The rain came down in sheets, a hard drumming on the steel roof of the nondescript black courier van parked a block from Peril’s building. The downpour smelled of copper and ash, city runoff swirling into neon gutters. Lucy shifted in the driver’s seat, mind racing through tactical overlays.
She zoomed her cybereyes in on the front lobby. No need for binoculars. Twenty gangers from the Cuchillos Oscuros—her display painted them in bright red outlines. They loitered in the lobby with battered submachine guns and machetes, looking bored. Or maybe just waiting.
The very mention of Cuchillos Oscuros dragged Lucy back to her first kill. The gang that had initiated her into the life. Full circle, she thought with a sour taste in her mouth.
Lucy muttered to herself. “Twelve I could handle. Maybe. But twenty?” She exhaled, re-checking the count. “That’s a problem.”
Her tactical computer pinged. Ten minutes till the op commenced. She felt the weight of time pressing on her. Ten minutes to kill, or possibly be killed. She stared at the wet street, half wishing the shadows would swallow her.
She wore full black recon armour—matte finish, slick with polymer plating. Pouches stuffed with spare mags and micro explosives. In the past two hours, she and Lioncourt had scrambled to gather gear. A new H&K 17 sat at her hip, a sleek replacement for her lost sidearm. And so much more. She eyed the stuffed duffel bag crammed with ordnance.
But it was the smaller backpack next to her that really mattered. From it, a thick cable snaked into her tactical computer. That bag housed Lioncourt. Or what was left of him. Mr. Matsumoto had rigged a nest of battery packs around Lioncourt’s ‘core.’ Lucy tried not to dwell on how surreal that was.
She took a breath. “Lioncourt,” she said, voice low. “We’ve got time. Might as well ask: How’d it happen?”
Lioncourt: Ah, ma petite dame est curieuse? But of course. You’ve heard how they say they can cure nearly every cancer if you have enough money, oui?
Skadi: That’s the rumour.
Lioncourt: I found the one they couldn’t cure. Despite all my wealth, it meant nothing. I was done. So I tried experimental uploading. You do strange things when death knocks and you’re flush with cash. Qu’avais-je à perdre?
Skadi: But if rich people could become immortal as AIs, that’d be world-shaking news. Everyone would know. Feels like science fiction.
Lioncourt: Because it doesn’t work, truly. The dream of seamless mind transfer is still fantasy. What we have is copying memories and personality. C’est proche, mais pas tout à fait pareil.
Skadi: So you’re a copy. The real Lioncourt died, and you… you continued?
Lioncourt: Ah, the Ship of Theseus discussion, non? It gets worse. Most, pratiquement tout, uploaded consciousnesses go insane on reawakening. La plupart deviennent fous. I was one of the few who survived.
Lucy’s mind briefly flashed to the amount of times she’d mentally called Lioncourt a psychopath or sociopath. Or both.
Skadi: Do you know how?
Lioncourt: Ah, yes ma demoiselle.
A brief silence, Lucy wondered if she’d pushed too far into something too personal.
Lioncourt: La souffrance. Suffering. On dit que la souffrance est bonne pour l'âme. Tis true. So very true. Suffering is a catalyst.
A beep from her tactical computer signalled five minutes left. The infiltration clock was ticking.
Skadi: We’ll probably die tonight. This plan is crazy.
Lioncourt: Plans that are least expected are often best. No one thinks we’d charge a building stuffed with armed men.
Lucy reached for the massive AA-24 autoshotgun in the passenger footwell, the same model Lioncourt once wielded with style. She’d barely skimmed the learnsoft data for it. “My training’s not complete. I only got basics on this shotgun.”
Lioncourt: Chérie, it’s simple. Point, shoot, reload. That’s about it.
She smirked grimly, checked the safety. “Easier said than done.” She flexed her left hand. The rain hammered the windshield, dribbling down in rivulets that caught the electric glow of overhead billboards. Everything felt on edge. The city’s hush was unnatural—a hush born of fear. Damocles lingered in everyone’s mind, a ghost blade ready to strike from cyberspace.
Lucy: All right. Five minutes. Then we go.
