CITY_CENTER
The broth that the ramen noodles were suspended in was dark and steaming, small patches of oil shimmering upon the liquid disc. Shards of chopped greens and frothy spiced bubbles created a webbing in between the noodles, a heady note spiraling upward. A half-cooked egg lazily turned on its axis in the bowl, the browned surface glistening.
Fiona was using chopsticks to eat ramen—she was still getting used to the utensils, but she was at least able to pick up the noodles so that she could clumsily shove them into her mouth. Steam from the food buffeted around her head. The soup was delicious and she ate with gusto. She had never tasted something this good before and had to slow down lest she choke on her meal. With the noodles hanging past her chin, she figured she must look like a barbarian, but quickly relaxed once she realized that every patron crowded around the cramped foodbar was eating their soup in the same fashion.
Crammed in next to her at the stall, sitting upon a hard and dented metal stool, Ramses was busy munching on sushi. Contrary to Fiona, the merc was able to utilize his chopsticks with a deft touch. He could pluck up the raw meat (which was not made of real fish) and rice and maneuver it into a port in his helmet that opened up where his mouth was without fumbling the food at all. Fiona just stared at the helmet, at that black hole, where sustenance was only consumed to fulfil basic needs.
There was so much she still didn't know about this man. A black hole in her mind. No matter how many times she tried to envision what he looked like behind that covering, her mental image would wobble and dissolve before she could commit it to her mental hard drive.
Yet she trusted him, all the same. She had to.
They sat for several minutes at that stall, silently eating. The rest of the city was doing the talking for them. They were on one of the underground shopping levels in City Center, in one of the many food courts. The stall they had chosen for dinner was an unlabeled eatery, comprised of only a single row of stools in front of a glass-covered wet bar. Genetically modified crayfish tumbled in a bubbling beaker—reserved for only the patrons that were ready to fork over a truckload of eddies. The humidity was thick down here—steam rose in great waves and condensation dripped from the walls. Something off in the distance hissed, as if it were somehow pouring rain inside. Pedestrians crammed through the tunnels, dressed in their ponchos, heads down as if afraid to initiate eye contact.
Ramses set his empty plate on top of the wet bar and paid. Fiona was just finishing up her meal as well. She slurped up the last of the broth and wiped her chin.
Ramses watched Fiona dab at the corner of her mouth with a thin paper napkin. He looked at her empty bowl. "I'm guessing you hated the food?"
"Are you kidding?" she wadded the napkin up and set it on the counter in front of her, the sarcasm not landing. "I'm still getting used to something that has flavor."
Ramses almost responded with a comment on how the soup was rather bland, all things considered. It was just recycled products all shaped together to give off an approximation of a cultural dish, everything sloshing around in a weak broth. But there was no point in abasing the woman's food when she had been enjoying it so, especially considering that her palate was no more developed than an infant's.
He passed a hand over the front of his helmet, making sure that it was sealed back up. Habit of tactile feedback—even though his HUD was showing that his helmet was completely enclosed again, he always felt the compulsion to double-check for himself.
The merc turned his stool so that he was facing the churning crowd of bodies, which moved like a rapid in slow-motion. He leaned back, keeping an observant eye on the direction of the flow, hearing every flap of clothing, chatter of stray syllables, the crackling of cigarette cherries.
"Sir?" the proprietor was leaning over the wet bar. He held an opened green bottle of sake. He was gesturing to Ramses' empty glass. "One more?"
He almost said yes out of boredom, but then an icon began to wink in the corner of his eye. An alert from his tracking software. He opened the program up, the command box in clarity while everything else blurred away into a thick myopia. The trace that Fiona had installed at Villereal's estate was indicating that someone over there was initiating a call. Was this the one they had been waiting for?
Ramses tapped Fiona's arm with the back of his hand—she had jumped in excitement upon seeing the call in her HUD as well—and both proceeded to tap into the connection. Their idents were on another partitioned network, behind any firewall. Villereal would have no idea that his lines had been bugged.
"Welcome to MedQuick," a female's smooth tone infiltrated. Their access was audio-only, so they could not see the avatars speak to one another. "Your call is important to us. If you know the department you are seeking to reach, please state it now."
"Prescriptions!" came Villereal's harsh yell. He certainly didn't sound happy. No surprise, there.
Fortunately for Villereal, the automated voice service would not take offense to any boorish client, of which hundreds certainly called every day. "Certainly. One moment."
Fiona gave Ramses a look, who shrugged. The proprietor was still waiting for an answer from Ramses, who only retreated with the sake bottle once the merc waved him off.
Fifteen seconds later, a new patient coordinator spoke up once the line connected.
"Hello, Mr. Villereal. What can MedQuick do for you today?"
There was a grumble on the other end. "Yeah, hi," he said in a harried and impolite tone. "I'll just get straight to the point. My fuckin' fridge just up and died on me last night and now my supply of insulin is ruined. I need more stock delivered in the next hour via your fastest delivery method. I don't care how much it costs."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," the patient coordinator said in false sympathy that nearly sounded sincere. "And how large of a supply were you planning to purchase today?"
"Would the answer affect whether I can get it in the next hour or so? I can't miss my dosage for today!"
"We can get you a week's supply in an hour and six months' worth in three days, if that suits you?" The coordinator sounded like she dealt with people as brusque as Villereal thrice an hour. One needed a strong constitution for this work.
"Yes. Great. Fine. Just be here in an hour."
"We will certainly try, Mr. Villereal. And is your North Oak address still the correct address that we should utilize?"
"Oh god," Villereal cried out with a fair bit of drama. "Yes, yes, yes, my address is still the same! No, my medication schedule hasn't changed. No, I don't need a sharps container. No, I don't need a consultation! Just charge the copay and send it on over!"
There was a brief pause on the other end as the operator coolly jotted down the answers from Villereal's exclamations.
"Wonderful, so we will use the card that we have on file with you, Mr. Villereal," she said, ignoring the grunt of pain that Villereal gave on the other end. "It looks like the charge went through, so you should be seeing your shipment shortly. The driver will be requiring your signature upon arrival, just to remind you. If that is everything, then thank you for using—"
The call cut out in the middle of the rehearsed line, most likely from Villereal's impatience.
"That's our cue," Ramses said to Fiona. He then brought up the map and shared the link with Fiona. A new red dot suddenly appeared in the part of the city marked Haywood, right next to an industrial complex that the map indicated was a MedQuick facility. "They're already prepping the vehicle if they have its beacon activated," he explained. "Credit to the name. They are quick." A dotted route then popped up that squirmed through Vista Del Ray, across the river via the highway, and up into North Oak—a projected course. "Time to go."
The two mercenaries immediately sprung out of their seats and slipped into the crowd. They sliced through the steam from nearby restaurants, specters wrapped in the superheated shrouds for mere moments.
Ascending the stairs, they were met by one of Ramses' sedans, which he had summoned while they had still been on the lower level. Quickly, they clambered in and Ramses floored it, nearly taking out a pedestrian that had been in the process of jaywalking in front of them. Fiona barely had enough time to fasten her seatbelt and she spent the first half-mile clutching at the overhead handle in fear, helpless to watch as Ramses expertly snaked the car through traffic, cutting across double-yellow lines and travelling down one-way alleys to expedite their transit time. [1]
The red dot market on their map had begun to move. The medicine, en route. It would reach the highway in two minutes, by their current estimate.
