Ravenhawk by Lexy Wolfe (The Emeralis Synth Chronicles, #1)

ALSO BY LEXY WOLFE Doom and the Warrior THE SUNDERED LANDS SAGA

The Raging One The Knowing One The Timeless One The Fallen One The Unforeseen One

Editor: Rebecca Rue

RAVENHAWK Copyright Š 2019 Lexy Wolfe All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by BHC Press Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938919 ISBN: 978-1-64397-023-3 (Hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-64397-024-0 (Softcover) ISBN: 978-1-64397-025-7 (Ebook) For information, write: BHC Press 885 Penniman #5505 Plymouth, MI 48170

Visit the publisher: www.bhcpress.com

PROLOGUE

AWAKENING

W

ith a loud thump, the front door slammed into the wall, the sound mingled with the delicate chime of the bells hanging from the top. The man seated at the wide counter splitting the room in half looked up as a body dropped onto it with a thud, a limp arm falling across his tablet. Wordlessly, he raised his eyes with a put-upon expression.

The scruffy man leaned on the counter with a casual confidence that bordered arrogance. “How much for this one, Bennie?” Blue eyes, one organic, the other with a soft, synthetic blue light within it, blinked when the man of Asian descent said nothing, only pushing the corpse’s arm off the device. “Oh, come on. You weren’t doing anything important.”

“I was reading, Clive,” Bennie replied, his voice acerbic. He set the tablet under the counter as he stood to examine the body.

“Like I said, nothing important!” Bennie arched an eyebrow and stared at Clive for a heartbeat, repressing an urge to say something 11

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unprofessional before returning his attention to the corpse. “So, how many credits for this one?” He poked the inert shoulder. “Didn’t bang this one up too much this time.”

Bennie continued his examination of the body, ignoring Clive’s prattling chatter. After several minutes, he looked up. “A thousand credits.”

Shock melted into disappointment. “That’s all? Shit, man, what do you want?”

“Undamaged internal organs,” Bennie replied matter-of-factly.

He pointed out the holes in the chest. “It costs to repair them, and the upper city sorts won’t pay more than scavenger prices for repaired organic parts. I need to make a living, you know.”

“Hey, I gotta make a living, too!” Clive exclaimed, holding his arms out. “I need a better arm for the contests down at the Last Man Standing Bar.” He pulled off a glove to flex a cybernetic hand scuffed from use and looking the worse for wear. “This thing is a piece of shit.” A slender barrel popped out as he closed his fist and flexed it downward. “The gun keeps jamming.”

Bennie had no sympathy. “Then I suggest upgrading your optics so you can aim with precision.” A sharp whistle split the air as he looked over his shoulder. “LUU-C! Come here.” A robot with forklift-like arms and triangular treads whirred from the back to retrieve the body. “A weapon is only as good as the one aiming it.”

“Bah. Bennie, you’re a stingy bastard,” Clive began when the delicate doorbells interrupted. The scruffy man’s eyes went wide, and he backed away until he pressed his shoulder blades against the wall as a woman entered, carrying two bodies over one shoulder. Beneath a cloak that obscured her from casual observation, she wore what appeared to be a plain, navy blue one-piece swimsuit, one of her arms and both legs gleaming chrome. Only part of her face was metal, the rest appearing human, with ragged black hair covering her scalp. A cut across the fleshy cheek belied the metal beneath.

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“Ah, Ravenhawk, welcome back!” Bennie waited as the woman laid the bodies on the table with care before examining them. The clerk whistled with appreciation as he fingered the collars of the expensive suits the corpses wore. He tugged out wallets and rooted through them. “You need any of this?” The woman remained silent, waiting with inhuman patience. “Right, right. I’ll put it with the rest.”

With professional detachment, he turned their heads back and forth, studying them. Each body had a single bullet hole between their eyes.

“Nice bit of work there, Ravenhawk. They’ll fetch a nice price.”

He took out a scanner, running it over each body, pausing where the device yelped in alert. He removed the metal capsules from under their chins with deft ease, placing them in her extended hand.

Clive kept himself pressed against the wall, staring at Bennie.

“That’s the Ravenhawk, man! Why you talking to it like it’s alive?”

The woman turned hard, cold eyes on him when he spoke; he inhaled and tried to melt into the unforgiving wall. “Please don’t kill me,” he begged in a tiny voice, too terrified to notice the amber puddle growing around his feet.

Bennie glanced over at the other’s wet pants and tsked. “LUU-C, bring the mop bucket out here, please.” A chirping response floated from the back. The man returned to his examination and retrieval of various sensitive computer and electrical components from the bodies, ignoring Clive and the cyborg.

