I wake up in a body that isn't mine again. A cold breath. Sharp beating of someone else's heart.
How many times already? How many shells, how many alien faces, how many lives - not mine, but lived by me?
Unfamiliar place. Who decided to resurrect me now and why?
I only remember following Quell's trail. Everything I did was for her. The only reason I allow myself to be resurrected at all. If she's alive... I'll find her. And if she's dead, I'll destroy the one who took her from me again.
I see reflection - new body. Strong, fast. Improved. Military modification. Someone invested. So someone needs me. The question is - for how long?
The first rule: trust only those you can kill.
Poe, the AI, is still with me. But his algorithms are glitching, he's starting to forget.
Harland World. Again. Now I work for Axley. Rich and arrogant. The kind that hire you not because they want to survive, but because they think they're too important to die.
I'm being framed.
Classic. You arrive in a new body - immediately suspect. Too many combat modifications, too little explanation. Too alien. Even on your home planet.
The floor of Axley's mansion was littered with shards of glass, crimson stains on the marble. Dead men in evening dress. The air was thick with smoke and metallic taste of blood.
Takeshi stood over Axley's body. The sleeve was dead. But more importantly, stack was destroyed. Whoever had come here hadn't wanted the client to come back to life. Total death. So it was personal. Takeshi ran his hand over bloody stain on his neck - charred edges. Thermal shock. Professional.
A group of guards stepped out from behind a column. Their weapons were half raised.
"Hands up!" one of them barked.
"I'm your guard, idiots," Kovacs's voice was calm, but with a hint of contempt. He straightened up slowly, his gaze never leaving nearest one. "If I wanted, you'd be dead already."
Their nerves faltered. One of the guards pressed transmitter. A few minutes later, the governor's security team appeared. They entered quickly, with rehearsed confidence of power.
Ahead of them all walked Danika Kharaks - tall, in uniform armor, her face covered by a holographic veil. She stopped, looking at the body, then at Kovacs. "You didn't even last a day."
"If you wanted to kill him, you wouldn't have done it in a room full of cameras," Takeshi replied, looking straight into her eyes.
"I know. But I still need a scapegoat. You present yourself perfectly: an outsider, a killer with a track record, and no one was expecting you here," she replied nonchalantly.
An underground detention center. Takeshi is chained to metal chair, an interface to the interrogation system on his temple.
Poe slowly materializes in corner of the cell. His outline flickers like an old hologram.
"The surveillance system is glitching. I have a window of eight minutes."
Kovacs cracks one eye open. His lips twist into a mocking smirk. "Eight minutes? You couldn't get ten?"
Poe shrugs, almost apologetically. Click. The handcuffs loosen. Kovacs sits up abruptly, his muscles tensing like a predator that has broken free from its chain.
He doesn't walk - he moves, smoothly, precisely, without hesitation. One guard enters the cell, checking out situation. Takeshi grabs his arm, twists it, and plunges his own taser into his neck. The body falls with a thud.
There are three of them at the exit. He rushes forward, knocks one out with a blow to the neck, breaks the second over his knee, the third doesn't even have time to understand what's happening.
The security door is ahead. "Poe, I need a lockout."
Poe hacks the system. Kovacs slips into the service corridor. The siren finally goes off in the prison.
Kovacs runs through the corridors, jumping over railings, slipping between partitions, and is already rolling along the floor to emergency exit.
He flies out into rainy night of Harlan's World. He takes a deep breath. Free. Poe hovers nearby, blinking.
"So what now?"
Kovacs adjusts his jacket, looks ahead.
"Now... I start asking questions."