(the sequel to A Chip In His Shoulder)
Author: L. A. Witt
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Formats: ebook, paperback
Excerpt:
Chapter
1
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
The noise needled my ears. Dragged me out of a sound sleep.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
Whoever was behind waking my ass up was going to—
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
Clarity jolted me awake. My palm computer’s alarm. The
reminder to log into my remote file server. My last resort against my dad.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
“All right, all right.” I leaned over the side of the
bed and fumbled through my clothes. Found the computer. Switched off the alarm.
Much better.
Computer in hand, I dropped back onto the pillows
beside Liam, who was still out cold. Jackass. I yawned as I rubbed my burning
eyes with my thumb and forefinger. The stinging refused to quit, though, thanks
to the shit that passed for air in the Gutter.
Still squinting, I picked up the computer again. The
signal down here was sketchy at best, but enough to let me access my remote
file server. I’d set it up to require logins every twenty-four hours or it
would release all the damning documents about my father and his ilk to the
media. Or, I thought as my finger hovered over the login button, I could let it
lapse now. Release the information and let Dad fall instead of giving him
another twenty-four-hour reprieve.
Twenty-four hours. Lucky him. It had been less than
that since I’d been waiting to die in my penthouse. Surviving? That had been
unexpected. Waking up naked in a cramped Gutter apartment next to my ex-lover
assassin? Yeah. That came out of the fucking blue.
But in spite of my father’s best efforts, here I was,
and now all I had to do was let my login lapse to make his life hell.
No. No, not yet. This was an emergency backup that
would ruin my father’s reputation, but might not land his ass in prison where
it belonged. A card to be played when all other options were exhausted. This
would only damage him. I wanted him destroyed.
“Here’s another twenty-four hours of safety, asshole.”
I pressed the button with more force than necessary. “Enjoy it.”
And now what? Fuck if I knew.
Not sleeping, that was for sure. I exited the login
screen and opened one of the local news sites. I swore the device groaned with
the effort of streaming information with the shitty Gutter signal. Eventually,
though, the page came up. The headline was no surprise, but it still sent cold
water through my veins:
Cybernetix Heir Kidnapped at Gunpoint, May Be Working with Captor
Okay, so Liam didn’t technically kidnap me, but
otherwise, they had us pegged.
Below
the headline, Three Sky Police Dead. Reward
Offered for Information, Capture.
I
chewed the inside of my cheek. Knowing Dad, that reward was substantial, and it
applied to capturing Liam or me. There was probably a “dead or
alive” attached to it too. And since dead men didn’t talk, “dead” likely paid
more than “alive.”
I skimmed the article on the small screen.
. . . anti-mod terrorist Daniel Harding, son of Cybernetix tycoon
Richard Harding, was kidnapped . . .
. . . evaded SWAT with gunfire and a bomb threat . . .
. . . unnamed captor shot multiple times . . .
. . . pair may be working together . . .
. . . substantial rewards offered . . . .
I
swore under my breath and put the palm computer aside. My stomach wound itself
into knots. The whole goddamned police force, not to mention Dad’s private
security, was probably on the lookout for us. The minute we show our faces,
we’re fucked.
Unless Liam had some sort of plan. Any kind of plan.
I glanced at him and considered waking him up, but
decided against it. Only a few things sucked more than dealing with a woken-up
Liam. Better to let him come around on his own.
I couldn’t help smiling as I watched him sleep. The
sheet only covered him from the waist down, leaving his flawless torso exposed.
He hadn’t aged at all in the five years since he’d disappeared into the Gutter
the night it all went to shit. Thanks to the vampire self-healing and the thousands
of nanobots in his body, there wasn’t a mark on him. No scars from life as a
prostitute, a thief, and an assassin. No discoloration in the smooth skin of
his abs to show where two bullets had nearly killed him last night. Probably
not even a bruise to acknowledge where I’d dug my fingers into his hips just
hours ago. A new cybernetic mod made of titanium and black silicone formed a
crescent around his left eye before extending into his sandy blond hair, but
otherwise, he was the same Liam he’d always been.
