ZEROSKINS - PART I

There was no discernible sky over New Jericho. It was just slate gray and rain, as constant as the buzzing pain in Max Lazarus’ head. He liked the gray, its impeccable blandness served to calm him in all the right ways. 

He was high, as he usually was after a job was completed. High, sore, and attempting sleep in a dingy little motel off the Undertow with paper-thin drywall and an air conditioning unit that took good old fashioned paper currency to operate. But Max hadn’t seen paper in years, and as such, was content to sit in his post-coital humidity.

The girl next to him, however, was not as content. “It’s hotter than motherfuck in here,” she said as she dressed herself in a white tank and her matte-black panties. “I’m gonna crack a window.”

Max barely registered she was even talking to him and instead focused on the rain outside and the crackling of the neons as they burned and steamed and gave nothing but a harsh flickering glow that only served to worsen the buzzing in his head. He needed a drink. Or a cigarette. He reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a pack of Kurohana Blacks, placed one between his lips, and lit the goddamn thing with a lighter he was constantly surprised still worked. He breathed in slow, letting the nicotine wash over him, through his blood stream, and calm the pounding in his temples.

The girl was nice, better than he’d expected, but still not quite what he was looking for. Maybe he didn’t even know what exactly it was he was looking for. Maybe he wasn’t looking for anything at all…

The girl’s name, although likely not her real one, was Annie. Max looked at her now, as she sat by the window, blowing tendrils of cigarette smoke into the storm outside. Her caramel skin glistened with beads of sweat and her hazel eyes caught the reflection of the neon sign across the street, nearly glittering in the comfortable darkness of the motel room.

“I can feel you watching me,” said Annie, without so much as a glance in Max’s direction.

Smiling, he replied, “It’s hard not to.”

She smiled herself in return, but her gaze stayed locked on the rain outside. “You might be the only john who actually enjoys talking to me…”

“You don’t talk to the others?” asked Max.

“Not really,” replied Annie. “They talk, of course. Mostly because they feel obligated to. But it’s different, it’s transactional, you know? You talk because you like conversation. You want to know me.” Now, she turned to look at him, smiling warmly with her offset front teeth, the small gap between them endearing and beautiful all at once. Perfectly imperfect.

“Right now, you’re the one good memory I have,” he said. And it was true, as true as something like that could be.

“That’s almost sweet,” said Annie. “If only you didn’t use that line on every girl you take home.”

Max smirked. “You think I do this often, then?”

“I recognize you,” she replied, her candor catching Max slightly off guard. “From the Bohemia.” 

Before Max had time to come up with a response, Annie interjected, “You used to come in on Thursday nights, late like, and order a Rewind from a girl named Persephone.”

Max smiled, the fragments of a memory tugging at the dark places in the corners of his mind, like something warm and bubbly and sacred, with a kick, tingling in all the right ways.

“Persephone,” he finally said, a whisper that faded almost entirely before he had even thought it. He held her name on his tongue, lingering there until Annie spoke again.

“Shame what happened to her, don’t you think?”

Max had seen the reports. A few months back, a working girl went missing, just up and vanished out of thin air, nobody the wiser. If she’d had a plan, she hadn’t told her boss, her friends, or her roommate what it was, and there was no family to speak of; her mother and father had both died tragically when she was a child. The most common consensus is that she couldn’t stand the fucking rain, so she’d gone to the mainland to rewrite her story and build something new, something that no one could take from her. 

Those thoughts were pretty and peaceful until NJPD found her body. All twisted up, limbs warped, bones broken, shoved into an empty oil barrel and hidden away in the backroom of a nasty dive bar on the Strand, where the corpse stayed for six months, perfectly preserved in her moment of ultimate horror.

They never found the girl’s killer. They had initially questioned her deadbeat ex-boyfriend about her disappearance, but when they found him, he was fucked on ExtraDeath and barely had the brain capacity to string three words together, much less an alibi — or lack thereof. So, like so many of the murdered working class in New Jericho, the beautiful little thing called Persephone was lost to the system and all but forgotten.

But the dead live on in memories, Max thought, attempting to purge his brain of the grotesque afterimage buried there of the girl’s twisted, mutilated corpse. 

