1


“I’ve got absolutely no fucking reason to complain,” I said.
Silence. No response from X-37.
My Reaper limited AI’s purpose was to keep me functioning at maximum capacity. I wasn’t sure how being a huge pain in my ass accomplished that task.
“I’m sorry, Reaper Cain. Does your statement require a response?” X-37 asked.
I ignored him. He was treading dangerously close to mind reading and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument or a lecture. Transcending from limited artificial intelligence to a fully functioning AI could activate his shutdown sequence, a topic that always put his panties in a bunch.
Why would I want to go there?
Life was about as good as it could get for a man on the Union’s ultimate shit list. Not only had my military occupational specialty been phased out, I’d been phased out—framed for seventeen gang murders and sentenced to death plus forty years, whatever the hell that meant.
I was also aiding and abetting a teenage runaway wanted by the Union because she was full of super-secret genetic research derived from the Lex program. And my ship was stolen from the Union fleet. Which I didn’t think should be held against me because it had already been liberated and converted to a smuggler when I found it on Dreadmax.
I said as much to X-37.
“You did, in fact, murder seventeen gang members in Night City,” he reminded me.
“But I wouldn’t have if the Union hadn’t planted evidence blaming them for my father’s death and the disappearance of my mother and sister. Stop being difficult and let me vent.”
“It should have been twenty-three murders, but six survived their injuries—two instances of gunshot wounds, an uncountable number of stab wounds across all six survivors, and one man thrown from a building,” X-37 continued.
“You’re making me sound like a psychopath,” I said, inwardly relaxing as the confrontation continued. This was something I’d learned on Greendale. I thrived on confrontation. It made me feel like me.
I got bored traveling one slip tunnel after another. But life was pretty decent, almost good, sort of. Definitely better than being on death row. Or getting shot in the face. Far more pleasant than being lit on fire and thrown from a moving train like that time on Picardy 19.
Long story. Better to not think about missions I did for the Union before Dreadmax. Point was, today, on my way to Roxo III to find the ocular engineering specialist James Henshaw, I was living the dream.
My Reaper nerve-ware still gave me problems. I had headaches several times a week, often twice a day, but nothing compared to the crippling ordeals I’d endured on Greendale. Just the mention of Zag City was enough to make me nauseous.
The optics in my eye worked, but there had been ghost images assaulting my vision ever since I tried to wear the Reaper mask I’d taken from Byron Thane. I couldn’t afford to see things that weren’t there. To rectify that problem I needed a certified ocular engineer, and the only one X-37 and Jelly, my ship’s computer, had been able to locate was James Henshaw on Roxo III.
My cybernetic arm worked better every time Tom tuned it up. The man was constantly asking questions and trying new things. He’d been homeless with only the clothes on his back when we met. Hardly indicative of someone with the skills to work on my advanced Reaper tech but, then again, I knew better than anyone that appearances didn’t mean shit. In any case, there was nothing to complain about from his performance or his companionship.
But to say my arm was perfect would be an exaggeration. It felt a bit heavy—most of the time. Strong as hell, but slower and less coordinated than I wanted. Or maybe that was just in my head. X-37 promised me it was freakishly fast. It just didn't feel that way to me.
I extended the blade from over my fist as I walked, listening to the satisfying clunk and experiencing the recoil all the way to my shoulder. “It snaps out pretty hard. Didn’t used to bang like that.”
“Was that a complaint? Very recently, you stated you had nothing to complain about. This, however, leads me to believe that you are in need of Tom’s assistance. Shall I contact him and set up a meeting for another round of repairs and re-calibration?” X-37 asked.
“No. I’ll see him later. We’ll have our usual meeting on the view deck,” I said.
“You mean whisky and cigar time?” X-37 asked sarcastically.
“I mean careful consideration of who we are and why we’re here,” I said. “Meaning of life stuff, X.”
“Of course, Reaper Cain. It is obvious you're getting in touch with your feelings,” X-37 said. “Will you be attempting to use the Reaper mask and stealth armor? Because I thought we agreed you needed as much practice as possible with these complicated items—before your life depends on such tools.”
An involuntary shudder rippled through my entire body at the mention of the mask. As though on cue, ghost images wandered into my vision. The device had left an impression on my nerve-ware. It was as though I had endlessly stalked a Union facility I had never seen in reality. The perpetual wandering depicted in the images made me lonely.
Was this what Thane had seen before I killed him and took the mask?
“Why are you harassing me?” I asked, pushing back the unfamiliar emotions evoked by the ghost tour. “We’ve got plenty of time in the slip tunnel for that. It’s better not to rush new things.”
“You’re afraid to try it,” X-37 asserted.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “I need to ask you a serious question, X,” I said.
“How serious?” X-37 asked with mock concern.
I bit back several choice swear words that wouldn’t add to the conversation. “Do you see the ghost images from the mask?”
