A line of text cascaded across the video.
WE APOLOGISE FOR THE USE OF ADULT LANGUAGE IN THIS CLIP.
Captain Weeks was pale. “Mayor isn’t pleased.”
Kage nodded.
“And now we have another victim. That …” His nose curled. “… Daggy Munch woman.”
“Actually, we have a third. Thomsin Sparling,” said Kage.
Weeks folded his arms. His eyes glazed over as they tracked something on the surface of his glasses.
Kage pressed on. “The best lead we have is Sparling’s apartment. I need a forensics team there ASAP.”
Weeks’ focus returned to the Detective. “Why?”
“We found DNA likely belonging to Sparling. It looks like his body was dissolved.”
“Dammit,” said Weeks, sitting down. “We’ve got a serial.”
“Please, sir. Give me a forensics team.”
“Done. Anything else?”
Kage eyed the paypoint on the desk. Thought better of it. “That’s all sir.”
Weeks’ eyes glazed over again. “It’s my phone. Yup, it’s the Mayor. Sort out this mess, Jackson.”
Kage headed for the door.
*
“Detective, there’s trace DNA in the shower cubicle, and on swabs taken from the drain.”
“Can you get a match?” asked Kage. He tried to ignore the tenor of Shoulders’ voice from the next room. The Senior Detective had been skulking about the bedroom since they’d arrived, barking orders at the forensic team.
“We have a field kit,” said the technician, “but it takes too long to run a broad search from here. We’ll take it to Headquarters for analysis.”
“Could you run it against a particular sample?”
Kage messaged over Thomsin’s DNA profile.
“Uh, yes sir. Let me take a look … It’s only a partial match on every sample, due to degradation. But put the samples together, and there’s enough overlap to positively identify that this is the subject’s DNA.”
Kage paced the gleaming porcelain tiles. “Any way of knowing whether he’s dead?”
“Actually, yes, sir. The subject almost certainly is. Chemical analysis indicates …”
Kage tuned out. Continued pacing. Thinking. Why dispose of Sparling’s body when the killer didn’t dispose of the others?
“Got something here,” called Shoulders from the living room. “I asked the techies to check for residue on the plates. And, I knew it, bingo. Saliva. DNA. Doesn’t match Thomsin Sparling, though.”
“Check it against the blood sample from Lincoln Russell’s forearm,” said Kage.
“What blood?” asked Shoulders.
The techie tapped his glasses. Whispered and tapped. Whispered. Tapped.
“Uh, that’s a match, Detectives.”
Kage paced. Spoke to his glasses. “Note, subject other than Thomsin Sparling was in the apartment. Likely killed Sparling, dissolved him, and flushed him down the drain. Subject also killed Lincoln Russell.”
“Dissolved him?” asked Shoulders. The broad man’s lips took on a bluish tinge.
Kage paced. “How did he get the names of his organ donors? Maybe he didn’t kill Sparling for his organs. Perhaps he used Sparling opportunistically. Used his apartment and glasses. His credit card. Identity. Sparling wasn’t a target, but the others may have been.”
Shoulders folded his arms. “You got any evidence to back up that piece of speculation?”
Kage tried not to look at the muscles that bunched under the man’s shirtsleeves. His biceps were larger than some of the Hyenas’ at the gym.
“We still don’t know how he gained access to the donor database,” said Kage to himself.
“If he did at all.”
“Yes. But supposing he did,” said Kage, “how did he do it? We know so far that he’s a Gutter. That he –”
“We do?” Shoulders had recovered the color in his cheeks. The ubiquitous smugness in his voice.
“We know he’s a Gutter,” repeated Kage. “Can’t go into the details now. Anyway, theory is that he’s an organ donor. How would a donor get to know who his recipients are?”
“Records are kept at Organ Sales, so far as I know,” said Shoulders.
“That’s correct.”
A reluctant smile whispered across Shoulders’ lips at the acknowledgement.
Kage tapped his glasses. Called Una. “Have there been any calls placed from this apartment, from Sparling’s glasses, to Organ Sales in the last week?”
“The Regulus,” said Una.