Outside, the Cuchillos Oscuros gangers shifted, bored, maybe joking about the Damocles fiasco. They had no idea Lucy Kellaway was parked in a battered courier van a hundred feet away, about to stage a suicidal run to rescue Peril. The hum of neon signs from a half-dead convenience store next door created a low buzzing that vibrated through Lucy’s seat. She inhaled the stale cabin air, tasting nerves and old coffee.
Lioncourt: If we fail, at least we fail fighting for a cause, oui?
“I guess so.” Lucy managed, her voice wavered. Peril’s in that tower, she reminded herself. We have no choice.
She popped the van’s door and stepped into the storm. Rain slapped against her armour. She mentally counted down from five. The sky sizzled with distant lightning. The city smelled like burning circuits and ozone. She gripped the AA-24, felt its cold polymer, and cursed the entire cosmos for dealing her this hand.
“Showtime.”
*
Lucy pressed herself against the polished granite facade of the building. The city’s upscale pillars and wide frontages provided some cover, though it meant she was only half-hidden from the six gangers at the front door. Her tactical computer’s countdown flickered in her peripheral vision: 10 seconds... 9... 8... She glanced at the readout and felt a knot of tension coil in her gut. Twenty armed foes inside, five posted here—Cuchillos Oscuros again. Full circle.
She eased forward, each step silent, eyes locked on the gang’s bored expressions. Her clock hit three seconds; she inhaled. Time to sprint. She let her ReflexArc-X spool to max, and her legs exploded into motion, muscles surging with artificial grace. The hum of her cybernetic enhancements drowned out the city’s perpetual hum of neon signs and corporate jingles from overhead.
Mid-vault, she saw the lights along the entire street cut out. Hellball had pulled the plug exactly on cue, orchestrating a localised power failure. Fifteen seconds, max, before the building’s internal systems kicked in. Lucy’s tactical display pinged a short green check: Go.
She soared through the dank, rainy air, the AA-24 autoshotgun snug against her side. At 300 rounds per minute in full auto, the gun was slow compared to a typical machine gun, but that fraction of a second between shells let her re-aim across multiple targets without letting go of the trigger. She mentally suppressed any guilt about the young ganger in her sights. The reticule from her gun link hovered over his chest, large and menacing.
She squeezed the trigger.
The AA-24 roared like a thunderclap. The first ganger hardly twitched. A fraction of a second, and he was down, armour shredded by artisanal shells Lioncourt had lovingly referred to as “Rods from God.” Each shot unleashed a storm of tungsten rods, unstoppable at close range. The lethal merc had been surprisingly sheepish when Lucy asked how much per round, saying he considered $80 for each hand-crafted shell un investissement dans l’art et la créativité.
They had looked alert—Cuchillos Oscuros was no stranger to violence—but they’d never faced a reactionware ballistic ballet like Lucy’s. Her tactical computer had synced with Lioncourt’s plan. She mostly had to confirm each step as her ReflexArc-X made them real, her body a wired marionette dancing at hyper-speed.
She twisted midair, the second target a woman wearing bright red gang colours. Lucy’s second round slammed into her knee, obliterating bone, then traced upward to centre mass at less than a yard away. No one survived that. Not with these rounds. Lucy glimpsed the woman’s shock-frozen eyes before pivoting the shotgun to the next. Rounds spat, muzzle flashes strobing in the gloom, and Lucy could taste the acrid gun-smoke mixing with the city’s chemical rain.
In the space of a single breath, the third and fourth gangers joined the list of the dead. Lucy’s mental readout clocked it at just over a second since her initial leap. The recoil felt negligible, a synergy of the heavy shotgun frame, well-designed gas-vent system and her cyberarm. She completed her spin, the gun now at her shoulder, and she let the ring reticule hover over the last two. Her reflexes hammered the trigger. Both collapsed in a flurry of tungsten rods and shredded leather. Six down, her tac-com told her, as if a calm observer. She’d worry about the moral weight later.
