Gunwitch: Rebirth

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Of course. I’m not cruel.’ Annette pointed to Metal Arm. ‘You take that nice, strong, cybernetic arm and the bucket down to the water and bring some back. Then we can teach Terri how to build something a little more solid.’

  Metal Arm cringed. ‘Uh… Could I get the ice cream? If I get water on this, it tends to short the electrics…’

  Annette shook her head and grinned. ‘So long as we get water and ice cream, I don’t mind who does what. Get a move on, it’s not like we have all day.’

  Sarah waited until the two men were out of earshot before getting to her feet. ‘Louise, are you nuts? They’re Cyber-Kings!’

  ‘Yes, but I’m a cyborg and, far more importantly, they’re men. We can handle a couple of men, can’t we?’

  Sarah looked at Annette as though she was insane for a second, and then a grin spread over her face. ‘Well, when you put it like that…’ She looked down the beach to where Blue Hair was already hurrying back with his plastic bucket of water. She pulled the side-strings of her bikini briefs up higher on her hips, checked the position of her bra cups, and then stepped off the blanket to meet him. ‘That’s amazing,’ she cooed. ‘Such a big man and yet so nimble.’

  Blue Hair came to a stop and stared at Sarah for a second, and then actually blushed.

  Annette turned away, trying not to grin too much, and waited for the ice cream to arrive.

  ~~~

  ‘Your problem is the seal on your battery compartment,’ Annette said. She paused to run her tongue over the inside of the little tub her ice cream had come in. Metal Arm, who was actually named Barry, watched this with the kind of enraptured attention only a man watching an attractive woman do something enticing can achieve. ‘The rubber’s shot,’ Annette went on. ‘Water gets past that and then it’s not only messing with the power supply, but it can get right into the electronics, and then you’re in a world of hurt.’

  ‘I’ll see if our mechanic’s got a spare,’ Barry managed. ‘I thought it was the exposed wires.’

  Annette shook her head, licking the pot again. ‘The grommets on those look fine. Nice, tight fits. Those are a real liability if you get into a fight though. Someone just has to get lucky with a knife and you’ve got one arm.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  Terri giggled and, as she had been shown by Blue Hair, patted the top of her bucket with her spade. Then she lifted the bucket carefully off the sand beneath and she was left with a fourth, quite respectable tower for her castle. Blue Hair, who had turned out to be called Ted, grinned.

  ‘You are good with kids,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Nah… Well, I used to do this with my kid sister,’ Ted admitted. ‘Haven’t seen her in a while.’

  ‘You should go see her.’

  ‘Ah… When I left home, there were things said. I don’t think I’m welcome…’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’m sure she’d love to see you. That’s the way families are supposed to be.’

  ‘How did we end up doing this?’ Barry asked. Annette had finally finished her ice cream and his brain was starting to regain some of its higher functions.

  Annette smiled at him. ‘You’re guys, we’re a couple of attractive women in minimal clothing. You and I are cyborgs and Ted’s aiming to be one, so that provides a connection. I don’t really think you wanted to spend your day kicking over sandcastles because it’s lame and you know it.’ Barry nodded, a bit lamely. ‘I mean, I can understand a desire to rail against the futility of existence, I really can. I wake up every day and have to come up with a good reason not to eat a bullet.’ Annette’s gaze shifted to Sarah and Terri. ‘It just so happens that’s been easier recently.’

  ‘What have you got t’ worry about?’

  ‘This time last year, I was a bright young thing with a promising career in cybernetics. Now I’m a fugitive, running for my life, and making a living as a hooker on Industrial Avenue. Do the math.’

  ‘Oh… Oh, well, put it like that and I do seem kind of lame. I was in a dead-end job I hated. The gang seemed like a way out.’

  ‘I’m not in a position to judge, but I don’t see the gangs in Brooklyn as having much in the way of a bright future. Mostly they’re the weaker offshoots of the Manhattan gangs and, sooner or later, someone’s going to make a move. I know it’s not easy, but if I were you, I’d be looking for a way out.’ Annette indicated Terri, happily shovelling damp sand to make a wall between two towers. ‘No matter what anyone tells you, that’s the future. Not gang violence and random destruction. Not adding more and more metal until you don’t know what’s really left of you.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right…’

  ‘I certainly hope so.’ Annette sighed and checked the time. ‘Terri, hun, we should really go find you some lunch.’

  Terri looked around with her wide, green eyes. ‘Ice cream?’

  ‘I think we should try another food group. I’m sure there’s some place up the beach we can find something.’

  ‘You really gotta go?’ Ted asked and then seemed to realise how lame that sounded. ‘Uh… I mean, yeah, you better run… Uh, there’s quite a good diner about a block up on the left that you’d better run to while you’ve, uh, got the chance.’

  Sarah grinned at him. ‘See you around, Ted. Don’t do anything too nasty to anyone.’ Then she kissed him on his crimson cheek, which only seemed to make it redder.

  Barry was helping Annette take care of the blanket. He really was quite dextrous with just a grabber. ‘It was nice meeting you,’ he said. ‘And if you tell anyone I said that… You know.’

  ‘You’ll have to hunt me down and kill me?’ Annette asked. ‘Well, if your mechanic can’t fix those seals, come by Industrial Avenue and I might be able to fix you up. I’ve got a workshop now.’

  ‘I might just do that.’

