Ghost Black

by Matthew S. Cox

「Lady Black.」

  「Aon.」 Risa offered a head-bow. Nice hair. Got tired of it straight and loose?」

  「Change be good, girl. An’ see ay not d’ only one ta think et. Dem eyes look good.」 He flashed a blinding smile, disappearing for an instant as an overweight man rushed through him. 「What’cha need? Ay got some new Usagi-6; ay ’member ye be fond o’ it.」

  Risa drifted over to the left wall. 「Information.」

  His eyebrows rose. 「Again? Always wit da’ information. P’raps ay ought’a be chargin’ for it dis time.」

  「Lunch on me? Wasabi Dragon?」

  「Alright. Twenty minutes?」

  Risa hurried across a packed intersection where two streets met; the corners had been mined out to make room for two ramen bars, a porn shop, and a sandwich place. 「On my way.」

  Aon’s virtual body dissipated. She plotted a route to the sushi place, which appeared in her vision like a trail of glimmering gold pixie dust. On the stairs down to Tier 2, she found herself stuck behind four twentysomethings with nowhere to be and all day to get there. Of the two girls, one looked like a neko: cybernetic cat ears, long furry tail the same shade of iridescent purple as her hair, and not a scrap of clothing. Her friends, as well as people walking the other way, paid little notice to her exhibitionism. The tail swished in a lazy side-to-side gesture while the group meandered down a step at a time, seeming to go even slower the more Risa wanted to hurry up.

  Miss Kitty and a short man on the far left giggled at something the other woman muttered. The other girl disappeared in a sea of black: long shirt, combat boots, lacy skirt over black leggings, and dark hair.

  Risa stuck her arm between the catgirl and the doom princess. “Excuse me; gotta be somewhere.”

  When they glanced at her, the innocence in the purple-haired woman’s face shifted in an instant to venom. A second after Risa forced her way past the group, the neko held her hands up and sprouted thin metal claws from her fingertips, the cheap version of Risa’s. A pink gemstone heart dangled from a blue choker made to look like a cat’s collar.

  “You got a problem, bitch?”

  Risa glanced back, raised an eyebrow, and turned to face her. “Oh how cute. Kitty’s got claws.” She raised her hands, and popped hers. Transparent Nano caught the overhead lighting, and glowed pale blue.

  “Whoa…” The white haired guy on the far left took a step back. “Uhh, Tam…”

  “Bring it!” Miss Kitty snarled, baring fangs; her tail fur fluffed.

  The other guy, a Marsborn with straight black hair down to his butt, put a hand on the neko girl’s shoulder. Narrow silver lettering on his black shirt read: ‘Mars Academy of Engineering - Arcadia.’ “Tam, don’t… them shits are Nano.”

  “This takes ‘cat fight’ to a whole new level,” said the doom princess, in a dry tone. She fumbled with a tiny skull-shaped purse. “Hang on you two. I need to get this on video. Can I interview you after you kill my roommate?”

  Risa glanced at the young woman. Friends like these…

  Tam’s tail thrashed back and forth. She glanced at Risa’s claws, a good inch and a half longer than her plain plastisteel ones, and shrank back. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, darn. I was hoping for some uberviolence.” Doom sighed and put her NetMini back in the purse.

  The short man gave her a ‘please don’t kill us’ stare. Risa retracted her claws, shook her head, and dashed down the steps to the second tier. Wasabi Dragon, according to her navigation app, was eight tenths of a mile away. After sprinting across The Strand, this is easy. She ran in the most direct path, dodging pedestrians, vendors, beggars, pickpockets, two street vendors selling cheap shit for tourists, and one man in a bright yellow robe offering the ‘word’ of the Church of New Mars.

  Her final left turn put her on a street wide enough to have an island down the center with benches and plastic trees. Five buildings away on the left, she spotted the familiar round door painted to look like gold and carved with giant Kanji her headware translated to ‘Wasabi Dragon.’ Asian dragons, holographic ghosts as big around as a man’s arm, swam about in the adjacent bay window making it look like an aquarium out of the Monwyn franchise. Despite her reason for going there, the sight of the place got her hungry.

