Circus sat at the counter of a streetside food stall, picking at the bowl of watery noodles in front of him as he watched the two gangs killing each other across the street.
Two minutes earlier the building had been quiet, with just a Japanese human sitting on the steps of the tenement building with a shotgun resting on his legs as he scrolled through his comm. Then a pair of vans pulled up right in front of the building, and a dozen Chosen poured out the back.
The Yakuza guard didn’t see the shot coming until it was too late, as the lead Chosen raised his rifle and ventilated his skull. Unfortunately for the rest of the Chosen – dressed in faux-tactical gear and body armour emblazoned with snarling wolves or old world flags – one of the other Yakuza guards in the drug lab on the third floor had been leaning out of the window while he smoked, and saw the whole thing go down.
Fortunately for the human supremacists, whatever the ork in the window had been smoking was enough to mess with his aim. The spray of fire from his submachine gun only hit one of the Chosen, with the rest of the shots sparking across the roof of one of the vans before ending in the chest of a salaryman in a grey suit, who’d reacted to the gunfire by dropping to the floor with his hands over his head.
The Chosen responded with a frantic and ill-aimed burst of fire that sprayed across the entire front of the building, with most of them unable to even see the guy who was shooting at them. Circus watched as the leader of the Chosen warband – marked out by his vivid red and black tattoos – stormed up the stairs alongside two of his fellows.
The door swung shut behind them, only to burst back open seconds later as the leader was knocked right back out onto the street and a lumbering troll bent double to step through the doorway, his hands swapped out for vicious cybernetics. He stood for a moment, bleary eyes surveying the street at the glacial pace of the dosed-up brain attached to them, before the Chosen got their act together and began unloading mags into the troll.
Part of Circus couldn’t help but smile at the comical display as the troll stumbled towards the closest van with the inevitability of a freight train and the stability of a kid riding a bicycle for the very first time. He still managed to wrap his hand around the head of one Chosen – a woman with three pointed ears on a necklace – and split her skull with the crack of a snapped faceplate before finally dropping to one knee and toppling over, further crushing his target beneath his immense bulk.
“Hey!” a whispered shout drew Circus’ eyes away from the firefight for a brief moment, down to where the proprietor of the food stall was cowering on the ground.
“Get down, ya fuckin’ lunatic!” the wiry human teen spoke in another frantic whisper. “You wanna get shot?”
“’Course I don’t,” Circus replied, twirling up some more noodles with his chopsticks. “Up here I can see the bullets coming. Plus, not gonna say no to some free entertainment and this slop isn’t going to taste any better if I let it cool down.”
“Fuck you too, you crazy bastard,” the teen murmured as he tried to shrink himself down even further.
Circus ignored him, turning his attention back to the gunfight just in time to see a Yakuza footsoldier rest a light machine gun on a windowsill on the second floor. He got off a whole brace of shots, but the Chosen stormtroopers had got wise by this point, and a woman with vivid red hair in a braid that went down to her waist was able to pop off a shot with her rifle that caught the dwarf right in the arm.
A sound grabbed Circus’ attention. Not the gunfire in front of him, but a sharp noise buried amongst the ambient din of the city’s streets. Half a minute later, the battling gangsters started to hear it as well, before an armoured truck turned the corner in a squeal of tyres, with lights and sirens on full blast.
The truck was red, trimmed with white and with the white silhouette of an armoured, winged woman in profile on the side, a shield on one arm while the other was outstretched; a hand reaching out for anyone that needs it. Below the art, angled white letters spelled out ‘Valkyrie Paramedical.’
The shooting abruptly tapered off as the vehicle came to a stop mere feet from the gunfight, its flashing lights bathing Yakuza and Chosen alike in a red glow as a harsh and distorted voice blared from speakers on the vehicle.
“Stand clear of the patient!”
Circus reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of sports sunglasses. Flipping them open with one hand and putting them on, the AR overlay let him see the vivid red hazard warnings that had sprung up around the wounded salaryman.
On the roof of the truck, a pair of automated light machine guns swung into action as the vehicle’s driver used his control rig to point one at the Chosen stormtroopers in front of him, and the other at the Yakuza building beside him. Simultaneously, two doors slid open just behind the driver’s compartment and a quartet of armed gunmen stormed out.
