Eat here, go there, pay for this. Airborne viruses could drop a genetically solvent human in days, but a little bit more programming, and nanos could take care of everything. Stuck with a venereal disease and don’t want the lady to know? There’s tech for that.
Slipped in between the official ads were the ones that flickered on the edge of awareness. If my chipset had been working right, I could have keyed in to those, seen the kind of ads oriented towards those of us with certain needs not wholly legal. Tech, cyber implementation, projection upgrades, software and all kinds of inbetween.
I had to get my filters fixed. The augmented adspace was easy enough to ignore, but the constant effort was killing my brain cells.
A woman wrapped in the ruins of a long brown trenchcoat stumbled into my arm, the board over her shoulders wet in one corner and reeking of urine. Bright orange paint, congealed into filthy rivulets, proclaimed her wisdom.
The end is cumming!
I think she meant coming, but don’t quote me. People are fucking weird.
I turned a corner, keeping my stride long, my pace unhurried. Any woman walking alone and with a purpose was a prime target for assclowns who loved nothing better than to get in her way, and I didn’t have the patience to bust some skulls tonight. I glanced at the empty wall beside me, flinched when an ad exploded into existence.
Are you safe? it asked me, thick white letters, blocky and uniform. Is your SIN registered with us?
Oh, hell. Propaganda avenue. Just great.
Keep yourself safe with this one easy reminder…
Jaw clenching, I resisted the urge to swat at the space and pushed my way through the pedestrians.
Beside me, the letters kept pace along the wall, turned blood red.
Necrotech conversion is real. You will murder your families. Brutalize your loved ones.
Probably the truest thing the corporate propagandists ever wrote.
Don’t take the chance, it suggested. Removing your SIN will cause irreparable brain damage and increases risk of conversion by 87%.
Bullshit. That was pure indoctrination. The Security Information Number was nothing more than a leash, a way to keep track of everyone, for any reason. It was the first thing I’d removed. The surgery had some risks, sure – mostly that burning out the SIN would kill the nanos programmed to it, but that wasn’t impossible to get around.
A good chopshop knew how to handle it.
The bad ones? Well, they usually killed their patients on the table. End of threat.
I turned my back on the glaring text, which now proclaimed a nice, healthy white reassurance. Love the security provided. We are here for you. Anytime. Anywhere.
I didn’t recognize the logo offhand, but it didn’t matter. All the big companies had ads like this. They got paid by the clocked consciousness, which I’d just contributed to by looking at the damn thing.
First thing I’d have Lucky do was scrub my nanos and reboot my chipset. Then I’d have him install new filters. Fuckheads.
Plato’s Key was a lot like the Mecca, except it catered more towards visual aesthetics and a shit ton of creds than it did towards SINless looking for a job. I’d gone once or twice, usually for a lark, but it wasn’t my scene by choice. Filled with posers, hustlers, and slick cons in slicker suits, it was one step away from a corporate bar and still trying to pretend like it belonged to the street. Rich kids and chrome, mostly. You could tell the difference by the level of shiny plating, glittering lights, and cosmetic enhancements the kids sported. Like it was a game.
Still, it was highly public, well out of range of my usual stomping grounds. It would be filled to the brim with fashion slaves wearing vinyl and sporting light tattoos they could turn off later to hide from mom, which, all things considered, meant they’d be twitchier about casual violence.
The entrance was glass – tempered, because windows didn’t survive without tempering in this district – but the surface played home to so many ads and commercials, I couldn’t tell one apart from the other.
The doors slid open for me, depositing me in air that was so much cooler and fresher-smelling. There was a dreadlocked bear of a man in black, typical bouncer uniform, who didn’t so much study me as raise both shaggy eyebrows and glower at me over the thick, crooked ridge of his nose. “Weapons?”
I grinned, arms at my side. “Just this ass.”
He didn’t look impressed. My tech arm got a long, hard scrutiny, but he wouldn’t find anything interesting there. I still needed to get the netware system reconnected, and my ammo slot was still empty. Not like I had any guns to put any ammo in, anyway.
