by Noah Rain
Carmen half turned me toward her. She planted a kiss on me that I hadn’t been expecting, and there was a whole lot of tongue involved. Carmen was aggressive and … and salty. I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy the experience, but it only added to my sense of bewilderment with the situation.
“What’s eating you, Kayde?” Carmen asked. She smelled like liquor. I looked behind her and saw Darla conversing with the group Carmen had been. They didn’t seem like your typical clubgoers, or socialites. They seemed more alert. They drank, but not heavily. They watched the dancers, but didn’t join in. “What’s eating him?” Carmen asked Nina when I didn’t answer.
“He’s worried about Scar,” Nina said with a wink and shrug.
“I am not worried about Scarlett!” I shouted. The music seemed to be getting louder, or my eardrums more fragile. “I mean,” I looked from Carmen to Nina and back again. “I am worried about her. But. Girls. What the fuck is going on?”
“You’re going to need to be more specific, Konnor,” Carmen said, crossing her arms. She didn’t seem amused that I hadn’t committed more fully to her advance. She stood with her hips tilted to one side. Even though she was wearing paramilitary tactical gear, it could have been a dancer’s outfit, if you looked quickly. She hadn’t even ditched the glove-gauntlets fully. They were clipped onto her belt.
“He doesn’t understand—“
“I don’t understand why we’re hanging out in a goddamn club after we just beat the shit out of DyCorp’s Guild in their own building!” I shouted, only realizing I’d shouted the last bit into a small pocket of relative silence as the songs switched.
Nobody in the club seemed to care.
“What are you worried about?” Carmen asked. “Think the big, scary DyNo’s are going to come racing in here with their stupid little trikes and cause a ruckus?”
“I mean … yeah.”
“After what we did to them?”
“We caught them by surprise,” I said. “Roughed some of them up—“
“Konnor,” Nina said. “Coming into a public place like this would be credit suicide to the DyNo’s, and probably to the King and Queen of DyCorp as well.”
My look showed her I had no idea what she was talking about.
“King and Queen?”
Nina sighed. “The Suits and Pearls at the top of a given corporation. Really, Konnor. How did you get through twenty-whatever years without knowing some of this shit?”
“Those of us who don’t live in Silk City don’t really have much to gain from learning the intricacies of the modern corporate royalty,” I snapped.
The girls weren’t true Silk City people. I knew that. But I was frustrated, and running low on patience.
“That’s not the part he doesn’t understand, Nina,” Carmen said. She looked around, but nobody on the dance floor seemed to be paying us any more mind than they were paying anyone else. There were a few groups up in the balconies and bridges—yes, the club had bridges—who did seem to be looking at us, but I tried not to pay it any mind, for now.
“Ah,” Nina said. “You’re wondering why Barter and his crew don’t come in here after us.”
“We’re not exactly hiding,” I said.
“The system isn’t sentient or anything,” Nina said, “but, I feel like I have to add that qualifier because I’m going to talk about it like it is sentient.” I nodded for her to continue. “We’ve explained that the Suits and Pearls look the other way most of the time, when it comes to disputes between companies, or between Guilds.”
“Right. The companies use their Guilds to settle disputes.”
“But not in public,” Carmen said. “Guilds can fight Syndicates in public, because the Syndicates are the bad guys. Helps with the public image of the companies who are ostensibly defending the downtrodden, and all that.”
“Right,” Nina supplied. “Messing with the populace can result in massive hits or even outright cancellations of credit, even for Guild leaders … and get this, even by their employers. And by populace, we mean the only populace the Suits and Pearls value the most. The sexy socialites of Silk City are like the red blood cells ferrying credit back and forth to the main arteries, which are the companies, and the amorphous heart that is the system. The companies might trade in credit, but the people are their commodity.”
“Okay,” I said, barely following. “Then what does that make the people of Jaxton?”
“Useful parasites,” Carmen said with a shrug. “They have enough credit to feed themselves, and enough not to riot, most days. Enough to keep them working menial labor jobs. Coding and the like.”
I almost took offense, until I remembered that these women were either from Jaxton or somewhere similar. Sometimes it was easy to forget there were more than two places in the world.
“So,” Carmen said, holding her hands out to either side, palms up. She moved them up and down to mime scales. “Barter and his boys come into the club and get their asses handed to them all over again. Or, they win, and take a massive credit hit for disrupting the veneer of decadence that counts for normalcy in Silk City.”
It was weird hearing her talk like that, after some of the things I’d heard Carmen say. She seemed to be the most vulgar and direct of the Vixens, but, just like Nina, Scarlett—and now I was forced to assume, Darla—she was sharp as anything.
“But Scarlett is out there,” I said, pointing toward a door that was revealed an instant later as a bathroom. “Out there,” I gestured meaninglessly. “They don’t have to play by the same rules—“
“Don’t worry about Scarlett,” Darla broke in, running her fingers along the backs of my shoulders as she twined around me and joined our small clutch, “you don’t need to worry about her. She’s the best of us.” Carmen rolled her eyes at that, but I noticed that she didn’t refute the claim.
