Code Noir

by Marianne de Pierres

  Shite happens, eh?

  Teece crossed his arms like an obstinate kid. ‘What’s it worth?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Remember that Brough Superior?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said suspiciously.

  ‘I’ll make good on my promise.’

  He eyed me for a minute. Then he took one step across and lifted me up into the air.

  That was no mean feat. I was just shy of two metres tall and eighty plus kilos. Teece only came up to my ears, but then he was built like several tanks.

  ‘Put me down, or I’ll slice you,’ I barked, sliding a garrotting filament out of my crop. Maybe I hadn’t loosened up all that much.

  But he just laughed at me in his way. ‘Do you really know where to get a Brough?’

  ‘Sure. Now are you going to help me with the barracks? ’

  ‘Such a gracious invitation.’

  I’d dangled the Brough carrot before. A Brough SS1100 was one of the first superbikes ever made. There was probably only a handful in existence. And Teece was a biker from way back. In fact he ran a transport business hiring bikes out to cross the wasteland that bordered on the west side of The Tert. We were living there right now, he and I. But that was about to change. I needed action and I couldn’t think of any gentle way to break the news, so I just said it.

  ‘I’m moving on today.’

  Teece froze. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve got some urgent business to attend and I’m going to base myself in Jamon’s old place.’

  I held my breath, unsure if I was right to gamble on him following me.

  He trembled and then took hold of himself. ‘I wondered how long it would be, Parrish. I only had you on loan, didn’t I?’

  His words stung, but then the truth is famous for being a first class bitch.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll lose my salvage rights if I’m not seen there. And there are some other . . . matters.’

  I stepped away from him, over to his comm cache, not wanting to see his hurt, and tapped in a Vivacity home code.

  A plump man with pink skin and a flirtatious mouth appeared on the screen. Ibis.

  ‘Parrish, darling? How lovely.’

  I smiled at him. ‘What are you like at interior decorating? ’

  ‘Brilliant, of course!’ Then, ‘Where?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘Here. In The Tert.’

  His cheeks, paled. For a second I though he might faint. ‘Are you insane?’

  Chapter Three

  I left Teece sulking with his bikes and ran east towards Torley’s, urgency claiming me. I had to find a quick lead on the karadji and Larry Hein’s snoops were the best on the northside. He just might need to be persuaded to help me.

  I reflected on my approach to Larry as I took in the landscape. From ‘Teece’s Bike Hire’ biz to Torley’s stretched a jumble of conjoined villa sets, long eroded of style and robbed of any dignity. These days The Tert was a sprawl of detritus architecture. Art Crappo.

  But it didn’t end there. The Tert boundaries spread peninsular-style to the south of the supercity, Viva. Slick and sick Fisher Bay on one side, the ailing Filder River on the other: a despoiling one hundred or more klick strip of rabble - animate and inanimate.

  It was once a massive engineering works site that got ripped down and disguised as a villatropolis - until the locals started showing signs of heavy metal poisoning from the industrial landfill.

  Now it was a weird territory for serious offenders. Every kind.

  A sterile strip of wasteland like an excessive firebreak divided it from the rest of humanity.

  To look at, nothing much had been altered by the short, intense war. The already patchwork human dwellings that had been damaged were now repatched and as functional as they would ever be. Not so their inhabitants.

  Nearly a thousand people died in a few days. The stink had got so bad that they’d allowed the Militia in to clean up. The mass cremations happened on the wasteland near Teece’s patch. Sometimes when I woke up in the night I could still smell it.

  The media gave all the death a heap of airtime. One-World, Common Net, Out-World - you name it. Nothing like a stack of burning, expendable bodies to boost the ratings!

  Priers - pilot/journos and their intrusive cam-cording ’Terrogators in fruited-up ’copters - supervised the whole affair jostling their Militia lackeys out of the way for the best close-up footage. Image scavengers!

  I became so desperate to lay my hand on some anti-aircraft hardware Teece had practically chained me up to stop me chucking grenades at them.

