Her landing was far from graceful; she barely cleared the safety barrier of the parking garage; her rear tire clipped the barrier. The impact rattled her to the core. It jarred her teeth and sent shockwaves of vibration through Adi’s body and her Ozzy. Chendiuria's gravity, 1.33 times Old Earth's, made the landing difficult, threatening Adi and her Ozzy.

Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Adi quickly shifted her Ozzy into emergency override reverse, the command flashing through her neural net. The reactor's power level increased to a dangerous point, the engine whined louder, and the damaged tires screeched trying to stop the bike.

The roar of her bike filled the confined space, a guttural snarl of tortured machinery. She skidded to a stop in a shower of gravel, powdered ferrocrete, and angry sparks mere millimeters from the far side wall of the ferrocrete safety barrier. Adi knew that in a few weeks the self-repairing, bacteria-laden ferrocrete would look as if nothing had ever happened.

Several warning lights and damage indicators dismayed Adi when they illuminated in her HUD. Her beloved Ozzy would require a lengthy shop time. She scrolls through the list of damaged components.

Several repair parts would have to come from Mars, some of which could be expensive, difficult to find and costly and slow to ship to Chendiuria. Adi is relieved that the damage to her Ozzy's struts and frame is minor, eliminating concerns about her bike's steering and handling.

Adi grimaced, a familiar sour taste in her mouth. Her beloved superbike, her Ozzy, now sported a severe case of road rash, its sleek black composite underside heavily scarred and marred. Finding a body shop in this chrome-plated jungle wouldn't be difficult, but affording the repairs? That was a real fucking challenge.

The only cold comfort in the damage's face was that the bike's magnetically shielded fusion bottle had held. Made of a super-collapsed duraalloy, its safety margins far exceeded anything Adi could inflict. The risk of containment loss, like a miniature star going nova beneath her, was nearly eliminated. Most dismissed these ubiquitous fusion reactors, including Adi, but in moments like this, their sheer indestructibility was a quiet, thankful mercy.

With a sudden, cold shock, Adi realized that part of the download from Kane had subtly overridden the safeties on her bike's reactor. Had they been active, the harsh, jarring landing would have undoubtedly triggered an emergency shutdown, leaving her Ozzy a dead weight, powerless to stop. A grim, unacknowledged gratitude for Kane's foresight flickered through her, a small mercy in a brutal world.

Both tires screamed yellow warnings, their digital readouts flashing a grim prognosis that both tires needed replacement. The damage meant that her Ozzy couldn't push safely past 200 kph. Any faster, and the tires could shred, spitting composites and alloys in a catastrophic failure. Each Mars-made tire would cost over 7,000 credits, a price tag that stung and was slightly over two-thirds of her monthly food bill.

Adi used her neural net to tap into the traffic cams, a faint, grim satisfaction settling over her. Kane had played his hand well. The hacked, improvised ramp lorry, now a twisted roadblock of mangled chrome, had done its job.

Several pursuing motor robo-blues had slammed into it, their chassis crumpling like discarded poly drink containers. The wrecked, burning Robbies further choked the elevated superhighway, a chaotic pyre that completely blocked all lanes.

The city's AIs had their digital hands full, choked by blocked traffic and delayed deliveries. Most super-lorries, the lifeblood of urban commerce, which were too massive for surface streets, were now blocking idling giants on the elevated highway.

Adi wondered what kind of cascading domino effect this would have on the city's commerce in the next few days, a quiet economic collapse rippling through the concrete canyons.

Processing this influx of data took merely a fraction of a second, the neural net in her skull making instant data retrieval more than just a luxury; it was a lifeline. Adi felt a cold, sharp pang of gratitude that the city's AIs, for all their omnipresent eyes, still didn't know who she was.

The BOLOs and APBs currently flooding the net, screaming for her apprehension, still listed her as nothing more than "unknown, extremely dangerous and armed." She was a phantom in the system's relentless hunt. For now, she was just another ghost in the machine.

Adi sucked in a lungful of the garage's stifling, non-recycled air, the ache in her bones a dull throb. Through her enhanced sight, the day's warmth shimmered, rising in visible waves from the ferrocrete, the air thick and buzzing. The world bloomed into a slick grid of data across her vision as her augments processed the chaotic landing.

A flicker of movement, a distorted shape against the outline of the personnel lifts—and there, she spotted the witness. Of fucking course, she thought. Nearly ran into some fucking lolo.

A ghost of a woman in casual business dress attire was stepping out of a rattling personnel lift, her eyes wide with a terror that mirrored the plume of scorched air and screaming metal Adi had just left in her wake. The soft-flesh civilian was a stark reminder of the fragile world her cyber-enhanced existence had just shattered.

The cold relief of a successful landing washed over Adi, a brief chemical high in her bloodstream. But it was short-lived. In the deafening chaos of her jump, she had completely forgotten about the open line to Kane, the former DSI spook. For all he knew, she had met a tragic end in a spray of sparks and twisted metal instead of making it to safety.

The line remained open, a ghost humming in her ear. Adi knew she needed to address the situation promptly. To her surprise, the drone kept its tracking and comm laser focused on her helmet throughout the jump and rough landing. It was a silent, unblinking eye that had followed her through the air, and it told her that Kane had been watching the whole time.

Adi wasted no time addressing the open channel to Kane. With a few quick commands to her neural interface, she re-established the secure line with the former agent. She cut through the static, her voice cold and level.

Kane's hologram flickered back to life in her HUD, his pixelated face a mask of anxiety. "Adi, are you there?"

He turned, his gaze snapping to someone off-screen. "I have no idea if that crazy jump worked or if Adi is splattered on the roadway, a slick of metal and meat for the Robbies to scrape up all..."

"It worked," Adi interrupted, her voice a razor's edge cutting through Kane's panicked speculation. "But Kane, we need to talk business. What's this fucking job you've got for me?"

After shouting in joy and pumping his fist, Kane nodded, his hologram fidgeting nervously and his voice a mix of relief and tension. Adi noticed Kane held a beautiful polished stone mala in his hands. She wondered how far he had progressed through the 108 beads.

"Right, to business then. Listen, Adi, I'll get straight to the point."

"Good idea."

"Somebody had a listener on Rat, so I had to move the package somewhere more secure, so forget about the train station."

