"Business men, they drink my wine, Plowmen dig my earth..."

  It had been an irritating and busy fuckin week, so to say I had worn Sway out once the weekend hit and we had any amount of free time was an understatement. Most of the day had been spent in his lap, and most of the night bent over something here or there around his High-Rise Penthouse in NYC. For a normal, powerless human being who spent all his time talking, I’d always been impressed by his stamina.

  Quite a few of my global side-pieces had been upset to find out I’d let him cuff me, but that wasn’t my problem. I lifted my head, morning light peaking in the window, realizing he was already up and sitting shirtless at his computer, furiously typing in the way keyboard warriors tended to. The clacking was driving me up a wall but I left him to his work as I sat up all the way, reaching for a half-full glass of water, watching him flipping through windows on his computer, admiring the little furl in his eyebrow when he’s angrily cutting into folks with biting words.

  “You’re so pretty when someone pisses you off,” I purred, and he jumped, not realizing I was awake and letting his stalk-wide eyes lower at me with a smirk.

  “You’re just pretty all the time,” he spoke, his voice a low rasp as he turned to me in his swivel chair.

  “Flatterer. Careful, I might jump you again,” I said, swinging sore legs over the edge of the bed and walking to the dark curtains, pulling them open and ignoring the printed outline of my body against the glass as I drank what was left in my cup. I peered out at the quiet city, glad for the two way glass so I didn't need to get dressed and could enjoy the warm sun on my skin as I peered across one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. Drones flew by, early morning deliveries ferrying commerce.

  Unlike my home sweet home of Detroit, New York City and its boroughs had fully embraced growth. Everywhere you looked there was neon and chrome. That included the people, and even 90 stories up, my sharp eyes could see the transhumanist art movement in all of its glory. As cybernetics evolved, it advanced industries outside of the medical field right along with it. Art, both commercially and underground, was not exempt.

  I admired the way society embraced everything from large scale body modification to more subtle editions. Men like Gaz took it to the extreme, replacing their entire nervous and circulatory systems with silver and gold, or self-imposed prosthetic limbs capable of doing hard labor that once required heavy equipment.

  It was useful but it didn’t really set my soul alight quite like the creative applications my kindred spirits had taken to. Changing eye color daily to match your outfit, replacing your human nails with black pieces of flexible metal, evening out your skin tone into solid ebony or ivory. Of course, some used this to become more attractive. Some to be scary. Some to blend in.

  I could learn so much about a person by what work they had done, by what they wore. Gaz was to the point. No reason to hide anything about the rippling musculature and skeletal reinforcement that made the man a 7 foot tall, 300 lb monster of a man. The red in his optical processors, replacement eyes as much for aesthetic as for helping him be violent, were a statement and a warning of their own. The sharp teeth, the dark black and gray scraps of clothing. If adonis had an angry, less fashionable brother that was half demon, it would be him. Violence. Spectacle. Aggression.

  On the opposite end, Firewall had always been subtle. Understated, on purpose, in most regards outside of dressing up in a two thousand dollar suit to go wading into fights. Without so much as a second or third look, most folks wouldn’t be able to see the way his chin was cut just that little bit sharper than most, or that he had grafted contacts over his eyes to sharpen his sight. Most people, but not myself. His rep spoke for itself, so he didn’t feel the need to double down too much. Not until you backed him into a corner, or paid him to be intimidating. There was something to his perfect, lawyer-cut brown hair, never being even a little bit out of place since I first met him decades ago. Pristine. Reserved. Arrogant.

  And then there was the medium. Upgrade. Loced, dark brown hair, scruffy beard, and somewhat rough skin would trick you into thinking he wasn’t concerned with his appearance, but really it was all function over form. He’d dressed exceedingly pragmatically for my dinner party, but there was no mistaking the dark black scelera in his real eye, or the way his fake one often focused or unfocused like a camera shutter. He was, in all ways, a simple enough kid, and I wondered why such a potent technopath was so averse to making changes to his fleshy bits. The kid was enough of an eerie mystery that I didn’t have a finger on it, just like his daddy had been. Enigmatic. Cocky. Tragic.

  Whatever the reason, as society improved it’s mastery of tech, it began to look more and more like science fiction come to life. I wished I’d brought my art supplies because seeing it this way was giving me serious inspiration.

