“Meeting” (Credit: Hideoyoshi on DeviantArt)
Hello and welcome! Starting this week off on a personal note. This is the 100th regularly scheduled post I’ve made for this website. It’s an important milestone for me, and that I’ve been able to keep up a consistent schedule of work for over a year, even amidst great personal changes.
When I started this project last February, I had no idea what it would bring. I’ve been able to write a lot of fantastic pieces about my interests like history or the world or entertainment. I’ve been able to showcase a lot of my creative work, both from my extensive backlog of poetry and short stories I’ve rewritten or crafted especially for this website. I’m also enjoying writing a novel in serial format, as it was in the good old days.
Today’s piece is something special. Longtime readers may recall a piece called “Killswitch” that went up in March of last year. It was the second creative piece I had done for this site and was my first crack at writing a cyberpunk story which has been floating in my mind for several years now. Well, “Killswitch” turned out far better than I hoped when I started writing it. I seldom wrote short stories in the years I’ve spent as a writer, so to take on a challenge with an idea that I discovered more than planned and have it be work I’m proud of was significant. I was intrigued enough by the world I had created and the ideas I came up with for that story to develop it into a full length novel project. There are many more details to be worked out, and it’s not coming any time soon. However, to celebrate such an important milestone, I figured it would be a bit of fun to write another short story set in that world and get a glimpse of what Grayson Carver (previously named Aaron Pierce) and Dominic Hauser get up to in their time as mercenaries in Millennium City.
Hope you enjoy!
Millennium City, Pacifica
March 13th, 2041
Neon lights in a rainy city have inspired humans for generations. The lightly crashing sheets of rain provide a droning backdrop to the symphony of human voices shouting through the streets. Sellers and customers bartering and haggling over prices at market stalls, orders at noodle stands and food carts, lovers’ arguments, friends’ predictions on the scores of the games, and holoscreens projecting the news and advertisements on the side of towering skyscrapers all collide in harmony and dissonance as the soundtrack to an ordinary day in Millennium City.
Two men, one in a hooded field jacket and the other with a long coat and a ballcap, worm their way through the sea of humanity. The reflection of the kaleidoscope cityscape is disrupted by the footfalls of reinforced boots in puddles collecting on a cracked and fragmented sidewalk, groaning from the weight of its neglect by a city that doesn’t seem to have the money nor the inclination to repair any damage out of view from its most well-to-do residents. The majority of the city’s denizens come from muck, and to muck they shall return. They can only stare at the distant, towering crown jewels in envy.
The Cellar Door is the destination for the two figures. A dingy, seedy bar where one of the city’s fixers holds her court. Kristen Salah perennially occupies a corner booth, its purple cushions and velvet curtains of finer quality and in better shape than anywhere else in the joint. Her throne lets her surveil the entire room. She knows every relationship between every single person in here. It’s her job to cut through the thumping pulsations of the music and roar of conversation to see what everyone else doesn’t.
Kristen Salah’s livelihood depends on creating and destroying relationships between people, as she is one of many fixers for Millennium City’s substantial population of mercenaries taking on jobs for the various corps, organizations, or individuals who need justice served in a world where it is in short supply.
The two men take their seats next to Kristen, whose orange hair is still eye catching in the low light. The tanned man in a simple shirt and pants next to her is unremarkable except for a scar which cuts across the forehead above his right eye. The pair understands that he must be the prospective client with no more than a fraction of a second’s worth of observation.
“Sometimes, I think you insist on us meeting the clients when they don’t even give a shit,” Grayson Carver grumbles his greeting while taking his cap off and flicking the remaining rain onto the floor. Grayson is a hardened fighter, with enough combat experience to give many of the corpo soldiers runs for their money. Top of the line implants allow him to manage well enough against much larger groups in terms of raw strengths, but his techniques on hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, and fieldcraft are all his own. Grayson believes maintaining the human touch to his work is an important component of the team’s effectiveness. No amount of flash-learning or implants can beat a mind trained to account for all possible outcomes in every situation. Binary data cannot replace lived experience and the sort of irrational thinking that gives the person the boost they need to escape an impossible situation. A machine mind cannot fear death and do whatever it takes to avoid it.
“No, ‘Hello Kristen, we’ve missed you?’ Just jumping straight into it?” the fixer’s tone would be considered flirtatious by an outsider. The playfulness is really a demonstration of power: Kristen gets to be as condescending as she likes because she gets to pull the mercenaries’ cards anytime she wishes.
