Rima's Run

Rima crouched in the shadows of an old patrol outpost off the coast, where rust bloomed like a malevolent fungus. A biting wind whipped around like a mad thing, carrying the metallic tang of brine and something both sickly sweet and faintly putrid. Her lungs, patched with genetically engineered coral grown in the black market biolabs of the castle-arcology's under-wards, burned with each breath. The air was diseased, thick with the runoff of forgotten war experiments and the exhalations of mutated entities that scuttled in the perpetual twilight.

She clutched the worn leather satchel containing her precious cargo—a vial of luminescent ichor harvested from a gloomworm, a blacklight parasite the size of a small vehicle only visible on nights when the moon was full and thrived in the festering inland forests just outside the arcology. Under edict of the Emperor's government, the fluid was forbidden—an aberration—as were those with mutations and certain "monstrous" bio and cybernetic modifications. For what the ichor represented, the trouble was worth it.

Rima's eyes, one a natural brown, the other a shimmering, insectile facet grafted from a deep-sea creature, scanned the entrance to the subterranean levels before her. She'd swum nearly a quarter of a kilometer across the arcology's infested outer moat, scaled the protective wall, and was now situated just twelve levels above her client. A mere twelve. And all of them belonging to the Bonejackers, a gang that controlled the flow of illegal bioware and thrived on the city's suffering. She could go around, but that meant a possible run-in with the Emperor's Doshin Vigilance Corps, an anti-mutant activity arm of the government police. Not that Bonejackers were pushovers, but, if caught with the ichor, the Corps would dissolve her alive and serve her as soup for the needy in a public execution. With the Bonejackers... well, chances weren't much better, but she'd take them over becoming soup du jour.

#

Down five levels beneath the twinkling gleam of the regime, graffiti sigils, scrawled in throbbing molds, marked the edges of Bonejacker territory—skeletal figures swaddled in genegineered flesh and embedded tech. Moments before the receptors in her facet caught skulking movement, the reek of gangland olfactory profiles hit her like a shockwave. She fought down the reflex to gag. Weaponized identity. Rima had been skirting the edges of Bonejacker territory to the best of her ability, but knew the gang would eventually figure out they had an invading body and attempt to expunge.

"Not a native denizen of these deeps, are you, little scavenger?" A voice rasped from the gloom of a shuttered neighborhood arcade covered in dust and desperation. Overhead light sources stuttered in nervous fear, briefly illuminating a stray horde-crab the size of a small dog as it skittered up and over the wall of a vidya shop, its stalk-mounted human eyes tracking the position of the approaching figures as it sought safety.

Two figures emerged, their bodies warped and augmented with crude bioware. The boi boasted razor-sharp bone spurs grafted to his knuckles and a face obscured by a pulsating mass of explosive acid pustules. And the gurl, gave Rima an ear-to-ear, lipless smile crowded with far too many piranha teeth. Bonejackers.

Rima's heart hammered against her coral-laced lungs. No doubt the gangers could smell the gloomworm ichor on her. It was a natural mutagenic, amplifying the user's abilities—if it didn't kill them outright.

"Just passing through," Rima lied, her voice tight. "I've got a sample for the Mitsuhashi labs," hoping namedropping the pharma with ties to the imperial family would give them pause.

"Mitsuhashi has no labs below Level 3, and they're all directly under the castle." The Bonejacker gurl guffawed loudly, puffing through the shambles she called a mouth. "You lie like fresh fish on ice awaiting the cutting board."

Rima shrugged, keeping her expression neutral. There was no reason to intentionally piss them off.

"Hand it over, and we'll let you leave... mostly intact." Boil Head hissed as a trickle of thick liquid oozed from one of the modded sores, hitting the ground with a sizzle.

"Tantalizing thought," Rima mused. But she'd spent four days in the deadly forest evading wild virals and creatures that would swallow her whole and shit her out half-dead, only to do it again. And again. And again. Slowly milking the life out of her while ensuring she had just enough oxygen to stay alive in its gut, but not enough strength to escape. Rolling over wasn't in the dice. She shook her head.

The two lunged.

Rima's enhanced reflexes allowed her to sidestep the attack, the bone spurs ripping through her already threadbare coat. In a swift counterattack, she deployed the taser hidden up her sleeve, its prongs tipped with deep-sea jellyfish neurotoxin. The boi convulsed and dropped, tiny acid eruptions repeatedly spurting from his pustules.

The gurl shrieked, her teeth gleaming brightly as she activated their sawing mechanism. She dove at the Rima who unleashed a viscous kick to the ganger's gut only to find it was reinforced with armadillo plating. Pulling Rima to her, Lady Teeth opened wide to give Rima a kiss of death.

Rima shifted and threw the ganger over her shoulder but not before the woman took a part of Rima's right ear off. With a curse, the scavenger bolted, weaving through the labyrinthine alleys, a skittering pursuit on her ass like an itch that wouldn't subside. The under-ward of the castle-arcology itself seemed to conspire against her, its decaying bio- and nanometal structures shifting and groaning, stretching to box her in. She could feel the insidious influence of Bonejacker modification at the deepest structural levels.

Slamming into a dead end of a crumbling wall, Rima spun around to meet her pursuer. The remaining Bonejacker advanced slowly, her face a mask of rage, her teeth a blur.

"Nowhere left to run," her voice a wet gurgle as jets of water cooled the screaming metal inside the slash.

Rima felt she had little choice. Reaching into her satchel, she pulled a vial of neon sky-blue liquid and held it out to the ganger. "You want it?"

The Bonejacker's eyes gleamed and she began to convulse with orgasmic glee. "Yeaahssh..." Her hand reaching out to take it.

Rima scrambled up the wall and whipped the vial down where it smashed at the feet of Lady Teeth. "It's yours."

The gurl recoiled in surprise and anger. "Bitch! I'll eat—"

Bio-mechanical tendrils rose from the floor in a tight helix to engulf and subdue her before she could finish.

Rima smirked, held her hand to the bloodied remnant of her ear for a moment, and then disappeared deeper into the ward.

#

"Do you think it'll work?" Rima stared at the waifish figures partially hidden behind the curtains of the Buddhist nunnery safe haven. Their sickly frames already showing signs of the Rot, a plague mutating people into grotesque, mindless husks.

Sister Ueshima smiled. "We can extract and process an agent to counter the affliction."

Her companion, Sister Nomura bowed, a small child at her skirt already showing the dusty chitinous patches of flesh. "We are indebted to you."

Then it had been worth it. Rima returned the bow, her ear now cleaned and bandaged under the expert care of the biotech splicer nuns. And she would venture into the forests time and again to retrieve more. However much was needed.