13

"Not bad," Ratboy said to himself as he checked his outfit in the bathroom mirror. "Not bad at all."

For a habstack bathroom, this one was pretty alright. Sure, it was crowded, with no shortage of 20 and 30-somethings pushing each other for space as they primped and preened. But it had a decent mirror, with minimal graffiti, stickers, and scratches.

He'd gotten a proper trim, and his hair was short and a little spiky, the way he liked it. He'd had the barber run a set of clippers over his face, too, knocking down his scraggly beard into a respectable stubble. Then he'd gone clothes shopping. He wasn't like Eight-Ball, blowing the income from a job on a new set of knucks and a chain, but you had to dress for success, right? So he'd picked up some high-performance black pants and a shirt, because he was serious business, and a snazzy red jacket to show he had style.

He needed both. The RoboCorp job had gone so well that Derrig had paid him and Eight-Ball a hefty bonus, bringing their cut to 25,000 bits each. Better still, the System goon had told them that his boss wanted to meet them in person and discuss the possibility of bringing them on for more work. Ratboy had been ecstatic. Eight-Ball less so, but he'd still agreed to meet Derrig's man.

Then Derrig had said that he wanted to meet at Belovodye, so now Ratboy had to play dress up. The Kulaks ran the casino, just like they ran the Port of Cyber City and basically the entire Harbor District, and for a gang of hardened criminals, they had a certain amount of style imposed on them by their boss, Nikolai Kuragin. The best way to keep a low profile was to look cool enough to fit in and dangerous enough not to be fucked with. It was tricky, but he thought he'd found the balance.

Certainly, the other residents of the habstack agreed with him. Next to him, a forgettable young man with just enough intentional scarring to mark him as a mutant gave Ratboy an approving nod. "Man," the kid said. "Cool jacket."

Ratboy grinned at the kid. "You're damn right."

Of course, you couldn't make a grand entrance on a public bus. No, a grand entrance required style and taste, so Ratboy used his handheld to summon an autonomous VTOL. It cost him a good chunk of bits, but God, was it worth it to be able to just fly over the bay instead of having to go up through Old Town and around, or across the Silicon Slough and up through Bayside. Plus, from the backseat of the VTOL, Ratboy could put up his feet and drink a beer.

"This must be how the rich stiffs in Old Town and Corporate Center travel every day," Ratboy mused to himself. "Just sit back, relax, and let the robot do the driving for you. Look at all the pretty lights and think about nothing."

The ride could have been more relaxing, he supposed. The whine of other VTOLs as they whipped past to wherever they were going. The occasional blinding sweep from the Halo’s searchlights, guiding its ultra-wealthy inhabitants as they came and went. Funny, that, Ratboy thought as the VTOL took him past the floating enclave and he had to cover his eyes and squint. Here I am, top of the world, and there's still some asshole above me making life hard. He sipped his beer and slunk lower into his seat.

***

Ratboy's VTOL set itself down on Belovodye's landing pad and flew off as soon as he'd tipped it. Ratboy dusted himself off, threw his empty over his shoulder, and took a deep breath. Man, he thought. I haven't been here since before the Kulaks took over. And now I've got a job offer instead of no money and the idea that I'm going to get laid.

Ratboy glanced up at the top of the building. He knew looking up made you look like a tourist, but he did it anyway. Belovodye was the tallest building in the Harbor District, some 500 feet, with a wide base for the casino floor, a central tower for the hotel rooms and more elite spaces, and a penthouse suite capped with a clock tower. There was something old school and a little out-of-place about it, almost like the building itself was one big middle finger to the city that surrounded it.

Ratboy got that. He really did.

Maybe Belovodye didn't have the old school glitz and glamour of the joints in Ciudad de Sal, or the PlayLand-come-to-life vibes of the Meadows high up in orbit. The air around Belovodye was heavy with salt water from the bay, petro exhaust from cars, ozone from VTOLs, sweat and perfume and booze and puke. But those places were worlds away. Belovodye was here. Belovodye was Cyber City, like it or not.

Ratboy took the elevator down from the landing pad to the street in front of the casino and made his way up the grand steps and to the front door. There were groups of people milling about, talking, waiting, commiserating. Planning their next move, trying to bum a few bits off each other for another round of gambling or drinking or dancing. Standard stuff.

