CYBER DIABLO

1

It was one of those cities that looked like a sparkling diamond but smelt of gunsmoke right from the breech. Crime around every corner: some drug deal going wrong; shootings left, right and centre; and a whole batch of hookers ready to suck you off for a quick hundred in the back pocket.

It was awful. But it wasn't always like this. Zemon used to be a thriving metropolis where people didn't have to worry about money or violence. Everyone had their purpose, and although some things remained pretty much the same since MiliCorp took over, most of the changes took a financial dump on the city's people.

Especially Luna Portalla.

When she got the call from Chip about The Witch’s Inn opening up in Hicburg, she wasted no time researching it. Managed to learn everything about the place – shifts, staff, cameras, alarms, off-limits rooms – all through her computer.

The take itself was five grand. Not much, and between herself, Vanderman, and Chip, that meant less than seventeen hundred a pop.

Vanderman recommended a slow approach: no weapons, no killing, just a simple in-and-out. Chip thought the best way to do it was during closing hours, but he changed his mind once he found out the club was open twenty-four hours a day. Then he recommended the afternoon, when it was quiet. But Luna disagreed. It was always easier to steal when there were a lot of people around, as long as they weren’t security or law enforcement. It made getting out without being spotted less of a hassle.

They agreed on that.

Come Sunday night, Luna prepared herself for the heist. She was in her bedroom, stuffing her arachnofibre mask in a chrome-yellow strongbox and loading the most recent security patches into her Mental Display. Sometimes you could get viruses, bad ones, and they could massively affect the way your MD operated. That could cause some problems, especially considering they cost a small fortune to cleanse.

It wasn’t often Luna had to steal. When she did, the money would last her about a month. Now, that money had been running out, rent was coming up soon, and she didn’t want to be thrown out on the streets by her landlord, not like before.

She pressed the neural port above her left ear and a hologram of windows popped into view, showing her heart rate, her recent search on Google (SLACK OFF SMOKE – a hot EDM song across the Triangle), and the entire camera system of The Witch’s Inn. She had snapshotted the layout of the stripclub and uploaded it to her Mental Cloud a week in advance. It gave herself and Chip more time to discuss ways to sneak in and steal the cash.

“Everything good?” buzzed Vanderman from her earpiece. His voice was deep and husky.

“All good,” she said.

“You headin’ down?”

She checked the time, saw that it read , and closed her MD. “On my way.” She grabbed the box, stashed it in her inside jacket pocket, and was halfway towards opening her door when a high-pitched voice called from the other side:

“Luna!”

Shit.

“One second, Vanderman.” Luna took a deep breath and opened the door. A little girl with fishbelly-white hair stood on the other side, staring at her with an open mouth. That look of wonder, Luna liked to call it. It meant nothing but trouble.

“Where are you going?” Sarah asked.

“Out,” she snapped, brushing her aside as she walked into the foyer.

Sarah squirrelled across the carpet, barefooted, and hopped onto the leather sofa. She stood as tall as her four-foot-something frame would allow her. “Where?”

Luna grabbed the apartment key from the stand and jacked it into the keyhole, rotating the prong until the lockplate clicked. “I’ll be back soon, ’kay kiddo?”

“But I wanna go out too!” she whined.

Luna turned, startled. “What’s wrong?”

Sarah sat on the couch, crossing her arms. “I hate being at home alone.”

“Tough,” she said. “You’re twelve now, you’re a big girl. Just not big enough for where we’re going.”

“Where?”

“Stripclub on the other side of town.”

Sarah, who was well used to seeing those sorts of places on TV (even though Luna had told her on multiple occasions to stop watching that damfool show The Running Man), didn’t seem bothered. “So?”

“So you’re too young,” said Luna. “That’s it. Just go to bed. It’s a school night.”

“But I don’t wanna go to bed,” she said. “It’s scary sleeping by myself. Please, let me come with you? I can wait outside, like I used to.”

Luna sighed, leaned against the door, and folded her arms. “For more than two hours in the rain?”

She nodded quickly. “Yuh-huh! I’ve done it before when we were – ”

Luna made a cut-off motion with her arm. “Stop.” She knew where Sarah was going with that. She was going to bring up the time they were homeless.

