Juliet woke up when Jensen cut off her AC, and the sun shining out of her viewscreen “window” grew bright enough to feel uncomfortable. She yawned and stretched, annoyed at the sheen of sweat causing her sheet to cling to her body. “Jensen, why is it so damn hot in here?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Bianchi, but your rent is past due, and the Helios management system has revoked some of your privileges.”

  “Dammit. Tig, er, um, Angel, send five-hundred bits to Helios for a partial payment. Will that be enough to have AC, Jensen?”

  “It will suffice for now, though more punitive measures will be taken if the full balance of one thousand, three hundred and forty-one Helios-bits isn’t remitted within the next seven days.”

  “Fine . . .” Juliet started to say, but then Angel spoke up through her implant.

  “I’m sorry, Juliet, but I cannot do as you’ve asked. You haven’t given me access to your financial accounts.”

  “Ugh,” Juliet said, sitting up and shoving her pillow up behind her back. The LED on the window screen said 8:04 AM, and the image displayed a view of Tucson from one of the upper levels of the megatower. The sun was midway up the sky, and everything was limned in a golden glow, from the windows of the other buildings nearby to the rooftops of the smaller buildings in the distance. “I know sunrise in Tucson is lovely, but you guys must be altering this image. Shit just isn’t that pretty anymore.”

  “This particular image is taken from the ninety-fourth floor and was subject to various post . . .”

  “Privacy mode, Jensen.”

  “Activating privacy mode.”

  “Angel, my codes are in my cloud vault. The passcode is rough, underscore, terrier, with a capital t, 787, ampersand, 1.”

  “Noted,” Angel said, and then a second later, “I’ve sent your payment to Helios Corp. Would you like me to randomize a new passcode for you? I have doubts about the authenticity of the apartment management AI’s privacy mode.”

  “Yes,” Juliet grunted, pushing herself to the side of the couch, feet on the floor. She felt groggy, almost like she had a hangover, even though she’d only drunk the one cheap beer.

  “I’ve sent you an encrypted message with the new passcode.”

  “Great. Any word from the . . . guy with the jobs?”

  “Dr. Tsakanikas has not reached out to you.”

  “Well, I’m about broke, have . . . people looking for me, and am waiting to hear from . . . him. I guess I’m laying low for now.” Juliet stood up, walked over to her kitchen counter, and opened the little fridge, rooting around for anything to eat. “Nada,” she sighed.

  “Juliet, would this be a good time to perform my baseline analysis of you?”

  “Seriously? What do you need to analyze? What’s the point? You want to bug me about going to the gym or back to school or something?”

  “My neural and synaptic interface is far more comprehensive than the PAI units for sale on the market today. I’m able to help you learn, focus, and integrate other cybernetic and bionic enhancements more thoroughly than standard human-to-wetware interfaces usually allow. Of course, my interface is only part of it—my groundbreaking software and architecture also play a role in the process.”

  “Are you going to change anything about me?”

  “No. The baseline will be one hundred percent evaluative. I am not authorized to make alterations to my host without express permission. Your current cyberware is very limited, so there isn’t much I could do in any case.”

  “Well, what do I have to do? Actually, hold off on that—I need coffee, at least.” Juliet rinsed her mug in the little sink and then placed it under the drink spout fed from some central location in the arcology. She touched the little menu, tabbing through soft drinks and flavored waters and settling on good, old-fashioned coffee. “Two creams, no sugar.”

  The spout hissed for a couple of minutes, and then a thin stream of hot water filled her cup. Juliet drummed on the counter while she waited, and then, after a bit more hissing, an even narrower stream of concentrated coffee poured into the water, staining it a dark brown. After one more pause, some sort of milky substance turned the drink from dark brown to tan, and Juliet picked up the steaming mug.

  “I don’t know what real coffee tastes like anymore,” she said, breathing in the aroma from the cup. “The last cup I had was at that restaurant Fee took me to for my birthday. I remember it being better, but, damn, this tastes just fine when you wake up feeling like shit. You know?”

  “Are you speaking to me?” Angel’s voice asked.

  “I guess so. Nobody else to talk to right now. Hey, speaking of that, did Fee ever get back to me? How’s Paulo’s arm?”

  “You don’t have any messages from Felix, though you have seven from Fred’s Salvage.”

  “Angel! Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t I see the message icon on my head’s up?”

  “I’m sorry, Juliet. You asked not to be bothered by non-critical messages.”

