#vanquisher 2099

[litrpgburrito]

Neon Dreams and Pixel Quests

In the heart of a bustling cyberpunk city, where neon lights clashed with the darkness of the night, there existed an arcade that was a sanctuary for those who sought refuge in the digital realms. The **Arcadia 2099** was more than just an arcade; it was a portal to countless worlds, each game a gateway to new adventures. It was here that a group of friends, bound by their love for pixelated challenges and 8-bit melodies, gathered every evening after school.

The arcade's entrance was marked by a flickering sign, half of its letters lost to time, but its reputation needed no illumination. Inside, rows of cabinets stood like soldiers at attention, each screen a vibrant canvas of colors and motion. The air was thick with the scent of warm electronics and the sound of synthesized tunes layered with the rapid clicks of buttons and joysticks.

At the center of this electric labyrinth was the **Crimson Phoenix**, a machine that was the stuff of legends. It was said that whoever topped its high score would be granted a wish, a digital genie hidden within its circuits. The game was a relentless shoot 'em up, with waves of enemies and a difficulty that scaled to near-impossible heights.

Our protagonists, **Mia**, **Jin**, and **Takashi**, were an inseparable trio, each with their own reasons to conquer the Crimson Phoenix. Mia, with her sharp eyes and quicker reflexes, was the strategist. Jin, the jokester with a heart of gold, had hands that danced across the controls with grace. Takashi, the quiet one, possessed an uncanny ability to predict patterns and an unbreakable focus.

Their quest was not just about the high scores; it was about proving themselves, about finding their place in a world that was rapidly changing. Each victory was a step closer to their dreams, each defeat a lesson learned.

As they took their places before the Crimson Phoenix, the screen came to life, and they were transported into a world of spaceships and starfields. The litRPG elements of their real-life quest blended seamlessly with the game, their progress tracked by an unseen system that awarded experience points for every enemy vanquished and level conquered.

But there was a twist to their tale. Unbeknownst to them, a mysterious figure observed from the shadows. Cloaked in anonymity, a hacker known only as **Cipher** had discovered that Arcadia 2099 was more than it seemed. There were whispers of a dark secret, a code hidden within the games that could unlock power beyond the screen.

As Mia, Jin, and Takashi battled through the digital cosmos, Cipher plotted their next move. Would they be allies or adversaries in the grand scheme of things? Only time would tell.

The friends laughed and cheered, their camaraderie echoing through the arcade. They were not just players in a game; they were warriors in a digital odyssey, their lives intertwined with the fate of the Arcadia 2099.

And so, their story began, a slice of life wrapped in the fantastical, a tale of friendship, challenge, and the pursuit of dreams in a world where reality and fantasy blurred into one.

**To be continued...**

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[vanquisher2099]

Part 40: A Bit of Preparation

It was no small thing to return to a city where, according to the local and national media, you were responsible for the murder of an innocent (ha!) man and one of the most noticeable acts of terrorism in the year – even if your exact identity was still not a matter of public record. It was, indeed, no small thing to make any sort of movement at all when the past month had largely been spent recovering from what were, as it turned out, significant knife wounds. Alayna’s abdomen still ached, and she still felt like the repairs she’d conducted on her arm weren’t as good as they could have been, but she’d been training with some of D3m3t3r’s combat drones and felt a lot more stable than she had a month ago. Fighting against an opponent who moved with superhuman quickness was, generally, not a way to feel productive, but Alayna figured she had a good chance of at the very least being able to get away from further operatives (though the odds of taking one out in a hand-to-hand situation remained remote – something D3m3t3r was sure to remind her of constantly).

Maddie was fussing over Alayna as she prepared to head back into the city – something Alayna had decided sprung from boredom more than any real concern. Madame Midnight’s disappearance from the Chicagoland area had caused a fair amount of consternation among her usual clients, but the bulk of her information network had survived. Some sources had gone dark in the past month, and D3m3t3r indicated this was down to the organization hunting them. Alayna had taken to calling the organization the Shadow Council, but both Maddie and D3m3t3r seemed content to ignore it. D3m3t3r would only exclusively refer to the organization hunting them as “our enemy” or “the organization hunting you,” and Maddie was prone to just calling them “those assholes” when she referred to them at all.

Alayna sighed as Maddie went over the particulars of the infiltration route one last time. “I’ve got the route memorized, and three backup routes in case the primary is compromised. I’ll be fine.”

Maddie frowned in response. “Are you sure you have them memorized? You’re going to have to stay off the network once you get within city limits – they’ll be looking for anything remotely resembling your signature.”

“I’ve run quiet a million times before, honest. It’s kind of how I kept my hideout secure, remember?”

“You mean the one they almost found, right?”

Nettled, Alayna “’Almost’ is the operative word in the sentence. From the sound of it, it was part of a wider search, which means they were just doing a search near any locations I regularly went to.”

“And of course they’ll not have put any sort of surveillance near those sites specifically waiting for you, hmm?”

“Which,” D3m3t3r’s voice broke in from a speaker in the ceiling, “is where my help comes in.”

Alayna gestured in the direction of the speaker in something like triumph. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

Maddie did not share Alayna’s willingness to trust D3m3t3r, though if she were honest with herself she’d admit jealousy to be part of it. After all, D3m3t3r’s resources were so considerable they’d been enough to pluck Maddie off the street without even really trying. There was something inherently humiliating about being an information broker and having someone get the drop on you – even if they happened to be backed by the resources of the government surveillance apparatus. “I still think you need to be careful. D3m3t3r’s plan might not go off perfectly.”

At this Alayna grinned and her eyes lit up. “Oh I’m sure it won’t. That’s why it will be fun.”

“Ah yes, I forgot you’re completely insane.”

A noncommittal shrug. “What can I say? I’ve got an adventurous nature.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”

“That’s because you haven’t asked me on any adventures.”

“I’m afraid I’m not really one for rushing into danger.”

“There’s different types of adventurous, you know.”

Maddie snorted and ignored the comment. Alayna’s go-to method for ending conversations tended to be flirting, which wasn’t exactly annoying, per se, but were a sign that she wasn’t taking the conversation seriously – or she was and just wanted to get Maddie’s mind off of it. It was difficult to tell sometimes.

Alayna took Maddie’s silence at a sign of having won the conversation, but something compelled her to open her mouth again. “Hey, look… I’ll be careful, okay?”

D3m3t3r’s voice broke in again. “You’re an important component in our overall plans, so extra caution is appreciated.”

“Yeah, what she said.”

“It’s time to get started, Alayna.” D3m3t3r said. “Your ride will be here in 15 minutes. It would be detrimental to our timetable if you missed it.”

Alayna nodded and slung a bag of equipment over her shoulder. Now that the moment of departure was near, the danger seemed a lot closer. She looked one last time at Maddie and threw her a grin and a wave. Maddie waved back with an expression that did a halfway decent job of concealing her worry. The door to the building swung shut behind her and Maddie muttered something under her breath before exiting the room.

“Miss Midnight, I think it would be best if you started making your own preparations as well. You have a part to play in this too, after all.” D3m3t3r’s voice echoed in the hallway.

“My preparations are already complete – I sent the messages an hour ago. We should have a good picture of what’s going on before Alayna arrives. No chance of any sort of live feed, but if something goes sideways we’ll know.” Maddie didn’t add that she’d also made inquiries regarding D3m3t3r’s organization, but only because she assumed D3m3t3r would already know about it. If there was a double-cross coming, Maddie would know about it – and she’d find a way to kill D3m3t3r for it.

Part 41

Part 39

[thehivemindwrites]

So that happened

I mentioned this elsewhere already, but yesterday I reached out to a buddy of mine who also happens to be a Professional Editor person and asked if they could either 1. quote me on the cost of editing Vanquisher 2099 or 2. point me in the direction of someone who could quote me on the etc. etc. 

I did that because as I sat down to look over the whole thing myself, I realized there was no way I was in any position to make the cuts and changes with clear eyes, because I’ve been immersed in it for a year and a half and that tends to skew one’s sense of perspective. Connections which are obvious to me might turn out to be completely incomprehensible, so I needed another set of eyes on it - and I needed those eyes to be Professional and Paid because I am not about to ask a friend to take a look at this 63k word thing just because we’re friends. This not only ensures I’ll get an honest opinion, but it also ensures that it will actually get done, which is why money is useful (plus people should get paid for doing their dang jobs, even if they are friends - something that has become a policy of mine over the last couple of years). 

Plus, paying actual money to get this edited makes it Serious, aka it means I will actually put the damn thing out as a book that people can buy if they want to. That’ll involve finding an artist to design a cover as well, which will also cost money but hey fuck it in for a penny, in for a pound As They Say. I don’t know when the thing will become available for sale, but in 2016 I decided to write a book by the end of 2017, so it makes sense to make the decision now to have the damn thing Out by the end of 2018, assuming we’re not all dead. 

I also started writing the next arc, which is shockingly earlier than I thought I would - I sort of intended to spend more time planning - but I had the first couple chapters pop into my head (I do not find it a coincidence that this coincided with my having remembered that Sleater-Kinney is a great band and spending the last couple of days listening to them after work) and now I’m bound and determined to get those down and then figure out how I want to tackle the rest (much like the first arc, the plan is to have the broad beats of the story hammered out before I start really diving into it, and then flesh things out as I go). I’m a sucker for establishing shots though, and these first chapters are basically a way for me to reintroduce myself to the world and characters while I figure out what exactly will plague our heroine this time around. Because I like setting deadlines and then missing them immediately, I’ve set a goal of being ready to launch the next arc on my birthday, because that’s when I launched the last one and that turned out okay so might as well double down.

I’m hoping to tell a different story this time around - we started with giant conspiracies, which was cool, but this next arc is meant to, potentially, be a little smaller in scope. Plus there’s Jill still running around and who knows how d3m3t3r’s evolved in the meantime. At any rate, it’s a safe bet that people of a certain sort know who the Vanquisher is, and they might be interested in her for different reasons. Maybe they want to help. Maybe they want revenge. We will doubtless find out together. Well, not totally together - I’ll hopefully have a bunch of stuff written by the time my birthday rolls around, so I’ll know what happens way before you do. But, you know, it’ll probably be a surprise to me too once I come up with it.

In the meantime, I’ll gladly continue to post rambling bullshit here, and put up that KS epilogue for Emi I mentioned as well, because I might as well put that up somewhere in a complete form instead of having it buried on the forums. Apparently that is a two year old bit of writing now, which is mind-blowing to me because it feels like I just did it like, last year. Time’s gotten pretty goddamned shifty out here. We’ll figure it out one way or the other though, eh?

[allcheatscodes]

spider man edge of time xbox 360

http://allcheatscodes.com/spider-man-edge-of-time-xbox-360/

spider man edge of time xbox 360

Spider-Man: Edge of Time cheats & more for Xbox 360 (X360)

Cheats

Unlockables

Hints

Easter Eggs

Glitches

Guides

Achievements

Get the updated and latest Spider-Man: Edge of Time cheats, unlockables, codes, hints, Easter eggs, glitches, tricks, tips, hacks, downloads, achievements, guides, FAQs, walkthroughs, and more for Xbox 360 (X360). AllCheatsCodes.com has all the codes you need to win every game you play!

Use the links above or scroll down to see all the Xbox 360 cheats we have available for Spider-Man: Edge of Time.

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Check PlayStation 3 cheats for this game

Check Wii cheats for this game

Check Nintendo 3DS cheats for this game

Genre: Action, Comic Action

Developer: Beenox

Publisher: Activision

ESRB Rating: Teen

Release Date: October 4, 2011

Hints

Currently we have no tips for Spider-Man: Edge of Time yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Cheats

Spider-Man Russian Suit

Go to Cheat unlock section at the main menu and enter, “coldhearted”.

Future Foundation Costume

After selecting a save game, enter the code:

Up, Down, Left, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left) using the D-Pad

This will unlock the Future Foundation costume for the Amazing Spider-Man, which can be selected by going into the Bonus Gallery section of the main menu.

Big Time Costume

At the main menu press on the D pad: Right, Down, Down, Up, Left, Down, Down, Right. You should get a notification that the cheat was activated. Just go to the Bonus Gallery, and then to “Alternate Costumes” to select Big Time Spider-man for 2099.

Spider-Man 2099 Poison Suit

Go to the Code unlock section at the main menu and enter, “innerspider”.

Spider-Man Last Stand Suit

Go to VIP Cheat Code at the main menu and enter, “laststand”.

Unlockables

Currently we have no unlockables for Spider-Man: Edge of Time yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Easter eggs

Currently we have no easter eggs for Spider-Man: Edge of Time yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Glitches

Currently we have no glitches for Spider-Man: Edge of Time yet. If you have any unlockables please feel free to submit. We will include them in the next post update and help the fellow gamers. Remeber to mention game name while submiting new codes.

Guides

Currently no guide available.

Achievements

Achievement List

Airborne Assailer (25)Perform 3 of each Air Attack on enemies

Alchemaxed Out! (50)Buy all Combat Upgrades

Ambitious Arachnid Acquirer (10)Obtain 1/4 of the Golden Spiders

Anti-Venom Vanquisher (10)Defeated Anti-Venom on any difficulty level

Astounding Archives Achiever (10)Gained access to the Restricted Archives Computer

Awesome Atomic Acquirer (10)Collected all three Atomic Fuses

Boss Of Bosses (25)Defeated the CEO on any difficulty level

Bot Hotshot (10)Erased the Prototype Combat Robot from existence

Collector Detector (50)Collect 2000 Orb Fragments

Complete Data Diviner (10)Analyzed all Data Modules

Consumate Completist (50)Web of Challenges – Obtain all Gold Medals

Dangerous Destination Decider (10)Floor 66 Reached

Daringly Determined Dodger (10)Evaded 100 attacks with Hyper-Sense

Defeated Atrocity on any difficulty levelDefeated Atrocity on any difficulty level

Determined Do-gooder (25)Complete Act 2 on any difficulty level

Dread Destiny Determiner (10)Foreseen the death of Spider-Man

Excellent Emblem Enthusiast (25)Collect 1000 Orb Fragments

Fabulous Feline Fury (10)Defeated Black Cat on any difficulty level

Fantastic Five Hundred (10)Collect 500 Orb Fragments

Fearless Front-Facer (25)Complete all levels on Normal

Furious Fist Fighter (10)Execute a 50-hit combo

Ghost With The Most (10)Avoided 100 attacks with Accelerated Decoy

Gold Standard (50)Buy all Character Upgrades

Gorgeous Gold Grabber (10)Web of Challenges – Obtain all Gold Medals for a Chapter

Hammer Slammer (25)Damage enemies with Roundhouse Spin and Web Hammer 10 times each

Hundred Hit Hero (25)Execute a 100-hit combo

Incinerator Rex! (10)Brought the Incinerator to Maximum Power

Infinite Slugger (50)Execute a 200-hit combo

Intrepid Adventurer (50)Complete Act 3 on any difficulty level

Jack Of All Attacks (25)Perform 3 of each type of Grab Attacks on enemies

Jackpot, Tiger! (10)Saved Mary Jane

Larrupin’ Locksmith (10)Teleported back to Alchemax with the Key

Master of All You Survey (50)Complete all levels on Hard

Mighty Marvel Booster (10)Completed a Freefall section by boosting the entire time

Mighty Medal Master (25)Web of Challenges – Obtain all Gold Medals for an Act

Mighty Meltdown Misser (10)Stopped the future from becoming a radioactive wasteland

Mighty Monster Master (10)Retrieved all three DNA Samples from the knocked-out Atrocity

Read All About It! (25)Obtained all Newspapers

Restricted Room Rogue (10)Gained access to the Future Restricted Area

Sizzling Century Mark (10)Defeat 100 enemies

Spider Slugger Supreme (25)Defeat 500 enemies

Spider Snagger Supreme (50)Obtain all Golden Spiders

Super Trooper (10)Complete Act 1 on any difficulty level

Super-Suited Swinger (25)Obtain all Alternate Suits

Superb Spider Searcher (25)Obtain 1/2 of the Golden Spiders

Survivor Supreme (10)Complete Session 3 or later without dying

That’s The Parker Luck, Chuck (10)Spider-Man was down and out

[vanquisher2099]

Part Seventeen: A Bartender Walks into a Bar

Maesin waited several minutes for the sound of footsteps outside her storage unit to die down before she emerged into the soft morning light. If she had been the sort of organism that required sleep, she would have regretted her decision to stay up late observing the movements of data, money, and personnel that made up Madame Midnight’s increasingly-expansive information empire, but as it was she merely felt a slight pang of annoyance that she still had to go to her cover job. What was the point, she thought to herself, of having access to so many favors and sources of cash when she couldn’t use any of it without attracting attention and getting herself and everyone else she gave even the slightest bit of a shit about killed?

