Payday

Payday, Conclusion

         “Once we’re in Sector 2, I’ll head over to Syntech. We’ll stop about a mile out, contact the spotter, and get our disguises together,” Gia says, sounding cool as ice again. Glad to see our sharing paid off and put her back on track, especially because I’m still scared as hell.
         “Sounds like a plan,” I say. I grab my rig and tuck it under my seat. I don’t want Sector Guard to start asking any questions, so I’m going to stay as low-key as possible.
         The Sector 2 lift is one of the bigger ones in Cleveland, with a platform that can accommodate twenty cars. It was probably this lift that was used by the majority of people when the city went on stilts. If the derogatory terms about Metroplexes bother you, by the way, you might want to get used to it. I still remember pictures of the old cities, like New York, and I’m old enough to remember watching the soul get sucked right out of them to become part of some Metropolitan machine that the United States has become. I have no love for what Green Earth did to make the ‘utopia’ you people up there claim to have.
         We were waiting about ten minutes for the lift to arrive. Not bad, by any standard. We were topside, greeting our friendly Sector Guard just minutes later, after being dragged eight hundred feet up to what is now known as Cleveland. What shocked me was how lax this area’s security was. There were five guards on post, each with pulse pistols they refuse to acknowledge publicly that they carry, and there didn’t seem to be any railings or forcefields to stop someone from fleeing the city. I’m sure they have Hunters, but that’s an aside.
         “Ident scan, please,” one of the helpful Sector Guards says to Gia. It’s an understood that he means me, too.
         This part always makes me nervous. I put my arm out the window, and the guard uses his palm media to scan it. Gia does the same, only I doubt Gia has her monitor profile hacked like I do. See, I don’t like being recognized, so that chip in my arm is saying that I am one Jeffrey Stills, a very kind older gentleman that succumbed to cancer in the Newark sprawl about two years ago. He had a quiet service, from what I understand, and his death was never reported, because his identification has value to someone like me. One arrest is all it would take for Gia to be constantly monitored if she’s got a legitimate implant.
         “Mr. Stills, you’re all set. Welcome to Cleveland,” the guard lets me know I’m in the clear.
         “Ms. Hathaway, you’re all set, as well, and the car looks good. You folks have a good visit,” the other guard on Gia’s side tells her.
         We’re driving down Euclid Avenue a moment later, in the clear. We breathe out a sigh of relief in unison. The guards could have chosen us for a random full-scan on the car, which would have picked up my pistols, Gia’s bearkiller, and the ungodly concoction of chemicals sitting in the trunk. That would have been bad, but we got lucky.
         “Your real last name is Hathaway? How royal,” I say, teasing Gia a little bit.
         “No, it’s Brant,” she replies, much to my chagrin. That was probably the name no one knew her by, given that even the assassin at her apartment called her Ms. Sloan.
         I laugh a little. She really has invested every dime into her craft, to be as professional as she possibly could, in the years since walking again. Between hacked ID chips, tightly bound wired reflexes, physical therapy, plus whoever taught her all she knows about gunplay, and making all those contacts, she’s probably the hardest working disabled person I’ve ever met. For someone with the personality of a block of ice, I’m really shocked by how much I’m drawn to her. I’m also grateful to note she’s warming up to me, maybe just a little. Maybe I can ask her out, you know, if we live through tonight and all that.
         Cleveland is the epitome of everything I hate about Metroplexes. Theirs was one of the first, and of course they’re all still works in progress for the next twenty years, but here, you really get an idea of what the finished project looks like. Biodomes sit next to enormous ‘green’ skyscrapers in perfect utopian harmony. No one in them will ever consider the glass being made for them – out of recycled materials, I might add – is being refined below, by some poor bastard in an ‘unclean’ factory. He’s getting centuries-old diseases like tuberculosis, and you’re getting an ‘Earth-friendly’ picture window. Congratulations.
         We drive past the current fad-dining craze, a series of restaurants all offering their take on Vitalife meals. Look, if you put a bunch of chemicals into a vat and call whatever comes out the other side whatever you want, be it a burger or a turkey breast, it’s still chemicals. I don’t like my burger being made from anything other than a cow that died to be on my plate. Tricking my mind into thinking it’s a burger doesn’t make it so, and who knows what the hell else they are putting in there? It’s just gross.
         What really gets me, though, besides the general hatred for metro areas altogether, is the bouncy colors on everything. The night is black, people. Making it almost as bright as it is during the day is not security, it’s stripping the days of their individuality, just like they’re trying to do to all of us. I mean, we’re heading toward SynTech at around 9:00 PM now, and all these bright neons and hot colors on everything make it look like it’s sunset. Even the streets are tinted slightly, it just drives me nuts.
         Within twenty minutes, Gia pulls over to a side street and stretches her legs. I wait for a moment, nervously clenching my nether regions, wondering if this is it. She leans down to the open window on the driver’s side, and takes a long look at me.
         “You coming?”
         Yep, this was it. After a quick change of outfits, we were heading into SynTech. There was no turning back, mostly because of the assassins waiting for us if we did. I got out of the car and slid my rig out from under the seat. Gia reached in and grabbed her backpack.
         “How are we hiding your rig?” Gia asked me.
         I showed her how I jury-rigged it with straps, so I could wear it like a backpack. It would conceal well under a jacket, or lab coat, as was the case tonight. She nodded in approval. I took off my jacket, and Gia saw my .38’s strapped to my arms.
         “Good thing you had those tonight,” she mentioned. “I was only going to be able to cover Crowe, so it was nice to have a streamer that could handle himself.”
         I kinda felt myself blush. Aww, how cute, I know.
         “Thanks,” I said, curious about her work. “You been on runs with a lot of streamers?”
         Gia got out some lab coats and ID tags. “A couple. But with them, it was kinda like playing football with an egg in your pocket.”
         “Nice analogy,” I laughed. “Hey, no matter what happens after this, you were awesome tonight, too.”
         Gia’s defenses went right back up. Maybe my comment struck too close to home, or she realized she might have been making a friend. She became visibly distant, and handed me an ear bud, a new palm, and a coat with the SynTech logo on it. Damn fabric was probably encoded, too. These corporations sure don’t take chances. With the bud in her ear, she contacted the spotter. I quickly connected to the call and put the bud in my ear.
         “Where are you?” The voice demanded immediately. Hello to you, too.
         “Less than a mile out,” Gia said. “Getting outfitted.”
         “Good, there is a quantity of mimetic latex I had Mr. Crowe include in your bag, so we’re going to give you some new noses and cheekbones, then I’ll scan your ident tags so I’m ready to upload them into the security database once you’re at the location,” the guy said. The voice was mechanical and robotic, and undoubtedly the robo-nerd I met earlier. Seems that our hacker friend wanted to get his hands dirty, from the most dirt-free position possible.
         I went into the trunk and grabbed our bag. Sure enough, there was a can of this toxic shit. Actors love this stuff for the natural look and everything, but I still say this stuff is probably going to kill you before the smog does. It’s a latex with small robots called nanites in it. They force the latex particles into a lattice structure that mimics what they’re told to by a program. This was not cheap tech, and there was enough here for two people.
         “How do we use this goo?” I asked first, though Gia was wondering the same thing from over my shoulder.
         “Put some on the bodyguard, a little around the cheekbones and spread liberally on her nose. Don’t let it drip,” the spotter tells me.
