Chapter 3: Compromised

1:07 AM

June 2nd 2497

Ripley

Fuck, fuck-fuck-fuck! The elevator slowly pulled me closer to what I knew would be my demise. I wasn’t just informing Shaun, I was taking the blame for a potential police raid! On a deal worth five million Shardyne! Every grate of steel and rumble from the elevator signaled my journey across the highway to hell.

Then it stopped, abruptly, the elevator indicated it had reached the top floor but the doors remained stubbornly shut. A voice rattled my prison. Shaun’s voice, eroded by ash and drink, was made understandable by laryngeal Shardware. A horrifying steel undertone spoke atop the grated stone of Shaun’s organic voice.

“There a reason you’re coming up here, Ripley? You’re welcome to drink with me any day, but I’ve got an important meeting going on right now.” Don’t let his pleasant undertone trick you, I reminded myself.

There was a reason he was known as ‘The Bloodmuncher’.

My fingernails dug into the metal of my other arm, I was hoping that there would be pain to distract me. There was none, and my voice took a few moments to gather. “I-uh, you see Shaun. A um- a girl came by to the Op-room and-“

“Ripper? if you’re telling me you got laid. I’ll call off the meeting right now. Haha!”

The distortion of his voice couldn’t shear away the merry laughter bleeding through. Hell, I would’ve laughed, except I forced my next words through.

Panic flooded my voice. “She’s a narc! I think they might know about this deal of yours, me and Hoaqin were discussing it when she came by and we found Brim unconscious and-“

The doors opened, it’s pleasant ding not enough to calm me. The office’s atmosphere was a stark contrast to the club downstairs. Where metal and neon danced in the floors below as a drugged out rave, this ‘office’ was intricately weaved between wood and furs with the pleasant song of an ancient opera dug out from the Old_Net. It was also far larger than it had any right to be, practically a small house stuck to the top of the club with one of the walls being a one-way window to the different world below.

Now it seemed like both worlds would crash down.

I stepped in, painfully aware of the wood creaking under my foot as the people who I reported to sat on a couch. Lucille for her part looked confused, while Shaun’s face was grave. Bald and old, his face was scarred like a tiger had mauled on it and he’d used tattoos to cover it up. The other two people on the couch opposite of their’s wore fine suits, with thick metal visors hiding their eyes. A man and a woman, the man held their lips as a straight line — straighter than a ruler — while the woman were a black veil over hers.

“Speak.” Shaun said. “From the beginning.”

“A woman knocked on my door claiming she was interested in joining the club, she had the looks for it. But… she was a cop, I think I figured it out too late because we found Brim with a fried Neuroframe in the washroom. She had concealed weaponry on her wrist, the bracelet kind you see on rich corpos who think they’re hot shit for having a secret gun on them.”

“Brim led her down?” Shaun’s face twisted, his scars and tattoos contorting into misshapened blobs of ink and beige. “He’s on guard duty today, and Brim’s the last person to do that without approval. Lucille?”

Lucille’s acting was good, she was the only girl working here who didn’t need a Personality Matrix since she was already an expert in becoming a vessel of her customer’s… wishes. “Must have shown him duped sigils, maybe a contract?”

Shaun didn’t look convinced, his brows furrowed deeply like metal being wrenched out of shape. He turned to the two corporate employees, speaking in fluent chinese that translated to me as text. “The deal has been leaked, police could be showing any minute. We’ll keep the package concealed, and they won’t know any better.”

The man was clearly not pleased, his lips puckering up, but the woman remained as still as a statue. Even when she spoke clearly with a voice that put singers to shame, her mouth didn’t seem to move behind her veil. “Proceed. But this security fault deducts two million from your payment. After all, they have no proof. Just the ramblings of two idiots.”

Shaun sighed, and I knew what that meant for the otherwise jovial man. He was furious. I would lose something out of this, that was a fact. My eyes aligned with Lucille’s, her gaze silently screaming at me to keep my mouth shut.

“We will investigate. I will figure out how this deal got leaked.” Shaun said, slowly drawing his attention to Lucille and then me. “For all we know, our Fixer could have been the one breached.”

This time, the corporate man spoke. He used his actual mouth, and there was the undeniable hiss of an eastern accent. “Missy is a professional, unlike you, chun huo. But I will speak to her, regarding this… intel leak.”

I stood there as they each quietly angled the deal in their favor, a part of me — actually, all of me — was glad that my acting skills were poor enough that Shaun didn’t believe me. But I couldn’t get this nagging feeling out of my chest, and that worsened when my eyes rested on the table.

