A Hard Knock Life: Arch Duke Ferdinand (ch. 11) (Patreon)

I had underestimated the ABB. Without Oni Lee or Lung, I figured that they would just roll over and die. The Tyger Claws would move in and just take over all their old territory like it was nothing. Wasn't like the Tyger Claws hadn't been planning to do exactly that for years now. Either that or the ABB would just splinter into a million pieces without unifying leadership. Which would have pretty much the same effect.

But, two days later, the ABB was still going strong. Maybe two days wasn't enough time to take over a small section of the city, but I thought there would have been at least some progress by now. The Protectorate acted as a balancing force in the area. They patrolled it often -- Miss Militia had been seen fairly often, and so had Assault and Battery. Which, of course, meant that other parts of the city were going to hell but I guess they didn't care about that.

I never really cared much for the comings and goings of gangs because, for the most part, it didn't matter to me at all. Now, it very much did. If the ABB stuck around, then that was a constant enemy that I would need to worry about because I very much doubted that they would just forget about me.

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose before I got off the couch. Jackie lived in Haywood, not that far away from the Coyote bar. It was a nice place, all things considered. A garage to fit a bike, some workout equipment, a desk with tools on it, and a punching bag. Through the garage was a narrow home that had two stories. The living room was small, between a couch and a coffee table with some kind of sand thing on it, there wasn't much room to maneuver.

Jackie lived upstairs while I took the couch. In the past two days, I ended up carving out my own little slice of the living room and garage.

"Still depressed that Glory Girl never hit you up?" Jackie questioned, watching me get off the couch since he had been sitting next to me so we could watch TV.

"Yeah, but that's not what I'm sighing about," I admitted. Glory Girl wasn't going with the three-day rule to avoid looking desperate. She wasn't even going with the four-day rule to make me think that she wasn't going by the three-day rule. Seems like she wasn't interested. A shame, that was but I guess I had missed my shot. I gestured to the TV as I spoke before digging in my bag to grab a bottle of pills.

They were the ones Jackie had mentioned. Green for chest and arms, orange for core, blue for legs and glutes, white for rest and recovery. They even came with a workout plan for the build I was going for. I popped a green pill and swallowed it before I continued, "The ABB. Don't like how they're sticking around," I remarked before I headed to the garage to lift.

"The ABB is done for, one way or the other. The Tyger Claws aren't going to let something like this slip them by, Protectorate or not," Jackie spoke up, not getting up from the couch. I took a seat on the work out bench and reached to the weight rack next to it. Starting my work out, I answered him.

"Might not get a choice. If they find another cape to rally around," I remarked, curling the weight. Working out with a prosthetic was a bit odd, but I still had an organic bicep so I had to work it out too. I hadn't really seen any visible improvement, but I felt stronger, so that was something.

"You mean Bakuda? Have you heard anything about her?" Jackie questioned from inside the house.

My lips thinned, "Nope. And that's what worries me," I admitted. I still had my backdoor into her systems, but I hadn't had reason to check it yet. With how the ABB was holding strong, my logical conclusion was someone had stepped up to assume leadership. Bakuda fit the bill. She didn't strike me as leadership material, but she didn't need to be if she was putting bombs in people's heads.

Jackie was silent for a moment, considering that. "Maybe not, mano. We would have heard if the ABB had tinker-tech grenades. Wherever Bakuda is, I doubt it's with the ABB." That was probably true. Odds were I was just assuming the worst. It was tempting to check, but Bakuda had enough time to stop and wonder how exactly I had found her.

Meaning, she had enough time to turn my backdoor into her systems into a trap if she knew about it. And if she didn't, I didn't want to tip my hand.

"Maybe," I tentatively agreed. Maybe I was just stressing out. After everything, the silence was unsettling. I was waiting for Bakuda to show her true colors. I was waiting on Tattletale to either betray us or follow through on the deal. I was waiting for Skitter to contact us. I was waiting for the ABB to collapse like a house of cards… it felt like there was a whole lot in the air at the moment. And I was stuck. Lifting weights and tinkering.

My code projects were going well. Babel, my new coding language, was making the most progress despite being the most complicated. With it, I could revamp my current spells and daemons in a much better language, making them more effective. But, that would take time. And a fair bit of it. Enough that I decided to split my time into more immediately effective hacks.

