The secretary’s voice was a dull knife sawing through Kelly’s concentration. “Dr. Voss?”

  Kelly stopped calculating how to break the waiting room chair. She had already rejected simple blunt force. She was now considering a rapid, twisting motion that would exploit the poor weld points where the legs met the seat. The chair was her enemy. It was ugly, it was uncomfortable, and its very existence in this lobby was a personal insult. She would see it in pieces.

  The secretary’s stare had weight. Kelly met it, her own gaze empty of anything but a patient, analytical focus on the secretary’s facial tics. The secretary’s gaze broke first.

  “The interviewer will see you now.”

  “Is the chair in there as much of a crime against ergonomics as this one?” Kelly asked, giving her current seat a solid thump with her boot. A faint creak of protest was her reward.

  The secretary’s lips tightened. “The seating in Mr. Blackthorn’s office is… adequate.”

  “A promise wrapped in a threat. I love it.” Kelly stood. About time. She’d signed her name for a huge salary, a formal excuse for her expertise, a key to their armory, and a single meeting with a man named Ren. The third partner after Dr. Haider and Venus. The older man, Ren, was an augment integration expert. The file said he could make a person and their hardware forget where one ended and the other began. He was also a war veteran.

  Kelly didn’t know which war, and, honestly, not knowing was basically its own kind of answer. The thing that actually mattered was that Ren reported directly to the upper echelon. In practical terms, that meant he was an Elite at the very minimum; someone whose existence made other people nervous just by standing in the same room—and possibly someone whose email signature could read “borderline demigod.” Kelly wanted to ask him about his dental plan.

  A requirement for her ‘training’ was a signed NDA, and for her to submit to a series of tests. Kelly stood up, her joints popping. She was ready to see what their tests measured, and how many she could break before they figured out she was the wrong kind of investment.

  Kelly had spent the last fifteen minutes in a hallway of the building's upper floors, along with two other hopeful interviewees. The air was stale. A man in a cheap synth-wool suit paced, muttering about market synergies. The other was a very friendly and eager woman. She had introduced herself twice. “Marta!” she’d said, each time with the same bright, unwavering smile. It was the smile of someone who had read a manual on positive affect and had decided to weaponize it.

  “It’s an incredible opportunity, isn’t it?” Marta said, not for the first time, gazing at the closed office door with genuine, unnerving zeal. “To be part of the solution at a time like this. The restructuring.”

  Kelly watched a bloom of fire erupt two blocks over, visible through the hall window. “Yeah. Restructuring.”

  “It’s why I got into crisis management,” Marta continued, undeterred. “The chance to help rebuild.”

  “I’m here for the company armory,” Kelly said.

  Marta’s smile didn’t falter. It somehow intensified. “Direct! I respect that. Asset utilization is key.”

  It was weird. That as the world crumbled, business continued as usual. But then again, Kelly lived in a world ravaged by countless wars and in a state of rebuilding, a world where ancient horrors, life forms, or war relics could crawl up from the ground at any moment, so the most desperate or eager people had kind of grown used to it and the infrastructure had built around it. Marta was probably one of them. She probably had a themed planner.

  At last, the door opened. The man in the cheap suit stumbled out, his face ashen. He walked past them without a word, heading for the elevators.

  “Candidate Voss,” the secretary announced.

  Marta turned her terrifying smile on Kelly. “Good luck with the interview.”

  “Kelly!” the battle maniac scientist replied, forming a heart sign between her thumb and index finger. “I’m reliving the day and getting stronger each time, so I'll probably see you soon! If you hear screaming from in there, it’s part of my process.”

  Marta’s eyes sparkled with pure, unadulterated excitement. “Really? That’s fascinating! A iterative resilience protocol! I look forward to comparing data!”

  Kelly blinked. She gave Marta a slow nod of respect. The woman was a different kind of monster.

