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Jett ducked behind a concrete pillar, grateful that he wore the trench coat as suggested. His back felt like it had been beaten with hammers, but it was better than being perforated by bullets. He hunched down as chunks of debris showered from Kane's continuous shooting. Jett placed a hand to his headset. "Can you shut the lights completely down?"

"I can."

"Blind him."

The lights clicked off with a groan, leaving a bright afterglow in their absence. Jett sprang from his shelter, rolling to the side as Kane continued to fire sightlessly.

Raising the railgun, Jett lined the scope directly at Kane.

Incognito buzzed in his ear. "What are you waiting for? Take the shot!"

Jett pulled the rifle to the side and fired. The nearby stack of crates exploded, crushing Kane under their weight.

"You can turn the lights back on."

Jett strolled over to where Kane lay pinned. He stood over him, aiming his rifle at Kane's face.

"Remember me?"

Kane spat blood at Jett's feet. "Remember you. In the alley. Vigil. Thought I killed you."

"I'm feeling pretty good for a dead man."

"What you want? Me to beg?" Kane snatched the helmet from his head. Blood fanned across his face, but he glared at Jett with glistening eyes. "Go ahead and pull trigger. Think I'm scared of hell? Every day is hell, mofo. Do it. Do it."

The flames created ripples of light that played across Kane's profile. For an instant his features seemed to change, altering into Jett's own face staring back at him.

"Do it!"

Raise hell, die well.

Jett took a startled step back, shaking his head. He raised his g-span and fired a shock charge from the gauntlet. Kane's body rocked and went limp.

Incognito angrily clicked over the com. "What are you doing, Jett? You were supposed to take him out permanently."

Jett walked past fallen guards toward the exit. He saw the emergency panel and approached it.

"If you let this punk live, Wayne will have died for nothing. You hear me, Jett?"

Jett opened the panel and turned the system back on. The fire suppression jets immediately activated, spraying cloudy streams of dry chemicals. Jett walked out of the warehouse in a cloud of billowing smoke as the flames were snuffed out.

"Jett. The job's not done. You owe it to Wayne, remember? You made a promise at his grave."

Jett deactivated the helmet, removing the headgear as the panels slid back. "I promised to get the guy that got Wayne. But on my terms. Not yours."

Incognito's voice was still audible, a mosquito voice buzzing from the headgear. "Jett? Jett!"

Jett thrust the headgear in his jacket and tucked the railgun under his arm. Sirens wailed, lights flashed from the sky as drones lowered to survey the incident. Jett pulled his knit hat on and lowered his head, sticking to the shadows as he picked up his pace.

A car squealed to a stop on the street ahead of him. Jett froze and reached for the railgun when the door slid upward.

No one was inside.

His holoband vibrated. Jett took the call.

Incognito's voice was strained. "Auto-cab. Get inside and go home, Jett. I don't think we'll be talking again." The call clicked off.

Jett got in the cab. It squealed off and drove down the wounded streets, jolting with every crack and pothole. Jett ignored it. His mind was far away, flung across time to the last ride of the Hellrazors and the dying of the world.

Chapter 8

Agent Ronnie Banks walked onto the grounds of another disaster. Warehouse in the Grindbox district. Smoke wafted from windows as if the place had been set on fire. She prayed that her morning wouldn't start with the sight of charred bodies. It would really spoil her appetite for breakfast.

She glanced around the neighborhood. "If we get warrants to check these warehouses, how many do you think are housing contraband?"

"Seventy-eight percent," Isaac said as he scanned the vicinity. His mechanical eyes recorded everything he saw, providing complete and accurate records for their cases.

"Really? I'd have guessed higher. Why only sixty-eight?"

"Because thirty-two percent of these buildings are abandoned."

She laughed. "Figures."

Sauntering over to the local RCE crew, she tapped the shoulder of the man giving orders. He glanced down at her with a wry grin.

"Agent Banks. Still fighting the good fight."

"Always, Captain Hardy. Mind telling me why you woke me from my beauty sleep? You boys can't handle a simple warehouse fire?"

"Thought you might be interested in this one. Saw you had a biogun incident in the Warrens a few nights ago."

"Yeah. Questioned a few toughs, but you know how that went."

He chuckled. "No squeal, no deal."

"You got it. Back on the streets in forty-eight hours."

"SAUL strikes again."

"You know it. I kinda think it might have been a bad idea to let a System-Assigned Unilateral Lawyer handle criminal cases."

"I'll take that understatement with a side order of contempt, Agent. But you know how it goes. The moment you complain, they trot out the numbers about how their artificial intelligent defense system has reduced the number of false convictions to nearly zero."

"Yeah, but it also puts a ton of toughs back out on the streets. Where's the justice in that?"

"You're preaching to the choir, sis. But before you reform the justice system, here's the deal with this scene: contraband firearms warehouse goes boom for no reason. We get here in time to arrest a number of scab workers and some low to mid-level toughs, including Mr. Jackson there."

He jerked a thumb at Kane, who was splayed down on his stomach with a pair of bored RCE troopers standing over him. He was cut, bruised, and covered with first-degree burns, but still managed to snarl and curse at the officers.

The rest of the soot-covered suspects were more subdued, lined up by the armored vans with their heads down.

Ronnie glanced at Isaac. "You wanna get the small fries?"

"Do I ever have a choice?"

"Sure you do. I mean, you will. One day." Ronnie walked over to Kane with a broad grin on her face. "Well, well. Virgil Kane, gift-wrapped and delivered, and it's not even Christmas. I'm told your DNA is all over this building and its contents, Virgil. Gun-running scores a one-way bid to Mars, and you just got caught red-handed. Hope you packed a toothbrush."

He craned his neck to glare up at her. "Shove it, pig. I got framed."

She motioned for the officers to set him up. "Yeah, I bet you did. A lot of high-profile weapons just went to slag up in there. What happened, rival gang clean you out?"

"No squeal, jade. Call a SAUL. Be out in twenty-four."

"I don't think so. Not with your record, and not with ironclad charges against you. Tell you what I can do, though. Cut you loose."

He gave her a wary glance. "Let me go?"

"Sure. The way I see it, your boss is gonna be pretty upset at your screw-up. Those firearms add to a pretty substantial loss. Someone has to pay for that. I'm thinking that person is gonna be you. So when the move is made, we can find out who the hitter is and keep moving up the food chain. You might not survive the process, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?"

His eyes darted back and forth. "I got rights."

"Yeah, you got rights. The right to pay the price for your actions. I don't care about you, Virgil. You're just another gear in the clockwork. You die, another gear takes your place." She knelt so she could look him directly in the eye. "And you will die if you don't start squealing like a newborn piglet. I don't care about your street code; I don't care about your tough-guy attitude. When your cold, mangled body washes up somewhere, I might be there to mop up the mess. But I won't bother to care. And neither will anyone else."