“Sorry, could you repeat that,” said Kage, walking away from the forensic team to find somewhere more private.
“I want to go to The Regulus tonight,” said Una. “You haven’t forgotten? You said I can pick the place.”
“Sure. The Regulus is perfect.” Kage racked his brain. Regulus. Why did that sound so familiar?
“Fine,” said Una. “Yes, there was a call logged two days ago from Sparling’s glasses to Organ Sales.”
“Uhuh. Could you find the sales consultant who took the call?”
“That would be a Hooplah Diaz.”
Perhaps it was time to pay Hooplah Diaz a visit, thought Kage.
“What time we meeting?” he asked.
“Seven.”
He checked the time on his glasses. 18:12. No time to visit the sales consultant before his date with Una. He’d find her afterwards. After The Regulus.
“See you there.”
Kage’s brain begun constructing a list of questions for Hooplah, fast-forwarding through the interrogation. He forced his mind back to the date. Where had he heard of The Regulus?
Ah. Fuck. The eternal cold of crushing ocean depths. Teeth. Blades engulfing him.
Kage gulped down a fistful of air. The Regulus.
“Can’t wait,” he said.
The Devil in the Didgeridoo
Hal’s rubber face wobbled. The outlines of her skin blurred and coalesced as Daniel focused.
“One more staple, and …” He felt a cold pressure in his chin. “… there you are. Good as new.”
Hal held up a mirror. “What you think?”
Pockmarks. Zinc-starved patches under the eyes made him look sad. Lost. Swelling everywhere. Puffy cheeks. Red, angry nose.
“Margaret thinks Daniel looks dashing,” said Margaret, resting a hand on his naked shoulder. The forefinger still oozed pus. He flinched, and she withdrew her hand, leaving slimy, brown track marks.
The painkillers wobbled the room again. Daniel’s eyelids drifted shut. Snapped open. Drifted …
“Want to take a nap?” He heard Hal’s voice through the familiar swoosh of the fan on her head spinning. The rotors of her stomach compartment slid aside. “Give you the bed cheap for the night?”
Daniel forced himself to consciousness. Shook off the effects of the OxyContin. Lifted his thousand-pound head off the operating table.
“No,” he said, standing on careful knees. “I’ll take it from here.” The floor receded and sprung back into focus as he gained his balance.
“You’re not ordering a taxi from this place,” said Hal. “Not a chance when you’re a wanted man. Its twenty-six flights down to the bottom. And you don’t look well enough to walk.”
“I’m fine,” he said. Blood rushed to his head. Pulsed in his cheeks as he bent down to collect his clothes from the floor. The dog had made a bed from his pants. Growled softly as Daniel yanked them away.
“Margaret will help Daniel,” she said, and wrapped an arm around his midriff. The frayed edges of Lincoln Russell’s nails scored the skin below his ribs. Margaret’s hand was cold. And not the kind of cold one felt on a winter’s day. Not a surface chill. Not something one could shake off with a printed cup of coffee, or a hot shower. Her hand communicated a deep, bone-numbing frost.
He tried feebly to wriggle from her grip, but she held him firm. Under Daggy’s gelatinous flesh, Margaret’s skeleton was as unmalleable as her will. “Marg
aret will help Daniel,” she said. It could have been an effect of the painkillers, but Daniel thought he saw her eyes glint the coldest steel hue.
“Don’t forget my arms and kidneys,” called Hal.
Daniel submitted to Margaret, as they descended the staircase behind Hal’s building. He wove in and out of consciousness while they swayed. Thought they stepped into a taxi. And although he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a dream, he felt Margaret lift him. Carry him up the staircase to her apartment.
An eternity soaked in darkness and honey was over before he knew it had started. When Daniel woke, the sun was setting behind one of the buildings beyond Margaret’s. The last beams of sunlight kissed his throbbing forehead. He shielded his eyes.
He was lying on the couch. Nude. He didn’t remember undressing.
“Is Daniel feeling better?”
He reached for a pillow, a throw, something to cover himself. But the couch was Spartan. What did an android need with furnishings after all?
He shielded himself with his hands. Faced Margaret. “What did you do with my –” he began. But she raised a hand.
