4

“You servin’?” Luna said.

The man behind the counter was missing half his face, and his skin was peeling away like a smudge of hot glue. His neck and jaw area had been completely ripped out, exposing a layer of flesh, wires, and two flex tubes which, when curved as they were, created a pair of spiderfangs. His eyes bore into her, through her, with distrust. She could very well sense it. He sneered, stretched his arm out, and made a fist. A square-shaped wireport poked out from his wrist.

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even make a sound, and Luna wondered how it was even possible for him to swallow. Now that she thought of it, how did he end up like that in the first place? Did all the gang members have to do it? Did they have a choice? Why would they remove parts from their bodies just to fit in?

Then the answer hit her: money. They were doing this for the green and nothing else. Suddenly she understood what the merchant meant when he had been pointing to his wristport. It was his method of payment.

Ohhhhh....

She zipped out her wrist-cable and plugged it into the man’s socket. A window popped up on her MD and swallowed the camera system, showing a single number at the centre: .

Twelve bucks, twelve!

She’d done transactions like this in the past, jacking her cable into the payslots of unmanned machines, normally when she was out on the town, but they had never been this expensive.

She thought she would have been better off drinking the pisswater from their toilets, but who in God’s name had the time to look around for those?

Reluctantly, she decided to pay for one bottle and share it between herself and Vanderman. That would be well more than enough to satisfy them, at least for now. After hitting , a bolt of electricity shot through her arm and the wire retracted, whipping back into place. A message emerged from beneath the porn ads, bearing , and she saw her e-currency decrease to on the hotbar.

They made off towards the right side, in the direction of this supposed cross passage, listening as the din in the foyer grew more vociferous. There was a fight up ahead – two men. One of them was massive and bullish while the other was much smaller; despite that, the smaller guy managed to hold his own just fine. His arms were cybernetic, Luna supposed, so that probably gave him the extra edge. No one expected cybernetic enhancements to offer such a boost to physical prowess when they were first announced. Luna certainly didn’t. The idea that technology could be combined with the human genome was unnerving. You would think, she mused, that trying to mess with something as complex as human DNA would mess it up completely. While that could happen in some cases, the vast majority had the total opposite effect. Five years ago, when Luna got hers installed, the cyber doctor (who were just called ‘doctors’ back then) told her the surgery would increase her strength by a whopping three hundred per cent.

And she saw how big a difference that extra three hundred per cent made when it came to fights. The smaller man ended up taking the brute down, a couple punches to the jaw and his platinum-lensed visor went flying straight off. The crowd erupted, some in anger and some with full-throated cheers, and Luna assumed there was a bet going on, with most more than likely putting their money on the bigger guy, who was nothing more than an unconscious sack of meat now.

Luna and Vanderman trod across the shacks and under the palm-oil polymer tarps, having to cross through more men and women until the air was completely sucked out of her. The heat became unbearable, and the cold feel offered by the glass cider bottle did nothing to help; she had to find an isolated spot so she could switch off the suit and take a swig. But from the looks of things there didn’t appear to be anywhere they could hide out. Then, eventually, she saw a fair number of outhouses stacked against a small patch of grass, and across from them a series of benches, each becoming more withered as they went down.

Seeing no other option, she began pacing across the crowd and went to pull the door open, careful not to bump into anyone (which proved quite impossible). As soon as the door opened it snapped back.

“Someone’s in here!” she barely heard someone say from the other side.

So she tried the next one, and the next, and the next one… until, finally, the last one in the line squeaked open. A man stepped out, fixing his cargo pants, and he hopped off the suspended platform before disappearing into the people.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Vanderman.

And before she could hear him say anything, she made a beeline for the outhouse, jumped inside, and shut the door behind her. It was dark and smelled exactly as she expected it to: like shit. She opened her MD, navigated to the suit controls, and deactivated the Image on her arachnofibre. Slowly her pink hair turned back to its original dark blue, and the gas mask vanished – thank God. Before the rest of the changes could even take place, Luna squeezed the cork off and ended up shattering the bottleneck. A swash of froth bubbled down her fists. She didn’t care. She poured the cider into her mouth, feeling ice-cold relief slip down her throat and send a shockwave of pins and needles across her body. She drank more than three quarters of it before she felt the sting from the snagged glass and decided she’d had enough. She had cooled down, just slightly, although her skin was still a melting pot of sweat.

Now she understood how these men and women smelled so goddamn awful.

Luna reactivated her suit image, popped the door open, and headed outside. Vanderman was waiting in the shade under a steel rafter, his arms crossed. She handed him the bottle – what was left of it anyway.

He downed the rest of it in one gulp, burping and letting out a deep-throated sigh once finished.

“Better?” he said, like in that Snickers commercial.

“As good as I’ll get,” she said.

Static. Loud, ear-raping static. It took Luna by surprise – Liz hadn’t said anything to them in a while, which she chalked up to her concentrating on the camera system. She had almost forgotten she was there, listening in on everything she was saying.

“Okay,” Liz said, her voice even more staticky than last time. “I found someone.”

Luna plugged her ear and leaned against the wall. “Who?”

“Someone with access to the underbase,” she said. “Check your inbox.”

She nodded, navigating her system display for her emails.

“’Bout time,” said Vanderman. “You know how hot it is out here?”

“You think you have it bad?” said Liz. “I have to sit out on the sidewalk. I’m in a vest and jeans and I’m still sweating like a pig.”

Luna opened her inbox and saw a message from . She tapped into it and saw multiple screenshots taken from Camera 14. The face-access door was open, and a black woman with a bright-red mohawk was picture-frozen outside of it, slightly blurry. Her right arm was almost entirely made up of wires which plugged into her neural port; she was dressed in a half-leather, half-diaphanous waistjacket, and she held what looked like a blue-rimmed laser sword (although it might have been a pulse rifle).

“Who is this?” Luna said.

“That’s your girl,” she said. “She’s one of the people who have access. I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait around for others to roll through. She might be your best shot.”

“Can’t the suit copy her with this file?”

“Nuh-uh. Too blurry. Unless you wanna look like a literal mutant-fluff thing, I suggest meeting her face-to-face and screen-capturing her with your MD.”

Vanderman cleared his throat, his face flushing thinly. “Where is she?”

“You can catch her on the way out from the bottom corridor on Camera 14,” Liz said. “But I doubt you’re anywhere near there.”

“We’re not,” said Vanderman.

“I’m not sure where she’s going, but I’ll keep an eye out.”

“How big is this place?” said Luna.

“Pretty damn big,” replied Liz. “These cameras aren’t even covering the entire complex, just the more… well, I guess more populated bits. You might have to do some mapping for yourself.”

“Fuck that,” snapped Luna. “These suits won’t last – no, I won’t last that long. Track this chick down.”

“Sorry, cupcake. You knew this wouldn’t be easy before starting it. What’s your battery at?”

She checked. “Sixty-four.”

“Gotta be quick then,” Liz said.

“Yeah,” she said ruefully. “Yeah we do gotta be fucking quick!”

She turned and began to walk along the right side again, passing the pillars and abandoned mall-shops. She came to a halt once she saw the cross passage around the corner. It was a glass door, and through it she could see the cogwheel-shaped tunnels from the cameras. She was near the underground now, but was it worth even going down there anymore? That woman could have been anywhere in the complex, and the underbase no doubt had multiple exit points.

She had no way of knowing the location of this woman, unless of course she popped up on the cameras from time to time; all she knew for sure was that she had to be (a. quick and (b. subtle. At least we don’t have to worry about not fitting in, she thought, but there was no saying what would happen beyond this point.