Chapter 15

Feb 20, 2100 The Sprawl

‎

‎ Since Jon planned on doing something less combat rigorous today, he wore a simple black long coat over a black long sleeve dress shirt and slacks. He liked being in decent clothes again instead of looking like he threw his outfits together at random based on what he found from a thrift store. He used the black sedan for this, since the Outrider car was more designed for prolonged off-road driving and didn’t look the part of something used for VIP transport.

Jon arrived at Dr. Preston’s house just after eight in the morning. She lived at the start of the sprawl. Her house isolated from some taller buildings around by a perimeter fence. Green well kept grass and a few tree saplings filled the lawn. The house itself was a modern design, with rounded curves and modern tech in it, setting it apart from most of the older vintage homes of the sprawl. Solar panels lined the roof and a network antenna ensured the good doctor had all her basic needs met. A strange scent hit his nostrils, warm and welcoming. Strangely alien and new all the same. Yet somewhere deep within his animal brain sat genetic memories that the smell was good. Some locked away experience his conscious self lacked access to, yet knew intuitively was something associated with warm summer afternoons.

He had the car running in blackout mode to keep prying eyes from seeing into the car and had the internal ballistic shields deployed. He called Rebecca from her driveway, figuring she didn’t want to stand outside waiting for him. Her holo-id icon popped up with a red cross and a chopdoc glove silhouette.

Rebecca picked up, and he told her he was outside waiting. She ended the call and stepped outside. She wore an overcoat on top of her white lab coat and carried a small terminal bag. She settled herself into the car and then heaved the door shut. “Wow, that’s heavy,” she said with a half smile.

He nodded, “Ballistic plating. Adds weight to the doors, but makes it so small arms won’t punch through.”

She nodded, her smile deflating. “I see. Is your life always so dangerous?”

He paused, realizing from her perspective he existed a hair’s edge from death all the time. “Never thought about it, but yea. Hey, what’s that smell?”

“Hmm? Oh, that’s my lawn. I just gut the grass yesterday.” Her brows furrowed, like something about the question seemed confusing.

“You never smelled that before?”

He shook his head. “Either spent all my time in towers, on bases, or in deserts.”

She nodded, turning to look away distantly, “Oh...”

Fresh cut grass? If his idea of home had a scent, this would be it. Reaching to the console monitor screen, Jon keyed in the next GPS cords and set the car on auto. As the vehicle began its journey, he settled back into the seat. Rebecca, however, fidgeted with the edges of her lab coat before glancing at him with a sheepish question on her expression.

“Would it be a bother if I could turn on some music?”

He chewed on the request for a moment. He wanted to hear and possibly avoid being ambushed. Sound discipline was a way to screen an incoming attack from your target. But he could see how uncomfortable she was. After some consideration, his sympathy for her won out.

“Go ahead, but keep it low. We want to hear what’s going on outside still.”

Rebecca nodded, her mousy half smile returning as she reached over to browse through channel selections. “Oh!” she said with a hint of joy. “I like this channel,” she said as she keyed it in. To be fair, as the music started playing, it’s not that bad, Jon decided. He caught himself tapping along to the beat as the car started slowing down to the congesting traffic in front of them. He leaned forward, trying to get a better look at what was going on.

Rebecca turned to him, trying her best not to look concerned. “What’s wrong?”

Jon shook his head, unsure, but he had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his gut. “Not sure. Nothing good, by the look of it.”

No stranger to situations like this before, when he deployed. Memories of roadside bombs going off in the streets. Panic scrambling as ambushes hit their units. Congestion in streets made you vulnerable to attack. They cut off avenues of escape and isolated your movement, making it easy to predict. He shook himself to clear the memories, taking a deep breath, and flipped the switch on the console to return control to manual. “Hang on. Just in case,” he said.

“Right,” Rebecca said as she settled deeper into the seat and clung to the belt.

