Chapter 1: The Red Room

The first man’s head cracked like an egg-shell as she slammed it against the filthy wall of an abandoned apartment complex. 

The distant, loud thump of music covered her approach behind the second man, whose neck she snapped with one hand, sending him crumpling to a floor covered in trash, needles, and inhalers. 

They were part of Bodycount’s crew, a street gang known as The Dregs -- she could tell who they were by the tattoos that covered their shirtless bodies and the blank, metallic visors that covered their eyes.

Vamp stepped over the twitching bodies; a tall, lithe, powerfully built Black woman dressed in black, the collar of her heavy leather jacket folded up high around her beautiful, scarred face. High-top fade. Black lipstick. Veve tattoos. Red eyes in a haze of black eyeshadow. She liked to smile big before killing, revealing a pair of gold-capped fangs.

She could feel the sagging stairway’s Gothic old timber creak under her boots as she climbed slowly, the moldy, damp carpet and music covered the noise. Before she reached the first landing, she used a hand held mirror to peer around the corner leading up to the next floor -- she spotted a camera perched high up in the corner of the ceiling.

“Got a cam. Need a hack,” she said low, her neuroport’s audio node filtering out the loud, dull atmosphere.

“Yeah. Gonna need a real look at it. Can you poke your head around the corner?” said a voice in her head named Gonzo.

“Lemme try,” she before slowly, very slowly, angling her head around the corner, one eye barely clearing the wooden banisters as she looked up the second flight up stairs, pinpointing the camera angled at her. 

“Got it. Hold it there,” he said. 

In the upper corner of her vision was Gonzo’s profile icon, a pewter thimble from the Monolopy game - next to his icon, a loading bar appeared as his program remote loaded into her neuroport, then using it  and her ocular cyberware, took control of the camera, whose angle now drooped towards the floor like an admonished guard dog. Through the camera, he slid into the building’s subNET.

“Cam’s down, you can move forward. Looks like their subNET has lots of goodies for us, but it’s gonna take a while for me to cut through their ICE. Hope you don’t need anything else from me.”

“Movin’ on up,” she said as she shook skull fragments from her gloved hands.

The next floor’s hallway was bathed in red light from a flickering sign that read “The Red Room”, positioned over a closed metal door at the far end.

Vamp clenched her jaw, straightened, and began to approach the door. When she reached the heavy, iron-wrought door lined with rusty latches. It swung open to her pull. 

Idiot forgot to lock it.

A sickly yellow light swayed from the small, filthy  room’s high ceiling. A middle-aged man, naked save for garters holding up tall socks and  unbuttoned shirt soggy with sweat. He loomed over a young Black boy strapped to a chair,  his arms were tied behind his back with thin wires that bit into his tiny wrists as. His head lolled to the side, eyes dull and senseless.  

The man held a knife in his hand, gleaming in the room’s light. He looked annoyed.

“Uhh…I’m still in session! I didn’t even get started! I have…” he said as he checked his expensive watch, “...like two more hours!”

Vamp smiled big before throwing the man to ground then kicking the knife from his hands in one smooth motion. The man’s eyes went wide.

She went to work on him with her hands; hands replaced with cybernetic combat models a long time ago. The man’s screams were barely audible over the music’s heartbeat. Vamp tried to not relish the satisfaction of brutalizing a monster, but she did.

She undid his bindings around his wrists, with a quick yank and the boy fell into her arms, result of the drugs coursing through his veins.

Using a mental command via her neuroport, she called Gonzo. 

“Yeah?”

“Got a live one. Heading out. Get ready.”

Gonzo was on the street below, waiting in the van.

“Wait. You find anything else?”

“He’s about eight or nine. They drugged him, I don’t know with what.”

“We’ll take care of him, don’t worry. But, did you find anything? Data-shards? Intel? Cash?”

In her exaltation of violence, she destroyed his neuroport. Still holding on to the child, she knelt down to sift through the man’s ruin, plucking a money clip and a few black rectangular chips.“He’s got some shit. Some cred and a few shards,” Vamp said.

“Okay, better than nothing. Tapped into the local CorpSec feeds - they’re on their way. Shake, rattle and roll, kiddo!”

“Moving now.”