  As soon as she walked up to it, the portal emitted a subdued gong noise and rolled aside, into the wall away from the window. Aon, already in the waiting area, stood from a chair and smiled. In the dark room, his eyes shone like flashlights set into a powerful face that grew broader toward the jaw. He met her by a podium, behind which waited a young woman in a pink T-shirt bearing a cartoon kitten wielding two katanas.

  “Sorry. Got stuck in traffic.” Risa blinked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your visor before.”

  He patted his coat pocket. “Oh, I still got de t’ing. Seem rude ta’ wear it in ’ere.”

  They followed the woman to a booth table, and sat facing each other.

  “So,” asked Aon. “What sort o’ ‘information’ ye be needin’ this time?”

  “I need to find Lars Staanek.”

  Aon brushed his fingertips over his chin a few times. “I ’ave ’eard the name. Most ay talk wit’ t’ink he be a fixer with a vendetta, but ’e been ’round ’ere a long time. Dis is new business.”

  “Yeah.” Risa grumbled, waving her hand to flick the pages of a holographic menu. She poked her finger at it, selecting a basic ‘sashimi lunch.’ “I need to find him.”

  “Bad blood?” Aon ordered something, evidenced by his menu chirping.

  “The worst. You remember Genevieve?”

  “Aye. You tell me ’bout her couple o’ times. Damn shame.”

  Anything I tell him will be all over the Martian underworld in an hour. “I traced it back to this guy.”

  Aon pursed his lips with a scolding headshake. “Now, I t’ought ye say you no assassin.”

  They both fell silent and leaned back from the table as a waiter set a teapot, two cups, and heated towels in front of them.

  Risa wiped her hands, then dropped the steaming cloth near the edge of the table. “Assassins get paid.”

  “Fair point. De man is a shadow. De people I associate wit’ aren’t de kind to trust a man goin’ about t’ings de way he’s going about dem. Ay know he been trowin’ money ’round, lookin’ for t’ugs to take a pass at you. ’E ain’t serious. Not wit’ dat kind o’ money, an’ not offerin’ it ta dat kind o’ muscle.”

  The waiter returned with two bowls of miso soup, set them on the table, and left.

  “You’re right. He has been around awhile. Long enough to arrange for a bad detonator. That’s what this is about. Do you know where he is?”

  “I maybe can find out, but I do not know.” For a big man, he handled the spoon with the delicacy of a debutante.

  Risa called Tamashī again, while sipping soup. 「Another quick favor. Can you get into the Elysium municipal archives? I need citycams from about three months ago.」 She sent a nav pin of the approximate area where gangers trying to collect Lars’s bounty had tried to abduct her by threatening to kill Chaia.

  「Looking…」 Tamashī leaned her head far to the right, held it there for a second, and bobbed it all the way left. 「Looking.」 She repeated the side-to-side gesture like a living progress bar.

  “You plannin’ a short meetin’ with this man if you find him, yes?” Aon smiled.

  “As short as I can make it.” Risa slid the empty bowl over by the used towel.

  The waiter returned and set a long rectangular plate in front of her with six sushi pieces and a sliced-up maki roll. In front of Aon, he placed a bowl of soup almost large enough for Kree to take a bath in, and added a tiny plate with two fried tempura shrimp.

  Aon stirred it, lifted udon noodles from the broth, and let them back down. “I should let dis sit a moment. Too hot.”

  「Got something,」 said virtual Tamashī.

  Risa glanced at the hacker. 「You’re looking for a gang bitc
h holding a gun on Chaia.」

  「Who?」 asked Tamashī.

  「The creepy kid that got upset when you thought she was a doll.」 Risa swiped her chopstick at the wasabi without looking and dipped a piece of tuna sushi in soy sauce. She stuffed it in her mouth, chewed twice, and a fiery flare blasted out her nostrils, watering her eyes and making her cough. Damn, too much!

  Aon chuckled. “Ay t’ought ya come ’ere alla time?”

  “I do.” She covered her mouth long enough to finish chewing and wiped her face. “Too much wasabi.”

  He shrugged. “When they name the place after it, you gotta expect it.”

  「Score,」 yelled Tamashī. Three ten-inch boxes appeared with images. Her friend had found a perfect shot of them a little while before Risa got there, as they forced the girl to walk to the ambush point. 「How’s this?」

  「Great… Dammit, how does no one notice three thugs abducting a girl with her hands tied behind her back? They walked right across the damn mall and no one got in their way.」

  “You seem distracted,” said Aon. “What be on ya mind?”

