I’m sitting in a dive bar in a run-down mega-complex, sitting at bar shelf with high stools, watching the sky darken and gather an angry cluster of cloud and smog. The only benefit of owning a corner shop.

It smells like ozone and piss. The evening neon lights and virtual ads blink to life in the streets below, ready to welcome slumped businessmen who leave as soon as their clocks hit seven pm. Traffic isn’t heavy enough yet that it’s too loud to think, but the kids make up for it, fighting and swearing and laughing as they run the walks above and below my complex level.

The bartender in this place is an old model barbot, pieced together with a dozen different parts and hacked within an inch of its life. I did most of the hacks myself. Its body and face are barely humanoid, but he’s clanky enough to make you feel like there’s someone else in the room.

“Hey Arnie,” I call to it. “Bring a whisky.” Turning away, I study the sky again. A storm was building over the city, and with it a feeling I learned to recognize over the decades. Something was coming.

Arnie rattles behind the bar, bringing a bottle and a glass to my table while I go to close the door. I shut out the noise and rising wind but leave the sign on for customers. Not that I expect any.

The whisky goes down smooth, and I pour myself another. Just as I raise it to my lips the old-fashioned bell above the door rings.

A girl walks in. Old enough to be in here, as her id pops up to show, but still really a kid.

One of her eyes is Cyborg. It glows in that eerie way older models do, not like the new ones where you can barely tell the difference between real and fake. She’s young, maybe eighteen. It’s hard to put an age to kids in this neighbourhood. Their skinniness fools you into thinking they’re younger, but there’s that look in their eyes, the look of someone who’s seen too much.

This girl has that look and then some.

It takes her four steps to get to the bar. She orders a shot and throws it back fast. The smell the fear and desperation roll off her, oozing from the pores of her dark coffee skin. She orders another and takes it to a seat in the back, as far from the me as she can get.

I study her. Her tats are sparse but skilfully done, brightly coloured koi fish on the back of her hands that run thin Cyber lines under her skin from fingers to brain. Black hair is cropped close to her scalp. Fashion or practicality? Judging by the goggle marks still imprinted on her face and a thin red line around her head from a sterile cap, I’d say practical. She probably worked at the nearby factory, assembling and shipping Cyborg parts. Her clothes are a hard mix of second-hand, refurbs and cheap knockoffs, and she wears them like a second skin, her movements smooth and comfortable.

She reminds me of someone I knew once. My body aches in the pre-storm weather, but I pick up my bottle, walk over and sit across from her.

“What’s the word, sweetheart?”

She glares at me, eyes full of anger and empty threats.

“The fuck you want?” She slams back her second shot, making a face as it burns down her throat, then rolls the glass between her fingers.

“Just your story, kid. Just your story.”

My voice is deep and gravelly. The kind of voice that makes kids like her sit up, take notice. She tenses and her fingers twitch. Jittery little thing.

She’s quiet so long I think she won’t answer me, but then she does. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says, her face closed off.

I pull off my jacket and put my bare arms on the table where she can see them and she goes still as she notices my tattoos.

Tattoos are tech, fashion and story all rolled into one. The tigers on my hands I got as a kid not much older than her. Gang signs wind up my forearms and elbows, filling every space with badges and warnings. Further up was a crisp band around my biceps, designed with the symbols of Corporation special forces. Above that is an angel, whose wings cut off the symbols of violence and death. Rebirth. Getting out. Starting fresh.

She stares at my arms for a long time, reading my story. Once she’s done, her eyes flick past me to the street.

“It’s raining,” she says.

I wait.

“My story is the same as every other one in this shit hole,” she says. Her voice is bitter, her eyes are tight. “I’m the oldest daughter. Mom’s sick, my older brother ran off. Pop visits the Cyber-dens just about every night and comes home drunk. Sometimes he swings his fists, sometimes he passes out in the door. He’ll wake up in the morning puking, crying, saying how he’s sorry.”

She hesitates.

“Then there’s Sasha.”

As soon as she says that name her whole being softens, becomes young. “Sasha is my little sister. She’s too pretty for this neighbourhood. We’re too poor to move anywhere else though, so I do what I can. Double shifts at the factory, odd paid jobs, hacking credits on the side.”

She glances up to check my reaction, but I don’t give her any judgment. “It’s not much, but it pays the bills. It carried us through. Until last week.”

Lips pressed together, she looks up at Arnie and starts to raise her glass, but I take it and bang it back on the table. “Lay off the sauce, kid. This stuff’ll rot your liver. And your soul.”

“Fuck you!”

She glares at me, tight as a garrote, looking for a fight. I lean back in my chair and stare her down.

