[Demons of NC] Chapter 96

The abandoned movie theater near Pacifica wasn’t all that abandoned. An old mulatto guy with a creaky prosthetic arm opened the door for me—for Evelyn—and gestured for me to come in.

The dim, flickering mercury lights gave off real horror movie vibes. I walked down a short staircase into a half-lit hall full of ragged old seats. With the dulled sensations, the whole thing felt almost like a video game. But what really threw me was the near-total lack of smell. In a place like this, you’d expect the stench of decay and mold. The absence triggered a memory—one morning, years ago, when I couldn’t smell shit anymore. Not even rubbing alcohol or pine oil. A few weeks later, they hauled me off to the hospital.

On-screen, muted trailers were rolling for upcoming flicks—Bushido, Dark Passion, Deep Psychosis. The pop culture of 2077 wasn't just braindance and chrome. After all, most folks didn’t want to actually feel what those movies were selling. Being a spectator had its perks. Like not dying.

I—Evelyn—could’ve used a bit more of that safety right about now. Barely three minutes in, I heard heavy boots thudding above. I turned, plastering a charming little smile across Evelyn’s face.

It wasn’t Brigitte.

It was Placide—Brigitte’s pet bulldog. Or by the size of him, more like her personal ox.

The black tank stared me down with pure hatred. Hopefully, they didn’t plan to zero Evelyn right away. At the very least, they’d want to interrogate her. Maybe even torture her for fun.

“Come,” he grunted, his lip curling like he’d just stepped in something.

“Where’s Brigitte? I’ve got a proposal for her.”

“Come,” he growled again, even more sour.

“Alright, alright,” I smirked. “Lead the way, big guy.”

Placide marched me through the theater and out into a rear lot tucked behind some crumbling industrial fencing. Waiting there was a nondescript van. No tags, no markings. The kind of ride people enter with the Voodoo Boys and only leave when it’s time for someone like Masuka to ID the body.

I climbed in without a fuss. The goal was to reach Brigitte.

Inside, I—Evelyn—settled into a seat in the back. On either side sat Haitian gangsters, skin black as oil. I felt like the chick from that meme—woman on a couch, surrounded by dudes. Good thing this body wasn’t mine.

There was a signal jammer in the van. Standard issue. Would’ve worked too, if we hadn’t prepped Evelyn’s hardware to shrug off that kind of cheap trick. Baks definitely earned his forty thousand.

The van pulled out. I stayed quiet, cycling through scripts—cloaking, fast hacking, close-quarters combat. I’d tested the CQC scripts on a dummy earlier. Weird experience. Felt a lot like a game: press attack, and the body executes pre-set combos on its own. Muscle memory—synthetic edition.

“You scared?” one of the gangsters suddenly asked.

“Should I be?”

Kept my tone even. No fear, but no attitude either. Last thing I needed was to trigger their predator instinct and have the party start early.

“You should be, bitch,” Placide muttered.

“I’m not here to talk to you, big guy. I’m here for your momma.”

Placide stared at Evelyn’s face like he was imagining it covered in blood.

“She won’t have much to say. But me and you? We’ll have plenty of time to chat.”

Keep dreaming, asshole. Evelyn fucked around and found out. The Voodoo Boys were next in line.

I wasn’t using voice comms with Lucy, but encrypted telemetry was still flowing. The Boys couldn’t jam that. A thin thread connected me to my crew. We were ready to strike.

There were no windows in the van, aside from the front windshield. Through that, I caught glimpses of dead amusement parks and half-finished megaresorts. Pacifica. A wasteland of stillborn ambition.

Eventually the van slowed and stopped near the coast.

“Out,” Placide barked.

I stepped out before he got handsy. We stood in front of a squat building hidden in the cluttered sprawl near the water. The faded sign over the back entrance read Roland’s Butcher Shop.

Fucking poetic.

A doll, butchered in a butcher shop. Could win awards on the indie film circuit.

The door opened. Inside, cold air and slabs of All Foods hydroponic meat dangled from the ceiling—artery-threaded synthetic flesh that never belonged to real animals.

“I always knew you were stupid,” came a familiar voice with that creole lilt. “But I didn’t think you were this fucking dumb, Evelyn. We thought you were off-world by now. Or dead.”

Maman Brigitte herself stepped into view.

Pleasure to meet you. I don’t think it'll be a long meeting—but it’ll sure be memorable.

I had a neat little plan forming, but first, had to check something.

“Give me a sec,” I said. “Need to scan local signals. You’re on the Watchdogs’ radar—wouldn’t want our little chat to get recorded.”

I activated the scanners in Evelyn’s implants, syncing with my own abilities through the proxy link.

“Scan?” Brigitte sneered. “Shut up, whore. You’re here to answer questions and pray, though I doubt you believe in anything.”

