Crash Deluxe (12 page)

She climbed my body, legs clutching tight around my waist. The weight of her toppled us on to her bed. Her tongue in my mouth, she undressed me while I lay shivering and jerking with the shock of mounting sensations.

The Eskaalim presence, already bloated by my hormones, erupted. Coherent thought deserted me entirely. My skin caught fire.

I rolled her over and mounted her, my hands around her neck.

Who
was I? Should I kill?

‘Jales. Relax. It’s like tripping. If you fight it you’ll become psychotic,’ she said.

I battled the desire to strangle Glorious and closed my eyes. Images rushed me. The past. Mo-Vay. Roo - flesh dissolving in the copper canal. Jamon Mondo. Kevin. Everything terrible.

Somebody was screaming.

I opened my eyes.

Me
.
I
was screaming.

Glorious pulled me down on her. ‘Suckle,’ she ordered. ‘Take comfort.’

I put my lips to her nipple, tugging and sucking it like a baby.

She petted and soothed me until the bloodlust subsided. Her legs wrapped around me, tight and secure.

The position seemed to give her pleasure and I felt her back arch.

I slipped my hands underneath the hollow, drawing her in to me, and suddenly everything changed.

The fire on my skin was back but now it blazed
for
her.

We slammed from one thing to another as we joined.

I had her in every way I could dream of until she cried out from fatigue.

Then I wanted more.

‘Stop now,’ she gasped.

‘No.’ I grabbed her and began kissing her body.

‘Stop, Jales.’ She tried to push me away. ‘Merv!’

‘Jales?’ Merv’s voice cut into our privacy. ‘Glorious’s vital signs show that she’s suffering from exhaustion. You must stop now or you’ll have to be restrained.’

‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I need more.’

I didn’t even hear the door open as Lam and Muscle Massive burst into the room.

Massive tried to pull me away from Glorious but I elbowed him in the mouth, knocking him backwards. The gentle giant touched the blood on his lip with surprise.

He lunged again, this time grabbing my arms and holding tight while Lam punched me.

Aided by the slick sweat on my naked body I twisted from Massive’s grasp and launched myself at Lam. He might have been the real deal but my Eskaalim frenzy was no-pain stuff.

I flung him across the room before he could put a hold on me.

I heard the crack. Saw the angle of his arm. His pupils went pinhead-size with shock.

Massive chopped me across the neck with one huge hand.

Down on my knees but I still couldn’t feel the pain.

‘JALES.’

I whirled, seeking out Lavish - the reason I was being denied.

But he was ready for me, a lion-tamer with a stun-whip and an antidote spray.

As I collapsed to the floor, he doused Glorious as well.

She cried out at the sensory denial.

‘Shut - the fuck - up!’ Lavish screamed at her.

She jammed her fingers in her mouth and cowered away from his rage, sobbing. ‘I - I didn’t know this would happen, Delly. She’s different. It shouldn’t have been like this,’ she protested.

‘You were indulging yourself, you little bitch.’

As Massive dragged me from the room, I heard the sounds of Lavish slapping her.

‘Merv,’ I screamed into the air. ‘Tell Lavish to leave her alone or I’ll kill him.’

‘Calm down, Jales. You’re in withdrawal. You’re not rational.’ The calmness of the voyeur’s voice enraged me further.

Massive threw me into my room and locked me in.

I paced, a brooding lunatic, slamming myself against the door for an hour or more until the very last of my energy was spent.

But it wasn’t over.

 

 

 

 

T
he full withdrawal started sometime during the night.

Massive held me down while Lavish shot me full of sedatives. They tied me on my side in bed and shoved a dog-chew in my mouth against the convulsions and peaks of rage.

I spat it out when the vomiting came.

And then the delirium.

I rocked and moaned in my restraint, gripped by thoughts of death. Then wishing for it. I hallucinated black whorls on my arms and legs.

The night passed in a hell of guilt and remorse and self-loathing. I’d never felt utter depravity before, or its flip side.

