Chapter 11

The text prompt blinked at him insistently, demanding a response. The cursor continued to blink in the empty field. Jon lounged on his couch, staring at the ceiling of his apartment in tower 3. His expression blanked even as his mind turned over possibilities. The prompt sat in the center of his vision.

Diva’s id wipe package sat waiting for his input. The gravity of the choice pressed in on him. What would he rename himself? He waffled at every idea. A part of him debated on if he should have left the decision up to Diva. She handled many alterations.

Something about his biz with Kloie stood out in his mind. The way she kept insisting he was some kind of knight. He thought the comment was a side hand joke about his augmentation, but the more he dwelled on the gig, the notion she thought he was some kind of chivalrous hero rinsed the taste of bile out of his mouth. Maybe he could stand to look at himself in the mirror if he didn’t see an abomination, but something honorable. Hell, it was worth a shot.

“Knight,” he said aloud.

He rolled the word around in his mind. Chewing on the word mentally. Tasting it from every angle. Even if Kloie was joking about his augs, wearing them, and the name like some kind of self-deprecating badge of honor struck a cord with him. A constant ember burning in his side to stoke his anger with Haltech. Anger was fuel, and focus to keep him in task. His alternative was to just shorten his name to a single letter.

Going by “J” was too on the nose, and easy to decipher, though. He input the letters for Knight slow with a thought and paused. This was a one and done process. No, do overs. Once he finished this, Jonathan Masters would be dead in every sense of the word.

He willed the accept command and the soft that Diva provided him blinked a final acknowledgement. He hit accept again, and the id change program executed. A gentle buzzing sensation rippled through his mind. Access codes and prompts all changed. More than that, anything like paper work connecting him to his new home changed too.

The only thing untouched were his memories. He let out a thankful sigh. He at least still had those. He stood, marveling at the sensation. Looking himself over in the mirror. The same face stared back at him, and yet he did feel different. He felt new.

“So. This is what a new man’s name feels like,” he said. Unconsciously, his mind drifted back to the full reskins he saw in the Toranaga hotel. The idea of his body being corporate property haunted him.

He turned to look out the window, taking in the city through fresh eyes. The skyline still had the same grime, the same garish clash of colors, and the same apathetic indifference to the lives eeking out an existence and those snuffed out. Aircars and corporate jets traversed the sky in designated lanes of traffic. MaxTac and MedTac crafts flew like steel sharks, parting the cars in front of them. Holo-ads singled out pedestrians, pitching sales and services. All in the same, over the top hyper aggressive brand of capitalism America had refined over the centuries. But now he has the freedom camouflage to move undetected within the morass.

His gaze pulled in from outside, drifting to the black alloy hand on the window ledge. His hand. Intuitively, he knew it could grasp and manipulate things. But it would never bleed or sweat again. His limbs would never itch. Then he remembered all the blood sucking mosquitos and quietly wondered if this was as much a curse as he initially thought.

Pressing himself off the windowsill, he drifted to his gear room. For being an eight by eight foot square foot room with padding on the walls for various weapons, the walls stood barren. He needed to fix that. That would cost him.

Catching himself in the mirror, he tried not to look disgusted with his clothing. He needed to clean up his wardrobe, too. More expenses. That was more of a want, not a need, though. But having a chosen wardrobe would please him, and right now, he needed as much of that as possible.

A gurgling noise issued from his stomach. The onset of hunger pains. He punched the burrito button on his vending machine. The chip sensor beeped and deducted ten credits from his account and dispensed the hot burrito. Since he couldn’t burn his hands anymore, he just reached in picking the wrapped item up and undid the packaging. Surface sensors in his hand told him the burrito was still too warm to bite yet, so he waited, holding the warm tortilla as he stood in front of his closet.

Raven must have gone easy on the budget with this aspect. She didn’t bring his old clothes over. Haltech and the Agency have the tech to pull him up on an easy rec scan. He didn’t mind being a merc, but looking so hand-me-down made him wretch at how grossly unprofessional he appeared.

He patted the thighs of his faded dark jeans. “Well, if I’m going to fix all this up, I’d better start working.”

He pulled up the contacts option in his hud, and cycled through the txt messages he received from various Fixers. There were enough jobs here to get him started. He scrolled back up to the top and made a call.

“This is Knight,” he said. The first time he used his newly assumed name.

“I’ll take the gig.”

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#

Later that night, he drifted back through the door of his apartment in a fugue state. Decades of service to the government, to the people, immunized him to the shock of killing, but even he had limits. He slowly stripped off his clothes, leaving a breadcrumb trail of blood splattered faded clothing in a lazy arch from the front door to the left into his bathroom.

