She didn’t look at the route until she was already rolling.
The clinic door shut behind her with a muted click that felt heavier than it should have. Iris crossed the short stretch of pavement to the bike, swung a leg over, thumbed the ignition, and let the engine settle before she breathed again.
Only then did she bring the overlay up.
JOB OFFER. PICKUP: TIN HAU. DROP: ABERDEEN. CLIENT RISK: VIP.
She stared at it for a moment, then snorted quietly.
The route bent east, pulling her away from towers and clean lines, into streets that remembered what the city used to look like. The buildings stepped down in height. The ward density ticked up. Painted charms layered over one another on lampposts and railings, red bleeding into gold bleeding into old brown paper that had given up pretending it still mattered to anyone.
Pickup was not in Tin Hau, not exactly. It was at the foot of Ten Thousand Buddhas, in a small residential cluster that clung to the mountain on the other side. It was close enough that drones would start to get jittery, as if embarrassed to get there.
The bike’s HUD fuzzed for a heartbeat and corrected. Iris ignored it.
The pickup wasn’t marked beyond a faded sign bolted over a narrow storefront. No holos. No branding. Just paint worn thin by sun and rain. Inside, a grill hissed steadily, the smell of fat and pepper sitting heavy in the air. Incense burned somewhere nearby, but it didn’t seem to bother the place.
An old man stood behind the counter, sleeves rolled, moving with the calm economy of someone who had been doing this longer than anyone had been watching.
He glanced up at her. Took in the jacket. The helmet.
“You eating,” he said.
“Just pickup, uncle” Iris replied, showing him CG job offer.
He squinted at it, then laughed once, sharp and humorless. “Of course.”
He reached under the counter, pulled a paper slip from a hook, and compared it to the screen like he was humoring a bad joke. Shook his head once, still smiling to himself.
“Tell him,” the old man said, already turning back to the grill, “next time he can come himself.”
“I will,” Iris said, and meant it in the vague way people did when they knew they wouldn’t.
He wrapped the order without ceremony and slid it across. Iris took it, feeling the warmth through the bag, and stepped aside without being asked. A couple of locals drifted in behind her.
Outside, weather got worse by seconds, and she swung on her bike, thumbing ignition on reflex.
Nothing happened. She frowned and tried again. The engine coughed, but turbine didn’t start.
Iris cursed through her teeth. Magic loved to chew on machines, and she let hers idle a little too long.
“Come on,” she muttered.
On the third try it caught, roaring louder than necessary, the idle hunting before settling. Iris let it run a beat longer than usual, palm flat on the tank, waiting for the familiar sense of balance to click back into place.
It didn’t.
She rolled out, keeping the revs low as she eased into the street. The HUD flickered as soon as she crossed the corner. The route overlay jittered, straightened, then snapped a block to the left before correcting again.
Iris exhaled through her nose.
“Yeah,” she said to no one, finally feeling engine stabilizing as she crossed the invisible border at the next street light.
She saw the lights before the cones.
Red and blue bled across the low buildings ahead, washing the ward paint into dull purples and sickly pinks. Traffic slowed without really knowing why, bunching up as officers waved cars through in uneven bursts. Iris rolled off the throttle and let the bike drift forward, looking at the commotion.
Behind the blockade, the wall was gone.
The exposed edge wasn’t uniform. Beneath the outer skin, the concrete shifted color in bands, rough layers poured over older ones that had already set. Some of it was smooth, some of it pocked and brittle, like it had cured too fast.
Jammed through the opening was the rear end of a civilian hauler, nose buried somewhere inside the building, ass hanging out at an angle that made her neck itch. One of its bay doors hanging open, and inside full of stuff that looked like insulation. One axle was off the ground. The tires were still. The whole thing looked like it had been parked there by mistake, or reckless driving.
A cop at the cone line waved at her without looking. “Keep it moving.”
Iris eased forward anyway, eyes flicking between the truck and the wall, trying to finish a calculation that refused to settle. The angle was wrong. The weight distribution was wrong. The concrete hadn’t failed the way concrete failed.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Hey,” the cop snapped, sharper now. “Move.”
She blinked, attention snapping back. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She rolled the throttle just enough to pass. As she did, voices carried over the noise, clipped and close, the sound of people used to being obeyed.
“You can’t write this up as an impact,” one said, tight, annoyed and somewhat familiar. “The pattern doesn’t match.”
“What pattern? Driver is…” Another voice, half-natural, half-modulated, replied. “Driver was a burner. You can’t just assume intent.”
Iris caught them in the corner of her visor as she crept by.
”Yeah, and by sheer accident that burner of yours rams into sealed infrastructure? Do you hear yourself?”
Kwan stood near the tape, posture rigid, eyes locked on the breach like it was personally insulting him. He was talking at Adam, who stood a step off to the side with his back to her, chrome fingers resting lightly against the hauler’s frame. Unlike Kwan, he was not shy of his own augmetics, once more wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a vest.
