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mustinvestigateTitle: All Quiet on the Liminal Fringe (8/?)
Author: MustInvestigate
Disclaimer: I only own action figures
Rating: PG – eventual NC17
Character(s)/Pairing: OT3
Warning(s): Pretentiousness; abuse of noir tropes
Summary: Because![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tuff_ghost sez it can’t be done…an endless Watchmen / William Gibson-verse crossover, existing via the kink meme. Dreiberg, Kovacs, and Laurie Isham are vigilante cowboys dedicated to making life difficult for the cybercriminals and megacorps that keep a stranglehold on a dystopian world’s 11 billion lives.
Their hotel was a few minutes’ walk from the Mystic’s. Laurie set off in the opposite direction, jumping from the fourth-floor window to a ledge across the way. Her gloves, inlaid with dozens of ceramic barbs, gripped the pockmarked concrete as she swung around the corner and dropped to land on an aluminium awning two floors down and then – what the hell – pulled off a tight flip learned from her stint as Tokyo Action Girl on her way to the alley below. The landing – dipping low to spread the shock evenly through her joints before smoothly standing – was automatic, practiced and recorded thousands of times.
She hoped it made Kovacs sick. Ideally all over Dreiberg.
Laurie had an idea what he was feeling – the sense-churning doubling she’d gone through every time she plugged into the rough cut of her performances – and wasn’t entirey unsympathetic. A final holo product was simultracked with a neural white noise that temporarily disconnected the audience from their own nervous system, which was a concept that now creeped her out no end. It wouldn’t be impossible to make that disconnection permanent, not for someone as skilled as Dreiberg but lacking the goody-two-shoes on their feet.
So, it was the wired-world’s good fortune that he was an ambitionless pompous jerkass, who took advantage of other people’s willingness to pitch in for a cause that was completely not their problem in any way.
He took her in. She owed him. And it was fun, sometimes, getting one over on the world’s smaller bastards. That was it. She certainly hadn’t signed on as permanent babysitter for his frighteningly repressed pet sociopath.
The frighteningly repressed sociopath currently riding on her nerves, hearing through her ears, undoubtably confused – goddamn, let him just be confused – by the restless electricity under her skin that reminded her she was a young, healthy human being, one who’d never had to suffer months without the intimate company of other human beings. Well, genetically human, anyway. Surgically fit, synthetically youthful, plastic fantastics that, up close, looked more like the first wave of Planet Krebulon’s effete invasion force.
It had been convenient, really, that they were all identikit wired for uniform sensation – not that they’d do something as base as fuck-vids, of course, only thematically important scenes in artistic endeavours – so she never had to learn any new techniques. Just point and click.
“Uck.”
A question mark flickered in the corner of her vision, projected by a small chip in her shades.
“Why ‘uck’?” she asked.
A few moments later the question mark was replaced with an N. She thought and tried again. “Where am I going?”
Y.
“For a walk. Am I allowed off the leash long enough for that?”
The Y disappeared, leaving a blank cursor. At least he was smart enough not to answer.
Laurie lurked for a few minutes, watching the movement around her for signs of the thugs that had chased them into the heights. She was disappointed to find none. They seemed to have successful thrown them, for the time being.
She turned onto the main street and dashed through the crowd to the pedestrian underpass, keeping her head down. Laurie had picked up the habit of avoiding the main streets and their closed-circuit cameras except on slow days, when they’d go out separately and stride with great purpose nowhere in particular, laying false tracks to throw off future investigations. That would be a little more difficult with her new shades, which were harder to hide than her fingernails. Not for the first time, she thought about Chiba City’s black market surgeons, about unremarkable features that would let her disappear completely.
Of course, in a dating pool where even noodle-slingers saved their fractions toward the perfect nose, the perfect tits, a dull face would get her even less tail than a nun’s wimple.
She thought of Amsterdam as the underpass’s stink filled her sinuses, of jogging along the dry canals with Jon gliding next to her on her security detail’s armoured transport, his lips moving as he communicated via wireless with the home office. He idly disguised his transport for her amusement, flickering from white steed to twisty dragon to a growling twentieth-century tank, which had charmed Laurie most of all.
Stale urine should not be nostalgic, Laurie thought as she spat out the bitter effluence of her re-routed tear ducts and rubbed her nose. Other pedestrians swerved to avoid the spittle without looking at her, thinking: Contamination. Plague. She shielded her face against a particularly harsh blast of grit on the opposite sidewalk and ducked out of the wind. She wasn’t the only brave soul seeking the shelter of the unmonitored alleys, but she was probably the only one who felt the lack of cameras with relief. This was her new home turf, the long unseen spread between Dreiberg’s and the Mystics where tourists feared to tread.
Like Kovacs and his rooftops, up where the signal was strong.
“I had a stretch like this in Holowood, too,” she whispered. “I patrolled whenever my security detail made the mistake of leaving me alone in any room with a window. You know how many bathroom vents I’ve crawled through, just to get a little me-time? Sally always threw a fit when I came back, blamed it on Blake’s ribonucleic contamination, but I think she was a little proud, too. Like I was some kinda white hat, anyway.”
No response. “You still there, K?”
The cursor reappeared and blinked.
“Good,” she said, not sure why that was good. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere – the connection could only be turned off on her end. Which might actually be a good idea, at least until she got closer to the Mystic’s. Unfortunately, radio silence was guaranteed to get the two of them charging after her, panicked and ready to do as much damage to her theoretical abductors as a toothpick and a beach ball could.
“I hate silence.”
The cursor blinked.
“Silence means the other person’s gonna fill it. And what do they fill it with? How much they love Sally Isham. How awesome it is to meet her daughter. Like I’m supposed to respond: Wow, you love my mother, I love my mother, what am amazing and singular connection! Would you like my agent’s number so you can be a big holostar too, or will a blowjob suffice?”
The cursor froze mid-blink.
