Note:
This short story was first published in the anthology series ‘Malarkey’s Imaginomnibus‘.
It featured in the ‘Fade to Noir‘ edition.
I absolutely recommend picking up the series as it features some amazing short stories by some absolutely fantastic indie authors.
Read the shorts and if you like a story, why not go and pick up their books.
I See Skies of Blue…
by Jon Ford
Shoulder aches again.
No surprise there.
Always does when it rains.
Fucking rain. Never. Fucking. Stops.
I glance up, peeking out from beneath my battered fedora where the rainwater is gathering on its beaten-up brim. I wish I could see the clouds, but all I see is concrete and steel. Maybe a shaft of something that could be sunlight peeking through here and there, but I wouldn’t place any money on it. Not a smart bet. There ain’t many places to see the actual sky these days. Not down here. Even if I could, it’d be a fucking monochromatic misery like everything else in this godforsaken place.
There’s a reason they call this place the Grey City.
Fuck!
A massive raindrop plonks right in my eye for my trouble. The left one. My real eye. Not the implant. I hope it’s water. Old Vick was off his tits the other day, drunkenly pontificating another of his crazy conspiracy theories. Not unusual. He’s an old-timer. Too many years on his clock. Too many brain cells snuffed out by cheap liquor. Probably had a few too many Cyber-Technicians messing around in his noggin too. Old Vick never met an implant he didn’t want. Apparently, the latest one feeds 3D porn directly into his cerebral cortex.
Whatever floats his boat. Everyone has their vices.
Anyway, he reckons this fucking rain is actually the ‘Elites’ pissing down sewage from their opulent towers in the High City. Dumping their shit on those of us confined to the bottom rung of society’s ladder.
Do I reckon it’s true?
Wouldn’t surprise me. Not much does these days.
Mum always called me jaded.
I prefer the term ‘realist.’
Anyhow, the Elites have been metaphorically pissing on us for decades. Might as well do it for real. I feel a trickle of water run down my face, following the contours of my razor-sharp cheekbones till it accumulates on my pursed lips.
Lick or drip?
I decide not to flick out my tongue.
Just in case Old Vick isn’t speaking out of his arse again.
Best not to take any chances.
I’ve arrived. I know it’s the right place because the locals are restless. Pissed, actually. They don’t like cops in this part of the city, so the fact there’s a bunch of black and whites blocking access to the narrow street is really ruffling some feathers. There’s also an ambulance and one of those big fuck-off-ugly Crime Scene trucks.
Interesting.
Seeing one of those in the wild is rare as rocking horse shit. Piques my curiosity. A little at least. All of them are spinning their lights, casting a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of shadows strobing across the street. Good job I’m not sensitive to that kind of shit. Anyway, appears whatever happened here, it’s caused quite the fucking palaver.
Just my fucking luck.
I sigh. Heavily. Scratch the end of my nose where the rainwater—or piss, if you side with Old Vick— is dripping off it. I shake my head slowly. I can feel the complications coming before I’ve even entered the shitty hotel they’re parked in front of. The peeling paintwork on the crooked sign foreshadows the underwhelming nature of the establishment.
The Welcome Inn.
An oxymoron if ever I’ve fucking seen one.
I know the place. Know it pretty well, in fact. Not personally, mind. I have my vices, yeah, but not the kind that regularly bring me here.
So, what will it be today? Drugs? Guns? Prostitution? All three? The triple threat of illegal shenanigans?
Resigned to my fate, I yank open the door and stride into reception. As lobbies go, it’s hardly the most…well…welcoming. The lighting is gloomy, the décor is shoddy with flaking paint and mouldy wallpaper, and the smell is… Well, let’s just say you might want to breathe through your mouth when you’re in here. The stench assaults the nostrils rather than gently greeting them. Damp lingers in the air like an invisible fog. Spend more than a few minutes in here and you start to feel like you’re being waterboarded.
But I digress.
The grubby-looking clerk at the front desk with the once-broken nose scratches his uneven stubble and nods warily at me. We’re familiar. His name is Steve. Can’t recall his surname. Don’t really fucking care. He’s always been a means to an end. Helpful when I want him to be.
“Room 127,” he says, gesturing toward the stairwell.
See? Helpful.
I’d wager his bollocks remember what it’s like when you’re not particularly helpful to me.
I like it when they actually learn their lessons. It helps with future endeavours.
