Crack in the Kill Code (AmpCore #2)

23 - Saw Cliffs

The Saw Cliffs was a part of Hadrian that Kirk hoped he never had to visit again. Even the name, ominous as it was, didn't do justice to the depravity of this place.

He looked up uneasily at the seedy market that crawled its way up between two man-made edifices. Once upon a time, the pair of tower blocks had been used for research and development by a conglomerate of corps. But time marched on, the great and the good of Hadrian moved away from the river to set up shop in the glittering heart of the new world, and the structures had been repurposed by some enterprising pencil pusher, to be used as housing.

Then some more enterprising and rather more hands-on people had put it to a different use.

Brothels, drug-fuelled nightclubs, black market distilleries, Risk-A studios and gambling dens infested the place, with long brightly-lit walkways criss-crossing back and forth overhead. But what gave the place its name was the nest of specialists in the upper regions, those who made a living reshaping the lives of others – literally. In a more civilised era they might have had real qualifications, but now they were simply known as Saws.

"Alright, it's not gonna get any prettier just cos we're staring at it," Doser muttered, thumping the car door shut and hunching his shoulders. He glanced at the address on the holo again then sighed. "You good?"

"Let's just get this over with," Nevay growled. "What in the fucking evergrind would some kid from Perrier be doing with the Saws? No way she's got the crypts to pay for any kind of mods from this place."

"Not your kind of neighbourhood?"

"Business is business," she replied, "but Saws give me the creeps."

"Let's just go," Kirk said, starting towards the closest elevator platform. "Sooner we find the place, the sooner we can leave."

Nobody argued that point. They crammed themselves into the big elevator, shoulder to shoulder with the local denizens of the Saw Cliffs. It was an open topped thing with just a chest-high grate of metal keeping its human cargo inside. Its magrails whined as it climbed, hauling them up from the chemical air of the lower reaches of Hadrian. As they climbed, the air grew hot with electrical discharge, and thrummed with the sound of hundreds of small wind turbines that crawled around the walls like ivy.

Kirk kept his shoulders hunched, eyes up, and one hand on the gun in his belt. People shimmied out of the lift as it climbed, and the higher they went, the fewer companions they seemed to have. Breathing deep, he risked a glance up.

The lair of Hadrian's flesh-cutters was only a few levels away, a series of dark, lurid buildings with neon-signage, mostly reds and deep purples, with sensual images of men and women entangled on billboards, proclaiming that nothing was better than what was on offer here. Be better, be bigger. Don't settle for what you started with.

If you've got the money.

"Stay close, eh?" Doser muttered as the lift creaked into place on the top level. Kirk risked a glance down, and immediately wished he hadn't. The ground was more than a dozen stories below now, ant-like shapes of people scurrying back and forth in a different world.

They moved into the upper level, where evidence of the Saws work was everywhere. He saw people with elongated limbs, some with extra joints. There were people with skin that looked like silver; he saw a woman with honest-to-god fangs. A swarthy young man with dreadlocks sported eyes that glowed blue. Dark clad men and women with guns watched them as they moved.

"Where now?" Kirk asked quietly.

"Across the way," Doser answered, nodding to the opposite side of the Cliffs. "She works out of the back of a club called Reaxis."