“The really sophisticated ones, they tell me I’m so lucky to work with a genius like Jon, practically have an orgasm right there talking about the saturation levels of their favourite Osterman hues. Once in a while I’m lucky enough to get a real creep, one who idolises Blake and wants to be just like him. Starting with Sally Isham’s daughter.”
She snorted. “I swear to god, when his death finally gets out and the media rehashes all that shit with him and my mother, I’m taking a shovel to my face and fleeing to Antarctica.”
* * *
“…hmmm… possible impact on muscle memory. Will investigate further.”
“On what now?” Dreiberg replied to the first coherent string of words to emerge from his partner’s grumbling in several minutes. He’d have an opening between virus sweeps in 26 seconds, and nothing to keep him occupied through the long wait.
“Direct application of another’s experience to nerves. Any sense memory remains?” He carefully raised and lowered his arms, then rubbed at his lower abdomen with a grimace. “Most likely of use with vat-grown assassins. Hook into sensations while growing, shorten necessary training period even further.”
Dreiberg watched him twitch spastically, tensing in something like sheer horror, then self-consciously relax his muscles.
In retrospect, it hadn’t been the best idea to super-stimulate someone on the verge of endocrinal DTs. Or to leave that man in charge of his most intimate functions while Dreiberg went into Pyramid’s well guarded server nest. Lacking any other option, they’d just have to play a very poor hand very, very well. “If that was true, every holo-fanatic would know kung fu. The real addicts actually lose coordination.”
“…hunh. Perhaps deadening would be ultimate goal. Reduce abilities of general population.”
The whiplash gymnastics of Kovacs’ paranoia drew a reluctant chuckle out of him. “Moderation’s the key. As with everything. Hell, they never hurt my reflexes!”
There – the security drones passed each other and paused for milliseconds to exchange sweep data. Dreiberg leapt into the gap in their recording and quickly wedged himself in the nearest good camouflage – a receptionist’s online-keno account cache.
Naughty, naughty, he thought, almost unbearably tempted to kill time before the next inner perimeter’s weakness by tracking down the employee’s manager and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to the mini-gambling den. He’d nearly convinced himself it would be not only fun but just when he realised nearly twenty seconds of real time had passed and – he peeked – Kovacs was still glaring, his mouth tight and scandalised.
“Hey, it was the old Sally Isham hacks,” Dreiberg said defensively. “Some of the very first megacorp burns, recorded for posterity.”
“Hmph.”
“Only the ones with Hollis – they were educational!”
* * *
Kovacs preferred the heights because they were safe, as long as a person had no problems with crumbling structures, vicious gusts, or an abundance of sharp rusted objects to impale oneself on when the wind knocked over your perch. Laurie preferred the alleys because they weren’t. The Sprawl was kind to her, providing a terrified young courier and two knuckledraggers bristling with Syndicate hardware.
“Seito-sama won’t be happy to hear that, not at all. Onsha has an agreement with Mercury couriers in this neighbourhood, and this is not the first time we’ve crossed paths, Wesley. You know the drill.”
They were huge, too, probably local boys stuffed with beef cattle hormones from puberty. Their profiles were visibly pockmarked, a peculiar vanity in a city where artificial pores were bought with teenagers’ walking-around credits. They didn’t need to be attractive. And they weren’t going down easily, she judged, humming happily.
“No, oh god, it’s a V-A communiqué…”
“Nuh-uh, Seito-sama will be most displeased. Best you dump what you got between your ears on my little drive here, if you don’t want your knees bending the other way.”
“Bu-but, it requires a Level-12 password, and I don’t got it!” the courier squeaked. “Only the client got it! I really – ”
“My associate’s real good at cracking passwords. And skulls. You wanna do this the hard way, we’ll scoop it right out of your grey stuff.”
“Oh God, I really – please – ”
Laurie left her nails sheathed – they were better for subtle work, and these two didn’t seem like the nuance type. She grabbed a broken power strip from a nearby trash heap and cracked the closer one in the rear neckjack instead. He jerked and fell to his knees, momentarily overwhelmed by internal feedback. That took his recorder out of commission, and a hard punch to his bowed head took the side of beef ferrying it around temporarily out as well. The other one turned as she leapt at him and, quick on his feet for a lump of scar tissue, backhanded her across the jaw.
Laurie admired that, how he’d already been shifting his body’s turning momentum to his arm before he consciously registered his assailant. She filed it away under Awesome Moves To Learn and tumbled backwards over his buddy.
* * *
Kovacs gasped and fell off the bed just as Dreiberg was readying himself to breach Pyramid’s security core. It was too late to abort. He dove in as Kovacs opened his mouth and security klaxons blared to life, hoped his blood pressure was holding steady as he nimbly cut through the bramble of their inner firewall, reached the central shell that most resembled the strike virus’s appearance as Kovacs started to slide, and had filtered through and replicated the necessary segments before Kovacs’ fists balled into the duvet and hauled the rest of himself upright.
“Laurie – ”
“Need some help here,” Dreiberg interrupted, fighting halfway back out before getting forced, nanometre by nanometre, into a corner in the time it took him to get the words out.
Kovacs let himself fall toward the damp carpet as he briefly abandoned the meat to follow Dreiberg and barrelled into the tight formation holding him in place. They scattered and raggedly reformed, turning like a flock of birds on an unseen updraft.
Dreiberg turned to attack, feeling his lips pull into a slow, savage snarl as he stunned one, then two drones, forcing their technicians to disconnect and take a long unscheduled nap. Three more blipped out of existence to the right. The remainder clumped together, turning erratically as they looked for the second invader and the unfortunate ones found him. Dreiberg rushed past them, feeling his partner at his heels. He knew better than to look at him directly.
He’d see nothing. No idealised human, no tiger, no starfield. Just an unfocusable shape like mist on waves, a matrix that spoke directly to the primitive roots of the software they rode on, forcing it to analyse the meaningless data for cognates. Hell, it could even catch Dreiberg out, and he’d had years of practice filtering it from his input.
They were free and disconnecting from Pyramid’s server as Kovacs’ body squelched to the carpet. He scrambled to his feet and staggered to the door. Dreiberg ripped the electrodes from his chest and called after him, “What’s happening to Laurie?"
