CASS CORRIDOR – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A nondescript green-gray door in the middle of faded brick frontage was all the face that Spector’s Tavern presented to the world. It sat in a side street just off Cass Avenue and it had the weathered, dogged air of a place that had lived defiantly through every attempt at gentrification, redevelopment and the failure thereof. Twenty years ago, the surrounding area had been on its way to becoming trendy; now it was as drab as it had been in the Great Depression, but Spector’s remained unchanged. Hard-edged and bloody-minded, like the locals who drank there, the aging dive bar remained a fixture in the neighborhood that fires, riots and gang warfare hadn’t managed to dislodge.

Inside, the place wasn’t any more inviting than its exterior. Dim lighting and a perpetually smoky atmosphere hid the aging décor, with most of the illumination coming from lamps over the pool tables in the back and the glow spilling from a projector screen on the far wall.

A hockey game was in its final moments on the big screen, as the Red Wings fought across the ice to pull back a tie from what was otherwise going to be a narrow defeat. Spector’s didn’t so much draw a crowd as it did have a crew of stubborn regulars, but still there was a collective expression of annoyance from them as the game clock hit zero and the equalizing shot didn’t materialize.

A broad-faced man in a faded brown jacket cursed under his breath and turned around on his stool to find the tall, bull-necked bartender offering him a wireless reader device. “Ah, shit, Jake. You can’t even let it sink in before you want me to pay up?”

“Losing a bet is losing a bet,” said the man behind the bar, his eyes hard and unfriendly. “Boss said you’re not good for credit anymore, Henry.”

“Your boss can blow me,” he retorted. “I got money. I’ll pay, then screw you!” Henry leaned forward and angrily pressed his thumb to the reader. A moment later, there was an answering beep and he was fifty credits poorer as the stake vanished from his bank balance. “I’ll take another drink while you’re at it,” he demanded.

Jake obliged, blankly pouring another two fingers of bourbon into his glass.

Henry raised the drink in a sarcastic salute to the hockey team. “You guys have sucked ever since you moved to Canada! Up yours too!” The liquor burned pleasantly on the way down, and he turned his back on the screen once again, his mind already thinking about the next wager he was going to make.

“Henry Kellman…” The voice was all gravel, and it came from close at hand. “Didn’t you quit drinking?”

Henry twisted on the stool to see who was talking to him and he started answering before his brain caught up to what he was seeing. “Yeah, well, I unquit, so go mind your own business—” He froze; he was looking at a ghost. “Holy shit. Mr. Jensen.”

How the man had walked into Spector’s, how he had made his way to the stool next to Henry’s, all without him noticing until right now, those questions flared and faded in his thoughts before he could utter them.

Jensen gave a slow nod. “Back from the dead. Again. Guess I’m making a habit of it.”

Henry put down the glass before the sudden shaking in his fingers made him spill the contents. He blinked, trying to make sense of what was going on. “Wait, they said you’d been killed in all that crazy shit that went down…” He caught sight of Jensen’s black polycarbonate hands as the other man signaled Jake for a drink of his own. “Oh man. Oh man…” He forced himself to stop talking, in case he said something he would regret. Regrouping, Henry forced a brittle smile. “I’m real glad that wasn’t true. I guess we’re all in the same boat now, right? Shit out of luck?” He gave a weak laugh.

Jake had a bottle of Tango Foxtrot black-label whiskey in his hand, but he hesitated before pouring a shot for Jensen. “This place isn’t a hanzer joint,” he said firmly. “Maybe you wanna go drink somewhere else.”

“I really don’t,” said Jensen, ice forming on the words.

“Hey!” Henry tapped a thick finger on the countertop. “This guy, he’s okay! He used to be my chief when I worked security over at Sarif, I’ll vouch for him!”

Jake’s vacant expression didn’t shift, but eventually he poured out a drink for Jensen and walked away, never once taking his eyes off the man.

“Don’t blame him, he don’t have a lot of what you might call ‘social skills,’ Mr. Jensen,” Henry went on. “So. Uh. You’re back in Detroit? How’s that going for you?” He shifted uncomfortably on the top of his stool. Half of him wanted to get up and make his excuses as quickly as possible, and the other desperately wanted to know what the hell Adam Jensen was doing in town.

“It’s a work in progress, Henry,” Jensen replied, taking a sip of the whiskey. “You’re not an easy man to find. I had to do a lot of asking around.”

“You were looking for me?” Henry gradually started to slide himself off the stool.

“Your apartment was closed up.”

