Prologue: Good Praxis
They were going to have to kill some people. She didn’t love the idea. But it wasn’t like they could just ask nicely where Nadia had been locked up.
Jackson sat up straighter, closing her eyes. Whirring and clunking came to life all around her. Landing pads deploying. Only a few more seconds. Killing was in the plan this time. It shouldn’t have been bothering her.
She squeezed the grip of her weapon, adjusting her hold on the long barrel. It was hard to move in this cramped space with the damn thing. An ugly, bulky gun with AUKTORIS ARMS MODEL 32 MAGNETIC RIFLE stamped down the side.
The soft glow of Cheshire was her only light, mere inches away from her face. A grinning, fanged smile, pulsing with slow, shifting neon purples and pinks and yellows. The helmet had once belonged to an Auktoris Private Security officer. One of the Domes. Blank, dark plexiglass. It had been modified, heavily. Up-armored. The outer shell was an external display now, a cartoonish cat face grinning at Jackson, hovering in the darkness.
Tess had even added little robot cat ears on top, of course, swiveling back and forth as the jet engines outside screamed higher.
Swooping in for a landing.
“Twenty seconds,” Tess’s voice said from the helmet, filtered with a menacing bit of static. For an instant, the fanged cat face flickered into a timer, milliseconds plummeting down too fast to read. “You ready?”
Jackson nodded. She could hear it plain as day, even with the static, even with the low tones added by the helmet to give Tess’s voice a mean sort of growl.
Tess was nervous. The figure across from Jackson had a pair of robotic arms, the hands spinning and clicking in fidgeting, rhythmless movement.
“Your heart rate and breathing are all over the place,” Tess said, the helmet flickering into EKG readouts this time. “Are you sure you don’t want…”
“I’m fine,” Jackson said. “Focus.”
“Yes ma’am,” Tess said. The figure with her voice straightened up and threw a mocking little salute.
The engines outside began to wind down, both of them shaking in their seats as the landing skids made contact. Jackson wondered what Tess’s heart rate and breathing looked like right now, the little line graphs probably skipping all over the place.
The robotic fingers kept clicking against each other.
“Don’t worry,” Jackson said. “She’s okay. We’re gonna find her.”
Cheshire disappeared, the darkness around them suddenly complete. That didn’t happen often. It didn’t last long, either. The doors beneath them opened.
Jackson jumped down out of the cargo bay of an autonomous delivery jet. Bright dusk flooded into her eyes, the metal struts running down her legs absorbing the impact of her landing. Her rig clanked as she moved, an older army exoskeleton. Almost exactly the model she’d worn back when she was a soldier.
She scanned the landing pad through the sights of her rifle. Clear: nothing but rolling drones moving out to accept the crates being lowered down behind them.
“Wow,” Tess said. “Pretty.”
Jackson blinked, looking out over the city. They were dozens of stories up, staring down at a place nothing like their home. No endless rows of billboards lighting up every tower here. Instead, a sprawl of quaint townhouses tumbled on and up into low hills, tree-lined streets already dim in the swiftly dying sunlight.
Jackson barely saw it, hard green eyes trained on their entry point.
“Weird,” Tess said, the helmet reflecting the sight before them. She dashed down the short bridge leading into the skyscraper with no further warning, bounding along on inhumanly fast legs.
Jackson followed, a bit slower, her rig letting out a thick ka-CHUNK with every step. Tess was much more quiet, piloting the modified remains of an Auktoris Heavy Trooper’s rig. Bright white armor on the legs and torso. Taken from the same dead man Jackson had liberated her rifle from. She hopped over another drone, a flat rolling platform moving along oblivious to the two criminals rushing inside.
Not criminals. Criminals was too soft a word. Terrorists was what they were called now, rogue actors, mad women posing a menace to civilization.
Her eyes squinted as the dusk light was replaced by dull fluorescents. They were in a long, tall-ceilinged room akin to a hangar, crates stacked up in neat, even rows. All covered in barcodes and arcane symbols, illegible to human eyes.
