“So… are we gonna talk about it?” I ask.
“Do you think we need to?” Niko replies.
“I guess not.”
“I mean, you had a good time, right?”
“You know I did,” I reply with a chuckle.
“Well, so did I, and I’m sure Saffi did too. So, what’s there to talk about?”
We fall silent for a few moments.
“Did you two… do that often?”
“A couple times,” he shrugs. “Never anything serious. We always knew I was gonna have to leave, so…”
He trails off, looking regretful. The sorrow in his expression makes me feel guilty- are Sofie and I taking advantage of him by being with him, when he’d rather be with Saffi but can’t? It’s hard to know. But if I asked him, I’m sure he’d say I’m being stupid. Just because he might have had feelings for her once, which our little romp last night dredged up, doesn’t mean what we have isn’t real.
“Anyway, let’s leave it at that,” he says firmly. Then a playful grin spreads across his lips. “Unless you feel like doing a play-by-play, maybe critiquing my technique?”
The idea is enough to make me laugh out loud, any lingering sense of guilt erased instantly.
“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Your performance was… let’s say, satisfactory.”
Niko rolls his eyes and gives me a playful smack on the back. Though to a casual observer, we might just seem like a couple taking a walk through a bustling megabuilding concourse, we’re here on business.
While we were all busy doing the triad’s dirty work yesterday, Tommy managed to get his hands on just about everything I asked him to find, including the ‘specialist,’ i.e. mercenary, that we’ll need to pull the job off. Unfortunately, he was only able to find one suitable candidate for the most important role in the entire operation- an individual known only as ‘the Recluse,’ who was only willing to entertain the idea of working with us if the person in charge of the job came to meet with him in person.
From his perspective, the request isn’t entirely unreasonable. This guy is one of the best security experts in the LC, but he does all his work remotely, from inside of a fortified apartment inside a megabuilding. He’ll either use drones, or remotely pilot someone else’s body, to do his part of the job. But the lag time between here and Liese, where Salzwedel’s house is located, would be too great for that to work. So if he’s coming, he’s coming in person. And if we’re gonna be the ones to make him emerge from his hideout for the first time in who knows how long, it makes sense he’ll want to see our faces first.
Tommy also let me know that if he does agree to work with us, he’ll want an extra fifty percent on top of his standard, not-insignificant fee. This is one area where we can’t afford to cut costs, though. And if everything goes according to plan, he’ll practically pay for himself.
To all appearances, the Recluse’s apartment looks just like any other. The door is a cheap, plastic thing- it looks flimsy enough that Niko could probably batter it down with his bare hands. But as we approach, and a camera mounted above the door registers our presence, that door slides open, revealing a far more imposing steel one, the kind that looks like it would be more at home in a bank vault, back when banks stored anything of real, physical value.
In the center of the door is a blue camera-eye, which lights up at our presence, and runs a scan of Niko and I. A moment later, the door speaks, in a genderless mechanical voice.
“It seems that you are armed. Please deposit your weapons into this container.” As it speaks, a drawer opens up out of the door, extended towards us. “They will be returned upon your exit.”
I look to Niko, who shrugs. We both remove our sidearms, and I take off the knife strapped to my ankle as for good measure. Niko produces a second pistol that I hadn’t even known he was carrying, and then a grenade, a garrotte, and a toxin injector, all from the depths of that orange jacket he bought at the market back on Akademos, a few days before the War Games. Apparently it’s full of surprises.
We both dump all our weaponry into the drawer, which promptly slams shut. Once the blue eye scans us again, to make sure we didn’t leave anything out, the door begins to open, a slow process of multiple locks unlocking, before it finally swings inward, inviting us to proceed.
The Recluse’s apartment doesn’t exactly look inviting. It’s largely unlit, the only real source of light being from the server towers that seem to be built into the walls, kept safe behind metal grates. Past the hallway we enter through, there seems to be a small sitting room with chairs that look like they haven’t been sat in for months, arranged around a table with a film of dust covering it. On the other side of the room is a kitchenette that doesn’t look like it’s ever seen any use at all. Above us is a single, bare bulb, either not turned on, or left on so long it burned itself out without the Recluse noticing.
When I heard the whole ‘never leaves his apartment’ thing, I assumed it was because he’d turned the place into some kind of ultra-comfortable safe haven he’d never want to leave, but this is almost the exact opposite. If we hadn’t been invited in I would have assumed nobody lived here at all.
