Chromed- Rogue Read online

  Chromed: Rogue

  A Cyberpunk Adventure Epic

  Richard Parry

  Contents

  Company People

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About the Author

  Also by Richard Parry

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  EXCERPT: CHROMED: RESTORE

  The Beginning of the End

  Chapter One

  CHROMED: ROGUE copyright © 2018 Richard Parry.

  Cover design copyright © 2018 Mondegreen.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13 paperback: 978-0-9951148-7-6

  ISBN-13 ebook: 978-0-9951148-4-5

  Chromed: Upgrade and its sequel Chromed: Rogue are a loving remaster of the original Upgrade.

  No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. Piracy, much as it sounds like a cool thing done at sea with a lot of, “Me hearties!” commentary, is a dick move. It gives nothing back to the people who made this book, so don’t do it. Support original works: purchase only authorized editions.

  While we’re here, what you’re holding is a work of fiction created by a professional liar. It is not done in an edgy documentary style with recovered footage. Pretty much everything in here was made up by the author so you could enjoy a story about the world being saved through action scenes and witty dialog. No people were used as templates, serial numbers filed off for anonymity. Any resemblance to humans you know (alive) or have known (dead) is coincidental.

  Want updates from Richard Parry? Sign-up and get a welcome bundle at https://www.mondegreen.co/get-on-the-list/.

  Find out more about Richard Parry at mondegreen.co

  Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

  For Arran, who loves this bittersweet universe above all others.

  Company People

  There was a time when coming to this part of Seattle wouldn’t get you shot. Lace hadn’t had a promotion in years. Her home stagnated along with her salary. Harry wasn’t sure how she made it home each day, but maybe there were still enough people who wouldn’t gun down a woman in a wheelchair.

  What used to be tree-lined boulevards slumped into scraggly wooden skeletons. Harry thought the dead trees looked like they could use some company but had been planted too far apart to huddle together for warmth. He didn’t want to stick around for long.

  He clanked across the street, the sound of horns coming loud and fast to his right. Harry swiveled his torso, raising a metal middle finger to the driver of a low-slung combi van. The van was coated in graffiti. Hard to tell whether it was intentional, or the owner made the mistake of leaving it outside one night. The driver looked on, wide-eyed, at Harry and the cart he hauled behind him.

  It might have been surprising seeing a company total conversion dragging shovels.

  Harry made the dubious safety of the sidewalk. Despite the shitsville state of the neighborhood, the link worked fine. Fine enough that Lace’s sighs and general tone of derision made it loud and clear. He cleared his throat. “What I don’t get is why the big man was so convinced Mason would be in contact.”

  “With you.” Lace spoke slowly and clearly, like she was trying to teach a chicken algebra. He knew she’d be eye-rolling. “That he’d be in contact with you.”

  “Yeah.” Harry held back a sigh of his own. Won’t help. “That.”

  “Gairovald’s right.”

  “You would take the boss’s side. Carter been in touch?” Harry’s overlay showed he was nearly at his destination. He remembered a small townhouse, fence bright and green back when he still had a real body that could feel the sun. Harry hadn’t been invited here in five years. Time to change that.

  “She said she’d lost Mason.” Lace sounded surprised, like someone managed to turn lead into gold. “Can you believe that?”

  “No, not for a minute.”

  “You don’t think she said that?”

  “I don’t think Carter’s lost Mason.” Harry’s chassis wound down, the massive four-meter high bulk of it slowing with engineered precision as he arrived. The townhouse was where it should be, but the fence sagged. Only flakes of faded green paint remained, clinging on like an old man’s memory. The front gate had gone, lost in the intervening time he hadn’t been welcome. A fine drizzle of rain overlaid the scene.

  “I…” Lace’s voice cracked like an eggshell.

  “It’s okay, Lace. I know they’re watching you.”

  The link hissed for a moment. “Yeah. They watch all the time. They’re assholes.”

  “We used to do that job.”

  “Be an asshole?”

  “If that’s what it takes. When someone goes off the rails, you need people who can pull the pieces back together.” Harry reached out a big mechanical hand, the hiss of hydraulics vying against the street noise. A piece of the rotted fence fell, flaking into the dead flower bed behind it. “That was us. We were that team.”

  They used to be such beautiful flowers. Harry remembered seeing a bee, a real live bee here at the edge of the city. He’d been sipping a mojito, the sun making him sweat almost as much as the frosted glass. He looked at his metal hand, remembering his flesh and blood. The overlay dropped a wireframe on his new limb, telling him it was in perfect working order.

  Perfect working order. He hadn’t had a mojito or broken a sweat in five years. Harry felt he worked, but maybe not lived.

