An olfactory firewall reeking of sulphur. The stench liquefied the Gerda underneath me.
I held my breath . . .
And woke up with Gigi giving me mouth-to-mouth. The taste of her foul breath and the feel of her lips on mine panicked me more than the realisation that I’d flatlined.
I knocked her on her arse and struggled out of the glove, sucking air like an asthmatic.
Teece was still gloved and twitching.
‘Is he OK?’ I shouted, spitting Gigi taste and sour vomit away.
Gigi hauled herself off the floor and rubbed her arse sulkily. ‘He knows what he’s doing. They came after you anyway.’
I stared at her suspiciously. ‘How do you know that?’
She tapped a polymer-capped stent behind her ear. ‘GeeGee don’t need that primitive shit.’
I looked at the fat banker with new respect. Not many people could handle a full-time net-vreal feed AND real-time. No wonder she spoke slow.
I was also mad at her. She’d given us her crappiest vreal tackle. She could have hosted us in something much smoother.
Despite her reassurances I dressed myself and hovered over Teece until he dropped out.
I helped him strip himself out of the glove. His skin was slick with sweat. He dashed tears from his eyes.
‘I lost you. I thought you’d—’
I stepped back, angry and relieved, not wanting to hear what he thought. Not wanting Gigi to hear. I handed Teece his clothes.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
Chapter Two
‘I thought you said it was just visual. Traditional. No surprises,’ I yelled at Teece. ‘You could have gotten us killed for nothing.’
He prowled around my living room. Ibis had wisely hightailed it back to the bar, leaving us alone to have it out. ‘I didn’t know. Gigi must have bridged her old set to a three-gen. She just didn’t think to tell us.’
‘Gigi never stops thinking,’ I retorted.
‘I guess that means you don’t want to hear what I found?’ he said.
I stopped dead. ‘You got in?’
‘Some of the way.’ He nodded. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to mention it in front of Gigi.’
‘Mention what?’ I held my breath.
‘I saw the terms of del Morte’s sentence. He was serving life for murdering and dissecting a bunch of cadet Prier pilots. Seems he had a thing for their bio-interfaces. His term was bought out.’
‘Who?’ I held my breath.
‘I couldn’t access that.’ Teece hesitated, as if there was something he didn’t want to tell me.
I crossed my arms and waited.
‘There is a record of it, though. I followed the signature as far as I could. The name you want is kept on an impartial.’
‘Where?’
‘Jinberra Island Detention.’
Jinberra. My heart plunged. Jinberra wasn’t just quod - it was another dimension in prisons. ‘Cool.’
He ceased prowling and stared suspiciously at me. ‘You can’t crack in there.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But there’ll be someone who can. I just have to find them.’
I expected Teece to argue. To tell me it was impossible. When he didn’t, I knew he had someone in mind.
I grabbed him. ‘Teece, you must help me if you can,’ I said fiercely.
He stiffened.
He was right to be careful of me. I’d come back from MoVay with more preoccupations than scars - only to develop a bad case of sour grapes over his new love life.
I forced myself to back off and reached out an appeasing hand to him instead. ‘Please . . . help me.’
He took my fingers hesitantly. Then he squeezed them together, hard.
A Teece-size bear-hug would have been nice, but I settled for a crushing handshake.
I smiled.
He smiled.
Things were better again. Not the same - but better.
‘I need that name, Teece. Whoever paid to have Ike freed also paid him to infect the whole of The Tert with the parasite and form those . . . those . . . creatures. If the canal hadn’t been saturated with copper sulphate we’d be overrun by freak knows what right now. As it is, some of them may be loose on this side already.’
Teece groaned.
‘What?’
‘I owe you an apology, Parrish.’
I dropped my fists, surprised. ‘You . . . me?’
‘When you came back from there, I thought you were going to run out on me . . . on us. I should have known you better than that,’ he said.
I sighed. ‘You do know me, Teece. The truth is . . . I was going to. But not for the reasons you thought.’
I hesitated. I hadn’t told him this - should I now? The chances of coming back from my next jaunt rated in the minus minuses. Somehow it was important that he knew everything if I was going to wind up dead or in quod for life.
