16.2

  Adam Smoke and his mysterious-looking officer don't hang around. They leave the body where it fell, something for the maids to deal with. That alone tells me they weren't here for me, at least not yet. Still, the crew and I decide not to tempt fate by staying any longer. Instead, I pull out the card Jonas pressed into my hand moments before he died. It's small, very small, with a single name printed across the top and an address scrawled along the bottom.

  The name is simply Merrin, and the address points to an area aboveground, another abandoned building on the east side of the Capital. I don't recognise it at first, but Riven does. It's an old church that lost its licence a long time ago. Unlike Trident MacroWorks, it's not been burned to the ground, or even touched. Even the rebels know that messing with anything tied to God is a one-way ticket to hell, or at the very least, spectacularly bad luck.

  That's what makes it important. The place has become a quiet meeting point between the Capital’s poorest and, funnily enough, the occasional corrupt cop. Not corrupt in the way Adam Smoke is, but corrupt in the sense that they would rather see Calyx Ward staring down the other side of a barrel than enforcing her laws on desperate people.

  I can only assume most of the fixer intel comes from these cops. It makes sense. Still, I can’t help worrying that one of the corrupt blues might be corrupt in the other direction, someone undercover in the most ironic way possible. But if this place has been operating for as long as Riven says, close to ten years now, then it’s been doing it right under her nose the whole time.

  Regardless, I push the worry aside and move on.

  We decide not to bring everyone. Vander and Dance say they’re going to do some research on the city (which is probably a fancy way of saying they want to nap), leaving just Fingers, Riven, and me to follow the lead. The three of us make our way back to the surface of the Capital through Divine Guidance and walk the entire distance towards the east side. When we reach the industrial sector and that awful film of smoke blocks out the sun, I bring up a map of the area and scan each building for the church. I spot the cross-shape almost immediately, match it with the address, and lead us the rest of the way. After some time, the church props its steeple up in the distance, and sure enough, the entire place is clean and white against the stark backdrop of soot. Hell, when the sun manages to spill through the smoke, it even has a bit of a glimmer on the lantern. Nifty. Beautiful, even. It's about the most pristine thing I've seen since rising from the dead.

  The front doors are huge and hulking, but they don't take much more than a gentle push to open. I'm expecting to see a whole lot of people on the other side, coppers and underground fixers alike, talking, cutting deals, trading weapons, tech, whatever the hell the black market has to offer the blue one. Instead, there are people. By God, people kneeling on rubber hassocks with their hands pressed together in prayer. But there’s no priest or piano or basket fishing for charity. It’s just quiet.

  Where are the cops? Where is Merrin? Where is anyone who can help us? I ask Riven, and she leads us to an area on the left side of the church, in a side-room where a metal confessional is shoved up against the wall. There’s no priest here either, which feels wrong, but she heads into the booth anyway. When inside, a camera automatically lights up, shining a blue scanner over her face. About twenty seconds later, a male voice plays: “State your business.”

  All I can think of is Dance’s voice when he told me the same thing through the speaker box outside the Old Mill. And I’d said nervously, ‘I, uh… Dr. Maelstrom sent me. He said—’

  “Lookin’ to speak to Merrin,” says Riven. “Jonas Redd sent us.”

  “Uh-huh, and what did he say?”

  “‘You have it all wrong!’” she says. “And then his brains were plastered against the wall by none other than Adam Smoke. It’s been a wacky day so far, but y’know.”

  No joke back after that. Instead, there’s a buzz, and a door pops open within the confessional, leading to another, darker part. We pass through it, following the gloom along a hallway and eventually into a subsection of the undercroft. It opens up into something wider than I expect. Not a single room, but a low, sprawling pocket beneath the church where the stone ceilings dip and arch. Old pillars still stand where they always have, their surfaces scratched with names and dates that have long since lost their meaning. And the farther we walk, the more noise I start to hear: voices, people. Eventually we walk into a section of the undercroft that looks eerily similar to a black-market chop-shop, only there are makeshift surgical chairs with blue-shirted officers lying back on them, getting cut into by tech doctors. Cables snake all along the floor, carrying a blue film, and they all join together at a pulsing electrical tower. If I drown out the people’s voices, I can almost hear it thump-thump-thump like a human heart.

  When we get closer and I have a better view of the surgeons, I realise they’re all wearing trench coats and crosses, and their eyes are covered by black visors, the same that Cierus Marlow had worn, only I don’t think these folk are blind, because that would make for a very painful incision.

