We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  I didn’t interrupt her; we didn’t have a “goodbyes” type of relationship. She likely wouldn’t notice me being gone ‘til tomorrow at some point, and I needed to be in work mode, not thinking about what we last said to each other. That had happened with Wife Number Two. Thinking about an argument had led to a lot of time in the surgery stack. Lesson learned: keep your personal life locked away. It can and will get you killed.

  So I walked out of my apartment.

  The armored glass elevator plunged down, allowing the city’s lights to play over me. The night had just begun in earnest, changing the city from the corporate jewel of the south into the party tourist location that had made it famous. Taverns, bars and pubs, clubs and lounges, parks, restaurants, street meat vendors, diners, and dives all roused from their dormant states. Likewise, partiers, punks, tourists, thrill-seekers, and mischief-makers took over Late Night Atlanta. Like the first hit off an opium pipe, the city breathed in vice and exhaled experience. It was in these streets I had grown up, where I had killed my first man, and where I had evolved into what I am now. Descending from my apartment to the streets below felt like falling from heaven.

  The soft ding of the elevator pulled me away from the now-subterranean view. I was still somewhat groggy. As I turned and stepped into the garage, I saw my BMW sedan sitting and waiting. The elevator had informed the E-Chauffeur in my car I was coming down, causing the vehicle to activate its electric motor and drive to the elevator. The sleek black and red paint showed off German engineering for the modern enthusiast who could afford it. I slid into the driver seat. The door sealed behind me, and I looked into the phone for the first time since the call had ended. The address was north of the city in Kennesaw. Not overly surprising, and at this time of night I could be there in 45 minutes.

  “Liz,” I said as I slid the phone into its cradle.

  “Yes?” The voice was sultry and sinful. Not a factory option; I’d had the default personality removed and a hacked variant placed in its vacancy. Not only was it far more secure, it matched the car better.

  “Get us on 75 northbound and get Ivan on the phone. Call until he answers.”

  The Beemer’s electric motor hummed as the autodrive engaged. The streets were wet from a late December rain, creating reflective surfaces in every puddle. The E-Chauffeur matched its speed with those posted, leaving me to brood as I listened to the muted rings through the car’s speakers. I had known Ivan for three years and employed him for two. He wasn’t Russian, but the influx of refugees from the Sino Conflict meant that the streets were learning all sorts of new slang. He was younger than me, and when I first met him, he barely had any cybertech. So I paid him half in cash and half in “chair-time” at my preferred mechanic.

  Now, he was running so many mods he barely qualified as human. Cybernetic addiction was another thing you had to balance in this life. You could run internal comms, sensors, weapon enhancements, subcutaneous body armor, organic weapon mounts, and limb replacement. A common mistake—that much tech meant you were going to flash every sensor in a three-block radius. And any decent CeeCee will fry your shit, turning off vulnerable systems one by one. Keeping your anti-intrusion software up to date could be as pricey as turning your body into a living weapon.

  Personally, I preferred a more subdued approach. My hardware was all non-network reflex, strength, endurance boosters, and a few other “dumb” systems that allowed me to be protected from intrusion and offer minimal footprint to sensor sweeps. Of course, there were the replacement body parts; those had been necessary as the years of damage took their toll. And that didn’t even account for all the possible chemical cocktails. Living at the bleeding edge was expensive, but that’s why I charged the prices I did.

  The speakers pinged, drawing me out of my thoughts.

  “Yooooo!” Ivan’s voice was cheerful, and the sound of thunderous music could be heard even through his voice filter. “You out tonight? I am at Typhoon!”

  “We have work. You sober?” I asked as the car took another corner smoothly. A group of young ladies were walking down the street, flesh, holograms, and minimal clothing drawing my eye. One turned and blew the car an exaggerated kiss.

  “Shit man, yeah mostly. I can drop a hypo but that will mess with my reflexes.”

  “I am headed to meet the client, call Zipline. Go get a work van. And some tool boxes. Meet me at Landmark. Sober up there.”

