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“Right,” said Reed.
 
Metatech nodded.

“And I know that when the rain came—”

“You think the secret to the rain is in this tech?” said Metatech.

Mason nodded at Reed.
 
“Hallucinogenic effects released in the atmosphere?
 
Only one syndicate specializes in synthesizing entertainment right into your brain.
 
It’s why I thought you might have been Reed, back at the bar.”

“Figures,” said Metatech.
 
“I was after Reed as well.”

“You assholes,” said Reed.
 
“It wasn’t us.”

“No, no,” said Mason.
 
“I’m pretty sure it was us now.
 
Not our speciality, but it looks like it’s our tech.”

“How do you know?” asked Reed.

Mason remembered a broken building, shattered stone, and a blackened piece of metal with the Apsel logo alongside
ATOMIC ENERGY DIVISION
.
 
The hallucinations feeling stronger there, somehow.
 
He tapped a fingernail against the bottle.
 
“Can’t say,” he said.
 
“You know how it is.”

Reed shrugged.
 
“You don’t want to sell it?
 
This could be easy all around.
 
Why try in markets that aren’t your core business?”

“That’s above my pay grade,” said Mason.
 
He grinned.
 
“You can keep trying the other way, though.”

Reed’s hand was tapping the table.
 
Mason nodded at him.
 
“Something to say?”

“We tried to buy the rain.”

“You what?”

“Wasn’t on my watch.
 
Didn’t know it was the rain.
 
While you guys were… getting acquainted, we’d already tried to get a demo of the tech.
 
Someone wanted to set up a deal.
 
Said they had something that would blow our mind.
 
We sent a team to… collect.
 
Old building, outside of town.”

Mason leaned back.
 
“Building’s not there anymore.”

Reed nodded.
 
“I figured.
 
The deal was sour.”

“It wasn’t sour.
 
Someone just didn’t use the right… protection.”
 
Mason took a last swirl from the bottle.
 
“You know who tried to sell it to you?”

The other man shook his head.
 
“Sorry, Apsel.
 
And you know—”

“You wouldn’t tell me even if you did.”

“That’s it.
 
You know how it is.”

“So,” said Metatech.
 
He splayed his hands in front of him, looking at his nails.
 
“What’s the play?”

“No play,” said Mason.
 
“Nothing up my sleeve.
 
I just want you to know.
 
If someone tries to sell you a metal box with an Apsel logo on it?
 
We’re coming after that box.”

“Fair enough,” said Metatech.
 
“What about—”

The door at the back of the restaurant was kicked open, a group of street thugs spilling in.
 
The lattice spun Mason around in his chair, optics doing a quick zoom.
 
He picked out patches, chains, the
Harajuku
style overdone.
 
He caught a familiar face covered with acne.
 
His HUD was already filling out, putting the five punks in.
 
Mason looked at where they were standing, picking out the tiger on the floor of the entranceway.

“Ah, hell,” he said, his shoulders slumping.
 
These little cocksuckers are going to screw this negotiation up
.
 
“South Sun Tigers.
 
No shit.”

“Mason,” said Carter.
 
“There’s an enforcer class hybrid approaching.”

The whine of servos accompanied the enforcer as it crouched low to push its way through the entrance to the restaurant.
 
Big metal hands pulled on the door frame as it shuffled into the room, marking and crushing the wood where they touched.
 
It stood up inside the restaurant, an easy three feet taller than the tallest of the South Sun Tigers.
 
The metal and ceramic of its armor glinted in red.
 
Some chains had been welded to the armor in places, giving an approximation of the South Sun Tigers patch pattern.
 
It flexed its shoulders, then slammed one metal hand into the palm of another.
 
A step took it forward, a hiss of hydraulics escaping as it locked into a fighter’s crouch.

Metatech looked at Mason.
 
“Friends of yours?”

Reed already had a gun drawn, some kind of energy weapon pulled out from under his jacket.
 
It was black and ugly, a short nosed thing.
 
“Christ, Apsel.
 
We came in
good faith
.”
 
The energy weapon swung to Mason, then to the South Sun Tigers.
 
Then back to Mason.

Mason’s hands were up.
 
“These guys aren’t—”

“Hey, asshole.”
 
It was the kid with the acne, walking tall with a bunch of punks at his back.
 
“I told you,
company man
, no one messes with the South Sun Tigers.”

“That’s not what you said,” said Mason.
 
The Reed man swung the weapon back towards the South Sun Tigers.

“What?” said the kid.

“That’s not what you —
fuck
this.”
 
The Tenko-Senshin was in his hand.
 
Mason couldn’t remember pulling it out.
 
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye as the Metatech man reached under his jacket, pulling out something that looked like a big staple gun.

“Going hot,” said Carter.
 
Her voice was flat.
 
She’d put a box around one of the South Suns at the back, a thin man with a data jack in the side of his head.
 
A cable, knotted and twisted, dropped down from the jack to a small portable rig.
 
The man tapped furiously on the keyboard.
 
“Prepare for interference.”

Mason nodded.
 
It’s time to dance
.
 
He kicked off a targeting solution routine, the helmet lapping out of his jacket and around his head.
 
His overlay marked the Tigers.

As an afterthought, he excluded the one with the rig, the overlay’s box around the man flashing and dying out.
 
Carter would be
pissed
if he stole her kill.

The Metatech man gave the staple gun a jerk, and the bulk of it fell out into sections, linking together into a barrel.
 
His other hand came out of his jacket, slapping a rectangle underneath.

“Link up.
 
Kick into overtime,” said Mason.
 
