⊶ 1.04 ⊷

Something Big

We roll back into UnderCity an hour later. Most of our time is spent driving around TopSide looking for a down ramp without a huge police presence. The bribe is a little high, but Brios is the one spending the hardfold.

UnderCity isn’t like the rest of New White Sands; it oozes a dangerous energetic vibe that amps up at night. The daytime crowds are gone and the streets are full of my kind of people. All the extra killing makes the energy pop.

The club we pull up to is one of the biggest in East End and the crowd out front is even bigger than usual. I slide off the back of Brios’ bike, open my hair clip, and shake my hair out. The party crowd thronging up and down the street gives us space.

I know I look fantastic.

Brios looks all right.

He gets points for parking our ride under the flashing faux neon sign above the door for Pluggz Triple X. The light glitzes everything it hits. He gets bonus points for his taste in bikes. The gloss black Briggs & Valiant Ej 300NFC hogs the curb lane. The bike bristles with angles, wings, and tapered fairings that curve around its fat tires.

Brios swings off the saddle, the Electro-jet turbine generator whining evilly as it shuts down.

The alarm pips as he joins me on the curb.

After our grand entrance nobody cares. We get lost in the movement of the crowd, hidden in plain sight by hundreds of ads floating in front of our faces. Strip clubs, illegal weapon implants, and escort services all compete for our attention.

I lead the way toward a sleazy looking alley mouth.

It’s always dark in here. Dark and narrow. Alternating rows of trash bins and cardboard squats are stacked along its walls. You have to weave side to side just to walk the path.

The alley is choked with people whose business flourishes in the darkness next door, conveniently located but separate from the ‘real’ world. We ignore a mix of solicitations and make our way straight to the back.

Brios sweeps his gaze left and right, trying for a casual disregard. It’s his unspoken way of sarcastically commenting how nice a place is, as shit-holes go. His gun hand stays close to the grip of his cannon. I trust him completely to keep me safe.

The crowd thins as we approach the dead end. The buildings vanish upward into the dark. Two city maintenance helos lumber overhead. They drift a few meters above the roofline of the fifty-plus stories on either side of us. Their marker lights flicker through the upper level brown haze.

We make a slow approach on the heavy steel door in the back wall.

My tech guy’s bodyguard steps into view with her favorite weapon in hand.

I know the innocuous short barreled shotgun has a mixed load of explosive, solid, and flamethrower rounds waiting for trouble. This end of the alley is always nice and quiet.

“Vicky.” I nod. She’s more done up than the last time I saw her.

I admire her tattoo. She’s been working on it for the last year. It suits her seven-foot height perfectly.

The blazing red dragon coils around her left leg and crawls over her torso culminating with its head, jaws wide, curving along her right cheekbone. The dragon is completely visible except where it slinks under a tiny pair of crimson short shorts and a gold bandana top.

The tattoo glows, illuminated by bioelectricity. It’s cutting edge, and set against her dusky brown skin, I’m frank when I say, “The ink looks fantastic.”

The shotgun doesn’t come off Brios as she nods her thanks, then asks, “He okay?”

“This is my backup, Brios.” They eye one another intensely for a moment. I tip my head at the door. “Is he seeing clients?” Having crowds at my back makes me twitchy to begin with, and here everyone is at my back. I glance over my shoulder, the hair on my neck starting to stand.

“I’ll let him know it’s you.” Vicky’s face gets the thousand-yard stare of someone who isn’t used to having a built in com-link. There’s a heavy clank as the lock disengages, and she turns to open the steel door.

We’re barely inside when she pulls the door shut behind us. It feels hasty, and, coupled with my uneasiness in the alley, I clench up.

Brios never misses a beat with me. It’s like we have a wire hooking our reactions together. He pulls his cannon.

My Doc Ripperkins dilate, flip filters, and in less than a heartbeat it’s as bright as a clear afternoon TopSide.

We move deeper into the shop and find a narrow beam of light illuminating a worktable.

“Hey Sweetie,” my guy says as he stands, pushing a lamp and lens affair out of his way. Half a dozen manipulator arms slide back into rest mode.

I relax a little, and Brios holsters his gun.

“Hi Ishacc. How are things?” I saunter over to where he squeezes his bulk out from behind a low wall of boxes. The cardboard is marked with some of the biggest names in tech and labeled with strings of number letter combinations that are meaningless to me.