Claustrophobia set in while the flow of vehicles clustered together, bumper to bumper in the two-lane traffic. The highway from the sprawl into the city center meant passing several mega-towers and all the drama that came with them. The air hung thick and smokey with pollution as the line of cars sat unmoving. Metal glinted in the distance, even through the hazy smog. Something humanoid, yet artificial, moving across the street. Construction mech maybe? He could only be so lucky. His instincts suddenly flared in alarm.

“Ah shit,” he muttered.

An instant later, several explosions billowed up, following muffled shock waves that rocked the black car. Rebecca muffled a startled cry. Jon zoomed in on the action ahead of them and could see the area cordoned off by local authorities as combat mechs fought between two corporations in front of a small tech firm’s office. The engagement seemed genuinely focused on what was going on up front, but he didn’t want to take the chance that this could work its way back to them. Throwing the car in reverse, he backed up before a car at his rear pulled in too close and then turned down a side street.

“Where are we going?”

“To your office, we’re just detouring around the fighting.”

Rebecca nodded, but he could see the fear behind her eyes. “We’ll be fine. Just putting some distance between us and the craziness.”

She nodded and tried at a half sure smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m not used to this stuff like you are. I’m sure it feels like another day on the job for you. I haven’t felt safe since Congress passed that bill, though. I wasn’t sure you’d help, but Raven said I could count on you.”

That hit a tinge of guilt in him as he recalled not initially wanting to be bothered with this. She might have been fine on her own, but it never hurt to be sure. Besides, he made a lot of mistakes of late. Too many of his friends going down had thrown him off his game, and he could use a breather to regroup and rally. Patch his hurt and figure out his next move.

“Well, I actually didn’t want to at first,” he said, glancing over at her.

She nodded, and he caught a look in her eyes that glinted. “I understand. You’ve had a lot of adversity hitting you in the past year. That can’t have been easy to focus through.”

He shook his head, making several more turns, the tires squealing as the car slide into its lane in top form. Then getting on the highway’s outer belt against protesting horns from other drivers before putting the car back into autopilot. He was lucky that whatever sparked off behind them was isolated. Their position would have been the perfect ambush point. For a flicker of a moment, he was glad his hands were mechanical and no longer capable of trembling for shot nerves. Score one for science, he figured.

“No. No, it wasn’t. It still isn’t. There’s a part of me that wants to be burning everything Haltech to the ground. But I went off half cocked after they killed one of my friends, and I might have made a mess of things. So this is good for me, I think. Get my head right. If anyone should say thanks, it should be me.”

“Have you needed to take any Neuroprozine?”

He shook his head, “No, I checked my implant status and I’m still at 99-100% transmission efficiency.”

Rebecca looked at him curiously, like he just sprouted horns from his forehead. “Really? It should degrade considerably your transmission rate after this long. You’re sure it’s not a glitch?”

He shrugged, “How would I know?”

“Run a system scan check? You can find the option in the bottom left of your heads up under the settings file.”

Since the car was auto-piloting, he had the freedom to try. He navigated to the folder and ran a scan via the neural interface. It was quick and gave no results. He turned back and shook his head.

“Nothing. All clean. I’ve been at peak ever since you woke me up on that table in Germany. Most of any difficulty I’ve had was just adjusting to the changes,” he said.

She nodded, and he noticed the hitch in her brow. He didn’t know Rebecca very long, but knowing she was the lead biocyberneticist at Roth meant she knew her field up and down, inside and out. “I see,” she said pensively after a moment. She had the look of someone staring down a mystery with no obvious answer. Slower than she might have under normal circumstances, Rebecca settled back into the seat.

He never gave it much thought, just chalking it down to the quality of her work. The rest of the ride continued in silence as they listened to the music some more and pulled up to Roth Industries’ primary corporate office. Jon pulled the car up to the underground garage sled. After getting out of the car and standing on the sidewalk, the street peeled itself apart below the car; the wheels supported on sleds. The car descended at a relaxed pace below street level into the darkness, and the asphalt stitched itself back together.

