It was stuffy in the metro station.
The Tortoise Line was one of the few stations actually underground instead of suspended on the mid-rise rails throughout the city. While he waited for the train to arrive, Aiden applied the medication cream, depressing the applicator against his face. He sighed with relief as the numbing vapor was sucked directly into his skin, deadening the throbbing and leaving a cool sensation behind. With any luck, the bruising wouldn't look so bad by the time he got home.
The first fight he'd gotten into at Terminary, his father had restricted his travel privileges and taken away his video games for a month. His mother made him write a letter (not even a net-message!) to the ringleader of the boys he'd scuffled with apologizing for his actions. Aiden handed it over and punched Toliver Livingston in the mouth a week later after the guy deliberately spilled oxalic acid over Aiden's new boots.
Aiden was not an easy target. There were dozens of other boys whose family's companies were considerably smaller, and who they themselves had even less of a spine. But if you weren't part of the "underclass", then it was an unspoken expectation to run with the richest of the pack, the boys and girls in Terminary who sometimes replaced their front teeth with platinum replicas, who could buy out entire hotels on a whim. And that Aiden refused to do. It was guys like Devon Shin that made him almost embarrassed to be the heir-apparent to one of the biggest tech companies in Neocopy. They were spoiled nobodies as far as he was concerned, coasting off their parents' influence and the best academic tutors that legacy money could buy.
And so Aiden often found himself alone among the powerful, even though he tried to avoid those circles as much as he could.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aiden spotted a group of seedy-looking men coming down the metro platform. They were trouble, easily recognizable by their neon-yellow overcoats and cobalt-blue shock carabiners clipped to their sleeves. It wasn't clear just by looking at them, but from Aiden's quick scan of their physiology, they were Mimickers — robbers who used reverse-engineered forensic AI to cover their tracks after the crimes. It wasn't unheard of for them to inject memory-altering nanomites into their victim's ear canals to make them forget who attacked them...or better yet, influence them to accuse someone else entirely.
The first one, a spiky-haired man with a scruffy goatee, glanced at Aiden but continued on. The rest of the gang gave him a wide berth. No doubt their own scanning software had detected Aiden's implanted defense systems.
When Aiden was younger, and his body was not yet mature enough to receive the computer chip that connected him to Auxy and the rest of the family's online hospitality services, his father had assigned an enhanced human bodyguard every time he left the walls of the mansion. Now, Aiden's personal RA took on that role — Auxy, and by extension Aiden, was capable of rendering any potential assailant comatose with a shock gauntlet embedded in his wrist. If that didn't work, there was always the anti-bio field generator, emanating a type of electromagnetic field hovering millimeters above Aiden's skin, one that interfered (usually fatally) with cardiac function to those within distance. Ineffective against artificial replacements, but a decent deterrent regardless.
Obviously, this sort of weaponry was deactivated in most academic and medical establishments. Otherwise, Aiden would have used the shock gauntlet on Devon in a heartbeat.
Aiden watched as the Mimickers approached their real target: a skinny young man in the Himura Tech service worker uniform, leaning by one of the pillars on the metro platform. Tapping busily on the glowing device strapped to his wrist, the man — a sewer technician, by the dark green color of his highlighted collar — seemed oblivious to his surroundings. He couldn't have made more than thirty thousand units a year, barely enough to cover a less-than-modest studio in the streets of the rundown 52nd Borough, but he made an easy target.
Better look this way, thought Aiden. Before you get jumped on. But it was too late.
The spiky-haired Mimicker walked straight up to the guy and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Spare some change?" he rasped sarcastically.
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The guy lifted his head, and upon seeing his inquirer, his eyes widened. The Mimicker's move was brazen if you were unaware of the unspoken rules of Neocopy. While the city's public safety commission regularly flashed on the holo-boards "If you see something, say something", the denizens of the city, upstanding and otherwise, adopted a more laissez-faire attitude: If you see something, get hit or get out of the way.
In short, people generally let each sector's private police force handle public incidents like these. Within each larger borough, sector policing was automated by threat surveillance sensors in most public locations, and though they could be easily thwarted by mid-level disruptor tech, the law enforcement response was relatively quick enough in quelling most small-time crime before things spun out of control. And when they weren't...well, nobody cared enough to risk their well-being to intervene, anyway.
