Ash in the Blood

by Lyn Forester

  “No, a different one.”

  “Sure you shouldn’t answer, just in case?” I glance at him, still standing in the doorway.

  “I get these a lot.” He rubs a hand across the back of his neck, a half smile on his lips.

  I arch an eyebrow. “One-night stands?”

  “Usually.” He waves his hand, unconcerned. “So, how about that sweet rice?”

  STICKY

  DRAKE

  “Mmmmm.” The sweet flavor of strawberry coats his tongue. “This is so good.”

  Reagen ignores him and swipes her datband across the payment bar. The old lady behind the counter nods her head at Drake and gives a toothless, pleased smile.

  Turning to him, Reagen frowns. “This is the third one. Is it enough to get the cuffs from you?”

  “No way.” He takes a large bite of the warm, sticky treat. “This is my prize for kicking your ass in the race.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “One of those wrist things.” He pinches the bottom of the cone to push more of the dessert toward the top.

  Her face smooths into an expression of mild confusion. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play that game.” His stare shifts from her datband back to her face. “I saw it at Penned.”

  At the nightclub, he’d witnessed a psy-gun appear in her hand in a flash of light. He’d stopped her from killing the club owner, Victor, after he tried to manhandle her. The weapon disappeared before security showed. He learned two things at Penned. One, when Reagen plans to kill, her eyes go completely blank, and she gives no warning. Two, she has a lead on some top-level gadgetry he wanted. He isn’t sure what exactly it is that makes her psy-gun appear, but he’s sure it has something to do with the occasional glint of silver from her datband.

  She touches the black plastic band at her wrist. “That’s not an easy thing to get you.”

  “Neither are the cuffs, or you’d already have a pair.”

  Her eyes drift down, and she taps against the band, her head nodding like she’s weighing the cost to her against how much she wants the halion cuffs. “Yeah, I can do that.” She points at the cone in his hand. “But that’s the last one of those I’m paying for.”

  “But there are still two more carts.” He can see the glowing signs over the heads of the crowd filling the narrow alley.

  “You don’t need to try one from every vendor.”

  “I’ve never been to one of these. How will I know which one to buy from next time if I don’t try them all now?” The funnel of wax paper empties faster than he’d like, and he licks the wrapper clean of sticky, green specks of rice.

  “I’m not stopping you, I’m just not funding your binge any further.”

  On foot, she’d lead them a few blocks from the Pink Skirt Motel, back toward Central Plaza. At a seemingly random alley, she’d pulled him into a market, the space between entrance and exit points stuffed with small carts, food, and knickknacks for sale.

  The vendors for the funnels of rice, with flavors ranging from sweet to savory to sour, dot the crowded alley. Portable grills, with sizzling sticks of meat, park alongside stalls that display clothing. Tables hold tubs of data discs for streaming illegal videos. He hasn’t seen a single cart with a licensed business stamp on it. There are even carts that advertise trade options for people looking to swap rice coupons for clothing credits, or vice versa.

  Those last ones are a complete rip-off and should be reported to Black Corporation. But then the rest of the vendors would get in trouble. No one here pays taxes on their sales.

  They reenter the customer stream, and the noise of the crowd floods around them. Conversation becomes hard again.

  “How do you know about this place?” He has to shout over the bustle of the masses that cram the space, vendors hollering their prices to draw customers.

  “Most of the lower levels have them. You just have to find the right alley for the day.” Reagen moves in front of him to slide through the holes in the crowd.

  “It’s not always here?” The smell of fried beans tickles his nose. He grabs the back of her jacket and yanks her to the left. The owner of the cart looks up as Drake stops in front of him. “How much?”

  “Three credits.” He scoops hot, salted beans into a fresh funnel. Behind him, steam rises from a rack where pre-bagged beans wait for sale.

  “Reagen, I need these.” Drake shakes her jacket. She swats at him, fist thudding into his chest, and he releases her.

