Bubblegum Crisis 2040 and all the characters from that series are property of all the folks who originally thought them up (that or some big corporate machine that bought the rights). Anyhow, this is a work of fan fiction, so don't try to make a buck of this somehow. Doing so would be bad karma, to say the least. This fan fiction is based off the new BGC2040 series, which is a great deal more gritty and violent than the orginal BGC2033. Also, there is no connection between the two anime storylines, even though the character names are the same. Bubblegum Crisis 2040 Synth Dream Part 1 A fanfiction by Michael McAvoy There was a rattling bang as the heavy metal doors swung outward to the street. Erupting from within, a loud cascade of background noise and screaming music, the kind that caused parents to worry about their children at night. A dazzling flood of light accompanied a wobbly and panicked figure through the doors past a pair of menacing looking doormen. Somewhat short and sweating profusely, the young man shoved his way past hopeful patrons, who were lined up outside the nightclub. Almost coughing with agitation, he finally broke free into the neon lit dark of the street. Several ugly comments from those waiting outside the club followed him. "Crazy bastard," one of the bouncers muttered with a pissed off look, shutting the heavy doors again much to the disappointment of the crowd. "Yeah, wonder what's under his skin?" replied the second. "Dunno," his partner replied. "Just as long - eh?!" Without warning the heavy doors swung open again, this time much harder. The first bouncer was pushed back into one of the handrails solidly, grunting as they went into his ribs. A slender looking man and woman emerged from the mayhem of the nightclub. Both were dressed in expensive clothes of the `business casual' variety. "Hey watch what you're doing," the second bouncer threatened, taking a step towards the pair. He was significantly larger than the couple put together. "Which way?" the well-dressed woman asked quietly, scanning the crowd. The first bouncer pushed himself off the railing. "Hey, you stupid assholes! I think you cracked one of my ---ergh!" Without emotion, the woman's companion grabbed the bouncer by the neck easily and lifted him off the ground. There were gurgling noises as a pair of feet kicked wildly in the air. The crowd as one mass moved back, several gasps of alarm heard. The first bouncer's partner moved to come to the aid of his coworker, but quickly found the woman's small fist driven into his gut with a sickly thud. The large fellow lost consciousness instantly, sailing down the steps and crashing into several now frightened people. "I will ask again," repeated the well-dressed man with deadly calm. "Which way did that man just go?" By now, the first bouncer was beginning to turn blue from the grasp around his neck. Motioning weakly with his eyes and a hand up the street, he croaked a few times. Quite abruptly, he was dropped to the hard of the concrete and metal floor, where he lay twitching and heaving for breath. Without a word, the man and woman sprung from the front of the nightclub. Sailing over the now terrified and mostly fleeing clubbers, the pair landed right near where the neon light of the club faded into darkness. Their figures disappeared rapidly, only to reappear in other neon lights further up the crowded street. Loud protests and cries echoed from the direction they headed. * * * Stumbling through Sodo Ward, the pleasure district of Megalocity, the young man sucked air in raspy breaths, ramming into people on the packed street. Drenched in sweat and his eyes bulging, he clutched desperately at a pocket in his jacket every few moments. Finally running into someone a lot larger than himself, the young man was pushed aside into a large metal box. "Moron!" the big fellow who had pushed him yelled, turning away with his girlfriend. The rest of the crowd moved on in both directions without much notice. The man leaned against the metal box in pain. Trying to move, he found that his limbs were not responding very well. Raising his hands before him, the fellow looked at his trembling limbs. His hands were beginning to clench and tense like grasping claws. "Oh, d-damn it!" he almost moaned. "Not now, not now!" Sweat now running down his forehead, the man looked around bleakly. His eyes fell on the large metal box he was leaning against. A moment passed as a desperate idea came suddenly. Pulling himself up straight, he wobbly turned around to face the box. It was covered with lots of professional looking logos. "M-mail service," the man said shakily. A panel on the box came to life with a pleasing little jingle. Menu options appeared. "Welcome to the Tokyo Automated Mail Service," a cheerful digitized voice announced. "Please insert a credit or debit card." Reaching back for his wallet, trembling fingers fumbled for the appropriate card. Clawing for his credit card, several other pieces of rectangular plastic fell to the pavement. Forcing his hands to work, he rammed the card into the machine and punched in a pin number. There would not be much time before his pursuers discovered him again. Or the withdrawal put him into a coma. The mailbox chewed on his card for three seconds. It was an excruciating length of time. "Card accepted," the machine said pleasantly. "Please select the type of mail you would like to send. Voice, video, package-" Reaching