“So, Doc, is he gonna live?” Mela taunted. She was leaning against one of the ripper’s cabinets, earning herself a tight-lipped look from Torn whenever the thing rattled. Which was often.

  “In spite of your best attempts to ensure otherwise, yes,” the ripper replied, busily swabbing at all the bruises that were starting to form on my skin.

  I had no clue what kind of chemical he was using, but it both eased the sting and actually halted the bruises in their progression. That still did nothing for the bone-deep ache I was feeling in most parts of my body, but it was a start.

  By tomorrow, I might even feel halfway back to human…

  Garren chose that moment to burst into the clinic setup, his cybernetic eyes blazing with anger.

  “We have trouble incoming. One of our scouts reported there’s Zerx moving through the streets in force. They’re all headed here.”

  …or not. I sighed. I won’t get to feel better, because Zerx are gonna finish me off.

  I should have been horrified by the incoming violence, but after the last few days, I just felt tired.

  Mela, on the other hand, still had enough energy for rage. The storm she cursed up actually made a couple gangers poke their heads inside the curtain in search of trouble. When they saw it was Mela and their leader, though, they quickly cleared out.

  “What the fuck are those assholes doing now?! Do they have any idea what kind of numbers we can take down?!”

  “I’m not sure they care, Mela. From what the scout was saying, they all look drugged out of their minds. I’m guessing they started celebrating, and…”

  The big man trailed off, but it wasn’t like he needed to clarify. When you had a large enough group of druggies, all it took was one of them suggesting a stupid plan, and suddenly they were all on board.

  “I already have the guys setting up overwatch points and securing all possible entrances into the building,” Garren went on. “The good thing is we trained for this. We’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll be fine if they don’t find a way to burn the fucking building down with us in it!” Mela snapped. She grit her teeth, stalking around like I’d seen agitated animals do in educational videos. “We have no idea what they have access to. Zerx have always been a bit touched in the head, and they’ve been sinking all their cash into weapons!”

  Garren rolled his eyes, though he did look a little worried. “They’re still stuck out here with us. I don’t think they have anything that dangerous. Besides, the building’s solid.”

  “I know! That’s why we chose it. Fuck. If they ruin my building I’m gonna —”

  “Your building? It’s my building.”

  I watched Garren goad the redhead into a good-natured argument, marveling at how quickly she unwound. When he caught me staring, he shot me a wink, but I could only muster enough emotion to blink at him owlishly. That, apparently, was enough to remind him I shouldn’t be there.

  “Just a sec, Mela. Now, as for you…” He stared at me, suddenly realizing he didn’t know my name.

  “Adrian.”

  “Adrian. Good name! Still, you need to leave. I can have one of my guys lead you out. The Zerx aren’t close enough to threaten you if you’re quick about it.”

  “Fuck! Mela groaned. “I forgot the kid!”

  I crossed my arms and scowled.

  Adult-like, though. I did it adult- like.

  “You’re under attack. This is Zerx. You really think they give a shit about who they come across? If they see me in the streets, they’ll shoot me down even quicker than if they find me here. At least here, I have cover.”

  Personally, I thought my logic was flawless. Garren and Mela, however, were looking at me in a way that suggested otherwise.

  “And that has nothing to do with the fact that ya wanted to sorta join us?” Mela demanded.

  “No,” I answered quickly. From the look she gave me, a little too quickly. “It just makes sense!”

  “Listen kid, I ain’t having yer blood on —”

  “Boss!” A wild-eyed thug on the older side, one that looked vaguely familiar, tore open the curtain. “They’re closing in from all sides. Trying to box us in.”

  “Dammit Mike, don’t just —” Garren cut himself off, his eyes narrowing. “Wait, they’re organized? Didn’t Tay mention they looked drugged out of their minds?”

  “Yes. Most of them, anyway. But they’re still acting way calmer than usual. Not just bluster and violence. I have no idea how.”

  I was still staring at the man. The name Mike jogged something in my memory…

  My eyes widened a second later when I recognized him. He was the one who had tried to calm me down and check how banged up I was after Mela saved my ass.

  “Well fuck!” Mela snarled, eyes flitting towards me. “They past the secret entrances yet?”

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  “They’re moving in a sizable mob, so no. They’re really spreading out to stop anyone from getting out, too.”

  “Dammit, kid, I don’t know if you’re my lucky charm or a trouble magnet.” Mela sighed in resignation. “Guess he’s staying, boss?”

  The ‘boss’ didn’t look happy at all, but after staring at me for a second, he nodded. “Fine. Seems that way. No reason to send him out into the slaughter at this point. Just… get him added to the security network. I’ll see to it that the rest of our guys are in position.”

  “And girls! We got just as many!” Mela countered.

  Garren didn’t answer. He just stalked off, shaking his head. He seemed disgusted with himself for allowing me to stay.

  Was he still convinced I was twelve or something? I knew for a fact gangs recruited from my age range. Younger, even, though that wasn’t for fighting. You could earn good money playing mule for a gang, at least until their rival made you. Then you’d just get torn apart in some alley for ‘daring to work for their enemies.’

  “Come on, kid, don’t get all loopy on me now,” Mela groused, dragging me out of the ripper’s chair and back into the hallway. “You wanted this,”

  I shook my head to focus up, because she was right. I did want it. I’d fucked up and put a ton of people in danger. And while my desire to help a gang, of all people, was likely misguided, I still felt what I felt.

  ’Sides, from what I’d seen so far, they seemed relatively decent. The Kittens weren’t known to be involved in some of the sketchier activities of the slums, either.

