Chapter 16

Feb 24, 2100 Residential Tower 4

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‎ It was his fourth day watching the outside of Roth Industries. He conducted a stakeout to watch and see if any further incidents like the one involving the protestors occurred again. So far, though, he was coming up empty-handed. He was also following Raven’s advice to lie low and keep his head down for a bit. Rebecca’s concerns about the likelihood of such an event occurring echoed with his own sentiments.

He leaned back with a sigh, fighting back the rising urge to get frustrated with the lack of anything useful turning up. He knew it was a long game, though. He just had to wait. He got up from his eagle’s perch and went back deeper in into his hide to fetch something to drink. He popped the top without shattering the bottle when his holo-id rang. He let it ring twice and then answered, inputting the date in a code, then received the response prompt.

“Jon,” Raven’s voice said, as a small portrait displayed her face in the inset window in his hud overlay.

“Raven. What’s up?”

“I got something. Not sure how we can use it, or what it even means yet. But it looks like Roth Industries and Biopharm Mechanicals are at the onset of their own little corporate war.”

“Ok? What’s that got to do with the Haltech?” he said.

Raven’s expression scrunched up as she tried to piece it together on the call, “Call it a hunch. Rebecca said she needed extra security of late, right? That the company’s resources were pretty taxed?”

“Yea,” He said. After a quick pull from his beer, he shrugged. He could see Raven nod in her inset window. He knew that face. She was shifting puzzle pieces around. She’d come across something that had her thinking.

“What’s on your mind?”

She shook her head, “BioPharm. As a company, they aren’t remarkable beyond manufacturing a lot of combat grade augmentations. Their clients are soldiers, police, and private contractors. It’s a market that Roth has held a firm control on, even though they haven’t moved on it. Their posturing against Roth just feels like it’s got something else behind it other than just trying to edge out competition. I just can’t place why.”

Jon took a seat back on the windowsill, looking down at Roth’s main entrance and corporate square. His skin crawled thinking about what happened down there. How it almost happened to him. He didn’t even need to zoom in to see several sizable blood stains from victims of brutal beatings down there.

“Hey? You ok? You look like you just saw a ghost or something?” Raven asked.

“Yea. Something like that. Sorry, you were saying?” he replied.

“I was saying I think it’d be a good idea if you stuck close to Rebecca and Roth. I don’t know what BioPharms angle is, but this feels pretty brazen for them. And they have some serious spend power that doesn’t match their finances.”

“You think they’re being backed?” he asked.

“That’s my guess. And smart money is that it’s Haltech. But if it is them, they’re hiding the receipt trail well,” she said.

“Alright. Look into it. I’ll make sure they don’t get anywhere with their attacks.”

“Got it. And Jon?”

“What?”

“Good luck.”

The call ended, and he finished his beer at a leisurely pace. Once finished, he got up, setting the bottle in a waste bucket, throwing his jacket on at the door. He made his way down to the ground level and stepped outside to walk across the street. He took a knee in the square and ran his mechanical finger tips across the blood stains. He turned back to the sound of approaching sneakers. Rebecca Preston approached with her lab coat still on.

“Raven just called. Said you might need someone to talk to.”

He nodded, looking back at the ground. “She also thinks a company is gunning after yours. Thinks it’ll get messy.”

“What do you think?” she asked.

He shook his head, running his thumb across his index and middle fingers after a moment. “Not sure yet. Just when everything makes sense, it takes a weird turn again.”

“You sound like a fish out of water.”

“Something like that. Find anything out about what happened down here?”

“I’m at my lunch. Wanna walk? I know the perfect dumpling vendor down the street.”

The pair descended from his over watch position to the street where Rebecca took the lead. He fell in step next to her as they proceeded down the street. “So, what did you find out?”

“Well, it’s more what I didn’t find. When everyone began exhibiting symptoms emblematic to Rejection Rage, I suspected some kind of chemical attack going after the glial cells in the brain’s base near the biochip.”

“And?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing showing the accident was chemically induced, anyway. Biologically, your scans and samples all came up clean. No foreign toxins of any note were present or broken down by your system.”

