High overhead, caught between the jutting spines of antennae, broadcasting and receiving a million signals a second, he stood. One hand gripped a cable bunch, veins of glittering blue and flashing red fibre that leapt between each sprouting receptor tine. His metal grip flexed sharply, distorting the image on a hundred thousand channels throughout the living spire underfoot. A hundred thousand families interrupted in their viewership, grumbling as the seconds trickled on and the interruption failed to right itself on self-replicating servers, each spawning offspring of themselves within the system in an attempt to grasp at a fresh signal.
Static hounded the view-tubes and before the minute was out, a hundred thousand voices had logged complaints to the building. A hundred thousand screams, bankrupted the service provider before two
minutes had come and gone, as shares were pulled with lightning scrutiny at the possible thought of incompetence and ’insufficient service’.
He relaxed his grip, metal creaking between his joints and the cables spat and choked back to life, a flush of streamed data racing to catch up with the hiccup of power. A hundred thousand voices silenced once more, breathed relief as their view-tubes sharpened to perfect pixilation once again. The spire’s hum, a low resonant thing he could feel through the tactile displacement sensors, that had replaced his nerves, returned like a heartbeat. It thrummed from the foundations, a mile below and howled out into the racing clouds overhead.
’Operative 096. Confirmed targets. Clear for Insertion." The voice was low, bubbling as if drowned. Encrypted. His head tilted, an affirmative click rising behind his right ear.
He felt something like enjoyment, the subtle twisting of internal pressures, organs pushing out against conduits and flexing plate. A moment’s indulgence, that expressed itself in the sudden vent of steam, from either slender vent exhaust tucked in where ribs would be. A valve somewhere inside his skull, miniscule and unseen, shifted and a fresh batch of Thrill drifted from hidden glands into his organic-link; the chain connecting his internals and brain. A wired sense of tension flexed each limb and it’s steel cable joints. A surge of urgency sent him moving.
"Operative 096. Engaging."
He stepped off the edge of the spire, leaving the receiver garden behind, arms spread to deploy the waft-netting that took in the air currents, sent him skirling through the night air, vicious and untamed.
Down he went, dragging thin wisps of fast moving clouds in his wake, the brilliance of glaring lights from below rising toward him. The Thrill made the fall, little more than a tingle. A freshness that always brought the sensation of flesh to his inhuman frame. As if he were human. As if he were some organic in flight.
* * * *
"What is it?"
The vial was glittering, or it’s contents at least. A filmy red consistency, not unlike flaked sunset captured and distilled. Temperamental bits clung to the inner glass and seemed to bubble and fit on their own, segregated from the whole and entirely independent in their animation.
He shook the vial. Got clapped upside the head for it.
"You rigged? Don’t antagonize."
He reached up to clutch at his head, where the stinging was slow to fade, where his hair fell away to one side, leaving a bald patch, clean and chemical’d. His fingers probed the triangle of dots, metal holes no bigger than a scary syringe, inspecting them for damage while his face formed a grimace that was half-way between aggression and grief. He gripped the vial in one hand and found the shape his fist made around it uncomfortable. He set the vial on the table between them and stared across at Phretz.
"Watch what you’re doing. Just had ’em done, still fresh. Still churches ’n virgins."
Phretz cleared his throat, a protracted thing that brought up a fleck of spittle across his bruised lips, injection marks crusted with pus, cracking under the convulsive exhale. Phretz leaned out of their shitty little booth and spat past the metal grates. That’s all the floors of Eye-Brite were. Metal grating, bought cheap off the slaughter-factory’s when the industry had flagged. Just before meat became a Sim-job, when factories weren’t necessary anymore just vats of proper nutrition.
"Then don’t fuckin’ antagonize."
"Alright. Alright! Alright..." The sharp tone of a three ring repetition, hung in the air, clarifying the moment and settling nerves. Phretz leaned back, satisfied, picking up his spoon to dig a lump of quivering Sim from his pan. The glob of gelatinous white meat, shook and quaked as it leapt into his mouth, slurped free of the spoon with a ravished sort of greed. Phretz wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, wincing as it tugged at the injection wounds. He licked at blood.
