Some two hours later, we were sitting and standing around, waiting for the cab to take us to our next target, a suspected nest, as Reign argued with the half-goblin in charge of the cleanup crew.

He was apparently both the leader of the crew that had cleaned up after us at the bio-farm, and wore a bag that looked suspiciously like the one that had gone missing from the fight, after Hobbs had vanished.

He was denying everything though, and as his crew were mainly goblins, not all of them had Keystones or any other implants. That meant that there were no recordings to act as evidence.

That, in turn, meant that they were in a sort of standoff, as both sides were well aware of the thefts. We knew they’d stolen our gear and were keeping it, and in turn, they were very unhappy about the bag full of mods I had next to me on the floor.

That they were paid to dispose of the mods and the bodies, for the price of the scrap, not the actual value of the mods on the market, meant that they would all be dirt poor, as they were required to hand in any weapons, etc., much as we were.

As it was, though, they all wore better clothes than any of us were and most of them had custom weapons. They could probably clear the specters better than we could.

The end result when Reign finished arguing with them was that a “we didn’t see you, and you didn’t see us” deal was struck. Specifically, it came about when I accidentally let slip that Oshbob character’s name, and suddenly the atmosphere changed.

Apparently, the goblins knew not to fuck with him, and if we knew and “worked for” him “too,” then we were suddenly all friends.

As much as anyone could be with a fucking goblin.

We agreed that we’d hit one more probable specter point, do some cleanup there, then we’d send the recordings of the mission to the guild, and head back to my apartment block. We’d drop off the mods with Lucky, and then we’d go scope out the chemist.

While we’d been waiting for the cleanup crew and the cab to arrive, Reign had walked us through the signup for the bounty guilds, making us all laugh as she pointed out that to sign up to be a bounty hunter, you had to be “of outstanding moral character,” which apparently also counted pretty much the entirety of the fucking city out.

We unloaded our gear into the trunk of the cab, having picked an actual ground cab for this journey as it meant it’d take longer and be cheaper. We were all settling in for an hour or so’s nap when I received a message.

I almost refused it, on the edge of sleep as I was, and seeing the army decals on the identifier, until the rank and name registered.

Major Marcial.

I triggered the accept, then went through the rigmarole of verification, allowing both internal verification through my Keystone, digital through my ident, and finally, only possible because of the gear I was wearing thankfully, my helmet triggered to send a facial scan to the system as well.

Once all of that was done?

The message began to play.

“Kabutt,” the major began, fixing the camera with a solid glare. “I’ve been informed about the actions taken against you, both by Tyrannus and the corpos, since you left the service. I was ready to reach out and offer my assistance, until a quick search verified that not only had you already begun to replace your equipment, but that you were making a name for yourself in the criminal underbelly of the city…”

How the fuck did he know that? I wondered blankly, but I shook the thought free as the recording continued to play.

“You also triggered the watch protocol by checking classified docs after leaving the service. While this is normally permitted, approved of even, as the fixes that ‘private contractors’ come up with always find their way back to us, it provided a flimsy reason that passed enough of a test that Tyrannus got you barred from the system.”

He shook his head as he went on.

“It’d be a hell of a lot easier if that little prick hadn’t done that, but we need to work with what we have, not what we wish we had.”

He sighed, flicking his hands forward, and my RI informed me that several files had been attached to the communication, as he spoke again.

“So far, three of my investigators have turned up dead. The two remaining have found remarkably little on Tyrannus and his friends, but they have found a significant windfall of credits in their accounts. As much as I detest that they’ve been bought out, it appears the choices were to have their accounts stuffed with credits or suffer ‘accidents,’ along with their families.

“I’ve deliberately left you for a few days to get your feet under you, but it seems that after the ‘accident’ in the Fingers, Tyrannus has taken the opportunity to claim ‘trauma,’ and is currently recuperating in the city. You’ll note that he’s on full pay, and despite his time in the forces remaining being less than yours, there’s been no talk of cutting him loose.”

“Motherfucker…” I breathed.

“However, this provides us with an opportunity,” the major went on. “I cannot be involved in the situation you find yourself in, for obvious reasons but, should you go looking, I think you’d find that a slight change was made to the requisition and final disposition for your suit…”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

My blood turned cold at the look on his face.

“It was seemingly ‘misplaced,’ and sent to be smelted along with the remains of the rest of your team. A little digging, however, has identified that something matching the weight and dimensions of your suit was transferred from the reclamation site before destruction. That container is currently making its way through the clearing process, before being sent on to a corporate trans-shipping address. You have at most fourteen hours before that suit is gone for good, I’m afraid, operator.

“I’d suggest that a personal visit to Tyrannus, along with a hacker who can check such things out, might be in your—and our investigation’s—best interests, as this is looking like a string to pull, one that might lead to whoever’s behind the shit that happened. Last of all? There’s some hints that there might be an actual Black Team out there, so watch your back.

“Find him, question him, and find out who he’s working for and what the fuck he’s been up to, and maybe there’s still time to fuck that little shit’s retirement plans up.

“Major Marcial, out.”

I sat back, staring at the freeze-framed image, before banishing it, ignoring the low-level banter of the others, staring straight ahead as my mind scrambled from detail to detail.

