I passed them both, took the opportunity to flash her friend a smile – a willowy girl whose love affair with a razor had turned her hair into a blocky fall of rainbow colors. She grinned back, one stranger to another in the dark, and licked her thumb.
Yeah. I liked the Mecca.
Feeling inordinately better, I sidled around a knot of half-naked guys. One sported a synthetic brace over his forearm, a bridge model. It glowed like a galaxy of neon stars. Another turned his head, showcasing a chrome curve drilled into his brow bone. It framed the plucked arch of an eyebrow.
Fashion slaves. Slumming it, probably. The Mecca was too far down the rack to be any rich kids’ first stop.
I didn’t see Tashi until she was on me. She was almost seven inches shorter than I was, but it wasn’t her build that allowed her to ghost through most places like a cat. Something about the way she walked, the way she bled through a crowd, usually meant she didn’t register on somebody’s radar until too late.
My smile brightened. “Hey–” I also didn’t see the interceptor, serrated twin to my own, until it flashed inches from my throat. “Fuck!” I slammed my stiffened palm against the hilt, smashing her fingers against it and spinning out from her reach at the same time. “What the shit, Tash?” The music drowned me out.
The lights skated over her head, flickering over the white tattoos etched into her hairless brown scalp. Her eyes were flat and dark, the titanium bar framing the underside of her lower lip winking as she set her jaw. The knife switched hands, nearly faster than I could track.
I had height and ordinarily would have claimed reach, but she had a way of moving that made professional dancers look like kids at their first party. Eerily fast, with superior agility boosters and a skinweave designed for flexibility and durability, she was wicked fast with knives and murder on the thrash floor.
A hell of a dance partner. Just hell as an opponent.
I bent my knees into a nervous crouch, sweaty hand splayed at my side as I watched her eyes. Not the knife. That hypnotic blur would land me dead. “What the fuck are you doing?”
She’d never been much of a talker.
Like a serpent, she struck out with the knife in her left hand. I caught her arm between mine and my right side, felt my wraparound tear, and wrenched hard. Her shoulder popped upwards, bones sharply defined. I didn’t hear it, but I knew the sensation of a dislocated shoulder.
She didn’t make a noise, even as lines of pain bracketed her mouth. Unnerving woman. Always had been.
I cracked her in the face with my metal fist – bone crunched. I winced in remembered sympathy. As the patrons moved around us, I stuck my foot behind her ankles and pushed hard. Caught between my foot and my grip on her arm, she hit the ground on her back, blood gleaming like synth rubies in the streaming lights, and didn’t move.
Shit. I checked her pulse.
Okay, so I’d only knocked her out. That was good. I did not want to open this subject with Tashi’s death. Not when I was already reporting another.
I stepped over her, leaving her to sleep it off away from the dance floor. My teeth clenched so hard, I heard them grit over the brainmelting throb of the Mecca’s music. Running a hand over my side confirmed my suspicion. Sure enough, my shirt was torn. I stuck my finger in the hole she’d carved in the wrapped end, measuring by feel how close she’d come to skewering my ribs.
Too close. And for what?
I pushed through the dancers this time, making a straight line for the lapis arch.
Moving through a floor of writhing, gyrating, usually drugged-out dancers is an art form. It requires grace, a certain understanding of the ebb and flow, and fast reflexes. I was good at it, I’d spent a lot of time out here. Earn enough bruises and you wouldn’t even feel the occasional elbow in your ribs or knee in your thigh.
A hand slid over my naked back, another caught my arm. I disengaged easily, didn’t smile back when a man with shock-blue hair hanging over one eye tried to catch my attention. Didn’t even notice when an electric orange boot lodged between mine.
I went down like an amateur.
Eye level on the Mecca dance floor is intimidating enough, but hitting the ground is the fastest ticket to getting your teeth kicked out. Many was the bruised and battered body the staff had carried out at the end of a rowdy night. Some were even alive.
This wasn’t the rowdiest crowd I’d ever seen, but down on the floor, trapped beneath a seething mob of sweat and adrenaline, it was unintentional war.