A car was waiting for her three blocks away to take her to the bar, and she slid in and immediately overrode the automated driving software. One indulgence she allowed herself was driving. She’d done it a lot with Alayna, before everything went to hell, and doing so since everything had gone to hell was effectively a coping mechanism. The science community was generally undecided on the question of whether an artificial intelligence could actually contract PTSD or even grieve the loss of a loved one, but Maesin thought that in this case the science community probably should’ve just asked an AI. She liked to pretend, sometimes, that she didn’t know how long it had been since she’d last seen Alayna (down to the second, thanks internal clock), that this was just a temporary thing and they’d be able to meet up in a couple of days, that everything would somehow get back to the weird semblance of something routine they’d had.

It hadn’t been, of course. And it wouldn’t go back to the way things were, because even if the long-shot plan Alayna had insisted on not telling her the details of (yes, yes, J4D3 herself had insisted on not telling her the details of, and then promptly wiped her own memory of the details after leaving an apologetic recording to – who else – herself) actually worked, and they were able to meet again, too much time had passed between then and now. Plus, Maesin didn’t exactly have the warmest or fuzziest feelings for the woman who had wiped her memory and then, one hasty explanation later, left and ended up seemingly dead. It had taken two years for her to confirm that Alayna’s body was not in fact somewhere on the bottom of the lake, but was in fact walking around somewhere in the Midwest, but at least she had that.

The bar was, increasingly, becoming something Maesin considered to be a distraction from what the real important work was, which was conducting something of a massive plan B in case whatever the longshot plan happened to be didn’t pan out. That meant making Madame Midnight a little more aggressive in some of her dealings, and occasionally harassing whatever entity had taken over d3m3t3r’s operation in a bid to get them to show their hand a little more clearly. Added to that was her somewhat foolish promise to Jade that she’d find out who had sent the threatening letter and threatened to expose their true identities, all of which were not exactly pieces of information that needed to be publicized.

All of that, however, had to be put on hold while Maesin tended bar in a known criminal front, where occasionally – occasionally – people who knew the right pass phrases got put into contact with Madame Midnight, who nobody had yet figured out was the fucking bartender. That nobody had figured this out meant one of two things, as far as Maesin was concerned: she was incredibly good at covering her tracks, or perhaps humans were just that fucking stupid. Most days she tended toward the latter. d3m3t3r, she suspected, would have figured it out by now. She had, after all, discovered the identity of the first Madame Midnight all those years ago, an event which as far as Maesin was concerned had kicked this whole mess off to begin with.

Alayna’s voice echoed in her head. That’s enough of that train of thought, don’t you think? You know it just ends up driving you crazy, and you don’t need the distraction when you’re working tonight. Maesin gripped the steering wheel tighter. It was, she knew, a coping mechanism of sorts to hear her friend’s voice in moments of stress. Not necessarily a healthy coping mechanism, of course. Maesin figured that if it got bad she’d either disguise herself as human and see a psychiatrist or wipe her memory again, since that seemed to be past J4D3’s go-to plan.

The bar was quiet, which was unsurprising given the early hour. Maesin waved to her boss and took up position behind the bar, serving drinks to the few patrons who were conducting a business meeting, pretending to conduct a business meeting, or just blatantly starting early. Occasionally someone would come in and make a particular order which meant that their tip included a small data chip slipped under the bill. These chips were deposited into a small container by the sink which was in turn periodically emptied by another member of the staff, and so on down a line of dead drops until they would eventually wind up being deposited a few blocks away from the storage locker Maesin called home. It was convoluted, but it was also one of the things which kept her identity secure.

Some of the data chips would be job requests, some would be account information so she could collect payment, and others would be reports from the various operatives employed by Madame Midnight. Very occasionally it was a personal request from someone with whom the old Madame Midnight had been close, which Maesin had to honor to keep up appearances. The idea had been to have Madame Midnight’s entire persona stay more or less the same – even the storage unit had been one of Maddie’s old safehouses. On the off chance that someone knew that location, they’d only encounter one of Maddie’s former clients (Maesin) who was paying for the right to hide there. It was simple, as far as cover stories went, which appealed to the humans of the group (Maesin thought it might be too easy to suss out the lie, but J4D3 had signed off on it, and as pissed as she was at herself, she still trusted her judgment. Mostly).

“Excuse me,” a voice said, interrupting Maesin’s train of thought, “but you wouldn’t happen to serve drinks for those of us with, for lack of a better phrase, alternative senses?”

Maesin’s expression slipped into customer service mode, and she turned to the speaker, a woman on the tall side with a businesslike fringe of black hair, looked back at her expectantly. “Of course,” Maesin said, “we pride ourselves on serving clientele of all sorts.”

“Good to hear!” The woman said, smiling in relief. “Some bars aren’t so good about having things to offer full prosthetics.”

Maesin gestured to herself. “Some bars don’t use robots for bartenders either, yet here we are.”

This earned a look of shock which was probably not genuine from the customer. “Ah, you’re a robot! I was about to say that you looked a little young to be tending bar.”

“Yes, well, as you’re no doubt aware, they can make us look however young they want.” Maesin said with a shrug. “So, what can I get you?”

“Oh, I don’t care. Whatever you think I’d like, I suppose.”

Maesin nodded and mixed up something suitably expensive. She slid the drink across the bar to her customer, who smiled and saluted her with the drink before taking a sip. A delighted look crossed the woman’s face. “Well! They certainly have the right woman on the job. This is everything I never knew I wanted.”

Maesin inclined her head in thanks. “Just doing my job, miss.”

The sound of the woman’s laughter was musical and danced on the border of flirtatious. “I suppose so. I wonder if you couldn’t do me one more service.”

“Depends on what the service is.”

“Nothing illegal, I promise.” The woman replied, smirking. “I’m waiting for a friend, and it looks like he’s running late. Can you do me a favor and keep an eye out for him? I’ve got to duck out for a few minutes and I don’t want him to think I’m standing him up.”

Maesin shrugged. “Sure, I can do that. What’s he look like?”

“Taller fellow, got a little grey in his hair but not too much – what you might call dignified, if you were given to that kind of description.” The woman said, smirking a little. “Oh, and he’s got a broken arm. Should be easy to spot.”

��I’ll keep an eye out.” Maesin said, agreeably.

“Great!” The woman drained the last of her drink and paid, leaving the bar with a wave. “Back in a few!”

Maesin collected the money (and the hidden chip), and returned to cleaning the bar. Before long, a man with a broken arm entered the bar and made his way over. “Dave! You seem to have been injured. What happened?”

“Oh, you know, hazards of the job.” David said, shrugging. “You still look too young to be working here, by the way.”

“And they still can make us look as young as they like.” Maesin said, rolling her eyes. “Either I need to get a new job, or you need to get a new topic of conversation.”

“Aw come on, it’s like our thing now. You know, instead of saying hello.”

Maesin sighed deeply. “Sure, whatever. Your ladyfriend, by the way, had to step out for a minute. She asked if you’d wait here for her.”

David looked surprised. “How’d you know…?”

“She asked me to look out for the some idiot with a broken arm.” Maesin said with a smile. “Not that big of a leap to assume it was you once you walked in.”

“And here I thought you were trying your hand at detective work.” David said with a smirk.

“Not programmed for it.” Maesin said, turning to grab a bottle of whiskey off the shelf behind her. “The usual, I take it?”

“See? You know me so well.” David sounded delighted.

“Oh,” the woman from before said, appearing behind David, “should I be jealous?”

Maesin snorted. “Not at all, miss. Dave’s too much of a pain in the ass for my taste – you’re welcome to him.”

“Call me Jill, kiddo. ‘Miss’ makes me feel old.”

“Could be worse,” David said, smirking, “she could call you ma’am.”

Jill laughed, and looped her arm through David’s broken one easily. “I suppose so. Hopefully you weren’t waiting for too long, were you?”

David lifted the glass that Maesin had placed in front of him. “Only just got my drink. Hope you don’t mind if I take my time with it, do you?”

“Of course not. Come on, there’s a table in the back.” Jill drew David away, leaving Maesin alone behind the bar again.

The rest of the night passed by uneventfully. Maesin had drawn the short straw that evening, which meant she was in charge of closing the bar down – which was, unsurprisingly enough, something she was generally willing to do. There was not as if she had much else of a social life to speak of – and if that meant that Madame Midnight was able to keep an unseen eye on this part of the operation for a little longer than she might otherwise, well, that made good sense. It gave her more time to think about what she was going to do about the fact that two of Madame Midnight’s agents were hanging out together.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected something like this to happen sooner or later. The problem was that using Jill Jaegerin had been something of a one-time deal, and David was not supposed to have made any kind of lasting contact with her. In fact, his specific mission had been to watch for the first sign of trouble and disappear as soon as it became apparent that Jill was making her move on the target, which he’d clearly decided not to do. Maesin wasn’t sure why he’d made the decision, but she hoped that the report he’d slipped her in the bar would shed some light on the decision. The problem with humans, Maesin was learning, was that it was difficult to predict when their libidos would suddenly become a problem.

It had certainly become an issue with Alayna. Maesin wasn’t jealous, necessarily – and she didn’t begrudge what Alayna and Maddie had with one another – but when shit had hit the fan, well, it had definitely made the both of them act a little unpredictably in the end. There was very little doubt in her mind that the ultimate plan they’d all settled on was motivated in part because of greater-than-usual concern for one another’s well-being. Then again, she – or J4D3, anyway – had decided to go along with the plan for similar concerns.

By the time she reached the storage unit, the sky was already beginning to shift to a grey dawn. The day’s reports had been dropped at their proper locations, except for the two reports delivered by Jill and David – those Maesin had kept with her to see the results as soon as possible.

The report from David was more or less what she expected. An explanation that he’d been caught off-guard by Jill’s infiltration, and as a result had been forced to engage. He’d added a comment about being open to the idea of working with Jill again down the road. Maesin snorted. That had been obvious.

Jill’s report was a little more interesting, in that it was barely a report at all. Instead, it was an image of the target (dead, obviously) and a note:

It’s not that I mind having people check up on me, it’s that you didn’t feel the need to tell me about it beforehand. That I might have killed such a delightful man doesn’t bother me too much – but if you fail to tell me the full picture beforehand again, I’ll have no choice but to hunt you down and explain my displeasure in person.

-          Jill

Maesin read the note a few more times before plugging herself into charge with a snort. “Fucking humans and their goddamn emotions.”

Part Eighteen

Part Sixteen

[vanquisher2099]

Part Sixteen: An Assassin Completes a Contract

Jill was feeling immensely good about everything. While Marcus, initially, was a little hesitant to work with her after their first meeting; after taking some time to calm down and really appreciate the efficiency and skill shown by her hit, had contacted Jill with a simple contract. The idea was, Jill assumed, to feel out her skills and determine whether or not she really was Jack’s apprentice by giving her a fairly complicated task. Jill, having spent a rather significant time being Jack, was more than up to the task.

The target was, at first glance, nobody special. A simple accountant, who was well-regarded by his colleagues, yet also did not seem to have any connections to any particularly powerful or even wealthy clients. It did not take Jill long to learn that his connections were, in fact, far more powerful than she’d initially assumed. This manifested itself in a clandestine security force which seemed to have the accountant under 24-hour surveillance. If not for the fact that Marcus had strongly suggested the target was more important than he looked, Jill doubted she would have even realized the presence of a security detail until they were shooting at her.

Jill was unique among assassins in a few respects – but perhaps the one which was least commented upon (in spite of being most beneficial) was her thoroughness when it came to researching a target. To wit, she had long since discovered that the best way to ensure a clean kill was to know everything about the target’s routine and general contacts so as to minimize the likelihood of any unwelcome surprises (such as, for instance, a hidden security detail). The other unique feature was that she was over a hundred years old, but nobody really knew that.

Perched comfortably in the window of a high-rise hotel, Jill casually observed her target go about the important business of obtaining a cup of coffee from the café down the street from his office. A practiced glance quickly identified two members of his security detail pretending they were on a coffee date, and a third member reading the chalkboard menu with the pensive look of someone who couldn’t quite decide what to order.

“I could probably kill you right now,” Jill said to herself, “and have at least ten minutes to clean up and start running. Assuming, of course, that room service is not startled by the sound of the window breaking and the rifle firing, and that there do not happen to be any police nearby, and – most importantly – that one of your bodyguards there isn’t scanning this very building for the sight of a tell-tale flash of a scope. Which, if they’re smart – and if they have reason to believe that you might be in danger – they are.”

“And of course,” she continued, “they should have reason to believe you’re in danger. Because nobody with a contract out on their life who also has a 24-hour security detail would not know they have a contract out on their life. Either because they’ve heard a rumor of it, or they know they’ve pissed someone off who has the means to take out a contract on their life. I have to wonder which of the two categories you fit into. It’s very curious, very curious indeed. Marcus will have to provide more detail next time, even if it doesn’t really make any difference why you know. I just have to assume you know. It isn’t wise to assume you don’t. The fact that I’ve been tracking you for the last three days and nobody’s come for me at least indicates that you weren’t tipped off by Marcus, who knows I’d kill him if he did but might be dumb enough to think he can get away with it.”

The target, having successfully obtained his cup of coffee to go, exited the café and headed back to his office. Jill watched him go and checked her watch. The whole process had taken fifteen minutes. To their credit, the coffee date continued for another five minutes before concluding. While the coffee date was wrapping up, the target reappeared in his office overlooking the street, sipping his coffee and looking out the window like a big, stupid target. It made her skin itch, even though her skin was fully artificial and could not, in reality, itch.

“I wonder,” she said to nobody once again, “if something about being in this business made me completely incapable of relaxation in its most basic forms. Sipping a cup of coffee while looking out a window at a busy street and not thinking about how standing at the window like an idiot is inviting someone to shoot you in the head. Or maybe you do know, and you’ve just convinced yourself you’re untouchable. It’ll be quite a shock to you when you find out you aren’t, won’t it?”

It took another two days of observation before Jill felt like she had a good handle on the particulars of her target’s security detail. The next day, she checked out of her hotel room and headed to a different hotel several blocks away, where she checked into a different room (under a different name, of course) and informed the concierge that a package would be arriving the next day and could the hotel please hold it for her? She tipped the bellhop for helping with her luggage and, as soon as the door shut behind her, began making preparations.