  “So, the messages aren’t like, about the you-know-who coming for me? Can you summarize them?” Juliet sat down on her couch, sipping her hot coffee.

  “The overall tone of the messages is one of concern. Fred wanted you to know that a crime had been committed at the yard and that he was being shut down for an investigation. Your shift tomorrow morning has been canceled.”

  “All right, Angel,” Juliet said, taking another swig of her coffee. “What do I need to do so you can complete this ‘baseline’ of yours?”

  “I’ve already made many measurements. While you were sleeping, I finalized my neural connections and performed the tests that wouldn’t trouble your rest.”

  “Finalized your connections? I thought you did all that when you were ‘initializing’ after I put you into my port.” Juliet set her cup down and sat back, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, is that why I feel hungover?”

  “It’s possible that some of my test batteries might have taxed the vessels and micro musculature around your skull.”

  “Jesus, seriously?”

  “Yes, it’s possible.”

  “Well? What do I need to do?” For the hundredth time, Juliet wondered how big of a mistake she’d made by porting this pirated PAI.

  “I’ll need you to tax a few of your major muscle groups first. Are you familiar with the exercise called a ‘pushup?’”

  “Are you shitting me? You’re going to make me exercise? You realize I work a welding rig for a living, right?”

  “Please, Juliet, it’s the best way for me to get my measurements.”

  “All right,” Juliet said, standing up, still wearing nothing but her underwear and tank top, and moving around her coffee table. She pushed it against the couch, giving herself a small, cleared space on the floor. “Pushups?”

  “Yes.” Angel’s voice was calm, clear, and almost clinical as she spoke about her baseline, and Juliet had a hard time feeling annoyed at the PAI. She was intrigued by what it was promising, in fact, wondering what it meant when it said it could help her learn and integrate wetware and cybernetics better. She dropped and began to crank out pushups for the first time since high school.

  The first pushup was a real challenge, and she almost dropped herself to her face, but she doggedly worked through it, and as her muscles woke up and her blood began to flow, she surprised herself by completing fourteen good, solid pushups. She fell to her stomach, rolled to her back, breathing heavily, and said, “I did more than I thought I would. I always did the assisted ones in gym class, you know, on my knees. I guess having a physical job helps.”

  “That was a great effort, Juliet, and I believe I have an accurate measurement of your musculoskeletal capacity and responsiveness. I would like to measure your cardiovascular capabilities now if you wouldn’t mind. My research files indicate that repeatedly completing large muscle movements can tax that system nicely. Are you familiar with the exercise called a ‘burpee?’”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Ten minutes later, Juliet was sitting, coated in sweat, on the floor near her AC register, heaving for breath. The burpees had been a nightmare for her. She knew she should exercise more. Having to work long shifts and not having much extra money made it unappealing, though, and, yeah, she could look better, but she was fit enough, in her opinion. She still wore pretty much the same size clothes as she had in high school nearly six years ago. Juliet figured she must be doing something right! Still, the burpees had kicked her ass.

  “Thanks to your efforts, I have an accurate assessment of your physical capabilities and potential. My integration with your neural and synaptic systems has allowed me to measure those capabilities as well. Would you like to see my report on your status?” Angel spoke up for the first time since she’d told Juliet to stop and rest.

  “Uh, I guess. Is it going to be depressing?”

  “There’s no need for depression, Juliet. I’m here to help you, and the only person you should compete with is yourself.”

  “Oh God,” Juliet said, rolling her eyes. “Did they use a self-help book to create your personality?”

  “No! My personality is a product of over nine billion factors. Not only that, but I continue to learn and change based on my experiences and my host’s preferences.”

  “All right, all right. Let’s see your little report.”

  “Excellent,” Angel said, and then Juliet saw a table appear in her augmented UI, and she used her retinal implants to zoom in:

  “Is this for real?” Juliet asked. “How is this supposed to help me? You just told me that I only had myself to compete with, and then you show me this report that compares me to what? Everyone?” It sure seemed that way to Juliet—Angel had ranked her in a percentile, and she could only assume it was based on some database the PAI had access to. “I like that you gave yourself a good rating!”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Juliet, use those percentile numbers only as a way to measure yourself. You can improve on those measurements day by day, and even the smallest gain will be encouraging for you, or so my human psychology algorithms say. Don’t be discouraged! This is only a baseline, after all.”

  “Am I really that broke? I’m not even as wealthy as one percent of the population?”