Ishacc has been rewriting and hacking my software for years. He specializes in code cracking and software mods. He learned his skills while working for City Utilities. His specialty is electronic locks and the control software for them. He’ll unlock anything for a price, but fencing electronics and code strings are his hustle.

About three years ago, I took Ishacc out shopping to set him up with some sort of style other than skater shoes, sweats, and a smelly tan colored fishing vest. I graduated top of my class in fashion design with a minor in fashion direction and trend prediction. He was looking to impress a girl, and I was the only one he knew who could help him. I took the job and it worked out. Now he slaves away even more to pay for her and their kids. I wonder if he likes the way his choices turned out for him.

“Well, you know. It’s okay.” He leans in to kiss my cheek. “Not great, never great. A couple weeks back, a local enforcer turned up dead. He was the one keeping a lid on things around here. Now the streets are a mess.”

I shrug noncommittally. “You’re right. It’s just a pain in the ass right now to get honest work done.”

He nods. “Now that’s the truth. So, honest work? What’s that look like for you and I?”

“I need your help with this.” I fish the security tap out of my pocket and turn it over in my hands. I watch Ishacc’s pupils tighten and widen again. The low key neon backlighting of his shop glitters along the black enameled edges.

Ishacc wipes his mouth with the back of one meaty hand. “Can I see that?”

There are kBits spinning in his head. I can’t see them, but I know Ishacc and I know they’re there.

“Sure.” I hand it over slowly. “It comes with a warning. It fried my rig in under a second.”

“Come on, Sweetie.” Ishacc spins it in his grip as he lumbers back to his work station. “You know that kind of talk just makes me hungry.”

Brios and I move closer to his tech-covered worktable. Ishacc drags a few pieces of seemingly discordant equipment together and runs handfuls of clips and plugs back and forth between them.

He lifts a large silver cylinder from a rack and sets it carefully in the middle of the workspace. When he eases the top off, a thick white vapor crawls over the lip, swirls to the table edge, and spills down to the floor.

Brios lets out a subtle grunt. Since I’m prompted, I ask, “Ishacc, what the hell is in there?”

“Liquid nitrogen.” He smiles as he finishes tweaking all the raw cabling. “It’ll slow the unit down so I can get a better read on the software and trip my system if it looks dangerous. It may take more than one pass to skim it all.”

He delicately connects the tap into a lone bundle of wire leads. He gently lowers it into the smoking canister, and with the flip of a switch, his monitors start pulsing data.

“We may not have time for that.”

My comment is lost on him; Ishacc is enraptured.

Code streams along in ever thickening amounts until it pours along like water.

“What the hell is this shit?” he mumbles as he sits. “Where did you get this thing?” He speaks louder but doesn’t take his eyes off the scrolling lines.

A coil spring thermometer with tinfoil mounted to the needle tracks the climbing temperature toward its mate. They touch. His system trips. An old fashioned Frankenstein-style bladed relay switch clicks off.

The connection ends.

Ishacc dials back the whole file and starts re-reading the event log from the beginning. His eyes go wider. At one point he clasps a hand over his mouth and lets out a gasp of horror and delight.

He lifts the tap out of the smoking cylinder and lays it on the table. He sits in silence for a few minutes, watching the frosty condensate slowly fade.

Brios gets restless and starts looking around. “Is this normal for him?” he asks me quietly.

It isn’t. In fact, I’m getting worried just standing here, like I’m waiting for God to throw a bolt of lightning at my head.

“Oh yeah. This is fine,” I reply.

“This is not fine,” Ishacc says in a whisper. He continues, his voice rising, “This thing is bigger than I can handle.”

“You’re just saying that,” I say, rolling a hint of mockery into my flattery. “You’re the best code analyst in UnderCity.”

“No, Sweetie. I’m good at software, but I barely scratched the surface of what this tap is running. I can’t tell you where it’s made, or by who. But the only people who could get their hands on this are top level players.” He slides the unit around with a steel probe. “You’ve heard the term ‘bleeding edge?’ This tap exists a fraction of a second before the blade hits. I could make a fortune pulling fragments of code out of here and recycling them. That,” he says as he points with his probe, “in one tiny custom unit, coded as it is, will open any door in the city. It’s worth a fortune.”

I snort. “So it’s a good thing I’m not a thief or some sort of criminal?”

Ishacc laughs. “You could walk into AlphaPlaza One and straight into AlphaTek’s data core with that thing overriding all their security.”

