Eyes of Ice

by J. C. Andrijeski

  “You are old as fuck, Tanaka. You know that, right?”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “It’s been mentioned.”

  Jordan snorted. “Get your ass down here. And if you stop for coffee, grab me one. Two sugars. A few sprinkles of chocolate. Maybe even a dollop of whipped cream, if you can spare any of that big fight money you’re earning these days––”

  “Bite me.”

  “That’s your department, Midnight,” the other retorted without a pause. “Get down here. Now. I mean it. Morley wants you here.”

  Before Nick could reply to that, Jordan hung up.

  Scowling a little, Nick glanced at Malek.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “It’s starting, isn’t it?” Malek said.

  Nick frowned, staring up at him.

  The seer didn’t point at his painting when he said it.

  Then again, he didn’t need to.

  Exhaling, human-fashion, Nick ran a hand through his black hair, still damp from the shower at the fight club. He could already feel a headache coming on.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”

  2 / Sorry, Straven

  HE FOUND JORDAN AND MORLEY in the building’s lobby.

  To get there, he had to walk around chunks of asphalt and glass, part of what looked like an organic desk, twisted into a bizarre shape by the explosion and fire, so that it looked more like the corpse of a screaming, broken animal.

  Nick also saw chairs, what looked like it might have been a water cooler, a machine that was probably used for one office function or another, part of a larger table, probably from a conference room or some larger work area, lots of burnt and twisted monitors and headsets, a high-end coffee maker that looked bizarrely intact, like somehow it had been almost completely untouched by the blast and the eighty-plus story fall.

  Most of the debris concentrate on the northeast side of the building, which made sense, given what Nick watched on the news networks as he rode a riderless taxi downtown.

  He’d left Malek in the Cauldron.

  He found himself split-screening the news as he rode down to the crime scene though, studying the painting the seer showed him even as he glanced at the building, noting the parallels between the images with not a small amount of unease.

  Fucking seers.

  He stared at the face of the vampire there, too.

  Nick didn’t think he knew him.

  Still, there was something about him.

  Nick almost wondered if he was involved in the nonhuman fight circuit in some way. He looked weirdly familiar, but not in a personal way––more like Nick had seen his face on a billboard or in a newsfeed somewhere.

  Shoving that all from his mind now, he nodded to the uniform cop who held open the door for him, lifting the line of police tape to let Nick by. From the faintly excited look in the cop’s eyes, Nick found himself thinking the human was a fight fan.

  His suspicion was confirmed with the officer grinned at him.

  “Hell of a short fight tonight, sir,” he said, beaming.

  Nick forced himself to smile, nodding. Farlucci, his boss at the fights, already chewed him out once this week for not being friendlier to the fans.

  “Yeah,” he said, noncommittal. “Good luck for me.”

  “Luck? Hardly, sir! That misdirect was amazing, not to mention––”

  “Is that my fucking coffee?” Jordan yelled from over by the security desk. “How about leaving your fans long enough to bring it over here before it gets cold, dickhead? Or is that Mr. Bigshot Fighter Dickhead now?”

  Nick fought not to laugh.

  Giving the uniform cop a deadpan shrug, he ignored the beet-red complexion the human developed from Jordan’s shouted words and patted the human on the shoulder.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Gotta go.”

  The uniform nodded, still bright red, but smiled at Nick anyway, still obviously star-struck, and now mortally embarrassed at being called out for it.

  Nick couldn’t help but find the whole thing ludicrous.

  Humans, Jesus.

  It seemed like the majority of them either wanted to kill him for what he was, wanted him defanged and in a box somewhere… or now, in some weird twist of fate, wanted his fucking autograph. He was convinced all of those different race-related wants were essentially the same want, only in different permutations, but he couldn’t make himself care enough to puzzle it out.

  He reached Jordan and thrust out his hand holding the coffee.

  “You’re a dick,” he said simply.

  Jordan laughed, taking the mug from his fingers. “I suppose you want money for this? You cheap, old bastard?”

  “You already owe me for dinner last night.”

  “See? Cheap bastard.”

  “I don’t eat,” Nick reminded him pointedly. “And blood’s not cheap.”

  “You get that free, asshole. Or, not free… my tax dollars pay for that shit. Along with your rent. And your twice-weekly jerkoff session from the I.S.F.”

  Nick shrugged, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets.

  He didn’t bother to correct the human on that last part.

  He still hadn’t re-instituted the live feeds he was entitled to as a vampire registered through the I.S.F. Technically, he was entitled to three a week. That was, three actual humans, who came to his door and willingly offered him their blood––and often other parts of their bodies. Like most vampires, Nick tended to like to fuck his food.

  The bodies attached to that food, that is.

  But he’d shut that particular spigot off over a month ago, and he hadn’t quite managed to turn it on again.

  He also refused to think about why.

  Or who the person he’d done it for might be sleeping with these days.

  Clenching his jaw briefly, he looked at Morley, the senior detective in Nick’s department and the closest thing he had to a boss on the NYPD side of things, apart from the precinct captain and lieutenant.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “What do you need from me?”

