Echo Path

The Shatterdome - Pulse

"Do you know who I am?" came the question from a gruff voice before her.

Pulse approached the man, his hands raised above his head, his back turned toward her as she kept her rifle trained on his neck. She’d caught him unsuspecting this time, leaving him with nowhere left to run. Three failed hunts, irreparable damage to her reputation as a bounty hunter, and two aethered lackeys he’d set up to take his place at the wrong end of her rifle had led her here.

Pulse was one of the last of a dying breed in Vargos. She hunted marks for those who could barely afford to put bounties on the ones who’d wronged them–Roman Stacks residents, low-level Iron Reach factory workers, even those condemned to life in Low Vargos. It was dangerous work that meant short lives and low pay, but Pulse had trained under the best. Payment be damned, she believed in what she did. And this moment, finally catching a target after so many near-misses, was what she lived for.

"You’re Alagos Beckman. You ran several brothels in the Roman Stacks, where countless women were trapped and worked to death. The ones you didn’t work were killed in the fires you set before you turned tail and ran. You’ve been on the run from me for three months but those girls had relatives. I took the bounty for cheap. I know exactly who you are, and it gives me so much pleasure to end your life here."

She spoke clearly, confidently, unafraid. He was a coward who tormented those unable to fight back. But his sudden flight from the Roman Stacks into the Shatterdome, clearly desperate to escape his fate at her hands, had left him with no friends, no contacts, and no hope.

This man embodied everything Pulse resented about Vargos: cheap, weak, devoid of empathy–a bully, a monster. Alagos turned to face her, hands still raised, betraying no concern.

"You’re too young for this," he said. "Why don’t you go back to where you came from? This is the Shatterdome, girl. How will you even find your way out once this is over? Let me walk out of here, and I can guide us out safely. Surely you didn’t track me down intending this to be a suicide mission? Let me live, and I can make sure we both get back to the Sprawl in one piece." He threw her a wry smile, his metallic jaw gleaming under the flickering neon of half-dead signs in the desolate district.

Pulse grinned, feeling the weight of her weapon counterbalanced by the weight of the moment. He wasn’t wrong. The Shatterdome was a bad place to enter and a worse place to try and leave. Too many skilled hunters, scavengers, and other Vargosians had entered and never made it back. She knew she should care. But she couldn’t bring herself to.

"Tell me, what did they pay you to hunt me down?" He asked.

"Fifteen credits," she said. "Barely enough for a week’s rent in the Gutter. Not that they had much left after everything you did to their families."

"What if I told you I could give you five hundred credits? I know a stitcher in the Sprawl who could hook you up with some excellent cyberware too. Come on, let’s be honest with each other–you’re a low-level bounty hunter. You could use the money."

Pulse watched his hands tremble slightly as he held them above his head. Nervous? Or just tired after weeks on the run? She looked him over, then motioned toward the ground with her rifle.

"Lie down. Belly to the floor."

"No," he said, feigning confidence. “I’m not going to just–”

"Suit yourself," she said with clarity, cutting him off.

Pulse exhaled slow then squeezed the trigger with one fluid motion. The rifle kicked and let loose a burning shot through the air, hissing with a high pitched whine before closing in and slamming into his chest. His torso erupted in a pink cloud, splattering the alley wall with a mix of synthetic white fluid and a fluorescent red dye. He staggered, eyes flickering in disbelief as he opened his mouth in an attempt to speak. Then he crumpled anticlimactically like a puppet with severed strings.

Pulse approached the body and turned him over. His vacant eyes stared skyward, the wound in his chest oozing milky-white liquid and the red dye. Synthetic. He’d gotten away again. She clenched her jaw and spat on the corpse, letting out a guttural scream.

"It doesn’t matter, you fuck! I’ll put down every single decoy you throw at me!"

She kicked the body. Hitting it again and again until the wound was wide open and stretched out, leaking the inhuman fluid into the cracks in the pavement. Pulse yelled in anger then turned and stalked away. Thousands of credits. He had to be paying thousands for these androids. How was he still affording so many?

Pulse wound her way back through the ruins of Vargos’ failed attempt at an urban paradise. The Shatterdome stretched for miles in every direction, filled with nothing but abandoned tech, rogue AIs, and scavengers desperate enough to attack anyone who crossed their path. She made an excellent target.

