CyRun - Chapter 9

Gabe held the rifle firmly in his hands as he crept down the grated staircase, which lead down directly to the storage area. He didn’t know how many people were down there, but he could hear plenty of talking and people walking. 

His back still to the wall, he took a quick peek. No one saw him, but he saw more than enough. There were several shipping containers right in front of the stairs. He counted seven guards, all armed as the one outside. Four playing poker in a table right in the middle of the place, one standing near a small room on the corner, and the last two standing near the exit, which was closed with a metallic security door. None of them knew he was there, and were about their normal duties. If they knew something was wrong, they weren’t showing it.

They were all wearing street clothes, and he could tell none were wearing any bullet-proof vests of any kind. He didn’t know if they were arrogant, stupid, or careless.

Gabe closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to make a plan, after all.

He opened his eyes. He knew what he had to do.

Noticing that none of the guards had noticed him, he took a grenade out of his bag, and went down two steps until he had the whole place in wide-open view. He nodded to himself, took the pin off, and threw the grenade at the table.

By the time they saw it, it was too late. The grenade exploded dead center in the table. The four men were blown away by the explosion. Limbs, sparks, and blood flew into the air.

The men began shouting and running. Gabe didn’t lose any time and fired his rifle at the two guards near the security door. The had barely managed to raise their guns. One was hit in the chest four times and ended with his back against the wall. The second one was hit in both the chest and the legs, falling to the ground. Both died on the spot.

Two more men came out of the small room in the corner, pistols out and ready. The three remaining guards located Gabe and fired at him. Bullets ricocheted behind Gabe. He gritted his teeth and jumped from the stairs to the container in front of him, firing his rifle. He missed all shots.

He dived and rolled, avoiding the guard's bullets. He reached for safety as he fell between the two containers. 

Sparks and bullets flew next to him as he checked his rifle. The bullet chamber had exploded. He grunted, shoved it inside the bag, and pulled the shotgun out as fast as possible. Hearing someone running in his direction, he popped out from cover and fired.

One of the guards was hit right on the chest, sending him flying backwards. Another guard aimed at Gabe and fired. He missed. Gabe didn’t. Half of the guard’s face was blown off as sparks from his aug exploded.

He tried to shoot the third one but the shotgun jammed. He cursed his luck as he hid behind between the containers again. The other man get running towards him, shooting wildly. Gabe put his gun back into the bag and pulled the pistol. 

He ran to the other side of the container and around it. The other man was about to reach it, and didn’t know he had changed positions. He jumped out from his hiding spot and opened fire in mid-air. The guard turned and fired once, but missed. Gabe hit him. 

The guard was hit several times but refused to go down, his shirt stained red. Gabe stood up and kept firing as he walked towards him with haste. It took ten shots from his pistol to finally bring the guard down. 

Gabe didn’t stop walking. He wasn’t one to take unnecessary risks. He reached the room in the corner. He heard voices inside, desperately trying to call for backup. He took a grenade out from his bag and threw it inside. It bounced on the ball and landed deep inside the room. Someone inside the room screamed. Gabe took a step back. The grenade exploded, and took the room with it. 

Without skipping a beat, Gabe made his way back to the security door and kicked a switch next to it. As the door rose, he ran to the truck Medici had pointed out. He checked the cargo. It was the right truck. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He jumped inside and began to work on the wires below the dashboard. Two seconds and a simple bridge later, the truck started.

He floored it and, in the blink of an eye, was out and merging into a horizontal traffic line. Anyone else would’ve exhaled, relaxed, and thought it was over, but he knew better. He reached below the dashboard a second time with one hand, the other one in the wheel. It took him longer to find it compared to the one in Medici’s car. They had cross-wired it.

Gabe grunted. He checked the traffic in front and behind him before pulling it off. Like clockwork, the truck’s engine shut down and began to dive, fast. He took his hand off the wheel and began to work on the wires he had unplugged. A sweat drop formed on the crown of his forehead, but he ignored it. He tried two combinations and bridges, but they didn’t work. The alarm sounds of the tuck’s insta-comp became louder. The truck was now completely vertical and in a nosedive against the concrete of the slums, if he was lucky. He gritted his teeth as he tried a third combination. The truck’s engine coughed like an old man before coming back on. Gabe wrestled with the controls to straighten the truck. It relented on the very last second before it crashed against the incoming traffic on a horizontal lane. He spun the truck around and stopped, hovering between lanes.

