The Ragdoll Sequence Box set

by J P Carver

  “You don’t start this by taking swings at her,” Marcus said.

  “What? You her goddamn bodyguard or something?”

  Marcus shook his head. “More like your bodyguard, Busta. She’d beat you down so bad you’d be stuck in that infestation you call a bed for a week. I know little about Kay, but she don’t seem then nursing type.” Marcus stepped aside. “But, you know Ragdoll from years ago, she ever give you the impression she wouldn’t break you?”

  Lawrence sniffed angrily and took a step back while wiping his nose. “I don’t like hitting women anyway.”

  “A gentleman you are,” Marcus said, smiling.

  “Yeah, I am. What’s this shit you asking about Honey like you’re a cop. You a cop?”

  “You’ve burned your brain out. I don’t remember you being this dumb,” I said and looked at Marcus, annoyed that he had steeped in. I’d been ready for Lawrence and now my blood was up and I had to slip my metal baton back into the sleeve of my sweater without anyone noticing. “You know what I do? I’m a computer cracker, kid, you think I play nice with cops?”

  “Ain’t no one seen you around here and up you show like some ghost. You still using, I can see it in your face. Where you getting your stuff at?”

  “That’s what I’m here to ask you. Someone tried to kill me using Honey and I’m sure it’s a supplier of yours.”

  “Tried to kill you? Nah, none of mine would do something like that, you aren’t worth the cost for an overdose.”

  I shrugged. “Someone cracked into Rentena to get the research to create Honey and it stops in this area—this restaurant.”

  “Ain’t no techies here, why you think you got so much work before you left?” Lawrence crossed his arms. “And I ain’t giving you nothing, Kay shouldn’t even have told you what she did.” He looked back to Kay, but the glare deflated as she gave one back. “But it don’t hurt to tell you where the Honey is flowing from now, we don’t sell that shit anymore.”

  “So I heard,” I said.

  “Yeah, so, it’s some chick.”

  I stared blankly at him. “Some chick?”

  “Yup,” he said and sat back in his chair and worked on his omni-pad.

  “That’s all your going to tell me?”

  “That’s all I got to tell you. Leave me be, bitch, I got work to do.” He kept his head down, and I turned to Kay who gave a faint smile.

  “She was a pretty thing, could tell even though she tried to hide it. From money, but I don’t know if she’s the source. Could have just been some sales chick. Even the drug houses are going the corp route lately.”

  "When d'you last see—" A loud bang from out in the hallway cut me off. Shouts and screams filled the air and more bangs followed, like someone was kicking in doors. I turned to Lawrence and Kay and they both looked surprised and went to the TV in the living room.

  “Aw shit, you are a cop,” Lawrence said and pointed toward the screen. On it were camera screens showing heavily armed troopers moving down the hallway. They were a few doors from us. When I looked back to Lawrence, he had a gun on me. “Goddamnit, I knew you weren’t being straight with us.”

  “We didn’t bring them. Think about it, why would we?” I said and took a step back, my hands raised between us.

  “Cause you got yourself in deep and using us to get out.”

  “You think anyone would forgive cracking a corp’s system for just two little dealers?”

  “Then they’re here for you which means you still brought them down on us.” He took aim, the gun cupped in both of his hands. I saw his finger move the trigger, but before he completed the pull Kay grabbed his wrist.

  “Think, you idiot. We get busted on drugs it’s a few weeks. You shoot her and it’s years.”

  “Would be worth it,” he sneered, and she slapped him across the face, hard enough he recoiled and almost dropped the gun.

  “If you’re gonna wait here and get your dumbass arrested, then fine, but they’re coming with me.” She turned to us. “Come on, I got a way out.” She took off for the kitchen and stopped at the fridge. She worked on pulling it out from where it was set between the cabinets. Marcus moved to help her and once it was completely out a small trap door appeared in the floor.

  “Where the hell does that go?” Marcus asked.

  “To the basement, another tunnel there will get us a few streets over,” Shay said as she grabbed the handle and heaved the door open. Lawrence showed up as she pulled Marcus over to stand at the edge. “Just drop, keep your arms at your side as you go. You’ll land fine.”

