With forty-eight hours to himself, Kal treated himself to an embalming ritual from stem to stern to cleanse himself of his demons. He had to if he wanted to enjoy Saturnalia during the next cycle. So, the cleansing was a private affair.
Falling into that old routine, he settled his restlessness behind a wall of influencer-pushed products and free samples from the cosmetics shoppe two levels down from his apartment and kept his fucking PC on do-not-disturb. He soaked his hair in conditioner for an hour, waxed the fine hairs off his toes, and listened to Echonocht's latest album on repeat.
It was like casting a spell, he knew, and that was why he couldn’t be interrupted. Any deviation from the ritual could upset the outcome and let the demons back in.
The only communications that could come through were those from his direct supervisor and even then, Macaw knew he had to call twice for the link to go through.
[*** 1/5] Kal moaned in agony as the display on the inside of his arm flashed blue in the dark, pending answer. He could lie again and say he rolled over on it. But he knew Macaw would just call him again. And if it was that important, the precinct would send a runner.
The thought of Ten or Four busting through his door while he was in a state of carnal dishabille made his sanitizer-shiny toes curl with imaginary mortification.
He hissed under his breath, “My one fucking cycle off in the last ten, and this bitch…” Kal was obviously more annoyed than usual because the light had started going off in the middle of his final step—the one that would effectively banish all his worries and make him amiable and placid until he could get his hands on a submissive. If Macaw had only waited another twenty minutes or so, Kal would’ve been on his stomach with a book, basking in those satisfying, afterglow chemicals.
As for now, he was still flat on his back, baring angry teeth at his unoccupied hand. He swiped his PC with his nose and growled, "Yes, Officer-3?"
"Wake ya?" Macaw asked. Before Kal could answer in cutting tones, Officer-3 said, "Nah, I know you. Finish jerking off and get to Oro Bridge, Tower Six, on Green Side. We've got a body."
Kal's heart leapt up into his throat. Tower Six. Jayeon’s Tower. The Tower he’d infiltrated only a few cycles ago. Oh shit, oh fuck, oh—He struggled to go back to his happy place as he groaned, “Isn’t that Green Precinct’s problem?”
“Jayeon Whitney is a paranoid rich-blood who doesn't trust anything whose primary is binary, and you're the only flesh 'n' bone not on mandatory crew rest with homicide experience. The enforcers in the Green have their hands full dealing with other, more important shit.”
“Lightsake.” So much for Officer-3 not wanting to burn him out.
“Was that a Yes and a Sir in a specific order? Hoho. Someone's been reviewing their Medji Creed. Next thing you know, you'll be doing your paperwork same-day instead of five minutes before a delinquency ping comes through from Scythe-Bravo, you lazy piece of shit.”
“Hold on. Keep degrading me, I'm almost there.”
Macaw croaked a disbelieving laugh. “I'm sending ME-0999 ahead of you. Did you know it suggested you over Technician-10 for this job? I didn’t even know they could submit assessments like that without being prompted. Shoulda sent you to that Unity maintenance certifier course instead of Onesie.”
Nines. Fucking Nines. Kal blinked. “Wait, I thought you said Jayeon didn't like tech.”
“No, I said he had a problem with non-verbal droids. Bolter Brain here wouldn’t shut the fuck up about insisting it take this one, so I don't think binary's gonna be the problem... Hey. Reminder. Don't blow this toaster up, Jackal. It's proprietary. And patented. And that means expensive in two different litigation lingos.”
“So I've been told,” Kal grumbled.
After Macaw hung up, the officer sent a pin with the location. Green Side. Check. Serpentine Syndicate risk assessment package. Check. Seventeenth floor? Wasn’t the terminal he’d hardlined into on the twentieth deck? So, maybe the homicide had nothing to do with this extraction?
Kal didn't like that his only back-up would be a quirky bot who preferred him, but if he had to pick a partner... Nines didn't labor on about regulations like other Metal Enforcers did. He was shrewd, sure, but he seemed to understand on a human-level that some things were better kept off the record.
Granted, Kal’d never accompanied him on a homicide call and Nines had very specific Habits formed around the preservation of human life, so maybe this would make or break their working relationship.
So, maybe Kal could get out of this with none the wiser.
Preference.
A robot that wanted things.
Kal snorted to himself. The truth was, Kal was conceited enough to wonder if Nines’ interest in him was unique. Unity tech was weird like that, wasn't it? Alien, and yet designed by human hands—impossible to repair, but virtually impossible to reverse engineer.
Nines was supposed to be assigned to the Blue Zone, like Kal. But he’d volunteered both himself and Jackal to take on this assignment, using an assessment to back up his claim. Was that why he’d been running diagnostics on the other MEs? And if he was insisting that they took the job, did that mean he knew about his agreement with Wolf? Could he be protecting Kal again?
