Oz still felt shaky inside as Trig looped them around the neighboring building to reapproach the warehouse from the east side. It was like xe was hot and cold at the same time but a quick glance at xyr bio scans on the holo screen showed xe was fine. Xe didn’t feel fine. What had Trig done to xem? Xyr panties were sticky and the only physical evidence that anything had just happened.

  Now wasn’t the time though.

  Trying to shove these strange thoughts and emotions away, Oz attempted to focus on the warehouse security feed. Three guards on the south end closest to Kato’s club and where Bekker had just left. Two on the west. One on the roof, towards the north end where some Kato patrons were walking presumably towards their vehicles. That left one on the east side door.

  Inside they couldn’t detect if anyone was there. All they got from the security coms was that the warehouse had one large main room, a hall with a bathroom and offices, and a few smaller rooms likely for storage. Xe relayed all of this to Trig in a disconnected monotone as they walked.

  “Stay back,” Trig muttered before stepping into the open and approaching the guard.

  Oz blocked coms so when the guard sent the message that someone was approaching, xe was the only one to receive it.

  “Heya skin,” Trig called out to the guard. His voice shifted from its usual Mercy growl into a lighter tone that Oz had only ever heard through corpo feeds and aids from Neo Paloma. “Some rust chips jacked my ride. Any way I can get some aid?”

  Before the guard could tell him to fuck off, Trig was moving faster than Oz’s human eye could track. The augments in his muscles were no joke as lightning fast reflexes brought one hand to the muzzle of the guard’s rifle and the heel of his other hand into the guard’s Adam's apple.

  A wheezing gasp and the guard forgot his gun. Grabbing his throat, he fought for air on his way down to the pavement in an almost silent spasm of death.

  “Let’s go,” Trig grunted as he took the gun then lifted the guard from under his arms and dragged him towards the door.

  Oz hurried forward, already opening the door using the security coms.

  Once inside, the door shut and Oz locked it. Trig set the body up next to it and if anyone didn’t know better, it looked like the guard had just happened to take a quick nap.

  “I changed the system's passcode,” Oz explained. “Should buy us a few minutes once they realize we’re…” Xyr words trailed off as the smell hit xem.

  The metallic tang of blood blended with bleach and the sewery stench of offal. It smelled like a meditech center and a butcher's shop.

  “Who are you?”

  The two stepped through the opening corridor, Trig with the guard’s gun raised, and faced the only other person in the room.

  A doctor, or at least a man who looked like a doctor in a shiny white lab coat slick here and there with blood, stood among rows of tables.

  Memories like glitches in a screen flooded Oz. Xe was a child, fresh off the streets and given xyr first real meal and a bath. The clothes a woman in a white coat gave xem were little more than a paper dress but cleaner than anything xe owned back in the ratters den.

  Another glitch. Xe was on a table, arms and legs strapped down. “This will only hurt a little.”

  Screams.

  Another glitch. The recovery room. Four other children, like xem, with bandaged heads and gauze over one eye. A man in a white coat standing next to Harry who was smiling at the girl next to xem. “This one.”

  Another glitch. Xe shook xyr head, shoving the memories away even as the reality of the moment was all the more horrifying without the filter.

  Oz had never seen anything like it. Not even at the docs. Nothing could have prepared xem for the main room of the warehouse. Xe expected racks of tech, coolers for the more delicate gear, but not this.

  On each table lay bodies and parts. Blood and innards littered the floor, clogging sewer drains near each table like discarded packaging. Torsos with removed augmented limbs on carts next to them. One had all of its threaded neuro-link nerve lines hanging from a rack above like shining chrome streamers. The one closest to Trig and Oz was opened up like a fleshy box to reveal various top of the line plasti-organs.

  “It’s a chop shop,” Trig hissed. “Fucking hell.”

  Bile rose and it was all Oz could do not to vomit at the sight of at least a dozen bodies in various states of dismemberment.

  “Who are you?” the doctor repeated, sounding annoyed even as he raised his hands to hopefully prevent Trig from shooting.

  “We’re a glitch in your system,” Trig said. Approaching smoothly. “That’s all you need to know. Now listen closely. We’re not going to hurt you, unless you give us good reason to. Now I’m going to sit you down over here and strap your hands and feet so you can’t go bothering anyone until we’re done.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The doctor’s annoyance grew even as he let Trig herd him to a corner. “I have work to see to. These parts,” he went on, irritated, “if I don’t put them on ice soon, they’ll be useless.”

  Trig pulled two electro-magnetic straps from his pocket and tossed them on the ground. “I don’t give a fuck. Put the first one on your ankles.”

  While the doctor grumbled but complied, Trig glanced back. “Oz. Oz!”

  Blinking, xe nodded. “Y-yea?”