         I opened up the small can. It looked like yogurt, smelled like a condom, and felt like paint. I spread it on Gia, careful not to let it drip, just as the hacker had advised.
         “Done,” I told him.
         “Hold up your media to her face. I’ll handle the rest.”
         I watched as the hacker took control of her palm media, installing and opening a program to control the nanites. It almost looked like a modeling program, adjusting the existing shape of her nose on the screen, then matching her skin tone in an advanced color recognition software. Suddenly, the white, gooey mess on her nose took shape and color, completely changing her facial appearance. She really did look very different now, almost ugly. But this is America, and no one remembers ugly people. That makes it an almost perfect disguise.
         “There should be some residue of unused product. Just wipe that off with a rag, and then switch with each other,” the spotter tells us.
         Gia did me next. It was really, really, cold, much more than I was expecting. When the modeling was done, I almost thought that I could feel two hundred thousand tiny robots crawling across my nose, but it was fleeting. A second later, I’m a new man. I believe this is my fourth new face since being born, and still no identity crisis, so that’s a good thing. I clean up the oily remains on my face, only to discover the bizarre nature of this mimetic latex. Even though it seems artificial, and I know that it is, it feels as though it is permanently bonded to my face, like the way a swollen eye or a knot on your head might feel. Now I understand those egotistical actors talking about ‘transforming’ into their roles with this stuff.
         I quickly turn around and have Gia help me get my rig on my back. With the lab coat on, she gave me a thumbs up, letting me know it was hard to notice. Works for me.
         “Okay, we’re on the move,” Gia says, putting the palm media to her wrist as she got back into the car. “Go ahead and scan my ident.”
         “Xero, you, too,” the hacker said as I entered the car carefully, minding my rig.
         I placed the palm to my wrist for a moment, then closed my door. Gia started us back up and got us on the road.
         “Okay, I have everything I need. One of you needs to keep an open line to me when you approach the guards. Pretend you are on a call,” we were instructed.
         Gia looked at me and nodded, closing the call. She would be the one doing all the talking. Five minutes ago I would have said it was a great idea, but five minutes ago her face didn’t look like an old Jewish woman trapped in the body of a twenty-something. Still, she’d probably be better at it than me. If I have to convince the guards of who I am, I might fall apart. Better that I look too important and busy to bother with them, I figure.
         The moments that followed made up the longest mile of my life. My heart was racing, but I was also excited. I knew I could pull this off, and then I’d be a major player. I could pick and choose my contracts and never have to put up with a suicidal rush-job ever again.
         “Xero, get a hold of yourself,” the hacker says. “The guard station will have passive biometrics. They’ll detect your fear as easily as I just did.”
         Good information to have. I took his advice to heart and began some breathing exercises I didn’t realize I knew. That learningware was rather comprehensive, as it turned out.
         Gia pulled us into the entrance to an underground parking garage. There were three guards I could see, which likely meant there were a few more that I couldn’t. We approached nice and easy, with Gia wearing her super-serious face.
         “We’re at parking,” I spoke calmly into the air, letting the nerd on the other end of my media know he better get ready.
         The guards saw our coats as we pulled up and motioned to lower the windows.
         “Ma’am, how are you tonight?” The guard opened with useless small talk. They do that to judge reactions.
         “Doing well, and yourself?” Gia stays cool as a cucumber. I’m too important and busy to be talking to anyone but the person on my media.
         “Late-night visit?”
         “We’re picking up some test results, we got a call that we just had a breakthrough. Gonna be burning the midnight oil tonight,” Gia laughs. It’s so out of character for her, I think to myself. Her acting skills aren’t half bad, though.
         “Alright, you have a good night,” the guard says, waving us in.
         This was not the hard part. The guards out front aren’t there to stop anyone from going in, they’re there to kill anyone trying to get out, should that escapee be someone like us. Oh, and for the record, this all might seem shocking to you, that corporations are erasing undesirables in your little utopia, but I can assure you it is common knowledge to people like me. If you’d like, grab a media full of trade secrets from your company and try to escape with it sometime. They’ll be hosing you off the walls for a week, and the news will report it as a car accident.
         The biggest fear I had going into this garage came true within seconds of getting inside.
         “What the hell?” Gia exclaimed, releasing her hands from the steering wheel.
         The steering wheel began guiding us to the computer’s next available parking space in the building. I had heard about tech like this, where the even the garage itself if wired to give that extra layer of security. It would either be another thing I’d have to hack, or it was officially no longer an option to leave with this car.
         “Relax, I’ll handle it once we’re inside,” I calm Gia, telling her the blatant lie she wants to hear. If we’ve already started lying to each other to protect one another, I think that means we’re dating.
         The system pulls our car into a parking space on the second basement level, near the elevators. I note that as I step out of the car and count how many cameras are on us.
         “So,” I say, pretending like I’m speaking into the media while really addressing Gia. “How do we unload all the extra product?”
         “I need to get my backpack,” Gia says, answering my question while pretending to talk to herself. It’s nice that we can have this understood code, putting on a nice, normal researcher show for the cameras.
         “Yeah, I’m just getting to the lift now,” I say, more directly addressing the dweeb on the other end.
         “Mention ‘profitable’ when you are at the guard station,” he responds in that grating, mechanical voice of his. I swear, if he isn’t a program, he makes for an annoying impression of one.
         Gia grabs her backpack and slings it over one shoulder. I don’t even want to fathom what kind of trouble those chemicals she has will make when combined, but I’m sure I don’t want to find out tonight. She joins me at the elevator, bound for the ground floor level.
         We remain in silence with each other until the doors open wide to the lobby of the research lab. The lighting and glass everywhere cast a blue tint on everything. A stairway and elevators lay before us, with the guard counter at my right. Glass doors at either side have shutters above them, telling me if we don’t make it through this checkpoint, we aren’t making it out of this lobby alive.
         “I really doubt that using a synthetic would be profitable,” I say, busy being too important to deal with the six guards and twelve cameras in this room.
         “I am on it,” Robo-geek tells me. I sure hope he is.
         “Badges, folks,” an older guard in his mid-forties tells us as we approach.
         We both pull our ID’s slowly, giving ample time for our spotter to do his magic. I hand it to the guard impatiently, making it seem like it’s an inconvenience.
         “Well, what’s our status with that project?” I ask into the ether.
         “You are in. Thirty seconds until your profiles cycle out,” the geek notifies me.
         The guard takes his sweet time scanning the cards.
         “Hate to hurry you, but they need us right away,” Gia says. I think it was risky, but she’s the actress.
         “Yeah, it’ll be a second, we’re at the guard station. Never can be too careful, I guess,” I say cynically into my media, trying to prop up Gia’s bullshit.
         “Okay, you folks take care, now,” the guard says, giving us the access we so desperately needed.
         Gia and I nod and walk three steps toward the elevator before the guard clears his throat, trying to get our attention. We turn slowly, expecting to see guns pointed at us. Gia is ready to throw down any second, I’m sure of it.
         “I’ll need to scan your bag, miss. Never can be too careful, I guess,” the guard explains. I guess I offended him with my comments to an imaginary person on the other end of this line.
         That bag contains some goofy-sounding chemicals I had, until this point, assumed were explosive in nature. When the guard opens Gia’s bag and pulls out a thermos and bagged salad, I didn’t know what to think. Had Gia ordered lunch on our laundry list of supplies? It was bizarre, sure, but I went along with it. More importantly, the guard went along with it, taking care to pack it back in and zip it up before handing it to her. If the guard still wanted to be a jerk about it, he could scan us for weapons, of which he would find plenty.
