My apartment is absolute shit. In fact, it probably rates somewhere near the worst in the city. It isn't spacious, it isn't clean, it doesn't have a good view. Any view. It is, however, in the tower that houses the Shit Show flea market, and that's actually a pretty nice perk.
More importantly, though, it's mine. As much as anything can be "mine" in this fucking place. As long as I stay ahead on the exploitative rent Araketh Industries charges for such a prime piece of real estate, I am allowed to call these few square feet of Duracrete™ and Glasstic™ home.
The job with the 0gr3 should actually keep me ahead on rent. But only just. I have a few other contracts active at the moment. They'll help pay for anything else for the month if I can get them done.
In the stairwell that leads up to my floor, I dip and dodge my way around the addicts, vagabonds, piles of trash, broken furniture, and far too many unmoving bodies to not wonder if one or more of them's a corpse. I do the same thing in my hall, and without even thinking about it, I rest my right eye against the scanner that unlocks my door.
A message appears, floating in the air in front of me. Huh. Looks like the nanites that make up my temporary eyeball have at least a rudimentary UI built in.
**ERROR: RETINAL PATTERN NOT RECOGNIZED. ATTEMPT 1/3**
Fuck. I need to get to my bed. I need to pass out. I do not need my damn door acting up like this. I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever felt this tired. All of them had been after a job went sideways. Though none of those had gone as sideways as this one.
Maybe the lens covering the scanner is foggy or something. That's all. Maybe it's just dirty. So I pull down my sleeve and rub it before sticking my face up to the tiny porthole again.
**ERROR: RETINAL PATTERN NOT RECOGNIZED. ATTEMPT 2/3**
"Fuuuck! Come on!" I step back from the scanner and blink a few times. Deep breath. "Piece of shit, good for nothing hunk of Araketh garbage tech."
I do not need this right now. What I need even less, though, is dealing with truly being locked out of my apartment. Fail another attempt with the same retinal pattern, and the whole thing locks down until I can get a guild agent down here to get things sorted.
Who the hell knows how long that would be? Even locked out, unable to access any of my shit, I will still be the one paying for it. I've heard it can take up to a year to get someone into the Unders and deal with anything.
Fuck that.
When Zamira shot me up with the nanomeds, they must have somehow fucked up the blood vessels in my eyes as they fixe the damage. Never even crossed my mind that might happen.
I want to punch the door for not doing literally the one thing it is supposed to do. "Fuck!" I yell and then punch the door.
There are more than a few people nearby, not a single one looks my way. A lady punching a door while screaming profanity is probably the tamest thing they've seen today.
Guess I'll have to crash at either Zamira or Marv's tonight. Or this month. Ugh. It'll be for however long it takes to purge the nano and get a normal retinal pattern back.
I punch the door again for good measure. "Fuuuuuck."
How long does it take to regrow organic eyes? Surely, I can get a set clone within a month, right? I'll have to ask Z, see what she can do to help.
Zamira's a good streetdoc. Really good. Probably the best in the Unders. I'm biased, though, given that she's my BFF and all. She doesn't talk much about how she got so good, though. All I know is that she was trained by and for the pharmaceutical arm of Araketh Industries and found a way out. Apparently it was ugly, messy, and she says is probably going to bite her in the ass one day.
In her second career in the Unders, she's made a name for herself by supplementing guild-approve medical treatments with semi-stable quick fixes she invents herself—or learned from other streetdocs. I, for one, am incredibly glad she does that. I might not be here today if she didn't.
Tomorrow, though...tomorrow I'll feel like the gutter trash I am. For the moment, however, I'm upright and breathing, and that counts for a lot.
Over the years, I've had to purge Z's nano a few times. I know what to expect. That doesn't mean I look forward to it or will like it. My next few days to a week will be spent periodically pissing out globs of tiny robots. It is not pleasant.
But hey, maybe when I'm done with that, my fucking door might unlock, and I can sleep in my own bed.
