Sean E. Britten

Life in The Schism is lonely, brutish, and short. Neko Derricks thrives in the virtual realm and tries to keep his head down every time he’s forced to interact with the so-called ‘real world’. After his latest hacking job though, he’s about to confront life in meatspace whether he likes it or not.

This story contains spoilers for both Kill Switch: Serial Escalation and Kill Switch: Final Season. I’m sure you’ve already read and loved both of those but just in case you haven’t, you should go read them now. In fact, if you’ve already read them once you should read them again!

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The Schism. A refugee camp six hundred miles long running down the East Coast of the New United States of America. Created following the Second Big One, with billions upon billions of dollars worth of repair bills unable to be paid and nowhere for residents to go it had been rebuilt into something permanent. Murky clouds of poison and neon wired 24/7 into the grid left The Schism in permanent twilight. Towers of concrete and scrap metal jutted above the urban sprawl. In The Schism, everybody wanted to be somebody. Until it broke them, then most people wanted to be nothing. Spending their days in pursuit of oblivion. Poverty, unemployment, housing shortages, water shortages, life itself was lonely, brutish, and short.

Neko Derricks narrated to himself as he darted through The Schism’s streets as a technique to keep his anxiety in check. He kept his head low and his eyes on the pavement. Concrete apartment blocks and towers of rusty shipping containers stretched overhead. Neon advertising was the only thing that made the towers shine. Hordes of people moved on the sidewalks and streets on foot. Neko felt crushed by them every second he was outside. So much chaos, so much movement, his heart beat harder in his chest. Out here in the physical, the real world. Meatspace.

A krew of Technicals passed Neko. Technical Boys and Girls, they favoured leather and fishnets, showing off the circuitry that glittered down their necks and arms, across their chests. They made a fashion statement out of their implants and the excess of ports and slots grafted to their skulls. The sleeves of Neko’s black hoodie covered his own circuitry. Head tucked low, his hood was pulled low over his forehead to hide his implants. I’m one of you, part of him wanted to say to the passing krew. I’m someone, I matter, in the digital at least. But he kept his eyes down, kept himself covered, and the krew didn’t even look his way.

Streets in The Schism were twisting, filled with trash, and nameless. Dozens and dozens of power cables, in some places more like hundreds, hung from weathered poles and scaffolding and from every building. Congealing in masses of black rubber. Here, at the corner of his block, an airship had come down over a decade ago and been left there. The damage it had done to the surrounding buildings as it fell had been patched up but the scars remained. The rotors and wings had been sheared off. The engines, guns, missile pods, and everything else of use had been scavenged off the craft before the fires from the crash were extinguished. But the tubular body of the airship, the colour of mustard, was intact. Gutted, it had been turned into a Korean noodle house. The entrance was through the open loading doors at the back of the crash. The floor was slightly tilted. Weathered boards and oil drums had been used to create its counter and tables. Steam poured out of the back of the restaurant, the kitchen. Holographic menus lit up the sides of the airship and the walls inside.

Neko passed the downed airship almost every time he left his apartment. Warm, spicy smells poured out of its entrance. It was filled with laughter and smiling faces, people slurping noodles or broth. Neko had Korean uploaded to his neural implants along with two dozen other languages but he’d never spoken it to another person face-to-face. Other implants would turn the words on the menu to English before his eyes but he still wouldn’t know what to order and that indecision paralysed him. He turned away from the warmly lit entryway. Projected high above the street, an enormous pizza revolved like a UFO. ‘Infinite Pizza-Stuffed Crust Pizza, Garlic Bread and a 2lt Soda’ read the pink words hovering above and below it. When he got home, he would order one of those, Neko resolved. Delivered to your window by drone, no fear of human interaction.

Neko clutched his fauxleather bag to his side. Most things could be delivered right to your apartment, food, clothes, parts, but unfortunately not everything. Some sellers, especially in less-than-strictly legal wares, liked to do things the old fashioned way.

Neko wasn’t just a Technical Boy but a netrunner, a console cowboy, a hacker. Someone who broke through corporate firewalls and into databanks for fame or profit. Mostly he did it for acclaim. He was part of a subgenre of hackers who sought out intel not for money or rebellion but as a way of gaining recognition. A small but obsessive band that Neko would never know except by their screen names and their reputations, based on what they’d hacked, broken, and taken. Neko only did small jobs for the money, enough to pay rent, for food, and he spent what remained on gear and implants to be a better netrunner. Now though, Neko had scored a big job. One he would have done for free, for the rep alone, but was paying enough cash that he could entertain the idea of moving out of The Schism. That’s what anybody who actually became somebody did unless they really relished the feeling of being a big, bad fish in a little, shitty pond. Moved north to The City or channeled that old Manifest Destiny spirit and headed west. That’s what Neko needed the new gear for, in his satchel.

Neko buzzed into his building via the thumbprint scanner next to the door. Some people lived in the lobby as well as the stairways and corridors, creating private shelters out of tarps and garbage. His apartment was on the eleventh floor and there was no elevator in the drafty concrete shell of a building. After the walk, he was out of breath by the time he got there. He had much better locks on his own door than the rickety thumb scanner on the building’s entrance. Neko keyed a code into the door, waved a chip implanted in one hand over the handle, and leaned over for the eye scanner. The scanner mentioned liveliness through pulses of light that measured pupil dilation so no one could use a dead eyeball plucked from his head. All the better for keeping the outside out. The door swung open, heavy, with a reinforced core. Neko slipped inside and shut the door quickly again, the lock automatically reengaging.

Neko’s apartment was narrow and compact. One long room with storage and a toilet and shower that folded out of the walls. His kitchenette was scarcely used but covered in grease, piled with biodegradable plates and takeout trash. Posters that Neko had owned since he was a teenager plastered the walls. Across the room was a domed window that overlooked the streets that Neko had been racing through to get home, foggy and yellow. His bed was shoved against a wall where it could fold away or convert into a couch for sitting, unmade and surrounded by clothes. His rig, his computer, tower bristling with gear, main screen wrapping across the desk and surrounded by holo spikes, faced the bed. The rest of the desk was covered in toys, knickknacks, and more takeout containers, but no photos or personal holos. Apart from the rig it wasn’t much but things could be worse. Neko’s last place had been a bed in a coffin block. Coffin blocks were stacks of tube-shaped chambers only big enough for one person arranged in walls that held dozens. Common areas of the building were all shared, kitchens and bathrooms, the bed chamber or ‘coffin’ was the only place you could find privacy with literally hundreds of neighbours constantly moving in and out of the other spaces. People generally tried to make the best of things, filling the common areas with music, kids drawing on the walls and windows, gatherings in the mess hall, but Neko had been too socially anxious for any of that. Outside the sanctuary of his coffin it had been hell, at least here he had his solitude.

Neko shrugged off his satchel, tossing it on the bed, and pulled back his hood. Underneath, his hair was dark and spiky. His face, like most Americans, was a mix of ethnicities, mostly Latin American but with heavy epicanthic folds. Circuitry glittered along his jawline and down the sides of his neck. Neural implants and grafts started at his temples then moved around behind his ears and ringed across the back of his head. Despite his shitty diet and sedentary lifestyle, Neko was fit and leanly muscled. He’d bought the right genetic traits so he didn’t have to worry about things like that, even if he still got out of breath climbing the stairs to his apartment.

