Necrotech (10 page)

Something cold gripped my chest. “May?”

“The eighteenth.” Just after my birthday.

A birthday I didn't remember having.

The date. I needed to check the date, but that wasn't processed through the software that managed my arm. A projection call would log dates, but users don't see that data without the interface. An ad, somewhere, might list a release date for something, but I'd long since learned to tune that shit out.

Fuck. “Prove it,” I whispered.

Wordlessly, Indigo flicked open a hand. A projection screen lit to brilliant red. With a few swipes of his fingers, the screen flipped so I could see it right way around.

A calendar.

July.

Months, not days.

I stared into the dregs of my drink, frenetically searching it for answers it didn't have. I wanted to order another, desperately, but given what little I was working on, I didn't trust my nanos not to take it and run. Shiva's drinks weren't nano fuel, they were nano psychedelics. One Cellular Sunset was probably enough for this conversation.

May. I was missing since May, he'd said. But I knew that wasn't possible. I couldn't remember May. It wasn't even supposed to
be
May. I gripped the glass so hard, red numbers pooled into the feed in my eye, warning me I was a second away from structural failure.

I eased up, but it didn't help the pressure in my skull. My throat.

“Riko?”

I shook my head, hard. “Yeah, sorry. I, uh...” What the hell was I supposed to say? That despite
his
memories of me in May,
I
couldn't remember anything for longer?

I was on dangerous ground here. The run I thought happened only the night before I woke up in that lab had gone down in April. I remembered it clearly. It was already hot as balls, and we were smack in the middle of a hit on MetaCore property. We'd gotten the requisitioned dataspike, ransacked the place so it looked like an everyday break-in, and were well on the way out when the whole place had gone up like Kongtown New Year.

They'd dragged me into Lucky's street clinic with a piece of rebar in my gut and a bottle of whiskey clutched in my good hand. It seemed like a dream.

I couldn't even be sure it wasn't.

That didn't explain why I couldn't remember anything after the night I got off Lucky's table. We'd gone dancing, a party that started here at the Mecca and roamed the rack. Then... What? Apparently, I'd wandered around for over a month. Then vanished, and woke up in the lab.

Months, gone.

Shit.
If I confessed to that, I may as well rip out my own spine and offer it on a smegging platter. An operation on a chopshop's table followed by extended amnesia sounded too damn close to corruption to risk Digo's
better safe than sorry
mentality.

I needed time.

Given the circumstances, I'd trade time for a team and get at the truth the old-fashioned way. “I know how to find answers,” I added grimly.

“Shit.” Indigo groaned the word into his hands, rubbing them over his haggard face. “Look. I'm not saying I believe you, but let's pretend what you're telling me is true.” Asshole. “According to that tablet you should have taken with you” – I winced – “that makes
you
clinically dead.”

“I am
not
dead,” I snarled.

“Obviously.” A sour edge, there. He rested his elbows on the table and stared me down with more aggression than I was used to from him.

It made a little more sense now. I thought he'd ditched me after days.

Turned out he'd had months to suck on this one.

“What do you possibly expect me to do about this?”

It wasn't exactly an arms-wide welcome back, but I pushed for gold anyway. “I want a team, Digo. I want the best of your lot.”

“Hell, no.”

I glared at him. “Don't give me that shit. I know you've got them. I want a heavy and two splatter specialists. I want you linking, a 'jector you trust, and–”

“
Riko
.” Indigo's eyes flashed in narrowed impatience. “Slow your roll. You're talking about some seriously deep shit. Corporate prisons? Labs? Stasis? First thing
you
need is a headscan.”

And there it was. The thinly veiled accusation I knew would be coming.

It didn't sting any less. Even though I knew how close I'd skated to nanoshock, it pissed me off.

I stood, bracing my weight on my flattened hands. The table creaked. “I am,” I said, so quietly I think the music must have drowned it, “
not
crazy.”

Perceptive as he was, he heard me anyway. “Says you.”

I didn't need a scanner to weigh in on that one. He wasn't running any less hot for his veneer of calm. “Digo, you know me,” I pressed.

