《Shadow Runner [Cyberpunk LitRPG with Cultivation]》


 Chapter 1: Take Me Out

    No matter how many deep breaths I took, I couldn¡¯t stop my hands from shaking. I tried tightening my grip on my little pea-shooter, but the slippery grip betrayed me yet again. The Cadmus E-20 was a notoriously finicky shooter, but it was also the only shooter available for thirty creds if a person knew the right dealer. And in a world where having a shooter was better than no shooter, this hunk of metal was my life insurance.


    It wasn¡¯t hard to figure out why I was suffering from a potentially terminal bout of nerves. The alley pressed into me from all sides, the smell and garbage doing nothing to help my mental state, or that of the twelve other miserable wretches waiting here. Jason had a sick sense of humor. Thirteen? This whole thing was gonna go swimmingly, in the most drowning sense of the word.


    Funny thing, number thirteen. The universe had gone to shit and back, and yet old Terran legends still stuck around.


    ¡°So Jace, after this job, you think I can get a piece like yours? You said we¡¯ll be hitting that fucker at five. It¡¯s been forever and he¡¯s not fucking showing,¡± Hein complained. How many piercings was too many? I didn¡¯t have an exact number to give, but looking at Hein¡¯s cheeks covered by pointy studs, I could confidently say he¡¯d found the answer.


    Half of Jason¡¯s little hit squad looked like they were starving spirits of the dead who had crawled out of a sewer. The other half had carefully slicked hair, artfully ripped clothing, and more ¡®bling¡¯ than was healthy for them. Hein belonged in the second half. Me? The first half.


    ¡°I told you to shut it and wait, didn¡¯t I?¡± Jason stepped into Hein¡¯s face. ¡°I don¡¯t need you bitching at me, I need you to do the job and do it right.¡±


    Jason didn¡¯t belong in either half. His firm face meant he¡¯d never had to go hungry for a single meal. And his clothes were from the middle district, where people didn¡¯t have to deal with the grime and the stench and whatever diseases were in season along the outskirt slums.


    No, Jason was there for the thrill and the street rep.


    ¡°Is your information good?¡± I asked. I could practically taste the bitter desperation lining my cheeks. This wasn¡¯t a job that I normally did. Too dangerous, too many variables. But when Jason cornered me and told me about his plan, I couldn¡¯t back out. I don¡¯t know how he knew, but he did.


    ¡°I¡¯ve already told you, Gato¡¯s good for the info,¡± Jason spat.


    Technically, it wasn¡¯t Gato¡¯s tip. It was his sister, who had the dubious fortune of being a Reaper higher-up¡¯s regular hookup, and the idiot had bragged about how his mighty gang had made a deal with some shady corp for prototype cybernetics.


    Now, did that mean the cybernetics were any good? That was debatable at best. Most probably, the gangers were being used as a test study on what the cybernetics actually did to a body. But was the chrome going to be more expensive than anything most of us could ever dream of laying our eyes on? Also yes.


    When Jason told me his plan, there was a little belittling smirk on his lips. Like he knew he was making an offer that couldn¡¯t be refused. It didn¡¯t matter. I could take the humiliation as long as the creds were good.


    ¡°But what if the intel isn¡¯t worth the hassle? We gonna wait here for no one to show up?¡± I pushed. I kept my voice even and tried to keep my stance loose and relaxed, even if I was pretty sure I was almost as twitchy as the rail-thin gleamer Jason kept in his group just for quick access to recreational substances when the mood hit him.


    Technically, it wasn¡¯t smart to challenge Jason so openly in front of a crowd. His temper got the best of him nine times out of ten. Predictably, the ponce¡¯s eyes got narrow and he exaggeratedly spun on his heel to send his dramatically cut trench coat billowing behind him. Considering how often he did that, he probably thought it made him look intimidating. The article of clothing might have been impressive on its own, but it was both painted in bright neon reds and greens and it hung off the frame of a brat more concerned with being worshiped than doing any sort of exercise.


    ¡°We have a problem, boy?¡±


    Jason stalked closer to me with each word until we were standing nose to nose. Frankly, I was surprised he hadn¡¯t tried to swing at my face. It was only when his eyes flicked to my hip that I knew for sure what was giving him pause. Out of all thirteen of us, only he and I had a shooter to our names. His was a large chrome monstrosity he could barely hold properly. Mine might have been a Cadmus E-20, but even they didn¡¯t miss when the target was only a couple inches away.


    ¡°Jason, I¡¯m here to do the job you invited me to, not cause trouble or whatever. I¡¯m just asking if I still have a job or not, that¡¯s all. I¡¯m sure the others are wondering the same thing,¡± I breathed back.


    Now that he was close, I got a good look into his eyes, and they were flinty with anger. But more important than that, I caught the hint of small cog-like symbols all around the outer side of his iris. I recognized them instantly from hours of scrolling through ads. Machina made some excellent eyes, and even better cybernetic limbs. Not top of the line, but they were up there.


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    Jason paused and swept his gaze over the gallery that was eagerly watching our little spat. He stewed in his thoughts just long enough for some of the aggression to bleed off. Instead of another curse, his pointer finger rose up to his eye.


    ¡°Gato¡¯s good for it. They know better than to fuck with me. And one bonus tip, Gato said that the mule is gonna carry some cybernetic eyes. Good ones that don¡¯t go out on you.¡±


    A cold sweat broke over my back. Did Jason know about my condition? Or was he just bragging about his new toy eyes?


    But the thought that dominated my mind was the fact that there might be a set of eyes at the end of this job. I used to think being poor was scary. No, losing my sight bit by bit with an onslaught of headaches, nausea, and dizzy spells was much worse. So if there was a set of eyes in the mule¡¯s package, I was taking it. It didn¡¯t matter if the whole gang turned on me or if I had to shove them into my skull myself afterwards. I would do it.


    ¡°Lost your tongue?¡± Jason taunted. His eyes flicked again to my waist before he stalked off. ¡°Just don¡¯t lose your nerve when it¡¯s time to do the job.¡±


    I kept my mouth shut this time as our glorious leader stalked away, sticking his left hip forward a little to show off the monstrosity he called a shooter. In the trickle-down economy of this world, the better heat a person was packing, the higher their standing. When someone kills a gang boss? They grab the now owner-less shooters first.


    Luckily, a minute or so later, our glorious leader¡¯s eyes started to glow with that tell-tale sign of an ocular call, and a smile began to take over his normally dour countenance.


    ¡°That was one of my guys,¡± Jason said when his eyes dimmed. ¡°The mule¡¯s on the way, so everyone get ready and try not ruin this for me.¡± The latter half of the order was aimed at me, but I nodded along just like the rest of them.


    It wasn¡¯t hard to find cover as our little group scattered. Jason¡¯s intel said that the mules would head down this grimy alley. As much as I doubted anyone would intentionally come into this dumpster and that we¡¯d have a much better ambush spot if we found a choke point among the garbage, it wasn¡¯t exactly the time for strategy.


    After settling behind a rusted slab of metal, I fumbled with my gun one last time, trying to do a professional job of giving it a look over. My old Cadmus E-20 was, from personal experience, a rugged piece of machinery. The only problem was that I had exactly two magazines for it. Fifteen shots in one, and seven in the other.


    Rowdy laughter sounded at the entrance of the alley, effortlessly cutting through the subdued quiet of the near-abandoned block and instantly cutting a frown into my face.


    We were on the lookout for a mule. Mules didn¡¯t laugh. They moved quickly and efficiently, and most importantly, they moved alone.


    Not for the first time, I cursed my poor eyesight when two blurry figures finally entered view at the mouth of our chosen alley, two giants of muscle and fat engaged in jolly conversation. The bottom of my stomach fell out when I realized both had gym bags casually dangling from their shoulders, and I had to hold back an urge to curse loudly.


    I was going to skin Gato if we survived because he wasn¡¯t good for shit. It wasn¡¯t one mule the Reapers had sent. It was a pair of them, and that complicated things.


    I wish I could say that the immediate ring of Jason¡¯s shooter echoing through the alley was unexpected. Almost instinctively, I raised my gun and pulled the trigger once, twice, five times in total, no thought spared to saving the bullets.


    My eyesight being what it was, my shots were just sent in the general direction of the mules with little aim. But luck was on our side. A spray of red plumed through the air, and one of the two mules slumped down to the ground.


    That¡¯s also where our luck promptly ran out.


    In a move smoother than anything I could ever have managed, the second mule turned and raised a hand directly towards the street kids who were starting to leave cover to rush them. The motion confused me until I caught a glint of metal, unmistakable even to my damaged eyes.


    A shot louder than Jason¡¯s erupted into the air, and one of the street kids at the front of the charge was reduced to a shower of blood that just about completely chunked the middle of his body. A head and shoulders slopped to the ground with a squelching noise, and my hands began to shake as I swung my shooter towards what was apparently the greater threat.


    Jason got the memo too, because his shooter barked again even as I unleashed bullets of my own. His shot made the mule groan and stagger back, a small patch of red slowly spreading through his shirt. On the other hand, my two shots plinked against the man with the sound of bullets impacting metal.


    Subdermal? The thought ran through my mind as the man¡¯s shooter fired once more, and another street rat was reduced to near nothing. As much as hot adrenaline was elevating my heart rate, an equally cold calm was coursing through my veins. He should be going for me or Jason, the ones with shooters. But he¡¯s taking out the close targets. That makes no sense unless¡­ he has a mid to short range weapon of incredible destructive potential, but low kill potential longer range.


    My feet began moving on their own as I backpedaled while squeezing the trigger again and again.


    Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen¡­ I clicked once more on reflex, but my shooter refused to spew any more attempted murder until I fed it again. If I was being generous, I had landed eight hits. It didn¡¯t matter. Neither Jason nor my shooter could penetrate the mule¡¯s subdermal beyond just small splotches of blood.


    In the meantime, the mule had taken out most of Jason¡¯s gang who had rushed him. But there were still a couple who somehow kept advancing when most of their comrades had been blown to bits. With a quick motion, the mule tossed his bag aside and wrenched his left arm to the side in a move that looked both unnatural and uncomfortable. Maybe it would have even looked funny, if it hadn¡¯t caused a long, deadly blade to spring forth from his limb with the sound of ripping fabric.


    The blade sailed straight through one of the street rats and proved its sharpness when it sliced its target in two. Blood splattered everywhere as the alley¡¯s fight slowed for a moment, just long enough for a single thought to run through my mind.


    We¡¯re dead. We¡¯re all so very dead.

 Chapter 2: Wild

    I stuffed down my fear as I fumbled for the reserve magazine and let the spent one clank to the ground with the press of a button.


    There was another whistle of the blade, another splash of blood, and another body that hit the ground. My arms were shaking too much to click the magazine into place in a single motion. That cost me a couple of precious seconds, enough time for the mule-turned-murder-machine to come into focus.


    He was bleeding in multiple places, but the biggest wound by far was a shot to the left pectoral, where there was an actual hole. I could just barely make out a glimpse of grisly stuff and twitching muscle. It wasn¡¯t subdermal that stopped Jason¡¯s shot, it was muscle.


    Synth muscle. It had to be. Nothing else would make sense, but the realization only drove a new wave of despair into my heart. What was someone who could afford those kinds of enhancements doing with a gang like the Reapers?


    Still, the key to this fight was Jason. His chrome monstrosity hadn¡¯t done much, but it had done something.


    Jason fired and almost clipped Hein while missing the mule by a mile. Worse, he let out a high-pitched squeal when the retort of the shooter grew almost too much for him. The chrome monstrosity wasn¡¯t lacking in kill capacity, that much was apparent.


    No, the issue is that the little shit couldn¡¯t even handle the shooter he decided to tote around. What good is the highest caliber weapon in the world if it breaks your wrist like a twig when you shoot it?


    The mule made short work of Jason¡¯s gang. Even Kaze, one of the rare exotics unfortunate enough to share our social station, was a pile of purple flesh. His half karu heritage of formidable muscle and ridged, stone-like skin had served him as badly as our human bodies were serving us. The only one left was Hein, who was furiously backpedaling.


    That left just me and Jason still in the fight. He was fumbling with his shooter, desperation in his eyes. I wasn¡¯t any better. Even as I finally managed to click the half-full magazine into place, I could barely bring myself to use the Cadmus. The mule¡¯s eyes swept past me like a predator, and some primitive part of me simply froze up.


    Never before in my life had I seen death draw so close to me. Even when I¡¯d been forced to use my gun before, it was to fend off the desperate who backed off after a shot or two. None of them compared to what I now knew had to be a professional killer through and through.


    Then the murder machine finally took his eyes away from us to spin around, and the sound of two blades clashing rang out in the alley.


    I could just make out the fact that someone had snuck up on the mule, and that the two were now exchanging blows with the speed and alacrity that didn¡¯t seem quite possible to match within human standards.


    Jason, for all that I thought him an idiot, proved he didn¡¯t lack courage when he raised his shooter and fired one more time. He dropped the weapon right after with a whimper, but the bullet hit the mark and buried itself into our attacker¡¯s back, which gave the mystery fighter enough of an opening to send a spray of blood splashing onto the grimy floor of the alley.


    Neither attack proved to be lethal, but they did make the mule suddenly back off in a surprising burst of speed.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± the mule growled before his voice relaxed. ¡°If someone paid you to mess with my delivery, my boss will double the creds.¡±


    The mystery man didn¡¯t reply immediately. Instead, with what I was fairly certain was a bored expression on his face, he surged forward. His own weapon, almost identical to the mule¡¯s, lashed out and extracted another spray of blood.


    My heart all but climbed out of my chest when I realized his target was Hein and not the mule. For this botched job, Jason¡¯s faithful follower had been rewarded with death instead of a shooter.


    The mule stood in a ready position as he backed up a couple steps more. ¡°Even without witnesses, my boss will find you. I¡¯m not sure you want the kind of heat that this brings.¡±


    ¡°Idiot,¡± the mystery man cursed. ¡°I¡¯m not here because I want to. I¡¯m just cleaning up after a brat who should know better.¡±


    The man¡¯s eyes were fixed on Jason with a glower, and if looks could kill, the former gang leader would¡¯ve painted the walls of the alley red. Instead, Jason just stared as he gripped his wrist with his shooter sprawled on the ground.


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    ¡°So you¡¯re telling me that you¡¯re babysitting some random brat? Here? In the outskirt slums? The same brat who decided to fuck with people he shouldn¡¯t?¡± I couldn¡¯t blame the mule for the disbelief in his voice. The way I was staring at Jason myself shifted at the implication. He wasn¡¯t supposed to be worth that much, not from what I had seen.


    ¡°What can I say? He¡¯s apparently still blood. You served, right? Gonna be a damn shame.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re here to protect the boy,¡± the mule argued. ¡°I¡¯ll head my way, we don¡¯t have to do this.¡±


    The man paused as he considered the suggestion. He looked¡­ well, unkempt. His hair was long and oily, his clothes tattered and dirty, and the less said about the thing he called a beard the better, because something must have crawled in there and died.


    ¡°No. Sorry, can¡¯t do that. Too many variables that can go wrong. It¡¯s my head if you decide you want revenge.¡±


    ¡°Fuck,¡± the mule cursed. ¡°I fucking told them to give me more men, more weapons, more something, but no, they wanted it all hush hush. Fuck, I hate this city.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s life away from the front,¡± Jason¡¯s bodyguard quipped.


    The mule took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and exchanged nods with the bodyguard.


    What followed was quite unlike anything else I¡¯d experienced. There was a¡­ shift, in the way they carried themselves, and I felt the air be driven from my lungs as a wave of pressure washed over me. Then they were moving, and it was at speeds that were definitely inhuman. Compared to their earlier fight, this was on a different level. This was something I had never seen before. It shouldn¡¯t have been possible for humans to move this fast.


    I¡¯d collapsed to my knees at some point, and Jason was no better. In spite of that, the look on the little shit¡¯s face was excited. With the stranger¡¯s revelation, it was like all fear had fled from him, and he was now almost buzzing in place. Really, if he broke into excited cheering for his guardian angel, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised.


    I didn¡¯t have such luxuries. Instead, I slowly began to drag myself forward with my eyes half-fixed on the battle. After what felt like an eternity, my fingers bumped up against something hard and cold.


    Jason¡¯s bodyguard was winning. The mule was good, but as soon as the clash resumed, the bodyguard flicked his formerly plain left hand and released a second blade to pair with the one he was pressing against the mule already. In theory, at the speeds that they were moving at, it shouldn¡¯t have mattered if there was one or two blades in play.


    But it did.


    With two blades, the bodyguard was drawing scores of blood on the other man¡¯s body, steadily pressing him through the garbage and trying to distance the fight from Jason. The mule wasn¡¯t having it, and took several punishing blows that sparked through his skin just to stay within striking range of Jason.


    That was what decided the battle, in the end.


    The mule pushed back the bodyguard and raised his right hand directly at Jason. In less than a second, the limb split apart, revealing a hollow chamber hidden in the man¡¯s wrist that began to spark.


    The bodyguard all but teleported between the two and even struck the arm aside, but the shot still rang out and tore right through the bodyguard¡¯s left shoulder. The mule had likely counted on that to give him an opening. But Jason¡¯s bodyguard seemed entirely unfazed that he was missing an entire shoulder. With a flick of his right wrist, the bodyguard shoved his weapon up through the mule¡¯s jaw. Disbelief filled the mule¡¯s eyes before they ever so slowly flickered out.


    The bodyguard sighed in a way that suggested annoyance rather than pain as he started to turn, eyes already searching for Jason.


    My turn.


    I raised the oversized shooter I had snuck over to, fixed it on my target with both hands, and fired.


    I can¡¯t rightly attribute the shot that hit the bodyguard square in the face to skill. Part of it came down to the fact that we were less than five steps apart and my eyes were still relatively good at that distance. Part of it was likely down to him relaxing when the obvious threat was out of the picture. However, it was most probably luck that guided my aim that day.


    It was also luck that Jason¡¯s chrome shooter was powerful enough to blow through a man who, moments prior, had shown superhuman abilities and held my destiny in his grasp.


    ¡°That fuck did you do? THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!¡± Jason was screaming his lungs out and already trying to scramble towards me, but I simply reoriented the shooter with trembling hands. I recognized the exact moment he realized he was far too close to me and entirely unarmed. ¡°Wai-¡±


    The shooter screamed again, and it made a sizable hole straight through the idiot who got us all into this mess to begin with. I wasn¡¯t a great shot by any means, but at that distance, even I could guarantee a headshot.


    Then, just to prove that I was an idiot, I stared.


    I didn¡¯t like him. I couldn¡¯t even stand him. Yet, the sight of Jason¡¯s utterly ruined face almost made me throw up. It probably would have, had this been the first time I killed. Unfortunately, that distinction went to something far more mundane.


    Instead, I numbly stumbled over the bodies and ignored the likely priceless augments that were just waiting to be scavenged. I would have killed for Jason¡¯s eyes just a moment ago. Now, I knew that they were too hot for someone like me to touch. Jason¡¯s family would be on the lookout and might have put tracking implants in them.


    All I could do was grab their credit chips. No way to reliably track those, at least as far as I knew, and I just threw them into my pockets without bothering to check what they were worth.


    No, my real target was something else. It took everything I had to drag my tired body forward. The dead bodies seemed to track my progress over to the first mule dead at the entrance to the alley.


    Two bags. Two shots.


    This has to be worth it. It must be.


    If it wasn¡¯t, the best I could do was add my corpse to the collection cooling in the alley and be done with it all.

 Chapter 3: Risky Business

    Life hadn¡¯t always been like this for me. I remember my childhood as this precious thing where my biggest worry was making sure mold didn¡¯t grow on my sheets.


    All that changed with The Protest.


    Protests of any kind were a rare species on a world like Kadar, let alone in Zanos city. It wasn¡¯t because there weren¡¯t things to protest about. Quite the contrary, in fact. It mostly came down to the fact that people couldn¡¯t bring themselves to give enough of a shit to work towards some nebulous ¡®better future.¡¯


    Oh, and the shooters. Lots and lots of shooters that the local police can bring to bear against any disgruntled mob.


    In recent history, at least in the last several hundred years, you could only find a single example of a large-scale protest that had swept through the slums. It had happened four years ago, and had been named as just ¡°The Protest.¡±


    After all, it wasn¡¯t every day that the general populace found out a food production corp was purposefully poisoning their products shipped to poorer areas. Well, poisoning is a bit of a harsh word. Bad for PR, and definitely liable to get a person either sued into poverty or quickly shanked.


    The official and shank-free name for what they were doing was ¡®application of experimental drugs meant to bolster the general health and resiliency of poorer city residents.¡¯ Read: blatant human testing. I have no idea how they were planning to collect data on the subject, or how long they had been feeding people weird shit, but when some poor soul leaked the info, the city erupted into violence.


    The wave of emotions rolled through the entire outskirts and caught everyone up in it. Me, my friends, my family. I never saw most of them again after that day.


    That wasn¡¯t the only reason I¡¯d never forget the day, though.


    The Protest was also the last day my eyes worked properly.


    I wasn¡¯t even being stupid, or reckless, or righteously angry. I was just going home and dodging the shadier alleys, like I would every other day, when I got swept into an angry mob of disgruntled idiots who decided to charge the entry checkpoint into the outer city districts.


    And, of course, the police guarding the checkpoint decided the best way to deal with the issue was to release highly toxic and harmful crowd control gas. I was right in the thick of things when the green cloud descended and choked every living thing in its grasp. Technically, the gas did the job. It chased off the disgusting poor schmucks who threatened the public order. It also ruined my health forever.


    Just like the food, the gas had to be some kind of new experimental stuff. After a couple months wheezing for breath, I realized that the gas had done something to my eyes. It started off with my eyesight getting all slightly blurry at a distance, and things slowly deteriorated from there. My perfect vision got to a point where I could only see okay at about five to six feet of distance.


    Normally, that¡¯d be fixable by a pair of glasses. The problem was that my eyesight kept getting worse. By the time I had gone through three pairs of glasses, I realized that I was headed for total blindness. I found tiny scratches in my irises whenever I pressed my face against a mirror. And about two months ago, the headaches started. I would become nauseous and unsteady at random times during the day.


    For just about any normal household in the city, this was a horrible tragedy, but one that could be fixed as simply as grabbing a pair of cybernetic eyes from a shop and replacing the organs. Sadly, that was just not something I could afford.


    Even the simplest standard set of eyes cost four hundred credits, and it took at least an extra hundred to hire a ripper to put them in you. By the virtue of the ever graceful Catill, long may he run his shop, I earned a nice round forty creds a week.


    I know what you¡¯re going to say. Oh, Adrian, you can have those eyes in ten weeks! Less drama, more work, hop to it. If only I didn¡¯t need to eat. Or if I didn¡¯t need a place to sleep. Or clothes to wear. Or¡­ well, you get the picture.


    No eyes for me.


    So, there I was, stumbling over the corpses and happily liberating two gym bags from their previous owners. As soon as I could, I forced my shaky legs to carry me away from the scene as fast as they could.


    I didn¡¯t get far, winded and disoriented as I was, but I did take as circuitous a route as I could just in case someone tried to follow. I didn¡¯t think anyone would go towards the sound of shots getting fired, but people had done dumber things than try to benefit from random gunfights.


    It seemed that my luck was finally turning, because about an hour later, I dove into a familiar alley untouched. After that, it was just a matter of gritting my teeth to shove a couple grimy dumpsters aside, revealing a hole hidden behind one of them. The hidey hole was one that a friend had shown me ages ago and was significantly smaller than I remembered. But it was still big enough for me to squirm through with the bags and pull the dumpster back in place.


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    Technically, I was now trapped in what was a partially collapsed apartment room with no other way out, but at least anyone who wanted to get at me would have to chat with my shooter while they struggled through the hole themselves.


    I fumbled in the pitch dark until I finally managed to close my fingers around a backpack, and then hurriedly extracted my scroll from the pack. The sheet of steel, plastic, and glass was old and had a crack running through it, but it still worked when I turned it on, and the flashlight mode lit up the grimy space with enough intensity to blind me briefly.


    It was then, finally, that I allowed myself the luxury of unraveling the first gym bag.


    I tore open the zipper and was greeted by carefully wrapped packages. They came with no official logo or recognizable tags, but that did little to hide the gleam of the cyberware within and the obvious quality of the pieces.


    It also did little to reassure me, because everything I saw as I rummaged through the damn bag were limbs, plates and mesh of subdermal, and several injectors of¡­ something.


    They were worth something to someone, but with what I had just done, it was going to be a lot of heat to try and get rid of these. I pushed the first bag aside and pulled the second one to me, and my stomach only dropped further when I opened it. Wetware. Extremely high-quality wetware, if my limited knowledge on the subject was to be trusted. Enough of it that I could completely overhaul the old and out-of-date set I had installed as a kid.


    In spite of that, I carelessly shoved it all aside in my frantic search. It was only when hope was starting to die in my chest and sweat was beading down my face that I found my savior at the very bottom of the bag.


    The pair of eyes came in a tube-like sealed container with what must have been near unbreakable glass for them to trust it with the precious cargo. Floating innocently in the preservation liquid, the eyes almost looked like they were a natural set.


    Where most of the manufacturers seemed obsessed with putting their logo somewhere on the sclera, these eyes were clear of any such adornment. If it weren¡¯t for the unnatural gunmetal gray of the iris, or the clearly mechanical bits poking from the back of the eyeballs, I¡¯d be convinced they¡¯d just extracted some poor guy¡¯s organs.


    Not that I would have been likely to care if they did. A replacement was a replacement.


    I sobbed, then, as loudly as I dared to. Tears streamed down my face and poured out all the frustration and fear I¡¯d been bottling up for so long. Whatever came of the events I¡¯d just caused, I knew I couldn¡¯t bring myself to feel regret anymore.


    I would shoot Jason in the face another thousand times if this was what the act got me.


    It took a while before I managed to calm down, and even then my limbs felt like lead. I was on the verge of passing out then and there, and I felt like letting it happen. It was only caution that stopped me from doing something so stupid.


    The Reapers as a gang were neither very influential nor very well regarded, but they weren¡¯t stupid. If someone robbed them, they¡¯d be all over the place looking for the thief. Even if I were innocent, I wouldn¡¯t want to get caught up in that mess.


    On top of that, I had to worry about Jason¡¯s family, plus whoever had sold the items to the Reapers in the first place. No, it was better for me to be far away from the area by the time they came to sniff around.


    To that effect, I started stripping. My clothes were stained with blood and grime, and I had them off in record time. My scroll also let me check my face and hair for any traces of blood, but I failed to find any and moved on.


    From out of my backpack I fetched a fresh set of clothes, my finest, in fact. I wished I had another set of shoes, but the beat up military-style boots on my feet were the only pair I owned. I made up for that by wiping them down the best I could and even spraying them with a cleaning solution I¡¯d prepped for just this occasion. It was time to go.


    I shoved the eyes into my backpack and covered them up as well as I could, then hesitated and grabbed a set of the wetware. A bit of digging turned up another set of chips, which I packed into my backpack as well.


    I had no clue whether the eyes demanded any custom pieces of tech to work, and there¡¯d be no harm in installing whatever I could from the collection anyway. If the eyes turned out to be faulty or infected, then some wetware and chips would be the least of my problems.


    Wiggling my way out of my hidey-hole was just as unpleasant as entry had been, but I still reset the dumpster with extreme care. I was, presumably, the only person still alive who knew about the spot. If all went well, then the wealth of cyberware I had left in there would be waiting for me to reclaim it one day.


    I also chose to leave Jason¡¯s shooter behind, no matter how much the decision pained me. Gaudy as the weapon was, it had proven its effectiveness, and I already felt worse without its weight on me.


    As I hurried away from the spot, I reflected on the second reason I¡¯d chosen it: it was extremely close to the entry checkpoint to the outer districts. When I reached it, the checkpoint was about as deserted as it always was.


    The wall that separated the districts whined away with its electrical charge, and the narrow walkway of a kill box was unnervingly bright. Scanners constantly ran over it from every angle possible, even on the vigilant lookout for slum dwellers audacious enough to try and cross the divide between dirt poor and relatively well-to-do.


    Because of course Zanos had gleefully implemented a citizenship tier system the second the wider republic suggested it.


    Slum dwellers were E class citizens, poor and generally distrusted but still allowed within the city proper. Above them, in a divide almost impossible to breach, were the D class citizens of the outer districts, followed by the C class middle district citizens, B class inner city stretch, and A class core city dwellers.


    Technically, I had C class access. The final gift of the man I was meant to call father before he dumped us. I genuinely had no clue how my mother had managed to convince him to register me as even that much, but I had never dared to cross into the middle district.


    I didn¡¯t want to suddenly remind him I was a thing and end up stripped of the one lifeline I had. Without access to the outer districts, I never would have been able to reach Catill and beg for work.


    His shop wasn¡¯t my destination of the day, however. That dubious honor went to ripper Glim and his little shop of horrors. I genuinely wished I could say my trip would be less risky than the shootout and subsequent slaughter I¡¯d just fled, but I wasn¡¯t sure that would be true.


    Once more, I could only trust that things would work out.

 Chapter 4: Eyes

    The slums were a world of uninspired street planning and uninterrupted strings of buildings that all looked the same. You could pick which concrete and brick structure you wanted to live in, but they were all tall, decrepit, and filled with walk-in cabinets trying very hard to pretend to be full living spaces.


    I couldn¡¯t rightly say the outer districts were much better than that.


    The streets were still locked into the same perfect grid patterns, the buildings were still uninspired, and I was willing to bet that most of the apartments were similarly small.


    Where things changed, however, was the maintenance.


    All of the buildings were meticulously maintained. The streetlights worked. You could actually walk without constantly stumbling over garbage. Oh, the alleys were still absolutely filthy, but no one really expected a well-mannered citizen to venture into those.


