“They’re all like this…”
“That’s why we're here.”
“Or there.”
“Around.”
“Everywhere.”
“Watching...”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Fire in the streets—more than usual even. It seems the power struggle between the two megaregions at the northwestern edge of America are growing worse by the day. Another Cipher Broadcast Tower on the contested border between the Portland and Seattle regions has been hijacked and is currently under hostile control of the infamous Portland… Uh… Group...”

---

---

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝟜𝔻 ℂℍ𝔼𝕊𝕊] 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...

A deal’s a deal—or is it?

It wasn’t her best work, but that was about all they had to go off of. That, and a set of poorly-ciphered coordinates, clearly encoded by Serena herself on a sheet of scrap paper that the ‘campaign manager’ had uploaded and sent to everyone’s communication codes.

It had to be the spot—hidden away in the greater corporate zone at the Reclaim’s edge. Desolate. Destitute. There was hardly anything left. A passing truck of mercs skidded by, one of them spinning about on the heavy turret mounted on its back. Off to glass another near-identical group batting for the other team, most likely. It takes a bit of maneuvering to evade their gaze, but that was the spot for sure. It looked just like every other withered box-shaped building in the zone. Nevertheless the complex sets of sliding metal doors, the few paths in and out—they had to indicate that the Pirate captain had chosen the building for a reason… If she had chosen it at all.

Droplets of water echoed as they impacted the concrete, creeping from exposed pipes and deposits of acid rain leaking in, but the warehouse was otherwise dead silent. Serena led her crew into the main room which had to be the size of a few basketball courts. Shelving units and the behemoth remnants of some sort of machine shop ‘uglied up the place’, but the floor was a bit too pristine. No dust. No rubble. No glass. Petrukov used her lighter to ignite three separate Raw Toxics between her lips, letting the smoke creep up towards the distant rafters and exposed ventilation shafts.

“Alright folks,” Petrukov started. “Make yourselves at home. This is our playground for the next… length of time.”

“Miss Petrukov.” The burly man stepped up alongside his client, stretching his oversized muscles and holding out a gun that was severely too small for his massive goon hand. The Pirate Queen smiled, admiring not the man himself but the now iconic black flag rigged up to a staff on his back. It was comical. It was absurd. It was totally on brand.

“Give it a test. Make sure you know you can—”

A series of blasts echoed endlessly off the tin walls. Serena hammered the trigger wildly, aiming at every interesting object down-range until the magazine was empty. The pangs of 9mm ricocheting off of every surface around them was like an anthem—a cause for concern, but also an anthem. She blew at the tip of the non-smoking gun.

“Thanks Bannerlord, but I’mma need another clip for the gat. And also the payload, chief.”

Bannerlord fumbled around at his own sidearm to grab a spare magazine of ammunition. Serena, in the meantime, started posing with her new piece and the steel briefcase, barrel leveled against the shadows at the outer edge or haphazardly flicked towards catwalks and side doors, but something stopped her, caused her face to flush and her gun arm to waver.

“They’ll be here any minute.”

“Fuck… I forgot the most important thing. Fuck,” she repeated. Again and again. “We forgot the—”

“Boombox?”

Once again, Serena From The Past had thought of everything. Once again, the Bannerlord’s supply cart was fully stocked and strapped with every piece of kit they needed and extra snacks. The entire situation was perfectly coordinated, endlessly complex. She, the queenpin, a boss playing some extradimensional chess game. Serena took up position in the center of the room and hammered down the play button with her foot.

“Yo-ho-ho.”

Lott stared blankly at the black screen in front of her. The room was a private conference chamber that was really more like a confessional if it had been designed by bored inquisitors looking for new methods of torture. It was much too short for her to stand without craning her neck, but then they had failed to install a bench for her to sit upon. She could stoop, albeit awkwardly and painfully, so the only option for her was to kneel and pray that she’d be able to stand up after. Perhaps the room truly was a confessional. However, the sins revealed today wouldn’t be her own, partially because there wasn’t enough time but mostly because that wasn’t what the screen wanted to hear. The screen wanted to know how others had transgressed against it, and by bowing before it Lott had honor bound herself to telling it what it wanted to know. So, no, she decided, it wasn’t a confessional but rather the denunciation station, her whistle blow signalling the arrival of the snitch express.

Only, judging by the blank screen, there was nobody waiting like a military wife for her shell shocked husband at the platform. Lott didn’t redirect her gaze from the screen. For all she knew, they could be watching her. They was in reference to the most important person in Lott’s world: her manager. She needed a manager so she could do her job. Her real job. Gatch was only her manager on paper. The screen was the-pronounced-thee manager with a capital M. Without The(e) Manager she was a lost sheep in a synthetic wool suit who’d stare at a blank screen for, she guessed, seven minutes straight without moving or even saying a word. She reached her wrist up to check her guesstimate.

In that one movement, her hand accidentally tapped the blank screen. The dark denunciation station radiated with a harsh blue glow as the image of The(e) Manager appeared on the touchscreen. They were nothing more than a still gray blob of a human silhouette, but she knew it was them nevertheless. The(e) Manager spoke and the blue bars danced behind its silhouette like a crashing wave.

“You are twenty minutes late, Ms. Ramana,” said The(e) Manager, their voice as sexless as their appearance. Lott blinked. Considering she had been five minutes early, that meant she’d been staring at nothing for nearly half an hour. She made a mental note to mention her slippage of time to Howland next time she saw him, and then made another mental note to make an actual physical note considering she’d surely forget that first one.

“My humblest a—”

“What is your report?” said The(e) Manager, cutting Lott off.

Lott paused. How could she word what she wanted to say without directly saying that she had nothing to say? Lott had so far discovered that if someone on Gatch’s team was actively working against him then all he had to do was sit back and wait while the rest of the crew just botched the campaign due to their ineptitude. The security team they had hired had been an absolute mess, with one of them blowing themselves up while another had not only failed to protect the innocent life of her cellular but had also confiscated its remains and prevented it from reaching cell Valhalla. However, they were contractors, not team members. They couldn’t be held responsible for the things The(e) Manager was hoping to squash.

“I have currently vetted a number of campaign workers and volunteers, but have yet to come to any conclusive data on whether or not any of them could intentionally be planning to sabotage the Mayor’s campaign. After extensively dealing with the media these past few weeks, I have begun to believe that there’s a decent chance that the outlets are just creating stories and seeing which ones make us flinch. How—”

The blue lights danced to life and signaled that it was time for her to shut up. “Ms. Ramana, I would like to remind you that your duty is to find proof of the existence of saboteurs and not the opposite.”

“Yes, you have been quite clear in your expectations and I look forward to achieving them,” said Lott. Achieving, but not exceeding. The better she did, the more they’d expect from her next time. Overachieving only led to becoming a future disappointment. “As I was about to say, there has been some issues with one of the new security contracts: Knight…” She scanned back through her footage until she caught sight of Glory’s badge. “Knight Enterprise. I currently plan to proceed with investigating whomever was in charge of hiring the—”

“Ms. Ramana, the company has put its faith in you as one of its most valued auditors. Not only do we not need to know how you plan to conduct your investigation, we cannot afford to have our time wasted. If you have nothing to report, than you only have to say it.”

“Currently I have nothing new to report,” said Lott, averting her gaze.

“How unfortunate, Ms. Ramana. Remember, further waste of the company time will be noted in your performance review and docked from your salary. Hopefully you will come back to us with a name next time.”

“Yes, of course, thank you.”

”And Ms. Ramana?” Lott looked up. “Do be careful. Word is the locals are getting a little rowdy around there.”

The silhouette snapped out of existence as the screen went to a solid soft blue glow. Lott dug her fingers into her thighs. The company had made it clear: they didn’t want the truth, they wanted a scapegoat. She didn’t doubt that it’d end up being her if she couldn’t produce a name. She wasn’t an auditor. She wasn’t a counteragent. She was an executioner tasked with performing a blood sacrifice to appease the gods of upper management, and if she couldn’t find a heart to cut out then she better tear out her own.

Lott stared at the blue screen, and the gray blob that was her grainy reflection stared back. How unfortunate? A waste of company time? She slammed her face against her reflection and the screen went black. She let out the angry breath of hot air that she’d be holding inside, and slammed her face against it again. The screen flipped from black to blue and back again as she repeated the exercise until something cracked. She looked up. The screen had given out before her nose, a dash of blood highlighting the spider web of glass. The soft blue light made the red blood look purple. It was inhuman. Synthetic. Alien.

Lott wiped the mess away with her sleeve, and checked her watch.

When she looked up, it was brighter and she was standing. Lott was in the gilded chrome cage of the VIP elevator. She knew it was the VIP elevator because it came with a liftman in an exosuit with a rifle casually slung in front of his chest. The normal elevator only came with the light smell of disinfectant and lingering tobacco smoke. The armed security guard slash elevator operator was holding out an embroidered handkerchief towards her. Lott’s brow twitched—it was the most quizzical look she could give—and the liftman waved the kerchief again. Was it part of his job not to speak? Very important people didn’t like chatter. She was curious how long he’d continue to do this strange gesture without speaking, only to realize when she rolled back the past that he had spoken.

“You’re bleeding,” he had said thirty seconds ago. An eternity, when it came to offering someone a tissue. A weaker man would’ve stuffed the handkerchief away by now. This was why he was given the illustrious position of making sure none of the common corporate scum stink up the VIP lift that was only reserved for special corporate scum. If he hadn’t thought of Lott as that special kind of scum before, he certainly would now as she continued to vacantly stare at the rag. There was a tiny design on it of a chibi girl. It made Lott think of her intern as she grabbed the tissue and dabbed her nose, careful not to get her tainted blood on Theresa’s face.

She went to return the handkerchief but paused. She had to know. She unravelled the wadded cloth and looked: red blood. Human after all. That was a pity. She quite liked the idea of potentially being extraterrestrial. Lott went to hand the rag back, but the liftman paused her with his hand and shook his head. It was hers. Fine. She could use a Theresa towel. Lott carefully folded the rag and put it in her front suit pocket. The elevator dinged and her time with the liftman was over. She felt her heartbreak as she walked out of the chrome cage without even giving him a head nod. If she had, he’d recognize her immediately as not being very important and likely would’ve gunned her down before she reached Gatch’s hideaway.

Lott crossed the reception area and mouthed “I’m expected” to the secretary as she fired off a snap from the old business gun at the double doors. There was a buzz, and the doors swung open to another set of double doors. Lott stepped forward, the first set closed behind her, and the second set opened with another buzz to the situation room. She paused and adjusted the liftman’s handkerchief so that “Theresa” was poking her little wide eyes over the edge of her pocket. This was where real business happened. Her intern deserved to see it. Lott looked up in time to see the doors automatically beginning to close. She slipped through with one long step.

A series of heads snapped to see who had broken through their tight defenses of one armed elevator man, one highbunned secretary lady, and two pairs of double doors. Lott was hit by a barrage of disapproving looks that the woman was all too comfortable with receiving before the heads returned to staring at the screens and muttering to one another. She looked at the screens of the growing crowd of protestors below. Now that was living. She wished she could be part of that crowd. Pushing, screaming, vandalizing, drinking—

Drinking? Lott felt a spark of life inside of her hollowed cavity and scanned through the covered faces of tired citizens. Behind the crowd was another crowd, and above that smaller crowd Lott watched a shaker spin in the air before disappearing back behind them. Cool moves, but could it be? Lott smiled, and the cameras were engulfed in flames. Not the cocktail that Lott desired, but it at the very least broke her attention from the excitement of raising violence. She clutched her tablet to her chest and approached Gatch. He seemed calm like she seemed calm, although his calm was likely meditative while hers was medicated. He exhaled as she stepped beside the couch he had been watching the Riotvision. It was a warmer kind of a hello than Lott had anticipated.

“We should prepare for the worst,” said Lott, staring at the screen of black smoke. She wasn’t talking about the riot. “We’re ahead in the straw polls, but that has only driven the other parties towards working together to embarrass us during the debate. The Pirates intend to leak footage of what they claim to be a schizophrenic woman being roughhoused by Central Party funded security. Said whackjob has ties to the NTP. I’d like to run through some questions so they don’t tear us apart up there.”

Assuming, Lott calmly glanced at the screen, they didn’t get through and tear them apart in here.

The drive was chaotic, dizzying and headache inducing, a maze of abandoned infrastructure projects and syncrete rivers. Urban planning was the absolute last priority into the Twin City Sprawl as structures melded into each other haphazardly and a criss cross of empty overpasses jutted out like the branches of an overgrown bonsai.

Keah wouldn’t have it any other way. The serenity of disorder, of imperfection. However, he had to restrain himself from shifting the gear stick or pressing down on the accelerator further this time. He looked up at his rear view mirror. The Pirate Queen herself longued in the backseat of his vehicle along with a few guards wielding bulky gats in shoulder and hip holsters. The route to her destination could have been shortened by at least ten minutes had they given him a chance to use some shortcuts. Unfortunately, he couldn’t argue with campaign

He cut left into a market district, the conga line of roadside vendors and hawkers haggling with the few Zoners that weren’t paying to the election. The sudden jerk in momentum sent a jolt of pain through his lower abdomen, knocking him off his game for a moment before he returned back to his senses.

Still hurting. Just a little bit less than before, though.

---

“ You know that your contract does not come with a life insurance package, Islander.“

A map of purple blotches covered his torso. The few cuts he sustained during the bar brawl just needed a simple kera-patch. The others needed the hands of an experienced ripper-doc. Or a former Biotechnica genetic analyst. His chest was rising and falling oddly like a punctured balloon. The bitter taste of iron flooded his tongue, Keah half-gagging half-coughing as the Iron Itamae reached into one of his cuts and twisted.

“ Cut my pay. Then - “ Keah hissed as his skin was sewn back together like a patchwork doll “ Then, we can talk more about my contract.”

---

He’d remembered when he’d first arrived on the outskirts of the Reclaim Zone, entering through the ruins of the Greater Corporate Zone. Driving through the husks and decaying wrecks of defunct and bankrupt corporations into the lair where the newest heirs roamed like lions, feasting upon the remnants of the old. How long was it going to be until they were usurped?

Like the OverDriver.

The rest of the journey from there on was smooth. There were only a few stops every now and then, just to let an auto-track skirt by or give berth to a roving band of Tinmen in their heavily armored APC. When they had finally arrived, Keah took a second glance at the coordinates and then, at the garbage dump in front of him. Was this it? Keah stopped and parked his car in front of the squat grey complex, just beside the teetering wreckage of an abandoned shipping container. He simply adjusts the rear view mirror and gives a simple nod to the Pirate Queen’s reflection.

“ We’re here.”

As he watches her saunter out of the Jury Rigg and walk into the entrance of the meeting area, Keah makes a final check on whether or not his parking is secure. Just as he crouches downwards to perform a bug inspection, he exerts too much pressure on his abdomen and the pain returns, an head-splitting agony that tears his mind in two. A needle of bubbling liquid drops out from his pocket and his hand scrambles towards it.

---

The pain subsides to a dull throbbing. The Iron Itamae sealed a loop around the last stitch, leaving Keah struggling to lean up on the gurney. The squeaky sound of taps turning and water gushing could be heard past the pounding in his head. The man responsible for saving Keah's life from a drawn out fate of internal bleeding and broken ribs resumes business as normal, dipping his hands into a bucket of water and taking out writhing scaled quicksilver.