Not wanting to call the attention of any dregger, he merged into the lane in haste before lowering his window and throwing the tracking device away. He then shifted his attention to the insta-comp. Being in traffic already, and carrying a spare, he pulled it off, unplugged it, and threw it away before raising the window. He pulled his spare insta-comp from the bag and plugged it with one hand. It turned on automatically, and a soft-reset later, it was all set and ready to go. 

He checked the systems to see if they hadn’t added anything overly-creative to the truck’s cargo, running a software that came pre-installed to detect any nearby signals. He focused his attention in the container the truck was pulling. The data the insta-comp displayed was unreadable to the untrained eye, made out of what seemed to be random numbers and letters, but he could read it just fine. He smiled. They hadn’t bothered to do anything with the container.  

He allowed himself a brief moment of respite. He checked his mirrors several times to make sure he wasn’t being followed, and he wasn’t. All that was left was to enjoy the ride back to Medici’s building and the sound the almost perpetual rain made when it fell on the windshield. For the first time in several months, he accessed an insta-comp not to do some hacking or improvised programming, but to do something rather mundane.

To select a music station.

CyRun - Chapter 8

Gabe landed on roof a of a construction two buildings away from his target. He got out, bag hanging from his shoulder, and closed the door. The car took off by itself and went away.

He grinned. He wasn’t stupid. Leaving a nicked car full of fingerprints and strands of hair wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to do. So, he had programmed it to lift on, merge into a vertical line for a couple of minutes before shutting down and crashing straight into one of the many abandoned towers of the city. 

Of course, every car had systems, pieces of software, lines of ghost coding, and even its own shields to stop that from happening. But hacking them out of the main system once you had access to it was pretty easy, especially for him.

He turned around, ran, and jumped from one building to the other. There wasn’t much distance between them.

He kept running and jumped again, this time aiming at a water pipe at the side of the window old man Medici had mentioned. He knew they were a desperate, almost dying outfit, but they had money somehow. They were terrible at their jobs, rats pretending to be men, but he hoped that the intel was at least better than the old piece of junks they claimed to be ‘guns’ they had given to him.

As he grabbed the plastic tube and put his feet on the wall to hold himself in place, he heard some footsteps down below. He looked down. There was a man walking around, armed with a simple straight-action Koshki rifle and some grenades. He did not recognized the outfit, but he was definitely no dregger. They were too proud not to wear their police grab if they were doing such a thing.

If he had noticed him, it didn’t show. The man kept walking under his own stop until he turned the corner and disappeared view. 

Gabe focused on the window. It was right next to him. He took a peak and saw a straight, wide hallway with blue walls and fake blue-ish marble floors. There were a handful of what seemed to be offices, four or five, with windows and doors leading to the corridor.

His window was in such an angle that there wasn’t anything that stopped anyone on those offices to spot him almost immediately the second they looked at the hallway. There was nowhere to hide.

He inhaled slowly and tried to focus on the sounds around him. The rain hadn’t stopped, and it was a fruitless attempt.

He shook his head. He took another peek in second attempt to see if there was someone in those offices. He managed to at least see that the two farthest offices were empty.

He took a deep breath. He was going to have to gamble it. He didn’t like that. 

He opened the window very slowly, so not to make a sound that might alert anyone around. He exhaled, took another deep breath, and jumped as fast as humanly possible. He rolled on the floor and put his back against the wall below the nearest office window, all in the blink of an eye.

If anyone had seen him, he was wide open to get killed on the spot, or warn every single dregger in miles to make a small game to who could cut his head first. But other than a voice behind him making idle chatter, he didn’t see a thing. He sighed in relief, no one had noticed him.

He wasn’t out of the red yet. He was still in a hallway with no place to hide. He couldn’t afford to waste any time.

He shuffled to his right, careful to keep his head and his brown hair below the window frame of the room behind him. He knew someone was there, and didn’t know if he was looking out or not. He stopped next to the door, reached for the handle, and pulled it careful to make the least sound possible.

There was someone on the other side, he knew that. But so far, the mumbles of chatter weren’t stopping and weren’t reacting to the door being pushed open very slowly by Gabe. He took a quick glance inside.

