Neon Dust [Progression Cyberpunk] 1.27 Ice Box

27 – Ice Box

Beef’s apartnt was in a building only two blocks from Addie’s, so she could already see the lights on his front stoop when he responded to her ssage. She slowed to a walk as she read what he had to say:

00:29 Randal P: A little late for you to be up, isn’t it, doll? What’s with all the panic?

Scowling, Addie sent him a quick response:

00:30 Addie: Co outside!

By then, she was approaching his stoop, and two of his goons were there, guys from outside the neighborhood she didn’t know very well. One of them stood and focused his chro eyes on her, his sore-covered lips splitting into a wide leer. “Oh, look at this little snack, Buzz.”

Buzz, a thin young man with so many facial tattoos that his skin looked like a page out of a net-toon, stood and flicked his tongue suggestively through fingers held up in a V. “Mm-mm! My, my! Is this your new girl, Gob?”

“Get Beef,” Addie said, standing at the foot of the steps, folding her arms over her chest.

“Oh, she summons the boss! Why, of course, milady.” Buzz perford a surprisingly elegant bow, but then he snorted with laughter and, using the handrail for leverage, vaulted down the steps to land uncomfortably inside Addie’s personal space. She stumbled back, scowling.

“Beef won’t like you ssing with , creep.”

The other Helldog—Gob, apparently—leaned against the building, grinning with schoolboy amusent at Buzz’s antics. “I think she likes you, Buzz!”

“Yeah, I think you’re right, buddy boy!” Buzz sidled closer, snaking out a long-fingered hand bedecked with rings and pointy, black-painted nails to grab ahold of Addie’s upper arm.

She jerked against his grip, more repulsed by the thought of how filthy he seed than worried he’d do sothing to her—not before Beef figured out what was happening. “Let go of !” she snapped, unable to play it cool. “Beef is gonna—” The door to the apartnt building slamd open and cut her words short.

“Let go of her, dipshit.” Beef, all hundred-thirty kilos of him, stomped down the steps, the tal plates on his boots clicking and grinding like construction machinery. Buzz released Addie and scampered away, standing halfway into the street as Beef glowered at him. He didn’t give chase or shoot the guy, though. He just jerked his aty thumb at Addie and said, “She’s off limits; I don’t care what ti of night. Understood?”

“Sure, boss.” Buzz shoved his hands in his pockets and, in a painful show of false nonchalance, strolled up the empty street, whistling softly to himself.

Beef looked at Addie, his thick, too-moist lips folding downward in a frown. “What the hell are you doing out here at this hour, Ads?”

“I need your help.”

“Oh?” Beef’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

“Yeah, the Black Jades took Tony.”

“Tony?” He looked over his shoulder at Gob. “We know anyone nad Tony?”

“I sure don’t, boss.” The banger shrugged exaggeratedly, reaching up to fidget with his chro, speaker-like ear, twisting the little grill left and right with tiny squeaks.

“C’mon, Beef, you know who I an. Tony—the guy my dad just hired?”

“Oh! Corpo-rat? Yeah, I saw him earlier tonight, I think. Well, listen, doll, if the Jades have a problem with him, that’s not really my problem, you know?”

“So you’re cool with the Black Jades nabbing people from our neighborhood?”

“Not cool, but it’s not like corpo-rat was much of a citizen. He just got here. Besides, when I saw him earlier, he looked like he was motoring out of our turf. How’s that my problem?”

Addie scowled, looking up at him as she unfolded her arms and clenched her fists in frustration. “It’s my problem, Randal; he was looking for ! Besides, I thought you hated the Jades.” She knew calling him by his given na in front of his crew would irritate him, but she also knew it would remind him that they’d been friends their whole lives—long before he was an enforcer for the Helldogs. Addie felt jittery and stressed, like she knew sothing terrible was about to happen and had to do sothing, but she wasn’t exactly sure what. She needed help, and, like it or not, the Helldogs were the best she had—the lesser evil.

