Mistrunner - Chapter 8 - Secrets

Money. Power. Influence. It’s all the same thing, and its pursuit is the one constant across the entire universe. In that arena, humanity is a collection of amateurs.

Jeremiah Braddock

For a brief second, I was in two places at once. That disorienting feeling faded quickly, and I soon found myself pulling away from the pillar that had begun my journey into the Bazaar. For a long moment, I just stood there, my breath coming in short, shallow pants. Bending over, with my hands on my knees, I forced a long, deep breath, and over the next couple of seconds, pushed the panic from my mind.

“You did better than I did on my first time,” came my uncle’s voice. I looked up to see him grinning down at me. “I threw up. Of course, that might’ve been some bad meat. It was winter, so food was scarce, and I was eating whatever I could find.”

“I feel like my brain is trying to go in two different directions,” I muttered. “Is it always like that?”

“No,” he said. “It’ll get better as you level. Let’s get back home. Hopefully, our packages will be waiting for us.”

“That fast? How?”

I’d expected it to take a few days for our orders to be filled; Jeremiah had already paid, so that wouldn’t be an issue, but it seemed to me like transporting something in from space should take a while. Apparently not.

“Teleportation,” was his answer. “Or they call it Rapid Transference. It always seemed like a fancy way of saying teleportation to me, though. Anyway – it only works with inanimate objects, and it takes a ridiculous amount of Mist. But in this universe – and remember this, because it’s important – money can get you whatever you want. It cost twenty percent extra to get it sent to the roof of the building instead of to one of the designated Transference Centers, but that’s a small price to pay if you’re trying to fly under the radar.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Okay, I guess.”

After that, we wasted no time leaving the Dome. On the way out, we went a different way than how we’d entered, and I saw that the Dome was host to a wider variety of functions than I’d originally anticipated. Not only were there a multitude of human shops within the giant building, but there were also a few of the Transference Centers my uncle had mentioned. Of course, I wanted to stop and browse through the shops, but Jeremiah didn’t want to waste the time. So, as usual, he was forced to endure my perusal of a couple of clothing boutiques. He even bought me a wicked pair of shorts even though he complained that they were too revealing.

That was one thing I’d learned early on about Jeremiah. Even when I was little, he would do whatever he could to make me happy. Sure, he put on a gruff front, and I often felt like a prisoner in my own home, but I knew it was only because he wanted to keep me safe. And given how much money he’d just spent on my new weapons and cybernetics, I was starting to realize that my estimation of how much he cared about me was woefully inaccurate. He had just dropped a fortune on gearing me up.

After my miniature shopping spree, I asked, “Are there any cybernetic shops here?”

“A few,” he stated, still pouting a bit about his schedule being thrown off. Or maybe he really did hate shopping as much as he pretended to. “But they’re all shit. There are better ones in King’s Row and Uptown, but they’re still not as good as Dexter. It’s the same with weapons. Humanity is rapidly improving, but ninety years isn’t nearly long enough to catch up with the rest of the universe.”

I wasn’t so sure about that; ninety years seemed like a lot to me, but what did I know? My uncle was well over a hundred years old, and he looked like he was in his mid-forties. Obviously, aging worked a little differently when Mist was thrown into the mix. It was possible that some of the aliens out there were over a thousand years old, extraterrestrial biology notwithstanding. You could probably gain a lot of expertise in that kind of time.

We made our way back to the hover car, but we didn’t really say much along the way. There was some idle small talk, but I was too distracted by our recent purchases to carry on a real conversation. Jeremiah didn’t mind, and he seemed lost in his own thoughts – a common occurrence. One minute, he’d be making small talk with someone, and the next, he’d stare off into space, obviously thinking of something else entirely.

Finally, after a short trek through the city, the car pulled into our building’s parking structure and we headed toward the apartment. As always, my uncle made a point to talk to, reassure, and otherwise socialize with his people along the way. It was a special kind of torture for me. Not only was I completely disinterested in those people’s lives, but I was also insanely eager to get started. After all, wasn’t my life about to change? I was going to get real cybernetics. Real weapons. After spending so much time selecting my loadout, my stomach was twisting and turning in anticipation of actually using all my new toys.

Jeremiah didn’t care, which meant that he soon found himself on the bad end of my most murderous glare. He didn’t care about that, either, sadly. He was immune to my evil eye, the bastard.

