33 – Four Days

  “Careful!” Glitch cried, watching as Beef heaved himself out of the wheelchair and into the back of the van. He landed on his good hip, and as the van’s suspension soaked up the extra weight, he began to scoot back, pushing with his left hand—his only one—and his working foot. When his back was against the jump seat, he turned to Addie and held up his thumb, heaving for breath.

  “All good.”

  Glitch folded the chair and loaded it into the van, then climbed in after him. When she’d pulled the doors shut and flopped onto the jump seat behind Beef, Addie asked, “All set?”

  “Yeah,” Glitch replied, and Addie turned back to the front, guiding the van away from the curb. Since the jump seat wasn’t original to the van, and wasn’t tied into the AI’s sensors in any way, it didn’t mind that nobody in the back was wearing safety restraints. Soon they were trundling along, and Addie was once again looking over the worn-down interior, wishing she’d had a bit more time to purchase some upgrades. As it was, she didn’t think she’d be able to surprise Tony with a bunch of van mods.

  “Katz knows we’re coming?” Glitch asked.

  Addie swiveled her seat, nodding. “Yeah. She said she’d get together some options for Beef to look at.”

  Beef grumbled. He was still a little dopey from pain meds, and though his swelling was way down, it clearly pained him to speak. Even so, he muttered, “Don’t need to spend a bunch of bits on me.”

  “Hush, big guy,” Glitch whispered, kneading the back of his broad neck and skull with her thumbs. “You earned your cut.”

  “C’mon. I didn’t do shit.”

  Addie leaned forward. “That’s a load of nonsense, Beef. Like any professional, you were there in case. You were ready to do whatever, and if we didn’t have you, we would’ve had to hire some other muscle for backup when we planned the job. You think he’d give up his cut?”

  Glitch smiled at Addie, then went back to work on Beef’s neck. “That’s right, sugar.”

  Addie shook her head, smiling. It was still strange for her to see Beef in a relationship like that, though she knew that wasn’t fair. She told herself that she’d just developed a very different mental image of him over the years, and that it would take a little time to adjust. As the traffic lights came and went, her mind drifted to other topics—mostly Tony’s message and how they only had four days left to get ready.

  Almost as if she’d read her mind, Glitch announced, “Just got a Backroom Auction update: we sold the last batch.”

  “Yes!” Addie clapped her hands together. Backroom Auction was a peer-to-peer encrypted auction site where, as one might guess, all manner of goods, legal and otherwise, could change hands for Sol-bits. The beauty of Sol-bits was that they, too, were completely encrypted and anonymous, unlike the various corpo currencies.

  Corporations didn’t love Sol-bits, but the digital currency had come into its own before the first AI wars, and was far too entrenched in every aspect of society to be rooted out. Not that the big corporations hadn’t tried. Even so, no matter how they pushed their own digital currencies, they never really caught on outside their company ecosystems.

  “So, cool if I order the rest of the software I need? Um, you’re gonna have to give me the name of our mark.”

  Addie slowly nodded, looking from Glitch’s bright eyes down to Beef, who was leaning forward, eyes closed, enjoying the netjacker’s continued efforts to loosen up his tense neck muscles. “Jammer?”

  Glitch nodded, her eyes unfocusing for a second, and then Addie heard the high-pitched whine that slowly faded as the jammer came online.

  “Okay, obviously, this is super top-secret. Like, use every precaution you can imagine when you’re looking for the daemons you need. I’m sure there are methods—”

  “Sis, come on. People in my line of work—the kinds selling what I need—deal with encrypted everything. I’m gonna put so many layers between me and the purchase that I might as well be an ancient AI living on Mars.”

  Addie pressed her lips together, looking from Glitch to Beef again. For some reason, she didn’t feel nervous at all. She’d been keeping the secret for so long, she’d almost begun to fear she wouldn’t be able to utter the words when the time came. Now, though? After everything she’d been through with those two? She smiled and started talking.