“Yeah.” He leaned back in the booth, folded his arms over his narrow chest. The blue neoprene didn't crease. “Once. That cab has jumped the curb.”

I resisted the urge to slap the table; it wasn't getting me anywhere. “For Nanji, Indigo. At least help me figure out what the shit put your sister and me in that vault.”

“You mean my
dead
sister? The one that was already supposed to
be
dead by the time you crawled out of whatever hole you came from?” The sharp fury in his eyes wasn't gone. I'd only managed to sheathe it in glass. I push too hard, I'd shatter it and lose him again.

I took a deep breath, but I couldn't force myself to sit down. If I sat, I'd crack. If I cracked, either I'd cry or bleed something. I couldn't remember the last time I cried.

I didn't do emotions well.

“Look,” he said, watching my hands curl and uncurl over the edge of the table. “
If
what you're saying is true – and trust me, Riko, that is a big, fat flaming
if
– you got my sister into some deep shit. I want those answers, but you need scanning first.”

He wasn't wrong. Hell, I'd have said the same in his shoes.

Just smegging
awesome.

“Lucky's still on the edge of Kongtown. Go get cleared.” He held up his hand again, as if to forestall anything I wanted to say. “When you're all cleared for action, there's this guy. He's legit,” he added before I asked. “He's got resources I don't. See what he says.”

“Outside help?”

“Just do it. If he gives the okay, then
maybe
you'll get a team.”

Something smelled off. Frankly, everything smelled off since I collapsed in that alley. I frowned at him. “What's wrong with your own fixers?”

Digo leveled me a look that begged to know if I was serious. “Name one that won't think you're fucking with them.”

“Taylor Jax.”

“He's not a fixer, and you know he'll only fuck you in the end.”

Good point, obvious innuendo notwithstanding – been there, done that.

I wasn't in the mood to fine tune the deal. “Fine. I'll meet this guy.”

Even though he'd made it part of the bargain, Digo looked surprised. I guess I couldn't blame him. Before now, I'd have asked all kinds of questions.

It's not like I had options.

“Arrange the meeting.” I kept my voice as even as I could make it. My shoulders straightened, not even a hint of pain. Nanos functional, just like I liked them. “Have him meet me at Plato's Key. Nice and public.” When he frowned, I pushed. “Tonight, Digo. Now. An hour. Whatever. And
then
I'll see Lucky, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because everything's fresh,” I snapped, covering the knot in my gut with temper. “Because the whole shitting place was on fire, Digo, and if they – whoever the fuck
they
are – get there first–”

“Wherever the fuck
there
is,” he cut in with pointed sarcasm.

I leaned on the table. Bright, sunshiny yellow fabric did nothing to take the edge off my twisted smile. “My point,” I said, very slowly and very clearly, “is that they have all the advantage. The least I can do is ride their asses on time.”

Indigo leaned back, and maybe it was partially because my reach could clear that table. Maybe he just gave up. Whatever it was, he didn't argue, he just nodded and raised his drink in my direction. “One hour. I'll see if he's free.” He gulped half the blue shimmer in his glass, looked into it for a moment, then glanced up. “Just rein in the cyberbitch persona, okay? You don't want piss this guy off.”

“It's the Key,” I replied dryly. I let the crack about my persona go. That was all natural, and he knew it. “Public, filled with bouncers, and ask Fido over there about my dance floor moves.”

He didn't smile. “I think this one will have moves you don't see coming.”

“What do we have on him?” I asked, intrigued by Digo's caution. “Sinner? Saint? Corporate bulldog?”

“Surprisingly little. But he's discreet and he knows his shit.” Which was enough to make most problems go away, in Digo's book.

I shook the fabric of my yellow shirt. Glass shards glittered as they fell to the carpet at my feet. Charming. “This guy have a name?”

“Reed. Malik Reed.” He drained the rest of his drink. “You'll know him when you see him.”

“Great.” I turned, the middle of my shoulder blades itching as I made my exit. I knew he'd have a clear shot at my back from where he sat, and Shiva hadn't patted either of us down for weapons.

I'd never thought of Digo as a threat before. It burned all the way down.

“Riko.”

I tensed, paused in the door. “What?”

