4r4nd0md4y's Sandbox Tales

inspiration for future tau-5 aesthetic: https://www.instagram.com/rome_adzan/
perfect nanku: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb9a4u4Aiec/?taken-by=rome_adzan
henri the fashionista: https://pastebin.com/WkHxPXcW

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Table of Contents

SCP Sandbox
Supersized Project Sandbox
Contest Entry Sandbox
You Are Here
Series Sandbox
Fancy Sandbox
Overflow Sandbox
Third Law Sandbox

Speed Demon Trailer

The pub has seen better days: the paint is warped and split, the air is like melting fondue, and everyone in here is loaded, whether with booze or guns, for bear. But the drinks - the drinks will kill you. And that's my kind of scene.

The hobgoblin smashes a bottle against an adjacent table and shouts an incantation, turning the spilling booze into a column of fire. He wraps both hands around his makeshift drunken angel sword and lunges at me, confident in his killing blow.

At night, the concrete slabs come alive. Shattered screens light up, feebly advertising cheap karaoke bars and sex-robot brothels that are in the same rooms. Trap houses invite anyone or anything with a bit of cash to spend it on software cracks, DRM patches, or just regular drugs. And of course, the mass-market K-pop robots are out in force.

This used to be Prometheus Labs' flagship factory here. Then it was left to die until a rag-tag group of anahums purchased it. Now it's the focal point for a thriving fashion boutique and underground criminal empire: the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu.

"Last week Oneiroi contracted out their security to a private group called Chappell Wraith Securities. I haven't heard of these guys before, but I've heard their security forces are heavily augmented somehow. Better safe than sorry."

"Listen up, pigs!" I call. "You've bent this city over and fucked it raw. The Chicago Spectre is here to fuck back!"

The enchantment is a Sanksrit prayer to the Hindu god, Ganesha; remover of obstacles. As a result, my enchanted bat now removes obstacles. There's a sharp crack and a smell like burnt hair as the blessing of Lord Ganesha blows out the kinetic energy redirector and shoves the excess force right back into Barnard Sachs's skull.

She's wearing an avatar of unclear Asian ethnicity, but I'd recognize her retro-sukeban style anywhere: a black sailor-top and skirt combo, with long leggings, combat boots, and a long black tendril in place of her left arm to round out the look.

Fact: Chappell Wraith Securities is a subsidiary of Wraith Enterprises, a veritable conglomerate with its hands in private security, necromantic and demonic engineering, and space travel. Fact: Wraith Enterprises are based on the moon, and can only be reached via Way or shuttle from a space elevator. Fact: Wraith Enterprises have built a space elevator.

Six androids and six gynoids lounge on the throne's enormous armrests. Each of them wears a simple white sling swimsuit and high heels, exposing their artificial flesh for the titillation of the crowd. A pair of disembodied hands expertly scratches the turntable, wired to the suspended, dismembered body of MachineGod himself.

Speed Demon Hub

The first rule of witches - they're all bitches.

Remember the witch in the gingerbread house? She lured little kids into her home and ate them. Fuck her.

The Wicked Witch of the West? She used an army of flying monkeys to terrorize a little girl (and nobody counts Glinda) and got melted by water. Fuck her.

Strega Nona? Could've locked up her pasta pot. She had to have known that Big Anthony was watching her. Instead she let the poor bastard use the pot and nearly drown the town, getting himself crucified in the process. Fuck her.

Witches are bitches. And I'm the baddest bitch of them all. I'm a witch, no question about it. but I'm a modern witch. About the only thing I still do old-school is summon demons. I certainly don't bear their children - I had my tubes tied ages ago. I don't promise my soul to them, I harvest them. I don't ask for a fraction of their power, I turn them into drugs and abuse the hell out of them.

People call me the Rookie. Together with my best friend and partner in crime, the Inside Man, I break the law. I lie, cheat, steal, kill, and do whatever I need or want to to make bank and break banks. I could do a lot of good with my powers - but it's much more fun to be a bitch.

Don't get me wrong, there's still a price to pay. I've got a little orb in my chest where my heart used to be. It feeds me, keeps me breathing when my lungs won't, and even talks to me sometimes - usually tries convincing me to kill my best friend in his sleep. I'm not even sure if he does sleep, but that's beside the point, which is that the little bastard in my chest needs vice like a Hummer needs gas. Its favorite foods are blood and gold, both of which my line of work provides plenty of.

I'm not just a witch. I'm a speed demon.

THE A-SIDE

1. Hypervelocity
2. Terminal Velocity
3. Escape Velocity
   1. Liquid Courage and Powdered Panache
   2. Night of a Thousand Kisses
   3. Chained to the Slave Majority
   4. Goddess or Godless
   5. Feed the Need Machine
   6. I Have Not Killed You Yet
   7. Escape Velocity

THE B-SIDE

1. Zeitgeist
2. Murakami Killswitch Escapes from Hell - COMING SOON TO A RECORD STORE NEAR YOU

THE PERFORMERS

The Rookie: 95% human. 5% demon - the five percent makes all the difference. She's not from this universe, but has more fun here anyways. One half of the Chicago Specter, the coolest up-and-coming paracrime syndicate on the block.

The Inside Man: He knows everything that's going on; him and an infinite number more. They call him the Inside Man because he gets in your head - in more ways than one. One half of the Chicago Specter, the coolest up-and-coming paracrime syndicate on the block.

THE VENUES:

Eurtec: The premiere technological metropolis in the West. Run by the Servants of the Silicon Nornir, a member of the GOC's ruling council, Eurtec presents itself as the official paracity of the future. Think Berlin meets New York and Tokyo twenty minutes into the future. By day, corporations, anartists, and paratech enthusiasts rub shoulders. By night, K-pop idol-bots and cyborg techno-fascists clash in the streets.

Three Portlands: Three Portlands is an autonomous city-state out of space and time, accessible only through dimensional portals located in the Portlands of Oregon, Maine, and the Isle in the UK. Three Portlands is a hotbed of occult and parascientific eclecticism, which the United States government is only barely able to keep a lid on. Rumours abound, however, of a clandestine organization supporting them from the shadows.

Liquid Courage and Powdered Panache

I don't usually hang around Three Portlands, but the dives are second to none and the bartenders aren't programmed to ask questions. I order a blit-bomb, and Hersh rotates with a click and starts mixing a cocktail of glowing chemicals that would be more suited to a bowl of Jello or toxic waste vat. The pub has seen better days: the paint is warped and split, the air is like melting fondue, and everyone in here is loaded, whether with booze or guns, for bear. But the drinks - the drinks will kill you. And that's my kind of scene.

Hersh passes me the cocktail. It looks like Superfund sludge. I toss the blit-bomb back and it hits me like a freight train, flushing my pores and making my skin steam. The hot euphoria of my innards being melted down and rebuilt by my chest engine is better than sex.

While I'm coming down off the high of ingested toxic waste, a hobo in ugly grey sweatpants and a windbreaker sidles onto the stool next to me and asks Hersh for a tonic. I order another blit-bomb. We don't look at each other.

"You the witch?" he says out of the corner of his mouth.

I heft up a small steel case in one hand. He does the same with a small USB stick. Hersh holds out two glasses: one full of tonic, the other of iridescent rainbow slick. We cautiously place our goods on the counter, then simultaneously snatch the other from the table and down our drinks.

I'm lighting up a cigarette when the hobo draws a pistol on me.

"UIU! Put your hands up! You are under arrest for trafficking in controlled substances, homicide, digicide (?), unlawful possession of firearms and paraweaponry, opening Ways within restricted spaces, crossing state lines in the commission of a crime, sending threats by mail, racketeering, and armed robbery."

He manages to get it all out in one breath. I haven't even managed to close my lighter.

"You forgot jaywalking," I say. Behind him, a man in a grey hoodie slouched in a booth gives me a wink and stares intently at a nearby wizard - a hobgoblin of a man who almost certainly has a penchant for fire magic.

The hobo stares at me. "Hands up!"

Hoodie's stare drills into the hobgoblin, who slowly sidles out of his seat with a bottle in hand.

"Do you know what's in a blit-bomb?" I ask him. I snap my lighter closed and he flinches slightly. Two more nondescript men and one women sit up straighter - they must be his backup. "Do you even know what'll happen if you shoot me?"

All eyes are focused entirely on me.

"What?" the hobo asks. His finger tightens on the trigger.

I wink. "Nothing!"

The hobgoblin smashes his bottle over the hobo's head and takes three lightning bolts in the back for the trouble. I grab the case and throw myself over the counter where Hersh is hiding. He stares at me accusingly as bolts of fire and other blood magicks destroy his selection of exotic depressants.

"Hey, don't look at me," I tell him. "I didn't start this."

I take a moment to think. Those bolts were thrown by the UIU. I'm not just dealing with some regular joes in over their heads. This must be MOOT: the Mobile Occult Operations Team. The heavy hitters. The wizard SWAT.

This will be harder than I thought.

Hersh looks ready to reactivate his combat programming. Time to make my great escape. From my left pocket comes a pair of bright-orange knuckledusters; from my right, a fistful of purple pills that tend to interact explosively with blit-bombs. I pop the pills and slide the knuckledusters over my fingers.

My whole body starts vibrating. As I peek over the countertop, the vibrations don't subside so much as move, concentrating themselves entirely into my fingers with an accompanying incandescent glow - a close enough look would reveal tiny explosions coming off my digits, bombarding the surrounding air with heat and concussive force like miniature thermobaric warheads.

A quick scan of the room reveals two things: that the MOOT agents have managed to instigate a bar brawl, and that there are no exits. I had to get Pushed^TM in by a bouncer - and in retrospect that's probably why the UIU wanted to meet here. No way out.

But I'm used to making my own.

I throw the case over the counter and vault over it, almost immediately taking a bar stool to the face; luckily, its owner is more alcohol than water at this point. She offers no resistance when I catch it and yank it from her hands. The stool immediately starts disintegrating, but stays intact long enough for me to catch a knife with the seat and bash its wielder so hard that their mechanical eyes pop out of their sockets.

A pair of angry wizards lurch at me. I duck under Gandalf the Chrome and sweep his legs out from under him. His buddy tries to lurch over him but receives a kick to the cybernetic crotch, then an uppercut that sends him in one direction and his metal jaw in another. As Chrome tries to get to his feet, I elbow him in the skull and drive him into the ground with a CHOOM.

I grab the case from the floor and a lightning bolt goes over my head. Looking up, I see the MOOT stalking towards me. They tried bringing me in quietly - now they just want me quiet. While the female agent lobs lightning bolts at me, her backup keeps the rabble at bay. It's all I can do to weave between the shots without losing my balance - her trigger finger is faster than the bolts she's throwing.

Then I get the drop on myself - literally, tripping backwards over a stray bar stool. It's exactly what I need. Neither of us are expecting the stumble, so her next few shots go wide. I manage to convert the fall into a back roll and come up on my knees. Then I throw the case at her.

Her lightning bolts are meant to disable nervous systems, not inanimate objects, so it hits her full force in the face. As she goes down, I lunge at her goons. They react a split-second too slowly. I reach out, grab them by their collars, and slam their heads together. It sounds like bottles breaking.

With my immediate vicinity free of morons, I scoop up the case and continue looking for an exit. Then my gaze meets the hobgoblin's. He's recovered from his impromptu tasing - man's tougher than he looks - and I can tell he blames me for it.

The hobgoblin smashes a bottle against an adjacent table and shouts an incantation, turning the spilling booze into a column of fire. He wraps both hands around his makeshift drunken angel sword and lunges at me, confident in his killing blow. And he should be. I've seen that kind of magic fire before: there's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it, and if I try to block it I'll be bisected like butter.

So I don't block it. I step inwards to meet him, twisting slightly to get between his arms and then grabbing his bottle hand and wrenching it upwards. He involuntarily releases his grip on the sword. As it flies into the air, I elbow the hobgoblin in the face and onto the ground. Then I bash the case into his face - once, twice, thrice. Not enough to kill him - that would break the spell and leave me covered in booze - but enough to keep him down.

I stand up and catch the bottle by the neck, then look at the walls. It's impossible to punch through them - they're Push^TM only. But I have a drunken angel sword. And there's not a substance on any Earth that can stop it.

I haven't even finished the thought before I dig the blade into the wall, carving out a Rookie-shaped ring of fire big enough for me to slip through.

---

It's almost nightfall, or whatever they call it in Three Portlands, by the time I shake the city's police golems and make it back to the hotel. When I get into the room, the Inside Man is sitting on his bed, munching on some crisps and watching a brainless action flick. I have no idea why he likes those things.

"Why d'you still have that thing?" he asks upon seeing the case in my hand. "I said you could leave it behind. It's empty, innit?"

I shrug. "I got attached."

The Inside Man rolls his eyes. "Whatever. Good work with the UIU - I made sure someone streamed you kicking their asses," he crows. "That kind of infamy is sure to put us in the top running for the name 'Chicago Spirit'."

"Us? You ditched me the moment those guys started throwing lightning around," I say, only half-jokingly.

"Hey, I got you the hobgoblin didn't I? Your job is to be badass. Mine is to let you be badass."

He stuffs a handful of crisps into his mouth. "I knew you'd get outta there fine. You gotta believe in yourself. Like I do."

I roll my eyes, then toss the case onto my bed and join him on his. "Seriously, what the hell are we doing here? You just said it was recon - for what?" I ask, reaching for the crisps.

The Inside Man perks up. "You remember Farhan?"

I nod.

"That was 'cause I was trying to get in on black market augs, right?" he says, passing the crisps. "But I got bored with it and so we never did anything. Well, I got hooked on this video game a couple days ago - it's called EVE Online, this online multiplayer game where you can start corporations and rob people and plan heists and - my point is, I'm hooked. So I want to try the black market thing again, for real."

He leans back. "Three Ports is prime for this kind of thing. Place is full of Maxwellists and the only real augcorp in town is Anderson - and they charge a fortune. Folks are chomping at the bit for cheap augs, and that's where we come in. We'll make a killing. But before I do anything I wanted to scope out the cops. See what they've got."

"So what've they got?"

"Nothing I can't handle with a good network. Anyways, that's all I needed from you. Gonna check in with my selves, see if they have any suggestions, chat with some folks around town. You can take off if you want. Got any plans for the rest of the week?"

"Think I'll stick around," I reply. " Go shopping, maybe. There's a few indie comics they sell here I wanna check out. Maybe a new mortar and pestle. What else is on?"

"Cool," he says, hitting the remote. The TV starts showing The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - don't judge, it's a great film. We watch the movie in companionable silence for an hour, only breaking the cheesy, feel-good dialogue onscreen with the crunching of crisps and the incessant gurgling of my stomach. The Inside Man goes out for thirty minutes, returning with a pair of large pizzas and a liter of soda. I devour it all - injecting yourself with demons is hell on the metabolism, and it's important to have a balanced diet. Even with a bellyful of caffeine, the stunt I pulled with the blit-bombs absolutely wiped me. I end up passing out before the movie finishes.

I don't sleep well that night.

Shaggy and Scooby-Doo speak Tamil on a waterslide high in the sky. I'm on a high cliff overlooking an orange sunset - then something pushes me off and I plummet far to the ground. My ex-girlfriend Natasha dunks my head into a toilet. I can't breathe.