A metallic box sat firmly in the center, about a foot long and wide, it was like a solid cube of steel. I’d recognized the model instantly. A SynTec Pandora, known for their function of creating specific internal environments. And that was bad, I’d tinkered with many containers Shaun needed for deals, confirming their security and ensuring they remained invisible to scanners.

Or opening one up when they couldn’t force them open. But… Pandora’s were as rare as their contents.

This cube specifically was a design I wasn’t familiar with. For one, it was a larger variant that would be odd to house any Implants. B.U.Gs and S.I.Ms were smaller than Neuroframes, and typically only needed to be concealed, not protected. Whatever was inside there, it was potentially volatile.

“Ripley,” Shaun addressed me with his mechanically stitched voice, and I shook like a flimsy tower in an earthquake. “You installed the secret compartment in this table, right? Activate it.”

That translated to ‘he’d forgotten how to do it’, I couldn’t just disobey him. I took my first few steps slowly, scared that the shaking in my legs would cause me to fall. But then loud screaming from downstairs tore my focus away.

Camera feeds lit up across monitors in the room, and the alerting screech turned everyone’s head. A WBPD STRIKE team had stormed in, far quicker than any of us expected… shit.

“A STRIKE team?” Lucille lurched in her seat. “That- that can’t be right? Have they set up a perimeter around the building already? This is all happening too quickly to be based on that girl’s report!”

The corporate woman agreed. “Too quickly, it looks like this deal was compromised from the start. We will need to scrub our communications, no one knows that we’re here for the Implants.”

So it was implants? But why use that container, it didn’t make any sense to me.

“Ripley! How the hell do you use this table’s secret compartment!” Shaun screamed, his fingers pressing all sorts of random corners and spots on the table. I rushed towards it, putting my fingers on six very specific areas on the table where a fingerprint scanner read my prints.

An automated voice spoke out. Something I’d installed in case Shaun forgot where the fingerprint scanners were placed.

So… this very purpose.

“REQUESTING ACCESS WITH UNVERIFIED FINGERPRINTS REQUIRES VOCAL AUTHORIZATION FROM EITHER LUCILLE OR SHAUN.”

They shouted simultaneously.

“Allow it!”

“Just fucking work!”

Silently, the table unfolded seamless connections allowing its top to be pulled back like a chest. As I pulled it open, I spotted several interesting items in there — items I knew belonged to Shaun and that he’d probably had Hoaqin memorize the scanner locations to access it.

His prized gun, a Silver Grade Shandian Phoenix-60, several grenades and ammo clips. And… I saw it, it was kept in a transparent container of glass — it looked like a mix between a caterpillar and a beetle rolled up into a tiny bead, except made of metal and entirely copper in color.

A Bronze Grade B.U.G… probably Hoaqin’s Implant.

Shaun threw me away from the chest with a harsh push. He stuffed the large box in, removing his Phoenix-60 Rifle along with several ammo clips. Yanking the top of the container down, I saw the slight seam disappear as the metal seemed to mend itself. Really, it was just an illusion of light reflection with specific angles.

Like the bottom of the table, which seemed to be completely empty thanks to Occulo-Permeability tech manufactured by Mazhyr. It would fool even a Silver’s eyes into thinking the table was far smaller than it seemed.

Modding it was the one time I’d been paid well by Shaun.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Now I questioned if I would ever get paid again. They all settled in their seats, Shaun’s glare pushing me off the couch as he nestled into the real leather.

Within seconds, they went from panic to silence. Shaun rested the gun against the table, his gaze now confident and focused. The two corporates had barely shifted an inch the entire ordeal and Lucille was busy checking cameras without a hint of fear. “They’ve secured the perimeter, our only way out is the sewers.”

“We don’t need to run.” Shaun said firmly, his misaligned voice making me shiver. “The police are just this city’s biggest gang. They want to lynch off our profits. This business meeting just got one more party involved now, with my charisma it’ll all be over and done with no blood spilled.”

He tapped a pad in his hands, and a door slid open. A barrage of steps echoed into the room from the dim staircase and two figures entered the room. I nearly shat my pants when I saw the first person. I recognized him.

Lieutenant Jacob ‘Blacktongue’ Grazhe. I’d heard rumors that he was stuffed with more Mutagen than any Genefreak on the streets, that he became their best Investigator and interrogator with an intertwining of promise and threat. I also knew that for anyone who got in his way, there were no bodies to bury. Only bloodstains.

I, of course, also recognized the silver-haired girl next to him. Diana Jones.

Sometimes I hated being right, because there was nothing I could do about it. We locked eyes for a second, and I’m not even sure how I looked at her. I had tried to seem composed but her eyes dug into me like a predator’s, unremorseful and cold.

The lieutenant snorted. “You gonna pull up some rehearsed line like I’ve been expecting? Be good boys and tell me what’s exactly worth five million Shardyne. I’ll make it worth your time.”

