Neon Dust [Progression Cyberpunk]

38 – Post-Mortem

Addie opened her eyes, squinting into the darkness of her bedroom, lit only by the faint amber LEDs of the old data cube she used for editing vids. Her room was quiet, but she could hear the creaking of the warehouse outside its thin walls, the metal support beams expanding with the morning heat and shifting against their enormous bolts as the wind buffeted the big, rectangular building. She'd noticed that about the industrial district—there was always a stiff breeze in the morning. Did it have something to do with being closer to the water?

She closed her eyes, and an image jumped into her consciousness—purple lightning, blindingly bright, arcing from her hand, coursing through one man and into another. She saw their faces, terrified and filled with horror as—

"No!" she growled. They'd been wearing helmets with blackout visors. She hadn't seen their faces! Her mind was messing with her—her guilty conscience. Why should she feel guilty, though? Those men had been planning to kill her. As soon as they confirmed she wasn't Clementine, she was a goner. She'd meant nothing to them. They hadn't had an ounce of sympathy in their voices. What kind of callous soul could just go around killing people without a thought?

In a way, she supposed it was good that she was having feelings of guilt. It was good that her mind was trying to humanize the men in their impersonal armor by adding imaginary faces to them. She was still a person—still human. "I won't feel guilty, though. I won't. They got what was coming to them."

With a thought, she had JJ turn on the little lamp beside her bed. She blinked against its glare, then held up her left hand, turning it left and right. She couldn't even see her injuries anymore. Whatever that trauma doc had done had been good work. When she sat up and stretched, she found the rest of her aches and pains had similarly vanished. She crawled out of bed and went into her bathroom. When she flipped the switch, an unfamiliar buzzing sound made her look up, and she saw that her dad had finished installing the vent fan.

"Thanks, Dad," she mumbled, stumbling toward the sink to stare into the mirror. The blood-red of her scleras was gone. "And thank you, mystery trauma doc." She could only vaguely remember the woman and the many injections she'd received. Even so, she vividly recalled looking in the mirror after Tony helped her into her little section of the apartment, horrified by the blood-red eyes staring back at her.

She leaned over the sink, splashed some water on her face, and then used the toilet; her bladder felt ready to burst. Her message icon was flashing, superimposed with a numeral seven, so she started going through them. Four were from Glitchwitch—three asking her why their connection had been cut off with increasingly alarmed verbiage, but the fourth told her to disregard the others because Tony had contacted her and filled her in. Addie smiled at the last line: Anyway, feel better soon, sis—even badass sparks need a little rest now and then.

"Oh brother!" Addie left the bathroom, shaking her head and wondering what exactly Tony had told her.

Two messages were from her dad. They weren't anything critical—just updates on what he was doing, and asking if he could borrow the van to bring some inventory out to a flea market next Tuesday. The final message made her smile. It was from Tony saying he was going to get them something for breakfast, and to message him when she was up. Most importantly, he'd signed it with a heart emoji. Was that the first emoji she'd ever seen him use? She was pretty sure it was.

"JJ, what's the deal with my Dust matrix?" She had very spotty memories of Tony and that trauma doc telling her it was fried.

"You'll need to have it replaced. Doctor Salcido said that using it would risk damage to your vascular system."

Addie supposed that made sense. The matrix was a system of monomolecular filaments threaded through most of her arteries and major vessels. "So, I channeled too much Dust through it at once?"

"That seems to be the case, yes."

Addie pulled on some jeans and slipped into a mostly clean T-shirt; it smelled like perfume and deodorant, not sweat, so she was okay with wearing it again. While she put on her socks and shoes, she messaged Tony, letting him know she was up. A response came immediately:

Tony: Almost home. Feeling okay?

