14 – Vasque

  Hector was about to climb onto the ladder when the kid, Alec, tugged on his sleeve. “Want me to hold your shirt?”

  Hector frowned, looking down at his well-worn hoodie. He supposed he ought to spare it; it was his only shirt, after all. He tugged it over his head and handed it to him. “Thanks, kid.”

  As he mounted the ladder, trying to tune out Pete’s histrionic attempts to whip up the crowd’s enthusiasm, he couldn’t help wondering what the hell he was doing. How’s this gonna help you avenge the Contis? How’s this going to get your name back?

  The answer was too simple: he needed money and potentia. He couldn’t stand against his enemies in the state he was in. Still, there were probably smarter ways than jumping into an underground fight club—smarter than trusting a low-life crime boss to share his earnings.

  Maybe I just don’t care. He chuckled. That was half the answer. The other half was that he wanted to fight. It was the only emotion that felt right. He couldn’t spare the self-pity of despair or depression, and he sure as hell couldn’t allow amusement to distract him. Anger’s good, though. Violence.

  He stepped off the ladder into the loose red sand, tuning out the noise of the crowd as he approached his foe. Vasque seemed a hell of a lot bigger up close and personal. The man had to be more than two meters tall, and his armor-plated muscles spoke of casual power. Hector’s new skin wasn’t small, but he was positively scrawny compared to the augmented fighter. Nevertheless, he raised his fists and loosened his knees, turning sideways to the other fighter.

  Vasque grinned, exposing teeth filed into points. His eyes were red and angular—implants made to give him a predator’s glare. “Sure about this, runt?” The other fighter’s voice was harsh and mechanical; apparently the mods on his neck went beyond just the armored synth-skin.

  Hector ignored him, listening for Pete’s command to fight.

  “Was gonna take pity on you, but I think I’ll enjoy punching that dumbass scowl off your face.”

  As often happened, Hector’s companion, his angry alter-ego, failed to rise to the occasion when it seemed the time was ideal. Nah, that son of a bitch likes to come when I don’t want him.

  “…the last fight of the night! Be sure to save some bits for drinks and donations to the Fight Fund! Now, let’s let these two off their leashes! Fight!”

  As Pete screamed the command, Hector rotated his torso to the left, slipping a vicious jab that he saw coming long before Vasque threw it. He tried to counter with a punch to the ribs, but the big fighter was wired and he leaped back unnaturally fast. Hector knew he couldn’t win in a contest of raw speed, but he hoped his experience would see him through. Vasque put him to the test, diving in with a wild combo of hooks and kicks.

  Hector didn’t try to watch every strike; he focused on the other man’s shoulders and hips, ducking, weaving, and blocking. He dodged most of the strikes and neutralized the ones that came through so they were just glancing blows. He could see the frustration on Vasque’s face, but more importantly, he could see his eyes begin to vibrate in their sockets—he was starting to feel the strain of an overused wirejob.

  Vasque tried the combo he’d used on Lund—a false retreat to set up a spinning heel kick. Hector clocked it and stepped into the blow, catching the kick under his arm. He drove forward, still holding the leg, and then stomped his right foot into Vasque’s other knee. To his surprise, his foot slipped off his thick armored flesh, and the knee didn’t give a millimeter. Vasque jumped up, spun, and ripped his leg out of Hector’s grasp.

  “Too weak to hurt me, boy,” the man said, panting as he circled.

  Hector might have taunted him back, but he could see his silence was irritating him. He just stared and watched, waiting for the other fighter’s next move. The crowd was having fun; they cheered and stomped, chanting, “Vasque, Vasque, Vasque!”

  “Do something, punk!” Vasque growled, and Hector bounced on the balls of his feet. He didn’t mind stalling; he didn’t care what the crowd thought. Vasque did, though. He growled and came in hot with another wild-seeming flurry. It wasn’t wild, though. It was a practiced combo that Hector had watched him perform a handful of times in his other fights.

