Nanoshock

by K C Alexander

  His eyes narrowed. “You think this is funny?”

  I shook my head, dropped my boots to the floor and kicked the one that fell sideways back upright. I focused on sliding my bare foot into it. Left Malik staring down at the top of my head. “I think it’s a shitrolling riot,” I replied. “What did you think would happen when you contracted a saint?”

  Didn’t have to translate the word. He knew. “I expected at least a modicum of effort.”

  I kicked the other one on, stomped hard to get them both in place. “Seriously, Malik. You’re so smart, and then you’re really very stupid.”

  That tic in his jaw. The tightening, subtle but there, in his shoulders. I’d learned to read him.

  And he’d learned to read me. His mouth twisted in disgust. “You’re out of it. What were you given?”

  Whoops. “Nothing.”

  “What,” he repeated evenly, “did my technician give you?”

  Damn him. I did not want Orchard in trouble. This was not her fault; she was too shitting kind. “She fixed my chipset,” I replied flatly, smile fading. “The anesthesia is wearing off.” Boots in place, clothes on, I picked up the assault rifle and slung it over my shoulder. Paused, and added, “Your people walked off with my Dakon M422A. I want it back.”

  “You may trade it for the Valiant 14.”

  They say familiarity breeds contempt. Guess so. Right now, tearing off Malik’s arm and beating him to death with it – in a very calm and collected way – sounded so much better than fucking him.

  “The hell I will,” I snapped. “It’s mine.”

  “It was until you broke contract.”

  My eyes widened. Narrowed just as fast. “No deal.”

  “Then your Dakon remains with me.”

  “Fine.” Whatever. The Adjudicator was a lot less rare than the Valiant, and a third of the price. I’d get another.

  As I walked past him, a powerful hand wrapped around my metal arm, held tightly enough that I’d have to work to disengage. He’d done this before. Back then, it’d totally turned me on. Now, I scowled down at the shape of his fingers, the color warm against the cold matte metal. “You’re about to expend your freebie,” I warned quietly. “I’ve had enough.”

  “Everyone has.” He dragged me half a step closer, biceps flexing impressively under his light gray suit jacket. So close that his mouth was only centimeters from mine. Not because he’d kiss me. Not because I’d kiss him.

  I’d rather facefuck a piranha.

  But this close, I couldn’t miss the frozen fury in his eyes. Or misunderstand the ice coming from his mouth. “You may officially consider your contract severed, Risa Cole.”

  My flesh fingers twitched. “She died in that lab,” I reminded him. So very, very softly. “You never had a contract with her.”

  “What I have,” he replied evenly, “is you. Contracted or not. On my payroll…” His grip hardened, tugged me that much closer. “Or not.”

  His face. I’d go for his fucking beautifully arrogant face first and then I’d make him eat his own dick whole. Choke on it. Then I’d mail his cock-stuffed head to his wife for shits and giggles.

  He let me go, a casual move, and calmly tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. Effortlessly posed, a goddamn model on a corpfuck feed with a less vapid stare and more deadly intensity in every line.

  Screw him.

  He knew my name. My gridded name, the one matched up with my DNA and my birth records and the SIN I’d carved out ages ago. He possessed my DNA – impossible to avoid. Orchard had been my only doc.

  I’d had no other choice.

  Now, I’d make one.

  I stepped back out of his reach. “Is that a threat, Malik?” Venom in two syllables.

  Even his shrug promised more trouble than I could handle right now. “Just a warning.”

  My jaw clenched. Every muscle locked so tight, I expected bones to break beneath. Not even Orchard’s chemical helper put this one down. But what could I do? Short of a skilled ‘jector willing to take this one on, I couldn’t just murder him and expect that data to erase itself.

  Or to vanish from the anglo records created when I was born.

  Line in the white tile, drawn in blood. Mine.

  Very slowly, with monumental effort, I turned. Continued to the exit, shaking.

  He let me go. Only way I could describe it. Motherfucker let me go.

  Not like I’d get far. He’d made sure of that.

