Silk City Vixens

by Noah Rain

  Silk City

  Vixens

  Noah Rain

  Silk City Vixens

  2019 by Noah Rain

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Published in the United States of America

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1 - That Left Kick

  Chapter 2 - Midnight Stroll

  Chapter 3 - Blowing Steam

  Chapter 4 - On the Ropes

  Chapter 5 - Electric Boogaloo

  Chapter 6 - My Kind of Spar

  Chapter 7 - Bad in a Good Way

  Chapter 8 - Stress Test

  Chapter 9 - Awkward Breakfast

  Chapter 10 - Battery

  Chapter 11 - Gloves Off

  Chapter 12 - Knocking Heads

  Chapter 13 - Club Scene

  Chapter 14 - Intertwined

  Chapter 15 - In Too Deep

  Chapter 1

  That Left Kick

  Nobody can take that left kick.

  That’s what Jackie Sullivan had always said, screaming it red-faced in my corner through countless fights, from dingy, moldy gyms to the heights of international prize fighting, and though the closest thing I had ever had to a father had long since passed from this world, those words rang true in my mind as I sank my shin into the expensive blend of resin and Kevlar armor sported by one of Jaxton’s most notorious Synners.

  Vash stumbled backward after the impact, and I withdrew my leg, chambering the kick and placing my foot down on the pavement as I watched him reel. He wore a mask, like most Syndicate and Guild members did. It was dark blue with teal lightning streaks, which was all a part of his gimmick. But I didn’t need to see his eyes to know the look he wore.

  His mouth was bare, and bloody drool leaked out as he started to fold in on himself as a result of the kick. He dropped one sparking blue baton, chains of electricity running along the pavement and fizzling out in puffs of steam as they struck the tiny pools of collected rainwater. He kept a hold on the other, but I knew he was too tense to wield it properly.

  “Give it up, Vash,” I said. “I’ve got you dead to rights. You’re going to fetch me my first bounty. Should be a good one. Enough to get me a rookie card and get on the radars of a few good Guilds. After that—” I hadn’t noticed before, but something dripped into my eye and I ran the back of my bare hand over my forehead. It came away bloody. Vash had landed a few hard cracks with those batons. It was enough to get my teeth to chatter and one jab to the chest had sent enough of a shock through my body to make me miss a breath, but it wasn’t enough to stop me.

  “You …” he said, his accent tougher to place now that he couldn’t breathe, “you’re one of them damn circus performers, aren’t you?”

  “Prize fighter?” I asked. “Sure. I mean, I was. Now, figure if you can’t beat em’ … well, more like if you can’t beat em’ in the cage, surrounded by fans and with the promise of sweet, sweet prize credit waiting at the end of the tunnel, you may as well pick up a private contract and see if you can have a go at the whole Guild life. Besides, this is my old neighborhood, and I’ve heard you’re letting those little sparklers go off in the wrong places. Rob a bank, Vash. Hell, rob whichever corporation has the worst Guild working security. But don’t rob the people. That’s just wrong.”

  “You … you’re not even wearing a mask.” He was still clutching his side, and his gritted teeth were pink. I really must have sank that one in nicely. Probably a few cracked ribs, and medical care was expensive, especially for freelancers like him.

  “Should I be?” I asked nonchalant as I strolled toward him, rubbing my knuckles to get what little feeling I could back into them. “I am a little new at this, after all. The Vigilante thing, of course. Not the fighting thing. But then, I take it the last part was obvious. I do appreciate any pointers you can give me. As for the whole mask thing,” I shook my head, “I’ve always found them to be a little too on-the-nose for my liking. Everyone knows the cops aren’t going to go after a Syndicate freelancer, and the Guilds know who you are anyway. If you ask me, both sides are a bit theatrical these days. Besides,” I looked down, “I am wearing a Gi.”

  I was. It was a black karate Gi with a white belt. I liked the former because it was something I had trained in for over a decade. I liked the latter because, as I had been telling the unfortunate Vash just now, I truly was new to the whole vigilante thing, and I thought it would be disrespectful to put the black belt on my first night on the job.

  “Big mistake,” Vash said. He had fallen down to one knee and had managed to catch his breath. I doubted that he meant to propose to me, but stranger things had happened. “This visor records my encounters, beams them back to the Shockers. They’re all going to know your face, now, and you just said you’re a Rook. No Guild or Syndicate at your back—”

  “Wait,” I said, stopping a few feet from him. I closed my eyes and blew out an exaggerated sigh. “Did you seriously just say your Guild is called, ‘The Shockers?’ Which damn corporation would name their Guild something from an old Saturday morning cartoon? Is it Blu Swipe, the credit bureau. No. Maybe North Union?”

  Guilds and Syndicates. It was all a big game, really. Vanity projects from Big Tech and Big Bank billionaires under the guise of protecting their own assets.

  Vash chewed his lower lip. And his teeth had just started to clean up a bit.

  “My Syndicate,” he growled.