Beef’s frown intensified as he leaned down, his leather creaking, his chains jingling, to put his enormous head a few inches from Addie’s. “Don’t call that in front of my boys,” he growled.

Knowing it would earn her so points, Addie reached for his ham-sized hand, grasping it with both of hers. “Please, Beef? If you don’t want to help Tony, fine, but do it for ? Do it for the Helldogs! You told yourself the Jades have been encroaching!”

“Yeah, sure, they have, but I ain’t a shot caller, doll. I can’t go to war for the Dogs.”

Addie nodded, feeling tears of frustration brewing. Beef’s hand wasn’t just the size of a ham; it was also hot, like it just ca out of the oven. She gave it another squeeze and nodded as she let go. “Okay. Well, I have to try. I’ll go see if I can reason with Troy.” She turned and started to walk away. Anticipation, fear, dread, guilt, and a hundred other feelings made the back of her neck and scalp tingle with a hot rush of blood as she took one step, then two, then three, and then Beef broke.

“Ah, for fuck’s sake. Hold on, Ads.”

###

The first banger to burst through the flapping curtain led with his shotgun barrel, and Tony grabbed it in his left hand, jerking him off balance as he brought the bone cutter down, its blade humming nacingly, into the side of his neck, showering himself and the plastic curtain in hot, crimson blood. Tony kept his grip on the shotgun as the man spastically pulled the trigger, sending a burst of buckshot into the tal ceiling.

He lifted the sizeable vibroblade for another cut, but the banger let go of the gun, slapped a hand against his gushing neck, and fell to the ground, writhing weakly as he gasped for breaths that didn’t want to co. Tony racked the shotgun, watching the ejector port to ensure a fresh shell fed into the chamber. It was an old, beat-up gun, and he didn’t see an ammo counter or a data module—not that he had a PAI to interface with it.

Tony moved to the opposite corner, darting past the curtain, grateful that the idiot bangers had stashed him in an ice-cold walk-in—he’d be hard to see, even with thermals. He didn’t think they’d throw any grenades or improvised explosives into the space; judging by the coolers lining the wall, there was a good chance the bangers had a lot of expensive inventory in there with him. Considering the back wall had two stainless rolling cabinets, possibly filled with more expensive stuff, he hoped they wouldn’t blindly fire through the curtain or walls, either.

Tony was contemplating rolling those cabinets toward the blood-stained plastic curtain for cover when he heard Troy’s voice calling, “Yo, Tony! You fucked up, man. Was gonna offer you a chance to work for us if you ca up clean. You got Julian in there? If you didn’t kill him, we can still talk.”

Tony glanced at the still, ashen face of the banger he’d sliced—Julian, he supposed. He decided not to reply; why give away his position? He stood ready, but then, with a clink-clink, a canister rolled into the cooler with him, already hissing yellow-white gas. “Shit,” Tony sighed, taking a deep breath and closing his left eye. He had a cybernetic retina, but most of the eye was natural, and that gas looked a lot like Riot Rain—a common crowd-dispersal gas that wouldn’t feel great on his skin, let alone in his eye.

Sure enough, his left arm began to tingle and burn as the fog enveloped him, but Tony doubled down, choking back his urge to breathe and smiling grimly as his new eye automatically adjusted to thermals. His body was cold as hell, but the bangers who might co into the space would be hot. He didn’t have augnted ears anymore, but he could hear muttering outside. Troy would send soone in to check on him, maybe two soones. They’d have masks, so Tony shifted his shotgun’s muzzle down.

The plastic curtain flaps rustled, and a red and orange thermal-painted figure stepped into the cooler, crouching like he was ready to fight. Tony waited for him to take a step with his right leg, then shot his inner thigh. A shotgun at close range against the femoral artery was pretty much as bad as slitting soone’s throat. The gun roared, a stream of fire in Tony’s thermal vision licked out and touched the guy’s leg, and then more yellow, orange, and red spattered around the space, rapidly fading as the cold interior cooled the blood.

