Rain

Three gunshots went off, and Aiko Kurusu opened her eyes.

Sleep cleared from her mind. It hadn't been gunshots. She was in bed in her apartment, and someone was pounding on her door. She could hear a muffled voice, and the drum of rain on the window. It wasn't real - condensation from the heat of Olynpia's engines.

"Babe?" Somebody shifted next to her, and Aiko felt skin on skin. "What's going on?"

"Don't worry about it," she whispered. The digital clock read 3:20 AM in angry scarlet. "Go back to sleep."

She reached over. In the bedside drawer were the cockroach bodies of two burner phones, and a pistol. She grabbed it and clicked the safety as she slipped out of the warmth. The hallway chilled her. She spied herself in the tiny circular mirror on the wall. Her black hair was wild and her eyes were tired.

"Aiko! It's me! Open up!" The voice was clear now. Aiko turned to the door, pressed an eye to the peephole. She saw a lanky young man, features made crazy by shadows from the one streetlight still working outside.

"Who is it," she called.

"It's me, it's Jared! Open the door, man!"

She recognised the name, and the logo on his t-shirt. Slow Weather Jamz. He was such a kid.

It was stained red.

"Jesus," she muttered. Her thin fingers fumbled the chain lock and the two bolts loose, and she wrenched open the door. She stared up at his too-young face. He'd been crying.

"Jesus, Aik," he stammered, "you're naked."

"You're covered in blood," she snapped back. "Get the fuck inside."

He ambled in, the red on his clothes and hands turning black in the light. Aiko peered out behind him, but saw nothing in the street to worry her. She shut the door and bolted everything.

"The fuck happened?" She turned back to him. Rain mixed with his tears and made Slow Weather Jamz cling to his torso.

"T-they hit up Ron," he gasped. "We were at the arcade, and -"

"Who did it?"

"Marco."

Things got... Hazy from there. She knew Marco. Marco acted tough but he didn't own shit. His most famous accomplishment was being apprehended by a Bioroid for hitting someone. How had he got the balls to do something like this?

"Let the bullets breath, Jared, dude." She saw brass casings slip into magazines. "Uzis jam a lot."

"Sorry."

Why was she good at killing? Would she find out why if they scanned the barcode on her neck? They'd find out how much she was worth, probably. Too much? Too little? It gave her away, and she'd spent too much failing to scrub the devilsd mark off.

She put the gas mask on. She could pretend to be someone else now.

"Transport?"

"Got a Cherokee outside." Jared was watching her. "I told Davey and No-Face but they didn't want any of it. Don't want no trouble."

Of course not. Cowards.

The drive was a blur. All the same. Packed houses. Dripping rain built by the engines of the city. Neon. Cleaning drones, the odd Bioroid, hookers and drunks and homeless. The people the upper city liked to pretend didn't exist. No transport. No services. No jobs unless you turned to crime.

She didn't know who to be angry at the most.

All of them.

He was there, suddenly, and she wondered why she even had a gun. What was the point? He was standing in the rain. He was talking to himself. Was he? Marco wasn't crazy, right? But Jared was behind her and he couldn't see her not be tough.

"Hey, motherfucker!"

He turned.

Oh, fuck.

Her finger hesitated. There was a song like this, wasn't there? East Coast rapper. She couldn't think. But he was holding her in his arms and she couldn't be even a year old, what was this shit? What if she'd pulled the trigger without shouting?

She could see his face, pale, scared. Marco was always a pretender.

The baby made a noise she hated.

Something in her head told her to pull the trigger anyway. But Nyalarhotep said something else. Everything was looking at her. So she did the one thing she could do to stop it. She thumbed the red blinking app on her smartphone.

"Mementos."

CANDIDATE FOUND

And then she was gone, into the swirl of red and train tracks and cogs and decay. She didn't have to pull a trigger. She didn't have to think about the fact that she had gone out to kill someone. She could ignore what Jared's reaction would be.

She needed a drink, but the human subconscious lacked bars.

But she knew one place that did good booze.