I BLINK out of the memory and back into bleary reality. Head throbbing, head bowed, head bleeding. A sloppy starburst of red-orange hair shields my eyes. Dark alley, bright lights, somewhere in the high layers closer to the overcity. Trimmed nails prying my eyelid back, someone else panicking. The boy. The not-Iros. Wringing his hands through his voice.
“She’s up, Lain.” He spits a curse, stalking back and forth across the tiny alley. Three paces from side to side. “Fucking fuck. She’s with Sarah Morninghawk. Or was. What the hell were they doing in the Orange?”
“What’s her head saying?” the girl asks. Only then do I notice the lightest mental fingers brushing over the surface of my thoughts. Trawling for information. The boy might not be one of Dynasty’s, but he’s still a Psi.
He crosses his arms and closes his eyes. “She’s shot up like a sewer grate. It’s all a mess. Can’t get a single straight thought.” His eyes open again; deep brown. “There’s an army on her tail. That’s going to be our tail if we sit here any longer.”
“We already dragged her this far.” I start to blink and the girl pulls away. Sloppy, sweat-damp hair falls back over my face. She looks me right in the eyes. Calculating, not threatening. “Hey. Mook. You on Shatter?”
I croak in a breath and try to sit up. They’ve got me wedged up against some rotting dumpster. Acidic runoff dripples into inch-deep puddles around the alley. Slowly blinking neon spits colored light near the exit onto the rest of the block, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare filled with nighttime pedestrians heading between bars and gambling houses and underground arenas. Faint citrine lights glow in the distance. We’re still near the Orange.
The stimulus overload redoubles my headache as I take stock of my injuries one limb at a time. My fingers twitch restlessly. Still working enough to shoot a gun, I think. But the rest of me is banged up like I got ran through a water filtration plant on the wrong side of the tubes. Right shoulder’s dislocated. Five different near misses tattoo my skin with dried and cracking blood. Burns up and down my sides, itching and tearing when I shift. That stab wound under my ribs still oozing hot and sticky. And one of my legs got fucked up somewhere along the way, deep in the hip.
That my JOY somehow survived the chaos is a surprise. That I can even think straight about it is an even bigger shock. Either I’m hyped up on whatever hormones the human body starts kicking out when it’s about to die, or the Shatter’s still doing something wild to my head. I’d put my money on the latter. How long has it been working, though? I doubt it’ll last much longer.
I slowly wipe my bangs to the side, smearing the gore over my forehead as I do. The tightness in my chest refuses to decompress. Hitching in small breaths through my nose, getting a hand down on the wet concrete, I straighten up against the dumpster. “Where are we?”
“We don’t have time for this.” The boy returns to his pacing. “Lain, we’re leaving. She’s not our problem. They’re going to be here any minute.”
“I can fucken move,” I growl. My throat aches from smoke and abuse, wrenching a violent cough out of my lungs as I try to stand and crash back against the dumpster. I reach out and snatch the girl by her wrist faster than she can jerk away. Gunslinger’s grip, all steel. I yank her close enough to feel her breath against my face. “Don’t be a bitch. Help me up.”
Shimmering hair, short cut, rainbow hues shifting over a plain white canvas. Slim build, defined shoulders, tight grey skinsuit stretched over her wide chest. A bookie’s calculating eyes stare back at me. Quick blinks while she runs the odds of helping me. The thin wire of her garrote knits between the fingers of her free hand. “We can’t drag you again. How badly do you want to get out of here?”
The sound of Sarah’s Sixer slams through my head. My fingers tighten like a vice around her wrist as the explosion in the docks blooms again in my mind’s eye. “Just get me on my feet. I’m already on Shatter.”
She smirks. “Then that’ll make this significantly easier.”
Before I can ask, she’s driving a needle into my chest, right above the heart. Her forearm pins my neck to the dumpster as the injection begins and I start thrashing. Last time, I had a few seconds to brace for the kick. This time is like having a static stream screen kicked straight into my head by a roided-up martial artist. The whole world flashes to fizzling white and grey. I think I start screaming. Nothing but drool comes out. She clamps a hand over my mouth anyways. Blood and skin in my mouth; half a missing finger, she’s cursing. My body rips and jerks and twists to get away and let out the flood of energy blasting out of my heart and into my bloodstream, but someone else pins me down and the girl just keeps on injecting.
I don’t even feel the needle slide back out, because the next time a coherent slice of reality makes its way through the drug-induced madness, I’m limping along between the two of them on a wide street in a well-lit block well away from the Orange. Close enough to the divide between our upside-down hell and the electric paradise on the surface that I can actually see the underside of the capital, the ceiling of the Vents. Pipes and air ducts and wide passages for electricity and runoff worm through the metal crust. It’s rare that I venture this close to the surface. Sarah’s territory is much lower down. A block like this- brassily-lit streets, packed with people, fliers winging over wide thoroughfares filled by actual transports and autocabs- definitely belongs to one of the bigger gangs. It almost looks like a proper neighborhood from the overcity; minus the dark ceiling high overhead.