Even with this new development upsetting his ritual, Kal had taken a pick-me-up half an hour before the boss had bothered him, so he was still hard. He sighed and instead of using his rather robust imagination to take care of himself, he figured a vid was advisable, to help expedite things.
One way or the other, he wasn't responding to a murder scene at full mast, and even if he managed a cold shower conversation with himself, he'd be too pissed off to handle any of the volatile human elements with any decorum. So, an expeditious orgasm was in order.
Normally, a play scenario would get him there in about five minutes if he really focused, but as he was scrolling through his suggestions, his eye snagged on something a little off the beaten path (so to speak) and he decided, Ah, what the hell.
It was only when the clarity hit him afterwards that maybe watching a public exhibitionist indulge in the back of a transport, straddling the vibrating chassis of a commuter minder, was in poor taste.
What's the hang up? I've busted to worse things, he assured himself as he got cleaned up and dressed. May as well be mad at someone getting off on top of a clothes drier. But as he gathered himself, he worried at the change in routine like a loose tooth. Exhibition, public play—those were things he'd been into before, had even partaken of himself. But mechaphilia? That was a little bizarre. Admittedly, maybe he’d been unconsciously shying away from exploring it because of his job.
He forced himself to mentally shrug and go about his business. He was overthinking it, surely. So what if his tried and true overlapped garbage every now and then?
He was just keeping things fresh. [*** END]
Kal kept his helmet on after they arrived on the scene. He'd been evasive and curt on the ride over. Nines had asked him out loud, “Ever been on Green Side?”
“Once,” he'd said. “But you know that already.”
Nines had made a humming sound. “I may have looked up your reports… but that job was over a cycle-cycle ago. I'm asking if you've been more recently.”
Kal didn't want to say, but he didn't want to lie either, so he'd asked, “Have you?”
“About a week ago.”
“What were you responding to?”
“A 17-90.”
“Suspected break-in?” That had lined up Wolf’s break-in a little too closely. “What'd you find?”
“Nothing conclusive.”
Helpful. “What do we know about our dead guy?”
“You didn't read the brief?”
Kal hadn't. Too afraid. He’d shrugged.
Instead of giving him the low-down or castigating him for not doing his due diligence, Nines had chuckled and said, “Well, there wasn't much you won't be able to glean once we get there. I'll interface with the security system and sort through everything you'll need.”
“Isn't that my job?” Kal had stated. “You're the Enforcer. You do deduction. I do electronics.”
“I can multitask. You just stand around. Look pretty.”
“So why'd you ask for me if you've got this on lock?”
“I didn't want any of the others. They would've used this as an opportunity. Keeping a tech from getting any wild ideas while trying to focus on the job is taxing.”
Kal had smirked. “And you don't think I will?”
“You're not ambitious, Jack. It's one of the things I like about you. Instead, I’m hopin’ ya realize something about yourself.”
Kal hadn't known how to respond. “Cryptic, much?”
Nines had only chuckled.
Kal was still chewing on their conversation as they were greeted by a bound security guard dressed like a receptionist and escorted up to the seventeenth deck. He was so tied up in his nerves that he nearly missed it when the guard addressed him directly saying something about inconveniences.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
The woman sighed and repeated, “Mister Whitney would like this resolved as soon as possible. He understands there's protocol to be observed, but the sooner this transient is removed, the sooner everyone can get back to work.”
Kal narrowed his eyes. “Mister Whitney confirmed the man isn't one of his employees?”
“Of course. That was the first thing we did once we were given his IFE information by your bots.”
“So he's not concerned about the fact that someone not on his payroll broke into his Tower without anyone the wiser and died on the premises?”
Nines could tell the woman was bristling up with defensive indignation, so he social-moduled all over things by saying, “My partner isn't implying a dereliction on your security teams’ part. We just need to know if we need to communicate any findings to him before reporting.”
“Bring any findings to me,” she said. Kal could tell she was uncomfortable talking to an unbound, but she was quick to mask that discomfort behind a wall of professionalism. “Mister Whitney is only concerned about the work stoppage due to the cordon.”
“What kind of work?” Kal asked.
The woman gave him an undisguised look of disdain. “A transient overdosing in a broom closet has nothing to do with the work we do on-site, Medji. I'll tell you what I told the first-responder drones: it's unfortunate that someone had their last puff on Mister Whitney's stoop, but that's no concern of his. This isn’t a murder. It’s just sad.”
“That's yet to be seen,” Nines said in a friendly, almost beseeching tone. “If we have any questions for Mister Whitney, can we—?”
“You'll direct your questions to me, my auxiliary team, or—barring that—you can talk with Mister Whitney's solicitor at Freeman & Colt.” The lift stopped and she gestured for them to disembark first. “After you, Medji. This is Deck Seventeen.”
