PatchNote

The ever growing system that was A-mhàin City, a circuit board of neon-advertisements; concrete monoliths and congested road networks.

The rain fell in sheets, impacting the concrete in the static pattern of an analogue radio. Her hood was doing little to protect her, having been soaked through as soon as she’d left the derelict processing plant. As far as she was concerned, the meeting was over. Brick and Breeya had devolved into childish arguments, and The Twins disappeared half an hour earlier. She gave it another half until the bickering couple realised everyone had gone. It wasn’t as if Jade could be much help when they resorted to politics, she didn’t know what she was talking about. All she knew was that someone had to do something.

The streetlights pierced through the rain as she walked. Beacons in the darkness of an early November evening. Each light taking Jade closer to her pad; each break in the darkness a checkpoint on her journey home. It was long and arduous, but these old Glaswegian streets flowed through her veins. Many of them had been the same since the late twenties, some had been completely rebuilt, others were buried under years of redevelopment and urban expansion. Once she reached the defunct M8 – now the express way though to the other side of the city on the east coast – she could grab the orange line of the subway. It would take her most of the way home, and she would avoid the traffic coming out of the corporate sector. At least the above ground traffic. She’d be hitting the trains at one of their busiest points, quitting time for the bootlickers.

She’d spent her entire life in this city, watching it rise and fall like the breathing of an abusive lover. She was here when the ashes settled from the war, wandering the streets while watching its rebirth and she would likely be here long after the city was abandoned to time, scattered with the rest in the Necropolis. Each new high-rise another glimmering watchtower of corporate dominance; each new mega-building a shrine to low-income housing solutions and starvation; each new transport expansion a reminder of how large the metropolitan area had become. The ever growing system that was A-mhàin City, a circuit board of neon-advertisements; concrete monoliths and congested road networks.

The penultimate stretch of her walk led her along part of the old canal that once connected Glasgow and Edinburgh. A canal that has long since been drained and repurposed to facilitate sewage and agricultural run off from some of the hydroponics farms that now occupied Port Dundas. As Jade made her way across Speaker Martin’s Lock an uneasy feeling crawled its way down her spine. A chill that reminded her of Amethyst’s bionic fingers against her skin – cold and unfeeling; a mockery of a loving embrace. Something uncomfortable and profoundly sinister. She huddled into herself as she walked, the rain still pounding against her thin Gore-Tex jacket, the hood from her jumper sticking to her hair, beads rolling down her face – their acidic taste tingling the corners of her mouth.

Through the deafening downpour came another sound, slowly building against the white noise of the world, approaching her at a steady pace as if someone was fiddling with the radio dial after finally deciding on which station to change it to. Only this station played rhythmic thumping, the music of machinery. A heavy thud followed by a softer one, then another heavy and a further soft. She’d been told that some of the drills in the oil flats north of the perimeter had a similar sound and pattern, but she was miles away from the walls and no one would have been driving supports for construction at this time. The thumping was joined by an accompanying splash, one that displaced the water that had been pooling along the path. A larger splash followed by a smaller one, a heavy splash then a softer one, and the squelch of flesh inside a wet boot. This wasn’t machinery, not entirely, and it definitely wasn’t some new-age industrial music pushing its way through the static. They were footsteps.

Her pace quickened as she huddled further into her jacket in an attempt to quell the icy affront of both the weather and her own defence mechanisms. She was rushing towards the busier A-road that served as one of the connections to the freeway and the entrance to the outer corporate sector, where her subway station resided; where salvation lay. She heard the shambling behind her match pace, not yet trying to gain on her, still trying to intimidate her, and it was working. She had made herself small on instinct, hidden herself into a coat that would provide little protection should an assailant plant a knife between her ribs, or fire a bullet through her belly. Her hand fell to her left side and rested against her upper thigh, the holster that should encase her own firearm alarmingly missing. She must have left it back at the meat plant, Brick would probably have picked it up and made some mocking comment about how she should never leave anywhere without a handgun. Now she might never get to hear his lecture about gun safety again. The acrid rain was soon joined by the briny tears that were crawling down her cheeks.