No time to admire her work. She zeroed in on the doors. Two quick shots of tungsten-laced shells shattered the building’s armourglass. She could have used the handle, but that would mean slowing down, maybe letting her finger slip from the trigger. Her systems said that was a risk not worth taking in a reactionware fight. She crashed through the ruined doors like a wraith, glass shards dancing around her boots.
Inside the lobby, it was a grand space of polished marble and tall pillars, all dark from the power cut. The place reeked of stale corporate perfume, and the hum of backup electronics squealed behind the walls. Lucy’s low-light cybereyes flicked over the crowd. Twenty more gangers, rummaging for vantage in the darkness, not yet adjusting to the blackness. A few had reactionware, maybe 30–40% of Lucy’s speed.
Enough to be dangerous, not enough to win.
She pressed the AA-24 to full auto as she dashed behind the first pillar. Another five quick blasts hammered out in under a second, tungsten rods punching through cheap vests and body enhancements like cardboard. She didn’t see them drop—she’d already moved on, following a script her tactical computer wrote in nanoseconds. She read fleeting muzzle flashes from the far corner as some sharper gang members realized the situation. The rest were disoriented, blinking in strobing darkness.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Lucy’s HUD gave her a new vector: she could take cover or go high. Go high, she thought, letting momentum carry her. She planted her left cyberfoot on the pillar, a vertical run parkour move that seemingly defied normal physics, and vaulted overhead. The shotgun roared again, aim once again unbelievably stable in her reinforced cyberarm. She could almost see each tungsten rod spitting out in lethal arcs.
Another five men dropped. The AI beeped a warning: one of the faster gangers was levelling a heavy pistol her way. She had microseconds to choose. Dive or risk the shot. The synergy from Lioncourt’s overlay hissed in her ear, Stay upright. She swerved behind a pillar as a bullet shaved a fraction off her right shoulder’s armour plate. Pain flared but the subdermal mesh caught the worst of it.
She swung the shotgun around and ended that ganger’s threat in an eruption of tungsten and bone. The deadly shotgun roared in the lobby, moving swifty to eliminate threats sweeping left and right.
The lobby went quiet.
Lucy recognised the hush of a firefight’s end, the acrid tang of gunsmoke choking the air. Five seconds, she realised. That entire assault was a heartbeat of destruction.
She ejected the now empty 32-round drum. It thumped on the marble floor, rolling near a limp hand. She slapped a fresh drum in, the motion practiced, ignoring the whine in her ears. She scanned for survivors. Her tac-com flagged three possible. Lucy exhaled a taut breath, stooped, and pulled the trigger thrice. Each shot boomed in the echoing space, scattering debris.
Then, only dripping water from the shattered glass, the quiet crackle of burning electronics from battered gear. Ruthless. But she couldn’t afford threats coming from behind her tonight.
*
Lucy took the fire escape stairs three, four at a time, lungs burning but aided by the ReflexArc-X’s oxygen implants.
Lioncourt: You’re a full eight seconds ahead of schedule. Vous vous en sortez très bien, Mademoiselle. Ashwraith and Chrome Oni have hit the roof, encountering heavy resistance.
Lucy felt her lips twitch in a wry grin. Those two mercenaries were a lethal sideshow on the top floor, a false insertion to distract Aurum’s defences. She knew they arrived in an AV the same second she’d breached the lobby.
Skadi: Least it keeps any reinforcements off my back while I climb.
She also remembered how Lioncourt had rigged things: from the seventh floor upward, thick armour grates could slide down at each stairwell landing. The contraption was a code-locked fortress. Normally, it’d take an hour to cut through, but Lucy had the codes.
Skadi: I think I’m in love with your shotgun.
Lioncourt: Ah, my dear… that was a birthday present from Ashwraith two years ago. A masterpiece, based on a design nearly a century old. Cet homme sait comment me toucher là où j’aime le plus.
Electronic laughter. Despite herself… Lucy found her face in a grin. She didn’t know French well, but she had a guess.
Skadi: Dirty old man.
She passed the fourth-floor landing, ignoring the faint chemical reek from old janitorial closets. Her mind flicked to the possibility that if Anne was wrong about Boltz, if that AI was faster at unlocking defence systems, she might be walking into an unstoppable military drone.