    The alleys were for chucking garbage into from a distance.


    Likewise, there was the occasional shop that managed to break up the monotony a little, and even a single park! Sure, it was no bigger than an apartment building, but you could still see a bit of greenery.


    Sort of.


    Most of the grass was stomped into the ground, and the singular tree was kind of anemic, but it was a nice place to sit down at the end of a long day. Today, however, I merely eyed the many benches with considerable longing as I cut my way through the park.


    After all, I would either greet the day tomorrow with a new pair of eyes, or I wouldn¡¯t greet it at all.


    For all the dark thoughts that were swirling through my head, the street where ripper Glim was set up wasn¡¯t particularly foreboding, filthy, or even suspicious. Point of fact, his door was right across from an ice-cream parlor.


    Sure, it was a front for one of the gangs and never actually sold enough stuff to justify staying in the business, but they still sold some of the best (and obviously not organic) ice cream I¡¯d ever had.


    I gripped the strap of my backpack and eyed the group of people loitering in front of the establishment with considerable distrust. They were all tall, muscular, and had clearly taken enough steroids and supplements to permanently shut off their brains. They also proudly featured the tattoos that marked them as members of the Goliaths.


    ¡°Oi, kid!¡± a voice snapped, and I slowly turned with one foot already on the first step to Glim¡¯s clinic.


    One of the gangers was moving towards me, arms crossed across his chest. I wet my dry lips as my heart pounded away. I knew it was a ridiculous thought, but a part of me whispered that they knew exactly what I had in my backpack.


    ¡°Y-Yes? What can I do for you?¡± I offered with much more confidence than I felt, and even tried to push my chest forward a little. Not in a challenging manner, just trying to come across as an eager youth ready to please the local hegemons.


    The man snorted, which was fair. I could charitably be described as scrawny.


    ¡°No clue what you heard about that place,¡± the stranger kicked off, inclining his head at the clinic, ¡°but you don¡¯t want to go down there. Trust me. The whole free treatment thing is bull. Chances are, you¡¯re not going to walk out at all.¡±


    That actually made me blink in surprise and look at the ganger again. He was fairly young. Fresh, some would say. Maybe a year or two older than me, though you wouldn¡¯t be able to tell with how little flesh I had on my bones.


    Regardless, I couldn¡¯t believe he was trying to warn me. That just wasn¡¯t something most gangers went out of their way to do.


    Having said that¡­


    ¡°Sorry, but I gotta. I¡­ don¡¯t really have the money to go elsewhere,¡± I admitted with a bitter grimace.


    Not that I would have opted to switch to another ripper even if I could afford them. I had no clue what ties a random ripper had or who paid them for info. There was every chance that news of exactly what I was installing would make their way to ¡®interested parties¡¯ the second it was in my head, and then I¡¯d lose my shiny new pair of eyes the next alley over.


    Or they¡¯d sell me out to the manufacturer I technically robbed, and I¡¯d be dead either way.


    The ganger grimaced right back, and actually opened his mouth to argue, but several hollers from his friends made him grumble and turn away from me.


    ¡°Whatever. I tried to warn you, kid. Whatever you do now is your business.¡± Posture stiff, he went to re-join the other Goliaths, and I watched him before I committed to my trip down the stairs.


    He wasn¡¯t wrong to warn me, of course. I knew all about Glim and his reputation. He was one of those few clinics allowed to continue operating in spite of the fact that they were as shady as a black cat, mostly because he kept his mouth shut, accepted all clientele, and even engaged in a bit of community service from time to time.


    The whole ¡®free checkups and treatment¡¯ thing was real. The catch was, you were rolling the dice every time you walked into his clinic. Get lucky, and as per the promotion, you walked away with a nice free checkup and some meds to make you feel better.


    Get unlucky, and people never saw you again.


    They might, however, catch sight of a familiar eyeball, piece of cyberware, or skin transplant package if they happened to frequent the right black market after one of Glim¡¯s ¡®acquisition sprees.¡¯


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    The thing was, I had something I was banking on.


    When we were still living in the outer district and I still had a mother, I vividly remembered her taking me to his clinic. The man had frozen up at the sight of her, his extra robotic limbs spasming like they¡¯d been shocked, and I was left to sit on his creepy surgery table while Mother and he talked in hushed whispers.


    Whatever was said that day, it worked. My mother told me that I should visit Glim whenever I needed a ripper and she wasn¡¯t around for some reason. He still charged me for everything, but he did good work, his meds weren¡¯t toxic bullshit, and he hadn¡¯t sliced me up for spare parts. Yet.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if whatever deal my mother had struck with him was still on or if I just wasn¡¯t a decent harvesting target, but the scav ripperdoc was still my best bet. Maybe it was kind of sad, but I even felt a little nostalgic whenever I saw him. He, along with my old Cadmus shooter, were the only things left of my mother.


    I knocked on the sturdy metal door as soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and it took less than a minute for several cameras in the various corners to focus on me before Glim ripped the door open, giving me the first glimpse of the ripper in a while.


    As always, he was a vision straight out of a kid¡¯s nightmares. Four mechanical limbs bobbed and weaved around him, holding surgery tools and a particularly large syringe. His breathing was an ominous hiss through that breath mask he always wore, and his eyes glowed with a sickly green light. Seeing as they barely peaked through a mass of shaggy brown hair, the creep factor was only enhanced.


    ¡°You. Thought you were dead.¡± That was his lovely greeting as Glim looked beyond me, then stepped aside barely enough to let me awkwardly squeeze by. As soon as I was past, he slammed the door close and it initiated a lengthy locking procedure that sent echoing clatters through the clinic of metal bars slamming into place.


    ¡°It¡¯s nice to see you too, Glim. Not dead yet. I do, however, need an eye replacement. I also got a bunch of better wetware and chips, so it would be nice if we could handle installing them as well.¡± I knew he wasn¡¯t a chatty individual, so I just dove straight in.


    ¡°Show me.¡±


    I did that. The dumbest thing in the world you could possibly do was lie to your ripperdoc. Didn¡¯t matter if it was the most legit of corpo rippers or a back alley butcher, that path only led to pain and a grisly death.


    ¡°Hmm.¡± Glim had one of his mechanical arms poke through the loot. ¡°Nonstandard. No notable markings. No logo. High quality, however. Where did you get this? No, wait, I don¡¯t care. Do you have my fee?¡±


    Good old Glim. I stared him in the eyes as I handed over a hundred credits on a chip, then had to fight down a shudder as zeroes and ones started flashing over his sclera, leaving only the green of his irises visible.


    Damn Cypher made extremely good military-grade cybernetics, but each and every one of their products was creepy to the max.


    ¡°Hm. Good. Lie down on the table,¡± Glim ordered with no preamble, in spite of the fact that I¡¯d only handed him a hundred creds, the first of several separate installations.


    He always made me pay, but I learned a long time ago he was surprisingly flexible about how much I paid him. It was definitely one of the reasons I kept showing up when I had to.


    Knowing what would be happening to me shortly, I stripped everything that went on the upper half of my body. Glim might do good work, but he wasn¡¯t shy about cutting apart whatever got in his way, and my best clothes would be liberally coated in blood if I didn¡¯t take them off.


    Funnily enough, he always did make sure to wipe down his patient¡¯s bodies after surgery. It was just the clothing he didn¡¯t care about.


    ¡°Would you like me to put you under for this operation, or will you stay conscious throughout?¡± Glim asked.


    I hesitated. ¡°What¡¯s the price difference? I¡¯m guessing there are painkillers involved for the second option?¡±


    ¡°Correct. The anesthesia that can dull the pain but keep you conscious is more expensive. You¡¯d need to pay me another hundred credits. General anesthesia that would put you under is considered part of the standard payment.¡±


    I¡¯d never done any wetware installations before, so this was news for me. Still, it wasn¡¯t exactly a difficult choice. ¡°Put me under.¡± Paying more for the grand privilege of watching him take me apart? Hard pass. If he wanted to kill me, he could do it whether I was under or not. Literally watching someone rip my eyes out of my skull wasn¡¯t on my bucket list.


    ¡°Very well.¡±


    Before I could say or do anything else, his syringe-wielding cyber limb shot forward and sank into my neck. Surprisingly enough, it was entirely painless. I was out like a light before I could even question that.


    ¡ª


    I groaned, somehow feeling both numb and like I¡¯d just been run over by a truck. My eyes were aching and kind of scratchy. This wasn¡¯t really a difference from before, even if it was somewhat exaggerated at the minute.


    When I went to raise my hand to brush sleep out of my eyes, the limb refused to cooperate. It felt like I was dragging it through water, which finally prompted me to blink my eyes open.


    For a second, I couldn¡¯t process what I was seeing. Then I froze because I could see everything around me in startling clarity. My natural eyes had been failing me for years, but even before then, what I defined as ¡®perfect¡¯ vision fell far short of what I was experiencing now.


    Every mote of dust that crossed through the light, every shadow, every scuff, I could see them perfectly. Having lived in a fuzzy sphere of colors melting into each other for so long, this was beyond exciting. It was like being born again.


    ¡°You¡¯re awake. Finally. It¡¯s a good thing you brought the wetware and those chips with you. The eyes are nonstandard. They would have fried your interface chip. I don¡¯t think they¡¯ll work with any other setup, either. The wetware might be able to support normal brands. Maybe. Should have charged you extra. Had to change everything.¡±


    I¡¯d never heard Glim talk so much all at once before, and I had to admit that what he was saying was a bit concerning. In spite of that, I did bring the wetware with me, so¡­ crisis averted? Besides, I honestly could not bring myself to care at the minute.


    I could see. I COULD SEE!


    Tears sprang to my eyes, and even though the water felt weird against the cybernetic replacements I¡¯d just had installed, I didn¡¯t care. The days of my vision failing on me were over.


    The ripper continued to speak. ¡°The eyes will feel off for a day or two. They¡¯re an advance model, though, so they should start to feel natural quickly. Won¡¯t notice the difference after the adaptation period. They don¡¯t have anything fancy, but they¡¯re high-quality optics. I think. Couldn¡¯t find any fancy options, at least. They can record, take calls, do the HUD display, etc. No malware. Maybe. The coding¡¯s weird.¡±


    ¡°They can really do all that?¡± I couldn¡¯t keep the excitement out of my voice. My scroll was great, but decent eyes were supposed to do everything it could and more.


    ¡°Yes. That¡¯s why the chips were needed. Had to pull your entire old setup, as I said. Including the wetware. All upgraded now.¡± Glim motioned towards the baggies I¡¯d brought him the stuff in, now full of the slightly bloody ports and chips I¡¯d carted around in my head for years.


    It felt odd to see those old parts there, blood stained and discarded, but Glim clearly hadn¡¯t found them worth better treatment. Which¡­ fair. They were as standard fare as standard got, just barely better than the stuff you¡¯d throw into the dumpster.


    And that no longer mattered, because I was beyond them now.


    A smile slowly stretched across my lips. With these eyes, I could hope for more, work towards more, maybe even dare to dream things would get better.


    I was just about to let the enthusiasm carry me away when a flash of pain shot through my head, and I hissed in a harsh breath. At the same time, my eyesight briefly glitched. I wasn¡¯t sure, but for just a second, I thought I caught sight of a shadow, and a toothy grin.

 Chapter 5: A Minor Glitch

    I jerked away from the shadowy figure and almost knocked straight into my unamused ripper when I slipped off the operating chair.


    ¡°What? Did you see that?¡± I yelled. I tried to calm my racing heart, but in spite of how brief the glimpse of that figure was, its gleaming teeth were seared into my memory. They were crooked and jagged, yet slotted perfectly together into a macabre grin.


    ¡°See what? There¡¯s nothing there. I¡¯d like you to vacate my shop before hallucinating. I don¡¯t need another idiot doing damage to my equipment. You did not ingest any¡­ substances, before coming here? Some drugs react badly with anesthesia.¡±


    I swung around to look at Glim like he¡¯d installed an extra head instead of all his extra limbs. ¡°Of course not!¡±


    My mother quite literally beat the sense into me when I hinted that I might be following the example of my peers and letting drugs get a death grip on my psyche. She also had a lot of issues with swearing too, which was why I tended to try and avoid cursing aloud. She¡¯d been gone for a while, but the habit of wincing whenever a curse word left my lips still had not left me.


    ¡°Hm,¡± Glim snorted. I didn¡¯t like how judgmental and disbelieving that sound was. Out of the two of us, only one liked to harvest organs illegally and sell them on the black market, and it wasn¡¯t me! ¡°You¡¯re still getting used to the eyes, I suppose. Some minor glitches are not unexpected.¡±


    ¡°Define ¡®minor¡¯ glitches,¡± I demanded, suddenly feeling a lot less happy about my new eyes.


    The eyesight was amazing and freeing, but only if it didn¡¯t come at the cost of my sanity.


    ¡°I can¡¯t say. Unfamiliar with the hardware, and the software it''s running. Replaced all your wetware, too. It¡¯ll take time to settle. You¡¯re barely off the chopping block.¡±


    I shuddered at his casual use of an alternative title for his operating table and found myself edging a bit closer to the exit. Pointless, of course, since he needed to unlock it for me, but I still wanted some distance between us.


    ¡°Settle in. Right. Of course, cyberware needs time. I¡¯ll keep an eye out for that, then. Would you mind if I just¡­ go, now?¡± I rambled a little as my new eyes flitted all over the place, identifying where I¡¯d left my stuff.


    The second I spotted my backpack and clothes, I rushed to throw them all back on, then intended to march right up to the door to wait there until he let me out. Before I could, one of Glim¡¯s human hands landed on my shoulder and gripped it with surprising strength.


    ¡°Stop,¡± Glim commanded. I did. I just about froze in place, actually. When I creaked my neck around to give him a look, the ripper simply sighed and waved a baggy full of bloodied wetware at me. ¡°Do you want to keep these? Also, there¡¯s this.¡±


    He let go of me briefly to approach a shelf and extracted the same container that had held my new and improved eyes. He practically shoved it in my face. Floating around the solution like they were being pickled was a pair of human eyes, optic nerves stretching behind them like some weird bits of worms.


    I valiantly resisted the urge to puke.


    ¡°Ah, um, yeah, no¡­ Keep them? Or throw them out, I guess. I doubt they¡¯re very useful.¡±


    The ripper nodded and shrugged, then finally strolled over to the door so he could input several strings of passwords he blocked me from spying on. When the door swung open and he motioned for me to get out, the relief was immense.


    ¡°Thanks for the operation,¡± I mumbled, and then I was at the foot of the stairs in the chill air of the evening, neck craned as far back as it would go.


    Stars twinkled far above me in direct defiance of light pollution, so numerous and so luminous not even the city¡¯s best efforts could drown them out. There weren¡¯t a lot of benefits to living in this stretch of the galaxy, but the night sky was definitely one of them.


    For the longest time, I couldn¡¯t get a single glimpse of this stunning sight. My eyesight had failed me to the point where there was just a smear of stuff for me overhead, with pinpricks of light only somewhat visible during particularly bright nights.


    I was only half aware of the tears streaming down my face. I almost took a nosedive several times trying to climb the stairs, but I refused to divert my attention until I was on street level. At that point, basic self-preservation took over, and I looked around anxiously.


    The street wasn¡¯t deserted, and there were still gangers at the ice cream parlor, but no one was paying attention to the disheveled kid stumbling his way out of the ripper office, which was good. The gangs were not as violent or as overt with their behavior in the city proper as they were in the slums, but better safe than sorry.


    Not that I was in any condition to do my due diligence.


    My eyes flitted every which way. I practically flinched at every sign of motion I spotted at a distance, not because there was anything startling in it, but because I wasn¡¯t used to seeing so much. Everything was sharp, and detailed, and demanded that I look at it simply because I couldn¡¯t before.


    My mind was spinning already. I felt overwhelmed. Sensory overload was definitely a thing, and it was kicking my ass twelve ways to Sunday. It didn¡¯t help that my eyes were definitely above the human baseline, either.


    It felt like I¡¯d lived my whole life, before and after the accident that damaged my eyes, viewing the world at the lowest possible resolution. Now, I suddenly had a pair of premium eyes in my skull that ran at the highest resolution possible. The sheer amount of detail I could pick out from a dozen meters would have blown me away even if I hadn¡¯t started with failing eyesight.


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


    In spite of that, I wouldn¡¯t trade my new eyes for the world. The thrill of just seeing things normally had put a big smile on my face, and my mood was so upbeat that I felt like nothing could bring it down. This was all the more true when I remembered what Glim had told me about the eyes¡¯ functionality.


    As stupid and reckless as it was, I pulled my scroll out of my backpack and quickly started looking up details on how to use advanced cyber eyes. As it turned out, on default settings, they were mostly operated through a series of blinks and eyes motions.


    I had no clue what that meant for my model, since the eyes didn¡¯t exactly come with a user manual, but I lucked out on the third set of instructions most manufacturers defaulted to. I squeezed my eyes shut and swiped them to the left, then up, down, and right. When I opened them, a collection of icons offered me various settings options for the eyes.


    The first thing I did was sync the eyes to myself properly, which allowed them to access my wetware even deeper and allowed me to ¡®click¡¯ on the icons with intent only instead of executing more weird eye motions. Syncing wasn¡¯t a standard feature, so I was once again thrilled with the eyes I¡¯d pilfered.


    From there, I customized my HUD and added several icons to the corner of my eyesight by default. They were minimized there and rather unobtrusive, but I could focus on them and bring them into focus if necessary. My chosen speed access icons were the default calls app, a rather basic browser I was determined to replace with one of my favorites later, a navigation app, and the settings access icon.


    I grinned vindictively when I finally granted my eyes access to my internet subscription using my old scroll, then finally stashed the ancient piece of tech away.


    I wouldn¡¯t need it ever again.


    Everything the scroll could do, my new eyes could do better, and they came with the added benefit of being built straight into my skull. No chance of losing them whatsoever! The thought of how exactly the eyes let me perceive sound from calls and whatever shows I might decide to watch freaked me out a little, true, but I got over that quickly.


    And there were other bonuses. For one, the navigation app was a marvel. When I set the route back home, a golden thread unfurled in my vision, stretching out of my chest and into the distance.


    I was mesmerized by the way it would shift whenever I moved, unerringly guiding me down the shortest path to my destination. With a grin on my face, I messed around with changing it to several different modes, including tacky glowing arrows, a ¡®wave¡¯ spreading out from and flowing down the right path, starry footprints that lit up the ground, and more. I ended up settling on the initial golden thread mode in the end, but the simple joy of experimenting was a treat.


    It was only when I found myself on the map that I realized I¡¯d been extraordinarily stupid. Instead of heading back home using one of the longer and more complex routes, I was now in sight distance of the checkpoint close to my home.


    I almost never used that checkpoint.


    It would have been more convenient, sure, but letting people know that I had access to the outer district when so few people other than high-up gangers had the same privilege was asking for trouble. Just the accusation of having a decent job in the outer district could get me mugged or knifed in an alley on principle.


    That¡¯s why I minimized my contact with everyone and always took the long way back home. I didn¡¯t care that people loved to theorize about why I could almost never be spotted out and about in the slums, or that Jason eagerly spread rumors that I spent most of my time on my back in some grimy hotel working as a joytoy.


    My luck had held out thus far, especially since I tried to time my daily commute for when I knew most people would be off the streets and in some grimy bar or in bed.


    It was too late to change paths, but I could make it harder to spot me. Grabbing my backpack, I made it into a kind of half mask that covered the lower half of my face and kept an eye out for anyone who looked like a spotter.


    It helped that there was so much less to see in the slums, or at least fewer things one might want to see. Straight junk dominated the scenery. More importantly, there seemed to be fewer people out and about. Was that because of Jason¡¯s stunt against the Reapers? Or what I had done to Jason and his bodyguard afterwards? Either way, it worked to my favor that there were fewer eyes to lock on me.


    Unfortunately, my need to pay attention soon started to work against me. Every shadow seemed a little too long, and every sound sent my raw nerves reeling. Even the weight of my backpack grew, dragging me down and slowing my steps.


    I didn¡¯t have all the expensive cybernetics in it, but I was becoming more and more painfully aware of the fact that I never even bothered to check how much the credit chips I¡¯d stolen off the bodies were worth.


    Somehow, my frazzled mind conjured up a conviction that anyone I came across would be able to smell the wealth on me, and that I¡¯d end up dead in some alley with my meager possessions stolen and my new eyes gouged out.


    A shadow flickered at the edge of my vision, and what sounded like a scrape of a foot shifted some of the garbage. My fingers tightened on my backpack. My heart hammered so loudly and with such power that I felt like I was going to puke.


    I tilted my head just a little to the side, not enough to take a proper look, but enough to see if someone was right on my tail. There was nothing, but before I could even feel relieved, another flicker in my peripheral vision only made my condition worse.


    Is there really someone? Or am I just seeing things? The meager working streetlights ahead of me flickered in an out, and my mind conjured faces laughing at me from the shadows.


    Another sound came, a bit further away this time, of shifting garbage.


    It¡¯s nothing. This is nothing. I¡¯m not being followed, and I¡¯m not going insane. If I repeated the words enough times, I might actually start to believe them.


    It was in this condition that I finally reached one of the tall, decrepit apartment buildings, and slipped inside with some measure of relief. I felt better with every moment that I drew closer to my own dreary cubicle that passed for a living space.


    Unfortunately, my body started to betray me right around then. My steps were slowing, lungs heaving, and both my eyes and the back of my head had started aching with a dull throb. I wasn¡¯t the strongest or the most athletic person ever, but years of pathetic meals and relatively tame work had done their damage.


    With stress added on top? I was barely putting one foot in front of the other by the time I climbed up six floors, and I was still two more floors away from my goal.


    I¡¯m going to complain. I don¡¯t care if it gets me shanked, but someone needs to do something about that deathtrap of an elevator because I don¡¯t want to walk every damn ¡ª


    My thoughts on the elevator, the last loss in a long string of decaying amenities, were roughly cut off when someone yanked on my shirt.


    I was thankfully only a few steps up from the landing, so when I collapsed onto my back with a whimper, I only lost most of my breath. My eyes, of course, were still performing their job perfectly. That meant I got to stare right into the maliciously grinning face of some grubby man I didn¡¯t recognize as he brought a knife up, ready to plunge it into me.

 Chapter 6: A Favor

    Tired or not, terrified or not, there are some instincts that make us all act the same. As it turned out, self-preservation qualified. Before I even consciously thought about it, I was driving my fist into my attacker¡¯s knee.


    His eyes widened, and he let out a shout as his stance crumbled. He almost collapsed on top of me, but at that point, I was already rolling away.


    I didn¡¯t quite pull off the maneuver. Just as I was about to get up, a foot kissed my midsection with a bit more force than was appropriate for a first date. I lost the air in my lungs. But even as I heaved for breath, I slipped my backpack off.


    I did that not a second too soon, giving me just enough time to shove the item between me and a knife. The weapon wasn¡¯t that great. Its blade failed to do much damage to my backpack, but my attacker wasn¡¯t deterred, raining down his second and third blow rapidly. Both were close enough to nick the skin on my fingers.


    With what breath I¡¯d finally managed to gather, I roared at the top of my lungs, then pressed forward with all my meager weight. If I¡¯d been fighting an adult on a steady diet and in good physical condition, my noodle frame wouldn¡¯t have had a snowflake¡¯s chance in hell of budging them.


    Fortunately for me, the asshole trying to kill me was just as underfed as I was, and his body was probably rotting away from a heady cocktail of drugs. When I applied all of my strength with desperation added on top, it was just enough to send him falling on his ass.


    I didn¡¯t hesitate or try to get a bit of payback in. I ran right past him and to the stairs, taking two at a time as my muscles burned with newfound strength.


    The lowlife cursed and screamed something after me, but I wasn¡¯t exactly paying attention. What I did hear was the thumping of his feet when he decided he wasn¡¯t going to leave me alone.


    My momentum carried me to the next landing and, with only slightly unsteady steps, up the final flight of stairs that heralded my arrival home. Already I was fumbling for my key inside my pants pocket, the search hindering the speed of my movement.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna fucking catch you, you fancy rat! I saw where you were! Coming here where honest people try to make a living with your fucking¡ª¡±


    I cringed, and my feet all but glued themselves to the spot.


    This wasn¡¯t a random mugging. He knew. He¡¯d seen me. I wasn¡¯t imagining someone following me, I was just too stupid to understand the signs.


    I spun on my heel and rushed forward with my backpack once again playing the part of a shield. The druggie clearly wasn¡¯t expecting me to put up a fight, because he ate a face full of fabric just as he was rounding the top of the stairs.


    For a second, his body held, and then he was toppling over and banging down the steps in a flurry of curses and screams.


    I pursued, fresh desperation fueling me. Even if I escaped from the junkie and locked myself in my room, I¡¯d only be delaying the inevitable. Now that he¡¯d got it into his head that I had money, the druggie wasn¡¯t just going to shrug and move onto some other, more convenient victim.


    He might even call in some friends to try and force the door.


    It¡¯s me or him. I don¡¯t want to die now. I can finally see again. I can¡¯t die. I can¡¯t die. I can¡¯t die!


    He was disoriented and hurt, but I wasn¡¯t in the best headspace, either. So, the second I drew close enough to reach a piece of him, I stomped. My foot came down on his ankle with all the rage I could muster, and I was rewarded by a surprisingly loud crack.


    The druggie screamed again, this time at the top of his lungs and in a voice so high-pitched it hurt my ears.


    I stomped again, and the sound choked off.


    I probably should have picked a slightly more crucial bit of body to stomp, because this time, his hateful eyes focused on me. He lunged with shocking speed, and then I had a line of agony shooting through my thigh.


    It was me that screamed this time, and when he went for another slash, I slammed my backpack into the knife with everything I had. I lost my grip a second later and the fabric sack went over the railing, but his knife must have gotten stuck in the fabric, because it went along for the ride.


    For just a brief moment, a jolt of relief and hope swept through me. No knife meant no more lines of burning agony carved into my skin. It meant a fighting chance! Or it did, for all of the two seconds it took for the asshole to tackle me.


    My head hit the stairs with a loud thud. I could swear I saw the stars stretching above us through the concrete, yet their beauty fled me when the asshole clocked me in the jaw.


    There was another crack, and my stunned ass stared as the man howled in pain and cradled his hand for a second, several fingers hanging limp. A part of me was present enough to analyze what had happened.


    His fingers broke. His ankle snapped too easy as well. Brittle bones. Probably off his rocker on Booster.


    Unfortunately, the same drug fueled him enough to snap his other fist into my nose. Then he slapped me with his broken hand, and soon I was covering my head and trying to curl into a ball as hit after hit rained down on me.


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    Even with adrenaline in my veins, I had no ability to strike back. My limbs felt like lead and strength had fled my frame. My head was spinning. I needed to throw up so badly that I couldn¡¯t even think straight. There would be no smart strategies or final desperate plays that would get me out of trouble this time.


    I should have gone for my shooter. He fell down the stairs. I had all the time in the world. Why didn¡¯t I go for my shooter?


    My dazed mind¡¯s only contribution was throwing more and more critique at my past self¡¯s actions, but that didn¡¯t change reality. And it definitely didn¡¯t change the fact that I was about to die.


    There was another crack, like a baseball bat hitting bone, and the sounds of violence briefly paused. They resumed a moment later, even more vigorously than before.


    It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize I was no longer the target of said violence, and that there was a voice chattering at me.


    ¡°Kid? Kid? Come on, talk to me. Just look at me, at least. Need to know how bad you¡¯ve got it.¡±


    I managed to force my eyes open. While I expected my vision to be bleary and unsteady from the beating I¡¯d just taken, it was crystal clear instead. That was almost worse, since it forced my brain to process things at speeds it just wasn¡¯t ready for.


    I threw up right then and there, and would have started to choke on my own spit if the guy hovering over me didn¡¯t react quickly enough to pull me onto my side.


    ¡°Easy does it. Easy. Damn, harder to tell if you¡¯ve got a concussion with those eyes of yours¡­ Just breathe, kid.¡±


    I tried really hard to do what he was telling me, but it still took me several long moments of sputtering and awkwardly brushing sick off my lips before I got anywhere near a normal breathing rhythm.


    When he noticed I was mostly back to cognizant, my savior pulled me up to a sitting position, fingers already poking at bruises that were starting to form. One of my saviors, I corrected myself, because I realized that the sounds of violence were coming from a scowling red-headed woman who was wholeheartedly kicking the life out of my attacker.


    ¡°Attack kids, why dontcha? In my fucking building you asshole? IN MY BUILDING?¡± Her violence was glorious. The druggie was pretty much dead at that point. I really shouldn¡¯t have been blushing at the sight of her, but there we were.


    ¡°Jeez, kid, you¡¯re really out of it,¡± the third member of their little party drawled, and my eyes fell on a man casually leaning against the wall and watching me with a smirk. ¡°Don¡¯t let Mela see you looking at her like that. It¡¯s fifty-fifty on what she¡¯d do about it, and, eh, not sure you¡¯d enjoy even the ¡®good¡¯ ending of that scenario.¡±


    ¡°Fuck you talking about Lurch?¡± Mela, I presumed, glowered at her friend as she finally stepped away from the twitching druggie. The man was a corpse at that point, and that made me giggle for some fucked up reason.


    ¡°Can you two shut up? I think he might have a concussion,¡± the man helping me snapped, and I sent him the brightest smile I could.


    He was by far the oldest of the group, somewhere in his late thirties to the early twenties of the other two. His hair was speckled with gray that really stood out against the dark browns. He was looking at me with far too much concern for a complete stranger.


    ¡°I¡¯m fine!¡± I declared, still feeling woozy and off and like a part of my brain was just not working right.


