Pt. 1, Chapter. 3 - "Amp"

EJ could feel the music resonating inside the building, despite how little sound actually escaped the dense walls of the night club. She tried to scan the interior with her pulse, but it seemed to vanish once it hit the building’s exterior. Despite the blind spot in her pulse that was this nightclub, the rest of the city around her began to pour sensory information into her mind. She filtered through it as she perched on the roof of a nearby building.

Night life was beginning to overtake the city streets. EJ could feel people wandering into the streets below, making their way through alleys and out of buildings. That was good. Groups of people were a great cloaking device, and not even the dullest faction thug would waste a bullet on a crowd comprised mostly of shifting bodies that they didn’t want to hit. She pulsed once more at the nightclub below.

The Evening Upgrade wasn’t the most popular locale for late night city life. It played host to a more specialized audience of city residents—delinquents like EJ. Despite being only a few streets from the college, the Upgrade was securely positioned in the center of swapper territory, which scared off most of the students and filtered the club population into two primary camps: people who had an in with the local faction, and people who could sneak their way around the territory. EJ fell into the latter of the two groups. The club’s location and usual clientele made for a relatively hidden base of operations for a plethora of illegal activities, including drug trade and augment swapping. She had been here a number of times already, mostly for various business transactions of the aforementioned illegal activities. In the past, however, she had been able to pulse through the building and get a quick read on the dance floor. Swappers and tech dealers were weird like that. They wanted to be hidden from security drones, but visible to anyone who may be a paying customer. Whatever was preventing her from seeing into the club would likely be impeding business in the club as well.

EJ frowned.

That’s not a good sign.

She had run into similar tricks before. Music was fundamentally just a mish-mash of frequencies, which made it stupid easy to use a dance club as a sort of frequency-masked area with enough speakers. Despite that, EJ should have still been able to catch the club in her pulse. She should have felt the electricity and conductives making up the structure of the building, but the area didn’t seem to register at all. Closing her eyes and sweeping the area with just her electrosense, the building registered like an empty black hole, sucking in her frequency and offering no sensory feedback. It was an odd sensation, one that she hadn’t run into before. She had grown used to being able to rely on even fragments of sensation provided by her electrosense. Truly getting no feedback at all from the building was concerning.

Theoretically, you could cause a pulse black-out like that in a few ways. The building could be entirely made of some sort of non-receptive material, like a ceramic-carbide. That was impossible, of course. EJ had been to The Evening Upgrade before, and was pretty sure she would have heard about the building being overhauled and rebuilt with new materials. Furthermore, ceramics were expensive. EJ had tried to build herself a ceramic vest for a very dangerous job a few years back. She had discovered that a single, twenty-hundredth by twenty-hundredth square of the stuff—a space no bigger than the palm of her hand—sold for roughly one-thousand bits. A whole vest of the stuff would have been somewhere around fifty-two thousand bits, practically enough money to sustain anyone for over a year of luxurious living. Thinking about trying to construct an entire building of the stuff, even using a cheaper synthetic like ceramic-carbide, conjured a number in EJ’s head that was larger than she was able to comprehend. No, the building definitely wasn’t made to be pulse-proof.

Likely, the music in the club was being layered with a complex weaving of counter frequencies. Counter frequencies made it hard for most modern tech to receive input by drowning everything in multiple layers of grayspace. Grayspace frequencies were like negative numbers. For every frequency, there existed a theoretical grayspace frequency that was equally powerful, but in the opposite direction—either higher or lower on the standard frequency scale than people could perceive via electrosense.

In that same example of negative numbers, say you knew that your enemy’s weapon activated on any frequency between the range of positive one to positive three. By running the counter frequencies negative one to negative three, their pulse wouldn’t be strong enough for their weapon to detect the activation frequency, rendering them unarmed.