There was a man inside, he was right. His back was to the window, he was in what seemed to be a call. He was behind a messy cheap plastic desk, and was surrounded by several impromptu shelves full of data disks, papers, and devices with tags on them.

“Yeah man, can you believe this? Fucking bullshit,” the man said. “They force us to use this old piece of shit phones to make all calls, and the doors don’t even have card lockers. It’s insane.”

Gabe grinned. He was right about that.

“It’s a miracle I at least have a computer in this fucking dump. When I joined the force, I didn’t think my post was going to be this crap, I’ll tell you that.”

The man was trapped inside his own personal bubble of whining or complaining. Gabe thought he could’ve even sneezed and the man would’ve said ‘gesundheit’ and continue whining to whoever he was talking to on the phone.

However, he had a job to do. He closed the door, carefully, and went to the other side. He took a glance over the second office’s window and saw it was empty. Good, he thought before putting his bag to his right, opening it up, and pulling a pistol out. He put the safety on, just in case.

He stood up and knocked on the door. “Hold on, someone’s knocking,” the man said before setting the phone on the desk and walking towards the door. He opened it wide. “Hello?” After seeing there was nobody there, “Is this another fucking joke, Carl, because if it is, I swear –“

Gabe smashed the pistol's butt against the man's forehead.  He collapsed and hit the ground with a loud thud, unconscious.  Blood dribbled from his head.

Gabe shook his head as he dragged the man’s body back inside the room, came back for the bag, and closed the door behind him.

First thing he did was tie the man down with the rope from his bag. First the legs, then the hand, then the arms, and finally some rope around his mouth so he couldn’t speak, tightening it up to the point the man’s back was stuck on a u-shape.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he heard someone say behind him with a weird mechanical tone. “Hello? I heard a noise. Bro, are you there?”

It was the phone. Gabe stood up, grabbed it, tear it in half, and throw it on a recycle processor on the wall. No need to leave any means to get outside help to the man, or anyone inside the building for that matter.

He walked back to the desk, pushed the chair aside, grabbed the one-piece PC –monitor and CPU in one- and the keyboard and took them with him to below the desk. He wanted to see what the system had, and by the cables alone he could tell there was an info grid in the building, and that meant there had to be a mainframe of some sort in the building. However, it made no sense whatsoever to do so while giving away his position.

Luckily for him, the man had accessed the mainframe before he had arrived and had left it open. That was good, since that meant that was one less barrier he would have to hack and force himself into.

Locating the right software in the operating system wasn’t hard, especially since that computer –as most computers set in cheap offices such as the one he was back then- ran the cheap and practical Mysis OS. It didn’t take him even one minute to access the codeline prompt, the basis of any system, and before he even knew it, with a few lines of extra codes and some editing of the pre-existing ones, he was in the main grid. The defenses they had set up were a joke, he didn’t even had to edit a single line to get past them. He activated some basic shadow software and edited it on the spot to stop anyone, even grid admins, to look at his moves. Just in case anyone was keeping an eye on the grid itself.

He could see it all, control it all, and most important, shut everything off. The surveillance system, the alarms, their records, everything. He made a copy of everything –and some bank records- and sent it to himself via an automated mail system that ran through several dozen proxies and three shadow hi-code firewalls. Nothing was tracking it down.

Then, with just the press of two keys, all of that data was gone from the grid. Their databanks were empty. 

To make sure they didn’t spot anything, he set all the security cameras to stop recording and to feed a constant five minute loop to the monitors themselves. No one would see him coming, and no one would be ever able to tell he was there to begin with. 

He smiled. Sometimes, it was just too easy.

He glanced over the desk. The hallway was empty. He nodded to himself and butted the PC monitor with the grip of his pistol as he stood up and put it back on its place along the keyboard. After patting away all the cheap plastiglass from his clothes, he reached inside the computer and ripped the HDD off the pcb and put it in his pocket, and for the finishing touch, he reached for the pcb itself and crushed it in half with both hands.

There was no way they were rescuing that computer, ever. 

He dusted the plastiglass dust from his hand, picked the bag from the floor, and walked out of the office, careful not to step on the man he had hit in the head who still showed no signs of being any closer to waking up.

He took one quick glance trough the office’s window to see if anyone had appeared on the hallway yet. No one had. He sighed in relief and opened his bag. He put the pistol back and got the rifle out, knowing that he didn’t have the gear to put the weapons were they should be, near him hands at all times.

