The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Opterative ZeroXVIII.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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I stepped out, and the cab pulled away, merging back into traffic and disappearing around the corner. The afternoon sun was bearing down on The Glen, and I stood at the edge of the court, letting my Kiroshis run a passive sweep of the immediate area, tagging civilians and scanning for active weapons signatures.
My optics flagged an older man standing on the far side of the basketball court almost immediately. He was positioned in the shade of a large tree that overhung the chain-link fence. He wore a dark clerical suit with the unmistakable white rectangle of a priest's collar visible at his throat, and his posture was relaxed. His hair was salt-and-pepper, cropped short, and his face was weathered and deeply lined.
Two men flanked him at a respectful distance, both wearing the attire of mid-level Valentino enforcers. They were chromed but not too much, carrying their iron concealed beneath fitted jackets.
The older man saw me approach and offered a slow nod. I returned it, crossing the court with an unhurried stride.
I stopped about six feet away from him, planting my feet and settling my weight. Up close, the lines in his face were deeper than they had appeared from a distance.
"Ghost, I presume?" Padre asked, his voice low.
"That's me," I confirmed.
Padre looked up at me, tilting his head back to compensate for the considerable height difference between us, and an amused smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "You are quite tall for someone who operates as a ghost, mijo. In my experience, ghosts tend to be harder to spot."
"That's why they put me behind a screen and a mask instead of a steeple, Padre," I said.
His smile deepened a bit, and he gestured with an open hand toward the sidewalk that bordered the court. "Walk with me."
I fell into step beside him, adjusting my stride to match his slower pace. His two bodyguards followed at a distance of about ten yards, close enough to intervene but far enough to give the conversation privacy. We walked along the shaded sidewalk, passing beneath a canopy of synthetic trees that had been planted by the city council as part of a beautification project that had clearly run out of funding after the first block.
"I appreciate you coming to meet me in person," Padre said, his hands clasped behind his back. "I know that most fixers communicate exclusively through encrypted channels, and many runners prefer it that way. Anonymity is a valuable commodity in our line of work."
"Then why the sit-down?" I asked.
"Because I am not most fixers," Padre replied simply. "I like to know the people who work for me before they work for me. I need to look into their eyes and see what kind of soul sits behind them. A man's code is only as good as the person compiling it, and I have learned, through painful experience, that competence without character is a loaded weapon pointed at the wrong target."
His gaze drifted downward, landing on the silver cross pendant resting against my chest above the open buttons of my shirt. The amused warmth in his expression shifted into something more contemplative.
"You wear the cross," Padre observed, his voice dropping half a register. "Are you a Christian, Ghost?"
"No," I said while I glanced down at the pendant and closed my fingers around it. "It was my father's."
Padre nodded slowly, his eyes lingering on my closed fist for a moment before returning to the sidewalk ahead. "Family is a good thing to keep close, mijo. It is often the only thing worth fighting for in a city that has forgotten the meaning of the word."
"I appreciate the warmth, Padre, but I'm not here for the small talk," I said, releasing the pendant and letting it fall back against my chest. "You called this meet for a reason, and I'd rather hear it before the sun cooks us both."
Padre let out a short and quiet laugh.
"Fair enough," he conceded, his tone shifting from pastoral warmth to the cadence of a fixer. He kept walking, his hands still clasped behind his back, but the relaxed stroll had acquired a more purposeful rhythm.
"God sees all," Padre began, his dark eyes fixed on the path ahead. "And sometimes He requires a mortal hand to deliver justice. There is a Tyger Claw wakashu named Hiroto Aoki who operates off the books in my parish. This Aoki has been distributing contraband, hard synthetics, and black-market cyberware through the residential blocks of The Glen for the past four months. His distribution network is small, but it is efficient, and it has been feeding addiction and violence directly into the families I have spent decades trying to protect."
He paused, letting the weight of the statement settle between us.
"Aoki brokers a deal with Maelstrom gangers tonight in an abandoned pachinko parlor here in The Glen," Padre continued. "The deal involves a significant quantity of unregistered combat stimulants and a shipment of stolen cyberware that was diverted from a Kang Tao logistics transport three weeks ago. Your primary task is to assist in sending Señor Aoki to his final judgment."
I didn't flinch at the phrasing. "Assist" meant I wouldn't be working alone.
"But this is not just an execution," Padre said, raising a finger. "I also need the decryption keys for Aoki's private ledger. The data stored in that ledger contains the names, badge numbers, and payment histories of corrupted NCPD officers who have been accepting bribes to allow the Tyger Claws to operate freely in Heywood. That information is leverage that my community desperately needs, and it cannot be allowed to disappear with Aoki."
"And the third objective?" I asked, knowing there was more.
Padre glanced at me, a flicker of approval crossing his face at the anticipation. "The last objective involves a specific physical payload. The Kang Tao shipment that Aoki diverted contains a sealed Kang Tao transport crate. The contents of that crate are not your concern, but the crate itself is of significant value to me. Secure it and deliver it to my drop point. The coordinates will be transmitted to your Agent upon confirmation of the contract."
He stopped walking and turned to face me fully, his expression carrying the weight of a man who was issuing orders that he had already prayed about.
"Do this quietly if you can," Padre said. "Aoki's Maelstrom contacts are unpredictable, and the pachinko parlor is situated close enough to residential blocks that a firefight could result in civilian casualties. Precision is paramount."
I nodded slowly, running the operational parameters through my head. I wasn't really known for assassinations, but I guess my reputation for not leaving any trace behind is what prompted this gig. An elimination with data extraction and physical asset retrieval, conducted in a hostile environment with an unknown number of Maelstrom combatants and a Tyger Claw operator who would almost certainly have his own chrome and his own security detail.