  Having seen and memorized the combo, Hector found it trivial to slip the blows when he knew they were coming. As the last hit came in—a knee aimed at his ribs—Hector stepped in with a vicious right hook, and this time he fired his Strength Boost, putting four aura into it. He knew he was pushing his luck; he’d torn up his body—his corpus vivum—with that much of a boost before, but that was before he’d taken on the Brawler archetype. His pathways were a bit more tolerant, a bit more robust.

  Hot aura exploded through his body, his muscles swelled, and his eyes lit up with fiery red light. As his fist ripped through the air, red flames erupted over his flesh, starting with his knuckles and traveling up his arm and over his shoulders. Vasque’s eyes widened, but he was committed to his knee attack. Hector, his strength bolstered by aura, met the knee with his elbow. At the same time, his punch connected with the gray-green dermal plate covering Vasque’s midriff.

  Hector’s fist cratered the stiff, leathery synth-skin, sinking five or six centimeters into his guts as the shockwave carried on, violently shaking and displacing organs and bones. Vasque coughed a strangled gasp of pain and flew back like he’d been shot by a railgun. Hector’s aura faded, and he shook his right arm; he’d cracked more than one bone.

  “…red! Did you see it, folks? Did you see it?” Pete was screaming in his excitement.

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  Hector tuned him and the crowd out, pacing toward the writhing fighter. He flexed his hand back into a fist, trying not to show any weakness or hint that he was injured. It proved to be a needless worry; Vasque was done. He was gasping silently, crawling on his belly away from him as bloody drool escaped his mouth in a thin trail. Hector squatted beside him, grabbed his shoulder, and said, “Hold still.”

  The people above probably thought he was being a good sport, trying to comfort his defeated foe and coax him into breathing through the pain. The truth was, Hector was taking his due in potentia. He triggered his system and exhaled slowly, closing his eyes against the rush as it flowed into him.

  //2 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 17.//

  He read the report as the euphoria faded. “Pathetic,” he said with a grunt, standing from the now-comatose man. It was to be expected; Vasque had spent his time cultivating technology, supplanting the very flesh of his corpus vivum. Potential would be repelled by the unnatural tissue.

  A door opened in the base of the silo underneath Pete’s platform, and two teenagers wearing green scrubs ran out—employees of Pete’s clinic. Hector turned and walked toward the ladder.

  “Hey!” one of the medics called. “You hurt?”

  Hector flexed his fist again. Pain lanced up and down his forearm. “No.”

  He climbed the ladder, ignoring the needles of agony in his arm, or rather, embracing them. Sometimes pain could be valuable; it could bring clarity if you were good at sending yourself into it. So, as he climbed and folded that lancing pain around himself, he thought about the Empire and the family holding the throne, the Lautrecs. He’d been avoiding the obvious: whoever had betrayed the Contis, whoever had betrayed him, would have gained much, and there’d been little love lost between those two families.

  He needed to do some research, and now that he had some funds, he figured that would be the next logical step—information. With the money in his bit-locker and what he was due to collect from Pete and Grando, he ought to be able to make some purchases; he should be able to get his system, and the AI that drove it, connected to the net.

  “Hector!” Grando boomed as he climbed off the ladder onto the platform. People were gathered close, clamoring to get a better look at him. Some were holding decks and tablets, maybe hoping for a pic. Most of them looked happy—drunk or just high on the euphoria of the event—but some were scowling, no doubt having lost some bits betting on the wrong fighter.

  Alec had managed to hang onto his place by the ladder, and he held Hector’s hoodie up, grinning stupidly, suddenly quiet now that Hector had won and he wasn’t the only one trying to talk to him. Hector took the hoodie and pulled it over his head. “Thanks, kid.”

  “Are you gonna train at Pete’s?” Alec asked, and the nearby crowd got quiet, everyone apparently interested in the answer.

  Hector shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Alec nodded, his eyes full of hope. “I’ll look for you.”

  Meanwhile, Grando had come closer, and he put a big hand on Hector’s shoulder, steering him away from the platform. “Give us some damn room,” he growled, waving his smoking cigar at the people pressing close. It didn’t stop most of them from snapping pics and trying to pat Hector on the shoulders and back. Many held out fists, and apparently some part of Hector was still capable of amusement as he reveled in Grando’s irritation, pausing to bump knuckles with most of them.