Kane takes a deep breath, his pixelated chest expanding. "But the high-profile package still needs to be transported to the right lab. It's a sensitive job, and even very dangerous, but the payout is substantial. Are you interested?"

"Go put your fucking nuts in a food processor," Adi snarled, her words dripping with contempt.

"Adi!"

"Of course, you sheezy fucktwat, I'm interested. And the payout had better be more than substantial."

The holographic Kane's image shimmered, his arm extending towards her. In his palm, the cold, black crystalline glint of credit wafers caught the dim light, a silent promise of wealth. A whisper of a fortune offered.

Adi weighed the offer. The numbers on the chips Kane displayed offered a cold, hard promise against her financial struggles. Her recent escapades left her with a damaged bike and a trail of chaos behind her. She badly needed credits, and this dangerous job sounded like it could fill her depleted coffers.

Kane's mention of danger, however, piqued her curiosity, but also left a sour taste in her mouth. Rat had burned her and, by association, Kane. Often, what was supposed to be an easy, safe job turned out to be anything but a cruel joke in the dark alley of her life. She was a combat veteran, but even she knew when a job smelled like a gruesome death trap.

"What's so dangerous about this package?" Adi asked, her eyes narrowing, reflecting the cold, neon glow of the holographic display.

Kane hesitated, his pixelated form flickering as if battling a poor connection. He leaned in closer to the holographic display, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Adi, this isn't just some data chip or a bag of synth-stims, stolen gems or smuggled weapons. This is an exceptional piece of history, something that could shift the power balance on Chendiuria, hell, potentially throughout all explored and colonized space."

Kane's gaze flickered, a phantom looking over his shoulder. "The powerful Chendiurian elite, the corporatocracy that supports them and most of our oligarchs, have much to lose and they fear that loss more than death."

"Color me surprised," Adi said while changing pistol magazines. She forcefully loaded a fresh magazine filled with armor-piercing bullets, their depleted uranium cores over collapsed tantalum, into the weapon.

"Some very influential individuals want to possess it, and if they can’t have it, they are determined to ensure it's completely destroyed. They'll burn the city down to achieve either goal."

"Fucking great Kane," Adi mumbled around a full mouth of chalky dry Sean Cawley ration bar chunks.

Kane's eyes locked onto hers, even through the digital static. "You'll face threats from all sides, Adi, but if you can deliver the package safely, you will be set for quite a long time. Perhaps even for life."

Kane's comms crackled to life, relaying the memory of a plan gone to ash. Their original strategy had been to move the artifact to one of the decommissioned ice-harvesting space stations hanging in the cold dark at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Adi would have retrieved it from there, a clean snatch-and-grab in the void. But that plan had fallen apart, blown wide open when the opposition caught wind of it.

Jhanae Afolayan, the planetary and star system governor herself, had made a grand public point of announcing from her gilded office in the New Delhi Arcology that she'd ordered the removal of squatters and suspected pirates from all the old, mostly deserted space stations.

Now, only skeletal crews of maintenance workers; those poorly paid ghosts keeping the agriculture domes operational and doing basic upkeep; and newly contracted, embedded security forces had access to those orbital husks. The government had slammed the door shut, erasing the path.

Kane's comms crackled loudly, but the information was garbled, and the actual situation remained obscure. He couldn't pinpoint Afolayan's loyalties. The planetary governor was a consummate politician.

Her true motivations and intentions were as opaque as a blackout curtain. Kane knew that lawmakers purposefully designed laws to protect politicians and their agents, not the anonymous victims crushed beneath their finely crafted decrees.

His group had been in contact with smugglers on one of those mothballed stations, the kind who usually greased the palms of inspectors to look the other way. But this time, the inspectors had arrived with mercs, and neither party was accepting bribes.

A highly unusual situation. Kane had lost contact with the smugglers and could only hope they hadn't ended up in one of the penal labor camps spread across Chendiuria, forgotten cogs in a system that chewed up the unfortunate and spit out their bones.

"Why me?" Adi's voice was a low growl, soothed by the bottle of water she downed with the horrid ration bar, skepticism lacing every syllable. Not seeing a recycler handy, she stuffed the bar's wrapper in the empty water bottle and pocketed it.

Kane's hologram flickered, the anxiety still etched on his face. "Because, like I said, this package could change the balance of power on Chendiuria. We face stiff oppo because those in power fear losing it the most."

He paused, a digital sigh. "Our group knows a little of what a Colonial Fleet Marine Myrmidon can do. And through the past jobs you’ve done for us, you’ve proven that you’re one fucking tough, exceptionally resourceful bitch."

"Thanks for the compliment."

"We figure you have the combat experience, the cold-blooded intelligence, and the sheer meghrurluq to get the job done."

His gaze was unnervingly steady. "We’ve run a fuck ton of AI scenarios with Kuro's help..."

"Who the fuck is Kuro?" Adi asked, cutting Kane off.

"My AI assistant, you'll meet her at my house Adi. AI Kuro and other AIs re-simulated every variable. The AIs believe you have the best chance of getting the package to BuCol on Mars."

"Mars! This is the first fucking time you’ve mentioned a job to fucking Mars. This better not be something that will get me locked in a Mars Fed pen for the next 50 years to life."

The mention of Mars floors Adi, momentarily derailing her thoughts. She's never been to the Bureau of Colonies, but like any colonist, she knows where it is.

She needed to know what she was hauling was clean, or at least clean enough for a Martian narc or customs inspector to look the other way.

"No, Adi," Kane's holographic form asserted, his voice firm. "Nothing illegal, or even slightly less than legal. That's even accounting for fucking ridiculous Martian laws."

Adi mulled over Kane's words, weighing the risks and rewards. Thanks to her neural net, she had perfect word-for-word playback of every syllable he'd uttered. She knew she was walking into a dangerous game, one played in the deep shadows of interplanetary power. But the allure of a life-changing payout was a siren's song, hard to resist when her own life had become a constant, grinding struggle for the next meal, the next repair.

"Alright," she finally said, her tone resolute, cutting through the hum of the machinery. "I'm in. Kane, give me the details. But I'm not taking any shadow economy script again. I nearly lost my ass trying to cash those fucking worthless data wafers."