“Hi Kristen. Why’d you drag me across town this time?” Dominic Hauser mocks the facilitator of their employment with a snidely pleasant tone of voice. Dom is one of the best hackers in the city. He slips anywhere he wishes via the net and can pick his way around any security system. The moniker ‘Icejacker’ was bestowed upon him by a member of the underground community after a job where he cracked the security system on a weapons manufacturing facility wide open and spilled the secrets of its clientele to the net. The name came from Dom’s ability to find the tiniest vulnerabilities and turn them into major liabilities, the way water seeps into cracked concrete and tears it apart as it freezes into ice.
“You boys don’t know how to have any fun,” Kristen chuckles, waving the waitress over to order a round of drinks.
“You’ve known us for long enough that having fun and meeting with you are oil and water,” Grayson maintains his dark and stormy demeanor, cutting Dom’s quip off with a simple look, a drop of his eyes and furrowing of his brow imperceptible to everyone else but his best friend.
Dom and Grayson have been best friends for most of their lives, and business partners for their adulthoods. As soon as the pair were old enough to start running scams, cons, and plays, they did so. When they had a chance to make the jump into full-blown mercenaries, they leapt at it. They met Kristen a couple of years into the life and impressed her with their efficient thievery jobs. She soon started using them to solve many of her own problems alongside finding them employment from others.
Dom and Grayson’s crew has become legendary amongst the hackers and mercenaries active within Millennium City. Those communities tend to live outside the normal societal boundaries. Decades ago, the government consolidated too much power into its hands. The corporations felt as though they were backed into the corner and used their considerable resources to lash out in a bid to retain their privileged positions in the world order. Instability and conflict followed. The old nation fragmented.
When the fighting stopped, the west coast of the United States was independent. Pacifica’s shining jewel was Millennium City, an almost lawless paradise for corporate interests. In the wake of the war, the Japanese megacorporation, Nakajima, set up operations in Millennium City. While the leading American competitor, Atheon Solutions, maintained a sizable presence in Pacifica after the dissolution, the new nation state’s independence gave Japan’s corporate angel the chance to stake a bigger claim on the continent.
Thus, mercenary work became a frequent fixture of city life. Mercs working for corps or private clients, and occasionally for world governments who needed something destroyed or stolen but couldn’t risk the exposure of their own assets. Mercenaries and hackers are responsible for the delicate balancing act between governmental and corporate influences dominating the city. The corporations pushing the boundaries of their influence are kept in check thanks to the hackers and mercenaries which do their business across the world, many united behind the causes of a free net which the corps would shatter once they gain the upper hand. There is no consensus on whether the status quo is sustainable, but the government isn’t saving anyone anytime soon.
“We haven’t met. Mark Shepherd,” the potential client ignores the previous frivolity and offers his hand to the two mercenaries.
“Dominic Hauser,” Dom offers his own name, in a polite but uncharacteristically professional manner. The warning from Grayson has obviously stayed his tongue.
“Grayson Carver,” the mercenary extends the same cold courtesy. A firm handshake but not much else.
“I’ll cut to the chase, gentlemen, the ALO has a request for you.” Mark refers to the Android Liberation Organization. The ALO is the city’s largest synthetic rights group, and some of its members have a rather dramatic view on how militant they should be. The ALO frequently employs the crew’s services, on account of its members’ sympathy to the cause. Usually for much less dramatic civil disobedience, as the negative press surrounding the incidents when members lash out tend to burn goodwill rather than build it.
“Hit me,” Grayson says coolly. Usually they make good money from the ALO by supporting their various noble causes. Mirage is the product name for the synthetics which Atheon has been creating for years, and is often used as a generic noun for androids. Once Artificial Intelligence was cracked, creating a synthetic body wasn’t far behind, and Atheon staked its claim in the modern age by being the first to create a synthetic person, though other companies soon followed suit. In the thirty-nine years since, the discussion of android rights has dominated the sphere of public debate.
“Emerson Kincaid is a senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Global Advancement Enterprises. Kincaid is the leading force behind GAE’s push against synthetic rights, and the ALO wishes to change his mind.”
“How is his mind being changed?” Grayson questions.
“Simple, you’re being tasked with snatching Kincaid and bringing him to a safehouse. Once you signal the all clear, I’ll come in and have a conversation with Kincaid,” Shepherd explains, offering a drive with information on the job. Grayson takes it, slots it into his neural interface, and looks it over, connecting his implants with Dom’s so both can look at the information together.
“Is this the kind of conversation that necessitates zip ties and sharp objects?” Dom’s usual irreverent nature comes back to full display while he parses the job details.