Consciousness returns in infrequent blips separated by seconds or minutes. We’re hustling along in the crowds. Then I’m looking down at the girl’s pinky, hastily sewn back together at the middle joint through some JOY-based ability. Then they’re dragging me into an alley and propping me up against a dumpster while I bleed out. Then I’m in the Orange again, seeing my reflection staring back at me in the cracked pane of a window. Green eyes wide open and hollowed by sudden, horrific loss. Then a bridge, crossing into a heavily trafficked block with street toughs covered in writhing, living tattoos. Snakes and mythological beasts worm around their arms while I stare. Or is it just the Shatter? Hard to tell.
It must be an hour before the pieces finally assemble themselves in a coherent order. I’m walking on my own two legs by that point. Small businesses lining the right side of the sidewalk, neon cars drifting lazily by on the left, distant views of massive towers rising over the neighborhoods to support the next layer up. Really does look like some cheap parody of an Electric Town suburb. Dull aches wrack my body with pins-and-needles at every step.
“She’s coming down,” the boy says, now covered in baggy streetwear. He’s not particularly tall, thin as a rail. Like a branch of an adolescent tree that was painstakingly grown into a shape with universal appeal to both sexes. “…I think.”
“You said that twice already,” the girl drawls to my right.
“This time is different.”
“How so?”
“There’s a different timbre to her spatial awareness and ego centers.” When the girl doesn’t so much as blink, he sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets. “It’s a Psi thing. You wouldn’t get it.”
“Let me try, then.” The girl glances down at me. “How you feeling, Mori?”
She knows my name?
Reaching up to my neck, I unzip my bodysuit down to the mid-chest, venting out the heat of walking. A slick sheen of sweat-riven blood is smeared around my collarbone. “Back in it, I think.” I grimace at the filth. “Though I’m going to be fucked to hell whenever this stuff finally wears off.”
“There you go. Different response this time.” She shifts back to me. “We’ll patch you up once we’re back at base. If you want to come with us, that is. You could use a place to keep low without having to worry about Dynasty nabbing you in the middle of the night.”
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More of my harrowing escape from the Orange trickles back into my head. Grimacing again, fingers curling against my skull as a localized headache rips through. Only when my fingertips brush through my hair do I realize I’m missing a chunk of my right ear. “How far are we from the Orange?”
“A few klicks. We lost the last enforcers half an hour ago. Friendly territory now.” She chuckles darkly. “Friendly as the Vents gets, at least.”
“Can we stop to get a drink? I need to make a call.”
“I don’t think you want to add more shit to the cocktail you’re running on.” The girl wiggles her sewn-together pinky at me. “Biohancer. Not a doctor, but I know my drugs.”
“Who do you want to call?” the boy asks.
“An old friend. I… he needs to know what happened.” An inside glance passes between the two of them, the kind that street-siblings always share. “It’ll only take a second.”
Another quick exchange of nonverbal communication between them, half of it subconscious. Then the boy’s nodding and we’re weaving between scattered packs of pedestrians, stopping at the next row of vending machines we pass. I pass my JOY over the automated holopad. Three shots of something cheap and awful come back a few seconds later. I choke mine down as quick as I can. The burning interplay between the two drugs adds a realistic tint to the second-skipping frenzy of the Shatter, gently prying away the gunshot echo and dead-body-thump that hammers on repeat behind my eyelids.
Brushing the back of my hand over my mouth, I tilt my head at the alley next door. “I’ll be right back.”
Under the shelter of a rotted concrete awning, I lean back and settle my shoulders against a hard brick wall. The rest of the alley is occupied by flattened boxes and moldy storage crates. Dingy apartments mark their entrances with flickering neon lamps. The closest is propped open by a cement block and lets out a mouth-watering collage of deep fried scents and heavily accented banter. My stomach growls loudly. I ignore it and pull out my JOY, summoning up a small holographic screen. Runoff from the awning shatters the pixels at infrequent intervals before splattering against my bare arms. I lost my poncho somewhere on the way. I have a few replacements back at my apartment, but there’s no going back there now.
I blink back to my task before the growing dread can settle any further in my stomach. Quick swipes navigate the electric-blue projections until I’m staring at my sparse list of contacts. Hesitating over the icon to call Ulysses. Sarah once told me that if there was ever a time she couldn’t help me, he always would. He’s her closest friend. A father to me as much as she was a mother. He’ll know what to do.
I tap the button and hold my breath. Three painfully slow rings transmit straight to my ears before the call finally goes through and the flat projection animates with a two-dimensional video from Ulysses’ end. I almost break when I see his face. He’s still awake. Somewhere in his offices over on the Five Rings Block. Eyes ringed by tired circles, sparking with shock as the video cuts on. Some mental fuckery of the Shatter fills in the colors of his clothes for me, despite the fact that he’s rendered entirely in monochrome cyan.
“Emilia? You’re alive?” A father’s concern darts over what he can see of me, the burned and bloodied upper half of my body. “What happened to you? Where is Sarah?”
