Chapter 11

SURVIVING IS WINNING

The woman called out.

“Annette Sheridan! You have an active bounty, and we are officially registered collectors. Surrender and—”

Really? Get the drop on me and start monologuing? My turn.

Annie charged.

She went for the wiry guy, deciding he was the easier target. That was a mistake.

He shoved his palm toward her, mimicking a palm strike, but the poor form told her it wasn’t a practiced motion. The rain warped, droplets rippling toward her in the same motion. Then a force hit her square in the chest like a truck.

She flew backward.

Concrete blurred below her. Her shoulder landed first, then her hip. She skidded across the ground and came to a stop at the feet of the second attacker.

The woman leaned down slightly, opened her mouth, and screamed.

Another invisible force slammed her into the ground. Concrete cracked, water bursting outward from the impact.

Annie grit her teeth and shoved the pain aside. She didn’t even think about her next move before striking. A metal fist aimed at the woman’s shin. She visualized the transformation, willing the metal to obey.

Her hand morphed into a spike.

It punched through skin, muscle, and bone.

Another blast of force struck Annie, hurling her across the ground and into the warehouse wall.

The woman started shrieking, no longer focused on her target. Instead, her partner caught the stray blast and went spinning into the opposite wall.

Annie rolled to her feet, heart pounding and ears ringing.

The banshee stumbled to a knee, one hand clutching the injured leg while the other tried to stem the bleeding.

Annie didn’t hesitate to take advantage.

She shot forward, low and fast, sliding to a knee as she closed the gap. She ducked under a wild swing, drove an elbow into the bad knee, then punched up toward the chin.

The woman recoiled, barely evading.

Lucky dodge.

Another unseen blast caught Annie square in the back, launching her forward. She crashed into the banshee as she was starting up another scream, and they went down in a tangle of limbs.

The woman kept screaming.

Does she ever shut up?

Walls cracked around them, stone flaking away in layers. The longer she screamed, the more destruction followed.

Annie struck without mercy.

Her metal fist caved in the woman’s throat. The banshee choked, a look of startled fear warping her face.

Annie staggered upright. Another blast knocked her forward, sending her skidding away from the panicking woman.

She climbed to her feet, risking a glance back down the alley. The man was kneeling at his partner’s side, trying to help her.

Annie fled without a second look.

Surviving is winning.

Alexander startled awake from a nightmare. Relief washed over him as the memory of it vanished into welcome oblivion.

He sat up in the sleeping bag, pushed aside the privacy sheet, and glanced warily around the room.

He heard nothing. Just the background hum of computers and other machines, nothing that should have woken him.

Then he heard it again. Muted. Thump, thump, thump. It was coming from the showroom, muffled by the closed workshop door.

He crossed the room and opened it.

Dim street lighting shone through the ballistic glass of the storefront. It was pouring outside.

Flashes of neon blue outlined a hooded figure with their back to the door. They reached back and hammered it again with their fist.

A metal fist.

Alexander exhaled in relief. “Coming.”

He approached the security panel, reaching out with his mind. Unlock the door. The panel chirped and complied, the door’s deadbolt releasing with a click.

As soon as the door swung inward, Annie rushed past, dripping water.

“Close it close it close it,” she said, breathless.

He shut it, but not before scanning the street for any danger. Seeing nothing, he reengaged the lock and ushered her around the counter and into the safety of the workshop.

When the door clicked shut, Annie shrugged off her worn denim jacket and peeled off the soaked hoodie beneath it. Her clothes were scuffed, torn in places, and marked with blood.

She looked around awkwardly, searching for somewhere to drop the clothes. Alexander chuckled and took them from her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

He heard the exhaustion in her voice, saw it in the slump of her shoulders. It was familiar to him, made him think of how he felt during the ride from the prison.

“You alright?” he asked, hanging the clothes on the line strung across the room.

Annie dropped onto the stool at his workbench. “Bounty hunters found me. The first pair were a joke, basically amateurs. But they must have called it in, because I ran into others trying to form a net around the area.”

Alexander studied her. Small cuts and scrapes, nothing life-threatening, but they’d still need treatment. Something else caught his attention though. When he’d first met her, the liquid metal had only covered her hands and wrists. Now it reached almost to her elbows.

“You—” he began, but a slam from the showroom cut him off.

They both turned toward the noise.

Annie tensed, the metal on her arms rippling. “Oh shit! I’m sorry sorry, I led them right to you. I didn’t even think! Damn it.”

Alexander cursed himself. No preparations in case someone found me? Stupid. I should know better.

Heavy, steady footsteps approached the workshop door.

Annie’s hands balled into fists. Alexander stepped forward.

The doorknob rattled and turned. The door swung inward.

Alexander caught Annie’s arm before she could move. “It’s just Frank,” he said with a sigh.

Frank stopped in the doorway, eyes flicking to Annie.