"Hey. Hey hey, what flavour you get?"
"Mint Cinnalick." Another spoonful vanished passed Phretz’ lips, mouth widening to encompass the spoon and Sim, without touching his lips. Careful this time, though his eyes failed to leave-
"Want some, Grisoll?" He flicked the pan with his free hand, fingers clicking against the metal rim, the plate bouncing, clattering in quick circles before it stopped. Grisoll’s eyes tracked the blubbery Sim as it wriggled in place, tongue darting out like it could catch the spoken taste. He didn’t answer, instead reached for his unused spoon, still magnetized to the steel surface of their square table. His fingers plucked and plucked at the utensil, eyes shifting distractedly at the metal piece as it failed to come free.
"Gotta pay for the privilege, Grisoll." Phretz shoveled another quivering morsel into his gaping mouth, while Grisoll went digging for his locker. He checked every pocket, which were not few, zipping and re-zipping, unbuttoning and re-buttoning until at last his face lit up with eager satisfaction. He plucked the locker from one of his many pants pockets, it’s metal head gleaming under the low lamps that spat and hissed overhead.
"Sure you got enough to borrow?" Both stared at the pay key, jutting from the table’s edge, hugging the wall, a simple little five prong port, short and stubbed, gold plating flaking off each tine, showing it’s age. Grisoll hesitated, eyeing his locker, scrubbing at the thin visor that sat on the cylinder’s flank. He squinted into the glass screen, barely the width of a cuticle.
"Ain’t even got your light proper, Grisoll."
"I know! I know! I know. Was gonna fix it, but I had to upgrade. Get the purest-"
"Churches?"
"Yeah, churches!" He hissed with irritation, glancing up as Phretz dug another morsel off the pan. "Ain’t worth nothin’ if it comes dirty. Chew your thoughts out, leave you with the Dulls. Ain’t got churches then you might as well kiss it-" He smacked his lips to his fingers, flicked the tips at the air "-bye bye." Then, his eyes fell back to the display, trying to read the info. without the light.
"Says I got the thirty."
"Thirty proper?"
"Thirty proper ’n then some."
"You thinking or you sure?"
"Still thinking. No no, I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure." A broad grin split Grisoll’s thin lipped face and he jammed the socket of his Locker onto the table’s key. A chime sound erupted from the locker’s rear end, followed by the scratch of a Digi-voice.
State order, please.
Grisoll’s grin thickened and he glanced at Phretz again.
"See? Told you. Proper Thirty."
"Ha! Proper thirty, only just."
"Proper thirty ’n then some!"
State order, please.
Grisoll blinked and wrapped his hand around the locker hurriedly, leaning forward to speak into it’s rear end.
"Spoon." He paused, as if to reconsider. "...and a Tumbler."
Checking.
Phretz gurgled around his last mouthful, sucking the jelly back into the hollow of one cheek, while he spoke out of the other.
"Couldn’t resist neh?"
"Tumbler ain’t nothin’! It ain’t nothin’, nothin’ at all." Grisoll waved a hand, frown returning at Phretz’ ill-humour, before returning his eyes to the embedded locker. It took a few moments, but eventually the rear end chimed again and the Digi-voice scratched to life once more.
Order confirmed. Account deducted: Thirty on borrow. Five on sale. A Server will be with you momentarily.
The Locker popped hooker quick off the prongs and Grisoll made a grab at it, fumbling several times before he finally managed to catch it. He kissed the cylindrical piece, wincing as it burned his lips before replacing it back into one of his many pockets. The table hummed beneath their elbows and the spoon, fork and knife attached to the table flickered and bounced slightly, the magnetics loosening.
Grisoll plucked up the spoon and beamed across at Phretz, who slurped a last spoonful from the plate before sending it across the table with a metal on metal whisper.
