16.3

  It’s been a few days since our discussion with Merrin Holyfield. I’ve managed to get some sleep at the Inn, though it hasn’t come easily with the worry of stopping Calyx Ward constantly on my mind. The real problem is finding enough people willing to risk their lives for a cause they barely understand. That alone is difficult, and even more so when we’re little more than outsiders. Whatever reputation we might have had back in N.A. carries no weight here in the Capital, which means the only way to garner any form of trust is through brute-force hiring.

  Our numbers would be smaller, sure, but if we could find even five extra mercs who knew their way around a weapon, a netrunning interface, or some clever black-market tech, we might stand a chance of breaching the factory.

  The other problem is surviving longer than five seconds once we get inside. We simply don’t have the tech for a job this dangerous. Merrin, however, offered to help with that. Not long after our talk, she confirmed that her boys were willing to upgrade our base cyberware to a reasonably high standard using spare parts that hadn’t sold in recent months. It was good news, no doubt, but it added a new layer of complexity to the hiring process. Anyone we bring on has to have the blood strength to survive the upgrades.

  That part shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Most mercs have spent more time in a tech surgeon’s chair than in their own bed. Neo Arcadia and Paxson may look different on the surface, but in that respect, they’re philosophically the same.

  Merrin mentioned in her text that Jonas’ stall would be available for interviews. So Fingers and I put together a small sign with HIRING NOW! scrawled in big black letters, and beneath it, in a smaller, harder-to-spot line, Mercs only. We set it out in front of the stall and wait in the back, perched on a splintered bench by an inactive android body, watching for anyone who might be interested.

  People do show up, but most of them don’t look like mercs at all. Even when I run them through my scanner, all I get are things like special optics or artificially assisted lungs, upgrades that are probably there to offset a lifetime of heavy smoking. We hear every kind of story: homeless veterans who can still aim a rifle, parents with sick children, teenagers with sick parents. Not one of them looks like someone who’s ever stared down a barrel, let alone taken a bullet. This must be how Raze felt when he first met me. I get it. I really do. It’s just that this job is too big to expect an underdog to suddenly take down the strongest line of defence in what might be the entire state.

  This goes on for hours, days, a whole week. The results are utterly crushing. After a point, I’m simply exhausted from the sheer number of incompatible applicants. Fingers agrees too. Even when she was hiring for Vander, Raze, and Dance (and everyone that came before them) things weren’t this bad. Neo Arcadia was jampacked with talent; here it wasn’t difficult to see how much of the poorer population ended up underground.

  No one looked like they were even trying.

  Eventually, after a week and a half of interviewing (and right when I’m starting to think we might have to change our plan), someone different shows up: a gentleman in a western hat made of black leather and red cowl that falls a little more than halfway down his chest. The outfit already has me rolling my eyes; I don’t even bother scanning him, though I do have to give him bonus points for the cowboy cosplay. He even has the chinstrap beard and the slight handlebar twirl to his mustache. He has green eyes, and he wears a dark long coat over a salmon vest, white shirt, black pants, and boots. Any second now I’m expecting him to reach into his holster and yell, ‘Draw.’

  But I’m not drawing. I’m not even entertained by the idea.

  He walks over to the bench and sits down across from me. I maintain eye-contact, one arm keeping my head as my elbow rests on the table.

  He reaches into his coat pocket, and I think he’s going to bring out a package of smokes. He’ll probably offer me one, and I might even take him up on it.

  But he doesn’t.

  Instead, he pulls out a card with a yellow skin. It has a subtle film of electricity running along the edges, making me think it must be some form of tech. He looks over at the inactive android (which looks as if it was being stripped for parts by Jonas) and flicks the card at it. The card completely explodes into yellow electricity, and for the first time in almost two weeks, the android rises. It’s small, spindly, and has to hop on one leg, but it’s moving alright. The eyeslit is glowing gold, and when I look over at the mysterious man, his eyes are glowing gold too.

  “How many people do you need?” he asks, and sure enough he has that western bite to his words.

  I blink, then run a scan on him. I expect to see an incredible amount of cyberware, or at the very least something netrunner-related, but all categories are marked over with the same line: Luck of the draw.

  I look at him a little more curiously now. What I mean to ask him is who he is, but the words get a little lost on their way to my mouth, so what comes out instead is, “What are you?”

  “Just a guy lookin’ to put his luck to the test,” he says. “I hear you’re hiring for an infiltration job. The Core Manufacturing Node. You’re after the dragon’s head.”

  “That’s one way of puttin’ it,” I say. “We’re hiring mercs only. Are you a merc?”

  “Somethin’ of the sort,” he says, and his eyes turn green again. The android flops down lifelessly. He sure controlled that for a good amount of time. “I run my own crew a little ways from here. Not underground.”

  “Surface fixer?” Fingers asks.

  “I don’t fix jobs,” he says. “Name’s Luck of the Draw. But everyone calls me Luck.”

  I don’t know if this guy is insane or telling the truth, but either way I am certainly intrigued. Seeing no point in it, I take off my visor and let it hang from my neck. “So you have your own crew. How many?”

