Part 2
### Chapter 1: 1 A New Skin
1 – A New Skin
Grando Scrim watched as his men dragged the plastic-sheathed body into the backroom of his club, The Velvet Strip . Orin grunted, grabbing a chair as he pulled the skin’s top half into the center of the room. The other employee, Pelo, was barely holding up his half, fumbling with the slick, vacuum-sealed packaging as the skin’s feet kept slipping out of his hands.
“Come on, dipshit,” Orin growled. “Damn flipper-fingers. I should’ve just carried him myself.”
“ Flipper-fingers ?” Pelo dropped the skin’s feet and held up his mismatched hands. One had three grayish, single-jointed fingers, and the other was a cheap wire-job—unskinned mechanical rods. “You making fun of—”
“Shut up!” Grando snarled. “Get the damn body in the chair.” He watched as the men stopped bickering and got to work. Muttering and cursing, they hoisted their package into the seat, and Pelo held it steady while Orin pulled out a box cutter and started slicing away the plastic shroud. The skin was fitted with a mask—a breather to keep it alive during transit. The damn things didn’t even have the wherewithal to breathe without a deck. Even so, the vibrancy of its flesh and its thick head of dark hair were enough to proclaim its health as Orin peeled back the plastic.
“Damn guy’s young,” Pelo remarked.
“Poor bastard,” Orin grunted, slicing the plastic over the skin’s chest. He nicked the smooth, tan flesh of the thing’s pectoral, and a thin bead of dark blood welled up.
“Careful, you idiot,” Grando said reflexively. As if to justify his chastisement, he added, “Kid sold his body; God knows why. Maybe he was saving his sick mama. Anyway, no sense cutting it up for no damn reason.”
“Sorry, Boss.” Orin continued to slice, working his way down to the skin’s waist. Then he looked up at Pelo, who was holding the thing’s shoulders. “Hold it steady, man.”
“I am!”
Grando watched the thug’s wirelike fingers flex with the strain of keeping the body from sliding off the plastic chair. He almost chuckled, but that wouldn’t be good for his image. He walked over to the desk he kept in the storeroom—sometimes a man wanted a quiet place to work where legitimate business wouldn’t come looking—and picked up his stogie. It was the real deal, not some vapor fake.
He spent more on stogies than most of his men spent on rent. It made a statement every time he sparked one up, and this was no exception. He leaned against his desk, stuffed the fat, hand-wrapped cigar between his thick, wine-stained lips, then flicked his thumb, producing a flame from the little mod he’d had installed in the nailbed.
As the blue-green torch ignited his chem-laced tobacco, Grando inhaled deeply, closing his eyes while the nicotine went straight to his brain. His reverie was short-lived. Orin cleared his throat and asked, “Should we leave this mask on it, Boss?”
Grando opened his eyes and regarded the naked body on the chair. It was young—probably not more than twenty. Not overly muscled, but not as skinny as some of the poor bastards in his neighborhood who might be tempted to sell their flesh—literally. “Leave it on for now. Don’t want the damn thing to croak on us. Wasn’t cheap.”
Pelo steadied the body on the chair, then let go, taking a step back. “You sure this is worth it?”
Grando glared at him. He’d already explained to these two knuckleheads what he had. Was it worth repeating? He supposed, for bragging’s sake, it might be. Grando reached into his pocket and pulled out the neurodeck—a domino-sized lump of gold and compressed carbon. He held it up, the gold inlay glinting in the dim amber lights, and the crimson seal winking balefully. “You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you, Boss!” Orin replied immediately, taking a step back. He was a big guy, Orin. He even had a glitchy-as-hell aura system. Even so, he knew Grando could whistle into the ether and have ten men just like him ready to kill, torture, maim—whatever he needed. Being a boss was a big deal, and muscle like Orin knew where their next meal was coming from. Pelo wasn’t quite so smart.
“Boss, that’s a pretty piece of tech, but, like, it was in the trash! Maybe just sell it?”
“This is a royal seal, boy,” Grando growled, tapping his thumb on the deck. “It was found lodged in a defunct recycler from the salvage of an Imperial dreadnought—a ship that had been floating in orbit over Titan for a hundred years!” He shook the neurodeck. “Whoever this is , he or she was around a long time ago, and they were connected. ”
Again, he tapped the royal seal. “A Royal . You think they might be happy we brought them back? You think they might show some gratitude? Maybe they know where some bits are stowed away. If not, maybe someone high up will pay a ransom. I don’t know how , but this thing is going to pay off big-time—way more than that skin cost me.”
While he spoke, Grando moved closer to the body, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. “If I could afford the process, I’d put myself in a deck and take that damn skin for myself. Give this big old body to the Royal.” That was the thing—putting a brain in a deck was a hundred times harder and more expensive than making a skin ready to receive one. Only the elite had neurodecks—high-end mercs, Royals, wealthy execs. Scum like him and his boys didn’t rate. He flipped the dense little rectangle in his palm. Yet.
“Where do you plug that thing, Boss?” Orin asked, peering at the naked body.
Grando frowned. “Somewhere on the head or maybe the spine—”
“Oh, I saw it!” Pelo said eagerly, pushing the skin’s head forward and exposing a weird, black polymer port at the nape of the neck, almost concealed by the thick, dark hair.