I, on the other hand, had plenty of mementos. My eyes
and throat burned from the pollution, and pain like I’d never experienced had
carved itself into places I’d never known existed. Rope burns and strained
muscles from rappelling down the elevator shaft. Bruises on my knees and arms
from the novice errors that had seen me bumping into beams and supports. A dull
ache from the crude surgery Liam had performed to get the proximity enforcer
chip out of my shoulder; he’d sealed the wound as only a vampire could, but the
tissue hadn’t completely forgiven the invasive, anesthetic-free procedure.
Whatever wasn’t sore from escaping my apartment ached because Liam and I, in
spite of being exhausted, had spent half the day fooling around just to make
sure we were still alive. Fuck, but I was a hot mess.
I sat up carefully and swung my legs over the side of
the bed. The water-stained plywood floor chilled my bare feet, and creaked as
much as my joints did when I reached for the pair of jeans Liam had loaned me.
Then I went into the bathroom to take a leak and throw some cold water on my
face.
I shuffled back into the main room. Liam’s apartment
was sparse and neat, but still had that yellowed look that seemed to permeate
every inch of the Gutter. Bare drywall, a single bulb dangling from the middle
of the ceiling. Definitely not the chrome-and-glass world in which I’d spent my
entire life. Just being here drove home my new reality more than anything else:
there was no going back.
Liam stirred. I sat on the edge of the bed, and he put
a hand on my thigh. I rested my hand on top of his.
“Morning,” he said, then did a double take and squinted
up at me. “Wow. You look like hell.”
“And
fuck you, too, jackass.” I glared at him. “I don’t look that bad.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Dude, all you’re missing is a
black eye and a split—”
“The same look could be arranged for you.”
“Okay, okay, you don’t look that bad.”
A tired grin played at his lips. Then the amusement
faded in favor of a frown. “I bruised the shit out of your neck, though, didn’t
I?”
I touched the spot just above my collarbone, sucking in
a hiss of breath when my fingertips found the tender, slightly swollen flesh.
“It’s not that bad.”
“No, but it’s—”
“It was either let you feed or let you bleed to death.”
I looked him in the eye as I lowered my hand. “I’ll take a bruise over you
being dead.”
He swallowed. His gaze drifted to the bite mark, but
then he shook himself. “So did you get some sleep?”
“Didn’t have much choice,” I said. “You wore me out.”
He smiled halfheartedly. “Good. Because that’s probably
the last decent sleep you’re going to have for a while.”
“I believe it. So what now?”
“We bring your dad down. Take down the whole fucking
Sky if we have to.” He sat up, laying the sheet over his lap. “Question is,
where do we start?”
“I was hoping you already had that figured out.”
Liam gave a dry laugh, which didn’t settle my nerves at
all. “Not quite, I’m afraid.”
I scratched the back of my neck. “Well, if we present
the information we have to the Sky Council, we can bring Dad down for murder
and blow open the corruption in the cybernetics companies. Draw enough
attention to the exploitation in the Gutter, and they’ll have to do something.”
Liam shook his head. “No way in hell the Sky Council
will ever listen to us.” He idly slid his hand from my thigh to the underside
of my knee. “We’d never even make it past security. We’re fugitives now.”
The news article’s headline flashed through my mind.
“More like terrorists. Which is why we need to get all the evidence we have in
front of the Sky Council as quickly as possible. Before Dad catches up to us or
has time to do damage control.”
“Which is where things get tricky. I don’t suppose you
have too many friends left on high, do you?”
“Do cyberterrorists count?”
He scowled. “Not if we want to get in front of the Sky
Council.” Liam watched his finger trace a wrinkle in my jeans. Some unspoken
thought darkened his expression.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Liam drew in a deep breath, apparently oblivious to the
taste of the air, and lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Say we get your father
charged with the murders and your attempted murder.” He inclined his head.
“What’s the common thread?”
“The common thread?” I eyed him. “Besides my father
paying you—” The penny dropped. I held Liam’s gaze. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled.
