The helmet was a decent upgrade, I decided a few minutes later, and at five thousand creds, it damn well better be. But between the all-round vision it provided, the additional processing power it made available for my RI, and the ability to link to a tacnet?
Hopefully this one would last a little longer than the last.
Again, it was a full-face model, gunmetal-grey and metal, with a neck that linked with my existing armor smoothly. It was also air-cooled, capable of being sealed from the outside environment, and had a layered titanium outer skin.
Most people disliked this kind of helmet. The fully enclosed design made it hard for anyone without the necessary training or mindset to wear it for long.
They got claustrophobia.
But for an APS operative? This was home.
It was also much, much more resistant to impacts. I could get shot in the head and survive most calibers with this on. And the way my days were going of late? That was a wonderful thing.
I got two frags as well, one flash-bang, and sighing, I paid the three thousand for an EMP as well. Between that, the medikits—four small and one medium—ammo—I got a lot of ammo—and the hatchet I decided to treat myself to, just in case, I was pretty much on the road to being poor again, down to three thousand and seventy-two creds.
It was worth it, though, as I felt like I was fucking loaded for monster hunting now.
The others were much the same. Reign apparently had some kind of a deal with the guild whereby half of her creds were kept for “incidentals” and the rest she’d earned yesterday, she explained, had been split between her various debtors, so she, too, was now broke again.
If she hadn’t had the deal where the guild kept half of her money? She’d have been fucked when it came to resupply as well.
The sisters were looking at us funny as they realized that far from being the poorest in any team, as they were used to, they were currently the richest.
Luna laughed her ass off when she realized, and Gessh, who often acted the brute in public, insisted she would cover the cab costs to the first target site.
Reign smiled, thanking her for the offer before I could, but explained that now that we were all guild members? We could use the transport tab.
Fifteen minutes later, we were stuck in traffic, as Reign—after several messages between us about everything, asking my advice—filled the sisters in on her real issues.
“Medikits?” Gessh growled, and before she could say anything else I cursed, fishing one out of my pocket and tossing it to Reign.
She caught it, just, fumbled it and then made an awkward grab, accidentally flinging it across the cab to bounce off the back of the partition between the cattle section—where the client sat—and the automated driver.
Please confirm your intent: assault/accident?
We all got the message at once, and the general laughter that rang out defused the growing tension, as Reign confirmed the mistake to the cab.
“Sorry,” I said after a few seconds. “I forgot until just then that you’d given me one of your medikits in the tunnels last night. That’s why I threw it over. I got it to replace yours.” I reached into the recess in my left arm and popped the dead medikit out, putting it in a pocket and placing one of the others into the small space.
“I forgot about it,” Reign admitted. “Thanks, Kabutt. Okay, so after that…” She went on with her explanation, and by the time we reached the target site, all of us trooping out and getting ready, gearing up to get hunting, the others were up to date properly.
“I’m not happy about this,” Luna said flatly. “Look, Reign, I understand you were on drugs then, and yeah, you’re not now, but fuck’s sake. You were screwing one of those guys, right?”
“Not just stealing their medikits, but draining his balls, she means,” Gessh added in helpfully.
“Yeah, I got that, Gessh,” Reign replied calmly. “Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I was.”
“And you still fucked them over,” Luna pointed out. “You met us yesterday, and we’re half-orcs.”
“Right,” Reign growled. “Look, I was fucked up then with drugs. I’m not now, but you need to make a decision. Either you trust me or you don’t, because you can’t be behind me with a fucking gun if you don’t.”
“It’s a fair point.” I agreed with all of them. “Look, Reign told you because she’d rather we were all honest with each other, and the shit you’re going to be seeing over the next few days? It’s not gonna be fun. Either you’re in or out—and I’ll be clear, I’m giving Reign a chance. Partly because yes, she has that damn nice elf ass…”
“Asshole,” Reign shot at me, her eyes twinkling.
“I’ve not seen that, but I’m sure that’s as nice as one can be too,” I agreed, not even pausing. “But that’s not the point, okay? She could have not told us. She needs a team she can trust, and she’s learned from her mistakes. I’ve made mistakes too, serious fucking ones, but I’m here. I don’t doubt you have too. Give it till the end of today.”
“What changes then?” Luna asked.
“Then if you don’t want in anymore? At least you’ve had hopefully another good payday,” I pointed out. “I’ll sort it with Julius so nothing is held against you.”
“You trust her?” Gessh asked.
I looked over at Reign, then Luna, before sighing and pulling my helmet off so they could see my face clearly.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s a dick, but she’s earned a little trust, I think. Add in that she’s a hell of a sniper? I think she’s worth the risk.”
“And you’re watching her,” Luna added shrewdly.
“Oh, I’m fucking watching her. But then, I’m watching you all. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, we are,” Luna admitted, and Gessh laughed.
