Cyber Witch
Cyber Witch: 2082 Book 1
Eddie R. Hicks
Cyber Witch
Cyber Witch: 2082 Book 1
By Eddie R. Hicks
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Copyright © 2019 Eddie R. Hicks
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This novel contains scenes of graphic violence, explicit language and sexuality and is intended for mature readers.
Cover Art by: Ravven
Contents
Prologue
1. Estrella
2. Ray
3. Estrella
4. Ray
5. Estrella
6. Ray
7. Estrella
8. Ray
9. Estrella
10. Ray
11. Estrella
12. Ray
13. Estrella
14. Ray
15. Estrella
16. Ray
17. Estrella
18. Ray
19. Estrella
20. Ray
21. Estrella
22. Ray
23. Estrella
24. Ray
25. Estrella
26. Ray
27. Estrella
28. Ray
29. Estrella
30. Ray
31. Estrella
32. Ray
33. Estrella
34. Ray
35. Estrella
36. Ray
37. Estrella
38. Ray
39. Estrella
40. Ray
41. Estrella
42. Ray
43. Estrella
44. Ray
45. Estrella
46. Ray
Epilogue
Afterword
Next time on Cyber Witch: 2082
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Also by Eddie R. Hicks
About the Author
Prologue
Walker
Walker’s computer terminal sent emergency alerts. The kind of alerts that told you to drop what you’re doing and run for the nearest exit.
Had he not stayed behind in his lab to back up his files, he’d have made it to the fire exit. Walker worked hard on this project, and it was going to change everything. He went for the door when his computer sent the confirmation the backup was nearing completion and mentally prepared himself to venture outside into the sweltering heat of Indonesia. The heat was too much for his aged body.
He wasn’t sure where the lab was exactly, Zhang Industries valued its secrets more than anything. Typical corporation. Walker had been blindfolded during his flight from Sydney to here. He knew the lab was in the middle of some Indonesian jungle and that was about it. He hoped the corporation would fly in a rescue team soon.
Screams bellowed from the halls, a mixture of English, Indonesian, and Chinese voices. Their shouts for help froze Walker’s finger still, it was inches away from the wall door control panel. Maybe leaving the main central lab was a bad idea. He opted to put his ear to the door. His ears picked up more shrieks, burning computer terminals, and exhaust pipes spraying their cooling contents outward. There were popping sounds, like echoing gunfire. Nobody was screaming after the gunfire stopped blasting.
This wasn’t your typical lab accident. It was an attack. The corporation wasn’t going to be sending help, not while the Federation military sprang into action in response to the sounds of violence beyond the exit.
“You, wait there.” A woman’s voice spoke beyond the door. He didn’t recognize the voice, though he recognized the accent. North American, west coast, he reckoned. “Open the fucking door.”
Now Walker was truly regretting not leaving the lab when he had the chance. Someone outside wanted in. He backed away from the door, his eyes gazing at the various computer workstations and testing pods; one of them should provide cover.
The doors slid open and ahead of it stood a corporate PMC, his body covered from top to bottom in black and gray combat armor, in his hands, an SMG. Behind the PMC stood a woman with blue eyes, thin curly golden-brown hair, and wearing a white lab coat, stained with red handprints. She was something to look at, though. Her hands were also glowing white. Walker’s throat tightened; she was an imaginary witch.
The witch stepped ahead of the PMC and instructed him to shoot himself. So, he took off his helmet, put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. His brains came out the other side, splattering across the door that had slid shut during the middle of the act. Walker wanted to run, he really did, but when the witch faced him, ordering him to stand still and not move, he did. He had to; her telepathy told him to. He became her mindless puppet.
“Take me to the prototype,” the witch demanded of him.
Walker’s mind-controlled brain obeyed, and he nodded. “As you wish—”
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
“No, of course not.”
He escorted her into the lab, a chamber full of decorated tables, computers, unfinished robotic devices, and a tube-shaped pod at the far end of the chamber. They made their way to the back and stood facing a cylindrical tube large enough to fit a large man inside. Most people wouldn’t be surprised if there was a man inside it as there was something that had legs, arms, body, and head beyond the tube’s frosty glass-like exterior.
She gave the tube a look up and down, then let out an impressed whistle. “You guys have been busy.”
“It will change the world once it’s complete.”
“I’d bet,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “Now, I want you to tell me everything about it.”
“Everything?”
“I’m a quick study.” Her index finger tapped the side of her head. “Show me all the reports, diagrams, blueprints, everything you know and have on those computers.”
Walker obeyed. He keyed in his password, bringing up exactly what she requested, the files he had saved to backup. The witch leaned in, viewing the screens as their blush light shined across her pale face.
