Page 88 of Neon Flux

“I’d forgotten about this. He had a little sister.”

I crossed my arms. Was I supposed to care?

“I remember—it was on the news. She was a geoteknik.”

So she was dead. No one survived that. Not even the rich. Everyone with Flux was basically born with a death sentence. First-gen emergence kids all burned from the inside out by fourteen. It took about five years before the first rudimentary Flux bioMods were developed, eight before the new-gen bioChips. I was born ten years after the initial emergence and still ended upblessedwith the old tech. I’d suffer for it the rest of my life—but at least I hadn’t been born a geoteknik.

To this day, no tech can prevent their burnout. They had immense power—the ability to vibrate any solid material. Some kids could shake rock until it melted into lava, other could tear tetracarbon barricades apart in minutes. But the thing that always broke first was them. The power was too great, and most were dead before they even hit thirteen.

“Imagine that, getting blessed with two kids, but one of them has Geo Flux,” Maddox mused.

“Lots of donations to bioMod research to find a solution, huh?”

Maddox nodded.

“Must be nice to never have to get your hands dirty.”

Maddox gave me a look—even through his darkened Vysor, I saw it. “I thought you didn’t get jealous.”

“I amnotjealous. I just hate rich fucks who haven’t worked a day in their life.”

“You know you work for a bunch of them, right?”

“I can work for someone and still hate them. Not mutually exclusive.”

“Heads up. Date’s over.”

I watched Eon hug him—again—then walk over to the ground-van we were hunkered down in. She threw open the door.

“So, what’s next?” Her pinky twitched on the doorframe.

“What do you mean, what’s next? You get that translation and tell us what the hell it means.”

“That’s not going to be done until Friday. What are we doingnow?”

“Weare not doing anything.”

“Trying to set up a meeting with the Kitsune,” Maddox oh-so-helpfully chimed in.

I spun on him. “Whose side are you on, partner?”

“My own. We don’t have a lot of time left, Cy. She’s a resource. We should use her.” He turned to Eon. “Intel says that they might’ve been hiding data for Renard.”

“What kind of data?” she asked.

“That’s the ten-million-cred question, isn’t it?” I rolled my eyes, but she didn’t retort. Her face was serious.

“So what’s the play? What info do we have on their internal security? Are we talking a CHAP or something more advanced? I could probably—”

“Oh, no. You arenottagging along. We’re not playing cops and robbers here, doll. We’re talking about walking into the Chrome Kitsune Den. One of the most dangerous places in this city.”

She looked between Maddox and me. “So which one of you is the cyberrunner? You’re trying to extract data—data that, if your theory is correct, Renard workedveryhard to hide. You’re gonna, what? Waltz in and just ask for it nicely?”

“She’s right, Cy,” Maddox said.

“Isn’t she always?” I groaned. “We work for POM. We’ve got tech that’d make even your head spin. We don’t need a cyberrunner on the inside.”

“I don’t care how fancy your tech is—nothing’s foolproof. You’re going to risk that?”