not reject the synthetic tech within her. She saw windows to her left and right. They were operation rooms where naked men and women lay on beds. Men in lab coats used surgical equipment to remove their arms from their bodies, others had their bones pulled out, in preparation to have it replaced with a cyborg one. It brought back memories of the day Estrella sold her body to the corporation when she and her family had hit rock bottom.

  A robotic arm held a network cable to her when the assembly line to receive upgrades ended. She took the end of the cable as instructed by the digital voice, plugging it into one of the three network plugs on the side of her head. She jacked into Yoshida’s software update server and saw a progress bar move from left to right. A flash of computer file names and directories flicked above it.

  Please standby, her AI said. Downloading a new operating system and receiving the destination to our new assessment.

  Where is that? Please don’t say, Los Angeles.

  It is Los Angeles, unfortunately.

  Fuck me sideways!

  Unable to comply.

  Not literally.

  Ah, that was an idiom. I am unfamiliar with that one.

  I hope you’re a fast learner, there's plenty more where that came from.

  Indeed. Your body is the first one they have installed me in. I will look forward to what we can accomplish, and learn, together.

  Four

  Ray

  Ray kept his face away from the two cops. The two uniformed men remained standing, pointing their pistols at two thugs with ripped jeans and sleeveless tops. The fists of the two men flared with tiny sparks. They were gathering energy for an electrokinetic attack; they were warlocks, IWs. The two IW thugs refused to comply with the cops; they had special powers, and the cops had guns. The two cops remained where they stood. They were outmatched.

  A third nonuniformed man approached. He wore the silver and shiny NC gauntlet on his right hand. It was an RW, a cyborg warlock created to keep the local IWs in line. The sparking fists of the two IW thugs went to the air when they saw the RW. The cops pushed them to the hood of their vehicle, placing them in handcuffs. The thug IW duo roared, cursing the police, and then threatening the RW with death. Ninety-five years later, and people in LA were still yelling ‘fuck the police.’

  IWs in cuffs, regardless if they were a shifter, telepath, warlock, or witch, were typically unregistered with the Alliance government and oftentimes were extremely violent. Use of IW powers was illegal without a permit, as was training to hone one’s supernatural abilities. Unregistered IWs had a tendency to break all laws regarding that.

  Ray power-walked to his car. If they had called an RW to back up cops, then things could get messy real quick. He’d written his fair share of news articles about innocents getting nasty burns over their bodies when they stumbled into the crossfire between the police, RWs, and rowdy IWs that didn’t want to be hauled downtown.

  The world of today, nearing the end of the century, was way different from the start.

  His car was parked a block away, forcing him on a long walk along the unkempt sidewalks. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, since Ray was human. Everyone around him were witches and warlocks; he was in the heart of the IW district.

  Two women, no older than twenty, whistled at Ray, their faces covered in black and gold streetwalker war paint. They were wearing black fishnet stockings and shorts so short you could see half the mold of their ass cheeks. And if you were looking at their chest, rather than the ass, then you’d be able to catch a glimpse at th
e full shape of their nipples, bleeding through the loose-fitting tank tops they had on. One of the working girls had fox ears and a tail; she altered her DNA with a quick wave of her hands.

  She made a duckface motion with her lips when Ray saw her. He kept walking as she changed her appearance. She lost the ears and foxtail, becoming an Asian woman, then a gorgeous African woman, a Caucasian woman with blonde hair, a stunning Persian. Her biokinetic skills let her become any ethnicity she wanted. Sex with biokinetic prostitutes was in high demand.

  The foxy streetwalker was back to her previous look with the fox ears and tails when she called out to Ray. “Hey, you human?”

  “I think he is,” her partner said.

  Foxy smiled at Ray as he looked back at them. “Ever fucked a witch, big boy?”

  Ray shook his head, keeping his movement toward the parking lot. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “Let me suck your dick once,” Foxy said. “I promise you’ll never look at a human girl again!”

  Ray chuckled. “I’m fine, really.”