This way, says an unfamiliar voice over the brainband. Nonverbal communication only has the tone and inflection you give to it purposefully, and this guy’s words had none at all. Eerie.
Accompanying the words was a sense of direction- literally, a sense telling us which direction to walk in. Not that it was particularly hard, since there’s only one door leading forward.
Niko steps in front of me seemingly insistent on taking the lead. Hard to know whether he perceives a real threat, or if he’s just trying to act protective because this is a generally creepy environment, but I appreciate the gesture nonetheless- because I know that he knows I don’t need to be protected, so he’s not actually doing it for some dumb bullshit macho reason, but as a way of signaling that he cares about me, or whatever. It sounds stupid when I put it into words.
After a short walk through another hallway where the walls are made from server towers, just like the entire rest of the apartment, we enter a room where the necessity of all those servers becomes obvious.
‘Recluse’ isn’t just a synonym for hermit, it’s a kind of spider. And the device that our man is sitting in/hooked up to sort of resembles a giant spider. Mainly in the legs, which there do seem to be eight of, and make an unsettling clacking noise against the concrete floor as he approaches us.
The rest of the device is a chair, sort of. He’s clearly not just sitting in it, though. His arms are in sockets of some kind, and at least one of them seems to be controlling the spider-chair, while the other manipulates the holo-screens that the chair is projecting around him. Although why they need to be projected, I’m not sure, since the Recluse himself certainly isn’t seeing any of it. He’s laying back, almost limp in the chair, with a mask on over his eyes.
Looking closer, I can see various tubes and wires connected to his body, feeding into several different tanks attached to the back of the spider-chair, and some of which seem to be wired into the room itself as well. The man’s body is thin, frail, emaciated- I’d be shocked if he wasn’t physically dependent on the chair at this point. It was clearly designed so he wouldn’t have to get up to eat or shit- some automated process probably refills his nutrien slurry tank and empties the septic one every month or so.
Apparently I don’t do a great job controlling my reaction, because the Recluse notices the look on my face. Not with his eyes, of course but with the cameras on his chair, which feed the data into him, either via the brainband, or through a direct connection to his ocular nerve. Probably both.
You see the problem, then?
This time, there’s an undercurrent of humor to his words, though subtle enough that I almost convince myself it’s not there.
“Uh, yeah. Hope you’re not planning to come with us in that thing, because my plan does not have room for it.”
Oh, no. I will be joining you in person, as agreed. But first- introductions. I am the Recluse. And you two, I presume, are Condor and Nightingale?
Beside me Niko rolls his eyes. He’s just mad because I said he had to be Nightingale.
“Yeah. We can talk about real-name privileges after you explain what exactly your plan for coming with us outside of that chair is. Because if we’ve gotta carry you the whole way, it’s not gonna work.”
My plan is simple. I will discard this body for a new one, in less… fragile condition. That body will accompany you. It will be a novel experience, after so long in this machine. Afterwards, I will simply place the new body back into the machine. However, the task of sourcing a new body falls to you, as we do not have time to wait for me to be resurrected legally.
The matter-of-fact way he says that is enough to make my jaw drop. I look to Niko, making sure he heard the same bullshit I just did. All he does is shrug, looking unsurprised.
“Are you fucking kidding me? What do you think I am, a wizard? Under any other circumstances, I’d tell you to go fuck yourself, even if you were the only competent security expert on this shithole of a planet, which you’re not.”
Beside me, Niko chuckles softly, covering his mouth with his hand to hide it. Both the chair and the body within it are motionless.
“However. Some friends of mine recently came into temporary possession of a yakuza resurrection facility. So if you were deliberately asking something incredibly unreasonable to try and dodge the job without having to turn us down… tough luck. Now hurry up and kill yourself, we’re burning daylight.”
----------------------------------------
“Are you sure there isn’t something we need to be doing right now?”
Niko is tense, I can feel it. Literally. He’s sitting in my lap, despite being the larger of the two of us- we discovered a while ago that between my tail and his horns, this is more comfortable. Despite being in that enviable position- or at least I assume it is, I’ve never run a poll or anything -he’s still stiff, shoulders hunched and his back stiff.
“Nope,” I reply casually, snaking my tail around his chest to pull him closer to me. “The spider-creep is getting his new body, so we’ve got a few hours before we need to be back at the Den. Saffi and my copy are making sure all the gear’s ready for tomorrow. We can just relax.”