“What the damn do you mean, ‘It’s just Frank’, kid? Like I’m the disappointing uncle showing up late to Sunday lunch!” he boomed.

He held two convenience-store bags in his big, calloused hands. The smell of Chinese food filled the air.

“I even brought your favorite!” Frank declared. “Sweet and sour pork.”

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A long, loud growl echoed from Annie’s stomach.

“It was Alex!” she blurted, pointing at him.

Twenty minutes later they were sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating from steaming takeout containers. They caught each other up on the past week between bites.

Frank sat on a stool behind Annie, tiny glasses perched on his nose as he cleaned and stitched a cut along her shoulder.

She didn’t flinch. The only sound she made was the occasional satisfied hum as she chewed.

Maybe there’s some kind of metal weave under her skin. Or reinforced nerves.

She caught him staring. “What?”

“Just wondering why that doesn’t bother you. Is it your ability?”

Annie laughed with her mouth full. “No. Just used to getting patched up. My instructor was the ‘pain’s the best teacher’ type.”

Alexander shook his head and kept eating.

“There. That should just about do it,” Frank said, standing.

Annie tilted her head with a smile. “Thanks, Mr. Frank.”

Frank chuckled. “Just Frank to you, little Annie. It’s about time Alexander brought a friend around.”

Alexander rolled his eyes as Frank packed the medkit and fetched a blow-up mattress and bedding from the closet. Another win for the storage.

“Kid, we’re opening late tomorrow. Got a shipment coming in you might like.”

Alexander looked up. “What is it?”

“That’d ruin the surprise.” Frank started inflating the mattress. “You’re welcome here as long as you need, Annie. We’ll kick Alexander out of that little nook he set up so you can have it. Won’t be the first time he’s slept out here.”

Alexander sighed but didn’t argue. Frank tossed down the bedding and rehung the privacy sheet. The man might bark and grumble, but Alexander knew he meant every word.

“Thanks, Frank.” Alexander said.

Frank grunted and gave a wave as he disappeared through the workshop door. “Don’t burn my store down!”

The door clicked shut, leaving only the familiar hum of electronics.

“He’s a good man,” Annie said.

“One of the best. Basically the only family I have left, though he’s not actually… you know.”

Annie stretched and rubbed her shoulder. “You cool with me taking the mattress?”

He nodded, fetched his sleeping bag and pillow, and set up on the workshop floor.

“Hey,” Annie said quietly from behind the privacy screen. “Thanks for opening the door.”

Alexander smiled to himself. “Get some rest. We’ll figure out what to do tomorrow. It’s probably best if we don’t stay here too long.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I just didn’t know where else to go. They were—”

“No,” Alexander interrupted, calm but firm. “I haven’t forgotten what you did for me. What you risked.”

He slid into the cold sleeping bag. “I don’t have many friends left. And maybe we’ve only known each other for the worst few minutes of our lives…” He hesitated, thinking about the technicians. The dead technicians.

Annie was silent while he organized his thoughts.

When he continued, his voice was steady. “No matter what’s coming, and no matter what we have to do to survive it, I want you to know that you’re a superhero to me, Annie—”

A soft sob broke the quiet.

“—and I’ll always have your back.”

Silence returned, deeper now.

“Thanks,” Annie whispered. “‘Night, Alex.”

“Goodnight, Annie.”

Morning came with no more surprises.

Alexander woke with a dull ache in his back. A lesson, that a sleeping bag laid over concrete did not equal comfort. Cracking one eye open, he immediately spotted Frank at his workbench humming while unpacking a shipping crate full of cybernetics.

“Morning, kid. Slept like the dead, huh?”

“Not the worst I’ve had this past month,” Alexander said, rubbing his neck.

“Good. Get some breakfast in you. Got something to show you after.” Frank pulled out a polished black box, inspecting it. “And let the girly know you’re awake. She’s been bouncing around my showroom since I got here.”

“I wasn’t bouncing!” Annie called from the showroom. “I was training. Didn’t want to wake you.”

Alexander shuffled out to join her. She had her hair tied back and was dressed in clean, casual street clothes. A layer of sweat beaded her brow, with a few strands of ginger stuck to her forehead. She looked tired, but much improved from last night.

They ate reheated leftovers before Frank beckoned them to the counter. The ballistic glass windows blacked out with a command, cutting off the view of the street. Overhead lights hummed to life.

Frank set down the ornate black box Alexander had glimpsed earlier, etched with silver and gold patterns that hinted at stars, nebulae, and angular alien shapes. They felt almost familiar to him, almost but not quite runic. Perhaps abstract circuity.

“It’s beautiful, ain’t it?” Frank asked. “Can’t take credit for the box. That’s how they shipped it.”

Annie reached out, pausing just before her fingers touched.

Frank huffed a laugh. “It ain’t gonna bite.”

While Annie traced the patterns, Alexander studied it. “You wouldn’t be this excited if you already had something like it. And the size rules out a lot. Small. Expensive. An implant of some kind? Maybe a sensory replacement. Ocular, aural, vocal?”