His voice remained tight. Angry. “I really think you should see Lucky first.”

“
After
I see Reed.”

His curse fragmented on a frustrated sound. “Whatever. Don't say I never gave you anything.”

Not one of the things I'd ever say about Indigo Koupra.

At least, not until now.

I
t'd take
the better part of an hour to get to the other end of the rack, where Plato's Key claimed turf riddled by chromers and fashion slaves. The district was busy, packed with all the night life activists, the scum-suckers, the nocturnal denizens who didn't want to – or couldn't – step outside in the light of day.

I passed prostitutes who weren't shy about shaking their bare breasts or ass-crack shorts at anybody who looked like they were carrying – credits or drugs, it was all the same. A hairless, dark-skinned man smiled up at a large sallow man whose face showed nothing but rapture. As I walked by, a glint of neon light picked out the metal tubing extending from the paler areola of his left nipple, vanishing into the john's pants. Didn't get much more black market than that. Buy him for an hour, and he'd do all kinds of things with the tubular attachments he'd probably stashed all over his body.

Tech fetishists got off on that kind of stuff. The spreading stain at his crotch said the guy he'd marked was an easy payday, and his hands rifled the john's pockets like it was no big.

It probably wasn't.

He wasn't the only john gagging for it, either. Not a meter away, a thick-thighed whore with a wealth of bright blue dreads flapped her bared asscheeks at a dark-eyed teenager sporting some serious flopsweat. He'd bite. They get that bad, they're already in it – just not
in it
, if you get the idea.

All the pros have menus. Load ‘em up easy. A quick search is all it takes.

The city at night comes alive in ways that the daytime can't touch. A heavyset man strapped into purple satin tapped his pal on the ass – a boy wearing a black suit, his face painted up like an homage to the skull on my shoulder. The voice that came out of his delicate boy lips was bass deep, and laughing. Another couple sauntered arm in arm, both sporting the same facial tattoos and wicked purple mohawks. Twins or into the kink, I couldn't tell. You could buy a face.

I saw boys, girls, both, and neither. Genetically modified people who wanted to live the life of an exotic; ethnic people who wanted to maintain their own cultural purity no matter the cost; old, young, filthy, chromed. Black, yellow, red, white, and every color in between poured into a giant melting pot and smeared liberally with propaganda and opportunity. Everybody out for something. Credits. A high. A hit. A favor. A good time. A hard time. Blood. Profit.

Always profit.

The heat eased off some by night, but the air sparkled under the canopy of brilliantly colored luminescence. Signs, ads, flashing girls and blinking warnings. Sex offered, tempted, bought and sold; looking up netted a galaxy of pornographic stars.

Eat here, go there, pay for this. Airborne viruses could drop a genetically solvent human in days, but a little bit more programming, and nanos could take care of
everything
. Stuck with a venereal disease and don't want the lady to know? There's tech for that.

Slipped in between the official ads were the ones that flickered on the edge of awareness. If my chipset had been working right, I could have keyed in to those, seen the kind of ads oriented towards those of us with certain needs not wholly legal. Tech, cyber implementation, projection upgrades, software and all kinds of inbetween.

I
had
to get my filters fixed. The augmented adspace was easy enough to ignore, but the constant effort was killing my brain cells.

A woman wrapped in the ruins of a long brown trenchcoat stumbled into my arm, the board over her shoulders wet in one corner and reeking of urine. Bright orange paint, congealed into filthy rivulets, proclaimed her wisdom.

The end is cumming!

I think she meant coming, but don't quote me. People are fucking weird.

I turned a corner, keeping my stride long, my pace unhurried. Any woman walking alone and with a purpose was a prime target for assclowns who loved nothing better than to get in her way, and I didn't have the patience to bust some skulls tonight. I glanced at the empty wall beside me, flinched when an ad exploded into existence.

Are you safe?
it asked me, thick white letters, blocky and uniform.
Is your SIN registered with us?

Oh, hell. Propaganda avenue. Just great.

Keep yourself safe with this one easy reminder…

Jaw clenching, I resisted the urge to swat at the space and pushed my way through the pedestrians.

Beside me, the letters kept pace along the wall, turned blood red.

