Page 9

I reached the fourth floor, my Vysor highlighting heat signatures behind each door. Most were sleeping. A few were clearly fucking—something I’d normally take the chance to watch. But tonight, I was working, and this was all business.

Apartment 496.

I paused outside, listening. A faint hum of electronics, but no voices, no movement.

“Update,” I whispered.

“They’re on the second floor now. Moving methodically, room by room.”

“Amateur hour.” I sneered. “They don’t know which apartment?”

“Doesn’t look like it. You’ve got time.”

My shoulder gave another twinge. I rolled it, feeling the misaligned implant grate against bone. Annoying, but nothing I couldn’t push through.

The anger that powered my Flux stirred, always eager to be channeled through the crude hardware fused to my skeleton. Another burst of Flux from my fingertips, and the lock was done for.

I entered silently, my weapon raised. The stench hit me immediately, far worse than the rotting hallway.

The most overwhelming was cat urine, but it wasn’t alone.

Rotten garbage and a note of mold rounded the whole thing out.

Piles and piles of junk cluttered the apartment.

Books—actual paper books—lined every wall.

“How can anyone live like this?” Maddox grumbled. He saw everything I saw through my Vysor. It wasn’t much worse than where I had grown up, minus the cats. Those wouldn’t have lasted long when the neighbors were hungry.

I moved deeper into the apartment, nearly tripping when a rush of white fur bolted out from one of the piles. It hissed and disappeared, and I ignored the impulse to shoot it.

One door was ajar, and faint blue light flickered from inside. I slunk down the hall first, pushing refuse and the occasional creature out of the way with my feet.

I pressed the door open enough to see the target sitting at a desk, a holographic terminal screen flashing. She wasn’t wearing a Vysor. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back in a neat bun, sitting with her back to me.

“Don’t you know not to linger in doorways?” she asked.

I slipped inside just as Professor Tanaka turned in her chair. She didn’t look surprised. If anything, she looked almost…relieved.

“You’re not who I expected,” she said simply.

“Corporate asset A-117,” I replied with a mock half-bow. “At your service, Professor. And you’re about to have some very unfriendly visitors.”

Her eyes narrowed. “POM sent its attack dogs. I’m flattered.”

“The ones at your door aren’t mine,” I said, moving toward her. “Black Legion. Rogue unit. And they’re not here to talk.”

“Neither are you,” she replied, remarkably composed.

I couldn’t help but grin. “Smart lady.” I kept my gun trained on her. “How long have you known I was coming?”

I stood close enough to read the lesson plans for the next week, pulled up on her holoscreen. Her desk was surprisingly tidy, considering how she lived. Just a few scattered notes, and dozens of pictures of her with who I assumed were her students.

“I’ve been expecting someone from POM for weeks,” she replied. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent. No fear. “Though I admit, I thought you’d beat the Black Legion here by a larger margin.”

“You know about them? And you’re still just sitting here?”

She sighed. “I think of it a bit like penance for my sins.”

My grip on the gun tightened; I couldn’t stand religious nut jobs. “Stand up. Slowly.”

She complied, still showing no fear. “I assume you’re here about the shield tech. I would prefer to discuss this matter with your superiors directly. I have information they would find valuable.”

“Orders are to bring you in,” I responded. “Black Legion being here complicates things.”

“Lucky me,” she drawled.

My earpiece crackled. “Cy, two coming down your hallway. Thirty seconds.”

I grabbed the professor’s arm. “We’re leaving. Now.”

She didn’t resist. “There’s a service passage through the bathroom. It will take us to the maintenance shaft.”

“Move,” I ordered, pushing her ahead of me.

We reached the bathroom when the apartment door burst open. Shouts, heavy footsteps. I shoved Tanaka toward the narrow maintenance hatch.

“Go. Now.”

She was pretty spry for a seventy-year-old, but her age showed as she stooped to enter the hatch. Slow—way too fucking slow.

“Move your bony ass or I’m going—”

Before I could finish, the bathroom door splintered.

A Black Legion operative filled the frame, his rifle raised.

Time seemed to slow as my combat reflexes kicked in.

My gun was already moving, firing twice—first shot at his throat, second at his face.

Both froze in midair, captured in the soft yellow hum of a Kinetic Shield.

Should have known. Every fucker on the street had this now. Of course Black Legion would have gotten their hands on it. Luckily, I knew how all their outdated equipment worked.

I surged forward, ducking down below his blast of gunfire, my shield protecting me just like his. I slammed my hand into the side of his helmet and let my Flux surge. He groaned as the whole thing overloaded.

Blinded and vulnerable, he staggered. I pressed my pistol up under the bottom edge of the helmet and fired. I watched the inside of the darkened faceplate splatter with blood and viscera.

The second soldier came in low, firing a burst that would have caught a normal human square in the chest—but I was already moving, my Vector-enhanced reflexes carrying me into a slide across the floor.

I felt the rage surge—hot, electric, demanding release. I channeled it through my implants, directing a concentrated electromagnetic pulse at his weapon.

The gun exploded in his hands, and I was on him before he could recover, driving my knee into his solar plexus.

As he doubled over, I grabbed his head and channeled another electric surge directly through his Flux chip.

His body convulsed as the delicate tech in his brainstem fried, and he dropped like a stone.

I grabbed Tanaka and shoved her into the hatch, my shoulder twitching in pain. We slipped through just as more footsteps thundered into the apartment.