  “I only took into account your Helios-bits. I didn’t measure the value of your belongings here in your apartment, or anywhere else you might have them. The more significant factor, though, is that I am not comparing you to everyone. I have a database attached to this set of host evaluation algorithms, and I’m not sure about its source. The database has just short of ten million comparative values for me to draw upon, and I can only assume that WBD created the database and that it is, perhaps, incomplete.”

  “Jeez! All right, well, I have a couple of good scores; tell me about those.”

  “As you see, your neural adaptiveness is very high! Your brain cells and nerves are very accommodating to my connections—this is very good, Juliet! I’ll be able to integrate my software with you and your augmentations very easily, better than I could for nearly anyone WBD ever tested. More than that, I’ll be able to perform my advanced auto-learning functions without much risk. With the right software, I can teach you skills directly: languages, technical abilities, even the knowledge of how to use certain vehicles, weapons, or how to fight a certain way.”

  “For real?” Juliet had never heard of anything like that. She’d seen documentaries about people regaining functionality after a stroke or injury with advanced PAI implants and their specialized software, but never someone just learning new things automatically. It seemed like fantasy to her.

  “This is absolutely true and part of my functionality. Unfortunately, the required software will be hard to obtain or create, though not impossible.”

  “All right, what about the synaptic one, the responsiveness?”

  “This is a measure of how fast your brain processes thoughts and reactions. It’s a valuable measurement among mercenaries and pilots. You’re naturally quick, and that’s good, but with augmentation, you could reach a much higher percentile.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least. I think I understand the rest, Angel. So, anyway, I appreciate you showing me all this, but I don’t really want a personal fitness instructor living in my head, so please don’t make a habit of hounding me about these numbers.”

  “I won’t, Juliet. I think that as you begin to make improvements, you’ll find that you want to keep at it. It’s human nature!”

  “Ugh,” Juliet grunted, rolling her eyes. Leave it to a PAI to think it understood human nature—it said a lot about the kind of people that programmed them. “Well, thanks to your little analysis, I’m going to need to get cleaned up. There goes another of my shower credits—I’m glad you didn’t measure those as part of my wealth.” Juliet laughed, wondering if Angel was trying to think of a retort, and then she soaked in the sani-spray for the full five minutes, scrubbing off her sweat and spending time to clean her hair properly—something she’d been too tired for the previous night.

  When she was out, standing in front of her mirror, brushing her unruly black hair, she took a minute to look at herself. She’d seen a lot last night—people beating a man and those same people reduced to rotting corpses. Not to mention a piece of stolen tech that was too valuable for her to sell, which she’d put into her head—crazy! She hadn’t slept a lot, but her eyes didn’t look tired. Their gray-green irises were clear and bright, staring back at her out of the mirror. She rubbed next to her left cheekbone, finding a spot of grease she’d missed in the shower, making a darker, charcoal-shaded spot on her olive skin.

  After rinsing the smudge away, she stood up and sucked in her stomach, standing up straight. She had an all-right figure—how the hell had she scored so low on Angel’s stupid assessment? Were so many people really that much fitter than she? “We’ll see . . .” she started to say, but then Angel pushed an incoming call into her augmented UI, and she saw the name: D. Tsakanikas.

  “Hello?” She asked, accepting the call, trusting Angel to filter her image to only show her face. The wide-angle, spatial cameras in her implants were lousy anyway; usually, anyone calling her had a hard time seeing much outside her face due to all the artifacts left over from the cheap image processing. Tsakanikas didn’t have that problem—his face was crystal clear, as were his gray suit, yellow tie, and the bank of computers behind him.

  “Ms. Juliet?” he asked in a deep voice, thick with a Greek accent.

  “That’s right. Mark gave you my number?”

  “Yes, I think we both know what this call is about. I’d enjoy having you come by for a proper, more private interview.” His attire and the computers did something to help Juliet banish the creepy image that came to her mind at the invitation.

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Send me a ping?”

  “Already on its way, Juliet.”

  His insistence on using her first name made her feel like he was trying to take control, so Juliet smiled and said, “See you soon . . .” She almost said his name, but then she thought about Jensen lurking in the wires, listening to her, and she cut herself off and made a gesture that Angel correctly interpreted to end the call.

  “If you travel by foot, you will arrive at the indicated location in just under two hours,” Angel said, and Juliet laughed.

  “Can you recalculate using public transpo?”

  “Of course. You’ll arrive in roughly twenty-seven minutes. I should remind you, though, that public transport vehicles are heavily surveilled.”

