Strong Enough: 3.4 Interlude

Interlude: Who’s Ready for Tomorrow

You cannot feel the rain.

It pings off metal, trailing in rivulets down the channels and divots. With each stride, it sprays, kicked high like wisps of breath off of too broad shoulders.

Accelerate.

The ground pushes up through your feet. Cracking, brittle strength. Lights flash, horns blare.

Dip shoulder. Accelerate. Activate. Activate. ACTIVATE.

You cannot feel the rain.

The car lands in two pieces, crimped, cratered. The crash draws your head around on wires. Unconscious nonthreats hang limply in the gap, water running red. Your arm shakes rises, metal strong enough to shatter the second vehicle all on its own.

With one push, the van spins away. A screaming face twists in anger.

Threat.

Your arm tracks. Fifty gradians. Activate. Activate. ACTIVATE.

A flare of heat and sound blasts away the rain. It describes perfectly the arc of glimmering metal spiraling through the air. The air closes in upon it, fingers twisting around a baby bird. You cannot feel the rain.

But it chimes, like music; deflects, diffracts that little mirror of steel. It hits the cracked and brittle, cracked and brittle, cracked and brittle—

Then the world screams.

Your arm lowers, task fulfilled. The other rises. Non-threats turn, run. Ambush spotted. Unarmed. Preserve ordinance. Focus on target.

The ground pushes up through your feet, through the rain, through the scream, through the body so softly breaking so gently parting, departing, departing.

—You blink the red from your eyes, suck in hard desert air. Run. Feel limbs of flesh and blood move, burning, muscles pulling and pushing. Sweat tickles from the edge of a dusty brow, describing a perfect arc from temple to jaw. The steady beating of shoes against the road, a dirge now, like a drumming in your heart where what remains batters against the sleek white cage of bone—

A body that will not grow old.

You cannot feel the rain.

But the sharp lance of a bullet rings red behind your eyes. Impact point: left shoulder. Targets, blue like rain. Weapons—targeting. More pain. Your arm comes up again. Activate. Activate. ACTIVATE.

Their mouths open in burring static. More targets, hissing binary, jaws stretching wide enough to devour the world. Words you can’t make out.

The gun kicks in your hands, softly. Targets slot into frame and disappear in flashes of red.

Bullets return with interest. One heavy, making the red inside scream even louder.

The blue is in the way. You’re too close to the end to stop now. A signal rushes to the newest piece of you and it leaps forward, red in maw and fang and digging deeply into your shoulder.

ACTIVATE

The pain washes out. The screaming red pushes you forward. The bullets thicken, thrumming against your skin like raindrops.

But you cannot feel the rain.

The world parts around you, heart screaming in your chest, blood screaming from your lips. The rage shatters the cracked and brittle world.

—The desert wind cuts like knives, sweat relief from the scorching, all-encompassing heat. Beneath, the asphate is hard and strong, sizzling against your boots with each stride, but you’re too close. There in the distant haze, a white cloak flickers, billowing beckoning towards the end of the road. A hand reaches out and—

Fingers clench around a torso. The rest drops onto wet ground. Smoking wreckage and twisted Neutralized non-threats left behind.

Ahead, the target building pierces the cracked and—cracked and brittle world. One step.

She appears like a ghost. Water running off that white coat. Red eyes. Her lips move.

“Maine”

The red inside screams an answer.

The rifle roars an answer.

The bullets rip through air and nothing else.

She stands before you, blackened barrel pressed against metal.

Her voice spits static.

A fist strikes air and nothing else.

The revolver spits fire against your eye. The red screams, thickening shroud wrapped tight around a roaring heart.

Arms grab air and nothing else.

The revolver spits again. Head snaps back.

Your head crashes forward through air and nothing else.

You cannot feel the hand on your shoulder, wrapped around thick tubing full of red. She tears it away and leaves madness venting and hissing into the air.

Grenades hit you and nothing else.

Static, colorful fractals fill your eyes from edge to edge. A scream, a roar.

The veil of darkness parts, and through it slips a gleaming revolver, scorched black with souls.

Red, red, red eyes meet yours.

You cannot feel the rain.

But the bullet hurts, it HURTS IT---———---

David jerks upright with a scream jammed in his throat. His hands scrape against the inside of his braindance wreath. Fingers press against his face, his eyes.

His heart pounds so hard he can feel his pulse pushing out against unblemished skin.