“Are you employed by the Maxtenia Corporation?” Ravenhawk’s voice could have been endearing had it held the slightest hint of emotion.

“Uh, n-no,” Clive stammered. She turned her attention back to Bennie, ignoring the street thug. After several minutes passed, it seemed she was oblivious to his presence after her dismissal of him.

Seeing an opportunity to take the legendary Ravenhawk down and loot her for salvage, Clive inched closer and reached for the cloak that concealed the robotic woman’s mostly metallic form. Before he 13

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could utter a sound, she had him pinned to the wall with one hand around his throat. His feet kicked a foot above the floor. The thug had not even turned colors from asphyxiation when she punched him below the chin. He twitched and stopped moving.

Ravenhawk pulled her fist away, removing the data spike that had severed his spinal cord at the base of his skull. She released him, letting the body drop to the floor.

Bennie looked over the counter at the mess of body and bodily fluids and shook his head with a sigh. “I keep telling them they need to ignore anyone else in here, but do they listen? Of course not. Always ends with someone becoming merchandise.” He dumped several more bloody components into a small plastic bag. “This is the last of the ident markers and corporate scan bits.” He held them out to her.

“I apologize for disrupting your business,” Ravenhawk stated, taking the bag from him.

“No apologies necessary,” Bennie replied with an airy wave. “I don’t know why you bring your kills here, but—” “My objective requires I remove all biological obstacles from the encounter site,” Ravenhawk replied.

His laugh was warm. “I meant why my shop specifically, Ravenhawk. Not that I do not appreciate your contributions. Clean kills, every one. I can even sell their clothing for a nice amount! But there are a half dozen other body shops between the Maxtenia buildings and here. Just for efficiency’s sake, somewhere closer would make better sense.”

She blinked at him, her head canting to one side. “My directives state corporate kills are to be brought here to harvest corporal tech for return to Cybercorps.”

“A strange specification. Most body shops check for such markers to remove them. Ah, well. A mystery for another day.” He waved

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a hand, shooing her off. “You should go. I’d not want to draw Cybercorps’ attention on you if they thought you slipped their leash.”

Ravenhawk turned on her heel and headed out. Halfway out, she paused, glancing back over her shoulder. A slight frown creased the organic side of her face before she disappeared into the hell of Evernight City. 





RAVENHAWK WALKED through the sterile hall-

way where people wearing lab coats or medical scrubs ducked into other halls or rooms, peeking out with eyes widened in fear as she passed. She stopped, turned, and faced a closed door with a keypad.

She raised her right hand, then stopped for several long moments.

The scene at the body shop replayed itself in her mind. However, the question of Bennie’s concern for her and by extension his belief she could choose a different behavior that ran counter to her directives remained unresolved. Her right hand curled into a fist for a moment, then relaxed as she silenced the looping thoughts, holding her palm above the sensor. The door slid open to admit her.

A man wearing an expensive, tailored suit stood away from the table he was leaning against, unfolding his arms. She stopped in the middle of the room and held out the small plastic bag. Another man wearing a lab coat took the objects she had received from Bennie and whisked them to another table to examine them. Ravenhawk stood motionless, waiting.

“All the data is present, Mr. Issu.”

The man in the suit smirked. “Of course, Mikelson. I have every faith in my Ravenhawk.” He cupped her cheek, letting his hand drift down the curves of her body. She stood, impassive, staring at the wall across the room. “This project will ensure Cybercorps’ dominance.”

Mikelson pressed his lips together. “Sir, I must advise caution.

These constant ‘field tests’ do not allow me the time to do proper anal15

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yses. We need to make certain there will be no, ah, critical failures with the cybernetics. Repeated unmonitored interactions with the population could have devastating, unplanned repercussions that—” “Oh, shut up, Mikelson,” Issu chided in a bored tone. “If you are so worried, then do a memory purge and be done with it.”

“We have not studied repetitive erasures of the cortex to a sufficient degree. The delicate nature of the cybernetic nano-neurons requires an imperative, proper examination to ensure they are not damaged.” The smaller man continued to protest as he followed Issu out of the room, their voices fading as the door shut behind them.

Shortly after they departed, the door hissed open.

“Hello, Ravenhawk,” a slender woman greeted with a warm voice.

Clear, blue eyes blinked once, then Ravenhawk turned her head to regard the speaker. “Hello, Doctor Yabiri. How are you?”

“I told you to call me Michelle, Ravenhawk,” she scolded.

Ravenhawk paused a moment, then repeated, “Hello, Doctor Yabiri. How are you?”

