by Lisa Smedman
As other techs ran toward the cubicle, the dwarf picked himself up off the floor, eyes blazing. "What the frig's her problem?" he sputtered, his beard quivering with anger. "She consented to this test, yeah?"
I had jumped up from my seat to restrain Jane, but there was no need. She'd fallen out of her chair and lay curled up on the floor in a fetal position. Tears spilled from shut eyes and her breath came in short gasps that sounded like sobs. I waved back the techs who were trying to crowd into the cubicle, knelt down, and touched her shoulder.
"Jane?"
"No," she whispered. "Not the mask. Please don't ..." Then she jammed her fingers into her mouth and sucked on them, a look of intense agony twisting her face. She stank of fear.
I shook her slightly. "Jane?"
After a long moment, she lowered her fingers from her mouth. Her eyes opened. They were full of confusion as they met mine.
"Where—?" She gulped. "What—?"
"You're in the Lone Star police station in Halifax," I told her. "In the scanning lab. The technician is just going to draw some blood for a DNA sample."
"No, I'm friggin' well not," the dwarf said, holding his chest with one hand. "Yer Jane Doe can go skag herself."
I glared back at him. "She's mentally ill," I growled. "She's not responsible for her actions. She—" I stopped myself. What was I doing, defending this complete stranger? Yet as I looked at her tear-stained face, something tugged at my emotions. Cut off from her memories, Jane was alone in the world. Just as I had once been.
Jane suddenly rose to her feet and sat down in the chair, making an odd motion with her hands that suggested smoothing out a wide skirt. Then she placed her right arm, which was still bound by the rubber tubing, onto the counter next to her. "I am anxious to see the sphygmomanometer in operation, Herr doctor," she said to the dwarf. "Please do demonstrate your device."
I turned to look at her, startled. Although she was speaking English, Jane's voice had taken on a thick German accent. She sat erect, her chin lifted in a haughty expression. Just the way she held her body transformed her. Even though I'd known her only a short time, I could see a distinct difference. She even smelled different. More confident, less fearful. She was no longer Jane Doe. She was someone ... else.
Even the dwarf could see the change. He kept a cautious distance. "What the frig's she trying to pull now?" His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"I don't know." I picked up a syringe and showed it to Jane. "Any objections to having a blood sample taken?" I asked her.
"Proceed," she said curtly.
I offered the syringe to the dwarf. But he turned his head and raised his hands, palms out in a silent refusal. I turned toward the doorway, but the other lab techs had melted away, except for one who was cleaning up the debris from the spilled cart.
"Will you take the sample?" I asked her, holding up the syringe.
She shook her head. "No way," she said. "That woman's nuts."
I glared my frustration at the tech. When I looked back at Jane, her posture had changed again. She no longer sat with a laser-straight spine, nor did she carry her chin quite so high. She shook her head slightly and blinked, as if she'd just woken up. "Is it over?" she asked.
I sighed and set the syringe down. "It's over," I said.
The retinal scan would have to be enough.
I had the techs run the retinal scan through the databases. It drew a blank: Jane didn't have a System Identification Number, nor was there any record of her in any Lone Star database. If she had ever been arrested, it wasn't within any of Lone Star's jurisdictions. And they cover most of North America.
"All right, Jane," I said, touching her arm. "We're finished here. You can go—"
I had been about to suggest that she go home, but then I realized that Jane didn't know where "home" was. Instead I fished a card out of my pocket. It had the name and address of a shelter for the SINless, down on Barrington Street near the docks. Not the nicest part of town, but she'd be safe enough once she got inside. I scrawled my name on the back of the card.
"Here," I told Jane as I walked her out of the scanning lab, toward the police station's Rainnie Street exit. "This is a shelter where you can go and doss down. Show them this card at the door and tell them Romulus sent you. Otherwise they'll tell you the place is full."
I held the door open for her. The sun was just rising, painting the sky over the Halifax Citadel a bright pinkish orange. She followed my gaze, looking up at the 19th-century military fort—now a high-security Lone Star prison—and her face took on a look of intense sorrow. Then her eyes rose to the sunlight-dappled sky behind it, and her expression softened.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "It feels so good to be ..."
