Chapter 4
Cori switched off the wallscreen and walked over to the oak desk near the kitchen, rummaging around inside one of the drawers. She dumped a load of papers on the floor and kept digging. After a few seconds she whistled and pulled a Dead Pool ticket out of the desk. She returned to the sofa, keying up the details on the ticket card.
A pleasant chime sounded in the room, and Cori glanced up at the monitor by the door to see the blinking light.
“Vid on. Buzzer camera, please,” she said, turning to the big wallscreen. It blinked to life to reveal a bloody, battered dwarf standing at the building entrance.
“It’s me, Cori,” Noose groaned. “Can I come up?”
Cori ordered the computer to open the lobby door. She ran down to the elevator and waited, pacing back and forth, until the doors opened and Noose limped out. The grim dwarf was in bad shape; his hair wet and disheveled, and a line of fresh blood spread from a wound on his forehead down to his chin and neck. His face set and ashen, he walked away from the elevator, favoring his left side.
“What the hell happened?”
“Seems I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Noose smiled, holding back the pain. Beneath his ripped and burnt duster she could see blood staining his shirt and pants.
Cori helped him back to her apartment, where he collapsed down on her leather sofa. He breathed heavily, head leaning back, holding his left side under his duster. Cori stepped away, looking down at the fatigued genny.
“You going to tell me what’s going on?”
Noose opened his eyes and looked at Cori, standing over him, her silk robe hanging open, providing a tantalizing view. He saw the ticket in her hand.
“Since when did you start playing the Dead Pool?”
“Damn the Dead Pool!” Cori threw the card away, then sat down on the sofa next to Noose, tugging open his duster.
Noose groaned as she pulled his bloody hand away, revealing his torn t-shirt and the wound beneath. Cori gasped as she saw five centimeters of plastic tubing protruding from Noose’s side, near his holster.
“Damn, Noose,” Cori breathed. “We’ve got to get your clothes off.”
The dwarf grinned widely. “Thought you didn’t want to get involved with me, Cori.”
“Dump the jokes, you stupid dwarf!” She helped him out of his duster, and he could not stifle a groan of pain as she removed his holster. She also tossed his backup pistol away, then ripped off his shirt, revealing his scarred and muscular torso. His bar code glowed at the base of his neck, the memento that all neohumans shared and that identified when, where, and by whom they had been genetically engineered.
She turned her attention back to his wound. She could see that the tubing had completely penetrated his side, poking out from his back as well. Fresh blood poured from the wound as he moved, and dripped down between the sofa cushions.
“We better get you in the bathroom,” she said.
“Sure thing,” Noose strained to rise, but failed. “Um, might need... your help on that.”
Cori frowned. “You’re going to need a mortician’s help if you don’t stop trying to play the tough guy.”
She grabbed him under the shoulder and legs, and lifted him into her arms, his bloody side staining her white robe. She walked across the room and down a hall, and then into a spacious bathroom. She laid him down gently on the large shower floor, and he leaned against the tile bench.
“You’ve been working out, Cori,” Noose commented, as she hurriedly opened a cupboard and removed several boxes.
“Yeah, for ten years. Now shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Noose managed to smile.
She returned and knelt down beside him, dropping a variety of medical supplies on the tiles. He winced as she sprayed the wound with a disinfectant, and then turned him on his side to get a better look.
“I’m going to have to pull this out,” she informed him. “I suppose a big tough guy like you doesn’t want a tranq?”
Noose shook his head, grimly. “If Neil the Cybernetic Barbarian can handle it, so can I. Besides it dulls the reflexes.”
She turned away from his forced grin. “You’re a masochist, Noose. And an idiot.”
“And your robe is open.”
Cori looked down at herself, then wrapped her robe tighter around herself. “For a half-dead dwarf, you sure notice the strangest things.”
Noose smiled wide. “They don’t look strange to me at all.”
Cori raised her hand angrily, then stopped. She reached down and grabbed the end of pipe sticking out of Noose’s side and pulled, hard. Noose grunted as the twenty millimeter tubing scraped out of him. His legs kicked out involuntarily and he slammed a fist against the floor. The world around him blurred and dimmed, the bathroom lights coalescing into a single glare. He fought against it, forcing himself to remain conscious, but found himself emerging from total darkness.
She looked down at him. “Back with the living, huh?”
“For the time... being.”
“Until you insult someone a tad too important.”
“No one more important than you.”
Cori looked back at his wound. “Looks like the pain’s going to your head, dwarf.”
“Pain’s for slags.”
“Then you must be living a life of agony.” She held up a tranq patch. “Time to say night-night.”
“The hell with that!” Noose said loudly. “I got things to do.”
“Yeah, like sleep.” Cori quickly adhered it against his arm. “You aren’t going anywhere any time soon. That wound’s going to take a while to heal, and you sure as hell can’t be scouring Atlanta looking for the guys that did this to you.”
Noose collapsed back on the floor, feeling the anesthetic coursing through him, calming his nerves, soothing his muscles. “What makes you think I’d do that?”
“Noose,” Cori smiled, standing, “I know you better than you do. Any time anyone screws you, you screw them back ten times over.”
Noose closed his eyes. “Hey... I got a rep to... uphold.”
“Quite a few reps,” Cori agreed, walking over to the counter.
Noose watched through half-closed eyes as she removed the bloody robe. Her well-defined muscles rippled beneath her deeply tanned skin, her athletic body a result of intense training. No cybernetics, gene-mods, or implants in Cori. Pure, righteous, un-engineered, God-given assets.
The corners of Noose’s mouth twitched upward, but then the drugs finally kicked in and he drifted off with a grin on his lips.
Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds Page 15