I woke slowly. The pills I’d been prescribed to help with the “adjustment period” kept me under all night and made me groggy as hell when I finally did wake. My RI pulsed flashing lights and slowly rising beeps in my ears, attempting to follow its normal routines despite the shit it was forced to work with.

I blinked, then coughed and rolled over, the gel-foam mattress feeling as if I’d spent the night on a rock.

Army beds were supposed to be bad. Hell, my rack in my quarters had been cursed almost every damn day of my enlistment, and yet…I’d have killed for it over this shitty bed any day of the week.

I sat up, turning and planting my feet on the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed and blinking around as I tried to boot my brain into gear.

My bag lay where I’d dumped it, my handgun still stuffed under my pillow, and the single transport crate for my personal gear the army had arranged to be brought still sat against the far wall.

I yawned and stood, swaying slightly as my spinal mod and arm seemed to take forever to come fully online. I growled to myself in disgust.

First thing I was doing—well, second thing, once I’d gotten dressed, sorted this shithole out, and checked my gear—was getting registered with one of the merc guilds.

I needed credits, and I needed them fast, to replace these shitty mods, and to get a decent, secure place to live. I was out of the army early; Richie and Sync were expecting at least a year in that shithole of a cave, and there was no way my friends were going to be left there for any longer than was absolutely necessary.

I’d be watched for the first four months; that was standard. Any soldier leaving the army was on watch for that period. After all, releasing a trained killer who’d spent years living under strict rules and hierarchy, into a total cesspit of threat and stress, with easy access to guns?

Best to keep an eye on us, make sure we weren’t going off the rails.

The army trained us to deal with our problems permanently, and in the city? The biggest problems we were likely to face were the gangs—which nobody gave a shit about if we started exterminating—and the corpos, which everything was built around.

That meant that either the corpos could stop being utter fucking dickheads and making us all hate them with a passion, or they could monitor us, and have a hit squad sent if we displayed certain tendencies.

After the four months, if we’d not gone corpo hunting, or loaded up and gone psycho, we were cut loose.

Best to give it a few months after that, then go for them when I was sure that I wasn’t being watched. And besides, the major would be in touch with a plan soon, hopefully.

A memory of him saying something about getting rid of the monitoring flared up, but I couldn’t remember whether that was true or a fever dream, so I shook it off.

I took care of nature’s needs, then started clearing around. The room was bare, the chair and table being the only things in the room that weren’t mine. Hell, even the blanket and pillow were from my case.

Still, my shit was in the way, and I needed room to work out.

I made the bed, sorted through my belongings, finding everything there—surprisingly—including my boxes of ammo for the handgun.

The personal items, stupid things like a recording on a projector cube of Fergie and Scott with their band, playing their hearts out, all of us steaming drunk and partying, I sorted and put away.

The guns were next. I laid them on the little table along with my cleaning kit, and continued on.

Clothes were sorted through, not that I had many.

That was life in the military: you didn’t keep much. Even as a sergeant, your room was subject to spot checks, and it was just damn easier to keep everything just so.

There was limited space in quarters, so you got in the habit of keeping a few personal items, and the rest all being digital. I had two outfits in here: one that I’d used for going out, and one that was literally for slumming around when I didn’t want to be in regs. That unfortunately was it, though; they’d kept my goddamn military gear, everything from training tops to fucking underwear, all-weather gear and boots, all of it.

That pissed me off to an insane degree, because that wasn’t usual. Hell, one of the few good things about serving was that you got all your gear. And it wasn’t like they could reuse it.

Hell, you lost or damaged it beyond what the cred-counters decided was “reasonable” wear and tear? They charged you to replace it! Then they ended up selling whatever you didn’t take when you left to a company that processed the material down for literally a handful of credits per ton.

That they’d not included my general army clothes with my personal gear? It was deliberate. Hell, it’d have taken more effort to arrange the disposal of them than chucking it all in my bag, so I knew it had to be intentional as well.

Tyrannus.

He’d stripped me of every fucking credit he possibly could, then he’d done this?

