Pop 'Em One (Bubbles in Space Book 3)

by S. C. Jensen

  As we approached the edge of the stacks, old warehouse buildings loomed above the low-slung flats, and we passed an apartment building with a few broken but un-boarded windows. A rustling noise filtered down from one of the upstairs rooms, and Dickie froze, wild-eyed, with his back against the building. Something flashed across a shattered pane of glass, but I couldn’t tell if the movement came from behind or if it was reflected from the building across the street.

  “Did you see that?” I whispered.

  Dickie shook his head, the skin around his lips looking tight and green.

  “Weird light,” I said. “Purple or blue. Up there.”

  Dickie forced his eyes up toward the window I pointed at. He shook his head again.

  I strained my ears, trying to catch the noise again, but the stacks had fallen silent as if even the buildings were holding their breath.

  “Okay,” I said. “Whoever it was probably has no interest in us anyway. A drug lab or something. Let’s get out of here before someone blows themselves up, huh?”

  Dickie nodded stiffly and I dragged him back into the street with me.

  A few minutes later, we were jogging out of the Creep Stacks, feeling relieved and more than a little foolish that we’d worked ourselves up so badly over a few blocks of empty apartment buildings.

  By the time we reached the grid we were laughing and joking with one another, drunk on relief. A few boilers zipped by on the maglev tracks of the grid, but none slowed or stopped. The Grit District was a through-point, not a destination. For people who could afford private boilers anyway. Even the taxi rings were empty. I checked the street signs to see how far we were from Cosmo’s place. I didn’t want to risk turning Hammett on again until I was sure we could make it to a charging station.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, staring up at small, neon sign that indicted we were at the corner of Martelle and Anderle. I took the card Patti had given me out of my pocket and turned it over to the address side. “This is it.”

  Could the android and the cyber-witch be there right now? It wouldn’t take long to check. I didn’t have to knock on the door or anything. Dickie could keep a look out and I could sneak up the stairs and see if anyone was home in #709.

  But what if they were?

  I didn’t have any news to share. And I couldn’t be certain that the android was on our side. Sure, the story about being human sounded true enough, but who knew what having a machine in your brain could do to a person. The last time I’d seen Rae, she was covered in blood, and not all of it had been her own. If the program learned that it was better to go into hibernation and wait for a more opportune moment, or worse—if it could learn to manipulate—Patti could be the most dangerous angle of this game.

  And if the necklace around her neck was full of nanoids . . . That was a whole different angle.

  Could it be a trap? I hadn’t considered the possibility of Patti setting me up when she gave me the card. I’d been so focused on the fact that I could use it to bargain with Price if I needed to, to get the info I needed to help Rae before I crushed his skull. I hadn’t stopped to think that the potential to double-cross worked both ways. I still didn’t know what had happened to Gore. Wandering into Patti’s safe haven might be a big mistake.

  But I needed to know. I needed to make sure she really was there if I wanted to be able to turn her over to Libra. Maybe I didn’t want to turn her over at all. I hadn’t decided yet. But if it could help Rae or Tom, I needed to keep my options open.

  Dickie leaned over my shoulder to read the address. “What is it?”

  “Come with me,” I said. “I want to check on something.”

  I jogged down the Anderle strip and found the shabby old apartment building with Patti’s address barely clinging to the side in faded red paint. Compared to the monstrously empty buildings in the Creep Stacks, this one was a veritable family fun day destination. The few windows had bars instead of boards, and soft-yellow light glowed gently behind a few of them with an inviting warmth.

  But in this area of the city, those lights were more likely to be brothel pads than family homes, rented out in fifteen-minute blocks by the local pro skirts, black-market dealers, and pinches looking for a safe place to get their glow-up on. There would be a manager’s office inside, if I was right about the place, the only permanent resident. The gatekeeper I would have to appease in order to have a look around.

