by Ren Warom
“It’s already on the table, as I’m sure you noticed,” she replies, generous with her scorn.
“Ah. No. Sorry, Ni.” Snapping on gloves, Bone strolls to the table and rubs a finger over the concentric, interlocking circles on the meat of the corpse’s right shoulder. “So, this is, what, number ten … eleven? I’ve lost count.”
“Twelve. Moron.”
He sneers, childish. “You ask Spaz about it like you promised? Because I’m tired of his insistence that I deal with these fucking things. This is the fifth one that’s cut into my time off-shift.”
Nia’s Uncle Spaz heads the Establishment, the Zone-based gang all other gangs in the Spires defer to. Nia and Bone exploit the connection in situations where Bone’s unusual friendship with Spaz yields no answers. This is one such situation. The first of the spiral corpses was brought to Bone’s lab four weeks ago, from the edges of Upper Mace. Spaz made it clear at that point, he wanted Bone to deal with any others found. It’s not the first time Bone’s handled fairly private gang business from out of his constituency, but it’s the most curious. Apart from the spiral tag, the bodies aren’t anything special; they’re only failed gang initiates executed in the normal fashion. Bone and Nia know what it has to be, a new gang, but Spaz refuses to confirm or deny.
“Yeah, I asked him.”
Bone raises both brows. “And?”
“Not a peep, just the same as the last time you tried asking,” she says. “Gang business, not mine, blah blah blah. He was definitely on edge though, way more so than usual.”
“I got the same impression. Intrigu …” Rising from his lungs in a dry, tickling wave, the cough takes over his whole body, immediately torquing his ribs to a hard knot of pain. He slams a mask to his face, struggling to stop, to breathe between paroxysms. Comes out of it with embarrassing slowness to find Nia’s eyes on him, cool and concerned and derisive. She’s always seen straight through him.
“Fuck me, Bone. That’s one hell of a cough,” she says. “You look shitty enough without getting sick. And you’re hungover. Again. That’s not going to help, especially not considering your beverage of choice.”
“And? Off-shift.”
She regards him in silence. He can’t bring himself to hold her gaze, stares instead at the intricate silver implanted around the curvature of her cheeks and eyes, trailing down her neck and into her scrubs. His narrow face reflects there, gaunt and unshaven. He looks like hell. He should probably stop drinking, but the drink shields him from far worse.
Relenting, as she always does, Nia touches his arm. “Are you okay to continue?”
He nods, wincing as the beginnings of a migraine rolls around his wrecked head. “I’m fine. Fine. Work is better than alone, and it’s not like I can sleep.”
He wants to talk to her, to tell her everything, tell how since Leif died, he’s been fighting this constant, crushing sensation of loss. It’s not grief. He hated Leif and Leif hated him. Leif was never a father; he was shackles, containment, control. His death should have signalled freedom; instead, Bone is coming unglued, losing the parameters by which he judges his existence. And then there are the dreams. Dreams of darkness, suffocation. Probably just a cheap, mental metaphor for a life under Leif’s thumb, but he’s scared to sleep, anyway, scared to face them. And too scared to share. Even with someone he knows will try to understand.
He yanks on his mask. Snaps viciously, “Scalpel.”
Nia fits the blade roughly into his unsteady grip. “Your skin matches our Doe here to perfection,” she informs him, acidic, taking his attitude personally and making him instantly guilty, because she deserves better than this and they both know it.
Disgusted by himself, as usual, he curls his lip. Cuts. Jerks back as gas hisses and thin, stinking liquid spurts up in a declining arc.
“Shit.”
“Not shit. Blood.” Nia swabs Bone’s nose, the movement oddly prim despite the cotton clasped in surgical tongs, the coolly amused amber gaze. “Seriously, though, you need to get help. Leif’s gone. You’re killing yourself by degrees and he’s not worth it. He never was.”