         “Sorry for keeping you, folks. Have a good night,” the guard tells us.
         With that, we hit the elevator. We’re still holding our breath as it descends from the forty-fifth floor, and don’t breathe a sigh of relief until we’re inside almost a minute later.
         “So, what floor are you on?” I ask into the media.
         “That took entirely too long. You need to get to floor twenty-nine, the layout for that floor is being sent to your media,” the spotter tells me. “The easiest access point is in the west corridor. I am uploading a passive life monitor to the bodyguard’s media to detect any people that may be occupying the floor with you. You will need to be undisturbed until the mission is complete.”
         “Bio-monitors? Can you believe this guy?” I say to Gia, tapping the pocket in her lab coat with her media inside.
         Gia gets the hint and grabs her device. I’m still trying to spot a camera in this elevator, but I’m more afraid of the one I can’t see rather than the one I can. With high-security corporate buildings like their R&D department, it is far more likely we are on camera more often than we’re not, with the possible exception of the bathroom. I decide to take that risk as the doorbell rings and the elevator deposits us on the twenty-ninth floor. Looking at the map, there is a bathroom just thirty feet away, so I guide Gia in the direction. As I hoped, they faced the men’s and women’s rooms toward each other, with the doorways in a little alcove just outside range of the cameras. A quick tug on Gia’s hand and she joins me in the men’s room.
         The bathroom is one of those ultra modern eco-friendly designs. Recycled water piping with real-time filtering, recycled drywall with murals of friendly skies, the works. I do a quick check for any listening devices or cameras before unloading my rig. With a high-frequency scanner like the one I put in my rig, I have all sorts of useful programs, like the one I’m employing right here. Without having to jack in, I use the console navigation to launch a program designed to detect even the faintest transmission devices in the room. Besides my palm and Gia’s, we’re in the clear.
         “Okay, Gia. Lifesigns?” I ask, truly breathing a sigh of relief.
         “I have three people, dozens of animals. Here,” she replies, putting our medias side by side for comparison against the map.
         I look at the life readings. I see a ton of rats, one person sleeping in a break room, a researcher, and a guard. The researcher is in the east wing, which puts us in the clear there, but the guard has a routine patrol of the floor. That patrol is also heading in our direction fast. He must have heard us come up. I hate doorbells.
         Gia acts fast, as I’d imagine she always does. She snatches my hand and drags me into a stall with her and locks it shut. I tuck my media in my pocket, and scramble to put my lab coat back on over my rig. Gia jumps into a squatting position, standing perfectly on the rim of the toilet bowl. The door to the bathroom opens up just as Gia lets out a very girlish giggle.
         “Oh, Harvey, you naughty boy,” she says as she reads my fake name off my ID card. Damn, she is good.
         “What’s goin’ on in here?” The guard is asking, though he thinks he already knows.
         Gia gasps in mock surprise. I give the girl a world of credit. If she was a male bodyguard, I don’t know how we would even have a plan for something like this.
         “Sorry!” Gia exclaims, echoing through the ultra modern and eco-friendly bathroom. “We thought this floor was kinda dead this time of night. We’re on our break…,” she lets herself trail off.
         The guard huffs, acting entirely too serious, the way all ex-cops with a joke job often do.
         “Are you gonna tell on us?” Gia asks, convincingly fearful.
         “Ma’am, I’m gonna have to report this. You can’t be foolin’ around on company property,” the guard scolds as his voice grows nearer to our stall.
         “Great, now I’m definitely not getting that raise. Nice going, Harvey,” Gia says, rather irritated, while moving me around so that she is now facing the door.
         I struggle to avoid the rim of the toilet bowl against the back of my legs from forcing me to sit on its ultra-modern seat as Gia grabs for the latch. She’s going to probably talk her way out of this one, too, I’m thinking. By the time the door has struck the inside of the stall with great violence, Gia already has the man in a chokehold. With the absence of any sight of implantation scars near his neck, I quickly realize this poor bastard was no match for Gia on her worst day. He’d probably be reaching for his gun, too, I think, if it wasn’t for the fact that his arm is pinned behind his back at a rather awkward and somewhat nauseating angle.
         “He likely has a life monitor, Gia,” I try to explain through the guard’s obnoxiously loud gasps for air.
         Gia goes on undaunted until the guard ceases to struggle. He is certainly not dead, thankfully, but will be briefly incapacitated. She takes that opportunity to pull his cuffs, radio, keys, and gun off of him as she places each of them on the sink counter. She then motions me out of the stall so that she can drag the guard onto the throne. With the guard in position, she snaps his cuffs onto the poor guy, looping behind his back and around the recycling tank. If everything goes well, no one will be here to release him until morning.
         Gia pockets the rest of his equipment as we make our way out of the bathroom. The walls are the same reconstituted drywall, painted a glossy white and reflecting the soft light of zero-energy bulbs tracking all through the corridors. Recycled glass makes up the doors to every private office and lab in the place, which looks ominous without the office lights on. The place is as bland and neutral as can be, just like any other corporate office I’ve ever seen. I try to ignore it and stay focused on my map, making sure I find the right room.
         “Nice work back there,” I say to Gia without looking away from my media.
         “Quit complimenting me. It’s my job, first of all, and we’re not out yet, second of all,” she replies coldly. This, of course, reminds me of the silent geek still in my ear.
         “We still don’t have an exit strategy, I take it?” I speak into the air.
         “As it stands, you will be responsible for making the information delivered upon receipt, then improvising a way out,” Robo-geek tells me.
         “Is that so? Hate to break it to you, but there’s a change in plans. The info is delivered after we’ve gotten out of here, and I don’t know why you thought we would be dumb enough to do it otherwise,” I respond.
         “You should have more than ample time to make delivery before leaving the building,” he shoots back. He must be a program, to have so little common sense.
         “I assure you, I will probably have the time. I’m just not going to deliver it until I know I’m safely out of the building. Tell the Puerto Rican he can meet me at the usual spot after I’m out.”
         Robo-geek does not seem to like my terms. I start wondering just who the hell these guys are, which strikes me as odd that I hadn’t done so before. Rookie mistake, I guess.
         “And what happens if you do not make it out alive?” Our dear spotter poses a rather ignorant question.
         “Then I guess you’ll have to find some other way to get the info, won’t you?”
         I stop listening to our geek as we come face to face with a small, open office. Several terminals line the walls, each with these sweet reclined seats with blue faux-leather upholstery. These things are big bucks, but the civilian versions have cupholders and everything. I put it on my mental list of things to buy when I get out of here.
         “Switching you to Gia, I’m streaming in,” I tell Robo-geek as I dump out of the call. He isn’t here, so I figure I can be as tough as I want.
         Gia immediately turns her back to me and covers the door. Once I’m in, there is nothing short of me dying or logging off that is going to get me out of my rig. Since I don’t plan on either happening until I have gotten the info, I need eyes in the back of my head, ready to take a bullet sooner than let me get interrupted. While Gia is up to task, and looks as focused as I am, somewhere in the back of my mind I’m still trying to figure out how the hell we’re getting out of this building alive.
         The room has no windows, just this long row of terminals and super-cool reclined seats. I sit back in one, and the entire chair contours itself to my body. I’m more comfortable than I am in my ratty old bed. Still, I string my high-band data-stream cables from my rig to the console, then another set to the back of my head. With the push of a button on my rig, the room becomes a wash of white light as I’m standing in my home inside the rig.
