Upgrade

by Richard Parry

  “You really must be good enough to not need backup,” said Metatech. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s the boss.” Mason tipped his head sideways. “Knows what he wants.”

  Metatech nodded like he knew. Maybe he does — could play golf with the head of Metatech on a Sunday. No way to know. “What did you lose?”

  “No clue,” said Mason. “We tracked the deal online, same as you. Unspecified syndicate tech. We’ve worked out it’s ours. Comes in a box about this high.” He held a hand up to the height of their table.

  Metatech leaned forward, his beer forgotten. “Recovery?”

  “No,” said Mason. “Remove and erase.”

  “Christ,” said Reed. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Why you telling us?” said Metatech. “I mean, it’s got to be golden. We’ll all want a piece.”

  Mason nodded again, as if agreeing. Another piece of the Tsingtao label peeled off. “It’s a fair warning. If you want in, you have to go all in.”

  “All in?” Reed looked at him over his glasses, Mason getting a view of his eyes for the first time. Worried. “What do you mean?”

  “Stock price might go up. Might go down too.” Mason turned the bottle in his hands. “Or war. We won’t stop until we… resolve the loss.”

  Metatech snorted, then caught himself. “There hasn’t been a war between the syndicates in—”

  “What do you want out of this?” Reed topped up his glass from the bottle. “And why us?”

  “Easy,” said Mason. “I’m actually hoping you’ll be smart enough to stay out of the way. Someone’s trying to sell our shit, and they’ll be trying to sell it to one of you.”

  “But why us?” Reed said. “Reed Interactive. Metatech. Apsel. What’s the link?”

  “Money, mostly.” Mason looked at the man, then turned the beer bottle around on the table, the knurls on the bottom making a harsh sound. “They’ll need a syndicate with the cash to pay for it. Look, we’re the same guy, just different places. We all got our reasons for working… where we do.”

  “Right,” said Reed. Metatech nodded.

  “And I know that when the rain came—”

  “You think the secret to the rain is in this tech?” said Metatech.

  Mason nodded at Reed. “Hallucinogenic effects released in the atmosphere? Only one syndicate specializes in synthesizing entertainment right into your brain. It’s why I thought you might have been Reed, back at the bar.”

  “Figures,” said Metatech. “I was after Reed as well.”

  “You assholes,” said Reed. “It wasn’t us.”

  “No, no,” said Mason. “I’m pretty sure it was us now. Not our speciality, but it looks like it’s our tech.”

  “How do you know?” asked Reed.

  Mason remembered a broken building, shattered stone, and a blackened piece of metal with the Apsel logo alongside ATOMIC ENERGY DIVISION. The hallucinations feeling stronger there, somehow. He tapped a fingernail against the bottle. “Can’t say,” he said. “You know how it is.”

  Reed shrugged. “You don’t want to sell it? This could be easy all around. Why try in markets that aren’t your core business?”

  “That’s above my pay grade,” said Mason. He grinned. “You can keep trying the other way, though.”

  Reed’s hand was tapping the table. Mason nodded at him. “Something to say?”

  “We tried to buy the rain.”

  “You what?”

  “Wasn’t on my watch. Didn’t know it was the rain. While you guys were… getting acquainted, we’d already tried to get a demo of the tech. Someone wanted to set up a deal. Said they had something that would blow our mind. We sent a team to… collect. Old building, outside of town.”

  Mason leaned back. “Building’s not there anymore.”

  Reed nodded. “I figured. The deal was sour.”

  “It wasn’t sour. Someone just didn’t use the right… protection.” Mason took a last swirl from the bottle. “You know who tried to sell it to you?”

  The other man shook his head. “Sorry, Apsel. And you know—”

  “You wouldn’t tell me even if you did.”

  “That’s it. You know how it is.”

  “So,” said Metatech. He splayed his hands in front of him, looking at his nails. “What’s the play?”

  “No play,” said Mason. “Nothing up my sleeve. I just want you to know. If someone tries to sell you a metal box with an Apsel logo on it? We’re coming after that box.”