I glance at the still-out-of-order elevator with a scowl, then follow the stairs up to the first floor landing. Can’t miss 127. It’s a regular beehive of activity. All the little coppers and their crime scene friends buzzing around. I’m not interested in them. I’m here to see the queen bee. It is noteworthy , though, how many fucking people are in here. Dozens of them flitting around like flies on shit.
Sorry. I’m mixing my metaphors, ain’t I?
Anyway, what gives?
Someone is dead, obviously. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But so many people are murdered down here in the Grey City that it’s almost treated like a hobby rather than a crime. A homicide case has to be exceedingly fucking important to get anything beyond the usual ‘bag it and tag it’ boys from the morgue. Justice Department doesn’t give a fuck. Everyone down here’s a criminal, so one less perp on the street is a blessing in disguise.
Thus, normally, we homicide detectives have a shit-load of fuck-all backing us up.
Not that that bothers me. I work better alone anyway.
As I approach the door to 127, one of the uniforms looks my way. I flash my badge at him. “Who’s in charge?” I ask.
I already know the answer, but I’m an eternal optimist. Maybe it’ll be someone else today.
He looks at me. His eyes flick up and down. I don’t care. I’m used to it. Even I’ll admit I’m not the most conventional of women. The fedora and the long trench coat harken back to a bygone age. They give a certain impression. But Sam Spade I ain’t. The black leather pants, the Def Leppard t-shirt—I do fucking love the classics—and the ‘don’t fuck with me’ Doc Martens portray a different image. Biker chick maybe. Can’t ignore the implants, too… Okay, maybe cyberpunk-biker-chick-detective.
Whatever. I like to think I have a style all my own.
“Who wants to know?” he shoots back. His tone indicates the level of his boredom. There’s a hint of annoyance in there, too.
“Detective Chase,” I volley back. Same tone. I don’t have the time to put up with his shit either.
An eyebrow tilt betrays his surprise, but he says nothing. I figure my reputation precedes me. He says nothing, simply pointing toward the other side of the room where there’s a big lump of a fella talking to a woman. Civilian. Obviously in shock. The maid maybe? Frankly, I’m surprised this place even has one. The streaks in her mascara tell me she’s been crying, and she’s hugging herself in an effort to quell the trembles and shakes. My guess? She’s the one who found the body.
The big bloke? Well, that’s Woddle. Chief of Police for this sector of the Grey City.
I know him by more than his reputation.
We’ve had a few… run-ins.
Big is me being kind. Behind his back, everyone calls him Chief Wobble. Maybe we’d be more polite if he was a decent human being, but he’s not. Political through and through. Wouldn’t hesitate to throw you under the bus if it furthered his interests. He’s tried to do that to me a few times, hence those ‘run-ins’ I mentioned. Anyway, from the way the buttons on his ketchup-stained shirt are straining under the pressure, if I ever need to find a greasy McBurger joint in this city, I’d wager he knows where they all are. He could probably rank them all personally.
Just sayin’.
I walk toward him, skirting around the taped off area of the crime scene. He sees me coming and nods toward me.
“Violet Chase.” He doesn’t say it as much as spit it out.
“Detective Violet Chase,” I answer.
He doesn’t look amused. “Thought they were sending Magnus.”
His voice is laced with disappointment. I don’t give a shit. I don’t really want to be here either. There’s a thousand things I’d rather be doing than standing here right now. But a girl’s gotta earn a quid or two, so needs must. I decide to try and play nice.
“Quite the circus, Chief,” I say more politely than I feel he deserves.
He glances around the room as if he’s seeing it for the first time. His jowls wobble as he does. Fast food isn’t his only habit. The man’s breath positively reeks of tobacco. Old school. Smoked or chewed, not vaped. A new problem in Grey City. Illegal, but so prevalent no one does shit all about it. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s an addict.
Everybody has their vices.
Even us coppers.
Even me.
I step back a little, out of the ‘stench-zone.’
“I thought they were sending Magnus,” he repeats.
I try not to roll my eyes. “Detective Magnus is indisposed with another case,” I say with a shrug. “So you got me.”
“I said I needed the best.” He’s not letting this drop.
“Well, you got me,” I reiterate. “What can I say?”
He doesn’t look happy.
“Just show me what you got.” I try and steer the conversation back to business. I could care less about this hard-on he’s got for my colleague. The sooner he briefs me on what the fuck is going on here, the sooner I can be out of his oily hair and getting on with the job at hand.
He blinks. Once. Twice. I look for signs of intelligence behind those dull browns, but it seems pretty vacant back there. Makes me wonder how many dicks he sucked to get to the position he’s in.