The security team was dressed in red fatigues and white body armour, fanning out out in front of the patient and dropping to one knee as they kept their assault rifles trained on the gangers. Behind them, a trio of paramedics leapt out of the vehicle. Like the guards, their jumpsuits were red with white trim, but their armour was lighter and much more flexible. Two of them were carrying a stretcher, while the last had a bulky case of first aid supplies.
The Chosen watched nervously as the paramedics took up positions around their wounded client, cutting away clothing and applying dressings to the gunshot wounds before carefully yet quickly shifting the unconscious salaryman onto the stretcher. The barrel of one of the Chosen’s guns drifted up ever-so-slightly, only for a more senior member to push it back down.
The patient was carried back into the van and, just as quickly as they arrived, the security guards piled back into the ambulance. The automated guns remained trained on the warring gangs as the ambulance pulled past them, before a single shot broke the silence as one of the Chosen took the opportunity to shoot a dwarf who’d poked his head out of the window.
Circus was pretty confident the dwarf wasn’t part of the Yakuza, and was, in fact, just a resident of the building who maybe thought the siren represented the salvation of a Knight Errant patrol, rather than just some Valkyries out to protect their customer. It didn’t really matter either way, as both gangs recommenced firing in earnest while the ambulance’s guns swivelled back into neutral as it made to turn the corner, confident that the gunfight was no threat to its precious cargo.
If anything, the brief pause had made the fight all the fiercer. The Chosen were better organised, a woman with an old-world American flag spread across the back of her jacket stepping up to fill the void of their dead leader. She had half of the stormtroopers unload their magazines into the front of the building, accenting their fusillade with tossed grenades that fell short of the mark but still forced the Yakuza back.
Simultaneously, the lieutenant grabbed the other half of her force and shoved them out into the open one-by-one – from the way she manhandled men twice her size, her arms had to be cybernetics – where her shouts and vague threats encouraged them to make another rush for the door.
Their entry went more successfully than the last, and soon the flash of gunfire was visible from the windows on the second floor of the building as the Chosen began to fight their way through the Yakuza lab.
But the Yakuza weren’t dead yet, and soon one of the windows shattered outwards as they countered the Chosen’s advance with grenades. Moments later, the window was filled with the imposing bulk of an ork, laughing down at the Chosen from behind a metal faceplate as he rested a heavy machine gun on the windowsill.
A bullet sparked off his faceplate before he was able to open fire, his right eye sparking as it was crushed by the shift of its reinforced housing. That only made the ork laugh louder, before all noise was drowned out by the violent outburst of the HMG.
Shots tore through the Chosen’s vans like they weren’t even there, ripping through the footsoldiers who sought shelter behind them. The newly-promoted lieutenant staggered back as she was hit, the bullet passing clean through her and exiting through the stripes of the flag on her back, before falling back onto the road.
The Chosen – the ones still outside the building – were all dead, but the ork still kept firing his machine gun into the trucks, gleefully laughing as the engines sparked. He began moving the gun in an elliptical pattern that grew ever wider until it covered not just the vans but the buildings on the other side of the street.
Circus saw she shots coming, moving with preternatural quickness as he bent to the right to avoid the angle of incoming fire. The shots tore through the front of the stall, disintegrating packets of dried noodles and filling the air with gas as they cut through the refrigerators. But then the deafening crescendo ended as the ork’s gun ran dry, and Circus simply sat back up.
He looked down at the cowering teen, who’d only just stopped screaming.
“Told you,” he said, briefly considering finishing his food before fishing a sliver of shrapnel out of the bowl and deciding against it.
Instead, with the battle done and the lunchtime entertainment over, Circus simply wandered off down the street with his hands in his jacket pockets, as the few survivors of the Yakuza stumbled out the front door of the tenement block to gawk at the carnage and strip the dead Chosen of their guns, drugs, credsticks and commlinks.
His path through the city streets was purposefully erratic, passing along the pedways and beneath the towering apartment blocks of the New Estates, all grey concrete and brutalist shapes, the slab-sided forms broken up by hanging washing, second-hand air conditioner units and all the other accoutrements of life that messed up the architect’s perfect vision.
Circus ducked into a corner shop, making a beeline for the chilled racks of soft drinks near the entrance. Once he’d paid for the drink, he walked a little further before taking a seat on a plastic bench that was positioned with a prime view down onto the sparse grass of the small park that occupied the courtyard of the estate.
