Three Glocks and a pair of knuckle dusters lay on the table, along with some fresh drinks. We’d looted all the dead fane and hadn’t come up with anything beyond what they’d been wielding along with a few credits. I considered the two other Agents. Aria looked near my own twenty-six years, and I figured Marko was slightly older. Marko, now back to his usual form, picked up one of the Glocks, popped the mag out and checked it before sliding it back in place.

  “One gun for each of us,” he said. “That’s convenient.”

  Aria grabbed one of the guns and shoved it in the pocket of her hoodie. It turned out she also had a FlexWeave outfit, but hers was StreetWear consisting of a pair of slightly baggy black jeans and the black hoodie. I reached forward, picked up the last gun and examined it.

  B-movie Glock 19

  Compact and easy to conceal, this gun is never out of ammo.

  Has a cumulative 5% chance to jam every 15 shots fired.

  I slid the Glock into my jacket pocket, had a sip from my drink, and looked around. The bartender, Gertie, had already turned off the club’s sign and was sweeping up broken glass, while the security guy, a jann named Faruq, sat at the bar with a bag of ice pressed against his jaw and smoked another black cigarette.

  “Anybody want these?” Aria said, poking the knuckle dusters with a finger.

  I picked up one of the knuckle dusters and had look. The weapon was made of steel and looked pretty much like what you’d expect, except for the engravings. They were half runic formula, half calculus equation and made no sense at all.

  Knockout Knuckle Dusters

  Glow a scary blue! Good for hitting people.

  Activate Knockout with a successful combo strike.

  Knockout has a 50% chance minus target’s (Vitality x2) to drop opponent to unconscious.

  I put the knuckle duster back down. They weren’t bad, but it was a little too random for my taste and didn’t have a damage bonus. Marko raised an eyebrow at me and I shook my head no. He shrugged and stuffed the knuckle dusters into a pocket.

  “Do we need to worry about the cops?” I said.

  All the corpses, blood, and gore had already vanished. I’d squatted beside one of the bodies and waited for it to happen. After about two minutes, the fane’s corpse had just faded from view and disappeared. It was creepy as hell. Tolun, still unconscious, was tied to a chair and gagged, head lolling. His blonde hair was pulled back in one of those stupid manbuns and he looked much younger than I’d expected. I doubted if the kid was twenty.

  “Gertie, do we need to worry about the cops?” Marko called to the bartender, who’d moved on to a mop. She snorted.

  “Ain’t no cops,” she said. “No security at all in this sector, unless you count the Hunt, and they’re the ones who started this shit.”

  I looked to Marko for an explanation.

  “From what I can tell, the Hunt is an organized crime family.” He nodded toward the bound fane. “Tolun is the second son, out to make a name for himself. He’s been coming in here, trying to shake me down for protection money.” Marko laughed. “Pathetic, really. The Detroit mafia would eat him alive.”

  “You from Detroit?” I said. “How long have you been here?”

  “He’s from Detroit, I’m from Seattle,” Aria said. “We’ve been here two days. Even live in the same building.” She pulled out a familiar keychain with a Lux plastic tag at the end.

  “That’s where I woke up!”

  “When did you wake up?” Marko said.

  “Maybe two hours ago,” I said.

  Marko and Aria shared a look.

  “Is that weird?”

  “This is all fucking weird,” Aria said. “We just thought the other two apartments were empty.”

  “So, you guys don’t know what’s going on either?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Even with the head start, we probably don’t know much more than you,” Marko said. “I woke up, did the tutorial, then got a quest that said I owned a club and should go check it out.”

  Aria nodded.

  “Same for me, except I had a DJ gig here,” she said. “Oh, and the countdown, of course.”

  I looked at them blankly. Aria gave me a quizzical look.

  “The orientation countdown? Top middle of your HUD? Should be down to about three hours?”

  “No…,” I started to say, then a countdown appeared right where she said it was.