He was always on my shit list, but that fucker kept making sure he was staying up at its head. That the major was investigating the whole thing gave me hope. It gave me a little promise that I’d find out who was responsible later, and I’d hunt them the fuck down and kill them for Fergie, Scott, and the kid’s deaths.

Ideally? Tyrannus was heavily involved, and he’d be booted out of the army. No protection, and he’d go running straight to his corpo friends, and then I’d be able to kill them all. But that was wishful thinking at this stage.

I shook those thoughts aside, forcing myself to process the rest of my stuff. Stupid little keepsakes, but they were mine, and each and every one had a memory attached.

I went through them all, then packed them away again, hanging my “good” clothes up, and dumping my clothes from yesterday into the sink in the bathroom, scrubbing the blood and shit from them, and hanging them to dry as best I could.

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The transport box was stashed in another closets, and I set to work on the guns, stripping, cleaning, and servicing them, before coding the gun safe to my ident and locking the rifle and shotgun away in the gun cabinet with most of the ammo I had.

My handgun, and the shitty caliber handguns, I left on the desk, as finally I got to work.

The first thing you were supposed to do with any new mod was let it heal, sure, but the second was use the fucker. Even with nanites, and a pure batch, there would be differences between the original, flesh model you were born with, and the new shit.

Slight “calibration” issues that would slow you down.

I’d already experienced them to no end with just walking; trying to run had been a bastard, as were most movements.

The best way to overcome that, though, was to use them over and over again, and the best way I could do that was exercise.

I spent the next two hours doing a combination of push-ups, burpees, sit-ups, squats, lunges, jumps, and more. Continually dropping prone, rolling, and leaping to my feet was a pain in the ass. Although I felt little difference—save being exhausted—by the end of it. The RI ran the numbers while I lay there on the shitty bare floor, panting and sweat covered, and assured me that the delays between my nerve impulses were significantly down.

The first hour of that was painful. The second? As I moved from stance to stance, following my sword kata? Infuriating.

I had no sword, which was bad enough, but the way my arm, my legs, and basically I moved? It was juddery, slow, and clumsy, and I hated every second.

A few days of this? I should be back to running, jumping, and more like I’d always done before, and I’d damn well need to buy a sword, even if it was just a solid blade. The arm was going to be a problem as well. There was no way to cover that; it was slower than my old one, as well as frankly shit, so I needed that replaced ASAP.

As soon as I could, I’d swap out the spinal reinforcement for a spinal tap and the shitty tier-one brain mod as well. They’d not be cheap, though.

Best-case scenario, I’d be paying at least ten thousand per mod, probably closer to fifty. As I was right now? With two hundred and ten credits to my name, I was so far from where I needed to be it wasn’t even funny.

The merc guilds wouldn’t offer me anything like an actual contract without me being at an average mod tier of two, with at least a few higher-end weapons and some decent armor.

With no armor, a handful of guns—most of which were crap—and tier-one real mods—the organelles didn’t really count—I’d be lucky to get a job clearing a basement of an infestation of rats.

Even goblin pest control jobs would laugh at me.

Fuck’s sake.

This was going to be a long month.

I needed food and drinks for the month. I needed somewhere to live after that, and at the very least some fucking armor. Without that, the mercs wouldn’t even take me on at the lowest level.

That left me a few choices, and none of them very good.

I forced myself to send a message to Tyrannus, asking when I wanted to fucking scream abuse at the little turd, for access to the reels of data recordings for Fergie, Scott, Richie, and Sync, as well as Barnes, though there would be a lot less of his stuff.

I’d lost that access with being booted out, and I hated that.

I needed to make their reels. It was going to suck, to be an emotionally crippling and horrible few days, made even worse by working with my shitty kit, but I needed to do it, to show their families what had happened.

That done, I forced myself to my feet, and into the shower, thankful that, at the very least, I’d bought some decent soaps and a nice towel at some point, so I had them now.

I reveled in the luxury of a long shower, ignoring the warnings that were sent to my ident about “excessive water usage” and stayed in the fucker until it cut off, before finally drying and getting dressed.

I had no clue what the weather was like outside, and considering that I only had two outfits? One of them was a “going out” shirt bright enough to be seen from orbit that Fergie had talked me into buying, and a pair of charcoal slacks with a bright-red streak down either hip.