“Cool.” I smiled. “Now, how about we leave all the bullshit out here, because as soon as we cross that threshold, there’s just our team, and all the rest of the fucking world against us, all right?” I gestured to a marker, denoting the beginning of Aramicorp’s legal boundaries.
“Fine,” Gessh growled after sharing a long silent look with her sister. “But if you steal from me, bitch, I’ll cut your fucking tits off,” she warned Reign, and she snorted.
“Fuck’s sake, make it my head. My tits are too small as it is.”
“Hey, don’t stress. They’re not that bad.” Luna grinned, patting her on the shoulder as she moved around Reign. “Mine used to be like that.”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Luna said. “Then I hit puberty.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Reign groaned, but the edges of a smile tugged at her lips.
The four of us pulled on whatever armor and gear we needed, before striding over the line. An automated message was sent to us all.
You have entered Aramicorp’s legal territory and are now bound by Aramicorp’s rules. All weapons must be relinquished to…
I dismissed it, looking around at the sorry state of the place. It was an old factory complex, literally a hundred meters by three hundred, and maybe five stories high, each floor filled with the slumped forms of the poor.
“I hate these places,” Luna muttered, even as Reign jogged ahead to introduce us—at my request—to the local security forces as they stepped out of the building, having clearly been waiting by the door.
It was a single older man who looked as though he’d never heard of soap, with a grimy optical mod that tracked us all. Behind him were two automated drones—blocky, graceless, and old, clearly ex-military models that should have been stripped for parts. One floated on a constant circuit around the building, while the other hovered protectively behind his left shoulder.
I shook my head, looking from the three to the literal hundreds of people in the building. They sat side by side on long benches, a narrow table before them, barely big enough to lean on. They wore full head immersion helmets, helping them to create the mem-cores. Their physical bodies slumped while their minds were put through the wringer for scumbags to be entertained.
My disgust rose as I looked at those poor people. Not at them, but at the city that forced them into this, for the few creds they got paid by the hour.
Some, like the sisters apparently once had been, were there to fight, their minds piloting simulacrums of themselves in a pit, facing the others, beating them to death, or in turn being beaten and killed.
Some faced monsters, while others were forced to endure adverts, one after another for AI training algorithms. More were used in virtual whorehouses—cam-girls and cam-boys they’d been in the past, exposing themselves and performing acts for their audiences, while they planned their weekends, or mentally shopped or whatever.
Now that little escape was gone, as they were forced into sexual servitude, producing mem-cores that allowed perverts to spend their time riding their senses, their bodies, or joining them in more intimate ways.
Friends sat side by side; people who had never been attracted to each other outside of the net were forced to perform acts of degradation on each other inside. And when they left the memory farms—if they ever managed to—those friendships were, more often than not, destroyed by the things that they’d been forced to do.
Some earned higher rates, allowing their bodies to be used for tortures or worse, while more were hooked up to be used in complex quantum processing situations, literally providing overflow brain matter to the AIs.
Places like this were horrific dens of slavery, no matter what anyone said. Staring at it now, seeing the hundreds of people slumped side by side inside?
I wanted to burn it all down.
I desperately wanted to set them all free, and I damn well knew there was no way to do it. They were coming here because it was all they had. They were paid an utter pittance to perform for the amusement of others. And if I did burn the place down? If I tore the Aramicorp servers apart and killed every single one of their shit-eating corpo scumbag bosses?
These people would starve instead.
Their kids would starve; they would be thrown from their shitty apartments and left on the streets. They’d be bought for real by the fleshpots and worse. Not only their minds would be broken by what they were forced to do, but their bodies as well.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to look away. The need for violence rose in me as I tried to control the shaking of my fists.
“Fine…I’ll let you in,” the old man sighed eventually. “But don’t disturb my pets…They break off? They lose their hour’s cred. Ain’t none of them who can afford that.”
“Your pets?” I growled, only to have Gessh grab my arm and squeeze.
The old man shrugged. “I walk my rounds and I watch over them, make sure they’re safe and alive, as well as dispose of those who die. That makes them mine, I guess.”
With that, he set off, trudging around the outside of the building, and we followed. “The noises come from underneath, in the old sections.”
“Are they open still?” Reign asked, and he shook his head.
“There was a fire a few years back,” he said, sadly. “A whole floor of my pets were lost…”
“Where were you?” I growled.
“Here,” he admitted. “I was asleep. Some kids threw something in the window, some kind of a firebomb, and it took the south wing out…” He pointed to the remains of a building next to the one we were circling. “The fire suppression systems kicked in, and I left these ones working. Their building was fine, after all.”
“But?” Luna swallowed hard.
“But there was a tunnel between the buildings that I didn’t know about.” His head bobbed on his scrawny neck as he shuffled along. “The south building was empty, just being set up and ready to serve the area, so there was nobody in there. But the fire? It went through the tunnel, and as the lower levels were sealed to keep them warm? We didn’t know until it was too late.”
