“But why risk it?” I asked. “Why would she want to destroy them so bad?”
“She doesn’t,” Kang spat. “She doesn’t give any more of a shit about the PSE than she does us.”
“Then why?”
“Deals are made, kid. We see new tech appear, new benefits, better standards of living, but behind closed doors, deals are made.”
“What kinds of deals?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped. “I don’t know who approached her first, but whatever she was promised, she went for it. If this gets out, it will be bad for everybody, but if we can just set things right, set things back on course, it will be okay. No one has to know.”
“But all those people ...”
“Sam, look around. You know how this is going to end. How easy was it for you to imagine they’d launched this biological attack against us? Even though it was Dragan, didn’t you wonder, just for a minute?”
I gritted my teeth, not wanting to admit I had.
“The way things are going, how long do you really think it will be before they do something like it, or worse? We can’t just sit back and hope it won’t happen—”
“But all those people, Kang. That’s kids, babies ...”
“I know.” He leaned close, looking about ready to crack. “That’s why we have to get that kid back. Do you get it now? None of that matters anymore. We can’t stop it. It’s happening. Now it’s just us or them. That’s the only choice we’ve got left.”
“And what about Dragan?”
“He saw everything, Sam. He’s not coming back.”
“Then I’m going to get him.”
“This is bigger than him. I know how much he means to you, but he’s just one guy. He’d tell you the same if he were here.”
“I’m going to get him.”
“You’ll never get in there, Sam, and you’d never get out alive if you did.”
“I’ll find the kid, and trade him.”
“There’s not going to be any trade. You have to give it up.”
“No! I want Dragan back, and I want my life back!”
I yelled that last part loud enough that people looked over again.
Kang slammed his fist down on the table, causing butts and ash to jump out of the ashtray.
“I’m through playing games,” he snapped. “I’m a dead man, do you hear me? Sillith doesn’t think we can stop it, so she’s going to make damned sure no one finds out what she did before it blows up right in the middle of Hangfei, but I’m not going to let that happen, goddamn it...I sacrificed everything to save this country, and this is all I’ve got left. Forget about Dragan. He’s gone, but you can still do the right thing. Where the hell is that Pan-Slav brat?”
There was desperation in his red eyes and I realized then that this was why he’d called me out there. This was why he’d made contact again. Dragan either wouldn’t or still couldn’t talk, and they didn’t have any way to find the boy. Sillith had given up on finding him and was trying to distance the haan, but Kang hadn’t given up. Not yet.
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Bullshit! Tell me where he is!”
“I don’t know!”
“Please,” he said, changing his tone suddenly. “Do you know where he is? If you do, tell me, please.”
“I don’t—” Kang reached across the table and grabbed a fistful of my tank top, dragging me halfway over.
“Hey!” the bartender snapped finally. “Easy, over there!” Kang didn’t let go.
“Get off,” I said, tugging loose. I pushed away from him, but he held on to my wrist. “Let go of me, asshole!”
“He’s dead already, Sam,” he pleaded. “I thought I could get him back, but I can’t. I can’t even save myself. You can’t let this happen...The burn will start the night of the festival...Our country will be left in ruins! We’re the only hope left for this damned world and we’ll be wiped out! We deserve to live, more than them. You have to—”
I jerked my arm away and started back toward the door, Kang knocking his stool over as he got to his feet and followed after me.
“Sam,” he said. “I swear if you walk out that door you’re dead. You can still do the right thing and walk away from this. Let me help you.”
“Screw you, Kang,” I muttered. There was a lump in my throat as I pushed open the bar door and stepped back out onto the sidewalk.
He was right behind me, swinging the door a little too hard in his drunkenness. He grabbed my arm and pulled.
“Hey!”
Before I could stop him he’d hauled me right up off the ground and pulled me into the narrow alley next to the bar. He slammed me up against the rough brick face, and held me there.
“Let me go!”
I kicked his shin, and stomped one heel down on his foot, but he held me fast, leaning against me and pressing his stubbly chin into my neck as he spoke in my ear.
“I don’t give a shit about them, you hear me?” he said. “Those barbarians deserve to die. All they contribute to this planet is violence. They suck up food, water, and air that other people, better people could be using. The world would be better off without them. Then the haan would have enough. Don’t you get it? They wouldn’t have to take so much from us. We could eat again. We could breathe again, and they’d be in our debt. The world would be better off without the PSE. You know it’s true.”
