<P><B><JC>Rebel Cell</JC>
<P><B><JC>Gelo R. Fleisher</JC>
<P>
<P>There was a locking sound as a new chest plate was sealed into place. Jerrod sat silently as the machines knitted his broken body back together. He didn't really know what to say, what to think. It had been less than twenty-four hours since he had woken up from the augmentation surgery. In that time he'd been nearly killed twice. And he had killed people. It scared Jerrod how very good he had been at it. The augs that PriCor had forced on him had helped, feeding him data and assisting his aim, but underneath it all, it was he who was the killer.
<P>
<P>He'd grown up in an industrial slum; cheap housing subsidized by the corporations in return for indentured, low-cost labor. The slums were dirty and dangerous, and violence had been all around him. From the gunshots in the night, to the blaring of CorpSec sirens as the corporate police patrolled the streets, to the gangs of angry youth who postured and threatened on the street corners, violence filled the air like the smog from PriCor's exhaust stacks. Jerrod had tried all his life to avoid drowning in that world. He saw the broken streams of humanity that fell through the cracks in that place; the helpless drug junkies, the angry thugs, and above all the crippling poverty of the working poor.