Still, despite the many, many delays and detours, we eventually made it into the apartment. Just inside, I stopped as the door slid shut. My uncle, who’d kept going, turned back to me and asked, “What’s going on? Something wrong?”

“No,” I said. “I just…I don’t know. It’s silly and stupid, but I guess…I guess I just kind of expected things to be different. Dumb, right? The world hasn’t changed. Just me.”

After everything I’d learned over the past two days, the world just felt different. Like I’d finally opened my eyes after a lifetime of walking around in the dark. But that was just my mind playing tricks on me. Nothing was really any different. I just had a little more knowledge, now. Never was that more apparent than when I laid eyes on the same, boring apartment I’d known since I was a kid.

“Well, if you expected that after a little information, you’re going to flip out when you finish your Awakening,” he said.

“What do you mean? I thought I was already Awakened,” I said, cocking my head to the side.

He shook his head. “Not until we hook up your KOI implant,” he said. “It’s a lot more advanced than what newly Awakened usually get, but even the basic ones complete the Awakening process by giving you access to your Interface.”

“Okay? So, when’s everything going to get here? And do we need, like, a cyber surgeon to install it?” I asked, following him into the living room.

“Already taken care of,” Jeremiah said, nodding to a series of metallic boxes in the center of the room. I have no idea how I’d missed them. “Those were brought down before we got here, and I’ve got a cyber surgeon on the way from King’s Row.”

“Really? One of those fancy docs?” I asked. “How’d you get them to come all the way over here?”

“Like I said before, it’s all about money,” Jeremiah explained. “And a little intimidation, I suppose. Usually, one or the other is enough, but sometimes, you need a bit of both. Remember that.”

I nodded, then went to my room to deposit my own, more mundane purchases. I resisted the urge to try on my new shorts – they were made of some sort of synthetic and stretchy fabric, and they had glittering shards of neuro-glass decorating the seams. The idea was that they could be programed to flash different colors based on my moods. Before my Awakening, wearing something like that hadn’t been an option, but now that I was getting access to an Interface? My fashion choices had just gotten infinitely more diverse.

But right then, clothes weren’t the most important thing on my mind, so, after tossing the bag on my bed, I went back into the living room, only to find that someone else had arrived in the short time I’d been in the back of the apartment.

The first word that came to mind when I looked at the newcomer was prim. Or maybe pristine. People in the Garden weren’t exactly dirty. We took hygiene just as seriously as anyone else. But the district had a way of infecting people with its grime, giving us a very distinct look. This woman wasn’t like that. Her face was impossibly clean, her skin perfectly clear, and her petite frame was wrapped in the latest upscale fashion. In theory, it was just a suit – a jacket, a nice blouse, and a knee-length skirt – but everything about it, from the material to the cut to the shoes that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, screamed affluence.

And then there were her cybernetics. Glittering at her knuckles were exposed bits of metal, evidence that she had some sort of implant in her hands. Probably for extra control, I reasoned. Her eyes looked normal enough, but they were far too vivid of a blue to be natural. I could only imagine what they did.

Her only nod to aberrant – at least among her socioeconomic class – fashion was her jaw-length, perfectly straight hair, which was hot pink, streaked with white. It made for a striking contrast, and one for which I was fully onboard. I would have to ask her where she had her hair done.

Equally striking was the contrast between her and the woman behind her. At first, I hadn’t seen Nora, as strange as that might seem, considering her hulking frame and loud fashion sense, but I’d been too focused on the woman who I realized was obviously the cyber surgeon.

“I do not usually work under such conditions, Mr. Braddock,” said the surgeon. Her voice was lower-pitched than I expected – almost husky. “You realize that my –”

“We won’t be doing the procedures here,” Jeremiah said, the interruption obviously irritating to the woman. “Relax, Doc.”

“My name is Dr. Cirilla Montague.”

“Yeah, I’m not calling you any of that,” Jeremiah said.

“It is a mouthful,” agreed Nora. “Speaking of mouths, the offer still stands, cupcake.”

Montague cut her eyes at Nora, looking at her in disgust. Not because she was a woman, I reasoned. Nobody cared about that kind of thing. People liked what they liked, and trying to change that was an exercise in futility that only resulted in resentment. Instead, I got the feeling that Montague considered Nora to be something of a lower lifeform. Or that’s how I interpreted the way she looked at the muscular woman, at least.

“Reel it in, Nora,” Jeremiah said. “You can sexually harass people on you own time.”

“You got it, boss,” Nora said, still grinning.

“Uh…hey,” I said, interrupting the resulting silence.