Like embedding a codebreaker into Breach and having it delivered via Siren Call. It was good stuff. Great stuff, really. Civilian-grade stuff was nothing to me now. I could just ping it, and I got handed the keys to the castle -- personal histories, bank account information, and implants. The works. It still needed work on more advanced stuff, though.

People and places with decent security, I was a bit more to drill through that ICE. But I was getting there. That being said, anything that was reactive and adaptive? That would get me.

Building the perfect spells would take time. First I would create the optimized language, then I could use it as a foundation to create the ultimate spells. A true one size fits all solution.

"If you're that worried about the ABB, then we should do something about it," Jackie spoke up, walking to the door and leaning on the doorframe. My muscles burned with exertion, but it was a good burn. I spared a glance at him, not speaking so I didn't lose track of my reps, prompting him to continue. "You hack their systems with that netrunner wizardry you got, find out their safe house and their deals -- then we hit them."

I finished my set, mulling that over, "And the Protectorate?"

"They care about looking good in front of a camera. We don't give them a reason to look our way, and they won't." Jackie reassured, then he offered a smirk, "Or are you telling me you haven't already slipped in the ABB systems?"

I smirked back, "First thing that I did." Gangsters weren't a corporation or the cops or heroes. Most of them used civilian-grade encryption to protect their data. If you can call getting their data sold to the highest data to the highest bidder data protection. Either way, while I hadn't brushed up against any of the higher-ups in the gang, I had slipped into more than a few street runners.

It helped that they wore identifying colors. All I had to do was look at them, hit them with Siren's Call, and I was in without them being any the wiser.

Jackie chuckled at that, "Finish up your set. We'll go pay the ABB a visit. Try hitting up Skitter, see if they want to join in." With that, Jackie headed back inside to suit up in something other than a tank top and sweatpants. I did exactly that. Finishing up my workout about an hour later, after washing off the sweat I worked up, I went to a laptop I had bought with my meager remaining funds.

I was a step above broke at this point. Without Jackie letting me stay here rent-free, I'd probably be screwed. The laptop was a cheap hunk of crap. Enough so that I was hesitant to bother tuning it up. After all, no amount of polish can turn a turd into a diamond. Still, it was able to suit my needs -- storing data and keeping track of the runners I marked. With a piece of script and a city map, I could see exactly where they were. I could see what they were talking about, I could see who they were talking to and I could see what they were planning.

The web of information was very incomplete. Barely more than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. Still, they offered their own opportunities. Hit them, and I could get eddies, guns, and maybe info on a bigger prize.

Using an algorithm that I had developed, I tracked where they had come and gone over the past couple of days. Out of the fifteen I had tagged, eight of them had busted the same building at least once. It was almost absurd how easy it was.

"Found a spot to hit," I called out to Jackie, now dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a white long sleeve with my sleeve pushed up at my prosthetic. It was going to become a default look to avoid tearing up my shirts to use my prosthetic defensively. Or offensively. "Sending Skitter a text now," I added.

I sent the text -- a location, a time, and a question mark. Skitter apparently had the other phone on hand because they sent a confirmation a moment later. They were joining us.

I could use the phone to track down their location. Find out who they were. Because, as far as I could tell, they were not a netrunner or a tinker. So, it would be fairly easy to track them down without them being any the wiser.

But I hadn't. And I wouldn't. Gave my word. I went a step further and encrypted my end, so no one could tell who the call was going to, and leaving out a baited fish hook to tell if anyone tried.

After that, I just grabbed my gun, sat behind Jackie on his bike, which was uncomfortable as hell, before we rode off to the destination.

…

“V, you found a fortress,” Jackie remarked as we took up a scouting position across the street. Similarly to how we acted breaking into Bakuda’s prison.

“On accident,” I pointed out, looking at the pachinko parlor across the street. Bright lights flashed as night started to fall on Night City. I could see a handful of thugs standing outside the door, and I was willing to bet it all that there were more inside. The parlor was closed for business, yet, in the hour Jackie and I watched the place, we saw ABB coming and going. “Looks like a safehouse of some kind. Explains why so many are coming and going. Getting orders, maybe?”

A war had been sparked between the Tyger Claws and the ABB with the latter on the defensive. At so close, you could feel the effects. There was tension in the air as everyone in the part of the city realized that they were living in a war zone. There were the cracks of gunshots in the distance, but it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. People just kept their heads down, more than a few of them wearing body armor just in case they catch a stray bullet. Which reminded me that I needed to get some bulletproof armor myself.