  Morley rolled his eyes. “Good evening to you, too, Midnight.” He quirked a dark eyebrow decorated with healthy streaks of grey. “Where’s my fucking coffee?”

  Jordan burst out in a laugh.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “I’ll go get you one. I might have to whine at my next I.S.F. check in that my human colleagues are using their resource in inappropriate ways, though. Start muttering about vampire’s rights. Racial discrimination––”

  Morley snorted, waving him off. “We got uniforms for that.” He jerked his head towards the door, towards the uniformed cop Nick just left. “Hey! Fight Club!” he yelled, as loud as Jordan had before. The senior detective pointed at Jordan’s drink. “Get me one of these. Same size. No damned chocolate sprinkles or any of that crap. Coffee. Black. Got it?”

  The uniformed cop, still red-faced, nodded.

  Nick snorted a half laugh as he watched the human disappear through the glass doors.

  “Is this why I’m here?” he said, looking back at Morley. “As a foil so you can torture newbie cops? Or is there some actual blood you want me to look at?”

  Morley rolled his eyes.

  “Come on,” the older African-American man said, motioned his grayer-than-his-eyebrows head towards the back door. “We’ll take you up.”

  “Up?” Nick frowned, looking up in reflex. “Is the suite accessible?”

  Morley snorted, glancing back at him as he headed for the elevator bank.

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “This place was built to withstand a damned nuclear war. The emergency systems had the fire out before the fire department drones could even get here. They ended up recording the whole thing and leaving… not long after we determined the motive likely wasn’t political but burglary.”

  “Do you have the surveillance tapes for that?” Nick said. “Jordan mentioned them, but he didn’t send anything over before––”

  “Yeah, he couldn’t
,” Morley said, leaning down to hit the button to call the elevator before he glanced at Nick. “Everything in this damned building is proprietary. Every. Damned. Thing. We’re still working on getting access to surveillance. I’ve got someone knocking on a judge’s door in the next hour or so. The security guys here won’t give us jack shit without a warrant. They can’t get ahold of the building’s owners… apparently, they’re in one of the Protected Areas in Europe right now, for some giant business conference. They probably don’t know what happened yet, with the delay.”

  Nick nodded, frowning. He knew what Morley meant.

  There were still delays in news transmissions between the continents.

  Ever since the wars, every region was too paranoid to use satellites for anything non-critical. They wouldn’t grant access to satellite use to other Protected Areas or economic regions unless it was a damned emergency, and sometimes not even then.

  If they were ever attacked by aliens, they were screwed.

  The door pinged in front of them, and Nick followed Jordan and Morley in.

  “How’s that cop going to find you for your coffee?” Nick said.

  Morley grunted in amusement. “Shut up, Midnight. Hit the button for eighty-eight.”

  Leaning down, Nick jabbed at it with a finger.

  The doors closed soundlessly.

  The elevator was fast. Fast enough that Nick felt it in his gut when it slid up to the floor just below the observatory on the eighty-ninth. According to the news briefs Nick had seen on the way here, there was a garden on the very top, which didn’t have a full roof, just transparent organic shielding, but more or less functioned as a ninetieth floor.

  The photos made it look like a tropical resort. A lagoon-shaped pool complete with waterfall, deck chairs, a full bar, a masseuse on hand for the tired and chronically rich all sat nestled inside a garden filled with real-live birds, palm trees, and an assortment of other living things you usually didn’t find these days outside a few select protected areas and I.S.F. owned zoos and botanical areas.

  The Northeastern Protected Area still had a lot of nature.

  They even had birds.

  Wynter told him she even saw a fox once… and a deer. She claimed to have seen numerous raccoons, squirrels, rats, lizards, and mice.

  Shoving her from his mind with a grimace, he fought back a swell of anger.

  Why was he thinking about her so goddamned much tonight?

  He wanted to blame Malek for showing up in his dressing area, for asking him about her, for bugging him to go visit her, to visit Tai.

  He knew that wasn’t all of it, though.

  The door pinged in front of him.

  Nick didn’t really think about how quiet he’d been during the elevator ride until it did. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d been aware of Jordan and Morley talking to one another, noticing him not joining him, but he’d barely noticed until he could feel them staring at him now, wondering at how quiet he was.

  Nick shoved that from his mind too, exiting the elevator in front of the two of them.

  The smell of smoke was overpowering, as soon as the elevator doors opened.

  Strangely though, this part of the floor didn’t look as bad as he expected.

  It was wet, and he could smell chemical dousing agents, along with the smell of burnt plastic, plaster, paper, wood, and harder materials that were probably organics and semi-organics. Those smelled strange to his nose. Definitely not like burned flesh, or even bone or teeth… but not quite like scorched metal or stone, either.

  He glanced at Morley and Jordan, and saw them flick on the lights on their headsets.

  It didn’t occur to him until then how dark it would be up here to human eyes.

  “Doesn’t look that bad here,” Jordan observed.

  “Yeah,” Morley said, frowning.

  “You guys haven’t been up here?” Nick said, looking between them. “I assumed you’d come up here already.”