EJ wasn’t sure how the specifics of setting up counter frequencies worked, but she knew that most modern tech had grayspace inhibitors built in, preventing devices from potentially reaching such frequencies. It was theorized that long-term exposure to grayspace could have a multitude of adverse effects on living things. The proper science of it all was still in flux, which meant that there were dozens of regulations on anything that could potentially express the unexplored frequencies. Of course, older tech—anything developed before grayspace had been discovered—lacked such inhibitors. An antique speaker or media tablet could be rigged to produce the negative frequencies, which would cancel out whatever range of activation pulses you rigged the device to emit. That would make it impossible for your average club-goer to buy drinks at the bar through their transaction chip, but more importantly it would prevent anyone from activating pulse-sensitive weaponry, which was exactly what EJ was supposed to be bringing to this meeting.

Could counter frequencies black-out a whole building like this? She wasn’t sure. The grayspace would prevent her from activating tech, but she should still be able to see the building in her electrosense. The building should have conductive components, and there was definitely power running inside. Perhaps this was some kind of stronger frequency., some sort of advanced cloaking tech.

EJ exhaled and dropped the pulse she had been pointing towards the club. Not being able to scan the building from the outside meant she would be doing all her reconnaissance while in the club. If this strange electrosense shield continued inside, she’d be relying entirely on sight and sound—senses that were unreliable in a loud, busy club full of people. If she needed to make a quick, emergency exit, she’d be figuring it out on the fly. That wasn’t her preference in such high-stakes situations, but she was plenty capable of thinking on her feet if she needed to. If all went well, of course, she wouldn’t need an emergency exit.

EJ clutched the briefcase under her arm a little tighter. The stolen sonic canon inside was her only real bargaining chip. If they believed that she could get them more weapons like it, she was in. If they didn’t buy her story or the weapon, if things went south, most of her arsenal would be nullified by the counter frequency. No gun, no pulse-bang modules, nothing. That would leave her with a single knife and her own wits.

EJ had to hope it wouldn’t come to that.

Once she had run herself through the plan one more time for good measure, EJ slipped back down to the main street and positioned herself one alley away from the club entrance. She had put on a formal, black smock and some nice, black pants to match. She slicked back her short hair and obscured the details of her face by wearing a standard model media link, which clung to one of the electroreceptors on her upper cheek and projected a simple, rectangular holo-display over her eyes. Before approaching the club, she locked the briefcase to her left hand with the magne-grip implant in her palm.

She took a deep breath, pausing for a moment to adopt the character of her tech-dealer alter ego, a confident individual that went by the online moniker “Trill.”

Don’t screw this up, EJ thought.

Trill approached The Evening Upgrade, half-million-bit briefcase in hand.

Multicolored lights shone dimly from behind the light-shielded glass door, and EJ could hear the music booming as she approached. It made sense that Seyet would want to meet here. The club was full of people, which generally deterred anyone from pulling a gun on you. He wouldn’t need that deterrence, of course, as he already had a counter frequency jamming EJ’s gun with grayspace. Perhaps he was worried that Trill might bring a more old-fashioned firearm to the meeting, one that didn’t require pulse authentication to use.

A tall, heavily augmented individual with angular features and no-nonsense eyes stopped her at the door. EJ could feel large portions of their arms, legs, and neck in her electrosense—combat upgrades likely.

The bouncer eyed the briefcase in EJ’s hand.

“Trill, I presume?”

EJ nodded.

“Mr. Seyet is waiting for you.”

The bouncer’s voice was steady and cold, their features unflinching. The pulse that accompanied their words attuned to the deep frequency of seriousness, a tone often used to indicate formality in business transactions like this. EJ nodded to them in response and tried to take another step towards the door. The bouncer quickly stopped her with a metal hand to the chest, pushing her back a pace.

“No one’s allowed in with unscanned cargo.”

“This briefcase doesn’t open until we’re negotiating pay. Seyet’s eyes only.” EJ responded in a deeper voice than she normally spoke in, underlining her words with a serious pulse.

