by Anthology
She was perhaps nine years old, and pale. Or, even healthy she'd have been pale. She was certainly pale now. Her body was lined with incisions and stitches. It looked as though they'd already had their harvest, but they'd taken the time to close her up. Deke looked around. "Where are they?"
"They?"
"Her bits," he said. "The bits you lot took out."
"In the tank, of course," one of the men said, pointing. There was a small stasis unit near the wall, glowing with a full charge. "We had to protect them."
Deke looked down. He blinked, hard. Several times. He heard his father's voice in his head.
"Don't let them fool you, lad," he'd said, one of the last times Deke had seen him. "They'll tell you about rights and liberties and what's right. They'll sell you a whole load of bullshit, if you let them. But it's real simple." He'd taken a swig of his pint and looked Deke straight in the eye. "The world doesn't care. Nature, she don't care about your rights. A tornado doesn't care about your right to life. Viruses don't care. A wolf, he don't care about your right to protection. He's gonna eat you, 'cause he's hungry and you're soft. Don't be soft, lad. Be the wolf."
Deke looked at the little girl. Her hand was bandaged. He reached down and pulled the bandage back. Her pinky finger was missing, as was half of her ring finger. Deke frowned. "You're going to sell her fingers?"
"No," one of the docs said. "That was by instruction."
"Instruction?"
"Mr. Johnson. He told us to take off her fingers." The doc glanced at the others, but they weren't talking. "Said it'd send the message he wanted."
Deke blinked again. He holstered his pistol and gathered the small child up. Several tubes pulled free of her arms. Machines started beeping, and his mesh picked up a persistent warning about moving patients. He cradled the girl to his chest. As if she were his own.
"What are you going to do now?" the doc asked.
"Wait."
"Wait? For what?" Deke said nothing. The doc frowned. "What are you wai-" he collapsed. A wave of dizziness passed through Deke, and the yak princess whimpered. The doctors collapsed. There was a crash from outside in the corridor. Deke set the girl back down and stared at her. The ork-Deke looked up but saw nothing through the skylight.
›HE'S COMING IN.
Deke inhaled. The world doesn't care. He opened the stasis tank and looked inside. Everything was sealed and tagged. He searched for a moment before he found the items he was looking for. They were quite small, and the miniature field generator barely held them, but they fit into the now-empty pocket at the small of his back. Deke closed the tank and turned around, facing the door. He drew the pistol.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid. I got the little girl back. He squeezed the grip of the pistol and looked around. The doctors were unconscious, not dead. He saw one's chest rise and fall. His finger twitched on the trigger guard.
The ork walked through the double doors and stopped. He looked around, taking in the dead doctor and the others lying unconscious on the floor. He looked at Deke, who nodded at him, then at the little girl.
"Chikusho," he whispered. Then he turned his gaze on the doctors. "Eta!" he spat.
"You have docs that can put her back together?" Deke asked.
›WHEELS ON THE WAY.
"We have doctors," the yak said. His tattoos were still glowing, and even Deke, who was about as magical as the mud on his boots, could feel the energy crackling in the room. The dead doctor's body burst into flames.
"So we're done?"
"She has been disfigured."
"You have docs. You can fix her," Deke said.
"Not that," the yak said. "Look at her hand."
"It's only a couple of fingers. You can get her cybers, or bud them."
"It is yubitsume."
"Yubi-what?"
"Yubitsume. It is a yakuza thing."
Deke loaded a message to Lincoln. "But we got her back. We're done."
"Her father will not be pleased."
"That he's getting his daughter back?"
"That she is missing her fingers. That she has been dishonored, and through her, the entire kai has been dishonored. I have been dishonored." The ork stepped closer, leaned down. "Why would they do such a thing?"
"Because they were paid to. Just like me."
"Like you?"
Deke gestured. "Wake that one up. He told me. His Johnson had him take her fingers off. I don't know what mess a couple bloody fingers makes, but those were his instructions."