“Getting killed,” Kovacs snarled and wheeled to the right, stumbling over his feet. He pushed himself determinately back in the right direction before grabbing the wall for support. “No…actually…”
He shook his head as Dreiberg helped him back to the bed. “Where is she? I’ll go.”
“Fine now. Insane woman. Argh…”
“What’s – ”
Kovacs grasped for air. “Never doing this again,” he declared.
* * *
The courier was running for it, hauling his skinny ass back to the halos of street lights. That was good. Laurie’s head rang from the gorilla’s blow, but she was perfectly placed to kick the first thug in the face before he recovered, and that was also good. His nose mashed sideways into his cheek, bearing the pattern of her treads.
His friend carefully leaned to check his injuries, showing more caution than she’d like. Still, her legs were long enough to reach and crack his kneecap if she didn’t mind scooting her ass along the slimy pavement. He shuffled just out of range, but overbalanced trying to grab her foot and left his neck open.
“Who are – aiigh!”
She flicked her razors out as she jumped, plunged two into the skin next to the nearest transmitter, curled her fingers, and yanked. The metal pulled loose with a gush of arterial blood. She rolled and scrambled to her feet as he slapped his hand over it.
“Who are you?” she growled back, not really interested in an answer. He was hired muscle threatening an innocent-enough victim. What else did Tokyo Action Girl need to know? More importantly, he was good, someone she could learn from.
Unfortunately, he was also smarter than he looked. He slapped a pressure bandage over his neck, never taking his eyes off her, then threw his unconscious partner over his shoulder and hoofed it without looking back.
“Well…crap,” she said, watching the foreign blood run in beads from her fingertips as the razors retracted. Her mouth was dry and tasted like the bottom of the Gunga’s vindaloo pot. She threw a few punches at the shadows and turned, trying to push the force of it from her heel up to her hand the way the Syndicate muscle had. Her muscles stretched like knotty plasticine, resisting and demanding more.
“Hey mister, you okay?” The courier, calling from the alley’s mouth. “Mister?”
“Why don’t you send up a flare?” she muttered, moving deeper into the concealing gloom, toward the Mystic’s.
“Wow,” he breathed, her tweaked eardrums easily picking up the words. “An actual street samurai. No one’s ever gonna believe this!”
Nor should they, she thought. The urban legends of freelance do-gooders were greatly exaggerated. Mostly young punks in nascent gangs trying to establish themselves on the turf of others, sometimes saving would-be victims in a sort of collateral altruism. As far as Laurie knew, she was the only one who put on baggy clothes that hid her moderately famous figure and went out specifically looking for trouble to break up.
Not unlike her boys, but more direct. More fun.
She wished her heart would stop beating so hard, closing her throat with every pulse.
“Still there, K?”
The cursor blinked to a rhythm that implied she was in the doghouse. She wondered if it was Morse code.
“Good. Make a note, will you – assuming we survive this one, we look into this ‘Seito’ fella next. If he’s figured out a way to crack secure data couriers, the black market is gonna get ugly, and fast.”
Y.
“Y as in ‘yes’ or Y as in W-H-Y?” Laurie reached the edge of the alley and leapt up to a fire escape to survey the sidewalk. It was a solid wall of commuter urgency this close to the main drag.
A long pause, then another Y.
“That’s not really helpful. We probably should have worked out a code before I left, you know? I would have thought of that if things hadn’t gotten weird. Here, for ‘yes,’ send ‘K,’ like ‘okay.’ Like Kovacs. Heh, and for ‘no,’ ‘D’ – like Dreiberg. Like, ‘no, I’m too good to answer a simple question for a thickie like Laurie. Hmph.”
She sidled into the crowd, slouching, and let the tide carry her north, following eddies until she reached the other side and the safety of another cctv-less stretch.
“I swear, every time he looks at me he still sees the gawky 12-year-old Sally tarted up like a scarecrow concubine to meet Hollis Junior. It shoots me right to the moon, you know? Had a bellyful of that attitude from Mom and her entourage – we know what’s good for you, you’re too young to decide, leave it all to us. And what’d that get me, huh?”
The cursor blinked.
“Yeah, exactly. Bupkas. Ooooh, hold that thought.”
Another learning opportunity in her road – a clandestine deal, possibly weapons? That would be fun.
No, she saw, just drugs. And too aware by half – the dealer saw her and shoved his customer’s hand away. They scattered like cockroaches in two directions, neither worth pursuing. She sighed.
“I would really, really like to punch something.”
K.
Laurie smirked. “You can’t tell me you’re not enjoying this, at least a little. How often do you get to beat someone up, huh?”
D.
“No, of course not.”
A flicker of reflected lights made her peek cautiously around the next corner, taking in the brutal civi-cops throwing a collection of modern disadvantaged youth in their hovering paddy wagon. She climbed to the roof and detoured west, not quite daring to fly over their heads. Sprawl police were often issued with the neurotoxin darts denied civilians, and rarely stuck with the ‘stun’ dose of just one. At least they’d cleared out the alleys for several blocks, leaving her in isolation when she touched concrete again. The deep breaths that were not calming at all echoed off the walls.
“Fuck. Can anything else go right tonight?”
K.
She flicked her vision to infrared and scanned the alley. Nothing. There were a few moving shapes inside the buildings, but faint through layers of brick and plastiform. No windows. Muffled curses and blows echoed along the ancient brickwork, making her twitch with envy. She ducked into a blind corner to wait out the disturbance and leaned on the wall, feeling the sore lump forming on her jaw.
“That’s gonna be a pretty one, I can tell now. All lumpy and purple.”
K.
“Not that it matters with the company I keep. Dan’s a monk and you’re afraid of your own dick. Which, given your upbringing, is probably the best of all possible scenarios.”
The cursor froze.
“Most boys would have grown into psycho serial killers, probably. But you didn’t, so, you know, kudos for that.”
Nothing.
“Is that thing stuck?”