The bounce just stared down at her. EJ glared back. Through electrosense, they could see exactly what EJ was bringing. The briefcase wasn’t pulse-proofed in any capacity, and she certainly wasn’t trying to hide the pistol stashed in the waistline of her pants. The two weapons were a distraction from the knife sewn into her sleeve, which would be somewhat obscured by the pulse-reactive fibers in her smock. If all went well, she wouldn’t need to worry about the knife, but it was the best back-up plan she had. After a moment, the bouncer snorted and pulsed to confirmation.

“Fine. Arms up.”

EJ complied, putting her hands in the air as if to surrender. This was the usual pat-down routine for getting into places with any semblance of security. You’d be pulse-scanned for items, disarmed, then allowed to proceed. The bouncer gripped EJ’s left shoulder tightly with an augmented hand. EJ felt the motors in the robotic hand cinch down on her.

“Easy, pal. I’m not going anywhere,” EJ said as Trill.

“I don’t doubt that. This is for my safety, pal,” the bouncer tinged their words with a biting frequency, still speaking in a steady voice. “So I can break your shoulder if you try anything.”

EJ let the bouncer remove the pistol she had stashed in her pants. They gave the weapon a quick once-over before tucking it away in their jacket. As Trill, EJ pulsed in annoyance, as if taking the weapon from her was nothing more than a time-wasting inconvenience. When she pulsed outwards, she caught another glimpse of the knife in her sleeve. It was still mostly obscured by the smock and didn’t fully register to her electrosense. Perfect.

“We good now?” EJ questioned with more annoyed pulsing. “Or are you going to keep Seyet waiting?”

“Please follow me.”

The bouncer pulsed the light-shield door open, releasing a flurry of colors and sounds from the club interior onto the street. The colors danced across EJ’s face and glinted off of the sleak, black metal of the bouncer’s augmented arms. They motioned for EJ to step inside. She did so.

EJ let the flashing lights and generic beats wash over her as she entered the club. The bouncer stepped in after her, letting the automated door slide shut a moment later. They motioned with a nod that said, “let’s go,” and EJ started towards the back rooms where she assumed they’d be holding the meeting in quieter chambers. But the bouncer caught her by the shoulder and pointed her towards a table just off the main floor instead. There, a single person sat. A larger individual in a puffy jacket, silvery metal plating covering one side of the face—Mr. Seyet, leader of the All-Seers.

Strange.

Stranger still, the club wasn’t full of people. In fact, it was practically empty. Sound spilled endlessly from various speakers built into the walls, but no DJ stood in the usual glass display-cubicle. A handful of Seyet’s minions lurked in a couple corners, leaning against the walls and watching the club. A couple of faction lackeys sat at the bar but hadn’t ordered drinks.

They’re taking this deal seriously. That’s good, EJ thought. Or they’re making sure they have an open space to fill me with bullets. That’s bad.

Another oddity floated to the surface of EJ’s thoughts. Her elecrosense flickered.

Wait a minute, I can feel conductives.

Somehow, whatever they were using to mask the building’s exterior didn’t carry over into the club interior. EJ was a bit baffled but didn’t dwell on the strange cloaking for too long. She could use her electrosenses again, that’s what was important. She made a mental note to scan the club from the inside whenever she could.

When they reached the table, the bouncer who had led EJ through the club motioned for her to take a seat.

“I’d like to keep this quick, actually,” EJ began, pulsing in a serious frequency.

“Please, Mx. Trill,” Seyet cut in. His voice was low and confident, layered with a quiet pulse to the relaxed frequency. “Take a seat.”

