Short Fiction: Part of our ‘Future Glasgow’ series.

---

I step off the curb in Sauchiehall Street, Glesga, and cross the road into Temple Street, Kowloon.

The physical replica of the famous red gate hides the first of the record/projector banks that run Hope Street to Charing Cross, slicin out the crumblin Gothic dwellins of a gutted auld shoppin street and transplantin it to Hong Kong, the night market switcherood in its place.

The shimmerin projections of the Hong Kongers are lookin up from their end at sandstone tenements, black iron drainpipes, and meltin grotesques, the projected Scottish people marchin on through them, hunched and glad to be out the rain, dryin under the hot blowers doin their best to recreate a stiflin HK summer.

The Scots – very real from my side, smellin of damp clothes – are in turn lookin at sheer, high blocks of brutal concrete painted red, fizzin neon over shop doors, flappin lanterns strung up above their heeds, and endless stalls of jewellery, purses, clothes – artwork and hardware and vintage electronics – they cannot touch. The smells of fried duck and burnin charcoal waft along with the artificial heat.

The Kowloon X-over zone, along with three others around town, was created and funded by an arts and tourism charity – ‘Glesga: The City of Guid Cunts’ – so the carbon’s offset and you don’t have to pay to get in. Lucky me.

A yella ‘X’ marks the X-over cafés. I slip into a crampt wee place, its plain tables and chairs overlaid with AR visuals of a cha chaan teng. 

Unlike the rest of the X-over experience, the shimmerin holo-wummin sittin across the table is seein exactly the same thing, only to her I’m the one who isn’t quite solid.

She has no muscle with her – no need, she’s sat six thousand geographic miles away from anythin dangerous I might be carryin – and she’s not expectin trouble from me anyway. Cause I’m desperate and she can tell. I’m shiverin in my skin and not because of the rain I’ve just shaken off.

I get the impression the other folk in this side of the café aren’t sure whether I’m a projection or not – I feel insubstantial myself, like I could slip through some crack any second and wind up floatin in a foggy, digi-limbo between Glesga and Kowloon.

The holo-wummin is auld, withered and shrunk, a smile barin false teeth like shovel blades in retreatin gums. She must surely have had some life-extendin interventions, the kind that are a big fuckin no-no in this country unless you’ve got some miles and political clout about you. But she’s not in this country, I remind myself. Not beholden to Scotland’s laws against livin forever. A gulf represented by an arm’s length of cheap wooden table.

Waiters pitch up at either side of us. It’s table service despite the size of the place, you don’t want punters movin about too much in a close-quarters X-over, it spoils the effect if you glide right through someone. I shake my heed at mine and the wummin murmurs somethin in Cantonese to hers, who bows and steps away with her order.

When she speaks to me, her voice is a wheedlin rasp, her Scots native-good and high class, only a little English mixed in: ‘Glad ye showed yersel, wis gettin nervish waitin lik dat.’

‘You knew I’d be here,’ I say, ‘Had to walk, that’s all.’ That’s the truth, I’ve not got a carbon mile to my name.

‘Well, noos the time tae haggle yer penny-fee, doll.’ She smiles at me with those grave-digger teeth.

‘I’ve not agreed to do it yet. I want to know what it is I’m puttin my neck on the line for.’

‘Yer neck’s awready oan the line. That’s why yer gonnae dae it.’

Fuck . . . She knows all about the squeeze I’m in with Mulligan. I’m only surprised for a second.

---

Last week, Maw called. She doesn’t have enough carbon for an idle chinwag, so when she calls I answer. 

Her face appeared floatin in my palm, skull hollow and ripped open at the back like a cracked chocolate egg where the pin-cams in her arthritic fingers can’t see round. At her end she’d see my own scooped-out heed floatin in hers. ‘I need you to pop home, love. The now,’ she said, and before she spoke another word I closed my fist and started runnin.