“Yeah…” he admitted. “I had to move out. I mean, after the incident and all, it’s not like I was an aug or nothing, but it was tough times… I ended up in a flophouse ’cos that’s all I can afford.” Henry paused, and a churn of old anger rose briefly in his gut. “Shit, man, they just fired the whole damn lot of us! No severance pay, no call-back, no help… Everybody on the security team, out of a job overnight! And after all we did to keep that place from getting torn apart during the riots…” He shook his head, and took a pull from his bourbon to steady himself. “That sweet kid Cindy on the front desk, she could… would have died that night if we hadn’t been there.” The drink helped him focus, and when he looked back at Jensen it was with a brief surge of defiance. “Those sons-of-bitches on the company board screwed us over, plain and simple. Sold Sarif to the Chinese, just washed their hands of us… And you too, looks like.”

Jensen nodded to himself, as if something was making sense to him. “So you’ve got to take whatever work you can get, right?” He nodded toward the screen on the wall. “Earn some money to make your bets.”

“Yeah.” Henry couldn’t stop himself from shooting a look toward the clock above the bar and then toward the doorway. He had somewhere else to be.

Jensen knocked back the rest of his whiskey. “Why don’t you tell me about the pass card, Henry? Who took it from my office?” His tone was flat, without inflection. “Was it you?”

“I don’t know what you mean—” Henry started to rise off his seat, but then the arm lying across Jensen’s lap suddenly grew a black, meter-long sword blade that extended out to hover over Henry’s thigh.

“Stick around,” Jensen told him. “Finish your drink. We’re not done catching up.”

Henry gingerly settled back on to the stool and placed his shaking hands around his bourbon. “Look, Mr. Jensen… you gotta know how hard it was here after the incident. Everything falling apart, no-one with any damn answers about what was gonna happen next. You weren’t here, Sarif was AWOL, and that dickhead up in digital security was no help to any of us on the guard detail…”

Jensen cocked his head, as if he was listening to a voice that only he could hear. “Go on.”

“So when the word came down I was out, I took advantage, yeah. Figured I’d hold on to it, could be worth something… What the hell else was I gonna do?” He paused, the reality of it settling on him. Henry thought that the part of him that was ashamed by his conduct had died off, but it was still in there. “No-one else was looking out for us,” he added. The justification seemed pathetic.

“Us?” Jensen seized on the word. “Who else?”

Inwardly, Henry cursed. That single slip had been enough, and Jensen had caught it immediately. He looked at the clock again. Now he was late, and that made things worse.

“You waiting for something, Henry?” Jensen had seen his nervous glances. “Anyone I know?” The other man turned and faced him with a cold, measuring stare. “I know you. You used to work for me, remember? I know you’re not the only one in on this.”

“Hey, that’s not how it is…”

Jensen slowly shook his head. “There’s a reason I came looking for you first. It’s because you’re the weak link. Don’t get me wrong, you did your job at Sarif just fine, but you’re a follower… you always have been. It’s why I always gave you the soft jobs.” He paused to let that sink in. “So tell me who wanted the pass card. Who put you up to it?”

Hearing it stated in such flat, blunt terms pulled all the resistance out of Henry like an exhaled breath. Who the hell am I fooling? he asked himself. I’m just a washed-up mall cop out of his league.

Henry polished off the last licks of his bourbon. “This comes back to me, I’m in the shit,” he muttered. “Wilder’s changed a lot since he went off the chain…”

“Don Wilder?” Jensen took that in. “Huh. Figures it would be him. Always thought he was too good for the job.”

That got a nod from Henry. Wilder had been security pit boss on the day shift at the main Sarif Industries office, and while the guy had the instincts of a hawk, he had the manners of a hyena. The rumor around the locker room was that before working at Sarif, he’d quit a job with the Illinois Department of Corrections just ahead of an investigation that would have seen him fired – but that was all hearsay. Henry had never liked the man, and had always been intimidated by him. Now that truth lodged itself in his thoughts, he found himself talking. “It was Don’s idea. I mean, we were both on the outs and we knew that there was no more money coming from Sarif. And with everything else that was going down, we had nothing in the tank. ‘No lifeline,’ he said.”

Both of them knew about the high-security storage areas in all the Sarif Industries facilities, and while neither man had direct access, they guessed that the content would have to be valuable. And to be honest, Henry had liked the idea of giving David Sarif the finger for leaving his employees to twist in the wind.

“You knew my pass card would get you into those places,” said Jensen, laying it out. “How’d you get around the voice code?”

