Extensis Vitae: City of Sarx Page 5

  “Tseng Bao,” Rin said in surprise. Her hand crept nearer the hilt of her katana. She had vowed to kill the man standing before her the next time their paths crossed.

  Bao wore his long, dark hair pulled back. His face was handsome except for his hard, narrow black eyes, which gave him a perpetual squint. He wore some type of high-end flex armor that was a burnt orange with black trim. His muscular forearms were exposed, revealing a pair of Chinese dragon tattoos that curled up his arms and disappeared beneath the armor sleeve. A carbon-black pair of sai hung on his belt, and he held a plasma pistol pointed at her. A pair of thugs that had been smoking and lounging against the wall outside the door of the tavern moved in behind her, and a couple more loomed behind Bao. The bounty hunter gestured with the pistol toward the alley. “Let’s have a nice chat somewhere a little more private. Don’t even think about touching that katana.” One of the thugs roughly removed the katana from its place at her waist. A couple of townspeople glanced in their direction as they passed but quickly looked away again at a scowl from Bao.

  Rin moved into the alleyway, two of the thugs falling in right behind her. Bao walked next to her, pistol pointed at her ribs. He looked away for a moment, and Rin saw the stim box mounted to the back collar of his armor. Bao’s enhancements were mostly chemical in nature. “You said something about a bounty?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Bao smirked. “One million chips for your pretty little head on a platter.”

  “Hmm… I’m impressed. Who did I piss off this time?”

  “Let’s just say killing the Overseer’s brother wasn’t a very bright idea. Where’s that boyfriend of yours? Another million for him, too.”

  “Don’t know who you’re talking about,” Rin replied innocently. Bao clubbed her on the temple with the stock of the pistol, but she didn’t flinch. Her dermal plating easily absorbed the minor damage. Shit. Reznik’s walking into a trap, and he doesn’t know it.

  “We’ll see about that,” Bao said. “Maybe a few holes burned through you with hot plasma will refresh your faulty memory.”

  “Doubtful. Remember when I said I’d kill you the next time I saw you?”

  “I remember you talking some shit like that.” Bao scowled. “You still upset over that hacker I put down? It was just business. One contract is much the same as another. What’s the big deal? You should know there’s nothing personal in our business.”

  “Well, it was personal to me,” she replied.

  They were approaching the end of the alley. A large dumpster sat at the end of the alley next to the back door of The Boisterous Keg. To their left, a scaffold had been erected for roof repairs being made five stories overhead. Heavy bundles of tiles were stacked on the top level of the scaffold.

  Rin knew she had to make her move, or she’d be dead in a couple more moments. “As a matter of fact—”

  She lunged sideways into Bao, knocking the pistol to the side and driving an elbow hard into his kidney. Bao grunted and staggered sideways into the wall.

  The nearest thug lunged for Rin, but with her speed, she easily evaded the man’s grasp. She seized the man’s wrist and propelled him forward, sending him crashing into Bao and momentarily shielding her from his deadly plasma gun.

  She charged the man holding her katana, who was futilely attempting to draw a large pistol from his belt. Rin drove her knee into the man’s chest and chopped down hard with her left hand, hearing a satisfying crunch as the man’s fingers were crushed against the butt of the gun. With her right hand, she pulled the katana from his grasp and leaped clear of her attackers. The man reeled back, not quite sure what happened, since it had occurred so quickly. By the time he realized he had lost the katana and his fingers were broken, Rin had landed a dozen feet away and had drawn her katana. On the draw, she carved through one of the scaffold support joints, sending sparks flying from the metal-on-metal contact.

  Bao darted clear of his men, firing the plasma pistol, but Rin was already moving, and the superheated plasma globules hit the brick building, burning large gouges in the blocks. Rin grabbed a crossbar on the scaffold, swinging forward and kicking the nearest thug in the chest, sending him back into his companion. One of the men fumbled and dropped a shotgun onto the dusty ground. The scaffold creaked as her weight and momentum helped the support slide free of the severed joint.