Earlier, I’d splurged and bought two stops on the subway to Ibrox – it’s cheaper since they de-engineered it back to a cable traction system but the crank still needs carbon-leakin power – but only cause I was hurtin so bad I couldn’t bear walkin. A half gram inside me and two more in my pocket had me on my feet but with no carbon to spare for a ride home. I bolted all the way. And I enjoyed it, heart bangin out a rapid rhythm, blood coursin like water from a burst dam.

Enjoyed it till I got all the way back and saw the door to the flat pried open. I’d disabled the electronic lock myself to save every little scrap of juice so it wouldn’t have been a big job, though the beefy lad towerin over my Maw was strong enough to rip the iron cone from the Duke of Wellington’s heed.

Subdermal ball-bearings rolled around under the skin of his face, arching his shaved brows, accentuating the twist of his smile, flair of his predator’s nostrils. It’s a grey-market body mod and the polis might look at you twice for havin it – might want to see how close your brain and nerves interfaced with the movable bearings.

They’re Pre-Rev fashion but since then are seen to skirt too close to transhuman fuckery and now almost exclusively mark someone out as a criminal. Profilin, aye, but accurate in the case of brick house Vick. The palm tech is an exception, it was just too useful and everyone was overly reliant on it – ID, comms, bank account, passport, vax status – but illegal moddin of the standard would buy you jail time.

My own – equipped with net capabilities and loaded like a venomous spider with mutant malware – would get me bunged inside for a few. (I have some unpleasant physical failsafes in place if I’m ever pinched which I hope I never have to use.)

‘Dana, hen, good to see you!’ he boomed. The little rollin lumps beneath his skin moved snake-like from his forehead and circled his eyes along the line of the sockets, makin hoods. ‘Mulligan’s been lookin for you. Makin yourself scarce, aye?’

I swallowed, mouth dry, thumpin of my heart becomin sickenin. ‘I’ve not got anythin to give him.’

‘You may have fucked the job but you could repay your advance, no?’

I shook my heed. ‘Don’t have the money anymore, Vick. I paid the rent, bought food.’ Maw started greetin. Vick’s hand was on her shoulder, grip too tight to be givin comfort.

‘You pay rent for this shitehole? I was assumin somebody was payin you to be here.’ The flat isn’t much, right enough. One bedroom for Maw, I sleep on the couch – thick, smelly blankets still in a heap against one arm – a kitchenette with a view of the big screen and the bathroom door.

In the no-window gloom – no miles in the pay-as-you-go meter, not even for the cooker or the kettle – you can see a faded picture on the wall of Maw and Da and baby me: The family Ansari-Maxwell, a forgotten wee stub of the revolutionary-turned-business Maxwell Clan of coders and brokers. Petrel Maxwell was my great, great granny – you see that famous pic of her holding the gun to Cartwright’s heed printed on everythin from mugs to beach towels these days, so it’s no wonder people are surprised I have no money.

‘Nothin left at all? Even just a token – a down-payment. That would do for now…’ His hand went to his belt, brushin aside the hem of his coat. I saw the dull matte anti-colour of printed plastic, the fine pyramidal ridges of a tactical grip.

I called up my account – sayin you have nothin left isn’t quite havin nothin left. Vick’s hand moved from the handle of the weapon. He held it out empty, palm up. I gave him a low five and the carbon was transferred. Now I had nothin left. Really nothin.

‘You’ve bought yourself a week, hen. Get the rest of it, I don’t want to have to hurt you.’ The subdermal marbles shifted and aligned at either side of his mouth in a horrible clown smile. He dipped his hand in my pocket and took the rest of the pseudo-meth I’d bought. ‘Food, aye?’ He chuckled and left through the broken door.

Maw was snottery-sobbin. She reached out for my hand. ‘Daniel . . . ’ she said, with shakin breath. I squeezed back and reminded her, firm but polite, that Daniel isn’t my name.

