“Juliet, Doctor Murphy has left you another message,” Angel said, startling Juliet out of her reverie. She was sitting on a folding lawn chair in front of the trailer, killing time before she had to meet Honey and the rest of the crew for their job that evening.

“She’s persistent,” Juliet sighed. She’d already turned the doctor down on her little vendetta mission against the Rattler gang out of South Phoenix. She didn’t exactly know what it would entail, but she knew she hadn’t felt like getting into the revenge business, not after all that she’d been through with Ghoul and Reynold. “I suppose it’s my fault for stringing her along; I said I was taking a break, not that I didn’t want to do it.”

“Would you like to see the message?”

“Yeah.” Juliet leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes and letting the video play on her AUI. Murph appeared, so detailed, Juliet could imagine she was present. So much of her was in high-res, Juliet wondered if the doc had used an external camera for the message. She stood in one of her operating suites wearing a clean white coat and smiled like she could see Juliet and look into her eyes.

“Hey, kiddo! I hope you’re feeling better after that rough mission. I know, I know—you can’t tell me the details, but I want you to know I’ve been thinking about you. Look, I’m not going to keep bugging you to do this job, but I’m not giving it to anyone else. I don’t care if it never gets done; in my mind, you earned this opportunity, so I’m going to hold it for you. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t a sweet deal for you. It’s a relatively low-risk job, and I’ll make sure you get some good rep and a fat payday. Gimme a call when you’re feeling up for it. Hey, don’t forget about my standing discount!”

Juliet smiled as the doc’s image faded away. “She’s pretty damn sweet, isn’t she?”

“She seems to have good intentions where you’re concerned,” Angel replied.

“Well, I guess I did pull her out of the fire, so to speak. Can you remind me to call her tomorrow? Seems like it would be dumb not to hear her out about this job.”

“I will.”

Juliet sipped at her “electrolyte enhanced” water and said, “Show me Temo’s message about tonight’s job again, please.” An amber, opaque window appeared in her vision, displaying Temo’s message:

January,

Hey, for tonight’s job, you’ll be going in undercover. I know it’s nerve-wracking, but it's a no-weapon job. If you bring any, you’ll need to leave ‘em in the drop vehicle, and I can’t guarantee they’ll get back to you. Make sure you bring your cracking gear. Honey’s on board and knows the extraction protocol if something goes wrong.

-T

Juliet smiled as she read the message, noting Temo’s use of her new handle. When she’d returned from Tucson after rescuing Ghoul, she’d decided it was time to stop taking unnecessary risks, even small ones like operating under her actual first name. She’d brainstormed for hours, trying to think of a handle, wishing she’d earned one already. The closest she could think of was “Lucky” because of how Ghoul used to call her that, but she decided it wasn’t right for her; it made her think of a pet.

Angel had suggested a lucky number or date, which had led Juliet to January—it wasn’t precisely lucky, but it was the month in which she’d been born, and she liked the sound of it. She figured it would do well enough until she’d earned a better handle. Looking over the note again, she said, “Well, I, for one, am happy not to go in packing weapons; it kinda portends a peaceful resolution, don’t you think?”

“It stands to reason that stealth and subterfuge will be the order of the day, not violence,” Angel replied.

“Order of the day? That’s a nice one, Angel. You’ve been reading more fiction?”

“Yes! Have you heard of Stephen King?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Juliet said, standing up to stretch. She wanted to get a shower in before she left, so she pulled open the screen door on her trailer and stepped up into the kitchen area as Angel replied.

“He was a prolific writer in the twentieth century and had some fascinating ideas about the future. I just read through a story he wrote, under a pen name, called The Running Man. Would you like me to tell you about it?”

“Yeah, give me a synopsis without spoiling it too much; I’m going to shower.” Juliet crunched up her water bottle and dropped it into the compactor she’d bought a couple of weeks earlier. She still had to transport the cubes of recyclable material to the park’s collection area, but with the compactor, she’d reduced that chore to a weekly event.

Listening to Angel talk about an old sci-fi story brought a smile to her face, and as she stepped into her modified bathroom, it widened further. She’d paid a resident of the park, a self-styled handyman, to gut the sani-spray booth and put in a real shower and an upgraded, tankless hot water heater. She’d had to give Howell an advance on her water bill, but it was worth it to have actual hot water running down her scalp and back after a hard workout at the dojo.

As she scrubbed her hair, applying conditioner, she leaned against the tile enclosure and said, “Wait . . . so the ‘game’ involved regular people trying to kill this guy?”

“Yes! The story has been described as ‘dystopian.’ I thought it was interesting because I can see parallels between King’s imagined future and our society. His vision of the heartless subjugation of citizens for material gains or entertainment value is echoed in our current reality.”

“Angel! I was hoping you’d have something entertaining to share, not a depressing, philosophical discussion. I get it, though—we have some bad things going on in our society. I mean, shit, I wish I could make a difference, but . . . I’m nobody. Besides, I’ve already got enough enemies, don’t you think?”

“Well, regardless of the moral implications, the story is quite entertaining. I’d recommend it.”