"Aww, Phretz! Nothin’ but slurp left! That ain’t cosy at all!" Grisoll tilted the plate forward, capturing the remaining syrup in the pan’s bottom. He set his spoon in and began to lap up the contents quickly.
"Ain’t my flaw you took your time with it. Keep you proper next time-" Phretz stopped speaking and it took Grisoll a few moments of finishing the syrup at the bottom of the pan, tilting it back to drain the last remnants into his open mouth directly, before he noticed. The pan came down and he saw Phretz’ attention lead off into the rest of Eye-brite. Cheap, dingy rafters hung chain linked lamps overhead, round dangling rings that burned incandescent, shielded by the perforated shade screens that made everything below a polka-dot display. Few of the other tables on this rung of the grates, were visible, scattered and distant from one another, for privacy’s sake. The high-backed booths gave the impression of shelter, while the walled off stairs, lacking a roof, funneled all sounds from the next rung down and the next rung up, into echoing nonsense.
This would explain the confusion on Grisoll’s face, at the frown on Phretz’. Nothing worth seeing beyond their own table’s edge but the man looked disturbed.
"What’chu doin’ Phretz?"
"You hear that?"
"Wha? Ain’t hear nothin’ ’cept the usual buzz."
"Somethin’ whistlin’-"
Grisoll began to lick the pan clean greedily, sucking on his fingers between laps. They stayed like that for a few seconds,Grisoll cleaning and Phretz distracted. Then, as if something clicked through, the pan tapped the table and they returned their attentions to the vial forgotten between them. The red substance within was agitated, reaching long strands that looked like ghastly limbs out to push at the curved boundaries of it’s prison.
"Is it supposed to be doing that?"
"Told you not to antagonize. Now you got it active."
"You ain’t said anything about not shakin’ it! Not a thing, not-"
"Alright! Alright, alright. Just the past. Let it go." Phretz fingered the vial with it’s black stopper, touching the glass tenderly, as if he could stroke the agitation away, as if the antagonized red within were some nerve-wracked pet or infant. "Shhh. No concerns, ease ease. Nothing to fret about. Listen to Phretz. He knows. He knows Shhhh."
"Lookit that, it’s calmin’. How you doin’ that?"
Phretz grinned and licked at blood again. "Nothing but simple once you know the trick of it. Nothing but ease. It’s mimetic, yeah?"
"Mimetic?"
"Yeah, calls on it self, asking for company and learns more from where the rest been. Enough travel from one to the next and it learns. Chews out chunks of whoever’s on it and keeps a copy of the memory. Instant down ’n upload, bam!" Phretz tapped a finger on the table beside the vial, the red within spiked again. He returned to stroking the glass, rocking it back and forth on the table.
"So you take it, it gives you the rush-"
"And you give it the memory. Copies the behaviour and transmits."
"So who had this last?"
"Some bull rover for this guy down by the Slithers. Got himself a pup he pulled off some Arbiter auction. Sniffer that used to be part of the K9A unit."
“A Dog?! You put it in a Dog-”
“Shhh! Keep your voice level.”
“You put it in a dog, Phretz?” There was intensity hugging the inside of Grisoll’s voice, leaning forward across the table to peer down at the vial, with a wide-eyed brand spanking scrutiny.
“Traits get pulled depending on reaction. The spec doesn’t matter, it’s the reactions you copy. The Sniffer’s attentions were razors, Grisoll. Ears, eyes and nose, he caught the air and that’s what it took.” He paused, long enough to smack the top of Grisoll’s head, when a stray finger began to poke and roll the vial about. The red inside began to flicker, flopping drops about like water on heat coils and spent bullets.
“What’d I say?”
“What?” Grisoll had reared back, hands on his ports, checking that they were still virgin.
“Don’t antagonize the produc-” Phretz froze again, then turned slowly, head canting to one side, mouth hung open with in slack concentration. Grisoll made a face and mimicked the gesture, though no secret revealed itself in the miming.
“What-”
“You can’t hear that?”