“Am I free to go?” he asked.
“There’s one last thing I’ll need from you once I’m done here,” she said as she continued to browse and commit everything on the screen to memory. “Place the facility on auto-destruct.”
“As you wish,” he said and went to key in the command on a rear computer terminal. “Anything else?”
She grimaced, reaching for a pistol strapped to her thigh, holding it to her face. She handed him the gun. He felt his heart beat in his neck.
“Open your mouth,” she said and watched as he held the gun and opened his mouth wide open. “Put the gun in it.” The barrel of the pistol found its way into his opened mouth.
He couldn’t resist the witch. She had total control of his thoughts and body. “Please …please don’t,” he said with a mouth full of a pistol barrel.
“I don’t want to do this,” she said, facing away from him. “Believe me, I don’t. But I have my orders. If I don’t carry them out, someone else will …after they punish me.”
“There’s …always another way.”
She didn’t believe so. “Pull the trigger.”
A bang echoed and the contents of what existed at the back of his head made the white lab walls behind him sticky wit
h crimson and gore.
The witch continued her task, committing the data to memory as the self-destruct alarms blared.
One
Estrella
A storm was about to roll in.
How bad of a storm? Estrella didn’t know. She focused her mind on other things, like how she would make rent this month. Being broke as fuck sucked.
She walked ominously through the crowded streets of downtown Buenos Aires when the downpour of water fell from the skies. The clouds overhead grew thick and dark, making the sun vanish. You couldn’t tell the difference between night and day. The metallic urban jungle around her didn’t help.
Neon signs flashed on automatically, controlled by their light sensors, the storm tricking them into thinking it was the evening when it wasn’t. In reality, it was still the middle of the day. Nobody was looking for a spin in the casinos or seeking the titillating flesh of dancers on stage in the clubs. People were busy at work, feeding the corporations that ran the globe, earning pay that’d be invested in the splendors surrounding her, all owned by the corporations. It was a fucked-up cycle. The local arcades were populated however, mostly kids skipping school to play videogames. She did the same back when school was a burden in her life. Videogame music and sound effects echoed at her side as she walked past and splashed through the puddles.
Looking up, Estrella saw countless people walking across the overhanging bridges connected to the upper levels of the city. They deployed their weapon of choice to combat the heavy rainfall, mostly translucent umbrellas. Her weapon of choice was a transparent rain jacket, umbrellas made you vulnerable. Much easier to reach for a gun when your hands were in the pockets you stored it in. That and it helped make her look human as she kept both her hands at her sides, buried into the jacket’s pockets.
Estrella’s left arm was synthetic, though it was hard to tell from afar, and as for her right, it was wrapped in an NC gauntlet. Humans never had that combination of tech on them, neither did imaginary witches, often referred to as IWs, since imaginary witch was a bit of a mouthful to say. Shades covered her synthetic eyes, now radiating with an emerald glow thanks to the low lighting brought on from the darkened clouds. The navigation data overlaid on her eyesight guided her through the urban sprawl to her destination, her boots splashing through rain puddles reflecting the glow of neon that wasn’t there two minutes ago. She chewed the bubblegum in her mouth during the walk, occasionally blowing pink bubbles.
She arrived at The Den half an hour later, a popular hangout stop for mercenaries. The drinks were cheap, and the job board always had high-paying gigs. Her boss Ricardo was always here when they weren’t any jobs. If he wasn’t, then she’d be kicking in the door of every brothel on the east side until she found him. And she would find him too.
The Japanese words and logo for the Yoshida Corporation flashed on a sign outside the establishment, one of many businesses they owned. The same logo was etched into her NC gauntlet and probably stamped on the inside of her synthetic arm and skeleton.
A doorman stood at the entrance as Estrella approached. He looked at her strangely, like she didn’t belong there, so she shed her somewhat fake appearance. She took off her jacket, pulling the hood away from her headfirst. Her long black hair was free to embrace the warm wet downpour from the heavens. She lifted her shades to the top of her head, unmasking the emerald glow from her synthetic eyes, and her black eye shadow and lipstick. She blew another pink bubble, and it popped. She resumed chewing it.
The doorman knew what she was at that point. His wide eyes said it all. But, just to make sure, she formed her hand, wrapped in her NC gauntlet, into a cup, flashing her holographic ID card. There was no question who she was, Estrella was an RW, a real witch, and she belonged with the mercenaries.
“I’m here to see Ricardo,” Estrella said, lowering her hand.
The doorman looked puzzled, narrowing his eyes at her. “Que?”
“Estoy aquí para ver a Ricardo,” she repeated.
“Si, si!”