Neko fell heavily into his chair. His heart was still running hot, the feeling of being on the street draining off of him. A mechanical arm moved on rails across the apartment ceiling. A hologram spike on the end of the unfolding arm flickered to life. It projected a tall and muscular man about Neko’s age, eighty kilos of California beef with a swimmer’s build, broad shoulders running to a tapered waist, long arms.

“Neko, that was quick! You’re home already,” the hologram said. “Have you eaten?”

“Not now, Johnny,” Neko said.

Waving his hand, Neko dismissed the holographic companion. Johnny dissipated and the mechanical arm retreated back across the ceiling. Rolling in his chair, Neko grabbed his bag and turned on the rig.

Time bled away whenever Neko got to work. He had to install the new gear before he could get back to netrunning. Streams of numbers and symbols poured down his screen. The holograms to either side fired up and started projecting constellations of the Verse. At least he remembered to order some food. The drone arrived at his window, signaling Neko through the glass, a boxy drone supported by four whirring rotors. Neko opened the window and the drone disgorged a pizza and bottle of Soylent Cola. The pizza was steaming hot. The cola icy cold. Despite that, the garlic bread was missing. Overhead, a massive hovercraft patrolled the street. Neko squinted into its spotlights with confusion. It must have been a private law enforcement craft, searching for someone or something, but for the moment it was running silent.

Boots tramped up the concrete stairwell. Residents of the stairs and corridors shied away, not knowing what the armed men in black and grey uniforms were there for but knowing it was nothing they wanted to involve themselves in. Covered in body armour, the half dozen men carried fully automatic submachine guns designed for close quarters work and holstered handguns. Behind them, high stepping up the stairs almost daintily, was an armed droid. Like a pack mule robot, it had a narrow, barrel-shaped body and four springy legs. Twin machine guns were attached to the sides of the droid. On its back was a strange device that looked like an artillery cannon but instead of a muzzle the barrel was totally solid and ended in a flat plate.

Reaching the eleventh floor, the men surrounded the door to Neko’s apartment. They fanned across the hallway with guns raised and one of the men guided the droid to a spot in front of the door. The mechanism on its back unfolded. The mechanism, a battering ram, consisted of several struts and a shaft of metal. Pressing the blunt end of its body into the door, with a plexiglass dome and cameras which passed for a face, the droid drew the shaft back and then drove it forward.

The door exploded inwards. The battering ram created a perfectly round crater near the handle where it hit and the rest of the door crumpled around it. Neko’s array of fancy locks shattered from sheer brute force. Hinges almost wrenched clear out of their sockets as the door slammed against the wall with a thunderous clap.

“What the-?” Neko choked.

Six men stamped into Neko’s apartment, completely filling it with their bulk and body armour. Four of them trained submachine guns on Neko. The other two, in the lead, aimed handguns. Neko froze in shock. Heart thumping, it was all he could do to raise his hands in a gesture of supplication. The two men in the lead holstered their weapons. One tackled Neko, tearing him out of his chair and twisting him around, smashing his unresisting body into the wall by the window.

“Get down! Get your fucking hands behind your back!” the man yelled.

Neko struggled to comply. The man yanked his hands back and the second man appeared with a pair of flexicuffs. They tightened the cuffs around Neko’s wrists, plastic cutting into the skin.

“What-, what? What’s happening?” Neko said. “What do you want?”

The man pulled Neko back roughly and threw him on the bed. Neko twisted and struggled to sit up. The six men loomed over him, especially the lead man who had just thrown him onto the bed. He was a squat, powerfully built man, shaved bald, with a sneer on his face.

“You’ve been poking your nose where it don’t belong, haven’t you?”

The leader had an accent, some kind of British. All the others were muscular and well-armed, their grey uniforms and black body armour making them appear to be PMCs, mercenaries, no doubt working for some big corporation. Neko made it his business to stick his nose constantly where it didn’t belong. This, however, had to be to do with the big job, the one he’d just bought gear for. The Slayerz job.

Neko had always imagined himself making a daring break for it if one day one of his jobs caught the attention of some corporate mercs or ninja. When the door erupted inwards though, he’d frozen like a deer in the headlights. Breathing hard, he tried to recover his nerves. His fauxleather satchel had a holopad and enough gear for him to disappear if he could get away with it. It was lying beside him on the bed but his hands were bound behind his back.

“Johnny!” Neko said.

The mechanical arm whirred to life across the apartment ceiling. Johnny’s image flickered into being. His colours were vibrant although he was only semisolid, part of Neko’s rig visible through him.

“Neko, you have guests!” Johnny said.

“Motherfuck-,” one of the mercs said.

“No!” the mercenary leader shouted.

The merc who’d sworn fired a burst at the hologram before he could be stopped. The bullets traveled straight through Johnny’s image and scored against the wall behind him. A couple of ricochets blew apart Neko’s window. A third hit the pillow where Neko’s head would rest when he was sleeping. Using the distraction, Neko managed to grab his bag even with his wrists trapped together. He leapt to his feet, head low, and tried to weave around the mercenaries to reach the front door.

Neko only got a couple of steps before a blow struck him across the side of the head. Ears ringing, he crashed into the wall and slipped. Several mercenaries closed around him. Big hands grabbed him from behind and threw him back on the bed. He lost his satchel somewhere in the process.

“You idiot, it’s just one of those fucking jerk-off holos for bleedin’ shut-ins!” their leader yelled.

The lead merc slapped the gun of the man who’d fired so it was pointed at the floor. The jumpy merc looked embarrassed. With his other hand, the leader pulled his handgun again and aimed it at the corner of the ceiling. He fired and took out the control box that Johnny’s mechanical arm attached to. The box imploded, hot sparks shooting through the air. Mouth open as if about to speak, Johnny’s image flickered and died where it was standing. The lead merc turned on Neko, gun in hand.

“I don’t know what you thought the point of that little exercise was, but you try to run again I’m going to put a bullet in your leg,” the man said.

Meanwhile, on the street outside Neko’s building, a sleek, black vehicle with red and blue lights came arching in for a landing. Trash billowed in all directions, blown away by the aircar’s engines. An imposing figure stepped out of the vehicle as one of the doors hinged upward like a wing. She stood a head taller than most of the people on the street, heavily muscled with broad shoulders, a powerful chest and tapered waist. Over a dozen different private law enforcement agencies operated with The Schism where there was no police as a public service. The company the woman was dressed as representing, falsely, favoured an old fashioned and dressy police uniform as their corporate outfit. A dark navy, double breasted tunic with two rows of large buttons down the front, complete with epaulettes and golden braidery, and long, straight pants. Both the uniform and the vehicle were stolen. The woman wore a black baseball cap that didn’t match the outfit as if to hide her features. A monster revolver with a red stripe down the back of its black rubber hilt, also nonstandard, rode her hip. The old fashioned uniform hid most of her military-grade prosthetic arm but the hand poked out of the sleeve, looking like a hand encased in a glove of light grey ceramic plates over a mesh of black webbing. Hurrying to the door of the building, Layla Jackson looked up at the whale-shaped hovercraft hanging in the air above, spotlights draping the surrounding buildings, and then quickly lowered her face before it could be scanned.

Upstairs, the mercenaries organised themself. Two went into the hallway to guard the entrance to Neko’s apartment. The battering ram droid blocked the entry near Neko’s kitchen, machine guns aimed at Neko. The other mercs seemed most interested in Neko’s rig but one of them knocked open the pizza box that had been delivered just before they broke in. They picked up a slice and bit into it but only chewed for a moment before spitting the wad of dough and cheese back into the box.