The other two men nodded, link requests already coming in from them.
 
Their icons blinked on his overlay, then stabilized.
 
Mason felt the familiar feeling of his lattice, warm under his skin.
 
He felt like his heart was slowing in his chest, his augments speeding up his nervous system.
 
The light in the room changed as his perception upshifted, the colors washing out.
 
The South Sun Tigers seemed to pause, the one on the rig typing in slow motion.

“This isn’t your play?” said Reed, his voice sounding stretched over the link.

“It’s not his play,” said Metatech, a flash of neural static following the words.
 
“I’ve got the big one.”

Reed clicked an affirmative.
 
“I hope that cannon of yours can do the job.”

Metatech’s smiley came across the link, outlined in red.
 
“It’s something a bit special.
 
From the boys in the lab.”

“This is what I’ve got,” said Mason, sharing his overlay with the other two.
 
“Six targets.
 
One of them’s an enforcer class hybrid — all yours, Metatech.
 
My handler’s on the decker.”

Reed marked the kid with the acne.
 
“You look personally involved.
 
I’ll take him.”

“Solid copy,” said Mason.
 
“Wait.
 
You’re leaving me with three?”

“Reed Interactive’s into entertainment.
 
We’re not a bunch of ninjas.”

“It’s ninja,” said Mason.

“What?”

“It’s just ninja.
 
The plural.
 
There’s no ‘s’ at the end.”

There was a burst of static from Reed’s end.
 
Then, “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Metatech.

“Ready,” said Mason.
 
He felt the lattice reaching down through his arms, and he pulled the trigger on the Tenko-Senshin.
 
The overtime played down his spine, and he thought he could almost see the individual flechettes leaving the weapon, silver flashes quickly surrounded by flames as they superheated the air, fire following them to their targets.

His optics cut out, the world going dark.
 
The lattice coughed out of overtime with a jerk, his heart thudding and kicking back in his chest.
 
He almost tripped, the wrench back to the real making him stumble.
 
“Carter?”

Mason heard something thump
hard
to his left, feeling the heat as the Metatech weapon fired.
 
There were three snaps from his right as Reed’s weapon fired.
 
He could hear their movements, quicker than thought.

“Carter!”
 
Mason swung the Tenko-Senshin in front of him.
 
“Carter, I’m blind.
 
That decker has—”

Snow flicked across his vision, then cut back to black.
 
Think, Mason.
 
He was pretty sure there was a table behind him.
 
He dropped to a crouch, duck-walking backwards until his heel hit something.
 
He knocked his head against the table, then fumbled for the edge and pulled it down to him, the clatter of plates and chopsticks almost lost in the noise around him.
 
Mason hauled himself around behind it.
 
Visual cover only, but it was better than nothing.
 
He felt the little Tenko-Senshin vibrating in his hand.
 
After a moment, he clicked it off and put it back inside his jacket.
 
His hands felt across the floor, finding the handles of something.

His overlay kicked back in, tracing the room again over the top of the blackness.
 
A burst of snow rained over the top.
 
The overlay dropped off, then flared back on.

“—On, but … Understand?” said Carter.

“No, I do not fucking understand,” said Mason.
 
He felt the table kick into his back as small arms fire tapped into it.
 
Metal, sharp and hard, plinked off his helmet.
 
“What the hell is going on?”

A scream cut across the room.
 
Something arced and crackled on the far side of the room, and Mason’s vision cleared.
 
The overlay cut out, replaced by text ticking up from the bottom right.
 
He caught the words
system BIOS
and
reloading
as the text scrolled

“You back with me?” said Carter.

“Yeah,” said Mason.
 
“Lattice is down.
 
Overtime’s not working.”

“Their hacker was pretty good.”
 
Carter’s voice carried something else.
 
Maybe respect.
 
“Not quite good enough.
 
Your augments are rebooting.
 
Give it time.”

“I don’t have time.”
 
Mason risked a look over the table.
 
The thin man with the portable deck was on the ground, smoke wisping out of the side of his head, the hole where the jack had been charred and black.
 
The remains of the cable to his rig was severed, burned away.
 
He saw the Reed man was down, splayed back on the floor.
 
Metatech wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but neither was the enforcer.
 
Three of the Tigers were still standing, the ones he’d originally marked on his HUD.
 
One had a red tattoo across her face.
 
Another was a huge man, a set of chains passing through the skin of his face.
 
The third was a man with a mohawk and the moves of a dancer.

“I see you’ve left me three.”
 
He looked down at the weapons he’d picked up.
 
It was a pair of butterfly swords.
 
“I’m not sure, strictly speaking, that these are part of the Eighteen Arms of Wushu.”

“They’re not replicas.
 
Stop whining,” said Carter.
 
“Just go cut a bitch, okay?”

Mason stood up from behind the table.
 
The three gang members, paused, then the woman with the red tattoo smiled.

“There’s still one left,” said the woman with the red tattoo.
 
“He’s mine.”

The huge man put a hand on her shoulder.
 
“No.
 
I want this one.”

“We take him together.”
 
She shrugged his hand off, reaching under her jacket and pulling out a pair of sub machine guns.
 
“What’s it going to be, company man?”

Mason looked at the guns, then into her eyes.
 
“I think it’s going to be like this.
 
You’re going to shoot your friend in the balls.
 
Then I’m going to throw you out the window behind me.”
 
He moved around from behind the table, his left foot sweeping out to clear some debris.
 
The lattice tugged at his calf, and his overlay flickered off for a second.
 
Mason ignored it, his breath coming slow and even.