Chương 3: Treasure Hunters

Kelly stopped a few paces from the barricade. Beyond the wreckage, beyond cars stacked high, a lot of men with guns, and delivery trucks on their sides serving as the centerpiece... the peak of the building that held her lab peeked out. A grey tooth against the smoke. Barely visible. Close enough to make her trigger finger itch. So close she could practically taste all the laws she would break once she got there. Then she saw it—something unexpected flickering through the gaps between the cars.

A jury-rigged security droid paced on two legs in front of the barrier, a humanoid heap of salvaged plating and exposed wires. Its head, a dented dome, panned side to side with sensors, a red beam tracing every seam in the metal, perhaps searching for someone to try and sneak past. The droid would gun down anyone who crossed with an accuracy that made the humans look like a firing squad recruited from a blindfold convention; the humans standing around were just there for moral support.

A beat-up compact rolled up to the checkpoint, and three men descended on it before the driver could brake. They yanked the door open, pulled out a scrawny traveler by his collar and belt, and dumped him on the asphalt. One knelt and started tossing his bags, another patted him down with the speed of a veteran pickpocket. The traveler tried to speak, and the third man shoved a soundless pistol into his skull and fired. The traveler hit the ground face-first.

The crew hauled the body to the side with the same effort they would use to stack crates. Her boot lifted, the smoking concrete ready to take her weight and send her forward. That's when she spotted the man in charge. Simon Lau. He stood a few meters from the barricade, center of the crew, issuing orders with the flat, clipped cadence of a man who expected to be obeyed yesterday. The nanofiber police gear he wore was shot full of holes and bloodstains.

Beneath the armor, Kelly spotted a coffee-stained apron hung past his hips, the embroidered bean on the chest still visible under a smear of something dark. The smile she remembered—the warm one that used to come free with a double shot and a wink—had been replaced by a cold line that turned his whole face into a warning. Unfriendliness, with a side of pure, steel-edged authority.

"Check the bags. Then stack him with the others." His voice carried over the street sounds, the others nodded, one of his men jumped. Kelly's brain automatically filled in the customer side of the counter: the hiss of the steam wand, the smell of real coffee grounds, the ridiculous ceramic mug he kept just for her. One of the only places in the city that served actual coffee instead of the synth stuff that everyone had gotten used to.

Before the world began to end, Simon had been the once-charming owner of her favourite coffee shop. Now, he stood behind his makeshift barricade with an air of cold authority and a small troop of dangerous-looking men. Now he was directing a roadside execution with the same calm he used to use for latte art.

He'd been a curiosity even before the world fell apart—there were rumors, back then, that he was more than just a barista, that the only server of real coffee in the city was a man with a deeply criminal past and connections he'd managed to bury under a polished smile, an excellent espresso, and a business funded by a criminal retirement plan. Kelly had dismissed it as conjecture, until she met him and found his face vaguely familiar, triggering distant memories she'd rather forget.

Both Kelly's childhood and Simon's past were too close in proximity to criminality to never have crossed, even in passing. He knew some suppressed part of her recognised him for who he really was, even if she didn't. He just didn't know where she had seen him, or how—of course, she had been much younger and looked much different back then. Now, watching him, that sense of recognition sharpened. There was no question. Her gut said their paths had crossed in some forgotten underworld corridor.

But the apron was still there, faintly visible under bloodstains and bullet holes. Today, he had quit hiding. The apron was a badge now, worn beneath stolen armor as a declaration: I'm the barista who will have you shot. The charm was gone, replaced by something sharp and efficient. He moved with the authority of a man who knew from experience that power was just violence, applied consistently. Then she saw him walk over to the dead traveler's compact car. He bent, slid his fingers under the frame, and stood up.

The whole car lifted off the ground. He carried it to the curb and dropped it next to the body, his breathing even, his face still set in that cold command mask. The motion was quick, practised, a speed born from doing it a few dozen times. And the way he'd done that, so casually, by himself? He was probably a strength specialist, and likely enhanced beyond what she remembered. Yesterday, he had been around the 2. 8 enhancement level, like her.

But now that the city was a flame, he was showing up somewhere between 390 to 400% boosted beyond baseline, or 3. 9 to 4. 0 EQ, which meant he was 41% stronger than she was, give or take a decimal. Which also meant he had only received the upgrade today and was likely still healing, his muscles repairing themselves and adjusting from surgery—unless he could ignore the pain and was willing to damage his upgrades, he wouldn't be able to exert his full strength.