  “I told you I’m done paying.” She shrugs to settle her jacket back into place, right hand gripping the top of her satchel.

  “You’re done buying sweet rice. This is different,” he insists.

  “I’m not made of credits. Comp it.”

  He leans close and yells in her ear. “I can’t charge this to the company. It would be explicit proof I’m aware of what’s going on here.”

  “Don’t you have a personal credit band?” She shifts her bag to sit in front of herself in a more secure location between her body and the stall.

  “Please, Rae, I’m hungry.”

  Freezing, fist wrapped around the bag’s strap, she turns wide eyes on him, brows pinched. Vulnerable and confused. Then the mask slides back into place, and he regrets that wall between them. She scowls as the moment passes. “This is the last one.”

  “Yeah, I promise. Last one.” He holds two fingers over his heart.

  “Stop it. You were never a morality rep.” But she swipes her datband across the reader.

  “I could have been.” He takes the funnel from the seller, the hot beans burning his fingers through the thin paper barrier.

  “You have to have an upper education to be a morality rep.” She squeezes between two men who haggle over a set of pans in the next stall over, elbows out to make the space wide enough for Drake to follow.

  He tosses a bean into his mouth, pops it between his teeth. The salt melts on his tongue, highlighting the earthy flavor of the snack as he swallows. “Okay, you caught me. I wasn’t a morality rep.”

  A table catches his eye, and he taps on her shoulder and points at it when she glances back. She follows the direction, her mouth popping in surprise. A narrow gap appears among a group of three, and she dives through. By the time he can go around them to follow, she’s wrist deep in machine parts.

  He recognizes a few pieces as the internal workings of desk-ports and a bucket of black sand that could be part of a filtration system. Everything else looks like junk. Reagen seems to know what the parts are for though. He eats his beans, one at a time, as she shifts through the piles. Some pieces get set aside, but most are rejected.

  A neat stack forms in front of her, and he thinks she’s ready to pay up when she ducks beneath the table and disappears. The vendor, unconcerned, tallies up her selection. When she reappears, she’s on her knees, body extended forward as she drags out a giant piece of metal framing half her size. It curves at an angle, and the top and bottom are jagged, as if the piece had been broken off of a large circle. When she lifts it onto the table, it thunks down with a solid weight.

  “How much?” She rotates the piece on the table until the curves face the holo-sky.

  The seller squints at her, chewing on his cheeks. “Nine hundred credits.”

  Drake coughs, choking on the mouthful of beans he’d been savoring.

  “Two hundred.” Unfazed, she runs her fingers down the seams at the edges.

  “You joking, girl?” The vendor scratches at his cheek, leaving a black smear of grease behind. “It’s worth at least six hundred.”

  “It’s unfunctional. The connectors are broken off and won’t support a linking system. That’s why it got scrapped.” She pries the cover off one of the inside panels, and Drake leans forward to see a lump of wires melted around crystal fragments. “And the internal mechanism is fried. It’s worse than I thought. I’ll give you one hundred.”

  The man leans forward and pokes a finger at the mess
. “One fifty for this and the other parts you wanted.”

  “Deal.” Reagen holds her datband out, waits for the vendor to scan it, then nods at her original pile of parts. “Bag those for me.”

  Drake eyes the large chunk of metal. “I’m not carrying that for you.”

  “I don’t need you to.” She pushes up the sleeve of her jacket on her left arm and reaches into the open panel of the piece to feel around inside. With a grimace, she digs deeper, elbow disappearing.

  “What are you doing?” Drake shares a confused look with the vendor, who waits with Reagen’s other purchases, bagged and ready.

  Ignoring him, she yanks out her arm. Grease covers her up to the sleeve of her jacket, and, clutched in her fist, she holds a shimmering mass of tubes. She takes the plastic bag from the seller and dumps the handful inside before stuffing the whole thing into her satchel. The material bulges at the seams, the flap unable to latch closed.

  “Thank you.” Reagen replaces the panel on the curved piece of metal framing. “You have a towel?”