Her bitching got in the way, but I tuned her out. I needed to be sure the local net was clean. Looked isolated enough for now. Later I’d do a full sweep for bugs.

“What if I talk too much?” I asked, plastering a fake-cute smile on Evelyn’s lips. “You gonna have your boy here lop off my head like poor Bug?”

Brigitte's expression shifted. The anger slipped, replaced by suspicion—and a flicker of curiosity.

“What are you talking about?”

“That I’m not as limited in shells as you are.” I triggered the eye-glow, puppet chip style. “Is that clearer?”

“Who are you?”

“Good question. Who am I? A soldier. One of the legions tied to her. The one you tried to contact.”

She stared for a few long seconds.

Then just said: “Come.”

Looks like the fish bit the hook.

“Brigitte—” Placide started.

“Guard the door,” she snapped.

The brute didn’t argue.

She led me into a back office. Closed the blinds herself.

How sweet.

Always nice when the target helps set the stage for their own execution.

Guess this is what vampires feel like when they lure some poor girl into the woods—she spreads out the blanket, thinking it’s for a picnic, not realizing it’s the fucking tablecloth.

“No one’s listening,” Brigitte assured. “So it was you at Konpeki?”

“Exactly.”

Could Lucy help me right now, netrunner to netrunner? No. Our connection was still live, but weak as hell thanks to the isolation layers. Which meant I had to kick things off myself. Time to stall the voodoo momma while prepping the strike.

“Where’s the real biochip with Silverhand?” Brigitte asked.

“It doesn’t exist anymore,” I told the truth—then bent it just a little. “Silverhand’s in cyberspace. If you want to reach Alt, I’m your only shot.”

“She sent you here for Johnny?” Brigitte looked mildly surprised. “Didn’t think she still had such… human traits.”

“Johnny’s just step one,” I replied, scanning her ICE while firing off a message to my crew:

“Move to my coordinates. At least six targets here. I’ll handle one.”

“You’ll need help on this side,” Brigitte said. “And I’m ready to give it. I know the Blackwall will fall one day, and I want to be on the winning side.”

Interesting. Where’d she get that kind of confidence? Some cyber-apocalypse prophet shit, or did she know something the rest of us didn’t? I didn’t ask. I’d find out once I ate Brigitte. But for now, I had to be careful. Her ICE was tough—couldn’t brute-force through it. Needed finesse. Or…

“Wanna meet her?” I asked. “I can make that happen.”

I sent the handshake request. If she accepted, I’d get a backdoor into her system and bypass her defenses. But Brigitte played it smart.

“Not here. We’ll go to Rezo Agwe. From there, we can safely dive deeper.”

I didn’t argue. No point spooking her. Could I take her down physically? Maybe—strike her temple, try to knock her out cold. But the risk was high. Her skull might be reinforced.

“How’d you find us?” she asked.

“Through Parker, of course. Traced her back from Yorinobu. I was pulling the thread from the other side. Thought if I took Evelyn out, I could ruin your op and grab the prize myself.”

“When we pulled a dummy from the mercs instead of the real chip, I thought they were trying to play us. Sell it off. But no amount of interrogation helped. They kept saying the same thing.”

“The two from Konpeki?” I asked.

“Yes. Time to trash that fatra. We need to move. The Watchdogs have been everywhere since Konpeki. We have to be more cautious.”

Huh. That might be why she dodged the trap. The Konpeki shitstorm probably made her more paranoid.

“Move?” I muttered. “Almost done with you.”

I launched amnesia at her.

Cracking her ICE with that script cost me a chunk of my own memory. But I only needed seconds…

When Brigitte came to, she realized we were linked through direct ports.

“What are you doing?!” she snapped.

“Fatra means trash, right? I’m taking out the trash.”

She tried to scream or send an alert, but it was too late. The direct link let me hammer her system directly. Her implants shut down. No more access to her deck. She reached for her gun and tried to break the link, but I had Evelyn’s body lock her arms behind her. Combat scripts executed perfectly. We lost the port link in the scuffle, but by then I’d already chewed through most of her defenses.

“Wait, hold on,” she gasped, giving up the struggle. “I can help you. I want to join you.”

“Then our goals align,” I said with a smirk. “Part of you will join me—your knowledge, your experience, your memories. The rest? Trash. You’ve been evaluated and deemed worthless. Today, you’re ranyon. A filthy rag no one gives a shit about.”

I kept the attack going. Time to consume the voodoo queen.

Re-linked physically, I began tampering with her implants. I didn’t have a virus shard or tranquilizer on hand, but I didn’t want her body wrecked in the process. Luckily, she had excellent netrunner-grade mods—including a full suite for bodily regulation under extreme conditions.