Two security guards burst through the front door, dragging a man in between them. Ah, Ratboy thought. Kulaks. The guards were dressed in suits, but their hands and faces were marked with the same kind of bratva-inspired augs that Kulaks in the Q had worn. The man they were dragging was barely conscious, his face and clothes that special kind of ruined you only got when you pissed off the wrong people. "Make way!" one of them called out. "We got a cheater here!"

Ratboy made way. The guards threw the man out through the door and he landed in a heap on the street. One of the Kulaks spat on the ground. The other shouted, "Don't you ever fucking come back, you bum!" As they turned to leave, Ratboy could see the guns tucked into the waistbands of their pants. Criminal shit, Ratboy thought. Real security wouldn't have their pieces so visible like that. Or they'd at least have holsters.

Ratboy glanced back over his shoulder, watching for just a moment to check if the guy they'd given the bum's rush to could stand up. Once the man groaned and rolled over, Ratboy went inside.

Through the inner doors, folks from all the poorer parts of Cyber City were walking around with an ease and comfort most of them didn't get to enjoy every day. Half of the bottom floor was given over to gambling. There were slots, card and roulette tables, machines running digital versions of games Ratboy didn't even recognize. There was a combination sportsbook and bar, where people bet on games from all around the world, on every last possible outcome of every moment of those games, on the outcomes of those bets, on everything they could think of. There was even an in-house algorithm that you could pitch potential bets to, and if it thought your grandma would actually die in the next week, it'd take your bet.

The other half was mostly restaurants. Places where you could be seen and places where you could disappear, places to eat small artistically designed portions and places to gorge yourself on the cheapest cut of "steak" that could be cloned in a lab, all of it paid for by the people pouring out their BASICs onto the casino floor.

But there was plenty of something Ratboy didn't have a word for, too. Small little soundproof booths outside of which bodies of every size and shape and configuration stood half-naked shouting prices. Medical beds where doctorbs turned people's BASICs into a cornucopia of synthetic uppers and downers and left them to dissolve in a drug-fueled haze. And there were quiet rooms where the people who'd had too much to drink, or had lost too much money, or simply didn't have the right vibe, were pulled into to cooldown before getting kicked to the curb. For everyone that was having the best night of their life in Belovodye, there was somebody having the worst.

Ratboy shook the thought from his head. I don't have time for this. I gotta find Eight-Ball. "Alright," he muttered to himself. "Where are you, Eights?" He pulled out his handheld and messaged him.

"bar" came the terse reply.

"which one? this place is half bars" "perpetul" Ratboy groaned. The second story of Belovodye housed its night club, Perpetual, and it was sure to be loud and crowded. If Eight-Ball was drinking there, then that meant he wanted to be someplace he wouldn't be able to hear himself think, which meant he was sulking about something. "alright see you in a minute."

Ratboy took the elevator up to the second story, and stepped out into a crowd milling about. Then he realized that they weren't milling about; they were waiting in a snaking line to get into the club. Ratboy groaned again.

Alright, well. This isn't going to work, but doesn't hurt to try. He pushed his way through the line up to the door, and approached the hostess and the bouncer. "Hi, hey, hello. My buddy's in there, he sounds drunk and mopey, I just want to go in for a second, grab him, and get out."

"Never heard that before," the hostess muttered. "Last name, please?"

"Menendez."

"You're not on the list, Sir," the hostess said, her voice almost painfully disinterested. "If you want to get in, please move to the back of the line."

Ratboy mumbled and took a step back, pulling out his handheld and messaging Eight-Ball "this lines a fuckign mess. come outside" But Eight-Ball didn't reply.

"Wait," the bouncer growled. He leaned over and showed his handheld to the hostess. She studied it for a moment, frowned, looked back and forth between it and Ratboy.

"Mr. Ramón Menendez?" she asked.

"...yes?"

The hostess cleared her throat and stood up straighter. "My apologies, Sir. Mr. Hanssen has indicated that you and your friend Mr. Eduardo Garcia are to receive VIP treatment all throughout Belovodye. He apologizes for keeping you waiting and wants you to know that he's added 50,000 bits in house credit to each of your Belovodye accounts. You can't pull it out, but it can be used for any food, drink, or gambling-related transactions." The hostess smiled, looked to the bouncer, and nodded. The bouncer stepped aside.