I'm trapped in a bunker with a family I haven't spoken to in years. There are monsters outside. There's an elf in the room. I stab him. The monsters get in. I hide under a table. It finds me. It has Natasha's face. I can't breathe.

There's a shadowy figure on top of me, knees planted firmly on my diaphragm in a way that makes my lungs scream. I can't breathe and I can't move and then the thing plunges its hand into my chest. My chest hurts and the thing looms over me with my heart in its claws. The light of its hellish pulse illuminates its face. It's Natasha.

But this is no dream.

I'm awake, and Natasha is on top of me with my heart in her hands.

The last time I saw her I'd left her heartbroken in a different bloody universe.

Now she's here to return the favor.

Night of a Thousand Kisses

I jolt upright with a shriek.

The Inside Man almost definitely heard that - fucker's never gonna let me live this down. Honestly, though, I'm twenty-seven. I'm way too old to have nightmares. Especially ones about old flames.

Still, that was a vivid one.

My chest is buzzing. I look down to find myself wearing a vibrating black-and-red corset.

I definitely wasn't wearing this when I went to bed. I don't even wear corsets. But what really gives me pause is the IV drip feeding blood into my arm from a pouch on the bedside stand.

"Aweh! You're up." The Inside Man enters the room with a plastic and paper bag in his hands.

"What the hell did you do to me?"

He shrugs and sets the bags down. "Saved your life - you're welcome. The fuck happened to you anyways?" he asks, pulling out breakfast food and fluid pouches. "I went out last night to get a soda and came back with you bleeding to death all over your sheets. You're lucky I had that combat corset - don't touch it by the way, it's keeping your blood pumping in your body."

"Why is it vibrating?"

"It's on! Stopping your bleeding with ultrasonic vibration. It's also draining fluids from your chest, and you know, pumping your blood. Been sitting in the stash for bladdy ages - figured I'd sell it while we were here."

I nod slowly. Then the implications of the combat corset actually hit me.

"Fuck! My heart!"

"Ja. Your heart." The Inside Man passes me a danish and paper coffee cup. "Seriously, it's like you got it ripped right out of your chest."

In between nibbles of cherry danish and sips of coffee, I tell him about last night. His eyes narrow.

"What the hell did you do to this girl?"

"I kind of ghosted her."

He hooks a fresh blood bag up to my drip. "So she tore your heart right out your chest? What, did the market value of kidneys drop?"

"Ha ha." I try to get up but don't have any strength in my arms.

"I wouldn't move. You look like death warmed over."

I look down at the sheets. They definitely weren't red when we checked in.

"I feel like death warmed over," I admit. "Christ. Didn't think you cared so much about me."

"Course I don't," he says with mock indignation. "But you're an investment, and I take care of my investments. Here, have another danish."

"Thanks."

I start nibbling at the danish and then pass out mid-bite.

When I wake up, the Inside Man is nowhere to be seen. The drip is feeding some clear liquid into my arm. I'm strong enough to retrieve my phone and the TV remote from the table. This is progress.

I gnaw on my cold danish while checking the news. There's no mention of the bar brawl on any of the TV channels, but the failed sting op at the Kiss of Death is trending on Void. I can't imagine what possessed Hersh to name his bar that. Of course, it probably isn't even his.

I'm mulling over shitty bar names ("Grog, Stock, & Barrel" and "Beermageddon" are my favorites) when the Inside Man enters the room.

"I got nothing," he tells me. "Spent all day trying to track this girl down but her trail's gone cold. If I'd entered your mind earlier I could've traced her emotions through you but I knew you wouldn't - It doesn't matter. You have any idea where she could've gone?"

"I have some ideas." I lay out the details of my former relationship with Natasha to the Inside Man.

"You're a real domkop, you know that?" he says when I'm done. "But that's good - we can work with this. You look a lot better too. Corset's doing a bang-up job."

There's no mirror nearby, so I take a selfie to check. I look like I passed out on a toilet. Still, it's better than looking like I died on one. The Inside Man interrupts my vanity session.

"Here's what I'm thinking. We kit you up, you pop over to your ex's universe, kill her and pop your heart back in, and we get back to robbing Anderson blind. I know for a fact you weren't born with that thing in you, so you gotta know how to get it back in you. Am I right?"

"Mostly," I say. "The problem is I can't just jump between universes anymore."

"The hell you mean?" he asks incredulously. "Just snort some of that hellsmack or whatever you need and jump over, right?"

"If I even look at my drugs without my heart I'm pretty sure I'll disintegrate," I explain. "It's literally the source of my mojo."

"Tch." The Inside Man looks worried. "We'll just have to talk to Alliott Chao."

---

After a week's rest, the Inside Man and I duck out of Three Portlands unnoticed. It helps that everyone expects me to have fled the city already, so nobody pays attention to an ashen brown woman when they can gawk at her albino boyfriend. You'd think nobody would look twice at them in a place like this, but they're apparently rarer than the magicians.

Our return to Eurtec is similarly unpronounced. We catch a red-eye from Portland, Maine to New York City and then take a shortcut through Backdoor SoHo, emerging in the Neuneukölln district. On the one hand, I understand why the city takes so many cues from Berlin. On the other hand, you'd think it could take some cues from anywhere other than Berlin.

Eurtec is different when I'm not on speed - warmer and slower. Above my head, a dozen sleek white monorails zip across the elevated maglev rails that crisscross the city. They shoot through gaps in the skyscrapers, all glass, steel and concrete. There are viewscreens tacked onto everything, blasting advertisements for brand new augmented reality implants, bionic prosthesis replacements, and smart kitchen sinks. It could be worse - if I had VR implants the damn things would be right in my face.

At ground level, street vendors parade their pirated tech, while shopkeepers stare at them derisively through their storefronts. From their 5D stalls, anartists vape contemptuously at both. The buildings seem taller, the streets wider, and the people dicier when I'm not hopped up. As it turns out, having performance enhancers on hand at all times does wonders for your confidence. Without my heart, I feel naked. Weak. None of these people notice me - I can't shake the feeling that if they did, they'd pounce on me like rabid dogs.

The Inside Man and I push through the main thoroughfare and turn off into the concrete jungle of inner Neuneukölln. The warmth of the city dips off. This whole area used to be heavily industrialized. It housed all of Prometheus Labs' research and manufacturing facilities until the company imploded in the nineties. Then everything was gutted or sold off, and the place was left to rot.

The buildings here are squat, concrete slabs. The advertisement screens are cracked and shattered. There are no street vendors or shopkeepers. Anartists still vape at us, but with the contempt of a robber sizing up an easy mark. The maglevs still run overhead, but they don't stop here anymore.

Our hideout is on the upper mezzanine of an abandoned warehouse near the center of the district. The lock is keyed to our biometrics - unless one of us unlocks the door and opens it, the stairway up won't be there. The moment we get inside we both flop onto the couch. When the Inside Man turns on the telly and starts discussing the meeting with Alliott, I almost feel like myself again.

---

For most people, Eurtec at night is just Eurtec without a blue sky.

I am not most people. So before I head out, the Inside Man puts me in body armor and hands me two pairs of hollowed-out bones.

"What the hell is this?" I ask him, examining them. They're unpleasantly warm to the touch.

"Slide 'em over your pointer and middle fingers," he tells me.

"The hell does it do?"

"Point those at someone and shoot. It'll remove their spine."

"How do I do that?"

"Same way you shoot a finger gun."

I squint at him, but slide them over my fingers. They feel rubbery, and flex with my digits.

"Looking good," he says. "Alright, let's get this show on the road."

With that, I walk out of the warehouse and into the night.

At night, the concrete slabs come alive. Shattered screens light up, feebly advertising cheap karaoke bars and sex-robot brothels that are in the same rooms. Trap houses invite anyone or anything with a bit of cash to spend it on software cracks, DRM patches, or just regular drugs. And of course, the mass-market K-pop robots are out in force.

I hate the stupid things. They kick up and down the city with their perfect clock-synchronized choreography and artificial smiles, begging suckers to come sing karaoke with them and dragging them back here if they offer even the slightest give. Then they dose them up to their eyes in drink, so that by the time morning comes the suckers don't remember anything but the buzz of karaoke. And the next night, the suckers come back.

My kit is concealed beneath a patterned hoodie, but even the hoodie does work: the patterns on the back confuse the CCTVs and K-pop bots. Everyone around here wears one. But it's not just how you look for the cameras - it's how you look for the people.

This part of Neuneukölln is especially bad. It's full of pickpockets and thugs looking to make a quick buck off the unaware. The police are useless - even if they patrolled here, they'd be practically blind since everyone wears the concealment patterns. Normally, nobody would mess with the girl with green flames pouring out from under her helmet. But right now, I'm pitifully human.

All I can do is walk with purpose and hope the lowlife around here know my reputation. There's honor among thieves in Eurtec. Everyone knows everyone, but nobody tells the cops. To be fair, part of it is because ratting your rival out would tank your reputation in the eyes of the original Chicago Spirit - everyone knows Richard Chappell hated snitches - but I like to think that most of it is personal pride.

Unfortunately, racial pride trumps personal pride for some people. It's only to be expected; when the authorities pray to Nordic supercomputers you're bound to get a few Nazis in the mix. The local variety call themselves the Chicago Geist. The rest of us call them anime Nazis due to their special blend of racism and techno-weeb fetishism.

I'm just a couple blocks from Alliott's place on the edge of the district when one such specimen gets in my way. He's weird even by anime Nazi standards; I can tell by the smell and swelling that the bastard has custom tanto implants in his arms. He's at least smarter than the fucks who get wakizashis in their arms - those guys can barely swing the fucking things - but he still got fucking samurai swords put into his arms.

"Gimme your money," he spits at me in German.

I shoot him with my finger gun. Nothing happens. Prick must've had his spine replaced. I should've guessed the spine-blasters wouldn't work on cyborgs. They're thrumming with occult magicks, but magick with a K tends not to touch metal.

While I'm trying to determine why he didn't get his back blown out, the weeaboo-Nazi squints at me. "Gimme your wallet or I'll slice you into sushi. I can see the crypto wallet in your pocket."

For emphasis, he takes a fish out of his pocket and throws it into the air. Twin tantos extend from his arms and he effortlessly chops the fish up into a hundred pieces before it hits the ground. The prick apparently had his reflexes enhanced too. So much for making a break for it.

I want to kill him. I want to kill this idiot stalking around at night with a bloody fish in his pocket so he can frighten minorities with his disgusting sword hands. Not because he's a Nazi or even because he's trying to mug me. But because he's in my way. Because he's standing there while I'm furious out of my mind. Because nobody would care if I slammed his head into the pavement and drove my frustrations through my boot into his skull until it cracked and pink mush came out.

But I can't. My chest is killing me, my goddamn gun doesn't work and if I try to physically rush him he'll gut me like a fish. I can't run away either; he's clearly faster than me. I'm outmatched by a racist weeaboo and it pisses me the hell off. But I don't have time for his hate-crime theatrics, so I toss him the USB stick with my payment for Alliott.

Somehow he flubs the catch and drops it. The idiot doesn't think to retract his swords, so every time he leans down they bonk into the ground. I walk briskly past him while he struggles to scoop up the wallet. I make two promises to myself: one, to throttle the Inside Man when I see him next; and two, to track the anime Nazi down and fillet him with his own blades once I get my heart back.

As I turn the corner, a stylized neon logo of a cat's face smirks down at me. This used to be Prometheus Labs' flagship factory here. Then it was left to die until a rag-tag group of anahums purchased it. Now it's the focal point for a thriving fashion boutique and underground criminal empire: the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu.

For the front of a criminal enterprise, the reception area is surprisingly clean. Then again, it's also the front for a legitimate worker-owned fashion boutique. The floor is tiled, the lights are fluorescent, and the seats are plastic and fiber. The reception desk is that weird gray plastic you see in schools and hospitals.

The receptionist is a bored-looking Russian woman in a blouse and miniskirt. She has a segmented metal cat-tail sticking up like a lightning rod jammed into her tailbone. I recognize the tail; it's an early model, back when they hadn't quite fixed all the kinks with artificial neural pathways in brain-machine interfaces. If I had to guess, her consciousness rejected the tail, so now it just sits there. That's probably why she works for the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu. They're one of the few employers, even in Eurtec, who would accept someone with such an obvious body-mod.

"Alliott Chao says you're a bitch," I tell her. She raises an eyebrow in recognition of the code phrase.

"Likewise, cock sucker. Membership card, please?"

I hand her a thin plastic card with the letters "KMZ" engraved on it in red and black. She accepts it without looking up from her computer. Her hands fly across the keyboard. After a moment, she answers.

"She should be in the makerspace on the fourth floor. Will that be all?"

"Yes, thank you."

She hands me my card. I make my way to the elevators and take the first one up.

The fourth floor is a single, wide-open room and hotbed of DIY activity.. As I exit the elevator, two people step inside it carrying a full-scale Power Suit. There's a girl with what are almost certainly real cat ears flitting between a few laser cutters in the corner. In the center tables, some people are sewing Kevlar into the lining of their streetwear. There's an android sitting in a dentist's chair against the wall, illegally overclocking their own positronic brain. A few people are milling near a pinball machine drinking beers - homebrewed of course; the bioreactors here aren't just for show.

I find Alliott Chao by the far wall, assembling a sniper rifle out of black thermoplastic.

"That's a Barrett XM500, isn't it?" I ask her. "I didn't know they'd uploaded the schematics online."

"They haven't," she replies. As soon as the barrel snaps into place, she starts disassembling it. "It's custom. Designed it myself. Uses a new shock-absorbent type of thermoplastic. KMZ is thinking of adding it to their lineup of tactical fashion. For bulletproof vests."

Alliott rolls up one sleeve and pant leg, revealing full arm and leg prostheses with several slots in them. The pieces of the sniper rifle fit into the slots perfectly.

"I like a girl who knows her guns. You're the Rookie, right?" she asks, rolling her sleeves down.

"Guilty."

"I've heard a lot about you. Jacking the Bank of Eurtec and the Phitransimun Combine? Pretty fuckin' cool."

"Thanks. What's the sniper for?" I ask her.

"My business," she says, rubbing her arm. "What're you looking for?"

"I need a bidirectional Way. Moddable one, that I can change the outlets for. I need all the information you can find on a witch called Natasha Tokyopop. And I need a spaceship and space suit that can get me to the Moon."

She raises an eyebrow. "When do you need this stuff?"

"ASAP."

"It'll run you about…" She pauses and then runs off a number with a whole lot of zeroes.

"Cool. Can I get back to you about that?"

"What? The Inside Man said you'd be bringing payment."

"I… had some trouble on the way here. I don't have the cash on me," I admit.

Alliott shrugs. "Can't do anything if you don't - hold on." She cocks her head for a moment, then starts jabbering into empty space in a language I'm not familiar with. Her facial expressions go from bemused to angry to conspiratorial and back again for several minutes. Then she hangs up and looks at me.

"Tell you what. I've got a job for you. You do this, we both get a fat payday and I get you what you need. You interested?"

Chained to the Slave Majority

Alliot pulls up to Kemonomimi Zaibatsu at noon in a black Porsche with sleek red lines. Its engine growls like a tiger on the prowl. Smoke rolls out of its twin tailpipes like they're on fire. The rear wings flap up and down like they're trying to lift the car off the ground, but what really draws my eye - and every other within a hundred yards - is the black machine gun mounted to its roof. God only knows what kind of mods she put into the car just to keep the top from crumpling underneath its weight.