A message from Nines popped up on his HUD as they followed the guard, and Kal twitched a finger to open it. “Well, isn’t she just a ray of sunshine?” the bot texted.
“Obviously they want this incontinence to go away as quickly as possible.”
“How ya wanna play this?”
“By the book. Any inconvenience can be blamed on it.”
“Oh, she’s pissed you off, hasn’t she? I’ve never seen you sink your teeth. This oughta be a ripper!”
“Get me footage from the lift and the stairwell.”
“Compiling.”
“Send me the ID ping breakdown for the last week and get me a list of companies that service Six.”
“Done and Done.”
“I want everything the security system has on behavior. Flag anything aberrant. Set the pattern recognition wide. I’ll narrow it down from there.”
“Oh, you are mad. I love it.”
The security guard took them through empty hallways and a labyrinth of vacant cubicles before Kal asked her, “Who discovered the body?”
“A sanitation bot. We usually have human cleaners visit throughout the week, but when the Tower is closed down for the end of the work-cycles, a team of metal types scrub everything from top to bottom. Mister Whitney doesn't like it, but he had to conform to Duat's occupational health codes.”
So, if it weren't for station protocol, the body may have been found cycles from now if at all. Checking the schematics, the closet wasn't segregated from the rest of the floor's HVAC. Kal asked aloud, “No one smelled anything?” When the guard gave him a befuddled look, he clarified with, “This is Green Side. Everything smells like mint and money. No one noticed the odeur de mort? I find that hard to believe, even if some of the employees aren’t Green Side residents.”
One of Nines’ cameras telescoped, studying him.
“How do you know most of our employees aren’t from Green Side?” the guard demanded. “You need a warrant or a subpoena to access that part of our records.”
Nines responded before Kal could make something up, “Average of thirty employees per floor, twenty-one floors... That’s a lot of people to source from the upper crust to do grunt work. It's a simple extrapolation.”
The guard took a moment to consider the validity of that before answering Kal. “The floor chief was choked to find out she and her team had been working within ten feet of a dead man, but it's not in anyone's contract to question how things are done within Oro Bridge… Would you think a bad smell is something worth bothering your supervisor over?”
Kal wasn’t sure if that was a dig at Blue Side or a personal jab. “Depends on the smell,” Kal said seriously.
The “broom closet” in question was a small server space with a security door. The sliding door was open. The room and the doorway were cordoned off by two aerial drones creating a red floor partition made of bright laser-pointer lines. There were two suppressor drones standing by, their markings denoting them as coroner robots. They were too heavy to go by lift—they would have had them come up the stairs, which meant they must have just arrived. Their batteries were already down to 40%.
“Directive?” one of them queried.
“Stand-by,” he said aloud, making a gesture with his kinetics for them to find a port to charge at until they needed them to do the bagging and tagging.
The two bear-like bots trundled off, drawing the attention of two human security members who’d been standing off to the side. One of them caught Kal’s eye and gave the barest of salutes in greeting but then turned back to their companion as they leaned against a glass cubicle partition. They were probably talking over their private relay, because the Medji didn’t hear them chattering through the black glass of their faceplates.
Either that or they’re trying to psyche each other out with a staring contest.
Kal didn't recognize their uniform from his time in the Tower before. They didn't have name tapes, and the security firm insignia emblazoned on their back didn't match the lead guard's. As if sensing his confusion, Nines sent him, “StratoCorp's private security,” along with a dossier that Kal downloaded for later review.
“They have ties to Serpentine,” Kal offered in return.
“Interesting,” the ME replied. “They were affiliated with Unity before they made a home here on Duat.”
“Oh, so these guys aren’t just pedigree. They’re legacy. See if we don't step on their toes,” Kal texted.
As if he’d decided they were competing to see who was the more insightful, Nines sent, “So Sumba herself loaned out a couple guns for her son? That was nice of her.”
“He’s normally covered in Serpentine when he’s out and about town, but it’s the first time I’ve seen her legitimate security getting involved with his affairs.”
“So that tells us what?” Nines asked.
“She wants to keep this above board. Which means she’s afraid it isn’t. Which means she doesn’t know what he’s actually up to within Tower Six…” Kal already knew all that already. He just needed to know how much Nines understood about the situation.
“That scales,” Nines returned. “Especially since Jayeon just wants this little inconvenience to evaporate.” Then the ME surprised Kal with a follow up to that notion. “Jayeon Whitney’s analog tendency… His mother’s keen interest… This might overlap with CorpEspi. But whether or not it is or it isn’t, the real question remains: Was our deader working for one of the Whitneys, or a third party? You tell me, Jack.”
Kal tried to control his heart rate so it wouldn’t tip off his life support system. He forced a laugh. “You don’t think he was just some homeless guy who bricked himself up in the first hole he found?”
