The creaking stairs would give him away to anyone waiting up there, and the fact that a new set of lights illuminated every time he reached another floor, thereby announcing his presence to anyone even remotely paying attention, didn’t exactly help, either.
The offices on the other floors were in darkness, locked up for the night. He pressed on to the top floor, listening for any clue as to who was up there, but hearing nothing.
He checked his gun. It was still in stun mode. On balance, that was probably for the best. A stun shot from Mindy would stop most things in their tracks, and he didn’t like to blow anyone into little bits unless he was at least ninety per cent certain they deserved it.
Well, maybe eighty-five.
The door to his office was closed when he reached the final step, but a light burned inside, silhouetting the writing on the frosted glass.
DEADMAN INVESTIGATIONS
No case too weird.*
Then, in smaller letters, right at the bottom of the window:
*Exclusions apply.
He ran through the list of people he wouldn’t object to having forced their way into his locked office. It was a list of two, one of which was him. The other, he’d left back in his workshop ten minutes previously.
He wondered if he should switch to explosive rounds, after all.
On closer inspection, the door only looked closed. It was actually resting against the latch, and opened with a nudge from his foot.
Dan snapped up the gun, taking aim at the cramped reception area just beyond the door.
Empty.
The door to the inner office stood wide open. A dim light seeped out. His desk lamp, probably. He heard the creaking as someone shifted their weight in a chair.
His chair.
“You coming in, or what?” said a voice from inside. Dan didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew the tone. If his own voice sounded like stones rubbing together, this one sounded like those same stones being formed deep in some planetary core somewhere.
Shizz. He definitely should’ve switched to explosive rounds.
He returned Mindy to her holster. No point making this even worse.
A lump of rock sat behind Dan’s desk, its back to the window, the light from the desk lamp casting half of it into shadow. It had arms and legs, and something that passed for a face, if you used a bit of imagination. An Igneon. And if an Igneon was here, Dan knew what was coming next.
It was impossible – or, rather, very difficult – to tell the sex of an Igneon just by looking at them, but the voice had already told Dan this one was male. He wore nothing on his top half, but Dan could see the elasticated waistband of some ill-fitting gray jogging pants before the rest of the legs were lost beneath the desk.
The Igneon held up a slab-like hand, gesturing for Dan to wait while he finished drawing a large and remarkably detailed penis on the desktop. His stone lips smacked together in a succession of spurting noises as he added three drops of flying ejaculate, then he nodded in satisfaction and replaced the pen in Dan’s cardboard desk organizer.
The Igneon interlocked his fingers, clasping his hands on the desktop as he looked up at Dan and smiled, showing off a number of diamond-like teeth.
“Now, then,” he said. With a nod of his boulder-like head, he indicated a wooden chair against the wall. It was the one clients sat in when they came to visit the office, and was coated with a thin layer of dust. “Well, sit down, then, before you make the place look untidy.”
Dan flicked his eyes around at an upended filing cabinet, and the paperwork strewn all over the floor. The guy had done a number on the place before he’d taken a seat.
Dan’s seat.
“I’ll stand,” said Dan.
“Suit yourself,” said the Igneon, something blazing in the dark hollows of his eyes. “You know why I’m here.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, so Dan didn’t treat it as one. He cut straight to the chase. “I don’t have her money yet.”
The Igneon sucked a breath in through his granite lips. “You know what, Deadman? Looking around this place? I can see you don’t have her money. I mean, look at this.”
There was a loud crack as he poked a hole through the flimsy wooden desktop. He rocked in the chair, then snapped off an arm rest. “Falling to pieces,” he said. He leaned back in the broken chair. “So, I see this, and I think, ‘Clearly this guy don’t have twenty thousand credits just lying around.’ I mean, no offence, Deadman, but this place is a shizzhole.”