His stare drilled me. Faded blue eyes - slightly aggrieved, always concerned.
I sank down onto the couch.
‘In MoVay . . . I lost consciousness at the end of it all - when I was with Tulu. I woke up and Loyl was waiting for me. He told me I’d changed - shshape-changed. And I believed him, because . . . well . . . I tried to. I stopped fighting the parasite and let it take over.’
Teece’s expression got incredulous and I rushed on, justifying myself.
‘It was all I had left to fight with, Teece. I was dying and I wanted to buy the Cabal some time so they could defeat Ike. I thought that if the parasite took me over totally I’d have the strength to hang on a bit longer.’
‘And . . .’
‘Loyl said I’d gone all scaly-monster and then healed. I believed him. But I wanted to come back and see you, put things in order before I went away. And I had to go away, Teece. No one else was going to put a bullet in me but me . . . you understand?’
He nodded slowly, processing all the nuances and implications of my confession.
‘But now you believe that you didn’t shape-change? ’
I nodded slowly. ‘I’ve got an . . . ally. A Prier pilot. She’s contacted me a couple of times. The last time was to say that she had taken Wombebe, one of the MoVay ferals.’
‘You call someone like that an ally?’
‘She wants me to stop whoever is playing God with us. She said she ’scoped me unconscious back there in MoVay. Swears I didn’t change, and that Loyl is lying.’
‘You believe her?’
‘Yes.’ I tried to sound confident.
‘And you expect me to believe you, regardless of how crazy it sounds, don’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘I just want you to trust me, Teece, the way I trust you.’
He took a step over to the bed and grabbed my wrist, pulling me into his arms. His hug was better than I remembered. It forged our bones together.
‘You never tell me the whole story when you should,’ Teece muttered into my ear.
‘Yeah, probably.’
He gave me a resigned look and stepped away. ‘Meet me in Hein’s tonight. I should have something that will help you.’
‘Thanks.’ I gave him my best smile.
He gave me the once-over. ‘Meantime, if you want to go anywhere without ending up in prison you’ll need to do something about the way you look.’
Teece was being practical, so I stopped short of punching him.
Chapter Three
‘Larry. Tequila.’ Every person on a bar stool turned to look at me.
When I’d gotten over the insult, I’d seen the sense in Teece’s suggestion and had used the time to work up a different image. In my normal clobber I’d be arrested in double quick time.
So here I stood: waist-long, blood-red tresses, hip-smooth leather mini (long enough to hide the knife sheaths strapped to my thighs), high heels and a sleeved corset thingy to hide my armoured-up leather crop.
Teece swivelled right off his stool to gape.
‘Shut it,’ I growled before he could say anythi
ng.
He didn’t. His tongue was too busy sweeping wetly across the floor. In fact, the whole of Hein’s bar assumed a kind of bewildered silence.
For a tough-arsed drinking establishment that boasted holocaust decor and a sticky excess of backroom smut, it was more than vaguely unsettling. Even the phlegmatic proprietor, Larry Hein, retired behind his cred-comm partition to sniff something calming.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea - trying out a new look on the locals. Parrish Plessis, warlord and all-round-tough femme had transformed into a legs-and-hair princess . . . and the sky had fallen.
One silver of grrl consolation. Tingle Honeybee - Teece’s girl - looked like she might faint.
I stared along the bar at Ibis. He was back again, drinking. Shot glasses littered the space between us. He propped his head up with his hands and looked me over in slack-mouthed awe. ‘Freaking miracles.’
My face flamed. If I’d been an average sort I’d have wished for the ground to open up and swallow me - instead, I wished them all a new kind of plague.
I took a seat next to Ibis, annoyed that I had to fiddle around and tuck the skirt underneath my thighs.
‘You know, the pishtol gives you away a bit,’ he slurred.
I looked down at my holster - only one instead of two - my concession to the whole grrlie thing.
‘Trial run,’ I croaked in my own defence. ‘Larry, where’s my drink?’
I wet my throat and tried to ignore the prickle of confusion around me.
