Nanoshock

by K C Alexander

  That sucked so hard. Vid-ink, at least, could be refinished; pixels just need coding. But some of the more original stuff had been destroyed. Bastards.

  I looked up, prepared to crawl off this thin mat beneath me. One twitch of my feet convinced me otherwise. I bit back a yelp, scowled at the needle shoved into the top of my left foot. Hollow and huge, it pushed mystery juice into the vein, dragging it from a cylinder on the floor. Also, it hurt like a cunt on fire.

  As Muerte would say, no bueno.

  Holding my breath, I reached down with my furrowed hand and wrenched it out. Which also hurt like a cunt on fire. Only like a cunt on fire that’d been kicked into the pubic bone for extra funsies. Too much for my delicate meat to handle right now.

  “Fuck!” I shouted, grabbing at my foot and squeezing hard. “Shithole quack of a motherfucking syphilitic – who the gaping asshole put a needle there?”

  A door across the plain, dingy room opened. I expected Digo or Muerte.

  What I got was pale eyes and a razor’s scowl. “You’re noisy.”

  I shot Tashi a twisted grimace.

  She took in my placement, the needle and IV hose discarded on the floor, and the cold sweat on my forehead. That eerie gaze slid to my healing arm, then flicked back to meet my eyes. “That was feeding your nanos.”

  “Nanos fed.” I gingerly let go of my foot. Tested it. It twinged. Would bruise before it completely mended, but better than walking around with that huge cunting needle shoved in there. “Where’s Indigo?”

  Tashi regarded me in silence for a while. I let her, struggling up to my bare feet, looking down at my T-shirt and boxers situation. Green and black.

  I liked boxers. They look good on me. But these were definitely not mine.

  When I didn’t fall over, Tashi finally beckoned. “I’ll take you to them.”

  “Them? Muerte there?”

  “Her, too,” Tashi said without looking back. Enigmatic little pixiefuck.

  “Do I need clothes?”

  She shrugged silently.

  I grabbed my boots by the door and stomped into them for extra foot protection. She waited. How nice.

  I followed her into a narrow, dusty corridor, cradling my arm so it wouldn’t jostle. The hall was dingier than the room I’d woken up in, with sad little lights guttering on and off and space made cramped by discarded furniture and abandoned junk.

  At least, I thought as I picked my way gingerly around the sharper objects, I didn’t fall over. I really didn’t want Tashi to carry me.

  Although knowing her, she’d just leave me with the trash.

  She stopped five doors down and across the hall, rapped once with her sharp knuckles and pushed inside. “She’s alive,” she announced.

  Another dingy room, dingy walls, dingy carpet stained to near black. Dingy windows with shades drawn, dingy lighting, just all-around dinge.

  And two joes in bloody clothes torn wide, black skinsuits beneath. They’d been tied to a couple of very dingy chairs.

  I pointed at them. “What?”

  Indigo stirred from his perch on one stool, turning to look at me. “Not for you.”

  “No shit,” I sighed. “Why are they here?”

  From her corner vantage point, Muerte flashed me a thumbs up. “Scouts.”

  “Scouts?” I repeated dumbly. Then gave them a harder stare. “MetaCorp scouts?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, shit.”

  I was obviously late to the party. Under street clothes I wouldn’t have glanced twice at, their skinsuits showed signs of wear, their faces the brunt of some heavy questioning. Unlike any joe off the street, both displayed that steely jawline of resolve you don’t find by accident.

  Given Indigo’s irritated scowl and Muerte’s folded arms as she stared at them, the men had obviously stuck to their invisible guns.

  “And I thought I’d had a bad day.” I grimaced, pulled at the too-big front of my borrowed boxers and slanted Indigo an eyebrow. “Thanks for the thought, man.”

  He glanced at the spacious area where a dick was supposed to be. Muffled a tired laugh. “You’ll grow into them.”

  It was almost enough to make me forget the giant hole that lived inside my chest. For some reason, that only made it hurt more.

  Made no fucking sense.

  “So,” I said cheerfully, studying the prisoners, “you’re the MetaCunts stupid enough to get caught. Who bagged you?”

  One stared straight ahead.