“Interesting,” I say, trying not to sound too excited as I pick up the tap. The black metal is still cold.

I gotta play it cool. With what was on the security tap, maybe Ishacc will be too freaked to hand over his contact. “Hey, on a separate note, I have a chunk of hardware I need to have valued. What was the name of that guy? You know. The guy you sent me to a couple of months ago when I had that other hardware for sale?”

“Larus?” Ishacc is distracted, scrolling over code and chewing on a fingernail.

Even as Ishacc drops the guy’s name, it slides around my memory like a slippery piece of fish.

“Yeah, that’s right. Larus.” I mentally repeat it a dozen times to get it to stick.

Ishacc flicks his eyes over me. “I haven’t seen him since he worked with you. I heard he moved shop. He’s somewhere in the Ganglands, hiding.”

“The Ganglands?” Nobody simply walks into Ganglands. Moving there is certifiable crazy. “Wow, I did not see that coming.”

It occurs to me the last data core I sold to Larus could be the reason he went into hiding. An uneasy feeling hits me again. I hope Ishacc won’t make the connection between me, my hardware, and whatever scared his buddy.

Ishacc is sometimes smarter than he looks.

“Well,” I say as I slip the tap into my pocket, “you go ahead and sell that code, Ishacc, and pay me my standard cut later.”

“Fine.” He hardly looks up from the screen. “But if you get caught by anyone with that, do me a favor?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Blow your brains out so they can’t brain hack you to find me.” He says it deadpan.

“Um. No.” I look at him like he’s a plague carrier. “How about we don’t get caught?”

Ishacc snorts and says, “Say hello to Larus for me if you find him alive.”

We push our way back out to the street.

I catch a vibe from Brios. He’s probably thinking about the money we’ll make with the security tap.

I’m thinking about wild five-finger discounts at all my favorite shops. I’m also worried about the Ganglands. Nulls are, by nature, style deficient. They have as hard a time wrapping their craniums around a person like me as I do them. The only thing I’ve ever agreed on with a Null is that violent deaths sometimes need to happen.

We move through the flow of people and the crush of holo-ads. Directed sound drops in and out as we walk.

Brios rumbles the B&V to life, and I make a show of getting on the back. I know it’ll distract him temporarily from the idea of where we have to go next.

I push it by sliding my hands around him a little lower than I should, but the crowd likes the overall aesthetic. People stop to watch. I can see it as an ad for my leathers, or the bike. You know, big ugly guy, superhot girl, his awesome equipment, i.e. his bike, gets him the girl to the rousing adoration of the crowd.

At one time, I’d strongly considered leasing a Lifestyle Capture Drone to follow me around so I could sell the footage to media outlets as advertising. Then I remembered that most of my clients would not appreciate being on camera; one revenue stream open, another one closed.

Brios doesn’t say anything about my hands. As we accelerate away from the crowds, I move them higher on his hips. I feel his disappointment through his spine.

By unspoken agreement, we roll out of New White Sands and across the Jumble. The remains of the old city are picked out here and there by homemade lights and heavily armed squatter camps.

Brios kills our headlights and flips the bike into nano fuel cell operation. The jet spins down into silence. The only sound we make is the crunch of our tires over gravel.

The city of New White Sands looms behind us; a glittering mountain, a seething anthill of struggling life and countless death set against the backdrop of an endless hum of data and flowing money…. Maybe I should sell poetry.

Somehow we find our usual place and Brios shuts the bike down. We stay silent as we slip past the stacked rubble barricade and through the tarp doorway of the makeshift bar.

There’s never a sign out front. Only South Am vets have any idea how to find this place. It moves randomly across the detritus of a different time. And now we’re here. The items in my pocket make me feel dangerously obsolete.

It’s the kind of tech that turned uptown wannabes into real players.

Brios nods at the few faces spread out around the low roofed room. We find a table under an archaic work light and pull up mismatched kitchen chairs. The waitress recognizes us. She doesn’t ask; she just brings over three beers. The bottles look cheap and dusty. The product is top notch though. We wait politely until she’s out of earshot.

“Now what?” Brios asks.

“Well, I figure we wait until sunrise and go see Larus.”

I’m not a South Am vet. I just happened to be there when the pre-existing condition liquefied into the shit that was the Uprising. I’d have died there if it hadn’t been for Brios.

All the regulars in the room know me, but a few others see me as an interloper.

