Chapter 2: HomeComing
The guns lay on the floor until dawn, a dormant constellation of bad decisions. I didn’t sleep. I watched the neon bleed across the ceiling and felt the panic of my siblings like a hum in my teeth. My mother’s drunken stupor was a black, silent hole in the corner.
By first light, the decision was a cold stone in my gut. I couldn’t keep them. But I wouldn’t get ripped off.
I chose the Militech Crusher. It was the most common of the three, less likely to be instantly recognized as stolen from some corp agent’s private collection. I wrapped it in a grease-stained rag from under the sink and tucked it into my waistband. The weight was alien, a tectonic shift in my reality. The duffle with the other two pieces I shoved into a crevice above the ceiling panel, a space known only to me and the roaches.
The streets were morning-quiet, the hungover calm after the nightly storm. The rain had stopped, leaving the air tasting of wet metal and decay. The prawn shop wasn’t a store for seafood; it was a pawn shop run by a weasel-faced man, its sign missing the ‘P’ so long ago no one remembered it had ever been there. It was a place where things disappeared into glass cases and credsticks exchanged hands with no questions asked. Usually.
The buzzer grated as I pushed inside. The air was thick with the smell of lemon-scented disinfectant failing to mask the odor of dust, despair, and old circuit boards. He was behind the scarred plexiglass counter, polishing a second-hand optical implant with a dirty cloth. He didn’t look up.
“We’re not buying scrap today, kid. Try the yard.”
His dismissal was a lazy wave of emotion, boredom tinged with mild disgust. I was just part of the scenery, another piece of Heywood driftwood.
I stopped in front of the counter. I said nothing. The silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable, until it pried his eyes from the implant.
He looked at me properly then. Saw my too-thin frame, my clean, chrome-free temples, the weariness that wasn’t just from a single night. His lip curled. “I said beat it. You’re blocking the light.”
I reached slowly for my waistband. His boredom sharpened into alertness, a spike of concrete focus. I saw his hand drift beneath the counter, probably toward a panic button or a sawed-off.
I placed the rag-wrapped bundle on the counter with a solid, metallic thunk. Unfolded the corners slowly.
The black steel of the Crusher gleamed under the shop’s sickly fluorescent lights.
Rizzo’s breath hitched. The disgust vanished, replaced by a calculating avarice so sharp I could taste it, coppery and warm. He didn’t touch it. His eyes darted from the gun to my face, reassessing everything.
“Where’d a clean-skin like you get a piece like that?” he asked, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. The fake concern was a poorly-woven blanket. Underneath, his mind was spinning numbers, risks, profits.
“Does it matter?” My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“It does if it’s hot. Which it is.Corp issue. Serial’s probably burned into a database halfway to Tokyo.” He leaned forward, his breath smelling of synth-coffee and cheap nicotine. “You walk in here with this, you’re painting a target on my back, kid. For that kind of risk… I can do five hundred eddies.”
Five hundred. It was insulting. It was a month’s rent in our coffin. It was also about a tenth of its street value, maybe less. His offer was a probe, to see if I was as stupid as I looked.
I looked at him. Not at his face, but at the tightness around his eyes, the greedy pulse in his throat, the slight flush on his neck. He was lying, but more than that, he was excited. He saw a mark. A zero-chrome nobody he could fleece and then maybe report to the nearest gang for a finder’s fee after I left. The emotional calculus was clear and ugly.
I rewrapped the gun. The sound of the rag scraping on steel was loud in the quiet shop.
“Whoa, whoa, kid. Easy.” His concern turned performative, slick. “Look, it’s dangerous.For you. I’m trying to help. A thousand.Final offer. That’s more than you’ll see in a year.”
I picked up the bundle and turned toward the door.
“Wait!” The anger now, hot and jagged. His plan was unraveling. “You walk out with that, you’re dead before sunset! Some scav’ll gut you for it in an alley. You think you can handle this world? I see you. You’re nothing. You’re null. Be smart for once in your life.”
The word hung in the air. Null. It was the unspoken name the street had for me. To hear it from his mouth, now, with the cold weight of the Crusher against my hip, changed something. It solidified the stone in my gut.
I glanced back at him. “I already am being smart,” I said, my voice flat. “I’m leaving.”
The buzzer grated again as I stepped into the damp, smoggy air. My heart was hammering against my ribs. I’d expected the lowball. I hadn’t expected the sheer, predatory glee behind it. He wasn’t just a businessman; he was a vulture, and he’d marked me as carrion.
I made it three blocks, threading through the growing morning foot traffic, the gun a burning brand against my skin. My old hand-comm, a cracked slab of plastic and obsolete circuitry, buzzed in my pocket. An unknown sender.
The message was text only, a string of characters that meant nothing. But appended to it was a single, clear line:
Ice flooded my veins. I stopped walking, the world narrowing to the glowing text. They knew. Not just Rizzo. They.The owners. They’d found the stash. They’d let me walk away from the apartment. Why?
A delivery drone whined overhead, its shadow passing over me like a shroud. The answer came, cold and simple.Bait. They were watching. Waiting to see who I’d meet, where I’d run.
The duffle was a death sentence. My family was in that apartment. Lita, Tommy, the others. The panic wasn’t just mine now; it was a future image, a premonition of chrome-plated boots kicking in our door.
I started to run. Not home. That would lead them right there. I cut into a service alley, my breaths coming in ragged gasps, the taste of the city’s filth sharp on my tongue. I had to move. I had to think. But the only thought was the relentless, digital ping of the tracer, a heartbeat leading a storm right to my door.