“Hang on,” Grando said. “Tie his wrists to the chair in case he freaks out when he wakes up.”
Orin nodded. “Smart, Boss.” He walked over to the bench in the back of the storeroom and rifled through some toolboxes until he found what he was looking for: a couple of good-sized zip-ties. Grando watched as he took hold of the skin’s wrists and zipped them tightly to the plastic chair’s arms. “That good?”
Grando frowned. “I dunno. You think he could break those ties?”
Pelo let out a high-pitched snicker, shaking his head. “No way, Boss! We use those to hook people up all the time.”
Orin shrugged. “I mean, I could break ’em, but I got this system, so…”
“Well, this skin ain’t got a system in it. Would have cost me twice as much.” Grando hefted the little neurodeck, marveling at its weight. The damn thing was dense . “All right, let me see here.” He walked around behind the body and aligned the tiny slots on the sides of the neurodeck to the ones on the edge of the port. “I think I just put it here and push it in…”
He’d barely applied any pressure on the deck before something chirped, and then it slid into the port as smooth as butter. Several tiny clicks sounded from the back of the skin’s skull, and then a shutter slid closed on the port, and the body began to vibrate.
“Holy shit, Boss!” Orin cried, stepping away from the unnatural sight.
“Shit! Is it seizing?” Pelo asked, also stepping back. It was like the two meatheads were afraid they’d be seen as guilty in Grando’s eyes if the damn thing died.
“Calm down! It’s probably normal…” He trailed off as he, too, backed away, watching the naked body jerk and vibrate, rattling the plastic chair legs on the stained concrete floor. “Just give it a minute…”
###
//Equilibrium Cybernetics, Neurodeck Mark 7.9 initializing//
Hector swam in a sea of darkness, a well of nothingness. All he knew was the faint, distant thrum of a heartbeat.
//Compatible corpus vivum detected, commencing memory and neural pattern remapping.//
Images flashed through Hector’s mind—his mother, his childhood dog, his father, and a thousand other faces. They came faster and faster, and soon it wasn’t just people, but experiences as well—an interminable kaleidoscope of memories, through which he seemed to fall at an ever-increasing pace: school, fights, girls, kisses, sex, military service, the Imperial Guard, promotions, honors, accolades, the Conti family… Esme.
Hector’s eyes snapped open. They stung, and everything was blurry. Something was in them—some kind of jelly-like goop. Antiseptic? He blinked, grunting as he tried to breathe. Something was in his mouth and his nostrils. Something was clamped around his face. He heard voices, but they weren’t clear. They echoed—muffled, like his head was underwater.
//Neural pattern remapping paused—insufficient host gray matter patterning. Some memories will be unavailable until remedied. Commencing background patterning. You may experience brief moments of nausea or disorientation until the process is complete.//
Hector blinked his stinging eyes, shaking his head, trying to get the stuff out of them. Someone grabbed his head, steadying it while they prodded the thing that was blocking his airway.
//Unpacking Chrysalis 9 Aura System modules. This will take a few moments.//
As the stuff in his eyes started to clear, Hector made sense of his surroundings. He could feel he was in a chair, and he could see a concrete floor. He saw people’s legs—some wearing canvas trousers, others in black slacks. As someone grunted and tugged on the thing in his mouth, he focused closer and saw big, scarred knuckles gripping a black plastic breathing apparatus. It began to pull away, dragging tubes with it.
Hector coughed and gagged as the silicone lines slid out of his nostrils and throat. He still couldn’t make out words, but he heard garbled voices and laughter. As the last of the tubes slid free, he leaned forward and coughed, hacking up a great gob of clear, slimy solution that spattered on the concrete, splashing his bare feet. His feet? They didn’t look right.
Of course they don’t, idiot. You’re in a new skin. His inner voice was harsh, grating, always irritated when he dwelled on the obvious.
He blinked again, still coughing as he tried to sit up and look around. He was in a cramped, dim space, stacked with liquor boxes and aluminum kegs. The guy with the scarred knuckles stood before him—a big bruiser wearing a green canvas jacket. His face looked like he enjoyed lending it out in service as a chopping block. The man in the slacks leaned close, and Hector shifted his gaze toward him, noting a matching suit jacket and a much handsomer face—at least it wasn’t scarred and bruised.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The suit said something, but Hector couldn’t make out the words. He shook his head and tried to rub his ear on his shoulder. That got the man’s attention, and he pointed, twirling his finger in a little circle while he said something.
//Chrysalis 9 modules unpacked. Accessing refinement log and applying schema to new corpus vivum… Process halted. 95,000 aura potentia units lost to entropy. Insufficient aura to refine corpus vivum or apply archived refinements, abilities, and boosts.//
Hector’s blood froze as he read the notice. How did I lose all my potentia? Entropy? None of it made sense. His deck should have been in a conditioner while he waited for a skin. Even if not, to lose all his aura potentia—it wasn’t possible.
He coughed, trying to curse as a third person, someone behind him, stuck a hard, sharp object in his ear and twisted, scooping something out. As it cleared the canal, his hearing clarified with almost painful relief. He heard the hum of machinery, the not-so-distant bass beats of club music, and a whiny voice behind him saying, “ Gross! ”
“It’s just packing material,” the big guy grunted. “Like greasing up a nice piece of tech before shipping it off.”