“Cameras?” Jackson said.
“On it,” Tess said, already crouched at a panel on one wall. Her robotic hands tore it free easily, exposing thick bundles of colorful cables. “Cover me?”
It felt good to move in a rig again. Smooth, even motions, gliding along even as her steps still made a crashing ka-CHUNK ka-CHUNK ka-CHUNK that echoed through the warehouse. She posted up behind a stack of crates, slowly sweeping the barrel of her rifle across the room.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Tess said. “Drones already called us in as a possible anomaly.”
“Possible?”
“No cameras on them, just radar and lidar.” Tess was fumbling with several of the cables, attaching small bits of electronics. “Security team en route to investigate. This way.”
She took off again, running down the edge of the room and ducking into a corridor that led deeper into the tower.
“Leapfrog,” Jackson yelled out, not quite keeping up.
“We have to move fast. They’re not anywhere near us yet.”
“We went over this. Leapfrog.”
“Yes ma’am,” Tess said, throwing another salute. No scoff or eye roll or snark this time. Instead she crouched along one side of the corridor, drawing a pistol and waiting. Another ugly gun, one of the few they had without “Auktoris Arms” stamped on the side, this one labeled with Cyrillic instead.
They took turns moving and covering, not that there was much cover in the bare hallway. Not even so much as a display or a sign. Tess guided them, her displays no doubt crowded with floor plans and camera feeds as they wound their way deep into a maze of empty twists and turns.
“Shit,” Tess said mid-dash, skidding to a stop and turning around. Backtracking.
“How many?” Jackson didn’t move yet, gun trained on the empty hallway in front of her.
“Lots.” She was crouched at an intersection, waving at Jackson to move. “Doing a full sweep. They don’t know it’s us yet.”
The hallway ended at a large spiral staircase, winding up and up toward their target. Tess holstered her gun and leapt straight up, synthetic fibers in her leg armor propelling her up the middle of the stairs until she was hanging off one of the railings.
Jackson slung her rifle and did the same, crouching and leaping up. Not as high but still respectable. The fibers implanted in her legs helped the rig, but she was much heavier than Tess. Her hands were encased in hard metal armor, robotic gloves that crushed each railing she grabbed onto as they climbed.
Dozens of stories in seconds, both of them leaping up floors, side to side up the middle of spiraling stairs. Pressure built in Jackson’s ears, dulling the clanging of each landing and the whine of the servos in her rig.
The top was a bare platform and a plain metal door, still no markings or signs or any indication of where they were.
“This is it,” Tess said, crouched to one side of the entrance. “Six of them waiting. Not on alert yet.”
Jackson crouched at the other side. “No way around?”
“Not unless you want to climb up the outside.”
That hadn’t gone well last time. Jackson let out a long sigh.
“Hey, we knew it would come to this,” Tess said.
“Yeah. Yeah…” Jackson said, nodding. “What do we say?”
“Check my corners,” Tess said, drawing her gun again. “Slice the pizza.”
“Good kitty. On me.”
Jackson moved in front of the door. The long barrel of her rifle made it a bit awkward to do this right, having to angle it up into a very high ready.
Not optimal, as Tess would say.
The door flew open with a single stomp of a kick, bits of debris flying everywhere. It led into a large lobby with glass walls down one side letting the last of the sunlight in. Six men in blue uniforms and armor jumped in place and turned to face her.
Caught out in the open.
“Drop your weapons!” Jackson screamed. “Drop your weapons now!”
None of them did. Sadly, quite the opposite. Jackson killed the three on the right before they could get a shot off, her rifle sounding off a deep guttural thunk with each shot as sharp ozone filled her nostrils.
Tess leaned in at her side, robotic arm snapping her pistol on target with computer-aided precision as she shot the other three, her gun barking short bursts of fire.
Silence. Jackson moved through the door to a set of chairs, shining leather to crouch behind as she watched and waited for any more motion.
