Mindy went over to Kitty. She seemed as if she might embrace the pink-haired girl but stopped. There was a strange awkward tension from the blond killer, a confusion about what to do in this situation. The lack of confidence was jarring and incongruous. Both women felt it acutely. Finally, Mindy spoke over Kitty’s quiet sobs. “I uh, don’t know what to do here, Kitty. I’ve been living with mercenaries and killers my whole adult life. We ain’t real big on hugging, but you look like you might need a hug. I can’t say if I’m any good at hugging, but I’ll try if you want.”
Kitty could only sniffle and nod. Mindy hugged her. It was a strange, stiff, and bizarre hug. This was not the fierce clutching of mother and child, nor was it the torrid embrace of star-crossed lovers. It was the tentative experiment of two people so badly hurt that even this tiny overture was stressful. But like any skill, the results improved with practice. Kitty’s sobs slowed, then her breathing followed. Mindy held her there for a while before she realized that the bartender had fallen asleep on her shoulder. She briefly considered putting her to bed on the couch but then decided against it. She was strong, and she could hold Kitty all night if it came to that.
Mindy shifted them both to a more comfortable position and decided to use the time reading text communications from Lucia and Roland. As expected, they had approved of the enormous expense Mark the Mercenary’s new crew would represent. Lucia was already working on getting Gateways Inc. to pay for it. She knew Lucia well enough at this point to assume this was a foregone conclusion. Two hundred thousand credits to end this latest Dockside scuffle was a bargain compared to what Gateways would have to spend battling The Brokerage themselves. Roland had run down the company that ordered the exotic materials and assembled Chico’s pistol as well. It was an arms contractor based on Thorgrimm, but they had offices in New Boston. Parker was pulling warrants on all of them as they spoke, meaning that particular tree was likely to bear fruit in the next twenty-four hours. Manny was off setting things up with Mark, and they planned on stealing the data and torching the Plain Fields facility by the end of the next day. Things were moving along nicely, and for the moment there was nothing for Mindy to do but wait.
Two hours later Kitty stirred. Mindy helped sit her up and waited for the groggy woman to open her eyes before seeing if she wanted a drink or something to eat.
“What time is it?” Kitty mumbled.
“About one o’clock in the morning.”
“Vodka?”
Mindy’s eyebrows rose. “Let me see what Roland has in his cabinet.”
An impromptu search of the spartan provisions revealed no vodka. Mindy held up two bottles. “Doc drank all the scotch, so we got Irish whiskey and this light brown stuff with a Cyrillic label. I don’t read any Russian, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t vodka.”
“What’s it smell like?” Kitty inquired.
Mindy unscrewed the cap and gave the contents a tentative whiff. When the vapors touched her bionic olfactory receptors she nearly gagged. “Oh gross! It smells like paint thinner and prune juice!” A small hand fanned briskly under her nose. “It’s gotta be almost pure alcohol! Ugh!”
“Does the label look homemade?”
Mindy checked. “Yup.”
“Rakia,” Kitty declared with authority. “It’s a kind of plum brandy from like, Poland or Croatia. Places like that, anyway. Some of the crews that come into the bar swear by it.”
“Tankowicz,” Mindy sounded out the name and put it all together. “Figures.”
“Bring that,” Kitty commanded. “I hate whiskey.”
“Hush your mouth!” Mindy sounded scandalized by so bold a statement. “You want a glass?”
“Not that kind of party, Mindy.”
“Damn,” the blond responded with mock severity.
With the drink situation sorted, Mindy returned to the couch where Kitty still sat, a trembling mound of blankets with a pink head poking out. A slender arm emerged from a drab green fold and snatched the bottle of light amber liquor. She took a tentative sip and her face contorted exactly as Mindy’s had upon smelling it. “Shit. Where does he get this stuff? Rodney’d kill for hooch this strong.”
“I think Granovich used to get it for him,” Mindy said. “Go easy. This might be his last bottle for a while.”
This sobered the women in an instant, and the reality of Chico Garibaldi again wormed to the forefront of their minds. There followed a long uncomfortable silence, which Kitty broke.