  I jogged until my energy waned, then I walked. Eventually I hauled my arse into a café for beer and food. Transport was around: scooters and Pets. I’d never been a fan of Pets. It didn’t seem right riding on a back of a kid even if it was half mekan. A more pragmatic person would have said, ‘Yeah but you’re putting cred in their pockets.’ But practical isn’t always my bag.

  More like hyped-up gut reaction!

  And getting worse.

  The food was average but the beer was good. Funnily enough it was one of the few things in The Tert that always was. Humanity might be on the fast track to hell but the beer in Tert town’d always be cold. I sipped my way through it and enjoyed being alone for the first time in a while.

  Not that I was really alone here. Since Jamon went down with the Cabal spear in his back, and I’d put a bullet in a shape-shifter named Io Lang, everyone knew me. Sometimes it was good, mostly it wasn’t, and some of the time I had to stop myself from hurting them.

  I was carrying a load of aggression inside that wasn’t entirely mine. It had to do with the needs of the parasite and the way it manipulated my body. The more epinephrine that flowed, the fatter and happier it got. The less human I got.

  Most of the time I controlled it. I’d even taken up meditation. But sometimes it got me so bad anyway that I turned rabid: angry and lusting. I likened it to a werewolf in the change - not that I’d ever seen one - but sometimes the need overwhelmed the rest.

  I guess you could say there was a new confidence in my look now, but it was shadowed by a dark preoccupation. I’d become the sort of person I used to admire - the person no one messed with, the one with nothing to lose. It wasn’t the way I expected it to be. Not one little bit.

  When is it ever?

  People didn’t mess with me but they competed endlessly.

  I slipped my hand into my pocket and fingered the little box of tattooed skin strips the ’Terro had given me. Why was King Tide so important to the Cabal? This wasn’t Fishertown.

  I drained my tube and asked for another. I wanted to get smashed but I didn’t have time.

  Four days!

  Besides, even that pleasure was denied me. The parasite kicked in when I reached a certain point of getting stoned and annulled the effects. You wouldn’t think you could crave waking up with a mother of a hangover and a mouth drier than six-month-old bread.

  But I did.

  One-World blathered on the bar vid. I switched sides of the booth to avoid seeing it. I didn’t watch net news any more on account of a personal grudge. Business conglomerates and politicians used to control the world. Now the steering wheel was in one set of reality-murdering hands. The media. They’d tried to frame me for the death of Razz Retribution, media hound and presenter. A capital offence. One I entirely did not commit.

  I was taking that grudge to the grave.

  I didn’t forgive a lot.

  Or forget.

  For the moment, though, they seemed to be leaving me alone. Too much public controversy, I guessed, over the truth behind Razz Retribution’s murder. Normally they didn’t give a canrat teste about the veracity of their viewing matter, but somehow enough doubt had separated the audience’s collective mind. Opinion had divided into camps.

  Parrish guilty. Parrish not.

  I guess intrigue made a change from the overdose of LTA ultra violence.

  By forcing Jamon Mondo to confess li
ve on the net, I’d bought myself some time. Now the Media couldn’t convict me without a trial and somehow they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do that. They were milking ratings.

  Though the heat had lessened I wasn’t off the hook, more like in a holding pattern. Too much was going on that I didn’t understand. Like my recent tête-à-tête with the Prier. The journo had tried to warn me about something (and failed on account of Teece’s trigger twitch), which left me with a case of chronic doubt and some ugly little skin flaps.

  I didn’t like unexplained allies.

  I continued to puzzle over it all as I knocked back my second tube, until a young, slick turk came hanging around my table. I picked him straight away - competitor!

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Problem?’

  He was lean and dark and, from the way he arched his back reflexively, on a testosterone high. Hard to say if it was natural or paid for.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ’Jus’ enjoying the view. Heard you’re the one that’s pretty dangerous. That true?’

  I sighed heavily. Whatever tiny interest his looks might have aroused in me dampened instantly. ‘You got the wrong person.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I been wantin’ to meet her. Real bad.’