  “Fair enough,” said Metatech. “What about—”

  The door at the back of the restaurant was kicked open, a group of street thugs spilling in. The lattice spun Mason around in his chair, optics doing a quick zoom. He picked out patches, chains, the Harajuku style overdone. He caught a familiar face covered with acne. His HUD was already filling out, putting the five punks in. Mason looked at where they were standing, picking out the tiger on the floor of the entranceway.

  “Ah, hell,” he said, his shoulders slumping. These little cocksuckers are going to screw this negotiation up. “South Sun Tigers. No shit.”

  “Mason,” said Carter. “There’s an enforcer class hybrid approaching.”

  The whine of servos accompanied the enforcer as it crouched low to push its way through the entrance to the restaurant. Big metal hands pulled on the door frame as it shuffled into the room, marking and crushing the wood where they touched. It stood up inside the restaurant, an easy three feet taller than the tallest of the South Sun Tigers. The metal and ceramic of its armor glinted in red. Some chains had been welded to the armor in places, giving an approximation of the South Sun Tigers patch pattern. It flexed its shoulders, then slammed one metal hand into the palm of another. A step took it forward, a hiss of hydraulics escaping as it locked into a fighter’s crouch.

  Metatech looked at Mason. “Friends of yours?”

  Reed already had a gun drawn, some kind of energy weapon pulled out from under his jacket. It was black and ugly, a short nosed thing. “Christ, Apsel. We came in good faith.” The energy weapon swung to Mason, then to the South Sun Tigers. Then back to Mason.

  Mason’s hands were up. “These guys aren’t—”

  “Hey, asshole.” It was the kid with the acne, walking tall with a bunch of punks at his back. “I told you, company man, no one messes with the South Sun Tigers.”

  “That’s not what you said,” said Mason. The Reed man swung the weapon back towards the South Sun Tigers.

  “What?” said the kid.

  “That’s not what you — fuck this.” The Tenko-Senshin was in his hand. Mason couldn’t remember pulling it out. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye as the Metatech man reached under his jacket, pulling out something that looked like a big staple gun.

  “Going hot,” said Carter. Her voice was flat. She’d put a box around one of the South Suns at the back, a thin man with a data jack in the side of his head. A cable, knotted and twisted, dropped down from the jack to a small portable rig. The man tapped furiously on the keyboard. “Prepare for interference.”

  Mason nodded. It’s time to dance. He kicked off a targeting solution routine, the helmet lapping out of his jacket and around his head. His overlay marked the Tigers.

  As an afterthought, he excluded the one with the rig, the overlay’s box around the man flashing and dying out. Carter would be pissed if he stole her kill.

  The Metatech man gave the staple gun a jerk, and the bulk of it fell out into sections, linking together into a barrel. His other hand came out of his jacket, slapping a rectangle underneath.

  “Link up. Kick into overtime,” said Mason. The other two men nodded, link requests already coming in from them. Their icons blinked on his overlay, then stabilized. Mason felt the familiar feeling of his lattice, warm under his skin. He felt like his heart was slowing in his chest, his augments speeding up his nervous system. The light in the room changed as his perception upshifted, the colors washing out. The South Sun Tigers seeme
d to pause, the one on the rig typing in slow motion.

  “This isn’t your play?” said Reed, his voice sounding stretched over the link.

  “It’s not his play,” said Metatech, a flash of neural static following the words. “I’ve got the big one.”

  Reed clicked an affirmative. “I hope that cannon of yours can do the job.”

  Metatech’s smiley came across the link, outlined in red. “It’s something a bit special. From the boys in the lab.”

  “This is what I’ve got,” said Mason, sharing his overlay with the other two. “Six targets. One of them’s an enforcer class hybrid — all yours, Metatech. My handler’s on the decker.”

  Reed marked the kid with the acne. “You look personally involved. I’ll take him.”

  “Solid copy,” said Mason. “Wait. You’re leaving me with three?”

  “Reed Interactive’s into entertainment. We’re not a bunch of ninjas.”

  “It’s ninja,” said Mason.

  “What?”

  “It’s just ninja. The plural. There’s no ‘s’ at the end.”

  There was a burst of static from Reed’s end. Then, “Ready?”

  “Ready,” said Metatech.