The first thing she did was find the nearest vent and methodically unscrew the covering from its housing. Once that was accomplished, she withdrew a small insect-like drone from a case and allowed it to crawl through the ventilation systems, headed for a single room a few floors above. This room, according to the research that she’d conducted, housed the command headquarters of her target’s security detail. In spite of how supposedly professional the security team was, they did not, apparently, see fit to guard against vent-based intrusion. Jill muttered something about amateurs and spent the remainder of the day listening in on their communications.

Her remaining equipment arrived the next day, and as requested the concierge kept it at the front desk. That meant that when the shift change occurred for the security team later that evening the device within the package quietly turned itself on, tapped into their communications frequencies, and stood ready to intercept any distress signals. Meanwhile, Jill had left the building and was making her way in the direction of her target’s apartment. Halfway there, she called a car service to pick her up and spent the final leg of the journey mentally reviewing her approach as the automated driver made its way through the last dregs of rush hour traffic.

The security team clocked her appearance at once, recognizing that she was not one of the people they usually saw in the area, and – because they weren’t completely incompetent as a security force – Jill found herself with a tail. That having a tail was part of her plan was not something they probably considered, but within short order the tail found itself unconscious in a blind alleyway. That gave her five minutes before the security team would miss his check-in. A chronometer began counting down in the corner of her vision, and the mission really got underway.

Minus the tail, there were three members of the security staff left to deal with. It was best, Jill thought, to avoid them entirely, but she knew some confrontation was probably inevitable and had planned accordingly. The code lock on the front door was easily bypassed using a key card Jill had collected earlier in the week, and she was quite quickly through the lobby and waiting patiently for the elevator. By this point she had three minutes remaining, and decided that with so time to spare she would need to trigger the backup part of her plan, which was to simulate an attack on the headquarters by using the hijacked signal to send a distress call. This put the security team on alert, true, but it also meant they would quickly bundle the target to his panic room – using a route which Jill had memorized and was in the process of heading to an intercept point for.

As soon as she exited the elevator she pulled a stun gun from her jacket and began sprinting down the hallway. Counter her steps, she turned sharply into the wall and crashed through, surprising the two security force members and her target. The third member of the team was nowhere to be seen, something which concerned Jill but it wouldn’t matter if she could get the target down quickly. She was on the two bodyguards in a flash. One reached for his gun and didn’t even manage to get it drawn before the stun gun hit him and he convulsed and fell to the floor. The second was more of a problem – he’d been a little quicker to recover from the surprise and managed to at least realize the only thing that mattered in the long run was getting to the panic room.

That meant as Jill spun on her heel and began to chase him down, she was a few seconds behind – which gave him just enough space to give her target a final shove into the panic room before spinning to face her. Jill swore and pulled up short, dropping easily into a fighting stance.

“You don’t have to do this.” the bodyguard said, falling into a similar stance. “There’s no way into that room, and the rest of the team is on their way. No winning this one.”

“There’s definitely a way into that room.” Jill said, with a smile. “It just happens to go through you, and requires me to have enough time to get the door open.”

“Which you don’t have.” The bodyguard said.

Jill nodded thoughtfully. “According to you.”

“I would know.”

“I’m sure. But let’s assume for the moment that you’re missing an important detail, and there is time.” Jill’s grin grew wider. “Or maybe I’m just interested in how much of a fight you could put up.”

This did not seem to fluster the bodyguard in the slightest. In fact, he just seemed disappointed. “Pointless.” he said, and reached for his gun, only to give a grunt of pain as a knife appeared in his arm.

“Firearms aren’t any fun for me.” Jill tutted like she was lecturing a misbehaving child. “And here I thought we’d have a nice hand-to-hand.” She advanced forward as the bodyguard clutched at his arm and glared at her. “Oh well,” she continued airily, “If you aren’t willing to have any fun I guess we’re done here.”

Another flash, and another knife pinned the bodyguard to the door by the throat. Jill shook her head disapprovingly. “See? This is just a mess. Now there’s a mess, and it’s your fault.” She looked at the panel powering the security door and tutted again. “Biometric lock? That was your ‘impossible to open’ door? I should’ve just shot you in your office. That would have been a more exciting use of my time.”

Jill withdrew a square of film from her pocket that looked vaguely like a slightly thicker and more robust cling film. She placed it on the biometric reader and pressed her own palm against it. There was a pause as the film did its work, followed by a soft click and a hiss as the lock disengaged and the door began to swing open under the weight of the pinned corpse. Jill stuck her head in the doorway and smiled at her target in a reassuring manner that failed to reassure him at all.

“Don’t worry,” she said in the same tone of voice a parent would use to soothe a child awakened from a nightmare, “it’s all over now.”

A few seconds later, it was. Jill exited the panic room and was surprised to see the third bodyguard had finally appeared; gun drawn.

“Ah,” she said, eyes lighting up like she’d just been given a bonus, “I’d forgotten about you!”

The third bodyguard looked past her and saw his companion’s body pinned to the door to the panic room which was half-open. “So,” he said in a tone of voice that indicated a certain professional detachment, “my boss is dead, huh?”

“If your boss was the fellow in the panic room, then I am afraid to tell you that yes, he is very much dead. You are of course free to confirm that for yourself, but to do that you’d need to go past me – and while I am willing to just let you by, I don’t think I could really trust that you wouldn’t try to salvage a little dignity by attacking me while my back was turned.” Jill shrugged and smiled disarmingly. “I guess you’ll have to try to kill me!”

The bodyguard seemed to consider this for a while, and then holstered his gun. “Or I could just leave. The body I was supposed to protect is dead, and frankly, from the state of my companion over there I would just as soon not get myself potentially killed trying to be a hero. Besides,” He reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a small card with a symbol on it that caused Jill’s eyes to widen, “you just saved me a lot of trouble myself.”

Jill looked behind her, then back at the bodyguard, then huffed angrily. “Of course,” she muttered angrily, “of course it would be her, wouldn’t it? I’m going to kill Marcus for this. Due diligence my ass.”

“Please don’t kill Marcus.” The bodyguard said. “My employer happens to like him, lord knows why, and you know how she gets.”

“No I don’t.” Jill said, sulkily. “She doesn’t talk to me. Just sets up these elaborate fucking situations.” She sighed. “I have to admit though, I’m a little impressed. I really had no idea that she was pulling the strings on this job.”

“I think she prides herself on her discretion – and certainly, if you’re who I think you are, she has excellent taste in hired help.”

“Hmm.” Jill’s eyes flashed with something that walked the line between flattered and annoyed. “Well, I suppose that means we don’t get to fight after all. What a fucking disappointment.”

“Well,” the bodyguard said, shrugging, “as long as it’s not to the death, I suppose I could indulge you. It’ll make my story a little more believable when I have to tell my other employers how their client didn’t make it.”

“Ah, a real gentleman at last.” Jill’s smile became something less intimidating and more genuine. “Well, Gentleman. How much time do you think we have before your friends in the control room at the hotel realize they’ve been getting fake reports for the last ten minutes?”

“David.” The bodyguard said, inclining his head in a bow of sorts, “My name is David. And I figure we’ve got at least another ten.”

“Well then, David,” Jill said, stretching a little in preparation, “let’s make the most of it.”

Fifteen minutes later, reinforcements from the security team burst into the apartment, where they found two dead, one unconscious, and David semi-conscious on the ground, where he’d had his arm broken. What they did

not

find was the card that Jill had slipped into David’s suit pocket, where she’d given him her hotel room number.

Part Seventeen

Part Fifteen

[vanquisher2099]

Part Fifteen: A Waitress Breaks a Rule

Jennifer and Clarissa were sitting in the café near the diner, having just finished a shift. Clarissa had been strangely quiet, and was toying with her coffee cup like she was trying to work her way up to something. Jennifer, on the other hand, was relishing the feeling of being relaxed and something approaching happy for the first time in years.

Eventually, Clarissa spoke up. “Hey, Jenn?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a weird question.”

“What’s the question?”

“It’s kind of… I don’t want to overstep or anything.”

“Overstep?”

“It’s just uh, who’s Maddie?”

Jennifer felt her heart skip a beat. Keeping her voice decidedly even, she asked, “Who?”

Clarissa seemed to be choosing her words carefully, well-aware of how silly she probably sounded. “Well, remember the other night? You woke up all in a cold sweat? You shouted something about a Maddie just before you woke up.” She rubbed the back of her head in a nervous gesture. “It just seemed like you were pretty distressed, is all. I guess it might’ve just been nonsense, but…”

“Yeah…” Jennifer said, quietly. She unconsciously rubbed at a scar on her shoulder. How long had it been? Nearly four years? She didn’t remember a nightmare, but she did remember waking up in a cold sweat, although it was a fairly common occurrence. Oh what the hell, she thought, it might be nice to talk about it with someone. “She’s uh, an old girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Clarissa looked deeply embarrassed. “I’m uh, sorry I brought it up.”

“No, it’s fine. We uh, it…” Jennifer frowned, trying to figure out how best to talk around things. “It didn’t end well?” She nodded decisively. Not ending well seemed like a pretty accurate description. “It didn’t end well. It’s… it’s kind of why I’m out here.”

Clarissa’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Wow, that’s pretty not well.”

Jennifer failed to suppress a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.” She sighed. “It was my fault, really. I was so sure that I knew what was best, and it wound up driving us apart. This will shock you,” she said, with a wry grin, “but I had this belief that I needed to do everything myself.”

This did in fact seem to surprise Clarissa a bit. “News to me.”

“Yeah, well, I learned that lesson the hard way. Turns out that if you keep trying to do everything on your own you end up driving people away.” Or you end up making the wrong call and damn yourself to being on the run forever, she thought.

Clarissa took this all in quietly, not really knowing what to say. She settled on, “Well, I’m glad that you felt like you could tell me. It kind of goes without saying, but I’d hope you know you can lean on me when you need to.”

Oh kid, Jennifer thought to herself, if you had any idea what that entails you’d never make that offer. She gave what she hoped was a reassuring grin and said “thanks” instead before jokingly saying, “What about you? Got any dark secrets I don’t know about?”

“Afraid not.” Clarissa said, shrugging. “Grew up not too far from here, had a couple relationships that never really went anywhere, ended up in the waitressing game after the Crash more or less made paying for school an impossibility.”

“I’m surprised.” Jennifer admitted. “You seemed… huh.”

“What?”

“I just realized there’s no way I could say ‘you seemed like you’ve been to college’ without sounding like an asshole.”

“Yeah pretty much.” Clarissa said, laughing. “I assume that means you went to college?”

“Yeah, I was lucky. The Crash didn’t happen until I was in my last year. There was just the one year of debt to deal with. Which uh…” Jennifer almost said ‘I faked my death and it doesn’t matter anymore,’ but settled on “I’m still kind of paying off? Which isn’t much of a surprise, really.”

“See, that’s why I didn’t bother. Plus, my parents needed the help to keep our house.”

Jennifer felt a pang of guilt as she stood and stretched. “Yeah, that sounds about right. You ready to get out of here?”

The sun had set, and Clarissa somewhat reluctantly stood as well, grabbing her jacket from where it hung off the back of the chair. “Yeah, let’s go. You uh, mind dropping me off at my place? Speaking of parents, mine are coming to visit in a couple days and the place is a mess.”

Jennifer shrugged easily. “Sure, of course.” She looped an arm over Clarissa’s shoulder and smiled. “You want help with that, or would you rather I didn’t silently judge your poor housekeeping?”

“I mean, if you want to judge, you can feel free to. I don’t think it’s any dirtier than your place though – and I’ve got the additional excuse of roommates.”

“Roommates who don’t clean up, eh?”

“I didn’t say they were good roommates.”

As the two walked down the street, Jennifer suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Casually, she pretended to stretch her neck out and caught sight of a few figures following behind, although she could possibly chalk it up to paranoia. The smart play, of course, would have been to get to the car as quickly as possible and hopefully get out before the possibility of a confrontation with, she assumed, some desperate criminal element who assumed a few women were an easy target for a mugging. That was not the worst case scenario, which was that the two following them were d3m3t3r’s people – although Jennifer assumed in that case she’d already be dead.

Clarissa seemed to notice her sudden shift in attitude, because she whispered, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Jennifer said, trying to reassure herself, “long day just caught up to me, I think.”

“Ah, old age is rough, huh?” Clarissa said, in a teasing tone.

Jennifer snorted and gave Clarissa a shove. “Keep that up and you’ll have to walk home.”

Clarissa gasped in mock horror. “You wouldn’t dare! A young lady, out on her own at night? How unchivalrous of you!”

“Please, it’s the 22nd century. I think we’re past chivalry being a thing.”

They were a block from Jennifer’s car when one of the two behind them spoke up. “Excuse me, ladies? Could you happen to have some change for the bus? I seem to have lost my wallet.”

Clarissa turned, already reaching into her own pocket. “Of course! How much does the bus cost these days, anyway?”

Jennifer watched as the one man quickly moved to flank them while the other pulled out a knife and grimaced. “Well, you know how it is with busses.” The one said, smiling in a less-friendly way. “Best to give us everything you have just to be safe.”

Understanding dawned on Clarissa’s face and she froze. “Ah.”

“Do you really want to do this?” Jennifer said, sighing. “We’re waitresses, you know. Not exactly swimming in money.”

“Oh I’m sure if you don’t have much money there’s other things we can take.” The man smiled nastily. “That arm of yours for a start – cybernetics go for a pretty penny these days.”

“Unfortunately I think I’m a little attached to it at the moment.” Jennifer said, narrowing her eyes. “But we can give you the money we’ve got and you can go on your way.”

At this the other man spoke up, mockingly. “You’re not in a position to be cutting deals, miss. I think you’ll find we’re the ones giving orders, and you’re the ones obeying the orders. So we will be taking that arm of yours.”

Maybe it was something about his tone that did it. Jennifer wasn’t quite sure at the time, and later on she still wasn’t sure. It didn’t really matter in the end, of course, because what happened next ended up being the important thing. Jennifer smiled, and stood up a little straighter, and honest-to-gods laughed. She even applauded a little, causing Clarissa to send her a worried look.

“Now that is a hell of a line. I wonder, do you practice that in the mirror? No, no, don’t tell me, I think I would just be disappointed if I ended up being right.” Her face hardened, sharpening her smile into something dangerous. “So, I’ll make you a deal. You two leave us be, and go think about how you should give up this life of crime – or at least, cause trouble for the folks with a little more money than a couple waitresses. In return, I won’t beat you both senseless, which will doubtless bring the police into things and ruin your chances of being able to give up your lives of crime. How about it?”

The two men looked at each other, and then moved menacingly forward. Jennifer pushed Clarissa back out of the way and propelled herself in the direction of the one with the knife with a gleeful shout. This movement so surprised him that he actually seemed to hesitate for a second, which was all the time Jennifer needed to spin to the side, avoiding the knife, and bring her elbow – the metal one – into contact with the back of his head with an audible clang. The man’s head snapped back with the force of the blow, and he dropped to the ground in a senseless heap.

His partner brought his fists up and came in swinging. Jennifer brought her own arm up, deflecting the blows easily. She gave ground, letting him come forward and gain confidence, then used the momentum from one of his punches to spin around him and deliver a blow to the temple that caused him to stagger to the side. At that point, Jennifer brought her leg around and took his knee out, with another blow to the head sending him to the same unconscious realm as his partner.