  ‘Whyso?’ I asked, vaguely curious.

  ‘Heard she could match it with anyone. Heard she was real good at one-on-one.’

  ‘Uhuh.’

  Now his mouth was geared up there was no stopping him. ‘Yeah. I wanted a piece before she got disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’ Now he had my interest.

  ‘There’s talk,’ he mock-whispered and winked, sidling closer. ‘Someone’s put cred out to bag her. I got friends who know.’

  I’m pretty funny about my personal space but I let him into the fringes of it.

  My hand fell casually to my holster.

  Hormone boy stopped dead when he saw what I was packing but I had the Luger drawn in the second it took him to breathe.

  ‘Siddown!’

  His legs folded under him, so that he just caught the edge of the booth seat. His face flushed with anger and embarrassment. ‘You are her. I knew it,’ he cried.

  He was beginning to irritate me. ‘Who wants her?’

  A smirk ventured across his face. ‘What’s it worth?’

  It was the second time someone had said that to me today, only this time I wasn’t feeling so charitable.

  I examined him closely, my free hand fingering the collar of poisoned pins around my neck. ‘You could get to keep your own eyes. You might not need bone transplants. The benefits are endless, really.’

  His smirk transformed back to anger - and a flash of fear. A reputation could be handy.

  I shifted my aim to the spot right between his legs. I expected he was keen to keep his gonads in working condition.

  ‘Names,’ I said quietly.

  Sweat appeared on his upper lip and his hair-freeze began to thaw. ‘Someone up Tower Town way.’

  My breath caught in my chest. I leaned forward. Tower Town was Daac’s patch.

  Bastard!

  Hormone boy saw my reaction and sucked up a deep breath like it might be his last.

  I jerked the pistol, firing it off. The booth’s table splintered to pieces. Vaguely I saw people scrambling away, but my sanity had waned as the parasite gorged greedily on my reaction to the news.

  Somehow hormone boy had avoided the bullet and was crab crawling all the way to the door.

  I let him go, flicked some credit the bartender’s way for damages and got the hell out of there.

  The backwash of my neuro-chemical reaction struck as I lost sight of the café. I went down in a heap with the barest survival instinct to get my back against something solid before the hallucination took hold. It was the same as last time and the time before . . .

  An Angel, massive, rose from a stream of blood,

  spraying droplets. My blood.

  ‘The change is close, human.’

  I screamed my denial. A long, terrified sound.

  I was still screaming as my vision cleared.

  ‘Oya?’ said a muffled, frightened voice.

  A group of ragged children - ferals - stood in a semicircle around me wearing breather masks. They looked weird but harmless. Everyone in The Tert knew better. Ferals carried bio-weapons. Lethal, close-range, fast-acting viruses.

  I recognised one of them, a tall thin boy who had helped me once before.

  ‘W-what are you d-doing?’ I stammered.

  The boy flicked his gaze to either end of the walkway. I could see figures moving past in the afternoon shadows.

  He peeled the breather skin away from his mouth and nose. ‘We’ve been watching for you to come back. Some would harm you, Oya. We protect.’

  We protect.

  I stifled an urge to laugh. What was it I’d said about repaying debts?

  I got unsteadily to my feet and the ferals spread to give me room. Then I touched the boy lightly on the shoulder. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Link,’ he said, drawing together black brows over a thin, angular face.

  ‘Link, I have somewhere for you all to live. Pass the word. Torley’s barracks will be renewed.’

  The boy’s eyes sparked. He turned to two of the others with a quiet instruction, watching until they disappeared amongst the passing trade. Then he faced me again. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his torn overall and produced another mask. ‘We stay with you. Oya’s guard.’

  I raised my hand to protest and he deftly slipped the skin into it.

  ‘You won’t know we’re there, Oya. I promise. Keep this close.’

  I sighed heavily and took it.

  I didn’t stop again on the way back to Torley’s. Between my desire to avoid another hallucination and the knowledge that my movements were being monitored by a bunch of kids, the pleasure of being alone had faded.

