by Ren Warom
Spaz jumps to his feet and leaps down, disappearing from view. Leaning over to look, Dash finds himself unsurprised to see his boss descending in huge, crazy jumps, feet sliding on the curved edge of the spire. He chuckles.
“Mad bastard.”
Following his boss’s lead, he hits the ground a few seconds later and catches Spaz as he strolls out of the courtyard onto the beaten steel cobbles of the Avenue. Spaz’s bar, Snatch, is the craziest, loudest joint on the Ave. Inside, they bypass the noise by heading for the private rooms in back, Spaz’s home away from home. To his office, where he pours two generous glasses of whisky. Taking up a seat on the window, Spaz stares out at the unimpeded view across the Zone, his drink forgotten almost immediately. He sighs, and it’s a sound of immeasurable exhaustion.
“This shit is a blight on my conscience, Dash. Don’t mind using the gang initiates the way we have because that yielded the results we needed and most of those fuckers die every year, anyway. But when it comes to Bone, I find myself questioning everything.”
“What?” Dash doesn’t know what to think. He’s never heard doubt in Spaz before. Spaz does not experience doubt. He can’t afford to.
“It’s a long shot,” Spaz says, toying with his glass. “A chance we were forced to take. I don’t like that our future rests on it. It’s too flimsy, too uncertain.”
“But … I didn’t realize,” Dash stutters. “I thought we knew.”
“We don’t know anything. Tides did the best he could, but it might not have been enough,” Spaz tells him, matter-of-fact. He swallows his drink in one, and sets the glass down on the window ledge with an angry clack. “I tell you, I’m just glad that supercilious fuck Leif’s heart packed out on him. Saved me pulling his plug.”
Dash is too stunned to answer. He swallows a generous slug of whisky and changes the subject. “I’ve no word from Lever. Shouldn’t she have reported in by now?”
Spaz barks out a laugh. “She won’t bother until she’s got something concrete to share, or she’s in a whole world of trouble. Ages me a decade every fucking time without fail. But she always delivers.”
“Is she safe?”
“She never is, Dash.”
“But this is different danger than her usual brand, surely?”
“Yeah,” Spaz agrees softly, then aims a significant look at Dash. “Now how about you tell me why you came to hunt me down? As edifying as this little chat has been, nothing we’ve discussed required a face to face.”
Dash hauls in a deep breath. “Fine. Fuck it. Your favourite Monk, Creek, finally got through to Burneo, okay? Looks like switching to someone a little stronger did the trick.”
The use of Monks, and of Burneo, bothers Dash. Their Monks are no longer loyal to the Notary, nor connected to the Chain, but they’re still Monks. Monks are odd creatures; all male because the gen is Y-connected, they’re distant, as though the world goes on outside of them and never quite touches them, and far too powerful. Even Spaz, whose gen is only partial, leaving room for human warmth, often looks as if he’s stepped too far outside of the world to ever come back, and it’s that distance Dash worries about the most, it doesn’t feel safe to him. Especially not with Burneo, who is definitely not sane.
“Wade’s strong enough, Dash,” Spaz corrects him calmly. “He’s just too impatient. Burneo’s a huge, uncontrolled receiver, meaning he’s open to everything, all the fucking time. You have to interpret him. To learn to listen for what matters. Honestly, I don’t know how the hell he manages to stay as lucid as he does. I get rushes of information sometimes and it gives me a goddamn migraine. His head must feel like fallout.”
“Well, Creek didn’t exactly pull a rabbit out of the hat, more like roadkill. Some shit about Reinhart in his playground and this bit of nonsense,” Dash pulls out his cell, tapping the slender glass with his thumb and reads it out, rapid and derisory, “‘He is waiting in the dark and the glass.’” He thumbs the cell to sleep mode and shoves it back in his pocket.
Spaz leans back, shaking his head. “No, no. That’s not nonsense at all.”
“Really? You trust his visions? You trust him?” Dash finishes his whisky and scoffs, “I find it a little ridiculous to be even marginally reliant on anything so disconnected, so insane, as Burneo.”
Spaz’s gaze flattens, flashes cold, and Dash winces, wishing he hadn’t spoken. He’s not like Spaz, can’t see what he can. “You’re very much mistaken,” Spaz says, soft but definite. “I trust him as much as I trust you. Don’t ever forget it.”
