by Noah Rain
“And what’s Sascha’s beef with them?”
“With DyCorp?” Darla asked. “Nothing, really. I mean, aside from whatever politics the Suits and Pearls engage in at their penthouse parties. This dispute is small-scale and focused. The leader of the DyNo’s has it out for us Vixens. He knows we’re Syndicate, and he’s one of the few in Silk City who actually cares about the supposed sanctity of the system. He doesn’t like leeches, and hates liars, even though he works for them. He’s been trying to expose Sascha. He can’t, of course. He’s got nothing on her, but whispers have been circulating that he’s willing to go rogue and bring her in to one of the few companies that actually might risk a corporate war by locking her in their debtor’s prison. He doesn’t think Sascha is as liked or protected as she thinks she is.”
My head was spinning. It was like another world.
“And is she?” I asked.
“Is she what?”
“As well protected as she thinks she is?”
“We’re here to make sure nobody finds out, ourselves included,” Carmen said. “We’re going to pay old Barter a visit, and let him know that he’s not the only one who can go rogue, and that there are plenty of consequences to go around this town three times over before a Suit bites it at the hands of anyone but one of their own.”
“Enough chatter,” Nina said, her voice going serious, almost military in rhythm. “We’re here.”
“Scarlett?” I asked.
“Aww,” Darla said but Nina shushed her.
“Running point, cupcake,” Carmen said as she reached for the door handle.
We took a slow, curving turn to the right, around the backside of a massive office building with a big ass of a parking garage attached to it. To our left, the bay opened up toward the west. There was no Jaxton on that side, only water for a solid thirty miles, and then abandoned suburbs.
I thought we were going to stop here and work our way inside, covertly, but Darla had other plans.
“Straight ahead, Nina?”
“Down the ramp and then, yes, straight ahead, Darla.”
We went down a well-lit ramp and entered the parking garage, the front bumper scraping as Darla took the decline a little quicker than she needed to. I kept my eyes peeled, and Carmen kept her gauntleted hand on her door handle, tense and ready.
I expected Darla to slow down or stop, but the pillars in the brightly-lit garage started whipping by even faster. The engine growled as Darla sped up, and my heart started beating faster. I looked over at Nina, who had stopped typing but now leaned forward, staring intently at her monitor.
There was a whirring, whining sound, and I looked out my window again. I nearly yelled out a warning when I spotted a figure clad in black leather keeping pace with us on a motorcycle, until I saw the shock of red hair trailing behind her like painted blood.
“Um …” I said, looking ahead and peering through the windshield. The garage wasn’t endless after all. Directly ahead, there was a wall of glass with steel frames separating the panels. It was like a glass box set in the center of the bottom floor of the garage. I could just make out figures on the other side. It looked like a workshop, tinted blue unlike the orange paint and concrete of the wider garage.
“One way to deal with DyNo tech,” Darla said. “Catch them naked.”
“Remember, Konnor,” Carmen said. “No wet works.”
“Wet works?”
“Nobody dies, if we can help it.”
“Right. But … who do I—“
“Fuck up anyone you see. Trust me, they’ll try the same with you. Without their Kevlar, they’re not going to have much to offer. I think.”
I tried to remind myself that this was some sort of glorified League fight, only one held in private, in secret, and between the prized assets of Suits and not on the screens of the populace those same Suits kept suppressed and mollified.
“Here we go,” Darla said with the same sort of glee she seemed to say everything. There was a darkness in that one. She was even more excited to ram a car through a wall separating her from unsuspecting Guilders than she was to pursue her more carnal pleasures.
Everything seemed to stay still and go quiet except for the roar of the engine as Darla pressed her foot to the floor. A dozen figures on the other side of the glass had got up from their various positions scattered around tables, benches and even mattresses and were now scattering in every direction. Before we made impact, I saw training bags, lockers, weapons racks and even, I thought, a series of bulky, tanky cycles on lifts.
We smashed through the glass barrier with ease, Sascha’s black car barely shuddering as it absorbed the impact as if it had been designed as a battering ram.
Darla slammed on the brakes as I watched glass shards and metal beams tumble through the air, lit by the sparks of metal on panel and the live sparking wires of busted LED lights hanging from the ceiling.
I didn’t have time to take a breath when the car screeched to a halt in the middle of the transparent garage within a garage. Carmen threw her door open, and she’d barely managed to step outside when a man in a leather jacket and classic blue jeans ran at her with a black pipe. Carmen planted her feet and planted a cross right into his sternum. There was a flash, Nina’s screen lit at the same time, and the glorified pipe-wielder-mechanic hybrid flew backward as if he had been hit by the car.
“You’re up,” Darla said, turning around to look at me. “Carmen might be a firecracker, but she needs back-up, and Nina and I have to keep the car running.”
I didn’t ask how the car would manage to make it another ten feet. I didn’t have time. More groggy, shocked, confused guys were getting up from their various piles of sparking chaos in the workshop, and all of them turned toward Carmen.
