Actions always have consequences. A simple, universal truth that everyone should keep firmly in mind. That I should keep firmly in mind.

  And I would, from that moment onwards. I promised myself this over and over as I left Catill’s shop and headed home. I would learn, and I’d do better, and I’d make fewer mistakes. Not ‘no’ mistakes, never that, but fewer of them.

  None of this helped with the cold grip of terror in my chest.

  I tried to focus on finding a new way home. My new eyes were a big help. I needed the route to be as confusing, as long, and as random as possible while still getting me to my destination.

  So, instead of taking the checkpoint furthest away from my apartment building, I took one a bit closer and slipped from the outer district into the slums. Then I doubled back in the opposite direction for a while before finally heading around in a great arc towards home.

  It was a bit risky, traveling so much of the slums. My feet would definitely not thank me for it. But after the scare Catill had given me and my grim thoughts about those forums, it felt appropriate.

  At least the circuitous route let me hit a few important stores on the way.

  The app might have gotten me in trouble, but it had also done its job while I worked. My inbox now contained a long and overly detailed plan to fix the many, many problems plaguing my body, chief of which was malnutrition.

  My first stop was one of the fancier prepackaged meal stores, where I got some much higher quality food for myself.

  Then I grit my teeth and stopped by a fancy health supplement store, purchasing more than a few packets of various powders whose names I didn’t bother learning how to pronounce. They weren’t the overpriced shit that those other ‘premium’ apps were shilling, either. Just down-to-earth stuff. Still, they cost as much as my monthly food budget and would last only a week.

  Painful. Exceedingly so. But some things ultimately couldn’t have a price attached to them, and health was on that list.

  Besides, every time I thought about my physical condition, my mind flashed back to the attempted mugging. The druggie had dragged me around with contemptuous ease, and even the best of my attempts to strike back were… deficient. No, I wouldn’t let myself get into a situation like that again.

  Either I would fix myself, or I would bankrupt myself.

  Despite being deep inside my own mind, I never once forgot to pay attention to my surroundings. It was thanks to this that I spotted several odd signs on my grand travels through the slums.

  The locals were both terrified and relieved, and that just made no sense. Then again… it didn’t take me long to figure out the split. Anyone who looked to be a ganger of any real sort was downright pale and shaky. Anyone who had a decent reason to resent the gangs was grinning it up.

  I’d covered nearly half of my planned route by that point, and my policy was always to be as careful in the slums as I could be, but curiosity eventually won out. I looked around, spotted a relatively ‘clean’ alley by slum standards, and then inspected the group of kids my age lounging in it. They fell on the side of people whose mood had seen a recent uptick, which made them a safer target in my mind.

  So, I approached.

  Suspicion instantly slammed down over their faces like they were donning helmets, and their loose, friendly circle closed for mutual protection. I’d made sure my shooter was visible just-so, which was a good argument against any stupidity on their part, but I still looked them over as warily as they did me.

  One of the group, a bold-looking girl, challenged me before I got too close.

  “Whatcha want?”

  I decided being upfront was probably my best ticket to walking away with the information I wanted (and without having to shoot someone). “Just confused, is all. Been, eh… indisposed, recently. What’s got everyone in a good mood?”

  The group relaxed a tiny bit, though the girl’s face also took on a mulish expression. “What’s it to you? Huh? And why should I tell you a damn thing?”

  I sighed, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. If she’d just demanded some minor payment from the start, things would have been so much easier. Still, needs must.

  When I extracted a credit chip, they all focused in on me intently.

  “Ten creds. Take it or leave it. You’re not the only group I can ask, and I bet they’d be happy to get paid.”

  They eyed me, then, in a whole new way. And as their eyes raked over me, dark and calculating, I knew what they were searching for.

  If I was offering ten credits so easily, what else could I offer? What else did I own?

  Thankfully, I always made it a point to dress just shabbily enough. I definitely didn’t look like I had any sort of money. Even the one ‘fancier’ possession I toted around openly, my backpack, had become significantly less appealing just recently.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  A knife-hole will do that.

  Of course, I wasn’t idiot enough to flash the purchases I had just made. Those were stashed away in the backpack, very carefully so it didn’t look bulky. Making a backpack appear as empty as possible was an art form, and one I eagerly practiced.

  “Listen. I’m tired, I’m grouchy, I’ve had a long day at work, and I just want to go back to sleep. Now, is there going to be war on the streets soon, or what?” I affected irritation, though I didn’t have to pretend very hard.

  Finally, the girl conceded. “No, no war. But the Reapers are done.” Her face broke into a bloodthirsty grin. “Done and gone.”

  This should have been amazing news. The gang I’d stolen from wouldn’t be coming around for revenge. One less group of angry killers I’d need to watch out for.

  Still, I could only stare at her. It took me a few seconds to form more questions, and even then, they came out as single-word wonders.

  “Gone? How? When?”

  “No one knows. Someone came through and decimated them. They barely even had the lowest level fuckers left, and leaders? All dead, to the last man and woman. They were all spectacularly splattered over the walls of the pigshit dump they called headquarters. The other gangs mopped up the leftovers once the coast was clear.”

  I stared some more, because damn. Double damn!