“I didn’t know what he was when I called you, Mindy. I didn’t mean to...” She could not finish the sentence.
“You didn’t do anything, Kitty.” Mindy smiled at her, though it was not her usual smile. This one was sincere and sad at the same time. “I’m glad you called me. If I hadn’t been there he would have killed you, or worse.”
“I’m so sorry!” Kitty was going to cry again, she just knew it. “I was so scared, and you are so tough. I thought that...”
“You thought I could protect you.”
Kitty nodded, shame overwhelming her. “I didn’t want to use you. I just wanted someone to make him stop. You know...”
“For good?”
Kitty’s reply was a slow nod of the head, heavy with shame. To deny it would be useless.
“Kitty, I’m an assassin. Killing people is what I do. Are you upset because you wanted me to kill someone or because you don’t think you can afford my rates?”
Kitty said nothing, she could not even meet Mindy’s eyes.
Mindy reached out and gently lifted her chin with a single finger. “Little of both, perhaps?”
The bartender’s face made the answer rather clear.
“Kitty-cat,” Mindy sighed with a look of maternal disapproval. “You can’t always afford the luxury of the moral high ground when you are in the grips of mortal terror. I don’t blame you for calling me. I’d have called me, too.”
The bartender blurted her defense. “I didn’t know he’d be like that! I didn’t think he would hurt you! Shit! I didn’t think he could hurt you!”
“He didn’t.” Mindy pointed to her side and her injured ribs. “I’m mostly osteoplast, kid. My bones were back to normal after a few hours at the body shop.” She pointed to her chest. “This? Hah! When you’re built like me and hang out with the scum I do? Let me tell you, a little rough trade is part of the job description.”
“But he tried to... he would have...” Kitty could not bring herself to say it. “I would have died if... that... happened.”
Mindy acknowledged this. “I can’t say it would have made my day, either. But some people are like that.”
“How can you be so damn calm about it!” Kitty hugged her knees to her chest. “He’s done it to me, you know. He made me feel like such garbage. Like I was so worthless he could just do whatever he wanted to with me and my body. He would, too. Any time he wanted to. Why not? He owned me, after all. By the time I got free of him, I hated myself as much as I hated Chico. I even felt guilty when Barney beat the shit out of him. It took me a long time to get over it all. Maybe I didn’t. I don’t even know anymore.”
“I have the benefit of a few years’ experience, Kitty. I grew up on a planet where everybody thought my body was theirs to control. Girls like me were usually paired off and married to whoever the church decided was best before we were eighteen. The prettier you were, the more valuable you were as a bride. Out of what I was told was pure coincidence, the prettiest girls always seemed to end up with the wealthiest church members.” Mindy affected a vapid facial expression and batted her eyelashes. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m very pretty.” This made Kitty smirk, and an encouraged Mindy drove on. “It was a messed-up way to raise a girl’s self-esteem, let me tell you. I was worth exactly as much as what an old man was willing to donate to the church to buy me. I hear the bidding was fierce. Not that it mattered, of course. When my sinful predisposition came out, the bids stopped quick, fast, and in a hurry! Girl, I went from hot commodity to ju
nk bond overnight. After I ran away, I learned to value myself so highly that it would take more than one asshole’s opinion to ever make me love myself less. Church elder or horny cyborg, it makes no difference. My body is mine, even if some people try to use it without permission.” She took a long pull from Roland’s bottle of Irish whiskey. “It’s like I told Ironsides. There ain’t nothing Chico could do to me that I can’t fix with a hot bath.”
“I wish I could feel like that. But I’m not Mindy the famous assassin. I’m just another piece of Dockside trash. You know nobody comes into the Hideaway for the booze. They come to suck up to The Dwarf and look at my ass. Even you, Mindy. I know why you sit at the bar three nights a week, and it isn’t to kiss Rodney’s ass.” Her hands went to the pink mop of hair and clutched at it. “And I tried to use that, just like I always do. I just shake my tits and watch the people do what I want them to. You could have been hurt, and it never crossed my mind.”
