First Breath: A Cyberpunk Novelette Read online

  First Breath: A Cyberpunk Novelette

  Laszlo Myles

  Published by Laszlo Myles, 2015.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  FIRST BREATH: A CYBERPUNK NOVELETTE

  First edition. October 10, 2015.

  Copyright © 2015 Laszlo Myles.

  Written by Laszlo Myles.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  1

  THE REZ WAS A STROBING mass of lights, lasers, and mirrors tuned to the heavy bass lines and syncopation. The floor shook with the beat and bodies moved to it, fluid and sexual, fingers running down sweating backs. Two girls stared into each other’s eyes before one let out a breath that sent the other into a fit of ecstasy. Hardy’s wetware mod ached to join them, feeding him shadows of breath—the latest drug craze that turned a faint mist of DNA into an electric stimulus.

  His attention turned to the other side of the sea of glowing dreads, bare skin, and fluid motion. The girl at the bar-side table had been watching him since he’d arrived. Her gaze followed him from the door to the bar, then to his usual seat against the wall. She was familiar, but not by the pink lines that glowed in her hair, or the nearly transparent synthetic that clung to her body.

  She wasn’t in his memory, but she had been once.

  That kind of familiarity was a thing he had learned to fear. When you’ve spent any time working for Jack, you learn that the people you can trust the least are the ones you’re familiar with.

  The hot breath lingering in the room touched at his mind, giving him just a taste of synaptic euphoria. Those synapses sparked, calling him to the dance floor, and his eyes heeded them, taking in the reflective, glowing mass. He drew his attention away, back to the bar-side table.

  She was gone.

  “You just gonna watch?” The voice came from beside him, smooth and sensual.

  He didn’t turn his head. “I thought I might sit this one out.”

  Her hands reached over his shoulder, teasing over the thin cloth of his shirt, and he inhaled just a hint of her breath as she whispered into his ear, “That’s not how this place works.”

  Synapses fired, and he tilted his head back, letting her fingers graze over the skin of his neck. He laughed, the sensation washing over him more fully than ever before. He’d gotten the breath mod days ago—an open-source derivative of the one that was already sweeping the party capitals. This was different, though. He was a slave to its need. That need made him stare after her as she walked to the floor; it made him stand, and it made him follow.

  Bodies undulated against him, but there wasn’t room for them in his mind. He followed the curves of her hips and shoulder blades as she dragged him to the floor by a leash of ecstasy.

  When she stopped, he was right behind her, hands on her hips, turning her to face him and give another taste of the breath he already ached for.

  She smiled, and they danced. He let his high carry him through the unchoreographed motions and excuses for skin to touch. He was immune to the cloud of breath in the room as others breathed into their lovers, or to strangers, and rode the high together. Only her breath mattered, and the dance became a means to taste it again.

  She put one arm around his neck, hanging down to scratch a long nail along his spine, and raised her face to his. He stared into her, and she breathed into him. His mod captured it all, translating her foreign DNA to impulses that made the lights glow like flames. His skin felt every body thrashing against it, and he threw his head back as if gasping for the air that would keep him from drowning.

  He lowered his eyes to hers—the eyes of his new, perfect drug.

  She was gone again.

  The space where she had stood filled with others, and their breath hung around him in a haze, but it meant nothing. He looked around the room, trying to pick out the pink of her hair, but it was lost in the neon glow. He sighed, closing his eyes.

  And there she was. A white silhouette on the black of his eyelids, fifteen feet away. The silhouette reached a hand out, and he opened his eyes, fixating on her position. Her hand was on the doorknob, and she glanced back at him. She smiled, then stepped into the night.

  When the door closed behind her, he moved to the edge of the pit, away from the dancers. He thought about going back to his table, to ride what was left of her high, but he saw her again when he blinked, and his craving nagged at him.

  Taking his coat from his chair, he ignored the fear that tried to rise up his spine. Maybe she worked for Jack. Maybe she didn’t.

  Either way, he had to follow.

  2

  HER SHAPE FLASHED WHITE in front of him every time he blinked. She had done something. The euphoria had settled enough that he could see reason. At the very least it was a tracking hack, in tune with something on her person, or even her DNA. In itself it was harmless, but he couldn’t know that was all it was.

  She’d gotten into his head, but he didn’t know how—she had hardly touched him. A wireless connection? Maybe something in the breath? His desire for that feeling had become an ache in his mind—a need he would have to satisfy. He’d followed her for half an hour through dark streets and darker alleys, and all the while the need grew.

  What was worse, he knew where she was going. Every step took him closer to Jack’s place.

  Jack had money. Lots of money. The tech he dealt with was expensive, and his clients paid him well. He could afford a place in the city proper, but he set up shop in the slums. Authorities didn’t bother him, and the locals were prime for employment—people who would do anything if you knew the right buttons to push.

  People like Hardy.

  It was also a good harvesting site for the tests nobody would volunteer for. People went missing, but weren’t missed.

  He closed his eyes again to check her silhouette. She was just ahead, fifty feet or so, fumbling with something he couldn’t see. Maybe a doorknob or a lock. She stepped back, and a gunshot shattered the near-silence of the street.

