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SEVERAL DAYS LATER I'm still desperately working to reassemble Wormfood, I can't help but keep checking over my shoulder, fumbling tools. I must be giving off some seriously sketchy vibes, but I can't contain them, not now.
With the security, the invasive monitoring, I know there were traces I couldn't hide. I scrubbed the contacts from the server records and any sign of my connection with Chroma but getting all the digital breadcrumbs would be impossible. How much time I have left is uncertain.
Chroma knew where Vulkan had been a week ago but didn't know where he was now. She said to follow my nose. Hound, she had to be referring to Hound. Cantor said he'd been returned to active duty. And wherever he is, should lead me to my next target. Trouble is, he's nowhere. Hound, Danger, they aren't listed on any missions I can access.
Stopping to dig around more about Hound now would be the wrong move. Wormfood needs to be up and running first, so I'm ready to launch the second I have a location. In all the repairs, pretending to be the good little worker simply restoring his company-issued battle armor, I've skipped one thing: the data array.
Without it, there are no connections and no remote piloting.
Doing the same to the prototype would be detected. Xamse has hardware and software booby traps set up to alert him of the slightest tampering. The fight with Tomahawk wrecked those for me on the old suit. I'd thank the guy if I could. One warrior to another, I suppose.
The outer door buzzes then clicks.
When Ayana buzzes through the security vestibule and into the lab, I fully expect to be dodging bullets. But if she detected anything unusual, she's playing it close to the bulletproof vest. I check to make sure my path to the prototype armor is clear. I know I can't shoot back, but she'd be hard pressed to kill me all turtled up inside there.
"You have a new assignment," she says.
Her barked out command has caught me before I've had much chance to even stand. I hunker behind a piece of armor, pretending to work.
"Oh?" I try not to appear too relieved that she isn't here to kill me.
"Suit up." She's got Xamse's tablet in her hand which means...
"You're doing the launch?"
Her smile is made of abject malice distilled from a brutal history where I'm sure all her attackers wear my face. Getting out of this won't be easy. My one hiding place has potentially become my coffin.
"It won't hurt," she says. "I have promised Xamse this, and we both know his rule." She lingers on the last word, her voice indicating that maybe she does know I've been a bad boy.
"I'm not worried," I say, wrapping my multitool in Dad's mask. Wormfood's guts left strewn on the table, I walk away from them. Calm. Collected. No more jitters. That's the intent anyway. "Who?"
"They call him Titan," she says. "He's been found in Las Vegas. Another one our client would like to see brought in alive." I can't help a snort of derision as I turn to the prototype and begin the preflight checklist. "I'm disappointed," she adds.
"Why's that?"
"You appear to have learned the real task here. You even seem to relish it."
"What do you mean? The killing?"
Instead of answering, she crosses the room to sit on the edge of the table where I've left Wormfood's entrails. She absently picks at the chipsets and wires, reading a future or a past, I'm not certain. "Yes. When I interfered with your first mission, I figured you'd lose the stomach for it."
"Ah," I grumble. "No pretenses anymore. You did fuck with the tranquilizers before Tomahawk."
"I did," she says. "A miscalculation on my part."
"How's that?" I face her as the prototype hums to life, reactive plates shifting into their default position and the faceted eyes flaring with their characteristic ruby glow. Blood on an obsidian tiled floor. Or flowing around my feet in a theater basement.
"You had it in you," she says, almost surprised. "To be a killer. A hunter." My face has hardened, jaw clenching. Dad killed people when he had to. Any soldier, any Augment has done the same. A fight with an Augment was war, pure and simple. "It will make killing you all the easier."
"Likewise," I mumble, turning to face the prototype. This could be her weapon as easy as it is mine. In fact, I'm not the weapon, the instrument of death, the Black Beetle is. None of this is me. "I'm only doing what needs to be done," I say, soft enough I'm not sure she'll hear, but she does.
"Fine, you go fix the things you need to make you feel better. Correct your past mistakes. I will plan for my future."
Mercifully she keeps her mouth shut through the rest of the pre-flight. When I step into the armor, she barely gives enough time to settle in before she eagerly mashes the tablet. Restraints are loose as she rockets me into the air. Faster than even the first time. I almost don't mind the blackout.
***
LAS VEGAS WITHOUT TERAWATTS of power might as well be Mos Eisley. The Strip passes mutely below. Without the electric pulse, this bizarre collection of plagiarized architecture feels as incongruent as it looks. Dark voids gape where giant screens used to broadcast messages of sex and fortune. Fairytale castles, glass pyramids which an architect forgot were another people's tomb, the French Riviera devoid of culture; there's even the Statue of Liberty. A place so divorced from reality, American icons seem exotic. But the light show isn't gone, simply stolen. Stretched across the northern horizon, the Aurora shimmers and shifts.
Cars line the broad boulevard. Two inner lanes have been cleared, but the rest are clogged with dead vehicles, in some cases stacked one atop another. Outlying areas of the city have fared better than the heart, reliant on tourists and expendable income. Fuel deliveries have been strained, so even travel by bus or car is difficult. The enormous, maze-like casinos and hotels quickly became uninhabitable with rolling blackouts and no air conditioning.
Despite the desolation, I detect a host of illegal networks on my scans. There's even a few which I know are open to the Collective. Several cluster around a collection of strip clubs adjacent to the main drag.
Those at least seem to have power.
Peel back the layers of civilization and America is just a bunch of Puritans who claim to not like pole dancing. Extremist hypocrites. Titan must know this. When the flood of tourism shut off overnight, Titan knew exactly what he needed to survive: a generator, solar panels, and a hacked tether to the stable, and highly illegal, Collective which allowed him to pursue business as usual.