“I never said—”
“Just take me to wherever you’re hiding and give me what you’ve got. We’ll take it from there. You don’t have to ever know the details. Lijuan is on her way to Duongroi already, and I’ll make sure you get over the border in the morning, just in case. I—”
I blasted him with my knee. He twisted his leg at the last second, but I clipped his groin hard enough to make him let go. He staggered back, trying to stand up straight as I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled it down back over his shoulders until his elbows were pinned. While he was off balance, I shoved him forward as hard as I could and he went face-first into the wall.
“Goddamn it!” he grunted. He wasn’t carrying his gun, but there was a stunner clipped to his belt. I snatched it and squeezed the grip as he tried to push away, jamming the business end into his ribs. His eyes bugged out as the prongs made a rapid-fire popping sound, and then he pitched over on his side and went limp. Breathing hard, I tossed the stun gun down on the blacktop next to him where his cigarette pack had fallen from his shirt pocket. I took it and backed out of the alley. The people up and down the street were still boozing it up, laughing, and talking. None of them even looked over.
“Sorry, Kang.”
I stuffed the smokes into my pocket and headed back out to the street. A bottle rocket whistled high into the air and then popped as I pulled the mask back down and sprinted back to where they were working on the parade float.
Overhead, the silhouette of an aircar drifted past as I approached the gate, a cone of light shining down and sweeping the sidewalk back behind me on the lookout for trouble it had just missed.
~ * ~
Chapter Thirteen
09:53:21 BC
By the time I got back to Wei’s, dawn had begun to peter down through the neon haze, and the streets had thinned out as much as they ever did. Most of the derelicts from the night before had abandoned their spots on the old stoops and left behind bottles, butts, and crumpled paper bags. The sign for Wei’s buzzed, casting a feeble red glow onto the grungy landing as I climbed down to the heavy door.
Just as I grabbed the handle, the door flew open and some big dude knocked me back as he barged through. I went down on the concrete steps but he just blew right past, not even looking back as he hustled down the sidewalk.
“Excuse you, asshole!” I yelled after him.
I got back up and brushed off, then pulled open the door and headed inside. The lobby was empty, but I could hear voices down the hall, anxious voices that put me on edge. Something was up, a fight maybe. I wondered if the guy I’d just pas
sed hadn’t just robbed the place or something.
When I got to the corner, a woman in a miniskirt and heavy lipstick came scooting around to squeeze past me. Her eyes were streaked with mascara, and she carried her heels in one hand.
“Hey,” I called. “What’s going on?” She didn’t answer. She shoved open the door and took off.
Something was up. No cops yet, but they probably weren’t far off. We were going to have to make ourselves scarce before they got here or else ...
I rounded the corner and saw Wei’s foyer. The force field was down and the window on the other side had been blown in, the heavy glass splintered around a fist-sized hole. The metal mesh sandwiched between the layers had been pushed through the crater, and wire bristles ringed the hole.
I rushed over to Wei’s door, which hung open, the jamb splintered. Wei lay inside on his back next to a toppled stool.
“Wei!”
I kicked through the trash that had spilled from a waste bin and knelt down next to him, pushing the jiangshi mask back to hang behind my head. His right leg was snapped at the shin, and his nose was smashed flat. Blood had run down his neck and stained the collar of his shirt.
“Wei,” I whispered, leaning close to him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other opened a slit and I caught a gleam there. He was still breathing. The cords in his neck twitched as he swallowed.
“I didn’t...,” he rasped.
“Wei, what happened?”
He looked confused, like he wasn’t sure where he was. His eyes swam for second, then focused on me.
“When they ... took you ...,” he wheezed.
“Took me?”
“When they took ... you ... I...”
I realized then that he was talking about the meat farmers, all those years ago.
“I know, Wei,” I said. “I know. Just tell me what happened.”
“I looked ... for you ... for days ...”
“Never mind all that,” I said in his ear. “Who did this?”
“Soldier...”
“A soldier attacked you?”
He managed a nod.
“She’s gunning ... for you,” he whispered.
I glanced back through the open doorway and saw someone scoot past, headed for the front door. More voices shouted from somewhere down the hall, and then something crashed.
“Get out,” Wei said. “Quick.”
Damn it. I couldn’t tell if any of the voices belonged to Vamp or Nix.
“I can’t,” I told him. “Just don’t move. Stay still.”
He pawed with one hand, and I saw that his fingers had been broken. With his swollen, knobby index finger he pointed at the safe under his desk. The door was open a crack.
I pulled it open. Inside were stacks of documents, some paper money, and on the top shelf, sitting on top of a couple of ration sheets, was a small, snub-nosed pistol. I grabbed it. It felt light in my hand, but solid. The surface was worn and dull, like it was old. When I squeezed the grip, the holostamp that nickered into the air next to it showed twenty-two rounds.
