Bitstream

1.4

I stare at the sallow woman, lips tight, trying to imagine who the hell would be looking for me. My eyes shift to the team, then to Li Wei and his thugs. I don't expect to be let off. Li Wei tugs at his leather suspender, his face twisting, pinching in disbelief like the words in the air are smoke he doesn't want to breathe.

The sallow woman opens her mouth to speak, but Li Wei cuts her off, raising the pistol and pointing it at Fingers. He crooks a finger. "You give me case. Now. I no ask again."

"You got your money," Raze says, stepping back from the door, gun still raised. His face hardens. He's seen this kind of play before. "Nice little business you've got, friendo. Bleed the suckers, push the junk across the line, sell it back just under market. All bought with a Chinese dollar, right?" He steps in. "You get to keep all that... if you let the walk happen. Take the chip. Or waste your last breath trying to figure out why hell's so damn quiet."

Li Wei smirks, meets Raze's eyes, and nudges the barrel towards his chin. "You have ten seconds to put the case back and walk out of my restaurant before I paint the floor with your American brain." For the first time, he speaks with clean, practiced English: sharp, businesslike. It crawls under my skin.

"Was hopin' you'd say that," Raze says, voice steady, like he's already halfway to pulling the trigger.

POP!

My heart kicks. A gunshot. But neither of them drops; they're still standing. It takes a second before I realise the sound didn't come from here: it came from the hallway, behind.

Then a man's voice, ragged and mean: "Bring me that bitch or we'll start killin' every last one of you cunts!"

Almost everyone turns toward the corridor. Everyone but two: me and the bodyguard on the far left. He steps forward, silent, lifts his gun to Raze's temple, and then my arm snaps out. There's no thought, just motion. A blur. His forearm hits the floor with a wet thump, torn clean through. For a moment he doesn't move. Doesn't even flinch. My mantisblade hangs in the air, my fist clenched, blood dripping from the tip.

Then I yank back.

I retract the blade and reach for my gun, but I'm too slow.

A steel limb lashes across the room. It cracks against one bodyguard's barrel, knocks another's clean from his grip. Then it folds back, sliding into Cormac's arm like it had always been there. Now he's holding two pistols. He pulls the triggers. One bullet punches into the rightmost guard's skull, spraying brain across the wall. The second finds the chest of the disarmed one, dropping him where he stands.

Vander puts a bullet through another skull. Fingers finishes the one I maimed, dropping him with a clean shot. Mercy, maybe. If he felt anything at all.

"Bastards," Li Wei snarls. "All of you. You fuck with wrong man!" He thrashes in Raze's grip but can't break free.

"Take it." Fingers passes the case to Vander, who turns and starts working the code into the door.

The bald woman's gone. Must've bolted down the hall the second things got loud, back towards the first shot.

I'm still stuck on that. Whoever fired it wasn't aiming to stop the deal. They were after me. And I can't shake the thought that maybe I was right all along: someone from the old life saw me on the street. Someone I wronged. Someone who wants to make damn sure I stay dead this time.

Raze rips the gun from Li Wei's hand and slams him to the floor. He levels the barrel at his head, but before he can pull the trigger, Fingers grabs his arm.

"Don't be stupid," she says.

He glares at her. "Not like you to spare suits."

She doesn't argue. Just yanks him towards the door with more force than you'd expect from someone a foot shorter. "Move."

I fall in behind Vander and Cormac. Raze and Fingers come next, all of us keeping a steady pace. Fast, but not frantic. No one wants to be the first to run into whoever's hunting us from the other side.

"Head around the back," Fingers says. "Right side."

I follow her lead, into another corridor. Breakrooms, restrooms, lockers. Easy to spot by the labels. But straight ahead, bigger than the rest, buzzing in green: EMERGENCY EXIT.

Vander hits the push bar. The door swings open, and a fist the size of a sledgehammer knocks him off his feet. He hits the ground hard. The case clatters free, skids across the yard, and comes to a stop against a steel pallet cage tangled in shredded bubble wrap.