“We’re clear,” Tess said, moving forward with no caution at all. “For now at least.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Jackson said, up and moving again but wary, still scanning the lobby. The receptionist’s desk was empty, a huge sign on the wall behind bearing a gold logo on a royal blue background. Global Corrections Group, Inc., it said. Cost-Effective Rehabilitation Solutions.
“I have their cameras,” Tess said. “And their unit trackers, I would know if—”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Listen, it’s not my fault that…”
Jackson missed the rest, her eyes drawn down to one of the men she had just killed. Smoking holes had been torn in his black armored vest, the blue cap on his head soaking up blood from the slowly growing pool beneath him.
“Hey, you tried,” Tess said at her side. “Would it make you feel better if I read you this guy’s history of abuse?”
“No.” Jackson felt the revulsion on her face, felt the scowl forming as she drew back from the body. She clapped Tess on the shoulder, nodding toward another set of doors leading to offices. “Let’s go.”
“Incoming,” Tess said, the helmet display flickering to a camera feed. A squad of men in that same blue uniform were rushing toward them, down the hallway they were about to enter.
“Ambush.” Jackson nodded at the receptionist desk and hopped over it, crouching in wait. How many bullets it would stop, she wasn’t sure, but it was the most solid thing she could see.
Tess glanced around the lobby, the leering smile of Cheshire’s face on her helmet growing wider as she looked up. With a small crouch, she leapt straight up and hung from the ceiling, custom claws on her hands and feet digging deep gouges in the clean white stucco.
“Hard cover,” Jackson said, shaking her head. “Hard cover, whenever possible.”
“Right, because that desk is made of kevlar.”
Jackson was about to tell her to quit snarking and focus when another man in blue came bounding into the lobby, submachine gun up and ready.
“Contact!” he started to yell. He made it through “con” before Jackson shot two holes through his chest, her rifle punching effortlessly through his armor. His partner followed close behind, not returning fire but ducking low to try and grab his wounded comrade.
Jackson shot him down, too, her eyes growing wide as his body jerked and danced, flopping onto the tiled floor. Almost exactly the way Vicks had fallen. Poor dead Andrew Vicks. Dead before he hit the ground.
She lingered on the thought a split-second too long, busy slapping the memory down. A small object was tossed out into the lobby. Her eyes followed it, thoughtlessly, the sights of her rifle snapping to.
Jackson blinked, her eyes squinting too late. The stun grenade would have made her blind and deaf, but they’d managed to steal a good set of goggles and a quality headset. She was ready when the security team moved in, sights waiting on the hallway.
Two pairs of officers in blue, mowed down the instant they appeared. Between Jackson’s rifle and the short braaaaaap of Tess’s pistol from above, they didn’t have a chance. The ones that moved out at them, anyway. Jackson could hear frantic commands from farther down the hallway.
Tess dropped from the ceiling, landing in a crouch and drawing a long, slender blade mounted on her back. It whined to life, glowing through a dazzling spectrum of colors as she rushed toward the voices.
Jackson cursed under her breath as she vaulted over the desk, sprinting to catch up. Reckless. She remembered feeling like that, once upon a time. Feeling invincible, untouchable, a master of the battlefield. A true warrior, wielding the twin weapons of superior training and unparalleled technology that could only be boasted by the United States Army.
Bullshit, all of it. A few of the men were surprised, sure. Especially the first one Tess cut to pieces, slicing his legs out from under him and then slashing his torso in half before he even fell. Smoke burst out from the cauterized cuts, his scream abruptly cut off.
But others stayed calm, opened fire. Jackson covered her partner, took them out before they could end Cheshire’s rampage.
“That’s right, run!” Tess screamed, sending sparks flying as she cut a man’s arms to pieces, gun and all. “Cheshire the murder kitty is here to kill all corporate thugs! Meow meow meow!”
The rifle stopped firing, the click of the trigger resisting Jackson’s finger. “Mag!” Jackson yelled, although she could’ve sworn she was fine on ammo. But of course it wasn’t that, it was the battery, a red light near the grip blinking frantically.