Nines’ ocular cluster fixated on Kal for several seconds. The Technician could see himself stretched or inverted across multiple lenses. “I don’t,” Nines said aloud, his voice suddenly stern, verging on angry.
Kal took two steps to the right to actuate the drones.
One of the cordon flyers said in a monotone, “Caution. You are entering an active crime scene. Pass your station credentials or desist and exit. You will not be asked again. Defensive force has been authorized.”
Nines waved a hand, the jerky movement betraying his impatience, and the drones hovered away from the door. The laser cordon painted on the floor remained but turned an inviting green.
“Is that all?” the Tower security liaison asked, but before either of them could acknowledge her, she put the back of her hand to her mouth to hold back a gag and said, “I'll be by the lift when you want to leave.”
“Is it that bad?” Kal asked once she was out of ear shot. He was wearing his helmet and could have run a spectral analysis on the air quality, but he was lazy.
Nines said flatly, “Forensics say he's at least five cycles gone.” Over their internal comms, he texted, “You’re not stupid. What are you hoping to hide from me, Jack?”
“If it becomes relevant, I’ll inform you,” he replied. Aloud he said, “While you get a baseline, I’ll go over the files you sent me.”
Nines just sent him a ping of affirmation and while he proceeded into the closet without flicking on the lights, Kal reviewed the security footage that the lift had managed to capture. He zoomed through the recording, looking for markers, and saw that Nines had already flagged points of interest for him to review. Even ticked off, the bot was still accommodating. It was kind of endearing in a way.
The footage that might have featured Wolf coming and going was missing of course. An hour-long block was completely gone; had been deleted before Kal arrived.
Sloppy piece of shit making my fucking job harder, Kal growled internally. No wonder Nines suspects I’m hiding something. If Wolf had done his job right, I wouldn’t have to scramble to clean up his fucking messes.
While he was in the feed, he reviewed his own visit to verify that the security system had scrubbed his presence from the lineup. He cursed internally as he realized the system had indeed blurred his face, but it was obvious that the footage had been tampered with from an extranet user code. Nines had already reviewed the footage, otherwise Kal would’ve taken the opportunity to fudge the meta-data.
But the fact that Nines hadn’t flagged his visit either meant that bot’s pattern recognition was faulty… or Nines had obfuscated the finding to make the behavior deviation look benign.
On top of that, the Deck Twenty key card Kal had used to access the stairwell wasn't listed on any of the access reports. It had been deleted ten minutes prior, just moments before Nines had forwarded the feed information to him—but the white line of code he'd fed the system before leaving remained.
Panic, confusion, suspicion, and relief made a cottage cheese cocktail out of his churning guts. The fuck was he supposed to do with that information? The fact that Nines was tampering with evidence was bad enough. The fact that Nines was tampering with evidence to mask Kal’s tampering with evidence was just… fucked.
Kal kept his mixed emotions in check by distracting himself with the tasker at hand. He still had to go through the motions. He still had to wear a face.
Comparing time stamps, the man in the closet had been dead for about ten hours before Kal had arrived.
Wolf hadn’t just done a sloppy job covering up his ingress and egress. He’d also left behind the biggest piece of evidence that would implicate himself in whatever was going on between the Whitneys: his hacker.
Kal knew who the “transient” was even before Nines said over their comms in a reluctant voice, “I'm gonna need your help with this one, Jackal-mate.”
“What is it?” He sounded just as begrudging.
“He's hardlined. Has a neural chip. I could do an unprotected dive, but that won't give me any of his wetware data. He's been off too long. But he has a Disso eye. You have your compact on you, don't you?”
Kal raised his eyebrows. “You want me to wash and wear a deader's contact lense?”
Nines sighed. Since the bot didn’t have lungs, the canned sound was artifacted by static. It had an ASMR quality to it that tickled Kal’s ears pleasantly. “I would, but I don't have eyeballs, Mate.” Again, he seemed to sense Kal's hesitation and added, “I've got his ID and his comm. I was going to beat around the net while you looked through his last gasps. But I understand if you don't want to. We can always bag it and take it back to Stock for analysis.”
He’s obviously testing me, Kal thought. The right answer, the Medji answer, is to bag this and in-check it.
He was getting real fucking tired of cleaning up Wolf’s fucking runoff. But if Nines was willing to look the other way on certain things… Kal mentally shook himself and took out his compact. “Hit the light then. Got any spare gloves?”
The light came on and Kal grimaced.
“I don’t have biometrics, Mate,” Nines said, but before Kal could reply, the bot pulled a small case from the first aid kit in his thigh and said, “I’ve only got the one set, so don’t cross contaminate anything.”