Outside, the yard's small: gravel underfoot, boxed in by a wire fence. Standing there are half a dozen men and women in leather kuttes, same style the scavengers wore. Each jacket bears a white wolf stencilled on the right chest. Their heads are laced with cyberware: thick visor plates, glowing implants, hair lit up in bright punk colours. The one who hit Vander steps forward. He's huge. Black. Both arms gleam with polished chrome, built from segments, pistons, and heavy joints that flex with mechanical grace. The servos hum. His fingers, tipped in clawed alloy, curl and uncurl like they've been waiting for something to crush.

No time to think, to understand. We draw and open fire. Bullets slam into the big man, sparking off his body like we're shooting at armour. He shields his head and keeps moving. I shift aim to the others—same deal. They cover their faces and the rounds bounce off with sharp little flashes. Whatever they're wearing, it's working. Cormac lunges in, throws his steel arm forward, clamps onto the big guy's arms and yanks like he's trying to drag him into the kill zone. Nothing. The big man doesn't budge. Cormac growls, muscles shaking, but it's like trying to move a wall. The man steps forward instead, pulling Cormac towards him one slow, steady tug at a time.

I ditch the pistol, draw my mantisblade, blood still crusted along the edge. I dash under Cormac's arm, leap, and swing at the man's neck. He snaps his forearm up, blocking it in a blur of chrome. I follow with a slash at his leg. This time, he grunts.

Gunfire dies out behind me. Just clicks now: empty chambers.

Then the man yanks Cormac in close, smashes him in the face once, twice. His nose bursts open. He hits the gravel hard, landing near Vander, who's still struggling to breathe.

Fingers and Raze stumble through the emergency exit, shoved hard by two goons behind them. Their guns are gone.

I stay put, near Vander and the case. Quiet. Watching. One of the men behind them catches my eye. Short. Familiar.

The guy from the circuitery.

Shit.

The big man's arms hiss and clank, pistons steaming, joints flexing like a machine coming to life. He locks eyes with me, then grins. His hair's pulled into tight locks, all metal and neon threads pulsing blue under the yard lights. The long leather duster he wears bristles with chrome trinkets and wired gear stitched into the seams. His visor fizzes with little cubes: up, down, up again. Like he's keeping time with music. But there's no music. Just silence. And then the sound of cold air breezing against my skin.

"That's the bitch," the short man says. "Split 'em clean with that blade. Still got their blood on it. The bitch."

"Shutcha mouth, Red," says the big man. His voice is deep, thick with Jamaican drawl. He doesn't move like the others. Doesn't talk like them either. "Most folks run they mouth, I take the eyes first. But you, ya bastard." He points straight at me. The smile drops like a mask.

"Me?" I say. My mantisblade stays tight to my chest. I cradle it without thinking. After what he did to Cormac and Vander, I'm not sure I stand a chance, even less with the crew around him.

"You go corpse-yard, slice up my brudda, my sista," he says. "Now you go die same way."

So that's what this is. Revenge. But how the hell did he find me? Was it the lot? The restaurant? The alley? Somewhere along the way, he clocked me. Knew.

Raze chuckles. "Need the whole pack for one girl? Hell of a tough guy you are."

The big man stares Raze down, still crouched in that low boxer's stance. The digital cubes in his visor freeze, then melt into a slow, pulsing wave. "I gotta teach you somethin', ya fool. After I kill this bitch bare hands, I'll kill you too. All of you. Nobody fucks with my people."

Cormac groans, one hand pressed to his bleeding nose. He props himself up slowly, dragging a leg under him. He coughs. "Nice fists," he says, voice rough. "Black market install, I'm guessing. Hmm?" That last note drips with sarcasm.

The big man grins. "Didn't need 'em for you." He straightens slightly. "Talk time's done. C'mere, green demon. Let's see that shiny little arm. Let's see what you are, special girl."

Before I can move, he lunges.

Fast.

I dodge, same reflex, same speed, but he's faster this time. His hand clamps down on my dead arm. Cold metal on cold metal. He yanks me into range and slams a fist into my ribs. The impact hits like thunder.

I don't feel a thing.

"Vitals low," says my neural AI. That voice: soft, female, almost forgotten. "Activating emergency protocols."

Electricity floods my system. My mantisblade sparks.

