With a newfound swagger in my step, I crossed the glimmering road to the other side of the landing. My silken undershirt clung softly to my frame, barely a whisper on my skin. The lavish wine jacket bristled in the face of a slight gust of wind. Anybody who saw me now could hardly equate me with the scared office-geek that entered this competition.

That iconic ivory fountain grew with the center of the Hub. It now loomed amid a sea of black, like a skeletal vessel crossing the river Styx. Water spouting from its peaked mouth shimmered bright blues, yellows, and reds under the rainbow of neon that illuminated this level.

The flashing red sign of “Vulcan Labs” beckoned to me from across the abyss. ATHENA had mentioned cybernetic augmentations several times throughout the competition, and this appeared to be the first fulfillment of that promise.

Vulcan’s sign outshone the “Lab” itself, which was nothing more than a double-wide medical trailer bolted down to the ground. A metal annex extended from the left side of the trailer to offer some more floor space. It could probably only fit a handful of people at a time. Surprisingly, nobody seemed to be in line for the cybernetic lab. Either that was a stroke of good fortune or an ill omen.

I entered anyway.

A dark woman with striking blue eyes looked up from a holo-screen projecting from a terminal in the trailer. She looked me up and down, appraising me like a shopper would inspect a choice piece of Karnan Beef, before returning to the streaming digits on her terminal.

“Can I help you?” A sonorous voice wafted out of her full lips.

“Yes, you may.” I smiled, taking a nearby stool for myself.

This got her attention. She looked back at me, raising a pencil-thin eyebrow. The stark white of her lab coat accentuated her sharp expression.

“This is a cybernetics facility, not a lounge.”

“What kind of mileage does she get?”

“If you have nothing other to do than harass me, I will have you escorted from the premises.” Her cheeks flushed with indignant rage.

“No, no. I am a curious buyer.” I waved a gloved hand. I did want to find something useful in this shop. Unlike others in my class, I always had a keen interest in cybernetics. When Ophelia pegged me with mine I turned it into a useful tool to furnish my extracurriculars, while my peers balked at the idea of an interstellar corporation planting metal in their brain.

“Curious, indeed.” She turned back to the terminal.

“We got off on the wrong foot here.” I stood up and made a bow. “My name is Puck, may I have the joy of your acquaintance?” I extended a hand in her direction.

The woman did not reply.

“Yes, a busy woman at work I see. Quite admirable. What sort of services do you offer in this fine cybernetics facility?”

“Look at the menu.” She pointed a slim finger at a console in the corner of the trailer.

“Much obliged.”

A retro terminal populated with green text gave me a list of cybernetic augmentations to choose from. Prices ranged from hundreds of thousands of credits to millions. From processor upgrades, to limb replacements, and biologically projected electromagnetic fields. I checked my balance.

Credits: 105,000

Wasn’t looking promising.

I selected an option to sort by price and found the cheapest item on the list.

[Cybernetic Augmentation - Optical]

Contestant Identification Scanner

Identifies and displays statistical information for other contestants within the range of the scanner.

10,000 credits

This one seemed marginally useful for estimating my odds. Something was off about the price, though. The next cheapest item on the list was 150,000 credits - a brain augmentation that allowed you to process information at a rate 33% faster than the average human. Why was this one so cheap?

“The Contestant Identification Scanner. This looks interesting, but why is it so cheap?” I murmured, my eyes glued to the screen.

“It ought to be free. LimeLight can’t force contestants to undergo cybernetic augmentation, but if they could they would require this. Instead, they set the price very low to entice contestants to purchase it. It’s very standard - I recommend it.” The scientist replied from her station.

“I already have an optical chip, will this interfere?”

She pursed her lips. “No. I will just upload the software into your existing chip. What’s the model?”

“Ophelia 245RX.”

“Yeah, that’ll do. Come on over.” The woman rose from her seat, heading over to a counter-top full of surgical instruments and yet another terminal. She patted her hand on the reclining chair next to her lab set-up.

I complied, not sure she wouldn’t exact some cruel act of revenge for my teasing.

As I laid down she pulled out a hand-held stick with a flash-bulb at the tip.

“This may disorient you for a bit, but it will be painless. Relatively, anyway.”

“What’s that sup-”

A flash of light blinded me. Pain exploded from my corneas, and I clutched at my eyes with a gasp.

“See? Not that bad.”

“For a scientist, your sense of relativity is a bit off,” I grunted.

“For a LimeLight contestant, your pain threshold leaves much to be desired.”

Touche.

“Now stop whining and test it out.” A hologram of a Retan projected from the trailer floor. He bore a suit of spiked armor strapped around his bulky frame. One of his hands wielded what would normally be a two-hander for man-sized warriors. His vicious snarl dripped with a very life-like viscous substance.

A small window popped up in my vision, connected by a thin white line to the Retan’s face. It displayed:

Contestant #A1234

Rank 12 Retan

Class: Berserker-Fighter

Title: The Crusher

Power Rating: 12th Percentile

Audience Approval Rating: 19th Percentile

Contestant Eliminations: 13

“Oh wow. That’s quite handy.”

