Pavo didn’t have enough time for her to be afraid.
She hurried to the same door she visited last time and thumped it twice with a closed fist. After a minute of no reaction from within, she swiped her hand over the panel, and twitched in surprise when the door opened. The scent of cotton candy thickened the atmosphere, mixed with a touch of autoshower soap. Risa barged in as if she lived there, clearing a tiny hallway with a bathroom right inside the door, halting at the sight of the room beyond.
Tamashī’s tiny figure lay draped upside down off the side of the bed, topless, panties stretched between her thighs. Silken, black hair fanned out above her on the rug like a puddle of ink. Only her shoulders, the arms limp to either side, and her head touched the rug. The rest of her hung suspended between the mattress and the floor. Her face looked so innocent and peaceful. She does look like a thirteen-year-old.
“Dammit, girl,” muttered Risa. She averted her gaze to give the woman some dignity as she crept closer. “You should’ve run away from these people. What the hell did they do to you?”
Risa circled to avoid stepping on hair and took a knee by the girl’s side. Bastards. Now what? Dammit, Raziel, where are you when I need you? She forced herself to look at the girl’s body, and debated touching her long enough to tug her underwear up to cover her. Amber snow fluttered in her vision when she attempted to run a bioscan from her cybernetic eyes. Some of the pixels coalesced into the word: Error 0517.
Great… what else is fried?
A hand to the stomach found the girl’s skin still warm. The sensation shocked a gasp from Risa. Whoever did this hasn’t been gone long. They might still be in here. She felt no broken ribs, and slid her hand up to the side of her friend’s neck―and felt a pulse.
“You gonna buy me dinner first?” Tamashī smiled.
Risa couldn’t help herself and screamed. She fell back on her ass, scooting away as if witnessing the dead return to life. Tamashī reached up and fixed her panties in place, yawned, and continued to lay there with her calves atop the mattress. The wire running from behind her left ear to an oblong loaf of shiny black plastic a few feet away seemed quite obvious all of a sudden.
Risa clamped a hand over her chest, gasping for breath. “Fucking hell. I thought you were dead.”
“Nope.” Tamashī stretched. “Must’ve slipped off the bed. Damn upgraded defense constructs in that place hit hard.”
“What are you, part cat? That can’t be comfortable.”
“Meow,” said Tamashī.
Risa stood, grabbed an oversized shirt from the rug and threw it over the girl before turning to give her some privacy. “You shouldn’t run around half dressed here. Especially if you convinced them you’re thirteen. You don’t want to know what I thought happened.”
“Oh that whole underage thing is so overstated. Walsh’s boys are nice to me. It’s a media smear campaign to make the Syndicate look bad.” Tamashī moved to sit cross-legged on the floor and wriggled into the shirt. “Eighty-four percent of the victims of Syndicate trafficking are legal age.”
“Oh, eighty-four percent. I suppose the whole sex-trade thing is fine then.” Risa scowled.
“You… actually cared about me?” Tamashī tilted her head, smiling. “I’ve never really had a friend before.”
“I suppose you don’t have to worry about getting sold as a sex toy to some colony world. You’ve seen too many of their secrets. They’d kill you if you ever tried to leave.”
Risa almost screamed when arms encircled her from behind and squeezed. She hadn’t sensed the girl coming up on her.
“Oh, you’re being a doom prophet. I already have sixteen companies after my head. The Syndicate is the only reason I’m still alive. I owe them for that.” The embrace weakened. “Shit you’re tense.”
“I need your help. I need you to find someone.”
“Easy enough, PID?”
Risa pulled Pavo’s contact entry up on her NetMini and handed it over. “It’s urgent. He’s been abducted by… probably military intelligence.”
“Oh, shit. I remember him.” Tamashī’s eyes opened wider than Risa had ever seen before. Finally, it seemed something had impressed her. “I might need to bowl jack for this one.”
“I don’t even wanna know what that means.”
Tamashī picked up her deck and gathered the wire. “Means it’s gonna take a long time, so I’ll log in from the bathroom.”