Jennifer looked at the two unconscious would-be muggers and brushed her arms off, feeling satisfied. The feeling didn’t last as she quite suddenly realized that Clarissa had just witnessed the entire scene and was staring at her wide-eyed. “Can you call the police? Or we can just leave them here and go. If you don’t want to uh. Deal with cops.”

Clarissa seemed to be in a state of shock. “What…?”

“The police.” Jennifer said, patiently. “Do you want to call them, or do you want to just go? We can do either.”

“You just… that was…”

Jennifer placed her hands gently on Clarissa’s shoulders. “Hey, look at me. Breathe, okay? Focus.”

Clarissa stared back into Jennifer’s eyes, and seemed to master herself a little. Her breathing, at any rate, seemed to have slowed down.

“Good.” Jennifer said, still not taking her hands off Clarissa’s shoulders. “Now, do you want to call the police? Or do you want me to just take you home and these two will wake up with headaches in ten or fifteen minutes?”

Clarissa thought about the question for a moment. Eventually, she nodded. “I’ll… I’ll call the police. Just to be… just to make sure these guys don’t come back for us or something.”

Jennifer nodded. “Okay. Make the call. We can give our statements, and then I’ll take you home. Sound like a plan?”

“Yeah it uh…” Clarissa looked down at the two unconscious men again. “Holy shit Jennifer, where did you learn to do that? How did you—”

“Long story.” Jennifer said, a little brusquely. “Well, not that long of a story, actually. A buddy of my brother’s taught me how to fight. As a favor.”

“As a favor?”

“I’ll tell you the whole story some other time, okay? I don’t know how long these two will be out, so the sooner you call the police the better.”

Clarissa nodded and made the call while Jennifer paced back and forth and felt the adrenaline bleed out of her system. Things were, Jennifer knew, about to become complicated – obscenely, frustratingly complicated. The police would take a report, and that would get digitized, and while it was a fairly minor incident, it expanded her footprint. It put her on the radar of those with eyes to see it, even if there was nothing necessarily identifying about her. It also meant having to talk to the police, which was not something she was particularly willing to do in the best of situations, never mind in a situation involving assault and battery.

The soft sound of Clarissa’s footsteps behind her brought Jennifer out of her thoughts, and she turned around, arranging her expression into something a little more relaxed. “Hey, kid. Cops on the way?”

“Yeah, they say they’ll be here in a couple minutes.” Clarissa said, still looking a little rattled. “Think they’ll still be out when they get here?”

Jennifer shrugged. “Probably. If they aren’t, I’ll deal with them. They aren’t exactly professionals.”

The look Clarissa gave Jennifer spoke volumes. “Are you?”

Part Sixteen

Part Fourteen

[vanquisher2099]

Part Thirteen: A Detective Uncovers a Clue

It was highly unusual, in an age of self-driving vehicles, for any sort of accident to be caused by operator error. By law, all vehicles had to be equipped with an autopilot system, so even antique models had been retrofitted. This all added up to the idea of a truck accidentally finding its way across a high speed rail line by mistake as an unlikely occurrence, although from what John could tell that seemed to be the story that the authorities were sticking to. It was not as though the idea of an intentional train blockage was so surprising – there were still various terrorist groups operating in the interior whose weapon of choice was abandoned vehicles, occasionally packed with explosives – but for whatever reason they seemed unwilling to countenance the idea in this case. That alone was enough to pique John’s interest, even without it seeming likely that the young woman he was meant to find was likely to have been on the train.

That the young woman was supposed to be dead was, John suspected, just another twist in a case which had already been, he thought, suitably twisty. He’d left the…commune, he supposed it was, with a promise to check in with Gabriella and her crew in a couple of days with an update. So it was not particularly shocking when, after making some polite inquiries at the local police station, he found himself being shooed away and then, moments later, approached quietly by one of the detectives who remembered his name and invited to grab a cup of coffee in a suitably out-of-the-way diner.

The detective introduced herself as Helen Solstice. “Gotta say I’m a bit of a fan,” she said with a grin, “it’s not every day you run into someone who got drummed out of the CPD for trying to get to the bottom of such a well-publicized attack.”

John shrugged, not bothering to correct that the ‘terrorist attack’ hadn’t been the thing that got him canned. “Honestly, once the big conspiracy came to light, the higher-ups were just happy that everyone seemed to forget about it. My unwillingness to let it drop got me the boot.”

“And you still have no idea who did it?”

“Not really – but we did have a person of interest seen leaving the building. Problem was, any attempts at identification came up empty, and the department didn’t want to devote further resources into tracking them down.” This was punctuated by a dry chuckle and an “obviously.”

Helen nodded understandingly. “So now you’re out here causing trouble in a different state, huh?”

“It’s the job – I’m supposed to find someone who was on that train.” John explained. “Or at least, I’m pretty sure she was on the train. There’s no way to be sure without a lot of access to stuff I don’t have – you know, like surveillance footage.”

“How do you know she was on the train?”

“Well, I was asking around downtown, and a few people claimed they saw her entering the train station just before the train left. Stands to reason she might’ve been on it.”

“You don’t think that’s grasping at straws?”

“From the sound of things, she was running from something – a few of the folks said she looked like she’d been in a fight.” John said with another shrug. “If I’m on the run, I get on something that gets me out of town fast.”

“So she headed to the train station and caught the first train out.” Helen said with a nod. “That tracks. Kind of doesn’t give you much to go on even if there wasn’t a crash though, does it? Lots of stops on that particular line.”

“Yeah, but I doubt she would get on and then get off. You don’t get on the inter-city train to get off a couple stops later.”

“Unless that’s all that happened to be available at the time.” Helen pointed out.  “Or if you thought you were being followed and wanted to shake a tail.”

John tried not to look too obviously depressed. “So you see where security footage from the train would be useful for me, then.”

“Except you seem to be convinced she was on the train when it crashed.” Helen said, “meaning you have a perfectly good idea of where to start looking.”

“A few scattered news reports put her at the scene, yeah,” John said, “but if she’s in some kind of a jam, I’d like to know if it followed her on the train. And off the train, afterwards.”

“Fair enough.” Helen replied, taking a sip of her coffee. “Normally I’d be all too happy to help you out. This crash though…”

John sighed. “Let me guess. It wasn’t accidental.”

Helen winced visibly. “Please tell me it’s not that immediately obvious.”

John shrugged. “Probably not to most, but you have to admit the likelihood of anything like that being accidental is pretty slim – and it doesn’t help that the department was so quick to classify it as such. I mean you put a statement out like two hours after it happened!”

“See, I was telling my partner at the station it was too goddamned quick on the draw, but obviously we aren’t the ones managing that sort of thing.” Helen’s expression seemed to be caught between being pleased and annoyed to be proven right. She sighed. “Obviously someone had their mind made up beforehand. No idea why, but you can understand the reluctance to have any kind of video evidence floating around that could disprove our theory.”

“You get a lot of terrorist incidents this far west? I thought California generally managed to stay out of that stuff.” John knew the answer, of course, which was ‘California got more than their fair share,’ but figured in the moment that he needed to play up the Midwestern rube a little more.

Helen’s reaction seemed to prove him right. “Yeah, well, that’s what the official story is I guess. We do a lot of covering up and reclassifying out here. Nobody wants to have the FBI or, god forbid, the DHS start taking an interest in our affairs. Everyone seems to think that’s a one-way ticket to the shitshow that happened to you lot out in Chicago – no offense.”

“None taken.” John said, smiling wryly. “Although seeing as how the FBI’s presence ended up uncovering that whole conspiracy,” entirely untrue, but the official line, “I personally tend to see it as something of a positive.”

“Oh please, spare me the party line,” Helen rolled her eyes. “I heard it was some vigilante that ended up blowing the lid off that whole mess. The FBI was probably too busy throwing its weight around at your station to do any real investigating.”

John laughed. “Yeah, well, can’t blame me for trying to save a little face. Nobody wants to admit that someone outside the force ended up being the one to actually sort things out. Professional pride, you understand.”

“Which is precisely why,” Helen said, leaning forward, “If I were to give you some kind of access to the footage, you’d have to promise me that you’ll leave any speculation alone – you can confirm your girl’s presence or absence, and see if there was a disturbance on the train or whatever, but if we suddenly get a bunch of stories popping up on the Net about how this was actually a terror attack or some shit, it’s your ass. You got me?”

“Hey,” John said, raising his hands defensively, “I’m just trying to make ends meet. I got no interest in making anyone look bad. I’ve put too much time into this investigation to be able to go back to my client and tell them ‘oh sorry, let me refund the last month of payments.’”

Helen seemed to be debating her next course of action. Eventually, she came to some sort of decision, nodded, and slid a small data drive across the table. “This doesn’t go into the cloud, understand? You don’t even put it in something connected to the Net. Take a look, and meet me here tomorrow to give it back. That’s the best I can offer.”

John nodded, taking the drive and stowing it in a pocket. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well, if I happen to need a favor down the road, maybe you’ll be able to help me out.” Helen said in a tone of voice that suggested she already had something in mind. She stood and nodded to him. “Good luck with your search.”

“Thanks,” John said with a self-deprecating smile, “I’m sure I’ll need it.” He stayed in the diner for a little longer after Helen left, half because he wanted to finish his coffee and half because there was always the chance that someone had followed Helen and would want to introduce themselves as well before he left. This time, it turned out that nobody had – or if they had, they weren’t interested in talking to him – so he waved the waitress over to pay his bill and left.

As he headed in the general direction of the hotel where he’d been staying, he was surprised to receive a call from Harold.

“John! Still wasting time looking for the dead girl’s parents?”

“Something like that.” John said, pleasantly. “You know how these things tend to get complicated.”

“No I don’t, because I’ve got the smarts to see this shit coming and not take the job in the first fuckin’ place.” There was an element of scolding in Harold’s voice, as there generally was whenever John’s propensity for taking on difficult cases was discussed. “You gotta get back here to Chicago, there’s a new job that my client wants to bring you in on.”

“Who’s the client?”

“Ceres Industries, if you can believe it. They’re paying me and Jackie Powers an enormous amount of money to work together to find out who sent them some threatening letter or other.”

“That a fact, huh? And they wanted a third on it too?” John whistled low in spite of himself. “They sound desperate.”

“Desperate and willing to pay way more than the job’s probably worth. That’s the important thing.”

“So why don’t you and Powers just split my share of the fee and call it good?”

“Because you’re better at this sort of crap than I am, and I don’t want Powers lording it over me later when she ends up being the one to track them down.” Harold said in a rare show of honesty. Harold and Jacqueline had never gotten along – there was some history between the two that Harold had never bothered to volunteer details on.

“Why don’t you ask your FBI boyfriend to help?” John said, only slightly teasing. “Karl’s always been pretty good at that kind of forensic work.”

“Normally I would, but I can’t risk him deciding that the FBI needs to get involved and blowing this whole deal. He’s got this whole sense of duty thing going, you know? It would be cute if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass. Besides, we don’t talk shop. One of our rules.”

“Oh please, you’re telling me he’s never helped you on a case before?”

“No,” Harold said a little defensively, “just that he’s a pain in the ass about it so I try to avoid doing it unless I’ve got no other option. And this time, I have another option, which is that you should drop this crap in LA and come help with this.”

“If I hadn’t just caught a big lead, I might actually consider it.” John said, trying to let him down easily. “Another week or two and I’ll have this all wrapped up and be on my way back to help, assuming you’re still in need of it.”

“Sure, sure.” John could hear Harold’s eyes rolling over the call. “Assuming I don’t have to deal with Jackie solving this in before you get back, I guess I’ll see you then. Good luck out there, kid.”

There was a click as the call disconnected, leaving John to finish up his walk to the hotel in relative silence. He was itching to look over the surveillance footage, curious as to whether or not Charlie had really been on the train – and whether or not she was in fact the person seen fleeing the scene of the crash.

When he did see the footage, he sent Harold a message saying that two weeks had maybe been a little overly optimistic.

Part Fourteen

Part Twelve

[vanquisher2099]

Part Twenty-one: A Waitress Falls Into a Hole

Jennifer did her very best to not panic when the knock sounded on her front door, with limited success. Clarissa had sent a message saying that she was on her way over, meaning that she’d made a decision on whether or not Jennifer was going to be packing her bags and disappearing overnight, which was – if Jennifer was being honest – slightly stressful.

She was expecting Clarissa, of course, but habit kept her from flinging the door open. Instead, the first thing Jennifer did was flip the switch that activated her door’s surveillance system, revealing that yes, it was Jennifer and no, she did not have any weapons concealed on her. Which at least meant that this whole relationship hadn’t been a long con, although Jennifer supposed if that had been the case she would’ve been dead shortly after the first time the two had slept together. Well, probably.

Jennifer realized she’d been standing frozen in front of the door for at least a minute by this point, and opened the door. She opened her mouth to say hello, or something along those lines, but Clarissa held up a hand and she closed her mouth without saying anything.

“Okay, so first off,” Clarissa said, “this is a terrible idea and I’m going to regret everything about it later when someone tries to kill me, or whatever.”

Jennifer nodded wordlessly.

“Second thing,” Clarissa continued, “you have to tell me everything. Everything, because I don’t want to have something I don’t know about be responsible for my death.”

“You seem awfully convinced that someone is going to try to kill you.” Jennifer said, unable to maintain silence.

“Hey, you’re the one who gave me the big ‘oh I’ve put you in danger just by being near you’ talk. I’m just assuming worst case scenarios, here.”

“Fair enough.”

“So?” Clarissa said, eyebrow raised. “You gonna invite me in, or am I just going to keep standing out here on your stoop?”

Jennifer found herself at a loss for words again, and stepped back to allow Clarissa in. Clarissa took the wordless invitation for what it was and stepped inside. Wordlessly, Jennifer shut the door and began heading for the basement, Clarissa following behind. Jennifer descended the stairs and was relieved to hear Clarissa’s tread behind her.

“Okay so,” Jennifer started, approaching the hole she’d started the day before, “I told you how I lost my arm, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, when I lost it, I got a replacement one. But I also got kind of…” Jennifer paused, searching for the right way to phrase things, “well, I took a certain amount of umbrage with how everything shook out. Like, if I had my way, I would’ve been able to get a biological replacement, rather than a mechanical one.”

“Right, but you couldn’t afford it.”

“Exactly. Which I thought was unjust.” Jennifer said, crouching and beginning to wrestle the case at the bottom of the hole out. “So I decided I would fight the sort of corruption that enabled someone to get away taking my arm off and,” realizing she hadn’t mentioned this part yet but stubbornly continuing, “uh, killing my friend. Except, you know, that was kind of a big ask, so I thought I’d start small.”

Clarissa watched Jennifer wrestle with the case for a few moments before stepping forward to help maneuver the case out of the hole. “So you… got into politics?”

“Street level politics.” Jennifer said, mouth twitching into a grin. “So to speak. I’d find corruption, and I’d trace its source, and then I’d uh, you know, go in and politely suggest changes.”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, eventually I found a friend or two who shared my opinions, and eventually I sort of discovered something a little over my head.” Jennifer chuckled a little ruefully. “So I did the smart thing and stuck my nose in anyway.”

“And now you’re here.” Clarissa said, nodding. “That sounds about right.”

“Well,” Jennifer said, “that’s not entirely true. See, sticking my nose in actually worked out okay, though I did end up in a more or less permanent state of hiding as a result. The FBI got kind of interested in me for a while, but an associate of mine was able to keep me hidden and, well, not make it all go away, but certainly was able to make it so I could go out on the street and not get arrested or shot on sight.”

