Kill switch the sommerfe.., p.2
Kill, Switch: The Sommerfeld Experiment #4, page 2
Take that back; maybe three.
2 – Bristol Beatdown
On the day Joshua had escaped NSMZ, he’d made Ginji, his half-brother, a promise.
“Do good things, little brother,” Ginji had said.
Joshua had replied, “Brother, I’ll be the epitome of the perfect, tax-paying citizen.” And, since seeing into the future was impossible, he’d naïvely followed up that promise with, “How many people get a chance to begin a new life, free of baggage?”
Two things Joshua had learned since uttering those last words he’d probably ever share with his only brother: never make promises you can’t keep, and—wasn’t there another fucking dumb platitude about, ‘when you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself?’ Yeah, he’d learned a variation of that.
Joshua planned on digging more than two graves, and occupying none of them.
Depending on how one defined it, maybe what he was about to do could be construed as community service.
Of course, that was bullshit.
An earlier light mist had given way to a cold, clear night over the city. Once a medium-sized city, the London megacity had finally absorbed Bristol in 2051 like a malignant spreading tumor.
Every travel guidebook, as well as caution signs in the maglev stations, warned that traveling to the heart of gang-controlled Bristol city wasn’t advised. To Joshua, it felt like Old Town—like home. And the main train station had something he needed.
When the London hyperloop and connecting maglevs were constructed in the 2050s, the old railways had been abandoned. Some were torn down; some were left to the elements. A small but steady stream of people moved in and out of the Bristol underground night market. Groups of teens and twenty-somethings hung outside, smoking, drinking, fucking around. A woman with a grill over a fire in a 55-gallon drum served shish kabob skewers of veggies and mystery meat.
Graffitied montages of bleeding roses from the area’s controlling gang, the Crimson Thorns, covered the station’s exterior walls in shades of holographic red and deep purple. A half-dozen of the gang’s enhanced razor girls with dyed red irises, red enameled titanium fingernails, and elongated canines, stood guard at the market entrance.
Gang members from other neighborhoods entered the market under the Crimson Thorns’ watchful gazes. This was neutral territory. Be cool, and all were welcome. Fuck up, and you were booted and banned, or your body was found floating in Bristol Bay.
Joshua glanced at the old-fashioned wristwatch that had replaced his regular watchcom. Bounty hunters couldn’t track old tech. He removed a cheap burner watchcom from his jacket pocket and switched it on. Shelby answered on the second chime, her face floating over the small holoscreen, glitching out from the substandard tech.
“Your face looks a little better,” Shelby observed.
“What’d you find?” Joshua’s face looked worse than it felt with all its purple and yellow bruising, but his ribs still hurt.
“I got you a lift on a transport leaving from these coordinates. Sending them now.”
“Smuggler?” Joshua committed the location to memory.
“The man calls himself a courier of goods. His name is Jelani and he’ll know you by Juan. Be there at 2300. If you’re late, they’ll take off without you. He wasn’t all that thrilled with taking on a passenger, but the money convinced him.”
“I’ll be there.”
Shelby’s face scrunched up and her eyes narrowed. “You have that look on your face.”
Joshua jogged across the street to the Night Market, standing in the shadows, watching for anyone who looked out of place. He didn’t think the bounty hunters had followed him to Bristol, but the moment he assumed, he’d no longer be a free man.
“You’re going after that doctor, aren’t you?”
“He lied. Stole my credits. Stood there and watched his crew beat the shit out of me.”
“You don’t have time for payback. Shot, for once, just turn the other che—”
“Call you in a few days.”
Joshua dropped the watchcom and crushed it under his boot, then walked into the light of a neon sign, cobbled from various older signs and rearranged to read ‘Night Market.’
Inside the market, weapons, drugs, and stolen goods were displayed in a loose collection of booths made from scavenged materials, tin roofing, thin sheets of discarded plastiply, and cinderblocks.
It took Joshua a few minutes to locate and purchase what he needed: an excellent quality folding karambit and a sixty-year-old Celestron spotting scope.