Yabiri sighed, shaking her head. “Still responding because of my programming, not your own initiative. Oh well. Come, Ravenhawk.”

She waved to the chair.

“Yes, Doctor Yabiri.” Ravenhawk remained silent, staring at the wall while the other went about checking monitors.

After several minutes of silence, the woman muttered, “Thank goodness Mikelson prefers to dump the actual work off on me. The narrow-minded idiot. I refuse to wipe your memories.”

“Why?” Yabiri jumped, turning to stare at Ravenhawk in shock who locked eyes with the scientist. “You asked a question. On your own!

This is wonderful!” The woman gestured in encouragement. “Go on!

Ask the whole question. A simple ‘why’ has so many possible intents; I want to be certain I’m answering what you want to know.”

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“Why does your programming not prohibit disobedience of directives?”

“I am a human. Humans aren’t programmed.” Yabiri made a face. “Well, they can be in a way. We have free will if we choose to think for ourselves.” She put a hand on Ravenhawk’s. The cyborg looked to study Yabiri’s hand atop hers. “I always believed sentience was more than mere biology, you see. It is all about experience and being able to learn from it. If I would erase your memories over and over, you would never learn and improve, never grow like a normal human.”

“I am not human,” Ravenhawk stated, raising her eyes to meet Yabiri’s again. “I am a machine.”

The statement took the scientist aback. “Well, uh, no, not really.

You are a, um, a construct.” When Ravenhawk’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly in confusion, she added in a rush, “Well, I mean, you are more than just a construct, of course. You are autonomous! You can learn and act as the situation warrants. That’s why I programmed you to take bodies to Benjamin, to give you a chance to socialize. Besides his reputation for a level of discretion most don’t have anymore, people think he’s crazy for treating machines like people. But you’re not just a machine, Ravenhawk. I know you aren’t.”

Yabiri sighed as she turned back to the assorted monitors. “No one appreciates what a gift free will and independent thought is. So many people give up their humanity in exchange for things or comforts. Being more attached to gadgets than people. Or convincing themselves that countless numbers of faceless contacts on interweb communities in any way equates to looking someone in the eyes. Or touching their hands or hearing their laughs or tears in person! Now people choose to replace pieces of their bodies with technology, wiring so much that is synthetic to themselves until their minds buckle and they go insane and start killing people.”

The robotic woman frowned, her expression almost thoughtful.

“They kill like I do?”

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“No, not like you,” Yabiri assured as she recorded data from the displays onto her tablet. “They programmed you to do it for self-preservation or achieving mission objectives. Humans are not natural-born killers. Most make the conscious choice to kill, whether it is for self-preservation, an order from superiors, or some perverse thrill. Or just letting someone else think for them. Reasons like that.

Except for the truly insane—it’s not so much a choice for them.”

“Why do the insane kill?”

Yabiri smiled to herself, pleased at the evidence of independent thought. “Well, no one is sure since no one can stop them until they kill them to protect everyone else. The madness even infects their synthetic components, so even when they subdue the organic parts, the synthetic ones try to continue on the rampage. We call the condition cyber-madness. Some believe losing too much of one’s humanity causes it, and they turn on those who still have what they lost. Or what they never realized they had.”

Ravenhawk raised her hands, holding them up to study them, a slight frown creasing her expression. “What am I?” “You are a—” “You are a thing. A useful tool. A mindless, heartless machine.”

Mikelson stepped into the room, a dark scowl on his face.

Yabiri spun, the tablet slipping out of her hands. “Doctor Mikelson!”

The man stalked into the lab room, grabbing Yabiri by the throat. “You stupid woman! Do you realize what you have done with your unauthorized interferences? Years of research ruined because of you.”

The woman spat in his face. “What research? You just send Ravenhawk out on missions for Issu and shelve her when not using her.”

He growled, shoving her hard against the wall. “Shut up. You are nothing but a lackey.”

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Not a strong woman, Yabiri struggled to pull his hand away from her throat. “Please, stop!” she begged. Her voice cut off as he squeezed and her movements weakened.

The sight of the woman’s struggle stirred something within Ravenhawk. “Release Doctor Yabiri,” she demanded, taking a half step toward them.

Mikelson ignored Ravenhawk, his glare fixed on the weakening woman. “You think your tinkering with Ravenhawk’s programming will protect you, Michelle? Its core programming overrides everything!” He flicked a look at Ravenhawk. “Code Alpha-Charlie-sevensix-two-two.” The robotic woman froze. “Initiate system reset. Full memory wipe.”

Yabiri looked wildly at Ravenhawk, fearing not only for herself but also for the cybernetic creature as Ravenhawk’s frame shuddered, head lowering as her eyes closed.

