When Juliet pulled into the open bay doors of the hangar, she waved at Bennet and the security guard he was chatting up. “Oh, brother,” she subvocalized. “Hope he doesn’t distract her so much that she can’t do her job.”
“I think I heard him say something about protein supplements,” Angel replied, and Juliet couldn’t tell if she was being literal or making a funny dig. Either way, she laughed.
She found Aya working on the port VTOL drive, lubricating gaskets as she finished the last stages of a rebuild Bennet had begun more than a month ago. When Juliet handed her the package containing the Cybergen PAI, Aya’s eyes widened, and she furiously scanned the dense product information printed on the back of the container. “Is this for real?”
“Real as it gets.” Juliet grinned, leaning against the side of the drive housing.
“Lucky, this is a real Cybergen chip? Like, one of their OG diamond substrate chips? You know how much this is worth?”
“I mean, I have a vague idea. It’s not like I go shopping for that kind of thing.”
“You know that corps have been trying to replicate their manufacturing process ever since the war, right? Even Hayashi hasn’t caught up to what Cybergen was doing back then. This is . . .” She turned the package in her hand, eyes longingly scanning the bullet points. “This is too much! I can’t take it.” Aya tried to hand the plastic case back to her, but Juliet chuckled and pushed it away.
“Yeah, you can. There’s no way I’m replacing Angel, so what good is that doing me sitting in a storage locker? I’d rather one of my very best friends was getting some use out of it.” As she finished speaking, Aya slammed into her, squeezing her in what would have been a bear hug if she were just a little bigger. Juliet laughed, mock gasping for air, but as Aya relaxed her grip a little, she hugged her back and kissed the top of her head. When the plucky salvage tech finally released her and backed off, she had tears in her eyes, but she was smiling hugely.
“I’ve been wanting to replace my PAI for years, but I always end up spending the money I save on other things—tools, mostly, but sometimes on eating out or a new pair of nice boots, or . . .”
“Or crates of books to share with your friend? Or kicking back into the company ‘cause Shiro was short on a payment to a supplier? You’re the least selfish person I know, Aya. If you wanted another reason why I’m giving you that chip, there you go.”
“Well.” Aya smiled and looked at the package in her hands again, then softly added, “Thank you.”
Juliet sighed and reached up to rub the back of her neck. Despite her earlier infusion of stimulants and nutrients, she was feeling the long night she’d just been through. “No worries. Seriously—that’s a gift, so don’t even think about having to pay me back anything, all right?” When Aya nodded, her eyes still moist, Juliet chuckled and rapped her knuckles against the drive housing. “How’s this thing looking?”
“Good! All the parts are either new or rebuilt now. Just need to finish putting it all back together.”
“Well, I’d stick around and help, but I’ve got some loose ends to clean up from that job I did last night. I’m probably going to be busy all day—meeting with some other operatives this afternoon, too. I kind of wanted to go with you to see Ladia. I wanted to introduce you personally, but I told her all about you. She’ll be good to you.”
“Oh, I didn’t expect that. Don’t worry.” She smiled, and Juliet could see she was happy, but it also looked like she was being brave, and the expression was so endearing that she almost grabbed her into another hug.
Instead, she said, “Promise me something?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t ever do anything that’ll change your smile.” Juliet wanted to tell her, more specifically, never to straighten the little crooked overlap of her bottom teeth. Something about that tiny imperfection made the overall smile so much more than it should be. Of course, she didn’t want to say that so bluntly; she didn’t even know if Aya cared about her teeth, but she wanted to be sensitive to the possibility. Despite her obvious efforts to the contrary, Aya’s smile widened, and Juliet’s cheeks began to ache as her own grin intensified. Aya’s cheeks turned red, and she finally gave up the battle and turned her face away.
“Are you teasing me?”
“No, you goof! I mean it! You’ve got the best smile on Luna.”
“Lucky?” She turned back to her, her smile gone. Suddenly, she looked much more nervous.
“Yeah?”
“We are friends, right? I mean, sometimes you say the sweetest things, and I wonder if you feel something more.” Again, Aya’s cheeks bloomed crimson, and she looked down. Juliet experienced something like panic, and she was glad Aya wasn’t looking at her face; she was pretty sure she wasn’t doing a good job of hiding her reaction. Was she surprised by Aya’s question? In hindsight, it was a reasonably obvious reaction to a nearly priceless gift, her compliments, and, of course, all the time they’d been spending together. Still, as she’d told Angel, Juliet didn’t see Aya that way, and she wanted to say so but also wanted to protect her feelings. Those seemingly conflicting motivations served to tie her tongue, and she could feel the tension building as the silence stretched awkwardly.