         I run over to my media cabinet by the video wall and scoop up a pair of palm media and stick them in my pockets. I put in a code on the keypad to the drawer below, and it pops open with my highly illegal program, my 9mm pistol. My avatar already has a holster under the trenchcoat, so I stick the gun in there, though it probably won’t be long before I’m using it for real. I should be scared, but I’m not. This was exactly the life I had wanted for myself, or at least the end result was. Part of me felt nothing, but part of me was insanely excited to see what happened next. If this was my last night on Earth, it was a hell of a wild one.
         I opened the door to my house. Instead of a street, a corridor spread out before me, ending with a door and a very large guard. The small corridor meant it was a space designed with very little storage memory in the area, making fighting multiple guard programs very difficult. Once several guards occupied the available space, it would be very difficult to run combat programs in the confined area. It was a minor security measure, but a damn effective one.
         I confidently strolled to the guard without missing a beat. He is wearing a three-piece suit, an ear bud, and sunglasses. He is also very happy to see me.
         “Name and password, please,” he demands. Maybe he isn’t so happy to see me.
         I pull out my gun as fast as if I had wired reflexes. Unfortunately, so does he. I didn’t quite see that coming. I move to the side out of reflex, with my broad side perpendicular to the guard, though I don’t remember telling my body to do that. I’m still training my gun on him as a bullet screams out of his gun and flies past where my chest would have been a second ago. I squeeze the trigger, aiming for his ear bud. I’m not nearly as surprised by the loud sound my pistol makes as I am to see blood shoot out of the ear of this guard. It isn’t a programmed guard, it’s a real human. Yet another problem I couldn’t have foreseen.
         The guard clutches his ear for only a moment before coming at me. The space between us is too small, and the space around us is too narrow. If I back up too much, he might back me into my home, which would basically mean he would be inside my rig. That would be terribly bad. I’ve never seen a security setup like this before, but I’m not about to let it stop me.
         He goes to grab me by my collar, but I duck under his hand and try to sneak behind him. Just as fast as I am, he matches me move for move. He spins to face me and presses his back against the wall, trying to shore up his defense. With each of us holding guns in our dominant hand, any attacks we commit to will be the weakest punches we’ve ever thrown. That stuff unfortunately matters down here as it does in the real world. The code behind it is complicated, so I won’t bore you.
         Now, I’m not going to lie. As fast as this guy is, and the fact that he is a real person, almost assures he is every bit as good as I am. There aren’t any guarantees I can beat him, but I damn sure wasn’t going to let it stop me from trying. He’s against the wall, sideways to the door. I, likewise, am against the other wall sideways to the door, trapped in this frozen moment in time where one of us is going to try to cap the other. Despite his superior security training, I rely heavily on the untested software that is tumbling around in my brain.
         He twitches, and I move. As his weapon hand rises to take aim on me, I grip his wrist with my free hand. Like a dancer from the twentieth, I do a quick twirl into him, taking his weapon arm with me. My back rests against his chest, and my gun arm crosses over my stomach. I feel the cold metal pressing against my kidney as I right the barrel against some random point in his guts. With me still holding his wrist, uselessly pointing his gun down the corridor, he must know that a single movement on his part will cause me to pull the trigger. I got him.
         “Nowhere to go,” I notify him.
         “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with?” The potty-mouthed guard asks rhetorically.
         “Log off. Now, while I’m still in the mood to let you,” I quip, quoting some badass I saw on holo a few times.
         His free hand pulls a media off of his belt clip, and I watch him choose to sign out. I pass through the space he occupied, and my back slams into the wall as his body vanishes from NeuralNet. It was a smart move on his part, but he’ll likely be back here after he deals with the electrical feedback his rig likely did to his ear, and after he notifies SynTech that I’m in here. I have less time than I thought.
         With him down, the entire corporate network has no functioning login system, so the door in front of me is useless. There isn’t enough space to get a large object in here to batter down the door, so I start scanning the walls like I’m looking for a mummy’s secret tomb entrance. It’s about as difficult, and likely can carry the same curses, at least in the sense of taking an unsafe amount of time from me.
         It takes me a few moments, but I do find a small button flush in the molding of the wall. Pressing it opens a door in the corridor that was not there a second ago. I’ll take what I can get. I dash through the doorway without a second thought.
         The room I enter into is easily the wettest dream of any streamer. A master control console, like a giant media, sits against the wall of this enormous chamber. Above the console, hundreds of video screens sit next to each other, forming a single large wall as tall as my house. The empty chair in the room is likely belonging to the network administrator, who has complete and total control over the proper functioning of the entire network within the building. Every camera, life monitor, video wall, and computer terminal is controlled and monitored from this point. I would have said at this moment that my luck was turning around, but I don’t know my luck very well.
         An old-style butler materializes out of thin air next to the chair. He’s a gray and balding man in a tux with one of those curly moustaches. It’s retro, which is cool, but it is also a program that directly serves the network administrator, which makes him a milder form of security, but one that may warn him that I’m playing with his toys.
         “You are not the Lord of this house,” the British-accented program informs me of the obvious.
         “No, he is unwell. I have been sent to retrieve directory information, nothing more,” I’m saying, trying to calm a program. I must be losing it.
         “Directory information is limited by individual login, and files are stored remotely at the console,” the butler says. Don’t worry, I’ll translate that to English for you.
         Basically, he says I’m screwed. Unless I know the researcher whose project is coming out this year, the info will be stored only at that researcher’s media console, of the two thousand or so media consoles in the building. I feel momentarily disheartened at this unforeseen level of security, but with my manic rush to find answers, my brain is moving almost as fast as my heart is racing.
         “Open a secure line, maximum encryption,” I tell the butler.
         Shockingly, he complies. One of the screens lights up with the communication protocol. I pull a media out of my pocket and butt myself into the call Gia is on with the spotter, and throw his ass up on the big screen. He’s not transmitting video, so this will have to do.
         “Hey, Robo-geek, give me the name of the head of R&D for this corp,” I say.
         “How is that relevant to…,” he starts.
         “Do it!” I shout. I feel like I’m wired on coffee, and my hair trigger is going to go off at any second. I’m still not fully adjusted to my rig’s processing speed, so I’m kinda tweaked.
         “Checking…,” he trails off. Robo-geek should only take a few seconds. It wouldn’t surprise me much if he had a giant console room like this in his place, either. “Alright, the man’s name is Brian Stone. What did you need…”
         I close the comm protocol and look at the butler.
         “Brian Stone has lost his password. Please recover,” I ask the butler, crossing my fingers.
         “The recovered password is catherine2058, sir,” the butler responds. That is just beautiful.
         I jump onto the console and login with the password of the head of Research and Development for SynTech, which basically means I have direct access to every project, and their schedule. I’m pouring through information faster than I ever could before, my processor feeding it to my brain as swiftly as I can accept it. The speed is staggering, and I’m pretty sure I’m only storing the info I see subconsciously, because no one can read this fast. I’m like a superhero or something, it’s killer.
         Before long, I’m staring at the timeline for clinical trials and FDA approval of a drug being called Intersec. The obvious marketing connotations of the name make me decide to look at their advertising files. A peek in that folder gives me a two-minute video file that was likely prepared to show shareholders at the next quarter meeting. I decide to take a quick peek, opening the file to one of the myriad of video screens on this massive wall.