  “Okay, listen. I don’t have the exact facility yet, but I can tell you the mark is Cross Corp.” She nodded as Glitch’s eyes widened. “Yep, that Cross Corp. The two primary marks are Jennifer Stavros and Eric Allenson. Tony’s gonna be our man on the inside, but he hasn’t given me the details yet. The operation is this Friday, though, so I figure he’ll be in touch soon.”

  “Friday?” Beef groaned. “That’s four days, Ads!”

  Addie smiled. “Don’t worry, you big meathead. We’re paying for the good nanites.”

  “Cross is big-time, Ads,” Glitch said. “Won’t they have tier-one defenses? I don’t think—”

  “They have some tier-two operators, but Tony says their infrastructure is mostly tier-three.”

  Glitch tilted her head, pursing her lips for a second. “Really? Huh. Well, maybe that’s doable, then—if we get the right daemons. Pretty much everything’s for sale, though; all it takes are bits.”

  Addie nodded. “Yeah, this job is gonna drain our funds, but we’ll walk away with some experience and lots of equipment.” She snorted softly. “Tony said I should say that to you guys if you balked.”

  “Hah. Corpo-rat.” Beef chuckled, but he didn’t move; Addie figured he didn’t want to interrupt his massage.

  Glitch continued to rub his neck, shifting topics. “We gonna rent a vehicle or use this van?”

  “Why?” Addie asked.

  “Because this van will need a little work if I’m gonna put my immersion rig in here.”

  Addie frowned. “Do we have time?”

  Beef responded, earning a surprised glance from Glitch, “I know some guys who can do it. We can upgrade the glass and cut out this cargo container to make room.” He thumped his knuckles against the container Tony had built.

  Addie considered the big metal box. “That’s where our, uh, smuggling compartment is.”

  “We can leave that in. I’ll have the boys mount a plate over it. Rig up some hydraulics and you’ll still be able to hide shit under the immersion rig.”

  “Need a better antenna array, too,” Glitch said, “but that’ll be easy.”

  Addie shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

  Beef leaned back into Glitch’s knees, reaching up to enfold her slender, nimble fingers with his massive, meaty palm. “Message me the parts, babe, and I’ll contact my guys.”

  “The van has new batts, right?” Glitch asked.

  Addie nodded. “One of the first things Tony upgraded.”

  They talked for a while more about what they could do to prepare over the next couple of days, and before long, the van pulled into the alley behind Katz’s place. Working together, Addie and Glitch managed to get Beef into the chair without dumping him onto the pavement, and then they wheeled him into the clinic.

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  Katz was ready and ushered them into the back hallway that led to her surgical suite. “I only had two appointments today, and I rescheduled. Least I could do, you know?”

  “How’s your daughter?” Glitch asked.

  “Adjusting nicely, and my business appreciates her being here—she’d been drumming up clients with her advertising magic.”

  “That’s great.” Addie squeezed her shoulder, smiling as she looked into the doc’s kind eyes. It was a nice reminder that, despite their difficulties, despite some of their more questionable actions, they had done some good over the last year or so.

  “So this is the infamous Beef, huh?” Katz asked, holding the door while Glitch pushed the sullen, purple-faced brute into the surgical suite.

  By way of reply, he grunted.

  “So, you mentioned a hand and a hip?”

  Beef growled and held his stump up. “Hand, hip, knee.”

  Addie shook her head. “He really needs a full leg replacement—the right one. The left leg needs a new knee.”

  “And we want to get him some other upgrades,” Glitch added. “He’s tough, doc, but he’s too delicate when it comes to explosions and bullets.”

  Beef groaned, slapping his big hand over his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Addie asked, leaning close.

  He shook his head, scrubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “It’s…it’s like every birthday I ever missed, all wrapped into one!”

  Addie looked at Glitch with wide eyes. Glitch returned the look, shaking her head, mouthing, Is he crying?

  Then Beef blew a raspberry and lowered his hand. “All right, enough sweet nothings. I’ll take some dermal plating, too, Doc.”