“This is the patient?” asked Montague, looking me up and down with a clinical eye. “Any cosmetic implants I should know about?”

“No,” Jeremiah stated. “Completely natural.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Mr. Braddock,” the surgeon stated. “Be honest, girl. Any cosmetics?”

I shook my head. I knew good and well that many of the men and women of Nova City used various cosmetic implants. Some were fairly innocuous, like the ones that changed eye color or provided aesthetic enhancements to a person’s body. I’d even heard about one popular “entertainer” on Bourbon Street whose whole body had undergone a striking degree of enhancement, resulting in a body so out-of-proportion that it barely looked human. But as much as I wished I could change certain aspects of my own body – who didn’t, right? – I’d never gone so far as to get any work done.

“Good,” Montague said. “Removing those things, especially when they’re performed by incompetent, barely trained cyber surgeons, can get very messy.” Then, she turned toward my uncle, asking, “Where are we doing the procedure? I would like to finish as quickly as possible.”

“Follow me,” Jeremiah said.

Then, instead of heading toward the exit, as I’d expected, he went deeper into the apartment. When he reached a hall closet that I didn’t remember ever being used for anything, he tapped a certain spot on the wall. A panel slid away, revealing a keypad, into which he punched a code. A moment later, the closet slid away, revealing a heavy door. He went through it.

“What the…when did this get here?” I asked, following him. Inside was a relatively compact room. The walls were lined in what looked like silver, and the most prominent decoration was a cyber surgery chair in the very center of the hidden space.

“Nora, stay outside,” Jeremiah said, ignoring me. Then, when the surgeon was inside, the door slid shut, and he asked, “Will this do?”

“This is…it’s…it’s more advanced than my own lab,” Montague said. “How did you do this? How does no one know?”

Jeremiah answered, “A man has to have his secrets, doesn’t he?”

Montague wasn’t listening. Instead, she’d started to inspect the walls. “This is nano-infused silver-mithril alloy,” she said. “No wonder it hasn’t been detected…but how did you get it? Who built this for you?”

Jeremiah said, “So, you’re saying that it is sufficient for our purposes?”

“I could do a full-body replacement for a Tier-4 cyborg in this room,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“Alright, then,” my uncle said. “Let’s get to work.”

She clearly wanted to ask more questions, but it was just as clear that Jeremiah wasn’t going to answer them. So, the surgeon just nodded and began her preparations. First, she took off her jacket to reveal the cream-colored and sleeveless blouse beneath before heading to a sink in one corner, where she began to scrub her hands. Meanwhile, I was told to take off my jacket and plant myself on the chair. I did so, and a few minutes later, Montague was looming over me.

“Asleep or awake?” she asked.

“Asleep,” was my uncle’s immediate response. “I’ll be here to make sure you don’t veer off course.”

I understood the question; many people in Nova City would rather go without cybernetics than put themselves entirely at someone else’s mercy. And few trusted anyone enough to have someone watch their backs. As a result, the city’s cyber surgeons had developed plenty of methods to allow their patients to retain consciousness while they worked. I was lucky in that Jeremiah was there. Otherwise, I would’ve been too afraid I’d end up in some random bathtub, my organs ripped out and whatever cybernetics I wanted installed gone. Or worse, somewhere like Bourbon Street, with the worst kinds of implants.

“Unnecessary,” Montague stated. “It would be suicide to cross a man with your reputation. Unprofitable, too.”

“Just so you remember that.”

She ignored his threat, instead focusing on me. “Relax,” she said, putting her hand on my neck. She adjusted its position a few times, then, suddenly, I felt a series of pricks as a half-dozen needles pierced my skin. I didn’t have much time to react, because only an instant later, I was drifting off into unconsciousness. As the darkness overtook me, I felt a wave of giddiness. When I woke up, the fun would really begin.

***

My eyes fluttered open, and I was immediately assaulted by the bright artificial light and the gleaming walls. I squeezed them shut and took a deep breath before reopening them. I turned to see my uncle standing nearby. The doctor was nowhere to be seen.

“Is she gone already?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago,” Jeremiah answered. “After she confirmed that the implants were successfully installed, there was nothing left keeping her here.”

“Oh. Okay,” I mumbled. “Can I have something to drink?”

“Sure,” he answered. “But first, we need to boot everything up.”

“How?”

“Just concentrate,” he said. “There should be something that feels like a switch in your mind. That’ll be your optics. Once you boot up the KOI, it’ll take care of your Arsenal.”