The ring road around Corpo Plaza let him out at the Haywood exit, towards the undercity tunnels. He just had to cross this part of town in order to make it to the highway exit. Headlights cut twin quartz paths as he sprinted the sinister sedan down the color-soaked tunnels, the illumination picking up sparse bulbs of condensation that refused to budge from where they were on the windshield as the car screamed through the channel, a roaring howl exuding from the engine and echoing through the rounded tube.
"Get your deck ready," Ramses told Fiona.
"What?" she asked, concentrating more on remaining oriented in her seat rather than actively listening.
"Your deck! When the vehicle comes into range, I need you to lock its brakes. We can't let it escape under any circumstances."
Fiona nearly wondered aloud whether there were any additional aspects of the plan that she was not privy to, but she was already nodding in affirmation, knowing that Ramses could see the movement in her peripheral vision.
Ramses drove with mechanical precision powered by pure adrenaline, the wheel of the car never a centimeter out of place. The back tires of the car skidded on wet pavement when he rounded corners, earning honks from the other drivers when he ran the red lights. Spray kicked up onto the windshield, flicked away by silent rubber blades. Occasionally, he would throw the parking brake to kick the rear out a little if he did not have enough velocity for some of the U-turns that he had to maneuver. The engine of the car bellowed, a full-bodied V8 that guzzled CHOOH2 like it was water. The entire car lurched when accelerating as if it were a hungry mastiff, desperate to down its prey.
The merc's foot pistoned on the clutch. Each slam of the parking brake a statement. Fiona saw no half-measures in the man's actions. Just raw force and drive. Will and concentration.
Turning onto a dual-level avenue, Ramses took the upper rise, his maneuvering so forceful that it startled a nearby driver into swerving away out of panic and crashing into an embankment shortly after with a terrific crunching sound. The street was flanked by palm trees and the monolithic apartment blocks were sparsely lit even as the night was rapidly approaching. Florescent glow dripped over the hood of the car underneath the conglomerate of the metallic sprawl of buildings. The sounds of the L-shaped light poles searing by made a whipping noise, the environment around the car blurring.
Another map check. A block separated them from the MedQuick vehicle.
Ramses made another U-turn at the next five-point intersection. A supermarket was across the way and to his left, a concrete wall with a skull graffitied on it. The highway exit was now in front of him—a single lane that elevated over the detritus of the congested slums, the sides barred with tall metal reinforcements like a cage.
A good place for a trap.
Ramses raced the car up until he had reached the halfway point of the ramp. He then pressed on the brakes after downshifting and oriented the car so that it was at an angle lengthwise. With the barriers of either side of the road only inches from the corners of Ramses' car, only a motorcycle would be able to slip through the gaps, albeit a foot might get taken off in such an attempt.
At this time of night, twilight on a weekend, traffic would be a crapshoot. Fortunately, Ramses did not have to worry about that because, at the end of the ramp down below, a stout and heavily armored truck pulled into view and began its ascent.
Towards the mercenaries.
Ramses had turned around in his seat to view the onrushing truck, one hand on the wheel. "Do it before they get nervous," he told Fiona.
She had already sighted her optics upon the heavily armored vehicle. Standard ICE, nothing that she couldn't crack in a few milliseconds. She quickly accessed the truck's computer and found the command that accessed the brake lines. Simple, really, to change one value from a 1 to a 0.
There was a horrid screeching sound as the truck's brakes completely locked up. Rubber laid in gridlines behind the truck as it skidded forward, shuddering, smoke rushing from underneath the wheel arches. It lurched to a stop, the engine continuing to rumble, five meters from the car.
Ramses was already opening the door before she could get a word out. Fiona saw him unholster his pistol, leaving the other weapons in the car. She also got out, but after a second's hesitation, grabbed one of the assault rifles from the back.
The merc stepped towards the truck at a languid walk, his hands folded behind his back as if he had all the time in the world. Behind the reinforced windshield of the truck, he could see the two MedQuick drivers lurch about the cabin in confusion, undoubtedly figuring out that they were the target of a hijacking. They were trying to radio for backup, understandably so, but Ramses' jammer was already active and blaring hot. No signals would get through in the immediate vicinity, not even on the hi-band.
His arms came to his side, the hand carrying the pistol held as still as a statue. Behind him, Fiona kept close in nervous anticipation, clutching her own rifle with a frozen grip. Ramses positioned himself next to the driver's side door, waiting, as if he was expecting to simply be invited inside.
He looked to the netrunner. "Can you access the door locks?"
Her access to the truck's subsystems was still up and running. "Yes."
"Unlock them."
She did, and there was a terrifying series of thunks that reverberated throughout the truck. Ramses reached up and wrenched the door away with a hand. He was pointing his pistol at the opening and the MedQuick drivers raised their hands in terror.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"
"Out," Ramses merely said.
The two drivers complied. Ramses kept the pistol trained on them as they slowly got out of the truck. Ramses directed them to stand against the side of the vehicle. They were middle-aged, with one of them having old cyberware scars running along his forearms. Ex-Animal, probably. Maybe Army.
"You," Ramses told the smaller of the two. "Disrobe."
The driver did a double-take, momentarily going agape. "What?" he asked, certain he had misheard.
"Your uniform," Ramses said, gritting his teeth. "You can keep everything else on." To Fiona, he said, "Make sure there isn't anyone in the back."
Using her deck, Fiona was able to see that there was a camera system embedded within the truck. She flipped into the feeds and was able to confirm for herself that no one was inside after examining every one of the cameras. She headed around the back, stepped up onto the bumper, and opened the double doors. Even unlocked, they took a lot of effort to swing forward on their thick hinges. The interior of the truck was barren, with a ridged aluminum floor, and two large stainless-steel cabinets that were locked by a glowing keypad. She leaped inside and merely brushed the first keypad she saw with a hand—the strobe atop it flashed yellow before it flowed green. Access granted.
Meanwhile, the driver had finished undressing and left his uniform puddled at his feet. He was wearing a white undershirt and nondescript boxers. His scarred partner was calm and collected, hands over his head, clearly no stranger to this sort of thing.
Ramses twitched the pistol towards the side of the road. "Over there," he told the drivers.
Fiona leaned out from the truck, watching what was happening.
As soon as the drivers had reached the midway point between the truck and the guardrail, Ramses did not hesitate. He fired his pistol into the back of the larger one's head first and when the smaller one had been in the process of turning around in a panic, the merc shot him in the temple. Both men collapsed to the ground at the same time, dark stains beginning to flood from their bodies.
"What are you doing?!" Fiona cried as she jumped from the truck. She started to jog over, but from the sight of the blood, she knew she could not do anything for the drivers.
Ramses was busy picking up his spent casings and pocketing them. "I wanted them away from the truck so that I wouldn't get blood on it," he said, maddingly casual.
She wanted to punch him. "That's not what I—!"
But he had straightened up so fast and was advancing towards her that she backed up against the truck out of fear. The fact that he could possibly kill her right here without a second thought flashed through her mind and some part of her dissociated.
"So your idea would've been to turn them loose or waste time restraining them?" he growled as he stowed his pistol back to its holster.