Necrotech conversion is real. You will murder your families. Brutalize your loved ones.

Probably the truest thing the corporate propagandists ever wrote.

Don't take the chance,
it suggested.
Removing your SIN will cause irreparable brain damage and increases risk of conversion by 87%.

Bullshit. That was pure indoctrination. The Security Information Number was nothing more than a leash, a way to keep track of everyone, for any reason. It was the first thing I'd removed. The surgery had some risks, sure – mostly that burning out the SIN would kill the nanos programmed to it, but that wasn't impossible to get around.

A good chopshop knew how to handle it.

The bad ones? Well, they usually killed their patients on the table. End of threat.

I turned my back on the glaring text, which now proclaimed a nice, healthy white reassurance.
Love the security provided. We are here for you. Anytime. Anywhere.

I didn't recognize the logo offhand, but it didn't matter. All the big companies had ads like this. They got paid by the clocked consciousness, which I'd just contributed to by looking at the damn thing.

First thing I'd have Lucky do was scrub my nanos and reboot my chipset.
Then
I'd have him install new filters. Fuckheads.

Plato's Key was a lot like the Mecca, except it catered more towards visual aesthetics and a shit ton of creds than it did towards SINless looking for a job. I'd gone once or twice, usually for a lark, but it wasn't my scene by choice. Filled with posers, hustlers, and slick cons in slicker suits, it was one step away from a corporate bar and still trying to pretend like it belonged to the street. Rich kids and chrome, mostly. You could tell the difference by the level of shiny plating, glittering lights, and cosmetic enhancements the kids sported. Like it was a game.

Still, it was highly public, well out of range of my usual stomping grounds. It would be filled to the brim with fashion slaves wearing vinyl and sporting light tattoos they could turn off later to hide from mom, which, all things considered, meant they'd be twitchier about casual violence.

The entrance was glass – tempered, because windows didn't survive without tempering in this district – but the surface played home to so many ads and commercials, I couldn't tell one apart from the other.

The doors slid open for me, depositing me in air that was so much cooler and fresher-smelling. There was a dreadlocked bear of a man in black, typical bouncer uniform, who didn't so much study me as raise both shaggy eyebrows and glower at me over the thick, crooked ridge of his nose. “Weapons?”

I grinned, arms at my side. “Just this ass.”

He didn't look impressed. My tech arm got a long, hard scrutiny, but he wouldn't find anything interesting there. I still needed to get the netware system reconnected, and my ammo slot was still empty. Not like I had any guns to put any ammo in, anyway.

Mimicking Jad, he jerked a thumb at the door behind him. It was sleek, paneled like wood, and lacked all the pretty accessories Shiva slapped all over the Mecca. “Go on in.”

“Cover?”

He snorted, which I took to translate meant I was attractive enough to forego the cover. I didn't take it personally – it was standard policy at places like this, especially when attendance was down. I hadn't seen a line, which told me they were looking for skin to fill the seats. The exotic girls got in for free. It made the guys with creds want to come play. Some things never change.

The door opened automatically, letting me enter without breaking my stride. Another smooth touch. The soul-deep beat of music not nearly as aggressive as the Mecca's washed over me, carried on electric graffiti.

Several mirrored balls spun over the dance floor, sending multihued sparkles over the interior. Lights streamed from the high ceiling, sliding through the dark in rhythmic match to the music thudding against my skin; pop-culture lyrics, twisted into what this place probably thought was hardcore. No thrashing here. I expected to see a lot of perfect skin, carefully chosen tattoos, suits and red lips and drinks with umbrellas.

I saw nothing but an empty club.

“Shit.” I stepped back immediately.

Too fucking late.

The door closed behind me. My back hit the panel, jarring me into a hard grunt. It did not open again.

“What the shit.” I snarled. My elbow collided with the barrier, a sharp crack of metal on paneled metal, but I didn't turn my back on the exposed space in front of me.

Tall round tables filled the space beside the dance floor, surrounded by skinny chairs padded with silver vinyl. There were two floors, with balconies overhead looking down into what I assumed was a gyrating mass of middle-class humanity on an average night. The lights flashed and shimmered, the music fell into a dub drop, and exploded back into a woman's remixed alto.