The bench was hard plastic, with little circles of metal where spikes once sat to prevent anyone using the bench to sleep on, before one of the city’s more committed transients took a file to them. Circus sat his can down on the bench, using the motion to hide the way he slipped his fingers into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a narrow datashard he’d been carrying since the night before. Quickly, he slipped the shard into the pocket of the man next to him - a dark-skinned human wearing a suit under a raincoat who was seemingly occupied by the AR feed of his cybereyes.
Circus put on his own glasses for a moment – just long enough to confirm that the payment for the job had been transferred – as his client stood up, before leaning back in his seat and watching a domestic argument on the sixth floor of the building opposite while he finished his soda.
Once the can was empty he crushed it in his palm and tossed it aside, blending into the foot traffic as he made his way out of the estates, taking the metro deep into the haphazard, older sprawl of the original North End.
Circus moved a lot more confidently through these streets; he’d got his job done, so there was no reason to be so careful to ensure he wasn’t being followed. He moved a little quicker, his hips swinging a little more as he looked around the neighbourhood with the comfortable familiarity of someone who was coming home.
His hands found their way naturally into his pockets, drifting away from the machine pistol tucked into a holster in his jacket, the punch dagger in his boot and the stiletto knife strapped to the back of his belt.
They stayed there even as a pair of gangers almost walked into him as they came around a corner. The first was a woman in a skimpy red leotard that brought to mind old-time strongmen, and the look was only enhanced by the layers of muscle that made up her body. It clearly wasn’t muscle she’d gained naturally; there were still visible seams and silicone injection marks, and the muscles were held together in place by cyberware that poked out of her skin.
Her companion was a gangly orkish man in a tight fitting purple and black patterned jumpsuit, with his face replaced by a white armoured plate that had black teardrops falling from his eyes. Unlike her companion – who looked like she preferred to let her fists do the talking – he was armed, with the barrel of a shotgun resting on his shoulder as he looked down at Circus.
“Watch it, norm,” he said. “Coulda got’cher filth on my suit.”
“Shit, and it’s such a nice outfit as well,” his friend drawled. “Be a real shame to ruin it like that. What’cha doing in this neighbourhood, anyway?” she asked, resting her hands on Circus’ shoulders, enveloping them completely. “Here to look at the freaks, huh?” she smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Here to spy on the freaks?”
“It’s no business of yours why I’m here,” Circus retorted as he looked the woman dead in the eye. “Can come and go whenever I want.”
“Hah!” the ork laughed. “Fuckin’ wiz world you must live in. Think I can get whatever BTL you’re running? Jander right into Medhall tower and spend the night fragging the Valkyries? The Troupe owns this turf, so you pay the toll, show the Troupe respect. An’ that means us, meat.”
“Does it?” Circus asked, before jabbing her fingers into the musclefreak’s throat. She staggered back, her hands flying off Circus’ shoulders but unable to actually reach her throat due to the sheer amount of muscle she’d packed onto her arms. Circus followed up the strike by kicking off the wall of the building to her right, bringing her knee up as she jumped and driving it into the side of the strongwoman’s skull.
She used her target’s shoulder as a springboard for her hand, already aware of the barrel of the shotgun dropping as the cyborg harlequin reacted to her sudden movement, the metal of his faceplate not flexible enough to fully display the shock he was radiating.
As she soared upside down over the harlequin’s head, Circus reached down and snatched the shotgun from his hands, easily pulling it out of the grip of his cyberarms before landing in a wide-legged crouch. Her hands wrapped around the barrel of the gun, Circus grinned wildly as she used the ganger’s faceplate as a target, driving the metal butt of the shotgun into it with enough force that the faceplate cracked, the circuitry of the harlequin’s optics sparking as they were forced out of their housing.
Blind, disorientated and in agony, the ork went down to a single kick to the chest. Circus tossed the shotgun into the air, catching it by the trigger with one hand before pressing the barrel of the shotgun against the human woman’s bulked-up thigh.
The crack of the shotgun echoed throughout the street as synthetic muscle and silicone cosmetic pads sprayed against the wall, the strongwoman howling as her leg gave out from under her. Circus looked between her and her companion, before deciding that the strongwoman was the more lucid of the pair. So she pressed the barrel of the shotgun against her throat.