"It wasn't necessary," Fiona swallowed.
"They were witnesses. A casual bystander is one thing. People like them, they're variables. They're part of the plan, and the plan is to perform your job until those variables are null. There is no room for fuck-ups. You need to rid yourself of each variable that could thwart you as you come across it. Less errors that way."
She looked down at a white-knuckled fist. He was already in the process of heading to the truck, his back to her. "Why do you think I can become you so easily?" she yelled at him, her voice echoing hollowly between the buildings.
He didn't yell back at her. He didn't berate or chide her.
Instead, he simply turned his head, that sinister glare always exuding from his optics as he beheld her for a long and serious moment. "Maybe it's because I know that you can take it. That one day you'll understand the reality of your situation and what control you have over it. This is the real world, Fiona. Time to start living in it." Ramses then bent down, retrieved the discarded uniform in a bunched fist, and shoved it towards Fiona. "Get dressed. We're moving out soon."
There was the faint inclination to deny him, but that sputtered away like a limp flame from an ember. Glowering, she climbed into the back of the truck again, and quickly changed. Her hands were trembling as she put on the clothes—she had to flex them to make them stop.
After a few minutes, Ramses joined her in the truck. He opened one of the stainless-steel doors—coolant gas flumed out in icy whirls, a sharp antiseptic smell exuding from the built-in freezer. The shelves inside were lined with white packages. He quickly scanned them until he found a thin one with the address he was looking for on it. He took the package out and set it on the closest counter. It was password-protected, but Ramses was able to crack the encryption in a heartbeat.
Time to deliver the Trojan horse.
Inside the package were fourteen separate plastic-sheathed syringes arranged in a row. A tiny window in the plastic showed a clear liquid sloshing around inside each one. The design of the syringes allowed them to be unscrewed from the top without breaking the security seal. Ramses unscrewed all of them but was careful to orient them positioning upward so that the contents would not spill. He then reached inside his coat pocket and came out with the vial of neurotoxin. Using another syringe procured from the truck's supply cabinet, he withdrew a sharp pull of the toxin and delivered two drops to each opened canister of insulin. He then reapplied the caps and swirled the liquid together, making sure to check that there was no difference in color or viscosity as a result of his sabotage.
He closed the package up after ensuring that the medicine was settled in its original position and placed it back in the freezer. Fiona had finished dressing by now, although the uniform was a little large on her. This was mitigated by tucking in the shirt, but the pants were still a couple of inches too long where they met her boots. Still, it would have to be enough.
"Package is at eye-level," he told her. "The guards are going to want to deliver the insulin to Villereal themselves. Don't let them. MedQuick policy is to get a signature from the signatory on-site. Got it?"
Fiona was tugging on the sleeves of the uniform to make them fit better. The shadow in her eyes deepened and became almost black inset against her skull. "They won't turn me away," she said.
"Good. Now, next order of business," he then rapped the inside wall of the truck with a fist. "You know how to drive something like this?"
"Not yet." Her eyes filled with static for a moment. Gigabytes of data from thousands of streams across the Net, grasping with countless limbs for her brain to assimilate. She blinked and her eyes returned to silver. "Now I do."
The trip back to the estate was uneventful as far as traffic was concerned. Fiona and Ramses had good contraflow heading out of the city, but there were several instances in which they came across the cops at the side of the road. The NCPD had been pulling over speeders all night. Street racers. Their modified rigs crackled with engine backfire and the carriage underglow painted the pavement in garish hues between their tires. Many of these traffic stops had ended in violence—the racers had tried to make breaks for it after being pitted into the highway guardrails. The crackle of gunfire was apparent even through the bulletproof glass of the truck, which faded once they got further down the highway.
Fiona had never driven a truck of this size before, let alone anything. The steering was just as heavy as she thought it would be, though. It took a great effort just to turn the wheel, the brakes were spongey, and the engine was so underpowered that she figured a motorcycle could shift from first to top gear well before she could reach the next gear ratio on this thing. Behind her, glimpsed in the side mirrors, was Ramses' sedan, keeping a comfortable car length away.
She heard his voice whisper in her ear as though he were in the passenger seat. "The next exit. Up the hill."
The truck was already in the left lane but she slowed down to take the exit. To her right, she could spot the mansion midway up the hill, lit and sparkling like a beacon.
"Target in sight," she relayed.
"Perfect. I'll stay in position in case things go south. Just remain calm. You'll do fine."
He sounded like he had ice water in her veins. Fiona just had boiling froth. Her palms were sweaty—she wiped them on her trousers.
It took a great effort for the truck to make it up the hill—all that heavy armor and a terrible gearbox made for a bad combination. Her left mirror flashed white as Ramses pulled out in front of her to park at the cul-de-sac just ahead. With a whine from the engine, the truck made it to the turnoff and rolled towards the front entrance. She could see Ramses already parked in position behind a forested roundabout, out of view of the estate's guard shack.
Fiona angled the truck towards the entrance. Floodlights bathed the entrance gate with a sharp glare. Three men on duty tonight, all of them holding rifles. So much firepower for such an unfortunate person. [2]
"Remember," Ramses said, "they're going to want to scan you when you get out of the van, so it's imperative that you leave your weapons behind."
"It'll be like I'm walking in naked," she groused.
"You've got your cyberdeck. You can disable or kill your way out with that, if need be. Everything else is strictly procure-on-sight. You want a gun? You're going to have to take it, but I don't think you want to challenge yourself that much."
Just what does he think is going to happen? Fiona had to push down her doubts, mixing them with the bile in her stomach. One of the guards was gesturing for her to stop. She gently applied the brakes, pressing harder on the pedal to eradicate that mushy feeling.
"I'm cutting the call," Ramses said. "They'll detect you talking with someone. I'll be on the cameras. You'll do fine."
"Okay," she said," just as the guard came up to her window. "See you on the other side."
Then a heavy silence. She had almost told him to wait so that she would not feel the loneliness afterward.
She rolled the window down. "State your business," the guard said, both hands on his rifle. He was wearing a dark logoed uniform matted with Kevlar. Could have passed for a cop.
"Medication delivery," Fiona said, surprising herself with how calm she sounded. She gestured to the back of the truck. "Immediate shipment to Chad Villereal."
"I'll take the package." The guard slung his weapon in preparation to receive whatever Fiona had to give, but the netrunner shook her head, remembering her lines.
"Sorry. Company policy. I need a direct signature from the customer."
"That's not going to happen."
"Then I won't be able to complete the shipment." She leaned forward, finding the thread of improvisation when it had been dangling in front of her eyes. "I am not authorized to deliver MedQuick shipments without interacting with the customer who has initiated the prescription. If Mr. Villereal feels otherwise, he is welcome to claim it in person at one of our distribution centers tomorrow morning. I'm sure they would be happy to accommodate his supply of insulin there."
Inwardly, she winced. She did not know what the decorum exactly was for a medication delivery driver, but she suspected that one part of the job description was never to outwardly reveal what it was she was shipping to anyone except the end customer. Fortunately, the guard seemed to accept the excuse she had conjured and was staring off at an angle—probably on a call to the boss, covering his ass in case what he was going to do next would result in him getting fired or worse.