Joshua glanced at his watch. He had an hour and a half to finish up business and then get to the area where his transport waited. With the karambit on him, public transportation was out of the question. He quickly calculated how long it would take to reach his destination, but with a cracked rib, he added a few extra minutes to his three-mile jog.
A mile from the night market, at a stretch of two-story office buildings, he climbed up a rusty fire escape to the roof of a building with a good view of his target. Lying prone near the edge, Joshua pulled the Celestron spotting scope from his pack. The two-story building across the way came into focus.
One light was on in the building, a corner office. Joshua spotted his target, Han Su, at a desk. Another body moved near the window then away before Joshua could fully identify them. Probably a bodyguard.
He counted four bodyguards: two at the front, two at the back door. All protecting the ripperdoc who’d drugged him, let his bully boys beat him, taken his fee, then called the Shadow Ravens—a bounty crew who had been chasing him around the globe for three months—in exchange for a cut of the bounty.
Su may have thought he’d be safe here, but a lot of people in the underground knew him, and knew the places he might go if he thought the authorities were on to him. It hadn’t taken much sleuthing to track him down.
Five bodyguards that he could see, and probably a few more he couldn’t. It appeared the doctor was worried about the patient he’d fucked over.
The doctor should be worried. A few of them laughed, shared a smoke and a beer.
The bodyguards didn’t seem worried. Apparently, the doctor hadn’t fully briefed them on the skinny kid coming for him.
Good.
That was a point in his favor. He would need it. An unknown number of bodyguards against one, and they were all jacked as fuck. Big lads. Enhanced. Muscle weave striations crisscrossed their beefy arms. Steel skull plates, acid etched with tattoos.
Joshua clambered down the rickety, rusted fire escape that had broken off a few feet above a burned groundcar. Landing lightly on his feet, he slid off the hood and made his way around the river-facing side of the building, stopping and listening every so often.
At the north end, he leaned a shoulder against a damp wall and glanced around the corner at the two massive bodyguards blocking the front. The crowns of their heads nearly brushed the top of the doorjamb. He picked up a rock and threw it into a stack of rusting metal shipping containers. It clanged between them, loud in contrast to the soft lapping of the Avon River’s water.
Joshua tossed another rock.
One bodyguard with a shocking mop of red hair tapped on his watchcom. “We got something back here.”
Quickly, Joshua spun, sprinting back to the front of the building.
As he’d suspected, only one bodyguard was left at the front door. From behind the building, he could hear shouts while they searched for the origin of the sound.
Joshua was aware of the importance of a preemptive attack against a bigger assailant. There was no secret to beating a larger guy: hit first with the goal of placing the odds in your favor as quickly as possible. And when it came to cheap shots? Yee had taught him that when outnumbered, there was no such thing as a cheap shot. Take what you could to turn the tide of the fight.
Joshua darted toward the guard at the door, sliding on his knees the last few feet and slashing out with the karambit, hamstringing the man.
The man bit out a strangled shout and topped over like a falling tree. His arms, though, were still useful, and dangerous. He flailed forward trying to wrap his arms around Joshua’s legs.
Joshua kicked a heel into his face, crunching nose and breaking facial bones, and the man fell unconscious into a dirty puddle of water. He snagged the man’s weapon, a Sen-Tec 5.8x28mm doublestack—an oldie, but a reliable model used by NATO three decades ago.
The scuff of feet on the linoleum floor and a movement up the hall sent Joshua snaking to his left as a bullet bit into the metal doorjamb.
A second bodyguard thundered down the hallway from the back door, each footstep a loud burst of muted color that, to Joshua’s enhanced senses, was just a good as seeing the man with his own eyes. He pointed the Sen-Tec at ankle height around the door and snapped off two quick shots.
A muffled cry and the thud of a body hitting the floor confirmed the hit.
Taking advantage of the lull, Joshua darted forward into the hallway and shot out a few sputtering lights. He didn’t need them with his enhanced senses.