Ratboy blinked, looked at the two of them suspiciously. He checked over his shoulder. Was a Kulak about to clock him from behind and turn out his pockets? No, this seemed legit.

And you know what? Why shouldn't it? He and Eight-Ball had done a good fucking job with that RoboCorp gig. In and out smooth as silk, and they hadn't been IDed, and they'd kept their fucking mouths shut. If Derrig wanted him drinking Belovodye's booze while he waited for the next job, that was only fair in Ratboy's eyes.

Ratboy grinned, feral, triumphant. "Thank you, Miss!" he said. "If you can, why don't you give you and your friend here a 1,000 bit tip, huh? Each. On me."

***

The bass in Perpetual rattled through Ratboy's chest, and he loved it. Everything felt better when you had an extra 100,000 bits in your pocket. Even if it wasn’t real money. And you had to split it. And you’d already given away 2,000.

Ratboy walked up to the bar and pushed his way to the front, nudging aside men and women who’d been waiting for a dozen minutes already. They grumbled, but nobody said or did anything. The bartender shot him a nasty look, then froze. Some smart lens or something must have identified Ratboy as a VIP customer, because she dropped everything and moved to take care of him. “What can I get you, Mr. Menendez?” she said, her voice augmented to cut through the noise of the club around her.

Ratboy grinned. Mr. Menendez. Here we go. Here we fucking go. “Yeah, can I get a beer? Whatever you got from La Patria. And a shot of tequila.”

“Right away. On your credit, Sir?”

“Please. And, hey, I’m looking for a friend of mine. Tan skin, shaved head, augmented hands, probably a chain with a magic 8-ball on it?”

The bartender nodded and pointed towards the booths. Ratboy arched an eyebrow in surprise. “He paid for a table?”

“He’s been here since before the booths became reservation only.”

Ratboy frowned. It was worse than he thought. “He causing any trouble?”

“No, Sir. He’s costing us some revenue, maybe, but it’s still early enough that we haven’t asked him to move.”

“I’ll cover the booth. Send the drinks over there, please.”

Ratboy hoped he’d find Eight-Ball at a table with other people, laughing and drinking and cracking jokes. Instead, his friend was alone, an assortment of beer bottles and a few shot glasses in front of him. He was wearing his standard "going out" uniform: dark pants and a dark long-sleeve shirt, the sleeves rolled up to show off his knucks and the collar unbuttoned to show off his chain. He looked miserable.

Ratboy frowned. "You already drunk?" he asked.

Eight-Ball looked up at him bleary eyed and indifferent. “Yep.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Got fired.” Eight-Ball reached for the beer bottle closest to him, picked it up and put it to his lips, threw his head back. After a moment, he grimaced and turned it upside down. A single drop fell out and splattered against the tabletop. Eight-Ball grunted, but a waitress chose that moment to set Ratboy’s drinks before him. Eight-Ball took the beer. Ratboy snorted.

“Sure, help yourself.” Ratboy brought the tequila to his lips and sipped. It actually tasted good. Guess VIPs get the good stuff. “Okay,” he said after another sip. “Tell me how you got fired.”

“Bennie fired me.”

“Right, but why?”

“The RoboCorp job. She didn't like the way it shook out."

Ratboy sneered. "The fuck you talking about, ‘She didn’t like the way it shook out?’ I don’t recall seeing Bennie Shrapnel outside with us. And what, you’re not allowed to have a side hustle?"

Eight-Ball grunted. "She built the cybercore, Rats. The one we installed on that killbot. So she feels guilty for what it did.” Eight-Ball sipped the beer. He let out a heavy side. “She didn’t say it, but I could tell she feels like I tricked her or something. Led her down a road she didn't wanna walk."

Ratboy crossed his arms and looked away. All around them, people were laughing and joking and drinking and dancing. And here the two of them were, Eight-Ball dissolving into his drink and Ratboy dressed up in his shiny new clothes sitting on his ass instead of out on the floor. "What about you?” he asked. “You feel guilty?"

Eight-Ball took a sip of his drink. “No. I don't. Maybe I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.” Another sip. "People die every day."