It blinked once.
“So, um, ‘nothing’ is our code for ‘mortified silence’?”
…
K.
“Fine, fine. I was just trying to help. My mother said her analyst insisted she talk everything out, especially the really crap years when she was first out on her own. Even though he taped it all and tried to blackmail her with it, she still said it helped.”
D.
“No?”
D.
“…I bet you’re wishing we made a code for ‘shut up’.”
K.
“You’re not getting one, either.”
* * *
“I’ve got a name – probably another intended victim. Unless this is the kind of cowboy who literally signs his work. Jacobi – you ever hear of it?”
“No. Someone has. Starting search, uhn...”
Kovacs frantically shook his head and rubbed his temples, distracting Dreiberg from his liberated data. “You going to make it?”
It was nearly a minute before Kovacs answered faintly, as if he’d been punched. “Will be over soon.”
“Are you looking at this?”
“Hmm.”
“It definitely came through Pyramid, but damned if I can say from where. It’s like it just appeared mid-file. And here, this is Blake’s work, right? Looks like the same stuff…or am I wrong? Is this set more…lively?”
Kovacs studied it for several heartbeats before shaking his head. “No. Is appropriated. Hack and slash – a good hack and slash – but not Blake.”
Dreiberg hesitated. “I…well, I was distracted on the way out, but I didn’t see anything that might be a consciousness-dump in there. It’s not impossible he’s somewhere out there, but the only reason we suspected in the first place was this stretch of code…”
Kovacs looked away.
“I’m sorry, man. I think he’s really gone.”
“Ask Sally Isham,” Kovacs muttered, crossing his arms.
“Oh for – ” Dreiberg yanked the rig from his forehead and threw it to the bedspread. Carefully. “You can’t let anything go, can you? Yes, I used to watch the old holos, like everyone else in the world. If a crush on Sally Isham makes me debauched, I’m just one of 11 million wankers.”
Dreiberg wished he’d left his rig on, so he could snap a shot of Kovacs’ gape-mouthed shock. He recovered all too quickly.
“Ordinary world obsessed with bloated, aging whore. Expected better of you, Daniel. Also, should take care to never share this view with Miss Isham. Would not appreciate.”
“What the hell is up with you two?”
“Attempted to make nice, as ordered. Now reprimanded for succeeding.”
“I turn my back for a few hours, and you turn into the world’s sole remaining Laurie Isham fangirl? Are you two trading mash texts right now?”
“Inappropriate, Daniel! Will not tolerate slur on – ”
“You brought it up, buddy!”
Kovacs’ mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “Merely suggested,” he ground out, “having Miss Isham contact mother. Knew of Blake’s death. Had emotional connection. Possibly entrusted with priceless information, if Blake suspected fatal plot.”
“Oh.” Dreiberg realised he was looming over Kovacs’ bed, and slowly lowered his clenched fist. “That’s…probably a good hunch.”
He gathered up the scattered electrodes and took his time putting them in the latex-lined pockets of his bag. “You could stand to use a few more words sometimes, you know?”
Kovacs spasmed, cracking his head on the wall.
* * *
Parts: one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine
Author: MustInvestigate
Disclaimer: I only own action figures
Rating: PG – eventual NC17
Character(s)/Pairing: OT3
Warning(s): Pretentiousness; abuse of noir tropes
Summary: Because
tuff_ghost sez it can’t be done…an endless Watchmen / William Gibson-verse crossover, existing via the kink meme. Dreiberg, Kovacs, and Laurie Isham are vigilante cowboys dedicated to making life difficult for the cybercriminals and megacorps that keep a stranglehold on a dystopian world’s 11 billion lives.Their hotel was a few minutes’ walk from the Mystic’s. Laurie set off in the opposite direction, jumping from the fourth-floor window to a ledge across the way. Her gloves, inlaid with dozens of ceramic barbs, gripped the pockmarked concrete as she swung around the corner and dropped to land on an aluminium awning two floors down and then – what the hell – pulled off a tight flip learned from her stint as Tokyo Action Girl on her way to the alley below. The landing – dipping low to spread the shock evenly through her joints before smoothly standing – was automatic, practiced and recorded thousands of times.
She hoped it made Kovacs sick. Ideally all over Dreiberg.
Laurie had an idea what he was feeling – the sense-churning doubling she’d gone through every time she plugged into the rough cut of her performances – and wasn’t entirey unsympathetic. A final holo product was simultracked with a neural white noise that temporarily disconnected the audience from their own nervous system, which was a concept that now creeped her out no end. It wouldn’t be impossible to make that disconnection permanent, not for someone as skilled as Dreiberg but lacking the goody-two-shoes on their feet.
So, it was the wired-world’s good fortune that he was an ambitionless pompous jerkass, who took advantage of other people’s willingness to pitch in for a cause that was completely not their problem in any way.
He took her in. She owed him. And it was fun, sometimes, getting one over on the world’s smaller bastards. That was it. She certainly hadn’t signed on as permanent babysitter for his frighteningly repressed pet sociopath.
The frighteningly repressed sociopath currently riding on her nerves, hearing through her ears, undoubtably confused – goddamn, let him just be confused – by the restless electricity under her skin that reminded her she was a young, healthy human being, one who’d never had to suffer months without the intimate company of other human beings. Well, genetically human, anyway. Surgically fit, synthetically youthful, plastic fantastics that, up close, looked more like the first wave of Planet Krebulon’s effete invasion force.
It had been convenient, really, that they were all identikit wired for uniform sensation – not that they’d do something as base as fuck-vids, of course, only thematically important scenes in artistic endeavours – so she never had to learn any new techniques. Just point and click.
“Uck.”
A question mark flickered in the corner of her vision, projected by a small chip in her shades.
“Why ‘uck’?” she asked.
A few moments later the question mark was replaced with an N. She thought and tried again. “Where am I going?”
Y.
“For a walk. Am I allowed off the leash long enough for that?”
The Y disappeared, leaving a blank cursor. At least he was smart enough not to answer.