“Please?” Sarah hopped up from the couch and approached her slowly, twiddling her thumbs and giving Luna those cute little eyes with their seawater-coloured undertint. “Pretty please?”

She sighed again, rubbing her face. Why did her sister have to be so pushy?

Static came from her earpiece. “Luna?” someone shouted.

Luna immediately recognised the voice as Chip. It was hard to mistake that nasal sound. She pressed the neural port and said, “Hold on.”

“What’s takin’ you so long? We’ve been waitin’ the past ten minutes.”

“My sister wants to come,” Luna said. “That alright with you?”

Chip groaned. “You’re not sticking her with me, are you?”

“You’re damn right I am,” she chuckled. At this point she still didn’t know whether or not she would bring her, but she was tempted, as long as someone would watch her. Chip’s job involved a lot of sitting down. He could very well keep Sarah in the van and update Luna through his laptop and MD.

He moaned. “Fuck me, come on. We don’t got all night.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” She muted the Cloud Call and beckoned Sarah with an upward nod. “C’mon. Put your shoes on.”

“I can go?” Sarah said.

Another nod. “But you’re staying with Chip.”

She grinned, and Luna saw her cute little buckteeth. Sarah reminded her a lot of a bunny. She had even stitched a Mini Lop on the little girl’s nylon jacket.

That had been five years ago, the day their mother died. She had gotten sick, had become unable to work. Brain cancer. Monah was her name, which Luna had tattooed inside the glowing pink heart on her own cheek, below her electric-blue hair, cut short and shaved at one temple, and above her gothish black lips.

Luna staved off tears. “Come on,” she yelled. “Before I change my mind.”

Sarah hurried off, giddy with that twelve-year-old excitement, and ran back in her tattered shoes, hot to trot. “Hey,” she said, “what’s in the box?”

“What box?” said Luna.

“I saw you come home with a cool yellow box yesterday,” she said. “Is it a present? My birthday’s next month.”

Luna smiled. Her birthday fell on Christmas Eve. Luna was thinking of getting her a pet rabbit in particular, and that would be expensive. “It’s not. And don’t worry, I didn’t forget.”

“What is it then?”

“Just a box,” Luna said. “Now c’mon. We’re gonna be late.”

L’illian’s apartment complex spanned more than fifty floors. Most residents would have to catch the bathroom-sized elevator to get to the bottom floor but Sarah and Luna only needed a short walk. They lived on the very bottom of the complex – saved them a lot of grief financially – next to the Ripped Palace gym, a place where people either lifted weights, stuck needles in their asses, or beat the living hell out of the AI punching bot.

But that normally happened bright and early. Tonight, things were quieter.

Luna and Sarah passed through the gym – still ripe with scattered dumbbells, misplaced benches, and sweat – and descended the grated stairway.

Chip's van rested on the far side of the parking lot. Vanderman was sitting astride the hood, blowing rings of cigarsmoke. He had a black fauxhawk and a scruffy beard which sat above his roofbeam shoulders on a neck wider than it was long. His eyebrows were thick and bushy and might have connected given enough time and neglect. “Look who finally showed up.”

Luna tapped her jacket. “Got your mask?”

“Yes ma’am.” Vanderman slid off the hood, went around the back, and popped the trunk open. Luna and Sarah followed.

Chip glared at them from over the driver’s seat, him and that glowing red eye. His crimson hair was frizzy and spiked, and his bottle-green jacket was thick, as if he were dressed to hike a snow-capped mountain. He held up his thumb and motioned back. “Inside. Three of you assholes.”

“Oh! Oh!” yelled Sarah. “I want the front seat!”

“Not happening,” said Chip.

She pouted. “But I feel sick in the back....”

“Vanderman or Luna up front. I'm not sitting next to a kid.”

Luna sneered. “Don’t speak to her like that. She’s sitting shotgun. She doesn’t like backseats.”

“You gotta be such a jerk to the kid, Chip?” chimed Vanderman. “It ain’t like you have to drag her around places.”