On the other side of the dance floor, a recessed dip in the floor gave way to an arranged pattern of padded couches, armchairs, smaller tables and drink pads. The bar filled up the far wall, floor-to-ceiling shelving backlit to let the bottles inside glow with unearthly colors. The small bots programmed to acquire the bottles ordered were silent and still, perched on the bar and powered down.

A streak of blue light passed over the seating area, merged with orange and briefly outlined a black silhouette. Athletic shoulders. Gray suit. Dark head, featureless in shadow. The lights skated away and left him in shadow again, but for the pale blue luminescence of a projected screen in front of him.

Well, fuck me.

Empty, the place was already eerie. With a single man perched in an armchair, it was downright surreal.

And I was rapidly approaching pissed. Trying to zen this one would net me dick-all.

I stepped away from the exit, eyes narrowed against the light assault, and scanned the immediate area for other ways out. I didn't see any signs, but that didn't mean much.

I was a third of the way across the empty dance floor when a whisper of movement flickered in my peripheral. I refrained from turning my head, but I saw him. A man in black fatigues. The helmet was full-coverage, black faceplate patterned with a faint grid of a heads-up display, and his chest was shaped by the bulk of light armor.

The body armor was similar to the goons in that prison, but most security forces tended to look alike when they weren't sporting corporation branding.

Another silhouette to my right shifted into view. Same gear. Same general build.

The music rolled over the floor, a visceral hum that only punctuated my mounting irritation. I was in the middle of the dance floor when two more stepped into view, one in front and one – I checked, already knowing what I'd see – yeah, one behind. One was trimmer but not by match. Maybe a woman. Maybe not.

Maybe it didn't shitting matter.

I deliberately relaxed my shoulders, my hands loose at my sides. A trap, then.

I was going to
kill
Indigo.

“All right,” I told them, resigned. “Let's get this over with.”

They came at me as a unit.

I squatted low as the first reached for me, hooked the back of his knee with my right hand and pulled. He countered by firming his weight on his right leg; I smashed his kneecap with my metal fist. It crunched. He screamed. I rolled out of the knot of hands and feet.

Pull, jab, down, all in one second.

One of them pulled his buddy up by an arm. He hobbled a bit, but I assumed his nanos were already working on it. I put my hands back by my sides again, deceptively loose.

Four black truncheons slid into four palms. A flicker of blue energy at each empty hand told me they'd activated shields.

Were they kidding me? This was practically riot gear.

I checked my left, but the suit hadn't moved. Engrossed in the glowing square perched above the table, he didn't spare me – or his goons – so much as a glance.

My choices weren't ideal. I could try and keep them at arm's length, stay far enough ahead that I could look for an exit, but there were four of them. Five, if the suit got involved. It'd be only a matter of time before they cornered me. I did
not
want to get stuck in a corner.

All I could do was fight.

My mouth tightened. Inside my skin, fury simmered into cool regard. Adrenaline flooded my system, feeding nanos and nerves with the same surge of raw energy.

I was good at this sort of stuff. I knew what to expect in a fight. I could cope with physical pain a hell of a lot better than I coped with emotional baggage.

This was what zenning it looked like to me.

I turned my gaze back to the four men. “Fine.” I lifted my foot, unzipped the fake pocket and pulled out the serrated knife that was all I had. The hilt was cool and comforting in my hand, the matte blade swallowing the light as it popped over us. “Bring it.”

They brought it.

I don't care what anyone out there tries to sell, the only thing that can even the odds of four-on-one is a full-body replacement – and unless a merc has Boone's unholy luck, that's a one-way ticket to necro-land.

I held my own for the longest thirty seconds of my life. It became rapidly clear that I wasn't a match for four lethally trained enforcers working as a unit. I bloodied my knife on one. Light armor isn't made to withstand a stabbing, and definitely not when I knew where the seams were.

I kicked another in the faceplate, cracking the plastic and shorting his display. Another earned a shattered elbow. His truncheon hand dropped useless to his side. If his scream caused his boss to look up from his stock tickers, I was too busy to see it.