He went outside and crept along the corridor and up to the farthest door on the left, the only door that had to lead down and to the storage area, his back against the wall, moving silently, guns held ready.

CyRun - Chapter 7

Gabe grunted after changing lanes. He knew he was being tracked, and he didn’t like it.

He knew it had to a be a standalone device, and knew that they couldn’t be dumb enough to put it under the seat like most beginners did, so he put his right hand behind the dashboard and began looking for it on the wiring. He hoped they were lazy and hadn’t cross-wired it with anything else, else he would’ve have to park to remove it, and that didn’t sit with him well. He didn’t like to waste time. 

It didn’t take him long to find it. He didn’t felt any wiring leading directly to it, so he yanked it away. He looked at it and smirked. They weren’t stupid, just lazy.

It felt hot to the touch, so he knew the cube shaped device was indeed transmitting a signal. He rolled his window down and threw the device away. 

With that out of the way, he turned his attention to the cheap insta-comp hastily attached on the center console. The odds of it having a secondary tracer software running were high, since they were cheap to install –especially with pirated software- and easy to track, so with one hand on the wheel, he began typing on the micro keyboard below the dot matrix display, looking for any code or software running on the backburner, maybe hidden as a shadow executable. He searched for several minutes and couldn’t find it.

He grunted, unsatisfied. His eyes began to dart from the insta-comp to whatever was in front of him, careful to go on the right side of the horizontal line and hit any cars. He accessed the main micro-server and unblocked the tracking software for common accessing. He hit the program, and indeed, it was off. He found out just in the time to break before he hit a truck at a high speed, which would’ve sent him ricocheting up in the air.

He rolled his eyes. They were lazier than he thought.

He drove for fifteen more minutes until he found a nice, dark place between two buildings in a hover platform to park. It was obvious enough to make people who saw him not suspect a thing, and dark enough to make most people miss him entirely anyway, which was also helped by the apparent proverbial rain of the city. First thing he did was pull the insta-comp out of its socket on the car’s center console and yanked it off, careful not to cut the important wires. He was pretty certain he was going to need it later.

Then he got off the car and checked the trunk. He was welcomed by the sight and the fresh smell of laundered guns. Several pistols, shotguns, rifles, and even two SMGs, all with three of four of their respective clips, along with an empty duffle bag and some rope.

He checked the duffle bag. It was empty. He rolled his eyes and focused on the guns. So far the Medici family had proven to be not very good at their job, so he checked the weapons they had provided, just in case. He believed there were very good chances not all of their had been taken care of properly.

He was right. All of the gun’s sights were off and at least two loading chambers were busted. The rifles feared a little better, with only one crooked barrel and two had botched nozzles. The shotguns were specially modified to have triple shot, turning it into a cannon, but ironically only one of the mods was assembled properly yet all of the shotguns were dirty, rusted, and didn’t work, one even having a malfunctioning trigger. None of the SMGs worked, having broken loading chambers.

He rolled his eyes as he took a toolbox from the trunk and began disassembling the guns. There wasn’t much he could do, not without the proper equipment, but he could make a good gun or two if he cannibalized enough working parts of all the others.

After ten minutes of constant assembly, disassembly, and testing of each component, he managed to rescue one rifle, one shotgun, and a pistol. The SMGs were impossible to salvage.

He checked the clips. Those were impossible to screw up, so he would’ve impressed if they had actually found a way to ruin those. In the end, he had switched the triple mod from the shotgun –since he didn’t trust the loose fit- to the rifle, although it took some improvisation and change some cosmetics with the butt of a screwdriver. The pistol was the easier to salvage, only taking straight parts replacements.

Luckily, they weren’t. The ammunition worked and the clips fit, which was what mattered in the end. 

He tucked his weapons, insta-comp, clips, and rope into the bag and closed the trunk with the scraps still inside before setting the car on reverse and letting it fall and crashing in a tail dive from the platform to the city and below. He didn’t trust it.

With bag in hand, he walked down the dark hallway until he reached the parking lot of both buildings. He looked around and couldn’t see a security camera. One of the guards was making his rounds on the other side of the lot while the other was taking a nap on his chair, so he shrugged and walked to the farthest car.