“So…” I was sick to my stomach. “You had a few hundred people under the building, and because you didn’t pay attention, they all burned to death?”
“One hundred and seventy-three,” he corrected grimly. “Cost me three years’ bonuses, and I’m still paying off the fines, so don’t try lecturing me, murderer!”
“Mur—”
“You, with your guns and the blood on your hands! Just you wait!” he hissed, jabbing one arthritis-riddled finger at me accusingly. “It’ll all come around. It always does! I was supposed to be with the Keeper by now!”
“We can find our way from here!” Reign stepped between us, as Gessh and Luna moved, one on either side of me, to guide me around the old shit.
“Door’s at the far end,” he called after us. “Lock it after you. Code’s seven-seven-oh-nine.” With that, he walked off, and I turned to the others, who were all glaring at me for some reason.
“What the fuck!” I snapped. “That old prick—”
“He’s a watchman, that’s it…security patrol. If he disconnected those people, they’d have lost their wages, and he’d lose his job. As soon as they said that the fire was next door? They’d have jacked back in themselves, and you know it.”
“But…”
“Kabutt,” Luna growled, grabbing me by the shoulders and forcing me to stare into her eyes. “You’re angry because that old fuck is here still, but he’s done nothing wrong. Was he stupid and missed that there was a risk? Yes. Could he have known, though? Probably not. So let it go.”
“Let it fucking—”
“Fine, don’t!” Luna snapped at me. “But aim it at the fucking corpos! Not him, and not us! You’re army through and through, right? Grew up in the barracks?”
“Depending on the posting for the family, sometimes we were in the city as well, but yeah, mainly the barracks,” I admitted.
“Then you hardly saw the real life of the city. Yeah, you were probably dirt poor like we fucking were, but you had the entire army as a family to look out for you. Here? Inside the city slums? If you’ve got a sister, you’re lucky. Having parents who give a shit? That’s insanely lucky! You won the fucking genetic lottery just by being born a fucking human!”
“Point there.” Reign sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like when you’re half and half. We’re not trusted by one race because of the other half, and the same the other way around. My parents were human and elf, not that I knew my dad, but growing up? Nobody trusts the elf.”
“You think it’s bad?” Gessh laughed. “They send full-blooded orcs out to clear the fucking minefields around the city with nothing but a few tools! They treat most orcs as animals, and half-orcs? We’re treated better than that, but we’re not as good as pure anything, in the eyes of the city.”
“Parents?” Reign asked, and Gessh snorted.
“Human and an orc,” she said. “He was into fucking ‘beasts,’ apparently. Got Mum pregnant and fucked off. We were three when she sold us to the Ravagers Guild to use as monster bait.”
“Fuck me,” I gasped. “Are you for fucking real?”
“Bait,” Luna confirmed. “We were starved and taught that food was at the flare. The faster we could get to it, the more we could eat. Then they took us to a monster site, fired the flare and set us loose. We’d run, while our friends, brothers, and sisters were picked off, and the guild would follow, shooting the monsters.”
“We escaped when we were five,” Gessh added, pausing at the door to the basement of the building and keying in the code we’d been given. “Next ten years? Well, let’s say we earned our scars.”
“Fuck me,” I said again, before shaking my head. “I…I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Gessh asked. “You didn’t do any of it.”
“No, but I thought I had it bad.”
“Ah, it wasn’t that bad.” Luna sighed. “We got to hurt a lot of people, made some good friends, had some good sex when we grew up. There was a lot that, while it was shit, was great as well. Besides, as half-orcs we get Keystones. They don’t waste them on full-bloods.”
“Uh, on that note.” I shook my head. “How much of it are you using?”
“The Key?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh, no clue. Why?”
“Aug-World…” I started, only to get laughs from the sisters.
“You’re worried about that?” Luna asked, and I nodded.
“Yeah, we barely use it,” Gessh admitted. “Too many attacks, and when we grew these?” She tapped one finger to a breast, covered in body armor, admittedly, but still clearly there.
“You learn not to let your guard down as a woman,” Reign added, getting nods from the other two.
“We disable most of the Aug-World ‘improvements,’ so we know exactly who’s around us,” Luna said. “But I know what you were thinking. When we joined the army, they had to break a lot of the recruits of it.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Well, that’s a relief—”
I broke off as the stench of the lower floors rolled up the stairs, and we all looked at one another. All conversation broke off as we hefted our guns.
“Time to get busy,” Reign announced cheerfully. “Last to get a kill buys the beers tonight!”
“Oh, you fuckers!” I growled, having been standing at the rear of our little group as they raced ahead of me. “I’ll damn well get you for that!”
The doors started to close, and I ran after them. A boom announced the arrival of Luna or Gessh to the party, as one of their new shotguns introduced itself.