Free Fade to Black by Nyx Smith

was narrow and deep, and Dok and Filly had the first two floors all to themselves. For just two people, that was a lot of space.
    Shank guessed the CyberDok business must be okay. Nobody getting really rich, but nobody starving either.
    In fact, Filly's twisting, swinging butt looked pretty damn well-fed. And well-exercised too, not fat, not skinny, but soft and firm and nicely shaped.
    At the end of the hallway, Filly put a finger to the print-scanner on the wall, and the door to the O.R.   slid open.
    Gleaming chrome cabinets and counters ringed the room. The operating table stood at the center of the floor. The slag lying there on his back was enclosed in a transparent isolation chamber that resembled a contoured coffin. A metal ring surrounded his head like a halo. Maybe a dozen skinny rods of different lengths stuck out of the ring at different angles, and, Shank realized, out of the slag's head.
    Dok stood at the head-end of the table dressed in a black and red Jersey Annihilators Urban Brawl tee, shorts, and sandals. His silvery slash-hair and beard made him look like an old man, maybe a little before his time.
    "Been scanning the Brawl, Dok?"
    Dok looked back over his shoulder and grinned. "I do love to see the body parts fly. Hoi, Shank. Thorvin."
    "Dokker," Thorvin said.
    "What're you into?" Shank asked.
    "A little gray matter," Dok replied. "You might want to keep back a few steps. I'm extracting a cortex bomb."
    Dok had his hands encased in a pair of gloves that extended into the isolation chamber. He seemed to be slowly, carefully twisting one of the rods stuck into the slag's head. The monitors at his left elbow showed different views: something that looked like a worm lying in a mass of goo, something that looked like a pin lying in a mass of goo, and various masses of goo, some gray, some red, some yellow, some colored kind of like puke.
    Shank edged a bit closer. "Ain't most cortex bombs rigged to blow if you mess with 'em?"
    "That's what they tell me."
    "What kinda charge?"
    "It looks like a Chiba Black. Probably a micro C-9 charge. A few grams of explosive."
    "So that's what? A blast radius of about half a meter?"
    "Enough to blow this slag's brain to hell."
    "Maybe a few of your fingers too, Dok."
    "It's a possibility. These're Securemed gloves. Kevlar H-insulated. I probably should have gone deluxe."
    On one monitor, something that looked like a pair of pliers slowly drew something that looked like an ant out of a mass of goo on what looked like a strand of spider's webbing.
    "What's that?" Shank asked.
    "The detonator," Dok replied.
    "You had to ask," Thorvin grumbled.
    "Rico wants us in on some job," Filly said.
    "Is that a fact?" Dok replied. "Good job, is it?"
    "Pay's okay," Filly told him.
    "We'll be busting some slag outta corp hell," Shank explained. "Least that's how it figures."
    "Wage slave making a break for freedom?" Dok asked.
    "Naw, the slag got snatched about a year ago. It's an intercorporate thing. The slag's real corp wants him back."
    "Does he want to go back?"
    "The info we got says the corp that snatched him is using threats against his wife to keep him in line. I don't guess he'd be too happy about that."
    "Probably not. Everything else scan okay?"
    "Piper checked what she could. You know what this drek is like. It looks chill. About the only thing left to do is go in and meet the slag face to face."
    "What if he doesn't want to go?"
    "Then I guess we're in deep squat."
    Dok looked back again and grinned. "Nothing new about that, is there?"
    "Not much," Shank agreed. "You in?"
    "I guess I could use the change."
    "Got any idea where to find Bandit?"
    Dok frowned, then said, "Good fragging question."
    * * *
    Farrah Moffit knew how she looked. Even lying in the dark of the bedroom on the broad expanse of the black satin-wrapped bed, she could see her own image clearly, as if reflected in a mirror.
    In a sense, she had become a caricature of herself. Her body had been blown up, filled