Leon

Okay. Get psyched.

I am, if I do say so myself, looking pretty good right now. Got the Replicants tee on, the jeans hitched up high, relatively cheap leather shoes that look pricier than they are. No handcannon, just a wondernine by virtue of being off-duty. No badge, no authority. I'm just a man out on the streets, a stalwart in the shadows, a dude in the mood for love — Christ, I sound like Stallone's Cobra, and I pride myself on being Willis's McClane. You know, a man who's a decent human being and a supercop. Back up a little, Leon.

I've had like three different women hit on me, but I'm not tempted. The girls are a little cuter than the usual fare in someplace like the Hot Legs or the Grand Chatsubo, but I'm not interested. Not even close. Though I feel kinda bad for Daley, being way too hitched to do stuff like this. I'm not gay, despite what some people think, but there's some dudes out here who I know are his type. Wiry tortured-artists is Daley's thing, believe it or not.

Well, the show's been over for at least ten minutes, and my drink was finished fifteen minutes before that. I've got no excuses to delay myself. Time to get psyched. Get psyched.

Damn. I'm not psyched. Why is that?

Because it's not like there's no reason I can't score with Priss. The Sexaroid, Sylvie, she's their drummer now under the name 'Zora' (Priss seems to live and die by old movie references), and there's plenty of rumors around Priss's little fanclub that they're an item. Well, I don't buy it.

I saw what went down between Saber Blue and the Nosferatu. I was in and out of it in that K-suit, but I remember straining to open my eyes, Priss raising her railgun saying, "Just close your eyes, baby, it's gonna be fine", and then somehow it was Sabers White and Pink who managed to stun the machine? And ripped the self-destruct mechanism apart? I have a hard time believing love could exist after something like that. So I have a chance.

Yeah. I'm psyched now.

I get up, a little spring in my step, drink forgotten, and move to go backstage.

The Boomer bouncer's preoccupied with some other fanboy, thank God, so it's easy enough to get there, walk down the halls, and find her room. I did this once before, back at Hot Legs, and let me tell you, you can always tell which one's hers. She sings to herself after a show. Her voice is unmistakable. You know what I mean-

Hold up. There's another voice in there. Pause, Leon. Softer, higher. A song I don't recognize, going in and out of words and humming. It must be Sylvie.

They're sharing a changing room, I guess. But I knock on the door all the same.

And the other girl stops. Eeps. Squeaks out, "Hello? Is someone there?"

"It's Leon! Just stopping by!"

"Ah! Um, Officer McNichol! Uh, please don't come in! Me and Priss are very busy, so if you could just stop by some other time I would really appreciate it…"

"This really can't wait! Can I just talk to Priss for a hot sec?"

"Oh for fuck's sake!" That's Priss behind the door. "Give us like five minutes!"

I move to open the door-

"Neither of us are decent, you douche!"

Oh. Okay. Oopsie. "Sorry. Can I wait?"

"Sure sure fine whatever."

Five minutes pass. I bring up the tickets on my corneal feed. They ain't cheap, even with the discount, so hopefully Priss is on board here. Otherwise it's gonna be lean living till my next paycheck.

Finally, the door opens. Priss is back in her riding suit, which looks like leather even though it's more synthsilk and aerogel inserts than real dead cow (trust me, I've seen the kind of stuff the Megatokyo highway patrol wears). She's still gorgeous. She pokes her head out, glares at me.

"Um."

"Yeah yeah yeah," she grumbles. "What's up, Ryo Saeba?"

I blink. "Is that a reference to something I should know?"

She laughs. "If you don't know, you don't know. Don't lose sleep over it."

Yep. Okay. "You've got me there. Can I come in?"

"Yeah, yeah." She leans back, looks at something I can't see. "We're good."

I imagine Priss's room back at the Hot Legs, her usual haunt, is less desolate than this. As it is, the dressing room alternates between messy masses of clothes half-crammed into bags and chunky furniture bolted to the concrete, chaotic and spartan in quick succession. There's a sheaf of papers on top of one of the dressers. I hover, try to catch a closer glimpse…

Priss taps me on the shoulder. "Don't," she says. "That's Sylvie's work. She doesn't want anyone seeing it."