Chip rubbed his temples. “You losers are messing up my sleep schedule. I’m the one who opted for the daytime.”

“Who clubs during the day?” said Vanderman.

“Friend’a mine does.” Chip cleared grit from his eye. “Liz, you know Liz, right?”

Vanderman neighed, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “Nerdy one?”

“If you wanna consider a cyber doc a nerd,” he said.

“What’s a cyber doc?” Sarah looked up at Luna.

“Like Chip said,” Luna replied. “A nerd.”

She nodded. “That’s cool. Nerds change the world.”

“One headache at a time,” Chip said. Then, as an afterthought: “Luna’s a nerd.”

Luna’s hum served as laughter. She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets. “Go on up, Sarah. Be sure to be extra loud during the car-ride, alright? Chip loves that.”

“Did he not have his coffee?” Sarah hurried to the front door. “Luna says you love coffee, Chip. And coffee’s supposed to keep you awake for a long time because of caffeine. That’s what Mr Deckard says.”

“I hate you Luna,” complained Chip, cupping his face. “It’s like listening to an old lady talk about gardening, ’cept she keeps talkin’ about her science teacher.”

“Shut up,” said Luna.

He gave her the finger without looking. “Loud and clear, captain. Oh boy, great captain, off to sail mate. Hardy har har. Now buckle up. We got a…” He paused, and for a moment Luna was scared he might announce that they were planning to steal money. Sarah couldn’t know that. Not until they made it out of Zemon, and God knew how long that would take. “… club to go to.”

“Sorry you can’t go inside, Sarah,” said Vanderman. “But hell….” He tossed his cigar on the ground, quenched it, and stepped into the rear of the van. “You only have six years to go. Then the men, or women, will be all over you.”

“Inappropriate,” said Luna. She stepped in behind him, slid the doors shut, and took a seat.

Vanderman reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellow box. He shook it in the air, grinning. “They gotta learn young, don’t they?”

The drive to Hicburg took a little under thirty minutes, and the sky was now pouring down. The roads were clogged with traffic, pedestrians were streaming from sidewalk to sidewalk, and the West Avenue tram rumbled across a suspended rail, heading towards West L’ankor to turn in for the night.

THE WITCH’S INN glowed with pink LEDs, hanging from a rafter. The lightstrips worked together to create an outline of a woman’s high-heeled leg which kicked every couple of seconds. There had been no windows; instead, there had been taffy-pink backdrops with white, woman-shaped stencils thrumming across the outer edge, and at the front entrance were two bouncers, one man and one woman, each armed with a phantom pistol. The man was finely muscled in his balding brown jacket while the woman was slim (though she had cybernetic arms) in a half-leather, half-diaphanous waistcoat.

“Alright.” Chip switched the engine off. “I’ll keep in contact.” He glared at Sarah and dispensed a weary sigh. “You’re with me again kid.”

“Where are we going?” asked Sarah. “Can we get ice cream?”

Chip’s eyes widened, staring into the rear-view mirror at Luna. Vaguely, he mouthed the words kill me.

Luna took out her strongbox. “Be nice and listen to Chip, Sarah. Even if he is a crank.”

“But can we get ice cream?”

“Sure. If you’re good.” Luna chuckled and stepped out. The rain hit her instantly. She pulled the LED-buttoned hood of her tawny jacket over her head. She couldn’t feel the water interact with her cybernetic hands, but she could sense the wind’s icy touch just as well.

She and Vanderman went around the van and took the arachnofibre masks from the strongboxes. Together, they put them on and pressed the buttons at the front. Her hair turned from dark blue to barn red, and her eyes shone with orange.

Vanderman’s face became slightly more bullish, although the full head of wavy blond hair made him look ten years younger.

Their names, as of tonight, were Lexi and Diego. They even had fake IDs to match.

“How do I look?” Vanderman ran his fingers through his hair.

“Like a sex-machine.” She smiled a little, showing those Hollywood-perfect teeth.

“Sex is the key to a man’s soul,” he said. “That’s why so many of us regret ever sleeping with women.”

She laughed at that. Vanderman had always been good at making her laugh. There was something about his imposing stature that made his endless childlike jokes a thousand times funnier.