“I’m a firm believer in ideological debate, Mister Hauser. Kincaid has serious fears over androids supplanting humans, and I think I can turn him around on that. Make him see that as an asset for GAE rather than a risk.”
“I admire your optimism.”
Grayson isn’t wild about the job. It threatens to run afoul of the League’s peacekeeping forces. Pacifica’s government is largely ineffective at tackling the boiling issues of Millennium City. The corporations use the city as their own playground, hardly ever facing retribution from the police or local government. Those who do try to keep the corps in line have an unfortunate tendency to disappear. To maintain order within the city and prevent the government from muscling in on their territory, the League of Controlling Corporations was created. The League was a cooperative council – the corporate board over the corporate boards – set up to essentially govern the city. The only thing any of the constituent corporations can agree on is how to best bully the government into staying out of their way. With the frequent demonstrations in favor of synthetics’ civil rights often becoming agitated, the League maintains a small peacekeeping force from the security teams of each company which can be activated in case of a protest boiling over.
On the other hand, the ALO has always been solid as employers, and the plan itself seems simple. There’s a safehouse the ALO set up in Riverside which should keep Kincaid safe long enough for Shepherd to talk to him. Kincaid’s route between scheduled events tomorrow will take him right under the Stockton Bridge. So long as Dom can neutralize the car’s locator beacon, then getting Kincaid to the safehouse should be a hop, skip, and a jump away. Kincaid travels light, usually without security despite not being very adept at combat himself. He relies on anonymity and seeming unimportant to keep himself safe. While stupid for a corp officer to do, Kincaid’s hubris should facilitate an easy job for Grayson and Dom.
Grayson and Dom concur on accepting the job. They say their goodbyes to their employer and their fixer before returning back to the streets. The rain has stopped, and the two discuss next moves. Grayson will double check the route for any blind spots and then prepare all the necessary equipment. Meanwhile, Dom will check the safehouse and set up his operation there. The friends part ways and vanish into the thrumming crowds of Millennium City.
***
The Stockton Bridge is one of the older structures in Millennium City. Once constructed over a river, the riverbed has since dried up and limited development has taken place underneath. Fortis Road, which runs underneath, is a thoroughfare linking rougher parts of town. Parts without as many cameras or wandering eyes, where men like Emerson Kincaid can do the nastier parts of their jobs without leaving a trail for others to follow.
It was the perfect place for the ambush. Textbook, quick, and clean. Once the car rolled under the bridge, Grayson was able to step from the shadows and corner Kincaid. Aging poorly, Kincaid wears the sneer of someone who believes he is the smartest person in the room, and the greasy white hair and slight potbelly of someone who hasn’t taken good care of himself. Grayson was less than impressed when he pulled Kincaid from the driver’s seat and remains so while watching Shepherd try to dislodge Kincaid’s stance with ideological debate. Shepherd is the only one debating.
The apartment being used as a safehouse sits on the other end of Riverside. It was a hop, skip, and jump away from the ambush site. Shepherd doubted someone who used looking unimpressive as a security measure would need a fortress for a friendly chat, hence the rough but not exactly squalid accommodations. The apartment hadn’t been used in some time, however, it was still intact with all amenities still working. Just dusty.
“They’ve been at it for forty minutes,” Dom groans, leaning on the kitchen counter. Shepherd’s droning in the other room, coupled with Kincaid’s scoffs in response, explain Dom’s sour demeanor. Masking the car’s location signal was quite simple, and remotely scanning Kincaid for a backup panic button or other beacon was a waste of Dom’s skills. This job could have been accomplished solo.
“Somehow, I don’t think Kincaid is as easy a mark that Shepherd made him out to be,” Grayson chuckles grimly. Grayson has seen enough brushes with corpos to know they’re seldom won over with inspiring words and appeals to humanity. Dom had done digging into Kincaid’s background, and he gets yearly bonuses for his project on cybernetic limbs. He has a financial interest in keeping androids as second-class citizens. But Shepherd didn’t need to know that.
Mark Shepherd is the unfortunate type of person which finds themselves working closely with the ALO or similar organizations: an idealist. Idealists are easy meat in Millennium City. To his credit, he did release payment to Kristen upon Dom sending a message that Kincaid was en route to the safehouse, stating, “I paid you to bring him to me. I’m the one that has to play my part, but you did yours very well.”
Less seasoned mercenaries might ask, ‘Why stay if you already got paid?’ Grayson Carver’s prevailing wisdom in response was always, ‘Never walk away from someone who has a reason to kill you without putting the fear of what will happen in return should they fail.’ In essence, Carver wants the chance to intimidate Kincaid into staying quiet about who roughed him up once Shepherd is finished bloviating on the true humanity of synthetics.
