Whatever Jim was spooning himself, I didn’t recognize the signs.
He was dressed in his idea of luxury, though to me it looked like he’d gone bargain bin shopping in Kongtown. His garishly green silk pants and embroidered tunic looked as out of place in the cheap motel room as I’d look at a rich wedding.
But Jim, he liked flattery. So I gave him my best once-over and offered, “Nice pants.”
He stroked a hand down the front of his tunic, leaving a sweaty smear in the silk. “Like it? Got a whole set in every color.”
This didn’t surprise me.
“How you been, Riko? Life treating you any better?” He waved at the only seating available – one of two beds – and took position on the closest.
There wasn’t much else to pick from. The farthest corner from the door was cluttered with makeshift shelving, riddled with computer screens in various sizes and hunks of metal – wires exposed and linked together, dust gathering in between them. Makeshift hardware. A wave of palpable heat shimmered from the systems array, making the marginally cooler room seem stifling.
The curtains covering the windows were a weirdly streaked mustard color, thin enough to let the light through but too opaque to see more than silhouettes between the cheap threads. Scattered food cartons, most from places that delivered, peppered the floor near the nest of tech, which suggested Fuck It Jim wasn’t much into fresh air or relaxation.
Or furniture.
If he thought I was going to get anywhere near a mattress with him, he was out of his mind.
I stood, feet braced, my arms folded under my breasts. I’d taken the time to put a cropped bra on underneath, so as his eyes flicked to my less than impressive chest, disappointment flashed across his features. Way better than greed. Only thing I wanted him lusting for was my credits.
“Better than what?” I asked pleasantly. I wasn’t sure how much of anything he knew. He wasn’t top shelf, but it never paid to underestimate a man with information at his fingertips.
“Well.” He gestured at nothing. “Better than when I saw you last?”
Fuck. I didn’t even know when that was. Last time I remembered dealing with Jim, I’d threatened to scalp him over a few hundred stray credits. “I’m alive and kicking,” is what I said instead.
“I can see that.” His thin nostrils flared. “No one knows you’re here, right?”
“Sure, Jim.” Again, I smiled. This one showed teeth.
Fuck It Jim lost a little bit of color in the face. “Uh...” He shifted a little. “Is this about that last transaction?”
Because I didn’t know the first thing about sweet-talking a weasel, I didn’t drop the smile. “Maybe.”
He sprang to his feet, scuttling so fast the bed was between us before both of his feet even hit the floor. “Now, hang on,” he stuttered, both hands held out. Pleading? Warding me away, anyway. Interesting. “You got your creds, fair and square.”
My creds? Hell if I’d ever gotten fair pay from the guy.
But I tried for tact, first, because he was enough of a rat to spill the goods if it came down to his skin or mine. “I’m not here to argue that, Jim.”
Probably not the way most people tried to commune with the guy. He stared. “You... aren’t?”
“Nope, not even a little.” I didn’t move from my spot on the stained floor, didn’t drop my arms.
I probably could have jumped on him, beaten him until his teeth fell out and demanded answers, but Jax’s caution made my skin itch.
I didn’t have to beat everyone up. I just found it easier.
And Fuck It Jim’s little rodent face set off every instinct I had – he deserved a beating. I wasn’t sure for what, but he’d know even if I didn’t. It’d be fair somewhere.
Instead, I had to stand here, feeling stupid while I tried to be nice. “But you know how things go,” I continued, wrinkling my nose. “Something goes sideways, and the bosses want all the details in a neat, orderly list.”
Jim’s chuckle cracked. “Heh. Yeah.”
“So, you know. He sent me here to ask a few questions.”
“He?” Jim’s face closed down – far too late for poker.
Oops. I had no idea what the hell we were talking about. His response made me wonder how much he knew, and whether I’d fucked up with “he”. Maybe I was reporting to a woman?
Jim shifted uncertainly. “You okay, Riko? You seem...” He hesitated. “Different.”
“Nothing a little chat can’t fix.” I leveled him with my best patient stare. “Can we just be honest with each other?”