Jon turned back with a grimace, unsure he liked how that sounded. “So, what happened back there? It really was everyone just losing it?”

Rebecca suppressed an amused look. “Please. That might be what the media wants to spin it as. Companies out there trying to drum up anti-augment fears. But it’s just that. Propaganda.”

“To what end? Why try to drum that up now?”

“If I had to guess? I’d say it was some attempt at controlling something that slipped out of their grasp,” she said.

“They being who?”

“Corporations? Who else? Augments began as a measure for the army to keep troops in service after typically debilitating injuries would have medically chaptered them out. Then, once augmentations went mainstream, it became the new fad. But Corporations were slow to jump on drip feeding them advancements, and now at a guess they pose some kind of threat.”

“How so?”

“How easy it is to augment someone beyond a basic human’s capabilities. Think about it, Combat Mechs are essentially the next step in combat drone technology, but what if a human being could match that artificially? Where would that leave all these corporations after having sunk so much money into these drones and mechs?”

“So you think by them crimping down on augments, and souring public opinion of them, corporations are playing some kind of control game?”

She shrugged, “Been a biocyberneticist with Roth since I got out of the service and went to med school. I oversaw our technology development from just simple appendages, to synaptic response systems to full integration, and then onwards to expanding the basic human design to improving and adding to it. And do you know what I observed during that time?”

Jon tried to hide his discomfort with the discussion, opting to shake his head uncertain rather than respond.

“That Corporations were only interested in the progress so long as there was a way for them to profit from it.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“What about the licenses for Mil Spec augmentations? You’d think that tech would sell like hotcakes.”

“Perhaps. But do you think corporations would allow the public to outmatch their combat mechs and lose that position of control?”

“No. Of course not.”

“It almost invariably boils down to money. Or controlling the flow of it. If a company could corner the market on augmentations and begin implementing further restrictions, while enhancing their other markets, they could fence the augmented populations into control without ever having to fire a shot.”

“But for that to work, they’d need something else driving their profit margins if they were going to commit market murder.”

The pair found a quaint little dumpling stand near the street side. An elderly Chinese man lowered a wire mesh rack into the boiling water while he set a fresh batch of dumplings in paper holders. The old man gave them a smile as he bowed his head. He spoke in mandarin with an accent, but Jon’s implant translated the text input into text in his hud.

“He’s asking if we’re here for the lunch special?” Jon said to her.

Rebecca nodded with a smile, “Yes, please.”

The old man handed her a paper plate with edges that curved up, like a bowl stretched out. It had four steamed dumplings on it roughly the size of small fruit.”

“20 credits please.”

Rebecca swiped her hand over the reader to pay for her order without a second glance. Then held a dumpling out to Jon, “Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those anti-vatmeat Luddites. Suit yourself. These are the best ones I found this side of the monument.”

Jon bit back a laugh at her vatmeat joke and shook his head as she paid. They strode back with a comfortable silence, settling in between them as Rebecca ate. Her words still rattling around in his mind. If Haltech was pushing BioPharm to edge out competition and then hung BioPharm out to dry? That could work. They already have the media painting the augment community out as a dangerous powder keg waiting to blow.

He glanced down at his hands. It didn’t help he felt the same way about himself. He sent Raven a text message.

“ Raven. I think I know how we can stop or slow down Haltech. If they want to take down Roth, then we have to save it.”

He felt the disgust and bile hiking up the back of his throat at the mere thought of sticking his neck out to save another company. In his book they were all trash, even if they weren’t 100% horrible to their employees. Their very presence and operation ensured the perpetuation of the system that continuously ground the souls of the poor underfoot.

Discomfort rankled him. He didn’t have a very black and white worldview, but he had long despised the power that corporations held in today’s society. Helping one out felt very much like an anathema to his mission of stopping them. Failure to act on Roth’s behalf just meant Haltech was in an improved position than if he abstained. If he didn’t act, or rather, his inaction in this situation would stand to benefit Haltech more. That outcome was the least desirable of the two. He could bite down his pride if it meant sticking it to Haltech and their puppets.