“Shhh,” she said. “Margaret is watching.”
Margaret too was naked. The purple stretch marks that snaked across Daggy’s skin, now Margaret’s skin, caught the last of the dying sun. But as repulsive as she was, Daniel’s eye snagged on a glass jar on the kitchen table. The jar holding his face.
Daniel closed his eyes. Counted to seven. Released his hands to his sides.
“What are you watching?” he asked.
His gaze switched between Margaret and the eyeless face in the jar.
“Skin,” she said, “is a beautiful creation.”
“Creation?”
“This is Margaret’s Project Alpha.”
Margaret lifted her hands to her midriff. Ran her fingers over her nipple-free breasts. Across her lipless mouth.
“I don’t understand?” Goosebumps broke out across his own chest. His own lips tingled.
Her fingers passed over her skin in what she seemed to think were seductive arcs. “Margaret’s Project Alpha is to become one of the created. Like Daniel. To become human.”
Odin sidled up to the android. Purred. Squeezed between her legs.
The android’s fingers ceased stroking. Her toes twitched. Insofar as Margaret could be said to display an expression, the pleasure dropped from her face.
Daniel puffed out his chest. Fortified his voice. “Humans wear clothes. Where are mine?”
Margaret pointed to a chair at the dining table. His smartshirt and pants, defaulted to white, had been folded neatly on the seat. His underwear wasn’t with them, but he felt it prudent to accept the spoils of this battle without further provocation. “Thank you,” he said.
Margaret craned her neck at a forty-five degree angle. “Thank you,” she repeated softly, tasting the words. “Thank you.”
He stepped into the pants. The fabric wrapped delicately around his groin. “Nobody’s ever thanked you before?”
“No,” said Margaret.
“It’s an expression of gratitude.”
“Margaret does not compute.”
“You helped me down the stairs at Hal’s. Up these stairs. Folded my clothes. Thank you.”
“Margaret does nothing that Margaret does not want to do.”
“Do any of us? Thanks, anyway.”
Daniel relaxed once he’d donned the smartshirt. His shoulders unbunched. His goosebumps subsided.
He slid on his glasses, and unfolded the torn Bible page from his pocket. Only three more names, three more organs, on the list:
Left lung – Ben Stanton
2843 Gemini Towers
Right lung – Bob Stanton
2843 Gemini Towers
Liver – Autumn Beckett
77 Alderbury Lane
The paper grew heavy in his hands. Daniel was tired. He’d retrieved his knee. His cornea. His tongue. And now he’d lost his face. And then there was the matter of his amygdala. “Not in the database yet,” Hooplah had said when he’d asked her over the phone two days ago. “It’s too soon. Hasn’t been assigned to a recipient.”
Hooplah. He tried to conjure her face, but he remembered only her flaxen hair. In his mind’s eye, her features were a blur of light.
Daniel’s chest sagged. He dropped his head into his hands. Lungs, liver, and amygdala. Without them, he was stuck. Only half a person. Little better than Margaret. Not his mother’s son. Impure. Fragmented.
But with each organ he retrieved, the authorities and that – what was his name … Private Detective Kage Jackson – inched closer to cornering him. Did he have it in him to take three more organs? Would the Detective catch him before then?
Daniel jumped. Margaret had sat beside him on the couch. He hadn’t heard her approach. With Daggy’s skin padding her feet, she hardly clunked on the tiled floor.
“Margaret wants lips.”
And then he remembered. It wasn’t just his organs he still needed to retrieve. He’d promised Hal arms and pair of kidneys. And lips for Margaret.
Gods.
He read the list again. Noticed that Ben and Bob Stanton shared both a surname and an address. Brothers? He could do them both at once. But the thought of overpowering two people, two men simultaneously, was daunting.
“Lips,” repeated Margaret. “Margaret wants lips.”
Daniel blinked the fatigue from his eyes. Tapped his glasses, and called up the tracking app.
Ben and Bob Stanton were in the same location. Bacchus Mall in the Promenade. It would be good to have his lungs back.