His men were armed with weapons that looked looted from fallen law enforcement and followed his every word like disciples. He'd always been quick, clever, and resourceful, but seeing him now, calculating and hardened? Kelly wondered if the warlord he'd become had been lurking under that smile all along, waiting for the right kind of chaos to let him out. Her lips twitched.

"Always said caffeine could kill me," she muttered, her voice unheard in the ruins. Kelly stepped out of the truck, hands loose at her sides, gaze sweeping over the mess ahead. The barricade was a jigsaw of burned-out vehicles, scrap metal, and the remains of people who had tried their luck earlier. Some still smoldered. A few still bled. She nudged a detached arm with the toe of her boot. Huh. Fresh. Everyone quickly gleaned that the center of the city was more dangerous.

Why had Simon blocked such a dangerous road and not one of the exits? Or the evac routes? Surely that would be more profitable... Why were Simon's men still in the city? Kelly scanned the scene, tracking the corpses, the roadblocks, the positioning, and noted the intention. Rather than block the way out of the city, Simon's barricade was intended to block the way deeper in. That meant one thing. The Tower. Her workplace sat at the end of this street and he had locked down the only road leading into her lab.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Almost a hundred 'todays' ago—or yesterday, depending on how many times you've been shot somewhere fatal—this building belonged to Vaughn Industries. A major player in the corporate wars that, more importantly, also happened to be Kelly's employer. They cornered the market in biotechnology, biomechanical cybernetics, advanced weaponry, and experimental research.

The company was run by Gideon Vaughn, a relic from wars fought with gene-sequencers and enhancement protocols because back then, someone had decided bullets were too basic. Gideon strutted out of the Augment Wars carrying an EQ score so high it ripped up the old limits of human capability, then took that momentum and built an empire on one useful principle: if breaking a law cost less than obeying it, the law had basically already quit.

Vaughn Industries led the field in products so lethally thoughtful that the paperwork came with bribes already printed in, a system that worked because everyone involved had agreed the written rules were decorative and the actual rules happened in conversations that didn't get recorded. A soundless pistol dropped another traveler face-first onto the asphalt, and the crew dragged him aside without breaking conversation.

Kelly stood, arms folded, watching Simon's crew move through the wreckage in a way that said they weren't scrambling for scraps like other survivors. She tracked Simon at the center, barking low commands, his men pivoting like they'd rehearsed this.

"Simon's sharp," she muttered, and watched him point two fingers toward the high-rise.

"He knows value, and he knows power. That's why his boys are still standing here while every other sorry bastard in this city is chewing on old pavement. They've got a goal. A stupidly ambitious one. One that usually ends with a statue in your honor and the rest of you in a very small box." The rest of the city scattered after every loud noise, in freefall, but Simon's crew? They knew the same thing she did. There was a treasure trove of advancements, sitting abandoned in a city unraveling by the second.

If they got inside first—gained access to and controlled the building? They wouldn't just loot the place. They'd be upgrading. Rewrite the body, rewrite the rules, take the fast lane to godhood. Vaughn Industries sat at the bleeding edge of military innovation and flexible legality—lethal hardware and paperwork with bribe options that covered most afternoons.

They made accord-breaking EQ augments, self-repairing temporary nanorobotics that rewrote battlefield medicine limits, corporate-engineered soldiers faster and stronger than natural selection had intended. Priceless in warzones, which made them priceless everywhere else, because the line between warzone and civilian market had become a suggestion.

They held deep roots in government contracts and corporate warfare—a generous way of saying they'd figured out war and business were the same machinery wearing different uniforms. It translated to: lethal hardware with a paperwork problem that money could solve. It was technology that could build empires... or burn them down.

Before the world tore itself open and started spewing out apocalyptic freebies and creatures that did the impossible, that kind of power had been locked behind clearance levels and kill squads—now, it was up for grabs. Though they came with a heavy cost if you survived the crisis, planetary crisis laws could sanction emergency upgrades in very special circumstances, assuming you could get to them without being turned into sushi. Kelly let out a slow breath, shaking her head. Of course this was about the lab.

Of course Simon was staking his claim. Simon leaned against the wreckage, arms crossed. Even now, he still leaned with the same easy posture he'd used behind the counter. Different setting. Instead of a coffee pot, he had a rifle slung over his shoulder, his men flanking him with weapons ready.

If Simon's out here holding this position to keep the scavengers out, then the rest of his crew are probably already at the facility, swarming the walls and trying to break their way in before someone else beats them to it, she thought.