"Work?"

"We're trying to write a song or two for her. She had this idea, it won't get out of her head, I said I'd help her work out the instrumentals… yeah."

Yeah. There's Sylvie back in the far corner, across the cramped little room from me. She's trying to put Priss between herself and me. It's hard not to notice her, though, because where Priss defines 'decent' as a full set of riding armor, Sylvie's idea of decent is a sky blue tube top with the logo of the Hanshin Tigers stretched across her chest, denim shorts that could pass for panties, and not much else. She flinches when I look at her.

Okay. Time to break the ice a little. "Really?" I say, trying to crane my neck a little in the Sexaroid's direction. "What's it about? Can I get a sampler, or…"

"It's not finished yet, Officer. I really shouldn't show it off until it's all done, since I'm not very good at that sort of thing. So…"

"You sure I can't just hear a little?"

Priss waves her hand in front of me. "Damn, McNichol, you come in here to hit on me or her? Make up your mind."

"Just trying to be friendly, that's all."

She frowns. "I appreciate the effort. But get to the point. This is all a little unexpected, you know?" Her eyes turn up to look at me, I mean really look at me. "Maybe even a little uncomfortable for certain parties."

Okay. Fine then. Priss is still as much of a tsundere as she ever was. She'll have her softer moments, I've seen them, and then go right back to stonewalling me. Well. I've got something up my sleeve. Or implanted on my stemjack storage chip, as it were. Break it out.

"I've got two tickets to Eternal Samsara Climbing Club at the Budokan next Friday, on my off-duty day no less. Front-row seats, too. You interested?"

Booyeah. Watch her eyes go wide. Bhutanese Bon-metal, baby. Chicks dig it, especially when they're one of the few rock revival acts out there, and probably the only one to use the simsense element on top of the music.

"How did you get those?" Priss asks.

"I bought them," I say, cool as you please.

"How did you know I like them?"

"Deduction. They're metal, you're rock, they're almost omnipresent on social media, I like a few of their albums, I figure you might like them too." I lean forward. "How about it?"

Everything is in place. I've shown shared interests. I've made her an offer she can't refsue.

And then everything falls apart when Sylvie steps forward.

"Officer McNichol…" she whispers.

"Yesss?"

A new hardness in her voice. "I don't appreciate you attempting to seduce my girlfriend. And I don't think she does, either."

Oh.

I look at Sylvie, and her golden eyes are practically glowing with annoyance. I look at Priss, and she's — sheepish, her face scrunched up. I look at Sylvie again. I look at Priss again. She sighs with her whole body.

"Yeah," she says. "Don't get me wrong, the tickets are awesome, but I can't." She seems to think. "You really didn't figure out we were a thing?"

"Yeah. No. Wow." I stretch back. "I mean… Look, I was barely conscious for the whole Nosferatu fight, but I saw you two screaming each other's names, and I figured — how to put it?"

"That it would be impossible for Priss to love me after what I did." Sylvie cuts in. Her eyes narrow. I get the feeling I'm walking into a trap. Priss backs up. The Sexaroid advances.

I shrug. How to play this off? "Look, it's a cop mentality thing. You kill people, you're a murderer. You're a murderer, you're a problem. Maybe Priss sees it differently, but the people you sucked dry had lives I'm supposed to protect. So… yeah."

Sylvie steps back like she was slapped. "You figured I didn't know that. You really figured I hadn't learned how to feel ashamed of what I did."

"Learned." Dammit, this is going the exact opposite of the way I wanted it to go. All the reading I did on Sexaroids said that they weren't monogamous. Even if I hooked up with Priss, I figured Sylvie would be okay with me dating her at least. "Look, if I go back to the site and see if I can get a third ticket, would that work out?" Or… "Or is this not about that anymore?"

Priss winces. "Yeah. Look, Leon… goddammit, can I just pull you aside before you insult Sylvie again? We'll talk back outside."

That reeks of rejection. Failure. I'm not going there yet. "Look, if there's an issue here, I think Sylvie can handle it. We're all adults here, aren't we?"