That meant that I was down to a pair of black trousers with reinforced knees, more pockets than my goddamn army gear used to have, and a thin training-style top that left my shoulders and arms bare.

Usually that was good. I was fairly well-muscled, after all, but hey, usually I didn’t have the cheapest, shittiest cybernetic arm replacing my own.

Fuckers.

My only coat was soaked from being covered in blood and recently washed, and I dismissed wearing that out of hand. I picked up my shoulder bag, full of the handguns, and I left my own gun on open display hanging under my arm in its holster, before heading for the door.

It was time to get my fucking life in order.

The corridor outside was as shitty and dark as it had been on the way in yesterday, and it took ten minutes to find my way to the lift I’d used yesterday.

Needless to say, when I was actually thinking the gang might be useful, if I could get them to answer a few questions, they were all elsewhere.

Dicks.

I grumbled a little, then sighed as the lift flowed down the floors at speed, making me stare out across the city at the heavy grey rainclouds that had settled in for the day.

Joy.

Reaching the ground floor, I strode out, passing the old bag who was now unconscious in a pile by the door. A stream of piss leaked from her to run to a nearby drain, adding that little extra ambiance the place really needed.

I walked out into the driving rain without stopping, picking up the pace and jogging across the uncovered sections to wait in line for the mag-train, letting two pass before paying my five credits and shuffling aboard with all the others.

One of the best things about the city was the prevalence of fast, affordable transport: two credits to anywhere in the outer city, or five credits for the day pass. That was on the outer ring. Admittedly, the inner ring was more expensive—more than double that—although the trains were a lot better. Fewer drunks passed out and drug-dealing going on, for a start.

The last ring was corpo and wage-slave territory only, and the likes of me needed a pass to even get access to their stations, never mind paying whatever the hell their trains cost to ride.

West Shamrik was my destination today, a neighborhood I’d grown up in. Although I’d lost touch with most of those I’d used to call friends, the few who didn’t die or join the army—and then die—meant that I still had a few contacts.

Forty minutes later, most of it spent ignoring a couple of beggars who probably had more credits than I did, a goblin asking for work, and two shaven-headed monks telling everyone that mods were the route to hell, and I finally jogged down the old street that was my destination.

I ran, trying to stay under the rain deflectors where I could, and yet I was soaked when I finally opened the door to Gunther’s Guns and Mil-tech Surplus.

I paused on entry. A powerful burst of memories hit me as I shook the rain off, seeing the miserable old fart behind the desk at the far end, staring at some ball game as usual.

“Buying or selling?” he called distractedly, before looking up and doing a double take. He took in the arm, the shitty clothes, and soaked appearance, as well as the fact I was alone. “Harry, that you, kid?” He shook his head in disbelief as he recognized me.

“Gunther.” I nodded to him, walking over and dumping my bag on the floor with a wet splat, then stripping water off my arms and face.

“Damn, you look like shit,” he whispered. His right eye—the cybernetic replacement—whirred as it tracked over me, no doubt evaluating and assessing me to within an inch of my life.

“Tell me about it,” I growled, sitting on a stool he kept on my side of the desk.

Gunther’s was old school, much like the man who ran it, selling all sorts of military surplus, from the shittiest rations for those that missed “the good old days” and wanted to reminisce, to under-the-counter mods and stolen gear.

I’d not seen him in years, and in taking the seat without asking, I knew I’d find out exactly how good my name was here in seconds.

Gunther invited people to sit, if there was a good bit of haggling to be done. Sitting without his permission generally got your prices doubled and locked you out of the good shit.

I’d been a “sitting” member of Gunther’s customers for years before I joined the army, and when I was in the regular squads, I’d continued to do business with him, going so far as to “arrange” some “samples” to make their way to him for resale on several occasions.

He paused, glancing from me to the seat and back again, then nodded and reached under the table, pulling out an unmarked bottle of golden liquid and two glasses.

“You look like a man with a story to tell,” he said simply, pouring for us both.

“Yeah…” I sighed, picking the offered glass up, saluting him, and hesitating. “To the dead,” I toasted, and he nodded solemnly, lifting his own.