Nanoshock

by K C Alexander

  My eyes narrowed. “Gee, thanks.”

  He shrugged, looked up at Tashi. “She’s for you, too. So.” He pointed at the couch. “Sit down. I ordered you an Indigo.”

  I paused. “Catch?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t fuck it up.” But then he smiled. Really smiled. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his stupid grill until I couldn’t see it anymore. “Sit down, Ree. Join the club.”

  Not a full hand, but a big one. I’d take it. With more gratitude than I knew how to handle.

  I glanced around, saw Val on the floor with a hot brunette, but no linker. “And where’s Digo?”

  “Said he’d be late,” Tashi replied.

  Fidelity kicked his feet lazily, two-inch flat heels winking. Orange sequins. I snorted a laugh. Tash looked down at her seatmeat, poking at the top of his head with a pointed silver nail cap. He looked up, swatting it away. “What?”

  “Where’s Boone?”

  The fascinating thing about Fidelity, I noted as a waitress in a sweet little dress that mimicked Shiva’s delivered my booze, was that for all his rich, warm brown skin, a flush of red bloomed so easily. “Why you asking me?”

  “Because you want to jump his metal bones.”

  Fidelity waved so hard, I was afraid he’d slap himself in hysterical dismissal. “No way, we’re just partners!”

  “You wish,” I offered, earning a wide-eyed glower that way missed its mark.

  I smothered my laugh into the rim of my glass, tipping the long, blue chute into my mouth. Not all that sweet, but richer than most would expect from anything blue, with a subtle way of sneaking up on you before clocking your brain into sheer stupid. A fine sheen of pale black floated on the upper layer – almost invisible against the rich booze underneath.

  A kind of coffee. Stupid and wired. The Indigo wasn’t a cheap drink.

  Like the guy, I guess. Though he was a cheap lay.

  And he was so late. I grumbled as Tashi and Fidelity argued back and forth; Boone had stepped out for personal business, I gathered. Once he’d been certain neither Fido nor Val would chase my ass down.

  Funny Fidelity knew that and the others didn’t.

  Because obviously.

  I surveyed the crowd as I nursed what felt like my first real break in too long. The Mecca thumped tonight, rolled a bump and grind beat that turned into sweat and rhythm. Not a thrash yet. May not go that way tonight.

  I could probably push that, if I wanted. Dance floors easily turned to blood with the right steering.

  Not that I planned on it. For all the fun I have thrashing my cares away, I’d done a hellish number on my meatsack recently. I’d rather hook up with somebody gentle this time around. Long, slow leisurely sex sounded like a day at a spa.

  Not that I didn’t know where to find those too.

  Swarthy hands braced on either side of my head, dark against the paler paint smeared on the couch. Indigo bent over me, his braid swinging down to bat me in the face. I grabbed it, held it away from my face, and grinned up at the linker I thought I’d lost for good.

  He smiled back. Like, a for real smile.

  My heart thumped so hard, I thought my ribs’d crack.

  I’d earned this. I’d worked my ass for this.

  The pit in my stomach wasn’t so sure.

  “You look relaxed,” he said.

  “You’re late.”

  “I’m right on time.”

  I scoffed, let him go so he could join me. Like Tash, he stepped over the back, but unlike her, sank to the seat. The other two looked up, waved, and continued arguing. About… I blinked. “Are they arguing about Valentine’s tattoo placement?”

  Digo shrugged. “Just got here.”

  “It’s right at the center,” Fidelity said, louder to include us. He turned in the seat, feet on the floor to paint the picture for us. “Right at the top of his asscrack.”

  “No, it’s not,” Tashi said, rolling her eyes. She braced a heavy foot on Fidelity’s back, forcing him to bend forward on an oof of compressed air. “It’s right on the glute. Left side,” she added, jerking a thumb at him grinding between two very hot brunettes.

  They multiplied around Val. Barbunnies. That deep-down promise of violence sculpted into his nature appealed to a certain set.

  Only thing I could do was laugh.

  “Where’s your friend?” Indigo cut in. “Muerte?”

  “Dunno.” I scanned the crowd by the bar; Muerte wasn’t a dancer. The leg, I think. She preferred kicking ass to grabbing it. “Said she’d meet us here.”