Figure while I'm here I'll see if Marv is at his stall in the Shit Show. I glance up to the left and see that my new temporary UI is missing a clock. Great. Hopefully, it's not too late and he's still there. Heading down, I once again hop over what I hope aren't dead bodies and what looks like a few...yep, that's people fucking right there on the stairs. Lovely.
As soon as I push the stairwell exit open, I'm overwhelmed by the cacophony of sounds and sights that made up the Shit Show. Holograms float everywhere, fighting each other for space and human attention. So do the dozens of vendors at the booths projecting them.
A kobold woman has the nearest stall to the stairs. Not a bad location. The scales on her snout and around her eyes are fade to a dull grey, and the rest of her lizard-like body has lost the shimmering quality that they'd have had when she was younger.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The smell of cooked meat wafts from behind her rickety table. Ugh. Damn it. I accidentally make eye contact with her, which we both understand is the universal signal to start making an unwanted sales pitch.
“Hey, little girl! You hungry?”
Yes. Very hungry. But I know better than to eat anything from the Shit Show. It hadn't earned its name for no reason. “I’m good,” I say and keep walking. There is no way I am adding diarrhea and/or dysentery to the list of today's bullshit. Also, I hate it when people call me little girl. Almost as bad are sweetheart, babe, baby, sweetie, and honey.
“Well if you want the best iguana-on-a-stick you’ve ever had, you come back here and see Aunt Seenus, you hear me?” I walk off and wave my hand in the air dismissively, doing my very best to ignore the fact that a lizard woman just offered me a lizard on a stick. There aren't hours enough left in the day to unpack the horrors in that.
Every table and stall holds the same old shit they always do. Incalculable kebabs of questionable quality and source, broken electronics that probably don't work and might have never worked in the first place, counterfeit cybernetics that no person in their right mind would install in their body, and even the occasional sex worker who makes promises even the most expensive and experienced prostitute would have a hard time keeping.
While it's not packed shoulder-to-shoulder, the Shit Show is active tonight. I have to push through more people than usual to get to Uncle Marv's space. Even he has a holo spinning above his stall, this one proclaiming that he's a "truly honest and legitimate businessman." His space is filled with a few rickety tabletops under a threadbare tent. Every surface is covered with assorted junk, broken-down chrome, and all sorts of scavenged or discarded tech.
Marv is short with a big nose and even bigger mustache. His sideburns come down to his jawline, and he wears his hair in a mohawk. What I don't know is if it's intentional or because of natural baldness. One look at Marv, and anyone can tell there are some dwarves hanging out in our family tree.
"You look like shit", Marv says as I walk up.
"Job went sideways," I say, shrugging.
"I'd say so, yeah. You're missing a goddamn eye, Reice!"
"Z patched me up as well as she could in the field." I point to her good eye, patently ignoring the missing left one. At least the nano sealed the socket off so there isn't a gaping hole in my head. "I'll get it cloned."
"Good luck affording that shit," Marv says. "More importantly, what the hell were you doing in the field?" My uncle puts down the cybernetic hand that he was fiddling with. "You know better than that. You're support for fuck's sake."
I roll my eyes. Eye. Whatever. "I know. I know. SecWatch put out a priority bounty on an enhanced monster going apeshit all over some neighborhood near the wall. They called it an 0gr3, and since the description said the target was chrome to the bone, I figure I'd be able to hack into the systems and take it down, no fuss, no muss."
"Stupid idea," Marv chides. "Let me repeat, my darlin' niece, you know better than that."
"Yeah," I agree. "Live and learn, I guess."
"Or die and don't," Marv counters. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "For fuck's sake, Reice, did I teach you nothin'?" He picks up some other broken piece of tech and sets it back down on the other side of the table, absentmindedly rearranging his inventory.
"Of course you did."
