Koi Pond

Red Latch - Perkins

Windfall Casino.

There was a time when Willy Perkins’ businesses all did as well as the casino, but these days, all of his ventures were suffering the same fate as every other business in the Red Latch district: failing, collapsing, and decaying both financially and physically.

Perkins wasn’t so different. He’d been an enforcer for the Gilded Teeth in his youth, but now his cybernetics were obsolete, his gut was distended, and his hair was thinner than a Roman Stacks scrap collector’s ribcage.

Red Latch used to be the center of Vargos’ financial heartbeat, but now the place was becoming decrepit and forgotten, slipping toward the abandoned state of the Shatterdome or the rusted-out decay of Grey Alley.

Despite the challenges, tonight was looking good for Perkins’ pocketbook. He was getting a lot of foot traffic into the casino and even managed to reel in a couple of downtown high rollers who, for one reason or another, had ended up in Red Latch for the night.

He looked out over the small but packed casino floor from his office, taking in the layout. He’d upgraded recently: three dice tables, eighty pachinko machines, ninety slot machines, five roulette tables, and twenty-seven card tables. Business was looking good, even if the neighborhood was in a freefall. A few more nights like this with money and booze flowing, the place packed to the rafters and Perkins might be able to retire to Sovereign Row, where Vargos’ old money lived.

His bouncers ushered the crowd out at 5:00 AM. He usually closed for an hour to clean the place up and restock whatever was needed before reopening for the morning crowd. They didn’t have much to spend, but just having warm bodies draining what little they had into the pachinko machines was worth something for the books.

He wandered over to his digital corner, a setup in the office with eight screens and a powerful quantum drive that made bookkeeping a breeze, even with the constant churn of capital moving in and out of the place.

Perkins booted up the machine and inserted his data output cord from his temple into the CPU. The initial processing loaded, then froze. Unusual for a processor like his.

He tapped the computer housing. The frozen output remained stuck in his field of vision. He hit it again. The screen blinked and updated with a slow-loading image of a digital koi fish, swimming gently in a sea of code.

He yanked his input cord from his temple and stumbled back from the desk. Something was wrong. He ran to the office window overlooking the casino floor—but instead of the usual post-closing cleanup, he was greeted by darkness. The main lights were out, only the ghostly flickers of the machines casting shadows across the space.

He hit the intercom.

“Hey! What the hell is going on down there?”

No response.

He strained his eyes, searching for any of his bouncers or dealers but saw no movement. His gaze flicked back to the monitors then back to the machines on the floor. The koi fish was on every screen. Every holoprojector. Swimming in slow, endless circles.

Perkins’ stomach dropped like a dead weight. He tried to swallow, but his throat grated like it was lined with sandpaper. He didn’t just feel like something was wrong, he felt he was being watched. Only the faint hum of monitors and the occasional dings from machines filled the soundscape. He slammed his hand on the panic button next to the window, sending the place into lockdown as alarms blared throughout the building.

Red emergency lights flooded the floor and his office as metallic doors slammed shut, with dark steel doors locking shut to block off the entrance to his office. The office window’s glass shimmered, its plasma lattice glowing turquoise in a honeycomb pattern, sealing him in.

His breathing turned ragged. This was bad. An attack on his systems. He’d dealt with cyber-intrusions before, but never this complex.

He looked out over the floor again, and something moved.

Was that…someone running?

His heart nearly seized as two figures slammed into the window. The impact was so violent that the reinforced glass nearly caved in.

Perkins shrieked, meeting the bright neon blue and black eyes of a man and a woman. They were covered in cybernetic augmentations with faces stripped of anything organic. Their eyes, ears, facial structures, their entire bodies—had been replaced with dark steel and neon-lit implants.

They stared at him through the glass, expressionless and impossibly perched on the angled window, as if magnetized to it. They didn’t move like people, settled against the glass with both fluidity and rigidity as if the laws of gravity no longer applied. Their bodies hung against the barrier like puppets with too many strings, their chests never rising or falling with breath, though they certainly looked like they were human at some point.

They glanced at each other. Then, without a sound, they vanished in opposite directions, melting into the darkness of the casino floor below.

Perkins stumbled back toward his desk, eyes darting across the room. His personal chit. Where the fuck was his chit? He’d upgraded it years ago after the casino was hit by some Coilboys. It had a distress activator installed now that guaranteed it could break through any signal block. His fingers found it and he hit the button.

The light went from red to green. The signal was out. Now, he just had to wait.

The first impact rattled the vents, and the second, heavier sound came from thudding against the wall. Then a third, this one closer as his entire office trembled like a wavering heartbeat. The sounds rumbled all along the perimeter of the office before silence dampened everything like Perkins had plunged into the sea.

His breath caught in his throat. The lattice protection covered the entire office. There was no way they could break in.

He waited.

Five minutes.

Nothing.

He allowed himself a shaky sigh of relief and wandered back to the window.

Nothing moved on the casino floor.

Feeling like he could finally relax, he sank into his desk chair, staring at the dead monitors. He’d have to spend a fortune fixing the network after this. His eyes flicked down. There, at the back of the desk, was a small hole in the floor.

Where the wires ran through to the building’s basement.

His pulse stopped as a single drop of sweat slid down his temple.

Then the hole burst open like a rock through paper.

The two figures surged through, inhumanly fast. Perkins flew backward, his computer setup exploding in a flash of sparks and debris. The entities loomed over him, expressionless and menacing.

They grabbed his legs, undeterred as he kicked and thrashed and screamed.

Perkins aimed the shotgun at their faces, finger tightening—

But he was too slow. A metallic hand locked around his wrist. The shot went off, scattershot blasting into the ceiling, the lattice shielding deflecting it and sending incendiary rounds raining back down. One struck his left arm sending hellfire through his system as he screamed.

Another hand clamped around his throat.

The world narrowed. A voice, cold and metallic, cut in through his gurgled grunts and gasps.

"Willy Perkins, you have been placed on a Wraith list by Madame Koi of Neon Heights. She has instructed us to relay the following message,” then, the cybernetic woman’s voice shifted to something silky and familiar.

Madame Koi herself.

"Willy, it’s sad we had to come to this. I told you twenty years ago—I don’t forget debts. But it seems you do. Consider the debt settled today. Our business is concluded."

The voice snapped back to the cold monotone of the cybernetic woman.

"Sig 5-N-4-K-3, executing process."

The cybernetic man holding Perkins’ throat spoke with no inflection.

The wraith’s grip tightened on his throat before his free hand punched through Perkins’ skull. It split open like wet paper, his synapses firing in a final panicked explosion of pain before blinking out forever. His body spasmed once, twice, then ceased moving forever.

Without so much as a final word Willy Perkins exhaled his last breath.

And went still.