I opened the door and stood up, drawing a few eyes my way as Carmen wasted no time setting on another pair of mechanics under the cycle lifts. She cracked one in the side and sent him slamming into the lift, where the cycle shuddered on top, threatening to topple over. The other landed a looping punch of his own, but Carmen took it on the jaw, smiled like a crazy person, and returned the favor, knocking him out with a hook and a flash from those nifty gauntlets.
While Carmen worked on the DyNo mechanics, it seemed I had stepped into the lion’s den. The half dozen figures who stared at me, some wearing Kevlar vests with no shirts underneath and others tossing fancy-looking batons from one hand to the other, didn’t look like mechanics.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Konnor. Pleasure to make your—“
Two came at me. I ducked an overeager hook from one and gave him a three-piece combo in the gut. To his credit, he didn’t drop to his knees, but he did shuffle backward to regain his composure. The other nailed me on the back of the head with one of those batons. I expected a spark like Vash’s cattle prods, but it seemed the DyNo’s were only using blunts tonight. I shot my head through his reeling guard and broke his nose. I felt wet on the back of my head and hoped the gash wasn’t too deep.
Then I went to work, striding over the glass and sparking wreckage of the DyNo’s workshop, and accepting the challenges of those who rose up to oppose me.
Carmen was right. The DyNo’s weren’t fighters. They were tough. Don’t get me wrong. But being tough only counted when everything else was equal. The DyNo’s swung their crowbars and meaty fists, but not a single one of them threw a kick. They picked up fallen steel supports and even light fixtures, but they’d have been better off taking their chances with a one-two down the middle. Ah, well. The basics were often the toughest techniques to teach, and I tried to tell myself the DyNo’s had the numbers, so I really shouldn’t feel bad about beating them to a pulp. Well, to a series of pulps of varying shades of purple, black and red.
“What’s your deal?” One asked. He had long, greasy hair and wore an old-school biker’s outfit. He hadn’t even taken the cigar out of
his mouth. “You a fuckin’ Vixen? They taking fuckboys, now?”
Now that I knew my own strength, I tried to gauge the sufficient level of force to use. I might not have Carmen’s gauntlets, but I knew I could hit even harder than I had ever thought possible. With that in mind, I tried to keep the rear-hand strikes to a minimum. I shrugged and sighed, and planted a pinpoint jab down the middle to give old Jack something to remember me by.
After I had put the finishing touches on the crew of glorified mechanics, booting one through the only remaining glass panel Darla’s driving hadn’t claimed, I felt a little bit embarrassed to be bleeding at all.
I turned around and saw Carmen squaring off against a DyNo with short, military-style blonde hair. He had a camo vest on, and she was bleeding from a cut over her eye. He knew how to fight, apparently. A short, violent, flashing exchange later, and he was bleeding from the nose, and she had him gripped on the back of the head, squatting over him. She appeared to be threatening him, and he didn’t appear to be taking kindly to it.
“Come on, Carmen!” Nina leaned out the back window to shout.
“Konnor!” Darla said, waving at me as she climbed halfway out of the driver’s side window.
“What?” I asked. Carmen ignored them altogether.
“Gotta go!” Nina said. “The DyNo’s are on their way!”
“What?” I asked again, for entirely different reasons. And then it dawned on me that we really had just beat up a room full of mechanics.
As Carmen stood and planted another hook right to temple of the seeming leader, and the only member of the garage who might have actually had some training, adding him to the wreckage, the whine of a chorus of engines echoed through the garage.
“We’re not going to outrun them if they’re on these crotch rockets,” I said, diving into the backseat as Carmen climbed through the broken window in the front.
“Scarlett’s got them,” Darla said, backing out over the wreckage like an old lady backing out of a driveway. I only hoped I hadn’t left any mechanics laying in her path.
Before Darla had executed the turn back out the way we had come in, the high-pitched whine of the trike engines picked up, but a familiar whine cut over it. I squinted through the far side of the wall of glass, ignoring the groaning, crawling figures we’d left inside. On the other side, in the wider garage, there was a wide concrete ramp leading up.
A rider in black flew through the air and landed on the lower level, tires screeching as she slid into a sharp turn, red hair brushing the oil-slicked ground. Before she was fully upright and speeding, four trikes flew after her, landing with sparks and crashes as they set off in pursuit.
“Damn, she’s good on that fucking thing,” Carmen said.
The rest of us made a sound of agreement as Darla slammed on the gas again and led us back toward the entrance, and I twisted around to look out the back window, trying to catch a glimpse of Scarlett or the neon green and black trikes as she led them on a chase through their own concrete maze.
“Think they got Sascha’s message?” Carmen asked Nina.
Nina had closed her monitor and was gazing out the window as if we were out for a leisurely drive. She shrugged, like it didn’t really matter.
“She doesn’t read us in on everything, Konnor,” Carmen said. “Doesn’t have to. We did our job. Honestly, I expected more out of Barter.”
“He didn’t have his bike,” Darla said. “The DyNo’s do most of their work on those.”
“Scarlett gets to have all the fun,” Carmen complained.
I could only shake my head, trying to convince myself this was all real. That I had just helped a Syndicate disguised as a Guild fuck up the leader and the mechanical department of a rival Guild.
