Chapter Two—Lower Street

They had to skip the sushi joint. “Sorry big guy. Gonna be late. Have to meet my contact at the Blue Phoenix?”

“You go the Blue Phoenix?”

Yeah, was he allowed to go to the Blue Phoenix? “Sometimes… It’s a good place for meets. Sides, the babes are hot over there. They don’t have all that cyber neon crap in their skin. Why go to a skin joint if you’re not getting skin?”

John shrugged.

“Now listen. We meet the guy in there—“

“What’s his name?”

“Dunno. Didn’t tell me. We meet him in there. He gives us the codes to deactivate the top floor security system. Said he’s got a playback loop we can install. Tricky part’s that we gotta do it at the front desk.”

“That could be difficult. What if we get caught?”

“Then we high tail it outa there of course—what do you think?”

“Yeah. Of course that’s what we would do. So we have to take out the security guard. Do you know where the monitor booth is at?” John asked.

“Yeah, it’s no problem.”

The interior of their 98-Esper lit up, the beige leather seating taking on a quick purple and pink glow as they passed the club. Traffic was heavy, but Kyle had no problem navigating the other vehicles.

A police drone buzzed by, a flash of blue scanners scraping the scene.

Kyle smiled. “Losers.”

“Hey, you passed the club.” John turned, glancing back. “That was the Blue Phoenix, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Just going to park around back.

The Esper growled as he laid on the fuel to beat another car into the parking lot, then Kyle screeched the tires as he turned into his parking lane.

“Haha!”

“That’s so reckless,” John said.

“I can handle it.”

He shut off the motor. This guy—his contact—better be in there, Kyle thought. The streets were wet from a quick downpour and the water was rising as vapor from the hot cement and the sewer vents.

Blue lighting filled the interior of their car, the back parking sign for the Blue Phoenix flickered. Guess they need a new sign. “Let’s get in there. If anything funny goes down, you get my back.”

“I got you, Kyle,” John said, then they shook each other other’s hands, a quick tough grab of forearms and a shake.

He clicked on his holo-mask, which was a high tech visual identification changer. For the most part, it was realistic, but artistic or neon masks were not uncommon.

“Let’s do this.” Kyle said, glad they had an easier time of this sort of thing than they used to. After May had contacted them—Kyle still had no idea how she even found them—and brought them into whatever fold she was a part of, doing something like this was way tougher.

That police drone with the quick scanner would normally pick up on their guns and other tech, resulting in a quick stop and some serious jail time.

But with high tech from May and her associates, a lot of these issues were dealt with before they even began.

It was hells of a lot better than hunting around black market tech dealers to keep out of law enforcement’s way. Sure, it was possible, but there were so many other risks, like narks, undercover sting operations, douche bag criminals that would take your money then blow your head off after they cashed in so they could take their gear back and sell it again.

Yeah… this was way better.

Kyle went up to the backdoor security.

“Hey, Kyle,” one off the guards said. He had a blue Mohawk and knee-high boots. His pistol was readily available to him from his exposed holster on his chest. “How’s it going? What do we have tonight?”

“Nothing much, Reese,” Kyle said. “Just here to make a nod to my favorites. “ he said, handing the guard some dollar creds. He’d split it with his pall there at the door.

“All right,” Reese said. “Go on in. Just don’t kick up too big a fuss, yeah?”

“You got it.”

Kyle forced open the double doors like he owned the place, John at his back as the muffled music of the dance floors enveloped them.

“Let’s find this guy.”

“You know what he looks like?” John asked.

“Sure do.”