Seems that the news played up the Protectorate. Wasn’t sure why I thought it would be any different.

“Can you get a look inside?” Jackie questioned, earning a small frown from me.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “They have heavy ICE on the systems of the parlor, but the people inside are the weakness.” A chain was only as strong as the weakest link. When it came to security, that saying had never been more appropriate. One weakness and the entire chain would break. One weakness and the entire security could be exploited. The gang had accounted for that as much as they could, but they weren’t prepared for a tinker.

“The place really is a fortress,” I agreed, looking through the camera feeds. All it took was me leapfrogging to someone that had access to the systems. The security on the parlor was fantastic, my new benchmark. Personal security was lacking. “I’m seeing gun turrets, mines… this place is the real deal.”

“Numbers?” Jackie questioned, as we were nearing the appointed hour. We waited an hour to mark more ABB to feed into the algorithm and to make sure that no major patrol was due. That, and another reason. “Are they guarding anything?”

“I’m seeing thirty in total. Seems to be the lowest they have there at any time. And if they’re guarding anything in particular, then they’re doing a good job of hiding it,” I answered. It seemed to just be a forward position in response to the Tyger Claws invasion. So, that meant guns. Ammo. Maybe eddies too. Also, someone in charge could give me a more complete idea of what was happening in the ABB.

Jackie offered a nod, his rifle at the ready. “Skitter?” He asked, looking to a mass of flies that swarmed off to the side in the room we were inside.

“I’M reAdY,” Skitter confirmed through the mass of flies. Skitter seemed to prefer it, not trusting anything that could be connected to her real body. Though, for all I knew, she didn’t have a real body. Powers were weird like that.

Jackie looked to me and I nodded, “Let’s do it.” Getting my rifle at the ready, I stood up and let Jackie lead the way. We walked down the building, my heart started pumping. As we reached the door, I allowed myself a moment to reflect.

This was, without a doubt, the craziest week of my life. Starting with a robbery that ended with me killing Lung. Days later, and I was about to hit an ABB fortress for… I’m not even sure if there was a particular reason. Wasn’t like this place was going to make the ABB collapse. We were just here to make them bleed, I guess.

And loot some nice shit.

The guards were on the lookout for precisely this, so we didn’t even make it to the road before they spotted us. At that same moment, I hit their implants. Their optics shorted out -- in doing so, I tripped a safety system that immediately tried to reboot them, but I killed that system before it could get started. They gasped, their hands going to their eyes, yet they still pulled the trigger.

Only for their guns to jam. Jackie and I strode forward, our guns at the ready. Jackie opened fire first, shooting out their legs and making them fall. I did the same, missing a few shots because of the awkward position. I was left-handed so having it braced against my right shoulder was weird, but because of it, my arm and eye were synced up. After the initial bursts, when I pulled the trigger, the bullets struck their target.

People shouted and scattered, all of them expecting exactly this. The guards hit the floor, one of them still trying to do something with his gun, even though he couldn’t see us. So, I severed the connection to his chrome arm, making it go slack. “Three o’clock,” I told Jackie, watching the gangster react inside the building.

Jackie didn’t respond in favor of kicking open the door and going in guns blazing. The guy on his left immediately went down, taking a few rounds to the chest. I followed him through, firing on the locations I knew that the ABB were hiding behind. They fired their guns, only for them to click empty. The turret dropped down from the ceiling, taking aim at the door, only to jam as well.

There was a blissful few seconds of the ABB realizing that all their guns were jammed, and had been over the course of an hour by Skitter. None had been the wiser. It was completely worth it, even if it had taken some time. Because of it, Jackie and I could stride into the parlor and fire away without having to worry about getting shot.

Gangster went down, falling like flies. They dove behind cover, only to still get hit because pachinko machines weren’t bulletproof. Jackie went left while I circled right -- the walls were covered in slot machines, with a long row in the middle of the room of machines facing back to back to maximize how many the owner could fit. Behind that row was a few steps, leading to an elevated floor that had a similar layout. Outside of them and the help desk, there wasn’t a lot of cover.

With one eye on the cameras, I saw one ABB thug was crouching low, a katana in his hands to thrust through me the moment I rounded the corner. He didn’t have any implants. Instead, my mantis blade popped out and with its glowing red blade, I plunged it through a pachinko machine and into the thug. The few that were backing him up flinched back, still recovering from their failing implants.