“I told you before, Phretz, I ain’t hear nothing.”
“That’s ‘cause you’re still running rust for ears. Get a sense-grade next time ‘stead of coughing up for a head jack.” Phretz had yet to turn away from the dark and polka-dot scenery of Eye-brite’s third rung, his voice distracted, robbed of it’s vitriol.
“Hey, plenty use out of Ports-”
“Nothing but p’n p-...You sure you can’t hear it now? A sharp whistle sound-”
“Can’t hear nothin’ ‘n Ports got more to ‘em than Porn ‘n Polit-”
The Ceiling cracked, all the dark and the rafters that held it up shuddering under some brutal impact. Suspension alarms creaked to life, dusting off their tumbling sirens to warble through Eye-brite’s interior. A half dozen tables on the Third rung went brilliant halogen white, indicating their availability, as their occupants vacated with the reflexes of the altered and paranoid. For once, the buzz went utterly still, echoing the footsteps of the vacating and the urgent-to-be-elsewhere as they rarely ever were. Arbiters spawned riots, but came through the front doors. Brawls, got the full urgency of hoots and the chirp of spectators, but that was already inside. Something come down on the roof and silence reigned.
This was the beginnings of an invasion.
Grisoll stared, head ducked so low his chin was lost beneath the table’s edge. The grip on his spoon was vicious, knuckled so white the bones were showing. His ports were leaking, a translucent red that trickled down the side of his skull, unnoticed.
Phretz’s head had retracted, erasing all sign of his neck, lips puckered around bleeding injection sores and eyes darting across the ceiling as if by sheer will alone he could peel back the dark obscure and lay eyes and scrutiny on the responsible.
“Phre-”
“Shut. Up.”
“Phretz wha-”
“Shit in your inport, don’t use my-”
The ceiling broke, a section seeming to unhinge, then plummet inward as the tenuous fibres, rebar and suggested construction solidity tore away and plummeted into one of the halogen lit tables. The floor groaned, as metal does when stressed beyond all measure than caved inward under the weight, grates pulling free and dominoing into open air. The winds, held at bay by a sealant grid, poured suddenly through the opening in the mesh, shrieking in the ears of the occupants. A riot of motion erupted, Halogen bulbs flaring all over the second rung as bodies fled the noise. The fourth rung continued it’s clandestine silence, the buzz gone dead in the whorl of the wind moan. The occupants were counting on the law of plenty to few in this case; no more than three bodies dead or broken in a brawl, or you risked the mob thinking you had an urge for mass murder and those still standing had better do something about you. Most were willing to take the odds that they weren’t one of the maximum three.
The ceiling hole illuminated, a spot-light that vibrated in static suspension; all bobs and weaves and inarticulate bounces, errant spinning flashlights and strobes stuck on. The light zoomed down, pin-prick thin and focused through the hole in the ceiling, punching dead centre down through the rupture in the grates, specs and flecks of debris circling it’s illuminating blaze, a stairway of dust, spiralling the cord of light.
A stench like batteries cracked open, ozone blue, the taste of electricity, hugged the air and ate winces out of sinuses.
It slid down into place with a weighty grip wrapped around the length of the light cord, all metal shells, curved out; some carapidic alien or insect. An armoured phantom, legs spreading to catch the edge of the metal grates on pronged avian boots, the scything toes clipping into place through the shredded grooves of the mesh. It’s free hand, a gauntlet of two broad fingers and a hooked thumb, grasped at the black unnoticeable haft of some long rectangular box, hard flat edges on either flank with a diamonds shaped faucet for a muzzle and a complex and undoable bind of cables, feeding tubes and metal spines jutting from where a forearm should be. The weapon came up, beneath the glare of a mirrored oval head, seamless and reflective of the dark above and the halogen spots around it, staring the eyes of those that met it back at them.
Phretz couldn’t help but think that featureless head on thick hydraulic cords, one could mistake for a neck, was looking at him.
