02h23m

She woke up …

Sweating… the ceiling fan was dead and the neon from the noodle shop across the alley kept the room in a constant state of artificial twilight, it was exhausting. Rane was pretty sure the only reason why the streets now looked like those futuristic movies was because everyone thought it would be a good idea to actually make them in real life.

She sat on the edge of her bed, the frame making noises under her weight as she sat closer to the edge. Part routine part itch, she ran a finger down the back of her neck, that tiny ridge where the skin met the cold seam of the spine mod. It didn’t hurt, not anymore, but there was always that feeling of an itch in the morning.

She stood up, looked at the window and stretched her back, that always made the servos thrum with a low-level static that she could feel in her molars.

Looking around the apartment was tiny but functional, mostly empty, she had just moved in. Four days out of jail, got assigned some work, a legitimate job starting Monday at the hydro-processing plant, a real luxury all things considered.

The credits they gave her when leaving ran out already, was barely enough for a couple meals, if not for the work assigned living space, she’s been out in the street already. Not that it was just luck, she paid dearly for what was now a handout from greedy-corp. She just needed to survive the weekend.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three taps on the door. She looked towards the door, to the small monitor on the right side, slightly aged but perfect quality to see who it was.

Knock. Knock.

Rane opened the door reluctantly. “I can’t believe you still wear that coat”, a stressed but suddenly confused face looked back to her. “Rane, listen I ….”, she cut him right away. “You know what, f- you, two years, not a single visit? I thought you were dead. Or maybe you are, judging by that face and still wearing the same stupid coat”. She didn’t even knew why she was pointing out the coat but it was pissing her off.

“Listen, I’m sorry but we don’t have much time, they are just behi….”. Now it was Rane’s turn to be confused but worried quickly.

“Get out”, she started closing the door, but it halted.

A hand kept it open, with a screech of the door trying to go where it couldn’t anymore, forced to go against it’s initial direction, but very quickly turning direction, opening again, it’s let’s-not-crush-a-human mechanism triggered.

Victor stepped to the side, now looking like a man who had been beaten down.

“Well well, if it isn’t Miss Rane, fresh out of the box”, it was Jack, smaller than both of them, but still a menacing figure. Behind him one goon who’s grin was as stupid as his face. Both entering the apartment, not in a forceful way but also not in a waiting for permission mood.

She didn’t lose a beat. “Exactly, and my debt is paid Jack, you know this.” “Oh I know” , he replied. “But old Vic here has some pending business, and I know you owe him”. She looked at Victor “The fuck?” - he shrugged. The other guy circled behind her. “See I got a problem” Jack continued, “That needs fixing, which makes it a problem for both of you”.

“Rane,” Victor started, his voice in a almost caring but serious tone. “We wouldn’t be here if we had a choice, coppers got the kid, he’s still in a local but if we don’t get him out soon, he’s ending at Blackgate”

“Blackgate? The heck did he do? You have to do some serious level of fuckery to end up there”. Blackgate was bad as it gets, even she didn’t ended up there and well, it had been messy.

Victor intervened, “He’s in for minor only, barely one hour ago, we managed to escape, but it’s what they’ll find once they process him.”. Victor paused, eyes to the left side corner, “We hijacked a lab and there was a bundle package with some Root Certs in it … still valid till midnight”.

Rane turned at the goon who had now circled to her back. He wasn’t looking at her face or checking her out, instead looking at the chrome seam at the base of her skull. She knew already.

Jack was mostly observing her interactions, like evaluating the next step that would get him what he wanted, not in a mood for prolonged conversations. He started “Ok now that the introductions are made. Yeah we’re in a pinch we can’t properly setup anything, you’re as good as it gets on short notice, also clean, won’t flag anything until we get there.”

“Get a cab? Why you need me for?”. She was playing dumb trying to gain some time for … something. But she knew they were after her for the spinal mod. It wasn’t one of those that gave strength or anything like it, it had been a life-death situation that allowed her to walk again.

Jack was still patient but clearly losing it. “A little bird told me that thing in your back”, he moved his finger in the air drawing a line “Can run unsigned code, off-grid, no one’s the wiser”. She looked at Victor, but realized immediately who it was.

Jack continued: “Oh, I know he’s your brother’s kid, he was always very chatty about his cool aunt, so you’ll help us get him out of there, and I need what’s on that head of his.”

02h38m

Designated driver because she had no outstanding warrants, Rane was driving a car that had seen better decades. Victor was on the passenger seat and Jack and Rex, she heard the name when they were getting into the car, both in the back seats.

While going to the car she got the short version of the story, they broke into a lab, stole a big experimental weapons called railcaster or something, almost looked like it belonged on a gunship, but still quite portable all things considered. Rane could see them tinkering with it in the back, they also had this weird cylindric tube with a window showing a chip of sorts, apparently some sort of portable power source they wanted to hotwire to the gun and shoot it to blast their way into the police station. And for that they needed her.

“How do we even get close?” Rane asked, her voice tight as she saw them messing around with the connection ports on the weapon. They were weaving through the thick, neon-lit traffic of the lower districts.

“We don’t,” Jack said, “We pull up, you hit some roof nearby, and you give us one high output burst. We blow the holding cell wall from the street, grab the kid and vanish.”

It started raining…

03h02m

They were three blocks from the precinct when the red strobes started reflected in the water drops filled back mirror. Cop cruiser behind them.

