Neon Rogue: Dawn Moriti, #2

By I.O. Adler

In the harsh streets of New Pacific, spy-for-hire Dawn Moriti thinks she's hit the jackpot with her latest data heist.

 

But when she shows up to the handoff, she walks into an ambush that leaves her client dead and paints her as the killer.

 

Now a target of the police and a shadowy group of mercenaries, Dawn must navigate the shadows of the city to clear her name.

 

Her only allies? A city detective who might be interested in turning Dawn over for the bounty and her sister Eve, a genetically enhanced soldier on the outs with her unit.

 

Dawn now races against time to unravel the truth behind the betrayal before the assassins find her first.

 

Book two in the Dawn Moriti series, Neon Rogue is a gripping cyberpunk novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. With a thrilling mystery, high stakes, and unforgettable characters, this is a book you won't want to put down.

 

Jump into the mystery today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucas Ross Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223736776

Book preview

Chapter One

Acredit ping in Dawn Moriti’s eye implant caused her to swerve as she squeezed the brakes to her motorcycle. A driverless taxi shot past her, horn blaring. She sped up slowly and cut across two lanes to make a turn off the boulevard. A three-dimensional ad for a hologram adventure experience almost obscured the intersection ahead.

Long-necked dinosaurs, a T-Rex, and lizard people with flaring eyes and brandishing glass-tipped spears threatened to lunge at her.

No traffic ahead as she pulled past the dazzling display.

A second ad flash for Jilly-Jolly Breakfast Treats. Healthy kids, all smiles, ready to crush the day while chowing down on energy bars that came in fifteen flavors, all with extra protein.

A quick scan confirmed it. The client had paid her early with the full amount.

What kind of person in New Pacific pays before the final delivery of a product?

Someone who’s naïve or stupid, she thought. Or it was a confidence ploy to get her to lower her guard and she was walking into a trap. Had the client dug into her past and called the cops?

Doubtful. Nick Fletcher wanted the information she had stolen. The credits in her account were real and she couldn’t help but grin.

Enough cash to pay off her new bike. Maybe even cover niggling things like rent and food.

Her ride was a lean, sleek electric motorcycle with a monster power plant, top-notch handling, and violet trim. She had the engine’s sound emitter set to a low purr. The dynamic suspension made her feel as if she were flying, even at the highest speeds. And the gyroscopic auto-balance system and collision detection allowed her to manage her apps.

She blinked away the message. The map display on her eyeball HUD confirmed she was where she needed to be.

New Pacific’s storm drain system, the wide canals that directed the incessant flow of rainwater into the ocean. The surface streets cut through the western industrial beige zone. Private factories, municipal power plants, salvage operations, scrappers, and anything the central Commonwealth and corporate zones considered too loud, ugly, or smelly.

The perfect place for a clandestine meet if you watched too many serials.

This should have been a virtual handoff and payout and she’d be done with it. But Nick Fletcher, CEO of Natura Unlimited, wanted to meet in person.

It would be their second face-to-face, the first being when he hired her after dropping a message into her Jill Foster ID’s mailbox. Jill was an ID she had abandoned, like most of her old aliases. But the handle had New Pacific Commonwealth Services credentials and it hadn’t been purged during their last security sweep.

Her dark web daemon sent Nick Fletcher to her virtual dead drop following his request for an investigator. According to him, it was for a sensitive matter.

His job sounded simple enough, his accounts appeared solvent, and Dawn sensed the possibility he might be squeezed out of a few extra credits after the job was complete to keep his investigation confidential.

What’s a little blackmail when you’re dealing with a soulless corpo with a fat e-wallet?

She had met with him after confirming she wasn’t waltzing into a trap. He didn’t object when she instructed him where to go, running him around the city for an hour before directing him to meet her at a shawarma shop inside a gray zone.

No cameras, no bugs, a neutral zone maintained by the assorted corporate spies and private operators running amok in New Pacific.

The storm drain spot was another gray zone. Three green pings from her mechanical roaches meant the canal was clear. Even now, they waited for their pickup. Her best bots and she didn’t want to lose them.

Her prior experience with corporate clients of a certain rank led her to expect the usual paranoid, arrogant, snotty psychopath used to getting their way. At least a pair of bodyguards, an armored limo, bullet-proof suit, and a minimum of three panic buttons to call down an airstrike in case of trouble were the least Dawn expected.

At their first meet, Nick Fletcher had come alone on the B-district bus. Rumpled suit, tousled hair damp with rain, and dimples. He shook her hand and offered to pay for lunch.

Not hungry. What’s the job?

