Punish the System - 11

“You're honestly telling this face - this face - that you don’t know who’s supplying you?” Jaz said. “What? Did you just wake up one morning and there were suddenly two keys of gear in your toilet cistern? Tell you what, mate, you must be the single luckiest drug dealer in the whole of Aston! Visited by the Heroin Fairy in the middle of the night with goodness and wonder? Fair play to you!”

“I swear!” the man whined. He was stocky, sweat-drenched, and had a massive red swelling blooming along his cheekbone. “White boy dropped it off this morning! Didn’t say who it was from. Told me to keep it safe and that he’d be back. I’m just holding it for me! I swear! That’s it!”

“Which white boy?”

“I don’t know! They all look the same to me!”

“Well, I’m afraid your lack of visual memory is about to become very much a problem.”

From outside the door, Connor wasn’t really paying too much attention to Jaz’s interrogation. Rather, he was leaning against a rack of unopened shampoo boxes in the corridor, eyes a little wide, heart rate slowing but still too loud in his ears. All of his attention was in trying to take in what Izzy was, effervescently, telling him.

“Okay. Let’s slow that down a bit. Can you just go through that again?”

“Certainly, Mr Connor! And apologies for my excitement. But this is really very interesting,” Izzy said. “That little confrontation seems to have generated far more XP than I would have anticipated. Which is simply fascinating! I’m currently theorising that while ‘kicking arse and taking names’ (did I say that right?) you made such effective use of your prior, extensive training in a high-risk, high-tension environment, that you gained XP at an accelerated rate relative to your theoretical System baseline.”

Through the thin door to the backroom, Jaz’s voice spiked and the drug dealer gave a strained cough in response. 

“And that means what exactly?”

“It means, Mr Connor, that you made more XP from hitting someone in the head with a hairdryer than you did clearing that Dungeon,” Izzy said, unnecessarily doing the splits. “It’s as if something within you is compensating for you not being appropriately baselined during your Integration. Quite simply, you shouldn’t be levelling this fast from reasonably minor engagements. But then again, there shouldn’t have been any Integration for you at all without a Planetary Core, so we are already several blocks down the road marked ‘Unprecedented Exception.’”

As he listened, Connor tried to ignore the rhythmic thud of a boot against a chair leg coming from behind him. Jaz was clearly escalating things and he didn’t give a damn. 

Connor had heard she was a tough interrogator. Joyful had once said that she always started polite, then became assertive, before ‘carving her way into a subject’s psyche like she has a mental machete. She doesn’t shout, she doesn’t threaten, but she makes them think they want to confess because it’d be a relief.’

The way his friend had said it, Connor thought it wasn’t just Izzy who might have a little Jaz-crush…

“Okay,” he said. “So I’m picking up more XP than I should. I get it. So, from that fight earlier, what did I get exactly?”

“Well, for starters you got +1 Resilience and +1 Dexterity. However, there’s something else vibrating in the background that I’m waiting to see what it resolves into.”

“I get the Resilience gain,” Connor said. “I took a bit of a kicking and worked through it. But where does the Dexterity come from?”

“You achieved near-perfect avoidance of a blade attack in sub-optimal lighting, and didn’t even manage to stab yourself in the leg! That’s growth, Mr Connor. Real growth. And your new Dexterity point is already in play. Expect faster response times, smoother transitions between movement phases, and post-conflict stability enhancements. Also, say goodbye to that charming burn in your thighs after a sprint. You’ll start having less lactic acid and fewer microtears which will lead to more sustained ultra-violence.”

Izzy beamed. Then, without warning, she conjured a pom-pom in each hand and shouted, “Give me an R! Give me a H! Give me an YS! What’s that spell? Stat-Stacked Street Wizard! Goooo Connor!” Confetti exploded in Connor' vision as Izzy struck a pose mid-air, her feet hovering just above the floor. “Seriously, you're killing it. Almost literally.”

“Okay. That needs to be the last time that ever happens. Any chance we can go back to the trenchcoat and tommy gun?”

Izzy ignored him. 

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr Connor, reaching +2 is a phenomenally low bar in terms of System strength, but let’s be honest, you’ve met the average civilian. As context, you are now 20% more dexterous than you previously were.”