“Fuck, Riko.” Jim stroked down his tunic again, and I noticed he’d left another damp smear. He was nervous. “You know I can’t do honest.”
“Yeah, you can.” I rocked back on my heels. Nothing to see here. Totally harmless. Right. “Be straight with me and I’ll be straight with you. It’s easy.”
His eyes darted left. “If I do, I’ll lose some serious cred.”
Like I had in dealing with him? The rat owed me.
My smile didn’t slip. “If you don’t, you’ll lose some serious blood.”
“Heh.” His laugh was weak, too thin, and he scooted a bit along the mattress. Another foot between him and me. “You get real scary real fast, you know that?”
I dropped my arms, ran a hand through my hair to push it from my face. “Hell, Jim. This isn’t scary.”
“No?” He asked like he didn’t believe me. Like I was joking.
“No,” I repeated seriously. And then I closed the distance. It happened so fast, I don’t think he even marked the point where I’d shifted from idle to speed. My feet dug into the floor, his throat was in my left hand, and I had his short body off that bed and pinned to the wall behind it with my arm servos straining. The muscles in my shoulder girdle screamed.
I’d tried it Jax’s way. I’d felt stupid doing it, and it didn’t net me jack. Now I’d see about mine.
My teeth bared, and this time there was nothing smiley about it. “This is scary.” He gurgled. “So here’s how this is going to roll,” I told him, only a little out of breath. “You’re going to tell me everything I need to know, and then I will very nicely not squeeze your liver out through your nose. You get me?”
He struggled, gasping, choking around the vise grip at his throat, but his thin fingers couldn’t force the metal digits around his neck to loosen. His face mottled under all that yellow, turned ugly green and purple.
Jim was light. Way too light. The heads-up numbers put him at a hundred and two pounds, and this close, I noted how far his clavicle protruded under the thin silk.
Sick. A whole lot sicker than I remembered him being.
His nostrils flared wildly, feet kicking, thudding against the wall, shaking it. I waited him out. He’d lose it before I did, no matter how badly my shoulder hurt for it.
His eyes bulged as he spat out curses that would have made a delicate woman blush. Instead, I grinned.
That did not go over well.
“Get away from me,” he managed to choke out. “You crazy bitch!”
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.” Bracing my knees, I shoved more thrust into my shoulder, forcing him higher against the wall. He squeaked. It was probably supposed to be a scream, but there wasn’t a lot of room between my fingers and the narrow diameter of his windpipe. “Make this easy, Jim. You don’t want to die here.”
Despite my general dislike for the man, I found sympathy in my voice with that one. It was obvious whatever was eating at Bukket Jehm, it wasn’t a guilty conscience.
“Tell me everything I need to know about our working relationship, and I’ll let you go.”
“Why?” he gasped.
“Because I can’t remember,” I said tightly, earning a bulging-eyed stare from the man whose throat moved beneath my diamond steel fingers.
Yeah, he was the one hanging by a fleshy straw, and I was the crazy one.
I snarled. “Now, Jim!”
“Agh…!”
<
br /> I chose to believe that was an “all right”. I let go, letting his frail weight drop to his feet, slump gracelessly to the floor. He hunched over, gasping, coughing, forcing blood back to his brain.
I hoped it helped. This wasn’t my trump card. This was simple intimidation. If I had to start breaking fingers, I wasn’t going to feel very good about my day.
Normally, a guilty conscience wasn’t my problem, either, but things were a little off kilter since walking away from Nanji. I wasn’t sure what exactly I felt there – guilt, fury, confusion – but if I killed Jim here, Jax would know. Facing his knowing mockery later would really scrape my nerves raw.
I crouched, balancing lightly on the balls of my feet, and pressed my fingers lightly together, elbows braced on my knees and close enough that if he so much as twitched, he’d be in reach. “So,” I began slowly, “let’s start with the reason you gave me a payout. What the hell did you get me into?”
“How can you not remember?” He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. I was getting a lot of that lately, too.