Jon turned back to Rebecca, who stiffened. Following her gaze up, he noticed the enormous crowd protesting in front of Roth’s main entrance lobby. Jon spotted several Children of Silicon signs waving in the protest mob. Most of the signs demanding the right to use Mil-Spec augs. Something only mercenaries and corpo goons got access to anymore. A few decried the fact that corporations got more rights than people. She glanced at Jon, worry in her eyes.

“Back entrance. Let’s go.”

He tried to lead her around to the rear of the building, but the mob was being fueled by protesters filing in from around the building. He couldn’t get her around the rear of the building without sparking off a fight. He paused, eying the protestors up, weighing the option. He could take them, but could he do it and keep Rebecca safe?

The crowd didn’t take long to realize who she was and crowded in on them like a school of hungry pirrahna. She pressed herself as close to him as she could as the crowd enclosed them. He didn’t like being hemmed in like this. But the crowd seemed to flow with them as protestors cheered and shouted at Rebecca. Jon did his best to push them back, but any ground he created, they lost to the surging ebb and flow of bodies.

As he tried to half drag/half push her to the doorway that didn’t seem to get any closer through the mob, Jon started to not feel well. His heads up display flickered several times, and he winced. It felt like half of his body was going through some kind of shock. Rebecca glanced up as he faltered and caught the look of strain in his expression.

“Are you ok?” she shouted over the crowd.

He tried to respond, but he struggled. It was like his body and his mind were disconnecting. Speaking opposite languages or something. He felt Rebecca’s grip on his arm tighten when a protester suddenly punched another. Just when he thought he’d gotten her here safely.

The man writhed, clutching at his head and screaming. He acted as though someone was drilling into his head, then glanced up and around. Pure rage in his eyes. Jon’s stomach fell away. Rejection Rage. He knew the symptoms from personal experience. He survived them through his father’s unfortunate luck. Jon’s blood ran ice cold, however, when more and more screams echoed out through the square. Objects flew and the Corporate doors to Roth shuddered closed with armored plates.

All around him, violence erupted. The protestors went from organized chanting to rabid shouting and fighting. He felt a strong hand clamp down on his shoulder, and Rebecca screamed at Jon for being half torn from her to face an unknown threat. It was a man about Jon’s size, with a close cropped hair cut. A high and tight, just a few days close to needing cut. The guy looked like a vet, covered in tattoos, with a gnarly scar on his torso and an aug arm. One of the Model 3500’s with the artificial dermal plating. His medical discharge severance package. But it was the eyes that struck Jon’s freeze reflex. He knew those eyes. That look. It was the same look he remembered from his old man every time his dad went into a rage fit.

The fist crashed into Jon’s jaw, sending him half to the ground in a heap before it even registered as having happened in his mind. He heard a voice, distant as he stared at the pavement. He rubbed at his jaw gingerly. His father had caught him like that when he was younger. The pain dragging the memory up to the surface as fresh as though it had just happened. As far as his body was concerned, it had just happened. And now his mind was running on a loop. His breathing went shallower, and his body tensed up. His fingers dug into the pavement. He stared down wide eyed and distant, lost in a memory where his childhood self was in near mortal danger. But the memory was distinct somehow. A noise, one his mind couldn’t place, was present this time. Consistent metallic nails being dragged steadily across a blackboard. He shook a few times from something rocking him. A few blunt impacts to the side. He barely registered them, his mind years away from his body.

The noise resolved itself clearer. It’s not a memory, his mind realized; the voice was present and next to him. It took longer than he would have liked, but he pried himself from the memory with a pained gasp. He turned to see Rebecca. Her eyes were wide with fear as she called his name out over the melee going on around them.

“Jon! What’s wrong?”

He shook his head, strain in his voice as he spoke, “I don’t know. It’s like trying to move and think in a pool of glue.”

Rebecca’s brows furrowed, and she glanced around as someone’s legs bumped into her, almost knocking her into him. “Can you get up? We have to get out of here.”