"Thanks," Keah grunted out, reaching for his bomber jacket that hung on top of a stool. The Iron Itamae doesn't reply. He zips up the jacket and begins to walk towards the exit, wincing with every moment. Just as his hand reaches towards the door, the imperial voice of the Iron Itamae rings out in a calm monotone.

“ The Zone is not like the other parts of the States, Demon. Your tantrum at the Duat has more consequences than you realise. “The Iron Itamae tutted like a father patronising an unruly child. “If a Scrapteam were to arrive on my establishment because of your actions…..” “ Should I be expecting any more emergencies in the future?”

“ I’ll be more cautious.”

“ Caution? When are you going to stop deluding yourself, Islander?” The Iron Itamae set down the bloodied scalpel next to the sink. “ You don’t fear danger. You crave its embrace. Its warmth. You are addicted to it. You claim to be above your baser instincts but the only comfort you find yourself nowadays is when your hand grips the wheel." The chef leans his head upwards, plucking out the razor thin bones from the fish and looks at Keah, dissapointed. “ I have considered what you have told me.”

“ And?” Keah said, annoyed.

“ Corporate espionage is a time honored tradition in this era. Amalgamation having its hands dirty with the polynesians isn’t that surprising. Your personal enmity with this so called….What was his name again?”

“ The OverDriver.”

“ Ah, you street racers and your ridiculous pseudonyms.” The Itamae began slicing the bream from its nape, working around its gills. “ Your past with him is part of something greater, I assure you, but he is nothing in the face of the election. “

“ He knows where my people are.” Keah begged out. " I can't just....I have to find him."

“ So, what do you plan to do about it?” His knife came down and the Itamae began seperating the pectoral fin from the body “ You’re not a paramilitary assassin. You’re not some Matrix hacker. You are just a simple racer. No one." In a single stroke, the Iron Itamae split the fish down into two fillets, tossing the carcass into a bin. " Instead of trying to hunt him down, I suggest that you do not distance yourself from the few allies you have left. Remember it was I who gave you the contact of the fixer in the first place. It was I who contacted the Ark about the potential opportunities in the Reclaim Zone. I am one of your only allies, and in this world, allies are necessary. ”

---

The Pirate Queen wasn’t eccentric. No, eccentric was an understatement. Insane was a term used by those who were small-minded and strange was too benign a word. Chaotic was the more appropriate term. Keah trailed behind closely in her shadow, a part of her Party but distancing himself from the dogmatic who held the Pirate's doctrine as divine truth. Petrukov was situated in the center of the room, surveying the meeting place and biding her time for the other party to arrive in the negotiations. Whoever they were. Mercs? Political rivals? Slicers? Fixers? Anything was possible.

Keah slowly walked up to her side and gave a small cough to attract her attention. He briefly wondered whether to tip his hand on Amalgmation's dealings but decided against it. He would decide that after this deal had concluded.

“ Is there anything I should be worried about during this deal, maám?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Just curious. I'm being hired to know when I need to drive you away and when I don't.”

Kay once again insisted on carrying equipment herself when the pirate crew disembarked and made their way into the warehouse. She almost regretted that decision for once when a spray of gunfire caused her to jump out of her skin and nearly drop some very expensive hardware. Once Petrukov’s gun ran mercifully dry, Kay was left clutching her chest with heaving breaths and fearing a heart attack at the ripe old age of 34. The ringing in her ears was only drowned out by her pulse thundering behind her ears as she reflexively wiped something from her face that wasn’t there. The movement unintentionally smeared her makeup and revealed the dark circles of fatigue under one eye. All at once she returned to the present more pissed off than usual, but determined to seem as detached as ever, as she moved past her employer.

“I’ve been holed up in worse places,” she remarked, hoping a white-knuckled grip on her duffel bags would stop her hands from shaking.

The affectionately dubbed “hacker woman” set about finding somewhere to plug in all her equipment. She found a single outlet in one of the darker corners and got to work setting up her station. Not wanting to set everything on the floor, she called dibs on one of the rickety metal work tables from the machine shop and dragged it over to her little space. Her hands moved of their own accord as she unpacked, adjusted, maneuvered, and finagled all the necessary and less necessary tools of the trade into position. Her oversized laptop dominated the table and formed the nexus of an unsightly array of wires connecting the external hardware flanking the triple screen behemoth; all flowing into an industrial surge protector. Antenna of various sizes and blinking lights decorated her impromptu workspace and she kicked her now empty bags under the table.

She stretched and admired her work for a moment before slipping the last pack off her shoulders and setting it gently on the floor. A bundle of cables emerged first and then a contender for the ugliest headset on the continent. The base appeared to be a variation of the “Looking Glass” VR headset series developed by FuryTech and one of the older models to be sure, but that was where the similarities ended. The slick, shiney white paneling had been removed to make room for a whole assortment of extra wiring and circuitry that formed a sort of veil. She set the tech aside and stood, stretching with a groan, and made her way toward Petrukov. She made a mental note to attempt contact with Delilah later after she spoke with her employer. Maybe if she was lucky the pirate queen would reveal her plans and not spring her absurdity on Kay last minute.

𝚄𝚙𝚕𝚘𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚒𝚛𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 '𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚅𝙸𝙳𝙴𝙾' 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚎, 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚢. 𝙶𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚘 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚏𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘-𝚙𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚘 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚎𝚌𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚛 𝚌𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚐𝚗. 𝚂𝚘𝚠 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚘𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚢, 𝙻𝚘𝚝𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚙𝚒𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚊𝚢 𝚗𝚘 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚒𝚖 - 𝚍𝚞𝚖𝚋 𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚑. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚘𝚞𝚝, 𝚆𝚒𝚛𝚎-𝚐𝚒𝚛𝚕, 𝚋𝚒𝚐 𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚍𝚢 𝚜𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍. 𝚃𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚏 𝚒𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚘𝚖𝚏' 𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝. 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜𝚗'𝚝 𝚝𝚘𝚘 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚙𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝙼𝙲𝚂, 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙸𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚛𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚛 𝚘𝚛 𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚙, 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚋𝚒𝚐 - 𝚋𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚜. 𝙸𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚢, 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚗𝚞𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚗𝚞𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛 - 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝?

𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚜𝚎, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚊𝚠 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚃𝙴𝙺𝙺𝙴𝙳 𝙾𝚄𝚃. 𝙴𝚇𝙾𝚂𝚄𝙸𝚃 [𝙾𝙽], 𝙶𝙰𝙲𝙺 𝙱𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙰[𝙴𝚀𝚄𝙸𝙿𝙿𝙴𝙳] 𝚂𝙲𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙼𝙴𝚁 [𝚂𝙻𝚄𝙽𝙶]. 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚎𝚗'𝚝 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚙𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚜 𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚌(?) 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚛 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝 𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚑 𝚔𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚜 𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚊𝚞𝚕𝚝 𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚍𝚞𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚜𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚛 𝚐𝚊𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚗𝚟𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗? 𝚃𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚟𝚎, 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚖 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚏𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗.

𝙷𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚖𝚙𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚠𝚘 𝚍𝚞𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚕 𝚋𝚊𝚐𝚜 𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕 𝚘𝚏 𝙿𝙸𝚁𝙰𝚃𝙴 𝙶𝙴𝙰𝚁, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚠𝚘 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚋𝚊𝚐𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚌-𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚊𝚛𝚖𝚜. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚞𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚑𝚒𝚖, 𝚒𝚗𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝 𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚢 𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝙿𝚒𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚞𝚗. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚐𝚞𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚙-𝚐𝚘𝚍. "𝙷𝚎𝚢 𝚀𝚞𝚎𝚎𝚗, 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝'𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎?” 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚊𝚣𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎-𝚖𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛, 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚎𝚛, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚣𝚎.

Location: Reclaim Zone, South City Sprawl.
Interacting with: No one in particular, but looking at the riot in front of APEX Industries R&D.

Glory tapped her foot against the dusty floor of the abandoned building she had been stationed in. It smelled bad, there was no air conditioning, and the gigantic amount of dust and decay was making her nose run. As a final bit of annoyance, the binoculars that she wore were digging into her neck from the weight. Unfortunately, she was here on a job. This building, along with several of the other buildings that other members of Knight Enterprise were occupying, were good vantage points on the crowd that was gathering in front of the APEX Industries R&D building. Knight Enterprise internal intelligence believed that some of the gangs that had sprung up in the reclaim zone were going to attempt to use the riot to try and incite violence to provoke a response from the present security.

Unfortunately, Glory had heard of this kind of move before. It was a devious tactic that took advantage of the lack of time to deliberate on an action: Make both sides believe that the other side just took an aggressive move and the tension might just boil over. It made Glory sick to her stomach that she couldn’t actively work to disperse the crowd, but there was nothing to be done against direct orders. Grabbing the binoculars from around her neck, Glory took a moment to sweep them across the swelling crowd of people before pressing two fingers to her ear and speaking into the microphone of her transceiver. ”This is Glory. I’m not seeing any personnel of interest. Continuing to monitor. Over.”

Glory gave another sweep of the crowd and this time she saw something that looked like more than just another disgruntled person. Glory had to stop and rub her eyes for a moment to be sure that she was seeing who she was seeing. Against all implausibility, there she was: Stella. The Ultrabartender. But why? Wouldn’t she be at home after her shift at The Duat? Or at least at The Duat itself either cleaning or sorting things? Glory had never figured Stella for much of a protestor, and so the presence of The Ultrabartender was truly mystifying.

Unfortunately Glory couldn’t go ask. She had to stay here, because APEX’s internal security had only been informed that they were going to use some of the abandoned buildings as scouting spots. If Glory entered into that crowd, she would not only be directly violating orders but would potentially also be counted as a threat for simply being in the crowd. As such, Glory was essentially trapped. Lowering her binoculars, Glory stepped out of the harsh sunlight that beamed through the half-broken window and into the shadows surrounding it in order to take a break from staring at the crowd. Leaning against the wall, Glory gave a sigh followed by a prompt sneeze. A bath was going to be needed after this.

Reaching into one of her pouches, Glory produced her phone. Flipping it open, she synced her contacts to the AR projectors and opened her email. Pressing a few buttons to scroll along, Glory winced as she saw an email from the company director regarding the death of Joe Blair. It was a painful reminder of yesterday.

Glory’s mind began to churn as she remembered her failures. Her angry thoughts were like the sound of nails upon metal as they began to filter into her head. Gritting her teeth, Glory forced herself to take a breath and calm down. The explosion was currently dominating news feeds, both internal and external. Everyone seemed to have completely missed the fact that Glory had passed out. Hopefully it stayed that way. Hopefully. Glory couldn’t lose this job. If she did… She’d probably be out in the crowd. Where else would she go?

Closing her emails, Glory turned off the AR sync in her contacts and stepped back into the blazing sun. Lifting her binoculars, Glory scanned the crowd once more in the hope that she would catch sight of someone trying to cause trouble. Thinking back a bit further than yesterday, Glory remembered the colors that her old gangmates used to wear: Green and black. Scanning the crowd, Glory was half relieved and half disappointed that she didn’t see anyone wearing the particular pattern she remembered.

If she could get some of The Reavers down on file… That would be a major boon to cleaning some of the dirt from her past. She just had to find them first.

”Mister Choi, I just don’t think it’s a good idea. There’s too many ways it could go wrong.”

From across a screen table playing a silent news stream, Choi’s consultant was giving the office’s owner a hard stare. The ticker across the screen read about a tense, yet still peaceful demonstration underway in No Man’s Land, which was currently throwing a wrench in many well laid plans. The awkward silence was finally broken.

”I’m not disagreeing with you. I can see how bad it looks.” Choi pointed a wagging finger at the screen, the same finger which then minimized the news stream and brought up an encoded message that took a moment to be translated.”But, read this. ‘No change in retrieval point.’ I can’t do anything, my hands are tied. APEX isn’t budging on this one.”

”What, are they stupid? They’re the ones who designated this contract as “Maximum Risk”, but now they refuse to give us another spot to meet up? How does that make any sense?” The young man’s voice was full of incredulity. Running his hands through his hair, he leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath that was cut short when it caught the scratchy end of one of Choi’s long e-cigarette drags.

”Come on, use your head. You know how things like these usually end up, don’t you? Have you ever seen any protests or demonstrations in this city remain peaceful all the way through? APEX isn’t sending us anywhere else because they don’t have anywhere else. Everything they have this side of South City is probably headed for No Man’s Land right now.”

The young man gave a deep, obviously frustrated exhale from his nose, turning his chair away from the news stream to face the fish tank behind him. The aquarium was vast, taking up a considerable space in front of the wall, and was immaculately clean, with dozens of beautiful small artificial fish swimming around amongst the tall stalks of vibrant and colorful vegetation. As he watched, one of the tank's only two organic inhabitants, a small sea snail, emerged from his small plastic pineapple house. As soon as the mollusk bared his bright crimson shell, though, his opposition emerged, too. Carrying an electric blue shell, the second snail made a beeline across the bottom of the tank to attack his adversary. In a sort of choreographed dance, the fish of the tank formed gangs on either side of the fishtank, all attacking and defending each other and their various snail lords. Sei watched intently, before the entire ordeal reminded him of the conversation he’d just been having.

”And what about security? None of your other heavy hitters want this fucking contract. You send the Tin Can Man out there alone, this is bound to right down the drain.”

C’mon, Sei! Give your boy a little more faith than that!” As Olex finally entered the room, Sei’s eyes nearly snapped their own connective nerves with the speed which they rolled to the back of his head.”What is it exactly that Sei doesn’t think ol’ Tin Can Man can handle, by the way?”

Choi only barely turned to face Olex, and tossed a small, electronically locked box down at the table. It could fit in the palm of one’s hand, yet looked as if it would require high-grade explosives to open without the proper biometrics. A lingering sense of concern and discomfort remained on his face as he spoke, his voice thick with consternation.

”APEX job, maximum security. They wanted something delivered to their R&D office in the GCZ, but now look. They’ve got themselves another one of the Reclaim’s famous ‘peaceful protests’. We asked for a different pickup, but they’ve denied it. It’s either we do it now, or in about another 2 hours we will be considered ‘In Possession of Illegally Obtained Documents belonging to APEX CORPS.’ and we will pay dearly for holding onto the intel. Rusto and Gin are already out on jobs on the other side of town and the rest of our friends don’t want to take it, they say that ‘the money’s not worth the risk’. Cowards.” To cap off the tirade, Choi immediately took a deep drag, and almost as immediately began coughing violently, stepping aside while his guards worriedly began to try and calm the man down.

”I’ll do it.

Sai’s eyes instantly shot open with surprise. ”What?

”I said I’ll do it. Just give the intel and I’ll run it. I don’t need backup for some peaceful protests. I’ll get there and make it out before anything even has the slightest chance of going bad.” Olex tried to greet the men’s surprised faces with a signature grin, but a quick read of the room made the smile feel a bit inappropriate.

Sai simply scoffed and buried his face right back into his palms. A shining sign of confidence from the young man. Choi’s face twisted a bit, showing off a few wrinkles that had begun to mar his once youthful face. He crossed his arms, the concern in his look was obvious. The years of running his office were always fraught with stress and frustration. Bad deals and failed contracts, dead couriers and plentiful enemies, Tencho Choi’s job was definitely one that needed a sweet retirement plan. Given APEX’s input, though, there wouldn’t be much to retire from. The rock and the hard place were growing more and more uncomfortable by the second.

”Don’t be foolish, Oleksandr. You of all people should know that it’s stupid to take these kinds of jobs on your own. We’ll just talk to Re-”

”And you should know that it’s even more stupid to tests APEX’s patience. As bad of an idea this is, and as much as we all know I shouldn’t be doing this, I think we also all know this is the only choice we have.”

