by Damien Boyes
The door opens and blasts me with a gust of warm air accompanied by music I can feel as much as hear, sensual bass overlaid by staccato rhythms and a jangly treble, like half the band is playing way too fast.
The room is small and nearly empty, just a few tables and a half-dozen people who look like they’d rather be someone else. A small glass bar sits in the corner and a bot stands silent behind it, waiting for someone to come up and order a drink or one of the of legal shyfts on display.
The dejected patrons watch as I enter, and their eyes follow me as I stride across the room to a metal door on the back wall, the one keeping them out of the real action upstairs.
Now to see if Shelt was able to get me in.
A panel slides open on the door and a green light sprays my face.
The scanner must like whatever it sees because a modulated voice says, “Password?”
“Zìyóu,” I answer. Freedom in Mandarin.
The locks snap and the door slides open and the people watching me put their heads back down to their drinks, imagining what it must be like to be blessed with the rep or connections required to access the inner sanctum.
I step through the door and the music gets louder and the air gets thicker as I climb the unlit, narrow staircase to the second floor, where another bouncer in tight jeans and a vest over dense muscle, his eyes glowing like a nocturnal animal, perches on a stool. He slips off, gives me a casual pat down, and grunts back up.
I start to sweat almost immediately and slip my parka off, carry it over my arm while my eyes acclimate to the all-red lighting, and my ears adjust to the deafening buzz of music and loud conversation.
The upstairs is far bigger than the ground floor, spanning across the knocked-out second storeys of three adjacent buildings. Behind me, blackwashed portholes run along the front wall in place of windows. Thick wooden beams supported by mast-like columns run from one side of the long room to the other, with heavy, dusty-looking fabric billowing from the ceiling in between. Brass lamps with red bulbs blush the room, while occasional cylinders of light flash as patrons burn shyfts into their rithms.
An mix of cast-off and secondhand tables with an equally diverse assortment of chairs fill the space, except for a small dance floor where half the people move slow and close while the others spastically bounce off them and each other. Padded leather booths line the walls, each one tucked into its own private, arched alcove. The far corner contains the only source of white light, a long counter of shyfts under glass with a small assortment of bottles along the wall behind.
There are at least a hundred people in here, indistinct forms silhouetted in the dim light. I pick my way through the tables, circling around the club to causally peer into each of the alcoves, and spot Petra and Vaelyn almost immediately.
They’re holding court in a booth under a porthole. Vaelyn’s all cheekbones and breasts under a rage of spiky red hair and dark eye makeup.
Compared to the shock of a woman beside her, Petra is ethereal, her translucent features flittering somewhere between boy and girl and fringed by ashen, almost silvery hair cut straight along her faint eyebrows. Vaelyn’s got her arm around Petra’s shoulder, possessive.
They’re not hiding—if anything they want to be seen. Two women flank them, both big, one black and blonde, one white with dark hair.
I consider marching straight over to their table and confronting them, but with my ass still sore from indulging my impulsiveness with Nyx, I decide to take it slow. What’s the point if I’m not learning from my mistakes?
I make my way over to the bar and stand in the three-deep line, causally keeping tabs on Petra and Vaelyn as I wait to be served. They’re not going anywhere, they’re doing brisk business.
Three different people come up to their table while I’m watching and the ritual is the same with each: approach, get lip-to-ear with one of the big women, long enough for a word or two. She then leans over to Vaelyn and relays the request. Vaelyn rifles through a small bag at her side for the requested shyft, which is passed across Petra to the other big woman. After the customer pays through a wave of a tab or a cashcard the shyft is palmed or immediately pressed to their cuff. Petra just watches. The entire process takes less than ten seconds.
A space opens up in front of me and I slide up to the bar. The shyfts are arranged by ‘artist’ under the glass. There are a dozen Rithmists’ offerings on display, probably fifty or so shyft varieties in total, each with a red hanzi on the cap, a character I don’t recognize that looks like two stick figures toasting each other under an umbrella or angular tree. I show it to my IMP and it tells me it’s a surname: Xiao.
