Mistrunner 2 - Chapter 7 - Gunther's Guns (Patreon)

I remember the first time someone told me that I didn’t act like a girl. In some ways, I understood it. After all, I was never a dainty, pretty, little thing. Instead, I gravitated toward more rough-and-tumble activities, eventually climbing onto the treadmill of lifting progressively heavier things. But back then, that accusation cut deep into my psyche, and for a while, I tried so hard to be what they wanted me to be. In the end, though, Jeremiah was the one who made me understand that there was no such thing as “like a girl.” I was just me. And so long as I was happy with who I was, that was all that mattered.

Nora Lancaster

Before we could go to the Bazaar, I needed to unload a few of the firearms we’d looted from the Enforcers. I had almost fifteen thousand credits to my name, but I had no concept of how much it would cost to enter the Bazaar. Given that I didn’t want to visit the Dome and be found wanting for funds, I had decided to visit an arm’s dealer in the Garden. So, after using Mimic once again, this time to adopt the persona of a middle-aged woman I passed along the way, Patrick and I set off toward the monorail, which was the quickest and cheapest way to cross the city.

As we walked the streets, Patrick stared this way and that like a tourist, a label that wasn’t that far off the mark. I nudged him with my elbow, and his attention jerked away from a holographic display of a half-clothed woman hawking some sort of energy drink. “Keep your eyes in your head,” I scolded. “You’re drawing attention.”

“Oh,” he breathed. “It’s just all so…different.”

I could sympathize. After spending so long in a backwater like Mobile, I found the constant barrage of lights, holographic displays, and sexual innuendo to be a little disconcerting as well. The only difference was that, while he’d spent his life hopping from one tiny outpost to the next, I’d grown up around such things. Still, I had to concentrate to keep my mind focused on what was important.

Doing anything less in a place like Nova was the height of stupidity, and it was a good way to end up as a rapidly decomposing corpse in one of the alleys.

We passed by some notable landmarks, like the Emporium, which was the district’s arena. In there, prospective fighters would be pitted against one another while spectators wagered on the outcome. I’d never been – Jeremiah had barely let me out of the apartment, much less taken me to such a den of iniquity – but I’d overheard plenty of stories at school. About half the time, one of the brawlers would end up dead. The gamblers wagered on that potential eventuality as well.

In addition, there were plenty of shops that took up the bottom floors of the various megabuildings. In fact, most of the huge structures had their own economies based on barter as well as the exchange of credits. Some were controlled by guilds that specialized in certain goods, but others, like the building where I’d grown up, housed tribes like the Specters. It was almost like each building was a city unto itself.

Eventually, we found our way to one of the monorail stops, and we took the lift up to the platform. It was at least a couple hundred feet above the hovercars on the street below, and we only had to wait a few minutes before the series of boxy transports came into view. They would eventually make an entire loop around the district, stopping at various points along the way.

Patrick and I boarded alongside a few dozen other people and quickly found a pair of empty seats. As we did, I couldn’t help but notice just how dejected most of the other passengers looked. It was expected, considering that the majority were wearing clothing appropriate for factory or farm work, but it was still a bit jarring after spending so much time in Mobile.

Sure, the town had its own problems – most notably, that it couldn’t have existed without the constant influx of medicine and other essentials that my uncle had arranged – but the people certainly looked a lot happier. But then again, it had also lacked a lot of the characteristics people in the bigger city took for granted, like the multitude of entertainment options, the fashion scene, and the support system that came with having a permanent Node in the Dome.

Plus, it was far more secure. For all the issues I had with the Enforcers, the people of Nova City never had to worry about monster attacks. Meanwhile, Mobile had been subjected to daily attacks from the wildlife; most had been easily managed, largely due to the wall and the Amigos, but quite a few had stretched the town’s resources to their limits. Nova, for all its issues, would never have to worry about that.

“Why are there no flying vehicles?” asked Patrick.

“Huh?” I asked, surfacing from my deep thoughts. “What was that?”

“Flying vehicles,” he said. “There aren’t any.”

“Oh. In school, we learned that they were originally allowed,” I said. “But it got too dangerous, so they limited it to hover cars and bikes. If anything but this monorail or the drones goes higher than a few dozen feet, the Enforcers will shoot it down. No questions. No polite requests to land. Just gone.”

“Seems a little extreme,” he mumbled.

I shrugged. “And what about your experiences with the Enforcers makes you expect anything else?” I asked. “Besides, before, it was pandemonium. People were crashing all the time. Lots of innocent people died.”

“I…I guess that makes sense,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“I already told you – to sell some stuff,” I said.

“That’s a what, not a where,” he responded.