“Go,” he said. “Get out of here.”
“I can’t, Wei.”
“She’ll kill you,” he said. “Don’t go back there.”
He coughed, spritzing blood as he tried to say something else, but I stopped him.
“Just lie still,” I told him. “Take it easy.”
“Wait,” he moaned.
Gun at the ready, I slipped back out through the door and sprinted down the hall. A guy sporting a bloody gash on his forehead ran past me headed the other way, and up ahead the body of a bald man lay facedown in a pool of blood. His soaked left sleeve hung to the floor, and a long red spatter led across the tiles to a severed, tattooed arm that lay amid overlapping sneaker tracks. Just past that, the door to our room hung open.
“She won’t come back,” I heard Vamp say from inside. “I told you, I already warned her. She’s long gone.”
“She isn’t,” a woman’s voice said. It was Sillith. I crept up and crouched next to the doorway, listening.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Vamp said. “Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
Don’t antagonize her, I pleaded silently. Vamp didn’t know what he was dealing with.
“She knows,” Sillith said.
I risked a quick peek and saw her standing with her back to the door. Vamp sat on the bed, the sheets still wadded up next to him, and Nix stood in the spot where he’d been sleeping when I left.
The combat armor would stop a handgun round. If I could put a shot into the dispersion mask, I should hit her in the face, which was probably unprotected, but that was a shot I wasn’t sure I could pull off.
“I know you’re there,” Sillith purred. “If you don’t come out, I will kill your male.”
I stood up and stepped into the doorway. Through the mite cluster, I felt satisfaction course just underneath her excitement over the promise of more violence.
“You really get a charge out of this, huh?” I asked her.
“Step into the room.”
I took a step forward, and as I did I saw Vamp slink off the bed and move in behind her. I opened my mouth to stop him, but it was too late. She turned, and Vamp threw a punch directly into the face of the dispersion mask.
“Vamp, don’t!”
His fist disappeared into the field, but I heard the thud and Sillith stumbled back a step as he threw a follow-up that caught her right in the face again, and she reeled.
She didn’t go down. The armor hummed as she swung the back of her fist at him. Vamp ducked as it swooped over his head, and he nailed her in the face again with a solid, meaty thud.
Even a human would have been thrown for a loop by a hit like that, but it should have been devastating to a haan. The armor, maybe combined with something like Nix’s inertial dampening field, might protect her body, but his fist connected hard. I felt the burst of signal, her surprise and pain, through the cluster. A strike like that should have shattered those delicate bones, but what I felt from her was more surprise than pain, fast turning to fury.
“Vamp!”
Nix moved toward her while her back was turned to him, and I saw something in his hand. It was the electronic wand he’d used to take his sample with the morning he showed up in my hotel room, only now he held it like a weapon. He swung it around, ready to stab her with it, but something, some invisible force, stopped his arm cold before he could land the blow. The needle-like prongs quivered an arm’s length away from her as the two struggled, and then Nix’s hand sprang open and the wand fell to the floor.
Without stepping away from Vamp, Sillith made a violent shrugging motion and something struck Nix. For just a second I swore I saw a hand, a haan hand whose long fingers were curled into claws as it thumped into the middle of his chest, but then it flickered and was gone.
What the...
Nix’s feet came up off the floor as he was hurled back toward me. His shoulder crashed into the lamp and sent pieces spinning across the floor after him. His body flew through the air and bashed into the wall next to the doorway so hard it broke the jamb. A slat of fake wood spun away as he caromed off and went down like a rag doll onto the floor.
Vamp was about to throw another punch when she turned back to him.
“Vamp, no! Get away from her!” I screamed.
He looked, and ducked down low when he saw me raise the pistol. Sillith reached down to grab him, and I squeezed the trigger.
I expected a single shot that I hoped would hit Sillith square in the head. Instead the gun let out three loud, overlapping bangs as it bucked in my hand. The first shot punched through the wall in front of her, but the next two got her, one in the shoulder and the other in the side of the neck. The armor absorbed the rounds, but they hurt her, I could feel it, and she stepped back from Vamp to face me instead.
I raised the gun again, ready for the recoil this time, when a sudden, crippling pain jabbed into my gut like the blade of a
long knife. I gasped and doubled over, the gun’s barrel drifting off target.
Not now....
My vision blurred as the pain came again, and the strength went out of my legs. I couldn’t breathe, and as I fell to my knees the gun slipped from my hand. It thumped onto the floor, and when I screwed my eyes up to look I saw Sillith’s armored boots clomping toward me.
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