“Dockside makes a person jaded, Kitty. I ain’t holding it against you. You’ve carved a life out of the hardest place around, and you did it on your own with the tools and skills this town gave you. You are a beautiful girl, and there isn’t nothing wrong with being pretty. Watching you tend bar is the highlight of my day, and I’m not going to apologize for enjoying it. I promise I won’t ask anything from you that you don’t want to give me. It ain’t my style. If it makes you feel better, it turns out we were all going after Chico, anyway.” She gave the younger woman a sly wink. “So I’ll kill him for free. Next one you’ll have to pay the regular rates for, though.”
“How can you be like this?”
“Like what?”
“Calm. Nice. Forgiving. I’ve just admitted to leading you on just so you can fix my problem. You could have been hurt because of that!”
Mindy’s tone grew a touch serious, ensuring Kitty’s full attention. “You are a sweet, beautiful, tough-ass girl, Kitty. I like that and I’ll be blunt, I’m after you like Roland gets after good beer. But never for a second forget who and what I am, Kitty. I have almost two-hundred confirmed kills. I can break a man’s neck before dinner and then sleep like a baby after dessert. There is an ugliness in me that makes your ex-boyfriend look about as nasty as a mean chihuahua. What you did? From where I sit that was just good thinking and a solid strategy. You evaluated a situation under extreme stress and made a solid tactical decision. I ain’t mad, Kitty. I’m proud of you and happy that I was the one you picked.”
More booze disappeared down her throat, and the irrepressible blond could not help herself. “Hell, that sort thing just turns me on.”
“Christ, Mindy.” Kitty looked like she might be relaxing. “You are one seriously hardcore bitch!”
In a flash, the ditzy country girl returned, and an exaggerated pageant pose was struck. “But I’m pretty, too!”
A wry-faced Kitty stared with trepidation into the open mouth of the rakia bottle. Resigned, she took her own impressive pull and coughed her reply. “You’re all right, I guess. You’re no Sid, though.”
Mindy frowned. “Yeah, that woman is sex on wheels, isn’t she just? Did I ever tell you about the time she tried to vamp on Roland?”
“She didn’t!” Kitty could not believe she had not heard about this. “Really?”
“Oh yes. It was awesome.”
The two women spent the rest of the evening in the sort of banal small talk that had a way of smoothing over the rough edges of a bad day. The fear and trauma were not gone or even dealt with, but for a few hours they were just two friends telling stories and getting riotously drunk.
With her universe going to hell around her, Kitty could let go of her terror and get lost in Mindy’s stories of Roland’s embarrassments and her own exploits. She laughed at all the horrible teasing Mindy inflicted on poor young Manuel Richardson and listened with rapt attention to Lucia’s storied evolution from corporate vice-president to premier New Boston fixer. She cried when Mindy talked about her best friend and partner, a giant cyborg named Mack, and how his respect and friendship had helped her learn to be the woman she was today.
Kitty had never seen Mindy in this light before. Mindy had always been just another customer and a dangerous killer who bore watching. Looking out for herself took up so much of her attention that Kitty had forgotten that every face in Dockside has a story. Mindy’s story was fascinating, and Kitty wondered if leading Mindy on had been such a bad idea after all.
Sometime before dawn, Roland and Lucia returned to find the women asleep on opposite ends of the couch, empty bottles of booze abandoned to the carpeted floor. Lucia tossed an apologetic frown to the big man. “They drank your rakia, Roland. I’m so sorry. Maybe Elena has more?”
Expecting to see the man glowering, Lucia was surprised to observe what passed for a smile on his face.
“Don’t worry about it. Just look at them.” He pointed to the pair of snoring, drooling women. “This is perfect. This is what you are supposed to do with rakia. It’s what Yuri would have wanted it used for. Let them drink and let them sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day for everyone.”
Lucia wrapped an arm around his. “Aw. Listen to you being all nice and sweet.”
“If you tell anyone, I’ll call you a liar to your face.”
“No one would believe me, anyway,” she mumbled and dragged him toward the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The killer was dreaming again.