Sheathing the mantis blade, I rounded the corner and started firing. I went for the legs where I could, but I wasn’t overly concerned if I caught them a bit higher. Not when I knew for a fact that they would tear me apart with their bare hands if the roles were reversed.

Jackie rounded the corner with me. I caught a flash of movement from the cameras, “Twelve!” I shouted at him, warning him of an ABB thug that was going to jump over the pachinko machines on the next floor. Jackie reacted instantly, and the moment the ABB member popped his head up, Jackie lit him up. The thug crashed to the ground, either dead or dying. He looked to me and nodded before jerking his head to the floor, gesturing to push up.

The magazine in my gun popped out, replaced with a fresh one. It was hard to count how many we just dealt with, but I would put it at ten to twelve. Another five on the second floor, while the rest were in the back room, all either plotting an ambush or being completely useless because of their falling implants.

I nodded back, taking aim at where I knew the ABB were. One tried to launch himself at me, only to be shot in the head. The other two were hit, both going down with a short burst of fire. Jackie took care of the other two. Looking to him, I said, “We need to get you an optic.”

“After seeing this, I’m not sure about that,” Jackie remarked, looking at a guy that was curled up in a ball, both of his eyes only seeing black because they were optics.

That was probably a fair point.

“The rest are downstairs. Behind the help-” I started, only to cut myself off when one of the security cameras I was looking through was shot. Meaning that someone had a functioning gun. Had they cleaned out the bugs? Didn’t matter. “One’s armed.”

“Lucky I have this then,” Jackie remarked, pulling out a grenade from his belt. It wasn’t one of mine, so it must be one of his.

The two of us hopped the help desk and headed into the backroom. There we found a door to the basement. Jackie looked to me while we took up positions by the door. I held up a hand, counting down from three. When I made a fist, the door slid open and Jackie tossed the grenade. Whoever was down there got a few shots off, but the door closed a second later and helped muffle the explosion.

As soon as it rang out, the door opened again. Jackie went down first, his gun barking as he shot at whoever was left. I couldn’t do the same because Jackie was in the way, but when we reached the bottom of the stairs, I could see the damage done. They had arranged a choke point at the stairway, and they hadn’t got out of the way in time. My stomach clenched at the sight of the aftermath of a grenade, but I shoved that out of my mind.

They were just dead bodies. I had seen plenty of them by now.

The downstairs… “Shit. Jackie, you’re lucky that grenade didn’t go far,” I remarked, seeing what was in the basement. What the camera hadn’t been pointing at. In short?

Guns.

I walked over, looking at the crates of guns, ammo, and supplies. My eye started IDing them as soon as I was looking at them. No wonder they had guns. Why hadn’t Skitter warned us about this? No problem really, but it could have been one. I looked at a Militech M251s Ajax, then to a Militech Crusher, before settling on a Malorian Overture. A assault rifle, shotgun, and revolver respectively.

I couldn’t have dropped my gun fast enough, going to the guns. “Skitter, do you want anything?” I questioned, looking at it all. I popped a magazine into the Ajax rifle while Jackie picked out his weapons of choice. He seemed to prefer pistols, I noticed.

“NO!” The swarm of bugs rumbled, flying up from the jammed guns. Jackie and I shared a look as we paused out looting for a moment. “Did… YoU HAvE tOO kIll thEm?” Skitter questioned, and, for a moment, I was absolutely floored by the question because I had no idea how to answer.

“We didn’t kill if we could avoid it,” Jackie answered for me. “But if we want to have this debate, let’s have it after we get out of here. V?” He questioned, earning a nod from me. The car that we had borrowed for this little excursion drove itself to in front of the pachinko parlor, ready to be our getaway car.

I gathered up what I could -- what looked expensive, what looked useful. If I had enough time and a big enough car, I would have grabbed it all. Instead, I was forced to grab a case, empty it out, then fill it back up with what I picked out. In doing so, I found a case. Inside was an OS card -- Raven Microcyber MK. 3. A major, major upgrade from my basic one that I was still sporting.

“Found a safe,” Jackie spoke up as I pocketed the OS card. Looking over, he gestured to a physical safe. I quickly walked over and popped my mantis blade out, the tip of it going to the seam line and cutting through it. When I was done, Jackie popped the safe open… “Come to papa,” Jackie muttered, seeing the money. I’m guessing the owner of the store preferred hard assets because there was at least fifty thousand in cash.