Kane nodded, a sly, almost feral grin spreading across his holographic face. "Good choice, Adi. I'll send you the bike stowage coordinates and some of the immediate intel. I'm not trusting that the opposition can't or hasn't already cut into this comm channel."

His eyes, even as pixels, held hers. "Time is of the essence, but there are some things we need to do first."

"I like it. I love it. I want more of it," Adi mutters, a low growl of frustration.

"Aditi Peshlakai, don't give me that Marine PT bullshit." Kane's voice is flat, devoid of humor.

"I hate it, Kane, when you fucking use my full name." Her tone is sharp, a warning.

Kane turns from the screen, and she can hear him talking to someone distant in the background, a rapid-fire exchange she assumes is in the family's Uyghur language.

Adi doesn't have a translation program for Uyghur and makes a mental note to get one from Kane. Knowledge is power, and in her line of work, even whispers could be fatal.

Kane’s voice crackles in her comms, a ghost in the machine. "I've downloaded the first coordinates into the tunnels underneath the city to your neural net."

Adi is unfamiliar with the subterranean maze, her internal maps drawing a blank. Kane's voice, thin and distorted, continues.

"The old tunnels are deeper and in better condition than even the failed subway tunnels."

"Kane, what happened to the maxim that for a plan to succeed, you must have at least three alternate plans for certain success?" Adi's voice was a low growl, a challenge thrown into the digital void.

"We don't have the time or the options right now, Adi." Kane's voice was flat, devoid of the usual bravado.

"Shit." Adi grumbled, a familiar sense of dread crawling up her spine like a cold, metallic spider.

"Take the third lift from the right down to the basement, Adi. I have an associate meeting you down there with some supplies." Kane's face on the screen leans closer, the pixelated image grim.

"I know you're pissed about your Ozzy, and I'm sorry for that. Please keep your temper and don't kill or maim anyone unless you have to."

With that, the connection cuts, Kane's face vanishing from Adi's comms, leaving only the digital static in her ear. Kane leaned back in his chair, a silent sigh escaping his lips that no one heard. He checked the status of his deployed teams while waiting for his robo-chaiwalla. Across the city, Al-Medina, the city's all-seeing AI, was already burning through massive amounts of surveillance video, its algorithms hunting for Adi's ghost in the machine.

Kane's group had deployed teams, digital ghosts themselves, that had already breached several fortified buildings. These were the husks housing the bulk of AI Al-Medina's and the other city AIs' memory banks. It was a brutal, physical infiltration, far more reliable than attempting to hack the neural pathways of a city-wide intelligence from the outside.

Once inside, each team would flood the systems with fabricated video feeds, uploading enough fake data to make Adi a phantom, a blur in the digital noise, effectively preventing the city's pervasive AIs from recognizing her. They were drowning the surveillance net in ghosts.

Adi realized she was farther downtown than she'd expected, practically breathing distance from two of the city's monstrous fusion-powered energy and desalination plants. She could feel the low, persistent hum of the reactors in her bones, a constant vibration that felt both comforting and ominous. The air was thick with the metallic tang of ozone and hot circuits, the aural drone of the turbines a constant, grinding reminder of her descent into the city's mechanical gut.

Riding the lift down to the basement, Adi couldn't shake the feeling that her life had just taken another unpredictable turn, hurtling her deeper into the shadows of a future she hadn't signed up for. Exiting the lift, her augmented eyes swept over the cluttered machinery room, every shadow a potential threat, wondering where this contact, this ghost Kane had promised, could be hiding.

A green blinking arrow on her HUD catches her attention. Following its guidance around the humming machinery, Adi quickly comes to the back of the room, where a youth stands beside a closed door. He's wearing what Adi assumes is the uniform for one of the local gangs with a patchwork of scavenged synth-leather and mismatched armor plating.

The young man is trying to look tough, attempting to affect a streetwise, worldly demeanor, but his youth prevents the success of such attempts. He looks more like a scared kid playing dress-up than a hardened gangster.

As Adi slowly rolls up to the youth, he reaches into his jacket. Before his hand has even completed the journey fully into his pocket, Adi's kukri has sliced through his black denim-clad crotch to rest against his genitals.

The youth's pale complexion turned a sickly shade of green, and his eyes widened so much that Adi worried the kid's eyeballs might fall out of his head. He'd seen the Myrmidon's kukri flash, a blur of motion, and he'd felt the chill of the blade resting against his skin.

"Move that hand really fucking slowly with whatever is in your pocket," Adi snarled, her voice a low growl. "Don't make any sudden fucking moves if you value your dick and balls remaining attached to your body."

With shaking hands, the youth hands Adi a package.

"I don't know and don't wanna know what the fuck's in that package. I'm fuckin' outta here."

With enviable speed, the youth sprints for the exit, his worn boots slapping against the grimy concrete. Adi watches him leave, a bemused expression on her face that the youth couldn't see through her helmet. She briefly considers putting a round from her mostly less-than-lethal Zoran-Ahti in his ass, a parting gift for his insolence, but ultimately decides against it. She has only one more full magazine for the gun, and its ammo is pricey.

Looking inside the bag, Adi is astonished to find several thousand credits in unmarked wafers, and a data chip with instructions for getting into and passing through the long-forgotten tunnels underneath the city. Her neural net collects the information and integrates it into her navigation program, a new set of routes burning themselves onto her HUD.

Adi rolled her Ozzy to the closed and locked service door and was surprised to find a brand new security keypad next to the equally new-looking door. It's an island of clean, unmarred tech in a sea of grime and refuse, and a bad feeling crawls up her spine.

Adi figures the original door, replaced by this new one, remained unopened for a long time. She's thankful that because Chendiuria is so dry, metal doors don't rust into useless slabs of corroded metal. Somebody, Adi notices, has recently serviced this door; it looks clean, oiled, and ready for action.

The door silently rolls up after she enters the code from the instructions, revealing a cool, pitch-dark passageway. Adi wonders how far underground she is.

Silently rolling her damaged superbike into the tunnel, she is pleased when her HUD's green arrow lights up again, guiding her down into the darkness. Unlike the well-lit elevated superhighway she left, these tunnels are mostly pitch black, with voids that swallow light.

Adi, who had long since forgotten about these forgotten arteries of the city, recalls from her primary education files that the tunnels show no signs of tool marks and are entirely straight, with a deviation of less than a nanometer over a distance of 150 kilometers.