"Sure as fuck don't seem like it when I see you lookin' like this." His voice is harsh, angry. Loud. "You got the shit kicked out of you and lost an eye, for fuck's sake." He lets that sit for a beat before lowering his tone and saying a bit more gently, "So what happened exactly?"
As I pick up what looks like the irreparably broken hilt of a nanoblade, I say, "Short version is, I failed to break through the thing's ICE fast enough, he spotted me, and then knocked me around while I was occupied. I got too close, that's all. Nothing Zamira couldn't handle. Arimaz distracted it, and I took it out." I frown at the junk weapon in my hands, then point at his holobanner with it. "Honest and legitimate, huh?"
Ignoring my attempt to change the subject, Marv plops down into a beat-up folding chair he keeps in his stall. "Sounds like you got fucking lucky to me."
"Z always has my back. I knew I was fine." I did not know I was fine, but there is no way in hell that I'm going to tell Marv that.
Marv isn't convinced. "What if this 0gr3 had his own Zamira, huh? What if there had been a...a...a...I dunno, Tr011 watching his back, huh? What then?"
It's my turn to ignore him and try to change the topic back to the bullshit broken weapon he's trying to pawn off on someone. Marv is better than that. "If someone tries to buy this, are you going to tell them it's broken?"
"I don't know if it's broken or not. I ain't an arms dealer."
"Marv, you're literally an arms dealer." I point the dead sword at him, and as I turn, I see the CyTek logo stamped into the pommel and Marv shrugs. CyTek Armaments Group is one of the four elite megaguilds on this continent, along with Araketh Industries, Weatherbell Communications, and Deitech Systems. "And you know someone has to have specific, registered CyTek mods to activate the nanites, even if it weren't dead a fuck?"
"I have a very discerning clientèle, o niece o mine," Marv says, waving his hand to dismiss my concerns. "I would never insult their intelligence and expertise by stating something so obvious."
"Sure," I say. "Whatever. Anyway, the reason I dropped by—"
"You mean it wasn't just to spend some quality time with your favorite uncle?" he asks. He reaches out fast to snatch the nanoblade out of my hands. I'm faster than he is, so it stays with me.
"Of course, that's part of it," I say. "The other part of it is that I think the nanites Z use on me fucked something up with my retinal scan, and I can't get into my apartment." He scowls but I keep going before he can get a word in. "I hope that maybe Z can do something to fix it, so I'm gonna go stay with her and Arimaz for a couple of days."
Marv sighs, closes his eyes, and clenches his jaw. His hand forms a fist and then opens again. He takes a couple of deep breaths. "So you're in way shittier shape than you look." Another fist, another breath. "And you look pretty shitty, Reice."
"Maybe?" It comes out as a question and much meeker than I intend. "I'll be fine, Marv. Like I said, I'll be back in a day or two when I purge the nano and see if my eyes are back to normal."
"Well, just don't do anything stupid in the meantime until you're healed up, alright? I don't wanna get a call and have to go down to SecWatch HQ to ID your body or get swabbed so they can verify your DNA."
"Awww, you do care about me."
"Nope," Marv says and winks. "Just don't have the spare credits to hop on a train or cab to get down there."
"You can always walk."
"Not with these knees, I can't." Marv shakes his head and rests his hands palms down on his knees and scrunches up his face in a mock expression of pain. "Plus, I got a business to run here. Can't just leave it all willy-nilly, can I?"
"Not when there's a rush like this all the time." I sweep my arm like a game show host's assistant to showcase that he has no customers. And hasn't since I've been here. "Don't want you to lose all these sales, do I?"
"That face of yours is driving them all away," Marv says, mocking me right back. "Now get out of here and let me know when you get your apartment figured out, would ya?"
I signal the affirmative by making finger guns with one hand and holding up the CyTek hilt in the other. "I'm keeping this, by the way." I stick it to one of the mag-panels on my belt and then make my way out of the Shit Show and head toward Zamira's workshop.