Chapter 6

“Wake up!” A sharp nudge to my shoulder pushed me off the bed and I found myself pinned awkwardly in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.

“Huh? Whuzzat?” I blurrily queried the gorilla that had viciously attacked me while I slumbered. As my eyes cleared I recognized it was actually my sister smiling down at my struggles.

“Time to hit the range! It was your idea, remember? Get up!” Sara cheerfully informed me with her fists propped on her hips. I managed with some effort to pry myself out from beside my bed and followed Sara straight out of the apartment into the hall.

While I’d been half asleep as I exited the apartment, I almost immediately shook it off at the burst of adrenaline I got from realizing I was finally out of that cramped hole of an apartment that I’d been in for days. As the door shut, I saw it was apartment number 1337 and made sure to remember it. Heh, leet. Yeah I’ll remember that. I followed her more alertly to the elevator at the end of the hall as I double checked I had my gun in its holster, and we took the heavily vandalized box down to the ground floor. I was surprised there wasn’t more trash around the halls, considering how run down everything else here was. “They have cleaner bots that come out of little holes in the walls and clean things up when people aren’t around. The apartment complex sells the trash to recyclers and makes a little bit of money that way over time. You can literally just throw your trash in the halls and it’ll get taken care of, but you’ll rarely see the bots if they’re working correctly,” explained Sara when I asked about it.

As we exited the front of the building we were treated to the brilliantly lit street’s visual cacophony of neon signs and the plethora of holograms interspersing them. Looking back I noted the name of our apartment building was The Carlton. With a thought, I set a pin in my map app in my internal agent, so I’d be able to easily find my way back. Unlike the various clever neon signs in the area, The Carlton was simply labeled as such with plain neon letters. It wasn’t even a particularly large sign and could easily be missed if you weren’t looking for it.

We started left down the sidewalk, and, when traffic thinned out a bit, Sara sprinted across the street with myself following as quickly as I could. The fact that I could now run, if only that short distance, put a smile on my face. Sara noticed and shared my grin as we strolled down the opposite sidewalk.

I was on the lookout for trouble, but apparently 8AM is either too early or too late for muggers in this area. I was somewhat surprised to see how much garbage was built up in the various alleyways. I’d have figured that if there’s money to be made in recycling trash then people would be taking it for themselves to make some money. The margins must be too low, or the big recyclers only deal in bulk to avoid dealing with small frys, or something. Well, since I’m not planning to go into the garbage biz, I don’t suppose it really matters one way or the other.

A quick 10 minute walk brought us to Gary’s Gun Garage just before a BurgerDepot that I could only assume was the one Sara worked at. Gary’s had a pretty large red neon sign underscored by a holographic gun that fired every few seconds, underlining the name of the shop with a streaking bullet. Sara pointedly ignored the BurgerDepot and headed right into Gary’s with me on her heels. A pudgy, balding, little dude, with circular red cybernetic eyes that looked a bit like glasses, glanced up from the tablet he’d been reading where he sat behind a bullet proof glass walled counter off to the left of the entrance. “Sara!” chirped the little guy happily as he hopped to his feet, not improving his height by much. “What brings your beautiful self to my humble gun emporium?” he asked with a big smile on his face.

“Heya, Gary. Morning! Just bringing my little brother Mal by to do a bit of shooting before work. You mentioned you had a shooting range, and he’s a little rusty. So I was hoping you could hook me up with a couple boxes of ammo for an Overseer and someplace to blow a few shots downrange.” She shamelessly winked at him as she said it and Gary turned bright red.

“O-of course! You’ve come to the right place! Just head through the door there.” Gary gestured off to his right and a door with a red light above it opened up for us as the light went green, presumably at Gary’s command. Gary’s circular counter looked to serve both the gun range side as well as allowing him to make sales in that front lobby section we’d just left. A gun range stretched farther into the building and had three out of three open lanes available. Guess 8AM is a little early for target shooting around here too.

A sliding drawer shot out of Gary’s counter and Sara walked over and grabbed out a couple of boxes of ammo. “Perfect! What do I owe ya, Gary?” asked Sara brightly.

Gary just waved her off with a wide smile on his face. “Since it’s your first time gracing my shop, this one’s on the house. I’m gonna let you get a taste for free so you’ll want to come back for more in the future. Call it an investment.” Gary laughed. “Normally 20 creds will get you a lane for an hour. And that Overseer ammo runs 10 per box, just so you know for next time, or if you need more ammo.”

Sara held up the ammo, looking like she was almost on the verge of tears. “You are the absolute best, Gary. That’s why you’re my favorite regular at the Depot.” She seemed to be inspecting the ammo as she walked over to the center lane, beckoning me to follow her.

As I followed, I looked over to Gary and threw him a thumbs up, “You’re the man, Gary,” I added. The little guy gave me a proud nod as he retook his seat and picked his tablet back up.

“Told ya Gary was cool,” said Sara as I joined her. I picked up a box of the ammo and found it was a box of MilSec .45 cal hollow points and it listed a series of guns that took this particular caliber. Overseer was third from the top. The headstamp on the base of the cartridges were identical to the ones in my belt, so I was plenty happy with them. Sara gestured to an odd symbol on the counter she’d set the ammo on. I raised an eyebrow in confusion. She just sighed and looked harder at the symbol and then back at me expectantly. I shrugged and examined it a bit more carefully. Almost as soon as I did, a popup appeared in my agent asking if I wanted to run the temporary range app. I confirmed I in fact did, and the moment I confirmed a holographic target appeared down range.