into his pocket, the fellow selected the package option. "Please place the item you wish to deliver in the receptacle below the screen. Please be aware this Mail Service station is unable to process any item larger -" Skipping past the box's warnings, he fished out a small item no larger than the palm of his hand. It flashed in the lamp light overhead. Placing it in the receptacle, the box quickly pulled it inside itself and whirred a few times. "You item is being automatically packed," continued the box. "Please enter the destination address." The young man spent several more moments before the mailbox before finally stumbling away. There was an ejecting noise and an annoying beep as the machine politely informed no one in particular that the credit card was still there. It took next to no time whatsoever before a passing young opportunist slid up to the mailbox. Stealing a brief look in both directions, a shady looking youth reached out and swiped the card, disappearing into the crowd nervously. The hoodlum was completely unnoticed as two figures in expensive clothes raced by with an unnatural grace. * * * He was done, and he knew it. Maybe if he had been at home or close to a hospital, things might have been better, but not now. Having stumbled down a back alleyway minutes earlier, the young man had begun convulsing with spasms. Contorting horribly, he had bent over like his spine was ready to break in two. Instead, he merely collapsed into the gutter, twitching, with his fingers locked outwards. There were many unpleasant waste products he was now lying in, human and otherwise. Stench rising from the gutter, he was soon beyond care as the withdrawal symptoms took him further from reality and closer to coma. As he lay there shaking in the filth, a pair of shadows moved over him, rising from the ugly glow of the gaudy lit streets. The well-dressed couple appeared on either side of him, apparently not winded by their exhaustive search. Looking at his companion, the man then casually bent down. Putting a hand around the now unconscious young man's head, the figure squeezed. A crunching and grinding sound was accompanied a tiny whimper, then nothing. * * * In one of the many towers that pierced the night sky above Megalocity, a penthouse office sat atop the tallest. Looking out over the rest of the city, the resident of the Genom office stared down on the twinkling star light of the civilization below. It was cold out, and the wind blew harshly, but not a stir or vibration made its way through the polymer windows. Mid-forties perhaps, and well dressed as suited a man of his station. A trim beard on an angular chin, he sported an expensive suit, but not too expensive. Similarly adorned was his office. Well decorated and sophisticated, yet not lavish. Opulence was a frequent mistake of many men who aspired greatness or power. It was a chain that weighed down the unwary. "It's supposed to be near the holiday season down there," the man said quietly. "Festive, I should suppose." Behind the owner of the office, across a solid cherry desk or considerable size, an apprehensive looking woman stood with her hands clasped before her. "Yes, Mr. Jarvis," she replied, demurely. "Do you know why they are festive, Ms. Takagi?" Jarvis asked with a particular air of disinterest. "It is because Genom has created a world for them to be happy in." "Yes, Mr. Jarvis," Takagi agreed again. Jarvis turned away from the window and sat down behind his desk slowly. "People..." he said, "look to us for stability and a consistency of... product, as it were. We literally saved this region. and others." Takagi could only remain silent in front of her superior. Her fate, one way or the other, had been sealed the minute that wretched hack had escaped her agents. "As you may or may not be aware, Ms. Takagi," Jarvis continued, well aware Takagi was completely informed, "Genom has been recently... weighed down by some unfortunate consequences from other... leaders of this corporation." Jarvis drummed his fingers on the polished wood of his desk for emphasis. "As well as those ever so endearing vigilantes." Takagi nodded; the Knight Sabers, of course. Who else would Jarvis have been referring to? They had been a thorn in Genom's side as far as publicity, bringing attention to berserk boomers. Eventually they had even compromised one of Genom's most powerful executives. "Yes," nodded Jarvis slowly. "We will not be exposed like that ever again. Which brings me to wonder why information stolen from our main computer has not been recovered yet? Especially when that information, if made public, would harm the populace's belief and trust in Genom in a way even the year's previous events have not." Takagi was quick to speak up. "The intruder has been eliminated, sir," she answered quickly. "There were no traces left by our agents." Jarvis's eyes bored into Takagi, burning right through her in dispassionate apathy. Takagi might as well have been an ant trying to get the attention of an elephant before being stepped on. "No traces? Indeed," he said with anything but amusement. "He managed to escape the boomers in that rat maze of a district, come in contact with half the citizens of the zone, and slip into a coma of his own doing before your agents were able to deal with him. And then, he did not have the information on him. Rather fine operation, I do believe. Well done." Takagi could have died