---

So I need a lot of carbon miles. Enough for air flights out of Scotland, for two. We’re talkin jet fuel – ten kilos of carbon dioxide for every gallon burnt. Serious fuckin mileage. Not the kind of cashish you find lost down a palm line.

So I’ll do what the wummin asks, even if it’s mental, and it is that:

‘Trident?’ My jaw hangs loose. She’s smilin again with those teeth that could turn earth. She told me in the end, maybe just to have a laugh at my expense. ‘That’s a fuckin ghost hunt.’

‘Och, A ken the auld story, sweetheart – the fleet sunk in the Atlantic oan its repatriation cruise, naebdy taks responsibility, naebdy kens where it hits bottom, there’s nae sign or signal fae the seabed. Only hing’s fir sure is the bombs didnae gang aff. Mystery-cast special, richt enough.’

‘But that isn’t the real story?’

‘When’s it ever, dolly?’

‘And how is it the Maxwells know anythin about it?’

‘Aweel, there’s little they dinnae ken.’

I can’t help but smirk, even if the exertion might split me apart from the seams of my mouth and down the sides. ‘That’s the conventional wisdom but this… this is somethin different. El Dorado, Atlantis . . . Myth.’

‘Aw ae which start wae a salt-grain ae truth. Ye go an peep fir yersel, ye’ll find it, a ken that, dolly.’

‘And why will they even let me anywhere near their very private, offline datastack?’

‘Yer a Maxwell, are ye no? Descendant ae Petrel the Reaper hersel.’

‘My Maw is a Maxwell. I’m . . . I’m just the baby in the basket, floatin down the fuckin Clyde. And as for Petrel, I never met the wummin – deed before I was a single cell in my Da’s bawsack. That is The Reaper’s legacy after all. She made sure that nobody lives forever in Scotland.’

‘Certainly no Josephina Cartwright,’ she says, and for a second that smile of hers falters. The eyes seem very auld indeed as she mimes a gun aimed at her temple.

I stand. ‘Half up front, and I’m goin to need some work done, on your tab. Also, I’ll give it a thorough look but I make no promises. I get the second half regardless.’

‘Deal.’ Flat-blade smile. She sips on somethin hot, puts the cup down and holds out her hand, account open, amount set.

‘I’ll have a poke around for the location of the Loch Ness Monster while I’m at it.’

---

I should get a taxi. My legs are rubber from the aftereffects of the sedative and I’m half blind, my right eye patched up while the new hardware and software sync. (I reasoned the datastack would require a personally-wired AR interface – just in the one eye though, for someone with fluctuatin funds like myself, you don’t want to end up completely blind because you’ve run out of juice.) However, I feel a desperate need for fresh air after the suffocatin heat of the clinic and its vinegary disinfectant stink. Plus, I’ve got an important stop to make afore I go home.

You don’t tend to get many chip rippers around Ibrox. Nobody has enough there to make it worth the trouble, and it takes more than some rough surgery if you want to cover your digital trail. No, the talented Gulls who work that game properly hide out in the bin alleys behind the big-time casinos, practised enough that you might still be able to play piano once they’ve gouged the wirin from your hand.

Still, I buy a Sunday Mornin Stunner along with the grams of synth from my dealer – who runs his operation out of a kilt makin front at the bazaar in the auld fitbaw stadium – which I can now afford to replace and then some.

I’m nervous carryin all this carbon in my palm, more than I’ve ever felt, though I tell myself I’m just imaginin the physical weight. The bold pseudo-meth helps at first before the para energy takes hold, fighting with the spacey dregs of the anaesthetic. I’ve no intention of givin anythin back to Mulligan and I see big Vick’s Newton-cradle face leerin out of every bus window and haunting every shadow.