“Keep it cool,” Victor whispered, but not looking at her. “Car is registered. Just a routine sweep.”

The cruiser pulled alongside them. A drone detached from the roof, hovering less than 2 meters from Rane’s window, lens adjusting as it scanned her face, a blue light pattern scanning. She kept looking forward, hands on wheel. In the cruiser two coppers inside, not even looking at them, just watching something on the feed, assuming it wasn’t worth their time, just another routine check.

It seemed like the drone was all finishing when something flashed on the cop’s car. Something was up. A red dot showed up near the drone lenses, infra-red scan, Rane looked through the rearview mirror, the gun!

The drone’s light turned a sharp, piercing red. Both cops looked to them simultaneously, they couldn’t get away clean anymore.

“Go! Go!” Victor screamed.

Rane slammed the pedal. The tires trying to grab the wet asphalt slipping as they speeded up. The cops followed them, sirens full blasting. It didn’t took long until a rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of a police heavy chopper started to chase them. They hadn’t just flagged their faces, they’d flagged the stolen tech now.

“Rane! Get up there! Now!”

She didn’t have time to argue.

The sunroof already half-open, she pulled herself through. The wind hit like a wall of knives, the rain needling her face as the car was being pushed harder. She pressed flat against the roof, palms over the metal until she found the forward handles of the railcaster’s mount.

The weapon was mag-locked to the roof rack now. She gripped the handles and felt the chassis clamps snap around her forearms, not a designed feature, just the recoil-lock engaging everything it could reach. Good enough so she wouldn’t fall.

She reached back. The cable was thick, triple-pronged, still trailing from where they’d left it coiled near the mount. She jammed the first end into the cylinder port, click, and fed the second into the seam at the base of her skull.

03h11m

The connection hit her like a punch immediately.

a surge

Not a handshake. Not data yet. Just raw, unfiltered current screaming up through her vertebrae. Her vision tore, the city splitting in frames, each one half a second behind the last, neon bleeding at the edges. White noise swallowed her hearing.

Her left eye gave up first, nothing, all black. The right one started throwing errors, the spine implant crashing diagnostics hard, red lines of code bleeding down the lower half.

Through it she could feel the cylinder’s charge the way she’d feel heat from a stove. Present, close, hurting.

Energy climbing.

The police chopper was directly overhead, its spotlight making everything even worse. The precinct was one block ahead. She couldn’t have known where the holding cells were.

She could feel it now, she could command some of the instructions in the flow

The chopper dropped lower but more distant. She could feel the heat building at her back, radiating off the cylinder like an oven, that’s why the cops were backing off. They were running out of road.

Raw data, too much to process…. almost…

Faded voices … “What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t see shit!”, Rane didn’t know what was in front of them anymore.

Jack shouted “Just shoot!”

She squeezed.

The recoil didn’t just shake the car. It almost broke it. A white-hot displacement beam punched through the rain and hit the precinct wall in a single detonation of concrete and violet sparks. The blast wave shattered every window on the block.

The shockwave threw her into the asphalt, the cable ripped from her spine with a sound she felt in her back teeth.

The world went black even before she hit the ground.

06h42m

Sleep was a thin, fragile thing. It broke when the smell of antiseptic hit her nose.

Rane opened her eyes. The room was sterile, filled with high-tech monitors that hummed with a rhythmic pattern. She tried to reach for her head but her arms felt heavy. She looked down and saw high-tensile magnetic handcuffs.

Victor was sitting in a chair by the bed. He wasn’t wearing his grimy jacket anymore. He was in a crisp, dark uniform with a badge that caught the light.

“You’re awake,” he said quietly.

Rane stared at him, the static still echoing in her teeth. “What happened? Where’s the kid?”

“Alive.” He didn’t look at her when he said it.

“You’re a cop,” she whispered, the betrayal stinging worse than the spine mod. “You used us, …me. I did time for you.”

“I was undercover.” He paused, eyes going to the window. “I didn’t know their target tonight until after the robbery. By the time they showed up at your place I had no way to get word out without blowing everything.”

“So you let them use me anyway.”

“My cover got blown the second I called for backup.” He met her eyes then. “I barely got you help in time.”

Victor stood up, reaching into his pocket. “Rex boy is in custody. Jack disappeared in the chaos. We thought he was small fish but we think he’s working for someone much worse now. All that firepower, that device, whatever it is.” He paused. “They got a brain dump out of the kid before we could pull him. He’s out but what he was carrying isn’t.”

Rane looked at the sterile white walls. She was four days out of jail, and she was already back in chains.

“I’m sorry but let’s be honest here, you and your family were doing stints well before I showed up. I just rode shotgun for a while.”

She looked at Victor’s empty hands.

“So… what you’re saying is that you brought no chocolates or flowers?”

Victor reached out, but he didn’t touch her. He pulled a small set of electronic keys from his belt and tapped them against the bed rail. “I brought keys…”

He looked at her, his expression unreadable behind the professional mask. “We might need your help again.”

Rane laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. The sun would be rising in a few hours, but for her, the night was just getting longer.

.

Thanks for reading. Sorry for potential disappointment, sometimes I have flashes of stupid ideas form in my mind that "are nothing or not complete", but I've been doing this exercise were I write them in my blog as brain dumps.

Photo by Valentin BEAUVAIS