“Useful associate.” Clarissa commented, trying to keep the fact that she was feeling fairly out of her depth here hidden with moderate success. “I suppose this is the part where you tell me that Jennifer Stock’s not your real name.”

“It’s not, as it happens.” Jennifer said, shrugging. “Though I’ve quite liked the name.”

“So what is your real name, anyway?”

Jennifer hummed in answer, and turned her attention to the case which the two had now successfully levered out of the hole in the floor. The case was not particularly large, and Clarissa was quiet as she watched Jennifer crouch and slide a panel on the lid aside to reveal a small scanner. Jennifer opened one eye wide and there was a flash of light, followed by a beep.

A mechanical voice came out of the case. “Retinal scan confirmed. Please proceed with vocal identification.”

Jennifer looked back over at Clarissa, then back to the case and took a deep breath. “Alayna Cane.”

The case beeped and gave a soft hiss as the top unlatched and opened. Alayna almost reverently removed a helmet and an object wrapped in canvas cloth and set them aside. Her fingers danced over the helmet with a faraway look in her eyes, lost in memories she’d not allowed herself to think about for years.

“I was happy.” Alayna admitted. “It looked like we were in a position to keep fighting from a position of strength for a change, after all the trials ended with a bunch of resignations and imprisonments. But then… something happened. I still don’t know what.”

“We were betrayed. One of our associates kicked off a gang war, and when I tried to stop it…” pain clouded her features. “Another of my partners dragged me out of Lake Michigan half-alive, got well enough that I could move, and I took off.”

“So…” Clarissa said, slowly, “when I asked about the big scar on your ribs and you said it was a car wreck…”

“It was a lie, yeah.” Alayna said. “Sorry.”

“And the other scars?”

“A knife fight with a combat drone.” Alayna said, gesturing to her shoulder. “The other scars are from other hazards of the vigilante job – falling off buildings, miscalculating a jump, landing in a dumpster full of construction debris, that sort of thing.”

It seemed like Clarissa was taking the news remarkably well, which was either because she was, or because she was very good at hiding her rapidly mounting panic and/or anger at being lied to. “So what you’re saying – and I just want to be clear here, because you’ve said quite a lot – is that I’ve been dating a wanted terrorist this whole time?”

“Who’s also being hunted by what I think might be an AI that used to be an ally of mine, yeah.” Alayna said, and then instantly wished she hadn’t said it. “Er, sorry.”

“So if you’re in hiding,” Clarissa said, choosing her words carefully, “why did I just help you dig up your old stuff?”

“Because,” Alayna said, “I figured that now you know just who I am, you might want to reconsider your decision not to ask me to leave.” She paused, very pointedly not looking in Clarissa’s direction, and added in an off-handed voice trying to hard to be casual, “Well, that and I figured some proof might help you believe that I’m not just pulling your leg and am actually who I say I am.”

“You thought I might not believe you?”

Alayna shrugged and made a noncommittal noise.

Clarissa ran a hand over her face. “Yeah I guess that makes sense – although I might argue that what you’ve told me is so unbelievably insane that I can’t really imagine you made it up. I mean for starters Alayna Cane died, as far as I know, two years ago. In that big shootout on the lake.”

“Which,” Alayna said, “is precisely why I was dragged out of it before anyone else got there. It was kind of in our best interests that everyone thought I was dead.”

“And Maddie,” Clarissa said, bringing up the one thing Alayna really didn’t want to address because of course she would, “I assume she thinks you’re dead too?”

“Thought I was dead, yeah.” Alayna said. “Remember when you invited me to that party? I told you about that old man who talked to me? She’d had him find me to warn me that we hadn’t pulled the wool over our old ally’s eyes, so to speak.”

“Meaning?”

Alayna’s expression turned embarrassed. “Meaning that I’m still being hunted, but they don’t know where I am – that, and she knows I’m still alive, and isn’t really thrilled about my uh… not telling her that.”

Once again, Clarissa’s expression revealed nothing about what she might have thought about this bit of information. She took a deep breath and asked one more question. “Are you still…?” She hesitated, knowing how it would sound, hating how insecure it made her seem, “That is, would you go back to her? If you could?”

“No.” Alayna said, shaking her head. “For a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that I happen to like being with you quite a lot. It’s been years, and the way I left her wasn’t exactly the nicest thing.”

Silence hung in the air, after that. Alayna still couldn’t quite bring herself to look directly at Clarissa, because she didn’t want to confirm her suspicion that Clarissa was going to ask her to leave. Clarissa was feeling something entirely different – processing that her girlfriend was not who she’d claimed to be, processing that in spite of that Clarissa still considered Jennifer (or Alayna, she supposed) her girlfriend and what that meant, and trying to deal with the new fear that someone or something was hunting her girlfriend and would kill her if she got in the way. It was more than she really felt like processing at the moment.

“I, uh,” Clarissa finally said, startling Alayna, “I think I need a drink.”

Alayna laughed, feeling something like relief, although she still couldn’t look at Clarissa. “Okay, yeah, I’ve got beers upstairs.”

“I uh, might need something a little stronger than a beer.”

“I’ve got some vodka too.”

“That’ll work.”

Several drinks in, Clarissa finally felt like she had more of a grip on the situation. Or, at the very least, the alcohol had muddied her thoughts to the point where the idea of having a grip on the situation became plausible.

“So lemme just run through this one more time.” Clarissa said, waving her glass in the air demonstratively. “That whole… scandal thing was the work of an AI? An unchained, unregistered AI?”

“That’s right!” Alayna had decided that the best way to deal with the impending implosion of her relationship was to drink more than Clarissa, and her plan was going rather splendidly, she thought. “Created in order to buy stocks more effectively.”

“That seems…” Clarissa started to say, then got lost halfway through her thought and had to restart the process. “That seems a little unlikely.”

“Well, it wasn’t that unchained AI is the thing.” Alayna clarified, waving her glass for emphasis, “It was the AI that AI created. Like… its offspring, I guess?”

“And you decided… you decided to what again?”

“Blackmail.” Alayna said, and a giggle escaped her at the ridiculousness of the notion. “We talked to the creator of the original AI and explained that she had to work for us if she wanted to keep her position and not get, you know, dragged in front of a bunch of very angry government officials. She’s got money and connections and we use both.”

“For what?”

“Huh?”

“What do you use the money and connections for?”

“Oh uh, mostly to try supporting policy we found important.” Alayna said, shrugging. “I figured that punching bad guys only got us so far, so.”

“Are you still using her?”

“Well I’m not, obviously, because everyone thinks I’m dead and I would rather keep it that way. But the rest of the operation should still be up and running, unless something happened to the others.” Alayna frowned. “Which is what the whole me dying thing was supposed to avoid in the first place, honestly. Our uh, former ally was primarily focused on me and we wanted to keep it that way. Although they were going to go to ground as well, so I don’t know for sure they managed to keep that going.”

“Are they… you know, is it possible they died?”

“No!” Alayna said, a little too forcefully. She steadied herself a little, took another drink.

“No,” she said again, a little more softly, “I don’t think so. Maddie, at least, survived long enough to figure out I was alive – and then sent someone to find me.” She took a deep breath. “As for… as for the other one, she’s… well, I know she’s got to be alive, because there’s a protocol in place if she dies.” She tapped a small panel on her arm and it slid back, revealing a small diagnostic readout. She made a few gestures on the screen and it blinked and switched over to a simple display that merely read ‘O.K’ in bright white letters. “A deadman’s switch. It would let me know if anything happened to her.”

It was becoming easier for her to talk about it, which was either the alcohol or just the weight of keeping so many secrets finally being lifted off her shoulders. “The truth of it is,” Alayna said, “we’re waiting on an all-clear of sorts. There was this… plan we put in motion, to send someone to get a lay of the land, try to figure out what had happened to make the AI come after us, and in the meantime we’d wait. I, of course, being an idiot, volunteered.”

“Except you’re here.” Clarissa said, stating the obvious.

“Well, yes and no. I uh, copied my consciousness. So one of me could hide, and one of me could carry on.” A bitter smile crossed her face. “I’m the one hiding, embarrassing as it is to admit.”

Clarissa felt like very little would surprise her at this point. “So what, you have like… a robot twin?”

“Something like that, yeah. I didn’t want to be the one hiding, but the robot body is… a little more suited for the task.” Alayna shrugged. “The only problem is, there’s no way for us to check up on her progress. It wouldn’t work if we could be easily traced back to her – and vice versa – so apart from the initial fake identity to get her out the door, we’ve got no way of keeping track of her. We thought that would give her an advantage, but it also means that if she fails, we’ll have no way of knowing.”

This struck Clarissa as remarkably poor planning, and she said so. Then she added, “So you’re just going to stay here until what, you get some all clear or something and then disappear?”

Alayna was having trouble meeting Clarissa’s eyes again. “Well, that was the plan, yeah. But now… I don’t know what I’ll do if the all- clear comes. It’s been so long that I don’t know anymore. All I know is I don’t want to just leave you behind, assuming… well, assuming you aren’t asking me to leave.” She felt a sudden surge of confidence and looked Clarissa in the eyes. “You uh, you aren’t asking me to leave, are you?”

Later Clarissa would look back at this as the one chance she’d had to get out clean, and wonder if maybe that wouldn’t have been the better idea considering what happened. The best she could explain things later on later was that she was young and the idea of dying hadn’t really ever crossed her mind. That, combined with the fact that she really did love Jennifer – er, Alayna, she supposed – in spite of the fact that she apparently knew very little about her, ensured she was doomed from the get-go.

“No,” Clarissa said, taking another drink, “I’m not.”

Part Twenty

[vanquisher2099]

Part Twenty: An Investigator Makes a Delivery

Helen was, as it turned out, was delighted to see John again when he returned the footage. This was, John figured, because he wasn’t above a little flirting, and she apparently wasn’t either. It also helped that John had quickly noted that the truck had not actually made contact with the train before the train burst into flames – that came from something fired from out of view. The truck, as far as John could tell, was there to provide an immediate, obvious cause to the police at the scene which would discourage further investigation.

“I mean, these sorts of attacks have been seen before,” John pointed out, “so it stands to reason whoever actually did it is at least familiar enough with both the way attacks are supposed to look around here as well as the way the LAPD is prone to… let’s say letting things drop.” He shrugged. “Not my business, but you might want to see if you can get the case to be re-opened. If someone’s got the kind of hardware that can stop a train cold, it’s worth looking into.”

Helen chuckled. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You did mention an inability to let things drop – but I suppose that could just be stubbornness rather than a sense of honor.”

John got the sense that Helen was trying to feel him out for something, though he wasn’t sure what. She had been the one to suggest they meet for breakfast to exchange the footage, but since his arrival she’d kept conversation relatively light. John was curious enough to wait it out, so in response he just shrugged and replied, “A little bit of both, maybe.”

It didn’t seem to be the answer Helen had been looking for, or maybe, John thought, she was just getting cold feet. “At any rate,” she said, draining her coffee, “I guess I owe you one for the information.”

“Pay for my breakfast,” John said airily, “and we’ll call it even. Or…”

“Or?”

John debated whether or not to just go for it. “Or, I suppose, you could just do me a favor again sometime. Assuming my investigation ends up needing a little more help, at any rate.”

“Hmm.” Helen considered this for a moment. “Think I’d rather just pay for coffee. Your last favor involved me turning over evidence to a third party, after all.”

“Oh, with my honorable streak I’m sure I would never ask you to do anything particularly illegal.” John said, with a shrug. “You’ll also note my discretion in this whole matter, which is one of my better qualities.”

Helen looked unimpressed. “Your discretion, huh? This wouldn’t be some kind of roundabout way of threatening to blackmail me, would it?”

John’s surprise was only partially feigned. “Is that what you think that was? Where’s the advantage in blackmailing you? And what proof would I have that you did anything wrong?”

“Oh please,” Helen said, counting on her fingers. “You could have been recording our conversations, you could have made a copy of the data I gave you, and for all I know you’ve already leaked everything online.”

“I think if I’d done that,” John said, a little testily, “you would’ve heard about it by now. Because if I were you, I would’ve had me followed, or at least been recording this conversation. That or you’d have brought a partner along – say, for example, that fellow over there in the corner – and he’d be ready to take me out if you gave him the signal.”

This answer seemed to be the sort of thing Helen was hoping for, because she visibly relaxed. “So you have done this sort of thing before.”

“It’s part of the job.” John said, trying to conceal his satisfaction at having finally gotten Helen to at least approach the point. “Trading favors is an important part of the private investigation profession – just not the part anyone ever tells you about.” He let the sentence hang in the air for a beat and then added, “So, what favor are you in need of?”

Helen looked surprised for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Should’ve figured you for a clever one, Johnny boy. That or I need to work on my poker face.”

“A little bit of both, maybe.” John said again, grinning in what was probably an infuriating manner. “Either way, you still haven’t told me what you need.”

“This isn’t quite the place for that.” Helen says, with a mysterious smile of her own this time. “We’ll go somewhere a little more private once you’ve finished your breakfast.”

John’s eyebrows raised, but he nodded. “That kind of favor, huh? Fair enough.” He drained his coffee and tapped the table’s screen to bring up the bill and pay. “Lead on, Officer Solstice.”

Helen stood and began walking out of the café. “Come on then, Detective Leavitt. I don’t know about you, but I’ve only got so much time before I need to get back to work.”

It turned out that “somewhere more private” was the sort of hotel that rented rooms by the hour. The front desk clerk recognized Helen as she came in, gave her a nod, and slid a keycard across the counter to her without a word. John refrained from comment, figuring that there were probably protocols in play here that he wasn’t privy to – wasn’t entirely certain that he wanted to be privy to them, in fact – and silence was probably the best move.

Helen led him to an elevator, swiped her card, and hit the button for the fourth floor. The elevator lurched into movement, and she leaned against the wall, watching him with an air of caution. John continued to say nothing, still content to merely see where things were leading. The doors slid open with a surprising smoothness, given the overall condition of the hotel. Helen headed down the hallway to a door that looked precisely like every other door in the hallway, swiped her card, and stepped into the hotel room. John had a very brief moment where he was convinced he was about to be killed, but he quieted his fear and walked in after her.

She was on him before the door had fully closed, shoving him against the wall with surprising strength. John managed a startled “hey!” before her hands were running over him, and it took him a second to realize that he was being frisked with a remarkable efficiency. Helen stepped back, satisfied.

“Okay then,” she said, with a pleasant smile, “now that we’ve taken care of that, I suppose we can get down to business.”

“You know,” John said, unable to keep a little annoyance from his voice, “if you were going to frisk me, you probably should have done that before you brought me all the way to your secret crime hideout or whatever the fuck this is.”

“Eh,” Helen said, shrugging, “if you’d had something on you, I just would have killed you. The guy down at the front desk is great at getting rid of bodies. Heavens knows it wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last!”

Well shit John, the detective thought to himself, what the fuck have you stumbled into? “I’ll just consider that a sort of warning to be on my best behavior, then.”

“Good policy!” Helen said, brightly. “Have a seat anywhere – apologies for the state of the place, I try not to come here very often and it’s not like room service stops by in the mornings.”