After a few more seconds, the guard looked back up at Fiona. "All right. You can pull up to the door, but do not get immediately out of the vehicle. There will be a squad waiting there to take you to Mr. Villereal."
"Appreciate it," Fiona added, just to be polite, though all it did was earn her a scowl from the man.
The wrought-iron gates opened smoothly, as if they were oiled every day. Fiona slowly let her foot off the brake and the truck moved forward, pebbles crunching between the tires and the concrete. She followed the driveway as it curved around a waist-high hedgerow—the path opened up to a small roundabout where a terrace acted as a makeshift porte-cochère. The truck was just short enough to avoid scraping the top upon the vined covering.
From the massive wood doors of the abode, four security guards—a combat bot making up one of the squad—marched out. One stepped in front of the truck, brightly illuminated from the headlights, and made a twisting motion with his hand. The sign to turn off the engine.
Fiona complied, and in the split second of silence she pulled in a deep breath. Here we go.
Before she exited the vehicle, she made sure to unstrap the pistol at her waist. She shoved the weapon into the glove box and electronically locked it away. Best not to create any sense of hostility. Not in this place.
She opened the door and hopped out, taking care to adjust her uniform. She tried to ensure that the nerves didn't show, which was hard now that one of the guards was shining a flashlight in her face.
"You armed?" one of them asked her. "Rigged with chrome?"
"No," she said honestly.
The flashlight dipped down—Fiona blinked to regain her vision. The combat bot stomped forward, a shotgun cradled in its massive paws.
A guard gestured to the automaton. "Bot's gonna scan you. Best you keep still. If you're hiding anything, it'll find it."
She obeyed. The bot came up to within three feet of her and tilted its head up and down twice in quick succession. Fiona was calm for this part, for there was no reason to believe the bot would find anything. And if it did, there would be no one more surprised than her.
The scan only took fifteen seconds and eventually the bot stepped back out of Fiona's bubble.
"Okay," Fiona breathed, her chest aching. She was feeling pinpricks all over her skin. Jitters of nervousness ran through her legs. "Am I free to make the delivery?"
The flashlight was on her again. "Show me the package first."
The hammering of her heart was so loud that she was sure that the guards could hear it. And if they didn't, their combat optics would certainly pick up the sound waves.
No. Keep calm. This is all part of the plan.
She met the guard's eyes. "Sure," she said, because what else could she possibly say?
Tailed, Fiona walked around to the truck and opened the unlocked rear door and clambered inside. In the fridge, the package of tainted insulin was where Ramses had said it was. She double-checked the address and the name, confirmed that it was the one she was looking for, then placed it onto the nearby counter and opened it up for the guard to examine.
"Move aside," the guard rudely said, elbowing Fiona out of the way before she could react.
Lifting one of the syringes, the guard held the flashlight up to the tiny window in the plastic. He could see only clear fluid bubbling within. Unless he was a trained toxicologist, Fiona was willing to bet that he could not spot the neurotoxin-infused insulin just by sight alone. There would be traces, of course, if the viscosity of the liquids was too disparate. But Ramses' toxin had mixed well—there would be no evidence of its presence.
Grunting, the guard set the syringe back into place. He closed the package up, locked it, and handed it back to Fiona. "Are we good?" she asked, a venom of her own intruding upon her words.
The guard's face twisted. He pointed a finger at Fiona. "Mr. Villereal's inside, delivery girl. Keep close or you'll regret it."
As she headed towards the doors of the mansion after locking the truck behind her, the guards had moved into position upon all four quadrants around her. Surrounded. The pathway exuded an odd heat here, as if it trapped a microclimate within its confines. Carefully trimmed scrub was allowed to spring up from the pebbled gardens that flanked the concrete route, the light fixtures throwing long shadows against the walls, cold shapes in spite of the warm night.
The doors swung open automatically as the quintet approached. Concrete was traded for polished tile and a blast of air-conditioning hit her full-on in the face so hard that it felt like she was going to be swept away.
Having seen the interior of the place already when she had hacked the camera system, nothing immediately stood out to Fiona, no surprises in store. The number of contracted guards, however, looked to have increased. The night shift had more bodies than the day shift, perhaps, or Villereal had gotten considerably more paranoid in the last day and had scrounged up more people from a different outfit.
Fiona took stock of the various rooms as they passed them by. To her ever-increasing worry, the number of guards milling about the area felt like they were multipling exponentially. There was a group watching the game in the massive den, who were whooping and laughing all together, the table in front of them filled with empty beer bottles. Another grouping stood in the kitchen around the long island in the middle, where a blanket had been draped over the stone topping, upon which an array of weapons in various states of assembly were being organized and prepared. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, and even grenades. Ammo magazines had been stacked in neat rows next to one another, as well as the brass hedges of individual bullets. Combat bots stood at attention at every chokepoint and corner, constantly scanning, always on alert.
Fiona's despair was only growing with every new enemy that she saw. She was not going to survive a fight with all of the guards here if things went bad. Once she had confirmed that Villereal had taken the medicine, she needed to make a quick exit back to the truck. Villereal would probably expire by the time she made it outside, if the neurotoxin worked as fast as Ramses said it would—violence was inevitable, so she reminded herself to make getting into the large and bulletproof vehicle her utmost priority.
The tightness of the courier's uniform was pressing into her at all the wrong angles. It made her throat feel constricted. She was staring with a vague helplessness as she saw the guards laugh among themselves, make small talk as they loaded weapons, or otherwise attend to their duties with a resoluteness that she knew she had yet to conjure. These were people who knew what they were doing. She, by comparison, was practically improvising every step.
Upstairs was no better. There were more guards here that she had yet to take stock of. She was tagging as many of them as she could with her optics. An alert in her HUD was indicating that she was in a hostile area—seeing as she already knew that, such reminders were useless to her.
Five on this floor, plus three bots. Twelve on the ground floor, and four outside. Great…
She let the guards lead her to Villereal's room. After having scoped the place out beforehand, she almost made the change in direction herself, but she had to halt herself at the last minute, reminding that she was supposed to be a stranger here, that she had never seen this house before in her life.
She glanced over to the embedded camera positions as she passed them by, but made no signal towards them that would give the game away. Ramses had to be watching her right now, seeing her progress. Would he be able to tell that she was scared shitless?
Her fear was turning cold. An almost alcohol calm was seeping into her brain. That focus in the face of adversity. Nothing else to do except proceed forward.
In the master bedroom, standing with a pale green robe open at the chest, revealing a sprig of white hair, was her target: Villereal. He was in slippers, a cigarette in his mouth. The cuff of the robe had fallen away upon the arm that held a lighter—a brick of American steel—revealing a spiraling tattoo wreathed upon his wrist. He had also shaved since Fiona had last seen him through the feeds—he must have been convinced to clean himself up somewhat.
Villereal's head of security—Iver—was there, too. He wore a shiny black trench coat and circular sunglasses. The light from the thin lamps shone dully upon his bald head. A submachinegun was strapped to his back and Fiona could detect the glint of a revolver in the hidden holster at his hip.
"Here it is," Iver said to his client, the announcer to the singular senate.
Villereal turned, the cigarette in his mouth dipping as he saw Fiona. He spread his arms in annoyance. "So?" he said, his voice high, almost a whine.
Fiona did not know what to say. Just keep calm. Everything is normal.
