Glenmore Witches

“Ego ignis sum… Ego ignis sum…” Ava whispered the words over and over. A mantra for the rolling cypher glyphs that shined bright green on the screen in front of her and into her synthetic eyes.

“You gonna keep mumbling that shit for much longer, Ava? It’s giving me the creeps…”

Viktor’s voice buzzed like sharp static to the ears, and her eyes darted to the data stream on the lower left of her screen for just a moment before quickly refocusing on the cypher. She had forgotten he was “hands-on” for this job, usually he kept to himself, not wanting any of the dirty work. She didn’t mind the company, as long as he kept his mouth shut.

“It’s nothing… Just something I read on an Arcana slate… It helps me focus.”

“You actually believe in that ‘feel the energy through your grafts’ crap? Didn’t take you for the superstitious type bezz…” Viktor scoffed. “Either way, tick tock. One minute left.”

Thanks for the heads up… Ava thought as yet another one of her older cyphers failed to break through. Cold sweat dripped down her cheek and her fingers quickened their pace, rushing past key after key in a flurry of clicks and clacks. It was no easy feat to hack into a megacorp server, let alone Sentinel Psitech.

She tried to remember all her old loops, outdated logarithms, and even some surprisingly basic security protocols. She couldn’t afford to fail. She needed this.

“Thirty seconds.”

Ava took a second to breathe and reached over at a knob by her neck. With half a twist of her wrist she felt a surge of power scrape the insides of her skull as her cortical implants overclocked. She fought through the throbbing, and soon her mind ran mathematical patterns, matrices and logs from years past. She sifted through the muck, synapses burning as she moved from one useless code to the next until it was clear as crystal. With one sweep of her hand, she inputted the code, and with only a few seconds to spare, her console beeped happily and green letters popped up on the screen.

Access Granted.

Viktor breathed a sigh of relief. “For a second there I thought you’d finally gonked out.”

“Ain’t nothing to it…” Ava reached for the knob, dialing it back down to an acceptable minimum while letting out a smokey breath that smelt of electrical burn. She could still feel the heat along her scalp, any longer and her neurons would’ve fried. “Wiring you the deets now.”

“Let’s see… Everything’s here, outstanding.” Viktor grinned, a little too pleased for Ava’s liking. “Mighty fine work, bezz.”

“As always. What’s got you pumped about all this junk anyway, Vik? Geo-map data, addresses, names… No valuables, no nothing.” Ava always had a feeling for these kinds of things. Didn’t matter if it was a job or a cup of coffee slipping off her desk, if something didn’t feel right it usually ended up not. “Something isn’t adding up…”

“Worry worry… C’mon Ava, how’s about a little trust for ‘ole Vik, yeah? I got a contact willing to drop a huge load of solaris for this.” Viktor shook his head. “Best not to talk about it on the line though, ya dig? Sooner we get this on the market, sooner we rake in the credz. Just chill out and things’ll work out like they always do.”

“Wait. Vik I need a favor…” Ava hated hearing the desperation in her voice, she was hoping the modulators in her throat would’ve eased it a bit. “I need an advance on this one.”

“An advance? Again?” Viktor shrugged. “Ava you’re killin’ me. What the hell happened to the last advance I gave you?”

“Listen, Vik. You know hardware ain’t cheap and my implants took a beating on this one. Damn overclocker nearly fried my brain. No other slider could’ve pulled this one off. You owe me.”

Viktor was an experienced handler. He would’ve heard this excuse a million times before, but Ava knew her worth. Getting to where she was would’ve taken years in the hands of any other slider in Glenmore. He needed her and she knew it.

“Ok ok…” Viktor sighed. “I promise you, as soon as I’m paid you'll get yours plus a bit, alright? Now listen, I really gotta jet. I’ll be in touch.”

Before Ava could say another word, the datastream buzzed out. There was little else to say anyway, this was just another job, another pack of cash to extend her life even if just for a little bit longer.

She laid back down on her bed and clutched her side. Her chest began to pulse, each heave getting heavier in waves until a stream of bright crimson stained her sheets red. She reached over for a neo-synthetic opioid stim with shaky hands and stabbed it into her chest. Slowly but surely the pain subsided.