“Tastes like shit,” the merc complained.

Another merc, the jumpy one who’d tried to shoot Johnny, attempted to turn on Neko’s rig. It was, of course, password and biometrics protected. The bald merc leader leaned over Neko, sitting in the bed, and sneered in his face. Neko tried to gather all his remaining strength and look defiant.

“Before we put a couple of bullets in your head and dump you in the nearest sewage treatment plant, we want to know what you might have passed on already,” the merc said. “That is, my employers would like to know.”

“Good luck, you’ll never get through the encryptions,” Neko said. “The biometrics won’t access if they read I’m in distress. Sure, you could give me something to calm my nerves and make it work, but then the passwords are a twelve digit lock on a Goldilocks chain. All of my data is stored behind an ice wall that makes the servers at the Ministry of Peace look like an app developed in a fourth world country. With a learning AI that’s twice as smart as all you meatheads put together.”

The mercenary leader held up his gun. “See, that’s nice and all, but my plan was to hit you in the face with the butt of this pistol until you bleedin’ give us everything we want.” He said. “Okay? Do I need to give you a demonstration?”

“Oh, okay, no,” Neko said. “No.”

Layla sprinted up the steps two at a time, tightly strapped combat boots ringing off the stairs. Dressed as a cop, the residents of the stairwell landings and halls wanted no more to do with her than with the mercs who’d gone upstairs already. Few people who rented in the building could even afford law enforcement. Counting off the levels, Layla reached the eleventh floor and turned into the corridor.

The two mercenaries guarding the door saw Layla coming but didn’t look past the uniform. Layla kept her head low, brim of her baseball cap covering her face. One of the mercs gestured at her to stop.

“Hey, don’t know if you didn’t get the word but we got authorisation for this op over and above all Schism services,” the merc said.

“Yeah, you just turn your ass around, we got this,” the second man said.

Layla didn’t reply as she closed the gap. Her mechanical hand snapped out, seizing the first mercenary by the jaw. His eyes bugged in surprise. Giving him a hard shore, her prosthesis whirring, Layla slammed the back of the man’s skull into the wall behind him. His eyes rolled back in his skull as the man went limp and slid to the floor.

The second man made a strangled sound of surprise. Able to see the uniformed woman’s face properly for the first time, a flicker of recognition crossed his features. Releasing the first man, Layla wheeled around and her left fist slammed the second merc across the side of the head. He was thrown sideways, scraping along the wall, and then fell bonelessly to the concrete floor as well. There was a reason Layla was also known as ‘Southpaw’.

Inside, Neko sat on the side of the bed with the mercenary leader looming over him. It was obvious that besides wrongly assuming that he’d covered his tracks well enough he had also vastly underestimated the response Slayerz and the network behind Slayerz would have to him poking around looking for intel on their upcoming season. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks. He seethed with frustration, trying to keep the tears in.

Layla Jackson entered the room like a stick of dynamite inside a watermelon. Sliding the hulking revolver out of her holster, she booted the broken door open and was halfway across the room in a couple of steps. The jumpy merc, nerves on high alert, was first to react. He swung around, weapon raised. Before he could reach the trigger, Layla fired two shots from her Raging Bull revolver. The bullets caught the corporate merc in the chest armour, flattening and failing to penetrate but driving him back into Neko’s rig with the impacts. Several ribs broken, he fell, wheezing, and dropped his submachine gun.

“Oh, shit! It’s Layla fucking Jackson!” one of the mercs yelled.

The mercenary who’d taken a bite out of Neko’s pizza was closest, and turned as if to tackle Layla. Besides her ceramic-plated mechanical arm, mechanical parts were built into Layla’s left side and wired down her left leg, reinforcing it so it could all lock together and her left arm could be anchored for feats of strength. Layla lashed out, kicking with her left leg, and her cyborg parts whirred. Her boot caught the merc like a shotgun blast. He was launched, flailing, across the small apartment and smashed into the wall above Neko’s bed. Neko was forced to duck as the man’s kicking feet flew over his head and then was thrown to the floor as the man landed on the mattress behind him.

The battering ram droid had been caught facing the wrong direction, machine guns pointed at Neko. It teetered in a circle, insectile legs moving delicately. Layla strolled past the waist-high droid easily. Aiming downward, she fired casually into the plexiglass dome that formed its head. Dome shattering, its circuitry brain exploded into glowing sparks. It staggered sideways into the kitchenette. Still moving, Layla went low as the next mercenary swung toward her. Her mechanical hand grabbed the man by the crotch and she hauled him straight upward, lifting him by the groin and slamming his head into the concrete ceiling. His neck twisted sideways, head rebounding with a sickening crack. Layla let him drop back limply to the floor as a pile of limbs.

“You fucking bitch!” the bald mercenary leader said.

The lead merc squeezed off a shot with his handgun as he swung around on Layla. The bullet tore through the left sleeve of Layla’s stolen uniform and ricocheted off one of the superhardened plates of ceramic armour that covered her arm. Laula aimed with her other hand and fired. The shot slammed the merc dead centre of his sternum, caught by the chest plate of his body armour. Despite knowing her opponents would be wearing armour, Layla hadn’t loaded armour-piercing rounds. The soft lead of her dum dum rounds would be devastating against soft targets but flattened against armour, although the large calibre delivered a considerable shock to the body. Her employers at People for the Ethical Treatment of People would prefer to avoid Layla killing people on this job, not that she was being gentle. As the man staggered, clutching his chest, Layla waded in and seized him by the side of the head with her left hand. She threw him sideways, past the foot of Neko’s bed. His head slammed into the wall and he reeled, unconscious, as he fell to the floor.

Neko looked up at Layla. “Who-, who are you?”

“Are you Neko Derricks? Screen name, IceSk8er?” Layla asked.

“Y-yeah, yes, that’s me,” Neko said.

“Come with me if you want to live,” Layla said.

“I know you, you’re Layla Jackson,” Neko said. “You were-, you were on the last season of Slayerz!”

Slayerz was a television event held once a year where fifteen teams of criminals, two to a team, were placed in an arena filled with deadly traps and told to wipe each other out. Only one team, the last ones left alive, got to leave. Billed as America’s favourite bloodsport, it was immensely popular and completely blew every other sporting event out of the water when it came to live viewership. Last season, however, for the first time in its history more than one team left the arena alive when Layla and her partner along with one other team escaped after all the other contestants were dead. They’d been hunted relentlessly by the network and by law enforcement since they were, technically speaking, escaped convicts, but never captured and as far as Neko was aware they’d been unseen until now. Layla had gained huge popularity on the show even before her escape as an ex-military cyborg with a propensity for one liners, who’d been imprisoned for murder her superior officer in what some argued was a totally justified killing.

Layla adjusted the black cap on her head. The merc she’d shot first grunted as he reached for his SMG despite his broken ribs. Layla stopped and turned, kicking him across the head. He fell back again. All four men in the apartment as well as the two outside lolled in various states of unconsciousness.

“These guys were working for Slayerz,” Neko said. “I’ve been hacking the network behind Slayerz to find out more about the upcoming season.”

“I know, the same people who hired you hired me,” Layla said. “People for the Ethical Treatment of People, when they found out your cover was busted they sent me to extract you. Get whatever you need, we’re leaving in sixty seconds.”

