First order of business: check if Wallace is really dead.

Wallace was a tough bastard, and he wouldn’t’ve gotten to where he was without being so. I, being responsible for his cybersecurity, I knew what ‘ware Wallace had better than most, specifically in his head: civilian high-end subdermal armor weave, metallicized skeleton including an armored skull, and a backup radar system he’d had installed behind his forehead to let him see even sans-bioware eyeballs as a backup. It was good stuff. Even a moderately powerful slug-gun wouldn’t crack his skull and the spitgun munitions so ubiquitous among the common gangers would just bounce right off his skin leaving only welts. The damage I was seeing didn’t match with a spitgun or a middling slug-gun though.

No, he’d been hit by something high-powered. Probably a micromissile of some sort. It was superbly gruesome to look at, but even my amateur forensic skills could easily pick up on the characteristic of a close-range shaped explosive. My immediate detective work wouldn’t change a simple fact though: Wallace was unquestionably dead. He’d kept his brain housed in his skull—unlike some brutes who moved theirs to armored containers in their chests—and couldn’t’ve had a backup. Despite how casually I did it, any form of mental duplication, backup, forking, cloning, or whatever-ing was still a strict no-no, and while all of the Emerald Ones operated on the wrong side of the law, none of them operated at the extreme levels of illegality that I did. I’d checked.

Second order of business: Find out who killed Wallace.

This one was surprisingly easy. My perception accelerated as it was, I couldn’t turn my head but I didn’t need to: I simply pulled up the feeds from the lounge’s security system (which was incidentally freaking out about “Unauthorized weapons discharge!”) and located the origin of the smoke trail. In retrospect, the perpetrator shouldn’t have surprised me. It wasn’t some assassin, it wasn’t some random ganger, no, it was Nesbit. She was standing, hand-cannon at her hip but aimed at Wallace, with a wide grin on her face.

Clues and hints began to percolate in my awareness. Nesbit’s attitude during her talk with Wallace: On the surface, submissive and obedient, yet looking back on it, clearly some sort of act and wildly out of character for her. Then there were the other times, times when listening to her blather on to people about “being a killer” and “being an alpha” or whatever had been unavoidable. If this was what I thought it was—a play for power and leadership of the Emerald Ones—even her hatred of me made sense: I was closer to Wallace, I’d been a member longer, and I was seen as “important” by the others. This put me above her on her little internalized totem pole, and for a self-proclaimed “alpha”, this was unacceptable.

Third order of business: Figure out what’s next.

I couldn’t exactly predict what would happen now that Nesbit had offed Wallace, but the broad strokes wouldn’t didn’t take a priest to prophesize. Her goal—presuming that her goal was in fact taking over the Emerald Ones and not simply anarchy in general—would be a bit difficult to accomplish. She’d just shot a well-respected leader in front of everyone. Solidifying her power base would involve converting people to her cause and eliminating those she couldn’t. I, frankly, couldn’t imagine myself working for Nesbit, and I wasn’t going to risk my life on the assumption that her hatred for me was strictly tied to Wallace’s leadership somehow. No, I’m a high-priority target.

As for the others in the room? Most of the gang-members were, by definition, followers. There would probably be a tense moment where they were torn between defending their now-dead boss and saving their own skin but, in the end, I didn’t think any of them would be willing to die for a dead man. The lieutenants were a different matter though. Scanning over their faces in the feed, they were all sporting the beginnings of various shocked or grim expressions. It didn’t immediately look like any of them had known this was coming, but assuming Nesbit didn’t have any allies was naïve. Some of them, given the chance, would probably simply try to shoot Nesbit under the broad umbrella of “preemptive self-defense” while the more follower-aligned would probably end up joining her after she extracted her blood-price from the gathering.

Fourth order of business: Get out, without being shot.

The conclusions I’d drawn all unilaterally agreed that it wouldn’t be good for my health to stay here in the long or short term. I had to get out, ideally visiting my lair beforehand. There was some incriminating evidence to destroy—my servers—along with bugout supplies and a purpose-built escape tunnel in my lair. Still, that didn’t solve my immediate situation: I was in a crowded room full of people who were already reaching towards weapons in slow-motion and I was a couple meters away from the nearest door.