I’d put up no fight against the Eskaalim. Lust had become more dangerous to me than violence because I found it harder to resist. Then, when the lust had me, the violence returned.

By morning a residual headache, tremors and joint pain were still with me. So was the bloating in my groin and the mental scarring, leaving me exhausted and depressed.

I had to get out of this place.

There was no pleasure in what I’d done. Pleasure was conscious-choice stuff -
not
having the animal ripped from inside you and put on parade.

I didn’t need the restraints any more. The self-loathing was punishment enough.

Muscle Massive came to check on me. ‘You behave now?’ he asked, hopefully, touching his steri-stripped lip.

‘Your mouth. Sorry . . .’

‘I am Frederic from Ukraine. I understand how it happened. I don’t touch those girls - too dangerous. You’ve got good . . . stamina.’

He might look stupid but he was smarter than me.

And too damn forgiving.

My teeth chattered. ‘Thanks, Freddy Ukraine, but I-I need t-to use the s-san.’

He loosened the restraints and went to stand in the doorway. ‘Hurry now. You must come.’

‘Where?’

‘To the Fair. A good thing. Keep you away from Glorious.’

‘What Fair?’

Freddy smiled and his eyes rolled into the folds of his eyelids. ‘You’ll see.’

I showered, put the cheongsam over my leather crop, and tucked a small derm of painkill into the pocket with Ike’s wetware. I’d lifted it from Lam when they were doping me with sed and right now I could feel another headache coming on.

Freddy walked me to a ’pede parked out on the club’s helipad.

Delly, Merv and Lam were waiting for us.

No one spoke. Lam’s arms were both heavily strapped.

As the ’pede climbed off down the side of the building, I stared out at the ordinary cits going about their biz and wished I was one of them.

‘When’s my interview with Monk?’ I asked, sullenly.

Lavish looked over his shoulder. I barely recognised his face. One of the Fair rules - Freddy Ukraine told me - was that all enhancements had to be suppressed.

Without the insidious allure of dizzies Lavish’s fine, athletic build seemed weedy, and his narrow features twisted. I felt nauseous just looking at him.

‘Not soon enough.’ He accessed his p-diary, a wrist model. ‘Tomorrow.’

I glanced anxiously at Merv but he was ignoring me and petting Snout in the crook of his elbow.

We ’peded for an hour before Muscle Massive Freddy settled us into a parking lot outside a members-only lo-rise of shop fronts with clean windows and quality products.

I blinked over and over as I climbed out as if I was waking from a faint, feeling the withdrawal finally beginning to leave me.

‘This is a
mall
?’ I muttered tetchily.

Lavish smiled at Lam and led us to a door at one end of the building, outside a lingerie shop. He then marched us into a conveyor-lift that whizzed a klick or more across to the other side of the complex.

I tried to count off the list of retailers on the display but the blur made my headache worse.

We stopped three-quarters of the way across and exited straight into the back of another lift. A glance at the display told me that it was between a patisserie and a surf originals shop. I committed the spot to memory.

The next lift went down - sixteen floors. I felt the weight of the ground above me as keenly as if I was down in Gwynn’s water pipes under the Viva/Tert border.

This time the doors opened straight into something.

A club
, I thought, only bigger.

MUCH bigger.

The floor stretched back further than I could see in a glance.

Expensive noise. Exclusive clientele. Intimates serving free wine fizz and tailor-made smoke - dope, green leaf and thin cigars, beautifully rolled - filtered or nose-piped.

Lavish guzzled down a drink without ceremony and left Merv and me with Lam. He disappeared down a corridor of booths and siddowns clustered under a cute sign that read Immoral Aisles.

I refused the wine, shut my olfaugs down and wandered into another area designated Biters. Even then I copped a headspin from the array of pheremonal scents and the heavy subliminals. The advertising was rampant, aggressive, personalised - and the last thing I needed.

Unwittingly, I stumbled straight into a floating net of porn pics and for a full free-colour minute I rushed on erections - the vreal so good that I could feel altering pressure between my legs as the sizing changed to find the right fit.