Almost reluctantly, Niko does just that, allowing himself to loosen up. As a reward for good behavior, I run a hand through his hair, feeling where the black metal of his horns pokes through the skin of his scalp. They aren’t solid metal, but rather bone protrusions covered in a relatively thin metallic layer, which also coats the rest of his skeleton. A useful enhancement to have on the streets of Limbo City, I imagine.
The two of us aren’t on the streets right now, though. We’re in one of Niko’s old haunts, somewhere nobody else knows about except Saffi. The storeroom of an abandoned rooftop pharmacy, long since taken over by a thrill-gang trying to expand their operation by cooking up illegal drugs by mixing together legal ones.
Saffi and Niko’s crew was sent to clean the place out, years ago, and they did exactly that. But Niko, feeling concerned that his relatively comfortable life with the triad might one day be torn away in the same way as he’d just done to the grangers, had felt it necessary to have a fallback plan. And the storeroom, already protected by a security system sophisticated enough to keep the gangers out, had seemed like the ideal place to start.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
So, in secret, using money he saved from the spoils of their exploits, he began fortifying the room further, and then stocking it with more than just expired prescription drugs. He got guns, ammunition, canned food, even physical currency- all the essentials for surviving and starting a new life when your old one is burning down.
Thankfully, it never came to that. But the security measures he put in place stayed around, meaning that when we entered, years after he’d last been in here, the only change was a layer of dust.
It might not sound like the most romantic spot, but this wasn’t just Niko’s fallback plan, it was where he went to be alone, when he wanted to be away from Tommy, or Saffi, or any of the various others who came and went through their lives. So it’s got more than just guns and canned synth-fish, it’s got a little alcove with cushions and a blanket, and a little box that Niko tells me contains memory chips of all his favorite books and movies from when he was younger, which he loved so much he needed physical copies of, though he refuses to let me know what’s actually on them. I suspect porn.
“It just feels as though we should be doing something,” he says, sighing. “The operation is tomorrow. Are we really sufficiently prepared?”
“I ‘unno about you, but I’m pretty well prepared,” I chuckle. “Just think of this as the calm before the storm. You should know all about that, right?”
“Ah. You… heard that.”
“That speech you gave to the ‘kuza guy yesterday? ‘The wolf never abandons its pack, and the storm comes without warning?’ You betcha.”
Hearing his own words repeated back to him makes Niko shudder in disgust. I know I’m setting myself up for the same torment the next time he hears me say something melodramatic in the heat of the moment, but I’m having too much fun with this to care.
Outside, a steady patter of rain is coming down on the roof of the building. Considerate guy that he is, Niko immediately shed his jacket and passed it to me when it first started coming down, aware of my rather negative associations with this particular form of inclement weather. Any discomfort I might have had has passed now that we’re inside, though. And the jacket was surprisingly comfortable.
“Just don’t tell Sofie about that, okay?”
“Bold of you to assume I haven’t already sent her the mem,” I reply, with a low, evil laugh. Since the store has been abandoned for years now, it’s been completely cut off from the power grid, so our only source of light is a compact, travel-sized plasma lantern in the middle of the room.
“Of course you did,” he sighs, but I can tell he’s smiling, even without seeing his face.
“Hey, I’m not judging. You know I’m a dramatic bitch too, and that shit was straight out of Hawkshade or Zauberin or something.”
“Out of what?”
“Stuff I liked when I was a kid. I’ll tell you about it some other time.”
He accepts that with a shrug. I’m not really in the mood to explain the details of the childrens’ media that shaped my personality right now.
The two of us sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, Niko making no complaints as I run my hand through his hair, or try to ease out some of the tension in his back. Then he speaks.
“This city must be a big change from the farm. I’m impressed how well you’ve adjusted in such a short time.”
“I’m an adaptive creature. Only way to stay alive.”
Niko pauses before replying, considering my words carefully.
“Unless you’re content to stay in the same place your whole life.”
Unbidden, an image of my family comes to mind. Father Len on the porch, blowing holographic smoke rings. Mother Kalli and Father Nico in the garden. Cesar and Damon racing hover bikes through the cornfields.
“Not me.”
“Me neither,” he says simply. Not that I would have expected him to answer otherwise. Living on a farm-world is desirable for a certain sort of person. Pretty much nobody would choose to have been born into the same circumstances as Niko.
“We’re lucky to have the choice, though. If we weren’t Nobles, I’d still be there, you’d still be here.”
And, of course, there are so many people who don’t have the choices we do- Saffi and Tommy and even Asher, to say nothing of the millions here in the LC who have even fewer choices than those relatively lucky three. My siblings, whose humble origins will most likely preclude them from ever advancing meaningfully in status, if they were inclined to walk that path.