Good. Because shit was about to get extreme.

I used the implants to induce a coma-like state. No twitching, no foaming at the mouth, no pissing herself in that fancy runner suit. Neat and tidy.

I locked the door.

And I feasted.

Another gourmet course. A fuckton of valuable info—runner tactics, Voodoo Boy operations, names, contacts. It would take ages to sift through all the memories, picking out gem after gem.

One stuck out: Brigitte standing over a beaten man, hands tied behind his back.

“I’ll ask one last time,” she said coldly. “Where’s the real biochip? Who did you give it to?”

“For the hundredth time… estimada señora…” the man wheezed. “We didn’t open the container…”

Jackie.

Now I knew. After Konpeki, the Voodoo Boys lured Jackie and his partner into a trap—using fake messages from T-Bug. Brigitte herself impersonated her. Then they nabbed the mercs. The chip turned out to be fake. So they didn’t flatline them right away—kept them for info. Looks like we’ve got a real hostage rescue on our hands, not just a PR stunt with “saving” Evelyn.

But first—the queen’s court.

I walked over to Brigitte’s limp body and grabbed her pistol. No grenades. Shame. I love grenades. They really help reveal a person’s inner world—unless you’ve armored it up.

No alarms yet. Good. Time to start this on my terms.

“The queen’s down. How many out front?” I pinged Lucy.

“Three. Maybe three and a half if you count the size of one of the goons. We’re ready. Say the word and we’ll paint the walls.”

Placide was outside, just like Brigitte ordered. Good little lapdog. Two more inside.

“On my mark,” I replied, placing the pistol in Brigitte’s dead hand.

Got an idea. Time to test it.

I hijacked her implants again. Puppeted her corpse to its feet. Guess that makes her a proper voodoo doll now, huh?

Switched Evelyn to puppet mode. She stayed upright, waiting for commands.

“Does my body… look like a corpse?” I asked through Evelyn.

“There’s a bruise here. Let me fix that…”

She gently wiped Brigitte’s face with a damp cloth she found on the desk.

“Let’s go,” I said. “And hey—command directive six FZ, five-minute range, countdown from seven.”

That would wipe five minutes of memory from Evelyn’s chip before and after the command. Didn’t need her telling my crew I was pulling cyber-necromancer shit.

Brigitte the meat puppet opened the door.

We stepped back into the cold room where two black gangers were waiting.

“We ready to roll, Maman?” one of them asked.

Didn’t answer.

My voice would sound off to them.

Instead, I dropped an optic reboot script on both and opened fire the second it triggered.

At the same time, I pinged the squad to take out the trio outside.

My aim was a little off—no tactile feedback in a puppet hand. Recoil threw me. Brigitte’s arms weren’t exactly benching chrome. But at point blank I still tagged one of them three times in the chest.

Then Evelyn moved.

Maybe Judy’s scripts didn’t make her a supersoldier, but she had just enough grace to slip a monowire loop over the blinded Voodoo Boy’s neck. He fired a few rounds in a panic before she shredded his throat.

Fake meat got a splash of the real blood.

I calmly finished off my “client” and, as a passenger, returned to Parker’s body. Brigitte collapsed to the floor. Gunfire echoed from outside. Seemed like it was over—until the cold room doors slammed open again.

It was Placide.

His face was covered in blood. Part of his head looked caved in from a high-caliber round. Jesus, what kind of skull does this guy have to tank that? Kinda makes me wanna look into what the hell he’s got in there—might install it myself.

“Slut!” the half-dead brute growled, raising his shotgun.

The shot boomed, but Evelyn dodged to the side. Puppet chip and combat scripts kicked in—Kereznikov lit up. I was already throwing everything I had at him: optic reboot, implant malfunction, synapse meltdown. Just a matter of whether he’d take her out before the scripts kicked in.

Instead of running, the doll charged straight into melee.

Another blast.

The monowire flashed. Like something out of a movie, Evelyn managed to wrap the weapon’s barrel with the filament and yank it off-target at the last second. Slick—but holy fuck, risky as hell. No doubt Judy pulled that move from some cheesy action flick.

Placide yanked the shotgun back, winding up to cave in her head with the stock—but my scripts started firing one by one. Just to be sure, I layered on an overload.

One second later, the half-dead bastard dropped, twitching and blowing blood bubbles.

“Finish him,” I ordered Evelyn.

She raised one leg high—came down with a brutal stomp straight from above, snapped the big man’s neck, and shattered her own heel in the process. Pulled a ligament in her right leg too, even with all the recent tuning. Fuckin’ movie kung fu… dumb as shit, but damn, does it look good.

Alright. Time to hop back into my own body and head out for the Voodoo Boys’ main den. Thanks to Brigitte’s memories, I now knew exactly where they were holed up.