Walking across the kitchen of the flat he semi/sort-of squatted, Axl realised he was stark bollock naked except for the jacket and remembered seconds later that it didn’t matter a fuck, he lived alone.

His choice. At least that was what he always told himself.

Machines he could handle, even if they did answer back. Human beings couldn’t be returned. Hell, most didn’t even come with a guarantee.

‘Hey fuck-wit ...’

‘Coffee,’ Axl demanded and wrapped his fingers round the cable attaching the Zanussi BreakfastBar to the wall. For once the Zanussi didn’t argue. Above the BreakfastBar what looked like a tastefully-framed Fox Studios poster flicked over on cue to a rolling newsfeed, leading in on the major headlines.

‘Samsara takes another 50,000 refugees from Europe.’

Crashing chord from the screen. Shot of thin Catalan woman breastfeeding toddler.

‘Cartel Pharmaceuticals sue IMF for collapse of Colombian economy. . .’

Another chord, less emphatic. A pan back from bombed office block to burned-out district of Bogota.

‘Vatican refuses to release figures for auditing. WorldBank denies Pope Joan might rise from the dead ...’

Minor chord for what would be a major miracle. And an archive shot of the Pope staring at a hovering camera.

No news in other words.

Axl pulled the tab on a Lucky Strike and drew smoke deep into his lungs. If there was anything the Zanussi hated worse than Axl washing breakfast down with coffee it was him smoking and eating at the same time.

The front door said goodbye, even though it knew Axl hadn’t paid rent on the sublet in months. The lift was scrupulously polite on the way down. One of the Armani-suited porters even smiled wryly as he let Axl out through a service entrance, something that was strictly forbidden.

But Axl was still scowling as he walked out of the Metropole and into a Mexican morning so hot it felt like someone had just kicked down Hell’s front door. Dead fireworks from last night’s fiesta littered the open-air car park at the back of the building. Dead fireworks, a sleeping drunk and three blank-faced local kids flopped out on a discarded nylon settee.

They watched him pass, their eyes hidden behind cheap copies of last season’s Spyro wraprounds. The joker in the gang crossed himself and Axl scowled even more. He’d remembered what he was trying to forget. It wasn’t the thought of a day at McDonalds that pissed him off. As if a day spent flipping burgers wasn’t bad enough, when his shift was over he had to go out and shoot somebody.

Grid-locked traffic. Smog warning. Three shootings since lunch time. Same as it ever was…

The valley was 100km long, 60km wide and 2500m above sea level. Inhabited since prehistory, its bowl now contained the world’s biggest city, Day Effé, Mexico’s capital. Axl still didn’t think in metres but he’d been around the city long enough to know just how big it was.

From long shot, the place cried out for plaintive single-track guitar, nose flutes, even a little mindless Dutch trance. Close up, it demanded needle-sharp acid lines or electric violin, amphetamine edged. But all Axl got in his head was street noise and the arhythmic grinding of gears as vehicles lurched up the Paseo de la Contre-Reformacion.

‘Vote Maximillia,’ demanded a poster. The picture of Max was flyspecked and bleached almost white by the sun. All the same the poster spoke firmly, as if it couldn’t imagine that Axl might do anything else.

Axl snorted. He didn’t vote, hadn’t voted, not in an election where the result had been a foregone conclusion even before it took place ten weeks back. Someone should tell the sign that Max won, as Imperial candidates usually did when they were the only person allowed to stand.

The sign was midway between Glorieta Cristobal Colon and Cuauhténoc, vast statues on the paseo dedicated to the man who discovered the New World and the Aztec emperor who lost it. Colon’s plinth had priests carved around its base, Cuauhténoc’s had scenes of torture. It seemed to Axl that very little had changed.

‘Vote ...’ The sign began again, only to squeal as Axl kicked out and crumpled one of its tubular uprights, making the hoarding lean even further. Not an easy manoeuvre for someone parked-up on an oversized Yamaha WildStar, but Axl was happy to make the effort.

He would have spat into the dirt like a cholo but caught himself in time.

Once, way back, the DFPD and Axl had an understanding, when this had still been what he did for a living instead of flipping burgers any place that didn’t want his papers. And as understandings went, it had been a good one.

He didn’t fuck up the hits, he didn’t turn tourists into Chinese takeout even by accident and he didn’t leave incriminating clues, the kind they couldn’t overlook. In return the DFPD didn’t give him grief about slotting lowlifes they’d have tagged and bagged themselves given half a chance.

Axl sighed and checked his watch. 7.30 p.m., Friday, August 13… His blood pressure was up slightly, his neurorhythms were erratic and his heartbeat was ten over ideal. But since he wasn’t carrying betaBs he was going to have to live with it. He had no messages and he was bored with waiting.

At least the three kids parked-up in the black Toyota bubble behind him had reruns of Blackjack Hot to watch. Sitting on his stolen Yamaha, Axl could do most of the dialogue from memory.

‘You going to die now…’

‘Yeah, right.’

Said hard and slow. The way studios imagined people spoke on the streets, fifty years out of date and way too intelligible. Real street was jump-cut and amphetamine fast. Axl had been there…

‘Say goodbye Jack.’

‘Goodbye Jack.’

And the gun would jump from Black Jack’s wrist holster to his hand before the villain even had time to mash the slide on some ugly, stub Skorpios.

Bang.

Axl hadn’t known how much the studios left out, not until he got to eleven and started killing people for himself. Putting a .38 ceramic through some jerk’s skull produced enough loosely-chopped meat to turn anyone vegetarian.

There were no labels in the clothes Axl wore. Not that it would have made any difference, since simple thread analysis would have identified everything except the jacket as being made in Day Effé itself. Most probably by twelve-year-old ghosts in a slum sweatshop out near Tapo. But he cut the labels from habit and most of Axl’s bad habits died hard.

Like stealing get-away vehicles and always choosing fancy ones. The fat Yamaha had been lifted thirty minutes before from in front of Thunder Road, the biker’s café on Avenida Madero. 1600 cc, 48-degree, old 8-valve pushrod unit, capable of 100kmp at just 2.4k revs per minute. What’s more the lovingly-restored V-twin was completely original, except for a turbo-charger and gyro, and a small Matsui semi-AI to handle cruise control.

Not that the evening traffic on the ten lanes of the paseo de la CR was going anywhere. And nor would Axl until he saw the Fiat coupe he was waiting for. Leon Kachowsky was forty minutes late and unless he turned up soon Axl’s blood pressure was going to take another unwelcome hike.

Back when, that would have been enough to kick Axl’s bass line into a jagged holding loop ready for the build. But now. . .

Axl spat anyway.

In theory, Axl’s every move was being watched by the vidcams bolted to road signs, bridges, the top of every tall building. Apparently there was even a fleet of low-orbit Aerospats bought cheap from the French. But this was Mexico City. Half the cameras weren’t working, and the output from those that were didn’t run basic visual recognition software. They got watched by low-paid staff who worked hard not to notice anything at all, it wasn’t worth the paperwork.