Piper kept walking with her anyway, shrugging. “Thought you might want some company.”
Estrella glanced at the apartment building, its dark and gloomy atmosphere, and the empty beer cans littering the sidewalk. Her optical scanners picked up the flashing neon sign of an arcade and pizza hangout further in the distance. It was the only positive thing she saw.
“It’s a rough place,” Estrella said. “But I’ll manage, I’ve been through worse with the gang.”
“Well if you need anything or a lift, give me a call—”
Piper twitched, nearly tripping over the curb. Estrella was quick to run, grab, and hold her steady. Her arm brushed the skin of Piper’s synthetic arm, it felt like the real deal.
“You’re low, aren’t you?” Estrella asked her.
Piper nodded, reaching for a switch at the back of her neck. When she tapped it, out sprung her battery, shaped roughly like a light bulb. Estrella saw the digital screen on the battery flash a low charge warning as Piper pulled it to her face, wincing. “Yep, was supposed to switch that one out when I got home. Guess I shouldn’t have had that smoke.”
And instead, Piper drove Estrella to her new home. A wave of guilt hit her while she held Piper still, looking up at the apartment.
“My stuff should have been delivered by now, right?”
Piper nodded. “Delivery drones are fast. Everything that belonged in your old place, should be here waiting for you.”
“I packed a few extra batteries.” Estrella dragged Piper with her beyond the glass sliding doors. “Guess you’re following me up after all.”
After a long elevator climb and a trek across halls that hadn’t been swept in at least a year, Estrella found her unit. Inside was an empty place save for her boxes jam-packed with her belongings. She didn’t pack any of it up. People from Yoshida did, probably during that two- or three-day gap she was getting her brains examined and her old AI torn out.
It made searching for the battery frustrating.
She ended up dumping the contents of three boxes on the floor. She hadn’t been in her new place for two minutes, and it was already turning into a dump. Piper fell to the floor, leaning her back against the wall next to the exit. The glow from her emerald eyes faded, she was entering power conservation mode. Estrella needed to hurry before Piper’s life faded.
The fourth box had two battery cells drop out amongst the contents within it. She swiped one quickly. Piper’s eyes were locked into the contents of the box when Estrella approached her. She was probably thinking about what kind of person reads comic books in this day and age, as a bunch of them came folding out to random pages from the box.
Piper lowered her head. The back of her neck was facing Estrella who stood above her. Below the data ports Piper had at the back of her head was the still open slot waiting for a fresh battery. Estrella slipped it in and then folded the hatch covered in flesh shut.
There was a two-minute delay before Piper got to her feet, breathing with relief. The life-support nanites within her resumed their duties, while the cyberware in her had another day or two of juice to operate.
“Thanks,” she said.
Estrella nodded. “I was out for two days before I got here. I got two extra cells that went unused.”
Piper didn’t make her way to the front door as Estrella figured she’d do. She tilted her head about as if she was running scans of the place. Piper patted her leather skirt free of the dust when a satisfied grin spread across her face.
“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, new girl. See you then.”
Piper went reaching for the front door with one hand, waving a flirty goodbye with the other. Estrella flushed as the RW vanished behind the door.
Something about Piper didn’t sit right with her. Estrella had doubts she was making a new friend, more like she was about to be used. She held the spent battery, pulled from the back of Piper to her face. It was at thirty percent, low power yes, but not low enough for the act Piper pulled. Piper wanted in Estrella’s place. Estrella beat herself up internally for falling for the trick.
What did Piper want? She was, after all, the RW that showed up with the scans of the wall Estrella used to hide the IW family of three. Piper never revealed who slipped her that information. Piper’s serial number failed to show on her facial scans, and Piper was clearly from the People’s Federation of Pacific Nations. The enemy of the Alliance, even in the post WWIII world.
Was Piper a spy from the Federation? No way, she was an RW, propriety of the Yoshida Corporation after she sold her body to them. If she was a spy, they would have outed her during her augmentation phase. Yoshida wouldn’t have been that stupid.
Would they?
Geoffrey.
Yes, Estrella?
Bring up everything you can find on Piper Taylor from the police database and Yoshida.
Twelve
Ray
Ray pushed his body up from the floor. He had made a miserable attempt at a jumping heel click. He didn’t care that everyone in the Alliance Star’s newsroom looked at him like he was an idiot for face-planting on the floor. Why? Because he did it. He resurrected his hackers’ blog. His old followers were bathing him with more likes than he could count.
He kept his tablet close to his face as he walked to his cubicle. The screen showed the new comments and likes his post generated, the post about the truth of the IW apartment attack, the past day. His followers praised him for calling into question the actions of the RW, Estrella Rodriguez. How she might have covered something up in a crime scene, and then feigned ignorance when her superiors called her out. The truth was out. It made his ego grow, ever so slightly. He’d have to buy Piper coffee sometime for the tip—
“Ray!” The fuming face of the Alliance Star’s editor-in-chief peered out from the glass office door. Steven was looking right at Ray. His finger was pointed at his desk. “Get the fuck in my office now!”
Ray shrugged, putting his pad away. “Get the fuck out of my office. Get the fuck in my office, make up your mind!”