“You ready to go then?” she asked.

“When am I never?” He fixed his jacket and trotted across the road. The tailback went all the way down to Main Street so there was plenty of time to cross.

She followed him through the bottleneck of the carriageway, slipping seamlessly between the cars, watching the traffic drones descend over the roads with their faint red lustres and diffused white beams.

The guards at The Witch’s Inn saw the two coming. Before they could step foot on the sidewalk, the woman stood forward and said in an incongruously deep voice:

“IDs. No IDs, no access.”

Vanderman spoke with a southern accent: “Busy night, I take it, yeah? Busy night, must be, yeah.”

He and Luna reached into their pockets, pulled out their wallets, and handed the guards the fake IDs.

“Feel bad for ya,” said Luna, using the same accent. “Having to stay out in the pissing rain all night?”

“Comes with the territory,” said the woman. She looked at her like with the eyes of a confused old lady and, after a moment, handed the ID back to her. “Alright, step up so we can pat you down. Any weapons on you?”

Luna spread her arms and the woman came over. “No misses, no weapons at all. We’re mighty against weapons.”

She frisked her from top to bottom. The man did the same with Vanderman.

“Clear,” the woman said.

“Clear,” the man said. “Head on in. Follow the rules and have a good time.”

“You got it, mister,” said Vanderman, taking his ID back with a goofy laugh. He stepped past them and the door slid open. Luna followed him. “Y’all have a mighty fine night now.”

“Yeah yeah,” the woman said.

Once inside, the doors shut. They passed through the foyer which led to an open expanse where loud EDM music played. The cocktail lounge on the far right glowed with an intense glacial-blue backlight, and above it RECHARGE STATION was finely fixed to a plaque. The ethyl-dampened air was hot, so hot that Luna had no choice but to take off her jacket and reveal her tank top, one that exposed her grey cybernetic arms as well as the wristport below her left hand.

Every table had a miniature hologram of a dancing woman, swerving around the suspended beam which held it off the ground.

There were a lot of people here, most of whom were tossing stacks at the legs of pole dancers. In any normal situation, those legs would have made Luna uncontrollably horny. Hell she could barely take her eyes off them now, but she had a mission to focus on, a duty.

The cybersafe was located in the very back office, where the owner Norman Lox would normally be, but on this fine night he had a business meeting all the way in Lucklanta Bay. Which, of course, made this the perfect time to strike.

She headed over to an isolated spot in the pink-flushed stripclub, tapped into her MD, and unmuted Chip on the Cloud Call. “We’re in,” she said. “You hear us okay?”

Chip sighed. “Yes….”

She furrowed her brow. “Where are you?”

“Still in the van,” he said. “Your sister keeps buttin’ my head to buy her ice cream.”

“Is your laptop set up?” she asked.

“Mhm,” he said, and then yawned. “I have access to all the cameras.”

“Alright,” she said. “Once we’re in the private rooms, deactivate the cameras. Shit might get bloody.”

Another deep breath, and Luna heard a tinny voice in the background:

“Do you not like ice cream? Ice cream’s supposed to – ” The call abruptly cut off.

She let out an amused snort, and she turned to tell Vanderman that the plan was ready to go, but he had already been on the other side, sitting on an octagonal bar table and chatting with a lap dancer.

Then, suddenly, a woman spoke from behind her:

“Hey, big girl.” Her voice was coquettish, velvety smooth.

Luna turned. The woman was thinly dressed in a glowing blue bikini with eye-poppingly gorgeous facial features. Flawless skin, glossy lips…. Man, she’s hot.

“Name’s Scarlet. You lookin’ for a little one-on-one?” she said, grinning brightly. “Fifty bucks a minute.”

Luna’s eyes fell on the chick’s enormous breasts, perky and firm. “Lead the way,” she said, dumbfounded.

Scarlet giggled and beckoned Luna with a seductive finger, leading her through the crowd of horny men and women, across the busy drinkers sitting at the bar counter, and through the portiere beads which led to a dimly lit section of two curtained rooms. Two bouncers, big and burly, stood outside each gap, cross-armed and wearing iridescent visors. NO TOUCHING THE WOMEN! hung from an L-shaped bar, flashing with blue letters, while Ƶ50/MIN was punched to the panel.