After hearing the pitch, she fought to keep her expression neutral. But it was something she might have done for free. Except she had bills and a bike to replace after her brother Pascal had sold her last one.

Natura Unlimited wanted information on Reilly-Bigg Corp’s farming operations. Anything and everything they might hide from shareholders and Commonwealth regulators. Especially their soil, water, and waste practices.

Instead of negotiating for a higher wage, she agreed to the job.

Reilly-Bigg Corporation had almost murdered her brother. He had been working at a remote Commonwealth research station when Reilly-Bigg attacked the place and killed the employees. The reason? To cover up the discovery of an enclave of recluses living on land Reilly-Bigg coveted.

But the corporations' sins included the corruption of the local law enforcement near the station and using their private army like a bludgeon against anyone standing in their way.

A gig to expose illegal farming practices? Dawn had thrown herself at the project with pure joy.

While Reilly-Bigg’s central servers were impossible to breach, their regional data transmission towers were simple enough to crack. Three weeks of easily intercepted signal with weak encryption and a few bribes to a greenhouse farm manager helped secure the evidence she needed.

Pictures, videos, bribes to Commonwealth inspectors, and massaged data on waste-level discharges were everything Nick Fletcher could ever want to upset the Reilly-Bigg apple cart.

Blowback would be swift and certain if he wasn’t lawyered up. She wanted to recommend all the things he was lacking, starting with a bodyguard or two. But first, she needed to hand off the data.

A laborer was worth their wage, as her mother would remind her. 

Even if the one hiring was dumb enough to prepay for services, Dawn thought. Most weren’t so willing to part with their credits. No wonder her mother would beg, beg, beg her to get a job that didn’t involve skulking about.

But the job was done. Once she handed the flash drive off, she could move on to more discreet clients.

She coasted past an open gate and down a ramp to a service road running towards a bridge, which spanned the canal. Rust streaked the concrete retaining wall. Thick sludge and algae clung to branches and trash stuck along the edge of the channel below.

Somehow, someone had got a robot truck upside down into the center of the aqueduct. Gray water flowed around it.

The bridge ahead had orange sodium lights burning against the darkening gloom of the early evening. A sedan stood parked with a man standing next to it, exposed in the drizzle.

He waved.

Her eye zoomed in. Confirmed it was Nick Fletcher, or at least someone with the same height and build and caramel brown hair. He hurried to a flight of stairs and descended towards her as she did a 180 and parked her bike.

Her three mechanical roaches skittered towards her, their surveillance finished. They climbed up a leg and returned to their spot in her left glove.

From her pocket, she produced a stick of glossy lip balm and applied some before getting off the bike.

He pulled up his collar as he approached. You received the payment?

Yes, thank you. But we could have done this by messenger service or I could have sent a delivery dog.

You said yourself how all of those networks have exploits you used to get information.

I did. She fished a thumb drive from a vest pocket and handed it over.

That’s it?

Spoofed soil data. Dates of inspections, along with the reports that don’t match Reilly-Bigg’s initial records before they ‘corrected’ them. Their wastewater discharge. Same deal as the soil, plus a voice interview I secured from a site manager. Video too, but it’s not as clear what’s happening in them. Up to you whether you want to burn the manager, but his ID’s there too. But he claims it’s like this at over thirty farms. Bribes. Pollution. Coercion of locals who don’t play ball. Besides everything that’s been exposed lately, it’s potent stuff. Enjoy.

She was about to leave when he asked, Aren’t you interested in how I plan to use this?

Not my business. My job’s done. You have leverage on one of New Pacific’s biggest corps. Don’t spend it all in one place.

They’re bad. Really bad.

Yeah, I know.

He spoke fast, like someone who had downed a triple dose of matcha with shots of ginseng, guarana, and a bonus kicker of methamphetamine. We’re going to do good with this. My company, Natura Unlimited, is going to change how food is grown. We’ve failed in upholding the intentions of the returnees who promised to make the world better. Cleaner. People like Reilly-Bigg have become everything the Caretakers said we’d be. They’d destroy the planet for a profit. They’re everything wrong with New Pacific and we won’t stop to fight for change.

Good on you. If there’s nothing else—

You were part of it, weren’t you? Revealing what they were doing to the separatists north of Salina? And what they did to the weather station crew?

How would you know that?

I looked you up, remember? They said you were one of the best.

‘They’ talk too much. And believe me when I tell you to watch out for which places on the dark net you sift through. That abyss will do more than stare back at you. We’re done here. Live carefully, Nick Fletcher.

Thank you. It means a lot. We might need to work together again. Can I call on you?

No, I rather you didn’t.