“I’m not playing, get in now!”
Ray looked behind at the dozens of reporters as they stood from their desks eying him. Ray’s ego was shrinking, as was his happy mood that had followed him up the elevator ride. He walked into the office, ready to face the music, ready to face the editor-in-chief.
More like, emperor-in-chief.
The door shut and locked behind him. No interruptions were allowed.
The glass dimmed to black with a tap of his computer console when Steven got to his desk. By the time Ray sat in front of the desk, Steven had pulled up the webpage of one notorious hacker from the past that came out of retirement last night, DigiSamurai69. He spun the screen around, making it face Ray, shining blue light across his paling face.
Ray grimaced. “Ah.”
Steven tapped the computer screen. “What the fuck is this?”
“Heh.”
“You think I’m fucking stupid? Like I wouldn’t find out?”
“I don’t use my real identity on that blog, there’s no way it’d come back to us.”
“I know who runs the blog though.”
“Of course you do. It’s why you gave me the job.”
“And you’re making us look bad! I had Alvin rewrite your story and we printed it.” Steven scrolled down the post and into the comment’s section, the same comments Ray was reading on this pad. He didn’t need to read the comments on the screen, Ray already knew what they said.
Alliance Star is fake news!
DigiSamurai69 is the real hero this world needs.
I’m unsubbing from the Star, tired of this fake news shit. Thank you for giving us the truth!
“It’s one thing to put out the news the way we see it,” Steven continued. “It’s another when people say we are fake news. This will hurt our numbers!”
A soft shrug lifted Ray’s shoulders. “At least Yoshida won’t pull their ads.”
“If people aren’t
clicking ads, because well, there’s nobody reading our stuff to click … What do you think will happen?” Steven made a good point. Ray fucked up, and his cringing face showed it. “Our views today are already down twenty-three percent because of this … Give me one reason not to fire you?”
Ray’s body wanted to tremble with panic. He got the job because he always got results the publication wanted. A dirty cop was doing bad things? Ray knew which cameras in the city were hackable. A high paying corporate executive was suddenly fired? Ray browsing through hidden emails found out why. Ray was unfireable, he was the best reporter, and the Star needed him. They’d never get rid of him, he’d always thought to himself. It’s what gave him the balls to raise his voice to Steven if things didn’t go his way, like last night.
And at that moment, he felt his balls and dick shrivel up and want to go inside him.
Ray had to do something and fast. He had to say something to keep his job. This was not the time to be losing it. “Because I still haven’t finished making the payments on the ring,” he finally spoke.
Steven lifted an eyebrow. “Ring?”
“For Arianna. I wanted to propose to her.”
“Well, looks like you’re in the shit now.”
“Sir, please,” Ray said, surprised he didn’t fold his hands together in prayer. “It … it wasn’t my intention to fuck you over like that.”
“I don’t know, after yesterday, you could have fooled me.”
“Let me fix this! Please, I need to make payments on the ring!”
Steven sat back, peering into Ray’s soul while twirling a pen with his fingers. “Yoshida wants us to run something that will make them look good, assuming we’ll have readers left by the end of the month. People thinking RWs like Rodriguez is the norm is going to hurt them. We’ve been given a damage control assignment.”
“Give me the story.”
“You? Mister truth, justice and the Alliance way?”
Ray’s panic was in the driver’s seat now. Gone were Ray’s moral code and journalistic integrity. The chat he had with Arianna last night only made him love her more, and that flower crown she picked up, she’d look so elegant with it during their wedding. He had to get that ring paid for. There’s no guarantee another job would be available, not in the overpopulated world he lived in with unemployment lines that went on for days. There was a reason people sold their bodies to Yoshida and become RWs.
Fuck that noise.
“Yoshida’s hosting a tech convention in New York,” Steven said. “We weren’t going to cover it originally. But if you get your ass there—”
“I’ll cover the show, and do interviews, whatever you need.”
Steven pointed the end of the pen at Ray’s pale face. “Don’t fuck this one up; this is your last chance with me.”
There was one other rule of journalism Ray had learned in school but forgot about, only to be reminded of it now. You’re only as good as your last article. It didn’t matter how many good ones you wrote, if the last one you did was shit, then you are shit. If the last one you wrote was fucking amazing, then you were fucking amazing.
Steven was willing to ignore all the good Ray did for the Star, because of the blog post. And he was going to forgive him, if he made Yoshida a happy paying advertising client, one that wouldn’t pull ads even though they see a drop in clicks, and sales of their many products and services.
The assignment was Ray’s and he left the office in a hurry. He grabbed his phone and tapped through an air flight booking app, booking a flight from Los Angeles to New York. The app reported it withdrew the appropriate funds from his account.
He stopped shy of the elevator doors, thinking back to the conversation he had with Arianna last night.
It happened in Munich, I’m in London right now, just got in a minute ago. Going to be catching a flight to the Alliance soon, New York, then to Los Angeles.
Arianna’s layover was in New York.
He dialed her number. He got the voicemail.
