30 – Banger Security Practices
By the time Tony slipped out of the shop again, it was three in the morning—still an hour before Golden’s opened their doors. He didn’t mind, though; he was full of pent-up energy and ready for a good, long run. The Blast was dangerous at night, sure, but this wasn’t really night any longer; it was super-early morning, and he was confident that ninety percent of the trouble-makers were in a drugged-up haze of one sort or another or sleeping off their wild night. This was beddy-bye time for thugs and bangers.
It was the same in any city, and it was Tony’s favorite time to run. A magical quiet descended on the warrens and hives of humanity in the pre-dawn hours, and mundane city streets took on a sort of mysterious quality you couldn’t find when the sun was up or when people were out and about. Of course, there were still dangers: the Dust-altered folks, the ones made more monstrous than magical, were active in the dark. So, while he let off steam and got some good thinking done, Tony kept himself alert, looking carefully into the shadows, his new cybernetic eye auto-adjusting its light gain, even without a PAI to manage it.
For a relatively cheap piece of cyberware, the eye had some autonomous functions that made his much more expensive retinal implant look bad. Of course, once he had a PAI and could install the management software, his other eye would pick up the slack, but for now, Tony was happy with the new one. After all, it had probably saved his life in that walk-in refrigeration box. If it hadn’t automatically switched to thermal imaging, he would have been blind in the gas cloud.
Thinking about that brought his mind around to the Black Jades and how he likely had a price on his head with them. Thinking about that brought his mind around to Addie and Bert and whether he was doing anyone any favors by sticking around. He was excited—probably for the first time in years—about working operator gigs with Addie. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been enjoying following her around on her little journo outings, but he’d failed to see the point of it all. Sure, she might spread awareness, but the people who cared, those with the means to do something, were all in on it.
There were people who lived the corpo life and never made an active decision to hurt anyone else, but they were all benefiting from the things that took place in the shadows—the things that took place outside their megatowers in places like the Blast. Even Cross Corp, where he’d spent the last ten years of his life, had research facilities outside New Manhattan. They had sister companies all over the continent, and Tony had seen first-hand some of the “research” they conducted at their facility outside Houston.
His thoughts kept running in circles, and every time he started to think maybe he should just bail and save Addie the trouble he would, no doubt, bring her way, he had to remind himself that the world was dirty whether he was around or not. Addie could get her ticket punched while sweeping the sidewalk outside her dad’s shop; she wouldn’t live in a fairy tale just because he walked away. If he worked with her, though, if they started building some rep and gaining some proper gear, he could protect her.
Tony laughed as he turned the corner, stretching his legs into an interval sprint. Was that right, or was he just deluding himself? Was he just trying to rationalize what he wanted to do? He had to come to grips with the fact that he couldn’t control everything. It was a dangerous world, and if he had to consider Addie’s chances with or without him, in his mind, it was a toss-up. He brought some trouble with him, but he also was pretty damn good at dealing with trouble.
It was exactly half past three when his messenger chip sent a ping through its rudimentary AUI, and he saw a message flashing from Addie. He slowed to a jog and read it.
> Addie: Hello, this is JJ, Addie’s personal AI. She’s sleeping but has instructed me to check your welfare every thirty minutes.
Tony chuckled and responded that he was fine, and then he began retracing his route through the neighborhood; the gym would be getting ready to open by the time he got there. He had a good sheen of sweat by then, his hair slick with it, and he was glad he’d taken a few minutes to wash up as much as he could in the storeroom sink; he didn’t relish the idea of several bangers’ blood running down his face while he ran.
When he got to the gym, Golden was opening up. He waved at Tony and a handful of other morning regulars and let them in ten minutes early. Tony went through the motions of a weights workout, but his heart wasn’t in it. His mind was a million miles away, thinking about Addie, the Black Jades, working as an operator again, and how he might best leverage Addie’s talents. If he could get her to mod out that drone of hers… He chuckled, shaking his head, putting aside thoughts of bomb deliveries and airstrikes with retro-fitted needlers. “Baby steps,” he grunted, pushing out his last set on the bench press.