“Refresh my memory, omae,” Circus said, conversationally. “I’m around here a lot, and I don’t remember anybody saying anything about a toll.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Shit, man, we didn’t know you was from here!” the strongwoman pleaded, forcing the words out past her damaged trachea. “Gang’s got the whole district on lockdown ‘cos the wolves and the dragons are on the fuckin’ warpath over that wageslave the pawns snatched! We figured why not make some jing while the sun’s shining, right? No harm in it!”
“Uh huh,” Circus drawled, looking down at what was left of the woman’s thigh. “Hope you made a lot, ‘cos fixing that is going to cost you. Didn’t nobody ever tell you not to shit where you eat? You wanna rob people, go nuts. Just do it the fuck away from here. And pick your fucking targets better.”
“You’re not gonna geek us?” the wounded ganger asked – quietly, like she didn’t quite believe it.
“I’m not your damn boss,” Circus said. “You want to play box fort in the streets, that’s your business.” She moved the barrel of the gun away from her target’s throat, jamming it into her open wound and grinning at the hiss of pain that produced. “So long as you aren’t so stupid it brings down heat on me, I couldn’t care less what you do. And while you scrape up the cash and time to fix this” – Circus twisted the barrel – “you’ll have plenty of opportunity to think about your mistakes.”
Circus pulled back the shotgun, looking it over for a moment before holding it by the barrel in her left hand as she slammed the bolt forwards, warping the metal and jamming the gun, and tossed it aside.
She was whistling as she walked down the street with her hands back in her pockets, her eyes passing appreciatively across the gaudy murals that decorated the walls of the run-down tenement buildings, built in layers of brick, concrete and scrap metal as new growth was piled onto the old.
The murals themselves were likewise a mismatch of different styles, sizes and subjects. Her gaze lingered on a portrait of a human woman that had been painted onto the bricked-up window of one building, so intricate in its detail that it could only have been done by someone with cybernetic optics or those Awakened who – like Circus – could channel mana into their body and enhance their sight.
Another painting covered the whole front of a row of buildings, vivid lines of paint stretching across boarded-up windows and crawling up rusted fire escapes as they created the unmistakable image of a feathered serpent, stripped down to its most fundamental lines.
Across the street itself, burned-out vans had been dragged into place and covered in sheet metal, garbage sacks and piles of bricks to make a barricade that blocked off almost all of the street, with only a single narrow route for people to make their way through. Circus frowned at the sight; it was a complete eyesore.
Some more kids were sitting on the barricade, dressed in a similar motley of different outfits that flaunted skin and prioritised self-expression over any actual united style. A human girl with a vibrant pink mohawk leant forwards as Circus approached, and for a moment her hand drifted to the revolver that was strapped to her bare thigh before recognition dawned in her eyes and she returned to lazily reclining on the barricade, waving off a couple of the newer teens as they eyed Circus suspiciously.
Circus didn’t even consider for a moment using the small gap in the barricade, instead leaping up onto the roof of one of the derelict vans in a single bound. Before her was what was once a fairly busy intersection, before urban planning relegated it into a side road and the lingering aftereffects of a cyberattack on the city’s GridLink system saw it become a dead spot through which no grid-linked traffic flowed.
Inevitably, the intersection had been repurposed as those on the fringes of society made use of a space that society had forgotten about. Most of the old road was now filled with shacks and stalls in a makeshift market, daubed with a dozen different multicoloured flags and neo-anarchist tags. A middle-aged dwarf was tossing cuts of unidentifiable meat on a griddle pan, while next to her a number of couches had been set around a stolen trideo screen and protected from the elements by a corrugated iron roof and net curtains. A tattoo parlour had been set up in a small shack, while a wizened old troll sat on the porch of its oversized neighbour, grinding alchemical reagents with a mortar and pestle.
Directly below the barricade, a hairless male human was levering great iron struts into place with the help of his oversized exoskeleton, coated in bronzed plates of metal. From her position above him, Circus could see the dividing line between the stumps of his shoulders and the circuitry that was woven into his salvaged lifting rig. He was looking up at her, and there was a pneumatic hiss as he raised an oversized hand in greeting.