“Doesn’t matter.” I knew my stare made him nervous; he was perspiring through his collar, staining the silk under his pits. “What has Taylor Jax sniffing around your accounts?”
Of all the things I could have said, that probably wasn’t my brightest idea. Apoplectic rage replaced the purple mottling on his face, his weasel-like features twisting into something ugly and vicious. “Jax,” he spat, hoarse. “You tell that donkey-fucking spunk-bucket that he ca–”
I angled my fingers towards him. “Jim.”
His lips pressed so hard together, they turned into a seam of white.
His eyes darted to the right.
“Spill it,” I encouraged. “Last chance.”
A muscle jumped in his thin face, just at the point where he was probably trying to grind his teeth into powder. “Fine,” he snarled. “Fine! Just let me get up.”
I rose, looking down on his shivering, curled figure with something I was pretty sure was pity. And revulsion. It felt strange, to feel both at the same time, but Bukket Jehm had a way of making you feel sorry for him even while you were pretty sure he’d sell your grandmother for a crate of something snortable.
I stepped back.
I hated that Jax had me second-guessing my usual methods. My forced goodwill turned into Jim’s opportunity as he threw himself between the farthest bed and the wall, rolled under it faster than I could lunge. His skinny ass cleared the lip with room to spare. “Damn it, Jim!” I thumped the wall with my flesh fist. “Get out here.”
“Make me!” The voice was high with victory.
Too early. It was a goddamned bed, not a fort.
And I was done talking. Setting my jaw, I bent, grasped the foot of the metal frame with my tech arm and tested the weight.
Too much, according to my lateral display. Way more than I’d have figured for a wire frame.
I heard shuffling, like rats clawing at walls, and then the unmistakable sound of something metal clanking against the frame I held. “Are you hiding under the bed?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“Fuck you,” he wheezed, fear making his voice tremble. “You go back and tell them the deal’s off!”
Deal? What deal? How the hell had I become the principal here? “You,” I grunted as I tugged at the bed, “and I are going to talk, Jim. Now.” This bitch was nailed down. Of course it was. You give somebody a chance, they’ll make off with anything that isn’t. Explained the lack of decor.
I squared my stance, fingers tightening on the frame edge. Every muscle from my reinforced biceps to the hesitant ache under my scapula twanged a warning.
I ignored it.
Sucking in a hard breath, I yanked. Hard. Much harder than I thought I could have; much, much faster. The bed frame shrieked, the springs clanked in the old mattress, the floor groaned as the bolts tore out of their moorings. I cursed hard and long as every nerve in my nonexistent arm turned to molten lava and Fuck It Jim made the last mistake he’d ever make.
He pulled a gun on me.
The mattress was still in freefall, bed frame carving plaster furrows down the wall I’d thrown it against as I stepped in, kicked the gun out from his shaking hands. I don’t remember making the decision. I simply reached down and seized his face in my metal hand. I slammed his head against the floor. Once.
He screamed.
Twice.
Three times, and the floor boards cracked.
He stopped screaming.
I didn’t stop breaking. Thud.
Crack.
Again and again.
When his head fell apart in my fingers, turning to so much mush and bone at the stump of the very motionless body I still straddled, I stopped.
Plaster dust rained like filthy snow, more gray than white, gathering like a fungus in the ruined shards of the fixer’s head.
Like a switch had been shut off, I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away.
Blood dripped from my metal hand. Seamed between the small plates. It smelled like iron and sweat and the noxious stench of voided bowels – shit and ammonia and raw, stinking fear.
My heart didn’t slow. It hadn’t even launched into the adrenaline-fueled race I was used to. It beat. Slowly. Surely.
The coldest kill I’d ever done.
Holy tits. Holy mother of freaking fucking hell. What was wrong with me?
I pushed off Jim’s inert form, my gaze skating away from the carnage of his head. Blood everywhere. Pink mush, gray bits. Plaster turning brown and red. Strained meat and pooling plasma.
I’d killed him. And it’d been so easy.
I staggered, half-crawling backwards, until my back hit the wall I’d pinned him against.