“What part of ‘I don’t want to know’ did you miss?” Risa stared into the rug, hoping some way out of her bargain with Walsh lurked among the carpet fibers. “How long?”
“Six to eight hours maybe. You wanna order food first?”
An icy hand squeezed at Risa’s heart. “That’s too long… I―”
“Guess you’re not hungry.” Tamashī traipsed by, covered to the knees in the shirt Risa had thrown at her. “Help yourself to the holo-bar… unless you want to watch me drool on myself.”
“No, thanks.” Risa went for the exit, stopping by the bathroom door without looking in. “I… have something to do.”
“Walsh?”
“Yeah.” Risa exhaled.
“Why didn’t you call me? I’m not like… cut off or anything. They’re protecting me, not holding me prisoner. Walsh is exploiting you.”
I’m not thinking straight. The thought she could’ve avoided being obligated to kill to save Pavo brought cheap soup to the back of her throat. Too late now, she’d already said she’d do it. The Syndicate didn’t take kindly to people who backed out of agreements. She’d never find Pavo if the Syndicate wanted her dead too. No… Tamashī was an afterthought. “I wanted to make sure Walsh wasn’t involved. He had nothing… you were here.”
“Oh.” Tamashī waved as if trying to get her attention. “You know, you can visit me when you don’t need a favor.”
She’s a guilt master. “Sorry. Yeah… Maybe. I-I need to do this before I change my mind.”
“I’ll vid you as soon as I find anything.”
Risa stood motionless as Tamashī plugged in and slumped limp against the wall. Once again, the diminutive Japanese woman looked like a young murder victim. She watched for a moment until the motion of shallow breathing caught her eye.
This girl is broken. Risa’s gaze slid down to the floor. Which one of us am I talking about?
ne dark alley led to the next, bringing Risa into the tainted heart of the Elysium City Business District. Three-quarters of a mile north and east of the city center, the veins of civilization clogged with a plaque of trash―human as well as inorganic. Far above in the shining silver towers, people with money and power remained ignorant of the open warfare occurring on the ground level. The disenfranchised had taken up a fondness for blades. Guns made noise and got the Defense Force involved too soon. A fast sword could leave the loser undiscovered for days, sometimes weeks.
Plenty of time to get away.
Not that the MDF cared much about solving such killings. Risa stopped in the middle of the alley, staring up out of a vast canyon of silvery plastisteel buildings at the dome over a mile away. So much time spent underground left her uneasy having sky overhead. The sight brought on a sense of vertigo, as if at any moment she would ‘fall’ from the planet’s surface and drift away into deep space. Motion pulled her gaze down. The locals emerged from their shadowy hideaways to check out the new arrival. Tight ballistic stealth armor attracted too much of the wrong kind of attention, though her visible weapons gave them pause, and the sight of her eyes made them move on.
Even the fringers here could recognize a tí-zhèn when they saw one. Her augmented ears picked up whispers: who’s she hunting; what’s the job; watch that one―she’ll kill you before you see her move. Their assumption she was an assassin still bothered her. They’re not wrong. She grumbled, attempting to think of a rationalization, then tried not to think. At the next intersection, she went left and strode into the sour telltale stink of a rotting body. It lurked out of sight, likely under
bags of garbage or inside one of the numerous trash bins as big as cargo vans. She smirked at the MSS logo: a cartoon planet with buggy eyes and broad smile. Martian Sanitation Services had been out of business for ten years at least.
That’s probably someone’s house now.
She checked her NetMini again. What’s taking her so long? A flick of the thumb brought up Walsh’s data. A brief glance before leaving the Orbital Hotel confirmed the target wasn’t a kid or anyone she knew.
Ral Narim: age 37, single, HR Director for NinTek Mars, well off, but not wealthy. A few minutes of staring at the man’s face failed to vilify him in her mind. He didn’t seem like the type of man to deserve death. Unlike the last time she looked, she kept reading. A note at the bottom of the file indicated the job was internal. One of the man’s underlings wanted the director position, and paid the Syndicate to accelerate his promotion.
