Read Online Necrotech by K C Alexander - Free Book Online Page B

nothin’ could be distilled into visual magnetism.
    My lips quirked. Not a smile.
    Unlike him, I didn’t enhance my persona. The only thing I made sure of was that I was dressed and clean – because let’s face it, nobody likes meeting people with blood, sweat, or the haze of burned-off slank smeared all over them. I kept my persona up to date, which meant my bleached hair was long at the top and hanging down the left side of my face, shorn to a buzz at the sides. My roots came in dark brown, courtesy of the genetic fuckup my mother hadn’t paid for. At least my eyes had come out hers – a dark hazel that went moss green or swampy brown depending on the light. Even my tattoos made it onto the projected copy.
    And so did my synthetic arm. Which Greg was very studiously avoiding.
    I leaned against the table, folding my arms on top of it, flesh over diamond steel. It pushed the shiny red tanktop my persona wore against my breasts, and that good old Greg noticed. I couldn’t claim much by way of stacking, too much muscle to be top-heavy, but it hadn’t stopped me yet. “Let me guess.” I dropped my naturally contralto tones an octave or two. Practically a purr. “Courtesy call?”
    Damn, but his face lit up. You’d think I’d offered him a handjob under the table.
    â€œSomething like that.” He grinned, unabashedly flirtatious in a way that was part refreshing, and mostly funny.
    Cops and SINless don’t mingle. I wasn’t the only saint to flirt with that line, but I’d never pictured good old Greg buying in. I wondered if he was having some work troubles, or maybe he wanted to flex some muscle without all the regs tying him down. It was obvious that I was something new and interesting, and the file he held over my head made him feel like he had more leverage than he’d ever get again.
    Given our history, brief as it was, I had a sneaking suspicion that my new arm turned me into forbidden territory. A way to stick it to the Purist Man.
    Maybe he wanted me to call on his God while he stuck it to me again.
    Too bad. Once was fun, twice was a rental.
    â€œCute, but no.” I shook my head, leaning back in my chair – away from him so obviously that he’d have to be stupid to miss the memo. “You’re having a rough year, right? Miles of red tape, clocked in and out like a civic official but given none of the perks. Overtime at half the going rate?”
    A faint wince around the eyes. “Salary, mostly.”
    Poor bastard. “Too good to take a kickback?”
    His mouth tightened.
    I bit back a sigh. Wasn’t my fault he had principles. “So you want something from me. That’s why you kept my file.” I crossed my legs under the table. “Leverage, I get. But you better play these next few seconds smart, ’cause you won’t get a second chance at this.”
    He frowned.
    When he didn’t immediately answer, I perched my chin in the palm of my metal hand and waited him out.
    Did I glitch him? It was always a risk. The bandwidth held steady enough for short calls, but got crazy twitchy around high time. When the system clocked the average consciousness of over twenty-six billion users at any given moment, the bandwidth – already straining under the payload of thousands of feeds, hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data – suffered.
    And that’s just in this city alone.
    Most sinners get a basic package for their upload needs, and it comes with shit stabilizers. You learn to ration this app for that, tweak that signal for this drag, but like everything else, those who pay more – to broadcast and to receive – get better signal.
    I wasn’t a paying customer, and Greg couldn’t afford it. Not on a cop’s credline. We coped. Or, like me, we cheated. Well, would have cheated if all my shit was working and I felt like risking enhancing the feed for this.
    It wasn’t, and I