Run… Diagnostics… Ava thought, and her implants picked up the slack. Biomonitors whirred to life on her heads up display, scanning her body for imperfections, of which there were many. The scans isolated two small grafts on her lungs that kept the cancer inside them from getting out of control, and to her dismay, they had begun to cease functioning.

“Oh... Fuck...”

###

Sable struggled to stop the bleeding. She placed both her hands on the gaping wound on Ashe’s stomach, but it wouldn’t stop. No-one anticipated the hunters would come so soon.

Their home was secure, hidden away in the deepest corner of the old city. This was supposed to be a new start, away from the prying eyes of Sentinel Psitech. Instead, she was back where she started, trying to prevent yet another death in the family.

“It ain’t bad is it?” Ashe said with struggling breaths, her argentine blood pooling all over the concrete floor, seeping into the piles of cyborg corpses and shell casings surrounding her. “Fuck that hurts...”

“You’re good, Ashe. Don't talk.” Sable said.

“Heh… I was never good at that, eh Jade?” Ashe replied between short, stifled breaths.

Sable didn’t need her nanites or psi-sight to know Jade was watching from a distance. “Ashe… Just… Just stop talking.”

“We both know this is the end of the line for me. So cut the crap and stop pretending you can do anything about it…” Sable felt Ashe’s hand grab hers, pulling it away. “Let it happen.”

She didn’t want it to happen. Sable’s psi-sight kicked in, synapses firing at a hundred miles an hour, memories of all their other coven sisters, their deaths as fresh as the days they happened flooding her senses. She couldn’t fail another one. “Ashe…”

“I don’t wanna hear it. I’m tired, Sable… Tired of fighting, tired of running, tired of all of it.” Ashe gripped her hand tighter this time, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I just wanna see our sisters again… I’m done… I’m good, Sabe…”

Sable shut her eyes for a moment, letting the silence take over before breathing in deep. The words came to her in code; hardwired and sacred. “Ego sum, qui sum.”

“I am…” Ashe repeated, her lips curling into a smile, breaths slowing to a crawl. “Who I am…”

Sable spread her hand over her coven sister’s broken form. Ashe's nanite infested blood drained upwards, settling in Sable’s palm, slowly forming a sphere. She gently guided the nanites into a vial from her hip, just as Ashe breathed her last.

She could feel Jade skulk away as she always did in the face of tragedy. Sable couldn’t blame her, they had lost way too much, way too quickly. She was angry sure, but there was a bitterness there that would rot if left to fester.

“Jade! Jade, wait!”

Jade shrugged Sable’s hand off her shoulder. “Nu-uh! No! We aren’t talking about this!”

“Jade… None of us saw this coming. It isn’t anybody’s fault.”

“Bullshit, Sable! You shouldn't have left Ashe here! There were only three borgs outside! I said I could handle it!”

“We both know that isn’t true… If Dizzie and I didn’t show, you’d be just as dead as Ashe.”

“You don’t know that! I could’ve taken ‘em and Ashe would still be alive! She’d…” Jade’s arms lit up, her nanites coating them in thick chrome as she smashed her fist into one of the pillars and turned it into slag.

Sable watched Jade melt onto the column, back sliding down and shoulders slumped. She was the youngest in the coven, brash and headstrong. People died, that was the hard truth, but it was one that Jade could never truly shake off. “We’re doing what we can to survive, Jade.”

“Is this what surviving is? Moving from one place to the next? Feeling safe one second, then getting zeroed the next?” Jade’s face turned firm, a snarl crawling up the sides of her mouth. “There were thirteen of us that got out of Psitech! Thirteen! What are we now? Three rats in a fucking cage just waiting to die! That ain’t a life I wanna live! That isn’t the freedom we were promised!”

“I…” Sable’s hand clenched. Jade’s words cut like a knife, but there was truth in them, painful truth. "We gotta talk to Dizzie about this… Make a plan, like we always do.”

“Dizzie?!” Jade shot back, knuckles cracking. “Dizzie can stay in this shit hole if she wants! I’m done hiding! I’m gonna find the cocksucker that ratted us out. Then, I’m going after Psitech! You two can either help me, or get the fuck out of-”

Suddenly, Dizzie stepped into the light and took a knee next to Ashe's corpse, her bloodied nanite sword in hand and sparks of static dancing on her fingertips. “I was wrong to think they wouldn’t find us. Jade is right."