  Black bags of trash piled up against the side of the building in the alleyway. They’d been there so long they appeared to be a part of the architecture. A burrow had been dug between the bags, like a cave entrance at the bottom of a lonely mountain. Judging by the collection of high-heeled shoes and sparkly strips of fabric peeking out the bottom, the pile looked to be home-sweet-home to a couple of the Grit’s entry level pro skirts. Pools of water collected at the base of the garbage palace, and the smell of compost wafted out of the alley.

  A pair of dark-ringed eyes glared out at me from the depths of the hole. My guts clenched, and I reared back, stumbling into Dickie.

  “Guess we should have knocked,” I said. I checked the crevice on the other side of the front door and, finding it unoccupied, I planted Dickie on the corner of the stoop. “Wait here. Yell if anyone comes in the building after me.”

  Dickie leaned against a sagging banister beneath the ragged awning above the door where it was slightly less damp than on the sidewalk. He said, “Sure. I could use a break.”

  I climbed the stairs with ginger steps, pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  A bare lightbulb flickered and buzzed above my head with about as much juice as a dried apricot. Rainwater trickled down the walls inside the foyer and left mouldering puddles of water on the floor, which smelled identical to the garbage pile in the alley. Directly in front of the door, a sagging staircase ascended into the darkness beyond the reach of the lightbulb. Tucked in behind the stairs was a small, grey sign, also marred with faded red paint that read MGR—By Appt. Only—100 cred/hr. There was no sign of movement from the office.

  I decided to forgo the formalities and climbed up the shadowed stairs, past the flickering bulb, and on to the first-floor landing. Where the stairs curved up to the second floor, a gaping hole opened like a mouth, where the stairs had rotted away beneath a steady stream of water. The foyer light bulb flickered like the bioluminescent tonsil of a deep-sea creature, trying to lure me to my doom.

  Turning away from the rotted stairs, I crept into the hallway, shining my finger light on the numbers on the doors. There was no rhyme or reason to them, as if the building manager had scrounged up whatever bits and pieces they could find in order to label the suites. Plastic plates with painted numerals, stylized metal digits, numbers carved into the wall. 536, 912, 444, 180. . .

  Thumps, groans, and whimpers sounded from behind some of the first doors in the corridor, but as I moved toward the back of the building, the sounds of human life faded. A pungent, metallic smell hung in the air. The rooms back here hunkered down, quiet as grave markers.

  My mind jumped around from image to unsettling image. It was the stink of the place. Like fresh dirt and rotting meat. I must still have been unsettled after the trip through the Creep Stacks.

  Room #709 was the very last door on the left. An almost burned-out light above the door gave off a faint orange glow, barely enough to see by. Nothing stirred behind this door, either. Quiet as the grave. I shivered.

  The stairs at the far end of the hall creaked. I pressed myself into the dark corner and waited, but no one came up or down. The old building was probably about to cave in on itself, if the staircase to the second floor was any indication.

  I leaned closer to the door and pressed my ear against the peeling black paint, hoping to get close enough to sense if there was anyone moving furtively inside. But when I touched the door, it swung inward. I jumped back, my heart hammering in my chest. Unl
ocked. Unlatched. I didn’t like that. Unlocked doors in HoloCity usually meant someone had been there before you and had left a mess for you to clean up.

  Or it might mean they wanted you to find them, and they planned to make a mess out of you.

  Still no movement inside the apartment, though. I pictured Patti waiting for me, eyes unblinking, chest unmoving—she didn’t have to blink or breathe in her cyborg body. She lived inside a shell. And the shell could wait indefinitely.

  “Patti?” I said. “Are you in there?”

  No response. Obviously. If I was a cyborg-slash-android, waiting in the darkness to assassinate my victim, I wouldn’t answer either. I rolled my eyes and flicked on the finger flash and reached into my jacket to pull out the pistol. If there was anyone in the apartment, they knew I was here the moment the door opened. There was no sense in being secretive about it. I didn’t like to shoot people. But if I had to shoot someone, I wanted to see who it was. I made a mental note to thank Rae for including the flash feature in the upgrade.