Sighing, I rolled my eyes and said, “Fine. We’re going to Gunther’s Guns. He’s got a few locations throughout the city, but I wanted to go to the main branch.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they don’t ask questions there,” I answered. “Plus, Gunther is kind of famous in the city. People treat him almost like they treated my uncle. I only met him once, but he talked to…my uncle like he was an equal. That tells me he can buy what we’re selling without worrying about any sort of repercussions.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” he said.

“Glad you approve,” I answered with a slight smile. Patrick was clearly out of his depth, but he’d gotten better over the past few days. Eventually, his mind would catch up to his circumstances, and he’d be able to start focusing on what he wanted to do with his life. For my part, I’d already given it some thought, but I didn’t want to make any firm plans until I knew what kind of funds I had to work with. Sponsoring his development and training would not be a cheap prospect, and I refused to sacrifice my own quest for revenge in order to support him. If it came down to it, I would have no choice but to cut him loose, whether I liked having him around or not.

The cityscape whipped by as the monorail accelerated to a truly frightening speed. The lights and holographic displays blended together into a rainbow of colors, casting the city’s blocky, modular buildings in an otherworldly glow. At times like that, it was easy to forget just how much pain, suffering, and oppression lay beneath the city’s often breathtaking surface. Case in point, in the very car we occupied, a dust head was slumped against one of the windows, drool tracing a line along the glass. A nearby man was ogling one of the scantily clad female passengers, his eyes telling a story of just what he’d like to do to her. Just as obviously, she was ignoring his gaze, probably hoping that he would lose interest before she left the relative safety of the cabin. Still another man was watching something lewd on his tablet while his hand found a home in his synth-leather pants.

I sighed. That was life in Nova City. There were miraculous things all around, but it was all coated in a layer of grime.

Idly, I used Misthack on the masturbator’s tablet, uploading a Ghost that shut it down. Sadly, that didn’t stop him. Instead, he shifted his gaze to the female passenger and resumed his self-gratification. All the while, he wore a broad grin that exposed his almost toothless mouth.

I shook my head and looked away. A couple of minutes later, the monorail pulled to a stop, and the ogled woman exited as quickly as she could. Thankfully, neither of her two admirers followed. The monorail remained at the platform for a few more minutes before it accelerated once again. Three stops later, we reached our destination and exited onto the platform.

Once we’d made it down to the street below, Patrick said, “I never knew Nova was this big.”

“This is just one district,” I said, striding down the street. “It’s the biggest one, but Algiers isn’t much smaller. Bywater is the second biggest, and then there are the upscale districts like King’s Row. They have smaller populations, but occupy almost as much space.”

“How big is the whole city?” he asked, hurrying to catch up to me.

I shrugged. “The Garden’s platform is about twenty miles across,” I said. “There are six platforms, too. Seven if you count the Council District, but nobody lives there. And what you see on the surface is just the beginning. There are a few places that have whole communities living in the drainage tunnels. Though they’ve been living down there long enough that they’re not really much different from the megabuildings where most everybody else lives.”

“How many people live here?” he asked.

“A lot,” I said. “Millions upon millions.”

For the next fifteen minutes, we wove our way through the pedestrians that were either going to or coming from work. Meanwhile, the relative cleanliness of our surroundings improved. It happened gradually, so it wasn’t that noticeable, but to me, it was a surefire sign that we were approaching the edge of the district. Sure enough, the ramp to the next platform soon came into view.

Like the one leading down from the Garden and into Algiers, it was a twisting spiral wide enough to accommodate fifteen hovercars traveling side-by-side. And I knew it wasn’t the only point of entry; there were three others scattered along the edge of the platform. Unlike was the case with the border between Algiers and the Garden, the base of this ramp boasted an Enforcer checkpoint manned by dozens of black-clad soldiers, more drones than I could count, and a plethora of auto-turrets. It would be suicide to try to force entry.

It was a good thing, then, that we had no reason to do so. Instead, we turned down the street and soon found ourselves before a squat, garishly painted building. Atop that building, which covered at least an entire block, was a sign proclaiming that it was Gunther’s Guns. Predictably, there was a holographic display of a barely clothed woman holding a light machine gun. Beside her was a similarly clad and sculpted man that reminded me of the covers of my collection of romance novels. Just looking at him brought a blush to my cheeks. Hopefully, my Mimicability would mask it.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Patrick by the wrist and dragging him across the street and into the building. However, once we’d passed through the doors, a figure stepped in front of us. Then another. And another after that.

“Please cancel all active abilities,” came a feminine voice. I looked up at the owner and saw a face that might’ve matched the pitch. However, the rest of the body was anything but feminine. In fact, it wasn’t even human. Sure, there were two arms and two legs, a torso and a head. But instead of flesh, there was nothing but the bulky metal of cybernetics right up to the head, which was surprisingly pretty, blonde, and smiling.

