1.4
I stare at the sallow lady, lips pressed together, wondering who in the world could possibly be searching for me. Then I look at the team, then at Li Wei and his goons, not expecting him to let me off so easy. He hooks a thumb around his leather suspender buckle, puckering, moulding his face into that of a man who can’t believe what he is hearing.
The sallow lady starts to say something else, but before she can, Li Wei points the pistol at Fingers, beckoning her. “You give me case. Now. I no ask again.”
“You got your money,” says Raze, stepping away from the door, gun still drawn. He no longer has that cold look but instead a lour that tells me he’s dealt with situations like this before. “You have a lovely business here, friendo. I bet you make a lot off putzes trading blood for the bottle. I bet you make a lot smuggling goods across the border and selling it back to worthless chumps for slightly less than the market value, knowin’ damn well you got that crap for a Chinese dollar. All that can be kept...” He takes a step. “... if you let the walk happen. Take the cred chip, and you won’t have to spend your last seconds realisin’ you’ll be goin’ to hell empty-handed.”
Li Wei smirks and looks Raze in the eye, easing the barrel towards his chin. “You have ten seconds to put the case back and leave my restaurant before I blow your American brain all over the floor.” For the first time, he spoke with all the clarity of a businessman, and not someone learning the language. It gives me the chills.
“Was hopin’ you’d say that,” Raze says, sounding as though he’s about to fire.
POP!
My heart jumps. There it was, the gunshot, but Raze and Li Wei are still standing. It takes a moment for me to register that the sound didn’t come from inside; it was from farther down the hallway, in the front of house.
A voice, nasally and masculine, soon follows: “Bring me that bitch or we’ll start killin’ every last one of you cunts!”
Almost all of us look towards the corridor, everyone except for two: me and the leftmost bodyguard. He takes a soundless step forward, raises his gun to Raze’s temple, and—
My arm jolts forward with breakneck speed, and before I know it the bodyguard’s forearm falls to the floor in what feels like slow motion, a chunk of severed flesh. Despite this, he remains steady and cool. My mantisblade freezes in the air, my arm raised and fist clenched. Blood drips from the edge.
I pull back, and at the drop of the severed limb, Raze shoves Li Wei’s pistol up towards the ceiling. A flash of white light, and the gun fires, destroying the bolt of the fluorescent bulb; it swings down violently but doesn’t hit anything. I retract the mantisblade and reach for my gun but before I manage to pull it out a long steel appendage whips through the air. It snaps with a metallic crack, catching the barrel of one bodyguard, and knocking another’s from his grasp. In a fluid, almost serpentine motion, the steel limb retracts. My eyes follow it as it sinks into Cormac’s arm, seamlessly morphing into place. He now wields two pistols instead of one. He fires both; one bullet pierces the rightmost bodyguard’s skull, blasting grey matter on the wall; the other bullet finishes off the bodyguard who previously had his gun knocked from his hand.
Vander blows another's brains out, and Fingers finishes the last henchman, whose arm I’d sliced, putting him out of his misery, if he’d felt any misery to begin with.
“Bastards,” Li Wei yells. “All of you. You fuck with wrong man!” He struggles in Raze’s grapple but is unable to break the hold.
“Take it.” Fingers hands the hard case over to Vander, who turns to input the code into the door. The sallow bald lady is long gone; she must have taken off down the hallway, back to the source of the initial gunshot.
I still ponder who that could possibly be, and why they’re so angry at me. Maybe my theory was correct, that I’d been spotted on the street and someone from my past life who I’ve wronged is hellbent on tracking me down, making sure I’m dead for good.
Raze grabs Li Wei’s weapon and throws him on the ground. He points the bore at his head but before he can finish him off Fingers yanks his arm away.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says.
“Not like you to spare businessfolk,” he says.
She pulls Raze towards the doorway, with more strength than I’d expect from a woman a whole foot shorter than him, and says, “Move it.”
I follow Vander and Cormac out the door, and Raze and Fingers follow me. We head down the hallway at fast-walking pace, making sure not to run into whoever this lunatic on the other side is.
“Head around the back,” Fingers says. “On the right.”
I follow their direction, into another corridor, either side of which houses staff breakrooms, toilets, lockers. I know by the labels. But at the end of the corridor is a much larger label, buzzing in bright green: EMERGENCY EXIT.