  The second streetwalker snapped her fingers, it made her hands flash with blue light brighter than the neon one’s decorating the district. A small gathering of rain clouds appeared above her, drenching her body wet, then vanished with the flick of her glowing hands. She ran her palms over her chest, across the soaked tank top. It was hard for Ray not to peek at the full shape of her augmented breasts visible from the hydrokinetically drenched top.

  “You sure?” she said. “You can have both of us, two for one deal tonight.”

  Ray turned away, keeping to the straight and narrow path to his car. “Everyone seems to be holding those.”

  “We can have a telepath record it too,” Foxy shouted. “Pause, Play, Rewind is back there.”

  Smile and keep walking. The more he spoke to them, the more they’d tried to lure him back. Not that he’d ever do it, Arianna was the only woman he needed in his life, and she was human. Nailing a woman with strange powers in the bedroom didn’t sit right with him. What if they make his dick shrink as a joke? Or worse? There was a reason the world put all IWs on a tight leash after the third world war. And he saw it as his trek to the parking lot continued.

  A warlock doused his body in flames and entertained a mass of girls with his pyrokinetic ability to juggle burning pieces of wood. Telepaths performed tarot card readings at tables near the streets. Dance clubs released loud vibrations from their music and signs out front stated humans weren’t allowed inside. Anti RW graffiti was spray-painted across several grimy buildings as trash crunched below Ray’s feet.

  A hologram poster read: Want safe streets? Then make haste and report all unregistered users of magic. A tips number flashed below as Ray moved past it. It was one of many holographic banners speaking to the masses.

  Next Friday Breaker vs. Xray in a flaming cage deathmatch! Come watch the action live at Josh’s Beer shack!

  Hot biokinetic girls on stage tonight! You’ll never believe how low they’ll go!

  Is your spouse cheating? Text telepath Nikki today for a free estimate.

  Walking home alone? Missed the bus and got to wait for the next? Swing by West coast Gunsmiths for ammunition. Always keep a full load in your gun at all times.

  The billboards and signs went on for days, adding their luster to the neon brightening the buildings, streets, and sidewalks.

  A sense of safety calmed Ray’s head when he sat in his car. It activated with the insertion of his keycard, and a three-second retina scan temporarily blinding his vision with six green lights from the scanner. With the car in motion merging into the traffic of the city, he switched on its autopilot and reached for his phone.

  He made a long-distance call to Arianna, something he’d avoided doing when news of the terrorist attack that hit the EU was made known to him. He wasn’t ready for the bad news if there was bad news to be shared. Her voicemail sounded. She’s just sleeping he told himself. It was, after all, past midnight in the European Union.

  The beep sounded the cue for him to leave the message.

  “Hey Arianna, it’s me, Ray. Of course, you didn’t need me to tell you that, since you could tell by the sound of my voice, oh and caller display. Yeah, I’m probably rambling. Anyway, I heard of the terrorist attack in Munich, just calling to make sure you’re safe ‘n’ shit. You not picking up is worrying me … then again, time zone difference, yeah. Anyway, just give me a call back when you can. I love you, Arianna.”

  The call ended with a prompt asking him to confirm if he wanted to leave that message or record a new one. He gazed at the screen for two minutes wondering if she’d ever pick up the message.

  The automated computer voice of his car informed him they were leaving the IW district and entering the human one. That meant his car had been driving for twenty minutes. Ray was looking at his phone with the car autopilot on for that long. He shook himself out of the trance, hit confirm, and put the phone away, ready to accept manual control of the car back.

  Outside the car’s windows was the Los Angeles freeway populated with cars and trucks, helping dot the darkened roads with their headlights. Gone were the flashing shows of IW powers, cops, and RWs looking for unregistered IWs. Those sights were soon to be replaced with humans on the streets and RWs making sure IWs stayed in their place when he arrived in the human districts. All the negativity he was exposed to earlier was gone, except the thought of possibly losing Arianna to an overseas terrorist attack. There was so much he wanted to do with her, so much he put off because he thought he’d have all the time in the world to do it.