  ~~~

  ‘You think we will see them again?’ Sarah asked once they had made it to the promenade, leaving the two men watching them from the sand.

  ‘Maybe,’ Annette replied.

  ‘They were nice. And you were right about the girl power thing.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was ready to shoot them if I had to, but…’

  It was turning out to be a really good day, maybe even perfect. They had had some fun, met some new people, and maybe even done a little bit of good in the process. Not bad for a few hours at the beach.

  Annette had put her glasses back on to walk to the diner and now Terri, balanced on her arm, reached up and pulled them off. Annette looked at her with blank, white orbs, but Terri just smiled. ‘I like your eyes,’ Terri said and Mickey gave a bark, apparently of agreement.

  Annette’s smile broadened. Yes, a perfect day.

  Queens District, 31/3/2117.

  The predicted storm had come and gone. Rain had lashed the streets of Queens for over eight hours and kept everyone indoors. The following day had been bright and clear, if a little cool, and the weather had chosen to maintain that condition through Jenny and Terri’s departure by ship.

  It was still keeping to the same cool, spring weather when Annette turned up on the avenue to meet Sarah with a postcard in her hand. She waved it. ‘From Jenny.’

  ‘Oo! What does she say?’ Sarah asked, rushing over to look for herself.

  ‘The usual sort of thing. They’ve arrived. They’re settling in. Everyone sends best wishes. Oh and “Terri sends a big kiss for Mickey.”’ Mickey gave a bark, circled his favourite spot on the sidewalk, and settled down to keep watch.

  ‘Well, that’s good then. She sounds happy. She’s got happy writing.’

  Annette raised an eyebrow. ‘Happy writing?’

  ‘Yeah. Isn’t it obvious? Her writing’s got a happy tilt to it.’

  ‘Okay, once again I am educated. A day without learning is a day not worth living.’

  Sarah gave Annette a frown. ‘Was that sarcasm? I can never tell with you. You know, you got all that money and you paid for Jenny to get out.’

  ‘I know. I’ve got the postc
ard to prove it.’

  ‘You could have used it yourself. You could’ve set yourself up in Sky City–’

  ‘Too many people with too many questions.’

  ‘But you could have got out of the game and you didn’t even think of it, did you?’

  Annette shrugged. ‘You’re giving me too much credit. I thought about it. But… I didn’t exactly get Jenny out of the game. I got Terri out of it. That’s no way to grow up. She’s a great kid and she needs a mother. Anyway, I got enough to make my workshop viable, and you got a few days off your back. We all got something out of it.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’ Sarah looked out along the avenue. ‘Now, either she’s lost or she’s looking for something outside her comfort zone.’