Laurie lurked for a few minutes, watching the movement around her for signs of the thugs that had chased them into the heights. She was disappointed to find none. They seemed to have successful thrown them, for the time being.
She turned onto the main street and dashed through the crowd to the pedestrian underpass, keeping her head down. Laurie had picked up the habit of avoiding the main streets and their closed-circuit cameras except on slow days, when they’d go out separately and stride with great purpose nowhere in particular, laying false tracks to throw off future investigations. That would be a little more difficult with her new shades, which were harder to hide than her fingernails. Not for the first time, she thought about Chiba City’s black market surgeons, about unremarkable features that would let her disappear completely.
Of course, in a dating pool where even noodle-slingers saved their fractions toward the perfect nose, the perfect tits, a dull face would get her even less tail than a nun’s wimple.
She thought of Amsterdam as the underpass’s stink filled her sinuses, of jogging along the dry canals with Jon gliding next to her on her security detail’s armoured transport, his lips moving as he communicated via wireless with the home office. He idly disguised his transport for her amusement, flickering from white steed to twisty dragon to a growling twentieth-century tank, which had charmed Laurie most of all.
Stale urine should not be nostalgic, Laurie thought as she spat out the bitter effluence of her re-routed tear ducts and rubbed her nose. Other pedestrians swerved to avoid the spittle without looking at her, thinking: Contamination. Plague. She shielded her face against a particularly harsh blast of grit on the opposite sidewalk and ducked out of the wind. She wasn’t the only brave soul seeking the shelter of the unmonitored alleys, but she was probably the only one who felt the lack of cameras with relief. This was her new home turf, the long unseen spread between Dreiberg’s and the Mystics where tourists feared to tread.
Like Kovacs and his rooftops, up where the signal was strong.
“I had a stretch like this in Holowood, too,” she whispered. “I patrolled whenever my security detail made the mistake of leaving me alone in any room with a window. You know how many bathroom vents I’ve crawled through, just to get a little me-time? Sally always threw a fit when I came back, blamed it on Blake’s ribonucleic contamination, but I think she was a little proud, too. Like I was some kinda white hat, anyway.”
No response. “You still there, K?”
The cursor reappeared and blinked.
“Good,” she said, not sure why that was good. It wasn’t like he could go anywhere – the connection could only be turned off on her end. Which might actually be a good idea, at least until she got closer to the Mystic’s. Unfortunately, radio silence was guaranteed to get the two of them charging after her, panicked and ready to do as much damage to her theoretical abductors as a toothpick and a beach ball could.
“I hate silence.”
The cursor blinked.
“Silence means the other person’s gonna fill it. And what do they fill it with? How much they love Sally Isham. How awesome it is to meet her daughter. Like I’m supposed to respond: Wow, you love my mother, I love my mother, what am amazing and singular connection! Would you like my agent’s number so you can be a big holostar too, or will a blowjob suffice?”
The cursor froze mid-blink.
“The really sophisticated ones, they tell me I’m so lucky to work with a genius like Jon, practically have an orgasm right there talking about the saturation levels of their favourite Osterman hues. Once in a while I’m lucky enough to get a real creep, one who idolises Blake and wants to be just like him. Starting with Sally Isham’s daughter.”
She snorted. “I swear to god, when his death finally gets out and the media rehashes all that shit with him and my mother, I’m taking a shovel to my face and fleeing to Antarctica.”
* * *
“…hmmm… possible impact on muscle memory. Will investigate further.”
“On what now?” Dreiberg replied to the first coherent string of words to emerge from his partner’s grumbling in several minutes. He’d have an opening between virus sweeps in 26 seconds, and nothing to keep him occupied through the long wait.
“Direct application of another’s experience to nerves. Any sense memory remains?” He carefully raised and lowered his arms, then rubbed at his lower abdomen with a grimace. “Most likely of use with vat-grown assassins. Hook into sensations while growing, shorten necessary training period even further.”
Dreiberg watched him twitch spastically, tensing in something like sheer horror, then self-consciously relax his muscles.
In retrospect, it hadn’t been the best idea to super-stimulate someone on the verge of endocrinal DTs. Or to leave that man in charge of his most intimate functions while Dreiberg went into Pyramid’s well guarded server nest. Lacking any other option, they’d just have to play a very poor hand very, very well. “If that was true, every holo-fanatic would know kung fu. The real addicts actually lose coordination.”
“…hunh. Perhaps deadening would be ultimate goal. Reduce abilities of general population.”
The whiplash gymnastics of Kovacs’ paranoia drew a reluctant chuckle out of him. “Moderation’s the key. As with everything. Hell, they never hurt my reflexes!”
There – the security drones passed each other and paused for milliseconds to exchange sweep data. Dreiberg leapt into the gap in their recording and quickly wedged himself in the nearest good camouflage – a receptionist’s online-keno account cache.
Naughty, naughty, he thought, almost unbearably tempted to kill time before the next inner perimeter’s weakness by tracking down the employee’s manager and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to the mini-gambling den. He’d nearly convinced himself it would be not only fun but just when he realised nearly twenty seconds of real time had passed and – he peeked – Kovacs was still glaring, his mouth tight and scandalised.
“Hey, it was the old Sally Isham hacks,” Dreiberg said defensively. “Some of the very first megacorp burns, recorded for posterity.”
“Hmph.”
“Only the ones with Hollis – they were educational!”
* * *
Kovacs preferred the heights because they were safe, as long as a person had no problems with crumbling structures, vicious gusts, or an abundance of sharp rusted objects to impale oneself on when the wind knocked over your perch. Laurie preferred the alleys because they weren’t. The Sprawl was kind to her, providing a terrified young courier and two knuckledraggers bristling with Syndicate hardware.
“Seito-sama won’t be happy to hear that, not at all. Onsha has an agreement with Mercury couriers in this neighbourhood, and this is not the first time we’ve crossed paths, Wesley. You know the drill.”
