The metal deck of the derelict tanker thrummed beneath my boots, a rusty heartbeat carried up from the Pacific swell and straight through the soles of my new Lynx-grade cyberlegs. I let it settle in my calves, felt the micro-servos compensating, then popped the second-stage pistons. I still wasn't used to it. Far below, on the flooded dock district, Maelstrom's club ILLEGAL.
Somewhere behind the clouds, a half-moon tried to break through; mostly it just made the smog shine. I rotated my shoulders, trying to loosen the stiffness Vik's tune-up had left under the skin. Same cat-eye optics in both sockets now, slitted irises dilating and contracting with each stray headlight that cut across the water. Any camera catching a glimpse would glitch out, but it let me drop the hood and let the breeze chew at the short hairs on the back of my neck.
"Kitty-cat to Mouse-trap. You gonna keep vibing up there or we actually doing this?"
Rebecca's voice scratched through on my subvocal link. I thumbed the throat-mic twice.
"Eyes first, trigger-happy. Hold position."
"Copy. But hurry. Maine's chewing the dashboard like it owes him eddies."
I smiled and settled the Kang Tao A-22B Chao against the tanker's rail. Smart-link synched in a blink, the targeting reticle blooming across my right retina. So polite: no matter where I pointed, the gun showed trajectories, angles, and kill probabilities.
Below, Maelstrom grunts, hulked around the club entrance, chrome faces, dermal LEDs flickering like cheap neon. They were bored, which suited me fine. I started tagging heat signatures. Two on the roof with Kang Tao Type-66s, one techie half asleep by a breaker box, three inside the delivery bay rolling sealed crates whose shapes made my stomach knot. Kids fit in crates like that. I'd heard the rumors outside a noodle stall, guitar on my knee, tightening strings while two corpo brokers joked about a "fresh inventory" headed north to the rape den. Laughter turned to gargles in an alley an hour later when my Ingram-Tinkerer flashbang landed behind their eyes. Loot paid for my implants; their data shards laid out a supply chain. Tonight, that chain snaps.
Behind me the tanker deck creaked. A faint footfall, heavier than mine but with deliberate care, Pilar. He didn't try to sneak; the man was two thirds cyberarm and zero stealth. He just leaned against a hatch, chrome fingers drumming.
"Nice mask," he said, nodding to the feline faceplate. My voice-layer shifted pitch and timbre, something between corpo liaison and street vendor.
"Appreciate the hookup," I answered, tone flattened by the filter. "And the fence work. Loot moved fast."
He flicked an imaginary lint off his jacket. "Scav implants sell themselves. Especially after I clean the gore." His grin was all big-brother mischief; but his eyes, same dimpled calm as Rebecca's, held worry. "You sure you wanna bankroll this gig solo? Sixty-K could buy you comfort."
"Could," I agreed, sliding the smart-gun back into its magnetic holster. "But comfort doesn't pull kids out of cages."
He didn't argue. Just tapped the side of his nose.
Down on the quay Maine's Type-66 growled, headlights off. Dorio rode shotgun, Kiwi perched in back with a deck on her lap, already probing the club's outer ICE. Falco loitered at the wheel. What surprised me was that I saw Gloria Martinez hug an SMG with them....
I breathed. Then I spoke into comms, voice-layer tuned to anonymous rasp. "Okay, team. Primary objective: Close down ILLEGAL, clear floors, secure living cargo. Maelstrom numbers estimated at twenty-plus, heavy augments, probably hopped on 'white lace.' Go lethal. No kid casualties. Copy?"
"Copy," Maine rumbled, already flexing his gorilla arms.
"Copy," echoed the others, Rebecca's sing-song "meow" sliding under the chorus. She wouldn't let it go, it seemed
Kiwi broke in, monotone. "I've got their spine access. Security cam loop feeds start in sixty. After that, the internal grid's dark unless they flip the manual breakers."
"Understood," I said. "On your mark."
A second passed. "Mark."
I launched.
Servos hissed, double-jump flinging me off the tanker rail. For half a heartbeat I was nothing but a silhouette against smog, then gravity snatched me down. Second-stage pistons fired, slowing the descent; I landed on a container roof with barely a clang.
