Slanders Venomed Spear
Black cloth running across her face jolted Kerr from her stupor, but her head still spun.
No data from her Opti either. Kerr blinked and refocussed her eyes.
Styx graffiti on bare walls. Some old scaffolding and metal fire doors.
Sections of the ceiling glowed dimly – new enough to be made completely of Hexaline instead of concrete.
She wasn’t in the old part of Tyton, but the Styx controlled dozens of other vacant warehouses. She could be anywhere.
“EMP field.” Cinder’s voice echoed off the bare walls and a fire door shut behind her. “But I’m sure you figured that out already.”
“Brave of you to think working with the Styx will get you anywhere but scavenged for parts.” Kerr tried to face Cinder, but her arms and legs were tied to the chair.
“I merely stepped up to fill the void.” Cinder’s boots fell heavily on the floor. “Chalice is gone. You disappeared. Abandoned us.”
Her venom caught in her throat. “You’ve been hunting Chalice. I heard everything.”
“You were there when that Adlet girl attacked us?” Rolling up his sleeves, wriggling artificial fingers, Cinder stepped into her field of view. “I wondered who led an outsider to us. Traitor”
“Do the rest of them know you want to traffic teenagers?”
Kerr caught the back of his hand across her face. She spat and grinned. “They don’t, yeah?”
Cinder hummed angrily, but restrained himself from hitting her again. “Seems you know the girl pretty well. Lusa.” He drew out the pronunciation. “She attacked me and killed Piston. Were you trying to sell us to the Adlets all along? After he took you in?”
“She also took my arm” Kerr tried to flex her fingers, but her arm wouldn’t respond in the EMP field.
“Then why?” Cinder narrowed his eyes. “What is she offering you?”
“You’ve a boring sex life, yeah? Some of us enjoy a little pain.”
Cinder hit her again. Kerr coughed and laughed. “Harder, daddy.”
He reared to strike, but hidden in the shadows, another hand caught his wrist. “Tech first.” It was a woman’s voice with the characteristic Styx lisp from their fangs, but her face was obscured by a high collar and a curtain of maroon hair.
Cinder jerked his arm away. “Tell us how they block us from reading their biosigs.”
“I will, yeah.” Kerr gathered her bravado. “We’ve already chatted over what she did to me.”
Cinder grabbed her jaw and forced her to look at him. Kerr stared defiantly at his optical implant. A bead of sweat ran disgustingly down his bald temple. His hormone regulator hissed, shunting cortisol out of his system. “I know you’re fucking her.”
“Jealous? We all saw what she did when you tried to touch her, yeah?”
Cinder threw her face to the side and snickered. “Why are you still protecting her? She used you too. Play it.”
The back wall lit up with the recording Greasegun had taken from the bar.
Kerr’s stomach dropped. Greasegun’s betrayal wasn’t what stung, it was her own stupidity.
There she was, wasted and burbling over a girl she’d just met.
Who’d just discarded her for a fucking computer.
Kerr should have known she was only ever good for a quick fuck.
It didn’t matter if it was Chalice or Lusa or anyone else.
Why had she believed that Lusa wanted something more? What more could there possibly be?
But Lusa had also defended her. Killed for her. Why would she do that if she was only going to throw her away? None of it made sense.
“What do you know about her tech?” Cinder circled her chair.
Kerr turned her face away from the images on the wall. Kerr didn’t know everything, but she knew the tech was a myth. “Did you see any tech on her?” It wasn’t a direct betrayal, but it felt like one.
Kerr couldn’t see him, but she heard Cinder’s footsteps stop. “Go on.”
Kerr’s chest rose and fell too quickly. The vice gripping her heart wouldn’t relent.
She should have learned after Chalice that she couldn’t trust anyone.
Telling Cinder that they would find them camping just outside the city would serve her right.
She was worth more than that. She was done being someone else’s fool.
Her lip bobbed, the words hesitating on the edge like a nervous diver, but they refused to jump. Greasegun was right. Lusa could cut her heart to pieces and she would ask her to do it again.
“The Adlet’s tech is incompatible with yours.” Lusa’s secrets would remain safe with her.
“What does that mean? We need new hardware?” Cinder’s optical implant twitched.
“No.” Kerr shook her head. A drop of blood fell thickly on her leg. “The biosig blocker overheats any existing cyberware, even if it’s turned off.”
“Is this what she told you?” Cinder straightened his stance, crossing his arms.
“Chalice had the specs,” Kerr leaned forward as much as she was able. “What the fuck do you think we were trading for?” She turned to the woman still standing in the shadow. “Before you partnered with these paedophiles and banjaxed the whole thing.”
The woman stepped forward, brushing hair away from her face. “Your outrage is immature. It’s business. Nothing more.”