“What’s new with Ruby?” Carmen asked Darla, hitting me with another small jab of disorientation. I looked at the group Darla had broken off from. I hadn’t noticed before, but while they all wore the same sorts of weird, revealing leather and silk as the rest of the clubgoers, these ones all had red jewels set into their silver rings, necklaces and even their sunglasses, in the case of their tall, skinny male leader.
What a tool.
“Same old,” Darla said. “They haven’t had any dust-ups in a while.”
“They don’t look like fighters to me,” I said. “What?” I said to the girls’ questioning looks. “I assume they’re Guilders?”
Carmen smiled and Nina nodded in affirmation. I felt like a dog being petted for doing a neat trick, and tried to shrug off the condescension.
“Not all of the Guilders specialize in hand-to-hand, Konnor,” Nina said. “As you found out with the DyNo’s.”
“So what does Ruby specialize in?”
“Hacking,” Darla said.
“Who doesn’t know how to hack these days?” I asked. I didn’t, of course, but I assumed plenty of people did.
“They can hack anything,” Darla said. “They could probably find out your credit PIN by reading a thousand-word bio on you and running it through one of their savant algorithms. It makes them one of the least martial Guilds in Silk City, and also one of the most dangerous.”
“So, they basically do what the Vixens do, only without the blackmail,” I said. “Doesn’t that just make them straight-up thieves?”
“Only if they leave a trace,” Carmen said.
Nina snorted in derision. She didn’t seem overly impressed with the Ruby’s, and I wondered if she was threatened by the implication that they could do something technological that she could not.
“Everything leaves a trace,” she said.
“Except for mind control,” I joked, tapping the side of my head. Nina smiled at me. I had meant it in jest, but clearly her and Sascha were taking the project seriously.
> “That’s right,” Darla said. “We don’t hack, but we do leave plenty of bad will in our wake. We trade in secrets, as Sascha and Scarlett told you. Secrets are light, but when they pile up enough, they can get heavy. Once we unlock Nina’s Level 2 formula, we can’t be blamed when Suits, Pearls and everyone else on this side of the bay just starts handing us information willingly.”
“Twenty-eight,” Nina said.
“What?” Darla asked.
“The mind formula would be level twenty-eight,” Nina said. She looked annoyed as Darla shook her head, dismissing the information as superfluous.
“Speaking of,” Carmen said, “have you two been working on the formula anymore?”
“When do you think we’ve had time for that?” Nina asked. Then she hooked my arm and pulled me closer to her, leaning up to whisper in my ear. “Don’t worry, Konnor. I plan to make time very soon.”
I wanted to respond sarcastically, but I couldn’t help feeling a tingle of excitement at the prospect, as long as Nina’s next battery of tests focused more on the formula than my muscular proprioception, or whatever. I felt a pang of guilt when I thought about Scarlett again, and did another halfhearted scan of the club.
“What was Barter whining about when you sat him down?” Darla asked Carmen.
“Just a lot of whimpering,” Carmen said. “Whining that he couldn’t take another credit hit or he’d be out of the Guild. He’s got kids in a city school. The usual.”
“Indoctrination programs,” I said, continuing my scan. “They’re better off in Jaxton.”
“Amen,” the three girls said in unison.
If I had stopped to think about it, I probably would have felt sorry for Barter. He’d likely been no different from me. Just a few days ago, I had been all-in on the prospect of joining one of the company Guilds. Maybe it would have been the DyNo’s. In the moment, I could only manage withering disgust tinged with a smidge of pity.
I had so nearly been one of them. Not just bought into the system, but a guardian of it.
“So then,” I said, relaxing a bit more as I started to examine the clubgoers more closely. “Why are we really here?”
“To be seen,” Darla said.
“Word will be spreading about the fight tonight,” Carmen said. “Not that you can call it much of one. It’s been a while since we actually engaged another Guild like that. Good to remind them that there’s more than just secrets coming from the Vixens.”
It was strange to hear Carmen refer to the Vixens as Guilders so casually, but there it was. I had to think everyone on this side of the bay knew they were Synners, but then, maybe the distinction between the two groups was less stark than I had always imagined. After all, what sort of difference did it make if you earned your credit or took it from those who did? In a way, the Guilders and Synners just had different hunting methods.
“Word’s out,” Nina said, looking back down at her phone. As she said it, I watched for the telltale blue and white glows emanating from people’s palms as they scrolled through their social feeds in the alcoves, at their dark, drink-laden tables and as they leaned over their private balconies.
I frowned. “Are there Suits and Pearls here?”
Carmen laughed.
“No way,” Darla said. “Even a swanky place like this is far beneath their tastes.”
“Guilders, then,” I said.
“Lots of them,” Darla confirmed. “And beside them, the cling-ons, groupies, man whores and sluts. The ones who want to get filled up by Guilders only half as much as they want their credit filled.”
As I scanned the crowd, Darla gave me a run-down on some of the Guilders in the vicinity. Some were obvious. Ripped, lean and lithe. It wasn’t so much the shape they were in as the sameness of their vibes, and the way they seemed to be more observant while the cling-ons and groupies danced the night away and drank copiously, not to mention ingesting whatever else they fancied.