The ork stared. He walked around the table and nudged the unconscious doc with his foot. The man moaned, and shifted a bit, but did not wake up. The ork grunted, kicked the others. They all had the same reaction.
"No one can know of this," the ork murmured.
Deke swallowed.›Get to the wheels.
›MORE YAKS. COMING UP BEHIND ME. GOOD GUYS, I THINK.
The ork swung around. "Lincoln is moving. Where is he going?"
›Ping me every two seconds. Let me know you're still there. Watch the new guys. Deke shrugged. "Maybe he saw something." He took a step toward the door. A light flashed on his AR, every two seconds. Deke clenched his jaw.
The ork inhaled deeply. The tattoos on his face and arms flared brightly, and the ork shuddered with exertion. "I have friends outside now," he said.
The light stopped flashing on Deke's AR.
The ork's eyes opened, turned toward Deke.
Deke shot him, two rounds, in the stomach. The ork cried out and collapsed, arms wrapped around himself.
"Dragon's piss!" Deke swore. He moved quickly around the small table, where the ork had fallen. Using the toe of his boot, he rolled the ork over. As soon as the yak was on his back, Deke planted a knee in the center of his chest and leaned down. The pistol, traces of smoke and cordite still wafting from the barrel, notched itself between the ork's eyes.
"Is Lincoln still alive?" Deke demanded.
"Yes," the ork said.
"Transfer the money."
"I cannot," the ork said. He groaned in pain, and then opened his eyes and stared at Deke. "It requires me to commune, and I cannot while in this much pain."
"Then do it tomorrow."
"Why should I, when you have betrayed me?"
Deke laughed. "Tell your bunny that he owes me what was promised. Whether he wants his little princess back or not, he'll want the secret kept. I'll keep his secret. Lincoln and I, we're getting off this rock. But I'm taking some insurance."
"We will hunt you dow-"
Deke reached behind his back and pulled the stasis pack out. He brandished it in front of the ork's face. "I have these." The ork's eyes widened. A finger and a half lay nestled in the sterile package. "You come after me, these come out."
The ork grunted in pain as Deke shifted his weight and stood. "I don't care what you all do around here. I'm getting out." He slipped the fingers back into their pouch above his belt. "But I want to be left alone." He aimed the pistol. "Do we have a deal?"
The ork stared at him, then yelped as Deke pushed down with his foot before nodding at the runner. "We do."
Deke smiled. "Then so long, lad," he said. "And remember. They world may not care, but you do. And I've got these bloody fingers." He smiled, a full, toothy smile, and spun and slid out the doors with nary a whisper of noise. The yaks outside are on the wrong side of the building.And was gone.
Better Than
Jean Rabe
Moses loved the night. Not because he could see better in it-which he could due to various enhancements in his cybereyes-but because that was when the snakes crawled out onto the sidewalks.
Moses loved to watch the snakes.
Pink, grass-green, blue, day-glo yellow, purple, they slithered into the low spots still filled with rainwater from the late afternoon deluge. They shimmied into splotches of beer and butted up against pretzel pieces puked from the drunkards tossed out of bars along Western Avenue. They slipped into puddles of piss provided by Seattle's vagrants.
Reflections from the neon signs was all they were, so his chummer Taddeus had said.
But Moses thought they looked like real snakes-beautiful, colorful, electric, eclectic, squirming, mesmerizing, fireworks-come-to-ground-just-for-his-very-own-pleasure snakes.
He stood on the corner of Western and Seneca, eyes locked onto a thick cherry and grape striped snake that twisted seductively in the water pooled between his size-eleven feet. He liked this city because it rained almost everyday.
The snakes only came out for the water.
"And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water." Moses liked that particular Exodus quote because of the water part. His father was a minister in Renton, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist… or was that Lutheran… who'd named all his children after significant folks from the Bible. Ruth was the oldest, followed by Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac. Moses was the youngest, and the only one who'd remained wholly human. Father said it was a sign that Moses was destined for great things. Moses thought it was a curse. He didn't have his sister's naturally-keen hearing or Isaac's tough skin. He didn't have Abraham's fine-looking tusks or Jacob's affinity for magic.
