Fade To Black Part 33

It began with Piper declaring, loudly, somewhere down the hall from the main room, that she would accompany the rest of the team to the meet with Maas Intertech. She could do nothing in the matrix. At the meet, she could at least cany a gun. Rico told he, curtly she wasn't going. She protested. He cursed. They both started to shout. It was the first time Shank had ever heard Piper yell.

By nine p.m., they were standing in a room with plastic flowers, perfumed air, and quiet music at the Chapel of the Eternal Light in Sector 7. For five hundred nuyen, they got the same deal for Dok that they had gotten for Filly. Only this time, when the pre-recorded trideo service ended, n.o.body had anything to say. Dok had said it all himself when he ran like a wild man out onto the tarmac, shooting his SMG. It was about Filly and revenge and doing what you had to do, d.a.m.n the consequences. d.a.m.n even death.

After the service, a slag in a neat black suit came with an urn full of ashes. Rico thrust a fistful of the ashes into Surikov's pants pockets.

"Don't ever forget," he said. "What you're getting didn't come free."

Surikov paled, and said, "No. No, indeed."

The meet came down in Sector 9 amid the gang-ravaged projects of Owens Park. The street was just one block long. Piles of building debris, the empty sh.e.l.ls of gutted autos, and every kind of junk and garbage lined the street. Plastic sheeting and thin macroplast panels covered the windows of the buildings, all abandoned but for squatters and derelicts.

Heavy clouds lingered overhead, backlit by the moon and reflecting a strange, almost unearthly light.

n.o.body seemed to be around.

At just past midnight, a pair of white, short-frame Toyota limos turned the corner and came slowly up the block. They stopped across from the van, near the opposite curb. Rico waited and watched. Thorvin had a drone in the air, keeping everything under surveillance. Bandit was in a trance, watching astrally. No warnings from either of them. Maybe Osborne was straight.

Maybe things would work out.

The rear door of the lead limo swung open. The slag who stepped out was nothing like the punk-like clown Osbome had brought to the first meet. This one was a real cutter, cool and corporate, easy in his movements, watchful and wary without showing more than he had to.

Shank stepped out of the van, showing his iron. Rico followed, then moved out as far as the middle of the street. Osborne met him there. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the air felt unusually warm and humid. "Sticks?" Rico said.

Osborne handed him a synthleather wallet containing seven certified credsticks, which checked out on the reader on Rico's belt Rico handed the wallet back, then keyed his headset.

The side door on the van slid open, giving Osborne a plain view of Surikov and Moffit. Piper was in the van with them. Rico hoped she had the sense to stay clear, stay under cover. She knew how meets like this worked, but he feared she wouldn't do what she should. "My tech's in the other car," Osborne said.

Rico nodded.

Osborne waved, and a slag in a dark blue suit came forward. After Dok's diagnostic a.n.a.lyzer declared the tech's DNA and retina scanner safe, Rico nodded toward the van. The tech went over to scan Surikov.

Rico kept his eyes on Osborne and the cutter, but neither looked suspicious or like they had anything more on their minds than the careful biz of "buying product," or "recruitment."

The clouds overhead seemed to be coming lower. A few curling tendrils of fog drifted along the street.

No warnings from Thorvin or Bandit, though.

The tech returned from the van. Nodded.

Osborne motioned him back to the second limo, then looked at Rico and said, "Anytime you're ready."

"You're satisfied the product's real."

"As real as it gets."

Rico keyed his headset. As Surikov and Moffit came walking out to the middle of the street, Osborne handed over the credsticks. "Thank you," Moffit said, looking at Rico.

She even made it sound sincere.

Rico backed away, then turned quickly and climbed into the van. Shank followed and slammed the side door.

The van rumbled and rolled ahead, accelerating quickly.Surikov and Moffit and the pair of white limos disappeared into the gathering fog.

Then, the van rounded a corner, and Bandit said, "Trouble."

There was no distinguis.h.i.+ng fog from clouds. The van slid into a sea of whirling, billowing white.

Thorvin shouted curses.

Abruptly, something came straight at them. Rico had just enough time to see it was a helo flying right on the deck, barely two meters above the pavement. It seemed almost near enough to touch. The only detail he noticed was the black annis logo on the forward slope of the helo's nose.