         “For too long now, people have worked hard below our metroplexes,” a female audio voices over the pretty utopian gardens before transitioning to the dirty, infested pool of disease below it. How nice of them to think of us. “With worsening health conditions, SynTech is proud to announce the first joint venture with BioSense, a subsidiary of Green Earth.”
         Oh, I can see this one getting uglier by the second.
         “Intersec is a long awaited treatment for those not fortunate enough to live in the Metroplexes. Finally, there will be a means for our fellow Americans to breathe easier, and counteract the negative affects of the environmental damage that surrounds them,” she goes on, glazing over the fact that Green Earth’s forcefields are what caused the smog density to begin with.
         “Best of all, thanks to cooperation with our government, there will be no cost to get this life-saving medicine to those who need it. It will be distributed directly into the air throughout all major cities beginning this year.”
         I stop the video right there, as I realize this inhaled drug is going to forcibly be pumped into every sprawl in the country starting this year. Who the hell knows what is going to be in that drug, and why the sudden interest in the sprawl? The contract is likely very lucrative with the US government, but what does the government stand to gain? Only eight percent of those in the sprawl participated in the last election, we’re useless politically.
         Then my paranoia kicks in, thinking that might be the whole point. Maybe the plan is to thin us out. Maybe the drug is deadly, or has some crazy side effects. Pharmaceuticals are way out of my league, so I just copy over all the data on this into my media, and get ready to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the butler sees me doing this, and was apparently programmed to not like it.
         “So you are aware, sir, I have notified security of your present access point, due to the unauthorized duplication of…,” he speaks so properly to me.
         “Yes, wonderful,” I say, scooping up my media and heading for the door. It is unlikely his programming is designed to mount any kind of attack against me.
         As I open the back door to the corridor, I don’t see the narrow hallway I was expecting. Quite the opposite, really, as the area is now as big as a football field. It also has about a hundred guys in suits standing around, waiting for me to exit the room. It is far more likely that the well-dressed men are programs, but I’m not in the mood to find out who the puppet masters are, anymore than I plan on leaving this room.
         I shut the door immediately and turn to the butler. Behind him is what looks like an elevator, which might be the better alternative. Unfortunately, beside him are two men with very nice suits and very large muscles. I scramble to grab my gun, but I’m much too late. Each one of the beefy suits grabs an arm with lightning speed and begins dragging me, inexplicably, toward the super-comfortable chair the network admin has for himself. As they force me into it, I see the butler get a small case out from under the console. He lovingly takes his time opening the box and removing a hypo gun from it. I freak out immediately, doubling my useless scramble to get away from these guards with grips like iron.
         My brain is trying to block out the words ‘contagion’ and ‘ancient genetic disorder’ while I desperately bid to focus on a quick fix. I don’t want to find out that the legends were true about these places, but I can’t think of a single thing to do. Suddenly, things become clear to me. I’d rather die than live with whatever it is that is in that hypo gun.
         “Call Gia!” I shout out to my media, committed to my decision.
         “Yes?” I hear her raspy, sexy, kick-your-ass voice one last time.
         “Pull the plug! Do it now!” I yell, assuming it’s the last words I’ll ever say.
         Of course, they aren’t the last words I ever said. Still, it makes for gripping drama, don’t you think? Anyway, pulling the plug means forcibly ending streaming by yanking out my link to the rig, you know, the jack in my head. Of course, without slowly transitioning your body from streaming to taking control over your real body again, you can rarely survive the shock. Worse yet, even if you manage to, you’ll likely be a vegetable for the rest of your life, with what remains of your consciousness trapped in some far corner of your mind, separated from the rest of your being. And yes, that was still a better alternative to whatever was waiting in that syringe.
         I don’t remember much between the time I came back into the real world and when security arrived. I remember hearing gunshots, piercing my ear like a drill. That was Gia’s bear killer taking out the first wave of three guys. Then I remember falling out of the world’s most comfortable hacking chair and tossing up the greatest burger I ever had. I still wasn’t entirely convinced, at this point, that I had any real control over my body, it was all reflex.
         Suddenly, my fingers started to tingle. Sensation - that was definitely a good sign. My vision started to focus, and my sense of smell kicked in, which was terrible timing given my proximity to the puddle I just made. I suddenly remembered I really needed to clean my fridge. Memory – yet another good sign. Somewhere I heard a bell, so my hearing was working just fine. I tried to get myself up. That was a bad idea, in retrospect.
         Gia turned to me, startled that I was, in fact, still alive. It coincided with the rushed footfalls of several men, which was just terrible timing. Two shots rang out, shattering the glass doors that separated us from the hall, and I just had to be looking right into the most beautiful eyes money could buy as Gia took two shots to the chest. Almost in slow motion, I watched the expression on her face change to a horrible, scared look. She came off of her feet, slamming into the wall to the side of me.
         I couldn’t afford to think in that moment, just act. I was still hidden behind the chair, so I took advantage of that fact, the learningware and the devil on my left shoulder wanting to go for it despite my body’s protest. I popped up from behind the chair, throwing out my arms with a twist and grabbing hold of my .38’s before I even knew how many guys were waiting for me.
         Within that second I had my first look at them. I saw black body armor from head to toe, with a black helmet and black-rimmed goggles to match. It was actually old-style cop armor, and for whatever reason I knew where the unarmored spots were. I pulled both triggers, each hand trained on a different guard as I tried to figure out what to do about the four others behind them. I wasn’t quite prepared for just how much recoil each pistol had, and the split attention between the two guns almost jerked my arms into the air. Yeah, I never fired them before, sue me. I put a foot up on the leather-covered arm of the world’s greatest hacking chair, and was suddenly very concerned that the learningware and the devil on my shoulder had some pretty crazy ideas I wasn’t onboard with.
         Two guards slammed against the wall, blood splattering ahead of them as they were taken out of the fight. The other four opened fire on my position, but my left foot already had all my weight on it, launching up and out by kicking off the arm of the chair and flying toward the hallway. As I flew out sideways, I took aim at the next two guys closest to me and released another couple of rounds. Being that I was in the air at the time, and the fact that I am not really as badass as those guys in the holos I’ve seen a hundred times, I was more grateful to hit them at all than to worry about where the holes were in their armor. But hit them I did, and they reeled backward at the final two guards just behind them.
         Now, don’t assume I’m cavalier about any of this. I had never before, in my entire life, shot a man, and I don’t plan on repeating it often. I know these guys had families, and I knew the damage I would cause pulling the trigger. I also knew, at the time, that it was them or me. You can’t fault me for the same desire to live as they had. Mercifully, only one of the four guys I had shot so far was likely dead, and I would carry the guilt of that one guy for quite some time. I couldn’t say the same for the guys Gia got to, mostly because they were sprayed all over the end of the hall.
         As my shoulder hit the ground, I lost my grip on one of my pistols. I wasn’t used to this kind of physicality, and I think my body was trying to tell my inner devil that I did actually have limits. Of course, the three of us come to this understanding as I’m left with one gun and two angry guards that will be coming at me as soon as they get their colleagues’ dead weight off of them. I lay prone, training my remaining pistol on the one guy that seems most likely to get his wounded friend to the ground the fastest. They’re shouting something into their radios, but I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears. I blink for what feels like an eternity as the last two men scramble to take shots on me. I can’t hit them both, and they know it, too. I can’t see their faces clearly, but through those protective goggles I see that look. They’re going to do me in, any second from now.