On her way into one of the lap-dance areas, a bouncer gave her a stern look, one accompanied by a wolfish sneer, and she immediately got chills. Not because she was scared, but because she wasn’t entirely confident about how this would go down. This had been one of the areas that had a camera everywhere, so she had to work closely with Chip if she wanted to pull things off smoothly.

Luna took a seat on the X-patterned purple sofa, shooting a glance at the camera in the far right corner of the room. It blinked with blue.

The lap dancer pulled the curtains closed, and the black screen across the top of the doorway flashed on, showing only 00:00 which counted up by the second.

Scarlet stripped her bra and tossed it aside, showing Luna those juicy fist-sized nipples on breasts larger than basketballs. She ambled past the glass table, her hips moving from side to side and her ass seeming to bounce with each step, laying herself on Luna’s lap.

She could feel her pussy start to tingle.

Scarlet brought her leg over Luna’s knees. “You can touch.” Then, in a harsh, conspiratorial whisper: “I’m not like the other gals.”

“Can see that alright,” Luna said, her fake accent breaking. “Do you mind if I just…?” She brought her left hand up to Scarlet’s face and caressed her cheek. Slowly, her eyes moved over to the time on the wall: 00:47… 00:48…. As low and as harsh as possible, Luna spoke: “Chip.”

Static from her earpiece. “Now?”

“Mhm,” she said.

“Hold on.”

Once the timer read 01:00, the blue lustre on the camera switched off.

“Who are you talkin’ to, baby?” Scarlet straddled Luna, placing her arms around her neck and pulling her sweaty body close to hers.

Luna tapped into her MD, navigated to , and selected . Her wristport snapped open, and a plume of white vapour steamed out – carbon disulfide, it knocked people out in a couple seconds. Her arachnofibre mask did well to filter the fumes.

Slowly Scarlet closed her eyes. She swayed back in a daze and Luna caught her before she could stumble and hit her head on the carpeted floor. She was stealing, but that didn’t mean she wanted any of the innocent ladies to get hurt.

“Sorry, Scarlet,” she murmured, heart racing. She laid Scarlet’s unconscious body on the floor, quickly squeezed her breasts for good measure, and said in a low voice, “Alright. Dancer’s out.”

More static from the Cloud Call, and this time it was Vanderman who spoke: “Same here. Ready to go?”

She nodded, as if he could somehow see her. “Yeah, you?”

“Can’t wait. On three. One…”

Luna snuck up to the curtains, readying herself.

“Two…”

She took a deep breath.

“Three!”

She brushed the curtains, grabbed the bouncer in a rear-naked chokehold, and muscled him inside. The strength from her cybernetic arms made it piss easy, and Luna felt a surge of power rush through her. The bouncer thrashed, grumbling and squawking for air. After ten seconds, his body fell limp, and his face turned a deep purple beneath the red light. She drug his body into the room and slid him under the glass table. She pulled off her tank top and threw on the man’s T-shirt which read WITCH’S INN. It was far too big for her – she wasn’t exactly the muscular type – but she figured it would work all the same. She snatched the man’s utility belt and wrapped it around her waist with the phantom pistol still inside. She ran her hands through the bouncer’s pockets and pulled out a keycard. Relief poured into her, bringing temporary cool.

The bouncer jittered to life, as if coming out from a daze.

Shit. She got down on her knees, placed her hand under his nose, and sprayed the gas. Once the guard’s eyes opened they immediately closed again. He was out cold.

She took a deep breath. “Got the card.” And she wore the jacket over the bouncer top.

“Same here,” Vanderman said in the same voice as last time. “We needa move fast. I sprayed ’em with some of that gas from the steampump. They won’t be out long.”

Luna understood that well; the gas would only keep them out for half an hour max.