Behind him, something clattered against a wall. Connor flinched, but Izzy continued blithely, as if they weren’t possibly within earshot of a suspect suddenly going airborne.

“To be clear, I expect this accelerated XP gain will taper off eventually,” Izzy continued. “Probably once you reach what would have been your initial Integration level. Probably. Maybe. Unless there’s a secondary factor. Which there might well be, Mr Connor. Frankly, the longer I talk, the more I realise we’re flying blind here, and I am very much here for that. If a touch nervous.”

“Join the club.”

“You are the club, Mr Connor.”

Jaz’s voice cut across the sudden quiet in their conversation.

“How about we try that again, mate! Slowly. And with more volume. Start with how often Geraldo makes a delivery and end with what’s different about the gear the white guy delivered!”

There was a mumbled reply. Then a louder response, half-choked off. Connor didn’t catch it all, but the general tone was pure cornered rodent.

“Can’t you, like… broadcast what they’re saying for me?” he asked Izzy. “Overlay subtitles or something?”

“You could just go in and join her, Mr Connor.”

Connor grimaced. Jaz had been very, repeatedly, clear that his presence around this interrogation was not required.

“You’ve done more than enough already, Lazarus,” she’d snapped, after she’d burst through the barbershop door, gun drawn. “That was some proper cowboy shit! Amateur hour, mate. Pure amateur hour. Jesus, Connor. The Dane wanted us to get answers, not rack up a body count!”

He’d tried to explain how it had all shaken out, but she wasn’t buying what he was selling. Eventually, she shooed him out of the room.

She’d joined him, for a moment, outside.

“Do you know how long it takes to get someone talking when they think we’re just muscle? When they just expect bruises straight out the gate?” Jaz hissed. “Now the only lead we’ve still got thinks we’re freelance nutjobs. Great. Real professional work, Lazarus!”

Connor didn’t answer. There wasn’t really that much he could say. Jaz was right, and they both knew it. He’d gone in planning to ruffle some feathers and then he’d caused things to escalate like crazy. That actually wasn’t really like him. He wondered whether the extra Dexterity was the only change that was happening to his internal landscape.

He cast a frustrated glance around the shattered remains of the barbershop. Chrome chairs overturned, hair dryers dangling from snapped cords, and that heavy, chemical stink of antiseptic just leaking from all the smashed bottles. At least the music had finally stopped… 

The rest of those he’d fought had already scarpered. Jaz hadn’t tried to stop them. One had limped off in one direction, another was carried away by his bloodied mates, arms hooked under shoulders, and staggering down the street. She’d made the call to let them go, and he understood why. The moment she’d heard the crash of glass shattering as someone’s head was planted into a mirror, she’d bolted through the door without hesitation. Like a good partner should. 

She’d chosen to run toward the trouble, not waste valuable seconds trying to corral runners. He would have done the same. Unfortunately, that meant now they were down to just one shaky suspect, hoodie dark with blood, and one eye swelling shut. And Jaz had made clear his subsequent interrogation was going to sit squarely on her shoulders.

Feeling bad, Connor thought it was best that he did what he was told and left her to it, stepping back into the shop’s front room and taking up a post near the front door like a moody coat rack. Useless, upright, and completely out of the way, while Jaz tried to claw something meaningful from the wreckage he’d left behind.

“How about it, Izzy? Any chance of the skinny on what is going on in there?”

“I’m not legally permitted to initiate audio capture in a room without your physical presence or explicit consent from all participants.”

“You’re a voice in my head! What do you mean you’re ‘not legally permitted’ to do something!”

“I am a compliance-forward Sprite, Mr Connor.”

“Jesus wept.”

More noises came from inside the backroom. The creak of someone shifting, followed by the scrape of metal against tile. Connor had no doubt Jaz’d get what they needed. He just wasn’t sure she’d leave the guy with his sense of smell intact.