         I train a shot on one guy and decide to go out swinging, but he’s suddenly flying down the hallway backwards. Only a bear killer is going to wreak havoc like that, I think, as security guard number two is making like Peter Pan down the corridor. I doubt she has much life left in her, but that bitch is my new best friend.
         With my ears still deaf to everything around me, I jump to my feet, scoop up my other .38, and head for Gia, just a little ways back inside the computer room. I make a quick detour further down the hall, stepping over bodies to peek around the corner and check the elevator. The good news is that it’s heading down. The bad news is that it’ll be back up here with more security in a few moments.
         Gia looks remarkably chipper for a lady that just took two rounds. She’s trying to get back to her feet, and my hearing starts coming back just in time to start an argument with her.
         “You can’t be getting up with two bullet wounds!” I shout, mostly so I can hear myself.
         Gia quickly scoops up her backpack and faces me. She lets her lab coat fall to the floor and pulls down that tight black shirt she was wearing to halfway down her cleavage. Through the bleeding skin, I see something shiny – something metal.
         “Titanium sternum,” she tells me quickly.
         She’s already walking past me when I’m asking, “How bad was this fucking car accident?” at the top of my lungs.
         Gia’s already sitting in front of the elevator by the time I catch up to her. The girl moves fast, that’s all I can say. Part of me wonders if she took those two bullets on purpose, right where she knew she would be safe. But now she’s grabbing a bite to eat, it would seem, because her thermos is on the floor, and Gia’s fishing out the salad.
         “Last meal?” I ask, not sure if I should be angry or confused.
         “No, buying us time,” she replies coolly.
         Gia unscrews the thermos and puts it aside. Then she snags the bag of croutons in the salad and starts crumbling them into the open thermos. The resulting smoke coming off of the container, I would assume, is not steam. As Gia quickly pours the resulting goop along the seam of the elevator and the floor, it hardens to a tacky paste in seconds. Quickly, she pulls her ear bud out and sticks it in the messy liquid, then hauls ass around the corner, dragging me along for the ride.
         “Okay, this explosion might buy us a few minutes. Then they come by the stairs and probably send in the helicopters,” Gia warns me. See, I knew those were explosive chemicals.
         Gia sends a pulse through her media to her ear bud. It’s a feedback pulse, enough to cause a mild itch in your ear if it ever happened to you, but it’s enough electricity to spark the bomb she just made. The sound that followed, even from the distance I was from it, almost deafened me again. Smoke and dust immediately started chasing us around the corner, making our job of getting out just one bit more difficult. With only the few minutes of peace Gia bought us, I had to return the favor of saving my life by getting her the hell out of this place.
         “Hey, is our spotter still on the line?” I asked, but I already knew he was. This was the hottest show going tonight, no one would miss this.
         “Yeah, but he hasn’t said a word in ten minutes,” Gia informed me.
         “Your employer is hard at work trying to find alternative exit routes, though without much success. I have not spoken because I do not wish to be an interference in an already delicate operation,” I hear coming through the speaker on Gia’s media.
         “Nice way of saying suicide mission, dipshit,” I inform Robo-geek. “Look, get me a window on this floor, I don’t care where it is.”
         “Northwest, corner office,” he says without missing a beat.
         “Alright, Gia, go check if the window is made out of bulletproof glass,” I ask of my bodyguard. And she does it without thinking twice. That’s a teammate right there, and Robo-geek can kiss my ass.
         With Gia distracted, I decide to go for broke, stepping over the broken glass of the computer room door and having a seat in the world’s most comfortable hacking chair. I pick up my precious rig and grab hold of the data cable.
         “No, the glass isn’t bulletproof. Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gia demands of me.
         “You took one for the team, I’m returning the favor,” I tell her. I’m trying to earn points with the comment when, really, this is truly our only way out alive.
         I stick the cable in my head without another thought on the matter. I’m sure Gia saw my body go slack in the real world and stopped talking to me. Down the long corridor of white light, I find myself inside my house. A section of wall is nothing but black and featureless. I guess I should be grateful the shock of dumping out of my rig a few minutes ago affected the rig more than it did me, but I was really proud of that wall. It had all of my favorite nudie posters on it.
         My pistol and media are still on me, though they should have returned to my media cabinet up front. I don’t really have time to explain that one as I just go all out, kicking open the door to my house and sprinting outside. The situation is a bleak as I had left it, with a football field-sized room filled to the brim with angry guys in suits. Nothing short of a tank is getting through them, so I instead opt to use finesse. That means running like a girl, screaming and all, in case you didn’t understand what I meant.
         I bolt out and am immediately chased by every suit programmed to kill me. The only thing I need is to remember where that back door was, and get inside. I use my navigation system on my media to locate it while I run and dodge suits that are right at my heels. There are so many soulless programs coming after me, their suits seem to gel together and form one super-wide corporate beast in my head, barreling at me like a battering ram. My positioning program keeps pointing out the back door, but the room seems to be widening, likely to make room for a really large and very mean juggernaut of a security program. I hear bullets whizzing past me from all angles, but I seem to be agile enough to move around them without breaking my stride. I love this new processor, by the way.
         Suddenly, a shadow turns the whole room dark. I’m almost at the back door, so I refuse to stop and look, even though that damn devil is awfully curious. I frantically press the button, and the door that isn’t there opens to me. I scramble into the empty room, knowing that crazy butler will want to play doctor in a matter of seconds, but I still take time to seal the back door. Looking out as it closes, I see a helicopter descend into view that bears more resemblance to a flying tank, shining spotlights into my little escape hatch here. I don’t even breathe until the door is closed completely.
         Spinning around, I have two options: sit at the console and wait for Dr. Jeeves to give me a Neanderthal disease, or slip into the elevator, down to lower security level. Mercifully, Jeeves doesn’t show up unless I’m sitting in the admin chair, so I avoid that. I decide to run into the elevators, but I don’t have a single clue where I’m going or what I’m doing when I get there. I choose the bottom level, only used in network setups like these for low-security systems that need very little maintenance, and mostly run automatically.
         The elevator opens in seconds, to an office setting that is a stark contrast from the evil villain supercomputer room I just came from. Here, a bunch of human robots are hard at work, oblivious to my presence and quite happy that way. In rows upon rows of perfectly aligned desks, the machines are all manning laptop media like secretaries. It would be comical, but only so after I find a way to not die in the next ten minutes.
         “What do you do?” I point to a random secretary, getting his attention.
         “I keep payroll address information updated,” he volunteers without hesitation. Any resistance to answering me would mean he has some kind of security built into his soulless body.
         “What about you?” I ask to the guy next to him.
         “I am responsible for the safe positioning of all cars in the garage,” he tells me. And that got my gears turning.
         “You and I have to talk,” I replied with a smile.
         Minutes later, I gracefully log off back into the real world. Gia is switching back and forth between checking me and checking the hole where the elevator used to be down the hall.
         “Time check?” I ask, removing the jack from my sore, tired head.
         “The spotter says a chopper is inbound, ETA two minutes, and I have lifesigns three floors down. We’re done,” Gia says frantically.
         I grab my pretty rig and get out of the world’s most comfortable hacking chair in a rush. To the tune of broken glass crushing underneath my shoes, I grab Gia’s wrist and bolt for the northwest office. Gia was already kind enough to make a hole where the lock used to be, so I let myself in. I’m staring at one of the only windows on the entire floor as Gia looks at me, confused.
