Plum Parrot
patreon
Neon Dust 2.43 - Another Night, Another Lab
🕑 Added 2025-07-04 19:31:29 +0000 UTCHere's your chapter! Happy 4th! Happy Friday!
-Plum
43 – Another Night, Another Lab
The van was surprisingly quiet as they left the Ninety-Nine en route to the location where Glitchwitch had pinned down Victor Kwon’s lab. Addie was quiet because her mind was busy dealing with guilt and the knowledge that she was deluding herself, and everyone in her crew knew it. After a while, the things she was imagining in her friends’ heads got to be too much, and she blurted out, “I know I’m not being…rational.”
Tony glanced at her, eyes narrowed in worry. Beef looked up, grunting, and Glitchwitch said, “What do you mean?”
“You know. The wipeware. I know it’ll basically kill Kwon, but…” She trailed off, irritated that she’d brought the topic up without thinking through what she’d say.
Beef was surprisingly supportive as he muttered, “Killing ain’t easy, ’specially your first time.”
Glitch looked at Beef, arching an eyebrow. “She’s killed before, though.”
Beef shook his head. “Nah, that guy don’t count. Yeah, she pulled his stack, but I’d put a fourteen-inch cleaver through his spine; he was a goner.”
Tony cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Glitch glanced at Addie. “What about the guys you took out at the corpo’s apartment? Weren’t they Black Talon?”
Beef perked up, his eyes drilling into Addie’s. “Black Talon? What the hell did I miss?”
Addie shook her head sharply. “That’s not important, and this is different, anyway. When I’ve killed before, it was a… a reaction. I didn’t walk out the door saying to myself, ‘I’m going out to kill a man.’ Well, that’s what we’re doing right now, and it feels different, and yeah, maybe I’m deluding myself, but for some reason it feels easier to say, ‘I’m going to wipe a man’s memory.’ So I hope you guys can forgive me, and like I said, I’m happy to bear the cost for the wipeware.”
“I already said—” Tony started to say, but then Beef surprised Addie again.
“I’ll pay for part of it, too,” the big man grunted, interrupting him.
Glitchwitch chuckled. “You’re cute, Ads, but I’ll let you three divvy it up.”
Addie hardly heard her. She was too busy looking at Beef’s implacable expression. He wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t frowning, and his eyes were too dark in the dim light of the van for her to get a read. All she could say was, “Thank you.” She hurriedly glanced at Tony. “Both.” Not wanting to make Glitchwitch feel like she was holding any sort of grudge, she added, “And Glitchwitch, you’ve already helped us a lot more than we’ve paid you for.”
The netjacker smiled, leaning back, her eyes hidden as usual by her visor. “We’re all friends here.”
Tony snickered, and Addie smiled, feeling a lot of her earlier tension melting away. She wanted to keep people talking, to avoid dwelling on the job, so she brought up another topic. “Hey, Beef, I noticed you weren’t limping.”
He grunted.
Glitch socked him in the shoulder very ineffectually. Shaking her hand and wincing, she said, “Tell us about it!”
“Uh, Peters got me a knee replacement and a nanite infusion for my hip. They fixed most of the torn ligaments and stuff.”
“What kind of knee?” Tony asked, turning his seat. “Like, is it gear or just a joint replacement?”
“It’s gear. Cybernetic with synthetic grafts connecting it to the rest of my leg. Why? You wanna see it? I’m not dropping my drawers for you, T.”
Tony snorted, shaking his head. “Just curious, big guy.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re better,” Addie said, unable to keep an image of Beef writhing in the air while Zane twisted his leg like a pretzel from flashing through her mind.
Beef grunted again, folding his arms over his chest and closing his eyes.
Addie looked at Glitch, who made a point of lifting her visor to roll her eyes. Smiling, she looked at Tony and asked, “Are we close?”
“Ten minutes. I was thinking Beef and I should start gearing up.” He gestured to the plasteel crate he’d bolted to the cargo bed. At the moment, it looked like a coffee table for Beef and Glitchwitch as they sat in the jump seat. “How’s your Dust, by the way?”
Addie glanced at the display she’d built into her AUI:
Dust Purity: Impure – 1.71 LIR
Dust Capacity: 4556/5000
Gain Rate: 22 units per 60 seconds
Current Dust-tech Drain: 0
“Close to full.”
