Cry Later

Cry Later

Jack surfaces from the dark like someone rising through cold gasoil. The slow ache of a body remembering every place it’s been broken. Light leaks into his eyes in thin, sickly strips and makes them water. Warm air smells of disinfectant and blood. A ceiling fan pushes it around with a soft mechanical cough.
He turns his head—slowly, because everything hurts. Zoe is sitting in the chair beside his bed. Her posture is relaxed. She smiles — soft, tired, like she just pulled him out of a fire and everything’s going to be alright.
Then his vision adjusts. Her hair is pushed aside and her skull is open. A neat crescent of bone peeled back like a metal panel. Cables drip from the exposed implant socket, still plugged into a diagnostic slab. Her smile doesn’t move. Her eyes don’t blink. Something that looks like it belongs inside a server rack sits in a tray beside her, still cabled into her head, blinking faintly like a heartbeat.
The last twenty-four hours, the dolphin job, slam back into Jack’s memory in pieces—none of them good.
Jack’s breath hitches like a stalled engine. He looks away from Zoe spraining his neck. Pain’s easier than that kind of fear. His eyes dart around the room, raking for clues.
The walls are stained in a shade of nicotine yellow that no cleaner has ever beaten. A cheap projector hums from a shelf in the back, throwing a misaligned image across the far wall: some old ad, the colors too saturated, the audio warped. A woman and a few men playing mermaids, splashing their tails in unrealistically clean beach water. No one’s watching it.
Over to the side, autodoc arms hang from the ceiling like tired insects. A few flicker in standby mode; others jitter like their servos can’t decide if they still have a patient. Metal trays clutter every surface—full of gauze, empty stim canisters, used bone screws.
Over the sound of mermaids, Jack didn’t sense at first that there are people in the room too. A man, tall, moist black skin, draped in one of those robe-coats that make no practical sense. A puffy collar, soft soles, like a rich kid slumming for fun. Except the look in his eyes is crystal cold calculation.
He’s transferring cred to a ripperdoc whose left eye is a massive, polished optics dome. Multi-lens, shifting focal rings, little iris mechanisms humming softly as it scans the payment. The ripperdoc doesn’t say much; just checks the transfer, nods once.
Then the doc calls over his muscle with a chin jerk. The bodyguard who steps into view looks engineered rather than born—huge, dense, shoulders the size of a doorway, veins like cables under tattooed skin, expression calm in a way that’s more threatening than anger.
The doc and his giant leave without a word. The black man watches them leave, not nervous—just confirming the transaction has stuck.
The projector flickers again. The video stutters and resets. Flapping mermaid tails, commercial laughter.
Jack’s voice comes out rough, unused:
“…You the one who paid for me not to die?” He glances toward Zoe again—brief, sharp, like touching a hot stove. “Or you payin’ for her?”
"Both of you, in fact.” The man approaches to stand at the foot of his bed, his voice is loud, honest, and velvety. “I’m Lenard. Lenard Jammer. You’re in a ripper clinic. Not a reputable one, but you’re alive, which is more than some of your team can say." He walks over to Zoe's body, looks at her, there is a flicker of sadness on his face, but only in the eyebrows. “Zoe didn’t make it. I’m… sorry. Didn’t expect to meet her crew like this."
Jack shifts, trying to sit up straighter. His ribs bite like razors under the bandage. He feels drowsy, and pulls wires attached to his cyberarms. More wires snake under the bandage around his chest, but there are no restraints. And no sign of his clothes or gear.
“Nobody drops that kinda cred outta charity.” It is very difficult to sound threatening wearing only a plastic clinic sheet, even if one can move. “So do you owe something, want something, or did something?”
"You are not wrong Jack, I do want something." Lenard grabs a metallic stool, and sits near the bed, leaning forward, eyes level with Jack’s. He wears a big golden nose ring, and Jack clocks two golden insets on his temples - some kind of cranial implants. "I want you. I have a job for you, and I can help you finish yours." He looks over at Zoe again, and then back at Jack, questioningly, his eyes bright and clear now, the kind of eyes that you want to trust. "And if you get paid, you might have enough to find out what happened to your other crewmate."
Jack’s cyberarm fingers flex once against the bedsheet, feeling the cables trail off like puppet strings. Somewhere in what Lenard just said there is a thing that could be a next move, and he doesn't want to look at it directly yet.
“Figure that means you’ve got a lead on the dolphin. Or the eco-ters who took it.” Jack takes a good long look at his new master, trying to parse the man’s build, his posture, what he hides behind the soft soles and the soft voice. His every stitch screams wealth, deliberate and palpable. And yet so out of place. The way he talks is real and human—a street charm that no corpo kid is capable of. And Zoe wouldn't just trust anyone—if him knowing Zoe is even true.
"I do have a lead on the dolphin," he says, "or rather, she does." He glanced back at Zoe again. "That implant—what’s left of it—keeps getting pings. Short-range, encrypted… I checked them." he frowns, looks down. "The dolphin is still talking to her. So your job isn’t dead. Messy, sure. Compromised, definitely. But if we can get a stable reply chain going," shade of embarrassment as he says this, "I can pull full coordinates. That’s your payday. Your friend’s resuscitation. Everything." He looks at Jack meaningfully, those clear black eyes. "And after that is done, I want you to help me with my problem."
Jack goes still for a long, cold moment—so long the mermaid commercial loops twice before he moves again. The idea hits him sideways. He drags a hand over his jaw, feeling the roughness, the dried blood, the tape from the clinic IVs. His cyberarm servos whir softly.
He should just tell this Lenard to go fuck himself, take Zoe and leave. What’s he gonna do, undo the surgery? But then there’s no way to save Malik. Or there’s gotta be a better way to save him. Unless he’s also gone already.
“No, fuck that.” Jack rasps and tries to get up.
“I know,” Lenard begins.
“No, you fucking don’t!”
“You cannot help her Jack.” Lenard calmly watches him fail getting out of the hospital bed. “But maybe she can help you. The dolphin is reaching out to her because it thinks she’s still alive.”
Jack wants to look at Zoe, but can’t. Hope wearing a dead friend’s face.
"Pull the coordinates from the signal. Just the data. You don't need to—" He stops. "There's a way to do it clean."
Lenard shakes his head without any judgment in it. "The dolphin isn't broadcasting coordinates. It's talking. It wants a response. From her. " A beat. "I need the personality index. The speech patterns. The—"
"She has a name."
"I know she does."
Silence. The mermaid commercial loops. Somewhere in it, someone laughs.
Jack's cyberarm is making a faint whirring sound he hasn't noticed until now. He stares at the floor. Clinic tiles, cracked along the grout lines, disinfectant smell that doesn't quite cover what's underneath it.
They should have just taken the out when offered and let the eco-ters take the tank. He couldn’t give up. Needed to win, felt like it mattered, to both of them.
It hadn't mattered.
And now Zoe is in a chair with her skull open and a man Jack met an hour ago is explaining, professionally, what he needs from her.
"If you do this," Jack says, and his voice comes out wrong — too flat, too careful, like he's negotiating a loan he knows he can't repay. "You keep it narrow. Then you shut it down. You don't — run it longer than you have to."
"Of course."
"And I want it off when we're done." He finally looks at the implant in the tray. The cables. The faint blink of it. "Whatever you built — you take it apart after."
Lenard meets his eyes.
He's going to do it because Malik might still be alive and there is no other lead. He's going to do it because he owes her a finished job more than he owes her a clean conscience. He's going to do it because he made the call that put her in that chair, and the only thing left is to make the call mean something, even if the something is ugly. He's going to do it because if he sits here much longer with his ribs screaming and the mermaid commercial looping and Zoe one step away with her skull open, he is going to come apart at the seams — and he can do that later.
"Fine." The word drops out of him like something used up. Not permission, exactly. More like a door he's stopped holding shut. "Do it."
“Usually it’s not someone I knew,” Lenard says, with that embarrassed flick of his eyebrows. “But it’s that, or no leads at all. Maybe think of it as her final contribution.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack tries to snap, but coughs instead, “And what of your problem then? What kind of job needs a half-dead merc, and why pay for me instead of pulling in a fresh crew with no bullet holes?”
“Because I’m isolated Jack.” Lenard says simply. “Slayton Nanotech is hunting me. I stole something they’re very emotional about," he smiles wickedly. It's weirdly disarming. "I need muscle. Someone to help me figure out how to get that heat off me. I can’t expose my contacts. Zoe vouched for your crew before the job. And that’s the only line I have left, which is why I followed her to the shithole where I scraped you off the pavement. Help me settle my situation with Slayton, and I will help you finish your job. I don't need your dolphin, I need you. And your remaining choom, maybe.”
Jack watches Lenard’s grin—too light, too bright for someone being hunted by people who erase entire blocks to clean up a mess.
“So what the hell did you steal?” He blurts out in amazement before he can stop himself. “Nope. Doesn’t matter.” Probably better not to know. “I’ll help you with your situation. But we do this on one condition. First, we finish my job. We get the dolphin back, we get paid, we find Malik.” He extends his hand. “After that, we handle Slayton. Deal?”
"Jack," Lenard says with a grin as he grabs Jack’s hand, but much less animated than when he was talking about Slayton. "This is what you hoped you would say."
Like he had known the answer all along.

