Revenge of the Cyber Dragons by C. T. Phipps & Michael Suttkus

Author:C. T. Phipps & Michael Suttkus [Phipps, C. T.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: cyberpunk, humor
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2022-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Not So Hard Choices

* * *

“Well, complicated is something I have more experience with than I can say I’m happy with. Start at the beginning.”

“I was born to a wealthy family that wanted me to be a doctor when I met a mysterious beautiful woman—” Gerard started to say.

I stared at him, nonplussed.

“Sorry, probably a bad time for a joke,” Gerard said, rubbing the back of his head.

“Yes,” I replied, softly. “It is.”

Gerard walked over to a nearby laptop that was running several medical apps, all of them self-contained. “This is what I managed to get off of Becky’s memory buffers.”

He conjured footage of her hanging around our apartment while I was off doing business for Snake. It was through her eyes and a kind of fascinating feeling right up until the time I realized she was using our infovision flatscreen to watch porn. That was a very uncomfortable feeling for a mother, however reluctant, to see my rapidly adultifying (was that a word?) daughter engaging in that sort of activity.

“Skip! Skip!” I said, looking away.

Gerard did so and I saw Winston Billions, wearing his brilliant white suit, break in and proceed to ice her. Given she was a bioroid, she was immune and struggled as a couple of other Trikuza thugs held her down until they put a shock collar on her.

“Winston,” I said. I don’t know how I sounded, but Gerard stepped back. It was true, I wanted to kill Winston for this. Whether this was Snake’s doing, or Winston had gone off on his own would matter later. Right now, I was going to kill Winston. Not to say I hadn’t killed people for money or in hot blood. This was different. Maybe I would have scared myself. It didn’t matter, though.

“Yes,” Gerard said. “He took her to a van where—”

“Oh God,” I muttered, closing my eyes.

Gerard sucked in his breath. “She was modified with multiple additions to her eyes and body there. They’re close enough that if Rebecca hadn’t been desirous of an upgrade to an adult body, we never would have known.”

“Why mods?” I asked, looking at him. “Why not just a listening device?”

“I don’t know,” Gerard said. “A lot of them seemed designed to cover the transmissions and encryption. There’s other changes, though, with what I suspect is plans to turn her into a weapon.”

“Then I’ll have to kill him slowly.” This had to be Snake’s doing. Turning children into weapons was his thing.

“That…might be possible,” Gerard said, lifting a small microchip on a petri dish. “This is designed to send signals between the subject, err Becky, and the receiver, Winston. It’s done on a weekly basis and is rather ineptly made because it’s done directly as far as I can tell.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

Gerard said, “I’m saying that you could use this to ping Winston’s location if you’re willing to leave the dead zone. Then, well, do whatever it is you want to do to him.”

He seemed both simultaneously uncomfortable and too comfortable with helping arrange a murder.

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