I hope she appreciated my restraint.
The ink on my right shoulder stood out in this obscenely stark environment like a colorful murder scene. I could also light the vid-ink up – made for some stunning visuals in the right place. Here, I didn’t have to. The Dia de los Muertos skull on my shoulder, the visual mix of art and designs that crawled from shoulder to wrist, and the ornate Kongtown dragon sinuously etched down my ribs, hip and thigh were more than enough for these C-town types to handle.
I got no love for my peepshow. Not from Orchard.
The enforcer behind me, Channing, wasn’t as obtuse. He tossed me a wolf-whistle for my trouble. I ignored him.
She led the way to a plain white wall, seams carved into its smooth paneling. A touch of a scanner opened one slot, and a medical table slid out. Nice and cold. Minimal padding. “OK, you know the drill. Scan first. Then physical. Shower,” she added, wrinkling her nose over her shoulder at me, “last.”
“Are you telling me I stink?” I asked, all wide eyes and impossible attempt at innocence.
Her nose wrinkled harder – so hard that her eyes all but vanished and her freckles collapsed in on themselves. “Even your hair is dried stiff, Riko.”
“I’ll show you stiff,” I muttered.
Orchard pointed to the table. “Put the gown on. And get up.”
“I could get u… mmph!”
She snatched the gown from my loose hold and threw it over my head.
The crisp fabric settled on my shoulders, felt like spikes and rust and dried cement. It grated against my skin like it’d peel the damn stuff off, but I didn’t flinch. Didn’t run, either. A small fucking win. At least I was breathing again.
So far, so good.
Forcing myself to relax, I suffered through the same scans and exams the others did. Only I wasn’t invited to the conversation. Not until three of us ended up clocking our physiology together, assigned treadmills to map our vitals.
Lucky me, I’d been put between Damrosch and the dude with an eye for ass.
For a good five minutes, none of us spoke. We just hit the treadmill and started running, sensors occasionally beeping to indicate another measurement taken. Damrosch’s track moved faster than mine, and mine was faster than his.
Didn’t take long for the shit to fly. “You gonna make it, Chanchan?”
I kept my eyes forward as he snapped, “Go kiss a dog’s ass, Tera.”
Heh.
“You volunteering?” she shot back, and laughed when he grunted. Then her attention turned to me. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
I wasn’t.
When I didn’t say anything, she clicked her tongue. “What, too good to mingle with the rest of us?”
That got me. I sneered. “You’re the ones trying to nut up.”
“Pretty sure you started it,” Channing volunteered. No sass. Just a statement. I shot him a similar look. He met it with a chuckle. None of us had been running long enough to work up a sweat. “Seriously, what’s your problem?”
“She doesn’t like corporate tools,” Damrosch cut in. Her turn to sneer.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Oh yeah?” She eyed me sidelong. “Then what is it?”
Steadily holding my pace, I turned my answer in Channing’s direction. “I don’t like corporate tools.”
His chuckle transitioned to a laugh.
“Bitch,” Damrosch crowed. “I knew it.”
Shrugging, I bumped up my speed. Sweat gathered along my spine, under my breasts. I’d be soaking this white sports bra soon. The tiny shorts given me and Tera weren’t my favorite – I preferred the boardshort style given Channing. These rode up. Fucking institutionalized bullshit.
We both spent too much time digging the lycra from our ass cracks.
Didn’t stop her from bumping her speed, though. Challenge on, huh?
Gritting my teeth, I held this stride while the rest of me adjusted. The machines beeped per half a kilometer, splitting our growing breaths and occasional pants into uneven moments of silence.
Channing left his machine alone. “If you hate it so much,” he said after a while, “why sign up?”
Because I had to jack whatever I could out from under prying eyes, and I’d run with corporate cunts if that’s what it took. I blew out a breath. “None of your business.”
“Pay?”
“None,” I repeated tightly, lungs squeezing, “of your business.” The speed was taking its toll.
“Do you owe Mr Reed a favor?”