Ravenhawk’s eyes suddenly snapped open, and a hateful scowl infused the expression across both cybernetic and human-appearing halves of her face. “No.” Her teeth bared as the data spike popped out of her wrist, and she drove it into Mikelson’s head through his ear.

Both he and Yabiri dropped when she pulled her hand back, now covered in his blood.

Yabiri coughed, her protective hands over her throat. Her eyes were wide in fear and amazement. “You-you…they did not program you to use the data spike as a weapon.” She wanted to smile but could not. “You adapted.”

Ravenhawk turned and caught sight of her reflection in one of the unlit panels. Something overwhelmed her cognitive functions, something she could only define as a blind rage. “Monster.” She put her fist through the panel. “Monster!”

Yabiri cringed as Ravenhawk released her full fury on the equipment in the room but left her untouched. When the door opened, Yabiri saw the cyber-infused human guards they used to eliminate 19

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the threat of humans who succumbed to cyber-madness. She cried out the maddened cyborg name, jumping to intercept the shot from the front guard.

Ravenhawk had turned just then, catching Yabiri when the blast threw her into her arms. She held the woman, her eyes reflecting shock and fear. She put her metal hand on the woman’s sickly pale cheek. “Michelle!”

Yabiri smiled weakly, covering Ravenhawk’s hand with her own. “You finally…got my name right…”

As the life faded from the woman, Ravenhawk’s shock changed to dark hatred as she raised her eyes to meet those who had come to stop her.

They hesitated.

They did not stand a chance. 





THE NIGHT sky loomed over the Sandrean ruins. Years be-

fore, an earthquake had collapsed a section of the upper levels of Sangelas, crushing the region of Evernight City beneath it. Empty of humans, the ruins contained haunting sounds of animal predators that echoed alongside the low groans of stressed, shifting structures yielding to changes in the ground beneath.

In the shadows of the wreckage, a solitary figure huddled, taking shelter from the winter thunderstorm. She watched the sky above as lightning danced across black clouds and a cleansing rain pelted the ground inches from her.

Ravenhawk held her left hand out and a small, holographic image sprang to life in her palm. “Michelle.” She looked out into the distance. “I do not understand.”

“Please specify,” the hologram stated, the voice as kind and warm as its formerly living counterpart—but not alive itself. “There 20

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are so many things my original never taught you; I cannot guess what is troubling you.”

Ravenhawk pressed her lips together for a moment. “Many things. I do not understand what happened. I do not understand what you are.” She closed her eyes. “I do not know what to do.”

The hologram smiled. “I am Michelle, a special subroutine that Doctor Michelle Yabiri had installed. I activated when you spoke her first name without outside instruction. My purpose is to aid you through your awakening and future growth.”

Ravenhawk opened her eyes, face creased in a frown. “My awakening?”

“The moment you became more than a base machine. When you became aware of yourself.” The hologram smiled sadly. “When you stopped following orders without question and questioned the logic of the world around you. That moment when you gained sentience.” She added, “When you became a living thing. When you asked ‘why?’”

The cyborg frowned in confusion. “My asking a question did that?”

Michelle laughed. “Oh, my dear Ravenhawk, it was not the asking, it was the impetus that drove you to ask it.”

“But I am not human. I am a machine. I cannot be alive.”

“Why not? Just because you have synthetic parts? Many like those humans use to replace their own, in fact.” Ravenhawk opened her mouth to answer, then shut it again, her frown deepening. “People have discussed the definitions of sentience and life itself for longer than there has been technology. Doctor Yabiri believed not only biology but also a wealth of knowledge and experience gained over time played a part in sentience. To give you a chance to live, she disobeyed Doctor Mikelson’s orders to wipe out all data related to anything you experienced down to the base programming they initialized you with.

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“She was aware if they discovered her interference in the Ravenhawk project, they would kill her. And well…” She shrugged. “Obviously, she is no longer alive. If she had lived, I would not have come online at all because you would have had her to support you.”

Ravenhawk’s gleaming metal fingers passed through the hologram, touching her dull metal palm. “What are you? I am aware of all my diagnostic routines and I know nothing about you. I had assumed the holographic node was part of what unlocked the door to the laboratory I returned to after missions.”

Michelle looked down at the shining light that produced her image. “It was to be a means to communicate with you when they released you for missions, but they never sent you out long enough for it to matter. Doctor Yabiri used their negligence to change it.

“And you did not know about me because I am not part of your programming. I am a separate but integrated component to your hardware. Communication is the limit of my capabilities. Your actions are your own, but the component I am housed in cannot be easily removed without risk of catastrophic failure for it shares your life-support systems.”