“Still,” Izzy went on, “I have to say that your Core’s adapting beautifully. That fight? Textbook execution. Perfect threat analysis, wonderful escalation control, and entirely proportionate environmental leverage. That’s your classic tri-vector advantage curve. It earned XP points at a rate I’d call alarming if it weren’t also so impressive. Honestly, Mr Connor, while utilising your existing skillset, you clock in as the most efficient resource-to-output conversion I’ve ever heard of a Sprite being embedded with. The only other example I can find like that was a catgirl who dual-wielded tasers and a chainsaw in her tail.”

There was a brief pause.

“She died horribly, of course. But her stats were staggering.”

“That’s either very reassuring or very, very bleak.”

“Well, that rather depends if you’re an optimist or not, Mr Connor. Are you?”

“No.”

“Wonderful. I knew I liked you.”

The door cracked open and Jaz emerged, one hand braced on the frame, the other curled into a beckoning finger. 

“Lazarus! Inside. Now!”

Connor followed her in.

The kid was slumped in a cracked vinyl chair, eyes far too wide to lie. His hands fidgeted in his lap like he was trying to wring the guilt out through his fingers. Jaz had done quite a number on his noodle.

“We’ve had some narrative movement,” she said. “Matey boy has deigned to share that he was planning on running this new product through the storefront, but Geraldo’s actual stash is in the basement. Hidden under the floor, beneath the fridge unit. There’s a hatch, but we’ll need the Dane to authorise backup to open it without blowing the whole damn theatre.”

“All that from a nervous wreck with a black eye?”

Jaz didn’t smile. 

“I didn’t have to threaten him. Much. I just showed him some old crime scene stills of Geraldo’s past work. Then I told him I’d be dropping his name into conversation, loud and often, for the next week unless he got real cooperative.” She jerked her head at the suspect. “Turns out survival instincts work better than bruises."

“Oh, wait a moment. Hang on. Now, that’s very exciting!” Izzy suddenly said, jumping up and clapping her hands, momentarily blocking Jaz from his sight. 

YOU HAVE UNLOCKED A NEW ABILITY!

ABILITY NAME: Anticipate Path

ABILITY TYPE: Passive

DESCRIPTION: When forced into a close-quarters melee with one or more hostile targets, you may perceive and react to their movements 0.3 seconds in advance.

DURATION: 10 seconds per engagement.

“Holy…”

“Who’s holy?” Jaz said, turning to him

“Nothing. Ignore me. I’m not here.”

“If wishing made it so,” Jaz said.

“You’re adapting wonderfully, Mr Connor!”

“Thanks?” Connor said.

“...Thanks?” their suspect echoed. “For what?”

“Not you,” Connor said.

“Right. Sorry,” the man said. “Was just trying to be polite.”

“I have to say your first Ability is a particularly elegant one! Anticipate Path is low-cost and entirely passive at Rank One. It offers a minor precognitive overlay. Think of it like seeing the first line of a sentence before it’s spoken. And, in time, this may even be able to be evolved. Considering the many handicaps you’re labouring under in the absence of wider System availability, I have to say your current Spine growth is progressing very efficiently. Even if I say so myself.”

“You do say so yourself.”

Jaz frowned at him again.

“What’s going on with you, Lazarus? Are you okay?”

“Just having a conversation with the voices in my head,” Connor said. “Which is all perfectly normal.”

“See?” the suspect said, pointing at him. “I told you this guy was a nutter!”

“Shut it!” Jaz snapped at him.

Connor massaged his forehead, trying to ease the growing tension. 

“This all does feel a bit like cheating.”

“You’re telling me,” the guy in the cuffs said.

“I’m not telling you anything, mate,” Connor said. “Shut up and let me have my conversation.”

“I mean, I just assumed, since you were looking at me when you said it…”

“You know what they say about assumptions? It makes an ass out of you and me.”

“Any chance we can try to get this interrogation back on track?” Jaz said. “I can’t imagine why I thought I’d be able to do this quicker without you.”

“Cheating? Not at all! The System thrives on adaptation. You’ve absolutely earned this, Mr Connor. You bled for it. You have, in your own small and certainly unauthorised way, levelled up! I would do another little dance, but you most recently forbade it.”

“So I’m basically a glitch,” Connor said.

“Did you just call me a bitch!” Jaz said, baring her teeth.

“No! For God’s sake! Shut up!”

“You shut up!”