  “Maybe she’s running intel on Val’s tattoo,” Fidelity said, snickering.

  Goddammit, I couldn’t stop laughing. It slid right up my throat, poured out of my mouth with so much relief. That hole under my sternum, that aching void, I swear I felt it closing. Millimeter by millimeter. Edge by ragged edge.

  Mostly.

  I don’t cry. Most I knew to do with this thick feeling was throw back the rest of my drink and slam it on the metal table. The noise of the club swallowed the sound.

  It did not hide the sharp clank of boot to metal, or the screech of the riveted table legs as they left pale scratches in the cement floor. I blinked at it. Red, spiky. Attached to a leg bent at the knee, which led to a saint I recognized, hands in his pockets, leering down at me like he’d scored some kind of point.

  “Rictor.”

  44

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Your foot is on my table.”

  His sneer widened. “I found you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He bent, until I got an eyeful of platinum teeth in a skeletal skull. “You’re worth a lot.”

  Uh huh. I inserted a hand between us. My flesh one. “Shiva know you’re causing trouble?”

  “Bitch better back down,” said somebody else. A woman, black hair high and tight, bare, muscled arms folded across an equally muscled chest.

  “You know this guy?” Indigo asked me.

  I shrugged, gaze on Rictor’s. He was built like a goddamn corpse, all bones and skin. I’d seen him in the comfort of his own vehicle. Hell if I knew what he’d do outside one. “Kill Squad,” I said.

  Tashi’s eyes narrowed.

  “Oooh.” Fidelity’s feet propped up on the edge of the same table, eyes alight. Teeth also alight. He’d taken the platinum as a challenge. “You piss off Dancer?”

  “A few times,” I said, smirking when Rictor’s features got tighter and tighter. Meaner and meaner. “The first was when I shot her to get out of her gang. The recent one was–”

  “Listen, you traitorous cunt,” the ganger hissed, bending down until we were rictus to smirk. “Your bitchass just got paid for, so why don’t you come nice and quiet?”

  My smile faded. So did Fido’s.

  “You just paid the fee in the last ten minutes?” I scowled. “My timing is still shit.”

  Not just my timing, either. News traveled too fast to keep it quiet now. And second by second, more of the Mecca’s regulars were clueing in. A hush fell over those nearest us. Even more so when another merc on the wrong side of the rails stepped out of the crowd. Then another.

  I stopped counting. Bouncers started peeling the fringes back. Making room. We’d all get bounced next to work this out in the street.

  Rictor didn’t intend to wait that long. He straightened. “You gonna fight back?”

  “Don’t be a moron.” I stood, dusted off the back of my shorts with my left arm. “Of course I’m not going to fight back.”

  At my elbow, Indigo stood slowly.

  Tashi slid off the back of the chair, came around it, hands at her sides.

  Fidelity whistled low and long.

  “We,” I corrected, relishing the word, “are going to fight back.”

  Fidelity moved. His leg flicked out, slammed the opposite table edge against Rictor’s knee. Both clanged – knee replacement under those baggy pants? Fuck me. Still did the work. He wobbled sideways just as another one of his
crew leapt over the back of the other couch – a three-seater, which left lots of room for Tashi to intercept.

  My left hook righted Rictor’s balance and then sent him flying across the table yet again; more screeching, more clanging. Blood gleamed in the streaming lights, splattered wet and dark on cement.

  A roar went up from the crowd.

  Easy to rile them. Hard to figure out which one of them wanted to kill me when riled.

  Bouncers moved in, but the crowd – eager for blood on any given day, when presented – pushed them back.

  The best way to handle who was Squad and who wasn’t was to drop them all, every single one that came at me. Fidelity and Tashi knew the drill, and Indigo was no slouch. I didn’t go for my assault rifle, either – didn’t need it. Not for this.

  This was one more shot at patching my cred. Taking on the Kill Squad outside their turf could go either way – it depended on the outcome of this fight entirely.

  Rictor whirled, came at me promising murder. He tackled me low at the waist, sent us both colliding into the two-seater. It tilted backwards, dumped us both in a roll I tried to top. Knocked my hat off; pisslicker. My head hit the floor and immediately jarred my senses. Pressure in my skull.

