2099: Serenity

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Several weapons later Yuki gave Alec an exasperated look. “Right now all you’re doing is wasting my ammo.” She shook her head. “Tell me what it is you’ve got coming up for you next, and I’ll tell you what I have that might help you out.”

“Brick.”

Nodding, with one eyebrow raised, she leaned over one of the counters, and pulled out a small black box. “Most people would use this lovely thing with their augs, but you…” In one swift movement she had her hand in his pocket, pulling out his phone. He was one of the few people who still had one. Most other people relied on their augs to tell them everything they needed to know, but he’d never wanted to be that attached to everything, so he kept his distance from all that with his phone. People looked at him strangely when they realized how hard he held onto his humanity. They didn’t understand his choices. “These are going to work well enough together.”

After pressing a couple of buttons Yuki passed the phone back to Alec. When he looked down at the screen the box was showing him Yuki’s face. “A camera?”

“You know me better than to think I’m just giving you a camera.” She looked up at the ceiling, one eye closed, and stepped over to specific point. “Give me a boost.”

Studying her, certain he wasn’t going to need a camera of any kind, he made his way over and lifted her up to the ceiling. Knowing her, she would have had a way to reach that spot even if he wasn’t there. “Okay, so what is it I’m looking at?” Alec glanced down at his phone again, seeing an empty room. On one side there was a mirror. “This isn’t exactly interesting.”

“Be patient.” Yuki poked him in the arm. “I thought you were good at waiting.”

Minutes later someone walked into the small room, and that someone was a woman, holding onto several hangers of clothing. That was something that hadn’t changed. Even with all the easy ways of buying whatever they wanted people still liked to try things on before they bought them. Biting down hard on his lip, he watched as the woman pulled off her top, revealing the fact she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, looking over at Yuki, who smiled at him. “Boost?”

Doing just that, Alec looked up at the camera. “You’ve got a lot of concrete between you and that shop, right?”

“About three feet.”

“The camera just ignores that?”

“Pretty much.” Yuki held it out to him. “I thought, considering what you’re doing, this would be something you could be much more productive with than I am.”

Grateful for her thoughtfulness Alec took the camera, smiling. “Thank you.”

She bounced back over to the counter. “You don’t want to be forgetting your ammo.” She pulled out a box. “I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

Stepping over to her, Alec took the box, the camera already in one of his pockets. “What do I owe you?”

“Let’s just call it even on the ammo, and the camera… $600. It’s worth more than that, but for you…” She grinned. “I like it when my favorite customers take away something that they’re going to get a lot of use out of. I hope you have just as much fun with it as I have.”

“How about this instead?”

Yuki studied him as he pulled an old film case out of his pocket and held it out to her. For a moment all she did was stare at him like she didn’t quite believe what he was doing. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Do you really think I’d offer you something other than that?”

Grinning, she took the case. “That covers it.” She pressed another button. “Go, and get the guy at Brick. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”

Taking a moment to watch her pull the tab out, and put it into her eye, Alec smiled. She gave him one last smile before she walked through what appeared to be a part of the wall, but he knew there was a hidden room back there. Pocketing the ammo, he made his way out of the shop. Once he was outside the door closed behind him with another grinding of gears, and then, sobering, he made sure Spike was fully loaded. There was no way for him to have any idea what might be coming next, especially considering what Yuki had told him about the Scorpion Gang. He knew of them. Everyone knew of them. They were mostly a waste of time not worth bothering about, unless they managed to do something totally stupid, but with them making the decision to go into hunting… well, things were going to get interesting.

Feeling as ready as he was ever going to be, Alec walked back through the streets of the city, not bothering to look up to see the sun barely managing to force some light through the smog. He thought of a time when the human race had cared about what it was they were doing to their planet, but that had all faded away with the beginning of the mega corps, and everything that had been was gone. Including the majority of humanity. As far as he knew, he was the only bounty hunter who was still entirely human. Most of the people he’d been friends with back when he first started out had slowly become less and less who they had been before, with their growing number of augmentations, and that was something he would never do. Shaking his head, he focused instead on what he needed to be doing. Getting into Brick would be easy enough. Getting out with his target was going to be the complicated part.