I take a moment to admire the machine and then hop into the shotgun seat, basking in the heated seats and light streaming through the sunroof. Alliot shifts into gear and we peel out of the district. She's trying to show off, and it's working.

On top of one of the tables in the makerspace, Alliott unrolls a blueprint of a large corporate office.

"You follow death ball?" she asks.

"Of course," I respond. "The City Cup is tonight."

"You gamble?"

"Of course."

"And you always lose." It isn't a question. "What do you know about Oneiroi Incorporated?"

"Not much. I bought a couple of their dream-cations once." I don't mention all the times I've used their memory removal services.

"Figured as much. Oneiroi's weird. They're privately owned but I haven't been able to figure out by who. More importantly, they're bastards. You know what they do with the stuff they siphon out of your head?"

"What?"

"They exploit it."

We pull onto the elevated autobahn at 200 km/h, weaving around tiny smart cars doing 80. The acceleration makes my corset feel even more constricting. At one point, a FLYPAPER unit lumbers onto a bend in the road - Alliott simply downshifts and drifts around it. Before I know what's happened, the FLYPAPER is a speck in the rearview.

Seconds later, we pull off the highway into Sigrunstraße, the cultural center of Eurtec. The Verthandistadion comes into view. It's the biggest sports arena in any paracity. For tonight, it's been reconfigured into an inverted circular ziggurat, comprised of multiple concentric rings that increase in radius the higher they are.

"Oneiroi's products and their customers are the same thing. They analyze people and then sell them - likes, dislikes, medical history whatever they can find - to the highest bidder. And the lynchpin of their corporate strategy is the deathball betting house."

Alliott stabs the blueprint with a finger.

"They know exactly how to rig the predictions and hype up the pot. Everyone plays, everyone loses - except Oneiroi. They make a fat goddamn buck and scoop up petabytes of data to troll. But that ends tonight."

The stadium is packed. Everyone's looking forward to watching ICSUT and Anderson Robotics duke it out for the cup. ICSUT's Battlebots team has been perfecting their players for years, stuffing bigger and bigger death machines into smaller and smaller packages. Anderson has focused more on improving the viral payloads in their death ball robots that enable them to infect the competition and destroy it from the inside out.

The two teams have completely opposed strategies that brought them all the way to the finals, and it's anyone's guess as to who will win. With that kind of excitement on the line, it's no wonder that the lines for the automated bookies are massive. Alliott and I wait for two hours to place our bets. Of course, if what Alliott's been telling me is even remotely accurate, the real winner will be Oneiroi.

"All the betting machines in Eurtec are connected to a central server in Oneiroi's datacenter. We're going to break in and modify the bets so that Oneiroi has to pay everyone, no matter what they bet."

Alliott touches the south side on the blueprint.

"The security system is weird - I have what I need to hack the servers, but to get physical access to them, we have pull two switches at the same time - one in the basement, one on the sixty-sixth floor. The executive floors. I had someone on that but… they're indisposed."

"Which is where I come in," I say.

Alliott nods. "At 7:30 PM, I'll go in through the front door as a maintenance technician and get access to the basement. You'll be here - on the skyscraper across from the south side of the datacenter. Once I radio that I'm in position, you'll shoot a line across to the upper floors of the datacenter. Zipline in. From there, you have two tasks - one, pulling the switch, and two, getting everyone to evacuate."

She taps the center of the blueprint. "The switch is right in the middle of the floor. Impossible to miss. Once you pull it, just take a couple hostages, maybe shoot some people. Eris knows those bastards have it coming. I'll have someone supporting you from the rooftop. Just draw attention to yourself until I finish the hack, then shoot another line to the ground floor. Backup will be there with the Porsche. You two follow the rails out of the city and then just loop back in. We'll meet back here. Any questions?"

"Two."

We grab a bite to eat before making our way to the drop point. Over some cheap burgers, Alliott and I chat for a bit about our misadventures and run-ins with the law. I tell her about how the FLYPAPER almost got me at the Bank of Eurtec - she tells me about the time she decapitated one of Anderson's salesbots with a shovel and turned him into an oracle.

She is really fucking cool.

"Why do I need backup?" I ask.

"Last week Oneiroi contracted out their security to a private group called Chappell Wraith Securities. I haven't heard of these guys before, but I've heard their security forces are heavily augmented somehow. Better safe than sorry."

The name sends alarm bells blaring through my head, but I don't say anything. Doubtless Alliott's already aware of the name's implications.

"Who's my backup?"

"Someone I'd trust with my life."

Night finds me and Alliott rolling slowly through the corporate district of Eurtec. Mile-high colossi made of glass and steel vie for space in an overpopulated skyline. There's so much artificial lighting that it's perpetually daytime. Every day, billions of credits in any currency you care to imagine flow through this place. Here, corporations rise and fall. Here, a single decision can shape or destroy thousands of lives. Here, money can buy you time itself.

Alliott's car doesn't draw so much as a glance, even with the machine gun on the roof. She drops me off at the skyscraper across from Oneiroi before driving away to find a place to stash our ride. I make my way inside and climb the stairs to the roof to find Alliott waiting for me.

"I didn't know Alliott had a twin," I say.

"She doesn't. I'm Alex," Alliott's not-twin says. Alex looks identical to Alliott - the only difference is that Alex has a small tattoo of a triangle inscribed in a circle on her cheek. She motions towards a harpoon gun leaning against a nearby vent. "Tie that off to the vent. There's a harness there, hook yourself up and get ready."

"Got it," I respond.

While I'm hooking myself up to the zipline harness, Alliott's voice crackles through my earpiece. "You've met Alex?"

"She has." Alex's voice comes in both in front of me and through my earpiece.

"Great. Play nice. I'm making my way into the building… now."

Alex rolls up her sleeves to reveal an arm and leg prosthesis. She slides an assortment of parts from the limbs and starts assembling a sniper rifle.

For this heist, I've forgone my bike helmet for something more akin to a balaclava and a pair of goggles given to me by the Inside Man. The goggles have a rudimentary targeting system and brain-computer interface that jacks into my limbs and allows me to aim a lot more easily. Instead of having to aim down sights or compensate for recoil, I can just point and shoot. It helps me compensate for my total lack of occult firepower.

There's also a bunch of stuff that the Man shoved into the pack on my back. After the fuckup with the weeaboo-Nazi, he made sure I was loaded for bear. But for now all I need are the goggles.

I slip the balaclava and goggles over my eyes.

"I'm in position. Check?"

"Check," I say.

"Check," Alex says. She lies on her belly and takes aim with the rifle. I take aim with the harpoon gun.

"Alex. On your mark."

We fire at the same time.

Oneiroi, Inc.'s windows are bulletproof. But what comes out of Alliott's gun isn't a bullet. It's a .50 caliber anti-matériel high-explosive incendiary, armor-piercing round - a baby missile that's designed to take out helicopters and armored vehicles. The shot blows out the central window on the south side of the sixty-sixth floor, as well as the windows directly above and around it, in a hail of glass. Then it obliterates a few pillars on the floor.

The harpoon line flies through the air and latches on to what's left of the closest pillar. I give the line an experimental tug to make sure it won't come loose, then clip onto it, close my eyes, and start sliding. The wind rushes past my face but I don't open my eyes until I feel my feet on solid land again. I skid to a stop just before smacking into the pillar and unclip my harness. Then I pull out my Desert Eagle from my pack and fire a round into the ceiling.

"Listen up, pigs!" I call. "You've bent this city over and fucked it raw. The Chicago Spectre is here to fuck back!"

Being able to say stupid shit like that is one of the reasons I love my job.

I scan the floor for a convenient hostage and the switch. The executive offices of Oneiroi look like they were modeled off a stock photo labeled "office". It's a maze of individual office rooms and bland fluorescent lighting. Rich geriatrics in thousand-dollar clothes and ties cower in their business cells.

In the dead center of the room is a white pillar with a grey metal box on it. Doubtless that's the switch in question. Conveniently, there's an old man in a fancy black suit and striped tie frozen besides it. Even from here he exudes an aura of callous wealth.

I stride towards the switch and examine it. There's a keypad lock on it. I look over at the executive and put an arm around his shoulder.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Barnard. Barnard Sachs," he stutters.

"Tell me, Barnard, what's your… what's your job title?"

"I'm the - I'm the chief technical officer."

"Fantastic! Barnard, what's the key code for this box?"

"I-I'm not at liberty to-"

"Ah-ah-ah, Barnard. We're friends here. And you wouldn't want to disappoint your friends, would you?" I press the gun barrel against his forehead. He swallows.

"Ah… n-no…"

"Then you wouldn't mind opening it, I'm sure." I take my free arm off of his shoulder and cock the hammer of the pistol. The click echoes in the silence.

Barnard swallows, then punches the code into the keypad.

"Thanks, Barney," I say. "On your knees or I'll blow your brains out."

Barnard falls to his knees. I open the metal box up. Inside is a large red handle labeled "DATA SERVER ACCESS".

"I'm in position," I say.

"Understood. On my mark," Alliott responds through the earpiece. "Three…two…one…Now!"

I pull the handle. The room goes dark.

"Alliott? What's going on?"

"Don't use my name. I'm in."

"The lights went out."

"Wasn't me. Everything's green down here."

At that moment, the lights come back on and I find myself face-to-face with a flaming skeleton in a striped black suit.

"Fuck!" I fall onto my ass and roll behind a cubicle. All of the old people are possessed. Green flame pours out from their orifices.

I recognize that green flame. I have pills that do the same thing to me. The name Chappell Wraith Securities pops back into my head. And then everything clicks into place.

"Natasha… you fucking bitch!"

"Ruku!" the drones croon in unison. "I thought I killed you!"

Goddess or Godless

My ex-girlfriend's army of possessed office executives goose-steps toward me. The combat corset feels like a vice around my chest.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I hiss.

"Me? You're supposed to be dead, babe," they titter in unison. "Am I that rusty?"

"Babe? What the hell is going on?" Alex and Alliott say simultaneously into my earpiece.

"Chappell Wraith Securities? They're run by a witch named Natasha Tokyopop," I say. "She's… enchanted the office drones into actual ones. Like demon robots."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Alex says in my earpiece. "Get down."

There's an ear-splitting crack and then a sharp ping.

Natasha shakes her heads. "Did you shoot me? Did you really just shoot me with an actual gun? Come the fuck on, babygirl, you know me better than that."

"Alex?" I say. There's no response.

"Alex? Oh, is she your new girlfriend? How many have you gone through since you ditched me?" the drones say. "Sorry Ruku, if she shot me then she's deader than dirt."

"Alliott, we've got trouble," I say. "These drones are charmed or something - I think they reflect bullets. Alex is dead."

Alliott curses. "I'm still working on the hack but I'll get you out, don't worry. Keep her busy!"

"What are you doing here, Rukmini?" the drones ask in unison.

"What do you think?" I say, looking for a way past Natasha. "Taking some fat cats hostage - you know, how you used to?"

"I am taking them hostage, babe," they say. "You know how much I'm charging these pricks? I don't even need Chappell's fortune! These assholes are paying me one every day!"

The lead drone takes a swipe at me with a baton. I duck past her and run down the corridor, rummaging through the backpack. My hands close around the handle of a metal baseball bat.

As I reach the windows, a sheet of green flame rises in front of the windows and licks at my face. I skid to a halt in front of it and turn around. The entire outer perimeter of the office is sealed off by a wall of green fire. Natasha's army of drones stalks towards me in perfect goose-step formation.

"I don't believe this!" I snap. "Chappell Wraith Securities? Fucking security guards? You stole my heart and sold out?"

The sing-song tone she's using dredges up a variety of feelings: arousal, from a particularly aggressive sex session I still have bite-marks on my tits from; shock, from the time she tracked down and beat a man to death for cutting her off on the autobahn; and fear - because that's the same tone of voice she used to coerce me into having my heart replaced with a demon.

Natasha's drones bear all the hallmarks of her style: brutalist fashion, perfect synchronization, elegant in the way they simply hijack the normal functions of a human body. She loves summoning and charming automatons. At one point she wanted to enchant a giant mecha. And with my powers? She probably has.

But she prioritizes form over function. I'd recognize that bulletproof enchantment anywhere. Hell, I'm the one who came up with it. It's a basic kinetic energy redirector - efficient and practically unnoticeable to the naked eye, but easily cracked by a sufficiently powerful banishment glyph.

I dive through a nearby doorway into a conference room and lock the door behind me. I pull a pocket knife out of the backpack and start carving symbols into the bat. Natasha's drones beat at the windows of the room.

"It pays to suck corporate dick, huh?" I shout. "I thought you were better than this.”

The glass makes a popping sound.

"Gosh," the drones say. "I wonder what coulda changed. It's not like you stole my magic and crippled me completely. Oh wait!"

The glass cracks and bulges.

"Me, right now? Everything I've done in the past five years? All you, Ruku."

The glass disintegrates. The drones begin to pour in.

"All. Your. Fault."

I drop the knife, wrap both hands around the bat and swing.

The enchantment is a Sanksrit prayer to the Hindu god, Ganesha; remover of obstacles. As a result, my enchanted bat now removes obstacles. There's a sharp crack and a smell like burnt hair as the blessing of Lord Ganesha blows out the kinetic energy redirector and shoves the excess force right back into Barnard Sachs's skull. He goes flying, taking a dozen drones with him and clearing a path for me. A home run.

"Get stuffed," I snarl. A secretary with a baton takes her swing. I parry it and crack her in the gut. Her vertebrae shoot out her back and she crumples bonelessly to the ground.

"I can't stay mad at you though," the other drones say breathily, strutting towards me. "You know, you're suuuuuuuuper hot when you're angry."

"Christ," I say. "You know how bloody creepy that is when it's an eighty-year-old white dude saying that?"

I talk into my earpiece. "Alliott, there is a wall of fire encircling the floor and I cannot get out."

"I'm done, I'm done, I'll send an elevator up, just hold on!" she says.

"How the hell did you even find me?" I ask Natasha.

"Babe, I've been keeping an eye on you since you ran away. You really think I'd let my forever girl get away like that?"

"You've been spying on me?" I backpedal towards the elevators.

"It's not spying if it's someone you love!" she titters. The faces of her many drones fall at once. "I still love you."

I'm so surprised by this that I stop swinging my bat. "You love - you tried to kill me! You've been spying on me and you tried to kill me and you have the bloody gall to tell me that you love me?"

This is a huge mistake. A half-dozen old white men in suits dogpile me and knock the bat out of my hand. It rolls towards the elevator.

They all breathe the same thing at me. "I was going to revive you. Bring you back to me. Show you how much you still love me."

"Jesus Christ. Get off me!" I try to push them off but some more drones pile on top. It's hard to breathe. I'm being crushed under a morass of old white men with garlic breath proclaiming their psychotic love for me.

"Alliott, I could use a little - "

One of the drones rips the earpiece away and whispers directly into my ear. "But then you didn't die and I couldn't track you any more without the heart. I thought I'd lost you forever and I was so upset but then you fell right back into my orbit! Don't you see? We're meant to be together! The universes are pushing us together!"

My vision starts to blur and darken. I think I feel a rib crack.

