I punched in the code for the gate at the entrance to my block of the street, the lock disengaging with a deep electronic buzz and then a pneumatic hiss. The gates were from when this whole neighborhood was a wartime shelter for nearly half a million residents of the city. It never got used for that though.

Since then it got renovated and now it’s just another borough of Auranyx. The biggest megacity northeast of the crater zone with more than twenty million souls living in its walls.

I used my foot to nudge the gate inwards so I could get in, didn’t want to put down my prize for the evenings work. Walking down the wide corridor that we shared with other residents past our gate I noticed old Allie sitting outside her apartment watching the news on the video panels by the public noticeboard.

The noticeboard hadn’t worked for years but the video panel still played the KAN twenty four hour news channel. I’d tried to make it quieter by messing with the software but I’ve never been able to get into the settings. Even tried breaking a speaker but it literally still worked dented so I gave up.

Allie was a weird one, even other old folks around that I’d talked to called her old. She’d been old when they were getting old even.

Yet she never changed or really did much though I did know she was still able to look after herself. I’d seen her pull iron on a ganger when I was six, she’d moved faster than I’d seen her ever move and had a damn Zukai in her one hand and up against the gangers head as he was blitzed out on something while he beat a skinny woman against the wall. There he was foaming from his mouth as he kicked this girl over and over while she just cried and tried to protect herself. Then bang and his head was gone, neck as well, and the entire side of the street got a light coat of ganger.

Don’t know what happened after that because I’d ran away scared, but I knew the girl lived with old Allie for a while. Seen her a few times, then she was gone and old Allie was alone again.

Zukai revolvers weren’t just a forty eight caliber magnum round, they had a seven round chamber. The things were heavy and kicked hard enough to break bones. Allie hadn’t moved a single muscle when she fired it one handed.

Old lady was either chromed entirely or some kind of bedtime story monster.

“Hey Allie, you still up this late? Think about your beauty sleep.” I asked teasingly as I walked towards her. We got on well enough as neighbors I knew she wouldn’t swing for me.

“Boy, if I get any more beautiful I’d need to start telling my inputs to take numbers.” She said in her croaky old voice, not looking away from the television.

I’m only ten Allie.

“Allie that’s gross. I’ll leave you to it, gonna go check in on my mom.” I responded as I walked past her.

“Young man in my day even youngsters knew the goings on, we had let our elders alone to get on with it after the wars you know. Else there wouldn’t be half of you lot around” She said said smiling but still not looking at me.

“Yeah, Allie. But wasn’t everyone too busy dealing with the dinosaurs though?” I asked smiling as well as I shuffled the bundle under my arm so I could get my key shard out of my pocket to let myself into my home.

“Boy, you better not let me get a hold of you or I’m going to make you regret those words. See how old you think I am when I throw you off the walkway balcony outside.” She said smiling still, but a shiver did run down my spine knowing she absolutely could do that and I’d not be able to stop her.

“Sorry, Allie. See you tomorrow.” I said and walked into my home. The first thing I saw was my mother cleaning up the food wrappers from her dinner, I was glad she’d gone back to eating actual food instead of relying entirely on her nutrient gel.

Mom had been basically addicted to incarnations, or just incarna, since before I was born.

No idea who my dad was and we didn’t really talk about it.

The incarnations were full sensory simulations that you could use while asleep and a lot of people spent every moment they could in them to escape their life. Eventually you run out of new content on the things and they start to get a bit boring and you look for a new experience. Mom was pretty good at getting the most out of them though so we didn’t spend much on them.

People would get a cheap medical port installed into their abdomens and then just live wired up to their incarna players while getting all their food and water pumped into them and waste out. Only waking up to replace the tanks and go buy new incarna shards. Mom was one of these for the most part, she was doing good lately and spent a few hours a day in the real world but she’d gotten bad quite a few times in the past.

I started shrugging my gray pleather jacket off while keeping the bundle in my hands but mom walked over to help take it off me. She put it on a hook on the wall and turned around to give me a hug.

“You were out late again you know. I don’t like it when you’re out late alone like that, at least you used to hang around with the other kids before.” Mom said into my ear as I hugged her. She was still a little taller than me but she was a short woman, so it wouldn’t be too long until I was taller.

“It was a totally clear job though. Literally didn’t see a soul around the wreck, even quiet out in the streets. The most danger I was in was when I had to pass by old Allie.” I said while pulling away from her.

“Oh leave her alone, she’s a sweet old woman. She was here when I moved in and even taught me where to get the baby support packages without getting tangled up in those corp welfare programs.” Mom responded while going back to cleaning up the living room, just a small space big enough for a breakfast bar in the wall and a sofa pointed at a video screen built into the other wall with a little square of standing room.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The corps are happy to help after all. As long as they can get your signature right here. Then before you know it they have the rights to almost everything you are and have to your name. Too many kids growing up around me either went into corpo grunt training only to wind up dead in weeks. Or signing on to some corp work scheme and just flat out go missing, never seen again.

Some kids are born already signed away. Straight into corp enrichment facilities to be taught everything they know by the corps involved and then spat out to be the corp’s soldiers for the rest of their life, no choice in the matter.

Fortunately that was more of a suburban thing. Corps don’t want too many of us slum rats running around in their nice buildings, even if we’ve been wearing their collars all our lives.

Shaking myself out of my corpo hating thoughts I walked into my room and placed the bundle onto my bed and started unwrapping it. After a little careful work the redox reaction battery was revealed. A high end model though this one, mostly used in high performance vehicles.