"I… don't follow?" She tried to remain blasé.
"It's been an hour," Villereal mimed tapping a watch at his wrist. "More than that. Four minutes over, to be exact."
She remembered why she was being paid to kill this man. Her imagination put in vignettes of Villereal's battered wife on a slideshow in her head, on repeat. The netrunner lifted her head. "The truck was on the premises an hour ago," she said, voice a bit louder now. "I thought your men would've been aware of our direct signature policy. Instead, I was delayed while they had tried to negotiate. If they had been aware, I would've been able to deliver your shipment to you on time." She made a show with her head of glancing at the security guards that surrounded her. Implicit blame.
Frustrated, Villereal took a long drag of his cigarette and pulled it out so violently that ash sputtered from the spent end.
"Fine… fine…" he grumbled, fed up with arguing already. He stubbed the half-finished cigarette out on a nearby ashtray atop a nightstand. He then gestured for Fiona to step forward. "Let's get this over with. Need to get on with my life, anyway. Fuckin' spasms are coming on. Shit…"
With all of these people in the master bedroom, spacious as it was, it was starting to feel quite claustrophobic for Fiona. Like she was walled in by human bodies. Thus she was grateful to be able to step away from the guards for a spell, thrusting the package of insulin forward in her hands to the point where the joints in her arms were taut. Villereal took the box from her and thumbed the lock. His eyes glanced up.
"Where should I sign?"
Fiona thought for a quick second. "Just send me your ident code and I'll record our business as concluded."
Yes. Please. Then I need to get out of here.
In the corner of her eye, Iver tilted his head, his sunglasses mirroring the light. She sensed an electric charge in the air, as if all the guards had sensed something she could not.
Are you watching, Ramses?
Villereal smirked. He made a show of looking Fiona up and down. She felt violated from his behavior, thinking that he was trying to visualize what she looked like without her clothes off. Whatever damage the neurotoxin was going to do, she hoped it would hurt a lot.
His eyes flashed. The data in transit.
Fiona received the packet and sent an acknowledgement back to the port the message had originated from. [3]
Then something went wrong.
A shift. As if her sight suddenly fragmented like a pane of glass.
A void of pressure bloomed in her ears. Everything went silent. Like someone flipping a switch.
Images overlaid in her optics like a HUD. Flashes. POV shots. A virus? No, Fiona's ICE was still at full functionality. Everything in her BIOS was registering intact, no breaches.
Steel flooded her nose, everything around her in slow-motion. Then… ice cramming her gut. So thick she almost imagined herself expelling freezing gas.
This was not Villereal's doing.
But was it all… her?
The images flattened, strobed, then became steady. A face, bruised and bleeding, was peering up while hands that were not hers pummeled it. A beautiful face, broken beyond recognition, the bones shifted to the point where the skin had split open. She did not recognize the face, but the hands… the tattoo on the left arm was the same as the one Villereal sported.
The scene shifted multiple times. All of moments of violent aggression. Always psycho-sexual. The woman in various stages of undress, blood encrusting some portion of her once-flawless skin. The slashes of remembrance only lasted for a few seconds each, but they were enough for Fiona to get the full picture.
The same woman, thrown upon a bed, arm at an awkward angle, her robe askew. The sensation of knuckles meeting that woman's stomach so hard that she crumpled, vomit streaming past her fingers. The startling yelp as a curling iron was pressed to the bare skin of her stomach, which was just beginning to bulge, heavy with child.
Interspersed with those frames of despicable actions were skewed perspectives from another person. Lying in a pool of ice water, faces peering down at her from a plastic prison. Hands brushing at her skin, fingers tracing down her stomach, ending up between her legs. The moments changed at the same rate, the perspective never changing, but the faces always on rotation. Emotionless, but greed hungering in their eyes. Her own naked body, wired in and helpless, all for their taking. Their warm fingers against her icy flesh. Their breath hissing in frantic clouds.
Then the intermingling clips all seemed to merge together, the abused and the abuser, culminating in an orgasmic pulse that began to blur reality and sense. Strobing and fluttering until no more detail could be made out. Vibrating. Something—someone—was howling a wicked note. And then…
Everything cracked.
The images faded away. She sighed, her face slackening, but this time it was different. As if her brain had rewired her nerve pathways, relearning how to breathe. Red hieroglyphics sped by in the corners of her vision, surrounding everything like an onrushing wildfire.
She saw Villereal staring back at her, in the real world, an eyebrow cocked in confusion. He opened his mouth, presumably to ask what the hell was wrong with her, when her breath became energy.
Something parted from her.
It launched itself at Villereal, infecting him in an instant.
His hands sprang open, the box of insulin tumbling from his grip and clattered upon the floor, spraying the syringes everywhere. His back pulsed and he gave a ferocious spasm, arms now lifted heavenward. He opened his mouth and sparks burst forward like a cauldron, his throat afire, his flesh melting. His eyes became bright candles, glowing like twin motes in the deep, weeping magma. Villereal screamed and screamed until his vocal cords dissolved and the sound petered out, sparks flinging about his head like a crown of fireworks.
He then fell silent, his arms falling back down to his sides, his hair crackling and on fire. His knees gave out and he swayed in place once, listless, before he crumpled in a liquefied pulp at Fiona's feet, boiling blood exuding from every orifice.
But whatever had taken Villereal had not been satisfied. Fiona could see a ghostly presence, red like blood, leap from body to body. It overcame Iver, then a guard, and then another one, until everyone in the room was soon screaming that same hideous note, their faces locked into rictuses of pain, each with every tendon wired whitehot tight. The hieroglyphics strobed in rapture around their victims, as if vibrating with some perverse excitement. Then, flashes like searing lightning across Fiona's eyes as every one of their faces erupted with fire, molten flesh dangling from their carved-out skulls, bone and bits of cyberware dangling in a lurid display.
And, somewhere in that black place beyond her mind, a digital roar and a faint wisp of laughter.
Something that had been gripping her throat finally unclenched. She could breathe.
Sensation came back to her as if she had been roused from a dream. Smoke furrowed around her in thick curtains. Fiona looked down. She was standing tall amidst the sprawl of bodies that surrounded her, their faces scorched and disfigured. She blinked and slowly turned, hands coming to her temples and holding her face as if she were about to come apart herself.
What did I do?
She could not stop staring at Villereal's face. His blackened jaw, hollowed out by heat. Deep pits that used to be his eyes. The side of his skull glinting with cybernetics where the flesh had burned away. The dark marks like infected veins that grabbed his throat, which had been bored at his voicebox by an intense heat.
What… did I… do?
Sounds from the hallway. Boots running up the stairs. The whirring of servos. Guards drawn to the noise from upstairs.
Fiona let her hands fall away, only now realizing that an alarm was steadily ringing throughout the mansion. A wailing tone, senseless and unceasing.
In just seconds, she was going to be overwhelmed.
On shaky feet, Fiona stumbled from the master bedroom, but not before she clumsily grasped for Iver's revolver. She tried not to look at his empty and scorched eye sockets, which had burned so hot they had shattered the lenses of his sunglasses.