He leaned forwards again, steepling his fingers in front of him. “But then, you know what I think? I think, ‘That’s not my problem.’” He tapped the side of his head. It made a sound like a hammer-strike. “This little voice, way up here, says your financial dire straits are not my concern. And you know what? That little voice, it’s right. Your problems are your problem. Getting back what you owe Shornack? That… now that, is my concern. That’s my problem.”
Throughout the Igneon’s speech, Dan’s attention had drifted to the window. Usually, he could see a full six blocks into midtown before the view was blocked by an outcrop of much taller buildings. Now, though, the view was blocked by something else.
“What the…?” he began, then his voice drifted off into silence as the woman standing on the window ledge tapped against the glass.
“There you are,” said Oledol, her voice muffled. “Everything OK?”
The Igneon turned in Dan’s chair. He regarded Oledol for a few long silent seconds. She waved at him, but he didn’t wave back.
Eventually, he turned to face Dan again. “There’s someone on your window ledge.”
“There is,” agreed Dan.
Neither of them moved for a while, then the Igneon’s brow shifted, rumbling like a tiny tectonic plate. “Where was I?”
“It’s quite high up,” called Oledol.
“You were saying something about my financial situation,” Dan said. He tore his eyes away from the window, but found them creeping back after a moment or to.
“Ah, yes,” said the Igneon. “Thank you. So I was.”
Oledol knocked again. “Can I come in yet?”
The Igneon slapped the flat of a hand against the desk. The movement was sharp and sudden, and made something in the desk go snap. He sighed, then gestured to the window. “Let her in. We’re never going to be able to concentrate, otherwise.”
“It doesn’t open,” said Dan. “It’s painted shut.”
“Sorry?” called Oledol, turning her ear towards the glass. “What was that? I can’t hear you very well. It’s quite windy.”
The Igneon tutted. “Fonk, Deadman, what sort of operation are you running here?”
Standing, he punched a hole in the wall beside the window frame. Outside, Oledol yelped and caught hold of the window frame, then tumbled inside when the Igneon pulled the whole frame, glass and all, into the office in a cloud of plaster dust.
Oledol jumped up quickly, trying to brush some of the dust off her with one hand. As she was wearing black, and literally covered from head to toe in the fine white powder, it didn’t really help.
“Thanks,” she said.
The Igneon nodded and smiled, showing off those gemstone teeth again. He turned back to Dan and his smile fell away. “Maybe now I’ll have your undivided attention.”
Dan stared at the gaping wound where his window had been. The warm night air wafted in. This high up, it was just possible to make out the soft hum of the vast engines in the sky far overhead.
The Igneon was directly between him and the hole. Dan thought about charging him, trying to shoulder him out through it, but would a six story fall be enough to stop one of these things? Make him angry, yes, but stop him? Dan wasn’t sure.
Besides, it’d just make things complicated, and things were already complicated enough.
“Tell Shornack I’ll get her money,” he said.
“Plus interest,” he and the Igneon both said at the same time. The Igneon laughed.
“Know how I knew you were going to say that, Deadman? Because you said that last time. Remember? When Jojo paid you a visit? You remember Jojo, right? Nice guy. Too nice. Too trusting. Shornack had to let him go.”
He shrugged. The movement resembled a small avalanche. “I mean, technically, she had me let him go. Took him nine minutes to hit the ground. We timed it, the boys and me. Made quite the mess.” He smiled, almost wistfully. “Fun times. Fun times.”
“Uh, sorry,” said Oledol, raising a hand. “I have an uncomfortable feeling here.”
She pointed to her lower stomach. “It’s kind of, like, a pressure? Does that make sense?”
Dan and the Shornack’s enforcer both looked from her face to her stomach and back again. “And?” the Igneon asked.
“Just wondered if you knew what it was.” She gasped and her hand went to her mouth. “Am I dying? Is that what’s happening right now?”
Dan and the Igneon exchanged just the briefest of looks.
“No. You’re not dying,” said Dan.
“But it can be arranged,” the enforcer said.
Dan pointed to a door in the corner. “Bathroom,” he said.
Oledol looked at the door. “In there? I should go in there?”