  “Dammit!” He ran toward her, darting around the brick corner of a building. He only had a second to take in the scene. The girl running. One of Jack’s thugs pointing a gun at her, finger flexing over the trigger. A bin with a heavy pipe sticking out.

  He shouted and the man turned his head, then his gun. Too slow. Hardy had already grabbed the pipe, connected it with the thug’s bald head. His gun fired wide and he fell to his knees. Hardy swung one more time and the man fell to the ground, unmoving.

  Hardy looked around the alley, but the girl was gone. A camera stared down at him from the corner.

  “Dammit!” He blinked and saw her outline two corners over. She wasn’t Jack’s. If she was, there had been a falling out. A hell of a falling out. Guns weren’t Jack’s style.

  He closed the distance between them, still holding the pipe. The ache in his mind was stronger now. He’d have to get another breath—her breath—or he’d be hurting.

  She looked up from against the brick wall, black and pink curtaining over one eye. He took a seat next to her on the pavement and leaned his head back. She didn’t say anything, so they sat in silence as his heart beat back to a normal rhythm. He wasn’t used to getting shot at. Even when he worked for Jack, he’d managed to avoid that.

  She exhaled, and a hint of it drifted up to him, numbing the pain.

  “You got a name?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Yeah. You?”

&nbs
p; He considered a fake name. The name he went by was fake anyway, taken from an old OS distro, but it was who he was. He decided against it. “Hardy.”

  The smile never left her lips. It was an odd look—half joy, half resignation.

  “You don’t have to tell me your name. I really don’t care. I just want to know what you did to me. Why are you in my head?”

  Her smile faded. She nodded back toward the door. “You want to know why, take a look.”

  He turned to look around the corner, but she caught his arm. “Not like that.” She closed her eyes, and he got the picture. He closed his own and looked through the building behind them. There was another white shape, like the one beside him, but smaller, distant. Someone was curled up somewhere deep in Jack’s building, one floor up from ground level.

  “What did you do to me?” He stared at her, tasting the faint breath coming from her lips. “Who is that?”

  She rose and dusted off her synthetic clothes, then offered her hand. “I tested you. You passed.”

  He stood without taking her hand. “I did, huh?”

  “Call me Mara.” The name clicked somewhere in Hardy’s mind, but no memories came with it. They were probably locked back in Jack’s place. He’d been right about knowing her.

  There was shuffling around the edge of the building, and he turned, fearing an armed man with a headache. It wasn’t the guard. There were three people—two men, and a girl dressed in your basic technotrash attire. The tallest, a man with short blond hair, glared at him.

  Mara put her hand on Hardy’s shoulder and nodded at the newcomers. “Meet the Narcs. They want to hire you.” She patted his arm and joined the group. As one, they turned away from the alley and Jack’s.

  Hardy watched them leave and thought about going the other way, but still felt the ache in his mind. No breath should be so sweet. She’d done something to him, and he had no choice but to go along with it.

  “A test,” he said, tasting the lie as sure as her breath. They’d got his face on Jack’s camera. He could already feel Jack’s eyes crawling over him, trying to determine his part in this. Whether he liked it or not, he was involved now.

  He cursed at his feet and followed.

  They’d better have a damned good reason.

  3

  BY THE TIME THEY GOT to the Narcs’ hideout, Hardy’s head was splitting. The idea behind breath was a breakdown of barriers: it was an excuse to get into someone’s personal space and stay there. Easy enough with people you know well. Not all that difficult with strangers, in the anonymity of the dance floor.

  Mara was different. He felt like he should know her, but he didn’t. She was an odd mix of friend and stranger that made it impossible for him to get close, and he was suffering for it. Moreover, he didn’t trust her.

  The Narcs, it seemed, were just some punks who hated Jack and wanted to take him down. He couldn’t argue with that. Jack had a pretty tight hold on the area, and nobody was very comfortable with it. Going by the quality band they had collected, nobody much was very willing to do anything about it either.

  “So who’s inside Jack’s?” He could still see the white silhouette from where they were, though it was smaller than before.

  Mara stood back as the tall one opened the door. “Lynn,” she said. “My sister.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Jack wasn’t a pleasant man to work for, but it was worse to be one of his guinea pigs.

  “She knew what she was getting into. She’s got a lot of information in her head that would help bring that place down. Too much for Jack to let her go.”

  Hardy stood back as the others filed in, and Mara smiled at him. She waited for the door to close before she spoke. “Hurts, huh? You know, you could just ask. No need for the tough-guy act.”

  Willing as she sounded, there was reluctance in her. She leaned in and exhaled in his face, lips keeping their distance. His brain spiked as the DNA triggered his mod, sending him headfirst into a wall of pleasure. He broke through it, beyond his limits, into a place of sweat, raised flesh, and unbearable tingling. He gritted his teeth against it, refusing to let it be anything but a fix, but his mouth opened in a sigh of pleasure. The pain didn’t just recede, but inverted.

  “It’s the mod,” she said, leaning close, the warmth of her breath pooling around him. “The version you have. I made it.”

