#ectn sides

Another meeting. Third that day.

Yujin checks his watch for the umpteenth time. It's barely past noon. Restlessness prickles at his skin. He just about manages to contain it.

Mizuki enters and takes their usual seat—opposite end of the door, penultimate seat on the right—with a greeting so quiet, Yujin almost doesn't hear it. He angles his head in response, hand straying to the phone in his pocket.

Satoshi Hagiwara enters before Yujin can do anything with it. He lets the device slip out of his fingers and stands along with the rest, bowing exactly the amount expected and not a degree or second more.

————

Drivers are inconvenient.

The man keeps throwing curious glances back at Yujin through the rearview mirror.

He pretends not to notice even as he catalogues the driver's every glance, hitched breath, unnecessary flick of the wrist—the tiniest movement. Yujin shifts in his seat; just enough that the driver will catch sight of him shaking his leg.

Just to agitate the man further.

Yet another meeting—with a client at an upscale restaurant in Palmer Plaza, famous for their flavour profile and price-less menu. Popular with the wealthy and the ones pretending to be. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon, he supposes.

His hand strays back to the phone in his pocket, fingers twirling the device without pulling it out.

Maybe he should have gone home first, change into a crisper suit. Too late now.

————

A sea of red lights stretches out in front of him. Drew Levine comes over the radio and starts in on yet another one of their conspiracy theories. It's nearly enough to make him crack a smile.

His gaze drifts back to the phone sitting atop the dashboard, serving as navigation. Fingers itching to grab it and—

A honk from behind forces him forward once more.

————

The "gym" reeks of unwashed socks and BO and blood.

The psycho bitch from Sunset Bay—the one with the rap sheet longer than her legs, legs longer than Yujin's life expectancy—is still standing, somehow. Still standing, breathing just as hard as him. What was the nickname again? "Molotov Mika"?

She spits blood onto the floor and cracks her neck.

She really doesn't know when to quit, does she?

It's too bad the boss doesn't want to watch her.

————

His apartment is clean and sparse—something out of an interior design magazine. Something dearest eomma would hate spending more than an hour in. Far from the only thing she'd hate.

He stands by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Plaza, whisky tumbler in hand, watching the red lights below speed away and over the Skyline Bridge. He takes a sip, gaze catching the TV reflected in the dark glass. ECNN broadcast. Breaking news about the Eastside Justicars. Uninteresting. Inconsequential.

His phone goes off. He sets the tumbler aside and picks it up.

"Thank you for your patience, Mister Song." Kotomi. Finally.

"Expect resistance."

"My father has a job for you."

Ángela is staring at the menu screens.

She's been staring for a good, long while. Long enough for other customers to arrive, order, eat and leave. Multiple times over.

It's the small hours of the morning, and the noodle joint's deserted apart from her and Jay doing his homework behind the drinks dispenser serving up cheap knock-offs of brand sodas and beer.

The TV is off. So is the radio.

Rain drips from roofs into clogged gutters and soon enough they'll overflow and flood the streets.

The world outside is bleeding neon.

And Ángela can still smell the blood on her.

She draws in a shuddering breath, and lets it out with a quiet, "Mierda".

Ángela should eat. She knows she should. But her appetite has been left behind in Hillside.

A kid, early 20s—had to scrape him off the Skyline Bridge. Wouldn't have been necessary if he'd just given enough of a fuck to wear leathers. Now he's going to the columbarium in Sunset Bay with a mother who can't stop crying.

Ángela draws in another deep breath.

Overdose in Eastside. Four of them. Suicide in Japantown. Two. Possible DV in Sunset Bay. AV crash in Desertview. Unauthorized purchase and flight.

At least no one died in that one.

Jay keeps looking up from his tablet. College kid. Must be nice. Nice to afford an education, nice to not actually need this job at grandpa's slurpshop, nice to go home and be alone.

Nice to not see some of the worst humanity can do to one another. Nice to not see how many people give up, wave the flag, go down without a fight because the fight's already been beaten out of them so very, very long ago.

Stop it, Ángela.