  Instead I ran hard. Along cracked walkways, dodging between villa sets, and occasionally up and down stairs that offered short cuts through buildings. It didn’t take long for the puff to hurt and the sweat to stream. A month of inactivity with Teece had left me soft and out of condition. Contrary to what you hear, sex isn’t enough.

  I reached Torley’s circuit by late day. Overhead, the whine of Priers made for a constant background irritation. I glared into the sky.

  What were they looking at? Who were they looking at? What made The Tert so damn constantly interesting to the media’s pedigree vultures?

  Soon a hum of a different kind drowned them out. Tert noise. The bars in Torley’s ran twenty-four-seven but at dusk they assumed a new intensity. The biz end of the day. I hadn’t seen Link or his little band for a time, but I had no doubt if I wailed or had a mind flip they’d appear. Being guarded by a bunch of virus-carrying kids depressed me. My debt to those around me mounted, daily.

  I walked with an indifferent pose, yet my whole body thrummed with tension. Would Larry Hein help me?

  Although salvage rights on Jamon’s territory were mine, I’d walked away from them while I’d recovered at Teece’s, a time when I should have been cementing my intentions. Some would take my inaction as a signal it was up for grabs. Maybe Larry was one. Now I had to wade back in and put my stamp on it.

  Jamon had run most of the north side of The Tert. Torley’s strip of bars, Shadoville and The Stretch. He didn’t exactly pimp, but he had the power to protect the babes if it suited him. He provided most of the entertainment there was to be had. Drugs, Sensil - sensory illusion - rooms, gambling, even down to the cockdog fights.

  If I got the chance, I planned to make some changes and not everyone would like them.

  I’d have to do some convincing.

  That thought sent me through a weapons check. I could feel the weight of the garrotting filaments in the lining of my underwear. Two Lugers strapped to my thighs - show pieces - my charm bracelet of several short-range stun grenades and one gas hallucinogen (Minoj, my arms dealer, had set them
to activate on my saliva only, after I’d nearly accidentally blown myself and Teece away one day; I told Minoj if he sold that information to anyone I’d gouge out his few remaining teeth with a screwdriver), an oxy torch and pouch, an assortment of knives and a push dagger. The necklace of lethally tipped pins around my neck completed the package. Close on two metres of pure arsenal.

  Could anyone resist a girl like me?

  Well, maybe. Mainly on account of my face. One side was caved. Nose bent as well. Unsightly, I knew, but somehow fixing it never seemed a priority.

  The noise and sprawl of Torley’s was like coming home. Outside Hein’s bar a band of King Tide crazies performed strip theatre under the sulky daytime glow of a cheap advertible proclaiming ‘The End of the World foks’.

  Inside, Hein’s looked pretty much the same as always - drab ’creted walls, tactile chairs, a hint of blood stains - apart from the absence of Jamon’s dingoboys. Most of Jamon’s canine army had run when I’d had my wicked way. I’d heard a few of the smarter ones had hung around hiring out as protection.

  Late afternoon meant a reasonable crowd. I recognised some. They all recognised me. A few called out welcome. Others retreated urgently into their bio-comms, which probably meant trouble.

  Larry Hein was in his usual spot behind the bar, orchestrating his servitors with a wave of his silk-water-colour scarf. Larry was straight but he loved to dress up. Tonight he wore slinky, pale green lurex with slits at the side. A month ago it was chiffon. I’d have to introduce him to Ibis so they could swap fashion tips.

  When he saw me, I caught the startled flash of white around his deep-set eyes.

  I strolled over. ‘You kept tab of what I owe you, Larry?’

  He nodded stiffly, feigning insult at my question.

  ‘Then quit looking so nervous.’

  He leant forward, wafting me with his tart imitation uptown cologne.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Parrish? I’ve had trouble keeping things tight here. And now all the nuts are nuts with this King Tide thing.’ He shrugged towards the door. ‘There’s talk that you’re dead. Or changed. Some of the ’goboys are howling that they’ve got salvage rights.’