Memory is a funny thing. Max hadn’t known the girl particularly well, all things considered, but nostalgia had taken hold and given way to mourning in a way that felt extremely foreign. If Max had any shred of humanity left, he might have cried himself to sleep. Even so, there was a hollowness in the part of his chest one would assume his heart was located.

Annie was watching him now, had been for some time. He could tell she was studying him, watching him stare into the nothingness somewhere in front of him. When she finally spoke, it cut through the silence like a blade.

“You’re a Nervehead,” she said, almost a whisper.

“Now what makes you say that?”

“Your eyes. The color’s gone, like the middle of a storm,” she replied.

Max scoffed, looked up at Annie, and smiled. “You know Nerve well?”

“I’ve known a few girls who OD’d on that shit,” she said. “Know enough to stay the hell away from it.” She ripped a deep, long drag and blew smoke, still watching Max’s eyes.

“You’re on the comedown now,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

Max stared through her, eyes glossy and barely open, as she flicked the smoldering end of her cigarette into a puddle outside and rose from the window, moving slowly across the room toward him.

“I heard O’s heighten on the comedown,” she said once she reached him, standing above him, his chin against her chest. “Is that true?”

Max smiled again and pulled her in close.

****

Max showered the night off his skin, the steam rejuvenating him in ways he didn’t quite understand. The color had returned to his eyes, an intense green that bordered on teal under the right light. The Nerve had worn off and the world around him continued at its normal pace, which had always felt ever-so-slightly sluggish to him. 

He dressed quietly in the motel bathroom and splashed cold water over his face, savoring the icy sting. He holstered his weapon in a shoulder rig, a Sig Sauer P226X Revenant with an integral silencer and a reinforced steel frame, and pulled his leather jacket over his shoulders, then silently watched the rise and fall of Annie’s breath as she slept soundly without him. In the morning, she’d wake up to a handwritten note and twice her fee wired to her account, as well as a phone number she could call if she ever needed something. Max hoped to god she wouldn’t.

The night air was finally cooling, a brisk chill whipping at Max’s cheeks as he made his way toward downtown, past holographic advertisements for every kind of vice from here to the lunar cities. The hologram of a young woman of what Max assumed was Japanese descent reached out to touch him, her hand gliding through Max’s chest. Max watched as rain cut into her sideways, leaving traces of glitch and static that looked almost like wrinkles across her otherwise youthful face. Her mouth moved, but no sound accompanied it. It was already two in the morning, well past New Jericho’s sound ordinance curfew.

As the holographic girl reverted back to the beginning of her endless loop, Max moved on, through the rain-slick alleyways that slithered through the Undertow like a maze. For most people, the Undertow was exactly the wrong part of town. Dirty, cheap, rundown, and dangerous enough to keep anyone without at least a mild death wish out. On top of that, it was the most poorly-surveilled part of New Jericho, so almost all of the illicit jobs and backroom dealings occurred in any one of the Undertow’s various drink joints. It was one of those drink joints that Max was headed to now. 

The Kitchen Sink was little more than a storage container with barstools. The smell of stale cigarette smoke and old gun oil hung in the air with a palpable thickness, just how Max liked it. The walls were metallic and hollow, red paint chipping endlessly to reveal the silver coloring beneath. A handful of booths lined the back wall, the faux leather seats cracked from years of use. It was always cold and wet inside the Kitchen Sink, despite the smoke.

Max approached the bar, where the joint’s proprietor stood stoic, polishing a glass and smiling a wide, nearly toothless grin. 

˙His name was Otto Kray and, depending on who you asked and how drunk they were, he came with a pre-loaded set of backstories. Max had heard them all: Bay City cop turned addict, washed-up lunar cities security, and Max’s favorite, former Catholic priest from deep in the mainland with a wicked drinking problem and a few unsavory sexual proclivities. 

Otto was fucking huge, standing at six-foot-seven on a bad day and weighing in at somewhere around 280 pounds. His teeth had all but rotted out of his face, most likely due to a combination of a decades long chewing tobacco habit and overall poor dental hygiene. His voice was gravel, metallic like some great groaning machinery. His left arm was cybernetic from the elbow down and one of his eyes was a completely off-putting obsidian black implant. The face around the implant was grizzled, scarred, and covered in gritty pock marks that would take a surgery Max knew Otto couldn’t afford to purge. He was so goddamn ugly, Max found it almost endearing. 