It's not his fault. He just got lucky. You should be happy for him, Ángela. Not many people get lucky in Eden City. He's not even wealthy, just... better off than her.

She works her shoulders and sighs, looking back up at the menu screens again.

Then a bowl of steaming hot pan-fried noodles materialises in front of her face. She looks up, to the side, where Jay stands. "On the house," he says.

She takes the offered bowl with both hands, the heat warming her cold fingers—when had they gone cold?—and she follows Jay to a seat by the back of the house, a bottle of beer and an empty glass standing ready. She takes a seat, feet throbbing in her shoes.

"If you need anything, just let me know, a'ight?" Jay says as he presents a set of chopsticks with a flourish and a smile.

All she can do is nod as she accepts them, guilt churning her stomach. She has no right to judge him. He didn't choose his life.

She unzips her jacket. Cool air caresses her overheated skin.

Chopsticks into the bowl. Noodles in mouth. Chew. Swallow. Keep it down. Repeat.

Don't think about it.

I flick the lighter open. Closed. Open again. Closed.

The clicking of the hood mingles with the sound of tyres pushing through puddles and water dripping from roofs. Plastic slides against plastic as I bring the lighter to my face and flick the spark wheel, sucking in a deep drag.

Fuck me.

I watch the smoke curl up towards the red lanterns above, disappearing into a shower of pink holographic petals falling from the drone show.

The brick digs into my back. I close my eyes, soaking in the peace of shaking off Atlas. He's been insufferable today.

Somewhere, fireworks go off to the excitement of little kids. Begging their guardians to move up front where the view is better. The parade is starting. I don't even remember what's being celebrated.

When I open my eyes again, it's to the sight of Paradox waving at me.

"'Sup, 'Lychko," she—apparently—says.

"Not gon—"

"卧槽!"

"Damn, Kernel, you got her speaking Chinese."

"Made her drop her ciggie, too," he responds with a barely contained giggle.

I look between the two of them. Where did they come from?

Paradox tilts her head up, then looks over my shoulder towards the crowd, clicking her tongue. "You know," she says, dragging out the 'know'.

But instead of finishing her thought, she graps my wrist. Like an icebreaker through the seas of Lux Terminus, she forces her way through the crowd, uncaring of my protests and attempts to free myself from her iron grip, Kernel following close behind.

Before I can even process what's happened, I'm standing on rickety scaffolding tall enough to overlook the parade. Every movement shifts the metal beneath our feet. I shoot them both a sceptical look.

Kernel taps me on the shoulder and points up when I turn my attention to him. "Time to climb," he chirps happily, and I follow the direction of his finger.

Are those... cables?

"This is a rather... elaborate form of attempted assassination, I must say."

"Don't worry your pretty little head, 'Lychko. If those ropes"—oh, thank heavens—"can support Gunshow over here—"

"Gunshow?!" Kernel protests.

"—they can support you, too."

As if to emphasise her point, she clambers up the side of the scaffolding, dragging herself up and over the ropes, and carefully slides into a standing position. "See? It's fine!"

Then she steps out, right over a several hundred meter drop, smoothly dodging a drone. She turns right back around, holding out a gloved hand. Kernel nudges me from behind.

This is suicide.

So why am I climbing up?

I slide my hand into hers. Kernel's grips my shoulder.

Then we move. The wind buffets us, blows my hair in my face. I look down.

Way down. My foot slips.

They both steady me, four strong hands gripping me tight. Kernel slides a hand over my eyes. Paradox guides me forward.

"Easy does it, Theron" Kernel whispers. That's a first.

I suck in a breath and let them guide me across until I feel concrete beneath my feet. Kernel withdraws his hand. "Welcome to our little slice of heaven," he murmurs.

I open my eyes again, breath catching in my throat. The entire parade is visible from up here. I lean over the edge, catching sight of the holo-dragon sailing through the crowd.

Kernel and Paradox both join me, Kernel sitting down on the edge, dangling his legs off the side.