Mimicking Jad, he jerked a thumb at the door behind him. It was sleek, paneled like wood, and lacked all the pretty accessories Shiva slapped all over the Mecca. “Go on in.”
“Cover?”
He snorted, which I took to translate meant I was attractive enough to forego the cover. I didn’t take it personally – it was standard policy at places like this, especially when attendance was down. I hadn’t seen a line, which told me they were looking for skin to fill the seats. The exotic girls got in for free. It made the guys with creds want to come play. Some things never change.
The door opened automatically, letting me enter without breaking my stride. Another smooth touch. The soul-deep beat of music not nearly as aggressive as the Mecca’s washed over me, carried on electric graffiti.
Several mirrored balls spun over the dance floor, sending multihued sparkles over the interior. Lights streamed from the high ceiling, sliding through the dark in rhythmic match to the music thudding against my skin; pop-culture lyrics, twisted into what this place probably thought was hardcore. No thrashing here. I expected to see a lot of perfect skin, carefully chosen tattoos, suits and red lips and drinks with umbrellas.
I saw nothing but an empty club.
“Shit.” I stepped back immediately.
Too fucking late.
The door closed behind me. My back hit the panel, jarring me into a hard grunt. It did not open again.
“What the shit.” I snarled. My elbow collided with the barrier, a sharp crack of metal on paneled metal, but I didn’t turn my back on the exposed space in front of me.
Tall round tables filled the space beside the dance floor, surrounded by skinny chairs padded with silver vinyl. There were two floors, with balconies overhead looking down into what I assumed was a gyrating mass of middle-class humanity on an average night. The lights flashed and shimmered, the music fell into a dub drop, and exploded back into a woman’s remixed alto.
On the other side of the dance floor, a recessed dip in the floor gave way to an arranged pattern of padded couches, armchairs, smaller tables and drink pads. The bar filled up the far wall, floor-to-ceiling shelving backlit to let the bottles inside glow with unearthly colors. The small bots programmed to acquire the bottles ordered were silent and still, perched on the bar and powered down.
A streak of blue light passed over the seating area, merged with orange and briefly outlined a black silhouette. Athletic shoulders. Gray suit. Dark head, featureless in shadow. The lights skated away and left him in shadow again, but for the pale blue luminescence of a projected screen in front of him.
Well, fuck me.
Empty, the place was already eerie. With a single man perched in an armchair, it was downright surreal.
And I was rapidly approaching pissed. Trying to zen this one would net me dick-all.
I stepped away from the exit, eyes narrowed against the light assault, and scanned the immediate area for other ways out. I didn’t see any signs, but that didn’t mean much.
I was a third of the way across the empty dance floor when a whisper of movement flickered in my peripheral. I refrained from turning my head, but I saw him. A man in black fatigues. The helmet was full-coverage, black faceplate patterned with a faint grid of a heads-up display, and his chest was shaped by the bulk of light armor.
The body armor was similar to the goons in that priso
n, but most security forces tended to look alike when they weren’t sporting corporation branding.
Another silhouette to my right shifted into view. Same gear. Same general build.
The music rolled over the floor, a visceral hum that only punctuated my mounting irritation. I was in the middle of the dance floor when two more stepped into view, one in front and one – I checked, already knowing what I’d see – yeah, one behind. One was trimmer but not by match. Maybe a woman. Maybe not.
Maybe it didn’t shitting matter.
I deliberately relaxed my shoulders, my hands loose at my sides. A trap, then.
I was going to kill Indigo.
“All right,” I told them, resigned. “Let’s get this over with.”
They came at me as a unit.
I squatted low as the first reached for me, hooked the back of his knee with my right hand and pulled. He countered by firming his weight on his right leg; I smashed his kneecap with my metal fist. It crunched. He screamed. I rolled out of the knot of hands and feet.
Pull, jab, down, all in one second.