“Phretz-”
“Shit-”
Both men rose, half in violence and half in cowardice, reaching for available weaponry that consisted of Grisoll’s spoon and Phretz’ mag-burner, that spat a single shot from it’s black rimmed muzzle, a spark of incandescent white hucked through the air at the perched piece of armour which responded with something so casual and effortless it left the pair frozen in sharp and rigid astonishment.
The metal hand, released the lightcord, fell into the path and smacked the thermal projectile from the air. The momentum of the shot was stolen in the gesture, leaving the bulb of magnesium still burning to fall through the hole in the grating behind and skirl into the winds.
“Grisoll.”
“Shit.”
Both were perched at the edge of their booth, the halogen blinking rapidly as sensors registered and re-registered their threshold presence. A strobe of illumination flashed across that mirrored face, which rose into a still regard, arms hung to either side of it’s carapace form. The oval skull tilted to one side, curiously, expectantly and both realized it was waiting for something. An indication confirmed, as boot steps came trouncing up the floor grill of the Third Rung, a heavy pant in the runner’s breath.
Brite Keeg was a monster of a creature. A foot more person than any other body could have hoped to match, the embedded AI steroids had continuously worked and re-worked the muscles in his shoulders and limbs, shrinking his torso to the thinnest of margins that required a mech-girdle for support purposes. His knuckles had been cracked in so many bar fights and reasoning attempts with customers of his establishment, that he’d had them replaced with ceramite studs. Rumours often persisted that he’d had some sensory output embedded beneath each palm that sent out an inaudible frequency, convincing any they were hearing a knocking sound whenever he approached.
Confirmation of course was rarely ever provided, as those who might have talked inevitably ended up in the Medic cells.
Keeg whirled into view, all jaw and metal-bright fists,the flesh of his shoulders, bulking around his head like cushions and pillows, contorted around the edges of pulsing spasms, clusters of newly grown muscle surging with all the control of an isolated drug overdose.
“You broke the roof!” He pointed, a difficult gesture that bent at the elbow rather than raised at the shoulder. Veins popped to life with the motion and his eyes squeezed tighter around grimly puffy features, red adrenaline flexing under neck cords the size of leviathan eels clutching at his windpipe. “You don’t break my bar! Less you’re looking to be broke!”
The perched creature, featureless, wrapped in metal and spawned of the sky, so a creature it must have been, didn’t move or shift it’s talon-toed grip on the mesh, body curling slowly, in perfectly at ease increments until it was crouched in place, the knuckles of it’s open hand brushing the grate before it while the metallic box with it’s black diamond muzzle, shifted across sculpted thighs, cable and conduit bulging underneath muscle-shaped plates.
No answer came and patience was never Keeg’s strongest suit. An eager energy rose through veins, channels and rivers of pumping chemical surging through the man’s uneven body, the AI pulling hormones and aggression to the forefront until Keeg’s face was a bright red blur in the oval mirror’s reflection. There was an inarticulate bellow, that drowned out the howling winds below and Grisoll and Phretz behind Keeg had not moved an inch, least they gain the periphery of either the unknown metal creature or Keeg himself. Neither seemed comfortable prospects so they stayed exactly where they were, huddling a little further into the space behind the Barman’s obtuse frame. The rule of few and plenty made reflex out of their fear.
On the table, the vial was full of spasms. Convulsive strands of red, limbing and punching the glass interior with eager impotence.
The air seemed to pause, a hydraulic pressure waiting for the piston to drive things forward in time. Inevitably, it happened and the world suddenly thinned to it’s most primitive of circumstances. Keeg’s charge forward was little more than a dozer blade, halogen light and shadow playing off his massive frame which led with fists and a guttural sense of violence. Six long steps on powerful thighs and mutated calves would have been all it took for Keeg’s first swing.
He made it, exactly three.