“Diz…” Sable muttered. She knew the weight their sisters’ deaths bore on Dizzie’s shoulders. She never wanted to lead them, in fact, she wanted to head east soon as they escaped. “It doesn’t have to be like this. We could still get out of the city, find a new place to hide.”

“Then what? Wait for Psitech to off us?” Jade interjected. “Fat chance. If we’re gonna do this, we’re going in hard.”

“So what? You gonna barge straight through their front door? That’s a quick way to get yourself killed. Think, Jade.” Sable shot back.

“Got a better idea then, smooth brain?”

“Enough!” Dizzie turned to Sable. “Fighting amongst ourselves does nothing. We do this the right way, the smart way.”

“The smart way? The fuck does that mean?” said Jade.

Sable turned to Dizzie. “Nothing about this feels right or smart, Diz. I assume you have a plan?”

Dizzie nodded. “I’ve got a lead. It’s a slim one, but it’s something. Make preparations. We’re going to Glenmore.”

###

Ava pulled her hood in close, passing through yet another alley lined with chem-ed up slummers loitering around her local MedRight kiosk. It wasn’t too far away from her hab-block, but it was far enough for even a local like her to be cautious.

From the outside looking in, Glenmore was a paradise of neon lights, and mega towers. The Jewel of Neo Elysium is what many who arrive from off-world call it, but it didn’t take long for the sorry shits to realize the dearth that waited for them in the shadow of skyscrapers and hover trains.

Between the highest crime rates on the planet, and more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else, Glenmore wasn’t paradise by even the slightest of measures, but to Ava, it was home.

"Welcome to MedRight! Your partner in improving lifespan expectancy! Hello, Ms. Shriker, what is the nature of your medical emergency?"

Lifespan expectancy… That’s rich. Ava thought. "Lung grafts are giving out. I paid for new ones six months ago. Haven’t heard back.”

"Searching database. Order received, product stock confirmed. Checking coverage status… I'm sorry, your order has been held due to lack of coverage."

Ava shook her head. "That can’t be right… I just paid my last premium. Reconfirm."

"Upon checking our records, your current monthly payment is no longer sufficient for your coverage. If you wish to upgrade, please contact your closest MedRight representative to learn more about our new offers!"

“No… No no no! You can’t do that! I paid! I paid dammit!" Ava noticed the unwelcome stares from the people in line behind her, and brought her voice down a notch. “I need that hardware… I'm going to die without it, do you understand?”

"Your allotted time for this session has ended. We thank you for your visit! Have a great rest of your day, and remember, when it comes to your health, MedRight has your best interest at heart!"

"Wait! I’m not done! I’m-” Ava felt a shudder in her chest again, bubbling steadily up to her throat. She tried her best to keep it together but couldn’t help but eject her insides onto the panel.

“Hey! If you’re done puking all over the place how’s ‘bout you get outta the line!” a voice screamed from behind her, followed by less savory insults.

She shuffled back into the street, hands still stained with blood. The walk home would be long, but she figured that if she made it back to her bed that’d be blessing enough.

I wonder how long it would take them to find me when I’m gone. Ava shrank at the thought, shaking it out of her head. She wasn’t going to be another statistic, another thing for her neighbors to watch on the news. Vik… I gotta call Vik.

She moved into a nearby alcove and her cortical implants read the command. A datastream appeared in the corner of her vision. C’mon… C’mon Vik pickup…

“Ava, hey…. Damn… You don’t look too good.”

She had heard his voice so many times before, but this time it hit different. Guess mortality has a way of putting things in perspective. “Vik… I need help… This is bad. Please tell me you got the money? I really really need it. I’ll work jobs pro-bono, anything you need.”

There was a deep sigh on the other line, the disappointing kind. “There’s been some… Complications…”

“What do you mean, complications? I need those credz!”

“I… Listen. The job we pulled? It was tagged… The suits at Sentinel are buzzin’ about the data breach like flies on shit… They came asking questions, I had to give ‘em something…”

“Wait… Vik… What did you do?”

“I’m real sorry, bezz. It was your ass or mine. Someone’s gotta take the fall, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me. It’s been good, Ava. Be seeing you.”

“What the fuck did you do?! Hello?! Vik?! Shit!”

Ava felt a tingle crawl up her spine, and a large shadow loomed behind her. Dread turned to terror as a pair of arms grabbed her shoulders and slammed her into a nearby wall. Next thing she knew she tasted street scum in her mouth, and she was face to face with a pair of ragged boots and a few discarded chem-halers.

