Page 6

EON

O f course, it was raining. The seeded clouds over Neo Stellaris never let up, no matter how much flooding it caused.

The polluted water ran off the pavement and down through a grate near my feet.

Funny, how I could identify with water. Six months sober, out of the club, and I remained tainted and circling the drain too.

I threw up my hood and pushed my way through the crowd.

People weren’t friendly in Neo Stellaris, but in the rain, that was even more obvious.

Hoods up and manners washed away. Only the occasional glow of a Vysor was visible through the hounding weather, an ad popping up as people walked by a business.

I heard my mother’s voice in my head. “Chiquita, when I was young, there wasn’t enough rain. People used to pray for it. To worship it, even. We would dance and pray and then sing and cheer when it finally fell.”

Water, the basis of all life, had been free from the sky above. The corporations had fixed that.

Like my thoughts had summoned a curse, a red notification even I couldn’t block lit up my vision.

Medical Payment Overdue: Service will be terminated.

Shit.

I’d found a halfway decent day job at a bioChip shop. Pay was terrible, but I liked the Modder, Dev. I hadn’t been able to get a single cyberrunning job since the data center incident. Deacon had cast me out after only half the crew had survived the job. He’d needed a scapegoat, and I was it.

Ironic, as almost every Vysor around was modified to give the masses Kinetic Shield tech.

Death by gun violence had dropped nearly seventy percent in the last six months, but no creds had come my way.

At least to Deacon’s credit, he hadn’t gotten any either.

He’d made the plans and code open source immediately.

I bumped elbows too hard with an oncomer, and I felt the repulsion as a yellow force field flashed. The shield in action, on the streets—all because of an ex-sex worker who couldn’t find a tech job!

The skin on the back of my neck itched like it always did when an unpleasant thought arrived.

I could always get work at a club again…

No.

I’d had to quit the club, no matter how good the money was.

When you worked in the underworld, Vector was everywhere.

That life only had one end for me, and it was me high and scrubbed in some dirty back alley.

Especially with men like the owner, Rook, all too happy to wave the drug in my face to get what they wanted.

I shook my head. I’d gotten clean, I’d found work…even if it was never enough.

The girls at the club had supported me, helped me get away clean from Rook.

Mercy had even let me stay with her while I withdrew from Vector.

I’d mostly locked myself in her bathroom to throw up and piss myself.

But she’d held my long hair back and rubbed my shoulders, and more than once I’d hallucinated she was my mother instead.

It had been horrible, but I’d spent my last creds on the detox drug to get me through. I would not waste that.

As if mocking me, the red payment notification went off again.

I was a damn good cyberrunner, but there was nothing locked down tighter than money. One little cyberrunner on their own couldn’t hope to break down that system of redundancies and firewalls.

A new notification popped up. My paycheck from Dev. Measly, but something.

A ping sounded in my ear, and I watched as the creds I just earned got sucked out of my account automatically. The balance hit zero again, and a red warning popped up in my vision.

Warning: Insufficient Funds. Overdraft fee applied.

Fuck!

I needed a real gig, and I needed it now. I’d even applied to corporate jobs, hidden almost every trace of my undesirable life during the interviews, but the time gap since I had left school with no advanced degree was insurmountable, apparently.

I let the flow of the crowd push me, with no destination, as I wallowed in my self-pity.

My feet carried me where they always did when everything else seemed hopeless.

A dirty red neon cross flickered weakly atop the clinic.

As I approached, three figures moved into my path.

Shimmering white robes draped them, their faces alight with neon halos that made my skin crawl. The Church of Divine Light. They’d been cropping up everywhere lately, the necklaces they wore containing a single, glowing crystal glinting like promises.

One of them, a woman with bright blue eyes and a too-perfect smile, stepped toward me.

“Sister,” she said, her voice lilting and warm. “Stellarium weaves through our city, casting its divine blessing on humanity. The Light welcomes all. Have you considered stepping into its embrace?”

I kept walking. I didn’t have time for this. Didn’t have the patience, either.

A huge meteor’s fall to Earth in 2053 had led to the discovery of Stellarium. This led some to call it divine intervention in humanity’s darkest hour. I wasn’t quite so willing to believe that.