“Bag it,” I said, looking around for a convenient one. Instead, I saw a desktop. Walking over, I jacked into it -- while Jackie gathered everything up, I hacked into the system. And there, my awareness grew. I didn’t have the time to go through it all manually, so I copied what I could -- email addresses, numbers, locations. Anything I thought I could use. Jacking out, I saw that Jackie was ready to go.

Heading over and grabbing my crate and lifting with my legs. A few days wasn’t enough time to get any real improvement, so I must have imagined that I lifted it with more ease than I expected.

“Skitter, are we good?” I asked, not seeing anyone on the cameras. Skitter took a moment to answer, pausing long enough I thought they had just called it quits.

“SoMeone Is ComMinG,” Skitter warned. “MaRQuise coLors.”

Marquise? “What is his gang doing here?” I muttered to myself, walking up the steps as I followed Jackie. The Marquise mob, as they were called, belonged in Watson. We were deep in ABB territory. There was no reason they should be here. Unless they had declared war on the ABB to? I didn’t mind the idea of it being open season on the group that was out for my blood, but the timing left a lot to be desired.

The moment that Jackie and I left the building, I saw them pulling up. Four men. Jackie and I dropped our hard-earned loot, our hands going to our new guns to raise them. The Marquise colors were black and white with a suit type of body armor. The moment they got out of their car, their weapons were trained on us.

“We did the heavy lifting. We’ll be generous and let you have what’s left,” I said, edging out a bit, getting ready to dive to cover. Not that it mattered. Some gangs had a weapon of choice -- like the Tyger Claws, who used smart weapons, or guns whose bullets could track you. The Marquise mob preferred charge weapons, which the weakest of them could easily shoot through a concrete barricade. Their love for the weapon kept them in power despite their comparatively small numbers of a few hundred.

The leader shook his head, a hologram facemask obscuring his face, “We’ll be taking that. And we’ll be generous and let you keep your lives,” he responded. Dick.

“I think this guy is trying to disrespect the law of finders keepers,” I remarked to Jackie. The larger man let out a huff, his weapons set on two of the men. I only had one assault rifle. Still, I saw bugs drifting to the barrels of the guns, hugging close to their body to avoid notice.

“I think so too. Met some real dirtbags in my day, but disrespecting finders keepers?” He made a chiding sound with a small shake of his head. The Marquise mob didn’t seem amused. Then one of them shifted. The one in the back.

“Sir?” He spoke up, speaking to the leader as he seemed to look at me. It was hard to tell, but I think he was looking at me. “He’s the one that killed Lung.” So more people had cracked the encryption on my debut. Where in the hell were my calls? I wanted options other than just Tattletale’s boss.

The other three stilled at that, and I could feel them looking at me with new eyes. So, I smiled. “I go by V.” I hated that people were using my full name. Especially people that I didn’t know, but that was the price I had to pay for going to school, thus my face and name were on public record. I would do something about that the moment I dealt with these guys.

The lead guy shifted, “Marq-” He started, only to cut himself off when we heard a siren wailing in the distance. Their heads snapped in that direction and I seized the chance. The plating of my prosthetic jumped out, my fingers elongated while the charge was built. Thrusting the hand out, lightning surged from it, leaping to the four Marquise footmen. The lightning was in the shape of my hand, and it washed over them like water.

They went stiff, a lightning bolt worth of electricity going through them before they hit the ground. Jackie responded instantly while our car pulled up. I grabbed the crates and threw them into the back. Jackie did the same, only to double back and scoop up the charge rifles.

“Drive! Drive! Drive!” Jackie shouted, diving into the car and I did exactly that. The pedal went to the metal as we peeled out of there, leaving the scene of the crime behind. I had no clue if the Marquise men would recover in time to get away, or if the cops would even bother with them. Marquise ran a tight ship and, despite not having the most stellar power of bone manipulation, he had lasted in this city for twenty years.

A huge breath escaped me, “Am I going to piss off every gang in the city before the week is out?” I couldn’t help but wonder, earning a laugh and a thump to the shoulder from Jackie as he righted himself in the passenger seat.

“Maybe,” he responded, sounding like he was high on life. “What was that? I knew about the mantis blade, but what was that electricity thing?” He questioned, earning a smirk from me as I let the autopilot of the car take over. The car merged onto the main road, speeding up to about a hundred miles an hour.