  If ever there was a gang I’d actually feel tempted to join for safety, it would probably be them.

  I’d expected Mela to take us to yet another room on the basement floor, or maybe one floor up, at most. Instead, she headed straight for a small, inconspicuous door that turned out to be an elevator.

  From the buttons available when we stepped inside, I counted a total of six floors. Mela hit the topmost button. Immediately, what would have been a metal box of death in just about any other building in the slums hissed and started moving upwards smoothly.

  “I’m impressed,” I said, glancing around. “Your elevator actually doesn’t look like it’s going to crash and burn any second.”

  “We have good peeps working on maintenance!” Mela sent me one of her smirks. “Whole building’s in good condition. Well, other than the shooting range, but that ain’t supposed to count. We’re still patching up the walls there regularly, too.”

  A shooting range.

  I blinked at her as I struggled to process that. Here I was, risking my ass to get enough credits for a gun and ammo to barely make it through a shootout or two, and the Kittens had a shooting range. A whole ass expensive room that required regular repair. Just to practice.

  Suddenly, joining the gang for real seemed more appealing than ever. Especially since their food was amazing, too.

  “Keep staring at a girl like that and she’ll think ye’ve got ideas,” Mela purred.

  “Not when the girl is you,” I scoffed, with as much disdain as I could manage.

  “Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The elevator mercifully opened before she could close her arms around my head and start grinding her fist into my skull. I jumped out, then promptly froze.

  There were wires everywhere. They covered the floors, trailed across the ceiling, and wound over the walls like snakes squirming in a monstrously large pile.

  “Heh. The look on your face,” Mela crowed. Slinging her arm around my shoulder, she pulled me along with her. “Come on, let’s go meet the idiot.”

  The ‘idiot’ turned out to be a small, reedy man stuck inside a room with way too many monitors, keyboards, and, most impressive of all, a full immersion chair with cooling pads. I never thought I would see one of those, but there it was. A vaunted tool of beginner netrunners the world over, rumored to let them perform miracles on the net.

  It would have been a hell of a lot more impressive if it didn’t stink like slum garbage. It was also obviously an older model. The leather-like material was grimy and flaking away in spots.

  “What do you want?” was the man’s polite greeting the second Mela approached his room’s empty doorframe.

  “Fucking lovely to see you too, Mort,” Mela snarled, her stance unusually rigid. “I need you to add Adrian here to the network. Get it done quick, we’ve got incoming.”

  “Yes, yes, the rabble. Well, let’s see his scroll, then. No, wait, those eyes…” Mort looked a lot closer at me now, his own eyes flashing with something close to avarice. “Those have advanced connectivity?”

  “Er… yes? Yes, they do,” I corrected myself quickly, and he snorted.

  “Of course they do. Because even street rats have better funding than me now.”

  He turned his very human eyes away from me in a huff, clacking away at one of the keyboards. I was honestly surprised to see those in this day and age. They weren’t entirely phased out, but they were pretty obsolete compared to larger scrolls, not to mention more advanced tech.

  Maybe he really did have shit funding, but I wasn’t about to say that with Mela in the room.

  It wasn’t long before I was hit with a notification from a private network asking to sync up with my eyes. I gave permission only after exchanging a meaningful glance with Mela.

  “There,” Mort spat the second I accepted. “Done. You can scroll through the camera feeds now, and even ping the network to stream what you’re seeing if you spot something important. Now get out.”

  Mela gripped my shoulder and led me out of the room, only speaking when we were a good distance away from the dour man. “Fuck if he doesn’t make me want to punch him. Every. Damn. Time.”

  “He’s not very friendly, I take it?”

  “Fuck no. No one knows his full story, other than Garren, but he was some kind of corpo runt before. Way I hear it, he fucked up something fierce, and he barely got away with the skin of his back. Lost most of that too, actually. Still managed to smuggle out that chair of his somehow. If he wasn’t smart enough to refuse to train his own replacement, I’d have offed him by now, but… well.” She shrugged, looking sheepish. “Not a lot of runners around here for hire.”

  I was willing to bet that was one hell of an understatement. In fact, now that I knew they had a runner of their own, a lot of the Kittens’ success made more sense to me.

  Security between the slums and the outer district wasn’t the best. Even a halfway decent netrunner could probably poke holes in it, giving a gang greater access to resources and quality equipment.

  No matter how unpleasant Mort was, I could only assume he still got treated like royalty within the gang. Course, if he ever tried to leave, he’d be killed faster than he could blink. And if rival gangs found out about the runner, they would burn everything in their path to get to him.

  Such was life in the slums.

  “What now?” I asked, instead of focusing on the topic.

  Mela sighed like I’d volunteered to charge to my own death. Which, well, I kinda had?

  “Now, I give ya this.” She shoved a gun into my hands. “And then we post ya up somewhere safe. Probably gonna keep ya right next to me, really. That way, at least ya can’t fuck up hard enough to get yerself and everyone around ya killed.”

  The critique wasn’t very welcome, but the gun was. I had no idea when she’d picked the thing up. It wasn’t one of hers. Still, it was definitely bigger and bulkier than my Cadmus, and looked a lot more deadly to boot.

  “Fifteen rounds. Smaller than mine, but, eh, don’t have a decent expanded mag shooter for ya with that magazine size. Just… spray and pray you hit someone, I guess. Oh, and take these, too.”

  The woman had entirely too many concealed pockets on her person, but when she shoved three magazines of ammo into my hands, I didn’t complain at all. If anything, I was feeling safer than I ever had going into a potential disaster.

  Of course, that was the moment when a chilling combination of gunfire and coarse shouting erupted outside.