"Sit down," Paradox says, dragging me down with a sigh. Kernel has materialised a guitar. Paradox looks at me, red eyes boring into mine.

"Remind me again what we're looking for?"

The churning of wheels kicks up sand and road dust, coating the interior in a thin layer of grime. The blinding glare of the suns sits just over the horizon, painting the sky a gradient of pink and orange and black. The radio hisses static.

Mika's question has Juno glancing at her briefly before reaching up to the scruff on his chin, scratching at it as he thinks. "It was a, uh... '77 Matsushita Empyrean Convertible. S-Class..." he trails off, chewing the inside of his cheek as he lets his hand drop back to the steering wheel. "Red, I think."

Mika gives a low whistle, sweeping her short hair away from her face only for the wind to blow it back again. "Should be a crime to abandon one of those."

Juno gives a noncommittal grunt in response. Sure, Matsushitas are good, but Escrivas are better. Nicer handling, superior battery range, higher top speeds, easier to maintain, endlessly customisable... Roomier on the inside.

"Merda," Juno curses, rubbing the top of his head. He spies Mika mirroring him in his periphery, face screwed up in pain. He clears his throat and croaks out a weak, "Sorry."

"It's all good, dude, didn't see it either. At least the suspension can take it." She bends over to fiddle with the radio, turning the dial until it picks up a station with slick guitars and snappy basslines and drummers that are clearly having fun for once. "Is that... hell yeah."

"What?"

"Britpop!"

"The fuck is britpop?"

Mika waves her hand around as she reaches into the duffel tucked between her feet and yanks out a cyberdeck that's seen better days. "It's a genre and movement that started in like the 199—"

"NINETEEN-NINETIES?!" Juno interrupts. "Güera, do you listen to anything from this century?"

Mika blinks owlishly at him. "...yes?"

They stare at each other for a long moment—until the lane detector shocks Juno into looking back at the road with its demonic, hellish beeping. He quickly returns the car between the road lines while Mika bends back down to her duffel, momentarily blinding him with the shiny plastic card she fishes out of it. Is it plastic?

She slots it into the deck and starts typing, the click-clack of the mechanical key switches cutting through the song on the radio. "Toogtyve-syvoghalvfjerds... Matsushita Empyrean... dér er du," she mumbles to herself. A few more click-clacks of the keypad, and then the fans of the deck make it sound as though it's preparing for blastoff.

"Mind explaining what you're doing?" Juno asks, if only to make conversation.

"Just using some cobbled together software and a still-unpatched exploit to whip up a keycard. No need to break a window and cut up our asses with glass or to figure out how to hotwire a model that old."

"Neat," he offers in response. "How many cars can you break into doing that?"

Mika sighs. "Far too many, dude. Far too many. Worst is that half these exploits are known, they just can't be fucked to fix them. Guess they think it's too expensive."

"Or," Juno starts. "Sales number go down if they fix it."

"Or that," Mika concedes.

They fall into companionable silence—Juno drumming along on the steering wheel, Mika occasionally lifting the deck off her lap and singing the words she knows. The road is clear of traffic; only the occasional cop car coming down the opposite lane, and some other travellers peeling off, heading for the spaceport. Sand sticks to sweat, but Juno doesn't mind too much.

Soon enough the suns go below the horizon and the stars come out, and Mika pulls the keycard out of her deck, while Juno has switched to one-handed steering, using the other to prop up his head. Back into the duffel the deck goes, and Mika cracks her neck and stretches out her kilometre-long legs with a yawn loud enough to drown out the radio.

"Did the Benster tell you where the last sighting was?" she drawls.

Juno gives another noncommittal grunt. "Somewhere 'round the—"

"Hold on," she interrupts, sitting straighter. "I spy with my eye a little red convertible."

"That's not how 'I spy' works, Meeks."

"I know that, Shoe-no—"

"Only my dad gets to say it like that," Juno interrupts.

Mika scowls at him before schooling her face. "And no one gets to call me 'Meeks'. But look—over by the canyon. I think that's our target."