  Katz grinned wryly at his antics. “I can do that. I have subdermal mesh, too, if you want to keep your skin’s natural—”

  He waved a hand. “Hell no. I want the real stuff.” Then he narrowed his eyes, and it was evident he’d had a second thought as he turned to Glitch. “Um, you don’t care, do you?”

  Glitch frowned, rubbing her chin. “Dermal plating? Like that plastic-looking skin some of the mercs have?”

  He nodded. “But they can still feel stuff, right, Doc?”

  “Oh, that’s quite right. Think of it as synth-skin, only designed to be a great deal more durable. It won’t look like skin, but it has all the natural functions of it. I have a variety of colors, and Beef wouldn’t need it to cover his entire body. Most people only apply it to their more vulnerable spots—chest, stomach, inner thighs, and the soft areas on the back. Some opt for plates over the throat and spine too, but—”

  “That’s me.” Beef nodded with conviction. “And none of those silly colors either. Black.”

  Glitch put her palms on his huge shaved head, gently drumming her fingertips as she considered his words. The room got quiet as everyone looked at her, awaiting her response to Beef’s decision. She shrugged and said, “Just don’t mess up his face, Doc.”

  Addie stifled a giggle. And Doc Katz smiled as she nodded. “How about I show you some limb options?”

  ###

  Tony flexed his hand, holding his arm before his chest as he looked in the mirror. Chavez, as always, had done beautiful work. The arm looked different, but that hadn’t been the goal. Tony twisted his elbow back and forth, looking at the underside of his arm and his palm—still candy-apple red. His knuckles and the topside of his forearm were different, though—coated with a smooth, seamless, matte-black layer.

  It wasn’t just paint, either. Chavez had replaced the top polymer layer of the arm with a couple of smart materials. The first layer, directly against the housing of his arm, was capable of spoofing images of a false interior. Chavez said it would fool even sophisticated scanners into thinking his arm had nothing but a pair of high-density batts nestled among the actuators; Tony’s needler and kinetic force mods would be invisible.

  The top, matte-black layer was anti-reflective, temperature-neutral, bullet-resistant, and still provided tactile feedback. It was a nice little upgrade for an already high-end arm, and Tony was pretty pleased with it. More importantly, it might be the key to his survival on Friday. Of course Jen was setting him up. Of course she intended to capture or kill him. The needler in his arm might just be the ace he needed to turn the tables.

  He finished drying off and then walked out of the steamy bathroom to his bed, where his new suit awaited him. He wasn’t going to wear it—not yet—but he wanted to make sure it fit. He’d ordered in some new undergarments, so he started there. The socks, underwear, and t-shirt were made from form-fitting, moisture-wicking black material that fit his flesh like a second skin. They were corpo-style through and through, but he was used to that kind of clothing, and it felt good as he stepped into his new pants.

  The suit was a deep charcoal gray, and the graph-weave material hung from his hips and shoulders without a trace of a wrinkle. It hugged his figure without clinging—perfectly tailored to fit his every contour. Tony tucked in the shirt, tried on the new belt and highly polished boots. He felt like a new man. Of course, the holster was a work of art, and seeing his mass driver in it when he stood before the mirror, he caught himself wishing Jen wasn’t setting him up. He found a small flicker of hope that the job was real, and he snuffed it out—there was no room for sentimentality.

  After ensuring the trenchcoat fit, he got undressed, hanging the suit in the suite’s spacious closet. Julius, the outfitter, had given him a small cannister of waxy leather oil, so he sat down in his underwear and rubbed it into his new belt and holster, working it into the already supple leather, and allowing the heady scent of it to carry his mind away to a distant, hazy memory of his uncle and his obsession with baseball.

  He’d had a real leather glove, and one humid summer afternoon he’d let Tony rub oil into it when they’d finished playing catch—something they’d done maybe three times in his entire life. The memories might have been few and far between, but they stood out in Tony’s mind when he tried to remember his childhood. Not as much as the fighting, perhaps, but they were prominent. He’d loved his uncle like a surrogate father—a role model in more than one way.