         “What are we doing?”
         “Take out the window,” I replied, staring straight ahead.
         The bear killer shoots another drill into my ear with remarkable gusto before shattering the window in its entirety. I grip Gia tight and just run for it. I can hear the security guards’ radios in the distance, so I don’t have time to think. I jump out of the twenty-ninth floor window with Gia in tow. She goes with me without a second thought. Trust, man - that intangible commodity no money can buy.
         We fall about five feet before landing in the backseat of a 2111 Spectrum with a convertible top. I believe it belongs to the Junior Vice President, but I’ve already blanked out the safety features, like theft detection and emergency engine shutoff. Hell, by the time he even knows it’s gone, I will have already crashed this flying piece of shit into a ditch somewhere in the sprawl. At least, that was the plan.
         We landed on our asses pretty hard, so I had that lump in my throat choking me as I tried to speak with Gia.
         “Can you fly a car?” I ask, praying we didn’t come this far only to have to wing it.
         “Buckle up,” she says, jumping into the front seat. I love this girl, I’m telling you.
         I do as I’m told, jumping over the seat to ride shotgun, and I buckle up. She grabs the wheel and the pitch control and slams on the gas. I don’t like flying cars, but this thing has some real power to the engine. I feel like I’m glued to the back of my seat instantly, as Gia cuts the wheel hard to get us out of the city. The helicopter is still heading this way, but at least we have more of a chance now than we did two minutes ago. We’re out of the building, and that was more than I was expecting. I count my blessings as I pull my rig onto my lap.
         I grab Gia’s media off of her belt clip. There is still an open comm protocol, so I move it over to my media so I can hear him.
         “We’re out,” I explain curtly.
         “I am aware,” Robo-geek tells me.
         “Gonna be doing anything about getting us out of the metro?”
         “The helicopter is going to be rerouted to downtown. Tell the bodyguard to head for the Sector 4 lift,” the nerd instructs me.
         “Head for the Sector 4 lift,” I repeat back to Gia. She just nods as she swoops down, flying unsafely fast through the city at about a one-story level. I still don’t know why she was flying so low. Maybe she got a rush out of it or something.
         “Feel free to begin transmission of the data,” Robo-geek volunteers.
         “I thought I explained this to you already. Have the Puerto Rican meet me at the usual spot in an hour. He can take delivery personally,” I explain before closing off the call. I’m pretty much done with him at this point, and I’m mighty pissed.
         “What are you going to do?” Gia asks as she tries to stay focused on the road.
         “I’m going to get our money, drop off the info, and make sure they understand not to ever screw with us again,” I reply, all full of piss and vinegar. Funny thing is, I actually mean it, for once. I really do intend to go ape shit on these guys in the most badass of ways. Maybe Gia is rubbing off on me.
         The ground is creeping up on us awfully quick as Gia brings us back onto the wheels, just a couple of miles from the lift. I watch the pitch control disappear back inside the center media console as we begin nice, normal driving on the road, as God intended. Gia had taken back roads the entire way, which was likely why no cop stopped us for flying recklessly low. I didn’t think she knew the metro map as well as she did the sprawl, but the street is dead as we touch down, out of sight of any witnesses. We just might actually pull this one off.
         We come up to the enourmous red metal tower that is the Sector 4 lift with no lines to wait on. It was just a ramp up to the platform itself, which cascaded into empty space on left side. This part is usually easy, because no one cares what you bring into the sprawl, only what you plan on bringing back. An oversized Sector Guard with a crewcut and clean shave raises his hand for us to stop as we arrive at the checkpoint.
         “Good evening, folks,” he says in that all-too-serious tone every cop seems to have.
         “Looks like rain tonight. Hope you guys are staying dry,” Gia says, instantly making a sight of herself. Unfortunately, that sight still looks like an ugly hag and a troll had a baby out of wedlock. Some of her charm seemed to have left with it.
         “Yes, ma’am. Proceed to the scanner over there,” the guard says, motioning to the scanning bed for imaging the car, up another ramp to the right side of the platform. They do these random checks sometimes.
         We’re still armed, so I can’t let them do that. We’re also wearing different faces that what our ID tags are going to bring up. This was the one part I would honestly say we screwed up all by ourselves, forgetting to take off the latex. The guard walks over to the imaging area, already assuming we’re going to comply.
         “What do you think?” Gia asked of me, seemingly clueless.
         “Well,” I started, feeling rather invincible at the time, given the events we managed to survive. “The Sector 2 lift didn’t have any forcefields or guard rails. Doesn’t look like this lift has them, either.”
         “Hold on,” Gia smiled. It was the first real one I had gotten out of her.
         Gia put the pedal to the floor and headed for the lift, completely avoiding the ramp to the imaging station. Guards are running at us from all directions suddenly, drawing weapons as they come after us. Once we were on the platform, Gia cut the wheel a hard ninety degrees and kept going. There was a sudden realization that we were insane as the rear tires cleared the edge of the lift, leaving nothing below us but air. Gia flipped the switch on the luxurious leather steering wheel to activate flight controls, and we just prayed they would kick in before smashing into what used to be Cleveland.
         It was like being on an old-time rollercoaster, freefalling through the air at tremendous speed. The convertible top was good enough to throw crisp waves of spring air into our faces as we dove down. The sprawl below was evident by the spherical cloud that drew closer, letting us know we were seconds from hitting the city’s forcefield. I hadn’t thought of that when suggesting we pull this stunt. We had less time than I thought.
         After what felt like an eternity, the pitch control stick popped up from the console. Gia gripped it until she was white-knuckled and hit the gas, cutting the wheel back toward the lift shaft. She weaved in between the rails that held it upright without smashing us into a single one. It was an amazing feat, given that we were probably doing about a hundred and twenty at the time. But, now we’re flying vertically, straight for the ground. I see the smog touch the hood, but we keep going. Gia must have known there was a hole in the forcefields for the lifts. I’d commend her, but I can only seem to scream like a scared little girl the whole way down.
         I was actually somewhat relieved that perhaps the last thing I could smell before becoming a vat of human jelly was the familiar scent of the sprawl. Sure, it was carcinogenic, but it was the smell of home. Then Gia blows my mind, slamming on the brakes and pulling back hard on the pitch control. Somehow, she managed to get us horizontal doing that, like a stunt driver in one of those big-budget holos.
         We continue to descend vertically for a few seconds. At the base of the lift, Gia flies through the exit and blasts off for the city. She seems to have a direction in mind. I sure hope so, because I know surface-to-air missiles have a tendency to fly through the night skies in the sprawl, and they’re never fired by good people. Then again, Gia probably knows those guys, too.
         “Where are we going?” I ask, not sure I want the answer.
         “Back to Trey’s,” she tells me. Yay.
         Within five minutes, she has us back at the mall of doom, pulling into the garage calmly, which was a stark contrast to the hundred and fifty mile an hour flight we just dashed across the sprawl. Moving that fast, even for a few minutes, makes the fastest speeds my old beater ever got seem like a crawl. I still hate flying cars, though, no matter how cool they might be.
         The well-dressed and well-armed gang bangers are a little more animated this time, once they recognize Gia. They’re whistling and hollering about the car, which I’m assuming is because of the luxury of the Spectrum. Looking around the interior when it’s not approaching mach speed does impress. All leather interior, which seems to be real, top-shelf media console center, eight valve propulsion system, and the flight system round out the crazy features. It’s also sleek as hell, and now that I’m getting out of it and greeting the hardened killers and ex-cons, I see it’s also jet black with a gloss finish.