  “Ready,” said Mason. He felt the lattice reaching down through his arms, and he pulled the trigger on the Tenko-Senshin. The overtime played down his spine, and he thought he could almost see the individual flechettes leaving the weapon, silver flashes quickly surrounded by flames as they superheated the air, fire following them to their targets.

  His optics cut out, the world going dark. The lattice coughed out of overtime with a jerk, his heart thudding and kicking back in his chest. He almost tripped, the wrench back to the real making him stumble. “Carter?”

  Mason heard something thump hard to his left, feeling the heat as the Metatech weapon fired. There were three snaps from his right as Reed’s weapon fired. He could hear their movements, quicker than thought.

  “Carter!” Mason swung the Tenko-Senshin in front of him. “Carter, I’m blind. That decker has—”

  Snow flicked across his vision, then cut back to black. Think, Mason. He was pretty sure there was a table behind him. He dropped to a crouch, duck-walking backwards until his heel hit something. He knocked his head against the table, then fumbled for the edge and pulled it down to him, the clatter of plates and chopsticks almost lost in the noise around him. Mason hauled himself around behind it. Visual cover only, but it was better than nothing. He felt the little Tenko-Senshin vibrating in his hand. After a moment, he clicked it off and put it back inside his jacket. His hands felt across the floor, finding the handles of something.

  His overlay kicked back in, tracing the room again over the top of the blackness. A burst of snow rained over the top. The overlay dropped off, then flared back on.

  “—On, but … Understand?” said Carter.

  “No, I do not fucking understand,” said Mason. He felt the table kick into his back as small arms fire tapped into it. Metal, sharp and hard, plinked off his helmet. “What the hell is going on?”

  A scream cut across the room. Something arced and crackled on the far side of the room, and Mason’s vision cleared. The overlay cut out, replaced by text ticking up from the bottom right. He caught the words system BIOS and reloading as the text scrolled

  “You back with me?” said Carter.

  “Yeah,” said Mason. “Lattice is down. Overtime’s not working.”

  “Their hacker was pretty good.” Carter’s voice carried something else. Maybe respect. “Not quite good enough. Your augments are rebooting. Give it time.”

  “I don’t have time.” Mason risked a look over the table. The thin man with the portable deck was on the ground, smoke wisping out of the side of his head, the hole where the jack had been charred and black. The remains of the cable to his rig was severed, burned away. He saw the Reed man was down, splayed back on the floor. Metatech wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but neither was the enforcer. Three of the Tigers were still standing, the ones he’d originally marked on his HUD. One had a red tattoo across her face. Another was a huge man, a set of chains passing through the skin of his face. The third was a man with a mohawk and the moves of a dancer.

  “I see you’ve left me three.” He looked down at the weapons he’d picked up. It was a pair of butterfly swords. “I’m not sure, strictly speaking, that these are part of the Eighteen Arms of Wushu.”

  “They’re not replicas. Stop whining,” said Carter. “Just go cut a bitch, okay?”

  Mason stood up from behind the table. The three gang members, paused, then the woman with the red tattoo smiled.

  “There’s still one left,” said the woman with the red tattoo. “He’s mine.”

  The huge man put a hand on her shoulder. “No. I want this one.”

  “We take him together.” She shrugged his hand off, reaching under her jacket and pulling out a pair of sub machine guns. “What’s it going to be, company man?”

  Mason looked at the guns, then into her eyes. “I think it’s going to be like this. You’re going to shoot your friend in the balls. Then I’m going to throw you out the window behind me.” He moved around from behind the table, his left foot sweeping out to clear some debris. The lattice tugged at his calf, and his overlay flickered off for a second. Mason ignored it, his breath coming slow and even.

  The man with the mohawk narrowed his eyes, looking at Mason’s foot, but didn’t say anything. He held back, his fingers twitching at his side.

  The woman laughed. It sounded genuine. “I’m sorry, what—”

  Mason tucked the swords by his side, throwing himself into a tumble towards the big man. The woman’s sub machine guns chattered after him, tearing chunks out of the floor. Mason’s roll took him behind the big man, the woman’s guns still firing. A look of horror passed over her face as the big man stumbled, blood spraying from the bullet holes. Nasty — explosive rounds. Mason pulled the swords out, stepping over the big man’s corpse. He swung twice, then stepped back.