    ¡°Sure you are. Whatcha got you smiling so much?¡± Mela demanded. Strolling forward, she elbowed the older guy out of her way and grabbed my chin to tilt my head up. ¡°Huh. Neat eyes.¡±


    ¡°Thanks? They¡¯re new!¡± I said brightly, then immediately felt my stomach curdle and a jolt of awareness slam back into me. What was I saying? What was I doing? Who even were they?


    My eyes swept over them one more time, and now that I was back into a more clear frame of mind, I picked up a rather crucial detail. All of them were wearing identical black biker jackets with the same mascot.


    A cute, purple kitten.


    The curdling dread simultaneously got worse and better. The Kittens weren¡¯t like the Reapers, or even the Goliaths. They were an actually influential gang, and they held sway over a good third of the slums and were always vying for more.


    The name was a misnomer, and only came about because one of their rivals tried to insult them. As the legends went, once they¡¯d beaten the offender half to death and tore out his entrails and hung him from them, the gang leader was so amused that they took on the moniker willingly.


    The story was probably exaggerated, but everyone agreed the previous name of Red Lions fit them better, considering how often they ended up covered in blood.


    The funny thing was, most civilians preferred them to just about any other gang. They wouldn¡¯t bother people for no reason. They might occasionally step in to prevent a crime if they were personally against what was happening. They also didn¡¯t care overmuch if you ¡®casually¡¯ joined one of the smaller gangs due to pressure or for protection.


    So long as you didn¡¯t cross them or try to fuck with their authority, the Kittens didn¡¯t much care about you.


    Mela scoffed, then gave me a wide grin that showed off far too many teeth. Credit where it was due, they were in surprisingly good condition. So, probably not a druggie then. ¡°Whatcha freeze up for, kid? Like what you see?¡±


    ¡°Um¡­¡±


    ¡°Heh. Course you do. Too bad you¡¯re a little too young for me. Fourteen? Thirteen?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sixteen!¡± I squawked out of outrage, then blushed scarlet when she shot me a disbelieving look.


    ¡°Geesh, ya need to eat a bit more then. You sure don¡¯t look it. Still too young, though! We got some standards round here. Well, some of us do.¡± She shot a venomous look to the guy leaning against the wall, but he just rolled his eyes.


    It was then that I found my tongue again, and remembered something I likely shouldn¡¯t delay.


    ¡°Thank you. Really. Thank you for saving my life,¡± I rushed to say, earning myself another crooked grin.


    That was good. Smiles were good. Reminding them they saved me was good. They were less likely to take my life, if just to avoid wasting their own effort.


    ¡°We sure did save your ass, huh? You owe the Kittens a favor now. Do remember that,¡± Mela all but purred, then drew away from me and stretched like the animal the gang was named after. ¡°Well, let¡¯s clean out. Might want to drag that asshole out as well. Don¡¯t wanna stink this place up more.¡±


    ¡°Like it could get any worse. No idea why you insist on living away from the HQ. The boss offered to let you stay,¡± the cool wall-lean guy complained, but he grabbed one of the druggie¡¯s legs and started dragging him down the stairs.


    I don¡¯t know what prompted me to do what I did next, but I shouted after them, and then rushed to justify it. ¡°Wait! What are your names? I need to know who saved me, right?¡±


    I got several odd looks, but eventually the wall guy spoke up.


    ¡°Name¡¯s Lurch. That¡¯s Mela. The old guy¡¯s Mighty Mike. We¡¯ll call in that favor eventually kid, so try not to croak,¡± he shot in parting, then continued dragging off the corpse.


    ¡°Oh get off it, the favor¡¯s mine, I saved his ass!¡± Mela groused.


    She started to follow him, then bent down for a second. When she rose into view again, she was holding my backpack. To my shock, she actually threw it at me and I fumbled the catch, letting it slam into my face.


    ¡°Heh. Get better at that! Also, hey, look, you got a knife out of this!¡± she cheerfully declared, then dropped a grimy knife onto the steps next to me.


    I just stared at the disgusting, crusty weapon in disbelief as they walked off.

 Chapter 7: A Job To Do

    I didn¡¯t keep the knife. Shocking, I know, but just looking at it made me vaguely ill. I honestly wasn¡¯t sure what all the layers of brown and black on its blade were. I sincerely prayed it was blood, because the alternatives could have been so much worse.


    I had more important things to worry about in the short term. There was just about enough time to examine my backpack and feel relieved that the damage to it wasn¡¯t all that bad before I started to feel weak and dizzy.


    Whatever had carried me through the altercation and the short encounter with the Kittens was fading, and it was fading fast.


    I also found out, to my unbridled joy, that attempting to stand on my cut up leg sent shivers of pain and numbness racing through it. I just about collapsed on the spot, but the concrete railing of the stairwell saved me from a painful tumble.


    If my home wasn¡¯t just a few meters away, I don¡¯t think I would have made it. I almost felt thankful that I didn¡¯t live in one of the megabuildings. I wouldn¡¯t have survived the trip through their ecosystem of endless fucking hallways and what felt like miniature markets in some of the larger corridors.


    I¡¯d spent part of my childhood in one of those, and while they were not as smelly as you might expect, the memories still left me feeling claustrophobic and on edge. Part of that came from how I was used to the sparser streets and polite distances kept in the slums. Still, even as a child, I disliked so much bustle.


    The memories were a welcome reprieve from reality, though, which was probably another reason I made it to my door. I waved my hand, the chip implant in my wrist registered, and my path to relative safety was secured.


    When I finally stumbled into my private space, the relief I experienced as shoddy lights blinked awake and the heavy metal door closed with a hiss behind me was immense.


    In all honesty, my place was kind of a dump. Not a huge shock considering it lived up to the exacting standards of the slum lifestyle, but it merited a mention nonetheless. Especially since the apartment consisted of a single room and a small alcove that served as a bathroom, without a door of its own.


    Directly to my left was a wardrobe that held the entirety of my clothes and had a small cubby meant to be filled with shoes. To my right was a double bed that took up entirely too much space, but was also the most luxurious item I owned. A holdover from when my mother was still around.


    On the far left of the room was a small desk, and on the right the aforementioned alcove with a shower, a toilet, a bathroom sink, and a mirror that stayed grimy no matter how often or how hard I scrubbed it down. At that point, I¡¯d just accepted that the plaque was a permanent fixture and moved on. I didn¡¯t really want or need to see my face that often anyway.


    The only hint of separation or privacy was the shower curtain you could pull out of the right-hand side of the bathroom alcove, and which followed a set of rails set into the floor to lock into the opposite side. It made the shower cramped and uncomfortable, but it was better than letting water freely spray all over the place. The drain was actually half decent, so mold didn¡¯t really spread past the corner.


    I headed straight for that shower, shedding clothes as I limped. I fumbled a little with the curtain, but when the first drops of hot water hit my skin, it was pure bliss. That was one of the reasons my mother eventually opted for the apartment: hot water. By some miracle, the building¡¯s boiler room still worked.


    I even broke out my good shampoo and soap for the occasion! They were from a slightly nicer brand and smelled like some indeterminable kind of flowers rather than pure, nauseating chemicals. I figured I got to treat myself a little with all that I had managed to survive.


    The cut on my thigh wasn¡¯t as bad as I initially feared. It was still an angry red line that went all the way from near my knee up to uncomfortably close to my crotch, but it was relatively shallow. It didn¡¯t even look all that inflamed, which I earnestly hoped meant I wouldn¡¯t catch some deathly infection.


    I would let Glim cut my leg off if I had to, but it was kind of sad that amputation was the cheaper option when compared to trying to beat an infection nowadays. The cheap infection medicine was risky and at least mildly addictive, and the good medicine cost¡­ well, an arm and a leg.


    I kept a small first aid kit next to the foot of my bed and close to the shower. So once I was all clean and toweled off, I grabbed it and applied generous amounts of rubbing alcohol to the wound before calling it a day.


    My face ached, my body ached, my mind ached. I barely forced myself to figure out how to set an alarm on my new eyes before I passed out.


    ¡ª


    I woke up to an alarm going off inside my skull. It felt a bit like my brain was vibrating while a cheerful tune played in the background, which¡­ let¡¯s just say it did a good job. I got up quickly just so the sensation would stop.


    It was a good thing that whatever sensors the eyes used cut off the alarm, because I honestly had no clue if I could figure out how to turn it off on my own.


    That couldn¡¯t entirely be blamed on morning blues. I felt like a particularly juicy piece of steak that had been pounded to oblivion so sauces and spices could be properly worked into it. My left eye ached something fierce whenever I blinked or my eyelid so much as twitched. Pain was blooming from all over my front. The cut on my thigh had started to tingle and itch. I was fairly sure one of my arms had a cracked bone or something, because moving it was agony.


    For several long moments, I just lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. I had to say, it didn¡¯t look all that appealing. For some fucked up reason, spiders, flies, and small insects just up and followed humanity wherever we went in the whole wide cosmos, so I had several thick cobwebs hanging above my head.


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    I needed to get rid of them at some point. I¡¯d never noticed them before because I literally couldn¡¯t see that well, but now that I did, I felt vaguely ill at the thought of the mess detaching and falling on top of me while I slept. I was willing to tolerate spiders for the good service they provided by exterminating all other insects, but having them hang above my head was a step too far, even for me.


    It¡¯s a good thing I set that alarm for an hour earlier than I normally do.


    An extra hour of sleep would have been a treat, but I needed to get myself moving, and I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d be able to do that as quickly as usual.


    This suspicion was proven correct when I stumbled off my bed. The pain I was in only got worse, and I almost threw up due to nausea that swept through me. A part of me rankled at my recklessness to just collapse into sleep when I knew I could have a concussion, but the rest of me was aware of the fact that I¡¯d had little choice in the matter. There was absolutely no way I could have stayed awake after a robbery, surgery, and then a near lethal mugging.


    Damn it, the mugging. I felt so ill with rage when I remembered I¡¯d almost been killed by some drugged up asshole with a knife, after everything else I¡¯d been through that day.


    It would have been a bitterly ironic way to go.


    I tried to distract myself by quickly locating some underwear and a shirt before snatching up my backpack and spilling its contents over my bed. The credit chips landed on the sheets with disappointingly little fanfare. I almost expected a little jingle to sound from thin air to celebrate my acquisition of meager wealth.


    Well, I assumed it was meager. Mules were on the lowest rungs of the gang power ladder, so they didn¡¯t typically have much money to their names. Granted, I didn¡¯t think that the murder machine was a typical mule, and there was also the fact that I¡¯d robbed Jason and his bodyguard too.


    I could have slotted the chips directly into my port and used my new eyes to check their value and transfer the credits to my bank account, but I chose to do it through my ancient scroll instead. It didn¡¯t happen often, since any attempt to create forged credit chips was met with extreme violence by the megacorps, but gangs did sometimes make decoys filled with nasty viruses as a final ¡®fuck you¡¯ to whoever managed to steal their shit.


    To my relief, none of the chips melted my scroll and reduced it to a worthless block of plastic and metal. To my consternation, the amount of money the chips contained was not meager. Three thousand, seven hundred and fifty-one credits. That¡¯s how much the entire batch of stolen chips was worth in the end.


    My tongue went dry, my mind spun, and my heart just about stopped. Then it started again, panic driving the beat way faster than normal.


    I had no clue how the credits were split between my four victims, but even if they were evenly divided, someone would take exception to the fact that I¡¯d stolen so much money. That wasn¡¯t even counting the high-grade cybernetics which I¡¯d stashed away in my hidey hole.


    All of a sudden, I was distinctly and beyond any doubt aware that there would be retribution for what I¡¯d done. The owner of all the goods would try to get them back, and Jason¡¯s family was just as likely to come after my ass.


    The one bright spot in the fucked up mess I¡¯d made for myself was the fact that I didn¡¯t think anyone had lived to note my participation in the robbery. Jason had approached me through his usual cloak-and-dagger bullshit, probably to spare himself the indignity of dealing directly with a guy he mocked for being a joytoy. That meant as long as I managed to keep my head down, the shit storm coming to the slums might just pass me over.


    Still¡­


    Nearly four thousand credits. That was the kind of money that could last me several years, or afford me some nicer amenities for a while. I might even be able to pay for a few nice programs or online courses.


    The problem was, I couldn¡¯t exactly register the credits to my bank. Such a sudden influx of credits to an account that was barely staying open would likely trigger all sorts of red flags. If any of my would-be pursuers had a way of monitoring such things, I¡¯d stand out like a sore thumb.


    Maybe it was pure paranoia speaking, but I preferred to stick to a safer approach now that most of my pressing needs were met.


    I had a place to stay, on account of my mother dropping our residence in the outer district and using all of her savings to outright purchase an apartment in the slums. I could see again, which stayed my inevitable date of execution by way of starvation. Just as importantly, I still had my job, which could at least cover the cheapest food and other essentials.


    I was in a better place than I¡¯d been at for years. So, it was rather an odd reaction when I burst into tears and unashamedly sobbed into my sheets for nearly long enough to make me late to my job.


    I couldn¡¯t help it. The relief, the stress, the sheer stupidity of what I¡¯d done, it was all crashing down on me. I had made so, so many dumb decisions! Signing up to ambush a gang mule was definitely one of them, but then I went and stole the cyberware, instead of thinking to check if the credit chips could cover the purchase of a regular pair of eyes. Sure, they wouldn¡¯t have been as good, but they also wouldn¡¯t be a major discovery risk.


    The credits at least couldn¡¯t be tracked, as long as I was cautious with my spending. The corpos jointly produced and backed those on a galactic level, and each chip was a blackbox with a certain value assigned to it on production. They could never be refilled, only gradually spent, until the credit counter hit zero and the slip of plastic and circuitry fried itself into uselessness.


    They tried adding series numbers and stuff to make each individual chip traceable at the start of the venture, but quickly gave up when they realized the scope of what they were doing and that they might like to have untraceable funds on hand if the need struck. So there we were. The chips now only contained some secret code thing that made it allegedly impossible to hack and which served as proof of authenticity at the same time.


    I distracted myself from having to decide what to do with the chips by scrubbing a bit of the gunk off my mirror and looking myself in the eyes. I was thin, thinner than the last time I¡¯d cared to look. Bruises bloomed all over my face, the most notable gracing my left eye, along with a shallow cut just above it. My black hair fell around my gaunt, pale face in waves, framing it and making it look even more skeletal.


    It was my eyes I was really interested in, though. I had to fight down a wince when I was a met with a pair of ruby-red irises that all but shone with an inner light. Yeah, definitely not subtle. Funnily enough, the eyes almost looked organic otherwise. There was no series code, no manufacturer mark, nothing. Just the creepy red glow. Overall, I looked like some vampiric corpse that had crawled out of a meat shredder.


    I sighed and looked away, finally deciding that I¡¯d leave most of the chips behind, hidden in my first aid kit. I¡¯d take the one chip that had around four hundred creds with me just for emergencies, but my heart couldn¡¯t take carrying around the full volume of my newfound wealth, especially not after my painfully recent mugging.


    This is not going to be a fun day. Catill is going to have so many questions. I just hope he¡¯s not going to fire me on the spot when he sees my face.


    Catill was many things, but he had a strict ¡®no trouble¡¯ policy that he stuck to religiously. Honestly, most days, I was surprised he¡¯d even hired me in the first place.


    So, the least I could do was try and minimize the chance of him getting swept up into my mess. Unfortunately, that meant taking the long way round to my workplace. And in my condition¡­


    It¡¯s a good thing I woke up early, I groused as I finished dressing, hoisted my backpack, and headed out the door.


    Each step was pain, but I¡¯d be damned if I failed to show up for work.

 Chapter 8: Gaming It Up

    If there was a god out there, like the old Terran legends liked to claim, then he was a sadist who hated my guts. There was no other way to explain the nonsense I¡¯d been through! I mean, who survives the clash of two inhuman murder machines and pulls off an amazing robbery, just to get nearly shanked in his own apartment building¡¯s stairwell?


    Goddamn building and its goddamn malfunctioning elevator. If I could have used it, the creeper wouldn¡¯t have been able to follow me, and I¡¯d have gotten off scot-free.


    Why was I on a fresh spree of complaints? Well, it was kind of hard to keep them in by the time I made it to Catill¡¯s rundown little shop. My entire being was on fire from the sheer effort of remaining in motion.


    It didn¡¯t help that he looked wholly unimpressed to see me upon my glorious entrance. And no, I did not almost trip over my own feet and faceplant.


    If Catill says otherwise, he¡¯s a dirty lying liar who lies.


    ¡°Wa happened to you?¡± my employer immediately asked, face scrunching up in distaste as he took in my bruises. The expression did not do good things for his features. ¡°I swear your kind¡¯s not supposed to change color like that.¡±


    ¡°Decided to redecorate a little. You know, a little extra color never hurt anyone.¡±


    ¡°Answer my question or walk, human.¡±


    I sighed, but I knew he was serious. Catill wasn¡¯t one to budge when pressed, so I could choose between justifying myself and losing my job.


    ¡°Listen, it wasn¡¯t my fault. I was tired and just trying to get home, okay? How was I supposed to know some random druggie was scoping out the area for victims? He almost killed me meters from my front door. If a couple kind souls didn¡¯t happen along, you¡¯d be down an employee right now. Still left me with plenty to remember him by, though.¡±


    Catill squinted at me. His eyes were dark yellow, a shade that could charitably be compared to amber. When I wasn¡¯t feeling so kind, like right in that moment, I called them piss-colored.


    A few seconds later, he nodded. ¡°You can get to work now.¡±


    Technically, I had around twenty minutes before my shift started. I also knew I had a snowflake¡¯s chance in hell of extracting more money from my boss for the additional labor, but¡­


    I just sighed again and did as I was told. He had literally saved my life when he hired me. If he wanted to take a little advantage of me, then let him.


    As always, I started my day at work in the most exciting way possible: going over the previous day¡¯s books and making sure everything was properly squared away. Few people were as anal about taxes as various merchant emporiums, and Catill wasn¡¯t exactly a whizz with the numbers.


    To be honest, neither was I. But I didn¡¯t have a rage boner against all things technological like Catill did, which meant I could check my work over using my scroll. My employer always scowled at this, but since he insisted on keeping actual log books in an age of space travel (restricted though it may be), he had only himself to blame.


    The entire store was a testament to Catill¡¯s oddity. The space bristled with shelves containing every imaginable knickknack that had nothing to do with technology. We sold paperweights, artwork, baubles of every shape and size, lots of tools, and other oddments. There was also an assortment of knives that could be passed off as something meant for a kitchen, but would most likely see use in dark street corners.


    Catill¡¯s Shop of Curiosities lived up to its title. Still, nothing was more curious than the fact that the place was still up and running, despite the fact that I had seen a customer enter the premises exactly five times in recent recorded history. I¡¯d also witnessed only one successful sale.


    After this mysterious staying power, the store¡¯s other chief curiosity was Mr. Catill himself. The man, and I was fairly sure he was a man, wasn¡¯t human. He was from some fringe alien race I didn¡¯t know the name of. No amount of searching the net had yielded the answer, and I¡¯d have more luck trying to pull it out of thin air than I would asking him about it upfront.


    He was extremely cagey about everything. One time, he utterly refused to share with me what he brought along for lunch. Even later, when I saw him slurp down the disgusting slop some vending machines called ¡®Highly nutritious paste! One tube will keep you fed for a full day!¡¯, he stayed tightlipped.


    His coloring was best described as puke green. I¡¯ve already waxed eloquent about his lovely eyes. His entire body was folds and folds of leathery skin that fell over each other. His face was humanoid but rather unique, with his squished nose and wide, bulbous lips that parted to reveal needlepoint teeth.


    Overall, Mr. Catill was a real beaut, on top of being a little looney.


    Really, he went to insane lengths to avoid using advanced tech. Even our cash register was subjected to hours of glaring when I finally talked him into getting one. Maybe he was doing some major money laundering for every gang in the city and needed to keep off the grid, but I tended to think he was just plain crazy.


    Yet, in spite of all his flaws, I would willingly take a bullet for the man. A small caliber bullet, and only to one of my limbs, but still. That was rare loyalty right there.


    One of his tamer quirks was an obsession with optimizing the layout of his store. So, once I finished the books (which took way less time with eyes that could track and autocorrect everything for me), I got to turn my brain off and just shuffle things around for hours at his exacting orders.


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    Was it fun, with the condition my body was in? Nope. But at least it wasn¡¯t too physically demanding, and I wasn¡¯t a joytoy like most of my peers in the slums assumed I was.


    Besides, now that I had my new eyes, I got to cheat. Catill didn¡¯t like it when I spent too much time on my scroll, even during my breaks, but what was he going to do about the feed I had built directly into my head now?


    I got to watch several inane shows, browse some semi-reliable news portals for things to look out for on the way back home, and even listened to music for a while. It was still tripping me up that the eyes somehow let me hear things, but I was just glad they worked.


    I was also thankful they had an automatic noise calibration system for when someone tried to talk to you while you were blasting music. That saved my bacon once or twice.


    The longer the day stretched on, and the longer I worked in relative calm and quiet, the better I felt. It wasn¡¯t just physically that I was improving, either. Sure, my muscles apparently enjoyed the chance to limber up and engage in some honest work, but what I valued more was my peace of mind.


    Cloistered inside my apartment, all alone with the stolen goods, it was easy for the demons in my head to convince me people were about to bust down my door, snatch me up, and then inflict horrible suffering on me until I screamed for death.


    At my workplace, though? In the company of Catill¡¯s regular surly self? Whatever part of me had clenched up and stayed that way ever since the shooting started was slowly relaxing. In that dusty little shop with my nagging boss, the notion of people hunting me down seemed ridiculous.


    How could they possibly manage such a feat, anyway? I was a street kid. I hadn¡¯t checked in with a proper health provider in over a decade. I didn¡¯t have any friends or acquaintances who knew what I¡¯d been up to. In fact, I was a stranger to just about every inhabitant of the slums.


    There wasn¡¯t even a way for anyone to track the cyberware I¡¯d stolen. Unless the pieces magically activated themselves and released some kind of a tracking beacon, no one would find them behind that dumpster.


    If someone, somehow, did do that, then good for them! The cyberware became their problem to deal with, and I could happily wash my hands of the whole mess. I didn¡¯t worry about the eyes so much. Glim had declared them free of most obvious issues, and I believed him at least capable of detecting trackers. He wouldn¡¯t have lasted so long as a scav scam of a ripper otherwise.


    No, the longer I spent working through a well-established routine in a familiar environment, the easier it got to talk myself into believing I was safe.


    And with that revelation, I felt like the world opened up before me. It bore mentioning again, but I had a brand new set of eyes and more money than I ever thought I¡¯d lay my hands on. A very limited piece of the world was my oyster!


    The first thing I did on my break was slot that credit chip I¡¯d brought along into my brand new wetware neuroport. Then I logged onto the most lauded and supposedly safest app store I could find. Navigating to the Reality Enhancement software tab was a matter of moments, and I was soon browsing the many, many options for sale. RE software wasn¡¯t exactly new, but its high degree of reliability and immersion was a relatively recent development made possible by wetware advancements.


    Now, in just a few mental clicks, people with the right hardware could download an app that meticulously tracked all their physical characteristics. The app could even present those characteristics in the form of stats and a neat HUD that gave advice concerning health, workout regimes, improved diet, and so much more.


    I downloaded a few partial sample apps, including one that showed me my current muscle mass and recommended fixes for any deficiencies, but I quickly cringed away. I could recognize a shill when I saw one, and this app had blatant product promotion all over it. Really, was it the best solution for all my problems to just shove a bunch of branded chemicals down my throat?


    Huffily navigating menus in search of the app so I could delete it did yield one useful discovery, though. Tucked away in a corner of my main ¡®eye settings¡¯ menu, I found a tab inconspicuously named ¡®color settings¡¯.


    I accessed it on a whim, then had to choke down an excited whoop when it brought up a 3D visual of my new eyes. All the bits whose color I could change were clearly highlighted and separated by different tabs.


    A silly part of me that never had quite died in spite of my circumstances wanted to make my eyes a solid pink. Sclera, iris, pupil, and all. It would probably freak people out something fierce.


    Another part of me leaned towards finding a green as close to my natural eye color as possible. It would have been kind of nice to claw a piece of normality back from the chaos of all that had happened. Yet¡­ that kind of felt like it would have been cheating, or perhaps denying a newfound part of me.


    In the end, I declined the offer to save my new color settings and closed out of the tab. I would keep my creepy red vampire eyes, at least for the time being.


    Navigating back to the app store, I eventually found an app that seemed to offer solid functionality for a reasonable price. I finalized my purchase immediately. It cost me twenty credits to get the damn thing, a ridiculous amount of money to spend on what some might see as frivolity, but I was determined.


    I could only really start to fix myself if I knew how to approach the subject. The app promised to keep track of my nutrition, help formulate a good workout plan, and even monitor a bunch of other useful health data that would alert me the second I got sick or something else went wrong.


    More to the point, it had a nice little stat point system that would track every bit of progress I made so I could stay motivated. I¡¯d never gotten to play full VR immersion games before, but I hoped the app would let me get a taste of that experience.


    Who knew? Now that I had the money, maybe I¡¯d buy a gaming set at some point. A cheap and old one, because you can never have anything nice in the slums, but¡­ I¡¯d take it.


    The app downloaded quickly, then asked for some time to collect and calibrate my data so it could generate the stats. I happily let it do its thing. There was an unpleasant tingle that passed through my eyes when the process kicked off, and my sight frazzled for just a second. But the weirdness didn¡¯t last long and didn¡¯t return, so I just went back to work.


    Ten minutes later, the app did a happy little jingle to announce it was ready. I dove straight in and started hunting for my stat window.


    When I finally spotted it, I froze.


    <table style="border-collapse: collapse" border="1">


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td style="width: 98.9568%">


    Adrian Flinn


    Strength: 0.6


    Reflexes: 0.7


    Acuity: 4 (-6)


    Physique: 0.5


    Recovery: 0.4


    Stamina: 0.8


    Soul: 1


    Adaptability: 1


    Tolerance: 1


    Cognition: 1


    Essence: 0.1


    Mind Synchronicity: Minor Instability


    </td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>


    Now, my stats were depressing for sure, but I kind of expected that from the start. That wasn¡¯t what threw me for a loop. No, what got me was the fact that none of the stats after ¡®Stamina¡¯ were supposed to be a thing.


    They were not covered in the app¡¯s promo. No one had tried to upsell me on them. Unlike the first half of entries, they came with absolutely no explanations attached.


    Okay, so¡­ what the hell are you?

 Chapter 9: Numbers Man

    A funny thing about humanity is that we never overcame our need for amusement, earth-bound or not. Even within the slums, where despair reigned and people died on the daily, we would always find some way to entertain ourselves. Drugs, bullying, and worse: anything to break the dreaded chains of boredom.


    So, it¡¯s only natural that games had followed us into the stars. And, once it became possible, they invaded every aspect of our daily lives, too.


    Stats enabled by the Reality EnhancementTM software were a perfect example of this. Monkey brain sees numbers go up, monkey brain feels good!


    It didn¡¯t really matter that most people could only ever squeeze out a few extra 0.1s out of the experience, at least without replacing parts of their body with cybernetics or delving into genetic enhancements. Even those miniscule tenth-by-tenth gains were only possible because of how the stats were set up. ¡®1¡¯ was the average level of physical fitness that a healthy adult was expected to reach, ¡®average¡¯ in the sense that the data was collected from all the different users of the app.


    Following that logic, with my stat of 0.6 strength, I was only worth about half an adult. Again, not a shocker. My daily meals were¡­ lacking. I avoided buying anything from the slums whenever I could, and instead used one of the many vending machines in the outer district as my main source of nutrition.


    These meal packs didn¡¯t taste very good, and they definitely didn¡¯t provide everything a growing body needed. Take, for example, the meal I¡¯d grabbed on my way to Catill¡¯s shop that morning. It was marketed as a chicken wrap with salad dressing, but all the various ¡®ingredients¡¯ that went into the unholy creation tasted mostly like cardboard with some subtle seasoning. The nutritional value of the meal just about matched the expectations set by its taste.


    Still, the vending machine meals weren¡¯t as likely to give you cancer or long-term health complications as the slum cuisine was. And at two credits per meal pack, I couldn¡¯t argue with the price.


    So, yeah. I was unlikely to ever be as healthy or as fit as I should have been at sixteen years of age, as long as I continued these fine dining habits. Thankfully, I now had the credits to work on the issue, at least in the short term. That was one piece of good news.


    But the odd stats were still bothering me.


    The app was upfront about what it tracked and what it could offer advice on. The physical stats were clearly listed in the little description section of the store, with more information available in a single click.


    Strength indicated physical might and muscular performance. Reflexes were, well, exactly what the word implied: your ability to react quickly and with stability. Acuity used to be the bane of my existence, since it referred to the quality of a person¡¯s eyesight and perception. From there, you had the trifecta of stats: Physique, Recovery, and Stamina. They indicated physical toughness and ability to withstand various forms of labor, ability to recover from wounds, and how long as well as how vigorously a person could exert themselves.


    Each stat could be accessed for a more in-depth breakdown. Strength, for example, included extra information like your presumed maximum dead lift or bench press. I had zero intention of looking there, because I didn¡¯t need to be bombarded by a variety of depressingly low numbers.


    Absolutely none of this explained what a stat called ¡®Soul¡¯ would cover. There was no accessible breakdown for Adaptability, Tolerance, Cognition, or Essence.


    Mind Synchronicity was the most alarming. What was ¡®Minor Instability¡¯ supposed to mean in the context of Mind Synchronicity? Nothing good, I¡¯d imagine.


    Yet, no matter how much I tried to extract an explanation from the app, the stupid thing refused to cooperate.


    Did I download a virus by mistake?


    The app page looked so official, though! They couldn¡¯t have faked all the reviews, either. No way in hell would they pay a shill to leave a review whining about how the app¡¯s recommended workout schedule was too much of a pain to follow.