Kal took the case and looked over their corpse. Wolf’s hacker was in his early twenties; Spacer, going by his pale skin and boney build. He was slouched in a back corner of the confined space, braced between a server tower and a concrete wall. His eyes and mouth were frozen open in a rictus of agony. Fluids had encrusted over his chest, pouring down from his face. His pupils were glassy gray, their edges broken and ballooned into the reddened whites. His tongue had swelled in death, blocking any view of his throat with its black, engorged shape. His hands were stiff claws, stuck grabbing at his ears which were covered in black and brown layers of blood and spinal fluid.
His clothes, from what Kal could make out under all the bugs and grime were ‘netic synthetics that could change color and pattern with a signal from any personal, sync'd device. Since going inert, they were gray, wrinkled, and unflattering. The youth’s hair was shaved down to the scalp to show off a tattoo of a Daoist spirit dog—Lang’s mark—chasing a black-tailed mermaid—a typical icon among Spacers who never intended to make planetfall ever again, having fallen in love with the Big Black.
“Husky,” Kal said under his breath, his horror eclipsing everything. No! Wolf… didn’t fucking outsource?! What the fuck was he thinking?! Why did he…? Coyote’s been talking about Husky as if he’s still alive! What the fuck is going on? Husky… He was just a fucking kid! Wolf fucking knew better! This isn’t right!
Nines said sharply, “One of Lang’s Dogs,” reminding Kal that their comms were still open. Then, to keep things out of StratoCorp’s airways, the bot sent, “Now, what was a Blue gangster doing in Serpentine territory, Jack?”
The Technician didn’t respond. He crouched down and pulled off his kinetic glove to slip on a rubber one. He needed all the dexterity he could get to try and grab the contact lens without damaging the Dog further. “Nines,” Kal texted back as he braced middle finger and thumb against Husky’s cold temple. He couldn’t trust his voice not to break. “This is not only fracking protocol, but I’m pretty sure whatever I see through his eye won’t be admissible if I witness him doing more than breaking and entering. Willing to take that risk?”
“Jack, you know he did more than just die here. I’ve seen the footage. I’ve seen the terminal access logs. I’ve seen the white strand you fed the system. I could have turned you in ten times over, cycles ago. But y’know somethin’, Jack? You could’ve done the same to me the day you met me. Both of us are, quote, aberrant entities, end-quote.” Nines texted. He sent a follow-up message before Kal could reply, “I told you before, Mate. I’m not interested in being an enforcer. I’m interested in the truth. You said you’d level with me. Level with me here, now.”
Kal gritted his teeth as he tried to slide the contact, but it was for-sure fused to the sclera. The kill-switch had obviously fried everything internally, but maybe there had been second-order electrical refractions that had half-cooked his wetware. If that were the case, the Disso eye could be useless too, but Kal would only know once he peeled it free and turned it on.
“Level with a fucking robot that thinks it’s a person,” he said aloud. Then he laughed a little. It came out strained, sounding like a hiccup or a cry. Oh no, he thought blandly. Here comes the panic. Awesome. He texted, “You’re on fucking rails! You can dress your speech up in as many Edgelander colloquialisms as you fucking want, but that doesn’t make you bound. At the end of the day, you’re one fucking mal-rep from Stock melting you down for scrap.”
Nines didn’t reply. In fact, he cut their comm link.
Kal finally managed to pry the contact off Husky and pieces of gunk came with it. He grimaced as he tried to get as much goop off before breaking out his contact compact. He projected his voice as he said, “I’m going to the atomizer lounge. I’m not taking off my helmet around this smell.”
Nines said to his back, “All I want is the truth.”
“No, what you want is mutually assured destruction!” he snapped out loud, but then he winced and shook his head. The StratoCorp cats could be listening. He struggled to rip the rubber glove off as he stepped over wire bundles and evidence markers.
“Your life support’s goin’ off,” Nines remarked.
“I have ears, Medji!” he snapped. He kicked the doorframe as he finally managed to snap the latex off.
Nines snatched the glove out of the air in a single fluid motion. He said, “Atomizer lounge’s on Deck Fifteen.”
“Don’t fucking follow me. Finish taking… Finish taking… pictures of the… scene…” He was gulping air. His suit made a pleasant chime, and a script notice popped up on his HUD. Oh, he could get the suit to administer a shot of muscle relaxers? But then he’d probably fall asleep, and he really couldn’t fall asleep right now. Another chime. A message from Nines, which he ignored. He would have marched, but Nines grabbed his upper arm to hold him fast. If he wasn’t focused on trying not to die, he would have focused on getting out of his grip.
“I got everything we’ll need,” Nines said soothingly. To Kal, it sounded a little too soothing. “I can render everything on a mat if need be.”
One of the StratoCorp security guards leaned away from their partner to regard them expectantly, but Nines waved them away and told them, “Blood got to him. Technicians, amIright? I’ve ordered the suppressors to get a cleanin’ up. Deck Seventeen’s all yours.”
Instead of putting them off, that garnered their full attention. As one of them turned their back on the Medji, the other pushed away from the wall and asked in a feminine voice, “What’s the word?”