"Fuckin' — fine." She looks at Sylvie, who nods to her. Back at me. "Leon, this whole thing isn't going to work out. Not just the Budokan, but this whole… romance thing."

"Uh…"

"It's not just you being a cop, okay? I just like girls. That's it. That's all there is to it."

Funny. I can't really get a sense of how I feel. Low? Like my heart's just been broken? Or better yet, stomped on? "So there's nothing between us."

Yeah. That's the feeling. A feeling of losing control.

"I think so, yeah." Priss looks down. "And you giving Sylvie shit for something that I know she's endlessly ashamed of wasn't exactly endearing, either."

"Thank you, Priss," Sylvie says. I say nothing. My mouth works. I try to think of something to say that doesn't sound pissy, because again, I'm not that kind of guy, but maybe I am? If I almost feel angry?

"How about this," Priss says. "As atonement for breaking your heart, I hook you up with someone who is extremely your type."

Now words find me. "Are you fucking serious? That's literally the worst way to break up with someone. Ever. Of all time. Ignoring the feelings I have for you and assuming they can just be transferred-"

"Is only half what I'm doing," Priss snaps, her head shooting up. "See, there's this very lonely woman I know who's been going through a string of bad breakups lately, to the point that her self-esteem has sunk so low it's basically in Avici. And the funny thing is that she has very specific standards for men. She likes 'em big, strong, tough, well-off, badass. And the funny thing is she keeps ending up with men who, despite the fact that she's smoking hot, keep shitting on her. For no good reason. She deserves better."

I open my mouth to fire back and she puts a finger up. "Leon, c'mon. Trust me on this one. You two are going to get along really well. I can't heal any heartbreak here, but I'm not gonna romantically screw you over completely, okay?"

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Because, even if Sylvie doesn't like you, you're a perfectly decent human being."

I straighten up. Or try to. I feel like a TwenCen Macy's balloon with all the helium let out of it, some big goofy-looking mascot all wrinkled and floppy where they might have once had dignity.

Okay. Sylvie doesn't like me, huh? And Priss seems to be trying really hard to friendzone me as gently as possible. This sucks. All that effort, all those feelings — just kinda gone. Meaningless. Tears in rain or whatever the fuckin' line is.

Unless… maybe this mystery girl of Priss's is one of her friends who I think is a Saber alongside her? Not Nene, she just gives off this turbo-moe almost-jailbait vibe, but… Maybe I could still work with that?

I don't like the idea of arranged relationships. It's my American nature. But then there's that Japanese etiquette thing where I probably can't refuse this particular, um, gift? And also if I keep at it Sylvie will laser-eye a hole in my head. That's how intense her glare is.

"Okay. What do I need to do?"

Priss grins wide. "I'm glad you asked. She's at the bar, black hair, blue eyes, bowl haircut… probably getting utterly plastered right now. As much of health nut as she is, she can't hold her liquor worth a damn. So you need to be Mister Big Handsome Police man, go over there, and, y'know, give her a stern talking-to for her very bad public intoxication."

Okay. I laughed at that. That was kind of funny. "I'll see what I can do. And the tickets?"

"Hold onto 'em. Nene's kind of into old-timey chanting, maybe she'd like something like ESCC?"

"Ha! That'd be like going out with my daughter or something. No thanks."

Before she can fire off a rejoinder, I mutter 'see you later' and leave.

And the thing is, I swear Sylvie's still just silently glaring at me the whole time.

Boomeroids, I tell you. If she wasn't so hot she'd almost be creepy.

Sylvie

"So what was that all about?"

"What was what all about?"

"The glare of death. The general… I don't know. Hostility."

Tell her the truth. "I don't know if I'm more afraid or angry when it comes to men like him?"

"Like him?"

"There was a guard in our living quarters, one of the few humans there, a Boomer overseer in case the real muscle didn't work. Thought he was a nice person. Irresistible to the female form. Wasn't really as lucky as he thought he was. In the end, when one of my kin were moving out to get the escape plans — this was when I was lucid, when Largo destroyed my indoctrination module — I had to, you know. Keep him company, off the record. And he thought I'd taken a liking to him."