It was an old Jurta Karu model. Small yet somehow bulkier than the usual car, with a huge compressor with exposed tubes and wires on top, and neon lights on the side. He knew the type. Popular with car modders with no money and wannabe gangsters looking for a cheap getaway car. You could find spares parts practically everywhere, even more so in the dark underbelly of the city.

There was a reason for that. It was the easiest car to nick in history. 

Gabe looked around twice and saw no one around paying any attention to him. He liked it that way, more so in that moment than usual. He put his back on the main door and discretely shoved the tip of the screwdriver on the wedge were the lock was. The forced it inside with a small his on top of the butt of the screwdriver before moving it left, right, down, and then left again.

He heard a too familiar click. He turned around, and the door opened wide.

The car stank of wet cheap carpeting and cigarette smoke. He ignored the stench, sat down, threw the bag on the passenger seat, closed the door to shield himself from the relentless rain. He grunted when he saw a leak on the roof.

Gabe looked at the dashboard. Whoever owned it didn’t seem to know that all Jurta Karus had a huge design flaw on its wiring, and he could tell because the owner had taken no precaution against said flaw. He shook his head as he pulled the hazard warning light switch, popped back in again upside down, stepped on the accelerator and the break at the same time, and just like that, the car turned itself on without a key.

Not wanting to waste any more time, he took off, merged into a horizontal traffic line, and vanished from view. He knew that by the time the guards saw something was amiss, it was going to be too late.

RAW - Chapter 2: Snacks and Explosions

“Have a good day!” I said.

“Don’t you mean half day?” asked Lester, looking down and adjusting his horrible flannel shirt.

“I’m going to be honest here, Lester. No matter how much you keep fiddling with that thing, it still looks like a rotten topping resting on leftover pizza that has been left out on the sun for two weeks.”

Lester’s shoulders slumped more than usual, which is saying something. “I know.”

“Come on man,” I said with a smile as I wrapped my arm around his neck. “Don’t let your nonexistent sense of style deprive you of the wonders and exciting activities you can do whatever sun we have left. You could watch a film, or count tiles, or watch grass grow!”

“Or I could shove red hot nails in my eyes.”

I tapped my chin. “But where are we going to get so much disinfectant and canned tuna to pull that off without liquefying our brains in the process?”

“I don’t know,” Lester said, surprisingly lowering his head even more than what I considered was the standard human limit. “Maybe I could just always jump in front of a moving bus and call it a day.”

Red alert -- literally. I put my hands on his shoulders. “I will drive you home, and I will take no for an answer.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Never mind that.” I had to practically shove the guy to my car. I opened the door with my leg and threw him inside. He landed on his back. Sure it looked funny and nothing like a kidnapping to those curious people staring from the sidewalk. “I’m only making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” I shouted as I sat on the driver’s seat and lowered the window. “He said he wanted to marathon ‘Mad About You’.”

All of the onlookers nodded in unison and understanding and carried on.

Before Lester had a chance to sit properly, I was already sinking my foot on the accelerator. I was ready to feel the motor screaming, the smell the burning rubber. It was then that I remembered my car was a Volkswagen and barely accelerated to beging with.

“Could you at least turn on the AC?” Lester said as he wrestled with his seat in a fruitless effort to make himself comfortable.

“Sorry mate, no AC. No radio. Heck, the backseat is made of cardboard and wet newspapers that I put on a blender. Pray heavens this car actually has a motor… either that or the power of the imagination is bigger than I had anticipated.

“You haven’t checked?”

I laughed. “Don’t be silly, I’m terrified of machinery I don’t know. One of those mysterious phobias that people can’t understand, like Hollywood actor’s phobias to criticism… or real life.”

After ten minutes, I felt a rumble in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was caused by all the potholes on the road that were slowly killing my fading suspension, or if my poor dietary habits were beginning to get to me, but after I saw a dim light in the distance, something became obvious.

“Hey man, I’m hungry,” I said. “Let’s stop on that ‘Plain’ corner store.”

“It looks that dull?”

“No, it’s really just called ‘Plain’.”

We parked and got out, Lester falling on his face first. Classic Lester.

“I wonder if I can buy a life? Or hopes and dreams?” He asked.

“Don’t think so mate, they discontinued that soda flavor in the eighties after it made people too happy and gave some kids glow-in-the-dark barf.” I walked over the snack stand and pulled a bag of chips. “Oh hey, this time they have one percent real cheese and ninety nine percent high fructose corn syrup. Nice.”