I was still stuck on the fact that I had just attacked Marquise’s men. “He’s going to be pissed about that,” I muttered to myself, not answer Jackie’s question. “The ABB are just a bunch of thugs, but I heard that Marquise only recruits vets.” Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that. What had he been about to say? I should have heard him out before I hit him with a bolt of lightning. I just saw the opportunity and went with it.

Jackie seemed to sense my growing tension, “Don’t worry about Marquise. Look, if you’re that worried about him? Approach him and say you’re sorry,” Jackie advised as if that was credible advice. “I’m serious. Marquise is the kind of guy that will let things go if you give him a reason to. That little spat? They won’t see any time. They never do. It's nothing a gift can’t smooth over.”

“A gift to the don, huh?” I muttered, wondering if that would really work. Jackie seemed sure of it. “Have you had to do it before?”

He shook his head, “Not me. Back when I ran with the Valentinos, a choom of mine got into a spat with a Marquise man. Beat the hell out of him before he realized that he was a Marquise man. Story got to Padre, who had my choom beat to hell and back before sending him to Marquise’s house with a nice bottle of tequila. I went with him to make sure nothing happened, and nothing did. The bottle was sent to Marquise and the dispute was settled. That was that.”

That was reassuring. “And that was that? They didn’t hit him later, did they?” I questioned, wanting to know what I could expect.

“Oh, he died later, but that was against the Maelstrom,” Jackie reassured as he glanced out the window. "What was that about, Skitter?" He asked, turning his attention to the bugs that flew out of the barrels of the charge rifles Jackie picked up. However, instead of answering, the bugs just flew around before settling.

I frowned -- I could never tell when Skitter was in control of an insect or not. However, considering the situation, I doubted that she would just fail to answer like that. Or had something happened? Or… "Maybe Skitter has a range?" I questioned as the car continued to race down the main road as we headed back to where we stashed Jackie's bike.

"Or maybe they're done with us," Jackie offered an alternative. "Sounded like they wanted zero collateral."

"We don't have the mods for that, and even then…" I muttered. Honestly, dying was probably a kinder alternative than a stint in Night City prison. At least if you were a nobody. The prison institution had been privatized, so prisoners were basically employees that didn't get a choice in the matter. So, slaves. If you got lucky, then you would spend a few years doing grunt work. If you weren't? The prison would loan you out to corporations for human experimentation. Testing out unsafe products for a general market.

The unlucky ones didn't last long.

"Yeah. But, maybe we can talk it out with Skitter. See if we can meet in the middle," Jackie agreed.

"We have to find out what their line is before we can do that, though," I pointed out, pulling off to the waterfront over in Japantown. Still, I was putting more stock in my range theory. After all, why bother with a phone? I'd think it was a bluff, but unless Skitter was baiting me with their identity, it made no sense when they could just use a swarm. "We should check everything for a tracker before we bring anything back to your place. Jackie nodded before we came to a stop and got out.

It had to be a fast job, but we tore through the crates and found nothing. My hand went to my pocket to pull out the OS Card while Jackie started dividing up the money. A three-way split. All the while he was shaking his head.

Looking over at him, Jackie sent me an easy-going smirk. "You capes make this stuff too easy. Thirty ABB, turrets, mines -- and we got in and out clean as a whistle. Making me look bad here, V," He remarked, not looking at all annoyed by that fact.

"Powers have to be good for something," I dismissed. Jackie handed me a stack of bills as he told me the split. Twenty-five thousand, so there had been seventy-five thousand in the safe.

"You looking to get chipped?" Jackie questioned, nodding to the OS card. "This one ain't a bomb, is it?"

I looked over the OS card. Compared to the run of the mill OS card I was sporting now, it was a real beast. Looking it up on the net, I saw just how much of a beast it was. Near ten times the base processing power, five times the storage capacity, response times couldn't even be compared… "Yeah, I'm going to chip it in. First, I'm going to see what tweaks I can give it."

I put the OS card back into my pocket. "So, I'll head to Vik's. I'll also start thinking about my present to Marquise before he sends anyone after me." I cast a look at the trunk stuffed with two large crates that were stuffed full of guns and ammo. With an additional four charge rifles. Jackie was right. It was a steal. Enough so I was starting to really wonder if I needed to make a deal with Tattletale’s boss at all.