Tony nodded. “Good.” He turned back to face the others. “Glitch, will you change seats with me? I gotta get some armor and stuff outta that crate.”
“My pleasure.” She stood and, hanging onto the cargo rack as the van navigated a turn, moved around the crate and waited for Tony to slide out of the driver's seat. As he clambered into the back, she sat down and kicked her short legs up onto the center console. “You need to replace the cushions in this seat!” she groused, reaching behind her back as though she could somehow conform the worn-down padding to her contours.
“It’s on the list,” Tony said, working to unlock the crate. “Beef, I got you a vest, but I could not, for the life of me, find a helmet in the entire surplus store that would fit your head. My AI did the measurements based on the resizing Glitch did on that visor you wore last time.”
“It’s all good, man. I’ve got a hard head.”
Tony chuckled, handing him his visor. “Wear this, at least. Best to keep your face off recordings.”
Beef grunted, taking the visor without hesitation. “And it improves my night vision.”
“Do you have retinal implants?” Glitch asked.
Beef shook his head. “Hundred-percent organic eyes, babe.”
Addie snickered, nudging Glitch’s knee with her foot. The netjacker looked at her and lifted her visor, giving her a wink. The gesture made Addie smile, and she wanted to ask Glitch why she didn’t take her visor off more, especially when she was just with “friends,” but for once, she got a grip on her impulsive tongue and just continued smiling.
Meanwhile, Tony was strapping on his new body armor. He’d taken some of the body armor from the Black Talons at Ross’s place—the pieces that hadn’t been ruined by bullets or lightning. He’d come away with almost a complete set, and it was good stuff. Still, it was distinctive, and he’d wanted to modify it, something that required a bit of an investment.
Apparently, the carbon fiber was treated with the laminate in a forging kiln, and Tony had to order special solvents and then high-grade matte black paint to take away the glossy sheen. The men who had been wearing the gear had already gone to the trouble of removing Boxer logos and identifying numbers, but the suits were still quite iconic. After Tony got done with the pieces, though, the gear was very different-looking—dark, no-nonsense, and not a single identifying name, symbol, or number.
As he set the dark helmet with its impenetrable, opaque face shield on the bench between him and Beef, he looked up at the bigger man and said, “Sorry, buddy, I only salvaged one suit of this stuff. None of the pieces would’ve fit you, anyway.”
“Hey man, I ain’t your little bro. You don’t owe me anything.”
“We’re a team, dude.” He reached into the crate and pulled out a very large mesh vest fitted with several armored plates on the front and back. “This will be comfortable, and your AI can link up with it to adjust the plate positioning. They’re meant to cover your vitals. I figure this underneath that fancy duster will serve you pretty well.”
“Ah, shit!” Beef said, taking it. “This is pretty neat stuff. The plates move?”
Tony nodded, pointing. “See the little cables running through the mesh? It’s not bad tech.”
Glitch had been watching Tony strap his armor on, and while Beef took off his jacket, she said, “Tony, you look like a damn storm trooper and you don’t even have that helmet on yet. I wouldn’t want to run into you in a dark alley.”
Tony grinned. “That’s the idea, my dear Witch.” He took a small pack out of the crate and clipped it around his waist. “I’ve got some stims and some emergency nanite injectors.”
Beef, struggling to wriggle into the armored mesh vest, grunted and said, “Cool.” Tony pulled on one side, helping to steady it, and the big man managed to get it over his shoulders.
“Got these too.” Tony reached into the crate and took out a bandolier loaded with grenades—yellow ones that he’d told Addie were concussion and red ones that were “frags.” He lifted a metal ammo can out of the crate. “Loose ones in here. I figured you could put some in your pockets.”
“Damn. Nice.”
“Yeah, well, we got a plan of attack on this place, but we don’t know what kind of resistance to expect. The guys who paid us to break Kwon out were certainly invested in whatever he’s doing, so it’s likely he’s got some security.”
Addie frowned, folding her arms over her chest. “Wish you’d let me come in.”
