The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

by Chris Strange

CHAPTER NINE

  “You know, you really don’t have to come with me,” I said. “I’m capable of buying Kemia on my own.”

  Vivian leaned against the steering wheel and threw me a look. “For the last time, Miles, if you’re spending my bloody money, I’m coming with you. Last time we left you alone you sent half the city’s lowlife scrambling to battle stations. You’re like a toddler with a machine gun.”

  I put a hand to my chest. “You know, words hurt, Vivian.”

  If she was about Tania’s age, she would have rolled her eyes—I could tell she was fighting the urge. As it was, she settled for a more cop-like scowl and peered out the window at the buildings across the street.

  The neighborhood looked worse than it really was. It was typical inner-city Bluegate: scores of identical, gray, four-story apartments crammed together in blocks. The footpaths outside were scattered with homeless Vei sitting on broken-down cardboard boxes and huddled in torn sleeping bags. Both Vei and humans lived in this area, but the Vei seemed to cop the worst of the poverty here.

  Many of the buildings’ windows had been broken at some point or other and patched up with sheets of plywood. Still, the gang presence here wasn’t too strong. Most of the residents were too poor to buy drugs, and it was hard to run a protection racket when no one had anything to protect. That was why my chemist had set up shop here.

  “Well if we’re going to do this, let’s do it,” I said, throwing open the door of Vivian’s car. It was a nice little hatchback, navy blue with a minimum of dings. It stood out here, but it could’ve been worse. She could’ve brought a squad car.

  A cold breeze cut down the street, and I buttoned up my suit jacket. It was still a little damp from the downpour, but it kept the worst of the cold out. Barely even winter and already the few trees on the street had been stripped of their leaves. I swore it was getting colder every year.

  Vivian got out of the car as well, locked it, and strode to me, her eyes moving up and down the street. Her posture was eerily perfect. It was like watching a Barbie doll walk. A Barbie doll who could kick my ass.

  “Christ,” I whispered. “Stop being such a cop.”

  She stopped searching the street for threats and fixed me with a glare instead.

  I pointed to her jacket. “Your gun’s poking out.”

  I strolled across the street before she could reply. She caught up with me on the opposite side of the road, outside a building that looked just the same as all the others, right in the middle of the block. One set of stairs led up to the front door, while another set disappeared below street level to a dark green door with four locks that were all much too expensive to belong to someone who lived on this street.

  Vivian peered down the stairs at the door, then threw one more suspicious glance around the street as if she expected someone to jump us. Hell, she was more agitated than me, and I was the one who’d spent all night getting guns shoved in his face.

  “This is stupid,” she said. “I can get you Kemia from the station. The sanctioned Tunnelers have a dispensary—”

  “I know about their dispensary. I’m not using that crap. It’s weak as rat piss. Spencer Davies is the best chemist in the city. All the freelancers use his Kemia.”

  She still looked dubious. “If he’s so good, why does he operate out of a hole in the ground?”

  I shrugged. “Holes make Spencer feel safe. Come on, and for the love of God play nice. If you spook him and he doesn’t want to deal with me anymore, I’m screwed.”

  She shot me another look that clearly suggested I was pushing it, but being the obtuse gentleman that I am, I chose to ignore it. Just because I was helping her didn’t mean I had to do it her way.

  I trotted down the stairs and rapped on the door three times: one long, two short. It was a code of sorts; it just happened to be a code that every freelance Tunneler in the city knew, along with a good portion of the general population. Spencer was a paranoid little Vei, but I’d tap out Camptown Races on his door and finish with an air guitar solo if that’s what it took to get his Kemia.

  There was a brief moment of silence, followed by some hushed scuffling, before a small rectangular window in the middle of the door slid open. Large, blue eyes stared out at me, their rims wrinkled and cast into shadow. “What?” the nervous voice snapped.

  I grinned, hoping my face wasn’t too bruised and gruesome-looking. “Hi Spencer. Can I come in?”