“I . . .” She started to try to fill the void, but Aya had the same idea, and her words came out in a rush.
“That was stupid! I shouldn’t have said anything . . .”
“Hush, Aya. I’m just trying to put my words together so I don’t stick my foot in my mouth. I’m not great with close relationships. For most of my life, I had one good friend. Come here, look at my face,” Juliet reached out to pull Aya’s chin, and Aya complied, locking eyes with her. She was clearly uneasy, embarrassed, and flustered. “Half of my brain is trying to think of the right thing to say, but the other half is telling me just to be honest. So, that’s what I’m going to do.” Juliet paused, took a slow, steadying breath, and then said, “I love a lot of things about you. I’d cut off my left arm to keep you safe. You’re the sweetest, most generous person I know, and that’s mainly because you’re not out for yourself. I love that about you. I care about you a lot, but it’s in a family and friend sort of sense, you know? I hope that’s not . . .”
“Oh! Oh, thank goodness!” The relief washing over Aya’s face was palpable, and Juliet couldn’t help her answering smile as she pulled her into another hug.
“You were afraid I was coming on to you?” Juliet chuckled. “I’m sorry, Aya.”
Aya pulled back, and they separated, leaning together against the drive housing. “It’s okay. It’s just ‘cause we haven’t known each other all that long, and, well, I didn’t know how to interpret everything. You’ve noticed I don’t exactly have a lot of friends, either, right?”
“Okay. Okay, we’ve got it sorted now, right? We’re friends who can talk about anything with each other from now on, yeah?”
“Yes.” Aya nodded firmly, her face endearingly determined.
“I’ve gotta get going. I’ll catch up with you later. Send me a message about your appointment with Ladia—let me know how it goes.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“I will.” Aya nodded, still fidgeting with the PAI package, her short, grease-stained nails picking at the edges.
“And put that thing in! I hope it still works after all these years . . .”
“I’ll test it out and send you a message!”
“Good.” Juliet watched for a minute as Aya looked around for something to cut the package, then turned and made her way back to her bike, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll be waiting!”
“Your stress levels were through the roof there,” Angel said as she climbed onto her bike.
“Yeah, I . . .”
“Lucky!” Bennet said, coming in through the bay door, the bright morning light behind him throwing his face into shadow.
“Hey, Bennet.” Juliet lifted the seat and pulled the killer synth’s data cube out, tossing it to the mechanic. “Will you throw this in my bunk for me?”
He hefted the slate gray device, lifting an eyebrow. “Yeah. No worries.”
She sat down and pushed forward, sending the kickstand back into its housing. “Sorry, I gotta take off again.”
He walked a little closer. “Working on something?”
“I’d say we both are.” Juliet winked and jerked her chin toward the security guard, where she leaned against the building on the opposite side of the drive.
Bennet chuckled and shrugged. “Hey, nothing wrong with being friendly. I was going to ask if you wanted to get a workout in . . .”
“I’m gonna be slammed today. Maybe tomorrow?” Juliet pulled her helmet on.
“Bah.” He sighed and rubbed his hair, and Juliet had the distinct impression that he was trying to show off his biceps. “Gonna need to get a new workout partner at this rate.”
Juliet groaned and released her handlebars, sitting back on her seat. “Are you really giving me grief about this? I’m sorry I’m busy . . .”
“Nah, forget it. I’m just messing around.” He started walking off, offering her a quick half-wave, almost like he was dismissing her, and Juliet frowned, tempted to call after him. Part of her wanted to figure out if he was really bothered or just being Bennet. She turned on her bike and drove out of the hangar—a bigger part of her wanted to get to Lopez’s apartment before he woke up.
As she maneuvered through the busy streets of the industrial dome, Angel said, “Anyway, you were saying? About your stress with Aya?”
“Oh, jeez. I was gonna say I almost told her I was attracted to her.”
“What?” Angel sounded scandalized.
“I mean, I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to say I was or wasn’t. I couldn’t stand the idea of crushing her feelings, so I almost pretended like something was there. I mean, she’s so sweet, Angel! I can’t imagine hurting her, you know?”
“Well, it’s better that you’re honest, though I would certainly appreciate you having some sort of romance in your life . . .”
“Not this again!” Juliet groaned.