Ratboy sipped his tequila. "They do."

"Even corpos," Eight-Ball said, his eyes distant.

Ratboy nodded. "Even corpos."

The two men sat in silence for a moment. Eight-Ball drained his beer, began waving to get the attention of a waitress when Ratboy gently lowered his hand to the table. Eight-Ball looked at him suspiciously.

"You cutting me off?"

"Who, me? Never. But Eights, you're doing it wrong. Haven't you heard from Derrig?"

Eight-Ball shook his head. "Not since the afternoon. Why?"

Ratboy grinned. "We're VIPs, buddy. You want to get wasted, let's do it in a bar with better booze."

***

Above the main casino floor that everyone had access to lay the high rollers' rooms. There was only one requirement for entry: have the money to cover the buy-in: 50,000 bits. More than Ratboy or Eight-Ball had ever seen at once in their lives.

Until today. Between the free-play credit and the VIP status Derrig had granted them, there was nothing keeping them from walking right in like they owned the joint. So they did.

As the elevator doors slid open, Eight-Ball took a deep breath. "So," he said. "This is how the corpos party." They stepped out and looked around. Confusion crossed Eight-Ball's face. "Feels like it's just as crowded up here as it is on the main floor. Is every corpo in the city here?"

Ratboy looked around and frowned. It did feel nearly as crowded as the main floor, but it was quieter. Instead of an unending parade of people laughing, drinking, dancing, gambling, cursing, there were pockets in the crowd. A group of men and women around a card table, all of them cheering and laughing and patting each other on the back, but only a few of them actually looked like they were gambling. People walking by with men and women infinitely more beautiful than them clinging to their arms. And for every person that was dressed like a stiff, there were two or three dressed all fashionable and shit.

"What are we looking at here?" Eight-Ball asked, his eyes glued to a table where a schlubby looking man explained some finance thing to an eager and attentive crowd.

Ratboy furrowed his brow as he tried to make sense of this new world. "Maybe this is what it means to party when you can actually afford to. These rich fucks don't have to worry about running out of cash. They want booze, or food, or drugs, they just go and get it.” He thought for another second. “They don't need a place to get what they want. They need people to do it with, maybe."

"What, every corpo is here to pay to have friends?"

Ratboy shrugged. "Maybe? Or, just, like… I don't know. An audience?"

Eight-Ball shook his head. "Corpos are fucking weird, man."

Ratboy nodded in agreement and grinned. "Let's go take their money."

The floor was mostly stiffs in suits, but there were enough minor celebrities about and the prodigal sons and daughters of wealthy families that Ratboy and Eight-Ball didn't look completely out of place. And it certainly helped that Derrig had given them a big enough bankroll that they could laugh off every loss and keep playing.

They traded beers and well drinks for whatever cocktails on the menu had the most interesting names. They told stories of growing up in the Lows, fighting and stealing and lying to survive. They reveled in the wide-eyed looks of disbelief they got from the corpos and the spoiled brats. They moved from table to table, from bar counter to bar counter. They danced in a club they didn't even bother to learn the name of, simply following the music and walking right past the line and even the bouncer.

An hour passed. Two. There were drinks, powders, combustibles, tinctures. Ratboy was dancing with a corpo woman ten years older than him and half a foot taller. He closed his eyes, opened them, and he and Eight-Ball were standing in a bathroom with a man and woman who seemed to be married. Eight-Ball was grinding up pills with practiced ease on a silver tray, cutting them into lines, offering them up to be snorted.

Whatever the pills did, Ratboy didn't think he could feel it.

Someone knocked at the door. The man and the woman froze, their faces masks of terror. "Ocupado!" Ratboy shouted. Eight-Ball chuckled.

"Mr. Garcia!" the person on the other side of the door shouted back. "Mr. Menendez!" His voice was high and grating. Very punchable (if voices could be punchable). "It's time to head upstairs, gentlemen."

"That's Derrig," Eight-Ball whispered. "Shit, I'm fucking high as fuck. Should we let him in?"

Ratboy realized his jaw was clenched. He willed it to relax. "I'm not afraid of him. He gave us money to play with, he can't be mad that we played with it."