  Ray had to take control of the situation.

  “Computer, show me the location of the nearest jewelry store.”

  His dashboard’s computer screen illuminated. A detailed top-down map of Los Angeles appeared. His location displayed as a flashing dot on the freeway, as the nearest shops requested showed as pulsing red dots. Tapping the dots changed the screen, showing photos, addresses, customer reviews of the jewelry stores. He browsed their catalog carefully.

  They sell engagement rings.

  Ray pulled out his phone again and selected his schedule planner app. He thumbed in a note to browse the store and purchase a gift he’d long put off for Arianna. A surprise for her when she returned to Alliance soil.

  Assuming nothing happened to her overseas.

  Five

  Estrella

  LAX and the pretentiously tall structures that made up Los Angeles was a depressing sight. It was confirmation Estrella’s forced reassignment was real, and not a joke. She was in LA, there was no going back home so long as Yoshida’s decision still held.

  Out there in the jungle of skyscrapers and neon, was the notoriously huge IW district she heard so much about, the district that sent a lot of RWs home in body bags. The LAPD was going to make her spend every day there, now that her body was leased out to them, she figured.

  She sighed a sound full of dejected emotions and wondered what she’d be doing if Yumi was still with her. Probably smiling.

  So … which way to the LAPD? She asked her new AI, Geoffrey.

  Processing, please standby. A map of the city appeared over her eyesight. Red lines were drawn on the map by Geoffrey, traveling from LAX’s location to the police headquarters they assigned her to. This is the most efficient route to it.

  Who do we report to again?

  A profile dossier replaced the map. It showed the ID photo of a uniformed cop, a man in his mid to late twenties—short brown hair, emotionless gaze—listing his age, height, name, service record, and education. Geoffrey had everything on him; even his address and phone number. She was surprised it didn’t list his hobbies and turn-ons.

  This is Marcus Desmond, Geoffrey explained so Estrella wouldn’t have to read the file. He is an officer, part of the Los Angeles IW crimes unit.

  All right.

  Hmm, it would seem he is not at the station. Marcus has been called to the scene of a crime in progress, possibly IW
s involved.

  Locate it. Marcus’s profile vanished, and the map of the city returned to her vision. The red lines carving a path to the HQ changed. She gave the updated map an inquisitive glare. It’s not far away. Let’s give them a hand.

  It is likely they called RWs to the scene already.

  Last time I checked LA is short-handed in the RW department. Estrella put her hands on her hips which were wrapped in tight black shorts. She wondered if the people walking past her were noticing her facial expression changing because of the silent internal conversation she was having. That’s why they hauled my ass out here, and you know it.

  Following the map floating in the vision of her synthetic eyes, she moved away from the airport, walking to the nearest public transportation train. You were assigned here as a part of your stress management.

  No, it was punishment. I ain’t got any fucking stress problems. This is LA, the highest concentration of IWs in the Alliance. They need RWs because they always end up dead.

  You are about to engage in risky behavior which could be attributed to stress.

  She snickered out loud, drawing the confused glares of the surrounding people. Their confusion faded when they saw the silver MC gauntlet on her right hand, her eyes emitting emerald light, and the black faux leather bustier. They knew a synthetic witch with an AI implanted in her head when they saw one.

  I’m about to make a good first impression, she continued. The sooner we please these people, the sooner we get a choice of a new assignment, meaning I can go back home.

  The subway station Estrella crawled out of deposited her in a neighborhood in dire need of a cleanup, and maybe a recycling truck to remove the mountain of rubbish building up. Every pad had security bars over their windows, more upscale ones had the laser upgrades securing windows, though Estrella only saw two of those. Quadcopter drones raced overhead, and they all bore the logo of the LAPD. She was getting close, just follow the drones. A gathering of LAPD and a few unmarked cars idled outside one small apartment, and the drones she saw earlier all floated next to a window on the thirtieth floor, or was it the twentieth? She didn’t have time to count or scan.