28 – Melancholy Moods

  Tony blinked, looking at himself in the mirror. His face was numb, but the swelling was already starting to subside, thanks to his nanites and the infusion the doc had given him. Still, the surgical lines, fine as they were, separating the synth-flesh from his natural skin were visible—like a fine spider’s web of cuts around his eye socket. They’d be next to invisible in a day or two.

  The new eye had a deep blue iris, and Tony closed his other eye, hiding its silver metallic hue. He stared into his new eye for a few seconds, trying to decide if he liked the color. It was darker than his other one, and he thought it made him look more serious. Something about wearing blue eyes didn’t agree with him, though—maybe because they reminded him of Eric.

  He opened his other eye and then expanded the management menu on his AUI. Selecting metallic hues, he picked black, flecked with silver, and applied it to both eyes. The new color snapped into place on his older eye almost instantly, but the new one took a few seconds to populate the new design. In the end, they looked virtually identical. He took a step back, turned his head left and right, and nodded. “Good enough.”

  According to the clock on his AUI, he still had two hours or so before he had to meet Eric, so he walked back to the parlor of his suite and mixed himself another drink. He’d never been much of a drinker—never got into mood-altering chems, either—but something about his current situation made the numbing effects of a stiff drink a little too appealing.

  He sat in the leather chair, staring out the window at the city, sipping his bourbon, and contemplating all the ways things might go in the next few days. He had no doubt that whatever job Jen was going to throw his way would be dangerous. That would be a best-case scenario—a test. Worst—and most likely—case would be a trap. Either way, Tony was going to dive in headfirst. He wasn’t stupid, though, so as a thought exercise, he put himself in Jen’s shoes and tried to imagine the worst ways she might try to screw with him.

  He thought about the mercenaries she liked to employ on her private team, about the kinds of tech and weapons they preferred, and about just how poorly his own gear stacked up. Of course, that sent his mind drifting back to his old gear—chrome, mods, guns, armor, and expendables. He rubbed the cherry-red enamel of his new arm, marveling at how much it felt like flesh thanks to the conductive field. He used to have a plasma forge on that arm, though…

  “Nora, find a retailer that stocks glitter rounds for the needler in my arm. Order me a pack and pay whatever it takes for rush delivery.”

  “Glitter rounds? Oh—I see. Conductive Particle Dispersal Ammunition, or CPDA. I’ll need to update my targeting routines; the rounds require timed micro-bursts and precise vectoring so the cloud forms where you aim.”

  “I’m sure the manufacturer will have the routines you need.”

  “I found some I can have delivered tomorrow. Manufacturer: Noble Sprite Ammo. Will that be all right?”

  “Fine with me.”

  “They charge a 499-bit fee for their targeting algorithms. I found cheaper versions on the city-net, but—”

  “Hell no. Pay the fee, Nora. We’re not going to risk street scripts.” Tony grinned as he tipped back his tumbler, draining the dregs of his bourbon. Glitter rounds used to give him nightmares, but hardly anyone carried them; plasma forges were just too uncommon. He looked at the time, decided he might as well get moving, and stood. He took one step and had to grip the cushioned chair back to steady himself. “Maybe one too many.”

  “Shall I direct your nanites to focus on toxin removal?”

  “Yeah, good thinking.” Tony cleared his throat, stretched his neck until it popped, then walked over to the door, pausing to collect his coat and shrug into it. By the time he reached the elevators, the world had stopped swaying with each tiny movement of his head, and by the time he walked through the lobby, he felt fine—just a slight, comfortable buzz remaining.

  He was about to step outside when a lilting, faintly exotic voice called out, “Mr. Shepherd?”

  He turned, smiling, as Titania approached. For an old-school synth, she moved more gracefully than most humans. Back when The Meridian Arms was new, she must have been top-of-the-line.

  “Something you need?” he asked when she was within a couple of meters.

