Chapter Seven-A

  Malory twirled around and around on a little stool balling up scraps of old invoices and job slips to build an arsenal. Each one completed was another she could launch at the back of the Doc’s head—he’d been ignoring her, so she was at war and bored out of her mind. An arc through the air, a bounce, and then they joined a graveyard of their brethren. Perks of living in the lab’s spare room? Clean, breathable air, complementary meals, a padded mattress free of bedbugs and so many biting mites. A shower with hot water. Sheets that smelled of antiseptic instead of city smog, and the reassuring presence of a trusted adult. Cons? She was forced to keep to a schedule, to respect a space that was never truly hers, and had to suffer the Doc’s bad habit of becoming so engrossed in his work that she wasn’t sure if she’d died in her sleep and only lingered on as a disgruntled specter. Another throw, and a miss. She kept a tally running in her head, and came to the conclusion her aim was horrible. It didn’t matter. She spun on the stool until she was dizzy—she wanted a job, to find her sister, to curl up in Nadia’s warm embrace; she wanted anything, really, to break the monotony.

  “You need a hobby,” the Doc said. That day, he was dissecting the scrap of an antiquated Model Four Aeon robot recovered from a back-alley skirmish and ignoring the paperwork accumulated on his desk. Some of the parts on the bot were reusable as after-market implants if someone was desperate enough. No good thing to waste.

  “You won’t let me drink anymore,” she said. She waited until the dizziness faded, then threw another wadded ball.

  “That’s not a hobby,” he said. He snatched it from the air without turning around or looking up. “It’s just an escape.”

  “What else am I supposed to do without my own neural net?” she asked. She’d watched and rewatched every memory chip he gave her a hundred times over until she could quote obscure scenes and facts from memory. Knowing the mathematical formula for Gaussian distribution did little to alleviate boredom.

  “No matter how many times you ask, I can’t just slot you with one out of the kindness of my heart,” he said. There were so many invoices and paperwork involved. A strict hierarchy of accountability that disappeared any unsanctioned corruption, real or perceived. The eternal machine of a strictly enforced bureaucracy.

  “I know,” she said. She let the crumpled receipt in her hand fall to the floor and examined her boots, their scuffed leather, the threads of knotted laces. “What about my sister? Any news?”

  “No,” he said. He stopped working, turned to face her, and sighed. “The description you gave me isn’t much to go on. The people with that kind of wealth have ways to disappear, even from our networks.”

  “Oh,” she said. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still hurt. She had made a promise, after all, and intended to honor it. “Will you keep looking?”

  “Of course,” he said. He massaged his forearm, sore from wrenching parts from their casings. “I’ve got a few contacts that specialize in this kind of thing. I’ll throw it to them, see what they come up with.”

  “Alright,” Mal said. It was something to hold on to, at least. She looked around at the mess she’d made, and started to clean. She wasn’t in the mood to harass him anymore.

  “Give me a sec,” the Doc said. His eyes clouded over in the blue sheen of a call.

  Malory threw the garbage into the compactor chute, pressed the button, and listened to the internal mechanisms churn it to pulp, ready to be recycled. She walked around the lab and looked at the labels of cryo containers—the Doc had enough chrome on the shelves to outfit an army, and she supposed that was the point. Most of it was low-level consumer stuff, but every so often, she spotted a piece that wasn’t available to the general public, even on military surplus; those were the pieces a merc would kill their own mothers to get. The upper echelon’s, waiting to be configured and slotted, she assumed. It wasn’t any good collecting dust in inventory. She stopped in front of a device straight from one of her sister’s favorite fright-night films: it had latches and leather straps to sit around the head where scalpels and lasers carved away skin, flesh, and bone. Robotic hands threaded new nerves, a new face to replace the old. Plastic surgery, refined and automated. It gave her goosebumps when she imagined it sculpting away at her. She knew there was built-in anesthesia, but it didn’t mitigate the clinical horror. She moved on to the bottles of pills and read the scientific names of ingredients to purge the image from her mind.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Good news,” the Doc called. He took a seat at his desk and waited for the printer to spit out a physical dossier. He was old-school, in that regard. Said it made organizing easier when the documents and tabs weren’t in his head.

  “You just want me out of your hair,” she said. She walked over and stood by his side. The ventilation kicked on with a hum.

  “Of course I do,” he said. He pulled the document from the tray and read it over one more time. “But I also have a job for you.”

  “Really?” she asked. She’d been living there for weeks and hadn't gotten anything after the first. She refused to go back to mopping shit after the taste of something more.

  “I put your name in for something big, remember?” He handed her the page. It was still warm, and smelled of burnt ink. “Finalization came through.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Mal said. She jumped up and down, and then clasped him in a hug. He was too wide to fit her arms around, but she tried anyway. She hadn’t believed him at the time, thought he was promising the stars to brace her for Oscar’s death notice. Something big meant rep, meant credits. She let go, and turned her attention to the description. When she finished reading it, she had to read it again in disbelief. She turned pale. It felt like some kind of sick joke. “You want me to do what?”

  “Before you freak out, look at the reward further down,” he said. He gave her a sly smile.

  “A selection of implants?” she asked. There were no names listed. The incentive was there, sure, but it seemed like a trap. “Kind of vague.”

  “I played around with the wording a bit,” he said. He cracked the knuckles on his left hand and shifted in his seat. “It allows some leeway in what I can give you.”

  “ZenTech tower, though?” she asked. Sure, she could pay the visitation fee, see Nadia. But the dorms were so far from anything important. And seeing her was personal. “Doesn’t matter much if I’m dead, either.”

  “It’s not that serious,” he said. He reached out, palm extended. “Give me your little hack for a second, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  “Okay,” she said. She fished it from her pocket and handed it over.

  “With a little upgrade to your programming,” he said. He pulled a connective wire from his neck, slotted it into the rectangle she’d made. His eyes glowed with the upload, he went stock-still for a moment, and then he was done. He unplugged and gave it back. “Now it should open any doors you come across in the tower, within reason. You just have to get to a mainframe access port and upload the malware package I stuck on there.”

  “What about the cameras? The guards?” So many variables, so much unmitigated risk. No wonder they were fine giving the job to a kid with no rep and dangling chrome as the reward. They didn’t expect it to work.

  “You still have my mask,” he said. He shrugged. His hair fell in his eyes, and he brushed it aside. “Use your friend as a way in the door. Wait until night when security is thin.”

  “I guess,” she said. There wasn’t a lot of confidence, and using Nadia to get what she wanted felt wrong. She didn’t want to be that kind of person.

  “Look, kid,” the Doc said. He stood to his full height, grabbed her tight by the arms, and forced her to look into his eyes. “I’ll say this only once. The Black Hands is not a charity. I like having you around, that’s true, but I staked my reputation to get you this chance. This is what you said you wanted, why you came to me in the first place. Get your shit together and tell me you can do it.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She clenched her jaw, felt the click of abused cartilage. He was right. This was what she wanted, and it didn’t matter if it was designed for failure. She would fill in the details herself. She didn’t need every action planned out in advance, or someone else’s script to follow. She had the tools provided, and that’s all that mattered. “I can do this.”

  “Good,” he said. He let her go and sat back down. His desk was cluttered with unfinished reports and so many stacked documents. “Now go. I’ve got work to do.”