Freddie had a long night pulling bullets out of a pair of Arrecho’s boys. His morning was no better, with his neighbor frantically waking him to sew up her dog that somehow ended up with a knife stuck in its back leg.
He loved dogs, he loved helping dogs, but he preferred to help dogs not at four in the morning. He jumped as the someone banged on the front door then rolled over on the patient chair and ignored it. The bang sounded again, louder.
“Go away!” he groaned. He could hear muffled talking behind the door, but he really didn’t want to deal with more inane bullshit tonight. A beam of light hit his eyes from a hole in the roof. He looked over at a clock. It was noon.
“Freddie! I have something for you buddy! Come open up!” He cursed to himself. It was Arrecho’s daughter now, Serena who was bugging him. She banged on the door again and shouted. “It’s bad business to keep the shop closed all day!”
Freddie groaned. He slid off the chair and into a pair of slippers. With a yawn, he proceeded to ignore the banging on the door and pushed through small plastic packages that filled a small shelf on the wall. “Lasagna, burger, oh! BLT?” he held up a thin package the size of a credit card before shaking his head and throwing it back onto the shelf.
“Freddie!” More banging.
“Coming! I’m indecent!” He called back over his shoulder, she didn’t sound too urgent. Even if she was the boss’s daughter she could give him a moment to wake up, dammit. He skimmed a bit more, then pulled up a package with a nod. “Bagel breakfast sandwich, yes please.” He threw the package into the rehydrator and set a dirty mug against a device built into the wall. A button press, and a hot black liquid poured out. Sipping at the bitter liquid that was almost coffee, he stumbled his way over to the door as the rehydrator hummed.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here already—” He froze as he opened the door a crack. Through it, he saw a cyborg. A full cyborg. He slammed the door shut.
“Freddie wait! She’s nice! Let us in, man!”
He stumbled back, racking his brain. “Renault limbs, what looked like a designer Calico flack jacket, and the face… a Triton face shield, bullet proof up to handgun rounds…” All premium pieces, though none of it matched up. That still left several groups that could have sent it after him. It was so jumbled though…
The small chime from the rehydrator made him jump, spilling his hot coffee over his hand and body.
“Ah! Dammit…” He stared down at the fresh brown stains down the front of his overalls. His last good pair. He took a deep breath and opened the door. “You, cyborg. Were you sent looking for me?”
The cyborg didn’t flinch, but answered in a chewed up voice that sounded half-fried. “I have no clue who you are. I was told you might have a task that needs doing in exchange for some siiiiiIIIIIIIimple repairs.”
The cyborg punched their throat to keep talking. He could see in the neck a Cemi-Vox voice synthesizer. Designed to prevent their words from being picked up on drones and listening devices, it was a high-grade military device, and it was being punched nearly full force by a cyborg. Whoever put this cyborg together should be pissed at how this bot was treating the hardware they kitted it out in. There were holes in the mask, and damaged optics behind. The body was in good shape, a customized Deema Evo II Puppet shell it looked like, and the limbs…
“What the hell happened to your feet?” He pointed at the pair of ankles the cyborg balanced on.
“Grenade.” It answered with a shrug.
“Faaaaah, come in.” He turned on his heel, allowing the door to open for the two. “Selena, close the door will you?” He opened the rehydrator and pulled out his breakfast, gesturing to the patient’s chair with the sandwich in his hand. “Sit. Uh, whatever your name is.”
“Kat.” She replied.
“Right…” He moved to bite into his sandwich, but Selena got there first, taking the sandwich and eating most of it in several quick bites. “Sure. Help yourself. Coffee?” He held out the half-full mug.
“Yes! Thanks Freddie!” She took the mug with a beaming smile.
Freddie sighed as he sat on a creaking, wheeled chair and rolled close to the cyborg, looking her over. “Haah. Okay. What are we working with?”
----------------------------------------
Karla went over the laundry list she’d made in her head. “I’d like my vision restored as much as possible, something done about my voicebox so it won’t randomly squawk, and something about my feet. I don’t know if you have replacements, judging by what Serena told me, but even wrapping the ankles in rubber or something so I’m not skidding around on hard surfaces would be good.”
The man called Freddie looked her over. “That’s it?”
“Do I need much more than that?” Karla looked down. She’d removed her clothes, and there was indeed some wear and tear, but it didn’t look too bad.