  Spencer Davies glared at me. It seemed to be the default expression for dealing with Miles Franco these days.

  “You got cash?” he asked.

  “Oodles of it.”

  He threw me one more glare, then slammed the window shut. I met Vivian’s eyes and jerked my head toward the door. “See. The best.”

  “Sorry if I don’t look convinced.” Her tone made me smile. I would have laughed if I wasn’t afraid it would make my lung collapse.

  Scraping and clicking came from the door’s multiple locks, and finally Spencer flung the door open. The reek of ammonia—and something that smelled like rotten cheese—wafted out from the pitch-black interior of the building, and I threw an arm across my mouth to keep from gagging.

  Vivian was slower. She started coughing like her soul was trying to claw its way out through her mouth and stumbled back from the door.

  That was Spencer’s cue to freak. He caught sight of her and yelped, the sound muffled by a flimsy dust mask he wore over his face. It wasn’t wide enough to cover his mouth, but it made a neat place for me to grab hold of and stop him from slamming the door in our faces.

  “Easy, Spencer,” I said, one arm slipping around his shoulders to keep him from moving. “She’s a friend.”

  He snapped his jaws at me and I let go of his mask before he could relieve me of any fingers. “She’s not my friend.”

  I kept my arm on his shoulders, praying that didn’t spook him too. He was wearing a white lab coat that was much too long for him, stretching all the way to his feet. I tried not to think of what toxins the chemist had managed to get on the thing.

  “Her name’s Vivian. Vivian, Spencer. Spencer, Vivian. There, now we’re all friends.”

  It wasn’t going to be enough for Spencer, I knew, but I wasn’t in the mood to put up with his nonsense. I’d send him a box of chocolates and a shiny new padlock for his door when all this was over, but for now I needed his help. I ushered him into his dark basement apartment, hands firm on his shoulders. “Business time. Let’s go.”

  Spencer continued to throw suspicious glances at Vivian, but he relaxed enough for me to let go and stop worrying he was going to try to knife her. He was a short Vei, his skin covered in purple liver spots. Even Vei got old, on Earth at least.

  Spencer shook my hands off his shoulders and hobbled through the darkness. The one window at the back of the room had been covered with newspaper, letting only a sliver of light in around the edges. The smell was even stronger in here, thick enough to taste even if I breathed through my mouth, and I found myself wishing for something nicer-smelling to put over my face instead. Sweaty gym socks, maybe.

  My knee slammed into the corner of something hard, sharp, and seemingly designed as some cruel torture device. I sucked in air—a bad move, I soon realized—and kept myself from screaming in front of Vivian. “Goddamn it, can’t you turn a light on?”

  “No light,” Spencer snapped. “It’ll deactivate the chemicals.”

  With my knee pounding, I couldn’t care less about the bloody chemicals. I forced myself back upright and felt Vivian’s hand come to rest on my back before jerking away again.

  “There you are,” she said. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

  I heard a door creak open, and a thin slit of red light appeared on the other side of the room, silhouetting Spencer’s thin body. “Hurry up then, if you’re coming.”

  Vivian grumbled something just below my threshold of hearing, and I couldn’t help but smile. I have to admit, I was getting a bit of a kick out of bringing her
here. Especially since she’d been so insistent on coming in the first place.

  Some days I really enjoyed being an asshole.

  I led Vivian to the back room, and Spencer shut the door behind us. The room was no bigger than the bathroom at a hamburger joint, all lit by a single red bulb in the center of the ceiling. Spencer flipped a switch, plunging the room into darkness, then another light flashed on, a normal white bulb this time.

  I blinked a few times, trying to hurry my eyes into readjusting to the light. The room had vinyl flooring and bare walls, with work benches around the edges. Another door led out the back, into Spencer’s apartment, presumably.

  I’d been to Spencer’s place hundreds of times, but I’d never been further than this room. The man could be keeping a family and a litter of German Shepherds back there and I wouldn’t have a clue.