The guy in the suit snorted. “Thanks for the insight, Orin.” He leaned closer to Hector. “Can you hear me now?”
Hector nodded, blinking. His eyes still burned.
“Want me to do the other ear?” the high-pitched voice asked.
“Just do it,” the suit said.
Hector held still, bracing himself, then the probing digit slid into his ear and scraped out a plug of goop.
“Better?” the suit asked.
Hector nodded, inhaling through his raw, runny nose. Damn skin feels raw. No nanites?
“I need you to tell me who you are, Mister Royal.”
Before he could puzzle out the strange nature of the question, Hector’s neurodeck flashed him another message:
//Aura System installed. Functionality limited by corpus vivum. Usable aura-pool capped at five units, regenerating at the rate of one unit per minute. Corpus vivum ambient aura potentia applied to: Strength Boost.//
The suit was still talking, but Hector didn’t hear him. He was too busy staring at the dismal news. His aura system—one of the best in the empire—was back to square one. He’d worked so hard to build up his potentia pool!
Almost a goddamn 100k of boosts, skills, and —
The big guy slapped him, rattling Hector’s skull and sending little stars floating through his vision. He blinked and then glared up at him. He moved to stand, tensing his arm to swing, but it finally dawned on him that he was fastened to the chair. The guy behind him slammed his hands on Hector’s shoulders, holding him down as the big guy leaned close. “Boss is talking to you.”
“What?” he grunted.
“Who—are—you?” the suit asked, puffing on a cigar.
“Hector.” He stalled as he mentally accessed his aura system and looked at his status:
//Status:
Aura System: Chrysalis 9 – Gold-3
Level: 1
Archetype: --
Aura Pool: 1/5
Aura Potentia: 0
Attributes:
Strength: 8
Speed: 9
Vitality: 8
Perception: 11
Corpus Vivum Enhancements:
—
Abilities and Boosts:
Strength Boost: + Aura
End Report.//
“And who is Hector?” The suit leaned close again, putting his cigar just centimeters from Hector’s right eye. He could feel the cherry’s unpleasant warmth, and the smoke made him blink.
“Hector Finalis. Guardian Primus of the Conti family.” Chew on that, you street rat. Did you know who you had tied to a chair?
The big guy, Orin, made an amused grunt. “ Finalis , huh? They really do that, Boss? Give the royal guards funny last names? I thought that was just in the serials.”
The “boss” grinned like a cat, his cigar held between his teeth as he stood. “Oh, they do that, Orin, they do that. Look at this, boys! A devil-damned Royal in my storeroom!”
“Release me,” Hector said, his voice cracking as he tried to swallow some saliva to soothe his raw throat. “The Conti family—”
“The who, Boss?” the voice behind Hector interrupted.
“Quiet.” The suit waved a hand. “I’m having my AI check.”
Hector watched as the man’s eyes flickered with tiny sparkles. After a moment, he pulled out his cigar, chuckled, and looked down at him. “What year do you think it is?”
Hector scowled, but he doubted it carried much weight in the weak, young skin. “AE 412.”
“What the shit , Boss?” the guy behind Hector asked, his voice rising an octave.
The boss chuckled again, shaking his head. “Sorry, Hector, my boy. It’s AE 609. You’ve been out for a while. My AI says the Conti family was slaughtered in a coup, by the way. Looks like you didn’t do your job very well.”
“ Lies ,” Hector growled, some of his old menace tinting the words. The big guy stepped back, startled by the tone.
“Don’t you remember? Hold on…” The boss held up a finger, the gold ring on his knuckle winking in the dim lights. “My AI looked you up. You’re supposed to be dead. I mean, real dead. Hah! It says you were a traitor! It says you turned on the Contis and helped with the coup. Killed during the Night of the Gray Phage.”
Orin snapped his thick, calloused fingers. “Oh shit, Boss! I think I heard of that. I think there’s a vid serial based on it!”
“There sure is,” the boss replied, sighing. “Dammit, though. I suppose that means this guy doesn’t have much to offer us. Still, I bet the Royals would love to find out we recovered his deck. Hell, even the Imperials! What do you think, boys? Should we send a message to the Lautrec Embassy?”
Hector didn’t hear their further taunts. His mind was reeling. The Contis… dead ? Esme, too?
I’m a traitor ? No .
No matter how he tried, though, he couldn’t remember what had happened—why he was in a new skin or what had led to the demise of his old one. He shook his head, looking at his aura level:
//Aura Pool: 3/5
End Report.//
His system had only been able to install one boost, but at least it was a decent one. What would it do for him if he used only three aura? What about five? It seemed so small, but his body was fresh… Five aura wasn’t much compared to his old levels, but it might just be enough.
Push an aura, gain three on the scale—that’s the rule.
“What’s he thinking about, Boss?” Orin asked, leaning over so he looked down his big, crooked nose into Hector’s face.
So, if the system says I’ve got eight strength, I could add fifteen to that. Seems like a pretty damn big boost for a guy in a skin like this.
“I think I blew his mind!” The boss chortled, pulling a big drag off his cigar so the ash blazed.
“Listen,” Hector said, licking his dry lips. They tasted coppery, like blood and salt. It pained him to grind the words out—trickery wasn’t his thing—but he needed to stall. “I’ve got someone I could contact—owes me a favor.”