  “Guild. Syndicate. They don’t seem all that different to me. One works for corporations and professes to uphold the law in a metaphorical sense by breaking it in a literal sense. The other works only for themselves. Both end up either making or stealing corporate money, which is all the same to me, though I am curious as to which pays better. Certainly both pay better than any of the 9 to 5 gigs the corps are offering these days.” I stroked my chin and shrugged. “Well. It’s more exciting, in any case. Ah, well. Either way, I’m not the only idiot in this alley.”

  “Wha—”

  I lanced a side kick straight ahead. Vash’s blue helmet and visor were at waist level, which wasn’t a good place to be right then and there. My kick shattered the visor, crushed the front rim of his helmet, and sent him over in a heap, his other baton spinning out of his hand.

  Vash was tougher than he looked. That, or the armor really took something out of my blows. He rolled over and coughed blood into the already-wet pavement, and I could actually hear him picking shards of visor out of his chin. I wobbled a bit as I walked toward him, my vision blurring. He had landed some good whacks. My condition had a lot of advantages, but one big disadvantage was that it never gave me a real good indication of what sort of state I was in. I had better clean this mess up and hand Vash over to the requisite authorities so I could collect my official Capture Card and cash in on my first bounty.

  “Idiot,” Vash spat. I had to admire his gumption. “I said it beamed the footage back to base. What? Did you think there was a fucking hard drive in my helmet?”

  “Could be,” I said. “Either way, I don’t see how listening to you prattle on is going to get us down to the precinct any quicker.”

 
“I’m just going to get bail,” Vash said. “Syndicates pay their own. Or is that another lesson for you?”

  “Duly noted,” I said. “But no, Vash, I already know crime pays in this town. In this world. Just as I know busting it pays as well.”

  “So what …” Vash wheezed. “You just thought you’d hang up your gloves, put on your pajamas, walk out your door and bust the first Synner you came across? All to get a goddamn Capture Card? You’re not even a Rook!”

  “Says more about you than me, I think,” I said. “You were the only Syndicate thug I knew by sight, at least in this neighborhood. I didn’t want to roll up on a Guild Chief or underling and end up on trying to cash in a bounty on one of the ‘good guys,’ now did I? You’re tough to tell apart, what with the spandex and light shows. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve got the same sponsors behind you. And besides, these aren’t pajamas.” That part actually did make me feel a bit self-conscious. Sure, dojos weren’t quite as popular as they had been thirty years ago, before the market crash, but the movies still were.

  Vash actually started laughing. It sounded disbelieving at first, sort of halting, and then it got increasingly shrill, even maniacal.

  “You cracking on me, Vash?” I asked, watching the windows in the apartment buildings that framed the dead end alley. Vash was crawling toward a sheer brick wall. I don’t think he had grappling gear, but I didn’t want him making a last-minute escape. “Come on. We’ll have a cup o’ joe with the boys and girls in blue. That’ll cheer you up.”

  I leaned over and grabbed Vash by one Kevlar-covered shoulder, and yanked him up like pulling on the scruff of a cat.

  “You’re my ticket into the only game worth getting into for someone like me,” I said. “I’ve got no skills except for the ones you’ve seen. Felt. Sorry. You know the gig, Vash. Us uneducated lads aren’t going to make it far in this new economy. We’re starting from less than zero. But then, you already knew that, otherwise you wouldn’t be whacking Guilders with glowsticks to earn a living.”

  Vash spun and jutted a punch into my midsection. I had expected it, of course, and I tensed. The punch didn’t have much on it. I looked down and saw that Vash had come to the same realization. He had already unclenched his fist and was now clutching the V of my Gi with his glowing, flickering blue glove, steadying himself.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like that?” he asked with a bloody smile.

  “You trying to stall?” I asked him. “I’d rather us walk to the precinct together. But I’ll carry you if I have to.”

  Vash smiled and I frowned.

  “You can’t feel anything, can you?” Vash asked, almost in disbelief.

  “Nerve damage,” I shrugged. “It wasn’t a very hard punch, Vash. But I’m sure I’ll have a headache in the morning from those glow—”

  I felt something, then. And I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It looked like a tiny metal spider, and it was currently perched on my right shoulder, glowing blue orbs for eyes blinking between my lapel and my skin. Its silver pincer legs drew blood. Before I could react, the mechanical piece of tech sank its razor fangs into my skin. It only felt like a pin prick to me, but the ensuing burst of electricity it released actually … well, it actually hurt a whole hell of a lot.

  Vash could have killed me then and there, but he apparently thought my nerve damage might actually be some sort of superpower and half-ran, half-limped out of the alley as I fell backward, the back of my skull cracking off of the pavement as the current ran through me, and brought me back to Vash’s question.

  How did I get here? How did we get here?

  Let’s go back a bit to see what brought me from a childhood spent rummaging through alleys to one apparently transitioning to fighting in them.

  My name is Konnor Kayde, which is absolutely fantastic for marketing purposes.

  At least, it had been fantastic, before a rash of nerve injuries had derailed my professional fighting career.

  You see, where street violence was the end-all, be-all of Jaxton—a dingy, rough patchwork of warehouses and old brick apartment buildings—and sex and glamour was all the rage in Silk City—the bright, neon glowing city across the bridge—prize fighting brought the best of both worlds. It seemed that, in a world that favored sex and violence, but never seemed to be able to decide between them, the strange, unintentionally erotic nature of cage fighting appealed to both clienteles equally.

