Fade to Black

by Nyx Smith

  Come're?

  Where ... ?

  Then, he felt her moving, maybe rising onto one elbow lowering herself onto his chest. The feel of her body descending onto his inspired him to a not-so-subtle excitement. They had just made love like that, her on top, he on the bottom. He guessed she wanted to do it again. With her, he'd do it forever.

  "Monk?" she said softly, her face just a breath away her hair showering down all around them. "Do you like me?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Would you like to be with me always?"

  "Sure."

  "I'm glad." Her lips brushed his cheek. "You're so booty. And it doesn't always work right unless you want it."

  "Huh?"

  "Breathe with me, silly. That'll make you."

  "Make me wha ... ?"

  Her mouth closed over his. She exhaled, long and deeply. So long and so deeply that when it came time for him to breathe, he simply inhaled her air, her breath. They did that a couple of times. It was wild and kind of sexy and the excitement it inspired in him made Monk want to go on breathing like that forever.

  It made him want other things, too. He began running his hands up and down her sides and over her slender back, down over her behind, then up and over the back of her head and through her lavish hair.

  They got it together, their separate parts. Minx began shifting back and forth, making it work. She kept her mouth on his throughout. The harder and faster they moved, the harder they breathed, passing the same breath back and forth, back and forth.

  By the time it ended, Monk felt dizzy-dizzy with excitement, and dizzy with something that seemed like love.

  The room actually seemed to be spinning, turning around and around and tilting wildly back and forth.

  The darkness took on a reddish glow, as if the sun were returning from night to twilight, and then to the last fiery radiance of sunset. Minx laughed and her laughter echoed. She smiled and her eyes seemed to gleam a fiery red. Her whole body had a crimson hue. Everything did.

  Grinning, Minx leaned down into his face, till their noses touched, and she crooned, "I made you."

  "Made you, made you," her voice echoed.

  "Huh ... ?" Monk said.

  "Huh... ? huh... ?" his voice echoed.

  "Come on! come on! come on!" Minx said. "Let's go! let's go! let's go!"

  "Go where? go where? go where?"

  Minx laughed and laughed and laughed. She tugged him up by his arms. The floor tilted downward, then upward, then back and forth and up and down. Minx grabbed him around the waist and tugged him forward, pitching forward down the slope of the floor, then staggering up, up the slope of the floor. A cacophony of raucous voices and uproarious laughter echoed and resounded. Leering, red-hued faces streamed toward him from out of nowhere, only to vanish right in front of his nose.. Minx forced him to run headlong down a flight of stairs, then dragged him stumbling up and down a long, red-hued passage.

  "Hurry! hurry! hurry!" Minx said. "Monk! Monk! Monk! It's time! it's time! it's time!"

  A metal door slammed open above them.

  Minx dragged him up, up and out through the door, then down more stairs and onto the broad, red-hued pavement of a four-lane transitway.

  Suddenly, everything seemed normal, just red, except for the fact that the transitway was empty of traffic.

  Monk looked to his left and saw a MediVan with flashing strobes and glaring headlights bearing down on him from maybe two meters away. He opened his mouth to scream, but didn't quite make it Someone jerked him back off his feet-right off the ground-and set him down again a good two or three meters away from where he had been, but now facing in the opposite direction.

  Something shrieked shrilly.

  "Monk, quick! "

  The MediVan door was open. Minx all but shoved him through, up the step and onto the seat. The driver looked human but skeletally thin, like death. The two orks in the rear had huge, savage tusks. When they smiled, their eyes gleamed a fiery red.

  Minx shoved onto the seat beside him.

  Tires screamed, the MediVan roared ahead.

  "Hear about the wreck on the skyway?" shouted one of the orks in the rear. "Guy jumped the divider, hit seven cars, decapitated fifteen people before his tires ever touched the ground! Slammed into an oxygen tanker and incinerated himself and a buncha other cars! They still don't know what he was driving!"

  Minx bent almost double with laughter.