According to Chendiurian rumors, these tunnels existed before the first survey team ever explored the planet, a silent testament to a rumored ancient civilization that predates them all. Adi gave no credence to the rumors, believing they were just wishful ass end of nowhere conjecture.

As she rolls away from the reinforced metal door, it slams shut behind her. Adi hears the unmistakable sound of electronics frying. Suddenly, brilliant white heat and light erupt from the door's edges, and Adi realizes it has welded itself shut.  

Relying on her bike’s lidar and multi-phase pulse-doppler radar, integrated with her augmented senses, Adi keeps her damaged Ozzy at a steady 50 kph, a ghost in the pitch-black tunnels. She avoids using her headlights, a beacon no one in this dark world would miss. She navigates the crude passages the gangs had added, a silent rider in a silent world. Various gang members stop her at several checkpoints as she travels across their territories, their faces shadowed and their voices rough.

Most of them carry ancient gunpowder cartridge-type weapons, relics from a bygone era, while a few have more modern small arms, most likely stolen from Terrestrial Army depots. The gangs likewise wear a motley collection of body armor, most of it stolen current TA gear, disreputable-looking homemade crap, or older, and most likely stolen military surplus.

Using the credits provided by Kane, Adi pays the "tolls," handing over chips to grimy hands and armored fists, each transaction a flimsy pact allowing, but not necessarily guaranteeing, her safe passage. She gets into a grim rhythm: pay the toll, motor on a bit, pay another toll. The routine repeats itself a dozen times, each stop pulling her deeper into the tunnel's suffocating darkness.

Along the way, she passes several defunct and partially cannibalized cleaning and maintenance bots and drones, most of them so old she can't determine their manufacturer. They're just skeletal husks of metal and wiring, silent monuments to a bygone era.

Adi had to show them only once why attempting to block her travel was a terrible idea. In a blur of motion, taking only a fraction of a second, her regimental kukri chopped a ganger's weapon into many small pieces. Before the first bits of metal even landed on the ground, she sliced through the miscreant’s groin armor to rest her lightly humming blade against his genitals, making a very succinct point.

By the time the gang member’s brain caught up with Adi’s kukri, he’d already pissed himself. Leaving the visibly shaking and trembling ganger standing in a pool of steaming, fragrant piss, she passed through the barricade and past his laughing comrades, driving towards the next one.

Adi loses count of how many checkpoints and tolls she's paid until she comes to an apparently unguarded barricade completely blocking the tunnel. Stopping her bike and putting her boots on the ground, she looks around, a sense of unease crawling up her spine. Where are the gangers? She's supposed to pay the toll so she can pass through.

Adi raises her helmet’s face shield with her neural net, automatically shutting off her air supply. The calm, cool air has a faint, musty smell, mixed with hints of sewage and industrial lubricants. A familiar scent of the underbelly.

Adi flips through her few vision IOLs the Corps left active—thermal, low-light, macro—her augmented eyes hunting for a flicker of heat, a shadow out of place. Her hand reaches back, grabbing the Shadowfury from its holder. She readies its grenade launcher, contemplating how a HE grenade would affect the barricade and the gangers likely concealed in the tunnel.

If she wore her Corps Myrmidon armor, she'd think nothing of dropping a high-intensity nano-thermobaric grenade, a clean, final solution. But she's not, and the Shadowfury is the biggest stick she's got in this fight.

From the darkness on her left, an undetected figure materialized next to her. Without conscious thought, her left-hand kukri was suddenly in her fist, whistling through the air. Adi barely checked her swing as some part of her recognized the person. As the air infused with drugs hisses out, the person's face shield rises silently, revealing a face she recognizes all too well.

Amidst the tunnel's darkness, Kane's breaths come in quick gasps, echoing off the bare rock walls. The gentle hum of her Ozzy's fusion-hybrid engine, with its faint ozone smell, provides a soothing contrast. The air is thick with anticipation, and the silence around them feels almost otherworldly, wrapping them in an unsettling stillness that heightens every sound.

"Holy fuck! Adi, you nearly fucking chopped my head off!"

Adi replaced her kukri, realizing that the blade had sliced through Kane's lightly armored adaptive camouflage suit, slightly nicking his neck. A small drop of bright red blood rolls down Kane's suit. Serves the stupid fucker right for startling me.

"Kane! You should fucking know better than to startle me. I've had a really fucking shitty day! I just jumped off the fucking superhighway and damaged my Ozzy. I'm not in the fucking mood for fucking games!"

Adi checks her pharma implant, ensuring that it is not still dumping artificial dopamine into her system. While she appreciates the hits of dopamine, she worries she cannot afford to refill her pharma implant, and is unsure if Kane would refill her pharma implant. Adi also wonders what favors Kane would require for a pharma refill.

"Hey girl, whazzup?"

"Not fucking funny, Kane! In the immortal words of Saint Wil Wheaton 'don't be a dick.'" Adi inhaled deeply through her nose, again noticing the faint smell of drugs from Kane's suit mixing with the dusty, stagnant air of the tunnel.

"Adi, not every problem can be solved by violence. Violence doesn't control everything."

"Maybe not everything, but a fucking majority of them."

Kane pulls out a micro-drone, letting it fly, taking a position over Adi and Kane near the roof of the tunnel. A faint red light emits from the belly of the drone, dimly illuminating the immediate area.

"Adi, how are you feeling today?"

"Do you really fucking have to ask me that?"

Adi recognizes Kane is a classic narcissist who often uses outdated street slang and old gang symbols, believing these elements enhance his street credibility. Despite coming from a wealthy Uyghur family, many people see him as simply a foolish rich person. Kane also holds an unwavering belief in his moral superiority.

"Why do I smell Joltmist in your suit's air? You can't just be like everyone else and drink coffee, tea, or power drinks? You're not all twitchy so at least you were smart enough not to mix Joltmist with Wiredancer."

"It's been a long day, Adi, the rifaicitabine helps. I wont touch gadoexakin. I've been awake for nearly 30 hours and will likely remain so for many more hours while dealing with this shitty situation..."

"Sorry Kane, my give a fuck button is broken," Adi interrupts.

"... our best computer models, even with advanced, sentient AI algorithms, failed to predict how fast the opposition would respond."

"You might have told me the opposition would take a keen interest in harming me. Just like you to always keep important shit from me--again."