  Red tattoo looked down at the stumps of her arms where her hands had been. The sub machine guns had fallen to the ground, hands still holding the grips. Mason stepped towards her, and she started to back away, leaving a trail of dark red on the ground, the spatters coming from her wrists. She stumbled once as her foot hit the table Mason had crouched behind.

  “You—” she said.

  Mason stepped forward, planting his foot into her stomach and pushing. She stumbled back, hitting the window, the glass cracking. Mason frowned, then did a spin, the kick hitting her high in the chest. The woman’s body smashed through the window and out. A half a second later a thump rose from the street below.

  He turned back and looked at the big man’s body. There were bullet holes up his leg and into his chest. No groin shot. “Close enough,” Mason said. He held the swords loose by his side, small drops of red falling from the blades.

  A slow clapping sound made him turn. Mohawk had his hands held in front of him, fingerless gloves muffling and shaping the sound at the same time. The last Tiger said, “Impressive, company man.”

  “I wish you guys wouldn’t call us that.”

  “It’s what you are.”

  Mason shrugged. “It’s no crime to have a job.”

  A smile tugged at Mohawk’s lips. “Come now. You take it a bit further than just a job.”

  “Maybe.” Mason flicked some of the blood off one of the swords, the drops spattering against the floor. “Still no crime. Now take you guys. Coming in here. Busting up the place—”

  “We own the place.”

  “—busting up the place, attacking me and my associates. That sounds like a crime.”

  Mohawk put a little pout into his voice. “Aww. Did we hurt your delicate corporate negotiations?”

  It was Mason’s turn to smile. There wasn’t anything happy about it. “You have no idea. Tell me, what’s your malfunction?”

  “My malfunction?”

  “Yea
h. You come in here, a bunch of big swinging dicks. Aside from,” and here Mason tipped his head at the broken window, “your token female.”

  “She wasn’t a token. She was my girlfriend.”

  “Unlucky,” said Mason. “So you come in here, wanting to pick a fight with ‘company men.’ You can’t win that fight.”

  “I don’t know. It almost worked.”

  “Didn’t even come close,” said Mason. “Now it’s just you and me.”

  “Sam is still out there.”

  “Sam?”

  “The big guy.”

  “Ah,” said Mason. “The enforcer.”

  “Yeah,” said Mohawk. “I guess you’d call him that.”

  Mason took a step forward. Mohawk stepped back. Mason nodded, then said, “Sam’s a smoking ruin right now.”

  “He’s a total conversion. Against a norm? Please.”

  Mason laughed, a little mirth in it this time. “That guy wasn’t a norm. He was Metatech.”

  “Meta… Shit.” Mohawk shrugged. “Ok, so Sam’s probably dead. But we got one of yours.” The man pointed towards the Reed man, lying still on the ground.

  “He’s not one of mine,” said Mason. “We going to do this, or what?”

  “Do what, company man?” But Mohawk started to move, and Mason followed, the two men circling each other in the middle of the room. Mohawk reached into his jacket, his hand coming clear holding what looked like the grip of a sword. There was no blade.

  Mason looked down at the butterfly swords he held. “Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?”

  Mohawk smiled, his lips thin and nasty. “Sometimes it’s got to be like that.”

  Mason’s overlay fuzzed with static again, then cleared. A blinking cursor on the bottom right spat out some text. The text said systems online. Mason smiled. “Yeah. Sometimes it’s got to be like that.”

  He tapped the lattice, overtime rising like a tide. The color washed from the light. Mason’s lips felt too slow and thick to speak. His optics marked the sword grip the other man held, picking out the nano filament blade of the weapon as it slid out.

  They ran at each other, but the outcome was certain. Mohawk’s sword was held high over his head, a classic kendo strike. Mason slipped to the side, the lattice gritty and unsynchronized against his muscles as he stepped to the side. He struck behind him, both blades entering the other man’s back. Mason felt the other man shudder through the grips of his sword, then a clatter as the nano filament sword fell from his hands.