I snapped him a hard look. Caught the bottom of my shoe on the rough treadmill surface and barely managed not to eat shit.
Damrosch’s snicker snapped my brain into gear. “Fuck you,” I said between gasps. “You aren’t going to distract me.”
They both laughed.
Tera bumped her speed up.
Setting my jaw, eyes ahead, I did the same.
Ten minutes in and we were both gasping. Even Channing had started to shine, though he’d maintained his pace. Sweat rolled off my face, dripped to the treadmill. My arms scattered droplets around me. Both enforcers obviously felt the same.
Of the three of us, Damrosch and I would hit the distance marker first. Channing would come in third, which I’d take. The question was who’d take first.
She pushed her speed higher.
Groaning silently, I did the same. We couldn’t see each other’s numbers, but fucked if I’d lose to a corporate puppet.
Sixty seconds of this and I couldn’t think of anything else but the effort. Three minutes more and I refused to die on this treadmill. I could long-distance jog for hours, but this? This was almost sprinting speed, and I wasn’t sure I’d manage it much longer. My lungs screamed, a cramp in my side stretching from hip to shoulder. Hell, even my tech arm was beginning to weigh down on the shoulder girdle that kept it in place.
Tera gasped for breath, strained and struggling.
The doors opened behind us. Leto’s voice. “Tera, Riko. You’re up.”
“Oh shit,” Tera yelped, and I knew why. Legs shrieking, muscles seized, we both tried to stop and we both ate treadmill. My knees gave out, feet glued to the rapid track, and my face smashed into the front controls. Then the treadmill.
It took a chunk of skin with it. All the sensors pulled free, taking more skin with them, and snapped back to the controls. That clattered, too.
By the time I’d rolled onto the floor, panting for breath and groaning, Channing was laughing too hard to keep his own pace and had to step lightly to the sides to keep from joining me. To my left, Tera lay sprawled on her back, mirroring my efforts to breathe.
Leto, three steps in the room and frozen in place, studied the tableau. Lips trying so hard not to curve, he said sternly, “No playing on the machines.”
Channing’s laughter went up an octave.
“Who hit first?” Damrosch wheezed.
“Riko hit the floor first.” I shot him an exhausted middle finger.
“The finish,” she managed, struggling to get up on one elbow.
Leto sighed, features struggling for patient. “Riko did.”
Tera returned the finger back at me. “Die in a fire.”
“You first,” I said, dropping my head back to the floor.
16
I’d earned some ground. Or at least some wary inclusion. Banh, Damrosch, Lindsay, Channing and Feliz. I committed their names to memory, as much to stay in communication during the run as give them shit over the comms.
I was putting that to good use now. “Channing, quit pissing around and get that door!”
Rapid fire forced me behind the abandoned car I’d stalled at. Banh, at my back, braced her Sauger over the rusted hood and laid down cover fire that didn’t do squat. Not a single break in the barrage of bullets coming back at us.
She ducked down as they pocked the metal. The car rocked.
“Eight!” It came through the headset sharp and s
hort. Kongtown slang. Bitch had just called me a bitch. “Do you know how to shoot that thing?”
“Woman, please,” I snorted, squeezing off another burst. “They don’t understand the concept of cover, suicidal bastards.” What’s worse, we couldn’t see jack and shit, just the occasional flash between cyclical reloads.
“Why the fuck is this area abandoned?” Lindsay demanded. “I thought Battery was residential mixed.”
“Mostly.” Feliz’s voice came clipped. “But yeah, there should be more activity here.”
“Sealed,” Damrosch volunteered, almost lost beneath another round of firepower aimed our way. Once it eased up, she added, “Probably zoned off for a raid.”
“You mean ours?” I said dryly.
“Channing,” warned Feliz, tucked somewhere behind a crushed dumpster three meters away. “You close?”
“I am working on it,” came his growl, low and tight on the feed. “It’s not exactly a stroll down Fenroll Park.”