"You don't need Alliott. You'll see - I'll bring you with me and things will go back to normal. Back to how we used to be, shooting and robbing and fucking all day long. It'll be so much fun!"

I'm about to pass out when I hear a faint ding and then several loud cracks. The drones fall away from me. I take a deep breath and then start coughing, but I'm breathing again. The pressure is gone. A hand grabs my own and lifts me onto my feet.

Alliott Chao stands in front of me, breathing heavily and holding my baseball bat. There are bodies everywhere. She's covered in chunks of white middle-aged businessman.

It is incredibly hot.

"Your ex is a real psycho, you know that?" Alliott pulls me into the elevator and slaps the button for the ground floor. Elevator music plays while we both try to catch our breath with our hands on our knees. My chest aches.

"She's not actually like that," I say.

Alliott looks up at me. "Huh?"

"She's not really like that. She's just trying to fuck with us. Me. She's just trying to fuck with me."

Alliott cocks her head. "Trying to brainwash you is just fucking with you?"

"Yeah. She used to - it's how we - it's her sense of humor."

"Her sense of humor."

"Yeah."

My ears are burning beneath the balaclava. Thankfully Alliott chooses to let me off with some dignity by changing the subject.

"There's going to be like… fifty fucking robocops down there," she says. "You got any ideas?"

My backpack is still on my back. I rummage through it briefly and then a smile breaks out on my face.

"Yes. Yes I do."

The elevator doors open to reveal the full extent of security that a monolithic corporation can buy. A hundred robocops have the elevator surrounded. Ten APCs can be seen through the lobby windows. There's not one, not two, but three entire FLYPAPER units drooling hungrily behind them.

I pull a bazooka out of the backpack. It telescopes on the way out, lengthening and widening to reveal a fully-loaded six-barrel incendiary grenade launcher.

"Cover your ears." I fire.

The FLYPAPER nearest to the elevator takes a grenade full-on in what passes for its face. It's instantly engulfed in flames. The robocops watch in horrified awe as it thrashes about, smashing the floor to bits and sending chunks of burning meat and metal everywhere. Then I fire the other five rounds into the crowd.

The lobby is transformed into a maelstrom of flesh, metal, and flame. Alliott and I sprint for the emergency exit. We crash through the door as bullets and agonized shouts fly past.

"Where's the car?" I shout.

Alliott simply takes off running, leading me through a maze of glass and steel. Sirens in the distance grow louder with each step. I almost run past the Porsche before Alliott slides into the driver's seat and honks at me.

We peel out of the alleyway the car was hidden in. Ahead of us, a line of cop cars blocks the road. Alliott spins the wheel and shifts gears, sending us into a spin and pointing us in the other direction. There's another line of cars blocking our exit, so she instead veers back into the alleyway.

More cops are waiting for us on the other side. Alliott swerves onto the pavement and barely avoids clipping one of their cars.

"Fucking hell," she yells. "They're everywhere! You know any shortcuts?"

I don't, but I know someone who does.

Dutch! I think into the void.

The Inside Man picks up after a moment. Rookie! You must really be in trouble. Hang on.

An intersection full of APCs bears down on us as he sends me a list of turns to take and curbs to hop.

"Take a right!" I shout. "There's a gap in the barricade!"

Alliott shoots me a quizzical eyebrow, but yanks the steering wheel to the right. The wheels scream as we slide into the turn and drift right through the promised hole in the vehicle barricade.

"Left!" Caltrops have been scattered across the road like salt. There's a shudder as we bounce onto the curb and hurdle right over them.

Ahead of us, the intersection is entirely blocked by a full APC barricade. Behind us, a flood of cop cars box us in. There's no way out.

"Use the machine gun," Alliott grunts.

"What?"

"THE MACHINE GUN!"

I unbuckle myself, pop the sunroof, and stand up in my seat. The machine gun is mounted to a swivel with a pair of trigger handles to grab onto, letting me spin it around but not aim it up or down. A pair of ammo belts dangle from the weapon, trailing into the back windows. I hoist myself up onto the roof and grab onto the handles, rolling around the roof so that I'm lying on the rear window aiming forwards and holding onto the gun for dear life.

A pair of cops with rocket launchers stand up and take aim.

I squeeze the trigger.

The machine gun sounds like a chainsaw cutting through metal and makes my brain feel like it's been put into a blender. In just under three seconds it carves an explosive swathe through the barricade, chewing holes larger than double-A batteries through everything in its way. The barrage of bullets causes the warheads in both launchers to explode in a massive fireball. I barely have time to roll back around and drop down through the sunroof before Alliott drifts right through the explosion.

Then we're on a straightaway just a hundred meters from the train tracks. A horn sounds and the gates start to come down. The Phitransimun Combine races towards the crossing gate. A tidal wave of blue bears down on us from behind.

Alliott and I register all of this and come to the same conclusion in the second it takes us to reach the tracks. She pulls into yet another drift and smashes through the crossing guards. Then we're barreling down an interdimensional railway with the Phitransimun Combine barely meters behind us.

The police sirens fade into the distance. The only things that can be heard are the juddering of the car, the steady bay of its engine, and the rumble of the pursuing train. We drive in silence for several minutes.

"Jesus Christ," Alliott says. "I'd known it would turn out like this I'da stayed home and watched the game."

She looks over at me. "You're something fucking else, you know that?"

"Thanks. I think."

Alliot cocks her head. "After this you want to - "

The car door on my side is abruptly ripped away. Something wraps around my arm and yanks. I scrabble for something to hold onto but find only the bat before being torn bodily out of the car.

There's a heart-stopping pause and then I land flat on my back, looking up into the eyes of Natasha Tokyopop. She's wearing an avatar of unclear Asian ethnicity, but I'd recognize her retro-sukeban style anywhere: a black sailor-top and skirt combo, with long leggings, combat boots, and a long black tendril in place of her left arm to round out the look.

"I told you. I wanted to catch up!" she exclaims, wrapping the tendril around my neck and pulling me into the air. "You ran away before we were finished. Was it the thing about brainwashing you?" she asks. "I thought it might be a bit much, but I know how much you used to like it when we - "

I'm too busy choking to pay attention. Natasha slackens her grip and lowers to the ground.

"Sorry! I'm still getting used to my powers. It's been so long since I had any," she says.

I take a quick look around while rubbing my neck. We're atop the lead engine of Phitransmun Combine. The wind buffets my face, breaking against my goggles and chilling me to the bone. I can see Alliott's car just below us, but Natasha stands between me and freedom.

"Rookie! Where are you? Are you okay?" Alliott's voice rings through the earpiece.

"On the train. With Natasha."

"Well you need to get off it stat," Alliott says. "We're gonna hit the junction in maybe five minutes and if you are not in here when that happens it's game fucking over."

"Got it," I say.

"You knowwwww," Natasha says in a faux-singsong, "I'm right here."

"What do you even want with me?" I spit.

"What, can't two BFFs hang out like old times?" she asks. "I've been doing wonderfully, you know! I took up judo, piano, started a corporation, and got my powers back. Now you go."

I take a swing at her. She blocks it easily and then slices at my leg. It starts bleeding.

"Don't have anything to say?" she asks. "That's fine. I'll just grill you instead. First question. What have you and the Inside Man been doing with all the shit you steal?"

The tendril lashes out at my neck. I smack it away and slam the bat into her ribs. She doesn't even flinch.

"Sit on your little dragon's hoard and blow it on catgirls and comic books?" she guesses. "Tell me I'm wrong." She catches my bat with her human hand and shoves me back. "You're a fucking hypocrite, Ruku. You always have been."

I lunge at her, but she sidesteps and I go sprawling towards the front edge of the train.

"Next question!" Natasha chirps. "What were you really doing at Oneiroi? 'Taking people hostage'? C'mon. That's more see-through than those panties you wore for my birthday."

I scramble to my feet and charge at her. Natasha dodges all my swings effortlessly. She looks past me and raises an eyebrow. "That's a Black Queen, ain't it? Now I get it! You're looking for a Way. Okay okay, next question. You want to come after me? Don't you?"

I feint at her from the right, then swing at her left. Then her right. Then her neck. Then her chest. She ducks, weaves, bobs, blocks, and then simply snatches the bat from my grasp and gives me a love-tap on the head. It feels like a jackhammer to the skull.

"How do you feel, Ruku?" she asks, poking the bat into my chest. "Powerless? Frustrated? Infuriated that I did this to you?"

She jabs it into my sternum and sends me sprawling. I struggle to my feet, trying to keep pain-induced tears out of my eyes.

"Well how the hell do you think I felt?" she asks. "When you crippled me? When you broke my heart? When you left me to die?"

Natasha throws the bat to me, then steps back and relaxes.

"Last question. You really wanna kill me, huh?"

Her arms drop to her shoulders and her tendril rests against the ground.

"Take a swing," she says.

My head is swimming. "What?"

"Take a swing," she repeats. "I'm right fucking here. I'm your monster, Ruku. Do the right thing."

I stare at her. "What?"

"Take a swing!" Natasha exclaims. "I'm a whore and a bootlicker and a murderer. Isn't that it? I'm a corporate slave and a pathetic bitch who tried to murder my ex and should be put down like one."

She raises her hands and gestures mockingly. "I'll give you one shot. Hit me. Pound my brain into mash. Kill. Me."

I oblige with an overhead that comes right down on her scalp and slams her into the ground. Then I swing again.

Once. Twice. Thrice. A dent in the train's roof forms under her head. Bits of brain, bone, and blood fly everywhere. Her perfect little face disintegrates. Her perfect clothing gets spattered in blood.

I stop swinging and pause to examine my handiwork. The avatar is well and truly dead. Her limbs twitch once, a postmortem reflex from a brain that isn't there anymore.

Then they twitch again. And again.

As if being rewound, the bloodstains on her perfect clothing dissipate. Her perfect little face reassembles itself. Bits of blood, bone, and brain are sucked from thin air back into her skull. The dent in the roof stays.

I swing the bat down again. The tendril whips upwards and stops it. Natasha hops to her feet, looking like she just got out of her wardrobe instead of beaten to death by a magic baseball bat.

Green flame pours from her eye sockets. She winks at me. "I think you missed."

Natasha tackles me right off the train and onto the trunk of the Porsche. I land flat on my back and she lands on top of me. She wraps her tendril around the bat, wrenches it out of my grasp, and flings it away.

"My turn."

The tendril sharpens into a scythe and comes down for the killing blow.

"Tokyopop!" Alliott's voice is audible without my earpiece.

Natasha pauses and we both look over at Alliott. Then there's a sound like a chainsaw cutting through metal and what's left of Natasha is splattered against the Phitransimun Combine like a fly.

"Get the fuck in!" Alliott yells from behind the gun. Then she disappears below the sunroof.

I take a few hasty breaths, then scramble over the machine gun and fall into the car with my feet on the dash. Alliot immediately pushes a button on the gearstick and floors the gas. My vision fills with the colors of the rainbow and then they're gone, replaced by the darkness of the industrial district and the neon glow of the Kemonomimi Zaibatsu's cat logo.

We're in the parking lot of the KMZ building. Neither of us speak for several minutes, not daring to believe what just happened. Then Alliott's phone dings, and she looks through it.

"They tied. Anderson and ICSUT tied."

It's like a dam bursting. We both start giggling like madwomen.

"The hack went through," Alliott laughs. "I can't believe it."

I pull my own phone out and look at my own civilian bank account. I'm more than two million dollars richer.

"I can't believe you splattered Natasha across the train," I gasp.

"I can't believe you pulled a bazooka out of your backpack," Alliott says, snickering. She smiles at me. "Want to grab a drink? I think we both need it."

Natasha's words echo in my mind. She almost skewered me back there, and that was just with a clone. I'm going to have to face the real Natasha soon enough, and I doubt I have a snowball's chance in hell of beating her. I have the Inside Man on my side - but she has all my powers, and then some. More than that, she's fueled by five years worth of hate - most of it deserved.

I need to get her out of my head.

"If it's all the same to you," I wheeze, "I'd rather get right to the shagging."

KMZ offers free bunkrooms to members. As soon as the door locks behind us, Alliott pushes me against it and we start snogging like teens in a cheap romance novel. We're both filthy and smell like motor oil and gunpowder, but it's nothing a long, steamy shower together won't fix. Besides, there's few aphrodisiacs more potent than money and adrenaline.

Alliot pushes me into the bathroom, yanks my top off, and then pauses.

"Why are you wearing a corset?"

Feed the Need Machine

Alliott Chao is hot enough to die for. We fumble with the straps of my corset in a horny haze before the Inside Man realizes what's happening and forces me to push her away. And that pretty much bins any chance of a shag when I have to explain why I have it on - and by extension, what my history with Natasha is. Which is, admittedly, much more intimate.

But I don't want to be intimate. I want to have my back blown out by a girl who roller derbies with her clones.

Instead, we spend the night researching Natasha Tokyopop. Alliott's fancy laptop lets her access information from other realities, so we go on an interdimensional web surf and dig up as much as we can on her and her group, the Chicago Wraiths. Things have changed since I left home.

When I say 'home', I don't mean 'house'. I mean 'universe'. I mentioned this way back when, but I left Natasha by physically leaving my home reality and fleeing here. This universe is more primitive than my original - for whatever reason, the government keeps a tight lid on the occult. Which is just fine by me. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.

But where I'm going, I'm not queen anymore. I'm barely even a pawn. My only hope is to make it to the other side of the board, and to get there I'll need as much dirt as I can dig up about Natasha. And these are the facts.

Fact: Chappell Wraith Securities is a subsidiary of Wraith Enterprises, a veritable conglomerate with its hands in private security, aerospace and demonic engineering. Fact: Wraith Enterprises are based on the moon, and can only be reached via Way or shuttle from a space elevator. Fact: Wraith Enterprises have built a space elevator.

It's all very space-age and fancy - and a far cry from the shit we used to get up to. That moonbase used to be a moon coven. The space elevator didn't exist. We spent our time figuring out how to kill cops, not privatize them. But that was a long time ago. If I know Natasha, she's set up all manner of counter-spells to ensure that I can't get there by magical means. I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way - or at least, as old-fashioned as my home gets.

Fact: The space elevator is utterly inhospitable to human beings. Even ignoring the Van Allen belt, which pumps out enough radiation to give Spider-Man cancer, the G-forces caused by the sheer speed of travel would turn me into jelly. Fact: Robots make the journey fairly often, performing repairs or otherwise overseeing the function of the elevator. Conclusion: If I want to reach the moon, I'll need to be a robot. Or something mostly robot.

Unfortunately, I'm mostly human.

This will have to change. Which is a whole bundle of problems on its own, as the Inside Man helpfully points out (by hijacking my vocal chords to voice his opinions). It's not the augmentations themselves I'm worried about. Once I have my heart back, I have a half-dozen different formulas I can use to regenerate my fleshy bod. The problem is getting them in the first place.

There are three legitimate (well, semi-legitimate) sources for augments: Anderson Robotics, the Servants of the Silicon Nornir, or one of the underground Maxwellist clinics. Anderson charges a fortune, and if I try to jailbreak so much as a finger it's likely to blow up and take the whole arm with it. If I let the Servants get ahold of my biometrics, I might as well just walk into prison. And if I get upgraded at a Maxwellist clinic, they'll fill my brain with so much scripture there won't be room for me.

