The apartment smelled of gun oil and synthetic leather as Miles lined up cartridges on the kitchen counter.
From his aimbot, multiple weapons to his swords.
Sarah leaned against the fridge, projecting holographic security footage above the coffee table.
The grainy images showed a bald man with circuit-like tattoos across his scalp—Bill Kid Morgan—loading a military-grade cartridge into his neck port.
"Billy's Boys operate out of an old hydroponics barn in the Flood Zone," Sarah said, zooming in on the footage.
Her fingers flicked through police reports, "Twelve core members, all chromed up with black-market implants. But this?" She froze the image on the cartridge, "That's Protoframe Series X tech. Military spec."
Miles slotted a thermal optic modification into his pistol, "How'd a two-bit gang leader get his hands on that?"
Sarah's eyes glowed as she accessed deeper databases, "Stolen from a Black Ice transport last week. If he's adapted to it..." The projection shifted to show a Protoframe android in a testing facility—its arm morphing into a plasma cannon that vaporized concrete barriers.
Miles whistled, "So we're not just putting down rabid dogs. We're stopping a nuke."
"Pretty much." Sarah's grin was all teeth. She tossed him a grenade cartridge, "Good thing we brought party supplies."
Miles caught it one-handed, then paused, "You're enjoying this too much."
Sarah's fingers danced across her forearm keyboard, the apartment's smart glass dimming as she plunged them into a VR map of the barn, "Remember our first date? When you took me to that shooting range?" Bullet trajectories appeared as crimson lines in the hologram. "This is better."
Miles shook his head, strapping on his holster, "You're impossible."
"Yet here you are." She winked, then stiffened. "Got a ping." Her pupils dilated with incoming data. "They're all at the barn—Morgan's hosting some kind of initiation. Twenty heat signatures."
Miles checked his hoverboard's thruster levels, "Then let's crash it."
Sarah stood, her back arching as her spinal ports synced with the city's surveillance grid.
Neon glyphs scrolled across her skin, "I'm frying their comms and overloading their security drones. They won't see us coming...Well, they will. But it will be too late."
---
Wind screamed past Miles' ears as they rode their hoverboards through the industrial sector, skimming over rusted pipelines.
The Flood Zone spread beneath them—a graveyard of abandoned factories where the city's glow didn't reach.
Sarah flew inverted for a heartbeat, her laugh cutting through the roar of thrusters.
The barn emerged from the smog: a decaying durasteel dome patrolled by drones with chain-gun mounts. Sarah didn't slow down.
"Initiate Phase One," Miles said through gritted teeth.
Sarah's fingers twitched. Every drone in a half-mile radius suddenly pivoted toward the barn and opened fire, stitching the roof with incendiary rounds. Alarms wailed as flames licked up the walls.
"Oops." Sarah landed gracefully beside a burning service hatch. "They should really work on their firewall."
Miles kicked open the door. Inside, the barn was a cyberpunk nightmare—makeshift server stacks hissed next to stolen med-pods, and gang members scrambled for weapons amid the smoke.
Bill Kid Morgan stood on an overturned cargo crate, his right arm grotesquely swollen where the Protoframe cartridge had fused with his flesh, "Kill the trespassers!" he roared.
Sarah sighed, "Phase Two?"
Miles drew his two pistol, "Phase Two."
Chaos erupted.
Sarah's arms unfolded into twin machine guns, her targeting HUD painting red diamonds on every hostile.
Miles activated his Aimbot cartridge, rounds finding knees and shoulders with surgical precision.
"How many people you think you will get?" Sarah yelled over gunfire, decimating a charging cyborg with a grenade.
"Maybe, all of them!'" Miles ducked behind a server rack as he return fire.
Morgan bellowed and lunged.
His mutated arm split open, revealing a plasma core that pulsed like a dying star.
Sarah's eyes widened, "Oh, that's new—"
The blast vaporized their cover. Miles tackled Sarah behind a reinforced storage unit as the heat seared his backplate.
"Okay," Sarah coughed, her left arm sparking from shrapnel. "I have new plan. It involves, we use stronger bullets."
Miles ejected his spent cartridge and loaded a high-explosive round, "Thought you'd never ask."
Morgan charged again, his arm cannon whining with another charge—
Sarah's remaining gun-arm reconfigured into a sonic disruptor.
She fired.
The frequency begun shattering Morgan's plasma core. Morgan was distracted by the core that he didn't notice Miles preparing to fire, "Jackpot." Two explosive round flew straight towards the core.
Morgan screamed as his own arm detonated, the blast hurling him through a wall into the night.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of flames.
Sarah wobbled to her feet, assessing the damage, "Looks like the Demon Gunslinger and Protoframe strike again."
Miles keyed his comm, "Package secured, J. Send cleanup." He eyed Sarah's damaged arm. "You good?"
She grinned, holding up her sparking limb. "Just means you're carrying me home."
As emergency sirens wailed in the distance, Miles scooped her up onto his hoverboard. Behind them, the barn collapsed in a shower of embers, casting their silhouettes against the smoke-choked sky.