“Hey,” Tony said, holding up a hand in protest, “you know I’d like to have you close; you’ve already proven you can take out some heavy hitters. But you know how it is; Glitch might need help up here. We don’t know what we’re walking into. Besides, you’ll have Humpty with us.”
Glitch nodded, clearing her throat. “Remember, this guy has friends in more than one corp. If I can’t keep a lid on our little raid, there might be all kinds of trouble coming our way.”
Addie continued to sulk, but she didn’t argue. She knew they were right. Glitch wore a pistol strapped to her thigh, but it was small, and Tony had said it only held a few bullets. Addie, on the other hand, had nearly a hundred rounds of needler ammo and her Dust abilities. If someone tried to break into the van, she could put up a hell of a lot more fight than the netjacker. A thought occurred to her, and she nudged Glitch again with her foot. “Can you, like, hack people—their PAIs?”
Glitch nodded, then shook her head, frowning. “Sort of. I mean, I can, but with my current hardware, it’s slow. I need a stronger wireless jack and a better data port with a dedicated quantum co-processor—if I ever want to use it in an emergency.”
“Huh.” Addie pursed her lips, imagining that. She supposed the co-processor was to run her cracking daemons faster. It was probably pricey gear. She noticed Tony slinging an SMG over his neck and shoulder, letting it hang by his side. “No Shotgun?”
“Who said that?” he asked, pulling the electro-shotgun out of the crate and slinging it over the other shoulder. He also had his pistol in a holster attached to his armored thigh-plate.
Beef glanced down at him, grinning. “We’re going to go hot, aren’t we? Trying to save those fifteen K bits, aren’t you? Hell yeah, man!” He nudged Tony with his elbow, and Addie groaned, swiveling in her chair to watch the van’s progress through the midnight streets of the Blast.
“We’re almost there,” Tony said. His voice sounded different—more harsh than before, almost like it had a metal edge. She looked over her shoulder and saw he had his helmet on. Glitchwitch hadn’t been exaggerating; the armor was very intimidating, especially coupled with Tony’s tall frame and his mechanical arm.
“Take Humpty out of my pack, please.”
Tony nodded, unzipping the yellow bag. They’d spent a few hours at the Ninety-Nine loading Humpty up with Glitch’s software; it was easy to do now that JJ could interface with the drone. Addie could add and remove Glitch’s access privileges immediately and remotely.
Glitch cleared her throat before speaking, “Tony, you might as well get my driftjack out of my case. It’s in the bottom drawer.”
“Right.” Tony leaned over to access Glitch’s big rolling case. Her driftjack would, hopefully, keep any comms from going in or out of the lab. It would jam all the gateways in the area and open an innocuous-seeming one that people’s PAIs and the AIs in local hubs would access while the outage persisted—in theory.
The only hitch was that the lab was located on sublevel eighteen of an abandoned office stack, and there was a good chance that there would be hard-wired connections down that deep. Glitch said there was a fair chance that even physical lines down there would just run up to the building’s antennae, which would be under the influence of the driftjack—a good chance, but not a certainty.
The van’s electric motors quieted as it eased into a debris-filled parking space along the road, two buildings down from the abandoned office stack. Tony must have programmed the spot. “I guess we’re here,” Addie said.
“Yep. Beef and I will stand outside. You put the driftjack in place and give the place a quick scout, but come back here and put up the curtain first. The light is visible for a city block in the dark.” Tony didn’t wait for a reply before opening the back door and hopping down with a clank of equipment.
Beef grunted, pushing himself up so he could stagger, stooping half bent over, to the door and follow him out. It was dark out there. The streetlights were mostly broken, and none of the businesses nearby had anything more than security lamps burning through their grate-covered windows. Addie reached into the crate where Tony kept the cargo blankets and took one out, clipping it to the little hooks he’d screwed to the ceiling.
Meanwhile, Glitch sat on the jump seat and pulled her big case closer, lifting out her data cube and crystal-glass touch pad. Addie flopped down beside her and stretched out her awareness to Humpty. When she slipped into his Dust engine and his sensory input poured into her, she smiled, as usual, and a lot of the dark feelings she’d been having—Tony and Beef were about to kill a bunch of people, weren’t they? Was Tony annoyed with her? He’d seemed short—faded to soft-edged background noise.