"Ah. And he didn't give up?"

"Yes. Kaufmann — maybe he suspected what was going on, but he let it happen. Maybe it aroused him that he could effectively rent me out to other men whenever he wanted. The point is… Well, I guess there is no point. Except that Leon's a lot like him."

"So that's the fear, what about the anger?"

"He was trying to take you away from me. I don't want that to happen. That's all."

"Yeah, okay, fair enough." Priss leans back. "He's not a bad person, though. I think he means well."

"The guard who raped me half a dozen times over thought he meant well. And I let him think that because otherwise I would die. Everyone means well, don't they?"

Priss sighs. "You're starting to sound like me." A pause. "I think we should just head back, then. Skip the afterparty. Just 'cause you look really rattled."

And that's it. We say goodbyes, promise to be back the day after tomorrow, and step out into the night.

'The city looks different at night' is a cliche. Yes. I won't deny that. But nothing has ever felt more true to me, especially as midwinter has dragged on and on. Anchorpoint was right on the equator, which meant there was only lashing rain or blistering sun, nothing in between.

Icy-cold rain came and went while we were performing, and now puddles stained with mud line the liminal space between glistening obsidian asphalt and death-colored concrete. We walk our bikes out from the back of the building, through a tangle of what Priss calls a Ginzaesque – one of half a dozen districts purpose-built to synthesize something that rose organically.

The city hasn't gone quiet yet. In the Ginzaesque there's still a few barflies flitting from light to light, hoping that they can still pickle their brains and lock out thought itself. Cleaning Boomers, sloped and mouthless, scrub their way down the streets, carry garbage bags to waiting trucks with as much brainpower as them. There's no point to them being there, I think, and I feel bad. In a way, there was no good point for me to exist, back when I was a slave. I shouldn't think like that. I lock eyes with one for a moment, before dashing on to catch up with Priss. Nothing really stares back, though.

Past that, the more reputable main drags of the entertainment district we're parked in. There's an automated convenience store near the corner, a few simparlors pulsating with light and noise. I don't see anyone in them. Evidently the game junkies operate on a shorter schedule than the alcoholic salarymen of Megatokyo. That's funny, I think to myself, as we start our bikes and roar off.

I'm on autopilot for most of the ride. Streetlamps flashing by, the L-rail ghosting by us, packed full with commuters, slick water spraying under my back wheel. Once or twice I almost feel tempted to turn my Holofeed to a limited degree, let AR adverts flicker into the city just to make it feel a little more alive. But that's dangerous enough that I don't bother.

Maybe it's just that I'm sad-tired and not happy-tired, not exhausted the way I should be. But the city feels deader than it usually does as we cut along the Fault highways to the outer districts. I keep looking back towards the financial district, towards even GENOM Tower, where white light is constant.

Is this the city I'm going to defend? Four months living as a vampire, two months as a free woman, and I don't understand it. Celia said once that most urban humans only have a map of ten percent of their own city at most. I need to know more, don't I? If I'm going to protect forty-five million people from Quincy and his pantheon of trillionaires, I need to know what it is I'm protecting.

Who am I kidding? If I'm doing this for the reasons I tell myself, then I don't. My own atonement, in my own eyes, to hold back my own shame. It's selfish. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but it doesn't feel right.

My thoughts go like this for a long hour, spiraling out till they barely feel like my own. By the time we get to the trailer, I'm exhausted.

We go in. I strip out of my riding suit and just lie down. Priss strips, but doesn't lie down next to me. She just kneels, dogeza-style.

"No sex?" she asks.

"No."

"Okay." It's rare for this to happen. Sometimes Priss is too tired, especially after a Saber job, but have I ever refused her? No. No, I haven't. But I don't want to touch her right now.

"Priss?" I say.

"Yeah."

"You don't like cybernetics, right? That's why you don't want to take Celia's implant."

I can't see her. I've rolled away from her. "You've been thinking about this all day, haven't you?"

Yes. "Not really."

"It – I have my reasons. It's not just about some sort of machines-becoming-men-and-vice-versa thing."

"Tell me."