The sewer tech raised a trembling hand. "I...I don't have anything to give."
"Sure you do, bud. How about you let me take a look at that e-wallet and we'll see what we can do, huh?"
As the man spoke, his compatriot circled behind the pillar they were leaned up against, activating a red-lined energy blade from the prosthetic sheath on his finger. The sewer tech must've known he was in trouble, because he tried to spin away to the other side, but the lead Mimicker grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him back against the pillar.
Just then, a light appeared in the tunnel, signaling the approach of the oncoming train. Though capable of reaching speeds of up to three hundred fifty miles per hour, the Tortoise Line's trains were visible for a fleeting moment before coming to a smooth, soundless stop.
"Boarding for Tortoise Line Stop M5", said the disembodied announcer voice overhead. "Line bound for Borough Nineteen, Sectors 3 through 10."
An alert flagged Aiden's neural network: an incoming call from his mother. Aiden stuck his nano-buds in his ear and felt the latex conform to his ear, making his way towards the train. All around, people began to board the train, the crowd flowing around the robbery like a herd of zebra fording a crocodile-infested stream, leaving the hapless service technician to his floundering demise.
Aiden squeezed into a spot by the window. The passenger volume for this stop was large, and it was taking longer than normal for the train to fill up — enough time for Aiden to watch as the Mimickers sprayed acid on their victim's face, laughing as the man fell howling to the platform. The one with the energy blade began rooting around in the man's collarbone for the finance chip, carving it out with messy, jerky cuts before engaging a wired connection to the man's e-wallet with a rectangle-shaped micro-transactor. Aiden watched as the spiky-haired Mimicker stomped on the man's abdomen with a heavy-treaded boot, nearly folding his body in half.
"Aiden, where are you?" came his mother's voice in his ear, her voice tight and stressed.
"On the train home. Why do you ask?"
"Don't play innocent with me. Another fight? This has gone on long enough. Your dad and I are going to have a talk with you and your sister when you get home."
"Tancy? What did she do?" A consistent honor-roller and committed teetotaler, Aiden would have expected his little sister the least likely to get into trouble.
"We'll discuss this when you get back. How long will it take?"
Aiden took a quick glance at the beat-down still unfolding on the metro platform. The victim was thrashing around in a puddle of his own urine, clawing at the raw, acid-ridden skin around his eye sockets, which had sunk into a formless mush. His screams were muted somewhat by the thick glass of the train. It sounded bad, but you could get optic replacements for a reasonable price, especially if you had street crime insurance. Aiden idly wondered if the unlucky sewer tech had the funds.
Should've looked up sooner, he thought.
"Probably fifteen minutes to get back," he said. Maybe a little longer. Lot of people boarding, so there might be a delay."
"I hope you're not being sarcastic, Aiden. No detours in downtown — you come straight here, do you understand me?"
Aiden sighed. "I got it, Mom."
"Stay safe." The line clicked off.
A pale, gangly guy bumped into Aiden's back. "Hey, watch it, kid."
Aiden turned. The guy's face was sooty, and his rumpled jumpsuit had a grungy look about it that came from repeated and uninterrupted use.
The accumulated irritation from the day's events finally broke to the surface. Aiden activated his shock gauntlet, opening the bangle enough to let a sliver of white, electric charge crackle around his wrist. "How about you watch it?"
What color that was left in the guy's face drained out. "Whatever, man." He backed up and shoved his way through the crowd to find another spot.
As the train began to move, the trio of onyx-black surveillance spheres, their middle ringed by a scarlet line, descended from the stairs leading down from the surface and spread out on the platform. Most of the time, the spheres could be seen bobbing beside the plexiglass windows of the office districts, their crown of yellow dials pulsing rhythmically like jellyfish heads.
Now they switched to attack mode, all switches flashing scarlet. They closed in on the group of Mimickers and the now-unconscious sewer tech sprawled out on the ground.
Just as they were about to pounce, the train zoomed into the dimly lit tunnel and the platform was whisked out of view.