There was a sound, like the clack of unfolding shutters, the whine of servos activating. Keeg seemed to stumble forward, crashing onto all fours with another strangled articulation. His body shook and trembled and the muscle spasms grew vicious, bubbling along the ridge of his shoulders and down along his back where the reinforced spine protruded through the skin. A locked tension ran the length of it, bending it inward at a sharp angle as Keeg’s body seemed to rear forward in slow motion, too big and broad for anything to be seen ahead of him.
Then, he peeled.
Flesh rolled back in neatly torn flaps, driven from shoulders, skull and arms on the slimmest of animated fibres, wafting overhead in the dark and polka-dot light. Slim enough they would evade the memory of having ever existed when those who witnessed what occurred could not drown it out with stiff drink or hard drug. Keeg shook where he perched, continuing to gargle incoherently as his outer layer and quickly following, the layer below that seemed to fold and scrape and roll up with elastic restriction until a neat pile of raggedly edged scrolls had formed up around the reinforced servitor vertebrae of his spine. A second and third collection appeared with lightning thin delay, right behind the first and onward in seconds until Keegs heavy and malformed skeleton, a bent and wretched thing where muscle had warped and forced bone to grow around it, seemed to waver and pitch in place, dripping organs and vital insides down onto the grate where they slithered, caught by the winds, between the standing metal creature’s legs and out the hole with perfunct abruptness.
The ‘body’ clattered to the metal grate, a sound that rose to challenge the wind for a moment. The metal creature, stood, lowering the arm with the strangely assembled box, flaps and diamond gouged muzzle flitting back into a uniform and simplified piece from it’s previous transformation. That oval reflection was regarding Grisoll and Phretz again, the space between them and their reflective audience clear.
The pair couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Phretz’ hand had grown numb around the haft of his mag-burner, finger tucked tightly and rigidly against the flat impression trigger even as he stared, mouth leaking blood freely now from where he’d bitten through a number of sores.
Grisoll was tucked into the booth, folded in on himself in awkward disassembly, as if his nerves and reactions had abandoned him to this moment. A pool of urine leaked down his seat and fell through the metal grate beneath their table.
No one had noticed the death of the buzz, for there were no bodies left in either of the adjoining Rungs. All those who populated the Eye-brite had sense enough to know their moment. Brite Keeg, Grisoll and Phretz made three. The maximum under the law of few and plenty. There were no bodies within a hundred yards of the squat Auxillary Sustenance Establishment, embedded in the low foundation flank of one of the spires.
Eye-brite’s sensors had begun to register the death of their owner and appropriate measures were already being taken, as shutters and wind sheets began to roll swiftly down across the window ports along the first Rung’s open walls. The tumblers on the doors would be sliding into place, fusing with the hard weld charges embedded for emergencies and sealing the offending parties within until the Arbiter’s arrived.
This did little to address the pair of holes in the structure and did nothing to sway, perturb or gain the notice of the metallic assassin.
The wind continued it’s manic arrival, moving through ceiling and floor with impunity. All around, tables from the First and Fifth rungs were beginning to shut down, their halo glare fading and failing with plinks of disservice that chimed in synch with the roll of the shutters as they slid into place. Of the three remaining, none seemed intent on moving. Voluntarily or otherwise.
Keeg’s skeletal frame, it’s rolled up assortment of former layers, unraveled in the harsh winds. The easing folds of peeled muscle, were sent snapping wetly in the currents, dragging with them the entire macabre sculpture, which toppled and slid from sight through the gaping hole in Eye-Brite’s floor mesh. With a negligent step of pronged feet, the metal creature moved aside to allow the former barkeep to tumble through the floor-crater and into the oblivion below.
“Phretz.”
“What?”
“This...this is it isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer. He set his mag-burner on the table, turning in the booth to face Grisoll while the shriek of metal erupted nearby. The fourth and second rungs lighting began to power down, halogen blinks, electric eyes in the growing darkness, drifting off to sleep all around them. Their own booth had fallen back into the polka-dot incandescence of occupation. Grisoll’s eyes found Phretz who had begun to dig through his own modest pockets in search of something. Grisoll turned, untangling himself to face Phretz once more, a conscious tension clouding his right side. As if the metal creature had gravity and impacted all mass around it.