He roars and winds up for another hit, but I slip past it and lash upward, blade slicing for his face. Sparks burst across his visor in a crackling web. Nothing. No damage. He just grins. Then he slams his fist into my head. Everything jerks sideways. I hit something flat and hard. The world reels.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

For a moment, it's just like waking up in the circuitery: cold, alone, right on the edge. My vision swims. The sounds around me twist into muffled noise: laughter, voices, distant, fading. Then a flicker. Blue light, somewhere to the side. I ignore it and look up. He's above me, the big man, watching, ready to finish what he started.

He steps forward.

Cormac's steel arm lashes from the shadows, wraps around the man's throat. Cormac throws his weight into it, locking him into a rear-naked choke. The man doesn't even strain. He tears Cormac's arms away like they're toys, flings him to the ground, then lifts a boot, ready to bring it down and crush him. Raze moves to stop him, but one of the gang catches him with a pistol whip to the skull and yanks him back, barrel pressed to his temple. He shouts something; I don't even catch the words.

I push up, one hand planted on something flat and solid. It takes a second to register: I'm lying on the hard case. The RFID spoofers. Netrunning software. Maybe I can.... But what if...? Ah shit, there's no time. I remove the neural wire from my temple, grab an RFID spoofer, and plug it into the manual-override port.

"Suspicious data identified," the AI voice says. "Are you sure you wish to allow this access to your primary neural system?"

Options for either 'Yes' or 'No' show up on my neural display. I waste no time selecting 'Yes'.

Suddenly, the big man's body is outlined in yellow. A data cube appears on the right of my neural display. Punched to the top, in bold letters, is the name 'Nyah Boba-Strider'.

Affiliation: Steel Moon.

Wanted For: Murder of a Corporate Entity; Trespassing in a Corporate Zone; Black Market Processing.

Weakness(es): Suboptimal Leg Protection (30%); Unprotected Head/Cranium (85%)

Resistant To: 9mm (96%); Electricity (74%)

On the far left of my neural display is a list of processes, most of which are greyed out, but the one at the top reads, in bright blue, SHORT CIRCUIT. Panicking, not knowing if any of this could help—if I do or do not have a suitable degree of cyberware capable of processing any integrated requests—I select the only available option and watch as an upload bar shoots from 0%... 25%... 50%...75%...99%....

This is it. Please, oh Lord.

But right as it's about to upload, a bullet flies in, and the spoofer is destroyed.

"Data error," the AI says. "Delinking."

My heart drops as my neural cord zips back into place. I look over and see that one of the crooks had spotted me. He stands there, shaking his head, gun drawn, smoke billowing from the breach, a sinister smile smacked to his face; it's a smile that says he wants me to watch Cormac die. To watch him suffer.

Cormac whips his steel arm up once again, blocking Nyah's boot and holding him in place, but he promptly kicks it away and traps it under his other foot. He lifts his free leg, preparing to stomp.

This is it. Impending death. My hand drops to my side in defeat. All hope is lost. But I feel something—not an emotion, but something physical, stout, in my pocket. I think for a moment that it is the key to Fingers' jeep. I pull it out. It's not. It's the switchblade, the one I picked up back in the circuitery, the one that coward, Red, left behind. I flick it open.

Nyah stomps and Cormac moves his head, letting his shoulder take the hit.

I only have one shot.

Don't fuck this up.

I take a deep breath, steady now, line up the shot, and one... two... three... throw!

The blade spins neatly, just as Fingers' knife had spun into the bull's-eye, and it lands, with sanguinary grace, in the back of Nyah's fat head.

He freezes. The joints and pistons in his metal arms spark and lock; it's as if he's been tazed and more than a thousand volts are coursing through his body. He says something, but once again my hearing is too suppressed to make out a word.

However, I spot, out of the corner of my eye, one of the crooks shouting at me. He takes aim, but once again Cormac's arm comes flying forward, snatching the pistol from his grasp and retracting. Cormac seizes Nyah's forearms, turns a flat hip into the swell of his duster-guarded flank, and suddenly Nyah is airborne, flipping over in midair, his hem flagging up to reveal bulging quad muscles coursing with countless steroids and genetic coding. When he hits the ground, Cormac yanks him towards his torso and uses him as cover. His movements are so slithery, like he's made of jelly.