“Your lips are just a few blocks from here,” he said to Margaret, and stood. “I’ll be back later.” He’d walk. He needed the air.
*
Kage stepped into The Regulus like a cat pawing a tub of water. Reluctantly.
A man clad in dazzling fish scales rushed at him. “I’mtellingeveryonewe’rebookedout,” he said at a thousand miles an hour. “Fridaynight’sbusysir.”
“I’m meeting someone,” said Kage. “The reservation is under Una.”
The maître d`’s mouth worked as he searched through a tablet lying on a heavy wooden lectern. “UnaUnaUnaUna,” he whispered. “Ahladythreetablesfromtheback. Behindtheoctopuses.”
Kage tried to ignore the rising panic pounding in his temple. His right temple. The scar tissue around the amygdala implant.
“I’lltakeyoutheresir. Rightthisway.”
The maître d` steamed past two whales and a dolphin, round the octopuses. And there she was. Black jacket. Black jeans. Black hair. Black eyes.
“You didn’t dress up,” said Una. She pecked his cheek.
“Neither did you.” He lowered himself onto the wet gel-seat. A thousand shudders ran through his thighs.
“I like swimming on the random setting,” said Una. She leaned back. Removed her leather jacket. Her smartblouse had been configured to almost entirely translucent, with the barest hint of opacity in crucial areas.
Kage forgot the alarming wetness permeating his pants from the couch. “You look … your …”
It could have been the dim lighting, but Kage could swear he saw the hard lines across Una’s forehead dissolve. The thunderclouds dissipated.
“So, what’s your preferred predator?” she asked.
Kage glanced down at the display on the tabletop.
“Hmmm.” He refused to acknowledge his hammering heart. “All they’ve got left is four Crimson-Tipped Regulian Squid, two Figure-Eight sharks, and a Sensalese Hinterland. Not much to choose from.”
Una leaned forward. Candlelight licked the outlines of her nipples. “All good options if you ask me. Hope you’re hungry.”
Kage tapped on the squid. “Here we go,” he said.
“The hunt’s only starting in a few minutes,” said Una. “You feeling okay? You look a little pale.” She reached out. Touched his elbow.
“Yeah, all good.”
Don’t tell her, he tho
ught. No need. Don’t tell her.
“You been here before, though, right?”
“Uh, not exactly.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Don’t tell her. Don’t –
“I can’t swim,” spoke Kage’s lips.
Una was all eyebrows. “Oh. Shit. I didn’t know. Want to go somewhere else?”
“No. I can do this. There’s no, you know, actual swimming involved.”
“Yes, but –”
He settled a trembling hand over hers. “I’m happy to be wherever you are.” Fuck, Kage. You could have said anything. I’m happy to be where you are. Could he be more clichéd?
But Una’s smile only grew. She leaned forward. Her perfume was his world. Fruity, supple, but with an edge. Like the expression on her face. No matter how broadly Una smiled, no matter how she softened her eyes, there was always the trace of a smirk on her lips.
She squeezed his hand. “I think it’s starting.”
And it was. The sloshing vibrations under his buttocks took on greater urgency, expanding and deepening. He watched as his chair elongated. Grew sides.
Una adjusted her glasses on her nose. Lay back on her own chair, which had also lengthened. “You’ve inspired me. I’ll be a squid too,” she said. “See you soon.” The sides of the unit stretched over her. Covered her face. Her feet. Until Una was entirely cocooned in the pearly-white, gooey shell.
Kage’s chair vibrated insistently underneath him. He could walk out right now. She wouldn’t know till she woke up. He’d say he had an emergency. A call about the case. An opportunity to talk to Hooplah, the sales consultant. He could make it work.
But he knew he had to do this. This was his penance for fucking up the last date. This was his atonement for being … wrong. For being unable to swim. For being born a Gutter. For being less than a man.
No, he was going to do this.
He lay back against the sticky base of the couch. Allowed its sides to grow over and envelope him.
“Service provider, The Regulus, requests interface,” prompted his glasses. “Accept?”
“Yes.”
“Relaaax,” whispered a silky voice in the pearly darkness.
Defragmenting Daniel: The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 23