They were huge, too, probably local boys stuffed with beef cattle hormones from puberty. Their profiles were visibly pockmarked, a peculiar vanity in a city where artificial pores were bought with teenagers’ walking-around credits. They didn’t need to be attractive. And they weren’t going down easily, she judged, humming happily.
“No, oh god, it’s a V-A communiqué…”
“Nuh-uh, Seito-sama will be most displeased. Best you dump what you got between your ears on my little drive here, if you don’t want your knees bending the other way.”
“Bu-but, it requires a Level-12 password, and I don’t got it!” the courier squeaked. “Only the client got it! I really – ”
“My associate’s real good at cracking passwords. And skulls. You wanna do this the hard way, we’ll scoop it right out of your grey stuff.”
“Oh God, I really – please – ”
Laurie left her nails sheathed – they were better for subtle work, and these two didn’t seem like the nuance type. She grabbed a broken power strip from a nearby trash heap and cracked the closer one in the rear neckjack instead. He jerked and fell to his knees, momentarily overwhelmed by internal feedback. That took his recorder out of commission, and a hard punch to his bowed head took the side of beef ferrying it around temporarily out as well. The other one turned as she leapt at him and, quick on his feet for a lump of scar tissue, backhanded her across the jaw.
Laurie admired that, how he’d already been shifting his body’s turning momentum to his arm before he consciously registered his assailant. She filed it away under Awesome Moves To Learn and tumbled backwards over his buddy.
* * *
Kovacs gasped and fell off the bed just as Dreiberg was readying himself to breach Pyramid’s security core. It was too late to abort. He dove in as Kovacs opened his mouth and security klaxons blared to life, hoped his blood pressure was holding steady as he nimbly cut through the bramble of their inner firewall, reached the central shell that most resembled the strike virus’s appearance as Kovacs started to slide, and had filtered through and replicated the necessary segments before Kovacs’ fists balled into the duvet and hauled the rest of himself upright.
“Laurie – ”
“Need some help here,” Dreiberg interrupted, fighting halfway back out before getting forced, nanometre by nanometre, into a corner in the time it took him to get the words out.
Kovacs let himself fall toward the damp carpet as he briefly abandoned the meat to follow Dreiberg and barrelled into the tight formation holding him in place. They scattered and raggedly reformed, turning like a flock of birds on an unseen updraft.
Dreiberg turned to attack, feeling his lips pull into a slow, savage snarl as he stunned one, then two drones, forcing their technicians to disconnect and take a long unscheduled nap. Three more blipped out of existence to the right. The remainder clumped together, turning erratically as they looked for the second invader and the unfortunate ones found him. Dreiberg rushed past them, feeling his partner at his heels. He knew better than to look at him directly.
He’d see nothing. No idealised human, no tiger, no starfield. Just an unfocusable shape like mist on waves, a matrix that spoke directly to the primitive roots of the software they rode on, forcing it to analyse the meaningless data for cognates. Hell, it could even catch Dreiberg out, and he’d had years of practice filtering it from his input.
They were free and disconnecting from Pyramid’s server as Kovacs’ body squelched to the carpet. He scrambled to his feet and staggered to the door. Dreiberg ripped the electrodes from his chest and called after him, “What’s happening to Laurie?"
“Getting killed,” Kovacs snarled and wheeled to the right, stumbling over his feet. He pushed himself determinately back in the right direction before grabbing the wall for support. “No…actually…”
He shook his head as Dreiberg helped him back to the bed. “Where is she? I’ll go.”
“Fine now. Insane woman. Argh…”
“What’s – ”
Kovacs grasped for air. “Never doing this again,” he declared.
* * *
The courier was running for it, hauling his skinny ass back to the halos of street lights. That was good. Laurie’s head rang from the gorilla’s blow, but she was perfectly placed to kick the first thug in the face before he recovered, and that was also good. His nose mashed sideways into his cheek, bearing the pattern of her treads.
His friend carefully leaned to check his injuries, showing more caution than she’d like. Still, her legs were long enough to reach and crack his kneecap if she didn’t mind scooting her ass along the slimy pavement. He shuffled just out of range, but overbalanced trying to grab her foot and left his neck open.
“Who are – aiigh!”
She flicked her razors out as she jumped, plunged two into the skin next to the nearest transmitter, curled her fingers, and yanked. The metal pulled loose with a gush of arterial blood. She rolled and scrambled to her feet as he slapped his hand over it.
“Who are you?” she growled back, not really interested in an answer. He was hired muscle threatening an innocent-enough victim. What else did Tokyo Action Girl need to know? More importantly, he was good, someone she could learn from.
Unfortunately, he was also smarter than he looked. He slapped a pressure bandage over his neck, never taking his eyes off her, then threw his unconscious partner over his shoulder and hoofed it without looking back.
“Well…crap,” she said, watching the foreign blood run in beads from her fingertips as the razors retracted. Her mouth was dry and tasted like the bottom of the Gunga’s vindaloo pot. She threw a few punches at the shadows and turned, trying to push the force of it from her heel up to her hand the way the Syndicate muscle had. Her muscles stretched like knotty plasticine, resisting and demanding more.
“Hey mister, you okay?” The courier, calling from the alley’s mouth. “Mister?”
“Why don’t you send up a flare?” she muttered, moving deeper into the concealing gloom, toward the Mystic’s.
“Wow,” he breathed, her tweaked eardrums easily picking up the words. “An actual street samurai. No one’s ever gonna believe this!”
Nor should they, she thought. The urban legends of freelance do-gooders were greatly exaggerated. Mostly young punks in nascent gangs trying to establish themselves on the turf of others, sometimes saving would-be victims in a sort of collateral altruism. As far as Laurie knew, she was the only one who put on baggy clothes that hid her moderately famous figure and went out specifically looking for trouble to break up.
Not unlike her boys, but more direct. More fun.
She wished her heart would stop beating so hard, closing her throat with every pulse.
“Still there, K?”
The cursor blinked to a rhythm that implied she was in the doghouse. She wondered if it was Morse code.