”We could at least try and wait for Rusto or Gin. You need some sort of support, my boy. Sending you alone would be foolhardy, to say the very least.”

A furrowed brow on Olex’s face was all Choi needed to see to understand his frustration. It mirrored Choi’s own weariness. Both men understood the situation they were in, and they knew Choi was simply trying to find every excuse they had to buy them time. There were no other choices left, and with a deep breath inhale and exhale, Olex let Choi know that he was done with the stalling.

”Just let me take the job, Choi. I can handle myself, we know that. Worst possible outcome, I die. No biggie.” Sei had finally broke his stare from the aquarium to face Olex and Choi, sneering at the Tin Can Man’s flippant bravado.

”It’s his funeral, Tench, just let hi-”

”I don’t recall asking you a goddamn thing, boy. And it’s ‘Mister Choi’ to you. You watch your tongue or it will be cut from your mouth.”

Even in his later years, the owner of the office maintained the fierce passion that kept him alive up until that point. The youngest man in the room had just spoken out of turn, a mistake he knew better to make. He simply sat up straight, giving a silent nod coupled with a hard gulp. There was no need to further test Choi’s patience. It took a moment for the boy to find the courage to look his elder in the face, but was surprised to find that Choi hadn’t done the same. His gaze was still locked on Olex, who at this point was examining the small secure box Choi had placed on the table.

The clear respect that Choi held for Olex gave Sei a burning in his stomach. Since he was a young adult. Sei Chen had been Tench Choi’s right hand man. Paperwork, enforcer bribery, network hacking, Sei did it all. All the tin can man had done was walk up and ask for a job, and within months, he was one of Choi’s few shining stars. Yet, Sei was still simply regarded as an errand boy, Choi’s servant that did the small work that the elder was busy to be bothered with. Youth had convinced him that one day he’d earn the same respect, all it would take was more hard work and time dedicated to the office. He hadn’t the maturity yet to realize that Choi only truly respected those whom he considered to be of equal ambition and ability. Those willing to just do small tasks or easy work were convenient. Simply only convenient. Robotic eyes and cerebral cyberware didn’t cloud Choi’s natural ability to read people, and while Olex had yet to find his way into his own place of power, it was clear he had a drive that those born from the Reclaim lacked.

”You haven’t much time left to get going, Oleksandr.”



To Olex’s dismay but not so much his surprise, the mob forming in the streets of the GCZ was much larger and more restless than it was when he’d last looked at the news broadcast. Almost the entire street was filled, with the area immediately in front of the APEX facility almost completely cut off by a dense frontline of protesters. Even behind him, more people were seemingly pouring in from side streets and alleyways. The mood was souring more and more by the second, as those new arrivals weren’t shy to bump and push Olex aside as they joined the larger mass of people. His pace slowed, and he began to slow sink deeper and deeper in the hostile crowd, their loud chants and intermingling speaking slowly turning into an incomprehensible cacophony. Scanning the surrounding street, Olex’ eye caught something.

Olex’s head tilted to the side a bit as he noticed Stella across the street, having to steal glances as more people carrying picket signs and rocks filled every available space around him. He turned his view just ahead of himself to make sure he wasn’t going to run right into someone, but his gaze always returned to Stella. Finally, his curiosity gripped him. What would a jog across the street hurt? Of course, it was easier said than done as the area was very quickly filling up, droves and droves of more people filing in at a surprising pace. Even with the allure of the B - A - R sign, the amount of shoulder checks and dirty looks Olex was getting was whittling down on his desire to finish his trip across the street. A slight poke in his ribs reminded him of the small metal box that he had stuffed in a pocket holding tight to his torso. Something nagged at him, the clear voice of Choi in the back of his head. As enticing and curious as the bizarre bar stand was, Olex knew better than to stray off this course this time.

Pivoting on his heel, Olex’s body tensed up as his return to the correct path was greeted with a harsh, intense heat washing over his face and chest. He relaxed slightly from the jolt, and his opening eyes were greeted to a spectacular wave of flames, the orangish-red wisps of which flowed off the wall and flirted dangerously from the crowd. With a face twisted in surprise,a shaky hand shot under his shirt, pulling it at a snail’s pace from its place under his arm, keeping it low past his waist once it was free. More molotovs were being drawn from the crowd, with the dull drone of the crowd slowly growing into a harsh growl. Aggressive in both their movements and their shouting, Olex could see the door guards tense up, and a cold flash of adrenaline shocked his gut, as he knew that it could only go south from this point. He’d lost his chance at trying to get in the building unharmed, now, he was desperate to get as far away from the muzzles of their weapons as quickly as possible.

---

Heads and hair all blended together, a sea of vibrant greens and blues, opposing the dull browns and blacks. Below the heads, it seemed to be a sea of chrome. For some, it was obvious that the allure of being more machine than man had taken ahold, as little flesh was left to be seen. Other bodies told more visually downtrodden stories, with many in the crowd carrying miserably outdated and badly maintained cyberware. Bare wires, little in the way of support or protections, open and rusted joints that could barely move in any direction, let alone the two they were meant. Proctor felt strangely at home, seeing that he wasn’t the only one with augments that had seen better days. Many faces in the crowd wore looks of fear and confusion, similar to the look that Proctor carried at that very moment.

Having just emerged from a secluded alleyway, the congealed mass of people overtaking the Baolei clinic was overwhelming at first. Muscles in Proctor’s body contracted and relaxed, as he intended to shield his eyes from the light, but it took a few notable moments before his arm would finally move and block out the garish colors and shine. Tired eyes surrounded by dark circles squinted his pupils adjusted to the scene.

Behind Proctor, in the layer of dust on the ground that was usual for the Reclaim, was a deep and jagged line, leading all the way up to where his right foot was resting. The elder grimaced as he tried his best to coax the stiffness out of his joints, but it was really just a robotic reaction more than anything. There was no way to massage cramps from metal legs, nor were there any cheap or easy ways to get his limbs operating any faster than they already were, short of Neurosynth. Pulsing, dull pain was still radiating from his legs, and Proctor soon enough just shut his eyes, grimacing at the intense throbbing that washed over most of his body from his legs up.

Where was he? What reason did he have to be here?

Murky stupor drove its way past the concentration he held on the pain, and momentarily washed most of the thought from his mind. Proctor’s eyes returned to the crowd, and for a moment it looked completely alien. Subtle anxiety set in as he realized he had no clue where he was at. Everyone in the crowd seemed to be facing away from him, so he obviously wasn’t the draw. But what was? Why did the crowd happen to all be chromed up looking maniacs? Was Proctor also about to join the crowd of chromed up maniacs?

Even through the back of their skulls, Proctor felt the prying eyes of the crowd poke and prod him. In and out of his pockets, searing their stares into his eyes. The crowd of machines need not face him to surveil him. To Proctor, the street fell silent, and everyone that had gathered outside of the temple waited for his next move. The air was thick with an electric and bristling energy that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

A commotion of loud conversation and stunned passerbys shocked Proctor awake. Very quickly, his mind was flooded once again with precious memories, a sense of relief washing over him. The pulse of pain in his body had calmed, and he finally felt comfortable enough to start moving. Pulling his leg forward, it was slow to move but did actually work, if not still a bit stiff. Proctor finally joined the crowd, trying to take peeks at the front of the temple, where the monks seemed to be addressing everyone. What they said mattered little to Proctor, he simply scanned for anything that looked like Neurosynth. The monk kept taking glances behind him, and gave hand motions for those closest to him to calm down, but what seemed to be going on in the temple was unclear to Proctor, who had slowly begun to wriggle his way into the thicker parts of the crowd, desperate to get his hands on some neurosynth as quickly as possible. He didn’t have any concentration left to try and figure out what was being said around him, the crowd was silent as far as he could tell.

The hunt for his artificial clarity was on.

“Come on…”
“Come on!”
“We all knew it was going to be this way…”
“Tricked as kids…”
“You grow and you see the light…”

“Or the dark…”

“You realize that’s all there is…”
“She called it 𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 Entropy…”
“No.”
“No. I call it disorder...”
“You harness it or it destroys you...”
“Nowadays, I’m always watching it happen. Can’t escape it…”
“I’m like its harbinger…”

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝟜𝔻 ℂℍ𝔼𝕊𝕊] 𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘...

Quiet… Classically too quiet. Was it always that way? The GCZ had to be a bustling place of back-breaking labor and profit margins as dangerous as a razor. It didn’t seem like it though. The place was the sort inhabited by ghosts—a playground for spectres and dead factory inspectors. The Pirate Queen wouldn’t be surprised if she found the remains entombed in the rubble. That was the sort of booty that pirates would go digging for here. Memories. Fragmented dreams.

But maybe there was more to the fate of the Pirate. She thought so. This sort of bounty was different. Those around her didn’t think so. She knew that much. But they didn’t know her.



“Y-yeah.” They caught her stumble. Or maybe they didn’t. “It’s uh— It’s going to be dangerous.” The inward cowardice was replaced by homebrewed courage, or apathy, or facade, or disorder.

“Stay strapped...” Petrukov showed a classic smirk, and bannerlord reacted with a grand cheer in his deep, resounding voice while pumping his fists into the air.

“We’re with you to the end, Serena.” Bannerlord flexed to show that he was, in fact, strapped. A thick riot shield was velcroed to his arm. Only he ever called her Serena. She turned back towards Keah as he was joined by Kay and the omega-strapped Johnathan. Bannerlord started to curl the bags of rather suspiciously labeled “Pirate Gear”, admiring Johnny’s exosuit in a totally respectful way.



Petrukov slapped her hands together and rubbed them up and down like some sort of evil genius. “Friends, romans, privateers, today is our greatest election prep yet. We’ve got a meeting with some of our dear friends in Portland. I’ve made a deal with them. A quick exchange of resources.” She nodded to Bannerlord. He unzipped the duffel and dropped it on the ground. A few golden coins clinked against the ground. Gold. Pure, physical, untraceable Bitcoins. “Then we’ll be out of here.”

“Prepare accordingly.”

"Sounds legal to me.” The Scrap-God (Law Goon status = OFF) huffed as he picked up one of those big boy coins looking them over before giving them back.

Kay raised an eyebrow at the sight of real physical money, gold at that.
”Is this gonna be a thing with you? The gold, the flag, et cetera. Should I be on the lookout for a sailboat?” she asked sarcastically.

"But, we’re pirates.” Johnny simply mused.

“Bannerlord,” Petrukov interjected, “take that down. We’ll be needing a sailboat for future… Escapades.”

Even Keah couldn’t help but take a closer look. Physical currency was a rarity in this era, mere curios for curators and hagglers in the black market. The money didn’t worry him. “ Hmmmm….,” Keah tapped the side of his helmet, taking note of where the Jury Rigg was on his GPS display before sending a signal for it to move slightly closer to the compound. It wouldn’t help to be cautious. “ And who would be willing to accept that” he pointed towards the pile of coins, “ as payment?”

At first, Petrukov just smiled. She went to speak, but the resounding sound of metal grating against metal from the opposite side of the warehouse drew her attention. Somewhere in the bowels of The Playhouse’s opposite end, something had arrived. Petrukov turned back to the pirates. “They will,” she said. “The Lords...”

“Take your positions, my friends.”

As the final door grinded open, they came in tight formation. First, two-by-two, four men emerged and found their places along the sides of the room, each with their own heavy body armor and light machine gun combo on display. A spearhead formation followed with another heavily armed trio at its point. They, and their further colleagues surrounded those tasked with guiding a mechanized cart stacked high with the sort of ominous crates that could only hold ominous goods. When each of the gangers—which appeared more like military men than gangers—had taken their position, one exosuited-up individual pushed forward and loomed over his subordinates.

He held his helmet in his hand, his weathered face and ragged white beard exposed from the edge of his power armor. He looked to Johnny first, then settled his gaze on Petrukov.

Johnny went to take a cool-guy position nearby, his hands on his Screamer in case he had to make any of these big fat idiots scream. He was close to the Pirate Babe/Queen in case he had to make a mad dash and take her crazy ass out of the derelict warehouse of the ever-hell. He eyed the man who was wearing the exosuit, some vet of many wars fought perhaps? Lovecraft wouldn’t let his guard down, not even near a hot babe or an old man.

Today was just getting more and more interesting. Keah didn’t like interesting unless it involved watching an under-race in Detroit. Interesting meant complications and complications meant potential obstacles. Whatever pool Petrukov had dipped her hand into, it had big fish, bigger than the ones he saw in the aquaponic tanks of Suraiboshen. He stood a little while back, keeping an eye on the location of the Jury Rigg, whilst his helmeted face projected no emotion towards the newcomers.

And perhaps it was a glitch…

For the briefest moment the Jury Rigg’s positioning system vanished from the Iconoclast. But it came back. Unmoved. Whatever waves rolled and crashed in the digital fabric were never quite monitored— never quite understood.

“ Hmmmmm…..” Keah murmured, the Iconoclast electronically distorting his voice before whispering quietly as he could to Kay. “ You know these guys by any chance, since you’re, you know, a black hat?”

Kay swallowed hard at the sound of heavy, booted feet and tried not to think about just how many firearms were within literal spitting distance from her. Keah proved a welcome distraction. As she leaned over to whisper back.
“Why would I know mercenaries? I fuck around with computers, not whatever they get up to. Even if I did, I wouldn’t know their faces or their real names.”
Such was the nature of her work. It was infinitely safer for everyone involved if they couldn’t identify their co-conspirators to law enforcement or worse even if they wanted to.

Not quite nothing…

Did Kay notice it too? Even away from her array, her Rosetta Stone Receiver received a single ping from the Labyrinth’s changing landscape. One glance, though, and nothing was different. In terms of presence in the cyberscape, things were quiet. Blank?

Dead static.

“Miss Petrukov,” the veteran started as he performed marginal stretches in his thick steel carapace. “You followed my advice… Came armed…” He looked to Johnny Lovecraft at the Pirate Queen’s side. “Brought a real weapon this time even, so long as its operator doesn’t trip in that suit.” The servos of his own exo whirred to stabilize the extra weight as he shifted from one foot to the other. Undoubtedly the speaker of the “Lords” was weighing in somewhere above refrigerator but below old-world automobile.

“And Herald, youuuuuuuuu—” Petrukov dragged out the syllable to give her eyes time to trace over each of her adversary’s armed reinforcements. “You came paranoid. As usual.”

“Any esteemed political piece in this Twin City game must understand the nature of the business. When a new client suddenly requires our services...” Herald didn’t look back, simply bringing a hand up to eye level and closing his fist. “Our product,” he interjected, and on queue a pair of coffin-sized sealed crates emerged from his rear guard firing line in the hands of two pairs of men. “You can’t help but wonder what changed their approach to ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’.”

“Turns out the Lords had things figured out.” Petrukov gestured with her gun still in her hand, finger coincidentally still on the trigger. “These things are far more useful in a debate than ‘evidence’.”

“So what have you got for me?”

“Quite the deal,” he said. “If you brought something for me.”

Petrukov smiled. She shifted her sunglasses as though adjusting them for some ethereal movie camera—always one to play the part. “Bannerlord, unleash the coin!”

Bannerlord’s shield didn’t hinder his hoisting in the slightest. Hoisting was one of his many specialties. Really, he was the chief-hoister for the Pirate Party. One of the bags of ‘Pirate Gear’ smacked the ground with a jingle in front of Herald. Even just kneeling down, the Warlord caused the concrete to jitter with vibrations. He unzipped the bag, met Serena’s smile, and brought himself back to his feet. The Pirate Queen had taken to helping Bannerlord in the meantime. While he threw his bag, Serena soon found that hers must have been heavier. She dragged the gold forward until the bag was sort of in between her and Herald.