“Hey Circus, welcome back,” he said. “Have a good trip?”
“Eh, same old shit,” Circus replied as she leapt down from the barricade. “The fuck’s all this, Trainwreck?”
“Tensions are running high with so many fascists in town,” he shrugged, the action looking a little like an industrial accident. “I’ve been wanting an excuse to build a barricade for years, so I figured why the fuck not take advantage? Everyone else just kind of joined in.”
“It’s a fucking eyesore,” Circus commented.
“So I’ll tear it down when things calm down,” Trainwreck said. “Or some artsy types will get at it, make it look as ‘good’ as the rest of this place,” he said, his eyes drifting disapprovingly over the murals, pennants and gaudy stalls. “Not everyone likes the whole funfair look, you know.”
“Not everyone can make it work,” Circus snarked back. “Whatever. You do you.”
She left Trainwreck to play with his toys, passing largely anonymously through the outdoor market. Most people there didn’t recognise her, though her comparatively mundane style of dress did earn her a few wary or dismissive glances. Only a few of the people there – the ones who’d been there the longest, or who she’d just taken an interest in for one reason or another – recognised her and nodded in greeting.
Circus paid them no mind, pulling her jacket tight as she slipped into one of the buildings that fronted onto the intersection. She made her way up a miraculously intact and powered elevator that took her all the way to the top floor.
At one point the building might have played host to a number of neat yet cramped apartments, with each unit containing one family of varying sizes crammed into a space that was just about tolerable for a couple with small children, but became unwieldy when those children grew or elderly relatives entered the picture.
Since the neighbourhood fell off the grid, however, walls had been knocked down and rooms repurposed until it was turned into a squatter’s paradise, with open-plan lounges, graffiti on every wall and enough stolen furniture to fill an entire mansion.
Circus’ apartment was a little oasis of security in the anarchy; one of the few intact rooms separated from the rest of the space by a heavy door and an electronic lock that gave way as Circus tapped her commlink against it.
Inside, the space was no less anarchic than the rest of the building, with mismatched paintings and statues covering haphazardly placed furniture. But a skilled eye would recognise that almost all of the art hadn’t come from the market below, but from galleries and private residences. The furniture, too, was expensive enough that it was well out of the reach of almost all the city’s residents.
Circus eagerly shrugged her jacket off, tossing it across an obscure piece of pre-Awakening sculpture she’d liberated from the penthouse of a local NeoNet shot-caller as she stepped into her walk-in wardrobe, shrugging off the rest of her clothes as she went.
Her hand drifted past sensible jackets and pants in masculine cuts before landing on a garish green and white leotard that was cut high on one leg and went down to her ankle on the other, with the same disparity repeated in the length of the sleeves. She completed the look with a short-sleeved green jacket that didn’t even reach her waist and a pair of thigh-high boots in the same colour, before sitting herself down in front of a mirror and painstakingly applying make-up to her face.
Once the face in the mirror matched the vision in her head, Circus looked at the chalk-white face paint and green lipstick and smiled, a manic grin that grew wider by the second before she sprung out of her seat and made right for the door of the apartment, snagging a bottle of real Islay scotch on her way out.
Carrying her drink, Circus vaulted over a sofa and bent down in front of a minifridge, fishing out a plastic bottle of Jaguar Cola – Stuffer Shack’s own-brand entry in the endless and occasionally bloody war of the brown soft drinks – and grabbing a red plastic cup from the top of the fridge. From there, she simply clambered out the window – long devoid of any glass – and sprawled herself out over a couch that had been precariously set out on a crumbling balcony overlooking the intersection below.
Circus popped the cork out of the scotch with her teeth, spitting it out and letting it roll over the edge of the balcony, before pouring a dash into the cup and drowning it in cola.
She let out a contented sigh as she drank, sinking even further back into the couch as she set her bottle down on the ground and watched the sunset. Her attention was only drawn away when another woman stepped over the window.
“Whirligig,” Circus said, waving her plastic cup in greeting.
She was a young elven woman with her face hidden behind her long hair. Her coat was practical and long, with a high collar and a hem down by her knees, but beneath it she was dressed for work in revealing clothes that came off easily.