Juliet snorted and rinsed her hair. She finished her shower, feeling much refreshed, and walked back to her bedroom, where the clothes she’d picked up while shopping with Honey were still stacked on her little built-in dresser. She rifled through them, picking her outfit for the operation and carefully going over the pants and shirt to make sure she’d gotten all the tags off.

She’d decided to wear high-end stretch-weave tights and a long-sleeved matching shirt. Juliet figured if they had a disguise for her, there was no sense in wearing something bulky. She put on her black cross-training shoes and stuffed her deck, its battery pack, and an extra data cable into her black belt pack—it had a stretchy waistband and was slim enough to hide at the small of her back.

Hair pulled back in a tight bun, she stood in front of her mirror and said, “How’s that, Angel?” She couldn’t help feeling a little pride at the way her figure and posture had improved over the last couple of months. All the activity leading up to Ghoul’s rescue and then the hard work she’d been putting in at the dojo were starting to show. She’d leaned out considerably, and her muscle tone was better even than when she’d done sports in school.

“I think that’s a good choice; your clothes are without bulk and will fit under nearly any sort of outfit.”

“Yeah. I figure if I have to ditch the disguise, I won’t be naked. Do you think I can get away with the vibroblade?”

“If they specified no weapons, the odds are good that you might be searched. I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for sneaking a weapon into a secure area.”

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

“Yeah, I figured.” Juliet gave herself another once-over, then said, “Hey, Angel, can you change my eyes to mauve again? I think it looks cool, well, and pretty, and it’ll hopefully distance me from the Juliet that WBD is looking for.” She watched as her naturally pale-green eyes shifted to the same purple-pink shade they’d been when she and the “gang” had rescued Ghoul. They seemed brighter, even though the color wasn’t any lighter than her natural tone. “Are you backlighting my irises?”

“Yes, it’s a feature of your optical implants. Don’t you like it? I think it makes your eyes stand out a lot more.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it looks wicked, but I’m a little self-conscious.”

“You needn’t feel that way, Juliet; if you were to walk down the street in downtown Phoenix, the number of non-natural eye colors would outweigh the naturally occurring ones. I’ve seen, through your eyes, many people with far more outlandish features. Why, at the dojo this morning, there was a new student with a set of chrome horns!”

“Yeah, good point, Angel. They were kinda cool looking, though, weren’t they? I mean, he had the right facial structure for those horns—he looked tough!” She glanced at her AUI to see the time and said, “Five o’clock, Angel; how long will it take to get to the meeting spot?”

“You should leave in the next fifteen minutes—the pin Temo sent is downtown.”

“Right! Order up the cab; I’m heading out.” Juliet hopped down the steps of her trailer, touched the thumb pad on the old biometric deadbolt, and then, with a spring in her step, made her way to the park’s entrance. She was in a good mood; it felt right to get back to work, to start inching her way toward a bigger bank account, and to have something to dream about. She’d been in a funk since the “Ghoul op,” as she’d been calling it, and it felt like she was coming out of a shadow, figuratively, because the sky was already darkening in a more literal sense.

Mrs. Jimenez was watering her flower pots, and she waved as Juliet hurried by. The retired dispatch operator had made a point of getting to know Juliet over the last few weeks, starting things off by leaving her a loaf of homemade bread with a note welcoming her to the community. When Juliet had stopped by to thank her, they’d found a sort of connection, talking about how things had changed in Tucson—Mrs. Jimenez had grown up in an area not far from where Juliet’s grandparents had lived.

At first, Juliet had been paranoid about the old woman, worried that she was some sort of plant, but when she asked Mr. Howell about her, he’d let slip that Mrs. Jimenez had lived in the park longer than even he had and that her husband had died just a few years ago. Juliet couldn’t imagine how WBD could have an informant already in place for decades before she came to live there.

“Hey, Mrs. Jimenez!” Juliet waved, still hurrying toward the gate.

“All dressed in black? At least your eyes are bright, but you’ll never catch a date in those dark clothes!”

“This is my active-wear, Mrs. Jimenez!” Juliet laughed. “I’m going to work out with a friend, not looking for a date!”

“Okay, honey,” she said, lifting her watering can over a runty little bunch of near-withered flowers. Her use of the endearment caught Juliet a little off guard—she wasn’t sure if it was because no one had called her that in a long time or if it was because she was so used to saying the word in reference to her new best friend. She waved once more, then hurried by, and soon she was outside the park waiting for her cab.

The cab ride into town took a while, and Juliet let her mind wander during the trip. She still didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do with herself, didn’t know why she wanted to leave Phoenix so badly; things were pretty good at the moment. She’d made a lot of friends—and frenemies—at the dojo and looked forward to going nearly every day. She had a fixer she felt she could trust and a cyber doc that felt like she owed Juliet favors. The reasons to stay around were pretty compelling.

As she rode, head bouncing on the tinted glass of the cab, she thought about what was pushing her to move on and concluded that she’d always wanted to see more, to experience life in a place different from Arizona. She’d hated how her family had moved on without her, though she supposed it was only her mom who did it voluntarily. Still, Arizona and, more specifically, Tucson had felt like a purgatory—a place she was stuck in, spinning her wheels and never moving on. More than that, she still felt like she was on the run, and, if she were honest, she was.