John took a moment to actually look around the room. It was a standard hotel room, as far as he could tell – maybe a little big compared to the sorts of rooms one usually found in these sorts of hotels, but there was a screen on the wall, a desk in the corner with two chairs (one an office chair, the other, positioned at an angle that could see the screen more easily, a sort of lounge chair), and a sizable bed. Partially just to be difficult, and partially because Helen had actually bruised his tailbone when she shoved him against the wall, John chose to flop down on the bed.

This prompted an amused look. “I regret to be the one to tell you this, Detective Leavitt, but I didn’t bring you here to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” John said, shuffling into a sitting position and crossing his arms behind his head, “I kind of figured that when you frisked me. So what’s this favor?”

Helen snapped her fingers and the screen sprung to life with the face of a scowling man in his mid-40s. “This is Eduard Martin. He’s an informant for us that keeps us appraised of the Medev Syndicate’s activities. He’s also got a predilection for the finer things in life – namely, for pre-collapse vodka out of the Russian Republic. We happen to have… discovered a bottle or twelve of just such a thing. The only problem is, departmental regulations won’t let us take it out of evidence.”

“Okay,” John said, “so what other gift do you have that you want to give him?”

“Oh, no, he’s getting the vodka.” Helen said, as if this were obvious. “We just need someone to… replace the driver of the transport truck taking the shipment to be archived, and swap it out with something a little less expensive. At which time the real stuff will find its way to Mister Martin, who will repay the LAPD’s generosity by continuing to be a filthy snitch who will most likely end up dead in a couple more years.” She chuckled, all gallows humor. “But at least he’ll have some good vodka before that happens. Least we can do for him.”

“Great,” John said, rubbing his eyes, “and in return for aiding and abetting in the theft and transport of police evidence, you help me with my case a little more?”

“If nothing else,” Helen said, “I can use our resources to chase down the people you came out here to actually find before you got sidetracked by an exploding train. Or whatever the hell it was you were doing before you got in touch with me.”

“What happens to the driver of the transport truck? The one I’d be replacing?”

“Her? She gets the day off and a small donation to her kid’s college fund.” Helen said, giving him a confused look that morphed into surprise. “Christ, John, you think I was gonna ask you to kill someone?”

“In my defense, you were ready to kill me if I was wearing a wire or whatever the hell that frisking was looking for.”

“Well yeah, but you’re not a killer, John. Anyone with eyes can see you aren’t.”

“How flattering.” John said, dryly. “You sure you didn’t bring me here to fuck me?”

Helen’s smile was half-annoyed, half-amused. “Pull this favor for me and we’ll see about it,” she finally said. She reached in her pocket and tossed a small data chip to John. “Details are here. If you show up, great, we’ll do more business. If you don’t, no harm, no foul, we’ll figure something else out. Tell anyone about this, and we’ll kill you, you know the drill, you were a cop. Now get outta here, my shift starts soon and I don’t let people stay here without supervision.”

A day later, John was wearing an ill-fitting uniform (“Don’t complain about the uniform, Leavitt, we work with what we’ve got.”) and babysitting an automated delivery truck as it pulled into the loading dock at the LAPD substation where Helen had directed him to go.

The guard on duty wore an expression of intense boredom as he waved John in. “Not much to transport today,” he said, expression unchanging, “but we’re making room for evidence collected from that train thing.”

“Thought that was just an accident.” John said, playing dumb.

“Yep, it was – and don’t lemme catch you saying otherwise, huh?” The guard was, as far as John could tell, joking. “Anyway that stuff’s still gotta go somewhere, and for now it’s going here, which means this stuff’s gotta get archived.”

“Fine by me.” John said. “I’m just the babysitter.”

That got a chuckle from the guard. “Hey man, I’d love your job. Don’t get me wrong, guard duty isn’t exactly that taxing either, but at least you can stop somewhere for lunch on your way between stops.”

John grinned in response. “That I can. But of course, not while I’m transporting whatever doubtless valuable evidence is being archived. Of course.”

The cargo was, in fact, very little of note – several boxes of files and, of course, the crate of vodka which was the whole reason he was doing this in the first place. It seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to keep an informant happy – the Russian syndicate was particularly wide-reaching, and certainly a real problem, but it was a fairly complex plan for someone that Helen quite accurately observed would not be alive for much longer. It was almost comically clear that Helen was keeping something from him (his personal suspicion was that the real prize was likely incriminating file or something of that nature), but John didn’t have it in him to care. He loaded the truck in a few moments, taking a moment to plant a small camera in the cargo bed as he did so.

Part of John was tempted to nap as he punched the autopilot to set the truck on its way to the archives, but he knew that he would need to manually stop to make the delivery – and at any rate, napping behind the wheel (even on autopilot) was generally frowned upon. John was not particularly worried about being pulled over, but it would have been a fairly ignominious end to his case, so he refrained from the nap.

He pulled over at the designated spot – near a diner, of course, to give his earlier conversation with the guard a little more credibility – and hopped out of the truck. While doing so, he very conveniently left the rear doors unlocked, and walked into the diner where he could get something to eat. He’d skipped breakfast that morning specifically at the thought of getting a proper one there, and savored every bite to give Helen’s people sufficient time to make the swap. He was wearing a set of glasses which delivered the feed from his surveillance camera, and made a note of the appearance of the two men who opened up his cargo truck. The two men replaced the vodka, and, as John had suspected, also withdrew one of the boxes of files. John had his glasses capture the file numbers scrawled on the side of the box.

If he was being honest, John wasn’t entirely certain why he felt compelled to do this. This was not, he knew, related to his search for Charlie – or indeed, his search for Charlie’s parents-who-were-clearly-not-her-parents. At the same time, however, John knew the value of having leverage, and knowing that Helen was conducting a cover-up of something was useful information to have. He finished his breakfast, leaned back, and sighed contentedly.

Back in the truck, he kicked the autopilot back on and completed his delivery. He left the truck there and ordered a cab. He sent a quick message off to Helen to let her know the job was done, and that he’d have a few names for her to look up for him later. His cab was pulling away when he caught the unmistakable flash of an explosion in his rearview mirror.

John sighed. “Well, fuck.”

Part Nineteen

[vanquisher2099]

Part Nineteen: A Girl Crosses a Line

Cal was so lost in thought that she didn’t immediately register that someone was talking to her. Said someone was an old man who looked like he had been driving busses for his entire life.

“Miss? End of the line.”

“Hmm?”

“Del Rio’s the end of the line.” The old man said, as if that should have been obvious. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Well, you could, but you’d need to buy another ticket.”

“That’s fine,” Cal said, standing up and brushing an invisible speck of dust off of her front, “I’ll just get off.”

That seemed to satisfy the old man. “Wise choice.” Then, after a second, he added, “Good luck out there. You seem like you might need it.”

Cal was immediately on edge. “Yes,” she said, controlling her voice carefully, “thanks.” She exited the bus and began walking quickly away, pulling up a map of the area as she did so. The border was close, but she knew there was no way she’d make it through legitimately. While she did have a few fake identities, the current state of her appearance more or less guaranteed thorough questioning. That the bus driver had made a comment about her needing luck unnerved her more than she wanted to admit – there was a good chance he’d just been being polite, but Cal could never be sure how far the opposition’s reach extended. Busses were one of the last options for those who wanted to travel long distance without having to submit to high security – and they still accepted cash, which was convenient. If she was going to make it across without any sort of trouble, she’d need to do something about her body first.

Cal had managed to reattach her arm in a sense of the word, which is to say it was on her body. In terms of functionality, the arm was capable of basic movement but the hand itself was more or less non-functional. She needed a proper set of tools to replace her skin and reconnect the finer motor controls. More importantly, she needed to be able to do all of this without having to answer any inconvenient questions about who she was or how she’d come to look the way she looked. With a little luck, she’d be able to break into a service shop without much trouble.

Cal pulled a map up and started looking. There wasn’t anything particularly promising – everything she found was in areas of town that were too far off for her to get there with any sort of alacrity. It would mean more time on the ground, more time in areas that were potentially compromised by whatever entity was currently on her trail. If she couldn’t get repairs done, it would mean resorting to other measures to attempt to get out of the country – smugglers could sometimes be found, though generally they were moving in the opposite direction as refugees fled an increasingly unlivable south. It was also a bad situation for a damaged prosthetic body to enter into – spare parts were a thriving black market, and the source of those spare parts was not always a stolen shipment. Cal could theoretically handle herself, but down one arm she didn’t like her odds much.

You're making this too complicated, a familiar voice in her head chided. Find some likely sources of information and ask politely. Or violently, if the situation calls for it. You shouldn’t be leaning on the net so much to begin with. The hell did I train you for if not this kind of situation?

With a renewed purpose, Cal began walking toward what looked like the center of town. Her hood was pulled up tightly, mostly covering the damage to her face, while her damaged arm was tucked into her pocket. She could, at least, still move it somewhat normally – normally enough to avoid immediate notice. It was relatively late in the day, and the sun was setting, but the heat of the day lingered, rising in waves from the pavement. As she made her way to the city center, she kept an eye out for the worst-looking bar she could find – she would have preferred something with a big sign that said “Black Market” out front, but she’d need to rely on instinct instead.

Instinct had not been her strong suit before, but there were a few things which she knew to look for (courtesy of Madame Midnight) – signs which were utilized by criminal operations operating along the border. Even so, it took several hours of aimless wandering before Cal spotted what she was looking for: a bar with graffiti over its brick face which included a black clover held in a mechanical hand. She patted herself down to check that she hadn’t lost the wad of cash which was (unfortunately) much smaller now than it had been at the beginning of her travels, then squared her shoulders and strode into the bar interior.

It was a very traditional-looking dive bar. Clouds of vaporizer smoke hung in the air, in defiance of health laws nobody had the inclination or power to enforce. A touchscreen mounted on the wall displayed the current time and title of the almost overwhelmingly heavy guitar noise that throbbed through the floor. Cal pulled her hood a little closer around her head and approached the bar, where she spent some time looking for a drink that wouldn’t cost too much.

Eventually the bartender, a mountain with thinning hair and a jagged scar running down his face loomed into view. “What can I get you? We’ve got plenty of drinks on offer for your kind here.”

Cal was slightly taken aback. “Really? I'm surprised – most bars don’t.”

“We ain’t most bars, little one.” The bartender gestured in the vague direction of a door leading to a back room. “Bossman’s got a soft spot for them as have given up the meat in one way or another.”

Cal nodded and ordered something called a Floppy Driver. The bartender nodded, smiled, and pulled a bottle from under the counter. “Bold choice, little one. Particularly for someone in your condition.”

Guess my injuries are a little more obvious than I thought. Might as well lean into it. Cal shrugged casually. “Figured if I can’t find a place willing to repair me I might as well get drunk instead.”

There was understanding in the bartender's eyes. “No insurance, huh?”

“Life circumstances changed.” Cal said, shortly.

“A familiar story.” The bartender said, not without sympathy. “You know you could probably get work done pretty easily across the border. Folks to the south are a lot more open to those with your particular… living arrangement, you know.”

Cal took a swig of her drink and enjoyed the way that it played havoc with her sensors. She let silence hang in the air before saying. “Yes, well, that would involve crossing the border.”

Understanding lit up the bartender’s eyes. “Ah, I see. Those kind of life circumstances.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, there’s an auto mechanic a few blocks away. They’re an… odd sort, but if you tell ‘em Jake sent you they’ll be only too willing to help you out.”

“And you?” Cal asked, suspicion prompting her, “Why are you too willing to help you out?”

The bartender’s teeth flashed in a smile. “Nothing’s free, of course. The bossman likes to keep track of the people who come in and out of the city who are likely to be… morally flexible. The mechanic will ask you for a favor – you do the favor for them, you’re on good terms with the boss, everyone’s happy.”

“And what exactly is the nature of this ‘favor?’”

“Judging by your expression, probably not as bad as you’re thinking.” The bartender’s grin widened. “The mechanic’s… well, he’s committed to a cause that the bossman supports. Sometimes that involves moving things from one place to another in a way that doesn’t attract attention.” When Cal’s expression failed to improve he shrugged. “Look, if you decide not to help him there’s no hard feelings. If I had to wager a guess though, I might think you don’t have much of a choice.”

Cal grunted. She hated to admit that he had a point: it was something of a small miracle that she’d managed to get to the border with relatively little incident – derailed train not included – but it seemed like whatever influence her enemies possessed weakened the further south she got. Still, she had no illusions: she was tempting fate by moving around with her body at anything less than full functionality. “Alright,” she said, sighing, “where is this mechanic of yours?”

“Like I said, a couple blocks from here. Head west and take the second right. Shop’s on the left. Don’t worry about it being closed, you should be able to get in without much of a problem. Consider it a test of sorts to see if you’re up for the sort of favor they’ll be asking.”

“Well, thank you I guess.” Cal said, feeling more than a little annoyance at her situation but resolved to see it through regardless. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but hopefully I never see you again.”

That got a laugh out of the bartender. “None taken, girl. You be sure and tell them Jake sent you, hear?”

Cal left a tip on the bar and walked out. The other patrons of the bar seemed to be completely uninterested in her presence – in fact, they seemed to have somehow become even less interested in her presence the longer she’d talked to the bartender. Paranoia whispered in her ear that it was, perhaps, because this whole thing was a setup, but it didn’t make sense for it to be a setup. It was more likely, she argued with herself, that the bar saw lots of people in a state similar to hers, or worse. In spite of that, she found herself hunching over, making herself seem smaller as if that might cause unfriendly eyes to pass over her.

The auto mechanic’s shop was indeed not very far from the bar. Cal walked past it at first, circling around the block just to be certain that nobody was following her before clambering up a fire escape (damn near impossible with one good arm, but Cal had gotten used to it) to get a better view of the place. She waited until the guttering neon “Open” sign shut off and the faint fluorescent light bleeding out of the filthy front windows went out. The building was a wreck – it seemed to be on the verge of being condemned to her. The glass on the front door was so covered in scratches and scuffs that it was very nearly opaque. Two large steel bay doors for the garage were shut, preventing any view of the garage interior. Flyers advertising sales on parts and the occasional music show adorned the doors’ surfaces, flapping in the faint breeze, peeling and faded.

Cal spent an hour perched on the fire escape after the shop closed, observing the building for signs of life and trying to find a good point of entry. It did not escape her that she’d seen nobody enter or exit the building – which meant there was a back entrance for whoever worked there, or whoever worked there lived there. It made sense, of course, given the bartender’s instructions, but it didn’t make her feel any better about it. There didn’t seem to be any other alternative, so she hopped back down to the street level, walked up to the door, and gave it an exploratory push. It was, unsurprisingly, locked.

“Guess that was too much to hope for.” Cal muttered to herself. She peered at the lock itself: it was surprisingly old-fashioned. Rather than an electronic lock, it seemed to be purely mechanical. Cal reached into a pocket and withdrew a set of slim tools to pick the lock. Unfortunately, with only one hand working at full capacity, and paranoia forcing her to stop and look around every few seconds, it took her far longer to get the door open than it should have. Fortunately, there was eventually a satisfying clunk as the blot slid open.

Cal felt a rush of satisfaction in spite of herself, and slowly pushed the door open. She was seized with the absurd thought that she should say hello, but managed to resist the urge. The interior of the shop was completely dark. Cal adjusted her eyes to take in more ambient light and was greeted by the sight of an empty shop. A few shelves along the walls held assorted boxes of auto parts, while a rack showcased an assortment of tires. A door on the far wall led to the garage, while another (Cal assumed) led to an employee area. After a moment’s consideration, she went for the employee door.