I keep my head down and avoid eye contact. I know my discomfort will fade. The faces I recognize will fill the others in on my story. In the meantime, I figure it’s best not to push it.

Brios, the big dummy, doesn’t notice these kinds of things. Even if he does, he never changes how he acts. He takes a long swallow of beer and then says, “So this butt-clown, Larus, is holed up in the Ganglands.”

“Yeah.” I know Larus by the work he’s done, so I try to defend him a little. “And he’s not a butt-clown, he really is talented.”

“He’s voluntarily living in the Ganglands.” Brios shrugs. “He’s gotta be some kind of a butt-clown.”

“It could be he’s a genius.” I sip my beer. “Maybe he’s letting the Nulls be his protection. No corporation is going to chase him in there. It’s just too much of a hit to their bottom line.” Brios looks like he still doesn’t get it, so I continue, “No company wants to lose money and resources like that. All the Nulls would come out to fight just because it’s a fight. And for them, having him there is a win-win. Anyone comes for him, they get a fight. No one comes for him, they get their hardware modded and fixed for free.”

“Huh.” Brios finishes his bottle and slides the empty aside. “He’s still a butt-clown, because we have to go in there just to talk to him.” He pulls the spare over, cracks the cap, and takes a draw.

I can tell Brios isn’t happy about any of this. He’s going through his beer faster than normal.

“The joke’s on us for actually going in there to find him. He is an asshole though. An asshole for making this harder than it needs to be.”

My palmscreen itches. I wonder what deals I’ve missed.

The sooner I dump the goods, the sooner I can get back on the grid, the sooner I can shop.

Unfortunately, the Jumble is a huge dead zone for shopping or style unless a girl likes dirty fatigues, unshaven-ness, and man-stink, even on the women.

“You good with moving on this in the morning?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He nods. “Not a good idea to interrupt a wild night of blood sacrifices and hunting human prey.”

“I agree.” I hate the Ganglands just as much as he does.

“I got a guy who owes me big time.” Brios has more beer and watches my reaction.

I keep it cool.

He continues, “This guy is good at what he does. I think he could keep the Nulls off us until we finish with Larus.”

“Are you saying you can’t keep me safe?” I ask, flashing him a smile.

“I’m say’n, I’m one man and I’m real good at kill’n.” Brios dips the bottom edge of his bottle in and out of a wet ring that has formed on the table. “But in the Ganglands, everyone’s a killer and there’s an endless supply.”

“So, this guy coming on board.” I widen the focus of my eyes to watch more of the room. Drinking makes Brios’ Texan drawl slip out and, veterans or not, there might be people in here who will take offense to sitting with a Texan. “What’s that look like?”

“I know you don’t like pay’n if you don’t have to and I agree with you. It’s good policy not to leave a trail of hardfold or kBits anywhere if you can help it.” Brios speaks slowly. I always take that to mean he’s thought about what’s coming out of his mouth. “He owes me enough that I could call it all in. He’d help out if it made us even. We find him tonight, rest up, and do our Ganglands fishing trip in the morning.”

“Okay. But I have final say.”

Brios relaxes as I answer.

“If I don’t like this guy at all, for any reason, he’s not playing in our sandbox.”

“Sure.” That’s all he says. It’s an unusual enough thing, him not blah, blah, blahing, that I wonder who this guy is he’s talking about.

I thought I knew all of Brios’ friends.

I finish my beer and we leave the bar with a fraction of a plan. “So where does this guy of yours live?”

“He hangs out with the Rafters, but he isn’t one.” Brios flips the bike on and mounts up. “I think he just likes the lifestyle.”

˜˜˜

We pick our way along roads cleared by corporations for whatever purpose.

The concrete gets rough as we approach an old bridge. My eyes amp a blend of starlight and ambient spill-over from the city behind us, and I spot manned barricades.

Rafter country.

Rafters are itinerant crop workers who use the old canals and river systems to get around. They have a retro style, are loyal, and slow to anger. A deliberate sort of people.

They’re river hippies.

A few years back, a small corporation didn’t pay them for their work. That company’s head office was a smoking hole by sunset the next day. Love, peace, and happiness, but on their terms. They’re hippies with guns.

I’ve heard they breed really good snipers out here.

Brios rolls onto the bridge deck and shuts the bike down. “We walk from here, until we talk to them. After we get approval, we can move into their perimeter.”