I rolled immediately, collided into more legs than strictly should occupy one space, and struggled to my knees. The ground was gummy – spilled drinks and worse. It crackled, a sticky film clinging to my skin as I pushed myself into a semblance of balance. Elbows slammed into my head, more than one dancer stepped on my calf, kicked my legs and knees by sheer accident or lack of attention. I felt something in my ankle give, hissed and shot my metal elbow back.
The weight on my leg lifted.
An orange blur in my peripheral warned me a nanosecond before the sweaty, careless dancers disgorged a combatant. I dropped, felt the air shift over my head, rolled again. A heavy boot slammed into the ground where my head had been, this one wider, more square than fleshbag feet ever got.
Goddammit. Boone and his wide foundation replacement feet.
Which meant the orange belonged to Fidelity.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why was my chunking team trying to wreck my junk tonight?
“Lay off!” I shouted, already knowing it was useless. They couldn’t hear me over the chaos, and the music didn’t care. I tried to get to my feet, but something sharp and mercifully organic slammed into my temple, knocking me for six as a thick hand twisted in my hair. Boone rang my bell with a dense fist, popping my ear and turning my vision inside out.
Vertigo kicked in, my lip curled into a snarl, and I turned into the weight of his grip. Curving both arms, I shoved my fists hard into Boone’s solar plexus. I heard his groan, felt the impact turn his body into a curved snap of pain, and the fingers in my hair loosened.
I ripped free, ducked on instinct. Just in time to watch an orange leg sail over my head and collide with Boone’s already hurting chest.
The look on Fidelity’s sharp-featured face was priceless. Idiot. I’d taught him that move.
Boone toppled into the crowd; short screams punctuated the crash. He was a large man, heavier than his frame suggested thanks to the tech that turned him into a human battering ram. The fact he hadn’t corrupted was one of those things nobody could figure out, but there it was.
I stepped into a lunge, seized Fidelity’s planted ankle with my tech hand, and yanked. My lateral display told me he was wearing full vinyl again – his favorite fashion go-to.
He hit the ground, swallowed by the aggressive crowd before the shock cleared from his reddened face.
That was three.
Sweat drenched me, anger turned my adrenaline high into a murderous beat. I shoved through the horde, caught someone’s flailing elbow in my metal grip and twisted. She spun around, stumbled into the arms of a knot of dancers. Swearing, laughing; limbs flailed behind me.
By the time I made it across the pit, I was snarling with the effort.
Valentine waited outside the arch, his muscled arms folded over his bare chest like some kind of mythical genie. He fit right into Shiva’s theme tonight. His hair was ice white and cut short; a black goatee framed his mouth. His bronzed skin was completely free of scars or tattoos.
That was four. Just fucking great.
Unlike the others, Valentine had been around the block longer then I had. He was handsome as sin because he’d paid good cred to be that way, but no amount of retooling would undo years of hard slaughter work. Something about him – his poise or the set of his jaw, something in the eyes – betrayed him for the killer he was.
Valentine was a munitions specialist, all about weapons where Boone was about survivability in the frontlines, but the lack of weaponry on him now d
idn’t make me feel better. No shirt, the sculpted beauty of his chest open to all comers, and black pants similar to mine completed the effect. All he needed were some gold bracers and an earring, and he’d be somebody else’s wet dream.
Me, I wasn’t biting. He was as lethal with his bare fists as Tashi with her blades, and four times as experienced.
Valentine and I had never gone round for round, respecting each other from a safe distance. I found him too artificially perfect to appeal to my libido and too dangerous to mess with otherwise, and I don’t know what he thought of me.
He watched me as I forged a path through the club, a muscle ticking in his left pectoral as if he was flexing one hand, over and over.
I didn’t bother with niceties. By the time he realized my intent, it was too late. Too close to give him any more time to prep and too far to grab, I lunged into a sprint, lowered my head, and rammed my shoulder so hard into his ribs I felt something pop. Him, me, I didn’t know. Adrenaline turned it all into fuel.
