Simulated Space, Chicago Hypernet, Layer 04

  Amber found her fingers drawn to where Jun had sealed her wound. Not a scratch remained. Just a residual static at the edges of her sensorium, and the memory of pain.

  They were home, now. Or at least high above it. She'd watched him trace the Chicagoland sprawl in neon red, directing her gaze to her hometown.

  The Heights. One of the nicer places near the South Wall. Flecked with bomb craters and husks of tanks, this was where the Texans had staged their last offensive. A bloodied boxer's final fury before the knockout punch. She still remembered the chatter of autocannons across the plains, the rain of rockets turning apartments to dust...

  She was a wee gal. Just hit double-digits. Two decades on, scars still remained. Even at night, Amber could trace the sweep of roads around old battlefields, the slums of refugees.

  Jun had put away his smile, rendering him unreadable. The light of an ascending starliner glinted off his visor.

  "Speechless?" she asked, finally.

  "In a way." He drew a glass floor up beneath them, watched her readjust to gravity. "Don't you ever wonder at how far we've come?"

  "More like where it all went wrong." Amber sighed, allowing some candor. "You ain't the usual suit, are ya?"

  "What makes you say?"

  "The way you talk, the way ya walk. The way ya didn't have someone ice me the moment I touched ya." Amber pointed at his legs. "But that stance... that's the tell. Ain't no one where I'm from stands like that, unless they're ready to shoot ya."

  An arched brow materialized on his visor. The starliner was long gone.

  "What's your angle, man? Who's got you kinked? Hell, who even are you?" She drew close. He didn't budge.

  "I'm nothing special. We're all a bit rancid these days."

  "That's two of us," Amber said. "But a guy like you's got connections. Folks in his pocket. What's he messin' with a gal like me?"

  Jun stared at her. Seemed to understand. A snap of his fingers made Amber tense.

  The Chicago skyline dissolved to black, a million tiny mirrors glinting as they overturned. Amber found herself in a studio apartment much like hers, blood splattered across window. She turned around, caught the scene of a murder.

  A bioroid. She could tell from the eyes. Their cyberlimbs lauched them across the bare concrete, slashed the throat of a hapless salaryman. His young daughter stood in the corner, likely shittin' herself.

  The smack of magazine, the report of a gun. Suddenly everything moved in slow-mo. His wife was one of those saps that'd never held a gun before. By fear, by choice, Amber couldn't say. Two shots went wide before the bioroid grabbed her by her cheap clothes, slammed her head against the wall. Watermelon against concrete.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Then it was gone, and the simulation played once more. Amber steadied herself, gazed out the window. And there was Jun, right beside her.

  "Why're you doin' this?" she sighed. "Shit ain't pretty."

  "It's reality," Jun answered, pausing the recording. "Besides, you've seen worse on the Net."

  "I ain't into bloodstreamers."

  "Done worse, too."

  Amber felt a shock rip through her. Eyes drooped to the floor. Wished she could disappear.

  "How many families have you destroyed?" Jun asked. "Moms and dads zeroed before their kids' very eyes?"

  "It- It's all part of the job."

  "All part of being Mafiya, yeah? And how'd that work out for you?"

  Amber steadied herself against the window. "I did what I had to do."

  "And then you chickened out. Decided you didn't like gettin' called a furball, china-doll, freak-of-nature. Bye-bye street cred."

  "Where's Dutch?" Amber quietly asked.

  Jun stepped close, grasped her chin. The black visor bore an ugly reflection.

  "Fact is, I needed someone nobody would miss. Bottom-barrel gutter rat who should've been dead last year." Poke to her chest. "And you got the lucky draw."

  She held their gaze a moment. Coaxed his arms off, sighed through sharp teeth.

  "What's kankei about this guy?" she asked, circling the frozen figures.

  "He's one of ours. My employer's, that is is. So's the bioroid."

  "If they sent a bio after him, he musta pissed off the wrong suit."

  "That's the thing," Jun said, opening a set of hyperscreens beside Amber. "Boss said he's clean. Had their ninja look into it and all." A snap of his fingers cast the scene in hard light. Faces bathed in neon glow. "What we got here is a company asset goin' rogue. See what I mean?"

  Amber narrowed her eyes. "You want a blade runner."

  "Maybe. Thing is, he wasn't alone."

  A translucent hemisphere of hyperscreens opened all around her. Gruesome killings, often public. All performed by bioroids.

  "Artemis. Yoshimura. Chimera. Every manufacturer with the same problem: Damn things start killing people."

  Amber furrowed brows. "I've heard of this. All over the screamsheets."

  "Surprised you can read."

  "Fuck you."

  "Pfft!" Jun appeased her with some virtual ciggies. Tasted like rotten paper. "Point is, the media's catching on. And that's bad heat for a corpo. Need you to figure what's happenin', before people start really talking."

  "Talkin' 'bout what?"

  This time, Jun sighed. He waved away the recording, brought them back above the Chicago skyline.

  "About bioroids. Banning them, killin' them, that sorta shtick."

  Amber shook her head. "What's a couple murders here and there?"

  "Everything. Possibly. Depends on the media." Jun turned to her, pressed his thumb to one of the fuzzy ears atop her head. "Think of it this way. First they come for the bios, then they come for clankers, then they come for you."

  And there'd be no one left to speak out for her.

  Not much different, really. But a difference, nonetheless.

  "I'm in," she said. "I'll need a team."

  "You, yourself, and thy," Jun replied.

  "Ec-fucking-scuse me?"

  "Boss said to keep this on the downlow. Hafta work it out as you go."

  Amber bristled hot. "What're you talkin' about? You want the job done, or what?"

  "I don't have time for this," Jun sighed, floating once more. "You got the job. Don't fuck it up."

  Amber threw caution to the wind, ran at him. "Ey, ey! What about Velvet?!"

  "Till next time, little bear."

  For a moment, all she saw was a swirl of light. As the glass platform shattered beneath her, turned to a mist of glitter amongst neon, Amber heard the wind whip past her ears, saw the ground racing to meet her. Might've questioned how her eyes weren't dry, if she weren't screaming at the top of her lungs. When impact came, it hit like a skytrain to the cerebrum. Explosive bolts cast off the drop-pod's door, while an electric motor elegantly dumped her on the ferrocrete.

  She was in an alley now. As her senses returned, she realized she laid in trash. Rotting boxes, last week's screamsheets. She wondered which reality she'd ended up in.

  A girl's voice gave a hint. "Jeeesus Christ! Are you all right?"

  She flipped herself over, cringed at the sight. Tired eyes on a younger girl, gun displayed openly on her hips. Likely no place to call home.

  "Never... been better."