Frank didn’t react.

Not that.

“Brain-interfacing then.”

It was a bit of a misnomer: every cybernetic implant or prosthesis technically interfaced with the brain, or something else that did the heavy-lifting for it. Organ replacements tended to be self-regulating and entirely automatic. And of course, subdermal plating or musculature-enhancing systems like lattices and nanosupport fibers didn’t require inputs.

He closed his eyes a moment. “That narrows it down to either a neural implant or a memstack.”

Annie stared at him with her mouth open, before turning to Frank with a serious look in her eyes. “Is he always this nerdy?”

Frank laughed. “Always! Usually just glances at me, says something like, ‘Loose power connector,’ as if he knows everything.”

Frank flipped the lid. Inside, three smooth, featureless cylinders rested in velvet. Smaller than a pinky finger and rounded at both ends. They had no lights or markings, no visible ports or seams. Just smooth and featureless.

Alexander couldn’t help the irreverent thought. They look like suppositories.

The stark design contrasted with the box’s ornate etching. Alexander couldn’t help but feel that the design was deliberate. The kind of deliberate meant to challenge one's perception.

His Technopathy stirred.

“I can sense them,” he murmured.

“Impossible,” Frank said flatly.

Alexander ignored him and reached into the devices. The casing was of a metal composition that struck him as unfamiliar. Deeper still, his senses expanded into something alien.

From the moment his power had awakened, he hadn’t questioned how it worked. How, with the slightest brush of his senses, he could understand what a device was. What its purpose was. He’d assumed it was because he knew how the machines worked already, understood capacitors and resistors, transistors and diodes, relays and transformers. He knew energy regulation, signal oscillation, and processing.

It was… logical, so it never required much thought.

But this was different. Here, faced with technology he had no framework for, his logic shattered. And with it, letting go of his rigid belief about how his power functioned, he felt comprehension flow into his mind. It whispered new terminology: Biomechanical nanotechnological integration.

Then the fragile understanding was gone, as if it never mattered, instead replaced by certainty.

His Technopathy didn’t require that he understand how the technology worked, though it could enhance it by revealing creative uses.

Instead, it was based on communication. His willed intent. The camera in his cell had been telling him that it was watching. Frank’s console had felt unhappy with him when he entered the wrong code, almost indignant at his efforts to subvert its purpose. And it was exactly that, a device’s purpose, that he could sense most clearly. The why behind a machine’s existence.

So he listened. It was challenging, something that would require practice, but the implants whispered secrets to him. Taught him some of their purpose.

Revealed to him the parts they’d know he wouldn’t like.

Surveillance protocols. Sensors to track their location. Code to report information about its host.

It’s not hostile… just curious. They have a desire to learn and to know. To grow with their user.

And they were willing to help him. With a gentle push of his Technopathy, he felt something shift inside the tiny devices. Code rewritten. Functions disabled. At least, that’s how his mind parsed it, but he knew it was so much more than that.

When it was done, he knew they were safe. As his senses receded, there was a flicker of something else… an awareness at the edge of his consciousness. It felt as though something knew what he’d done, and then it was gone.

Alexander stumbled back a step as his vision returned, only to find Annie’s metal hand waving an inch from his nose.

“You were all zoned out,” she said. “Did you just zap them with your power?”

“Yeah,” Alexander whispered. “There was nothing bad, not like the Santiago Systems one I had—”

He froze. “Wait, Annie, what about your implant?”

Annie rocked back on her heels. “All good. Got a chop doc to remove mine just in case.”

He nodded. “These still had some reporting features, but they seemed more designed for research if that makes sense.”

“Good work, kid,” Frank said, pulling out the leather tool roll containing his precision tools. “I ordered these through a connection of mine.”

He slid a few of the tools out of their sleeves. “These are from a boutique firm in the European District called Veritus Praxis. Cutting-edge adaptive neurotech designed specifically for superhumans. Supposed to help your brain interface better with your powers or something. Rumor is they can take a Tier 1 rookie to Tier 3 in months.”

Frank scratched his chin. “Some folks are saying there’s more to it. Something about being more than just a human with power, whatever that means.”

Annie’s eyes widened. “That rumor is true?”

“Eh, I dunno. Lotta nonsense out there,” Frank said with a huff. “But people are calling implants like this ‘growth engines’. My guy thinks someone’s trying to roll out a whole system for managing powers. Probably bullshit though.”

He tapped the box. “Got them as display pieces, but I planned to slip you one and replace it with a knock-off.” He looked at Annie. “Good thing I ordered extras, because no way I’m letting the little miss walk out of here without one either.”

Annie squeaked. “Really?!”

“Way the kid tells it, you saved his life,” Frank said. “And I know what that might end up costing you. So you've earned it.”

She beamed, practically vibrating on the spot.

“So, who’s first?” Frank teased.

Annie’s hand shot up.