Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  "But what about —?"

  I had already shut the door in her face and was half way to the elevator.

  The handi-cab skimmed along the slotted macadam of the HardCity, the sound of air circulators rattling in unison with the aging motor. I was sitting in back, my ghost-hand screaming at me, the pain constant now. I could barely see through the safe-shades tonight. There were several atmospheric advisories on the RT, and the air outside the shields was the color of pewter. Every few moments the belly of the cab would thump over another magnetic terminal, clocking the distance to the Brooksfield industrial park.

  A moment later I saw the flames.

  A quarter mile away, the salmon colored smoke rose in a dense curtain above the smooth grey walls of the Re-Gen Center. Panic squeezed my heart. Tendrils of lights were cutting through the haze, reflecting off mirrored windows all around me, the whine of sirens seeping through the cab's welded joints. I blinked the sting from my eyes, then I rubbed the cab's grimy side-shield as the maelstrom loomed ahead of me.

  I recognized one of the squad cars pulling up behind a fire wagon.

  "Program stop! Right here!" I ordered the cab over to the side-track.

  The cab rattled to a halt, and I snicked open the door with my money-chit.

  "Jesus Chriminy, Glory — whaddya doing here?" The voice bellowed behind me as I climbed out of the handi-cab. I whirled around and saw the behemoth coming at me. A pituitary case named Zander, he was an old watch commander from my former precinct. He was built like a freight barge, with a half a dozen chins and beady little eyes set deep in his fleshy face like two little raisins. He wore a safe suit under his flak vest. "How'd you know about this so fast?"

  "What happened, Zanny?" I couldn't take my eyes off the burning building.

  "How'd you know about this?"

  "What happened here?"

  "Answer my question, Glory."

  I told him it was hard to explain... but I felt it. I felt the fire.

  "You what?" The fat man was staring at me now, his eyes contracting into tiny black diamonds.

  I looked at him. "My hand's in there, Zanny, I gotta go make sure it's okay."

  I started walking toward the fire scene, toward the giant burning monolith. The building was as wide as a city block, as high as the clouds, with thirty-inch thick walls carved out of super-slate and artificial mortar. Another wholly owned subsidiary of MicroSoft, the Re-Gen Center was a place where amputated limbs and cancerous organs could be given another chance, cleansed through hyper-radiation, reconstructed through genetic engineering. My hand was in there somewhere, in its final stages of regeneration, and now the top floors were blazing bright liquid silver. Goddamn idiots had too many alkaline metals stored in the vaults again. These magnesium fires could burn through Fort Knox. I could feel the dry heat on my face as I approached, my phantom hand tingling.

  Then a steel vice-grip was on my shoulder, yanking me backward.

  "Easy does it, Sweetheart," Zander growled at me, spinning me around. And there might have been a scintilla of sympathy in his tiny cinder eyes, I'm not sure. Two other plain-clothes cops were approaching us, the pink glow refracting off their mirrored shades.

  "Lemme go, Zanny!"

  "You don't get it—"

  "Let go!"

  I tried to wriggle free but his grip was like a channel lock on my neck, so I just gave him a sharp nudge to the ribcage, trying to shove him off me, but it must have triggered his goons because they were on me in a blink, driving rock-hard fists into my kidney, then a few knuckle-balls to my gut, their genetically-enhanced hands like sledgehammers. They snapped my feet out from under me, and I just folded like a paper doll, the ground coming up and smacking me in the side of my face.

  Zander leaned down close enough for me to smell the beans on his breath. "Bad news, Glory," he was saying. "The fire's a diversionary thing."

  "— what? —"

  "Whole thing's a boost job." His big meaty face was glowing magenta-pink, melting before my eyes.

  I managed to utter, "What are you telling me?"

  "I'm telling you the place was knocked over, scumbags pinched a buncha organs, extremities and what-not."

  Everything was going dark, and I got one last question out: "My hand—?"

  Zander sighed. "Sorry, Sweetheart... they got it. They got your paw."

  I shivered suddenly, adrenalin coursing through me. I tried to stand up, tried to yell, tried to grab for Zander's sidearm. I didn't even notice the other cop coming toward me. His fist came out of nowhere.

