The Dog was, under almost any other circumstance, my least favourite kind of person. He was loud, annoying and always looking for the next thing. Something newer and shinier. As soon as his current obsession wasn’t the hottest thing around anymore it got thrown out and forgotten.

  As a contact however he was great. Always up to date on whatever was happening anywhere. And always willing to talk, even if you didn’t pay up first. He was careful enough not to let anything really valuable slip but I could usually stay up to date just by letting him talk my ear off for a while. After dealing with Simon's clutter though I wasn’t in the mood for long conversations.

  I set the implants I had been working on to standby and accepted the call.

  “How’s my favourite scavenger doing? Staying safe I hope? It’s getting crazy out there you know. Did you see the news? Corps are laying into each other in the open. I heard they’ve been calling in special agents from all their secret black sites. They’ve got a bunch of-” Dog immediately started rambling away,

  “Wow, that's crazy. So did someone get caught in the crossfire or what? You know I don’t get involved in that shit,” I interrupted.

  “No no nothing like that,” he continued like he hadn’t been cut off. “What did I just say about staying safe? You know you’d probably have a lot more friends if you spent half as much time talking to people before they die as you do looking through their files.

  “But whatever. Business then. You’re looking for Anthony Harper, recently murdered. He told a friend of his about his implants and now that someone's ended that friendship for them they want them retrieved. He’s down some sewer pipe over east. Not gang territory technically but close enough that my client doesn’t want to go themselves.

  “Got some nice shit on him too. Both eyes, onboard computer, swappable arms, whole bunch of that health monitoring garbage. Sounds nice right?”

  It did sound nice. It sounded great even. Another set of eye implants with processors like Simon had had would be great. And maybe someone who cared enough to monitor their health would keep their systems a bit more organised. But that was more nice tech in one place than usual. My usual hauls would be one of those on their own plus some cheaper implants. People who could afford all that didn’t end up dumped in sewer pipes.

  “Who killed this guy? That’s a lot of gear to leave laying around. Can his ‘friend’ even afford all that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Probably pissed off some idiot with a gun by looking at him funny. His body’s still there after a day and a half so no one who cares. And the best part is, the client only wants the eyes and computer. Probably can’t afford all that. So same deal as usual. You get me the part all nice and cleaned up and keep the rest. As I said, sounds nice right?”

  Now that did sound nice. Some people like Simon were smart about things, even if they still ended up dead. It sounded like Anthony had been stupid. All the money to set himself up with nice gear only to waste it walking somewhere he shouldn’t have been.

  I looked over to the same empty shelves I’d been thinking about earlier. Dogs clients had a bad tendency of being light on details but it usually went in my favour. They listed all the important implants to make sure he took their job seriously and ignored the run of the mill stuff people took for granted. I would probably be getting more out of this than what Dog had told me about. And that was already a lot.

  “Alright. I’ll take care of it. But don’t try to rush me again. The last guy already took ages to work through. Cleaning up pulled implants isn’t easy, you know.”

  “Sure sure. Just don’t waste time. Now about the-”

  “Don’t waste time right?”

  As soon as I confirmed that Dog had sent me a location, and before he could drag me back into corpo conspiracy theories, I hung up.

  I could never decide whether I liked walking through the city. In a few ways it looked good. There were signs all over the place of people trying their best to make themselves at home. There was graffiti and murals on the walls or decorations hung from the wires and cables between buildings. But sometimes the effort just made the failures look worse.

  As I walked away from my apartment I looked over the people selling from stalls in the street. Most of them I didn’t recognise. They tended not to stick around terribly long. Regular stores tended to last longer but a few more of those had also closed down. Places I’d never been in and now wouldn’t get the chance to. I couldn’t dig anything up about them either since the city deleted old records often.

  A lot of people who did work similar to mine liked to do that too to keep themselves hidden. They had fake identities, only used cash and made sure there was nothing identifiable on their implants. I did some of the same. You wouldn’t catch me introducing myself as anything other than Vulture. No need to make myself easy to track. But if someone was rooting through your insides you probably weren’t in a state to care about privacy anymore. Anything you hadn’t told anyone or written down by then would be lost forever. Some of my friends would probably find it funny to hear me say that. They talked to a lot more people than I did.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The line between the rest of the city and gang territory was obvious. From one alley to the next the people hiding in nooks and crannies disappeared. The gangs would patrol and kick out anyone that wasn’t either with them or paying them.

  Here at the edge of their territory the streets changed hands often. You could never be sure who you’d be running into unless you were in a gang yourself. For the average person it was probably safer to live and work deeper in. As long as your boss was paying their protection money there wouldn’t be any trouble.

