“Um, I surrender?”

  I probably shouldn’t have made it sound so much like a question, but I was sort of panicking. I didn’t even want to put my hands up. The lovely ladies and gents in front of me looked ready to interpret any movement as a hostile action.

  They stared at me for several long seconds in absolute silence.

  Then Mela began chuckling, and the guns dropped away amidst several smiles.

  I, of course, scowled. “Oh, you bi—” Mela’s smile briefly turned feral, and I corrected myself quickly. “You beautiful and extremely kind individual.”

  She laughed at that, brushing an actual tear away from her eyes. “Ya looked like you were about to piss yourself!”

  “You do remember I dragged your ass all the way out here, right? You do remember that?”

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Also, ya owe me my gun back.” She extended her arm with a gimme-gimme gesture, but it was only when she narrowed her eyes dangerously that I sped up my slow-motion move to fetch the gun. “Ahhhh yiiiis, come back to mama.”

  Someday, I wanted to find a girl who would look at me the way Mela looked at that gun.

  “Tell me you’re going to take us both to a ripper now, and that you won’t spend the next hour talking my ear off about gun specs,” I groused.

  “You wouldn’t know an amazing gun if I used it to shoot ya,” Mela countered, but she did put the dang shooter away. “And sure. Oi, you guys, ain’t someone gonna help a poor girl and a kid make it back to base? No one?”

  “Wouldn’t want your brother to think we’re hitting on you,” one of the guys shot back. “And it’s not that far now. We believe in you.”

  “And I believe in my ability to shove my boot up your —”

  “I’m sure we’ll manage, thank you,” I cut in, reluctant to antagonize a whole group of gangers, even if they were Kittens. I wouldn’t put it past Mela to annoy her own gang enough to shoot her.

  “Awww, the kid’s cute, Mela,” crowed another ganger, a woman this time. “Way cuter than you! I’d ask if he was your younger brother or something, but nothing that shares your gene could be so polite.”

  I shot the woman a grin as Mela hobbled over to me and gripped my shoulder for support once more. Then we were on the move again, away from the laughter and teasing of the Kittens.

  “So, we’re safe now?” I whispered once we were out of earshot, earning myself an odd look from Mela.

  “Of course, kid. They tease and talk big, but trust me, none of those guys would ever do a thing to you. Boss would rip them a new one if they did, but they’re also just genuinely good guys and gals. We don’t make it a habit to traumatize kids.”

  “Then how come you walk around without a mask to cover that face of yours?”

  “Oi.”

  We fell into another silence then. Really, Mela’s assurances shouldn’t have made me feel so much better. I’d known the woman for all of a few hours, and I was already willing to take her word for it, even when my safety was on the line. That wasn’t ideal, and was liable to get me shot at some point, but I was way too tired to care.

  At least our destination wasn’t all that far away. The Kittens apparently didn’t care for making their secret tunnels unnecessarily long. One second, we were trudging through an oddly well-constructed tunnel, and the next we were greeted by a pair of guards stationed in front of a strategically small door. Then we were through the door and into a basement proper. Plenty of people were streaming around, nearly all of them sporting some kind of injury.

  Mela grabbed the shoulder of a passing Kitten.

  “What’s the situation like? Losses? Also, which doc’s not swamped by bodies? I need a couple of things looked at.”

  I saw the exact moment the man realized who he was talking to. He stiffened and stood a little straighter.

  “Torn’s free. Come on, I’ll help,” he volunteered, shouldering half of Mela’s weight. “We’re doing okay. We retreated from those crazy fucks, but only because they managed to get a car-mounted machine gun somewhere. Who the fuck brings that to a street shootout?”

  Mela cursed loudly. “Did they manage to use it?”

  “Nah. We know to keep the collateral damage to a minimum. That’s why we retreated so quickly. It kept our losses to a minimum too. We can just retake the streets another day when we wipe those scum off the face of the planet.”

  “Good. And good work out there. I wantcha to pass that message along. I got ambushed early on and had to split, but I’m proud of how ya handled it.”

  “Thanks.” The man smiled dazzlingly, which had an… odd effect, considering how brutish his face looked. But he seemed to genuinely value her praise.

  Now that I was paying attention, I also noticed the way people were looking at her. At first I assumed they were just weary, but it didn’t take me long to figure out they were worried. For whatever reason, it seemed that Mela had both the respect and the affection of her fellow gang members.

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  It sure wasn’t her acerbic tongue. I could at least say that much.

  Their worry and respect extended even further than I thought. Several visibly wounded people, with bloody bandages tied around arms, legs, or both, quickly got out of her way when we reached a certain privacy curtain. That let us go straight through to visit one Ripper Torn, a man who had way fewer artificial limbs than Glim but who freaked me out something fierce when he turned to look at us.

  It was the eyes.

  Fuck, those eyes. Eight large compound eyes. Two a bit bigger than normal on a human face, with three smaller specimens flaring around each in a triangular formation. The surrounding flesh had long since healed and scarred over fully, but it was still puckered and raised around the cyberoptics. It looked like someone had carelessly welded those eyes onto his face.

  As for the effect on his appearance… well, If I ever met him in an alley at night, I was going to piss myself and then run till I passed out from exhaustion, in that order.

  “Again, Mela?” Ripper Torn sighed. I was shocked at how normal his voice sounded. “A stab wound? A gunshot wound, with the bullet still inside? Tsk. And a variety of smaller cuts and abrasions, with one that requires more extensive medical care. You never fail to disappoint.”

  “And nothing ever gets past those eyes of yours, eh?”