  “Da, what’s the gig?”

  “No clue. Pack for a little bit of everything. There seems to be a timing issue, so I don’t want to go back to the lockers if we can help it.”

  “Seems nexus. You want back up for the meet?”

  “No, they seem relaxed enough. Besides, the down payment is already in the bank.”

  “Skuller, see you at Landmark.”

  He hung up, and my BMW slid onto I75 north. The 16-lane freeway cut through the entire state, offering those so inclined easy surface travel to Tennessee or Florida. It had also made Georgia a smuggling hub for over a century. Drugs, people, guns, and all manner of illicit goods made their way through the country on I75. Atlanta didn’t mind as long as the right palms were greased and enough busts were made to show the housewives who gave a fuck that the Dot-Gov types were “doing something.”

  My first jobs, once I had been inducted into the Cartel, had been driving loads of “product” from Jacksonville to Lexington. I knew this interstate like I knew my own hand. I could still remember my hands on the wheel, tweaking on meth, listening to older Sicarios in the passenger seat tell me the ways of the world, as salsa-pop pumped out of the speakers. My vision blurred to the tune of the beat. It hadn’t seemed like a bad way to spend one’s teenage years, and that’s why the Cartel recruits from high schools. By 18, I had killed men for less money than I now spent on a haircut and massage. When you grow up with nothing, you really don’t have much to lose.

  “Manual drive. Release governor. Sport mode active.” I watched the steering wheel extend from the dash as I touched the accelerator, and I felt the gasoline engine kick on. The twin turbo V6 growled as I began pushing into the light traffic, watching the speedometer climb to 140KPH.

  “Anything else Papi?” The voice sent a light shiver down my spine. You could practically feel the virtual teeth biting on your earlobe.

  “Yes, Playlist 4. And back it off about twenty percent there Liz.”

  “You’re no fun.” The car pouted as it dutifully activated the playlist.

  I dodged around a slow-moving cargo hauler and pressed harder on the accelerator.

  * * *

  The drive back from Kennesaw was faster than the one there. The meeting had gone predictably; now all that was left was to convince my crew. The Landmark Diner was one of those long-standing Atlanta traditions that seemed almost ageless. A large-scale diner planted in Buckhead that, during the day, catered to upscale families and corporate workers looking for a meal with a wide variety of menu options. But, much like the rest of the city, as the sun set, it took on a new tone.

  The front of the restaurant remained brightly lit, attracting partiers heading out for the night, and, later, partiers recovering afterwards. But in the back...we who plied our trade in violence and vice could enjoy a more private and secure environment.

  I breezed past the receptionist, who was lost in the holo drama before her. I walked through the mostly empty dining room and stepped through an unmarked door near the bathrooms that most people would assume was storage. It was not, and the sonic wash of the noise dampener came over me like a baptism of hidden vice. The backroom had been a well-known comedy club, but the years marched on, and as the need for private dining had increased, the establishment had responded. Now the darkened room was lit by contrasting blues and reds making facial recognition software iffy at best. Sonic dampeners kept conversations localized to their tables, and patrons desiring maximum anonymity could rent booths with force shields.

  I glanced around those in the open and saw a number of
familiar faces. Herold “Limerick” Jones was at one table, surrounded by a host of hangers-on. He was a local WaveRapper who fancied himself a player in the underworld. Our dealings had all been public and polite. Our mutual acquaintances had informed me that his lyrics weren’t just for show, and he was more than happy to get his hands dirty. Neither I, nor my clients, had any desire to hear of my work on a chart-topping hit.

  Four armored police officers sat at another table. Their gear marked them as elite APEX rapid response and crime suppression specialists. When plans went sideways, and you didn’t have an exit strategy, they happened…a normal patrol officer wasn’t a threat to a man like me, but these cops rode Mil-spec VTOLs, and ran as much cyberware as any Street Soldat I cared to think of. I looked over their faces, since their armored helms hung from the back of their chairs like mirrors. I recognized two and could tell they recognized me. We had a checkered history, as men who had seen each other through their holographic gunsights tended to have. But all of us viewed it as happenstance of the profession, and this place was as sacred as any church or temple. Out on the streets, they would crucify me if they could, but a good meal is hard to come by late at night and no professional rivalry was worth endangering that.