“Oh, yeah?” The boss turned to walk in a slow circle, making a show of mulling over Hector’s proposal.
Hector looked at his aura report:
//Aura Pool: 4/5
End Report.//
The big guy was still leaning close. The boss’s back was to him.
It won’t get better.
Hector decided not to wait for his fifth aura unit. He activated his Strength Boost, putting all four of his aura into it.
//Warning! This corpus vivum is not enhanced for aura tolerance; this action may result in an aura overload!//
Hector scowled. He hadn’t seen a message like that in a long, long time. He decided he didn’t care. If he had to mess up the skin a little to break free, so be it. He needed to get out of there before this lowlife “boss” sold him out. He needed to get someplace he could lie low and figure out what the hell had happened. Most importantly, he had people to kill. He’d taken a blood oath. If the Contis were dead, then everyone involved in their killing needed to die.
The thoughts were a flash through his mind, and he once again activated the boost. This time, his system didn’t warn him. This time, his eyes filled with a crimson fire, and his muscles flared with heat as they expanded. His entire body was limned in a furious red glow as the aura poured into him, transforming him into something supernatural, even if only for a few seconds. His thoughts sped up with dopamine and adrenaline; there was nothing like that first aura rush in a new skin.
Heart hammering like he’d just been thrown from an orbital dropship, Hector ripped his arms away from the plastic chair. The left wrist snapped the zip tie. The right wrist shattered the chair arm. In both cases, his flesh tore, and he felt the bones compress dangerously, but they didn’t break.
As his arms came free, he surged upward, smashing his forehead into Orin’s chin. He heard the thug’s teeth clack together, felt the bones in his jaw crunch, and then the big guy flipped back and fell with a thud. A single gasping wheeze escaped his lungs on impact.
“What the—” the guy behind Hector tried to say, but Hector was already whirling, whipping his right fist around in a murderous haymaker. His knuckles caught the much skinnier man on the side of his jaw and, once again, Hector felt bones break—the thug’s neck and jaw, and his wrist.
He turned off the pain. He’d been through a thousand battles, broken a hundred bones, and been shot dozens of times. The pain didn’t matter. He pivoted just in time to see the boss pulling a fat, chrome peacemaker out of his waistband. It looked like an energy weapon, something meant to burn a six-inch hole through a guy.
Hector took a step to his right, lunged forward and down, and swept his leg through the air toward the boss’s knees just as the gun coughed out a buzzing, crackling streak of orange-red plasma. It passed close to Hector’s head—close enough that he felt the heat and smelled burnt hair.
As the boss tried to correct his aim, Hector’s foot crashed into his knee. Unfortunately, his strength boost had worn off, and his new skin had normal bone density. Even so, his form was perfect, and he felt the suit’s knee buckle. He also felt the small bones at the top of his foot protest painfully. Maybe they didn’t break, but something didn’t feel right as he pulled his foot back under him and lurched forward, aiming to capitalize while his opponent struggled to regain his balance.
Hector caught the boss’s wrist as he tried to shove the barrel of his gun at him, then he twisted and pulled him into a wristlock. The man gasped, and the blaster clattered to the concrete. “You fuck! ” he cried, only to whimper in pain the next second as Hector pushed him against his desk.
Hector grunted, struggling to maintain his hold with one properly working hand. His wrist throbbed, and he could see the swollen purple lump of the distended bone.
Grando gasped, “How the hell? How do you have a system ? Goddammit !”
Gold-class neurodeck, fool . “The deck,” Hector grunted.
“L-listen. We can be f-friends. I can help you. You can help me. You’re gonna be screwed out there on your own.”
Hector shook his head, tweaking the guy’s arm. “Why?”
“P-pick up the blaster. Really! I’m a businessman. I already put a pile of bits into that skin you’re wearing. B-be reasonable!”
You shouldn’t have threatened to call the Imperials. “You’ll sell me out.”
“Are you kidding me? That was just me trying to show the upper hand! You think I want anything to do with the Lautrec family? I’m a damn criminal! Even if I handed you over, they’d root around in my brain looking for what else I knew. They’ll turn me into a vegetable!”
Hector pushed him against the desk again, then let go. He took a step back and bent to pick up the blaster. The charge indicator said it had one shot left in it. That was the problem with small, high-powered plasma weapons. He glanced at the two goons sprawled out on the concrete. “I killed the small one.”
The boss waved his hand. “Forget it. I’ve got a hundred like him. What I don’t have is someone with a Royal-class aura system!” He groaned as he pushed himself around the desk and collapsed into his chair. “Damn my eyes, I need a drink. What do you say, uh, Hector? Let’s help each other out.” He reached into a drawer and, while Hector held the gun on him, pulled out a bottle of caramel-colored liquor. “I’m Grando Scrim, by the way. Come on, let’s toast to a new partnership.”
Hector ignored him for the moment, turning to regard the two downed thugs. His aura system allowed him to see the potentia leaking out of the dead one. He strode over to the body and put his hand on the chest, waiting for the crimson vapor to trigger the draw. Even as Grando leaned forward, eyes bulging out, Hector felt the familiar old churning in his gut, and then the vapor poured into his hand, rushing into his body.
//3 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 3.//
As he stood, Hector became aware of Grando’s ongoing babble, “…doing? You’re stripping him? Don’t you need a scraper?”