“Good. Make a note, will you – assuming we survive this one, we look into this ‘Seito’ fella next. If he’s figured out a way to crack secure data couriers, the black market is gonna get ugly, and fast.”
Y.
“Y as in ‘yes’ or Y as in W-H-Y?” Laurie reached the edge of the alley and leapt up to a fire escape to survey the sidewalk. It was a solid wall of commuter urgency this close to the main drag.
A long pause, then another Y.
“That’s not really helpful. We probably should have worked out a code before I left, you know? I would have thought of that if things hadn’t gotten weird. Here, for ‘yes,’ send ‘K,’ like ‘okay.’ Like Kovacs. Heh, and for ‘no,’ ‘D’ – like Dreiberg. Like, ‘no, I’m too good to answer a simple question for a thickie like Laurie. Hmph.”
She sidled into the crowd, slouching, and let the tide carry her north, following eddies until she reached the other side and the safety of another cctv-less stretch.
“I swear, every time he looks at me he still sees the gawky 12-year-old Sally tarted up like a scarecrow concubine to meet Hollis Junior. It shoots me right to the moon, you know? Had a bellyful of that attitude from Mom and her entourage – we know what’s good for you, you’re too young to decide, leave it all to us. And what’d that get me, huh?”
The cursor blinked.
“Yeah, exactly. Bupkas. Ooooh, hold that thought.”
Another learning opportunity in her road – a clandestine deal, possibly weapons? That would be fun.
No, she saw, just drugs. And too aware by half – the dealer saw her and shoved his customer’s hand away. They scattered like cockroaches in two directions, neither worth pursuing. She sighed.
“I would really, really like to punch something.”
K.
Laurie smirked. “You can’t tell me you’re not enjoying this, at least a little. How often do you get to beat someone up, huh?”
D.
“No, of course not.”
A flicker of reflected lights made her peek cautiously around the next corner, taking in the brutal civi-cops throwing a collection of modern disadvantaged youth in their hovering paddy wagon. She climbed to the roof and detoured west, not quite daring to fly over their heads. Sprawl police were often issued with the neurotoxin darts denied civilians, and rarely stuck with the ‘stun’ dose of just one. At least they’d cleared out the alleys for several blocks, leaving her in isolation when she touched concrete again. The deep breaths that were not calming at all echoed off the walls.
“Fuck. Can anything else go right tonight?”
K.
She flicked her vision to infrared and scanned the alley. Nothing. There were a few moving shapes inside the buildings, but faint through layers of brick and plastiform. No windows. Muffled curses and blows echoed along the ancient brickwork, making her twitch with envy. She ducked into a blind corner to wait out the disturbance and leaned on the wall, feeling the sore lump forming on her jaw.
“That’s gonna be a pretty one, I can tell now. All lumpy and purple.”
K.
“Not that it matters with the company I keep. Dan’s a monk and you’re afraid of your own dick. Which, given your upbringing, is probably the best of all possible scenarios.”
The cursor froze.
“Most boys would have grown into psycho serial killers, probably. But you didn’t, so, you know, kudos for that.”
Nothing.
“Is that thing stuck?”
It blinked once.
“So, um, ‘nothing’ is our code for ‘mortified silence’?”
…
K.
“Fine, fine. I was just trying to help. My mother said her analyst insisted she talk everything out, especially the really crap years when she was first out on her own. Even though he taped it all and tried to blackmail her with it, she still said it helped.”
D.
“No?”
D.
“…I bet you’re wishing we made a code for ‘shut up’.”
K.
“You’re not getting one, either.”
* * *
“I’ve got a name – probably another intended victim. Unless this is the kind of cowboy who literally signs his work. Jacobi – you ever hear of it?”
“No. Someone has. Starting search, uhn...”
Kovacs frantically shook his head and rubbed his temples, distracting Dreiberg from his liberated data. “You going to make it?”
It was nearly a minute before Kovacs answered faintly, as if he’d been punched. “Will be over soon.”
“Are you looking at this?”
“Hmm.”
“It definitely came through Pyramid, but damned if I can say from where. It’s like it just appeared mid-file. And here, this is Blake’s work, right? Looks like the same stuff…or am I wrong? Is this set more…lively?”
Kovacs studied it for several heartbeats before shaking his head. “No. Is appropriated. Hack and slash – a good hack and slash – but not Blake.”
Dreiberg hesitated. “I…well, I was distracted on the way out, but I didn’t see anything that might be a consciousness-dump in there. It’s not impossible he’s somewhere out there, but the only reason we suspected in the first place was this stretch of code…”
Kovacs looked away.
“I’m sorry, man. I think he’s really gone.”
“Ask Sally Isham,” Kovacs muttered, crossing his arms.
“Oh for – ” Dreiberg yanked the rig from his forehead and threw it to the bedspread. Carefully. “You can’t let anything go, can you? Yes, I used to watch the old holos, like everyone else in the world. If a crush on Sally Isham makes me debauched, I’m just one of 11 million wankers.”
Dreiberg wished he’d left his rig on, so he could snap a shot of Kovacs’ gape-mouthed shock. He recovered all too quickly.
“Ordinary world obsessed with bloated, aging whore. Expected better of you, Daniel. Also, should take care to never share this view with Miss Isham. Would not appreciate.”
“What the hell is up with you two?”
“Attempted to make nice, as ordered. Now reprimanded for succeeding.”
“I turn my back for a few hours, and you turn into the world’s sole remaining Laurie Isham fangirl? Are you two trading mash texts right now?”
“Inappropriate, Daniel! Will not tolerate slur on – ”
“You brought it up, buddy!”
Kovacs’ mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “Merely suggested,” he ground out, “having Miss Isham contact mother. Knew of Blake’s death. Had emotional connection. Possibly entrusted with priceless information, if Blake suspected fatal plot.”
“Oh.” Dreiberg realised he was looming over Kovacs’ bed, and slowly lowered his clenched fist. “That’s…probably a good hunch.”
He gathered up the scattered electrodes and took his time putting them in the latex-lined pockets of his bag. “You could stand to use a few more words sometimes, you know?”