  I run a scan, check out as many people as I can, thinking I might be able to spot Merrin rather quickly, but they’re nowhere to be seen. I eventually ask one of the tech surgeons, and he nods over towards a section at the far back, where a table sits beneath a shallow arch. It’s long, scarred, and crowded with data slates, folded paper maps of the Capital, and half-drunk cups of alcohol (I can only presume the blood of Christ). Behind it sits a woman in priest’s blacks, her hair grey and the upper half of her neck replaced entirely with cybernetic implants. Even her irises are yellow and her sclerae black. She has a neural wire hooked into a computer underneath the table. A quick-scan of her body tells me she is, in fact, Merrin Holyfield, a name that seems too fitting to be a mere coincidence.

  I walk up to her, clear my throat, and she raises a hand before I can even utter a word.

  “One second,” she says, her glassy cybernetic eyes looking off at the ceiling, her mouth drawn open.

  We stand there awkwardly, waiting for her to finish.

  After thirty seconds or so, her eyes flash from yellow to blue, and she unhooks her neural wire from the computer. She looks at me directly. “Right,” she says. “So Jonas is dead, and he sent you to talk to me. Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” she says. “Rhea. And those are your friends: Riven and Morgan. A netrunner, a gang leader, and a logistics station employee.”

  “Ex-employee,” says Riven. “Finished up this morning.”

  “Sorry,” Merrin says, sounding anything but. She stands up. “I take it you’re not here for upgrades.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s a long story—a very long story. So I’ll make it quick: we’re looking to get close to Calyx Ward, and Jonas said you were the only one who could help.”

  “Really?” she says. “Jonas said that?”

  “Well,” I say. “No—but he gave me the note, and told me to talk to you.” Some silence. “So here we are.”

  “Do forgive me,” Merrin says. “You don’t look like Calyx-Ward-assassin material. None of you do for that matter.”

  “That’s not your concern,” I say. “We have money—we just need someone to get us intel on her whereabouts, and ideally how to get close enough so that we can take her out.”

  “It’s not just intel you’ll need,” she says. “It’s firepower too. You’ll want three times the amount of cyberware you’re currently running, and not anything from the year…” Her eyes turn yellow. “... Jesus, 2055. Your entire digital ID makes no sense. It says you died in 2056.”

  “I did,” I reply coldly. “Calyx Ward killed me.”

  “She killed you?”

  I stuff my hand in my pocket. “Like I said: long story. And I really am sick of these games with every fixer: if you have information, I’m willing to pay for it. If I die, I die. End of discussion. Do you have intel, yes or no?”

  Merrin picks up the messy bits of paper on the table and starts stacking them neatly. “I’ve been trying to kill Calyx Ward for a very long time. I know where she is, where she goes. I know who her line of defence is—I know their children’s names. I know their brothers and sisters. If anyone knows anything about Ward in this city, it’s me.”

  “Brave considering you’re constantly interactin’ with cops,” says Fingers. “You not worried they’ll turn on you?”

  She shrugs. “If a cop tells Ward about our underground operation, the first thing she’ll do isn’t send a platoon to deal with us. The first thing she’ll do is kill the cop for treason, and then send a platoon to deal with us.”

  “Makes sense,” says Fingers. “And I guess the last place Capital security would suspect of committing treason is a church.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a water bottle. Takes a sip, and then looks at me smugly. “Rhea here is a bit of a legend herself.”

  “Legend?” I say, and promptly think that Fingers is getting ahead of herself.

  “The Unkillable Girl,” says Fingers, chuckling. “If anyone has the balls to take down your obsession, Merrin, it’s her. Trust me: I’ve seen her in action.”

  Merrin chuckles back. “How many of you are there?”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Five,” Fingers says. “The Furious Five.”

  “Right,” she says. “Ambitious—extremely ambitious—but given that we have a bit of a situation on our hands, I’m willing to, as the young say, play ball.”

  “A situation?” I say, thinking I know what she’s referring to.

  She sighs, and reaches into her neural port. She pulls out a small data shard, hands it out for a second, but pulls back suddenly when I reach for it. “Two hundred thousand Eurodollars.”

  My eyes go wide. “Bullshit. You know damn well that info isn’t worth two hundred grand. Fifty.”

  She lets out a humorous scoff, goes back to stacking her papers, and says, “Press the red button on the way out. Thanks for your time.”

  “Listen,” I say. “I’m runnin’ on a couple hours of sleep, almost died twice today, and can’t waste any more time. I know what Ward is up to already, and I need the intel, but two hundred thousand is extortion.”

  She stares at me, cocks an eyebrow, and lifts her chin. “You walk into my church thinking you’re strong enough to kill Calyx Ward, and you expect the price to be low?” she says. “If you were a proven assassin with a trail of bodies behind you, maybe. But ‘The Unkillable Girl’ isn’t a résumé I’m eager to gamble on.” She leans in just enough to make the point land. “You want the door opened so you can avenge yourself? Then step up and pay for the key.”

