Chapter 24

Lugging a high tech rifle and a heavy duffel full of solid metal arms on my back, I didn’t really feel like walking up a full ten flights of stairs, so I headed up to sub 9 and took the elevator the rest of the way. For some reason the people in the elevator all seemed to be keeping considerable distance from me on my short trip up to the ground level. Oh yeah, I’m covered in blood, guts, and my own shit. I bet I don’t smell awesome right now.

On the way up I took the time to cut together a full vid of the gig, from purchasing the poison, to distributing it, to the cleanup job slaughtering a good thousand kids, to the confrontation with another merc crew. I thought it made a pretty compelling watch, all said.

While we’d been checking for loot near the food court, we’d discovered a large number of rooms that had clear drag marks to their doors, in areas of the level that smelled particularly nasty. Lizzy had cracked one of the apartments open and immediately vomited at the intense odor of death. We discovered it packed like sardines from floor to ceiling with corpses in various states. Most of them seemed to have perished when I’d gotten my poison upgrades, as the corpses had black veins running all over their bodies. If the look on their faces could be justly considered evidence of their painful passing, then they had died badly, and screaming. I’d simply snapped a pic to add to the end of my gig vid and closed the door.

I vaguely wondered if I should feel bad about murdering that many children. Then I found myself rubbing my foot on the back of my leg where Abby had pulled out a homemade shiv. Nah…Fuck those kids. I’d seen the piles of chrome they’d ripped out of people. And Sara had told me in no uncertain terms to stay out of the food court kitchens if I didn’t want nightmares. Seemed it was a bit of a horror show in there. I hadn’t known they were fucking cannibals.

When the elevator finally made it to ground level, I trudged out and down the halls to The Drunk Kitten. I kept finding myself amazed at how well my mere appearance parted the crowds around me, the sidelong fearful looks from various passersby were actually somewhat gratifying. I finally felt like a real badass merc. Of course I’d killed thousands of people today, so I supposed I actually was one now.

I walked into The Kitten just as a song was ending. As the final chord of the live band’s song faded to silence, I could hear the good sized group of mercs chatting with one another. Which made the sudden cessation of their various conversations, as their attention was drawn to me, rather perceptible. I pretended not to notice as I walked my blood drenched ass over to the bar.

Without a word I sent the bartender a copy of the vid I’d labeled ‘gig complete.’ I took a seat on a bar stool and waited while his eyes glowed blue, apparently reviewing it. After a minute of waiting, I just pulled out a blue box of cigarettes, slid one out of the pack, and brought it to my lips, grimacing a bit at the blood my less than clean fingers left on the filter. It crackled to life with a small streamer of smoke as I drew air through it. The moment I did, a small circular hole the size of my fist opened on the bar and an ashtray rose up out of it. With a smile I tapped my finger on my cigarette, knocking the ash off into the convenient tray. I really love this high tech shit sometimes.

I was halfway through my second cigarette by the time he finished his review of my footage. As his eyes stopped glowing, he pulled out a clear mug filled with water and ice from below the bar and set it in front of me. “On the house,” he declared. “I’ve forwarded the video evidence of the job to the client with my assurances that he’ll be satisfied with the results and can have his cleaners begin clearing up the detritus down on sub 10. 200,000c, as previously agreed.” His eyes glowed yellow for a moment and 200,000c showed in golden numbers for a moment on my HUD.

I nodded with a grin as I got up from my stool, taking my free water with me. “Pleasure doin’ biz,” I said simply and turned to head for the booths, where I saw the twins waving happily at me with the hoods of their cyber ninja suits pulled down. Oh good, I can actually tell which is which now.

I found myself getting some respectful nods from various mercs as I walked over to the girls. Huh, is that Katrina? I wondered as I saw the woman in a yellow tank top all but hiding behind a large man in a booth next to her. For some reason she seemed to have upgraded herself since I last saw her and now had two glowing red cybernetic eyes.

Quickly finding myself standing in front of the girls’ booth, I discovered that Gary had apparently joined them at some point and was pulled up against Sara with her gorilla-like arm over his shoulder. Given their height difference his face was all but pressed into the side of Sara’s breast, he didn’t seem to mind as he had a wide grin on his face and a beer in his hand. I just raised my mug to him in a silent toast that he returned with his beer bottle.

“Well girls, that’s ‘gig complete,’” I stated confidently. All of their eyes glowed gold for a moment when I sent them each 20,000c, eliciting cheers all around. I set the heavy duffel on the table carefully to avoid their drinks, noticing that they seemed to have kept some of their spoils of battle that were also taking up space. The samurai’s sword was most prominently displayed in front of the twins, but Lizzy seemed to have kept a few pieces of chrome she’d found in the scav pile down there, since I saw a pair of golden chrome hands, with that golden sheen I’d come to recognize as Samsung brand, along with a similar thick golden ring sitting in front of her. “We just need to sell off these arms, and-” I pulled the high tech rifle off my back and held it out, stock first, to Gary. “I still gotta ransom back Stumpy’s girlfriend here. Gary, I told the guy I’d have his gun appraised by my favorite arms merchant and sell it back to him at that price. If I was selling this to ya, what would you give me?”