Shaking his head, knowing he always worked best if he didn’t over think what he was going to be doing before he even got into the building, Alec stepped into the lot he’d left his ship. Everyone knew who he was, so they would hit his ship if they thought they were going to be able to get at him that way, and he’d made certain anyone who tried that was going to regret it, because it wasn’t as though he hadn’t seen what could happen to hunters who weren’t careful enough. One of his first mentors had died in their ship. It had been his own stupid fault. He hadn’t been careful enough, even though all hunters made enemies. It was a part of the job. Anyone who got into hunting knew that the likelihood was the majority of the other hunters were going to hate them if they were successful, which would lead to someone trying to kill them, and if something went wrong then someone would be trying to kill them. Sometimes he wondered why he’d made the decision to walk the path he had… until he remembered what his other options were.

Hatchwater had been the only thing he’d inherited from his family. It was an old ship, one that most would have already replaced, but then they’d also replaced their humanity with something ‘better’. Alec ran his hand over the metal, tapping a code into his phone as he stepped onto the ramp leading him to the door. When he stepped through the door he found another body. Sighing, more amused than anything, he grabbed the body and tossed it off the ship. Someone else could deal with it. It was their own stupid fault for thinking that it was possible for anyone who wasn’t him, or an invited guest, to get onto his ship, simply because it looked like it was going to be an easy thing to do. It wasn’t. Any i***t would have known that if they’d stopped to think, because they knew who he was.

With the body sorted Alec stepped over to the console. Tapping in another code, one that confirmed it was him, the engine started to whir. “Good morning, Alec.” The ship’s voice was the same it had been when he was a child. At times he thought he should change it, but it was a good reminder of why he didn’t need to make the same mistakes other people had. “Where is it we’re heading to?”

“These coordinates.” He tapped them into the console. “We’re going to need to be quiet and careful. You know the drill.”

“I do.” The ship lifted from the ground. “I know those coordinates as an area of Brick space. Are you sure what you’re doing is safe?”

“My job is never safe, Hatchwater.” Alec smiled. “You don’t need to worry about me. I will be fine.”

“Yes, you’ve said that before and then come back in the most terrible of states.” The way the ship spoke it was almost possible to see a woman standing in front of him shaking her head. “I hope that doesn’t happen this time.”

Alec laughed. “Life would be much less enjoyable without you in it.” He took a seat. “How long until we leave the atmosphere?”

“Get yourself comfortable now as it will only be a few seconds. There are some signs that we might be followed.”

“Now that is a surprise.” He shook his head. “None of them are going to be able to take on Brick, but, of course, they’re going to believe they can take me on. Take my target.” He belted himself in. “It’s not going to happen, and yet they keep seeing me as this weakling who’s going to make a stupid mistake.”

“People make their choices based on the information they have in front of them, and more often than not that is affected by the feelings of the people sharing it. We both know that there are those who are talking about you because of certain things that happened in the past, which means they assume that you are going to make the ‘same’ mistakes. Only that wasn’t your mistake in the first place. It was the mistake of someone else, and your choice to cover for them is what led to this.”

“He’s a friend, Hatchwater, and it was important to me that he didn’t feel the weight of this mess on his shoulders. I can cope with it. He wouldn’t be able to.”

“Sometimes, Alec, I think the biggest mistakes you’ve ever made have all had something to do with your connections to other people, which are something we both know make you weak. If you were to simply take a step back, everything would be simpler.”

“Maybe it would, but I give a damn about people, and that’s not going to change. I will make this work out eventually. It’s just going to take some time. Giving it that time isn’t going to affect me that much.”

“Except now you’re dealing with those fools.” The ship sounded amused. “Just promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want someone else to own me, because we both know what would happen. I’m not worth anything to anyone else.”

“Yuki would take you in. She knows what you mean to me, Hatchwater.” He shrugged. “I made her promise me she wouldn’t scrap you, and she looked almost excited, as you’d be a new challenge for her. I can just imagine what she’s going to do to you if she ever does get her hands on you.”

“I’m not certain I would work well as the war machine she would want me to be, but then maybe being owned by someone else would change the way I view the world. There’s no way of knowing until it happens, and I will keep hoping it doesn’t, as I would prefer to stay your ship.”