"All according to plan," Upgrade, when he really shouldn't be saying that.

  Kendrick had been working harder than I had ever seen him over the past week. He had disappeared to the basement of our home base every day for hours, only coming up when he got hungry, got annoyed with Gabriel, or needed to take a small break. The way he was consumed with work was… almost inspiring. It was on the seventh day that he finally called us down for a house meeting, which was surprisingly refreshing since my routine of exercise and training had started to become ever so slightly monotonous, as it tended to when we were between missions.

  As I descended the stairs, a light breeze told me Sileena had shifted behind me. “Good morning, Sileena,” I greeted without looking, pleased when she sighed, frustrated she’d failed to sneak up on me for the… 600th time officially.

  “Morning,” she grumbled, scooting down ahead of me and pushing the metal door open that lead to the main floor of The Garage. The loud creak announced our presence, and Upgrade gave a wave from the far side from the entrance to the building, close to the monster of a computer he had hacked the PsyPro with.

  I took in the scene, metal gleaming in front of him half as bright as the smile he beamed at us with. There was a hefty load of dangerous looking toys in front of him. Marauder, just as excited as I was to see what the boss, Jefe as he called him, had cooked up even if he’d helped build it.

  I never went into the domain of Garbiel if I could avoid it, and that was because the place was a deathtrap. All manner of weapons, sharp edges, accidentally armed mines and prototypes were strewn across every surface, in every drawer right next to basic tools and otherwise out of place. Still, if Kento Yamada’s info was swimming freely in the mind of Kendrick Carter, there was no better place to build and test whatever you had cooked up.

  Several misfires and bone-deep waves of concussive force had been delivered to us as proof of the latter.

  I was last to arrive, watching as the two placed the last of the new tech down in front of us himself.

  “Alright, so we’ve been hard at work getting all the new ideas floatingin my head translated into the real world,” Kendrick began like a child excitedly giving a presentation in school. “Most of this stuff is just ideas I already had that are augmented by information I didn’t have before mixing in. It’s actually kind of jarring to have to sift through information in your own head like a library, or to have schematics suddenly look… primitive that you’ve been storing for a rainy day for half as long as you’ve been in the game… Anyway, with the help of the FORGE R&D pushing us along, I’ve upgraded each of us-”

  “BOO!” Sileena howled at him and he flipped her off just as fast.

  “Each of us,” he went on. “Considering my arm is still healing, Gabe did a lot of the technical work so… if anything doesn’t work, fit or explodes blame him and his imprecision.”

  “Oh yeah, sure, and when everything exceeds expectations, just remember that it was my imprecise innovations that pushed his work from average to superb.”

  “So what is all of this,” I cut in.

  “Let’s start with you,” Kendrick said motioning to a collection of at the far side of the rather long table. Apprehensive, I followed him. “You asked me to keep it simple whenever I worked on something for you ages ago, so I tried to keep it in mind…” he trailed off lifting the hilt of a blade and tossing the weapon to me. I caught the weapon, keenly aware of the lack of blade, and the backwards curved guard.

  “A jang geom?” I asked him, and he nodded. “Without a blade?”

  His false eye flashed for half a second, and I felt my implants light up with activity. I would have taken offense, but he and I had long since past any sort of boundaries about him intruding on the software of my implants. My awareness of the weapon was, suddenly, multiplied as if I had nerves within it. Deadened ones, but nerves nonetheless.

  “I see,” I spoke and he grinned harder. I could sense something about it was… awaiting a command from me? I struggled for a second, listening to the extension of my will, and turning away from the table, holding the weapon out. With a thought, a hardling construct extended from the base of the weapon. A sharp, long hardlight construct.

  “Your implants have a lot of… versatility. It took me 2 days of distracted coding, but I managed to package some new functionality into your extra-nervous-system. ENS 2.0 will act as a jump off point for you to balance a connection to specially made weapons that react on the fly to your commands. Try telling the weapon to heat up.”

  “I can’t tell it anything,” I responded, knowing that, intuitively, he was understanding what he himself had made incorrectly. He paused, intrigue playing across his face like a book despite his best efforts to appear bothered that I had corrected him mid presentation. I took the opportunity.“You have connected this weapon to me. You do not tell your arm to strike.”

  My mind was moving fast in the seconds between sentences, acclimating as I twirled the lightweight tool and felt the solid blade, surprised to find it cold to the touch. He responded with one word: “Interesting.”

