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There is nothing to do but wait. I can feel the code shifting inside me, resetting the various functions I’ve come to rely on to survive.
Augmentations allow us to enhance our strength, our speed, and our knowledge of the world. In my case, augmentations are the only thing standing between me and being completely crippled. Megaris belongs to augmented korabi. That little human managed to completely disable me in seconds.
In over a thousand bounties, nobody has ever hacked my augmentations. I didn’t think it was possible. It’s not supposed to be possible. Because nobody is supposed to know the code. Of course she knows the code. She was my administrator. If I could move my mouth I would let out a dark chuckle. With a little knowledge, that fugitive just rendered four hundred pounds of pure justice absolutely immobile.
I could call for help, but there is absolutely no way I am going to ever let this story leave this room. Shame doesn’t begin to cover it. A korabi warrior only has his honor and his capability. Being caught this way is exceptionally shameful. She could have killed me if she wanted to. She could have taken a lead from the electric socket in the wall, attached it to my neck, and run high voltage through it until I was dead. She could have taken a kitchen knife and stabbed me in the throat. Looking around the room, I can see twelve separate ways she could have dispatched me. But she chose to run. Because she is prey.
Mercy is not a human trait, and it is certainly not a korabi one. And yet, here we are, having both had the opportunity to slay the other, and neither one of us having taken it. I am greatly unsettled by that almost more than I am by feeling my spine fizz with a fresh flush of current as the augmentations continue rebooting.
She knows me, and that knowledge gave her an advantage. Now I must take the time to get to know her. Starting with the apartment I cannot help but stare at. Even my eyelids are frozen in place. I suppose I should count myself lucky that the basic functions are still online, like sight, and breathing.
Her apartment is a typical pleb place. About a hundred square feet in a rectangle. Her walls are pink and purple. There’s a bed at one end, a single. Humans are not permitted to cohabitate. When they associate freely with one another, they start to get ideas about rebellion.
Lyric has been living in pure luxury. Female humans with less privileged jobs have much harder lives. They sell themselves in Purr Parlors, or they walk the streets. Megaris is not an easy city to survive, even without me hunting you.
My augmentations are still working on resetting. Sometimes, I wish I’d never been talked into them in the first place, even if it meant shuffling with a limp. A bounty hunter who can be paralyzed by five foot fux all of a human female is one who should be ashamed of himself.
Four
Saved
Lyric
I have twenty bux. I have eaten half a sandwich. I am alive, so I’m doing well. I have decided to head to the least violent scum enclave on the north side of the city. It is one of the most organized enclaves I know of. Hunters have a harder time there than anywhere because the humans are able to coordinate, plan, and even build. I’m not sure why the korabi are tolerating that. Usually any encampment which shows any signs of developing leadership is incinerated. These humans seem to have found a glitch in the system, a blind spot in the authority’s surveillance, perhaps.
I keep my head down and walk as fast as possible without running. Running triggers extra surveillance. Stopping triggers extra surveillance. I have to try to fit in with the slow stream of scum filtering all around me, appearing out of sewer grates and sliding gently down walls. They ignore me for the most part. They have their own problems, and like me, they do not want to attract the attention of the authorities.
There’s a body in the road up ahead. If I still had my augs on, I’d see a flower bed. Without them, I see sunken flesh and a visage of deceased misery. This is obviously far from the first body I have ever seen. But it is the most human body I have ever seen. I cannot tell if it is male or female, old or young. But I am struck by the weakness of it, the sheer vulnerability, and the utter waste of what I am now realizing is a shared potential. I avert my gaze and walk past, leaving the tattered clothing flapping in the wind.
I want to be sick. This city I have served is a grinder for the human spirit. It is a cauldron of cruelty in which all are broken one way or another. I know that the body will be retrieved soon. Nothing in Megaris is wasted. They will want the chemical components from the once human flesh in order to fabricate whatever it is they are fabricating in the industrial quarter.