“Don said he knew someone who could deal with that. Said she had the tech and everything.” He shook his head. “I never met her. Just got paid up front. A finder’s fee.”

“You owed anything?”

Henry shook his head again, afraid to lie out loud. There was still some money coming his way, the last of the cash Don had promised after the thefts were done.

Jensen leaned closer, and his voice dropped to a low register. “Do you have any idea what you opened up for him?”

“I dunno, Don said it was a stock of nu-poz. I didn’t question it!”

“Weapons,” Jensen replied. “You helped him get his hands on military-grade hardware.”

“Oh no.” Henry felt the blood drain from his face. He’d always suspected it could be something like that, but he’d never had the guts to look too hard at things. “You gotta believe me—”

The sharp chime of a vu-phone cut Henry off before he could say anymore, and by reflex he pulled the device from his pocket. The number was unlisted, but he immediately knew who it was. Jensen must have seen the answer on his face, because he reached out and plucked the phone from his hand, triggering the call.

“Where the fuck are you at?” said the familiar voice through the phone’s speaker, all snarls and arrogance. “You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago. You keeping me waiting, asshole?”

Henry managed a lame reply. “Sorry, Don… Something, ah, came up.”

“What did I tell you about names on the phone, stupid?” There was a spitting noise, and when Wilder’s voice returned his tone was sly. “Ah, don’t worry about it. I sent someone to bring you your cut. It’s all good.” Then the line went dead.

“What did he mean by that?” Henry began, looking to Jensen.

But the other man had stood up, stepping away from the bar, his hand slipping into the pocket of his long coat. Henry spun around to see what had alerted Jensen, and there in the tavern’s open doorway were three men in yellow-gold gang colors, all of them grinning, their pupils dark with drug-effect dilation.

“It’s payday,” said one of them, bringing up a drum-fed machine pistol with a wicked, hungry sneer playing across his lips.

* * *

Jensen hadn’t expected to cross paths with the gang-banger called Cali again, but there he was, large as life and twice as ugly, clearly doped up beyond all reason with whatever cocktail of drugs was the choice of the MCBs. It was the only way the man could still be standing. A day or so before, when they faced off at the manufacturing plant, Jensen had left Cali with ruined legs and figured that would be the last he’d see of him. He hadn’t reckoned on the enthusiasm the Motor City Bangers had for elective cybernetic augmentation.

Cali was wearing torn, bloodstained cut-offs that revealed his newest enhancements. From the knees down, both his shattered legs had been replaced by shiny, gold-plated augs that ended in skeletal, claw-like feet. They matched the designs of Cali’s twin cyberarms, and he was grinning like he’d been reborn, his weak flesh replaced with glittering metal.

He came stiffly through the door of the tavern, followed by a gangly kid with a pump-action MAO shotgun and a third ganger carrying a giant, heavy-caliber pistol that was far too big for his skinny frame. All the MCBs drew down as one, and Jensen knew this was not a robbery, not a show of force, but an execution squad.

Jensen shoved Henry away, down toward the bar, launching himself in the other direction as he tore his pistol from the holster beneath his coat. Lightning-fast, Jensen fired three rounds as he dove, and at least one shot clipped the kid with a big semi-automatic. But Cali and the shotgunner were already firing, filling the air inside the bar with hot, screaming lead, and Jensen took multiple hits across his shoulder and upper arm that slammed him off course. Jensen spun and fell across tables and chairs, crashing to the floor among a rain of broken glasses and spilled beer. Pain shocked through the muscle-machine interface in his bones, the ripple effect of the impact over the polycarbonate implants like a kick in the chest. He took a wheezing breath, tasted blood.

“I know you!” Cali was whooping and laughing as he sprayed rounds from the machine pistol across the room, cutting down the other drinkers who were too slow to take cover or flee through the fire exit.

Behind the bar, Jake perished as a shotgun blast blew him back into a rack of liquor bottles. He toppled out of sight in silence, his sightless eyes looking at nothing. The gunman who had ended him hunted for Henry Kellman, who was scrambling desperately across the floor between the legs of the bar stools. The MAO barked again and Jensen saw Henry go down in a bloody heap.

“Done, man, let’s jet!” shouted the punk with the shotgun.

“No!” bellowed Cali, as his weapon ran dry. He ejected the drum mag and let it clatter to the floor, jamming a new load into the ammo port. “Where’s that hairy-faced fucker? I’m gonna smoke him!”