  Still, I willed the weapon to heat, and watched it turn bright red to signify that it was hotter than a thermo-sword now.

  “This is two prototypes mashed into one. The ENS upgrade that I gave you is something that Kento was directly overseeing so it was in my head. Large scale, the FORGE wants to make exosuits easier to maneuver for folks without traditional cyberdecks, faster response times and such. That, plus the hardlight shield tech layering I used to fuck up Gaz gave us that.”

  “No one better to test it with,” Gabriel conceded, and I gave a sharp nod as I turned the weapon from a single edge to a double, and then flattened the top. “Like riding a bike, I guess.”

  “Intuitive,” I agreed. “Impressive work, gentlemen.”

  Upgrade tossed something else at me, this time something to fit over my fingers, and I caught it out of the air over my shoulder before turning to face him again. Without his help, this time my implants subsumed whatever coding sorcery he’d used to make the sword connect the same way.

  This time, upon activation a hardlight extension of my fist, only twice as large, blinked to life around my arm. I flexed my fingers below the ringe, and the hardlight moved with it. A giant gauntlet?

  “Crude,” I commented with a smirk.

  “Say that after you punch something with it,” Gabriel commented. “I know you’re strong, but this thing SHOULD be able to do what upgrade did to Gaz without breaking your fist, and only needs about 5 minutes to recharge once it’s overloaded. Now, imagine it in the same of-” and before he could finish, I’d turned a fist into a shield floating a few inches ahead of my arm.

  “I’m already nearly bulletproof,” I commented. “Why give me this?”

  “Extending your longevity is something I’ve been concerned with since I learned how your upgrades work. The longer you can fight without overheating, the worse off whoever you’re fighting is,” Gabriel explained as Upgrade nodded along. “Well, the first part was more Jefe than me, but I do care a bit.” He shrugged, and I had to fight hard not to smile.

  Asshole.

  “And also, Upgrade can use all of this too, albeit without your penchant for precision.”

  “It isn’t a lot, but it should take you a long way as long as it works as well as it did in practice.”

  “Handy work from my handymen,” I conceded. “Thank you.”

  “Awww stop,” Kendrick jokingly dismissed. He was in rare form.

  “Sileena!” he spoke sliding away from the two prototypes and moving towards the next setup. This one, however, was exceedingly menacing-looking due in no small part to the fact that it looked like a spinal cord with dozens of needles arranged in perfect pairs parallel on either side of it’s length. At it’s base, wider than the rest, a pair of vials rested, flanking the center piece.

  “So, due to the nature of Sileena’s powers and how often you run out of juice because you stop paying attention to your own warning signs,” Gabriel spoke in an honest assessment, “We birthed more proprietary greatness.”

  “Yeah, we…” Upgrade grumbled, taking the reigns for himself and turning it over so we could see it’s full, menacing form in his hands. It flexed around his careful grasp, able to twist slightly as the myriad of fangs did the same. “Basically, I wrote a program, several hundred lines of code actually, that is capable of taking small samples from your body, monitoring all of your bio-rhythms and actually show you the results in real time.”

  “Oh my god do you have to attach this thing to me?” she asked, and i finally looked at her pale, almost frightened face.

  “So, yeah that is a thing,” he admitted, “And a lot of those needles have to puncture into your spine at specific intervals in order to transmit the information into your head as to make it as unintrusive as possible. It’s… a bit…”

  I furrowed my brow with worry as the small way his pupil dilated, and the sweat beaded at the corner of his brow told me he wasn’t all that sure about it.

  “Banal, might be the correct word,” I told him honestly, and with just enough contempt to get the point across.

  “I know I regenerate, but I’ve never had to fix my spine before Kendrick,” she told him, and he did nod understandingly.

  “Yes, and if you want me to be honest, I am not sure one way or the other, but that’s something that needs to be tested for. Perfect environment for that test is while we are home and between actual missions. I’ve been able to gather, mostly through observation and your retelling of the experience, that it’s not a biological thing, or some sort of accelerated metabolic response.”

  “Explain,” I cut in before he could keep going.

  “When Gaz broke her arm, she regenerated it automatically. Bone broke skin,” Gabriel said pointing at the limb in question. “That should have left a scar.”