    Well, if the app itself wasn¡¯t going to give me what I needed, I¡¯d simply take full advantage of the net instead. Or I was about to, until muttered curses and a whack to the back of my head reminded me I needed to keep my hands moving.


    ¡°Fool boy! Wat do I pay you for? Get back to work. It¡¯s not lunch break yet.¡±


    I did, and with gusto. Not just because Catill was not a man to mess with, but because he deserved at least that much from me. I didn¡¯t think amusing myself while I worked was wrong, but letting myself get distracted enough to stop working altogether? I was ashamed of myself for slipping that much.


    It was only several hours later, when Catill gave me his blessing and I was shoving cardboard chicken down my throat, that I could take time for some research.


    Things refused to go my way from the start.


    I began by looking through all the stat listings from other apps. They were pretty damn universal, with only a few using different words for the same things. Those who offered a stat breakdown followed my chosen app to the T.


    In the same vein, no matter how many times I looked things up or how differently I worded my request, the stat lists available on the net corroborated the app descriptions. There was no such thing as the stats my new app had foisted on me.


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    So, I was forced to get a little more specific.


    ¡®Soul¡¯ naturally brought up nothing but gibberish. Religion hadn¡¯t really been a thing for a long, long while, and only a few people here and there even bothered with that stuff anymore. Oh, there were obviously whispers from time to time about horrible things and even worse fates, but the monsters they featured were very real.


    ¡®Adaptability¡¯ just hit me with the dictionary definition of the word, like I was too stupid to know it. ¡®Tolerance¡¯ too, though I also got a bunch of history texts, along with some articles about tension between Terrans and alien species and all sorts of fucked up politics.


    ¡®Cognition¡¯ was a doozy. I even went down a rabbit hole of psychic nonsense for a hot minute. Pretty soon, though, I got frustrated and ditched that inquiry as well.


    ¡®Essence¡¯¡­ well, Essence was almost as bad as Soul and Cognition. But it also veered into a few different sites offering, eh, ¡®alternative¡¯ methods of insemination and cross-breeding with alien species, complete with informative pictures I wished I could scrub from my brain.


    Why did I click that? Why? Maybe getting stabbed woulda been preferable.


    The search for ¡®Mind Synchronicity¡¯, at last, yielded a bit of info. Not at first, obviously. First I had to dig through psychology garbage and self-help websites and guidebooks, which¡­ yeah, not something that was ever gonna help me. Can¡¯t ¡®Deal with my traumas in a healthy manner¡¯ while living in the slums. Or living on Kadar at all, really, let alone the lovely city of Zanos.


    Underneath all that, though, I found a couple forums. Kind of shoddy-looking and archaic, but there were actual people there looking for help. Lots of questions about how to maintain their Mind Synchronicity stat, and worried comments about their condition worsening.


    I was intrigued at first, but the longer I read, the more I became convinced this was a wash as well. What the hell was I supposed to do with ¡®You need to center yourself and mind the energy you¡¯re absorbing¡¯, or ¡®A bit of purification is preferable even if the source you found is pure¡¯?


    Absolutely nothing, that¡¯s what.


    Still, there was another entry that confused me: ¡®I know how hard it is to get your hands on Essence, but it¡¯s better to be careful in the long run.¡¯


    The forum contributor had used that word, ¡®Essence¡¯, like it was something that could be discovered and maybe even used directly. Logically speaking, that should preclude it from referring to a stat on my screen. Right?


    And yet¡­ if two of the keywords I was so desperately searching for were mentioned together, wasn¡¯t that a hint of its own?


    I groaned, then forced myself to get back to work. My meager meal was long gone. I didn¡¯t want to let Catill catch me slacking off twice in one day.


    Lifting a box, I caught sight of my grouchy boss and paused.


    Catill.


    Now there was a thought. He was old, or at least he looked old, and he was into all sorts of odd and esoteric stuff. Maybe he¡¯d be able to enlighten me on what I was dealing with.


    How to be subtle about this, though?


    Subtlety wasn¡¯t my greatest virtue. I could be careful, even downright sneaky, but that was a different thing than managing your words around someone. That, I failed at more often than not. Mostly on account of not having a lot of friends or any experience with interpersonal relationships.


    I needed an angle.


    Thankfully, it wasn¡¯t long before I had an inkling of a plan. When Catill wandered over to inspect one of the shelves I¡¯d just rearranged, I took the chance to execute it.


    ¡°Um, I hope you don¡¯t mind if I ask you a question?¡± I ventured carefully.


    When Catill turned a gimlet eye on me but didn¡¯t immediately cut me off, I took that as encouragement enough to go on.


    ¡°Heard Jason bragging about something the other day. He said he got a premium Reality Enhancement app, and that he¡¯s going to be able to raise his ¡®Essence¡¯ and ¡®Mind Synchronicity¡¯ stats soon, but¡­ those aren¡¯t a thing, right? I looked up some of the apps, and none of them have those.¡±


    I¡¯d kept my eyes carefully fixed on the items I was moving, because a part of me was convinced Catill would see straight through my bullshit. However, that just meant I missed the moment the man¡¯s puke-green skin turned almost stark white.


    I was forced to notice the change when he suddenly gripped my wrist with crushing strength and forcibly turned me to face him. I yelped, but the sound died in my throat as he fixed me in place with his stare. His eyes were¡­ frightened? Aghast? Dare I say it¡­ even deranged?


    ¡°Stay away from that boy, do you ¡®ear me? Stay away and never go near ¡¯im again. I swear, if you so much as think about approaching ¡¯im again, I¡¯m going to throw your ass out on the streets, and I don¡¯t care wat you¡¯ll do to survive then!¡±


    Catill¡¯s grip on my wrist tightened as he kept ranting. It was like he wasn¡¯t really looking at me, though. His eyes were locked on mine, but they seemed to be staring at something or someone far beyond me.


    ¡°O-Okay, I get it! I get it!¡± I stammered. ¡°I don¡¯t exactly like Jason, anyway. He¡¯s a fucking rat.¡±


    ¡°Good. Good.¡± Catill¡¯s eyes properly focused on me again, and he grimaced. ¡°I don¡¯t like those eyes of yours. I don¡¯t care if they¡¯re cheap crap, you shouldn¡¯ta bought somethin¡¯ that unsettlin¡¯. Git to it, boy! Back to work! If your mama coulda ¡¯eard you, she woulda taken your ass off.¡±


    I froze, but my boss didn¡¯t notice, still ranting in his odd accent as he walked away.


    My mother. He¡¯d mentioned my mother. And yet, I¡¯d only met him after she¡­ disappeared.


    I was looking for work on one of the main outer district streets, and he¡¯d happened to come across me. Heard me arguing with a shopkeeper that said I¡¯d be useless to him even if he hired me.


    I¡¯d always thought that was it. A moment of chance, when the blasted city actually did something kind for me, for once. But he¡¯d mentioned my mother, and I was now too shaken to go after him and ask why.


    His reaction wasn¡¯t normal. ¡®Calm¡¯ and ¡®collected¡¯ were at the top of my list of adjectives for the man. Maybe even ¡®cold.¡¯ Catill was many things, but he never lost it like that. He just didn¡¯t.


    My mood didn¡¯t improve for the rest of the day. I was on edge, constantly stealing glances at my boss. Or trying to, at least. Catill had suddenly proven himself to be elusive. He did have an office in the back where I usually did the paperwork, but he didn¡¯t like to spend time there himself. He was usually all too happy to ¡®supervise¡¯ my work. Now, I almost thought he was hiding from me.


    It was only when I finished for the day and headed out that another thought occurred to me. If Catill had reacted that badly, and if he was visibly terrified just to hear me mention those words, how were people just openly discussing it on the net?


    Maybe it was silly of me, but with everything that had happened recently, a cold pit of worry settled in my gut. What if the forums weren¡¯t meant to help at all? What if they were supposed to serve as bait for whoever was dumb enough to engage with them?


    More importantly, was I now on some kind of watch list, just because I¡¯d opened those forums?


    Common sense said no. My paranoia screamed YES.


    I could almost swear I heard mocking laughter echo in my ears, and for just a moment, a black silhouette with a disturbingly crooked grin flashed past the corner of my eye.

 Chapter 10: Consequential

    Actions always have consequences. A simple, universal truth that everyone should keep firmly in mind. That I should keep firmly in mind.


    And I would, from that moment onwards. I promised myself this over and over as I left Catill¡¯s shop and headed home. I would learn, and I¡¯d do better, and I¡¯d make fewer mistakes. Not ¡®no¡¯ mistakes, never that, but fewer of them.


    None of this helped with the cold grip of terror in my chest.


    I tried to focus on finding a new way home. My new eyes were a big help. I needed the route to be as confusing, as long, and as random as possible while still getting me to my destination.


    So, instead of taking the checkpoint furthest away from my apartment building, I took one a bit closer and slipped from the outer district into the slums. Then I doubled back in the opposite direction for a while before finally heading around in a great arc towards home.


    It was a bit risky, traveling so much of the slums. My feet would definitely not thank me for it. But after the scare Catill had given me and my grim thoughts about those forums, it felt appropriate.


    At least the circuitous route let me hit a few important stores on the way.


    The app might have gotten me in trouble, but it had also done its job while I worked. My inbox now contained a long and overly detailed plan to fix the many, many problems plaguing my body, chief of which was malnutrition.


    My first stop was one of the fancier prepackaged meal stores, where I got some much higher quality food for myself.


    Then I grit my teeth and stopped by a fancy health supplement store, purchasing more than a few packets of various powders whose names I didn¡¯t bother learning how to pronounce. They weren¡¯t the overpriced shit that those other ¡®premium¡¯ apps were shilling, either. Just down-to-earth stuff. Still, they cost as much as my monthly food budget and would last only a week.


    Painful. Exceedingly so. But some things ultimately couldn¡¯t have a price attached to them, and health was on that list.


    Besides, every time I thought about my physical condition, my mind flashed back to the attempted mugging. The druggie had dragged me around with contemptuous ease, and even the best of my attempts to strike back were¡­ deficient. No, I wouldn¡¯t let myself get into a situation like that again.


    Either I would fix myself, or I would bankrupt myself.


    Despite being deep inside my own mind, I never once forgot to pay attention to my surroundings. It was thanks to this that I spotted several odd signs on my grand travels through the slums.


    The locals were both terrified and relieved, and that just made no sense. Then again¡­ it didn¡¯t take me long to figure out the split. Anyone who looked to be a ganger of any real sort was downright pale and shaky. Anyone who had a decent reason to resent the gangs was grinning it up.


    I¡¯d covered nearly half of my planned route by that point, and my policy was always to be as careful in the slums as I could be, but curiosity eventually won out. I looked around, spotted a relatively ¡®clean¡¯ alley by slum standards, and then inspected the group of kids my age lounging in it. They fell on the side of people whose mood had seen a recent uptick, which made them a safer target in my mind.


    So, I approached.


    Suspicion instantly slammed down over their faces like they were donning helmets, and their loose, friendly circle closed for mutual protection. I¡¯d made sure my shooter was visible just-so, which was a good argument against any stupidity on their part, but I still looked them over as warily as they did me.


    One of the group, a bold-looking girl, challenged me before I got too close.


    ¡°Whatcha want?¡±


    I decided being upfront was probably my best ticket to walking away with the information I wanted (and without having to shoot someone). ¡°Just confused, is all. Been, eh¡­ indisposed, recently. What¡¯s got everyone in a good mood?¡±


    The group relaxed a tiny bit, though the girl¡¯s face also took on a mulish expression. ¡°What¡¯s it to you? Huh? And why should I tell you a damn thing?¡±


    I sighed, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. If she¡¯d just demanded some minor payment from the start, things would have been so much easier. Still, needs must.


    When I extracted a credit chip, they all focused in on me intently.


    ¡°Ten creds. Take it or leave it. You¡¯re not the only group I can ask, and I bet they¡¯d be happy to get paid.¡±


    They eyed me, then, in a whole new way. And as their eyes raked over me, dark and calculating, I knew what they were searching for.


    If I was offering ten credits so easily, what else could I offer? What else did I own?


    Thankfully, I always made it a point to dress just shabbily enough. I definitely didn¡¯t look like I had any sort of money. Even the one ¡®fancier¡¯ possession I toted around openly, my backpack, had become significantly less appealing just recently.


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    A knife-hole will do that.


    Of course, I wasn¡¯t idiot enough to flash the purchases I had just made. Those were stashed away in the backpack, very carefully so it didn¡¯t look bulky. Making a backpack appear as empty as possible was an art form, and one I eagerly practiced.


    ¡°Listen. I¡¯m tired, I¡¯m grouchy, I¡¯ve had a long day at work, and I just want to go back to sleep. Now, is there going to be war on the streets soon, or what?¡± I affected irritation, though I didn¡¯t have to pretend very hard.


    Finally, the girl conceded. ¡°No, no war. But the Reapers are done.¡± Her face broke into a bloodthirsty grin. ¡°Done and gone.¡±


    This should have been amazing news. The gang I¡¯d stolen from wouldn¡¯t be coming around for revenge. One less group of angry killers I¡¯d need to watch out for.


    Still, I could only stare at her. It took me a few seconds to form more questions, and even then, they came out as single-word wonders.


    ¡°Gone? How? When?¡±


    ¡°No one knows. Someone came through and decimated them. They barely even had the lowest level fuckers left, and leaders? All dead, to the last man and woman. They were all spectacularly splattered over the walls of the pigshit dump they called headquarters. The other gangs mopped up the leftovers once the coast was clear.¡±


    I stared some more, because damn. Double damn!


    I had very good reason for my heart to be skipping in fear at this news. The Reapers were horrible, and no one would miss them, but they were entrenched. Uprooting them so quickly and painlessly should have been impossible.


    Unless, of course, they¡¯d pissed off someone far beyond them. Say, like a mysterious manufacturer of top tier cybernetics.


    That would do it. For sure. Corpos like that loved their hit squads¡­


    I swallowed. ¡°I¡¯m gonna guess that everyone and their alien mother is trying to get in on a piece of the pie?¡±


    ¡°Of course.¡± The girl looked amused now. ¡°There¡¯s war happening already, they say. Lots of gangs are recruiting to make up for their losses. I guess you¡¯re alright, so I don¡¯t mind telling you that a recruiter for the Hounds will be by soon to check out this location. Stay if you want.¡±


    ¡°Um, thanks,¡± I stammered, caught thoroughly flatfooted by the offer. ¡°I gotta go, though. My mother would kill me if I joined a gang right now.¡±


    The group sneered and booed at me, like that was somehow going to turn me suicidal, but they didn¡¯t stop me when I decided to leave. I didn¡¯t need to worry about lying to them. We were unlikely to cross paths again, especially since they were about to do a very dumb thing.


    Who the hell went out of their way to join a gang during what sounded suspiciously like all-out war?


    I mean, Reapers weren¡¯t the biggest or the wealthiest, but they had pushed hard and pushed smart, at least at first. They had more than a few streets under their control, along with several distribution centers and a lucrative ¡®shopping mall¡¯ that was maybe three stores in total.


    With all that up for grabs? Even a big gang like the Kittens would feel tempted to take over, let alone the minor players of the slums.


    I cursed internally as I resumed my winding way home. The encounter had not improved my mood.


    Those kids had no reason to lie to me, but maybe they were¡­ confused. Yes, that was a word I liked. Confused. I mean, there was no way the Reapers would just get wiped out. And there was most definitely no bloody way that I¡¯d been involved with the potential cause of their extermination.


    Damn it, I needed to figure out what to do with the cybernetics I¡¯d stolen.


    The simplest answer was to install them all. There was really only one problem with that. Well, two: cyberpsychosis and number-blindness. To be fair, those two were fairly similar, especially in the sense that both could be blamed on excessive upgrades and the strain they placed on the mind.


    Cyberpsychosis occurred when someone got too many upgrades too quickly. It clouded the mind, impeded judgment, and generally gave someone more callous if not outright sociopathic tendencies. It definitely made it harder for someone for see other people as anything but victims. Those suffering from the condition typically pursued all of their darkest desires, inflicting their most vile urges on everyone around them with considerable glee.


    In a way, number-blindness was the exact opposite of that, but also much more¡­ sad, for its inevitable danger.


    It was impossible to move cybernetic limbs, to truly manipulate them and use them as your own, without three important factors. Proper nerve connections needed to be installed. Exceedingly exact coding had to be done. Lastly, you had to give your body time to recover from the ordeal.


    Unfortunately, ¡®waiting for one¡¯s body to recover¡¯ was just not enough. There are some things that are eternally different once you replace your own limbs. And if you kept doing it, removing piece after piece of your natural-born body, then it was entirely possible to become more coding than man.


    The corpos, so long as you had the money, would happily do anything for you. If you wanted them to pickle your brain in a jar and shove it into a wholly new, cybernetic body, they would! Too bad you¡¯d immediately be overwhelmed by your own coding, emotions falling away, until only the cold logic of self-preservation remained.


    And that was number-blindness. While cyberpsychos were ruled by their out-of-wack whims and urges, the number-blind couldn¡¯t even recognize their own emotions anymore. ¡®Little better than those bloody clankers,¡¯ Catill liked to say, and he was basically right.


    Alternatively, you could be one of the rare few gifted enough to maintain control over themselves, and you¡¯d arrive at the other end of the procedure with might and power that no normal person with squishy bits could wield.


    Those people were rare, though. Very rare.


    So, I couldn¡¯t risk just grafting a bunch of new stuff onto my body. When choosing between two horrible fates, it¡¯s often better not to choose at all.


    While I walked and did my thinking, I could proudly say I never let anyone sneak up on me. Likewise, I could proudly say that I detected something was wrong long before I was actually confronted by it.


    For one, there was the sound of gunshots and screaming in the distance. Then there was the blood splattered all over the floor of my building¡¯s lobby, and a couple bloody handprints on the walls when I started to climb the stairs to my apartment.


    Higher and higher I went, all the while spotting unmistakable traces of carnage and suffering. By the time I reached the landing right before mine and spotted a woman only slightly older than me slumped against the railing, I couldn¡¯t even find it in myself to be surprised.


    Resigned, yes, but not surprised.


    As if that wasn¡¯t enough, I knew her. In fact, she had saved my life not even a full day ago. And now there she was, bloody and visibly wounded and squirming on the floor.


    Consequences, I remembered as I stood there, frozen. All actions have consequences.


    Then why the fuck did I rush forward to check over the worst of her wounds? Why did I ignore the feeble protests and her attempts to protect herself, even in her dazed and addled condition? Why did I shove my arm around her and yank her own arm over my shoulder, then proceed to drag her up the stairs in spite of my aching and protesting body?


    I had no clue. But I did know, even in that very moment, that there would be consequences for these actions.


    I also knew I was unlikely to enjoy them much.

 Chapter 11: Opening Doors

    Mela, if I was remembering her name right, was heavy. Now, I wasn¡¯t going to be the idiot to tell her that, but my straining face and trembling muscles as I dragged her up the stairs were dead giveaways.


    Then again, I wasn¡¯t sure how much of that came down to her weight and how much was due to the abysmal state of my body. I still had several fractured ribs and plenty of bruises. One whole side of my face felt like it was on fire. I¡¯d managed to get through the day at work easily enough, since all the boxes were pretty light. But hauling an adult up a flight of stairs? A whole different proposition.


    It also didn¡¯t help that the person I was trying to save was fighting me. Not very hard or very effectively, but she kept moaning and trying to squirm away. This was in spite of the fact that I could see the growing red patch on her tacky pink shirt.


    Something, probably a knife, had gone right through her Pink Kittens jacket and into her side. Her face had clearly been worked over hard by someone¡¯s fists. She also had a massive gash starting from her hip all down her left leg, and I saw the way she winced whenever she failed to keep her weight off the limb.


    ¡°Dunno where ya takin¡¯ me ya stupid shit but my guys will fuckin¡¯ kill ya,¡± she slurred viciously. ¡°Think ya can take advantage of me? Huh? Huh?!¡±


    I fought down the sudden urge to laugh in that wheezy, hysterical way people use when they realize they¡¯re fucked.


    ¡°I¡¯m not taking advantage of you. I¡¯m trying to save your life. To repay a favor, remember? You saved my ass here just¡­ fuck, was it only a day ago?¡±


    I almost dropped my burden when she turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were way too close. They stared at me for a few seconds, blinking blearily, then went wide with recognition.


    ¡°Wait, kid? What are you doing?¡±


    ¡°Hauling your ass up the stairs to my apartment. Want me to stop?¡± I sassed, hard, because what else was I supposed to do? I had a definite feeling someone was on our heels, and if they caught up, they were going to catch me with my proverbial pants down.


    ¡°Heh, trust me kid. If you wanted to get laid, there¡¯s easier ways,¡± Mela teased.


    ¡°Do you want to get dropped?¡± I said through gritted teeth, pulling us up the last few stairs and stumbling down the hallway. ¡°Because that¡¯s how you get dropped. I don¡¯t make it a habit to save gangers bleeding out on my doorstep.¡±


    I chose that moment to trip and squish both our faces against my front door.


    ¡°Your pickup technique needs work,¡± she groaned when I pulled us back. ¡°But I¡¯ll give you points for eagerness.¡±


    ¡°Fuck damn it, these last few days want to kill me. Kill me, I say,¡± I growled.


    Using my nifty cybernetic eyes, I sent an ¡®open¡¯ request to the doors. They hissed and started to move instantly, but got stuck a mere centimeter in. I growled again, shifted our weight around, and got the doors moving with a kick.


    ¡°You have a potty mouth on ya don¡¯t ya kid? Parents didn¡¯t teach ya that¡¯s rude?¡±


    I froze for a second, but recovered quickly and dragged the bleeding woman into my humble home. As the doors closed behind us with a hiss, I let out a breath of relief.


    Safe. In a loose interpretation of the word.


    ¡°Nope. Dead parents. Very tragic. The whole slum kid shtick, you know?¡± I tried to say the words flippantly, but they stung. My mother was the reason I usually tried not to curse or use too much slang. She always insisted on raising me like I was a tiny little corpo just waiting to claim my legacy.


    ¡°Shit. Well. Sorry,¡± the brute of a woman muttered, a little quieter than before.


    I didn¡¯t reply, but I didn¡¯t take her in the direction of my bed either. People who insulted my mother did not get to bleed over the one piece of good furniture I owned.


    I eventually managed to get Mela situated on the floor of my bathroom section. It was a tiny bit moldy, sure, but I did a good job of scrubbing it semi-regularly, and it definitely wasn¡¯t as bad as that blasted mirror.


    ¡°Give me a second,¡± I muttered, more for my benefit than hers, as I grabbed my first aid kit. My trembling fingers fumbled with the zipper. When I pulled the kit open, I almost spilled everything all over the floor.


    ¡°Sheesh, kid, don¡¯t be that nervous. I don¡¯t bite. Won¡¯t even ravage you, either,¡± she taunted, hand pressing her blood-soaked shirt against her wound.


    ¡°Yes, yes. Either take that off or pull it away from the wound, please. Unless you want to bleed out.¡±


    To my surprise, she complied. Who knew that all it took for her to shut up was the threat of bleeding to death?


    When she finally pulled away all the fabric with a pained wince, I got my first look at the worst of her wounds. It wasn¡¯t as bad as it could have been, really. The edges of the wound were relatively smooth, and I didn¡¯t think it was too deep. It was bleeding like a fucker, though.


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    ¡°Right. Right.¡± I nodded. ¡°No biggie. Large stab wounds. I can handle those.¡±


    Ignoring her look of more than mild disbelief, I grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and applied it liberally to a swab made of some fluffy synthetic material. To her credit, she didn¡¯t flinch when I started to disinfect the wound. Even when the swab got soaked in blood and I started just splashing generous amounts of the alcohol on the area, she stayed still.


    Once that was done, I grabbed one of the more valuable items in the kit. It didn¡¯t look like anything special. Just a small, unmarked jar of powder. But as soon as I sprinkled some over the wound, the gushing flow of blood slowed down, then stopped altogether.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s interesting,¡± the woman mumbled as I moved on to her leg.


    I had to do a bit of convincing and put up with a lot of complaining, but eventually, she positioned her leg so I could get a good look at the jagged gash. This time, I was able to use a swab instead of just flooding everything in alcohol. Then I applied the powder there as well.


    My heart ached through every second of it.


    The alcohol wasn¡¯t that expensive, but the powder was. It was Glim¡¯s own product, some kind of super coagulant that stopped even heavy bleeding in seconds. It couldn¡¯t do shit for internal wounds, but so long as your leakage was on the outside, you could slap the powder on and be good to go for a while. Sure, the wound could reopen if you moved around too much, but still¡­ the powder was way better than nothing. I had barely eaten for two months just to be able to afford it.


    ¡°Where¡¯d you get something like that, kid? You wouldn¡¯t happen to have a MaxDoc as well, would you?¡±


    I didn¡¯t say anything. I just stared at her.


    ¡°Okay, okay,¡± she mumbled. ¡°No need for that particular look.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t have a particular look. You just asked a street kid orphan if he has expensive healing aids.¡±


    ¡°And I¡¯m sorry, ¡®kay? Don¡¯t be a grump.¡±


    I just sighed as I pushed myself up from the awkward kneeling position I was in and staggered towards my bed. I remembered just in time to wash up first. A ton of scrubbing later, I still felt kind of icky, but I collapsed onto my bed anyway.


    It was hard to believe how little time had actually passed. Since I¡¯d found her, dragged her in, and did basic first aid, maybe fifteen minutes had gone by. Still, I felt like I¡¯d run a marathon.


    ¡°I guess this means that I paid off that favor now?¡± I asked wearily.


    ¡°I guess. Do something else nice for me and I might feel compelled to thank you instead.¡±


    I groaned. ¡°Any special reason you¡¯re being all insufferable?¡±


    ¡°Any special reason you¡¯re being a quippy brat when you know I can fold you in half?¡± she shot back, though I could tell she was just being playful.


    Probably. Maybe.


    Perhaps I should tone it down a bit?


    I figured being honest wouldn¡¯t hurt. ¡°I talk too much when I¡¯m scared or stressed out.¡±


    ¡°Funny. I try to be clever and flirty when I¡¯m scared or stressed out.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± Yay for my amazing vocabulary! ¡°What happened?¡±


    ¡°Fucking Zerx happened. I have no idea who shit in their breakfast this morning, but they ambushed us not far from here. They got me good. And they had, like, twice our numbers, so I ran. I didn¡¯t get too far, but I almost made it home before you found me.¡± A long pause ensued. Then¡­ ¡°Thanks.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re welcome. Literally the least I could do after yesterday.¡±


    ¡°Not a lot of people would bother, even if I did save their ass.¡±


    ¡°Maybe.¡±


    We lapsed into a bout of silence while I grappled with fresh fear. Zerx weren¡¯t supposed to be in my part of town. They shared a border with the Pink Kittens, sure, but they stuck to their stretch of the slum hell, and our local rulers stuck to theirs.


    They weren¡¯t as big as the Kittens, either. Ferocious, angry, and utterly prepared to fuck up your day, but definitely not on the level of one of the biggest gangs around. They had aspirations to reach that level, though. For years, they¡¯d been recruiting aggressively. I suppose I shouldn¡¯t have been surprised they¡¯d come out to play at the first opportunity.


    Another thought swept through me, one I¡¯d been trying to ignore since those kids told me the Reapers were finished.


    This is my fault, isn¡¯t it? I stole all that shit. Whoever owned it is coming out to play because they want their product back, and the entire slums are paying for it.


    For a moment, I almost felt crushed under the weight of fear and guilt. It didn¡¯t take long for me to sweep at least some of those emotions under a rug, though.


    I wasn¡¯t the one who made the mystery patron of the Reapers lash out. It wasn¡¯t me killing people out in the streets. All I ever wanted was to carve a tiny little bit of normalcy and stability for myself. Did I intend to do it at such a huge cost to everyone else? No.


    But now that it had happened, I wasn¡¯t going to waste time feeling guilty about it.


    I wasn¡¯t out of the woods yet. I might even get killed when and if I got swept up in the gang nonsense. Still, I refused to feel torn up over the deaths of a bunch of people who probably deserved whatever they got anyway.


    Mela shifted on the bathroom floor. ¡°You know, kid ¡ª¡±


    A loud bang on my door cut her off. Both of us immediately tried to stand up. I got to my feet, but she wheezed in pain and fell back down as the sudden movement reopened her stab wound.


    ¡°Open up! I don¡¯t give a shit who you are! If you¡¯ve got that bitch in there we¡¯re going to tear you apart you fucker!¡±


    More banging, more slurs, and more promises of violence.


    I looked at Mela with wide eyes. "How do they know you''re in here?" I whispered.


    ¡°Not sure, but ¡ª¡±


    ¡°Open up you fucker! You¡¯re gonna regret ever fucking with us when we get our fucking hands on you!¡±


    ¡°¡ª probably the blood. I was bleeding all over the place.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think about that. Why didn¡¯t I think about that?¡±


    ¡°Well, you could¡¯ve cleaned up if we had more time, but with how quickly they caught us? You woulda had to leave me be if you wanted to avoid them, kid. And I¡¯m kinda glad you didn¡¯t.¡±


    She shot me a wide grin, but it was unnaturally wide. It resembled a grimace more than a jolly expression.


    I could hear multiple voices in the hallway at that point, several of which were discussing how to break down my door. That wouldn¡¯t be easy. It was a solid door, for the slums. Still, I also knew that if they were truly determined, there was little I could do to stop them. They would get at us eventually, and I had no idea what to do.


    Mela tried again to stand up. Putting the entirety of her weight on her back, she managed to slide up the wall until she was on her feet.