  “I wanted to ask how your appointment with Doctor Clyburn went.” The softly glowing metallic orbs of her eyes shifted toward Tony’s right eye, and she smiled. “Seems you had a little work done.”

  “Yeah, he was a real pro. Appreciate the referral—it made him a little more flexible with my, uh, idiosyncrasies.”

  “I’m pleased I could be of assistance. I see you’re about to step out—so you won’t be dining in tonight?”

  Tony checked his clock: 21:04. “A little late for dinner—even for me.”

  If metallic flesh could blush, he thought hers would have. “Ah, yes, of course. Perhaps I could call you a car?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “That’s very thoughtful, but I’m going to stretch my legs. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Perfect. If you intend to make a late night of it, perhaps I could entice you into the executive lounge for a nightcap.”

  Tony tilted his head, measuring her pleasant, friendly expression against the loaded-sounding invitation. “I’d like that, Titania, but we’ll have to keep it friendly—my heart’s spoken for.”

  She ducked her head and took a half-step back. “Of course. I should have assumed as much. A friendly drink, then? I’ll be here all evening—drew the graveyard shift this month.”

  Feeling suddenly very sorry for the synth—clearly a product, body and mind, of a bygone era—Tony sketched a half-bow and smiled. “It would be my pleasure, ma’am.”

  Outside, after he’d walked half a block and his cheeks and nose had gone numb from the cold, Tony began to have second thoughts about walking to the Ghost Ship. His mini-map said it was only another sixteen minutes, though, so he tucked his chin into his collar and motored on, trusting that his exertion would warm him along the way.

  As he walked, his mind drifted back to Titania and her almost charmingly clumsy attempt at flirtation. She had to be fifty or more years old—probably predating the last AI wars. She was effectively immortal; he didn’t doubt any contract she’d had with the hotel had expired decades ago, though it was possible she’d renewed it without much negotiation of terms. Still, he wondered why. Why wouldn’t she want to explore the world more—explore life more? She could upgrade her metallic flesh. She could travel; she could work elsewhere.

  He chuckled at himself—trying to figure out the internal motivations of an ancient synth. He supposed he couldn’t understand because he couldn’t put himself in her shoes. He’d grown up hating his situation, wanting to escape it. Titania might love her place in the grand scheme of things. She might derive satisfaction from things that were utterly alien to him. Every time he let himself think about synths and AIs like that, he ended up reminding himself that what he took for granted as human desire probably didn’t apply to them. Still, she’d certainly seemed lonely.

  Though his mind was occupied with his existential musings, Tony kept his eyes peeled, scanning the slurry-covered sidewalks ahead of him. His high-end optics made easy work of the dark—blacks became shades of blue, and objects and people stood out in high-res, clear as day. It almost made the dreary night magical. He’d trained Nora to watch people’s eyes for him. She tracked them as he walked, noting if anyone stared at him for an unusual amount of time. She also checked for weapons and suspicious hand movements, so when the two men tried to jump him, he wasn’t caught off guard in the least.

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  Nora outlined them in red, placing red, flashing exclamation points over their heads. Tony had plenty of Dust, so when he saw those timely warnings, he triggered his wire-job. It gave him the speed he needed to give Nora’s assessment a second look. Sure enough, both men had their hands inside their coats, elbows up and out like they were about to draw something. To him, they were moving like ants caught in honey, giving him plenty of time to assess them; he figured they were just thugs thinking they might mug a distracted guy.

  Their coats were dense polymer, designed to slow small-arms fire and protect against blades. Their chrome was low-end, bulky stuff. One guy had ballistic polymer synth-skin covering his throat, and the other had a metallic skull plate. They were low-end muscle who would’ve been more at home in the Blast than New ’Hattan, but they were probably tough, and they’d probably survived just enough throw-downs to think they could take out a guy like Tony, even if he did walk like a cat and have eyes that cost as much as all their gear combined.