“You have a gift,” she called after me, her voice dripping with something too smooth, too rehearsed. “We could help you, you know.”

I stopped, my jaw clenching.

My Flux was under control—had been for months with no Vector to feed it—but the idea that they could sense it made my skin itch.

“Not interested,” I ground out, turning just enough to give her a look that should’ve told her to back off.

She smiled wider. “You were meant for more.”

I turned on my heel and left them behind, their voices fading into the background hum of the city.

There was no god in Neo Stellaris—except for the one who sat on the top floor of POM Enterprises.

I walked toward the clinic, and the endless torrent of rain harassed me as I pushed past the automatic front doors.

The lobby was filled to the brim with the city’s refuse.

Human lives no one cared for and found easier to ignore than deal with.

The whole place stank of unwashed bodies and various fluids.

Many present had the telltale shakes, here hoping for some relief from the misery of drugs leaving their body.

My pinky twitched, an echo, but I shook it off.

I pushed my way through the crowd, shoving a man—who was naked under a long coat—out of the way as he tried to show me the porn holo he was watching.

If the Church wanted to help people, they should be inside here, actually helping those in need. That never seemed to be the case.

I made it to the permanent resident ward, waving my hand over the access point. The portal flashed blue—and then red.

The automated receptionist flickered to life, her synthetic face stretching into a neutral expression.

“Healthcare proxy E-11749. You have an outstanding balance of 32,634 creds. Please submit payment.”

I swallowed, shifting on my feet. “I need an extension.”

The AI blinked at me. “Request denied.”

I exhaled sharply. “Look, I can work off some of it. Another contract, another—”

“Request denied.”

My fingers curled into fists. “Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

The AI didn’t answer. It didn’t need to. We both knew what happened to people who couldn’t pay.

“I just want to see my mom…”

Even if, after the accident, she didn’t recognize me half the time. Just sat in her room wailing and fighting the staff.

“Please return within twenty-four hours with payment or Patient-28945 will be—”

“I know!” I screamed, and the AI blipped away.

“How rude.” A soft, lilting voice chimed in my ear. “Some of these earlier models have no sense of decorum.”

“DITA, they’re programmed to have no empathy. That’s why they do this job.”

I heard her digital huff. “Still rude.”

DITA, my personal Digital Intelligent Technology Assistant.

When the craving for drugs had hounded me like…

well, addiction…I’d immersed myself in the only thing that truly brought relief.

Cyberspace. In my time there, I’d modified the Chinese ICE Breaker, improved it.

I’d trained it on my own cyberrunning knowledge, given it an actual personality filter, and a slightly less ridiculous avatar.

“Any jobs come up?”

“I pinged everything on the message boards, but…no responses.”

Her voice held a hint of sorrow that was all too human. I’d really gotten a bargain on her personality profile.

“So I’m still blacklisted?” I asked.

“It would seem that way,” she replied.

I smashed the side of my fist into the tetraglass door in front of me, and a red warning flared.

“You know,” DITA's voice softened, “there's a maintenance access panel in the east corridor. The biometric scanner there only runs a basic pattern match. I could spoof it with your last authorized entry signature.”

"That's..." I hesitated, then shook my head. “That's technically breaking and entering.”

DITA’s avatar shrugged. A small map appeared on my Vysor display, highlighting the route. “Twenty-eight seconds of camera blackout is all I can manage.”

I stared at the blinking route. What was one more sin in a lifetime of them? “Do it.”

The security panel yielded to DITA's digital touch, the maintenance door sliding open with a pneumatic hiss.

The smell hit me first—antiseptic overlaying the sour notes of unwashed bodies and processed food.

I slipped through darkened corridors, passing night staff too overworked to notice another shadow.

Room 2273. I pressed my palm against the door, taking a deep breath before pushing it open.

My mother lay in the adjustable bed, her thin frame barely creating an outline beneath the institutional blanket.

The left side of her face drooped slightly, a permanent reminder of the bullet that had torn through her brain.

Her once thick black hair, the hair she'd kept long despite fashion trends because “Ibarra women have always worn their strength down their backs,” was now cut in an efficient crop, streaked with premature gray.

“Mamá,” I whispered, moving to her bedside. “It's me. It's Lucita.”