There's no shortage of illegitimate augment rings, but most of them are jank as fuck. If I went to any old back-alley doctor I'd be just as likely to get a perfect full-body transplant as my organs harvested and my brain wired to a crypto-mining rig. That leaves exactly one option: Farhan Jahaniam. Then I remember that I beat Farhan to death with his own arm a few months ago.

I'm stumped.

"MachineGod," Alliott says. "You could see MachineGod."

I snort. "MachineGod? He only augments influencers. He doesn't deal with peasants like us."

"You're not a peasant anymore." Alliott turns the laptop towards me. The headline onscreen reads, "Bringing Down the House".

I read through the article quickly. In short? Oneiroi, Inc. is crippled. Our heist wrecked their headquarters and most of their human capital. The upset at the deathball match did the rest. My balaclava-clad face and the name "Chicago Spectre" are plastered all over the news.

"We took down a megacorp last night and became overnight millionaires," Alliott says. "How much more influential can you get?"

"So what?" I say. "You want me to just walk into his place and say, 'Let me in, I'm the Rookie'?"

Alliott taps her prosthetic arm. "It worked for me."

---

We spend the rest of the day assembling a list of augmentations that I'll need to survive the trip up. Then we make plans to meet the MachineGod. Before I head out, I dress to party, swapping out my helmet for a rave mask and cat-ear headphones. Then I strap my skates on and rocket out the door to the crimson-light district.

The corporate district is where money is made; Neuneukolln is where money is stolen. But the crimson-light district is where money is spent. You can get a full-body augmentation courtesy of Anderson in the morning, shop for synthetic rubies in the afternoon, and then cap the day off with an eight-course French dinner. Or you can buy a sexbot, have it upgraded with combat programming and equipment, and then have its facial features completely resculpted to resemble your favorite waifu. There's a reason the Bank of Eurtec was built here. The crimson-light district is the peak of late-stage capitalism; a black hole into which money disappears.

The streets are jammed this time of night, but any native-born knows just which alleys to take to avoid the night rush. I vault over railings, swerve around cars, duck under the arms of annoyed cyborgs, and let the city melt into a blur of light and metal. Then my neck nearly snaps as my skates automatically screech to a halt in front of MachineGod's temple.

There's not much to see aboveground. Like an iceberg, most of his domain is below the surface. The only indication of life is EDM rising up from a staircase nestled between a sex shop and an armory. As I descend the stairs, I see a roided-up bouncer sporting a second pair of cybernetic arms grafted to the sides of her ribs.at the bottom. She looks like she's already planning to throw me back up.

"Tell the MachineGod that the Rookie wants in," I tell her. She sizes me up for a moment and her eyes go far away.

"The MachineGod welcomes his newest acolyte." She opens the door and I walk into the MachineGod's neon coliseum.

It's sweltering and muggy and the strobe lights are an ugly neon pink. Everyone here is mashed together and wired up. Thick black cables dangle from the ceiling like a puppet master's strings, plugging into every exposed orifice they can find and replacing people's blood with EDM. The floor itself is a giant subwoofer; TeddyLoid rattles my teeth with every step.

In the center of this sea of flesh and metal is a massive ring of steps leading up to a shiny steel dais. Atop the dais sits a combination throne and turntable set. MachineGod's twelve apostles lounge on the throne's enormous armrests. Each of them wears a simple white sling swimsuit and high heels, exposing their cybernetic flesh for the titillation of the crowd. A pair of disembodied hands expertly scratches the turntable, wired to the suspended, dismembered body of MachineGod himself.

MachineGod is a lot of things. A power player in the Eurtec underworld; an information broker who operates on an industrial scale; a complex messiah; a thrower of parties; an influencer, a pusher, a God. Some people claim that he's a rogue AI - a prototype Norn that escaped onto the Internet. Others think he's an actual god - an avatar of Mekhane or Vishnu, adapted for the modern age. Still others argue that he was the first person to figure out how to emulate consciousness on a machine. Nobody knows for sure. Nobody really cares either. What's important is that the MachineGod fought and died for our right to party. He's our lord, savior, and DJ. And this is his most sacred temple.

MachineGod's thick, muscular torso is directly above the center of the throne, underneath a mounted head and surrounded by four separate pairs of arms and legs. Robotic manipulators pop out from hidden rails under the steps and grasps his parts, bringing them together and stringing thick spindles of wire between them as they descend. In one fluid movement, the grippers detach themselves and MachineGod's body clicks together as he lowers himself onto his throne.

MachineGod's eyes glimmer like diamonds against a face sculpted by a neo-renaissance surgeon. His biceps compete for my attention with his bronzed, sleekly toned thighs. His apostles scoot closer, leaning against him and fondling an abdomen chiseled to perfection. With four hands, he caresses them. With the other four, he mixes a beat that makes my heart bounce in my chest.

His voice resonates in my ear. "Welcome, Rookie, to my temple!"

At the sound of my name, the crowd parts around me like the Red Sea, opening a path to the dais. I hear murmurs in the crowd. They're talking about the Bank of Eurtec. The Phitransimun Combine. Oneiroi Inc.

"Have you come to seek my blessing?"

I nod once, not trusting myself to speak. Instead, I let the Inside Man take over my voice.

"MachineGod!" we say. All eyes turn to us. "I request your blessings. Augment me."

MachineGod laughs - a quick burst of record scratches that pierce my ears. "How bold! I would expect nothing less from the woman who broke Oneiroi's back. What do you desire?"

I rattle off a list of augments. "Full-body augment. Ceramic frame. Protection for high G-force and orbital re-entry. Full cognitive upload. I need my chest organs intact, brain optional. I need to be combat-ready. Unarmed, knife-fighting, guns, the works. Cognitive overclocker. Infrared tracking and magnifying lenses. Weapons. Something bladed. And something to interface with computers."

"I do not bestow my gifts lightly. What would you do with them?" he asks. "Would you be my apostle? Or my champion?"

"Neither," we say. "I want them so I can kill my ex. On the moon."

He laughs again. "Entertainment! Truly, hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned. And what do you offer in return?"

The music fades away.

"What will you sacrifice at my altar?"

"What do you want?" we ask.

MachineGod contemplates. "What do I want, I wonder?"

A bassline comes on, getting faster and faster.

The crowd waits with bated breath to hear his answer. The upper steps of the ring descend, lowering the throne onto a wider level of the dais. All the while, MachineGod studies us like ants.

"Ah!" he says aloud. "That will be your sacrifice."

A television screen lowers itself from the ceiling. The turntable flips over, revealing an operating table. The lowest step of the dais flips upward so that it goes up and over the throne, leaving a gap in the stairs. Camera lenses open up on the ring, and a series of manipulators with surgical tools emerge. A long, black cable extends from the ring.

"The Ophanim shall be the tool of your ascension. You shall be reborn in a forge of music. And in return, I would have your memories. I would know how your love curdles to hatred. I would share that emotion with my people."

The screen turns on, showing our face through the viewpoints of everyone wired up in the club.

"Those are the terms of my blessing. Will you accept?"

We think it over. The Inside Man is certain that he can gatekeep my memories and make sure only the sanitized bits get through - even from a computer. I trust him enough to believe it.

"We - I accept your terms."

The beat drops. The crowd roars.

MachineGod's apostles slide from the throne and descend the steps towards me. They surround me and sweep me off my feet, carrying me up the steps. Before I can blink, I'm strapped to the operating table, staring up at the ophanim. MachineGod takes hold of the thick black cable and jams it through a hole in the table into the base of my skull.

I feel a sharp pain, and then nothing.

The Crumbs You Throw Me

The year is… I'm not sure to be honest. My memories are fucked up from all the times I went and got the bad ones sucked out by Oneiroi. I know it's my sophomore spring semester at ICSUT. I'm double-majoring in theological engineering and biochemistry. Never let it be said I don't challenge myself.

But I'm not particularly challenged physically, and it's starting to show in the mirror. Pumping iron doesn't particularly appeal to me, but maybe there's some clubs that will. Parkour looks interesting. Judo too. I could use a good cardio workout - and I've always wanted to learn how to choke somebody out. Plus I could use the social interaction.

So that night, I put on my hitherto-unused gym sweats and attend my first-ever judo session. There are four other people there with me: a German exchange student, a slim Asian, the instructor, and a blonde European woman who introduces herself as Natasha. She's been part of the club for two years - the second-oldest member behind the instructor.

The first thirty minutes of judo is warm-ups. My muscles scream as we bounce around the mat. For the next hour, we practice fundamental judo techniques. As the only women in the room, Natasha and I practice with each other. We learn the roll. The hip escape. The mount.

The final half-hour is what's known as free-rolling, where we pit our pitiful skills against one another. And naturally, Natasha volunteers to spar with me. I'm outmatched in seconds. She sprawls out against me and pins me so fast it makes my head swim.

That's the moment, with her tits mashed against my own, at which I realize I have the hots for other women.

---

It's later. I don't know how much later. Weeks, maybe. I've been stalking Natasha on social media and found out that she just broke up acrimoniously with her girlfriend. This is my chance. I've been attending the judo sessions religiously for obvious reasons, and it's finally starting to pay off. So that evening, after our judo session, I invite her out to a movie.

The movie is Lucy. Thankfully, the rest of the night goes much better, as we spend the rest of it laughing about how terrible the movie was. Natasha complains about how she's wearing Louboutins for the entirety of the film. I drone on for an hour about how I could make better nootropic drugs with what I learned in Applied Theology and the campus biochemistry labs. Somehow, it doesn't put her into a coma. She invites me to lunch the following week.

I think I'm in love.

---

At our lunch date, Natasha attempts to educate me about the hypocrisies and contradictions of late-stage capitalism. I figure she'll grow out of her communist kick in a year, but what the hell. I'm trying to get in her pants, so I feign attention. If nothing else, I admire her dedication to her cause. She's at least trying to make the world a better place, which is currently more than I can say for myself. But that line of thinking makes me feel guilty, so I shove it out of my mind by concentrating on her breasts.

Eventually I get bored of hearing about the alienation of the common worker and awkwardly change the subject by asking her if she's seeing anyone. She considers the question, then tentatively admits that she had a girlfriend with whom she has now broken up. I commiserate the feeling and tell her that my girlfriend dumped me as well. This is a bold-faced lie. I've had girlfriends, but in the strictly friend sense. But she doesn't need to know that. All she needs to know is that I'm single.

---

There's a carnival coming to town, so I invite her to it. If I'm lucky, we'll smooch on the Ferris wheel. We throw balls at the dunk tank (I miss every shot - she hits the target dead-on first try), ride the shitty spinning teapots and the carousel, fake screams on the pirate ship, and share cotton candy and caramelized apple. But the Ferris wheel breaks down while we're in line.

My plans are shot, so I try to salvage what I can by suggesting my go-to shitty date idea: a movie. Natasha suggests a film, but there isn't a showing for several hours. So she invites me back to her place to watch television until the movie. She has her own car (how cool is that) so we drive uptown to her apartment. It's a small, shitty condo, but one that she takes a lot of pride in. There's a living room-kitchenette combo, with a couch and a queen futon in front of a small telly. I park myself on the futon and prop my back against the couch. Natasha does the same.

We watch anime for a while. She's trying to get me into Fullmetal Alchemist. Her favorite character is the brother who's a suit of armor. It appeals to her cybernetic sensibilities. I'm content to sit quietly and listen to her talk about the philosophy of the show. I might be within rubbing distance of Natasha but I'm much too cowardly to make a move. I tentatively mention that the movie's going to start soon. She tells me she has a better idea, then turns the TV off and straddles me.

She plucks my glasses from my face and sets them aside. I think to myself, ah, what the hell, (I remember this because I specifically aped it from a DC comic) and pull her down so our lips meet.

We make out and cuddle for a while. Her breath tastes like caramel apples. Then she slides her hands under my shirt.

---

It's a lot of fun having a girlfriend. I introduce her to demonics and comics. She introduces me to Marxism and strap-ons. All good things must end, however, as I can't find any internships stateside and end up returning to Wolverhampton for the summer. I spend my internship exorcising faulty guidance chips and slowly becoming radicalized by video chats with Natasha, until the Brexit referendum pushes me over the edge to full-on ancom.

At least in theory. Natasha pushes me to get out there and apply what little of her teachings have managed to stick, but I'm much too cowardly to do so. I come from a long and distinguished line of Brahmin scholars, and the pressure to succeed and live up to the family legacy is intense. Moreover, my father is uncomfortably conservative - the kind of person who thinks Thatcher could have taken a few lessons from across the pond - and I am simply incapable of dealing with the fallout if he were to discover that I'd turned commie.

Natasha's patience never wanes, though. If anything, I'm harsher on myself for my inaction than she is. But self-flagellation is a poor substitute for action, and I only end up feeling worse. I'm actually glad to come back to ICSUT for the fall semester.

Natasha's actually graduating this semester, with a double-major in biomedical thaumaturgy and robotics, though she hasn't said a word about what she plans to do once she leaves. She'll probably join an NGO or something, or maybe just run off and start a revolution somewhere. I've poked her about it a few times, but she's noncommittal about
it. I don't pry - after twenty years of being interrogated by parents, it's nice to spend time with someone who's content to just spend time with me in silence.

Then Natasha introduces me to her friends.

---

My first time meeting the members of the Chicago Specter is a memorable one. Natasha drags me out into the woods, and while I initially suspect she wants to shag (which is an absolute no-go in the fucking forest), she instead stops me dead in the middle of a clearing. Then she opens a portal to hell underneath my feet.

It's not actually a portal to hell. It's like being flushed down the toilet to hell. For what seems like an eternity my lungs feel ready to burst and I'm submerged in slime and my body is being stretched into spaghetti. Then the eternity subsides. I take a deep, deep breath and collapse to my knees and puke. Natasha helps me up, then I get a look at my surroundings and puke again.

I'm on the Moon. The honest-to-God Moon. I'm on the Moon and I'm alive. Apart from the projectile vomiting, I actually feel pretty good. And the view is amazing. We're in a little cave on a mountain, overlooking what Natasha tells me is the Mare Imbrium. She leads me deeper into the cave, into what I would describe as a 21st-century witches' coven.

The coven is quite well-furnished; there's a microwave, toaster oven, and refrigerator in the corner. They're plugged into a power strip that's plugged into itself, sitting in the middle of a pentagram nearby. There's even four couches. Three women lounge on the couches, swiping through their phones or (somehow) browsing the Web on their laptops. Natasha whistles to get their attention.

She introduces them as the Chicago Specter, a gang of criminal magical girls and far-leftists. The Indian girl wearing the cap with bunny ears is Diya, a tankie furry from the middle of Texas.

terminal velocity original

8:30 AM

The room swirls into view, colored purple and pink and smelling like sex and bad decisions. The bed is soft and plush, with a thread count in the thousands and a price tag even higher. A naked boy on the left wiggles his tail and furry, pointed ears and says, "Hey. Rookie. Wake up."

On the right, a naked girl with the same accoutrements and also fantastic breasts snaps her fingers. "Wake up. Something big is going down."

It's way too early to be thinking about anything, and there's a hangover that has made it clear that it isn't going anywhere. The bed is so very inviting, as are the duo lounging on it… but greed wins out over lust.

"…something big?"