“No.” Hector stepped over to the other downed goon. A scraper was what someone with a low-end aura system would use to gather potentia. A gold-class system could do it better. At least that used to be the case; he wasn’t sure what had changed in the last couple of hundred years. Considering what he’d seen so far…not much.
When he put his palm on the other goon’s chest, Grando cried, “ Wait! What are you doing?”
Hector looked up, glaring at the man. “ Potentia ,” he growled, as though the word explained everything. In his mind, it did.
“He’s not dead !”
Hector shrugged. It wasn’t his problem—the man shouldn’t have challenged him. Mentally, he reached for the system trigger he knew was there—like how a person might flex a muscle. He was about to pull it, about to signal the aura system to start drawing, but then Grando babbled another rambling promise: “Wait! You’ll kill him in his state! He’s one of my best men. Leave him, and I’ll make it up to you.” He held aloft the bottle of booze. “Come on, we’ll be partners. It’ll pay off a thousand times what you’ll get out of Orin. I swear!”
Hector looked at him, narrowed his eyes, then slowly withdrew his hand, standing. His other hand, the one with the unbroken wrist, still gripped the blaster, its single charge a baited promise. Grando’s offer hung in the air—partnership—promises of another kind. Hector’s mind flashed to Esme, imagining her scream echoing. He had people to kill.
This scum wouldn’t stop him, but maybe he could be of use. The Lautrecs, untouchable in their orbital spires, hoarded aura potentia to keep their corpora viva eternal. He’d play Grando’s game for the moment. But every noble who’d spilled Conti blood would burn. He lowered the blaster, forcing a nod. “For now.”
His aura system pulsed:
//Aura Pool: 2/5. Corpus vivum damage: critical.//
Hector had only five aura and a broken, low-rent skin, but he had a blood oath to keep.
--------------------------------------------------
### Chapter 2: 2 Lemon
2 – Lemon
Grando heaved an enormous sigh and reached up to wipe his forehead. “Thank the dog’s balls! I was hoping you’d be able to see reason. For a minute there, I thought maybe your deck got scrambled from too much time in space…”
Hector tuned him out as he assessed his body. Everything ached, but his left leg felt numb. He turned the blaster on Grando and reached down to rub his thigh.
The crime boss started to step around the desk. “You okay? Did you wreck the skin?”
This skin is fresh. It wasn’t ready for all that aura. “Aura overload.” Hector scanned the room, looking for a place to sit. He’d ruined the only chair other than Grando’s, so he moved that way, pushing past the man to flop into the creaky, wobbly, old desk chair. All the while, he watched Grando and kept the blaster trained on him.
“Balls, man! Take a drink, and I’ll get you some pants.” Grando moved toward the two bodies.
“Don’t.” Hector partially depressed the trigger, making the blaster whine.
Grando chopped his hand in a negative gesture, shaking his head. “Don’t shoot, dammit! I’m just making sure Orin’s alive, and then I’ll get Pelo’s pants for you.”
If he were dead, I’d see his potentia leaking out. Hector watched, eyes narrowed, as the man stuck two of his thick fingers against the big goon’s neck.
“He’s still got a heartbeat. I’m glad, honestly. He’s smarter than average when it comes to my employees.” The crime boss straightened with a grunt, then he moved to the other thug, the one whose neck Hector had snapped. Again, he stooped, straining the seams on his tailored suit pants. He untied the drawstring on the thug’s baggy canvas pants and pulled them off. “You’re in luck. He didn’t shit himself.”
When he tossed the pants to Hector, he pointed to the door. “I’m just gonna call in one of the girls. Don’t worry”—he gestured to the body and the unconscious goon—“they see stuff like this all the time.”
Hector arched an eyebrow. The movement felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. His body wasn’t his body. Sighing, he shook his head, banishing the thoughts as he pulled the pants on over his naked legs. He knew he’d get used to his new skin eventually. If I keep it. He winced as he tried to make a fist with his right hand. The muscles and tendons all felt torn, never mind the fractured bone in his wrist. Even so, he clenched his jaw against the pain, tying the drawstring on the olive green pants.
“Hector, this is Lemon, a dancer here.”
He looked toward Grando’s voice and saw him standing near the door with a young woman. She looked like a doll—the kind soldiers in the guard would fight over, desperate to win the right to leave the bar with her contract. Even so, she had a certain quality, a certain presence , that warranted a second glance. Hector figured she was a lot older than she looked, but it was hard to tell with her smooth skin.
He guessed she’d been successful enough to afford a rejuvenation treatment or two. Still, you could always tell with a rejuv; even when they looked like they were barely out of their teens, there was an air about them that gave away clues toward their real age. Lemon’s first tell was her walk. She just moved too damn gracefully, too damn confidently , to be a young dancer at a place like that.
“ Hector , huh?” She stared at him, taking him in just as he was doing to her.
“He’s a new employee.” Grando chuckled and pointed to Orin and the corpse. “Things got a little rough during the interview.”
“And what do you want from me?” Lemon took a step toward the door, shaking her head. “Something’s not right about him. Something in the eyes.”
“You wanna earn an extra hundred bits for a few nights or not?”
Lemon slowly turned, peering at Grando under angled, white-blonde eyebrows made all the more threatening by the sharp layer of her bangs. “For what?”