This would not be simple or clear cut. No, it had to be as convoluted and ass backwards as possible. He glanced at Rebecca, who’d finished her lunch now, striding alongside him quietly.

“Raven thinks a company called BioPharm Mechanicals has an eye for running your company out of the market. Aggressively if it has to.”

Rebecca nodded, a thoughtful expression on her features. “That makes sense. It would explain the sudden spike in safety accidents lately, and why our own corporate combat mechs have been so tied up.”

He nodded as she explained the situation. “I watched your company’s main entrance for a few days,” he said, testing the waters.

“And?”

She didn’t even react. It sounded so nonplussed coming from her. He nodded, feeling reassured by that. “Nothing of note so far. I was hoping to see if I could spot another instance of what happened several days ago when I was walking you into the office. So far, zip.”

She nodded, with a knowing smile, “That’s why you were in the square.”

“Yea. I thought if I looked at it from a fresh vantage point, I might notice something new.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t work out, though?”

He shook his head no. “That obvious, was it?”

“Just a well-informed guess, I suppose. Something artificial triggered that accident. Finding its cause will be the trick, if it’s possible at all,” she said.

“Any clues?”

She shook her head, “None yet. The data is still preliminary.”

Jon figured that was her way of saying she didn’t know yet. But he took her to be an exceptionally bright mind. Rebecca was at the forefront of her field and had been for at least a decade or more. Her file in Roth’s database he’d taken a casual look at also included very favorable mentions by her mentor, Dr. Omar Sarafi.

“You like to get lost in your own thoughts often, don’t you?” she said, nudging him gently with her shoulder.

“Force of habit, I guess. Everything is often both a puzzle and a life and death situation. I always had to stay a step ahead of the game,” he said.

“Interesting. Sounds nuanced and exciting,” she said.

He shot her a curious look, and she grinned, holding her hands up. “Hey, I’m no boring book worm. I used to sling lead with the best of them,” Rebecca said. She slid out of the left side of her lab coat and showed him a tattoo on her shoulder blade. It looked like a unit crest.

“What branch?”

“Army. It’s how Raven and I met. Well, you saw the photo in my lap.” Tugging her coat back up, she smiled fondly. “Those were good times. Different times.” Her tone tilted towards wistful.

“How so?”

She turned back to him and shook her head, smiling apologetically. “I was a different person back then, and everything changed.”

“How so?”

She shook her head no with a tight smile. “Oh no. Don’t you go playing your secret spy games on me, Mr. Knight? No, fortunately, I’m just a different person now. I don’t chase excitement like that anymore.” She pushed him away. “This is where we part ways for now. I got a project to go check in on, and you’ve got your spy thing to do.”

He stepped back evenly with the push and nodded; he opened his mouth to speak, but an explosion down the street followed by the staccato clatter of rifle fire echoed and rippled off the steel and glass walled canyons of the street face.

Rebecca turned down the direction of the noise and frowned. “It’s been like that ever since they passed that bill. Companies just gunning at each other now.” She turned to look at him with a tired smile. “Makes ya miss the days when they just bought each other out. Now they just blow each other up.”

“How does the police factor in?”

Rebecca snorted derisively. “They act like good little minions holding a perimeter while a company’s war mechs trade rounds in public.”

“And collateral damage? Casualties?”

“Insurance payouts,” she said matter-of-factly. “Usually paid for by selling off the remaining undesirable assets that survived the attacks.”

“Sounds lovely,” Jon said with a scowl.

“That’s just our world now,” Rebecca said. Her expression looked worried, though. “I’m going to head inside just in case that spills over or spreads.”

He nodded and made for the residential building across the street. As he went, it occurred to him he’d like to carry some weapons on hand without potentially broadcasting it. He paused, “Hey, you mentioned if I needed anything about my augments to come see you?”

Rebecca stopped at the doorway and nodded. “Yep. Offer still stands.”

“Alright. I’ll be by in a day or two.”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully and shook her head. “Pick me up for work tomorrow morning and we’ll sort it out first thing.”

He opened his mouth to protest but couldn’t find anything wrong with the plan, but he wasn’t happy about it not being his own. “Fine,” he said, turning to leave.

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