This fuckbot was out of her mind.

  Her intelligence engine rose above Baz’s POV, a virtualization of her malfunctioning machine learning. She’d long since filled her drive to capacity, so as new conclusions were drawn, primary functions erased—prompting the mayor’s mistress to vector targets on every heartbeat in the room, while forgetting her own battery needed oxygen just to survive. Baz tried to locate her Hostility Ramping levels to stand her down, but a virus called “Haywire” corrupted all her neural networks like bubonic code—so he just cut the power instead.

  But the Haywire virus was coded to react instantly to a terminated power supply, so the bot cracked the mayor’s back, as SWAT blew the door and the mayor slipped into cardiac arrest, but Baz just watched while the spark extinguished behind her synthetic bloodshot eyes.

  Nubotica pressed charges against Baz since the PD Bots were theirs—Warrior.4s converted to civic duty. They wanted as much distance from that still-twitching Mistress Bot as possible, and Baz’s unauthorized breach made him the perfect fall guy. He steamed in that VR-pen, since his lawyer was a joke and hadn’t practiced law since Legal Bots replaced public defenders years ago. But when details emerged on the holo-lines of a shadow group called the “Underground” and a manhunt rallied for a guy named Dave Roselli who got his own two daughters killed that day, Nubotica dropped all charges and just fired Baz.

  But they blackballed his ass first.

  Baz couldn’t help it—he went off on Nubotica’s counsel about what he’d seen inside that limber 2.3’s intelligence engine. The Haywire virus was dug in like a tick, her Hostility Ramping redlining in a way he hadn’t seen since his 6-in-1 days in Venezuela. In fact, a little voice went off in Baz’s head when he hollered, “It came from your weapons division!” that he should probably just keep his big mouth shut. But as always, Baz heard that voice after he spoke.

  No matter how much he spent on a digital suit for his avatar’s interview—and despite extensive knowledge of robots—not even the Android Disposal Units, overworked and understaffed in the crackdown, would touch Baz after the Glitch. ’Cuz once Nubotica dropped “Degenerate” on his SSS, he was radioactive without a hazmat, and after six months and a dozen nonstarter holo-applications, Baz just said fuck it—

  And embarked on a life of crime.

  CRIB

  2051

  “You’re just too illegal, darlin’.”

  And Baz dumped the lead bot’s head in a synthetic grinder.

  Nestled in his complex between hydro-chargers and an out-of-order Laundry Bot—the rig was the same tech as the massive disposal units dispatched across the country after the Glitch, only smaller. Its claws crushed titanium and synthetic flesh into millimeter-sized fragments, before magnets separated both and credited his orbital account with ¢1,500. “Goddamn shame.”

  Her cranial-CPU was worth a helluva lot more than salvage. Baz could’ve wholesaled the waferboard on the Dubai Dark Bazaar, backtracked the crack and blackmailed the Carnival board, or just let Axl in on a lil accelerated sentience . . . but he couldn’t risk any evidence coming back his way.

  The criminal enterprise called Baz’s life had stayed in business and relatively unincarcerated for the last eight years by staying one step ahead of the Feds. Smart-RAM might be worth tons of ¢rypto . . .

  But dodging Wirecrime was priceless.

  Baz walked outta the “garage” of his “building”—both built from the same modular units as his apartment. At first, he liked living in a lattice of sawed-off shipping containers. Thought it jibed with his off-grid career. But now Baz had no illusions. He lived a few notches above a Public Storage . . . in a shithole of sea cans.

  As he entered his crib, his lights, climate control, and holo-display came to life. “Welcome home, Baz.”

  Polymer-neon lit up a sunken living room’s neural chair, a hallway that led to a queen-size spacefoam and private bath, and a tiny kitchenette with more RAM than he needed, to prep meals he never ate and mix his fave drink—if it weren’t for the obv bad memories.

  “Warning, component compatibillllllllll—”

  Then half his lights flickered and died, his climate control choked, and Baz decided to just talk to his Nest instead of letting it activate the wrong holo.

  “Show account info.”