***

Jack turns the little pocket knife over in his palm—the one Zoe used to flip absentmindedly any time she got nervous enough to hide it behind bravado—and tucks it into his beltline. The meds have softened the edges of the pain but sharpened Jack’s thoughts in a floaty, distorted way—like he’s thinking through a fish tank.
He covered her up with a sheet without looking, like a coward.
Zoe’s implant flickers under Lenard’s hands. He’s in the project mode, muttering "I can spoof her. Imitate her, like.. Not proud of it. Keeps the line open... Just a personality construct."
Lenard’s laptop looks like a bleeding-edge prototype—no brand marks, smooth angles, ports that adjust themselves while he works. The code on screen scrolls in patterns generations ahead of Jack’s IQ. Lenard doesn’t fumble once. Doesn’t sweat, doesn’t try to impress him, just works. Every so often he looks up, and there’s no fear in his eyes, no guilt, just that unnervingly calm focus. If Jack walked up to him now and bashed his brains out with his bare hands, nobody would know.
So he focuses on practical things instead. Clothes are a priority—he orders the cheapest, fastest delivery option through a clinic’s contact panel. The chili-red combo of cargo pants and a tank top cling like plastic film, cheap fibers prickling sweat out of him. He looks like a discount ganger on his first day out of juvie—but at least he’s not ass-out under a clinic gown, and modesty ain’t ever saved a life anyway. Tank top barely covers the plasti-skin bandages along his ribs. They itch, the bright green patchwork making him look like he is held together by glowing children’s stickers.
Finally, Lenard announces that he managed to talk the dolphin into sending the coords. Blue Shadow didn't go far–the location is in Florence. Jack’s been through that zone before: an enormous industrial estate chugging out plastics and polymers, toxic-air warnings that everyone ignores, repugnant housing climbing the hillside in a desperate attempt to escape.
Before Lenard begins scoping out the Blue Shadow hideout through the net, he casually suggests to think about hiring some more people for the gig, giving Jack the once-over, eyebrows raised like a silent “You sure you can walk, choom?”
Jack’s reaction is a low, humorless breath—almost a laugh, but the kind with no warmth left in it.
“Yeah, I look like hammered shit. I’ll manage.”
He pulls on the cargo boots from the delivery package, stomping them into shape.
“I don’t need an army. I need wheels,” he mutters.