“Would you kindly fuck off? This is my scene,” Kwan snarled back at him.
Adam didn’t raise his voice. “It stopped being only yours when it went through a wall.”
”Why, just because you suspect it could be Voskhod-9?” Kwan scoffed. “Give me a break.”
An awkward pause settled between them. Adam didn’t turn, he tilted his head just enough to acknowledge the jab, attention still fixed on the hole in the wall.
“I’m not suspecting anything,” he said. “I’m saying you don’t know what it was carrying.”
Kwan snorted. “It’s a civilian hauler. Why does it matter who was driving? Probably tried to run a shortcut by map and punched through old concrete.”
Kwan’s gaze flicked to her before she realised she is ignoring a policeman on active duty, and he frowned.
Kwan didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “Keep her moving.”
Another glance at Iris, this one openly dismissive. “What is it with burners today,” he muttered. “Is it laced with honey here or what?”
That should have been it.
Iris nodded once, contrite on instinct. “Yeah. Sorry.”
She rolled forward, throttle barely cracked, eyes already turning away. She hadn’t planned to say anything. She really hadn’t. But the truck was still there in her peripheral vision, hanging wrong, refusing to resolve.
The words slipped out, almost as an afterthought. Adam’s head turned just a fraction too fast, but he didn’t acknowledge her.
“You might want to check the hauler for hidden compartments,” Iris said, feeling more sheepish than she normally is.
Kwan turned. “For what?”
She shrugged, already moving again, like the answer didn’t matter that much.
“Back end’s too heavy. Doesn’t look like it’s skewed on rebar, so...”
”Stop.”
She obliged, watching Kwan come closer, and took off her helmet. Didn’t feel like Kwan recognised her, but it was hard to tell behind lifeless lenses of his artificial eyes. Adam’s gaze left her the moment she spoke of hidden compartments.
His attention snapped straight to the truck, eyes tracking the axle, the angle of the rebar, the way the concrete had folded instead of shattered.
Kwan noticed the shift. His frown deepened as he followed Adam’s gaze despite himself.
“And you know this because,” Kwan said.
“Because I move weight,” Iris replied, simple as that.
He didn’t reply at first.
“Huh,” Kwan said, the sound dragged out of him. “Something heavy, then. Guns, ammo, drones…”
He trailed off before Iris could react, and a cop stepped in once more.
”Ma’am, last warning.”
The warning came out flat, the kind issued when there was nothing left to threaten her with.
”Yeah, yeah. China’s last warning,” she muttered to herself as she put helmet back on.
She rolled on the throttle and slipped back into the lane as traffic opened, the bike stuttering once before settling as she crossed the next intersection and the wards thinned.
In the mirror, she saw Kwan still standing there, eyes no longer on her. Adam hadn’t moved. He was staring at the wall like he was reading something written there for the first time.
Blue and red strobes fractured, then vanished as the city closed ranks again. Traffic loosened, the wards thinned, interference quietly disappeared, and the city went back to pretending it made sense.
She let the number on the speedometer climb, hoping to clear the run before weather got unbearable.
Aberdeen rose to meet her in layers.
Midday crowds were gone, replaced by quieter movement. Courier units cutting diagonals through traffic, office workers loosening ties, jackets slung over shoulders, vendors packing down. The air felt cooler now, damp without rain.
The road tightened, then opened into a private approach that felt insulated from the rest of the city by more than elevation. Real stone under the asphalt. Planters heavy with winter-green bamboo. Etched wards shallow and tasteful.
The gate recognized her before she slowed. No booth. No guard. Just a muted chime and a section of road unfolding itself, smooth and unquestioning.
The villa sat low and wide where a helipad used to be, spread out like it didn’t care how high it was. Warm light glowed behind glass walls. A pool hung out over the edge, water held in place by engineering that cost more than most people’s lives. Below it all, the city stacked itself into distance and haze.
She parked where the buzzing drone’s AR overlay told her to. Cut the engine. The quiet pressed in, sudden enough to make her ears ring, and she took off the helmet, trying to get a breath of fresh air.
A service panel slid open, patiently waiting, and Iris handed over the bag. The panel closed. Credits ticked into her account before she’d finished turning away.
No tip.
”Of course,” Iris muttered.
She didn’t move right away. Instead, she slipped the helmet under her arm, fished a stick from the inner pocket of her jacket, and lit it where she stood. The ember flared emerald. Smoke curled up and drifted lazily across the courtyard, softening the sharp lines of glass and concrete.
A polite chime sounded. Then another, a shade more insistent.
Iris ignored it, took a slow drag, and let the smoke spill out into the open air like it belonged there.
She stood there for a moment, helmet under her arm, looking out over the city. From up here, everything looked orderly, problems reduced to grids and light patterns.
Down below, someone was still arguing over a hole in a wall that had been poured too many times to count.
She ground the stick out with her boot, slid the helmet back on, and swung onto the bike, and rolled out as the lights finally began to come on, one by one.