At the same time, Vander pulls the leg of the short man, Red, who holds Fingers at gunpoint, tripping him. Fingers snatches his pistol midfall, aims it to her left, and pops a bullet in the skull of the man holding Raze. Together, they grab the gangmembers' bodies and use them as cover against the bullets from those firing in on them. It was all so fast, impressively so; they had everything calculated in the space of a split-second and executed it only with a couple more.

Vander glances at me when picking himself up off the ground, pounces, and pulls me around the steel pallet. Meanwhile all I hear is that steady muffled drum of bullets, becoming clearer as time goes on. A bullet hits him in the shoulder; the blood pours out and he grimaces, saying something to me. The words take a bit of repeating, but eventually the sound clears up and I hear him yell:

"Ster with us now."

He sits against the pallet for cover with me, unzips his fanny pack, and reaches inside. He pulls out something small, pointy, and bulbous. He presses a button at the top, and it starts blinking orange. A grenade, I'm sure.

Vander turns over, shouts, "Tossed!", and lobs the blinking grenade over at the gang. I can see it travel through the translucent bubble wrap around the pallet cage. It doesn't even manage to strike the gravel when it ticks off and—

BOOM!

Fire. Smoke. Crackling.

The guns stop shooting. It takes a while for the smoke to clear but when it does, I can see the bodies of Steel Moon picking themselves up from the flames. Raze and Fingers drop the human bodyshields, hurry ahead, and finish each of them off. The gate around the yard is now completely busted open and bits of cyberware and guts are mixed between the rails and pickets. Some splashes of blood are a dark red while others are a strange yellowish green. It's frankly sickening; I feel it right in my stomach, a burst of nausea, the sort you might feel on a long drive in a dirty car.

Vander grabs my chin, raising it. With his other hand, he brings something to my mouth. My vision blurs too much to make out what it is. I feel dizzy and my head is buzzing. He forces my mouth open and sprays a gust of humid air inside, filling it with a sour, lemony taste. I take a deep breath, feeling it wash down my throat and turn into liquid.

Soon my vitals stabilise. My vision clears up, and I can see the small object in his hand: it's a red-and-green inhaler, with the stamp MX-3 marked across the canister.

Vander gives my face a few light slaps. "Yer fine. Good on you." He puckers those blue lips, licks them, and stands, making his way over to the rest of the team.

I take my time getting to my feet. I'm still not sure I've completely recovered. Although it certainly feels like it, this might just be a temporary effect of whatever drug I ingested from the MX-3. Still, I'm glad I'm alive, and that this team is far more competent and skilled than I could have possibly imagined.

The spoofers are scattered over the ground; the force of the explosion must have knocked the case away. They're in good condition, save for the one that got blasted from my hand. I start packing them into the hard case one by one.

When I look up, I see Fingers approaching me. I shut the case, pick it up, feeling that it is indeed quite heavy, and hand it to her. Before she can say anything, a voice perks up.

"Mudda...." A cough. "...fucka... I shud kill ya all, ya..." A groan. "...bastards...."

Fingers looks back at Nyah, who's stunlocked on the ground, raises her pistol, and shoots him in the head. Lights out. Iced. No need for final words or goodbyes. "Blues will be here any minute," she says, making a move towards the busted gate. Then, more assertively, she adds, "Grab your guns and delta. Now. All of you."

I don't know which of these weapons in particular is mine, but I go for the first one I can see, near Red's body. I go to pick it up but find that he's still moving, groaning. Wasting no time, I bring my arm up to his brow and eject the mantisblade, splitting his skull in half. "Adios, dustbucket," I murmur.

But I notice something: the underside of the weapon has a tiny blue-blinking dot. In fact, as I look around, I realise all of their weapons do.

Tracking devices. That's how they found me.

It's best I leave them here, just in case that's not the last of them. After killing off a guy that dangerous and perhaps high up in their own little criminal ladder, they would likely want revenge, as I'm sure many people would in this city.

I follow Fingers and the team out the back. I can see flashing blue-and-red lights in the distance, and I can hear the faraway whir of the emergency sirens. Li Wei must have called the cops on us. If we don't move quickly, we'll be done for, locked behind bars in those gritty cages.