right there. Not that she was at all certain her life might be over sooner than later. Jarvis had a less threatening outward appearance than other Genom executives did, but he was several times more ruthless than most. "But then, perhaps stupid luck may be on your side, Ms Takagi," Jarvis said, straightening in his leather chair. "Perhaps this... addict who was able to enter our most protected systems merely threw the information in a trash receptacle while fleeing. I would hope so, for your sake, Ms Takagi." Jarvis got up and returned to the window, staring out into the cold darkness. "Should it be otherwise, you will find need of your services here at an abrupt... and terrible termination." Takagi bowed deeply and backed away. Had she not had the willpower, she would have fled. * * * A sullen pink was rising out of the Pacific, announcing the approach of the morning. It was a sluggish and heavy time of the day, being neither day nor night. The lively and energizing lights of the Sodo Ward had been mostly turned off for a couple of hours already, except in some areas that catered to `hardier' patrons. Details to the eye were hard to come by in the shadows. AD Police inspector Daley Wong wondered idly if that was not such a bad thing. This ugly twilight seemed to hide the uglier filth and disease that seemed to be just about everywhere these days. Wong pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up his noses and sighed. He seriously doubted the inevitable smell and stains from the gutter would be easy to remove. "And me with my better shoes on this morning," he said. A larger figure walked into the alley. Behind him, the flashing lights from several patrol cars winked coldly. It would not be long before the forensic teams with their analyzing equipment arrived. "What's the matter, Wong?" asked AD Police inspector Leon McNichol. "Kinda early to be bitching." Daley shoved his hands past the sides of his jacket and into the pockets of his pants. Turning away from his partner and back into the alley, Daley shrugged. "Just wondering if I should have been something a little more cushy," he replied over his shoulder. "Like a public defender, or a dentist." "Kinda late to be bitching." Leon followed Daley further into the grime. There was an acrid and salty smell permeating the nauseating stench that made its home in the back streets. Daley stopped up short, looking down. "Here he is, Leon," he said. Leon stepped up beside Daley and crouched down. Taking out a small flashlight, he scanned a body lying on its side. The body was rigid and contorted. Daley watched where the beam from Leon's flashlight fell. Leon paused as he reached the upper part of the body's torso. "I'd say cause of death was an acute loss of a head," Daley remarked blandly. Leon shifted his feet and stood up from his crouch, scanning around the body some more with his light. He sniffed and nudged the body with the toe of his boot. "There it is," identified Leon. "Looks like most of it has run into the drain. Can you tell me again why we're here? This should be a case for the regular police." Daley ran his fingers through his hair and scratched the back of his head. Sometimes he wondered about his partner's attention span. "Leon," he said. "Weren't you listening to the incident commander's report? Witnesses saw a couple with incredible strength and speed chasing a fellow that meets the clothing description of this guy. This couple also roughed up a couple of bouncers further up the district." Walking back out to the main street, Leon looked slightly uncomfortable. "Yeah, so?" he argued. "What of it?" Daley shuffled up beside his partner. "Strength and speed to beat up a pair of doormen twice the size of you sounds a little much for an ordinary couple. Boomer's perhaps?" Leon only snorted in reply. "At any rate," continued Daley, "there's not much we can do here until forensics gets some info back to us." Climbing behind the controls of their patrol car, Leon did not respond. In fact, he now looked rather sullen. The patrol car revved to life. "Hey Leon," observed Daley with a little smirk. "At least your favorite vigilantes didn't get here before we did." "Shut up, Wong." * * * ADP File #234321.A Classification: suspected boomer related homicide Date: October 12, 2040 Location: Sodo Ward, Tokyo Subject: Frederick Tachiyama (26) Cause of Death: massive head trauma Motive: unknown Details: victim apparently pursued by unidentified couple (suspected boomers by witness account). Victim discovered in Sodo Ward alleyway by passersby. Personal belongings left on body of victim. No physical evidence at scene linking any suspects. Autopsy Results: victim died with high levels of illegal substance synthanol-tetrabizene (synth) in bloodstream. Synth is substance suspected for use by DataNet manipulators to enhance direct neural interface connections. Highly addictive with destructive side effects noted on the nervous system. Next of Kin: Kimberly Tachiyama (24) (sister) (notified) Action: frozen pending further evidence ADP File #234321.B Classification: homicide (forwarded by Tokyo Police) Date: October 13, 2040 Location: Sodo Ward, Tokyo Subject: Kaji Yamada (17) Cause of Death: massive head trauma Motive: unknown, suspected connection to File #234421.A Details: victim found in apartment by parents, deceased. Victim in possession of credit card of one Fredrick Tachiyama (deceased). Card used earlier