That name again. I had been after him, back in my former life. When I was a cop.
This must be his place. Shelt seems to think Xiao had something to do with what happened to me last time, with what happened to the group. He thinks it all started because I got too close to Xiao, and somehow all the shit that happened after was related.
Could it be one more coincidence that Vaelyn hangs out in a place Xiao runs?
I’ll have to make sure to ask.
Most of the customers seem to be buying one of only a few different shyfts. One of them looks like what Dora keeps injecting into her cuff, the display skin all pink and sparkly. The most-requested one contains an aquamarine mist interspersed with a regular crackle of blue-white lightning. Vaelyn has three available: a fractal rainbow one, a golden-purple one, and one that looks like it contains liquid flame. Who knows what they do. Who knows what any of them do.
I suppose I could buy one and find out for myself, but a head full of janky neural code is the last thing I need right now.
The bartender looks through me, reaches under the counter and retrieves four shyfts for the guy behind me without a word being exchanged, moves down the counter to supply someone else.
It’s like they’re communicating psychically. Which, I realize, they probably are. I’m the only one in here who isn’t wearing a cuff. I left mine back on the table at the apartment.
The next time he gets close, I reach out and tug on his sleeve and he starts like a ghost grabbed him. I mouth the word ‘beer’ and he squints and points down through the clear surface of the bar to the wide array of shyfts on offer. I shake my head, point behind him and repeat, ‘beer.’ He turns and gestures to the three dusty bottles on the shelf as though still unsure what I mean and I nod and point to the green bottle with the gold label. He bends and rattles around in a small fridge and fishes out a cold one and spends another minute looking for a bottle opener then finally places the bottle in front of me. I approve the charge that pops up on my tab and he goes back to serving shyfts.
I put my back to the bar and look across the room to Vaelyn’s table. From what I can tell every third or fourth booth is doing some kind of business, slinging shyfts mostly, but Vaelyn is selling the most by far, second only to the bartenders. If her shyfts are tainted her customers don’t seem to mind.
A table opens up nearby and I take my beer and sit. Vaelyn puts on a show for each new customer, hands agitated, large lips over-enunciating vowels in the cacophony of music.
After each sale she leans over, cups Petra’s crotch and pulls her face in for a long deep kiss I feel like I can hear over the music. Petra’s relaxed to the point of torpidity, allowing herself be worked over.
A waitress swings by and I nod for another beer. This is the most normal I’ve felt since I woke up in someone else’s body. The low light and the damp heat and the sting of alcohol in my throat and the overwhelming music are like a pillow smothering my frazzled senses.
When the waitress comes back with another bottle, I upend it and take five long gulps. It fizzles in my nose and for a second leaves me pleasantly woozy, but then my new brain overdoes itself, trying to approximate the effects of alcohol, buffs my thoughts with steel wool then jams a pry bar into my self-confidence and heaves.
The heat and the noise and my brain’s shitty recreation of an alcohol
buzz all mix together into a muddy headache. After two beers.
Looks like I’m never going to make it as an alcoholic.
My stomach turns and I clamp down with my teeth and try to breathe through it. I want this to stop. It dawns on me that I’m treating my brain like it’s still made of meat, dousing it with chemicals in an attempt to make it behave differently. Which is exactly what all these people here are doing, except they’re being smart about it. No messy alcohol for them. They’re altering their brain function with the pinpoint accuracy of precise code instead of the imperfect interplay of molecules and cellular pathways.
Which is, I suppose, why shyfts are so strictly regulated.
I watch Vaelyn and Petra for fifteen more minutes, waiting for my head to clear, absently scraping the beer’s foil label off with my thumbnail.
Twenty-two customers come and go, most of them opting for the fire-filled cylinder. Vaelyn’s definitely the most popular of Xiao’s stable. I wonder if he ever comes in here himself? If what Shelt said is true and this whole mess with tainted caps started with me, it must have to do with Xiao. I was investigating him, maybe I got too close. Maybe all this is his revenge.
