A purposefully created and expertly initialized “glitch” infected the software controlling a certain construction site. Five minutes later, an automated security-mech disguised as a standard construction-mech fired round after round of anti-personnel munitions from an arm-mounted gatling-gun. Emily Yang huddled behind a rubble-filled dumpster as she held a trembling child in her hand.

Maybe “child” was too dismissive a term the girl had already properly managed to enter her teens after all. Without parents, without mentors, without a single ally, the girl had been doing a splendid job of keeping herself clothed, fed, sheltered, and breathing, in a world that clearly meant her ill.

This was why, despite their greatly differing backgrounds, Emily found an affinity growing between herself and the girl. A connection strong enough for Emily to risk her career and her life to try and save the girl, ruining a highly lucrative score that had been nearly five years in the making.

The girl that Emily was trying to protect was 15-year-old Katelyn Ingram. The last living member of the Ingram family, a once-influential and still well-known household that quietly held modest, but meaningful shares, in many of Megacity Decem’s most powerful corporations. 3 to 7-percent might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but when it came to the wealth and power of some of the most powerful companies in not only the city, but the world, Decem’s Ingrahm family quietly became a stooping giant. Outwardly normal, but easily capable of flipping the city on its head, if the circumstances were right.

Things were fine when Katelyn’s family was alive. Her older sisters, and three parents, were competent in their respective fields, and generally held decent reputations in Decem’s society. This and the Ingrahm’s generally inconspicuous manner had been enough to protect them to such a degree, that Emily was 90-percent sure the accidents that took the lives of Katelyn’s parents and sister, were just that.

Accidents. A bizarre, yet genuine, streak of bad luck. Alas, young Katelyn wasn’t as lucky as her family had been. Their deaths had been too high-profile, and even if that hadn’t been the case, there were plenty of sharp noses in the Mega-City that would have smelled blood in the water regardless.

In the eyes of the majority of Decem’s high and low folks, Katelyn Ingrahm and the Ingrahm family’s assets were now just a fat piece of meat. Some folk tried to get at it by feigning kindness and concern, to pull the girl into their circles, and into their care, into their grasp.

There had also been numerous attempts at kidnapping. As well as attempts to argue that young Katelyn was too incompetent to look after herself and that the girl should be placed into the care of the state, and fostering of competent hands, alongside the Ingrahm fortune. Now it seemed that some enterprising souls had found a means to get at Katelyn’s assets by killing her.

“Shit-shit-shit...Shit! Okay, kiddo...I’m gonna do a thing. Do NOT move or we both die, you hear me,” said Emily. Her mind moved a million-light-years per second as she tried to think of a way out of the quagmire she’d stepped into. The young girl in Emily’s arms nodded mutely.

Mercenary work and freelancer work could often be a bit soulless in Lux-Aqua-Tempestas. They were the folk who often did work that the corps and governments either didn’t want to be bothered with, or couldn’t directly be seen doing. Emily was living better than she’d ever lived, and had reached a high point in her career, yet she still lied, cheated, and stole on a regular basis. That was just how the job tended to go. It was up to the individual to decide just how low they were willing to go, and how much of their soul they were willing to lose.

Up until roughly 3 hours ago, Emily Yang had been Victoria Norton. A high-powered corporate negotiator and agent, who’d managed to make her way pretty far into the ranks of Sun-Eater Media Corporation’s management. Things were going so well for “Victoria” that Emily had been toying around with the idea of ditching the con that she’d been running and simply living corporate for a while.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The NIIABs had already proven they were up to the task for those kinds of long deceptions. Or rather, Emilly had already seen that as far as the world was concerned Victory was a real person, who’d been born, raised, and lived, within the Mega-City. “Emily” was the ghost, and over the passing years, she’d felt fainter and fainter within Victoria’s mind.

Then Victoria met Katelyn. Then Victoria heard through the grapevine that some of her superiors and their associates in Nautilisk-Behemoth Corp, were planning something nasty. The proper thing to do, whether Corp-rat, or Merc, was to look away. Dark deeds happened every day in the Mega-City, and the world at large, and smart girls learned to keep their heads down. But this was a kid. A kid that Victoria knew, and somewhat liked, or at least was somewhat impressed by.

A soft-spoken, but well-put-together, girl who was already well on her way to becoming a large and in-charge boss-lady of some decency and real principle. Victoria couldn’t let her die. Emily couldn’t let her die. Now here she was, in the shit. Trying to keep both herself and Katelyn alive, and pointedly not thinking about how badly she’d likely blown her cover with her actions. Both her act of protecting the girl now, and the actions she’d had to take to force the manager directly above her, to spill the details on tonight’s little engineered industrial accident.

Soft, cream-colored, skin became shimmering, shivering, silver-chrome liquid-metal. Emily had taken a very big step a few years ago, going fully cyber and undertaking a treatment that would replace the majority of her cells with a certain kind of “alchemically”-created nanobot, whatever that was. Back then, it felt like a flight of fancy. It felt like the act of a bored, vain, tech-crazy, paranoiac with a little too much money, but now, it seemed that the rationalizations she’d given herself for explaining this drastic move had been correct. A day had come where Emily’s life choices and career would land her in hot-water, of the sort that couldn’t just be fled from.

The metal ate away at the pantsuit and leather coat that Emily had been wearing. Emily held Katelyn tighter and sort of washed over her. Her body formed a semi-perfect sphere around the girl. Leaving on a set of three long brush-like appendages that could either be described as fox-tails or squid’s tentacles. Foxtails. The three fox-tails cracked like whips and fired out a flurry of thick “hairs” that flew like missiles. Flying out from behind the dumpster and striking the “glitched” security-mech.

The sphere spun out from behind the dumpster, as the missile-hairs detonated. Blowing themselves, and the security-mech sky high, and making enough noise that Emily wished that she’d thought to try them out more extensively after their purchase. Now the entire city would be stirred into a fervor, because that was not the minor explosion she’d been envisioning when she purchased the nano-missiles. An inner-gyroscope kept the girl inside the sphere seated upright, the massive silver orb zoomed out of the construction site and onto a road. Moving so quickly that the slowly activating machines that the unseen hacker was trying to call into play were unable to take a single step.

After passing by several streets, and cutting through several stoplights, the sphere ducked into a back-road and emerged as a very small sedan. It raced down the road for a while, before decelerating, and eventually stopping in a quieter part of Decem. A part of the city’s industrial districts that held fewer people, and less traffic. The door of the car opened, and a shake-legged Katelyn stepped out and immediately vomited on the side of the road. The car morphed in a mass of squirming chrome that eventually took the form of a woman with three silver fox-tails that quickly disappeared within her form. A new set of clothes appeared on Emily’s nude form before the metal turned back into skin.

A wide-eyed Katelyn gazed at the older woman with wariness, confusion, fear, and just a touch of awe. Emily liked the awe she saw, but she didn’t have time for any of the other stuff. The two of them needed to get off the streets pronto, if she knew the corps well, they’d likely have their security guys combing the city’s security-feeds, and there would be a swarm of camera drones out in the air looking for any sign of the two of them.

“Come on, kiddo. Time’s a-wastin. If we just stand here, we’re dead,” said Emily. Snapping her fingers every third or fourth word to get Katelyn’s attention and snap the girl out of her stupor.

Emily strode forwards, leading the way to a certain store that she knew would be the perfect place to hide out in. A certain little store, that she’d finally managed to earn loyalty-member benefits with, shortly after her big nanite-infusion treatment.