Again, the Lords seemed to fill in any gap Herald took with exactly what he required. Before he even finished turning and taking those few sluggish steps to the crates, one of the gunmen placed a crowbar into his hand. He leveraged the crate’s nailed-down lid off with one hand in one swift stroke.

“AK-12s. Quantity: ‘a fuck-load’, just as specified.”

“Just like the movies.” Petrukov paused, adjusted her sunglasses, and looked towards Bannerlord. “Just what we needed.”

A sound. Metal against metal. Rising.

Herald’s lieutenant got his hands around one of the rifles and swung back towards his clients. He kept his finger on the trigger by default—warlord habit—but it didn’t matter. The laser was only visible as it glinted against the kicked up dust from ‘The Playhouse’s’ new inhabitants. You might have thought it was a harmless trick to the eyes until it melted a perfect cylinder straight through the lieutenant’s brain.

The Lords of War had a habit—for better or worse—of ‘clearing the room’ before bothering too much with assessing the situation. The warehouse resounded with a dozen overpowered guns rocketing off streams of lead in succession. Herald assessed only after he dove back and threw the crate upright in front of himself. He caught only a glimpse of the beady electronic eyes behind the shaky hand that held the weapon— concentric circles surrounded a metallic rod that still glowed green in the aftermath of its ray. He helmeted up. The close quarters of the warehouse provided no room for mistakes.

Another of the warlord lieutenants skidded across the ground straight for Serena as though on wheels with a blade that telescoped from his hand. Perhaps the cruel spike would have connected, but the lumbering Bannerlord had a quicker reaction time than he appeared. He clotheslined the lieutenant with enough force to bounce the goon’s skull off the ground. Five more panels on the wall opened up on a catwalk above, and an array of shadows with the same beady, glowing eyes began to take shots.

"Somebody save the boombox!" Serena had no fear. She couldn't see bullets, but what she could see was the prized, oversized musical console in harm's way.

“Get her to cover!” the Bannerlord yelled before stabilizing his shield against a shotgun blast that sent him back a few inches. The order itself was a bit futile, considering how few standing pieces of cover existed in the empty space save for a few heavy machines and columns that held up the crumbling ruin just barely.

She hadn’t been ready. She wasn’t a fighter. Petrukov drew up her weapon to unload her mag again, prepared to jam the trigger into oblivion. She didn’t see it coming—a shotgun blast from the Lords’ back rank. How could she detect its shrapnel? Its spread? No invincibility, no heroes, no black flag. Just the shrapnel headed straight for her. Damn near 2000 feet per second.

Keah wasn’t surprised or angry at the sudden turn of events. Just resigned to the realities of the Reclaim Zone. Betrayal had become a chore like any other in this world and acting like this was different was foolish. In a mere instant, the warehouse had become a thunderstorm of burnt propellant and lead, spent shells clattering against the floor like raindrops. He was frozen, affixed, unsure of what to do now. Petrukov was the one who came up with the plans. He was great at following plans. Not so good at making them up on the fly. He needed more time to think.

The tungsten-jacketed hollow-point bullet sailing towards his head at Mach 1 wasn’t patient enough for him.

For Keah, it was like intimately kissing a Tokyo auto-shinkansen with his forehead. His neck cracked, his head snapped back, every molecule in his body was a part of the brain-jostling experience. His hand reflexively grasped the front of his helmet whilst he stumbled back like a moon-walking drunkard. Managing to find cover beneath the drinks table, he breathed in and out. With a sense of wonder, he slid his finger where the bullet had left its mark, a wicked ravine of melted, rent poly-steel that tapered off towards the back.

He had to give credit to Engitech. Sure, their chrome wasn’t flowery but it was functional. However, he wasn’t that keen on stress-testing their product again with a second bullet or more.

Well, it was just a good thing he planned for an alternative route in mind. Lifting two fingers to the side of his helmet, Keah whispered three words.

“ On your marks….”

---

>://RECEIVING COMMAND

>://PROCESSING COMMAND……..

>://SPEED REQUIRED.

>://ACTIVATING COMBUSTION ENGINES

>://ROTATING DRIVE TRAIN

>://SHIFTING GEAR

>://SPEED ACQUIRED

---

You hear it. Everyone in the warehouse heard it above the bullet-fire. Underneath his helmet, Keah grinned,eyes focused on one blinking dot in his helmet GPS that was coming towards him.

It was a primal sound, a prehistoric roar that slowly grew in intensity and volume, from a mere buzz in your ears to a head-splitting din of grinding gears and screeching rubber. 3 tons of boron-carbon alloy with the soul of 500 horsepower torque came swerving into the complex, bullets bouncing off the Jury Rigg’s frame as its wheels turned towards its master. Sliding in a pendulum drift towards him, Keah jumped in through the open window, face planting against the wheel.One hand on the wheel, he turned it to the right and pumped down on the brakes, taking control of his mechanical monster and zooming past the enraged gun-men, all of whom were firing at him.

He came to a stop in front of both Johnny who was holding Serena, the backdoors automatically opening for them to enter.

“ You can get in or get out." He glanced waitingly towards the both of them and then, nodded towards the Lords of War shooting towards them both. "Your choice.”

“Every operator in the Reclaim ends up in their fair share of bouts against the GCZ. It’s like everyone’s got a hustle and that’s where they keep it—out of the sightlines and away from prying eyes.”

“Now that’s a place where the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖’𝕤 players are made.”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Shit. Back up.”
“Is the camera off?”
“Does Valentine know we’re here? Does somebody know?”

“He sent us. Had to be for a reason. And he said not to turn it off.”

“Something’s not right.”

“They’re coming.”

“Turn it off!”

---

---

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] 𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘...

“Calm down. Everybody just calm down. Calm down. We’ve all got to calm down.” Gatch was already calm, but he figured if he said it over and over again the bombardment of questions might stop. “Can somebody get me connected to APEX Twin City proper? You know what? No. Just… Someone connect and ask for Turkish. He’ll know what to do, or something.”

Gatch’s withering, bloodshot eyes never left the wall of displays. As his advisor marched out of the room, he collapsed back onto a couch that was worth more than monthly wages for anyone below the sixth floor. The crowd was too amorphous for him to really follow the man behind the megaphone. He didn’t have the attention span anyways. Lott stole it away. She did that a lot, but still she was one of the shills who did it the least. Busy with her own anxieties, the candidate figured.

“This is already the worst. I am the worst. APEX is the worst.” He clicked a switch on the side of the couch and its cupholder rose to meet his bronze hand. The sight caught him for a second. He still wasn’t used to the new color. Used to be slick silver, until—

So maybe the whole ordeal wasn’t THE worst.

“Schizophrenic woman? What? Did that actually— you know what I don’t care. We can pretend like it didn’t or someone can find her and—... Okay questions, yeah, shoot.”

For a moment, Lott continued to just stare at the interrupted camera feed. Her eyes were an unresponsive blue screen of death that reflected a black screen of death to come. Gatch’s proclamation that he was the worst had sent her mind spiraling. Lott had always assumed, regardless of who surrounded her, that she held the title for being the worst. It had been a comforting thought for the woman. She liked knowing exactly where she stood, even if that was at the bottom. However, if her boss—well, one of her bosses—said that he was the worst then she would still somehow manage to be beneath him. Yet what was worse than the worst?

Lott didn’t know, but she imagined hypotheticals would fall somewhere in that abyss of awfulness. She snapped herself out of the downward spiral, jerking her focus back up to reality that she almost gave her brain whiplash. The worst mayor had told the even worse publicist to start asking questions, and regardless of how embarrassingly terrible Lott was at playing her part the game still required her piece to be moved. She moved to the chair in front of him and sat down stiffly with crossed legs, her PDA balanced carefully on her knee.

“As Mayor of the Reclaim Zone, you have been credited by multiple corporations for bolstering what had once been a fragile, risky market into one that is now considered a smart investment. However, many critics in the labor force claim that unemployment has grown despite the rampant relocation of many businesses to the Reclaim, and that the freedom given to corporations have only ratcheted up tensions back to the state that they were thirty years ago,” said Lott in a droning monotone, her eyes flicking up on occasion as she read from the prepared questions. “Is there anything you’d like to say to address these concerns? Likewise, would electing you for Councilman see the corporate deregulations practiced in the Reclaim Zone spread to the rest of the Twin City Sprawl?”

“Wait—are you actually asking me? Did somebody not write answers or something?” Gatch sighed and nearly collapsed back into the couch. There was a knock at the situation room door and the voice on the other side spoke without acknowledgement.

“Gatch, I got Turkish. He’s not in the GCZ…”

“…”

“I’ll get him here…”

Gatch shook himself and looked back to Lott, finally willing himself to play the Game. “The unemployment gauges utilized by journalists and fringe politicians don’t even scratch the surface of what the people in the Reclaim do to get by. There’s a way for everyone if they find it. That’s how things are in this zone. That’s how they’ve always been and that’s what the people want—to find their own way regardless of a dead man walking around with an inspector’s clipboard allocating jobs and funds and...”

“The deregulation of the Reclaim Zone just brought more of what the people were craving, and now whether you notice or not, we’re all thriving just as much as we planned to. Whether it’s me, or the Reavers, or factory workers slowly dismantling machines for their own benefit. Everyone—”

Gatch sat up and stared into the static beneath the TV’s LEDs. It was like Lott had evaporated from the room. Had he actually been talking for once?

“Everyone takes.”

---

“Come in members of the round table. I’m considering shooting a harpoon zipline into the R&D building and dangling precariously over the crowd for advanced reconnaissance.” The sound of the classic “old school” radio static played over Knights Enterprises satellite communicators as he finished. The crunch of static appeared again only a moment later, preemptively striking its opponents (other radios) before he came back in. “Advise.”

Another artificially added chunk of static.

Salt flicked the grappling gun in between his hands, inspecting the Knights’ newest piece while his digital display of infrared lasers traced over the crowd. The commando’s visor caught one face that didn’t belong in the crowd. A second glance would have been impossible as the radiating fires overloaded the goggles.

The molotovs had done their jobs, though the puddles of still flaring gasoline acted in part as a wall that APEX’s doormen could shield themselves behind. Olex could see the invisible lines drawn between its masses. Through the thickening smoke, certain parties exchanged glances and others maintained distance. The dangerous ones were more coordinated. Firebombs, though they tried to appear sporadic, could be tracked to a coordinating cluster of rioters that dispersed amongst the crowd to throw and then retreat soon after. The major attacks on the corp’s hired killers weren’t sustained. There were other plans, or the concealed crowd hadn’t brought enough firepower.

---

“An excellent motto, but I think the company would prefer if we go with a more marketable slogan for this election. Everyone Gives? I will workshop ideas with my team later,” said Lott, her focus more on the screen in her hand than the other person in the room as she made notes. She was thankful that the Mayor didn’t ask further as to why there weren’t already written answers for the questions. Lott still felt uncertain when it came to being a publicist, just like she felt uncertain when it came to being herself, but she imagined crafting answers would fall under her responsibility.

A notification blipped on her PDA, but Lott was able to hide the concern on her face like she was able to hide the fact that she’d been slipping in her duties. Lott shifted her legs and continued playing the moderator, “While the Bay has enjoyed a continual stability, South City and, more specifically, the Reclaim have endured more tumultuous times. Why, it was only yesterday that your offices were besieged by rioters. How do you plan to protect the Bay and stabilize South City when you cannot keep your own home office safe?”

Two men wrestled one another back and forth in the crowd out front until chance had it that they came too close to one of the mercs. The camera picked up a spray of blood that must have traveled 10 feet from the man’s skull. Gatch hardly reacted. “Looks safe to me,” he said. “But uhhh—...”

He paused, watched some more of the live action. The crowd had become a pot with a tight lid—98 degrees celsius. “APEX won’t fall. There’s plenty of Reclaim goons looking for jobs. Half of ‘em are even dumb enough to freelance gang work with a corporate name attached. Just give ‘em guns. It’s not the safety they want. Fiends. They want the violence. Watch...” The doormen barked orders that were amplified by their exosuits. The crowd yelled expletives that were amplified by the alcohol. Two opposing forces like a sliding fault line, but nothing came of it.

---

Stella was already catching onto the hustle. Each different gang and group in the crowd dealt with the strange, out-of-place, independent variable differently. Some avoided her, sent her looks. Others hassled her, but fielding them was as easy as fielding a Limbo’d patron into a pneum transport to their station quarters. The megaphoning had stopped alongside the greater assault. As the vial emerged from Stella’s console, she smiled, as her Clairvoyance Optics gave it the best scan they could without a live sample.

Analyzed. Fine.
But with too many missing variables.
Could that even happen?
A sliver of glass.

Half-full.
Half-absent.

Not empty, but unscanned.

The Ultrabartender flickered back to the club. Back there, frozen in time, the Mixologists were taught to embrace the confounding factors. Suspended in space that way, you knew they were there for a reason—pre-placed.

They were made.

By Agents.

Sh ado w d e mon s.

Chaos’s invocations.

The Mixologist’s right arm split apart in slivers of artificial flesh and metal to reveal a chamber whose hypodermic fed into the cyberware’s greater interworkings. Stella slipped the vial into place, punctured it, and just as quickly as it had opened up, the autonomous machinery sealed away, spewing new readouts were fed to the Ultrabartender’s optical implants.

It was hard not to get jostled in the crowd, but Olex hadn’t been bothered too much. In that sort of land, where violence ruled for those who so chose it, everyone else had other concerns. Just like the courier, each piece had their own intentions to disseminate among the masses. One such subject did collide with Olex, though the assailant hardly recognized the hefty shoulder check. He looked towards Olex from behind dark glasses. His face was that of a ghost—pale, gaunt, and forgettable. The dark-red and unkempt hair, however, were quite the sight.

“Excuse me,” he said before slipping by, careful not to knock his briefcase into any other passers by. Another wave of molotovs kept the flames fed. He disappeared into the smoke.

>>>𝟡𝟡 𝔻𝕖𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕤...

“Holy shit.” This time, the sound of static was overlaid with the sound of Salt stumbling back upright. “The infrared actually picked up one of the Reavers.” He leaned over the lip of the roof from the burnt out building where he was posted. The grappling gun, for better or worse, no longer stole away his attention.

“Class one operator, ‘Salt’, reporting to Reclaim Command. My team has spotted one of the Reavers… Older guy with a rough beard. Kind of looks homeless and definitely doesn’t look like he’s here to kill someone.” Salt paused and surveyed the thug’s proudly displayed jacket. He had all the marks of one of the Reavers, and by the looks of it he had little to fear in the heat and haze.

“One of their elder members?”



That explained why the megaphone coordination had gone silent. The master of the masses draped in his green rags was fixing for a drink. He didn’t come alone though—had a whole entourage with him. They stayed in a tight circle. Not their first riot, it seemed.



When Stella looked back up, the drink was in her hand. She swirled the glass along the table. No ice. Not this time. The glass looked halfway like a test tube with metal columns reinforcing its sides. Stella had never seen such a vessel for her art. The B - A - R was even stocked with a spare few. Stella slid the drink across the bartop, but she didn’t release her hand from its brim. A thick hypodermic still extended from the base of her palm into the liquid. She stirred. The man in rags just stared her down. His associates had formed a tight semi-circle around the B - A - R and one of them held out a velvet sack for her. She took it in her offhand.