I’d dug it out of a wrecked car that broke out of the speedway west of my house and fell into a utility chute. I’d noticed the broken chute cover and looked down to see the wreck at the bottom, the speedway barrier had been fixed by droids within fifteen minutes of it being broken so the evidence of where the car went off the speedway was already gone.

This gave me a window of time before scavengers like me would find it, I’d gone back home for my tools and gone back to the chute earlier this evening. Found the right utility stairs to get down to the bottom of the chute and found the wreck.

Crushed by the impact and then by the fall the car was just a mangle of steel and aluminum covered with blood and soot where the electronics had shorted. Fortunately I managed to find the power cell undamaged but discharged in it’s armored housing.

I’d had to cut through a good bit of the wreck to get to it though, and one of the cars dead occupants. I think it was a guy but it was mostly just loose meat at that point although one of his chrome legs mostly survive uncrushed.

Cybernetics weren’t worth much taken from corpses, the important electronics killswitched when their user died. I’d heard it was to make people being hunted for their chrome harder, meaning that they’d have to be captured alive and then butchered which was much more difficult task. I thought it was just to stop the poor from inheriting chrome and making less sales.

The redox reaction cell would make me about three hundred aura when I sold it, maybe more. It wasn’t enough to get out of the slums by any means, but it was enough to pay nearly two months rent on its own. Not bad at all for an unexpected find that only took a couple of hours work.

Putting the power cell onto the shelf above my bed I was careful to make sure it would fall off. The room was only just wide enough for my bed and bedside table, I managed to weld together a shelving unit that fit around my bed, giving me storage up near the ceiling for my things. Tall enough I didn’t bash my head getting out of bed.

Taking off my shirt and pulling on a vest then rolling into bed I smiled thinking of that stack of aura I’d get soon. Hadn’t had such an easy win like that in a while now.

“I’m heading off to bed Mal, make sure you get some sleep.” Mom called out from the living room, my door was a little open so I heard her clearly.

I was tired after burning through all that steel in that hot utility chute tunnel. Down on my hands and knees surrounded by chunks of still warm steel and aluminum. Tomorrow I’d have to get the power cell to the scrapper, maybe Mayan if he’s sober enough or maybe Berry if she’s actually home.

I realized I’d forgotten to check my mail and swung out of bed once more to plug into the grid port installed into the wall above my bedside table. I pulled the cable out of the cerebral implant on the side of my head. My model was outdated and cheap but worked fine, a simple symmetrical model where it had a smooth, chrome, soft rectangle on each side of my head with a IR emitter, an input port and an extractable connection cable on each.

Moms model was even older than mine but was more expensive back in the day, she’d paid to get it some small upgrades as time has passed as well so it was actually a bit better than mine. Hers was only right sided though and was matte black apart from the scratches.

I flicked through the applications on my display, most of them cracked older versions of the software. I found my mail app and opened it, flicking over the spam that had arrived since I’d last checked. The spam filters might have worked if this was a legit version with self-updating filter but that was beyond my means so I just made do.

I had a message from Ears, a friend of mine for a few years now. He wanted to know if I was interested in klepping a secured truck that his crew had found abandoned, they needed someone to weld through the security shutters and hopefully be able to disable the security lockout on the truck. And then another one saying it was fine, they found someone. Then another saying they lost the guy and needed someone. All about half hour apart.

Typical Ears. Klepping that truck is asking for the kind of heat we couldn’t deal with. I sent him a mail saying I’m out, told him if he was going to hit the truck that he’d want to park it with his rust heart gang friends even if he had to pay them a cut. That might give him enough of a mask to stay out of trouble if he did klep the truck. I didn’t like working with a crew anyway.

Hadn’t worked with a team in a few years now. Too much trouble during and after. Working alone means you get the whole score. Sure, not as big gains and not as often, but you keep your bones inside your skin and you don’t make enemies of anyone.

I had a message from Mayan saying he’d sent me some aura credits for some scrap I’d left him to value a little while ago. I’d already received them so that lined up. Preem salvage there, found enough near new controller board interface sockets in a rusted lockup in the closed off maintenance tunnels to fill my whole bag. Spare parts for the repair bots to use but rusted open and free for the taking, only reason they were still there was the whole tunnel was collapsed and had been flooded until recently.

As soon as I found the tunnel wasn’t flooded anymore shot down there quick as I could. I’d chucked away the rusted interface sockets and salvaged the rest. They weren’t exactly gold bars but they were worth thirty aura credits each and I’d found sixteen of them, split between no one but myself.

Now I’d found a near brand new high performance redox reaction power cell. If I could keep up this streak I might be able to afford some chrome before the year is out, or maybe try to get me and mom into a safer neighborhood. Old Allie kept the corridor safe enough for my liking but mom had to go out in the street a lot and this was between two gang territories, guns lighting up the street was common enough.

Maybe somewhere in the northern quarter, somewhere near Marchand or even on her street would be nice. No gangs there. You mess with Mrs. Marchand and you may as well bury yourself in fercrete now and save everyone the trouble. She knew my name at least, I might be able to swing a house on her street if I could get the upfront aura together and maybe prove my worth a little.

Ah, well. Everything was going to be fine for a little while at least.

Then a subtle not quite shiver ran through the whole room. Literally every surface down here in the water district was solid, hardened fercrete, you don’t shake that easily. I unplugged my implant and sat up to listen carefully.

I wondered if someone had just bombed something nearby? Gang escalation or police halo-chopper were my first thoughts. I hoped things didn’t spread to our street though it did feel quite far off so I wasn’t too worried.

Then a rumble, one of those deep, low ones you feel in your gut. It felt close, you just know it was, like when you know lightning is near compared to far even if you didn’t see the flash.

Then an actual crack ran along my ceiling and down my wall.