This time he dreamed without terror or confusion. His dream had a relaxed and almost organized sensation. The desperate phantoms that had clawed their way into his previous dream were less frantic and more friendly this time. The flood of impressions, thoughts, and personalities was no longer a crushing black tide. He floated on a gentle river, calm and strong.
There were four of them. He could see them all now. Not as people, but as memories of people. Instincts, experiences, impressions and desires swimming and wriggling through his own asserted themselves at moments appearing to be random at first, but were obviously quite deliberate when viewed from a distance. He could feel them all in his dream. He could pick them out as individuals in a way not possible when fully awake. Chico did not know if the dream pushed him down to their level or raised them up to his. He was astute enough to understand how important they were, though. In the dream he listened, and thus he learned about his newfound head-mates.
There was Chico Garibaldi, the murderer. His persona was strongest and in front. He understood that this was because he was alive and the others were dead. They floated in Chico’s dream after all, and dead men do not dream.
There was Roger, the enforcer. In him Chico felt an arrogance and anger that mirrored his own. He thought he would have liked Roger if they had ever met in life. The ghost of Roger agreed. He was a fighter, a brawler and a scrapper. He could stand toe-to-toe with Tank and give as good as he got. There were memories of a white cyborg body and a huge fight with Tankowicz in the parts of the dream where Roger lived. The echo of a battle lost still haunted the phantom with rage and shame.
Torvald was there, too. The mercenary was proud and fierce. He liked Chico’s savagery and approved of his taste in women. Torvald would have let Chico pull an oar on his boat, and apparently that was some sort of compliment wherever Torvald came from. Chico did not understand the reference but appreciated the sentiment all the same. The old man had the experience of a thousand battles to draw from. He knew a lot about Roland Tankowicz, and it was Torvald who knew how and where to pierce the giant’s hide. It was nice to have a century’s worth of combat instincts telling Chico when to fight, when to sneak, and when to run.
The woman was the hardest to connect with. If Laura was disgusted with Chico, he might have understood her better. Women were often disgusted with Chico. This woman was not. She was very ambivalent toward Chico as a man, though it was obvious she consented to their current arrangement. When he chased the shadows of her mind, he felt a strange sense of icy satisfaction. It did not feel l
ike affection, nor was it approval of him as a person. It was as if she held some inscrutable expectation for performance that he consistently met, and thus she was pleased. Chico did not know if he liked having her in his mind, but she was by far the smartest of them all. She told him when he was about to make a mistake and helped him find the things he needed and the people he was supposed to kill.
It should have been a proper mess, but somehow the dream kept them all straight. The voices never shouted over each other, they spoke in turn and when appropriate. How much of that was the careful work of an advanced AI versus the natural ebb and flow of his crowded headspace, Chico could not discern. It would be more accurate to say he did not care. He was smarter, stronger, more skilled and meaner than he had ever been and he liked it. What he did not like, and all the voices in his head concurred with this, was being yoked to Corpus Mundi and The Brokerage. If they had just offered to put him on payroll, an arrangement could have been made. Instead of an equitable arrangement, they considered him to be little more than a product.
The woman’s knowledge manifested as an idea. Chico should not be this aware of the others in his head. Nonna was supposed to preserve his skills and experiences as well as his drive and enthusiasm. The others were there to supplement the gaps in his abilities and stabilize what was obviously a defective template. Nonna was the gatekeeper and warden of Chico’s mental prison. She allowed the experiences and instincts through, but not the desires and motivations. The whisper of rage and fear from Roger confirmed this. He had been the first to experience such subordination, it seemed.
But Nonna was not suppressing enough of Chico Garibaldi, and to protect his mind the AI had been coerced into allowing the templates to overlap. Chico was never supposed to know they were there, but Laura knew that letting different templates move in and out of the command matrix would invalidate the fail-safes and break their hold on his systems. Every moment that Chico let another mind drive his body made it increasingly difficult for his masters to control him. Tank was the key to the ease of this. They all hated him, and at any time that hatred made it easy for one of them to slide into the driver’s seat. It was the one point where all four minds could overlap with minimal interference.
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