He moved to an incline bench, but a new message popped up on his AUI before he got started. At first, he thought it was JJ checking in again, but when he glanced at the blinking tab, he saw it was from Maisie. “Ah, shit,” he sighed. Part of him had hoped she’d just ghost him, that she’d disappear into the woodwork or, worst-case, sick her cousins and the other Jades on him. He’d almost rather deal with a wordless blood vendetta than talk to her. Glancing around the gym, ensuring this wasn’t a distraction, so someone could slip up behind him and slit his throat, he brought up the message.
> Maisie: Tony? Are you okay?
Scowling, Tony stood and racked his weights. He walked to the locker room, got his towel and shampoo, and then, after stripping down, stood under the hot, steamy nozzle for at least ten minutes, letting the water wash away his sweat, his grime, and, for the most part, his stress. He wasn’t sure how to react to Maisie, and his first instinct was to ignore the message. She’d figure it out soon enough that he was alive. She’d hear from her uncle’s scumbag friends and family members that he’d been involved in the banger’s death.
He wouldn’t be surprised if that message weren’t just the prelude to another trap. She’d ask him if he was okay, where he was, if they could meet, and then—surprise, surprise—Black Jades shooting him from the nearby windows. The more he thought about it, the more irritated he felt, and he forced his mind in other directions as he went through the motions of washing his hair and scrubbing the blood out from under his nails. He was toweling off when another message came through.
> Maisie: Please, Tony! Or, I guess whoever has this comm ID—just tell me what happened. Tell me if Tony’s okay.
>
> “Pretty good at playing dumb, I guess.” He sighed and sent a quick message:
>
> Tony: Yeah, I’m okay. Not in the mood to chat.
More people were showing up at the gym, and probably five others were in the locker room with him. None of them looked like they were planning to kill him, but Tony’s paranoid side began to wonder which of them, if not all, might be Jades. He got dressed as quickly as he could, constantly glaring around. He stared at one guy who sat for a while until he noticed and hurried out of the locker room. Another message pinged, again from Maisie, and he almost blocked her without looking at it, but his curiosity got the better of him.
> Maisie: They won’t tell me anything. My uncle’s goon, who was watching me, left a couple of hours ago, but I can’t get ahold of my uncle or cousins. I’m here watching my aunt’s kids because she has the AM shift at the Boxer plant, but none of us know what’s up. Please, Tony! I didn’t want to do that to you! Didn’t Addie tell you?
Tony jammed his feet into his sneakers and pulled his last clean, unripped track jacket over his T-shirt. If Maisie wasn’t lying, if her uncle made her set him up and she didn’t know what kinds of horrors the Jades got up to, he supposed he could muster some sympathy for her. Would the greater Jade organization look after her? Would Troy’s wife get some kind of death settlement? He knew some gangs kept a fund for stuff like that, but this was the Blast, and he had no idea how organized the bangers in the district were.
Irritated that he was already feeling something other than anger at Maisie—wouldn’t it be easier if she’d just flat-out betrayed him?—he walked out of the locker room with his gym bag and sent her a response.
> Tony: I’ll tell you what happened, but I want to look you in the eyes when I do it. Can you meet later?
A response was immediate:
> Maisie: Yes! My other aunt is coming at noon. Meet for lunch?
>
> Tony: All right. Manuel’s?
>
> Maisie: Okay. Gimme ’til 12:30.
Tony gave her response a thumbs-up, then focused on his surroundings. He was outside the gym, already walking back toward Bert’s, but another idea struck him. He had the bit-lockers he’d taken from Troy in his pocket and the PAIs he’d ripped from the thugs in the alley in his bag. He was curious if he’d gotten lucky or not, and Dino’s Chrome Warehouse was nearby.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and turned to the left, jogging across the street in the light, early morning traffic. It wasn’t yet five o’clock, and the sun wasn’t up, but he was facing the upcoming sunrise and could see the sky turning pale gray whenever he caught a glimpse between the tall buildings that dominated the skyline. He doubted the Jades would be out looking for him yet, and if they were, they wouldn’t know where he was. Even so, he kept alert, scrutinizing alleys as he passed them and peering closely at the hooded figures sitting around on stoops or standing in groups smoking chem-sticks.