  The secretary ushered Kelly through a reinforced door. The self-proclaimed baby time-god waltzed inside an office as big as a house, but whose space was mostly occupied by a fortress of a desk, walls flickering with disaster feeds, and glass cases holding shiny trophies of corporate victory. The office even included a private medical pod and a rack of weapons that looked both expensive and unhappy to be there.

  A tall, severe man waited behind the desk, framed by a window full of urban collapse. In Kelly's opinion, all he needed was a cat and a Germanic accent, and she would have mistaken her host for a supervillain. But then again, weren't most legal and HR teams villainous? The man wore an expensive tailored designer suit with a gold crocodile on the left pocket. His augment was a subtle, scanning thing. It made Kelly think of an accountant who enjoyed audits a little too much.

  Kelly’s first look was for the chair. It was a wooden thing, straight-backed and severe. A test. She approved. It would be satisfying to break later.

  “I am Enrico Blackthorn, the head of contracts at this organization and resources lead.” The man did not stand. His voice was pleasant, firm, and devoid of anything resembling human warmth. He was impeccably groomed. He smelled of expensive soap and colder things. “You may also call me Blackthorn.”

  Kelly’s eyes scanned him. No bulk from subdermal armor. No telltale hum of muscle-motor assist. Her head tilted. “You’re unaugmented. A normie? No—not a normie, but close. And so high up the food chain? Dang. Good for you.” It was an observation, delivered with the flat curiosity of a biologist noting an almost plain specimen.

  Then her attention was stolen. Not by him, but by the cushion on the seat of the awful wooden chair. Her fingers brushed it as she sat. The texture was wrong. It was incredible. She gasped. “Wait. Is that giant spider silk?”

  That was impossibly rare.

  “You have a sharp eye,” he mused. He did not sound pleased. “We were fortunate to encounter a living mutated species. Dr. Haider famously erased the many dangerous elements of the strain and engineered reproductive capabilities potent enough to combat the mutation, allowing them to supply the material.”

  While sitting, Kelly’s focus belonged entirely to the cushion. Her hands pressed into it. Her eyes traced the impossible weave. It was sublimely soft. It was on a chair designed for discomfort. The contradiction was beautiful. She wanted a bed made of this. She wanted to reupholster her truck’s entire interior. The truck had earned that luxury.

  “We have no shortage of applicants wishing to join our organizations many teams,” Blackthorn said, the words pulling her back. He leaned back in his own, obviously silk-clad seat. “But few make it to my office. I believe in personal recommendations, Dr. Voss. If Joe hadn’t vouched for you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “And Venus seems to have a good feeling about you, especially after you forewarned her father's company about Genecorps attempted raid this afternoon.” His augment-eye glinted faintly. “Which makes me wonder how you even knew about their competitors covert theft attempt at all.”

  Kelly settled into the terrible, wonderful chair. She folded her hands in her lap, a picture of innocence. “A lucky guess?”

  “I don’t believe you.” No smile. No play. “The world is in chaos, and everyone is taking a bite from its corpse. I believe that despite your achievements and merits today, you are one of the people capitalising on its crumbling. Yesterday, you were a barely enhanced intern. Today, you are beyond the threshold, with your own private bodyguard.”

  Kelly wouldn't call Reggie a private bodyguard. If anything, she was the one guarding him. He wasn't even here. He was likely trying to befriend a contaminated sewer rat.

  “In any case, I must thank you for coming here.” He sounded about as thankful as a landmine. “I am certain our competition made you an offer. Your trust in us won’t go unrewarded.” His gaze was a physical probe. “Why do you wish to join the organization?”

  The real reason was loops and strength and a man named Ren. But that was a boring answer. She smiled. It was not a friendly smile. “Ever since I was young, I always wanted to become a corporate-sponsored vandal.”

  Blackthorn was very still. “A vandal.”

  “A sanctioned one. With a budget. I find the building you hate. I drive my truck through the lobby. I take their fancy marble reception desk and use it to build a barricade across their main gate. Then I spray-paint your rival’s logo on the wreckage. I do the fun part. You get the territory. Everyone wins.”