She hovered Humpty close to the driftjack, then extended his gravity manipulation field to encompass it. “Okay, Glitch, sending you a link to the front cam feed. Tell me where to put it.”
“Roger. Just fly him up to that antenna cluster on the roof of the main building. I’ll give it a good look.”
Addie sent Humpty burbling out of the van, spying Tony against the nearby building, blending with the shadows. Beef was leaning against the van, also nearly invisible in his black duster. She gave Humpty a nudge, and he sped up, humming through the air toward the abandoned building. It had two sections, one that was only ten stories high and another, narrower one, that stretched up another eighty.
There were antenna arrays on both roofs, but Glitch hadn’t seen any traffic coming through the ones on the tall tower, just the one on the wider, lower roof. It only took Humpty about twenty seconds to arrive, and Glitch said, “See the ones with the red, blinking LEDs? I knew they were using those!”
“I see ’em. Should I—”
“Hang on! Freeze! See the cams? They’re rotating toward Humpty.”
Addie saw them, all right. She zoomed Humpty up and to the right, moving ahead of the rotating camera array. When she was safely in its blind spot, she descended toward the antenna cluster and deposited the driftjack on the roof. “How’s that?” she asked, while waiting for the cameras to cycle past again.
“Perfect, actually. And, I’ve just captured the camera feed. Hah!”
“It’s wireless?” Addie thought it looked like it was hard-wired to the equipment there.
“Yes, it is, which is good news for us. It means the building’s wiring has probably been mostly stripped.”
“So you’ll be able to capture signals from the lab!” Addie launched Humpty back into the air and zoomed him down toward the building’s front entrance.
“Go slow, sis!” Glitch said, tapping furiously on her crystal-glass. “Let me grab as much as I can before you fly in front of the door or windows down there.”
“Okay.” While she waited, Addie subvocalized to Tony, through a private comm channel, “Are you mad about something?”
His voice came back immediately. “Huh? No, why?”
“Oh, you just left kind of abruptly.”
“Nah, I’m just eager to get this done. I… Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve got a bad feeling in my gut. Something feels off. I can’t tell if it's this job or Ross that’s bugging me, though. I don’t think it’s this.”
“Ross?”
“Yeah. Something just feels off. I think we need to check into this Weaver guy a little more before we do his thing, you know? I have a feeling there’s more going on than Ross trying to get a rival off his back.”
“Sure, we can take it slow. If you’re still feeling off, we can give the money back, too. I don’t want to ruin our lives by getting mixed up with some horrible Boxer backstabbing!”
Tony’s voice sounded a little amused, but not in a demeaning way, when he replied, “We’re not gonna let Boxer ruin our lives. Promise.”
“Okay, Ember,” Glitch said. “Scope it out.”
Addie flew Humpty the rest of the way down and paused by the front door, gliding left and right. Humpty’s cams could pick up all sorts of wavelengths, and she ran the gamut, looking for any sign of security through the half-broken glass windows and doors. She saw some slumped, warm figures in there, but they looked to be sleeping. “Some scavs, maybe. Sleeping.”
Taking a deep breath, reminding herself that Humpty was quick and nimble, and she could get him out if something bad were in there, she pushed him forward through a broken window. “Okay, Alpha”—they’d decided to give their two teams designations—“get in position! I’m heading in to scout the route to the elevators and stairs.”
“Roger,” Tony’s voice replied through the team comms. “We’re moving to that derelict bus. Eyes on the front door, waiting for your go, Bravo.”
Comments
Plum Parrot
She needed a new matrix and she got one off screen. It was mentioned in a previous chapter
Robert King
i thought Addies dust engine thing burnt out when she fried the corpo kidnappers? idk i could be misremembering but thought she would need a new one.
Plum Parrot
I swore I attached that PDF! This is driving me crazy! Oh well, fixed now :)
InLucidReverie
Hell yes let's go
maximum0428
Ooh they're being so professional, assigning alpha and bravo squads! This is gonna go well I hope! 😂 At least it doesn't seem they can call for backup now that GlitchWitch owns the antenna Also, GlitchWitch and Beef would be pretty good together too lol, another ship setting sail alongside Addie and Tony? I sure hope so! Also also, pfd pls 😛