When I get back, before I’ve even dropped my coat, I ask Maw for her Da’s number. She’s tight faced. ‘Why on Earth you’d want to speak to that man, Daniel . . . ‘

‘Dana. Maw, my name’s Dana.’ I put money on the meter and click the kettle on. It’s not that she disagrees in principle – she’d never support the shite spouted by the Christian & Atheist Alliance for Science – and if it was somebody else’s wean she’d have no problem mindin their name. However, when it’s your own the proprietary gene kicks in and it’s hard to fathom such fundamental changes to the things you thought you knew and understood. Though considering what she’s been through with her own folks it can’t help but rankle. But she’s my Maw. I promise her we’ll soon be off. Both of us. Time to go. Just this one last thing…

She slips her hand into mine. The contact info pings across the gap between the electrons of our skin.

---

If there’s one thing every hacker hates it’s a job that has to be done onsite. And this is some fuckin site: Park Circus, the Maxwell Clan compound. A double ring of ancient sandstone tenements nestled among tangles of bioengineered jungle, the dwellins joined by a spider’s network of bridges and tunnels, its outer aesthetic of a jewel-like fossil underlaid by hidden patterns of steel and security, invisible webs.

The gate parts and we enter the outer ring where it’s all business, twenty-four hours a day, the kilt-clad drones of the Maxwell hive busy makin the honey. They sent a rickshaw for me – a quad cycle limousine, equal parts PR stunt and status symbol.

Each corner of the bullet-proof bubble carriage is being pedalled by a body-guard/athlete hybrid, hearts and lungs and muscles cybernetically modified to within a baw hair of illegality – probably past it, actually, but the rules don’t apply to people with money (while even a decent-lookin prosthetic can attract the attention ae the scheme polis) even if they are the very ones who sought to eradicate transhumanism entirely from the country. Do as we say, not as we do and all that.

Petrel Maxwell had been a firebrand of the Rev, not just a standard-bearer but a hacker of immense skill and finesse. A true leader. But the thing that really made her famous, and gave the Maxwell Clan its longevity, was the public scalpin – digital and physical – of Bain CEO, Josephina Cartwright.

For three hundred years Cartwright had been head and heart, body and soul of the Bain company, world leaders and innovators of transhuman and singularity tech, sellin infinite life for an infinite subscription fee. Then Petrel and her followers stormed their HQ at the Electric Clock Spire and, on cam, deleted her digital consciousnesses, burned all trace of her from the cloud, and detonated the hard back-ups before puttin a bullet through the wummin’s heed.

All over Scotland, rebels stormed the corporate corridors of power and assassinated the immortals, the monoliths, purgin singularity data banks with codes and explosives. And so she became Petrel the Reaper. Bringin death back to the world – or Scotland, at least. History. And the Maxwell family has reaped the benefit ever since, slowly metastasisin into the kind of hegemony their old chief would have loathed.

Penetratin the outer ring, we slip through tuberous foliage, soft mist from sprinklers in the air to quell the manufactured heat – all offset no doubt. The irony of the rich havin access to renewable energy so they don’t have to pay the mileage while I have to pay up front just to make a brew isn’t lost on me. I hadn’t touched the ice-cooled champagne in the rickshaw limo’s carriage yet, and as we enter the next set of gates to the inner circle I pop the top off that sucker and drain as much as I can before I start to hiccup.

The inner circle of townhouses curves round a garden – more tame but no less exotic than the rainforest buffer between the inner sanctum and the office. A windmill is planted in the centre, its shaft made of bark and lichen. The buildins boast more clean sandstone, more invisibly-braced relics, seethin from within with light and noise and tech buzz.

From outside, my new eye is already pickin out various networks – public, secret, secret-secret, and lines of defence physical and digital. The clinic did good work: perfect colour match, little to no scarrin, the interface fast and unobtrusive, there when needed. Primo job.

Still, as I walk through the scanners on the door my heart starts to rattle, and it’s not just the latest dab of synth and the champagne fizzin about my heed. The machine ticks off the standard gear in my hand then sweats me out for a few seconds before givin me the green light, the palm mods and eye job passin under the radar.