So much for salvaged gear. Auktoris and their fancy new guns, not worth the polymer they were printed from, cheap goddamn—
“Fucking reactionaries!” Tess yelled. “Taste my—Aah!”
The crack of bullets hitting Tess’s armor cut into Jackson’s ears, her heart twisting in on itself. She looked up in time to see Tess staggering backwards, one last security guard firing short bursts into her chest.
Jackson dropped the rifle, only vaguely aware of the panicked, gasping scream crawling out of her throat. Her hands moved on their own, drawing a long-barreled revolver from her belt, heavy and dark and engraved with a flower near the grip. A single shot knocked the man over, punching through his armor just as clean and neat as the magnetic rifle.
A lot more kick, though.
“Fuck!” Tess yelled. She felt along her armor with her free hand. “I just painted this thing.”
BLOOD check for blood HURRY
Jackson had to stomp down the impulse, keeping her sights trained down the hallway instead. Tess was fine, she mumbled to herself silently. There wasn’t even a mark on the armor.
“You good?” Jackson asked anyway.
“All systems green,” Tess said, the Cheshire helmet flashing through an array of camera feeds. “We need to hurry, all the sweeping units are heading back here.”
Jackson grunted and shook her head, doing a quick sweep of the bodies around them. All threats down, for now anyway. The hallway out of the lobby was a different world than the ones they’d followed from the warehouse—thick, dark blue carpets, tasteful panels of wood and cream-colored walls, immaculate offices with walls and doors of glass.
Tess was already moving farther in. Jackson followed, passing a small office. A woman in a crisp suit was hiding behind her desk, eyes wide as she peeked out at them, HUD elements blinking in her glasses. Her footage would probably end up all over the news, if it wasn’t being livestreamed already.
Not their target. Jackson kept moving, passing a man crouched and cowering against the wall.
“Oh God, please don’t hurt me,” he said.
“Check his face,” Tess said.
“Please don’t hurt me,” the man said again, “I just work here. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.”
Jackson slapped his hands down, grabbing a glove full of his hair and lifting his chin. Also not their target.
Ahead of them, the hallway opened up into a wide-open space, the same tall ceilings as the lobby. This area ended at a wall of glass, looking out directly toward the setting sun. They had read this beforehand, long gushing articles about this office, how this CEO had taken steps to show how connected to his employees he was.
One of them. Safe and secure and gated off up here in the C-suite offices.
Jackson knew the moment they saw him. A man waited, standing behind an enormous desk near the back wall of glass, tall and stern and impeccably handsome. He watched them enter, calm and collected with his palms down on the desk, only moving to adjust the lapels of his suit.
Tess kept her gun trained on him, her helmet display flashing through loading meters and scans of pictures of that same man. “Confirmed,” she said, “Carlos Bennet.”
They approached their target slowly. Deliberately. Jackson’s boots sank with each clanking step into deep, rich carpet, weaving her way around meeting chairs left out and waiting per this man’s self-described “open, available” management style. A pretty face on this company, a chiseled jaw and soft brown eyes that met Jackson’s with nothing but smug disdain.
“Mr. Bennet,” Tess said. “You have something we want.”
“Don’t move,” Jackson said.
He stared them both down, following her order for now. Jackson drew closer, almost close enough to reach him. She wanted to think he was her age, couldn’t be older, but it was always hard to tell with people as rich as him. Smooth, youthful skin wasn’t all that expensive, in the scheme of things.
He opened his mouth, narrowing his eyes and glaring at Jackson for a moment before he spoke. “Are you here to kill me?”
Jackson glared back. “Yes.”
He was quick. Not quick enough, but quick. He dove for the side of his desk, reaching for something, what it was Jackson didn’t bother to process. It didn’t matter. She lunged forward, bringing one gloved hand down in a hammer strike, smashing his right hand against the wood.
He gasped, choking on a breathless scream and clutching what was left of his hand. Blood poured from mangled pulp and digits holding on by threads of skin.
