Uneven stone bricks lay like crooked teeth across the main street. Moldy baguettes, slick with spilled cheap beer from men collapsed by the curb, fused into a stench that clawed the throat. Where doors once stood, only a few warped boards leaned like broken ribs. Children’s graffiti served as house numbers, bright scrawls on rot. The iron gates were long gone—ripped out, sold off, their rust the only ghost left behind.

This was the Pat Slums, a trash heap the city chose to forget. One-twentieth the land, a third of the souls, all jammed into a breathing bruise.

“Mm...”

A drunk at the roadside shifted, jabbed awake by his bottle. The street’s black “soil,” fermented muck and microbes, didn’t disturb his dream. Only there did he have a place of his own. Men like him lay everywhere, like driftwood after a storm.

A man with a black bag walked past, unfazed. He stooped and picked up the bread soaked in beer and sweat. Wet yellow crumbs squeezed out between his blackened nails like pus. A blonde girl in a backward baseball cap stood where a door sign should be and frowned, her brows neat arcs in the dirty light.

“Jack, are you sure HQ sent me to this hellhole for the job?”

A faint blue glint pulsed near her ear. Deep in her teal-green eyes, data scrolled like rain.

“If HQ’s intel holds, ‘that person’ ran into the slums,” Jack said. His voice came lazy with static. “It’s a knot down there. We could only send you to scout.”

Elsewhere, Jack hunched at a terminal, a stolen “Southwest Sea” cigarette caught at the corner of his mouth like a glowing thorn. A sleek virtual keyboard threw cold light over a half-cut soda can ashtray. Secondhand smoke and air freshener swirled together and got sucked into the overhead vent, then bled into air heavy with steam.

“Even your custom external comms cut out in there,” he added. “Be careful. In fifty-six minutes, a squall’s rolling in. Visibility’ll drop to nothing.”

“Didn’t your last physical say if you keep smoking, you’ll be dead in twenty years? Still can’t quit. And you won’t take augmentation.”

She didn’t need eyes on him to know. While she piped data his way, there was room for a sigh.

“Augments are boring,” he said, grinning smoke. “What’s living without burn? How would I taste this fire in the throat and the thick warm swell in the chest? It’s survived this long for a reason.”

She shook her head, a small wave of surrender. He was the sort of man who’d roll weeds in paper if cigarettes vanished.

“I’m going in. I’ve been in worse pits, but this one sticks to the skin...”

...

Unlike the barren entrance, the deeper streets thickened with shopfronts and shuffling bodies. Bare legs gleamed under streetlamps like wet porcelain. Women in cheap slit qipao leaned in doorways, their makeup throwing a sultry sheen under mixed lights, a perfume of invitation. Electronic necklaces circled throats with tiny screens, each a number that cut like cold steel. Different styles meant different houses. The price glowed the same.

Crosie’s loose tracksuit made her stand out like a clean brushstroke on a dirty wall, but no one spared her a second look. In this place, everything had already been seen.

“Mm... the bar in the intel should be here.” She threaded through a braid of alleys, ten turns deep. The marked spot was a blind corner, a dead end, a mouth of brick.

The wind rose, rough fingers riffling trash. Burnt foil and plastic bags spun like ash leaves. Moisture coated her exposed skin, a warning. The storm had its hand on the latch.

A virtual screen floated before her eyes. A flick of her fingers, fast as a pianist’s trill, and the hidden door lit up on her HUD.

[Please enter passcode.]

“Mm... good. Just a basic security rig. It’s a bar, not a fortress.”

[Decryption program initialized. ID: 2354.]

[Estimated time to breach: 34 seconds.]

A surge of code cascaded in her gaze. The latest decryption package, preloaded in her chassis, went to work. While it teased the lock open, it slid spines into nearby surveillance nodes and cracked them one by one. Through their veins, she streamed this block’s feed back to Jack.

[3... 2... 1... Breach successful. Program terminated.]

The cold prompt chimed in her skull. The ragged poster on the dead-end wall shimmered and resolved into a rusted metal door. From the look of it, there was still a stretch to walk beyond.

...

“Miss, someone’s breached our system. At the Miyamoto clan’s bar. No moves yet.”

Beneath a junk-collection yard, in a concrete belly of a room, mercenaries sat before a wall of screens. On one feed, Crosie slipped into the last alley.

“Don’t worry,” said the girl in a tailored suit. She sat behind a desk like a fixed blade. “The moment she stepped into Pat, my lord’s side flagged her. The Miyamoto clan will act. Letting ‘their’ people walk our turf? If that gets out, we’re a punchline.”