The man in the bathroom said, "What, who is that? What's happening? You can't just let a guy in here!" The man pointed at the silver tray where it sat on the sink. "We're doing drugs! He'll see!"

"Well, fucking do them faster and there won't be any for him to see, will there?"

Derrig knocked again. "Gentlemen! The boss doesn't like to be kept waiting! Open up and let's go upstairs."

Eight-Ball stepped over to the door and threw it open. "We're already upstairs," Eight-Ball said, his words only a little slurred.

Derrig stepped inside. The man and woman gave matching squeaks of fear. Derrig glanced at them for a moment, then promptly forgot they existed. They ran out of the bathroom. Derrig smirked. "No, no, no. You're on the 20th story, but you're not upstairs. This? This is a playground for children. A nice playground, but a playground nevertheless." He pointed at the ceiling. "The three of us are going straight to the top."

"Time to meet the boss?" Ratboy asked, swaying on his feet.

Derrig nodded, then studied both of them for a moment. A smile crept across his mouth. There was something cruel in it. "Well. Time to clean you boys up, then we'll meet the boss." He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out two small glass vials and placed one in each of their hands. "This is standard issue for field agents who are undercover and may be required to consume illegal drugs as part of their work. We call it 'Instant Purge.' Bottoms up, gentlemen."

***

The elevator doors opened in the middle of the penthouse. Ratboy's mouth still tasted of blood and vomit and every bad decision he'd made that night, but he had to admit his head was basically clear. At least, it was clear enough that he could appreciate that Derrig had been right: there was being upstairs, then there was being at the top.

The air was heavy with the scent of things Ratboy had only ever heard about in stories and videos. Wood. Leather. Tobacco smoke. All of it real. The floors were some kind of stone (marble, maybe? Was this what marble looked like?) with plush rugs thick enough that Ratboy could feel his shoes sinking into them with each step. There was art on display, statues, shelves filled with real books and pictures and certificates and military medals. There were floor-to-ceiling windows on every side of the building.

Ratboy glanced over at Eight-Ball and found his friend's eyes were also wide with wonder as he gazed around. Aw, goddamnit, he thought. We look like a couple of rubes.

Derrig turned to speak and gave both men a smirk. Ratboy felt his mouth twist in distaste for the man, his smug look and his obnoxious voice and his punchable face. Fucker's just as much of a smug prick as he was the night he dropped us off at RoboCorp. Still, he shoved it down. Business before pleasure. "Gentlemen, welcome to the Belovodye Hotel and Casino's ultra-exclusive Winter Palace. My boss is wrapping up a friendly game of poker, but the staff will be able to assist you with anything you need. Feel free to look around. Shut doors are shut for a reason. And try not to make too much noise, yes? You wouldn't want to be a distraction."

At the back of the room, a group of eight men and women sat playing cards at a large oval table. It was some dark wood, heavy and solid, with padded tabletops and drink holders and a space for a dealer to stand. Even the tables on the high roller floors hadn't looked so fancy.

Eight-Ball grunted, and Derrig gave them a nod and walked away. In his place, a waitress walked up, a pretty blonde twenty-something in black slacks and a white dress shirt. "Can I bring you gentlemen a drink while you wait for the game to finish?"

Ratboy thought about it for a second. He was going to say, "Give me a beer," but beers weren't the kind of thing you drank in a joint like this, were they? He needed something classy. A whiskey. No, even better.

"I'll have a… a Scotch." Scotches were classy, right?

The waitress nodded. "What kind would you like?"

Ratboy blinked. "I… what have you got?"

The waitress rattled off a string of names that sounded like gibberish to Ratboy's ears. He wasn't even sure he could repeat back what she'd just said to him.

Fuck it. Older's supposed to be better with this stuff, right? "You said you have an 18 year? Let's do the 18 year."

"And for you, Sir?" she asked Eight-Ball.

"Uh… Just a beer. Whatever you got is fine."

"Would you like–"

"Surprise me." Eight-Ball flashed the lady a smile. "I'm not picky, I promise."

