Then:
Well, it beat prison. Maybe.
The elf was wrapped head to toe in ballistic plating, had a big Browning autopistol in his hand and an assortment of bladed weapons magna-locked to his armor. Sometimes his off hand held an axe or a combat knife or a sword, sometimes a ball, sometimes he just used it to reload as fast as he could (which was, according to SPORTSNET: THE SCOREBOARD's broadcast, the second fastest speedload in the league).
Urban Brawl. He got shot at a lot, stabbed a few times, and almost run over by a motorcycle at least a couple times per game.
This was why the doctors had implanted him like they had. This was why he had a cell over in E Block and didn't get yard time unless they wanted him to try out something new. This was why so much of his seven years behind bars had been spent in the E, or in a recovery ward, or under a las-scalpel, or drinking special shakes and eating special foods or working out or drugged or all at once. Something about his record had caught someone's eye, something about his medical files had earned a second glance, something about his luck had kept him alive this long.
Bellevue Correctional Facility worked on rehabilitation, sure. But they also worked on control. He'd been implanted, on a genetic level, with a hunger. A need. A craving. The Novacoke made the itch stop, but it made the other gene-treatments howl in his brain when he stacked everything together. Two hours of an Urban Brawl game stretched out in slow motion to him, time distortion doubled and redoubled by Synch and Move By Wire and adrenaline and Novacoke and Reakt until every match felt like it took days or weeks or months. The crashes after the fact made the week between games feel like years, full of cold and the shakes and a hum-drum, grey, life that held nothing but an ache for more.
The Urban Brawl, leasing him and other inmates out to the Screamers, was just a way to recoup some of the money. The doctors were pleased with his progress, were content with how his life on the razor's edge had fallen together, so they felt like loosing him on the world in order to make some of their money back. They got to show off to other doctors in other facilities, got to write journals about Subject 79 and gene-therapy integration with biogenetic manipulators, got to show off to the warden and get increased budgets...why wouldn't they like him?
So here he was. Signed up to play as a Scout for the Seattle Screamers, running and jumping and shooting motherfuckers in the face under the stage name Snow Falls (who his teammates, when they bothered to talk to him, called Snow Falls Sideways). He kept his big black Browning in one hand, the ball or a blade or a reload in the other, and his pupils were wide and black as sin the whole time. He sweated and shaked and snarled his way from game to game, then felt the rush and the buzz and the jet engines roaring in his skull for two hours, then went back to moaning and wishing for more until his next hit.
It beat prison. Maybe.
"And I'm telling you, I ain't never gettin' locked up." Rourke just had on his wifebeater, armored jacket slung over a chair, preaching to his choir about the wonders of freedom and the dangers of incarceration. "I know what kind of shit goes on in those fucking places. Ain't no trog givin' it to me up the ass."
Cateran knew the last bit, the whole bit, was a joke at his expense. He knew Rourke didn't like him much, knew Rourke looked down on him for having gotten locked up, knew Rourke had some need to make himself feel bigger than the people around him. He ignored it, and kept playing pool. He was used to it; the longer people knew him, the less they liked him.
The elf had stripped off his top layer, too, but where the big adept just had a Predator tucked sloppily into his waistband, Cateran kept on his two-gun rig. His heavy Guardians were snug in their holsters, wrapped around his rumpled white shirt, his sleeves were rolled up and collar undone against the heat, his black suit jacket and tie hanging off a spare cue over on the rack by the wall. He pocketed another ball as Rourke's cronies laughed and raised glasses and shot him scornful looks.
Pool was so, so, easy now. Sinking balls was like pulling triggers, but with less mess.
"But seriously, you guys want to know the worst thing about killing a bunch of Chinese guys?" Rourke said, all stubble and bad breath, yellow teeth and surrounded by a flock of wannabes. "You just want to do it again in a couple of hours!"
It had been a couple of hours, and they'd dispersed around Rourke's favorite old bar after chatting with Mr. Johnson and handing over the file. Angel was in a booth near the back with his 'link plugged in, but no one knew if the hacker was scouring the Matrix for news reports like he always said, or just running a BTL. Cateran knew which way he'd bet. Sleepy was at the bar, flirting with someone he probably didn't know had started this life as a man. Carni was, all of a sudden, blocking the light for Cateran's next shot.
"Score! Eight double-doses of Enn Cee!" She giggled, throwing her hands up in the air, light catching the razors, the spur ports. When she slapped her hands down on the torn green felt of the stained old pool table, an assortment of slap patches scattered across the felt. A local dealer's stylized sun, his personal Novacoke logo, glowed softly on the flimsy wrappers around each patch. "I told you I'd get us a good price!"
Cateran blew a little smoke in her direction to back her up a step, banked a shot off the far side of the table to avoid her mess, and nodded.
"Ye suck dick better'n I do," he grinned sourly. She'd lie to him about just how good a deal, he knew, and keep a little on the side for herself. Fuck her, anyways.
