Chương 672: Interlude - K & K

Kevin looked up as someone pushed the door open. He was in an apartment, though he supposed that it wasn't much of an apartment anymore if no one actually rented the place out. It was one of those nicer habitation blocks. Enough square-footage to handle a family of six or so. Three bedrooms, one full bathroom, a water closet. Most of these probably housed ten to fifteen people who split the rent evenly. At least, that's what he figured. He wouldn't know. Paying rent wasn't something he did much of.

A back appeared in the open doorway, then the rest of a skinny, rather short man carrying a cardboard box.

"Yo, Kev, you in here?"

"Yeah, I'm here," Kevin said. He set down the tech he was working on, then came over to help. He didn't need to be accused of being lazy.

"What is this?"

"More gear," the man said. He turned, and gave Kevin a gap-toothed smile. Kneebreaker was an... alright kid. He wasn't actually that much younger than Kevin, but Kevin couldn't think of him as a fully grown man. Maybe because Kneebreaker insisted that people call him Kneebreaker instead of his real name. He was a fifth-generation Canadian, from way out near Vancouver, which meant that his features could have him pass from anywhere in South-East Asia, at least to people who didn't know better.

Kevin himself hadn't ever set foot outside of New Montreal. If he had it his way, he never would.

"What did you get your hands on now?" he asked. Kneebreaker dumped the box onto the desk a half-second after Kevin cleared out some space for it.

"Bit of this, bit of that," Kneebreaker said.

"Got some junk, I think, but there's some augs, a few computers, you know, stuff." Kevin decided to judge that for himself. He opened the box up, then started to sort through the contents. There were old augs, sure, but they were old-old. More interesting were some cyberdecks. Also old as all hell, but a lot more usable. He found some hardware that had obviously been ripped out of something like a vending machine, an electricity meter for an apartment complex, and some odds and ends.

"Damn, I can use maybe a quarter of this," he said.

"Then use that," Kneebreaker said.

"Can I help with anything?" Kevin hesitated, then nodded. He handed the vending machine part to the shorter man.

"Take this apart. Get all the plastic off. Don't mishandle my tools. I still remember that screwdriver bit you lost."

"I paid you back for it," the younger man said, but he shook his head and moved over to the table in the centre of the room. Kevin had turned this apartment into a temporary workshop. Emphasis on temporary. There had been a set of desks in one room that he'd moved over, and a long, low table that was now in the centre of the space. Right now, it, and much of the floor, was covered in tech waste. What was a lot more interesting were the contents of the nearest bedroom.

Sitting on the floor, in neat, orderly rows, were all sorts of electronic devices. They were all wireless capable. Ancient smart-phones, tablets, cyberdecks, counters, just about anything that could be powered by a lithium cell and that could receive a signal with any amount of reliability. Strapped to each one of those was a thin bar of off-red plastic with a pair of simple wires plunging into the soft material. There was enough semtex in that room to take out a couple of mega buildings...

well, if it was placed correctly. The Ball Busters were hoping that they could take out something a little smaller than a whole building. Kevin sat down at one of the workbenches with one of the cyberdecks and connected it to his own laptop. It was an old thing, and that was perfect. He'd reformatted it six times already, and was pretty sure he'd have to do it again. Half the crap he jacked into had some sort of virus in it, and some of the nicer things had ICE and nastier countermeasures.

He had one aug explode in his face, and wasn't about to forget it. It had been a small explosion, but he'd nearly shat himself and didn't need a repeat. He hummed a little to himself as he erased most of what was on the deck, then replaced it with the program they'd designed for this. It was ridiculously simple. One bit was a receiver, waiting for a specific string of code over an open channel, the other a simple command sent to a paired device he'd taped to the side.

It was little more than a battery and a few loose wires. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. He'd made fifty of the damned things over the course of a week, and his fingers still hurt from it.

"Hey, Kev," Kneebreaker said. He was frowning at the stuff he was taking apart.

"Mind if I put something up on the radio?"

"Eh? Yeah, sure, but I reserve the right to veto if your taste in noise is as bad as your taste in names."

"Heh, no worries." There wasn't really a radio. Kevin had barely ever interacted with a radio in his life, and his job was basically playing with old tech. But the name had stuck. It's what everyone called anything that made noise in a public space, or in a car, or that belted out ads non-stop. Kneebreaker moved over to a laptop set on another workbench, then leaned in and tapped at its screen for a few moments. It was hooked into a pair of scavenged speakers that Kevin had rigged up a few days back.

There was a crackle, then a familiar voice filled the air.

"Not this bitch," Kevin said.

"I like 'em," Kneebreaker replied.

"--and I still think that it's a godawful idea, but who's gonna listen to me? They sure as shit won't!" the voice said. It was this grindy, high-pitched woman's voice, very slightly synthesized. Probably some sort of voice changer, if he had to guess. Or she had some cyberware making her voice sound off.

"Anyway, those shitcakes at Avenir Bioworks got their shit yoinked! The SotS are taking the credit for it, but I'm not so sure. Those over-hyped backyard docs aren't the thieving sort."

"God, she's so fucking stupid," Kevin muttered. Avenir made cybernetics and shit. The Sons of the Scalpel installed all sorts of shit onto themselves. It fit.

"I like 'em," Kneebreaker repeated. He was back to work, at least.

"Ah, alright, alright, next bit of news! I said that I'd be saving something juicy for all the fine, fine listeners of WallRat, and I come bearing the goodest of cheesy, my little friends! This is big. And I'm not exaggerating. I mean it's big big. This is gonna rock your world."

"Probably an ad," Kevin muttered. Kneebreaker snorted, which made him a little more likable. He found Kevin's jokes funny.

"Right, so get this, pals and gals and assorted friends," WallRat said.

"Yesterday, a sweet little pair of Samurai pointed themselves at the ol' Velvet Wheel, and now news is going 'round that there's gonna be a conclave!"

"Holy shit," Kevin said.

"A what?" Kneebreaker asked. Unfortunately, WallRat answered.

"Some of y'all are little baby gangsters, mobsters and mooks, so you won't know, but back in the before-times of like, six years ago, conclaves were big meetups where all the gangs big and small got together and measured each other's dicks. It was a big hullabaloo." Kevin connected to the laptop via aug and paused it.

"It means that there's gonna be a big meetup of all the gangs."

"All of 'em?" Kneebreaker said.

"Yeah, probably. Maybe? Depends on how much shit WallRat is spouting." He hated to admit it, but WallRat was the number one gang news source for a lot of low-level gangs. She ran a daily podcast with news, updates, and gossip. Every niche had one, even the drug-sellers and gangbangers. There were a few others, but WallRat had been in the game longest, and was the most popular one. She even had her own little gang, back in some arcology, though it was mostly teens and fans and posers.

He shook his head, unpaused the podcast, and returned to work.

"So, the samurai? Stray Cat! Yeah, that New Montreal bi-atch that shot the mayor, and with her, an overseas cat called Nya. Don't know that one as much, but she's got a record longer than I am tall, and lemme tell ya, I'm a tall kinda gal! No clue if other samurai are hopping on, but I'd bet pennies to credits that we're going to see a buncha them. Now, the biiiiig question: what in the fuck is it all for?"

"What'd you think?" Kneebreaker said.

"Don't know," Kevin replied.

"But it might be an opportunity." He slipped two wires into a stick of semtex.

"All those leaders, all in one place. Could be the kind of place where someone makes a name for themselves, ya know?"