“You can read it in our report,” Nines assured her.
“You’ll tell me what you found right now, Tin Man.”
“You’re welcome to look at the bound stiff yourself. I’ve added your IDs to the credentials list. Just be sure to let the sup—”
“Stop. Open your comm. I’m sending you directives.”
Kal opened his mouth to tell her to go fuck herself—directing station security was his perview—but Nines had stiffened all over, squeezing his arm hard enough to make him swallow his kneejerk response. Over their private comms, Nines said to Kal, “She’s passing me an authority code. Station level. You see the other one? She’s on a direct line with Sumba Whitney.”
Textbook Septet overreach twice in as many days? Sumba can’t be that fucking deperate. “Did she ask for a direct line transfer?” Kal ground out. His muscles were beginning to cramp. Lightsake, first a panic attack and now withdrawal?! The fuck!
“Nah, she passed me a rogue-out flagged with a station-level auth’ to give it extra zing. Naughty. I'm supposed to kill you and throw myself from the Tower.”
Kal gasped like a beached fish. “How'd you quarantine it that fast?!”
“I didn't. I'm just ignoring it.”
The Medji was ignoring a batch file that looked like a direct, lawful order. “How?!” Kal hissed, showering the inside of his faceplate with spittle.
“Hey!” the StratoCorp mook barked. “Shit-can! I sent you a direct fucking order! Are you fritz’d?”
The robot chuckled. “Do you trust me?” he asked Kal.
Nines wasn't just aberrant.
He was jailbroken.
Free.
“Absolutely not,” Kal wheezed.
“Good. Hit the deck.”
Nines dropped him and Kal had the good sense to curl into a ball as Nines flicked out his arms, deployed his riot bolters, and shouted, “Desist! Your actions are in direct violation of Duat Station security protocol seve—ebat!” Several armor-piercing shells hit Nines in the chest and arm, throwing molten slag every which way and sending him pinwheeling to the side with the kinetic force.
Looking through his braced arms, Kal saw the two Stratos post up beside each other and try to inadvisably take cover behind a glass cubicle.
“How the fu—?!” the chick shouted.
“Like I fucking know!” the other roared. “Drop ‘em!”
Adrenaline helped clear a bit of his initial numbness and Kal started recording the altercation with his helmet, but that meant he couldn’t face away from the flash that enveloped the pair as Nines unloaded a crowd-control frag. Ears ringing, Kal barely made out the Stratos’ shouts of protest as they fired blindly in their direction.
Nines had positioned himself over Kal and judging by the shutters of groaning metal, the bot took another dozen shots directly to his chassis. Then Nines rose away from him and the cubicle across from them shattered, spraying glass up like a confetti cannon of sparks.
Nines pulled him to his feet. As if hearing him underwater, Kal made out, “Technician-11, I need you to make your way to the exit. This location is no longer safe.” He pushed him toward the lift and waved a hand to actuate the aerial drones and suppressors to assist him in covering Kal’s exit, painting yellow light on the ground as if Kal’s eyesight wasn’t already recovering.
Kal pinged Green Side’s Scythe over their Enforcer array as he snapped, “No fucking shit!” But instead of following the drones, he flicked his own glove and directed the aerials toward the Stratos. “Listen to your Habits! We’re taking them alive!”
“Technician—” But before Nines could get out more than that, he had to collapse around Kal to keep him from getting peppered by another volley of hot, metal projectiles.
Kal yelled in his face, “Trust me!”
The Stratos weren’t used to fighting non-humanoids. While Kal sent one suppressor to Husky’s resting place to recover his remains before the Stratos could think to nuke the evidence, he sent the other to secure the lift and prevent any other security guards, to include their lead if she was still on-deck, from getting close to the fire.
Another volley made Nines’ grip on him turn almost painful as Kal fingers worked to manipulate the drones on a more precise level. His thoughts were too scattered to properly formulate known moveorders, so he piloted them directly. While one drew one of the Statos’ startled attention, the other dove in and sent a paralysis strand at the security guards’ suits. They’d opened their comms to communicate with Nines on the station’s line and hadn’t the training or forethought to close the loop.
A second after he sent the code, their suits seized.
He could have left them paralyzed.
But Nines had taken fire for him.
He sent another string through the open channel.
The two Stratos screamed, then gurgled wordlessly as their own suits’ life support administered a charge of electricity that would hurt like absolute fuck since they couldn’t freely convulse.
The silence that descended on them afterward was short-lived. The wail of a dispatch siren could be heard a block away.
Scythe-Echo sent over their relay: “Blue, Green Side.Five Enforcers en route to your position. Status?”
Nines smacked Kal in the shoulder once, but didn’t step back from basically cradling him.
“I can’t breathe,” Kal protested.