“Do we really have any choices, though? You and me, we’re lucky, sure. But Sofie- if she wasn’t a Noble, she could have been anything, anyone. Rich parents, talented gymnast, smart as a whip, yet her entire life was predetermined because she inherited some long-dead Founder’s pattern.”
If I’m not careful, this whole conversation could turn deterministic quickly, which would get depressing really fast. Acknowledging that free will is a lie rarely makes things feel romantic.
“Without that pattern, she wouldn’t be the Sofie we know. And because of it, the Citadel is right where she wants to be. Same goes for us, too. If we weren’t Nobles, we probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave in the first place.”
I pause, reconsidering.
“Well, except maybe you. But who knows? Non-Noble Niko might have been thrilled to be a corporate serf.”
The mental image I share of a bright, cheerful, horns-and-tattoos-free Niko excitedly mopping the floors of a corporate arcology is enough to make the two of us laugh, though with a hint of sadness, because we both know he’d have been anything but thrilled.
“Conversations with you are always so cheerful,” he says sarcastically, although not without some fondness.
“We could always change the subject,” I offer.
Leaning back further into my embrace, Niko yawns and closes his eyes.
“Or we could just… stop talking for a while.”
“Now that you mention it, that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.”
----------------------------------------
When conducting meetings entirely within the Brainband, one needn’t limit oneself to the possible as far as venues go. For our briefing, I selected a simple conference table, resting on the surface of an onyx-black inverted pyramid, the tip of which is balanced on the peak of a mountain made of glass. Above us, the sky is a symphony of incandescent supernovae, blooming into impossible colors that dissipate into the void just as quickly as they’re born.
All of this is perhaps a little over the top for a meeting like this, but I like to think it adds a sense of majesty and awe that Limbo City has thus far been lacking. Nobody comments on any of it, but I do spot Saffi looking up at the cosmic fireworks display above us, and the Recluse peering over the edge of the pyramid, which is perfectly still, despite the breeze which, if this were more than a shared idea we’re all experiencing, would have upset its nigh-impossible balance and sent us tumbling to our deaths.
At this height we’d all be dead of hypoxia already, though. So there isn’t much use dwelling on that part of things.
“Let’s begin.”
Seated at the head of the conference table, I tent my fingers and smile wickedly. Rather than ordinary clothes, I’m ‘wearing’ a full-body jumpsuit made of roiling black matter that reacts to my words and movements. Perfect attire for our present environment, which is somewhere between purely concrete and completely abstract.
“By now, you all should be aware of our primary objective- stealing the Hurricane Howl, a Regalia weapon tied to the line of the Stormwolf.”
With a tap of my finger against the table, I summon a visual representation of our target. It emerges from the center of the table, a perfect replica of the weapon in question, contained within a glass case.
For the most part, the Hurricane Howl resembles an ordinary belt-fed machine gun. However, in place of the drum magazines, there are two canisters affixed to the underside of the gun, both transparent. And inside of each is a thunderstorm. Dark clouds struggle and strain against their confines, electricity brewing within each. Complex machinery connects the captured micro-storms to the gun itself, which is ornate, black metal with burnished silver engravings depicting a pack of wolves charging down each side of the barrel.
“Priceless, of course- and also useless, outside the hands of Mister Nightingale here.”
From across the table, Saffi raises her hand, and I nod to her.
“Iza, do we really have to do this whole code-name thing? This guy-” she jerks a thumb towards the Recluse, who occupies a significantly less fragile body than the last time I saw him “-already saw your faces, so he has to know who you are by now. Your little War Games were broadcast to the entire Imperium, remember?”
“The code-names, Ms. Mockingbird, are no longer for his benefit, but for anybody who might overhear our communications during the operation itself. It’s best to get in the habit of using them now.”
Only half true. We’ll be communicating via brainband most of the time, after all. I just like the code-names, and if our ‘specialist’ is going to make us call him Recluse the whole time, I want one too.
“Now, unless there are any other burning questions…?”
Looking across the table, I’m met with no further resistance, though Saffi does roll her heart-shaped eyes at me. Precisely how her eyes have taken that shape, and how it’s possible for them to roll, is unclear. A fully immersive brainband sim like this operates on a certain level of dream logic.
“Good. As I was saying. We’re after the Hurricane Howl, currently in the possession of one Anselm Salzwedel, antiques aficionado and CEO of Blitzar, a major warship manufacturer. It, along with the rest of his collection, is held within his home on the planet Liese, which has exactly one public teleportal hub, on the other side of the planet from his home.”