    ¡°We¡¯ll be fine, kid,¡± she gasped. Seeing the expression on my face, she gave a low, harsh chuckle. ¡°Don¡¯t look like that! Now, can you come over and help me move a few things around?¡±


    I did as she asked. Wasn¡¯t sure what else to do. Still, I was far from confident we had any chance of making it out unscathed.


    Or at all.

 Chapter 12: Hard Knocks

    Turns out, when you live in a box, there aren¡¯t a lot of options for hiding or decent cover. I could have tried to curl up inside my wardrobe and hope they somehow failed to check there, but ¡­ that probably wouldn¡¯t work.


    Still, when Mela gave me her instructions, I looked at her like she¡¯d just stabbed me somewhere vital.


    ¡°Repeat that for me, please?¡±


    ¡°I want you to turn over your wardrobe and drag it to this side of the room so we have some cover. Then we need to block the door with your bed,¡± she repeated slowly.


    I didn¡¯t care that she was looking at me as if seriously doubting my intelligence. I was too busy screeching bloody murder inside my head.


    My wardrobe. My bed. Some of the only things of any worth that I owned.


    That stupid, stupid bed in particular. It was so nice. So fluffy. Lying on it felt like I imagined it would feel like to lie on a cloud¡­ if clouds weren¡¯t collections of the foulest gas that dumped acid on our heads on the few occasions we had any precipitation.


    She wants me to do what with my lovely bed?!


    Then I looked again at the rabid ganger. She was doing her level best not to pass out or puke blood while a bunch of thugs tried to break down my door and kill us both. That made me reconsider my priorities a little.


    Not without snarking, though. Never without snarking.


    I started pushing on the wardrobe, ignoring the screaming threats from the hallway.


    ¡°You do realize,¡± I grunted, ¡°that this is, like, the entirety of what I own? Like, literally all of it? I fucking love that bed.¡±


    ¡°Awww, who¡¯s a lost little puppy? You are! Poor little thing. Dontcha worry, we¡¯ll find ya a nice girl to love instead. Or boy. Both? I ain¡¯t judging!¡±


    ¡°Well I am!¡± I hissed, then wondered why I was still keeping my voice down. Shrugging, I gave the wardrobe one final push and sent it tipping over onto its side. It landed on the floor of my apartment with a loud clang, the cheap metal ringing like a bell.


    The voices in the hallway fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, I had an idea.


    With the best shit-eating grin I could manage under the circumstances, I started to scream.


    ¡°Please! You have to help me!¡± I shrieked, pitching my voice to make me sound way younger than I was. ¡°Whoever¡¯s out there, please help! She¡¯s insane! She¡¯s got a knife!¡±


    Mela glared at me, and I had to bite back some unstable-sounding giggles.


    ¡°What? Maybe they won¡¯t shoot me immediately,¡± I whispered as sweetly as I could, though my mood immediately soured when she stumbled over to the wardrobe and I realized my bed was on the docket next.


    ¡°Yer one insane kid, aintcha? What did I do to get stuck with you, of all people?¡±


    ¡°Joined a gang. Saved a kid from getting mugged. Got ambushed by a rival gang,¡± I counted off.


    Pushing against the frame of my bed, I tipped it over and positioned it to block the door. Not as useful as it would have been had my doors opened inwards instead of withdrawing into the wall, but¡­ beggars, choosers, and all that. A few extra seconds were a few extra seconds.


    Next came the unpleasant task of checking exactly what I had on hand to violently protest the gangers¡¯ invasion of my privacy. Which¡­ wasn¡¯t much.


    I knelt by my backpack and examined my options. My good old Cadmus E-20 had at least five rounds left, though the exact count was lost to me in the haze of fear and adrenaline.


    Meanwhile, when last I checked Jason¡¯s shooter, I¡¯d been confronted by the startling realization that it had only one shot left.


    One. Shot. Left.


    The asshole had brought a massive-caliber gun and a disproportionally small number of bullets to an ambush.


    Not for the first time, I put extra heat into cussing out the idiot in the confines of my mind. We all could have died so easily on that day, and it was mostly his fault. Worse, now his dumb ass was reaching out from beyond the grave to screw me yet again.


    ¡°You look like you¡¯re gonna shit yourself, kid. Everything all right?¡± Mela¡¯s voice snapped me out of it.


    I hurried over to her, holding out both guns. She raised a brow at me.


    ¡°I¡¯m wondering if they¡¯d be open to vacating my premises if I just threaten with the guns, without having to do the whole shooty-shoot thing.¡± I flushed at the smirk she gave me. ¡°Ammo is expensive, okay! I don¡¯t have much of it. More like I have six shots between both guns and then we¡¯re dead.¡±


    ¡°That old Cadmus ain¡¯t gonna do much anyway. How many rounds you got in that other shooter?¡±


    ¡°One. The previous owner was kind of an idiot I had a violent disagreement with.¡±


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    ¡°How violent?¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter. He¡¯s no longer around to protest my treatment of his gun.¡±


    ¡°Ah.¡± She nodded sagely, or what she probably thought that was supposed to look like. ¡°I approve. One shot ain¡¯t gonna be good for much, though.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I know that! Any better ideas, or should I just¡­ what? Lie down here and wait to die?¡±


    ¡°Urgh, I can¡¯t believe I¡¯m gonna die alongside a brat,¡± she griped, but she did slip her hands behind her back and draw out two guns.


    Both were steel monstrosities about on par with Jason¡¯s shooter, just a lot less glammed out. They were pink. The cutesy kitten symbol was a tad much. Still, they looked way more lethal than my pea shooter of a Cadmus.


    ¡°You need something like this. Here, I¡¯ll give ya one of my babies. I swear, though, if you somehow damage her¡­¡±


    She shoved one of the pink shooters into my hands. I was stuck between awe and disgust as I fumbled with it, letting my own guns clatter to the ground.


    The gangers must have finally rallied by that point, because something heavy slammed into my door with incredible strength.


    ¡°How many bullets?¡± I asked in a hurry, checking the shooter over. It was large, much like Jason¡¯s, but the magazine was bulkier and longer, making it tricky to get a proper grip. Not for the first time, I was annoyed by how much smaller I was compared to others my age.


    ¡°Ten. These beauts are custom! You can typically only find them with five, maybe seven to a magazine. Had to pay premium to get them touched up. The paint even glows in the dark!¡±


    I had to level another disbelieving look at her. I was trying to cut back on those, but really, she got them out of me like we were at a sale.


    ¡°You have guns that glow in the dark?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with that?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t know, just that everyone and their half-blind mother is going to know exactly where to shoot if they want to kill you!¡±


    ¡°Why do ya have to sound like my boss right then, huh? Cantcha just appreciate art?¡±


    ¡°Because your ¡®art¡¯ is going to get us ¡ª¡±


    I was cut off by a loud metallic whine as my door began to fail. Risking a nervous glance in that direction, I could just about make out the edge of the metallic barrier peeling back, letting in the light of the hallway above my bedframe.


    I once more silently wept for the large, glorious bed. Only inside my head, of course, because I couldn¡¯t afford to have tears blur my vision.


    ¡°Again! We¡¯re gonna have that bitch soon!¡±


    Another bang shook both the door and the bed.


    At that point, neither of us felt like talking much. I was too distracted by my deafening heartbeat to have any energy left for banter. The grim look in Mela¡¯s eyes suggested she wasn¡¯t much better off.


    Another bang, and even more light began to invade my apartment from the outside.


    I began cursing my building¡¯s cheapskate manager. Once, the doors had all been made of solid reinforced steel alloy, strong enough to hold back a small army for a little while. That was stripped away decades before I came along. The only proof those doors ever existed was the way their replacements didn¡¯t quite fit the locking grooves right. The new doors were a bit thinner, a bit shorter, and a lot more flimsy.


    Oh, it was still some kind of metal, but I was seeing firsthand that it couldn¡¯t resist any forceful attempts to gain entry.


    Not that I needed prior proof. I¡¯d come across a few gutted apartments in the building. At each one, the battered doors lay on the ground like corpses, the only silent witnesses of what had happened. The actual corpses were long dragged off by that point, either for processing or for sale. Or, if the apartment¡¯s inhabitants were still alive¡­


    Didn¡¯t make much of a difference, really. They¡¯d still been dragged off for processing or for sale. They¡¯d just be more miserable while going through the experience.


    ¡°Listen, kid. I know this is a lot. Still, when they get in here, I want you to shoot. This is you or them. Don¡¯t hesitate.¡±


    Mela¡¯s voice sounded serious and focused for the first time since I¡¯d met her. Surprised, I looked at her. The ganger was gazing at me with such regret that I just stared back, blinking stupidly.


    Then she scowled and punched my shoulder, which effectively broke me out of the daze.


    ¡°Yeah, yes, I get it. Shoot first, questions never. Another day in the slums,¡± I joked. But from the way she was looking at me, I could tell she didn¡¯t believe I was ready to do what was necessary. Probably thought I froze up at the warning, rather than due to the shock of her suddenly getting her shit together.


    She might have tried to say something else, but it was then that my poor door finally gave up the ghost. It rattled out of its setting with a loud metallic clang. The gangers on the other side must have thought it had more in it, because they stumbled through with loud curses, overcommitting to the strike. Only my bed kept them from pouring through into the apartment.


    They immediately opened fire.


    I wanted to scream as shots were buried into my mattress, but at least they weren¡¯t ricocheting wildly about the space the way I¡¯d seen them do once or twice when I was way too close to a gang shootout than I cared to be.


    ¡°Get the fucking bitch! Get the kid that¡¯s with her too. We¡¯ll have some fun with both before we cut her throat!¡±


    ¡°Get ready, kid,¡± Mela whispered.


    Both of us gripped our guns a little tighter.


    For a group that had managed to batter my door down, the gangers took altogether too long to shove the bed over. As soon as their view was clear, they opened fire again.


    Shots thunked into the metal of my wardrobe, and my fingers shook with adrenaline. Then Mela lunged to the right, and her own gun began to fire in retaliation. There was a horrible wet gasp and a scream from the doorway.


    I chose that moment to pop out on the opposite side. The moment stretched, my fear and excitement giving me more situational awareness than I might have expected.


    The gangers had busted down the door and the bed, but most were still stuck in the doorframe. Only one was starting to climb over the bed itself. One ganger had his hand clasped around his neck, which featured a brand new hole in it. Another two were turning their guns on Mela, who was firing on the climber and had clipped his leg.


    I was just about to pull the trigger myself when my view¡­ glitched.


    The gangers¡¯ faces turned into shadowy things with unnaturally wide grins, all leaking some foul substance. Time itself jerked a few seconds forward. Shots were fired, the climbing ganger died, and then the one right behind him put a bullet in Mela¡¯s forehead while his friend fumbled with his shooter.


    Then reality snapped into place again.


    I hurriedly pointed my own gun away from the climber and in the direction of the murderer behind him. I pulled the trigger as quickly as I could, as many times as I could. The first shot missed its mark. But the second blew the man¡¯s fingers off, and the third found its way to his chest.


    His clumsy friend managed to fire back at Mela, but at that point, she¡¯d already put down the climber. She turned her gun on the clumsy ganger, now the last man standing.


    The pink monstrosity roared one last time, and the ganger died with a startled look on his face.


    My vision was swimming. If I wasn¡¯t already lying on my side after throwing myself out of cover to shoot, I would have collapsed.


    Then fingers found my shoulder, shaking me lightly.


    ¡°Kid? You¡¯re okay, kid. Just breathe.¡±


    I took a deep breath, finding to my surprise that I¡¯d been going without oxygen for a hot minute. As my starving lungs filled with a coppery scent, I managed to start pulling myself off the floor, only to freeze when my eyes landed on Mela¡¯s left shoulder.


    A heavily bleeding shoulder.

 Chapter 13: Smooth Operator

    I wanted to cry. For way more than just one reason.


    My precious, precious bed was done for. As was most of my apartment, for that matter. And there I was, spending even more of Glim¡¯s very expensive powder on an idiot who¡¯d managed to get shot and even reopened her older wounds along the way. If I was a bit rougher while applying the powder than necessary, who could blame me?


    An annoying redhead, apparently.


    ¡°Dammit kid, you really don¡¯t know how to treat a lady!¡± Mela flinched away from my fingers that were working the powder into the wound. ¡°I disrobe for you and everything, and this is what you do?¡±


    I just glared in response. I would have paired the look with a painful squeeze if that wouldn¡¯t have restarted the bleeding and forced me to spend more of my resources.


    ¡°Maybe I¡¯d be grateful if there was much for me to see,¡± I snarked instead.


    From the look she gave me, I was toeing a very thin line with that particular taunt. Was that even a genuine spark of hurt I saw there?


    Now that was just ridiculous. Sure, the bra covered with actual cutesy pink kittens was a step too far, even for someone who was dressing that way ¡®ironically¡¯, but she did have¡­ er, a ¡®bountiful¡¯ chest. I was just a bit too wrapped up in existential horror to so much as steal a glance.


    ¡°Rude. Ruuuude! Here I¡¯m trying to distract you from all that happened and you¡¯re just mouthing off. Really, kids these days!¡±


    I winced. If that was really what she was trying to do, well¡­


    ¡°I¡¯ll dial it back,¡± I mumbled, refusing to look her in the eye as I grabbed some of the bandages out of my first aid kit. I hadn¡¯t bothered with them before because it was best to let the powder sit for a while, but I had a feeling we weren¡¯t staying in my apartment long.


    Speaking of¡­


    ¡°You know, I own this place. Like, *own-*own it.¡±


    Her head snapped over to me so quickly, I thought she¡¯d break her neck.


    ¡°Wait, really? Um¡­¡±


    She looked around at all the devastation. The shot-up bed and wardrobe, the bullet holes and cracks in the walls, the decimated shower barrier¡­


    Wait, is that a tiny spray of water? Did they hit a pipe or something?


    I groaned. ¡°How the hell am I going to afford to fix this place up?¡±


    A second later, though, I perked up when I remembered the wealth I¡¯d hidden away from the robbery. It was going to be ¡®fun¡¯ trying to justify where the money came from, but maybe things weren¡¯t so bad after all.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Mela¡¯s morose voice snapped me out of my thoughts. When I looked at her, she did look genuinely sad and pissed off, at herself I mean. ¡°I didn¡¯t know¡­¡±


    I shrugged. ¡°S fine. Not like you knew people would try to kill us immediately.¡±


    Focusing on the bandages, I tried not to think too much about¡­ well, anything.


    My home was wrecked. I¡¯d gotten mixed up in a ganger war. And then there was that weird time glitch that had happened in the middle of the shootout, when I¡¯d seen¡­ stuff I didn¡¯t have any words for, even if I wanted to talk about it to anyone ever.


    If I started thinking about any of it, I was liable to hyperventilate, or just pass out in a puddle of my own tears. Then I would definitely get gunned down, stabbed, or something equally as unpleasant very soon. Especially without a front door.


    ¡°Why dontcha go ahead and ruffle through those guys¡¯ stuff?¡± she suggested, once I¡¯d finished tying off the bandages somewhat inexpertly. ¡°I¡¯m sure they had some creds. Might help.¡±


    ¡°Sure. Sounds good. We¡­ we probably need to leave right after, don¡¯t we? If this group of idiots found us, there¡¯ll probably be more of them coming.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, probably. If you get me back to base, the Kittens can help.¡±


    She pulled that guilty expression again. Honestly, it was starting to make me uncomfortable. She didn¡¯t seem like the kind of woman to stress over this sort of stuff.


    I paid careful attention to my own body as I searched the gangers. Everything ached, but that wasn¡¯t surprising. The cut on my leg was giving me the most trouble. While I fought it admirably, my walk did still slip into a limp on occasion. At least there wasn¡¯t any fresh blood on my pants, so it wasn¡¯t likely that my wound had reopened.


    As it turned out, the lowlifes did have some credits. Not a lot, of course. Probably nowhere near enough money to fix up an apartment. But it was something. I wasn¡¯t all that eager to start sticking credit chips into my port, but I¡¯d go over them later and confirm. For now, I stuffed them in my backpack.


    Once I¡¯d searched the gangers¡¯ bodies, all I had to do was grab my own hidden stash of credit chips and zip them away in my backpack. I threw in a couple changes of clothes from my ruined wardrobe, just in case, and I was ready to leave.


    Really, that my life could be so easily uprooted was what hit me the hardest. I was aware of just how little I owned, of how transient my life was at the best of times, but to see proof of that¡­


    I pushed it all down and forced myself to speak casually. ¡°I¡¯m ready to go, if you are.¡±


    The look of profound pity on Mela¡¯s face totally did NOT make me want to punch her.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    ¡°What?¡± I demanded.


    ¡°Nothing, kid, nothing. Come on, help me up. I¡¯m not gonna be able to do much but hobble, but you¡¯ll be a big strong man and help me out, wontcha?¡±


    ¡°Please never call me that again.¡±


    ¡°Think about the two of us, pressed together, breathing heavy¡­¡±


    My self-control failed me.


    Ignoring her outstretched arms, I put my hand on her face and shoved. Lightly. She broke out into chuckles and refused to be knocked over, but her smile did shift from ¡®teasing¡¯ to a more genuine expression.


    ¡°This ain¡¯t the end of the world, kid. I promise.¡±


    What could I say when she decided to switch to that solemn, quiet tone? There was nothing to say. I just put her arm around my shoulder and helped her up.


    She swayed, but kept her feet. I still knew we were in trouble. I doubted she had it in her to make the entire trip, and I was struggling to support her weight already. My leg throbbed. I swear I could feel every inch of the wound that stretched across my thigh.


    ¡°You alright there kiddo? You sure the big bad man can manage a trip to our cattery?¡±


    ¡°Oh no,¡± I gasped, as dramatically as I could manage. ¡°I think my strength is failing me. Terribly sorry, but I guess I need to drop you now.¡±


    I shifted like I was about to drop her on purpose, and her arm tightened around my shoulders.


    ¡°Sorry, big bad man. Keeping my mouth shut now,¡± she pleaded, sporting a strained smile.


    I scoffed but didn¡¯t rise to her bait. Instead, I made sure she had a gun in her free hand and then slowly took us out of the apartment.


    Really, the operative word for the entire experience was ¡®slowly¡¯. A slow shamble over the various obstacles our fight had left behind, and out the door. A slow descent down the stairs, having to take a break once or twice when our wounds acted up. A slow exit through the underground garage, which I typically tried to avoid.


    If there was one thing to feel thankful for, it was that all the typical riff-raff had cleared out from down there. I saw the favorite setup of the local druggies. A fire was still crackling away inside the massive metal barrel they normally gathered around. But there wasn¡¯t a single idiot trying to visit heaven through a syringe for us to worry about. All the nearby violence must have spooked them.


    ¡°Hey, we¡¯re almost out of here!¡± Mela decided to proclaim cheerfully when we were halfway to the exit ramp.


    So, of course, we immediately heard hollering and laughter from that direction.


    ¡°What happened to staying quiet?¡± I hissed. ¡°Really? What happened?¡±


    I hurriedly dragged us over behind one of the derelict vehicles that graced the garage. The old hover car was beat up to hell and back. Even the frame looked like it might crumble away into rust if I touched it too hard. But at least it provided some cover. We managed to throw ourselves behind it and out of view just as a pack of gangers strolled into the garage like they owned it.


    Which, depending on how the clash in the streets had gone, they very well might.


    From the brief glimpse I got, they were definitely Zerx. They were all bedecked in their signature psychedelic clothes, featuring enough odd colors and shapes to trigger someone¡¯s seizures. They also had a variety of weapons in hand. I saw several shooters, ranging from impressive to pathetic, but there were also pipes and, I swear to all I hold dear, an honest to goodness katana.


    Who even used katana anymore?


    The Zerx spotted the fire barrel and cheered. Gathering around, they each claimed one of the empty crates. Then they looted the drinks and a few syringes of some filth that the druggies hadn¡¯t been in the right state of mind to take with them while fleeing.


    I, meanwhile, was focused on escaping as quickly and as quietly as possible.


    The task was difficult. There weren¡¯t all that many cars to hide behind, and our shuffle-step-shuffle rhythm wasn¡¯t the quietest thing in the world. Our luck held, but only because the gangers promptly broke out into a loud argument.


    I kept half an ear on what they were saying, then felt my blood turn to ice in my veins.


    They were discussing us.


    Apparently, the group of clowns we¡¯d left cooling in the wreckage of my apartment had called for backup before they managed to rub two brain cells together and find a way to batter my door down. This brave group of volunteers had arrived to help.


    Well, if by ¡®help¡¯, you meant ¡®happily join in the rape of the Kitten before grabbing whatever loot she drops.¡¯ Zerx: classy people, one and all.


    I put extra speed into our shuffle out of the parking lot. When we emerged outside into the chill air of a late evening, I wasn¡¯t the only one to let out a breath of pure relief. I chanced a glance at my fellow sneak, but the boiling rage in her eyes made me look away quickly and decide I didn¡¯t want to engage with her just that moment.


    I didn¡¯t really need to, either. I knew where we were going.


    Mela had referred to the Kitten¡¯s HQ as the ¡®cattery¡¯, and that was an apt description for the place. Day or night, it was rambunctious and loud, with plenty of caterwauling from gang members absolutely butchering karaoke. It was also the building most street kids watched with envy, wondering if they might one day be allowed to join ¡®the good life¡¯.


    I didn¡¯t really share their enthusiasm when it came to signing away my future to a gang, but I did know where the place was located, at least.


    We were halfway there before I attempted conversation again.


    ¡°So¡­ you guys have cookies?¡±


    Mela gave me such a confused look that I snickered. ¡°Everyone says ¡®the dark side has cookies¡¯, I explained. ¡°I have no clue what that even means, but¡­ a gang has to count as ¡®the dark side¡¯, right?¡±


    She stared a second longer, but then she chuckled. ¡°Sure, kid, we¡¯ve got cookies. I¡¯ll even see if we can drum up some milk for you. Didja even ever try a cookie?¡±


    Once. A long time ago, when my mother was still around and treats were something we could afford. Not that I was going to unveil my whole life story to a ganger I was helping against my better judgment.


    I shrugged. ¡°Eh, not really. What¡¯s it like?¡±


    ¡°Divine,¡± she teased, then changed tracks. ¡°It¡¯s sweet. You¡¯ll like it.¡±


    ¡°I bet I will. I¡¯ll at least like it more than you.¡±


    ¡°Oi.¡±


    I kept her talking, though we both kept our voices quiet. The slums were unusually deserted. Everyone had scattered when trouble reared its ugly head, and they were now safely hiding away in whatever corner they could find.


    It was a wise move, and I made sure to borrow some of that wisdom. We stuck to side streets and filthy alleys whenever we could manage, and I tried never to pick a path without some debris to hide behind if the need struck.


    And the need definitely struck. We came across another three groups of Zerx gang members, just roving around like they were itching for a fight.


    The whole thing would have been a lot trickier if they¡¯d bothered to be stealthy at all. But the Zerx were celebrating their victory in whatever clash they¡¯d had with the Kittens. We always had ample warning in the form of laughter, jeers, and even drunken singing on one occasion. Each time, we were in a decent position to duck behind cover and wait out their passage.


    When we were almost to the cattery, Mela spoke up.


    ¡°Don¡¯t go directly for the front door. See that old building with the storefront on the first floor? Head there. We use a side entrance there.¡±


    I did as she said gladly. I¡¯d been wondering how we were going to get inside the cattery when the Zerx would almost definitely be watching the main door.


    From the outside, the building looked on the verge of falling apart. But when we entered through the back, I realized it was much better appointed inside. The walls were actually in good condition, with no peeling or cracking in sight.


    The innermost room contained a shaft with a ladder to a lower level. Our injuries made that a doozy to handle. Mela went first. I helped her by scooting up to the shaft on my belly and holding onto her arms to give her extra support. Once she was at the bottom, it was my turn.


    I almost told her to leave me up there.


    After all of our shuffling, my leg was killing me. I nearly slipped once or twice when I had to put my weight on it. Thankfully, I didn¡¯t break my neck.


    Not so thankfully, once I finally made it down and turned around, it was to the sight of a grinning Mela and about two dozen guns pointed at my face.


    Joy.

 Chapter 14: With Great Prejudice

    ¡°Um, I surrender?¡±


    I probably shouldn¡¯t have made it sound so much like a question, but I was sort of panicking. I didn¡¯t even want to put my hands up. The lovely ladies and gents in front of me looked ready to interpret any movement as a hostile action.


    They stared at me for several long seconds in absolute silence.


    Then Mela began chuckling, and the guns dropped away amidst several smiles.


    I, of course, scowled. ¡°Oh, you bi¡ª¡± Mela¡¯s smile briefly turned feral, and I corrected myself quickly. ¡°You beautiful and extremely kind individual.¡±


    She laughed at that, brushing an actual tear away from her eyes. ¡°Ya looked like you were about to piss yourself!¡±


    ¡°You do remember I dragged your ass all the way out here, right? You do remember that?¡±


    ¡°Oh, don¡¯t be so dramatic. Also, ya owe me my gun back.¡± She extended her arm with a gimme-gimme gesture, but it was only when she narrowed her eyes dangerously that I sped up my slow-motion move to fetch the gun. ¡°Ahhhh yiiiis, come back to mama.¡±


    Someday, I wanted to find a girl who would look at me the way Mela looked at that gun.


    ¡°Tell me you¡¯re going to take us both to a ripper now, and that you won¡¯t spend the next hour talking my ear off about gun specs,¡± I groused.


    ¡°You wouldn¡¯t know an amazing gun if I used it to shoot ya,¡± Mela countered, but she did put the dang shooter away. ¡°And sure. Oi, you guys, ain¡¯t someone gonna help a poor girl and a kid make it back to base? No one?¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t want your brother to think we¡¯re hitting on you,¡± one of the guys shot back. ¡°And it¡¯s not that far now. We believe in you.¡±


    ¡°And I believe in my ability to shove my boot up your ¡ª¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll manage, thank you,¡± I cut in, reluctant to antagonize a whole group of gangers, even if they were Kittens. I wouldn¡¯t put it past Mela to annoy her own gang enough to shoot her.


    ¡°Awww, the kid¡¯s cute, Mela,¡± crowed another ganger, a woman this time. ¡°Way cuter than you! I¡¯d ask if he was your younger brother or something, but nothing that shares your gene could be so polite.¡±


    I shot the woman a grin as Mela hobbled over to me and gripped my shoulder for support once more. Then we were on the move again, away from the laughter and teasing of the Kittens.


    ¡°So, we¡¯re safe now?¡± I whispered once we were out of earshot, earning myself an odd look from Mela.


    ¡°Of course, kid. They tease and talk big, but trust me, none of those guys would ever do a thing to you. Boss would rip them a new one if they did, but they¡¯re also just genuinely good guys and gals. We don¡¯t make it a habit to traumatize kids.¡±


    ¡°Then how come you walk around without a mask to cover that face of yours?¡±


    ¡°Oi.¡±


    We fell into another silence then. Really, Mela¡¯s assurances shouldn¡¯t have made me feel so much better. I¡¯d known the woman for all of a few hours, and I was already willing to take her word for it, even when my safety was on the line. That wasn¡¯t ideal, and was liable to get me shot at some point, but I was way too tired to care.


    At least our destination wasn¡¯t all that far away. The Kittens apparently didn¡¯t care for making their secret tunnels unnecessarily long. One second, we were trudging through an oddly well-constructed tunnel, and the next we were greeted by a pair of guards stationed in front of a strategically small door. Then we were through the door and into a basement proper. Plenty of people were streaming around, nearly all of them sporting some kind of injury.


    Mela grabbed the shoulder of a passing Kitten.


    ¡°What¡¯s the situation like? Losses? Also, which doc¡¯s not swamped by bodies? I need a couple of things looked at.¡±


    I saw the exact moment the man realized who he was talking to. He stiffened and stood a little straighter.


    ¡°Torn¡¯s free. Come on, I¡¯ll help,¡± he volunteered, shouldering half of Mela¡¯s weight. ¡°We¡¯re doing okay. We retreated from those crazy fucks, but only because they managed to get a car-mounted machine gun somewhere. Who the fuck brings that to a street shootout?¡±


    Mela cursed loudly. ¡°Did they manage to use it?¡±


    ¡°Nah. We know to keep the collateral damage to a minimum. That¡¯s why we retreated so quickly. It kept our losses to a minimum too. We can just retake the streets another day when we wipe those scum off the face of the planet.¡±


    ¡°Good. And good work out there. I wantcha to pass that message along. I got ambushed early on and had to split, but I¡¯m proud of how ya handled it.¡±


    ¡°Thanks.¡± The man smiled dazzlingly, which had an¡­ odd effect, considering how brutish his face looked. But he seemed to genuinely value her praise.


    Now that I was paying attention, I also noticed the way people were looking at her. At first I assumed they were just weary, but it didn¡¯t take me long to figure out they were worried. For whatever reason, it seemed that Mela had both the respect and the affection of her fellow gang members.


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    It sure wasn¡¯t her acerbic tongue. I could at least say that much.


    Their worry and respect extended even further than I thought. Several visibly wounded people, with bloody bandages tied around arms, legs, or both, quickly got out of her way when we reached a certain privacy curtain. That let us go straight through to visit one Ripper Torn, a man who had way fewer artificial limbs than Glim but who freaked me out something fierce when he turned to look at us.


    It was the eyes.


    Fuck, those eyes. Eight large compound eyes. Two a bit bigger than normal on a human face, with three smaller specimens flaring around each in a triangular formation. The surrounding flesh had long since healed and scarred over fully, but it was still puckered and raised around the cyberoptics. It looked like someone had carelessly welded those eyes onto his face.


    As for the effect on his appearance¡­ well, If I ever met him in an alley at night, I was going to piss myself and then run till I passed out from exhaustion, in that order.