“What the…”

I ignored Patrick’s exclamation and focused on Misthack. I had already uploaded a Ghost and moved on to the next cyborg when I heard someone clear his throat. “Please don’t deactivate my guards,” came a rough voice over an unseen speaker.

“Deactivate?” said the female cyborg, though I wasn’t certain if gender identity really mattered when all the relevant parts were mechanical. A mechanical hand shot out, but I batted it away. “What’d you do, you little –”

“Stop, Dierdre,” said the voice over the intercom. “Or she’ll have to get serious. None of us wants that. Just let her in. I’ll keep her in line myself.”

“But Mr. Gunderson, you pay us to –”

“And ma’am, I trust you’ll remove the hostile program from their systems before you leave,” the intercom said. “I would hate to have to debug them myself.”

I narrowed my eyes and nodded. “Assuming everything goes the way I hope it does, meaning I don’t have to…get serious, as you say, I can do that,” I allowed.

The female cyborg, whose name was obviously Dierdre, stepped aside, but she continued to glare at me. The others did the same, but judging by Dierdre’s attempt to grab me, I didn’t have much to worry about from them. It wouldn’t be easy, but so long as I kept my wits about me, I could probably survive long enough to get away. Still, their state was curious; I wondered how they’d managed to avoid the Singularity with so many cybernetics. Perhaps the secret was that they hadn’t.

Either way, I pushed past them, dragging a stunned Patrick with me into the building. Soon, we found ourselves in an expansive lobby containing a host of archaic weaponry. Not only were there giant bronze cannons, but there were muskets, suits of armor, and long guns of every sort on display. There was even a giant monstrosity of a tank right in the middle of the room.

I’d been there before, so I’d expected the display; Patrick, however, had not, and his jaw dropped at the sight.

“It’s always nice when someone appreciates my collection,” a man said as he stepped out from behind the tank. He was short, stout, and sported a huge braided beard. He was dressed in an honest-to-God leather suit, complete with a bolo tie and a wide-brimmed hat. At his waist was a revolver so big it would’ve made Ferdinand II question his adequacy. You know, if he weren’t an inanimate object. The man looked at me, adding, “But you seem like you might have been here before, Mistrunner.”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” I said. “What does it matter?”

“Oh, it matters,” the man said, hooking his thumbs onto his belt and taking a wide stance. “Those boys and girls out there, they cost me a fortune in cybernetics, not to mention top-flight installation. And then you come along and pick their defenses apart like it’s nothing. What was that program you uploaded?”

“I call it Time Bomb,” I said. It was a lie; in reality, I’d uploaded the Sleep Ghost, but I hadn’t activated it. “You can guess what it does. You know, if you don’t play nice, I mean. Easily removed, though. And their defenses barely qualified for the name, Gunther.”

“Ah, so you know me?”

“I know of you,” I said, focusing on the man. He was at least a Tier-4. Maybe even a Tier-5, though I got the feeling that he wasn’t as strong as my uncle. However, whatever he lacked in raw strength, he could probably make up for in sheer firepower. He was not a man to be trifled with. “Word is that you’re an honest businessman who doesn’t care too much about where things come from. You pay what something’s worth. Not a credit more or less.”

“Glad that my reputation is still intact,” he said. After that, Gunther rolled his shoulders and said, “Alright, here’s the deal. If you want to do business, I’m going to need you to drop that ability that’s concealing your identity. I won’t ask you to do it until we’re out of sight and in a clean room, but after that, I have to insist.”

“And if I don’t do that?” I asked.

“Then we don’t do business,” he said. He held up a hand and with two fingers pointed down, mimed a person walking away. “You head on your merry, little way, and I go back to running my business. No harm, no foul. But if you make me go through all the trouble of setting up a clean room and then refuse to drop the ability, well...then we’re going to have some problems.”

I didn’t want to drop Mimic, but given Gunther’s reputation, I didn’t think he’d run his mouth all over town. Still, doing so would feel almost like taking off a set of armor. Once my identity was exposed – and I had no illusions about whether or not he’d recognize me despite meeting only a single time – I would be bare to the world. But who was to say that other arm’s dealers throughout the city would be any less insistent on knowing my real identity. And besides, my uncle had trusted Gunther, after a fashion. That had to count for something.

But then again, he’d trusted Nora, too, and look where that had gotten him.

“Time’s tickin’ away,” he said, tapping his wrist.

Finally, I made a decision and said, “Fine. I’ll deactivate the ability once we’re in a clean room.”

He clapped his hands together, saying, “Wonderful! Come with me, then.”

With that, he turned around and strode through the lobby. There were a few people around, but they were too interested in the displays of weapons to pay any attention to us. Gunther led us through another set of doors, and I briefly got a glimpse of a warehouse full of rack after rack of weapons before he led us down another hall and into an unadorned office. Once we were inside, he pressed a couple of buttons on the wall, and I felt the Mist in the air agitate.

