The Naked Truth

Cody - The Con Artist

As the last tumbler of the safe falls into place, the lights of the expensive apartment turn on. Behind me, I hear the soft hum of a coilgun spinning up. I freeze in place while my eyes adjust.

“What do you think you’re doing?!? Get away from there!” Her voice is surprisingly calm, but the anger is there. Betrayal does that.

The view is right out of one of those daytime dramas that Essential Enterprises is always broadcasting. All that’s missing is a musical sting and a sudden zoom-in to her face. Ms. Sylvia Hayes, the VP of Brick Lane Realty is standing in the doorway to the bedroom where we’d just spent the past few hours together. The flashing lights from the buildings across the street splash her with red and blue lights. Her silver hair’s a mess, her icy blue skin shines.

In one hand she’s holding the bedsheet wrapped around her body, more from sudden modesty than a need for warmth. 

Her other hand is pointing a slim, shiny pistol at me with a slight tremble.

I leave my tools in the lock and move away from the hidden safe, turning slowly toward her. I start to step forward with a smile on my face, “Sylvia, I know this looks bad, but…”

Sylvia pulls the trigger and there’s a quiet compression of air before my shoulder is shoved back against the wall by her shot. I look down at my bare chest and the bruise is already beginning to form. Baton rounds, of course. She’s too proper to have illegal ammo. Still, I’m pretty sure that pistol was a gift, and this is the first time it’s been fired.

“I don’t want to hear about what it looks like, Cody! Is that even your real name?”

“Yes…”

“Shut up!” She’s getting louder now. I barely hear the quick recharge of the gun. “I can’t believe I trusted you! Slept with you! Now I find you trying to steal from me!” She inhales with a shudder, refusing to cry. “I knew it. No one who looks like you would ever actually be interested in me. It’s only about what I have.”

I stay against the wall, letting her process and fill the air with words instead of more rounds. She does have a point. She’s almost 30 years older than me. Our meeting at Sunset Towers was not a mistake. I planned the whole thing after my hacker, Harper, cracked her itinerary. The wait staff got me around security. My suit and fake ID got me through the party and into her line of sight. After that, the seduction was easy. I made it a little more challenging by letting her think it was her idea. Best way to get back to her place.

The hovercar ride here was the tricky part even though it was short. I had to keep her interested but not ask deep questions. She needed to stay excited about what we were going to do when we arrived, not jump me during the ride.

My mind races through my contingencies, but my physical options are limited. Even if I could make it to the door without taking another shot in the back, this isn’t a district where someone gets to run around naked without someone calling security. Worse, their response time in the Gold Ring is fast. Materials Management Corporation security may not be the best trained, but they had the best gear and vehicles. They’d run me down in no time. They might not bother with non-lethal ammo either. At least a streaker isn’t worth calling the Dragoons about.

I turn the tables on her. “Okay, so what do you want?”

She stops short, as if she’s never heard the question before, “I… I want the truth. I want to know who you are, and why you did this to me.”

“That’s funny, that’s what I’m here for too.” She looks confused, but I don’t give her a chance to speak. “You were born when the city was still being built,” it’s a statement, not a question. I did my research. “As part of the Renovation Generation, you never really had to look for work, there was something for everyone to do. You were making a new city from the ground up while learning how the new world worked with magic in the mix. In your case, you even got altered by the Tempest at the genetic level, permanently changing your body. Sure, you worked hard, but you also had a path that led you to this,” I gesture around at the elegant, expensive room. “After the corporate war settled down, you found yourself in the real estate branch of MMC.”

Then I gesture down at myself, “Not all of us were so lucky. Magic skipped over me entirely. No genetic changes, no gifts for casting. I’ve never held a job important enough to get any bionics, cyberware, or other augmentations. I’m just me, and I was born in the depths of Bricktown. My birth parents put me into the system, and I got traded around as a tax dodge for a while. I tried to avoid gang violence, stay independent. Along the way, I started earning money however I could...” I trail off to let Sylvia’s imagination fill in the gaps. Her eyes stay hard, but I notice her jaw shift uncomfortably. Her face is now a paler shade of blue.

“Sometimes I wonder why your generation built Bricktown in the first place. I mean, what was the sales pitch to have a whole sector of this huge city made into low-quality, mass residences? Was it an afterthought? Was there any long-term plan to deal with the population boom that your parents started and your generation made even worse? Don’t tell me it was just a temporary solution until the border could be expanded, because the Drake has never kept that empty promise.”

I take a breath to get back on topic, “I’ve slept on the streets and in lock-up. I’ve been sentenced to “community service” sweatshops making new toys or meds that I’d never be able to afford. At least that system worked as advertised. I learned lots of important skills, and not just the tools. I learned how to network, smuggle, make fake IDs, run a con, all kinds of useful things. So now, when someone on the street is looking for something, they ask around and they find me. I’m pretty affordable these days. I’m not all about the Scales either, I can work in favors, information, barter, that kind of thing.”

Sylvia’s head snaps up as if she’d been nodding off. She brings the gun back in line, and shakes it at me, “Who is it? Who sent you? Is one of the board members trying to kill me before I take his position?”

“Nobody sent me,” I reply calmly. “This job is for me, and every other kid that had to go through what I did. The ones that were ignored and starved until they formed gangs. Gangs that pooled resources to survive, mainly by stealing from others. Every person they killed in order to get what they needed to survive left blood on your hands. Your paper-pushing helped build Bricktown. You ended up owning a lot of real estate at the end of it. Made yourself a landlady of several blocks, a regular slumlady. Then you started adjusting the numbers, ignoring the effect on people’s lives.

“I recently met some folks who were put in the line of fire because of you. They found evidence of your rent manipulation. They discovered proof of you paying gangs to lean on certain blocks even harder, to encourage complaining tenants to move out. Sometimes feet first. We’ve tracked some of the survivors to other blocks, or found them crammed in with their relatives. We lost track of several people when they went to Undertown.”

Sylvia’s eyes are huge, as she realizes what I’m saying. She doesn’t deny it, but her reaction confesses everything. She looks exhausted, and can’t stand up anymore. She slumps into one of her expensive, comfortable chairs, the gun slips out of her numb hands. Regret? More likely that DerMed patch I slipped onto her back finally kicked in. I can’t pronounce the name of the drug, but it doesn’t mix well with alcohol. She’ll be dead soon, and a tox report won’t show a thing.

I walk over to the chair, bending over so our faces are inches apart. I can hear her breathing starting to wheeze. “We’re not letting you get away with this. So, to answer your original question, I’m looking for your Reclamations, Inc. post-mortem contract. Sorry, you’d call it a “will and testament.” We can’t have your blood money passed along to someone of your choice. We’ll make sure it gets somewhere it’s needed more, like the halfway homes hosting the people you forced onto the streets.”

I reach around behind her, carefully removing the DerMed patch. I’m going to have a lot of cleaning up to do, but I was prepared for that too. Then I find her hidden hard drive, use her biometrics to unlock it, then some creative accounting.

First things first, get my pants back on.