11 - Striper Assassin

by Nyx Smith - (ebook by Undead)

  “Huh?”

  “Fair lady, allow me to guide your search.”

  “Oh… well, great!”

  “Pray, take my hand.”

  She hesitates over that, but what choice does she have? Search the Philly LTGs for a connection she may never find? Better to take the ebon hand of chance in hopes that the Dodger will lead her right to the source, directly to Striper.

  One touch and it’s like they’re welded together.

  For a moment, it’s panic time. She realizes she couldn’t pull free even if she tried. She feels a tug and suddenly the grid’s hurtling past, becoming a blur that resolves into blackness. She has no idea where they’re going, but it’s faster than she’s ever gone before. She’s helpless and squirming. She feels like a billion creepy-crawlers are running all over her body, only this time they’re on the inside, all throughout her insides, even inside her head, behind her eyes, and she can’t stand it. She’s twitching convulsing, crying out…

  And suddenly she’s in a node, a sculptured node. It looks like a small square room with bare plastiwood walls and a matching floor. A bare bulb hanging down out of the darkness casts a stark white sheen over the pulsing brownish hues of the virtual room. A tall iconic man with black hair and heavy brows and wearing a casual black suit comes in through the only door, closes it, then pauses facing her, hands at his sides.

  “You want Striper?” he says.

  His voice is like a low, raspy whisper, like a voice gone too raw for speech. It makes Neona nervous. This whole biz is making her nervous, more than nervous. She can feel the sweat streaming down her meat body. She better be really careful. “Uhh, yeah… I, I got a job for Striper. I’m contacting for a Johnson. You know?”

  “What’s the job?”

  “I don’t know that. I just know it’s hot. And the pay’s wiz. I’m supposed to set up a meet.”

  “I can smell lies.”

  “What?”

  “Your lies.”

  “Hey, it’s no lie!” She turns to look to her rear, for some way out of this node, but there’s nothing back there but another blank plastiwood wall. She sends her fingers flying over the keys of her guitar, but before she can initiate even a single prog, two more iconic men appear, like they’re coming right out of the walls. Neona catches a blur of movement from the corners of her eyes and suddenly the two iconic men are right there, on either side of her. They seize her arms, tug her hands from her keyboard guitar, hold her like they’re welded to her, becoming a part of her program.

  And now she can’t get her hands to her keyboard.

  A whimper escapes from her lips.

  “Please…”

  The man in front of the door steps toward her, and now his face is changing, darkening, turning black, like he’s growing fur, and swelling, growing huge with eyes that burn like fire and fangs that flash like ice, and his massive snarling maw comes closer and closer, then swallows her whole.

  Switch off, lights out.

  She’s gone.

  25

  The main entrance of the Wanamaker Mall just off Market Street soars atrium-style to seven stories, and echoes with the voices of the hundreds passing across the main floor. Tikki joins the crowds taking the escalators to the sublevel concourse. A broad passage leading off the northern end of the concourse connects directly with the Thirteenth Street subway station. Telecoms line the walls. Tikki makes calls from places like this, at the heart of the metroplex, to minimize the chance of police or other security agencies picking up her conversations in random scans of telecom lines. She picks a stand, puts a wad of chewing gum over the visual pickup, then checks her wrist chronograph. When the time hits 20:05:00, she starts dialing.

  The telecom’s display goes black.

  “Who’s this?” a male voice says in Japanese.

  “Two guesses.”

  In another moment or two, Black Mist comes on the line. “Yes?”

  “Anything?”

  “One interesting inquiry.”

  Interesting means trouble. It could be as simple a thing as trouble in the telecom lines or trouble of a more profound variety. Protocol guides her response. She hangs up, folds another piece of chewing gum into her mouth, then joins the crowds moving into the subway station. The next arriving train fires her two blocks down the line to the Market East station. She picks another telecom, gums the visual pickup, and dials.

  Black Mist answers. “Yes?”

  “What’s interesting?”

  “Contact Steel.”

