Page 11

CY

I leaned back in my chair until the whole thing groaned in protest underneath me.

Morning stand-up dragged on a good day, and after the Tanaka job last night, I'd needed to burn off some energy.

A few too many hits of Vector had led me to some underground club in Blue District where the bass line matched my electromagnetic pulse perfectly.

The night was a blur of synthetic beats and willing bodies, but I remembered the bartender—some kid with new tech piercings, bio-responsive that shifted colors when he got excited.

He'd been fascinated by the sparks dancing beneath my skin, the little Flux chaser. He kept buying me drinks just to watch my Flux respond. One thing led to another, and he’d come in his pants when I’d shocked the shit out him as he sucked my dick in an alley.

After that, I'd gotten maybe two hours of sleep. I could feel the Vector still working itself out of my system, and the gammas hadn't made me coffee this morning. I was not doing well.

“Reports indicate that rumors of a possible DDoS attack on the Green District data center have legitimacy.

We have no information at this time of when such an attack will occur, but it's important that we remain vigilant…” Tex, my manager, was still reviewing the daily items, and the beta and gamma leaders hadn't even given their updates yet.

Fuck, I was going to die in this conference room.

I slouched down further in my chair, groaning and rubbing my eyes when Maddox elbowed me.

He didn't look much better than me—dark circles under his eyes, that thousand-yard stare he got when something was eating at him.

Knowing him, after last night he'd stayed up late working on one of his robot projects, trying to keep his mind off what had happened with Tanaka. By the look of him, it hadn't worked.

“You look like shit,” I whispered.

“At least I wasn't broadcasting my location to half the district,” he muttered back, not taking his eyes off Tex. “Your electromagnetic signature was pinging surveillance networks all night. I had to do a bunch of counter—”

“Relax, I kept it low-key.” I stretched, joints popping. “Just needed to decompress after our academic consultation.”

Maddox's jaw tightened. “That what you're calling it?”

The guilt was eating at him—I could practically see it in the way he held his shoulders, the careful distance he maintained from everyone in the room.

“You need to get laid,” I whispered.

“Fuck off, Cy.”

“I’m serious. All that tension's gonna give you an aneurysm.” I leaned closer. “I know this place in Magenta—”

“I said fuck off.”

I shrugged, settling back into my chair. Maddox would work through it eventually. He always did. That's why we made a good team—I handled the immediate aftermath, he handled the long-term processing. Different coping mechanisms, same result.

“…isn’t that right, Cyanos?”

My full name caught me off guard, and I turned to see Tex looking at me expectantly. His dark eyes were framed by shapely eyebrows, a delicate feature compared to his aquiline nose.

“That’s right.”

The corner of his mouth flicked in a grin. “Excellent. Then I’ll be having the betas bring their weekly reports to you for review from now on.”

Fucker. He knew I hadn’t been listening.

Goddamnit, the seven circles of hell were better than this. Maddox stood up and started giving his presentation on proper weapons maintenance. I had to hand it to him—he looked terrible, but he gave the presentation flawlessly.

He was diving into the need for monthly check-ins at POM’s bio-compatible hardware clinic when one of the gammas whose name I couldn’t be bothered to remember interrupted.

“I thought we got top of the line bioHardware as a perk of being POM Security. Why do we have to do monthly checks?”

I noticed the kid wasn’t wearing a Vysor. Not something I normally gave a shit about, but then I saw one of his pupils flash. A new ocular implant, still in R citizens built on top of businesses.

No maps existed of Magenta. It changed too fast and was too vast. I knew that place better than the back of my hand.

I leaned back, not wanting to seem too eager.

“Half those messages are fake. Who’s saying I won’t spend the entire night sitting in some nasty-ass bar for no payout?”

Tex shrugged and slid the memo to my display. “Up to you. But I’d hate for it to be true, and something like this gets out on the streets.”

Yeah, out on the streets before we could take our cut. Almost every synthetic drug on the market had started out in some corps lab, and most had been released to help boost the quarterly profits. Bonus for keeping the populous subdued. POM was never a company to tolerate competition.

“It’s either this or be on call for DDoS threats.”

“So sit and waste time in the office all night, or sit and waste time in some bar?” I asked.

“Your choice, Cyanos.”

“Do I get to charge overtime?”

“No.”