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  She leaned forward.

  Blackthorn stared. He tapped his desk. A light glowed. “Okay, right.”

  “That has always been my dream. My lifelong passion.” Kelly said, her tone dreamy. “To push the boundaries of property damage and corporate accounting.”

  “Uh huh.” Blackthorn’s voice was dry. “And the real reason?”

  Kelly shrugged. “A love for suicidal battle and barely legal scientific progress?”

  “Your psychological profile tells me otherwise.”

  They even had a psychological profile? Poor bastards. Because of the loops, that document was a fossil. It described a ghost—outdated by years—by lifetimes of trial and screaming error. Kelly pictured a team of analysts pulling their hair out, trying to compare her file with the woman who’d driven a truck through a security checkpoint for fun. The battle mania. The illegal experiments. She had been telling the truth about that last part.

  “Alright, alright.” She let her posture slump, a performance of defeat. “I got stuck on ‘apocalypse duty’ and I thought it would be exciting to learn the secrets behind the portal phenomena and get rich while doing it. Crisis laws always makes or breaks people—mostly breaks—so this is my big chance.” She met his eyes. “Plus I'm looking for a friend.”

  “Ah. I see,” Blackthorn conceded, steepling his fingers. The motion was slow, precise. “How unfortunate. Someone high up in your former internship project really does not like you.” He swiftly changed subject. “Who is this person you are looking for?”

  “Some nice lady from the mist-market,” Kelly said, waving a hand. “Jen—actually, I don’t know what she calls herself to you corporate types. Young. Gold eyes. Shotgun belt. Good hair. Lots of Deadtech.”

  “I’m certain there is an interesting story behind this.” Blackthorn’s voice was flat, a recorded announcement. “I will put my cards on the table, Dr. Voss. I feel conflicted about your application. You have incredible potential. Your… inventive solutions today prove that. Your achievements to date, securing a high-level internship despite your background, further demonstrate your value. Your combat skills are impressive. Your capture of Simon Lang and the footage of your decimation of threshold-level creatures from the market this morning can attest to that.” He paused, the lens of his ocular augment contracting slightly. “I didn’t even know one could customize a shrink-box to physically occupy and mimic a user’s shadow. That is tech nobody has. Nobody. As far as I am aware.”

  "Oh, that's just my backpack, it's because I'm going camping later,” Kelly explained. “It’s a very compelling backpack. Don't worry about it. You would get it."

  “Which brings me to the matter at hand.” He slid a small, neat pile of paper across the desk. “The summarized witness reports. They describe a shocking propensity for violence. A lack of psychological stability. Your actions exceed reasonable defensive parameters.”

  Something bothered Kelly. A genuine flaw in her work. “There were witnesses?”

  “You expected none?”

  “Hell yes I did,” Kelly replied. Her voice was matter-of-fact. “I’m excellent at silencing witnesses. It’s a core competency.”

  Blackthorn remained unfazed, a man who had seen budgets more frightening than guns. “In every instance, the 'witnesses' were your surviving victims. We have particularly critical footage from a Luigi Rossi. He was crying. Loose cannons have no place here. If we sign a contract, foolhardy behavior will not be tolerated.”

  “My methods are flexible,” Kelly defended herself. She sounded genuinely offended. “It’s not my fault everyone leaves their interpretations so open-ended. If a man runs away screaming, that’s his review of the event, not my problem.”

  “We need more guarantees.” Blackthorn’s finger hovered over a button on his desk. “Your behavior today is drastically different from your prior psychological profile. And given your past links to a particularly dangerous criminal group—a hybrid mutant and overclocked cadre—that discrepancy is a cause for concern.”

  He pressed the button.

  Two holograms burst to life between them. Kelly’s pulse did not race. Her face did not flush. She schooled her features into a mask of mild interest, a scientist observing a mildly incorrect diagram.

