AFTER ALL Ulysses implored me, I’m turning my back on his kindness anyways. I feel like I’m stabbing him in the back as I lead Lain and Matthias out of the headquarters on a convoluted path no one but a street rat could follow. More and more I’m sure the assassination attempt was only directed at me and the thieves. Kun Kharsa was right about the intelligence of Dynasty’s Executor. Whoever has been orchestrating the syndicate’s years-long expansion is no fool. Ulysses, ex-pro fighter, fifty years of fighting experience and a horde of diehard bodyguards, is an impossible mark. Emilia Mori, eighteen-year-old wrench that keeps throwing herself in their path? Much more realistic.
Still. I don’t even stop to leave him a sign that I’m gone. I don’t need that kind of baggage weighing me down, not where I’m going. The body I left in his office will be message enough that someone sold us out. Forgiveness will have to wait for later.
We spill out together into the muggy heat of the Vents. Pre-dawn, the streets stripped of their neon, only a moody grey-green murk illuminating the undercity. The western edge of the Five Rings Block sprawls in front of us. Four lane street, graveyard empty, a façade of closed storefronts on one side and a yawning chasm to the Abyss on the other. No waiting assassins or enforcers launch surprise attacks as we dash across the freeway to a bridge between the blocks. We keep up the run for long minutes, the only people braving the quiet. The Vents is emptier than I’ve ever seen it before. I can hear the creak of the undercity as it sways fractionally from the billions of welds attaching us to the intra-city crust; the individual droplets of acidic runoff dripping down the gutters to pool inside cracks in the concrete. Echoes of far-distant gunfire ride on the fetid undercity air, so faint they could just as easily be the moans of the wind.
We’re half an hour out of the Five Rings block and running past the smoggy-smeared exterior of a dormant metro station when I finally call for a stop, pulling out my JOY. Matthias catches a glance of who I start typing a message to. He goes to distract Lain; I’m pretty sure she lets him. She already knows, anyways. A plan to kill an Executor needs a certain kind of blunt-force insanity to pull off, and after the carnage at the Lighthouse, there’s only one person left in the Vents crazy enough to want in.
His reply comes ten seconds after I fire off my message.
[Lotus block. Rock Bottom Club. Bring some balls this time.]
-
The Rock Bottom is a shoot-the-shit electroclub that straddles a volatile line of preferred clientele. Or it was, before the entire undercity decided to go on lockdown. Usually, the club is one of the hottest spots on the Lotus block. Just down the street from a high-traffic intra-city lift, popular with uni fighters from the overcity and gang lieutenants alike, it’s got a rap sheet longer than an Electric Town bullet train. The kind of place you go to get fucked up or get in a fight.
‘Course, the uni mooks who wander down here after their tournaments and practice hours don’t exactly know that, which makes it all the more fun for people like me- people who just come to drink and watch the show. I’ve been to the Rock Bottom enough times to know better than to bet against the mooks. They might be out of their water in the Vents, they might be drunk off their asses, but the moment a Venter makes a pass at them, all bets are off. Drip fed on gladiocracy, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that they can fight. But still. It’s a little scary how much better they can be. Sometimes it feels like they’re an entirely different breed of human compared to us, and boy can they be assholes about it.
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Normal nights, you’d see every one of the Eight’s colors sprinkled across the lounges, the bar, and the music selection; a healthy layer of tourism on top. Dance floor lights, beating music, drinks and smokes greeting you at the door, a pulse and a rhythm that whirlpool you inside. Three AM after the worst night the Vents has ever seen, the alleys around the horseshoe-shaped club are as dead as its front façade. A moody spectrum of neon shimmers through the thick fog pressing down from the overcity, blanketing the blockaded front doors in pale light.
I take the lead on the approach, 6-Teba holstered. The two bouncers covering the entrance spit out lighters and lurch to their feet when they spot me coming through the fog with Lain and Matthias on my heels. One with huge metal gauntlets sheathing his forearms, the other a lean knifefighter swaddled in Wishbone’s particular shade of white. Both scorched and bloodied. Recognizing the clothes we stole from the Dynasty assassins, they jerk into fighting stance on caf-fueled nerves. The knifefighter slips a hand behind his back, preparing to throw. I’m about to call him off when a familiar voice cuts out of the lobby for me.
“Hold it. She’s with us,” Krey says, forcing his way between the bouncers.
Somehow, after all the hell that’s happened since I last left him in the Vector Seven streets, my old friend looks none the worse for wear. His eyes are harder, his anger a few degrees cooler, but little of the unfolding carnage has managed to leave a mark on him. The folded-up Malice is slung across his back like a Guardian’s shield. Fresh antibac tape covers a gash running down his right bicep. The sleeves of his olive-green cowl, a frayed gift from Ulysses for his tenth birthday, are rolled to the shoulder. Fingerless gloves and dark combat trousers with a single kneepad make the rest of his kit.
Krey’s eyes drift from me to my companions. “Didn’t say you were coming with company.”
I cock my head to the side. “Didn’t say you were coming to the Lighthouse. Figured I’d return the favor.”
“I didn’t get an invite. Had to make my own.”
“Oh, you made one alright. Made an exit too.”
“Don’t start, Emmy. Dax taught us both cards. I played the best hand I had and folded for the next.” He goes back to staring down at me, almost a foot higher because of the club’s front steps. “Why are you here?”
“I’m done running.”
“Took you long enough. What changed?”
I let a slow breath through my nose. “I’m picking up where Sarah left off and putting an end to this.”
His eyes ignite like dormant coals, my words the stoking breath. “You’re gunning for the Executor.”
“I still have the intel Sarah and I were going to use to find her office. But I can’t get into the Orange when the whole city is on lockdown. They’ll be expecting a counterattack. I need them looking somewhere else. I need you, and as many people you’ve got holed up in there.” I look him straight in the eyes. “One last run. You owe me that much.”
Krey chews it over for a moment. Two hundred-credit chits roll between his fingers. “And them?”
Matthias steps up, shoulder to shoulder with me. “I won’t go back to living under Dynasty. And if I can, I won’t let anyone else suffer what I did.”
His eyes flick to Lain. “You?”
She shrugs, hands in her pockets. “I’m with them.”
Krey nods to himself, turning the proposal over. It satisfies, just like I knew it would. Stepping back, he waves for us to follow him into the beating heart of the club.