That’s out of line, Vi. He may have had to eat a pussy or two as well.
With a wave of his hand, he beckons me to follow him. Out of the room, down the stairs, and back outside into that fucking rain. Fortunately, I’m only briefly exposed to what I now keep thinking of as aristocratic urine because we are presently climbing into the back of the ambulance parked out front.
Two bodies. Both naked.
One I recognise immediately.
Raggedy Rose.
Or at least that’s what she’s known as. Her real name? Rose Allcock. Local prostitute.
Yeah, the irony of her name isn’t lost on me.
She’s kind of pretty in a girl-next-door way. Long black hair, shaved on one side where I can see her implant port. Other than that, she’s pretty pure. Not in the spiritual sense. She’s fucked more people than I’ve had hot dinners, and I’m not exaggerating. There are marks around her neck. Distinctive to someone like me who’s been in the game for a while now.
Strangulation marks.
I know that Raggedy Rose has a tendency to indulge in the rougher side of sex with some of her customers, so is this a case of a client taking it too far?
With a shake of my head, I look closely at her death mate.
The other body looks vaguely familiar, but even if I can’t recall who he is, I know what he is.
Elite.
Well, fuck.
You can tell because he’s clean. Unblemished.
Tanned. Fit. Athletic.
Perfect, apart from the dent in his skull where his murderer bludgeoned him to death.
Which, in itself, is fucking unusual for the Grey City. Just to clarify, I don’t mean the head injury; that’s pretty common down here. I mean the perfection.
“He’s High born,” I say as I take off my hat. “Elite.”
“Yeah,” Woddle nods to my previous statement. “One of Lord Sterling’s sons.”
“What’s he doing down here?”
“Fuck knows.”
Wobble…sorry, Woddle glances at me. It’s not the heavily modified cybernetic arm that protrudes from the left sleeve of my coat that grabs his attention. Just like we all have vices, pretty much everyone down here also has some form of implant. Par for the course in the Grey City. It’s the mohawk. It’s a vivid purple, to match my name.
Not that I can see it myself.
He can, though.
He’s covered in implants himself. Like the expensive NOIR chip attached to the interface at his temple. Not the cheap underground shit most of us have. Nah, his is legit.
Must have sucked a lot of dicks and eaten a clowder of pussies to afford that.
Not enough to afford the tech this dead dude’s packing.
Remember I said he was ‘unblemished’? Perfect.
Got time for a history lesson? I’ll be brief, I promise.
At the turn of the 22nd century, shit was stagnating. World was dividing. Rich getting richer while the poor got poorer. Not just here in Britain, but all over the fucking developed world. London became a bit of a shitter, but it was still the capital of this glorious not-so-green and pleasant land, so the Elites—as they were now called—decided to bury the problem.
Literally.
And by problem, I mean the poor people.
They built their shiny palaces skyward, forcing everyone else underground. In the High City, they have pristine skyscrapers of glass and chrome, and blue skies. In the Grey City, we have perpetual night, dirty buildings, and a metric fuck-ton of street crime.
The Sterling Family are one of Britain’s richest. They own the tallest towers. Nicknamed ‘The Bank of England’ as they have money in pretty much everything. Legal and illegal. Of course, no one can prove the latter.
And if you did, you’d likely end up on a slab like this fucker here.
Anyway, while all us low life scum wear our implants externally, the Elites can afford the nanotech versions. Miniaturized tech implanted under the skin so as not to mess up their perfect aesthetic. I don’t have a NOIR implant. It’s way out of my price range. Woddle’s is clipped to his temple interface, and it’s about the size of a stick of gum. This dead fucker…his subdermal implant would be about as big as Woddle’s penis.
Roughly the size of the nail on my little finger…in case you were wondering.
“Which one?”
“Lazlo,” Woddle says.
Now that is a surprise.
“Well, shit.”
Chief had been understating when he said ‘one of Lord Sterling’s sons.’ Lazlo was the chosen one. The golden child. The favourite son. Day didn’t pass without seeing him on the front of some tabloid newsfeed on the interwebs. Usually, he’s wearing bloody awful wraparound smart-glasses, though. That and he’s not stark bollock naked with his dick swinging in the breeze. No wonder I didn’t recognize him. He’s famous for his charity work that apparently deals with the underprivileged from the Under City.
Don’t make me fucking laugh!
I’d wager no one has ever seen his pretty little face down here.
Till now, of course.