"It's the Poltergeists," the two hybrids say in unison. "They're all at Berlin Station but I can't probe any of their minds for some reason. Whatever they're doing, it's big."

"So?"

"They're all at Berlin Station… except one. Achmed's doing the same thing as you - enjoying the company of his favorite cyber-whore at the Nuts and Bolts. You gotta get the info out of him the old-fashioned way."

"…Fine. When?"

"Now!" they both say. "Hop in the shower, quick one, five minutes - you smell like sex and bad decisions - and get an Anti-Hangover too, I know you have the points for it."

"Okay."

Roll over the male and stumble out of the bed towards the bathroom. There's a woman with chocolate-colored skin and jet-black hair staring out of the mirror; she looks like she was struck by lightning. Lurch into the shower and let it wash the decadence and depravity of the previous night into the drain. Dry off, put on clothes, then stagger out of the room towards the lobby. Stop by the kiosk and redeem one hundred -

INSUFFICIENT PLEASURE POINTS FOR PURCHASE

Hiring four nubile Asian cybernekos to appease Asmodeus has a hefty price tag. That's fine. There's still two pills in the pocket of this bike jacket. Pretty sure they should do the trick. Totter into the lobby bathroom. Drink from the tap. Swallow them both. Hangover's gone, vision is sharper, mind racing but there's this itchy sensation and now it's stabbing there is a stabbing pain in your head and chest and there is something crawling out of the tap with tentacles and claws and fangs red and green and purple and suddenly everything smells like smoke but it's a sweet sickly smoke so TAKE A DEEP BREATH

8:45 AM

and suddenly come back down and feel the heft of a wrench in one hand and a grizzled Middle Eastern man with a cybernetic eye and bald silver head shackled to a chair in the middle of a cold concrete floor and hear someone say in a bizarrely modulated voice, "What's in the train?"

The man spits on the floor. "Fuck you!"

Suddenly that wrench isn't dangling it's swinging and there's a CRUNCH as it collides with the man's left knee. He screams out in pain and somebody is laughing, producing these bizarre robotic giggles.

The question comes again. "What's in the train?"

He screams "Fuck you!"

Wrong answer.

The wrench winds up again and everything is starting to spin again fuck fuck fuck wait there's an orange powder on that cart over there so hold off on that wrench swing and step over to the cart and just snort that powder and drop the wrench because who needs a wrench when there's lightning coming out of your fingertips so start laughing again because he's going to really be screaming when this is over but first TAKE A DEEP BREATH because

9:20 AM

"We're gonna rob the Phitransum Combine."

Wait where is this - alright, calm down, this is the firing range slash armory back at the warehouse so everything is fine. This is a safe place, so step back for a moment and figure out what's happening. The Inside Man is scribbling across the armory whiteboard. He's practically shaking with excitement. From the look of things, he and a few thousand of his alternate-reality counterparts are doing that thing where they research, analyze variables, and crunch the numbers to plot and simulate an entire heist in their collective heads.

"This is perfect. The entire freaking Poltergeist gang is gonna be there. If you can loot the Combine before them then we can frame them for the crime. We'll replenish our treasury and get the Poltergeists out of the way… and that will get us one step closer to claiming the name 'Chicago Spirit'."

The Inside Man steps back from the whiteboard. It's a mess of arrows, letters, and overly detailed faces, but what sticks out is the drawing of the train. It barely looks like a train at all - this beast is the lovechild of a Rolls-Royce and a fighter jet designed by someone with a hard-on for Julius Caesar. There are even fins on the top. Who puts fins on a train?

"Treasury?"

The Inside Man looks unimpressed. "Yes, treasury. We need to have some class."

He opens up one of the armory lockers and throws a shotgun to you which almost gets dropped because there's a brain in a jar where the drum magazine is supposed to be. The jar is covered in mesh; inside, the brain is speared on a bizarre metal crown and is hooked up to a bunch of electrodes coming out of the base. There's also some kind of music player plugged into a dock in front of the jar. It could only have come from the Inside Man, and there he is, flashing a smarmy, self-satisfied grin.

"What the fuck is this?"

"It's from a world where wars are won with the coolest weapons," the Man says, smirking. "The gun doesn't fire regular bullets - when you pull the trigger, it zaps the brain and causes it to shoot off a psychic slug. Hit someone with that slug and it rewires their brain. You prime the slug with your music. No recoil, no reloading, no running out of ammo. It'll fire as long as your phone has charge."

He sounds quite pleased with himself.

"There's two settings - Salmon and Acid. You can switch by hitting the fast-forward button. One of them makes people think they're a fish - the other literally melts their brain."

"And if there aren't people?"

"If it has a brain, then this thing will fry it. My boys tell me that Alexylva uses cyber-everything to guard their trains, so you'll be fine. Good job getting the deets on that train from Achmed, by the way."

"Thanks."

"Right. Get to the insertion point, sneak onto the Combine, get into the vault car, steal the loot with that fancy curtain trick you do, and book it. I'll guide you through the details. Keep in touch with the headset."

Helmet - check. Leathers - check. Shotgun - in hand. Handbag - full of drugs. Step outside the warehouse and sneak out of the alley to where you left Achmed's muscle car. Buckle the shotgun into, appropriately, the shotgun seat. It looks secure enough so hit the gas and peel out down the street. The insertion point is on the outskirts of the city which is still a ways away so just calm down and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:30 AM

Pull the satchel open. Take out the baggie of chartreuse powder. Take out the baggie of tangerine powder. Spread them in a mix on the dash. Snort the mix in a single go. Wipe bloody nose and floor it.

The engine roars, literally, howling in anger as it mashes up and digests the cocktail of sex, drugs, and demons inside the driver's brain. The transmission turns from metal to bone and begins to cackle as its calcium gears shift. The driver's seat is a spinal column. The exhaust is screaming in pain. The tires are bleeding. The steering wheel is blinking.

There's no time to scream. There's only time to hold on for dear life as hell on wheels rockets into the grassland limbo that surrounds Eurtec and pursues the train with white-hot fury.

Grab the shotgun. Grab the satchel. Unbuckle the human skin belt. Stand up and get buffeted by the wind. Squint against the cold knives of the air and try not to fall out of the maw of the slobbering beast traveling at several hundred miles per hour. Look at the train on the left and realize that it is actually about twenty meters away - this fucking hellhound is chasing something else entirely. Open the satchel. Pop the purple pills inside. Scream as bones start to melt and organs deform as all the calcium in the body replaces itself with a dense yet stretchy aramid fiber.

Jump out of the vehicle and reach for the train. Grab onto train as left arm unspools itself into a twenty-meter long string and then just as rapidly respools itself. Stand shakily on caboose of Alexylva Express, watch the hellhound race out of sight into the grasslands, and then as the train shifts transdimensional gears and the world explodes into a swirl of rainbow bubbles your lungs start to twist counterclockwise to reality so TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:31 AM

and flinch as the Inside Man's voice explodes inside the helmet then dial the volume down right quick.

"Rookie! Hey! You okay? What the hell happened? Did you cross into the next universe?"

"I'm onboard. In the last car."

"Nice. Poltergeists are still onboard. Get to the vault car, snag the loot, then kill yourself or whatever and respawn back here. I can sense something in the caboose - one thing, but it's hungry. Get your shotty ready."

Kick the door open and swing the shotgun into position with a single fluid movement.

There's no actual furniture inside the caboose. Just a bunch of inactive brass robots and also a very big wolf with very sharp teeth that is growling so shoot and pray to God Satan that those psychic slugs actually work. The shotgun fires with a thick bass drop. The wolf stops growling, flops onto its side, and starts wiggling around like a fish, mouthing wolf sounds. Then it realizes that it thinks it needs water to breathe and starts making loud gasping sounds.

Step over the wolf and navigate through the machines. Open up the door to the next car and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:32 AM

because there's a dozen Poltergeists in the next car popping open the crates littered throughout and they don't look happy at the interruption. Every single one of them has gotten a headjob: a new, bright red eye loaded with cybernetics, a face covered in shiny silver, and metal plates lining the skull. They're also holding submachine guns.

Duck behind one of the unopened crates as bullets start whistling overhead. Peek over the crate and start shooting then duck down as one bullet almost goes right between your eyes. There's way too many of them to kill, and pretty soon they're gonna figure out that they can literally waltz up to the crate and pop you in the head. Tune out the shouts of the Poltergeists and the rumbling of the train and the cacophony of gunfire and search the satchel for the good stuff. At the bottom, buried beneath the baggies and pills, is a modified autoinjector filled with buzzing neon locusts that flap against the plastic. There's no time for anything fancy - pop the autoinjector open and jab it into your neck.

Suddenly everything is double - like there's a second everything superimposed just over what's actually there, including yourself. The superimposed image is vibrating and blurry so that means it's working hopefully but there's really no point worrying about it now because either it works or you die so hit fast-forward on the shotgun, vault over the crate, shoot the first Poltergeist in your crosshairs and TAKE A DEEP BREATH

10:33 AM

because suddenly you ARE the Poltergeist and your vision is half-red and your head feels like pins-and-needles and there's a submachine gun weighing awkwardly in your hands but otherwise the drug-fueled haze has cleared up nicely. The Rookie is dead ahead of you, clad in a black leather jumpsuit and red-black helmet but with a toxic green glow spilling out from underneath her helmet. She's not the Rookie: that's a demon in there, piloting and repairing that body in its owner's absence - but it's fueled by nearby souls and is even less efficient than a Hummer, so unless someone dies very soon it's going to cannibalize its host body in a very ugly and very radioactive way. Under the circumstances, do the only thing that makes sense. Shoot the Poltergeist on the left to free up her soul for the Fauxkie's convenience and in the process abruptly teleport two feet to occupy the vacuum in her brain that was left behind. The Fauxkie moves too sluggishly to avoid the bullets tearing through your favorite leather jacket and also INTO YOUR BODY, but then kicks into overdrive as your brimstone valet feasts upon the now-untethered soul of the not-so-innocent. Green smoke pours from the bullet wounds as they seal up and the radioactive bitch starts shooting like mad. It actually smacks itself in the face with the butt of the gun - it's like this thing has never fired one before - but muscle memory kicks in and the Fauxkie manages to avoid completely shattering its nose.

Predators

+ crit

rimple:

I'd change the tone of the bit after the shots start firing somewhat, make them funding delighted to have something to do. Adds more character, feels different to "Alright, serious mission mode" and acts as a reminder that they're really not quite human

<Lex1nat0r> I agree with Rimple
The serious mission mode right now somehow ends up making them seem more socially adept than the rest of the dialogue. I get that it's what they're the most used to, but it's still jarring.
It feels like an undeserved character shift
Other than the bullet resistance, their actions are easily replaceable with generic MTF members
Maybe instead of having recognizable operator language, they have some kind of on-mission conlang that evolved among themselves? Like, their version of operator speak that still sounds off

Obviously they ARE a plot point, but the final researcher's dialogue makes her FEEL like a plot point
Just a cog in the joke
Also, to hammer in the annoyance of "Go back immediately" in, I'd have something beforehand with them expecting and looking forward to the rest, as opposed to it being a small question after the fact
A joke without substance doesn't work with the tone of the rest of the tale or the series as a whole

Irantu, Munru, Onru, and Nanku stared dolefully at the whirling ball of knives.

"So, to be clear, our assignment is to sit in this truck trailer with this object and escort it from here to Site-45? And then… ride straight back?" Irantu asked.

"Correct," the researcher standing in front of him said almost dismissively. "Here's the containment procedures for the thing; you shouldn't need it. Long as the box doesn't break you'll be fine. Trip shouldn't be more than fifteen, sixteen hours max. We're not expecting any hostiles. Here's a transponder in case you need to contact the driver."

Irantu took the proffered paper. "And if the box breaks?"

The researcher cocked his head and clicked his tongue. "…that's why we assigned you. Oh! Here's a couple spare boxes."

The man behind the wheel of the truck honked the horn. "Let's go! We're supposed to be there by tonight!"

The remaining members of Tau-5 looked to Irantu. He nodded and they leaped into the semi-trailer. Irantu clambered in more carefully, conscious of the box. The trailer door slammed shut and the truck started moving.

The squad sat in the middle of the empty trailer, staring at the box. There was a single incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating the cold metal floor.

"So," Munru broke the silence. "What exactly is it?"

Irantu looked at the containment dossier. "It says here… the object should be contained within a polycarbonate box point-two-five meters to a side and five centimeter thick walls with a lockable lid. If the box breaks, two D-Class personnel must be sent in to the cell… one to occupy and lure the object and one to contain it in a replacement box. The D-Class personnel should only be recovered once the object is securely contained. More D-Class may be sent in should the first one be eliminated by the object.'"

Nanku picked up the cube. "So… it kills people unless it's in the box?"

"Explains why we are guarding it," Onru noted.

The squad stared at the box for several more seconds in silence. The light flickered.

Finally, Nanku spoke up. "Anybody have playing cards?"

---

Munru peered over his cards. "Go fish."

"Damn," muttered Nanku, snatching a card from the pile on the floor.

Onru was next. "Irantu… have any tens?"

Irantu handed her two tens. She showed the other two tens in her hand and placed all her cards on the floor. " I win," she said.

Nanku angled her head to look at her. "Sound excited about it. Sound more normal," she complained.

Onru shrugged.

Nanku rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "Now what should we play?"

"Dunno," Munru replied.

Nanku perked up. "Did you just use slang?" She got up from the floor and advanced on Munru. At that moment, the truck bounced over an utterly enormous pothole in the road, sending the box flying from Irantu's grasp. He leaped up to grab it, but missed, and it struck the wall.

Unfortunately for the squad, that particular lid was partially defective, and the impact against the wall caused the hinge to break. The lid fell off the box, and the ball of knives practically threw itself out of the box and lodged in Nanku's skull.

"Somehow she always gets… the short end of that stick," Irantu commented as she collapsed.

---

Nanku awoke to find her vision blurred and speech slurred . "Bwuuuuuuuuuuh," she grunted as she tried and failed to pick herself off the ground.

The people around her were indistinct blobs but she assumed they were her team. "Whuuuuuuuuuh," she moaned.

One blob spoke. "It hit your head. I took it out and… put it into the replacement box. You may… have brain damage."

Inevitably, though, Nanku's senses and speech capabilities soon came back to her, and she saw more clearly that Munru was holding the spare box, now with the ball in it. His hands were badly sliced up, even with the bulky gloves he was wearing.

Nanku forced herself into a sitting position and slumped back against the wall. "That… explains the box," she mumbled.

"I wonder why… they want to move it. I also… wonder why they chose a truck to move it," Irantu said.

They looked to each other, but saw that nobody had a satisfactory answer. Nanku reached into her pack, extracted her slang cheat sheet, a notebook, and pen, then began writing. Munru watched her idly.

"What are you… writing?"

She looked up. "A novel!"

Munru raised an eyebrow. "Since when?"

Nanku shrugged and put the pen in her mouth. "Me number 39… did a lot of writing. You know, the memory restoring isn't perfect… sometimes I lose stuff. Like writing. I want… to reconnect with her… with me. I want to reconnect with me. " She shrugged again and started chewing on the pen.

"What are you writing about?" Irantu asked.

"Us!" Nanku said excitedly. "And how we killed the Warrior and... our father!"

"Can I see?" Onru asked, reaching for the book. Nanku slapped her hand away. "I'm still writing!"