I interrupted her thought by pressing a credstick into her hand. It had maybe ten nuyen left on it, but that was more than enough for a local call. Even though I doubted Jane could give me any more information, I didn't want to lose touch with her.
"If you remember anything more, use this to give me a call," I said. I took the business card back from her and added a telecom number to it.
She blinked, then pocketed the credstick.
I pointed in the direction of Barrington Street. "The shelter is that way. Good luck."
"Thank you, Romulus," she said. "Se'seterin."
Bright morning? The word was Sperethiel, the language of the elves. Where had she picked up that expression? From her cat-smuggling "friends"?
I yawned, and watched her go. It had been a long night. As Jane walked away, I wondered if I would see her again.
4
I took a jander down to the Public Gardens that evening. I waited until it was dark. The city's quieter then—fewer humans on the streets—and the night always feels like a much more natural time to be out and about.
The Gardens used to be a public park, up until the beginning of this century. But once simsense was developed, there wasn't any need for people to physically visit the place. Not when they could walk through it virtually and avoid unpleasant weather and encounters. In the mind, every day is a sunny day. And there aren't any gangers to mug you.
I walked between the trees along a path that was more garbage than gravel. The flower beds on either side were overgrown with weeds, the fish ponds had dried up to crusted mud, and the fountains had stopped working long ago. Gang graffiti was scrawled across the tumbled stonework walls. The Gardens had become a haven for the SINless, squatters who'd built homes for themselves in the trees out of scrap wood and metal. Firelight flickered through the cracks in the tree house walls, and loud, thumping music filled the park as boom boxes competed with one another for territory. Above the cacophony of wailing guitars and thudding bass, I could hear rough voices laughing, and occasionally a thud or splatter as garbage was dumped from one of the tree houses.
The ground was covered with litter; a foul smell of spoiled food rose to my nostrils as my feet scuffed through the plastic wrappers. Acrid smoke from the cooking fires drifted down from above, and I caught the occasional whiff of hashish or sweet crack smoke. There were also more pleasant smells, like lingering memories of the Gardens' former glory. I passed by a tangled rose bush that had probably survived only because of its tough thorns, and drank in its rich velvet scent.
I heard a faint hissing noise and spun around just in time to see a ganger sliding down a rope that hung from one of the tree houses overhead. One gloved hand clutched the rope; the other held a Streetline Special. The gun was tiny, its lightweight composite body hidden by the ganger's slim hand. It was a cheap factory knock-off, and not terribly accurate. But at this close range, the ganger probably wouldn't miss.
I stared her down as her feet touched ground, ignoring the rustling noises in the branches overhead that told me that other gangers were moving into position, closing the circle around me. I knew from police reports that they liked to use monofilament nooses: molecule-thin, weighted wires that would slice a victim's head off with one sharp yank. I fought t
he urge to tuck my chin defensively in against my neck—it wouldn't do any good, anyway—and concentrated on the ganger descending the rope. She would be the leader, the one who would decide whether the gang would parlay with me—or whether they would cut me up like meat and argue over the pieces later.
The gang leader was a wiry human with slanted eyes and a mop of bleach-white hair. She'd had her eyes replaced with anime-eyes, a style of cybereye modeled after a cartoon character that was popular just before the turn of the millennium. They were wide and staring, giving her a childlike appearance that didn't match her malicious smile. She was probably in her twenties, but with those eyes I couldn't think of her as anything other than a girl.
She wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out to show off her tattooed arms, which had muscles like braided wire ropes as a result of climbing up and down to her squat in the trees above. Her trousers were navy blue with a gold stripe down the side; military-issue and probably boosted from some UCAS sailor who'd made the fatal mistake of straying into the Public Gardens after dark.
I was standing near the tree that held the squat she probably dossed down in. Keeping my moves slow— and maintaining eye contact with the girl the whole time—I unzipped and splashed my mark across the tree trunk. It was a challenge that even a human could understand.