“Well, you definitely shouldn’t go in here,” Dan said. He pointed again. “Bathroom.”
Oledol hesitated, then about-turned and shuffled, cross-legged, in the direction Dan had pointed. She opened the door, fumbled around for a light switch, then stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind her.
The Igneon tapped his fingertips together, then shrugged again. “Interesting friend you’ve got there.”
“She’s not my friend,” Dan said. “She’s a…”
“She’s a what?” asked the Igneon, when Dan didn’t finish the sentence.
“I don’t know. A witness.”
Oledol’s voice floated out through the bathroom door. “OK, so now what?” she asked. There was a faint clank. “Oh, wait. I think I worked it out.”
Both men waited for a few moments to see if she was going to say anything else, before continuing.
“Know what, doesn’t matter? Like I said, your business is your business,” said the Igneon. “But my business is my business, and right now, my business is getting back what you owe.”
“I told you, I don’t have it. Not yet.”
“And, see, that presents me with a problem, Deadman,” said the enforcer. “Normally, when someone can’t pay, I hurt them. I don’t kill them, because where’s the business-sense in that, right? Where’s the return on that investment? Nowhere, that’s where. So I don’t kill them, but I hurt them. I hurt them very, very badly. It’s crude, yes, but you’d be surprised how effective it is.” He shrugged. “Well, probably not all that surprised.”
He looked Dan up and down. “But you… Well, you see my difficulty. You don’t get hurt. How do I motivate someone who can’t feel pain? Huh? Cut your arms off?”
The Igneon looked deliberately at each of Dan’s hands. “Fun, sure, but what’s the point? You’ll only…”
He looked back at Dan’s left hand again. “Wait. Is that…?”
“A woman’s arm,” Dan confirmed. “Yes, it is. And no, you can’t hurt me.”
That wasn’t strictly true, but Dan was happy to let the enforcer keep thinking it.
“So, I guess you’ll just have to take me at my word,” he continued. “I’ll get Shornack’s money. I just need a little more time, that’s all.”
The Igneon rocked back on his heels, making the floorboards grumble in complaint beneath the faded carpet. “I guess I’ll just take something from you. We’ll call it a security deposit.”
Dan gestured around the trashed office. “Good luck with that,” he said, just as the bathroom door opened and an ashen-faced Oledol stepped out.
She closed the door quietly, leaned against it for a moment as if recovering from some terrible ordeal, then walked quickly over to Dan.
“Something happened in there,” she whispered. “There was… liquid involved.”
She looked down as one of the Igneon’s enormous hands wrapped around her upper arm. “Hey!” she protested. “That hurts.”
The enforcer ignored her, and flashed Dan a toothy smile. “She’ll do nicely,” he said.
Dan snorted, but then thought better of it. “No, please,” he said, forcing some emotion into his voice. “Not her, anything but her.”
It sounded far more sarcastic than he’d intended, but Igneon’s weren’t exactly renowned for their subtlety or humor, so it had the desired effect.
“Yeah, I thought so,” the enforcer said. “You want to see your friend again, you get Shornack’s money by this time tomorrow night. Otherwise, we’ll let her go. Like we let Jojo go.”
“Um, sorry, you’re hurting my arm,” said Oledol, her voice rising half an octave. She tried to yank herself free, but the Igneon’s grip was much too strong. She slapped him on his upper arm, but it was like hitting a mountain, and equally as effective.
With a tug, he pulled her towards the door. She cried out in pain as her arm was almost yanked from its socket. “Ow. Let me go!” Oledol protested. “I mean it!”
The Igneon hit her. It wasn’t hard – barely a tap, really – but it was enough to spin her around and knock her feet out from under her. The grip on her arm was all that stopped her falling to the floor.
“Do me a favor,” said the Enforcer, pulling Oledol closer and snarling in her face. “Shut your fonking mouth and stop—”
The rest of his sentence was lost in the explosion. Specifically, his explosion. There was a flash of light from Oledol’s neck, and the enforcer’s rock-solid frame became hundreds of smaller, rock-solid pieces, all hurtling in different directions at once.