“I want to bring your father and his company down as
much as you do,” he said, “but last night wasn’t the first time I’ve done a hit
for your father or any other cybernetics tycoon. We go after him for those
murders, I go down right alongside him.”
I swallowed.
He squeezed my leg. “Daniel, I did what I did because I
was desperate. I know that doesn’t make any of it right, but just take me at my
word here: when you’re offered a contract for a hit, you don’t turn it down or
you wind up with a contract on your own head.”
I hadn’t given much thought to how things worked in
blood transactions, but it made sense. A man who knew about a contract but
didn’t take it was a liability, and as someone who’d been deemed a liability by
my father and his corporate empire, I was hard-pressed to begrudge Liam the
things he’d done to survive.
But that wouldn’t help me take my father down, a mission
that had bordered on an obsession for the last few years. I couldn’t stomach
the idea of him spending the rest of his life in anything less than the hellish
world within the walls of a maximum security pen. He deserved nothing better.
“So if I can’t fuck him over for murder,” I said, “then
what?”
“We
get him where it really hurts,” Liam said. “In his wallet. Specifically, his
company’s wallet. I think the only shot we have here is working with someone
who has the clout to get the Sky Council’s attention. Which means we need to
find and make nice with someone who has that clout.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
“Vampires.”
I waited for the punch line. When it didn’t come, I
said, “You’re serious.”
Liam shrugged. “You said yourself they’re hemorrhaging
money into cybernetics companies for research and development.”
“Yeah. And?”
“And, if we can prove to them that they’re paying for
R&D that isn’t happening, and funding a mod that Cybernetix is keeping up
its sleeve, they’ll have the motivation to investigate and take them down.”
“But Cybernetix has covered its tracks a dozen times
over. These are people capable of covering up the murder of someone as far up
the chain as they are, Liam. We have no concrete proof that the mod exists, and
the minute Dad smells a leak, he’ll make all the evidence disappear.”
His gaze shifted toward me. “Then we get the proof
before he has a chance to cover it up.”
I eyed him. Oh, goddammit, I knew that look, and I
barely kept myself from groaning. “You have an idea, don’t you?”
“Sort of.”
I fidgeted on the edge of the bed. “What do you have in
mind?”
“We get into Cybernetix and take the UV mod prototype.”
“Liam,
are you fucking insane?”
A grin played at his lips. “Do you even need to bother
asking?”
“Okay, no.” I exhaled. “But your insanity doesn’t
negate the fact that what you’re suggesting is on the
absolutely-out-of-your-fucking-mind end of the batshittery spectrum.”
Liam shrugged. “Got any better ideas?”
“Yes!”
He cocked his head. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
“We—” I wracked my brain. “We could . . .”
He lifted his eyebrows expectantly, the corner of his
mouth twitching.
“Okay, fine. No. I don’t.” I tapped my fingers on the
back of my arm. “So we go into Cybernetix and get the mod.”
“And once we prove it works, we’ll have his company’s
balls in a vise.”
“Prove . . . prove it works? But how do—” I pinched the
bridge of my nose. “Why do I get the feeling you’re really suggesting we
install this thing into you?”
“You’d be right.”
“So we put this mod into you. Then what? Have you go
running out into the sun in front of some random vampires?”
“Well, not random ones.”
“You already have some in—” I stopped. “Oh, no. No.
Liam, you can’t be serious.”
He shrugged. “Seems like a good idea to me.”
“Your parents,” I said. “You’re going to show your face
to the same people who put you in the damned Gutter.”
“When they find out they’re being fucked by the
cybernetics companies,” he said, “somehow I don’t think my parents will give
two shits who I’ve slept with. That said, I guarantee the window of time
between getting my father’s attention and being thrown out will be very short,
which is why I want to have the mod already installed in my system so I can
show him it works.”
I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. “I guess we
don’t have much choice, do we?”
“Not
really. But first things first. If we’re going up to the Sky, then we’re going
to need to doctor our appearances a bit. Our faces are probably plastered all
over the Sky and Gutter
by now.”