One of them pulled his buddy up by an arm. He hobbled a bit, but I assumed his nanos were already working on it. I put my hands back by my sides again, deceptively loose.
Four black truncheons slid into four palms. A flicker of blue energy at each empty hand told me they’d activated shields.
Were they kidding me? This was practically riot gear.
I checked my left, but the suit hadn’t moved. Engrossed in the glowing square perched above the table, he didn’t spare me – or his goons – so much as a glance.
My choices weren’t ideal. I could try and keep them at arm’s length, stay far enough ahead that I could look for an exit, but there were four of them. Five, if the suit got involved. It’d be only a matter of time before they cornered me. I did not want to get stuck in a corner.
All I could do was fight.
My mouth tightened. Inside my skin, fury simmered into cool regard. Adrenaline flooded my system, feeding nanos and nerves with the same surge of raw energy.
I was good at this sort of stuff. I knew what to expect in a fight. I could cope with physical pain a hell of a lot better than I coped with emotional baggage.
This was what zenning it looked like to me.
I turned my gaze back to the four men. “Fine.” I lifted my foot, unzipped the fake pocket and pulled out the serrated knife that was all I had. The hilt was cool and comforting in my hand, the matte blade swallowing the light as it popped over us. “Bring it.”
They brought it.
I don’t care what anyone out there tries to sell, the only thing that can even the odds of four-on-one is a full-body replacement – and unless a merc has Boone’s unholy luck, that’s a one-way ticket to necro-land.
I held my own for the longest thirty seconds of my life. It became rapidly clear that I wasn’t a match for four lethally trained enforcers working as a unit. I bloodied my knife on one. Light armor isn’t made to withstand a stabbing, and definitely not when I knew where the seams were.
I kicked another in the faceplate, cracking the plastic and shorting his display. Another earned a shattered elbow. His truncheon hand dropped useless to his side. If his scream caused his boss to look up from his stock tickers, I was too busy to see it.
Problem was, for every point I scored, there were three of them to score one each for their battered buddy.
I caught a truncheon in my side, cracking ribs. Wrenching at it did nothing – the sticks were designed to snap into place with the gauntlets, negating disarming attempts like mine. Another jammed into my kidneys. Pain roiled under my skin, turned my vision inside out and nearly dropped me to my knees. The only thing that would keep me from pissing blood later was the nanos, but not if these sec-level spunkguzzlers did as much damage as it looked like they intended.
I punched the visorless one in the face with my tech arm, calling it a draw for the blood streaming from my mouth and into one eye, and gave it a little extra thrust for kicks. He dropped.
I had no time to celebrate. A boot slammed into the back of my right knee, another smashed into the side of it. Ligaments wrenched, popped with sickening visceral agony, spilling me to the floor and jarring my teeth. My knife went skittering across the tile.
It was all I could do to fight the urge to curl around the excruciating pain in my ribs.
No time. I rolled, biting back a scream, avoided the hands reaching for me. I hit the edge, found the stairs leading to the pit by sheer accident, and flailed ass over elbows. There were only two steps.
My broken ribs and devastated knee found both of them.
The lights, the music, the world turned into a black, tunneled vacuum.
8
If I passed out here, I was dead.
It took effort, but I sucked in air through gritted teeth, forced myself to stay conscious. I just needed to wait out the damage, ride the pain.
Maybe seriously consider some pain dampeners; shove the risk.
I slung an arm over the rim of the padded table shoved into my back. I couldn’t see out of one eye, and the floor was jerking back and forth, but I didn’t need perfect vision to glare at the four silhouettes coming down the steps at me.
The pale glow behind me went dark. “That’s enough.”
All four stopped.
The suit didn’t shout; he didn’t have to. His voice wasn’t as deep as Jad’s, but it carried the kind of weight you can’t program into tech. It was effortless, patient, and cool. A signal that cut through noise with pure authority.
I was going to rip his voice box out and make him eat it.