He took a ragged breath, and then another one. His body felt sluggish, but he could work with that. He trained to work in extremely inhospitable environments before and had done a lot of cold water swimming training in the service before getting out. “I can manage,” he said with a nod. She tried to strain a glance at the doors and turned back to him, the worry still there but for different reasons now.

“Security shuddered the front doors. We’ll have to take the other entrance. But we have to get through this crowd first.”

“Where is it?” he asked, trying to subdue the effort it took to speak.

She pointed 90 degrees to the right. Just beyond the throng of bodies, a secondary entrance sat awaiting them like an oasis in a desert. A nondescript access door guarded by two mechs that seemed indifferent to the disturbance. “That way.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

They had to go directly through the crowd. The violence was escalating, and he heard sirens in the distance, but there was no way the law enforcement could get this mob under control in any reasonable time frame for Jon to count on them. No, he was going to have to fight his way through. He closed his eyes and took a measured, deep breath and let it out. Doing so repeatedly to slow down the erratic pounding of his heart. He felt his fingers loosen in the gravel he created on the pavement. The tension eased from his body like a weakening current of electricity. A moment later he nodded, then turned to her. “Ok. I’m ready. We’re going to fight through the crowd. Whatever happens, stay with me, right on my heels.”

“Won’t that trip you up?”

He shook his head and gave her his most reassuring smile. She had to believe in him for this to work. “Don’t worry about me. We’re going to be working in tight quarters, so think of it as a dance. Any space I create, you fill it up. Like a game.”

She nodded. “Ok.”

He flexed his hands to get an idea of his body’s response speed. His mind felt foggy, but even with a foggy mind, trained reflexes were nearly autonomous. The actual concern was the lethargic way his limbs responded to his commands. Like trying to move in a vat full of caramel. He took one last deep breath, letting it out as he drew up to his full height, rolling his shoulders, doing his best to stay stationary against the roiling crowd.

“Let’s go.”

Hell had broken loose, with Jon and Rebecca standing at its epicenter and needing to extract themselves. Someone reached out, grasping his wrist, trying to pull him away. Instinctively Jon flowed into motion, twisting himself and wrenching free of the grip as he, in return, grabbed the offending hand and twisted it above the assailant’s head, then throat punched the man. Spinning on his heels, he repositioned himself to face the direction he placed a GPS marker for the entrance Rebecca needed.

He grabbed her hand and tugged. She nodded, falling in behind him, clutching the sides of his coat. He advanced, chopping a man’s grip on another at the elbow, causing him to let go. Jon followed up with a punch to the face of the man held a moment ago, and an elbow strike in the nose’s bridge to the man opposite. To drive a wedge between them, he drove a knee and then reverse kicked out between the two.

Advancing forward, he kicked behind the knees of a small air force veteran woman with augmented arms. As she went off balance, he punched for her sternum, driving her into the crowd, causing a small tumble of legs and arms.

A bigger man with a t-shirt proclaiming freedom for Mil-Spec aug licences advanced. Jon kicked him in the knee, causing him to crumble in agony, then advanced around the man’s back as he writhed on the ground. Rebecca tip toeing along behind Jon’s wake, apologizing to all of them politely.

A sign post with a malfunctioning overlay that blinked “ALL AUGS ARE EQUAL!” sailed for Jon’s head. He grabbed the post and torqued it down and away, wrenching it free of his assailant’s grip. Jon quickly thrust the bottom of the post into the man’s gut, doubling him over before doing so again to his target’s head.

With a flourish, Jon brought the sign post down across a raging woman’s arm, batting away an attempt to grab him. He charged forward, shoulder checking her. She staggered back, her face contorting with momentary confusion. Quickly, the woman lunged back after him, not missing a beat. The butt of the sign post halted her charge. She deflated against it as the small wooden post cracked and splintered to the ground in pieces, along with her crumpled form.

Rebecca yelped from behind as someone reached out and seized her by the shoulder. Spinning as quick as he could, Jon cursed his lethargic reaction speed. A burly man with a large barrel chest and impressive beard loomed at the opposite end of the arm, clutching the Doctor. Jon threw a punch at the man’s face, and the burly man snarled at him. Jon repeated the process until the man’s expression went glazed and he tumbled backwards into the roiling wave of humanity.