  “Yeah.” The vendor pulls a grease-stained scrap of cloth from his pocket and hands it over. He nods at the part still on his table. “That all you wanted from it?”

  “Yep.” The cloth does a good job of wiping off most of the black crud, and she pulls her sleeve down to cover the more stubborn brown streaks.

  “You don’t want the rest of it?” He takes the rag back, tossing it into a box with other greasy cloths already in it.

  “Go ahead and resell it.” Reagen adjusts the bag on her shoulder.

  “Whatever you want, girl.” He tries to move the piece and grunts, letting it thud back onto the table.

  Drake crumples his funnel into a ball and tosses it in the bin next to the cart. “We done here?”

  “Yep.” Reagen shifts her bag again. Must be heavy. A gentleman would offer to carry it.

  “Good, I’m thirsty. There’s a cart at the end that’s advertising GoGoNow.” The flashing sign displays the familiar smiling face of the logo.

  “Oh, that sounds good. I could use a drink before we head up to Level 11.”

  Drake checks the holo-sky and spots the sun’s image closer to the outer rim. Going up six levels will take time, but they should make it right as the Time Wardens switch to Half-Light. Not ideal. But they need to go over the locations where the blue guards found the dead bodies of Ash victims Burgus and Halrow. Looks like they’ll have another long night.

  Drake licks his lips and tastes salt from the fried beans. “Yeah, all that heavy lifting makes me parched, too.”

  She snorts. “You didn’t lift anything.”

  “But watching you was exhausting.” He pushes through a line of people. “Oh look, they also sell sweet rice.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I bet GoGoNow on sweet rice would be yummy.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Cherry Flavored GoGoNow on sweet rice.”

  “Not happening.” She cocks her head. “Do you hear ringing?”

  Now that she mentions it, he can feel the vibration in his pocket. The sound blends with the noise of the crowd. He steps behind Reagen and lets her break a path through the crowd as he pulls out his palm-port.

  “Is it another one of your one-night stands?” Reagen shouts back as they near the end of the alley market.

  “No, it’s a message from Newland. Looks like Level 11 will have to wait. There’s been another break-in.”

  ELBOWS, KNEES, AND NOSE

  REAGEN

  When we arrive at Gr8 Games, pedestrian traffic floods the sidewalk, a line forming in front of the building as people chatter in confusion over why the shop has closed. Overhead, the holo-sky dims, the streetlamps coming on as the Time Wardens switch Level 4 over to Half-Light. From here, the transition through Quarter-Light and into Star-Light comes fast.

  I knock through the bars over the front door to gain attention.

  When we interviewed Newland, the owner of this aphremore den, last night, his club was packed with clients who appeared to live there. A constant stream of income for his club. Newland’s revenues drop every second Gr8 Games stays locked up. Soon, even his diehard customers will abandon loyalty to find their fix down the street at his competitors’ shops, The Hut or Penned.

  City restrictions aside, it’s one of the primary reasons aphremore dens don’t set up business so close together. Three on one street is unheard of and what drew our attentions here in the first place. All three clubs pull in more credits than they should while splitting the customer base three ways.

  I pound my fist against the door again, hard enough to shake the frame. The noise of city traffic makes it impossible to hear inside. I give the line a nervous glance. They hadn’t been too happy when we’d cut to the front. A few crane their thin necks to peer up at the dark sign above the door as if sheer desire will make it turn on. If that happened, we’d likely be mobbed.

  “Try them on the palm-port again,” I tell Drake.

  He sighs as he pulls out his palm-port. His first two attempts were dumped to a message box.

  “It’s ringing.” Impatient, I tap my foot and wait. After a minute, he shuts it off with a scowl. “Think there’s trouble?”

  “Could be. Or they’re just ignoring us.” I eye the closed entrance, measuring the distance between the bars against the width of my shoe.