“A custom cocktail for the consumption of the coordinator.” She lifted her hand from the drink and her Clairvoyance Optics swarmed the bag to devour and digest its stimuli. “A man very down to Earth. All-natural. He who cultivates. On the come up...”

The man in rags pulled something from beneath his cloak. He screwed it onto the cocktail like a lid. Stella rarely did to-go orders. The Limbo was part of the experience. But the Limbo was everywhere. It was ubiquitous—floated through the air on unseen currents.

He screwed the lid on top. Looked like a sort of spray bottle. Then he addressed Stella: “Put it on.”

She spent a long moment just admiring the device’s clean hardware and design. The man in rags and his associates had already distributed and put on their own masks. It comfortably sealed against her face, and when she took her first breath through the rebreather, she could feel it whirring to life with its own internal machinery. The man in rags and his goons turned on heel and stamped off to their own designated spots. He must have done a lot to make them all feel like important pieces fielded.



The Knights operatives had cycled on and off the radios about Reavers sighted, but Salt stayed on the older not-so-gentle man. Even locked in their sights, though, the Reavers couldn’t be stopped. Knights Enterprises had no men on the ground, so when it happened, it spanned only fractions of seconds. A ghost, obscured with dark sunglasses and a thick trench coat, stepped from the crowd with a timed step. He carried a briefcase. The elder Reaver was looking the other way when the ghost closed the distance. Half of the Knights Enterprises onlookers may not have even been able to see their encounter before the comm-line was filled with noise.

“He’s been—”



“Target’s down. Repeat. The target’s been…” Salt let his words trail off as he squinted into the infrared. It was one quick move. Behind his briefcase, the ghost had pulled a serrated blade that carved into the Reaver on a twisting chain. The elder fell to his knees.

“The target’s insides have become outsides.” The Reaver’s flesh still caught on the blade as the ghost started back into the crowd like nothing happened. Few of the rioting groups even reacted to his presence. They were all preoccupied, but those who felt the splatters of blood couldn’t ignore the sight.

“Keep eyes on the assailant. I—” Salt cut out abruptly. Just static. Then, silence.

---

Lott struck like a cobra, snatching her precious tablet from Gatch’s hands as it wobbled and pressing it against her chest like it was a crying child whose callus father had unintentionally hurt it, and then became a statue once again. The mayor seemed distracted, as if he’d never seen someone disemboweled before. If it interested him so much perhaps she should invite him out the next time the Koena Dome had a Saws & Dolls match. Then again, a subordinate inviting a superior out to anything would be unprofessional.

“Good,” said Lott. She actually smiled. It was discomforting. If it ended up being necessary, Turkish would also be gone soon—the blame for the security fiasco at the Swathe Street Commons pinned solely on his shoulders. A little explosion here and a bit of police brutality there was hardly something that raised an eyebrow in the Reclaim. However, if a minor fabrication happened to imply that his ineptitude wasn’t actually ineptitude but intentional malfeasance to create negative press for the Central Party then all the better for her. Her superiors would have someone to point the finger at, and she’d have a momentary relief from the stress that was turning her insides into one giant ulcer.

“There is one more thing we should prepare for,” she said, studying the Mayor. He seemed nervous. She figured that meant she should also be nervous, but she didn’t feel much aside from the chair below her and the nice breeze coming from the climate controlled vent shaft. Could someone who couldn’t manage a life-threatening riot raging just several dozen stories down below manage the day-to-day stresses of being a council member? Lott didn’t know the answer. Despite being infatuated with watching old vids of political assassinations, she never even considered that there could be any dangers in being a politician.

Maybe she would consider sticking with politics after the election.

“Joshua,” she said. Using her boss’s first name was a big deal, and maybe a risky step, but Lott figured it would have the head-turning impact akin to an angry mother using their child’s full name. “Did you knowingly use votes of the deceased to win the mayorship over the Reclaim Zone?”

For once, there was a sign of life in the way Lott glared at her boss. It wasn’t a question that would be asked by a moderator at the debate, nor was it something that APEX had tasked her with finding out. She asked simply because she had to know the truth. It kept her up at night, at least until the sleeping pills and vodka shots did their magic. If she was going to keep playing the Great Game honorably, Lott needed to know if the player her piece was supporting had cheated.

>>>When a pot boils over, you can see the signs early on bubbling up, but the physical change takes place in an instant. Ninety-nine to one-hundred.

It was almost undetectable. The untrained laymen would surely have seen Gatch in just another zombified moment, but Lott saw him when he froze. The mental calculations dissipated as a new problem perplexed his brain, right when she said his name. He sat up a bit and spent a long moment staring straight forward. Then, in an instant, he looked into Lott’s eyes for perhaps the very first time—really meeting her gaze, which transposed into its biting glare.

He let a touch of perplexion waver his expression as if he was searching for a name. Gatch felt it was only justified to play the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖, use its tricks when Lott thought it was time to question him. He’d bet his money on how easy it was to get to her. “Yes…”

Gatch stood up and moved to the table at the center of the conference room. Embedded at its head was a console, and with a few somatic commands, the array of display screens lurched backwards in time. A few of the displays combined and zoomed into the smoke.

“Look at those people—‘at us’ if you prefer. The constituents, the people, you and I...”

The ghost flashed across the screens. One panel to the next. The cycling chain on his blade met the Reaver’s stomach again. Time, in the digital depiction, slowed.

“What do they all want? Your next job is to tally up all their votes. To really make change, we can find all their problems, come up with a holistic solution. The monks, that’s what they’re telling you. They’re going to be the guys that invade the lower bureaucracy, thinking they can change the whole Game from the ground up. Should we do that too?”

“You can see the people on the screens, Ramana. They can only see themselves from inside the smoke. Don’t waste the blessing. Use the information available...”

The displays evaporated back into static. The live feed of the building’s surroundings started to play, looping between side alleys and central coverage of the riot.

“What do they want? What do they really want?”

“That’s the thing. None of those people throwing stones want a unified system where votes get tallied up. They want to spill each other’s blood and get away with it. They want to deface and destroy a corporate faction because it makes them feel powerful. They live all their lives—like us—giving into desires. The desires are just different.”

“And what happens to the desires of a dead man? His influence remains in the Reclaim in the stones he’s kicked and bricks he’s lifted, but his opinion evaporates? If there were someone—by pure chance—that could go through the system and allow the Reclaim to live on, and its chaos to reign. Sometimes we focus too much on changing the Constant, that we can’t change a thing.”

“Who dares to tell the man whose guts were shredded that he’s no longer a part of any of this when his signature is imprinted on the asphalt of the Reclaim?”

“Is it you?”

---

For the first time since his speech, the man in rags dared to enter the crowd rather than lurk at its edges. Stella caught him in glimpses, weaving in between a hive-like beast of a thousand different misaligned goals. Each arm of any anarchic hecatoncheires was marred by its own mental shadow demons. He flowed through them like he was sympathetic, the bottle in his hand.



In the heat of the moment—there, up close to the flames, in the frying pan—those passing by could hardly notice what the man in rags was doing. He kept the bottle close to his waist, loosely flicking and flittering it back and forth in his hand in time with his hurried pace. But occasionally, it would rise. He would depress the trigger, nozzle facing out towards someone caught in the action, distracted, but maybe catching just a sliver of the rags tinted like shadowed grass as he disappeared back into the madness.

---

“Who, then, speaks for the dead men who lived in the chaos? Who can speak for the Constant?”

---

“Outpost three. There’s signs my perimeter’s been breached…” The Knights Satellite line cut off.

“. . .”

“Outpost three?”

The upheaval came quick, and this time, there were no more molotovs. It started with one or two cases, looking like the riot was no different as shoving matches began and fists were thrown. Soon the doormen braced themselves to confront what lay beyond the dying flames, and it did come. Two men charged through the dying flames. It couldn’t have been more than 15 feet from the courier caught in the crowd; one of the Reavers lurking in the smoke grabbed the collar of the nearest protestor and crossed his hands, locking the leather around his victim’s throat. From behind, the shrill cries of a young man cracked through the air. The bottle fell from his hand and flame enveloped him.

Frenzy in Death.
Assimilation or Rejection.

Left and right, front and back, one after another more vicious combats broke out among groups. Some of the protestors battled back their own. A ganger fell back into the flames. A journalist’s ribcage crunched against the pavement. At the gates of APEX’s stronghold, the tense men raised their weapons with fingers hovering over triggers, and lashed out with metallic boots. The ghost was gone. The man in rags was gone.

“Outpost One to Command Post. Three of my operatives at their outposts are reporting unknown parties have entered the abandoned complexes surrounding the APEX facility. One Knights operative not responding...” Salt had already packed up all his gear strewn about the rooftop. The zipline gun, it seemed, would have to wait for another day. He honed his infrared headset in on the only other outpost in his sightline. Another block of protestors flooded its entrance and began fanning out on lower floors.

“Outpost two. Come in, Glory. You’re getting swarmed. Stay on guard—uh...” Salt paused, slapping his hand hard against a busted coolant unit. He surveyed his gear once again. “Units reroute. Pull out if necessary. Mobilize towards those that need extraction, and find out what the hell they’re doing in there...” For the first time in many weeks, all the play melted away from the Operator’s tone.

The uproar had been more than enough to distract most of the chaotic crowd from the abrupt arrival of two open-top armored trucks that drifted into stops only meters from the APEX facility. The closest civilian rioter that stepped towards the vehicles lost the mounted plasma-laser lottery and the upper-half of his head began to liquefy. An old man appeared from the passenger side and nodded towards his companion manning the turret. Unlike the others, he wore no more armor than a muscle shirt that exposed his arm’s interworked machinery and old cargo pants. He puffed a cigar and stared directly into the nearest security camera.

“Someone get after Gatch,” he said whilst waving his arms to get as much attention as he could from the inanimate building. He raised his voice, so the thick Irish accent would pick up over the raucous crowd. “Cleaning crew’s here, isn’t it?”

In the street, Olex could see the people of the Reclaim as the newly arrived variables divided them from one another, from their own plans, from any order that had emerged. Those who stood against the paramilitary metal titans lost eyes or broke bones. Those who sank back into the crowd found other rioters, gangers, and civilians turning on them. Even still, as smoke gave way to stampedes obscuring vision, the APEX megalith came alive with light. The old man coordinating the GCZ shock squad strolled through a lifting garage door that opened into the east alley along the compound’s block.

As if moving harmoniously, one superorganism, the west side of the crowd also split away. At the head of the tight cluster of rioters, the man in rags arrived just in time after a dose of thermite pulsed with heat and light from within an abandoned husk adjacent to the west alley. When the man in rags was ushered inside, some of his collective fragmented off to watch the alleyway.

---

“Bossman.” Gatch’s advisor flung both doors to the meeting room open and the facility manager followed. The candidate flashed Lott a final look, before fixing up his posture. “You’ve got a video call from HQ—and you’re gonna want to take this one.”

“The integrated security field alerted us to a breach in the east and west alleys of this column.” The facility manager stepped in before the situation room’s occupants could respond. “It must be—”

“Turkish. Yes. We called. He likely wants more info about what’s happening, and a drink or something.” By the time he looked back towards Lott, Gatch was already letting the double doors careen shut behind him with his advisor leading the way. “Publicist. This is the perfect time for you to get acquainted. He’s probably still down on the factory level. Take over while I answer HQ. Ask your questions or—...”

“You know.” Gatch shrugged his shoulders and the doors swung shut.

The facility manager remained squinting at the array of screens. With her mouth agape, she fervently interacted with the switchboard on the table. “There was another breach, too. I’m sure of it. West end of this column…” The displays zoomed in on the west alley. There was nothing but smoke. Dark shapes.

---

Is conscious absence possible?
Or are we just oft caught up—
Lost in the chaos.

The Mixologist really couldn’t resist. As the world tore open its chest with wicked claws of shadow and bared its fleshy core, she was gifted the position of dousing dangers in drink. The B - A - R was beyond stocked. Ingredients, reagents, tinctures, and toxins of the sort Stella hadn’t seen since she admired the wide selection of Limbo’s storage. She was inspecting a variety of the glass reagent containers, idly tossing them into the air, when a nondescript, unmarked drone dove through the crowd and halted to hover just in front of the B - A - R. The Mixologist stared into its singular camera eye. It stared back. She hardly noticed the violence—rising—too enraptured by the captivating gaze of the black-glass scanner. She wondered how it saw her.

Did the scanner, then, see clearly into her mind murked by dancing shadows.
Did it see beyond motivations to mix and make merry?
Or did it see darkly?

Stella raised a glass to her lips and felt its cool contents spill over her, warded off by the oxygen mask.

Location: Reclaim Zone, South City Sprawl.
Interacting with: Salt @Opposition

Glory gave a frown as she heard Salt suggest shooting a zipline into the R&D building. Always had to have a crazy idea. Glory resisted the idea of dropping a snarky comment about how bad of an idea that was, as by all technicalities Salt did have a bit more pull than she did. Stepping from her spot in the shade back into the harsh sun again, Glory raised her binoculars to her face and scanned the crowd once more. A few moments afterward Glory’s nerves went into high alert as fires broke out among the crowd. Tapping her communicator and pressing two fingers to her ear Glory gave an extremely brief status report. ”This is Outpost Two. I’m spotting multiple fires breaking out in the crowd. Does anyone see the source of these fires? Over.”

It was a few moments later, when Salt reported seeing a member of the Reavers, that Glory cursed repeatedly. Thankfully, her communicator hadn’t picked up on that. Her binocular-enhanced view blitzed across the crowd for a few moments until she spotted him. An elder member among The Reavers. Glory’s blood began to boil as she found more and more members of The Reavers dispersed among the crowds of people. So there was something more to this riot. Glory began to reach for her communicator to confirm that it was indeed an elder member of The Reavers, but common sense stopped her. She reminded herself that her prior history with them was unknown to most if not all the people involved at Knight Enterprise, and if she confirmed that it was an elder member they would want information as to how Glory knew about that so accurately.

Putting her hand back onto her goggles, Glory resigned herself to watch and did her best to quench her wrath. She was about to call out the location of another member of the reavers when her earpiece buzzed with rapid responses that one of them had been stabbed. Glory’s gaze snapped back to the elder that had been spotted earlier, and she had to resist the urge to chuckle in grim satisfaction as one of the pieces of her history was eliminated.

Glory tapped her communicator and pressed two fingers to her ear to report in. ”This is Outpost Two. I’ve lost sight of the assailant. The victim is immobile. Over.” Glory took a few moments to scan the crowd again, and this time noticed that something interesting was happening in the crowd. Someone was spraying something onto people in the crowd. Glory was about to key in and report this strange event when her earpiece buzzed with news of Outpost Three being breached. Shortly thereafter, Salt reported that her outpost was being swarmed, this coincided with the riot exploding into total chaos. Glory lowered her binoculars slowly as she heard more status reports flow in. This had officially become bad. The situation was promptly worsened by the fact that a few moments later a pair of open-topped armored vehicles arrived on scene, each sporting a beastly plasma-laser mounted gun. Glory felt her heart skip a beat as they settled into place. So much for a bad situation, the situation was now awful.

Cursing again, Glory tapped her communicator as she began to move towards the stairs. ”This is Glory. I’m moving to the stairs and then to the roof. Salt, you’ve got a grapple gun, right? Can you try throwing me a zipline? I don’t want to try leaving through the lower floors. Not with the chaos going on. Over.” Lowering her fingers from her ear, Glory threw the door to the stairs open and began to rapidly climb, skipping every other step as she went in order to maximize her speed. It didn’t take her long to reach the upper floor, and with a brief shoulder check the stiff door to the roof was thrown open.