We walked over the counter with some junk food and paid the lady who smelled of wet pancakes and cigarette butts. We exited the place, making sure not to step over the rat that was waiting for its turn to come in, and walked back to the car, my hand already full of fake cheese and crumbs. “You know, you can now at least taste a thing besides stale gluten and sugar in these.”

As we were about to get inside, I saw a red shine, a sparkle if you wish, reflect on my windshield, as if a something had went kaput high above. “Now what was that?” I think Lester saw it too, since he looked up to the sky at the same time I did. “Is it me or did Mars just explode?”

“Good riddance, that was planet was nearly as devoid of life as me,” Lester said with that typical magical depressive charm of his.

“Don’t say that mate, I’m sure—“ Then I saw another sparkle, except larger.

I rubbed my chin and raised an eyebrow, “Well I’ll be…”

“I didn’t know we had two Mars,” Lester said

“We don’t.” I saw another red flash. It was getting bigger, and closer.

Red alert -- literally. “Get down,” I shouted, shoving Lester. 

The store window exploded in a million tiny pieces. Something, someone, or a very realistic special effect crashed into the store and send millions of now-free stuff into the air, scattering nachos and all kinds of artery-clogging snack cakes all over the place.

CyRun - Chapter 6

“So.” Medici waved his arm from behind his wooden desk as Gabe entered his office. “I want to think no one bothered you?”

Gabe shook his head, his eyes half closed and his expression devoid of any emotion whatsoever. 

“Good,” Medici said. “Please, sit down.”

Gabe did so.

Medici put his hands across the table, crossing his fingers. “I won’t bore you with details, since I can see you’re a man with very… well defined priorities.  There’s a cargo transport I need you to recover for me.” Medici stood up and pressed several buttons on his computer. The lights of the room dimmed and his window darkened by itself. A holographic projector that was set on the ceiling turned on with a loud beep, and after a handful of seconds a holographic display in shiny neon blue appeared in the middle of the room, the lights and lasers of the device illuminating part of Gabe’s back. 

Gabe turned around and looked up as the device displayed a 3D rendition of a large three story building. 

“This is where you’re going.” Medici walked around the desk, pulling a tactile glove with metallic strips over the fingers from inside his suit and putting it on his left hand. He moved his hand and the model rotated. “It’s on the corner of Koldyron and Hannon, third sub-level, near the fifth abandoned subway. Inside, there’s a truck.” He moved his fingers, and the model of the building was replaced with a picture of a medium-sized hovertruck. “I don’t need the truck, I need the cybernetics and the devices inside the trailer. They belong to me. Bring the contents back here and get paid. A simple cybernetics run.”

Gabe crossed his arms.” A CyRun.”

Medicci nodded. “Right. My men tell me it is heavily guarded, and trying to go via the main door is suicide. Your only point of entry…” With another small move of his fingers, the holographic projector displayed the building again. He walked around it and pointed at a window on the third floor. “Is this. Leads to some offices, should be lightly guarded.”

After a brief silence, Gabe grunted. “That’s all?”

“Unfortunately,” said Medici. “My men were unable to procure any more information. We don’t know how many people are inside, we don’t have floorplans, and we don’t know where the truck is exactly. All we know its inside.”

Gabe stood up and looked around the model of the building. He stared intently and with a frown at the 3D model as if something had caught his eye. After going around it twice he closed his eyes, took a long breath, and nodded.

Medici raised an eyebrow, feigning not to notice. “I told my people to prepare a car for you. It’s old, but reliable. Inside you should find all the things you need.” The old man walked around the desk, sat down, and turned the holographic device off. The lights turned on and the window cleared up on their own. He took his glove away. “Now I don’t need to tell you that if you leave with the car and never come back, we’ll track you down. If you get to the truck, somehow, and we find out that by mere accident someone on the street is using the same devices you were supposed to bring, we’ll track you down. I much rather…” Medici scratched his chin, “Avoid such a needless, pointless act of… violence.“

The old man once again waited for the man in front of him to react to what had been, for him, a clear treat. He didn’t. Gabe simply looked at his with cold, emotionless eyes.

“Is that understood?” Medici asked to make sure.

The man grunted. The old man knew that was all he was going to get.

He waved his hand. ”I’m glad. If you have any questions, ask Neri, my right hand man.”

