We’re getting close to the end. If this story is new to you, why not start at the beginning? Tarmac Bourbon was how she’d left it, minus Ranger Rusty on the door. Delilah figured him for needing time in the chair too. Those repairs wouldn’t come cheap, but that was life in the syndicates. The air car disgorged Delilah, Scott, and Lily onto wet asphalt, rising into the sky in a roar of turbines and a spray of driven rain. Delilah caught Sampson’s eyes as the door shut between them, hope lost, gone, like it had never been. They’d be taking him to a reprogramming facility. Reed would connect a hard line and hack his link storage. Extract his secrets. It felt like too big a thing to worry about. Beer was easier to focus on. She stepped into Tarmac Read More …

If you and Delilah haven’t met, go introduce yourself. Who was already on the move, trying to get a little cover. They’d made it to a marble statue near the entrance. She would have shrugged in a more relaxed situation — just because you were handed a coilgun didn’t mean you knew what it could do. These mercs seemed to have no idea. She took another breath in, then squeezed the coilgun’s trigger for two and a half seconds. Over fifty rounds punctured the walls of the house, chattering into the statue, shedding marble like big chunks of hail. Her EM emitter was still raining confusion to the mercs outside, and the bullets delivered judgement that the EM couldn’t. The merc’s body dissolved on her overlay, wireframe distributing into a wider area. Good effect on target. The third merc hadn’t Read More …

If this is your first encounter with Delilah, you should introduce yourself from the beginning. A year. A little longer than Oliver. But not long enough to explain the syndicates’ war with Sampson. “You’ve been a player for a lot longer than that.” “No human deserves to live at another’s feet.” The chair whined as it turned Sampson to follow her movements, the room’s sound system speaking for him. Delilah wondered what his real voice had been like. Whether it had been this melodious. Whether he’d been a dancer, or a fighter, or just a walker, trying to get by, before his body was taken from him. “They hammered me into this chair because they preyed on my pride, Delilah. I was bearding the lion in its den long before Reed’s current interest. They’re just the latest to take it personally. Read More …

If Delilah is new to you, start at the beginning. “Maybe you’re crazy,” she said, not disagreeing. “My cheese is you, Delilah Griffiths. Have you heard of Omo’s Island Adventure?” The fuck. Delilah found a gap in the wall of servers, stepping between them. More servers, rows and rows. Her overlay started building a map. Her optics were having trouble piercing the surrounding racks, too much EM interference, so she’d need to do this the old fashioned way: one step at a time. “No,” she said. “Is it how you got to Ollie?” There was a pause, and she used the time to jog down one wall made of servers. Sampson’s voice was muted when he spoke. “Oliver came to me, Delilah.” “Bullshit. You hacked his link and left him a cripple. He can’t even piss by himself!” She shouted at Read More …

If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. Delilah crushed that line of thinking, tossing it out of her mind and over the bridge of thought to drown like an unwanted sack of puppies in the dark of her subconscious. Her brother Oliver — her Ollie — was one of these … cripples. The thought wouldn’t go away, now she was seeing so many at once. A hundred or more people, racked and stacked like organic wares at a chop shop, wheelchairs and exosuits in equal numbers. They all shared the same jerky movements, tainted meat everywhere Delilah looked. A hundred fucking cripples at a mad king’s birthday party. The people he’d mutilated, celebrating with him. Sampson was sick, and he would die tonight. Hell with the bonus. The car hissed to a halt, the door clunking open with confidence. Delilah put a Read More …