To Juliet’s relief, Angel laughed softly and said, “I’ll let it drop, mostly because something happened just now. Lopez is still sleeping, but someone delivered a package to his townhome. It’s sitting in front of his door.”
“They didn’t ring the bell?”
“His house AI, simple as it is, alerted him. As far as I can tell, he ignored the message; he hasn’t emerged from the dream-rig.” As Angel explained, Juliet felt her brow furrow as she looked at her map. She was still twenty-three minutes away. She wasn’t sure why, but the package concerned her. Her mind jumped to all sorts of scenarios: Could it be a warning—something to alert him about Juliet’s presence or to let him know the synth she’d killed was missing? Could it have something to do with the organ harvesting? Most of all, something in her gut wanted to think the package was a bomb. It was too obvious—someone was going to clean up this loose end before Juliet could get a chance to question him. Gritting her teeth, she leaned forward and cranked the throttle, veritably flying past the slower-moving vehicles around her.
As luck would have it, when she hit the onramp to the interdome highway, she flew past a parked corpo-sec patrol vehicle. It was a sleek vehicle, low to the road, with wide axles and tires, and when she howled by, cutting the wind like a knife, it lit up with blue and white lights and gave chase. “Melt it!” Juliet growled when Angel highlighted the pursuing vehicle in her rearview feed. Rather than slow down, she tapped the downshift, cranked the throttle, and felt the H-cell kick in, throwing about forty percent more power to her rear drive motor.
Her front wheel lifted for a full second as her rear tire chirped from the torque. Then, as she leaned further forward, the tire came down, and despite her irritation and the seriousness of the situation, Juliet’s smile stretched into a mad, ear-to-ear grin inside her helmet as her surroundings became a tunnel of blurred lines and lights. Gripping the handlebars as they fought to pull free from her hands, a wild giggle bubbled up from her stomach. “Holy shit, this thing can move,” she said, almost proudly, watching the needle on her virtual speedometer surpassing one personal record after another.
While Angel did her thing, trying to confuse cameras and drones, altering her bike and helmet colors, and sending out conflicting reports to Luna City Security about speeding motorcycles, Juliet focused on driving, weaving through traffic, and generally leaving her pursuit in the dust. Several times, Angel alerted her to other corpo-sec vehicles trying to intercept her, but she made it to the offramp ahead of them and into the shadows of the tall buildings in the central city dome. The drones were smart enough to spot particular vehicles, and there were certainly plenty of them patrolling above, but Angel seemed to be confusing them enough to keep her from getting boxed in.
When she was less than two kilometers from her destination, Juliet pulled into a parking structure and found a dark corner behind a panel van belonging to JR Voight, Genuine Hardwood Flooring, and parked the bike. As she got off and hooked her helmet to its cradle, she groaned and said, “Guess I’ve blown it, haven’t I? I’m gonna have to ditch the bike.”
“Definitely won’t be a good idea to ride it anytime soon. You had half of the on-duty Luna City Security looking for you.”
“Well, make it a new color, and we’ll leave it here for a while.” Juliet turned and jogged for the stairs that would take her down to the street. She still had her needler in its holster, but she felt like she wasn’t really prepared for what she was about to do. Why hadn’t she stopped for fresh ammo or to pick up her Texan? Was it her talk with Aya? Had it flustered her? Had she been in a rush for no good reason? As she climbed down the plasteel steps, she drew her needler and checked the magazine, ensuring it was loaded with the botu-rounds again. It was, which raised the question of when she’d switched out the shredders. The whole night and morning felt like a blur.
“I think I’m still being sloppy ‘cause of that infusion.”
“It’s possible. Don’t worry, though; your riding was flawless; there weren’t any patrols on this block, let alone near this garage.”
“I’m talking more about how I didn’t get prepped for dealing with Lopez. Something’s making me hurry. I feel like something’s about to happen.” She demonstrated the truthfulness of her words by breaking into a jog as she exited the garage, running across the street and into an alley that ran parallel to Evan Lopez’s street. Her mini-map said she was one point two kilometers from his townhome. “I think something is going on with that package.”
“But you didn’t know about the package until we were en route.”
“I know. I think, like, subconsciously, I knew something was going to happen, and the package is just confirmation. Whoever that synth worked for has to realize it’s missing by now. Knowing that, they must have eyes on Evan, right? If they’re as bad as we know they are, they aren’t going to play nice when it comes to loose ends. They must consider Evan compromised by now. If you were evil and had resources, what would you do with a compromised asset?”