  The trap door looked like a hole to a world of darkness but Marcus took a deep breath and stepped off with his arms crossed over his chest. A surprised yell escaped him as we heard the air ripple his clothes on the way down. A thump echoed to us and he coughed hard.

  “Holy shit, that’s a ride,” he called, his voice barely above the sounds of doors being kicked in. Kay came over and grabbed my arm.

  “You next,” she said and looked to Lawrence as if waiting for him to argue, but he kept his eyes on the door, his head cocked to listen. “Same thing, arms on your chest and —

  "Try to not to scream. Got it.” I stepped up to the edge. "Son of a bitch…"

  The darkness seemed to pulse like it had in my drugged induced dreams. I stepped off and felt my stomach jolt at the sudden loss of solid ground. The wind was freezing on my skin as I fell. I wanted to close my eyes, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. If my end came I wanted to face it. Every few feet something whooshed past my ears. The air changed as the faint square of something came into view.

  I hit the pad with such force I thought I had broken something. The air was knocked from my lungs. I gulped in the cold as Marcus crawled onto the pad and took my hands. He dragged me off and onto the cement floor where he knelt beside me while I struggled to regain my breathing.

  “Christ, thought it would be softer.”

  “You landed wrong,” he said and sounded sympathetic.

  “Did I? How was I supposed to land, genius?” I sat up and clutched my stomach as I stood. My abdomen pulsed in a dull pain, but it didn’t feel like anything tore open. “Maybe next time I can just land on you to cushion my fall.”

  “Hopefully there isn’t a next time.”

  Kay hit the pad the same as I did and struggled to breathe for a few seconds after impact. We grabbed her hands and pulled her off just in time as Lawrence landed a moment after.

  “Don’t remember it hurting so much,” Kay said between gasps and then stood straight. She looked at Lawrence as he came off the mats and brushed his pants off. “Gonna need your help to get the hatch open,” she said to him as she picked up a backpack that had been hidden in a box. She swung it onto her shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah… all right.” He sneered at us as he went past Marcus and I and followed Kay to the back of the basement. The place was strewed with broken and dust covered items, to where there was only a singular path through it all. We reached the back of the room to find a metal door with six arms that were bolted into the concrete.

  "You just had this put in?" I asked, noticing the clean patch of wall around the door. Kay pulled on the handle which didn’t move. "Why?"

  "Because—" She pulled harder, and the handle budged a little. "Because the droopers have been sniffing since we took over the trade here."

  “Droopers?” Marcus asked in a low voice.

  “Drug Investigation Branch troopers. Think CES but with a hard-on for drugs instead of tech,” I said and faced Kay again. “You sprung for an escape route?”

  “Thought it best too—grr, Busta get over here and help me, it’s stuck.” She grunted and pulled on the handle as Lawrence moved beside her and took hold. “Goddamn bastard, told you we shouldn’t have gone with them.”

  Lawrence pulled, and the door creaked on its hinges. He pulled again, and it released in a noise that sounded like a spring breaking. It echoed through the basement.

  “No way they
didn’t hear that,” I said. “We gotta go, now.”

  The door squeaked open to show the mechanism inside had sheared off and laid in a pile of shavings on the metal floor of the tunnel.

  “Shit, can’t lock it now.” Kay shoved the items aside and then pulled herself up into the tunnel. It stood only a few inches above her head as she crouched down in it. “All right, keep quiet and follow me. Busta, you take the rear, don’t want anyone getting lost.”

  “Whatever you say, but I don’t much care if they get lost.”

  “They get lost and I’ll make sure you get lost too, asshole,” Kay called and crawled into the tunnel.

  Marcus motioned for me to go next and helped me up into it as my stomach was complaining a lot more now. I swallowed back against the pain and followed the shadowed form of Kay into the darkness.

  I heard Marcus clamber in behind me and then Lawrence got in. Everything went dark when he closed the door. A light would have been nice, but I didn’t want to make any more noise than I had to. DIB had their own tricks, and I knew none of them. Since neither Kay nor Lawrence talked, I followed suite as we rumbled deeper into the tunnel.