The first guard that turned out onto the upper landing gave a shout as he saw Fiona. The netrunner focused in on him and raised a hand, optics nestled upon his outline. Whatever had happened back in the bedroom, she could do it again. She clenched her brow and unleashed spike of energy that overloaded his cyberware—he fell, magnesium blistering from the back of his neck, but it was not at all like what had just happened in the room behind her. The guard was twitching on the ground, dying as the electric pulses stabbed at his spinal column. A slow death, lacking the vivid brutality from earlier. And this attack had cost her a portion of her RAM, a portion that would be slow to recharge. Not good. She suddenly realized that she was in trouble.
A combat bot tromped up the steps, over the body of the man that Fiona had just incapacitated, bringing its weapon to bear. The netrunner brought up the revolver, now abandoning the usage of her quickhacks, and fired twice. The first shot hit the bot's hand, causing it to drop its railgun rifle. The second shot hit it in the waist, destroying its gyroscopic sensor. The bot stumbled on the last carpeted step and rolled down the staircase, its body twitching in all directions as it tried to right itself.
Machinegun fire blistered in from the bottom floor—guards raising their weapons upwards to shoot in the empty space, right at her. Bullets punched through the glass embedded into the railing guard, sheared metal cabling whipping everywhere. Some of the paintings mounted on the wall jumped and dangled at severe angles from their ruined hanger claws. Glass littered the floor, which was scorched and coated with dust.
Fiona blindly fired down at the floor below, but was unsure if she hit anything. The rattle of chained weapons fire was apocalyptic. Each report bled together to create one continuous explosion that threatened to destroy Fiona's eardrums. She yelled, out of frustration and anger more than anything else, and stumbled into the closest room, an office, to regroup.
"Ramses!" she tried to call through her link. "I need backup! Upper floor, near the stairs! Hurry!"
But a flashing icon read LINE DISCONNECTED. The house's network was refusing to allow her access. Shit. She tried brute-forcing the network link and was momentarily rewarded with a scant few bars of connection, allowing her to get her hopes up. But two seconds later, the connection vanished. The network had forced her out.
That wasn't right. The network should not have been able to identify her address so easily. If it was so sophisticated, it would have detected her right off the bat when she was performing her recon of the building yesterday. Something was seriously wrong, here.
Another guard tried rushing her position as he ascended the stairs. He fired at Fiona's head when she poked it out for a better view past the doorway. Yelping, she hurled herself backwards and tripped over her own feet, landing on her back.
The guard barged through the door that had been halfway open, shattering its glass face, and aimed a shotgun at Fiona's head. She was faster—her shot hit him in the knee, sending him to the ground. And when he lifted his head up so that he could roar in pain, she shot him in the face, sending a spray of blood and brains upon the cabinet behind him.
She tried pinging the domicile's security system again, and she flipped into that blank space of rudimentary code before something suddenly threw an error. Traversal locks slammed down around her and she was kicked back out into realspace with a jolt of static. Smoke rose from her deck and she smelled burnt flesh. Her own.
Fiona cried out in frustration. The firewalls for the house were definitely more aggressive than before. This couldn't have been an upgrade to the system. Someone else was in here, on the lookout for her.
More fire erupted from the hallway, taking out part of the door. Deep gunfire—rifles on automatic. No way out.
Fiona scrambled for the shotgun that belonged to the guard she just killed. She headed into the bathroom. From memory, the wall here was up against the master bedroom. She levelled the weapon and fired. The recoil nearly dislocated her shoulder and a spray of plaster made a fine white dust cloud that looked like talcum powder. But there was a savage hole that had punched through the wall.
Taking a running start, Fiona tucked in her shoulder and bashed her way through the weakened wall. She tumbled to the ground, coated in a fine white ashen substance. She was back in the bedroom—Villereal and the other men she had fried were laying in their contorted positions where she had left them, their blackened faces peering out towards nothingness, comprehension completely burned away.
Scrambling to her feet, Fiona grabbed for Iver's submachinegun this time and vaulted over the king-size bed, and took cover just behind a nearby cabinet. More shadows from the hall—she fired at them with the revolver. There was a shout and the shadows yanked themselves back. Hard to tell if she hit anything.
She flicked the cylinder of the revolver open. Empty. She tossed it away. Bringing the submachinegun up, Fiona calibrated the scope and fired short bursts to dissuade anyone from trying to make a run toward her position.
But the sounds of gunfire past the doorway never stopped. Loud. Relentless.
Everyone in the house was all coming for her. To kill her.
And she only had one clip of ammunition left and not enough RAM to take them all.
"Ramses!" she tried again. "Upper floor! Master bedroom! Too many of them! Help me!"
The merc had left the car behind almost immediately after parking it in the cul-de-sac, not content with sitting around, waiting for things to go south. He had made a tight orbit of the circle, taking care to stay out of sight of the guards manning the booth outside. Sure, he could act casual out in the open, but it would be hard for him to explain his presence in this posh neighborhood while he was strapped to the gills, looking like he was about to assault a military bunker. [4]
He had checked his digital chronometer intermittently while he waited in a shadowed corner, just past a screen of bushes, trying to estimate the time when he would expect to see Fiona emerge from the premises. The moon was full tonight, lobing down upon his shining helmet. He was not one to be too impatient, but he found himself tapping his foot on the ground after not hearing from Fiona for a few minutes. He tried to tell himself that this was all normal. Fiona had been doing everything right so far. No reason to believe that things were going out of control. Besides, she would alert him if she needed help.
He had been watching it all on the cameras, one eye on his HUD while the rest tracked the real world. Just following her as she moved from room to room, up the stairs, and toward the master bedroom.
But before he could flip into the master bedroom's camera feed and see Fiona confront her target, the network had kicked him out.
Ramses spent several minutes silently cursing and trying several backdoor methods to try and force his way into the system, but the network had gotten some slick new ICE or something because it kept on detecting his attempts and threw him out every time, like a bouncer kicking out a repeat offender. Too slick—normal ICE would not be this sophisticated. The only way this could happen was if there was a 'runner in the system.
Wait…
The unmistakable crackle of gunfire from a nearby enclosed space ripped him from his frustrated cracking attempts. He whipped his head towards the house.
No.
Ramses did not hesitate. He immediately exploded for the guard shack, his pistol flashing in his hand already. He made it across the road and to within ten meters of the guards before they finally turned, noticing his approach, his armor rendering him black on black.
They were slow on the uptake, most likely because they rarely could behold a fully-armored form bearing down on them from the darkness, like a phantom. Ramses' silenced pistol coughed and the first guard fell back, blood roping from his neck. He then fired twice more and the windows to the guard shack splintered with heavy cracks—the guard manning the desk jerked and toppled from his desk.
The last shotgun-toting guard in the area turned to level a burst of buckshot towards Ramses, but the merc shot him in the knee first. The guard dropped, the shotgun going off in his hand and taking out a chunk of pavement with a roar. Ramses gripped his weapon with two hands and fired twice into the base of the guard's neck, killing him instantly.
"Fiona!" he tried calling her through their link, but he was registering a LINE DISCONNECT error. The network was still being uncooperative. "Fiona, if you can hear me, stay in cover. I'm coming in!"
Retrieving the shotgun from the ground where the guard had dropped it, his own tastes be damned, Ramses blew out the window of the guard shack, spraying glass over the dead body inside. He threw the weapon away, reached in past the breach in the window, and slapped the controls to open the gate.