Skadi: You think these Frag-24 AP rounds can drop a drone?
Lioncourt: Ils briseront la bête. Never design security you can’t defeat yourself. I bought those shells precisely for a scenario like this.
Lucy nodded silently, reaching the first gate—a huge slab of macroplastic armour across the middle of the fire escape, the city’s worst fire inspector nightmare. She paused at the access panel, typed an eighteen-digit code with reflex-driven speed. Three seconds for each door times five floors… that’s time we can’t spare.
Lioncourt: Aurum’s brillant, but unaugmented. Keep the pressure on him. He’ll scramble.
Yes, that was the plan: no time to think. Blitz to the twelfth floor, in Aurum’s face, before he reacted. The gate whirred up. Lucy didn’t wait for it to open fully, rolling under the narrow gap.
Alarms screamed in her HUD. She rose into a crouch, reflexes primed to shoot. A massive assault drone sat in the hallway, autocannon lowered at the door. But it stayed inert. Didn’t even track her.
Skadi: Anne was right. They haven’t fully come online.
She slipped past the towering metal beast. Another two flights of stairs brought her to a tangle of half-buried anti-personnel mines. They glistened in the overhead fluorescent strobe, faintly humming in standby mode.
Skadi: All disabled by the same code?
Lioncourt: Non. Each door code kills that floor’s traps, or I can do it from Peril’s loft. If the system was truly active, concealed turrets would be a problem, too.
Lucy’s shoulders tensed. She hammered the next 18-digit code for the second gate, rolled under that door as well. Repeat until twelfth floor. Her breath came in tight bursts. The next twenty seconds felt like a series of actions in déjà vu: run up stairs, hammer in a different 18 digit code to a panel, roll under rising door. Repeat.
Finally, she stumbled onto the twelfth floor landing, her boots sinking into plush carpeting that reeked of a familiar musty incense.
At the corridor’s end: The big front door to Peril’s domain. Real wood, polished with swirling patterns—reclaimed oak from an ancient English manor, Lucy recalled Peril telling her once.
She paused, assessing gear. She ejected the mostly-full antipersonnel drum from the AA-24, snapping in a fresh mag of exotic anti-armour shells. Enough for maybe one big fight. The rest of her weaponry—pistols, small grenades—wouldn’t faze heavy drones.
Skadi: Time to knock.
She pressed an explosive shaped charge onto the door. Lioncourt had insisted she couldn’t risk turning the handle.
The explosion hammered outward, but Lucy’s tac-com read an unexpected spike. Aurum or his guards had rigged the other side, so the door charge triggered secondary blasts. Flames licked through the hallway, scorching the overhead lights.
Coughing, Lucy rolled through the jagged threshold, eyes searching for threats. The sweet stench of burnt wood and old varnish filled her nostrils. This was Peril’s precious door, now blasted to cinders.
She froze. A monstrous ten-foot assault drone loomed in the dim loft, tribarrel cannon spinning. This one wasn’t offline. Its steel limbs flexed, servo motors whining. Lucy’s heart hammered.
She gripped the shotgun, mind racing. No turning back. Now or never.
*
Lucy crouched behind the only real cover in Peril’s loft: a steel column supporting the bedroom floor above. The acrid smell of scorched wiring and spent gunpowder hung in the air. A single overhead fixture sparked in the aftermath of the door’s explosion.
Suddenly, Aurum’s voice boomed across the loft, piped through a surround-sound system. It reverberated off steel beams and half-destroyed furnishings -“Two hundred million dollars.”
Lucy’s heart hammered. Her tac-com was at full capacity as she eyed the big fully operational drone mid-room.
She glared at the battered remains of the loft’s once-luxurious décor. No-win scenario floated through her thoughts. Lioncourt refused to accept such a thing, and she felt him frantically discarding sim after sim in her HUD feed. But facing a heavy assault drone controlled by an AI? Slim to none was being generous.
Aurum’s voice boomed again, repeating that figure. “Two hundred million dollars. Walk away, take the money, and live your life.”
It was a bribe, obviously. But a poor attempt at one.