  The first hologram was of a face kelly immediately recognized. A warm, kindly smile. Silver hair. Colored nails. Bright, striking golden eyes.

  The second was a much younger girl. About eleven. The girl had the upper half of a broken silver haired military droid strapped to her back with industrial tape, its wires spilling over her shoulders like a metallic shawl. She stood in front of a towering cybernetic form—a humanoid shape of grafted metal and raw, polymer-wrapped mutated muscle. The thing stood imposing, and looked incredibly dangerous. One massive, three-fingered hand rested on the girl’s shoulder. The girl had a busted lip. A bloody nose. She was grinning.

  “We found that picture in your apartment,” Blackthorn said. His voice was softer now, a scalpel. “It’s impressive no copies existed online. Forgive the intrusion. We had to ensure you were someone who could be trusted.”

  Kelly stared at the hologram of the massive figure. “Caliph,” she said, the name simple in the room.

  “Caliph the Butcher,” Blackthorn confirmed. “Also known as Caliph the spike, or more commonly; Massacre Caliph. The hybrid mutant-overclocked criminal. He terrorized North American grids for years with a gang of illegally augmented fugitives. Many witness statements mention he traveled with a foster daughter. She disappeared. The assumption was she died.” He let the assumption hang.

  Kelly wasn’t happy. The intrusion was a physical itch between her shoulder blades. She kept her poker face. “That was the only copy I had of that picture.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Good.” Kelly’s hand dropped to her side, not to her hip, but into the pool of darkness her chair cast on the expensive rug. Her fingers closed. She pulled a heavy pistol from the solid shadow as if drawing it from a shelf. She leveled it at Blackthorn’s center mass. “Erase it. Or I’ll use your collarbone to hold my hair up. And if you’ve really done your research, you know I’ve done that before.”

  Blackthorn looked at the gun. He looked at her face. He saw no bluff. He tapped his desk. The hologram of the young girl and the giant winked out. Only the hologram of her friend remained. “Satisfied?”

  “For now.” The gun vanished back into the shadow. She made a mental note: Apartment compromised. Store it in personal memory and delete that copy next loop.

  “The silver-haired, golden-eyed, Mistmarket girl has a mundane identity. A front, clearly. A Dead Tech expert who appeared from nowhere. This individual has attempted to flood certain markets with relics from the AI Coup eras through illegal channels.”

  Smart, Kelly thought. Jennie didn’t show them the good pre-war stuff. But her tech’s gotten better if they can’t even tell she’s not breathing anymore. They still think she’s a living human person. Wow, now that was impressive.

  “Alright, let’s cut the bullshit, Blackthorn.” Kelly leaned forward, her eyes on his, ignoring the glowing hologram between them. “Where is she?”

  “That is the question.” A thin, cold smile touched his lips. “‘She,’ is a Dead Tech genius. The likes of which we rarely see. Her location is a valuable asset in our possession. It was our information network that led to her capture.”

  Kelly saw the mechanism now. Clear and ugly. The location was a leash. A stick and a carrot made of one person. They would dangle it. They would use it to make her behave, to make her produce, to make her hand over anything of Jennie’s she might know. They would trade her for patents.

  “You want a deal,” she stated.

  “I want an employee. One with… focused motivation.”

  “And what does the employee do?”

  “You are multifaceted. A capable inventor. You would join the Relic Research and Augment Customization team.”

  “You mean I’d build illegal augments. Find the loopholes. Hide the war crimes in the firmware.”

  “I mean you would develop cutting-edge human enhancement solutions within a complex legal framework,” he corrected, his tone smooth. “Dr. Haider has also added a clause for your participation in the Defense Division. There is a six-month probationary period. My addition.”

  “I’ll pass probation by lunchtime,” Kelly said.

  “Dr. Haider is often called a mad scientist,” Blackthorn continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “A rumor he cultivates. In truth, he is a philanthropist. He wishes to protect this world, whatever the cost to his reputation.”