Phretz’ laid out two small thimbles of smooth steel on the table, one after the delicate other and Grisoll took a moment out of his paralytic fear to regard them, recognition pulling his eyes up to stare at Phretz. The sores on the pusher’s lips had begun to crust over again, the bleeding little more than darkened patches surrounding the cracked injection sites. He seemed melancholy in the polka-dot lights, tiny pin-pricks of illumination catching just the right amount of broken features to suggest resignation. Grace. Grisoll stole some nerve off that and seemed to still his trembling to a minimal.
“A last little odyssey.”
“Yeah? What’s in ‘em?”
“Touch of Noose. Some Thrill. Enough for an in-system pinch.”
“Why thumb delivery?”
“Runs up the arm, can feel it, like an invasion. Trickles and pours. Porno in the veins. Body buzz from the tips to the top, when it finally takes your head off.”
Grisoll stared at the metal nail injectors, the slivers hidden on the inside, too thin to feel. He picked one up and looked inside, cradling it in his hands with newborn delicacy. Phretz’s hand rolled the vial around between them, back and forth on the edges of his fingertips, frantic energy given this small outlet. The glass on metal was the only sound for a few sharp seconds, as buffeting winds found somewhere else to be momentarily.
“Hey Grisoll?”
“Yeah, Phretz?”
“Sorry. I mean, sorry, for this, all of it, sorry.”
Grisoll shook his head, gaze falling to the vial Phetz was rolling around, listening to the man’s throat constrict around words he’d never given to anyone before now, at least as far as Grisoll had known him. Metal ground metal and a shadow began to chew apart the lights all around them, servers registering the final occupied table as a final grace for those witnesses still available. Somewhere in the establishment a whine erupted overhead, flashes erupting in the dark as protected lenses caught evidence and stills of the scene. Mics chimed to life and there was the briefest of pauses in the Metal Creature’s approach. An after-thought, perhaps.
“Still happy about the virgins?”
Grisoll’s hands rose to touch at his weeping ports, a shaky smile creeping over his face. He shrugged a little helplessly, fitting the edge of the delivery injector onto his thumb, resting it in the top crook of his fist.
“Wish I’d gotten some porn.”
“All they’re really good for.”
The shadow stepped in and the incandescent bulb overhead guttered. Both men made fists, the drugs rushing up their arms and veins. Metal clapped loudly as something nearby unfolded and the mics caught the first edge of hallucinating shrieks.
* * * *
Arbiter Response Units arrived at Auxiliary Sustenance 034, coded ‘Eye-Brite’ by local populations, at a prompt 6:34 AM, 3 hours prior to sunrise outside of the Perma-clouds that never parted and an hour after recording mics and cameras had run through their bandwidth allowance.
The Law’s arrival past the Resident Zone Line, was enough of a reason to be somewhere else. You did your best to be on another community platform or, if you were unlucky enough to live on the same one, stayed inside, shutters bolted and lights out, pretending to be ghosts. Those who braved the shutters on their homes, little more than staggered cubicle compartments and stacks of obsolete shipment containers pressed into the shade of the spire, would watch as the glare of descending lights flashed across the stairwell plates of mesh grating upon which all life past the R.Z.L resided. The clinging metal limbs of the Geckos, made punctuating baritone calls that echoed throughout the district. Their multi-limbed segments crawled and shifted, a canopy of brazen lights scouring from a dozen embedded bulbs in it’s segmented body, whirling and rotating with fine precision through a complex orbit of one another. Slender legs, moved each with fluid grace, clinging to the side of the spire by the intravenous divots carved out of it’s surface. Fluidic contraptions of eerie, almost organic regard, a dozen spotlights illuminating the area for a hundred feet in all directions.