“I have detected them,” X-37 admitted. “It is surprising that you can see them. They are merely the residue of deleted files. My assumption is that X-27 and Byron Thane scrubbed the mask long before we encountered them in an attempt to hide its origins. These visual artifacts should not exist in your nerve-ware when you’re not using the mask. It is quite vexing.”
“That’s what I thought. Can you identify the location where the images occur?” I asked, feeling dread I couldn’t quite explain.
“I cannot,” X-37 said. “My analysis suggests it was a Union facility completed after your incarceration began. My advice is to forget about it, unless you can somehow get the Union to allow you admittance to their secret laboratories.”
“Can you make the images stop?” I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.
“They have already been deleted. Perhaps James Henshaw can scrub the nexus of your ocular augmentation and nerve-ware,” X-37 said. “Or you could just put on your big boy pants and deal with it. There should be no measurable effect on your performance as a result of these visual artifacts.”
“You’re such a dick, X.” I swaggered down the narrow, curving hallway of the Jellybird, the ship that had saved us from Dreadmax. We didn’t talk about that mission or what happened to all the people below decks, but I couldn’t help thinking about them at times.
There had been murderers and psychopaths dumped on Dreadmax, every one of them with multiple life sentences for crimes too vile to mention. But there had also been political refugees and people who had merely angered the wrong bureaucrat.
There had even been children born and raised during the twenty years the place was operated as a prison. I thought about Bug, the kid who had spoken to me over the public address system and helped me out of some tight spots. I wondered where he was and if he was okay. The last I heard, Bug and his friends were heading for one of the few ships to escape the doomed station.
I thought about my past, but only for a second. Ramming those thoughts back into the darkness where they belonged was second nature. I didn’t need to dwell on them to keep my hatred of the Union burning hot. But if I let those feelings get out of control, I would do something stupid and endanger my mother and sister.
They were out there somewhere. No one had been charged with their murders because their bodies were never found. To me, that meant they were still alive and probably being held hostage by the Union for that moment when they needed to punish me or use me.
“Shall I remove ‘test and evaluate the Reaper mask’ from your to-do list? You haven’t taken action on this item for nine days,” X-37 stated.
“I’ll work on it after you scrub the ghost images,” I said.
The mask was something different for me, a dilemma I’d never faced. I craved using the device yet feared what it might show me. Confidence in my decisions had been one of my earliest definable personality traits, long before I reached adulthood.
I remembered my mother and father laughing at how determined I was over small things. This was one of my earliest memories. To be so conflicted about the Reaper mask and the weird ghost-like aura it sometimes projected was unnerving.
“We have discussed this, Reaper Cain. There is nothing more I can do. Your best course of action is to face your fears and master the device before you are required to use it in a life and death situation,” X-37 said.
“I’ll get to it tomorrow.” The more X-37 harassed me, the more I wanted to kick back with a glass of whisky and a cigar. Tom was better at foraging for supplies than I was. He brought in some decent stuff during our last spaceport call.
“You are equidistant from the training room and the observation deck. I can easily send Tom a message advising of the delay,” X-37 offered.
I hesitated, fumbling the decision. In the middle of a mission or a hard fight, I thought more quickly, and it usually paid off. The lack of violent confrontation and the promise of imminent death was making me sloppy and weak-minded.
I didn’t like it.
The easy life sucked.
There were reasons the mask filled me with indecision. Warnings flashed every time I picked it up. X-37 promised he had neutralized the anti-theft measures inherent to the Reaper mask.
But I wasn’t in the mood to trust my Reaper limited AI completely.
The thought of putting on the mask and triggering an anti-tampering response where it leaked acid into my face and gassed me to death didn’t exactly motivate me to use the device. My soul craved a challenge, not a face-melting incident with Reaper gear designed after my “decommissioning.”
Still, the mystery of the mask was calling me and I knew I couldn't resist forever. But I could give fate the finger, because I was a jerk that way.
It might be better just to leave that one locked in the vault—no more threats of a torturous death, no more ghost images of Thane’s lonely isolation.
I headed for the training room, weighing the pros and cons of putting the Reaper mask in permanent storage. I’d spent a lot of time in prison thinking deep thoughts. I knew myself well.
“I will alert Tom to your change of heart,” X said, sounding smug.
“Whatever, X,” I muttered, wishing I had just ignored him again.
Yes, I was avoiding a confrontation with Elise and learning to use the Reaper mask. The two activities seemed to go hand-in-hand. Even if she wasn’t in the training room, once I started playing with the mask, she would show up as though called.
She either wouldn’t or couldn’t explain how she did that. I secretly wondered if it had something to do with the Lex-tech, but there was no way to tell.
The other really unpleasant task on my to-do list was the complete interrogation of Tom. I’d come to enjoy sipping whisky and telling stories over cigars with the other man. Putting my Reaper interrogation skills to use wouldn’t be good for our friendship.
There were also some funeral arrangements I needed to make.
“I had really hoped Tom’s secrets would have leaked out during our recreation,” I said.
“You have learned a great deal about each other,” X-37 said. “However, it is unlikely that a really deep or important secret would be discovered this way. You will need to get physical.”
