The whiskey bottle was a dead soldier between them, its final dregs a testament to confessions that hung thicker than the bar's smoke-hazed air. The opening riff of yet another SAMURAI song was vibrating through the floorboards, a low, primal thrum that felt like the soundtrack to their shared unraveling. Luxy's eyes were closed as her head was lolling back against the scarred wood of the booth, a single tear tracing a clean path through the grime and defiance on her cheek. Void watched her, the adrenaline of their raw exchange fading, leaving behind the familiar, leaden exhaustion. The world outside this grimy bubble - Marzena's smear campaign, Amy's fragile hope, Keira's worried gaze - felt like a distant, hostile planet.
"C'mon, Luce," Void said, her voice rough but gentle. She nudged Luxy's boot with her own. "Can't sleep here. The barflies will pick your pockets clean, and your commlink's probably gonna get more blackmail material than a corpo exec's diary."
Luxy's lips twitched into a weak, slanted smile. She didn't open her eyes. "Let 'em try. My pockets are as empty as my fuckin' promises." She let out a long, shuddering breath that smelled of cheap whiskey and despair. "Just... Gimme a minute. The room's spinnin' like a goddamn grav-rig."
Void understood. It was far from your hallmark intoxication, rather, it was an emotional purge. They had carved themselves open on this sticky table, and now the cold air of reality was seeping into the wounds. She slid out of the booth, her own limbs feeling heavy and uncoordinated as the bartender gave her a slow, knowing nod from across the room. The unspoken understanding in this place was that some nights ended with patrons being carried out, and others with them carrying their own ghosts home. That night was a bit of both.
"Up you get, you magnificent disaster," Void grunted, hooking her hands under Luxy's arms and hauling her upright with a grunt. Luxy was dead weight for a second before her survival instincts kicked in, her boots finding balance on the sticky floor. She swayed, gripping Void's shoulder for balance.
"Fuck me, you're strong for a stringbean," Luxy slurred, her head dropping onto Void's shoulder.
"And you're a lightweight for a professional drunk," Void shot back, her arm tightening around Luxy's waist. They made for the door, a three-legged race of the damned, moving through the bar's dim, beer-scented atmosphere. The other patrons, a collection of husks and hustlers, paid them no mind - "weird shit" was just another Tuesday in Taverna.
They pushed through the heavy door. The humid, electric night air of Szczecin hit them like an abusive mother's slap. It was a cocktail of CHOOH2, fried food from a vendor down the block, and the ever-present undertone of industrial decay. The shift from the bar's contained chaos to the city's vast, indifferent sprawl was always jarring. They stood for a moment on the pavement, blinking under the flickering orange glow of a faulty streetlamp, letting their systems recalibrate.
"Right. Which way's the fuckin'... thing?" Luxy mumbled, squinting down the cracked sidewalk.
"Your place is three blocks east, you intellectual amoeba," Void said, steering her gently. "Try not to puke on my boots. They've seen enough horror for one lifetime."
They'd taken maybe five stumbling steps when the voice cut through the ambient city hum, sharp and grating.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, what the dolls dragged out."
The man was a walking cliché of low-life bravado. He leaned against the brick wall of the alley next to the Taverna, his frame bulky in a way that spoke of synth-steroid abuse rather than honest muscle. A cheap, luminous tattoo of a serpent coiled up his neck. He had the glazed, aggressive look of someone who'd been drinking something stronger than beer for hours.
"A pair of little lost pups," he sneered, pushing off the wall and taking a step toward them. His glassy eyes devoid of anything but contempt roamed over them with a proprietary leer. "All done with your little... Date in there? Bet you could use a real man to show you how it's done."
Void felt Luxy stiffen against her. Her own sluggish pulse sharpened into a fine, cold point. She didn't let go of Luxy, but her posture shifted from supportive to a coiled readiness.
"Not interested," Void said, her voice flat and devoid of all emotion. It was a dismissal, simple and final. "Keep walking, Lux."
They tried to move past him, but he sidestepped, blocking their path. The smell of cheap whiskey and unwashed skin rolled off him in waves.
"Oh, don't be like that, sweethearts," he crooned, the false sweetness in his voice as thin as razor wire. "A pretty thing like you," he said, his gaze landing on Void's magenta hair, "all done up like a joytoy. And your friend here... Looks like she could use a firm hand, hell, maybe you both could."