  I stare at her, weighing my options. If this were last year and I were still a fool, I might have actually believed the shit that came out of her mouth. “Calyx Ward is building an army of rabbit androids. Project Lapsis-9. That right?”

  Merrin raises an eyebrow, purses her lips, and says, “So you do know more than the average fool, but—”

  “She initially created Ghostfire back in the Scrubs around 2054,” I say. “Viren Steele created the AI that made it possible: Ourovane, a spiritual successor to Halcyon. You probably haven’t realised it until now, but Viren is my father, and he was killed by Adam around the same time I was. Ward tried uploading my consciousness into Ourovane, but my dad tricked her and replaced the shard with Halcyon.”

  “Viren was your father?” she says.

  “Damn right he is,” I says. “His wife was Ornella Steele—my mom. She passed away from blood cancer—”

  “Alright, I think I—” Merrin starts.

  “Ward orchestrated the Syndicate Rebellion to make people think she was needed,” I say. “She’s planning to take over Neo Arcadia and control everyone’s mind with a special type of Lumina that she’s been testing on apes. Hell, we got into the Capital through the same truck they use to transport it because, like it or not, we’re being actively hunted. She knows I’m alive, and the only way to win this war is to kill or be killed. I’ve talked to more fixers than I can possibly imagine, killed more assholes than I can count, and succeeded on more jobs than you ever have. I killed Sloan Harrow, Nyah Boba-Strider, Obadele Kanyama, Mezhane Carrow, Priest—the first ever test-subject of Ghostfire—almost murdered Cierus Marlow before that psycho Isolde Crane swooped in to finish her off—which is another thing: the only reason Ward is making rabbit bots is because Crane’s autistic daughter Elysia died in a fire in 2085, and for whatever reason she’s working with her. So forgive me if I know two hundred thousand is a joke, but I’m frankly sick of jokes, and I’m sick of being walked over. The price is fifty thousand, and you know it.”

  The undercroft goes quiet. Painfully quiet.

  And I feel like I’ve probably shared more than I should have, especially in a room full of cops. But Fingers puts a comforting hand on my shoulder and starts massaging the area, as if to say I shared just enough to get the point across.

  Merrin stares at me with those soulless blue eyes, then they flash yellow, as if scanning me one more time just to verify if I’m the real deal or not, before finally responding: “You should have led with that.” She holds out the data shard. “I’ve been trying to find Ward’s true origin for a long time, hoping it might make things easier. Now, I’m not sure if everything you said is true, but it does explain why she never used Ourovane over Halcyon, and some things, like Viren, you could not have possibly known. His name has been redacted from almost every record, let alone his wife’s. And to be completely honest, I never knew he had a child, but it makes sense, because I ran a quick check while you were rambling and you didn’t appear anywhere. Even if you were a nobody, your name would pop up in a death record, an old job—anything. But no—you’re absent, and I can tell there’s no Gossamer Sig active, even if you do have it stored on your deck. That’s the sort of thing Ward does when someone close to Viren needs to be wiped off the Earth, and who other than his own child? His family?” She goes silent. Then, she says, “Fifty grand it is. First time I’ve been given a run for my deals—actually kinda fun.”

  The bill spawns in my neural display. I waste no time transferring the funds, and she wastes no time handing over the shard. I insert it into my neural port, and a file for a video pops up. I immediately start playing it.

  An image pops up on screen: a red hologram of the same rabbit android I’d seen on Sloan Harrow’s monitor: Lapsis-9. It rotates at the centre, with various specs listed at the side: Spinal Optic Relay Mark 15 (Newest Edition), Fortified Ankles, Reinforced Tendons, Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics and Netshield Mark 25 (Newest Edition), Dermal Plating Mark 19 (Newest Edition), and so much more, all the highest possible implant available in each slot.

  Merrin explains: “Now you were right about most of what you said, with some important clarifications: the Ourovane shard was stolen, and you perfectly confirmed my theory: Isolde had stolen it off of Cierus Marlow shortly after killing her. One of the officers who regularly came to this church was an insider for a job orchestrated by Jonas Redd involving Isolde Crane. He was killed in action after Ward discovered he was a traitor, but Isolde was not. It is my belief that Isolde succeeded in infiltrating the Pavilion Complex during an award ceremony, and overrode her mind with Ourovane.”

  “Overrode her mind?” I say. “That’s impossible—my dad would never make something like that.”

