Hal plunged the tungsten hard drive into a bath of toluene and dry ice.  The metal seethed as toxic ribbons coiled up from the hopper.  Mr. F’s goons hadn’t said a word since they pounded on the hatch to Hal’s workshop in the dead of night.  Hal knew the tall one – a chip runner from the lower grid.  The other was new.  He had a flat face, top hat, and a jury-rigged pistol hanging under his coat. 

The drive was old – pre-SIN, matte black, heat-scored, with fresh blood smeared across the pins.  Hal opened his mouth to ask where they picked it up, then thought better of it.  He’d learned not to ask questions after midnight.

The job took an hour.  Hal precisely fused copper wire to gold leads across a thermal breaker and tamperproof voltage trap.   Whoever built it did not want anyone prying inside.

Hal powered up the rig. If the voltage was off or the drive heated too fast, he’d brick it.  If he failed to crack the drive, Mr. F would cement his boots and dump him in the river.   Hal just hoped he owed the Grid King enough ETH to be worth keeping alive.  To a man like Mr. F, debt was better than money.

No flash.  The terminal was dead.

The short man shifted his weight, thumbing the side of his pistol like he had an itch.  Hal stole a glance. The barrel was a filed-down hydraulic tube, bolted to a spark plug chamber, spot-welded to a nunchuk grip.  He would’ve bet it was a dud – if smoke wasn’t still curling from the muzzle.

Then – life.  The cursor blinked.  Data flooded in like a torrent.

Hal spun around his bench, nearly knocking over a stack of salvaged ASICs.  He jacked in a backup drive.  Characters poured down the screen faster than his eye could track.  He unfolded his reading glasses, but they didn’t help.  The code was foreign – except for one line of plaintext repeated in a loop.

Don’t trust the bears.

“Where did you say you got this?” Hal asked, forgetting his after midnight rule.

The terminal froze.

A grid of white dots covered the screen and, in the corner, a single line blinked.

SIN|KEYTREE|LOCKED:N=12

Impossible.

Mr. F’s goons loomed over Hal’s shoulder.  If they could read, he’d already be dead. 

Hal heard the rumors.  Everyone in the grid had.  But if this was real – he wasn’t just a target.  He was a threat.

A heavy hand clamped onto Hal’s shoulder, sour breath against his ear.

Hal didn’t hesitate.  He grabbed the glowing soldering iron and drove it into the tall one’s hand.

The thug howled in pain, stumbling over a half-assembled diving drone.

The short man drew his pistol. 

Hal swung the frozen hopper into his face, cracking bone, but not before the gun went off.

Hal doubled over in pain, the slug burning in his gut.  He shoved the clone into a backpack and staggered for the fire escape.  Rain drenched his face as he slid the window open. He fumbled down the slick steps, missed the last rung, and splashed into a puddle of neon light.

Shouts followed him, but the wind tore them away.  He ducked into the shadows of a tight alleyway two blocks down.  It was only a matter of time before his name hit the death market.  A couple of hours.  A day at most.  No one ever lasted a week.

Hal still had contacts.  Favors.  Maybe even debts he could call in. If he could patch himself up, score a burner retina or a biomask, he might buy a little time.  But first – the drive.  Now he was a target.  Every scavenger, hustler, and bounty hunter in the grid would come sniffing for him.  There was only one person he could trust with the relic.

Hal slid down a collapsed entrance to the underground rail.  There was a dead drop nearby – one he’d used back when you could still get your hands on neural cores.  The lockers were just as he remembered: graffitied, rust-bitten, most of the locks busted open and picked clean long ago.

Hal turned the drive over in his hands. It felt heavier now, knowing what was locked inside.  A sticker clung to the casing – half torn, water faded, something he slapped on years ago.  Batten Deep.

What were the odds.

He slid the drive deep into the back of a cracked locker, wedged under a plate of rusted sheet metal.  For a long moment, he just stared.  The last piece of SIN.

He wiped his hands on his coat, left a mark to signal the drop, and crawled back toward the street.  He turned the corner – and almost collided with a woman, her fluorescent green hair plastered to her face in jagged, rain-slicked blades.

“Hal?”  She asked, checking her wristwatch bounty screen.

Hal sighed and slumped against the brick wall. Maybe he knew her.  Maybe not.  Didn’t matter now.

“Easiest money of my life,” she smiled as she pressed a revolver to his forehead.  

Click.