Recycle.

Rain was always a bad omen. Max’s fingers slipped as she climbed the sleek wall of the fancy apartment building, its walls black in the midnight rain. She hated the sprawling arcologies, tall as damned spires reaching for the clouds. She sniffed, her vision glitched as she squinted at the gathering icons littering her peripherals. The cybernetic glove swallowing her right hand clutched hard to the concrete lip of a tenth floor apartment. In the unshielded glass she saw a couple dancing in black leather. Her vision glitched, the couple pixelated. Disappeared. Ghosts, she told herself, grunting as she pulled herself up to the tenth floor. Fucking ghosts.

She needed to get back to the Dream.

Hands clutching the eleventh floor, she shimmied to her right. Crawling along the right side of the building as rain licked her hair, weaving under the fabric of her jacket. Catching sight of a silhouette in the panoramic window to her far right, a quick scan old her everything she needed to know. Her target was right there in that apartment. Waiting.

What a fuck.

He didn’t know she was coming. Men like him expected to get hacked by ransomers. By mercs looking for money, looking for codes. Sliding over to the concrete lip beneath his wide rain-slicked window, she dangled her right hand and twitched the fingers. What men like him didn’t expect was her.

She traded in memories, just like the rest of the world. But not just any memory—deleted ones. Ones the corporations tell you that you can never get back.

Yeah, they lied.

Rain beat against the glass. Sneaking a peek over the ledge, she scanned for him. The lavish sofas and holographic fireplace centered within the sparse room went blurry for a second. Almost as if the rain was melting into her eyes, pressing watery fingers over her pupils. She shook the feeling away—nah, it was just the hangover getting to her. She hadn’t Dreamed in what felt like years though it was truly only hours. She felt like an alcoholic coming off a week long vodka and henny binge. She needed to get jacked up and washed away in Dreams soon—but her supplier had cut her off. Sent her on this one-woman mission where success meant a whole year of Dreams. Free Dreams.

She snatched her glove across her upper lip. Who in their right mind would pass up that?

All she needed to do was convince this fucker that he didn’t have to go into work tomorrow. Or, ever. Easy. She wouldn’t even have to lay a hand on him to do it.

Hanging off the edge, her eyes followed his shadow moving across the room. It sounded like he was speaking to himself. Giving himself pointers about tomorrow. She grinned as he moved closer to the window and held her breath as his profile slid into view. Slapping both hands to the ledge, she dropped. Dangled there as he stared out at the rainy uppercity. Rolling her eyes, the click of his heels as he walked away signaled that the coast was clear. Max pulled herself back up.

A smile spread across her face. There it was—his back—moving away in slow motion almost. She could see everything—the pulsing blue light of his Uplink creating a sleek hole at the base of his neck. Flashing lights, orange and blue, ran in tandem around the hole. Communicating to her that he was free—open to her hacking. Opening to her glove.

Max reached out. A pool of code streamed through her vision, his deleted memories whirring about in her head like a hissing fan. She swam through three, her eyes lighting up as she took hold of one particularly scarring memory. One that the Director would have liked to forever forget.

Max couldn’t let that happen. She needed to Dream. And if she had to fuck with his memories to get her fix, then so be it.

She pulled at the thread of his deleted memory, dropping herself into the black void of cyberspace as the world outside slowed significantly. Rain drops falling at a tenth of their speed, slapping the back of her jacket and crystallizing.

Here we go.

Cyberspace opened up to a dingy apartment. It pixelated into view, blurring before it sharpened and cleared. She assumed this was the Director’s first apartment. It teetered right on the boundary between the upper and inner cities. While the man wore a sleep pinstripe suit in the present, in the past bank of his memories he was in sweats in a stained wifebeater with a cold one in his hand and his eyes staring through the thin glass of his apartment, pointedly looking down. A crumpled blue tie lay on the floor near his feet.

Seems like someone missed work today.

Maybe he was waiting for someone?

Max floated there behind him, looking out at the grungy landscape of the inner city. She lived down there. But in his past memory she couldn’t be sure what year it was. Maybe this was before the memory banks and cerebral Uplinks were a thing? Way before he directed New York’s memory bank? By the looks of things, he sure as hell didn’t work for any of the corporations that traded in memories. He was too beat-up. Too young and defiant looking.

Floating toward his shoulder, she glanced at the fiery blue eyes glaring back at her in the reflection of his window. A twinge of guilt unsettled her stomach. On the counter, she recognized the sharp outline of a pistol. Nearby, a silver clip sat dislodged. Max bit her tongue. All she would have to do was make him think it was loaded. Maybe she could get him to…

No. Valve said make him quit his job, not harm himself. She wouldn’t do more than she needed to do. Then she could get back to the Dream.