A bald man with a prosthetic eye and a small antenna tried to stab him, but the blade had snapped against Jon’s hand as he gripped down and crushed the man’s hand, leveraging him aside so they could advance around him.

A young teen wearing a t-shirt praising the proposed 31st Amendment to make Mil Spec Augs a right for citizens grabbed his left arm. Through the artificial haze in Jon’s mind and surrounding his body, Jon could make out the frantic and semi vacant look in the kid’s eyes. Jon gave him a quick headbutt that put his lights out. The grip on his arm slackening. Rebecca clinging to his jacket, tip toed along in the wake he left.

Gunshots cracked off nearby, and Jon’s body went rigid for a moment as Rebecca flattened herself against his back. The volume of cries from the crowd intensified and made pinning down the source of fire difficult through the foggy haze that permeated his mind and body. He forced his body back into motion, fighting against the protestor’s frenzy, and the sluggish responsiveness of his own body. He strained against the torrent of bodies fighting all around, as his primary thought was to get Rebecca to safety.

A large man knocked off his feet tumbled into Jon’s side. It took a lot of effort to heave the man back into the fray. He likened his current situation to running an obstacle course through mud after a fresh rain. He didn’t have long to linger on the question, though. It took a great deal of effort to focus on his task.

Beyond the crowd, he could see the entrance behind a gated fence. Two combat mechs armed with stun batons guarded the gates. He had to get Rebecca there. He felt the strain of fighting through the morass of his sluggishness in this crowd building and a concern that whatever control he had left would fade into the insanity that was driving the protestors.

He turned back to give Rebecca one last look, and she caught the tired look in his expression.

“Are you ok?” she asked him.

He shook his head, his brows furrowing with the effort. “No,” was all he had the focus and energy to say.

She looked distant and thoughtful for a moment, like she was running several processes.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, just thinking. But we can do that where its safer.”

He nodded, “Right.” Turning back to the gate, then to her again, he took a breath. “Stay close. We’re going to make a last push for the door.”

She tightened her grip on the back of his jacket. Squaring his shoulders in front, he lowered his center of gravity and took a few deep breaths. Hopefully this worked, because if it didn’t, he wasn’t sure what would happen next. He felt the grip on his control loosening by the second. He was going to run out of steam or be forced to stop himself. He found neither option all that appealing, so he steeled his resolve.

With a surge of movement, he barreled forward. Jon smashed into several bodies, throwing them out of his way as he crashed ahead like a linebacker smelling the quarterbacks’ blood in the backfield. Rebecca did her best to keep up behind him without tripping on him or anyone as he bowled over.

At last, Jon smashed a lanky protestor with a set of Aug arms in matte black finish like his own out of the way. Jon did his best to spin around, putting himself between Rebecca and the crowd, but he stumbled in the movement as his body responded fractionally slower than his mind. He pushed her behind him to arm’s length, but she grabbed his arm and tugged him along. They cleared the mesh gate and got to the entrance, where she was admitted for her biometric access and the RFID scan of her implant. She pulled him inside, and as soon as they cleared the second set of doors, Jon felt a tingling jolt surge through him. He fell to a knee as the sensation felt like pins and needles throughout his body. Half painful, half relief.

“Hey, you ok?” she asked, and crouched down next to him to get a better look at him. He ran a system scan, half in fear that he was going to fly into some kind of berserker rage or something. The scan came back negative and exhaled in relief, glancing over at her and giving her a cautious nod.

“Yea, I think so.”

Rebecca nodded and stood up with him. “Let’s get you to my lab just so we can be sure. I can do a few more tests for good measure.” She followed his gaze out of the doors to outside. “The company and the local police can handle that situation. For now, let’s make sure you’re not affected any longer.”