  Hardy tried to fight against the high, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to lay in it and let the dark world around him fade into nothingness.

  “It’s superkeyed to my DNA. No one will ever give you a feeling like I can,” she said. “I can dole out your pleasure as I see fit. Or I can fix you, if you like.” She backed away from him, fingers lingering on his chest. “After you help us.”

  He succeeded in fighting down the feeling, separating his thoughts from it and letting it flood his mind in the background. She was manipulative. He had a feeling that had nothing to do with the Narcs, or with Jack. It was all her.

  “Alright,” he said, his flesh still raised to tips. He gestured to the door. “Show the way.”

  4

  THE PLACE LOOKED LIKE it had been decorated by the technotrash girl. It was more workshop than anything. Cables hung in spools on nails in the wooden wall—newer cables, mostly, but there were some coaxials and Cat 5s as well. Dismantled electronics were everywhere, from children’s toys to high-tech headgear. The room was lit by strings of LEDs, but light of every color shone from fiber optics in bunches.

  The Narcs stood by a table poring over a schematic of some sort. Probably stolen from Jack. When they approached, the plans rolled up—not for him.

  Mara pointed each of them out and gave a name. The big guy was Les, the de facto leader of the group. Number two was a kid called Simek. He was obviously there for brawn. Neither of them looked happy to see Hardy.

  The technotrash girl just went by Z. Her hair shone purple—fiber optic strings hanging here and there. She was the only one who looked welcoming.

  “I suppose you helped with the mod,” Hardy said. Mara seemed smart enough, but not technologically so.

  Z saluted in mocking fashion. “Team effort.”

  Hardy liked to evaluate the ability of people he was going to work for, but this time was different, he didn’t have any real choice in the matter. He could wait out the addiction, but it wouldn’t be pretty. Uninstalling the mod wouldn’t do much either—just cut him off from the drug, but leave him wanting it.

  “Alright,” he said, “what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is for you to do as little as possible.” Les still had the glare that Hardy was beginning to think was trademarked. “You’re here because Mara wanted you. I don’t.”

  “Hey, you picked me up. I can leave any time.”

  Les nodded toward the door, but Mara stared him down. “We need him. He’s been in there before.”

  That was what she wanted. His expertise. He had a feeling his membership was about to be revoked. “Listen, I don’t remember anything from in there. Not much, at least. Everything I could tell you is in a bit of brass headwear at Jack’s.”

  Mara grinned. “But you recognize me.”

  That confirmed it. She had worked for Jack. “That’s it, though. I couldn’t tell you if you were my boss, or if you got Jack his coffee in the mornings.”

  Something clicked when he mentioned Jack’s coffee. A cup of coffee, black, but cold. Mara grinned again; she’d seen the recollection. Jack liked his coffee cold. Hardy knew he shouldn’t remember that. He shouldn’t remember a lot of the things he knew about Jack, or the people who worked for him. It should all have been locked away in his crown.

  “It’s not your memories he took,” Mara said. “Too messy. He just took the bridges.”

  It made sense, he supposed. Take down the connections between thoughts—the ones that linked his conscious mind to the things Jack didn’t want him to remember—and they were as good as forgotten. “What’s it matter how he did it? They’re gone.”


  She moved between Les and Simek at the table and rolled out the schematic. Hardy pushed through as well. Jack’s was a big place—took up a whole block—and the schematic showed it. Just beyond the door they had stood in front of earlier was a hallway, anonymous rooms coming off either side. A stairwell at the end, metal stairs, the kind with the grated top to dig into your shoes.

  Hardy looked at the map. That detail wasn’t on there. Why would it be? It was just a blocky diagram of stairs... but he could see them in his mind. Black painted steel, grated top.

  “It’s all in there,” Mara said. “We can bridge some of those gaps, but not all of them. We have vague ideas of what Jack does in there. Lynn has the specifics. That’s why we need to get her out.”

  “And her crown with her,” Les said.

  Hardy looked at Les. He found no trust there. “She’s been wiped?”

  “We get the girl, we get the crown, we get Jack.”

  Hardy didn’t need to look back at the map to see where the crowns were kept. He could remember it now. He could remember the guards there, too. He tasted the memories like forbidden fruit.

  “We can’t pay you money,” Les said. “We don’t have any. But we’re getting into that crown room, wherever it is. We can pay you in memories.”

  All those things he couldn’t remember. Little bits of life he thought were lost forever. Mara was a fool, messing with his brain to force his hand. All she’d needed to do was offer him his own mind back.

  “What do we need?” he said.

  5

  THE BEAT STILL POUNDED at The Rez. The lights still flashed, the bodies still swayed. They had been gone for only a couple of hours, so nothing should have changed. It felt different, though. The lingering breath no longer did anything for him, Mara’s dampened it to nothingness. Or maybe she’d programmed exclusivity into the mod. Either way, he was getting nothing. He’d asked for another breath before they left the Narcs, trying to keep images of a begging junkie out of his head. She had given it—just a touch, and grudgingly—but it was already wearing off. It made him irritable.