Dom’s bored expression vanishes as something scrolls across his neural interface. A quick word of warning to his partner: corpo soldiers just breached the perimeter. Heavily armed and coming for Kincaid. Grayson conveys the warning to Shepherd, who sits and stares at Kincaid for several moments, unsure of what to do.
“Shepherd, get Kincaid into the bedroom and lock that fucking door. Dom, see if you can slow them down,” Grayson takes command. Dom immediately reaches out through the network for any wireless access points on the building or the soldiers. He calls out six regular GAE corp soldiers.
Grayson readies his handgun. A custom slick, black, powerful piece, Grayson designed his weapon to be an extension of himself. Powerful and accurate while flexible for the close quarters combat enjoyed by so many of the city’s denizens. Between arm mounted blades, speed units, and generally enhanced limbs, Millennium City killers like to get up close and personal. Grayson set himself up to respond appropriately.
The six man team appears at the end of the hallway, and Grayson’s choreographed performance kicks in. The first two advance quickly while covered by their friends at the rear. The middle two are staggered in their approaches. It’s a standard GAE practice, one for which Grayson has planned extensively. Grayson fires two rounds into the enemy on the left and he crumples. Scaling the walls and leaping over the third man, Grayson now cuts off any firing solution the four remaining enemies could get against him as they run the risk of hitting their own compatriot.
Then Dom’s reach makes its first appearance on the battlefield. The five remaining weapons jam and seize up. Grayson kicks the closest soldier into the wall, and while he tries to stand back up, a rapid blow to his neck with the butt of Grayson’s gun shatters the man’s windpipe. Four left.
Soldier number three drops his rifle and pulls a knife from its sheath. He twirls it in his hand for a moment, settling on his preferred grip, before charging Grayson. The mercenary grabs the arm with the knife and plunges the blade into the chest of the soldier still behind him before putting one round through the chin of the soldier holding the knife, and executing the stabbed soldier with three rounds to his chest. Two remaining.
The final pair of soldiers charge Grayson, but Dom strikes again and cripples one’s leg implants. Grayson fires off five rounds in rapid succession to down the wounded one before the final soldier reaches him.
The last soldier, however, has long blades stored in his arms. Grayson throws himself backwards as his enemy’s arms split apart and the blades pop out, barely missing the mercenary’s face. Grayson rolls to the side in the tight hallway to avoid a stab which impales the right blade into the floor. Scrambling to his feet, Grayson puts some distance between himself and the soldier, recovering his gun, and dropping to a knee to avoid the next swing. Fatal error. Grayson puts two rounds in the soldier’s chest at point blank range, followed by an execution shot to the head.
Taking a deep breath after the exertion, Grayson clears and holsters his weapon as he steps inside the apartment.
“Nice, only took you about sixty-eight seconds this time,” Dom cheerfully informs his best friend of one of the better times he’s had in clearing a group of enemies under these kinds of circumstances.
“Shepherd! Bring Kincaid, we gotta move him!” Grayson yells through the bedroom door. The latch clicks open and Shepherd stands quivering, his left hand around the collar of Kincaid’s expensive suit and his right holding a pistol shaking worse than a drunkard as the sun approaches. Grayson shakes his head in disapproval.
Their quick exit from the apartment is interrupted when a figure rushes into the apartment with impossible speed. Grayson is sent flying by the impact into the far wall. Shepherd instinctively throws Kincaid aside and tries to point his pistol at the newcomer, but she knocks it out of his hand and picks him up by his face in one swift motion. The table in the middle of the living room quickly gets painted by Shepherd’s blood and brain matter as she smashes it down over and over again.
Camille Pryor would be beautiful if the remnants of what used to be Mark Shepherd weren’t splattered across her cargo pants, tank top, and face. Tall, lithe, with sharp cheekbones and blonde hair, she is a knockout in more ways than one. Her looks and movements are slightly too perfect, allowing Grayson to quickly deduce that she is a synthetic herself.
Grayson draws his weapon and dumps the remainder of his magazine towards her. The shots would have been dead on for most targets; however, she is much faster than most of Grayson’s fallen foes. Literally somersaulting over the volley of fire, she closes the gap between herself and Grayson, disarming him with the same speedy technique which Shepherd fell prey to mere moments earlier. Grayson throws all of his force into a punch which impacts her midsection.