His job was to crack the main door, by fist or by fire. He was Mantis’s equivalent of a heavy, which operated best in close combat – serious amounts of strength and various ways to avoid a KO. Boone, Digo’s usual heavy, used tech for that. He’d replaced his legs with wide foundation feet, earning him rock steady balance and a kick like a goddamn railgun. Not to mention I’d seen him work the stuff like a battering ram, fuel a hydraulic jump and stomp stuff into mush. People, mostly, and the occasional wall. Or door.
Or car.
Riot shields.
Boone was a heavy of many, many strengths.
What Channing brought to bear remained to be seen.
Flanking Feliz – only an idiot leaves the coordinator unprotected – Damrosch scanned the streets. Heat pushed down on us like a sweltering blanket, making everything hard to see through the constant barrage of heatwave. My boots sank four centimeters into melted asphalt, tar oozing up around the soles. Made every step fun.
Through my heads-up display, a series of numbers, figures and indicators flashed. Over a hundred degrees outside, a calm seventy inside the regulating armor. Thirty rounds left in my Sauger, which did not bode well for our initial assault. I had more clips, of course, but at this rate, we’d blow our loads on cover fire the assholes didn’t care about. Sui-fucking-cidal.
I ignored everything else fed into the HUD but the thin green line around the team. It helped identify them in the dark, through smoke, or in the chaos of a fight. Reed’s people had upgraded since my last experience in a Mantis combat suit, allowing a blend of sensors and network to place each person. Meant we could see each other through barriers, to an extent.
Wasn’t perfect. They occasionally glitched in one direction, or lagged half a step behind. Yay for beta testing in the field.
To make it worse, red lines should have marked our enemies. Problem here was that I didn’t see any. Could have been another glitch, could have been the limits of the network. Could be these assholes had better tech than we did. It was supposed to be empty. Guess whose intel sucked again? Well, Greg’s too. Emptied out, my ass.
“They’re either locked behind serious stealth gear,” I said, slinging my assault rifle back into the crook of my arm and dropping to the street. “Or the heads-up is shitting the bed.”
“No stealth suit is that good.”
“Lindsay,” I said between clenched teeth and repeater fire, “I will take your ass in that bet.”
Trick offer. I knew from firsthand experience just how good stealth gear could be. I’d come face to face with MetaCorp thugs with integrated tech that made them all but invisible to the sensors in standard helmets. Had to use your goddamn eyes to see them coming, and who the hell went bareheaded in a gunfight?
Given this place had MetaCorp ties, it wasn’t that much of a leap.
“Focus,” Feliz snapped. “Channing?”
“Six seconds!”
“Shit,” hissed Damrosch, a tight sound of pain.
“Tera?”
“I’m fine,” she said, too loud and too fast. “Only clipped. These aren’t standard twelves.”
“I clock ’em at armor-piercing and fuck you,” I muttered. “One of these will blow a lung out.”
“Maybe yours, snowflake.”
I smirked as I peered down what limited sight the Saugers had.
I held my fire, half under the back of the sagging car, finger resting on the trigger guard corporation engineers insisted on. The asphalt, only barely cooler under here, stuck to my gear.
Nothing about this place looked like a certified tech center. But aside from the quality, the Vid Zone chopshop had been the same. Shitty façade, internal badass engineering. I mean, except for the part where it caught on fire and filled up with slavering killbots.
On the very, very slim plus side, there was no sign of necro activity. Regardless of Malik’s reassurance, I wasn’t letting my guard down until we’d cleared the place. All I knew was that this hadn’t turned into a blight. No necros crawling around, no burn team on standby. Relief beat the sheer terror of a once-human sack of meat coming at you any day of the week.
Just in case, I’d padded my requisitions with one of my own heavy handguns – a M422A Tactical Revolver, .525 caliber and designated by runners as the Adjudicator. It blew holes through people you could put your fist in.
Which would all be moot if we got stuck here because our heavy was using his brain instead of his metaphorical dick.
So backwards, motherfucker.