***

The sliding metal door of the clinic bangs open and the older Indian woman who appears doesn’t apologize. She’s dressed for motion—street pants, boiled bolero jacket with a collection of colorful patches, heavy metallic hoops. She's around 60, and built like a problem that survived every solution.
Boots hit the floor tiles like she’s testing them for weakness. Sterile light washes over her face—lined, sharp, eyes bright with the kind of attention that never really turns off. Long greying hair streaked white, brown, and toxic green highlights.
She takes in the room in one sweep, finally taking a long look at Jack. Her mouth twists up in a smirk—not disgust—recognition.
“Seen worse. Been worse.” Her voice is raspy and mocking. She turns her head slightly, voice carrying without her having to raise it. “So which one of you idiots stole a dolphin?”
“Eco-ters stole it from us.” Jack replies steadily. “They shot my runner. I walked out, barely. Name’s Jack.”
She looks Jack up and down again, slower this time. “Got enough duct tape to hold you together?” She smiles crookedly, and then jerks her chin toward Lenard without looking directly at him. “And you? You the brains, or just the money?”
“Both, unfortunately,” Lenard replies, without looking up from his work.
That earns a short, humorless huff. She looks back at Jack.
“Juno said ‘quick wheel job.’ I hope you’re all not cursed. I’m Jata. You ride with me, you don’t lie, don’t freeze, and don’t touch my dash without asking.”
She reaches into her jacket, pulls out a battered metal flask, takes a small sip, then offers it to Jack without ceremony.
“You bleed in my car, you clean it yourself.”

***

Jata's ride is a scarred but perky tactical utility vehicle having more mods than original parts, and probably stuffed with questionable enhancements after a nomad fashion. Jack hears it hum with a low, ominous gurgle through a molten traffic towards Florence, zoning in on Blue Shadow coordinates.
"Soo, I sifted through some of their messages, and here's what's up.” Lenard suddenly drops looking up from his laptop. “Turns out, our environmentally oriented friends weren’t freelancing. They were hired to hit the facility and broadcast it publicly. Best bit: your employer—Ms. X—hired them to do it. They weren’t supposed to grab the dolphin. That was your part. Clearly their showing initiative for the cause was not according to her plan.”
He probably expected some kind of reaction from Jack, so decided to unpack a little more after receiving only a blank stare.
"My bet is that she's making a power grab. Humiliate whoever's currently in charge of the facility with one hand, but grab the asset with the other. Only it doesn't work if she does not have the asset. And I haven't seen any broadcasts from Blue Shadow either—for some reason they are not upholding their end of the deal. Maybe they have decided that saving the dolphin is enough for them, but this fucks you."
“Corpos playing both sides?” Jata’s dry chuckle from the front seat, “Original.”
This is pertinent, but doesn’t change the mission for now. Jack just stares out the side window at a plastic refinery sliding past like a rusted cathedral.
"Jack, just remember," Lenard tries to catch his eyes, "the only way you get paid is if Ms. X succeeds. We need both the dolphin, and the broadcast. The latter I can do though, as long as I can grab the footage from their net—I'll release it for them."
“Fine.” Jack replies. “You keep digging. I want names, call signs, anything that tells us why Blue Shadow’s sitting on their hands. You dump the footage. But you do it after we have the dolphin secured.”
Jata slows down the car as it prowls through squat industrial blocks, approaching the coords, and points with two fingers at a half-collapsed warehouse ahead, smoke stains up the side. She slows further, letting a convoy of slag haulers pass, then cuts the engine.
Jack’s fingers rest on Zoe’s knife in his pocket.
Coordinates point to the squat pale blue building, with what looks like a vibrant and toxic industrial past. Stop idolizing the rich and powerful, the wall says in beaten down block letters. There is a wide entrance for cargo trucks, with a vertical shutter open —wide enough for the dolphin rig to have rolled through. Jack looks over the roofs and good scouting spots. No one in sight.
"My way in,” Lenard hands him a tiny interface shard, “Just slot it into any terminal inside." Jack turns it once between two fingers, then slips it into a thigh pocket where his hand can find it without looking.
Lenard closes the laptop, and takes out a smaller but somehow even more expensive looking deck, and slides a VR wreath with golden designs from its comfy velvet casing. The wreath's contacts softly click into place on his temples, and his eyes close as he relaxes on the back seat, head leaning back serenely.
I'll be on comms.
Voice comes on clean and intimate in Jack’s phone implant, as Lenard’s actual lips don't make a sound.