  “What if her regeneration didn’t leave a scar?” I answered back. Kendrick took initiative, which meant the logic behind the response here was something he probably didn’t trust Gabriel to properly convey.

  “Then it’s resetting to a state that is exactly like it was before, probably. Gabe and I figure that means that most signs point towards her being able to heal the sort of small scale trauma this would inflict. It’s a theory.”

  “Can we not talk about me in such a… clinical way while I'm standing right here?” Sileena cut through with an edge to her tone. With crossed arms, she looked at it with the fear still clearly rattling her heart. I touched her arm, and she visibly fought the urge to flinch. Visibly for me anyway.

  “Okay, sorry I didn’t mean to make this into… that,” Kendrick conceded. “I’ll scrap this design and we can cook you up something else instead-” but Sileena would not have it. Her hand snapped out, extended to take the nameless tool from him and look it over like she had some intuitive connection, or a way to understand it that I doubted she had hidden from us.

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  “No, no I will be fine. Just… took me to a bit of a dark place, is all. No, this is a good idea for something that would be helpful. Thanks,” she spoke brightening up again. Upgrade nodded.

  “Didn’t say the best part. They can also inject nutrients and boosters directly without you needing do do much more than press a button.”

  “That’s insane!” she spoke in an earnest display of excitement. “I’ll warm up to a test run, at least. I mean, I’d rather learn my limits sooner than later anyways.” Upgrade made eye contact with me for a split second and that was enough for him to convey concern to me.

  Too eager.

  She was probably just being agreeable out of some kind of trauma response, but that had to be unpacked in a far different scenario.

  “Table it for now, pending a bit more testing and work. Lastly,” he announced while gesturing for us to walk over to the end of the table. Notably, the table had a lot more projects than he was acknowledging. A lot of it was more or less stuff that looked half done, or lower priority.

  “Foundational technology was something of a focus for me this time around. In order to continue to improve and upgrade, we need to start somewhere. Why not start somewhere that can always be built upon further. To that degree, this idea started as something specifically made to help Gabe, and evolved from there to something I plan to use and build on later.”

  He pointed at a jet-black ring with a green pane of glass in the center. Gabriel lifted it between two fingers, letting us see it.

  “This is the EIEPATCH,” Gabriel smirked. “It stands for Enervating Integration of Extra Preceptory Analysis and Tactical Combat Hirearchy. Nerd-boy made that up to justify making it an acronym. It is a catchall both for this actual eye patch and the operating system that runs it.

  “It’s a damn cool lente, and I wish I could take more credit for the damn thing. It’s another way to track information, which is a thing I need help with. Whatever the wearer’s pupil is looking at gets scanned in real time and identified and cataloged. Really pushed that dinky ass 3D printer making something small enough to power the hardlight glass.”

  “Which I could not have gotten to work without you, pana. Don’t sell yourself short,” Kendrick encouraged.

  “I do think I’m going to end up having to make a few more prototypes. Anyway, for now it just kinda locks into place on your eye like a monocle, and ideally, it’ll link up to a cyberdeck. For now, I don’t have one so the data will kind of be a lot but to sift through… hmm. How to explain… basically, it’s capable of outlining threats en masse: guns, knives, giant electric sledgehammers et cetera. But also, if I stare long enough, it will analyze something’s structural make up and highlight possible weaknesses. Weaknesses my power, in particular, would run roughshod over even with the problem of my control. As soon as I get a cyberdeck installed, though, I can fine tune on the fly.”

  “This was inspired by my cybernetics wasn’t it?” I asked, having simply observed and listened to his description. “In summary, this thing lets you do what I do a bit less… precisely.”

  “Precisely,” Kendrick answered. “Figured if I was giving you a giant, punching fist, which is more his thing than yours, I could give him something to reign in the general danger that is Marauder on the field.”

  “Damn that’s sick,” Sileena said.

  “And, it’s also part of a system I want to link into all of our tech. Combat solutions given in real time, increasing our overall output while lowering the chance we get fucked up. This was made with Gabe in mind, but he’s not the only beneficiary once we’ve had time to put all of this through proper field testing.”

  “And, that sums up a week’s worth of rough work, with an obsolete 3D printer,” Gabriel said.

  “A half working soldering iron,” Kendrick threw out.

  “No coffee after the first 3 days.”

  “A press that can’t stay hot to save it’s life.”

  “Five broken laser saws.”