“Yeah, I’ve got her. Heading over now. Call ahead, chop shop’s got fresh meat.”

###

Ava drifted in and out of consciousness, flickers and glitches scratching her eyes, voices grating in and out of static.

Boss wants this done on the hush hush. No trail to follow.

…

Get her on ice. Steady. Steady.

…

She’s crashing, bring the damn stims!

…

Clear!

Then came a shot, a sudden jolt into her chest that forcibly pulled her back to focus. An intense brightness stung her eyes, like a beam shooting straight in from front to back.

So… Bright… Ava thought as she tried to raise her left arm. Her fingers broke the light apart like stained glass. Where… Where am I? Her hand drifted over to her left eye, and her hand disappeared from view. Her fingers inched towards it, and while every fiber of her being told her to stop, they kept going till she could feel the moist inside of her socket.

Her heartbeat hastened, panic rising. A quick turn of the head to her right had her face to face with a set of scalpels, saws, and drills while a biomonitor beeped lazily to her left. As her remaining eye adjusted to the searing light, shadowy forms hung in the corner of the room, floating listlessly between flickers of halogen lights, and the clinking of hooks and chains told her everything she needed to know about where she was. Her lips fluttered, a scream crept up from her stomach, inching its way up her throat as every muscle in it tightened until finally snapping.

“Where the fuck am I?!”

Four men rushed into the room, one of them wore a black apron and blue gloves that came up to his elbows.

“I thought you guys said she was out?! Keep her on that damn table!”

Three of the men rushed to the table, slamming her arms back down so hard she felt her shoulders pop. “She was when we left! We swear!”

“Well she sure as hell's awake now! Whatever! Just hold her down, you morons!”

The scav doctor grabbed a saw from the table, flicking it on a couple of times with a sharp whizz. “Don’t struggle. Sooner we get this done, sooner you go back to bein’ all peaceful like.”

“W-wait!! I-I have money! It’s all at my place! I’ll wire ‘em to you! I’ll give you everything!”

“Tsk tsk… Sorry, doll. You’re money ain’t nothin’ to what we’re getting to dice you. Tough goin’s.”

Ava struggled against her captor’s grips, the saw buzzing closer and closer to her chest. It hovered over her sternum for a bit, the air around it churning and hot. Then, an explosion from the other room rocked the walls, followed by thumps of gunfire and screaming.

“The hell was that?! You two go check it out!”

In the commotion, Ava reached over to the nearby table and slipped a pair of scissors under her arm. Before the last of the goons could clamp down on her wrists. Her hand shot forwards and steel met flesh in a spray of warm crimson.

The doctor rushed her next, and Ava swiped at the scav’s face, connecting with one of his eyes. She put the bloodied blade to work on the restraint on her waist, only for it to slip from her fingers and fall with a clink on the floor.

Shit! Oh god! Oh god, no!

“You bitch! That was my fucking eye!” The doctor stood, a stream of blood pouring down his cheek. “That’s it! You’re dead!”

The doctor lunged towards her and wrapped his hands around her throat, tightening with every passing moment. Her vision began to fade, but before she could pass out, the man’s hands suddenly released. Ava gasped for air, eyes fixed on the doctor now floating above her with a face frozen in terror.

A woman approached the bench. Her eyes glowed a neon yellow, and her hand was outstretched. Two others emerged behind her, stained with scav innards.

“Sable, do a full-sweep. Jade, I want eyes on biomons. Make sure we know if more of them are coming.”

“W-w-w-h-h-a…” the doctor struggled to say between crumpled and twitching lips. “You've got no idea who you're fucking with! Y'hear me?!"

“Quiet! You have information on a Psitech op, a raid on the south side of town! Talk, if you value your life!”

“Psitech?! I chop gooks off the street! Ain’t got nuthin’ to do with Psitech!”

“H-He’s lying! Please help me!” Ava screamed.

“Get that girl off the bench, now!”

“On it!” Sable rushed over, and the second she cut the straps off, a rush of relief ran through Ava so quickly she could barely stand.

Meanwhile, Dizzie’s hand twisted and slowly curled, a circle of glyphs manifesting around it. The doctor screamed, his hardware going haywire and blue sparks erupting from his skin.