But she could use it as collateral, she figured. Moving to the counter, she concentrated on the clip. Red exclamation points faded and sharpened in her field of vision, flickering in warning. She ignored them as the clip slid across the countertop and lodged itself in the butt of the pistol. Easy. Asshole wouldn’t expect a thing.

Max jumped when the apartment’s front door slid open. Red lipstick smeared over a dirt painted face met her. Followed by a guy in a floor length trenchcoat. The woman was dazed, blue eyes as glassy as marbles as the guy moved his lips up and down her neck, leaving long purple bruises. When her eyes met the back of the Director’s head, they almost popped.

She sputtered, shoving the big guy off her. But he didn’t get the hint and just yanked her by the wrist, pulling her closer.

The Director didn’t even bother turning. He saw the reflection in the window.

Max had to do more than watch. Her eyes snapped to the woman’s hands. They widened as she saw silver on her ring finger. Had the Director been married? His personal life didn’t matter to her, but it explained why she had found him utterly alone in his apartment.

His wife was taken aback at her husband’s silence. She steeled her face. “You caught me.”

What a bitch.

“You do so much, Axel. I needed an outlet.” The man she tumbled in with went rigid, the guy going still as a statue as he turned his body toward the Director. “Don’t bother with your judgmental shit. He’s not real.”

An android, then?

Made sense. On closer inspection, Max could tell his chest wasn’t rising and falling.

The woman threw up her hands, her grin going crooked as her heels clacked across the cracked tile. “You caught me.” She repeated.

She didn’t get close enough to put her hands on him. He pivoted on his heel, crossed the kitchen and stood nose-to-nose with her before she could even try it. The Director simply stood there, breathing heavily. The android at the front door watched him tentatively. Stomping over to his master, he shoved his way between the two.

Max watched everything with a sinking feeling in her chest. She had an urge to protect the Director—but how? If he and the droid got into it the droid could easily snap his neck in defense of the woman. Max figured that if the droid applied enough pain to the Director, perhaps he would begin to mistrust technology and in the present he could outright hate it. But would hate alone make him quit his job?

Hell, no. He makes bank.

Max had to find another way.

Recycling. That’s what she called it. Bringing deleted dreams back to life and melding them in such a way that she implanted ideas into other peoples’ minds. A deleted memory was like clay in the hands of her memglove, allowing her to pause and change things to her leisure. In effect, she could play God.

Sort of. She wasn’t really sure what the consequences of drastically changing things were. Guess she’d find that out tonight. Anything to get back on Valve’s good side and get back to Dreaming.

Androids exist to protect and take care of their masters, right? So, instead of making the Director outright attack his wife, she’d make him do something subtle. A string of code weaved into his skull, blurring as it entered the back of his neck. Floating to the back of the room, she flew behind his wife and watched as the Director’s eyes slowly flitted toward the loaded pistol on the countertop.

The droid was lightning.

It rammed his palm into the center of his collarbone and didn’t let the weight of its attack force the Director to the floor. Instead, the droid caught him by his opposite arm, spun him around and twisted his arm behind him.

“Whoa—fuck.” His wife hissed, stumbling backward. “Why—” her eyes snapped toward the pistol on the counter, they flashed. “You son-of-a—” she caught herself, stood as straight as she could. “You were going to shoot me? He’s not even real.”

It was like the Director was mute or something. Max had to act fast. The droid wouldn’t harm the Director by himself, there were protocols in place to keep stuff like that from happening even when a droid was trying to protect another human. With his arm pulled behind him, all the droid would need to do was apply a little pressure to the Director’s elbow. Just a tiny bit…

Max stretched out her hand. Wove some code into the Uplink at the base of the droid’s neck and watched as the thing twitched. It was fighting her—what the hell? Max bit her lip—deleted memories never fought with her. They ebbed and flowed like water in a lake, changing course whenever she bid it. Deleted memories never bucked against her commands. They never looked at her either, but the droid turned its neck like a damned owl and its silver eyes landed on her.

Max froze.

“You can let him go, droid. He isn’t a threat.” The lady spat, fanning her hand at him. “Go on, drop him.”

The droid didn’t listen. With its eyes pinned to Max, its opposite hand rose like a marionette on a twitchy string. Its fingers contorted, bucking and thrashing against the commands she battered against it, until its palm landed on the cup of the Directors elbow. Rearing up, the droid smashed its hand into the supple flesh.