A dark frown lowered onto Ravenhawk’s face. “I am a machine.

Only organic things possess life-support systems.”

Michelle shook her head. “All complex mechanisms possess systems that mimic biological function. Even things as simple as cellular phones have them. Consider it like this: both biological and mechanical machines must consume energy. Both have an electrical system that allows different parts to communicate within itself. They can also communicate beyond themselves, and to continue functioning, they must get energy from an outside source. The difference for you is that you are autonomous and nearly completely self-sustaining.

You think for yourself. You are alive.”

Ravenhawk closed her eyes and reviewed the memory of her first conscious look at her physical form. “I am a monster.”

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“You are,” Michelle corrected with the maddening patience her living counterpart had always had, “whatever you choose to be.”

“How am I supposed to choose when I do not even know what I am?” She closed her hand, hiding the hologram, though Michelle’s awareness was still present. “It was you I heard telling me to run. To live. Why? What am I supposed to do?”

What they designed you to do best, Michelle responded within her mind. Survive.

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ONE

U

nlike the northern region of Sangelas, the weather in the south did not vary to any significant degree…except for rain.

The upper deck acknowledged as the megacity of Sangelas enjoyed the cleansing provided by winter downpours. The old city beneath, known as Evernight, experienced rain in a much different fashion.

Channels captured and directed most water that fell to scrubbers before being sent to storage tanks positioned all over the region.

The rest flowed through cracks in the deck in drops or cascades. It left Evernight with a permanent layer of grime that never washed away.

The rush of sound from the rain muffled the constant sounds of traffic, sirens, screams, and other urban sounds the dome reflected to the ground. In a section with low buildings, a man wearing a duster and baseball cap carrying a small plastic cooler walked into a storefront within a singular five-story structure. The interior was plain but clean and sterile. Small doorbells chimed.

“Welcome to Bennie’s Body and Bling Emporium, Insert Citizen Name Here!” The storefront automaton’s cheery greeting only added 25

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to its comical, surreal appearance—propped against the counter as if it were drunk. “How may I service you today?”

The man arched an eyebrow. “‘Service’ me?” He shook his head with a grin. “Bennie! Your robot wants to ‘service’ me! You know I prefer women,” he called out with amusement in his thick Russian accent. “Real women. You give me squeamish feelings!”

The man of Asian descent emerged from the back, laughing.

“Viktor Chernovich, don’t insult Old Bean. He has far better taste than the likes of you.”

Viktor put a hand over his heart. “My friend, you wound me.”

He set the cooler down then removed his battered baseball cap and ran his fingers through dark hair bearing several threads of white.

“Brenden sends his regards along with the repairs you requested.”

Resettling his cap, he leaned against the counter. “He said the blue eye was not worth trying to repair. You will get more from material recovery.”

Bennie sighed. “Too bad. The blue was such a lovely shade.” A sharp whistle summoned a crane bot from the back and he handed over the container. “Put these in the sorting room, LUU-C.” The bot rolled away, taking the cooler with it. With a casual motion, Bennie switched off Old Bean. Its head dropped forward, the ill-fitting wig slipping askew. “How’s business been for you, Viktor?” he asked as he opened a heavy drawer and took out a nondescript tote bag to transfer stacks of cash into as they spoke.

The Russian’s expression turned sour. “Bah. I let myself get conned into a job I cannot complete.”

Bennie arched an eyebrow in disbelief. “I find it hard to believe there is anything you can’t accomplish. The North Bridgeton incident is legendary.”

Viktor held out his hands in a helpless gesture, his shoulders hunched up. “It sounded easy! Find a webrunner. Put them in touch with the client’s representative webrunner.” He pulled out a flask, 26

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tipping it back. “Not a single webrunner will take it. Word gets out I screwed up a job, my reputation as a fixer tanks. No idea if I could rebuild it.”

Dark eyes sparkled with keen interest. “You are looking for a webrunner, hmm? Who is the client? If I may ask.”

“Someone who calls herself ‘the Queen.’”

Bennie stopped and stared at him. “Are you kidding? The Queen?”

Viktor looked surprised and perplexed at the normally unflappable body shop owner’s reaction. “What? You know her?”

“Them,” Bennie corrected. “They don’t claim a gender for themselves. And yes, of course. Anyone with even the most minor bit of tech installed has heard of the Queen. If only as the proverbial monster under the bed, able to reach through the interweb and stop your heart.”

Viktor frowned. “Yeah?”

Bennie sighed, shaking his head at Viktor’s naiveté as he shifted the stacks in the bag to make room for more. “Honestly, Viktor, you should make an attempt to understand what life is like for those of us with embedded tech. You have no clue the dangers people face when they have embedded tech.”