“Aaagghh fuck! Ok! Ok! A couple of nines came by a few hours ago, dropped that girl off and told us to chop her up! She was part of some job went zero!”

All eyes settled on Ava, and the thought of her getting chopped up sent a shiver up her spine.

“The men who dropped her off, who were they working for?”

“I don't know! I swear!”

“He… He sold me out…” Ava clutched her chest as the thumping resurged and another fresh stream of blood poured out her lips. Sable placed her hand gently on Ava’s side, and the warmth soothed the pain just enough for her to stay awake.

“Diz! She isn’t gonna make it! We gotta jet, now!"

Jade turned from the balcony with a scowl. "Just take her biochip and get it over with!"

Sable shook her head. "I can't! Her implants are archeotech, shit's ancient, could corrupt the data!"

“We got more scavs on the biomons! Make the call, Diz!” Jade said.

“Take her with us, we’re leaving!”

“Hey, wait! You can’t leave me here! Let me go! I-I can talk to the boys, make peace so you can walk, no trouble!”

Dizzy turned her attention back to the doctor and smiled. “My thanks, but I think we’ll manage.”

"Aargh! No!"

Dizzy clenched her fist, and the doctor’s head fried up until all that was left was a steaming pile of flesh and electrical burns.

###

"Got an ID. Name's Ava Shriker. Glenmore PD says she's a data slider, known quantity at that."

"Find any more about her?" asked Dizzie.

"Sure. Got some info on the job she did and it's all we hoped. High level Psitech server hack, deets on our sigs, whereabouts, you name it. I found some on her handler too, but it’s locked behind a firewall and I’m no dataslider," Sable couldn’t take her eyes off the biomonitor hooked to Ava's vitals. "But there's something else… Whoever this chick is, she's a real piece of work: top shelf neural processors, upgraded multi-core thermal sinks, and check this out, manual overclocker interface, right by the occipital lobe…"

"Blah-de-blah-de-blah… Sable. English, please?" Jade said.

"Girl's gotta be a walking mainframe to handle a load like this and not get fried. Synaptic activity is off the charts! I can't believe it… She's-"

"Psionic." Dizzy said.

"You've gotta be shitting me…" Jade said. "She from Psitech too?"

"No, memories are clean. Not even a hint of a wipe neither. She's homegrown..." Sable shook her head. "Diz. Do you know what this means? There are others like us out there!"

"We can talk about that later. Any way to wake her up?" Diz said.

“She’s down bad…” Sable shook her head and sighed. "She's got some kind of growth in her lungs. There are two implants in there that keep it in check but they've stopped working. Won't be long till the tissue gets eaten up completely. Unless… We give her Ashe's nanites."

"The fuck you say?!" Jade roared.

"Hear me out! The nanites’ll fix the damaged tissue and keep the mutations under control!”

“We aren’t even sure if she’d survive! You're gonna waste Ashe’s nanites on a street rat with fancy hardware?!”

"She's Psionic, just like us! She can take it, I know she can!”

“Jade has a point. We spent all our lives at Psitech,” Dizzie said. “They built up our bodies, experimented on us for years before we even had a taste of the nanites…”

“You think I don’t know that?!” Sable shot back. “I just wanna make this right… Just this once, I wanna remember saving someone for a change…”

Both Jade and Dizzie looked away, and Sable knew they wouldn’t say anything back. Her attuned memory and clairvoyance was her gift and Psitech’s nanites amplified it tenfold. Their other sisters were lucky to be fighters and techs, always living in the moment, while she was forced to relive the past in crisp, unfettered detail. It wasn’t fair, but nothing was ever fair, not in this city.

“Do it.” Dizzie said.

“What?! Diz, you can’t be-” Jade interjected.

“She is our only hope at getting the one who wronged us. Without her we have nothing,” Dizzie turned to Sable. “You’re sure she can survive the nanites?”

“Y-yeah…” Sable swallowed hard. “I’d stake my life on it.”

“Good. You know how this works. No decision for the coven is made without full agreement. Jade?”

“Ugh… Fucking fine!” Jade huffed. “But if this ends up being a waste of time, it’ll be on you, Sable.”

###

“Ego ignis sum…” A whisper floated out her lips like a wisp of cold wind, a chill that drifted down her neck and shoulders nudging her awake. She was in some kind of run down room, no straps or surgical tools this time.