I’ll ask Vaelyn about him too.
The throbbing in my head has settled to an unpleasant tightness but the nausea has passed and I’m about to move over for the chat when a woman in a sleek grey suit and three hundred dollar ebony hairstyle imposes herself at Vaelyn and Petra’s table.
She isn’t looking for shyfts, doesn’t have a cuff, isn’t even wearing a winter coat. She probably just walked in from a long black vehicle that’s still idling downstairs.
The muscle on each side of the booth slide out, but uneasily, looking to Vaelyn for instruction. Something’s keeping them from getting physical.
The woman ignores them, leans over and rests her hands on the table so her face is centimetres from Vaelyn. She says something and Vaelyn responds with a sneer, cocks her head at Petra. Petra doesn’t answer, barely moves, just rolls her eyes enough to show her indifference to whatever’s being said.
This sets the woman off and she reaches across the table and grabs Petra’s arm, tries to pull her up and around the table, but Petra goes slack, refuses to be moved. Vaelyn’s security is bouncing from foot to foot. Their instincts are telling them to intervene but Vaelyn keeps them on the leash. She isn’t concerned. Whatever’s going on here is between Petra and the other woman, and Vaelyn’s acting like she already knows how it’s going to end.
Vaelyn slides out, unfolds her body, makes a show of it. She’s tall, nearly as tall as her security, her powerful-looking body poured into a black one-piece open halfway to her navel.
She waves the woman in, but doesn’t give her much room to pass, then adjusts the bulge that protrudes from her groin and stretches down one leg.
The woman grimaces but squeezes by and shuffles around to Petra, grabs her hand. She’s pleading now. Come with me, she’s saying. Come home. Petra just shakes her head and gently pulls herself free, turns her head away and lets her eyes fall back out of focus.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed the commotion. People have stopped dancing and the neighbouring tables have all turned to look. The woman must feel the weight of the eyes because she arranges her suit jacket back around her shoulders, whispers one last time to Petra, then slides out and snaps something at Vaelyn and her flanking security before stalking away from the table and down the stairs.
Vaelyn reaches up and with a satisfied smile claps her muscle on the shoulders, says something to them with a nod toward the door. They both grin and head down after the woman.
Petra hasn’t moved, the expression on her face barely different from when I sat down. Whoever that woman was, whatever she had to say, it couldn’t force its way through Petra’s protective shyft barrier.
With the security gone, I figure this is a good a time as any to introduce myself.
I stand and weave over to their booth. Vaelyn sizes me up as I approach. She’s flushed, full of adrenaline, back in the booth with her hand between Petra’s thighs.
Petra doesn’t even swing her eyes in my direction. She’s still staring off into space.
“Store’s closed,” Vaelyn says when I get to their table, yelling to be heard. “Come back in fifteen.”
I lean over, rest my palms on the table. “I’m not buying,” I say. “I just want to talk.”
Vaelyn looks me up and down, her eyes black in the red light. “We don’t talk to cops,” she says and turns to nuzzle Petra’s neck.
“I’m not a cop,” I say to her cheek. “Not anymore. Do you remember Dub, from your counselling group?”
Petra stirs at Dub’s name but Vaelyn doesn’t react, she just extends her massive tongue into Petra’s ear.
“What about Miranda?” I continue. “Or Tala? Or Dora or Elder?”
Vaelyn retracts her tongue and her jaw muscles lock, but she doesn’t look at me. Petra’s demeanour ripples. For the first time since I started watching, there’s something going on behind her slack façade. She knows something.
“What about Finsbury Gage?” I ask. Petra opens her mouth to say something, but Vaelyn is already out of the booth, body pressed against my side, mouth at my ear now.
“Back off right now and I won’t fuck up that pretty face of yours.” She licks her lips. “Not too much anyway.”