  GeoS.Orbital>
  COVANE,BAZ

  Baz scrolled through his shitty interest rates and the heavy debt hanging on his biometric accounts to the only number that mattered:

  DATE TRANS AMOUNT BALANCE

  09/29/51 SynG0987 1,500 1,056,776

  “Ugh.” Baz groaned. 1,056,776 ¢rypto?

  Baz kicked himself for his busted Cortex and said a prayer to the Street Meat gods that his other seven Rockettes would sell, since a mil ¢rypto to his name meant that in sixty days of rent, as many bowls of shumai, and maybe a half brick of data-glass . . . Baz would be busted. “Goddamn learning cap.”

  He couldn’t remember when a million bucks was a lot of money. Back when dollars died with the Blockchain Act of ’45, there’d been such insane runaway inflation for so long you’d hear talk of bringing back the Economist Bots and firing all the human ones.

  Instead, they just handed the economy to a few True AIs—or General AIs, depending on what you wanted to call ’em—that were silo’d somewhere in super-secure sites since the Glitch.

  Baz poured himself a tumbler of Old No. 7.

  He tried not to think about Ria Rose, but his wetwire scanned his thoughts anyway, and her holo-mug materialized alongside a fragment of footage from the firefight. “Accessing data and mem-drive. Subject identified as—”

  “Shut up.” Then Baz forgot his onboard wasn’t a her. “Sorry.”

  Did he just apologize to the chip in his head?

  “Dial forward a minute thirty.” The footage in his wetwire swept past the bot blowing its cap.

  “Stop.” It froze on the moment when Ria looked into the loaded gun, aimed right at her. He studied her eyes. They weren’t lost or scared.

  She just didn’t give a fuck.

  “Half speed.” And as the POV leaped at Ria in slo-mo to tackle her, he noticed the emotional levels dancing in his own head:

  Loyalty

  Nostalgia

  Irrationality

  The three components of stupidity, Baz reckoned. “Dial back 25 seconds. On holo.”

  Ria Rose materialized on the array in his living room—right as her warning echoed across his crib . . .

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Stop.” She froze, just barely glancing at Baz.

  It wasn’t just attitude behind her eyes. Or fearlessness. The woman held a disdain—no, an utter contempt—for anything and everything sacred in this world. Which made Baz smile.

  It’d been a long time since he’d asked himself the magic words. More addictive than any wafer. But considering his current financial situation, why the fuck not?

  “Am I ever getting Out?”

  WETWIRE.VR

  >full.sim<

  Instantly, his apartment evaporated, and Baz was whisked onto a beach in the Tahitian Protectorate. An island breeze wafted through his hair.

  “Don’t say that baby,” a woman’s voice whispered. “You just gotta be patient.”

  Baz turned around and saw her. A thousand feet down the beach. Doing cartwheels, of course. The sand, a deep cobalt, reminiscent of the barely lit skies.

  “Haven’t seen you in months, Baz.” Her intonations were as synthetic as the smell of coconuts and the sound of the crashing waves. IRL-enviros were the assets most protected by the Protectorate—why else would it cost so much to go there? “Did you miss me?”

  Her hourglass figure was the only recognizable feature this far away, but her words were in his ear, since his aurals were still set for close quarters. But he didn’t bother changing them. He just wanted to watch her move.

  Was her gait the same? Her attitude? Fearless like—

  “Please don’t tell me you’re hangin’ out with her.” Eddie interrupted, like he already knew the answer.

  “Don’t you ever ding?”

  Eddie grinned. “Not until you change your settings on me.” His avatar pushed the woman sideways. “I take it we haven’t heard from Miss Rose?”

  Baz just shook his head.

  The firefight that lit up five Robo-Rockettes left seven still functioning. So Eddie and Baz were both clinging to the hope that at least they’d get paid for those. Baz exhaled and wiped away the memories.

  “C’mon bruh, don’t get lost in the rear cam. We got seven bots on the line.”

  His wetwire chimed, a minute later. “Incoming Message: Ria Rose. Accept?”

  Eddie and Baz exchanged virtual glances. A half dozen Wutani RhythmThiefs wasn’t nuthin’ in ¢rypto.

  “You gonna answer that or what?” Eddie sounded like he was on eggshells too. ’Cuz if this deal was dead, then neither of them could afford to ignore Ria’s wafer and whatever was on it anymore.