“Hey babe, guess what? I’ll be in New York very soon, gonna be covering a trade show. Let me know when your flight arrives. Maybe we can hang out for a bit then return to LA together? Call me when you get this message, love ya.”
On his way back to his apartment to pack, his tablet pad beeped. A new comment was posted on his blog.
Makes you wonder, why would IWs target a poor family of three like that?
That’s a good question, he thought. Why did that IW gang target them, and nobody else in the building?
Thirteen
Estrella
Piper Taylor, age thirty-five in human years, four in RW. She was originally from Auckland before becoming a refugee in the Alliance, having fled the Federation. There wasn’t more to say about her life there. The Federation was pretty big on censorship and keeping foreign eyes out from its network.
If the stories Yumi told Estrella were true, Auckland was home to several underground resistance cells fighting a losing war to liberate the pacific island from Beijing’s rule. Piper was likely one of those resistance fighters before the military came down on her hard, forcing her to escape across the big blue pond, landing in Los Angeles.
Falling asleep with Piper’s profile open got Estrella dreaming about her. She was back in the car ride to her place, and Piper came into her place from behind. When Estrella turned, the dream Piper transformed into Yumi, her old roommate from Buenos Aires. Yumi was always behind Estrella when she came home. It didn’t matter if Estrella had been returning from a mission, or stepped out for a walk, Yumi refused to be alone in their apartment. She was okay with that, Yumi always had a way to dispel Estrella’s negative thoughts, especially if they got back from a mission gone wrong.
The dream Yumi sat with Estrella on her bed, commenting on how much more space her new place had compared to the small one-bedroom unit they shared in Buenos Aires. Dream Yumi rested her head and short black hair on Estrella’s shoulder. She told Estrella that she missed her, and not to let her absence hold her back from being happy. Estrella groaned in reply.
Yumi offered a backrub, hoping it would make her happy. She accepted, and Yumi went behind Estrella, she felt a synthetic hand on one shoulder, and another made of flesh on the other. The dream was too real. Estrella didn’t want to wake up and told herself everything else had been the dream. She wanted the dream she was experiencing to be a reality.
Estrella’s phone rang in the dream. Yumi grabbed it, glanced at the screen, and handed it to her. She told Estrella it was an important call.
A ringing noise forced Estrella’s eyes open. She ignored it, so the noise ignored her nonverbal way of saying fuck off. She wanted to continue sleeping. The noise didn’t stop, and neither did the thin rays of sunlight beaming in from her window.
You have an incoming call, Estrella.
She buried her face in her pillow. You don’t say.
Estrella moved her head to the left and saw the wall. She forgot her new pad had her bed placed inside a large cubbyhole inside the apartment. There was only one way her body could roll out of bed, to the right. She looked in that direction and saw a holographic black cat sit on a coffee table, gesturing to her phone resting on it. It caused the noise.
The call is from your relative, would you like me to take a message?
“Oh fuck!”
She rolled out of bed swiftly and then cursed once more when her left foot got stuck in the small garbage pail she left next to it. It went flying across her unit, hitting the metal wall with a thud. She’d have to choose a better place for that when she returned to unpacking.
Estrella ran for the phone, slipping it into her right hand, free from the NC gauntlet. That too lay on the table. Her right hand and arm were marked by tiny holes pricked by the gauntlet as it transferred utility nanites to or from it.
Her thumb was seconds away from accepting the call when she looked down and saw the panties she wore and her bare breasts further up from it. She opted for an au
dio only call. It was probably for the best since the holographic pictures of Piper and her dossier were floating near her bed, near the table, near everywhere. It looked like Estrella was plotting to stalk Piper. Too bad the data Geoffrey found contained nothing Piper didn’t already explain.
“Hola como estas!” Hi how are you.
Estrella grinned at the sound of the voice. “Hola como estas tía Anna.” Hi how are you Aunt Anna?
“¿Has llegado a salvo a Los Angeles?” Have you arrived safely to Los Angeles?
“Si estoy bien.” Yes, I am fine.
She continued to speak with her aunt, the woman that helped raise Estrella after she was rescued from the Bald Skulls gang’s captivity. She never had the chance to say goodbye to Anna, or give her the heads up of her transfer to LA. Anna heard of the transfer from some rep in Yoshida, spitting a bullshit story that Estrella needed stress relief, grieving over the loss of Yumi, and sought to do it right away.
Anna calmed Estrella’s thoughts as she walked around her unit during the call, informing her she received the money transfer Estrella sent before confronting Ricardo. She gave the air-conditioner a firm strike with her synthetic fist which left a fist-sized dent on it. It shut off at least three times during the night. There was a reason Estrella ended up stripping down to her panties, and why she was in no hurry to cover her sweat-drenched body, while beads of sweat formed at the tips of her nipples.
She appreciated the call when the chat was coming to an end. The warm feeling in Estrella’s chest was proof that somewhere, out in the fucked-up world that humans continue to ruin every year, there was a person who still cared for her wellbeing, and supported her choice of becoming an RW, going in for the operation that turned her body into a network of wires, cyberware, and a colony of nanites, working around the clock to maintain the genetic manipulation done to her body.
Cyber Witch Page 10