  The MediVan shot down a narrow tunnel and into the burning red glow of the night. A man crossing the street directly in front of them dove toward the sidewalk. His briefcase bounced on the MediVan's front hood, then struck the front windshield and split wide open. Hardcopy and comp disks whipped across the windshield and vanished. The MediVan's siren began whooping and wailing.

  "Boner!" the driver shouted.

  He grinned, eyes glaring red.

  Monk looked at Minx as she grabbed his head and tugged him into a kiss, her breath gushing into his mouth hot and wet, her hand thrusting down and squeezing his groin.

  "So booty!" she cried.

  The night filled with flashing stroboscopic lights of red and near-red. The MediVan screamed to a halt.

  Minx thrust a reddish MediVan jacket around the back of Monk's shoulders, pulled one on herself, and tugged him out of the van.

  Cars and bodies littered the roadway. Gunfire stammered and roared. "This one!" Minx exclaimed, tugging Monk around in a circle. She thrust him right at the sprawled body of a woman, a very large woman in clinging reddish clothes. "Now! Do it now!"

  "What ... ?"

  She thrust him down, his head to the woman's, his mouth to the woman's mouth, and then with two fingers clamped his nostrils shut. Monk grunted in surprise, abruptly exhaling-just once.

  Maybe that was the wrong thing to do.

  "No, Monk! No!" Minx exclaimed. "Not like that!"

  Abruptly, the woman jerked and stiffened beneath him and her eyes flared open wide, glaring a fiery scarlet-red.

  "Oh, drek!" Minx cried.

  The woman began clawing Monk's face. She moaned louder and louder, like a creature risen from the grave and bent on exacting a terrible vengeance.

  "FIEND!" Mink shrieked.

  Monk stared, wide-eyed, till suddenly Minx was tugging him back, right onto his feet.

  "TOO LATE! RUN, MONK, RUN!"

  They ran. They ran across the width of the street-dodging around smashed cars, jumping over bodies-and in through a doorway and up a flight of stairs. Monk glanced back only once. The woman he had breathed into was up on her feet and staggering around. She grabbed some slag in reddish camos and tore his eyes right out of his head.

  Monk opened his mouth and screamed.

  The slag screamed, too.

  A door slammed open. Monk pitched forward through the doorway. The door slammed again to his rear as he tumbled to the floor, onto his back. In some little, one-room apartment Panting, gasping, thrusting back her hair and groaning, "Oh godddddd ... ," Minx knelt down beside him and laid her head on his chest.

  "That was the wrong thing to do, you little booty," Minx said, catching her breath. "She must've been dead already."

  Monk gaped, panting. "Dead?"

  Abruptly, Minx's hands were moving gently all over his face, and she gazed down at him with a red-hued look of genuine affection. "Oh, Monkie ... are you tired?" she crooned. "You must be tired. Like you're drained or something."

  Now that she mentioned it...

  "Come're," she murmured. She pressed her mouth down over his, and exhaled. Monk felt his whole body tingle with excitement. When she did it again, breathed into his mouth again, he inhaled deeply. It was sexy and wild and it made him feel like, like ... Like sex. Better than sex.

  Later, when they were lying nude in each other's arms, Minx whispered, "Are you still hungry?"

  Monk thought about that. "I'm not sure."

  Minx smiled and snuggled close. "You're so booty."

  "You're all red," Monk said. "E
verything's red."

  Minx giggled. "Of course."

  26

  The door from the alley led into a narrow hallway that ended at a squarish room crowded with artifacts: chairs, a couch, kitchen appliances, trideo, simsense gear, bookdisks, chips, several cyberdecks, and what looked like the scattered components for several more cyberdecks. Bandit had no particular interest in any of this. He investigated further. A small room off to the left turned out to be a lavatory. A third room looked like a bedroom.

  The character of the bedroom stood out. Life glimmered here, though faintly. The spiritual essence of the world seemed to matter here. This room must be investigated further.

  Bandit returned to his body.

  "Okay?" Rico asked from the front of the van.

  "Yes," Bandit said. "Interesting."

  "You didn't see anything dangerous?"

  "Not likely."