  “Come on, come on!” the crime boss groused, waving for people to move aside and trying to tug Hector’s sleeve. “Let’s get our cash. I’ve got an early morning.”

  Hector shrugged at the crowd in apology and followed Grando into the lift. They weren’t alone, but Grando’s presence kept the other folks polite. They shrank away, crowding the walls to give him room. As the cage rattled and started to climb, Hector looked at Grando. “Can Lemon have the day off tomorrow?”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Need a guide.”

  “Yeah? Why her? I can send one of my boys—”

  Hector shook his head. “Someone who doesn’t irritate me.”

  Grando stared at him for a moment, then he shrugged. “We made more tonight than she earns for me in a month, so I guess I don’t mind.” Hector just nodded, and the boss added, “I was talking to an interesting guy tonight during the fights. Had some info for me about a rift. You still interested?”

  Hector glanced at the other people in the car; none of them seemed to be listening, or maybe it was more that they were actively trying not to listen. He nodded to Grando. “Yeah.”

  “Good. He gave me a contact in the Governor’s office. I’ll get in touch and grease the right palms—I’ll take the money off the top of our split tonight. Keep you posted.”

  Hector grunted, watching the square of light through the cage as it grew closer.

  “You fought damn well, you know that? That aura of yours is something else, too. People were going nuts. You weren’t using it for most of the fight, though. I never saw anyone dodge punches like that. Must have done a lot of fighting back in the day, huh?”

  Hector looked at him, narrowing his eyes. Grando was smarter than he let on, and it made him suspicious when he acted dumb.

  “Just making conversation, man. Damn. Quit glaring at me, would you?”

  Hector grabbed onto the cage as the elevator slowed, turning his gaze to the gate. “I fought a lot.”

  “Right, well, I guess it shows. You want me to try to get you into some bigger venues? Well, maybe not bigger, but you know, more money.”

  Hector pulled the door open with a rattle. “Yes.”

  “Heh.” Grando clapped him on the shoulder, directing him out into the madness of the warehouse party. Music thumped, lights strobed, and people crowded together in a sweaty tangle, dancing, drinking, and smoking. Grando’s goon was waiting and helped clear a path toward Pete’s office; luckily, the party atmosphere made it easy to be anonymous again. Hector pulled his hood over his head, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and followed the crime boss and his man.

  When they reached the door to Pete’s office, a gym regular acting as a doorman let them in, even though Pete hadn’t yet made it up from the silo. Grando motioned to a beat-up old couch, the synthetic cushions sporting dozens of tape-repaired tears. “Sit down, Hector. Lars will get you a drink. Hungry, too?”

  It was the first time Hector had heard the goon’s name, and it took him half a second to realize who Grando was talking about. He nodded, though, looking at the burly tracksuit-wearing goon. He had short blond hair and a matching mustache, and, honestly, he looked pretty friendly as far as goons go. “I need some bugs, too.”

  “Oh yeah? I didn’t see you get hit very hard down there—”

  Hector held up his right arm, the wrist noticeably swollen. “Nah, when I hit him.”

  “All right. Hear that Lars? Bugs, something to drink and eat. Can you handle that?”

  “Yeah, sure, Boss.” Lars looked at Hector. “Want booze or…”

  “Just some electrolytes.”

  The goon nodded, threw him a thumbs up, and then slipped out the office door. Grando sat in the big rolling chair behind the desk, no doubt Pete’s. “He usually doesn’t take long to come up, ’specially if he knows I’m waiting.”

  Hector closed his eyes, feeling more than a little tired. He felt a certain kind of pressure in his skull, and he knew his system was just about done going through the leveling process. It was probably going to hit him like a truck; he’d need a good night’s sleep.

  “You good, Hec?”

  He opened his eyes, nodding. “Yeah. I won’t come in tomorrow.”

  “Cause of the little shopping trip?”

  “Yeah.” He stretched his neck. “And I need sleep.”

  “All right. Take a day off. Hopefully, I’ll get some news about the rift while you’re out.” Grando stood and pointed to the broken blinds hanging lopsidedly over the window by Pete’s door. “Here he comes. Let’s see how many bits we made.”