  “See anything particularly interesting?” he asked me, getting up and pressing his body against mine, warm against the cool room. I leaned back and chuckled. The way his deft, beautiful hands held my waist was starting a fire in me all over again. I had to work not to squirm. Sway had worked on his appearance: Straightened his teeth, had his voice pitched down to have better presence, even a bit less blue in his eyes to be more personable. Rarely did I reduce him to what I could observe. No use trying to find strings and ins to his psyche that would let me tug and manipulate him when he was wrapped around my finger, and I was wrapped around every delicious inch of him.

  “I’m just admiring all of the body art. Samantha Sims the Art Curator can’t help but judge and appraise, everyone she sees” I spoke as an arm coiled further around my waist and I melted into it. “Where did my phone end up?”

  He reached his other hand around, and handed it to me, knowing I’d want it before long. Such a sweetheart. “Back to work for us both?” he asked.

  “You, working over there?” I asked, looking up at him, and he chuckled.

  “Yeah, Sam, one of us has to make an honest living. Well, as honest as I can. Someone found out about the situation in New Detroit and the Wastes. Running damage control has been outside of my colleagues’ ability to handle without some hands on from me. I’m going to be bogged down for fucking days with this shit.”

  “Oooooo is that a tone I’m detecting?” I teased as he let me go and sat in his chair again, leaving me to snatch a robe off the ground and cover up before I sat on his lap to observe.

  “You sure are. I’ve been fielding emails from journalists, ignoring calls from at least 10 people wanting comments for their podcasts and short-form content across the spectrum of genres, I’ve been arguing on 4 social media platforms about whether or not this has to do with rumors that the FORGE has been kidnapping children from gangs across the country to weaponize them and that this was a breakout.” I watched as he flipped through tabs across 3 monitors, fingers hitting keystrokes at the speed of light.

  “So par for the course?”

  “No,” he said with a less than happy sigh. “It’s actually on top of everything else. I’ll be setting up meetings for the rest of my week. For now the veritable army I’ve got on payroll is completely tapped with spinning this into something the FORGE can use for positive publicity. Just breaking even in the public eye is going to be a hell of a feat.”

  “You’re getting that pretty furrow in your brow again. Relax honey,” I said, leaning my head over his shoulder and running a tongue along his earlobe, just to make him shiver. “Let me do my thing. You know I’ve got a real army on my side right? Let me get to work too and I’ll show you some things.”

  I winked and he placed a kiss on me before I got up to get dressed, taking his smack against my ass as encouragement. “Whenever you get to work my job gets all so much more difficult…” he lamented but back to typing he went. “I’m due a call with my assistant but the real reason I’m on edge has to do with a strongly worded email I can’t even show you because it deleted itself after he sent it.” This time when his phone rang, he turned on the speaker after one ring. I knew exactly who he meant… and my blood started to boil and go cold at once.

  “Jack, my baby, what in all fuck do you want? You think I can’t see and hear? I’m already knee deep on this, come on now. Seriously, who the fuck do you think you’re talking to my guy? You think you knew before I did? Imsorrywhat? Bitch who cares about Senator Blake and whatever she has to say? She might as well be off the ballot, aint no way she’s winning out over Big V…” he yelled in the charismatic, almost drawl of his work voice. He pressed a button on his desk and a glass partition came halfway down from the ceiling. The bed, too, receded into the ground, and a solid pane slid into place over it. He took a remote and started pressing buttons that lifted the windows from his PC and let them be placed on the glass walls forming a 10x10 square around him so he could have a video call with whoever had reached out, and look at multiple displays at once. I tossed him a shirt so he could be a bit more proper.

  Sway had been top dog of a media empire for as long as I had been known for my art, and that was a damn long time. When our FORGE alliances had seen us cross paths, I had learned just how small my position, at the time, was. People likened the reach I had to a spider’s web. Well, if that were an apt description then Sway and his reach was more like the tree the web was made between the branches of.

  He had something most people didn’t: charisma. Beyond even me on my best day, on the best drugs I could manufacture, Sway had a way with words. I turned to look at him, working 3 angry and scared journalists or whoever like a goddamned pro. His words had a power that almost made me worry. More than that, his mind was like a goddamned lock box of information. At the snap of a finger he could recall anything and everything he’d ever seen or heard. On top of that, Sway was able to categorize data in a way that made me wonder if he was truly a normal human or not. The answer was yes. Man just had an insane work ethic. I’d considered killing him when he proved to me he knew more about my past than most living people did, but he had assured me that if he died or came up missing that I’d end up ruined.