He turned to her, showing the side of his face that wasn’t plated with metal. A wide, self-assured grin stretched across his face. It made something inside of EJ feel nauseated, but she pushed it down and maintained a serious, business-like expression. She tried to not stare at the facial augmentation. The plating covered half of the top of his head and split perfectly down the center of his nose but didn’t extend down to the mouth. Instead, it wrapped around the side of his head, covering where his other eye would be. It was as if a hemisphere of his brain had been replaced with hard machinery. Part of EJ wondered what an augment like that was for. Across the surface of the flashy augment, a smattering of small, red, mechanical eyes glowed, humming with electricity. EJ thought for a moment that the eye displays were simply ornamental, but when she blinked, she could have sworn that several of them had shifted position. Hair only grew from the unplated side of Seyet’s face, and a long, curly stream of black locks flowed down over his shoulder, highlighted with streaks of metallic gold that matched with the colored eyelashes. His lips were brightly outlined in a similar wispy, gold filigree, and filled in with a deep, purple, synthetic coloring. Appearance augmentation seemed to be something he was fond of, and quite skilled at. EJ had to admit that Seyet was quite fashionable. Handsome, even. Though, not her type.

Definitely not my type.

He motioned at the seat opposite from where he sat with an open hand. Each of his fingers were covered in rings of various colors and sizes, with his pointer and middle fingers bearing a sort of multi-segmented claw fixture. Again they seemed simply ornamental at first. EJ only noticed their sharpened, bladed edges on a second glance.

She nodded, then carefully took the seat and placed the briefcase in her lap, still magne-locked to the implant in her palm. As she did so, the music died down slightly. EJ guessed that they would still be running the counter frequency, however. It just wouldn’t be as potent. The bouncer positioned themself directly behind her, standing above the two at the table, but staring straight forwards. EJ took a breath.

“Mr. Seyet, I believe—” she started to say as Trill, but Seyet silenced her with a raised hand. Dammit, when were people going to start letting her speak in full sentences? She had memorized a whole spiel to sell this, and she was eager to get the negotiation on its way.

“Why the rush, friend?” Seyet spoke through the same, sickening smile. His teeth were outlined in gold and silver metallic trim, and something glowed from within his mouth. Speech augment, EJ guessed.

“It’s rather dangerous to move through the city with something like this,” EJ responded, tapping the briefcase. “I’m sure you understand.”

Seyet nodded slowly and pulsed to understanding.

“Of course, of course, I understand. Commander Keddik?” Seyet motioned towards the bouncer standing behind EJ with one hand. “Can you assure our guest that the location is secured?”

Commander Keddik grunted.

“I can, Mr. Seyet. We are the only ones in the building, aside from a handful of my guards watching the entrances.”

It was a dangerous truth that EJ was already well aware of. Despite the pounding of her own heart in her ears, EJ forced herself to look relieved at the statement. Seyet tapped his facial augment with two clawed fingers.

“Trust me, I keep a close eye, or several, on everything that goes on around here.”

He laughed. As he did so, EJ caught a glimpse of several eye-displays on the facial augment swiveling towards her. She wasn’t sure what the augmented segment of Seyet’s face did. Was it just a visual augment with multiple inputs? Some kind of surveillance camera feed?

“I’m glad to hear it,” EJ said, stretching out her serious frequency to trail after her words. She was preparing herself to push the pulse out around her to check out the club. She needed to get a good look at everything herself.

The counter frequency that was being run through the music would prevent her from pulsing to activate any tech, but it wouldn’t stop her from using her electrosense to snoop around. She couldn’t sustain the pulse in a wide-cast, or she’d likely give away the fact that she was scanning the area. Instead, she had to use a quick snapshot, pushing her pulse throughout the whole building but only for a split second. The information would come all at once, which meant it would only be accurate as far as her brain was able to process it. She had used this trick before, of course, and took a moment to think about the details she’d need to focus on.

How many guards, how armed, and where, she reminded herself.

Then, she blinked, and shot the pulse across the room all at once.

EJ felt a rapid series of sensations vibrate in her gut, and images flashed in her mind for only a second.

Somewhere around eight guards, maybe less. She was sure of at least five of those, however, as they were heavily augmented, which made them stand out more in her electrosense. All armed—three with firearms, two with pulse-weaponry, and she felt a few more metallic buzzes that were likely something for hand-to-hand combat. Two by the bar, two by the door to the back rooms, one in the corner by the door. Potentially a few others in the back, she wasn’t entirely sure. They were spaced out enough that she wasn’t immediately worried. Still, this place would light up with gun fire faster than an illegal bot fight if they detected any foul-play on her end.