Her eyes drop first.

“So,” I say to her. “Sick mom, kid sister, missing brother, deadbeat dad.”

She sighs, not a stop-rushing-me sigh, but a heavy gust of air that carries the weight of the world in her breath.

“They came last week. Some guys Pop owes money from gambling. Gangsters. Pop racked up more debt than I knew, more than he could pay back. A hundred K in credits.”

Hefty sum. Gangsters didn’t usually lend that much money unless they were aiming for something. I think I know what’s coming.

“So, they show up, polite and smiling like we were all friends. And they ask for Sasha.”

I was right. I wish I wasn’t. Pretty young thing in a place like this could earn certain people a lotta of money. Even more than a hundred grand depending on how they use her.

The girl continues. “So I stepped up. Offered to take Sasha’s place. But they didn’t want me. I’m too old, not beautiful. I fought them, begged them, told them I’d do anything they wanted, whatever it took to leave my sister be.”

Naive. But she’s loyal and gutsy and I like that.

“I didn’t think they heard me, but then one of the guys says something to the boss, and they stop. ‘You’ll do anything?’ the boss asks. I just about piss myself but they’re still holding Sasha so I say ‘Ya’. They tell me they got a man who needs killing, but they can’t use their guys. They say that if I do this thing for them, they’ll cut Pop’s debt in half and leave Sasha be.”

Her voice is shaking by the end, and streams of tears slip down her cheeks like the rain outside. I don’t speak, just listen to the rising traffic and wind and the silent screams of the girl sitting across from me.

She swipes an angry hand over her tears and sniffs. “I’ve done some shit in the past, stuff I’m not proud of. But this. This will cross a line. No coming back. Not for me anyway.” She looks at my arms again. The angels.

“After they left Mom cried herself sick and Pop disappeared. Not sure if he skipped town or what, but I hope he never comes home. I hope he dies in a gutter somewhere.” Strong words, but her voice lacks fury or hate. She just sounds tired. Beat.

“I went back to work. After a week I thought maybe they’d forgotten, or… I don’t know what I was thinking.” She puts her elbows on the table, hands holding her face as she watches the spatter of raindrops against the windows. “They came back. Grabbed me after my shift this afternoon. Gave me an address, a name, a picture and a knife. Told me to do it today.”

A quick sideways look and she smiles with dark humour. “I don’t think I’m meant to survive this. I mean… a knife! If I hack the dude’s biochip, I can overwhelm him long enough to get close, but there’s no way I won’t get caught.”

Lines deepen around her mouth, and she taps her fingers in front of her. “Besides, even if I could get away with it, there’s still the rest of the debt. They’ll come back for another ‘favour’, and another after that.”

I look at her hands. They’re clasped like she’s praying. Waiting for an answer.

My body protests when I get up. I’m getting old. The girl watches me go the bar, pushing Arnie out of the way. I crouch and touch a hidden safe with my finger, sending a signal through my tats to unlock it.

I take out two things and stand up. I ask myself why I’m helping her but can’t come up with any answer that makes a spark of sense.

Returning, I set the objects on the table, and she stiffens, her eyes shooting to mine.

“Your choice,” I say. “The pistol is a Pan5000. You point, you pull, the chip in a person’s head short circuits, fries his brain. Id tag’s been hacked off. Don’t need to get close to kill a man.”

I point to the other item, a round data wafer the size of my thumbnail, and a virtual number appears above it. “Credit chip. Ten grand pre-loaded, untraceable. Choose one. You take the pistol and leave the front door. Or you take the credits, skip out the back entrance, disappear. Nobody sees you or follows you. Start fresh.”

My eyes hold hers so that she feels what I’m about to say. “You choose your path, and then you walk it like you mean it.”

She looks at me with some combination of hope and despair. “What’s the catch?”

I shake my head. “No catch. No strings. A gift.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Good question. I rub my tattoos, trying to find an answer. “Because I’m old and nosy,” I say.

I can see it grates at her, especially with what’s coming, but she lets it go. She’s too desperate to turn down this chance.

I leave her and turn away from the bar, staring out the streaked glass at the city barely visible behind the downpour. Even the rain in this town was dirty, steeped in pollution that left trails of grime on the walls and windows. But I didn’t hate it. The place was what it was.

Her anxiety is heavy in the room, but she doesn’t take long to decide. I hear her get up and then there’s a breeze as she stands at the front door, the pistol in her hand.

“Hey kid, what’s your name?” I say, my back to her.

“Falah,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” I say.

From the corner of my eye, I see her raise the pistol at me. She pulls the trigger.