Eyeing him, I said, “I’m assuming this is going to be
more complicated than putting on a pair of glasses and a fake mustache.”
Liam chuckled. “Yeah. Just a little.”
Chapter 2
After I’d endured an hour of a chemical that I was sure
was going to eat through my scalp, Liam was satisfied the job was done. He had
me rinse my hair, and then I looked in the dingy bathroom mirror to check out
his handiwork.
So
much for the dark-rooted blond look I’d so painstakingly maintained. Now my
hair was ink black, walking the razor-fine line between appearing natural and
screaming fake. I abandoned
my customary spikes and smoothed my hair to the side, parting it so it looked
meticulously arranged.
I swallowed hard as I met my reflection’s eyes. With
this uniformly dark, conformist hairstyle, the only thing that set me apart
from my father or half brothers was the plain, gray shirt and faded jeans.
Well, and the mess of bruises.
My skin crawled. The longer I stared at this new me,
the faster my heart beat. If anyone down here figured out who I was, I’d be
fucked, and no amount of altered hair or nondescript clothing made me feel
remotely inconspicuous. Even dressed as a Gutter rat, I was still a Harding.
What if footage from the surveillance cameras of my apartment building had made
it this far? What if my reputation as an economic terrorist had preceded me?
What if anyone so much as caught a scent on me that didn’t gel with the Gutter?
“Done admiring yourself, beauty queen?”
I turned around as Liam came into the bathroom, and I
pulled in a breath. His sandy blond hair was more of a reddish brown now,
bordering on bronze. False lenses darkened his blue eyes to a deep brown, and
the mod on his left temple had disappeared. No, that wasn’t right. It was still
there, but covered, pushing up the layer of false skin to create the appearance
of a crescent-shaped scar.
He
glanced past me at the mirror, running his fingers over the edges of the false
skin. Then he shifted his attention to me. He looked me up and down, pausing to
adjust a few strands of my hair before he grinned. “You know, I like the half
blond look, but this?” The grin broadened. “This suits
you nicely.”
“Yeah, right.” I faced my reflection again. “This will
never work.”
He put a hand on the small of my back. “Of course it
will. You don’t look like you belong in the Sky anymore, do you?”
“I
don’t look like I belong in the Gutter, either.” I glared at the mirror. “Fuck.
I look like myfather.”
He scrutinized my appearance for a moment. “No, you
don’t. Not as much as you think.” Before I could say anything else, he leaned
in and kissed me. “You look fine. And no one will recognize you, which is the
important part.”
“We’ll see.” I ran my fingertips across the false skin
over his mod. “You covered it up.”
“Visible mods are a liability down here.” He looked
past me and eyed the mirror again, finger-combing his hair over the uncovered
part of the mod. “You can’t walk half a block without getting mugged, but mods
are an open invitation for someone to stick a knife between your ribs with no
obligation to clean out your wallet.”
“Oh. Great.” Fuck, I really was in a different world.
Liam finished smoothing his hair over the mod, and then
stepped away from the mirror with a muttered, “All right, let’s go.”
Wearing a borrowed duster, I followed Liam out of his
apartment and into a hallway lit by a buzzing half- burned-out bulb. As he
locked the door behind us, he said over his shoulder, “I know you don’t like
the idea, but this is going to get dangerous. You need—”
“No mods.”
“Daniel—”
“I’m not getting modified.” I waved the idea away.
“It’s out of the question.”
Liam shoved his keys into his pocket. “You want to see
this to the end? You do what you have to do to stay alive.”
“I
understand that, but I want to stay human.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed; mine flicked toward the
camouflaged mod on his temple.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “You know it isn’t.”
He set his jaw and brushed past me down the hall.
“Let’s go.”
“Liam, I didn’t—”
“I know what you meant.”
Mouthing a silent string of profanity, I started after
him. “Goddammit, you can’t honestly expect me to let go of my issues with mods
overnight.”
He
spun around and stabbed a finger into my chest. “I can, and I do. Don’t think
for a second your pretty little principles are going to keep you alive anymore.
People want youdead,
Daniel.”