Together, she and Vanderman left the lap-dance area. Luna locked the access door with her keycard. Then they proceeded around the tables and across the Recharge Station. She had expected to be stopped again, perhaps by a real bouncer, but from the look of things, they were no longer around, which struck her as odd. She figured the bartenders must have been well armed if they could afford to have little security loitering by, if there had been any in this area to begin with.

Right as they were about to make it to the OFF LIMITS door, Luna overheard a conversation. One between two deep-sounding men.

“A million bucks,” one said.

She stopped in place, watching Vanderman squeeze his way through the swallowing crowd. A million bucks?

More people swarmed past her, so close the sweat suffused her air-bubble. She curiously tapped her neural port and turned up the volume on her dropper. She isolated the backdrop noise – the music and hubbub – and zoned in on the two men drinking glasses of neon-green alcohol at the bar table. She could still hear the buzz coming from the holo-projection of the tiny pole dancer between them.

“… Glitch has it in for the corps,” the same man said. “Boss says it’s the deal of a lifetime.”

“What’s it for?” the other said.

“Tier-1 Power Gauntlets. They’re supposed to be used to lift heavy machinery up north, where they’re building the new electrical towers. Says it’s efficient. But you know what else they’re efficient for?”

“What?”

“Beating people into submission. Gettin’ more people into the underground without an issue, Boss says. Takes only one blast and somethin’ as strong as a police droid is done fo‘.”

“When’s this happenin’?” the other man asked, taking a sip of his drink.

“Sunday next week,” he said. “Supposed to meet up with Boss close to midnight. I’ll know I’ll be there.” He laughed a deep, smoker’s laugh.

A hand touched Luna’s shoulder from the front, and when she looked up she saw Vanderman saying something to her. She stopped isolating the conversation and all at once the music and voices came back.

“You good, Luna?” Vanderman said, looking at her a little doubtfully.

“I’m fine,” she said.

He pulled her by the shoulder, holding her close to his side, just as Luna had done with Sarah. “Don’t zone out like that. Christ, kid.”

Yeah, that probably would have been a good idea, but she had new information that almost made this robbery feel pointless. Gauntlets worth over a million bucks? With that money, she could head west towards Nevada, far away from this shithole of a city, and live a normal life where everything didn’t cost an arm and a leg. She would be able to give her sister a happy life, one where they would never have to fear being evicted or getting food-poisoning ever again. The MiliCorp federation only spanned so far. Chyna Deadman had been the CEO for the past twelve years, and she brought a great deal of tech to both North and South America. But Deadman’s lemminglike reach ended just on the border of Nevada. And that was just too far a distance for Luna to travel safely. She needed a big take, something to help her get out of Zemon without having to go through the trouble of being ID’d at the ZLB turnpikes.

It was just so fucking difficult.

Vanderman slid his keycard through the access slot of the OFF LIMITS door and it beeped open. They stepped inside and shut the door before heading across the short hallway. NORMAN LOX was written across another door at the opposite end, pegged tautly to a golden plaque. Vanderman was about to open it but Luna tugged him back.

“What?” he said.

“Hold on,” she whispered. “Chip?”

Static. “Camera’s off. Already thought of it.”

She nodded. “Alright, go ahead. Can’t be too careful.”

Vanderman turned the knob and pushed the door open squeakily. They stepped inside, finding a dark room the size of a kitchen, looking just as it had on the camera system. Boxes everywhere, noticeboards thumbtacked to the wall, and bright computer screens set to white noise. Then, in the corner: the cybersafe, split into three separate parts, each drawer boasting a red light and an LED screen which read .

The two-filtered exhaust fan passed air lazily through the space, comforting Luna.

Vanderman reached down and pulled a ballpoint screwdriver from his boot compartment. He tossed it to Luna and she caught it without an issue. “Why did you stop out there?”

She kneeled in front of the cybersafe and began unscrewing the dial pad. Vaguely, as she went through the process of jacking her wrist-cable into the pad’s undersocket, tapping into her MD, and infiltrating the safe’s security system, she explained to Vanderman what she had heard from the two men at the bar table. She even mentioned that it was next Sunday, and Vanderman seemed deeply intrigued, although most of his responses were agreeable grunts. Eventually, she reached the end of her knowledge, and when Vanderman asked for more, she said:

“That’s all I know.”