  “Pieces?” Lace’s voice was almost a whisper. “That’s what we did? Picked up the pieces?”

  “Yeah. One second.” Harry cut the link audio, tearing the fence down. He caught the action of a guy up the block. Harry waited as the man jogged closer.

  He was average height. Above average concern, his brows furrowing into a thin line. He looked the type to start some shit, if Harry was a normal like him. He stared into Harry’s optics, struggling for the right thing to say. He settled on, “Uh.”

  “Hi.” Harry’s PA amplified his voice too much in the real. He turned it down. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Uh.”

  “Help you?” Harry relaxed as much as the chassis would let him, crouching low, trying to look smaller. This guy had cojones the size of melons to come up to him, and Harry liked that in a neighbor. Especially Lace’s neighbor.

  “We don’t…” The guy’s off-the-rack shirt stuck to him, the rain’s drizzle adding mugginess to the day’s sins. The shirt looked hand-me-down, maybe used by someone else before it got to its current owner. “We don’t get a lot of your kind here.”

  “Sure.” Harry paused, swiveling his torso to take in a forming crowd. “What’s your point?”

  “Uh. See, she’s not home, and I kind of try to keep an eye out.” His
eyes darted to the Apsel falcon on Harry’s chassis. “I’m sorry about this, but I have to ask. Why are you here?”

  “It’s okay.” Harry wondered what Mason would say. “I’m just here to … make it right.”

  “Make it right?” The man laughed, but there wasn’t any trace of humor in the sound. “How can you do that? There’s not much left.”

  “I know.” Harry held up his metal arm. “These are strong. Stronger than anything I used to have. I can put them to work.” He extended his hand. “I’m Harry Fuentes. We used to … I work for the Federate.”

  The man reached out, tentative, trying to work out how to shake Harry’s massive hand. He settled for wrapping his palm around a couple of Harry’s fingers. “Julio. Man, I’m pleased to meet you. She’ll be pleased to see you. No one from the Federate comes down here anymore.”

  “Julio, you’re one brave motherfucker. Brave, or dumb as a box of rocks.”

  “Yeah.” A smile worked its way onto Julio’s face. It looked like it belonged there, like he’d been wanting an excuse to smile all week. “That’s what my old lady says too.”

  “Great. I understand. Look, I’m going to…” Harry trailed off, looking at the cart beside him. How did you explain fixing a fence as a way to mend the hollowness in your gut?

  “Sure.” Julio smiled again. “You need anything, you ask.”

  Harry watched as Julio walked away, the crowd drifting with him. The overlay did quick ID scans of people’s faces, dragging information from the link. When it finished, he knew who they were, and where they lived. The link told him everything except why they were here.

  He turned it off. Harry didn’t need the uplink. As soon as he cut it off, it snapped back on. He would have sighed, but it wasn’t worth the static.

  “What are you doing, and why have you shut me out of your link?” Lace sounded brittle, anger vying with concern. “I’m only getting audio from you. It’s like you’ve fallen off the edge of the world.”

  Edge of the world. “Something like that,” said Harry. “Just a little personal business.”

  “You don’t have personal business.” The link snarled, hissing and popping. “I’m getting interference.”

  “I’m not shopping, if that’s what you’re asking.” Harry stamped into the yard, scanning the dead grass and blasted plants. A small lemon tree clung to life near the front door beside where the steps used to be. A ramp leaned there now, because Lace couldn’t use stairs. Not after what Harry had done.

  “You still do that job, don’t you?” asked Lace.

  “Which job?”

  “Being an asshole.”

  “What is it about my personal business that interests you so much?”

  “I don’t mean to pry. But what could you possibly need?”

  “Something I’m not going to tell you about.”

  “People here are getting nervous.” The overlay said Lace’s voice carried stress markers.

  “No, they’re not,” said Harry. “And if they are, you can tell them to fuck off.”

  “How do you know they’re not getting nervous?”

  “Because I’m online and haven’t left the city. Geofencing would have triggered. I’m not anywhere near Mason. If there was a risk I’d bump into him, city CCTV would have got him first. We’d know what underwear he had on today. The Federate has bigger things to worry about than my personal business.”

  “If it’s not shopping, what is it?”

  Harry shut down the link. It’d taken him a little while to find the right tools, ones that he could hold and use like the man he used to be. It’d taken him longer to do that without Lace working out what he was up to.

  She wasn’t stupid.

  He pulled the cart into the yard, hooking a piece of digging equipment up to his chassis. Finding farming equipment with the same mounts as Apsel combat hardware hadn’t been as hard as he’d thought. Some bean counter in Finance had embarked on a standardization program years back, making “industrial” the same thing as “military.” It was a mistake that cost millions, but there were still a few pieces of industrial equipment in warehouses. It’d just been a matter of getting them delivered without anyone noticing.