Bone’s eyes sting. He grips the scalpel hard in a shaking hand. Beads of fetid blood cling like oil to the blade. He watches one slide and topple from the edge as the scalpel trembles. The mirror-like glow of the scalpel. The flash of dropping blood disappearing into the gaping mess of his first incision. Too deep. Crooked. He can see the dappled rot of subcutaneous fat. The blue-white of bone. Can almost see the heart, still and silent under the ribs. Chambers filled with pools of gelatinous, putrid blood. What can he say? The equation should have been simple, life minus Leif equals peace; how it’s become this horrendous fucking mess, instead, is beyond his comprehension. All he wants is to be free of it. Light-headed, longing for the cool burn of a gas-malt, longing for a cigarette, Bone does the one thing that might get him through to that moment: his job.
“Where’s this one from?” he asks, knowing Nia will allow the subject change, even if she disagrees with it. In these rooms, she’s a professional first and his friend second.
“On our territory, for once. Precinct 17. The canal. They dredged him up this morning. Someone saw a foot in the reeds, turned out to be a whole cadaver. Unusual there, hence his delightful level of degradation.”
“Yeah, it is rather.” Bone frowns at the corpse, annoyed by its refusal to be simple. “Give me your prelims.”
“He’s not an initiate,” she says. “He’s established gang, which means he’s Canted Cross, but he’s been executed exactly the same as the failed initiates. Canted law for transgressors is exile to Spine Freak territory, weaponless. So, this is a great deal more serious than usual transgression, and it has to be connected to the Spiral.” Nia catches his eye. “Which proves we were right.”
“Shit.” A new gang means nothing but trouble, and some of these corpses have been young Spires lads, trying to become gang-folk. That never ends well. “Reckon he tried to switch affiliation and got caught? An attempted change of allegiance would constitute a more serious response.”
Nia looks down at the corpse, her half-sneer telling an epic tale of scorn and gang-etiquette drilled into her from birth, never quite lost. “An honourless death.”
“Precisely.”
“So why the canal of all places?”
Bone shrugs. “Beats me. Probably wasn’t killed there. Maybe someone played ‘chuck the corpse?’”
“What if he’s not Canted?” Nia says, offhand, busy staring at the corpse.
Bone’s horrified response turns into another prolonged coughing fit. When it stops he wheezes out, “You really want for a non-Canted to have been swanning about on Canted territory?”
“No.” She grabs the saw, thrusting it across the table. “But check the bolt-pattern, just to be sure. Not like we don’t have to empty him out and weigh his organs, anyway, might as well be thorough on all angles whilst we’re at it.”
He sighs and reaches for the saw, his hand trembling so violently, the fingers blur like fluttering wings. Ignoring Nia’s tut of disapproval, he applies the blade in a reckless arc, damned and damning. The clock counts out motes of time. Nia’s reproach forms a beacon that Bone ignores, just as she ignores the spray of rank blood painting his scrubs. The saw stutters to a halt. Lifting the sawn section, he exchanges it for his scalpel and severs away, dropping organs, heavy and liquid, into deep steel bowls. Looks into the empty cavity, poking latex-shod fingers up and down each rib shooting right of the spine—a collection of severed branches.
“Well, that’s sort of a relief.”
Nia’s eyebrows elevate. “Canted?”
“No doubt about it.” Bone feels around each nub of steel, counting them out.
Nia bites her lip. “A new gang means all types of shit may be gearing up to hit the fan.”
“Yup,” he says heavily, distracted. His gut is beginning to hurt. He needs that drink he wanted earlier. “So, what do we tell Spaz about this one?”
/> “Nothing,” Nia says, emphatic. “Not enough new intel to bother him with. We file a basic report, off record as required, and forget about it. Deal with any further corpses as quietly and cleanly as possible. Do our job—”
Loud, insistent bleeps from Bone’s call-alarm cut her off. He swears and snaps off his gloves with two sharp jerks, chucks them on the scalpel tray. His cell’s at home, so he goes for the office phone, dialling with impatient force.
“What?”
“Bone. I’m sorry, but you’re needed again.”
“I’m not on fucking call, Bellox. I’m off-shift until next Monday. Get that? Mon. Day. Canard’s your man till then. Call him.” He moves to slam down the receiver.
“Bone!” Almost a shout, an edge to it like glass, and Bone hesitates. “You’ve been personally requested. By Stark.”
“Stark? Fascinating. But he doesn’t cover my jurisdiction.”