“Delete it.”
“Exactly.” Juliet hit the end of the alley and turned left toward Evan’s street. They were only half a klick away. When she was two buildings down from his, she slowed to a walk, scanning the street and the nearby windows, letting Angel analyze as much as she could. She’d just reached the neighboring building, about fifty meters from Evan’s place, when Angel highlighted an automated black commuter vehicle with a bulbous passenger compartment.
“There are a lot of signals coming from that vehicle. Slow down and watch it as I scan.” Juliet nodded and knelt like she was tying her shoe, staring at the vehicle as her vision flickered through a dozen different spectrums. After a few seconds, her sight mostly returned to normal, but the highlighted orange silhouettes of two people in the van remained—Angel was augmenting her view to show what she’d found. “Those two individuals have been staring at Evan’s apartment. I cannot pick up any audio, even with your exceptional auditory implants.”
“All right. Just a minute.” Juliet stared at the glass passenger dome, watching the orange-outlined humanoid figures Angel was drawing for her. Both had their backs to her. She exhaled, pushing all her air out until her stomach began to contract in, and then slowly inhaled, willing their thoughts to come to her. Like whispers on the wind, she started to hear a voice:
Get your lazy ass up and take the package in, you punk-shit cop. . . smells good . . . this bitch gonna share?
Almost tumbling atop those fragmented masculine thoughts came another voice, this one decidedly feminine, which made Juliet wonder how that was happening—were their thoughts pitched like their voices, or was she somehow assigning genders to them?
Mm, so good! I see you eyeing my bagel, you bum. Think I’m sharing? Think again.
The first voice came again, louder and clearer, and Juliet knew she was hearing his thoughts as he spoke them:
Can’t we just flip the switch? There’s enough explosive to collapse most of that building.
“Angel, can you open that vehicle door if it’s locked?” While she spoke, Juliet darted to the car parked in front of the one in question, ducking down by its front bumper. “They’re getting ready to blow up a bomb in that package.”
“Searching some less-than-savory net sites for encryption codes for that make and model. Give me just a few moments.”
Thanks to her optics' AI-assisted terahertz scanning capabilities, Juliet was still able to see that the occupants weren’t looking her way, so she drew her needler and waited, ready to pounce as soon as Angel gave the go-ahead.
“I’m ready. I should be able to co-opt control of that vehicle using your wireless jack. We’ll know if the codes I just downloaded work in a moment. I’ll flash the headlights once I’m in.”
Juliet licked her lips, ensured her needler had a round in the chamber, and nodded. “Ready.” She stared at the little round ladybug lights on the vehicle and stood as soon as they winked their bright bulbs at her. She took three long strides in the street to the passenger door and grabbed the handle, yanking it back. It opened with a satisfying click and, for about half a second, Juliet looked into the startled eyes of the female passenger with a data deck on her lap, then she pumped two botu-rounds into her silky blouse and two more into the neck of the man sitting beside her.
They both spasmed briefly before falling utterly still, and Juliet sort of felt bad when the woman’s bagel fell to the floor with the cream cheese side down. She stepped into the round, domed interior and sat on the seat facing the two immobilized occupants. As she stared at them, pondering her next move, Angel said, “I’ve set up a jamming field on the interior of this vehicle.”
“You can do that?” Juliet was surprised but pleased by Angel’s quick thinking. It was highly possible that one or both of her two captives had PAIs capable of calling for help if they determined something was wrong.
“This vehicle, the Paragon Radius, comes equipped with privacy features such as a wireless screen and sound-dampening glass.”
Juliet nodded and looked around the passenger compartment of the automated vehicle and spied a black duffel next to the man’s seat. She pulled it close and yanked the zipper back, looking inside. Shrink-cords, two submachine guns, and extra magazines revealed themselves to her. “Very nice of you two to help me out like this.” As she worked to bind her captives’ feet and hands, she said, “Angel, can you take us on a drive around the industrial domes? Let’s find a nice, quiet place to get to know our new friends.”
“And Evan Lopez?”
Juliet took the data deck off the limp woman’s lap. “We can disable the bomb, not that he deserves our help, but I’d hate to have his neighbors pay for his crimes. As for the answers we were going to get from him . . .” Juliet felt the cold presence of Lacy Blake slide in behind her eyes as she grinned wickedly at the woman, reaching over to wipe a smear of cream cheese off her chin. “I think these two might have a few more answers than he does.”