  Carter probably knew where he was. She knew a lot more than she let on. She hadn’t said anything to Lace, though.

  The reactor on his back hummed as he turned the cracked earth over. The fans in the chassis kicked in, venting heat out the back as he shifted dirt. He built a pile of dead foliage, flowers that used to be red or blue now a uniform dry, brittle brown.

  There weren’t any bees. Not anymore.

  Harry returned to the trailer. The plants in the back were the best he could find. And hell, at least they were alive. He looked at his metal hands, then at the plants.

  Shit. It’s not like he was built for delicacy.

  Julio stood at the fence line, holding beer in a generic brown bottle. No syndicate branding. Home brewed, maybe. If so, it was flat-out illegal. There weren’t any yeasts left that weren’t under patent. “How’s it going?”

  Harry swiveled. “So-so. What do you think?”

  “Very … flat,” offered Julio. “You want a hand?”

  “I couldn’t ask that of you.” Harry’s chassis hummed. “It’s my problem.”

  Julio set his bottle down at the crumbling fence line. “Hey, company man. I’m not a charity. I’m hoping I help you here, you help me out too.” He pulled a plant from the cart, glancing at Harry’s hands. “Didn’t think it through, did you?”

  “Not this part,” said Harry. “The rain stopped, so I figured it might be safe to try planting something again.”

  “It’s okay. You get started on the fence.”

  “Thanks.” Harry clanked around the fence line, tearing posts from the ground, crumbling concrete yielding from the earth. Once the old supports were gone, he hefted a posthole digger from the cart, working his way around the property. Each point where the overlay suggested the optimal place to dig, he hunched, the chassis bracing. Pneumatic rams in his arms fired. Each hole was perfectly carved, cut instantly into the dirt.

  Sometimes being less than a man made things easier. But only sometimes.

  Julio and Harry worked throughout the day. Harry did the hard, heavy things. Julio helped with the delicate jobs, occasionally heading off to get more beer. By the time they were finished, the day had turned to dusk, light failing under hard gray clouds.

  Harry put equipment into the trailer before turning to Julio. “Thanks.”

  Julio shrugged. “Think nothing of it. She deserves it.”

  “Yeah, she does. Thanks anyway.”

  “Doesn’t look done yet.” Julio spoke with the expert air of a man who’d dug more than one garden.

  “No. She’s on the clock. Double shifts. Won’t be home for a while.”

  Julio nodded. “You’ve still got time, then.”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “What about you?”

  “I got everything I need.” Julio sighed. “I’m pretty sure—”

  “You said I could help you out,” interrupted Harry. “You probably weren’t thinking about me keeping quiet.”

  “Quiet?”

  “The illegal beer.”

  “There’ll be another time, Harry.” Julio laughed. “But you did help me.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah.” Julio retrieved his bottle as he walked out of the yard. “Because you helped her. That’s how it works.”

  “Around here?”

  “No, it’s how it works everywhere. You company people? You’ve just forgotten.”

  Harry watched him go. He checked what they’d achieved in Lace’s garden. Dusk made shadows of everything, but he could imagine what it would look like when the sun returned. It wasn’t much. It sure as hell was what she had had before.

  He fired up the chassis’ lamps. Plenty more needed doing, but what he and Julio had done today was a start.

  Chapter One

  Fixing Richl
and? Impossible. But Sadie hoped fixing Richland enough so they could get a tiny sip of power was possible. With a reactor meltdown in the heart of a nest of monsters, it was unlikely to be prime real estate anytime soon. They needed enough power for the little things.

  “I don’t get why we’re out here.” Haraway kicked a stone, sending it skipping away. “It’s late. There are zombies.”

  “They’re not zombies.” Brushing black hair over her undercut, Sadie grabbed two harnesses from the van. They had lights, which in her view was essential for grubbing around in a city full of monsters. “I’m going with mutants.”

  “Zombies, mutants, whatever. I don’t read fiction.”

  “Didn’t look like fiction to me.” Sadie handed Haraway a harness. The company woman’s clinic-perfect blond good looks were unmarred by roughing it. Sadie pulled her own harness on. The black nylon straps felt unforgiving through her shirt, like even syndicate designers hated illegals.

  I’m not illegal. I don’t want their shit in my head.

  Haraway held her harness at arm’s length, like it was a snake. “What am I doing with this?”

  “Putting it on.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t do fieldwork. This was your idea, remember?”

  Haraway tossed Sadie a crooked smile. “All this?” She raised her hand, as if saying behold this dead city. “It’s new to me.”