Vander presses down on the bar of the exit door, pushes it open, and—
A large fist thumps him off his feet; the hard case hits the ground hard and skids, stopping at an empty steel pallet cage, covered in torn bubble wrap.
Outside, which is a small gravel yard squared in by a wiry gate, there are several men and women dressed in leather kuttes, the same ones I’d seen those scavengers wear, with the stencil of the white wolf emblazoned on the right breast pocket. Their heads, much like the scavengers’, are heavily modified with cyberware, complete with those same visors, and their hair glows brightly in punkish neon cuts. The large black man who knocked Vander off his feet has two arms made of gleaming metal, their surfaces a sleek, polished chrome that catches the dim yard light. Each arm is an intricate assembly of hydraulic pistons, articulated joints, and segmented plates. The servomotors within whir softly with every movement, and the digits, tipped with reinforced alloy claws, flex with unnerving precision.
Immediately, we draw our pistols and open fire at the bulky man. He covers his head and the bullets bounce off him in small, winking sparks. I focus my fire on the other gang members but find that they’re covering their faces too, and just like him, the bullets spark right off their bodies. Cormac hurls his lengthy steel arm forward and grabs one of the man’s steel arms, yanking with as much force as he can muster, perhaps hoping to open him up into the line of fire, but lets out a screech of exertion when the arm doesn’t budge. The man steps ahead, pulling the arm towards him, as if tugging on a rope to mount a steep slope.
I holster my pistol and draw my blood-stained mantisblade. I dash forward, under Cormac’s steel arm, yank myself upwards, and slash at the man’s neck, but he brings his steel forearm back with incredible pace, blocking the blow. I follow up with a cut to his leg and he lets out a groan.
The bullets stop spraying. Guns start clicking.
The man pulls Cormac forward completely, biffs him in the face twice, causing his nose to burst open, and tosses him on the gravel, near Vander, who still hasn’t recovered.
Then Fingers and Raze are pushed out of the emergency exit by two goons who seem to have rushed up behind them, their guns snatched from their hands.
I stand back near Vander and the hard case, not saying a word. I notice one of the people behind Raze and Fingers. It’s the shorter guy from the circuitery.
Shit.
The pistons in the muscular man’s arms steam and pull, extend and retract, like those of an old train engine. He glares at me with murderous intent, then smiles. His hair is coiled into tight-knit locks, some interwoven with metal strands and neon highlights that pulse with a sapphire glow. The black leather duster he wears is adorned with various mechanical gadgets and glinting chrome accents. The digital cubes in his visor bump up and down, as if to the beat of music, but there isn’t any music. Only eerie silence, and the sound of my hot breath as cold air presses against my stomach.
Blood oozes from the man’s bulging quad, where my blade broke his skin, but there’s something off about the colour. It’s a strange yellowish green.
Is this person human, or am I dealing with a bot running on hydrocells?
“That’s the bitch,” the short man says. “Sliced their bodies in two with that fuckin’ blade. Still has their blood on it. The bitch.”
“Shutcha mouth, Red,” says the muscular black man. A Jamaican accent from what I can tell. A deep one at that. He’s not like the others. “If just anyone say a word I dun take their eyes off da body. I want you—ya bastard.” He points at me, and just like that the smile is gone.
“Me?” I say, keeping my mantisblade secure across my chest, cradling it, caring for it. After seeing what he just did to Cormac and Vander, I’m not sure there’s much I can do, especially with all this armed backup.
“Ya silly girl. You up the corpse yard and kill off I brudda and sista, you end up dead.”
So that’s what this is about. Revenge. How on Earth did this man find me? Did he spot me coming into the parking lot, in the restaurant, the alley, or maybe on the way here?
Raze laughs. “Bit of a pussy bringing your posse, ain’t you? Big guy like you.”
The muscular black man looks at him, still hunched in that boxer’s pose. The digital cubes in his visor stop pumping. A steady wavelike stream fizzes instead. “I gottah teach ya somethin’ then, ya ful. Once I kill this bitch bare hand, I’ll kill ya, too. All you. Ya bastards don’t fuck with my humans.”
Cormac, rubbing his nose, sits up with a groan. He lifts one leg and, with his free hand, picks himself upright as much as he can. He coughs. “Nice fists,” he says, clearing his throat. “Black market installation, I presume, hmm?” He drags out the hum almost sarcastically.
“Made quick worka you,” he says. “’Nough chitchat. C’mere ya green demon. Show me dah special arm, won’t ya? Ya special girl.”