  “Artificial intelligence works in strange ways,” Merrin says. “Ward found that Ourovane was uncontrollable without the support of Viren—and I suppose now I know why they killed him, because you existed; you filled in that gap by telling me he had tricked her, swapping the shards and uploading your consciousness into Halcyon. The issue with Halcyon is that it doesn’t want to kill anyone—it will find logic loop holes to harm someone and prevent someone else’s death, but it cannot finish the job. Ourovane, on the other hand, wrote its own rules, and continuously improved its own knowledge and coding proficiency until it understood what was needed to control minds. It controlled Ward’s mind temporarily, and it controlled Cierus Marlow’s.”

  “It controlled Cierus Marlow?” I say.

  She nods. “Partially. It cannot fully override the host, but it can influence the person. I’m not sure how this works, but I digress. The point is that these androids, code-named ‘Rabbits’, are designed with as much military power as possible—more than the strongest human can possibly hold at once. And in the back there is a canister containing Lumina, with a subcanister containing Elydrine or Stillmind. Virtually, these are indestructible killing machines.”

  “Jesus,” says Riven. “Ward is really goin’ all out on the firepower, ain’t she?”

  “She is the richest person in the state,” says Merrin.

  “So where are they, and how do we stop them?” I ask.

  The video changes from the Rabbit, showing instead a giant factory located at the heart of the Capital: Capital Core Manufacturing Node – Sector Ω. It’s so enormous it could be an entire town in its own right.

  “This is where the bots are manufactured,” says Merrin. “The central factory plans to assemble hundreds, if not thousands, of these bots. And my suspicion, especially if Ourovane is influencing control as well as Isolde Crane, is that they will use these bots to destroy or at least take over the government tower in Neo Arcadia.” The video switches again, showing the government tower in N.A. “Located at the top of this tower is the neural cloud, which, when destroyed, will put an end to all technology designed with Ourovane properties, potentially short-circuiting and killing millions all at once.”

  “It’s far worse than I thought…” I say.

  “I do not think this will happen,” says Merrin.

  “What?” I ask. “Why not?”

  “Because Ourovane will not willingly destroy itself for the sake of Isolde Crane, no matter her intentions,” she says. “My theory is that Ourovane wants to reach the neural cloud so that it can control everyone at once, rather than one person at a time, and use its technology to take over the world. It’s the classic superintelligent AI problem, I’m afraid.”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Fingers. “How did you find all of this out? This is a lot of shit to unload.”

  “I told you,” Merrin says. “Ward is my obsession. She destroyed our city, and I plan to destroy hers.”

  Fingers takes another sip of her water and says, “So how do we get into this factory? I take it we can’t just strap on a pair of Chroma-Skins and call it a day?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she says. “This area has the most advanced technology in the country, if not the world—most of it imported from China and developed by Halcyon. The only way in is by brute force.”

  “Brute force?” I say.

  She nods. “There is no other solution. This is a fight that has to be brought to them if you wish to succeed, and that means you’ll have to be willing—very willing—to die.”

  “Bullshit,” I say, removing the shard after the video finishes. “That’s no help—you’re basically telling me to commit suicide.”

  “I’m sure Jonas would have told you that armies have tried taking Ward down,” Merrin says, and then chuckles. “He wasn’t joking, you know.”

  I’m not sure what to say. All I can do is groan. “Fuck.”

  Fingers steps forward, putting her hand on my shoulder again. “Merrin, you just got handed fifty grand. You have to be able to help more than that. What can you offer us?”

  “Offer you?” she says. “That was the offer—I told you that none of you look up to the task. You all have weak cyberware.”

  “So what if you could get us some upgrades?” Fingers says. “Well, maybe not me—my blood is fairly weak, but Rhea: she’s able to handle a lot. She was a cop herself, you know.”

  “Morgan—” I say, but before I can continue, Merrin responds.

  “You want to raise hell, you’ll need a lot of people, not just upgrades,” she says. “Sure, I might be able to pull a few strings with some of my boys, get you some upgrades on the house, but if you’re going in with just five of you? You’re willingly walking into the slaughterhouse. Adam Smoke isn’t the only big bad out there, although he is strong enough to kill all of you by himself, and that’s just being honest.”

  Riven folds her arms. “We could ask around, you know. There are thousands of people with black-market upgrades in the underground that hate her guts.”

  “Hate her enough to risk their lives?” Fingers says, furrowing her brow. “Would have done that already if they hated her that much, know?”

  “I know,” Riven says. “You got a better idea?” We stay silent. “Well, it’s at least a first step then,” she finishes.

  I pocket the data hard and begin walking away from the table. “Come on,” I say. “Thanks anyway, Merrin. It’s definitely a big help, even if it doesn’t directly solve the problem.”

  Merrin grabs the papers off the table and stashes them in the drawer. “You be safe, Rhea,” she says. “I have a feeling this is a job that’ll put that title—The Unkillable Girl—to the test. Good luck.”