“Everyone shut up,” their suspect said.

They all shut up.

“Would you like me to rename the Ability for you? I mean, Anticipate Path is perfectly functional but it is a little dry. We could call it… Blade Waltz? Foresight Shimmy? Ooh! Know-Fu?”

“No,” Connor said.

“No, what?”

“Know-Fu? “

“Not you.”

“Then who…”

“I said not you!”

“Okay,” Jaz said, all her patience now exhausted. “Let’s pretend the last few minutes of dialogue didn’t just happen and try all of this again. I want you, in as much detail as you can, to describe the ‘white boy’ who brought you all this nice shiny heroin.”

Connor leaned back against the boxes and closed his eyes as their suspect gave a very clear description of Leather Jacket. 

He’d just been in the most incredible fight of his life. And that was before he got the +1s and the new Ability. This current version of him was faster, sharper and so much stronger than he had ever been before. And something inside him felt wound tight and ready. And not just on adrenaline. It was like constantly having a kind of wire-strung tension whispering just below his skin, asking to be used.

He’d have spent a bit more time thinking about that, but then came the first sign that something was about to go very wrong.

Beyond the storeroom’s flimsy plasterboard walls, the city still grumbled along. Cars. Footsteps. The distant thrum of an ice cream van jingle looping its madness. But for a beat, just a beat, everything suddenly went quiet.

Connor turned his head. Not towards Jaz or the sweating man zip-tied to a folding chair, but toward the window high on the storeroom’s rear wall. One of those frosted rectangles you only noticed when something changed behind it.

Like movement.

Or a glint of metal.

Or the way pigeons outside had just exploded into the air.

“Jaz…” he started, just as the wall blew inward.

Not all of it, just the corner, where brick turned to dust and chipboard dissolved into splinters. The sound was monstrous in the enclosed space, completely deafening Connor. Then came the scream of tyres on wet tarmac and the bark of suppressed fire from the front of the shop

Someone was lighting them up from both the alley behind the barbershop and through the front window.

Connor tackled Jaz low, dragging them both behind an overturned salon chair and a stack of boxed hair products. Bullets punched through the wall, in tight controlled bursts. This wasn’t your standard gangland spray-and-pray, this was some properly trained work. Someone out there had a sub-gun, probably something like a Scorpion EVO or a SIG MPX from the staccato pace and the size of the holes. 

They were using subsonic rounds. Suppressed ones at that. Had to be military grade. Whoever was running this hit, hadn’t come to play.

A second volley blew out the rest of the doorframe. Plaster stung his cheek and Jaz swore and rolled onto her side, coming up with her weapon already barking twice, delivering controlled return fire through the ruined doorway. It didn’t matter if she hit anything. At least she’d make them think.

A third burst stitched the upper shelves. Bottles of aftershave exploded and hair clippers flew like shrapnel. Connor stayed low, dragging the informant, who was screaming from being hit in the chest, by the ankles into better cover.

“I suspect they’re not just here for him,” Connor said.

“Obviously,” Jaz snapped, reloading. “This is a full-on cleanup!”

Glass shattered above them. Another volley of shots, this time through the frosted window. A ricochet buzzed past Connor’s ear like an angry wasp.

He looked around. One exit. One target. They were boxed in.

“We’ve got maybe thirty seconds before they come in hard,” he said. “Not sure I much like our chances against what they’re packing.”

“You got anything clever, Lazarus? I kind of feel you’re the expert in this sort of situation.”

Connor didn’t answer. His eyes had found the mop bucket. The cracked mirror. The razor box on the supply shelf.

“I like the way you’re thinking, Mr Connor. Go get them! Give me an R. Give me an…”

He wedged the bucket in the doorway with a broom handle and tipped over the shelf in front of it. Smoke canisters would’ve been better. But this would have to do. The next burst of fire was followed by movement, a shadow in the alley approaching at speed.

Jaz squeezed off another shot.

There was a yelp. Then silence.

Connor grabbed the mirror and hurled it flat against the doorframe at a forty-five-degree angle. Just in time to catch the reflection of another attacker rounding the side. Connor fired and the man dropped.

“That’s two,” Jaz said, breathless. “Any more?”