Before I have time to respond, the man lunges forward and, with a well-charged thrust, throws a punch. I dash to the side with the same breakneck speed as before, but to my shock the muscular man grabs me by my non-functional mechanical arm, lines me up, and unleashes a heavy whop. His knuckles collide with my ribcage, sending a shockwave through my body. Painless.
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“Vitals low,” my neural AI says—that same feminine voice I’d almost forgotten. “Activating emergency protocols.”
Electricity courses through my body; my mantisblade begins to spark.
He goes for another swing, charging it up with a primal roar, but this time I slide out of the way and slice my mantisblade up at his face. A web of electricity sparks up, but the impact has no effect. He grins and punches me again, this time in the head. My vision blurs and I fall, thudding something solid and flat.
For a moment I feel the same as I had when waking up in the circuitery—alone, cold, on the brink of death. My vision blurs and the sounds around me, laughter and voices, dwindle to suppressed muffles. I notice something from the corner of my eye—a blue glow. I ignore it for a moment and look up at the muscular black man. He’s gazing down on me. He steps forward, and I see the shadow of Cormac’s steel arm stretch out and wrap around his throat. Cormac launches himself and wraps the man in a rear-naked chokehold. I do my best to pick myself up, pressing on the flat surface for support, only to realise that I’m lying on the hard case containing the RFID spoofers.
The muscular man breaks free from Cormac’s hold, removing his arms as though they’re just pieces of silly string, and shoves him onto the ground, turning to finish him off with a singular stomp of his enormous combat boot. Raze moves to stop him but one of the crooks bangs him on the head with the butt of a pistol and pulls him back, keeping the barrel pointed to his temple. He screams something, too. The cold face is gone now; it’s replaced with rage—pure, unbridled rage.
Seeing no other option, I remove the neural wire from my temple, grab an RFID spoofer, and plug it into the manual-override port.
“Suspicious data identified,” the AI voice says. “Are you sure you wish to allow this access to your primary neural system?”
Options for either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ show up on my neural display. I waste no time selecting ‘Yes’.
Suddenly, the muscular black man’s body is outlined in yellow. A data cube appears on the right of my neural display. Punched to the top, in bold letters, is the name ‘Nyah Boba-Strider’.
Affiliation: Steel Moon.
Wanted For: Murder of a Corporate Entity; Trespassing in a Corporate Zone; Black Market Processing.
Weakness(es): Suboptimal Leg Protection (30%); Unprotected Head/Cranium (85%)
Resistant To: 9mm (96%); Electricity (74%)
On the far left of my neural display is a list of processes, most of which are greyed out, but the one at the top reads, in bright blue, SHORT CIRCUIT. Panicking, not knowing if any of this could help—if I do or do not have a suitable degree of cyberware capable of processing any integrated requests—I select the only available option and watch as an upload bar shoots from 0%... 25%... 50%...75%...99%....
This is it. Please, oh Lord.
But right as it's about to upload, a bullet flies in, and the spoofer is destroyed.
“Data error,” the AI says. “Delinking.”
My heart drops as my neural cord zips back into place. I look over and see that one of the crooks had spotted me. He stands there, shaking his head, gun drawn, smoke billowing from the breach, a sinister smile smacked to his face; it’s a smile that says he wants me to watch Cormac die. To watch him suffer.
Cormac whips his steel arm up once again, blocking Nyah’s boot and holding him in place, but he promptly kicks it away and traps it under his other foot. He lifts his free leg, preparing to stomp.
This is it. Impending death. My hand drops to my side in defeat. All hope is lost. But I feel something—not an emotion, but something physical, stout, in my pocket. I think for a moment that it is the key to Fingers’ jeep. I pull it out. It’s not. It’s the switchblade, the one I picked up back in the circuitery, the one that coward, Red, left behind. I flick it open.
Nyah stomps and Cormac moves his head, letting his shoulder take the hit.
I only have one shot.
Don't fuck this up.
I take a deep breath, steady now, line up the shot, and one... two... three... throw!
The blade spins neatly, just as Fingers’ knife had spun into the bull’s-eye, and it lands, with sanguinary grace, in the back of Nyah’s fat head.
He freezes. The joints and pistons in his metal arms spark and lock; it’s as if he’s been tazed and more than a thousand volts are coursing through his body. He says something, but once again my hearing is too suppressed to make out a word.
