Silicon Man by William Massa Page A

Requesting backup.”
    Cole knew the cop made him. Great!  
    He moved the same moment the cop did. As he dipped down a nearby side street, the officer cranked up his bike. Cole sprinted down the street, motorcycle in hot pursuit. It roared down the alley, gaining fast.  
    Cole spotted some tweens playing basketball and snatched the ball. “Hey mister, what the hell?!” The outraged words died on the kid’s lips when he caught a glimpse of the pulsing power bars on Cole's neck.
    Cole whirled on the advancing motorcycle cop and hurled the basketball with superhuman strength. The cop never had a chance to react and the basketball slammed into his face full force. The impact hurled him from his seat, motorcycle skittering out from under him. He hit the street hard.
    The bike clattered down the alley in a rain of sparks and shrieking metal.  
    The roar of an engine made Cole turn. A car was hurtling down the alley. Moving too fast to stop, tires about to crush the downed police officer to a bloody pulp.
    Cole jumped into the street and dragged the cop from the path of the onrushing vehicle.  
    “Sorry,” Cole said.
    He spun back toward the end of the alley, where the open-mouthed tweens were staring at him. Cole scooped up the basketball. His eyes locked on the oversized hoodie one of the kids was wearing…  

    ***

    When the call from the Underground Network came in, Keira was hunched over a worktable, busy patching up an X2000 model. The android’s chest was open, revealing a complex web of electronics and steel. Dark goggles shielded Keira’s eyes from the rain of sparks produced by her sizzling soldering iron.  
    Keira had once been a cyberneticist working for Synthetika, but that seemed like an eternity ago. Now she was in business for herself. Keira’s work area resembled a futuristic body shop. Mech body parts and circuit boards were strewn everywhere and wires seemed to be growing from the walls, like tangled clusters of electronic fungus.  
    She remained focused on making adjustments to the gutted AI spread-eagled before her while an adorable beagle chewed lazily on a synthetic hand and watched her work.
    By law, only Synthetika could repair malfunctioning mechs. Making modifications to androids or hacking the machines was punishable by stiff fines and even jail time. But it didn’t stop the practice from proliferating. There were plenty of out-of-work cyberneticists willing to perform modifications at competitive prices to satisfy a growing demand, whether Synthetika approved or not. Keira was one of them. She quit her high-profile gig at Synthetika a year ago, and she had to eat.  
    Most of the jobs were special requests — memory, personality or specialized-skill implants for mech owners who wanted their AIs to learn a few new tricks. Sometimes privacy was the reason they sought her out, but usually they were only reluctant to pay the steep prices Synthetika charged for upgrades and modifications. The work was steady and kept a roof over Keira’s head. The big drawback was that she had to keep a low profile and remain watchful of the law.
    The authorities knew they couldn’t put a stop to illegal mech modifications no matter how much political pressure Synthetika exerted on local governments. They tolerated the underground mech economy and looked the other way, most of the time. They did have to make examples out of some lawbreakers, to satisfy the politicians. They tended to select those cyberneticists who got cocky.  
    Egomania ran rampant in Keira’s line of work. Most cyberneticists thought they were gods who gave life to data and steel. A majority of her peers saw themselves as artists and loved to leave digital signatures on their hacks, a practice that often came back to haunt them.  
    Keira harbored no such illusions of grandeur and tried not to get caught up in the culture. She worked enough to keep the lights on, kept her head down and avoided the big paydays that could shine an