Lucille laughed. It was a believable laugh, being not overdone or half-baked. “F-five million? I know my girls are good, but for you to see five million in one of them and not me? I’m frankly offended.”

“We both know this isn’t about one of your girls.” The lieutenant’s voice, smooth in that old playboy tone, now grew a sharper edge. My metal arm reacted, a sharp blade clawing up to my flesh shoulder. “Is it?”

The voice echoed in my head, driving me to madness as it became all I could hear, I wanted to spill my secrets as though a volcano of truth had erupted through me. My metal hand gripped my flesh hand, and it was only the warm blood seeping through my arm that allowed me to steer my thoughts.

The lieutenant’s eyes scanned the room, clearly looking for any suspicious activity. I couldn’t tell what he thought of me as he passed his vision over me, but I knew it wasn’t good. Whatever mutations he had that were known, it allowed him to read and manipulate people.

And there was little information about his combat abilities.

“I assure you.” The corporate woman spoke again, the voice still coming out of her silent mouth. “We’re here to pick up a fine girl, a ‘private exhibition’. If she’s worth the price, we’ll recommend her to you, but by then her worth will be worn down.”

The Lieutenant’s gaze lingered on her, his smile dropping to a fine line. “That’s fancy tech, is it so that they can’t read your lips over surveillance? Or is there another voice hidden in you? I bet you do all of the real talking and this mutt carries some fancy chrome, and from what I see… Bronze’s. Just an inch away from Silver, that what you after? To break through?”

“The fact that you think we’re Bronze…” The suited man stood up. “Is proof you haven’t seen through us at all. Grade Limiters, keeping prying eyes away.”

“First time I’m seeing a suit wanting to hide rather than show off. Tell me, which branch of Yuzhou are you working at?” He stepped forward, the impressive muscle mass on him dwarfing the corpos.

“Shandian Engineering.” The woman responded clearly. “We work in counter-intelligence. And you’re Lieutenant Jacob Grazhe of the Westbrook Police’s District. You’re stationed in the First Precinct, and have been at your position for the last three decades, why?”

“Don’t like politics.” He brushed the topic aside.

“Don’t like politics? Or is it that if you rise higher than you are, you would have to drag up all your crimes with you? Or perhaps you’re comfortable where you are, you know this district, it’s criminals. There’s a relationship there that your superiors don’t want to disrupt. We can help with that.”

“As I said. Politics. Now what are you really here for?” His voice took on that sharper tone again, and subconsciously I thought to myself that I was here to warn Shaun and Luci— no, what was I here for? What was I doing here, in this place where what was clearly happening is above my pay grade?

Maybe I should run? I spotted Diana in the back, or should I think of her as Officer Jones? Silently, I- I sent her a comms request through the civilian sigil she’d given me a few minutes ago.

“W-w-what is it Ripley-y? And no-o, I’m not sorry. You fucked up and this is the pr-rice you pay.” Her voice had a festering bite, running so fast that I could barely get a sense of it.

“I u-uh, just, are Selene and Hoaqin fine? Can you look out the window and tell me if they’re out of the b-building? They’re innocent-t in all of this.” I didn’t know what else I could ask, or even say to her.

She didn’t respond, her sight flickering for a moment before studying down the window for several more. “No. It seems like they’re being held back by the guards with the-e others around the d-dancefloor, they tried to e-s-scape? The perimeter must have been secured by then.”

I bit my tongue, fuck, this was not going to plan. I think she sensed my panic, the dread probably shaking through my bones without shame, because she sent another message into my head. “Look, if this works out between our bosses, everything will be fine.”

My mind tuned out the conversation going around me; it was easier not to focus on it. I pretended I was anywhere but stuck between Shaun, the Lieutenant and two corporates. Four potential silvers, two confirmed. The value of their bodies combined was enough to live a comfortable life for the next century.

All I knew was that the conversation was being spun around in circles, deflection after prodding after deflection. If it continued, this would be fine — this would be fine. Everything could go back to normal.

“I really do believe the girl we’re coming to see is worth it.” The corporate man smirked. “She just received a Neuroframe, her first. You know how they are in that state, imagine having control of one. It’s adorable. If you want, you can take her after we’re done.”

I didn’t hide my gasp, a gargling expulsion of air released from pure shock. All eyes turned to me, Lucille and Shaun’s staring daggers to silence me, the Lieutenant’s piercing glare, the corporates’ cold visors aimed towards me, and Diana’s… she stared blankly. As though in realization.

The Lieutenant cracked a smile, a tiny corner of his lip lifting. “Tell me more.”