  And he smiled at me when he said it because I’d flinched at the thought of a deadman’s switch and because someone who knew how ruthless I was didn’t have an ounce of fear. That was the kind of influence he wielded. Maybe he couldn’t kill with his hands as easily. Maybe he didn’t have 35 hitmen in Michigan ALONE. Sure, that was true. But with a well placed word, the right conference call? The entire country would turn on anyone.

  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something whorish to him just out of view of the cameras while he worked. God, but I was a sucker for that kind of strength and certainty.

  Still, some things couldn’t be handled on the national news circuit. To that end, there was Halogen. I served as one of the HBICs of the underworld. Arguably the top of that ladder was within reach at this moment. Or… it was.

  On my phone, I had a few dozen messages from various elements. Balancing a legitimate business as an artist and curator kept me busy whenever I didn’t go ghost like yesterday, but even so, I could literally create drugs to keep myself going for weeks without needing any rest. I sighed, highly bothered to end my weekend away so soon, but Sway was back in his element and I had to get back into mine. I felt two of the extra organs within my body kick into gear, and I directed them to create a microdose of stimulants that took me from hazy from exhaustion and sleepiness to fully alert.

  First message I checked was from Gaz prostrating himself for fucking up the PsyPro defense, which was both fortunate and not. I had fully expected Upgrade and his runts to kill him if it didn’t work out, but he had lived and expected me to be angry. I could work with that, but it had to wait until later.

  At least 10 different gangs, a dozen mercenaries and 3 PMCs had reached out after the FORGE had put retrieving Kento in my lap since technically I fucked it up. A 25 million dollar price tag wasn’t small, but I could easily afford it while using FORGE money.

  A few were more noteworthy than most, but before I could sift through I saw a message from a particular entity near the top of the FORGE food chain.

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  Good Morning H:

  I’m not unaware that you’ve been playing at separating yourself from us and distancing yourself from our reach. Frankly, Samantha, the fact that you couldn’t just talk to me is only upsetting on a personal level since I thought we were friendly, but even still I’ll say it plain: I don’t care. I’m sending this to your personal phone from a burner as a sign of friendship, because some of my business friends might take what you’ve been getting up to by consolidating and taking our agents into your personal retinues as an act of war. Personally, I’d rather you didn’t but more importantly you letting that PsyPro slip is problematic. Your antics have potentially cost me a lot, in ways you couldn’t comprehend even if I told you. You and Sway are on notice. Get it back or kill Upgrade. I don’t care about what happened to his father anymore.

  Please, dear girl. Don’t make me an enemy.

  Amnesia.

  Fucking email deleted itself as soon as I read it, and I grit my teeth. Amnesia was the only moniker I knew for the scariest fucking guy I ever met, the dude who had convinced the FORGE I should be elevated in the first place and my true benefactor. I’d wondered how long I could keep plucking gang leaders and snatching FORGE agents into my personal care until he noticed. I’d hoped to make a few more strides before he did but he’d at least not told me to stop. Then he’d just have ended up mad when I didn’t.

  Still, a warning was a warning, and even though he fucking hated Kento I’d have to get people on this to stay positioned where I was. I scrolled until I saw Firewall had also sent me a message, ignoring everything else.

  Halogen if you ever make me work with some fucking rank amateurs like these Scrap Packers I will triple my rate after I cut your discount. Still, I managed to get in and out of the database. Your accounts, including the offshore ones, are now disconnected from the FORGE. If they didn’t know before, they do now. As to the situation in New Mexico, consider it handled as well as it could have been given the short notice. It was exceedingly violent according to Buffalo, but it’s handled. I’ll be back on the East Coast soon enough.

  Always such a complainer, but he really was my favorite resource to tap for wetwork. He was due for a reminder not to overstep, however, so I’d probably need to make a few heads roll, including some of his people if he didn’t get the picture. If my memory wasn’t failing, and it wasn’t, the Buffalo he mentioned was one of his vets, and he had a kid. Might have to send someone to shake him up, remind Firewall why I get that discount.

  Anyway.

  The Daywalkers taking a shot at a supernatural detention facility the FORGE was using had been a serendipitous occurrence I’d had Firewall take advantage of while I was bogged down. He’d also sent me interest in the contract on Upgrade.

  The idea of killing him had me twisted in a knot after what happened to his pops, but that wasn’t going to stop me from using his possible death as a springboard. Kid had too much information to be left alone now, and there was no way I could fold him under my wing. Moral codes were so useful when they could be manipulated, but he was ironclad solid against any and all of us. Hell even if I declared total independence from them TODAY he’d still hate me enough to refuse my money.