A hulking figure stepped out of an office doorway. Joshua ducked under a fast punch and lunged to the side to dodge a kick. He shot up with a fast palm strike to the head, followed by a quick snap kick to the top of the knee, snapping the joint, and bringing the bodyguard forward into an elbow that smashed his nose. Joshua followed that with two strikes on either ear.
A tight, roundhouse kick to the solar plexus knocked the man into yet another bodyguard coming in from the same office. It must be where Dr. Su had holed up.
Joshua recognized Four who clambered to his feet. During the beatdown at the doctor’s office, this one had knelt on his arms while another punched him in the face. Violence for its own sake, the enjoyment of fist against flesh. The bruising on Joshua’s face and ribs were still ugly shades of purple and yellow. He bit back a feral growl. This motherfucker…
Joshua dodged under a clumsy, slow haymaker and flung out the karambit using its finger ring; the upward sweep eviscerated the man from stomach to chin.
An arc of blood splattered the walls.
Briefly, he again thought of his promise to Ginji. The promise to be good.
He didn’t regret not keeping his promise for this hijo de puta.
It had been an easy promise to make when he hadn’t known the bumpy, shit-strewn path he’d have to walk after escaping NSMZ… No, not walk; run. Run his ass off. That’s what Marta had said in the beginning. He would have to run his ass off.
NSMZ agents.
Bounty hunters.
And then there were motherfuckers like the ripperdoc who’d taken his money then sold him out and decided to run off and hide in this shitty building.
They all wanted a piece of him, and he was sick of it. Sick of running. Sick of hiding.
Fuck them.
The fifth and sixth bodyguards who ran down the hallway from the back were slow as mud, their punches telegraphed as Joshua blurred between the two of them like a rubber ball with jabs and slashes of the karambit. More and more, Joshua noticed that during fights, when his concentration was at its most focused, he could see moves telegraphed. Punches before they happened. Small tells such as the twitch of a muscle, the movement of the eyes.
It was something he’d always been able to do to a decently accurate degree. But lately the ability had blossomed.
These two bodyguards he didn’t recognize, and had not been in on the beating. Maybe extra muscle hired by the doctor. It would save their lives. Not by much.
A straight-finger punch to the windpipe took one down, gasping and holding his throat. Joshua dodged low, rolled behind number five, and hamstrung him with an outward flail of the karambit. His spurs would have been nice in this fight. Maybe at some point he’d have them replaced.
But then, he tried not to plan too far in the future.
Joshua slammed a fist into Six’s temple as he toppled like a tree, the man screaming. He reached for a weapon. Joshua kicked it out of his hand and scooped it up. A little .22 Eros.
A seventh bodyguard walked out of a bathroom at the end of the hall, fumbling with his pants’ fly, and stopped mid-zip, staring at his fallen comrades, blood spattered on the walls, and the skinny kid with the dark, sunken eyes. He held up his hands at the Sen-Tec pointed his way.
“Fuck this,” he said in a thick cockney accent. “I ain’t getting hurt for that buggering, fat cunt.” He spun on his heel and jogged toward the rear entrance. The door slammed behind him.
Joshua cleaned the karambit blade on gasping bodyguard number five, stepped over him, and continued to the office.
Despite the decrepit condition of the building, the office itself was tastefully decorated with a desk and two chairs in forest-green synthleather and chrome. A few holopaintings of a harbor and boats hung on the walls.
The ripperdoc, aka ‘that buggering fat cunt,’ aka Dr. Fucker McFuckface—whatever the hell his name was—cringed in the corner of the office, his hands fisted up around his face, that shifty, superior smirk from when he had betrayed Joshua replaced by fear.
Joshua strode over, grabbed the man by the front of his expensive, Beijing custom silk suit, and shoved him onto the desk chair. He whimpered and a spreading wet spot stained his khaki trousers.
“Look at me,” Joshua growled.
“No, please.” Dr. McFuckface glanced briefly at Joshua.
Joshua grabbed one of the doc’s hands from where it gripped the chair arm and bent a finger until it broke with a muffled pop.