“Well I like what I hear,” he said. “This Glitch man might be our ticket out of this city.”

She nodded, focusing on breaking the cybersafe’s firewall. It was a simple Tier-4 lockbreak. Would only take a couple minutes. “You know something, old buddy,” she joked. “I think you’re right.”

“You hear all that, Chip?” Vanderman said.

Static. “Huh? Nah, I’m too busy buying ice cream for Sarah.”

Vanderman chuckled. “New heist next week. Million dollars cash.”

“What?” shouted Chip, and he began to laugh. “That’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about!”

“Language, shithead,” she said, and finally she cracked the cybersafe open. “No swearing around my sister, I told you that before.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he said. “Fuc – screw this take. Next week’s where the money is.” Then, as if talking to someone else, he said, “Cheers bud.”

Luna slid the cybersafe open, and she saw the bulky stacks of hundred-dollar bills laid out neatly inside. Luna pulled out her yellow strongbox and began stashing the money inside. Vanderman did the same.

“Hooooo baaaaby!” said Vanderman. “This is what I live and breathe for!”

“Alright, talk to you when we’re outside, Chip,” said Luna, closing the box once full and stuffing it in her inside jacket pocket.

Luna and Vanderman made their way out the door again, glad that the cameras were still disabled. However, once they left the OFF LIMITS section….

A bouncer was waiting for them on the other side. Luna expected her to stop them on the way out, pull a gun to their heads and call the police, and then they would be locked up for good. Why was she even back here? Luna didn’t understand, and… and…. The bouncer greeted Vanderman and Luna, like they were actual staff, and then Luna remembered that she had been wearing the Witch’s Inn T-shirt.

“You two okay in there?” the woman asked, her shirt tight against her muscles. She must have had a lot of gene-hacking done to achieve that size while also maintaining a fairly feminine voice and face.

“Yes ma’am.” Vanderman pointed at the door with his thumb, making sure she could see the keycard. “Cameras are goin’ out all over the place so we went to have a look. Made sure there wasn’t an electrical problem.”

“A storm’s comin’ to Zemon,” the woman said. The blue and pink lights flickered in her black eyes. “They might have to up the security on this place while Norman’s out.”

Vanderman laughed. “You got that right. Damn nearly anybody could sneak in during a power cut.” He cocked his thumb and patted the woman’s shoulder. “Catch you later.”

“Wait,” the woman said, and Luna’s heart jumped. She pointed at her. “What’s your name?”

She took a moment to respond. With a faint smile, Luna said, “Lexi. Don’t remember me?”

She pursed her lips and gave her a confused look. “Can’t say I do.”

There followed a moment of intense, gut-wrenching silence, apart from the music and the voices and… well, the more she thought about it, the more she realised it hadn’t been silent at all.

“Well I’m bad with faces and names anyway,” she said. “These new eyes’ll be the death of me.”

All three of them laughed.

Luna rubbed the bridge of her nose as if she’d been punched really hard. “No worries, see you ’round, ’kay?”

She nodded impassively. Yet somehow Luna had an idea that this lady saw right past her fake smile.

They left the area after that. They zipped up their coats once they made it back to the dark foyer. They walked outside the building and the music faded. The rain was now thundering down, and flashes of lightning forked in the distance. The billboards on the edifices swapped to indicate that a stage-three rainstorm was building and that people should avoid driving at all costs.

Like that’ll happen.

Then Luna saw Chip sitting at an outdoor ice-cream parlour called Frozen Freddy’s, along with Sarah, who was happily scooping spoonfuls of chocolate melt into her mouth. Luna headed over and chatted with them as if she hadn’t stolen any money at all. A few minutes later they were rushing across the street to Chip’s van.

Once inside, Chip switched the engine on, waited for Sarah to finish her chocolate melt (he didn’t like it when people ate in his vehicle while driving, things got too messy, he would say), and drove towards L’illian.

A simple in-and-out. Not a bad execution, but Luna had her eyes on a much larger prize as of now: those Tier-1 Power Gauntlets.

A million dollars, she thought. The ticket out of here.