“Hey, Circus,” the elf said as she leant against the wall of the balcony, looking out over the rooftops with her arms folded. “So… I was wondering if there was anything else you could teach me? I’m bringing in more money than I was before – more exotic, I guess…” she smiled, awkwardly, her right hand reaching up to brush some of her hair back from her pointed ear.
“More money is nice,” Circus mused as she poured herself another drink, this time adding more scotch than cola. “I guess I can teach you some more techniques, make your dances really shine and show you how to properly bust a guy’s balls. Hmmm…”
She paused for a moment, pretending to think it over as she tapped the surface of her drink with her index finger, watching the ripples spread across the cup.
“Ten thousand and I’ll give you five days. Lessons every morning, so you can still get to work in the afternoon.”
“That’s, uh,” Whirligig stammered. “That’s a lot.”
“That’s manageable,” Circus retorted. “Not in the mood to haggle. You’re bringing in more ‘cos I taught you how to channel mana, combine mind and body. Enlightenment takes work, work takes cred.”
Circus turned back to the view in front of her as she took a gulp from her cup, feeling the scotch rolling down her throat. All the while, she was aware of Whirligig pacing up and down the balcony behind her, her head bowed and deep in thought. She was aware, too, of how each step Whirligig took was carefully placed, how much effort she’d put into sculpting her body and opening her mind until she’d gained a preternatural amount of control over her movements.
For an escort, that sort of perfect body control could be very useful indeed. Both for the physical effects and the mystique it gave her. A mystique she could package up and sell.
“I’ll get the cred,” Whirligig said – quickly, like she was afraid the words wouldn’t come out if she didn’t hurry. “Gotta be ready to do anything to get ahead, right?”
“Truth of the world,” Circus shrugged, looking at the bottle of cola with a frown. With a flick of her wrist she spilled what was left in her cup over the floor, then put about a shot glass’ worth of scotch in before holding it out for Whirligig. “Here, take this. New business needs a toast, or whatever.”
“Thank you,” Whirligig said, a little of her professional demeanour slipping into her tone as she took a sip.
Circus simply set the soda bottle aside and took a swig directly from the bottle of scotch, sighing in satisfaction.
“No idea why I thought that would work,” she muttered to herself as Whirligig sat down in an armchair, nursing her drink. “I’ll try lemonade next time.”
“Hoi, chummers!” another voice said from above them, and Whirligig’s head spun around as a taksuit-clad figure dropped down from the rooftop.
Circus looked back much more leisurely, having noticed Imp’s approach.
But it was close, she thought to herself with a slight frown. She’s getting better.
Imp was dressed in a skin-tight dark grey taksuit coated in patches by concrete and brick dust from where she’d been clambering over rooftops. A black scarf was wrapped around her long neck, one end dangling down over her back like a half-cape, while an assortment of knives and pouches was belted to her waist, with a machine pistol in a holster on her right thigh and a long-range monocular on her left.
Her face was hidden behind a pale grey mask bearing the visage of a horned, grinning demon with black lenses in place of eyes. The mask was open at the back to leave her hair free, which she’d dyed with a long purple streak.
She was carrying a bottle of beer in one hand and somebody else’s jewellery box in the other, which she tossed to one side as she sat down on the very edge of the balcony, with her feet dangling over the edge. She reached up and took her mask off, setting it aside before bringing the beer bottle up to her mouth and using a tusk to pop the cap off.
Imp drank almost half the bottle at once, setting it back down and letting out a contented sigh before picking up the jewellery box and forcing it open with a quick finger-punch.
“A little lighter than usual, Imp,” Circus said, nodding at the beer.
“It’s pre-drinks,” the eighteen year old said as she held up a jewel-encrusted choker to her throat. “Look at all the people down there. Everyone’s all scared and huddled together for warmth like… uh, whatever those black and white birds are. Seen ‘em on trideo.”
“Pelicans?” Circus asked.
“Sure, whatever,” Imp answered half-heartedly. “Point is, someone down there is going to break out the spirits, someone else is going to plug in a sound system and then everyone is going to start having a good time.”
“What is it like out there?” Whirligig asked. “I’ve been here all day.”
“It’s kicking off,” Imp looked back, grinning ear to ear. “I kicked it off. Hid on a rooftop and chucked a firebomb at the pawns.”
“But…” Whirligig started. “You know the humans are the ones protesting Knight Errant right? I mean, this time?”