They worked their way around the gathering crowd, looking outside at the brawl taking place in the square just outside the entrances. Once they got to the elevator lift, Rebecca’s shoulders relaxed and Jon watched her let go of some tension she carried. She caught his concerned look and gave him a faint smile.

“I’ll be fine. I’m just not built to handle that much excitement.” He turned to put his back against the wall and allowed himself to relax. “If it helps, I’m not either. Not that kind anyway.”

She gave him an appraising look. “Well, you sure handled it in stride, at least.”

He didn’t look away from the doors, his gaze distant. “Thanks.”

Jon refocused and checked the floor count as the lift rose the massive tower. They bypassed the residential and maintenance levels, and most of the office levels, before hitting the cyber research levels. The lift eased into a gentle stop before the doors parted open and Rebecca pushed herself off the wall and gestured for him to follow her.

The cyber research floor sported a lot of glass walled rooms with arms, legs and various other augmentations set up for testing. In one room, a doctor was programming an arm with various movements and then testing out the limb’s performance. In another room, a mechanical torso rigged up with several combat dummies nearby. A large red sign over the door read “CAUTION: Testing in Progress. Do not Enter.” A beat later, the mechanical torso detonated like a mine, dispersing metal balls into the dummies.

“Jesus!” he said as they walked by the lab.

Rebecca smirked, “Yea. I’m not a fan of that at first either. You get used to it. Some labs in here test mil spec aug designs for the DOD or contractors like Haltech although I guess at this point there isn’t much difference now that Miltech’s gone,” she said. Her voice coming across in a tour guide tone of voice.

“This way,” Rebecca said, gesturing him through a general lab around a corner. It opened up into a large workspace with slots for several researchers and held a few offices. She led him into a small office offset from the primary they’d just entered. Swiping up an interface and logging in, she gestured for Jon to take a seat as she pulled over some scanning equipment.

“Hold still. This won’t take long. I just want to get a memory dump from your system’s cache to see what it can tell me about what happened outside.”

He nodded along, as though he understood a fraction of what she just said she was doing. The devices made their own symphony of noises as they scanned images and collated all the data his implants had collected this morning. As her equipment did their tasks, Rebecca stood nearby and swiped various bits of information into several categories she’d set up.

Several beeps later confirmed the equipment had finished, and she had the data work to process. She glanced up and gave him a smile. “Ok, it looks like it finished the information pull. I’ll need some time to look over what I’ve gotten.” She glanced at her display and frowned. “There’s a lot to sift through here, which is good. Ideally, it’ll mean I can get very specific, unfortunately, because there’s a lot going on, it’ll mean there’s a lot to follow.” She turned to him with a sympathetic frown.

“I don’t have a quick answer for you. Sorry.”

He shook his head with an appreciative smile. “Thanks, but it’s ok. I appreciate you following up on this.”

“I’m just speculating, but at a guess, it looks like someone triggered an entire crowd of augments into an artificially activated Rejection Rage. What fascinates me is how you only exhibited partial symptoms. There are several variables to consider, though, so that’s going to take time to narrow down. Jon?”

Jon went rigid at the mention of Rejection Rage. He suspected and on some subconscious level even known that’s what was happening outside. The thought of brushing so close to the madness that’d claimed his own father left him cold. Her calling his name in question grabbed his attention and rooted him back into the conversation.

“Sorry, I just have a history with the disease. Hearing it brought up dragged some uncomfortable feelings back up.”

“Sorry. I’ll be in touch once I figure out what happened. In the meant time, you look pretty banged up. Let me get the medbed to work running some quick repairs. It might not be a bad idea keeping you on retainer for security,” she said.

The bed’s spider like mechanical arms whirred and hummed back and forth as they administered repairs to the limbs he used so hard in such a brief span of being back on his feet. He felt his aversion to her idea rise several octaves. “I appreciate that, but I’m not really a company man kind of guy.”

Rebecca nodded, an understanding look on her features. “I understand. If not for Roth, then maybe just for me? Rationalize it as helping a friend? Or repaying a debt if you’re more the guilt driven type.”