Something exploded. Maybe a rocket. Rico saw fire. The world roared and crashed and tumbled and when it finally came to a halt, he could barely see anything for all the smoke. Blood was running into his mouth, he felt a tightness in his left side, and if he breathed too deeply it hurt like h.e.l.l. The van seemed to be lying on its roof, windows cracked and smashed. Rico struggled to stand, but something hanging above him kept getting in his way, and then he realized Piper was right beside him, gasping, grunting with pain, suddenly coughing.

He found her shoulders. Her grunts rose into shrill cries as he pulled her up. Smoke filled his eyes. It was turning from gray to black. Where the h.e.l.l was the door? any door ...

Something crashed. Shank shouted. They stumbled out onto the street. Smoke mixed with fog. Burning debris littered the roadway for as far around as Rico would see.

The shooting started, a full company's worth of weapons blasting away on autofire.

"WHERE'S THORVIN?" Shank hollered.

The ground roared at their backs with the fury of another explosion. The shock wave all but knocked Rico off his feet. Rico staggered and caught himself, but Piper stumbled and fell to her knees. Rico tugged her back up, but she wouldn't stand, wouldn't stay on her feet. That was when he saw the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s of hair at the side of her head and the dark stains on the back of her jacket.

"She's FINISHED!" Shank bellowed.

Shank yanked Rico forward, and Piper slipped out of his hands, falling like a sack, a sack of meat.

Rico tried to stop, but Shank kept pulling him and then half a dozen rounds slammed into his shoulders and back and he nearly pa.s.sed out.

This was it, he realized. The end. There was no cover anywhere. It seemed like a thousand machine guns were stammering from all around. He tried to pull the Predator 2 from the holster on his hip, but he couldn't get a firm enough grip to tug the weapon free.

He stumbled over chunks of debris, piles of trash, with Shank shoving him forward and shouting, "Keep MOVING!"

When finally Rico stopped and looked around, he stood in an alley and Shank wasn't around. The alleyway was deserted. He staggered forward a few steps, then turned and started back. All he could think of was leaving Piper sprawled like a bag of meat on some street in no-man's land without anyone to mourn her pa.s.sing.

What the frag ...

What the frag was wrong with him?

His legs gave out. He hit the ground hard. He felt so tired, so weak. He couldn't keep his eyes open.

He laid his head against the cool, gritty concrete and exhaled deeply.

Fade to black.

39.

Minx hesitated and looked away, a faint smile curving the comer of her lips. When she did that, Monk now knew, she was listening to radio calls or maybe getting a telecom call over her implanted headware.

She had once been a sort of messenger. Now, she mostly took calls from friends.

The change didn't affect that, the implants. After the change you couldn't get stuff like that put in, for various reasons that Minx hadn't yet explained, but anything you had before the change went on working just like before.

Which was good, Monk thought.

Now, Minx looked at him and smiled.

"It's time," she said.

"Uh-huh."

They ran-ran and ran-down stairs, down a long tunnel, more stairs, through a door, then onto the elevated walkway beside the lanes of a transitway. They had to run because they had what Minx called "only a small window of opportunity." That meant they had to be fast. They had to be "on time."

The red-hued darkness didn't slow them down. Monk could see just fine. Better than in full daylight, infact.

A huge stepvan with flaring strobes and flas.h.i.+ng lights came screaming around the comer of the transitway and screeched to a halt right in front of them. The pa.s.senger door banged open. Minx tugged on Monk's hand and they scrambled inside.

The truck roared and raced ahead. The slag at the wheel in the Omni Police Services uniform looked at them and grinned. His eyes glared a fiery red. He laughed. Minx covered her mouth and swayed with silent laughter. Monk couldn't resist a grin, though he wasn't exactly sure just what he was grinning about.

Minx had this sort of private joke between her and her friends that wasn't entirely clear. Monk guessed it had something to do with what they were, or what they had become, or the change, or something, but he hadn't quite figured it out.

Minx didn't seem to mind.

"You're so booty," she told him. "You'll scan it. Just give it time."

The stepvan roared out onto some ground-level street, and everything got hazy and foggy. The haze and denser patches of fog all looked kind of reddish. Everything did.

Abruptly, they came to a halt in what looked like the middle of a war zone. Police cruisers everywhere, flas.h.i.+ng strobes, slags in uniforms, slags with guns. Minx grabbed Monk's hand and pulled him from the stepvan. There was a body on the pavement just a few meters away. The body of an Asian woman.

Minx smiled and nodded, urging him with her eyes, her whole expression, to go ahead.