"You said I'd be assisting," I reminded him. "Who else is on this?"
Padre's expression softened, and the paternal warmth that had been temporarily suppressed by the operational briefing returned to his features. "You will be joined by two of my own, whom I treat as if they were my very own daughters. They are experienced, capable, and they have my absolute trust. I would not pair you with them if I had any doubt about your competence, and I would not pair them with you if I had any doubt about your character. They should have arrived by now."
Padre turned his head, looking back across the basketball court toward the street we had walked from, and I followed his gaze.
Two women were rounding the corner of the chain-link fence, walking side by side across the sun-bleached concrete with a relaxed and confident stride.
My Kiroshis tagged them automatically, running facial recognition and chrome profiling as they closed the distance.
The one on the left was named Valerie Valdez. She was shorter, maybe five-foot-five, and moved with a compact, yet explosive energy that reminded me of a compressed spring. She wore a brown leather bomber jacket with a high collar that pulsed with a faint, blue LED glow along the interior lining, and the back of the jacket bore a bold, stylized print of a Samurai demon skull logo, the edges of the ink slightly faded from wear.
Beneath it, a dark grey ribbed tank top was cut above her waist, exposing a strip of toned midriff. Her legs were wrapped in dark, synthetic leather tactical pants fitted with utility pockets and reinforced knee sections, the material accented with silver hardware. A wide, silver-studded black belt sat around her waist, and her feet were laced into black high-top sneakers with red detailing and thick soles that looked built for running, climbing, and kicking teeth in.
A thin black choker wrapped tightly around her neck, and as she got closer, my Kiroshis flagged the subtle seam lines tracing the edges of her orbital sockets, indicating premium Kiroshi Optics, along with a neural port nestled behind her right ear and a personal link cable embedded in the synthetic housing of her inner wrist. Her forearms also carried a geometric paneling of concealed cyberware housings, and though the specific hardware was difficult to identify at a glance, the structural reinforcement of the forearm assemblies suggested either a set of Gorilla Arms or the retracted housings of Mantis Blades. A subdermal grip modification pad was visible on her right palm, the skin slightly discolored where the synthetic interface had been bonded to the tissue for seamless smart weapon compatibility.
She had dark hair pulled back in a functional, no-nonsense tail, and her face was angular, carrying an alert attentiveness that said she had already scanned me, assessed my threat level, and catalogued my iron before I had even finished looking at her jacket.
The woman beside her was named Clarita Ibarra. She was taller, closer to six-foot-two, and she carried herself with a looser, more languid posture that could easily be mistaken for casualness by someone who didn't know how to read the tension underneath. She wore a crisp, white button-down shirt with the sleeves casually rolled to her elbows and the top buttons left undone, paired with a solid black tie that hung loosely around her neck in a knot that looked like it had been tied once, six months ago, and hadn't been adjusted since. Dark trousers were secured by a standard black belt, and a black leather shoulder holster was harnessed over the shirt, the empty space beneath her left arm suggesting the iron was currently unloaded or had been deliberately left behind for the meet.
Her appearance was heavily personalized, and the most immediately visible detail was a prominent "Valentinos" tattoo sprawling across her neck in a bold and ornate script. A smaller cross tattoo rested on her upper chest, just visible above the open collar of the shirt, and she accessorized with small hoop earrings, metal lip piercings that glinted with each subtle shift of her expression, and a dark cross pendant necklace that mirrored the religious iconography of her ink.
Both of her forearms and hands, from the elbow joint down, had been entirely replaced with cybernetic limbs. They were polished, high-end gold-plated prosthetics featuring segmented joints that articulated with the fluid precision of bleeding-edge engineering, and the knuckles and fingertips were capped with dark metallic reinforcements that looked purpose-built for impact. The gold finish caught the afternoon sun and threw warm, honey-colored reflections across the white fabric of her shirt as she walked, and the effect was simultaneously beautiful and deeply intimidating. My Kiroshis tagged the limbs as custom-manufacture, non-standard configuration, and flagged the structural density of the joints as significantly exceeding civilian-grade specifications.
Subtle cybernetic seam lines were embedded in her skin, running along her right cheekbone and just beneath her right eye, tracing the faint, precise geometry of subdermal implants that could be anything from targeting augmentations to passive threat-detection arrays. Her face was striking, with sharp, high cheekbones framed by dark hair that fell in loose waves around her shoulders, and her eyes carried the confidence of someone who had learned to fight with those golden hands and had gotten very, very good at it.
They stopped about eight feet from us, and the shorter woman planted her hands on her studded belt, tilting her head as she looked me over with an evaluating gaze that was as subtle as a spotlight.
The taller woman crossed her golden arms over her chest, the segmented joints clicking faintly with the movement, and offered Padre a warm, respectful nod.
"Padre," she greeted him, her voice carrying a smooth Heywood lilt.
"Mijas," Padre said, and the warmth that flooded his voice was so genuine and paternal that for a fraction of a second, he didn't sound like a fixer at all. He sounded like a father welcoming his daughters home.
He turned to me, placing a hand on my shoulder, and gestured toward the two women with his other.
"Ghost," Padre said. "Allow me to introduce you to your partners for this evening. Clarita and Valerie."
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Clarita is r4vu's creation from his own FF! And well, Valerie is V...
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A gig has come, send a bonus!
The infamous P@treon exists for those of you who want to read ahead.
patreon .com/Crimson_Reapr (Don't be a gonk, remove the space)
They get around 3 long-form weekly chapters (4.5-6k words each).