The low-level hum of the comms in my ear was just loud enough to blank out the conversation I was trying to keep track of. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, necessarily. I just needed to know that whoever they were, were focused on their own business so they wouldn’t notice me traipsing over their heads.

Wouldn’t do for a bunch of shady bad guys to catch me swiping their tech when I was in the middle of their den.

I touched the speaker at my throat. "Silver Fox. You got something for that feedback?"

“Naw, shug, that’s best we got for now.” The smooth whiskey voice of my partner drawled back to me. It was no wonder he was so popular with any female he set his sights on. He was easily twice my age, but got laid more than any guy I knew. It was those piercing blue eyes of his; they drew most women to him like a magnet. And, if for some reason they didn’t automatically compel women to strip out of their clothes for him, his voice would.

Thankfully, I wasn’t attracted to muscular, tattooed, bearded men with silver hair who could be old enough to be my father. And whose words sounded like liquid sex when it was directed at any other female other than me.

“Gon’ make sure we do a tech check on yo’ ‘quipment when you get back to the den,” he drawled out.

Yup. I was totally immune.

“And if I don’t make it back there?” I was dangling head down in the middle of the building’s main ventilation shaft, reaching for the opening that I’d need to get me to the clean room, based on the building’s schematics. The carbon wire clipped onto my harness at my belt was the only thing keeping me from being a stain on the ground many, many feet below.

“Stop talking foolishness, girl, and get your head focused. I expect you in by curfew.”

I cringed at the gentle reproach from his tone all the way up here. I swallowed my grumble about my supposed curfew and shifted my weight so I could swing into the open duct.

Theoretically, the carbon wire attached to me could hold a dangling semi-truck, but when you were in nothing but a bodysuit and harness with a tether on you, logic didn’t quite compute in your mind. The throbbing pulse in my forehead wasn’t helping me concentrate at the task at hand.

Finally, my fingertips grazed the lip of the duct, and I scrambled into it with only a little bit of a clatter. The raised voices however didn’t stop. In fact, one of them mewled and whimpered, adding to the noise.

Great. Someone was likely being tortured. I wiped my bangs from my eyes before tapping my temple. The building schematics overlayed my vision in a prismatic teal that showed the various tunnels that interconnected and split from the main duct. I swiveled my gaze in all directions, trying to line up the three-dimensional schematics to what was in front of my face. This one tunnel was the most direct way to get to that clean room.

I decided to move forward, hoping that they were staging some kind of random intervention and not torturing someone to death.

“You stopped moving, shug. You all right?”

I shook my head to get moving, inching across the duct until I arrived at the utility door, right where it was supposed to be thanks to the map. "It's all good, I just needed to make sure they didn’t hear me. They’re putting up some kind of racket, so as long as they don’t stop whatever they’re doing, I think I’ll be covered."

"You know they're probably torturing some poor bloke to death."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, and I had a crisis of conscious. No worries, though, I got over it.” I muttered as I inched myself steadily across the duct until I faced a utility door.

“That’s right you did. We ain’t a charity, and they ain’t no orphans needing rescued. They’re scum beating up on other scum. They doin’ us a favor cleaning up after they own mess.”

“No need to preach to the choir, Silver Fox. Okay, comms off.” Thankfully, that would guarantee me some reprieve from what could be a full on lecture. One of these days he would stop treating me like a kid. 

I pushed back the tip of my left index finger, and flicked on the blowtorch and set it to high heat. The fire of the blowtorch finally went through the metal casings of the lock, and I was able to move on.

"One barrier down." Three to go.

I moved past the utility door, moving toward the clean room, leaving the sounds of torture behind me. Soon, I found myself hovering over the right room. I unlatched from the rope that suspended me. The floor had touch-sensitive plates that would sound alarms. I didn't need anyone to walk into me while I was on stilts.

I dropped into the shadows. Even from here, I could still hear meaty punches and whips against flesh. At least the cries to stop were muffled. 

Ugh they were torturing some unfortunate soul. As if that was the best way to get information from anyone. But I wasn’t here to teach these men efficiency.