Fuck. She locked eyes with the little holographic man. “This isn’t who I am.” Maybe I can fake it… talk him into leaving Mars quietly. Pavo’s smile filled her imagination. I don’t have time. I gotta find Pavo. She took three steps before the confident grin on the idealized vision of the man she loved melted into an accusing glare. Walsh wouldn’t give her the info he’d collected until after she did the job. Could she kill a total stranger to save Pavo’s life?
He’d hate me for doing this. She turned back the way she came. If I don’t do it, I could lose him anyway.
Clenched fists slackened to limp fingers. “If he hates me, at least he’ll be alive.”
She spun around and sprinted the last half-block to the alley-facing wall of an exclusive apartment. All four doors at the ground level were little more than slabs of metal defined by thin seams with no way to open them from the outside. Everyone entered and left the building by way of the roof deck, hovercars or corporate shuttles. The ground floor had only emergency exits designed to keep the legion of filthy, forgotten souls at their doorstep from getting in.
Boosted agility and reflexes carried her up a wall upon inch-wide fingertip holds. At the sixth-floor level, someone’s open balcony offered entry to a living room littered with toys. Whoever lived here had a toddler. Risa froze, listening to complete silence. Once confident no one was home, she crept down a hall past bedrooms, and crossed the living room to the door, careful not to disturb anything on the way.
After reaching the hall outside, she breathed again. Despite the guilt, worry, and fear wrapped around her heart, she put on the face of someone who belonged in the building and power-walked to the elevator. The doors closed with a weak pneumatic hiss. Risa stuck her finger into the holographic spot for the forty-eighth floor, where her target lived.
By the time the elevator opened, she moved without life, an automaton set on a task. She did this for Pavo. Better not to dwell on it.
Don’t think. Just do.
Given the hour, she expected Ral to be working. Chances were he’d be plugged in and as helpless as Tamashī had been. In case he used a Senshelmet, she’d be quiet. While those devices did not completely cut off the outside world from the user’s consciousness, they caused a sufficient reaction delay that she felt no sense of concern he might defend himself. As long as she could get close enough before he noticed her.
I should shoot him. Harder to trace back to me.
Risa searched the panel by the door for the M3 port. The wireless models always have a backup for building management. Picking fingernails eventually located a tiny hatch on the side of the housing, exposing an asterisk-shaped port. She took her wire from the harness and plugged in. As soon as the snap echoed in her skull, the hallway changed to a small room, connected by other small rooms with thin corridors stretching out to both sides. The environment shimmered as if made of blue-black glass, lit by a sourceless azure glow. Every lock on every door had a virtual node associated with its computer. The circuit controlling the lock to Ral’s apartment hovered in front of her, represented by a six-inch, rotating onyx cube.
As soon as she touched it, the walls shimmered and melted. Bars of static danced in midair. A jolt of pain ran down her brain stem and blossomed into a spider web of prickling flame around her skull. She pressed a hand into her left eye―which felt as though it would burst from its socket without her hand there―and glanced around. No security construct came out to confront her.
Fuck this hurts. I shouldn’t be doing this shit without a deck. They must have some kind of anti-intrusion soft running. Her voice screamed internally, sounding far away like another person. Her knees faltered, refusing to hold her upright. Ugh! My brain is on fire.
She grasped the sides of the cube, halting its spin, and pulled it open to reveal a screen similar to a standard consumer interface terminal. Rather than the GlobeNet browser, the panel displayed two giant buttons. One red, labeled ‘locked,’ and one green, labeled ‘open.’ She poked her finger at the green square and it lit up as the red one dimmed.
This is too easy. Why is there no security program?
Eager to escape the sensation of her brain in a frying pan, she disconnected and found herself kneeling with her cheek against the wall. If not for the three-foot wire between her head and the panel, she’d have been on the floor. She sucked in air, grimaced from the pain of an implanted M3 port supporting her weight, and forced herself upright. A few drops of blood oozed between her fingers when she clamped her hand around the wire.
Shit. I really need to stop plugging direct.