She responded in the affirmative and threw on a heart emoji. Grinning like a fool, she brushed her teeth and went to their little living area. While she waited for him, she used the coffee machine he'd gotten from Mrs. Lane to make herself a cup. When it was done, and after she'd had her first sip, she started a cup brewing for Tony. She didn't have to wait long. Less than five minutes later, he came through the door bearing a white paper sack full of something that smelled distinctly like Mexican food.

"Breakfast burritos," he announced.

Addie's mouth salivated at the smell. She rubbed her stomach as she hurried over to him with his cup of coffee. "That sounds so good!"

He took the cup and walked with her over to their little second-hand breakfast table. "Thank you. I figured you'd be hungry. I'm always starved when I do a lot of healing."

"I can't believe I'm not even sore!" Addie sat in the chair he pulled out. "I remember being in a lot of pain… but it's all kind of blurry now."

"The doc said that would happen. She hit you with some pretty strong stuff." Tony sat down and began unpacking the sack. "Got a burrito for your dad, too, but he wasn't answering. It's still a little early, and he was up late."

Addie sipped her coffee. "My last message from him was at two AM. He's like a kid again now that he doesn't have to keep store hours."

Tony nodded, passing her a promisingly heavy paper-wrapped burrito. "Well, when we got home, I checked in with him and he was attending a live auction in Korea, so it's not like he was up playing around in a dream-rig or something."

Addie snorted as she unwrapped her burrito, imagining her dad in a dream-rig. The more she thought about it, though, the less funny it seemed; there were plenty of men his age addicted to the alternate "lives" afforded by the full-immersion systems. She poured some green salsa labeled with an "M" on the end of her burrito and took a big bite.

Tony watched her chew for a few seconds, then said, "Do you remember me talking about Ross last night? Remember the, uh, offer he made us?"

Addie hadn't remembered—not until just then—but it all came back to her, and she shook her head while she swallowed. "It sounds really weird, Tony. What are the odds that we're the operators who kidnapped his scientist and also got the job to protect his daughter? I mean, forget the fact that he's probably the guy who was paying the bangers to make trouble at Royal Breeze."

Tony nodded as he chewed. When he swallowed, he said, "I was thinking the same thing. I thought about it a lot, though, and I don't think the odds of it being a coincidence are as wild as you think, though."

"No?"

"Nah, not when you take Torque into account. Think about it. Ross and his buddy Weaver—they're rivals who work for the same company, right? They probably came up together, you know? Odds are they share a lot of the same contacts. So? Weaver reaches out to a fixer to get some operators to steal Ross's scientist. Later, Ross reaches out to the same fixer for some muscle to protect his daughter. See what I mean? Torque doesn't have that big of a stable. He doesn't have anyone like you. It's not so far-fetched an idea that we'd pull both jobs."

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Addie nodded. "I guess I can see it." She continued to eat, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized she was still bothered, and it wasn't because of the coincidence factor. Ross was, supposedly, going to handle Victor Kwon. What did that mean? She had a feeling it was more along the lines of getting Kwon back in line, working for Boxer. And what? She and Tony were supposed to deal with his rival, Weaver? What did that mean, exactly?

Tony set his burrito down and picked up his coffee. "What are you thinking?"

"I think Kwon is doing evil things, and if he started doing them working for Ross, then why the heck would we help him?"

Tony sighed, but the expression ended in a soft chuckle as he shook his head ruefully. "I had a feeling you'd say something like that. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it, too, though."

"What do you mean?"

"We could still do something about Kwon. We just need to get to him before Ross does. Then, providing we pull that off without getting caught, we could still take advantage of Ross's hefty expense account and do something about Weaver. I'm sure he's just as bad as Ross."

Addie chewed another bite as she mulled it over. Tony sipped his coffee, watching her. When her burrito was half gone, she set it down and said. "That's a lot of exposure with some very dangerous people. I kind of wanted to avoid doing anything for or against Boxer. I mean, I'd rather they didn't know we existed."