  Still, Spencer was a friend, of sorts. Well, acquaintance. Business associate, maybe. All I knew was I liked Spencer, cantankerous old bastard that he was.

  “So what do you want?” Spencer ran his hands under a tap that was spewing more rust than water and wiped them on his lab coat. “I’m not giving you any more free samples.”

  Vivian gave me a sideways look, and I held up my hands. “Not necessary. I’ll take four bottles. I’ve got real, honest-to-God paper money this time.”

  “Yeah yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.” Spencer shuffled over to me—his knees had given out a couple of years ago—and squinted, looking me up and down. “You get into a fistfight with the Eight themselves?”

  “Not quite. John Andrews had his boys go to work on me.”

  Spencer’s eyes widened. He put an arm out to rest on the nearest worktable, and frowned at me. “John Andrews? You’re the one that’s stirring up everything? What’ve you got yourself mired in this time, Franco?”

  Everyone was so quick to assume all this was my fault. As if I hadn’t been minding my own business when this whole damn thing got dumped in my lap. Maybe I had a criminal face or something.

  Vivian seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d lowered her sleeve from over her mouth and nose, and now her lips were quirked upward in irritating fashion.

  “I’ll have you know,” I said, my voice loud with emphasis and perhaps a little anger, “I uncovered vital information on Bluegate’s drug trade. There’s some new drug on the way. Chroma. You heard of it?”

  Spencer shook his head, and his glance darted from me to Vivian. “This your doing?”

  Vivian said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Spencer frowned at us for a few seconds. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was scaring the old man, I could tell. He had enough paranoid delusions without fears of John Andrews kicking in his door looking for me. As long as we didn’t hang around, it didn’t have to come to that. Spencer had friends he could rely on to keep the gangsters off his back, which was good for me as well. If Andrews started threatening Spencer with his creepy claw hands, Spencer would squeal faster than a whore being slipped a hundred.

  Finally, he snapped out of his state. He pushed himself away from the table and tottered over to the large old fridge that sat humming in the corner. “What was it you wanted, then? Four?”

  “Make it five.” I jerked my thumb at Vivian. “She’s paying.”

  I flashed her a smile that broke on her scowl like waves on rock. Still, she didn’t say anything to disagree with me. I have to say, she was a good sport. I was starting to like her, beauty or no.

  Spencer bent over, holding his back, and peered into the fridge. “This batch is nearly out. Got some fresh Kemia out in the lab. Wait here.” He switched the light back to the red light and shuffled out the door back into the lab, closing the door behind him.

  “Is this really going to cost me a thousand dollars?” Vivian said as soon as he was gone.

  “Of course not. We’ll need other supplies for the trip, though. It’s essential for our survival that you buy me one of them new flat TVs.”

  She snorted and wandered away from me, glancing at the papers and notebooks scattered around the room. All of them were written in Spencer’s cramped handwriting, in a mix of English and Vei. She studied them as if she could read them, though the one I picked up was indecipherable even to me. Forever the cop.

  The red light gave the room an otherworldly look. I watched Vivian pick through the papers, reminded suddenly of the lights and dancing flesh I’d glimpsed at Andrews’ strip club. I thrust the thought aside before my face could betray me. She’d gut me here and leave Spencer to clean up the mess if she knew the image that flashed through my head.

  She wandered over to the refrigerator and put her hand on the door.

  “Christ,” I said. “Don’t you need a warrant to go rummaging around like that?”

  Apparently, she didn’t. Her face screwed up in a frown, and she made a noise. “Hmm.”

  “Hmm? Hmm what?”

  She reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Kemia. In the red light I couldn’t see the tinge of silver that was characteristic, but it still sparkled and shifted in a way that wasn’t natural for a liquid born of this world. She tossed it to me, and I caught it with both hands, careful not to spill any of the precious chemical.