"I didn't hear you complaining earlier," she snatched up the patches and pocketed half, sashayed over to his jacket to slip the other half into a pocket for him. "When it was yours being sucked."
The elf scowled, eyes on his jacket, those pockets, and her hands; not her ass, the way half the bar was. She produced his pack of smokes from his jacket and held up his lighter, trying to give him a pouty, flirty, look. All her own shit, her gunbelt and her sleeve-torn jacket and her own pack of cigarettes were hanging from the wall not ten feet away, but she'd rummaged in his pockets instead, just to try and show she could.
"Can I suck on something else?" Someone over by the bar almost choked on his beer.
"No," Cateran said, suddenly standing a hair's-breadth from her in less time than it took his pool cue to clatter to the ground, her wrist caught in his hand. "At least nae somethin' of mine."
For a second, her chromed eyes widened, then narrowed, and he thought about going for one of his guns or her throat. She thought about it, too, but then she shrugged and her eyes went half-lidded and catty.
"Fine," she said, and he let her wrist slip out of his grasp. He put his smokes away and ignored her as she stomped off, peering into the pack before he tucked them back into a pocket. "Your loss, prison bitch."
That got another laugh from Rourke and his crew, who Cateran knew wouldn't have survived, wouldn't have stayed sane, through a tenth of what he had in Bellevue Correctional. He stooped to pick up his cue and went back to his one-man pool game, mood dark. He took one of the slap patches with him. He hadn't had any Novacoke since in their shooter's nest, which wasn't doing his amiable demeanor any favors.
The night passed. Carni went upstairs a few times, with a few guys. Angel sat in the corner and fucked his commlink. Sleepy went upstairs with his new girl, and Cateran wondered just how new at being a girl she was. Rourke kept up his bullshit -- "...so I told her, 'Yeah it's big, baby, but don't worry, Chinese bitches don't feel pain like people do!' And then it was rape time! Haw haw haw!" -- until his audience drifted out, and soon enough they had the greasy dive to themselves.
Cateran sighed as he sank the eight ball on his millionth solo game. He spat a chewed-up wad of Betel gum into the pocket after it; he was done playing. It was time to go to work.
He slipped his coat on and sauntered over to the bar next to Sleepy. Cateran leaned and reached over, getting a giggle from Carni somewhere behind him thanks to his kilt flaring up, emerging from behind the bar with a bottle of whiskey. It would suck, but so did this job. He'd drained the silver flask full of good single-malt hours ago and tucked the empty thing back into his sporran, it was time for a fresh drink.
He rummaged carelessly for his smokes, tugged out the pack of Targets, thumbed them open. He gave the pack a little jostle to flick a few cigarettes out, then offered one to Sleepy as he thumbed his lighter to life.
Geek the mage first.
The fat fuck made it halfway to the filter before the laes-laced tobacco tumbled him from his chair, out cold. The sound of Sleepy's head thumping onto the wood floor sat Angel up to blink bloodshot eyes and look around, made Rourke sit upright and try to see through a haze of beer and Bliss, widened Carni's chrome eyes. Cateran stood up from his stool, grim-faced.
The elf's Guardians leapt into his hands like magic, and even as one black-on-chrome gun swung lazily down to put a pair of explosive rounds into Sleepy's drugged form, Cateran's right arm thrust out at Angel like the finger of an angry god. Cateran had spent almost ten years inside, and didn't know fee-fie-fiddly-fuck-all about how commlinks really worked, what they could and couldn't do, and Angel had set up the firewalls and other shit for him anyways; he didn't want any tricks, so the decker got it next. The Guardian roared and a burst tore the hacker's skull apart and painted the wall behind him a sickly shade of red, spattered with grey and bits of electronics.
His left gun swung over towards the razorgirl, his right the adept. The guncam mini-screen showed him Carni double over and fall backwards as two EX-slugs tore into and through her dermal sheathing to send her tumbling to the ground. Rourke twisted as he was shot, too, but the adept managed to keep his feet and flail his arms a bit.
Cateran swung both guns over, squeezing the triggers as he did. Betel and Novacoke and Synch and Reakt all stacked on top of one another, making his eyes catch the flash of chrome and the way the light fell along the front and rear slide serrations, marveling at the gorgeous amber color of Rourke's hastily thrown mug of beer as it sailed overhead, watching the way his shots tore through the adept's upturned table, bits of detritus going flying. He pumped shot after shot into that splintering, shattering, slab of cheap polymer even as his attention slipped away to watch how the bowl of peanuts had scattered, trying to make out some pattern in the random tumbling of salted snacks.
Somewhere behind him, finally, the stool he'd kicked away two lifetimes ago hit the ground.
Blood seeped out from behind the table, but Cateran sauntered over and kicked the ruins of it away to get a clear finishing shot. Rourke coughed red and tried to muster up the strength to flip him off, so the elf shot him in the head twice, point blank. He'd never really liked the guy, so he kept going even after that. He squeezed triggers until his slides locked back and ammunition warnings blinked into life over his field of vision, leaving the loudmouth's chest a red ruin.