Irritated, I snapped my response. “How about I try words first?”
“You are the expert,” X-37 said. “I was only trying to help. As I always do.”
* * *
A single light illuminated the training room. When I stepped inside, I looked at the beam shining down on the Reaper mask. I’d placed it on a security pedestal and covered it with an impact-resistant glass dome.
“We’re not alone,” X-37 said, enhancing a shadow image near the back of the room that was probably Elise. I tapped my thumb and middle finger together to acknowledge I also saw her. She thought she could spy on me, and I was inclined to allow her the illusion for now.
The only sounds were the occasional creak of the ship, inaudible to normal hearing, and the constant work of ventilation and climate control systems. The humidity and temperature in the room was slightly drier and cooler than the rest of the ship.
“It’s about time you showed up,” Elise said from the shadows.
“Jelly, turn on the lights in the training room,” I said.
“I scared you, didn’t I?” Elise asked.
“You can’t scare a Reaper,” I said, crossing my arms and looking her over. She’d come a long way since I pulled her out of the cage on Dreadmax. Her time on Greendale had been hard, but it taught her to be even more self-sufficient. She’d gone from a pissed-off runaway to a capable teenager who wouldn’t need a Reaper if the Union wasn’t trying to track her down and return her to captivity and scientific study.
"You're finally going to try again?” Elise asked. “Your face didn’t burn off the first time, so I’m not sure why you’re so skittish.”
I ignored the question and her commentary, walking past her to examine the Reaper mask in its display case. The device had been designed to be both intimidating and functional. I loved and hated the look of it. Understanding exactly what it did was becoming an obsession. Which I hated—because obsession led to bad decisions.
"Do you know why the Union started the Reaper Corps?" I asked Elise.
"Probably to create a bunch of self-important assholes with fake arms and bad attitudes," Elise said.
"That is a surprisingly insightful observation," X-37 said privately.
"Get serious, Elise," I said, ignoring X-37. "You know better than that. What happened to the street-smart kid I met on Dreadmax?"
The teenager rolled her eyes. Her lips twitched as if wanting to say something mean, but she elected to cross her arms and just give me attitude.
"The Union never had a monopoly on assassinations," I said. "We pulled our skill set from several specialties. What made us different was that we weren’t just assassins. We were intended to send a message."
Elise stared me down. “You want me to be impressed?”
“Are you?”
She shrugged, but I saw her pulse beating in her neck.
I removed the tech-glass case from the mask, then lifted the skull-like device. "We were scouts, spies, shock troopers, and interrogators. Any job that was nasty or repulsive to the human psyche was reserved for us.”
She softened, something like concern coming into her eyes, but didn't say anything.
I activated the device, studying the three blue circles—two eyes and one sensor in the middle of the forehead.
"I just came to watch that thing eat your face," she said, regaining a little bit of her normal attitude.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," I said, slipping the device into place. “Activate full Reaper mask functionality.”
X-37 was right, the ghost images were minimal and should be easily ignored. As for the possibility of death by Reaper mask…
Sensations flooded into my brain, barely filtered by X-37. The only satisfying part of the ordeal was that my limited AI was just as overwhelmed as I was.
That was what he got for being a dick.
Staggering sideways and then forward with my hands out, I ran into a wall. If Elise was still in the room, I couldn't see or hear her. My vision was a wall of blue lights. Sounds roared in my ears. The tactile sensations of my artificial and natural hands increased to an unmanageable level.
There wasn't any pain, which was nice. I felt about as good as I ever had. Maybe this was an illusion or maybe the mask had triggered some sort of central nervous system response.
But something was wrong. A sense of danger that had nothing to do with the technology I was attempting to use grew moment by moment. It was a primal feeling I couldn't ignore.
I ripped the mask off, ignoring the shutdown procedures that X-37 had explained to me when we first began our study of the device.
"It doesn't seem that we are in the training room," X-37 said.
"No shit," I said, gazing at the external door of the airlock, heart pounding like a pneumatic hammer.
My cybernetic left arm was on the wheel. A few turns to the left and I would've been violently ejected into space because the small room hadn’t finished its decompression.
"That was not what I thought would happen," X-37 said.
"Jelly, can you tell me where Elise is right now?" I asked. Images of her lying dead because of something I’d done terrified me.
"She remains outside of the airlock. The young woman followed you from the training deck," Jelly said. “It seems that you had an argument. She was very adamant that you not exit the airlock without an extra vehicle activity suit."
The internal door from the airlock opened and I saw Elise relax. Her eyes were puffy and red like she'd been crying or at least holding back tears.
"Well, that was stupid," she said.
Her reaction caught me off guard. I started laughing. She joined in. Our collective mirth grew exponentially.
"Can one of you please explain what is happening?" X-37 asked.
“Don't worry about it, X,” I said, still wallowing in the camaraderie the near-death experience had prompted. “We're taking the mask back to its security pedestal in the training room. I think we've done enough testing and evaluating for one day."