Another tap of my finger, and the display case containing the Howl sinks back into th table, replaced by a holo-projector that immediately activates to show a 3D map of Liese, with a red dot on one side showing Salzwedel’s home, and a blue dot on the other showing the teleportal hub.
“Obviously, we won’t be entering there. Instead, we’re going to use Salzwedel’s private hub, inside of his home. He takes security seriously, so the codes change every six hours. Acquiring the latest codes from here on Viņsaule would be next to impossible, so we’re going to the one place that’s guaranteed to have them.”
The projection of Liese disappears, replaced by another planet entirely. A caption above it identifies the world to the others as New Arrach. Pretty boring as planets go, largely Earthlike, just with about 25% less ocean, and only three, large continents.
“Here, in the city of Temmas, the regional offices of SecuriCorp LLC are located. Salzwedel has a team from SecuriCorp patrolling his home at all times, even when he’s home, but especially when he’s not. They have a shift change three times each day. We’re going to break into the SecuriCorp offices, take out the team scheduled to take tomorrow’s second shift, and replace them.”
As I’m talking, the hologram zooms in rapidly, first to Temmas, then to the building where the offices are located, then into the building to the offices themselves. SecuriCorp is a small operation, with only a few regional offices in the entire Imperium, so figuring out which one would be catering to the Salzwedel home wasn’t too hard.
“Here’s the plan for how we’ll be accomplishing that.” I tap my finger again, and a panel in the table opens up in front of everyone, revealing a slim paper dossier. “You’ll notice it’s not especially long. That’s because the building won’t be particularly well-defended. It’s just an office, after all.”
Rather than opening the dossiers, each of the team members simply places their palm against them, absorbing the contents instantly.
“We will, however, have to worry about the team we’ll be relieving. They will, of course, notice we’re not the people they’re expecting, and there won’t be time to generate false credentials. So we’ll have to kill them. Given that, you may be wondering why the game of dress-up is necessary at all. It’s not for their benefit, but rather for the house’s automated security, which is programmed to ignore anybody in a uniform.”
“Not to the degree that it would allow us to simply walk away with whatever we’d like, though,” Niko interjects.
“Correct. It’s just to get us through the door safely. Once we’re inside, it’ll be our newest addition’s job to suppress the security system and allow us to begin the looting. The Regalia is, after all, not our only objective. We need to steal roughly two point five million credits worth of valuables, in order to recoup costs for the heist itself.”
Most of that went towards the Recluse’s fee, so he’ll essentially be helping pay himself here.
“Using the drone footage of the interior of Salzwedel’s home, I’ve plotted a route that will allow us to obtain the necessary items as efficiently as possible. Given whose money we’re playing with here, I have- of course -included more items than we may strictly need, in case anything proves to have been overvalued. Should there be any excess funds left over once our debts with the Syndicate are settled, they will be distributed equally amongst those present.”
While I’m talking, the projection zooms in even further, through the teleportal inside of the SecuriCorp office, and into Salzwedel’s home. It follows the route I planned out, highlighted by a crimson thread weaving its way through the house, intersecting with various items as it goes. Paintings on the walls, statues on pedestals, jewelry behind glass cases.
There were plenty of easy targets- multi-million-credit items that would have squared our debt and then some. But none that would be feasible to transport through a teleportal. We’d need analog transport to haul the terracotta warrior statue in Salzwedel’s bedchamber off of Liese, and that would take time we simply don’t have.
“At the end of this path is the Regalia. Or rather, what I believe its most likely location to be. Salzwedel doesn’t exactly have it out on display. If it’s where I think it will be, great. If not, we’ll have plenty of time to find it. Guard shifts are eight hours long, so nobody will be coming to take over for us for quite a while. That being said… let’s make sure this doesn’t take eight hours, yeah?”
A couple chuckles at that, but nothing too enthusiastic. Fair enough.
“After the primary objective is secured, we take the teleportal straight home. No need to pass back through the SecuriCorp offices, obviously. We can assume there’ll be some kind of investigation, but so long as nobody is stupid enough to show their face or use their real name, we should be in the clear.”
It’s possible Salzwedel won’t alert the authorities at all, since doing so would risk exposing his illegal possession of a Regalia weapon, but he’s probably smart enough to just omit that particular item from the manifest of things taken.
“Everybody clear on their role? Good. In that case, this meeting is adjourned. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”