Chromed: Delilah: Future Forfeit City Stories, #2

By Richard Parry

It's 2150AD. Samson will pay.
Delilah Griffiths is ex-Metatech. She's got the best covert ops bionics money can buy. None of that helped brother Ollie when the link virus crippled him. Smart money says the terrorist hacker Samson is behind it, using his link-jacking skills to destroy lives. Reed Interactive's bounty on Samson's head is Delilah's dream job.
When Delilah puts the muzzle of her weapon to Samson's head, he tells her a story too perfect to be true. It's a story too monstrous to be a lie. Syndicates are creating mind-control technology. Killing Samson could give Delilah the vengeance she craves, but let the syndicates get away with everything.
Faced with the choice between darkness and salvation, Delilah holds the future of millions in her hands.
Megacorps. Cyborgs. AI. Gene-spliced monsters. Syndicate enforcers. Off-grid illegals. Supersoldiers. Rock music. Violence. Einstein-Rosen bridges. Liquor. Enhanced reflexes. Power armor and energy weapons. Full body replacements. Swearing. Mind control. Telekenetics. G-Men. Drugs. Neural links. Orbital cannons. THIS IS CYBERPUNK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mondegreen
• Release date: Nov 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995114814

Book preview

Chromed: Delilah

Chromed: Delilah

A Cyberpunk Contingency Story

Richard Parry

Mondegreen

Contents

Stay Primed

The Job Interview

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

About the Author

Also by Richard Parry

Glossary

Acknowledgments

EXCERPT: CHROMED: MELTDOWN

Bodyshopping

Chapter One

CHROMED: DELILAH copyright © 2018 Richard Parry.

Cover design copyright © 2018 Vivid Covers.

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All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9951148-1-4

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Second printing.

Future Forfeit Reading Order

No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. Piracy, much as it sounds like a cool thing done at sea with a lot of, Me hearties! commentary, is a dick move. It gives nothing back to the people who made this book, so don’t do it. Support original works: purchase only authorized editions.

While we’re here, what you’re holding is a work of fiction created by a professional liar. It is not done in an edgy documentary style with recovered footage. Pretty much everything in here was made up by the author so you could enjoy a story about the world being saved through action scenes and witty dialog. No people were used as templates, serial numbers filed off for anonymity. Any resemblance to humans you know (alive) or have known (dead) is coincidental.

Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

Stay Primed

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https://www.mondegreen.co/get-on-the-list/

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You can find out more about him at:

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For OG Dee.

The Job Interview

Delilah didn’t like this one bit.

It wasn’t the bar itself. Tarmac Bourbon was typical of its kind: a place that served overpriced cocktails to sararimen wanting to make a statement about their expense limits. It had the mood lighting. It had the plush might-just-be-real-leather seats, couches and chairs and privacy booths arrayed around the interior. Her link was still up, overlay on just fine. No one had dropped an EMP on the place to shut people like her down, although that would have been extreme for an interview. It wasn’t even the doorman, a big guy who packed enough metal under his skin to be closer to an industrial loader than a person. Her overlay picked out his mods, enhanced strength, sub-dermal armor, EM shielding, the works. It might seem a lot for a bar in the central business district of Seattle until you figured the corporate takeover incentives. The Syndicate Compact wasn’t for shit anymore, and everyone was fair game.

She wasn’t worried about the doorman. He was just insurance, a visible measure of Tarmac Bourbon’s dedication to customer safety. What she was worried about was that the doorman didn’t have much to do. Not tonight. Not standing tall outside this bar with expensive drinks. He stood in the rain, looking like his field of fucks on the weather was barren, doing nothing. Because there was no one to do anything for, or to, or whatever. There was no one here at all. The street was empty, aside from what might have been a cat but was probably a rat, emboldened by the lack of the usual glut of foot traffic. This street should have been wall-to-wall with sweaty people getting angry at each other in the seething humidity brought by the rain. There should have been an air car or two, a bunch of street vehicles, and more people than you could kill with a bandolier full of grenades. There was none of that. The doorman. The rat. The rain. That was it.

Reed wanted this to go smooth. Reed didn’t want interruptions.

What Reed wanted, Reed often got, or they did before the ass fell out of their company. That kind of stock price drop drove a set of, in Delilah’s view, reactionary behaviors. As she let the door click closed behind her, cool air conditioning welcoming her like a forgotten lover, she took in the two people seated in the middle of the bar. A man and a woman, under normal circumstances just the kind of people this bar was for: suits, slicked-back hair, faces clinic-perfect. No privacy booth, because there were only a few people in here. There was the barman, tall guy with a decent waistcoat and a nice smile, which meant he was black ops all the way to his perfect teeth. There was a woman lounging against the bar, with the look of someone who’d just had her conversation interrupted, a martini glass in front of her, olive still intact. At the back, red neon advertising where a cavalier drinker might relieve their bladder, was another huge man like the bouncer out front. Delilah let her optics scan the room, overlay giving her the low-down. It was what she expected: everyone in here was modded. The two suits had the least metal under the skin; while they weren’t as clean as they’d been on their incept date, their link architecture and optics said non-combatants. The barman, on the other hand, was riddled with metal. Not as much as the doorman, but enough to show he wouldn’t need to call outside help to deal with a customer too stupid to know when to stop sucking back Mai Tais. The woman still working on her cocktail olive was about the same, which suggested they were a matched black-ops pair. Good to know. The man bathed in red light at the back was like the doorman: a machine with a human brain still giving instructions to circuits doing all the hard work.

One of the suits — the man — cleared his throat. Miss Griffiths?

Are you asking that because you’re not sure, or are you being polite? Delilah took off her coat, shaking water onto the polished wood floor. Under the coat she wore laminar body armor, a sidearm at her hip. She hadn’t worn heels and a dress because she hadn’t expected it to be that kind of night.

Scott’s being polite, said the woman suit. We know who you are.

Delilah’s overlay flickered as her link updated her with information on the two of them. Fantastic, she said. She looked at the bartender. Whiskey sour. He nodded, starting on the drink while she walked to the two suits. She held out a hand. Since we’re being polite. I’m Delilah Griffiths. She was waiting to see which suit would take her hand first because that would be the one in charge.

The woman reached first. A pleasure. I’m Lily Clarke. This, she released Delilah’s hand, gesturing to her companion, is Scott Reynolds.

Delilah