  Rather than even pretend he could be subsumed, I wrote him off. So many people had offered his head on a spike that I was having a legitimate issue picking someone. Worse, even doing this would be detrimental to anyone who knew what was up. He’d done his part by going for the PsyPro, and even though he’d both succeeded and beaten Gaz because someone had decided to try and muscle me out of my cocaine business in the southwest, it had forced me to weaken my defenses here. This could fuck me over. If he’d waited 3 more days I’d have been set. Either way, here we are.

  Killing him or stealing back the PsyPro meant that folks would continue to see me as a FORGE cronie, and weaken a precarious position. I grit my teeth for a bit before Sway knocked on the glass, and I turned to see him point at his phone and then say sorry in sign language. He was going to be there for a while. I told him it was fine, and then looked away.

  Chaotic day already, and it was only seven.

  “Chaos… hmm.”

  A lightbulb turned on in my brain and I smiled a wide, villainess’s smile, because in chaos there was calculation… and maybe Upgrade could prove useful yet.

  Within an hour I was all dolled up, hair still unruly but a type of unruly where the curls framed my face properly, and wearing one of Sway’s blazer’s over my bare chest, one button closed to keep the girls away. I had to always look as prim and proper as possible while maintaining an edge to my appearance that was striking enough to remind folks who they were fuckin with.

  I stood in front of a pane of glass with Sway on the other side conducting what was about to be a hell of a call.

  I gave him a nod, and the lights went down so only I was visible in the center of his living room. I reached out and pressed the glass where a“call” button was illuminated, and about a dozen calls went out at once all over the world. Displays popped up, windows for each caller. For some, this was the thing in the morning. For some, this was smackdab in the middle of the darkest part of night.

  I gave no fucks: when Halogen called you picked up the phone.

  Sure enough, a dozen faces, some of the meanest bastards in the business, picked up. Mostly head honchos, a few representatives. But all of them were muted, and could only hear me speak. Most of them were already trying to talk.

  “Ohaiyo, buenos dias, good morning and hello, my lovely business friends. Don’t bother trying to speak, or to attempt to hangup or I will come find you and eat your fucking fingers by dinner tonight.” Everyone simmered down, and I watched Firewall roll his eyes.

  Cruising for a fuckin bruising, that one. The stims I’d been dosing myself with were certainly weighted a bit too heavy towards heightening things: my emotions were running high.

  A dose of something close to Lexapro to dull it out…

  “As you all know, I’ve been auctioning off the right to a lucrative contract bringing in the PsyPro and-or killing Upgrade and his folks. Well, I’ve decided on the winner. See, the race was close,” I spoke grandly, eyeballing each of them. “You filthy animals are all far too interested, and way too willing to go the extra mile. Bludhawk promised to have it done and over with within a week of getting the contract, minimal collateral damage. In a weird turn of events, Firewall said if I wanted he would get it done with as MUCH collateral as I wanted him to employ and promised he could do it in the same timeframe. You two should talk I think you’d be great friends. Anyway, the answer to who will be receiving the contract is…”

  I paused. Each of them were either at the edge of their seats… or some equivalent.

  “All of you. Everyone here, and everyone else in the know are now entered into a countrywide race, winner takes all. And, since I’m here to have a good time, I’m increasing the pool from 25 to 50, and opening up a spot at my personal table to whoever succeeds. You want in on what I’m building, make yourself the obvious choice, First come and allat. The only rules to this race,” I said as Bludhawk and Firewall both picked up phones and only paused when I said rules, “Is that there are none. I don’t care if you start by killing everyone in this call and all the rest of your competitors. I don’t care, particularly, if you kill the FORGE-backed criminals who are going to be gunning for him for free. I only barely care if someone kills those on my personal payroll. BUT, this is a limited timeframe here. You all have 60 days to complete the contract starting at the end of the week. Once that time has been spent, if he’s alive the prize pool halves itself. Any questions?”

  Sway unmuted Bludhawk as he rose his hand. “This is lower than the normal rates for Haven interference and aid. Am I to assume this is intentional?”

  I regarded him with a violent grin. “If Haven wants me to keep shelling out those sorts of resources, they’re gonna have to prove they’re worth the premium.”

  “This sounds like a more direct challenge,” he said a bit more grim… but not looking disinterested.