  Annette followed Sarah’s gaze, vision narrowing to pick out the woman Sarah had spotted. ‘The latter, sort of. I think she’s looking for someone and she’s not in her comfort zone. That’s Kerry Clement’s sister.’

  Gillian slowed as she spotted Annette and Sarah. She looked worried and her motives for walking down Industrial Avenue in the middle of the week were obviously not social. Annette fixed a surprised smile on her face and waited.

  ‘Louise… Uh, hi,’ Gillian said.

  ‘Gillian. It’s nice to see you, but–’

  ‘Could I talk to you? Somewhere private?’

  Annette frowned, but she said, ‘Sure. There’s an alley a little way back where we can get some privacy. Mickey, stay with Sarah.’

  ‘It’s Tina, my daughter,’ Gillian said as soon as they were off the main avenue. ‘She’s missing. I didn’t know who else to talk to.’

  ‘She’s the cop, right? She spoke at the funeral. Surely the police are–’

  ‘That’s just it.’ Gillian’s fists clenched at her sides. Her body language was all about tension and worry. ‘She’s supposed to be on some undercover drugs operation in Sky City. The police won’t tell me anything, but she just vanished two days ago. I don’t think anyone’s heard from her.’

  ‘They aren’t going to tell me any more than they’ll tell you…’

  ‘I know, but… But Detective Bradley, the detective dealing with Kerry’s murder, she told me that someone had killed the man responsible. She was sure it was you, somehow. Somehow you’d found him and you’d… dealt with him. I need you to find Tina.’

  Annette chewed on her lower lip for a second. It was not going to be easy. With Kerry and Marlow, she had known where to look; in fact, knowing where to look had been the reason Kerry was killed. Now she would need to work from scratch, more or less. But…

  ‘I can’t promise anything,’ Annette said. ‘I’ll look into it. I owe Kerry that much.’

  ‘You don’t owe him anything, but thank you.’