One of the guards had been carrying a Tsunami Kyubi assault rifle. Ramses picked it up, noted that its iron sights had been modified, along with the muzzle. Hi-power 7.62 rounds. Could rip a limb from its socket if aimed correctly.
Perfect for quick and dirty wetwork.
When the gate had opened just enough, Ramses darted in and ran towards the front door. He could see that the entrance was already open, the sounds of gunfire much louder. To hell with stealth, he needed to take care of this problem now.
Every second yields your advantage.
Ramses leaped over the decorative hedges and stomped through the water features, his boots uprooting some of the plants that had been inserted in the loose soil. A guard was taking a position in the middle of the estate's entryway now. He was looking somewhere inside, his weapon pointed towards the upper floors instead of outside. His mistake.
Ramses raised his rifle from the exterior corridor. The gun chattered and blood exploded from five different holes in the guard's body. He was in the process of falling when Ramses charged inside, pushing the corpse to the ground.
There were seven security guards interspersed within the spacious living area.[5] The surround sound system was blaring some sort of techno rhythm, a strange accompaniment to the noise of rounds going off. The staff had just begun to notice Ramses' intrusion and seemed to lethargically bring their weapons around.
But Ramses had already pulled the pin on a flash-bang grenade and tossed it out into the middle of the room. His visor automatically polarized a second before the grenade went off. Magnesium streaks carted throughout the mansion in long tails, streaming vivid coronas of sparks. Smoke filled the room and Ramses fired into the obscurity, having switched to black-and-white infrared so that he could see everything. Three guards went down, one of their arms hanging by tendons after a 7.62 round had ripped away the elbow. One rolled on the ground, wheezing from a punctured lung. Ramses shot him in the head, exploding brains all over the once pristine tile floor.
There were more guards taking up positions outside. Ramses found a spare clip from one of the men he had killed, reloaded, and swept the rifle in a firm arc once he had slammed a round into the chamber. The glass of the house spiderwebbed white and shattered, allowing Ramses to fire out upon the privateers. Warm air rushed inside, the noise of the glimmering city beyond a silent veil.
A sniper round ricocheted next to Ramses' feet. He saw the source—a crackle at the edge of the property. He knelt, touched a knob at the rifle, and fired an incendiary grenade from the underbarrel. In the garden a couple dozen meters away, the sniper rose from his position, lit on fire, and screeched like a banshee. He threw himself into the pool, too late to save himself from being cooked to death.
He took care of the stragglers outside with short bursts of his weapon. The mercenary then returned his attention to inside the house. The floor was now slick with blood, glimmering with scorched bullet casings. Smoke crawled along the ceiling and a fire or carbon monoxide alarm was shrilly ringing somewhere. He glanced around for Fiona. Nothing. The series of gunshots from the upper floors was his clue as to her whereabouts, though.
Some of the militia from the earlier group were making their way back over to Ramses' position. They fired on him and Ramses grunted as a bullet struck the chin of his helmet. His head was knocked to the side, but he recovered quickly, firing his weapon one-handed, indiscriminate anger feeding his focus. A series of rounds blew one guard's head completely off, his neck spewing a gout of blood before the body simply leaked upon the floor.
The port on Ramses' rifle clacked open. He threw the weapon like a club and it impacted the head of the closest guard with a sickening crack and they went down to a knee. Ramses grabbed another assault rifle from the ground, rolled, and performed two pinpoint headshots on more security personnel from his prone position. He got back up, swung his weapon toward the man he had struck with his empty rifle, and spat a short burst of bullets into his chest, blowing a hole in him two inches in diameter.
Everyone is an enemy. Everyone.
Something about the hit of adrenaline always calmed him down. This is where he was in control. Others would revert to base instincts and panic. Knowing that always gave him the upper hand.
This time, he needed to share the control with those that could not possess it.
Coming to you, Fiona.
Fire struck the ground at his feet. Coming from the upper landing. A few more bullets pummeled his armor, but nothing penetrated. Ramses lifted his rifle and made a short streak across the railing with his own return fire. An armored guard pitched over the side and landed upon the coffee table on the bottom floor, completely demolishing it. Ramses hurried over and put two bullets into his head. When in doubt, double-tap.
There was a whine and a railgun round streaked past him, punching through the wall just behind him. A combat bot was maneuvering down the stairs, its gait unhurried. "Drop your weapons!" it blared in its synthetic tone, but Ramses rapidly brought up his quickhack menu and toggled a microcircuit overload. Sparks showered from the robot like a carnival display and it spun on a heel, all limbs rigid, and crashed down the steps, as loud as an avalanche.
Holding the rifle one-handed, Ramses made his way up the staircase. The music was still pumping at full blast, vibrating the floor, which was jingling with the spent brass casing that had already ceased smoking. He had reached the middle landing when two more security guards appeared at the top. Ramses ducked and heavy rifle rounds sailed over him. He fired his own weapon and the knees of the first guard exploded in clouds of thick gore as the bullets destroyed their kneecaps. His victim let out a wailing cry and pitched down the steps, breaking his neck after rolling upon a step in a bad way.
That had been the last of the bullets in that weapon, but Ramses was already hard-charging towards the second guard, who had begun to descend the steps. The merc had closed the gap too late for the guard to get off a shot—Ramses raised his left arm and his forearm armor shunted the guard's shotgun off to the left. It boomed harmlessly, destroying part of the expensive chandelier that had been, until this moment, untouched. Thick crystal rained upon the ground in a deafening cascade, the ground now glittering with shards of rainbow.
With his right hand, Ramses drew his .45, shoved it directly against the guard's sternum, and fired twice. The Kevlar vest slowed the velocity of the first bullet, but not the second. The man's ribcage shattered, lodging bone into his heart. All of the guard's limbs went slack. But Ramses, not content with leaving things to chance, shoved the guard up against the railing, held the pistol up to his chin, and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp explosion and the top of the guard's head erupted. Ramses shoved the now-clearly dead body down the steps, finally reaching the upper landing.
The air continued to crackle with riflefire. Another guard was leaning out from cover down the hallway, the open air of the lofted top floor directly across from him. Ramses called forth another quickhack and soon the guard was shrieking as his clothes suddenly caught on fire, courtesy of his overheating cybernetics. Unable to put out the flames, the man suddenly dove straight off the railing, crashing straight through the glass, perhaps thinking that he could reach the pool far faster this way, of a same mind as his prior cohort. He hit the ground hard, leaving behind a splatter of blood, somehow got to his feet, stumbled, and pitched directly through the broken patio doors, lodging several shards of jagged glass into his throat. A dark spray misted into the night. The guard gurgled once and died.
"Fiona!" Ramses had abandoned the link and was now shouting aloud. "Sound off!"
One more security guard had burst from the adjacent office, having been alerted to the noise. Ramses shook him off, punched him twice in the face. At close range, it was akin to running into a brick wall. The guard's jaw dislocated with a thick pop, fresh blood bursting from his nose. Ramses then belted him in the stomach, driving the wind out of him—as soon as the guard instinctively bent over, he stuck his pistol against the back of his head and put a bullet into it.
Ramses alternated between deep pants and whispered curses. He went from room to room, clearing it as he went with his heavy sidearm. Occasionally, someone would land a hit on him from a covered position, but his armor was able to mitigate the kinetic energy of the bullets so well that he could not even be knocked back a step.