Grando shrugged. “I need you to put him up. Give him a place to crash. He’s starting from zero, but we’ve got big plans.”
“ Two hundred a night.” Lemon held out a ring that blinked with tiny purple LEDs. Grando stared at her, his thick lips twisting as he contemplated her words. She tried another angle: “He’s young. He’s tall. He’s gonna eat a lot.”
Grando’s expression concerned Hector. He looked like he was a roll of the dice away from smashing her teeth out. After another moment of Lemon staring and Grando scowling, the tension finally broke, and the boss said, “One-seventy-five, and don’t think about countering again. Also, I’m leaving, and I need you to get him a bug pack. Something for—” Grando looked at Hector, adjusting one of his big gold rings. “What’s wrong with you, Hector? What kind of bugs should she get?”
“Regen—bone and tissue.” He paused, inhaling heavily, then added, “Aura conditioner too.” Unless you want me to fry this skin from the inside.
Lemon tapped her little ring. “That doesn’t sound cheap. Where do I even buy an aura pack? We don’t have ’em here.”
Grando sighed and pressed one of his rings against hers. Hector figured they were bit-lockers. Why weren’t they using an online encrypted bit-vault? Was that how things were done at that level? Physical bit-lockers?
As he pulled his hand away, the boss said, “That should cover it. You can get the aura bugs at Pete’s. A lot of the fighters have systems.” He looked at Hector and added, “Shitty ones.”
“Okay, but he, like, needs shoes and—”
“Check the lost and found. There’s a bunch of shit in there.” Grando looked at Hector again. “I’m out of here. Just go with Lemon. She’ll bring you to me tomorrow, and we can start talking about our plans.” He paused and nodded at the blaster. “I wouldn’t carry that around. The peacekeepers in this district are real bastards.”
Hector scowled at the man, contemplating an objection. He shook the idea off, though; he wasn’t in a position to bargain. It sounded like he’d get fixed up at least, and if he decided Grando was more trouble than he was worth, he’d ditch him in the morning. He nodded.
Grando frowned, but he nodded too, pushing his way past Lemon, but not before saying, “I’ll send Jam in here to take care of Orin and Pelo.” Then he slipped through the door and was gone. Lemon looked at Hector and clicked her tongue, walking closer. Her skirt and blouse were semi-transparent, just enough to reveal the shape of things that lay beneath the fabric. Hector studiously focused on her eyes.
She arched an eyebrow, flashed him a sardonic smile, and then some hidden device beeped, and her clothes shifted to solid black. “Better?”
“What?”
She scoffed. “Nice try, but you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to look so guilty . It’s not like I wasn’t trying to get noticed.”
Hector shrugged. I’m fresh off the deck, and you’re trying to make me say something dumb.
“You don’t talk much.” When Hector didn’t respond, she gestured to his bare feet. “Can you walk? We can go up to the front office and check the lost and found.”
He gingerly stood, wincing as the tendons in his feet and ankles screamed at the burden. He tuned the pain out, then looked at Lemon and nodded.
“Follow me, then.” She turned and sauntered to the door. Hector looked at the blaster, then set it on the desk. It was a clumsy, shoddy weapon anyway. It looked more likely to blow up in his hand than hit a target. He followed Lemon, focusing on the cold concrete pressing into the soles of his feet, letting the pain wrap itself around him like a red blanket as it mounted with each step.
Lemon looked over her shoulder, her straight, short hair dancing with the movement. “We’ve got a bug dispenser here. I’ll get you a pack while you put on a shirt.” She pushed open the door, and the music and lights of the club washed over him. Whatever else might have changed while he was on ice, strip clubs apparently hadn’t. Lewd holo-projections decorated the walls in garish reds, pinks, and blues. Women and men danced on pedestals all around the enormous space, and the crowd, writhing to the music, pressed close to their favorite performers.
Hector was surprised by the clientele, if not the décor; the clubs he’d been to in port cities, even on Luna and Europa, tended to be packed with spacers. Here, Hector saw a healthy mix of young and old—men, women, and other. One thing was constant, though: these were the dregs , the baseborn , the underclass —the silent masses , as Drake Conti once said over a tumbler of Venetian bourbon. How Esme had scowled!
“Hector?”
He blinked, realizing he’d already followed Lemon through the crowd to the front office, and she was holding the door open. “What?”
“Go look through that cabinet.” She pointed to a tall cupboard on the far wall of the office. “I’ll go fetch you an aid pack.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He nodded and pushed past her. When she closed the door and the music got a little quieter, he let out a shaky breath and braced his hands on the cabinet, leaning into it while he focused on his heart. It was racing. There was a half-empty bottle of soda on the counter, and he drained it. It was flat and warm, but his throat wanted more.
The thing about a new skin was that it did funny things to your brain. Hector’s old body had been genetically engineered for strength and endurance, and that was before he’d poured thousands of aura potentia into it—
Breathe the air, you’ll taste the spark, but hunt the rifts to light the dark!
The old rhyme about potentia drifted through his mind, a childhood memory summoned by the system printing familiar patterns into his new brain, no doubt. Aura was everywhere, but potentia was the refined, semi-conscious stuff everyone fought over. He tried to remember why he was thinking about it, and couldn’t. He held out his left hand and watched it tremble. Focus.