Then I’m in, swingin through an archway into the buildin next door, the bottom floor cleared out as an expansive waitin area for the good and great of the over and under worlds of Glesga, parquet floorin and tasteful last, last century furniture.

Everywhere there’s suits standin, sittin, shufflin, tryin to be casual as they wait to be called upstairs to the office via the grand, twistin staircase that sweeps up to the mezzanine. There are familiar faces from the media bullets – politicians, businesspeople, charity chairs and cause pushers – all here to lobby and graft. This is how Park Circus gets its nickname: Unholyrood.

People are lookin at me. I’m noticeably shabby in laddered tights, long coat a few years past trendy, skin waxy and unwashed, three days of stubble on my chin. There’ll be more than a few clockin my sallow skin and dark, thick hair, hallmarks passed on from my Da, and wonderin about my stock. The Rev was riddled with ethno-nationalists among other cranks, a powerful strain of bullshit whose smell still hangs around four generations later. I let the pseudo-meth and the champagne give them all big grins and cheerful nods.

A waiter is doin the rounds. He’s deliberately steerin clear of certain people, the desperate-lookin cunts, faces shiny with cold sweat. I step right into his path and help myself to a random tumbler, givin him a big wink. I watch the stairs – you can tell how the meetin’s went by how they come down, either glidin on the soft carpet, palm ticklin the bannister, or almost runnin down sideyways, hand grippin so tight it’s buffin the shine from the walnut, neck flushed red around their collar.

Soon, I get the tap on the shoulder and it’s my turn. A butler whose tailcoat is bulgin with as much augmented muscle as the rickshaw drivers leads me up that grand, portentous staircase to the door of the Big Man’s chamber and holds it open, the smell of wood wax and cigar smoke welcomin me across the threshold.

‘Granda,’ I say, chemical smile plastered on my face. At a quick glance, Granda Maxwell is no older than my Da was when he passed almost a decade ago, though by my rough count the auld geezer must be in his eighties. Naughty, naughty. But life extension isn’t livin forever, his kind would argue. There was a limit, but if you have the money, why would you not take care of yourself any way you can?

Closer, his face is like the old, smoothed-out mouldins on the doorframes from all the plastic work. He’s small behind a big desk. Guess we all have our insecurities no matter how auld and how powerful.

Petrel the Reaper herself is on the wall behind him, the larger-than-life portrait backlit to give her an angel’s glow like a saint in a stained-glass window, forever glowerin down on the unlucky sod who has to sit on this side of the desk. Her own form of immortality. When you’re so used to seein her in the meme with the gun pointed at Cartwright’s heed there’s somethin unsettlin about her just sittin there with her hands in her lap and her eyes followin you.

‘Daniel,’ he says, ‘I… I wis surprised ye called.’

‘Dana,’ I say. ‘Not Daniel.’

He nods and there’s somethin warm there. Somethin that makes me unable to trust my own judgement. ‘Dana, ae course, ma apologies. Am sorry ye hud tae wait there. Hings huv been hectic the day, hope ye understawnd.’

‘Aw yeah, of course. Things never stop for me either.’ I’m smiling too hard, knee jigglin, feet refusin to stay planted on the woven rug beneath the chair.

‘Well then, ye willnae mind if we get straight oan tae the reason ye’re here?’

‘I’ll come right out with it then. I’m lookin for a job.’ I give the office an obvious once over, as if I’m intendin him to step aside and let me sit down in his chair right then and there, as if I’m measurin the windows for new curtains.

He smiles and sighs, kindly auld man. ‘Dana . . . I never cut yer Maw aff. The money wis always there fir her if she just asked. The door wis ayeways open fir her tae come hame. I even reached oot eftir yer Da passed away but she wouldnae see sense, didnae even want tae talk aboot it.’