  34

  If I could trust Muerte, she was the only one who’d found my flat so far. Meant I had somewhere to fester, and I very much wanted to fester. I had literally nothing else to do. Couldn’t ream Malik dick to asshole. Couldn’t make Indigo work any faster. Couldn’t get Orchard to up my tech and couldn’t find a streetdoc who’d do it without risk of fucking me up or over.

  Couldn’t hit the Mecca – even that place closed ass early in the morning for cleaning. And on the slim chance I’d meet any Kill Squad or other opportunistic meatheads, I didn’t have it in me to fight.

  All I had was a relatively unknown place to rack out, a lot of guns in it, and a stash of slank I hadn’t burned through yet.

  It was ultimately a start. Not a great one, but a start.

  My door was still locked. Small favors. My place empty. Larger favors.

  My stash untouched.

  Awesome fucking world I lived in.

  Banking on the fact that it’d take Digo more than a couple hours of effort to crack a company’s chip sec, I snagged two envelopes of haphazardly measured orange powder. This stuff, it could be shot up, snorted, even eaten. Tasted like ass with a side of ratshit, but it worked.

  In my case, I was too fucking worn to do anything else but dump it on the dresser in a messy pile and sit crosslegged on the bed, staring at it.

  Zen it, right?

  I counted out the problems in front of me.

  One, somebody had stolen a security vid incriminating me in blacknet saint traffic. Two, that same pendejo had somehow figured out where I lived, and according to Muerte, they hadn’t released any of it openly.

  Three, it’d only be a matter of time before they did.

  Four, the Vid Zone’s chopshop lab showed signs of necro code in the databanks. Weaponizing it, according to Malik Reed. MetaCorp had wanted in there so bad, they’d taken on an insertion team and a metric spunk ton of murderous necros in the middle of a blight.

  Five, Battery’s location had been secretly owned by MetaCorp, and its databanks deleted only days ago. Given the timing, that was about the same time Greg and Indigo had been poking around there.

  Six, the Knacklock shop and its doc had some sort of deal with MetaCorp, but if I wanted to hit that one, I’d have to wait for more information.

  I stared at my fingers, five metal and one scarred.

  MetaCorp was the common denominator here. But then…

  So was I.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Six problems in front of me, and that wasn’t including Dancer’s Kill Squad, the up-and-comers sniffing around my ass, Lucky’s disappearance and the protection he’d supposedly extended over my cred this whole time, the ruined art of my right side, my only access to med-tech cut off because Malik Reed’s limpdick can’t handle a punch…

  I wondered if Orchard got in trouble.

  I also wondered how long before Malik tried to fuck me with his records.

  My forehead dropped to the surface of the dresser, a puff of slank dust exploding out in tiny grains. Stuff came in yellow and purple, too. Red, but that shit’d gone out of favor when the prime dealer got caught cutting the goods with raw chemicals. Killed a few unlucky suckers before they’d run him down.

  I inhaled sharply, caught a nose full of the cloud. Swallowed it down.

  “Problem number seven,” I muttered to the dusty powder. “I am sober.”

  At least that one I could fix now.

  I stayed on the bed, my legs hanging over the edge, my head on the dresser surface. My
hands hung loosely between my knees. Which is how the projection caught me: slowly easing my brain into a slank haze while Orchard’s medicated chill padded my calm.

  I flicked out my tongue, licked up a patch of the orange dust in front of my face, and answered the call.

  The box loaded up, Indigo’s plain avatar popped in. Nothing fancy about it. He hadn’t even updated it in years. “You racked out?” he said by way of greeting.

  I nodded, not sure if my avatar had formed or not. I guess it had since Digo was looking at me.

  “Muerte know where?” he asked shrewdly.

  My nose wrinkled. He took that as a yes.

  The first blast of advertising crawled across the walls. “News,” he said, “stay put. We’re coming to you.”

  Indigo was worse than Lucky sometimes. Worse than me. The connection dropped and I was left blinking, dusted orange slank trying to coat my eyelashes when I huffed out a tired laugh.

  So much for festering alone.

  And so much for my stash. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to take more than a hit when possible opportunity came my way.