  Another thug rushed in to try to tackle her, but she dodged, kicking the man in the back and propelling him face-first into the brick wall. She grabbed the stunned thug’s arm and pulled him around, putting him between her and Bao just as the bounty hunter fired again. The stench of burning flesh reached her nose, and the thug she was using as a shield screamed in agony as the plasma began burning a six-inch hole through his ribcage.

  The loud groan of overstressed metal resounded in the alleyway as the scaffold toppled and collapsed, sending stone tiles raining down onto the group. A tile caved in the head of the thug that had gotten hit by the plasma, so Rin let the man fall and sprang away, doing her best to dodge the falling debris. Another thug crashed into her, desperate to escape the deadly rain. Rin cut him down and leaped over a section of scaffold that collapsed in front of her. Tiles shattered all around her, peppering her with stinging fragments of ceramic as she sprinted for the mouth of the alley. The thug with the broken fingers stumbled around, miraculously not getting hit by any tiles. His luck ran out when a jagged rail from the scaffold impaled him through the back, pinning him grotesquely in place, still standing but slumped over, blood running down the metal shaft sticking out of his guts.

  Rin dropped into a crouch, katana raised protectively in front of her. A cloud of dust billowed throughout the alleyway, and the rumbling avalanche of tile and scaffolding started to settle. A form loomed in front of her as another of Bao’s men came stumbling out of the cloud, coughing and choking, blinded from the dust, an arm hanging at a weird angle from a shattered shoulder joint. Rin stabbed him through the chest, sending the thug spinning into the wall of the building. He slumped and slid to the ground.

  The dust began settling, and Rin was just about to be cautiously optimistic that Bao might have not survived the avalanche intact when a streak of orange-and-black fury exploded out of the dust cloud.

  Bao leaped about fifteen feet into the air, and his momentum allowed him to run along the wall above the debris. He kicked off the wall and launched himself at her, spinning into a tight front flip. A barrage of shuriken led the way as he landed where Rin had been a moment earlier.

  Rin tumbled sideways, deflecting a couple of shuriken while the rest sailed harmlessly overhead. She regained her feet just as Bao snapped off another shot from the pistol. Rin felt the heat of the pale green plasma globule on her face, and her eyebrows singed as she narrowly leaned out of the way just in time. The round sizzled into a wall. That was too close. Time to take away his advantage.

  Rin’s katana flashed just as Bao pulled the trigger again. The plasma pistol failed to fire as Rin’s quick strike severed the last two knuckles of his trigger finger, sending it arcing up past his face. Juiced up as he was on stims, Bao likely didn’t even feel the pain, but the blood pumping from his finger must have registered on his HUD. The bounty hunter cursed in Chinese and dropped the plasma pistol.

  Rin followed up the attack, but Bao was a blur as he sprang away from her. She imagined that his stim delivery system would take care of the bleeding, but he couldn’t grow a new finger, so that would put him at a disadvantage.

  Bao’s already narrow eyes became black slits, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. “Bitch, you’re gonna pay for that one,” he growled as he drew his sai. Rin noticed the right one faltered slightly as he adjusted his grip to account for the stump of his index finger. He began to twirl them in his hands, the carbon black blades a dark blur. The luminescent ink of his dragon tattoos flared and pulsed angrily in response to his mood.

  “We’ll see who ends up paying,” she replied with a grim smile. She backed away, h
er katana becoming a silvery blur as she put it through a defensive pattern. The two of them faced off, maneuvering for position.

  Bao suddenly lunged forward, almost faster than Rin’s HUD could track. She had maxed out the speed augmentations available to her generation of skin, but Bao’s stims allowed him to move even faster. He was likely stronger as well, but his weakness was damage resistance. He might not feel pain, but his body sustained damage like normal, assuming she could get past his armor and score a significant hit.

  Their weapons clashed and sparked faster than the eye could see as they exchanged blows. Bao tried to ensnare her blade with the tines of his sai and nearly succeeded. He twisted and tried to yank the blade from her hands, but she had a proper two-handed grip and was able to disengage. Bao followed up, managing to get inside her guard as she recovered. He stabbed her several times in the abdomen, but her dermal plating deflected it harmlessly before she broke away. Bao tried to trap her blade again, but she slashed him in the side as she evaded. His armor deflected the damage, and he managed to spin around and crack her in the cheekbone with a pommel as he whirled past her.