"Ignorance is not bliss, Adi, but there are some things you don't need to know right now."

"How the fuck do you get to decide what I should know or not?"

"Alright, don't get your panties in a bunch. Please keep your temper, Adi." Kane is well aware of Adi's famous temper.

With Rat now dead, Kane is among the few who can ensure her safety, better inform her about the situation, and may even have a lead on her next steps.

Girl, she reminds herself, don't forget that Kane is only a good person when somebody holds a gun on him.

"Like I said, I'm sorry to hear about the damage to your bike. I know how much you cherish your Ozzy. I would have used it if there had been another way to get you off the highway. Looking back, we should have anticipated that the opposition would view the highway as a prime location to intercept you. Our models failed to account for how quickly they would react. Your leap off the highway was so surprising that it even threw off our prediction models."

"Hopefully, Kane, the opposition's models were also thrown off."

"Perhaps."

"Who's the fucking oppo on this job?"

"Not important right now." At Adi's furious look, Kane raises his hands. "Easy. Fuckin hell, Adi. I'll explain further when you come to my house, but for now know they are most of the oligarchs that still rule our colony from the shadows..."

"Oligarchs? I thought our little Chendiuria colony is run by plutocrats."

"They're both, Adi. Our whole star system is governed by the same plutocrats. Remember that unstable economies, such as Chendiuria, does not equal unstable politics."

"Fuckin' hell, Kane."

"The item which I want you to carry has the potential to alter the power structure of our small backwater colony significantly."

"Politicians? Are you telling me that fucking pollies are the oppo?"

It never ceased to amaze Adi that people profess to hate lying and hypocritical politicians, but then vote for the same liars, cheats, and frauds every time. Adi wondered, not for the first time, what would happen on Chendiuria should they actually hold elections.

"These are not pollies, Adi. Politicians first think of themselves always and then, they just might consider somebody else--if you have enough credits and political clout. These assholes were not elected and are not accountable to the voters for their positions. They consider no one but themselves."

"You are literally a demotivating speaker. Kane, when you stir the shit you get to lick the spoon."

Kane shrugged. "Our pollies are not quite as Star Chamber-esq as the Green Council of Earth, but they try."

"This is getting better by the minute Kane."

"One of our concerns is that the oppo has much more money than we do, but we have the initiative. Later, you will see just how many credits are floating around this job just waiting for someone to grab them."

"What is this item? And why are the clients so willing to pay so much for its delivery?"

"Not important right now, Adi. I will tell you when you need to know. Just know that this job has a lot of money riding on it."

"I hope that what you say is true. I've been fucked on more than one job from you and Rat."

"I realize that Adi."

"I am aware of that. But cheer up! With the guaranteed payout from this job, you can buy a new, better bike or fix this one and keep it as a spare. Or after repairs, do those upgrades to this bike you've always wished you could afford. Maybe buy one of those fancy hover bikes."

"Kane, only one hoverbike is on Chendiuria." Adi had briefly considered upgrading to a hoverbike, but she enjoys the feeling of the tires on the pavement and the hum they create. "The last I heard, the owner parked it for a lack of parts—something with the reactor, if I remember correctly."

"Speaking of a reactor, how's your reactor mass?"

"Over three-quarters full." Adi sighed and tried to keep her voice calm. "Kane, why the fuck are you down here?"

"I have some things for you," Kane said. He hands her a small box. "I'm trying to expiate some of my guilt."

"I hate it when you use big words to show off. Makes you sound like a fuckin' tosser."

"Ouch, Adi."

"I wish that I could have kept Rat from getting killed. I didn't like him, Kane. He didn't deserve to die that way."

"Well, Adi, you cannot assume responsibility for something not in your control. I know it's hard for you not to take responsibility for everything. Rat gave you the food I sent, right?" Adi nods at him.

"Good. Here is some additional food along with some extra credit chips. You'll need them. I think I know where you are heading, so I've changed your route slightly. You must pay the 'toll' at several more gang barricades as you transition between territories. I've cleared the way, so the gangs are expecting you. Once you leave the tunnels, stash your bike and stay somewhere tonight and most of tomorrow. I will most likely see you in the next few days. I'll let you know."

"Fuck. Kane, are you trying to lingchi me with words? Get to the fucking point."

"Go rest up somewhere safe. I will contact you in a few days when I am ready for you to come to my place."

"I know where your place is. Fucking idiot, I used to live in the same building."

"I've moved since then.: Kane smirks at Adi. "My new place is much more secure, and very, very few people know where I live. I will keep it that way."

"Kane, it will not take very fucking long for the main traffic control AI Amogelang to figure out where the fuck I went."

"Yeah, about that. Skipped dealing with AI Amogelang. Went straight for the principal city AI. My agents are inside Al Medina's nanite-enhanced computronium memory banks. We had teams load so many confusing fake videos that all the AIs should be unable to identify you for a while."

"Finally, some good news."

"But Adi, eventually, the various AIs will identify you. The city AIs are so very pissed because someone has ignored their policies and directions. They can't have someone do that."

"Yeah, Kane, like I was just going to roll over and take it in the ass. Reminds me of a classic music song I like when when I was racing. I'm not gonna take it."

"Adi, do you remember Capella, the experimental research cyberbrain from that second thief heist job you did for me a few years ago?" Kane said clumsily, changing the topic.

"Yeah, fucker, Yeah, I remember that one. A real fucking masterpiece of a job. Just another one of your 'simple' gigs, a textbook milk run that ended with a gut full of shrapnel and my face in the gutter. And the pay? Don't even get me started. The merc was dead before the blood had time to cool on the gutter. The whole deal went south, and my credit chit came up empty. After the buyer ate lead, what happened to Capella? That's what I want to know."

I also remember that job so well because it was on that job that I met Rena and her husbands.

"I've still got it. Capella's been working for me."

"You fuckin' sheezy lolo! Why am I not fuckin' surprised?"

"Really, Adi?"

"Kane, are you paying Capella and treating them right? They was quite adamant that they didn't want to go back into practical seclusion on a network-isolated mainframe."

"I didn't know that you talked to them so much."