So he had to turn to tech to compensate. And tech was damn expensive.
He touched the tip of his boot to the pool, sending out a ripple that made the cherry-grape snake dance.
The snake had crept down from the overhead neon sign advertising "Live Nude Dancing Elves." Moses idly wondered if any place advertised dead ones. He tapped his foot and the snake wriggled faster.
Moses hadn't given the snakes much thought until a handful of months past. That's when the microscopic vision subsystem implanted in his cybereyes malfunctioned. The series of minute optical lenses, designed to magnify objects up to a thousand times their normal size, splintered during a fight with a trog razorguy. Moses, who'd emerged battered but victorious, had been on a run with Taddeus and a few others into the Barrens, and they didn't pull enough nuyen from the job to get his lenses replaced. Didn't matter-he was kind of glad he hadn't, as rather than magnify the snakes they now enhanced their color and sometimes spun pieces of them away like one of those toy kaleidoscopes kids looked into. The cracked lenses made the snakes breathe, too-Moses saw their sides moving in and out, and when he cocked his head just right, as he was doing now, he could see their tongues flicker from between their invisible fangs to taste whatever interesting things were in the water.
In fact, Moses hadn't realized Seattle's sidewalks had snakes until the lenses cracked.
"Move it!" This came from a muscle-bound troll who cursed and stepped off the curb to get around Moses. "Go stand somewhere else, you ugly vatjob!"
Moses flicked his tail at the oaf, but the troll was quick, already on his way down the street. Moses liked his tail-it was one of his favorite modifications. A meter and a half long, covered with tiny lizard-like scales with mirrored surfaces, it had a built-in light at the end that he sometimes read by. It was one of those balance tails, weighted and grafted onto the base of his spine and keyed to a processor that monitored his center of gravity.
He'd gotten his shaped dermal plating at the same place he'd bought the tail-from his trusted ripper doc. Paid almost full price for the plating and had it stylized with ridges at the elbows, bumps across his forehead for the heck of it, and made to look like he had great abs and a broad chest.
Made him look better than human.
It was decorated just above his heart-not with tribal art or hieroglyphs like most favored-but with "EXD 3:6" in reference to the Bible verse: "Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God." Moses hadn't been able to find a verse that at the same time mentioned Ruth, but then she had a whole book devoted to her.
He had Doc add a wet sheath over the top of the plating some months ago, save for the spot on the chest with EXD 3:6 on it. It was a variant of a dermal, but modified to feel cool and slippery, sexy, glistening… sort of like snakeskin.
The cherry-grape snake writhed faster as Moses continued to stare.
The sheath was great because thugs had a hard time grabbing onto him. He'd tried to get a chameleon modification with it, but Doc said combining those features was a few years away. So he settled for adding a near-meter-long head of fiber-optic hair, bright orange with a cascading effect of yellow and red at the tips to make it look like fire. Because he styled it often, it was wearing a little thin in places and sections of it needed to be replaced.
That's why Moses had come down here tonight… to get some nuyen to pay for more hair and some other enhancements. He had his heart set on getting some horn implants. He'd been fitted a year or so ago for bull horns, but decided they were a little too big, and too expensive. Last week he'd put some second-hand goat horns on layaway, at the same place he'd get the hair replacements-from his trusted ripper doc. Bright, white horns with a mother-of-pearl glaze-fixed implants, as the retractable ones were a little out of his price range. Doc promised that the horns wouldn't itch.
Some of Moses' other implants did, and scratching them in public had gotten him banned from more than one establishment. The penile implant was the worst, with its mentally-controlled gel reservoirs and synthetic skin that he had some sort of allergic reaction to. He hoped he could remember to ask Doc for some more ointment for the rash.
"Nuyen," he said. "Came down here to get me some." He repeated "nuyen" until it became a mantra that twisted in time with the cherry-grape snake. "Nuyen for the tech-fix."