I didn't want to make a fixer an enemy, but the ball was in his court if we became enemies or not.

And, if he was watching us like I thought he was, then we just proved that Lung hadn't been a fluke. We showed that we were major league players stuck in little league. That we were worth our asking price.

"We NeED tO TAlK," Skitter announced their presence with a swarm of bugs, making Jackie and I flinch at their sudden arrival.

I nodded, "We do. You have a problem with killing?" I ventured and the swarm of insects shifted, turning into a turbulent mass before answering.

"I haVe a PobLeM With nEedLess DeAth," Skitter spoke.

"We went non-lethal where we could, but I'm not going to risk my life to make sure that the other guy lives," Jackie spoke up, crossing his arms. "You might see things a bit more different if you were the one with a gun in your face."

The swarm shifted at that, like a churning wave that folded in on itself. "MaYbe," Skitter admitted. "BuT I waNt tO be A HeRo. NoT a MUrdErer," Skitter pointed out.

"In this city? I don't think you get to make that distinction. Scum rises to the top, as it were. The real assholes in this city are the ones that control the system. They won't ever see a day in a cell, and even if they did? It'd be a five-star hotel treatment." I argued with a shake of my head. Could it really be called murder if the other guy deserved it? The word murder… that implied you were doing something wrong. Murdering a guy like Lung or Oni Lee? That was a public service. "Look, Skitter, neither of us are going in gun blazing to see how many bodies we can stack up. Can you accept that?"

There was another tense silence as Skitter seemed to consider that. "I cAn. BuT, iF you eVer aSk me To KiLl for You…" They were drawing a line in the sand. I could respect that. They saw the logic in what we were saying and decided not to begrudge us for it. At the same time, they made it clear they wouldn't step over that line willingly.

"Won't happen. Not my style," I reassured. If I ever had to ask someone to kill for me, then I'd just kill the target myself. Wouldn't make anyone do something I wasn't willing to do myself. "We have your cut. Drop it off the same place we got the phone?"

"YeS." And with that, the swarm dispersed.

I sighed as I scratched at my cheek. That had gone about as well as it could have. I would have made a comment to Jackie, but my phone buzzed a second later. A hand tapped at my ear, accepting the call.

"Bugs, huh?" I heard Tattletales voice ring out in my ear. So, they had been watching. I would have preferred to keep that a secret, but I couldn't have anticipated Skitter's reaction to killing.

"Like what you saw, Tattletale?" I asked, closing the backdoor to the car. Jackie looked around his gun at the ready to start shooting the moment they revealed themselves. "Or are you still going to pretend that we aren't worth our asking price?"

There was a small chuckle on the other end, "I'm not the one who decides that, but our boss decided that you were worth some of what you asked. You are officially on probation -- Each gig you do, your asking fee will be delivered to you piece by piece as an additional bonus to a job. Sound fair?"

I hit the mute button and turned to Jackie. Hopefully, Skitter was still in the area. "Tattletale’s boss isn't giving us what we asked for all at once, but he is willing to give it. Each gig we do for 'em, we get something that we asked for as a bonus. Are you two okay with that?" I told them both, earning an accepting nod from Jackie. And Skitter was still in the area because a few cockroaches spelled YES.

This was good. Great even. Tattletale’s boss was willing to play ball with us. This was him pushing back. Now, after a few gigs, after we strutted our stuff, Tattletale’s boss would see that we do our best worth without a leash.

I pressed the unmute button, "Do we get to pick our bonus?" I questioned, hearing an annoyed huff from Tattletale. In response to that, I pinged the call, trying to find a bead on where she was. Could be anywhere in the city. Instead, the call was taking place nearby. Looking up at the shantytown that sprung up near the water, I saw a drone flying.

"Naughty, naughty," Tattletale remarked, catching me trying to find her. "But you can choose your signing bonus. However, the bonuses are tied to gigs. You skip a gig? You lose a bonus." That was annoying, but not unexpected. I'm guessing that was a test of his to see what we're willing to do.

After relaying that info to the others, I continued to stare at the drone. "Alright. Jackie will take that dinner reservation, Skitter wants the money, and I want a skill shard for…" I should start with something simple. After all, knowledge was useless without context. "Mechanical engineering."

"Done and done," Tattletale agreed and I could hear a sharp smile growing in her voice. "Look forward working with you."