  The other, an older grunt with pepper in his brown hair, flicked a glance at Muerte.

  I raised both eyebrows at her. She shrugged. “Tashi did most of the work.”

  Behind me, Tashi replied, “They were easy to take down once their cover cracked.”

  “Tch.” I braced both hands on my hips, managing to bite down a wince as my flesh spasmed over the bone, and bent to meet the gaze of the first one. Black hair twisted back into rows of braids, kept tight and severe. Dark rust skin and nearly black eyes, all locked down to sheer iron will. Impressive.

  The older guy? He didn’t look so confident through the fading bruises. Not that he’d spilled his guts, either.

  Indigo shrugged when I tilted my head at him. “They’re stonecold.”

  “You try a screwdriver?” I asked wryly.

  Muerte coughed.

  “Primitive,” Digo sighed. And then, thoughtfully, “But not yet.”

  The older guy paled, red splotches standing out on his skin. He set his jaw.

  I nodded. “Oh-kay.” Straightening again, I stepped back. “What are we doing with scouts?”

  “They’d be instrumental in data flow,” Indigo said. He jerked a thumb at the sterner one. “I’ve seen this one around.”

  “So why not just crack their chipsets wide?”

  Muerte’s hands clapped once. “Ooh, good idea!”

  Both went pale.

  Digo shook his head. “I want to ask questions you can’t ask data.” Ugh. Such a linker. I’d rather kick people’s teeth in than ask questions, so this wasn’t my beat.

  I shrugged, patted the scout’s braids. “Let me know when you need me.”

  Was that relief ticking under the stony one’s taut cheek?

  “Yeah,” Indigo said. “We’ve got this.”

  Ah, hell. Couldn’t pass this one up.

  Using the momentum of my turn, I lifted my front foot and roundhoused it all the way back to the side of the younger one’s head. The impact of my heel and his jaw cracked so loudly, the other guy jumped, yelping. His chair creaked.

  My target’s chair rocked all the way to the side, then fell over. He screamed in a deep, manly way. Very stern. Very soldier.

  Very broken jaw.

  “Riko!” Indigo leapt up, grabbed my metal shoulder. “We need them alive, remember?”

  “He’s alive.” I shrugged off his hand, smirking.

  Then shot Muerte a smeared metal finger when she added, “Can’t talk, though.”

  “Get out,” Indigo said to me, pushing me back to the door. Gently, I noticed. Shit. “Go back to sleep or something. Go fuck somebody. Hell, go rub off on the doorknob, I don’t care. You are not helpful here.”

  It didn’t hurt because he was right – of course he was right. It hurt because even though he’d have said the same thing back in the day, now it was just one more slap in a surprising amount of them. They added up. Even the harmless ones.

  So I left. Not because he told me to, but because I was afraid that if I continued to stand up to his refusal to let me in, I’d crack something. His face.

  My… Well. Something. Maybe something emotional. I didn’t do emotions. They exhausted me. I was tired of feeling them.

  I felt like a sack of meat at the end of a bungee cord.

  Tashi watched me go. As I approached, she said quietly, “I’d rather just kill them.”

  I met her eyes. For once, they didn’t spit daggers at me. Nodding faintly, I murmured, “I have a feeling there’s more to
this than a bunch of dicks being dicks.”

  “Once we knew where to find them, they were too easy to catch.”

  “Any idea why?” I pressed open the door with the one arm that hurt less than the other. For once, my left wasn’t the bitchiest.

  Tashi shrugged bony shoulders. “It’s like they just gave up when they realized we weren’t going to.”

  “You’re scary when you run an assclown down.”

  She glanced at me. Back at the room – specifically, the linker righting the spilled chair. Then, quietly, “Thanks.” Not for the compliment.

  I flinched. “Don’t,” I replied, shaking my head. “It gives me ideas.”

  “Something has to.”

  “Pixietwat.”

  She didn’t hit me. Didn’t even acknowledge the insult with her recent barrage of violence. Tashi just huffed out a sharp breath I chose to take as a note of humor and let me go.

  Look at that. A moment of solidarity. A breath instead of bitterness, like maybe it’d be OK. Maybe Tashi would forgive me, lead the way for the rest to give me a shot.