***

Jack nods once, more for himself than anyone else. No amount of waiting is gonna improve his odds, so better to get on with it.
He steps down from the vehicle and the heat hits him like a wall. Florence air tastes like melted toys. There are uniformly grey and mottled production buildings around, several huge concrete silos with ladders broken off. The wide cargo entrance of Blue Shadow hideout yawns ahead, shutter rolled up.
He crosses the threshold, boots echoing once on concrete before the sound dies. Jack moves forward, slow and deliberate, eyes cutting corners, listening for the smallest lie in the silence.
Just beyond the entrance—long, wide darkened space, with something like stalls sliced symmetrically on either side, each about three meters wide, four deep. Walls are white square tiles with layers of dust and atomic hazard graffiti. There is a slot machine which is the only powered thing in here, probably for sentries to kill the time, only there's no sentries. Power circuity is fixed along the walls, construction equipment thrown down in one of the stalls. Sure enough, the familiar rig, the one Zoe rented, is parked deeper in, but no dolphin tank on it. Sun imitation light is spilling from a side door way down the hall, with some voices, too far to make out.
“Tank’s gone,” he subvocals. “Rig’s here, dolphin’s not.”
There are no guards, no cameras he can see, no active security. The eco-kids are young amateurs, sure, but they did manage to lay down an ambush for Jack and Zoe before. This looks more like distress than incompetence.
The slot machine chirps and clacks to itself, a tinny jingle echoing obscenely in the empty hall. Jack hates it immediately.
“I’m gonna slot you into something dumb first,” he murmurs. “See if they booby-trapped the building or just the obvious stuff.”
Jack reaches into his thigh pocket, fingers closing around the shard. He rolls it once between thumb and forefinger, then cracks the access panel and slides the shard in.
There is a dry disembodied Ha ha from Lenard, and then the slots start spinning. Three purple hearts, spin, spin, three googly eyes, spin, three crowns come up, then an animated oversexualized princess screams "JACKPOT! WAY TO GO!"
No, this is not connected to anything Jackpot. Try looking for access points in the next room.
Jack takes out the shard from the slot machine and pads over to look at the rig. The engine is not warm, likely had been standing here for some hours. He crouches, eyes tracking the floor—dust clumped and cracked where water pooled and dried again. This trail leads into the sun room.
As Jack peers inside it, he has to blink against the light of the sun lamp, shining onto a tree cowering in the corner. It is tall and gnarly, dull dry leaves, tubes feeding into the soil from a creaking ag support system block, more dead leaves on the red floor tiles. Smells like dairy that went off. Server blocks and terminals are scattered around the metal tables, they are on, but nobody is using them. There's an ocean waves white noise ambient blaring from a speaker somewhere. Voices, definitely arguing, coming from the next room, beyond the wood panel imitation sliding door.
“A little recon never hurts. Hey Zoe, if I slot you into those terminals, can you listen in without tipping them off?”
Not Zoe. Lenard’s voice is calm, with but a small edge of something like need. Just let me in.
Something catches in his lungs for a second, and the shard falls into the dust and dry leaves. As Jack picks it up and feeds it into the socket, the lights flicker, and a bunch of equipment comes alive around the room.
Now we're cooking, Lenard's disembodied voice sounds almost erotically slurred. I'll do a quick run around the system, meantime patching you through to their convo. And sounds like it's a good one, enjoy!
There's a blip in the phone signal, and then voices break out, in unison with the muffled echoes from behind the faux wood door.
“Shut the feeds. All of them. Now. We got what we came for.” This voice immediately cuts Jack with recognition. Snowflake in an orange bomber jacket with red makeup. This is the voice that gave the order to execute Zoe.
“What we came for was the broadcast. Don’t rewrite the contract after the fact.” Slow male voice, Spanish accent.
“The contract didn’t say drag a living thing through a killzone! This wasn’t the plan!” Shrill, girlish, neurotically excited.
“The plan was exposure babe. Exposure means footage, footage means payout.” Deep and sensual female voice.
“It’s not equipment—it’s alive.” Snowflake again.
“Everything’s alive if you zoom in far enough. Doesn’t change the invoice.” Slow Spanish.
“We already fucked the job by pulling it out. You know that, right? That thing wasn’t supposed to be here.” A new voice, grating sore throat guy.
“Doesn’t matter babe. We have reels, facility interiors, corporate logos on illegal hardware. That’s the money.” Sensual woman again.
“You upload that, it’s dead. You know that!” Shrill girlish.
“It dies either way. We don’t have the tanks, the meds, the power draw. Best case, it lasts a day.” Slow Spanish, almost laughing.
“Then we keep it alive for a day. That’s still a day longer than they gave it.” Snowflake, not amused.
“You people hear yourselves? We’re not a sanctuary. As a public pressure group we have bills. Lets pawn it off to a marine sanctuary.” Someone completely new, female, with some kind of slavic accent.
“We saved it. That counts for something.” Yet another voice, almost mewling.
“No babe. What counts is whether the transfer clears.”
“She paid us to make noise, not to parade the thing like a trophy!"
“She paid for proof, which it is.”
“She paid us to hurt the company, not hand them an excuse to bury everything."
“You’re guessing babe."
“So are you.”
Same argument Jack's heard in a dozen rooms before. Everyone trying to be righteous and solvent at the same time. Malik would probably convince them that they can have both somehow, and get away with the dolphin while they are still figuring it out. Jack can't. So he's going to have to move faster than their consciences.
Another blip interrupts the argument, and Lenard’s voice comes back, I don't see anything like a tank in the network. If it's on the premises, it's not plugged into anything. And the dolphin stopped responding.
Nothing left for Jack to do but try. He slides the faux-wood door open with his bare hand and walks in.
There is a gaggle of teenagers arguing in the middle of the room, and the rest are forming a loose circle around. Air is full of cigarette smoke and painfully cheerful vape tastes. Dolphin tank is stacked on its side, bright blue silicone blobs holding together the fissures in the glass.
The half circle facing Jack retracts immediately into a stunned silence, with those more trigger-happy or competent taking aim at him, while the half circle facing away keeps arguing.
“It’s scared.”
“It’s expensive.”
“If we dump the footage, we lose control.”
“If we don’t dump it, we’re just thieves with a dying mascot.”
“We’re not killers.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be a handoff job.”
“Everything’s a handoff job if someone’s paying.”
“And if the money doesn’t come?”
“Then we find another buyer.”
“As if! And tell yourselves what story this time?”
“Same one as always, that it was necessary.”
“We don’t upload. Not yet.”
“We do, or we’re done, it’s that simple.”
The silence spreads and the voices grind to a halt as everyone in the room is now aware of Jack’s presence.
These kids just stare in shock at Jack’s red hot outfit, flesh stapled together with bright green slabs, cyberarms and weapons crowding out the room. His walk is tortured and slow, and he makes no effort to hide it --- better sell it as inevitable.
After a theatrical pause, the Snowflake comes to:
"Look who's alive." She tries to keep authority, but on her face Jack can read that she's perplexed, and doesn't know where this is going. Jack doesn’t know that either, if he’s honest.
I got the footage. But something's wrong. Someone else is snooping around here. Be quick, whatever you want to do. Get the tank and get out, Leanard’s voice leaks a tinge of urgency.
Jack lets his gaze sweep the group.
“You’re not saints. You’re not villains. And while you’re trying to decide, you’ve become a committee. And that’s just so, fucking, boring!”
Some people reach for weapons, some round up on Snowflake. "Who's this? That a guy from yesterday?" "What's with the zombie porn?" “Is this what you call security Jay? How’d he just walk in?” She cuts them off with a gesture and opens her mouth to speak, but Jack just plunges on. Is that what Malik would have done?
“You don’t know where this is going because you lost control the moment you rolled that tank. And what did you buy with it? Uncertainty, questions, and discord in the ranks.” He looks around the group. Several kids look smugly at Snowflake, like he just proved their point. She noticed that too.
“Oh, and you think just because we didn’t kill you, it gives you some kind of what? Moral weight?” She smirked.
“I’m just here to make an offer.” Jack deliberately steps in further into the circle, and some teens step away on instinct, just in case. “Let me take the dolphin, we both get paid, and it lives. Which it’s sure as shit not gonna accomplish here.” Jack spared an amazed glance at the tank. “Even a famous marine biologist such as myself can see that.”
“Definitely. You look like someone who can enforce your offer.” She retorts, and some of the kids snigger. But in her eyes Jack sees that she's considering, calculating. "What are you gonna do with the dolphin?"
***