She took a small sip of the rose-tinted Crimson Blaze gifted by the Miyamoto second son. With her other hand, she sketched on a virtual pane. An encrypted letter leapt away to several anonymous accounts. What it said, who took it—no one would ever know.

...

An old speaker roared with e-music, bass like thunder in a metal bowl. Custom-built, lifelike strippers looped their prewritten temptations on stage, skin like lacquer, smiles painted by code. Liquor sprayed freely over blackened oak, a sticky rain. Hunters wove through the crowd, eyes sharp for prey. In VIP rooms, doors shut over deals no daylight should see.

“One Deep Blue Heart. Room temp, no ice. Three-tone.”

Crosie slipped through the bodies, slid onto a barstool, and sank into the role like an old predator with a bad hobby. The bartender’s tins flashed and crossed midair, each arc a silver fish. When they fell, they poured into glasses of fierce, shimmering color.

“Your Deep Blue Heart.” Soon a three-layered spirit stood before her, dark blue sliding into deeper blue, then purple from top to bottom. A clear ice cube floated dead-center, hanging like a jellyfish in the deep, hypnotic.

“People here look so happy,” she murmured.

Emotion first: a soft ache warmed her chest, then her gaze drifted. These people lived rough, but they were still “alive,” and maybe not knowing was the sweetest kind of luck. Once this was done, she’d swap her sister’s prosthetic for something better. She ran numbers in her head. Years of savings—enough left after the new limb to do a little more...

The bar door swung. A man came in and scanned the room like a hawk on a wire. As he passed a table, he “dropped” a silver tag. The woman there caught it without looking and slid it into the valley of her chest. Then she rose and headed for the bathroom. The man ordered a drink, took a sip, then whooped at the stripper stage like a drunk sailor. In the noise, he drifted toward the side exit. Crosie saw it all, every stitch.

“Tch... so what if your chest is huge. I’ll— I’ll have R&D add a little volume when I get back. Hmph.” She shot the bathroom-bound woman a murderous look, thought it over, and tailed the man instead.

The side exit fed into another alley, not the one she used to enter. Rain tore at the world like claws. She stepped out and got soaked in a heartbeat, water cold as teeth. The man pushed on a few paces left, shoulders hunched against the downpour. The squall smothered sound and scent. He didn’t notice the shadow on his heels.

Blue flickered at Crosie’s ear. Silence answered.

“Tch. No contact? Then this storm’s perfect,” she breathed, a spark of hunger under her tongue. “If I don’t follow now, the door shuts.”

She flowed forward, agile as a fox, coiled as a leopard. Every jut of brick and dumpster lip became cover. She ghosted him through three turns. He never felt the thread.

“Pop!” Her shoe slapped a puddle, and water burst up like shattered glass. The man walked on, a gray smear in the rain. Crosie stopped.

Wrong.

Something in the air was wrong.

The storm went feral. Wind pressed on her chest like a fist. Rain hammered skin like fists made of ice. Beyond the roar and the hiss, the world held its breath.

Whoosh! She dropped her head. A slender round shaved a kiss off her scalp and buried itself in the wall with a hard insect thud. Black shapes broke from the empty lane, men in masks cutting the rain like knives. Crosie’s gaze went hard as flint. Her legs slid into a strange open stance. Her waist bent into an angle that defied bone. Blue data streamed across her skin, crawling like a swarm.

[Combat mode, engage.]

...

The man lifted a beaded curtain and stepped inside. He tossed his soaked coat at a chair like shed skin. He rolled his neck, then reached under his jaw and peeled off a face. Underneath, a handsome face smiled back from the mirror.

“This thing’s a marvel. Latest nano-bionic mask. Where did Father dig up toys like this?”

He set it aside. As he tugged on a dry shirt, an urgent call pinged the air.

“Mm... Got it. Seal the blocks around here. No one in, no one out. Kill the outside net too,” he said, voice low and brisk. “This is our main bargaining chip. Don’t let it slip.”

He hung up, thought a moment, then dialed another encrypted line.

“That bitch smashed two ‘new-types.’ The rest, she glitched,” he said, half-laughing, smoke in his tone even without a cigarette. “She’s hurt bad. Half her body won’t be moving. No parts, no fixes. We’ll see how long she lasts. I’ve sent people. Grabbing her’s just a matter of time. Heard you botched your end too? Haha. Let’s see how you spin that. Word is the police brought in something nasty. Wrap your mess fast. Don’t leak a whisper.”

He cut the call and looked at Crosie on the virtual screen beside him. A crooked smile curled like a hook.

The storm raged on. In wind and rain, the slums of Pat went black as a closed eye.