Nanoshock

  One thing at a time, right? That was Lucky’s zen.

  Lucky.

  I just didn’t know how to deal with that one. Not right now.

  Maybe when I’d pulled cred up. My own cred. My own way.

  The ugly little knot in my gut felt too much like rage to link to Lucky.

  I was seventeen blocks into the corporate center when I rolled up on a towering glass penis-replacement. Runners called the place C-town. They called it the Capital, but we replaced the C with whatever we wanted: corp, cunts, cocks. Name it, it sticks.

  Every corporation has kilometers and kilometers of turf in the sector. Shell companies, branches, side operations – locating the center of any of them is like searching for a virgin in a whoremine.

  Whatever Malik Reed’s offices were, they weren’t Mantis central. I didn’t know what Mantis central looked like. I imagined it was full of corporation fuckheads standing in line to wipe the boss’s taint with reports.

  By the time I made it into the underground parking garage, I felt much cooler. Much, much steadier. I’d nail this one down and go from there. The job in front of me.

  Whatever else Lucky had done, his lessons remained solid.

  The elevator rose fast enough that my ears popped, leaving me wiggling my jaw as the elegant doors slid open. I stepped out, straightening my threadbare tie like I was a businessman here to hit on the secretary.

  This floor, comprised of this lobby and Malik’s offices, was too fucking big. The walls were decorated with paintings of long-dead artists, the extremely airy interior boasting real plants and tasteful lighting fixtures. Behind the nondescript desk occupying the central space, massive windows gave rise to an incredible view.

  C-town is cleaner than just about anywhere else, with stronger shields to block out the sun’s punishing radiation and a filtration system that keeps smog to a minimum. It leaves the area bright and clean, with a panoramic view of a portion of the city. Green spaces stood out from all the glass and glitter like welcome mats, similar gardens growing on building rooftops.

  And all of it, of course, visible from the entry of Malik Reed’s place of business.

  My favorite?

  The personal assistant watching me enter.

  Hope Ramsay, like the desk, was nondescript – perfectly tamed dark blonde hair, features easy to look at but hardly anything to plaster on a vidscreen. I suspected genetic modification. Nobody could be born with just the precise amount of unassuming. Plain enough to be unthreatening, pretty enough to compliment the surroundings. Womanly figure without stepping a kilogram out of line, like every good assistant should be.

  Another part of corporate credo. You make ’em extra hot or extra plain, but never ugly.

  Hope looked at me over a pair of frameless glasses, her smile fading to a flinch. “You look like death.”

  “Aw, Hope, you worried about me?” I grinned at her, pulling back my hair from my face so she could see my eyebrows raise and lower suggestively. “I could stand some loving care, if you’re offering.”

  Hope surveyed my outfit, stained tie and all. I took the time to rest my elbows on the tall desk, batting my eyelashes at her. “Riko,” she said slowly, “how do I put this? You… need new clothes.”

  I laughed. “Talk sweet to me some more, Hope.”

  “Maybe from a reasonable distance away?”

  “You break my heart.”

  “Sorry.” Her eyes danced behind her lenses, not nearly so severe as her role on Malik’s payroll demanded. But that didn’t mean she left it entirely. Her gaze focused between the obvious, catching all the little signs most didn’t. “You look tired.”

  I had no answer for that. I was tired. Sick and tired of this ghost on my tail and the questions I had no answers for. Sick of the pain dulled in my arm, and the subconscious awareness it’d just roll back up to agony again. Even as I stood here and chatted up the secretary, most of me braced in preparation. For hurt. For confrontation.

  If Malik knew anything about the vid for sale, Hope would have to call in a cleanup crew.

  I waved her concern away with my good hand. “Where’s Mr Corporate Creed?”

  “Preparing,” she replied, gesturing back to the elevator. “Mr Reed will be in the munitions center.”

  I stared at her, hand flat on the desk.

  She blinked up at me. “What?”

  “You’re letting me wander into the armory?”

  Her pretty mouth turned up at the corners, one hand resting on her defined hip. “Yes?”