Dash holds up his hands, surrendering the argument. “Just airing my thoughts.”
Spaz makes a scoffing sound. “Sure you are. So whilst you’re here, aggravating my eardrums, what happened with our canal refuse? I presume it was delivered in time. I wouldn’t want to have to send it to that prick De Lyon’s lab. Too risky by half.”
“Nia sent in a report, discreet as ever.”
It’s only when Spaz’s shoulders relax that Dash realises how much tension they were holding. “Good. Then we can leave that to develop as it will. You spread the word now, no more requests to be honoured. Shouldn’t be any legitimate initiates with it anymore but if anyone’s found with it who isn’t, you know what to do.”
“Dispose.”
“That’s the one.” Spaz rises from the ledge and stretches, groaning as his tendons pop back into place. “I’ve got to strap my arse into a suit. Got some investors to sweet talk up at GyreTech HQ in an hour.”
“I thought you’d forgotten.”
“Not likely,” Spaz snaps. “Your fucking reminders have been sending shocks through my leg every ten goddamn minutes.” He yanks out his cell and chucks it at Dash’s head as he strides out of the office. “You can stop it now.”
Dash catches the cell midair and tosses it between his hands like it’s a hot coal. “Not likely,” he murmurs.
Spaz loathes these responsibilities as CEO and Chair of GyreTech and Dash dislikes having to push reminders, but Spaz expects him to, despite the frequent snarling. Spaz is all about duty. His people––the gang folk––their welfare is more important to him than his own comfort. And maintaining GyreTech is vital to that end; it’s a corporate armour Spaz has used to protect them all for the past twenty years.
Chapter 6
Dawn. A slow break of light seeping through the clouds like water through cloth. On the Southern bank of the Spine, Lower Mace is a schizophrenic frenzy of noise and claustrophobia. Trapped in a car in the midst of the tumult, Stark stares out the window and fumes, fit to explode. The metal barks of growling cars at war fill the air. Horns and sirens blare over the rumble boom of traffic. Crossings bleep; hysterical, as if no one’s listening, and tangles of pedestrians, clothed in dispassion, choke the pavements, oblivious to anything but their individual destinations. Indifference, that’s the heart of this nightmare.
Stark leans forwards to tap the sheet of black glass between him and Tal. It slides down and Tal looks in the mirror. “Boss?”
Stark jerks a thumb at the door. “I’m out. Only three more blocks to City, and I’m fucked if I’ll wait the seventy-five minutes it’ll take to reach it on wheels.”
“Right you are, boss.”
Stark’s reply to Tal is a slamming door. Bull-like, he forges through a disgruntled crowd of office workers on lunch break towards City Central, a monument to authority built in bronze and slick-faced granite. Like an ancient temple erected to invoke imaginary gods, it fits awkward as a fake limb into the expansive tower blocks, the slightly grotesque Gothic-style spires of Lower Mace. As if only invoking chaos, its sides burgeon with childishly depicted visuals, deriding the City Force and mocking the Notary. Even across the dull face of the entrance they exude, a riotous array painted over and over until even the highest echelon is resigned to their presence.
Pushing through into the cavernous foyer, Stark traipses up the wide grin of the staircase, relaxing as the roar of outside fades to a murmur behind thick walls and s
oundproof glazing. In its stead comes the low hum of networked computers, the subterranean burr of a thousand voices talking at once. The Notary replaced the old City Bureau with this monstrous pile the same year they abolished departmental units. Without those units for order, all floors spew in a free-flow of desks in semicircular arrays. It doesn’t work, but neither did the units, and no one’s ever bothered to protest, choosing instead to wedge shoulders against an ever-growing tide of anarchy.
Stark weaves through the muddle, squeezing between chair backs. It’s hot. The smell of tired bodies overwhelms, yet none of the tall, vaulted windows are thrown open to allow the air to clear. Accustomed to the stench, Stark hollers a few dozen hellos as he works his way to the rear of the room, where a seamless wall of darkened glass punctuated by tall, silver doors demarcates open floor from office space. He shrugs off his jacket and strides towards the middle and largest. Inscribed across its surface in blocky capitals: BURTON. Stark taps twice and pushes in without being called.