Teece was the worst. His stare didn’t prickle - it burned. But he didn’t come to me with news, despite his promise. Instead, he stamped over to a Res-booth and began smashing a set of gloves around, leaving Honey by herself at the bar.
I sighed and turned back to Ibis. Now what?
‘So you got your way with Teece,’ said Ibis.
‘I usually do.’ I noticed his mottled skin. ‘How are you?’
Ibis had arrived in The Tert enthusiastic and cheeky. Now he was drained, discontent and more than a lot wasted. I felt pretty guilty about that. He was my mate and I hadn’t looked after him too well.
He cleared his throat and puffed his cheeks in a way that told me he had something to get off his chest. I swallowed my tequila while he worked up to it.
‘I knew it would be rough here, Parrish. I knew I wouldn’t like the filth and the poverty. But I was naive enough to think it wouldn’t touch me. Well, it has.’ He sighed. ‘People shouldn’t have to live the way they do in this place. And the trouble is, now I can’t go back and forget. The smell, the dirt, the abuses - they won’t go away.’
I kept my expression neutral. I’d never heard Ibis impassioned about anything before. That was usually my corner of the ring. Where had my flirtatious, frivolous friend gone?
Alcohol had turned his mood maudlin and I needed to shake him out of it. The Tert was all the things he said and more, but you couldn’t let it get to you - bleed your heart.
‘People make choices, Ibis. Most of them wouldn’t change things if they could. Face it - they’re content living on the limits.’
‘If you believe that then why are you helping the children?’
I thought about the ferals. ‘Kids are different. They need to know they can change if they want.’
‘I think you’re wrong. Not about the children, but about the rest. I think they all want something better than this.’
‘You’re being romantic,’ I argued flatly.
‘Better romantic than indifferent,’ Ibis retorted.
I shifted irritably on the tactile stool. It jigged a bit and muttered a breathy complaint. I thumped on its sensor pad.
‘I’m not indifferent. I wish I was,’ I said.
Instead of any further argument he sighed in resignation. ‘I know.’ He shrugged and downed another shot. ‘You’ll get killed this time, you know.’
Ibis’s warning, delivered so matter-of-factly, sent an involuntary tremor through my body.
Two large, silent tears squeezed from his eyes. Pity for me? Or for himself? I didn’t get a chance to ask ’cos he slumped forward onto the bar and fell into a noisy doze.
I made a cut-throat signal at Larry Hein. No more booze.
Larry nodded and gave me Ibis’s beer as a chaser.
I watched Larry smoothing his lacy apron. Underneath it he wore a latex jumpsuit - like he might have a hot date after closing. The idea of Larry even having a libido distracted me momentarily from my gloom that Teece wasn’t keeping his promise. Men were always yanking my chain.
Take Loyl-me-Daac. When did he ever tell me the truth? I so wanted him but I couldn’t cop the personality disorder that came with the package. He and I were like an old-fashioned coin - two sides of the same creation. Permanently connected but from a different angle.
He wanted a better world for his chosen few. I wanted a better world for anyone that wanted a better world. Believe it or not, there’s a big difference.
I hadn’t seen him now for a week or so and I ached for it already.
Eyes on the road, Parrish.
I reminded myself that I hated Daac at the moment.
‘M-Ms P-Plessis. May I speak with you?’
Ms Plessis? Teece’s girl, Honey, was sweet and feminine and polite. The sort of girl that guys wanted to crush tenderly to their chest while they put their other hand up her skirt.
I was jealous about her and Teece, but I cogged it as well. I’d given Teece nothing but grief and aggravation. He ran my business, loved me too well despite my shortcomings. Now he’d found someone who could love him back and who might be alive tomorrow.
‘It’s Parrish. And make it quick.’ I fingered the pistol and plucked irritably at the bar mat with my other hand.
She bit her pretty pink lip and her eyes grew large and nervous.
Crap. I hated that.
‘T-teece said you were looking for a bio-hack. I m-might be able to help.’
Ah. I glanced over at Teece. He’d had the vreal-gloves on but he wasn’t punching any more.