  “Every battery we could find.”

  Then they fist bumped and said, “And that’s just the light work,” at the same time.

  “You two are cute as fuck,” Sileena teased and they both flipped her the bird together. “Not helping your case.”

  “Kendrick,” I said, tilting my head with curiosity as I let my eyes roll over each of the presented items, not presented ones, and then back to him. “None of this looks like you have crafted anything for yourself.”

  He gave a nasty sort of grin before he answered me. Far too proud of something he rehearsed in his head, for sure.

  “What’s the point? I can use all of this, except the spine thing, without needing tools to do it. Your sword is connected to my personal internal nervous system, and so is the EIEPATCH. In fact, the latter I could do already, except I needed to intrude on a system more actively than just glancing at it to pull it off. All the program does is handle things I already take an active role in passively. Notably, I can take in the data from another linked in EIEPATCH pair at any given time, even in real time. In other words, it’s just an upgrade for me on all levels. All the other weapons on the desk are also more general tools and toys I slapped together. More shit I can use too.”

  “How pragmatic,” I said, giving him no indication that I was actually fairly impressed by his thorough nature.

  “And efficient, more importantly. I can focus on 3 people instead of four, and reap the benefits. We’re gonna be rubbing shoulders with much bigger threats en aggregate now that we’re likely on more than a few shit lists. I’ll be damned if we get caught flat footed again. I simply won’t allow it.”

  Like fate disliked that particular challenge, all of the lights in the room went out, and in the late evening that meant that besides moonlight penetrating the windows on the outside of the open floor plan, it was almost cave dark in the room where once upon a time manufacturers and other factory workers toiled away their days.

  In rapid succession, everyone, at once, reached for something close. I was thankful I hadn’t put my sword down, or taken off the Brass Knuckle-like hardlight fist. I was about to activate both when I felt as though the very air pressure in the room began to double down around me, and my heightened senses began to rapidly increase. I exhaled quickly, going to move but something caught my attention. A cross section of needles sliced through the air around me, and I smelled the faintest hint of ozone in my immediate vicinity. Electric wires ahead of me, several sets of them set like a trap to prevent my approach, just enough that I would need to step back, but I was almost certain there was another set that I had heard whiz right behind me.

  My heart rate was increasing far too quickly as well, which meant that my decision making might have been impaired, lightly, by something affecting me. A poisonous gas? My eyes locked onto Gabriel’s slow motion form snatching something off the table, and he looked absolutely fine. No sweat, pupils, from my limited perspective, at a reasonable size. Not gas. Nothing had pricked me either. Could it have been something else? Perhaps something that could numb my… supersenses?

  No. Fast acting, immediate, targetted or at the very least judicious, and something that wouldn’t trigger my body’s sympathetic nervous system. A cyber attack?

  RUN SELF DIAGNOSIS?

  That was… intrusive. Whatever it was, I chocked it up to Upgrade, who was taking steps towards Marauder and beginning to say something. With a thought, I somehow felt each inch of cyberware scanning itself.

  NO INTRUSIONS DETECTED.

  That was worrisome then, because I had no clue.

  Unless of course… it was magic?

  I had been stuck in this line of thought so long I hadn’t even realized what Marauder and Upgrade did. Flying overhead like crows with blinking red lights for eyes descending on carrion were three high grade explosives. I was pleased to see Upgrade’s hardlight shield blinking to life and spreading out from his back, legs and slowly stretching arms first.

  I could activate the sword and throw it if not for the electrical wires that I could tell would push me to the limit of consciousness if I couldn’t get it together.

  Which I was struggling with doing since my body was in a state of panic I hadn’t realized was coming on in time to get out ahead of. I detested having the control of my body snatched away from me the way that it had been done. Was risking being shocked into unconsciousness worth it?

  Marauder turned a pistol shaped object towards the weapons and, with startling precision, fired three times at the incoming bombs, causing each to explode, and pushing Upgrade over in the flames. Shift, I saw, blurred out of place and appeared in a spot a few feet out of the blast radius towards the other end of the table from me.

  That’s when I saw it, striking out through the space between the two of them like a coiled snake springing out of a shadow. A woman, hooded, muscles toned, wearing ash-gray and a dark blue, landed on one foot the second Shift stopped, unaware she’d fallen into a trap. The speed was something I couldn’t have matched unless I was already moving after the explosion. No, it wasn’t that she was superhumanly fast, it was the surprise factor and my predicament making her appear that way. Each second of indecision was preventing my intercession.