Before either of those seated could speak, the lieutenant lifted his hand. “No, not you. I asked Ripley.”

I felt my body drain of heat, a cold so numb I couldn’t feel the world around me but the pinpricks of my own blood flow screamed inside of me. I didn’t even question how he knew my name.

Strangely, the Lieutenant took a glance at Diana. “What were the names he asked you about on your call? Selene and Hoaqin right? Selene’s the prettier name, and I bet she has a fine body.” Then he settled on me, and only me. It was like I was staring at a railgun.

“Now, tell me more about her.” The words sliced into me.

I collapsed onto my knees, my metal arm twitching out of my control as groans of pain were forced into words by my brain’s rewiring. “We… we’re close friends. And-urgh!- been close since we were children! O-our parents worked toget-gether at Syntec!”

I couldn’t breathe out of the pure agony of my throat muscles being wrenched to the Lieutenant’s commands, my mouth and lungs acted without caring for my conscious thought. They stole my memories and sold them away. “My-my dad got fired, tried to reveal a-urgh! Coverup of— then her parents tried as well. They’re all dead now! She had… trouble, so I got her some work- work— work here. Protection. But- she doesn’t deserve this!”

“Another victim of the machine.” The Lieutenant clicked his tongue, then his voice turned mellow, soft like a caring grandfather's. “Come here Ripley, point her out to me.”

I didn’t feel the strange compulsion then, but my legs still betrayed me and moved. I couldn’t look at Shaun and Lucille’s faces, I couldn’t bare to. I knew what was on them. I gazed from the window, knowing that Selene wouldn’t be able to see me through it.

I pointed her out, her pink hair was like a spark of flaming joy amongst a sea of despair. Nearly the entire club was huddled into a circle on that dancefloor. It could fit maybe fifty bodies but right now it was definitely more than a hundred. They pulled Selene out from the mountain of people, throwing her to the ground before the barrel of a gun pointed to her head.

I saw Hoaqin lurch, but he was pinned down in seconds, helpless.

Just like me. “Nononono…. No! What, why are you-!”

The Lieutenant’s hands fastened around both of my shoulders. “Breathe, calm down.”

It felt unnatural to me. My breathing turned slower than ever, relaxed and secure like a nested chick’s sleeping beside his mother. But Selene had a gun to her head, this was a betrayal of my mind just as much as my body. It was a good thing then, that I could release my rage in place of panic. “What do you want?!”

He tapped the window. “Now it would be a shame if we were to find that Selene had a knife on her and attacked one of my officers. But the floor of this fine establishment had to be painted with her brains for our safety. Unless, of course, you confirm that there is a deal occurring here. You’ve seen evidence of it?”

I wanted to answer ‘no’, but I didn’t want Selene’s brai- I couldn’t think of it. Shaun and Lucille’s gazes were no longer bastions of confidence, from their piercing irises alone I knew what they were saying.

“Don’t worry about them.” The Lieutenant wrapped a friendly arm around my shoulder. “You mod all the girls here? My police pals claim they’re perfect, and the Snake Fangs? Small in number and admittedly lacking in territory, tiny fish in a big sea, but what they have is a bite that keeps the bigger sharks from hunting them. You do Shardware a service, kid, it’s a blessing and it’s wasted here.”

It was said matter of factly, but I reminded myself there were no promises made. I saw the future unfold, Selene’s dead body and mine soon following with Shaun’s Phoenix-60 Rifle. A hole in my chest large enough to take out my heart and lungs with one shot.

“I-I- Didn’t-“ My mouth couldn’t form the words. I saw the gun muzzle deforming Selene’s hair, her body quivering and the glistening of tears visible even from afar. If I could hear her voice, whatever heart-wrenching sound was coming out of it, I knew I would crumble.

“Just tell me. And you’ll be doing me a favor that I could repay. I know some ways to relocate you, to give you the opportunity your intelligence deserves. Reconfiguring Neuroframes without an Implant takes talent, hell, just normal Shardware reconfiguration takes a lot from the mind. You’re an engineer and a doctor rolled up in one? Why spend it all cooped up in the basement of a two century old building?”

It still wasn’t a promise… but it was a start.

“The table.” I felt like an anvil had dropped from my throat. “Has a hidden visual-isolated compartment in the middle of it, only I can open it with specific placement of my fingers on-“

The Lieutenant didn’t utter a word as he stepped towards the table.

At once, his hand sharpened with steel claws that seemed to peel out of his skin. Not Shardware… it was a Mutation. They began to hum, vibrating so fast they were a constant blur. Then they plunged, ripping the table into two and out fell all of its contents.

The Lieutenant stared at the metal box for a second, mockingly shaking it in front of Shaun. “Thank you, Ripley."