The chrome reflective surface of his mirror sensed his presence, rippling as the mirror displayed his reflection walking by into the shower stall. A heavy weariness weighed in on him. He could crush stone with his bare hands. He reached out for the faucet. The water dripped, and he remembered to swipe credits to the water company.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A beat later, the shower head sputtered, then rose to full pressure. He flipped the lenses over his eyes, shielding them with black mirrored surfaces. The shower spraying in his face, then he lowered his chin, letting the water spill down onto the crest of his skull, and drain down his cheeks in forked rivers. Doubt threatened to press in and smother him.

He searched deep for the ember of rage. That pinprick of white fiery light that kept him focused. He had to reach down into the muck if he hoped to strangle Haltech. Regardless of how dirty going after them made his own hands. What was morality to a dead man in body and soul? He contemplated checking in with Raven.

Communication between himself and his former handler had been sparse. She had to maintain her cover inside the Agency, which had become nothing more than a puppet branch of the government for the military contractor corporation. Ever since their merger with Miltech, Haltech pushed for more and more deregulation of private militaries. The news always had a way of tearing down any sense of progress he tried to walk away with.

In tonight’s news, Haltech successfully smashed a less wealthy company, absorbing their assets ruthlessly, assimilating its work force. Work for less or go broke on the streets. Few declined the offer because being poor was a death sentence in Cap City. The US, or rather its hyper focused brand of capitalism, brooked no kindness for the poor in its system. The system viewed them as leeches that drained from the pockets of the wealthy. He swiped the feeds aside like a bothersome fly.

He ran his mechanical fingers through his hair, watching the blood rinse to the floor colored orangish pink against the tangerine floor tiles of his bathroom. His shoulder bumped into the wall, leaning against the tiles for support. His ankles used to ache because he stood in the shower too long. War injuries in his knees used to ache, forcing him to lie down and run a bath. There was no more pain in his legs now. Just the memory of pain lingering in the back of his mind. A forgotten abusive ex that left a profound and undesirable impression in his soul.

Clinically, he was better off this way. Chronic injuries erased in the absence of his biological limbs. Phantom limbs on a phantom soul. For every step forward he took, Haltech surged further and further out of his reach.

He didn’t use the air dry function in his shower because he didn’t want to pay for excess power needed. Instead, he just stood there, letting the water drip off of him like the melting snow in the Rockies during the spring because his ankles didn’t hurt anymore. Thirty minutes later, he dried off through evaporation. Just standing there, blank faced.

Reality crashed in on him again, and he struggled against shock when he refocused himself. He had to hit Haltech back somehow. But how? He had to send a message beyond just hitting them. Walking down their corporate hq lobby and shooting the place up didn’t strike him as too effective without them knowing why it was happening.

His eyes drifted towards his tv screen. A lens overlay played the news about Haltech on the loop. They’d just obliterated some small time company like the affair was a typical Tuesday Afternoon. Jon doubted the event even showed up as a blip on their radar. Then a thought hit him.

He had his answer for how to make them hurt. Attack their means of war. But just launching off on a raid against a Haltech mech facility struck him as foolish even by his standards. But if someone else contracted the gig for him, though, then he was just a simple merc taking a great paying gig.

He called Raven, now that he had a reason.

“Jon? This you?”

“Yea. Sorry. Got a chipwipe from Diva. Figured getting a new chip id would help keep me out of Haltech’s sights.”

“Knight, huh?” She said.

“Look, I need a favor,” Jon said.

Raven glanced left and right, then leaned forward. “Sure, what is it?”

“I need you to find the CEO for Technica Corporation. Convince him to open a gig against the Haltech mech facility.”

“That is suspiciously specific.”

“Tell him that’s where the mechs that hit his company came from. Ordering the hit would be his way of getting payback and protecting other little companies.”

Raven had to bite back a laugh. “Surely you don’t care about other companies?”

“Fuck no. But I care about people, and Haltech smashed a lot of lives with that attack. So we need to send a message. This is how.”

Raven pursed her lips thoughtfully, then nodded. “Alright, I’m in. Which Fixer should I send him to?”

“Nomad. Thanks, Raven.”

She nodded. “Don’t mention it. Just don’t let this track back to you.”

His face twisted in his best wounded look he could muster. “Who, me? I’m just the ghost. They’ll never even know I was there.”

Concern flashed across Raven’s face at the comment. “How are you doing?”

“How am I even supposed to answer that?” he said.

“That’s fair. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry again. You know, for how this mess all turned out.”

“I know.”

She told him if he needed anything else to let her know, but he cut her off quickly. Thanking her for the ask, he cut the call. Talking to her still hurt. He hissed at that. Not happy with his own reaction to her apology. There was nothing for it though. At least she’d agreed to help him.

Now to wait for the contract...

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