The ganger let go of the rope, took a quick step toward me, and touched the barrel of her pistol to my chest.
I smiled. "You can't kill me with that," I told her.
It was only partially true. If she shot me in the head or spine I'd die, same as anyone else. But otherwise, I'd only have to shift to wolf form to regenerate the damaged tissue and bone. A bullet to the chest would hurt like drek, and would leave me gasping and bloody on the ground. But it wouldn't kill me.
She could see I wasn't bluffing. She lowered the pistol and cocked her head to one side. Her overlarge eyes stared at me, disconcertingly childlike in her adult face.
"Wha'cha want?"
"I'm looking for a troll with a horn like a unicorn's," I said as I zipped up my pants. "He's a Weed, like you." I was guessing, of course. The troll had been wearing a long-sleeved jacket when I saw him in the parking garage.
"Why?"
"I want to catch the thing that iced his chummers," I answered.
"Are you Star?" she asked in a voice that hissed with menace.
As I considered my answer, I heard a rustle in the branches overhead and felt something threadlike brush against the tuft of hair on the tip of my left ear. I kept absolutely still, knowing that if I made a wrong move now the monofilament noose would drop around my neck in a flash. Decapitation is something I sure as drek can't regenerate from.
"I'm a bounty hunter," I said. "Lone Star pays good nuyen for taking down dangerous paranormals like the one that killed the two Weeds up in the North End garage."
"Wha'cha talkin' about?" she snorted. "Stud and the others were druggin'. That was what flatlined 'em."
I shook my head. "It was a para. I saw it."
"You was there?"
"I happened by. I heard shooting and checked it out."
"Most folks would'a run the other way," she said.
"I'm not most folks." I gave her my most wolfish grin.
She considered, then said, "Wait a minnit." She raised her gloved hand and flicked her fingers in silent gangspeak.
We waited in the bedlam that was the Public Gardens, listening to the blaring boom boxes and shouts from overhead. A police chopper passed low over the park, its prop wash thrashing the tree branches while a searchlight stabbed down at the ramshackle shelters. I heard the splat of pistol fire, and a round or two zinged off the gold star that was painted on the chopper's armored belly. I suppressed a growl; the squatters in the park were firing at a Lone Star vehicle. But now wasn't the time to make an issue of it.
The chopper moved away, its rotor noise fading into the night.
A branch overhead creaked as a heavy weight bent it, and then a burly form slid down the rope the gang leader had used. It was the troll from the parking garage. He towered over me, more than two hundred kilos of pure menace. A stubby spiral horn jutted out of the center of his broad forehead, and his lower canines curved up and over his upper lip. One of his pointed ears was torn; the other was studded with earrings made from the pull tabs of soda pop cans. The troll looked as if he were in his early thirties, but was probably barely out of his teens. Trolls only live to about fifty, and mature early.
"Hello, Stud," I greeted him, guessing that his was the name the ganger girl had used earlier.
He stared at me a moment, then his eyes slid to the girl beside him. "Never seen this frigger before in my life."
"Yes you have," I said. "Watch." I shed my shirt and unzipped my pants, letting them fall around my ankles. As I dropped to hands and knees, I heard the girl's voice: "Likes to show off what he's got, doesn't he?"
Then I changed...
I swiveled my ears and caught the troll's sharp intake of breath as he watched my body shift into wolf form.
"You're the dog I saw in the garage," he whispered.
I panted happily, my tongue lolling. Then I shifted back...
The wide-eyed ganger girl eyed my human form appreciatively as I put my clothes back on. I shot her a wink, then spoke to the troll.
"That ball of light that I saw touching the elf girl's head—"
"My girlfriend," the troll rumbled. I could tell from his ugly frown that he'd crank me if I mentioned the fact that he'd accidentally put a bullet through her chest.
"It was a paranormal animal," I continued. "A corpselight. Where'd it come from?"
"It's Halo."
"Who's Halo?"