As Max sat on a barstool, Otto was already pouring him a drink; whisky, some bottom shelf Chinese shit that Otto swore he loved. Max had always thought it tasted like motor oil.

“You look tired as shit,” Otto growled, sliding the glass across the bar.

Max picked it up and sipped, wincing hard as the harsh liquid went down. “Had a night.”

“You and me both,” said Otto, pouring himself a matching drink. “Osaka sent some Yellowjacket through earlier tonight, lookin’ to stir up trouble. Rowdy customer thought he was hot shit and got popped right in the face. Spent the last two hours scrubbin’ blood and brain off the  goddamn floor.”

“I thought they knew to leave you alone,” said Max.

“Apparently the status quo is changing,” Otto replied. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

“You still selling on the side?”

Otto nodded, a microscopic expression that Max would’ve missed had he not been looking for it. “Anything with a dollar sign.”

“You got amps?”

Otto squinted, watching Max with a quizzical, almost distrusting glare. “The fuck you want amps for?”

“The fuck you think I want them for,” said Max. It was not a question.

“I thought you were off that shit.”

“I was,” said Max. “And then I had my fuckin’ knee blown to shreds and rebuilt by that goddamn butcher you call a surgeon.”

“Stich is an artist,” replied Otto, downing the rest of his drink in one deep swig. “He did my eye.”

“And coincidentally, your eye’s the ugliest fuckin’ thing about you,” Max snapped. He took a breath, then took a drink and shrugged away whatever animosity was boiling beneath his skin. “Look, I don’t need much, okay? A couple doses, tops. Enough to get me through the weekend. This fuckin’ thing aches when it storms.” He stretched subconsciously,  shifting the titanium plating in his knee.

Otto stood in silence for a long, lingering moment, which made Max painfully aware of how quiet the bar had become around him. He could sense pairs of beady eyes on him from every corner of the room.

Finally, Otto spoke. “I can do two, that’s it. If you need more, you can try your luck with a junker.” He dug around under the bar, removing a small black pouch. He unzipped it and placed two single use eye-droplet vials full of an electric blue liquid onto the bar in front of Max. Max picked up one of the vials, titled his head back, and dripped the contents into his right eye. Immediately, he felt the drug’s venom slither through his nervous system, his blood stream, and finally his brain.

Amps were a synthetic pain-management stimulant used to dampen localized pain down to a dull buzz, originally developed for military use on the battlefield. Essentially, amps were a cheap and poorly regulated painkiller descended from early 21st century methamphetamines. 

Max blinked away the excess, pocketed the second vial, and finished his drink. He checked the time and made a mental note. He’d take the second vial in exactly twenty-four hours.

“You heard from Sam?” Max asked, cutting into the silence.

Otto shook his head. “Not for a while. Last I heard, she was runnin’ shotgun for an Osaka Immigration Unit. Had her makin’ runs in Paraxis, of all places.”

He scoffed, then continued, “Never did really understand how those motherfuckers shoot in low-G. You’d think it would affect bullet trajectory, all of that.”

“Can you get her a message?”

“I can try,” said Otto. “No promises it’ll get to her. And if it does, no promises she’ll read it.”

“That’s fine,” Max said. “Just see what you can do.”

“Where you want me to have her send a reply?”

“Give her my inbox.”

“What is it about her,” asked Otto, “got you all hung up like a fuckin’ schoolboy.”

“It’s not like that,” said Max, even though he knew it was the purest form of bullshit.

****

Amp hangovers were the dirtiest, nastiest drug comedown Max had ever felt. Like a thousand tiny hammers banging away inside his skull, pressing his eyes out of their sockets. His joints were stiff and his blood felt thick, like a viscous sludge running through his veins. He hated every minute of it.

He awoke in his apartment, a fourth-floor one-bedroom shit-box in a dirty, rundown complex with no official name. He paid rent in cash on the the third of every month and paid utilities on the fifth if he had access to them, which was not always a given. 