  That is interesting. Steel is a special name for a special person. It demands her immediate attention. “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  She hangs up, turns. Stepping up from her rear is a Flash Point Enforcement trooper carrying a compact H & K MP-5 TX submachine gun and wearing a full array of semi-flexible body armor, including helmet with polarized faceplate and heavy insulated boots. Tikki is not surprised. She not only heard him coming, she smelled him coming. She wonders just in passing if he noticed an errant bulge in her jacket created by the Kang automatic holstered at the small of her back.

  “What’s that?” asks a metallic remodulated voice.

  The trooper points toward the telecom. Tikki keeps her eyes on the trooper, gives him a puzzled expression and a noise of inquiry. “Uuh?”

  “I’d call that defacing private property.”

  She replies with a quick burst of Russian, a few stock phrases. She also gives him a look like she doesn’t know what he’s trying to tell her. The trooper shifts toward the telecom, pointing, jammering ever more vehemently. When he’s near enough to touch the unit, Tikki reaches over, pries the gum from the lens of the telecom’s visual pickup, and pops it into her mouth. The gum is what this is all about.

  The trooper stares at her for a couple of moments.

  “Get the hell out,” he says.

  Tikki turns and goes.

  * * *

  She dumps the stolen Suzuki Aurora in an alley leading off Delaware Avenue, not far from the river, then crosses another alley about as broad as a football field and strewn with garbage, piles of debris, broken chunks of concrete, twisted metal struts, burnt-out rusted cars, and old junk. At the rear of a deteriorating three-story brick building stand a trio in worn black synthleather jackets: two males, one female. They’re dressed like gangers, but that’s deceiving. They are sentries, Tikki knows, and they see her approaching despite the dark. In all likelihood, they smelled her before she ever stepped into view. Tikki knows that because she knows what they are. Their smell makes it clear. Like her, they may look human, but are in fact a very different kind of animal. In some ways, they have more in common with her than any human.

  The three standing sentry duty wait with weapons at the ready. One male holds a Colt Manhunter, the other a Mossberg CMDT combat shotgun. The female holds a Scorpion machine pistol with a curving thirty-five-round clip.

  As Tikki draws near, the darkness to her left and right flickers with movement, dark shapes barely glimpsed out the corners of her eyes. She knows what’s moving in on her flanks without having to look. Without needing to hear the quiet growl that arises briefly a few meters away to her right, Wolven Weres in their natural form—two males, two females. The pack is taking no chances tonight. They know a serious predator when they see one. And when they smell one.

  Tikki pauses, facing the two-legs at the rear of the building. The male with the big Colt automatic steps out a little ahead of the other two. He smells wary, uncertain, even a little confused.

  “If you want to live, go away,” he growls.

  Faintly, Tikki shakes her head. She isn’t worried. Not even about the pair of four-legs creeping around to her rear, boxing her in. Doubtless, that’s part of the reason why the male in front of her is being so cautious. She’s very calm. That means she smells calm, too. Calm and in control.

  “Need to contact Steel,” she says.

  “Don’t know the name.”

  “Don’t
yak me, boy.”

  Tikki summons a quick surge of anger, feels the heat flash up the back of her neck. That breeds an unmistakable change in the air, and Wolven Weres never miss a scent. Even in human form their sense of smell makes a human’s insignificant, irrelevant, by comparison. The male shifts his stance. His whole attitude changes, as though he’s not sure whether to attack or back off. He glances at the other two-legs, then looks back at Tikki. “Who are you?”

  This is a first contact here in Philly. Tikki doesn’t plan to give anything away unless she has to. “I know Steel. Steel knows me. Steel’s waiting for me to call.”

  The two-legs exchange more glances. Do they know one another’s thoughts by means of scent alone? That’s Tikki’s guess. None of the three speak or make any obvious gesture. They simply look at each other, then the female turns to descend the concrete steps leading to a basement-level door. The pair of males look back at Tikki. They all wait.

  In a few moments, the female returns.