in the day to illegally purchase various electronic components. Tokyo police investigating possibility unknown suspects traced use of Tachiyama's credit card to Yamada. No physical evidence left at scene of crime linking any suspects. Next of Kin: Parents (notified) Action: frozen pending further evidence * * * Excerpt from a Tokyo Underground Press interview with Priss Asagiri, Lead vocalist of Sekira. (April 2040) Interviewer: So, how do you feel about the world we live in? Priss: .... Interviewer: ...okaaay... So, if you weren't a singer, what would you do? Priss: ... I think I'd join the Knight Sabers. and blow things up... * * * A persistent and annoying alarm greeted Kimberly Tachiyama as the sun began to stream over Megalocity. Not that Kimberly could actually see the sun; there were far to many apartment buildings between her window and the dawn. The only real difference she could tell each morning was a change from black darkness to a sickly gray that illuminated the off the white buildings outside her apartment. Groaning noisily, Kimberly fumbled with a hand at the little table by her bed, searching for the offending timepiece. She finally hit a large blue button on its top, sticking up out of its molded plastic box, and the alarm was replaced by generic retro-techno beats. Kimberly peered blearily towards the twilight outside her window with such angst and bitterness that any clueless teenager would have admired. Her liquid display clock radio showed October 15, 6:45 am. Scratching underneath an armpit absently, the woman in her mid- twenties stared through matted bangs of hair, blonde with split ends. "Who created this stupid reality, anyway?" she asked out loud after staring out into space. Nothing in her apartment answered. Nothing in her apartment ever did, but that was the nature of conversations with inanimate objects in apartments. They were always rather one sided. A little while later, Kimberly opened up the front door of her dwelling, showered and clothed for another day at work. Stepping outside into the hallway, she almost tripped over a little package outside her door. It was a small mail parcel with her name on it and no return address. There was a little sticky note on top of it from a cranky, elderly neighbor. Something about the damn mail service sending it to the wrong apartment number. So much for the perfection of tangible mail delivery in a world dominated by electronic transfers. The thought of electronic anything immediately pissed Kimberly off to no end, and she angrily kicked the packing though her door and slammed it shut without another glance. Kimberly pressed her face up against the clear plastic of the apartment elevator as it descended from the near top floor where her apartment was towards the lobby. Despite being inexpensive, her building was a fairly nice place to live, built new in the years after the big one had struck. Most people did not mind living in the bland quarters, choosing not to think to hard about the countless billions of little nano-machines that had constructed the structures throughout the city with no small amount of help from armies of boomers. There was not much comfort as the elevator plunged the fifteen floors to the street level below. There had not been anything resembling comfort at all, really, since the day before. It had all been a real big blur, the AD Police notifying Kimberly of her brother's apparent murder. They said apparent because the AD Police was not sure what had killed him first, the pulverization of Frederick's head or the Synth in his blood stream. In angry shock (she could not decide from another of her family being dead or the fact that `little Freddie' was just another hacker junky on the DataNet), Kimberly had dutifully answered the police summons to collect her brother's personal items and choose a method of body disposal. Kimberly's parents, like so many others, had died in the big quake. They had died at work, in their big and shiny buildings that engineers had so proudly erected as quakeproof. The irony being that Kimberly and her little brother had survived unscathed at home in an average Japanese house. From then on, Kimberly and little Freddie had just been another couple of orphans amongst thousands. There was a gap in Kimberly's memory from the time of the quake right through the first few months of state-sponsored care in a massive tent city of refugees. Honestly, she did not care one bit that she could not remember any of it. Freddie was too young to remember at all. She had her brother cremated at the police morgue. It was easier and far cheaper to have Freddie's body disposed of in that manner. Kimberly figured it was somehow fitting since the bodies of her parents had never been identified, pulverized beyond recognition like millions of others by falling buildings. What bits and pieces that had not decayed completely by the time the construction boomers arrived on the scene over the following years were incinerated by other boomers designed to dispose of potential biological hazards with fire. Kimberly was now completely without family, as far as she could figure. Aunts, uncles, grandparents. who really knew? The chaos, death, and destruction had been so widespread over Japan that in the years after the quake, people were more overwhelmed as a whole with picking up the shards of their own little tragedies than looking for missing relatives. There was a