  “Snap out of it, baby,” Trig followed, softening his tone a little. “You need to find the data bank. The sooner you get the data, the sooner we get out of this. ”

  “Data bank?” The doc asked, now slipping his wrists into the second strap. “There is no data bank.”

  Oz frowned, trying to focus on why they were there. “Does Bekker keep it with him?”

  The doc snorted. “That man is an idiot but even he knows better than to keep sensitive information on his person. It's why we’ve been able to keep going so long.”

  “How long?” Oz asked, not really wanting to know.

  “Long enough. We’ve hit every Free Zone in the east. As soon as we feel the pressure, we move.” He looked from Oz to Trig and back. “I guess we didn’t feel it fast enough this time.”

  “You got millions in tech here, even more,” Trig scoffed. “Plus Neo Paloma corpos breathing down your neck with those missing brats and you don’t keep track of inventory or anything? I don’t buy it.”

  Oz stepped closer, careful not to step on any of the fallen, undesirable parts. As Trig spoke, xe got a good eye on the doc’s face. He was calm, annoyed, but under it there was fear. Beads of sweat slimed down his brow and there, for a moment, his gaze flicked nervously not to Trig and the gun but a door just beyond the tables.

  Turning to it, the door had no label or any indication of what it was for. An office? Closet? More storage space?

  Oz moved towards it.

  “D-don’t!”

  Xe turned to see Trig press the gun’s muzzle against the doc’s head and watch the lab coat wince.

  “Don’t move,” Trig said. “What’s so special about that room?”

  The doc didn’t say a word, only trembled.

  “There’s no camera in there,” Oz said. “At least not connected to the coms and I don’t get a signal.”

  Xe made for the door but this time Trig stopped xem.

  “Wait. Let me go first, just in case.”

  He gave the doc a warning look then moved between Oz and the door. Opening it, he slipped in and paused. “Fuck.”

  Pushing in behind, Oz couldn’t see what the problem was until xe was fully in the room.

  It was a smaller operating room and, on the table, a live victim stared up at them.

  More memories glitched through with interference

  A girl on a table across from xem. A simple update, the white coat lady said.

  “Won’t hurt a bit.”

  The girl’s body spasmed, flailed. Blood and clear fluid covered the table.

  “She’s seizing.”

  A white curtain drawn between them as the monitor toned an unbroken beep.

  It was a Droido. Naked body splayed out on a steel table sticky with blood. Their limbs were gone, scars and sutures lined most of their body, and the remaining flesh was a sickly pale.

  The worst of it was their head. The Droido was propped up so that their head was under a bright light. The skin was peeled back and skull open to reveal a pulsing brain to the open air. Wires fed from their feed into a staticky monitor.

  “Oz…” Trig said, but his voice sounded very far away just then.

  Xe stared down into the other Droido’s wide eyes, one white-out, the other little more than a dilated iris.

  Running a finger down the IV drip line to the Droido’s chest, Oz shook xyr head. Slowly, xe raised xyr fingers to the Droido’s face and wiped a tear that fell.

  “What are you doing?” Trig asked, clearly unnerved.

  Oz couldn’t answer. Xe wasn’t sure. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Fuck, which part?”

  Xe turned but couldn’t take xyr eyes off the Droido. “You can’t re-transplant neuro-tech.”

  Trig frowned then stepped out, pointing his attention and gun at the doc. Oz could hear him repeat the statement and the doc’s hash laugh.

  “You can, sort of, so long as both patients are still alive during the transition.”

  The memory of a white coat. Angry.

  “All that tech, all that money, wasted!”

  Something was wrong inside Oz. Xe couldn’t put a finger or name on it but it was wrong. Something inside of xem was screaming, crying, raging, even as xe did nothing but stand there and stare into those wide, horrified eyes.

  “What’s your name?” xe asked finally.

  The Droido opened xyr mouth and closed it silently again and again like a gaping fish.

  Something was keeping them from talking.

  “Oz,” Trig called, again sounding so very far away. “We don’t have time.”

  Nodding, xe reached up and pulled out a cable port from behind xyr ear.

  “What are you doing?” Trig’s voice now sounded panicked.

  Xe turned, this time looking at him. “I have to get the data, right? This is the only data port in here.”

  “Oz…” Trig floundered, unable to come up with words for this insane hell they were in. Finally, he shook his head and stepped in close. Pressing his lips against xyr ear, he said, “Don’t hurt yourself. Harry will understand if we go back without this.”

  More memories.

  Harry, frowning down at Oz as the white coats told him that his first choice had died.

  “No other girls?”

  Disappointment as he looks at Oz. “It’ll have to do.”

  “Will he?”

  Neither confirmed that while Harry loved the persona of friendly mechanic, he was a crime lord who put money and respect above all else. Especially above his own hires and property.

  Without another word, Oz jacked into the Droido’s port and began the connection.