  “Accept,” Baz said, and waited for her avatar to appear.

  But she wasn’t there, which was bad.

  Not even a holo, which was worse.

  Just text.

  NO DEAL

  SCUTTLED

  across the Bay

  Ria stared at the translucent “NO DEAL” hovering in her wetwire.

  She focused through at the seven Nubotica RhythmThiefs, each chassis harnessed to the armored transport’s far bulwark, and she considered reexamining them for damage.

  Clinging to its overhead railing for support, Ria was alone in the cargo hold, bots rattling as the rig rumbled over divots and potholes in Chinatown.

  wetwire-ding

  hot.cipher

  “Incoming: encrypted source,” her onboard chimed. “Request identification?”

  But Ria shook her head. “Audio only.” She knew exactly who it was. “What’s good, boss?”

  “You tell me . . . Where the fuck are you?”

  “Oh, I’m doing fine, thanks for asking,” Ria said with a smile.

  “Don’t play. How come I can’t see you?”

  “Heavy interference.” She lied, glancing at McT’s massive chassis on the other side of the transport, also crumpled in a heap. “Can’t be too careful after today.”

  A nasty groan.

  She swung down onto one knee to carefully reinspect what was left of McT. Somehow this Wutani L7 search-and-destroy specialist, prototyped on Coronado Island with a kill ratio of 97 percent . . . got jumped by a showgirl.

  She pulled the Warrior Bot’s fully auto Jester 11mm. Smelled the chamber to confirm the android got off a single round before the lead dancer wasted him.

  “You wanna fuckin’ spill it, or—”

  “McT’s gone. Smart bot lurkin’ with a blown cap went nuts off the Cortex.”

  “It wasted McT and the Rockettes?”

  Lights in seven eyes sparked instantly. Fingers flexed. The word ‘Rockette’ triggered a power-up somewhere deep in each cranial-CPU and the RhythmThief closest to the door opened its eyes wide. “Ladies and gentlemen!”

  “Ria, you there?”

  She muted her aurals and crept over to the bot as it ran through a preprogrammed routine. “The Carnival Horizon is proud to present—”

  “Shhhh.” Ria cupped a hand over its mouth and unmuted. “Say again, boss? Your encrypt glitched.”

  “All of ’em? You couldn’t salvage like one or two? Maybe Covane can put the paddles to a straggler.”

  She stared at her unsent text. “NO DEAL” still hovered in her wetwire. Ria had big plans for Baz. She needed to make sure his only way Out . . .

  Send.

  . . . was her.

  Ria opened fire—unloading kill shots into all seven Rockettes’ craniums—chassis rocked—black blood splattered—’til the clip seized empty off the final spent casing.

  “Nope.” Unmuting her aurals again. “I tried. But the lead bot wasted every last one of ’em.”

  “Goddammit. I’d’ve paid triple for a vintage Rockette.”

  She remembered looking in Baz’s eyes. Broken like his reputation. Nothing more, really, than a guy infatuated by her ass.

  ’Til he saved her life.

  “I’ll load McT’s firmware onto another L7 when I get there.”

  “Yeah, when’s that gonna be?”

  Ria felt the familiar rumble of a carbide on-ramp and the roaring echo of the armored transport entering a parking garage.

  “Now.”

  The handle latched up, cargo doors rolled down, and Ria stepped onto an interior loading dock in a downtown garage. A self-driving liquor-distro truck sat on one side of the transport, a restaurant supply semi on the other—both unloading cargo at once. From the sea of activity emerged a woman named Moxie, in synthetic dreads and ocean-blue round-rims, who recognized Ria instantly—then clocked how her pants hugged her curves: “The fuck are you wearing? You goin’ out on the floor tonight?”

  “You wish. Just a deal that needed sweetening.” Ria smiled as she said it, but cut a line for the bathroom inside to change, cursing herself for not swapping outfits earlier. Ria couldn’t have any other coworkers noticing shit out of the ordinary.

  Especially her maniac boss.

  Fang>
  ROSE,RIA

  As the back entrance scanned her SSS, the thought crossed her mind just how much that name had cost.