  Last, I spotted my party. Posted in the corner booth, Ivan was stretched out with half a plate of wings, and a growing pile of bones next to it. I calculated the amount of time he had been here, based on the speed at which I knew he ate and how many wings remained. Close to forty minutes.

  Ivan had been tall and lanky at 6’8” and 200 lbs. Then he’d added half again his natural body weight in augments and cyberware. Those hadn’t bulked him up, so his long spindly limbs had earned him the street name of “Scarecrow.” He didn’t care for the nickname; his ego demanded he be Ivan the Great. But even that wasn’t good enough. He was “Ivan the Greatest of All Time, Goddammit,” which, of course was shortened to Ivan the Goat behind his back.

  He was wearing typical Soldat combat clothing, a clashing mix of Sino aesthetic and “Formal Slavic Business Wear.” His Kamayhara combat gi was an eye-catching blue and had been covered by cyberware sponsor patches. His tight, slash-resistant pants, black, were by Adidas. Multiple refugee cultures had collided with unrestrained American capitalism and resulted in some very strange fashion trends.

  Ivan looked up at me with a broad grin on his face. His companion turned to see me with an expression more sly and reserved. Zipline was a Circuit Cowboy I had used for few jobs. His specialty was Direct Action Network Manipulation and Intrusion. His skills would have landed him a comfortably extravagant lifestyle in any corporation, however that would have required a shift in lifestyle that Zipline clearly wasn’t embracing. His skinny, scar-covered body spoke of a life of alternating chemical and technological addiction. His clothes were tattered cargo shorts and a denim vest bearing currently-trending Trailer Park SlamRock patches. His hair had been replaced with the interwoven tech-dreads of processors and spare RAM, giving him onboard computing power to rival most 20th century supercomputers.

  Of course, keeping that kind of tech safe in the trailer parks full of factory burnouts and junkies wasn’t easy or cheap. I had seen Zipline’s personal cluster of trailers before. Layered active and passive defenses ranging from less-than-lethal minefields to auto-turret controlled shotguns loaded with monofilament razor shells. I had been curious about why he still lived there. His freelancing clearly provided more than enough for him to move to a safer environment, but he had merely shrugged and said he didn’t want to be removed from the real.

  Sliding into the booth, I reached over and palmed the privacy screen, causing an opaque white field to block out the rest of the room. I glanced at their faces, hungry and almost feral. My jobs never paid small, and these boys knew that came with risks. But on the ragged edges of society, you rarely get opportunities to break out of your station in life. These two men knew that to do so meant the application of violence and acceptance of risk.

  “What’s the rabo?” Ivan asked, pushing aside the pile of dead avian remains in front of him.

  “Recovery of an asset,” I said evenly, pulling out a disposable tablet, “and retribution on those that took it.”

  I quickly entered an eight-digit code, opening the tablet. Ivan picked it up and began flipping through the pages of the brief. Zipline had likely already hacked the pad; he was just polite enough not to talk about what he found. He compulsively hacked every device he laid his eyes on, so I didn’t bring my personal phone out when he was around.

  “So break it down, Hoss,” Zipline said in his overly exaggerated southern drawl.

  I cleared my throat and took a second to run over the details as they had been fed to me. The scene hadn’t been an entirely unfamiliar one. A stoic patriarch, the weeping matriarch, and their cluster of supporters; the story was only new in the minutia.

  “Sometime around noon today, a Bankhead drug den was robbed. They did the typical sweep job looking for drugs and cash. When they didn’t find enough, they started taking people.”

  At that moment I selected a file and pressed play. Shaky tri-dee clawed to life as a desperate cameraman caught precious frames of a masked man shoving a young girl who had been gagged and bound into a cargo van. I froze it on the best frame of the girl’s face.