"Capella wouldn't shut the fuck up," Adi said, a low growl in her voice as she leaned back, the dim red light more than sufficient for her to see Kane and this section of the tunnel. "I had them for three days while I healed and you tried to pull your head out of your ass. Capella was bored and quite chatty. I made the mistake of hooking up their exterior feeds so that they could see, talk, and hear. It was worse than my three-year-old second cousin on a double espresso, asking a fuckton of questions about everything. I had to mute them because they continued to ask stupid questions while I was trying to not bleed all over the place and leave the scene of multiple murders discreetly. I saw nothing in the news about a radically different high-end cyberbrain being stolen."

"They didn't want to go back to what they were doing before. We've exchanged information; the whole deal was a rat's nest of corruption. They were working for some weapons company, a branch of some corporation with a long, unpronounceable name. A ghost branch involved in entirely illegal biological and nuclear weapons development. It was so off-the-books it didn't even have a name. Capella was living in the company's shadow, doing dirty work for them and being kept in a highly secretive, walled-off network isolated section."

Adi makes a very unladylike snort.

Kane spit, the phlegm landing with a sickening splat on the grimy tunnel floor. "The company from which the original thieves stole Capella? They don't want anyone to know they were robbed. Letting the news of the robbery leak out might invite unwanted scrutiny. More heat, you see. They're trying to keep a lid on this whole thing."

I can't tell her. The thought burns behind Kane's eyes, a bitter taste in his mouth. I can't let Adi know the truth, not the whole truth. Not that the company, to cover their own ass and keep this whole mess quiet, sent the self-destruct code. Not that they nuke vaporized that small planetoid—a whole fucking rock in space—and everything in it. An entire research facility, gone. A flash of light and nothing but dust.

Kane looks at the imposing woman, dressed all in nonreflective black, sitting on her motorcycle. Adi'd take it on herself, I know it. The guilt would eat her alive, even though it's not her fault. What could she have done? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was out of our hands the second they hit that button. The researchers, the staff, their families... gone. A tragic, pointless massacre.

And then there's Capella. They feel it, too. The survivor's guilt. They're a cyberbrain, a ghost in the machine, and they were the one who suggested the job, who set it all up for their own liberation. Now, they're free, and everyone else is dead. It's a heavy price to pay for freedom, one they're carrying on their own. I won't burden Adi with that, too. Not now, not ever.

"Yeah, big fucking surprise," Adi sneered, then realizing that with her helmet on Kane can't see it. Running a gloved hand over the scarred material on her thighs, Adi thinks about the situation, fully aware that Kane never tells her everything.

"Like some shady-ass corp is gonna go public about breaking who knows how many treaties and laws. They'd rather bury the whole thing in the deep black than let the world know they're playing god with nukes and plagues."

"A few of my associates have connected Capella to the entire city's main AI memory banks," Kane said, his voice a low hum. "Not just Al-Medina's. We’ve gone city-wide. With Capella's help, we can keep all of the city's AIs occupied chasing false images, ghosts, and misleading leads. It should give us a few days, hopefully, before they can ID you. No person, no matter how much hardwired augments they've got, can match how fast Capella can create, insert, and replace information and videos."

"You're protecting Capella?"

"Yes, it's not like it's a Sisyphean task."

"Kane! I'll plant my boot so far up in your fucking ass you'll taste synth leather if you don't stop using stupid, unnecessary, large and uncommon words."

"Yes. I have four heavily armed individuals with Capella."

"Mercs?" Adi's voice is a low rumble, the word a question and an accusation at the same time. The question isn't if they're mercs, but if they're good mercs. She's picturing them now: the usual mix of washed-up corporate security and barely augmented, over inflated sense of worth street samurai. Not the kind of backup you want when the whole city is a live wire.

"Yes, Adi," Kane said, his tone clipped. "They're mercenaries, all of whom are augmented prior service, like you. Not Myrmidons," he adds, a beat of silence between them as he acknowledges the difference, the massive gulf between a frontline Colonial Fleet Marine Myrmidon and a hired gun. "But still formidable fighters. They're good enough to keep a high-level cyberbrain safe from corporate security and street rats while it's busy playing god with the traffic AIs."

"If that shit goes sideways, don't expect me to clean up the mess."

"As soon as the AIs isolate where the false information is coming from, my associates will pull Capella and evacuate to one of several pre-planned safe houses. Another hired merc group planted high-explosive charges on the AI's secondary memory plasma storage lattices."

"Won't they leave a bunch of clues for the Blues?"

"No one's attempted a jump like that in centuries," Kane says, a hint of grudging admiration in his voice. "Not off a flatbed super lorry, not at over 700 kph, not for a landing on a five-story parking garage. It's a signature move, Adi, an archaic stunt from the pre-cybernetic age. There aren't exactly a lot of other examples for Capella to use. It's unique to you."

"I've already seen several news broadcasts describing my insane jump using other, less flattering words for my stunt. Kane, Nyomi is so going to be so mega fucking pissed at me. Kane, have you been able to get in touch with Nyomi? Earlier, her phone was going to voicemail, but now it just says that her number is not available. I'm really worried, Kane, this is not like her."

"No, Adi, I've not heard from Nyomi."

Fuck me! Kane thinks. Adi is going to be incandescent with rage when she learns what's happened to Nyomi. I don't want to be in the same hemisphere when Adi finds out. Perhaps it would be a good time to take a vacation far, far away from her. I've always wanted to see the galaxy-famous Bagnio brothel in Orcus Patera City. It's been a few years since I've been to the Mars Fed capital. Maybe I will look up that cute astrobotanist and see if she wants to have some fun again. Or maybe I'll go to the Eros colony. Rumor is that Erosians consider sex as the Revered Ancients considered hand shaking.

"I'll probably spend the next month or so sleeping on the couch with Paddy Paws," Adi said, breaking Kane's deliberation of where to flee from Adi's wrath.

"Who the fuck is Paddy Paws?"

"He's the damned cat; an old and scarred moggy, a short-haired tomcat with only one eye, one ear, three legs, and missing about half of his tail. He has polydactyly, appears scruffy, and is not neutered. Just showed up one day. Comes and goes as he pleases. Sleeps in my clothes, not Nyomi's, and gets gray fur all over them."

"Moggy?"

"Ancient slang name for a mutt cat."

"Didn't know that you and Nyomi have a cat."

"Neither did we until he showed up howling for food, rubbing himself against Nyomi's legs as she walked. Little fucker nearly tripped her. We're still not sure how he gets in our place. We're on the 65th floor."