The banger scread, fell to the ground, and tried to scrabble backward, but Tony darted forward, wrapped his fingers around the base of his breather—a full-sized riot mask—and yanked it off before retreating deeper into the cooler. He nudged one of the stainless cabinets away from the wall and hunkered behind it before he pulled the mask on. Even then, he didn’t breathe, giving the mask a few seconds to make its seal and pump out the gas that had gotten inside. All the while, the guy he shot wailed, now in agony from the Riot Rain as well as the gunshot.

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The banger was only a couple of steps inside the cooler, but nobody ca for him. No one darted through the curtain to grab his arm and haul him out. Nobody even called out to him. Tony figured they were communicating through their PAIs—likely linked up into a group comm channel—but he still shook his head in disdain. “Chicken shits.” He’d try to save a buddy in a similar situation, but he supposed the bangers’ caution was warranted; he’d shoot anyone who tried.

As the fog cleared from inside his mask, Tony tried a small breath, and it tasted fine. He silently thanked the poor banger who’d gone quiet, no doubt bled out into a coma or dead already. Tony took a minute to indulge himself by rubbing his palms over his arms; his skin was itching and burning from the gas. The big question was whether or not the bangers outside the cooler knew he’d taken the other guy’s mask. They had to assu so, right? If he were quiet, though, maybe they’d think he’d gone down.

He stood behind the stainless cabinet, gun pointed toward the gently swaying plastic curtains, for several long seconds before Troy called out, “Yo, Tony, that wasn’t very nice. Adrien had a family.”

Tony didn’t respond, just stared, everything obscured by the thick, acidic gas that still hung in the air. He could see faint glimrs of heat outside the fridge as bangers moved around in the space beyond, but he wanted a clear shot. He wanted another kill. If these sons of bitches were going to wear him down, he’d make them pay dearly. His patience paid off. A full minute after Troy finished speaking, one of the faint red outlines moved forward, growing brighter in his vision.

Tony tracked the guy’s head with his shotgun, certain they’d armor-up whover they sent in next. Even if they put a helt on him, though, buckshot from three ters would crack it, and then the gas would finish the job. An involuntary shudder ran through him, and that’s when he realized they’d cranked down the temp.

They were going to see if they could freeze him out. Why send this guy in, then? Just to be sure? The figure stepped into the cooler, and Tony realized his heat signature was off—warr than the surroundings but too cool to be a person. No, this was a synth.

Tony didn’t care; synthetics were modeled after humans, and though they were resilient, their synthetic neural shes were inside a skull not much more durable than a human’s. Buckshot would do the trick. Tony let the synth get a few steps into the room, watched it stoop to check on one of the bodies, and then when it stood, he squeezed his trigger. The shotgun roared, fire lanced out in his thermal vision, and buckshot clicked and cracked against sothing a lot more resilient than a synthetic’s skull.

As the synth charged faster than any natural human, Tony racked another round and shifted to his left, sliding around the tal cabinet, hoping the thing couldn’t see him very well. Sothing humd, and tal clanging and grinding against tal echoed through the freezer. Then, he rounded the cabinet and ca up behind the synth. He squeezed the trigger even as he lined the barrel up with the back of its head.

Boom! From half a ter, the impact was devastating, and the synth lurched forward, slamming into the back of the walk-in. Tony didn’t wait to see if it was dead. Before the shot's echo faded, he racked another round and squeezed another shot off, again in the back of the synth’s head. This ti, a yellow spray in his thermal vision registered against the wall before rapidly fading to green and blue, and the synth collapsed, twitching.

Tony racked a shell, but it sounded wrong, and when he opened the ejector port and stuck his finger in the chamber, he found nothing but empty space; he was out of shells. Another shudder ran through him, and he frowned, cursing his shitty Dust reactor and lack of a PAI. With his old setup, he could’ve had his nanites counter the low temp, but they were power-starved, and he had no way to direct them. He squatted, set the gun down, and then ran his hands over the still-twitching synth, looking for its weapon.