Her bodysuit alone was high-tech, outfitted with cloaking capabilities, temperature regulation, everything she needed to move through Vargos' fractured districts unseen. And her rifle? A Fountainhead high-grade piece, with pulsing ammunition designed to disable cybernetic safeguards on impact. A good piece of loot in the right hands.

But none of it crossed her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about the decoys. Cat and mouse games were common in Vargos, but Alagos Beckman was proving an elusive one. She was running low on credits and would need to take side work soon. But she couldn’t shake the faces of his victims from her mind.

The women Alagos had locked away in his network of brothels had all been Roman Stacks residents–doomed from the start in a city like Vargos. But to be imprisoned and forced into the body trade by a rat bastard like him? Pulse could hardly stomach the thought.

She wasn’t naïve. Pulse knew as well as anyone else that Vargos ate people alive, and those without credits or connections barely left a stain. But the women Alagos had sold into horrific slavery weren’t just another statistic in the city’s endless brutality. They haunted her as their faces appeared against the backs of her eyelids every time she blinked. No one else would chase him down. If she let this go, it meant they had died screaming for nothing.

She’d have to tighten her belt and put off side jobs a little longer. He could only duck her for so long before she was on him.

The stockhouses of the Shatterdome she passed stood like skeletal remains, their rusted beams curling inward as if they’d rotted like a dead rodent, curled and devoid. Flickering street lamps cast long shadows that jerked and twitched with every movement, creating the illusion that something was always right behind her. Her third time in the district and she was already sick of it. Two hours of walking, and somehow she found herself back at the decoy’s corpse. She was lost.

Activating her neural implant, she pulled up a digital projection of the district map in her cybereye, scanning for where she’d made the wrong turn. Her route should have led her straight to the exit. Instead, somewhere along the way, she’d taken a right that looped her directly back to the body.

Pulse clenched her jaw with a tightening pressure. Something wasn’t right. She activated the tracking protocol in her neural net and started retracing her steps only to freeze at the sound of a voice behind her. She whipped around, rifle drawn, sweeping the empty, darkened street.

"Who’s there?" she barked, scanning the shadows.

She was met with a heavy silence.

Then, again the voice chirped. Louder this time, as if someone were speaking right beside her.

"Well, hiya!" The voice said, cheery and upbeat in an unnatural contrast to the dead air of the Shatterdome. "Need help getting out of these dusty streets?"

Pulse spun in circles, her rifle ready, trying and failing to pinpoint the source.

"No need to worry!" the voice continued, unfazed by her frantic searching. "My name is Gussy! I’m an AI frequency designed by Violet Corporation to help track things! And I’ve noticed you seem to be lost! Stay tuned to this neural frequency if you’d like some directions on how to get back home!"

The voice paused, inviting back the crushing silence of the district before sounding off again.

"Based on my readings, you appear to be a resident of Neon Heights! Can I provide you with directions?"

Pulse stilled, eyes flicking left and right before she finally lowered her weapon. The AI, “Gussy” it called itself, had no body. There was nothing to shoot.

"Uh…yeah, I guess," she muttered, immediately feeling ridiculous for responding out loud.

"Great!" Gussy chirped.

A route out of the Shatterdome materialized in her cybereyes with holographic yellow arrows blinking in the murky darkness, leading her through a web of alleys. Pulse followed them cautiously.

"Just one thing I need from you first, if you don’t mind?" Gussy spoke directly into her mind. Her stomach twisted. AI’s making requests was never a good sign. AI’s that did anything more than serving were usually rogue, and often for good reason. But she didn’t have much of a choice here. If she didn’t get out soon something far worse than a rogue AI would stumble on her wandering lost through the district’s black streets.

"Sure," she said hesitantly. "What do you need?"

She kept walking, the neon arrows guiding her through the abandoned alleys and rows of decrepit buildings.

"I need you to take that rifle," Gussy whispered, its voice still disturbingly cheery, "and go kill the CEO of Geyus Markus Holdings–Deronemous Geyus!"

Pulse stopped dead in her tracks, her breath catching in her throat. The yellow arrows flickered. Her stomach plummeted to her feet.