  Tagged me square across the bridge of my nose.

  It was like a switch being turned off.

  I woke up in a holding cell. They brought me some food, and I got my bearings. And then I started pacing, and I must have paced the length of that cell for hours, thinking.

  I just couldn't figure out why some second-story man would risk life and limb to get himself a natural hand? Sure, there was a healthy black market for natural organs, but nowadays test-tube extremities were being farmed everywhere, and they worked a lot better than the originals. All you needed was a plastic scaffold that mimicked the shape of a hand— and a few cells to "seed" it with— and pretty soon the cells assembled, and the plastic degraded, and voila! You got a brand new hand, stronger and more dexterous than the original. It just didn't make any kind of sense that a local cat would try to boost one.

  Funny thing was, I had no idea how close I was to the answer.

  Around five o'clock that night, Zander showed up and sprang me.

  "Dicks ain't exactly supposed to brief 'civvies' on law enforcement matters," Zander grumbled as he led me through a narrow corridor toward the processing bay. He was chewing a stinky cheroot, and the brown smoke swirled around his huge head as he walked. The 'civvies' reference was definitely a dig. Cops hated ex-cops. But for some reason— be it pity, amusement or what-have-you — Zander had a soft spot for yours truly. "I'll tell ya this much," he went on. "We've already recovered ninety-five percent of the organs."

  "Ninety-five percent?" I gave him a sidelong glance as we strode through pools of halogen.

  "That's what I said, Glory."

  I tried to control my emotions. "My hand's been recovered?"

  "No sir, I didn't say that."

  "My hand's in the five percent?"

  "Yessir, unfortunately, yes."

  "Where's my hand?"

  "Go home, Glory," he said, pausing by the gigantic exit door, punching out a code on the keyboard.

  I stood there, gaping at him. "Do they know who cribbed it?"

  "I said go home."

  "Has it been fenced yet?"

  The door hissed open. Zander turned to me and grasped a handful of my collar and very softly, very patiently, asked me to vacate the premises.

  I knew it was the last time his request would be soft or patient.

  I waited two days.

  Pacing the length of my place, zoned out on restrex, flexing fingers which were once attached but were now noisy ghosts, sputtering, tingling, sparking, I could feel my sanity — what was left of it — denaturing into something primal. Something black and poisonous. I've been known to have a temper — I won't lie — but now a new kind of rage was coursing through me with each twinge of phantom pain.

  I had to do something.

  On the second evening, I jacked into the net, trying to scare up some of my own leads. I threw out some cockamamie call for bone marrow cells as bait, and started sorting through all the fences working angles on hot tissue. Process of elimination got it down to a single shit-bird.

  Georgie Quine was a small time scrounger. Specialized in hot molecules copped from indie labs, research schools and the like. He lived under a co-op down near the hover station; I decided to take a chance and pay him a visit.

  By the time I got down there the night air had turned gelid, the city a rancid mélange like too many perfume counters clashing. The clouds were faded black muslin, cracked and veined with
yellow age and pollution.

  "Who dat?" The blurred image of Georgie Quine was flickering on the rez-box moments after I pushed the toggle.

  "It's Glory," I told him.

  "Glory?" the pallid face on the screen crackled at me. "What's the panic?"

  "Got questions need answers."

  "No can do, Brother. Sick as a dog."

  I told him he'd better get well quick or I'd make him terminally ill.

  A minute later the door seal hissed, and the little stick figure poked his wan face out the crack. "I got the blue lung, Glory," he wheezed. "Chrissake, I can't hardly take in a breath."

  "All I want to know is who stuck the Re-Gen Center, and don't give me any noise about you not knowing anything."

  The junkie sucked his sallow cheek for a moment. Dressed in grey leather and a mole skin mask, he was a couple of years away from the incinerator, his skinny body riddled with genetic dissonance. He had one good laboratory eye left, which flashed and sputtered like a dying light bulb as he replied. "You didn't hear this from me, okay? Alright?"