Burton’s on the phone. His eyes bug, apoplectic, as Stark saunters in and throws himself like a heap of dirty laundry onto the chair opposite. Smile wide as a hyena’s, Stark helps himself to a cigar, Burton’s lighter, and a shot of pricey malt and drops his booted feet onto the corner of the desk. The only sound in the room is Burton’s voice, gathering ice, and then the short, sharp clap of a phone none too gently replaced. Burton watches Stark for a moment, jaw working, then he scoots his chair over, lifts a foot shod in a classy blue brogue, and kicks Stark’s legs off the corner of his desk. Stark blows a long plume of smoke, shrugs, and crosses one leg over the top of the opposite thigh.
“You yelled?” he says, voice rolling heavy as a freighter through the silence.
Burton folds his arms. “Damn straight, I did.”
“I’m in trouble?”
The look he gets is almost amused. “You’re always in some kind of fucking trouble.”
Stark’s face hardens a touch. “Don’t tell me,” he says, having played out every last move of the Notary in his head on the way here. “They think it wasn’t advisable to pull Bone in on this. They think we should’ve stuck with De Lyon, despite fuck all results.” Burton sniffs. Stark huffs out a sardonic laugh and continues, “What about Burneo? Did they lose their damn minds when you told them I want permission to go after him? Am I to be hung up in red tape to my eyeballs?”
There’s another long moment of silence, as they wage eyeball war, then Burton chuckles, relaxes back into his chair, and slowly pours himself a malt. He leans to top up Stark’s, and drawls, “Something like that. Officially.”
“Balls to officially. What’s your poison, brother? How hard can I push?”
“Considering we’re dealing with something unprecedented?”
Stark raises his glass in acknowledgement. “Amen to that.”
Swallowing his slug of malt in one gulp, Burton says, “Bone isn’t a problem, but his profile’s too high. This is a restricted case. They’re anxious no one gets wind of his involvement, especially not the gangs, so they want you to be discreet.” Burton rolls his eyes at Stark’s sharp burst of laughter. “As for Burneo, hell, that one’s always going to be contentious.” He gives Stark a pointed look. “Be careful. I trust your instincts, but I’ve read the files. All of them. He may not be merely accessory to this and you know it. He may well be our killer.”
Stark shifts, unsettled. The files they have on Burneo concern his possible involvement in terrorist action against the Notary, and even the occasional attack on the Zone. Then there are the bodies, all found in or near the sewers. Hundreds of people a year enter the sewers, most are never seen again, but some are occasionally found … altered. The City Office and the Notary know it’s Burneo, but there’s no way of proving it. He’s a ghost in the sewers, in the departmental records. An elephant in the files no one’s too happy discussing.
With all the certainty he can muster, he says, “I stand by my instincts.”
Burton nods. “Fair enough. I’ll back you up in this, but only so fucking far, and I need hard evidence soon. Very soon. The fact these are all nameless means the Notary aren’t particularly buzzed about us making an effort. You make too much noise, and they’ll choke off your air supply, and I’m telling you, as a friend, you’re already louder than is safe.”
Stark’s jaw muscles leap. “I’m supposed to make no waves, make no noise in hunting this fucker down? How? Three in less than two weeks, Burton. They’d been there a while, so there’s bound to be more, has to be. Did you actually read those fucking books I streamed you after we found Crucifixion?” Stark snorts as Burton shakes his head. “Well, I’m telling you, according to those, he has the hallmarks of an escalating psychopath on a rampage, and the second you separate importance by whether the victim has verifiable ID or not, you’re heading for troubled waters.”
“Ah, my friend, you know this place as well as I do.” Burton raps knuckles on the desk for emphasis, his features pale with stress. “We’re pissing daily on the fires of hell and you expect the Notary to get excited about a few Does?”
“We’ve not seen anything like this guy in decades,” Stark says, stubborn. “Much as we dislike their activities, the gangs have at least been useful for curtailing non-casual violence, and yet they are ignoring this killer. Why? Why is this guy being left alone to kill when others haven’t? It is making me all kinds of nervous.”
“I concur,” Burton replies, his voice strained. “But it makes no difference to the Notary. Their orders stand.”