  The shockwave washed over them, as did the heat, showing deep purple eyes stalked wide open, and a black-cloth mask from nose to chin. I couldn’t even scream in time, cursing the agonizingly slow wait as the woman rolled beside Shift and a flash of metal rang out. This was it, she’d strike true and take her out first. No, I was first, clearly. She was second…

  A needle stabbed into her thigh, and a thumb pressed down the plunger at the other end, shooting liquid into her thigh. Immediately she removed it, tossed it aside, and waded towards Marauder and Upgrade, dropping the syringe and throwing more small explosives at the pair, and then making a sign with the other hand in an elegant, if direct, move.

  I did not hear what she spoke, but rather felt the rattle of magic within me.

  That explained my heightened state. A genius stroke, to give me some kind of hex that would play on my powers like this: an anxiety attack, everything turned up to 11 and out of my control. It was taking a lot to stop my implants from running amok as I fought back panic, to keep balancing myself just enough to witness, wait for a moment.

  But trapped like this, I was having decision paralysis on how to get out of this snare.

  An explosion forced the two of them apart, and the incantation she had spoken resulted in a shockwave from her now outstretched hand. I’d missed so much just trying to rationalize in the moment. Seconds of combat were akin to days for me.

  Marauder rolled away from the attack launched from her hand and barreled forward, dragging a particularly large hammer off the table, and jumping forward to bring every bit of might he could muster down on the assailant…

  Wildly.

  He’d been misdirected and manipulated in the same manner he tended to get one over on others. Create chaos for your enemy, limit their options, and pounce. It was a playbook I respected, but so easily upended when your own choices were being filed down so surgically. The room was an open floor plan, but any number of things caught in the violence and destroyed here could start a chain reaction. No bombs, none of his anyway. Going for a gun meant shooting wildly with all the prototypes in the line of fire, or maybe even Shift taking a stray bullet.

  Wait… Shift. Where was she? Why had she just walked past her. What was in that syringe?

  All of my questions were answered as she blurred past me and into a nearby wall like a bull in a China shop, slamming into it, holding her head as she fell over, writhed, and then shifted away again. She was suffering like she had when we first found her.

  The invader leapt to the table, avoiding the shower of spark and lightning that rolled towards her as the hammer hit the ground with a thunderous boom, and her foot snapped out to the side, hitting his shoulder. The smoothness of her transition from that attack to another kick, from crouching to standing and striking his chin, was equal parts violent and elegant.

  Marauder’s wide eyes went white as she knocked him out, jaw distending a bit and spit and blood flying in a spray as he fell.

  Without missing a beat, emerging from the smoke of the explosives she’d thrown that separated them, Upgrade was like a rhino sprinting towards her. I saw the fake eye calculating, scanning, running dozens of lines of code that flickered quickly even to my senses as he snarled in frustration. His human eye, half illuminated by the glow of the other in the gloom, was focused. The unnatural green set in the sea of black was locked on the ocean blue of hers. It would be a short exchange. The plan crystallized in my minds eye as I was an audience, frozen as fear gripped my very core. He would lose. He wasn’t calm and collected, he was a leader defending his pack. Not so much a wolf as a hound staring up at Boa Constrictor whom had bested us. She removed what looked like a revolver from a holster on her chest and fired once, twice, three times at Kendrick until the form fitting shield blinked off and he leaped onto the table to swing at her while he had the chance.

  Sloppy.

  Stupid.

  She could have simply shot again and that would have been the end of him.

  I had to focus to hear what she said as the light from the bombs faded. “That’s almost embarassing,” she spoke, teasing as she slid under and caught his arm, driving her elbow into is diapragm before using the pivot from that attack and grip on his wrist to throw him over her shoulder onto the table, which broke scattering his projects everywhere.

  With her pistol aimed at his head, after a masterful mid-air twirl had her spinning into place and landing beside him she exhaled, out of breath but still the victor.

  “And just like that, all your planning, all your hard work, and all that excitement comes crashing down. So, since I just kicked all of your asses, killed each of you before you could have fought back, and spared your lives…” she took off the mask, pulled back her hood to reveal stark blue hair and a fair few piercings on her caramel-skinned face, “I’d like to have a chat.”