  “The whole fridge is full of them,” she said.

  I frowned. “But then what was…”

  A loud bang came from behind me. The front door. Spencer.

  That slimy little son of a bitch.

  Vivian swooped past me like an avenging angel. Other cops, dumber cops, would have drawn their guns, but she didn’t. The expression on her face was neither anger or excitement. It was pure determination.

  She and her determination threw open the door to the lab without slowing and raced away, leaving me alone in the workroom.

  “Blood of the Eight,” I swore under my breath. “I don’t deserve this shit.”

  I raced after Vivian and Spencer, emerging into the lab just as Vivian ripped the front door open and tore out onto the street. That woman must have been half-cyborg or something. I ran through the lab as quickly as I dared, not wanting to collide with any deadly chemicals, and burst out into the sunlight, blinking and dazed.

  Goddamn it. Why the hell was Spencer running? I was going to have a hell of a time finding a new chemist if he got away. Or if Vivian caught him, for that matter. Either way, it was going to be a pain in the ass.

  I was already panting like an obese dog when I clambered up the stairs to the street and glanced around. Vivian was tearing down the street away from me, arms pumping and hair swept back like something out of a supermodel photo shoot, but where was Spencer?

  A white sedan at the end of the street roared to life, and I caught a glimpse of pale skin behind the wheel. The devious little bastard had jacked a car. So much for the goddamn cripple act.

  Rubber squealed against concrete, and the car slid away from the curb and headed back toward Vivian. I watched, barely able to breathe, as she skidded to a halt, drew her gun from under her jacket in one smooth motion, and aimed it at the car.

  Spencer didn’t take any notice. He looked to be barely in control of the vehicle, but he tore past Vivian without slowing, even when she squeezed off a shot into one of the front tires. The crack of the gunshot sent a handful of homeless Vei screaming and ducking for cover, but I had no time to worry about them.

  I don’t know what made me act. Spencer was driving toward me; he’d be passed me and gone in seconds. Maybe it was instinct, something animal-like, that made you give chase when someone ran. Maybe I was just angry, sick of this shit, wishing everything would go back to the way it had been.

  I was gripping something tightly in my hand. I hadn’t thought about it as I’d run, but now I looked down at the smooth glass bottle. The Kemia. I had Kemia again.

  Fuck them all. It was my turn.

  I uncorked the bottle with my teeth while I shoved my hand in my pocket to rummage through my coins. They were all differen
t denominations, to make for easier identification, and some were even foreign currencies.

  I didn’t have anything specific to change the car, so I had to rely on one of my favorite coins, a large one with several concentric circles carved into it. It was a simple probability manipulator. I fished it out of my pocket, started humming as I let controlled randomness fill my mind, and splashed Kemia over the coin.

  There were no flashes of light, no loud bangs. Just the awareness of a twisting in reality, and a dull black hole appearing where the center of the coin should be. I gripped the coin tight in my hands and pointed it toward the car hurtling past.

  If I was thinking clearly, and knew more about car engines, I could probably have devised a clean way to bring the car to a halt. There were a lot of moving parts in an engine, and there were a lot of things that could go wrong with them. But I did the first thing that came into my head.

  I made the tires blow out.

  The tire Vivian had shot went first, exploding in a burst of smoke and the smell of burnt rubber. The rim hit the road, squealing, and the car skidded for a moment before Spencer regained control.

  The other three tires went half a second later. The air was filled with horrible screeching, some from the wheels and some from Spencer. I caught a glimpse of fear on Spencer’s openmouthed face before the car flew by me, drifting slowly and inexorably sideways.

  I had just enough time to whisper, “Shit,” before the passenger side of the car slammed into a streetlight. The earth seemed to shudder beneath me, and the tortured sound of twisting metal filled my ears. Jesus Christ. That hadn’t been quite what I’d intended.