Waiting at the wheel is just a part of the job. Jata absently scrolls through the Bug’s diagnostic panel. And getting paid for waiting is much easier than what this reanimated solo set out to do. She had to give it to him, for tenacity if nothing else. Jata was in the biz long enough to know that when fixers say ‘quick and easy wheel job’ it really means dumpster fire, but that’s what the premium is for. She still needed the money. She glanced at the picture pinned to the top nav panel: Kavita at 11, her toothy smile, brimming excitement after getting her first home hydroponics kit. Kavita does well for herself now. But Jata still needs the money to throw at her debt pile. It feels like trying to fill a crater pinch by pinch, but she’s stopped thinking about it now. It’s just what she does after each job. And everyone likes being good at something.
She glanced at the bougie netrunner sprawled in Bug’s backseat. Doesn’t look like effort, might even drool, and yet, he’s also contributing. All part of the job.
The moment the first jeep clears the corner, Jata’s back straightens. Two black-and-grey corpo sleds, suspension tight, moving like they own the street. The halo overhead hums into position—too smooth, too quiet, not a news drone.
Jata’s hand slaps a switch. Bug’s engine drops into a predatory purr, panels subtly shifting as dormant mods wake up. She growls into comms, voice low and steady:
“Company’s here. Two armored jeeps, one halo drone, corpo materiel. One-fifty seconds, maybe less. Somebody know who the fuck are they?”
She angles the vehicle, rearing away from view without fully committing—ready to ram, ready to run.
Then she selects a playlist.

***

“What am I gonna do with it?” Jack steps closer to the tank, puts one metal hand flat against the silicone-patched fissure. Unlike the tank, the cracks in his plan are starting to come apart. He’s trying to figure out which corp would have traced them. If they had a tag on the dolphin, what took them so long? Has Ms X run out of patience with her little eco-ters group? “I’m gonna move it. And in about half a minute, a corporate strike team is going to make all the decisions for all of us!”
That gets their attention: Blue Shadow erupts in chaos. Some people run, someone rushes to the consoles. "We're locked out!"---a girl screams, a few kids scramble to get equipment, others try to disappear into the boltholes like cockroaches. Weapons come up half-ready, half-panicked. A couple of older-looking guys with rifles are shouting orders.
Snowflake is frowning, puzzled, but doesn't stop anyone. "You're not making any sense! If these corpos aren’t with you, then why?.."
Jack get out of there! It's Slaytrrrrr... Lenard’s voice cuts off into a static resonance scream. The dolphin convulses once in the tank.
Jack points at Snowflake, finger like a final verdict.
“You help me load it.”
Snowflake stares at Jack, at the bucking tank, at the room dissolving around her. Her eyes are wide, earnest, terrified in a way that finally looks genuine.
“I just wanted to do the right thing...” For a heartbeat, she looks like she might argue again. Then the dolphin convulses harder, a wet, awful sound echoing through the glass. Snowflake swears—raw, human—and shouts over her shoulder:
“Help him! Fuck the gear—help him!”
That does it. Two Blue Shadow kids rush forward. One drops their weapon that looks like a plastic souvenir. Another grabs the tank’s edge. A redhead pixie cut girl no older than 14 starts sobbing while pushing.
The tank moves. Jack feels it—momentum, ugly and real.
“Jata, get your wheels inside for loading, we’re rolling out the fish!” He bellows into the comms.
“It’s not a fish, it’s a mammal!” The redhead ugly cries through a giant sob.