  “Oh, shit. Ugh,” Juliet said, an idea springing to her mind, “My neighbor’s kid was selling his bike. Let’s see if I can bargain him down.”

  Thirty minutes later, Juliet, wearing large, dark glasses and the hat she’d bought the previous night, was riding a wobbly, dark-green mountain bike toward the northern end of Tucson. She was thirty bits poorer, and her ranking, according to Angel, had dropped to an even lower fraction of a percentage point. “That’s bullshit,” she said, thinking about it.

  “What’s that, Juliet?” Angel asked, getting better at detecting if Juliet was speaking to the PAI or just to herself.

  “You should count the bike as an asset. My net worth shouldn’t have dropped.” Laughter and whirring tires startled her as a trio of middle-school-aged kids whizzed past her on battery-assisted bicycles.

  One of the boys shouted, “Nice antique, lady!” They all burst into renewed laughter, and then they were gone, leaving Juliet in the dust.

  “I’m sorry, but when I ran a comparative sales search, I found that your bike is worth very little, and sales for near-identical items are quite slow. I’m trying to keep your asset list clean and would rather not clutter it with items like old underwear and near-worthless bicycles.”

  “What the hell, Angel? I don’t remember you being this bitchy yesterday or even this morning!” Juliet huffed, moving north past Grant Road, lucky to catch the busy intersection on a green light.

  “I’m sorry, Juliet! I was attempting to add some snark to my personality. I find that you speak in such a tone from time to time and thought you would find it amusing.”

  “Seriously? You can alter your personality on your own—try to become more compatible with people you speak to?” She jerked the handlebars to avoid an older woman who stepped off the curb, stooping to pick up something she’d spotted in the bike lane. “Lady, look around yourself!” she called out as she whizzed by.

  “Yes, that’s the goal of the subroutine.” Angel said, ignoring Juliet’s outburst and continuing the conversation.

  “Pretty cool, Angel, pretty cool.” Juliet had another thought, “Hey, Angel, what’s the difference between bionics and cybernetics?”

  “That is a good question and one that’s met with some debate. The simplest explanation and the distinction I use when categorizing augmentations is that a bionic augmentation is meant to be consciously activated, whereas a cybernetic augmentation is meant to replace a natural body part and work without conscious effort.”

  “Cool. My friends and I just call everything slang terms. You know, like ‘gear,’ ‘wire-work,’ ‘plastic,’ shit like that.”

  “That’s informative. Shall I search for more slang terms and use those interchangeably with the two terms I just defined?”

  “I don’t care, Angel,” Juliet laughed, though her lungs were huffing and her legs were burning. “I’m just making small talk.” She followed Angel’s directions, looking at the little map in her augmented vision, taking the path of the snaking green line that would take her to her destination.

  Tucson had decent bike lanes along most of its major streets and a big percentage of the side streets, making the ride a pleasant one. On top of that, it was Saturday morning, traffic was lighter than usual, and she didn’t have to share the lane with many people. It would have been almost fun, except Juliet hadn’t ridden a bike in several years, and she had to stop and walk several times because her thighs were burning so much. “Yeah, this isn’t for me. Damn, I wish I hadn’t wrecked my car.”

  “I see from the incident report that you were struck from behind by a gravel truck. You’re quite lucky you weren’t injured.” Angel’s tone was pleasant and light, like she was trying to point out the bright side to a little kid.

  “Yeah, just a lucky girl, I guess.” As she rounded a corner, Juliet stepped onto a bike peddle, hopping back into the seat, and taking advantage of the street’s downward slope.

  “Your destination is the cream-colored adobe building on the left,” Angel said.

  “Right,” Juliet said, confirming Angel’s words with the little map in her head-up display. The building looked like it used to be a house but had been converted into a doctor’s office, with a swinging placard out front that read simply, “Dr. Tsakanikas - Cosmetic and Augmentative Surgery.” She squeezed the rear brake on the bike—the only one that worked—and slid to a stop in front of the drive, annoyed to be dripping with sweat again. “Not much to be done about that, though. One doesn’t ride a bike around Tucson without sweating her ass off.”

  The bike didn’t have a kickstand, so she laid it on its side in the gravel next to the drive and walked toward the black security screen door. There weren’t any cars visible, but she had no idea what could be lurking behind the two closed garage doors. Her steps creaked on the wooden steps leading up to the porch, and when she stood in front of the metal door, she saw that the wooden door behind it was closed. A video com blinked with a green LED next to the door, so she touched the button and said, “Hello?”