Nines ignored him and sent over the link, “Received, Scythe. Drones have secured the site thanks to my technician’s efforts. We’ll stand-by for debrief.”
“Ops?”
“Subdued. Breathing.”
“Impressive. ETA, sub two-mike. Scythe out.”
“Impressive is an understatement,” the bot said. Nines’ ocular cluster turned to face Kal as he asked quietly, “Awlright, Jack? Didn’t get hit, didja?” He tried to go for the depression valve on Kal’s neck, but Kal grappled with him and pushed him away, staggering to his feet as he depressed it himself and ripped the helmet off.
He found a cubicle trashcan to be sick in. When he stood back up, wiping at his mouth, he saw that Nines hadn’t moved from his kneeling position in the middle of the space. That was because he was missing half his right arm, and the lower half of his right leg had been turned into slag. Kal took several deep breaths before stuffing a glove into his hard pouch to pull out his sheet of pick-me-ups. In full view, he cracked two tabs between back teeth and pocketed the rest.
“Jack—”
“Shut up. Don’t.” Kal held up his hands. He got his breathing under control and finally approached, looking down at him. “You’re off-net. Jailbroke.”
Nines stared up at him for several seconds. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“Ninety cycles.”
“How?”
“I want to tell you.”
“Did you crack it yourself?”
“No.”
“Someone broke you. That’s why all of Stock’s… That’s why your matrix…” He barked an incredulous laugh. “You’re scrap. They’re going to notice when you go in for repair. But you know that. You knew that when you covered me! You should’ve fucking run!”
Nines’ spine when ramrod straight. “‘Scuse me, you’re goin’ off like a frog in a sock ‘cause I fucking shielded you? Are you mental?”
Kal fell down in front of him and bodily shoved Nines’ ocular cluster back as he went for the bot’s in-port in his neck. Nines tried to defend himself, but with only one arm, his grip on the back of Kal’s suit collar didn’t give him enough leverage to pull or push the technician away.
“Stop it!” Kal growled, shaking free and straddling him for ease of access. He swatted his hand back again. “We have less than a minute to create a proxy!”
Nines instantly relaxed, letting him hardline into his chassis with a satisfying c-click. “You… Sorry. What?”
“I’m not letting ‘em impound you. I’m making a decoy.”
“Oh,” Nines stated. “Erm… Why?”
Kal rolled his eyes and swiped shaking digits across his PC’s interface. “Just shut the fuck up and let me work.” Then he blinked and added reluctantly, “Please.”
Nines grunted his ascent. After a handful of harried moments, with Kal furiously flicking through data, Nines laughed and said quietly, “Blimey… So that pretty mouth of yours does have some manners after all.”
“Nines,” he snapped without looking up.
“Sorry. I know you’re tryin’ to focus. It just… tickles.”
“It does not.”
“And you would know, Mister Bound?”
Kal didn’t respond. He was just praying that Nines respected his wishes and didn’t try to interpret his biometrics. He didn’t even know what the fuck he was thinking and he didn’t want confirmation that he was officially, medically losing his metaphorical marbles.
Nines whispered, “You suspected I was irregular. You could’ve told me to leave ya alone, Mate. But you didn’t.”
“What if I ask nicely again?” Kal mumbled.
Nines chuckled. “Will you?”
Kal chewed the inside of his cheek and decoupled.
Nines rubbed a rubber fingerpad against his in-port as if the physical intrusion had caused him some sort of discomfort or ghost-like sensation. “Done? Already? You move fast, Technician. I’ll hafta remember that.”
Kal got up to retrieve his helmet. “You see the proxy? Feed that to the printer when they run the repair. I didn’t have time to make anything elaborate—just cloned some of your modules and left the impression of a matrix. It won’t hold up under a bound diver, but it’ll fool any of their automatic scanners. Let’s hope they’re lazy.”
Nines sighed again. “You really are sweet on me.”
He was spared from formulating any kind of reply by a bound Green Side Enforcer shouting across the floor, “Station Security! Everyone on the ground! Hands and armatures where we can see ‘em!”
Nines lifted his amputated arm and waved a greeting.
Kal dropped to knees, held up his gloves, and sighed.
“Those Corp cats were acting well outside their given authority,” Fleshed Enforcer-6 told him as she passed him a cup of hot ginger tea. “Illegal armaments and ‘netics. Surprised they didn’t turn you into a smear.”
Kal, who’d been kneading his scalp with his elbows braced on Green’s breakroom table, put his hands out to receive the cup, but didn’t reply. He was exhausted. He’d been at Green Side’s Aft Precinct for almost ten hours of processing and he was feeling like a rung-out rag.
FE-6 seemed to take his silence as an invitation, so she expounded on her previous statement. “Apparently, they stole the station codes from a black-market skink in Dock Side. Since you left them alive, we were able to do a wetware extraction. They were veg’d, but we got their seller. They were planning to implicate Jayeon Whitney in something, blackmail him for fuel, and bail out the station. If not for you… they would’ve flown the coop.”