“Screw this,” I muttered, and rolled out from under the car. A bit awkward, given the asphalt didn’t want to let my knees and elbows go. The sound I made slicked through the comm. Squelch. Super classy.
“Riko, don’t–”
“Too late,” Banh snarled.
Word. I was already darting across the street, closer to the entry than any of these fuckers had gotten – save Channing. I slammed my back against a heavily armored electrical unit, crouched low enough that my head wouldn’t make for easy target practice.
“Blowing in three,” Channing said over the crackling report of gunfire that just would not quit.
“Finally!” Lindsay shouted.
“Who you blowing?” I added, bending around the protective cover and squeezing the trigger. Three times, three round bursts. A bullet screamed so close to my head that its wake scored a groove at the bottom right side of my helmet.
I jerked back so fast that I left black streaks on the metal. My heart pounded, no doubt recording those vitals to the Mantis analysts. Yaaaaay.
Channing ignored me. He really liked doing that. Instead, he took off running, gesturing with his hand repeatedly as bullets pinged and sparked and tore up the ground around him. Blue light ignited at the farthest corner of the wide doors, getting brighter with every second.
He’d meant explosives, not a controlled entry. Motherhumping son of a bitch!
Boom.
Precision is supposed to be the hallmark of specialized teams. At least when it comes to company policy. I’d expected something quieter, neater. Something that’d laser its way around those doors and blow them off their hinges.
Those hinges did not blow.
Everyfuckingthing else did.
My faceplate lit up like a Deli celebration, flashing, sparking, red red red. Too slow to do anything but throw my goddamn hands up in resigned laughter, I caught the blastback full in the face and chest. My heart slammed into my spine, my ribs collided with each other. Lungs kicked back, guts flattened, metal arm thrown wide. I had to brace my feet and legs so tight, I sank further into the blistered street. Grunted as the protective cover on a nearby electrical unit tore off its bolts and rocked into my chest, then rolled off my shoulder and sailed to the street.
Even my comm link audibly shattered, throwing a feedback fuzz so loud that it sliced right through the blast’s subharmonic pressure. I clawed at my helmet in defense, yelling.
And then it was over. The static in my ear eased off, giving way to voic
es I couldn’t quite track.
I’d like to say everything went silent. It sort of did – I could tell that nothing moved, save the debris still dropping off the façade. Not even weapons fire to break it. I shook my head rapidly, ears pulsing like I’d just taken one of Muerte’s kicks to both. The helmet hadn’t shattered, but my whole face felt squished anyway.
And in between my ears, rattling around in my skull, an aggravating buzz. Shit. I hadn’t felt that – heard that? – in weeks. Not since my chipset had rattled something loose in the Vid Zone and left me half-deaf with the noise.
It’d been fixed once. Maybe I needed a full chipset replacement. The tech wasn’t supposed to rattle so easily.
I turned slowly. Blinked at the group as they rose from their impromptu cover positions. I couldn’t see their expressions, but hey, it didn’t matter. I’d take this one.
I threw my hands up into the air. “Victory!” I yelled, too loud through the angry thrum in my brain. Two helmets jerked. “Still motherfucking standing.”
Audible groans, noises of impatience. Slowly, they clarified into actual words.
“That was reckless,” Feliz snapped.
“Stupid, you mean.” Lindsay strode forward, clearly with every intent to knock my shoulder with his. He closed the gap fast.
“You’re going to get us killed,” Damrosch added curtly.
Ladykiller with the temper didn’t count on the straight arm palm I checked that shoulder with. Harder than the aluminum car dented by the blast behind Banh. I didn’t push. Gave him the chance to swing that shoulder back and out of reach.
“Watch out,” I said, smiling.
Silence seethed on the line. Until Feliz gestured over our heads, two fingers in a single sweep down. “Move it, we have work to do.”
That we did. Not a single shot had been fired since Channing blew the door. Compared to the barrage pinning us down before, that felt off.
“Think I killed them all?” Channing asked, his tenor surprisingly melodic when I paid attention. He paced past us, careful through the debris. No squelch of tar, though.
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