  “Video was taken by the asset’s boyfriend.”

  “Excuse me,” Zipline said stubbing out his Pall Mall. “What does some drugged out slag have to warrant our kind of response?”

  “The asset is the daughter of a very prominent figure in local politics. If he involves police in this matter it gets discovered his daughter is a burned out junkie who performs in online porn shows.”

  Perking up at that information, both leaned in. Scandal and corruption meant even healthier paydays. Plus, who didn’t like hearing about the woes of their social betters?

  “Who is he?” Ivan asked.

  “No one you voted for,” I countered.

  “You know I can’t vote.” He pouted. Ivan had caught a charge early on, and it was a sore spot. For a known killer, having a felony record for attempting—and failing—to break into an AutoBurger kiosk during a three-day drunken binge? Less than intimidating.

  “Anyway,” I said, slightly annoyed at the deviation; they knew I wouldn’t discuss client details if it could be helped, “we have been charged with getting her out of the current predicament and returning her to her family.”

  “So, who took her? And why?” Ivan asked, taking a pull off a bottle. “Also, where is she?”

  “Learn to read faster,” Zipline quipped. “Boss, this ain’t gonna be that easy. The Towers are no fucking joke.”

  “Fuck man, The Towers?” Ivan moaned.

  “Yes,” I said icily. “The Towers. Get over it. It’s why you get paid the big bucks. The good news is the hard work is done for us. The family tagged the girl with a tracker on her last trip to rehab and had the family investigator track her once the boyfriend informed them of what occurred. He traced her to the tower and has sat on her this whole time. They move her, and he will inform us.”

  “So who has her? Why did they take her, anyway?” Ivan asked. He pointedly was not reading the brief as a rebuke to Zipline’s jab.

  “Tower gang called 47 Ronin. And, as far as we can tell, they grabbed her and three other females, likely in hopes of selling them.”

  “Yeah, I know those guys,” Zipline said. “They’re a burned-out shitty MC. Made up primarily of Russian refugee kids who have a hard-on for Jap samurai culture shit. They used to be an up and comer, ‘til a few months back. Half their number either got cut down or got hard time.”

  That part hadn’t been on the brief, but I wasn’t surprised Zip had that kind of intel. Guys like him had a vast array of informants and intel sources. He was as much an information broker as he was a combat hacker.

  “Shit was gnarly,” he continued. “Deal gone south with some crew of dudes I had never heard of before, turned to gun play, an
d it just so happened that an APEX VTOL was nearby. Gunfight became a massacre, and ever since, the forty-seven Ronin are more like nine. Hearing that they are robbing Trap houses and dabbling in human trafficking doesn’t surprise me one bit. These dudes are speed freaks with some bare bones milsurp augments.”

  “Know any of them personally?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered, lighting another Pall with a propane torch.

  “That going to be an issue?” I kept my voice flat and didn’t move. This world was made of questions like this, determining if someone was mercenary enough to take on someone they knew personally. I could feel muscles tensing and aching for the comfort of the grip of a handgun, but I forced myself to remain calm.

  “Nah,” Zipline said, expelling smoke across the table. “I know him. I don’t like him.”

  “Good. Got us an in on these guys?” I asked as my muscles relaxed slightly. There was still all the chance in the world that Zipline was setting me up to stab me in the back. But, like I had told him, the risk is why they pay me.

  “Yeah, like I said. Speed freaks. I can drop a Wave asking for a load of trentameth for pick up. These guys are likely mid-meth-ride and will be up for another two days.”

  “Do it. There is a bonus if we get her back before anyone finds out she is gone.”

  “Yo,” Ivan interjected. “So we go in and get the girl, what do we do about the Ronin?”

  “We kill ‘em all. Contract is pretty clear about that. Client wants this washed away like a bad dream.” I pointed at Ivan. “Me and you go in, handle them, grab her, and walk out. It’s The Towers. No one is going to give a shit. Zipline runs intrusion and overwatch.”

  “Nexus,” Ivan said, “What is the payout?”