Code Noir

by Marianne de Pierres

The albino girl/thing rolled her eyes.

  They were black like Daac’s. Not true albino.

  ‘Skin-stripped,’ she said. ‘How d’ya think I’d afford this place?’

  I stared closer. Speckles of blood seasoned her arms like finely ground red pepper. Raw bleeding meat covered in a translucent synthetic skin. I didn’t understand what she meant. Didn’t want to.

  ‘You seen a woman go through here? Scarf, boots, face paint?’ I asked instead.

  The nearly albino girl/thing chewed on a fingertip. Some plas skin came away in her mouth and she spat it on to the floor. I suddenly knew what made it so crunchy.

  Beats nail biting, I guess.

  ‘Nope.’ She watched the blood well on her fingertip, licking it like an ice cream until another skin grew.

  ‘Putcha print ’ere. Same on the door lock. What’ve you got to pay for it?’

  Loyl and I exchanged looks. We held out our cred spikes at the same time.

  She stared blankly at them. ‘Fingerprints buy youse a shower. No bed. What else you got to barter? Skin, hair, sperm, hormones - ’though me sampler’s on the blink. I’ll have ta use me big glass. It’s all good in Mo-Vay.’

  Mo-Vay? ‘What do you do with the samples?’

  She frowned at the question. Bemused. ‘Sell them to Ike,’ she finally answered. ‘What else?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’d be God to you,’ she said.

  I couldn’t think of what to say next, so I stood and waited to see if Daac would lop off a finger or spit into a jar for her. I sure wasn’t going to.

  Maybe he was thinking the same thing about me.

  The albino girl/thing began to tap her fingers on the desk. One of them left wet, pink smudges.

  Eventually I scrabbled in my pack for something of value and came up with a fistful of Loser’s fur.

  I plonked a pile of it in front of her. ‘Body hair,’ I lied.

  She stretched backwards and pulled a magnifier over her head. It didn’t do much for her look. Blood-specked white girl/thing in brightly lit plastic bubble.

  She studied the hair expertly. So much for the broken DNA sampler. This little girl didn’t need one.

  Daac sent me a what-the-fok-did-you-give-her frown.

  She answered him before I could. ‘This is canrat. Not worth batshit, usually. But this one’s got dingo innit. None left around here no more.’

  She flicked off the light and jerked the bubble back, beaming a grin.

  ‘How long youse wanna stay?’

  I followed Daac past the guest lounge toward the stairs. Did I say guest lounge? Try locked ward. I knew lots of punters in The Tert suffered from the effects of the heavy metals, but I’d never seen the worst of it.

  Until now.

  Some of the occupants lounged connected to pumps, their uncontrollable shaking, warts and rashes testament to their particular poison. Others were vocal and hallucinatory. One - a woman, I think - smiled soft, bleeding gums at us. Her toxin-darkened skin reminded me of Stellar, Jamon’s ex-squeeze.

  I turned away, sick to my stomach.

  We climbed three flights of rotten stairs and risked the corridor. Daac reached into his pack and produced a skin glove. He slipped it on and touched his fingers to the keypad.

  Nothing happened.

  After a moment he kicked the door and it sprang ajar. Peeling off his glove, he dropped it. In a minute it had shrivelled into something like the albino girl/thing’s fingertips. ‘No need to give anything away for free,’ he said.

  The room sported a half-window view of the pavement below and the stink of urine in the san. Richly coloured mould stains formed a dizzy pattern across the ceiling - a tripper’s paradise. One bed, a low chest with single drawer and a hard-backed chair. The air con wheezed in asthmatic spurts: freezing blasts - then nothing.

  ‘You sleep first,’ he said. He dragged the chest across in front of the door and the chair to the window. Then he pulled a Sprag semi-auto from his pack.

  I’d never seen Daac with a weapon like that before.

  He felt my curiosity. ‘Just a feeling,’ he muttered.

  The pillow looked risky, so I set my pack under my head and stretched out on top of the cover. My hands rested on the Lugers for comfort.

  ‘Don’t shoot yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Never.’ I yawned, wanting and not wanting to sleep. ‘Plenty of practice.’

