Free Steel Rain by Nyx Smith

mere mention gives her a shiver of nerves. She steals a quick glance around with her eyes. It's been a couple of years already, but she's still running from that job in Miami. How could she have forgotten that? Her Mr. Johnson turned out to be dirty. The Miami job was a setup. She got some wiz tech out of the deal, but her chummers all got dusted. She barely escaped with her life. She made it through Philly, Baltimore, New York City. Now here she is on Long Island, the Zone. Hiding with Gamma. Hiding in the Zone. Her and Gamma and his cutters.
    What was she thinking? She's got jack for brains. Run from Gamma? Is she blasted? totally scrambled? Gamma's the only chance she's got. Gamma said so and it's true. "Sorry," she blurts. "I'm sorry."
    "Let's go back to the doss, all right?"
    She chokes back a sob. "Jewel."
    The cutters help her up. She's a little unsteady. She feels like she's got bruises all over her body and a trickle of blood slips out of her nose. One of the cutters hands her the Fairlight Invader, a little dusty but no worse for wear. Gamma cradles the back of her head and gently presses a kerchief to her nostrils till the trickling blood comes to an end.
    "I really care for you a great deal," he says softly.
    Neona closes her eyes, and whispers, "I know."
    The Leyland-Rover van waits in the street, just on the other side of a pile of rubble. Neona moves through the sliding side door to one of the bench seats behind the bucket up front. Gamma sits beside her, slips an arm around her shoulders. It's a comforting feeling. Reassuring. She's going home, and she's exhausted. All she wants is sleep. One of the cutters takes the wheel. The others take the bench in the rear and the van starts humming, moving out.
    It's a long slow ride. Around piles of debris cast down by crumbling buildings. Through streets full of burned-out hulks and stripped-down junk. Past forests of withered lifeless trees and oceans of gnarled twisting vines. Ponds and puddles with a stench so strong it burns the eyes. Whirling dust demons. The cutter at the wheel sends them banging through ruts and potholes and bouncing over sprawling debris, but he does not turn on the headlights. The fog curls and flows everywhere. Never shine headlights into the fog, not this fog. It attracts bad things.
    A low brick wall appears on the left. It supports a sign. An old black sign with faded white lettering. Neona's seen it in daylight and knows how it reads: "King P Psy Ctr." She doesn't know what that means. She knows that the buildings lying just beyond, on both sides of the rutted road, look ancient, medieval, big brick castles with bars on the windows and metal gratings over the doors. Maybe a hundred years ago, this was some kind of psychic research center, or maybe a gov lab. It looks like the kind of place where a person could scream and scream and never be heard. A place where razorguys in black synthleather burn holes into people's brains with burning metal brands.
    It gives her shivers.
    But it's safe. It's home.
    They pull around to the rear of a building and park. One of the cutters tugs open a heavy metal door and Neona precedes them all inside, down a flight of stairs to a broad open space: the "commons," they call it. Mostly it's just doss space for the cutters Gamma keeps around: cots, a table for eating, and other accommodations. Neona's telecom and couch are right in the middle of things.
    As she enters, Neona spots the only other girl she's seen with the group. Her name is Poppy and she's kind of a cutter, with cybereyes and hand razors. She's also Gamma's girlfriend. Now, though, she's lying on a cot on her back like she's unconscious and her face is a purplish mass of bruises.
    "What happened to Poppy?"
    "She took a fall," Gamma says. "But don't worry. She'll be more careful in the future."
    That's reassuring.

11
    The AC Plutocrat spends a brief eternity settling onto the aeropad. Gordon Ito is up and standing by the side hatchway door