Fortunately, while I was personally unarmed, the headquarters weren’t. Most of the defenses I’d insisted on and the elaborate security systems were aimed at preventing ingress from hostile forces but that didn’t mean there weren’t internal security measures like the occasional security turret. Specifically, the lounge was equipped with a pop-out, ceiling-mounted, crowd-control electrolaser. Its shocks were non-lethal, and so far, it had only ever been used to reign in a particularly rowdy party, but in this case, every millisecond of distraction would count. Reaching into its control system with my digital tendrils, I activated it and targeted Nesbit. Likely, her ‘ware was good enough to tank the mild zaps it delivered, but even a split second of distraction was better than nothing.

Suddenly, I was hit by a minor air-pressure wave, which I realized was the sound of a gunshot in slow motion a couple millis later. I could see some of the quicker gang members had finished drawing their own weapons and deploying their combat stims. Someone in the crowd had taken a potshot in the general direction of Nesbit, and it was easy to see that there was an incipient full-out firefight brewing. I pushed my muscles to their limits and started a dive towards the nearest door.

Another level of control that I had over the headquarters was doors, lights, and HVAC, and as I flew, I desperately thought of other ways to buy myself a couple seconds to get out the door. Lights were the obvious solution—while everyone doubtlessly had some sort of night-vison ‘ware, these often took a beat to switch modes. It’s not much, but… I started rapidly turning the lights in the lounge on and off.

Around me, the bass-shifted sounds of combat picked up. I started to hear more guns of various types being fired, I saw flashes in the air where chemically-powered weapons released bright muzzle-flashes, and I heard the pop-pop-pop of the electrolaser shooting spark after spark into Nesbit’s form. Nesbit didn’t seem overly bothered though. As I watched, she simply ignored the electrolaser’s feeble shocks and the couple spitgun pellets that ricocheted off her cheek, while she gleefully realigned her hand-cannon towards an offending shooter. She was also starting to shout something both audibly and over the general comm, but I’d muted her.

With two slightly painful cracks, my knees contacted the tiled floor where I’d leapt, and I continued my sliding dive towards the door before I fell prone with my arms stretched out above my head to minimize my profile. Behind me, Aleksander had ducked behind the visual cover of our table and pulled up a scarf that’d been around his neck. Then, the countermeasure patches on his thick jacket popped, covering the area around him in thick smoke, anti-laser glitter, and radar chaff.

For a second, I was blind. The countermeasure fog I found myself in cut out my radio links to the cameras I’d been watching, and I began judging the distance I’d slid by the painful ridges of each floor tile as they encountered first my elbows, and then my knees. Counting the next twelve seams mentally, I braced my hands forwards and then—slap. My palms caught on the wall of the hallway I’d slid into, and after reducing my perception speed to something that would allow me to move, I executed a quick barrel roll to get out of the doorframe and then popped up to brace myself against the wall.

Here, in the hall, it became obvious that Aleksander hadn’t been the only one packing personal countermeasures. The signature thick smoke was pouring out the doorway that I’d just come through like the mess hall was just a massive honey reservoir for honey that happened to be gray and opaque. Fortunately, here in the hallway the smoke was thin enough that I could pick up a good network signal again. I did so.

Inside the hall, as seen through the cameras, was absolute pandemonium. A thick wild ocean of smoke filled the room, lights flashed, and concussive blasts from all spectrum of firearm whipped gray clouds and tendrils around like a physics undergraduate’s overblown fluid-simulation project. I didn’t have any time to spare though. The gunshots were already reducing in frequency, and the cheap countermeasures that most could afford didn’t have a high dwell time—in seconds, the gray fog would lose its charge and turn into gray dust coating the floor. I checked my route, and then broke into a sprint, leaving the gunshots and my now ex-gang behind me.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

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I looked in the mirror, and I looked like shit. More specifically, I looked like I’d crawled through an incinerator’s chimney and then subsequently a spider sanctuary. Practical my escape tunnel was, luxurious, it was not. I shuddered again at the memory. The “server coolant tunnel” did actually run coolant too, so the generated warm-and-damp atmosphere had attracted all sorts of critters, all of whose webs I’d cleared with my forehead when passing through.