"What are you going to put in it?"

"Action! Adventure! Deep character moments! Sex!"

"I do not recall anyone… having sex?" Munru asked bemusedly.

"Well, Dirk Pitt always has sex with some… vivacious firebrand," Nanku said, looking proud of herself for not having used her cheat sheet, "so I can't have a… thrilling, swashbuckling adventure… without sex in it."

"Wait," Irantu asked, "who is going to…?"

Nanku shrugged. "I can figure that out later."

Eyebrows rose.

---

Nanku glanced at her cheat sheets. "I'm having… writer's block," she said, stuffing her notebook and pen back into her case. She pulled out her pistol from her holster and stared idly at it. Then she put it away, peeled off her gloves, and started nibbling at her hands.

"This is… boring," Onru sighed, holding the box up to the light and peering at it.

Irantu decided to take charge. "Let's… do some bonding… activities," he suggested.

Munru tilted his head in acknowledgement. "What activities?"

Irantu thought for a moment. "All right. What is your… favorite operation?"

"Operation… Churlish Wendigo," said Nanku, before going back to her fingers. "When we tested the… LFOs...? LFOs. I enjoyed the… being able to… move so freely."

"Rolling Thunder," said Munru. "With the… handheld railgun prototypes. They were fun to shoot."

"Operation… Morningstar. Those… cherubs? Cherubs. Those cherubs were so… squishy and fun to kill," said Onru.

"Operation Thousand Miles. Our first mission," said Irantu.

Onru, Munru, and Nanku cocked their heads. "Spoken… like a squad leader," Onru mumbled, one corner of her mouth curling up near-imperceptibly.

The truck went over another bump, but this time Irantu easily caught the box.

"New question," Irantu said. "What is the… funniest death one of us has had?"

Nanku cut in. "That's easy. When they replaced… our stoma- our guts… with multi-purpose digestion units! Irantu's ruptured and he got menin… meningo… blood poisoning. They had to put him down because he… looked like an eggplant."

Irantu made an attempt to chuckle. "…Okay. When we raided the… fire elemental compound in Death Valley. Onru… had a shoulder-mounted fire suppressant launcher… but it exploded. I remember I got hit by… chunks of her ribs."

Onru huffed slightly. "We were testing the warding implants. Munru's backfired and… electrocuted him. Even after he was dead he kept twitching like a… like a little puppet."

Munru tilted his head. "Wrong. Nanku at the gathering of… mages. All those wards and implants… and protective spells and nobody thought… about guns. She had more holes than… Swiss cheese."

The corners of Onru's mouth tilted upwards. Irantu gave a small snort of laughter. Nanku attempted to make a pouting expression.

Munru looked around the trailer again. "We haven't… done operations like that since… the warrior."

"From killing god… to killing time," Onru said.

"There must be… a good reason why we've been stuck inside," said Irantu frustratedly. "We have been testing… several new devices."

"We usually field-test on live targets," Munru snapped. "This is the first… time we have left Site-30 in six months."

"It's so boring," said Nanku. "Six months and no operations. Nothing but the range targets and rats-"

"-and rats just squeak when you kill them," Onru added.

"They don't know what to do with us," Munru muttered. "Not since we got… more human. Remember what I said after we killed two-nine… the Warrior? I said, 'We will not be cooped up in cells. We will be able to live, and learn, and love, and create…' We were never supposed to."

"Well, we have been… testing new equipment…" Irantu trailed off.

Munru snorted. "I think… they know what happened down there, with the Warrior… maybe they wired us without us knowing. Now they are… afraid of us and want to… mothball us."

"The rats cannot have helped," Onru noted, looking archly at Nanku.

"Captain Hughes was reassigned last month. They said… she was promoted to head a new… initiative. What if it wasn't? What if they… are moving everyone off Tau-5?" Munru asked.

"Just because we haven't had… any missions does not mean we are being… mothballed," Irantu declared. "We are testing equipment that could save lives when it is ready. We are good at it… we are making the world a better… place by doing it. We do the things nobody else can do."

"What are those?" Munru asked sardonically. "Killing things and dying? They… could send D-Class for those. They could… have taken this object and given it to the D-Class… they were supposed to! But they… sent a team of, as Nanku puts it, 'crack super-commandoes'. This is no operation… this is a distraction."

Several bullets came through the trailer door.

---

As was her due, Nanku took most of the shots, grunting from surprise rather than pain. The four of them leapt to their feet.

"Yes yes yes yes yes!" Nanku cheered. "Finally!"

She took two steps forward and then slid towards the door. "Tell me when - "

"The item is the priority," Irantu barked. He glanced at his squadmates, saw their crestfallen looks, and conceded. "…You can deal with the hostiles. I will guard the item." He dropped to his belly and shimmied towards the far end of the trailer with the cube.

The smile back on her face, Nanku shoved the trailer door open and was temporarily blinded by sunlight flooding into the trailer before her ocular implants kicked in to shield her from the glare.

They looked outside to see that they were driving along a winding road high in the mountains. The edge of a cliff was mere meters away, and far below it a sprawling desert underneath a deep orange sky.

About twenty meters behind them were an assorted group of featureless black jeeps and bikes. There were machine guns mounted to the jeeps, and men posted to said guns, while each bike had a passenger with a nasty-looking rifle. All of their assailants wore thick helmets and military-looking gear.

"I count two jeeps and two bikes," Munru said. "You know… I am actually glad we tested this new prosthetic." He gripped his prosthetic thumb with his other hand and carefully made a finger-gun motion at the lead jeep's tires. "Let us make sure my… aim has not worsened."

Munru's ocular implants quickly generated a firing solution and overlaid it on a HUD directly in his mind's eye. Ignoring the bullets whistling at, past, and through him, he took a deep breath and then smoothly pulled his thumb back. Inside his arm, the thumb completed a small circuit which immediately began building a massive amount of current through a long, helical ring made of a special thaumaturgically-charged superconducting ceramic. This generated an intensely powerful magnetic field, pulling a small rod-like projectile stored in his arm forward at ridiculously high speed.

The electromagnet disengaged right as the projectile reached the midpoint of Munru's arm. The projectile did not stop, and it kept going, blasting through his middle finger and piercing right through both of the lead jeep's left tires.

The truck swerved around a switchback, narrowly avoiding flying right off the edge. The blown-out jeep and Nanku's knapsack were not so lucky. The jeep crashed through the guard rail and soared off the cliff, while her writing materials soared out of the truck and landed square in the lead bike's sidecar.

Nanku gritted her teeth. "I need to get that back!" She took three steps back, then raced forward and leaped out of the truck towards the bike.

Time stood still, and for a moment she thought she had fatally misjudged her leap. So had the bikers. They were unpleasantly surprised when, through some miracle (of genetically-engineered physical prowess) Nanku landed feet-first on the rear biker's head, knocking her right off her seat and underneath the tires of the oncoming jeep. The lead biker himself was rather surprised by this display of agility, allowing Nanku to put one hand on the handlebars and the other on his chest - knife in hand - before shoving him off.

"Finally finally finally!" she exclaimed, veering towards the other bike. Much to her chagrin, however, its front rider burst into flames just as she pulled alongside it. The bike fishtailed and then crashed into the mountain side of the road; both its riders skidded to a halt, the front one still burning. Nanku looked towards the truck to see Onru waving, the barrel of a CO₂ laser extending from her palm.

The final jeep screeched to a halt. The truck did not, but once they were a few more miles away, it slowed down enough for Nanku to catch up, grab her knapsack, and leap from the bike to the truck where the rest of the squad was waiting.

Munru shut the trailer door. Then he looked back at the squad. "Too easy. Fun and games, right… if this is a distraction, then those were our toys."

"Don't be so paranoid," Nanku replied, but her face dropped from excited glee to uncertainty.

The lightbulb in the trailer flickered some more.

---

When the truck rolled into Site-45, the four commandos stumbled out of the back of the trailer with Onru holding the anomaly, which was immediately plucked from her grasp by a waiting researcher. While Irantu relayed the details of the mountain chase to the researcher (who did not look at all surprised to hear about it), the rest of Tau-5 took a look around the docking bay.

"I need to stretch," Nanku mumbled, yawning. "I wonder what there is to do around here." She glanced pointedly at Munru. He stared back. Onru got in-between them. "Perhaps we can find… a shooting range or people to play cards with," she suggested.

"Unfortunately, I don't think you will," the researcher interrupted them, handing Irantu a large metal briefcase. "This contains sensitive equipment that you need to deliver to Emil Ascarilla immediately. We'll have to send a team to investigate the people who attacked you; you'll have to take the longer route. Trip shouldn't be more than twenty hours max. Here's a transponder in case you need to contact the driver."

She pointed to a trailer even smaller than the one they had ridden in.

Tau-5's faces fell in unison, but they dutifully climbed into the trailer. The door slammed closed and there was the familiar rumble of the vehicle getting on the road. The trailer was cold metal, and there was a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

"We weren't… backed up," Munru noted.

"Because they do not have the facilities to do so!" Irantu shouted, exasperated. "Stop thinking that we are… going to be decommissioned! Let's do something else. We can… play cards."

The lightbulb went out.

This Gun Turns People into Ducks

+ Crit

TyGently: I think it could perhaps do better if the setting were clearer before it becomes relevant
when you've only got dialogue it's good for it to be anchored
the "whisper" bit btw is long enough that it screws up formatting on mobile, on the sandbox site at least
otherwise it's entertaining
perhaps you could play up the comedic horror of turning people into ducks as a humane option, touch on if they're still conscious or something, idk
** mention something about them spending the rest of their happy little lives at the duck pond**

Foundation Site-42 Weapons Testing Range

"What?"

"Not just people, actually."

"What?"

"I know, right? Oh man, you have no idea how long I've been working on this - "

"Hold on hold on hold on back up. Back up for me. That thing in your hand… that NERF gun… turns people into ducks."

"Yes."

"How the fuck did you do that?"

"It wasn't easy. Been working on this sonuvabitch for close to five years now. Cost at least a few million bucks."

"No - I mean, how the hell does it work?"

"It's pretty cool, actually. So. You know SCP-2730?"

"Uh… Yes. Gilbert Gottfried? The, uh, the were-duck pretending to be Gilbert Gottfried?"

"Yeah. So, turns out that he can actually turn other people into ducks too, and we figured out how it worked, and, well…"

"Huh. Okay. So… how does it work?"

"That's classified."

"Come on. I have higher clearance than you."

"Alright. But I have to whisper it into your ear."

"Just tell me."

"I have to whisper it! I don't want anyone without clearance hearing us!"

"There is nobody around."

"The walls have ears!"

"Fine. Whisper it."

"……………………………………"

"That's… that's just…"

"I know. This is seriously one of the best days of my life. C'mon, lemme show you this baby in action."

"Wha - are you going to shoot someone with that?"

"I already did!"

"Okay, how on earth did you get permission to do that?"

"How else do you test a gun that turns people into ducks? I've had the full backing of the Ethics Committee on this one!"

"What?"

"Think about it - it doesn't kill anyone, just turns 'em into a duck. Pain-free and they get to quack and fly around. We can even drop them off at the duck pond. Way more humane than shooting 'em."

"And this - this gun works? It actually works and it turns people into ducks?"

"Look down the range."

"…there is a duck on the range."

"Say hi to Duck-6773."

"You mean…"

"Yep! I have to test it on a couple more cases. Come on. You'll get to see this bad boy in action."

"Okay…"

"Right. D-8712, I need you to stand right there. This gun doesn't do anything, see? It's a NERF gun. We're just testing some laser targeting sights… okay, now watch carefully…"

PEW

"Okay. That is a duck. That is a duck, standing where that D-class was standing."

"Right?! It's the coolest fucking thing I've ever built! Okay. We've got one more test to do…"

"What the hell is that?"

"That is a Peregrine Series Humanoid Utility Droid."

"An android. You're going to try to turn an android into a duck."

"Edge cases mate. Edge cases. Stand back."

PEW

"That is… that is a… that is a carbon-fiber duck."

"Holy shit. I wasn't actually expecting that to work. Holy shit."

"Did… did it just say "quack"? Did it just auto-tune the word "quack"?"

"This is the coolest thing I've ever built. Oh my god."

"So, uh, what exactly are you planning to do with this duck gun?"

"What do you think? Mass production baby!"

"Mass - mass production?"

"Of course! Not, like, actual mass production - but like, as the Foundation's standard-issue sidearm or firearm or whatever."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"It's light, it's easy to conceal, it's easy to aim, and it has no recoil. Think about it. Assassinating persons of interest, fending off Insurgency raids… by turning them into ducks! We might even be able to turn 'em back and interrogate them or something! Worst case scenario… you like Peking duck?"

KYS

It was raining in Brookline. Inside a cramped, sparsely furnished apartment, Santosh Desai browsed MSN on his computer; fried eggs and poorly brewed coffee to his left. One article caught his eye as he idly scrolled through the newsfeed.

"San Diego woman found drowned in bathroom"

He clicked on it. At that moment, his email gave off a special ding, indicating that he had received a message from someone in the Foundation.

Santosh clicked on the message and entered the twenty-digit encryption key.

> To: Santosh Desai (pcs.57|iaseds#pcs.57|iaseds)
> From: Henry Allen (pcs.57|nellah#pcs.57|nellah)
> Subject: Internal Work Order KCP335831 has been assigned to Santosh Desai
>attachment: MTF_Anart_Catalogue.pdf; SCP-exhibit-jed.jpg; SCP-exhibit-jed-2.jpg;

---

Internal Work Order Number: KCP03831
Internal Work Order Type: Containment Procedures

Requested Completion Date: 09/01/2004

Internal Work Order Summary: Development of Containment Procedures for Euclid-Class Anomalous Artwork Exhibit
Requested Scope of Work: Design and implement containment procedures for a series of anomalous artwork exhibits (designation pending) that have begun appearing across the New England area.

Externally, the exhibit consists of four white prefabricated walls and a white roof, with a single doorway. The phrase Choices by Jed [sic] is written on the wall above the doorway. It is unclear what is inside the exhibit, as it is opaque to imaging equipment. Audiovisual equipment is rendered inoperable while inside the exhibit. Persons that approach within 1 meter of the exhibit are compelled to enter one at a time and wait for their turn to enter. All agents that have entered the exhibit have been unable to report on their experience - to wit, they claim to be able to recall their experience inside the exhibit, but are physically unable to relay the details of the experience to others. This effect extends to drawing pictures, miming actions, and writing containment procedures for the object. The cube has no other discernible effects.

At this time, there are five known copies of the exhibit in the New England region: Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Concord and Manchester, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine. It is presumed that the creator of the exhibit, who has been designated as PoI# 1976, goes by the name Jed.

Due to the compulsion effect and the public locations of these exhibits, remote destruction has been deemed nonviable. The containment procedures should outline steps to contain new exhibits and locate and apprehend PoI #1976. The annual budget for containment is $75,000. The initial budget to begin containment is $100,000. Attached is a list of Mobile Task Forces you may utilize.

These procedures should be completed and implementation should begin by October.

Requestor: Henry Allen
Requesting Department: Containment Development Team

Santosh pulled up Word drafts of three other containment procedures, stared at them, and groaned.