"Too bad for them, I've already called dibs," Kelly muttered as the droid's scan washed over her position. She'd have to introduce them to a little concept called hostile corporate takeover. She stepped forward into the open—a few were already eyeing her truck after the scan. Plus, this was the only way through.

"Dr Voss," Simon greeted, voice light, almost amused.

"Didn't expect to see you still breathing."

"Well, I've had a lot of practice. Didn't expect to see you playing border control," she shot back whilst continuing to step closer, nodding her head pointedly at the large barricade.

"What, the end of the world made you territorial?" His men stood ready. Some kept their attention on Kelly, but others remained focused on a small gap in the barricade with impatient and eager expressions. But it didn't feel like they were guarding it—they were waiting for word from the lab, Kelly noted. Waiting for confirmation that their friends had gotten inside, and for the moment they secured everything. Simon shrugged at her question.

"Good business opportunity." Kelly stepped even closer, walking as she spoke, and some of his men shifted, their fingers sliding over the triggers in response to her approach. Kelly didn't care, "Figured you'd be off-planet by now," she said. Simon's brow twitched, just slightly.

"That was for the ones who mattered. You know that." She nodded once. None of that was news to her. The corporations and elites had fled long ago, as soon as the portals stopped being static and harmless. New York had the first eruption, then Beijing. The people who could have made a difference–the CEOs, politicians, and top-tier enhanced humans—were the first to run.

Their EQ augmentation scores were off the charts, and they took those advantages to orbital colonies and beyond, leaving everyone else behind to fend for themselves. As far as Kelly knew, so far, no one left on Earth had an EQ high enough to fix any of it. Simon leveled his gun at her chest, head tilting slightly away from the sights.

"You're outnumbered, unarmed, and alone—standing in the middle of my road," he said, tone casual, almost relaxed.

"So let's make this easy. Drop everything valuable, and I won't put a round through your skull." Kelly blinked at him, then down at the gun, then at the half-dozen rifles aimed in her direction. She let out a slow breath, raised her hands as if to surrender and walked closer in faux-defeat. Then, she grinned.

"See, that's the thing, Simon," she said.

"I'm immortal and an asshole. It doesn't matter what you throw at me. I don't stop. Can't stop. Ever. I'll keep trying to get better. You'll break before I do." Behind him, his men shifted, a small few of their eyes flashed with lower grade scanners, the entirety of them sizing her up before immediately dismissing her as any form of threat. One of them looked to another and did circular motions with his finger beside his head, the universal symbol for "she's freakin' crazy."

But Kelly was calm—even as a barista, Simon wasn't the type to waste time on charity. If he wasn't trying to kill her yet, it was because he thought she had something worth taking. She could feel the calculation among his men, the weighing of risk versus reward and seeing nothing but reward. To them, she was one person surrounded by many, alone and unarmed. Kelly rocked back on her heels, sizing them up right back. She would have to deal with the security droid first.

The droid had planted itself right in the blind spot of her scan, so its level remained a big fat question mark, and picking a fight with a question mark was a quick way to end the loop early. Her next act would rip that droid out of the equation entirely. Her initial surrender let her drift a few steps closer to Simon in a very 'I give up but also I plan on assaulting someone' sort of way. The gap between them had closed, but was still a gap that a bullet would cross faster than her legs ever could.

There were a lot of men with guns. Criminals, lower EQ, but the speed of the barrier checkpoint they'd thrown together told her they'd been at this kind of work for a while. The heavy hitters were probably already at her lab, trying to crack it open. With that much experience in the crew and Simon's reputation hanging over them, most would hold fire rather than risk friendly fire or putting a round through their boss. His men fanned wide to either side of the barricade.

Kelly's neural augments spun up, kicked into gear, and started crunching the angles of every raised barrel and spitting back the one position where the incoming fire would miss the important, non-fatal bits. Simon scoffed, "Sure. Whatever. Man, I was hoping we wouldn't have to kill you, that truck's pretty valuable." He signalled to one of his men, who began to approach Kelly with surprising diligence, a pair of cuffs in one hand and his rifle's aim never leaving her vitals.

A scant few fanned out to her sides to get better firing angles, "Take her," Simon commented, "kill her if she struggles, it'll take a while, but we can rig the biometrics later." I guess this really isn't their first rodeo, she thought, equally impressed and disgusted. It wasn't hers, either. And then she moved.