“Well, you’re shite at business, then. It’s a feckin’ mystery how you’re holding half this city. Your men still don’t have Chalice, and we barely broke a sweat relieving you of that DocPod. Many thanks, by the way.” Kerr projected her most confident grin.
The woman wrinkled her nose. “Why did you bring it to Model 2?”
“That’s another thing we have.”
Cinder turned to the woman with a raised eyebrow. “Masho?”
Masho’s eyes narrowed only slightly. “I didn’t get this far believing filthy tunnel rats tied to chairs. Prove it.”
“It’s in my back pocket, yeah?” Kerr could feel her pulse throbbing in her throat.
“Where is it?” Masho’s jaw flexed.
Kerr caught a gleam of metal. She had external vocal processors, not implants. That’s why her collar was so high. Her curiosity got the better of her. “Don’t you have the fancy DocPods?”
Masho pulled her collar tighter. “We’re discussing Model 2. Where is it?”
“With Chalice.” That made no sense. Chalice had locked herself and Pinga in the vault long before they had acquired Model 2. Kerr hoped they didn’t know that.
Masho snapped her gaze to Cinder. Cinder shrunk. “How the fuck was I supposed to know? They didn’t tell me anything!”
“Ah, right. I was about to ring the snivelling shite-sack and tell him all about it before you nabbed me.” Kerr quite enjoyed seeing Cinder put in his place, watching his optical implant jerk between her and Masho.
“Then give us the specs for the biosig suppressor.” Masho took a step forward, staring down at Kerr.
She tried to calm the roiling in her stomach. “If I decompress the file, it’ll fry your cyberware. That tends to kill people.”
Masho turned slowly to Cinder.
“You still need me to finish making your weapons,” Cinder yelled, voice shaking.
“Hmm.” Masho turned back to Kerr. “Remove his hardware then.”
“What?” Cinder stumbled backward into the arms of two Styx, their unnatural green eyes mocking him. Cinder screamed as they dragged him away.
“Don’t go anywhere.” Masho said flatly, following. Footsteps trailed away and then, nothing. Kerr strained her aural processors, but they were offline like everything else
Surrounded by nothing but the sound of dust falling, she clenched her jaw, as if that might stop the sticky warmth spilling across her cheek.
Think, she told herself. She needed to survive this first. Then she could figure out what to do about Lusa.
The thought of reuniting with her, leaping into her arms, pulling those glorious noises from her throat – stop it.
Kerr reminded herself that her hormone regulator wasn’t working and she had to focus.
She could figure out how she had become so addicted to her later, even if Lusa didn’t want her back.
Masho returned, striding with her long, heavy coat swishing about her ankles. Kerr craned her aching neck to get a better look. Combat boots thudding dully against the floor. Loose-fitting TacPants. Her black coat with the unusually high collar.
She was either incredibly wealthy, or…
“You don’t have real cyberware, do you?” Kerr’s face had swollen and the words came out muffled.
Masho raised an eyebrow along with the corner of her lip. She pulled back her collar and removed the ancient prosthetic, revealing an ugly scar. She refastened it, “How did you know?”
“The coat.” Kerr shook her head. “You have no Thermabulle.”
“Clever.” Masho waited for the implication to sink in.
They stared at each other for several moments. Kerr’s eyes widened when she realised. “You knew about the biosig suppressor.”
“There is no such thing.” Masho righted her collar. “If you had a scanner, you would see that I also have no biosig. Nor can I use DocPods.”
“Then why…”
“He was a greedy simpleton who would have destroyed your little group and sold its women and girls to us for the chance to be in charge for a day. I disliked him.” Masho toyed with a ring on her finger. “Let us see if I dislike you.”
Kerr spat in disgust. “You’re the one who wanted to buy us from him. You’re worse than he is.”
“Was.” Masho chewed the inside of her cheek. “He did not survive removal of his implants.”
Kerr blanched. She hated Cinder. She remembered hoping that Lusa would kill him when she rewatched the footage from her Opti. It still felt strange to have this woman talk about his life ending with such nonchalance.
“You’re worth practically nothing” Masho flipped her hand like Kerr was a snowflake to be brushed off her coat. “A year of revenue before you died, perhaps.”
“Then why? Why make trafficking a condition of the deal?” Kerr flexed her good forearm. They weren’t like Lusa’s. She had no hope of breaking through the bindings.
Masho shrugged quickly, like it was obvious. “Women put ideas in men’s heads. Make them want more. Remove the women,” Masho held out one hand, then the other. “They have nothing to fight over. No future we don’t control.”
Kerr sneered. “You’re disgusting.”
“Am I?” Masho did her best to copy and mock Kerr’s expression. “Disgusting is relative. It wasn’t too long ago we killed your kind on sight.”
“My kind?”
“The kind that does what you do with your girlfriend. There is much she hasn’t told you.”