“Yes, I know they do,” I said through my teeth.
“Which means you get to make hard choices and
sacrifices, just like—”
“Don’t fucking talk
to me about making sacrifices.” I batted his hand away and stepped closer until
our faces were nearly touching. “Just because I’m not a fan of mods, don’t you
dare stand there and assume I haven’t had to sacrifice anything. You know nothing about how much I’ve sacrificed the last
few years.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve made sacrifices,” he growled.
“Wasting away in luxury—”
Liam caught my fist before I even realized I’d thrown
the punch. He didn’t blink, didn’t break eye contact, just kept on looking
right at me as his fingers dug into the back of my hand. “You done?”
“Don’t
you dare lecture me about sacrifices, you son of a bitch. You have no idea.”
His lips pulled back over clenched teeth, revealing the
edges of his unnaturally sharp canines. “Enlighten me.”
I jerked my hand free from his grip, but the sudden
ache in my throat stopped the words from coming. I managed to snarl, “Fuck
you,” and then shoved past him and kept walking.
Tried to, anyway. I only made it two steps before Liam
grabbed my arm.
“Daniel.” His voice was much gentler than his grasp.
“I’m sorry. I really am just trying to keep us both alive.”
“I know. But look, don’t just assume things about me.
My life isn’t what it was five years ago.”
“Then what . . .”
Holding his gaze, I swallowed hard. The truth was right
there on the tip of my tongue, itching to be told, but anyone could be
listening. The fewer people who knew my secret, the safer we all were.
“Daniel?” Liam loosened his grip on my arm. “What is—”
“We don’t have time for this now. Let’s just go.” The
question lingered in his eyes, and I added a whispered, “Please, Liam.”
He was quiet for a moment, then nodded, and we kept
walking.
In silence, we stepped outside.
The pollution was more intense out here. The foul taste
on my tongue and the sick sweetness in my nose dragged bile up my throat. One
breath had me coughing hard enough to double me over. Hard enough I was sure I
was going to puke. I braced myself against the building until the worst had
passed, and stayed that way as the world spun around me.
Liam’s hand materialized on the back of my neck. “You
all right?”
Jaw clenched, I drew in a cautious breath. The air
stung the back of my throat, but I didn’t cough quite so violently this time.
Though my stomach didn’t exactly settle, the danger of getting sick was—I
hoped—gone.
I straightened up and squinted against the noxious air
as I buried my face in my collar. “Is it always like this down here?”
He nodded. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I’m
sure.” I rubbed my burning eyes and muttered, “And how do you fucking see?”
“You’ll get used to that too. Come on.” He tugged at my
arm, and I let him lead me while my eyes slowly adapted to the pollution.
The legends about the Gutter didn’t do it justice.
Maybe it had to be breathed to be believed. Or maybe this kind of polluted,
poverty-stricken place simply didn’t translate to low-res photos and bootlegged
videos. Thick haze obscured upper floor windows and shrouded streetlamps in
greenish yellow halos. A downdraft from above blew into the back of my collar
and kicked trash and debris around on the streets and sidewalks.
The atmosphere made my skin crawl, but it was the glassy-eyed
bleakness of the people that gave me chills. Workers shuffled in and out of
factories, the ones in the oncoming shift as lethargic as the ones on their way
out. People regarded each other—and us—with shifty eyes, everyone hunched and
guarded.
All sorts of coughing—from throat-clearing to the kind
of hacking reminiscent of end-stage tuberculosis—filled the background like an
improvised band with no sense of rhythm. Much as I tried to muffle it, I added
my own out-of-sync contribution to the perpetual lung clearing.
The only one who didn’t was Liam. I envied his
effortless breathing. Probably the result of a mod of some sort. That or being
a vampire. Same thing, really.
People walked around an animated altercation like the
fight was a lamppost or a park bench. I didn’t see anyone glance at the
passed-out drunk, the rat lapping at a pool of vomit beside him, or the mangy
cat perched on top of a trash can. No one seemed to notice the man with his
pants around his ankles fucking a barely dressed woman against the
graffiti-covered bricks. I couldn’t decide if the woman looked bored, wasted,
or both.