Valentine tried to grab for me, but he’d never seen me go for brute force – it wasn’t my usual standby against immovable objects like him. With my arms wrapped around his trunk, he staggered, my weight bearing him backwards. I howled with the effort, pain working its way into my collar bone, down my flesh arm, as we fell into the curtains, tore them off the rod, and collided into Indigo’s table.
Glass rattled. Shattered. A man cursed.
My fleshy surfboard rode the wave of impact for me, but damn, it still hurt. Fabric slithered off the table, skimmed over my back, Val’s side, and coiled gently on the floor.
He groaned beneath my metal palm as I planted it on his face, using it to prop my aching body up.
“What,” I snarled, jerking my pale hair from my eyes, “the fuck, Digo.”
My answer was the unmistakable pump of a Sauger Quad 54 primed for firing. I looked down the barrel of a blocky, dinged-up shotgun and couldn’t help myself.
I laughed.
6
Indigo Koupra looked enough like his sister that seeing him tore open the bloody wound of guilt I’d been trying not to suck on since I woke up in that station. Like hers, his skin was olive, his hair mostly black where he hadn’t streaked it dark blue, and he kept it long in a thick braid. He had more edges than Nanji did, taller and more defined. His eyes were lined with the same thick black ridge of envy-inducing lashes, but his gaze gleamed a much darker blue.
He also had a tendency to look at me like I’d grown a second head, unlike his sister.
Fidelity once asked why I’d chosen Nanji over Indigo’s exotic, masculine appeal. It came down to three things: she already had a crush on me, they weren’t into sharing, and he liked to think I was crazy.
Well, and fourth point, I had a weakness for curvy ladies. Nanji wasn’t into rigidly defined athleticism.
Not for herself, anyway. She was hella into me.
Indigo stared at me now, his full lips twisted into a grimace torn between anger and wary disbelief. “You are one crazy bitch, you know that?”
Beneath me, Valentine hadn’t moved, his eyes closed. I knew he was alive, I could feel his heartbeat beneath my forearm, but he’d recognized the sound of the shotgun and knew as well as I did what it meant.
There was nothing precise about that spray.
My laughter dried up. “I’m going to get up,” I told Digo. “We’re going to chat. While we do, Val is going to go buy drinks for the others.”
“Stay right there.”
“Come on, boss,” Valentine grunted beneath me. “Her knee’s in my gonads.”
“You shut up,” I said mildly. “You don’t get a vote.”
Indigo stared at me a moment longer. I don’t know what he read in my face – I was going for stone cold – but he jerked his chin in a nod. “Slowly.”
My weight shifted, knee easing the pressure off Val’s junk. His breath worked out on a sterling note of relief. His hands closed on my hips – warm, callused and rough – and he practically benchpressed me onto my feet.
Okay. Inappropriately timed as that pulse in my snatch was, I could appreciate a strong man with a sure grip.
Never mind that I had too many other issues topping off my plate. I didn’t need to add this one. Besides, in my experience, the strong ones usually ran too extreme: too scared to let a woman call the shots, or one-trick dicks full of their own vanity.
Too much work. I’d appreciate from a healthy distance.
He set me down, fingers squeezing my hips once, and let me go. Pain radiated up my ankle, but not as much as I’d expected. The nanos were already working on my minor injuries. I’d need the damn energy recharge I ordered, but at least they were working.
Val didn’t stick around. Giving me a nod – a glint of humor in his otherwise steady hazel eyes – he got the hell out of the way.
That left me and Indigo, staring at each other over a shotgun and the ruins of a whole lot of drinks.
The team must have all been here, having a good time, drinking, when somebody called in word I’d arrived. Who? The redhead?
No reason; I didn’t know her.
But everyone here knew me. I was a regular, like Indigo and our team. Any one of them could have sent word. My fingers tightened into fists.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked, eying the shotgun. “You only get one shot, and that piece of shit’s too front-heavy to aim.”
“You’re like a foot away,” Digo retorted. “I don’t have to aim.”