Now the thundering strides were speeding up. It was as if they knew they had broken her, brought her to the pinnacle of fear; made her realise she was unarmed and unprotected, and chosen that exact moment to gain on her, to pounce for their attack. The perfect ambush predator.

She was approaching the freeway now and the subway station lay a mere three hundred meters away. She could sprint, but if her pursuer was augmented like she suspected, they would be able to catch her but they were gaining on her anyway. She could hear the rhythmic pounding behind her and she was barely keeping it out of grappling range. At any moment she could be grabbed, subdued and be at the mercy of her attacker. She was no use in close quarters combat, her skills came from her netrunning. That was it! Her netrunning! If this pursuer was augmented, then their cybernetics would have been linked to their neural network allowing their brain to control the augments. It was the footsteps that had ultimately given them away, and why Jade had been fearful that this person was enhanced. If one of their legs had been replaced with a cyber-limb then one footstep would sound heavier than the other, that was what had made her think of machinery. Their movements would be perfectly natural, no limp or strut, but the sound always gave them away. If she could somehow get this person in front of her or in line of sight long enough to make the connection, she could use her hand terminal to access their personal network and disrupt the signal between the brain and the limb, freezing it in place. She only needed a couple of seconds, but turning around surely meant death. 

Two hundred meters. The phosphorescent lights of the station were coming into view, beaming the logo of the SPT through the waves of mist. Crowds of people streaming down the stairs; hundreds of witnesses waiting for the next train home. She was nearly free of this nightmare, nearly able to slide between two people with contrasting clothing styles and disappear like her tears in the rain.

One second the station was in front of her, the next it was disappearing above her head, her vision replaced by the pavement coming to slap her in the face. Pain shot up her leg as her ankle buckled and the other escaped the grip of the concrete, gliding over top of the puddles of water and kicking it up in a raucous splash behind her. Her hands fell in front of her too late, she felt her wrist snap under the sudden pressure of her body, the weak tendons failing to support her weight. A warm hand grasped her shoulder and overturned her form, tears still flowing down her face, the rain clouding her vision of the attacker. She reached into her pocket.

“Please…don’t.” Jade cried.

Her plea rooted the assailant long enough for her terminal to connect with the person’s neural implants. A simple ice pick program gave her access to their entire bio-network and with one press of a button, she sent an overload of commands to their leg. There was a sudden anguished scream and Jade felt the hand that gripped her shoulder pull away. She scrambled to her feet, not bothering to look behind her as she ran towards the station.

“You bitch! You weren’t good for anything anyway!” they screamed. Each word was guttural and full of pain. She had likely severed some of the nerve connections between the cybernetic limb and his organic body. She hadn’t just left the man unable to control the heavy weight of his prosthetic, but had also sent shock waves through their body, firing all the pain receptors in their brain. It would be like watching a part of your body slowly be engulfed in flames, feeling each crackle of your flesh as it charred. Cybernetics may be replacements for organic limbs, but they cause you a hell of a lot more pain.

When she had reached the steps of Cowcaddens station, she afforded herself a look back, a small admiration of her handiwork. The man – and she could now tell it was a man – was flailing in agony, trying to force any sort of movement from his leg. His arms tugging at the mechanical thigh in a vain attempt to lift it away from the group. It moved maybe half a foot before slamming back against the pathway. If it had been a more contemporary model, the reset time would be less than three minutes, still long enough for Jade to get away, but this model was likely outdated and drastically in need of replacement. He couldn’t afford the upgrades, and that meant he would be stuck out in the rain for at least fifteen minutes. She would be long gone by then.

She watched a little longer as the rain turned the man into a sopping wet scarecrow, planted in his small claim of the city. People pushed past her and she was dragged along, engulfed in the crowd. Her temporary art installation fading behind a sea of both organic and augmented bodies. The ticket gate beeped as her terminal tapped against it, and the train doors closed with a clunk. Jade sent a message to Brick, her hands shaking slightly from the slow decrease in adrenaline, she retyped it multiple times until she spelt every word mostly correctly. He would know what she meant.

Drop the gun off at my pad tomorrow and spare me the lecture pls.