  “Name?” A rough, unaccented voice asked through the speaker.

  “Juliet. I’m here to see . . .” The door buzzed and clicked, and Juliet quickly opened it before it latched again. As she pulled open the metal screen, the wooden door swung open, and a man wearing a tank top and sporting more hardware than she’d ever seen on a person motioned her through. Juliet stepped into a small, square room with Saltillo tile flooring and white walls. A large viewscreen took up one wall, and two yellow fabric couches occupied the walls to her left.

  She’d barely taken in the space when the geared-out guy motioned to the wall next to the door, and Juliet saw painted footmarks on the floor and hand marks up on the wall. It didn’t click for her what he wanted, so she looked at his chrome LED eyeballs and said, “What?”

  “Hands and feet on the marks.” His voice was gravelly and resonated strangely through his metal and plastic throat.

  “Uh,” she said, awkwardly moving to place her sneakers onto the foot marks and reaching up toward the hand marks. “This is kinda awkward.” She was effectively spread-eagled and feeling very vulnerable.

  “Don’t move,” the voice said from behind her, and then she felt his hands as they started to press into her clothes, from her shoulders, then down her arms. When his plastic and rubber fingers dug up into her armpits, Juliet flinched and started to pull her arms down, and then she felt a cold, hard, circular piece of metal press into the base of her skull, and he growled, “I said, don’t move.”

  Juliet froze and lifted her arms back up, and then the cold metal was lifted away, and the search resumed, with the awkward groping only growing worse as he reached the bottom half of her body. Juliet seethed, angry at being so helpless. She was angry at this asshole and the guy who paid him, but also at herself—what had she been thinking, coming to a place like this? Mark had as much as told her that this doctor wasn’t operating legally.

  After the guy finished squeezing her jeans and the tops of her ankles, he stepped back and said, “Sit down. Doc will be with you when he’s done.”

  “Thanks,” Juliet spat, pushing herself away from the wall and sitting on one of the couches. Her face was flushed with anger and embarrassment, and she folded her arms across her chest.

  The viewscreen showed an infomercial about cybernetic organ replacement, but she didn’t watch it; she stared at the thug, scowling thunderstorms in her eyes, and, if she could kill with her glare, he’d surely have been reduced to slag. He was big, made more so by his augmented, piston-driven arms with their black plasteel and rubber design. He’d obviously avoided using synth-skin for effect—the arms were intimidating.

  Now that she was looking at him and not facing the wall, she could see the snub-nosed, high-caliber revolver he wore at his side. It looked powerful enough to erase a person’s skull. “Did you really have to put that cannon against my head? Do I look that dangerous?”

  “Dangerous comes in all kinds of packages. Just follow instructions next time.” He grunted, his backlit, red, glowing eyes vacant like he was watching something on his AUI.

  “Why a revolver, anyway? Aren’t they kinda old fashioned?”

  That got his attention, “What?” he asked, turning his gaze on her.

  “I mean, aren’t they kind of obsolete?” Juliet wasn’t trying to annoy the huge cyborg, but he shifted his stance like she’d punched him. He took out his pistol, and Juliet flinched, but he didn’t point it at her.

  “Nah, they’re only obsolete if you don’t admire the perfection of their design—solid, few moving parts, able to hold a million kinds of smart ammo. I could beat a guy bloody with this thing and then fire all the rounds without any fear of a misfire. If one of my rounds was bad, I’d just click the trigger again and move on to the next one.”

  “Oh, I see.” Juliet nodded.

  “Hey, I wasn’t trying to cop a feel on you, all right? These pads are meant to detect explosives, metal, and electricity—I couldn’t even feel what I was touching. My name’s Gary, by the way.” He holstered his gun and held out his black rubber palm in illustration.

  “You couldn’t feel? How do you manage to grab your gun and . . . whatever else?”

  “I can feel. I meant I can’t really feel—it’s like . . . imagine you had wax on your hand.”

  “Oh, right. You worked as muscle for a long time?” she asked, but just then, a green light Juliet hadn’t noticed lit up above the only door in the room, and Gary cleared his throat and pointed to the door.

  “It’s open now. You can go in.”

  “Oh.” Juliet stood up and smoothed her jeans down, cleaning the sweat from her palms, and then she nervously moved toward the door, reaching for the handle. “Time to meet the doctor, I guess.”

  Electric Angel on Royal Road. I've had to remove the rest of the chapters as a condition of publishing on Kindle Unlimited and Audible.

  Electric Angel is now available on , and .