  Morley shook his head, still staring around, aiming his headset light at the walls, where an organic fixture was still dripping some kind of chemical down on the light blue carpet below.

  “Where are we going?” Jordan said, pulling up a virtual, 3D representation of the blueprints for the floor.

  Nick already knew where they were going, though.

  “This way,” he said, inclining his head towards the passageway to the left of the elevator lobby. “Silverton’s office was down here.”

  Jordan and Morley followed as Nick made his way cautiously down the hall.

  As they made their way deeper into the suite, the damage grew more apparent. Nick saw sections of wall blackened from smoke. He saw a monitor embedded into one segment of wall and pointed it out to the two detectives.

  “Watch out for that,” he commented.

  They nodded without answering him or slowing their steps, staring around with the lights on their headsets.

  Past the next row of doors, Nick saw a whole section of wall missing, exposing a long, wide room to the right of the corridor. Something about the layout made him think of a conference room. He found himself thinking the twisted, broken table he’d seen down on the ground below the building might have come from there.

  He kept walking, hearing Jordan whistle when his light picked up the same missing section of wall, and the dripping pipes from overhead.

  “Fuck,” Jordan said. “How many people were in here? When it happened?”

  “Only three we know of for sure,” Morley said, his voice grim. “That’s why we need access to that surveillance. They only released to us that Silverton was here, plus the two people they believe were the thieves.”

  “Human?” Jordan said.

  Nick practically felt the detective glancing at Nick’s back.

  “Far as I know,” Morley said, looking up through a hole in the ceiling that showed all the way up to the roof. “Where’s that pool?” he commented then. “Is any part of that over this part of the suite?”

  Nick pointed to his right. “Other side, I think,” he said, stuffing his hand back in his coat pocket. “But I’d be surprised if they weren’t getting leaks at least.”

  “Maybe that’s how they got the fire out so fast,” Jordan joked.

  Nick grunted. “Maybe.”

  He could smell it up ahead though.

  They were definitely getting close to the blast site.

  “Be careful,” he said, glancing backwards. “There could be missing sections of floor up here. You might want to let me get a little bit ahead of the two of you… and don’t wander off the corridor without really looking where you’re stepping.”

  Jordan smiled, looking like he was about to crack a joke, but Morley met Nick’s gaze, nodding, once, his eyes serious.

  “You go up ahead.” He glanced at Jordan, giving him a sideways frown. “…I’ll try to keep this jackass from falling through the damned ceiling.”

  Nick smiled faintly, but never took his eyes off the floor, or the ceilings where he was walking. Truthfully, it was a little easier to see without the glare of the light from the two headsets flickering around directly behind him. When he got a good ten or twelve yards ahead of the two human detectives, he felt a shock of cold wind and froze.

  He looked down.

  The floor looked stable enough, but he found himself walking carefully, moving more to the right side of the corridor, away from the side where Silverton’s office had been.

  “I think the whole fucking office is gone,” he called back, stepping forward carefully.

  He glanced up then, and saw stars reflected by the virtual ceiling projected inside the artificial dome of the New York Protected Area. Grimacing a little at the view of plants he could see through the openings in the roof, he realized he was looking up at the gardens he’d seen imaging of in the news feeds.

  “Sorry, Straven,” Nick muttered under his breath, referring to the famous designer and architect who’d made this building, and made it famous in t
he process.

  Nick only knew the name before today because the same person supposedly designed Phoenix Tower, where Ms. Lara St. Maarten lived––Nick’s sometimes sponsor, and Malek the seer’s sometimes roommate, sometimes leash-holder, and possible girlfriend, at least from what Nick could fathom.

  He’d never really wanted to ask, truthfully.

  He was still easing forward, moving slower now, gazing up through those holes in the ceiling, when––

  The floor dropped out from under him.

  Feeling himself fall, Nick leapt back in reflex, catching hold of a chunk of wall that more or less ended where the floor did. Pulling himself back, and finding firm floor to stand on, he used the wall to pull himself back a few more feet before looking behind him.

  “Okay,” he called. “I found the end. Whatever you do, don’t walk past where I am.”

  Jordan chuckled. “You fall off, Midnight?”

  Nick leaned over the edge of floor, still gripping a chunk of wall as he stared down the two or three missing floors below him.

  “More or less,” he muttered, frowning.

  He felt the humans approaching behind him, and held up a hand.

  “Don’t get much closer,” Nick warned. “I mean it. And stay on this side of the corridor. Don’t walk on the left side at all, if you can help it––”

  But Morley had upped the beam of his headset light, and was shining it into the space in front of Nick. He whistled, longer and louder than Jordan had earlier.

  “Damn,” he said, his voice full of wonder.

  Nick followed the course of the light.

  On the other side of the massive hole between floors, he saw the continuation of the corridor on the other side, and a blown-out window beyond that.

  Fixtures stuck out of the wall in areas, along with parts of desks, tables, more monitors, and what looked like an old-style painting, like the ones Malek did, only on actual canvas, not on the walls of a bombed-out church.