Hopefully there would be a zipline waiting for her, because if not… Glory was in a lot more trouble than she originally thought.

Baolei Clinic
Reclaim Zone, South City Sprawl
April 2, 2065

Hypocrisy.

Was it just part of human nature? Howland watched the crowd through an electric-blue haze of tropical-fruit vapor as he considered the question. Around him, hundreds- no, by now, thousands of hypocrites jammed the streets, desperately seeking the relief promised at the Baolei clinic.

Their need for relief, of course, was entirely self-inflicted. It was their own deprivation of their humanity that led to their symptoms. The relief they sought was inevitably temporary, just a means to allow them to make themselves even less human going forward. They sought to avoid the costs of their choices only to continue making the choice, like a debtor using one credit card to pay off another. They were hypocrites, all of them. Maybe trying to stop them from destroying themselves was 𝔽𝕦𝕥𝕚𝕝𝕖-

Howland shook his head, inhaling a rush of fruity extracts and exhaling a neon cloud after it. The electronic cigarette gave a slight hum as it vaporized part of its liquid contents. No, it wasn’t hopeless. Men may be hypocritical, but they were also capable of reason and judgment. No man could be made a slave unwillingly, not even slave to their own desires. Men may be inclined towards hypocrisy, but Howland wasn’t going to surrender to nebulous absolutes like fate. If man weren’t capable of better, then they’d be no better than insects - a biological machine which executes its natural function and ultimately nothing more.

What about you? Howland thought, directing the question to the shimmering haze around him. An e-cigarette was an ultimate display of hypocrisy, after all. It was a product whose sole and exclusive function was the delivery of veiled self-harm. Every puff of vapor was a portion of one’s precious life floating away. Ultimately, it was a product no sane individual would ever seek. It was a bestseller.

No, he decided. Disguise was a utilitarian function. The glowing vapor matched the powdered dye in his hair and reflected strangely off the makeup on his face, changing the angles and lines of his features. In this state, he could carry on a full conversation with Sarah and Theresa together and neither of them would recognize him. Leo, too, though the boy so rarely pulled his head out of his video games that Howland might not need the disguise to pull that one off. David would figure it out, though, he mused - the boy was canny like that.

Every great philosopher worth reading has, at some point, pondered their own sanity. Howland was no philosopher himself, but it was his duty as a rational and thinking being to question himself. A doctor who kills people. A medical professional standing in a warzone smoking. It would be easy to mis-cast him as a hypocrite, but, no. He wasn’t like the crowd here, desperately seeking relief from their own self-imposed pains while steadfastly refusing to admit their real cause. The liquid in his e-cig was just harmless glycerin and natural flavors, no addictive substances. A disguise, after all, was more than just a change of hair and clothing. Nobody would quickly connect his disguise to who he really was. A medical doctor, smoking? Preposterous. That would make him a…

No, in a sea of hypocrites, Howland remained sane.

Towards the entrance, a reporter spoke to a small swarm of camera drones. “This is S’venia once again coming to you live, currently at the Baolei clinic.”

Howland frowned. That reporter had been there, yesterday, during that curious altercation between Ms. Ramana and the poorly-dressed hacker, whom she definitely knew. His disguise was probably sufficient - they’d only spoken briefly, after all - but Howland wasn’t going to bet his work - bet the fate of humanity - on probably. He’d introduced himself yesterday, and if she somehow recognized him here, he’d be hard-pressed to explain the disguise. He’d hoped to tour the facility himself, one way or another, but he wasn’t going to risk accidentally running into a reporter with a cloud of cameras orbiting around her having spoken to him just last night.

The clinic, Howland decided, was a poor target for attack, despite its misguided efforts. An explosion or a murder would only draw sympathy for them. No, an action here would need to highlight the hypocrisy of the masses at their door, not justify it. He’d hoped to investigate the clinic’s methods and sources of support for SPECS victims. Perhaps this reporter on her tour could uncover something of use?

They would, doubtless, only tour her past what they wanted her to see. But it was already evident this lady and her drones knew a disreputable hacker, and it was plain what interest a journalist would have in such a person. Maybe, just maybe, she’d be resourceful enough to come up with something of use anyway. For now, it was the best lead Howland had to go on.

Howland withdrew, melting into the crowd. He’d need to come up with a new approach for this problem.

“...You know.”

“I don’t,” said Lott heavily. Finally, she admitted it. Her voice almost sounded human in its defeat. “Josh—”

But Gatch was gone, secretly promoting the facility manager to be the one to fix Lott with a quizzical glance before she returned her eyes to the monitors. Lott ignored both her and the screens. She stared blankly at the double doors while her eyes rewatched her conversation with Gatch. She wasn’t sure if what happened had really happened until she lived it again, and even then she wasn’t sure if she was smart enough to know how to process it. Lott played it again, like that would help her. All it did was elevate her heart rate to dangerously normal levels. Shit, she was panicking. Lott looked around the room. She needed something. She needed…

“...more info about what’s happening, and a drink or something.”

The latter, definitely. Lott mechanically stood from her chair and stiffly walked over to the dry bar. Vodka was too clear for the situation, this kind of thinking required something dark and heavy. The tumbler clacked on the countertop, was filled halfway with a whiskey that smelt either like campfire or a rioter’s molotov, and then drowned in bitters. For the first time in nearly a decade, Lott made a face as the glass touched her lips. It was a fittingly difficult drink to swallow.

Had Gatch really admitted to her that he’d knowingly committed voter fraud to win the last election?

“Yes…”

Lott inhaled. Did APEX know? What was she thinking, of course APEX knew. They hadn’t sent her there to determine whether or not Gatch had broken the rules to win the mayorship. They had sent her there to plug leaks and throw any stowaways overboard, not to question if the captain should be captain. She was the sheet for a magician to throw over and disappear a planted audience member underneath and little more. Lott’s hand shook. She should be honored. “You can see the people on the screens, Ramana.” Gatch was right. She was privileged. Most companies treated people like disposable paper towels, only used once to wipe up some dirt before being thrown into the landfill. Lott was special. She was used repeatedly, much like the tumbler in her hand.

Fuck it. She could feel the eyes on her, casting judgments, as she made another drink.

Lott knew one thing for certain: she had underestimated Gatch. She had never seen him as much of a player. Despite being the most important part of the Game, the king was typically one of the weakest pieces. She looked longingly at her reflection in the mirror over the bar, her eyes seeing ghost images of Gatch standing behind her. Something had changed about him. No, nothing had changed about him. Rather, she had only just realized. He, like Samsara Washington, was dangerous. In fact, he was more dangerous, because unlike Washington he had been able to hide his terrifying nature from her for so long. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t get a word in edgewise. She had been petrified.

Now, she just had to determine if that had been due to love or fear.

“Use the information available...”

A taunt. An invitation. A plea for mercy? She could use the information, but to what end? It couldn’t be enough to take Gatch down. In the end, the truth would bury Lott and Lott alone—unless she found someone else to be the truth for her. It was the right thing to do. Potentially stupid, definitely suicidal, but right. Maybe the only reason Gatch would tell her something like that would be to test her. Check her loyalty. But...maybe he wanted a way out of the Game. She had just been made into a pawn, and already she was unsure if she could keep playing. He’d been in it longer than her. If that was the case, shouldn’t she withhold the information? Keep him in the Game? Punish him for breaking the rules?

“What do they want?”

Lott didn’t know what she wanted to do.

“What do they really want?”

Not just in this situation, either. In everything.

“They want to spill each other’s blood and get away with it.”

The American Dream, right? She had once thought it respectable.

“They want to deface and destroy a corporate faction because it makes them feel powerful.”

But feeling isn’t being. Feeling is a forgery.

“They live all their lives—like us—giving into desires.”

She only desired to be.

“The desires are just different.”

She didn’t want to be a pawn in the Game.

“Is it you?”

But could she be more?

“Take over while I answer HQ.”

Impossible. King was never an option.

“Look at those people—‘at us’...” Us? “You and I...” Us. "—like us—giving into desires.”

Queen, now. Well, if not that then she certainly she could be promoted to a rook.

Lott felt like she was falling. She caught herself on the bar and checked her watch to administer a few doses to keep her equilibrium in check. Lifting her head, she gave the mirror a confident smile before immediately diving into a deep analysis of every single thing that was wrong with her appearance. She needed a haircut, a mud mask, a dangerous blast of uv radiation, and a new suit. She didn’t know where she could buy a personality, so she’d have to fake one. Lott leaned forward and lifted a lid to look at the bloodshot eye. Perhaps she needed to channel Adamantia Steele and have her become a part of her daily life.

The ritual was easy enough.

Lott poured herself another drink, and then whipped one up for Turkish. King’s orders were to become acquainted. Perhaps instead of serving Turkish up as the scapegoat, Lott could use him to help bolster her up a step or two. Lott herself took a topsy-turvy step or two and then she was following in Gatch’s footsteps, stepping out of the room and toward the elevator. She pushed the call button and waited on her opportunity to go down. Reflecting back on it, she didn’t like how the advisor had so easily peeled Gatch away from her. Jealously, for Gatch? Stupid. He had said it himself. Lott and Gatch?

They were an us now.

“One of the abbot’s monks came to me days after my first public appearance. Learned about the platform, and what I thought of the Reclaim. Made introductions, asked his questions, and left quick. That was their Way. ‘Look not for the solution, but for the center of everything’…”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Another series of Neurosynth shipments headed from the Phoenetek distribution center HQ in the Twin City Sprawl has ‘vanished’ en route to major corporate suppliers and clinics around the sprawl. Phoenetek has yet to comment on the delay, and corporate voices on the other end of the supply chain are thus far silent. Where is the Neurosynth for the people of America’s west coast?”

“Speculations have been made that the shortage is part of a much larger espionage campaign between the incorporated giants of the west, but so far we have no news on the disappearance. Stay strong South City. Hart Media signing off...”

---

---

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕄𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤 𝕋𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕊𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕜] 𝕀𝕟𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘...

>>> 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...
>>> 𝕎𝕖𝕝𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔽𝕝𝕦𝕩 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟!
>>> 𝔼𝕧𝕖𝕟 𝕟𝕠𝕨, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕤𝕖𝕖 𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕞𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥…
>>> 𝕋𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖, 𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕖𝕣'𝕤 𝕗𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕕 𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕖—𝕓𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕚𝕫𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖…
>>> 𝔸𝕟 𝕒𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕒𝕣 𝕠𝕗 𝕠𝕟𝕖 ℍ𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕤' 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕤…
>>> 𝔹𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕤𝕞𝕠𝕜𝕖 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕖𝕕𝕘𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕦𝕝𝕒𝕣 𝕃𝕒𝕓𝕪𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕙...
>>> 𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕒 𝕡𝕒𝕚𝕣 𝕒 𝕘𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜...

>>> 𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕚𝕥 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟 𝕨𝕙𝕠 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕕𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕕...
>>> ...
>>> ...

This time too.
She could have sworn that just beyond her gaze another of those Matrix hitman creatures reached and reached and reached its claw her way.

But she turned her tragic glasses on no such strike…

“Miss? Your friend is in a dire condition. He may need treatment now.”

Delilah looked towards the monk in 𝕣𝕖𝕕 and Shade in 𝕓𝕝𝕦𝕖 luminescence. The intermittent flashes back to the forced server crash at the Knights’ Labyrinth node wouldn’t go away, and with their persistence remained a persistent headache; but it didn’t quite stay contained in her head. Both brain hemispheres, flashed back and forth in red and blue dimensions. Or could it really be that simple? She felt her body and the Earth and the air sway in haphazard patterns.

“The Shade can handle himself. The man I knew would take care of unfinished business before tending to his wounds.”

The monk’s hand twitched but Delilah missed it. In just a fraction of a second he let his fingers curl and uncurl, never quite reaching a fully-formed fist. He opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t have to. Someone across the mats spoke for him, but the abbot hardly used any words.

“Novice,” called the abbot before raising a serene open palm. His subordinate needed no words to relinquish his task to Dao. The young monk was directed towards the door, as though his master knew what perils lied beyond. Delilah turned, and she could have sworn she prompted a fist to swing Shade’s way. No response. Just stillness, then—

>>>ℙ𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟…

The issue with artificial clarity is that it emerges from an abnatural connection to the mind. Proctor could feel it through every aching bone and bit of metal, but the flesh cried only for relief from that very same torment. A figure approached almost silhouetted, though radiant glare reflected from the temple’s lanterns unto her own silver limbs as they reached out through the crowd—through the fog—towards the cyborg. She looked into Proctor’s eyes but she wasn’t paying attention to him. It didn’t seem like it at least. The monk focused only on the machine within.

Proctor had his own mat amongst the sea of man-mixing-with-machine, but other lost souls and broken borgs were no more than an outstretched arm’s reach away. The whole front room of the clinic had been transformed for inpatient care. Even in the bustle, he didn’t have to wait long in the fog. The monk that had guided him in was quick in working her way between the busted bodies and bolts.

“You’ve seen combat, haven’t you?” She didn’t quite expect an answer. That, or she wasn’t too keen to hear one, as she yanked on Proctor’s leg. As soon as she had the limb flat, an industrial drill nearly pinned him to the floor. “Or something else took your mind. You’re a vagabond maybe?”

The drill whirred again and phantom jolts of pain climbed up any remaining nerve endings that escaped their replacement with plates and gears. She had to almost shout over its mechanical cries. The outer armor of Proctor’s prosthesis was off in seconds, and the monk leered that empty gaze at its inner workings, as though she were doing more listening to the cybernetics than looking. Her hands were gentle against the unfeeling metal, at least for a moment. Proctor felt the whirr of the drill again, then a heavy yank accompanied a small firework show contained within parts of the vagabond that he’d likely never planned on seeing.

“Not always, though. You did something much bigger than wandering, probably for someone built more of gold than steel. We don’t see too much Strider class Furytech stuff in the Reclaim. It’s a bit out of fashion, but still pricey for any older aug operations.”

Her silver hand flexed like it had a mind of its own, ripped a piston away still steaming within its grasp. The monk tossed the defunct apparatus behind her before going for one of her own machinations amongst the tools spread out on her mat. She went back to tinkering away, and the installation of a fresh gas piston brought with it the relief of a tightness that seemed to linger with Proctor for years—the cause of which may or may not have even been remembered. Just like that, lifted away.

“So what is it, mister? Who are you?”

>>>𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕞𝕒𝕟, ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕖...
>>>𝔻𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕣 𝕚𝕤 𝕛𝕦𝕤𝕥 𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕒𝕨𝕒𝕪...
>>>𝔸𝕟𝕕 𝕚𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕠 𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 𝕚𝕥...



>>>𝔸𝕨𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕟...

The monks were blank but eager faces, statues in a Matrix, surrounding their two brothers at the room’s dead center. One red and one blue, opposed not only in their respective tints but also in combat. The duel between them almost appeared more a graceful—but unrelenting—kata than a fight. Heavy cybernetics grinded against one another and smashed bolts loose with clouds of sparks. Those watching gave quiet commentary at key moments. Yet, after every bout, the monks recovered, drew back, acknowledged one another, and began another respectful round. The whole display felt hypnotic, like Delilah was back in the Labyrinth. She tried to shift back, but didn’t manage, and wondered if some foreign substance had muddled her blood once again.

“You’re mesmerized.”

The chaser of the matrix snapped back into bodily sensation. Like a rubber band, Delilah could feel her brain awaiting the ℙℍ𝔸𝕊𝔼 𝕊ℍ𝕀𝔽𝕋.