  “By myself?”

  “You are an adult,” she pointed out, laughter in her eyes. “And under contract.”

  “Uh huh.” I dropped my chin on the counter top, rolled my eyes at her. “Reed ordered you to let me in there, didn’t he?”

  “Of course he did.” She reached across the desk, gesturing me to stand up straight. I did. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach my shoulders – she was shorter than me, with that rounded physique I enjoyed so much wrapped in bland professional suits I enjoyed much less. “Hold still.”

  I waited, surprised, while Malik Reed’s personal secretary unkinked the knot in my tie, straightened it out, and then tied it properly in the space of seconds. With a final flourish, she pushed the neat, perfectly folded knot into place.

  “There,” she said briskly. “Don’t you look smart?”

  Making a face, I hooked the knot with a finger and tugged it looser, earning myself an exasperated huff. “You may want to wash your hands,” I told her.

  Hope, unfazed by my attitude any day of the week, chuckled. “Sanitization is a lifestyle choice. Go down three floors,” she added. “Follow the signs.”

  “Should I bring a ballgag or a paddle?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Laughing to myself, I headed for the elevator I’d just left, waved at Hope without turning around. “If you see Orchard, tell her hi for me.”

  “Tell her yourself,” Hope called back as the doors closed. Her wave warmed me in places that had nothing to do with sex. Well, mostly. I’d tap her, given the chance, but she stubbornly preferred cocks and wouldn’t budge on my suggestions to acquire one.

  Not like fucksticks were hard to get.

  Oh, well. Just because I hated corporate bullshit, and most of the execs who chew on it, didn’t mean I had to hate every person in it. Hope Ramsay was good people. Loyal to Reed, so I didn’t trust her if it came down to it, but I liked talking with her.

  The elevator hummed a welcoming note as it slowed.

  The munitions lab, huh? Mantis Industries specialized in armor and bodygear, not weapons. The only real break they’d forged in the munitions industry had collapsed with their corporate partners some decades ago: the Valiant 14, with 12mm caseless rounds and an orgasmic rate of fire. The assault rifle was perfection in nanosteel, and had been a joint experiment between it and rival company TaberTek. The Valiant savaged everything in its category, poised to launch Mantis into arms as well as the armor they specialized in.

  They’d only manufactured fifty final prototypes. Before the Valiant could hit mass production, the eternal meatgrinder of the corporate world got to grinding, and TaberTek went down. Cannibalized in boardrooms across the city.

  I owned a Valiant; the second of two. The first had been stolen from me by my Vid Zone abductors, and fuck them so much for its loss. The second came with my freelance pay; signed, sealed and delivered by Malik himself.

  I should have brought it with me. Riddling Malik Reed with his own company’s failure smelled like sweet, sweet irony to me.

  I followed the signs and arrows down thinly carpeted corridors and by more of those paintings Reed liked so much. Eventually, I reached wide double doors at the end of a hall and paused. The art and carpet clearly stopped at this point. Beyond, framed in narrow glass slats in each door, I saw white. Always white.

  My stomach twitched. A tiny little movement that rippled up my spine, wiggled into a spot behind my solar ple
xus.

  I did not like laboratories. Or hospitals. I didn’t like anything that had to be kept cold and clean, that smelled of antiseptic and misery. Every time I paced through a pristine white environment, barren walls and overhead lights, part of my head started to scream.

  Leftover reaction from that lab that’d murdered Nanji. I’d been fighting memories I didn’t recognize as mine ever since – something about bashing my own head against white tile and people shouting all around me.

  Orchard, the Mantis doctor, called it post-traumatic stress.

  I called it bullshit.

  I don’t know why I’d expected the munitions lab to be anything different.

  When I approached the double doors, my breath hurt in my lungs. The cool air scraped like razorblades across my skin, tucked sharp fingers into my flesh and hooked in. Here it was. The usual start.

  Security cameras everywhere made me damn sure I didn’t display any signs of this weakness, even as I sucked in air and forced myself not to shake. The images had gotten less sharp with time. Didn’t stop my traitor brain from filling in the gaps.