He opened the cabinet and rifled through the clothes, looking for something that would fit. He finally found a dark gray, pullover-style sweatshirt. It had a hood and a little pouch in the front, and it was comfortable. What more could he want? He pulled it over his head, and the scent of the previous owner’s deodorant wafted into his nose—spices and cedar.
He opened the next cabinet and found a dozen or so pairs of shoes. He had a hard time believing people were leaving shoes in a club, but then he remembered it was a strip club run by a criminal named Grando Scrim. Are Pelo’s shoes going to end up in this cabinet? He pulled out a promising-looking pair of well-worn black work boots.
Sitting on the little desk chair, he tugged them on. They were made of some kind of breathable, moisture-wicking fabric that conformed to his feet. They were comfortable, and the pressure felt good, supporting his throbbing tendons. The chair pulled him in, and he closed his eyes, adjusting his position until most of the pain in his body was just a distant throb. The lack of acute agony was so nice that he found himself drifting into a doze.
His rest was short-lived; Lemon opened the door after just a few minutes. Hector’s eyes snapped open, and he watched as she carefully pushed it shut and twisted the little lock, muting the throb of the club’s music. “Here,” she said, pressing a silver-foiled squeeze tube into his hand. Hector looked at the label: Fossbone Emergency Nanite Pack .
He wrinkled his brow. “ Fossbone. ” The word felt strange in his mouth.
“What? I mean, they’re no BioEuropa, but I haven’t heard of any lawsuits recently.”
Hector shook his head. How do you explain that you’ve been dead for two centuries and there were things that were familiar and yet disturbingly foreign?
He ripped the pull-tab off the tube and stuffed the nozzle into his mouth. As he squeezed the berry-flavored paste out, his new skin’s prodigious hunger reared its head, and his stomach gurgled. “I need to eat.”
“I know. Didn’t you hear what I said to Grando? I’ll buy you food.”
He nodded as he kept squeezing the tube into his mouth. When he finished, he held out his right hand to Lemon. “Pull on it.”
She tilted her head. “ What ?”
He needed to straighten the bones in his wrist before the nanites fused them. “Pull. Straighten it.” When she hesitated, Hector stood up, and she flinched back. He limped over to the door, gripped the knob, ignoring the searing pain the movement generated, and pulled.
Lemon looked away, grimacing. “Oh, God. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“The pack had a painkiller.” Not a good one, but don’t tell her that . He grunted and put his weight into it. After a few seconds, the fiery lances of agony crescendoed as the bones began to shift. He slowly rotated his wrist, guiding them into place. When the relief overtook the pain, he gasped softly and let go of the doorknob.
He held his arm up, squinting at the swollen wrist, and when he couldn’t discern any unnatural bend, he nodded, moving back to sit down.
“That was disturbing.” Lemon frowned, looking him up and down. “How’s the rest of you? Can you walk?”
Hector assessed his pain and shrugged. “A few minutes.”
She reached into the little purse she had clutched under her arm and pulled out a small cylinder. A moment later, she was smearing on some two-toned purple-and-gray lipstick. “I don’t have any plans. We’ll walk by Pete’s to get you the other pack you wanted. The, um, aura bugs.” When Hector just grunted, she asked, “What’s the deal with your system, anyway?”
Hector looked into her light gray eyes and shrugged.
“No comment, huh?” She frowned. “I mean, I’m not an idiot. I don’t live under a rock—plenty of the bangers and corpos who come into the club have systems. Is yours fried or something?”
“Aura overload. Burned up the pathways.”
Lemon narrowed her eyes. “That can happen?”
Hector nodded. “Yeah. Skin wasn’t ready for the boost.”
“ Skin? ”
“My body.”
Her eyes flew wide as understanding dawned on her. “You have one of those things—a ghost chip?”
“Neurodeck. Yeah.”
“So this isn’t you ?” She gestured to him—his body.
“It’s me now .” Hector closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. His body was tingling, and blissful numbness had replaced most of his acute pain. The nanites were doing their work.
“But the, uh, skin had an aura system?” Her tone rose at the end of her question, incredulous.
“No.” He tapped the back of his head. “Neurodeck.”
She mulled his words over for a moment, then her eyes widened and she leaned forward. “Aura systems can go on neurodecks? Grando didn’t know, did he?” Her amusement was a little contagious, and Hector grinned crookedly.
“Nope.”
She stuffed her lipstick into her little bag and took out a small object, popping it between her lips. A pill? “Can we walk a little? You’re not a great conversationalist.”
He stood, ignoring the comment. His legs and feet were more numb than sore.
“Follow me.” She paused at the door, looking over her shoulder at him. “Let me guess: Grando wants you to work for him because of what you did to Orin and Pelo, right?”
“Maybe.”
Lemon whirled on him, narrowing her eyes. “Come on !”
“He didn’t want me to kill him.”
Lemon’s eyebrow arched. “Seriously? You’re that good?”
Hector grunted noncommittally. Enough chatter, girl. I need to eat.
Nobody bothered them as they passed through the club, and a few seconds later, they came to the exit. A bouncer with metallic limbs and glaring, angry-looking red eyes held the door for Lemon, glaring at Hector as they passed through. Outside, Hector had to squint against the bright glare of the yellow sky. The blast of warm, iron-scented air on his face felt good at first, on the heels of the club’s chilly AC, but after only a few seconds, he could feel sweat beading on his forehead. “Where?”