‘But I do – it’s just I’d like to work for it, I don’t just want you to give me money cause . . . ’

He holds up a hand to cut me off and I let him. I don’t quite know why, it just happens. I’m silenced with a wave. ‘Dana . . . Naw. Ye wouldnae be a good fit. It’s like yer Da – he wis a good man, nae doubt aboot it, but he just wisnae the right fit fir yer Maw, fir a Maxwell.’

‘And why not?’ My mouth is dry, tongue sore from bein chewed.

Again, that look, like he’s bein kind to a simple child. ‘Ye know why.’

I nod. It’s a struggle to look back up at him, but I manage. ‘I do. I just want to hear you say it.’

He stands up and comes round the huge desk, still straight-backed, his movements fluid and precise. He leans over me. I can smell toothpaste and a hum of whisky underneath. He puts a hand on my tremblin knee, pressin down firmly until it stops movin. ‘Because yer a mongrel,’ he says with a smile. ‘An I can only trust a true Scot.’

---

I see myself out, wobblin down those treacherous stairs. I can still feel the pressure of that hand, the only thing tetherin my spinnin heed to the ground. For a moment I wonder in panic if he’s passed some mutant software onto me, into the gear in my hand or eye, but it’s not that. I try to breathe deep and do a system check. Wirin’s all good. I focus, tryin to move with purpose as I scam my way into the house network and trip the fire alarm. I lock the doors too, set off the sprinklers, causin a brouhaha of shoutin voices and heels slidin on wet, polished floor, my inward state manifest.

In the chaos, I slip off, followin the power, a hot core of it comin from upstairs somewhere round the curve of the conjoined tenements – the routes pulsin in my vision. I’m doin my best to avoid the security cams flagged up, hastily wipin out and loopin footage as I go.

I’m through into the other buildins in the ring now, headin up a stair twisted around a frozen crystal waterfall that’s crashin down from a round skylight. Tasteful. The chaos is followin me all over, alarms and sprinklers and shutters creatin a maze for the security.

To the plain eye, the library is nothin but an empty room with a deathly soft maroon carpet and a few scattered wingback chairs. To the Augmented Reality, the room is an endless, glitterin chamber of information. I reinstate the cracked door lock behind me and I get to work, barrellin down the stacks, followin the trail of heightened security. The better the protection, the more valuable.

I dab at the synth in my pocket, rubbin it into my gums as I work, the chem buzz makin everythin vibrate as I tear and rip and finesse my way past encryption, indiscriminately infectin things as I go along. If I had any ethical quandaries about what the auld expat wummin in Kowloon might be wantin with vintage nuclear warheads which vanished into the sea, it’s been overridden by a fevered fury to rip these Maxwell cunts off good and fast and hard.

I finally crack the egg and I see it – I see what I’m supposed to take. And it isn’t anythin to do with Trident.

---

After settin the alarms straight, I spill outside with the other soakin wet suits, wavin off the rickshaw and leavin on foot, out the gates and down the hill to Kelvingrove, which is dark and would be an easy place to snuff someone if you were to suddenly realise they’d stolen somethin important from you. Pleasant stroll in the park to get back to the city centre so it is, headin towards the soft glow of the projectors comin from the Charing Cross mouth of the Kowloon X-over.

If my hand felt phantom-heavy before with all that carbon loaded on it, the thing I’ve just stashed in there makes it feel like it’s made of lead. Instinctively, I pull the cuff of my sleeve over my hand, bawlin it up in a fist.

My level of paranoia is so high that when Brickhouse Vick steps out the door of a close right in front of me on Temple Street, I hesitate because part of me is sure it’s just my imagination again.

‘Dana, hen!’ he growls. The ball bearins arrange themselves into a walrus moustache and winged eyebrows. ‘Good to see you ag-’

I pull the stunner from my pocket and zap him one right in the pus. He squeals and the BBs under his skin scatter like a break shot, goin haywire. He claws at his face and crumples to the ground. I turn on my heel and slam straight into Mulligan himself, backed up by another slab of muscle – this one tuned up the old-fashioned way, through painful exercise, no shortcuts, the kind of bruiser that knows exactly how dangerous she is.

