Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

04 - In Your Own Back Yard

The words rang out, high and clear, strangled with grief.

Killed my sister.

Piper could barely suppress a groan. Somewhere in her mind, she knew her human concern should have been for the dead girl, but her thoughts went elsewhere. All she could think about now was that this incident would be reverberating through AmpCore's filthy bloody cliques for months now. Blood for blood, the corps twisted facade of honour trying exert itself, and Toran had dumped them all right in the middle of it.

She looked at him. There was not a shred of remorse on his face, just anger. Boiling, storm-grade anger that she could feel even from several meters away as he glared at his opponent.

"Your sister tried to kill me, Vinder," he spat wiping a smear of blood from his face. "Her and everybody else at Wayfinder."

"You're a fucking dead man, Knox."

"Get in line, you mewling little shit."

"Shut. UP!" Mattise thundered. His amplifier twisted sharply in his grip and both students suddenly choked, words quite literally being rammed back down their throats. Simmering with disbelief, Mattise nodded to his subordinates. "Clear this place out. I'll deal with these two in private."

The quartet of instructors sprang into action, using their amplifiers to forcefully herd the two rival camps to opposite sides of the room. Piper, against her instincts, let it happen, shuffling towards the doorway they'd come through, finding herself shoulder to shoulder with Odiye as they spilled into the passage beyond. The instructors marched them to the end of the hall.

"Back to your classes," growled the female instructor, her face grim. "And if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you'll stay out of trouble until we've sorted out who's to blame for this mess. Now go."

The pair barred the path back the way they'd come, amplifiers shimmering with power as they watched expectantly. The students slouched off away from them, nursing scrapes, burns and bruises from the fighting.

"Fuckin' Wayfinder," one of the male students with a Skiltron stamp on his jacket snarled once they were out of earshot. "I swear, when my parents hear about this-,"

"Good luck with that," a tanned young woman interjected bitterly. "Old Mattise is trying to keep everybody out of AmpCore."

"Eh?"

"He's on a little crusade to keep the big corps off the board and out of his hair. Wants 'independence'. Dictatorial prick's creating his own little kingdom down here."

The male student's expression darkened. "We'll see how long that lasts. I'm not having some jumped-up teacher from Ness-Net telling us what we can and can't do."

Piper felt her temper rising. Mattise was a brusque and at times downright abrasive individual, but a lot of that, she suspect, stemmed from the fact that he didn't want to be running AmpCore. With so many senior executives and board members implicated in the scandal of the AI fabrication yard in Hadrian's northern districts, Mattise had simply been left holding that bag as one of the few people without a vested interest.

In rising to the challenge in his typically blunt style, it seemed like he was making enemies.

"Wind your neck in," she growled. "Without Mattise you'd all just be killing each other."

"What's so wrong with that?" the female student snapped, rounding on her. "Maybe AmpCore could do with a little house cleaning?"

Piper didn't miss a beat, stepping forward to bring herself face to face with the girl. "And who gets 'cleaned' out on your watch, huh?"