It registered distantly with Jensen that he wasn’t actually the one the MCBs had come to kill, but Cali had no intention of leaving without taking his scalp as a bonus. Jensen lurched forward, coming back to his feet underneath a circular table bolted to the floor. Ripping the table’s central support free, he took it up with him like a battering ram and slammed it into Cali before the ganger could finish reloading. Without stopping, Jensen used the broken table to flatten the shooter against the wall and knock him down. Cali’s gun went spinning away, and Jensen pivoted before the second thug with the shotgun could track to him. Blind-firing once again, he hit the other gang member and sent him staggering away, out on to the street. The kid with the big pistol had already fled without firing a shot.

Jensen went to Henry, who lay face-down in a puddle of blood and cheap Scotch. “Kellman!” he snapped, turning him over. “Can you hear me?”

He was wasting his breath. A ragged gouge cut by a close-range shotgun blast had torn away the right side of Henry’s head, killing him instantly. Whatever he had known about Don Wilder’s part in the break-ins was lost – Murdered to keep him silent, Jensen thought. It didn’t matter that Spector’s Tavern was way outside MCB turf, or that a shooting here might have some serious gangland blowback. Magnet’s crew were only interested in making sure Kellman never talked.

Beside his body, Henry’s vu-phone was smashed beyond recovery. That meant Jensen’s immediate sources of information had now narrowed to just one. Rising to his feet, he strode back to where Cali was struggling to extract himself from a mess of broken chairs and splintered wood. He tried to talk, but Jensen punched him hard enough to knock the ganger to the edge of unconsciousness. Then, grabbing one of Cali’s brand-new metal-clad ankles, Jensen dragged him across the ruined bar and out through the fire exit, into the dimly lit alleyway beyond.

* * *

Cali came to, moaning and coughing, trying and failing to sit up. That was the thing about recent augmentees with new limbs, they instinctively thought the tech would work just the same as their old organic arms or legs, that they would be able to start walking normally from the moment they got off the operating table. Jensen knew from long, bitter experience that it didn’t work that way. No amount of painkillers could change the fact that it hurt like hell and it took months of physical rehab just to learn how to move again. That the ganger had come out looking to make trouble instead of healing up spoke volumes about his bravado and stupidity.

“Fuh…” Cali managed, trying to assemble a curse. “Fuh… yooo.”

Jensen holstered his pistol and listened for the sounds of sirens. Cass Corridor was on the edges of the zones still patrolled by the embattled Detroit Police Department, so there was a chance the cops were on their way. “Pritchard? Monitor the DPD alert frequencies. Warn me if they get close.”

“Will do,” said the hacker over the infolink. “I’m also running down anything I can on the whereabouts of one Donald Wilder, ex-employee of Sarif Industries…” Pritchard had listened in on the whole conversation with poor Henry, but Jensen suspected that Wilder would not be easy to locate. He was too smart to leave a clear trail, and that meant using other means to find him.

Jensen put a boot on Cali’s chest and pressed down, making the gang member choke. “You like the metal, huh?” he asked, nodding toward the signature gold limbs. “I wonder how you’re gonna do without it.”

With a flash of motion, Jensen extended the nanoblade in his forearm and sliced cleanly through the mechanical core of Cali’s right shoulder. In a gush of white processing fluid, the aug broke off and rolled away, the fingers clutching at air. Without pausing, he moved, putting his boot on Cali’s other shoulder. The ganger cried out as Jensen took Cali’s left arm and bent it back the wrong way at the elbow joint. He gave it a savage twist and the bearing gave way.

Jensen tossed the ruined mechanical limb down the alley, then went to work on Cali’s new legs. He stamped through the left knee joint, severing vital myomer muscle feed lines, finally dropping into a crouch and extending the blade again. It made short work of the other leg, and at length Jensen took a step back. Lying there, limbless and powerless, Cali rocked back and forth, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Where’s Wilder?” Jensen demanded. “Tell me now. Otherwise, I’ll leave you here for the cops, the local meatheads… or whatever finds you first. Understand?”

Predictably, Cali’s responses followed a path from threats to refusals to insults, then back to dire warnings of retribution from the MCBs. It was only when Jensen put the nanoblade at the gang member’s throat that he started to bargain and plead with him. And eventually, as the skirl of a police siren sounded close by, he came up with the name of a street across the city in the Ravendale district.

“Got a possible location,” said Pritchard, refining his search with the new information. “An apartment complex, with a residence there registered in the name of Wilder’s ex-wife.”

“Copy that.” Jensen turned his back on Cali and strode away, ignoring the man’s renewed cries for help.

“You’re just going to leave him there?”

“He’ll get the same chance they gave Stacks,” said Jensen, and he kept on walking.

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