Layla took a folding knife from one of her pockets and sliced off Neko’s flexicuffs. He retrieved his satchel from the bed, beside one of the unconscious mercs. Apart from the holopad and gear in the bag already, he looked around the apartment and couldn’t see much he felt the need to take. Thinking quickly, he shoved a couple of his favourite t-shirts into the bag from the dirty clothes pile beside his bed. He was still wearing his black hoodie and dark pants. Neko glanced up at the control unit for Johnny in the corner of the ceiling. The mass marketed hologram had been his only real companion since moving to this apartment but he’d never fooled himself into thinking it was anything real and he didn’t feel much about the unit being busted now. Before he left, he returned to his rig. Mounted to the side of its tower was a powerful electromagnet. With the flick of a switch, Neko sent a massive current running through his drives and gear to wipe them beyond recovery.

Neko and Layla left his apartment then hurried down the stairs. The sleek, black aircar Layla had borrowed was parked outside, its rack of lights and alarm system keeping curious thieves at bay. The hovercraft was still gliding overhead like a giant killer whale, engines rumbling. Its outline glowed from the surrounding neon. As soon as Neko and Layla left via the front doors, a couple of searchlights popped on. One of them basked the pair in its glow as the other swept the street. The two of them couldn’t have been more exposed in broad daylight.

“Damn, one of the men in your apartment must have gotten off a warning!” Layla said.

“What do we do now?” Neko asked.

“Run!” Layla said.

The two of them sprinted toward the police cruiser Layla had flown to Neko’s apartment building. The first searchlight from the hovercraft followed them while the second swung around and fixed on the vehicle. Crowds of people surrounded them, looking on but staying well out of their path. From overhead was the sound of a rotary cannon’s barrels spinning up.

“Wait, get back!” Layla said.

Layla threw herself backward into Neko. The multiple barrels of the 20mm rotary cannon fired to life with a noise like thunder. Heavy calibre bullets, anti-aircraft rounds, punched right through Layla’s borrowed cruiser. Every third bullet was a tracer, streaking bright orange through the night, but given the aircar was stationary the hovercraft’s computer-assisted targeting had no problems zeroing in from the first shot fired. Fluids exploded from the front end of the cruiser as the cannon climbed backward. The windshield imploded and the red and blue light rack blew apart as bullets cut across the roof of the vehicle. Screaming, onlookers scattered on both sides of the street. Bullets drilled the back of the vehicle and one of the engines exploded, bursting in a billowing fireball, before the cannon went silent.

“Shit,” Layla said.

Given it was a troop carrier, not an attack craft, the hovercraft’s options were limited. It started to wheel around in the sky, its 20mm cannon swivelling. Layla shoved Neko backward, the way they had come, and the pair sprinted down the sidewalk.

“Come on! We need to find transport and lose that hovercraft!” Layla said.

As she spoke, two attack bikes swung into the street. They must have been guarding one of the building’s rear exits. Two more mercenaries in black and grey uniforms rode low in their saddles. The attack bikes were compact and light, painted a pale urban camo scheme, able to fold down for storage on craft like the troop carrier overhead. Like the battering ram droid, twin machine guns were mounted to either side of both bikes. Headlamps flared on both bikes. They roared toward Neko and Layla, small but powerful engines climbing to a high-pitched whine.

“Move! Out of the way!” Layla said.

Layla shoved Neko across the sidewalk. Metal ducts ran up the side of Neko’s building, feeding into each level. He stumbled and fell behind one of them for shelter. The guns ripped open, sending blazing rounds chattering across the street and sidewalk. Layla spun sideways across the road toward a boxy groundcar. Twin rows of bullets tore across the vehicle, punching through metal and glass. Most of the crowd had scattered when the hovercraft blew apart Layla’s escape vehicle but a few onlookers were hit by stray bullets. A couple were hit around the legs and went down, wailing, bright red splashing the asphalt under neon lights.

Layla slipped the Taurus Raging Bull out of her hip holster. Thumbing back the revolver’s hammer, still moving, she fired back at one of the bikes. Its headlamp exploded, showering the rider with hot sparks. They whipped around violently but managed to get the bike back under control. The bike and rider swung by, staying upright.

Neko watched as Layla dove behind the shot-up groundcar. The motorcycle she had shot sped down the centre of the road. The second bike screamed around the other side of Layla’s cover like a fighter jet. The rider triggered short bursts from his double machine guns as he leapt onto the sidewalk, chewing into the car and the nearest building.

Holding her hulking revolver in one hand, Layla waited, head and upper body tucked in. As the motorcycle screamed past, Layla straightened and stepped around the groundcar. She held her left arm out straight at shoulder level. The rider was coathangered as they whipped past, smashing into Layla’s prosthetic around the head and shoulders and getting slammed off the bike. The attack bike sped along without him, crashing and ricocheting over and over into the street. The man who had hit Layla’s arm crumpled, falling to the sidewalk and writhing from a broken collarbone.

The other bike swung around in a tight circle, having sped past Layla’s blazing police cruiser. Both machine guns erupted again. Rounds jumped off the surfaces surrounding Layla. Gun swinging in her fist, Layla darted into the street again. She fired and the shot winged past the rider. He ducked and the guns went silent for a moment as his finger came off their trigger, next to the bike’s accelerator. The bike swung across the road, the ride struggling upright. Layla waded in and swung her left fist. The punch swept over the bike’s handlebars and connected with the rider square in the chestplate. Her left side locked up, left leg anchoring her to the road, and she launched the rider directly backwards off his bike. They were flung several metres, flipping head over heels before landing in the road. The bike slid out and flipped as well, crashing end over end with pieces flying off its exterior.

“Come on! We’ve got to go!” Layla shouted.

Neko emerged from his hiding place, legs shaking. “What are we doing?” He said.

“Improvising,” Layla said.

The hovercraft circled overhead, its searchlights beaming. Wounded onlookers were dragged off the street by good samaritans. Layla led Neko to the first of the downed attack bikes. It lay on its side on the sidewalk, idling, less damaged than the second. Layla righted it easily, mechanical arm whirring. Climbing onto the saddle, she gestured for Neko to get on behind her.

“Really?” Neko said.

“Get on!” Layla shouted.

The 20mm rotary cannon opened up again. Bits of asphalt and the nearby gutter exploded, flinging chunks of concrete into the air. Bullets cut toward Neko and Layla, tracers burning. Neko leapt onto the back of the bike’s saddle. Without waiting for him to settle, Layla hit the accelerator and peeled out, shrieking down the sidewalk. Jolted, Neko wrapped both arms desperately around the big woman’s midsection and hung on. His black satchel flapped against his side.

Layla shot down the block like a bullet. Shootouts in The Schism, between rival gangs or between criminals and private law enforcement, were not uncommon but curious passersby were massing at a safe distance. Layla streaked through them and kept hurtling across intersections. They passed the downed airship turned Korean restaurant as Neko happened to glance back, its holos and warm light spilling onto the road. Hard to believe that less than an hour ago he’d been passing by that place too scared to go in and now he was clinging to the back of a speeding attack bike fleeing private military contractors out for his head.

“Why is this happening?” Neko yelled into the whipping wind.

“You didn’t cover your digital footprints well enough!” Layla said. “Only that’s not really fair, we hired you, or PETP hired you, without giving you a real idea of what you were up against! Now you know!”