  I ran into the back of Kay as she stopped suddenly in front of me. We both cursed, and I backed up and felt Marcus’s hand on my leg to stop me.

  “What is it?” I asked in a whisper. Shay shifted some, her silhouette swaying from one side to the other. “Kay?”

  “Hold on, girl, it splits ahead.”

  “It splits? You… you do know which way to go, right?”

  “Yeah, but… shh,” she said, and we all held our breath as voices reached us. I couldn’t tell which way they were coming from as they seemed to echo through the tunnel. For all I could tell, they were behind us. “Shit, they found the escape route.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Must’ve mapped the place before charging in, the bastards are sitting right where we’d come out. Can’t go that way.” Kay said and crawled forward a bit.

  “What’s the goddamn hold up?” Lawrence called.

  “Kay thinks they found the hideout,” I said, and he cursed. “We got somewhere else we can go? Not the biggest fan of cages at the moment.”

  “Give me a second… yeah, we can go this way. Bit more run down, but they were supposed to make sure we had a couple of ways out.” She went left and I followed. “Just take it nice and slow and keep an ear out.”

  “Yeah, sure will,” I said as the tunnel creaked under our weight and the sound became more ominous the farther we went. It came to where I would pause a few seconds after Kay crossed, just to make sure things settled enough. Kay continued without worry of the state of anything and I wondered if she was just high or trusted that everything would hold.

  Five minutes later my luck kicked in. The tunnel expanded enough that we could crawl side by side and Lawrence pushed his way past me, the metal creaking like it would snap, and stopped Kay with a hand.

  “They’re gonna be waiting wherever we come out, babe,” he said just under his breath. “You know that, right?”

  “Maybe and maybe not. Thought I told you to stay in the back.”

  “I ain’t your bitch to order around, I do what —“

  “You are my bitch right now cause I’m gonna get us out of this. Listen to what I say or go back to the restaurant.” She turned a little to look at me. “You okay?”

  “Knees and hands are gonna be hurting for a few days, but nothing we can’t handle.”

  "Good, should only be a bit longer. If they were at this exit we’d hear them by now. Come on—"

  She moved forward as she spoke and I heard something snap beside me. The snap became a low whine of metal twisting and bending under our weight. The entire tunnel jerked to the left and the seam ahead of me split to allow yellow colored light in. My stomach jolted into my side as the seam became bigger. Kay and Lawrence disappeared in a slice of black and yellow. I waited for the impact and it came with a thundering crash. I hit my head off the metal side and heard Marcus cry out and bang off the walls.

  It took a minute to get my bearings enough to figure out where we had landed. I blinked a few times, my vision blurry and made the end of the tunnel look like a well of piss. Details came in a moment later and I could see we had landed on some kind of tiled floor.

  Marcus groaned behind me and with a tight chest I crawled toward where he lay in a haze of dust. He coughed a few times as I placed my hands to his cheeks and wiped away the grime that plastered them. "Hey…" I said slowly and his eyes focused on me. "You all right?"

  He coughed again. “Yeah, but who are you?” He looked around. “Who am I?”

  “I swear, if you’re messing with me…”

  He grinned. "I’m good, doll." The grin faded as he reached up and pushed my hair back. A cut burned when he touched it “You’re bleeding. It’s not that bad, though.”

  “Jackass,” I said and looked him over. “I don’t see no bones poking out, just some minor cuts. You able to move?”

  “Was thinking of staying here, it’s kind of cozy.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll be out there if you change your mind,” I said and pointed to the end of the vent as he laughed. He struggled to his knees and followed me out.

  It felt amazing to be able to stand, but the place we were in was anything but. The piss colored light came from old electrical lights that hung from the ceiling. Most were out or flickering and beyond those that worked, the entire area was black.

  “Ragan!” A voice from above called and the faint outline of someone appeared out of the vent. “Ragan! Answer me, you bitch!”