“I told you, we’ll go get your bugs.” Lemon took his uninjured wrist and pulled him along the sidewalk, weaving through the heavy pedestrian traffic. The street wasn’t for cars; tracks ran in parallel lines on a lower platform, and he could see trains rushing to and fro. One flew by while he watched, and he marveled at the lack of safety measures.
Hector looked up, frowning at the faded, graffiti-covered towers on all sides. Most were the default blue-gray of plasteel, but some were muted shades of orange or pink, red, and yellow. Some had sharply angled corners, and some were smooth and rounded. They were all tall, but in the distance he saw true megastructures—buildings that made the nearby ones quaint. Shaking his head, he asked, “No. Where is this ?”
Lemon looked at him sideways before replying, “Helio! About twenty blocks west of the spaceport.”
“ Helio ?” No slang, girl.
“You’re not familiar?” She stopped, turned, and arched an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? Heliopolis ?”
Hector’s vision tunneled for a moment as his heart rate spiked and a small burst of adrenaline entered his system. It wasn’t that he was stunned to learn he was on Mars; it was more that he’d so thoroughly assumed he was on Earth that it had given him a momentary sense of vertigo when his mental image of himself shifted planets.
Something’s still not right . Hector looked at the dozens of plasteel skyscrapers again. “Too big.”
Lemon shrugged. “Well, I’m not making things up. How long were you out of it, anyway?” She grabbed his wrist again and pulled, continuing down the sidewalk. As they turned a corner, she must have decided he didn’t plan to answer because she asked, “So, how well do you know Grando?”
Hector smiled, his lip curling up a bit higher on the right side. New skin, same old mannerisms. “Well enough.” Obviously, he didn’t know Grando, but he knew his type .
Lemon looked at him over her shoulder, staring long enough that Hector began to wonder if she’d run into someone. She was nimble, though, and avoided collisions as she steered him beside a mural of a white-winged angel standing over huddled children. The angel had golden skin and pale blue eyes, and she grasped a blood-drenched sword.
Hector stared at the art as Lemon spoke. “If you think Grando’s dumb—don’t. If you think he hasn’t found an angle that puts him on top in your little arrangement, then reconsider. I’m just saying, don’t make the mistake of trusting that man.”
Hector nodded. “I don’t trust anyone.” He looked down at his unfamiliar, young body. “Even this skin.”
Lemon shook her head, frowning. “So strange. So… creepy .” After a couple of seconds, she shrugged, taking his wrist again. “Come on! Pete’s is just around the corner.”
Hector allowed her to pull him. She wasn’t wrong. There wasn’t anything clean about getting a body like the one he was wearing. When he’d been a royal, he’d had vat-grown clones, conditioned for superior strength and endurance. They weren’t all his clones, but he was always himself . Everything about him—his memories, his personality, even his aura system—was part of his neural print, his engram. What about my soul, though? Is that in there?
He tried to silence his thoughts by asking, “Who’s Pete?”
“He’s a chop-doc, but he also runs fights.” She shrugged, turning down a narrow street that felt more like an alley. “I guess it works out because he has trauma equipment on the premises.”
“Huh.”
“Don’t worry, Grando was right: he’ll have the bugs.” She stepped around a woman trying to sell glass jewelry on a blanket. Hector followed, stepping momentarily onto a bike lane. It was evident that in that city, “bike” meant pretty much anything with two wheels. Batt-powered vehicles beeped constantly as they moved through the crowds. One of them rode up right behind Hector, horn blaring. He stopped and turned as his old temper—a constant, silent companion that always chose the worst moments to make itself known—heated the back of his neck.
The bike rider stopped his rig with the front tire an inch from Hector’s knee, and then he stood on the pegs and jammed the horn button: beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeep! He was wearing a dingy gray jumper with no shoes, but he had a chipped-up red helmet on his head. Hector balled up his fist, tensed his muscles, and then felt cool fingers in his other hand and a gentle tug. When he turned, glaring, he was met with Lemon’s too-pretty face. She cocked a blonde eyebrow and tilted her head, clearly asking him what he was doing.
He allowed himself to be moved, giving in to her pull as she continued through the crowd. She turned again, and when they were a few steps from the busier, noisier thoroughfare, she said, “I’m not sure where you used to live, but around here, everyone’s pretty rude out in the streets. So, like, if you go around fighting everyone like that, you’re never gonna get anywhere.”
When she slowed and looked at him expectantly, he exhaled a pent-up breath and nodded. “Ghostwalk.” He shrugged.
Her left eye narrowed as she slowly shook her head.
“ Echo ?”
Again, she shook her head.
Hector felt the old irritation rise again, but he inhaled deeply and kept his voice calm. “It’s when you forget you’re in a new skin—act like you’re still your old self.”
Lemon smiled, nodding. “I get it, I think. Pretty weird, though. Sorry—I’ve never met anyone with a ghost chip. I’ve known a few people who were on the other end, though.”
Hector nodded. The poor bastards who gave up their skins.
Like she’d read his thoughts, Lemon tapped his chest and clicked her tongue. After a second’s pause, she pointed across the street to a large, two-story plasteel and concrete building with open bay doors along the sidewalk. “Pete’s.”
--------------------------------------------------