---

It was drizzling in Cambridge. Santosh stood across the street from a large white cube, huddled in a totally unnecessary thick winter coat. Next to him stood Peter White, a mountain of a Finn and the agent tasked with monitoring the exhibit.

Santosh stared at the structure. "Is this it?"

Peter shrugged. "Bigger than it looks."

Santosh shot him a look. "What do you mean?"

Peter shrugged again. "Can't say exactly. Sorry."

"Oh. Right."

They continued to look at the exhibit. "So, uh," Santosh said, "do you know who Jed might be?"

"Someone from Awsee?"

"Maybe."

The two continued to stare at the structure in silence; the drizzle intensified. Santosh wished he was back in front of his computer.

"Okay," he mumbled aloud, "I can't get close enough to analyze it properly… but I can figure out where it, where all the pieces came from. Then I can figure out how to contain them and the whole thing… So I just need to find out where the parts came from and the person who bought them all."

---

Guy Chesapeake was in the middle of an intense Counter-Strike match when his cell phone rang.

"Answer… speaker… phone," he enunciated, figuring now was as good a time as any to test his new speech-recognition software.

"Hey Guy, it's Santosh. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sorry, I'm drowning in work right now," Guy replied. Onscreen, he clicked a terrorist's head. The terrorist promptly dropped to the ground.

"Guy, it sounds like you're playing Counter-Strike."

"Nope, working on a commission piece," said Guy. He clicked again, and swore as the shot missed.

"Please? It's about anart," Santosh teased.

"I suppose the commission can wait," Guy said even as he continued to click on terrorists. "What's up?"

"Do you know anything about an anartist called Jed?"

"Yeah! She's basically the Ada Lovelace of anart." Guy cursed under his breath as the bomb detonated. "Big fan of her work."

"Jed's a she?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Uh, what do you know about her?"

"Me, personally? Not that much. I've never actually met her but I do follow her on Friendster and Myspace. She's real smart, did a lot of the early GUI work for Titan… ah, really into interactive artwork and body modding. I heard she actually got herself a full-blown gynoid shell."

"Gynoid shell?"

"Yeah. Turned herself into an android."

"Okay…what kind of interactive artwork?"

"VR, AR, haptic feedback, that sort of thing. First person shooters, visual novels, museum tours. Basically just video games but art."

"Does she have anything to do with Are We Cool Yet?"

"Uhh… I think? Hang on a sec, let me double-check."

Santosh could hear Guy tapping away at his keyboard.

"Okay, uh, she won first place in an AWCY contest for best use of technology to send a message. Get this - she made a VR whorehouse - but the VR gear could read your mind so that the whole time you're banging these digital whores they're just reciting your worst fears back to you."

"Oh…kay…"

"Fucking AWCY. Literally, haha. But, uh, I don't think she does anything big for the group - just enters their tech contests. Anyways, I think I've got a magazine around here where they did an interview with her. Pictures and everything… You still have that Reader I got you? I can IM it to you on that."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that. Thanks, Guy," said Santosh, pouring himself a glass of water. "I'll call you up if I need anything else."

"Yeah yeah. So where's this sudden interest come from?"

"She put up an exhibit in Boston and it's pretty interesting. Wanted to learn more about her. Alright, thanks again Guy. I gotta go finish some other work now," Santosh said quickly before hanging up.

He downed the glass and then started tapping away at his keyboard.

---

It was starting to rain in Brookline. As Santosh pushed away from the computer and turned to look out the window, the ebook on the desk buzzed. He picked it up to see a message from Guy.

Santosh opened the message to a digital issue of a magazine. Emblazoned in large letters on the first page was the word Planasthai. Underneath that was the tagline "The Future of Anart is Now", alongside an animation of a cartoonish, winking blue-and-silver robotic face.

He tapped the face and the screen changed to display a picture of a very feminine-looking robot; if not for the blue-and-silver color scheme and the thin lines running down and across its body, Santosh would have thought it was a real woman. He started reading.

The Future of Anart is Now

Over the past few years, the fields of anart and paratechnology have been surprisingly distant. Several anartists are making steps to change this trend, but none as much as Jed - not only is Jed one of the most prominent paratech aficionados in the anart world, but she is also an android (technically, gynoid). Some of Jed's recent work includes Redline, which won first place in the Seventh Annual AWCY Technomancer Challenge, and Vaishnavastra, which won the inaugural Neo-Tokyo Gibson Award for Excellence and Innovation in Art. Jed is putting the finishing touches on a new piece called Choices, and we got the chance to sit down with her and talk.

Tell us: Who is Jed?

Hi, I'm Jed. I'm an an anartist, gynoid, and trans woman. I was briefly a part of Are We Cool Yet? but I've since broken ties with the group and am now a freelance anartist supported by the Guild of Humanities within the Church of Maxwellism. My specialty is interactive artwork, especially artwork that incorporates paratechnology in some way. When I'm not working on art, I chair weekly meetings of LGBAnarT in Neo-Tokyo, swim, read, watch cartoons, and play Counter-Strike.

Tell us a little bit about your background. What got you interested in art?

Oh, boy, that is a long story. My relationship with my parents was shaky, to say the least. I had tiger parents - Dad called all the shots and directed basically everything in my life and Mom let it happen. I eventually snapped after my freshman year of college - my dad wanted me to become a computer programmer, I told him didn't want to do it. He told me that what I wanted didn't matter, and that that was how the world worked. I packed up and left a few weeks later, and spent the next couple months bumming around with some college friends. One of them happened to be in AWCY, he introduced me to anart, and that was that. I spent like six months in AWCY churning out robot after robot, but when I built up the courage to finally come out as a woman - well, I ditched AWCY. The Maxwellists came to me a few months later - they liked my work and wanted to sponsor me. They even offered to help me transition by giving me a gynoid body, so of course I leaped at the chance. Since then, I divide my time between commissions for the Church's Guild of Humanities and personal projects.

If you don't mind, would you be willing to share some more details about your upgrade?

To be perfectly honest, I don't think we have enough room to explain how the process works! It was hugely experimental at the time and massively risky, but I was willing to try anything. Basically they anesthetized me, dipped me into a vat full of some kind of acid that literally ate away everything except my nervous system, and then clamped the gynoid shell around me. This is a massive oversimplification of course and I would love to talk more about it but we're not here to talk about android transplantation - we're here to talk art.

What would you say defines Jed's art?

Well, like I said, a lot of my work is interactive but I also focus heavily on femininity. Not feminine like some dumb stereotype about flowers and makeup, but more like how do people perceive and interact with women, you know, how does society treat women? How do people and society perceive and interact with transgender individuals? There are a lot of failures and shortcomings in those areas, especially the last one - just look up the trans panic defense - and it's important to draw attention to those shortcomings and critique them because the first step to fixing a problem is diagnosing it but society doesn't want to take those first steps. But people are dying because of those problems. I was lucky enough to be able to get this body but far too many women, trans or cis, are getting hurt and even killed in what's supposed to be a developed society - that is absolutely unacceptable. So that's what a lot of my art is about - trying to get people to re-examine their attitudes, prejudices, and bigotry towards women because society still needs to shape the fuck up in those regards. Oh, uh, excuse my French.

Don't worry about it. You also mentioned focusing on interactive art, could you elaborate? What makes interactive art such a favored medium of yours?

I really like exploring how people make choices, in like high- or low-pressure scenarios, and show other people what those choices are and how those choices affect the world around them. I can't really say why. I mean, maybe it's because I loved playing video games and reading Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid? [laughter] I guess if I had to pick a 'real' reason [making air quotes] it's partly because I never really got to pick my own path as a kid and partly because a lot of people see, well, my identity as a choice and that's just flat-out wrong, so this is kind of a way of, you know, poking back, I guess, and reclaiming the ability to choose. The things you do in my art? Those are choices. Who I am is not. Plus, I think people become a lot more invested in something when they influence its outcome. The art becomes more meaningful when you become a part of it. And of course, it's a ton of fun trying out the latest and greatest paratech.

Speaking of choices, tell us about your newest upcoming work, Choices.

I wish I could. [laughter] Actually, one of the things about Choices is that when you participate you get a geas placed on you that prevents you from saying anything about your experience. It's a major departure for me in a lot of ways because I pushed aside most of my traditional themes for a much more intimate experience. Everything that happens inside Choices is a secret; only you will know what happens inside. But it's also a way for me to, I guess, confront some aspects of my own personality that I really, really am not keen on. To tell you the truth, I find the events that occur inside Choices to be intensely erotic. Choices should be as far from that as possible, but for some reason, some wires got crossed in my brain - pardon the pun - and so it's intensely thrilling to me. I normally wouldn't be this cavalier about it, but hey. Choices is all about forcing you out of your comfort zone, so I owe it to you guys to do the same. You probably already hear about way weirder anartists all the time anyways - I hope. [laughter]

Do you have any advice for budding anartists?

Bad advice is still advice, right? I guess there's two main things I would say. Don't keep talking about all the cool art you're going to make or you'll never get around to actually making it. And to any girls reading this and interested in making art, go for it! Anyone who says you'll be terrible is secretly scared that you'll show them up - so show them up. You're so much better than them. That sounded better in my head. I wish I was as good a speaker as I am an anartist.

Trust me, you're great. One final question: is Jed a nickname?

It's actually my initials, J-E-D. I can't tell you what it stands for, though - a girl needs to have some secrets!

Thank you very much for your time, Jed!

Thank you for having me!

Choices by Jed will be appearing this fall, in Boston, Cambridge, Hartford, Concord, Manchester, and Portland.

Santosh put the reader down.

---

Complete Domination

If Eurtec had been a whole new world, Neo-Tokyo was an entirely different universe. The only thing connecting it to the rest of reality was the rain - and it was always raining in Neo-Tokyo. Every single building in the city was either a towering black glass and metal skyscraper or a squat black glass and metal bungalow. Hundreds of covered walkways, electrical cables, and glass tubes crisscrossed the skyline, blocking out the cloudy grey sky with a web of black glass and metal. Neon tubing ran everywhere, illuminating the blackness with shades of lime, tangerine, crimson, cerulean, indigo, and gold.

Even more so than Eurtec, Neo-Tokyo was a haven for man-machines. Every single person Santosh laid eyes upon was augmented: a man ambling through the streets like a gorilla on an extra pair of shiny silver arms; people climbing the skyscrapers on eight grey spider legs; rolling cylinders with antennae poking out everywhere; shiny floating swarms that hovered over everyone else and briefly formed human-looking faces from their amorphous masses. A bird landed in front of Santosh with a thud; when he looked closer, he could see sharp metallic feathers and tiny jet engines on its wings.

Santosh had only been standing inside Neo-Tokyo for five minutes and it felt like his head was going to explode. Guy had no such problems, expertly shepherding Santosh through the press of cold metal into the closest skyscraper. The building's lobby provided little respite from the outside; it shared the same dark metal architecture, cables, and neon tubing. Only the high, uniform ceiling and its bright white lights indicated any difference between the inside and outside.

"Pretty cool, right?" Guy said.

Santosh took a deep breath. "Jesus, Guy. Did we die and go to TRON hell?"

Guy rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, you have to admit this is pretty freaking cool. Look, even the inside of this place looks like a laser tag arena."

"Felt like I was gonna choke to death on cyberpunk," Santosh snapped, slumping against the wall. "It is really cool, but, look, can - can we just go find Jed?"

"Sure," Guy said. "Just chill here for a couple minutes and catch your breath. I'll ask around about, what was it called?"

"L-G-B-Anart-T."

"Yeah, that. Sit tight dude."

Several minutes later, Guy returned. "Hey, you feeling alright?"

"Yeah," Santosh said. He shook his head vigorously for a second to clear it out and asked, "Anything?"

"Yeah. Nobody here actually knows what LGBAnarT is, but a few of them said that Jed usually hangs out a few blocks from here in one of the skyscrapers. C'mon, I got directions."

Santosh followed Guy through the lobby to an elevator, which opened almost before Guy pushed the button. The elevator, thankfully, was not black glass - it was regular glass and metal.

The elevator panel lacked traditional pushbuttons - instead, there was a keypad and a small cable jack.

"Okay… he said 150th floor," said Guy, tapping away at the keypad. Before Santosh could register the sentence, the doors closed and the elevator rocketed upwards.

"Guy, did you say 150th floor?" Santosh asked.

"Yes."

"But the Empire State Building only has like, a hundred?"

"Yeah."

"Guy, what the hell is this place?"

"Hell if I know," Guy said.

"What? You said you'd fill me in when we got here! Aren't these weird cyberpunk cities supposed to be your thing?"

"I know, I know. Look, basically nobody knows what Neo-Tokyo is. Officially, the Maxwellist Church built it as an answer to Eurtec - their own technotopia for folks who didn't like the GOC. But the rumor is that it just sort of showed up, out of nowhere, right at the stroke of midnight on New Years 2000. One moment there's nothing here, and the next, poof. Cyberpunk city. I heard that some of these people are actually space aliens. No joke, actual freaking aliens. How cool is that?"

At that moment, the elevator doors dinged open. Guy and Santosh stepped out, and for the briefest moment Santosh's head spun at hyperspeed as he registered the streets several thousand feet below. Then he and Guy were forced back by a press of cold metal and flesh.

Guy forced his way through the throng of machines, Santosh following closely behind and doing his best. As they navigated the maze in the sky, Santosh fought to keep from staring out of the skyway. Occasionally there would be a gap in the web, and it was possible to see lightning arcing through the sky. For the briefest of instants there was even something visible in the clouds: the silhouette of a giant, chained to some massive object and illuminated by the bolts of electricity.

Santosh was considering what he had just seen when he crashed into Guy.

"Hey, what's up?" Santosh asked.

"This should be the place," Guy said. They were standing inside a massive roundabout slash rotunda, supported by dozens of skyways spanning the rest of the city. In the center of the rotunda was a gigantic spiral of supercomputers, humming in time to the pulse of the city.

"Hey, is that her over there?" asked Guy, pointing off in the distance. Santosh followed his finger and immediately noticed Jed, leaning against the wall and nursing a can of something. Even from this distance, her cerulean-chrome color scheme was unmistakable.

"Yeah. C'mon."

---

Veronica's Bizarre Adventure

Fitzroy: My manifesto's in my bedroom, and my will's on the kitchen counter. It's been a pleasure, man. ████ ███ ██ ███ ████ █████.

<End Log>

Closing Statement: Immediately following the conclusion of the interview, Fitzroy pulled a revolver from under her cushion and shot herself through the temple. As of ██/██/20██, Ms. Fitzroy's will has been declassified.

Fitzroy: My manifesto's in my bedroom, and my will's on the kitchen counter. It's been a pleasure, man. ████ ███ ██ ███ ████ █████.

<End Log>

Closing Statement: Immediately following the conclusion of the interview, Fitzroy pulled a revolver from under her cushion and shot herself through the temple. The bullet passed through the temporal lobe and lodged itself near the brainstem. Ms. Fitzroy currently remains comatose.

SCP-2669 Mitigation Record: D-952

Owing to the nature of Ms. Fitzroy's wound, it was suggested that what remained of her consciousness be uploaded into SCP-2669. Test data from the probe since its initial launch suggested that a fragmented consciousness might be able to disrupt D-43852's control of the probe and enable the Foundation to re-establish permanent control. The proposal was accepted, and Veronica Fitzroy (now D-952) was uploaded into SCP-2669.