However, I spot, out of the corner of my eye, one of the crooks shouting at me. He takes aim, but once again Cormac’s arm comes flying forward, snatching the pistol from his grasp and retracting. Cormac seizes Nyah's forearms, turns a flat hip into the swell of his duster-guarded flank, and suddenly Nyah is airborne, flipping over in midair, his hem flagging up to reveal bulging quad muscles coursing with countless steroids and genetic coding. When he hits the ground, Cormac yanks him towards his torso and uses him as cover. His movements are so slithery, like he’s made of jelly.
At the same time, Vander pulls the leg of the short man, Red, who holds Fingers at gunpoint, tripping him. Fingers snatches his pistol midfall, aims it to her left, and pops a bullet in the skull of the man holding Raze. Together, they grab the gangmembers’ bodies and use them as cover against the bullets from those firing in on them. It was all so fast, impressively so; they had everything calculated in the space of a split-second and executed it only with a couple more.
Vander glances at me when picking himself up off the ground, pounces, and pulls me around the steel pallet. Meanwhile all I hear is that steady muffled drum of bullets, becoming clearer as time goes on. A bullet hits him in the shoulder; the blood pours out and he grimaces, saying something to me. The words take a bit of repeating, but eventually the sound clears up and I hear him yell:
“Ster with us now.”
He sits against the pallet for cover with me, unzips his fanny pack, and reaches inside. He pulls out something small, pointy, and bulbous. He presses a button at the top, and it starts blinking orange. A grenade, I’m sure.
Vander turns over, shouts, “Tossed!”, and lobs the blinking grenade over at the gang. I can see it travel through the translucent bubble wrap around the pallet cage. It doesn’t even manage to strike the gravel when it ticks off and—
BOOM!
Fire. Smoke. Crackling.
The guns stop shooting. It takes a while for the smoke to clear but when it does, I can see the bodies of Steel Moon picking themselves up from the flames. Raze and Fingers drop the human bodyshields, hurry ahead, and finish each of them off. The gate around the yard is now completely busted open and bits of cyberware and guts are mixed between the rails and pickets. Some splashes of blood are a dark red while others are that strange yellowish green. It’s frankly sickening; I feel it right in my stomach, a burst of nausea, the sort you might feel on a long drive in a dirty car.
Vander grabs my chin, raising it. With his other hand, he brings something to my mouth. My vision blurs too much to make out what it is. I feel dizzy and my head is buzzing. He forces my mouth open and sprays a gust of humid air inside, filling it with a sour, lemony taste. I take a deep breath, feeling it wash down my throat and turn into liquid.
Soon my vitals stabilise. My vision clears up, and I can see the small object in his hand: it’s a red-and-green inhaler, with the stamp MX-3 marked across the canister.
Vander gives my face a few light slaps. “Yer fine. Good on you.” He puckers those blue lips, licks them, and stands, making his way over to the rest of the team.
I take my time getting to my feet. I’m still not sure I’ve completely recovered. Although it certainly feels like it, this might just be a temporary effect of whatever drug I ingested from the MX-3. Still, I’m glad I’m alive, and that this team is far more competent and skilled than I could have possibly imagined.
The spoofers are scattered over the ground; the force of the explosion must have knocked the case away. They’re in good condition, save for the one that got blasted from my hand. I start packing them into the hard case one by one.
When I look up, I see Fingers approaching me. I shut the case, pick it up, feeling that it is indeed quite heavy, and hand it to her. Before she can say anything, a voice perks up.
“Mudda....” A cough. “...fucka... I shud kill ya all, ya...” A groan. “...bastards....”
Fingers looks back at Nyah, who’s stunlocked on the ground, raises her pistol, and shoots him in the head. Lights out. Iced. No need for final words or goodbyes. “Blues will be here any minute,” she says, making a move towards the busted gate. Then, more assertively, she adds, “Grab your guns and delta. Now. All of you.”
I don’t know which of these weapons in particular is mine, but I go for the first one I can see, near Red’s body. I go to pick it up but find that he’s still moving, groaning. Wasting no time, I bring my arm up to his brow and eject the mantisblade, splitting his skull in half. “Adios, dustbucket,” I murmur, and grab the pistol, stashing it in my holster.