  He slung down on to the chair so he could recce the window and the door. With half-light and half-closed eyes I gorged on the sight of his face. My thighs itched, so I rolled away.

  Could I trust him? For half an hour, surely, I decided, and crashed.

  I didn’t have dreams any more, only dark shadowy spaces of dim consciousness. The Eskaalim’s gluttony filled me like a bloated carcass.

  I wallowed in thick, red, river-warmth. It washed into my mouth and across my breasts, pouring down my body. Spreading my legs for it, I came high and wide like a summer sun.

  I sweated myself back to proper consciousness, fist clenched between my thighs as I shuddered to the end of my orgasm. Thankfully my back was still turned to Daac. Had I moaned aloud? Please, no!

  I lay still, waiting for the moment - and the embarrassment - to pass.

  But the heat wouldn’t leave me.

  Hadn’t left me for a while. Since The Slag, my tee had been wet under my arms and around my neckline. I sweated all the time, like I had menopause or some other shitty female affliction. My neck ached from leaning on my pack.

  At least Loser isn’t in there, I thought. How would I have explained him to Daac?

  Daac! I sat bolt upright. Where was he?

  Chair empty. San empty. Bed empty. Chest back in its place. Door ajar.

  Relief came first. He hadn’t witnessed my lust.

  Then fury.

  Bastard left me unprotected! If the Cabal wanted him marinated, garnished and BBQed, I’d be more than happy to do it.

  I slipped my pack on and stumbled to the window.

  He was out there on the pavement, under neon, in deep discourse with a stranger. He handed a pock-marked guy something then slipped back toward Chez Nutter.

  Forgetting my relief that he hadn’t seen my night-jinks, I sat on the chair, pistols drawn, waiting for him.

  He came quietly into the room, replacing the chest.

  ‘Friends?’ I asked.

  He jumped and then located me in the dark.

  ‘Parrish?’

  ‘Unless you left someone else here asleep and defenceless. ’

  The smallest of grins. ‘You? Defenceless?’ Then he ran his hand across tired eyes. ‘I shook you. You wouldn’t wake. It was important.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Biz.’

  ‘Out here in Mo-Vay?’ I drawled.

  ‘We could spend for ever looking for Leesa Tulu. We need information or we’re wasting our time. My last sighting was back on my place - a vendor who said she’d seen Tulu and Mei. Since then I’ve been following you.’

  ‘What vendor?’ I demanded. ‘Don’t tell me . . . grey hair, eyebrow studs, food like rat vomit.’

  He gave me a stare. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Never mind. How much did it cost you?’

  The stare became quizzical. ‘Cost? Why would it cost me anything? She just told me.’

  I suddenly got a bad case of gnashing teeth. Life sucked. ‘Why are you here, Loyl? This isn’t just about Mei and Sto, is it?’

  He sat down on the bed. ‘You first.’

  ‘I’ve been hired to find Tulu,’ I said truthfully. ‘I told you that. Attempted hijacking and voodoo dolls made it a bit more personal.’

  ‘And your employer would be?’

  ‘Client privilege.’

  I watched him carefully now, the neons outside strobing pink and sickly yellow stripes across his face. Maybe it was fatigue - the Wombat knows he’d been travelling hard and fast as well - or maybe he’d held on to the sane, gorgeous act for too
long, but fanaticism had begun to transform his face into something much less attractive.

  ‘She’s an experienced medium. I might be able to reach the Eskaalim through you, Parrish. With her help.’

  ‘Why me? What about the others that have been infected?’

  ‘We’ve tried. They didn’t survive,’ he said flatly.

  ‘So its about attrition, is it? You happened to kill the others and I’m next on the list?’

  He frowned, missing my sarcasm, missing everything that didn’t fit with his skew on the world.

  ‘You’re stronger than the rest, Parrish. You’ve already survived two attempts at contact. If somehow I can harness this creature through you . . . it could be useful.’

  I exploded. ‘Harness it! For what? What are you thinking? An army of shape-shifters to fight your wars?’

  He didn’t answer me directly. He didn’t have to. I saw the truth of it in the glittering calculation of his eyes. ‘We will have our place back, Parrish. Our land. This will all change. I’ll rid it of the scraps.’