I run my hand back over my hair as I take a close look at Lazlo’s bloody skull. It’s a tight mohawk. Short. I’d love it longer, but then I wouldn’t get it under my hat, and I fucking love the hat. Reaching out, I tilt the corpse’s head sideways with my hand and wipe away the blood on his temple. There’s an incision. Maybe ten millimeters long and sealed back up. If Lazlo had been alive, this little surgical scar would have healed over, but as he’s dead, it gives me clue number one.
It’s recent.
Very, very recent.
“It’s gone,” I say.
The pieces start to slot into place in my head. This isn’t an over enthusiastic client killing a hooker and getting his head caved in by an angry pimp.
No.
This is a robbery gone wrong.
“Look, Violet.” Woddle’s voice is low. Confidential. “I need a fast result. Big wigs from the High City are breathing down my neck on this one. My ass is on the line. Which means now yours is, too.”
When isn’t it?
Fortunately for the Chief, I know this area better than his precious Detective Magnus. I know these people. I live amongst them for my sins. Two hours later and I’ve wandered about two miles from the hotel so far, checking in with all my informants. Problem is, they’re all telling me the same thing.
Jack shit.
It’s not been cheap, but I figure it’ll be worth it. I’ll find a way to get my money back.
Best you don’t ask exactly how.
Thing is, I know Raggedy Rose, and I know who she rolls with. Thus, I’m already pretty certain how things went down. Let’s just say that the murder of Lazlo Sterling was done by a smart person.
Which does not mean they’re a good criminal. Oh, no, not by a long shot.
You need to be in the Goldilocks zone to be a good criminal. Not too bright. Not too dumb. Just right. I mean, of course, there are a few evil geniuses in the Grey City. The outliers. The crime bosses who run their shadowy enterprises under the nose of the law without getting caught. But they’re a special breed.
Remove them from the equation, and my previous statement hangs true.
See, if you’re too dumb, you’ll get caught because. Because you’re fucking dumb. There’s a good reason why most crime bosses in the city use the low IQ fuckers as muscle. They don’t trust them to have the brain capacity to pull off a caper that requires some sort of intelligence.
At the other end of the criminal spectrum, you have the people who are, on reflection, a little too
clever for their own good. Smart people. They get ideas. A moment of inspiration that will get them a quick buck. Or in this case about a million of them.
The problem with smart people is that they don’t think things through properly. They get blinded by the bling. They get overconfident in their assumed infallibility.
Case in point, the murder of Lazlo Sterling.
I’m still waiting on the autopsy results, but I know what they’ll tell me. So let me relay to you a little story of a man called Roger.
Roger is a smart man. Real smart. He plies a trade in the Grey City dealing in cybernetics and implants. I know Roger pretty fucking well because I’ve been one of his customers more frequently than I’d like to admit.
Roger and Rose are an item. Have been for years. He knows what she is, but he doesn’t care. Rumour on the grapevine is that he can’t get it up and she’s an insatiable nympho. Sometimes you do whatever it takes to make it work. Each to their own.
Anyway, Rose, unlike most Grey City women, is relatively implant free. Ironic considering who she’s shacked up with, but the fact is that punters will pay a higher price for the appearance of purity. Fucking her is as close to fucking an Elite as most men down here will ever get. I guess Lazlo felt that way, too. I can see his thinking. Pop discreetly down to the Grey City to knock boots with one of the underground whores. He wants to have sex that feels a little wild. A little dangerous. But not too dangerous. Rose straddles both the world he’s intrigued by and the world he’s comfortable in.
So, he drops in for a visit. Then another. When it’s clear there’s a pattern developing, Rose tells Roger. Roger, being a little too smart for his own good, sniffs an opportunity for a side hustle.
Rose fucks Lazlo sideways and maybe slips him a drug. Something fast acting, like a variant of Succinylcholine, or Vecuronium. A paralytic. Probably snuck in there alongside whatever shit they were shooting up. I can see it now. Rose promises him that whatever is in the needle will ‘enhance’ his experience. Rich kid, eager to stick his prick somewhere it probably shouldn’t be, lets her prick him first. A few minutes later, he’s paralyzed. Out cold.
Which is when Roger moves in to remove Lazlo’s NOIR implant.
Nanotech like that would go for a pretty tidy sum on the black market.