  The two of them regarded each other again, searching for any weaknesses. Bao yelled and charged, bringing his sai together to block her strike and deflect her sword up and away. He drove his knee into her midsection and tried to bowl her over with his greater size and strength. Rin hopped backward and reversed the grip on the sword, bringing it down and slashing the back of his unprotected calf.

  Bao grunted and released his grip on her sword, bringing the sai inside and jabbing at Rin’s chest and throat. She felt a few of the strikes connect, but her HUD indicated the damage was deflected. Bao stayed right on her, stabbing repeatedly, not allowing her to get free and gain a reach advantage again. Rin brought the sword down, trying to cleave him through the shoulder, but he slid past her in a blur of orange and black, trying to stab her in the back.

  Rin leaped away, clearing some distance between them. Bao darted back in low, sai twirling and steel ringing as she worked her blade, slashing and parrying. She felt clumsy in comparison to Bao’s sheer speed, the first time she could ever remember having that feeling in a battle.

  “You’re slower and weaker than me,” Bao said with a sneer. “It will only be a matter of time before your damage resistance wears off. When that happens, your blood will paint this alleyway.”

  Rin ignored the threats and attacked furiously. Her katana was liquid silver as she twirled it, forcing Bao to back away or lose a hand from the whirlwind. She charged, and Bao kept slipping away. Seeing a break in his defense, she spun the sword to the side and back, scoring a powerful strike against Bao’s side. He grunted as the blade creased the armor and bit into his ribs, but then he gained some distance.

  “Nothing to say, huh? Very well.” Bao attacked again, leaping past her low guard and stabbing at her face with both sai. Rin nearly stumbled as she tried to duck. Her HUD flashed an amber warning as one of the blades narrowly missed her right eye and scraped along her temple, but her dermal plating again turned away the blow. After a flurry of slashes across her arms and shoulders, she knew she wouldn’t be able to take much more damage before beginning to bleed.

  “It won’t be long now,” Bao observed, backing away to toy with her. He idly twirled the sai as he poked and prodded at her, but Rin refused to take the bait. Instead, she focused on his hold on his sai. She knew the grip of his right hand was weaker, and she just needed to find an opening to take advantage of it. Finally she saw what she was waiting for. When Bao twirled the weapon between a strike and defensive position, the right sai was slower and clumsier. She decided to focus on that.

  Rin backed away, keeping the advantage of distance. Her probing slashes were all parried away neatly. She brought the katana around to his right side in a casual strike, and when Bao spun the right sai back against his forearm for a block position, she hammered into his blade with all her might. The sai dug into his forearm from the strength of her attack, and her blade drew blood from the meat of his forearm. His fingers fumbled the grip, and he almost dropped the weapon. There it is, she thought in triumph.

  Rin slid her katana down hard against the fork of the sai, and the weapon flew out of Bao’s crippled hand. His eyes widened in surprise, and Rin reversed her attack, striking Bao in the forehead with the hilt. He stumbled back, desperately trying to fend her off with his remaining sai, but it wasn’t enough. She slammed past his defense and drove the sword into his chest.

  Bao stiffened as his armor buckled and the point of the katana drove deep into his pectoralis muscle. With his stims blocking the pain, he growled and brought the remaining sai up and drove it into Rin’s back, trying to stab her kidney. Her HUD flared in alarm as the blade began to penetrate her dermal plating. With a savage thrust, she drove the katana deeper into the bounty hunter’s chest. Blood suddenly sprayed out as the blade ruptured Bao’s aorta.

  The pressure went away from Rin’s back, and the bounty hunter sagged against her, blood pumping out over both of them. The sai tumbled from his suddenly nerveless fingers and clinked to the street.

  Rin grasped Bao roughly by the chin and forced him to meet her eyes. “This is for Ichiro Akiyama,” she said quietly.

