“Assassinations are--of all the black jobs--somewhat expensive.

The price, of course, varies. If the target is the average civilian with a public-facing job with low security, then it can cost as little as 500,000 credits to have them shot by an amateur gunman.

The price tends to rise from there, unfortunately, but we do make sure that those prices are justified, and we also have an industry-wide price-match guarantee on any and all contracts taken out.

It’s a very competitive business, after all.”

--Interview with Professor Hands, President of Off-Corp LLC, 2048

***

I glanced up and found the man immediately, the red outline that Myalis was painting on my augs helping to spot him.

He was a normal-looking kind of guy, a bit sweaty in his six-figure three-piece, but otherwise he didn’t stand out from the other corpo-likes attending the gala. Just another guy here to chat it up, drink some expensive crap, and listen to Burringham talk about how great he was.

The difference was that most of the other corpos in the building didn’t have guns mounted on the inside of their forearms, and if they did, they weren’t aiming them at Burringham.

I reached my arm around and shoved Lucy back. Her chair tipped over and she screamed as she flailed. “Sorry,” I said, but my attention was elsewhere.

Lucy was safe-ish, at least I hoped she’d be out of the way of any shooting. My augs locked onto the assassin and my cyberwarfare software cut through his security as if they were little more than cobwebs. I had a lot of options from there, but turning all of his augs off seemed the easiest.

He noticed, it was obvious, the way his eyes widened and his arm went limp.

Burringham was safe.

Then the asshole grabbed his prosthetic arm with his meaty one, tugged his wrist down at an angle that looked frankly disgusting, and he aimed it towards the podium.

The bang of the first shot was like... well, a gunshot in a crowded room. People screamed, some ducked under tables, and Burringham’s speech cut off with a scream.

The railguns in the back of my suit deployed, unfolding with smooth efficiency before both of them fired, leaving twin lines of smoke in the air connecting me to the gunman.

“Shit,” Gomorrah said in a very unnunlike fashion. She stood up, grabbed an indignant Frannie, and moved her closer to Lucy. “Go,” she said to me.

The implication was clear. She’d keep Lucy and Frannie safe while I went out and took care of all the more troublesome shit.

I nodded to her and jumped onto and over our table.

There were two choices here. Either I took care of the gunman, or I tried to see if I could do anything for Burringham. In the suddenness I didn’t see if he was injured or not. The gunman might give me answers, but Burringham’s health mattered more.

That decided it for me.

I shot off towards the stage and arrived just as the first of Burringham’s security detail reached him. I found some beefy guy stepping up ahead of me, but I shoved him to the side and dropped to one knee next to Burringham.

He wasn’t shot anywhere nice and romantic like the shoulder or in the leg, instead he had a nice pinprick wound right in his side. His arm was probably raised to gesture when he got hit.

“Take off his jacket,” I said.

“Ma’am--” one of the security guys started to say.

“I’m healing him here and now,” I said. “But I need to know more about the wound.”

“‘S fine,” Burringham said. He waved the security off with an arm.

“We should at least move him to somewhere more secure,” one of the guards said.

I considered it for a second, then nodded. “Get him up. Is there a medical station we can bring him to?”

“There’s a nurse’s station one floor down,” the guard said.

“Is the kitchen closer?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Kitchen then,” I said. “Myalis, can you tell me anything about Burringham, the gunner?”

The gunman’s being moved out of the hall by security, he’s currently attempting to trigger a suicide device planted in the base of his jaw, but you deactivated it.

I chuckled as I backed up and let one of the guards scoop Burringham up. We ran past his secretary, who was so pale I was afraid she might faint, the trail of blood we left as we ran past didn’t help.

“Clear out!” one of the guards said as we burst into the kitchen. The chefs and others working on fancy meals jumped, but they backed up as more guards poured in.

“There!” I said as I pointed to a stainless steel table currently covered in trays with little cake slices on it.

One of the sou-chefs had time to grab a tray off the top before we arrived and the guard at the head of the pack swept the rest off and sent what was likely a few thousand credits worth of dessert crashing down.

“Jacket off,” I ordered.

The guards pinned Burringham down, and one of them sliced his coat off with a stupidly sharp knife.

It didn’t look good. The hole in his side was pouring blood out with little spurts, and there were dozens of other, smaller holes all over his chest, obviously sliced open from the inside.

The gun the assassin used was chambered with nine millimeter rounds. The projectile seems to be an explosive fragmentation bullet. The sort used by some Vanguard to kill lower-tier antithesis.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get more blood in him, and let’s patch him up. Something quick.”

New Purchase: Class II Nano-Regenerative Suite
Points Reduced from... 10,594 to... 10,494!

A familiar box appeared next to me, and I popped it open and jammed the nano-feed-thing needle into Burringham’s side. The same thing I’d done with Rac just a couple of days ago. The second tube I tugged out and pressed over his neck. I figured there was a vein or artery or whatever there. “Hey, Burringham, you got any augs that will help you?”

“S-sure,” he said. “Best, best money can buy.”

“Cool,” I said. “You’ll be just fine, by the way.”

One of the guards moved in close, he had a red cross on his shoulder, and had a large first-aid kit that he dropped on the table above Burringham’s head. “Going to monitor his vitals. What did you administer?” he asked as if making conversation about the weather.

“It’s a class two nano regenerative suite,” I said. “Second tier samurai medical tech. Lots of little nanorobots that’ll reconstruct his insides, and, ah...”

We both watched as a spider drone scuttled out of the box, ran over Burringham’s chest, then burrowed into the gunshot wound on his side.

“W-what was that?” Burringham asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

The medic only paused for a moment before applying patches to Burringham’s chest and flicking open some things on his big kit. He seemed ready to inject Burringham with a whole host of drugs, but was waiting and staring at his displays. “Blood pressure’s staying stable,” he said.

“Bleeding stopped,” I said with a gesture to Burringham’s chest.

There are lots of small metallic fragments spread across his insides. Judging by the radiation readings, the bullet was encased in radioactive materials. I retract what I said about the round being purchased by a Vanguard.

“We’re going to need a small container for radioactive shit,” I said.

The little spider drone squeezed out of Burrinhham’s side with a squelch. It landed on the table, then little pinchers let go of a bloody mess of metallic things before it dug itself back into his wound.

“Uh,” I said.

“We’ll take care of it, ma’am,” the medic said.

“Cool, cool,” I said. I backed away, then beelined for a sink where I turned on the tap and washed the hands of my suit.

“Ma’am?” one of the guards asked as he approached me. There were nine of them in the kitchen by then, just milling around and being very suspicious of all the kitchen staff. The only one that seemed genuinely busy was the medic, and even he was waiting and chatting with Burringham in low tones.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“The gunman has been apprehended. He’s still alive.”

“Oh,” I said. “Was anyone else hurt?” Those two railgun shots might have...

“No ma’am. The hall was locked down, and the guests have been told that things will proceed in a moment. Did you wish to be there for the interrogation?”

“You’re doing that now?” I asked.

“Before the city’s police arrive and try to interrupt things, yes,” he said. “We don’t want the city police interfering here. The building’s own PMC branch is helping us secure the area, they don’t seem keen on poking their nose in just yet.

“Well, uh, yeah, count me in,” I said.

If our guy was still alive, maybe he could tell me why he wanted to interrupt Lucy’s big night, and kill Burringham.

***