Gabe raised an eyebrow.

“The man you just met. Half cybernetics for a face? Looks like a lawyer? That guy.”

He nodded and walked to the door. Neri opened the door before he could. Once again, Neri petrified the second their eyes met. He felt like he was looking at a giant brick wall with legs, his uncaring, cold expression carried a glint of treat that he soon found impossible to shake off. 

“Car.”

“W-what?” asked Neri nervously, with a half-broken voice.

Gabe kept staring right at him. “Car.”

“O-oh, right. It’s-it’s in the hangar. Second car t-to the left, the one with the b-big altered compressor on top. C-can’t midd- I mean, miss it. K-keys are inside.”

Gabe grunted and left, bumping his shoulder against the terrified man. It nearly made Neri fall over. Neri kept looking over his shoulder until the man disappeared from his view, and went inside Medici’s office, closing the door behind him.

Medici wasn’t too pleased with his right hand man. “Do you need some testicle implant?”

Neri said nothing, he simply adjusted his tie, cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and turned around. “There’s something about that guy, boss. I don’t like him.”

“Neither do I.” Medici closed his eyes and scratched his chin. 

“Permission to speak freely, boss?”

“We’re not in the army. Sit down and go ahead.”

Neri did. “If you don’t trust him, then why did you sent him to recover our ‘products’ from Varnetti? That guy is a dregger, that guy has no fucking chance, no one does, you know that. For the love of God, why did you sent him of all people? If he finds out we sent him, we’re fucked!”

“No need to raise your voice, Neri. I trust you and your judgment, and I know you’re voicing valid concerns for the business. That’s why you’re my consigliere.” Medici clasped his fingers in front of his chin, elbows resting on the table. “But don’t worry, he won’t be doing that.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he won’t get a chance to talk. He will be shot the second they see him. You have not been paying attention. That’s how Varnetti works, that’s how he has always worked. That’s how all dreggers work.”

Neri tried to get comfortable on the chair. He failed. “So let me get this straight, boss. You sent a guy that could as well have ties with them, a guy you knew nothing about, to make something that none of our guys could, no questions asked? Why, just to piss on Varnetti?”

“Exactly.”

Neri laughed, throwing his hands up. “Well sorry, but I… I don’t know what to say. Might as well tell Varnetti we give up while we’re at it. Who knows? Maybe we… we’ll be able to work for him selling counterfeit hi-jacks on the streets!”

Medici smirked. “You see Neri, that’s both your biggest asset and your biggest flaw, you worry so much you fail to catch what isn’t obvious.”

“Boss, I’m just trying to understand, to make sense of the thing you just pulled!”

“It’s very simple. Put yourself in Varnetti’s shoes. You’re up in your mansion on one of them middle levels hovering above town when suddenly you hear that a total stranger has assaulted the pound that you also happen to use to stash all of your wares. You don’t who it is, or who send it, but you know they know, the voice is spreading, and that someone might try again. What do you do?”

“I move it, of course.” Neri raised an eyebrow, still not seeing it.

“And if you move your stuff, people will find out, we will find out. And that’s when we’ll strike and get our ’products’ back, and even some, and at the same moment hurt Varnetti were it hurts the most, and because he won’t know who attacked him before, he will be clueless to who did it.” Medici smiled wide. “You see, it’s perfect. All we needed was a suicidal idiot or a punk off the streets trying to play tough guy to pull it off, and he just happened to be perfect for it.”

“What about the car?”

“Neri, why do you disrespect me? Do you think this is my first time planning a CyRun? The car has being cleaned, it’s impossible to track it back to us, no one will know about it but us. Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t track it ourselves. It just happens it’s not a necessity.” 

“What?” Neri opened his eyes wide. “Why?”

Medici laughed. “Because my dear friend, we will be tracking him. Every person that enters my office gets scanned, you know that. All we need if for Lou to zero on whatever augs the man might be carrying, like his arm-phone or maybe an eye. We’ll be fine, trust me, my good friend.”

Neri tried to relax on his chair a second time. It worked. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, it seems you have approached this from every angle possible. I apologize for doubting you, boss.”

“It’s all right,” Medici waved his hand dismissively with a smile. “I have no need for a yes-man as consigliere.”

There was a knock at the door. Medici glanced at his computer monitor. He pressed a button, activating a speaker on the other side of the door. “Come in, Lou.”