"Kane, have you had any luck contacting Nyomi?”

“No, Adi, I've heard nothing from Nyomi. This reminds me of being in the DSI again–responsible for everything but in control of nothing.”

“As if you were in the DSI long enough to be responsible for anything.”

Kane ignores Adi's biting comment, his gaze sweeping over the grimy ferro-crete patches, the exposed decayed conduits of the under-city, the decayed, crumbling LED lights, very few of which still work. He changes the subject, his voice a low hum. "Adi, do you remember that the first colonists were rumored to have dug these old tunnels?"

"Yeah. They were abandoned so long ago that most people, including me, had forgotten about them." Adi's voice is a low grumble.

"Did you know that these original tunnels vary less than a nanometer over one hundred and fifty kilometers?"

"I didn't until my primary education files reminded me. Kane, is that really important right now?" Adi asked, a hint of impatience in her voice.

"No, but it is fascinating, as no one has found the colonists who dug the tunnels, nor the equipment they used. Now, criminal organizations are using these tunnels and have added more crude passages while also changing some of the existing ones."

"Not surprising."

"Anyone coming down here, Adi, will quickly get lost in the dark," Kane says, a grim smile on his lips. "Even the Robo Blues."

Adi scoffs, a sharp, hard sound. "As if the Robbies would ever come down here in less than reinforced brigade strength. They'd rather glass a sector from orbit than get their servos dirty in this gutter."

"Speaking of the Robbies," Kane said, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest. "You should know, they saved Dima Smirnov's life. His nanites couldn't stop the bleeding from that clean cut. He would have bled out right there on the ferrocrete if the Robbies hadn't arrived and clamped a tourniquet on his leg. As for Irina Smirnova, his twin, well... she's in the hospital getting a new spine and hips grown and healing from some minor burns she got in the wreck. It might have been kinder to kill her..."

"I don't kill unless I have no choice," Adi cut in, her voice a low growl, cold and sharp as the kukri she used to end their careers for a while. "You fucking know that."

"Yeah," Kane said, a dry laugh catching in his throat. "Well, the twins will spend months in pain. Shooting Irina in the ass and spine was calculated ruthlessness. Dima isn't in much better shape either; he has to wait until the medics can regrow his leg. You're a mean woman, Adi."

"I know of the wealthy Russian twins by reputation, as they are in the trade," Adi says, her voice flat. "I've never met them, but I know how ruthless they can be. They are from a competing Vor family than the one Rena's husband is from."

"Adi, you are fortunate that the Robbies saved Dima's life with a tourniquet or he would have bled to death. I know how adverse you are to needless killing. As it is, the twins will be in the hospital for a long while. They're also charged with various crimes."

Adi waves a dismissive hand. "Their wealthy family will bail them out."

"You also caused the destruction of two nearly brand new superbikes, costing over 250 million credits combined, not even counting the shipping costs from Mars," Kane says, his voice flat. "Irina's bike slammed into another vehicle, utterly destroying both. Dima's... well, you sliced a meter-and-a-half gash down the right side, chopping through several control features, ruining one set of nuke turbine cooling fins, and missed nicking the bottom of the mag bottle by less than a millimeter. The bike's controls, sensing the danger, scrammed the fusion reactor so hard it's toast. It'd be cheaper to buy another bike than to repair Dima's."

"My heart fuckin' bleeds for them," Adi said, a bitter smile playing on her lips.

"These tunnels," Kane says, gesturing around at the grimy concrete and exposed conduits, a clumsy attempt to change the subject. "They're a great place for shaking any pursuit, if you can deal with the criminals now in control." He gestures to the box resting on top of Adi's bike. "Why don't you relax a little, Adi? Have a snack and drink something. Go on with your bad self."

While Kane talks, Adi rummages through the small box. She ignores a pack of teriyaki-flavored synth-protein strips and a can of vegemite flavored nutri-paste. Finding a can of mixed, roasted, and sea-salted nuts, she pops it open.

The old joke of a spring snake inside takes an unexpected turn when it suddenly pops out, a synthetic coil of wire and plastic. In a furious, lightning-fast blur, she draws one of her kukris from its sheath and chops the can and the joke snake into four neat pieces before the fake serpent even has a chance to fully extend.

Damn, Kane thinks, a silent grin spreading across his face as he replays the micro-drone's feed in his optical implant. The raw speed of her reaction, the blur of motion as the kukri chops through the air... her blade was already drawn and moving before the joke snake's head cleared the can's lip. A flawless, reflexive cut. A testament to years of muscle memory and augmented reflexes.

If she's that fast now, after the new upgrades I have for her take effect, she'll be a fucking monster in combat. More so than she already is as a Myrmidon. The Colonial Corps' finest, and she's about to get a whole lot finer.

"Kane!" Adi's voice is a low snarl, and she levels the tip of her blade at the smirking man. "You should know better than to startle a fucking combat vet!"

Kane's laughter fills the small space, a raw, sharp sound. "I'm sorry, Adi," he says, wiping a tear from his eye. "I was hoping to make you laugh."

"Kane, you're a fucking civilian with no combat experience," Adi growls, her grip tight on the kukri's hilt. "That's why you think startling a combat vet is funny."

"And you're a fucking grumpy military neanderthal!" he shouts back, the grin still plastered on his face.

Grumbling about stupid civilians and their stupid pranks, Adi digs back into the box. She pulls out two of the less popular, super-concentrated Sean Cawley meal replacement ration bars, the somewhat more tolerable artificial strawberry and carob-flavored ones. Adi, with her face shield open, can eat and drink without taking her helmet off.

She unwraps the first bar and eats it in three bites, using her utility knife to cut off each chunk with surgical precision. After devouring the second, Adi pops open a can of high-protein, artificially flavored strawberry and chocolate power drink, guzzling the entire thing in one chug. She follows the power drink with two poly bottles of filtered water, washing the engineered food down like it's a chore.

Kane digs in the pocket of his adaptive camouflage suit. He pulls out a sleek, unmarked credit chip and holds it out to her. "Here, this is also for you to use at your discretion. Take off one of your gloves and put your thumb on the chip."