Tony leaned back, inhaling deeply through his nose as he stared at her. She liked that he was listening, even if he didn't agree. After a minute, he slowly nodded. "I get it. Want to walk away? I'm cool with that. We can pick up something else from Torque. We've got other stuff to worry about anyway—Beef's thing, and whatever."

Addie watched him closely as he spoke, trying to determine how he really felt. As far as she could tell, he'd always been honest with her, but she knew he'd put his feelings aside to favor her. Was he doing that now? Did he want to take Ross's contract? She knew he did, but not how much. In a way, she loved that he'd be willing to give up something he wanted to accommodate her feelings, but she also hated the idea of being any sort of burden to him.

Maybe burden was the wrong word, but it boiled down to the idea that she didn't want him to build up some kind of subconscious grudge against her. Like, he'd hear about a job he wanted to do or a thing he wanted to get, and in the back of his mind, he'd be thinking something along the lines of, "Well, I'll have to see what Addie thinks about it first, I guess." Of course, some of that was healthy in any kind of relationship; they should take into account each other's desires and dislikes, but on the other hand, she didn't want to always be the…wet blanket.

"I guess…" she started to say, but then shook her head, sipping her coffee as she tried to organize her thoughts.

"You guess?"

"I guess we're already pretty exposed to Ross. If we did this favor for him—this contract off the books—we'd have some leverage with him. It might be smart to have an ally inside Boxer, even if we don't like the kind of work he does."

Tony looked at her for a long moment, like he was trying to get inside her head. "Yeah, I mean, that could definitely come in handy down the line."

Addie put her cup down and dug around in the sack for some hot red salsa. "Plus, Weaver went after Clementine, and she's a pretty darn sweet kid, considering her parents are corpos."

Tony snapped his fingers. "Shit! I should have thought of that angle! Of course you'd want to protect the kid."

Addie looked at him sharply, and when she saw his sly grin, she kicked him under the table. "You're lucky you didn't try to manipulate me like that!"

He winced and reached down to rub his shin, but he was smiling even more broadly. "You're kind of cool, you know that?"

Addie found her hot sauce and began applying it to her burrito as she asked, "Huh? Where'd that come from?"

"I mean… you're not predictable. I swear, I try to imagine how you'll react to something, and you surprise me more often than not."

Addie took a bite and watched him as she chewed. The sauce was hotter than she'd expected, and the bite also had a good-sized chunk of jalapeno in it. Still, she maintained her cool as her cheeks slowly reddened. When she swallowed and stood up, intent on getting something cold to drink, she said, "I hope they're good surprises."

"Always." Tony saw she was going to the fridge and said, "Can you get me one of those MuscleMates? I hit the gym this morning."

"Seriously?" Addie shook her head in disbelief. Did he never sleep?

Like he was reading her mind, he replied, "Yeah. Couldn't sleep."

Addie grabbed an orange juice and one of his purple-and-black pouches of protein and aminos. When she handed it to him, she asked, "What was keeping you awake?"

He watched her sit down, then shrugged. "Lots of stuff. I knew you were okay, but I kept thinking about how close things were. Those goons, those Talons, were serious business, Ads. If they'd come into that room hot—like, if they'd wanted Clementine dead?" He shook his head.

Addie scowled. She didn't like where this was going. Was he about to tell her she shouldn't be "on the ground," or whatever the term was when operators were in risky situations? "We're in a dangerous business. I'm going to be at risk sometimes, so we just need to be smart. I need to learn from my mistakes."

Tony nodded. "And so do I. We were under-geared for this job. Hell, we've been under-geared for most of the jobs we've done."

"Not the surveillance ones."

He sighed, nodding. "Yeah, I guess I mean that whenever we run into real trouble, like shit hits the fan kind of stuff, I always walk away feeling like I should have had this or that. We've got some operating capital, and we're about to have more if Ross comes through, so let's get some proper supplies. We can't afford top-of-the-line everything, but we can afford the budget model of just about anything—grenades, stim packs, body armor. You know what I mean?" He grabbed hold of his ear and wriggled it back and forth violently.