  The bonnet of the car had wrapped itself around the lamp post, and the windshield had cracked. A thin trail of smoke or steam wound out of the engine, and it continued to make sounds like a sick grandfather clock. Through the smoke I could make out Spencer’s silhouette, but I had no idea if he was injured. I hadn’t meant to do that much damage. I wanted to stop Spencer so we could find out what the hell was going on, not kill him. Christ, he was probably just running because he was afraid we’d brought gang troubles into his house. Such a stupid, paranoid Vei.

  I let the Pin Hole in the coin close, and the black hole faded to nothing. Kemia had made such an extreme change possible, but I still felt drained, my breath coming heavy.

  A hand grabbed my shoulder, and my heart jumped so high it nearly kicked out my back teeth. I spun around, but it was just Vivian. She’d holstered her gun, and now she was staring over my shoulder at the carnage. Her face was a little flushed, but somehow she was breathing almost normally. Me, I was still puffing and wheezing like I was on my deathbed.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, unable to speak. I realized I still had the cork to the Kemia bottle wedged between my teeth, so I recorked the bottle and slipped the coin back into my pocket.

  “Stay here,” Vivian said.

  “Nuts to that.”

  I followed her to the wreck. A few people in the surrounding apartments hung out of their windows, staring at us, but at least the road was devoid of traffic. I’d be worried about the cops showing up if Vivian wasn’t already here.

  Glass crunched underneath my shoes like ice. The air stunk of melted rubber and petrol, but it didn’t look like it was going to go up in flames. Even so, I was ready to bolt if I saw a spark; I’d seen enough action movies to expect an explosion at any second.

  I crept closer to the car, as if my steps would be just the thing to finish Spencer off. That was the last thing I needed. A groan came from inside the car, and my steps suddenly seemed ten times lighter. He wasn’t dead. There’s something uplifting about knowing you’re not going to get hit with a murder charge.

  We found Spencer still in the driver’s seat, miraculously unkilled despite failing to buckle his seatbelt and choosing a car that didn’t have an airbag. Not that he had much choice in this neighborhood.

  Vivian leaned against the passenger side window frame while I set about trying to pry open the driver’s door.

  “You injured, Spencer?” I asked.

  He rolled his head toward me, seemingly confused but coherent enough to glare at me. A nasty cut graced his forehead, but at least he wasn’t spurting blood from an open chest wound or anything.

  “Give me a hand with this door,” I said to Vivian. I jerked against it again but only succeeded in generating a crunching noise from the twisted frame.

  “In a minute. There’s no hurry. You don’t have any other pressing business, do you Mr. Davies?”

  “The Eight take you.”

  “Vivian,” I said. “Seriously, give me a hand here.”

  Spencer scowled and turned toward me. He was pinned in place by the steering wheel, keeping him from wiggling too far. “You tried to kill me! Fucking Tunneler.”

  “My bad. In my defense, you lied to me. I don’t react well when people lie to me.”

  “Oh yes, and you’re the epitome of virtue, are you? Get me out of here.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “Before we let you out,” Vivian said, “I’m going to need answers to a few questions.”

  I threw Vivian a look, but she ignored it. She wouldn’t really leave him there, would she? What the hell had happened to all her moral high ground bullshit?

  “No,” Spencer said.

  “No? You want us to leave you here? Do you think the police or the gangsters will find you first?”

  His face flicked through alternating expressions of fear and rage, so fast I wondered if she’d short-circuited his brain. Maybe it was possible; hell, I wasn’t a doctor.

  Finally, his face returned to a state of neutral anger, an expression I was beginning to find almost comfortable. It meant things were back to normal. “Get me out. Then I’ll talk.”

  Vivian shrugged. “Fine. But if you try to run again, I’ll have you in cuffs before you can sneeze. Then we’ll see how you like it down at the station.”

  “You’re a bastard, Franco,” Spencer said. “I always knew you’d bring trouble down on me one day.”

  I met Vivian’s eyes and grinned. “You know, I think he’s starting to like us.”