In some ways, it felt like being in some kind of celebrity club. And I guess we were. I had no doubt that many of the people of Silk City and even Jaxton knew most of the Guild leaders by name and face. They were the faces, the brave protectors and enforcers of the almighty companies, and they garnered much more will—both good and bad—than the lowly, outdated League fighters like me.
I had been a champion, and yet, I might as well have been a ghost. It wasn’t all bad to feel unseen.
Darla explained the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Guilds, and she explained how many secrets the Vixens had on all of them. It wasn’t the Suits and Pearls Darla had the most experience with. The man I had caught her with under the Jaxton bridge was a rare catch. A Suit desperate enough and hopped up on Nina’s pheromones to lose his inhibitions in the most animalistic way. Looking at Darla’s revealing outfit, and those half-moon breasts spilling out of her tactical top, I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“In some ways,” Darla said, rubbing up against me like a cat as her own stories got her excited. “We’re in the most danger and the least.”
“The price of secrets,” I said.
Carmen phased back into our vicinity. She brushed against me too, and even Nina seemed to be standing close enough to me that I thought she might actually not detest me in the moment.
“They don’t realize that having their credit hit zero and being kicked from Silk City would be the best thing to happen to them,” Carmen said.
“Then why don’t you girls do it?” I asked.
I didn’t mean to make waves. It was a question that popped into my mind, and it was honestly asked. All three of the Vixens looked as if they’d been slapped.
Darla recovered first.
“We have a mission, Konnor,” she said. It was amazing how quickly she could switch from her purring, sultry demeanor to a deadly serious one when it came to discussing the system they were trying to infect and eventually topple.
“Ten o’clock, tiger,” Carmen said, turning my shoulders to my left.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but Scarlett was still there, looking exactly as I had imagined her as she made her way through the crowded dance floor from the edge of the room, her helmet gripped under one arm, hair tossed over one shoulder like a scarf. She was accompanied by a small group of suit-wearing men and women with dark shades on. They looked comically serious.
She winked as she approached us.
“How’d it go with the DyNo’s?” Carmen asked.
“Lost them,” Scarlett said casually. She was slick with a mix of sweat and the same scented club mist that covered the rest of us. “Got them found.”
“By who?” I asked.
“He really is a baby, isn’t he?” Carmen asked Nina.
“Enforcers,” Scarlett said.
“Ah.”
I had heard of them. Paramilitary soldiers who were supposedly independent of any specific company. They kept the peace when Guild conflicts got out of control, or when people got too big for the system. They were like the white blood cells of the system itself, designed to enforce corporate law even against the corporations.
“Who are they?” I asked as the half dozen strangers nodded at the Vixens and then continued on their way.
“Onyx Guild,” Scarlett said. “Their company makes most of the autos you see in Silk City, including ours. They helped set up a few blocks and detours for me.”
“You call them?”
“Sascha … knows their Pearl pretty intimately.”
“I see.”
Clearly I had underestimated the Vixens, and Sascha. More so, I had underestimated Scarlett, who had led a Guild on a city-wide chase by herself, only to casually stroll into a club after they were bagged and tagged.
“Miss me?” Scarlett asked, and I realized I had been staring at her for more than a minute without saying anything.
“Sure
.”
Scarlett smiled, set her helmet down in the center of a table that had been being used by a pair of model-looking girls, who abstained from saying anything. She then raised her hand to her neck, clutched the silver zipper at the choke, and brought it down lower than I would have thought, exposing the tops of her breasts.
“Hot,” Scarlett said.
“Yes,” I agreed. The other Vixens had turned away from us. Darla was out on the dance floor, and Carmen was watching her while Nina continued to troll away on her mobile, her hips swaying unconsciously.
“This your latest secret?”
A female voice said it from behind me. I saw Scarlett’s glare before I turned around. And then I was taken aback by the trio of women I saw leaning over the silver rail, the blue backlit bar painting a bright contrast behind them. The speaker was blonde, with shoulder-length hair. Another had short, spiked hair dyed blue and the third was dark-skinned and haired. They wore tight white outfits that were one piece. They were strange and alluring, exposing the tops of their breasts and stopping just at the top of their thighs. They wore silver silk shrouds that shimmered under the lights.
“I’m sorry?” I stammered.
The leader smiled at me. She had bright blue eyes, and teeth whiter than her pristine getup. Now that I looked closer, the women in front of me weren’t just gorgeous. They were strong, with athletic, meaty forms that had lost none of their curve. They looked like gymnasts.
“I said, are you the Vixens’ latest secret?”
“I … uh … who are you?”
She gripped the bar with both hands and vaulted over it with ease, dropping right in front of me, face-to-face.
“I’m Calisto,” she said. “Of the Silk City Swans.” She extended her hand. I jutted my own forward awkwardly, but our hands didn’t meet. I looked down and saw that hers was much lower, and farther forward, than mine. She smiled wider as I reached down to pull her hand back up in an awkward shake.
“Konnor,” I said.
“Konnor …”
“None of your business,” Scarlett said, standing beside me. Carmen shadowed me on the other side, and even Nina had stopped fiddling with her mobile and was openly glaring at the two women up on the platform.