  Back from his brief trip onto the astral, Bandit sat cross-legged in the rear of Thorvin's van, amid a clutter of tools and spare parts. He waited while Rico gave instructions to the rest of the group. This deep into Sector 6, Little Asia, they were probably safe, thanks to Piper's connections, but they would take no unnecessary chances. Dok and Filly would stay on guard here in the van. Everyone else would take a squat, go into the small apartment Bandit had scouted and shack out.

  Bandit followed Rico and Piper, Shank, Thorvin, Surikov, and Marena Farris out of the van, across the alley, and into the cluttered apartment.

  "You sure this is okay?" Rico said.

  "I'm sure," Piper replied. "The slag who lived here caught big-time feedback. The rent's paid till the end of the month."

  "Who's the slag?"

  "Someone I know from the Irons."

  Farris and Surikov took seats at opposite ends of the couch. Shank paused, watching them. Bandit stepped into the bedroom.

  The air smelled of incense. The walls had been painted to look like a forest. A few plants, dried and nearly withered, sat in colored pots. Figurines and shiny trinkets decorated the chest of drawers, the bureau, and the small table in one corner, along with a few animal pelts and bones, vials of crystals, and a small drum. A pair of sleeping bags lay on the floor under a veil of mosquito netting. Beneath the pillows at the head-end of the sleeping bags lay a small cache of drugs, feel-good stuff, illegal, and a book, The Shamanic Tradition, by Arthur Garrett, Department of Occult Studies, U.C.L.A.

  None of this had any real value. Bandit flipped through the book by Garrett, just curious, then dropped it onto the sleeping bags. The character of the room suggested a medicine lodge, where a shaman might do long magic, but that impression was apparently a lie.

  The book by Garrett as much as proved it.

  Fluffy stuff, very philosophical.

  The real surprise came from the closet. Bandit assensed something there, something hinting of power.

  He found an open black plastic case that was just under a meter long. Inside was a flute, a big one, apparently carved out of wood and ornamented with shamanic symbols. Bandit ran his fingers lightly over the wood. On the astral plane the flute was a living entity-visible and real-alive. Softly radiant with energy.

  Like a focus, a weak one, only recently made.

  Odd ...

  The flute seemed to call to him, as if from across a great distance, faintly, so faintly, like some part of himself that he had forgotten long ago.

  He wondered ...

  He considered the sword hanging from his belt. He had carried it a long time. When he was younger and less skilled in the ways of Raccoon, he had sometimes needed the sword to defend himself, but he had not used it in years. He would probably never use it again. He had come to understand that such violence as a sword might do was not compatible with the ways of Raccoon. Maybe it was time he gave up this part of himself completely. Maybe he should leave the sword in exchange for this flute, which somehow seemed representative of an older part of himself, his life, his being, and a part more important now.

  No question it would be a fair exchange.

  "You're making a mistake," Farris said.

  "Naturally, you would say that," Surikov replied.

  "This won't work out as you think."

  "Why should that bother you?"

  "Ansell, you know I have only your best interests in mind. I still care about what happens to you."

  "I should believe that? After all that's happened?"

  "Yes, yes, you should. I was wrong, I know that now. I'm sorry. I was afraid, deathly afraid. I know that's no excuse, but can you really hold it against me? What would you have thought in my position? I'd been taken from my room in the middle of. the night by people I didn't even know. People with guns. I knew you were angry with me. I knew you blamed me. What else could I have thought?"

  "You really thought I wanted you killed?"

  "I know that's not very rational. I wasn't thinking very rationally at the time. Maybe I wasn't thinking at all. I don't know. I'm just afraid that you're making the same mistake, that you aren't thinking. You feel you've been betrayed, not just by me. You're full of anger. Maybe you feel that going to Prometheus Engineering will be a kind of revenge ..."

  Surikov shook his head. "That's not it at all."

  "Darling, how can you be so sure? You've been with Fuchi all your life. I know you haven't always gotten everything you wanted, but you were happy. For a time, you were very happy. If you could just put aside your anger, you'd see that you weren't happy at Maas Intertech for the same reasons that you won't be happy at Prometheus Engineering."

