Zoë Blade

“ The eerie glow of the walls and pipes is familiar enough, but the human sized and shaped blob glowing in the living room isn't. I switch the vision to only twenty percent infrared overlay so that I don't have as much information to distract me, and I brace myself. ”

“ I throw my katana onto the floor as a sign of good faith. While I'm not exactly ready to commit harakiri just yet, suddenly my imitation of a life doesn't seem to be worth fighting for so hard. I figure that if either one of us lives on, I haven't really lost much. The gamble's worth it, because if she'll go along with my plan—and I'm pretty sure she will, because I'm pretty sure I would—then we can both get what we deserve.
Mike doesn't get into his office until seven the next morning. When he sees me, he freezes, and for just a second he reveals fear in his eyes. ”

“ There's no discernible change from an outsider's perspective, but inside my brain and its hardware, a dozen little defence applications are springing to life, waiting for my signal that they should start wreaking havoc. I usually slip into this mode several times a week, but in my line of work it's safer to err on the side of paranoia. ”

“ The right move would have been to kill me as soon as he saw me in the room. But he can't do that. He needs me. So I turn my back to him, walking up to the window.
"Bad night?" asks Mike, feigning ignorance.
"You could say that. When I got home, I found an intruder waiting for me."
"My god!" says Mike. "What happened?"
"I dispatched her, naturally." The first rule in my line of work is never trust anybody, not even somebody pretending to be your friend.
"Her?" asks Mike, pretending to be shocked by her gender, knowing full well how rare human assassins are, let alone women. ”

“ Even in the sunshine, the guiding beam of my tripod mounted rifle is brightly illuminating a thick circle of skin on his neck, just below his white beard, but even if any of the passersby can see infrared as well as I can, they won't have time to do anything even if they notice it. ”

“ He gets up and makes his way to a shelf filled with various photos and figurines, where he pours himself a shot of whiskey from an expensive looking decanter.
As he glances back at me, I decline his offer of the same with a subtle shake of my head. Call me paranoid, but in my line of work, I never could feel comfortable if I was anything less than a hundred percent sober.
"They couldn't just have him running around pirating their intellectual property," Mike continues.
"But it's food," I protest. "It's not like it's a rich kid's luxury like music or films. ”

“ It really puts my job into perspective when I'm reminded how the human race is the only species that isn't still wrapped up in daily life-or-death struggles for food, or at least, not for copyright free food. ”

“ The trees are such a vibrant green this time of year, they look somehow unreal, set against the pale grey concrete blocks that people waste their lives in. I quickly inspect all the nearby rooftops, making sure nobody's on any of them. Old habits. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately, and between the implants and the drugs, I'm beginning to feel less and less like a real woman and more and more like some kind of machine, just efficiently fulfilling her job role and nothing else."
"Efficiently?" I hear Mike practically choking on his drink. ”

“ Mike has a dubious look in his eye like he knows I'm up to something, just not what. For a manager, he sure lacks vision. He looks out the window at the ant-like people all those floors below, oblivious to the woman pointing a high powered laser rifle straight at him from the next block along, and raises his glass. "To—"
Despite giving my new business partner the order to fire, the laser burst still somehow makes me jump. I've never seen it up close before. On the receiving end, it's deadly silent, the only sound being the sloshed gurgles of the target. ”

“ Trust is simply a matter of being able to predict someone's moves. Since I'm a pretty good facsimile of you, I figure we can both predict each other just fine by working out what we would do in each other's situation. ”

“ His cardboard cup drops to the floor, and I unscrew the rifle from the tripod, duck below the top of the brick wall of the bookstore, fold up the tripod and put everything in my holdall, hidden beneath a pair of jogging bottoms.
In a fleece, t-shirt and designer jeans, I hopefully pass for someone on her way to one of the gyms scattered around the legal district, where people who help corporations sue their customers for a living would feel far too inconvenienced by taking a detour on their way home just to stay in shape. ”

“ I hire you because you're the sort of woman who knows better than to take unnecessary risks. Why did you wait so long?"
I let myself sigh. "OK, so I felt a little empathy towards the target. He'd never hurt anybody. I mean, I read his profile. He was essentially a good man." ”

“ All Godin want to do is ensure the uniqueness of the very specific dishes served in their chain of five-star restaurants, so don't give me any of that melodramatic bollocks about starving homeless people just because they have to eat boiled rice and steamed vegetables instead of foie gras en brioche. ”

“ It's not our job to question our clients' motives, only their ability to pay. Besides, he was a liability. Copyright violation is one of the most serious crimes there is these days, given the structure of our fragile economy. ”

“ There are plenty of public domain staple foods. The homeless can eat the same handouts as the starving children in Africa: rice, grains, vegetables, pulses. No one's trying to stop people from eating. They have more than enough to live on. ”