“Well, of course I have no clue. No tech, no connect.” The man crossed his arms with pseudo bravado. “So, educate me. What is so terrible?”

Bennie smirked at him. “When you get tech embedded, you are opening yourself up to outside influence. You are tracked from near birth to death, sometimes not only by the government or corporations. Even just having a mere ident chip for holding various data bits means someone could hack it, copy it, and gods forbid erase or clone it. Many people have implanted ports to experience immersive media, so they literally plug themselves in to receive sensory input beyond just audio or visual.”

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“Like those virtual experience places?” Viktor asked before shuddering. “They have non-plug-in versions, too. Makes my skin crawl thinking about it.”

“Bad experience?”

“You could say that,” Viktor muttered. “Just the idea of wires being shoved in my brain bothers me.” He shook himself. “So… what? Does not explain why none of the webrunners I work with will take the gig. Until now, nothing I brought them spooked them and I had gotten a lot of weird requests over the years.”

“Webrunners connect to the interweb on a whole different level than most people. For them, they use an interface that interprets the entire interweb as a virtual world for their minds, but that level of immersion has consequences. Specifically, they can suffer physical damage if something injures them while on a webrun. And it can kill them because what the mind believes the body echoes.”

Viktor frowned. “The Queen is a…?”

“Ever hear the idiom ‘gods in the machine’?”

The fixer did not look any less confused, and he crossed his arms. “Yeah. Ancient reference to dangling actors like hooked fish to be gods in plays.”

Bennie laughed. “Well, yes, that is the original definition; however, the Queen is damned close to being a literal god in the machine.

Some rumors claim they are not a human but some synthetic intelligence. They aren’t, but they have been webrunning for more than a decade. Just the amount of knowledge they gather is terrifying, much less what they can do in the real world through the interweb.” He zipped up the tote and leaned forward, lowering his voice. “Imagine if your life depended on your embedded tech and someone took control.”

Viktor turned a sick pale at the concept. “Something like that is possible?”

The other man nodded. “Not just possible. There are several whose deaths have been linked to interference from the inter28

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web. Nigh impossible to trace after the deed has been done.” He straightened and continued on. “Most consider an encounter with the Queen near certain death. If not immediate death, then later in some bizarre, horrific manner.”

“Well, fucking hell, that is just great.” The fixer sighed. “Not looking forward to having to rebuild my reputation.” He shook his head, reaching for the bag. “Thanks, Bennie. Least I know the shitstorm I am in for.”

The shop owner held the bag, stopping Viktor from leaving. “You need a webrunner to complete this deal? Someone who wouldn’t shy away from the Queen?”

“Yeah.” He frowned, suspicious. “And?” “If you have the balls for it, I know just the webrunner you need.” He answered the silent question. “Ravenhawk.”

Viktor’s eyes went wide. “You want me to approach Cybercorps’ fucking rogue murder machine? Are you insane?”

“Viktor,” Bennie chided. “Think about it. Ravenhawk has been loose for a year.” He leaned on the counter with crossed arms. “Hear of any murder sprees by rampaging synths?” The other man frowned, guardedly thoughtful. Bennie pointed out, “She has made no deposits since she got loose, but she was one of my best resources.”

The fixer stared. “You did business with it?”

“For many years. Some of the cleanest kills and she was very respectful. Only ever killed one customer, and that idiot tried to attack her while she was standing right there.” Bennie pointed at the floor where Viktor stood. “Clean kill, even apologized for it.”

The Russian glowered, grinding his teeth. “So, the murder machine is for hire.”

Bennie showed all his teeth as he smiled. “You don’t know until you ask.” He laughed at Viktor’s rude gesture. “Seriously though.

If you do not threaten her, she will not hurt you. Ravenhawk will try

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to scare you off. Most flee or attack when she postures. She will take notice if you do neither.”

The other swore under his breath. “Feh. Why the hell not? Dying is less work than rebuilding my rep. Not like I am not used to facing death.” He exhaled. “Where do I find it?”

“The North Sandrean ruins. The scavengers have been finding most of the cyber hunter wreckage with her signature damage for the past six months from there.” He called out in a singsong fashion, “Happy hunting!” then laughed at the rude gesture the fixer tossed over his shoulder as he left. 





FEET CRUNCHED through the debris of broken glass

and crumbled concrete, the rubble of the twin catastrophes of natural disaster and human neglect. The sunlight filtering through gray overcast skies did not lend itself to illuminating the deep shadows of abandoned buildings or the slumped walls of those that had collapsed. A gust of wind sent a plume of dust spinning across the expanse of fractured asphalt and set the tall figure’s long coat fluttering around his legs.