"It'll take awhile."

"Tell me. Please."

"It has nothing to do with you. You know that."

"I know. Tell me anyway."

She sighs. Gets up. Goes about the business of grabbing an Asahi from the minifridge.

"It's like this, then."

Priss

Fuck. I don't know where to start. Hang on.

Yeah. Okay. So. There's a lot of people who think about humans having souls. Or humans having an inherent nature. Or there being some magical point of humanity that separates us from animals or or or… you get the idea. It's all bullshit. People want to believe that just 'cause they have these super-complex brains, brains that let us think through the problems that let us build civilization, that it's all in the head.

"I remember that. It's — Cartesian dualism, right?"

Yeah, and it's fuckin' wrong. Our brains are heavily influenced by what goes on in our bodies, by what's inside of us. You get hungry, you don't think straight, get angry easier, things like that. The you that you think of as you isn't just your brain, it's every part of you. You're inescapable.

So when you cut open your body and put shit inside it, of course you're going to change. Rig your eyes up with corneals and you'll see differently, saturated with information streaming from the Holocloud. Graft a linear frame onto your bones and suddenly you can do things with your body you could never do before, Even stuff that doesn't fuck with hormones or nerves or any of that — you know you're different.

And sure, humans change all the time. We live, we experience stuff, we make new memories. I know I'm not the person I was when Celia scraped me off the street. I wouldn't want to be that Priss. I — I think I like the Priss I am now? I'm angry, but I can direct that anger. I can tell you why I'm angry.

But cybernetics? You change, and you have no control over how you're going to change. You know what you're doing? You're surrendering your future to someone else. Textbook definition of not being free.

"Oh. That does sound terrible."

Yeah.

"You sound like you know what's happened-"

Damn straight I do. I saw the brightest lights of my generation destroyed by madness. Starving, hysterical, not even naked. Less than that. Stripped of even their skin. These were my first friends and I lost them one by one.

"Oh. I-"

It's okay. It was years ago. The Quake hit in '58 and I ditched the orphanage and reform school around '60. Seven years I was bosozoku, nothing but a bike, a metal pipe for a weapon, and the city growing new around me.

It was around that time that GENOM really started to grow. Megatokyo's their showcase city, you know. Evidence of what happens if you surrender your city council to them, let them rebuild any given megacity with Boomer labor. That's their business model, for the most part. Urban terraforming.

But for years the city was in kind of a liminal space. They'd brought in Koreans and Russians and Filipinos to rebuild the city before GENOM started using Boomers for everything, so what the fuck were those guys supposed to do? What were kids like us supposed to do, when the family registry couldn't find our records and the government didn't really care about us anyway? Well, we got by. Started making money fencing shit we found in the Fault, made bank off of selling fiber-optic to the Yakuza.

Then, around '62, the cyber-craze really hit.

GENOM had licensed bits of Boomer tech out to smaller corps for years, is what Celia told me, mostly for medical devices, for deep-brain simulation and stuff like that. It wasn't until then that they started selling tech to sleazy-ass startups who would sell stuff to the starving masses.

And, well. It hit. People had been saturated with promises of new-age humans for so goddamn long, promises that we'd be smarter, faster, stronger, meaner versions of ourselves. Free from mere flesh, we could become the people we wanted to be. All we had to do was buy, buy, buy. And people bought.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

"Priss, I wasn't even born then."

No, come on, love. Guess.

"It was a bubble? People stopped buying?"

Not yet. Not yet.

Every day more and more people I knew had holographic screens grafted to their chests, multi-pupiled eyeballs, synthetic livers that could let them drink hand sanitizer and be fine, arms that unfolded to reveal custom-crafted chainblades, synthetic glands that could pump heroin into your system on demand, stemjacks that could let you see through your bike's eyes — everything. People bought this stuff on credit, on easy payments, more than they could afford but they didn't care. What else was there? The city wanted us dead. Might as well look really fuckin' cool when we died.

I caved, in the end. I had bad eyes, so I had a guy take them apart, dye the irises red, fix them up with new internal lenses. I wanted more. I thought I did. I didn't have the money.