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

Gary’s eyes quickly turned professional as he took the rifle out of my hands and began giving it a once over. I scooted into the booth next to Lizzy while we all watched him removing the clip, jacking out the shell in the chamber, pulling out a cable from the side of the gun that I didn’t even know existed, and plugging it into a port behind his ear. Various neon lights I hadn’t seen on the rifle when it’d been aimed at me lit up in quick succession. Less than a minute later, Gary unplugged the cable and it zipped back into the rifle of its own accord. Gary picked up a napkin from the table, reached over and dipped it unceremoniously into my mug, and used the wet napkin to rub off a bit of blood that seemed to have somehow dirtied it. “Lot of custom work on this baby. This is a damn nice rifle. I wouldn’t be at all embarrassed to use a rifle like this. Brand new? Something like this, with this many mods, would run you 50 grand, easy. Buyin’ used? I’d probably give you 35 for it.” His sudden professionalism was slightly ruined by tossing me the rifle to pick his beer back up and then leaning back to continue cuddling up with my sister.

“Thank you kindly, Gary. Always good to have a professional opinion available,” I said graciously, once again toasting him before taking a long gulp of that sweet sweet ice water. At some point I should really ask the bartender what brand this is. I opened my contacts to send Stumpy a message. Fortunately I didn’t have very many contacts yet, because for the life of me I could not recall that his name was actually Logan. Having found it by process of elimination I whipped off a quick message.

Malcolm: Got your rifle appraised. Was told I could sell it for 35,000c, so that’s what it’ll cost you. We’re drinking at The Drunk Kitten if you want to come by and pick her up.

Not 20 seconds went by before I got a response.

Logan: I’d come right now…but I’m stuck in a ripper chair getting my foot replaced. I can be there in…Doc says an hour. 35 grand, no problem. See ya then?

I responded in the affirmative and addressed the girls after finishing off my water. “Looks like Stumpy is getting a new foot put on at the moment,” this got a few laughs. “He’ll be coming by in an hour or so. Me? I need to get out of these nasty clothes and get into a shower. Think you girls can hold the fort down here while I take care of that quick?”

“Go!” said Lizzy, gingerly shoving at my arm with the use of a napkin to keep the blood from getting on her hand. “You smell almost as bad as that one apartment downstairs.”

Standing up, I sent Sara 1000c, saying, “Drinks are on me tonight, I left a grand with Sara to get you started. Back in a bit!” This got me some more cheers and raised drinks as I waved off their praise and made my way out of the bar.

The crowds continued to part around me, and I got my own private corner of the elevator all to myself on my way home. Walking down the hall up on 150, I noticed that the MilSec security guys were definitely giving me some looks, and their hands were kept at the ready on their weapons. When I just nodded politely, I got a polite nod right back. Having always been rather ignored by those guys in the past, that definitely gave me a warm feeling deep down.

The moment I entered our apartment I made a beeline for the washer/drier. Stripping down to my skin, I tossed everything, boots included, into the washer. The only thing that didn’t go in there was my guns. Sending the machine 5c started it rotating and spraying water and various chemicals into the mix. The boots were making it thump loudly, but I wasn’t going to walk around with those nasty things a moment longer than I had to. And I sure as fuck didn’t want to clean them by hand after what I’d been strolling through all day.

Walking naked into the bathroom, I stopped and stared at myself in the mirror. My hands, face, and torso were liberally smeared with blood. My hair had so much in it that it was all but slicked back, and somehow there were even a few small chunks of unidentifiable flesh stuck here and there. Damn, no wonder people were getting out of my way. I look like a deranged murderhobo. Finally I shrugged and just strode into the shower, which started up with a quick application of creds to its temp app. Embrace the murderhoboness, man. This is your life now. I told myself.

I just put my hands against the wall and leaned on it as the hot water washed over me, sluicing off the blood and more disgusting bodily fluids. Checking my account I found I now had over 150 grand to my name, and I hadn’t even gotten my share from the guns or chrome yet, not to mention the cyber arms and the rifle. Finally, I had some damn money again. I needed to put together a wishlist for what I wanted to buy myself.

I’d been slowly putting together a list of everything I remembered from my last life. I figured if I was going to be here until I died, I’d probably start forgetting stuff eventually, and it was better to write it all down while it was fresh. I had dozens of possible jobs I could do to earn even more money, not to mention the random little things that were basically money or gear just laying around Noir CIty waiting to be picked up off the ground. Just need to gear up a bit and I can start making some real money.

I ran a hand through my hair, causing the water running off my face to take on a decidedly red tint. Everything’s finally starting to come together.