  Blood on the floor. Excruciating pain in my head.

  A black hole opened up behind my sternum. A void that made me want to hunch over it, like I needed to nurse a wound.

  The hell I would.

  I shoved open the doors with more force than they needed.

  Malik Reed was a creature of routine, right down to his clothes. Gray, sometimes a pop of color in his shirt or his tie. Always a suit. Always an attitude, like he owned the city and everything in it. Today’s single-color blessing upon the peasants came in the form of a pale yellow button-down, pressed and tailored perfectly to Reed’s physique. Tucked into crisp, light gray trousers and a matching vest, he looked like an exec fisting the public at a corporate picnic.

  Five people in shades of gray camo cargoes and black T-shirts stood around a plain metal lab table; five sets of eyes snapped around to me. One pair did not. “You’re late,” Reed said to the large projection dominating the center of the table. It spun slowly. Blueprints, looked like. A lot of missing information in it.

  The rest of the munitions lab spread out in every direction. Larger than I could map, with protective panes set up around various projects and different departments, the whole floor had been devoted to arms development. Racks lined walls and shelves, various firearms and prototypes of things I didn’t recognize had been left haphazardly on tables with parts strewn around them.

  There were a lot of projections. A few tablets. Technicians everywhere beyond the initial meeting room we gathered in – many wearing protective gear and all of them sporting badge IDs. A busy floor for a company that doesn’t do munitions.

  Busy enough, I realized as the ache in my chest faded to a dull throb, that my tremors had vanished. Why? Was it the different environment? Less sterile. Less quiet?

  Or was it Reed I refused to show weakness to?

  Either way, I’d take it and run. I jerked my eyes back to the group, curling a lip. “You didn’t tell me it’d be a party.”

  “You didn’t ask.” Reed pointed to a chair.

  Eat me danced at the tip of my tongue. Didn’t bother. The group was already eying me like the short kid in a game of basketball. I got close enough to see the projection, stayed far enough away from them to draw a line. “What’d I miss?”

  “The whole thing,” said a broadshouldered man. Military posture, ID clipped to his collar. Channing. Cody Channing, obviously an enforcer. “Sucks to be you.”

  I shot him a bland smile. Bland only in the sense that it was mostly teeth and fuck off.

  He glowered at me.

  “Wait, is this why you wanted me here?” I lifted both hands, palms up. “You couldn’t just tell me on the line?”

  Reed finally looked at me. Gaze on mine. “Did you rest?”

  “Absolutely,” I lied. Didn’t even miss a beat.

  Skepticism all but radiated at me.

  “Your version of rest needs reprogramming,” piped up a woman with short white hair. She smiled back at me. Also all teeth. Ooh. I liked her already. “We have a job to do, and you’d better haul your weight or we’re leaving you for the cleanup.”

  “Where’s the job?”

  “Should have been here for the briefing,” said another man. Leaner, cocky. Thought he topped me on the scale. I smiled at him, too.

  “Located in Battery,” Feliz cut in. She shot the younger man a hard look, severe as an anglo axe to the face. “Shut up, Lindsay.”

  Awesome. Just awesome. The only thing worth locating in Battery was the second of my chopshops, which saved me the need to strongarm Malik into it.

  He worked fast. And it was the first good news I’d had all day.

  I grabbed the stained, wrinkled tie I’d donned just for the occasion and made a show of tightening it up to my neck. “Well, then.” Nice and brisk. “Thanks for letting me join the club.”

  Every eye dropped to the filthy faux silk. Even Reed’s.

  Despite the pretty knot Hope made of my tie, not one of the enforcers cracked a smile.

  Killjoys.

  When Malik finally raised his gaze to mine, I re-evaluated my impact. Framed by that perfectly shaped goatee, the slight lift of one corner of his mouth looked a hell of a lot more wicked than it should have. “Rendezvous with Dr Gearailteach,” he said, looking at me but obviously talking to the others. “Wheels up in two hours. Dismissed.” They nodded, turned away. “Riko,” he added, tenor dropping an octave, “a word.”