  Orientation: 03:05:56

  “What the shit? It just appeared when you asked about it.”

  “Hmm,” Marko said. He pulled out a deck of cards and started to absently shuffle them. “I don’t know what that’s about, but we’re guessing we’ll get a new quest once the timer hits zero.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “You guys seem pretty calm about this whole thing,” I said. “I mean, she beat someone to death with a mace about ten minutes ago.”

  “We’ve been here longer,” Aria said. “And it isn’t a mace. It’s a thyrsus.”

  She reached out and the weapon appeared in her hand. It was about two feet long and carved from a single piece of wood. Vines twisted up along the shaft ending at the head, which looked like a pinecone.

  “I got it during the tutorial, when some homeless guy tried to knife me,” she said. “It’s supposed to represent Dionysus.”

  “Are you a priestess or something?”

  “Or something,” she said, letting the thyrsus vanish again. “I’m Divine. That’s my Archetype. Jasper claims I’m a direct descendant of Dionysus, which seems like bullshit to me, but whatever.”

  “And I’m a wererat,” Marko said, dealing himself a hand of solitaire. “Isn’t that lovely? I might not have been the most popular guy back home, but no one ever called me a rat.”

  That explained the transformation he’d undergone during the fight.

  “I’m a hemophage,” I said. “Is Jasper just the default AI?”

  “Hold up,” Aria said, cocking her head. “You’re a what?”

  “Hemophage. I, uh, do stuff with blood.”

  “What kind of stuff?” she said.

  “It fuels my Matrix,” I said. “You have a Matrix too, right?”

  “Yep, but it doesn’t run on blood,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Where do you get the blood from?”

  Marko laughed.

  “Jasper,” he called out.

  Jasper appeared above the table, smiling its manic smile.

  “Hello [Marko]. Hello [Aria]. Hello [Victor].

  “I hate the way it says my name,” Aria muttered. “Sounds like the bank calling to tell me I’m overdrawn.”

  “Hey, Jasper,” Marko said. “Is Victor a vampire?”

  A big LOL floated out of Jasper’s head.

  “No, of course not,” it said. “Hemophage is completely different!”

  “Does he drink blood?” Aria asked.

  “He could drink blood,” Jasper said. “But he doesn’t have to drink blood.”

  “I don’t drink blood!” I said. “I absorb it.”

  “Like a sponge!” Jasper said.

  “Stop helping,” I hissed at the AI.

  “What about diseases?” Aria said. “He sounds like a walking STI.”

  Huh. I should’ve asked that. I never even thought of it.

  “The process decontaminates the blood,” Jasper said. “It’s still safe to kiss him!”

  Marko laughed, looking up from his game to make a smooching face.

  “Pass,” Aria said.

  “I hate you all.”

  “Don’t forget to equip the necklace you received, [Victor]!”

  I had forgotten. I opened up my inventory and examined the new necklace before equipping it. It was a thick gold chain and weighed enough I thought it might be solid gold.

  Tureaud’s Golden Chain

  I pity the fool!

  +2 Strength, +2 Vitality,

  +2 Presence

  I wasn’t sure who the fool might be, but the chain was the best reward I’d yet received. I was now Strength 7, Vitality 8, and Presence 5. Aria bent across the table to peer at the chain.

  “Looks like you mugged a pimp,” she said.

  I was about to respond when Tolun opened his eyes and started to cough through his gag. His Health was up to 80%.

  “Better take off that gag before he chokes,” I said.

  Marko grunted, put down his cards, and leaned over to tug Tolun’s gag out of his mouth. The fane coughed again and spit on the floor. He looked at the three of us, a sneer on his face, blue eyes blazing.

  “You can’t do this to me!” he said. “Don’t you know who my father is?”

  A message appeared.

  New Quest: Who’s Your Daddy?

  You’ve beaten, robbed, and kidnapped Tolun Nova and killed all his minders.

  Maybe his father, Kaius Nova, head of the Hunt, will have a sense of humor about the whole thing and let it slide?