national service where queries for the missing and the dead could be posted and searched through, but Kimberly had never found anyone looking for her or her brother. She could not remember when she stopped bothering to look. And now Freddie was dead, too. "Little shit," mouthed Kimberly, fogging the plastic window of the elevator as it came to a stop at the lobby level. Freddie had been in college learning design of computer systems when he had gotten addicted to life (if one could call it that) on the DataNet. Endless hours upon hours of sitting in darkened dorm rooms, staring at numerous vid-screens propped up on cardboard boxes or scrap pieces of plastic crates, navigating the sites and data all over the world. DataNet addiction had developed the worst kind of otaku, bringing a level of widespread obsession only seen in the worst fans of the kinds of anime involving fourteen year old girls flashing their cartoon panties while wielding magical makeup kits. Kimberly did not understand either obsession, herself. All she knew is some DataNet runners, apparently just like her brother, opted for state of the art cranial implants for a more direct connection to the streams of information. The only drawback was the need to use the drug synth to make the interfaces between the digital and the biological gray matter of the brain function. The drawback was the long-term side effects of synth being extremely debilitating, if not downright fatal. In a classic bureaucratic decision, the Japanese government had made synth illegal very early on, but not outlawed the cranial implants that required the drug. So, there was still a high demand for synth, and there were more sources available than the police could ever hope to get a handle on. The beauty of synth was a child with a decent chemistry set and high-end molecular sequencing software (provided as freeware on the DataNet, naturally) could produce the stuff in quantity. Consequently, most addicts tended to be their own suppliers, making it almost impossible for the police department to combat the problem with traditional anti-drug enforcement polices. The only thing the police did have going for them was synth produced nothing much in the way of a altered state of biological chemistry for addicts who were not modded with the DataNet implants. So, mainstream junkies never bothered to use synth long enough to form any addiction to it. There were three main ways to be a good runner or hacker of the DataNet. The first was to have incredibly powerful computers at your disposal, but that generally meant working for someone who could afford the power you really needed to do some serious running. Unfortunately, those systems tended to be closely monitored by people whose sole job was to ensure employees were not using their systems in ways the companies did not approve of. Second, you could have less powerful and expensive computer systems, but be incredibly gifted, creative, and have an inborn knack for how to mod your hardware to get into the hard to reach areas of the DataNet. These people were generally brilliant, few in number, and mostly benign in motivation as far as their running and hacking activities. The final way you could become an advanced DataNet runner was to be without expensive computer equipment and untalented enough to know how to make do with less. It was from this third and largest pool of DataNet addicts that most of the cranial modded synth types came from. The mods to a human noggin were surprisingly not that expensive, as nano-machines made the need for skilled surgeons completely unnecessary. Synth side effects were well known, however, which kept the population of modded hackers to a bare minimum. Why did the few decide to risk certain degradation of their nervous systems? Kimberly did not know, and in the case of her brother, she decided she really did not care. She had not heard one peep from him in almost a year, anyway. Freddie had chosen his life as Kimberly had chosen hers, with the intention that never the twain should meet. `Little jerk couldn't even leave me that much,' she griped to herself on a lightly populated train out of town. Kimberly's work was a little way out of town, in one of the areas that had yet to benefit from reconstruction after the quake. In fact, the majority of buildings still standing were condemned, housing without modern facility the most desperate of society. Property values were near rock bottom this far out of Tokyo, which was of great benefit if you were a startup company. Not to mention if you were a startup company trying to break into a Genom controlled market. In Kimberly's case, if you were a college graduate in cyber- molecular structures and pseudo-biologic systems, chances were you went in with some Genom subsidiary to help build the better boomer or any of a million other products. However, not many grads got to do the really interesting work that Genom had to offer. Chances were your skills in that field would go to work on some small component of the newest useless gadget, and that was if you got to work in your desired field at all. Genom was notorious for hiring people with good potential, and then sticking them in a dark corner somewhere just to keep them from working for any competitors. And the atrocious contracts new hires signed legally prevented them from getting a job with a competitor in a related for fifteen years should they decide to quit