"What's he starin' at, ya think?" The speaker was an elf, a live one, but she wasn't nude or dancing. She was wearing a sand-colored plastic dress that crinkled when she crossed her arms in front of her probably-enhanced chest.
"The puddle. Maybe he lost something in it." Her companion was also an elf, face painted garishly and lips three times any natural size. "Didja lose something in it, mister?"
"Lose? Lose yourself. Get lost," Moses said. They stood too close to the water and made it harder to see the snake. He heard the sand-colored dress crinkle as the pair strolled away. The snake could swim freely now.
An ork peddler walked by, selling hot soyjerky. Passersby commented on the spicy smell. Moses couldn't smell it. He couldn't smell anything.
Moses had a direct neural interface connected wirelessly to the various built-in computers nested in the implants that allowed diagnostics checks-and said checks told him several things were either malfunctioning or were overdue for maintenance… his failed nasal receptors for example. They'd been out of whack for the past eighteen… or was that eighty… months. His enhanced taste buds didn't register anything either. He could be eating… well, pretty much anything… and not hurk it back up because of the taste. He only ate to keep his strength up and because his super thyroid implant demanded it.
"Should get 'em fixed," he said. "Maybe."
He'd need a lot of nuyen for the repairs. He had Kevlar bone-lacing with RFID sensor tags, a blood circuit control system, and a datajack engraved with elaborate Japanese kanji-signs that he couldn't read… it was a used model and so he hadn't been picky.
"Nuyen," he said. "Sashayed down here to get me some."
The encephalon he'd went under the knife for six or so months back hadn't helped. Hardwired into Moses' brain, it was supposed to boost his information-processing. It only seemed to scramble things now. At least the math subprocessor unit whirred along without a problem; he could calculate rent and utilities in a nanosecond, and it doubled as an alarm clock. His internal GPS worked without a proverbial hitch, too. It's how he found his way to this corner without making a single wrong turn. Too bad he hadn't thought to load his sister's address into it. What was her name? Ruth. Yeah, that was it.
"Ruth. Nuyen. Nuyen. Nuyen."
The radar sensor was another matter. It was supposed to emit ter
ahertz and ultrawideband radar in frequency pulses, analyzing Doppler and bounced signals. It never had worked right-another piece of used equipment he probably shouldn't have had installed without first asking Doc for some sort of warranty. At least it functioned as a motion detector, except that it never registered the snakes. He'd remember to ask Doc for a warranty on the pearlized goat horns.
Once more he thought about taking what little nuyen he had stashed away-coupled with what he was going to score tonight-and spending it on repairs to his existing systems. But he really wanted the goat horns, and he was being good by repairing at least one of enhancements-his fiberoptic do. Besides, if he spent all his nuyen on repairs, he'd never be able to afford the cyberfins he'd been thinking about. Saw an advertisement for them a couple of days back… or was that a couple of weeks… or months?
His memory played tricks sometimes.
"Nuyen," he said. "Came down here to get me some."
His regular ripper doc could implant the webbing between his fingers and toes so he could manage the butterfly and backstroke in record time. Of course, Moses knew he'd have to take swimming lessons first.
The two elves returned, the sand-colored plastic crinkling a little louder.
"Geese," Moses pronounced them. It was the right neighborhood for hookers. The women were looking for someone to dock with-for nuyen, naturally-their gander probably somewhere close by for safety. Moses wouldn't mind docking with the one with the overlarge lips, but he needed to save his cred for the hair replacement and the fins… and to fix something. What attachment was he going to repair? Besides, his father had taught him to stay away from those kinds of women. They were sinful. Moses was SIN-less
"And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with the fathers; and his people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither thy go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Deuteronomy thirty-one-sixteen."
"Talking all Biblical. Still looking in the puddle, he is," big lips said. "Yo, Clint." She sidled up to Moses. "You interested in a little whoring, maybe we-"