  When he sidestepped like he was glitching through space, snatched out his mass driver, and held the fat barrel toward their heads while it whined and sparked in the misting rain, they probably had severe second thoughts. “Wrong guy,” Tony remarked, turning off his speed boost to conserve Dust.

  The two men slowly removed their hands from their coats and held them up, empty. “Uh…” one of them stammered.

  The other was a little more articulate. “Yeah, we fucked up.”

  “I’m not in the mood to deal with District Patrol, so just get lost.” As soon as he said “get lost,” the two men bolted, sprinting across the street and causing one of the AI public transports to swerve, sliding in the slush toward the curb and nearly smashing into a row of parked cars. Tony holstered his hand cannon and started walking.

  There wasn’t much pedestrian traffic at that time of night—not with the weather like it was. He supposed a storm like the one that had just rolled through could bring out people’s desperation, even in the thugs and criminals. They had quotas to meet—bigger fish looking for their kick-up. It made them take risks they might usually avoid—like trying their hands at a target who wasn’t nearly as soft-looking as they were used to. It made Tony think of Beef and the bangers in the Blast, and he smiled, shaking his head as he realized he kind of missed the big idiot.

  Before long, he came to the Chen-Olafson Tower, one of those towering monoliths that tried to be everything at once—corporate offices, high-rise apartments, and an indoor shopping gallery that never quite slept. A dozen corps kept their logos blazing near the top, while fifty floors of residents lived beneath them—rich assholes for the most part, proud of their little piece of sky that overlooked the greater populace. Somewhere down in the retail tiers, a handful of clubs, including the Ghost Ship, rented space.

  He stepped through a pair of doors, striding into the park-like lobby amid a blast of warm air. As his skin thawed out and blood populated the constricted capillaries, his scalp started to itch. Tony ran his hand through his hair, inhaling deeply as he walked up ramps and stairs, aiming for the nearest bank of elevators. He’d gotten used to cool, crisp air, and the heat and sterile atmosphere of the megatower were almost unpleasant. He felt irritated, but he soon realized the air wasn’t the cause; it was the people and the noise. He’d enjoyed his musing thoughts on the walk over, and he simply couldn’t concentrate in the bright, crowded space.

  The building itself didn’t have any laws against firearms, but he knew that every level and every establishment would have its own rules. The elevator he got into was crowded, and it stopped a dozen times before it finally got up to speed, soaring up to the mid-tower levels, and depositing Tony on the “Pavilion Europa” where he’d find his destination. He meandered through the crowds, past a dozen restaurants and a dream-rig rental business, before he came to the Ghost Ship.

  The fa?ade was simple—gray and blue plasteel with a purple neon sign, but the lobby was different from those in most clubs. It was a long, rectangular room with five closed doors on the far wall, each staffed by a human or synth security officer. They were professional in attire—suits and stylish chrome—and they all wore SMGs over their shoulders. Tony knew from past visits that the SMGs were needlers, loaded with high-voltage flechette stunners. They were just there to keep the peace in case some chem-brain lost his cool over having to disarm.

  The doors were marked with red and green lights, and he stepped up to one with a green light. He nodded to the guard, who lazily eyed him up and down, then opened the door and waved him through. The antechamber he walked into was like an airlock with a customer service window on one wall. Tony walked over to the window, and a woman with hundreds of tight dreadlocks said, “Feet in the yellow square and stand still for a scan.”

  Tony complied, and he heard a heavy-duty scanner array clicking away in the ceiling. “I’ll need you to check the pistol and the ammo cartridges in your arm.”

  Tony was already unloading. He put the offending objects on the counter, and the woman drew them under her bulletproof window. A moment later, she pushed a small chip drive through. “Plug this into your data port. It’ll disable your PAI and impede any recording. If you remove it while you’re inside, you’ll be escorted off the premises and banned for life.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Understand?”

  Tony nodded. “Yeah, I get it.” He picked up the little device and reached around to the back of his skull, probing his data port with a fingertip to guide the drive into place. “See you in a while, Nora.”