Below, the entrance guards jerked up, confused by the metallic echo. Perfect. Smart-gun cleared leather; targeting pips bloomed red. Three rounds—silent, sub-sonic—arched over crates and drilled their skull jacks before they finished turning. They crumpled like puppets whose strings had been cut.
A side door burst as Maine's bulk hammered through. Dorio followed, shotgun barking flechettes that stitched two Maelstrom gunners to a kipple wall. Gloria dove past them, SMG chattering a bright line into cover positions. I sprinted along a gantry overhead, dropped a cat-shaped EMP puck, the Tinkerer tech was paying off, onto the breaker box. Blue flash, electric coughing out. Club lights died, replaced by emergency crimson.
Screams rose. The party had started.
I vaulted a gap, double-jumping to a ventilation relay. Through a grate I saw a holding pen. Four kids, limbs trembling, eyes wide. Collars around their throats, cables naped into dataports far too fresh, naked and bruised. I slipped inside.
"Hey," I whispered, voice-layer softened. They recoiled until my mask's cat-eyes dimmed to a reassuring glow. "I'm getting you out. Close your eyes a sec." Mini flash-strobe dazzled them; better blindness than trauma from what came next. I cut the locks, found the collar release, and removed the needles gently. Their sobs were small, brittle things.
Comm pinged. Kiwi: "Multiple heat signatures heading your quadrant."
"Copy." I toggled Maine: "I have the kids, need evac vector north hallway."
"On it," he answered, gunfire thunder backing him.
I guided the children single-file through dim corridors that pulsed alarm-red. Each footfall felt carved from glass; every doorway could spit lead. Rebecca's revolvers popped somewhere near the bar, each crack followed by her manic laughter. Pilar's crazy suppressive bursts rattled ducts overhead. Dorio barked orders; Falco's engine roared, repositioning.
Corner. Two Borged Maelstrom drones rounded it, shoulder plating grinding. That was until I saw Rebecca hit them with a grenade.
We spilled into a loading bay just as Maine kicked the steel doors wide. Smoke curled off his cyberarm barrels. "Taxi's here, kiddos!" he boomed. Gloria hauled a ramp, Kiwi covering with drone-mounted SMGs.
I shepherded the kids into the Van Falco had swiped. One little girl paused, tugging my coat. "Cat lady… thank you."
My chest tightened. I nodded once, unable to find words.
"Extracting," Falco snapped. Engines screamed, wash of heat whipping my coat as the AV lifted.
Rebecca's voice cut in, breathless. "We're clear front. You?"
I said. "Still pockets inside."
"And the rest of that graft-head herd is stampeding our way," Pilar added, mic crackling with static and glee. "Time to feed 'em lead."
"Copy," I muttered, re-chambering. "Let's finish this."
But a new audio feed bled into the channel, distorted, buzzing like teeth in a blender. Maelstrom command. "All units—kill protocols. Samples expendable. Flush the lower pens."
Dread iced my veins. More kids. Another level down.
I pivoted to the stairwell, lungs burning, cat mask snarling under neon emergency strobes. Somewhere deeper, hydraulics groaned—the sound of cages descending into something worse.
Kitrina's voice, suddenly close, whispered in my inner ear: "Go. Remember, they took everything from those children. Take everything from them."
My boots splashed through a ribbon of coolant as I dropped to the basement landing, pistons in my Lynx-legs hissing. The emergency strobes down here were fried, everything bled together in pulsing infrared from my cat-eyes. Hot silhouettes moved behind bulkhead doors, each one stitched together from bad chrome and worse pharmaceuticals. Maelstrom had emptied the junk drawer of cyberpsychosis and stuffed it into skin.
I flexed my fingers. Polished tungsten, four centimeters each, engraved with tiny hex-chevrons.
Kiwi (comms): "Heads-up: basement grid shows eight hostiles. Cyberware loadouts are heavy—spine grafts, recoil dampers, dermal plating."
Maine: "Translation: they won't drop easy. Make 'em drop anyway."
Rebecca: "save me one chromehead. Need a chew toy."
I ghosted forward, body-suit whispering against my skin. My thermal-armor dermis tingled where coolant mist touched it. Good tech; it had already saved me many times.