No matter how far technology had taken the world, no matter the e-conveniences we created for ourselves, it always came down to flesh, blood, and bone…

I didn’t feel any differently. But I had a different type of strength.

I slipped unseen. That was my job after all. To be unseen.

I slipped into the door, third to the left. Schematics projected in my  lens.

I blinked them away, accessing different information from my databanks. The memory I needed was there, and I called up the key code I’d purloined from my last hack job. Holding my breath, the light turned green. Smiling, I pushed inside of the room.

The computer was where it was supposed to be, an old model that actually required a monitor to use as an interface rather than an embedded user chip. No way this was the one that had this much security around it. What the hell?

I did not slither through the underbelly of Cyberscape to not find what I was looking for.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

This was the only time, though. There wouldn’t be another opportunity in a few months. I calculated the odds in my head, the rain of numbers blurring my vision. I needed to figure out something soon.

My partner respected the radio silence when I needed it, but if I didn’t move soon, he’d wonder why, and I wasn’t about to let him know it was because I got shit information.

I slumped in the chair. Everything about this office was so retro. Wooden chair on wheels. Pockmarked metal desk. Even the windows had wooden slats for blinds. It was like a scene from one of those detective novels that Silver Fox liked reading.

I wouldn’t admit defeat yet. There was still time.

And that’s when I saw it. A secret button under the desk. And the wall moved back.

Time seemed to stand still for a moment as I spied the chronos chip gleaming in all its black glory behind a protective glass casing. I finally found what I was looking for. Lifting the polycarbonate glass, I plucked the chronos chip from its nest.

“Hello, sexy,” I crooned at the chip.

An amused chuckle rumbled in my ear. “I’m guessing you got what you need to be talking like that, shug.” A shrieking sound trilled from his end of the comms, and he immediately switched to his war-mode. “What just happened? Your pulse spiked and heart rate sputtered.”

Oops. I forgot that he’d have biometric reads on me, thanks to my suit. I snapped back to hide where my thoughts had actually been when his voice came on the line: in the dirty, dirty gutter. “Err, nothing, just a zap on my finger, is all. Stop clucking at me like a mama hen!” Was that right? Did hens even cluck?

I produced the counterfeit chip to stand in place. For all intents and purposes, it would pass all superficial tests.

“Hen? Damn, shug, now you know I’m the fox that eats up all the hens in the coop.” I could practically see his eyes light up and dance as they always did when he teased me about his sexual prowess.

His voice would be the death of me.

I zipped the chronos chip into a secret compartment in my bodysuit. “You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes at you.”

He barked out a laugh. “Come on back, then, shug. Wouldn’t want your eyes rolling out of your head during a job.”

“I’ll tag you when I’m on my way.”

I put the room back as I’d found it, even the chair at an angle. Getting in was always the easiest. Getting out would be tricky.

I changed my appearance. Gone was the black capped hair, which I placed carefully into the compact backpack I carried with me. Shaking out the platinum blonde extensions that I had woven into my look, and layered brightly colored club wear over my black bodysuit.

I pressed the comm at my throat. “On my way back to the den, Silver Fox.”

“Copy. Countdown’s starting, shug.”

That meant that if I didn’t make it back to the den in an hour, he would come after me, guns blazing. “Roger that. Comms out.” I emphasized that with a tap that would show that I’d muted him. He’d still be able to override it in an emergency, but I didn’t want to be distracted by nonsense gutter thoughts at an inopportune time as I was hightailing out of here.

I slipped out of the room, and headed down to the lower levels by way of the old dumbwaiters that were hidden among electrical panels.

No one looked at the stuff underneath the surface. Years of growth and adding on…the bones of the city--of what things once were--no longer mattered.

Which worked out for my benefit. If people cared, they wouldn’t need to hire me to do the trace work.

I clipped my carbon wire to the dumbwaiter access shafts, and skimmed all the way down to the floor level, where I found myself just outside of the main bathrooms.

I surprised a couple of club rats zoning on the latest hype drug. They barely stirred, as they were more involved on their high than reality.