  He remembered how his mom used to get excited when her brother was coming over, how she’d try to cook something a little more filling. He made it easy, always arriving with boxes of groceries—more food than he ever ate. Tony worked the last of the oil into the holster, and the memory faded, supplanted by his current reality. He blinked a few times in the brief disorientation that followed.

  “That one snuck up on me,” he muttered.

  “Something I can help with?” Nora asked.

  “No, thanks.” Tony hung the belt and holster in the closet and then pulled on his far-less-formal clothing, including his bulky operator’s jacket. He smiled at the comfortable familiarity of it; the coat always reminded him of Addie. He slammed his mass driver into his old holster, stuffed his feet into his boots, and then started for the door.

  “Time to find out if Chavez sold us out.”

  “Are you referring to the meeting he arranged?”

  “Yeah.” Tony hurried to the elevator and hit the lobby selection on the touchscreen. While Chavez and his assistant had worked on his arm, they’d gotten to talking, and Tony had slowly begun to believe that the doctor truly wasn’t happy with Jen and his current Cross Corp contract. He began to believe the doc might be willing to help him even beyond what he’d done for his arm. So, he’d decided to take a leap of faith and ask.

  The thing was, Tony knew Jen was going to screw him over on Friday; he just didn’t know how. Of course, a big part of how he’d get around the trap was riding on Addie and the others, but if he could get them a little intel—a place to start for Glitch, perhaps—then he might be able to up the odds even more. What he was lacking was up-to-date knowledge of Jen’s operational habits.

  “Hello, Mr. Shepherd,” Titania called from the front desk as he walked across the lobby.

  Tony paused and strode over to her. They hadn’t spoken since he’d walked out like an asshole the other night. “Um, hey.” He put his right hand on the counter and drummed his fingers—a nervous tick he could have controlled if he’d wanted to.

  “I’m truly sorry if I offended—”

  “Oh, hey.” Tony shook his head. “Don’t you dare apologize. I was in a mood. You know what I mean?”

  She nodded, her metallic curls bouncing with the motion. Her eyes were very expressive, and the more time he spent with her, the more he realized she didn’t “upgrade” her old-school synth aesthetic because her skin was of far finer craftsmanship than modern synth-skin. She was truly a work of art. “I understand perfectly, Tony.”

  He smiled. “Then let me make it up to you sometime, yeah?”

  “Of course. Simply say the word.”

  “Great. Thank you.” Tony nodded, smiling as he turned and went out into the night, nodding to the doorman on his way through. Ever since he’d “failed” to assassinate Doc Chavez, his melancholy moods had been fading. He hated how he’d scared Chavez’s assistant, Helen. He hated that he’d lost control of himself that way. But things had turned around; as the two had worked on Tony’s arm, and the horror of him brandishing his pistol at her faded, she’d begun to joke around with the doctor, falling into a working routine.

  Tony walked toward his cab, remembering how she’d been the one to bring up the doctor’s real grievance with Cross. What had she said? Something like, “You know, Cross kidnapped Doctor Chavez a little while back.”

  Chavez had acted irritated, but he’d been quick to describe the scene: two of Jen’s goons had been killed on a side job she’d given the green light, and one of the survivors had claimed their augments had malfunctioned. Of course, Chavez had procured and installed the augs—reflex jobs—so Jen had decided to put a bit of fear into him. Needless to say, the doctor didn’t feel good about the experience.

  The cab pulled into traffic, and Tony looked at his mini-map: thirteen minutes to the destination—Parkview Housing Stack. It was a low-income housing development sponsored by a consortium of District One corporations. They hadn’t built it out of any sort of altruistic motivation; it was designed as an overflow for the corporate housing in their own megastructures.

  Tony was on his way to visit one of the eighty-thousand residents in the stack—a woman Doc Chavez had told him about. She was a new employee in Jen’s corporate office. A woman with access to her itinerary, and, according to Chavez, more than a little disgruntled. He smiled at the thought; he might have been reckless. He might have taken a big risk going after Chavez the way he did, but maybe something good would come of it. He clenched his mechanical fist. “Something more than an arm upgrade.”