Her muscle won’t be gone long. I need to defuse this situation before it gets out of hand. A fight isn’t going to get me any answers.
I turn and we’re nose to nose. “Word is you’re slinging tainted shyfts. A rumour like that, if it got out, could kill a career.”
Maybe defuse was the wrong word.
She sneers and moves into me, grinds the heavy bulge between her legs into my thigh.
“Threaten me again and your pretty face won’t be the only thing I fuck up.”
“Vae,” Petra says, her voice quiet but strong. “That’s enough.”
I turn to Petra and Vaelyn hits me in the kidney. It’s all I can do to keep my knees from buckling, but she doesn’t hit nearly as hard as Nyx. Her arm’s cocked back for another but I step into it and bring my forehead down on her nose, pulling up just short of breaking it.
She staggers back, eyes overflowing.
“Vae!” Petra shouts, now on her feet.
Vaelyn and I square off but before either of us can move, I’m facedown on the table, one arm pinned up my back.
“Don’t resist,” a man’s voice commands from behind me, his tone matter of fact, like slamming people face first into tables was a regular occurrence for him.
“Let him up,” Vae says, but it sounds like someone’s restraining her too. “I was about to finish him off.”
“Then you can follow us out,” another man says.
“Wait,” Petra says. “Who is he?”
“Rep-net says Gage Gibson,” the voice behind me answers.
“I’m Finsbury,” I croak. “Finsbury Gage.”
“Let him up,” Petra orders.
“Ma’am—” the man protests.
“Petra—” Vaelyn says at the same time.
“I said, ‘let him up.’”
I sense a moment of silent communication but the pressure on my arm relents, and I’m able to stretch back up. The man behind me is my height, short hair, dark suit, narrow tie under a white collared shirt, eyes bright in the dim light. He’s resting easy, hands crossed at his waist, like he’s waiting for the bus, but I’ve been around guys like this—the ones who would breeze in and out of base with their designer sunglasses, three weeks of facial hair and sense of superiority. Special forces. His cousin stands between Vaelyn and I. Whoever these guys are, they don’t answer to her.
They’re protecting Petra. Who the hell is she to warrant a highly trained babysitting team?
On cue, Vaelyn’s muscle returns, looking sheepish. Their coarse oversized skyns are like dumb beasts next to Petra’s guardians’ sleek killing machines. Someone mus
t have given Vaelyn’s team a scolding outside. And since Petra’s security didn’t intervene when that other woman showed up, they probably work for her too. Or someone close to both of them.
“I’ll be fine,” Petra says to the man behind me. The two men nod and a blend back into the room. I scan the club and try to find them again but they’ve completely disappeared.
“Now that the chaperones are gone, we can have that dance,” Vaelyn says and steps toward me. Petra backs her down with a look and she skulks off to the bar.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Petra says, then fishes a shyft from her pocket and empties it into her cuff. “And I’ll tell you what I know.”
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[01:57:34:24. Sunday, April 21, 2058]
I can feel Galvan glaring at me. He’s not stupid, he knows I’ve shyfted. Probably knows exactly what I’m shyfted on too. But right now, the prospect of him reporting me is dwarfed by what’s immediately in front of us.
The arKade.
We’ve finally found it.
We’re standing in the open elevator at the base of a yawning, three storey atrium. The upper two floors are glassed-in, and directly in front of us a glowing stepped ziggurat rises from the ground, flattens a storey-and-a-half-up into the atrium at a catwalk. Skyns of every possible physical composition cavort on its surface to music I can't hear, entertainment for the silhouetted observers behind the surrounding glass walls on the second and third floors.
I’d imagine Mom would describe it as a vision of Hell.
In the middle of it all, reigning from a private box overhanging the show floor, sits an oversized beaver in a red cocktail dress, with two of those tank-skyns flanking either side of a small throne.
That has to be Kade.
Kade’s a beaver. A real-life, honest-to-god beaver.