“I said don’t move,” Jackson said.
“Gross,” Tess said, still holding him at gunpoint. “Alright, let’s get it.”
Jackson leapt over the desk, pulling his arms behind his back and shackling his wrists with the same cuffs she’d carried since her days as a cop. Not that she was too concerned about him trying to fight back at this point. But she did it anyway, shoving his face down against the desk and pinning him there.
Tess holstered her pistol and reached for the back of her helmet, drawing out a long cable. The jack on the end looked more like a needle. “Okay, asshole, this will sting a little. Or a lot. Depends on how much you struggle.”
Her robotic hands grabbed his head, holding it steady while Jackson kept him pinned down. Tess ran her fingers and the needle down both sides of his neck, checking behind his ears as well.
“You can’t get her,” Carlos said, his breathing already slowing down, back to normal. “It’s impossible.”
“Then how about we skip this step and you just tell me where she is?” Tess said.
Carlos clicked his mouth shut, doing his best to glare up at his captors. Jackson had been expecting him to slip into shock by now, seeing how badly his hand was mangled.
“Didn’t plan on him talking,” she said. “Seems pretty lucid, though. Considering.”
“Automatic analgesic implants,” Tess said, tapping a small lump on the side of his neck. “Too moneyed to feel pain, huh?”
Jackson snorted. Of course.
“Ah ha!” Tess yanked his head to the side, sinking the needle into another lump high on his neck, almost hidden behind his ear. “Connecting.”
Her helmet display flashed with a dizzying array of images, files, text scrolling out too fast to comprehend. Carlos stiffened, teeth gritted, straining against the cuffs. Analgesic or not, that needle couldn’t be comfortable.
“Found her!” Tess said. “Provincetown! I fucking knew it!”
Finally. It had been years. Jackson instinctively recoiled from the idea, too used to disappointment. “You sure?”
“Very,” Tess said. “Do your thing and let’s get out of here.”
Jackson let out a long, tired breath. Again, like she did every time, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. If this was worth it. If it even made sense.
She touched the metal shape of a shield pinned to her chest. Her old badge. Still there. Always.
“Come on, Mr. Bennet,” she said, lifting him to his feet. “Let’s have a talk, you and me.”
“You have what you came for, don’t you?” he said, feet struggling to keep up with her, shining leather shoes dragging and stumbling on the carpet.
Jackson dragged him into the center of his open office, kicking a chair to the side. She looked around, conscious of things she never would have considered in the past. The way the light of the sunset would frame them, for example. Or the backdrop of the glass wall, making the open area in front of the desk a perfect stage.
Tess circled them as Jackson forced the man to his knees. Her helmet stared intently, the usual leering Cheshire smile flickering down to a solemn glare. Watching, greedily recording and saving every moment.
“Carlos Bennet,” Jackson said, stepping in front of him to meet his eyes. “You are under arrest.”
“This is ridiculous,” he said. His voice was calm, but clammy sweat was beading all over his face.
“Your crimes are incarcerating innocent people,” Jackson said, drawing her revolver. “Enriching yourself off the suffering of your prisoners. And last but not least, aiding Auktoris Global Funds in a program of mass murder.”
“Innocent?!” he yelled, trying to rise to his feet. “These are not innocent people! That’s preposterous!”
Jackson shoved him back down to his knees. “Unfortunately, I cannot threaten you with jail. And you cannot repay in money the damage you have done.”
“We are making the world safer!” he yelled, eyes finally growing wild. “We have a duty—”
“To your shareholders. You’re not fooling us,” Tess said. She tapped at her wrist, where she wasn’t wearing a watch. “Jackson, I’m loving this. You know I am. But we gotta hurry.”
Jackson raised her pistol. She placed the muzzle against Carlos’s forehead.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “I am forced to administer justice in the only manner that carries weight to someone like you.”
She thumbed back the hammer. Click-CLACK.
“You can’t do this,” he said. “You can’t do this. You can’t just—”
Jackson pulled the trigger.