“You wanted info on Slayerz! I would have done it for free, for the reputation!” Neko said. “Intel on upcoming seasons of Slayerz is the hottest data in the whole entertainment industry but I didn’t think they’d go this far!”

“PETP wanted intel on the upcoming season for an op but they compartmentalised the whole thing,” Layla said. “So one hacker didn’t get the whole picture! One netrunner, like you, tries to hack the location, another the arena specs, another contestant profiles, you get it. Once Slayerz got the idea of what was going on they had to put a stop to it, even if they didn’t know what it’s for! It’s a billion dollar secret you know!”

Road traffic in The Schism was mostly boxy groundcars and ancient motorcycles. Given it was light, however, roving packs of pedestrians crossed at various points without worrying about traffic signals or rules, of which there were none. Layla weaved through them, leaving people scattering in their wake.

The hovercraft dove below the tops of the buildings, rattling windows, glittering holos and billboards painting its armoured sides. Whatever authorisations the PMCs had for this op, they must have been top tier. Its stubby wings almost scraped the surrounding structures, bulk shadowing the street. The troop carrier’s onboard targeting system wasn’t designed to hit ground targets as small and fast as Neko and Layla on the motorcycle. It tried anyway, firing in short but withering bursts. The road exploded behind them. Another burst and a junction box erupted, electricity crackling as dozens of cables broke free and went snaking through the air. Layla veered to give them a wide berth as pedestrians ran, screaming. A nearby building went dark and a bunch of holo advertisements flickered out of existence.

“We’ve got to lose them!” Layla said.

Buildings thinned out. Layla streaked around one corner onto another street, engine screeching. The hovercraft was awkward moving between the buildings, meandering. Its back engines flared as its tail swung around. Neon for various bars and clubs blurred by at ground level on either side.

“Over there! Over there!” Neko said.

Slapping at Layla’s shoulder, Neko pointed. The big woman hurtled the bike to a stop, pulling sideways and leaving curling streaks of rubber on the asphalt. The club had the name ‘THRUST’ running vertically down either side of its entryway in purple neon. Projected above the door was a holo of a shirtless young man with washboard abs gyrating endlessly.

“In there?” Layla asked.

“Yes!” Neko said.

Letting the bike fall on its side, Layla and Neko abandoned it in the middle of the street. Neko led the way toward the club entry where a small line of people were waiting to get inside. They blew past the bouncers, big men covered in vatgrown muscle. Layla’s police uniform made them hesitate even though it was looking a bit ragged, particularly over her left arm. The exertion of containing the mechanical arm as Layla threw and punched was shredding the material.

Neko spared a look back before they slipped inside the club. The hovercraft was holding above the street and long, black ropes unspooled from its underside. Six men rapidly made their way down the ropes, pulling them taunt in freefall. Six more waited at the hatches to deploy. All wore the same grey and black uniforms as the men who’d invaded Neko’s apartment, carrying submachine guns and pistols.

“Come on,” Layla said.

Music throbbed as they entered the body of the club. Flashing lights strobed across their faces. The vast majority of the club’s patrons were men. Most of the others presented as something more fluid. The bartop and a walkway stretched along a lengthy dance floor. Neko looked around with something like amazement as Layla steered him away from the doors. The bouncers hadn’t bothered to follow them inside, probably watching the rapid deployment from the hovercraft along with everyone else.

“I always wanted to come in here,” Neko said.

“Is the plan to stay in here?” Layla asked.

“No, no, there’s a second exit!” Neko said.

Neko had passed the club a bunch of times. On a couple of occasions he’d loitered outside, circling, feeling like some kind of creep. The glimpses through the entryways looked sexy and dangerous, the walls done up in black tarps and gleaming steel like some kind of dungeon. Shirtless bartenders serving unidentifiable cocktails. Holos of half-naked men alone or in pairs above every table and at the ends of the bar. Now that he was inside though, Neko could see the walls and the holos were just decoration. All the patrons only had eyes for one another, dancing, talking, embracing. Connections that Neko had denied himself.

“If we get into a firefight in here it’ll be a bloodbath, we’ve got to keep moving,” Layla said.

The second exit, on the far side of the club, spilled directly into a massive marketplace. Neko and Layla shot out past another pair of bouncers and a line of waiting patrons. Clubs and bars lined the side of the market. People were milling and moving, buying and selling, everywhere they looked.

“Where to now?” Layla said. “You’re the local.”

“I don’t know, I avoided exploring this place,” Neko said. “I just thought we could lose them in the crowd!”

The marketplace was a sprawling maze of stalls and huts built on top of a huge, unused patch of construction rubble between half-finished tower blocks. On the side with the bars and clubs was the food section of the markets. Every kind of food that could conceivably be bought and sold cheaply seemed to be available. Sweltering stacks of vat meat revolved next to a stall selling bowls of fried insects. Dogburgers, steaming rice and curries, churros, street foods from every culture on earth and a bunch that had been invented right there in The Schism. What looked like a full pig on a spit revolved over a glowing pit, although looking closer it was, of course, an enormous rat. A heady mix of aromas, meat, and spices rolled off the food stalls.

Neko and Layla took off down one aisle of the marketplace. Under the canopy created by the various stalls, the temperature climbed and cut through the brisk night thanks to the sheer number of cooking fires, deep fryers, and open stoves. Customers and sellers looked at Neko and Layla in confusion as the pair jostled them aside.

Several mercenaries had already pushed through the club, Thrust, and were fanning out looking for the pair. Others moved through alleyways beside the surrounding buildings, hoping to cut them off. They moved into the market, guns raised. Their appearance scared off a large number of onlookers.

Neko and Layla reached the end of their aisle and darted sideways. Ironically, it now seemed like Layla was the one putting the pair at a disadvantage. With his slim, average build and black hoodie, Neko could have easily disappeared into the crowds of people moving around the markets. Half a head taller than most of the crowd with her massive frame, mechanical arm, and conspicuous outfit meant Layla was the one standing out. As they ran, Neko heard snatches of conversation about the hovercraft and fighting in the streets nearby. Word in The Schism travelled fast.

“Over there! There they are!” someone yelled.

A three-man team of mercs threaded through the food stalls, slamming people aside. They threw one man into a table covered in satay sticks, bits of hot meat and skewers going everywhere. Two mercs fired and a neon sign near Layla’s head exploded. Holes punched through more signs and countertops as Neko and Layla ducked.

“I knew I should have packed more heat for this job.” Layla drew her hand cannon of a sidearm. “Get down, stay low!”

Layla swapped the Raging Bull revolver to her left hand. The mechanical limb moved with metronomic precision and absorbed the recoil easily as she straightened and fired. The mercenaries dove for cover. A cooking pot near one of the men erupted, spraying sticky rice into the air.

Neko crawled beneath a flap of tarpaulin and between the legs of a stall. As he got inside, the stall’s owner fled out the back. Bags and cans of ingredients surrounded Neko as he stayed down on his hands and knees. A paltry desk fan did little to cool things down but just stirred the hot, moist air that filled the stall. He ducked as more bullets ripped through the air above the countertop.

Layla was forced sideways by the combined weight of two mercenaries’ fire. Their submachine guns blasted through several stalls, their customers and owners having thankfully fled. Apart from distant cries for help and the occasional civilian, pinned to the ground with their hands over their ears, Layla, Neko and the mercs were alone in this section of the markets. Layla squeezed off several thundering shots to give them something to think about. The hulking revolver only held six shots, however. Layla was forced to duck, throwing open the cylinder and reloading. Meanwhile, the third mercenary circled around looking for Neko.