  “Follow me,” she says.

  Tikki follows, down the steps, through a door, through a dark section of corridor maybe three meters long, then through another door. One door is closed before the other opens, so the light from inside the second door never shows outside. The second door lets into a small, bare room lit by a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling. The only furniture is a worn wooden table with a single chair. The male who sits in the chair is big and brawny, trim but heavily muscled. His hair is black. His eyebrows all but meet above the bridge of his nose. His arms, too, are covered with black hair. More hair shows from his palms. He wears a black synthleather vest, shatjeans, and big black boots. His right arm lies casually on the table. Embedded into the table top is a long knife standing upright next to his hand.

  He gazes intently at Tikki for almost a minute, then says in a low voice, “What are you?”

  Tikki ignores the question. The male probably knows she’s Were just by her smell. He’s probably never encountered one like her before. Her particular breed is very rare. Let him wonder what she is. “I’m supposed to contact Steel.”

  “You’re not a sister.”

  Not one of the pack, is what he means. Tikki’s heard the style of talk before. She is anything but one of the pack, this male’s pack, any pack. She shakes her head. “The handle is Striper.”

  “How do you know Steel?”

  “Not your problem.”

  The male watches her a few moments more, then rises, pulling the knife from the table top and slipping it into the sheath hanging from his belt. “Wait here.”

  Tikki nods, very faintly.

  The male goes through the door opposite where Tikki entered. She waits, standing still, arms at her sides. She doesn’t need to look to know that the female who led her in here is waiting by the door at her back, and that a pair of the four-legs are waiting there also. Their smell is plain. If she looked, she would see a pair of massive wolven Weres in their true form, ears laid back against their furry skulls.

  The big male soon returns. He looks at Tikki, then very deliberately reaches across to her side of the table and plants the knife firmly into the table top. This is not an invitation to participate in some obscure ritual of the pack. Rather, it’s a challenge to prove herself, a special protocol, previously arranged with Steel.

  Tikki tugs the knife free, wraps her left hand around the blade, checks to make sure the male is watching, then squeezes and tugs the knife free. The feel of the blade slicing through her palm tugs at her lips, forming a ruthless sneer. She lifts her hand, palm out, so the male can see the cut. Blood forms into rivulets trickling down over her palm. Then it stops. She licks the blood away and shows her palm again. There is nothing to be seen now but the palm of her hand and a faint reddish smear. The cut is healed.

  The smell of the blood and her physical reaction to pain and injury wash through the air. One of the four-legs outside briefly howls. One of the Weres behind her growls, deep and low, as if responding to menace. The big male before her watches with eyes that grow wide, then narrow.

  Tikki buries the point of the knife in the table top. The male reaches over and jerks it free, then returns the knife to his sheath. “This way.”

  Tikki nods.

  The male leads her down another short hall, past several doors, all closed. The air in the corridor reeks of female smells, like someone has just given birth. That probably explains the number of sentries outside, and the numbers keeping watching in their natural form. When the alpha female goes into labor, the entire pack goes on the defensive. Wolven Weres are very protective of their young. Tikki has learned that from experience.

  The male opens a door near the end of the corridor, motions Tikki inside, and closes the door behind her.

  The room is small and almost bare. On the table along the left wall is a standard Mitsuhama personal telecom with a micro screen and visual pickup and a molded plastic handset for privacy. Beside that is a gadget the average citizen probably never sees.

  Tikki spends a moment looking it over. She’s seen models like it before. It comes in a hard-shell case a bit bigger and thicker than an ordinary briefcase. The lid, standing open, bares a black macroplast faceplate fitted with a display screen, a small keyboard, some switches, and graphic indicators. The fiber-optic line from the telecom plugs into a port beside the keyboard. Another line, plugged into the adjoining port, rises up to vanish through a small hole in the ceiling. That probably connects to a satellite dish on the roof of a nearby building. What the dish is linked to is anyone’s guess, but Tikki is confident that any call made through the setup will be virtually untraceable.