  Disconcerting noise between my ears.

  Goddammit. I’d just shaken it!

  Fists blocked, arms locked, I struggled to get my knee under him, twisted my shoulders and jerked an elbow into his armpit. Just enough to get his ass off me and thrown to the side. He moved like a spider and tackled like a bruiser. Every contact hurt.

  Bouncers pushed through, all wearing the usual black. Most carrying batons. Some fists.

  Jad bent and plucked a struggling merc up by the back of the neck, shook her like a rag doll when she went for him. Didn’t see what happened next, but I’d guess she wouldn’t care – corpses don’t.

  You don’t fuck with Shiva’s bouncers.

  Fighting back had always been allowed, if the hunters were too stupid to go for outright assassination, but I wasn’t going to swing my dick in her direction. We knew to lay off the bouncers.

  But this crew? They hadn’t gotten the memo.

  45

  One of Rictor’s elbows turned outward, swapped what I’d mistaken as meat for the tech buried in it. Barrels appeared where an arm used to be. I dodged too late – a sudden crack of a short-range shotgun blast rocked through the noise, the music, the shouting. It caught me square in the right side of my chest, shredding through the koala’s admonition.

  Never, never got easier, and shotgun shells only made it worse. The round tore through flesh and bone, spread a hole in my shoulder and under my collarbone that I felt rip wide. A lung popped. I staggered, fell to hands and knees as all the blood left my head. Made the ringing sound worse, overwhelmingly noisy. Aggressive. My blood, I saw as I struggled to stand, gushed to the floor. I slipped in it, boot heels drawing thin lines of red.

  “Riko, fuck!”

  “Now?” I rasped, going for funny and failing miserably.

  The Kill Squad lieutenant’s triumphant laugh cut short as Indigo tackled him, rolling him over and over in a flurry of blue glints of light and the domino effect that followed them into the crowd. Taken out at ankles and knees, bouncers and fighters and bystanders all collapsed, making a hot mess even worse.

  An arm slipped under my metal one – orange and yellow. “Holy tits,” Fidelity gasped. “Come on!”

  “Not…” I gritted my teeth, shivering as the blood cooled down my side. Fuck, it was dribbling into my crotch. Not the kind of lube I’d’ve chosen for a night at the Mecca. I cursed, hissed what I had of any breath.

  “Come on.”

  He dragged me away from the central ring. I looked back, saw Tashi standing her ground – which always covered a larger radius than anyone expected. With her knives in her hands, and her skills honed twice as sharp, she dropped motherfuckers in gouts of blood that didn’t stop. Even when it mixed with booze on the floor.

  Fido didn’t see her stumble.

  Didn’t see her drop to her knees. Nobody had touched her; a gun? Rictor’s one-shot surprise was toast, but others may have brought in slimmer weapons. Shiva didn’t expressly disallow it.

  Too much blood to tell what was hers. Her face hit the cement. Her back arched up, like she was cradling her stomach.

  My head screamed. Crackled.

  “Tashi!” I struggled, and Fidelity wrapped one hand around my metal shoulder like his grappling control would work on diamond steel. “She’s hurt–”

  “So are you!”

  “Fuck this.” I flexed my arm, rotors grinding and whirring as the tech broke his fleshy hold. He snatched his arm back before I broke it – accidentally – and I turned back as he tried to recover his balance.

  “Riko!”

  I elbowed, pushed, shoved my way through the ring of fighters and not fighters.

  A face got in my way. I left jabbed it. It sprayed blood.

  A broad chest. I suckerpunched it with my right – screamed bloody murder and went blind with pain. Not that it mattered. I elbowed and pushed, chanted Tashi’s name.

  Pixietwat had once turned on me; she’d thought I’d murdered Nanjali.

  She’d tried to kill me; she was protecting Indigo.

  I knew these feelings. Knew that drive more than anything else. Indigo needed her more than he ever needed me.

  But she’d given me a chance; run with me into a different kind of hell.

  We’d protected Indigo together.

  When I finally broke free of the tangled ring, Tashi was screaming in the center. They’d opened up around her, the closest gone wide-eyed as she threw her head back, eyes and mouth wide.