“’Course,” Imp smiled. “Watching those wannabee stormtroopers get tear gassed and beaten was better than any trideo I’ve ever seen. Oh don’t give me that look,” she snapped to Whirligig. “The amount of weapons they pulled out, it was clear they were going to kick off sooner or later. I just made it happen on my time, not theirs.”
“Uh huh,” Whirligig sounded unconvinced. “And what if the riot comes here?”
“Then we cut their balls off and nail them to the shiny new wall,” Imp replied. “Who gives a shit?”
“Sure we will,” Whirligig sighed. “Anyway, I’ve gotta go. Can’t be late for work, and can’t miss work because someone poked the cops into closing off districts.”
“Have fun, omae!” Imp drawled sarcastically, before her attention was drawn to an amethyst on the end of a necklace. “If you ever want to frag over rich assholes rather than getting fragged by them, you know where we’ll be.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Circus said. “Be ready to build up a sweat, and bring your first payment.”
“Yeah, sure,” Whirligig answered as she made her way back through the squat.
Circus sank back into her seat, taking another swig of scotch until the silence was broken once again by Imp.
“You’re being pretty chill right now,” she observed. “Normally when the greasepaint comes out you’re about ready to tear up the town.”
“It’s like you said; things are going to get interesting later. But even now the tension’s thick in the air, getting in my blood. Remember I said part of being an adept is opening your mind to the world? Maybe you’ve noticed it yourself.”
“Shit,” Imp chuckled. “I thought that was just the ADD.”
“Imp – Aisha,” Circus began, “I’ve gotta ask, why’d you keep coming round here? You’re not paying me for lessons anymore, didn’t take me up on my offer to partner up – and I know that’s not ‘cos of the seventy-thirty split because I know you don’t care about money.”
“’Aint kicked me out yet, have you?” Aisha drawled, though there was a little heat to it. “Nah, but seriously, I just like this place.” She swept out an arm in front of her, encompassing the people thronging the market below. “There’s a lot of people down there. You’ve got drifters who stuck around, queer folk looking for community, transhumanists shedding their meat, bad artists who can’t make it big, good artists who just like the vibe” – she gave Circus a pointed look – “people who couldn’t make it out there but found something here instead. Here’s the one place in the city I can be myself, which is more than I’ll find with my family.”
Aisha slapped her palm down on the balcony, an angry look in her eyes.
“I mean, shit, he gets shot at for a living but I’ve got to live a ‘normal life?’ Finish school, get a job, get a fucking SIN – like I want a government leash around my neck? He’s never said it but I see it in his cybereyes every time I let him see me. I mean, where the fuck does he get off worrying about me? What gives him the right?”
She let out an angry sigh before seeming to calm a little, picking up her mask and lying flat on her back as she stared into its snarling visage.
“You should see ‘my’ room in his basic-ass wageslave apartment. It’s all flatpack furniture, cream walls and monochrome bedsheets. How’s that ever gonna compare to a place like this?”
“How is Shadowrunning working out for him, anyway?” Circus asked, after Aisha had quietened.
“Think he’s got a new fixer,” Aisha answered. “They’ve been going to this club in Constitution Hill a lot. Got a new member, too. Another girl, maybe a couple years older than me. Means Brian and the cute twink are outnumbered.”
Circus laughed. “And the new girl? Is she cute?”
Aisha took a while to answer. “Nah, I don’t think so. Cute’s a very specific kind of attractive. New girl’s a troll – skinnier than most – with legs for days and fuckin’ awesome horns, but I’d say she’s more statuesque than cute. In a good way.”
All around them, speakers mounted on the buildings around the intersection suddenly burst into life with a sharp blast of static, before switching over to deafening music that was so indie it’d probably never even been heard beyond the boundary of the intersection’s new barricades.
“That’s more like it,” Circus said as she stood up, draining the last of the scotch in a few big gulps. “Everyone was too fucking scared down there.”
“Damn right!” Aisha exclaimed as she slipped her mask back over her face before rolling forwards right over the edge of the balcony, her descent almost completely soundless as she climbed down the front of the building.
Circus tossed the empty bottle aside and strode right up to the edge of the balcony, bowing like a trapeze artist to nobody in particular before leaping off the edge with a gymnast’s grace.