The rest of the “safehouse” wasn’t much to look at. A grimy mirror, a utility sink, a crate with my bugout supplies, and a scooter facing a doorway-sized rollup door. Also, an inconspicuous physical keypad on the wall. A keypad that had a physical detonation cord connected to the scuttling charge in the server room. Punching in the code—6279 6521—I waited for a second before breathing out. There’s no going back once I do this.

Once my mad dash through HQ was complete and I’d secured my lair’s door behind me, I’d quickly merged with my copies. This only took a few seconds due to the short time they’d been active. Then, of course, I let my morbid fascination draw my focus into the cameras around HQ while I crawled through the spiderwebbed tunnel. I regretted it. Bodies were scattered, food was spilled, and blood flows formed shoals against the settled countermeasure dust. Above it all, a bloodied and triumphant Nesbit surveyed her new domain while loudly crowing that she was the best—or something along those lines. I wasn’t paying too close attention, but I’d tuned in just in time to see her shoot a ganger she seemingly disagreed with execution style in front of a gathered (but diminished) crowd. As far as I could tell, nobody had been sent up to find me specifically yet, but it was only a matter of time. I knew the Emerald Ones were finished.

With a sigh, I pressed the confirm key on the keypad.

Three… two… one… WHUMP! Distantly, and felt more through the soles of my feet rather than heard, the server room blew itself and all the possessions I hadn’t dragged with me or secured online to bits and fine shrapnel.

Bending forwards and holding my head under the streaming water of the sink, I attempted to get rid of more of the gray dust and once my head was clear, I made another fruitless attempt at slapping my clothing clear of dust. Seeing how it didn’t work well and mentally shrugging, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to unpack clean clothes now, and instead hoisted the bag onto the cargo rack of the scooter. Then, I hoisted myself into the scooter’s saddle, checked its charge and checked cameras outside of the garage. No surprises were waiting for me.

Nevertheless, I’d been caught underprepared too many times in recent history. I unholstered my pistol and kept it gripped tightly behind the scooter’s lackluster visor. One more quick check of its interface—it was fully charged and ready to fire at a moment’s notice—and I decided it was time to go. Triggering the garage door and punching in a random destination across the city into the scooter’s autodrive, I kept my head on a swivel as we slid out of the concealed garage with only an electric hum and the crunch of sidewalk debris underneath the tires. Two turns later and I was out of the alleyways and onto a transit thoroughfare. There, the driving AI opened up on the throttle, and I disappeared into Sunday afternoon traffic. I didn’t look back.

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Two days later and two cities away (by high-speed rail), I found myself staring at the off-white wall of the miniature hotel room I’d rented. Yes, there’d been plenty of frustrated yelling on the backup gang-comms where a heated Nesbit barked orders to find me after I hadn’t been found hiding under a table or something. Those heated orders had turned enraged when the first of the gang members—now creatively renamed “Crimson Ones”—stumbled across the disaster zone that was my server room. Of course, they didn’t know I was still listening, but I was still rapidly losing access to what little digital infrastructure remained as they changed their operational security procedures. Apparently, some of the people who’d survived had paid attention when I preached. It almost made me feel proud.

Then again, it’s not like it bothered me any. Their “find the Issa bitch”-trail had gone cold after they’d found the escape tunnel, and I’d taken the majority of the gang’s yet-unlaundered cryptocurrency wealth with me. Some physical money stashes remained and the wealth that was caught up in the handful of laundering fronts remained, but I was, in a way, rather wealthy suddenly. Running a gang with over a hundred (paid!) members took quite some funding: the unlaundered funds I’d taken amounted to about 80% of the gang’s entire liquid wealth.

Unfortunately, it was only of marginal utility to me. I could use it for small things—like booking the hotel room I was in—because it was easy to find people who wouldn’t ask questions and were willing to look the other way if someone wanted to rent a room and paid upfront for a couple nights. Big spending on the things I wanted to buy was right out though. Reputable retailers, in particular those who sold servers of the computational power I needed, wouldn’t accept black-market money. The easy-to-find unreputable folks who would take my money, usually only sold weapons, drugs, or other goods that were illegal in the first place.