***

“Copy that!” Jata snarls angrily, smashing the comm panel, and starts backing up. A quality sound of a Kerala screamo team is making Bug’s windows and panels vibrate. She backs the Bug hard into the entrance tunnel, metal screaming as the rear bumper kisses concrete.
The tunnel swallows her whole—good cover, bad timing. She knows instantly that this will give the corpo vehicles time to close in, so she'll need to push through them on her way out. Knew this job was unsalvageable.
Corpo engines grow louder—disciplined, confident.
There is a rhythmic thump, thump, thump, thump hitting her seat from the back. She almost forgot about the runner parked in her backseat. She turns around ready to punch the bougie bastard.
His spine is arched inhumanly back like a coil about to snap, almost pushing him down onto the floor. His one leg is convulsing in a series of kneejerks, his soft shoe going thump, thump, thump against her seat. His one elbow is doing the same, shoulder bent backwards, wrist hitting the window. His face is a picture of serenity, like something from another person, another body. Jata’s fury changes into horror, as she turns away with a startled scream and slams another switch.
The Bug’s suspension locks. Cargo clamps deploy with a heavy thunk.

***

The tank scrapes over the tunnel threshold, water sloshing violently inside. Jack’s arms are screaming, cybernetics whining under load, ribs burning like someone poured acid under the plasti-skin, something is leaking from the wounds.
Slayton. Not Blue Shadow's play, cannot be, they’re too small. Which means—
Lenard. The heat followed Lenard.
Son of a bitch.
Jack shoves the tank the last meter. His ribs make a sound he doesn't want to think about. Okay. Okay. Ms X still needs the broadcast and Lenard has the reels now, so—
So they're still worth something. The dolphin is still worth something. Move.
“Jata!” Jack wheezes over the noise, trying to catch his breath. “They’re not here for the tank—this is Lenard’s mess! We move, we still get paid!”
He shoves the tank the last meter, Blue Shadow kids scrambling to help, fear turning them into something useful for once.
The clamps bite—the tank locks into place.
Jack slams a hand on the truck’s hull. He hauls himself up, barely graceful, collapsing into the side seat, the kneepad torn clean off of his pants.
A small figure in an orange bomber jacket looks him in the eyes, one last time. Hers are bright green within the smear of red makeup, pupils wide with adrenaline. Her tiny brave group of idealistic children is unraveling around her, all because she tried to do the right thing.
“Load secure! Go!”