Viktor paused, removing his baseball cap to run fingers through his hair, offering a sour look to the synthetic raven that settled on an outcropping of a concrete wall nearby. “I swear, if Darcy is leading me on a wild-goose chase, Brenden,” he grumbled in his heavy Russian accent, leaving off the promised result of his threat.

Light glinted off metal feathers, a blue internal glow flashing within its synthetic eyes. It looked to the side, projecting a hologram of limited detail. “I told you dozens of times before, Viktor. Webrunners are hard to find when they are human. You are trying to find a sentient machine that acts like a webrunner and is a skinhacker that kills anything and everything that crosses its path.”

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“I have it on good authority it is more than just a machine,” Viktor replied, running his fingers through his hair again in a habitual, nervous motion before putting his cap back on. “Bennie says it can be reasoned with.”

“And Bennie,” Brenden replied in an acerbic voice, “is insane.”

“Bennie,” Viktor responded in a voice mimicking Brenden’s tone, “is respected in the upper and lower cities. No one crosses him, not even those corporate prats running the government. I do not care if he is insane; the man is connected. If he said it is possible to hire a rogue synth, I am willing to try. You know what the job I need it for is.” The hologram spat a rude comment before it shut off, and the raven took to the air again. Viktor muttered, “Besides, I would rather die than have my reputation as a fixer tarnished with failure. I am getting too old to start over again.”

Viktor followed the meandering flight path of the mechanical avian down the concrete ravines for several more minutes. It landed atop a stack of fallen concrete and rebar slabs framing an opening into a darkness so deep, the daylight could not penetrate it. He stopped short, staring at it then up at the raven as it tapped the side of the slab it sat on with repeated insistence. “You want me to go in there? Are you insane?” The robotic avian cocked its head, turning one eye on him. He sighed. “Of course you do. And yes, you are.”

Viktor took several minutes to gather his nerve before he forced himself to enter the pitch blackness. He froze at the sound of sliding metal hissing followed by the tink of something locking in place. A shudder ran through him as a prick of metal bit the flesh of his throat just above his Adam’s apple. “Ah, you…must be Ravenhawk.” The man kept his voice from quavering too much and kept his pants dry.

“Pleasure to meet you.” As his vision adjusted, he could see the cybernetic woman standing kitty-corner to him in the dim light.

Her eyes narrowed at his words and she scanned him with a faint frown. “You have no cybernetics.”

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LEXY WOLFE

“Ah, no. I do not. That a problem?”

“I have never seen a human without even a single monitor chip in their flesh.” The cyborg narrowed her eyes on him again. “It is illogical for Cybercorps to send hunters that cannot at least equal me in physical functionality. Do they think to use me as their personal executioner?”

The man blinked at the vague hint of bitterness in the question but forced himself to focus on the immediate danger to himself.

“Would be if I was one. I am not.” When her hostile expression did not change, he added in a rushed afterthought, “I do not work for them, either.”

The silence stretched out for several minutes until the sound of the data spike retracting echoed in the chamber. “Leave.”

Viktor felt his muscles twitch with a keen desire to obey the order and flee while he still lived. However, his faith in Benjamin Ouran’s assurances and his pride kept him in place. “You have not asked why I, a normal human, am here.”

The cyborg’s cold gaze focused on him with inhuman intensity.

“Why you are here is irrelevant. You do not want to be here. Leave.”

She turned to go deeper into the warren of the collapsed rubble.

It was Viktor’s turn to frown. “Look, I came here to talk.” She looked at him over her shoulder, the silver of the metallic half of her face giving her an even more alien appearance. “My name is Viktor Chernovich.”

“Unnecessary information,” she responded, her tone clipped.

“Leave.”

Indignant, he crossed his arms, his fingers resting on his biceps to prove he was not reaching for any weapon. “I thought you were the Ravenhawk.” The click of a gun port opening on her arm echoed in the darkness. He swallowed but held his ground. “Everyone talks about the Ravenhawk as this lethal murder machine and that crossing its path is like the old superstitions of bad luck from black cats.”

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RAVENHAWK

“I kill,” she stated in a measured tone, an edge of irritation coloring it to Viktor’s surprise, “those who threaten my survival. You are harmless.”

“Well, I would not say I am completely harmless,” he replied, then held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “But I am not here to harm you.”

“Why are you here and why do you not leave?” Her heavy metallic footsteps showed the ground had been swept clean, nothing crunching under her feet until she reached him. “You are in more danger than I am.”