Juno does as instructed. When he doesn't immediately notice it, Mika turns bodily to get the same angle as Juno and points to where she was looking. He follows the line of her bandaged pointer finger, where—sure enough—a little red convertible sits under a rocky overhang, hidden behind thorny shrubs. "So... those optics of yours..."

"3K each."

"Oof. Never mind! Although... we're in the desert, it's dark, no witnesses..."

"You'd miss my annoying ass too much."

Juno sighs theatrically and steers offroad. "I hate it when you're right." He pulls up next to the abandoned vehicle, a slim and sleek model definitely not built for the size of either of them, aerodynamic and low to the ground, coat shiny cherry red.

"Definitely a Matsushita. What do you think, Meeks?"

"Need to have a better look at it," she replies, unbuckling the seatbelt and clambering out of the car, hitting her head on the way out with a pained hiss and a subdued curse Juno doesn't catch.

He watches her move behind the Matsushita, head bent low, nodding to herself and bringing out the keycard. It's an Empyrean, then, at the very least. She moves up to the driver side door and activates the card.

The headlights flash. Mika turns back to Juno with a thumbs-up and is seemingly about to leg it back when something makes her stiffen and look around, a pensive look on her face. Juno follows suit, sliding forward in his seat to get a better angle, but sees nothing.

Slowly, Mika starts moving back to the passenger side with her head on a swivel and throws the door open.

"What's up, Meeks?"

"Thought I heard somethin'. Either way," she says, bending down to pick up the duffel. "We hit the jackpot, boyo. Meet up back at the Benster's?"

"Nah, I'll join you. Just let me get back on the road."

She throws another thumbs-up before returning to the Matsushita and starting it.

Before long, Juno sits in the passenger seat with his own car programmed to drive home and Mika in the driver seat, ooh'ing and ah'ing over how the Empyrean handles. "They just don't build 'em like they used to," is said more than once. It almost makes Juno wish he was behind the wheel. Almost.

"Wanna test the radio?" Mika asks, flipping on the aircon. Juno shrugs and taps the infotainment system's touchscreen—because of course it's a touchscreen. "So we've got... Eden City Pop Classics"—Mika makes a face at that—"Rockin' with Rocco. Jesus." Mika shakes her head vehemently.

"Dude's worse than Drew Levine with the conspiracy theories. Straight up 'tinfoil hat'-levels of batshittery. And the music isn't even good! Fuckin'—tone deaf singers and drummers without rhythm and guitarists who think they'll be the next Jimi Hendrix with three chords and an inability to tune their own axe."

"Jimi who?"

Mika looks at him as though he'd asked what water was. She opens her mouth to answer, but then she looks at the rearview mirror, and what comes out instead is, "Juno. Cardinals."

Juno looks back over his shoulder just as the first shot slams into the side mirror. "Cazzo Madre di Dio!"

"I knew this was too easy!" Mika yells as she steps on the gas, throwing them both back in their seats, and steers the car away from the road. "Better not fucking destroy the undercarriage on this thing! Juno!"

"On it, on it!" He unbuckles his seatbelt and quickly retrieves one of the guns from Mika's duffel, sliding a fresh magazine into it. "Keep 'er steady, Meeks!" he shouts before sliding down the window and popping out of it.

"Call me 'Meeks' again and I'll line you up to become human Swiss cheese!"

Juno fires off a handful of shots that all go wide, forced back inside the vehicle with the Cardinals's returning fire.

"It's too dark out here, I can't see shit!"

"And whose fault is that?!" Mika hisses as she extends her neural link and slots it into the steering wheel. "Gimme my deck, quick!"

The next attack comes as a volley of bullets that punch straight through the rear window, shattering it.

"Merda!"

"You good?" Mika calls.

"Yeah... yeah, I'm good. Here." He drops the deck into Mika's lap before popping back out the window to retaliate, this time hitting a tyre. The Cardinals's cherry red SUV swerves, but the driver is evidently skilled and experienced with that kind of damage. In hindsight, the Matsushita being the same colour as the Cardinals's fleet really should have been a hint.