“Look, here.” Freddie pointed out several frayed black fibers sticking up on her left bicep. “The muscle strands have separated here, and will continue to fray as you move, eventually failing. And here, these actuators on your knee, I bet they feel stiff, right? That’s because your seals have blown out and have lost a ton of hydraulic fluid.” He peered around the joint. “Were you somewhere high pressure? The seal has actually been pushed inwards…”
“I was underwater for a while…” She looked over her limbs with a frown. They looked amazing, and were apparently pretty expensive, but they were heavily lacking in durability and combat ability.
Karla paused at that. Combat ability. Why am I thinking in terms like combat ability? Those two hundred years as a murderbot might be getting to me. She had never killed a person on purpose till she was taken over by Stoke. Still, she had a hard time caring about her personal moral quandaries. Something to look into later, she thought as she tuned back into what Freddie was saying.
“—honestly, they need a full factory overall, and would probably be better off replaced with something of a lower spec—”
She cut him off. “How long will they last?”
“How long? It all depends on what you do with them.”
Karla cocked her head. “You had something that needed doing, right?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Uh, yeah. Something combat-related.”
“I’m good at combat-related.” Karla replied, trying to put in as much confidence into her words as possible.
Freddie twisted his lips and glanced over at Selena. “You think the old man would go for it?”
“If it’s cleared out already? He’d be dancing to get in on this.”
He sighed and looked over Karla for a few moments. “There’s a factory down here. A big one that fills the ridge where this valley ends up north. It is owned by the Rising Eagle Corporate Group. It’s the only holding they still have left after some trouble with their board members, and they are still weak. I doubt they have much of a security force in place. They faced frequent corporate warfare once others smelled blood in the water, but they somehow stabilized, and are now steadily making their way back up in the world. If that holding was taken out, their entire corporation would collapse, they’d be eaten alive up north, and down here…”
“The Amarillo Heights would take over!” Selena added cheerfully.
“Wait,” said Karla, “you kill the people who own a factory, and then you just go in and claim it’s yours? Wouldn’t the city or church security forces step in?”
Selena laughed. “Nah nah nah. Chica listen. They don’t care about whoever runs it. They have contracts with each and every factory down here. As long as the contracts remain fulfilled, they don’t care if everyone in the factory is gunned down. We just gotta swoop in, bring in some of our people, then get to work. It’s basic corporate warfare.”
Karla shook her head, this was very different than her era. “That’s corporate warfare? Actual warfare? Isn’t murder a crime?”
“Have you not been on the streets? There’s too many people, even with all of the habs they built. People are cheap, contracts are gold. As long as you don’t fuck up a contract, then nobody cares.”
Freddie nodded as if this was all common sense. “That’s why you’ll need to also find their documents on what their making. Technical specs, contract requirements. Delivery details. Beyond that, you just need to slip past their security detail and take out three people. They should be at the factory most of the days right now, they just got that new contract and they are ramping up hard. Here.”
Freddie walked across the room to a cabinet. He pulled out a few pieces of paper and held them out. Karla stretched her senses out, but could only make out that the paper was creased, and covered in dust. Otherwise she couldn’t see a damn thing. She looked at Freddie and waited.
“Oh! Yeah, your vision is out, right? Let me see if I can get your eye fixed up real quick.” He leaned over her and began prodding. “You said it was working till you were impacted by something? Probably something loose or fractured…” A click, a spark, and the eye made a slight whine as it warmed up. “There! Your power line was broken, but a quick solder job and it’ll be good to go. That will break again after a hard impact though, so this is just temporary, okay?” He held out the papers again.
Karla could finally see again. She took the papers as she glanced around. Grimy. The building they were in looked heavily run down and old. Serena was there, close to what she imagined. Young, pierced eyebrows and a sharp smirk over her face. Freddie looked far younger and scragglier than she expected, with numerous traces over his body from sensors and tools. “You’re young for a technician. You sure you know what you’re doing?” she asked.
Freddie scoffed. “I was the head technician of the Rising Eagle corporate group. I personally handled the board of directors with their gear and interfaces.”
“If you were so well regarded, then what happened? Why are you all the way down here?” she asked as she looked over the papers. They were announcements of two men and a woman’s success in gaining a large contract with some other corporation.
“Freddie here killed the board of directors.” Selena laughed. “Wired into their brains, had them all melt down right in the middle of a presentation! It was kick-ass!”