He traced his fingers down its right arm and found its fingers wrapped around a hard plastic handle. Tony gripped it and pulled it loose, then explored the implent with his other hand. His grin returned when he felt a familiar shape: a kinetic axe. He found the pressure switch on the haft where his thumb rested, knowing full well that if he held that down when he swung the weapon, it would discharge its energy capacitor, adding a force multiplier to the impact.

“Okay, going out swinging then,” he muttered, confident the breather wouldn’t let anyone hear his words. He was pretty sure they were going to wait him out. The cold was getting untenable, so Tony decided he had to make sothing happen. He crawled on the tal floor to the front of the tal cabinet and then to the first of the two corpses blocking the path to the doorway. He dragged it to the side, then repeated the process with the other. By the ti he returned to the tal cabinet, the gas was thinning in the air, adding to his urgency.

He unlocked the brakes on the cabinet’s casters, then did the sa with the other. Grunting, shivering, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering, he pushed one cabinet halfway to the plastic curtain, then lined the other up behind it. Standing behind the two rolling cabinets, Tony gripped the kinetic axe, put his shoulder against the closest one, and heaved. He took five lunging steps, picking up speed, and when the first cabinet rolled out of the freezer, he wasn’t surprised when a dozen guns roared.

When the second cabinet cleared the curtain, he felt it hit sothing, heard soone grunt, and then the gunfire refocused on it, sending jolts and shudders through the tal. It felt like trying to hang onto a snare drum while a dozen drumrs beat on it. Tony stopped short of the curtain, shoving the cabinet hard, darting to the side, again in the corner of the freezer.

He waited until he heard the first sounds of mags running dry—plastic clattering on concrete, n shouting, “Out!” or “Reloading!”—and then he made his move. Tony pressed the arming button on the kinetic axe; it whined and humd as he slipped through the curtain, taking in the scene.

Maybe a dozen mbers of the Black Jades stood around the opening to the walk-in. Most were behind so sort of cover—pallets, a battery-powered pallet jack, a stack of 200-liter drums, large wooden crates, and a rolling tool chest. They were in a warehouse, as Tony had guessed, and it was filled with stuff. The nearest cover was a stack of pallets to his left, and he darted that way imdiately, rather pleased to see Troy standing there, eyes wide, racking the bolt on an AK-style automatic.

As he ran past him, the banger shot-caller tried to lift the gun and bring it to bear, but Tony was fast, and Troy wasn’t ready to see an axe coming at him. He vacillated between shooting, blocking, or maybe running, and it cost him dearly. Tony’s axe hit him in the upper thigh, just where his femur t his pelvis. Troy was wearing jeans and chains under a heavy leather coat. If Tony had a sharp axe, he might have hurt him pretty badly, but he didn’t have a just sharp axe; he was wielding a kinetic axe. As the blade hit ho, it bucked in Tony’s hand, zwapped, and blood and bone fragnts sprayed out of the back of Troy’s pants, his jeans shredded by the force wave.

As Troy collapsed, trying to cry out in pain but finding no voice in his agony, Tony sprinted past him behind the stack of pallets and then darted between one obstacle after another as he tried to confound his pursuers.

###

“Ads, you’re going to get fried for this,” Beef groused, slapping the flat of his enormous cleaver against his open palm. Addie didn’t respond; she felt guilty for manipulating him, but she’d already promised herself she’d try to make it up to him sohow, and definitely not the way he was hoping. She unzipped her bag and gently lifted Humpty out.

“I’m going to get eyes in there and see what’s going on. Did you start the group comms?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, flicking the air toward her. A ping sounded on her AUI, and she saw the invite. After accepting it, a comm window appeared, and she ran her eyes over the nas: Beef, Buzz, Gob, Runt, Reject, Snatch, C-Ball, Thrash, and, last but not least, Addie. They were all Beef’s boys—Helldogs he was in charge of and could trust to keep their mouths shut if necessary, depending on what was about to go down.