  I swept the light across the entryway. Stains marred the walls in various, indistinguishable shades of brown and grey, water seeping in from the floor above. Whatever was left of the roof wasn’t doing much to keep the rain out. The floorboards, made of the same cheap, recycled plastic material as the floor in my own skid-row apartment, had buckled and twisted into a treacherous terrain. I stepped inside carefully and swung the light into the main apartment.

  Nothing. Not even anything to hide behind. No furniture or curtains. I moved farther into the empty room. The apartment had no kitchen area. No counters or appliances. No bathroom—a jagged hole in the floor exposed a length of calcified black piping to demonstrate that there may have once been a toilet. No bedroom—though a thin soiled mattress had been pushed against the far wall. A single electrical outlet and a barred, broken window were the only indications that the room wasn’t a utility closet.

  Something caught my attention outside the window. I turned and took a step closer to look, but I caught my toe on one of the twisted floorboards and stumbled. My right hand, still clutching the pistol, reached out for the wall and my upgrade flailed for balance. The light from the finger flash spun around the room like a spinner at a dance club. My gun hand went straight through the soggy plaster next to the window. I cursed and shook my hand to get the wet clumps off my sleeve.

  The view outside the window wasn’t anything to write home about. A warehouse building with broken windows housed a community of makeshift tents. No one moved in the darkness. But behind the warehouse, the Creep Stacks loomed, pale and ghostly, through the fine mist of rain. Large warning signs had been posted along the perimeter with red lettering scrawled by in inexpert hand. Danger: Keep Out. Having survived my first trip through, I planned to do just that.

  But beyond the signs, a flash of movement made my breath catch in my throat. A flicker of eerie purple light pulsed from the upper window of one of the squat, troll-like buildings. I leaned forward and focused on it. Was that the same building where I’d seen the light before? It was impossible to tell. They all looked the same from this distance. The one with the light had a mottled texture to the outer walls, as if it was starting to grow a skim of mould. It was like the rotten spot on a piece of fruit from which decay spread out and consumed the rest of the flesh. I stared out at the stacks, waiting for the light to come back. Seconds passed, then minutes. No more lights.

  I sighed and turned away from the window. Patti and Johanna weren’t here yet, if they were coming at all. Dickie was probably getting drenched out there. Time to go.

  I turned toward the door and stopped short.

  A man stood in the doorway, his shadow illuminated in the weird orange glow from the corridor. His head hung too low, and a lump rose from his back like a second skull, but he was as wide as the doorframe and as solid as a brick. Clutched in a fat fist, he had a wide-mouthed plasma cannon that could put a hole in my chest big enough to use as a window.

  “Drop it, sister.” The man’s gravelled voice clawed across the room toward me. “’Less you wanna get faded. Drop the gun and reach.”

  I didn’t drop the gun. I didn’t reach. I stepped back and said, “Are you the manager of this fine piece of real estate?”

  He growled in response, kicked the door closed behind him, and lurched into the room. The cannon made a whining sound as the charger wound up. “Think you’re a wise guy?”

  “I’m looking for one of your tenants.” I stepped back again, but the wall was behind me and there was nowhere to go. The bars on the windows seemed to be the only structurally sound bit of architecture in the building, so the leap of faith to the fire escape wasn’t an option either. Assuming there was a fire escape. I’d probably lose my chips on that bet anyway. “Number seven-oh-nine. Good-looking redhead by the name of Patti Whyte. You know where she is?”

  I kept my finger flash pointed at the guy’s feet. He wore old, steel-toed work boots covered in what had once been high-vis orange safety material, but now looked more like bottom-of-the-barrel brown everywhere except where the dirt had been scuffed off the inside of the boot from the man’s shuffling gait. On the toes, the protective outer layer had been worn down to expose the bare metal beneath. The bottoms of his pants had been rolled around in the same muck that covered the boots. I didn’t want to shine the light any higher in case he got more annoyed than he already was and decided to use me for target practice.