The door squeaked as it slid to the side. Risa scrambled to her feet, stuffing the wire back into her weapon harness on the way inside. Cube-shaped white chairs flanked a matching sofa around a slab of mirrored glass acting as a coffee table. One bot the size of a dinner plate roamed the carpet, the hum of its cleaning unit the only noise.
This place is too neat for a bachelor. Light leaked out from under a door at the end of an interior hallway, likely the master bedroom. At least there’s no sign of kids. Between the thick pewter-colored carpeting and her padded boots, she made no sound as she crept up to the door. When her nose got an inch from the blue Epoxil barrier, the scent of ballistic propellant wafted by.
That’s not good.
She drew one of her Hotaru-6 pistols and nudged the bedroom door open. A luminous blue spatter on the far wall glowed upward in a V from a destroyed terminal. White neural memory fluid caught the glow of a nearby holo-pane. Ral Narim slumped over his workstation, two bullet holes in the back of a beige Senshelmet. Blood covered the desk, rolling over the front edge to drip onto his lap and the floor. Risa froze in the doorway, feeling the distinct discomfort of eyes on her back. Amid the eerie silence in the dead man’s room, she wondered if the man she had been sent to kill was still there. Damn Osebi and his ghost hunter dustblow. She scowled at of the way he always talked about cold spots on thermal or ‘electronic voice recordings’ from the dead.
Hypocrite. If there were angels, there had to be ghosts.
Her breath fogged in the air. Muscles in her back tightened.
A weak tremble manifested in her body as she surveyed the area. A spot of green light by the wall caught her eye. The thermostat had been set on fifty degrees. She slouched, feeling like an idiot.
Ghosts… yeah, sure. Whoever killed him wanted to hide the smell. Damn, I shouldn’t linger here. Fuck Walsh, this better not be a setup. For all she knew, someone had paid the Syndicate to hand her over.
Risa edged backward out of the room, twitching as the door hissed closed. The instant she turned to leave, her NetMini vibrated, startling a yelp out of her. She slid down the wall to a squat, cradling the device in shaking hands. Nerves reduced the buzzing NetMini to a mysterious slab of plastic she couldn’t figure out how to activate. With each vibration, anxiety grew until it slipped from her grasp and clattered to the rug at her knees. As elusive as the button had been to her fingers, the simpler option had been more so to her brain.
“Answer,” she snapped.
Tamashī’s holographic head shimmered
in over the NetMini, as big as a plum. “Uhh, Risa?”
“What?”
“Come back here. I umm, found something, and I gotta show you this.”
She picked up the device, bringing the spectral girl close to her face. “Send me the file.”
“I…” Tamashī looked down. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
Risa’s throat tightened, leaving her voice a weak croak. “What?”
“Maybe I’m looking at it wrong, but…”
“But what?” she yelled. “Tell me, dammit!”
A dimmed-out icon appeared on the physical screen, upload progress indicated by an expanding pie-slice of full color.
“Your friend… I…”
No.
Tamashī looked at her like a twelve-year-old begging for a toy. “Please let me tell you in person.”
“What happened?”
“No. You’ll do something stupid.”
Risa’s voice got cold. “Tamashī…”
“I found video from his helmet. Looked like soldiers shooting at him.” The girl shied away from Risa’s glare. “I… umm… don’t think he made it.”
Risa cradled the NetMini to her chest, shaking from a wave of devastation too intense to allow her to cry or even speak. She’d made the ultimate mistake. The last time she’d seen Pavo, she spoke the fatal words: I love you.
“Risa? Please come over. I’m so sorry… You shouldn’t be alone.”
She forced herself upright, still clutching the NetMini against her heart, and staggered to the door. Halfway to the elevator, Tamashī’s incessant repetition of her name pierced the fog in her mind.
“Risa? Hello? Are you still there?”
“I don’t think so.” She stared through the ethereal face floating over her hand. Her arm fell slack at her side. Tears stopped. Sadness receded, and she took on the posture of a broken marionette.
Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1) Page 45