  Probably not! You should kill him and his other son, Gost, before they find out!

  Defeat [Gost Nova] 0/1

  Defeat [Kaius Nova] 0/1

  Defeat 10 Hunt Thugs 0/10

  Reward: Control of Nova Sector, 250 Command Points, 300 Credits

  I heard Marko groan and Aria snort.

  “Did you guys just get that quest?” I said.

  They both nodded. Tolun looked at us like we were insane.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “Let me go! Right now!”

  “Out of curiosity,” Marko said. “Did we actually rob him? I broke his knife, but he didn’t have anything else on him.”

  Aria fidgeted in place, eyes looking everywhere but at him.

  “Aria?” he said.

  “I might have taken his credits,” she said, still refusing to meet Marko’s eyes. “And his car keys.”

  “You bitch!” Tolun said. “I’ll have your tits for that.”

  Marko reached over and slapped Tolun on the back of the head. The fane acted like he’d been tased, back going straight, his mouth gaping at Marko. I suspected he’d never been hit before.

  “Shut it, kid,” Marko said. “Be nice to the lady or she’ll slit your throat.”

  “We should kill him anyway,” Aria said. She pulled the Glock out of her hoodie and pointed it at the fane’s head. “I hate elves.”

  Tolun struggled in place, rocking the chair back and forth. His face went pale and he looked like he might start crying.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “We might not want to kill him.”

  The fane shot me a look of pure gratitude. It was the first time I’d seen the haughty vanish from any fane. Even the guard at the Lux was kind of a dick.

  “We can’t afford to be soft,” Aria said, gun still raised. “Not here. Marko had the cleaning lady try to gank him.”

  I blinked.

  “What?”

  Marko nodded.

  “It’s true,” he said. “It was during the tutorial. Tried to stab me with an ice pick. And I had a shiftling try to rob me. He made his arms into swords. This place is nuts.”

  I tried to process that for a minute, then decided it didn’t matter. I shook my head.

  “It’s not about being soft,” I said. “He can tell us stuff. Like, how many guards does his father have and what kind of weapons are they carrying? That sort of thing.” I shrugged. “And he isn’t part of the quest.”

  “From the description, I’m going to go ahead and guess we’ll find ten guards,” Marko said. “It’s still a valid point though.”

  “I’m not telling you shit!” Tolun said.

  “Oh really?” Aria said. She got up and ground the gun into the fane’s temple. “I do like one thing about this place. No cleanup. The blood and brains all just disappear. Bodies too.”

  “There are ten guards!” Tolun said. I think he might have pissed himself. “They have enchanted machine pistols and maybe knives. My dad and brother have tech blades and know how to use them.”

  Aria lowered her gun and patted the fane on the cheek.

  “Good elf,” she said.

  “What kind of blades?” I said.

  “Technomancy,” Marko said. “Tech for short. It means they’ve been inscribed, like the knuckle dusters or the clips for the Glocks.” He looked at Tolun. “What do the blades do?”

  “I don’t know!” he said. “I swear! They never let me touch them.”

  “How is technomancy different from enchantment?” I said.

  Aria sat down again, putting the Glock away.

  “Enchanted weapons hit more and hurt more,” she said. “Technomancy makes weird shit happen. The blades could turn into lightsabers for all we know.”

  “I’ve got a map location,” Marko said, eyes unfocused. “It’s well east of here. Let’s get moving.”

  “We’re going now?” I said.

  “Might as well,” Aria said. “Unless you want me to pop a cap in junior here. Probably won’t get us out of the quest, though.”

  “Could we just ignore the quest?” I said. “Or wait to do it?”

  “Do you know what happens if we ignore a quest? Marko said.

  I shook my head, no.

  “Us either,” Marko said. “I’d rather not find out.”

  Aria held up a set of car keys. Tolun’s car keys. She gave them a jingle.

  “I’m driving.”