Page 29

CY

A fter leaving Hellfire, I’d had an idea. Eon had no known address, but she’d been arrested in this area of Magenta. Maybe someone around here knew her.

Maddox had hated the idea, called it “ridiculously analog,” but I never let his negative attitude stop me.

I’d shown Eon’s holo to what felt like hundreds of people, but no one had said a thing.

“This is pointless, Cy. We’re wasting time, and if Tex knew—”

“Well, then it’s a good thing he doesn’t. Come on.”

We were in uniform today, masks on. That meant we got what we wanted, but people avoided us like we had a walking case of C89.

The crowd parted before us like a river around a boulder, everyone’s eyes averted.

Then I saw someone struggling against the flow—a woman with a little boy tugging on her arm, waving at something in a store window.

I approached her and her eyes widened, but she was caught between her son and me.

I pulled up the rendering of Eon on my wrist display to show her.

The woman shook her head. “Never seen her,” she responded automatically. She started to walk away, dragging her wildling along behind her when he chirped, “Mom! That’s Eon!” She shot her son a look and tried to drag him faster, but it was too late.

“Hold on their, champ. How do you know this woman?”

The boy grinned at me, delighted to have the right answer. “She works at the mod shop Mom took me to. She’s the best! She gave me the latest MegaBoy episodes.”

Dumb brat.

I stood tall and loomed over the woman so she knew exactly what would happen if she lied again. “And where might this shop be?”

Her lips flattened into a line, and her grip on the boy’s hand tightened until he was trying to squirm away. Her eyes darted to the weapon at my side and the POM badge on my chest. She exhaled. “Dr. Chopra’s. At forty-five and Q7.”

Maddox looked at me, but I waved at him to follow, knowing the way.

I saluted the boy, which he mimicked back. I looked up at his mother. “Better toughen that one up if he’s gonna survive out here. Nobody likes a nark.”

We made our way through Magenta, up stairs and over catwalks. I even ducked through a shortcut in an old vent someone had crudely welded a grate over. Two kicks from Maddox and it was open. Giant fuckin’ nerd, but one who never missed a day at the gym.

“You really do know your way around here, huh?” Maddox asked, wrenching the grate free and tossing it to the side.

“Never forget your first, right?”

We ducked into the vent, and the other side spit us out less than a hundred meters from the clinic.

“Any chance there are cameras in there we can access?” I asked.

“In a mod shop? No. Even we need a warrant for that,” Maddox said.

“Guess we do this the old-fashioned way then.” I unholstered my gun.

Maddox eyed it suspiciously. “You going to shoot her?”

“She’s got a shield,” I said.

“You assume she’s got a shield.”

“She’s got a fuckin’ shield or she’s a dumb bitch who wouldn’t be worth anything alive anyway.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “So this isn’t personal?”

“Shut the fuck up, man.”

We reached the level with the shop. It looked like everything else in Magenta—run-down and plastered over.

The front looked like a legitimate chip clinic, but every shop in Magenta offered illegal upgrades as well.

Black-market hormone modifiers were the most common, but I’d seen everything from spyware to supposed Flux enhancements.

I casually walked closer but passed the door, doubling back to look through the front window.

There she was, bent over the front counter like she knew I was watching.

Ass out and arms crossed on the counter in front of her, pushing her tits up as she laughed with a customer.

Looking like a dream. This was her—the real her.

Her hair was lavender now, and she wore a torn tank with some noodle shop graphic over a negligible skirt.

True Magenta fashion. Ripped and dirty and sublime.

Seeing her like that had my mind reeling.

I’d run into the shop, fist her hair, slam her face down into the counter.

It would crack and blood would leak from her forehead as I pressed her into it and moved behind her.

I’d run my fingers up those creamy thighs, under her skirt, until I found her pussy, dripping for me.

“Needy slut,” I’d whisper in her ear as I unbuckled my pants and she moaned as I pushed—

“What’s the move, Cy?”

I shook my head. “Standard arrest. You get the door, I’ll do declaration, then—”

Maddox’s face hardened, and he reached for his gun. I spun to look back through the window.

She was gone.

“Fuck! I’ll go through, you head around.”

Maddox took off without another word as I busted through the front door.

I vaulted over the counter, the errant customer barely dodging out of my way. The door to the back was jammed, like she’d pulled something down in front of it. I slammed my shoulder into it, over and over.

“Eon Ibarra, you better not fuckin’ run on me again. Nowhere to hide now.”

No reply, but I heard scrambling on the other side of the door. She was still there. I slammed into it again.

“I’ve got your ID flagged. You won’t get anywhere.”

But now I didn’t hear anything. Fuck. I took three steps back and ran at the door again. I felt it give just enough that I could force my head and arm through.

She was scrambling out another window onto the catwalk behind the building. I fired at her. The bullets froze in midair, cased in the yellow aura of her shield. She managed to squeeze out the window but flipped around just long enough to flip me off before disappearing.

“Shit. Maddox,” I spoke into the comm on my headset, “she’s on the run—south side catwalks.”

“This place is a fucking maze, man. I don’t know what—wait, I’ve got visual.”

“Stay in pursuit. I’m following.” I’d finally managed to shove the crates away from the door and scrambled to the window.