Genom. Genom lawyers called it protecting their corporate secrets (ignoring the fact the poor twenty-somethings never knew any secrets to begin with). So, it was stay in a hole with Genom, or face a bleak job hunt with a useless degree. Kimberly had taken a more radical track at graduation, throwing her lot in with a startup company trying to make a niche in advanced upgrade parts for boomers. The money was good, the rest of her colleagues young and idealistic, and the atmosphere relaxed. Besides, it appealed to Kimberly to think of herself as something of an outlaw in the Genom controlled boomer technology world. Sure, the company was small, in a ratty warehouse in the crappy outskirts of town, and sometimes hurting for development money, but there were never any really tough times. There was hope that after four years, the company might be one of those not swallowed by the Genom machine. Walking over broken sidewalks and empty concrete shells of shattered dreams, Kimberly made her way to her company's warehouse. Skirting around the pitiful homeless drunk, who had claimed the front area of the warehouse as his territory, Kimberly pulled out her security card and slid it through the identification check at the door. Yanking the heavy door open, she entered and let it close slowly behind her. As usual, the area was its general clutter of workspaces and offices without dividing walls, beyond which covering most of the huge warehouse floor was the research and production area. Only, no one was there that morning. Kimberly blinked a little, looking at her watch and reaffirming to herself that she was actually late for work. "Oh, hey Kimberly," an unhappy voice droned from off to her left. She turned and spied one of her coworkers, a guy slightly older than herself named Osamu. He was your quintessential computer geek, and had some of the bad personal hygiene to prove it. He had a little plastic crate, which he was filling with some items. Some of them were rather expensive bits of company computer ware. "Uh, morning," Kimberly replied warily, approaching the unkempt looking man. "What are you doing with your deck there? And where is everyone? Oh, crap, don't tell me today is a holiday." Osamu looked up from his packing with a pathetic lopsided grin on his face, like the one bit of joy he was going to have that day was knowing something Kimberly did not. Kimberly watched him with distaste, glad her little workstation had been as far away from his as possible. "Didn't you hear over the weekend?" he asked with a little bit of nastiness. "The old geezer bailed the country with our profits." "Excuse me?" Kimberly replied in a dull tone. The geezer Osamu referred to was the thirty-nine year old owner of the company. Osamu continued his packing. "Yeah, he emailed everyone Friday night," he said. "Told us our venture was gonna hit rock bottom here in the next few quarters, so he was taking what profits there were and heading to America before we went bankrupt." "What the fuck?" demanded Kimberly with a cross between anger and amazement. "What do you mean he took our profits?" With everything to do with her brother over the weekend, she had not once thought about checking her computer for messages. Osamu finished his packing, picked up his plastic crate, and headed for the door. "Just that," he said. "He took his remaining investment and split. Sucks, huh? Nice of the bastard to at least tell us, eh?" "He can't do that!" she argued. Then hesitating a bit, she added, "Can he?" Stopping by the door, the programmer shrugged. "Who knows," he answered. "Point is, he did. Grade-A asshole, if you ask me. We don't even get our last week's pay." Kimberly almost started to run to catch Osamu at the door before stopping herself. "Wait a sec! You can't take the company's equipment like that, can you?" Osamu smiled in a pasty fashion. "Actually, I can. The old geezer always bought everything here in cash, since we never could secure credit with anyone. It's paid for, so no point in letting it rot. Consider it severance pay, if you want. After all, everyone else's already been through and took their own shit yesterday. Laters." The door closed behind him, and Kimberly was left alone. Looking around she noticed that everyone else's desks and stations had been cleaned out of most of the portable deck stations. There was a lot of expensive equipment still left throughout the warehouse, but it was too big for anyone to want to take home. All of it was at least a nine months old, and of no practical value outside of a lab. At any rate, it would probably be obsolete already, even being top of the line equipment a scant eight months earlier. Another little part of Kimberly's life broke off and dropped away behind her. * * * Sylia Stingray had a problem, and she definitely did not like having problems. Actually, any of the elegant woman's closest acquaintances would probably agree Sylia had several problems, and most of them personal. Right then, however, her most pressing issue was deep below the Silky Doll. Standing alone in one of the subterranean enclaves that served as the headquarters of the Knight Sabers, arms crossed, Sylia faced the terminal of her main research computer. Unlike other powerful machines Sylia had at her disposal, this particular terminal was different from all the rest. The primary difference being it was a completely stand-alone machine tied into no other computers or networks