The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation Read Free Page A

was on the horizon now, the sun beginning to glimmer through concrete canyons like an orange spotlight piercing the smog.
    â€œJimmy?” he asked the shadows down the hallway.
    â€œSaints from the grave!” cried a familiar voice, and a bald gnome of a man shuffled into view, his smile wide on a plump, rounded face.
    â€œJimmy.”
    â€œZakariah! You out slummin’ again after all these years?”
    â€œI’ve been down south.”
    â€œTravellin’ without a plug, too,” noted Jimmy with a mischievous smile. “You on a breakout?”
    â€œI went straight years ago, Jimmy . . . sort of.”
    â€œYeah, me too.” He winked with a smirk. “You look older now, all grown up.”
    â€œYou lost your hair. Why don’t you get a transplant?”
    â€œHey, the little chickies love the dome, zero. All the young sliders are shavin’ every day to keep up.” He grinned playfully.
    â€œYou still chasing teenagers, Jimmy?” Zakariah replied in kind. “I thought you would’ve moved on to better things by now.”
    â€œHah, that’s about as funny as yesterday’s strong crypto.”
    They chuckled together for the sake of old times. It was an archaic joke, but it bound them together across the years.
    â€œYeah, I heard you went gaming big time,” Jimmy said. “Saw your shadow sublevel a coupla times. They finally burned ya?”
    â€œNot the first time. Can you help me out?”
    â€œYou always were a cheeky slider. What, a dozen years go by and you come in out of the night dirty with tracers and ’spect me to bake you a birthday cake?” Jimmy hunkered low and stared up at Zakariah, daring him to answer. His grey coveralls were dirty and spotted with tiny burn holes from hot solder.
    â€œWell, Jimmy,” said Zakariah carefully. “I was in the area.”
    Jimmy looked in wonder at Zakariah, waiting for an explanation. When none came he burst out with a laugh. He held his gut and roared, shaking his head in disbelief. He stepped around from behind the counter, locked the old wooden door with a triple bolt, and walked away into the shadows, signalling for Zakariah to follow.
    A custom implant was far beyond the expertise of a back-alley bootlegger, but bastard plugs floated regularly through the underground, some stolen from corpses, some completely unregistered. With an old terminal, one could get to Main Street at least but not to any Prime levels. Nothing hot, Zakariah instructed, nothing that could be traced back downtown.
    Jimmy sat with a monocular lens on his right eye, reading serial numbers on components and checking them against an in-house computer.
    â€œYou’ve got a goldmine here, Jimmy,” Zakariah stated as he surveyed some of the plunder.
    â€œThis ain’t the half of it. I got thirty-to-life in detox with what I got stashed,” said Jimmy grimly. “You can’t move this junk like in the old days. You should see some of the new quantum circuitry coming out of the black labs, piggyback architecture. Chips that speed each other up, that
learn
to go faster.” He raised an index finger. “Now, that’s the PH -phat future, my friend. If I could sell out I’d go clean and rest my weary backside in a Prime Three gameroom forever.”
    â€œI could dump the lot for you, Jimmy, for sure. How much do you need?”
    Jimmy stopped and whistled a slow exclamation. “You scare me, mister.”
    Zakariah caught his left eye with a solemn stare. “I’ve got connections. I’ve got resources. I need maybe three weeks to re-wire an avatar.”
    â€œIf the greysuits don’t crash me in the morning. I knew you were either heaven or hell when you walked in the door.”
    â€œYou could have flushed me out the alley, Jimmy. It was your decision.”
    â€œMaybe I shoulda.” He turned back to his work and picked up another trinket. “You were