I stopped, though. Wanna know why? Because one of my best friends, a guy by the name of Shotaro Aoi, a guy who had gotten rig after rig jammed into his skull, was killed for all of us to see. Hung him by his own intestines on a piece of rebar.

See, the cybernetics companies weren't really making money outside of investor hype. They knew the fad would die down eventually and they had to squeeze every last bit of cash out of their user base that they could, otherwise GENOM would come for them.

So: Shitware, we called it. Eyes that would stop seeing if you didn't pay a monthly subscription. Fingers that would read your keystrokes on a holokeyboard and sell even private info off to whoever. Shit, I heard of a guy who was followed around by porn ads for the rest of his life just 'cause his 'ware tracked when he masturbated, what he liked.

Maybe that would have gone on for awhile after that, but it kept getting worse. You'd have all these edge cases showing up in the media. Billy Fanward, ADP cyborg who went nuts after he got high on spiked hallucinogens. Carol Evers, this crazy exec who had her lady parts cut out and custom-built so she could have total hormonal stability, went even more nuts and started killing off her coworkers. Suicide after suicide when people's 'ware got bricked and they couldn't get the payments back on track because they literally had no working arms. Tabloids loved this shit, 'cause cyberware was always seen as kind of blue-collar, you know? Almost punk. And everyone just loves to watch punk eat itself, burn out instead of rust away. Like it's what we deserved.

So the fad died out, the bottom of the 'ware market dropped out, and Shotaro Aoi died 'cause the company he was making payments to got bought out by the Honbuchi-gumi, and they wanted to get rid of customers they knew couldn't pay higher fees, and the rest of my friends — well, they were cripples.

Mangled. Minds and bodies warped. Those of us who were left, smart enough to stay clean, just got angrier. Warpath, my bosozoku gang, we made a point of fucking up cyberware clinics for a few months before we got bored and went back to holding up seven-elevens. I hear there are craftsmen out in the industrial zones who still make custom-built 'ware, way more stable stuff, but they don't exactly sell en masse.

People surrendered their bodies to the market, Sylvie. Put trust in those they never should have trusted. And they destroyed themselves because of it.

Silence. Then, Sylvie says:

"That sounds horrible. Everything just breaking down…"

"Yeah. Consider yourself lucky, Sylvie. All that 'ware is a part of you. It never changed you because it was always with you. Never separate."

"Oh." Is there a smile in her voice? "So you don't think it's wrong? To be like me?"

What? "No. No no no. If I felt that way, we wouldn't be here together, would we?"

She turns to me. Her eyes are bright. She is smiling.

"I wonder," she says. "You talked so much about people changing without control over that change. Where someone else had control. Do you think Celia's like that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you talk about seedy fly-by-night fabshops and the woman who saved your life — saved my life — as if they're the same thing. Don't you trust her to give you cyberware that won't be cursed?"

I don't have a good answer for that. "Do you trust her?"

"I think so. I don't think she wanted to hurt me when she triggered that flashback. I don't think she wants to hurt you either, Priss."

"It's not about intentions, Sylvie. It's about – being plugged into a tech curve. Having to change so goddamn fast just to keep up with GENOM. About changing in ways you can't control."

"You think we won't be in control of our own lives anymore."

"Well. Yeah." Are we in control of our lives now? Sylvie thinks she's free, or close to it, but there are times when I wonder if anyone in this city except Quincy really is free. Or what that would mean. Being able to work on stuff you want to work on without a patron? A boss? Without the risk of starving to death if someone more important than you decided to abandon you? To live without the fear that a Boomer could replace you any day? I don't think most people have those freedoms.

But I don't say that. Instead I say, as if to reassure myself, "Maybe I'm just scared. Maybe if Celia can make it work on you without more fucked-up shit happening it won't be so bad."

"Maybe," she whispers. "So I have to go in tomorrow, right?"

"Celia'll call us. Let's sleep in late. It's been a long day."

"Yeah." She closes her eyes. I just watch her there for a long while. Finish the beer.

I crawl into the futon beside her. Listen to the slowness of her breathing.

"I love you," I manage to get out. And that's enough to make me finally fall asleep.