“I know. Look, Bone, I really am sorry to do this, believe me, but Stark made it clear he needs you, right now, and he’ll go to GyreTech if he doesn’t get you, which I cannot bloody afford to deal with ever, frankly, so get moving. The tenements at Wharf End. There’s a blockade. You can’t miss it.”
Dial tone purrs in his ear. The receiver drops from his fingers and clatters to the desktop. It makes him jump. He peers out at Nia, her hands full of rotting liver.
“I have to go,” he tells her.
She nods. “Where’ve they called you?”
“Wharf End.”
“Wharf End? But that’s way past River Head, over the Sewer Estuary.”
“Way out of my turf, is what it is,” he mutters.
Nia’s hands tighten, sending rivulets of rotting fluids to spatter the shining white floor of the lab, a Braille of indifferent death. “Bad juju,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” Bone starts to peel out of his scrubs. “Real bad juju.”
Chapter 3
Tank exhaust whips the hair of a rat-faced child, slaps it into tails to match her face. Dressed in a tattered tee and filthy shorts, she should be freezing, yet she stands, blank as a brick, oblivious to all but the array of tanks and guards outside the dominating facade of the tenements. It’s obvious she’s a street kid, but she’s a bum note of scenery and her presence tightens Bone’s anxiety. His head is still pounding, a swiftly grabbed coffee having made no inroads towards curing his ailments. He’s so tired, his eyes are burning coals, searing the sockets.
From the rooftops, the sharp, gull-like cries of Broken Saints gangrunners echo about the street. They’re different from Canted calls, which are more like the chatter of starlings, but he understands neither. The girl does, though. She listens for a moment, head to one side, and then pelts for it, her speed in the snow extraordinary. He watches her go. Sunlight ripples, rendering her a dwindling streak of red against a dull, white expanse. When she’s gone, he scours the roofs, squinting, looking for the runners. They’re impossible to spot, so he walks forwards to the blockade, where a private snaps him a swift salute.
“Welcome to the circus, Mort Adams. CO Stark requested you join him corpse-side on arrival.”
Bone frowns. “Thanks.”
He hates official titles, prefers his Zone name: The Bone-Man. It’s a gang nickname, an honorific. He’s the only outsider to ever receive one. Bone was a joke when he was born, bad Mort humour. A gang name for a Mort’s son, it caused problems in the Zone when he started training. He had to work ten times harder to prove his worth, but it paid off in unexpected, often uncomfortable, ways––they’ve come to attach too much significance to his refusal to ornament his flesh. He’d tell them the truth, if they’d listen, but he doubts they’d believe him. They want it to be what they think it is. You can’t fight that sort of thinking, so he doesn’t try, merely quietly resents it.
Stumbling across rough ground, he enters the tenement, only to find himself blinded by darkness. Panic hits the same way it always does in this sort of sensory deprivation, and he all but screams the detective’s name, “Stark!”
“Bone? Here! Keep straight on. Follow the smell,” comes back, solid as a guiding rope.
Bone swallows the urge to run, and follows the voice because the smell is everywhere. Slowly, he adjusts to the dim light. There’s quiet scuffling in the corners. Rats, their fur heavily matted and grease-smeared. Fear snakes through his lower intestine and he hurries on, desperate to put them behind him. Comes to a door manned by a skinny Wharf Guard private, pale as fish guts.
Bone points. “Corpse?”
The boy nods, and Bone ducks through, cursing the cramped doorway. Inside, Stark waits for him, standing beside her, and Bone falters to a stop. Stares. Blood buzzes deep within his veins. Awe intermingles with the sensation of falling, and everything fades but her. Poised in a halo of angelic white light, she’s a slowly mottling statue, perfectly aligned. The tang of her rot is acrid and stings his eyes, making them water. He wipes a shaking hand across to clear his vision, needing to see her.
Her skin. It’s her skin. As pure and unmarred as his, bar the natural effects of decay. He almost refuses to believe it. There’s no one in the Spires like him, no one whose flesh is unmarked. No one else whose natural inclination to alter the self with mods of iron, steel, and silver, or multifarious genetic alterations has been stifled. He’s alone. Or at least, he thought he was because now there’s her. How ironic they should meet now, when their similarities can make no difference to his state.
Squat as a tank next to her alien beauty, Stark holds up a large glove-encased hand and gently strokes her slender arm.