She nodded and left to go get their drinks. Eight-Ball turned to Ratboy and shrugged. Ratboy gave a little nod of his head, and the two men began taking a look around the penthouse. They walked over to the windows and did a circuit of the floor, looking at all of Cyber City spread out and twinkling before them. In the dark, it was beautiful, everything from Silicon Slough and Corporate Center in the south, to the Lows and Old Town across the water, to Kensington to the north, and the scattered lights of hills in the east. Up here in the dark, you couldn't see the pollution, the traffic, the people trying to eke out their existence however they could. From up here, it all just looked like jewels.

"Eights," Ratboy whispered. "We fucking made it."

"We made it to Kulak fucking central, you mean," Eight-Ball whispered back. "We got to keep our heads on swivels, man."

Ratboy nodded. Head on a swivel was smart. It was right. But God, after five years in the fucking Q, he'd take this fucking victory. Wake up in a hab cube, go to sleep in a penthouse. That's fucking Cyber City, baby. That's the way it's supposed to be.

Ratboy let his gaze drift over to the poker table, pretending to be interested in the painting behind them: a group of men from another era with wild haircuts and moustaches and beards and outfits standing around a table and laughing uproariously.

The big gorilla at the head of the table was definitely Nikolai Kuragin, head of the whole Kulak crime syndicate. If having the place of honor as the host didn't give him away, the military-grade augmentations poking out from under his finely tailored suit sure did. Eight-Ball muttered under his breath, "Kuragin's here? This is getting heavy."

The guy next to him was Vinnie Wolf, an actor that Ratboy had grown up watching. Leaning against him trying unsubtly to distract him was Dr. Amy Zing, a plastic surgeon Ratboy recognized from advertisements all over the city.

Ratboy didn't know the guy next to Dr. Amy, but he had that mix of anxiousness and self-importance that screamed "low-level politician."

On the other side of the table were some folks Ratboy didn't recognize, but could guess their professions. The stiff in the pinstripe suit had to be a Tendecchio. What the fuck a Tendie was doing in the heart of Kulak territory was a mystery Ratboy didn't have an answer for.

The woman sitting next to the Tendie was every bit as severe as Dr. Amy was charming, dressed in all black, her dark hair going silver, her face a lined and humorless mask. That's got to be Derrig's boss, Ratboy thought. If she doesn't scream "System," I don't know System.

Next to her was a grinning corpo doing his best to look cool in retro clothing. Jeans, t-shirt, a leather jacket. And next to the corpo was the most out of place mook Ratboy had ever seen. Big bushy beard, glasses with a big square frame to draw attention to his eyes, and flashy suit jacket worn over a plain black t-shirt and a pair of dark pants.

The waitress brought Ratboy and Eight-Ball their drinks and asked them if there was anything else she could get them. Eight-Ball gave her a smile and sent her on her way. The two clinked glass and sipped their drinks.

Ratboy choked as the Scotch hit his tongue and slid down his throat. He'd had plenty of liquor in his day, but never a Scotch.

"Good?" Eight-Ball asked with a smirk.

"Tastes like someone stubbed out a cigarette in rubbing alcohol." He took another drink, a careful sip this time instead of a thoughtless slug, and considered the Scotch. He gave a little nod. "I kind of like it."

Derrig reappeared from wherever he'd vanished to and gave Ratboy and Eight-Ball a curt nod. Guy moves like a fucking criminal, Ratboy thought.

"We going to be waiting long?" Eight-Ball asked, nodding his head towards the game. "Still a lot of money at that table."

"Don't worry, Mr. Garcia. I'm quite confident the game will be ending soon."

Derrig led them over to a sitting area, plush chairs around a low coffee table. He gestured for them to sit, and as Ratboy settled in, he realized it was the most comfortable seat he'd ever had in his life. Holy Hell, he thought as he sipped his Scotch. If this is what waiting looks like, I'll wait my ass off.

But, Hell, might as well entertain myself a little bit. "So, it's the lady in black, right?" Ratboy said to Derrig.

Derrig blinked. "Excuse me?" "Your boss. She looks straight out of a movie or something, like she was specially chosen for the role."

Derrig stared at Ratboy for a moment, then just chuckled softly and turned his head back to the game. Ratboy frowned. Prick.

Over at the poker table, the players were laughing as Vinnie pulled a stack of chips in front of himself.

"I swear you're cheating, Vinnie," the Tendie said with a laugh. "I don't know how you're doing it, but you're either the luckiest son of a bitch to ever live or the smoothest cheat I've ever seen."