I’d killed before, obviously, but this was... different. It’d felt different. I hadn’t been riding a wave of adrenaline or fear. I hadn’t felt hatred or been paid or any of the usual reasons a person like me killed a man.
I’d simply... reacted.
And Fuck It Jim was dead.
Dead before I’d gotten the answers I so desperately needed. What the hell had gone through my brain? Why? I hadn’t even thought about it, I’d just... Squish. No more Jim.
That wasn’t like me.
My meat hand shook. My insides trembled violently – nerves. Serious nerves. Lucky had cleared me, but what if he’d missed something?
What if it wasn’t something his scanners could see?
“Oh fuck,” I gasped, bile welling up in my throat. Whatever had gone sideways, whatever it was, I knew enough that it was wrong. It wasn’t me.
And I wouldn’t get any answers from Jim now.
Something cold, sharp, and bitter curled into my chest. I shuddered, suddenly freezing where before I’d been warm. I sucked in a breath. My teeth chattered; I clenched my jaw.
It didn’t help.
Shaking, I stared at the corpse, the ruined bloody stump pointing to the pile of raw mush I’d made of his face, and I couldn’t manage to think in cohesive words.
Something was so wrong with me. But who the shit could I trust to help now?
The sunlight darkened behind the thin curtains, turning the congealing stains black. I blinked stupidly at the body. Glanced at the dimming daylight.
A muffled thump shook the complex.
Instinct threw me behind the other bed a nanosecond before the windows shattered inward.
13
The apocalypse rained down in Fuck It Jim’s hotel room.
Glass sprayed a glittering volley of sharp edges and razor points. I felt it pepper my head, my bare shoulders like sand. The bed groaned beneath the impact, but held. The one I’d ripped from its moorings went flying, slammed into the far wall, juddering the whole room as I clapped my hands over my ears.
The high-pitched whine of a helo was as unmistakable as the impact of booted feet hitting the floor.
What the shit.
Now my heart spiked into overdrive. Adrenaline slid through my
limbs, narrowing my focus away from Jim’s corpse and to the voices barking out orders nearly incomprehensible in the chaos.
Surprise was my only weapon.
I reached under the bed, grabbed the bare springs and dragged myself underneath the frame. The metal edges scraped against my front, bunching my tank. Ouch.
On the bright side, if my tits were even a little bit bigger, I’d have gotten stuck. Eat that, Fuck It Jim.
Well, posthumously.
My feet vanished as a set of boots circled around the foot of the bed, moving quickly to the small door I figured led to the bathroom. “Clear!” I heard.
Sucker.
I reached out from under the bed – every kid’s worst nightmare – and grabbed the second guy’s ankles. Jerking sharply rammed his shins into the metal frame, providing me the leverage to pull myself out. I wrenched his ankles on the way past and sent him staggering for balance.
Rolling to my feet, I seized one of his windmilling arms, jerked hard and ducked under his elbow as his weapon came around – another Sauger 877, which was probably a coincidence, given Sauger’s standing among paramilitary personnel.
That part where it could cut me in half was just frosting.
The gun in my dance partner’s hand went wild, bullets spraying. It peppered the wall, tearing holes through the plaster.
The man shouted a warning to his companion as I kept hold of his elbow, and I spun behind him, my arm hooked in his until we were back to back. I was shorter than the guy – he couldn’t clock me with his helmet and I wouldn’t be target practice for his buddy.
As I used him as a shield, I craned my neck to mark the white logo splashed across the back of his all-black, heavily armored uniform.
An M and a C, interlocked together in a circle. Son of a bitch.
The letters were as familiar as the city’s unique stench. MetaCore, Incorporated isn’t just a company. It’s a megacorporation that eats smaller firms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – the kind of superconglomerate with fingers in everything from tech development, arms, and industry, to multibillion-dollar style and beauty firms. Sauger had been an independent firm before MetaCore had bought them, as had the makers of the TekSpek software that now held prime turf as the go-to for most weapon-to-HUD linkups. This was the kind of overarching umbrella group little companies died at the feet of.
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