    ¡°Again, Mela?¡± Ripper Torn sighed. I was shocked at how normal his voice sounded. ¡°A stab wound? A gunshot wound, with the bullet still inside? Tsk. And a variety of smaller cuts and abrasions, with one that requires more extensive medical care. You never fail to disappoint.¡±


    ¡°And nothing ever gets past those eyes of yours, eh?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s why your illustrious leader keeps paying handsomely for my services. Hop on.¡± The man patted his operating chair. Grabbing a bunch of syringes and other tools, he laid them all out meticulously on a single tray. ¡°I¡¯ll need to remove that bullet first before I can do anything for you, you understand.¡±


    ¡°Go for it, Doc,¡± Mela said through clenched teeth, clearly not looking forward to what was coming.


    Torn helped her take off some of the clothes that would get in the way, then actually froze for a second when he saw the powder I¡¯d applied. ¡°Have you seen another ripper already?¡±


    ¡°Nope. Well, unless you count the squirt over there, but I don¡¯t.¡±


    I came under much closer scrutiny by the man than I would have liked, but he didn¡¯t say or do anything alarming. He just hummed in thought.


    ¡°Interesting. Well, the good news is that Glim¡¯s powder is one of the best products out there for first aid purposes. I have no clue how you got your hands on some, young man, but I¡¯d be interested in discussing the subject later. For now¡­¡±


    The doc trailed off, and the next second, his hands were moving. He clearly wasn¡¯t big on anesthesia. His scalpel made a deep incision, and before blood could even well up properly, a small pair of clamps was in and out of the wound in record time.


    ¡°As expected. Two centimeters in depth. Low caliber bullet. Bruising and mild burns in the affected area, but no signs of infection. The powder¡¯s effect, no doubt. Very good. No reason to delay your medicine, then.¡±


    An inhaler was offered up instantly. As Mela huffed in the MaxDoc, the ripper poked a syringe in her shoulder, injecting it directly into the wound. Another went into her side, near the stab wound, and the last was reserved for that bad cut she had on her hip. I watched, fascinated, as the medicine took hold.


    It wasn¡¯t exactly instantaneous healing, but it was pretty darn quick. I could literally see her flesh squirming and struggling to close over the wounds. It seemed to be eating up the remaining powder. I shuddered at the image, but I couldn¡¯t bring myself to look away.


    Torn¡¯s next words snapped me out of it.


    ¡°Your turn, young man.¡±


    My wide eyes darted to the ripper, who had a new tray in his hands.


    ¡°No need for anything fancy here,¡± he went on. ¡°Just take the MaxDoc and I¡¯ll handle your injections.¡±


    I almost refused. ¡®Almost¡¯ being the operative word. My apprehension about this odd reaper had nothing on my desire to finally stop hurting.


    Picking up the inhaler, I tried to copy what I¡¯d seen other people do on very rare occasions. I pressed down, took a deep breath in, and then nearly broke out in a violent coughing fit when the damn ripper jabbed a needle into my face. He got it done quickly, and the tingling numbness that followed was actually pleasant, but that didn¡¯t change the fact that I briefly had a needle in my face.


    Of course, I then quickly got a needle in my thigh, and in my side, and one in the arm for good measure, which confused me a little.


    The ripper must have noticed the look on my face, because he explained, ¡°Just an immunity and digestion booster. You¡¯ll feel hungrier than normal soon. I advise you to eat until you feel like you¡¯ll puke if you take another bite. It¡¯ll help with your condition.¡±


    ¡°Oooohhh, ya got one of those? Yeah, those are nasty,¡± Mela said cheerfully. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s find something to stuff our faces with.¡±


    She hopped, actually hopped, out of the ripperdoc¡¯s chair.


    It was ridiculous how much easier she was moving around already, but then I had to admit my own recovery wasn¡¯t far behind hers. I felt amazing. Better than, really. My body was listening to me properly for the first time in weeks. My various wounds didn¡¯t even twinge as I followed Mela through the Kittens¡¯ underground HQ.


    Apparently, the cattery had everything growing Kittens needed. A single flight of stairs down, we found ourselves in some kind of makeshift cafeteria. It was a huge space. A long counter blocked off one section, with cooking staff behind it. An absolutely crazy number of gangers milled about the rest of the room, which was completely open and full of tables.


    ¡°Mela! Good to see you made it!¡± a mountain of a man roared in our direction, prompting the most sincere smile I¡¯d seen on Mela¡¯s face yet.


    ¡°Garren! Good to see you too, big guy. What¡¯s it like out there?¡±


    Mela didn¡¯t bother to go fetch a meal from the kitchen staff. She just sat down with Garren at the mostly empty table, and I joined her. Immediately, another ganger stood up and beelined for the counter, loading up two platters.


    ¡°Bad,¡± Garren answered. His chemical green cybernetic eyes scanned the room constantly as he spoke. ¡°Someone really fucked it up this time. Big and small players are vanishing, left, right, and center. Everyone else seems to think the best response to that is all-out war, all the while hoping their competitors will just turn up dead. And the ones responsible¡­ Well, from what¡¯s left, this is professionals doing the work. Has to be. Some corpo¡¯s behind this, fucking trust me on this one. No one even knows what the fuck they want.¡±


    I kept my face carefully blank. They didn¡¯t know what the corpos wanted. I very much did.


    The problem was, part of what they wanted was currently sitting pretty in my skull.


    Thankfully, the ganger returned just then with two platters of food. He put one in front of me and one in front of Mela, who sent him off with a thank-you and a smile.


    I just stared at the food. Even if I knew it was all fake and might even taste like cardboard, it looked amazing. Some kind of meat, mashed potatoes, lots of salad I couldn¡¯t name, and all of it in amounts I never could have afforded a week prior.


    It was the most sumptuous meal I¡¯d ever seen.


    ¡°Fuck, that doesn¡¯t sound good,¡± Mela was saying. ¡°Any end of the trouble in sight?¡±


    ¡°As long as entire gangs keep dropping dead? Nah. It¡¯ll be chaos in the streets all the way through.¡±


    ¡°Double fuck.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± Garren turned his intense cybernetic gaze on me. ¡°Now, mind telling me who¡¯s your new friend? Since you brought him into MY house and all.¡±


    I froze with a fork-full of food halfway to my mouth.


    This wasn¡¯t just another ganger. Mela had sat me down at a table with the leader of the Kittens.


    How the hell was I supposed to introduce myself?

 Chapter 15: Guilty Conscience

    I¡¯m not ashamed to admit I couldn¡¯t find my tongue when the leader of the Kittens focused his cybernetic eyes on me. He looked like he killed hardened gangers every morning before breakfast. I definitely didn¡¯t.


    Fortunately, Mela decided to come to my rescue. Not so fortunately, she drew her chair up to mine and grabbed my head in the crook of her arm, almost squashing me into her breast.


    ¡°This little shit is the one who got me here in one piece,¡± she said, giving my neck an extra squeeze. ¡°I saved his scrawny ass yesterday, but he did enough today to put me in his debt twice over.¡±


    I was still speechless, but for an entirely different reason. For one thing, Mela¡¯s arm around my throat was cutting off my oxygen. But that wasn¡¯t the main point. Mela seemed just irreverent and wild enough to blow off anyone who did her a favor. That she was taking ownership of it, especially right to her gang leader¡¯s face, spoke volumes.


    ¡°That so?¡± Garren hummed, but the intense look in his eye eased off. ¡°Guess we owe him a favor, then! Can¡¯t have one of my favorite lieutenants getting offed in some random alley. What happened anyway? We just lost track of you.¡±


    I couldn¡¯t see Mela¡¯s face. I was still trapped against her chest, tapping her arm in an attempt to communicate that she was going to make me pass out. But the venom in her voice made it clear that she was not happy.


    ¡°One of the fucking Zerx rats managed to get me. I have no clue how he snuck up on me, but he had a knife in me before I could react. Blew his fucking head off for the trouble but ¡ª oi, kid, if you wanna nuzzle into my chest all ya gotta do is ¡ª oh, sorry.¡±


    My face was an interesting shade of blue when she finally let me go. I broke out into coughing immediately, glaring at the ganger as I massaged my throat.


    ¡°Ha! Your friend¡¯s too scrawny if a little rough love gets him like this!¡± Garren laughed, then directed his grin to me. ¡°Go ahead and eat, kid. I remember how it felt when I finally got the first good meal in me after ages, and I don¡¯t think you¡¯re much better off than I was back then.¡±


    A flush beat back the blue from my cheeks, but I did nod and dig in. I¡¯m sorry to say I practically moaned when I took the first bite. Don¡¯t get me wrong, it wasn¡¯t some premium shit from the city center. It was about as close to ¡®real food¡¯ as my left sock. But it was processed better than anything I¡¯d ever put in my mouth before, so was there really a difference?


    ¡°Look at ¡®im go!¡± Mela laughed, but her face was worried as she turned back to the gang leader. ¡°We can¡¯t just let ¡®em do this to us, Garren. We gotta retaliate somehow or they¡¯ll just keep coming at us. We need to work even harder. Our territory¡¯s a mess already, and it¡¯s only the Zerx coming after us at the minute.¡±


    The big guy sighed morosely and rubbed at his forehead. ¡°I know. I just don¡¯t want all-out war. Dammit, Mela, it¡¯s bad for business! If we pull our guys off the protection details, we¡¯ll have assholes nosing into our turf in no time. They just need to hit a few of our big establishments and we¡¯ll be bleeding money for fucking months trying to get everything fixed and set up again.¡±


    ¡°I know that,¡± the redhead snapped. ¡°But it¡¯s not like they¡¯ll stop now! They started this shit. We need to ¡ª¡±


    ¡°¡ª finish it, yes.¡± Garren sighed again. He sounded so tired and frustrated, I would have felt bad for him even if I didn¡¯t feel largely responsible for the mess in the slums. ¡°We need to kick off another recruitment round. If they¡¯re going to swarm us, we gotta replace the people we lost and get some more guns out there.¡±


    Suddenly, a pit opened in my stomach. The food I¡¯d already shoveled down my throat wasn¡¯t sitting so pretty.


    Memories from the past two days spun around inside my head. The tension and recruitment all over the streets. The attacks. What happened to Mela. Even the deserted state of the slums while everyone fought to keep their heads down and out of sight.


    ¡°I can help.¡±


    Garren¡¯s and Mela¡¯s eyes both snapped to me, making me realize I was the one who¡¯d said those words.


    ¡°I mean¡­¡± I fought down the urge to look away like a chastised child. ¡°I don¡¯t, like, want to join join, but if you need more hands out there, I can at least ¡ª¡±


    ¡°Kid, you look, what? Twelve?¡± the mountain of a man asked kindly.


    This time, when I flushed, it had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with indignation. ¡°I¡¯m almost seventeen!¡±


    ¡°Ah.¡± Clearing his throat, he glanced at Mela like he was asking her to rescue him, but she just smirked and looked away. ¡°Listen, kid ¡ª I mean, just¡­ listen. You look, eh, capable, but we don¡¯t use chi¡ª I mean¡­ Fine. I¡¯ll just say it. Whether you saved Mela or not, I need someone who looks like they can actually hold and fire a gun without buckling. Besides, you ever kill someone?¡±


    ¡°I have. Ask her.¡± I jutted my chin at the redhead, fighting the urge to cross my arms and glare. I didn¡¯t want to look like a pouting child. It wouldn¡¯t help my case any.


    Why am I doing this? I never wanted to be part of a gang!


    I knew why, of course. The new eyes in my skull were a constant reminder that I was the one responsible for this whole mess.


    I kept wondering what my mother would have thought of me. What Catill would think of me if he knew. What the countless souls stuck in the slums would do to me if it ever got out that they had me to thank for the storm raging outside their doors.


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    The guilt was eating at my insides, and fuck me, but I couldn¡¯t just ignore it. I¡¯d gladly watch plenty of the gangers burn, and laugh the whole time, but what about the kids like me? The desperate families? Everyone forced to demean themselves just to earn a few creds and feed their loved ones contaminated slop for one more meal?


    Something must have shown on my face, because Mela actually sighed instead of just dismissing me. ¡°Damn it, kid. Alright, ya wanna play big tough ganger? Let¡¯s see what yer made of first. Impress me, and I¡¯ll put in a good word with Garren here.¡±


    Garren¡¯s chemical green eyes narrowed. ¡°Mela, you can¡¯t seriously be ¡ª¡±


    ¡°I said what I said. ¡¯Sides, ye heard the kid. He doesn¡¯t want to join for real. He just wants to help out right now. Let¡¯s see if he can even stand straight after I¡¯m done with him, and we¡¯ll go from there.¡±


    Garren nodded with obvious reluctance while I put away what little was left of my meal. Guilty or not, afraid or not, I wasn¡¯t going to waste food. I was raised better than that.


    ¡°Kay then, squirt. Follow,¡± Mela ordered as soon as I was done.


    I pushed away from the table with one last glance at Garren. He was watching us speculatively with an odd look in his chrome eyes, and I wasn¡¯t sure I liked it.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± I asked, more for something to distract myself than from real desire to know.


    ¡°We have a place to train on the lower level, right next to all the rippers. Nice and safe. If someone gets opened up by accident, they can put them back together. Real handy when we¡¯re training with the knifes and such.¡±


    I blanched. Who the fuck trained with actual weapons?! Weren¡¯t they supposed to be blunted or fake or whatever?


    Mela noticed my shock and laughed, loud and clear. Then she sent me a bloodthirsty grin. ¡°Best to practice with the real thing. Can¡¯t learn to respect the fucking blade if it won¡¯t fuck you up when ye do something stupid. Didja know we had an idiot who thought he could ¡®catch the blade before it struck¡¯ him or someshit like that? It was hilarious when he tried it the first time. Torn put his fingers back on out of order and made him live like that for a week, just to drive the lesson home before he put him back together the right way.¡±


    Never fuck with Torn. Never, ever fuck with Torn.


    Message received.


    ¡°We¡¯re, uh, not going to train with knives right now, right? Right?¡±


    ¡°Look at the big manly man,¡± the frustrating woman cooed. ¡°All his bravado¡¯s gone already! What happened to talking back all the time, hm?¡±


    Well, we weren¡¯t surrounded by hardened criminals before, all of whom seem to adore you, I thought, eyes darting around at the Kittens. **Everyone we passed was happy to see Mela. Half of them were gazing at her with unconcealed bedroom eyes, while the other half just looked like they¡¯d gladly take a bullet for her.


    So I didn¡¯t dare say anything. Mela laughed at my silence, but didn¡¯t question it further.


    Really, the woman¡¯s popularity was just odd. Or at least it was until I saw the easy way she greeted everyone we came across. Sharing jokes, reassuring them that everything would be fine, and generally showing exemplary levels of charisma¡­ where was that when she was dealing with me?!


    Of course, while part of me was caught up in all that nonsense, another part took careful stock of the way she moved. Graceful, snappy, and with no pain or hitches lingering at all. I would¡¯ve been shocked if I wasn¡¯t also feeling way, waaay better myself. Not a thing was hurting, and it wasn¡¯t just because I¡¯d been stuck full of painkillers.


    While we ate, I¡¯d caught a glimpse of myself in the metal spoon. My black eye was gone. The nicks and small wounds were cleared up, too. When I¡¯d experimentally run my fingers along my thigh under the table, there was no trace of the long cut, either.


    To say my mind was blown would be an understatement. It was now high on my priority list to get some of that stuff Torn had used in the syringes, no matter the price.


    Maybe even a MaxDoc. Those miracle inhalers couldn¡¯t cure you, but they did have some odd mix of healing reagents that sped up blood clotting and general recovery. They also included a shot of adrenaline, mixed with antibiotics and several kinds of stimulants. I heard they led to one hell of a crash-out if you pushed yourself too hard after taking them, but they¡¯d get you up and keep you up for an hour or two in emergencies.


    A second wind and a second chance bottled up in an inhaler. Probably why they cost enough to feel like paying for a second life in the slums.


    While I was lost inside my head, we arrived at our destination. We first stepped into a large gym-style room that stank to high heaven of sweat, then Mela beelined for a door in the far wall. There, we found a private workout space. It was much smaller than the gym, but admittedly comfier and not nearly as smelly.


    The room already had mats laid out all over the floors. There was even a boxing bag in a corner. One whole wall was lined with racks of various equipment I didn¡¯t have the first clue how to use.


    ¡°Okay, kid. Let¡¯s see what made you so confident to ask Garren to fight alongside Kittens,¡± Mela purred as she limbered up.


    Gingerly, I slipped my backpack off and left it on the seat of one of the mystery machines. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m rea¡ª¡±


    I almost lost my recent meal as Mela buried her fist in my stomach, knocking the breath out of my lungs.


    ¡°What the fuck?!¡± I backed off, clutching my stomach and wheezing.


    ¡°Ya think Zerx are gonna wait for ya to square up? Fucking hell kid, don¡¯t make me laugh. Come on, get those arms up, we¡¯re not done.¡±


    She came at me then, and she was relentless. It was all I could do to keep my face and torso relatively safe, and I only managed that much because of ¡®my early slum experience¡¯TM.


    When we first moved to the slums, a lot of kids didn¡¯t like it that I had slightly better clothes or a mother actually willing to take care of me. Those kids didn¡¯t hesitate to make their dislike known.


    It took me a month or two of trying to hide that shit from my mother before she finally forced me to confront it. But then, with more reluctance than I¡¯d even seen from her, she taught me how to at least minimize the damage, if not effectively fight back. The little shits stopped bothering me after I managed to slog a few of them in the nose.


    Mela didn¡¯t. She just laughed and grinned at me like a feral cat. Then she swiped my legs out from under me.


    As I lay on the floor, questioning all my life choices, her face came to hover above mine. ¡°Not complete shit, kid. Didn¡¯t expect that. But do ya really want to sign on? With those skills? Fuck, kid, I saw you fire my shooter. Almost broke your wrist.¡±


    She wasn¡¯t wrong. Shooting that thing had left my arms feeling sore and strained. I wasn¡¯t about to admit that to her, though.


    ¡°Oi, stop glaring at me like that.¡± She sighed. ¡°This is for yer own good! Wouldn¡¯t give two shits if you didn¡¯t save my ass. Woulda handed you a gun with a smile on my face and let ya just get fucking shot the first time we had trouble.¡±


    Somehow, I sincerely doubted that was true. For all her bustle, Mela was the type to save a random street rat from getting his teeth kicked in.


    When I went to tell her that, though, I barely managed a wheeze.


    ¡°What was that?¡±


    ¡°My name¡¯s Adrian, you ass,¡± I gasped instead.


    She gave me this odd look before breaking into a laugh.


    ¡°Well, imagine that! It has a name after all!¡±


    I moaned in distress as she pulled me up and started dragging me off to the ripper. Even for the chance of another MaxDoc, I did not feel like being on my feet right then.

 Chapter 16: Ready, Set, Go

    ¡°So, Doc, is he gonna live?¡± Mela taunted. She was leaning against one of the ripper¡¯s cabinets, earning herself a tight-lipped look from Torn whenever the thing rattled. Which was often.


    ¡°In spite of your best attempts to ensure otherwise, yes,¡± the ripper replied, busily swabbing at all the bruises that were starting to form on my skin.


    I had no clue what kind of chemical he was using, but it both eased the sting and actually halted the bruises in their progression. That still did nothing for the bone-deep ache I was feeling in most parts of my body, but it was a start.


    By tomorrow, I might even feel halfway back to human¡­


    Garren chose that moment to burst into the clinic setup, his cybernetic eyes blazing with anger.


    ¡°We have trouble incoming. One of our scouts reported there¡¯s Zerx moving through the streets in force. They¡¯re all headed here.¡±


    ¡­or not. I sighed. I won¡¯t get to feel better, because Zerx are gonna finish me off.


    I should have been horrified by the incoming violence, but after the last few days, I just felt tired.


    Mela, on the other hand, still had enough energy for rage. The storm she cursed up actually made a couple gangers poke their heads inside the curtain in search of trouble. When they saw it was Mela and their leader, though, they quickly cleared out.


    ¡°What the fuck are those assholes doing now?! Do they have any idea what kind of numbers we can take down?!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure they care, Mela. From what the scout was saying, they all look drugged out of their minds. I¡¯m guessing they started celebrating, and¡­¡±


    The big man trailed off, but it wasn¡¯t like he needed to clarify. When you had a large enough group of druggies, all it took was one of them suggesting a stupid plan, and suddenly they were all on board.


    ¡°I already have the guys setting up overwatch points and securing all possible entrances into the building,¡± Garren went on. ¡°The good thing is we trained for this. We¡¯ll be fine.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll be fine if they don¡¯t find a way to burn the fucking building down with us in it!¡± Mela snapped. She grit her teeth, stalking around like I¡¯d seen agitated animals do in educational videos. ¡°We have no idea what they have access to. Zerx have always been a bit touched in the head, and they¡¯ve been sinking all their cash into weapons!¡±


    Garren rolled his eyes, though he did look a little worried. ¡°They¡¯re still stuck out here with us. I don¡¯t think they have anything that dangerous. Besides, the building¡¯s solid.¡±


    ¡°I know! That¡¯s why we chose it. Fuck. If they ruin my building I¡¯m gonna ¡ª¡±


    ¡°Your building? It¡¯s my building.¡±


    I watched Garren goad the redhead into a good-natured argument, marveling at how quickly she unwound. When he caught me staring, he shot me a wink, but I could only muster enough emotion to blink at him owlishly. That, apparently, was enough to remind him I shouldn¡¯t be there.


    ¡°Just a sec, Mela. Now, as for you¡­¡± He stared at me, suddenly realizing he didn¡¯t know my name.


    ¡°Adrian.¡±


    ¡°Adrian. Good name! Still, you need to leave. I can have one of my guys lead you out. The Zerx aren¡¯t close enough to threaten you if you¡¯re quick about it.¡±


    ¡°Fuck! Mela groaned. ¡°I forgot the kid!¡±


    I crossed my arms and scowled.


    Adult-like, though. I did it adult- like.


    ¡°You¡¯re under attack. This is Zerx. You really think they give a shit about who they come across? If they see me in the streets, they¡¯ll shoot me down even quicker than if they find me here. At least here, I have cover.¡±


    Personally, I thought my logic was flawless. Garren and Mela, however, were looking at me in a way that suggested otherwise.


    ¡°And that has nothing to do with the fact that ya wanted to sorta join us?¡± Mela demanded.


    ¡°No,¡± I answered quickly. From the look she gave me, a little too quickly. ¡°It just makes sense!¡±


    ¡°Listen kid, I ain¡¯t having yer blood on ¡ª¡±


    ¡°Boss!¡± A wild-eyed thug on the older side, one that looked vaguely familiar, tore open the curtain. ¡°They¡¯re closing in from all sides. Trying to box us in.¡±


    ¡°Dammit Mike, don¡¯t just ¡ª¡± Garren cut himself off, his eyes narrowing. ¡°Wait, they¡¯re organized? Didn¡¯t Tay mention they looked drugged out of their minds?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Most of them, anyway. But they¡¯re still acting way calmer than usual. Not just bluster and violence. I have no idea how.¡±


    I was still staring at the man. The name Mike jogged something in my memory¡­


    My eyes widened a second later when I recognized him. He was the one who had tried to calm me down and check how banged up I was after Mela saved my ass.


    ¡°Well fuck!¡± Mela snarled, eyes flitting towards me. ¡°They past the secret entrances yet?¡±


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    ¡°They¡¯re moving in a sizable mob, so no. They¡¯re really spreading out to stop anyone from getting out, too.¡±


    ¡°Dammit, kid, I don¡¯t know if you¡¯re my lucky charm or a trouble magnet.¡± Mela sighed in resignation. ¡°Guess he¡¯s staying, boss?¡±


    The ¡®boss¡¯ didn¡¯t look happy at all, but after staring at me for a second, he nodded. ¡°Fine. Seems that way. No reason to send him out into the slaughter at this point. Just¡­ get him added to the security network. I¡¯ll see to it that the rest of our guys are in position.¡±


    ¡°And girls! We got just as many!¡± Mela countered.


    Garren didn¡¯t answer. He just stalked off, shaking his head. He seemed disgusted with himself for allowing me to stay.


    Was he still convinced I was twelve or something? I knew for a fact gangs recruited from my age range. Younger, even, though that wasn¡¯t for fighting. You could earn good money playing mule for a gang, at least until their rival made you. Then you¡¯d just get torn apart in some alley for ¡®daring to work for their enemies.¡¯


    ¡°Come on, kid, don¡¯t get all loopy on me now,¡± Mela groused, dragging me out of the ripper¡¯s chair and back into the hallway. ¡°You wanted this,¡±


    I shook my head to focus up, because she was right. I did want it. I¡¯d fucked up and put a ton of people in danger. And while my desire to help a gang, of all people, was likely misguided, I still felt what I felt.


    ¡¯Sides, from what I¡¯d seen so far, they seemed relatively decent. The Kittens weren¡¯t known to be involved in some of the sketchier activities of the slums, either.


    If ever there was a gang I¡¯d actually feel tempted to join for safety, it would probably be them.


    I¡¯d expected Mela to take us to yet another room on the basement floor, or maybe one floor up, at most. Instead, she headed straight for a small, inconspicuous door that turned out to be an elevator.


    From the buttons available when we stepped inside, I counted a total of six floors. Mela hit the topmost button. Immediately, what would have been a metal box of death in just about any other building in the slums hissed and started moving upwards smoothly.


    ¡°I¡¯m impressed,¡± I said, glancing around. ¡°Your elevator actually doesn¡¯t look like it¡¯s going to crash and burn any second.¡±


    ¡°We have good peeps working on maintenance!¡± Mela sent me one of her smirks. ¡°Whole building¡¯s in good condition. Well, other than the shooting range, but that ain¡¯t supposed to count. We¡¯re still patching up the walls there regularly, too.¡±


    A shooting range.


    I blinked at her as I struggled to process that. Here I was, risking my ass to get enough credits for a gun and ammo to barely make it through a shootout or two, and the Kittens had a shooting range. A whole ass expensive room that required regular repair. Just to practice.


    Suddenly, joining the gang for real seemed more appealing than ever. Especially since their food was amazing, too.


    ¡°Keep staring at a girl like that and she¡¯ll think ye¡¯ve got ideas,¡± Mela purred.


    ¡°Not when the girl is you,¡± I scoffed, with as much disdain as I could manage.


    ¡°Oi! What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡±


    The elevator mercifully opened before she could close her arms around my head and start grinding her fist into my skull. I jumped out, then promptly froze.


    There were wires everywhere. They covered the floors, trailed across the ceiling, and wound over the walls like snakes squirming in a monstrously large pile.


    ¡°Heh. The look on your face,¡± Mela crowed. Slinging her arm around my shoulder, she pulled me along with her. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go meet the idiot.¡±


    The ¡®idiot¡¯ turned out to be a small, reedy man stuck inside a room with way too many monitors, keyboards, and, most impressive of all, a full immersion chair with cooling pads. I never thought I would see one of those, but there it was. A vaunted tool of beginner netrunners the world over, rumored to let them perform miracles on the net.


    It would have been a hell of a lot more impressive if it didn¡¯t stink like slum garbage. It was also obviously an older model. The leather-like material was grimy and flaking away in spots.


    ¡°What do you want?¡± was the man¡¯s polite greeting the second Mela approached his room¡¯s empty doorframe.


    ¡°Fucking lovely to see you too, Mort,¡± Mela snarled, her stance unusually rigid. ¡°I need you to add Adrian here to the network. Get it done quick, we¡¯ve got incoming.¡±


    ¡°Yes, yes, the rabble. Well, let¡¯s see his scroll, then. No, wait, those eyes¡­¡± Mort looked a lot closer at me now, his own eyes flashing with something close to avarice. ¡°Those have advanced connectivity?¡±


    ¡°Er¡­ yes? Yes, they do,¡± I corrected myself quickly, and he snorted.


    ¡°Of course they do. Because even street rats have better funding than me now.¡±


    He turned his very human eyes away from me in a huff, clacking away at one of the keyboards. I was honestly surprised to see those in this day and age. They weren¡¯t entirely phased out, but they were pretty obsolete compared to larger scrolls, not to mention more advanced tech.


    Maybe he really did have shit funding, but I wasn¡¯t about to say that with Mela in the room.


    It wasn¡¯t long before I was hit with a notification from a private network asking to sync up with my eyes. I gave permission only after exchanging a meaningful glance with Mela.


    ¡°There,¡± Mort spat the second I accepted. ¡°Done. You can scroll through the camera feeds now, and even ping the network to stream what you¡¯re seeing if you spot something important. Now get out.¡±


    Mela gripped my shoulder and led me out of the room, only speaking when we were a good distance away from the dour man. ¡°Fuck if he doesn¡¯t make me want to punch him. Every. Damn. Time.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s not very friendly, I take it?¡±


    ¡°Fuck no. No one knows his full story, other than Garren, but he was some kind of corpo runt before. Way I hear it, he fucked up something fierce, and he barely got away with the skin of his back. Lost most of that too, actually. Still managed to smuggle out that chair of his somehow. If he wasn¡¯t smart enough to refuse to train his own replacement, I¡¯d have offed him by now, but¡­ well.¡± She shrugged, looking sheepish. ¡°Not a lot of runners around here for hire.¡±


    I was willing to bet that was one hell of an understatement. In fact, now that I knew they had a runner of their own, a lot of the Kittens¡¯ success made more sense to me.


    Security between the slums and the outer district wasn¡¯t the best. Even a halfway decent netrunner could probably poke holes in it, giving a gang greater access to resources and quality equipment.


    No matter how unpleasant Mort was, I could only assume he still got treated like royalty within the gang. Course, if he ever tried to leave, he¡¯d be killed faster than he could blink. And if rival gangs found out about the runner, they would burn everything in their path to get to him.


    Such was life in the slums.


    ¡°What now?¡± I asked, instead of focusing on the topic.