"Piss off, you bum-stenching chromedome," Luxy slurred, her head lifting. The alcohol was making her brave and stupid. "Your flirt's out of date and your personality's as boring as a fuckin' Delamain."
The man's face contorted, the fake charm evaporating into pure, ugly rage. This was the reaction he'd been looking for: a reason to escalate.
"You stupid bitches think you're so smart?" he spat, taking another step, forcing them back toward the alley's mouth. "Walking around like you own the streets. You're nothing. Just a pair of cunts who don't know their place. I'm gonna teach you some respect."
"Your last warning," Void said, her voice dropping to a deadly quiet. She gently pushed Luxy behind her, creating space. Her mind was already running calculations. Distance, potential weapons, exits. The Taverna's door was behind them, but it felt a continent away. "Walk. Away."
"Or what?" he laughed, a harsh, barking sound. "You gonna cry? Gonna call your girlfriend?" His hand went to his belt, and the streetlamp glinted off the cheap, polymer grip of a flechette pistol. It was a messy weapon, designed to shred flesh at close range with a cloud of hyper-velocity needles. It wasn't accurate, but in a confined space, it didn't need to be. He didn't level it yet, just rested his hand on it - a clear threat that didn't need words. "Now, you're gonna come with me, and we're gonna have a little fun. Maybe I'll even let you watch it afterwards."
That was it. The line had been crossed from unpleasant harassment to a direct, physical threat. The verbal filth was one thing, the weapon was another. In that split-second, Void's world narrowed to a tunnel. The city's sounds faded. There was only the drunkard, the gun, and Luxy's shaky breath behind her.
Time seemed to slow, crystallizing into a series of hyper-clear images. The grime on the man's knuckles. The lazy, arrogant sneer on his lips and the way his weight was distributed on his back foot, making him slow to react. Void had spent a lifetime being the smartest person in the room, the ghost in the machine. But she'd also spent it surviving. And sometimes survival required a more direct approach.
He opened his mouth to spew more venom, but Void cut his attempt short.
It wasn't a wild swing. It was a piston-strike of pure, efficient violence. She dropped her weight, twisted her hips, and drove her right fist forward in a straight line that bypassed his clumsy guard entirely. It connected with his jaw with a wet, sickening CRACK that was louder than the traffic. The sound of teeth shattering.
The man's head snapped back. A spray of blood and saliva misted the air. The flechette pistol clattered to the pavement. He staggered - a gurgle of shock and pain escaping his throat as he stumbled back into the alley wall. His eyes were wide with disbelief, the alcohol and arrogance wiped away by blinding, white-hot agony.
"Fuck, that hurt," she mumbled to herself.
But he was big, and hopped up on something that was fighting the pain. With a roar of pure fury, he pushed off the wall, swinging a meaty, wild haymaker toward Void's head. She barely ducked under it, the wind of the blow rustling her hair. As she came up, she drove her elbow hard into his ribs. He grunted, the air whooshing out of him.
"Void!" Luxy shouted, her voice sharp and clear now, all traces of drunkenness burned away by the surge of combat adrenaline.
The man focused entirely on Void. He lunged for her, a bull of flesh and fury. It was a stupid, brute-force move, but it was fast, fueled by a damaged ego. Void started to sidestep, but her boot slipped on a patch of greasy pavement she hadn't seen. The microsecond of lost balance was all he needed.
His full weight slammed into her, driving the air from her lungs in a sharp, pained gasp. The world upended. Her head cracked against the unforgiving concrete, stars exploding behind her eyes. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth where she'd bitten her cheek. For a terrifying second, her vision swam, the neon signs of the street blurring into streaked, nauseating colors.
He was on top of her, a crushing weight smelling of stale sweat. His knees dug into her ribs, pinning her. His face, a mask of bloody, twisted triumph, was inches from hers.
"Not so fuckin' clever now, are you, you pink-haired cunt?!" he roared, spittle and blood flecking her face.
She bucked and twisted, but he was too heavy, his position too dominant. Her arms were trapped. Her cyberdeck dug painfully into her back. Her mind, usually a stream of code and solutions, was a screaming, primal thing - "get off, get off, GET OFF."
His right hand, the one not braced against her throat, scrambled across the ground. His fingers closed around the grip of his pistol.
"Gonna paint this alley with your brains!" he snarled, bringing the weapon up. The barrel, a gaping black hole, swung towards her face. Time fractured. She could see every scratch on the metal, the faint glow of the charge indicator. She could feel the cold promise of the hyper-velocity needles that would turn her skull into a sieve. This was it. This was the ugly, meaningless end she'd always half-expected.