Kuragin gave a dry chuckle. "He's not cheating. He knows better."

"Whose deal is it?" the severe looking woman asked. Yep. That's gotta be her, Ratboy thought. Serious, no nonsense, not afraid to be at a table with all these celebrities and politicians and killers.

"Oh, uh, that's me," the glasses guy said. "Sorry."

The corpo snorted as he watched the glasses man bobble the deck. "I don't know why you don't use a card shuffler up here, Nikolai. You've got Uroyo Company Kwik Kards on the casino floor. If our machines are good enough for your business, surely they're good enough for your pleasure."

Kuragin laughed, the sound deep and sonorous. "And let you give yourself an edge? I think not, my friend."

The corpo grinned. "Nikolai, I would never."

Kuragin's grin became a confident smirk. "Yes, Gavin. I know."

One by one the players left, and Ratboy felt more confident in his read of the situation. Vinnie, Dr. Amy, the corpo, and the politician were all gone. Just the Tendecchio, the lady in black, the guy in glasses, and Kuragin were left. Then the Tendecchio shook Kuragin's hand and headed out.

But then the lady in black did, too. Ratboy blinked in confusion. Glasses guy is Derrig's boss? Ratboy looked the guy up and down, thoroughly unimpressed by his thin form and nervous expression.

Well. Him being Derrig's boss hadn't been Ratboy's read, but maybe it made a certain kind of sense. The guy wasn't a tough-as-nails operator or some hard-nosed director with steel in their spine. But maybe he had the vibe of someone who might be a proper spy: observant, quiet, forgettable. And now he and Kuragin were heading over together.

Except the guy looked positively sick, and Kuragin had one hand on his shoulder like he was keeping him from bolting.

The two men sat down across from Eight-Ball and Ratboy. Derrig stayed standing. Now that Ratboy was just across a table from him, he realized just how intimidating Nikolai Kuragin really was. The hard face and the close-cropped grey hair made him look like a military commander. But the augs told you he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Hell, he probably even liked it.

His arms were full-on replacement jobs, as thick around as Ratboy's legs. Carbon fiber plating hid their inner workings (and probably no shortage of mentally actuated weapons). His eyes weren't just dark; they were black, multiple lenses in each eyeball irising open and shut and feeding his brain who knows what kind of visual data. There was even a faint whine of gears and hydraulics with every motion he took. And his augmented lungs made his voice unnaturally deep and loud.

Between the accent and everything else, it felt a little like Kuragin was what you got when some of the meanest bastards Ratboy had known in the Q got knocked up by a NuSSR tank. He glanced over at Derrig. "This is them?"

"Yes, Sir," Derrig said, drawing out the 'Sir' ever so slightly and giving Ratboy a smirk as he did so.

Ratboy frowned. Calling a gangster like Kuragin "Sir." System badge or not, you're just another crooked cop, aren't you, Derry Boy?

"Very good." Kuragin turned to Ratboy and Eight-Ball and flashed them a broad smile. "What a pleasure to make your acquaintance, gentlemen! Tell me, have you met my friend Mr. Joseph Rondel? Joseph, here," Kuragin began, then stopped. He put a massive cybernetic hand on Rondel's shoulder. It covered the entire thing. "May I call you 'Joseph,' Joseph?"

Rondel nodded. He looked even sicker somehow.

"Ah! So friendly. Anyway, Joseph here is an independent investigative journalist. Is that a fair description of your profession, Joseph?"

Rondel swallowed nervously. "Yes, Sir."

"Please, no need to be so formal. If I may call you Joseph, you may certainly call me Nikolai. Now, then. Joseph is an investigative journalist, and he's looking at corruption here in the Harbor District. That's a very noble goal, yes? There is much corruption in this whole city. The corporations. The police. The government. It is parasites all the way down. Vermin growing fat by sucking dry the blood and the wealth of this city. You are doing very good work, Joseph."

"Th… thank you, Mr. Kuragin."

"'Nikolai,' please." Kuragin's easy smile became a stone-faced frown, as if the pleasant businessman were a thin mask that had fallen away. "But. I do not like that you went to the port for your reporting."