  “Call.” Risa tapped her head. “Got a friend trying to help me find this guy too.”

  He nodded.

  Tamashī shrugged. 「No idea. Maybe because she looks so calm.」

  「Thanks. I’ll try to get over soon.」 Risa thought about smiling at Tamashī; her NIU animated it on the far end.

  The hacker waved and hung up.

  Risa slid her NetMini off her belt, pulled up the best image cap of the female gang thug, the only one who’d survived the encounter, and shifted from ‘onscreen’ to ‘hologram.’ “How about her? Any idea who this is?”

  “Hmm.” He reached across the table, cradled her hand in his, and pulled it closer. Steam from his soup shimmered in the hologram and coalesced as fog on the NetMini’s black screen. “Think I’ve seen that one ’round. She buy Sylph sometimes, smileys too. Far as I know, she goes by Alys. I believe she run wit’ da Nines. Smart girl, avoid de Nightcandy an’ Zoom.”

  “Not too smart. Know where I can find her?”

  He flashed his blinding grin. “Of course.” The steady amber glow in his eyes fluctuated for a fraction of a second, and her NetMini vibrated. “At night, anywhere on the surface lookin’ for a scrap wit’ SecSpiders or Titans. Right about now? Follow de nav pin. She loiters on Tier 5. De Nines got de name from chems or booze. Dey’re always ‘to de nines.’”

  “Great. Bottom feeders living on the bottom.” Risa sighed. “That’s going to be a great place to go after eating raw fish.”

  “You could get it to go.” Aon winked.

  Risa clamped her chopsticks around a piece of spicy tuna maki, brought it to her mouth, and paused. “I’ll hold my breath. I hear this stuff doesn’t keep well.”

  The nav pin Aon provided led Risa five stories below the surface. Expansion downward from Elysium had initially started as a failsafe. When the city had been planned out, faith in the technology for a dome that large had been weak. For years, all citizens had been forced to drill and practice a rapid evacuation underground in the event of catastrophe. As luck would have it, the dome held. These days, terraforming made the odds of a serious incident minimal. Air in this region of Mars was close enough to Earth to allow a person to last a few hours without breathing apparatus. Plenty of time to head down in the event the dome failed. Tunnels existed deeper than Tier 5, though they’d never been finished off. Perhaps if the SPEE (Secundus, Primus, Elysium Express) tunnel had made it all the way south, they would have.

  Risa’s nerves vibrated with anxiety as she moved among tiny dwellings lining the sides of a cramped passage. Tarnished plastisteel panels, quite stark in contrast to the hospital sterility of Tier 1, hid behind piles of shipping cartons, old furniture, and scorch marks.

  Someone’s got missiles down here? She walked faster. In the middle of the day, most of the unfortunates who lived this deep worked on the surface at menial jobs, or slept off the night before. A shadow moved, watching her. The turn of her head that so often sent threats in the other direction had no effect. No glowing purple eyes, no outward clue she was more trouble than she’d be worth.

  At least people won’t assume I’m an assassin. The nav pin led her to this neighborhood, a tight interconnecting grid of pitiful tunnels. Residents paid paltry rent, a mere thousand credits or so per month compared to eight or nine times that for a surface apartment. The poorest ones squatted wherever they could, often shooting anyone who tried to kick them out.

  The figure emerged from shadow, a man somewhere in his twenties with indigo hair and dull-crimson eyeshadow. She stopped walking and met his hungry gaze. Based on the look in his eye, he thought her an easy mark despite the laser pistols. She grinned. Bet he thinks I’m going to run.

  Risa swiveled to face him, and rushed forward. In a blur of speedware, she closed the distance to him, jumping into a knee strike to his chest that shoved him against the wall he’d been leaning on. Before his facial expression had changed in reaction to her motion, she had one hand worth of Nano claws teasing at the side of his neck and jaw.

  Speedware off.

  Two of the slender points drew blood.

  He yelped. “Gah! Shit!”

  She spoke in a low tone, as menacing as she could make herself sound. “I’m in a hurry, you’re in my way, and no one will miss another wannabe rapist. Where’s Alys?” Risa narrowed her eyes.