Good point. I lashed out an arm, popped him in the throat with my extended fingers. The shotgun jerked, he staggered back against the table. Glass rattled, bottles tipped.
But he didn’t shoot me.
His eyes widened – fear, maybe, surprise for sure. I snagged the gun from his loosened grip, flipped it around and jammed it so hard against his chest, I knew it’d bruise before his nanos could hit it. He hacked and choked, one hand at his neck, the other braced against the table behind him.
“Let’s try this again,” I said, tight and barely level between clenched teeth. The metal was smooth, cold, faintly damp from Indigo’s sweat. “What the shit, man?”
“Nice,” he croaked.
“You started this.”
His gaze flicked to my right. As sweetly telegraphed as it was, I didn’t expect a cold metal barrel to press into my skull over my ear.
“Please do not make me charge for cleanup.”
Shiva’s dulcet tones were already in a throaty range guaranteed to muddle anyone’s sense of gender identification. On a threat, her voice turned to pure velvet.
Smug triumph replaced Indigo’s fear. For that reason alone, I wanted to shoot him. It bit deeply, raked diamond steel talons into my brain and squeezed.
I wanted blood. I wanted his eyes, shocked and wide, I wanted blood on his teeth and a lung on the floor.
All I had to do was squeeze this little bit of metal.
I could feel the trigger move, even hear the faint give.
The gun nocked against my skull dug in. “Riko, darling, you know how much I enjoy you...” The mild words faded. The meaning did not.
She would shoot me, and Indigo, and anyone else who messed with her business. She’d never even lose a wink of sleep.
Not one of my finer moments. I was a merc, sure, but I wasn’t into murder for kicks. Regardless of how pissed I was right now, this wasn’t helping anything.
I choked it all back. Hauled my anger, vicious and hurting, back into a dark metal closet and slammed the door. There’d be time for that later. There’d have to be, or else the vicious rage would eat me alive, but not right now.
With a theatrical sigh, I pulled the gun out of Indigo’s ribs. He fell back into the curved booth, rubbed the spot. “Get her out of here,” he snarled.
The metal at my head eased away. A long-fingered hand with shimmering golden nail polish reached around me to relieve me of the shotgun.
I let Shiva have it. Better her than Indi
go.
“No,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “You kids have things to work out. I will send refreshment, on the house.” In the corner of my vision, I saw long purple hair, golden silk with more fabric than she allowed her girls to wear. I couldn’t see her expression, but her voice frosted. “Don’t ever again, Koupra.”
I don’t think she meant about the guns. It only confirmed what I suspected – one of Shiva’s had sold me out, pitting their loyalty to Shiva against helping out a Koupra.
Dumb. Fucking. Tool.
Indigo paled, hands clenching on the table’s surface.
I helped myself to a seat as Shiva departed in a swish of fabric. Staff was already fixing the curtains, which would give us some privacy, but I didn’t wait for them to clear off. I pushed aside a sea of half-empty glasses. “You want me to ask you again?” was my opening gambit, and his jaw tightened.
“You have a fuckton of nerve, coming back here.”
“Where else am I supposed to go?” Rotating my right shoulder sent sparklers of pain through it. “Fuck. At least tell me why Tash tried to fillet me.” I mean, I knew why I would have tried in her place – but I didn’t think he knew what I knew.
If he did, I’d have a whole new barrage of questions to ask.
He usually sulked like a kid. I was used to his temper, but the black rage underscoring his champion glower caught me by surprise.
Anger didn’t do it justice. It was rage and hurt and grief and something hot enough, brutal enough to melt a man’s conscience. Whatever damage I was fighting, he knew his own demons and he saw them when he looked at me.
I’d never felt so close to him as I did in that moment.
And I never wanted to beat his head against the table so much.
I very carefully flattened my hands against the sticky surface, palm down. No threat, see? No weapons. Just me, unarmed and harmless. Shiva’s orders. “Indigo, I have a lot to tell you.”
“I’ll bet,” he spat.
I frowned. “But you’re going to have to give me something to go on here. Last time we spoke, everything was fine. What changed?”
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