"Aye." He spat his cigarette onto the mass of hamburger where lungs and a heart used to be. "Ye're ne'er gettin' locked up, ye fuck."
Cateran sent a mental command to shove aside the empty magazine pop-up messages, but a hair too late. Lunging at him from behind them, Carni slashed and swiped with razors and spurs, snarling in anger and pain as she tried to gut him.
Cateran swayed from side to side, fighting instincts and habits and half-remembered commands from skillwires he hadn't slotted that day. Her second-generation reflex chips just weren't fast enough to keep up with him. They'd seen to that. He twisted and leaned, half-spun, got his guns up to catch on her wrists and elbows and forearms, diverting her blows just enough, every time. She swiped and thrust at his centerline, every attack a killing shot, and he just got out of their way and sighed in exasperation. While she flailed and slashed and bled, he got an idea.
He slipped away from her last slash a little too slowly, and razored nails sliced the sleeves of his suit coat to ribbons and drew lines of blood from the backs of his forearms. A split-second later one black-and-chrome Guardian slammed into her temple, just near her datajack, to stagger her and buy him half a second. He stretched it out because time didn't work for him like it did other people, and by the time she blinked and shook her head he was halfway across the bar with two tables in her way.
"Wait," he said, both guns twirling in flashes of chrome and suddenly holstered. He held his hands up at her, ignoring how the blood was pouring from the slashes in his arm because it's not like he felt it anyways. "Jus' fuckin' wait!"
That and the holes in her belly bought him long enough to keep talking.
"Everyone'll blame ye," he said, eyes on hers. "Since Vore an' his bitch. They know what ye did, why ye did it. They saw ye flirtin' wi' me earlier, saw me turn ye down."
He saw her chrome eyes narrow, saw her skilled little tongue swipe at her lips.
"If ye live, they'll blame ye. All th'bastards in here earlier, kissin' Rourke's ass. Everyone that heard 'bout you an' Vore, everyone that Sleepy owed money to." He ignored another popup in his cyberoptic display, kept his voice firm, flicked his gaze towards the back door pointedly. "They'll blame ye. Ye'll die either way. Juggler'll see tae tha', an' ye know it."
"So run. Jus' go. Ye get a new name, a new face, an' murder stupid cunts somewhere else. Ye go now, or ye'll die slow."
She looked him in the eyes, saw how much he meant it. She went.
Cateran slumped his shoulders, tired but too strung out to actually feel it. He strolled back over to the bar to right the stool he'd knocked over. Blood dribbled freely from his slashed-up arms and his biomonitor chirped in his ear, annoying him, so he did his best to keep himself hydrated with the whiskey bottle. Three Knight-Errant squad cars rolled up in front and uniforms got out to storm the entrance, then a pair of officers came in from out back, too. The backdoor patrol was still alive, which meant Carni'd gotten away without them spotting her. Good.
The elf leaned against the bar, drinking from the bottle as he bled all over the countertop. A woman in a suit sauntered in behind the guns-drawn patrolmen, ignoring them as they stomped around in their uniforms and shouted 'clear' and muttered 'oh my god' under their breath. Cateran gave her a cheery toast, splashing a bit of whiskey from the bar as he slapped it down; it mingled with the blood, his and others', but she didn't spare it a second glance.
"Excellent work, Mr. MacGregor," his parole officer said, her high heels carrying her through the mess unscathed. "Once facial recognition pinged their Mr. Johnson for us, the file was recovered quite handily."
He ignored her to light up, but like always, the bitch kept talking. Idly, he wondered if the scotch was high enough proof to burn or if he'd mixed too much blood with it.
"Triad and Yakuza forces lost a number of soldiers today, a classified Wuxing file is secure in Ares hands, and an assortment of unsavory criminals are off the streets. Knight Errant, the justice system, and the people of Seattle thank you for your efficiency."
She bared her corp-perfect teeth at him in something that was meant to be a smile but wasn't. He hated her suit, hated her curves beneath it, hated how she owned him. Hated her. Hated himself. He took another drink as one of the uniforms came scurrying over and spoke to her.
"Mr. MacGregor, where's the last one?" Her perfectly groomed eyebrow arched just enough to make it clear it was a demand, not really a question. Her shark-smile was gone.
"Portland. Or LA. Or Denver." He shrugged, bled, and took another drink. "Did'nae ye hear? Somethin' set her off, maybe tae much coke. Th'crazy bitch slashed me up, then went an' killed her whole crew before she lef' town. I won' be needin' a new face or name. This time."
All you have to control is the person writing up the incident report. She gave him a cool stare, and since she didn't order anyone to cuff him or shoot him, he assumed his logic made up for his impertinence. Fuck her, either way. He tossed the half-full bottle to shatter on the bar's floor and spill out with everything else.
"Th'sole survivor, I am. I'm jus' lucky, I guess."
It beat prison. Maybe.