Kovacs spasmed, cracking his head on the wall.
* * *
Parts: one - two - three - four - five - six - seven - eight - nine
no subject
Date: 2009-09-18 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-19 05:42 pm (UTC)But really, thanks, this is hugely encouraging. I'm far from pro, aside from a little freelance proofreading, but do have a couple novels that were derailed by a long illness a few years ago. After the first several sections, I started dredging up my old work habits for this, since it was enjoyable enough to motivate me back into the groove...I'm glad it seems to be working to someone not me :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 07:23 pm (UTC)That so cannot be true, I refuse to believe it. I adore this thing, and I think my tastes are pretty representative of the fandom's in general. I bet you're just not getting enough exposure, and also you lost some readers during kinkmeme migration. You should totally spam this all over
to change subject completely, IS Dan actually seriously obese here? I get confused between his own perception of himself, and his virtual construct (which I had read as kind of feature-blurred and half-complete, because he doesn't care for how he presents himself), and his physical self...which I kind of thought was your intention. Laurie and K don't seem to note his physical presence too much, whereas I have a pretty good picture of them both from each other's perspective.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 10:01 pm (UTC)I'd say Dan's like Donal Logue in Tao of Steve, heavier than in the GN without the muscle tone, but not in need of an anti-gravity belt to get around. They'd both be fairly indifferent to their looks, and Dan's somewhat self-conscious about it, but his self-image is more centred in his real abilities. You're right about the other two being more defined, but I think that's because they're threatened/drawn to each other (and thus over-analysing their chaacteristics), while Dan's the solid rock they're fighting over, and thus not defined. I should have Adrian do a bit more Dan-mulling :)
I'm always annoyed in scifi where people who live by their mental abilities also happen to have gym-toned physiques that look great in leather and rivets, for some reason. So these three are based more on me and my gamer friends, where the guys neglect themselves to one extreme or other, and the chicas are into marathons and martial arts.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 11:02 pm (UTC)Yes, it makes no sense, and it makes it difficult to find any particular characters physically attractive, if they are shaped like Barbie and Ken dolls.
I thought it made very good sense that there's not a clear physical picture of Dan, because he does live by his mind and it seems he is, by work and by habit, inhabiting an avatar way more often than a physical body in a room. And, like you said, the other two have plenty of reasons to be morbidly fascinated by one another's physical bodies. I was just curious because of what Brancher said below, and also because my own notion of Dan's avatar was something like a snowman or a bipedal blancmange :D
anon!
Date: 2009-09-19 12:44 am (UTC)Re: anon!
Date: 2009-09-19 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-19 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-19 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-19 06:04 pm (UTC)And thanks for that! - although I suspect I'm way too slooooow to ever get paid for writing :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 05:44 am (UTC)I was thinking today about how great it is that in this au, Dan is seriously obese, Walter is scrawny, and Laurie is still her gorgeous animal self. I cannot fucking wait for the porns of this.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 10:52 am (UTC)I think I love you?
I just sat down and read through all eight parts twice, because, hot damn, it's just that good!
I tend not to really enjoy AUs too much, because I don't see the point. In this case, I willingly eat my words with a little bit of strawberry jam. ;) This fic... is amazing. You've placed such delicious tidbits of canon in places, 35 minutes ago, and have introduced an entirly different verse while keeping the characters astoundingly themselves.
Despite, you know, being half cyborg in Kovacs' case. Or maybe, because Kovacs is half cyborg.
And, and, and...
It's freakishly sexy.
I love Walter's vulnerability, Laurie's aggressive personality, and Dan's creeping jealousy.
Seriously - this whole fic is gold.
Thank you so much for writing it and posting it for the masses and lurkers (like me *cough*) to read. :D
You're fantastic.
P.S.
I'm totally looking forward to the next part.
<3
no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 09:48 pm (UTC)everything he’d been so desperately trying not to think about
Date: 2009-10-10 03:53 am (UTC)Re: everything he’d been so desperately trying not to think about
Date: 2009-10-10 09:06 pm (UTC)You're totally converting me to the miniskirt. This is now what Miss Isham wears every single day.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 05:25 am (UTC)The cyberpunk world and it's complicated inhabitants drew me straight back to the first time I read Neuromancer and fell in love. I wish there was a more useful way to express my undying love for this 'verse.
I do hope this continues because it would be wrenching if this universe isn't explored further!
Also, smut? Pretty please?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-14 06:49 pm (UTC)Smut is coming, extremely strange smut, just slowly :) It's funny, in that it made me realise how little sex there is in Gibson worlds. Characters hook up, yeah, but it's more 'we've got some down time between jobs/crises/being shot at, wanna fuck?' Narrator: ...and then they done sex, then being shot at immediately recommenced.
re.
Date: 2009-10-18 05:58 am (UTC)On the other hand, Im disappointed that this story like most others will simply descend into porn.
It's too bad, but it's impossible to please everyone.
However, Im thankful for what is already here and do enjoy the story as it is. Thanks for sharing.
I felt compelled to draw this.
"get your claws out of my partner, he's a good man"
http://i35.tinypic.com/2v29l51.jpg
It's sort of how I envision the character, with his large multiport neckjack and scarred from surgery.
I know he doesn't have the blots, but I put them in anyway because it more character specific. I do have blotless versions if you're interested.
Re: re.
Date: 2009-10-23 02:45 am (UTC)http://i38.tinypic.com/w016c4.jpg
I thought the character is a lot more compelling and interesting if he didn't actually have eyes. Maybe just like a visual chip or something.
http://i36.tinypic.com/2pt1ks7.jpg
no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 11:35 pm (UTC)I wasn't sure if you had seen this very nice portrait of Kovacs on dA yet, so I wanted to drop in and make you aware of the artist's work!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 10:11 pm (UTC)I just want you to know that EVERY DAY I go look at my flist thinking "maybe there's more Liminal Fringe today."
Every day.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 06:45 pm (UTC)Love. Every. Word.
Must be continued, for great justice!