  “That’s why your illustrious leader keeps paying handsomely for my services. Hop on.” The man patted his operating chair. Grabbing a bunch of syringes and other tools, he laid them all out meticulously on a single tray. “I’ll need to remove that bullet first before I can do anything for you, you understand.”

  “Go for it, Doc,” Mela said through clenched teeth, clearly not looking forward to what was coming.

  Torn helped her take off some of the clothes that would get in the way, then actually froze for a second when he saw the powder I’d applied. “Have you seen another ripper already?”

  “Nope. Well, unless you count the squirt over there, but I don’t.”

  I came under much closer scrutiny by the man than I would have liked, but he didn’t say or do anything alarming. He just hummed in thought.

  “Interesting. Well, the good news is that Glim’s powder is one of the best products out there for first aid purposes. I have no clue how you got your hands on some, young man, but I’d be interested in discussing the subject later. For now…”

  The doc trailed off, and the next second, his hands were moving. He clearly wasn’t big on anesthesia. His scalpel made a deep incision, and before blood could even well up properly, a small pair of clamps was in and out of the wound in record time.

  “As expected. Two centimeters in depth. Low caliber bullet. Bruising and mild burns in the affected area, but no signs of infection. The powder’s effect, no doubt. Very good. No reason to delay your medicine, then.”

  An inhaler was offered up instantly. As Mela huffed in the MaxDoc, the ripper poked a syringe in her shoulder, injecting it directly into the wound. Another went into her side, near the stab wound, and the last was reserved for that bad cut she had on her hip. I watched, fascinated, as the medicine took hold.

  It wasn’t exactly instantaneous healing, but it was pretty darn quick. I could literally see her flesh squirming and struggling to close over the wounds. It seemed to be eating up the remaining powder. I shuddered at the image, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.

  Torn’s next words snapped me out of it.

  “Your turn, young man.”

  My wide eyes darted to the ripper, who had a new tray in his hands.

  “No need for anything fancy here,” he went on. “Just take the MaxDoc and I’ll handle your injections.”

  I almost refused. ‘Almost’ being the operative word. My apprehension about this odd reaper had nothing on my desire to finally stop hurting.

  Picking up the inhaler, I tried to copy what I’d seen other people do on very rare occasions. I pressed down, took a deep breath in, and then nearly broke out in a violent coughing fit when the damn ripper jabbed a needle into my face. He got it done quickly, and the tingling numbness that followed was actually pleasant, but that didn’t change the fact that I briefly had a needle in my face.

  Of course, I then quickly got a needle in my thigh, and in my side, and one in the arm for good measure, which confused me a little.

  The ripper must have noticed the look on my face, because he explained, “Just an immunity and digestion booster. You’ll feel hungrier than normal soon. I advise you to eat until you feel like you’ll puke if you take another bite. It’ll help with your condition.”

  “Oooohhh, ya got one of those? Yeah, those are nasty,” Mela said cheerfully. “Come on, let’s find something to stuff our faces with.”

  She hopped, actually hopped, out of the ripperdoc’s chair.

  It was ridiculous how much easier she was moving around already, but then I had to admit my own recovery wasn’t far behind hers. I felt amazing. Better than, really. My body was listening to me properly for the first time in weeks. My various wounds didn’t even twinge as I followed Mela through the Kittens’ underground HQ.

  Apparently, the cattery had everything growing Kittens needed. A single flight of stairs down, we found ourselves in some kind of makeshift cafeteria. It was a huge space. A long counter blocked off one section, with cooking staff behind it. An absolutely crazy number of gangers milled about the rest of the room, which was completely open and full of tables.

  “Mela! Good to see you made it!” a mountain of a man roared in our direction, prompting the most sincere smile I’d seen on Mela’s face yet.

  “Garren! Good to see you too, big guy. What’s it like out there?”

  Mela didn’t bother to go fetch a meal from the kitchen staff. She just sat down with Garren at the mostly empty table, and I joined her. Immediately, another ganger stood up and beelined for the counter, loading up two platters.

  “Bad,” Garren answered. His chemical green cybernetic eyes scanned the room constantly as he spoke. “Someone really fucked it up this time. Big and small players are vanishing, left, right, and center. Everyone else seems to think the best response to that is all-out war, all the while hoping their competitors will just turn up dead. And the ones responsible… Well, from what’s left, this is professionals doing the work. Has to be. Some corpo’s behind this, fucking trust me on this one. No one even knows what the fuck they want.”

  I kept my face carefully blank. They didn’t know what the corpos wanted. I very much did.

  The problem was, part of what they wanted was currently sitting pretty in my skull.

  Thankfully, the ganger returned just then with two platters of food. He put one in front of me and one in front of Mela, who sent him off with a thank-you and a smile.

  I just stared at the food. Even if I knew it was all fake and might even taste like cardboard, it looked amazing. Some kind of meat, mashed potatoes, lots of salad I couldn’t name, and all of it in amounts I never could have afforded a week prior.

  It was the most sumptuous meal I’d ever seen.

  “Fuck, that doesn’t sound good,” Mela was saying. “Any end of the trouble in sight?”

  “As long as entire gangs keep dropping dead? Nah. It’ll be chaos in the streets all the way through.”

  “Double fuck.”

  “That’s right.” Garren turned his intense cybernetic gaze on me. “Now, mind telling me who’s your new friend? Since you brought him into MY house and all.”

  I froze with a fork-full of food halfway to my mouth.

  This wasn’t just another ganger. Mela had sat me down at a table with the leader of the Kittens.

  How the hell was I supposed to introduce myself?