The method of removal lends credence to my theory. It’s surgically precise. None of your crude butcher shop tactics; this was a nice job. The incision was tiny. Accurate. And was healed up afterward using a skin-knitter. I’d wager that the killer hoped even Lazlo wouldn’t notice. Probably just think his implant was faulty. He’d wander home after spreading his seed and then find out that the implant was gone. At that point he’d quietly get it replaced, not wanting to draw attention to what he’d been up to down below. Probably never come down here again. Or at least not to Rosy.
But I noticed it right away.
I’ve always been good at spotting the small stuff. The stuff others overlook. I like to think that’s what makes me a fucking good detective. Better than that shithead glory-hound Magnus.
Big Ben.
More accurately, Elizabeth Tower. Old Big Benjamin is the bell. Was a time a dozen decades ago when its chimes could be heard all over the city. Not anymore. This place used to be the pride of Britain. A landmark familiar around the world. Now it’s just another derelict building consigned to act as a foundation for the High City
It does still have its uses, though.
See, when no one knew where Roger may have gone to ground, I started to ask myself a few questions. Like, what would I do if I knew I’d killed an Elite and had the full weight of the law hunting me? What would I do if I’d lost the love of my life? More pertinently, what the fuck would I do if I had access to a nano-tech, ultra-Hi-Def NOIR implant and all the above was true?
I’ll tell you what. I’d make use of my ill-gotten gains. One last time.
All of which leads me here. To one of the only parts of the Grey City where you can find a crack in the ceiling. Where you can see out into a world most of us will never know. Old London. Otherwise known as the High City. To one of the only places where—if you’re brave enough to make the climb—you can see the sky.
The real sky.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Roger. What a fucking mess.”
The man gives a start at my words. He hadn’t heard me coming. Being a girl has its advantages. Where I’m short on muscle, I’m light on my feet. I can be a sneaky fucker sometimes.
By the way, don’t take my lack of muscle for me being a pushover. I’m a feisty bitch in a fight.
Anyhow, the Doc wasn’t paying attention, and I don’t blame him. The sight from up here is pretty fucking glorious.
“Sorry, Vi.”
He doesn’t sound sorry.
Doesn’t sound much of anything. Losing a loved one will do that to you. Some people purge the grief out of their system kicking and screaming. Wailing and bawling. An emotional release. Others—and I’d include myself in this category—just shut down. Feel numb. For me, that’s because I’ve seen a lot of death. I’m kinda insensitive to it by now. But for Roger…
“Sorry about Rose, mate.” I try to inject a note of sympathy. I fail miserably.
He doesn’t acknowledge my condolences.
Roger realises that all this is his fault. Rose’s death. He royally fucked up, and he knows it. He’s wallowing in a pit of blame and self-pity.
“So, what happened, Roger?”
I’m standing behind him, so I can’t observe his face directly. But I can see his reflection in the grubby window along with his dead expression and tear-stained cheeks.
“Rose said he was here again,” he starts slowly.
“Lazlo Sterling?” I ask. He nods. “He’s been here before?”
Another nod. “Yeah. Bunch of times. He took a liking to Rose. He came regularly for her.”
No pun intended I’m sure, but I almost snigger and shoot back a comment.
Yeah, I’m sure he did!
“So, you figured you’d rob him?”
“Rose slipped him a mickey, sent him to sleep. He should have been out for hours while I extracted it. But…” He doesn’t complete the sentence, just ends with a tiny sob.
Remember earlier when I said smart people make dumb criminals because they don’t think things through? I present my case.
“Filters,” I nod. “You forgot the fucking filters.”
The Elites are a paranoid bunch. For all their aristocratic airs and graces, they are also a bunch of backstabbing bastards. Hence, they all have cybernetic implants which can filter foreign items out of their bloodstream. Just in case someone decides to poison them.
Or in case a hooker slips them a mickey.
Interesting fact for you. Mickey is short for ‘Mickey Finn,’ which is supposedly named after the manager and bartender of a Chicago bar and restaurant back in 1903. Old Mickey was accused of using knockout drops to incapacitate and rob his customers. I love shit like that. Roger couldn’t have picked a more apt word for what he and Rose did. Funny, ain’t it? How a term from almost three hundred years ago and four thousand miles away is still in use here in Great Britain. Told you I had a penchant for that time period.
“He woke up, just as I was finishing,” Roger mutters. “He was pissed. He knocked me sprawling. Senseless. Attacked Rosy before I could get back up. He strangled her with his bare hands, Vi.”
“And then you killed him?” I ask.
It wasn’t really a question.