She saw how he was playing for time. Lioncourt had just messaged that Ashwraith and Chrome Oni, who’d feinted the rooftop infiltration, had pulled out. So now the defenders would re-converge from above. Lucy had maybe three minutes—four if she got lucky—before hammered between the reinforcements at her back and the unstoppable drone in front. She would be crushed.
Lucy: Lioncourt… find a way.
She needed to buy him seconds to conjure some miracle.
Lucy shouted from behind the steel column, voice tight: “You betrayed her, Aurum! Peril trusted you. You’ve betrayed her!”
Aurum’s smooth baritone came through the speaker system. “Don’t be childish, Skadi. Two hundred million—enough for a new life. It’s fair.”
He pressed on, voice dripping with rationalisation: “I’m the hero here. Peril’s a mass murderer, hiring killers nightly across the city like some lethal vigilante. They should give me a medal. I just prevented hundreds—maybe thousands—from dying in an all-out gang war."
Lioncourt, still in Lucy’s feed, was ripping through calculations. Precious seconds drained away. Very few yielded a survivable outcome.
Lucy realized he’d locked himself in an analysis loop: He can’t choose who to sacrifice. Too much a white knight, refusing to pick her or Peril to die.
Lucy: Who’d guess the deadliest assassin can’t condemn me or Peril?
She exhaled, scanning her tac-com. She flipped through the scenario stack Lioncourt had dismissed, selecting the one with the highest chance of saving Peril.
She wanted to shriek defiance at Aurum. Scream, To hell with your money. But time was short. Aurum’s repeated “Two…” came through the speakers. Lucy seized that beat, rolling out from behind the column and unleashing the autoshotgun at the drone’s arm cannon.
The big steel beast whirred, returning fire with almost matched reactionware speed. Its tri-barrel autocannon spat tungsten death, shredding couches and walls in seconds.
At such close range, Lucy’s Bullet-Rzer AI’s movement ballet couldn’t shield her from everything. She felt an impact on her upper leg—armoured plate slowed it, but it lodged in the subdermal armour like a sledgehammer hammering in a nail there.
Her own shells found their mark. The assault cannon’s plating cratered, sparks erupting. Four shots in quick succession. At least one main weapon was toast.
But the monstrous drone—ten feet of sculpted warsteel—didn’t rely on just the cannon. It lunged across the open space with startling speed, a huge arm snapping out, vile blades where a hand should be.
Lucy tried to roll aside, her reflexware searching for an extra inch, but the beast was too fast.
She was caught at the midriff, feeling the blades punch through her jacket, her subdermal armour, and deep into flesh.
Her pain editor killed the agony, leaving her clarity.
But Lucy’s finger never left the shotgun’s trigger. At this range, she couldn’t miss. Rounds hammered every critical spot, cratering the drone’s armour.
She saw four- or five-inch craters open along its plating as it lifted her off the floor with the skewering arm. The blades dug deeper into her abdomen, a savage mechanical grip.
She switched aim to the drone’s shoulder joint, unleashing shot after shot. The whole arm assembly becoming detached in a shower of explosive force. She knew if she survived, she’d need new eardrums—the muzzle blasts pounding her at point-blank were deafening.
Lioncourt had told her: The drone’s head is just sensors. The core is in the chest. She pivoted the shotgun to centre mass, praying the next slugs would fry it.
The machine spun, trying a last vicious punch aimed at her skull. She twisted enough that it smashed her left side instead, pain editor dulling the impact. Probably splintered half her ribs.
Finally, one shell punched through something vital. The drone went dead, dropping Lucy. Instant off-switch.
She landed, swaying. The drone’s severed arm still impaled in her midriff.
Clinically, she recognised a likely mortal wound. She couldn’t move properly, and removing the blade might kill her.
But she had to reach Peril.
Lioncourt screamed through comms not to pull the arm out, but Lucy yanked it anyway, ignoring the blood loss. She might have only minutes before Aurum’s reinforcements returned from the roof.
She stumbled across the destroyed loft, discarding the empty AA-24. It had been a good friend indeed.
She drew her H&K pistol, her old companion. She approached Peril’s server door, breath ragged. Time to end it with Aurum.