I pulled myself through and saw Maddox rounding a corner after her. Shit. Magenta was the perfect place to run—full of ratholes and thousands of different paths of escape. Under the harsh artificial light, her lavender hair flashed as she ducked into a shop.

Maddox and I busted into the noodle bar, which was crammed so tight with patrons I didn’t know how she’d made it to the back without knocking someone over. Maddox wasn’t as graceful. The cheap plastic tables flew as he barreled through them, noodles and soup coating the floors and walls.

Indignant groans and curses flew from the patrons of the shop, but I didn’t slow. I launched myself over the counter, pushing the clerk aside and slamming into the door of the kitchen as I made the hard turn.

“Hey, hey hey hey!” the chef yelled at her as she pulled a rack of bowls down between us and kept running.

I slipped on the dishware but scrambled after her.

She ducked out a “window” that led to another walkway.

I shoved myself through while Maddox just busted through the locked door beside it like it was nothing.

She pulled open a door and the sound of a deep bass beat poured out as she disappeared into it.

I followed, ripping the door to the club open. “Shit.” There were bodies everywhere. It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the day, the club was packed. When you never see the sun, night and day don’t matter.

“I’ll go left, you go right,” Maddox said over comms.

I didn’t hesitate. I pushed through the crowd, a few errant hands trying to pull me in to dance.

I couldn’t see shit. I sent out a wave of Flux, and the flashing neon lights overhead stopped pulsing, but there was still too much going on.

That’s when I felt it—a responding echo of Flux.

I locked in on that signal to see a head of lavender hair pushing along the back wall.

“West side, headed toward you. Back wall,” I commed Maddox.

“Got it—fuck—”

She lit up, sparks flying up her arms as Maddox approached her, gun out. The crowd shifted around her nervously. If she was willing to use her Flux, she was desperate and didn’t have a way out. Good.

“Push her toward the crowd,” I said.

“Too many civilians, not a good move.”

“I know, dumbass. That’s the point—she won’t risk hurting them.”

“You don’t know that, Cy.”

“Yes, I do. Now move.”

Maddox’s bulky frame moved toward her, and she walked backward into the crowd. People were actively avoiding her now, their faces lit with fear in the light of her Flux. Maddox kept on her, and I circled around until I was right behind her.

I moved to grab her, but she anticipated, dodging away. Maddox and I were a good team, though. We’d cornered her, and she had nowhere to go.

Electricity wreathed her arms, pooling into incandescent balls in her hands.

Her eyes darted back and forth, reflecting the neon of the club around us.

She was looking for any opening, somewhere she could discharge without harming others.

But there was too much around us. Speakers, lights, holo projection units—the whole damn club was one giant piece of tech.

There was nowhere for her to discharge and not arc to something, through someone else. She wouldn’t do it.

As I approached her, the air thrummed with her field, and it sang in my blood.

My Flux rose up to meet hers, and I could feel discharges flashing along my skin.

The electricity on her skin resonated with mine, almost like they were dancing in a gentle rhythm.

But there was absolutely nothing gentle I wanted to do to her.

“Nowhere left to run, doll.” The sparks in her hands flared, a warning.

I took a step closer, and she took a step back, flat against the wall.

“Do it. Light me up and half this block with me. It’s the only choice you have.

” She didn’t move, but I was close enough now I could see the hatred swirling in her illuminated eyes.

I took another step forward, and I was so close I could practically taste her.

But instead, I propped my left arm over her head on the wall and leaned in to whisper in her ear.

She tried to hide it, but I felt the shiver as my lips grazed her and static jumped between us.

“Do it. I want to see what you’ve got. Show me all of it—show me everything. ”

She turned her head to stare daggers into me. “I’m not like you.” I knew there was no greater insult she could have given me. I ran my hand up until I’d snagged her bottom lip with my thumb.

“That’s just the thing, doll—we are the same. Fuckin’ worthless. No one does what we do who has any value. So embrace it.”

“Fuck you.” She snarled it, her lip flexing under my thumb.

“All in good time, doll. For now, we’ve—” Suddenly her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her body went limp, her Flux sputtering out. I barely caught her as Maddox’s hand pulled away from her neck, where a neurodampener chip was now lodged.

“Sorry if I interrupted something, but we’ve got to clear the area, now.

” Maddox pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the crowd.

They were starting to panic. Even in Magenta, street fights with this much Flux involved weren’t common outside of gang activity—or POM Security.

People were being shoved down and trampled as the crowd bottlenecked at the club door.

I knelt so Eon’s slack body fell over my shoulder.

“Safe house M56 isn’t far from here.”

Maddox’s Vysor flashed, and I knew he shot me an annoyed look. “We have to get her back to HQ.”

“You see a good way out, man? This whole segment is going to be like a fuckin’ stampede in minutes.” I wasn’t lying. The crowd was already out of control, and people died from being crushed in panics like these almost weekly here. Maddox knew it too.

“Fine.” He used his massive frame to clear me a path through the crowd, and my hand tightened on Eon’s thighs as I followed. It took everything I had not to focus on how her skin felt, how fucking good she smelled.

There would be time for that soon.