Is it the credits? Are you worried I can’t pay? Don’t you want a cleaner world?

It’s not that. I’m no fan of Reilly-Bigg. But meetups like this, handholding, and a job suited for a team of operatives are out of my comfort zone. You sound sincere and maybe Natura Unlimited will do something good with the data you’re holding. I’m sticking to smaller jobs for now. It’s getting late. See yourself home.

He stiffened as if her words stung. Then Dawn realized he was clutching his chest. A whiff of smoke rose from his jacket. He stumbled forward, the flash drive tumbling from his fingers.

She wasn’t fast enough to catch him as he crashed to the ground.

The black hole above his heart was impossible to miss. A trickle of smoke wafted from it. A burner wound. He gasped as his eyes pleaded with her. His expression grew slack as the life vanished from his face. With a final wheeze, he stopped breathing.

No. No, no, no.

She clung to the pavement and dared to look about for any sign of the shooter. No one was in sight, but the street on the opposite side of the canal overlooked them and had a dozen places where a sniper could be hiding.

She was exposed.

Arm over arm, she crept for the bike and with the back end as cover, she once again studied the parked vehicles and trees in view across the way. Even an amateur with a scoped laser rifle could hit her.

Nothing moved. The lights along the far street brightened as the sky fell away to blackness. Nick Fletcher continued to stare into nothing. The shadows along the service road bloomed. Yet she remained perfectly still.

Listened.

Watched.

Wished she had splurged some of her bike money into eye upgrades to give her thermal vision.

Lights from a few passing vehicles threw phantom shapes about, but the night yielded no shooter.

Still no alarms, and why would there be? The shooter’s weapon had been silent, or quiet enough to be lost in the steady thrum of truck and machine noises echoing about the industrial district.

A vibration buzzed from Nick Fletcher. His phone, she realized. After several pulses, it quit making noise.

She considered her options for help. But the only person she believed who might come to her aid hadn’t been around for the past week. Eve Moriti, her sister.

Eve was a soldier with enough skills and enhancements to make her worth a squad of trained goons. Even if Eve was available, it would take her too much time to get to Dawn’s location. She’d be walking into the same ambush.

Dawn sent out her bugs. The three tiny machines deployed from her glove and wasted no time in scurrying up the retaining wall. She sent them down the sidewalk and across the bridge while she tried to control her breathing. Her mind wouldn’t stop reviewing every step she had taken that day.

Had she made a mistake? Let someone follow her? Had her overconfidence made her sloppy?

Her client was dead. She’d be the one lying there if the killer hadn’t missed.

She had been the target, she assured herself.

Between Meridian agents, Reilly-Bigg, Evergreen Corp, and the Fish family in Seraph, someone was opting for the dead part of dead or alive. Not every hunter checked for updates on the boards to notice a bounty might have been canceled. She had dared believe the worst was behind her and now she was going to pay for the oversight.

The concrete beneath her was cold and damp. She could see her breath. The first of her roaches made it to the end of the bridge. No motion, no targets. They scampered along, navigating the trash and broken sidewalk, rounding puddles and making it to the base of a large eucalyptus tree. All three climbed. Once they were a few meters up, they scanned that side of the canal.

Visual and sonar data filled Dawn’s UI. Nothing resembling a human shape in view.

Had the shooter moved? Were they even now in a second spot, waiting for her to believe she was safe? Daring her to break from cover?

A notification flashed across her cybernetic eye. Emergency services summoned, according to her scanner app. Police and ambulance would be there in moments.

Best guess? Nick Fletcher’s people had either known his location and were worried, or he was carrying a biosignature device and it had sensed an emergency. Perhaps the assassin had received the notification too.

She crawled towards Nick’s body and grabbed the flash drive. While the data was clean, there remained too many links to her presence. But her moment of truth came when she rose and straddled her bike. Fumbled for the starter toggle as she kept her head low. Her body itched as she anticipated an incoming burner bolt.

The bike purred to life. She kicked it in gear and rocketed forward, gunning it up the ramp, onto the surface street, and left the scene of the murder in the rearview mirror.

Chapter Two

I thought you had left this foolishness behind you.

Jenelle Moriti, Dawn’s mom, wiped down the sink and counter in the small apartment kitchen. Dawn’s brother Pascal’s apartment, now shared by their mother who Pascal had sprung from jail.

She moved quickly for a large woman with a wide frame. Her black locks were up in a tall bun. She wore the sleeves of her periwinkle-blue housedress rolled up. Her flip-flops clacked with each step around the galley kitchen.

Dawn sat on the edge of a couch with her device in hand.