With their presence, the Arbiters arrived, as mysteriously and distantly as a zap storm come out of the gloom. They converged across the metal grates on Auxiliary Sustenance 034. Dark black armour, polished to a refracting gleam that caught the edges of the Gecko spotlights and made every spectator wince from their hiding places. Hard shells, divided by ceramic mesh, covering them in sections and segments, gave them the appearance of two-legged insects, the only human part of their appearance in the hard iron jaws that existed below their full-wrap visors and shade-screen helmets, rounded and hugging the base of the neck. A dense foam moulded to protect the neck’s nape, stuffed and pulsing with feeding lights and liquids, that constantly fed a stream of ‘wet’ data from each officer directly to the control hub. Connected and isolated, no Arbiter could be threatened without another knowing it almost instantly. These soft kits also served as the main source of drug induction, providing the Arbiter with thought-command access to several enforcement narcotics capable of making each individual a riot crew all to themselves.
The doors had been forced, cracked with a half dozen thermal charges before anyone had registered the ruptured entrance points in both the ceiling and floor. Smoke wafted off the burned out tumblers on the doors, while the Arbiters had filed in with textbook invasive tactics and floorplan coverage. Security identification, a frenetic buzzing voice, feminine and harsh had greeted them demanding identification under threat of perforation. The lead officer in charge, had merely offered the override command issued every Arbiter hub that presided over the Districts.
Power was restored with a brief command and control was transferred automatically to the Arbiters with the security deactivation. Booths lit up and the rafters were shown in their rusted, industrial solidity. Each rung was secured by the heavy footfalls of well armed Arbiters, who swung Hard-shell riot-boxes in their hands to orient on each empty booth that lit up. Stopping power enough to punch holes in mobs, the long box-shaped shotguns had a conical mouth. Those outside of the law referred to them as levellers. A squad of five, could dismantle a protest with three rounds apiece.
Of the Rungs that lit, only the third was occupied and only then by a single booth. The skeletal remains, blood pooled and visceral, sat at the table, facing one another, heads lolled back to rest against the booths, hands locked to the table, the flesh of fingers still clinging to the bony tips, pressed and pulped. The flesh hung around their hips and ankles in dramatic rolls and bundles, the drip and leak of internals having long since faded to a runny stream that vanished between the grates underfoot, whipped away into the night below.
The data vault had been sealed by a three layer redundant security system, next to unheard of this far below the Resident Zone line. Three different master-commands had been pulled from three different layers of increasingly impressive Arbitration Authority. With the third, they managed to crack open the first layer of the Cube’s security, activating the Powder Jets, that layered the entirety of Auxillary Sustenance 034 in a fine blue talc. The screams and shrieks had erupted not soon after that. Reports back had been received with stumped silence from their higher ups, demanding the Arbiter’s present fall back on standard protocol in retrieving the next of Kin notice.
Libraries and Archives were consulted, detailing the names and identities of the owner and the two bodies found in the booths. Of the latter, a summary existed detailing only the bare minimum of appointments kept and logged for just such an occasion. The system retrieved Phretz’ militant profile, for his time spent in the Rogue Data Conflicts some two decades past and listed him as a field Medic, dishonourably discharged for AI tampering and boosting implants out of burnouts. Of Grisoll, there was merely a long sheet of implant upgrades, most recently an inport direct feed to the brain, with custom input jacks connected directly to sensory and chemical distribution components of the brain. A typical Thrill-rider upgrade, meant to take advantage of the ‘surreal’ experience within all five senses when plugged in.
A long history of porn addiction and substance abuse, followed his purchase orders and receipts listed.
Of the Former, Keeg Brite, however, information matched a ‘Fun-run’ account. The Arbiter hub returned with six different alias, each with a radically different story, gender, modifications and history within the system. It would take five days for the Hub to recognize the algorithim for a ‘Mirror House’ AI, inventing and uploading new profiles directly to their archives whenever an attempt was made to access Keeg Brite’s actual information.
An order went up through the hierarchy for full investigation proceedings, while the Arbiters pursued the next of Kin reference, the only thing listed in every profile that matched. A name:
Izel Prew.