He swung his bare feet to the cold concrete floor and stood slowly, minding the splitting headache and its accompanying dizziness and nausea. His apartment was threadbare, with little to no evidence that someone lived there whatsoever. The furnishings were simple, built for practicality, not pleasure. The walls, like the floor, were made entirely of concrete, which gave the room a harsh industrial aesthetic.

Before Max had the chance to gather himself and find his bearings, there was a loud, echoing knock at his door, an unwelcome intrusion on an already unwelcome morning. The knocking continued and the hammers in his skull responded in kind. 

He reached the door — a nine foot slab of metal bolted in like the entry to an underground bunker — and unlocked an exterior set of latches, typed in a six-digit combination on a small electronic key-pad, and heard the massive internal lock click free. An automated Osaka delivery unit stood in the doorway, a boxy steel courier drone built like a trash compactor with legs. Its front panel unfolded to reveal a narrow biometric scanner pulsing faint blue, waiting for confirmation.

“Recipient: Max Lazarus. Biometric verification required.” The unit’s voice was flat and synthetic, clipped by some economy-grade vocal processor. It held the package in a recessed compartment sealed behind armored shutters, standard protocol for high-risk districts where couriers were robbed as often as they delivered. The faint blue light ticked impatiently. “Confirm identity to complete transfer.”

Max leaned in, letting the scanner wash his face in a thin blade of blue light. It chirped a hollow metallic sound as it read his retinal pattern and the light turned green. The armored shutters folded in on themselves and a small black parcel much like a briefcase was presented to Max. He took it from inside the courier unit and the shutters closed. “Transfer complete,” said the unit’s synthetic voice as it turned on its axis and returned back down the hallway. 

Max placed the package on his kitchen counter. It was made of some sort of carbon fiber, the Osaka sigil etched into the top left corner, and felt oddly light for its size. Max placed his right thumb on a small scanner until the package beeped and snapped open. Inside, molded foam cradled a sleek, matte-black sidearm, along with three extra magazines. The weapon was cold and efficient, built purely for tactical edge and kill-function. Like most Osaka weaponry, it would have no serial number, no sales history, and would DNA-locked to Max’s hand, meaning that no one who didn’t have Max’s hand readily available could use it. 

He set the gun and its magazines aside, then removed the molded foam to reveal a small latch underneath. He pulled it open and took out the case’s remaining contents. A thin manila file was placed at the bottom of the case. On top of it, a cred-deck, made of sleek chrome; Max’s advanced payment, along with a set of forged credentials.

Inside the file was a passport-style photograph of a mainland senator, his face stiff, over-lit, and almost certainly fifty percent plastic. His smile was fake and his eyes soulless, the kind of man who played God from the relative safety of a penthouse condominium. Max scanned the file for any important information. At the bottom of the page were a set of words in bold type: 

T A R G E T  W I N D O W:  2 2:0 0 - 2 2:0 7.   N O  E X T E N S I O N S.

As Max tucked the folder back underneath the foam, the apartment’s landline rang; a sharp, jagged sound built into the room’s walls. He had neither the energy or the patience to answer, so he let the ring play out until an automated messaging service took over. After a brief moment of silence, the messaging service’s AI assistant spoke, a pleasant synthetic female voice with a slight British accent. “You have one new message,” she said. “Would you like me to play it for you?”

“Yes,” replied Max, somewhat curtly.

A long, harsh electronic beep preceded a familiar female voice. “Max, it’s Sam. I got the message Otto sent me. Glad to know I’m on your mind.” Sam had always been cocky, it was part of what drew Max to her when they’d met offworld, all those years ago, on a frozen rock under the banner of a long-dead corporation. 

“A lot of shit’s gone down here,” the message continued, a slight air of worry masked well enough by Sam’s charm, “a lot of shit I don’t wanna get in on over the phone.

“I’m flyin’ back in to New Jericho tonight. Corporate flight, jacked in to their system and gave myself a ticket under a false name.”

What the fuck has she gotten herself into?

“I’ll shoot you a line when I have an address and a bottle of whisky.” There was a pregnant pause, like Sam couldn’t quite say the words she was thinking. 

“I’m glad you’re still alive, Max,” she finally said. “I’ll see you soon.” The line clicked dead.

Fuck me.