****

For the past few months, Vamp and Gonzo had been working her way up the chain of a syndicate of human traffickers who targeted children and young women in District 13. She was given the name of a man, tracked him down, then beat them to death. She stripped whatever she could find from the predator-clients or their suppliers; data shards, cred sticks, weapons, armor, gear, and then met back up with“Gonzo”; an old Media whose best days were far behind him. Gonzo went over the data, traced locations, and used his contacts to help Vamp find her next target.

The duo had taken a secret refuge on the city-island’s industrial sprawl, The Foundry, where the Trade Gangs had waged war over territory and corporate contracts -- in Combine territory, their leader, Han, had strung up the bodies of four rival Trade Gangers who had dared to invade.  Fear of the coming gang war kept most people away from the area -- that and the smog, which was so thick and constant that you had to wear an air-mask and goggles.

A week had passed since the Red Room. 

The large shutter door to a dark warehouse shut behind Vamp rumbled in on her motorcycle, parking next to Gonzo’s beat up old van. Part of a larger factory complex that was occupied by The Commonworks, Vamp and Gonzo’s little corner was just a large storage room secured by cameras, a few hidden turrets, and a collection of trip-sensors. On top of it all, the Commonwork’s regular patrols made it so even corporate forces had a hard time moving around the area. 

Gonzo was at his “perch”, surrounded by monitors that cast the only illumination in the cavernous room. He was a small, thin, middle aged White man dressed in a frumpy old suit too big for him, tie lazily looped around his neck, his craggy face was thin and jagged like a splintered stake. A pair of brilliant light blue eyes blazed from behind spectacles.  “How's the boy?” he asked, appraising Vamp as she approached. 

“Still at Maddox Tower Medical. Doc says he’s still in a coma from the drugs they used on him. No socials or ID. Refugees said his parents probably died, ”she took a seat next to Gonzo.

“Fuck,” Gonzo winced.

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence. 

“If anything changes, she said doc would let me know,” Vamp felt that anger-grief that usually came after her rescue ops; this time it was coming on fast like an out of control freight train, barreling up from deep within where she stuffed it all down. She secretly hated finding the victims of trafficking because she saw the aftermath; their shivering, vacant stares, the wild anger and the shrieking nights -- they often never got better; perpetually locked in hell. She felt useless and she could feel that rage begin to smolder, like sizzling embers on a forest floor. Like a practiced forest firefighter working a blaze, Gonzo went straight to the source of that anger - her grief. He took her hand.

“Hey. You got him outa there, okay. You did good. You…ow!”  Vamp had squeezed a little too hard.

“Shit, sorry,” Vamp blinked back hot tears

“ ‘Strong like bull!’ ” he said in his cartoon Russian accent, chuckling as he rubbed his slightly crushed fingers.

“What is that from? You keep saying that,” Vamp said, sniffling a bit as she wiped away a hot tear. Stupid Gonzo always knew how to make her chuckle at his stupid Dad Jokes, she thought to herself.

“Old cartoon. Let’s go over what we got so far,” he said, turning to the large monitor behind him. He fished a Morley brand cigarette from his jacket and lit it, filling the space with smoke, the glow of the monitors taking on a dream-like haze. “First up; what did I find in the Red Room’s subNET? It’s all encrypted, but I have programs working on them right now. Might be a few days. Not to worry though, because you found us some good stuff,” he pushed off from the desk in his chair, rolling across the floor to a table covered in tools and tiny bits of tech pulled out from various computers and electronics. He fished out the two black rectangles, the credit sticks full of crypto-currency, that Vamp had found off the man she killed in the Red Room.

“Those two cred sticks had enough to pay Han our “rent” and a little more; which is right on time because we’re gonna need to get you a dress. Something sexy, for the club,”

“What the fuck, Gonzo?” she asked flatly.

He rolled back to his Perch.

“The shard you found had enough data for me to trace a signal. I ID’d said signal and…” with a few key strokes he brought up the profile of a handsome young man on the large screen. Corporate, or ex Corporate. White. Thirties.

“Sean Glassman, former BioDyne executive turned middle-man for hire; works as a go-between for the Corporates and the underworld. Did some more digging; this guy runs his “office” out of a night club in Cheap Side called Club Vertical,"

“Wait, Vertical? I think I remember you saying something about some missing girls linked to that club?”