The door at the far end of the room creaked, and Ava felt her heart skip a beat. A woman walked in with a data slate, bright yellow eyes, and a beaming smile. “Well now. For a second there I thought you were a goner.”

“W-where am I?” Ava said.

“Safe. That’s about all I can tell you right now.” Sable said as she reached for Ava’s arm. Ava drew it back.

“It’s alright. I’m not gonna hurt you. Just wanted to make sure you’re good? Can I do that?”

Ava gave her another good look, slowly relaxing her arm. “Y-you… You were at the scav haunt…” Ava said, her throat dry. “You and two others…”

“Yeah, I was. That was two days ago. You remember much?”

Ava nodded as the woman gently moved her wrist. “Vik… He sent me to get chopped up.”

“So that’s the shithead’s name huh?” the woman said, her hand drifting from Ava's arm up to her shoulder. “Breathe in for me please? In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

Ava took a deep breath, expecting pain to come swiftly after. “Wait. My lungs-”

“Are all better, thanks to yours truly.”

“B-but… My implants were gonked. How did you?”

“Took ‘em straight out and set you up with an upgrade. You can scan yourself now if you’d like.”

Ava flicked her bioscanner on, and to her surprise, the mutagens in her lungs were completely gone. “T-This is impossible…”

“Impossible she says… The nanites I injected into your system cleaned house. The rest is history.” Sable said. “Name’s Sable, by the way. C’mon, about time you met the rest of the crew.”

Ava followed Sable out, there wasn’t much else to see other than broken walls and planked up windows. The other two women were in the place’s living room, or what was left of it anyway.

“So here they are, your saviors in the flesh. One with the chromed up arms is Jade, and that there on the rug is Dizzie.”

"So you didn’t snuff it. Hoofuckinray.” Jade walked up to Ava, looming over her with a scowl. “Figured out what you can do yet?”

“What I can do?” Ava said.

“Haven’t quite got to that part…” Sable said.

"Jade, Sable. I would like to have a word with our new sister… Alone." Dizzie said without shifting her gaze.

The two women made their way out of the room. Ava gave Sable a worried look, and Sable shot back with one that looked like 'you'll be fine'. Then, Dizzie pulled a pistol from its holster and laid it gently between them before offering a space on the rug with an open palm

"Please, sit." Dizzie said.

Ava shook her head. "I-I think I'd rather stand, thank you."

"I said. Sit."

Sparks crackled from Dizzie's eyes and Ava dropped down to her knees. Her back straightened and she slowly slid forwards, upright and sitting.

"Apologies. I don't like having to repeat myself." Dizzie said.

Is she hacking me? Ava thought. Her neural processor whizzed to life, trying to find a breach in her systems but there was none. "H-how are you doing this?"

"Your questions come later. Mine come first." Dizzie said. "Your handler. What is his name?"

Ava's lips shuddered. "Vik! That rat bastard!"

"And what is his connection to Psitech?"

"He's just some dumb merc jockey, he's got nothing on Psitech!" Ava felt her hand reach for the gun, fingers curling tightly round its grip.

"I do not like being lied to. You know this first hand, do you not?"

Ava's arm curled up until she could feel the iron press against her temple, intermingled with beads of cold sweat.

"I'm telling you the truth." Ava grit her teeth. "If you don't believe me, then pull the trigger. Like I give a shit."

"Hmph… A shame."

Ava felt control rush back into her body and she immediately took aim at Dizzie. "W-who are you people?"

"We are a sisterhood of common purpose. Wronged by those we thought we could trust." Dizzie said. "You walk a similar path, do you not?"

"You don't know me. So don't even…"

"So you do not seek the one who betrayed you? The man called Viktor Vrax?"

Ava felt her jaw clench. "So what if I am? What's it to you?"

"Viktor is but a pawn in this game. Help us find him and we shall help you find justice."

"Justice? In this city?" Ava chuckled. "Good luck."

"If not justice… Vengeance then?"

Even if she wanted to take Viktor down, there was no way she was doing it alone. Whoever these people were, they would be her best shot, perhaps her only shot.

"Damn straight." Ava lowered the gun. "I'll take you to Vik's, on one condition. You don't touch him. He's mine. Do we understand each other?"

Dizzie smiled. "We understand each other."