"Not who ... what." His expression melted into a dreamy smile. "That drug is some good," he answered. "Frigs ya up somethin' fierce—leaves ya weak as a kitten for days after. But it's the best rush ever. Like a good boff. Just leaves ya wantin' more."
"Did you know it was a living creature?"
The troll shook his large head. "Not until it flat-lined Punk and Mick. That's when Alishia took a peek at it in the astral and started screamin'. When it latched onto her, I decided to cap it. She's nowhere near as chill as those two, and it would'a done her for sure."
The girl ganger shot the troll a look. "So Halo really is a para? This guy's not scammin'?"
"Guess so," the troll said.
My mind was still trying to process what I'd just learned. The tentacled horror that had killed three people in the North End parking garage was being sold on the streets as a drug. Somebody had found a way to sustain corpselights in a city environment, and was selling a new high: the deadly rush of ecstasy that a corpselight used to subdue the victims whose life essence it fed upon.
It looked as if Drug Enforcement had a claim to the case, after all.
"Where'd you score the Halo?" I asked.
That got me a look. I could see the troll debating whether or not to tell me. Ratting out your dealer is an excellent way of getting iced. But that dealer was responsible for the death of the troll's girlfriend...
"Ya gotta know a shaman or mage to use Halo," he stalled.
"How come?"
"Ya need magic ta use it."
"I don't want to use it," I reminded him. "I want to talk to the friggers who're dealing it. I want to capture one of these corpselights."
The troll paused, but I could tell by his body language that he was going to give me what I wanted. He still craved the "drug" Halo—that much was clear. But the craving was stirring up a fear that I could read in his troubled eyes as easy as I could read a marquee.
"Try the Old Burial Grounds," he said. "Ask for Wowkwis."
It was an unusual name. Mi'kmaq Indian, by the sound of it.
"Thanks," I said.
The wide-eyed girl ganger had already lost interest in me and was climbing back up on the rope. She disappeared into the tree house above.
I gave Stud a look. "It'll be payback for Alis
hia," I told him.
"Yeah," he muttered as he turned away. "Sure." I could see that he didn't really believe me. He figured the corpselight would ice me, too.
I bared my teeth at any gangers who might still be sitting in the branches above, then loped out of the park.
5
The Old Burial Grounds are in the oldest part of the city. They might have had a proper name once, but that's the name everyone uses now. Some of the graves go back to the late 1700s, just after Halifax was founded.
I walked along Spring Garden Road until I came to the cemetery, which is about a meter higher than the street. The burial grounds are a block square, and are surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence topped with ornate spikes. The main entrance is on Barrington, but the gate there is rusted shut. The graves are so old that nobody comes to visit them anymore, and the gate hadn't been opened in a century or more.
The cemetery is one part of the city that's always deserted at night. It had a reputation of being haunted all along, but only after the Awakening of 2011, when magic returned to the world, did those stories prove true. The ghosts that manifested in the graveyard packed a one-two punch against those who intruded on their final resting place, first paralyzing with their chilling touch and then filling their victims with a magical fear. More than one fresh corpse, dead of a heart attack or stroke, had been found in the Old Burial Grounds when dawn broke.
I climbed up and over the wrought iron fence, thanking the spirits that I wasn't allergic to iron, then leaped down inside the grounds. The huge oak trees inside the cemetery sighed and rustled overhead—a quiet contrast to the bedlam of the Public Gardens.
I walked through a grim forest of leaning headstones and larger, more ornate monuments topped with cherubs. There were also a number of slate grave markers, but their inscriptions were long gone; the outermost layers of slate had sloughed off like dead skin, centuries ago. The place seemed to have the reek of death, but it was probably just my imagination. When I took a good sniff, all I could smell was tree sap and the rich loam of well-fertilized soil.
I didn't see any sign of a drug dealer, and was starting to think Stud had given me a false lead. I couldn't see anyone else moving around in the cemetery, and there didn't seem to be any of the markers dealers leave to clue buyers in to the stashes they've left behind for them.