A short man with a tribal tattoo on his face and wearing a suit walked it.

“You sick Lou?” Asked Neri as he looked over his shoulder. “You look awful pale.”

“B-boss…” Lou loosened the shirt around his neck. “W-we… we have a problem.”

The old man’s stopped smiling. “What is it now?”

“Erm… the man you told me to scan?” Lou began to sweat profusely.

“Gabe. Yeah, what is it?”

“He has no augs.”

Both Neri’s and Medici’s eyes opened wide as they jumped out of their chairs. “What?” shouted Medici. 

Lou pulled a paper out of his jacket and shook it as he pointed at it. “He has no augs. No implants. Not even a fucking arm-phone. He has nothing.”

Neri and Medici walked towards Lou, the old man snatching the paper. “Are you sure? Completely sure about this?” asked Neri, his tone bordering on a scream. Medici focused on the paper.

“Y-yes. I checked a dozen times.” Lou remembered what the guy had done, how he had behaved, and what he had pulled off in the hanger. “That man… he’s a monster.”


“Oh my god,” Neri looked at the paper. Lou was right. He glanced at his boss, who was standing next to him. “What do you want to do, boss?”

Medici didn’t answer, the paper shaking as his hands trembled. His eyes were opened wide.

“Boss?”

“What the fuck are you two idiots doing?” Medici shouted. “Track the fucking car, right the fuck now.”

RAW - Chapter 1: In the mouth of dullness.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, groaning as I walked to the gates of the local Cheapo-Mart, the oh so great wretched hive of scum and mass production mega mart where I worked. “Ok brain,” I said to myself. “I know you hate me, and sometimes I hate you too, but its six in the morning, so I need you to wake up so I can earn that guap. I want running water this month.” In a clear sign of pure mental anarchy, I felt my face contort and my left eye twitch, giving me that patented sensation of burning needles piercing my skin.

I slapped my face, trying to gain enough cognizance to open the door of the place. Six bazillion mosquitos, flies, and discarded candy wrappers welcome me along with that familiar smell of cheap chlorine and sweat. “Ah right, the Classic Cheapo smell. You know you’re shipping Cheap when the smell somehow gives you acid reflux.”

I walked down the many aisles to a corner of the mega mart, past the drunken hobo that fell asleep on a bed made out of cockroaches and toy cars. It was the meat section, and it was hard to miss, with its huge sign above the barely functional displays that said ‘Actual meat not guaranteed’.

I was in charge of the ‘sausage assembly’. It was as interesting as it sounds.

The door to the section had been stuck since forever –stuck in the sense that it was actually painted on and was never a real door to begin with- so I simply jumped over the displays, careful not to step and slip on the great puke stain of sixty three that simply refused to go away. It is said that whatever shoes stepped on it would forever be haunted by its smell.

I went behind the freezers to look for my partner in crime –since making people pay six cents per Cheapo sausage was an actual crime in several states… and Nantucket- and found him right where I expected him to be, sleeping on top of the ‘Can’t believe it isn’t real meat’ boxes. I slapped him on the back of the head. “Hello, Lester.”

“Glycolysis,” he shouted as his neurons were shaken awake. “I mean… hello Paul.”

“So, my tall yet chubby friend,” I said as grabbed one of those fluffy freezer jackets from the floor and shook all the rats off.” You ready to partake on yet another grand adventure of the mundane and insanely maddening exercise that is poorly paid manual labor?”

“No.” He adjusted his glasses as he stood up. “But I don’t think it matters. Nothing really matters if you really think about it.”

I laughed. “Oh Lester, your pessimism really cheers me up. No matter how miserable I think I am, the fact that I know you’re here to share my misery always makes me feel all warm and fussy inside. Well, it’s either you or the nuclear fusion batteries that keep this antiques we call ’freezers’ running to barely legal levels.”

“Oh how I wished I had your natural excitement,” Lester said with slumped shoulders.

“Funny you say that, because I have none right now.” I opened the first freezer. “Smell that? Smells of…  tedium.”

“Didn’t know tedium smelled like warm beef blood and ammonia.” Lester picked up some old, wet boxes from the floor.

And so began yet another day, just like all the others. Uninteresting, boring, dull, repetitive, and in the end, mundane. Not even the haunted carts that moved on their own from aisle twenty two that went by in front of our section made it fun anymore.