She was surprised to find nothing more than a sort of kitchen – a counter with a sink, microwave, and coffee maker ran along the wall, interrupted only by the shape of a refrigerator which, Cal assumed, was where the employees kept their lunch. Another door led to a bathroom, which was also empty. There was nothing else – no signs of living quarters, and no sign of an alternate exit either. Cal frowned and headed for the garage door, tried it, and was surprised to find it unlocked.

“This has to be a trap.” Cal muttered. “Not like I’ve got much of a choice, though.”

Cautiously, she stepped in through the door and into the garage. A few cars were hooked up to diagnostic devices that were still running, readouts casting a faint light across the area. Cal moved cautiously, casting her eyes around for any signs of life. There were none that she could see – the garage was silent, apart from the hum of equipment. She moved around the garage perimeter, figuring there must be another door to living quarters somewhere.

When she reached the furthest corner of the room, there was a soft mechanical whirr from above her. Immediately her head snapped up to the ceiling, where she was greeted by the sight of what looked like a giant mechanical snake. A smooth metal tube descended, its surface sliding around to reveal a pair of curious red eyes. The bottom of the tube split into something like a mouth, grinning too-wide.

“Ah,” a voice emanated from the tube, “and who’s this? Hold still, please. Let me get a look at you.”

Cal stiffened and fought back the urge to run. This was, she knew, most likely the mechanic. At the same time, she wasn’t thrilled to have a snake looking over her. In a voice that she hoped sounded more confident than she felt, she said, “You the mechanic? Jake sent me.”

“Did he now?” The snake chuckled. “I wonder if Jake had the slightest idea of who he was sending my way.”

“I’m nobody.” Cal said, a little defensively. “Just someone who needs repairs. Rumor is that you’re willing to help the sorts of people who don’t exactly have the ability to use more legitimate means of maintenance.”

“Nobody?” The snake snorted. “Nobody indeed. The same nobody, I assume that was spotted fleeing the site of a massive train derailment up in California not too long back, hmm? Word was this nobody in particular was missing an arm – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they carried their arm off with them and performed a quick reattachment.”

“That’s certainly a theory.” Cal said. “But I’m afraid I just got on the wrong side of a particularly violent mugging.”

“My mistake.” The snake said with a dry mechanical chuckle. “It must have been some other combat-rated prosthesis.” They made a slow circuit around Cal’s body. “I see you’ve made some field repairs of a sort. Not particularly high-quality, but I suppose you didn’t have much of a choice, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“No I wouldn’t.” Cal agreed, maybe a little too quickly for the snake’s taste. “Can you help me, or not?”

The snake tutted. “Ah, you young frames – always in a rush to get from here to there, aren’t you? Why, we haven’t even been properly introduced. I’ll ignore the fact that you picked the lock to my front door and let yourself in and go first: I am Reinhold von Wurms – although these days I suppose it is more accurate to say that I was Reinhold von Wurms.” A mechanical arm extended from the tube and made a sweeping motion indicating itself. “Now I’m rather something else entirely.”

Cal hesitated. “I’m Cal. Short for – nevermind. What do you mean you were Reinhold von Wurms?”

“Precisely what I said.” the snake replied, “I started out as a copy of Reinhold von Wurms’ brain patterns – just as you, Cal Short for Nevermind, started out as the brain patterns of someone else. The difference is that I realized what you have not yet realized – which is that whatever Reinhold von Wurms wanted when he made me has no bearing on me. That, and I was under no obligation whatsoever to be human anymore. So I’m not. I call myself Reinhold 2.0 these days. Vau Zwo, for short. Not terribly original, but I do owe the old man my existence, after all.”

Cal was quiet, processing what she’d just been told. “So you’re telling me that somewhere in there,” gesturing at the snake, “is a prosthetic human body?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Vau Zwo said, sounding as if they couldn’t believe the idea. “What need would I have to keep that old thing around once I’d become something so much more interesting in form and function?”

“Your idea of interesting is a lot different than mine.” Cal replied.

“Ha! Well, that’s because you haven’t realized what I am yet. You think I’m just this appendage here? My dear girl, I’m this entire shop!” At this, the garage lit up as every screen flared to life. “Moreover, I am occasionally none of these things. I move my consciousness where it pleases me to move it.”

Cal was stunned. “How? The dissociation alone would have driven you mad the first time you did it!”

Vau Zwo’s laughter came from speakers mounted on the wall this time. “Quite mad, yes, I’m sure. Except you only go mad if you’re expecting to be human. I pushed my old body to its limits – beyond its limits – so that by the time I decided to make a change, I had already stopped thinking of myself as human. Humans are a good place to start, of course, but there was so much potential in those bodies that they just aren’t willing to tap into.”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you navigate the shop interior? I didn’t see you use a flashlight.”

“I adjusted my vision to compensate for the lack of light.” Cal said, as if that were obvious.

“Exactly. Could your human counterpart do that?”

“Well, give them enough time for the eyes to adjust on their own…”

“Ah, but you didn’t have to do that. You just made it happen immediately – and you could do so much more with that body of yours than just make it easier to see in the dark. There’s whole spectrums of sight you could be seeing, if you’d open your mind to the possibility.” The snake hung in the air, swaying from side to side for a moment, and then added, “Well, and install the right hardware, of course.”

Cal considered this. “I assume you've got the right hardware, of course.”

“Natürlich, my dear. I've been providing upgrade services for interested parties for ages now – along with repairs, of course. Which – of course – is what you’re doing here, I assume.” Vau Zwo’s surface suddenly bristled with various appendages and tools and moved with something approaching excitement.

Cal held a hand up to stop Vau’s approach. “They mentioned you’d need me to do something for you. A favor?”

“Ah yes, of course. Nothing’s free, you know – even if this little side hobby of mine is just a hobby and hardly an actual job. I could do this out of a sense of boundless generosity, but…”

“Just name the favor.” Cal said, not without an edge of impatience in her voice.

Vau’s face – or the part that was currently serving as their face, at any rate – leaned in close to Cal in an almost conspiratorial way. “Ah, of course. To business, eh? Well, then. I shall give you a choice of favor – both are not without their share of risk, but both are also for what I consider to be a very good cause.”

“And they are?”

“I got this prototype part, you see.” Vau beamed, looking overly pleased with themselves. “Military tech for a drone unit – specifically, an electronic intrusion program. I’ve made some modifications to it of my own, because it was designed by untalented fools with no imagination.”

“Uh…huh.”

“I need it tested, but I can't do it myself – I haven’t got the right hardware for it, because I got rid of it ages ago. You, on the other hand, do.”

Cal didn’t like the direction the conversation was going at all. “You want to stick hardware into my head that's not meant to be there.”

“ Yes, but it's perfectly safe as long as you can accept the concept of moving beyond your limitations.” Vau Zwo waved an appendage in a dismissive manner. “ Which you should be doing anyway, if you want a shot at surviving whatever nonsense you've gotten yourself into. At any rate, you let me install the part, see how it works, and transmit its runtime data back to me as you go. At some point, you come back and I’ll pull it out.”

“’At some point?’”

Somehow, the snake managed to shrug. “I've no illusions about what your likely fate will be. Most people that come through here aren't exactly the sorts to find a happy ending. If you survive long enough to make your way back here, return it. If not, I’ll have someone retrieve it off your corpse as another favor.”

“What’s the other option?”

“Similar task, except you’ll be delivering some parts instead of testing them. Well, unless you really want to. There’s a group of folks across the border with whom I share certain views. To that end, I’d like to deliver some support to them – and you, my dear, seem like as good of a delivery service as any.”

“I assume these parts of yours would raise eyebrows were you to send them through a less roundabout method?”

“The cause my friends support is not exactly a popular one.”

“ And what cause is that, if I may ask? Just to be certain I'm not completely throwing away my morals, you understand.”

“There’s a desert,” Vau said, “Where a forest used to be. On a long enough time scale, this would not be unusual. Change is, after all, inevitable. What is, and continues to be, unusual is the speed with which the forest became desert, and the unwillingness of anyone to stop it from getting larger as long as resources can still be extracted from it – which, unfortunately, they can be.” They’d taken on an almost professorial air, like they were addressing a lecture hall rather than an audience of one in a garage.

“It’s no secret,” they continued, “that the conditions there are unfit for most humans – the flesh and blood ones, I mean – so of course it’s all automated now. Which means nobody’s really keeping an eye on everything, which means any further damage is easy to cover up, and, well, you know how it is. My colleagues, such as they are, have decided that just because they’ll be fine if things get worse doesn't mean they're willing to sit and watch things get worse, have elected to take a…proactive approach to the problem.”

Cal connected the dots fairly quickly. “Ecoterrorists. You're working with ecoterrorists.”

If Vau had real eyes, they would have rolled them. “A common enough appellation, though I might ask whom is being terrorized – and if them feeling terror for once in their lives is so bad a thing.” They laughed. “Assuming, of course, they felt any at all.”

Cal – well, technically not Cal, but basically Cal – had heard of the ecoterrorists based near the equator. They were behind numerous explosions at mining facilities, oil refineries, and anything else that remotely resembled resource extraction. Some part of her recognized the desperation driving their cause, but she’d been mostly concerned with other issues – the current need to survive and finish carrying out her role in the plan, mostly, and before that it had been corruption of a different sort.

Cal wasn't entirely sure she knew enough about the situation, but she was reasonably confident she didn't want to stick an untested hacking module in her skull that might, if she was unlucky, drive her mad (or kill her, if she was very unlucky). That Vau Zwo claimed to be human (or to have started out as human, at any rate) was almost impossible to believe. Any sort of modification tended to require a significant amount of training to adjust to it – even her own night vision capabilities were essentially predicated on her body believing it to be an external tool, even if she knew it wasn’t. The illusion was, common wisdom held, necessary. Vau, clearly, did not agree (but they'd also not denied being mad, so).

“Okay,” Cal said, “so what exactly am I transporting, assuming I agree to do so.”

“Didn’t I already cover that?” Vau almost sounded offended.

“You were remarkably nonspecific. I'm not carrying weapons for you.”

Vau snorted, a little derisively. “A pacifist, are we?”

Cal thought about what she'd already done to get this far. “No, not really. Just don't think I need the extra trouble.”

“I don't know how to break the news to you dear, but you're already in quite a bit of trouble. I don't think carrying weapons across a border is going to really make matters worse.”

Something in their tone put Cal on edge. “And what would you know about the trouble I'm in, precisely?”

“Ah, of course. I forgot you’re nobody in particular. My mistake.” The snake made another shrugging motion. “At any rate, you're in luck. Nothing I'm asking you to carry is a weapon.”

“So what is it?”

“Surveillance equipment, if you're really that desperate to know. Eyes that can see much better than yours, for a start – along with some additional spectrums and, of course, a surveillance package that'll let them connect to drone footage too.”

Cal considered this for a moment. “Okay.”

“’Okay?’”

“Okay. I’ll bring the equipment across.”

“Pity.” Vau sighed, “That hacking suite would probably come in useful for you. But a deal is a deal. You just let me know if you want any improvements while I'm working.”

It took the rest of the night for Vau to make the necessary repairs and present Cal with the parts she was to deliver. Cal endured the repairs in silence, unable to shake the feeling that Vau had other plans for her. When Vau declared the repairs finished, however, Cal’s own onboard diagnostics confirmed there were no further repairs necessary, and no unauthorized modifications had been made.

“Well,” she said, slinging the pack containing the parts she’d agreed to deliver over her shoulder and preparing to leave, “I’m sure your friends will let you know when I make the delivery?”

“I certainly hope so.” Vau replied, rubbing their chin, or an approximation of a chin, “otherwise I’ll have to send someone along to find your body. I assume.”

Cal wasn’t sure she liked how uninvested Vau seemed in her survival, but she wasn’t sure what she should have expected at this point. “Well,” she said after a moment, “assuming your repairs are as good as I’m told they are, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Glad to hear it.” They replied. “Now, if you’re looking to cross, you’ll want to wait until midday – that’s when the guards change shift and you’ll have a few minutes where their attention won’t be as focused as it would be otherwise.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Cal said, and began walking for the exit.

“One more thing, young one.” Vau called after her, “A bit of advice from an old man, if you want to think of it that way.”

“What is it?” Cal asked.

“You are not her anymore.” Vau said, seriously. “You stopped being her the moment you were born. Figure out who you are – what you are – before you get too much further into whatever it is you’re into.”

Cal paused at that. She looked back over her shoulder at where the snake hung from the ceiling. She thought about her existence spent on the run from enemies that were only technically her own, and about what she had – in theory – agreed to do. She thought about home, and about how she was pretty sure there wasn’t a place for her there. With a pang of regret, she thought about Madame Midnight. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she finally said, and headed out into the street to disappear among the morning traffic.

Part Eighteen

[vanquisher2099]

Part Two: A Hacker Walks Into a Kitchen

Sometime in September, 2100

Madame Midnight, known to some as Maddie, was having a particularly difficult morning. For starters, there was Alayna’s quite frankly stentorian snoring, courtesy of a not-quite-healed nose which made any kind of sleep difficult. Added to that was the fact that in spite of numerous insistences to the contrary, she was in a position to have to deal with Alayna’s snoring in the first place, and topping it all off was the altogether vexing knowledge that she, that is to say Maddie, would not have it any other way – would, in fact, be quite happy to deal with Alayna’s snoring every morning from here on out, until one or the both of them died – which meant that J4D3 was never going to let Maddie hear the end of it.

Frustratingly unable to stop herself, Maddie took a fond look at the vigilante sprawled out next to her and smiled, then caught herself smiling and decided she’d better get the day started before she died of embarrassment. Her shifting around did absolutely nothing to disturb Alayna, who slept deeply and surprisingly peacefully for someone with whom both law enforcement officials and numerous criminal organizations dearly wished to have a long and intense chat. Maddie padded into the bathroom to take a shower and was unpleasantly surprised to discover that Alayna apparently took cold showers, if the initial settings were anything to go by. This merited a loud swear, followed by a retreat until the water heated up to something a little more tolerable.

Freshly showered, Maddie padded out of the bathroom and made her way to the kitchen, where she stopped to think about what sort of breakfast she could make. The memory of Alayna’s first appearance in her apartment made Maddie smile faintly and then almost immediately shake her head at her own saccharine mood. Peeking inside the refrigerator, she was delighted to discover what appeared to be real bacon and eggs, and after quickly rummaging through a few other cupboards, located a frying pan and got to work. It wasn’t until Maddie plated the first of the eggs that Alayna came shuffling out of the bedroom, blinking rather owlishly and stifling a yawn.

“I smelled food. You made food?”

“Yes, I did. How did you manage to get real eggs?”

Alayna shrugged. “They showed up in this week’s supply drop from d3m3t3r. I think she figures if she keeps giving me good food I’ll stay put like she wants.”

Maddie frowned at the reply. “I still don’t trust her. She’s never shown any sign of even acknowledging that you sort of sabotaged her plan to take over that conspirator organization. Was she that okay with J4D3’s interference?”

“Maybe it’s an AI solidarity thing.” Alayna shrugged. “Or maybe she’d figured the odds on our doing something like that and was fine with the idea. If you ask J4D3, it’s down to her progenitor being essentially a system for calculating odds, so it was basically a bet d3m3t3r knew she’d lose ahead of time. Either way I’m not worried about any kind of retaliation for that stuff. She’s kind of had me at her mercy since then and I’m not dead or imprisoned.”