  “I really wish—” she started to say, but was cut short as the drive sank into the slot.

  “We good?”

  The woman stared into space for a moment, then nodded. “Showing the blocker online. Go on in.”

  The second door hissed open, and Tony was hit by the bass thumps of the club’s music. The air in the club was misty—some chemical mixture that made it hard to see more than a dozen paces in any direction. Holo displays made it seem like fantastical creatures and beings were just out of reach, fading into the mist whenever you tried to focus on them.

  The Ghost Ship was popular, but not really for the dance floor. Most of the club’s square footage was taken up by private meeting rooms and booths, though there was a large bar area and, here and there, synth, human, and holo dancers performed, adding to the surreal atmosphere.

  Tony had a good idea where he’d find Eric; they used to have a regular booth, so he walked in that direction. On the way, he passed through the bar area and slowed, eyeing a pair of dancers who looked familiar. He hadn’t expected nostalgia to hit, but he supposed no one ever expected that strange melancholy emotion. A hundred memories vied for his attention—hushed meetings before dangerous jobs, celebrations after said jobs, and dozens of faces, friendly and not-so-friendly.

  He remembered Jen when they’d first met. She’d been cool then—rich, powerful, full of flattering comments. Tony sucked his teeth, shaking his head; it seemed so obvious now—how she’d played him, how she’d used him. A server bumped into him, jarring him out of his reverie, and he started moving again.

  When he got to Eric’s usual booth, he wasn’t surprised to find him already there, despite being twenty minutes early. He had a feeling his onetime friend had been there a while, probably dreading the meeting based on the way he was leaning back, eyes closed, rubbing his temples with a pained expression.

  Tony grinned. Only in The Ghost Ship could you expect to catch someone so off guard. “Burdens of your bad decisions weighing heavy?”

  Eric’s eyes popped open, and he muttered a curse.

  Tony didn’t wait for an invitation, sliding into the booth opposite him. “Early, huh? Must have been nervous.”

  “Fuck you. I had work to do.”

  “Work, huh?” Tony shrugged, and as he sat there, looking at Eric’s face, noting his sunken eyes and the new wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, he contemplated beating the life out of him right then and there. He’d lose access to that club for the rest of his life, but did he really care?

  Eric stiffened, and he glanced to the side nervously, and Tony wondered if he’d let some of his murderous intent into his eyes. “Jesus, man. I’m trying to help you here. I thought we were past the bullshit banter.”

  “Fair enough. What’s the job?”

  “Heh.” Eric shook his head, chuckling as he reached for his martini. “I see you fixed your eye.”

  Tony ignored the comment, staring. He couldn’t get the murderous thoughts to stop drifting to the surface, and it was bothering him. He hadn’t felt that way when they’d met before, had he? Was something different? He reasoned that maybe he was just feeling more comfortable, more in his element; he was relaxed enough for his real emotions to surface. Why, though? He couldn’t pin it down. Maybe he was just tired of all the bullshit. Maybe he was just ready to be done with the people who’d betrayed him.

  When Eric realized he wasn’t going to be making any small talk, he sighed and tapped the control panel on the table, activating the booth’s noise suppression field—nobody could record in there, but that didn’t affect normal old snooping. The field would stop that. “This job Jen’s got for you, T—it’s a suicide mission.”

  Tony yawned, leaning back. He arched an eyebrow and rolled his finger in the air for Eric to proceed.

  “I’m serious. I mean, yeah, there’s a chance you pull it off, but it’s risky as hell. She’s testing you—not just your skills, but your loyalty.”

  “Just spit it out, Eric. What does she want?”

  “She wants to be in charge.”

  Tony snorted. “What else is new? She’s in charge, man.”

  “No, I mean, really in charge—of Cross.”

  Tony narrowed his eyes. He knew what Eric was saying, but he didn’t believe it. He shook his head. “No way. She’d never.”

  Eric nodded. “She wants you to take out her uncle. She wants you to kill Herman Cross.”