First bulkhead: manual crank. I slipped the Tinkerer snake-cam under the door—a cat-eye on a fiber lead. Feed popped into my HUD: two Maelstrom bangers, both rocking aftermarket mantis blades that looked forged in a garbage fire. They were arguing about me, of course.
Ganger #1: "You see the news? That vigilante bitch she's down here. NCPD tagged her unstable."
Ganger #2: "Unstable's just another word for free meat. The boss says Sweep and bag."
They turned toward the door. I keyed the mag-bolts: CLACK. The slab slid aside on rusted runners. I dove.
Smart-Chao chirped, auto-selecting HP rounds. Two taps—thud-thud—sent tungsten-jacketed kisses through the nearest skull-jack. The second banger pivoted, mantis blades scraping sparks. I jetted forward on calf-boosters, ducked the swipe, and raked my claws across his abdominal mesh. Sparks and bio-gel splattered the bulkhead. He dropped to his knees, hands clutching a gut that wasn't there anymore.
He tried one last overhead slash. I caught the mantis arm on the upswing, twisted until servos cracked, then punched claws through the throat hydra. Wet heat sprayed my visor. He sagged, buzzing like a shorted relay.
Kitrina: "Clean strike. Keep momentum."
"Copy," I whispered, stepping over bodies.
The corridor forked. I angled right, toward the datapit Kiwi had marked as "child cages." My feet hammered grates slick with bio-sludge. A Maelstrom bruiser hove into view, twice my mass, limbs piled with hydraulic cylinders. Red optics tracked me—then he howled, charging.
I fired six rounds center-mass; they cratered his plating, slowed nothing. He swung a gorilla arm, piston crack fracturing air. I vaulted—double-jump pistons blooming—cleared the arc by a meter. Landed behind him, claws ready.
Slash hamstrings. He toppled; I rode his spine down and drove talons into the back-port. His OS screamed through my audio implants before flat-lining.
I skidded around the next corner, claws dripping, lungs sawing cold air that reeked of ozone and fear. My thermal dermis kept the bruised spot on my ribs numb. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the steel doors up ahead and the twelve heart-beats trembling behind them.
A Maelstrom psycho lumbered out of a side alcove, chrome ribs open to the air like a wolf cage welded around a man. His optics were blown wide on some synth-adrenaline cocktail, irises strobing crimson. He saw the kids behind me before he saw the claws.
"Pretty kitty," he croaked, servo-jaw whining. "Gonna snip your tail—"
I hit the boosters.
One piston popped. My knee slammed into his breastplate, the second jump launching us both backwards. We smashed through a maintenance grate, sparks spitting, coolant geysering around our bodies. He tried to torque up a gorilla arm; I buried four tungsten claws into his elbow joint, ripped sideways, tore the limb free in a shriek of steel and tendon.
He bellowed. I buried the second hand under his chin—felt my nails meet base-skull—and squeezed. Servo-neck locked an instant before the vertebrae sheared. When the body stopped twitching I planted a boot on his chest and pushed off, landing light. Hydraulic fluid sheeted the floor; the crimson LEDs on his optics winked out, one by one.
«Basement west corridor clear,» I growled across comms, voice-mask pitching me into static anonymity. «Going for the cages.»
"Copy, kitty," Rebecca chirped, revolver thunder booming somewhere above. "Aim for the soft bits."
A burst of Maine's cannon rolled down the ventilation shafts—deep, thunderous. Screams answered it.
I sprinted.
The big blast doors were on a mag-lock. Kiwi's drone zipped overhead, EM fangs bared. One pulse—lock lightning-shattered, doors groaning apart just wide enough for me to slip through.
The room beyond was hell. Thick iron kennels lined concrete pits, each cage barely coffin-sized. Twelve kids—seven boys, five girls—jammed into one corner, hugging each other, streaked with grime and snot. Opposite them lay a small shape—another child, limp, head slumped at an angle no neck should allow. A Maelstrom butcher stood over the corpse, bone-white dermal plating jewelled with fresh arterial spray. He held a chrome cleaver wired to his wrist.
He looked at me as if a new toy had arrived.
"Don't move," I said.
He grinned, a lipless bar of steel teeth.