Afterlife Bar, night.
Barom waved off the suit who had pitched him and finished his drink. A few more fixers drifted over with shards and smiles. He listened. None of the offers landed. Not big enough.
He turned to go. Neon washed his chrome as he stepped into the street.
His optics flashed a warning. The interface jumped, glitched, and froze. A spike of current detonated at the base of his skull and boiled through his frame. Control dropped out of his limbs like someone hit a pause key.
"Buzz."
A high-velocity round lanced the air and ripped into his right leg—tech sniper rifle. The prosthetic shredded; Barom toppled.
His body's recovery kicked hard. He clawed back a sliver of command and tried to trigger Sandevistan.
Two combat specialists came in behind him and killed the attempt. Twin shotgun barrels were already parked against his hands. Close-range blasts hit with ugly kinetic weight. Both hands went dead metal.
Everything he prized stopped working in seconds.
Sandevistan finally spun up, but all it did was speed the helpless writhing. He dragged his head up and saw the suit from the Afterlife standing over him.
"You slipped something in that shard." Barom's voice jittered at high speed. "I'll kill you for it."
The ambush virus had ridden the shard at insertion. It burned his systems, stole his window to counter, and left him half-locked before he could even move.
"Target experimental subject secured. Requesting evac," the suit said into his comm, ignoring him.
The two heavies hauled Barom up by the shoulders. A hover AV settled to the curb. The red Arasaka sigil stared down at him from the fuselage, bright and certain.
"You're Arasaka. Why me?"
He could not connect the dots; he had never worked with Arasaka. The answer sat elsewhere. His ripperdoc had already sold everything: the injection, the parts list, the weapons map. Arasaka had one vial of the serum's base compound without knowing where it came from. Until they found the source, scarcity ruled. A living subject who had taken it was too valuable to pass.
Barom, the only known injected subject, was inevitable.
They strapped him into the AV and lifted. Afterlife's floor stared up, full of mercs who had watched the snatch and had nothing to say while Arasaka hovered six meters away.
"Arasaka gets bolder by the day," someone spat when the AV finally banked away. "They really came into the Afterlife to grab a guy. Think we're soft?"
That same man would not have raised his voice if the team had stayed. It sounded sad because it was true.
"What did he do to rate that kind of pull?"
Maine's crew stepped out in time to catch the last of it.
"Maybe his last job crossed Arasaka," someone said.
"Who knows?"
It was entertaining as long as it was not their problem. They broke up and headed out.
…
Rebecca weighed her options. She had not pinged Rocky in two days. She knew he was on a contract, so she had not called. He had not called either. Hard to tell when he would be free.
Sending an email was not her style. It was late, and she had time. If he had finished, the clinic would be open. She decided to swing by and check.
…
In the clinic, Rocky was building a batch of serum.
"L, the ICE scaffold for your data fortress is in. It still needs polish," Lucy said over the line.
"Good work. Thanks, Lucy."
She was wiring the small server stack in her apartment, turning his idea into a footprint on the net. If you want a company, you need a data fortress. They were not there yet, but a minimal box would help him move.
The clinic buzzed with a visitor request.
"Lucy, someone's at the door. I'll call you back."
"Okay."
The run did not demand his hands every second; he could still take walk-ins. He cut the call, pulled the front cam, and frowned.
A man in a suit waited at the door—unfamiliar face. Agency posture, he did not bother hiding.
Trouble had found him, faster than he liked.
He had known this day would come the minute he put Advanced Soldier Serum into the market. Stimulants were one thing. A drug that raised physical capacity, sped reactions, and deepened chrome tolerance was another. The corps would come.
He could not hide. He could only wish for more time to stack leverage.
He steadied his breathing, walked over, and opened the clinic door.