  I had very good reason for my heart to be skipping in fear at this news. The Reapers were horrible, and no one would miss them, but they were entrenched. Uprooting them so quickly and painlessly should have been impossible.

  Unless, of course, they’d pissed off someone far beyond them. Say, like a mysterious manufacturer of top tier cybernetics.

  That would do it. For sure. Corpos like that loved their hit squads…

  I swallowed. “I’m gonna guess that everyone and their alien mother is trying to get in on a piece of the pie?”

  “Of course.” The girl looked amused now. “There’s war happening already, they say. Lots of gangs are recruiting to make up for their losses. I guess you’re alright, so I don’t mind telling you that a recruiter for the Hounds will be by soon to check out this location. Stay if you want.”

  “Um, thanks,” I stammered, caught thoroughly flatfooted by the offer. “I gotta go, though. My mother would kill me if I joined a gang right now.”

  The group sneered and booed at me, like that was somehow going to turn me suicidal, but they didn’t stop me when I decided to leave. I didn’t need to worry about lying to them. We were unlikely to cross paths again, especially since they were about to do a very dumb thing.

  Who the hell went out of their way to join a gang during what sounded suspiciously like all-out war?

  I mean, Reapers weren’t the biggest or the wealthiest, but they had pushed hard and pushed smart, at least at first. They had more than a few streets under their control, along with several distribution centers and a lucrative ‘shopping mall’ that was maybe three stores in total.

  With all that up for grabs? Even a big gang like the Kittens would feel tempted to take over, let alone the minor players of the slums.

  I cursed internally as I resumed my winding way home. The encounter had not improved my mood.

  Those kids had no reason to lie to me, but maybe they were… confused. Yes, that was a word I liked. Confused. I mean, there was no way the Reapers would just get wiped out. And there was most definitely no bloody way that I’d been involved with the potential cause of their extermination.

  Damn it, I needed to figure out what to do with the cybernetics I’d stolen.

  The simplest answer was to install them all. There was really only one problem with that. Well, two: cyberpsychosis and number-blindness. To be fair, those two were fairly similar, especially in the sense that both could be blamed on excessive upgrades and the strain they placed on the mind.

  Cyberpsychosis occurred when someone got too many upgrades too quickly. It clouded the mind, impeded judgment, and generally gave someone more callous if not outright sociopathic tendencies. It definitely made it harder for someone for see other people as anything but victims. Those suffering from the condition typically pursued all of their darkest desires, inflicting their most vile urges on everyone around them with considerable glee.

  In a way, number-blindness was the exact opposite of that, but also much more… sad, for its inevitable danger.

  It was impossible to move cybernetic limbs, to truly manipulate them and use them as your own, without three important factors. Proper nerve connections needed to be installed. Exceedingly exact coding had to be done. Lastly, you had to give your body time to recover from the ordeal.

  Unfortunately, ‘waiting for one’s body to recover’ was just not enough. There are some things that are eternally different once you replace your own limbs. And if you kept doing it, removing piece after piece of your natural-born body, then it was entirely possible to become more coding than man.

  The corpos, so long as you had the money, would happily do anything for you. If you wanted them to pickle your brain in a jar and shove it into a wholly new, cybernetic body, they would! Too bad you’d immediately be overwhelmed by your own coding, emotions falling away, until only the cold logic of self-preservation remained.

  And that was number-blindness. While cyberpsychos were ruled by their out-of-wack whims and urges, the number-blind couldn’t even recognize their own emotions anymore. ‘Little better than those bloody clankers,’ Catill liked to say, and he was basically right.

  Alternatively, you could be one of the rare few gifted enough to maintain control over themselves, and you’d arrive at the other end of the procedure with might and power that no normal person with squishy bits could wield.

  Those people were rare, though. Very rare.

  So, I couldn’t risk just grafting a bunch of new stuff onto my body. When choosing between two horrible fates, it’s often better not to choose at all.

  While I walked and did my thinking, I could proudly say I never let anyone sneak up on me. Likewise, I could proudly say that I detected something was wrong long before I was actually confronted by it.

  For one, there was the sound of gunshots and screaming in the distance. Then there was the blood splattered all over the floor of my building’s lobby, and a couple bloody handprints on the walls when I started to climb the stairs to my apartment.

  Higher and higher I went, all the while spotting unmistakable traces of carnage and suffering. By the time I reached the landing right before mine and spotted a woman only slightly older than me slumped against the railing, I couldn’t even find it in myself to be surprised.

  Resigned, yes, but not surprised.

  As if that wasn’t enough, I knew her. In fact, she had saved my life not even a full day ago. And now there she was, bloody and visibly wounded and squirming on the floor.

  Consequences, I remembered as I stood there, frozen. All actions have consequences.

  Then why the fuck did I rush forward to check over the worst of her wounds? Why did I ignore the feeble protests and her attempts to protect herself, even in her dazed and addled condition? Why did I shove my arm around her and yank her own arm over my shoulder, then proceed to drag her up the stairs in spite of my aching and protesting body?

  I had no clue. But I did know, even in that very moment, that there would be consequences for these actions.

  I also knew I was unlikely to enjoy them much.