  The team filed out, a stream of gray and black. “Ooooh,” murmured Lindsay as he passed me. “Somebody’s gettin’ reamed.”

  I jerked my elbow back. The sharp edge connected with the hollow beneath his shoulder blade, bone catching on bone on the way to gouging muscle. He stumbled into Feliz, who braced with a curse that balanced the wisecracker’s yelp.

  He turned on me. “You friggin’ cunt–”

  “Dismissed,” Reed repeated, deep voice so wildly authoritative that even I felt the impact of it in my gut. Which only made me angry. Really, really angry.

  “But she–”

  Only then did Malik’s eyes leave mine, cool as the ice I needed to jam down my pants on the regular. The way the cords in his neck moved when he turned his head fascinated me. I wanted to trace every one of them. Maybe lick them.

  Then see if they’d plink like an old guitar when I snapped them out.

  The weight of his silence pressed down like a slow hammer to the face. They felt it. I felt it. Could I get any more pissed?

  I damn well was going to try.

  14

  I took the opportunity to sling myself into a chair, leaned back and kicked my boots up on the surface of the shiny table. The technicians beyond those seals continued to work without much attention to us. Soundproof, maybe? Bulletproof for sure. Maybe fireproof, too. A killbox if something went wrong.

  I wondered how many times something had.

  Unable to stand up to the boss – probably unwilling, executive power and all – the enforcers turned and left, backs stiff. All pissed-off pride among their own.

  Reed watched them, one hand slipped into his pocket. When the doors closed, a hiss of air in their wake, he turned back to me. “Would it kill you to let jibes pass you by?”

  “Would it kill you to give me some prep?” I retorted. “You could have told me about this on the comms.”

  “You needed rest.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need, motherfucker.”

  A flash of teeth. Not a smile. His eyes narrowed. “I assure you again that I’ve never fucked my mother,” he replied flatly.

  I waved that away. “Like you never thought about it.”

  Somehow, my rejoinder cut through his annoyance. He paused, actually paused, to think about it. After a long, unnerving moment, he tipped his head. Acknowledgment.

  I snorted.

  “Since you are here,” he continued, “would you like to know
who legally owns the Battery location?”

  “Oh, do I get to know?” Acid sweet. “Gee, thanks.”

  No reaction. “Trace the shells back far enough and it leads to MetaCorp, Incorporated.” Evenly. As if he’d just told me his favorite color – which I knew. Gray. Because gray.

  I scowled. “You knew this last night, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged, no fucks to give minus several more.

  I threw my hands up. Which only made the seam at my shoulder stretch, then crunch. That cut through the pain-dampening effects real fast. “Fuck damn,” I gritted out between clenched teeth, and forced myself to train my gaze on him instead of my arm. No weakness. “Throw me a bone here, jackmaggot. Given MetaCunt ran our asses ragged at the Vid Zone blight, your shitbrains manage to source any whispers that we’ll see them in Battery?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Figures.”

  We’d fought necros and enforcers that day in the Vid Zone, which nobody had seen coming. Initial evidence suggested the smegheads wanted the same thing we wanted – the necros had torn them up just as bad as they had us, and we’d walked away with the data.

  Short victory.

  Was it possible they’d been trying to retrieve their own data from their own fuck up?

  I dropped my head to the back of the chair. One foot fidgeted on the table, leaving a black rubber streak on the surface. “You know it’s been stripped, right? Do you have anything to go on?” Not that I needed much bait here. It’d still be nice to know.

  “Sixteen hours ago you were frothing at the mouth for this.” Dark eyes appraised me. “What changed?”

  Everything. My mouth hardened into an aggressive line. Slowly, I laced my fingers across my stomach and asked, “Want to know what I learned today?”

  “Basic math.”

  “You wanna try again, wiseass?”

  He approached the table, bent with his hands on it. A power lean. Common suit tactic, especially the execs. And one that put him too close for comfort. “No. Get your feet off my table.”