“Yeah,” he nods again. “I tried to get him off her, but…he was too strong. He killed her, Vi. I lost it. Rosy keeps a baseball bat close by. Metal one. Just in case a client gets rowdy…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. I’d seen the damage to Lazlo’s noggin.
“I’m in a lot of trouble, aren’t I?”
This time it’s me nodding. “Fuck yeah, Roger. The Sterlings want your fucking head on a pike, mate.”
“Fuck.”
It’s a good word to sum up his predicament.
During the whole conversation—if you can call it that—his eyes have never left the view out of the window. I follow his gaze.
It’s a flawless sky above the High City. Just a couple of wispy clouds drift lazily across our view. They add to the perfection rather than subtract. Birds glide and wheel, going wherever the breeze takes them. The sun is high, its radiance glinting off the chrome and mirrored glass of the High City, their buildings as shiny as ours are dull.
A monochromatic vista of breath-taking wonder.
At least that’s what I perceive.
I gesture toward the stolen implant that hangs from his temple. I can see how he’s created an interface to allow the tiny device to be plugged into his oversized slot. Told you he was clever.
“What do you see?” I ask, softening my voice.
“Skies of blue,” he replies flatly. “Brilliant, beautiful shades of blue.”
I nod. I’ve seen it before. Fleetingly.
See, that’s the thing. The thing that drives men like Roger to do fucked up, stupid things like this.
Colour.
Technology, you see, is a double-edged sword. What it giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other. Cybernetic arms and eyes are just a part of the puzzle. The flip side is the NOIR system.
Normal Optical Input Restrictor.
Fuckers in the High City found a way to make money off colour. Fucking colour! Don’t ask me how it works, but they found a way prevent us regular folks from seeing the complete visible spectrum. Old Vick reckons it’s a satellite thing. Beamed into our brains from space. Or maybe something that affects the electromagnetic spectrum and how we perceive it. All I know is that if you don’t pay your NOIR subscription, you see the world in shades of grey.
And I’m not being metaphorical here.
It’s like living in a black-and-white movie. Like those old 1930s detective flicks I was talking about earlier.
Now, as I said, you can get yourself a NOIR implant, pay your exorbitant subscription fee, and hey, presto, colour service is resumed. But even then it’s limited. Muted. Standard definition instead of that Hi-Def you dream of. And let’s face it, not many of the fuckers down here in the Grey City can afford it.
Problem is, this fucking shit turns colour into a drug, and like any other drug…it’s addictive as hell. Once you’ve tasted the rainbow, you never, ever want to go back. And if you make it hard to get, people will find ways—nefarious ways—to obtain it. The criminal element steps in to fill the void. Black-market chips and hacked subscriptions. We do what we need to down here to get our fix.
But the Elites…
They live in a permanent world of colour.
Ain’t no contracts or subscriptions required with their fancy-ass implants, and it’s Ultra-Hi-Def all the way, baby.
“Sorry about all this, mate,” I say as I stand up. “You seen enough yet?”
A sigh, then a nod. “I suppose you better take me in.”
I wish it were that simple, Roger.
I pull off my fedora, placing it carefully on a broken piece of the tower next to me.
“Give it one last look, Roger,” I say as I move behind him. “Go on. One. Last. Look.”
His eyes flick to the sky as my cybernetic hand reaches out. As he takes in the infinite blue, I grab his neck between metal and polymer fingers and twist. Just once.
*Crack*
It’s fast. Easy.
Roger’s head slumps sideways on a neck no longer able to support it. I let go. The body slides to the floor where it lies in a lifeless heap. I’ve known Roger a long time; he was the one who fitted me with the arm, so it seems somewhat ironic that it’s that same arm that kills him.
I don’t grieve for him. I’ve never been sentimental about things like this. CyberTechs are ten-a-penny in the Grey City. I’ll find someone else to service my parts.
Using my real flesh and blood fingers, I ever so gently disconnect the tiny NOIR implant from the slot on his temple. I regard it for a moment. It’s so small. I shake my head and smile as my left hand reaches up and peels back my mohawk at the front to reveal my own carefully hidden NOIR slot. I close my eyes. A moment later, I’ve aligned the adapter with my interface. I push, feeling the pressure briefly before it snaps into place. I smooth my mohawk back down, hiding my newly acquired implant.
Then, and only then, do I open my eyes.
A billion vivid colours massage my senses. My heart beats faster. Tears of unadulterated joy run down my cheeks.
As I said, we all have our vices.
To be continued in the first Violet Chase novel ‘The Head Case’ coming soon(ish).