Glitch hunched her shoulders and retreated as far as she could into the relative warmth of her black, armored hoodie. The thermostat in this place was set to exactly 72 degrees – the ideal working temperature for a middle-aged man – which meant she was freezing. A few feet away a polite, white sign reminded visitors of Green Spaces (“A Breath of Fresh Air for Your Business”) to please keep off the grass. Glitch had pointedly chosen to wait for her meeting at the exact center of the lawn. The green, plastic stuff under her beat-up, blood-splattered shoes was fake anyway.

She shifted her weight and scanned the park again. No sky overhead, only a metal dome with huge, hanging sun lamps to give wage slaves their Vitamin D dosage and keep the handful of biological plants on the verge of life. The park had entered its day cycle so the whole space had a uniformly gray light, like an overcast day. Dried masses of twigs that might generously be called bushes with a few leaves hanging on gamely at their ends lined the park’s perimeter. A square pond utterly devoid of life occupied the exact center of the space, reflecting the gray, steel sky overhead. Little paths made of poured cement cut their way through the false grass in neat, geometric lines as though a computer had scoured through thousands of stock photos to create the ideal "recreational space."

A corporate park was no place for a Runner, especially after sun-up, but the client hadn’t been willing to meet earlier than 5 am. Glitch thought – hoped unrealistically – that it would still be early enough to avoid passersby, but already a handful of wage-slaves were here jogging in synthetic, brand-name workout clothes or wandering in pairs, already suited up in ties and pencil skirts. Most had mastered the art of staring without looking at her directly, but a couple of them were still getting the hang of it. They all had to know she wasn’t a drug dealer or some unappreciated executive’s dirty little secret - the hotel across the street was more suitable for either and infinitely more discreet.

The kangaroo pocket of her hoodie buzzed against her stomach. Glitch fished inside and pulled out a digital watch with a cracked faceplate and a coating of dried blood. It belonged to a now-dead pilot named Wingz, one of three casualties a forensic team was no doubt poring over right now on the hundred and eighty ninth floor of a skyscraper owned by Eyes in the Sky. With any luck, their ghosts would be too busy haunting the dreams of the janitorial staff to intrude on hers. Glitch herself had only barely made it out alive via a dubious alliance with the Runners who had killed her crew - Nine, Syntechie, and Nero. It was complicated, and she wasn’t ever planning to explain it to anyone.

The watch was either Wingz’ phone, a particularly odd one, or a glorified pager for when his phone wasn’t on. Either way, it was bio-locked. Glitch wasn’t able to pick up or ignore calls from someone named “Star Girl” this time or the other two times the watch had buzzed in the last hour. Glitch held the watch in her hand until it stopped buzzing, then put it away again. It gave her a surreal feeling: somewhere out there in the city of Neosakka, someone was living in a world where Wingz might still be alive. She half-envied Star Girl, whoever she was. Not knowing was agony, but answers were worse.

The watch wasn’t the only token she’d walked away from the job with: she had blood on her shoes, scorch marks on her hoodie, and thick, deep bruises from being dragged out a window by a chopper. Her entire body ached. All that and one other thing: a data packet stored on the cyberware inside her head. Syntechie had given it to her with a blue-lipped smile and a “That makes us even, pet.”

Which brought her to the present and the reason she was standing here in the false-daylight of a corporate park instead of jacked into her computer at home like a sensible person. The data was the key to cred and the hard-fought end of this shit-storm of a job. All she needed to do was successfully trade the data for payment, and she’d be done. Safe. Able to go home and hide in her own personal Matrix until she forgot what biospace even felt like.

A woman appeared through the sliding glass doors at the far end of the park beneath the giant, metal “Green Spaces” logo. Whatever beauty she might have had in her youth had been firmly replaced by practicality. She was a heavier set woman, but fit exactly into her charcoal-gray dress suit and flats. White showed at the roots of her flat brown hair that she’d tied back into a severe bun. Thick foundation and a broad, bright lipstick didn’t quite draw the eye away from the heavy frown-lines etched into her forehead. She carried a data pad in one hand, and a large, gray flip phone in her other.

The woman headed directly toward Glitch with short, clipped steps. She halted at the edge of the path, unwilling to refuse the polite orders of the little white sign. Glitch stayed where she was on the grass, stoically watching the woman from across the dozen feet that separated them. If the woman wanted to talk, she was going to have to raise her voice loud enough that the jogger lingering at the other end of the path might overhear.

The woman’s lips shrank down to a well-practiced line of disapproval. She stepped out onto the green, and the synthetic grass made small squeaking sounds against her soles.