I tore the ephemeral off my face and flicked it to the floor. A gobbler scuttled up and digested the web, the space on its back offering me a free sample of a new enhanced Tao dizzie. I kicked it out of my way so I could move and got a perceptible jab from its sample probes.

Another free minute of jittery lust and a blast of marsala scents.

Sweat poured off me from the hyper-stimulation and a new kind of fear. The whole sex thing was like a bleeding wound that I wanted to cauterise. I staggered from one consumer trap to the next before I cottoned on to Lam’s smirk.

He was keeping his distance from me, but it seemed to be out of respect rather than anger.

Who could figure people? If
he
’d broken
my
arms I’d want to poison him.

‘What’s the trick?’ I growled as a pair of hands grew out of a wall, slipped around my chest and began massaging my breasts. I chopped at the wrists. The wrists snapped off but the hands stuck to my cheongsam.

Lam’s smirk turned to a guffaw.

‘You’re a newbie,’ Merv explained. ‘The products have a memory. They don’t saturate you more than once unless you invite them to. It’s the Fair etiquette. You’re a target, though. First in, best hooked.’

I wrestled with the hands, finally tearing the dress to get rid of them.

Lam obligingly bought a T-shirt from a nearby booth and passed it to me in his teeth. I didn’t know whether he was rubbing it in that I’d broken both his arms, or if this was his kind of hero-worship.

I took it anyway, ignoring the belly-dancing torso banging about on the front of it.

Soon as I put it on over the dress the product clamour stopped seeking me out.

‘You’ve bought something. The race is off now,’ Merv explained.

‘Thanks.’ I nodded at Lam.

Taking some deep breaths to settle my shakes, I began to look around properly, sorting through the orgy of images, expressions and merchandise.

When I first saw Leesa Tulu, I thought I was hallucinating.

Or dreaming awake.

Only when she actually brushed past me to enter a mainlining booth did I react.

I recoiled at her touch but she didn’t recognise me out of context, with my prettied-up face and city clothes.

A war of impulses flooded me. Merv, always watching, saw something in my face.

‘Jales?’

‘Do you know her?’ I managed to get out.

He glanced carefully where I was looking and nodded. ‘Kind of. N-not good company, Jales. P-please don’t stare.’

I followed him a sufficient distance away so that my fixed attention wouldn’t be as obvious.

‘Quick,’ I ordered. ‘Tell me what you know.’

‘Her name is M-madame Tulu. She’s a s-spiritualist with a lot of influence in certain circles.’

‘Who does she work for?’

Merv got nervous, fidgeting.

I grabbed his arm and squeezed it.

He squirmed, uncomfortable with my touch and my insistence.

‘Tell me what you know or . . .’ I snatched Snout from him and put my hand around the toy’s collar where its wireless sensors were.

He paled as if I had put a knife to his throat.

My friendly veneer had been stripped away. Only the slimmest thread of control and the security buzzards floating above my head were stopping me from going after Tulu right there, right then.

‘I don’t know if it’s right, b-but they say she works for S-slipstream.’

‘Who?’ One hand had found its way to Merv’s shirt, my fist clenching the material.

He began to sweating, glancing around. ‘They’re f-finders - of a sort. B-but Slipstream are more specialised than the others.’

‘How?’

‘S-slipstream hunt out all the illegal genetics operations in the S-southern Hem. They buy any worthwhile advancements and on-sell to whoever w-wants it.’

‘Who would want it?’ My voice matched Merv’s. Low and quivering.

‘I don’t know, Jales. T-truly. I can get Snout to s-sniff for you if you don’t hurt her.’

‘Do it,’ I said. ‘Tonight. The other stuff as well. I need to know.’

‘Come and s-see me after the club closes,’ he said.

I gave Snout back and let him go. Lavish appeared out of the throng as if his antennae were wired to the intensity of our tête-à-tête.

‘Secrets, Jales?’

‘Sweet nothings, Lavish.’

He squinted suspiciously. I couldn’t have much longer before he pieced together who I really was and worked out what he would try to bargain for with that knowledge.