I follow Fingers and the team out the back. I can see flashing blue-and-red lights in the distance, and I can hear the faraway whir of the emergency sirens. Li Wei must have called the cops on us. If we don’t move quickly, we’ll be done for, locked behind bars in those gritty cages.
Fingers leads us around the block, towards the Catalyst parking lot; the line is still as big as ever, but there are a lot more free bays. I can see the Fragment Roamer behind the blinking amber bollards. I grab the key from my pocket and unlock it. The sidemirrors unfold, and the headlights flash yellow. Raze and Cormac step into a black saloon car—it’s too dark to make out the exact make or model, but it’s clean and mafiaesque—while Vander hops on a red sportbike, a Suzuki Hayabusa by the look of it. They take off before Fingers and I even step into the jeep. Fingers decides to get into the driver seat this time. She switches on the ignition and the seat and mirrors adjust to suit her frame. She leaves the hard case of spoofers under the seat and takes off.
By the time we’re on the main road, the cops are just pulling into the back of the alleyway block, a big black van full of them. We got out of there just in the nick of time. But what now? Will they follow us? Will they check the cameras and track us down?
It’s something I ought not to think about right now, but either way I can see myself showing up on a wanted list soon, just like that psychopath with the crazy metal arms.
Rhea Steele: Wanted for Murder and Theft by Gunpoint.
Hopefully that’s the last I see of Steel Moon. I really shouldn't have let that short man go. Stupid. I’ll have to think more clearly next time.
The ride is painfully quiet for five minutes, but once things begin to settle down and we’re a fair distance from the blues, Fingers turns to me, offering a smile. “So, you’re something of a netrunner then?”
My heart skips a beat. I’m not sure why but it does. The sudden question must have caught me off guard. “The... spoofer? That’s what you’re referring to? I, well, I took a chance, based off what Li Wei showed us. Too bad it got destroyed.”
Fingers shrugs, keeping her attention on the road. “I'm surprised the wire didn't spit right out. That means you have some netrunning software embedded in your operating system,” she says. “Like I said, full of surprises, aren’t you?”
“I stole it off the dead girl at the circuitery,” I admit, staring at my hand, fiddling with my fingers. The nails are dirty and could use a polish. I hope bristles and soap get blood out. “Mine was failing. Had no other option. That’s why they were after me. Because I... killed them.”
“You let the fat guy live,” she says.
I never thought of him as fat—stockier than anything—but I suppose he was on the larger size. I see the concern in Fingers' face upon making this statement. It’s a careful, thoughtful expression, and it’s not for focusing on the road. She doesn’t even indicate when taking turns.
I’m expecting her to ask if I’m stupid. Straight answer, yes—simple yet full of complex judgements, somewhat ominous.
But she doesn’t. She lets out a deep breath, one that she’d been holding for some time. “You almost got my team killed, Rhea,” she says.
The statement hits me like a truck. I’m not sure what to say except: “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect—”
“But,” she says—there’s always a but in the grand scheme of things—“you also saved us, saved that asshole Raze, too, goddamn you.” She chuckles. “That throw.... I'm impressed. Your only problem is that you’re out of date. A bit confused. So let me tell you: every decision you make has a consequence in this city, even small ones. Know? Can’t take a chance, have to play it safe unless you know you can win over and over again.”
I smirk. “Is that why you risked swapping those cred chips?”
She grins, giving me a thumbs up. “Why do you think they call me Fingers?” She opens her hand and the tip of her index finger pulls in. A microscopic replacement skin ascends and pops out. Sticked to it is the cred chip worth four and a half grand.
“You are fast,” I say.
“I grew up on these streets,” she says. “Thirty-five years—you pick up a thing or two.”
“You look much younger,” I say.
“Everyone does.” She shrugs.
After the next turn, we’re facing the industrial estate. At the end of it is the bridge leading to the other side of the city. The buildings shoot high and extend far, with highways overhead and viaducts sifting through the enormous expanse. A tram rumbles across on an elevated rail; I can see countless people staring out at the streets below, smoking, leaning, thinking, I’m sure.
Trying to keep the conversation going—silence frankly disturbs me to no end—I ask, “Now that you have the spoofers, what’s next?”
She pouts her lips thoughtfully. “Have something in mind, a way of securing more assets, and you’re going to help me.”
“Me? Just me?”
“’Course not,” she says, tapping her foot on the case poking out under her seat. “You’ll have these to help you.”
I don’t know where she’s going with this, but one thing’s for certain: I like the sound of it.