It should have felt better to be outside of the system. It should have felt freeing, but as we made our way toward the Vixens’ tower, I couldn’t help but feel like I was now a part of the system more intimately than I ever had been before.
Chapter 13
Club Scene
I assumed the hasty retreat we had beat from the DyNo’s garage within a garage would take us right back to the Vixens’ penthouse, or if not, then surely some secret hideout the other Guilds didn’t know about.
What I absolutely did not expect was to be standing in my fucking karate gi complete with Kevlar undervest on the edge of a packed dance floor in an expansive, multilevel club in the downtown core.
I’d like to think that I’d seen so much strangeness over the last week and change that I’d have been able to accept the sudden, confusing turn of events, but as I leaned against a row of silver bars that separated the dance floor from a platform bar and looked out over an entirely different sort of chaos than what we had left for Barter and his boys a few miles away, I found myself at a total loss for words.
Of course, the fact that whatever the Silk City underground royalty counted as music sounded like an electronic stampede didn’t help matters.
The only thing that kept me from bolting out into the night was the prospect that Barter and the DyNo’s were waiting for me, and the very relevant fact that I had no idea where I was. Oh, and the Vixens that had brought me here—Darla, Carmen and Nina—were currently standing on either side of me, excitedly conversing with other clubgoers as if nothing were amiss.
Well, Carmen and Darla were conversing, both of them wearing their black leather tactical suits, while Nina was pretending to listen to some tall, blonde-haired model type prattle on about his latest ad campaign while she toiled away on a mobile device. She could have been hacking his credit, for all he knew.
There was plenty to look at. The lights were a dizzying, kaleidoscopic array of red, green, blue and amethyst. Rather than strobing, the lights seemed to drift over the club like streamers or silk threads. There was mist. It had a cooling effect, and hopefully a cleaning effect, given how many sultry, sweaty dancers were gyrating in the hypnotic chaos. I couldn’t help but wonder if something else was in the mist, too. The clubgoers seemed almost too happy. Too rhythmic and gliding.
“Nina,” I said. She made a sound that signified that she had heard me, but didn’t take her eyes from the screen. I was beginning to get used to that. The other girls just spoke to her whether or not she responded, so I did the same. “Are there pheromones in this stuff?”
Nina frowned and looked up from her screen. She watched as I rubbed the vapor between my thumb and forefinger. I had either said something astute enough or dumb enough to capture her attention, and decided to be proud of either fact.
“What?” Nina said. “You think everyone in Silk City knows how to weaponize pheromones?”
She was obviously insulted by the implication. In truth, I didn’t know how hard it was to weaponize pheromones. I didn’t know anything about pheromones, really. I basically conceptualized them the same way I’d imagine most people did: as naturally-occurring love potions.
“Like,” I droned. “Drugs or something.”
I nodded at the dance floor, which was only a few feet away. In any other circumstance, I’d have been drooling at the clientele. Sure, there were plenty of guys in tank tops and trendy pants with bright, gilded belts and as many bangles as the women. But the women. They were something. Lithe, athletic and sensual. They wore an eclectic mix of styles that could only originate in the cities, where the line between farcical and trendy had long since frayed and worn away to the point where it was as thin as the boarder of a bubble.
Nina looked like she was deciding whether or not to justify my question with a response.
“As a matter of fact,” she said. “There are chemicals in the mist.”
She reached up, twirled her own fingers through the backlit fog, and then brought her fingers up under her nose and sniffed, nodding at me to do the same.
I did, feeling ridiculous.
“Well?” Nina asked.
“And?”
“Umm …”
“Lavender.”
“Okay.”
Nina went back to her phone, leaving me at a loss.
“This a riddle or something?” I asked. Nina pretended not to hear me, so I shifted over to her. “This a rid—“
“The fog is scented, Konnor,” Nina said without taking her eyes off the screen. “That’s it.”
“No pheromones, then.”
Nina looked up at me. Her expression morphed quickly, going from annoyed to … could that be compassionate?
“You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
We both knew who. Nina only smirked.
“You’re really starting to catch it with Scarlett, aren’t you?”
“I’d hope I haven’t caught anything from her or from the rest of you,” I said, not meaning to sound nearly as crass as I did. Nina took it in stride.
There was no sign of Scarlett. I was concerned for her. After all, the last I had seen her, she had been leading a troop of DyNo’s on a subterranean chase. She was a good fighter, but she was heavily outnumbered, and I didn’t know what kind of weapons the DyNo’s carried.
“To be honest, Nina,” I said. “I’m just confused about the whole situation.”
I wasn’t lying. My eyes kept drifting toward every door I could find in the place. Every time I thought I had them all marked, a new one opened, giving a glimpse to the Silk City night or some side room that could have had a party every bit as intense as the one we were in now. My heart skipped a beat every time one of those doors opened. I told myself it was because I kept expecting Barter and his boys to spill in and light the place up, but I couldn’t help but picture Scarlett strolling in, bike helmet clutched under her arm, red hair swinging over her opposite shoulder as she made her way through the crowd, and toward me.
Nina opened her mouth, either to quell my fears or stoke the flames, but then I felt two hands grip my shoulders from behind.