  “It is. Market share of illicit activities is about to get more scarce across the pond too.” He nodded, and something in the pierce of his green eyes seemed to gather an understanding good enough for himself.

  Next up, someone far too pale to be healthy with a crop of dark hair and a chin that could cut diamonds spoke. “What’s this about a place at the table?” he spoke with a thick, eastern european accent.

  “Yeah, you’re kind of far away so you might not have been pickin it up, but I’m shaking my chains,” I somewhat dramatically said, shaking my chest and throwing up my hands. “And once that’s said and done, whoever brings me the kid’s head can have a spot in the empire I’m going to build.

  “Dangerous,” he said. “I like it. Consider it finished already.” He sat back, and I swore his shadow behind him didn’t move as he chuckled. No one was eager to follow him up. Being rolled into my gang was as good as striking gold. Twice now, I’d used it as a lure, and twice it had hooked me quite the haul.

  “Halogen,” Firewall cut in though he hadn’t been unmuted.

  “Yes love,” I cooed in response, not betraying the imminent threats I had been thinking of acting on in my head.

  “Why the smoke and mirrors here? You could have any of us handle this effectively enough. What I don’t get is why you feel the need to make this a game. Is there a bigger game at play?” I liked how intuitive he was. Hell, I almost liked it enough to let him off the hook.

  Someone waved at the camera on their laptop, and I recognized it was Galinda, Gaz’s second in command speaking on behalf of the Scrap Pack. “Shut the fuck up Firewall, don’t try and undermine this because you’re worried you won’t win.”

  “Ah yes, 0-2 with Marauder thinks she’s got a voice. You were a courtesy call, don’t get this all twisted up in your head. Be glad you’re included, be quiet, and be out of the way if and when I make landfall.”

  “Or fuckin what?” she asked.

  “I will kill you, Gaz and everyone else in your pack of low class, irrelevant, frankly useless gang. I will never understand the choice to leave you worthless cyber-apes in charge of security.”

  Positively scathing. There went the calm and collected business man, but I could hardly feign surprise that a pyrokinetic had a shortish fuse.

  “Not to worry,” Galinda said as she lost most of the room. “Gaz got unlucky, sure, but one thing’s for damn sure: you step out here, and I’ll make sure you die screaming. That goes for everyone else in this fuckin call. Keep lookin down your noses at us if you want to.”

  I cut in at that.

  “Okay! At the risk of losing my bodyguards or my favorite contractor I’m gonna cut you all loose now. Best of luck, ta-ta for now!” I called out. I disconnected everyone, and as the lights came back up, Sway looked like he had seen a ghost.

  “What?” I asked as he rubbed his temples, going pale as a ghost.

  “I’m going to have to do so much to keep this from blowing back on us you madman,” he whined and I cackled, full evil witch laugh.

  “Maybe, but you love it. And me,” I spoke, rubbing my hands together and wondering just how wild things were about to get. With everyone at his throat, and each other, I was certain that the country was about to start coming apart at the seams. Half of the parties in that called had bad blood with each other, to say nothing of the greater underworld itself. Shit one of the only reasons it wasn’t always open war was the US government and their own retinue of super soldiers and advanced tech would put us all on the backfoot.

  Well, the ones not bankrolled by the FORGE anyway, but even still there was only so much they could permit.

  Problem is, egos had swollen to the point of crowding each other out, and this one act would be a match in the tinderbox. I could imagine it escalating past small manageable skirmishes in more than a few cases.

  In the ashes and debris that followed, I had a few ideas how to come out on top, and I might not even have to pay a dime to do it that wouldn’t end up right back in my own pocket in a few years.

  Of course, that would require me to get my own hands dirty, but that was fine.

  “Sway, can you connect another call for me?” I asked him as he slowly started getting dragged back into his own work. “I need to talk to a few of my favorite little monsters.”

  He grimaced at me, and 1 more screen popped up, and 4 girls answered within two rings of each other. “Sammy!” one of them called out.

  “Long time no speak ladies,” I told 4 of the world's most intelligent, dangerous and powerful women. “You heard the good word?”

  “Um, hell yeah, bitch,” one chirped, “I was wondering if we’d be allowed to come play.”

  “Not this time. Just Honey Bee. I have a plan and I’m gonna need you in play to pull it off.”

  The girl in question curled an eyebrow and crossed her arms to mask her interest. “Well, when the Queen of the Midsummer Night comes calling, I pick up the phone.”