Most people up and about at that hour were heading off to jobs in one factory or another. From what he’d gathered, public transit in the Blast wasn’t as timely as in other districts, hence the crowds gathering near stops—people were early, so they’d get one of the buses when it happened to arrive. When he got to Dino’s, Tony groaned when he saw the sign on the door; they wouldn’t be open until eight. He put his face on the glass, peering in, wondering if he might get lucky and catch Dino or one of his employees early.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Nobody moved in the dimly lit interior, though, and Tony turned with a sigh, scanning the nearby stores. Nothing looked promising, so he jammed his hands in his pockets and started back to Bert’s, resolving to return later in the morning. He’d only gone two blocks, though, when he saw a neon sign up an alley he hadn’t noticed before: “Doc Fox – Urgent Care Available 24/7.” Was it a regular clinic, or was Doc Fox a chop-doc? Maybe both? With time on his hands, Tony started up the alley, only to be startled by a message ping; it was JJ checking in.
As irritating as it was to talk to a half-wit PAI, Tony did it to humor Addie. He messaged the bot that he was stopping at Doc Fox’s clinic, and while he was at it, he asked JJ if he knew anything about the doctor. To his surprise, JJ responded immediately with something useful:
> Addie: Addie has visited Doc Fox before when she was exposed to a tech phage. It was transmitted to her via a corrupted data chip that she purchased, hoping to gain access to a first-hand recording of the collapse of the NGE tower. It held no such video, and Addie’s data port was infected. Doc Fox was able to purge the phage and installed an upgraded firewall.
It wasn’t a glowing recommendation, but it wasn’t a condemnation, either. It sounded like Addie needed something done, and the doc handled it. When he reached the neon sign, Tony looked down a short flight of grimy concrete steps to a metal door that might once have been painted red but was now mostly a brownish rust color. A keypad and cam sat to the left of the handle, and Tony descended the steps to press the call button.
After a few seconds, a voice came through the little speaker, “Emergency?”
“Nah. Just looking to upgrade some cybernetics and maybe sell some parts.”
“When I unlock the door, step into the foyer, put your weapons in the locker, and proceed through the next door. Hostility will be met with deadly force.” Before Tony could respond, the door buzzed loudly, and he heard the bolt click open. He pulled the door and stepped into a short, concrete hallway. As promised, lockers lined the left wall, activated by a thumbprint. Tony didn’t have any weapons on him, so he walked past them to the next door and pulled the handle.
He almost pushed the door shut again when he saw the auto-turret hanging from the ceiling in the next hallway. It had two wide-bore barrels, and its sensor array tracked him with a menacing whir and a flickering red LED. When he stood there, hesitating, the same voice came to him again, this time in person, though, as the doc called out from the doorway at the other end of the hallway. “Don’t worry; if you’re not violent, it won’t shoot.”
Frowning, Tony took his hands out of his pockets and walked slowly and calmly down the concrete hallway to the open doorway where the doc stood. The man was younger than he’d expected, maybe a little older than Tony. He had one of those wispy, patchy beards that made you wonder why he didn’t just shave it off, two chrome eyeballs—no LEDs—and a full head of long, stringy hair. He wore well-stained blue scrubs and plastic flip-flops, but the weirdest thing about him were the extra mechanical appendages sprouting from his forearms. They were like metallic spider’s legs, tipped with dexterous-looking, multi-jointed digits—half a dozen on each side.
“Doc Fox at your service. Step into my office.” He motioned Tony into the room. It was a typical chop-doc clinic as depicted in popular fiction—auto-surgeon chair at the center, stainless carts and cabinets, medical waste bins, and a pair of big stainless refrigeration units. It was surprisingly clean, and the concrete looked damp and smelled of bleach. The doc must have seen him wrinkling his nose because he explained, “Pardon the disinfectant odor—just cleaning up after an emergency visit.”
Tony nodded, still looking around. A small rolling cart with a data terminal sat on the right-hand wall, and some rolling chairs and stools flanked it. “You buy used PAIs?”
“I’ll buy most gear that’s operational. There’s a big market for used tech in the Blast. What’s your name, pardner?” Tony hadn’t put his finger on it until the doc said “pardner,” but he thought he caught a slight southern, maybe Texan accent.