“I—” she cut herself off, thoughts swarming like eidolons from just beyond sight. Back to the 𝕃𝕒𝕓𝕪𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕙. Then, back to reality. “This is what the monks are doing behind the scenes? It’s just fighting. Like in Koena Dome.” Delilah grimaced. There was a cutting edge to her tone.

“Look closer,” the Monk offered, redirecting Delilah before she too closely inspected his silhouette in the dim dojo. “Where upon their faces do you see the festering anger that brought you here today, netrunner?”

“Are they not calm and aware? This is the Way of the Machine.”

“If they’re not careful, I’ll step in and show them what it really means to be hit by a machine.”

“Is that how you’ve confronted your problems? Perhaps not uncommon for the Reclaim’s netrunning sort, but does it work is the real question. What really causes your anger? Did you really come to the dojo in search of your credits?”

“What?” Delilah wrinkled her brow. The interest, intent and focused upon her, threw Delilah off. How long had it been since she’d had the ear of someone who dared to question her method while still listening in? “I need to find someone who’s tagging the Labyrinth. An artist… There’s information everywhere, and something dangerous is entangled in it all.”

“Consider, my friend, that the Way of the Machine may offer you what you seek if you render yourself unto its Way, as you’re afflicted just like the others—by your own machines. That is why each face you see is here. That is why your friend is here—”

Shade?

It looked like him—at least, his depiction. An image? Just across the tatami mats. Just beyond the battling men and machines. It couldn’t have been. She, the Shaman, was well acquainted with the nature of figments. Delilah could have sworn the monk’s hand reached for her. She didn’t feel it physically. It was just another ectoplasmic claw crawling forth from the beyond, but nonetheless, she let her body fervently twist to escape its grasp from the shadows just beyond her vision. She stumbled forward across the dojo.

>>>ℙ𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣 𝔻𝕠𝕨𝕟…

The robed figure greeting those at the door of the clinic waved S’venia inside the moment she offered praise unto the operation. Before turning back to the journalist, he wrapped his hand around the shoulder of a colleague. With one whisper, the young monk was sent scurrying across the clinic’s floor to secure another.

“Of course,” he said. “All are welcome to gaze upon the operation, take part in our practice, and lend aid to the destitute of the Reclaim Zone. Allow me to introduce you to someone who may be able to better direct your inquiries, miss…” He trailed off in search of a name.

>>> …

“Dharma,” the young boy tugged at her sleeve, ignorant to her interest in Proctor. A quick exchange left her eyeing the journalist just across the room. The monk that provided her with the message soon settled next to her toolkit, inspecting it and beginning to tidy those tools that weren’t already rolled back up in the mat.

“It seems I’m needed elsewhere,” Dharma tapped the fixed plate of steel over Proctor’s prosthesis. “You can rest here. Stay for more treatment if you’d like… Of course, no one’s stopping you from leaving if you’ve got other business to take care of.” She laughed.

>>> …

“Press…” She didn’t approach the doorway or the reporter directly. Tracing her silent step across the clinic would create more of an arc lacking any sharp angle. She didn’t check S’venia’s press chip. The young monk hadn’t either. “Welcome to Baolei Clinic, Reclaim outpost of the Mekanedo Monastic Order.”

Almost as soon as Dharma had reached S’venia, her steps reversed and she began to reenter the doorway without looking away from her new subject of interest. “You’re welcome to examine our operation yourself, and while the other monks may be busy taking care of those in need, I believe I could answer any questions you might have.”

>>> …
>>> …
>>> …

The Machine clinic’s operation was a thousand moving pieces. The once disturbed bearers of the discrete litter carried their heavy cache into another back room, off into a further passage, and Dao soon disappeared after them. While the floor was covered in writhing patrons who still battled off the agony of a Machine?, others conversed with as much heart as they could offer, bolstered by the brews of their monk caretakers. Each monk conferred and greeted the others in passing, present for small moments before bustling tasks called to them. Even beyond the temple, the Reclaim streets buzzed with inhabitants—drones, worker bees, wasps...

The Enforcers scarcely appeared outside their carapaces—that telltale black body armor, full helmets with eyes alight in the night. That was how they alerted the world to their presence, and how it worked. So often, the denizens of the Reclaim could feel them coming from blocks away. Streets could clear when the armed brigades marched, but never quick enough. The Reclaim’s people were never quite able to recognize the earliest signs. Simplistic kevlar weaves poking out beneath white collars; belts on a little bit too straight, a little bit too tight; no obvious weapon bulging from the lining of a jacket, but instead improvised electronics embedded in sleeve linings or holstered on the ankle.

There were two or three such bugs working their way throughout the crowd. Eyes gleaned as much as they could from glances at the temple, but their gazes never lingered too long. Entering incognito gave not a perfect camouflage, but instead a lack of clear motive. They were vagabonds, like the rest of the crowd, but even the most derelict denizens of the Reclaim reflexively gave them an arm’s length of distance. The hidden wasps merely watched, but the Reclaim watched back. The Machine watched back.

“We all want to walk the wire.”
“Play both sides...”
“Like every major issue is resolved simply by…”
“Just crossing the line.”
“Choose a camp, and only then will you often find that evil resides in enemy and ally alike.”
“We try to walk the tightrope.”
“But it’s up there that no one sees you.”
“And rarely are you ever seen again…”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“Tensions continue to mount on the contested Northwestern border of Portland and Seattle. Many believe the Lords of War skirmishers to now be trapped inside the hijacked Cipher Tower taken control of only days ago. Hart media is live on the border as siege seems to be laid outside the tower by a force of ——…?—>>>--??>>>”

---

---

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝟜𝔻 ℂℍ𝔼𝕊𝕊] 𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘...

She never knew what it meant for a weapon to backfire. Hadn’t used them enough. That would change.

“Fan out. Encircle.” Such was the way of the Lords of War.

“B-Team keep the Ciphers clear. C-Team withdraw. Relay a report to Knox as fast as possible. A-Team with me… And let the hunt begin...”

Herald couldn’t help but smile as the Scrap God shielded Petrukov from a final fate. It really was that easy sometimes. One could presume he wasn’t the quickest covered head-to-toe in his worn exosuit, but it certainly served its purpose. As the Jury-Rigg drifted through the wall and splattered its surroundings with small shards of concrete, Herald’s helmet only emitted a hardy chuckle, haunting with its mechanical amplifiers echoing in the old warehouse. A length of bent rebar smashed into his leg chassis, but he hadn’t noticed.

Per𝕙𝔸ℙ𝕊 they’d all forgotten her. Perhaps she di𝕕 𝕗𝕒𝕕𝕖 𝕒𝕨𝕒𝕪 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖 𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕟 𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕣𝕚𝕩. At first it was the subtle burst of interference—reminiscent of televisions screens poorly tuned and all that—that jolted the Jury-Rigg. Kay first caught sight of 𝕙𝕖𝕣 on a busted camera lens that must have been placed recently overlooking the warehouse’s exterior. Then, the hacker faded back to the base white Labyrinth, and there she was standing r𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝕚𝕟 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕟𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕙𝕖𝕣…

Tucked behind a low pylon to ensure her safety and proximity to outlets, Kay was a shadow in the firefight. So no one saw her seize.

Just as quickly as the Drift Demon’s vehicle exploded into view, a solace for his fleeing comrades, they faded from the warehouse-turned-battlefield, leaving only the driver in the dust among the Lords. The moment Petrukov slipped through the garage gateway into the building’s connector room, its garage doors began to collapse in all directions, sealing the driver off and sealing the candidate and her lawyer within. It seemed ‘their choice’ was clear.

As was the decision of the Lords. Their Herald braced his shinplate against a low pylon bursted to rubble and the hulk of metal held from a handle atop and a trigger below aimed at the driver that dared to create an escape route. There was a window of perhaps two seconds where the entire warehouse room could hear that strange pulsing charge as CO2 built up. Then, it all burst out with a puff of ignition fire. The first bang was the 40mm shell firing forth from the barrel of his grenade launcher. The second, almost imperceptibly present in the echo of the first, occurred when the slug slammed into the rear bumper of the Jury-Rigg, nearly taking it off as the car was jolted forward far enough to bend the recently closed garage door in a few inches.

“Aim for the wheels and we’ll drag ‘im out of the wreck,” boomed from the amplifier.

They were like spiders—silent as them at least, save for the sizzling of the laser burns the Ciphers left in their wake. One of the purple-clad men jumped from the catwalk, harnessed in a thick cable, but the sound of its winch was inaudible over engine revs. He fell in perfect position to grab one of the Lords by the helmet, rip off the visor, and jab the lit flare in his hand down into the face that lay beneath. The winch began to retract.

---

The corridor’s connector was blackened as the garage doors shut. Two green globes, offset just a bit as though whatever eyes or goggles—it was indistinguishable which they were— were malformed. They illuminated a mouth of titanium incisors twisted in a smile. Inheritor had that habit. His mouth was always half smirking, more slack than would make those around him comfortable.

“Encirclement is dangerous, Petrukov. The Lords are trying to encircle you… All the while sending back their weakest rank to alert Portland. Imagine what would happen if the High Warlord knew you’d double-dipped and dealt with the Ciphers...” His ‘S’ trailed off, all snake-like.

“You’ll be under siege. So close to your election.” Inheritor could see it, almost as if through his optics. A detachment of the Lords dashed back through the opposite end of the warehouse, with aims to reach the GCZ’s back alleys and escape into the shadows, crawling their way back to Portland. Some Ciphers would give chase, but neither of the squads realized what watchers might lie in their way.

Serena stared down her adversary. Her animated sunglasses showed their best approximation of an emoticon glare in pixelated nodes of red light. “What’s the plan Inheritor?”

That slack smile return, accompanied by a automatonic cackle. All of the barriers rose, and the doors were opened.

---

A steady beating bounced off the warehouse walls, metallic, lo-fi. Something within the stereo had busted upon his impact against the concrete pylon. The Bannerlord hugged tight the mighty boombox to his bulging chest, arm veins popped with adrenaline. The archaic machine sprayed flecks of his own blood back onto him with every pulsation. He looked down to his arm, torn open by shrapnel, but he could hardly feel it. The black flag strapped to his back was a dead giveaway for where he was ducking low. It was peppered with the high-caliber ballistics of the Lords of War, even had a long scorch mark that sheared off the top of the flag from a reflected ray of the Cipher’s guns.

He was pinned down, but so long as he remained, the boombox still played.

Before Petrukov could get in, the garage door slammed down. The rest followed, making him feel like a cornered mouse.

He should be afraid. That made sense.

So, why wasn’t he?

His muscles are tense, his stomach flutters, his skin trembles but it’s not due to fear. It’s the thrill. The excitement. The fear of being afraid that runs through his nervous system. He hates this. How the odds excite him more than they frighten him. The flutter of adrenaline in his chest. How his heart beats so fast that his rib cage feels like it might break. It’s as if everything before this was a hazy daydream.

A jolt from the back knocks him out of his stupor. Damage readings, blinking inside his iconoclast, pop up and mark out a portion of the Jury Rigg as burning red. A quick glance makes him slightly worried. He’s built the chassis to take punishment but even carbon-laminated steel has its limits. There’s more dull thumps that follow, sparks combining with shrieks of metal to form a single drawn out sound that reminds him of a rope being pulled to its seams. The Jury Rigg’s audio receivers pick up the words of the Herald’s leader, who speaks about him casually as if he’s an animal in a slaughterhouse.

“ Aim for the wheels and we’ll drag him from out the back.”

Familiar words from long ago slither into his ears, above the belching groan of the exhaust. He remembers the cold chill of the Ni-Cola in his left hand. The feel of flesh sticking to metal. His car parked right next to OverDriver’s Monica. They’re both sharing crappy instant-ramen and then, out of nowhere, when Detroit just begins to set, he says the words.

“ There’s two endings for people like us in this world, Demon. Dying quick or dreaming quick. I’m not sure which one comes first.”

He thumbs the gear stick, fiddling with it, deciding his next course of action. As if he has a choice. Petrukov was trapped away from him. The Ark hated him. He was trapped within this shithole of a city trying to claw itself out from futility.

They wanted to drag him out? He’d let them drag the Demon out.

He shifts into reverse gear, ripping out the front of the Jury Rigg embedded in the garage door before chucking the stick left and swinging it into a high third. He sends it into a sweeping pendulum drift before pushing the gear forward into first and sending the Jury Rigg zooming forward in a blazing trail.

The first Herald slammed wetly into his windshield, cracking the right upper glass. The second became a road bump under his wheels. They’re just meat to him. Everything outside the car is a blur of gunfire and flailing bodies. Inside the air-conditioned filter-scrubbed interior is his world. His second body. He whips the wheel to the left and shatters a Herald’s spine from behind, sending the merc crawling on the ground like a newborn.

The brakes squeal, the extra momentum swinging his helmet right and left. He’s staring face to face with the leader. His Octadactyl grips the wheel tightly with its titanium paddings, leaving a shallow indentation in the carbo-olymer framework. There is only anger now, an ocean that fills his lungs and makes his head light and hot. There is no man in front of him. Only a target.

His boots slams down on the accelerator and the Jury Rigg burns forward, a half-ton blur of blood-spattered steel and eth-fumes.

50 kmh.

He closes his eyes.

100 kmh.

His heart beats in anticipation.

150 kmh.

“ Swim, Keah. Swim away”

He gasps, rising out from the tide of rage, and pushes on the brake, just barely managing to avoid the leader. The interior of the car begins to feel like summer, the roof above his head glowing like a hotplate. He turned to the right, the laser raking a trench across. Then, something that sounded like a wet balloon popping rang his eardrums as he could barely make out the shrill alerts from his helmet.

WARNING. WARNING. FRONT LEFT TIRE IN CRITICAL CONDITION. FRONT LEFT TIRE IN CRITICAL CONDITION.

The Jury Rigg, for the first time, spins out of control, his grip of the wheel loose and slack. The ruined. Maneuvering with three wheels is easier than maneuvering with two. It feels like sailing in the Atlantic with only a lifebuoy and two spoons for paddles. He’s not sure whether or not he’s driving or a passenger along for the ride. His mind soon fills in the patterns for his vehicle’s drunken chaos as he slightly turns the wheel to the right, swerving past a trio of Heralds that blast at his bullet-riddled doors with wild abandon.

Keah doesn’t question his luck when the garage doors open again in unison. All he focuses on is Petrukov and Lovecraft standing out in the open, the Pirate Queen looking paler than ever. To his left, the Bannerlord was in the midst of the firefight. The bullets currently raining down on the both of them left him little choice. He brushed past a Herald, the sideswipe leaving the merc tumbling and clutching his hip in pain, thundering towards the shellshocked form of Petrukov and Lovecraft.

“Maám, get in. We can still get you out of here. The election matters more than a dea-” Keah’s head flinched as his right side mirror exploded into a puff of glass and metal. He was more worried about whether there would be a Jury Rigg left to repair rather than how much it would cost to repair his ride after Petrukov’s botched deal. The side door clicked open with a screeching whine, Keah waiting for both of them to get in.

“ Lovecraft, I only got three wheels left.” He pumped up the gearstick to first and squeezed the accelerator, the engine purring gently in response. “ Make sure it doesn’t get below that number.”