The machine continued to hum as it replaced plating and components. He lost the feeling in one of his arms for a bit, which was a curious sensation considering he stopped having a real arm almost a year ago. So what had lost feeling? Sometimes this shit was too confusing. Just a giant mind fuck.

He arched his brow. She was thorough, that was for sure. He could tell she would not give until she found an angle, and getting her off his case felt better than keeping her on it. He relented with a sigh. “Alright, alright. I give. I’ll do it for you. Not for Roth.”

The medbed finished and the mechanical arms all folded themselves away back into the base of the medbed with a cheer beep he recognized at this point after spending so much time prone on them in the past six months to a year. He got up and leaned against a desk closer to her, thankful to be upright again. He rubbed the fresh plates on his arm, noting that the piece with the Desperado patch remained. The laser etched grooves comforted him as he traced his finger over them. Registering them through the tactile sensor points in his hands.

She nodded, understanding his feelings about working for corporations. He figured Raven had briefed her to some basic extent about what was going on with him and Haltech.

“Thanks for getting me through that mess down there. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t think I’d have been able to get out of it on my own,” she said.

She was right. Given her size and disposition, it was doubtful she’d have been able to fend off a crowd that large in a rage fit. “We’re lucky it wasn’t worse than that. But it still feels too suspect. Rejection cases are pretty low these days. And I doubt the entire crowd skipped on their Neuropropheline shots,” Jon said.

“That’s what bothers me. I want to know how that happened. Everything about it just feels too staged.”

On that he agreed with her, but he knew the media would find some way to spin it somehow. Sensationalize it and distract from the fact that statistically that many rejection rage cases clustered together at the same time was about as likely as the sun exploding tomorrow instead of in six billion years. He was also curious though to see how Roth would handle it. That much negative PR on their doorstep was bound to draw some kind of response. The question was, what kind?

He pushed off a desktop he sat on and noticed a picture of Rebecca in some combat fatigues and squinted as his retinal implants zoomed in on the image. She was standing with Raven, and the both of them looked grimy. An after action photo, or maybe post training. Rebecca glanced up from her overlay monitors and followed his gaze to her picture.

“Ah. Leah. We met during an operation a decade ago. She was doing some data collection and needed me for a consult. I was just wrapping up my theories on a few augmentations.”

“You guys look like you got a little dirty. What was the operation?”

She smiled apologetically. “Sorry. Non disclosure agreement prevents me from discussing it. But I can say that her and I never stopped talking after that. She contacted me a little while later, asking if I’d like to stay working with her as a consultant again.”

Jon smiled, “And by consultant, she meant keeping you on retainer to patch up her people as needed?”

Rebecca nodded. “Yea, something like that.”

“Roth ok with that?”

“Yea, they write it off as a DOD consultation claim. Gives them a tax bonus.” That seemed typical.

Sensing his mood shift, Rebecca’s lips curled up into a slight smirk. “It’s nothing like that. Roth really isn’t all that nefarious. We got our start by working closely with the DOD to patch up soldiers and get them back fighting. We actually began as a high tech off shoot of the Wounded Warrior program. Then when we hit big, we began our own program and developed into what Roth is today.”

Came to think of it. He recalled a few of his joes getting wounded in action and going home, only to come back with mechanical prosthetic replacements that enabled them to return to duty. That was far less commonplace these days, but at the height of a lot of the brushfire wars, retention rates were very high because of Roth and its program. “You guys helped more than a few of my people when I was a soldier. Thanks for that.”

Rebecca tried to hide her smile by focusing on her work, giving him a stiff nod. “Of course. It’s just part of what we do.”

He nodded to that, checking in with security. They had dispersed the crowd outside. Local authorities had taken them to the nearest Augment Treatment Clinic. “It looks clear to leave, so I’ll get out of your hair. You have my number if you need me.”

Rebecca nodded to him, her face buried in an overlay full of scrolling data as she mumbled an acknowledgement to him. With that, he took his leave of Roth.

‎

‎