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Alright, now we’re talking. Sara gave me a bit of room as I squared off in front of the counter. Utilizing all the practice I’d spent much of the previous day accomplishing, I whipped out my revolver and loosed a round downrange… I missed the target. Badly. I wasn’t expecting that much kick from the gun, and it nearly tore itself out of my hand and whacked me in the face.

Sara snorted in amusement, and I’m pretty sure I heard Gary laugh as well. But I ignored the non-believers and holstered my Overseer and tried again. I almost hit the target with that second shot. Sara was outright chuckling at me at this point. I sighed and lifted my gun and took careful aim. I lined up the sights on the front and back of my pistol and carefully pulled the trigger. I finally hit the target about halfway between the edge and the bullseye.

Alright let’s try that again. I holstered my Overseer once more, and after a moment I drew it quickly and this time took a split second to aim before I pulled the trigger. Ding. The app informed me that I’d just clipped the edge of the bullseye. I smiled to myself, guess aiming is somewhat important when shooting…who knew?

+200 Handgun XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+200 Reflex XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

I smiled wider, guess the system that determines XP knew. I finished the rounds in my revolver and reloaded from the ammo box. Working on my quickdraw, I found myself hitting the bullseye about half the time, and I hadn’t missed the target entirely since those first two shots, granted one of my shots clipped the very edge…but that still counted as hitting the target, damnit.

On the first shot of my second reload I nailed the bullseye dead center and got another notification.

+200 Handgun XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+200 Reflex XP (+100 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

Handgun Level 1

I felt knowledge of my gun radiating through my mind like I was remembering something I had somehow forgotten even though I knew it incredibly well. I reloaded again and adjusted my stance slightly. “I think it’s coming back to me now. It’s still there in my muscle memory. I just had to get a feel for it,” I stated confidently. I again holstered my Overseer and stood for a moment before drawing it much faster than before and squeezed the trigger, as I now knew instinctively that pulling it was the wrong idea entirely. I’m pretty sure that’s the Level 1 Handgun skill talking. I hit the target dead center wringing a ding out of the app. I heard an appreciative whistle from Gary’s enclosure. I holstered the gun and immediately drew and fired again. Ding. I repeated the action over and over until it started to feel more like a zen exercise than anything else. Before I knew it, I’d finished off the ammo in the boxes. Noticing six empty boxes in front of me I came to the conclusion that Sara must have been buying me more without me noticing. The app was telling me I’d just hit 24 bullseyes in a row, and I realized I’d been ignoring my GEMA notifications. As soon as I thought about it they popped up.

+2000 Handgun XP (+1000 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

+400 Reflex XP (+200 XP from Rested XP Bonus)

Handgun Level 2

+1 Handgun Perk

Holy shit, how the fuck did I get so much Handgun XP? Even if only half of that XP came from shooting, with the other half coming from the rested bonus, that’s averaging more than one XP notice per box! Gotta be something to do with that weird trance I was in. I stopped trying to draw and fire and simply reloaded from the rounds on my belt and aimed slowly and put one shot after another into the target as I pulled up the perk list for the Handgun skill. No point in worrying about the how right now. It happened, that’s all there is to it. There were a plethora of options available, but one immediately jumped out at me and I selected it before even bothering to read the others.

+Quickdraw Perk

Booya! That put my Handgun at 0/3000XP and Reflex at 1300/2000XP. Sara was giving me an odd look as I cheerfully holstered my empty gun and headed over to Gary who had put down his tablet and had been watching me shoot. “Hey Gary, can I buy another box of that same ammo please?” I asked politely, sending him 10c.

“Sure thing, kid,” he said, almost startled. He grabbed a box from under the counter and tossed it into the drawer which extended out of the enclosure and gave me access to the box. “I see what Sara meant about you being rusty. That was a rough start, but you’ve got a real killer’s draw.”

“Thanks! I’ll take that as a compliment from a man that would know.” I held up the box and gave him a nod as I headed back to the lane. I started pulling out cartridges and putting them into the empty loops on my belt. It was about three quarters filled, and 12 rounds filled it up entirely with one last reload for my revolver which I decided not to use right now.

“You were never that good of a shot before,” said Sara quietly where she was leaning on the counter in the next lane over.

As I finished reloading my Overseer, I looked over at her with a shrug. “Don’t know what to tell ya. It started to feel like I was meditating or something, and I just fell into the zone. Maybe I just had too much stuff in my head before? Just needed a bullet to empty it out and turn me into the evil genius I was always meant to become!” I holstered my gun and held my hands out to the side clenched into rigid claws, then threw my head back and cackled, “Muahahaha! First Noir City, and then the world!” I cackled some more and then dropped my hands to my side and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “No?” I asked, to her expression of obvious doubt.

She snorted, “Nope, still my idiot brother. C’mon, let’s get outta here. I need to get to work and you need to go…hunting.” I let my shoulders and head slump forward as I followed her chuckling self out of the gun range as she thanked Gary again, giving him a wink and a wave.

We got out front and she gave me a serious nod. I straightened up and returned it seriously. She spun on her heel and headed into the BurgerDepot. I considered the restaurant for a moment and decided that I didn’t want her to have to work there for even one more week. I felt my expression firm into something blank on my face as I turned the other direction and stalked down the street. Time for murder.