“Ballerina Girl,” he says. The low timbre of his voice vibrates Bone’s eardrum to the point of discomfort.
Bone’s motionless. Fixated. He follows the long lines of her attenuated limbs in a caressing gaze and moves without thinking. Walks a slow circle about her, rising with exaggerated care over the system of ropes crossing the room, intricate as spider’s web. She’s perched delicately, gracefully even. Ethereal despite the rigid lines of restraining rope and the dappled gnaw of rats. Despite the brightening maroon blush of lividity speckling her lower body, and the animalistic rictus of her face. She’s a macabre artwork of flesh and rope.
Her body floats above the denuded toes of her right foot. The left soars in a high arc above and over her thrown-back head. Her arms, too, sweep back. Her naked body twists into a curve so extreme that, were she not held by that torturous formation of knots and pulleys, she would crumple. Her dilemma hits his chest full force. He’s overtaken with the urge to reach out and pluck her from the web, rescue her, even though the moment she might have been rescued is long since passed. But those ropes, they make him ache so far inside, he can’t pinpoint the location of that hurt with any accuracy.
He steps towards her, reflected in her blank eyes. Up close, the illusion of purity, of mod-free skin, is broken. He sees the scars where mods should be, the evidence––almost invisible to all but Morts and surgeons––of genetic tampering. Those tiny pucker marks by the eyes, the pinprick of white stipples in the irises, the body’s reaction to change. He’s halfway relieved, but his gut cramps in disappointment, too. Being alone is a burden, and Bone often wishes there existed the option of normality without modification, or that modification felt in any way normal to him after all these years of being denied his own. All he wants, all he ever wanted, is to feel normal.
“Ballerina Girl?” Bone digs in his pocket and snaps on gloves, focusing on the corpse, his job. “She’s labelled?”
Stark points to the inside of the leg suspended at a freakish angle above her head and Bone steps around to look. Tattooed in spidery writing, it tangles along her inner calf: BALLERINA GIRL.
“Any work you know?” Stark asks, intense with hope.
Bone reaches out and rubs his finger along. The writing stretches in flesh just beginning to slip. He traces the letters one by one. Delves deep into the repository of Zone scratch names and their accompanying styles stored in his
memory, registering only disappointment, frustration, and the beginnings of bewilderment.
“It’s not a style I’m immediately familiar with, no,” he says, slowly, thoughtful. He turns to Stark. “I’m betting her killer tagged her himself. In which case, with all these mods removed—which is probably her killer, as well—he’d most likely be a surgeon. I’m looking at a fairly impossible task, even with my somewhat larger list of Zone contacts. But I’m guessing you sort of knew that. So, why am I really here?”
“Because there are no mods, and I think that means something. I think it means you’re supposed to see it. And because Ballerina Girl makes three.”
The distant roar of the tanks’ exhaust momentarily dims. Bone turns back towards the creature floating centre stage and the precise machinery of her presentation. That elegant layout of hooks and pulleys holds the rope web unyieldingly taut, even to the weight of her sagging flesh. He looks beyond her at the whole room, realising it’s no longer slowly corroding ruins but a grotesque stage for the performance of Ballerina Girl.
A coat of deep red paint, daubed on in thick waves, disguises the walls and obliterates the narrow windows, bleeding onto the blackened plas-wood of the floor, into the mould-patched expanse of the ceiling, eradicating every trace of the room’s former function. Whatever perverse impulse has moved the hand of her killer, there’s explicit intent to it. The little light that may have penetrated this derelict capsule has been blotted. Instead four powerful, solar-fed spotlights are set into the far corners of the room, angled to highlight her perfect, unreal curves and mask-like face. Simple. Pre-planned. Perfectly executed.
Tension coils through Bone in a slow, sick spiral. He’s seen more than he cares to recall, but nothing so careful as this, so deliberated. No one in the Spires cares enough to put this much thought behind slaughter. Violence here is a reflex; effortless as the countless movements a body undertakes in order to function. Ballerina Girl represents a calculated act of destruction, art as opposed to aftermath. And there have been two more like her. Three aberrant artworks, now his to interpret. But how does he begin to interpret this? Bone rubs at arms stippled with reaction.