  I grabbed him with my jacked-up lab-hand and slammed him hard against the jamb, hard enough to rattle his brain. Made his eye flash tilt. My phantom hand was cold now and twinging with filaments of pain, and I was losing control. "I'm on a goddamn schedule!" I barked at him. "Tell me who did the goddamn job and you can keep your teeth in your skull!"

  "Stains, Stains did the job, Stains did it, Rupert Stains, that's the guy."

  I blinked, incredulous. Rupert Stains was a major player in the biotech arena, a genetic designer with more awards than the head of Rotary. Rupert Stains was also a boy-wonder who had made designer-in-residence at Big Softie before his thirtieth birthday. Word was, Stains had started to decline in recent years, contracting an especially virulent form of Miller's syndrome. But who the hell needs natural tissue when you're rich, right? Word was, Stains had replaced every major organ and every square centimeter of his flesh with the finest tissue money could buy. His delicate little physique was trimmer than ever, his handsome mug more handsome than his press pictures. But rumors were also rampant that Stains had gone completely bug-fuck loony. Maybe it was the loss of all that feeling, or maybe it was just the natural course of a genius intellect. Regardless, it made no kind of sense that a guy like Stains would do a B&E job on a re-gen lab. He had a family, according to news reports, and was not the type of guy to get caught with his pants down.

  "Stains was behind the job?" I finally managed to ask, clutching at Quine's throat.

  "No, no, amigo, no — Stains did the thing. Along with Hawkhurst and Black Jimmy."

  "You're telling me Stains did this thing himself with a couple of second floor men?"

  Quine's eye pulsed. "My hand to the almighty." He glanced at my stump. "No offense intended."

  "They still in the HardCity?"

  Quine swallowed dryly. "Cops already got two of 'em, Glory, I swear to you, they're coming down hard on everybody. Nobody's moving a thing—"

  "Who's left?" I tightened my grip. It looked as though Quine's eyeball was about pop out.

  "Stains — Stains is still running — somewhere north of Blackchappel —"

  I started slamming the back of his head against the jamb, a thin membrane of scarlet drawing down over my vision. "They took one of the naturals! A hand! A right hand! Where the fuck is it?!"

  The words wheezed out of Quine's turkey neck: "—Stains has it—"

  I hurled the little hoodlum to the floor of the foyer, cracking his skull against the wall. His eyeball flickered and strobed.

  I turned and started toward the north, the vapor lights going red and hazey.

  I barely heard Quine's slurred speech behind me, a sickly bird singing one last tune.

  "Better hurry, Glory... Stains has already been to the transplant team... ."

  The words were barely audible as I began to run.

  Blackchappel was a vast graveyard of decaying, oxidized Quonset huts buried in hardpack like fossilized dinosaurs, their metal spines gleaming in the sodium wash. The air was hotter around here. Toxic. Veined with static electricity. Handi-cabs wouldn't run this far, and the cops rarely bothered patrolling the place. But as I approached the east bridge on foot, breathing mask-filtered air, lenses down, heart hammering, I saw the commotion a hundred yards away, out by the ancient switchyard.

  Zander and his posse — three squad cruisers in all — inching along the edge of the tracks.

  My invisible fingers were fuses now, lit and crackling hotly, the pain making me crazy, and I started trotting along the shadowy footpath, staying low, moving toward the switchyard, toward those slow-moving cruisers. I was all jigged up on hate and adrenalin, and I was clenching my phantom hand, tasting hot magnesium on my tongue.

  Ahead of me, the cruiser's jerked to a halt, one by one, their doors springing open, the shadowy figures of Zander and his men piling out, guns raised, infrareds snapped on, search-strobes sweeping the cobalt haze in front of them. And my heart was jittering wildly in my chest as I realized, all at once, just exactly what was going on

  One of the Quonset huts a quarter kilometer away was lit up inside.

  An underground clinic.

  Rupert Stains was in there — I was sure of it now — my missing hand growing on his arm.

  The revelation coursed through me like nitro, all the tiles in the puzzle-box clicking in place in my brain: the son of bitch in that silver warehouse, richer than God, taking the last vestige of sensation from me, taking my hand, my touch, taking it from me and assimilating it like a worm growing segments. And now the rage was erupting in me, all the pain, all the longing, longing to feel something, longing to touch, and before I knew what was happening I was running full bore toward that goddamned Quonset hut with my gun drawn.