How did a world like this exist so close to the Sky?
The sleek glass landscape to which I was accustomed was mere meters above that
opaque, seemingly impenetrable haze hanging over the decaying streets and
buildings.
“I can’t believe people live down here,” I said into my
collar.
Liam’s gaze slid toward me. “You think they would if
they had a choice?”
“Don’t fucking start, all right? This is the first time
I’ve seen this all firsthand.”
“Point taken. Well, this is it.” He gestured around.
“It doesn’t get any prettier down here.”
I said nothing, just tried to take it all in. If our
task of bringing down the cybernetics companies was daunting in the light of
Liam’s apartment, it was herculean out here in the wilds of the Gutter. All the
white-collar espionage and cloak-and-dagger games we played in the Sky,
stealing and swapping information and little pieces of technology, suddenly
seemed as effective as chasing away the cat and hoping it didn’t come back for
the rat five minutes later.
“We’ve got one stop to make,” he said after a while.
“And then I say we head up to the Sky and contact some of your people.” He
glanced at me. “You sure they’ll help us?”
“At this point, the anti-mod movement needs all the
help it can get. Now that they know Dad’s willing to kill me?” I whistled and
nodded. “Ooh, yeah. They’ll help.”
“Even if that means working with a cyborg vampire who
tried to kill you?”
“Beggars can’t be anti-mod snobs.”
“Speaking of which . . .” That damned eyebrow arched.
“Daniel, you need some mods.”
I closed my eyes and groaned. “We’ve been over this.”
“We have, and I still think you’re being an idiot.”
“I’m touched.”
“Look, I’m not asking you to replace bones or organs,
for fuck’s sake. Nanobots. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more?” I laughed. “Yeah, okay. Sign me right
up.”
He stopped and glared at me, the stark light from an
overhead streetlamp picking out all the tiny contours of his covered mod.
“They’re not that big of a deal. They’re invisible, and they saved my ass more
than once last night.”
“No.” I put up my hand. “Maybe yours have saved your
ass, but the only mod I’ve had so far almost killed me.”
“That
was an entirely different kind of mod.” He shifted impatiently. “Think about
it. In the parking garage last night, what if you had taken those two bullets
instead of me? You’d bedead.”
My stomach lurched at the memory of Liam covered in his
own blood.
He touched my hand and his voice softened. “Look at the
world you’re living in now.” He gestured at everything around us. “Just walking
down the street is dangerous here. And what we’re involved in? This is bigger
than the hacking and computer shit you’re used to. We’re not just playing
corporate espionage anymore.” He stroked the side of my wrist with his thumb,
the light intensifying his artificially darkened eyes to the point I was almost
compelled to draw away, especially as he added, “This is war, Daniel.”
And what good am I to my side if I agree to become my own enemy?
Lowering
his voice, Liam said, “Your father wants you dead. I guarantee before this is over, there
will be bullets flying and shit exploding, and if you want to survive to the
end, you have got to get modified.”
I shifted my gaze away from him. I couldn’t tell if the
sick feeling in my gut was from the air I’d breathed or what Liam had said.
He reached for my hand, and waited until I looked at
him to speak. “Please. Twenty-four hours ago, yes, I was ready to kill you
myself, but now . . .” He lowered his gaze, watching his thumb rub the side of
my hand. After a moment, he met my eyes. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
I gritted my teeth, alternately looking straight ahead
and glancing down at our hands. “You are such a sap, you know that?”
He laughed quietly. “Maybe I am. I’m serious, though. I
know you hate mods, and quite honestly, I don’t blame you. But if it means the
difference between life and death, will you please consider getting nanobots?”
He paused. “They can be removed, you know. They’re not a permanent mod.”
I eyed him for a long moment, trying to come up with an
argument for not getting nanobots in light of our situation. And I couldn’t
come up with a damned thing.
“Fine. Nanobots. Nothing more.”
“Thank you.” He squeezed my hand. “Now let’s get
the fuck out of here.”