***

That’s all Jata needed.
“Hang on!”
She guns it.
The Bug surges forward, engine roaring, mods threatening to fall off.
Florence opens in front of her. There's a school yard ahead with a dozen children and teenagers playing, snorting drugs, or just hanging. Gunshots of unrelated street violence ring out to her left. Florence connects to Oil Wells in the north, lots of abandoned drilling equipment to play hide and seek. Favela in the east beyond a train line and a ridge of garbage dumps, hovels climbing up the mountain, narrow, overcrowded. Corpo sleds hate those.
She jerks the wheel hard east instead of plowing through the yard. The Bug fishtails, tearing across a cracked parking strip and blasting through a chain-link fence beside the school. Metal screams as the vehicle bursts through and slams down a steep service ramp that drops toward the garbage ridge and train line leading to Favela.
She glances at Jack, he slides halfway out the side window, pistol braced on the frame despite the violent shaking of the Bug. He’s aiming upwards and back. Clever: if the halo keeps eyes on them, the jeeps can keep the pressure indefinitely. Still an impossible shot though.
In the rearview, the corpo muscle pop out of cars’ windows and open fire. The heavy jeeps mash through the school yard, something bursts under their wheels like a melon. Jata’s eyes jerk up to Kavita’s image, and then back to the road.
The Bug rockets uphill into Favela’s busted streets, engine snarling as bullets ping off the plating. Jata watches the road like a predator.
Power junction ahead. Garbage runoff stream. Flashing ambulance speeding by.
“Alright! Let’s make you earn that paycheck,” she grins.
As she passes the screaming ambulance, she clips it deliberately with the Bug’s reinforced flank — not enough to wreck her vehicle, but enough to spin the ambulance sideways across the narrow street, blocking half the lane and showering glass around. Immediately after, she swerves through the shallow garbage runoff stream, splashing filthy water across the road and sending loose trash sliding everywhere.
The Bug bucks like a kicked animal. For a moment the rear wheels float—too light, too sideways. The tank with the dolphin is creaking and sloshing. Jata clamps both hands on the wheel, throttle feathered instead of mashed. The Bug straightens, suspension growling as it settles back into the climb. In the mirror she sees the result of the trap: one corpo jeep buried spectacularly nose-first in the trash. The other skidding but alive. Good. Now she needs distance.
She surveys the terrain ahead in a single glance. Corrugated iron hovels upon hovels, upon few more levels of hovels. Clotheslines and ladders between them—tight, messy, obstructed. Convenience store sale, some kind of flea market attracted a crowd. Titty bar parking lot with a couple of cars and an open maneuver space.
She hits the horn and floods the lot with engine roar as she barrels through. Parked cars scatter like billiard balls as the Bug clips bumpers and shoves vehicles sideways into the narrow street behind them.
“How’s that runner there?” She shouts to Jack.
“Seizing but breathing!” He shouts back after a quick check in-between the shooting.
“My life!” Jata snarls, and then she has no more time to talk. The Bug shudders from the last impact. The wheel jerks in her hands and she has to fight the vehicle back into line again.
“You know, none of this matters if we flatten the dolphin!” Jack points out angrily, holding on to the frame with every surface of his body.
She breathes once through her teeth and stabilizes again, feathering throttle and steering until the suspension settles. Behind them the surviving jeep slides painlessly through the chaos she created and starts closing the gap again.
“Persistent bastards…” Jata mutters. Ahead of her Favela spills out onto the mountain road access—and straight into madness. Traffic jam choking the road. Open-air rave blasting rainbow strobes and bass, dancers overflowing into the street. And beside it all…Biohazard storage yard. Steel drums stacked behind a weak fence.
Jata’s eyes flick between the rave and the drums. Then she grins.
“Alright. Let’s make them choose.”
She jerks the Bug toward the biohazard yard, bursting through the fence into the barrel storage area. A sharp chemical smell floods into Bug’s interior, making all of them choke and cough. She wants to keep moving toward the mountain climb exit on the far side of the yard.
The Bug claws onto the mountain road to the Sentinel Peak just as Jata feels the weight shift—rear wheels slipping, suspension shrieking. For a moment she thinks they’re going to roll. She saves it, barely. The corpo driver just sailed through flawlessly avoiding the spills and the barrels, like they were expecting this, and now their jeep is only twenty meters back. The halo swoops in closer as well to spot the driver. Too close. Then suddenly it’s smoking and swaying, veering off to the side, but still airborne.
How the hell did he make that shot?! Jata can’t help but look at Jack, and finds him doubled over, retching and gasping for breath, clutching his side, squirting blood onto the seat.
She bites her lip and guns straight toward the hiking station parking area, jerking Bug off the main lane and into the gravel lot. If she cuts diagonally through, she can make an exit onto the upper mountain service road behind.
Corpos navigate the zigzag successfully and close in. Five meters. Jata can hear the jeep’s engine through the Bug’s frame now. The Slayton driver is good—disciplined, patient, leaning on the Bug’s rear quarter trying to shove them off road. Jata didn't wreck purely because the Bug is bigger than their jeep.
Jata is vaguely surprised when Jack, not dead, with a rictus of furious determination on his bloodless face, leans out again and aims at the halo. His pistol booms once—and the halo falls away and crashes. In this moment the long raspy gasp like a kitchen sink sound echoes from the back seat, as Lenard breathes in and seats up. The halo must have been holding the signal keeping him under.
Jata looks him in the eye through the mirror. His face is covered in tears and bodily fluids from his convulsions. Lenard looks slowly around, looks at Jack spewing blood, holding his insides, out the window at the Slayton vehicle, close enough to reach. Then he takes a breath—and dives back into the cyberspace again, head lolling back.
Then Jata sees Slayton’s car back window slide down, and a corpo soldier with a dark crystal visor covering the upper half of her face, ear to ear, lines up her rifle at Bug’s wheels. If they are caught, Jata's entire crew, the Razor Genies, are going onto the corporate hit list. They are tough bastards, and no strangers to hit lists, but who knows how far the corporate scythe is going to slice. It takes her a lot of effort to not look at Kavita.
Jata swerves chaotically, looking desperately around the mountain road, looking for anything at all. There is a shrimp farm with tanks and a belltower. Woodchipper chewing through foliage with a mighty roar. A bunch of hikers, women on a wellness retreat, scattering away.
Jata makes the call instantly. She jerks the Bug off the paved road and straight through the chainlink fence into the shrimp farm. Metal tears. The Bug crashes between rows of water tanks and pipes, splashing brine and shrimp slurry everywhere.
Jata deftly maneuvers between the tanks and concrete service paths. The corpo jeep follows, missing no beats.
“I got them.” Lenard’s voice booms over Bug’s speakers, startling Jata and making Jack let out a short scream. Then the voice starts laughing, a hollow, lobotomized joy with a bit of static, on and on like he cannot stop.
Bug heaves as both tires on the right side are gone, rims grinding concrete. The whole vehicle is leaning, about to roll. Jata is standing on the wheel now, both arms locked, shoulders like steel beams. Shrimp water sprays behind them like a storm from a ruptured tank. The voice is laughing.
“Hold together… hold together…” She prays.
Then suddenly the corpo jeep's wheels stop spinning, and the engine coughs smoke as they start going in reverse. In the mirror Jata sees the driver is fighting for control, teeth bared in disbelief, hitting an unresponsive panel. The vehicle slews sideways in the brine, soldiers grabbing for anything as it slides off the concrete lane and smashes nose-first into a silo. Metal gives with a thunderclap. Jata doesn’t even slow.
She drags the Bug out of the shrimp farm lanes and onto the mountain road again, rims screaming but moving. Jack slumps back against the door, pistol falling into his lap.
“Good… driving…” he coughs.
Lenard opens his eyes like someone waking from a nap. He removes the wreath carefully, places it back in the velvet case, and wipes his face with a sleeve, frowning in distaste.
“Glad we made it,” he winces slightly, massaging his bruised wrist. “Where are we exactly?”