  Annette just smiled and led Gillian back out onto the avenue. Whatever Gillian thought, there was a debt left to be paid. Annette had got Kerry into the mess that had killed him and she was going to try her hardest to make sure his niece made it through whatever the LIPD had got her into.

  ~~~

  Annette had never considered herself up to Mariel’s standard when it came to infiltrating computer systems. She had, in fact, learned a lot of what she knew from Mariel during late-night chats about whatever random topic they came up with while they drank themselves into a hangover. Good times… Now Mariel’s lessons, usually couched in terms of ‘this is what a hacker would do, but I obviously never would,’ were coming in very useful as Annette made her way through the security around the LIPD headquarters’ systems in Sky City.

  The first stage had been to hijack a couple of public servers to act as relay points. If someone tried to trace her back to the network in her workshop, they would have to find their way past those two blinds first, and she had arranged for several different points to send her probes from so that nothing came from a single source.

  Then there had been the research phase. She had sounded out the outward-facing servers to uncover what they were and what software they were running, and then she had gone digging in manufacturer sites and a few interesting forum sites she had located to see what weaknesses she could uncover.

  Cracking a backup server which had not been updated as assiduously as it should have been got her access to the LIPD’s internal network and from there it started getting tricky. She had little idea what she was looking for or where to find it. She located the personnel database and so Tina Clement-Bride’s service records. That helped a little: the last entry indicated that she had been assigned to an Operation Anti-Venom and gave the name of a detective who was acting as her immediate superior. So Annette went looking for his records…

  It took her hours, but she eventually had what she needed. Operation Anti-Venom had been set up to investigate a new drug which had begun appearing on the streets of Sky City in small amounts. Annette looked at the observed effects and decided they were talking about snakebite. That was before she found a reference to the name among the file entries. Annette had destroyed the lab the Juicers had been using to make the stuff, but apparently not all the people responsible for it. The LIPD had recorded a couple of instances of Sky Lords using the stuff on house raids in Greenland. They had been entirely unable to track down the production facility or those responsible for making it. That had been when a few young Sky City-based rookies had been inducted to attempt to infiltrate the Sky Lords.

  Annette had had to go find more information on the Sky Lords since she knew nothing about them. They seemed to be the popular gang to join if you fell into the bracket of young, bored, rich, and stupid in the enclave. Not all of them were actually rich, but they had comfortable lives and parents who probably told them that they were a disgrace to the family name once too often. Annette suspected spoiling the kids in their formative years might have come into play. Whatever, the Lords were more like a wannabe gang than a real one. They were into petty crime in Sky City, more for the fun of it than for whatever they might steal. Their biggest impact on the enclave’s culture was their habit of breaking into large houses in Greenland to hold multi-day parties. However, they almost always held these events when the occupants were away for some reason. It was rare for anyone to be hurt, or caught.

  Backing out of all her connections, Annette sat back on the chair she had found to grace her underground hideout. There was not much to the place at the moment: a workbench, an office chair, an old freezer cabinet. The latter was going to become a nanofabricator; Annette had her suitcase unit building parts as fast as it could and she was assembling when she had spare time. Once that was done, things could really get started down here, but for now it was a useful space to work, away from prying eyes and with network access. It was quiet down there, which let her think.

  The Sky Lords did appear to be the key to finding the laboratory producing the snakebite. However, Annette did not think she could infiltrate the gang effectively and there was not enough time for an espionage job anyway. No, something more direct was going to be needed. Something much more direct.

  Sky City District, 1/4/2117.

  ‘Come on, Danny, wakey-wakey, rise and… Well, shining isn’t one of your strong suits, is it?’

  Danny Farrell struggled out of a deep sleep born of drinking until four in the morning and tried to make sense of what was happening. His brain kicked into overdrive quite suddenly, but it was another second or so before he realised that his desire to set speed records in running out of his current location was due to the gun barrel he was looking down.

  ‘Please try to maintain bladder control. I had enough of that with the last one.’

  Danny managed to focus past the pistol and saw the owner of the voice, a woman with dark-brown hair, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. How had someone got past the security on his building? Perhaps more importantly… ‘Who the Hell are you? What do you want?’

  ‘The last one of you inbred morons I talked to said I was “that witch from Queens who can bend bullets,”’ Annette told him. ‘Does that help? As for what I wan
t… Simple enough. I want to know where you’re getting the snakebite from.’

  ‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Annette sighed. ‘Now, if the stammer wasn’t a bit of a giveaway, your face is totally screaming “I’m a lying bastard.” Where do you get the stuff?’

  Danny pulled together enough wit, even through the throbbing in his head, to evaluate the situation. ‘I’m not telling you a damn thing. How are you gonna make me? It’s not like you can just shoot me.’ Pulling back a little, Annette moved her pistol away from Danny’s face and he began to smile. ‘Told you–’

  The pistol stopped moving right over Danny’s groin. ‘Actually, it’s a lot like I can just shoot you,’ Annette told him. ‘I think we’ll start here and then… improvise.’

  ‘I don’t know where the stuff comes from! Really! You’ve gotta believe me!’

  Annette smiled. ‘I do, Danny. I do. But I just bet you know someone who does know…’

  ~~~

  The Sky Lords were slightly misnamed; they were an equal opportunities gang and even some of the lieutenants were girls, generally tougher than the men. Annette could understand that having done a short course in female emancipation while in university. Her lecturer had been fond of the phrase ‘women have to work twice as hard as men to be thought half as good.’

  One of the female Lords was called Ashley Jane Simmons. Her mother was the financial director of an electronics company and her father was a partner in a law firm, and Ashley was used to getting her own way. She was definitely not used to being hit over the back of the head and waking up attached to the iron-frame headboard of a bed in a hotel room by cable ties strapped around her wrists.

  ‘Oh good, you’re awake,’ Annette said from the foot of the bed. ‘I was beginning to think I’d hit you too hard.’

  Ashley’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who the fuck are you? Have you any idea how much trouble you’re in? Do you know who I am?’

  Annette frowned. ‘Of course I know who you are. I didn’t think you were that stupid.’

  ‘I’ll have you killed. I’ll have your family killed. I’ll–’