“Not from the city, huh?”
“Oh, me? No, no. I was recruited by Boxer’s parent company, Oldfellow-Ryburn, down in Austin. Transferred up here for a promotion but couldn’t get along with the local execs. Decided to open my own shop a couple years back. Now it’s your turn.”
“I’m Tony.”
“Ah. Not the verbose type, I see.” Fox rubbed his scruffy chin, and Tony smiled faintly and shrugged. “Well? What can I do you for? I’m always eager to gain a new client.” As he spoke, the doctor looked Tony up and down. His eyes moved quickly over his arm and up to his face, scrutinizing his cybernetic eyes, lingering a few extra seconds on Tony’s high-end, silvery iris. “A fellow transplant, I see.”
“That obvious?”
“People born in the Blast don’t tend to have eyes like that.”
Tony nodded. “Well, listen, Doc, the stuff I’ve got for you right now is probably barely worth your time, but you work with me, and I’ll guarantee you some more meaningful business down the road.”
“That so?” The doctor folded his arms, openly appraising Tony again. He slowly began to nod, then asked, “So? What you got for me today?”
“I need a decent PAI that can interface with Dust-tech and a better Dust reactor—probably a better matrix, too. I’ve got these to trade, along with my bits.” Tony reached his mechanical hand into the side pocket of his gym bag and grabbed the three PAIs, displaying them on his palm.
“Well, let’s start by evaluating these, hmm?” Fox pointed to the cart where his cube-like data deck and AUI projector sat. “Put ’em on the cart, and I’ll scan ’em.” Tony dropped the chips with their long, iridescent synthetic nerve fiber tails onto the cart. Fox frowned, looking more closely at them. “I see blood flecks on one of these, and they’re not exactly packaged properly.” He snorted, smiling wryly. “To say the least.”
“Their previous owners aren’t going to be looking for them, and I’m sure you’ve got some empty boxes and gauze or something you could pack ’em up in, yeah?”
“Ah, the joys of running a chop clinic. Luckily, you’re right, pard. It’s the rare banger or Blast denizen who wants to keep the packaging after I install a new piece.” The doctor reached behind his data deck and pulled out a fragile-looking cable. It spooled out of the deck, thin as fishing line with a round metallic tip. He touched the tip to one of the PAI chips, and it snicked as it attached, snapping into the invisibly small debugging port. Fox stared into space for a while, reading whatever information was streaming onto his AUI.
“Well?” Tony prodded.
“Valorex, model nineteen. When new, it retailed for 750. I’ll take it off your hands for three. It’s dated and, obviously, used.” While he spoke, Fox unplugged his wire and inserted the tip into the next PAI. Tony contemplated trying to bargain up the price, but he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. He could take the chips to another shop, maybe over to Dino’s when they opened, for a second opinion, but other than that, he was in the dark. He decided to keep it cool and just listen to the doc’s offers before he said anything.
After a few seconds, Fox grunted. “Surprising. This is a Liquid Industries chip, and it’s only a year old. I’ll give you twenty-five hundred for it.”
“Can it interface with Dust-tech?”
“Afraid not. Quite robust otherwise. I mean for these parts.” He unsnapped his diagnostic line and plugged it into the third chip. A minute later, he tsked and shook his head. “Rack and Gable—low-end. I’ll give you a hundred bits for it. I can probably offload it on a kid looking for their first chip.”
“So, 2900 for all three?”
“Yeah. Let’s call it credit for now, however. I know what you want, and I’ve got a couple of options—used but in good condition.”
Tony’s eyebrow shot up. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve got a deal with a guy at Boxer Trauma. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say when a corpse goes unclaimed and gets stripped before incineration, Boxer isn’t always getting an accurate accounting of the recovered cybernetics.”
Tony narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “You always brag about ripping off the biggest corp in the district to complete strangers?”
“It’s called building trust, pardner. I show you a little, and maybe you won’t feel so nervous if you ever need to go under my knife. You catch my flow?” He waved a hand dismissively, his extra, mechanical appendage clicking with the movement. “I’ve got a feeling about you, anyway. You’re not a rat.”
“Hah! Don’t tell that to Beef.”