Dr. McFuckface screamed.
“You took my money.”
“I’ll… give back the money! Let… give me my holotablet.”
Crack. A second finger.
“And then you called in the bounty hunters.”
The man screamed and began crying, huge fat tears rolling down his round flushed cheeks.
“Please… please stop. What do you want… I’ll give you anything, please—”
Crack! A third finger.
“You sold me out.”
The only reason Joshua had escaped was because his heightened metabolism had filtered out the drugs before the bounty hunters could arrive. He had shoved the bed against the wall, broken a sub-basement window, and wiggled through. Bleeding from a myriad of cuts from the glass, he’d managed to steal a watchcom and call Shelby.
For three days, Joshua had holed up in a shitty hotel room on the outskirts of London to heal from the beating.
He was lucky the bounty hunters hadn’t found him. They were still in the UK looking for him, and it was Shelby erasing footage from the security cameras around the megacity that had saved his ass.
Again.
Joshua reached into the pocket of his shabby jacket and pulled out two credstiks.
“Start transferring money to these. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“How… how much?”
Crack.
The man screamed.
“What did I just say?”
“Until… until you say stop.”
Joshua released the man’s hand, and Dr. McFuckFace folded it up shaking against his chest like a bird with a broken wing. Joshua reached across the desk, slid over the doctor’s holopad reader, and placed both credstiks on the funds transfer pad.
The doctor sniffled as he shifted money from his account to the credstiks, every so often looking at Joshua, hoping he would say to stop.
Quickly, the man’s bank account was cleaned out, leaving exactly one credit.
“Enough.” Joshua thumbed the credstik readers to verify the amounts. He now had a few hundred thousand—however, bribes and no-questions-asked flights were expensive. Shelby had been sending him what money she could, but money transfers were risky no matter what method she used.
His watch dinged. Thirty minutes to get to his ride.
“I’ve got a ride to catch.”
The doctor’s expression registered relief until Joshua grabbed his hand and broke his thumb. The man screamed and cried.
“If you call the authorities, it won’t be your fingers next time. Do you understand?” Joshua grabbed the man by his hair and made him nod. “Yes, Mr. Scary Man who’s going to cut my throat,” Joshua said in a higher-pitched voice. “I’ll be good, and I won’t call the authorities. Right?” He yanked the man’s head back and the doctor gave a minute nod.
Joshua slammed the doctor’s head forward against the plastiwood desktop. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped forward. Joshua slipped off the doctor’s watchcom and crushed it, then smashed the holotablet against the edge of the desk.
After what the doctor had done, he really wanted to kill the motherfucker, but he’d promised Ginji that with this second chance, he’d be good.
Joshua stepped over the dead and unconscious bodyguards in the hallway. He was trying.
3 – The Passenger
Under a cold Bristol evening sky, a recent rain shower shining on the tarmac and reflecting the neon lights of the distant city, Frank Jelani stood at the end of his cargo plane's lowered access ramp. Raindrops darkened the shoulders of his jacket, and mist danced in the rays of the harbor’s dim lighting.
Jelani lit up a cigarette with the tip of a cybernetic middle finger. He’d lost his limbs in a street fight decades ago when he’d been young and stupid. Since cybernetic limb replacements were the only option, he’d figured he might as well outfit them with useful items, like a lighter, a bladed knife, and set of lock picks.
He blew smoke rings into the misty sky and glanced at the built-in watchcom. He and his crew were five minutes behind schedule. The main client and cargo—his lone passenger, one who had expanded his account by fifty-thousand credits—was late.
“Meera! Fanya haraka!” Hurry up!
“Otto is late, jefe,” Meera said as the men loaded the last of the cargo. She tucked a long black lock of hair around an ear filled with piercings.
Jelani looked around the cargo hold. Plastic crates held sets of fine dinnerware, appliances, skycar parts, ID implants and one ID implant machine, along with several loads of instant mealpacs and a very fine motorcycle bound for Bogota, Columbia.