  “Before you break your toes kicking the poor door, let’s try the back way.” Drake nods his head toward the alley between buildings.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” I turn away from the offending door.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  The alley smells as wonderful as I remember. At least the dumpster’s empty. They must have gotten one of the street sweepers running again to clean out the space.

  “What are we going to do about that?” Drake stops below the fire escape, face going pale. The folded ladder hangs a good fifteen feet off the ground.

  I glance around. The empty dumpster comes up to my chest, not tall enough. The cement side of the building has a smooth finish, providing no cracks for easy finger holds. Drake’s shoulders are broad, but even standing on them, the ladder will be out of reach.

  “Ever done a buddy toss?” I stretch my right arm out and grip it at the bicep to stretch my shoulder.

  “You can’t be serious.” His eyes move from the metal platform above, to me, and back again, gauging the distance.

  “We could go home, instead.” I pull on my left shoulder, then raise both arms above my head and bend toward the ground.

  Oh, the burn of extended muscles feels so good.

  “A cup and toss, right?” He weaves his fingers together to form a basket, knees bent, looking a bit relieved.

  “Yeah. Go a little lower.” I move in front of him and lift my leg, place my foot in his hands, and test the strength of his hold. Satisfied, I take a few steps back.

  “If you break your face, it’s not my fault.” He shakes his arms out and glances back up at the base of the ladder. Then he crouches back down, hands forming a cup.

  I crouch into a runner’s stance. “Ready?”

  “No.”

  “Awesome.” I sprint forward, one, two, three. My foot lands in his palms, momentum propelling me as he springs up, throwing me into the air. For a moment, I fly free, weightless.

  Amazing.

  Then my upper body slams into the ladder, and oxygen rushes from my lungs. My legs swing in empty space, and I scramble for purchase as stars sparkle across my eyes; my vision goes fuzzy. I get an elbow looped over the top of the ladder and lock myself in place against the cold metal.

  “You okay?” Drake’s shout fights to be heard over the buzz in my ears.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.” I wheeze against the constriction in my chest.

  A breath shudders into my lungs, stinging my tongue with the taste of rust. Another breath, and my eyesight clears. I force my body into motion, lift myself over the folded ladder,
and sprawl onto the platform, back against the hard floor.

  The thing shakes beneath my weight.

  “So, you wanna just let me in the front door?” His voice hits a higher pitch at the end, and I picture his terrified expression at joining me up here.

  “I’ll let the ladder down for you.” The chill of metal seeps in through my jacket, and I thump a fist against the surface. The screech of stressed bolts joins the creak of the frame. “Plenty of room for both of us.”

  “I won’t be able to reach, even with it lowered.” He reasons.

  “You can stand on the dumpster.” I pull myself to my feet and lean over the shaky rail to peer down at him.

  He squints up at me as he tries to gauge if I’m serious.

  I point at the large metal container.

  “I hate you.” He stomps over to the dumpster and bends to grip the handle on one side. “Ugh, this thing stinks.”

  “Put your back into it!”

  “Shut up!” His body forms a bow as he heaves his weight against it. The thing rolls a foot and stops. It’s going to take him a couple minutes.

  I pull the pin that locks the ladder in place. The entire platform rattles as the ladder slides toward the ground. While I wait, I check to see how hard the lock will be to pick.

  Not hard at all. The knob looks misshapen, the metal melted. When I give it a gentle tug, the door pops open an inch and stops.

  I peer through the gap and see that efforts were taken to fix the problem. A bar slides through the lever handle on the inside, long enough to span the doorframe. But the thin piece of metal flexes when I give the door an experimental tug. Won’t take much force to bend.

  The fire escape shakes as Drake climbs up. I reach into my satchel and pull out two clear masks before I unshoulder the bag and set it off to the side. The air contaminant inside the shop should be too small to hurt me, but no way am I taking that risk. The liquid drug, once vaporized, hangs in the air for a time. Even with the club closed down, it might not have dissipated yet. I slip one mask over my head and let it dangle from my neck by the elastic band while I wait. The small black vents on the side are only so good at letting moisture out.