“Yeah, and now we know why; Glassman got recruited by Bodycount not too long ago. He lures refugee girls to the club, promises them a career as an influencer or singer or whatever, then to a motel where he drugs them and hands them over to Bodycount’s syndicate. We get Glassman, we get a shot at Bodycount. We get Bodycount, we get access to the whole damn network.”

“And justice for Denise,” Vamp promised.

“ ‘And justice for Denise’. But first, shopping,” Gonzo handed over one of the credit chips. 

“Don’t kill the cred on this chip. Please.”

She smiled nice and big.

****

Vamp had raised herself in the streets of Old Detroit, a city that had seen various rises and falls through the years. When she left, it was on one of its Falls, however, recently she heard that the city was coming back. It was a city that always came back no matter how many times it got knocked down, which he held as a source of pride. She couldn’t help but compare Detroit to District 13, noting the differences. 

Detroit had a soul and a warmth that glowed dimly under the overgrown lots and empty, sagging buildings; you could see the Better Yesterday and the hope it brought. District 13 didn’t have any of that old charm - it was a factory made city, floating out in the middle of the Pacific in international waters, its street’s hard corners once fresh from the printing mold now blasted to hell and back. The place looked like some kid’s new action figure playset, fresh out of the box,  now totally destroyed. It was a sad place that never got a chance, now propped up by corporate interests trying to breathe new life into the city’s corpse.

However, the Jade Market was different. It had something. That thing that Detroit has.

 Especially at night.

Music from a hundred different countries clashed and echoed over the open air market, which was made entirely of green shipping containers, stacked three high in some places, connected by a web of makeshift bridges and colorful lanterns. Neon signs buzzed through the haze of smog, reflecting in the pools of rain water on the ground. People from all corners of the world shopped here, merchants hawking their wares in German, Mandarin, Urdu, Yoruba, Haitian. The smell of sharp spices and cooking meat rolled over the sulfuric stench belching from The Foundry. It reminded her of Detroit’s Eastern Market.

She picked her way through the teeming crowds, clutching on to her shopping bags. Gonzo would be pissed, but she could tell the normally taciturn and cantankerous old journalist had a soft spot for her, especially since she was helping him with his big story on the corporate connections to trafficking rings. She was making his career!

Finally, she reached her destination, right in the middle of the bustling market; a hulking war machine from the previous Corporate Conflict, retrofitted into a food cart that served shawarma. The doors to its loading bays were swung open, supporting a massive tarp hung over the small eating area, and flies zapped themselves on the blinking neon sign that read “Shawarma Tank”. Kids played on the tank’s rusted cannon.

Zahid smiled as she walked him, the order window between massive treads of the tank. “Our ‘Dark Angel’ has cometh! How are you, Beauty?” his grizzled old face broke into a handsome grin.

Zahid was also from Old Detroit, which in earlier days was home to the largest concentration of Middle Eastern peoples in the United States. Whenever Vamp visited Zahid’s tank, they talked about their shared home city, their old lives and loves until the morning, often sipping Qahwa, his own special brew he kept for his VIPs. 

Invariably, Denise would come up.

“You can’t keep blaming yourself, child,” he’d say, every time in some form or another, but always with a saintly patience.

“I know,” she’d say, always the same way while looking down at the ground. 

She should have never let her little sister go. She should have paid more attention. She should’ve told her sister “no”. When Denise went missing, Vamp went to find her, eventually landing on the name Trent Eades, a high level executive at OmniTek Corporation who had done terrible things to Denise before killing her. 

When Vamp had gotten her hands on Eades, she smiled that smile of hers as she did terrible things right back to him.

Eades was part of a ring of  rich and powerful predators who preyed on young girls from poor communities, often communities of color. Online, commenters blamed the victims mercilessly while the news wouldn’t even bother with a missing Asian, Black or Latina girl, leaving these rich predators unpunished. Vamp didn’t want just a few sick predators; she wanted the whole club and the corporations that protected them. 

She wanted them all

Gonzo had traced one of the lead traffickers to District 13, a war criminal from the recent Corporate Conflict who earned the nickname “Bodycount” for recording his horrific crimes and, after the war,  selling them to build his empire. 

Vamp looked down the gentle slope of the Jade Market as it descended towards the docks below, noting the low, long honk of arriving cargo ships. It was a grey morning.

A little message icon popped up in the corner with Gonzo’s icon. 

“Glassman’s gonna be at the club tonight. Hope you got something to wear.”