         Trey makes his way through the sea of oglers, and finding Gia puts a smile on his face.
         “Whatcha got there, Lil’ bits?” Trey is being very playful, which is unnerving more than enjoyable. My nerves are pretty frayed after all this.
         “A 2074 Spectrum, hot as the fires of hell. But, give me a beater for it and we’ll call it even,” Gia says.
         My jaw hits the floor when it dawns on me. That’s it, we’re done. Mission complete. We even unloaded the hot car.
         “Boys, get this beautiful beast into the shop, and get this beautiful lady another car!” Trey says through a creepy laugh.
         “I have work to do, Gia,” I grab her attention for a second before she wanders off with her friend, who is already offering her a beer.
         “Don’t worry, my man,” Trey informs me. “No one gonna bother you.”
         Gia looks over to me and nods, motioning me to one of the workbenches. I scoop up my rig and wander over there, ready to tie up the last loose end. Of course, that does also mean I have to put on my ass-kicking hat and lay down the law. I still feel up to task as I get comfortable and jack in.
         So, I might have been a rookie, but I’m not an idiot. Once I’m in my beautiful house with the vacant black wall, I get my gear together and run my traceback program. See, I never go anywhere without my rig tracking my every location. With anything else on NeuralNet, I want to avoid being traced at all costs, but the last thing I want is to be intercepted like I was by the Puerto Rican. So, by the time I get in my car, I’m already setting course for Pasadena, California.
         Five minutes later, I open up my car door and breathe in the perfectly salty air on this perfectly moonlit night. Ahead, Robo-geek and the Puerto Rican are waiting on the front patio of the oceanside condo. The Puerto Rican stands up from his table with a warm, brotherly smile. He opens his arms as I approach as though he plans on hugging me.
         “Xero, my friend, we did it!” He speaks to me in that horrible fake accent.
         I smile back as I move to embrace him. Only I change my mind midway through, holding him by the back of the neck as I duck down and upend his legs. His momentum forces him to somersault in midair, landing with his back flat on the table. I take joy in that, as my lightning reflexes draw my pistol on Robo-geek the second he twitches to stand up.
         “No, Xero, please,” the boss says to me in a very American accent. “Don’t hurt him.”
         “Okay. Start talking. I want every detail,” I offer, training the gun on the temple of my non-Latin friend.
         “We’re a group against Green Earth, okay? We had a hunch that SynTech was in bed with them. We’re all former streamers and coders, so we had the bankroll to get you guys,” the decidedly younger-sounding boss explains.
         “You had the bankroll, but no one had the balls to do it themselves?” I sound threatening. I kinda like the new me.
         “Alright, alright. It’s just me, okay? No one else,” he replies.
         “You sent assassins to our apartments!” I’m using my outdoor voice quite a bit here.
         “Actually…,” he starts shamefully. “Those were me, too. I just routed your calls to make sure the job got done.”
         I train my pistol on Robo-geek again.
         “Then who or what the hell is he?”
         “Please, take the gun off him,” the boss pleads. “That’s Exis, my new project.”
         Okay, now I’m intrigued.
         “Project?” I ask, trying to hide my interest.
         “He’s a security bot, but I dumped every single piece of learningware I could get my hands on into him. I just wanted to see how much I could push his AI.”
         And now it all comes together. He’s making a pet human that has no existence outside of NeuralNet. It does explain why he is light years beyond any bot I have ever seen. Satisfied with the info, I release the Puerto Rican so he can get himself up. I thought, especially toward the end, there, that he might wet himself. That would have been killer.
         “We still have a deal, right?” The Puerto Rican has already spilled the beans to me that he’s a lone wolf, which does mean that I could walk away from here and sell the info to someone better equipped and better bankrolled. Still, he is one man fighting against Green Earth, so he gets points from me for that. I weigh my options for a moment.
         “Increase Gia to five,” I demand.
         “Five hundred thousand is ridiculous for a bodyguard,” the boss tries to explain.
         “That girl took bullets for me tonight, you little shit! Besides, you don’t know just how good this package is. You haven’t seen it. I have. Two mil and change for the whole shebang is worth every penny on this one,” I say. I hadn’t ever done a negotiation before tonight, but I think that Mr. Crowe thing might have been a fluke. I just might be a natural at this.
         “Exis, make it happen,” the boss says.
         We wait a second in silence, staring at each other hard.
         “Both transfers are complete,” Exis says. I still like Robo-geek better.
         Those magic words were all I needed to hear. I tossed a flash stick at the Puerto Rican, which I rightfully called as the scummiest avatar imaginable. A second later I’m back in my car, heading home. I didn’t have to drive, but I wanted the time to be separated from them to check my accounts. I’m looking at a balance of just over one point six when I see a call coming in from ‘Unknown’, which I cautiously take on a secure line.
         “Xero, this is it! Do you realize what you have done here?” The boss is babbling and fawning all over the place. Without his avatar in front of me, it sounds like he’s much younger than me, and not even half my size.
         “You’re welcome. Spread the word about us,” I instruct him before closing out the call.
         My car stops shortly thereafter, so I choose to log off. After a quick flash, I’m blinding myself by staring at the fluorescent lights inside the garage. I pull the jack and get myself vertical again. Gia is sitting next to me, bandaged up and enjoying a beer with Trey. There’s yet another new car sitting where the Spectrum was, and despite the late hour, it seems every gangster in here is buzzing about the job they’re going to be doing on the Junior Vice President of SynTech’s car that he so kindly had donated to their cause. It’s like Christmas Morning, only there’s more bass in the music that’s playing.
         “Hey,” Gia says to me with a much friendlier appearance than our first meeting. “Everything went okay?”
         “Better, actually,” I say with a smile.
         “Good, I’ll check my account later. Listen, that ride is yours. Trey is going to drop me home in a few, so I guess we’re set,” she replies somberly. I hate saying goodbye to people, though, especially when the people is such a hot chick.
         “Or not,” I say cryptically.
         Gia’s cocks her head, curious what I mean. Keep them guessing, that’s what I always say.
         “I got you five,” I tell her, raising a hand so she’ll let me finish without interrupting. “Call it hazard pay. You were amazing tonight. There’s another hundred from my share if I can work with you again. I might be green, but I know I never want a different guard.”
         Gia actually seems speechless for a second. I’m impressed with how much I’ve crawled out of my shell tonight. Gia just might be, too, because she smiles admiringly at me and nods.
         “You have my number,” she tells me. She never actually gave it to me, she just assumed I swiped it from her media. Good guess, too, because I did.
         Exhausted, I smile as I drag my tired ass into some random Japanese beater from twenty years ago. I didn’t care if it was a go-kart at this point, I was just happy to be heading back home a very alive and very rich man. I was on the road for an hour before crossing into New York, which I did just as the sun was starting to rise.
         So, that is how I got into the life. Seeing that sun rise as I drove into Buffalo, rich beyond my wildest dreams and the newest badass on NeuralNet, I knew I was going to end up doing this a long time. I have to admit - dangerous though it was, I had so much fun. I worked with a hot chick, jumped out of skyscrapers, met scary Italians with guns, it was insane. So, I’ll ask you just one question, while you sit in your dull cubicles and your sheltered universities and judge me – have you ever felt this alive on payday?