  Two hundred meters ahead of me the doors to the Quonset burst open.

  I fumbled the safety off, and I ran as fast as my lab-legs would carry me.

  Zander and his men were already fanning out when they saw me approaching. Zander did a sort of comical double-take, his infrareds whirling toward me, a glint of sodium light catching his eyepiece and blossoming. Almost fell on his big fat ass. "Glory!" His rasp filtered through the pox mask. "What the fuck —?"

  He couldn't finish his thought because things were happening very quickly now.

  A hundred meters ahead of me, the shadows were disgorging three figures, and I sprinted toward them, ignoring the cops off to my right, ignoring the pain in my chest, ignoring Zanny's warning calls, ignoring everything but the three men fleeing the hot house, and I fixed my iris on the smallest of the three. The little one was dressed in leathers, jackboots and old flying ace goggles. He had broken off from the group and was high-tailing toward the East Sprawl Bridge.

  Stains.

  I fixed my sights on the bridge and made a bee-line, the first tracer shots popping behind me, Zander's plasma-pellets buzzing over my head, buzzing white-hot, making the darkness flicker and crackle. I stayed low, my gun raised, aimed straight ahead at the little millionaire racing across the bridge fifty meters away.

  Stains was heading toward the far gates, toward the luminous threads of blue laser-light demarcating the outskirts, and as he approached the end of the line, he swam through a pool of chrome-yellow arc light, and I got a momentary glimpse of his right arm... and the pale, pink fingers clutching the tiny vintage Walther PPK handgun.

  My right hand.

  I was about to shriek at the top of my lungs when I saw him skid to a halt, then spin around with the Walther raised, then the four silver florets sparking from the barrel. I dove to the ground just as the dumb bells sizzled above my left shoulder, striking the bridge behind me, chewing through the ancient Teflon span.

  Behind me, pandemonium erupted, the sounds of angry cop voices, and more sirens coming from the distance, and Zander's men firing off high-V slugs, and I managed to rise to a crouch in a hail of gunfire and squeeze off a half dozen smart-slugs with my stupid left
hand. The heat seekers arced out into the darkness and pin-wheeled every which way but it was too late: Stains had crossed over into the SoftCity — a vast restricted area where super bacteria had broken down the cells in the concrete, metal and glass, and now everything was literally soft and waxy — and nobody, I mean nobody, was reckless enough to chase him into that quagmire.

  Except me.

  I crossed the far threshold and plunged into the indigo fog, the blue terminal lasers vibrating all around me, and I descended a steep slope of ashes into the wasteland, my boots sinking ankle deep into the detritus, and I kept the gun raised in case Stains was waiting to ambush me, but I knew I was doomed. My right hand — its natural nerves intact — was far too fast. My right hand was a killer. I could never out-shoot my own right hand.

  The only thing I had going for me was the searing rage pumping through my veins.

  A building rose out of the mist — some sort of gothic ruin from some Twentieth Century train station— and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the millionaire ducking behind a rotting rampart twenty meters away, and I started firing wildly, sapphire flames barking out of my gun, and the smart-bullets curled around the side of the building, puffing through steel girders: needles through pudding.

  And then my gun was empty, and I started toward the building, awkwardly reloading a magazine with my left hand and right stump, my brain fizzing, overloading, a cognitive tape-loop parroting: Why? Why would this son of a bitch with more money than God risk everything for a little taste of the natural touch, a little bit of feeling?

  Why?

  I was approaching the building when the adjacent wall erupted in my face.

  The little rich man was bursting through the softened mortar like a toy through a vacu-form.

  Gunfire exploded all around me as I dove for cover behind a fossilized train engine, and I felt the heat on the top of my skull as the fireworks display swirled over my head, piercing the softened iron of the SkyChief, and I opened my mouth and wailed through my mask, my voice drowned in a hurricane of fire, and I finally managed to look up. Stains was running away across an old decaying trestle.