Stark’s face sets like stone. “Nothing to say this killer won’t start picking off people we can ID by face alone. It’s not happened yet, sure, but the Notary won’t be pleased if it does. They’ll blame us, despite their reticence being the thing holding the investigation back. You know it, I know it.”
“I do. But you know it’s asking too much to expect the suits to care until it gets personal.”
“I care and I’m a fucking suit. You care and you’re a suit. Fuck’s sake. We’ve not been blue collar for years, Burton. We’re both on higher recom than we ever dreamed and we still fucking care!” Stark jerks a finger at the ceiling, even though the Notary would never deign to park their HQ on City premises. “What makes those fuckers different?”
“Distance. Lack of culpability.”
Burton’s quiet tone cuts the fury from Stark in one clean sweep. He collapses back, shoulders slumping inward. “Yeah,” he says, listless.
Rising up to reach over and clap Stark beneath his shoulder implants, Burton says, “Square up. We’ve ploughed the shit all this time without benefit of their approval. You thinking of quitting on me now? Over this?” He raises his brows in disbelief.
Stark sucks in a lengthy drag on his cigar. It’s almost gone out, the end giving off a fine wisp of dying smoke. He gives it a hostile stare. “Nah,” he drawls, bathing the end of the cigar in the flame of Burton’s chunky gold lighter and pulling in a long, lung-suffocating blast. “I’m not.” Chucking the lighter on the table, he rises to his feet and strolls to the office door. “Not yet. Just keep my arse covered.”
“Size of your arse, that’s asking the impossible,” comes the reply, bullwhip fast.
Stark’s still laughing as he exits into the tightly-pressed swell of bodies outside City’s vast doors. He heads for his base of operations, wishing he could bring his right and left hands, Tress and Suge, onboard the investigation, but until the Notary have reason to begin caring, he’s stuck on his lonesome. If fury were productive, he’d expend energy on a truckload, instead he begins to worry about the ramifications of his chat with Burton. This case will get ugly. He knows this instinctively. Just as he knows it’s likely to end in catastrophe. It’s an outcome he’s too familiar with, one he fights against every day and rarely wins.
He thinks about Ballerina Girl, the rictus of her face, the hopelessness in her eyes, how helpless he feels in this hunt for the man who put it there. Another face rises in front of
hers. Teya’s. Bright blue eyes, staring out from a devastation of bone and flesh that left cramps in his belly hard as food poisoning. He was Reinhart Strake then, wharf rat, poor boy, seventh son to Calise Strake. A collateral damage kid, fatherless, just like a thousand others, except for one difference: a determination to change what he was.
When he turned seventeen, he became the only locally-born member of the Wharf Guard, the military force created to keep old Wharf gang troubles from exploding out across the Spires, setting him at odds with his closest friend, Aron. And like him, Aron has changed beyond recognition, become a dark legend. A child’s nightmare. A bogeyman. Burneo.
Aron was never normal, and it never mattered. Stark grew up with him, close as a brother, ended up falling in love with his sister, Teya, only a year younger than him, whereas Aron was four years older. They’d planned to marry, he and Teya, have a family of their own, but after he joined the guard and lost Aron’s friendship, Teya abandoned him. She followed Aron’s lead, joining the harder, more dangerous gangs who held fort deep in the sewer. Whilst there, she caught a disease common amongst low-gang dwellers: G-Warp, disfiguring and incurable.
When he found out, Stark took his squad in to rescue her against express orders, but it was too late and he was forced to take her life to spare her the horror of its full manifestation. He blames Aron for that. If he’d told her to stay away from the gangs in the sewer, she might have listened, but he didn’t. Nor did he help her when she was suffering. Instead, he tried to carry her deeper into the sewers, away from help, and Stark’s never been able to understand why.
In the wake of the incident, the slaughter that followed, he had to run, to shuck off his old life and hide in a new one, under a new name. He became Stark. Just Stark. Paring everything down to the sort of focus that’s seen him rise through City’s ranks, from Buzz Boy to City Officer, a respected troublemaker with more commendations than disciplinaries, despite his habit of going against procedure. But he can’t forget Teya’s face. That mess of blood and bone spoke into him, a language of ruin. He died with her that day, left Reinhart Strake crumpled in the black sewer mud beside her broken body, and he’s never forgiven Aron for her loss. He can’t.
