Hawk and Spider

Novya picked herself up, slipping once or twice on her blood-soaked hand, and sat against the metal exhaust vent that was humming quietly in the night air. After finding a comfortable position, she brought up her shirt enough to see the hole the auto-turret had blasted through her abdomen.

“Fucking sloppy,” she berated herself through clenched teeth.

After a moment of inspection to make sure that there was no exit wound, Novya pulled her makeshift field kit from her pocket. Biting down on the thick strip of leather, she stabbed the quick repair needle into the wound. Immediately the searing pain set in and she threw the needle away. After what felt like an eternity of convulsions and muscle spasms, the pain subsided and she spit out the leather strip.

“You’d think those would hurt less after the fourth or fifth time,” she groaned.

A brief inspection of where the wound had been showed that the area had sufficiently self-repaired. The hole had been replaced by a neat lattice of scar tissue, though the scorching from the burn remained. Novya pushed her bloodied shirt back down and wiped off her hands. She took a moment to collect herself before standing up and looking to the North-East.

RST Megacorp and its luminescent white walls towered over the city in a way that Novya had grown to despise. Somehow, the perfect, clean white shape was more ominous than any of the buildings surrounding it. She would fix that.

Finding a new seat atop the exhaust vent, the gentle heat of the metal warming her aching muscles, she took her favorite pack of cigarettes and tapped out the last one. Novya cursed because she knew she would have to buy a new pack from Wilson. The skeevy jerk was always jacking up his prices, saying, “Supply and demand, babe.” She knew damn well that she was the only one that had any demand for this particular brand of cigarette, which had long gone out of circulation, and also knew that Wilson had more than enough supply.

Lighting the cigarette, she leaned back on her other arm and took a slow drag. It is going to be a very long week. She paused for a moment after hearing a soft tapping on her metal arm, but before she could inspect the cause, a raindrop snuffed her cigarette.

“Shit.”

Novya coughed into her shoulder, splattering blood onto the fabric of her shirt and staining her skin. The copper taste was tainted by something more profoundly metallic. That bastard Wilson had sold her a repair needle that had almost expired. Her mouth was going to taste like tin for a month and she made a mental note to take that fact out of his hide. A soft hum radiated from her calf and she pulled out the glowing phone.

After taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the brightness of the screen she saw the confirmation she was waiting for.

FILES RECEIVED – PAYMENT DELIVERED [275870.43]

A sigh of relief passed through her before she lied back to stare up at the sky. A few more jobs like that one and I can just leave. Novya wasn’t sure where, or even how, considering how little information about the outside world made it back into the city. With any luck, there was some small piece of land that was untouched by RST left to live on. Watching a surveillance satellite pass through the sky, she made a quiet prayer to whatever gods might be listening that the anonymity hardware she installed was still working, despite her injuries.