Eden & Echo - A Gritty Cyberpunk Noir Thriller

"This is going to be fun." Vika told me once we were out of earshot, repeating my earlier words but with a much more sarcastic tone. Evidently she wasn't happy about something. "I asked him if we were going all out and he said yes."

"But that's good, right?" I asked.

"Only if you like getting your ass kicked. But that's not my concern." Vika said as she stopped and pulled me aside. Her expression was sour. "I remember the first time I saw my mom fight, and I mean really fight. It changed things between us. One second we were walking down the street and the next she was standing over four dead bodies."

"What happened?" I asked, curious and also a little confused. I had never even heard a whisper about any of this and I couldn't imagine Aunt Laura hurting anyone, ever. She was a baker, not a soldier.

Vika leaned her back against the wall and took a deep breath. "We went on vacation with my sister right before I joined the SDF. It was just the three of us down in Bohem for the weekend. We were going to do some shopping, visit the museums, all the usual tourist stuff. We were coming back to our hotel at the end of the day and we were about a block away when Mom told us to walk faster."

"It was dark out and just beginning to get cold. Not as cold as Sühi but still there was a chill in the air. I looked back and saw two male hunds with white fur in puffy black winter coats following us. I recognized their long muzzles and realized they were from Borzaya."

I knew where this was going. The Borzayan Federation bordered Sühi to the north east and had tried to invade their smaller neighbor multiple times, usually with little success. The BZF was a classic example of what happened when an empire became so corrupt that it rotted from within, but still somehow managed to lurch along like a zombie from sheer momentum.

"We were in trouble. I had heard the stories of Borzayan gangsters abducting people and the three of us must have looked like prime targets. When we started to pick up the pace they sped up too. What I didn't realize was they were herding us into a trap."

"There was an alley up ahead where two more were hiding. I don't know if Mom smelled them or she just knew what to expect but when they jumped out at us she was ready. I knew that Mom had some wetware, almost everyone does these days, but I didn't realize until that night how heavily augmented she actually was."

The former SDF soldier looked off into the distance and took another breath. "You know how your dad cuts up a roast chicken for dinner, sliding the knife between the joints to avoid hitting bone? You know how the bird just comes apart? I watched my mom pull out a little knife and carve up those two gangsters like they were standing still. By the time I could register what had happened it was already over."

"One of them had a handgun stuck in his belt. It was one of those old surplus pieces from the First Continental War. No smart targeting, no gyro stabilizer, just an ugly mass produced hunk of steel and plastic. She picked it up, spun around, then fired at the two gangsters coming up the street behind us. They must have been about twenty five meters away."

"I still remember that shot cadence." Vika mimed shooting a pistol with her left hand. "It was a classic example of a failure to stop drill, ice cold and well practiced. She shot them both twice in the chest, then when they didn't immediately fall down she finished them off with headshots."

I frowned. None of this made sense. "Did you ever find out where she learned to do that or where she got the combat enhancements?"

"Grandmother Kolbe taught her to shoot and fight when she was a pup. The wetware was late-war Döbian custom, real boutique shit." Vika lowered her voice. "Rumor has it Grandfather Braverhund gave all his children basic warhund augmentation when they were little. Then when they were adults he offered to upgrade them the rest of the way."

Augmenting a minor was illegal and incredibly dangerous. I found myself wondering how he had even gotten his hands on that kind of hardware in the first place. I had been augmented at birth, but I was a demi-human. We were different, built from the ground up to be compatible. "Why in hell would he do that?" I asked.

"Integration." Vika answered. "Start them young and by the time they're adults they've already had ten years to get used to the wetware. But I think it's more than that. I think he passed it on to his children somehow and they passed it on to their children."

"Like, organically?" I asked, not believing what I was hearing. Genetic engineering was one thing. It made sense for those traits to be passed along. But wetware had physical components. "You're talking about inheriting warhund traits? That's impossible!"

Vika shrugged. "I'm no scientist. But my sister never served and never was augmented, but we are aging at the same reduced rate. Without wetware she should be reaching the end of her natural lifespan. The same with the rest of our cousins. Haven't you ever wondered why nobody from that side of the family ever seems to get sick? When's the last time one of them had a heart attack, or a cancer scare?"

I was about to argue but then I realized she was right. I just hadn't noticed it because I didn't grow up around normal hunds. I couldn't even remember a single time when one of them had suffered a major illness or an injury that hadn't healed completely. "We will talk more about this later." I promised, my head spinning from all this new information. "I have to suit up."

Vika led me to the locker room and started getting into her air conditioned patrol uniform. "You see what I mean now, about not looking at people the same way."

"Yeah." I admitted as I struggled into the tight moisture wicking base layer of my uniform. "That's insane. How did I never hear about any of this?"

"You probably never thought to ask and we don't really talk about it. Plus people usually only notice things that aren't to their benefit of liking. What we like about the world around us we just accept as normal, even when it's not." Vika said sagely.

"Too true." I said as I zipped up my stab vest. The material felt different than the one I had been issued. It wasn't rigid, for one thing. "What do you make of this?" I asked.

Vika pulled a double edged knife from her plate carrier and gave it an experimental poke before I could protest. Nothing seemed to happen but as soon as the knife made contact she yelped in pain and leaped backward. "Fuck that hurt!" She growled as the knife hit the ground. "My whole hand is numb! That thing shocked the shit out of me!"

I looked down at the black stab vest. Apparently it had some kind of defensive mechanism built in. I decided to ask Simon about that later as I pulled on the blue cargo pants and button down shirt that completed my uniform. Finally I stepped into my black synthetic leather boots and pressed the button to auto tension then lock the Kevlar laces in place.

"I'm getting some feeling back." Vika told me as she pumped her hand open and closed trying to restore sensation to it. "Unfortunately that feeling is pain. And lots of it." She grimaced. "That thing packs a punch. Come on, I'll show you to the armory."