of any kind. In other words it was completely isolated from any access except by someone who had the authority to activate the computer's terminal. And Sylia was the only person in the world who had the codes to access it. There was good reason for having a computer isolated from the rest of the world, especially since it housed all the data and research on each of the Knight Saber Hardsuits. That information could never be allowed to leave that particular room. Sylia ground her teeth. If that were true, then how had Genom defeated her vigilantes so handily several nights before? It had seemed like another rogue boomer, but had quickly turned into an ambush. Genom released a whole battalion of combat boomers equipped with advanced weaponry specifically designed to render the Hardsuits' protective armor useless. They had barely escaped with their lives. Even now, Priss and Linna were laid up with broken limbs and battered bodies. Nene had helped Sylia pull the two out of the Genom attack, but the blonde hacker had been a near basket case since. How none of them had escaped being killed was a mystery. Genom had shown intimate knowledge of the Knight Saber's weaknesses, including some Sylia had not even known existed. To do so meant someone had to have gained knowledge of the Hardsuit designs. Or did it? Sensitive information could only have come from this particular computer before Sylia, and the enigmatic Stingray knew no information had left the terminal. No one besides her had ever accessed it. So how could Genom known so much about the Hardsuits? Even Nigel did not know enough about their systems to present a real security risk, especially not since he had spilled his guts to Mason. Sylia put her fingertips to a throbbing temple. Her regular headaches were doing nothing to improve her mood. Turning on her heal, Sylia left the room, heavy doors sliding closed behind her. Walking down a hallway, she turned into the Pit. Before her, suspended on their maintenance supports were the four Hardsuits. Hers and Nene's had minimal damage, but Priss and Linna's were a mess, slashed with scorch marks from Genom weapons and showing numerous armor failures. It would be impossible to repair them in that state. They were not much more than extremely expensive scrap now. Sylia considered for a moment the last time she had taken the time to upgrade the Hardsuits. She could not remember right offhand. What if Genom had been sacrificing boomers and property to the Knight Saber's destructive vengeance for the sole purpose of observation of the vigilantes? Was it possible Genom's analyzing devices could have pierced the carefully packaged secrets of the Hardsuits? Pride almost let Sylia dismiss the idea, but the simple truth of it all finally sunk in. Sylia did the upgrades almost single handedly to the Hardsuits, which took time and lots of money. Genom had the resources to throw hundreds of top engineers and billions at the little problem of the Knight Sabers. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Genom caught up to them and the secrets her father left from his lab. Swearing under her breath, Sylia mentally berated herself. Of course it was reckless and idiotic to have put off upgrading the Hardsuits. Her cause was too important to allow a setback like this to occur from a lack of her diligence. The race to stay ahead of the technological curve was nothing to be taken lightly, especially against a company like Genom. The newest upgrading of the Hardsuits would just have to take precedence over everything else for a while. That would take a lot of time, but with Priss and Linna hurt, there was no way Sylia was going out with only Nene in obsolete Hardsuits. Sylia shut the lights off to the Pit and headed for the turbo elevator back to the Silky Doll. * * * "I'm home," Kimberly called out bleakly as she unlocked and swung her apartment door open. Her apartment was still refusing to answer, but even that failed to annoy the out of work designer. She trudged through her door, a box of belongings and items swiped from her company warehouse under one arm. Closing the door, she continued into her home, kicking something small in the darkness. Sighing, Kimberly slumped her shoulders. "Lights," she mumbled. The lights came on in her apartment, way too bright for her comfort, naturally. She squinted for a few moments until her eyes adjusted, looking away at the floor. As Kimberly's focus came back, she spied what had connected with the toe of her shoe. Resting on the carpet a couple feet away was the small mail parcel that had been outside her door that morning. The sticky note had fallen off not far away. Kimberly stared absently at the parcel, with a gaze that might have well been fixed on something a mile away. Almost a minute ticked by as she stood motionless, her mind blank. Finally, breaking her revere, Kimberly sighed. She let the tension fade from the small of her back and bent over for the package. It was very light. Peering at the label, Kimberly saw there was no return address on the brightly colored plastic covering. Holding it in the palm of her hand, she also noticed that her name was on it, but the address was wrong. The apartment number on the label was from the crabby woman down the hall who had stuck the sticky note on it. The old lady was an odd bird, constantly threatening to use her `weapon' to defend herself against any of the delinquents who filled