Mulligan tries to speak, his hands up, but I fire the second charge into his belly and he throws up on his shoes. Before I can take aim again my arm goes deed as the gun is slapped from my hand by his new back-up. Her second punch is an eye-level blur and I can’t mind how it finishes.

I feel somethin solid beneath me, the rain on my face, can see the stars straight ahead among dizzy neon symbols, lanterns and buntin flappin in the warm breeze. Scattered images out of phase. The space between Kowloon and Glesga – limbo here I come . . .

---

They probably don’t need to tie me down. The come down from the synth is well in effect, couldn’t run if I wanted to. Blisterin pain in my face, dry blood crusted on my lips. I’m strapped to a hospital bed, the ones used for givin blood. It has a long arm rest on one side and my arm is fixed there, palm up, the pinpricks of built-in cams and projectors in my fingers twinklin under the harsh spotlight above.

She’s sittin by me on a plastic chair, the auld wummin. In the real. The big sister who decked me is standin not far behind, just beyond the cone of light thrown down on us.

‘You hacked into that X-over café didn’t you?’ I say. My tongue is thick and sore. ‘You were never in Temple Street.’

‘I’ve never left Glesga, dolly. Why wid anywan want tae?’ She smiles and shows off those spades of hers. ‘Yer debt wae Mr Mulligan’s clear, by the by, though ye might huv tae settle a score wae his mucker whas fizzog ye ruint.’

‘You paid them to watch me?’

The bruiser is movin around, gatherin things together. She’s wearin an apron over her clothes, mask and goggles coverin her face. Lightenin bolt of panic as I try to move my spaghetti limbs and realise just how tight they’ve got me rigged up here.

‘A didnae ken wit ye’d dae when ye realised wit ye were really there tae steal.’

Tryin to take deep breaths but they’re comin out short through my nose. I shake my heed, my brain bounces off the dry insides of its chamber. ‘Doesn’t matter what it is. We have our deal. Take it. I don’t care what it is, just take it. Take it and give me my mileage.’ Bold ask considerin but I need that fuckin carbon like a leech needs blood. Mulligan might be off my back but the Maxwells are the ones takin over the contract.

Scrubbed up, the meathead is lookin like more than just hired muscle now. She has magician’s hands, fingers dextrous and clever (exceptin the bruises my face left on her knuckles) as she sets her instruments out on a tray: scalpel, wire-cutters, needle-nose pliers, a syringe and ampoule of lidocaine.

‘A will, dolly,’ the auld wummin says. ‘But it’s no just a case ae daein a regular transfer. I cannae huv any trace left ahint.’

I’m thrashin, only my heed really able to get any movement. The needle pricks my forearm. Dr Deadlift presses the plunger then pulls the syringe out, staunchin a run of blood with a cotton ball. The feelin in my arm dribbles out with it. Spongey numbness at first in the fingers then nothin. She swabs my palm with a disinfectant wipe and I know it should feel cold and rough but it doesn’t. The blade goes in and I don’t feel that either, just a vague pressure as she starts to root around.

I throw up in my lap. Champagne fizz.

The auld wummin wipes my mouth with a hankie. ‘There, there, Dolly. No many ae us huv the stomach fir aw this lark. Even yer Petrel the Reaper couldnae pull the trigger. No really.’

‘Cartwright,’ I spit. The name tastes of acid.

‘That’s the wan. Petrel squirrelled away wan last, final copy ae her and tucked it awa safe, leavin deed meat “Josephina Mark n” or whoever oan the flair wae a pointless bullet through the brain pan. She’s bided in the Maxwell vault er since – the secret ae the Clan’s success, the most astute business mind in the country, mebbe the world, at their exclusive disposal.’