  And I was a popular fighter.

  I wasn’t very tall. Only around 5’10”, and I was slim, but well-muscled. I had a few tattoos—one in the middle of my spine and the other on the back of one calf—but no piercings. I had short dark hair that spiked up like a retro anime character when I got wet or sweaty, and I had piercing blue eyes beneath jet-black eyebrows. Men and women tended to find me intimidating because of the dark, bright look, but they also found me alluring. Of course, I never really cared about any of that. I cared about fighting. I cared about getting better. I cared about finding a purpose in this waste of real estate they called the twin cities.

  I had spent years honing my craft until I had become one of the best fighters in the world. At least, one of the best fighters who still believed in throwing down inside a steel cage, with little to no clothing, and with nothing but our fists, feet and will to set us apart.

  Most of the men in the audiences and watching on their flat screens at home knew all of the fighters by their violent deeds. They knew the Eurus for their throws, and they knew the Southerns for their Jiu-Jitsu. They knew the Amro’s for their wrestling and the Jaynu’s for their kicking techniques. With me, they got a nice blend. I wasn’t flashy on purpose, but when I did connect with a solid kick, people tended to go to sleep, and stay that way for a long while.

  The women liked the knockouts, too, even if not quite as many of them were into the technique on display. Some fighters gave them the shivers, and not in a good way. Some fighters—like me, I would later learn—gave them the shivers in all the right ways. More than the combat, the women liked watching the effort. Sometimes, when I sat on the stool and took my water and ice between rounds, I caught them staring slack jawed while their husbands and boyfriends sat with their arms crossed.

  I had started out like any other orphan would, sweeping the floors of a local Jaxton boxing gym to make ends meet—those ends often being the bottom half of a rotten cardboard box to sleep in in the locker room. It was an old gym, and most of the equipment had been broken and rotted. The ring protested with angry squeaks anytime the boxers passed under the ropes to spar, and the boards groaned and splintered when they bounced and shadow boxed. The mirrors were smudged and permanently fogged in places, and the tilted ceiling fans used to give me nightmares as I imagined them falling and crushing me as I dodged the adult fighters with my mop and bucket.

  Still, the bags had always been clean. I remember loving the smell of the boxing gloves and the heavy bags. That mix of leather and rope and oil with just a sweet tinge of sweat. They were black, and polished to a sheen.

  Of course, it was boring being left alone in a boxing gym as a kid every night, and I had something of a photographic memory, so I passed the time in the only way I could think to. For two years, I wailed on those bags in the deep reaches of the Jaxton nights, listening to sirens scream past—the cops had still pretended to care then—and timing my steps to the heavy, booming bass of the dance club upstairs. I timed my punches with the metronome, and my kicks with the occasional shatter of a bottle on the floor. I took my breathers between songs and listened to the muffled arguments between drunk clubgoers as they spilled down the stairs in the adjoining hallway and loitered outside of the stained windows of the gym.

  I liked to think I was being clever by putting my time in on the bags at night, when Jackie wasn’t around to reign me in or slap a mop in my hand to go over the same rotted wooden planks for the fifth time that evening. I assumed he
never knew what I was up to. But, a sharp mind and a willing body are more than enough to make a fighter out of anyone, and I broke my first heavy bag when I was twelve years old.

  It had been a left roundhouse kick, timed to the beat of the latest, greatest hit that nobody would remember in ten months, but which had dominated the summer nights for as many weeks. I never learned what any of the words were. Everything sounded like it was being shouted or rapped or screamed through three layers of pillows and a slathering of marshmallow by the time it drifted through the dusty rafters of Jackie’s Gym. But I knew the beats, and that song had had quite a tempo.

  I hadn’t been angry that night. I’d been calm. Deadly calm. I didn’t really have much muscle to speak of at that time. I was still a kid, after all, and I’d be a late bloomer. But I had seen plenty of Eastern movies, and I’d been enraptured when a Karate champion had come into the gym on a whim and shown the boxers a thing or two the sweet science could learn about the power of kicks. They had laughed the Karateka out of the gym, but he hadn’t seemed to mind, and his kicks had stuck with me.

  It was all in the hips. That was what I’d learned after months of trying unsuccessfully to get the chains holding the 200-pound heavy bag in place to so much as rattle. For months, the most I would do was get the chains to hum like a moth’s wings, and then finally, on that hot summer night, I’d twisted my hips just right, flexed my core just right, and sighed in just the right way. This time, my shin did more than sink into the sand-packed leather bag. This time, it broke right through, and I’d stood there in stunned silence, watching sand spill onto the gym floor like a broken hourglass until I found the wherewithal to perform my most exhaustive cover-up operation.

  Of course, sweeping the sand out the back door and spreading it as evenly as possible over the potholes and cracks in the back parking lot, followed by a shoddily-placed strip of duct tape I’d commandeered from Jackie’s office, left a lot to be desired. But as I had stood there, panting, arms crossed, watching the sad, sagging heavy bag drift back and forth on its oiled chain, I knew there was no way Jackie would notice.