EJ took a breath, and opened with the first line of Trill’s sales pitch.

“This tech is difficult to get your hands on. I’m sure neither of us want it falling into the hands of some other faction.”

She pulsed to serious, business tones again. Phrases like this were how tech dealers tried to hook clients on making a deal. The phrase said, “I’m eager and willing to sell to you,” but also said, “unless you’d like me to take this sale elsewhere.” EJ tapped on the briefcase in her lap.

“Remind me,” Seyet said, “Exactly how you did get your hands on this?”

“We produce it ourselves,” EJ lied flawlessly.

“We?”

“Yes. A team of developers. Hidden between the undeveloped city sectors.”

“I see.”

He’s testing me? Why would he agree to meet me himself if he didn’t trust my story? Or perhaps they think I’m an imposter? I need to be careful. Push for a deal, but not too hard.

Seyet scratched something into the surface of the table with his clawed pointer finger absentmindedly as they spoke. Then he tapped hard, and the point of the claw sunk into the soft, synthetic tabletop.

“I know we are newly acquainted, Trill, but traditionally, when I go out of my way to meet for a business negotiation, I like to meet my potential business partners face-to-face,” Seyet said, obviously referring to the media display covering the upper half of her face.

He wants to be able to read my expressions, EJ thought.

Any tech dealer worth their bits—hell, anyone participating in illegal trades of any variety—made sure to obscure their face. If a security drone got a clean scan on you, you’d have your face plastered all over the security server’s main feed. Fast way to lose all your customers. EJ had figured that Seyet may ask her to reveal her face. He didn’t trust something about her. That was to be expected, of course. “Trustworthy” was the last descriptor you’d use for a tech dealer. And yet, something about his composure unsettled her. There was something else that Seyet was worried about. Something he suspected of her, more than just a false deal.

Do they think I’m here to kill him?

No, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet if that was the case. Or they’d have simply shot her at the door and been done with it.

She glanced down at Seyet’s scratching. The design carved into the tabletop was partially obscured by his fingers where he had stabbed the surface, but from what she could see, it vaguely resembled some kind of writing. EJ couldn’t immediately discern any meaning in the carving. The script was entirely composed of straight lines, like the tallies used to teach children to count. It was far from the interconnected dots, swoops, and footnotes that made up modern texts.

Another language? Code? Perhaps just gibberish?

Seyet cleared his throat.

“Well, Mx. Trill?”

“Yes, of course, my apologies.”

EJ tried to pulse to disconnect her media link. Nothing happened.

Remember the counter frequency, static-brain?

Well, at least that confirmed that their safety measures were still in effect. EJ manually disconnected the media link from her electroreceptor, pulling it from her face and placing it on the table. Seyet smiled.

“We’re among friends, are we not?” He pulsed calmly to relaxation.

With her face now revealed, EJ made sure to keep her features emotionless as she spoke. If he was trying to read her, she wasn’t about to help him out.

“Of course, Mr. Seyet. ”

“You mentioned that your team operates out of the undeveloped sectors? That’s pretty far from city central.”

EJ nodded. More testing? Was he just looking for confirmation of authenticity? Maybe she should push to show him the weapon. That would certainly lend her some credibility, but he might read it as hasty, eager to leave. Like a scammer would be. Trill wasn’t a shifty tech-dealer, they were a person of business.

Before EJ could form a response, Seyet spoke again.

“You know, about the same time your associates contacted my agents, I heard there was a bit of a scandal involving stolen tech in sector eight,” he said, pulse remaining steady in the relaxed frequency. Some of the eyes on the augmented side of his face twitched.

Panic surged inside of EJ, and she forced herself to retain a calm presentation.

So they do suspect a false deal. I need to defend Trill’s reputation, then push for authenticity.