  “Ten and countin’,” Luck of the Draw says. “More than enough for your little plan to have a chance. Chances, after all, are worth bettin’ on in this city, no matter how small.”

  “I take it you heard about the job already,” says Fingers.

  He nods but doesn’t say anything.

  “Part of this plan is potentially going to require you and your crew to get some upgrades,” I say. “Now I’m not sure how strong you guys are already, but it’s something to keep in mind. You need strong-enough blood so you don’t turn into cyberpsychos halfway through the mission. It’s a brute-force job, so it’s important that everything goes smoothly.”

  “I’m more than happy to oblige,” he says. “I’m sure my men would have no issue gettin’ upgrades. The only other thing to consider is, of course, their payment for all this.”

  “Your payment is the upgrades you get,” says Fingers, “plus an additional eight hundred grand you can spread among your buddies, know?”

  “Wait, eight hundred thousand?” I say. “I thought we agreed on six hundred?”

  “I pulled some strings with my sister,” Fingers says. “She’s willin’ to lend a bit, add to the pot. Should have probably told you that.”

  “No,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “It’s a nice surprise, if anything. So yeah, eight hundred thousand sound fair, Luck?” God, that name is weird to say out loud. But hey, there was also Rhythm of Rhythm. “We only need an additional five, not all ten.”

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  “Nah,” says Luck of the Draw. “You’ll need all ten, plus whatever else you have in store. Trust me.”

  We go quiet for a bit, and I think that he’s probably right. He and his crew would be getting about 72,000 each if my math is correct.

  “Don’t worry about payin’ me,” he says, as if reading my mind. “You just worry about makin’ sure my boys are well-looked-after.”

  More silence, and this time I actually mean to ask him the question: “So what exactly are you? A netrunner?”

  “Of sorts,” he says, “but my tech doesn’t run on systems. It runs purely on chance. Every card I take out has a one-in-three chance to perform a function: control, short-circuit, and blind.”

  “So you got lucky with that little android demonstration, ay?” Fingers chuckles.

  He chuckles back. “Yeah, I guess I did. But there is one more card.” He leans forward. “There’s also a one-in-fifty-two chance that one of the cards will be a Death Card.”

  “What does that do?” I ask, probably sounding stupid.

  “Exactly what you think it does,” he says, running a thumb along his beard. “It won’t kill everyone instantly, but it’ll definitely hurt—a lot.”

  “Why don’t you just always use that one?” I ask, genuinely curious.

  “I can’t see which card does which,” he says. “Even a scan won’t tell me anything.”

  “I see.” Before I can ask him how he’s gotten by for so long on nothing but pure luck mechanics, Fingers folds her arms and says:

  “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  He smiles, and you can tell by the wrinkles around his eyes that he’s trying to stifle a laugh. “I guess you’ll have to find out, if you’re willin’ to take the chance.”

  Luck of the Draw certainly seems a little over-the-top, almost mythical to be completely honest, but he’s the first guy out of the last two hundred that actually seems to have a bit of competence. If he’s telling the truth about having an additional ten men on stand-by, that certainly increases our odds of success. I suppose the best bet would be meeting with his crew first, to see what they can offer and if they’re capable of surviving more than a few seconds. Even if this guy might be lucky, everyone else might just be scraping by. I’ve also never heard of him, ever, and neither has Fingers. He’s only popping up now like a ghost from the grave, and if I’ve learned anything about those types of people, it’s that it’s best to treat them with caution.

  Luck of the Draw doesn’t lead us to his hideout directly, says it’s too risky. Instead, he writes the coordinates on a scrap of paper and tells us to gather our crew and meet him at high noon, a detail I find a little on the nose, both literally and metaphorically. So later, Fingers and I round up the others and make our way aboveground. The location sits near a railroad station, long abandoned by the look of it, and far enough from the Capital that the noise of society feels distant and thin. The land isn’t burned out like the eastern districts, but it isn’t thriving either. It sits in a quiet in-between, where nothing has been rebuilt and nothing has been properly destroyed.

  Rusty tracks cut through the dirt like old scars, buried beneath weeds and windblown trash. The station itself leans slightly to one side, its windows boarded up, its signage stripped down to warped metal frames. It’s the kind of place people pass without looking twice, assuming there’s nothing left worth taking.

  Which, of course, makes it exactly the kind of place someone like him would choose.

  In the very back of the area, there’s a long yet short warehouse with freight containers spread along its side. There’s a guy standing outside a door, and surprisingly he isn’t dressed like a cowboy; he wears a white vest and cargo pants, and his face is almost entirely all black-market tech. No eyes, only a pair of red slits that pass for them.

  He stops us, has a quick word on the holo, and then taps a code into a dial lock, causing the door to open. We head inside, and unlike the church’s underground, this place is quite loud. Catwalks crisscross the interior at different heights, bolted together in a way that feels temporary and permanent at the same time. People move along them, hauling parts, shouting measurements, ducking under hanging cables. One man is welding something without even wearing any safety gear. It all looks very industrial, very busy.