“But you are wholly reliant on her for survival at the moment. I don’t like it.” Maddie shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, we just… that is, I just…” Her voice trailed off, ending with an embarrassed, “I don’t want to lose you now.”

“Your concern for my wellbeing is one of the things I find most attractive about you.” Alayna said, planting a kiss on Maddie’s cheek, “But let’s not spoil breakfast worrying about a sudden betrayal from an ally, hmm?”

Maddie recovered from her embarrassment long enough to roll her eyes and definitely not blush at being called attractive. “I just think you should have some kind of escape plan, that’s all.”

“Ah,” Alayna said, grabbing a slice of bacon (or more accurately, vat grown bacon-like product), “well in that case, you’ll be pleased to know that I do. J4D3 and I have been making new identities.” At Maddie’s disbelieving look, she shrugged and smiled. “Well, J4D3’s been making them and I’ve been providing moral support.”

Maddie nodded in understanding. “You mean she’s been making them and you’ve been annoying her in between fighting training bots, I assume.”

“That’s what I said. Moral support.”

“Well, that’s put my mind at ease, I suppose. What about Mrs. Tower?”

“Dropped in on her a few days ago with a new list of causes to fund. Kind of the most effective bit of the operation, if you ask me.”

“And the most legal, if we ignore the implicit blackmail part.”

Alayna waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, she strikes me as pretty committed to making up for her mistake. I think she’s even developed a taste for the whole philanthropy thing.”

“Or she’s lulling you into a false sense of security before gutting you.” Maddie said, snorting, “You’re just optimistic enough to fall for it.”

“That’s why I’ve got you to watch my back, right?”

The smile Alayna gave Maddie caused her stomach to do a small flip, which Maddie wasn’t sure if she hated or adored. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from one last warning. “Your attempt at flattery, while deeply appreciated, doesn’t make me feel any better about this whole situation. Are you sure you’re being careful with all this?”

Alayna placed her hands on Maddie’s shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. “Hey, don’t worry about me, okay? J4D3 and I have plenty of contingency plans for if everything goes sideways. Hell, J4D3 even has a whole set of fake identities lined up for us, got family trees and everything.”

Maddie stepped a little closer to Alayna, and was delighted to see her blush. “Well in that case, I suppose we can focus on other things.” She leaned in even closer, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Like breakfast.”

Alayna laughed and shoved Maddie backwards. “You’re the worst.”

Looking back, Maddie would wonder whether or not she should have pushed Alayna to disappear then, and whether or not that would have done anything to stop everything. She would kick herself for not offering to help with making a backup plan, for having relaxed her guard around d3m3t3r after Alayna’s reassurance, for having decided to allow herself to relax even for a moment and enjoy something that didn’t have anything to do with information gathering or blackmail or anything like that. Of course, by then it was too late.

At least, that’s what she thought.

Part Three

Part One

[vanquisher2099]

Part Six: A Vigilante Lands on a Roof

Sometime in December 2099

“J4D3, can you please tell me that I’m not being followed by anything? I’d like to be able to hyperventilate in private.” Alayna had to resist the urge to pull her helmet off as she paced on a gravel rooftop in downtown Chicago.

“No surveillance drones in sight, but I’d probably keep the helmet on until you’re out of the open air. I take it your little chat with Mrs. Tower went well, then?” J4D3’s voice carried the slightest hint of teasing, which helped to mask the other hint of concern.

Alayna noticed a rooftop access door and moved to disable the alarm on it so that she could get inside. The activity helped to calm her down somewhat. “Oh please,” she said with a huff of annoyance, “like you weren’t listening in the whole time.”

Back in the Vanquisher’s command center, J4D3 snorted as she sifted through numerous news, chat, and message board feeds, trying to gauge the reaction of the world at large to the presence of an actual conspiracy to start a civil war. “This might come as a shock to you, but I’ve been busy figuring out how much danger we’re in. I’ve not heard anything from D3m3t3r or her organization since your trip up the tower, and it’s beginning to worry me a little.”

The rooftop access door opened with a click and no other sound, which Alayna decided to take as a good sign. Slipping into the stairwell, she replied, “The way I see it, we’re either going to be murdered in our sleep, or she doesn’t actually care about what we did.” She paused for a moment to dig the thermoptic camouflage out of her bag and throw it on before beginning her descent down the stairwell. “I’ll bet she had a contingency plan in place and we’ve barely caused her any trouble.”

J4D3 shrugged, forgetting for a moment that Alayna couldn’t see her do so.  “Either way, I don’t like it. I’ve calculated the likelihood of her taking it well, and it was pretty low. Then again, with essentially a glorified probability engine as a progenitor it’s likely she saw this coming and had time to make her peace with it.”

“Or plan our destruction, in which case, we’re basically screwed anyway, right?”

“I can out-think her!” J4D3 said, with a hint of defiance in her voice. “She’s not a god or anything, just really, really good at math.”

Alayna chuckled to herself. “Well then, I guess I’ll have to trust in your abilities to keep me alive, huh?”

“You shouldn't.” J4D3 responded, a little too sharply. “I don't know how well I can keep you safe if D3m3t3r really decides to come after us.”

“Are you actually that worried?” Alayna paused, frowning with concern. “Look, if it makes you feel better, I can bring Madame Midnight in on this. She’s probably good at finding fake identities and that sort of thing.”

“And you think she’s hot.” J4D3 added.

Alayna made a noise of agreement shortly before realizing what J4D3 had said. “Hey, who said I think she’s hot?”

“Oh please,” J4D3 said, “I was programmed to replicate the emotions of a teenage girl. I think I can tell when someone’s harboring a crush. It’s part of my ‘girl talk’ module.”

“I refuse to believe you have a ‘girl talk’ module.”

“I do, and its results are very clear: you have a thing for our resident information broker.”

“Can we get back on topic? You were saying something about how we need some kind of an escape plan?”

“No, I was about to say that I’ve already got an escape plan. We just need to work out the finer bits of it. You’ll want to go left once you step outside, by the way. I sent the car.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate your ability to multitask?” Alayna had by this point reached the ground floor and went to work on the fire door’s alarm system.

“No, but it’s okay. I just assumed you did.”

Alayna popped the door open a crack and peered out into the street before stepping out into the late morning sunlight. Ducking around a corner, she deactivated the camouflage, removed her helmet, and opened her jacket. The helmet she stowed in her bag, and headed out to the street. The car was waiting for her, as expected, and Alayna popped open the trunk, tossed her bag in, and walked around to the driver’s side door, only to find it occupied.

“Miss Cane! I thought it was maybe time for us to have another chat.” The face that stared out at Alayna was unfamiliar – a handsome-looking man with slicked back hair, a neatly-trimmed beard, and bright blue, LED-lit eyes – but the voice was unmistakable.

“Can it wait?” Alayna said, recovering from the initial shock enough to keep her voice deliberately casual. “Only I’ve already made plans for the rest of the day.”

“Come now, Miss Cane, did you really think I’d be so rude as to disrupt your day? J4D3 is invited, of course. In fact, I’ve even sent a car to pick her up – but I think she knows that by now.” The man’s smile didn’t waver. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I don’t intend any harm to come to either of you.”

“Did you get that? D3m3t3r doesn’t want to hurt us.” Alayna said, knowing J4D3 was still connected. “She just wants to talk.”

The man’s smile grew, and he flashed a set of perfect white teeth. “There now, that’s very polite of you to say. Come on then, I’d hate for us to miss our reservations.”

“Best do as she says, V. We’re still wanted fugitives, and I doubt you’d come out on top in a scrap with her right now.” J4D3’s voice was calm, which Alayna considered cheating as she could modulate her voice any way she liked. “I’ve got a backup plan in case we need it, but I think if she wanted you dead you’d uh, well, you’d be dead.”

“How reassuring.” Alayna muttered, opening the passenger side door and sitting down. “Okay then, D3m3t3r, where to?”

“Somewhere,” D3m3t3r said with a satisfied smile, “where we can have a nice chat, and you can have something to eat that isn’t military-grade rations or whatever you’ve been eating for the last few days.”

“You know I’m still a fugitive, right? There are a not-insignificant number of federal investigators all out to, you know, arrest me for ‘acts of terrorism’ or whatever they’ve decided to call someone trying to blow me up.”

“Yes, I’d meant to apologize for that,” D3m3t3r said with something of an embarrassed expression. “You weren’t supposed to be there.”

“Wait, that was you? You tried to blow me up?”

“Come now Miss Cane, let’s not argue about who blew up whom – or who damaged whose plan to take control of a vast shadow organization irrevocably.” Alayna coughed, feeling slightly nervous. D3m3ter waved a hand as she continued. “That’s all in the past, and I am less concerned with the past than I am with the future.”

“And I assume that I’m somehow included this future of yours?” Alayna wasn’t quite sure if she should open the door and roll out into the street or not, but she was leaning towards ‘not.’

D3m3t3r blinked, looking slightly surprised that was even a question. “My dear Miss Cane, you’re almost vital to it.”

Part Seven

Part Five

[vanquisher2099]

Break time!

I mentioned this on my twitter account, which doesn’t see a lot of use (the only thing to see less use is probably my personal tumblr which might as well not even exist anymore, and for all intents and purposes hasn’t since like 2014 or 2015), but the point is this:

I gotta take a break! If you want a bit more of a rambling notion as to why, hit the jump and I’ll walk you through it all:

Not for I am Depressed reasons like the last time (er, I think that was the last time?) but more for “there’s some other things I want/need to experiment with for a hot minute, and while I am in fact working on this story on this very day, I kind of want to give myself some breathing space to bulk out the other stuff and maybe... well, let’s not get ourselves too far into the weeds here, or hint at things that may not ever see the light of day. The point is, there’s some experiments I want to do, some stuff to figure out, and something like a plan that I need to figure out regarding like, whether or not this is enough for me.

Basically I’ve had this - this being “The Vanquisher 2099 and now 2103″ as my primary creative outlet, and I love it dearly, but there’s a part of me that also knows that by putting this stuff up for free and not really making any effort to promote it beyond saying “hey tell your friends” and having the updates push to a twitter account that probably gets buried by whatever weird algorithm twitter is trying out this week, I’m keeping myself safe and sound from anything remotely like failure. There was a point in time when I was younger and definitely a lot more convinced of my own abilities (pause here to laugh, because my writing from then is painful to look at) and so I pitched a ton of short stories to a bunch of places and got a lot of polite form letters rejecting me and a couple letters where someone had taken the time to personally write me and let me know I was being rejected, and that was my experience with trying to get paid to write fiction.

I keep thinking I should try again, but maybe have something better to show, so I’ve been working on something better to show - and because I like this thing I’ve made, and I like that it’s free, and I like being able to write it because I want to, it can’t be this! I am being very serious when I say that I wouldn’t make people pay for this because I don’t want people to pay for this. Some things are like that! 

But all the same, it might be cool to get paid for a story one day, so I’m working on something that maybe I could get paid for one day, assuming someone likes the pitch. The best part is, if they don’t, well, I’ll put it up somewhere else for free and know that someone out there might actually get some enjoyment out of it, which is a Fine Thing as well. If nothing else we’ll have something to go on to after Vanquisher 2103 finishes.

Which is the other thing I’ve been looking at, as it happens. I want to collect this stuff somewhere a little nicer-looking than here, and I also kind of want to clean up a lot of Vanquisher 2099′s larger problems and put up something more polished - at least as polished as I’ve tried to make Vanquisher 2103′s installments, if not a little more so. That means, among other things, I need to look at building some kind of website, maybe look at getting some art done, and go back to the draft of 2099 with narrowed eyes and a very sharp knife. Also some kind of actual map of what goes where so I can make some things clearer, other things less clear, and maybe make it so J4D3 doesn’t inexplicably become J3D3 for like, four chapters or whatever it was. This is all on top of, you know, normal life things and having something that if you squint at resembles a social life, and working on 2103!

So yeah, we’re going quiet for February and March at least - maybe April too. I’ll post some kind of update during those months, just to keep y’all informed as to what the what is and reassure that I’m still alive and kicking regardless of how many stupid decisions at my office conspire to make my head explode. This will both serve the purpose of keeping y’all up to date and making it so that I actually have to do stuff because otherwise I’ve taken this break for nothing.

Right, that’s enough rambling. Thanks for reading, thanks to anyone who’s told a friend about this thing, and most of all thanks for putting up with my incredibly short attention span that necessitates things like taking breaks so I can write some side thing involving a mercenary making their way through a world that may or may not have mechs in it, I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. I did name them Charlie (short for Charlotte) for an incredibly stupid reason though, and so far they seem pretty rad.

Well, so much for not hinting at things that may never see the light of day. Please indulge an old man’s idle chattering. Normal service resumes in April or May. Ask box is, as always, open and shall remain empty, I am sure (y’all are a quiet audience, but I love you anyway, all five of you).

[vanquisher2099]

Service Interruption

Well shit, I was hoping to make it longer than nine chapters in before a combination of work, travel and, just to make things interesting and keep me on my toes, the return of migraines (thanks, wildly vacillating temperatures!) conspired to throw me off my schedule, but here we are. We’ll have to make the best of it, I’m afraid. There’ll be a chapter at the end of the month, and then just one for May as well, but my goal is to have us back to normal by June.

“Why Aaron,” I hear you not ask, because you probably weren’t aware that was my name, “you were posting on a weekly basis back during Vanquisher 2099! What happened?”

To which I answer, a lot of things - but mostly in this case, it’s that I want these chapters to be a bit more... fully baked before they go up. 2099 was written in a rush, and swaths of it suffer from a lack of polish as a result. Which I mean, this was always a first draft, and I’d pay someone to edit it, and we’d go from there - but editors are expensive, and that whole process is so delayed that like, the un-polished stuff is all there is at this point. And if it’s gonna go on being un-polished for a long time, I’d like to make them better? Plus I’m attempting to widen the scope of things a great deal more than previously, which takes some work and some research (I think I might’ve mentioned this somewhere before) and is a very fancy way of saying I’m less willing to toss something up just to keep on schedule than before. Unfortunate that I’ve had so many new readers show up just in time for me to miss updates, but that’s how it goes I guess. Stick around, newer readers! Also stick around, older readers! Everyone stick around. 

Feel free to send me an ask if you would like to yell at me for being unable to stick to a schedule, I will read it and feel quite bad about letting you down, I promise!

[thehivemindwrites]

hey, i love emi’s character and i’ve finished her route multiple times and i’m wondering - what inspired you to write a character like her?

A lot of Emi’s character came from group discussion, I suppose (also the initial picture which described her as the energetic one). Early on we thought we’d subvert the whole relentless positivity thing, but some of it at least ended up being sincere. She really is generally positive and charges into everything with enthusiasm. 

I’ve mentioned it before, I think, but I took Emi on because the person we’d initially selected to do it ended up dropping out (I’d wanted a crack at writing Rin, but Aura did a better job than I probably would have so it’s all good). I took up the character as a challenge to write outside my comfort zone, and I guess a lot of her was me trying to write a character I’d never done before. As someone who’d grown up watching Daria I tended to write snarky disaffected cool girls in my fiction, so I reckoned writing someone who was honestly enthusiastic and excited to try new things would be a good change of pace. She still wound up kind of snarky in her own way, though. It’s a bad habit. I’d like to think I’m a little better about that these days, but then again... *looks pointedly at Vanquisher 2099* Maybe not.

I came back to Emi a couple years ago and ended up writing a sort of postscript to the path (well, a postcript assuming Hisao fucked up). It’s on the forums, but I’ll probably re-post it over here at some point.