The Augment's profile is surreal. Sprung from Killcreek, he came to Vegas to work on his bucket list and ended up as a bouncer. Pretty soon, Titan owned his own den of sin.
This ought to be interesting.
I ease off the rockets and settle onto the roof of a building behind a flickering neon sign. "Sneaky Pete's", declares the blue and red neon while a purple set of eyes jitters over the roof line. Music thumps through layers of tar and insulation. A generator hums at the center beside a clever homemade cell tower constructed of galvanized pipe and an outdoor antenna. None of this is legal, but I'm not here to make arrests.
Tearing the antennae free from its moorings with a quick tug feels good. For one, it's a rejection of Eric and Chroma's plans. There's also a more visceral reason.
I'll miss this bad boy in the fight against Vulkan. Inside Wormfood, there's a sort of disembodied feeling like you might get when playing a VR game. In the prototype, I feel connected to each tiny motion. I forget the suit's strength isn't my own. The ability to fly, not natural.
Next, I rip out the plug on the generator. The neon sputters and winks out while I jet to the parking lot. The rhythmic pulse of hip hop has been replaced by muffled shouts. People stumble outside, and the HUD tracks each one, boxing in their faces to create drunken portraits of confusion.
I get the need for a bucket list. Mine is long overdue. I guess if I'm being honest, I might have considered at least a visit to a strip club somewhere on there but way below throwing out the opening pitch for a Giants game.
Dazed, most of the patrons bumble along the wall or in bleary knots, laughing about their bad luck. Only a few see the dark armor in the unlit space where a valet podium once stood. Intoxicated, one tosses me a ticket and a wad of bills. Another who's had less to drink freezes, then bolts for the street.
I didn't enter the building because I wanted to do this in the open and save the creepy old dudes from becoming statistics. Getting them all to run is ideal. This doesn't hold for the next group.
Girls make their way through the door clad in loose robes or remnants of some costume they were half-way through discarding. Once again, I haven't much thought this through. I've got no way to stare at my feet or the starry sky. The HUD relentlessly tracks each swaying body. Ayana's pointed criticism about my sexual experience feels suddenly relevant. I came prepared to fight an Augment not confront...this.
One of the girls screams and rushes back inside. To my surprise, the rest don't follow suit. One even steps closer, her robe leaving little to the imagination.
"Calm down, ladies. Even Augment hunters need a lap dance." She smiles, not the least bit intimidated. "You on vacation or something?"
I've had odd reactions to public appearances ever since FreedomNet played up the whole hero angle. Most of the fights though, I've managed to keep outside population centers. This time, the brief specified Titan worked and lived in this same damn building which gave me little choice. And why would he ever leave?
"I need to speak to Pete."
Another one of the exotic dancers comes forward, emboldened by her friend's response. "You here for a job? 'Cause if you be here for a job, strippin' outta that armor gonna take too damn long. Boys be impatient." The night shift at Sneaky Pete's has a good laugh.
She's bold. The shifting mid-thigh robe isn't even my focus anymore. I get the feeling she's about to get in my face.
I show her my hands. "Pete. Titan. I need to see him. This doesn't involve you."
"You a robot?" asks the other. She's slipped in front of the one who seemed ready to pounce. Her own flimsy robe has come undone. "Or you just hidin' in there? No matter to me," she says, her finger tracing the leading edge of an armor plate on my...the armor's...chest. "Maybe you got attachments. I ain't never met a guy who couldn't use a few batteries every now and then."
I haven't seen this much flesh since that one time in bed with an escaped lab experiment. My hormones had been the first thing to thaw when escaping the bunker, but life put them back into cold storage. Girlfriends, or the vague idea of having one, had always been somewhere behind saving Dad, freeing Mom, trying not to die.
"I'm not on the market," I say, backing up, giving ground. For fuck's sake.
"Target locked. Shock deployment set for female, approximately one hundred fifteen pounds," Drake suggests.
"This ain't a commitment," she replies, moving steadily forward.
The bold one, or should I say, the other bold one, is checking over her shoulder. Damn, a distraction. I almost want to let it work. Not to see if I can earn a free show, but to see if that same reckless lust is even there anymore. Or has it gone somewhere else?
Anger. Regret. An overwhelming need to change the past. What do I have left?
She reaches again, and I intercept her hand. The grip causes a squeak of pain, and she crumples. I'm not holding her that tight, am I? I release her hand and stagger away as her friends rush forward. The HUD tracks their faces as they form a defensive wall around their co-worker. All are shouting and angry. One throws her shoe. A goddamn shoe which Drake tracks, eager to unnecessarily obliterate.
I have a mission.
"Kill the audio," I demand, and Drake complies.
Muted, their protests aren't much easier to ignore. The full horizon HUD tracks them. A knot of half-exposed flesh, huddled protectively, anguished faces contorting with every curse. Who approaches a walking weapon anyway? Lying down in front of a tank would be as effective. And for what? To help a fugitive?
"Scan the building," I say.
Doppler imaging reveals several more figures moving around inside. Some are crouched low, breathing stressed and trapped under a solid surface—table, stage, or bar. A pair goes about business as usual, a private dance in the dark. Another stumbles through tighter spaces at the back. Collisions with the wall and heavy, desperate footsteps paint a digital afterimage of escape as somebody familiar enough with the building makes their way to the rear exit in the total darkness.
I do the ladies a favor and make sure they're clear of the jet wash before I launch. The first one to approach, she stands, the tiny robe a pennant whipping from her shoulders. Lip reading isn't part of the algorithms, but I don't need a computer assist on this one.
"Don't kill him, asshole!"