  Swiping the stuff back into the packet it came from, I dropped it into the stashbox, licked the remains off my hand and set about prepping for company.

  That meant sitting my ass down in the narrow hallway. Waiting.

  Daydreaming in vicious color.

  Slank isn’t the kind of thing you want to take in a bad mood. It amplifies your state of mind, makes good times great and bad times ugly. I’d hoped it’d ride on the calm Orchard had chemically forced on me, but I guess I was just too wired for that.

  Instead, I stared at my limp hands, one gray and one grayish complexioned under dusty brown, dangling between my knees. I thought about all the ways I wanted to tear out somebody’s spine and whip it overhead like a stripper’s LED G-string.

  My day, I decided, was absolutely going to get worse. How could it not?

  Click.

  I looked up. “You’re too fast,” I shouted, “come back in ten minutes.” Let the slank settle. I’d burn through this much too fast to enjoy.

  Silence.

  My eyes narrowed. I held my breath, straining my ears. Not like this place wasn’t ass to mouth anyway. Flats in every direction, and sturdy walls or soundproofing couldn’t mask every bit of noise.

  Two fingers tapped on the tile beside my hip, flesh to floor.

  Clack.

  Street-honed instinct kicked in through fading burn. I kicked off the floor, went flying ass-first down the tiny hall as my door exploded. Splinters streaked in every direction, shrapnel torn apart by a wall of repeaters.

  I was too winded to laugh.

  Most of the time, nobody expects the occupants of a doorbuster to be floor-level at the start. Half the time, though, this kind of frontal assault is mostly about getting attention. Anything that draws blood is a bonus.

  One hundred percent of the time, I stashed firepower everyfuckingwhere I could, ensuring I’d never be caught flat-footed. Should have known my place wouldn’t stay hidden. Muerte had overestimated how much time I had to clear out.

  The rapid rate of fire didn’t slow down, suggesting more than a few shooters. Probably a crew. I kicked out the thin line of plaster disguising my first stash.

  Not everything stayed in a drawer. Just the shit too big to hide.

  The Cougars inside this one would do the job. I’d rather have my Adjudicator – I felt like I’d traded my favorite handgun for my assault rifle – but it’d do. Problem was figuring out which of my various exits hadn’t been covered.

  As the bullets ripped through plaster and supports, trashed the rest of my door from top to bottom, I picked up a third gun. A Phelps & Somers CounterTech II, always a decent backup against primitive fucks.

  Only two knives – the rest had been lost to Mantis, too. Dammit.

  And my Valiant. Left that hanging on the corner of the dresser because occasionally I’m smart and lucky.

  But how lucky?

  I chose an exit at random – the window in my bedroom wall. It looked out over primo real estate: a shitty alley and the grimy facing of the place on the other side of it. Narrow space, too many levels down to risk jumping.

  The problem had pushed their way into flats across the way. Form of mercenary fuckheads.

  A shotgun cracked, thundered between the two structures and bounced back, louder and louder. The 7mm round hit the window frame over my head and shattered it.

  I crouched, spared the direction it came from a glance. Two assholes, definitely saints, leaning out of a busted window. The bottom one had the shotgun, which he pumped for a second shot. Two-cartridge beast. Slow, but messy.

  Couldn’t see much of him, but his pal stood out. A lanky bastard with a shock of white hair on the top of his head and bright green bands around his elbows swaying his Viva Insurgent left to right – shit aim, decent coverage.

  Awful line of sight.

  I retreated a few steps. Voices shouted behind me. Unintelligible, except I recognized the tone of mercs on a mission. Didn’t take long for one to run up on me. That one, I put a bullet in. As she sprawled, blood smearing my floor, two more flattened on the other side of the corner. Popped out just in time for me to shoot another. Side-hit – he’d been taller than I expected.

  Two women, one brick house.

  Way more firepower than I deserved.

  Jamming both of my Cougars into the front of my pants – no more room in the back, and my harness had vanished – I turned and hauled ass. Braced one foot on the window frame and launched myself into the very narrow space outside.

  Only two places to go, and one sucked worse than the other.