Layla had been herded to a section of the market where the lines started to blur between food stalls and other goods, mostly groceries and foodstuffs that would be taken home. There seemed to be no organising principles. Bullets blew apart a bunch of fruit and vegetables in a nearby stall and caused them to burst into colourful sprays of mush. An overwhelming wet garbage stench filled the air as several durians split open. Another stall boasted local seafood, caught in drainage ditches and waste treatment runoff from the poisoned coastline nearby. Most of the fish and other creatures, resting in melting ice, looked like they were in the middle of evolving from one form of sea life into a totally different genus of animal. Layla kept moving, crouched over, and came to a stall covered in huge bowls of spices. Her eyes lit up with an idea.

Small sacks filled with spices were piled up like sandbags beneath the stall. Layla’s hand danced across them until she found something suitably hot and spicy. Swapping the Raging Bull to her right hand again, Layla picked up the sack with her left. The bag weighed probably close to fifteen kilos but to Layla it felt like nothing.

The two mercenaries had stopped firing and were moving closer, searching for her, working in tandem. Guessing at the distance, Layla straightened and hurled the bag of spice. It flew through the air just under the canopy of stall roofs and umbrellas, spiralling. Both men instinctively turned their faces to look at it. Layla brought her gun around and fired. Smacking the flying sack, the dum dum round expanded and blew it apart in midair. A noxious cloud of reddish orange powder filled the air right above the two men and rained down on their upturned faces. Both men were instantly blinded as burning spice filled their eyes. The sensation felt like battery acid. Clawing at their faces, they started to scream. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. As they inhaled, more spice filled their throats and nostrils, setting them on fire. As their inflamed airways closed up, eyes swollen shut and streaming tears, the two men fell to the ground and started gagging, covered in layers of the reddish orange powder.

Stalking Neko, the third mercenary moved around the food stall with his submachine gun raised. The merc kicked over a table at the front of the stall, next to the one Neko was hidden beneath. Plastic bowls of vegetable broth splattered the dirty concrete. The puddle started to leak into Neko’s hiding place.

“Come out here, you little shit,” the merc said. “And I’ll make it quick once we’ve got the intel off you.”

To one side of the stall Neko had chosen was a massive wok, bubbling with a dish made of meat, vegetables, and thick noodles. The smell wafting off it was delicious. Much of the heat inside the stall came from the gas stovetop under the wok. As the man neared, Neko just barely out of sight, Neko figured he had no choice but to fight back. He lunged, grabbing the handle of the wok. The mercenary barked in surprise, only barely keeping his finger off his trigger.

Neko grappled with the heavy wok. Its open face was almost a full arm’s length in diameter and it was full of food, almost too unwieldy for him to handle. With a burst of adrenaline, Neko managed to heave the wok around and upended its contents over the merc. Burning oil and bits of meat sprayed the man’s face. A mass of noodles splashed his arms and chest, and slithered down the front of his body armour.

“Fuck!” the man yelled.

Burns erupted over the man’s face. He swiped his eyes with one gloved hand. Neko wanted to bring the now-empty wok around and knock the mercenary out but it was still unwieldy. He fumbled, tripping into the countertop, and the wok fell to the ground with a dull clang. Blearily, the man blinked to clear his vision. An expression of pure rage covered his scorched face and he aimed his SMG at Neko’s chest. Orders to keep Neko alive if possible forgotten, he was seconds away from riddling him with bullets.

Layla’s mechanical fist grabbed the merc by the back of the head. Appearing suddenly behind him, she swung him sideways into the pole supporting the roof of a stall. His face broke through the pole with a loud crack. Strength disintegrated out of the man and he crumbled. Layla let him drop, covered in noodles and stir fry.

“Nice work with the wok,” Layla said.

“Thanks, uh, what about the other two?” Neko asked.

“The spice must flow.” Layla shrugged. “Come on, more are on the way.”

Hearing the gunfire, several other three-man teams jogged toward Neko and Layla’s position. Before they left, Layla stole the unconscious merc’s submachine gun and several magazines of ammo. They fled deeper into the marketplace, past the food stalls and groceries into a menagerie of tiny stores selling every kind of goods imaginable, stretching away and folding in on themselves in seemingly endless rows. Neko and Layla ran past stalls selling clothes, fauxleather goods, moonshine, and plastic barrels of Chinese computer chips. Multiple stalls were cluttered with shelves and shelves of illegally copied movies, shows and videogames on holodisc and VHS. Others promised cheap phone implants, netrunner gear, VR systems, weapons, medicine, pots and pans and cooking utensils, sex toys, live animals, and a hundred other things.

In spite of the gunfire, there were people about as Neko and Layla charged through the marketplace. Most were stall owners, protecting their stores, but there were knots of patrons still walking around. Many were gossiping about what was going on, whether it was gang warfare or some kind of op. They stared as Neko and Layla raced past.

“Is that Layla Jackson? From Slayerz?” someone said.

Music poured out of many of the stalls. Psycho country from one, electrofuck from another, all blurring together into a mess of sound. Neko’s heart pounded after his brief encounter with the last mercenary. Neons and holos crowded the aisles from all angles. With his adrenaline running so high, his vision seemed too sharp and too cluttered. Miniature bars and cafes were scattered throughout the markets, Neko noticed for the first time. With people gathered in them, drinking and still enjoying themselves. Neko and Layla reached the end of another row. An old fashioned android waited nearby with its minder. It resembled a moving crash test dummy but was dressed in bright colours like a clown. As it spotted Neko and Layla, the droid fingered a long, blue balloon and inflated it with a whoosh of air from one of its fingertips. It started twisting the balloon into some kind of hat to offer to Neko. The young hacker started to feel his heartbeat slow to normal. He had been to the markets before but usually only to grab a piece of gear or tech he couldn’t find anywhere else, and then he’d get out. Now he could see life in The Schism for the people who existed primarily in meatspace wasn’t just pain and getting broken down. They made their own life, their own light and fun and purpose.

The backdrop to this half of the markets was dominated by an illegal holocast of two enormous sumo wrestlers. Over fifty metres tall, the pair of giants circled one another in silence. The colour balance of the holo projector was off so both wrestlers looked far too pinkish, like cartoons. Stomping on air overhead, the giants crashed together and ripples went through their flesh like crashing waves.

“Where is that broadcasting from?” Layla said.

“Over there, the bars are set up to watch the holocasts,” Neko said.

One of the half-finished and then abandoned concrete towers bordering the marketplace had several levels taken over by makeshift bars. The building had no outer walls, just ranks of concrete floors and pillars. The bars, open to the air, were set up to watch the holocasts projected above the market. Neon alcohol signs and table lights of the bar could be seen from down below. The rest of the building was probably filled with squatters.

“Let’s go,” Layla said.

Gunfire exploded as another three-man team spotted them. Shouts and the smell of gunpowder wafted over the stalls. Another burst and a fish tank near Layla disintegrated, gushing water and bits of glass. Bioprinted koi tumbled out with the destruction, flopping and wriggling like windup toys as they hit the ground. The clown android was hit as well, staggering back with sparks shooting from its chest. Layla raised her stolen submachine gun and emptied the entire thing over the heads of the approaching mercs, shredding signs and canopies. As they ducked for cover, Layla pumped out the empty magazine and replaced it with a fresh one.