I closed my eyes, searching for what he’d described. A moment later, I felt it, like an incomplete circuit in my brain. Mentally, I forged a connection. When I did, I couldn’t keep a gasp from escaping from between my lips.

It felt like my whole body came alive, all at once, and in a way that defied any description I might come up with. It wasn’t precisely an itch or a tingle, but those were the closest I could come to putting how I felt into words. In any event, it passed in the space of a second, and my new Heads-Up Display activated.

Not only did it display mundane things like the time or direction, but it also integrated a communications package that mimicked the comm device I usually carried around. In addition, I could see that it had linked to my bank account, though I didn’t have more than a few credits to my name. Finally, I could see an icon representing my Arsenal Implant blinking in the corner of my vision.

“You’ll get used to all the information,” my uncle said. “I remember going through an electromagnetic field a few years back. It disrupted my optics, and I had to wait almost a week to have it replaced. Worst week of my life. I kept asking everyone the time or what direction, and I had no idea what my cybernetics were doing. Horrible stuff.”

“Should I activate the Arsenal Implant?” I asked.

He nodded. So, I mentally touched the appropriate icon, which brought of a simple question:

Arsenal Implant (Mk. IV) – Adavant Association [Grade E] found. Would you like to activate? You have one (1) unused cybernetic node. [Yes] or [No]

I chose to activate it, and the moment I mentally selected the affirmative option, I became aware of something on my arm. But it was also somewhere else, too. I told Jeremiah what I was feeling, and he explained, “Quantum space. Doing it for a weapon is limited; all you have to do is mentally tag it, and you’ll be able to summon and dismiss the weapon. It takes a second or two, so you’ll probably want to keep a sidearm or a blade out. You’ve got four of those slots.”

“Okay? And these other three spaces?” I asked, mentally probing them.

“Less limited. That’s what sets a good Arsenal Implant apart from a generic one. Those spaces can hold just about anything that isn’t living,” he stated. “Most people use them for ammo and survival gear, but it’s not that uncommon for people with top-grade Arsenal Implants to work as couriers. But be aware of how much weight you can carry. It’s based on your Constitution, so the stronger you get, the more you can shove in there. Anything more than forty pounds or so, and you’ll need an access point to retrieve it, but it’s great for emergency supplies and ammunition.  But let’s get your weapons out of the way first.”

At some point, someone had brought the boxes into the cyber surgery theater, and Jeremiah quickly retrieved the top box’s contents. It turned out to be the Keugen Kinetic Rifle, or the Kicker, as I’d been told was its more colloquial name. At Jeremiah’s prompting, I concentrated on the rifle and was rewarded a moment later with another notification flashing across my HUD:

Kinetic Rifle – Keugen Gunsmiths (Grade E) found. Would you like to bind weapon to your Arsenal Implant? You have four (4) unused weapon slots. [Yes] or [No]

I selected the affirmative option, and immediately, I felt the rifle at the edge of my awareness. With a thought, I dismissed it, and it disappeared. I could see a small icon representing the Kicker on my HUD, and when I selected it, the rifle appeared in my hands after only a couple of seconds.

“Whoa,” I muttered, which drew a slight chuckle from my uncle. “What?”

“Nothing, Keanu,” he said. “And just so you know, you can adjust your HUD however you want. I suggest you shorten your notifications and move things around when we’re done here.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, already thinking about what I wanted to change. I’d barely begun to explore what kind of features the KOI had, and I was eager to test its limits. To that end, Jeremiah handed me a small chip. “What’s this?”

“Operating manual,” he said. “Slot that into your information port when you’ve got a few extra minutes. It’ll tell you what you need to know.”

“I have an information port?” I asked, my hand finding a flap of artificial skin on my neck. It blended perfectly well, but I could feel the seam. When I pulled it aside, my fingers brushed against an inch-long metallic slot. An information port was one of the other things that marked a person as an adult. With it, I wouldn’t have to worry about sitting in front of one of the screens. Instead, I could just connect directly to the information source. “I have an information port!”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s high-quality, too, so the connection should be able to keep up with your KOI. There’s also an extendable jack in your left wrist; you’ll use that to access more stationary access terminals.”

“I don’t –”

“But no porn,” he growled. “If I find out you’ve been downloading questionable sims, I’m going to yank that port out of your neck. Got me?”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t intended to do any such thing. Really. I mean, nothing too shady. Unless it seemed really…uh…interesting. It wasn’t like it would be anything I hadn’t seen before. I mean, one stroll through the Garden, and I’d get all the education on human anatomy and mating habits I could ever need.