  “She jumped,” bellowed a woman, voice thick with a guttural accent. Russky, maybe. Unlike the anglo zoo, russkies integrated easily with everybody else. Only thing different is they kept tight bonds with each other, trusted each other over strangers, and so on. Their language hadn’t rusted as badly as most.

  I’d met a handful of russky runners along the way. Funny enough, most leaned to munitions specialists. And when it comes to russky-run companies, they run heavy weapons development. Crown of them was the Bolshovekia the merc pointed at me.

  I clambered up the alley walls like a spider on steroids, oddly calm for the chaos unfolding around me. Thank you, Orchard. And slank.

  And the brutal, icy rise of revenge brewing where adrenaline should be.

  Didn’t care about flight. As I leapt side to side, grabbing ledges and cracking wall and jamming my feet and toes wherever they fit, I pulled myself up with incredible ease. Searched for a place I could fight.

  Would have kept going if a tanned hand hadn’t snapped out of an open window I climbed past, grabbed my left foot and jerked me roughly inside. I had barely enough presence of mind to brace the sole of my boot on the wall before I ended up in a permanent splits, but my ass, back and side scraped hard into the ledge.

  I landed on my back, gasping for the air punched out of me, and grabbed the pistol at my stomach.

  A boot stepped on both, hand and weapon. “Don’t shoot me, I’m here to help.”

  35

  Detective cunting Greg Keith. I’d recognize that voice anywhere – it showed up on a frustratingly regular basis now that he considered himself one of us. I scowled at him through gritted teeth, struggling to my feet as more shouts, more gunfire, erupted below us. Thuds rocked the floor – boots, probably. A lot of them.

  Probably a few heavies.

  Definitely a lot of guns.

  Place was too small for swords, so I had that going for me.

  Greg, the moron, tried to help me up. I glared at him so fiercely, he backed up. “Whoa, don’t bite, either.”

  I would, given half the chance. Savage him so bloody, he’d limp out of here and never hit the streets again. The detective was so far out of his league – and his fucking jurisdiction – that he’d shown up in the sinner’s version of bare. No armor, one weapon – a Manticore
. He’d moved up in the world.

  I backed away from the window, sparks dotting the dark alley as the mercs aimed at nothing. Sound strategy – enough firepower, and somebody’s bound to hit something. If they had any snipers lined up, though, I was dead bloody meat and a gray-pink splatter.

  I held my side, bent over, gun loosely in my other hand and swinging by my knees. “Christ on a cunt,” I managed, glaring at him. “What are you even doing here?”

  He smiled faintly. “I figured you’d need extra help after the raid.”

  “Indigo send you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I was closer.” His smile vanished, gaze searching the window and head cocked like he listened for oncoming fuckheads. “I have good news and bad news.”

  I straightened slowly, side aching. Orchard’s dose of happy juice and the little bit of slank I’d swallowed weren’t nearly enough to keep me mellow through this kind of shit. I pulled out my second pistol, easing a little farther into the room – a lot like mine, but no hall, I noted; clear space for shooting and no cover – and watched the window. “Cover the door.” And then I added, “Tell me.”

  Greg, for all his stiff blue neck, stood at my back.

  “Well.” He held his pistol like a professional, at least. Double-cupped, barrel pointed up, elbows bent and steady. So cop, it hurt. “Good news is Koupra’s on the way down, couple of people with him.” Relief hit. “Bad news is that there’s a bounty on your head pretty much guaranteed to set me up for life.”

  Relief fizzled. Boy, did he flinch when my metal hand pointed that second gun at him. Covering the window and the cop was easy. It was the rest I worried about.

  Greg went wide-eyed, but fucking hell, he pointed his own Manticore right back at me. Straight-armed and stern.

  I took a very brief second to approve of his reaction.

  “Stand down,” he said firmly. “I’m not here to kill you.”

  I met his eyes, death etched in mine. A promise of every nightmare the good detective ever had. That Manticore of his didn’t waver. Guess he’d learned a thing or two on that job of his. A gun in his hands suited him. “Talk fast,” I said flatly. “How much?”