I can’t show weaknesses, not now, not when everything is going to hell. Can’t let anyone know how badly I need to scream- not even Ulysses. I swallow hard, wishing I had another drink in hand. Bitter myself, bracing against the haunting images burned into the back of my eyelids.
My voice still cracks. “Sarah is dead. She’s dead, Ulysses. They got her.”
The audio is silent for a disbelieving moment. “Was it the Executor?”
I shake my head. “The Executor wasn’t even there. It… there was a bomb. They were waiting for us when we showed up.” Slowly, the gears start turning. “They knew we were coming. Or that Sarah was, at least. I… got away.”
“Are you alright?” When the shellshock keeps me from responding, Ulysses’ brow furrows in concern. His scarred hands tighten around the lip of the desk. “Emilia, are you alright? Chin up, girl. Keep talking to me.”
If I had any tears left unburned, that one reassurance would have ripped them out of me.
“I-I’m fine,” I stutter. “I mean no, I’m not fine. I’m really fucken hurt. But I’m alive. I’m away from the Orange.” All my breath leaves me as my head hangs low. “What do I do? They caught my face on a hundred security cams, and I can’t get a hold of Krey, and she’s… she’s gone. I don’t…”
“Where are you now?”
“Somewhere near the crust. Nero’s streets, I think.”
Ulysses lets out a heavy breath, buying time to think. “Send me your location. I’ll find you as soon as possible.” His eyes arrest me through the screen. “Keep your head down. Whatever you do, don’t go back to your apartment. Dynasty will be watching.”
I suck in a loud hitch through my broken nose, patting my damaged gun. “I know. I don’t know if they tagged me with something before I got away, though. I’ll figure it out and find my own way to you. I just… someone needed to know.”
“You’ll be fine, Emilia. It’ll be alright. Just stay on the move for now.” He buries the shock of the news while I give him a weak thumbs-up. Pretending as all fathers do, that everything is under control, giving me the reassurance I need to keep going. “Good girl. Eyes up now, alright? Message me if you change your plans. If I don’t hear anything, I’ll be in contact soon.”
I nod, more to reassure myself than him, repeating the motion with my eyes closed till I feel well enough to face the world again. “Have you heard anything from Dax or Krey?”
“No. Why?”
“Krey was supposed to be running backup for me on the job. I haven’t been able to get a hold of him since this morning. I’m worried something might have happened to him too.”
Ulysses’ gaze darkens. “I’ll look into it.”
-
Rejoining my two unexpected saviors at the vending machines, I pluck the boy’s half-finished shot from his hand and wave them towards the sidewalk. He slouches and lets it go. We slip into the late-night crowd with ease, rejoining the flow of foot traffic. This late at night, the air is clear of JOY-augmented fliers, the streets stripped of autocabs. Most people are either heading back to the lifts to the overcity or committing fully to slumming it up in a club or arena until sunrise. Those who do neither keep their heads lowered against the smog, hoods raised, weapons dangling just under the edge of coats.
Reinforced by the brief intermission, my steps fall more surely, though the constant ache of my injuries draws ever closer to catching up. I shove the pain down and step faster to keep pace with my companions. Feeling exposed without my poncho, feeling the wary eyes checking out my burns and melted clothes. My arms cross defensively over my chest.
“Those bridge guards we passed earlier,” I say, easing back into the conversation. “We’re in Nero’s territory. Only his fighters use nanite weapons.”
“He’s our boss for the moment,” the girl replies. She taps a nail against her sternum. “Lain.” Then points to the boy. “Matthias.”
“Petty criminologists and handymen thieves at large,” Matthias smoothly continues. “And as you explained twice earlier in your drug-induced daze, you are-”
“-Emilia Mori,” Lain drawls. “Person of interest, amateur gunslinger, and possibly Dynasty’s Most Wanted.”
I don’t know much about Nero, never met the man personally. None of the Eight disliked Sarah- most all of them had a special respect for her, even if it was a grudging one- and a few like Ulysses were time-worn friends. Nero’s somewhere in the grey between. An ex-minor league fighter from the overcity who returned home to become a businessman. The only rumor about him I know to be true concerns the orphans he houses and the quasi-legal work they do in his undercity factories.
Lain’s not wrong, though. I escaped Dynasty’s trap by the skin of my teeth. Even with Ulysses’ distant help waiting, I’m alone on the streets in the middle of what’s about to be a crossfire over Sarah’s territory and possibly a hell of a lot more, given the summit of the Eight is supposed to go down tomorrow night. Krey is still missing. I can count on Ulysses to take me in. But I can’t just crawl into a corner and hide.
Sarah died trying to stop Dynasty. If I turned my back while they ate up more of the Vents, just gave up on everything she stood for, I’d never be able to live with myself. She believed our home could be better. Breaking the cycle was her dream. I can’t just let it end here. Someone has to carry on her torch. Someone has to take her place. And someone has to avenge her.
I make up my mind as a long autocab with tinted windows slows to a stop on the street beside us.
I’ll see Sarah’s dream through to the end, no matter what it takes. And even if it’s the last god-damned thing I do, I’ll put a bullet between the eyes of the bastard who took her from me.