the streets. Kimberly did not know what the weapon was, nor if the old lady even had one, but she never felt the old woman was worth talking to long enough to find out. A clock chimed in the apartment. Looking up from the small package in her palm, Kimberly noticed she was late to meet one of her friends for dinner. She did not feel much like eating, but the opportunity to drown her unemployed sorrows in alcohol seemed agreeable. Pocketing the postal parcel, Kimberly turned on her heel and headed out of her apartment. "Lights," she mumbled as the apartment door closed behind her. * * * Takagi sat in her darkened office, the soft glow of a data screen illuminating her high boned features. Brows furrowed in concentration, she observed the information intelligence officers in the Genom Corporation were feeding her from their central office. As each new stream of information arrived on Takagi's screen, she filtered it and looked for leads on the young DataNet hacker who had stolen from Genom's top secret databases. She wondered where the information was. She wondered if she could find it. She also wondered if she would be allowed to live long enough to know one way or the other. The facts, she thought to herself, trying to concentrate. The hacker had broken into Genom's most secret and dedicated of servers, almost by accident by all accounts. The hacker had downloaded the information and made a copy of the information on a data disk. By his pure luck, or the ineptitude of the boomers sent to retrieve the data, the hacker had escaped his apartment with his life and the missing data. There was the obvious assumption, Takagi reasoned. The worm's deck confirmed the data had been downloaded onto a portable media, and that media was not in the apartment. Therefore, the media must be floating out there in the city somewhere. Be it in a trash receptacle or in the hands of another unidentified person, that was what needed to be discerned. But where had the hacker deposited the data? He had fled the pursuing boomers for over an unbelievable fourteen blocks of the maze know as the Sodo Ward. Somewhere in those fourteen blocks, the hacker had separated himself from the missing data, but where - "Stop," Takagi commanded out loud, forcing the data stream to pause. Eyes moving rapidly, her mind raced over the known timeline of events as she scanned the screen. There was something important missing. "His credit card," she murmured, taping her chin slowly. "Why did he lose his credit card during the pursuit?" A lowlife with a petty theft record had gotten his hands on the card somehow and used it repeatedly. That he had signed his own death warrant the minute he used the stolen card did not concern Takagi in the least, and the punk was the furthest thing from her mind. The card itself, however. "He was in final withdrawal from the effects of prolonged Synth use," Takagi continued out loud to the empty room. "Loss of motor control, impaired judgement. if he tried to use it while being chased, would he have even noticed dropping it somewhere? And if so, what did he use it. for?" Takagi felt like a blundering sophomore Genom intelligence agent. Eyes becoming narrowed and intense, she called up Fredrick Tachiyama's credit report. Why had she missed what was so obvious, she berated herself. Narrowing her search field, Takagi focused in on credit card activity during the boomer chase. And there it was, use of an automated postal server. Name and address of a small package the exact weight of your average data disk. Takagi closed off her data stream completely and summoned her two assassination boomers. It was time for them to redeem themselves. * * * In a city as big as Tokyo, it was hard to imagine people living completely alone and isolated from any other human being. The reality was the larger the society, the more people tended to be isolated from it. Unlike the small town where everyone had the opportunity to know everyone else and rely upon them for survival, the big city allowed for many conveniences that could keep a person from ever having to leave their home. The old woman that had lived alone and secluded in her apartment since the big one had occurred years before had lost all her family. In that time since, she had isolated herself from the world that had shaken itself to the ground, destroyed her life, then miraculously raised itself before her bewildered eyes. Those eyes were now lifeless and destroyed as well. Clutched in one hand gnarled with age was a child plastic gun, realistic in color and detail, but wholly without the ability to fire any ammunition. Above the ruined woman, a man and woman in very expensive suits slowly examined the apartment, looking for missing Genom data, only there was no data to be found. The apartment the old lady rented was completely without a computer of any kind. The address was right. The person was wrong. The man and woman looked up from their fruitless search as information was sent directly to their boomer brains. The police were on their way, notified by neighbors of a disturbance in the apartment complex. Acknowledging the information, the two boomers stepped through the smashed front door of the apartment and exited. There would be another chance to locate the right person later. * * * Part 2 forthcoming. Comments and Criticisms welcomed! http://www.angelfire.com/va3/shenandoah/ Last updated October 15, 2001. Sincerely, Michael McAvoy