“You’re not the Runner we contracted,” the woman said stiffly.

“Well, I’m what you’ve got,” Glitch replied.

There would be no introductions. Wage-slaves like these that came to collect and pay up were referred to only as Mr. or Mrs. Smiths. And Glitch, for the duration of the conversation was only “Runner”.

The Mrs. Smith’s frown intensified.

“This is a breach of protocol,” she pressed.

“Yeah,” Glitch said. “That’s pretty much what we’re paid to do. You want the data or not?”

If the woman’s lips got any thinner, they were going to disappear entirely. Nevertheless, she handed Glitch the datapad. Glitch sat down right where she was on the pseudo-grass. Dampness soaked up through her jeans. Did they wash the turf or something? It would have been nice if there’d been a wall or something for her to lean against – she was going to get a face-full of the stuff in a moment. She pulled her hood back. From the base of her skull, she unspooled a jack-in cable. Glitch glanced around the park. The other wage-slaves had given them a wide berth, and there wasn’t a security guard in sight. Glitch closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her nose filled with stale air and faint hints of chemical cleaner. She jacked into the datapad.

The soreness of her muscles melted away as she disconnected from biospace and the body she left behind there. Glitch felt intense relief, and then the emotion drifted away without the feedback of her biology to anchor it. Her avatar, a black cat with purple eyes, popped into space and looked around. There wasn’t much to see inside this tiny shoebox of a matrix. The devs hadn’t bothered to program the interior with any sprites, so her own deck rendered it as console green, pixelated wire-frames, and clunky labels, like an ancient, 8-Bit video game. The floor represented the operating system, and the poorly-rendered mice scuttling back and forth were background processes. Several scurried over to her to see if her deck wanted to sync up with any of the data pad’s applications. Glitch’s cat avatar batted them aside and they backed off. Simple boxes containing programs and features she had access to were laid out in nice, neat rows. Not far away was a wall with a locked gate that represented the login gate that hid anything on the datapad she didn’t have permission to access. Glitch studied the lock through the cat avatar’s eyes, tail twitching as its animation idled. She decided against trying the portal. Stick to the job: deliver the data, get paid, go home.

She generated a wireframe box with an open top and dumped the data inside. It took a few cyberspace moments for the transfer to complete. An error message populated somewhere inside her deck. Glitch glanced at it. It was a “failure to install” notification for system THRLL0907 – some adware had tried to insert itself into her system and been rejected by her firewall. Drek, she hated marketers. The data finished transferring a moment later.

Glitch jacked out. She opened her eyes, back in biospace. Sure enough, she’d toppled over on her side, and the stiff blades of fake grass pressed up against her cheek like discarded packing-plastic. She sat up, rubbed away the residue of cleaner, and handed the datapad back to the Mrs. Smith. The woman checked the transfer and then nodded.

“This will do,” she said.

Glitch spooled away her jack-in cable and didn’t answer.

The woman flipped open her phone, held down a speed-dial number, and raised it to her ear.

“Go ahead and push the payment through,” she said to the person on the other end.

She hung up. Glitch got up and started walking away.

“The payment has been transferred to the account number you provided us with,” the Mrs. Smith said briskly to her departing back. “A pleasure doing business with you.”

Glitch pulled up her hood. She heard the wage slave’s footsteps squeak a retreat back to the safety of the cement walkway. The Mrs. Smith’s phone rang and she picked up to address the next item of business for the day. A breath of relief escaped Glitch’s lips.

It was over.

Done.

Handle, her Fixer, would get her share of the pay transferred to her account. That should keep her fed and housed for a good six months if she didn’t spend any of it on upgrades. She’d probably buy some upgrades.

“Excuse me?” the Mrs. Smith’s voice suddenly hailed her.

Glitch didn’t stop walking or look back. The data was good – she’d checked it herself – and she didn’t owe this woman or her corp bosses anything. Her stomach stirred uncomfortably. She fought an impulse to start running.

“Runner! Wait a moment, would you?” The woman’s voice was closer now, breathless, and pitched high to sound friendly.

Glitch whirled around in alarm. The woman wasn’t quite running towards her, but only just. She took a shortcut across a stretch of grass, voluntarily ignoring the mandate of the little white sign. Every other wage slave in the park stared openly now.

Glitch backed towards the glass double doors. One hand reached for the beretta she carried concealed beneath her hoodie. The woman reached inside her suit jacket and produced a small handgun of her own with surprising speed. She held the gun at her side, barrel up at Glitch as she walked closer.

“My manager would like a word with you,” the Mrs. Smith said breathlessly.