‘Why… why do you want her?’ I can see out the corner of my eye, though I’m tryin not to look, the beefcake-cum-chip-ripper is sweatin and huffin at somethin.

‘She wis my Maw.’ Big smile, watery eyes in ironed-crease sockets. No stranger to needles and knives herself. ‘She hud forty-three weans throughout her lang life – and no aw ae the brood could be huntet doon an exterminatet by the fanatics. A wis a young wan back then, just a babby, easily spirited awa an oerlooked.’

‘You goin to bring her back properly?’

Smile is soft this time, teeth hidden by bloodless lips. ‘Naw, dolly. Am gonnae set her free. It wis wrang fir her tae live forever as a God but it’s also wrang tae keep her livin forever as a prisoner. We aw deserve death eventually.’

‘It’s not happenin,’ the strongman surgeon grumbles. She throws the scalpel and pliers into a steel dish, both of them red with my blood. The palm of my hand is open, the flesh peeled back. I can see bones and tendons and bits of wirin from the tech. ‘Acid countermeasures – too risky.’ I start to wretch again, though nothin comes up this time.

The auld wummin – Cartwright’s daughter – dabs at my face with the hankie again. Behind her, the Gull has got a freezer box and is pullin a sleek steel instrument like a flightless dart flickerin with LEDs from a chargin dock. The sight of it makes my whole body shake.

‘No, no, no, fucksake, fuck – Don’t. Fuckin – fuck. Don’t! NO –’

The auld wummin’s holdin my face in her hands, pullin me away from what’s happenin. She’s lookin deep into my eyes, sayin, ‘It’s okay, dolly, it’s okay.’ The machine plays a warnin bell. Skin pops and crackles and I can smell burnin meat, like the piped in grill-stink of the Kowloon X-over, as the harmonic blade slices right through skin and muscle and fat and bone and tendon, neatly sealin up the veins and artery and blood vessels as it goes.

After some time, the warnin note stops and there’s a soft thump – my hand droppin into the freezer box.

‘The Maxwell’s will huv a harder time ae findin ye noo, kiddie,’ the auld wummin says. ‘Go get yer Maw and get runnin. Av goat mine noo. Cheers.’ She winks.

The butcher is undoin the straps, blood on her apron.

‘The carbon,’ I wheeze, dizzy. When my remainin hand is free, I snatch the pseudo-meth from my pocket and pour it out, shakin, onto the instrument tray and scoop a wet fingerful into my gub. ‘I cannae… I cannae take the carbon without my . . . without . . . ’

Not done with me, she grabs my other, unmutilated wrist, my fingers covered in sticky saliva and powder. I pull away, screamin, the synth firin everythin back up as I kick and flail, heart jumpin right out my chest. But she’s too strong. ‘Stay still,’ she orders. She’s holdin a stud gun. The barrel goes into my palm and fires with a tyre-blowout hiss of compressed air.

I feel this one. Like slammin your hand down on a nail. I squeal. She lets go and I wrap both arms around my chest, tryin to tuck both hands – the sore one and the missin one – under my armpits.

‘Basic chip,’ the auld wummin says. ‘Fresh ID an plenty ae credit. Ye says tae me afore that ye arenae a Maxwell. That’s certainly true noo. Hope it works oot, dolly.’

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Maw wants me to hold her hand as the jet engines roar to life. ‘Dana,’ she calls me. She’s scared. I squeeze her hand with my remainin one. The acceleration crushes me into the seat. My stomach drops out the floor, left behind on the runway as we swoop up into the air. Then it’s all below us, gettin smaller: Scotland, the Maxwells, Petrel the Reaper. Our past. Nobody lives forever in Scotland. Our future lies in the land of the Gods.

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Editor’s Note: ‘Forever in Scotland’ was first published by NewCon Press in their anthology, ‘Night, Rain and Neon’: All New Cyberpunk Stories (2022).

Our thanks to NewCon Press for allowing us to reproduce it here.

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