  Snapped right back up on the bungee cord.

  Exhausted to the point of resignation, I stumbled back to my empty room.

  A man screamed behind me.

  30

  I went back to bed, but I didn’t sleep. I lay flat on my back and stared at the ceiling, replaying what I could remember of the whole event.

  Indigo had contacted the detective, not Tashi. The thought played and replayed in my head. He knew the detective would try to hit me up first. Greg didn’t know the others. They only vaguely knew Digo worked a blue for info.

  He’d all but hand-delivered an invitation. To help him.

  To watch his back.

  I didn’t know what it meant. Another thing to be angry about.

  Now, MetaCorp was something else. Something had pulled them out of the gutter they’d been hiding in. If it was the same department chasing my ass, they’d managed to dodge me at every turn, avoiding every effort at pinning them down.

  So what the tits brought them to Deli?

  The only link was Indigo Koupra.

  But how did they know?

  I crossed one ankle on my upraised knee, metal arm tucked under the back of my head. I had to leave my right on the mattress. It still hurt when I tried to put pressure on it. Close at hand, I’d laid the Valiant 14. Just in case.

  Far as I’d been able to piece together, we squatted in a place on the fringes of Deli – close to where its borders began to blend with Kongtown. Dunno if anybody lived on this side of the floor, but I suspected most squatted, too.

  Either way, it was quiet enough that I was getting nervous. My raised foot twitched, fidgeted in tandem with nothing.

  I had too much to think about and nothing but paranoia for my troubles.

  When a rap came from the open door, I bolted upright, swore and grabbed my arm before it tore clean off. Not that it would. It just felt like it.

  “Stop freaking.” Indigo raised cartons of Kongtown takeout from the hall. “You’ve got to be starving.”

  I was. Whooshing out a pained breath, I scooted back, crossed my legs. The empty front of my boxers bagged. I resented that.

  Digo sat across from me on the bed, lean legs folded in near perfect whatsitcalled. Like mine, but bendier. Lotus position, I think. Ironic.

  He offered a closed carton in each hand. “Choose.”

  The smell wafting from each filled my lungs and nose with heavenly reward. I pointed.

  “Dim sum,” he said approvingly, “Good choice. I’ll take that. You get gyoza yakisoba.”

  “Fuck, you’re a jerk.”

  “True.” We both fell silent as we cracked upon the cartons; Digo passed me chopsticks. I used them easy. Everybody south of the Fourteenth Divide knows how to use these. Kongtown food is a matter of life or death most days, and shops cropped up just about everywhere.

  The takeout had cooled but it didn’t matter. Cold Kongtown was just as good, if not better. I inhaled the noodles, looking down at my food instead of at the linker with me. I was starving. Tapped out of energy and tired of thinking. For a while, chewing and slurping was the only sound between us.

  Eventually, as I slowed, Indigo’s chopsticks clicked in my direction.

  I eyed them, then searched his features. Nothing. No exasperation, no anger. Just his face. Doing nothing.

  That silent thing, it irritated me. I frowned at him. “What.” Not a question.

  “The detective found you.” Another not a question.

  I nodded. “Traveled to the Mecca to do it.” I searched every crevice of his expression, eyes to mouth and set of his shoulders. “Did you try to call me first?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  A shadow of a smile. “Why’d you go get Tashi?”

  “I was with her already,” I replied. I looked back at my food, carefully tore a gyoza in half with my chopsticks. “Boone smuggled the detective out of the rack while the rest of us rolled in to Deli together.”

  His head tipped to one side, his own sticks clicking. A fidget. “I’m surprised Tashi let you come.”

  I didn’t know if it hurt or just pissed me off. The carton dented between my fingers. “You’re the one who projected Greg instead of Tashi,” I snapped.

  “Yeah, I did.” Click, click. “You should fix your protocols.” Click. “What about the rest of my team?”

  Ouch. Extra fucking ouch. His team, huh? Fine. “Tashi’s wherever you put her last.”

  “Lookout.”