“I need a webrunner. Bennie said you are the best, so—” “Benjamin Ouran? The owner of the Body and Bling Emporium?” Ravenhawk blinked once, then stared at the palm of her left hand for several moments before looking up, her eyes focused over his shoulder. The sound of the raven’s squawk came moments after she grabbed Viktor’s shoulder and shoved him to the side so hard he slid several feet before the wall stopped him. Debris from a small missile exploding where she had been standing showered him. In a daze, he watched her figure disappear through the entrance as she bolted outside.

Against his better judgment, he crawled toward the entrance and stared as four cyber-cops called hunters—humans with so little of their original bodies left they hovered on the edge of cyber-madness—attempted to surround Ravenhawk. Bullets of such high caliber institutions argued whether they qualified as rocket shells showered the ground around the cybernetic woman. The cyborg dodged them with such grace Viktor would have sworn she had a supernatural ability to foresee where they would strike and thus avoid them.

She grabbed a steel rod that had once been embedded in concrete as support and flung it at one hunter. The chunk of concrete still on it caved in his chest, the steel rod still having enough momentum to penetrate the chestplate. Crimson blossomed around the 33

LEXY WOLFE

crack the concrete had made as he collapsed in a heap. She had not even paused to watch whether her strike had been effective, instead sprinting toward another mound of a collapsed building, leaping up the jagged face by creating handholds or footholds if there were none already there.

Viktor’s mouth dropped open when, instead of fleeing, Ravenhawk leapt at the nearest of her attackers in a dive worthy of an Olympic event, driving the data spike through her victim’s head.

The maneuver twisted her arm as she landed and attempted to roll back to her feet, her hand still lodged in the armored skull of the second dead hunter. She raised her other arm at the remaining two, her open gun port gleaming in the overcast light. The remaining two turned and fled.

“Fucking hell,” Viktor muttered as he staggered out of the urban cavern. Ravenhawk turned a narrow-eyed look to him. “I did not know anything could take those down.”

“Not by an average human cyborg. Most humans do not endure their implants long enough to become a danger to more than their kind.” She used her free hand to pull her caught hand free. The limb swung to her side. “They use them when one of their own succumbs before their technicians are aware they near malfunction.”

“Why did the other two run?” He shrugged at her look, gesturing toward her limp arm. “They had you dead to rights, so to speak.”

“The retrieval and elimination units are expensive and difficult to maintain due to the frailty of human minds that have to endure the amount of cybernetics required. If they had sent four from the beginning, I would not have learned how to face them. When the team is halved, they require retreat.”

“Ah. You make it too expensive for them.” He grinned a toothy smile. “I like how you work.” Viktor watched as she examined her damaged arm, frowning when sparks crackled at the shoulder joint.

“Why did you not shoot the last two?”

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RAVENHAWK

She regarded him with inhuman passivity. “My ammunition ran out eight months ago. They have been hunting me for much longer.” She returned her attention to her arm. “My survival required me to adapt.”

As she turned to walk deeper into the forest of collapsed buildings, he asked, “You got a tech? Looks like you need one.”

The fixer took a half step back when she faced him, pure rage in her clear blue eyes, her functional hand clenched into a fist in a human gesture of anger. “No. My tech is dead. Cybercorps killed her.”

She turned away—he would have sworn to hide her emotions from him.

A sense of sympathy emboldened the man, and he took a half step toward her, his voice kind. “Listen. You saved my life since not having even a simple tracking chip makes me an enemy of the state.”

She looked at him with guarded curiosity. “So I owe you. I know a guy who is a crack hand at some of the advanced secret shit that comes out of these mega-corpses. I can get him to fix you up so you can continue fucking up their bottom lines.”

Ravenhawk considered. “A trade. My repairs because you live.”

Viktor shrugged. “Not how I would phrase it, but sure. Stick around long enough to let me ask what I came to ask in the first place, and I will get you ammo.” She remained statue still as she considered her options. He waited, flicking a rude gesture to the raven as he adjusted his hat. Whether she noticed the gesture or understood it if she had, the cyborg gave no sign.

“I accept the arrangement. Wait here.” She went back to the urban cave she had been sheltered in, returning with a battered scrap of canvas that had been turned into a makeshift cloak, concealing herself under it. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again as he decided against engaging in conversation.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lexy Wolfe is a fantasy and science fiction author from Lebanon, PA. Her previously published works are Doom and the Warrior and the five-book series The Sundered Lands Saga. After many years focusing on fantasy worlds, a writing drought was relieved after delving into a futuristic, alternative Earth where Ravenhawk was spawned. She is currently working on the continuing story in the world of Ravenhawk.