“Let’s go!” Layla said.

Neko and Layla darted through the markets toward the half-completed building. As they got closer, neon arrows directed them toward a sports bar. The two giant sumos continued to clash above them. Neko could look up and see the soles of their feet, along with other saggy, dangly bits he wished he couldn’t. A short path led to an entry in the honeycombed tower.

The merc hovercraft circled the marketplace, back into view, searchlights hunting. The remaining teams of mercs were closing in. They must have been talking to one another as the flying craft had some concept of where Neko and Layla were. The two of them fled into the building.

Jury rigged lights lit the corridors and stairwells of the building. Colourful signs advertised drink specials and sporting events coming up on the holocast. Submachine gun tucked against her armpit, Layla led the way up the stairs with Neko tagging after her. He strained to hear the mercenaries’ boots tramping up the steps behind them.

Makeshift walls of drywall and plywood had been erected around the open air bars. Short corridors led to chemical toilets. More jury rigged lights illuminated a couple dozen patrons. Although it had been silent outside, the sounds and commentary of the sumo fight were being piped into the room. Most of the patrons were peering out of the building, across the market, at the wrestlers. With the open wall, a cool breeze cut across the room. Half a dozen totally flat televisions were pasted around the bar tuned to different sporting events along with other small holos on the tables.

“Everyone out!” Layla said.

Bar patrons turned and stared. “Isn’t that Southpaw Jackson?” someone asked.

Layla switched her SMG to single shot, aimed, and fired a round through one of the televisions. Its delicate electronics fractured and the picture blinked out.

“Out!” Layla said.

The bar customers leapt to their feet, abandoning their drinks and tables. There was no security, just a couple of bar staff. The crowd spilled out the exit the way Neko and Layla had come, back down the corridor of flimsy walls to the concrete stairwell. The flood of people would meet the mercenaries coming up the other way, slowing them for a few seconds at least.

Layla crossed the room with Neko behind her, still holding his satchel. The sports bar, apart from the flat panel televisions and HD holos which had reception far superior to the sumo holocast outside, was wasteland chic. The bartop was made of weathered planks set on top of old oil drums. Some of the tables were also supported by oil drums or stacks of ancient tyres. Rusted signs and sporting memorabilia had been nailed to the walls. Reaching the lip of the building, lacking any kind of safety railing, Layla peered across the market toward the hovercraft.

“Got to figure out a way to take down that troop carrier,” Layla said. “If I could take out one or two of its engines from up here, they’ll have to head back to base.”

“I could hack into it, bring it down safely?” Neko said.

“You can do that?” Layla asked.

“If I can access its systems wirelessly, I might be able to piggyback on its transponder code,” Neko said.

Mercenaries came up the corridor toward the bar. They forwarded their arrival with a couple of smoking cylinders that bowled through the entryway.

“Flashbangs! Get down, open your mouth!” Layla said.

Neko ducked behind one of the tables, hitting his knees. Instinctively, he shielded his face and eyes. Without understanding the why of the order, he let his mouth hang open as wide as it would go. Both grenades exploded across the other side of the room in brilliant, searing flashes. The light and white smoke were accompanied by a couple of deafening cracks. Pressure waves from both blasts bounced through the room, blowing around loose coasters and the like. Neko’s open mouth stopped his eardrums from bursting even though the noise of the flashbangs left a howling ring in his ears.

Layla recovered fast, straightening from behind a table made of old fashioned tyres. Mercs moved in after the flashbangs. She opened up with her stolen SMG. Bullets drilled through the thin walls like paper. Mercs were sent scrambling, sending back overlapping howls of gunfire. Neko and Layla’s positions were better than that of the invading force. Although they couldn’t be seen properly, the walls the mercs were hidden by offered absolutely no protection while Layla and Neko at least had the cover of the tables, solid enough to actually stop bullets. Their backs were to the open drop outside the building, however, and Layla only had a finite amount of ammunition to drive the mercs back.

“If you can hack that hovercraft they’re using, then do it!” Layla shouted over their ringing ears.

Neko swung his bag around and flipped it open. Inside he had a holopad and some basic gear still more sophisticated than what the average net user would have access to. As the firefight continued, he switched on the holopad, a virtual screen sparking to life in the air above it. Neko unrolled a flexible keyboard, a strip of rubber covered in keys. He could use both the holo and the keypad to manipulate the data. Neko fired up a familiar program to filter through the electrical signals and traffic passing invisibly through the air all around them.

“There’s a lot of noise but I think I can narrow it down!” Neko said.

“That’s great, do what you need to do!” Layla said.

The mercenaries got smart, looping around the bar where Layla couldn’t see and then laying suppressing fire down through the walls. Rounds punched apart the drywall easily. The gunfire was totally random but it filled the air with bullets and ricochets. Layla fired some short bursts back through the walls but there was no chance the mercs would be staying in one place. They moved constantly trying to overwhelm her, some of their shots getting dangerously close to hitting her. While she was distracted, several other mercs appeared around the bar’s entryway. They fired and moved in leapfrog bursts. Rounds chewed into Layla’s table and the stack of tyres supporting it.

Layla swept the top off the table, letting it clatter to the ground. With her mechanical hand, Layla picked up a tyre from the top of the stack in front of her. Although it reduced the size of her cover, Layla cocked her arm back, her left foot planted, while holding her submachine gun in her right hand. She whipped around and let fly with the tyre like she was throwing a hammertoss. Spinning, the band of hard rubber and mesh shot across the room like a missile and hit one of the advancing mercs flush in the chest. He was picked up, ribs breaking, and catapulted backward through the doorway. The meaty thwack the tyre made as it hit the man’s chest echoed through the room. Layla brought the submachine gun around and emptied the magazine into the other two stunned men. Both fell back, wailing, one bleeding from a mangled hand and the other from their leg.

Neko zeroed in on the hovercraft and pierced its outer defenses. A system access page appeared in Neko’s holo. He didn’t have time to run a program to brute force his way through the portal, he just had to hope none of the standard fallbacks were in place. Neko’s fingers flew across his keypad. The words ‘admin’ and ‘admin’ appeared across the boxes in front of him. The screen blinked and the administration panel opened in front of him.

“I’m in,” Neko said.

“Fantastic,” Layla said drily.

Layla loaded the last of her stolen magazines into the submachine gun. The firing behind the thin walls increased in intensity, deafeningly loud, and bullets ripped through tables, chairs, and holoscreens, causing glasses to burst behind the bar. Layla picked up another tyre and threw it through one of the walls.

“I’m running a trojan puppet but I’ve got to talk my way around the onboard AI!” Neko’s fingers flew across the keypad. “Convince it I’m actually one of its own systems instead of an outsider!”

“Any guesses on time?” Layla said.

“It’s really more of an art than a science!” Neko said.

“Then we might have a problem,” Layla said.

The mercenaries stopped firing and fell back, like fish fleeing an incoming shark. The hovercraft was circling toward the building. It breached through the image of the two enormous sumos, its nose and canopy pushing through the pinkish fighters followed by the rest of the sleek body. The nose of the craft drew level with the open wall on one side of the bar. Although it was on a swivelling mount, the 20mm cannon underneath the hovercraft was pointed directly ahead at them. Its barrels started to spin up. The whine cut through the noise of the remaining televisions and holos.