“Bring her.”
My ass. I tried to get to my feet. My damaged knee buckled hard, twisting out from under me. Before I hit the ground, two sets of hands curled around my upper arms. Pulled me upright.
I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood as torture streaked through my broken ribs. It came out on a mangled, “Fuck.”
They half-carried, half-dragged me to a plastic arm chair across from the suited man, and set me gently into the padding. Two sets of hands clutched at my shoulders, holding me firmly in place.
“You must be Indigo’s friend,” my host said. His eyes met mine across the neon-drenched club, too dark to see the color of.
Pain banked. Rage burned in its place. “Go to hell.”
He inclined his head. “Not my faith.”
Thought he was a bag of laughs, huh? “Listen up, Malik.” I drew his name out like poison, every muscle in my body taut with the effort not to launch myself at him. Or hunch into a miserable ball of pain. “You have exactly one minute. And the only reason I’m giving you that is I need the time to knit.”
“Understood.” Malik Reed did not smile. Or, at least, he didn’t actually curve his lips and reveal his teeth. I wasn’t even sure he could – he didn’t seem the type. His top and lower lip were thick and full, but when matched with his high cheekbones and the sharp angles of his face, there was nothing soft about him. He wasn’t commercially handsome, not by a long shot; his jaw was too square at the edges, chin too pronounced and nose too wide. All in all, probably the kind of bone structure a woman would die for, but he wouldn’t score any points for charm.
Not that it mattered. The impression Malik Reed left was one of wealth, power, and the kind of prestige that comes with assloads of unshakable confidence.
And a seismic lot of fucks he didn’t have to give.
He’d started this with blood. My fucks had exponentially increased, and not in the way I generally liked them.
In the club’s light-speckled interior, Malik’s gray suit looked crisp and perfectly tailored, creased at the pant legs and hemmed over shiny black shoes I bet cost too much. The shirt underneath his fitted jacket was black, a mandarin collar buttoned neatly at the strong lines of his throat. All very corporate chic. The whole thing probably cost as much as my cut from a decent run.
I printed my clothing by machine. M
alik Reed had his tailored by hand.
That meant backing. Probably corp-level, since private sector didn’t usually come paired with sec-level forces. That meant I couldn’t twist his cunting head off his spine. I’d have to play this one carefully. SINless versus corp exec one on one, and I’d own his ass.
SINless versus a corp exec and four enforcers?
I was meat.
I gripped the arms of my chair, uncomfortably aware of the hands curled over my shoulders, the mind-altering waves of pain radiating from knee to ribs to, oh, every bone in my body, and the taste of blood on my tongue. I narrowed my eye. The other one was already a bloody slit. “Get your spunkchuckers off me.”
In this techno-strobe mess, I couldn’t tell what color Malik’s skin was. Dusky, anyway. Given the features, I’d guess a blend of anglo, African, and a handful of other landmarks from Native to Mexican. Muddled, like most of us beyond the restricted cultural reserves. His eyes were practically black in the shadows, his limbs long and movements precise as he gestured in two directions.
The hands at my shoulders let go. He didn’t stop there, turning his head to glance somewhere to my left.
The lights played over the harsh, sculpted angle of his jaw, outlined his profile briefly, and slid back onto the dance floor somewhere to my right. “Now you have my full attention,” he said, turning his gaze back to me as if he’d done me a favor.
My fingers fisted. “Great.” I showed him my bloody teeth. “Just for the record, I am going to kill you.”
“Why?”
The answer was so obvious, my brain hitched. Why? Because he’d stood by while his tapdancing assclowns beat me down like a stray dog. Because if he was corporate, that meant he knew people. Probably knew some of the same people that operated in my sphere. In my line of work, reputation was everything. It didn’t matter how good I was, it’d all go to shit if he opened his girly lips and blabbed about the trap he’d set on me and the damage his team had caused.
I had more to prove than he did.
“Because,” was what I managed, and this time, he did smile. Sort of.
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