Yes, she could parry this blow. She had always wormed her way through these types of interactions before.

For the first time since sitting down, EJ made Trill smile. Not an over-the-top, open-mouth smile like Seyet. Just a simple grin. She raised an eyebrow.

“Is that a threat, Mr. Seyet?”

“No, no, of course not,” he said, returning to his table carving. “ I would never threaten a friend. Consider it a business concern. Reassure me, Trill.”

“Well, friend,” EJ laced the word with a harsh frequency, “I’m happy to report that you’ve horribly misunderstood the rumors.”

Seyet raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“You see, it was our tech that was stolen,” EJ lied confidently. “There was a leak from a prior client. We dealt with the—ahem—unsatisfied customer and recovered our stolen products.”

Seyet put a hand on his chin and nodded slowly. EJ let her words hang in the air before she continued.

“Now, if you’ve heard of these rumors, albeit incorrectly, then surely you’ve heard of what our product can do. I’ll have you know that I did come a long way to meet you here, Mr. Seyet, because I thought you would perhaps be open to communication and further business dealings. But I will not be threatened with illegitimacy.”

EJ set the briefcase on the table with an abrupt thud and used it to push herself up from her seat.

“Clearly you aren’t—”

Before she could finish her rebuttal, the familiar robotic grip of the bouncer standing behind her, Commander Keddik, clasped her on the shoulder and shoved her back into the seat. EJ sputtered.

“Oh, save me the overdramatic sales pitch,” Seyet said. “You’ve made your point.”

He gestured with an open hand towards the briefcase. EJ blinked.

Am I...am I in? That worked?

She released the handle of the metal case from her magne-grip module. Luckily, the augment wasn’t pulse-activated, so the counter frequency couldn’t nullify it in any way. Then she cleared her throat, sat up a little straighter, and input the code to open the briefcase. The locks clicked in compliance, and EJ rotated the case to face Seyet. The faction leader slowly lifted the case open, revealing the weapon inside to only himself. EJ felt him pulse, likely checking the pieces of the canon. A moment later he pulsed to amusement, and slowly lowered the case shut again.

When the briefcase closed and EJ could see Seyet’s face, he was wearing a wide smile. EJ hesitantly let herself grin as well. The glowing, red eye modules on Seyet’s augmented face swiveled about.

Seyet chuckled to himself. It was a low, growing laugh that he entertained for a few moments. EJ was glad that he was excited about their deal, but this was certainly more of a reaction than she had expected. He just kept staring down at the briefcase, smiling and shaking his head.

No, not at the briefcase, EJ realized. He’s staring down past it. At the table-drawing?

Seyet chuckled once more, staring down at the table where he had carved into its surface earlier in their meeting. He brushed away some chunks of the table with a hand.

“Tell me,” Seyet said, his voice suddenly turning dark, “Do you know the origin of your name?”

EJ furrowed her brow in confusion. What did this have to do with names? Was he referring to the codenames used by people like them, tech dealers and faction leaders? Names like Trill and Seyet? Seyet lightly traced over his carving in the table.

“Ellen-Jane. EJ, I suppose. It’s based in the writing of prior iterations, is it not? Progenitor-speech.”

EJ’s blood ran cold in her veins.

“Shit.”

Details from the meeting thus far suddenly clicked into place. This had always been a set-up.

She tried to stand quickly but two mechanical arms seized her with a forceful grip and planted her firmly in her seat, arms locked at her sides. EJ growled. No way she was bargaining out of this one, but she couldn’t fight her way out either. Seyet roared with laughter, a mad bellow not unlike EJ’s own cackle at the bridge earlier in the day.

“You must honestly believe me to be made of static!” He almost spat his words at her in the sudden episode of unbridled amusement he was displaying. “I’ve watched you, Ellen-Jane. I’ve watched you across every sector you’ve run from, followed you into every little hidy-hole and through every little job of yours.”