Fingers leads us around the block, towards the Catalyst parking lot; the line is still as big as ever, but there are a lot more free bays. I can see the Fragment Roamer behind the blinking amber bollards. I grab the key from my pocket and unlock it. The sidemirrors unfold, and the headlights flash yellow. Raze and Cormac step into a black saloon car—it's too dark to make out the exact make or model, but it's clean and mafiaesque—while Vander hops on a red sportbike, a Suzuki Hayabusa by the look of it. They take off before Fingers and I even step into the jeep. Fingers decides to get into the driver seat this time. She switches on the ignition and the seat and mirrors adjust to suit her frame. She leaves the hard case of spoofers under the seat and takes off.

By the time we're on the main road, the cops are just pulling into the back of the alleyway block, a big black van full of them. We got out of there just in the nick of time. But what now? Will they follow us? Will they check the cameras and track us down?

It's something I ought not to think about right now, but either way I can see myself showing up on a wanted list soon, just like that psychopath with the crazy metal arms.

Rhea Steele: Wanted for Murder and Theft by Gunpoint.

Hopefully that's the last I see of Steel Moon. I really shouldn't have let that short man go. Stupid. I'll have to think more clearly next time.

The ride is painfully quiet for five minutes, but once things begin to settle down and we're a fair distance from the blues, Fingers turns to me, offering a smile. "So, you're something of a netrunner then?"

My heart skips a beat. I'm not sure why but it does. The sudden question must have caught me off guard. "The... spoofer? That's what you're referring to? I, well, I took a chance, based off what Li Wei showed us. Too bad it got destroyed."

Fingers shrugs, keeping her attention on the road. "I'm surprised the wire didn't spit right out. That means you have some netrunning software embedded in your operating system," she says. "Like I said, full of surprises, aren't you?"

"I stole it off the dead girl at the circuitery," I admit, staring at my hand, fiddling with my fingers. The nails are dirty and could use a polish. I hope bristles and soap get blood out. "Mine was failing. Had no other option. That's why they were after me. Because I... killed them."

"You let the fat guy live," she says.

I never thought of him as fat—stockier than anything—but I suppose he was on the larger size. I see the concern in Fingers' face upon making this statement. It's a careful, thoughtful expression, and it's not for focusing on the road. She doesn't even indicate when taking turns.

I'm expecting her to ask if I'm stupid. Straight answer, yes—simple yet full of complex judgements, somewhat ominous.

But she doesn't. She lets out a deep breath, one that she'd been holding for some time. "You almost got my team killed, Rhea," she says.

The statement hits me like a truck. I'm not sure what to say except: "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't expect—"

"But," she says—there's always a but in the grand scheme of things—"you also saved us, saved that asshole Raze, too, goddamn you." She chuckles. "That throw.... I'm impressed. Your only problem is that you're out of date. A bit confused. So let me tell you: every decision you make has a consequence in this city, even small ones. Know? Can't take a chance, have to play it safe unless you know you can win over and over again."

I smirk. "Is that why you risked swapping those cred chips?"

She grins, giving me a thumbs up. "Why do you think they call me Fingers?" She opens her hand and the tip of her index finger pulls in. A microscopic replacement skin ascends and pops out. Sticked to it is the cred chip worth four and a half grand.

"You are fast," I say.

"I grew up on these streets," she says. "Thirty-five years—you pick up a thing or two."

"You look much younger," I say.

"Everyone does." She shrugs.

After the next turn, we're facing the industrial estate. At the end of it is the bridge leading to the other side of the city. The buildings shoot high and extend far, with highways overhead and viaducts sifting through the enormous expanse. A tram rumbles across on an elevated rail; I can see countless people staring out at the streets below, smoking, leaning, thinking, I'm sure.

Trying to keep the conversation going—silence frankly disturbs me to no end—I ask, "Now that you have the spoofers, what's next?"

She pouts her lips thoughtfully. "Have something in mind, a way of securing more assets, and you're going to help me."

"Me? Just me?"

"'Course not," she says, tapping her foot on the case poking out under her seat. "You'll have these to help you."

I don't know where she's going with this, but one thing's for certain: I like the sound of it.