    Mela sighed like I¡¯d volunteered to charge to my own death. Which, well, I kinda had?


    ¡°Now, I give ya this.¡± She shoved a gun into my hands. ¡°And then we post ya up somewhere safe. Probably gonna keep ya right next to me, really. That way, at least ya can¡¯t fuck up hard enough to get yerself and everyone around ya killed.¡±


    The critique wasn¡¯t very welcome, but the gun was. I had no idea when she¡¯d picked the thing up. It wasn¡¯t one of hers. Still, it was definitely bigger and bulkier than my Cadmus, and looked a lot more deadly to boot.


    ¡°Fifteen rounds. Smaller than mine, but, eh, don¡¯t have a decent expanded mag shooter for ya with that magazine size. Just¡­ spray and pray you hit someone, I guess. Oh, and take these, too.¡±


    The woman had entirely too many concealed pockets on her person, but when she shoved three magazines of ammo into my hands, I didn¡¯t complain at all. If anything, I was feeling safer than I ever had going into a potential disaster.


    Of course, that was the moment when a chilling combination of gunfire and coarse shouting erupted outside.

 Chapter 17: Visions of War

    The sound of bullets biting into the building¡¯s fa?ade made me flinch, but Mela just growled angrily.


    ¡°Fuckers here already? Follow me, kid.¡±


    I didn¡¯t protest as she broke into a run, less from having nothing to say and more due to the strain of keeping up with her.


    Stupid tall people with stupidly long legs.


    She led me to a stairwell and surged downwards, taking the steps three or four at a time. I almost tripped and flew right into her back. Instead, I managed to stumble into the wall. Using it to steady myself, I forced my aching body to match her pace.


    One floor down, we came upon a scene of carefully controlled chaos. Men and women were toting guns around and taking their positions. They all stayed well clear of the windows and grouped up near strange nooks in the walls.


    A simple glance revealed multiple hatches and the like set deep within these nooks, allowing the defenders to tear them open and return fire from unexpected directions. Nobody was doing so at the moment, though. The Kittens had chosen to wait and observe their enemies.


    Every so often, a few brave souls would walk up to a window, part the blinds, and peek out. Bullets immediately began to beat a rapid-fire drum against the windows whenever this happened, but the glass was holding so far, surprisingly enough.


    I shot a startled look at Mela. She answered with one of her signature bloodthirsty grins.


    ¡°Reinforced. That glass is gonna stand up to even heavy calibers for a while. Long enough to spring a fun trap, I¡¯ll tell ya that much.¡±


    I didn¡¯t doubt it. I just followed her over to one of the smaller hatches.


    ¡°Now, kid, I want ya to shoot when ya can, but don¡¯t fucking dare turn that thing in the direction of anyone around ya. Also, only step in when I need more bullets or something. Yer not a trained shot, ya don¡¯t have training to fight with us, and yer as green as they come. Just¡­ don¡¯t fuck up or get in anyone¡¯s way, ¡¯kay?¡±


    I felt that was deeply hurtful and unnecessary, but I wilted and nodded under the woman¡¯s scathing glare. Still, this did prompt me to look around for some way to contribute safely.


    The idea hit me when I saw a few gang members struggling to look at scrolls from the corner of their eyes. The scrolls did contain feeds from various cameras, after all, so a single glance could be helpful.


    It could also be dangerously distracting. But if they didn¡¯t have to look at the scrolls at all, because someone was providing overwatch¡­


    I can do this. I can figure this out.


    Quickly, I brought up the menu for my eyes and flicked through the options.


    It didn¡¯t take long for me to land on a tab marked ¡®connected networks.¡¯ It took me even less time to figure out how to open the camera feed. The second I did, though, I swayed heavily on my feet.


    The world shifted in front of my eyes as the left half of my vision was suddenly taken up by a camera feed from outside. Gangers dressed in the neon colors of the Zerx were wildly firing at the Kitten HQ from shoddy cover. Their eyes were wild, their faces fixed into a rictus of ecstasy. Some kind of Booster variant drugs, probably, from the way their veins stood out against their skin.


    My right eye could still see normally, though I did notice a whole list of cameras with small preview shots of each hovering at the edge of my vision.


    ¡°I can see the gangers outside,¡± I said quickly to catch Mela¡¯s attention.


    She looked at me in some confusion before her eyes widened.


    ¡°Oh. Your left eye¡­ it¡¯s glowing. Hrm. That could be useful.¡±


    She started giving me instructions, guiding me to the right cameras that would cover our angle of the building. There were six in total. I even figured out how to ¡®split¡¯ my view between them all. It was a bit like having six monitors stacked together, except I was being forced to watch all of them at all times. Just trying to keep track of the details like that was giving me one hell of a headache, but I convinced myself it was something I had to get used to. I also kept telling myself that it would help.


    Still, Mela noticed something was off. ¡°You okay, kid? Ye don¡¯t look so hot.¡±


    ¡°Gee, thanks. And I¡¯m fine. I just never did this before. No, don¡¯t look at me like that. I¡¯ll get used to it. ¡¯Sides, wouldn¡¯t you prefer me on camera duty instead of trying to fight?¡±


    ¡°Fair.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Just¡­ keep an eye out. Call out when they¡¯re being dumbasses and leaving cover, or if they¡¯re trying to bring in the big guns. We¡¯ll be fighting back soon enough.¡±


    I nodded, heart suddenly beating in my chest much louder than before.


    While we waited, I busied myself with watching the idiots. Really, it was a bit like seeing toddlers recklessly breaking everything around them. They were shooting wildly most of the time. Some of them even looked surprised or lost when their magazines ran empty. It was all typically mindless Zerx behavior.


    What did give me a chill was the line of much calmer Zerx hanging back. These looked way more put together, as Mike had described. Their weapons were also way higher quality. If the bigger crowd was barely using pea shooters, these guys looked like they packed heat on the level of Mela.


    When I pointed them out to her, the woman snarled and cursed. Then she ripped a scroll out of some nearby Kitten¡¯s hands so she could see for herself. ¡°Fuck. There goes my hope this is just some bunch of jumped up druggies acting out of turn. The fuckers shooting right now are just new additions and rabble. Those are the actual Zerx in the back. The guys they recruited and trained properly. I even recognize a few of ¡¯em.¡±


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    ¡°Why aren¡¯t they up front, then?¡± I wondered aloud, earning myself a look of exasperation.


    ¡°Because they¡¯re not idiots.¡±


    Garren¡¯s voice interrupted us, crackling through a set of speakers I hadn¡¯t spotted before.


    ¡°Everyone on your marks. We hit back in ten, nine¡­¡±


    As soon as Garren started to count down, all levity, nerves, and even anger fled from the gangers around me. The transformation was so quick and total that I could hardly believe it. I could only watch, stupefied, as every nearby Kitten stepped up to the hatches and prepared.


    The countdown hit zero, and all hell was unleashed.


    The hatches were torn open, and a hail of bullets rained down on the drugged up Zerx. Courtesy of my front row camera seat, I could see exactly how much devastation that caused. Blood sprayed through the air. Entire limbs were detached from the bodies they belonged to. Far too many lives were snuffed out in an instant.


    The majority of the Zerx panicked. Some even dropped their weapons and tried to scramble to better cover, but that wasn¡¯t meant to be. The few cowards who weren¡¯t gunned down by opportunistic Kittens were mercilessly taken out by their own gang members.


    I got to watch as one of the more ¡®put together¡¯ Zerx stepped out of the back line, drew a gun, and emptied a shot directly into the forehead of a fleeing druggie. The reed-thin ganger dropped, and the back line of Zerx laughed. I felt a bit of bile rise in my throat.


    Not all of the druggies were completely useless, though. There were still at least eighty men and women down there in this initial wave, and while a ton were getting scythed down, a few had enough presence of mind to look for where the bullets were coming from.


    Shot were fired back, and I just about jumped out of my skin when a spray of blood painted the floor a couple meters away from me. The Kitten screamed as he went down. Someone surged forward and dragged him back, already applying first aid. A few more people grunted when other shots grazed or hit their mark, but at least we didn¡¯t have any fatalities yet.


    Then the more experienced Zerx finally made their move.


    Cars wheeled out of alleys, interposing themselves between the attackers and Kitten bullets. Several honest-to-goodness metal barriers, each probably weighing a ton, were carried out easily by men and women whose arms and legs shone chrome. The back line of Zerx pushed forward, ruthlessly claiming their spots behind these obstacles. I even saw one of the druggies get shoved away from cover when they tried to take up the spot of a more experienced Zerx.


    These new enemies were a whole new brand of trouble. Whereas before, the Zerx fire was wild and ineffective, it was now anything but. I shouted out a warning when one of the Zerx peeked above the hood of a car with a large rifle, but it did nothing to stop the woman from firing.


    The shot ripped through one of our windows. Suddenly, I was inhaling the acrid bite of slum air as I covered my head against the glass shards raining down all around me. Mela was cursing up a storm. She fired wildly at the Zerx, but the woman had ducked away too quickly.


    Another spray of blood heralded an injured Kitten. This time, when I looked over, I was greeted by the wet gurgling of a man with a large hole in his throat. The guy in charge of playing medic did not move forward to help, and the gurgling did not last very long.


    I had to tear my gaze away from the Kitten¡¯s blank, unseeing eyes.


    The superior weaponry wasn¡¯t the only trick the new Zerx had, either. They were concentrating their fire. It wasn¡¯t long before the rest of our windows were blown out, one after the other. Kittens could no longer move around the room as freely or effectively as before. They had to edge their way carefully past these new deadly openings.


    I had no clue what the building walls were made of, other than that it was some soft, porous material. Plumes of it rose into the air whenever bullets hit the wall, but it did its job well. Instead of sending the pellets of death ricocheting around the room, the material trapped them and robbed them of their momentum, sparing us at least that one threat.


    I fumbled through the first few minutes of actual fighting. My callouts weren¡¯t slow, but they were distracting more than they were useful. I did slowly get into the rhythm of it, though, especially once I memorized all the designations Mela was hissing at me.


    ¡°C3, RED CAR, GUN THAT BITCH DOWN!¡± I screamed.


    I was rewarded by the bark of several guns, and the woman using the particularly large and deadly rifle was buried under a rain of lead. I couldn¡¯t even conjure up the sick feeling that had lingered in my chest before. I only felt a grim sort of satisfaction as the Zerx who¡¯d killed three Kittens finally died.


    Someone stepped up and took her weapon, of course, but they were at least not as precise or as lethal with it as the bitch had been.


    Mela chose that moment to duck down and back away, hand fumbling for the magazines one of the Kittens had dropped at her feet some five minutes ago. I stepped forward into her place, keeping my body pressed up to the side of the hatch as I opened fire through it. I tried to focus my shots on a spot where one of the Zerx kept peeking around his barrier, but by the time Mela was ready to switch back in, I¡¯d barely managed to scratch the metal.


    By that point, frustration had replaced my fear and nausea. I was forced to admit that Mela was right. I wasn¡¯t very useful. Not as a gun, at least. I had one Zerx to my name so far, and that was more because the idiot had stumbled out of cover straight into my shots than because I was improving as a shooter.


    I was improving. But I was also fighting through three different kinds of dizziness and a fair bit of existential dread.


    Even as Mela shoved me aside to resume her place, my vision glitched yet again. All the faces around me turned into monsters with fanged grins and molten eyes. Mela¡¯s arm was detached at the shoulder as some high caliber round pulverized most of the flesh, leaving just a few stringy pieces of skin and tendon attaching the limb to its owner.


    My vision snapped back to normal. Resisting the urge to empty my stomach, I bodily tacked Mela and pressed to the wall. She was about to bite my head off when a bullet whizzed through the air exactly where¡¯d she¡¯d been standing.


    Her eyes were wide as they stared at me, but I didn¡¯t say anything. I just crawled back to where I had been a moment before. Still scanning the cameras, still ready to scream instructions when the chance presented itself, I fought to keep myself together.


    The glitching was getting more frequent.


    It had started as a few vague flashes every now and then, just before one of the Kittens I¡¯d been fighting alongside got maimed or killed. At first, I couldn¡¯t react fast enough. I didn¡¯t even know what name to scream to warn them.


    That was slowly changing as my adrenaline ramped ever higher, the battle raged on, and I started to get to know the people fighting and dying around me. It almost felt like a curse. The second I learned someone¡¯s name, the moment I started to see them as more than a faceless Kitten, the visions came on more frequently.


    And I was often still too slow. My body and mouth could only move so quickly.


    At least the other gangers weren¡¯t questioning my attempts to help. They seemed to assume it was just part of my overwatch. Already, more than a few of the Kittens were looking at me with far more friendliness than before. Already, I¡¯d made a difference.


    Funny how none of that felt like enough.


    Of course, the universe couldn¡¯t just let me languish in my pity party. My eyes widened in alarm when I spotted four chromed out figures suddenly rush out from behind the Zerx lines, actual honest-to-goodness riot shield hefted in front of them.


    ¡°Borgs! Incoming borgs!¡± I screamed at the top of my lungs, then rattled off their lines of approach. People focused fire on them immediately, but it wasn¡¯t enough to stop the monstrosities of muscle and steel from getting way too close to the building.


    Close enough to pause in their advance before a cluster of grenades came sailing towards our broken windows.

 Shadow Immortal is now Shadow Runner

    Hey guys, we just changed the title of this series from Shadow Immortal to Shadow Runner.


    Apologies in advance if this causes any confusion. We''ll post an extra chapter tomorrow.


    Also new shoutout code, just wanted to share because it looks cool :P


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    Adrian was born a couple hundred years too late to witness humans ruling the stars. The days of relentless scientific advancement are long gone. Humanity¡¯s former cradle has become the birthplace of nightmares, so Adrian lives on a world far from Terra.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    But Adrian has a secret. His eyes are failing him, and in this age, blindness means death. When the chance arrives to earn a couple quick credits for a new pair of cybernetic eyes, he jumps on it. Only, Adrian gets more than he bargained for. With a slew of gangs, corpos, and a ruthless scientist now on his tail, he needs to do his best to survive and keep their hands off the prototype tech stuck inside of his skull.


    Oh, and his new eyes are making him see horrors beyond mortal comprehension, but no biggie¡­ right?


    Expect:


    + A world where sci-fi meets eldritch nightmares, and everyone is worse off


    + A determined MC who¡¯s out to make life better


    + A unique cyberpunk/eldritch world


    +Daily 2k+ chapters


    What NOT to Expect:


    - A story where MC has tons of plot armor


    - A story where only the MC is capable of using his head


    - Cardboard side characters


    Chapter 1: Take Me Out</a> Story Page</a>


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 Chapter 18: Hacked Off

    ¡°Grenades!¡±


    It was all I could get out as I saw eight balls of death sailing through the air.


    The Kittens reacted instantaneously. Fire shifted focus. I felt explosions rattle through me as they managed to detonate some of the grenades in midair. Three of the clusters were shot down before they could reach us.


    Two grenades sailed through one of our windows.


    Before I could even feel terror, Mela tackled me to the ground. My skull bounced painfully against the floor, but that was the least of my worries as explosions shook the building.


    My visions went absolutely insane as the flash of heat and force rolled over us. I was surrounded by grinning monsters and dying Kittens. Horror flooded my system until I couldn¡¯t feel the floor I was lying on. I couldn¡¯t move. I¡¯m pretty sure I had a seizure or two.


    ¡°¡­ fuck, kid, speak to me!¡± Mela¡¯s voice slowly broke through my daze. Once my eyesight cleared, I saw her worried face leaning over me.


    I blinked up at her. ¡°Wuh?¡±


    ¡°Thank fuck. On your feet. Now. Now!¡± she screamed, pulling me up and pressing me against the wall.


    I finally got to look around and take in the devastation the grenades had wrought. Honestly? It wasn¡¯t that bad.


    Well, ignoring the blood and viscera scattered all over the place.


    ¡°Uric, Tip, and Bethany jumped on them. Fuck. They jumped on them,¡± one of the Kittens, the medic, ranted in Mela¡¯s direction.


    Mela herself seemed stuck between rage and resignation, but it didn¡¯t take her long to choose ¡®pissed.¡¯


    ¡°Back to your posts! Back to your posts now! Punish those fuckers!¡±


    That finally reminded me to check the camera feeds properly again. For a second, I just stared in surprise. I saw only two borgs struggling to cover the remaining distance between them and the HQ. The other two were gone, and there were two suspiciously fresh craters on the street below, still smoking.


    Just about every Kitten¡¯s gun was focused on the two borgs, who were struggling to continue their advance. Their metallic bodies strained against a literal hail of bullets. The riot shields, no matter how good, were starting to chip and crack.


    Then one of the brutes threw caution to the wind with a scream.


    He dropped the shield, covered his head with his harms, and broke into a dead run. His feet left actual indents in the ground as he covered the last few meters. Just as I thought he might actually manage to burst through the front doors of the HQ, a high caliber bullet caught him in the knee.


    It must have hit something incredibly vital, because the metal limb exploded. Still, the brute had enough momentum to throw himself forward. While the camera angle was awkward for me, I guessed he planted his face on the building¡¯s wall about a meter away from the doors.


    The angle was awkward for our shooters, too. They couldn¡¯t take him out. Terror started to rise in my chest. I was convinced the borg would live until he managed to find his way inside somehow.


    I was wrong.


    I sucked in a sharp breath when a Zerx bullet caught the back of the man¡¯s skull, obliterating his head. My shock then quickly turned to horror when the borg¡¯s body detonated with enough power to shake the building¡¯s foundations.


    Smoke and dust billowed up into the air, blocking the camera. When they cleared a few seconds later, I could make out the edges of a massive hole in our HQ.


    The Zerx had an opening, now. A very real, very visible opening.


    I was already screaming a warning when more vehicles emerged from behind the Zerx. Just two, this time, careening directly for the opening the borg had made in our wall. The second borg was still out there as well, though he had crouched down when his buddy exploded. He cowered desperately, trying to present as small a target as possible for all the people shooting at him.


    Someone in the building must have had enough of the worsening situation. Grenades began to sail out of the HQ at both the approaching vans and the borg.


    The second borg didn¡¯t fare any better than the first. The explosion of his death was only matched by the detonation of his own body in response. Another grenade rolled directly under one of the armored vans and blew up the entire front half. What was left of the vehicle swerved to the side and tipped over, spilling out blood, body pieces, and a remarkable number of living Zerx who¡¯d apparently been packed into the back like sardines.


    The other vehicle was more successful.


    It got through the kill zone, then vanished from my view when it tore through the opening the borg had made in the wall.


    ¡°Fuck. Fuck!¡± Mela screamed, frustration rolling off her visibly.


    When she opened fire again, she did so wildly and with no regard for aim. Funnily enough, she still managed to be just as deadly. Her shots clipped one of the Zerx when he peeked a bit too far over his barricade. The man toppled over into the street, where he was promptly finished off.


    Mela yelled at the top of her lungs as she continued venting her emotions in bullet-form. ¡°Keep at them! Kill all the fucks!¡±


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    I hesitated for just a second, but my curiosity refused to be held back for long. I kept three of my six viewpoints trained on the outside, prioritizing the cameras which were focused on the thickest clumps of Zerx fighters.


    The other three, however, I quickly scrolled through until I found the cameras on the inside of the ground floor.


    The place was a mess. Plaster, blood, and bodies littered the floor. The van had driven straight across the room and into a wall. It had caught at least two Kittens between those points, if the blood trails and corpses were anything to judge by.


    The Zerx had already started spilling out of the vehicle, shooting all around them blindly. They weren¡¯t being very effective, and the defenders were using their superior positioning to gun them down fast,  but I still saw several Kittens falling.


    ¡°They¡¯re in, but they¡¯re not doing great. Our guys are moving through them,¡± I narrated quickly, only half-aware I was even doing it. The news did the trick, through. Most of the Kittens relaxed noticeably, and both their rate of fire and their accuracy went up.


    There was no one keeping an eye on scrolls at that point. The overwatch had been delegated to me some time ago when my effectiveness was proven. That meant I was the only one who got to see two more borgs emerging from the van inside of our HQ.


    Somehow, I felt disinclined to share that little tidbit. No sense in triggering a panic.


    Before my own panic could properly set in, actual turrets descended from the ceiling of the room. Four of them, one for each corner, with double barrels thicker than my wrist. They opened fire, and¡­ well, the borgs didn¡¯t last very long at all.


    I felt my lips curl into a vindictive smile as I watched the turrets light up the van, absolutely obliterating another regular Zerx that tried to slip out. The man¡¯s sacrifice did let them drag one of the double doors shut, though, and soon another brave sacrifice managed to close the van, which was standing up to the turret fire frustratingly well.


    That didn¡¯t stop me from trying to bolster our morale.


    ¡°Turrets have them boxed in! Most of them are dead already, but the leftovers are trying to hide in the van. I don¡¯t think they¡¯re very happy they made it inside!¡±


    Cheers and bloodthirsty hollers answered my claim. For just a few moments, it truly felt like we were close to wrapping things up.


    The Zerx on the outside were dwindling. A ton of their people had gotten pinned down by defenders, thanks to all the height and positioning advantages. Their borgs seemed to be down, even if they had left a hole in our wall and repainted the bottom floor. The van was managed.


    Then I felt the oddest shiver crawl down my spine.


    It felt like I¡¯d just dipped my toes into ice cold water, or like that one time I¡¯d spotted a guy stalking me when I was ten. It was pure dread brought on by deep primal instinct, the kind of feeling that just couldn¡¯t be captured in words. I¡¯d never been able to describe it.


    I could definitely describe what happened next, though.


    A line of crackling electricity zapped up to one of the cameras I was using and booted me out of it. And I wasn¡¯t just mentally aware of it, either. That electricity was a physical experience. I felt it stab through my eye as it severed my connection to the camera.


    I doubled over with a groan, clutching at my left eye, but the feeling didn¡¯t abate. It stretched out. This time, it claimed two cameras at once, for double the agony.


    Then I felt it race deeper into the building and up its sides, gaining in speed and power. I desperately tried to pull away, but the thing was spreading too fast. The discombobulating sensation it left in its wake prevented me from doing anything other than slumping to my knees.


    Helpless, I experienced each new link in the growing net of wrongness. I felt it spread through our cameras and infect the turrets. Then, languidly, like it was relishing the moment, the infection reached out to people. I felt it claim every cybernetic on the lower floors. I felt eyes going blind. I felt hands and legs seizing up, going into convulsions, or even threatening to strangle their owners.


    Higher and higher up the building it went, sweeping through and into the netrunner¡¯s suite above us, as well as into me.


    I was only vaguely aware of Mela screaming my name, barely even felt her hands close around my shoulders. My mind was entirely consumed by the glitching kaleidoscope of my vision as it fractured into something foreign and entirely inhuman.


    The cybernetic organs were rapidly heating up, and as they did, the chaos in my visions grew and expanded. I saw spots of black so deep and alien, they could never belong within our reality. Colors the likes of which I¡¯d never seen, spilling over and into each other. Creatures, wrong and inhuman and with grins too large and too pointy, grins which opened into devouring holes of infinity speckled with far too many eyes.


    My brain hurt. My mind hurt, threatening to fracture into a billion little pieces as that feeling of creeping electricity struggled against the safeguards that must have been placed on my eyes.


    The electricity won. My eyes fizzled one final time, and shut off.


    Then, just as the infection rose up to swallow me completely, I felt the crackling line of electricity go taut¡­ and then it snapped.


    One second I was spasming out on the floor, utterly blind. The next, I blinked ¡ª and looked up into the worried eyes of Mela, whose hands were gently cradling my cheeks.


    ¡°Don¡¯t fucking die on me, kid. Not again. Please not again.¡±


    She brushed her fingers under my eyes with a gentleness I had trouble associating with the woman. When she lifted them away, I realized they were stained red.


    Blood. My blood.


    ¡°Is it me or did I just get hit by a lightning strike?¡± I tried to say, but all that came out was a garbled moan.


    Still, that was enough to make Mela¡¯s face light up. ¡°Fuck, kid, ya freaked me out. Up with ya, but gently! Gently!¡± she hissed when I tried to sit up too fast. ¡°Let¡¯s get ya propped up against the wall, and Ravs will see ya in a second. Don¡¯t try to do anything, ¡¯kay?¡±


    I couldn¡¯t have tried shit even if I wanted to. I just collapsed against the wall, letting my head thunk against it. The bit of pain from that failed to register compared to the mother of all headaches currently raging inside my skull.


    My eyes, too, felt oddly¡­ tender? That wasn¡¯t really the word for it, but they were strained. The way my failing set had felt whenever I forced them to stare at a screen for hours on end.


    A tiny bit of panic shot through me. Still, all I had to do was open my eyes and sweep them over the room to reassure myself that my vision was as unnaturally keen as it had been since I¡¯d made the switch. I could only hope that whatever had just happened hadn¡¯t damaged anything permanently.


    That thought prompted me to try and connect to the cameras again. The effort hurt, at first. It felt like I was poking at an open wound, and the connection was slow to establish itself.


    It did work, however, and I was treated to the sight of waning chaos. The turrets must have turned against their owners. More than a few Kittens were laid out in pieces.


    In spite of that, the van was finally cracked open. I got to see a few Kittens emerge from it with satisfied looks on their faces, so I could only assume all the attackers were well and truly dead. On the inside of our HQ, at least.


    The attackers on the outside were still there, but they looked hesitant and confused. Some had stepped freely out from their cover and advanced a fair bit before getting gunned down for their trouble by the Kittens recovering from the chaos. Those who hadn¡¯t rushed in weren¡¯t pleased at all.


    Whatever had happened, I could only assume it was some kind of plan on their part. A netrunner of their own, perhaps? Those were rare in the slums, but¡­ well, the Kittens had one.


    The Zerx had attacked with confidence. They were expecting to win. Assuming not all of their leaders were idiots, it made sense that they had something to rely on, some card up their sleeves meant to ensure their victory. Of course, that left me with a burning question.


    Why did the attack stop?

 Chapter 19: Blood Price

    No one gave me answers, at least not at first. The Kittens had other matters to attend to. They were angry and had plenty of adrenaline roaring in their veins.


    So, was it really any surprise that their swift retaliation was a thing of both beauty and ferocity?


    Bullets were used like they didn¡¯t cost a thing. Once the Zerx remnants started to pull out, some of the Kittens organized a counteroffensive.


    Garren was in the lead. The big man charged out of the HQ following a line of our own borgs with riot shields. I was shocked to spy an old-fashioned two hander sword in the gang leader¡¯s hands. At least, until the blade began to vibrate and its edges started glowing red-hot.


    A thermal weapon. Somewhat crude, if I wasn¡¯t mistaken, but a thermal weapon nonetheless.


    My theory was proven correct when Garren stepped up to one of the Zerx barricades and cleaved right through it. The blade went through the steel like a hot knife through butter, and the body of the Zerx behind it didn¡¯t fare any better.


    I was just as shocked to then see Garren grip the barrier by one of its incredibly hot edges where his sword had cut through. Lifting it, he hurled the damn thing with enough strength to make it bury itself in the back of a fleeing Zerx.


    The secret behind that little trick was revealed when he flexed his hand afterwards and I spied some melting synth skin stretched over metal. Cybernetics, then. Cybernetics of a high enough quality to masquerade convincingly as natural limbs, too.


    Either crime really did pay exceptionally well, or Garren had been very important before he decided to set up in the slums and start the Red Lions.


    I had just enough energy to narrate the events going on outside to the gang members stuck in the room with me, to much cheering and support. Mela did grumble about how she¡¯d told me to rest, but she didn¡¯t really press the issue.


    Ravs found me not long after I watched the Kittens dispatch the last of the Zerx. The medic gave me a couple painkillers, squinted at my eyes a bunch, then shrugged and told me I¡¯d need to see a ripper if I wanted to get them properly checked out. Preferably Torn, since the ripper was apparently the best the Kittens had.


    Ironically, I found myself wishing I could go visit Glim. Sure, there was always a risk he might decide he was through with me and harvest my organs, but his weird extra limbs were preferable to the freak show that was Torn¡¯s eyes.


    But did I really need to see a ripper at all? I was feeling a ton better already. Even the sluggishness that had briefly plagued my eyes¡¯ functionality was fading.


    I opted to put off the doctor¡¯s visit.


    Instead, I rested, sitting in the same spot I¡¯d occupied through most of the fight. I only stirred when I saw the Kittens, led by Garren, drive one of the Zerx vehicles closer to the HQ, then shuffle a roughly human-shaped bundle out of it.


    For some reason, I felt an intense burst of curiosity wash over me at the sight.


    ¡°Come on, something interesting¡¯s happening down there,¡± I mumbled at Mela, only swaying a little when I got to my feet.


    She scowled at me, but she was clearly just as curious as I was. The two of us piled onto the elevator and set it to the ground floor.


    We just missed the excitement. One of the Kittens lingering inside the ruined space directed us down to the basement and Torn¡¯s section of the clinic. Apparently, Garren had something he wanted the ripper to check out, so everyone had piled on down there.


    The sight of the bottom floor did dampen our excitement and curiosity a little before we headed to the basement. Compared to the number of bodies respectfully laid out in a corner of our room upstairs, the ground floor was a slaughter.


    There were far too many human bits all over the place. The Zerx bodies alone made up a whole pile. The smell was such that I thought I¡¯d never want to eat again. Piss, much worse kinds of human waste, coppery blood, and an underlying stench of scorched meat all mixed together into an olfactory assault of altogether unholy proportions.


    When we final made our way down to Tron¡¯s clinic, we were desperate for anything to take our minds off of that.


    ¡°What happened, boss? Little scout here says ya had some excitement going on at ground level.¡± Mela tried to butt into things with her usual cheerfulness, but her grin was brittle and there was a tremulous edge to her voice.