I understood what he’d just gifted me. I had to get inside Jinberra and he’d maybe found a way for me - at the risk of involving his new grrl.
My gaze met his with gratitude. His slid away in pain and guilt.
‘Where does this bio-hack live?’
‘Inner gyro.’
Viva. I’d figured Honey for a city grrl. For one thing she kept her fingernails clean.
She took a deep breath. ‘If I tell you about him . . . they mustn’t find out . . . about me . . .’ She slipped her thumb in her mouth like a kid.
It reminded me of Mei Sheong, the crazy pink-haired chino-shaman who drove me nuts. The Loyl-me-Daac addict.
My curiosity stirred. ‘Who?’
Thumb out. A nervous swallow. ‘Delly. He o-owns a pleasure club called Luxoria on Brightbeach. His clients are top-tier. Media, royals, athletes.’
‘Why is he after you?’
‘He doesn’t like his employees vanishing. Teece said if I explained that, you’d be sure to look after me,’ she said.
My fingers spasmed so hard on my holster that I nearly shot my high-heeled toes off. ‘Sure. What about the hack?’
‘There’s a guy who works for him called Merv. He’s the bio-hack. A-a genius, in my opinion.’
‘How so?’
‘He can crack anything.’ Honey lowered her voice. ‘Whatever you want to find out, he’s the one.’
‘Lots of people say that,’ I said dryly.
‘He cracked Militia to get me out of Viva.’
My interest increased. Militia had as much ice as Prisons. ‘I’m impressed.’
Her thumb went in and out several times, nervous again. ‘One thing you should know about him . . . he’s got a thing . . . he thinks shadows are taking over the world. He’s fighting a war against them. Sees them when he’s jacked in.’
Brain-fry. Most bio-hacks got it. It wasn’t the popular, glamorous pastime it had once been. The attritio
n rate was high - it messed with your brain’s electrical impulses after a while. Most hacks still preferred to work off voice and touch-pad and to avoid vreal. Slow but safe. I squashed a sigh. At least it isn’t parasitic aliens.
She hurried on. ‘He used to work for the media. Then something happened. Brain-fry is my guess. Most of the best hacks end up with it. Delly found him DJ-ing the screens at a Meathouse and offered him a job. He’s harmless, just weird. If you can convince him to help you . . .’
What are the chances of that? ‘Let’s talk more,’ I said, as sweetly as I could.
Turned out that Honey’s ex-boss Delly was a prominent flesh operator in the Inner Gyro. She said he had some rules that she didn’t go for, like insisting that all his people should mainline rough. So she got out.
According to her he was a grudge-bearer, didn’t like his employees doing runners, He sent bounty after her. Teece had ‘disposed’ of them.
Honey showed me her stent. It was an exxy number: fine polymer tubes flush with the surface of her skin in the pattern of a star. Très chic.
‘The star shape was Merv’s idea. It’s a protective charm. He’s big on superstition, says it’s the twin of intuition. He says we don’t give the psychic thing enough cred.’
‘So how do I get close to Merv?’
She tongued the bow of her top lip. ‘That’s the hard thing. Delly keeps him close so nobody poaches him. Merv’s job is to watch over the girls and keep the hackers out of the club’s system. He doesn’t go out much. Doesn’t like people.’
Honey’s face fell into an arrangement of pretty thought-creases. I got the feeling the process was hard for her. I’d give her about seventy per cent lucidity; the rest was probably mulch.
Bitchy? Moi?
‘Once a week Delly trolls the lobby of the Globe for new clients. It’s the one regular time he leaves the club. Maybe, if you were there, somehow you could convince him to hire you. He’d rather buy the opposition than have any.’
I followed the threads of her idea.
‘How would I do that?’
Honey set her feet and crossed her arms as though she’d suddenly got comfortable. ‘The pleasure industry’s different in Viva than it is here. It’s illegal for anyone in the ’burbs to procure Amoratos or pay for physical pleasure. The law says they have to use NS if they don’t have a partner. Delly said the laws changed when the media took over from politicians. Part of the safe-city campaigns. I think they just wanted to keep the whole thing exclusive.’
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