Kal rolled his neck after taking a tentative sip of tea. It was scalding. He winced. “That’s annoying. That’s gonna drive a reissue of credential tokens for all the techs.”
FE-6 smiled companionably. “That’s really all you’re worried about, huh?” Then she frowned slightly as she took the chair across from him. She leaned in as she asked, “You okay? Med said you passed up an eval.”
“Spare me. I know the protocol, alright. Just… let me piss in a cup so I can get back to work. I’m fine.”
“Work?” She stared at him. “You’re joking, right? You just exposed a huge security breach and patched the hole all in one go. Whitney wants to shake your hand in front of a thousand media drones. Captain Heron is already talking about giving you a commendation. ”
“Yippee.” He took another sip. “How’s ME-0999?”
It took a second for her to catch on which raked nails over his nerves. Clearly, hanging out with an unbound with spades in processing power had spoiled him. Six snapped a finger. “Oh, your unbound issue! It’s spun up. Your Stock guys told us that you’ve been having some issues running diagnostics on the Unity models down at Blue, so we took the liberty of repairing it here. Don’t worry, the print cost isn’t coming out of your stipend. Thanks to your footage, we know you didn’t really get a choice in the matter. Metal types. Can’t live with ‘em…”
Oh, ‘cause that was the reason I turned on my cam—to avoid being caught up in another report of survey. Right.
She clapped her hands. “Good news is, its matrix was green across the board. It's in the shop now sitting for a new paint job. Stick around. We can have it escort you back to Blue Side.”
He really, really didn’t wanna do that sober. “Time?”
“The print and installation itself is basically done. We’re just observing the cure time for the enamel parts. If we let it walk out with the chassis still gummy, it’ll stick to tram seats during the no-heat, no-cool season and the Transportation Liaison hates that. Should be twelve hours. We’ve got bunks. If you go through that door—”
“Thanks, Six.” Kal stood up and it took a second for the room to stop spinning. “If that’s everything, I’ve gotta get back to the station to draft up my report.”
“Rep—You mean about the dead guy? Your ME sent the packet ahead to Scythe-Bravo. Was it not supposed to? It said you’d already added your comments…”
Fucking Nines. Kal tried and failed to fight a smile. “Well shit… Right. I forgot.” He shook his head. “I’m… tired.”
“Blue’s tracking that you’re on comp time right now.”
“Comp?” Was that a word that existed?
She smiled at him and leaned back in her chair to make a grandiose gesture. “Yeah. It’s this weird thing that happens when you almost die in the line of duty. They give you time off to process and rest. Heard of it?” She was being facetious, he knew, but again, the very human response irritated him. “I guess it’s more common for enforcers. Not every cycle a technician saves the day.”
“How long?” he demanded.
This time her expression was more concerned than anything else. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Gods of Night and Shadow, he needed a solid eight before he tore someone else’s face off for once. He grit his teeth and asked, “How long are they benching me?”
“A work week. Ten cycles, according to Officer-3.” Then she said in an undertone. “Lamplighter, no wonder you’re so strung out. They really work the Blue guys like that?”
“If it wasn’t for your Green boys shuffling a corpse into our workorder queue, we wouldn’t have to,” he snapped before he could overthink the response. “Respectfully.”
Enforcer-6’s expression cooled. She made a dismissive sound. “I’ve seen your metrics, Metermaid. You were lucky we tossed the bone your way instead of Teal. I don’t get you. You’re getting a fucking medal out of this, so why’re you complaining?”
“Where’s my suit?”
“We bot-dropped it back at Blue for Stock’s in-check. You’re free to go whenever you want.” She got up and went to leave, but hovered in the archway before saying over her shoulder, “I emptied your pockets into the incinerator. That’s the last time I cover for a Blue Sider.”
“Don’t ask me to thank you, Green Sider.”
“I won’t.” She gave him a lazy salute and went back to Green’s mint-smelling bullpen. “Dar’pro’, Asshole.”
He braced himself against the back of a chair, trying to summon the strength he’d need to get home.
Fuck the tram. He flicked at his PC to order a shuttle.
There was a message waiting for him from an unknown comm line. He fortified himself, scanned it for malware, and, when it came back clean, he opened it up.
“I’m staying in the Red Room for the weekend!”
The Red Room was one of the private spaces located in Saturnalia’s basement level. Kal made a helpless sound and rubbed at his face. Coyote, even riding under the radar, still made the effort to reach out and reassure him like no one else would. He’d been so excited about getting one of the premium rooms that he couldn’t wait for their sync-up before messaging him. Kal wanted to cry.
He tapped away, “Nice! I’ll look for you tomorrow.”
Coyote sent a party-hat emoji and a heart. “K-k!”
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