"No, I didn't!" Rondel protested. He tried to pull away, but Kuragin was twice his size and outfitted with the kind of augs that would have let him tear the door off a VTOL.

Kuragin sighed. "Such sophistry, Joseph! You went to the bar that is a ten-minute walk from the port and that the workers go to when their shifts end. You went to the port, and your agent swore to me that you would not! Why would you make a liar out of such a nice lady, hm? Tell me."

"I didn't know!"

"'You didn't know?' Joseph, you insult us both! You mean for me to believe that you are such a fool that you need to be told what is and isn't okay?" Kuragin sighed and shook his head. "Joseph, you are intelligentsia. The men and women you talked to in that bar, I appreciate all that they do, but they are not. They lack your education. Your ambition. They do not know better than to talk to someone who buys them drinks and asks them harmless questions. But you, Joseph. You are smart enough you should know better."

Kuragin's hand closed to a fist on Rondel's shoulder. His clavicle and his humerus and his scapula broke like dried twigs. Rondel let out a startled, choked gasp. Kuragin sniffed. "And now you do."

Kuragin let Rondel go and he collapsed to the floor howling. His shoulder was gone. In its place was just meat and blood and bone fragments.

Kuragin barked out, "Etogo kozla von," and Derrig snapped to attention.

"Sdelano, shef." He called over two men and pointed at Rondel's writhing body. They scooped the journalist up without a word and began carrying him to the Palace's central elevator.

Kuragin gave an approving sniff and patted Derrig on the shoulder, gave him an easy grin. "Molodets, Deriga."

Ratboy shut his eyes for just a moment to center himself, then opened them. He glanced from Derrig to Kuragin and back again, and suddenly it all fit together.

Derrig moved like a fucking criminal because he was one. He wasn't a System agent working with the Kulaks; he was a Kulak that had weaseled his way into the System.

"Don't worry!" Kuragin shouted after him. "My doctors will set your bones for you. You'll be back at work in no time!"

Ratboy and Eight-Ball stayed silent as Rondel was dragged away whimpering. There were times you kept your head on a swivel and time you kept it down, and this was one of the times you kept it as down as it would go.

Once the elevator doors had shut on Rondel's cries, Kuragin looked Ratboy and Eight-Ball over. Ratboy felt his skin crawl. Then Kuragin flashed the two of them a sheepish grin, and Ratboy's discomfort turned into confusion. "My apologies, gentlemen. Business never stops. But that is a good thing, yes? If business never stops, then neither do the opportunities.

"For example. A certain unhappy Tendecchio affiliate has seen fit to let me know about the movements of their money. Specifically, the digital vaults that the Tendecchios use to collect on their protection rackets. Even more specifically, he's let me know the times and locations at which said vaults will be least protected."

The Tendie that was at the table, Ratboy thought. Probably some cousin of a cousin who married into the family and realized there weren't as many opportunities for advancement as they'd hoped.

"I want that vault, gentlemen," Kuragin continued. "Unfortunately, my men had to kill some of their men recently, and so tensions are currently very high with the Tendecchios. They will be looking out for Kulaks.

"But. They will not be looking out for you."

Ratboy glanced over at Eight-Ball. Eight-Ball's face was a vision of indifference, but his fingers had a deathgrip on the armrest of his chair, a sure sign that he didn't like this one fucking bit. And, you know what? Fair. There was a smear of blood on the floor from where Kuragin had turned that journalist's shoulder into so much ground protein. The smart thing would be to politely decline and then disappear and hope Kuragin forgot he ever existed.

But disappearing didn't put bits in the bank, did it? And Eight-Ball had always told him, "Stop thinking and start planning."

Okay, so let's plan. What's the actual ask here? Lift a digivault from a Tendecchio car while the Tendies were all standing around with their dicks in their hands? That's doable. Not easy, maybe, but very doable.

Especially if the prize is something like ten or twenty million bits. And sure, they're going to be Kuragin's bits, but a small percent of a big take can still be pretty damn big.

Ratboy's tongue snaked out of his mouth and ran over his lips. He had this. They had this. He emptied his glass of Scotch, felt it burn all the way down his throat. He let out a slow, steady breath, and he grinned, his eyes bright with hunger. "Tell us more."