  “You caught me on a bad night.” The man coughed and hocked a thick glob of phlegm onto the twisted floorboards. “I’m not in a generous mood. Don’t got a lot of enthusiasm for smart talkers.”

  “I’m just looking for a friend,” I said. “She gave me a card with this address on it.”

  “Sure.” He snorted and spat again. Maybe the lump on his back was a repository for extra mucus. “Some friend. You got set up, sister.”

  “She asked me to come here.”

  His eyes went to the dirty mattress on the floor. He said, “You lookin’ for a place to lie down? Or a girl to lie down with?”

  “This isn’t the kind of joint a person should be looking for either,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised.” He leered at me and took a shuffling step forward. “Nobody been in this here room but you. Not on my watch.”

  The cannon wavered in front of him unsteadily, and his head swayed. The smell of two-week-old curry doused with bathtub hooch wafted off the man. It filled up the room like an overweight highbinder’s belly stuffed into a suit two sizes too small. Something had to give. The taste in the back of my throat suggested it might be my breakfast.

  “Could you point that thing somewhere else,” I said. “I don’t really fancy the see-through look.”

  “Sometimes they’s just not interested,” he said, ignoring me. “Even when you’s got the creds. Nothin’ to do ’bout it.”

  Maybe commiserating over broken hearts would distract him long enough for me to get away. I said, “You think she stood me up?”

  He laughed dejectedly.

  I tried again. “You’ve been watching this room? Or all the rooms? Nobody came to see you about renting number seven-oh-nine?”

  “Don’t take it too hard.” The snub nose of the cannon dipped and he stepped a little closer. Light from outside filtered into the room, casting rough shadows over the man’s face. One eye sunk beneath the misshapen lump of his forehead and the other bulged outward to make up for it. There was a glint of silver beneath the dirty collar of his undershirt, hidden by the folds of flesh that dangled from his chin. He said, “Could be I’m free, if you’s needin’ company.”

  “Not tonight,” I said, hoping I wasn’t going to have to blast the guy for being lonely. “But I’ll give you my number if you make me a promise.”

  He grinned with teeth that looked like a set of dentures harvested from seven different people. Then the grin twisted and
he snarled. “I might be ugly, but I ain’t stupid.”

  Then he remembered his gun and pointed it back at my chest.

  “I want to know if anyone makes arrangements for this room,” I said, keeping an eye on the cannon. “And I’m willing to pay for the information.”

  “I’m willing to pay too.” The man laughed until it turned into a cough, and he spat another gob onto the crooked floor. “You gonna give me what I want?”

  “That depends,” I said, my mouth as dry as if it was my spit sliming the floorboards. “You want a fight?”

  “Maybe a little,” he said, and I could hear the leer in his voice. “Just for a warmup.”

  “Suits me.”

  I flashed him with a high beam in the good eye. He lifted his hands to cover his face, and I lunged for him. I dropped the light just long enough to give him a little kiss to the solar plexus with the upgrade. He doubled over with a burst of fetid air, and I grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the cannon and wrenched it out of his grip. The man fell on his knees, wheezing. I stuffed his gun into the waistband of my pants. Then I kicked him in the ass and sent him sprawling.

  “If you follow me,” I said, “I’ll give you a real fight.”

  He groaned, which I took to be an acquiescence. I backed out of the room and closed the door behind me. Then I ran down the corridor and scrambled down the stairs. The thump and rattle of a slamming door chased me as I exited the building. I risked a glance over my shoulder to see if the hunchbacked lecher had decided to test my convictions.

  I glimpsed a wizened old prune of a person. Indeterminate gender. Varicoloured scarf wrapped around their head. A gold ring strung through the middle of their nose. Then I tripped on something laying across the stoop. I flew headlong off the stairs and into a puddle of what I hoped was rainwater but which none-too-faintly reeked of urine. My skin crawled like it wanted out of this deal it had with my body.