  "So I should return with you to Fuchi? You must be mad."

  Shank grunted and took a seat on the floor, then leaned back against the wall beside the hallway leading in from the alley door. Marena Farris didn't miss much. Ever since trying to waste Surikov, the exotic-looking biff had spent every available minute trying to persuade the slag to go back to Fuchi. She had a one-track mind, and she was smart. No matter what Surikov said, she found some way to twist it around and turn it into a reason why Surikov should return to the Black Towers. This far along, it was starting to grate. Shank had heard enough of Fuchi already.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He'd been slightly more than a day without any sleep.

  No big deal. He'd gone a lot longer than that in Bogota and Panama City, some years ago. The smart soldier knew to grab a few zees any time he had the chance.

  Not enough furniture to go around, but Shank didn't mind the floor. A carpeted floor was a lot better than a bug-infested hole in the ground ...

  Now if Marena Farris would just shut up ...

  The worst of it was that their situation would probably improve if Farris got things her way. Thorvin had spotted the Executive Action Brigade coming after their asses in North Caldwell, Sector 20, and Rico suspected that the E.A.B. had been hired as their backup and that Fuchi had done the hiring, maybe through L. Kahn. If Fuchi got what they wanted, they might be content to let bygones go by, call off the backup, and forget it.

  If not... Well...

  There'd be plenty of time to catch up on sleep when it ended, whichever way things ended.

  "I want you to stay with Farris."

  Piper ran her hands up over Rico's chest to his shoulders, then leaned her head against his chin, his neck. "What if something goes wrong?" she said, softly. "You might need help."

  "You're a decker. Not a cutter."

  "I can shoot."

  "If things go that wrong, one more gun won't make any difference. And I need you to watch Farris anyway."

  "She's not going anywhere."

  "That's the point. She's our responsibility."

  Of course he would feel that way. Piper decided not to argue. She knew less about guns and fighting and had less experience with either than anyone on the team. That made her the obvious choice to keep watch on Marena Farris.

  Rico and the rest of the team were ready within an hour, suited up, weapons checked, and heading out to the van.
Rico put a pair of cuffs on Marena Farris' wrists and another pair on her ankles. "That's so you don't get into any trouble," he explained.

  "Please don't go through with this," Farris said. "This meet. It won't work."

  Rico hesitated a moment, then said, "It's already done."

  Piper followed him to the alley door, there for one last embrace. "Be careful, jefe," she murmured.

  "Always," Rico replied.

  Once he had gone, Piper had nothing to do but sit in one of the armchairs and wait and worry. She held an Ares Special Service, but doubted she would need it. In all likelihood, no one would be coming to rescue Marena Farris, and Farris didn't seem like the type to try and break free on her own. This only emphasized Piper's feelings of uselessness. Tonight's meet had no need for a decker. She could jack in and monitor police activity, but the police, as usual, would probably prove to be irrelevant. She could try and infiltrate the Prometheus mainframes, in case Prometheus tried a double-cross, but the chances of her learning about that from the matrix seemed close to nil. Corps kept records on almost every aspect of existence, but documents on any illegal or quasi-legal operations were likely to be hidden away in Code Red datastores, or in some node isolated from the corporation's mainframes.

  About the only thing she could do was pray, ask the kami to be kind. Before she could decide where to start, Marena Farris said, "I know you must mistrust me, but I want you to know that I'm grateful for the way you've treated me."

  Piper felt a twinge or irritation. It was hard to look at Farris and not feel something like that. The woman appeared every bit the swank corporate whore, sophisticated and yet slutty. Impossibly over-developed. "I don't need your gratitude."

  "I've often heard stories that make runners seem like wanton criminals," Farris said. "I know that some are brutal killers. That's obviously not the case with you and your people."

  "Why are you talking like we've done you some big favor?"

  "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

  "What does that matter to me?"

  "It could matter a great deal, depending on how things go."

  "What things?"

  "The meeting tonight with Prometheus."

  "What do you know about it?"