  Black lines dribbled from her eyes. Like running mascara, but thicker. Finer. They gathered at the corners of her mouth. Spilled over.

  Bubbled from the knife wound in her arm.

  Fuckgod. Nanoshock. Hard. Fast. How?

  One leg collapsed out from under me – too much blood loss. Didn’t care. I’d drag my ass over to Tashi if I had to, get her the shit out of–

  A shot cracked, with the unmistakable subsonic thoom of a sniper rifle heavily modded for close range. So, so much power. Less accuracy, but that didn’t matter in close quarters. Tashi’s jaw exploded. So did the base of her skull. Chunks of brain and bone flew, and the gore-streaked glint of her chipset skittered across the ground, smoking. Two patrons on the other side of the target went down screaming.

  I yelled Tashi’s name, struggled through blurred, streaming vision to place the shooter.

  Shiva stood on the bar, a goddess of death with a sniper rifle cocked against her shoulder. Her black lips were set so rigid, only the thinnest black line showed. Her features, for the first time, had gone hard as stone – similar to Indigo’s in a lot of ways, especially when he got mad. Her eyes met mine. I think they did.

  Nanoshock that advanced could just as easily turn to conversion. Maybe was.

  She couldn’t take the risk.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “Was she converting?” I heard.

  I spun on my knees, metal hand braced. Barely held me up. “Fidelity!”

  A streak of orange beside me, and then I was on my feet again. Stumbling, I leaned on the lighter man under my shoulder, tried to wrap my head around words that only came out garbled. “I know,” he said in my ear. Thick voice. Like he was fighting tears. “I know, keep moving. What the fuck happened, I don’t know… keep moving… I know…”

  He wasn’t talking to me. Maybe we both fought shock together.

  Somehow, we made it through the crowd. Staggered to a back exit wired to scream the kind of alarm that sheared through music. He kicked it open. Everything shrieked. My head, my chest, my body.

  Mercs and saints, sinners looking for a good time – they all streamed out around us. Some still fought, bursting through the open doors, tripping on anybody unlucky enough to be in the way.

  Guns drew.


  Knives glinted.

  Fidelity stumbled as an ankle caught between his. Mine? Fuck, mine. I went down with him. He wrenched free. “Go,” he rasped.

  I struggled to push my head up. Managed to straighten my arms; agony shredded through my side, my shoulder. My head. “Come on,” I panted. “Indigo! We need–”

  Fidelity, who had never been the rough type, grabbed my face in savage hands and dragged me so close to his that I couldn’t possibly mistake the ream of black seaming his eyes. The whites had gone gray. Rapidly turned black. Blood at his mouth, nanobots duplicating so fast they pushed out of every pore, like gray sweat.

  “Go,” he repeated, and with near inhuman strength, threw me as far away from him – from the doors – as he could.

  I collided with a trio of runners. We all went down together.

  Elbowed in the head, stomped into the broken and pitted asphalt. Yelling, swearing. And louder than the others, shriller than I’d ever heard, Fidelity screamed as his body twisted, jerked.

  My spine turned to ice.

  I’d heard those screams. First in Lucky’s chopshop all those years ago. Again, spilling from Tashi’s mouth as she choked on blood and nanos.

  I’d seen the way they twisted in Nanji’s tech-broken body.

  Conversion.

  I didn’t understand. Didn’t get it. How? Why?

  “It’s her,” yelled somebody – a woman’s voice. High and scared. “Her gang is going necro!”

  “Get away!” shrieked a guy too young to be in here, kicking hard to wriggle out of reach. I caught a boot to the face. Growled as I tried to roll away.

  “People around her are converting!”

  No. It wasn’t me. I’d done nothing. So how?

  MetaCorp?

  What the hell? When?

  Members of the Squad leapt into the fray, swinging modified bats and spiked boots.

  I covered my head with my arms, drew my knees up to protect my stomach and the seeping hole in my shoulder as saints and sinners stampeded around me, over me. I had one shot. One smegging shot, and pride be fucked in the eye socket. Struggling to concentrate, I flipped my crackling chipset wide and projected the one shitting person I was so fucking tired of projecting.