They were plugged into a life they preferred rather than the one they were born into. When the credits ran out, and they always ran out, they would be in for a rude awakening. One that many didn’t survive.

I traipsed over a litter of tranced bodies, and snaked my way through serpentine halls toward the dance floor. Just past the mob would be a hidden emergency exit when things like building permits and safety codes were a thing.

Static squelched in my ear. Silver Fox’s voice broke through in bursts, trying to tell me something. I tapped my ear a couple of times to change the frequency, but it was all mostly static, thanks to the crazed rave music. One phrase came through loud and clear, though: “They know.”

Their security wasn’t so horrible after all.

How much they knew, I could only guess, but I erred on the side of caution. I had to assume they knew everything and every detail, however unlikely that might be.

I found a willing body to dance and spin around with, and soon, one dance partner turned into two, three, four...a whole mob. I gave myself up to it, raising my hands high above my head, throwing my head back in decadent laughter. Selling the idea that I’d been here all night, been partying just as hard and just as long. It was an easy sell, the heat of the club made me as sweaty and flushed as my dance partners in no time.

I paused when I saw my current disguise projected onto the big screen, platinum extensions spinning around my body...

Damn. I wanted to be able to use this disguise again. But, I couldn’t risk it. Great. Time to burn this identity. Shame, really, since I hadn’t had time to really play with it.

There were a few bouncers scoping the dance floor, but they didn’t look twice at the twelve-foot projection of me gyrating between two hot bodies. Good. I hoped that meant that they didn’t know who they were looking for, only that they were looking for someone.

I needed out but the sea of bodies were getting a little grabby, slowing my exit. At this rate I wouldn’t make it out of the club and back in the den before Silver Fox fired up his tank and started an urban war.

Fuck this. I amped up some of the bionics that were attached to my suit, and pulsed it into the air. It came out as a dazzling light display. The club dancers whooped it up a notch, thinking it was part of the show. The bouncers, who had been scouring the crowds were temporarily blinded.

I sliced my platinum extensions off leaving me with my chin-length bob, and grabbed a rainbow party wig and glasses off of a dancer, and headed toward the hidden emergency exit. I pushed my whole weight against it, expecting it to boarded up or locked at least. My efforts sent me stumbling into a grimy alley.

Well, that was a nice bit of luck. I took in a few breaths of the dank, fetid air, lucky that I was between two buildings and out of view of the hovering drones that monitored this sector, albeit lazily. A beep buzzed against my wrist, reminding me of my timeline. I got moving.

There were muffled voices and I could see a couple grappling in the dark. As I got closer, it was clear that they were not a true couple, and that the woman was not happy with this dude’s attention. He parted from her, and holding a fistful of her hair, whacked her across the face with the flat of his hand. While she was stunned, he yanked her dress down, exposing her breasts.

Red washed my vision as the anger rose inside of me. Rapists were the worst kind of criminals out there. Just as he worked his belt and pants off, I reached them. Gripping the back of the guy’s neck, I pried him away from the woman whose glazed eyes and tear-streaked face would forever be imprinted in my memories.

“No means no, you sick fuck.” I released the spring in my forearm that shot my knife into my hand, and dragged the blade across his neck. The hot liquid of his blood splattered everywhere, oozing over my fingers.

The woman, snapping out of her stupor, started shrieking, over and over again, louder than when the man had been attacking her. This type of racket would surely alert the security drones, burnt out slum sector or no. Exactly the type of attention I did not need. “Yo, can you shut up? Hey!” I snapped my fingers in her face, accidentally sparking a little flame between them.

The woman scrambled from under the man’s body kicking him toward me, screaming all the way. Sighing, I shook my head. I pulled off the ridiculous wig from my head and plopped it on the man’s cooling body and walked away from the alley full of echoing screams.

I saved a life, and the chick wasn’t even grateful. Figures. 

I patted my pocket, reassuring myself that the chronos chip was still inside, then jogged in the direction of my motorcycle. The buzzing at my wrist was reaching the critical point. I’d need to push it if I’m gonna make it to the den in time.