“There we go,” he said. “Clean as a whistle. Nothing in, nothing out. Now, if you will, Miss…”

“Braddock,” I said, deactivating my ability. My image shimmered, and I once again looked like myself. “Mira Braddock. I believe you knew my uncle.”

Gunther gaped at me for a long moment before he gathered his wits and said, “Little Mirabelle. I haven’t seen you since –”

“It’s been almost six years,” I said. “You came to our apartment to broker some sort of deal with my uncle. I disobeyed and came out of my room while you were there, and you gave me a practice pistol. A dainty little thing that my uncle threw away the moment you were gone. He said it was a ‘girl gun.’ And I have to agree, Mr. Gunther.”

“He threw it away?” the man asked. “Seriously? That little gun was, ounce for ounce, one of the most powerful…you know what? Never mind.” He shook his head. “I was sorry to hear about Jeremiah. He was a good man. Misunderstood, but still, he had a good heart.”

“Wait, you know what happened to him?” Patrick asked, his first contribution to the discussion.

He nodded. “Everybody knows,” the bearded man said. “They broadcast it throughout the city. Claimed it was one of the finest achievements since the city was founded. They called him a terrorist.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Not really,” Gunther said. “Jeremiah was…well, let’s just say he was a complicated man, and from their perspective, he was indeed a criminal and a terrorist. But let’s not talk about that. I’m sure you came here for a reason, right?”

“Right. I want to sell some weapons,” I said.

“Where are they?” he asked. “I understand if –”

I nodded at Patrick, and he emptied out his storage. In seconds, stacks of guns, blades, and Enforcer uniforms were on the floor.

“What did you do?” Gunther asked, staring at the pile wide-eyed.

“My uncle was killed by Enforcers,” I said. “You do the math.”

He swallowed hard, then nodded. “Give me a couple of minutes to go through everything,” he said. “I’ll buy the guns, but I don’t want anything to do with the uniforms.”

“Even the Banshee suits?” I asked.

“They’re called Infiltration suits,” he said. “They mask heat signature and provide a little protection against small arms and blades.”

“But you don’t want them,” I said.

“I do not,” he responded. “Too hot. Nobody would buy them when doing so would just paint a target on their back.”

I shrugged. “Fair enough,” I said. “Just let me know when you’re done with the tally.”

With that, I retreated to lean against the other wall. I crossed my arms as Patrick joined me. He said, “That took a lot of Mist, so I’m not going to be able to store anything else for a day or two. Not without a node to shoulder the cost.”

I glanced in his direction and noticed that he looked paler than usual. I could understand that; I’d only rarely been pushed to my limits in terms of Mist usage, but it was never a pleasant experience.

After a few minutes, Gunther rose from where he’d been examining the weapons, and turned to me. He said, “I can give you forty-eight thousand for everything. It would be more, but I’m going to have to spend some credits to pay a contractor to remove the identifier beacons.”

I nodded and accepted the resulting transfer. “Can I ask your advice on something?” I asked.

“Sure,” he agreed.

“I need a Cybernetic Engineer,” I said. “A good one, too. There was a woman my uncle hired, but I can’t remember her name.”

“Cirilla Montague,” Gunther said. “Your uncle went through me to hire her. He couldn’t set foot in King’s Row without setting off every alarm in the district. But I do business with some of them.”

“Cirilla Montague,” I said. “Can you get in touch with her? I intend to buy some cybernetics, and I’m going to need someone trustworthy to install them. And, if you can suggest a venue, somewhere to have it done.”

I knew it was a lot to ask, but I wanted to trust Gunther. The combination of his reputation and the fact that he had been on good terms with my uncle made me predisposed to trusting him. Besides, I needed some guidance, and he was the only person I could think of that might help me.

“I could do that,” he said. “But you’d better have a lot more credits than what I just transferred to you.”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “But I will after a trip to the Bazaar.”

He nodded, an avaricious gleam in his eye. “Interesting,” Gunther said. “But I won’t pry into your secrets. The rates will depend on what you need done, so I won’t quote you anything right now. But here…”

A communication request popped up on my HUD. I accepted the contact.

“Give me a call once you’re ready,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Guess we’re done, then. I’ll see myself out.”

Gunther said, “Don’t forget to remove that program from my people on your way out.”

“I won’t,” I said, moving toward the door.

“And Mirabelle?”

“Yeah?” I asked, standing by the door.

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” he stated. “Like I said, he was a good man, and his passing was a loss for all humanity.”

“Thanks,” was my only response, but in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but remember that he hadn’t just passed. He had been taken. Murdered. Tortured and then displayed like a trophy. It only reminded me that I still had a job left to do.