“Impressive,” Professor Tanaka commented, as if watching a particularly interesting lecture demonstration. “Your control is impressive for someone handling such volatile Flux.”

“Years of practice,” I replied, scanning the maintenance shaft.

“Status?” Maddox demanded in my ear.

“Moving to extraction point B,” I answered, the pain in my implants making my voice tight.

The maintenance shaft was narrow and dark. We descended quickly, following the dim emergency lighting. Tanaka moved, but she was still too fucking slow, limping. I was about to throw her over my shoulder when—

“You know why POM wanted the shield tech kept proprietary?” she asked, her eyes hard. “It’s not about money. It’s about control. The shields could protect people—”

“Save the anarchist propaganda,” I cut her off. “I just want to get us out of here.”

We emerged into a wider service corridor. My Vysor mapped our route to the extraction point.

“They’re following,” Maddox warned. “I’ve got thermal signatures in the shaft behind you.”

“How many?”

“Two. The third is circling around to cut you off.”

Shit. I glanced at Tanaka. I wasn’t about to die over this old bag.

A crash came from behind us. They were getting closer.

“This way,” I urged, pulling her down a side passage. The extraction point was just ahead. But so was the third operative, according to Maddox. She was still too slow. I grabbed her around her waist, and she flinched. My gloved hand came back covered in blood. She’d been hit and hadn’t told me.

“You old bitch! You stole the shields, and you weren’t even using one?”

She slumped against the concrete of the corridor, sliding down slowly. “Like I said, penance.”

The two operatives were almost on us. I looked at Tanaka, bleeding out slowly.

I didn’t have a MedKit and wouldn’t have time anyway.

No time to get what she knew. Probably couldn’t fight off three trained operatives without the advantage of surprise, with her weighing me down.

And I couldn’t risk them taking her alive.

The choice was simple.

“Nothing personal, Professor,” I said, pressing my gun against her temple. “But you’re not theirs to take.”

Her eyes met mine. No fear, only calm acceptance. “Never thought I’d meet two like you.”

I pulled the trigger.

As her body crumpled, I spun toward the doorway, channeling my Flux into a concentrated blast. The energy surged from my fingertips in blue-white arcs, my shoulder burning as the implant there heated.

The electrical charge caught the remaining operative square in the chest, shorting his shield and stopping his heart in one brutal surge.

“Cy!” Maddox’s voice was urgent in my ear. “What’s happening?”

“Target eliminated,” I replied, already moving toward the maintenance shaft. “Three Black Legion down. Two in pursuit.”

“Get to extraction point B. I’ll meet you there.”

I slipped out of the narrow tunnel, leaving Tanaka’s body behind.

The pain in my shoulder had settled back to its familiar dull throb.

Maddox had rolled up with perfect timing and got us away without having to deal with the final two operatives. The job was over for all of us, anyway. Target terminated.

The transport was auto-driving us back to HQ. Maddox hunched over his tablet, fingers moving across the holographic keyboard with obsessive precision. He'd been typing for twenty minutes straight—the same incident report that should have taken five.

I stretched out across the opposite bench, feet propped up, taking another hit of my VaPurr. The Vector cartridge smoothed out all the electromagnetic static that never seemed to stop.

“You know you're gonna wear out that keyboard if you keep retyping the same paragraph,” I said, watching him through the smoke.

“Just want to get the details right.” His voice was tight, controlled.

“Details.” I grinned. “What details? The part where Tanaka’s dumb ass didn’t have a shield, or the part where I put her down before Black Legion could grab her?”

Maddox's fingers paused before resuming their frantic dance. “You didn't have a choice.”

“I know that. You know that. But you're still acting like I shot your grandmother.” I leaned forward, electromagnetic current crackling around my fingers. “She was about to get dragged off to some black site. What I did was a mercy.”

“She was a professor, Cy. An old woman.”

“She was a liability. That’s why we were here.” I shrugged. “Better a quick death than whatever they had planned for her.”

Maddox finally looked up, his dark eyes conflicted. “You didn't even hesitate.”

“Hesitation gets people killed. You taught me that.” I took another drag. “Look, I get it. It’s that hero complex that had you in NSPD in the first place. But this is what we do, partner. We're tools.”

“Some of us don't make it look so easy.”

“And some of us don't pretend we're doing anything else. We're alpha assets, Maddox. Death is the job description. POM doesn't pay us to arrest people or read them their rights. They pay us to make problems disappear.”

Maddox returned to his screen, jaw clenched. “She did reminded me of my grandmother.”

“Yeah, well, your grandmother probably wasn't stealing tech for rebel groups.” The words hit their mark—I saw it in the way his shoulders tensed. “Tanaka made her choice when she took that research. I just made sure it ended on our terms.”

“You're cold, man.”

“I’m realistic. We both knew how this could end the moment we got here.” I settled back into my seat. “Difference is, I don't need to rewrite history to sleep at night.”

The transport hummed through Neo Stellaris's neon-washed streets while Maddox stared at his reflection in the window. After a long moment, he picked up his tablet again.

“Target unable to flee,” he typed. “Lethal force was necessary to prevent capture by hostile elements.”

“There you go.” I grinned. “See? That wasn't so hard.”

Maddox's fingers moved steadily now, no more hesitation. Sometimes all it took was acknowledging the truth—we weren't heroes. We were tools. Very expensive, very effective tools.

And tools didn't have the luxury of guilt.