  She takes up the handset from the telecom, lifts it to the side of her head.

  The voice she hears is inhumanly hoarse, a rasp, a coarse, breathy whisper. It belongs to Castellano, also known as Steel. He is one of a handful of people whom Tikki regards with a special degree of respect. He would make a dangerous enemy. More than that, he understands what it is to be loyal.

  “Problem,” Castellano says.

  “Yes?” Tikki replies. To anyone else, she might have said, “Whose problem? Yours or mine?” With Castellano, things are not that simple. His problem might well be hers, too.

  “Decker came to my node.”

  “Your what?”

  “My computer.”

  Tikki exhales deeply, rolls her eyes. Decker lingo often seems designed to be as irritating as it is incomprehensible. She prefers plain, ordinary words. “So?”

  “The decker wanted Striper.”

  “Why?”

  “Unknown.” A few moments pass. Castellano is not a big talker. His words come slowly. He uses them sparingly. “Claimed to be fronting for a Johnson.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Big job. Big pay. All lies.”

  This is not a good thing. Tikki has had enough experience to realize that there are only two reasons why someone should try to contact her: either to hire her or to kill her. The implication here is plain. A legitimate inquiry for her services would not rouse Castellano to suspicion.

  As far as Tikki is concerned, the truth of what Castellano says goes without question. He’s proven himself too many times. There are no lies in Castellano’s world. There may be half-truths and shades of gray, but he can smell a lie even as it is born, and he cannot tolerate the stink. He has the instincts of a hunter. He has the senses of a wolven Were.

  If he says a thing is a thing, it’s a fact.

  “Traced the line,” Castellano goes on to say. “Originated your area. Thought you should know.”

  “Right.”

  Castellano gives her the specifics, which are few and swiftly conveyed. “I’m expanding,” he adds. “Work in your area. You available?”

  “Not now.”

  “Later.”

  “No question.” For tonight’s favor, and others, she would make herself available. First, though, she has a problem to deal with. Before that even, she has to meet Adama.

&nbs
p; “Call when you’re free.”

  “Soon.”

  “Good.”

  The music throbs and pounds through the spectral dark like a wing alive, vibrant with power and thundering with menace. The round central dance floor flickers and flashes with blasts of orange, red, and yellow laser fire. Tables outlined in neon of an infernal hue line the curving walls. Between the grotesquely writhing bodies and parts of bodies on the dance floor and the infernally burning tables runs a broad, curving aisle broken into segments by four rampways leading down.

  This is the uppermost floor of a place called the Seven Circles Club, where each level was named for a division of a place called Hell. Tikki is familiar with the concept. The Buddhists, for instance, named 136 places reserved for the torment and punishment of the dead, and Buddhism is something Tikki has heard a little about from time to time.

  She takes the ramps down toward the lowest level.

  Whores of both genders in Minimalist thongs and halters line the rampways, displaying massive pecs and perfect breasts, and offering to play any game, sate any desire, for fees and even for free. Most are obviously male or female. Others smell like one but resemble the other. Some even resemble different races, those not strictly human, such as elves. Patrons of the club come in practically every imaginable form, from poser elves to make-believe cats and sharks, phony samurai and pretend-Romans. Most wear Minimalist fashion: halters and thongs, shredded body stockings, straps and cultured chains. The elite among the decadent crowds adorn themselves with shifts and robes and electro-bodypaint that flashes with ever-changing patterns of color and graphic sexual imagery.

  Down on the fourth level, someone jostles Tikki’s shoulder and curses her. Tikki bares her teeth with irritation and swings her right forearm like a club, the studded guard on her arm adding impact to the blow. Staggering away from her, a man falls, spraying blood. Anywhere else that would cause a commotion. Here, though, it’s just another part of the night’s entertainment. The Seven Circles Club is no ordinary nightclub. This is where the suits and salary men and exec secs come to mingle with the wannabe razor-crowd, the chippies, and the freaks to partake of the most decadent pleasures and experience life on the edge.