Addie cocked an eyebrow and almost laughed. "What are you doing?"

"I need some proper damn audio implants! These things haven't been right since I ate that flashbang last night."

He looked so frustrated that it was almost cute, and Addie had to struggle not to laugh as she reached over to grab his wrist. "Well, don't do that to your ear! You're going to hurt yourself. Let's go see Doc Fox, okay? I need to replace this matrix, anyway."

Tony let go of his ear, smiling crookedly. "Yeah. Let's do that, 'cause if I have to live with this buzzing much longer, I'll lose it. What about your implants? Do they have auto-dampening? It really helps with gunfire and explosions."

"JJ?" Addie queried. "Will my audio implants dampen loud noises?"

"Yes, Addie," JJ replied. "Your current auditory implants include a rudimentary dampening protocol. They can mitigate the impact of consistent environmental noise, but their response to abrupt sound spikes, such as explosions or gunfire, is limited. If you anticipate further exposure to combat environments, I would recommend upgrading to a more responsive model."

Addie shrugged, nodding to Tony. "He sounds so darn smart! I'm still not used to it. Anyway, I kind of knew the answer, but I wanted him to confirm. Basically, I should probably get an upgrade, too."

"Yeah, I figured. So? Ready to head out?"

"Yep." Addie wrapped the final third of her burrito back up. "I'll save this for later."

Tony gathered the garbage while she put her leftovers and the extra hot sauce containers into the fridge. While they walked to the van, Tony pulled a pair of PAI chips out of his pocket. "I cleaned these up this morning. I think they're pretty decent models. I'm gonna see if Fox will buy 'em."

"Do you think there's any data on them?"

Tony shook his head. "Doubt it. Those guys were pros. I'm sure their PAIs were programmed to wipe when they died."

"Right. Pros."

Tony looked at her sideways, then put an arm over her shoulders. "You doing all right? We haven't really talked about… you know."

"How I blasted those two creeps?" Addie tried to sound flippant, but it fell flat. She shrugged. "I don't love the idea that I killed them, but they would have executed me if they hadn't paused to check if I was Clementine. They were talking about me like I didn't matter. They were so…smug in their armor with their big guns. I don't think you'd killed their buddies yet, 'cause they didn't act hurried at all."

"Well, I'm proud of you. You know, on the topic of their armor, that fancy little needler of yours can handle dual mags."

"Dual mags?"

"Yeah. You can get specialized magazines that have two ammo compartments. You know how you have forty rounds of paralyzers in your mag right now?"

"Yeah…"

"With a dual mag, you can do twenty paralyzers and twenty rippers—armor piercing rounds. You can change the active ammo through your AUI, or, if you're in the thick of it, have JJ do it."

"Would rippers work on armor like those guys had?"

"Well, yes and no. You gotta hit the softer spots, like their joints or the small gap around where the helmet interfaces with the body armor. We can practice." As Addie nodded her enthusiasm, he chuckled. "On the other hand, your lightning handled 'em pretty damn nicely."

Addie basked in the praise, reluctantly separating from him as he opened the passenger door for her. "I need to learn to control it a little better."

"Yeah, for sure. When's that guy back in town?"

"Pyroshi? He's back. I just need to make an appointment."

As she climbed into the van, he said, "Make one. Maybe tomorrow. I'm gonna see Glitch and work on Beef's thing. I'd like that off our plate when Ross reaches out."

"Shouldn't I—"

"Nah, I can handle some bangers with a grudge, Ads. Let's be a little smart with our time—your training is important." He pushed the door shut, and Addie sat there, waiting for him to walk around. She wasn't sure how she felt about what he'd just said, but she kind of agreed with him. In a way, she thought it would be better if he "handled" the Helldogs. She was too close to that one. Besides, he wasn't wrong; she needed the training, and she was eager to see Pyroshi again.