  With that, she withdrew the katana from Bao’s chest and shoved him away. The bounty hunter crumpled to the street in a pool of his blood, gasping weakly. The tattoos on his forearms faded back to their normal color.

  Rin surveyed the carnage in the alley for a moment before walking over to the shiny plasma pistol on the ground. Plasma weapons were rare and quite valuable. The gun was in her hand before she knew what she was doing, and she was slightly irritated when she realized that she had picked up the gun in case Reznik wanted to add it to his collection. Well, okay, just in case we meet up again, she decided as she tucked the pistol into her belt. She couldn’t help wondering if bounty hunters had gotten to Reznik yet.

  Chapter 8

  Reznik had been following Declan’s directions for about twenty minutes when he came across the skin shop. The block was more upscale than most of the Sprawl had been so far, and he realized that the closer to the inner city he got, the nicer the neighborhoods were. “Upscale” was still a relative term, but it seemed more like a normal city block instead of a slum.

  “Centralux Skins,” a holographic banner proclaimed. “Don’t be a prisoner in your own body—free yourself and upgrade today to the person you were meant to be!” Curiosity got the better of Reznik, and he stepped inside to look around.

  A light flashed in his eyes from an iris scanner as soon as he walked in the door. “Welcome, visitor,” a pleasant female voice greeted him. A hologram of an attractive, sharply dressed woman appeared and floated alongside him as Reznik walked inside. “Would you like to open a CentraLux shopper account today?” When Reznik replied in the negative, the hologram barely skipped a beat. “Are you shopping for a new skin or just some cosmetic enhancements?”

  “I’m just looking around,” Reznik replied. “I won’t be buying anything today.” The hologram thanked him for stopping in and disappeared. The walls of the store were lined with huge holoscreens of attractive people. Several customers were viewing personalized holograms.

  A chubby young woman held her arms out to her sides, and a machine dropped down from the ceiling and scanned her up and down in a 360-degree field. Several holograms appeared in a line in front of her with her face superimposed on the different body types. She gestured in the air, and the holograms cycled past her. “Oh! What about this one?” she asked her boyfriend, pointing to a hologram that was about six inches taller, with a tiny waist and unnaturally exaggerated—almost cartoonish—curves.

  Reznik was reminded of Izzy, the woman who had been with Haze’s gang that he had killed back in the underground bunker. “Bodies made to order,” he murmured to himself.

  “Certainly. Anything you want,” a voice answered him. Reznik hadn’t realized anyone was listening in. A tall, s
lender woman with shimmering black hair, porcelain skin, and jade green eyes stood a few feet away. She was dressed in a crisp white blouse and tight knee-length black skirt. The woman looked him up and down. “We can provide any cosmetic enhancements and change your build, race, facial features… pretty much whatever you want. If you want to keep your same features or want to have a very specific look, we can get you a 94.3 percent match—guaranteed. Unless we have your model on file, then we can make an exact duplicate.” She smiled a movie star-caliber smile.

  “What do you mean by a 94.3 percent match?”

  “Original skins are created to specification with 94.3 percent accuracy. Think of a holovid star that you want to look like, or maybe you always wanted the strong chin and aquiline nose of a certain great house. Those would be original skins created to certain specs. The accuracy would be similar to when you see someone from a distance that you think you recognize. You’re sure it’s the person you know, yet when you approach, you realize it isn’t—subtle differences like spacing of the eyes, shape of the mouth, contours of the brow and cheekbones. This person could be a sibling of the person you know, yet only when you see them up close do you notice the differences. Someone intimately familiar would instantly recognize the differences, yet if you’ve only seen them from a distance or met them years ago, you might think it’s the actual person. If we already have the genetic code used for a template, then we can make an exact copy more or less, but originals are 94.3 percent accurate, we say.” The woman smiled again and watched him.

  “Very interesting. I’m curious what skins go for these days,” Reznik admitted.

  “May I?” she asked. She held up a gadget that looked like a laser pointer. “You’re a synthetic, aren’t you?” When he nodded, she pointed the laser at his eye. “Hmm… no tags.” She looked puzzled after scanning both of his eyes. “What kind of optics do you have?”