He hissed the words in triumph, standing and leaning over the table. EJ spit at him and pulsed to hatred. Not her best comeback, she’d need to workshop that one. He chuckled, then tapped the side of his augmented face and the eyes all focused on her. She would have thrown rude gestures at the eye modules if her arms weren’t being held. Again, not her best work. She was down to just a knife and her wits, the exact position she had wanted to avoid at all costs.

“I see everything that goes on in the world-city. I have eyes in every district. I’ve watched you make your way through other factions, other sectors. I watched as you plucked that sonic canon away from those goons in sector eight. You’ve practically done my work for me.”

“What do you want to hear, ‘you’re welcome’?” EJ pulsed to sarcasm. “Oh! Does this mean we can still work together? “Among friends” and all that.”

The clever retorts were getting better. Barely.

Seyet ignored her. EJ flicked her wrist, activating the magne-grip module. No other guards had responded yet, she needed to act. Now.

“They all want you dead, you know,” Seyet continued. “That’s what I promised them if they’d hold off for now. Though I was hoping you’d get through a few more before you inevitably made your way here. Unfortunate.”

The knife ripped free from her sleeve, flying towards EJ’s hand and snapping into her grasp. Before they could react, she flicked her wrist again and reversed the lock, sending the knife flying straight at Keddik’s face. The augmented soldier let go of the mange-grip arm and snatched the blade out of the air between two robotic fingers, then promptly snapped the blade in two.

Damn, that was expensive.

No more knife, now she was just left with her wits.

Seyet’s commander swept an augmented arm around, lunging for EJ’s throat, but she managed to reach up and deflect the attack in time. They grabbed onto her nicely slicked-back hair instead and yanked hard, pulling her head upwards. EJ threw herself up and backwards, slamming her skull into the metal hand, which flew back enough to smack the commander in the face. She grunted in pain but felt the mechanical vice on her other arm and her hair loosen for a moment. She took that moment to reach across and activate the magne-grip once more, locking her grip onto Keddik’s other arm. Then she planted a foot and pivoted as hard as she could, slinging her assailant across the table as she stood up. They hit the surface shoulder-first and slid across, leaving streaks in the synthetic, plastic material.

EJ booked it.

“Get her you static-brained drones!” Seyet bellowed. “GET HER!”

EJ heard shots ring out around her. She flashed another wide-cast pulse and felt steel rapidly hurtling towards her—one bullet towards her right leg, another at her left shoulder, and a third arcing too wide to hit her. She twisted herself quickly on her left leg to avoid the shots as she ran, feeling the bullets zip past in her electrosense. She threw her pulse back up just in time to feel more metal ringing through the air towards her. No wait, there was more. People were emerging from the back rooms. One of them fired a pulse weapon towards her. Additionally, she could feel the augmented commander closing on her and she approached the door.

Shit shit shit.

EJ hit the floor to dodge the best she could but wasn’t fast enough. White-hot pain seared suddenly in neck, and she could feel warm blood beginning to trickle down her back and chest. She’d found herself in potentially lethal situations like this before and had taken a handful of wounds from conventional bullets and pulse-blasts alike. That was the only reason she was able to force herself to keep moving through the pain. She had managed to miss most of the pulse-blast that had been headed towards her, but the spread of the shot had still clipped her on the right arm. Her arm buzzed, mostly numb, and she could see her skin through holes in the sleeve of her smock where the blast had melted through her clothes.

Dammit, this was a nice outfit.

Instincts still pumping in her chest, demanding that she keep moving, EJ flung herself back to her feet. Just as she did so, a metal fist collided with her gut. EJ wheezed but kept standing and managed to block the next swing from the commander, which had been aimed at her head.

“Neat arms,” EJ taunted, barely managing to dodge another rapid punch that sailed past her face.

“Soldiers, who said you could stop shooting?” the augmented assailant shouted between grunts, ignoring EJ’s banter and landing a blow against her shoulder that made something pop painfully inside.

Wait, what-the-static? They want to be shot at?