“Fucking—” David collapses back against the couch, gasping for breath. His eyes trace the static of the ceiling mounted TV screen. The peaks and troughs beat against him like rain and you cannot feel—

David slaps his cheeks. Ain’t no time for that. Instead, he shoots off a call. Doc picks up after two rings.

“Davey!” A chuckle echoes through David’s ears. “Yah been liking my new merchandise, yeah?”

David forces a laugh. His heart races. “How’d you tell?”

“When else yah ping me this early?” Doc asks. “Got a lotta stock a’ this one. Feel like it’s a new top seller.”

“Don’t know if the corpos’ll keep their cool through this one.” David pushes himself upright. “Shit, when he got zeroed, felt like the bullet was ripping through my skull.”

“Good ain’t it?” David can hear the smirk in Doc’s voice. “Might’a had a hand a’ my own in that…”

“Like what?”

“When an old client comes in with a mountain a’ eddies and a grave full of chrome…let’s say I made sure he was set to records hehehe…”

David frowns at that. “You knew this borg?”

“Knew is a strong word in the business, Davey,” Doc replies.

Sure, and you never know who’s gonna crash on you for getting turned down. The thought still sticks in David’s gut. Not enough to stop him from selling the BD. David needs to get his scratch up ‘cause Arasaka jacked the price of everything this semester. They blamed it on the Storm, but David was born in this shithole.

Night City takes things from people, and eddies most of all.

David shakes his head. “Sure it’s not too hard for the corpo babies?”

“Ah, but that’s the secret, Davey. Them spoon lickers want the pain, they wanna feel like they’re hard enough to tear through a police blockade with their own hands.” Doc laughs again. “Don’t you?”

David shrugs, pulling at his collar. “Who was that chick at the end?”

“Saw her, yeah? Made sure my editor kept her extra crisp. Mmm. Might scroll some rigging for those legs hehehe.”

David rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.” Something about her pushing a gun in his face—David holds back a shiver. “I’ll pick up the next batch after school.”

“Don’t wait too long, Davey,” Doc says. “Got other buyers lined up for this one.”

“Sure.” David ends the call and levers himself off the couch. Not like Doc won’t scroll off another batch if the demand is there. David’s not sure how you can be a ripper in NC and still be that hard up for scratch. Not his biz.

David pats his chest one last time. Damn, that was hard, he thinks. But he’s gotta be hard to survive the Academy. Last semester, fucking corpos didn’t know what to do with him, and David’s just fine with that. One sign of weakness though, and they’re like fucking sharks.

David pulls on his uniform and leaves his unit. Two guys with bats by the stairs today, less than usual. David walks past them without looking and hops the wall to the central concourse. He drops a floor onto the garbage pile and slips off before anything can ooze onto his sneakers. Megabuilding was never nice, but it’s gotten worse since the Storm; more tweakers and BD addicts lying between the supporting pillars.

One strung out old man lays half curled around a junked together radio blaring music off the concrete walls.

“Yeah I ain’t your average sicko! I’m dead just like disco, and my bank account is zero—zero—zero!”

David grabs the NCART, pressed into the wall of bodies for the morning rush, until it drops him off near Corpo plaza. The rebuilt the stupid fountain even bigger after the Storm, almost two stories. Jets of water shoot up in massive arcs between levels. For his public relations class, he had to write some bullshit statement about company resiliency. Couldn’t fight the Arasaka. Anything you tear down they just build up again.

David walks by the top of the fountain, on the raised concourse, fighting back the urge to jump into it. First semester, he mastered the art of showing up at the doors just in time to avoid being late, without giving anyone else the time to mess with him.  He’s just about to head down to Arasaka tower when a flash of glowing white draws his eye.

There, on the ground, a head of neon white hair, short cut and drifting in the breeze. David fights back a swallow, about to turn away when he catches sight of the other woman.

Dark hair, pale face, expressive lips twisting into a half smile. David can hear her voice in hissing static.

He jerks back, blinking. When he opens his eye again the dark-haired woman is gone, and the other one walks off. David presses a hand against his chest. His pulse presses hard against the tight collar of his blazer.

No, he shakes his head. No way it’s the same girl from the BD. David jogs down the stairs towards the Arasaka tower.

The woman is leaning against the entrance.

Her face is exactly the same as the BD.

She’s wearing an Arasaka uniform.

David doesn’t realize he’s staring until a manicured hand clamps down tight on his shoulder. He jolts, twisting. It brings him face to face with glowing green eyes and brilliant red hair.

“Hey there, little rodent,” she says. “Why are you looking at my friend?”