  “I ain’t no rapist.” He tried to sound tough, but a trace of a whimper threaded under his words. The man attempted a weak smile. “Just lookin’ for creds. I ain’t know no Alys.”

  Risa frowned. “Too bad. That means you’re not useful.”

  “Wait.” He stood on tiptoe in an effort to distance his neck from her claws. “Street E5-11, Apartment 18.”

  “Thanks.” She took a step back and retracted the claws, curling her fingers to smear the blood from the tips. “I’m going to walk away like we never met. Don’t give me a reason to remember you.”

  He scooted to his right and slipped into the door of an apartment. She walked fast, trying to project as threatening a visage as possible while hiding her worry. Without the Wraith online, her speedware wouldn’t auto-activate if it sensed an incoming projectile. Granted, it never worked on energy weapons―too fast.

  Three streets ahead, she turned left, went down four more, and followed the numbers on the left until she found Apartment 18. A corroded plastisteel slab hung in the doorway, not quite on its sliding rails. She pushed it aside and stepped into a living room flooded with boxes, both full and empty. From the looks of it, stolen consumer electronics, shoes, clothes, and a few cases of OmniSoy packets for a ‘Vari-Quik’ meal reassembler. One company’s experiment in proprietary serving-sized packets for the base protein slime wasn’t the runaway success they’d hoped for; rather than capture the interest of busy families, their one-meal pouches had become a staple for college students and druggies.

  Snoring led her down a short connecting hall. She peered into a side room where a jumble of small limbs occupied a Comforgel pad. Five or six underwear-clad preteens, all boys, slept in a mass. The room smelled like wet dog and stale soda. Risa backed away cringing, and kept going down the hall past a dark bathroom where a nude, scrawny woman about her age sprawled on her back between the toilet and the autoshower. A collection of autoinjectors of various colors―yellow, green, orange, red―lay scattered around her arms and legs. Risa stared for a moment at the woman’s concave stomach until she could perceive movement.

  The money Lars offered had to seem like a fortune… maybe a lifeline.

  In the back bedroom, the object of her search―the woman who’d put a gun to Chaia’s head―occupied a queen-sized Comforgel pad, draped half off the side, face over the carpet. With nothing on but skin-hugging underpants, she looked far less threatening than Risa remembered, despite her muscular build. She didn’t trust the woman’s apparent vulnerability. No one that lived in this part of the c
ity in a perpetual high had the time (or willpower) to work out. She didn’t have the physique of a pro lifter, but looked far too jacked to be a run-of-the-mill doser.

  Risa tensed as she reached the door. Just want info. Don’t make me kill you. Augmented hearing picked up breathing right inside the door to the left, and the creak of tendons.

  She activated her speedware as she rushed in. A slow-moving man, clothed in dirt and boxer-briefs, lunged at her with a punch wrapped in a set of spiked indirium knuckles. Risa leaned to her left, flowing around the incoming fist, and grabbed his wrist with her right hand. Twisting the limb away from her, she pushed his punch to the side and drove her left forearm into the back of his elbow, breaking the joint. A quick yank on the arm changed his charge to a stumble.

  Her motion continued in a fluid spin; she delivered a reverse roundhouse kick to the back of his head, which flung him face-first into a wall-mounted storage bin on the opposite side of the bedroom door. Dust erupted from two drawers slammed closed by his impact. The metal knuckles slipped off his fingers and struck the floor with a heavy clunk. He wobbled around to face her, blood running out of his nose. She spun the other way, kicking him across the jaw.

  His face warped and flapped like a layer of thick rubber stretched around a Gee-ball orb. Both eyes rolled up into his head as he fell to his knees and went over sideways, unconscious.

  Risa shut down the speedware.

  “Stop makin’ so much fuckin’ noise.” Alys moaned. “Tryin’ ta sleep.”

  A three-second glance around the bedroom found nine pistols, three knives, and one shotgun leaning on the wall by the headboard. She grabbed a length of cord from the floor, pounced on Alys, and bound her wrists behind her back before the woman regained coherence.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Alys squirmed.

  Risa put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pushed her down onto the rug. “It was faster than safing all the guns you’ve got stashed here.” She held her right hand in front of the woman and sprouted claws.

  Alys trembled.

  “I see you remember me.”