“I get you,” I said.

“Good. Now, let’s get these other weapons tagged and put away,” he suggested. “Then, we’ll do the ammo. I suggest keeping the different types separate until you get the hang of it.”

“Okay,” I said, eager to move on from the awkwardness of the previous conversation.

After that, we went through everything, and before I knew it, I had all three guns and mountains of ammunition stored in the arsenal implant. In addition, he’d had me store a nano-edged knife in the fourth slot. Once that was done, Jeremiah said, “Now, we get to the fun part. Let’s open your Personal Interface.”

“How?”

He gave me a level look. “Figure it out,” he said.

I deflated a bit. I’d gotten a bit better at navigating my KOI, so I had a good idea how things worked. It was insanely intuitive, probably because it was wired into my brain in such a way that it was practically a part of me. Or maybe literally part of me. I was still a bit unclear on how cybernetics worked. Either way, all I had to do was concentrate for a second, and a status page opened in front of my eyes.

Name: Mirabelle Lisa Braddock

Class: N/A (Requirements Not Met)

Level: N/A (0%)

Constitution: 3/10

Mind: 4/10

Mist: 1/10

Skills: 7/7

· Cybernetic Interface (Tier 0) – 1%

· Firearms (Tier 0) – 0%

· Close-Quarters Combat (Tier 0) – 0%

· Stealth Operations (Tier 0) – 0%

· Combat Utility (Tier 0) – 0%

· Mistwalking (Tier 0) – 0%

· Spycraft (Tier 0) – 0%

“I think it’s broken,” I said, a little alarmed. “My stats are, like, fractions.”

“It’s not broken,” my uncle said. “What nobody’s ever told you before is that tiers are mostly irrelevant. They only affect potential, not actual power. To realize that potential, you have to work. If you want to increase your constitution, you’re going to have work out. Run. Do gymnastics. That sort of thing. For mind, you’ll have to learn. You need to do puzzles. I’ve found that mathematics is very effective as a training tool, and it has the added benefit of increasing the Mistwalking skill’s progression.”

“And Mist?” I asked. “How do I raise that stat?”

“Using your skills,” he said. “Mostly, it’ll increase on its own, but there are a few ways we can jumpstart it. But you’ll see when we start training.”

“But I have so many questions!” I complained. For instance, my eyes kept flicking towards the two categories with “N/A” beside them. “How do I get a class? And what does it mean by level? And how is my potential determined? Like, is it just based on my tier? Or is it something else?”

“Calm down,” he said, and I realized I’d fired those questions out rapid-fire. “First, you get a class when you meet the requirements. It might be tomorrow, or it could be in ten years. And no, I’m not telling you any more than that right now. You need to focus on getting stronger. Your class will come when it comes. Second, you mostly get levels by killing things. That allows you to absorb their Mist, and once your Mist reaches a certain point, you gain a level. Finally, your potential is determined by your tier and level. Rule of thumb is that you multiply your tier – in your case, seven – by your level. So, for you, it’s zero. Once you reach level one, it’ll be seven. Level two, and it’ll be fourteen. On and on. That number gets added to your species’ baseline potential. For humans, it’s ten. Again, at level one, your maximum will be seventeen. Then twenty-four. Etcetera.”

“Sounds easy enough,” I said, already dreaming about the day when I had a Constitution in the hundreds. If ten was the baseline potential for a human, I couldn’t help but wonder what a person with twenty Constitution could do. I’d seen people perform plenty of unbelievable feats of strength, but I had always thought them the result of cybernetics. Now, I was beginning to wonder how accurate that assumption was.

“It’s not,” he said. “But you’ll see once we start training.”

“Can we start now?” I asked, finally swinging my legs off the chair and pushing myself to my feet.

Jeremiah shook his head. “No,” was his answer. “We don’t want to draw too much attention. Besides, this city is too safe. It’ll stunt your growth.”

I swallowed hard. If Nova City was too safe, I questioned what my uncle considered dangerous. Given what I’d seen from him so far, it stood to reason that whatever it was, it would eat my alive.

“For the rest of the day, I want you to study the manuals for your cybernetics and weapons,” he said, handing me another few information chips. “Because tomorrow, we’re getting started.”

His broad grin sent a shiver up my spine, but it was accompanied by a significant wave of excitement.