The impact of several dozen chunks of flying Igneon knocked Dan off his feet. He landed heavily on top of his desk, which finally decided it had taken quite enough abuse for one day, thank you very much, and immediately collapsed beneath him.
The roar of the explosion became the rattle of pebbles bouncing off a number of hard surfaces, then that, too, faded into something close to silence. The only sounds in the room were Oledol’s ragged breathing, and the distant hum of the Up There engines rolling down through the clouds.
These were joined, a moment later, by the sound of something hard hitting something harder on the street outside, and the high-pitched bleating of a car alarm.
Flat on his back, Dan lifted his head from the wreckage of his desk and looked at Oledol. She was staring at her arm, where the Igneon’s hand had been holding her.
Dan cleared his throat, then raised his eyebrows when she turned her gaze towards him.
“OK,” Oledol said, doing her best to bring her breathing under control. “So that time might have been my fault.”
With a grunt of effort, Dan extricated himself from the desk. His hat had fallen off, and was now partially buried under a pile of rocks. He pulled it free, beat it back into shape, then placed it back on his bald head.
He flicked a few pebbles off his chair, and lowered himself into it.
Only then did he speak.
“Now, I’m sure this won’t come as any great surprise,” he said, a breeze blowing in behind him through the remains of his office wall. “But I have some questions.”
CHAPTER SIX
Oledol sat on the dusty clients’ chair, nodding as Dan made a list on his woman’s fingers.
“You launched me across Ned’s workshop without moving a muscle. You had no chip, no knowledge of them, and apparently no understanding of where you are. You climbed six floors straight up the side of a building in the dark.”
“You told me to wait outside.”
“Yes, I did,” Dan confirmed. “But I meant specifically in that spot, not vertically upwards. How did you climb all that way, anyway?”
Oledol appeared confused by the question, then she mimed a climbing motion with her hands. “Like that.”
Dan raised his eyebrows, clicked his tongue against his teeth, then shook his head.
“Moving on. You seem to have no understanding of basic bodily functions—”
“I just forgot, that’s all,” said Oldeol, tapping the side of her head.
“Yeah, except that ain’t how amnesia works, sweetheart,” said Dan. “And I speak from experience here. And then, of course, we come to the real question. The big one.”
He held up a sliver of shattered rock. “How the fonk did you do this?”
“Do what?”
Dan sucked in his bottom lip. It was mostly to stop himself shouting. The woman – Hell, barely more than a girl – looked back at him, her eyes wide, her face open and smiling. Like him, she was humanoid in shape and size, but the markings on her skin were unfamiliar. The skin itself was a pinkish purple, but with a network of lighter lines running across her cheeks and down both sides of her neck.
Down Here was a magnet for off-worlders, for reasons Dan had never been able to understand. He’d met people from all across the galaxy, even seen a few from beyond its boundaries. He’d never seen anyone like her, though.
“‘Do what?’” he echoed. He pointed to the stone shard. “How did you blow this guy to pieces?”
Oledol shifted on her chair. “Oh, that. Well… Actually, first, can I ask you a question?”
Dan sighed, but lowered the Igneon piece. “What?”
“How about ‘Ollie’?”
“Huh?”
“Instead of ‘Oldeol’,” said Oledol. “Ollie. Would you like that better?”
Dan frowned. “Why would I care?”
“Well, it’s just… You don’t seem to like me very much. I thought, you know, maybe if I changed my name you might…”
“Call yourself whatever you like,” said Dan. He held the shard up again. “Now. How did you do that?”
Ollie placed her hands on her knees and straightened her arms. “Trust me,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“You came from the Malwhere,” said Dan. “You weren’t just wandering around inside that warehouse, you came through the portal.” He gestured to her. “This isn’t you. Not your usual form, anyway.”
Dial D for Deadman: A Space Team Universe Novel (Dan Deadman Space Detective Book 1) Page 4