He might as well have done nothing. Pryor smirks, a predator toying with her prey. As she grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall, Grayson understands the truth of his fate: Kincaid was being surveilled by the company, and the woman about to kill him is an enforcer for GAE. She’s either been tasked to recover Kincaid or silence him. To Grayson, the distinction is academic. He won’t live long enough to find out. The last images his eyes will process are hers getting narrower to accompany the sadistic, sinister grin on her face as she chokes the life out of him. The mercenary’s life in Millennium City is fraught with dangers, and Grayson Carver is not the first mercenary to die on a simple job, and it’s doubtful he’ll be the last.
Yet he remains breathing, while horror dawns across Pryor’s face. The grip around Grayson’s throat relaxes, but not a single mechanical muscle in the rest of her body moves, save for her face. Golden eyes widen in fear, and Pryor’s sinister grin turns into slack-jawed terror. While free to rub his sore throat, Grayson notices Dom step out from the bedroom with hatred on his face. Dom’s hands are clutching some invisible object, one of his habits while hacking. While unnecessary, many hackers use physical gestures to focus their minds on what they are trying to do. Dom’s right hand resembles a clenched talon. He twists it slightly and Pryor turns to face him.
“H-h-how?” The whisper of a woman who has never known fear in her life until this moment almost fuels Dom, and his lips curl into a sinister grin like that which was drawn on her face mere moments ago. Androids are designed to be completely resistant to hacking. Theoretically, synthetics cannot be assaulted from the outside. For security reasons, they are designed not to be reprogrammable by outside forces. The mere fact that Dom has taken control of one reinforces to Grayson that Dom is every bit deserving of his prodigious reputation.
“Tell me what you know, Camille Pryor.” Dom could have willed her to speak her plans without making a verbal request. He could have ripped into her mind and discovered her current tasking himself the way he learned her name. Making her answer is a demonstration of his abilities, and an exercise in cruelty. Fear will compel her to answer. Fear will affect a synthetic just as much as an organic. The downfall of creating machines with human emotions is that the survival instinct remains the same as well.
“Kincaid has a pacemaker, and it was chipped by the company. When it registered distress, we were dispatched to find him. We were ordered to bring him in alive, if possible. Or kill him, if we must.”
Grayson curses under his breath. He knew the job was too good to be true. Dom being exceptional is the only reason he is alive right now. It’s a familiar situation.
“Does anyone at GAE know who we are?” Dom continues his questioning in a calm, measured, even voice. Men with true power need not raise their voices. To Camille Pryor, Dominic Hauser might as well be God almighty.
“No. We just knew Kincaid had been grabbed, and we followed the signal here.”
Dom cracks a genuine smile. Not a joyful one, not a warm one. No, this smile means he has made a decision based on the information he received. He clenches his fist, and Pryor begins convulsing with violent spasms and unleashes an unholy sound somewhere between a scream, a shriek, and a prayer before something inside her head flashes a bright blue which spills from her eyes and mouth before the light dies and she collapses ingloriously.
Grayson calmly collects Shepherd’s pistol and walks over to Emerson Kincaid cowering behind the couch. Not used to such violence, Kincaid is terrified of the fact that the ruthless killers sent to retrieve him were eviscerated by the men who abducted him. Grayson doesn’t bother with pleasantries and simply puts one round through Kincaid’s head, then tosses the pistol aside. Wordlessly, he retrieves one of the submachine guns from the hallway, and unloads it into Pryor’s body, shredding her mechanical body in an attempt to cover up the nature of her death.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Dom’s words need no acknowledgement, he speaks for both of the mercenaries. They slip out of the apartment building through the stairs and out the back entrance, only slowing their brisk pace several blocks away, once they feel the coast is clear. The cops and corpos will both be descending on that apartment building momentarily. Grayson and Dom don’t want to be anywhere near it when they do.
Grayson calls Kristen to apprise her of the situation. He opts to excise Dom’s newly revealed strengths as a hacker. Not only would Kristen exploit this skill to no end, but the companies would not take too kindly to their supposedly uncrackable security protocols having weaknesses which can be exploited. To Dom’s credit, he has no intention of making his secrets public knowledge for the same reasons.
“Who cares what happened after the money hit your account? You got paid and you got out. I’ll give you a ring when the next thing comes up. Until then, go back to your flowing booze and women of questionable moral character.”
Kristen’s glib response sets Grayson at ease. If there were even the earliest rumblings of fallout, she would never be so blasé about a client’s death and pissing off one of the corps. Despite this being an easy job going sideways in such a spectacular fashion, secrets are best kept when most of those who know they stop breathing. It’s always preferable to have cash in hand and no witnesses at the end of the day.
Dead men’s cash is often more useful than they are.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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