Her eyes, wide with a terror that was purely physical, locked with his. And in that final moment she saw it: not a simple, homicidal intent, but an eager anticipation. He was going to enjoy this.
A low, digital whizz, the sound of a capacitor charging way above its maximum rating, cut through the roaring in her ears.
"Get. The FUCK! Off her!"
The command was a razor-sharp shriek, ripped from a place of pure, unadulterated fury.
The assailant's head started to turn, the triumph in his eyes shifting to confusion, then to a dawning horror.
Luxy was standing over them, her posture a silhouette of vengeful fury. Her left arm was fully extended, the sleeve of her jacket ripped away, revealing the full, menacing architecture of her cyberarm. The matte-black housing was buzzing, vents glowing with a malevolent cherry-red heat. From the palm emitter, a visible pulse of shimmering, distorted air-thicker, more concentrated than before-erupted not as a wave, but as a focused lance of energy.
"You're gonna regre-"
It drilled right into his temple. There was no loud sound, just a sickening, wet POP.
The effect was instantaneous and gruesome. The man's body arched backwards in a violent, unnatural spasm, every muscle contracting at once. A scream finally escaped his throat, but it was a short, choked-off sound, like a wire being snapped. His eyes rolled back into his skull, showing only the whites. The flechette pistol clattered from his spasming fingers, landing beside Void's head.
He seized, his limbs flailing like a marionette with its strings cut, his head whipping back and forth. A torrent of blood burst from his nose, followed by a darker, thicker fluid that seeped from his ears. The X-43 MIKE implant - Keira's jury-rigged design from all those years ago - pushed to its absolute lethal limit, completely obliterated his systems. It had sent a surge of raw microwave energy through his cerebral cortex, boiling the delicate tissue from the inside out.
His body went limp, collapsing off of Void in a boneless heap. The vacant, staring eyes and the slack, open mouth left no doubt. He was very, very dead.
Silence descended, thick and heavy. The only sound was Void's ragged, desperate gasps as she dragged air back into her lungs. She shoved the dead weight off her legs and scrambled back, her boots slipping in the blood that was now pooling beneath the man's head.
She looked from the corpse to Luxy, who was still standing frozen in her attack stance, her cyberarm now emitting a faint, dying whine and the smell of superheated components. Luxy's face was a mask of stark, horrified shock. She quickly realized: she had executed him.
They looked at the mess. An assault-turned-murder. The blood wasn't only from broken noses: it was cerebral hemorrhage from a life eviscerated - quite permanently, in fact.
Without a word, Void pushed herself to her feet, her entire frame now screaming in protest. She walked over to the body, stiff as a mannequin, then knelt, her face devoid of expression, and frisked him with the same detached efficiency. She found a cred-chip in the jacket belonging to the corpse.
She stood back up, turned and walked back into Taverna. The bartender was already standing, his truncheon in plain view now. He'd heard the scream, the silence that followed. He saw Void, disheveled, blood on her face and clothes, her knuckles raw.
"Fifteen hundred," she said, her voice a low, gravelly thing, stripped of all affect, as she flicked him the eddies. "For the drinks. And for the biohazard disposal out back."
The bartender's eyes flickered to the screen, then to the door, then back to her. He understood the price had just quadrupled. He understood why. He gave a single, grim nod.
"Don't be a stranger," he muttered, the lie falling flat in the charged air. He turned as his hand reached for a mop, but then quickly glanced at Void's face again and changed his mind. He figured a heavy-duty cleanup kit from a locked cabinet behind him will do a better job.
Void walked back out into the night where Luxy was still standing, staring at her own hand as if it belonged to a stranger.
"Okay," Void panted, leaning against the grimy brick wall. "What the fuck was that?"
Luxy stared at her still-smoking palm. "I think I just turned his brain into soup. My poor MIKE's fried. Keira's gonna hate me if I ask her another favor."
"Tasty." Void spat blood. "Remind me to never make you that mad. And don't worry about Kei, I'll warm her up to the idea."
"Noted." Luxy finally looked at her. "You good? He cracked your head open."
"Hardest part of my body. Besides my ego." Void pushed off the wall. "How about never doing that again?"
"Deal. You're buying the next round."
"After that? I'm buying the whole fucking bar..." She looked at her hands, then touched her own cheeks. "But maybe not today. Let's just get back home. I... Don't think Kei's gonna like this kind of red on my face."