  Kelly let out a single, hard snort of air. It was the most honest sound she’d made in the room. She knew Haider well. A genius, yes. Empathetic? Sometimes. He was also a greedy asshole who’d vivisect his mother for a ten percent market advantage.

  “Our mission,” Blackthorn said, gesturing to the window where the city smoldered, “is to eradicate the toxic biochemical cocktails covering the globe. To isolate and stabilize the mutations. To turn environmental chaos into a product. Safe, monetizable mutagen augmentation. We want to make breathable air a free public resource.”

  And you want to sell the bottles, Kelly thought. Turn the 99.9999% death-by-toxic-sludge rate into 0.1%, create mutant augment packages, and pour oil onto the dumpster fire that is the augment arms race. “The Mission” is a good tagline. The test subjects will die in drums.

  “We have a keen interest in unique mutations,” he said, his augment-eye fixing on her. “After observing your conversation with Venus Vaughn, and considering her remarks, we suspect you may host a mutation worthy of study.”

  Kelly should have known. They didn’t want her for her pretty face, her great body, or her immense sense of fashion. They wanted to see what made her tick. To take it apart.

  “We have struggled to dissect the toxins, the biohazards, the radioactive agents,” he admitted. “The mix is chaotic. Resistant. But we hope something from the present…” He gestured again to the window, to the distant, battling shapes in the smoky sky. “…will provide a key. Your display today gives that hope weight.”

  “Wait, you guys believe me? About the power stuff?” Kelly exclaimed, pitching her voice into a giddy excitement. “That’s so cool! I’ve never considered sharing it! You want to make more baby time-gods? Like me? Pretty sure it’s not a mutation, though. Probably impossible.” And it would likely destroy the fabric of reality, she thought silently. Either way, Kelly wasn't keen on letting them experiment, at least not for free, and not on her living tissue—her dead tissue didn't interact with mana, shed checked, under a microscope—plenty of people had already spliced themselves with portal DNA to disappointing results, and so long as the tissue she gave them was dead, it would look like any other failed attempt.

  “Good luck with that,” she said. “All the gods I’ve met so far have been assholes. I’m the best, obviously.”

  Blackthorn gave her a long, unreadable look. “Good. Then, if you pass the combat division’s evaluation, you may join the research team. The competence test we can skip. Your recent achievements suffice.”

  “You are technically already hired for the Defense Division for the remainder of the day.” Blackthorn then explained that the full contract would begin tomorrow. The combat test could be immediate.

  Kelly listened as he recited rules, NDAs, and implied threats of corporate imprisonment. Her mind was elsewhere. Jennie’s location was a hook in her gut. Training with Ren, a veteran, was a tangible prize. She’d always wanted to punch an Upper Echelon member in the face. Vaporizing one with terraforming tech was satisfying, but a fist would feel more personal.

  She grabbed the contract. Skimmed it. The legal language was a weaponized fog.

  Then a clause snagged her eye. She looked up. “You want a percentage of any invention I make under your employment?”

  “A standard revenue-sharing provision. To fund further research and cover liability.”

  “That’s theft.” Her voice lost all its playful color.

  “It is investment and protection. We handle volatile relics. Pre-war anomalies. Staff safety is a monumental expense.”

  Kelly scanned the lines. The percentages were aggressive. The ownership clauses were traps. She saw the whole, grimy machine: they would leash her with Jennie’s location, milk her for ideas, claim her work, and if she became a problem, they’d bury her in a prison built from the very contracts she was holding.

  She looked at Blackthorn. At the cold office. At the hologram of her friend with golden eyes.

  Why, she thought, the disinterest gone, replaced by a familiar, clinical clarity, did she feel like she just made a deal with Satan?

  The answer, however, was obvious;

  This Satan offered better benefits. Paid Time Off. And, most damning of all, a comprehensive dental plan.