Humpty rose into the air, nearly silent with his Dust-tech gravity engine. Addie directed him toward the big warehouse where the Black Jades made their base, angling toward one of the high, paned-glass windows that were all half-open to allow warm air to vent out. They didn’t need Addie to spot the two guards near the open bay door. What they needed to know was what to expect on the inside. Addie watched through Humpty’s eyes as the windows drew near, and then she artfully guided him up and over the tilted glass pane.

“I’m in.”

“Saw that,” Beef wheezed, leaning against the alley wall. He was enormous, true, but he wasn’t exactly built for quick runs through the district. His boys were all gathered in the shadows around the alley, so ard with guns, so with stylized weapons like Beef’s. Addie had no idea, in the grand sche of things, how these bangers would stack up against the Black Jades; she just hoped they’d catch them unawares and get Tony out before sothing terrible happened.

She shifted her attention back to Humpty’s feed. The inside of the warehouse was a jumbled ss of enormous shelving units, stacks of pallets, boxes, drums, and equipnt. The heights were relatively empty, though, and Humpty’s dark coloring and quiet movent made it easy for her to fly him around and get the lay of the land. She just wished JJ could interface with Dust-tech so she could feed him the footage and have him make a map.

At first, it almost felt like the place was empty, but then she reached the back-left corner and saw a tal box that looked like it had once been on the back of a truck. Refrigeration units sat atop it, humming away, doing their job, but near the front end, where a plastic curtain blocked the interior, ten or more n in banger attire stood with weapons ready, watching the cooler. Addie frowned, narrating what she saw, “Found them.” She carefully counted. “Eleven bangers, but they’re surrounding a cooler. I an, they’re staring at it like it’s filled with monsters or sothing.”

Beef grunted as he rubbed his chin. “Eleven, huh? They saying anything?”

Addie moved the drone closer, and that’s when she saw that the plastic curtain leading into the refrigerated container was covered with blood, with a pool slowly spreading outward on the concrete. She saw Troy fastening a heavy black helt on another banger, and then his voice ca through Humpty’s mics, “You’ll be fine, Rosco. Just run in there, let the armor do its thing, and hack his fucking head off.” He handed the armored-up banger a heavy-looking black axe.

“Beef, I think Tony’s in the cooler. They’re sending an armored-up banger in there with an axe. Why would they—”

“He must have a gun. Must’ve overpowered his guards or sothing.” Beef chuckled, the sound deep and moist in his chest. He coughed up a wad of phlegm, then, after spitting, said, “If they’re all focused on that cooler, might be we can fucking make a move. Might be we can turn this shitshow into a glory ride. Shit, Ads, maybe I’ll get a promotion if we can wipe these rats out.”

“I just want to get Tony out, Beef.”

“Yeah, we’ll try not to kill him.” Beef turned to his boys, and Addie saw her comms light up as he subvocalized, “Snatch and C-Ball, do your thing.”

Snatch’s na lit up. “Got it, boss. Firing in three…two…one.” The clicks of two silenced rifles sounded near the alley mouth, and the guards by the cargo bay door dropped.

Beef trundled out of the alley, waving his hand, “Let’s go, boys! Ads, let know if sothing changes inside!” Addie hurried to keep up, splitting her attention between Humpty’s feed and her eyes. Standing still or walking while doing that wasn’t much of a challenge, but running and trying to follow other people—she’d have a headache later.

As they passed the dead door guards, each with a pool of blood spreading around their heads, Addie tried not to own the guilt of their deaths. They were the ones who took Tony. They were bangers of the worst sort; the kinds of things the Black Jades got up to were the stuff of horror stories. No, she was the good guy here. She was here to help a friend. So, focusing on that thought, she watched as the armored banger went into the cooler and flinched when Humpty transmitted the sound of a very loud gun going off in there. “Hang on, Tony! We’re coming.”