  But what catches my eye most of all is what the crew are actually working on. In the very centre of the warehouse is an enormous machine. It almost looks like a tank, but with some pretty bizarre distinctions: there are no wheels, only six hulking legs, three at each side, giving it the impression of a highly mechanical beetle. The top, which I can only assume leads to the cockpit, sticks up like an iron flathead. The lower section is the most incomplete; I can see the power lines climbing up along the limbs and feeding into the centre, where a hollow outline waits in need of a pulsing core.

  I have no idea how an unsophisticated group like this ended up with technology this advanced, but they must have been building it for a very long time.

  Eventually, Luck of the Draw shows up, coming down a flight of grated stairs. He’s no longer wearing the coat, but he is wearing the hat, and that makes Dance let out a laugh and say, with utmost Aussie fixation:

  “Mr. Magic is a jackaroo. You weren’t jokin’, mate.”

  “An Australian,” says Luck of the Draw, meeting us by the door. “A doctor, at that. At least I figure so based on the white trench.”

  “Not a doc, mate,” he says. “Maybe one day, in a universe six dooooozies away from this one. Run a card by me and let’s see how likely that ends up bein’.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says. “There’s still plenty of life to live, if you end up survivin’ this, after all.”

  “What are you er workin’ on?” Vander asks, walking up to the hulking machine. It’s no surprise he would be the first to ask that, the engineer that he is.

  “The big questions first,” says Luck of the Draw. “I like to call this girl Betty.”

  “’Course you do,” says Dance. “I’m guessin’ you’re gonna ride on top of it next.”

  Luck of the Draw chuckles. “Funny guy.” He massages his beard and looks up at it. “You think my butt would fit?”

  “Give or take a few pounds and maybe,” says Dance.

  I step up next to Vander, and Riven directly follows.

  “That’s a chimera,” she says, her eyes gone wide with wonder. “I thought they stopped developing these years ago.”

  “I thought so ter.” Vander rubs his lips with blue lipstick. “Too dangerous because er AI still weren’t secure enough not to go crazy with it.”

  I can believe that. If something like that were to become susceptible to The Helios Paradox, then it would be pretty much unstoppable. “How did you get your hands on one?” I ask.

  “I didn’t,” Luck of the Draw says. “I got the blueprint, but my boys built the rest. We’re almost done, just need one final piece.”

  Fingers says, “Were you already plannin’ to attack the Core Manufacturing Node with this?”

  He nods. “Yeah, but not for another long while yet. Once I heard about you, I realised the opportunity to, well, speed things up a bit.”

  “So, you need our help?” I ask.

  “It would certainly come in handy,” he says. “I estimate that we’ll have this completely finished in the next month or so, but there’s the small issue of actually powering it. We need a power core; we might be good with our hands, but nuclear fission ain’t exactly our forte. Luckily I already know where we can get one.”

  “Ah, I see,” says Dance poshly. “You need some gruntmen to get the most important part. One hell of a doozie that is. I thought we were hirin’ you.”

  “Think of this more like a partnership,” says Luck of the Draw. “You help me, and we help each other take down Calyx Ward. I’ve already come close before. I just didn’t have the manpower that I do now.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Dance. “And let me guess: the twist is you’re actually evil and you’re gonna take over the city. Who saw that comin’?”

  “I wish,” he says, laughing. Then his face goes more serious. “Let’s just say the reason is deeply personal. Not important.”

  I nod. “Hell, at this point I wouldn’t care if you were evil or not. Anyone is better than that bitch in the chair.”

  “Seems you have a grudge too.”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” I say. A little bit of quiet, and then I ask, “So where is this power core?”

  “That’s the fun part,” he says. “It’s on a train, or at least it will be a month from now.”

  “I was expectin’ an arc like this to pop up eventually,” says Dance. “Shit always requires a train at some point. But I’m guessin’ it’s gonna be passing through here, the railroad?”

  “Not here exactly,” he says, “but along the same track. This place is abandoned for a reason—it’s technically on the east side, and the Capital don’t like the east side.”

  “I gathered that,” says Fingers. “Do you have any idea how to stop this train? How armed it’s going to be? Who’s going to be on it?”

  “We can get into all of that,” Luck of the Draw says. “But I want to know if you’re interested in workin’ together first. Can’t take a chance on people that are havin’ second thoughts.”

  We all look at each other, and I know from raw experience that we don’t tend to turn away opportunities like this, especially if they’re directly related to our goal. I shrug, seeing that no one else is answering, and say, “Sure. Why not.”

  “Alrighty,” he says. “Guess we can talk about the details in my office upstairs, but be warned: it’s gonna require a lot of shootin’, though I suppose given that you’re willin’ to fight the big dogs in the Capital’s centre, you’ll be more than willin’ to get your hands dirty, and your fingernails even bloodier.”

  Again, we all look at each.

  I smile, thinking that this might be the closest thing to a proper final fix as it gets. It’s sure been a long road, though I know there’s still a whole lot more path to unearth.

  A hand lands on my shoulder, and I instinctively think it’s Fingers’, but this time it’s actually Dance’s.

  “Guess we got a train to catch, mate,” he says. “And be sure to show me some of those card moves up there. I love a good trick.”

  here.