  “I’m alive, we both are,” I called and heard Kay give a whoop of joy. “Think we’re stuck here, though.”

  “Nothing we can do other than to keep going. We can get some rope and get you out of there... I guess.” A sound of something falling and then thudding onto the ground came from a few feet ahead of me. “That should keep you until we’re back.”

  “What about DIB?”

  “Screw them, I brought you this far and I’ll get you out. Just take it easy, should only be an hour at most.” I heard her start to crawl through the tunnel again, the brackets creaking with every thud.

  “An hour?” Marcus said as he rubbed at his face to remove the chalk-like dust that covered it. “We’re stuck here for an hour?”

  “Looks like,” I said and moved toward where the thud had come from. I found the bag that Kay had been carrying. Inside there was a flashlight, a knife, a baton, and a few other packages. Some were food, most looked to be drugs of some kind. “They were prepared.”

  Marcus was staring up at the ceiling when I walked back. He felt my eyes on him and looked down, a worried expression on his face. “How much do you trust her?”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, his hands going into his pockets. “If she doesn’t come back for us we’re kinda screwed. I don’t have a clue where we are.”

  “Me either.” I dug out a water bottle and took a long sip. “She’ll come back for us, as long as they don’t get caught.” I put the cap on the bottle and tossed it to him. He caught it and drank some.

  “That’s my other worry,” he said and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I can’t get Crow on the line.”

  “Static?”

  “Nah, just dead. Not sure if that fall knocked my neural around or if we’re just too deep for my basic stuff to get out.” He chuckled. “Maybe hanging around you isn’t my best idea.”

  “Meaning?” I asked darkly as I sat on the ground. He froze.

  “Was kidding, Doll. Take a breath. I just mean that we seem to get ourselves into a lot of trouble.”

  I sneered. “You mean I get you into a lot of trouble.”

  I heard him move in behind me and sit down. His arms went around my shoulders and stomach and he pulled me back against him. I protested a little which he ignored.

  “No,” he said softly, “well, maybe, but I’m okay with that. Trouble follows
all of us, you at least get into interesting stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t call this interesting…”

  He kissed the top of my head and squeezed. “Maybe not, this does kind of suck.” He paused and his arm pulled a bit from my stomach. I looked down and felt like I’d throw up. Blood seeped through the clothes and had colored his forearm. “Doll?”

  "Shit…" I said, still unable to take my eyes from the blood.

  He slid around me. “You feeling dizzy? Light headed?”

  “No,” I said and pulled at the sweater and shirt, it stuck to my skin. “This can’t be good.”

  “Blood generally isn’t,” he said and took hold of the hem of my sweater and shirt.

  Without another word he pulled it up which caused a searing pain to rush across my stomach. I hissed through my teeth.

  “Shit…” he said, his lips going thin.

  “What?”

  “The damn synthetic skin didn’t adhere completely.” His fingers played across my stomach and then touched the long stretch of discolored skin, causing my stomach to quiver. “Micro breaks are all along the edge and the tearing is getting worse.” He cursed.

  “What does that mean?” I asked as calmly as I could, but my throat was dry and it came out in a croak. His eyes locked with mine for a moment and then turned back to the wound.

  “It means that the skin will continued to pull apart until… shit!” His hands were red with my blood, but he didn’t seem to care. He looked around the area and reached for the bag. He dug through it as I watched blood pelts grow along the line of skin. I was getting tired of my blood being on the outside.

  “I can fix this,” he said as he stopped digging thought the bag. His eyes were distant in thought. “Yeah, that should work.”

  “Marcus?”

  His focus returned to me. “We just need to seal the cuts until we’re out of here and can reapply the synthetic. Kay has glue in here.”

  “Glue?”

  “Well, medical glue. I bet it’s for when needle pricks won’t stop bleeding. It’s not meant for what we’re gonna use it for.” He shook the small bottle a few times and pushed up my sweater again. He found a towel in the bag and used it wipe away the blood. “Good thing Kay thinks ahead.” He held up another bottle. “Rubbing alcohol, gonna sting like a bitch.”