“Move it!” Layla said.

Layla grabbed Neko by the shoulder and heaved him off the ground. Neko just barely managed to snatch up his holopad and keypad, still running background programs, before he was pulled away. The two of them sprinted across the room, Layla guiding Neko roughly.

The 20mm cannon erupted, its barrels disappearing in a blaze. The noise was world-ending. Anti-aircraft rounds churned through the room, annihilating everything in their path. The building seemed to shake. Tables and other furniture exploded. Chunks of wood were reduced to splinters. The bar’s countertop was blown apart, glass bottles shattering, oil barrels bowled over with gaping holes in their sides. The walls the mercs had been using to hide had more holes blasted through them and sections collapsed. Concrete dust filled the air.

A ratty pool table that must have been carried the whole way up the stairwell or flown in by drones was across the bar. Neko and Layla fled toward it as the room exploded around them. A single round would be enough to turn either one of them to paint. With her mechanical arm, Layla grabbed the side of the pool table. Her left leg locked up and she flipped the table easily onto its side. It landed with a heavy boom. Brightly coloured balls spilled across the floor. Like Layla had hoped, the base of the table was a slab of solid concrete. Its green felt top now faced toward the hovercraft. Neko and Layla disappeared behind the table.

The minigun continued tearing apart the surrounding walls and furniture. Neko and Layla covered their ears as the screaming split their skulls, both kneeling. The pool table shook as bullets smashed into it but the thick wood and concrete slab held. One of the pockets was torn open. Other bullets chewed apart the side of the table, ripping massive craters out of the wood and spraying the back of Layla’s head with splinters.

Neko threw his gear back on the floor. His head was buried low over the holopad, face almost stuck in the projected screen. Righting the keypad, Neko started punching in new instructions. The ship’s AI was waiting patiently but suspiciously for the codes he fed it next. The pool table shook. It was the only solid piece of cover they could have gotten to but it couldn’t stand up to the barrage forever. The underside of the table started to split and more concrete dust filled the air.

“Hope you’ve got something!” Layla said.

“Almost!” Neko said.

Neko punched in a final few strings of commands. The lines on his holoscreen turned from red to traffic light green. Suddenly, the 20mm cannon stopped firing with a metallic snarl. The silence yawned. Neko and Layla’s ears were ringing worse than ever, a swan song of dying frequencies. Ruin filled the sports bar, destroyed furniture, walls, along with the reek of shattered alcohol bottles.

“Got it!” Neko said.

New images, feeds from the hovercraft’s external cameras, popped up around the main screen of Neko’s holopad. He used them to guide the ship as he punched new commands into the system. The crew inside the hovercraft was frantic as they wrestled with unresponsive controls. The craft moved backward. Blue flames flared from its engines, picking up its front end.

The hovercraft kept pushing backward, back through the sumo holocast, with its front end tipping up and up. It drove itself almost totally vertical. The crew in the cockpit were thrown out of their seats. A couple went tumbling out of the cockpit, down the length of the troop carrier’s bay area. Off to one side of the marketplace was a section of picnic tables where people could sit and eat. The hovercraft arched toward it. Going belly up, the craft exposed its underside and its engines, now upside down, punched it toward the ground.

The food section of the markets was nearly abandoned after Neko, Layla and the mercs had gone blasting through it before. A few groups of people had been watching from a safe distance but seeing the craft arch toward them they ran for it. The craft crashed down on its back, crushing dozens of tables and chairs underneath it. The roof of the gigantic craft crumpled like a tin can and sparks flew as panels were ripped open. As soon as it landed, the engines shut off. There was no explosion, no loose fuel, only the cooling whine of the engines. It sprawled next to the marketplace like some dead alien beast.

Layla picked herself up and hurried across the destroyed bar. Near the entry she found a second submachine gun. She carried it with her, one in each hand, as she moved back toward the stairwell. In spite of the ringing in their ears, echoing up the concrete steps, Neko and Layla could hear boots retreating into the distance as the mercs fled back to the ground floor.

“With no backup, they’re not going to risk it,” Layla said. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”

“What now?” Neko asked.

“Well, we kind of depth charged your fucking life here, giving you the job that got you in these guys’ sights. They won’t stop, they’ll send more,” Layla said. “How about you come with me and earn a bunch more credits doing some more work for the good guys?”

“I guess so?” Neko said. “There’s nothing holding me here.”

xXx

Another sports bar in another city, The City in fact, to the north of The Schism. It was a far nicer one than the bar Layla and the mercs had destroyed that night, months ago. Most surfaces shone with the gleam of glass or polished chrome. You couldn’t look in any direction without seeing half a dozen screens and high def holos. On a normal day, the screens and holos would have been displaying different sports and games all clamouring for attention but today, of course, they were all displaying feeds from Slayerz. Everywhere you looked was the main feed of the game. Other screens had feeds from different teams and areas, or highlights, and the holos showed revolving profiles of contestants, weapons, and threats.

You had to pay to reserve a seat in a place like this on Slayerz day, but Neko didn’t need to worry about cred anymore. He sat in the middle of the bar, smiling, a fizzing cocktail in front of him. The room was loud and filled with people, other patrons jostling his shoulders, but the anti-anxiety meds meant he didn’t jump or shrink away the way he once would have. Across the room, a bunch of people booed and a wave of popcorn was hurled at one of the screens. Neko brought the cocktail to his mouth to hide his laughter. A lot of people were angry at how this year’s Slayerz was turning out but some seemed to be enjoying it even more or found it just as funny as Neko did.

Another guy Neko’s age stopped by the table in front of him, caught up by the drama on one of the nearby screens. Tall, lean and dark, with ropey muscles in his arms and a foppish fringe falling over his eyebrows, the rest of his head shaved. He blocked Neko’s view for several moments and then stepped back, realising his mistake, and wiped his fringe back.

“Oh, sorry.” The guy jabbed a thumb back at the screens. “Can you believe all this?”

“No, no, it’s pretty hard to believe,” Neko said.

“I’m Dyrrius, uh, mind if I sit here?” He asked.

“Neko, not at all,” Neko said. “Are you a big Slayerz fan?”

“Wouldn’t exactly call myself a fan but-,” Dyrrius said. “Can you imagine being a part of something like that? People shooting at you? Explosions and stuff?”

“No way,” Neko said, smirking. “That would be crazy.”

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Sean: Man, it’s been ages since I touched anything in the Kill Switch ‘Verse! Or did I used to think of it as the Slayerz ‘Verse? I can’t really remember. It’s a lot of fun, it’s like getting back to my roots. If you check out what’s under the ‘Kill Switch’ tag you’ll see some of the earliest stories that made it on the website were ones that expanded on characters and events from the trilogy. Titama is probably my favourite, very similar to this story really. Hell, even the banners look the same!

Originally, I thought of doing a collection of short stories and calling it Kill Switch: Behind the Black. Since each novel revolves around a season of Slayerz, Behind the Black would be stuff that’s happened off-screen either in character backstories or just revolving around the show in some way. One of my favourite things in the novels are these ‘advertisements’ that kick off each chapter once the show is underway and they’re already like fun little vignettes in themselves, so it made sense.

Anyway, if you made it this far and you enjoyed all that then here’s some more info about the Kill Switch novels and short stories. Oh, I think I’ll have another random, unthemed short story to go up next and then I’ll get back on the Mixtape theme so make sure to keep checking the site. Thanks for reading!