The doorman waved for her to enter the establishment. Rainwater became a thing of the past as a dry and air-conditioned environment replaced it. She moved past the crowds of mercenaries. She could smell the alcohol on their breath as they spoke, and the lingering scent of stem cell burgers and overcooked fries from the kitchen. It wasn’t hard to tell who was human and who was an RW like her; just look for the NC gauntlet, synthetic arms, and eyes. It was the international sign that someone traded their humanity for money and cyberware so powerful it might as well be called magic.
Ricardo was at the back, sitting in a private corner reserved for hotshots like him. Three rounds of empty beer glasses stood on the round table in front of him. He was your typical mercenary boss in this part of the city, sporting a brown jacket full of rips and tears, probably a hidden weapon or two when he wasn’t asked to leave them at the door. Then again neither was Estrella, but she was a different case. RWs couldn’t harm humans.
So she wanted the doorman to think.
The optical scanners in Estrella’s eyes ran a facial scan of Ricardo, not that she needed to, but it was always good practice to make sure you were about to confront the right person. The data displayed over her eyesight.
Name: Ricardo Cortez
Age: 34
Species: Human
Occupation: Mercenary
Notes: Frequently visits underage prostitutes
She grimaced at the last line of data. That was new. The corporations harvested new private data from Ricardo recently and chose not to forward it to the police. She wasn’t surprised. Richard sat with a brutal-looking bodyguard with a fierce crimson mohawk on his shaved head and enough nose piercings to hide the fact he even had one. Some young girl cuddled with Richard wearing booty shorts, fishnet stockings, and a bikini. She was most likely found in the red-light district, and Estrella had serious doubts she was older than sixteen. She grinned and scanned her too.
Name: Alexis Castillo
Age: 18
Species: Human
Occupation: Streetwalker
Notes: Error, please try again later
There was no point in trying again later. Error messages like that were typical signs someone paid a hacker to alter their profile, a bad hacker at that. The good ones would have doctored notes and would have charged Alexis, if that was even her real name, extra. Streetwalkers with fake IDs were usually underage. This meant Ricardo committed three crimes. Estrella’s actions would be just.
Additional scans displayed lines of text over her eyes. The scans suggested everyone at the table had more than one drink each, and that no weapons were detected, though it was possible they had something hidden within their body armor.
Well, here it goes, she echoed internally. Estrella gave Ricardo the worst scowl he’d ever seen. “Ricardo!”
Ricardo slouched back in his chair, looking up at Estrella and smiled. “Estrella Rodriguez in the flesh!” He rubbed his hands together, standing up to greet her with open arms. “Soon to be number fucking one RW in the city, what can I do for you?”
Estrella clenched her fists. “Stand still and put your hand on the table.”
“Que?”
“Just do it.”
“What’s this about?”
“Just do it, motherfucker!”
He grinned, looking back at the underage girl he was sitting with. She shrugged. Ricardo did as well and then rested his palm on the table as requested. Estrella reached for a concealed dagger strapped to her leg using her cyber speed, impaling his hand to the wooden table. Ricardo screamed.
His bodyguard rose, and the chair he sat on crashed backward. He went charging for Estrella. She struck him hard across the face with her right hand, wrapped in the silver-studded NC gauntlet. If it had been her synthetic hand, he wouldn’t be standing or holding a hand to his nose which was now leaking red.
Ricardo examined his hand that was stuck, held to the table by Estrella’s dagger after stabilizin
g his balance. He watched the red that plumed on his fingers, she looked at the fury burning in his natural human eyes, something she’d be doing if she still had them. The girl he was with, Alexis was it? Estrella had forgotten already, went into a frenzied panic. Estrella told her to scram, and she did, heels clicking, into the bar behind Estrella.
A downed bodyguard on one side and Ricardo’s stabbed hand on the other. It was her and Ricardo now. She placed the swarm of nanites within her body on full alert.
With gritted teeth, Ricardo yelled. “What the fuck, Estrella?”
“You don’t like to listen do you?!” she retorted.
“You fucking bitch!” He staggered, unable to move with a dagger through his still-bleeding hand, holding him in place. “You fuckin’ real witches aren’t supposed to harm humans!” He tried pulling the dagger out from his hand. It didn’t budge. Estrella basically nailed his hand to the table with it. He groaned. “I thought that AI in your head prevents you from attacking us?”
She sneered. “I changed the rules.”
Ricardo’s downed bodyguard got to his feet in a daze from her punch. Estrella saw the guard reach for a pistol. By the time he aimed it at Estrella, she held her gauntleted hand out, and it was glowing blue. Holographic pentagrams spun in circles on her gauntlet, the utility nanite swarm within her was seconds away from behind deployed and had been before the bodyguard touched the material of his pistol.
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