“I’m glad it’s to your liking.” She replied with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Credits: 95,000

The tanned woman made her way back to her station. She began tapping away at a set of virtualized keys that emanated from a desk-emitter. It appeared she was done with me.

“What’s in the side room?” I asked, pointing to the door at the far end of the trailer.

“Oh, that’s Arvik.” She shrugged. “He runs a small Technicians shop in there so that contestants don’t have to wander back down to layer 2. Go bother him.”

“It’s been a pleasure, madam.”

------

The room “next door” was a simple set of four sheet metal walls and a canvas roof. Several workbenches of a similar model to the Technic’s guild on level 2 were spread over the otherwise bare concrete floor. A bearded fellow in nothing but overalls and boots stood huddled over a workbench. When he heard me approach, he put down his tools and faced me. A pair of goggles, one lens much longer than the other, was strapped down over his ruddy face.

“Hey there! Name’s Arvik, what can I do ya for?”

“Hello there!’ I beamed. Finally, some hospitality around here.

“I recently ‘acquired’ a wrist-watch that can synchronize with remote-controlled drones and I was looking for something to pair with it. You wouldn’t happen to have anything for me, would you?”

“I’ve got a few home-brews. I’m not sure if it’ll pair with yer wristwatch there.” He scratched at his red beard with a gloved hand. “Let me take a peek at it.”

I smiled and walked over to his workbench. He pulled out some kind of scanning tool, bathing the slim watch on my wrist in red light. His goggles zoomed in and out as they appraised the mechanisms.

“Hm. Strange. Ahuh…” Arvik muttered to himself.

“Anything promising?”

The technician sat up. “It’s handmade and originally coded, nothing else quite like it on the market. However, it has an E port and T port that allow for more generic drones to be coupled with it. A few other ports I can’t quite figure out, but...” he clapped his hands together. “It should work with what I got, though. Care to take a look?”

“Well, what do you have to offer?”

“Sawblade drones, recon drones, long-range sentries on the higher end of the spectrum. I can do custom commissions, too, but that costs more and might not be ready ‘afore the next round.”

“Anything for around 95,000 credits?” I grimaced. None of that sounded close to affordable. For as much fortune as I'd earned, I felt like a pauper surrounded by these technological goodies.

The heavyset man frowned. “Nothing durable. I have a few expendable remote-drones that run for 35 apiece. They can be reused, but they’re heat-seeking plasma cutters. Usually, ya fling ‘em at something and they cause a whole lot of mess. Not much to salvage when the damage is done.”

Heat-seeking plasma cutters? That sounded delightfully devious; convenient to store in the EM lace on my Stregone.

“Can the heat signatures be specified? I have a few pieces of optical scanner cybernetics. Maybe they could be synched?” I didn’t want these things running rampant and turning back on me.

Arvik’s eyes lit up at that. “Why yes, I could link them to your optical scanners! Any target you identify you could sic with these bad boys. Oh, just give me a minute!”

I sat back on a bench and watched Arvik work for about a half-hour. He tapped away at a keyboard extension and fiddled with the two disc-like hunks of steel that he produced from a locker beneath his station. Lines of code streamed by on his terminal. Sweat began to pool around his brow.

I had just finished counting the number of rivets in the four sheet metal walls - there were 76 - when he hopped up from his bench.

“All set! All you’ve got to do is scan a face you want to obliterate with your scanner software and tap the confirmation icon on your watch.” He made his way over to me with a small, hook-like utensil and placed it on the side of my watch. It flashed blue at the tip and I heard a buzz.

“There we go. Chip module is implanted in the watch.” Arvik gingerly placed the two disks in my gloved hands. “And these are all set to go. If you want to activate them just apply pressure to the top and throw! They’ll track whatever you set your eye to.” He grinned, obviously proud of his work.

And I was too. “Thank you Arvik, you’ve been more than helpful.”

“Anytime!”

Credits: 25,000

I ought to come back to this guy. A real honest, hardworking technician with a simple love for electronics. I was curious to see what he could come up with on a full budget and enough time for his passions to come to life.

I stowed the two discs in the lace of either arm. They vanished within the ruffles, held in place by the force of an EM field.

A door on the side of the expansion led me outside. There were now several dozen people wandering about the eternal night of the third layer. Some headed into Tabor’s and a good dozen were on their way to the front entrance of the lab I had just exited. Looks like I beat the rush.

A steady stream of contestants shuffled into the glass doors of a nightclub. “Persephone.”

Despite the dim lighting, I could see some of the ground levels from my vantage point on the street. Lively folk in various degrees of inebriation sat around leather couches, sipping on glowing beverages. A bar staffed by a young woman in a dark waistcoat was full of patrons at its red-topped stools. The walls buzzed with the hum of techno music.

And what balding hooligan did I see sipping at a glass of amber liquid, double-barrel clinging to his robed hip?

Just the man who didn’t want to see me.