  She pulled her usual attire from a crash bag, swapping stretch-fatigues for a throwback to the Roaring Thirties when women took over Wall Street—two-thirds of a pin-stripe three-piece, open at the collar but snug at the waistline. Buttoning her vest, Ria caught tiny black spatters on her hands. She ran the water quick, washing the android blood down the drain . . .

  And flashed to MissPop808.

  Splattered in blood by the Wichita PD, a girl named Maria ran inside her house, only to get gunned down a minute later . . . Pulse fading, dome blown clean, eyeless on a floor in Kansas.

  And Ria almost laughed. At everything she’d done to survive, the crazy shit she’d seen, and all the nasty things she’d endured—

  Since her Nanny Bot went Haywire in the Glitch.

  AUGMENTED

  April 10, 2043

  Maria’s head was a red mess of spaghetti brains and skull fragments.

  The doctors at Wichita General took one look in Trauma Room 1 and called for a VR-priest, since there was hardly a heartbeat left. But when a ding from Nubotica Cortical Synthetics said an augment team was enroute, the lead surgeon felt her lukewarm corpse and wondered:

  “Maybe they can kickstart this one back to life.”

  Nubotica’s Encepholodrive was basically an oscillator, three Duracells, and enough graphene to charge ten million more than it cost—but it was little more than a spark plug for Maria’s brain. The doctors slotted its charging fiber into one frayed but functioning I/O slot and pinned Maria’s wetwire with enough current to keep a few vital organs out of sepsis.

  The team numbered five—and none had done this Stateside, unless you counted lab rats and rhesus monkeys. But only a crisis like today could fast-track a procedure like Cerebral Augmentation through FDA approval in 22 minutes . . . Sometimes science just needed a swift kick in the pants.

  Putting Maria back together took thirty hours. Which was average, among the three dozen augmentations performed in America that day. To save 36 teenagers and adolescents from fatal head traumas, Nubotica’s proprietary algorithm dispatched teams across the country at lightning speed and lost only two patients, though nine never regained motor function, and the last kid’s wetwire was so illegally loaded with porn that when they sparked him back to life, hunger was sidelined by an intense drive to masturbate, and the boy was lost to psychiatry forever.

  Maria woke up and felt too much.

  That’s how she’d always describe it—not pain, not hurt, nothing specific—she could just feel more. Tiny vibrations off the oxygen pump two feet to the right. Whispered conversations between doctors and FBI agents in the hallway outside. And the headlines on a holo-display in the apartment across the street.

  Because Maria was now augmented.

  She was distinctly aware of exactly how much time had elapsed since she’d been shot. Which was weird, since Maria lost track of time during soccer games, class, or any one of her dad’s rants. They said that was a function of a newly installed internal clock in her now augmented temporal lobe—the one that governed her sense of time. The same accounted for new and improved hearing, sight, and smell; the ability to perform differential calculus in her head; and her 4-dimensional predictive software. She laughed as the team leader finished talking—when asked why, Maria just said, “Nah, I just knew you were gonna say that.”

  She stuck around for two more training sessions and a diagnostic, but the holo-lines across the street and the hallway conversations with the FBI filled in too many blanks about her dad’s cryptic warning. A whole shitload of robots went fucking psychotic—from makin’ soup to killing people in a nanosecond. In fact, that exact instant when a virus took hold, intelligence engines went Haywire, and homicides started—kids called it “the Glitch.”

  And people were scared. Not just of robots or AI—sure, “Bot kill man, man fear bot”—but it was the conspiracy that terrified folks, gobbling up the holo-lines in hours. Who caused the bots to go nuts? This was no sentient rebellion, this shit was man-made. A virus called “Haywire” ripped across the country through short-range BIOS updates, unit-to-unit like a flu epidemic, on a select number of models, a list of which was being compiled currently by the FBI. But Ria was a little more preoccupied with their number one suspect . . .

  Dave Roselli was the most wanted man in America.

  The virus traced back quick to a list of conspirators, nestled in the Synthetic Emancipation Movement, called the “Underground.” Her dad’s face floated in every wetwire in America. And whatever was left of Maria’s life (like her right cerebral hemisphere)—was now utterly destroyed.