Sudden cracks rang through the club once more, somewhat drowning out the sound of Seyet’s shouting and the generic, techno-beats pumping through the club speakers. They must have shut down the counter frequency to let the soldiers shoot, not that it mattered now. Keddik had already taken her gun.

EJ kept her pulse up and could feel the bullets in the air. She used a low, resonating frequency to feel where Keddik would swing next. Luckily for her, their arms were entirely augmented up to the shoulder, so she could feel the mechanisms pivoting the robotic muscle of the arm. The hardest part of reading the incoming blows was the commander’s torso. She couldn’t block, counterstrike, and dodge bullets all while watching how the augmented individual was twisting to aim the punches.

EJ got in a couple hits, feeling the familiar ache of hand-to-hand combat in her arms. Then she jumped back as quickly as she could to avoid an incoming shot. Keddik didn’t seem phased—they barely reacted to EJ’s hits or the volley of bullets. They approached through the gunfire, even swatting a bullet out of the air with a metal forearm when it sailed too close. In the space between exchanging blows, EJ could feel every part of her thumping with pain. Keddik lunged to close the distance between them again, winding back for another punch.

EJ’s pulse picked up on another large pulse-blast incoming directly behind her.

Shit.

Moving before even thinking, EJ snapped her wrist to activate the mage-grip module. As the commander’s punch came hurtling towards her, she twisted to the side and locked onto the metal arm. A second punch collided with her side a second later, and EJ felt something crack. She grunted loudly against the pain and threw Keddik’s weight against them, using their lunge to spin them into the oncoming pulse-blast. The same pivot-deflection move had worked out twice for her now.

When the blast collided, EJ was safely shielded behind the body of her foe. Keddik cried out in pain as the beam of weaponized energy melted through the back of their clothes, exposing an extensive series of mechanical bracings running down their spine like a steel exoskeleton. EJ barely managed to reverse her grip module in time to avoid being pulled with the commander as they crashed into the soldier who had fired the pulse weapon.

Time to go.

Against the pain that was thundering through her, EJ braced herself and charged the club’s ornate, glass door. She felt another blast in her electrosense behind her, from the direction of Seyet.

Goddammit, EJ, she scolded herself in her head.

She had been busy dodging other bullets and hadn’t had time to worry about Seyet’s own potential armaments. That was sloppy.

Wait. That wasn’t a bullet.

Oh shi—

The blast of the sonic canon hit EJ like a bolt of lightning. More than simply killing your target, the canon was designed to incapacitate whoever you were aiming at. It did so with agonizingly painful beams of concentrated sound waves. EJ felt the shock of the weapon tear through her skin and vibrate to her bones. At first there was a loud POP, and EJ could hear herself crying out in pain, but then the world seemed to go silent. A second later, a coursing wave of intense nausea throbbed in her head and coursed down through her limbs.

Then EJ’s weight hit the glass door to the club, and a thousand shards of crystal raked across her body as it shattered. She hit the ground outside and rolled onto the street.

Time to—EJ. You need—up.

Even the words she told herself in her mind were swimming in a sea of pain, and she heard them cut-out in her head, broken up by audible static that fuzzed over parts of her own thoughts.

She pried her eyes open, but the world around her was an endless black void of nothingness. She thought she was standing, as she could distantly feel the twitching muscles in her calves. But then again, she felt her muscles ache and twitch all over. She tried to pulse, and for a fraction of a second her electrosense illuminated the world around her. She got a flashing image in her mind of the street stretching out before her, wires in the ground from the college’s central power grid snaking back towards the college’s spire and the bot-graveyard bridge in the distance. Then a jolting spear of static shot through her head once more, and the image vanished.

EJ blinked hard several times, beginning to make out shouts from inside the club. Slowly, her vision returned to her.

You need to go, NOW, the voice in her head demanded.

Cradling a mangled arm and bleeding from the neck, EJ managed to throw herself into a shambling jog towards the college in the distance.