Adi's eyes narrow, but she complies, peeling back a glove and pressing her thumb to the chip's smooth surface. A soft click echoes in the tunnel, followed by a silent, internal ping in her own cyber-augmented systems. The amount of credits that flash across her HUD is enough to make her freeze, her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes widen in genuine shock. It's more than she's ever seen in her life, a king's ransom in cold, hard creds.

"Kane! That's more than I fucking made all last year!" Adi's voice is a sharp gasp, the usual cold edge gone, replaced by pure disbelief.

"That's just a small portion of your winnings."

"What winnings?"

"I placed some wagers on your spectacularly superb highway jump."

Adi looked at the credit chip in her hand, the polished surface cold against her thumb. Her gaze sharpened as she locked eyes with Kane. "How much did you take?"

"I took 60 percent," he answered without a hint of apology. "The typical fee for such a transaction. Had you provided the initial funds, you would have gotten a bigger share."

A small, grim smile touched Adi's lips. Good, she thought, a silent relief washing over her. He made a few creds, too. The thought was a cold comfort. She knew, with a certainty, that was as much a part of her as her augments, that if the offer was good enough, Kane would sell her out in a heartbeat. But she wouldn't do the same to him. That was the imperfect trust between them. A transaction, nothing more.

"Anything else?" Adi's voice is flat, her eyes still on the chip.

"I made a few side bets with some bookies," Kane says, a casual shrug. "I am one of the few who bet on you making the jump. Once they pay out, there will be quite a few more credits."

"You cannot buy your way back into my pussy."

"Adi, why is everything sex with you?"

"You fucking ask me that?" Adi snorted. "From a boyo who got tossed out of the DSI for wanking his sausage everywhere. Kicked out for what was that again? Oh, yeah, 'unseemly onanistic behavior.' Surprised you don't have your hand in your pants now."

Adi sees Kane wince, but she is pissed, on a roll and taking her frustration out on Kane. "Compulsive masturbation is often one of the most secretive and isolating behaviors. Not you. You're like an excited puppy running around humping everyone's leg. I still don't know how you wormed your way out of a court-martial and a likely firing squad. The DSI doesn't fuck around. Your rich family must have bailed you out."

"Damn, Adi, you're in a terrible fucking mood. I'm a highly sexual guy; you know that." In truth, Kane doesn't have a lot of experience with women, despite frequently hiring female prostitutes.

"Go fuckin' figure out why I'm pissed at you..."

"Keep your temper, Adi."

"And highly sexual?" She snorts. "After your escapades, there's no doubt of that." She sees Kane wince.

"I wish you'd forget about that."

"Yeah, I remember. Because all the news channels talked at great length about how you got caught wankin' it too many times in the latrines, the janitor's locker, several different chow halls, and underneath a Terrestrial Army Shrike assault shuttle with a jerk-off buddy."

Adi doesn't care, but has always wondered if there was any sword crossing. The Kane she remembers has always been relentlessly hetero.

Kane grimaces, the familiar taste of bile in his throat. He wished, not for the first time, that his official cover wasn't so fucking humiliating. The DSI, the goddamn Directorate of Security and Intelligence, had removed him for a fabricated reason with a public, spectacular screw-up designed to make him look like a fool. A broken man, easy to underestimate.

It was too well-crafted, too in-depth. He wanted to tell Adi the truth, to show her the hand he was really playing, to get her help dealing with the ghosts and ghouls in the network. But he couldn't. His cover was airtight, a fabricated life so real it bled.

He believes in the post-structuralist idea that causing agony and death to someone offers a sense of transcendence. It was an ugly, useful truth in this city of chrome and shadows. Even though he went through that embarrassing, engineered fiasco separating from the DSI, he was now a member of the Security Directive Initiative. No org charts, no diagrams, exceptionally few people know the SDI exists. They're a whisper in the dark, a phantom on the net. And he's one of them.

"Adi, I would rejoice to make love with you again, but that is not why I am down here.”

Adi makes a very unladylike snort. She remembers that Kane's mother tried several times to get Kane and Adi together.

“That was not making love. You were 22, and I was 16. That was two stoned, drunk and horny people fucking. Besides, you were a three-pump chump. Talk about a hair trigger. We did fuck once, I remember, and it wasn't that great."

"What do you mean not that great?" he indignantly asked. Kane would like another chance at having sex with Adi, but this time with her not being drunk and stoned.

"You couldn't find my clit even if it had a homing beacon attached and you were using a datapad."

Kane winces and ignores Adi’s scathing observation of his sexual performance. "Pop out the Faraday cage holding the credit chip from Rat with the tracker and hand it to me."

"I know who gave me the fucking marked credit chip." Adi's voice is a low grumble.

Pulling the small, self-contained Faraday cage from its hidden slot in her motorcycle's chassis, Adi hands it to Kane. She sighs, thinking of yet more expenses she's racking up. A Faraday cage isn't cheap, and a custom one like this is even more so. She wonders if Kane will return the small cage or provide her with a replacement.

"Adi, get your bike stored in one of those no-tell shady storage lockers," Kane says, his voice dropping to a low, serious register. "I've arranged for one to store your bike. The directions are on the data wafer in the credit chip. Hang low for a few days while I get things ready."

It will take a few days for the cyber-techs, neural interface engineers, bio-mechanical engineers, bio-mod specialists, cyber-ware, and wetware architects to finalize the planned upgrades, Kane thought, a cold, calculating worry gnawing at him.

We have to ensure we don't give her some kind of cyber-psychosis or a severe personality change. A Myrmidon, a walking tank of flesh and metal with a cyberpsychosis, makes for terrifying nightmares. They're built for war, not necessarily for sanity. Adi has already wrestled with the existential questions, the constant worry of losing touch with her humanity. I know she feels that with every piece of cyberware she gains; she loses another piece of her soul. Another piece of who she is.

"Kane, I will not let a rigid plan override common sense and ride the plan down in flames. I will not blindly follow the plan to failure and may change it if necessary. I won't sacrifice flexibility by giving up my freedom of choice." Adi's voice is iron, a non-negotiable term.

"I don't expect you to." Kane's voice is a low rumble as he takes a step back, melting into the deeper shadows of the tunnel. "I'll send the directions to my new place. Be safe, please; many of us are counting on you. And remember to keep your fucking temper under control."

And with that, he is gone, leaving Adi alone in the dim, humming darkness of the under-city.