"Mangia merde e morte," Juno grinds out, squeezing the trigger, watching as the bullets punch through the windshield without shattering it. He pulls himself back inside where Mika is hitting the keypad like their lives depend on it—which, technically, it does.

"Got anything?"

"Picking up signals, but dunno if they're our tailing assholes."

"Whatcha planning?"

Mika doesn't respond. Instead, she grabs Juno's gun and pops out of her window to exchange fire with the Cardinals. "Ka' I ik' bar' læg' jer ned og dø?!"

Juno bends down to grab the other gun when another volley goes out and Mika cries out in pain. "Meeks! You good?!"

"Don't worry about me," she grinds out as she pulls herself back inside, clutching her side, white t-shirt now stained bright red. "I got the driver."

Juno looks back at the Cardinals just in time to watch the engine explode into a cloud of acrid black smoke. "How in the fu—"

"Shut up and take the wheel," Mika sighs, unplugging her neural link as she stops the car and drags herself out.

Juno hurries out of the car himself, grabbing her by the armpits and helping her into the passenger seat. "Hold on, Meeks, I'll get you to Doc's, yeah? Gonna let you have all of our cut, yeah?" She nods weakly as he buckles her in. "W-what was that?"

"A turret. Roof-mounted."

"You tanked a fucking turret?" How had he not seen it?

"H'yeah. Guess I did."

Juno purses his lips and sweeps some of her hair out of her eyes. "Hey, Meeks?"

She grunts in response.

Cold metal kisses the underside of Stella's jaw.

Brown eyes bore into green, willing Stella to spill her secrets. She blinks slow, still holding on to the tumbler of whisky she's been sipping from since the meeting began.

"Speak," the newest Velychko to arrive demands. The *other* Velychko, as far as Stella's concerned.

Instead of responding, Stella shifts out of the way, raising the tumbler to her lips and sipping slowly. She doesn't break eye contact.

Different client. Same old shit.

Stella runs her tongue over her teeth, making a show of thinking about it.

"No."

"No? Even with a firearm pointed at you, you still refuse. I didn't think *you* would have death wish," Velychko drawls. She flashes Stella a smile sharp enough to cut glass.

Stella leans back on the couch, crossing her legs as she does. The music outside changes, makes the floor vibrate harder than before. Velychko's glass shakes on the tabletop, sliding dangerously close to the edge. From her periphery, Stella catches the driver, Arden, shifting in his seat.

He hasn't said a peep this entire time. Very unlike him. Did Velychko muzzle him or something? He catches Stella looking at him and makes a show of inspecting his nails. He's not a very good actor.

Velychko shakes her head, reholstering her weapon. "Should I take this to mean you don't know where they are?"

Ridiculous. Of course Stella knows where they are. She wouldn't be a very good songbird if she didn't.

But pointing a gun to her jawline and refusing to pay won't make her sing. And the fact that *Valentyna Velychko* is resorting to threats tells Stella more than Valentyna would ever know.

Stella drains her tumbler and sets it on the glass table next to the couch. "Money," she says. "Cash. ECD," she adds.

Velychko scoffs, the sound harsh, and sits down on the couch opposite Stella's.

Just as she thought. "Folded quicker than usual. You're in deep shit, aren't you?"

"Maybe we shouldn't—"

"No money, no info," Stella interrupts, shooting Arden a pointed look. He raises his hands in mock surrender and says nothing further. "Your name means jack to me." She turns her attention back to the woman in front of her. "Your gun even less."

Velychko's next breath is a deep one. She plucks her glass—now millimetres from sliding off and shattering—from the table and drains the contents in two large gulps before slamming it back down.

"A trade," she croaks, then clears her throat. "Intel for intel."

"Better make it worth my while, then."

"Uh, is this a good idea?" Arden whispers quietly. He quickly glances up at Stella, and she pretends not to listen in. "What if she sells us out instead?" he continues.

"You know how brokers operate. They'll just—"

Velychko interrupts him by raising her hand. She narrows her eyes at Stella. "You tell me where to find Hagiwara's servers. I tell you the real identity of Eidolon."