  Scraps! The Tert punters? Sure, I guess. But right there was where Daac and I had a fundamental. When I said The Tert is full of human scraps, I meant it fondly.

  He meant, torch ’em!

  You see I’m pretty big on live and let. Unless you try to stick a gun at my head or a knife at my throat, in which case I’ll turn you into dog food. To my mind the world had a history of carnage that could be summed up by arguments over who thought they had the right.

  Most people still didn’t get it. We all had the right. And none of us had the right. How simple could it be? How we fucked it from there on in was an individual problem. The thing I hated more than anything else - more than stone-cold crazies, fakers and pretty dresses - was manipulative zealots.

  And yet my hormones squealed every time this particular one came near me.

  Well hormones or no, I wouldn’t let him use the Eskaalim to make foot soldiers for his cause. But I wasn’t going to tell him that just yet.

  Just tag along Parrish, play the game. Come from behind.

  I calmed myself with that plan. ‘So where is Tulu? ‘

  ‘Won’t know until morning. When they come back to get paid.’ He yawned and slumped down on the bed. ‘Wake me at light.’

  I watched him sleep, and stewed - several hours of a bitching internal war that alternated between wanting to leave him and wanting to lie next to him. Moral disgust versus fleshly temptation, while his jaw fell slack and he snored softly.

  By dawn temptation had a foot on the home straight and my pelvis was doing a funny crampy thing. I shoved him awake with my toe, avoiding flesh contact, in case the crampy thing turned into another orgasm and I died from mortification.

  ‘Let’s move. This place is making me scratch.’

  He rubbed his eyes with his flesh hand and stretched, pulling his tee tight, flashing rib flesh. I tumed away willing the heat to leave me. How could anyone look so innocent one minute and act so rabid the next?

  I got one flight down and the stairs stopped dead.

  ‘Loyl?’

  He looked past me, slipping the Sprag loose from the straps of his pack. A wall of pale membrane blocked our path.

  I touched it. ‘Feels like thick sorta web. It’s warm.’

  He pulled me back, frowning. ‘This’ll be noisy.’

  ‘I like noisy.’

  ‘You would. Back up in case.’

  I climbed back to the top of the stairs, marvelling how we slipped from enemy to ally so easily.

  Daac sprayed fire directly into the membrane.

  No richochet. When the vibrations stopped he stepped down to feel it. ‘Holes are there , but closing up already.’

  Claustrophobia was on me. ‘Let’s look around.’

  We marched down the corridor taking one room at a time. All the doors opened easily like ours. They were empty. About six in all.

  Back in our room, Daac pointed on to the street. ‘Fancy a climb?’

  I reached to open it, eager to get out. ‘Sure.’

  The window was fastened shut, nothing unusual in The Tert.

  ‘Watch out.’ He swung the chair at it and nearly flattened himself as it bounced straight back at him. He touched the window. ‘Same stuff. Transparent though.’

  I pulled a knife from my boot and stabbed at it. The ‘window’ barely dented and within seconds the surface smoothed.

  ‘Parrish!’ Daac had that tense, throaty tone.

  I knew what he meant. Add ‘trapped’ to my phobia list.

  I ran from room to room checking the ceilings. Dirty but smooth. No manholes. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? The only gap I could see anywhere was the aircon breather vent at one end of the corridor.

  ‘Look,’ I shouted.

  ‘I think you’d better look,’ he called, ‘here.’

  I ran back to him. Through our window the grey-pink dawn lit a swarm of activity. He pointed to a quad-runna. Around it roved a guard of naked, painted-up young turks armed with kit rifles and fast-twitch muscles. Their movements were swift, exaggerated. And arrogant. A confidence you only got when you believed you were untouchable.

  ‘The web-stuff doesn’t seem to be covering the vent. Otherwise the aircon would have blown,’ I said.

  ‘How big is it?’

  I glanced meaningfully at the width of his shoulders. ‘Big enough. Just. You should lose some weight.’

  He jerked the Sprag. ‘I’ll cover the hallway. You get the damn thing open.’

  I didn’t need to hear any more. I grabbed the chair and ran back down the corridor.

  With my push dagger I pried around the edge of the vent. No go. I stabbed and hacked with each of my knives in turn. I couldn’t even dent the metal.

