Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

44 - Monsters Are Not Born, They Are Made

 "You really think she's going to come?" Kirk muttered, probing a loose tooth with his tongue.

Cutter spared him a sidelong glance. "I think she will."

"You think the corps will let her?"

"We'll know soon enough."

Kirk rolled his eyes, and tried not to think about just how deep in shit he was at this very moment. He glanced over at Arden, who was currently holding a sullen silence and glaring into the ground, like she thought she could tunnel out of here through sheer force of will. A swell of regret hit him like an ice cold wave.

Not enough that the corps took her sister and locked her mother in some ghoulish 'safe house'. Now she was a bargaining chip for powers that could erase them both off the face of the Earth in the blink of an eye.

His mind had been racing for hours trying to figure out some escape plan, each more insane than the last. They hadn't bothered to bind his hands, but equally none of the guards were standing close enough for him to make much use of the fact. His mind was filled with lurid fantasies of bounding forward, tearing a rifle from the grip of the nearest gangland bastard and turning it on Cutter and his people.

Mowing them down like grass and running out of here with Arden, back to the city, and freedom.

He shunted those thoughts out of his head as soon as they came. More likely he'd make it two steps and get a bullet in the teeth for his trouble. Without some kind of distraction there wasn't much choice but to ride this storm out.

Piper isn't the simple little girl you think she is.

She's been out there, killing the wraiths.

Cutter's words crawled unbidden back into his mind and he felt his jaw tighten, unwilling the face the truth of the implications. He knew a little about AmpCore, the wizard-freaks on a corporate leash, capable of doing insane, wrong things to the natural world thanks to the great excesses of technology.

He'd never seen one of them though. He'd hoped he never would, but that seemed like a vanishingly unlikely dream now.

Worse than that, if Cutter was to be believed, the corps had done something to her to make her ... like them. They'd stuffed some of their unnatural fucking grafts into her like a machine to be repurposed. Would he even recognise her if he saw her again? He knew that the corps could make people do a lot of things if you gave them enough time. They could make people see the world their way, because the alternative was just too painful.

Kirk dug his nails into the palm of one hand, distracting himself as best he could. Part of him prayed that Piper wouldn't come; wouldn't throw herself on the mercy of a psychopath like Cutter Jennings. A much louder part hoped she came and brought a corporate assault force with her. He hoped the gangers and the corporations slaughtered each other to the last drop.

He looked around slowly. Cutter Jennings sat off to one side, his big frame folded into a sitting position on a large metal crate, surrounded by his guards. The gangster's chosen meeting place was a sprawling underground smelting yard, dormant and skulking beneath a dormant refinery complex with a few floors and old smokestacks jutting out into the city.

On every dark gangway and stairwell armed men and women squatted, scanning the open space. There must have been at least fifty guards here. No matter how confident and vicious he came across, it was clear that Cutter wasn't stupid enough to take half-measures when going up against Hadrian's corporations.

"Boss," a guard further down in the yard called, raising a hand. "Nevay's comin' in."

Cutter swivelled on his crate. "She got company?"