His wife screamed. The Director howled, legs buckling. Arm hanging limp at his body as the droid slid around the man’s body and snatched up the gun.

A rain of pixels blurred the memory. Sirens—real and howling—were flooding into Max’s subconscious. Smacking her hands to her ears, she tried to block it out as the inky blackness of cyberspace swallowed her whole and spat her out. She was dangling from the ledge again, one-handed.

She smacked her memglove to the ledge and froze as her eyes scanned the Director’s apartment.

He was wreathing on the floor, going into epileptic shock as his feet kicked out at odd angles and his nails raked at his head. His skin was going red. A pool of sweat spread out from under him, dampening his pinstripe suit, sticking hair to his head. Max watched slack-jawed as his body danced and jerked into stillness. His head flung to the side, his eyes popping out of his head as tears welled up in the crooks of his eye sockets.

Saline poured from his tear ducts. Saliva dripped from his open mouth.

Max stared. It was all she could do. Had she gone too far? Had she done this? Fuck—she had killed someone. Not just any someone, but the Director of Upper New York’s most prestigious memory bank. Suddenly, the Dream hangover didn’t seem like so much of a problem as she stared into the face of the man her memglove had killed. No—she had killed. Max was a murderer. And she had done it for fucking drugs.

She had gone too far.

Her stomach flopped. She vomited, bile burning her throat as her lunch spewed all over the sleek window before her. No one would know. The police wouldn’t be able to trace this back to her because her memglove was the only one in existence. But it would only be a matter of time before they put two and two together and found out. She would need to leave town. Run away. Cut her losses. Change her name, her Uplink ID. Fuck.

Had she really done this for some fucking drugs?

She slapped her palm against the ledge. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

Down below, red siren lights lit up the wet pavement. The police already knew. The moment his link went dead, they knew he was gone. Murdered like a lobster boiled alive in a pot. His brain had fucking fried.

Max shimmied across the rain soaked complex, climbing down floor after floor. Hanging from one ledge and somersaulting to another. Spotlights lit up the neon soaked streets below. If she didn’t get out of here, they’d fucking find her and question her about why an inner city rat like her was hanging around the upper city and the Director’s apartment complex. They’d confiscate her glove. They’d turn off her Uplink. They’d fucking kill her once they found out what she could do.

Fuck Valve. Her comms buzzed. A phone icon faded into view. Valve was calling her. The fucker already knew.

“8th street, right up Unicorn Alley, sweetheart.” He was telling her the drop-off. Where her payment would be stashed, then hung up.

Max dropped to the fifth floor, dangled from a balcony and let go. Crashed into the rain soaked seat of someone’s rocker. Peering in through the glass, she saw no one. Linking with the building’s security, she bid the door open with her memglove and it obliged. Buzzing open, she slid inside just as the door clamped to a close. It was dark, but the blaring lights from outside lit it up in a periwinkle blue. She whispered through the apartment like a ghost and opened the front door. Sticking her head out, she watched as people rushed up the hallway and to the nearby lift. They were gathering around, hoping for a chance to see the fresh corpse of the Director. Max bit her tongue, jammed her hands into her pockets, and kept her gaze to the ground as she walked off.

So far, so good.

Someone shoulder checked her as she made her way toward the emergency fire exit. Shoving open the door, the fire alarm shrieked as she slid out. Bringing attention to her. Fuck.

Sprinting, she met the first ladder and plunged down. Did the same to the second and third. When she met the pavement with no trouble, she scanned the surrounding alleyway and jabbed her hands into her pockets once more as she left.

Meeting the front of the complex, she joined a gathered crowd of onlookers as a feast of cop cars cordoned off the building. An ambulance screeched to a halt nearby, almost hitting the gaggle of people, and EMTs hopped out. Sprinting.

Max hung her head. Part of her wanted to stay. Wanted to watch them attempt to bring the Director back to life. She needed to know for sure that he was dead. That he wouldn’t somehow wake up and remember she had been there in his mind, melding his deleted memory to her will. Making him feel pain he wanted to forget so badly that he deleted it, threw it to the black void of cyberspace for her to catch and bring back.

A white body bag exited the building, rolling about on a gurney. The crowd watched in silent terror, rain making the neon lights reflecting on the pavement run, as a flood of policemen followed behind, their faces grim. Like stone.

Max’s face went white, her eyes trained on the gurney. She had done it then. She had really killed a man.

Backing away, the raindrops seemed to freeze in midair as she turned and sprinted.