"Good lad," nodded Giggles ambiguously. The Hound made an appreciative 'mrff', but if Colin heard it too that was ideal. They were both good lads, really.
But as they moved outside Giggles started to get the feeling that something was off, precisely because the Hound was so excellently trained. All mammals have a keen nose for smoke, and a riot dog like Hound could find Marco's ill-fated pond smack deluxe blunt from blocks away. Now that they were outdoors, Giggles could hear a siren, but...
Giggles and the Hound met eye to eyesac. The Ophan kit was an extraordinary piece of equipment. With his exponentially magnified sense of depth and colour, Giggles could scan the horizons for miles and more, see the faintest stars in the brightest daylight, contrails and windstreams that were invisible to the naked eye.
But the other half of his headgear was not nearly so esoteric. And the airborne soot that should have stood out like a beacon was nowhere to be seen.
A gunshot cracked down the street, dislodging the penny just enough to drop.
"Shit!" yelled Giggles abruptly, smacking himself in the head. He repeated the motion of pulling at his own hair several times until it became clear that he was working at the smoke mask under his hood. "Fucking! Scent simulator! Must've broke in the carp box, I was using it to rebreathe."
A particle filter that allowed its wearer to inhale enough particles to smell was no good to anyone. A better one would have a chemical sampler that plugged into the user's neurons, effectively giving them a safe, artificial nose, but Giggles's kit relied on audiovisual to better calculate what he was supposed to be smelling.
Giggles flipped the switch he was looking for and started to run towards the electric wail, waving for Colin and the Hound to follow. "It's overcompensating for the sound of the alarm! There's no fire. Someone trigged it for cover." A turn and a few metres later and they were at the side of a, well.
Whether it had once been a true river or never anything more than a canal to drain rainwater and provide coolant to the adjacent factories was impossible to tell. It was much easier to see what had happened at its banks.
Someone shot all five of them so quickly that you can see exactly what they were doing. Fucking mercs. Giggles looked back to signal where he was to Colin and the Hound, nothing but a pair of scowling eyebrows still studying the carnage with the Ophan. Bloodsplat angles converge at... Top of one of those buildings there. Firing squad positions, a few shells on the ground...
"Looks like we're late to something," rasped Giggles as his new friends arrived. "Could've been corporate revenge, but all these were killed by one shooter. You don't hire one guy to kill five. Bad practice. Besides, snipers that good ain't cheap." They were at the back of the not-burning building. The canal foamed lazily below. "I have a feeling this was either a failed rescue, or a target theft by one really confident mother fucker."
Giggles could easily fit his submachine gun in his backpack, but he was still holding it in hand. Now he had good reason. "You seem like a good guy, Colin. I'm not gonna ask you to follow me into this kind of business meeting." His head was uncannily still. "But I think my people need me."
Someone was popping corporate cherry, and Giggles was not about to get left out of the action.
Vec
Timemaster