His head was swimming. A fear he had not yet made the acquaintance of yet. Not fear for his own life. For someone else's.
Finally making it to the master bedroom, he was now at a robot's back as it was shooting at someone trapped in the bathroom just beyond. Ramses grabbed his knife and, without the bot realizing it, stabbed it between the plating in its lower back, severing the wires that its CPU used to command all motor functions. A simple push and the bot was now motionless at the merc's feet.
He sheathed his knife and reloaded, the maneuver so practiced that it only took two seconds for him to get back into a ready stance.
There was already a pile of corpses when Ramses entered the master bedroom. They weren't ones he had killed. He only had time to glance at them, noting the strange burns that had seemed to have scorched them all from the inside out, their mouths blistered and cracking with blackened flesh.
He knelt down and turned the one he guessed was Villereal over. The microsoft ports at his neck had melted into his skin. He was not going to be able to jack into his deck, nor would anyone. All of the silicon in Villereal's head, he guessed, had completely liquefied and had cooked his brain. His helmet was recording the whole time, so he had some proof to be able to offer to Wakako, but he remained fixated upon the damage to these corpses. He had never seen anything like this before. This was not the sort of damage he expected a rote quickhack to accomplish. Either Villereal's cyberdeck had a major flaw in its design, or Fiona had found a way to kill the man in a way that eluded even him.
"Fiona?"
A clatter from the bathroom. Something getting knocked over. Ramses raised his .45, his entire body wired like a drum, hot electric energy in his brain.
He quickly rounded the corner. Fiona was crouched behind a black stone toilet, a submachinegun lifted aloft in her hands, finger clenching down on a trigger but only producing impotent clicking sounds from the weapon.
"Hey," Ramses said. He came over and gently lowered the gun down with a hand. She barely recognized him for she was in a world of fright. "Hey. Enough of that. Have you been hit? Talk, Fiona."
The woman was shivering all over. Already experiencing an adrenaline overdose. Nerves, shock, the like. Her eyes were scrambling in her sockets, the movement fast and artificial. Teeth chattering as if she were back in that ice bath.
Ramses grabbed one of Fiona's wrists and squeezed hard enough that the pain brought a little of her back. Fiona made a soft sound, clenching her eyes shut, and Ramses released her. Her eyes regained focus and she let out a breath that sounded like she had been holding it for years.
"Ramses?"
"AO's clear," he whispered, his helmet neutralizing his relief. "We can exfil."
"I didn't… I didn't…" Her eyes were staring back towards the bedroom. Towards where Villereal lay. Something had happened in there. Something disturbing.
"Quiet," Ramses said. "There will be time to talk, but not now. Can you walk?"
"I… I…"
"Fiona."
The netrunner stood on wobbly legs, glanced at her ashen face in the mirror, hair askew, a carbon smudge on her cheek, blood—not hers—flecked on her armor.
"I think so," she could only whisper. Her eyes shone with some deep-rooted panic. Shimmering like wet stones.
Micro-LEDs in Ramses helmet shimmered, and his optics flickered for a moment, as there was a reason to disbelieve her. [6] But he instead turned, taking Fiona's submachinegun so that he could fit a clip into it that he had scavenged beforehand. He handed the weapon back to the netrunner, knowing she'd understand.
Back in the master bedroom, one last guard had found the carnage that Fiona had caused. He stood over the bodies, weapon pointed down, innately curious as to their roasted states. "God damn—"
He never got anything else out because Ramses shot him in the head from the bathroom with his heavybarreled pistol. A fistula of gore exploded from the side of the guard's head and impacted upon the wall. He collapsed.
"Missed one," he grunted out of annoyance. "Sorry about that."
Holding the netrunner tightly against him, feeling her body tremble through his armor, Ramses led her out of the building, head on a swivel, eyes constantly scanning his surroundings. He did not relax even after he finally made it to the car, buckled the nearly catatonic woman into her seat, and jumped into the driver's seat so that he could floor it out of the neighborhood. The sirens of the approaching NCPD howled into the night and soon his headlights disappeared among its brethren as he hit the packed highways, the ribbons of concrete that tightened a noose around the city.
Several car lengths back, the Extremaduran calmly removed the thin ribbon wire from the shard slot in his neck. He drove with one hand on the wheel, his movements slow and calculated. He was far back enough to blend in with the rest of the traffic—no one would ever know he was in pursuit.
So the plan hadn't worked. Despite his tampering with the security system, the two had made it out unscathed. Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. The dossier he had been given had been comprehensive, the plan had been a long-shot at best, but he needed to see their abilities for hiimself. The Extremaduran tried not to give in to impatience—he had carte blanche for this job, but even he knew his employers could only wait for so long. They would want to see results. Soon.
The passing streetlights glowed upon the silenced 9mm pistol that sat in a specialized slot in the center console of the car. Up ahead, his target vehicle took the exit to City Center. Perfect.
He angled the wheel and got off the highway, curving down the suspended concrete seam that laid into the jeweling glow of Night City, his quarry always in view.
A/N: Ten chapters in already? And almost halfway done? How time does fly. Still, only further motivation to see this thing all the way through, seeing as we've made such progress already!
Playlist:
[1] In Transit / Hijack
"Swam Down"
Audiomachine
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
[2] On Premises
"Bullet Time"
Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer
The Matrix Resurrections (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[3] Metamorphosis
"Worm Ride"
Hans Zimmer
Dune: Part Two (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[4] Hard Charge
"Wreckage and Rape"
Elliot Goldenthal
Alien 3 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[5] Claw Your Way Through
"Gate K9"
P. T. Adamczyk
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
[6] Exfil/Trace
"Exfiltrate the Horizon"
Ludvig Forssell
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Original Video Game Soundtrack
THE CAST (so far):
MAIN_CAST:
Ramses: Night City merc. Solo. Unknown age. Unknown origin. Adept in: precision weapons, infiltration, assassination.
Fiona (JP422-7C): Netrunner, formerly in the employ of NetWatch. Early twenties. Unconfirmed origin.
SUPPORTING_CAST:
Michiko Arasaka: Corpo. Head of Hato faction of Arasaka and member of the corporation's board of directors. 68 years old.
Rzhevsky: Unknown age. Estonian origin. Housed in DaiOni cybernetic conversion. Personal bodyguard of Michiko Arasaka.
Wakako Okada: Fixer in Japantown. A former mercenary. Known for her brusque manner and high (sometimes unreasonable) expectations with the contracts she holds.
The Extremaduran: Assassin. Hails from Europe. Under NetWatch employ. No Night City identification.
Rogue Amendiares: The so-called Queen of the Afterlife and former partner of Johnny Silverhand. Night City's best fixer, highly sought after by mercs due to her lucrative payouts and all-biz attitude.
Ryo: Merc. Former Tyger Claw. An avid collector of BDs from the Edgerunner crew and a friend to Fiona.
Tobin: BARGHEST commando. Based in Dogtown under the command of Kurt Hansen. Moonlights as a merc during rare opportunities of shore leave.
Kross: Ex-Malestrom turned merc. Retired from the gang but quickly got bored of life without the action. Went independent for the juice, not the cash.