The doors caved in oh god oh fuck, the doors caved in. Trapped in the connector room with his pirate queen some funny glowing fuck appeared before them, talking about betrayal this, the election is fucked that. It didn't matter though she entertained the thing for a moment's time, his reassuring hand of Scrap grabbed onto her by her left shoulder. "Queen, let's go before they turn you into fish-chum." He'd yank on her shoulder pulling her towards the other door (!?) that lead to the adjacent warehouse. He kicked it in with a chachooooow! The door gave in as the exo-suited psycho walked through rifle raised, a few goon-lords (that's what he thought they were called) were already there. A few trigger pulls later they were fucking corpsed and were sent to the undergod without too much remorse.

After scanning the area for a moment he dragged the Queen out into the warehouse where they went to flank back around to where DD was, but he ard all sorts of scraping, dying and car related death killing sounds. Holy fuck, when it all ended the two were outside and he was with the Queen once more but there he was. A dying half heap of a car, the Demon's car and he was beckoning for them to come forward it was now or never and if it would be now then make it quick. With only one tire fucked, the other three were fine. With haste Johnny moved and practically tossed the woman into the back seat of Keah's car.

"Just drive, driver!"

Johnny jumped in the back, gun aimed out the window perhaps Keah would s-s-s-s-s-slam the gas and take off now but if anyone dared follow them he'd have to grease them back to the old 20th century. As for Bannerlord and the boombox, a funeral would be held later for the sacrifices they made today. Enough mourning, it's time to add to the bodycount!

With @Atrophy

“If you look deep enough into a mechanism, grinding its cogs to sparks, spiralling, shredding any foreign component that interrupts the inner workings of a great machine; it seems so vile, but then you start to understand why it exists. Because the decision is all yours—let the gears click on in lockstep or stick your hand in between their serrated edges and feel the metal edges. Feel them twist deeper towards bone. You’ll feel finality in agency.”

ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕄𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕖
𝕋𝕨𝕚𝕟 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
>>> …
“I called the station. We can’t cut the feed. Both vest cams still recording.”

“Does Valentine know what’s going on?”

“You think he’ll be paying attention? Of course he’s not going to do anything...”

“But this is the job.”

“And we gotta find something.”

---

---

ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖, 𝕊𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕙 ℂ𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕒𝕨𝕝
𝔸𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕝 𝟚𝕟𝕕, 𝟚𝟘𝟞𝟝 :: 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝕓𝕖𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕚𝕞 ℤ𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕕𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕥𝕖
[𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕤] ℝ𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕝𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘...

The corridors of the factory level’s interior were tight enough to provide the space a unique dynamic in close quarters confrontations. The Bomb Squad was already sweeping the space in between the walls of heavy machinery and snapping shots of their points of interest. Turkish, however, knew to leave his squad to their prep. He had other plans—walked straight past as they deployed laser measurements, kicked the loose layer of rust up along the floor with thick boots that sounded like concrete against the steel walkway.

An engineer approached the lift shaft, where her foreman paced with stiff limbs. “That Irish guy is back.”

“You mean Turkish?”

“But his accent’s—”

“I tried calling “Management” but the lift’s in use. Looks like someone’s coming down.”

“You think they’ll let us out of here?” The engineer felt the defeat in her voice before she heard any answer. A calm set of hands smeared grease along her lab coat. His stomping had become almost as loud as the old world lift shaft creaking to life.

Turkish peered down the hallway. He had a console probing the space with green and red light as it scanned its surroundings. “The security ‘round ‘ere?”

Meanwhile, Lott stared unblinking as the red LED number above the door of the elevator changed as she went down and down. There were no blackouts to speed up the process or a kind, armed man to keep her from feeling the passage of time. It didn’t help the woman that time had slowed to a crawl for her, an odd side effect likely brought on by mixing Dr. Howland’s miraculous meds with two Manhattans that were so strong the fumes alone made the eyes water. Perhaps living life in bullet time would be nice if she were to face off against the violent mob, allowing her to fully articulate the illegality of their actions and how their right to assemble was negated the moment they stepped onto private property, but alas Gatch had handed her a different destiny.

He just hadn’t mentioned the destiny would involve her being trapped in an elevator for what felt like months. If he had, she would’ve swiped the whole bottle instead of just bringing herself a third Manhattan that was dangerously close to being little more than a whiskey soaked cherry. She should’ve spent her exile coming up with a plan of attack for how she would ingratiate Turkish so she could use him as a stepstool to boost herself up to new heights under Gatch.

Instead, she found herself entranced by her own appearance in the reflective surface of the elevator door. She was a mess, but she was standing taller—if only to make sure she didn’t spill the overfilled drink she had made for Turkish. The doors slid open with a ding followed by the scraping noise of a rusted lattice gate used to seal off the lift from allowing undesirables access to the nicer parts of the corporate world. Lott stepped out of the elevator, her suit a rare sight amongst the lab coats and jumpsuits, as the gate screeched shut behind her. Her dead eyes swept her surrounding, settling momentarily on the foreman and the engineer. The auditor in her flared up as her eyes captured images of the employees who should have been working instead of socializing. Just because there was potential that they would all get hammered and sickled to death by a violent mob of rabble rousers did not mean that productivity should be threatened.

“Shouldn’t you be working? And shouldn’t you be making her work?” asked Lott, addressing the engineer and the foreman. There was no malice in her voice because it wasn’t needed, the thread count of her suit was proper intimidation enough. Any protest against her was clear career suicide. She didn’t necessarily enjoy telling them off. She was just playing her part in the great corporate machine, a small cog pushing around smaller cogs to keep things moving.

Lott turned and eyed the man she recognized as Turkish, even though she couldn’t recall a single time they had ever actually spoken. Had they met before? She tried running a quick scan of his face through her archives, but nothing was flagged. She realized that it looked like she might be ogling him, and then she realized that she had been. Lott cleared her throat, looked down at the nearly full tumbler of whiskey in her hand, and held it out for Turkish.

“It’s good to see you again, Turkish,” said Lott, still unsure if they had ever met. “The Mayor has sent me in his stead to catch you up on a current situation, should you need it, and to assist you with...”

Nothing. Lott’s mind went blank. Why was she here? Had she been sent to only give the man a drink? Had Gatch just been trying to push her away instead of bring her into the fold? No, no, no, that wasn’t possible. Her heart rate quickened and her watched beep, a slight sedative administering herself into her system to keep her barely above comatose. Mimicking Gatch’s nonchalant movement from earlier, she shrugged her shoulders as if she wasn’t fencing with a panic attack and said, “You know.”

Both workers seemed averse to Lott’s gaze. The moment their eyes connected, the foreman’s attention suddenly slipped away. He turned back to a series of cabinets and a desk, a little space he’d created trying hard to pretend it was an office. Another burst of laser radiation emerged from the device in Turkish’s palm, marking the low edge of the corridor’s corner with a pulse of unseen heat. He turned to Lott at the mention of his name—stared her down with perplexed brows that looked bent into a caricature’s pose for a few seconds. Good to see you again, she’d said. Turkish searched his memories, but his static gaze fell to her offering before anything came.

He took the drink in one hand, continued to direct the laser with his positioning beam in the other. His eyes didn’t stop scanning the corridor as he spoke. “I’m looking for the security room. Some console or office where there’s gotta be a detailed map of the place or something. That’s what they’ll be after.” Turkish pressed a button down on his belt’s communicator and its brief feedback came from further beyond. Another one of the exosuited squad members jogged down the hall, kneeling in front of the infrared marker and bolting a device to the wall.

“The team’s setting up the defensive perimeter—workin’ their way in, but it’d be best if we could set up ‘round the payload.” Turkish moved over to the foreman’s desk, as though cursorily interested in the sheafs of paper and which ones needed signatures or stamps. The foreman couldn’t even pretend to work—just sat and watched, wondering.

“He told me that the blueprints were the target,” Turkish made a face alongside the vague pronoun. Perplexion? Respect? A knowing hesitation. “You get the blueprints to a few sections a’ APEX prefabs and you know all sorts of secrets about the fuckin’ diameter a’ their screws or something.”

Turkish’s inspection of the foreman’s administrative space grew more in depth, intense. Before long he had looked over a nearby table, opened up a cabinet by the fluorescent water cooler, and glanced inside some drawers. Inside was one of those new 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ High Density Brain Bars. They were all over the holograph NET ads these days. Turkish unwrapped and chomped it. That look in his eyes hadn’t changed since Lott had seen him. Massive pupils. Artificial Lawn Green. The color you’d see only fake yards meant to mimic some trad primitivist fad in The Bay’s upper tiers.

“Whatever they’re after, they may already be slinkin’ ‘round the halls. Seen any?” he asked the foreman before continuing. “We figure they’re got someone out there rilin’ up the crowd. Have ‘em charge the doors and eat up all the C4. while they dash their sneaky lads to the security room.” The 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ bar was gone in an instant, and Turkish kept glancing back towards the desks in the foreman’s “office”.

“We should have that covered now, though. Should be easy to deal with the targets. Maybe the Reclaim folk’ll get in by some fluke.” He tapped a finger to his cranium, then gestured to the shaped charge now mounted on the wall. It’s technician stepped back and the charge spit out laser sensor, which soon faded beyond the spectrum of visible light. “Clean their mess up for us. Maybe we scrap a bit with whoever makes it past. Clean fun.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” said Lott, hungry for the violence, in what she had intended to be an internal thought. She’d been lingering next to Turkish as he ran his scans, shifted through papers, and ate someone else’s depressing excuse for a lunch. The way he scoped out the room wasn’t too distant to how she used to run her audits inside of APEX Clinics, although those days the only thing potentially exploding were the nervous, red-faced employees frightened by her very being. Lott moved to take a drink upon realization that she had actually spoken out loud to buy time to think of some excuse for what she had said, hitting the empty glass hard against her teeth as the lights burned her eyes.

Lott blinked. She had a full glass before; where had it gone? She noticed the drink in Turkish’s hand, felt betrayal, knew that now there was no point in asking him to get drinks if he already had one, and then realized she had been the one to give it to him. Lott rolled her neck and felt her mind sink into her stomach as a cool sweat formed on the back of her neck. Had she missed a dosage? She checked her watch and the tiny pin needles pricked her skin just in case. She didn’t level out, but she felt like she had leveled up. Realized she didn’t need an excuse. It was the truth. She wanted to watch them grease a few lowlifes.

“In case there is an incident tomorrow. We need to make certain that your team's methods are media approved. Don’t worry,” said the meds, using Lott as their mouthpiece and lifting her hand to pause Turkish. “I’m not asking you to shift tactics, or to curb your curses, or to kibosh the cute accent. It’s just to alert the board so they can sell their shares now and repurchase them back once the price dips.”

“Anyway, you mentioned tomorrow,” continued the diazepam, failing to recall that Lott had actually mentioned it. “I am concerned about our contract with Knight Enterprise. They failed to protect the personal property of the Mayor’s Right Hand the other day.” She felt the phantom vibrations of her phone, a text reminder about the explosion that had also happened failing to come through. If they can’t even do that, how can they hope to protect the Mayor’s actual right hand?”

Lott sniffed, looked through Turkish, and corrected herself, “My right hand side’s right hand.” She felt something was wrong and leaned against a cabinet to steady herself. “What I’m saying is we need a hand. Will you be there to oversee security? How much do you trust the Knights?”

Turkish left the 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔼ℕ bar wrapper on the “office” floor. The condensed nutritional supplement had visibly energized him even more, in a strange sort of wired way that had him walking robotic and far too present in physical space. When the first tremor came, it barely shook him. It emanated through the resonant maze of corridors from a source that could only be determined via the amplified vibrations coming from the front of the complex.

---

The guard out front and his partner had both been civilians not too far back. Corporate guns, corporate greed—they had a way of changing people. That machine sought their sort and showered them with gifts of what had been missing, their conditions manufactured by the machine itself through crushing competition. None of it really mattered anymore. Now, he was an APEX Bastion, but their feeble barrier was set to break, and after the ‘support’ that had arrived casually strolled inside, he knew it was meant to be that way. He knew he couldn’t go back.

When the last firebomb pressed him back against the brick, he couldn’t do anything to prevent the swelling crowd from pushing the doors. Some came forth with tools to battle the steel doors while others just seemed to be fleeing the terror from within the mass. A crowd that size is more a fluid hive than a rational group. Most of them hardly noticed him. They had their own worries as the fluid mass forced everyone forward, crushing against the brick. He jammed his arm forward, and released the deployable riot shield strapped to his arm which shot out to wedge itself in a corner of two meeting walls. He could feel it pressing down against his chest, but could no longer see the crowd beyond the shield. The job, the guns, the money, it all didn’t matter now. What mattered was nothing at all, or maybe just a hope that the crowd would be focused on the doors, that he would be overlooked as they crunched their way forward, that his shield could stand the weight of the pressing crowd and his ribs wouldn’t be crushed. His job was over, and so he sat waiting.

---

The doors had given way to pry bars and IED charges by the time Turkish and Lott got to the security room. There was no one inside. Any overseer had either abandoned their post or didn’t feel the need to show up most days anyways. Bad timing. A bank of camera screens flickered to portray the building’s corridors across all the lower levels. Swathes of people charged down halls with will and intent perhaps only known to them. They followed signs for the factory floor, but there were others.

“That’s them.” Turkish pointed out a series of heat signatures that crossed the path of a jammed camera. “Close.” He turned, found the rather obvious lockbox in the floor of the security office and let a tube extend from his palm. He motioned for Lott to step back, a gentleman’s courtesy before a spray of thermite flames hissed against the lockbox door. Those green pupils didn’t shrink in the slightest against the blinding light. He just smiled, took it all in.

There were voices from beyond. Hard to hear over the sizzling steel, but still carrying down the corridors. A resolute man came upon the adjacent hall, seen through a distorted camera lens picking up static from a jammer. He called to a few comrades beyond view, then stared down the hall with a set of infrared goggles. With a gulp of air, and a final double-take bearing a resemblance to what the non-devoted might call regret, doubt, or apprehension, he dashed towards Turkish’s charge. The following flash of light covered the spray of his blood, but when the puff of smoke dispersed, his leg was missing from the knee down. He called out:

“It’s clear. The run to the exit is clear from here,” he said, in a choked voice. “But I— I can’t walk. I can’t—” He struggled for words, because he knew they couldn’t change his fate. His stifled weeping was as resonant against the metallic walls as the coming footsteps. The Man in Rags stopped before his fallen disciple, and dropped a stim syringe to clot the wound. The megaphone from before had been replaced by some spray bottle in his hand, tinged with slight bioluminescence—life beyond the machine. Integral to the 𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖.

“Thank you for your service,” he said. “But APEX’s Bomb Squad’s in the building. Make it out if you can.” The Man in Rags turned, stared down the corridor at the security room’s door, stared at a watching shill, nameless, and as meaningless to him as the rest of them. As pointless a role in the grander game in his mind as the fallen pawn. Then, he walked on, and an entourage followed.

Turkish walked out of the office with a black box that looked more like a magic wand than a blueprint, but when he held it up to the light and activated it, a three-dimensional schematic constructed itself, reflecting off of the sulfurous smoke the lingered from within the security office. The pawn made an attempt to crawl towards his salvation, but could hardly stand the pain, and could hardly meet the eyes of Lott and Turkish.

“Squad’s checkin’ in and says most of the folks are inside or runnin’ away. We’re ready to cave to the exits. Tomb ‘em up. Seems like most of ‘em took their pitchforks to yer manufactory and are having the time o’ their lives. Won’t make it out if we can help it. Just keep ‘em until someone official comes to clean Gatch’s problems.” He clicked the projection off and pocketed it. Then turned his gaze towards the fallen pawn.

“I’ll take this back to Brandon. No orders for a capture mission, so these ones’re all yours.”