That little fucker Tyrannus.

I kept coming back to that arrogant motherfucker, thinking he had the right to…thinking he could…

He’d tried to steal my suit.

That was why he’d gotten me out of the system, I realized. It wasn’t just the usual shitty tricks; getting me blacklisted from the system meant I couldn’t chase up my suit.

I’d not done it yet because I couldn’t bring myself to. To be in such a mess physically and then to tease myself with the unmatched sheer magnificence of the APS?

To know that it’d be weeks if everything went well before I could order the delivery, and most likely months? I’d left it alone. Not least because if I got in touch with the APS armorers and didn’t provide them with a delivery address, I’d get a load of shit from people I knew.

There was never enough room in the armories. That was part of the nature of the world—big tech required big parts and maintenance equipment. For them to keep my suit there while I got myself together, for a year possibly?

They’d be going apeshit.

There’d be a new Red Team, and they’d need the slots my old team—and my armor—was taking up.

They’d be desperate to get it out of the way, and once it left them? I’d need to either provide it a safe area for storage—which I couldn’t afford, not at all—or be wearing the fucker all the time. And I couldn’t do that either, not without the correct mods.

No, my armor being delivered to me would set every fucking gangbanger, merc, and corpo team on notice. It’d be a bloodbath as they tried to take it from me.

It didn’t matter that thanks to the sheer complexity of the system, nobody untrained with it could so much as lift a hand in the suit. It didn’t matter that the number of nanites needed to provide the full bonding process meant that it was cheaper and more efficient to melt the armor down when its operator died.

No, not at all, because the suits were tightly controlled and tracked!

The corpos were only permitted five of the suits each. That was it. Yeah, they had more than that in the real world; they got around the limit by hiring APS operators out of the army as guards…Hell, there were rumors that entire teams were sponsored through the program!

But the one point there was that all the APS suits were fitted with trackers. Back-hardpoint perma-sealed fucking thermite explosives, to make sure that if we went off the rails? We could be taken down before we took half the city out.

They were determined that it be that way “for public safety,” but really? It was because if an APS operator went fucking nuts and started to really go for it? We could do serious damage to the city, and who knew what else.

There’d always been rumors of APS that made it out without being tracked. That were “lost” and that formed black teams of ghost operatives.

They were joked about, and we all talked constantly about ways to get around the trackers and so on so that we could join—or if there wasn’t such a team in reality, so that we could be the first—and to create a real Black Team.

Nanites were expensive, but the thought that you could get a suit out, get it around the registration and tracking requirements, and then get it wiped, use a fresh batch of ’nites to bond some other fucker to my suit?

It’d be horrifically expensive, but it could be done. And once it was? You could send your APS operative out on assassinations, hit enemy corpos, trash depots, and raid research sites…

There was nothing you couldn’t do, and every single APS that existed would be a suspect because…

No.

The government wouldn’t permit that, because they’d invested so much in the myth that we were impossible to capture. That our suits were impossible to steal. No matter the reality, if word got out that one of the suits was off the rails and couldn’t be identified, the other cities would inundate us with their operatives trying to grab it.

It’d start another arms race.

My mind spiraled around and around, seeing the possibilities, some realistic, some fucking insane—entire wars starting all over again, all for some corpo little fuck who’d seen a chance to make some scratch and had taken it.

Regardless of anything else, that’s what this came back to. I didn’t know whether Tyrannus was involved in the shit that happened in the Fingers or whether he was just incompetent. I didn’t know whether the AROC or the scavs and that fucking mech were involved in the theft of my suit, or whether Tyrannus thought he could steal ten-fucking-years of my hard work and planning, to pad his account out. And right now? I didn’t care.

His incompetence had led to Scott and Fergie’s deaths. His greed had made things far harder than they needed to be. And his being a little shit had even blocked me from creating the reels for their families when he’d booted me from the system.

He’d done that, at the very least, and that was more than enough for me to take his fucking balls and grind them to an atomic level of dust below my boots.

I realized suddenly that I’d gone straight through irritated, passed through anger, and out into cold rage, then I’d blown the fucking doors off nuclear fury, and I was out into the far side, skating across the frozen surface of hell as all emotion compressed into a tiny box and was put away, ready for when I needed it.

The cab had grown slowly quieter as the others realized that there was something wrong, and Reign was the first to speak.

“Uh, Kabutt, are you okay?” she tried, looking at the cold titanium of my helmet.

I shifted, turning to stare at her like my head was on rails, all smooth movement.

“No,” I said flatly. “No, I’m fucking not, and I need to kill something, right now.”

“We’re close to the next site,” she said slowly, clearly trying to figure out what she or the others had done to cause offense.

“Tell me when I can kill something. Till then, leave me alone, please.” I forced the words out, trying to keep my calm. The compressed marble of my emotions shook inside me, the glass that held them in check a hair’s breadth from shattering.

“Okay.” She sat back as she shared a look with the girls.

I couldn’t bring myself to speak to them, and started to search instead.

Richie had given me the details of that hacker. I couldn’t remember his name, but he’d said he was good…and I needed to get in touch with him anyway, so fuck it.

I found the contact details after a few seconds, and I grimaced, already hating dealing with fucking hackers. Connecting up, I put the call through to Bowdoin.