  For a run-down piece of crappo architecture, this place sure had some interesting extras.

  My hand strayed to my dagger belt. It brushed the Cabal knife. Maybe?

  The black metal sliced through the grating like cheese. ‘Loyl! Come!’ I bellowed.

  Back near the stairway the wall began to harden and become brittle. The youth army was spraying it with something from the other side.

  Loyl stood there transfixed.

  I shouted to him again. ‘Now!’

  He ignored me, dropping to his knee in the corridor. The Sprag sprayed its own message, perforating the membrane.

  He was buying me time. Only I didn’t need a hero. That was my job.

  Annoyed, I holstered the Lugers and hauled arse up into the mouth of the vent.

  I’ve been in chutes before. Well once, anyway. But that was laundry and going down. This was aircon and going up.

  Dusty and slippery.

  My upper body strength was pretty good for my size, but that’s the problem. My size. The effort of getting my entire body plus pack up into the hole nearly did me in. Only the thought of what the small army of jacked-up pubescents was planning on doing to us got me up over the first lip.

  I squirmed around and hung an arm down for Loyl.

  ‘Come on! Grab it.’

  A second later he was there. He stretched to meet me.

  I saw restraint probes snake out, fixing on to his neck. Flat-ended suckers delivering tiny paralysing kisses.

  Too late!

  He gargled and flopped to the floor.

  I should have gone down there after him. But the sight of his paralysis terrified me. Jamon had done the same thing to my legs not so long ago. Then he’d tried to rape me.

  Rewind on the hero thing.

  ‘I’ll find you,’ I yelled consolingly at his unconscious body and contorted up around the first kink in the duct and along as far as I could squeeze.

  I lay panting. Below I could hear voices. Shots bounced around the opening of the vent. Any second I expected web-stuff to come crawling up the sides. My muscles screamed with exertion, my mind screamed with dread.

  So much noise.

  In the end nothing and no one followed me.

&n
bsp; I lay wedged there, fixated with guilt and worry at leaving Daac behind.

  Leaving him behind? Who are you kidding, Parrish? You’re the one stuck in an aircon duct.

  Stuck was the word. I tried the caterpillar thing and went nowhere. Ahead of me the duct narrowed away into a thin tube. My feet paddled and slipped on the smooth interior. Because of my pack, I couldn’t go backwards either. So I lay, arms pinned to my side, wondering what it might be like to mummify. Fingernails of panic clawed at my belly.

  A few minutes later freezing air blasted through the pipe, over and under my clothes. Forget flooding the rat from the sewers - these scuds were trying to freeze me out!

  Soon my teeth were chattering.

  The cold must have frozen my brain because it took an age before I remembered the Cabal dagger. Or maybe it was just that it began to dig a hole in my groin. With difficulty and a lot of wriggle, I slid it from inside my knife belt.

  I gouged in a small, laborious circle. Slowly it punctured the metal. Every now and then I stopped and poked a finger through. Encouraged and warmed slightly by the effort I worked on. The layer of insulation wrapped around the outside of the tube was easier. Soon the hole got big enough for my hand and arm, then my shoulder and finally my head.

  With relief I squirmed out of the duct into the ceiling. I rummaged in my sack for my headband and slipped it on.

  Fashionless enough to make Merry 3# gag - but effective.

  The light illuminated the usual rafters, cobwebs and dust. No one had crawled through here in a while. I remembered the intricate mould patterns I’d admired in the room and wondered if they were connected in some way with the creepy mesh.

  I checked my compass implant and got a bearing. Bent over like a hunchback I ran through my options.

  Most Tert villas had cut-thrus into the next set. This one had been blocked off with scrap and chunks of plas - no signs of the mesh, though. The roof above was intact, which meant I either hacked my way out on to the roof - time consuming and noisy - or I removed the rubbish.

  I didn’t fancy climbing around on the outside of the roof waiting for a canrat, or a whatever, to pick me off, so I went for the cut-thru option.

  A minute later I was dust-coated, fingernails torn and bleeding from scrabbling and scraping, face and inside my nostrils caked. On the bright side, the Cabal knife was a freaking miracle of cutting power. When I found out what it was made of, Raul Minoj and I were gonna make a killing on the open market.