Karla cocked her head at him.
“They were doing some bad shit!” He held up his hands. “I had full access to their heads and thought I could make a big change in the world if I took them out. Made an example out of them…”
“And? Did it?” said Karla.
“No… well, kinda? Not really.” Freddie dropped himself back into his chair with a squeak and looked over the paper clippings. “They lost a lot of their power, but I bet as soon as they get back on their feet, they’ll continue with their side projects. All of the info I fed the news networks was purged, as if it had never existed. ”
“What was it?”
He hesitated, his eyes flitting around the room. “I was leading a project to develop a kind of brain digitization, not fully, just for pieces that were damaged, usually by folks who use the cheap knock-off interfaces that tend to fry their prefrontal cortex. We’d upload a simple image from a healthy brain to help an injured person live a normal life. Personality and memories intact, clean.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Karla.
“They started grabbing people off the street and giving them lobotomies.” Selena gestured to the front of her head. “They put in this hardware, and a modified scan from a trained soldier, and boom! Instant, skilled, loyal guards and soldiers. No training, no questioning of orders, and no pay.”
“More than lobotomies, they were replacing over half the fucking brain!” Freddie leaned back with a sigh. “I took out the directors and fled down here. I don’t want them to get back onto their feet and continue that shit. I want that company to burn. Once they lose this last factory, other corporate entities will tear them apart. Maybe slowly, maybe fast if I can send word of what happened. But either way, that would be the end of those bastards.”
“That’s also how I’ll get you out of the sector, Chica.” Selena spoke up.
“What, I can’t just walk out?” said Karla.
“Nobody moves between sectors of the City without a reason, especially north. If you were coming south, they don’t care as much. I don’t know how you made it down here to the Canyon, but I’d bet my left nut you didn’t come down the proper way, otherwise you’d have been through all of the gates, and they wouldn’t have allowed you down here with how kitted out you are. If we go through with this, I bet we can get you onto the first shipment back up north. You can hop off and be on your merry way.”
“Wait, how many sectors are between me and the northern sector of City West?”
“Just two sectors, three walls. One sector wall is right above old Tijuana, another is near the military base, then another right above old LA. You could go east after military, but there’s another two sector walls to get through out that way. Honestly, it would be a pain in the ass to try and get through some other way. Unless you had some contacts with the City or Church, that is.”
Karla sighed. That giant Church building was probably one of the checkpoints to get into the city, she wondered if there were more elsewhere. No way she was fighting her way through, but she’d rather die on her feet than drown in the sewers trying to walk back north.
It just seemed all nice and dandy, too convenient. Too perfect. “You are trusting me quite a bit with all of this information.”
Freddie shrugged. “If you were here to kill me, you’re already here. I doubt I could stop you. But if you can help, we’re running out of time to stop the Rising Eagle from taking flight. We need to kill it in its nest.”
Karla chuckled. “How poetic. How many guards are we talking about? And how heavily will they be armed?”
“Light,” said Freddie, “they aren’t supposed to bring anything beyond simple guards down this way. Honestly the entire city is limited to self-defense weaponry aside from the Church and City Security. The number should be around forty or so, but they’ll be spread apart and easy to deal with or avoid. Especially with how geared up you are. Besides, you just need to take out the three heads, and grab their data. I’ll get you an GPIO tool to mess with their security systems once you’re inside.”
Karla cursed internally. It sounded complicated, but perhaps one of her best options. She had no cash nor connections down here, only her body. She might as well put it to use. She nodded. Only the end goal mattered. Get to the north of the city, find Delta and Olivia and get the hell out of this place. This was just the first step. “Fine. If that’s the price to pay to get fixed back up, and up into the north sector then I’ll do it. But I’ll need some weaponry.”
“I told you my family makes guns!” Selena gave her a thumbs up. “I’ll find some nice pieces for you to work with.”
“That’s good. Yeah, good.” Freddie rubbed his face as he looked over the papers. “We should move soon. If we can get in before they finish up the contract, we’ll get the payment for that delivery. They’ll be hurt financially and we’ll have their factory and a big paycheck. If you do this for us, I promise I’ll find some damn good limbs to replace your worn out ones then, but that kind of ask is difficult down here without some serious cash.”
Karla tossed the cutout papers onto the desk and laid back. “Fine. Then we should get moving. Cut me up, doc.”