  I had no intention of spending long here. Pulling implants from the dead was easy as long as you weren’t squeamish since you didn’t have to worry about the body. That meant I could do my work quickly without damaging my goods. I’d leave as soon as possible and clean them up once I was safely back home.

  Fortunately I had plenty of practice at this. I’d left pretty early so the gangs weren’t out on serious business, just a few patrols. They were loud on purpose to scare people away and didn’t try very hard to spot anyone like me sneaking past them.

  I made my way a little further in until I found the right place. A large construction site with a bunch of open tunnels. Like a lot of the surroundings it was abandoned. I decided to head around the site and enter from the other side. The scaffolding from where I’d approached looked way too damaged to climb through.

  Once I was in it was exactly as easy as I’d hoped for. I hopped down one of the holes and didn’t have to look far to find Anthony's body. He wasn’t looking that bad yet after only a bit over a day down there. Besides the bullet holes that is.

  And as expected it didn’t take long to remove everything. This part of my work even others in the business didn’t like to think about. Lots of my friends were fine taking a contract to kill some idiot, but they got a little pale thinking about cutting someone open. Not that I didn’t understand them. I’d like to be looked after after death. But Anthony here wouldn’t be getting that so he’d have to settle for having me pry into his life.

  This job really was a gold mine. All of the parts the Dog had listed were here and I packed them away safely. On top of that running a scanner over him also showed a few joint and muscle enhancements. They joined the important parts in the bag and I secured them to my back.

  Getting back out of the hole was just as easy since there were ladders set up from the construction work. I spared what was left of Anthony now a glance and hoped he didn’t have anyone who might have wanted to bury him. Probably not or Dog wouldn’t have taken the job. It wasn’t smart to be around the bodies of people reported missing, just in case.

  Before I could leave, my nice profitable job decided to become a little difficult. The gate at the front of the construction site was carefully opened and three guys made their way in. I immediately jogged back and took shelter behind some barrels where they hopefully wouldn’t see me watching them.

  They walked through the gate carefully and checked their surroundings. That was bad. People paying attention usually knew what they were doing. I couldn’t tell what gang they were from at a glance. They wore casual clothes and had pistols out. The same kind of stuff anyone around here would have. If I could spot a gang tag I could at least guess how likely they were to start shooting.

  If the parts hadn’t still been on Anthony I might have thought it was a trap. Someone kills him and waits for whoever comes to pick up the body. But a gang would have taken the parts and only left the body. Only corporations played the sort of games where they left the loot behind to make sure someone took the bait.

  Either someone had spotted me on my way in or I had really bad luck. And now these overeager mooks were here. You got guys like that sometimes. People who thought that if they just worked hard enough their boss might see their efforts. Crazy that a company job didn’t beat that out of them before they turned to crime, but I guess gangs needed stupid grunts too.

  So here they were acting like proper security at the edge of gang territory. I would have preferred to stay hidden but they were coming further in. And they were between me and the exit so I wasn’t likely to sneak out. I decided it would be better to make myself known than let them stumble over me.

  They might be smart enough not to start anything. Firing shots would draw attention and it was just as likely to be a rival gang as backup for them. Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst I kept my own gun ready but pointed at the ground as I called to them.

  “Alright over here guys, let’s talk about this,” I called. “I’m sure we can-”

  I pulled back as one of them whipped up his pistol and started taking shots at me. Swearing slightly I made sure there was as much scrap between me and them as possible.

  “Hey, HEY! You really wanna have a gunfight over some spare parts? Just tell me what you’re after, I'm sure we can work something out,” I shouted.

  They stopped shooting but no one answered. That was weird. Normally even the tryhards couldn’t help themselves from talking shit. I’d expected at least a few threats. But the quiet did mean that I could hear the footsteps of someone approaching.

  Thinking too hard in a situation like this was how other people got themselves cornered. I turned in the opposite direction from them and started sprinting, staying as low to the ground as I could. They started shooting again but nothing hit me as I dipped into the scaffolding.

  It was exactly as fragile as I had feared and I could hear everything creaking while I ran across some planks. But I didn’t care about making noise anymore. Once I got to the other side I kicked a few beams on the way out. The gang grunts had started shouting behind me but they were drowned out as the entire structure collapsed.

  Making that kind of noise was the last thing I wanted to do on a job but sometimes you didn’t get a choice. As far as things going south went, that hadn’t been too bad. Talking things out didn’t work that often so running was the next best thing to avoid a firefight.

  I kept running along more or less the path I’d taken in. Those guys shouldn’t be able to follow me quickly enough but there would be people coming to check out the noise. Even these parts of town weren’t abandoned enough for buildings to collapse at random.

  Despite all that I couldn’t help smiling as I jogged away. The bag I was carrying was worth a lot and I’d have plenty of time to pick each piece apart.