WBD seemed like a distant threat, always lurking in the background, always a faceless menace whenever she went into a new place. If it weren’t for Angel constantly spoofing her identity, she knew she’d have been caught by now, and it felt like, even though millions of people lived there, Phoenix was too small, too close to WBD, to be sticking around. “So I need to save some money and get someplace a lot further away,” she sighed, tilting her head so she could look up at the night sky through the window.

The AutoCab made its way into downtown traffic and, to Juliet’s sweat-inducing horror, pulled into a parking garage next to the Vykertech Corporation megatower. “Holy shit! Angel, did you know this was the location?”

“I knew the meeting point was this parking structure, but I still don’t know what the job entails or where it will take place.”

“I don’t like this!” Juliet hissed, contemplating bailing on the op.

“Your heart rate is elevated, Juliet. Perhaps practice the breathing exercise that Sensei walked you through during stretching last week. You shouldn’t need to worry about Vykertech; they have no knowledge about your involvement in the dreamer operations.”

“What about the tiny little fact that I distributed evidence of their criminal activities all over Tucson?” Juliet subvocalized.

“As far as Vykertech knows, that was done by Reynold and his contacts.”

“I hope we were as clean about all that as you seem to think,” Juliet replied, still carefully subvocalizing; she had little trust when it came to AutoCab privacy practices. The cab wended its way up through the garage to the fifth level and then pulled into an empty stall.

“Your destination is the elevator bank on this level, passenger. Thank you for your patronage.”

Juliet grunted and opened the door, stepping out. She could see the elevators not far away, and as she peered into the shadows nearby, her stress-tightened shoulders relaxed a little—Honey was leaning against the concrete wall talking to another person.

Juliet walked over, and when Honey noticed her approach, she looked up and waved her over, “Hey! January, this is Carn; he’s working with us tonight.” Juliet looked where her friend, dressed in a black hoodie and tight jeans, pointed and saw a man crouching near one of the concrete support pillars. He was lean, had brown, buzz-cut hair, and wore an olive-green jumper. He looked up at her and winked a mirrored, silvery eye, dragging on his Nikko-vape.

“Cool. Good to meet you.” Juliet looked at Honey and the bank of elevators nearby and asked, “Is the job, like, here?”

“Nah,” Carn answered for Honey, blowing out a billowing cloud of vapor. Juliet caught a hint of lemon when the mist wafted her way. “They’ll pick us up here.”

“They?” Juliet glanced from Carn to Honey.

“Whoever’s running things. I know as much as you,” Carn shrugged, dragging on his vape again.

“Right,” Juliet shrugged and moved to lean against the wall near Honey.

“Looking good,” Honey said, reaching out to rub the stretchy fabric of her top between her fingers. “Bet it’s comfy.”

“Yeah; I was hoping I wouldn’t have to take it off to wear whatever, you know . . .” Juliet trailed off, well aware the Vykertech probably had cameras covering every inch of their garage. She glanced around, looking for lenses, thankful that Angel was scrambling her appearance. Angel seemed to intuit what she was doing and helped by highlighting the little cameras mounted at the joints of nearly every support pillar where they met the cement ceiling.

“Right, I get it. Smart, girl!”

Juliet smiled and leaned back, waiting and watching while cars, tires squealing on the cement, wound their way up and down the garage. People walked by on the way to the elevators, and Juliet began to feel like this wasn’t the most brilliant place to loiter. She was just getting ready to voice her concerns when a small yellow van pulled up in front of them. “Saguaro Scrubbers” was emblazoned on the side in bright blue lettering.

The side door slid open, and a burly black man with a thick, bushy beard said, in a deep rumbling voice, “Let’s go! Carpets won’t clean themselves!” He grinned, showcasing a wide gap between his front teeth, and winked.

“Here we go,” Carn said, standing up and tucking his vape into a pocket at the front of his overalls. “I recognize that dude; his handle’s Motor.” He trotted over to the van and slapped palms with the other man, and then clambered inside. Juliet looked at Honey and shrugged, hustling to the van and hopping in. Honey was right on her heels.

“‘Sup ladies? I’m Motor, and our driver is Debbie.”

“Yo,” a hoarse voice said from the front; Juliet had no view of the speaker. The van didn’t have seats, but there were boxes and large carpet-cleaning machines all over the place. Carn had taken a seat on top of a package of deodorizing powder, and Honey was working to wedge herself between a couple of cleaners. Juliet shrugged and squatted down on a box of industrial waste bags.

“Not the nicest ride in town,” Honey said. Then, “I’m Honey.”

“Hey,” Juliet said. “I’m Janu . . .”

“January,” Motor said at the same time. “Process of elimination.” He tapped the side of his head as if to illustrate his genius.

“Right.” Juliet forced a smile. Debbie started the van rolling, and Juliet could feel it winding its way out of the garage. “So? Where we going?”

“Two megatowers over—WBD,” Motor replied, slapping his palms together and grinning enthusiastically.