Back in my home city this wouldn’t be too big an issue. Not only did the Emerald Ones have laundered money on hand, but we also had one or two of those elusive connections who were willing to accept gray or black money for more exotic requests—no questions asked. Here, in a city I didn’t know among a gang-scene I was mostly unfamiliar with, I could probably track down a dealer who’d sell me an illegal slug-gun in a day or two, but beyond that… I didn’t have a gang backing me, I couldn’t reach out to any connections who might’ve been alerted to my extraordinary personal wealth, and I didn’t have the ‘ware, or frankly the time, to intimidate myself high enough through the local food-chain to get access to a good supplier.

No, I needed a new solution. And “needed” was definitely the right word there. There hadn’t been any lectures over the weekend, but today there had been, and with a merit-scholarship, unexcused absences were inexcusable. I’d spent all day hooked into the hotel’s cheap net-access provider, VR casting myself into university and my psyche was completely worn out. Yes, my schedule was arranged to be temporally possible so that classmates didn’t ask dangerous questions like “Why is Issa in two places at once?” but Issa copies had an entire time-block of down-time between lectures to unwind and do the assignments. They also had advantages I didn’t quite have. Notably, being incorporeal. They didn’t need to eat, go on bathroom breaks, or get stiff muscles.

For now, it’s manageable. I could maybe do a week like this—me being no stranger to crunch times—but beyond that, my academic perfection would begin to slip. I needed computational power pronto and it needed to be something stealthy. I’d be hosting copies of myself and putting one of those onto a rented cloud server somewhere? No way.

More than a server to maintain my academics and my copies though, I needed… something. Leaving the Emerald Ones, my home city, and everything I didn’t have in a bag on my back had been astoundingly, scarily, easy. I admit, it was annoying being in a new city where I didn’t know the lay of the land but beyond that, there was nothing besides a vague feeling of loss. No nostalgia, no longing, no homesickness. Even ruminating on Wallace’s gruesome fate left my feelings only a muted mix of loss at the wasted potential and disgust at that image of his final moment. I mean, I’d known the man for years, trusted him to an extent, but now that he’s gone, the most vibrant image that remained in my mind was the gory scene of him, headless.

Slowly, it came to me, the planet-shattering realization. It left me feeling hollow and answered my questions. Ever since I’d changed—become something else—I’d been pushing this crisis ahead of me, thinking that by ignoring it, keeping busy, and pushing onwards, I’d be able to avoid it. Now though, slumped against a dreary wall inside a cheap room where I’d hit my head if I stood up to my full height, I cried for the first time in years. The subconscious tools I’d used to lie to myself didn’t hold anymore. The headquarters where I lived, surrounded by “compatriots” was gone. The university I’d been attending for subjective years now, felt cold and unfriendly in a way I’d taught myself to ignore and simultaneously forged myself to keep safe.

It made sense in hindsight. For subjective years now, I’d been cramming my personal perception of time to boost my productivity and academic performance. For every waking hour Wallace lived, I’d lived three. I was an anti-social, self-employed, one-woman, sweatshop laborer. Even worse, I thought as I bumped my head against the wall in frustration, there’s no real reason why. What was I planning on doing with my degree? Serving the Emerald Ones better? Making more money? Look where I am now, all the money, independence, and opportunity a woman could ask for, yet…

I hadn’t even had friends when was younger. Other street kids were just ambulatory ravenous voids that sucked down food, money, and opportunity if I didn’t get to it first. Yes, there were occasional symbiotic relationships that formed for mutual benefit, but beyond that, nothing besides long-faded memories involving blurry faces of parents and impressions of smiles.

Eventually though, I managed to pull myself together and wiped away my tears. That glorious feeling of catharsis at having a good cry aside, self-pity wouldn’t get me anywhere productive. I’d always been good at doing what needs to be done, and damn it, I would find a solution. Ideas were already beginning to percolate in my mind, but first, I needed to leverage my advantages, and for that, I needed to acquire a powerful computer first…