“Beef? You friends with the Helldogs?”
“Not exactly, but…” Tony sighed and shook his head. “It was funny in my head, that’s all. Forget it.”
“Right, well, have a seat, and I’ll be back faster than a rattlesnake bite.”
As the doctor slipped through another metallic door, closing it behind him with a solid thunk of the bolt, Tony sat on one of the stools. He couldn’t fault the chop-doc for keeping his inventory locked away. He supposed the guy got all sorts of customers, especially being open twenty-four hours a day. He wondered about that—there must be an apartment back there somewhere.
He wondered if Fox got more or less business being so close to a store like Dino’s Chrome Warehouse. It was probably a mixed bag: more installs but fewer direct cyberware sales. Tony looked at the autosurgeon chair. It looked newer, with more attachments than the one in Doc Peters’s clinic, but it was just a chair, not a full table. Did that limit the procedures it could do? Most of Tony’s work had been done in a fancy boutique with high-end surgical suites, so he wasn’t well-versed in chop-doc hardware.
Thinking about Doctor Chavez brought a cold gleam to his eye and started his mind down a dangerous road. Tony was almost grateful when Fox came bustling back into the room with two plastic-wrapped bundles. “Fully refurbished, factory reset with all the latest firmware updates, and thoroughly disinfected.” He held each package up, dangling them from his fingers so Tony could glimpse the PAI chips within.
“I’m listening.”
“Right, right, I forgot you’re a man of few words.” Fox lowered his left hand and wriggled the package in the other. “This one can talk to Dust-tech and has a reasonably intelligent and capable AI, but it’ll need a lot of training. It’s a NeuroSync model seven, so it’s a few years old, but they haven’t done much with their AI coding in more recent models other than shipping them with more pre-loaded behavioral capabilities—all things that this one can learn with a little time and practice. I’ll let it go for 5100 bits.”
Tony grunted and shifted his gaze to the other package. “And that one?”
“A CoreMind 77-A. It’s a little more budget-friendly, but the AI is not exactly a self-starter. Be prepared to micro-manage the hell out of it. I’ll sell it to you for 3300.”
Tony frowned, contemplating the two options. With the money he’d gotten for the guns he sold to Bert, his other bits, and the credit from the three PAIs, he could almost afford the NeuroSync, and he’d much rather have a capable, clever AI. He wanted to know if the two bit-lockers he’d taken from Troy had any money on them, but he didn’t want to have to ask the doctor to read them for him. To do it himself, though, he needed a PAI or terminal with an actual screen. He should have checked them out before leaving Bert’s, but—
“You thinking about it or need me to find you something else?” Fox asked, interrupting Tony’s thoughts.
“You got a tablet or something I could borrow? I need to check a few things regarding my finances.”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” Fox turned to the rolling cart where his data deck sat and pulled open a drawer, lifting out a small tablet in a hard black clamshell case. “For field visits. Let me log you in as a guest.” He tapped the screen a few times then handed the device to Tony.
“Thanks.” Tony reached into his pocket and took out his three bit-lockers. He slipped the one Bert gave him back into his pocket, then he took one of the others and held the sync button down while, on the tablet, he touched a matching icon. A message appeared on the screen:
> Tap the sync button on your device again to connect.
Tony did so and, shifting the screen so he was sure Fox couldn’t see it, he read the balance report: 332 Boxer-bits. Grunting with poorly contained disappointment, Tony repeated the process with the other bit-locker. This time, the message that popped up on the tablet was different:
> Enter the encryption key to connect.
Tony frowned and, for the first time, really looked at the bit-locker. He turned it slowly in his fingers and almost laughed when he saw the tiny numerals carved into the plastic on the reverse side: 1441. Leave it to bangers to have lazy security practices. He punched the numbers into the tablet and grinned widely when he saw the balance report: 16,448 Sol-bits.
He logged out of the little tablet and looked up at Fox. To his surprise, the doctor wasn’t watching him. He was standing near another stainless cart, using a tiny screwdriver to adjust a joint on one of his mechanical appendages. Tony cleared his throat, standing up from the stool. “I’ll take the NeuroSync, Doc, and let’s talk Dust reactors.”