At the barricade, Brios speaks quietly to three men: hunters on guard duty. He motions for me to wait. The riflemen look me up and down while Brios pulls the bike behind the barricade, dismounts, and comes back. “Stay close and don’t say anything.”

I nod.

We go down to the river bank, following one of the guards who guides us.

Along the river’s edge is a clutter of different kinds of boats and rafts tied off to form a floating community.

I never knew so many Rafters were down here.

An antique looking PBR sits roped off but ready to go, gun tub uncovered. A handful of burly men huddle in the stern playing cards under a hissing white lamp.

Lamplight glitters softly from decks, railings, and out of quaintly decorated windows. The smell of cooking food drifts with the breeze along the valley. The whole place is neat, tidy, and organized.

I stop as kids run by with mini lights. They’re playing a chase game with one another. Key word here is playing.

I thought only CitOne kids had the luxury of playing. Everyone else I know with kids has them working. It isn’t cruel; it’s an economic reality, another indicator of how advanced we are as a civilization.

The few adults who lift their heads from evening work, repairs, sewing, or tinkering with mechanical parts, nod and smile at our guide but give us wary looks.

The breeze picks up along the river valley and the air turns clean and smells intensely sweet. Something pulls at my chest. I shake my head. There are no shops out here. Plus, I remind myself, I look huge in plaid flannel which seems to be THE fashion du jour.

I turn and stare at the glowing towers of the city in the distance. That’s my home, filled with shops, people to bilk, and money to make and spend.

“Is he here?” I hear our guide ask.

I look back. He’s speaking to a woman perched on an old water drum. She’s dressed in jeans and cross laced knee-high boots. She looks fit, and hot, like this year’s trending supermodel hot.

I tamp down my jealousy. If I spent everything I’d ever earned, I could look like her. Where is she getting cash like that out here?

As she stands, her old air cavalry jacket swings open exposing a stripped down flight harness, a short cropped one button vest, and no shirt or bra. I catch a fleeting glimpse of the flawless pale skin on her belly and an eyeful of glorious underboob. She could hit any club in the city and fit in perfectly. The name tape on the jacket has been re-stitched at some point with a newer badge, one that reads Angel.

As Brios requested, I keep my mouth shut.

She nods. “He’s just finishing dinner. Probably getting ready to go.”

She lifts a weather flap from a window with a long delicate finger. “Wolf, you’ve got some friends here.”

A deep voice responds. “Let them in.”

We step onto the sturdy raft and enter the small cabin.

If Angel wasn’t enough, Wolf is wide shouldered and taper-waisted. There’s a lot of Spain in his features, but his voice is unaccented. He’s an awesome middle-aged specimen of male.

He looks at us a moment and stands from the small table. He silently clears his plate to a counter in the tiny galley.

“I want to propose a job.” Brios jumps right in. “One that would make us even.”

Wolf’s eyes drift over me. I don’t know why he’s bothering. He has a blonde supermodel for a door guard. I let him look. Maybe he’s just being polite.

“Right to the point,” Wolf says, “That’s what I like about you, Brios. No waste. No fat to our conversations. The downside is you sometimes forget your manners.”

Brios shuts his mouth and steps aside.

Wolf’s eyes finally meet mine.

I try to stare him down like he’s Brios.

He doesn’t look away. “I’m Wolf. I’ve known Brios since before South Am,” he says as he leans forward to shake my hand. “His manners haven’t changed.”

“You can call me Sweetie.” I almost use my real name as I take his hand. His gaze disarms me. His eyes are dark gray, set over good cheekbones and a wicked jawline.

I slap myself mentally and make note to be extra vigilant around him.

Weird thing is … I feel like I’ve seen him before, someplace in the city.

His smile widens. “I’ve heard of you, Sweetie.”

“Whatever you heard, it’s probably a lie circulated by my detractors,” I answer. This far out of the city someone has heard of me? I want to call ‘bullshit,’ but Brios is sure we need this guy.

“I think it’s noble of you to pay for Mr. Quan’s youngest daughter’s piano lessons.” Wolf’s eyes soften. “I hear she’s improved at least tenfold.”

I sit heavily on a chair.

Only a handful of people know about that arrangement.

I stare. This handsome face with its disarming gaze, this Wolf; his is the face of danger.

*****

Find this book on Amazon here: Shadow’s Fall: New White Sands City Cyberpunk Book 1

Or start reading the series free by signing up for the INSIDERS mailing list to get the free prequel novella.