    Garren staunchly ignored both, offering us a tense smile. ¡°Scout? And yes, that¡¯s about right. We found who we think was the Zerx runner. Fucker just about had us there by the end. We found Mort passed out in his setup. We managed to wake him up, but he¡¯d apparently only had time to jack out before the enemy runner burned him out. He¡¯s not in a good way, but he¡¯ll make it. Our friend here, however¡­¡±


    He motioned at the runner who was most likely responsible for the attack, currently laid out on Torn¡¯s operating chair.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    Most of him was perfectly intact. He was even in that silly full body suit that runners always wore on shows. It looked clean and spotless, a far cry from Mort¡¯s own gear. His face, though¡­


    That was a thing of nightmares.


    His muscles were frozen in a rictus of shock and pure terror. His eyes has been clawed out, deeply. It almost looked like someone had tried to get at his brain through the fleshy orbs that just happened to be in the way. Tracks of blood and all sorts of other matter stained his cheeks.


    Even more horrifying were his hands. The blood and bits of viscera stuck to his fingers and under his nails clearly suggested the man had killed himself.


    Torn was humming around him with an array of tools and scanners. His concentration was so intense, he actually missed Garren¡¯s first three attempts to catch his attention. It was only when the big man shouted his name that the ripper snapped out it.


    He cleared his throat sheepishly. ¡°Repeat that?¡±


    ¡°I said, can you tell us why this happened?¡± Garren growled. ¡°He was winning. Mort was out. What the fuck made him decide he wanted to remove his own brain so much?¡±


    The ripper shrugged. ¡°As far as I can tell¡­ nothing. I can detect incredibly high levels of adrenaline and associated hormones in his system, which does suggest he was under enough duress for his heart to pop if the condition had persisted. But as for why he¡¯d kill himself? I have no more idea than you do.¡±


    ¡°Well that¡¯s¡­ not great. Is there any chance whatever happened to him might happen to us?¡±


    The look of pure disdain Torn shot Garren was a thing worth immortalizing for future generations to ponder.


    ¡°I¡¯ve detected no noticeable signs of a memetic hazard. Most tellingly, the fact that we¡¯re not all clawing out our own eyes as we speak. So, no. It¡¯s unlikely that whatever happened to this runner is contagious. Faulty equipment would be my best bet, since you said his entire setup was fried. He probably wasn¡¯t ready to handle the strain it took for him to support a hack this widespread and powerful, especially off of whatever nonsense he¡¯d managed to scrap together and stuff inside a van.¡±


    Everyone relaxed a little, though the mere mention of a memetic hazard had put us all on edge. Those were not something to joke about. But then again, they were incredibly rare and petered out quickly on a world like ours. Not to mention they wouldn¡¯t be much of an issue inside the slums of all places, what with our general lack of cybernetics and direct net connectivity.


    Still, no one liked to think about a mental plague that could twist normal people into any number of different abominations. Not abominations of flesh, perhaps, but abominations all the same.


    ¡°Good. That¡¯s good. I¡¯m also happy to see you two are fine,¡± Garren said belatedly, glancing at me and Mela. ¡°This was no place for a kid. And your brother¡¯s gonna be pissed enough already that he missed this shit. Would be way worse if I had to tell him his baby sister got killed on my watch.¡±


    Garren grinned as Mela sputtered, and some of the tension drained out of the room. At least until Mela rallied and pointed an accusing finger at me.


    ¡°We¡¯re not all fine. This guy passed out on me and went into some kinda seizure. I wanted to have ya check him out, Doc.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m fine! It was just because of my eyes! I think the runner got ¡¯em before he, er, expired,¡± I protested, but Torn was already pulling me into another chair. Less because he was worried about me, I¡¯d wager, and more because he didn¡¯t want to miss the chance to inspect my cybernetics.


    To my surprise, Garren came to my defense. ¡°He¡¯s got a point. I went into a spasm too, and my vision cut out.¡±


    ¡°Yes, well, didja bleed from your eyes, too? Because he did,¡± Mela snapped.


    That shut Garren up. His own eyes widened as he stared at mine, analyzing the traces of blood on my cheeks.


    ¡°Erm, maybe he took it worse because he¡¯s so young?¡± he offered up weakly, but his heart wasn¡¯t in it.


    Still, while Torn prodded at me, I couldn¡¯t help wondering why Garren was sticking up for me at all. I narrowed my eyes at the gang leader while he was looking at Mela, but other than a slightly stiff posture, I couldn¡¯t glean anything.


    ¡°There is nothing physically wrong with him,¡± Torn declared. ¡°Some light irritation due to heat, likely when his eyes were getting hacked. This does suggest a higher level of cybersecurity than I¡¯d expect to see in the skull of a street rat, but he¡¯s otherwise fine. His eyes are undamaged and fully functional.¡±


    With that, I was ushered out of the chair and out of the room as well. There were plenty of wounded people for Torn to tend to, apparently. He couldn¡¯t waste time on perfectly functional ignoramuses.


    Not his exact words, but it was heavily implied.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s that.¡± Garren brushed his fingers through his hair. He was very pointedly not looking at Mela when he spoke next. ¡°Look, kid, you did well. Maybe not with direct combat and all, but from what people were telling me, you kept it together and supported our guys when it counted.¡±


    Mela glared at him, but I just blinked.


    What is he saying?


    ¡°So, the thing is,¡± the gang leader bulldozed on, shooting me a wry grin, ¡°I¡¯d be open to accepting you on a permanent basis. Fuck if we didn¡¯t lose enough good men and woman today to need fresh blood.¡±


    ¡°Ya can¡¯t be fucking serious! Look at ¡®im! He¡¯s so fucking skinny he might keel over if you give him a gun too large!¡±


    Mela broke into a tirade, but I could barely hear her.


    I was being offered a spot in the Kittens. Me. Street rat extraordinaire.


    Kittens didn¡¯t just recruit rabble, like most other gangs did. You had to actually contribute something for them to want you.


    And Garren wanted me.


    Though I¡¯d always hated the idea of joining a gang, though I knew it would complicate my life in a million different ways¡­ well. I¡¯d just gotten a ton of proof that going at it alone was likely to get me killed eventually. The slums were teeming with chaos, and whether people knew it or not, it was centered on me. If whoever I¡¯d stolen from ever got close to finding me¡­


    ¡°I¡¯m in,¡± I said loudly, drawing the eyes of both Garren and Mela. Garren looked pleased. Mela looked more than a little pissed.


    ¡°We¡¯re happy to have you!¡± Garren boomed before Mela could get a word in. We¡¯ll need to put some meat on those bones of yours, and you¡¯ll need to learn how to actually shoot, but¡­ for now, just get some rest. There¡¯s plenty of cleanup to do, and no one¡¯s going anywhere until we¡¯re sure it¡¯s safe out there. Should only take a couple days, but better safe than sorry. Zerx have a habit of lingering even when they¡¯re beat.¡±


    I nodded eagerly, not at all ready to venture outside any time soon. I¡¯d need to come up with some excuse and then message Catill, but that was preferable to running across pissed off gangers. I could just tell him the truth, anyway: war in the streets, chaos all over the place. Not even the old codger would want me to brave that just for work.


    I was just starting to feel properly hopeful about my future when Mela¡¯s hand clamped down on my shoulder. I looked up into a decidedly fanged grin.


    ¡°A little Kitten now, eh? Fine. We¡¯ll get ya ready to claw up the streets, then.¡±


    Oh, that doesn¡¯t sound good at all.

 Chapter 20: Lower Tides

    I jerked my head to the side, barely dodging a blow that would have rocked my world and put me out of the fight. I kind of wanted to let it happen, really. Just bite the dust and get some fucking rest already. Yet something pushed me to keep moving, to keep gulping down breath after breath of stale, dank air.


    The world glitched. Time jumped forward, and a monster with a smile to die for buried their fist deep in my stomach.


    I blinked hard. My vision cleared, but things refused to improve. The only difference was that the monster now had the grinning face of Mela.


    Even with the warning from the vision, I couldn¡¯t do a damn thing to dodge the coming blow. My body was lagging. My thoughts were more sluggish than one of the druggies you¡¯d see slowly rotting away in an alley.


    The only reason darkness wasn¡¯t already creeping into my vision was because my new eyes simply refused to let that happen. Oh no, I was forced to witness the full glory of a punch propelled by expertly maintained muscles as Mela¡¯s fist knocked my last remaining breath out of my body.


    I would have thrown up if I hadn¡¯t done that three times already. Instead, I got to dry heave and squirm on the ground as the sadistic redhead stood over me, cracking her knuckles.


    ¡°Well? Are you feeling like a proper Kitten yet?¡± she taunted.


    ¡°Lovin¡¯¡­ it¡­¡± I wanted to spit the words at her, but I barely managed to gurgle them out. ¡°Go¡­ spar¡­ Gar-ren.¡±


    Mela narrowed her eyes for just a moment. Then she laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls of the small private gym. I scowled fiercely.


    Five days. Five. Days.


    Entirely too long a period to be treated as a scratching post by a frustrated Kitten lieutenant. Just because she disapproved of accepting ¡®kids¡¯ into the gang for their own sake, did she have to take it all out on me?


    Well, fine. I had to admit that wasn¡¯t all she was doing. Sure, she pushed me to the brink of collapse every time we sparred, but then she¡¯d drag me back into the world of the living by pawning me off on Torn. Then she¡¯d sit me down at the cafeteria and force me to scarf down way too much food.


    I actually threw up on day one, and she caught flak from both Ravs and Garren. That was when I desperately made my plea. I told her I had shelled out plenty of credits for Reality Enhancement software, and that it could offer me the perfect diet regimen to get my body back in shape. It could even account for any training regimen, if I fiddled with the setting.


    I came to bitterly regret sharing that information.


    Mela was ecstatic. From then on, no matter how hard she pushed me, she could brush it off. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± she kept saying. ¡°Ya have RE software tracking yer condition.¡±


    She was right. Sort of. Unfortunately, the software also happened to be a major source of stress for me.


    Adrian Flinn


    Strength: 0.6


    Dexterity: 0.7 ¡ú 0.8


    Vitality: 0.5


    Recovery: 0.4 ¡ú 0.5


    Stamina: 0.8 ¡ú 0.9


    Soul: 1 ¡ú 1.2


    Adaptability: 1


    Tolerance: 1


    Essence: 0.1


    Mind Synchronicity: Minor Instability ¡ú Growing Instability


    Most of the stats were fine. Better than fine, really. Lots of good food followed by brutal exercise actually seemed to be doing something for me.


    Unfortunately, that final entry loomed large in my mind, and for a very good reason. ¡®Growing Instability¡¯ was an all too appropriate description of what was happening to me. Whatever my condition was, it was definitely in flux, and not towards a positive outcome.


    That first night after all the fighting was done, my sleep was plagued by nightmares. I couldn¡¯t remember everything about them. What I could remember was the sensation of being more than flesh. I moved through the world as a shadow that refused to conform to that world¡¯s laws, twisting, growing, shrinking, and adapting as necessary to hunt my prey.


    The sheer freedom of it was intoxicating. The excitement of the chase left me all tingly. And then it all came crashing down when I caught sight of my face in a mirror: a wispy, dark face with no discernable features other than an all-too-wide grin, and red eyes glowing like hot metal.


    I gasped awake, shaking and sweating like I¡¯d run a marathon. My mind was such a mess that it took me a while to notice all the¡­ inconsistencies.


    Just past the edge of sight, remnants from the dream still lurked. Glowing lines occasionally flashed past me. Shadows stretched just a little too far. Fanged grins or red eyes gleamed in the corner of my vision.


    They¡¯d all flee when I tried to focus on them, leaving me to wonder if I really was losing my grip on reality. Then again, the stat page had already answered that question, hadn¡¯t it?


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The only minor comfort in all the madness was that it didn¡¯t seem like I was losing my wits for nothing. Sure, the shadows were disturbing. I began to consider clawing my new eyes out every time I tried to go to sleep. But despite their terror, the glitches I was experiencing seemed to be trying to help me.


    It didn¡¯t trigger every time. Not at first. But sometimes, when Mela came at me with some real aggression behind her hits, my eyes would glitch out. Then I¡¯d get a little hint as to what kind of pain she was planning to inflict on me.


    It was mere flashes at first, there and gone too quickly to be of much use. But the more practice I got, the more reliable those flashes became. And the more serious Mela was about hurting me, the more stark and informative the visions were.


    It got to the point that Mela actually looked at me with something close to approval one day after a particularly grueling session.


    ¡°Listen, kid¡­ I ain¡¯t gonna lie to ye. Yer not great at this. Throw on at least twenty more kilos and a fair bit of muscle, and maybe you¡¯d actually be able to do something to fight back. That instinct ye¡¯ve got, though¡­ now that¡¯s valuable. It¡¯s almost like yer moving before I try an¡¯ hit ya sometimes! Keep at that, and ye¡¯ll be useful out on the streets way sooner than I thought.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t exactly a glowing review of my potential as a fighter, but it was also the most praise I¡¯d managed to wrangle out of Mela thus far, so I decided to take my wins where I could get them.


    The world didn¡¯t stop turning just ¡¯cause I was getting the shit beaten out of me on the daily, of course. Garren kept the gang on high alert for the first few days after the fight. Still, the longer we waited, the more it seemed like things were tentatively dying down.


    Our scouts reported as much. Most gangs had let their stupid blood thirst run its course and were now licking their wounds, eying each other like they expected the next blow to come down any second. Even the string of mysterious slaughters, the work of what I assumed was the Reapers¡¯ previous benefactor, had stopped.


    When we went two whole days without hearing about another gang mysteriously wiped out overnight, it really started to feel like things could go back to normal.


    Shortly after that, Garren released most of the fringe Kitten members back to their homes. He sent them out with orders to report and retreat to the HQ if anything suspicious happened or a rival gang tried to make a play against them.


    A day after that, I stumbled downstairs from the shared sleeping space on the second floor to find Mela waiting for me outside the cafeteria. She held a wrapped sandwich in one hand and was hurriedly stuffing her face with another.


    ¡°You good?¡± I asked doubtfully as the redhead choked and sputtered.


    She managed to swallow and answer in a reedy voice. ¡°Yeah. Let me grab some water. Fuck, that went down the wrong way¡­ Anyway, munch on this and I¡¯ll be right back.¡±


    She shoved the wrapped sandwich into my chest and fled.


    The sandwich was good, much like everything else Feyo¡¯s team of cooks produced for the gang. The painfully thin, jolly man was one of the reasons people insisted on taking their meals in the HQ, or even living there full-time. If Garren ever let something happen to the cook, he¡¯d probably have a violent revolt on his hands.


    Mela was still coughing when she returned, nursing a bottle of water. ¡°Sorry for the wait,¡± she quipped. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    I fell into step with her easily, still enjoying my sandwich. I wasn¡¯t just content to follow blindly, though.


    ¡°You planned something special for today? You shouldn¡¯t have. You know I enjoy our dates regardless,¡± I teased, earning myself a fond eyeroll from the redhead.


    ¡°Ye wish. But yeah, I do have something planned.¡±


    When I realized she was leading me out of the HQ, I felt my body stiffen and my breath start to come a little more quickly. It didn¡¯t make much sense. I hadn¡¯t even spend a full week there. But somehow, in that time, the HQ had become my safe space. Everything outside was dangerous.


    I knew that wasn¡¯t quite true, of course. Still, it was hard to argue with those feelings when the weird glowing lines and shadowy figures suddenly multiplied in the corner of my eyes, both lurking just out of sight.


    I blinked. Hard.


    ¡°And you¡¯re not tell me where we¡¯re going because¡­?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a surprise. I figure it¡¯s the least I could do after¡­ everything.¡±


    Mela¡¯s voice was uncharacteristically solemn. I kept my mouth shut, even if my sandwich no longer tasted so great and I desperately needed a sip of water myself.


    If Mela noticed my growing anxiety, she never acknowledged it. Not when we reached the same narrow entrance we¡¯d used to sneak into the building, or when we climbed up the shaft to street level, or even when we put a solid distance between us and the HQ.


    Really, it was a bit embarrassing how long it took me to realize we were heading towards my apartment building. Or, well, our apartment building. I kept forgetting Mela had chosen to live there too, much to Garren and her brother¡¯s frustration, if gang gossip was to be believed.


    I still hadn¡¯t gotten to meet her brother. I¡¯d only learned recently he was out of town on gang business, the thought of which I found both daunting and exciting.


    Once I knew our destination, it was easier to push past the doom and gloom. I tried to focus on keeping pace with Mela. The walk itself was pretty great, honestly. It was amazing to feel my body glide along without pain, exhaustion, or hunger weighing me down.


    ¡°You know, it¡¯s weird to just be out and about like this,¡± I eventually admitted, trying to sound like I was joking. ¡°It feels like I should expect trouble. Like Zerx are going to jump out from around the corner and try to riddle us with bullets or something.¡±


    ¡°I know it¡¯s not a nice thing to hear, but¡­ ye¡¯ll get used to it. Or ya won¡¯t, and ye¡¯ll choose to walk away from this life. Either or. Not gonna judge ya regardless. Fuck knows I tried to convince Garren to chase ye off enough times.¡±


    This should have bothered me, but she sounded so sad and resigned that I couldn¡¯t muster up any anger.


    ¡°I keep saying it, but I only look young. I really am almost seventeen. For the slums, that¡¯s¡­ well, not old, but¡­ Oh, you get it.¡±


    ¡°I do. I do, and I hate it. Don¡¯t mean it¡¯s right, the way things are at the moment. Even if they¡¯ve been this way for a long time.¡±


    I could only sigh, because I really wasn¡¯t about to argue against that. So, it was in a much more companionable silence that we reached our shared apartment building.


    Once again, I felt a thread of¡­ tension. That was one word for it.


    This time, though, it had nothing to do with potential ambushes. I was walking towards the most tangible inheritance I¡¯d gotten from my mother. An inheritance that was thoroughly soiled when those fuckers bust down my front door and ruined my apartment.


    Except, when we finally reached my floor and my eyes drifted over to the familiar doorway, I froze.


    Instead of a gaping hole, I spotted a door, firmly blocking access to my home.


    ¡°What¡­?¡±


    I didn¡¯t stand there and wait for an answer. I strode on quickly, almost fumbling the request to have the doors open because I still wasn¡¯t used to sending it with my eyes. They did slide open though, and what I saw on the other side was definitely not a scene of devastation.


    If anything, my apartment looked better than ever.


    A soft, plush carpet in Kitten colors covered the floor. A brand new, larger wardrobe graced the spot where my old one once stood. An even larger and comfier looking bed had replaced my beloved item of luxury. Even the shower nook had been scrubbed so thoroughly that no mold had survived.


    There were a few extra items there, too. They made the space feel way smaller and more cluttered, but that was just fine. Now I had a desk, a couple chairs, and even some kind of cooking unit, sitting on the desk beside a charging port with a slot for a scroll.


    ¡°Well, I figured¡­ Yer apartment was trashed because of me, and¡­¡±


    Mela shut up when I turned around and hugged her, carefully hiding my teary eyes by pressing my face against her shoulder.

 Chapter 21: Burdensome Limitations

    Mela was a horrible friend with a penchant for relentless teasing. I knew that, and I still hugged her and cried for an embarrassingly long amount of time. At least she didn¡¯t record me¡­ I think? She better not have. I would exact bloody retribution.


    It might take me a lot of growing and practicing, but I would find a way.


    Then again, she looked about as embarrassed as I did. She beat a hasty retreat at the first opportunity. She also rushed to assure me that the area was much safer now, that she would take the head off of anyone who dared mess with the youngest Kitten, and that she was a call away if I needed something. I did tease her for all this in turn, so¡­


    Well. I guess we were both a little awkward.


    Now that I was alone, though, I felt even more lost. The last time I¡¯d stood in that space, it was covered in blood and other bits that really shouldn¡¯t be on the outside of someone. Now, my shoes were by the door, and I got to sink my toes into what had to be the fluffiest carpet I¡¯d ever felt.


    I started to walk around absently, brushing my fingers over all the new surfaces. The wardrobe felt more solid. The desk I had no idea what to do with, especially since I hardly ever felt the need to use my scroll anymore. And the chairs¡­ they felt like a real luxury, for some odd reason. Maybe because I¡¯d thrown out the last chair I actually owned for being a rotted mess?


    Not that it was actual wood, mind you, but whatever replacement material it had been made of was authentic enough to rot. Way quicker than actual wood would have, too! A real nice bonus feature!


    These chairs were metal and looked suitable for smashing someone over the head, probably on account of Mela¡¯s tendency to use furniture like that. But the cushions were comfy, and I perched on one while looking around like a lost owl.


    ¡°What am I supposed to do now?¡± I asked myself out loud, dizzy with both confusion and an odd sense of liberation.


    I¡¯d successfully stolen the eyes. I¡¯d made it through my suspicious ripper and a mugging. I¡¯d saved Mela. I¡¯d survived a fucking war.


    And now there I was, sitting in a comfy chair, with no idea what was expected of me.


    Oh, the Kittens were likely to want something in the future, but neither Garren nor Mela were the types to just screw with my daily life for the hell of it. So I was¡­ well, essentially, back at square one.


    Just way better equipped. I had an actual safety net, more credits than was healthy for me, and good eyesight.


    That did leave me with one more question, though.


    ¡°What do I even want now?¡±


    That wasn¡¯t supposed to confuse me so much, was it? Most people could probably answer the question easily. The problem was, I¡¯d never had time to think about it. I¡¯d been trying to stay ahead of imminent starvation or violent death for so long, I had no clue about anything beyond.


    What right did a kid from the slums even have to throw around such a frivolous question?


    That, at last, did stir a desire in me. It felt like the first spark that made old machinery twitch and stir to life.


    Yes, I was a kid from the slums. Yes, life had strung me along and kicked my ass too many times to count.


    So, that was what I wanted: I wanted to never be so mishandled again. I wanted to know I could take care of myself.


    I wanted to feel safe.


    The problem was¡­


    Strength: 0.6


    Dexterity: 0.8


    Vitality: 0.5


    Recovery: 0.5


    Stamina: 0.9


    Those stats. Those stupid, stupid stats. Compared to an average kid my age, I was a stupid distance even from the starting line of proper conditioning.


    The Reality Enhancement software was helping, sure. Its careful analysis of my body yielded plenty of data to transform into an exact schedule of how much I could push myself, how much I should eat, etc.


    I¡¯d shared all that with Mela, Garren, Ravs, and even Feyo. The gang leader had assured me I¡¯d always have enough to eat. Ravs was there to check up on me and okay my continued torment by Mela. Feyo was more than happy to ¡®put meat on my bones¡¯, as he liked to say.


    None of that changed the fact that I was dealing with the effects of long-term malnutrition, lack of proper exercise, and stunted growth. Not to mention enough chemicals in my system from the slop I¡¯d been eating to ensure I died of cancer eventually, without proper treatment.


    Wonders never stopped piling onto the citizens of our wonderful corpo-run world. I mean, why would anyone care about the slop sold in the outer districts, let alone the slums, when humans bred like rabbits compared to most other races? Clearly, we were the most accessible fast-replenishing resource, and corpos knew that.


    Ranting aside, my point was that I was small. I could be very easily squashed by any ganger on a solid meal plan of steroids and rage-inducing drugs.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Mela certainly knew it. Fuck, she wasn¡¯t exactly subtle about her lack of confidence in my physical abilities. How many times had she ¡®nonchalantly¡¯ complained, loud enough for me to hear, about the Kittens¡¯ lack of good support members? I knew for a fact she wanted me to beg Ravs or even Torn to take me under their wing. According to her, I ¡®had a brain that¡¯s actually worth shit¡¯ and could excel under them.


    The problem was, I really didn¡¯t want that. I didn¡¯t want to be ¡®support staff¡¯, however useful.


    I didn¡¯t want to feel vulnerable anymore. I didn¡¯t want to jump at every shadow that crossed my path, scared out of my mind that I¡¯d get ambushed again. I mean, even with the shooter Mela had left me with and all the training she¡¯d given me, I still wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d be able to take that druggie she saved me from. Not one-on-one.


    But the stats were against me. I was never going to be a physical powerhouse, even if Garren was okay with drugging his own people to the gills for a boost (and he wasn¡¯t). I had to accept that.


    Mind you, I wasn¡¯t about to give up.


    I¡¯m just going to have to work smarter, I resolved silently as I stripped off most of my clothes and jumped into the shower. Or borg out to the point I can take care of myself.


    I didn¡¯t particularly want to go insane or lose my ability to feel emotions. But if it came down to a choice between running scared for the rest of my life or seeing if I could withstand enough cyber bits to measure up with more physically gifted gangers, I¡¯d roll the dice.


    Granted, I did have one other potential option. And it was a lot more appealing.


    Stepping out of the shower, I got comfy on my new deluxe bed. Then I booted up my search engine and started browsing.


    The object of my research? Netrunners.


    Though the Zerx assault ultimately failed, I was never going to forget what happened that day. Our cameras hijacked. Our defenses turning against us. My own eyes almost stolen from me.


    That level of power was terrifying. It was a nightmare even to consider one person wielding that much influence over the world around them.


    And it was tempting. So tempting, in fact, that I had to fight down the urge to search for learning resources right then and there.


    I forced myself to slow down. To keep it to casual browsing.


    But as I browsed, the urge only grew.


    There were plenty of stories, both starkly realistic and blown out of all proportion, about exactly what runners were capable of. I found no less than seven news reports from the deeper city districts about businesses getting stripped of their credits and secrets by rival corpo runners. Four reports of borgs getting hacked and unleashed on their own employers. Three reports of independent runners who¡¯d had a bit too much fun and disabled entire blocks of security, before getting hunted down and taken out by corpo assassins.


    In an age when most ¡®civilized¡¯ people had net-connected machine bits in them, runners may as well have been wizards. They could do just about anything to you, if the fancy hit them.


    So it really didn¡¯t surprise me that training resources on the subject were heavily restricted, whether behind cold hard creds or corpo contracts.


    You want to be trained as a runner? Sure! Join your local branch of our corpo office, sign a contract, and we¡¯ll put you through our courses. Oh, what¡¯s that? You don¡¯t want to spend the next eighty years indentured to us? Too bad. You¡¯d better have several thousand credits to shell out for the classes, then. And that¡¯s on a monthly basis.


    This formed an effective barrier for most people. No one could advance in this particular career except those born to wealth, or those willing to sell themselves body and soul to play in the digital world.


    I didn¡¯t qualify for either category.


    For a moment, I idly considered going to Garren. Runners were always a hot commodity. He¡¯d likely want to get more of them. With Mela and her burning desire to keep me away from combat backing me up, the man might say yes. A very selfish part of me nudged me to try.


    The other, more reasonable part of me scoffed, telling me I¡¯d never do it.


    Damn it, that part was right.


    I¡¯d heard Garren complain about finances more than a few times over the last couple of days. The kind of meds, food, and other supplies he secured for the Kittens on the regular were not cheap. They cost him thousands of credits every other week.


    Even with all of the gang¡¯s many sources of income, most of them highly illegal of course, he was only just staying ahead of things. He¡¯d confided as much in me one time when Mela and her nonsense had driven him to drink.


    So, just asking Garren to pay for lessons or learning resources was out.


    You¡¯d think there was a much simpler solution to the problem. After all, the Kittens already had a runner. Mort might have nearly gotten himself killed by his surprise Zerx rival, but the man was neither stupid nor useless. If he was willing to back me and actually play teacher for a bit, I could probably get to a basic level of runner proficiency in a couple of months.


    Unfortunately, that was a pretty fucking big ¡®if.¡¯


    Mort owed his status and influence within the Kittens to his runner skills. Anyone who showed up with the potential to replace him was his biggest threat. If I so much as revealed any interest in runner training, I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if I just vanished. They would find my body in an alley a couple days later.


    That might seem like a bleak outlook, considering how nicely the Kittens had treated me. But having met the man myself? Yeah. I wasn¡¯t taking that risk.


    Naturally, that left me with only my stubbornness, my ingenuity, and my own meager resources.


    Then again¡­


    I eyed up my backpack, knowing it was metaphorically weighed down by the addition of the cred chips I took off the Zerx Mela and I had killed. I¡¯d tried to split those with the woman, but she¡¯d just waved me off and told me that she owed me for saving her ass already. That meant I¡¯d enriched myself by an additional two thousand, five hundred and some-odd credits. Together with what I already had, well¡­


    It wasn¡¯t enough for personalized classes and proper guidance. Not even close to enough for bribing some runner into taking me on as an apprentice, either.


    Still¡­ maybe, just maybe, I could do something with the money?


    A ton of research later, I was even more frustrated than I¡¯d been at the start. Supposedly, you could get shards containing lessons for much cheaper than personalized courses. They¡¯d be good for at least the basic stuff, if not the more advanced learning.


    Problem was, no one deigned to share the wisdom of how you could actually buy these shards. Even those who openly discussed the best shards to purchase, by name, never once quoted a store that sold them.


    Besides, the sites where I found the info weren¡¯t exactly what you¡¯d call ¡®upstanding.¡¯ Not the so-called ¡®dark net¡¯, not even close. I had no way to access that. But they were definitely not sites set up by law-abiding citizens.


    I was just about to throw caution to the wind and try one of the paid forums when my attention drifted to the current time. I froze. It was already way too late, and I was actually going back to work the next day.


    Grumbling, I got even more comfortable on my ridiculously soft bed and tried to drift off, thinking about Catill¡¯s grumpy face.


    Catill!


    I jolted upright.


    Despite his deep hatred for all things tech, my boss also consistently turned up all sorts of odd wares at his shop. It was a long shot, but if he could somehow help me get my hands on some of those shards, then I¡¯d be a huge step closer to my goal. Failing that, I was at least sure Catill could put me in contact with people who would be able to procure shards.


    When my nervous energy finally fizzled out much later that night, I fell asleep with a big smile on my lips.