***

The wind at the Sentinel Peak moves differently than in the city. It smells like cold stone and old things. The overlook is littered with the leftovers of people who came up here to forget something for a few minutes—cups, bottles, grease-stained cartons.
Jata sits on the ground leaning against the Bug’s bumper, flask in hand, boots stretched out. The mountain wind pulls at her green-streaked hair. She closes her eyes and listens to the hum of the sprawl below, and the sound of chewing. The sound of being alive.
Lenard sits cross-legged on the hood of the Bug, his plushy cape wrapped around, eating noodles like someone who just came back from a swim instead of a neural war. Jack is hunched forward, elbows on his knees, red shirt long since gone—replaced with gauze and tape wrapped tight. Jata still made him buy the cleaning supplies and work on the seats—rules are rules, and she did warn him. He spins a little pocket knife between his fingers. Flip. Catch. Flip.
“Got it.” He says and disconnects the call, then announces to everyone. “The drop off is confirmed. Futura address.”
Jata feels the warmth of her old warhorse that survived another campaign. After the ranger shop patch job—new wheels bolted on—they’ll make it. To be on a safer side, she’ll have to take them down the mountain on the other side, and drive all the way around the sprawl to reach Futura. It will take many hours in traffic, especially since Rockies flooded again recently, but make it almost impossible for corporate netrunners to find them in road surveillance. And Jata would welcome the relative quiet and numbness of the commute.
“She would’ve loved this view.” Jack mutters watching the skyline.
“Are you kidding?” Lenard snorts from his perch, “She’d hate it. Would’ve said something like ‘zooming out, the pixels of the oppression blur and make the city look almost forgivable’. Did she ever give you that one? Pixels of oppression?”
Jack laughs, and clutches his side. Jata listens to both men without interrupting, too awkward to participate in something she doesn’t share. It makes her sad somehow.
"Hey Jack?” Lenard says quietly, when the laughing sputters out. “Remember when we started, which actually was just today in the morning, hard to believe, you said you wanted to say goodbye to her, properly? The job is not finished yet, and it's totally up to you, if you're comfortable, but this is the perfect spot. Has a view. And we are never going back up here, unless literally chased by murderers. Soon as we come back down, you know how it is—the churn starts again, and there's never time."
Jack is silent for the longest time, head bowed, facing away from them. Finally he exhales.
“…Yeah.”
Slow steps carry him to the edge of the observation deck. For a long moment he just looks out, turning the knife over in his hand. Then he speaks—not loud, not ceremonial. Just enough for the two people behind him to hear.
“Zoe Flash Kim.” He finally says her name out loud. The wind takes it immediately.
“She would’ve liked you, Jata.” Another pause. “She would’ve robbed you blind, Lenard.” That earns the faintest smile. Only Jata heard him mutter “Unlikely”.
Jack crouches near the edge of the deck and presses the knife into a crack between the concrete slabs. He wedges it in firmly and leaves it there. A small piece of chrome catching the last light of the day. “Leave you something to fidget with.”
He straightens slowly, holding the bandage. The city hums below them. For a while no one says anything. Then Jack clears his throat and wipes his hands on his pants.
“Alright.” His voice is tired. “Let’s go finish the job.”

***

Traffic crawls. Jack’s everything hurts. He must have passed out a couple of times, and woke up without change to one hood or the other sliding past, and Jata humming softly, one hand on the wheel, another in the open window.
“Check this out.” Lenard turns the small display toward him. Lines of text scroll—short bursts of translated pattern language from the dolphin.
LOUD
LOUD PLACE
WHERE AM?
WHERE FRIEND?
FRIEND SAY LATER. IS LATER?
Jack looks at the words until they blur. Then he throws the tablet back at Lenard and turns away to stare at the glass.
Lenard goes on, because of course he does.
“I am going to keep a little back door open using this 'zoe' channel, to check what Ms X's employers are up to.”
Jack nods without really listening. Zoe used to say later all the time. Usually when she was about to hurt. She’d grin, shrug it off, kick the feeling down the road like a pawn shop loan. Maybe she got that bit right. He is tired. He’s too tired to fix the world tonight. He doesn't know what you tell someone who doesn't understand yet. And maybe he doesn’t have to. Let it believe she’s out there somewhere. It could be true if—
“Just let the construct talk,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “Tell it it’s safe. Or something.”
“Safe,” Lenard repeats thoughtfully. “Don’t you think that’s overselling things a little? We are delivering it to its former captors. Probably going to end up in a lab just like before. More experiments, more damage." He is trying to figure out the correct wording, like words are the problem.
Jack presses his fingers harder into his temples.
“I know,” he says. His voice is flat with pain, with fatigue, with the last of his patience. “I know what we’re doing.”
Silence settles back into the car.
“Tell it anyway.”
With his eyes closed, Jack tries to melt into his seat and maybe drift off again.
“Don’t you get the blues on me now, soldier.” He hears Jata’s voice after a long silence, strangely soft and dreamy. “For what it’s worth, we’re all just moving from cage to cage. Different cages with different lighting.”
Jack says nothing. After a moment she adds, “You can fall apart when we stop.”
Then she taps one of the panels, and the sound system comes alive with an elegant Spanish duo, violins and guitars riffing and stretching, making the room for breath.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Looks like this is later.”