  I shrugged, jammed my chopsticks into the carton. Only a quarter left. “Boone had escort duty for your insider. Haven’t seen Valentine or Fidelity in weeks.”

  “So, you came with two runners to tear the place apart.”

  No lilting question mark in that one, but it was definitely a question. I met his searching inquiry with a flat stare of my own. “You called for help.” A beat. “I helped.” Another, longer. “Also, some kid, Lavender or something, said you owe him one.”

  He smiled. For a moment, he really smiled, with that engaging way of his that turned his blue eyes up and edged endearing lines at each side of his mouth. It might have loosened that panic in my chest a little, if it’d stuck around.

  Maybe he saw something in my face that said I’d taken that smile more personally than it was meant. It faded. “Serves me right, I suppose.” He toyed with the dim sum in his carton. Dropped his gaze to the front of my… his boxers. “Good thing I carry spares.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “You’re wearing them.”

  “Also weird,” I muttered, and set the carton on the floor by my primed Valiant. “So, you want to talk about the giant bloody Ganesh in the room?”

  “Depends on the Ganesh.”

  “What?”

  “Are we adding or removing a wall?”

  I blinked, fingers tapping unevenly against my thigh. “I don’t know?”

  Indigo gave up the metaphor for me. “I mean,” he clarified, “talk.”

  “By myself?”

  “Humor me.”

  Another moment of silence. I was suddenly keenly aware of the sharpness of his study – like his sister had, he saw more between the lines than was comfortable. I looked at my fidgeting fingers instead. Then, jaw squaring, forced myself to meet his gaze anyway. “I have a question.”

  He waited.

  I took a deep breath. “Did you know that somebody’s been convincing up and coming saints to take me on?”

  “More than rumor?”

  I nodded. “Targeted. No identity yet, but that same spunkdumpster got ahold of that vid you tried to crack.”

  The thick black fringe of his eyelashes widened. “Copied? Impossible.”

  I spread the fingers of my left hand, curved over my thigh. “The vid’s going to be available to the highest bidder if I can’t track it.”

  Those lashes narrowed. “For a fact?”

  “Mue
rte dug it up.”

  “You trust her?”

  “In this? Yeah.” The skin on my healing hand twitched. Felt weird enough that I frowned at the fissures in it. “She was in the Kill Squad same time I was, but she’d stayed when I dicked out. I guess they decided to come after me without telling her.” Outside Lucky’s. I swallowed that knot hard enough to scrape all the way down. “Muerte gave them an enormously cheerful fuck you.”

  “She dumped them for you?”

  “Apparently, she’s ready to move on,” I replied, dry as the dust coating every surface around us.

  “Splatter?”

  I shook my head. “She could have gone splatter specialist, she’s good enough for it, but she’s a better fixer.”

  “Good to know.” Indigo sat back, bracing his weight on a hand splayed behind him. The Kongtown carton in his other hand tipped back and forth. “About that vid. I’m positive nobody’s gotten into my personal system. Not even a projector,” he added.

  “How would you know?”

  His grimace carved deep. “I’d know.” Then, “You sure Reed didn’t do it?”

  “Same song and dance.” My back hunched, bones suddenly too tired to hold my own weight up. “No reason for him to do it. No reason for you to do it. There’s nothing to gain by ruining me.”

  He didn’t argue. Didn’t gloat, either. “Glad you realize that.”

  My front teeth set together, jaw thrusting. I leaned forward again, a spike of anger flaring my nostrils. “Whose fault is that?”

  “Whose fault tanked your cred to begin with?”

  “Goddammit, Indigo–!”

  “Sorry.” Low. Hard to say, like he swallowed most of it back. “I know it’s not all your fault.” His empty fist clenched, both lowering back to his lap. The black cargoes he’d changed into did not, I noticed, have the too-large crotch problem. Apparently, I was the only one with a penis issue.

  And fuck, didn’t I know it.

  Indigo exhaled. “It’s been a rough few weeks.”

  “No shit,” I muttered.

  “Not just for you,” he added flatly. A cutting reminder. “As far as anybody else cares, I should’ve taken you out the moment you came back without Nanji. We’re feeling it, too, Riko. You aren’t the only flag getting shot at.”