Monk knelt down. The Asian woman might have looked dead, just at a glance, 'cause there was a lot of blood, but she wasn't really dead, not quite yet. The subtle radiance of the living lingered about her body.

It was hard to see, and Monk had only just recently begun to notice this kind of thing, but now that he knew what to look for, now that Minx had pointed it out, he could see it and see it clearly, as long as he took a moment to look.

He leaned down and put his mouth over the woman's mouth, then slowly inhaled. He kept inhaling till he felt a tingling suffuse his whole body. With that tingling came a pleasure even better than s.e.x, at least in his limited experience. It was more than just physical pleasure. It made him feel full, strong, powerful, almost indomitable. If he let his imagination run wild, a danger Minx had warned him about, he could almost see himself possessing such great power that almost anything ...

Minx squeezed his shoulder, and bent to kiss him. They exchanged breaths, exhaling into each other's mouths, then inhaling that sweet, sweet breath.

"Now it's my turn," she said softly, smiling.

Monk nodded. "Sure."

There were other bodies waiting.

They were at Chimpira when the call came in L. Kahn took it via the telecom at his booth. Ravage, sitting beside him, heard the entire exchange. An informant reported that the runners who had been hired to bust Ansell Surikov out of Maas Intertech had just been ambushed up in Sector 9. Police were at the scene, but the informant believed the runners to be dead.

L. Kahn broke the connection, sat still for a moment, then softly cursed. "I hired backup in depth and what happens? Daisaka Security gets them with a guns.h.i.+p. There's no justice. No justice at all."

Ravage agreed, and reached over and picked up L. Kahn's drink, drew it to her mouth and had a sip.

L. Kahn frowned and looked at her. It was his unhappy frown. Intolerant "I've had enough problems lately," he said. "Don't test my patience."

"I get these impulses," Ravage replied.

"You'll have to learn-"

If he had more to say, he didn't get it out. Ravage splashed the drink into his face. As he began reacting to that, she slashed her hand across his throat. The razors protruding from under her synthimplanted nails tore through flesh like a knife through air. No significant resistance.

As the first blood came pumping, pulsing, spraying out through the wounds, she reversed direction, making a fist and slamming it back into L. Kahn's face, shattering bone and gristle and driving his head against the back of the booth. The man bled, banged backward, and slumped in little more than an instant.

Then Ravage hopped up and away, before any of the blood and gore could stain her clinging silver-hued bodysuit.

The pair of orks L. Kahn had hired as extra guards turned to look, then just looked at her and waited.

These particular orks had no illusions about their place in the Newark underworld. They understood that when orders came from above, the good soldier simply nodded and obeyed. In this case, they had acceptednuyen from her, from her new employer, before nodding and pledging obedience. With a quick gesture she indicated that they should take charge of the body.

"Toss it in the Ditch."

Sanitation would cart it away.

On her way out of the club, Ravage stopped at a telecom and dialed the number her new boss had given her. The boss' helper answered, a dark-skinned elf. He looked a question at her.

"It's done," she told him.

"Muy bien," the elf replied.

That finished her biz for the night.

The sunlight seeping through the dark, grime-smeared window swelled and faded away. Days were pa.s.sing, but Rico hardly noticed. He lay on a bare mattress on the floor of a squalid room in an abandoned building. He had a bottle by his side and some food. He had bandages wrapped around his chest and covering more cuts and gouges than he had interest in counting. Some fleeting instinct for survival had compelled him to find a street doc and go to the safest refuge he knew.

When he finally woke up in that alley, he'd gone back for Piper, but by then the streets were deserted, the bodies gone. Even the wreck of the van had been removed. It took the heart out of him. Maybe it had cost him his soul.

Little things came to mind now, how. Piper used to smile or laugh, the way she cast her eyes down when something embarra.s.sed her. For all the razor-edged skill she'd had as a decker, she had been and would always be in his memory a reticent j.a.panese, a soft-spoken, loving, and loyal woman, more beautiful than any he had ever known. It occurred to him that this crumbling building wasn't far from where they had first met. This very apartment was where they had first made love. The place hadn't been such a wreck those few years ago. It had been tired and worn, but safe. Quiet.

How many months had they lived here? He couldn't remember. He'd been surprised to find the building still standing.

It was all he had left. He hadn't been smart enough to save anyone. He'd let them be used by the megacorps. Sure, they got Farrah Moffit together with the real Surikov-and had turned the pair over to Maas Intertech, but so what?

What did that matter now?