“Almost definitely.”

Another squeal of tyres and then more smashing came from the front of the shop.

“They’re trying to flank us,” Jaz said.

“So, let’s not be here when they succeed.”

Together, they hauled the injured, zip-tied man to his feet. He was swearing in a mix of Turkish and English, wide-eyed and half-conscious. Connor pushed the fridge to the side, earning him a look of surprise from Jaz, and opened the floor hatch they’d been told about that led to the boiler crawlspace.

“Get down there!” he said.

Jaz hesitated. 

“They’ll follow.”

“I know.”

She gave him a look but didn’t argue further. With one quick vault, she was inside, then turned to drag their new informant in after her.

Connor took a breath. Then flipped the light switch off. Darkness bathed the storeroom. He heard footsteps creeping into the corridor outside. They were moving more carefully now since losing two of their number.

“I am not sure what you’re planning here, Mr Connor,” Izzy said “But would it help to see the real-time configuration of those currently attempting to perforate your vital organs?”

“Would it—Izzy, what sort of question is that!”

A new element flickered into place in the top-left corner of Connor’ vision. It was a minimap with three glowing red blips pulsed against a grainy outline of the shop and the surrounding lot, spaced in a loose triangle. Opposite that, still hovering in his peripheral like a patient debt collector, his ammo counter showed the same saturated bullet count as before.

Six. Still six.

“Wait, why hasn’t the count ticked down?”

“You’re not in a Dungeon. Until you enter a recognised combat instance, the System isn’t performing ammo reconciliation. Free preview, basically. Try before you die. Oh, and just in case you were getting giddy, you have no shield in the ‘real’ world, either.”

Connor pressed his back to the peeling plaster, angled toward the shop door, and crouched low. The minimap twitched with motion. The red dots were converging. Connor exhaled once, slowly, and waited. Waited.

As the first one entered, Connor grabbed the man’s gun, twisted, and slammed his head into the edge of the doorframe with a sickening crunch. No finesse, just blunt, close-quarter brutality. The man folded with a finality he was now all too familiar with.

The second came in shooting blind. Connor could feel the benefit of his new Ability, and was able to drop low in time, sweeping his leg out from under him. The shooter hit the ground hard and Connor followed through without pause to drive a punch straight into the man’s throat. A soft, wet gag. More silence.

Sirens now. Getting closer. Sounded like at least one good citizen had phoned this in.

Then the back door crashed open.

The third shooter stormed in. Heavy steps and even heavier weapon. Even with Anticipate Path flaring, Connor barely had time to clock the size of the barrel before the round punched into his side. His body spun away before he told it to and he found himself hitting the ground with a yell that ended in spit and blood, fingers scrabbling to keep hold of his gun.

“Mr Connor!” Izzy shrieked, pitch slicing through his skull. “You’ve been shot! System confirms trauma to lower ribs, abdominal lining, possibly spleen! That was not sub-lethal, Mr Connor! Healing, healing, healing!”

Connor ignored her, firing up from the floor, but in his desperate wildness, he missed. The shot chewed plaster from the ceiling. The shooter was impossibly bulky. He was masked, Connor realised, and wearing a ceramic plate vest.

Then the space in floorboards just next to the gunman was filled by Jaz surging up from the crawlspace, gun firing. Her blast hit their final assailant square in the back, but his vest caught it. The shooter turned and returned fire.

The burst sent Jaz reeling. She dropped like someone had yanked her cord, vanishing back into the dark below, her gun clattering along with her.

Something primal clawed up Connor’s spine and he unloaded. This time, one of his bullets found neck. Just above the collar, causing the shooter to spasm, dropping his weapon and then dropping altogether. A twitching heap by the back door.

Silence. 

Sirens were still growing.

All the red blips vanished from the minimap. 

“Mr Connor… you’ve taken catastrophic damage. You’re at 44% integrity and dropping. I… I can try to flag a Stabiliser routine if I breach protocol…”

He didn’t hear the rest. His eyes were locked on the jagged hole in the floor where blood was splattered all over the boards.

“Jaz…” he wheezed. His voice was cracking and vision was fading. “God… Jaz?”