Fade to Black (8 page)

"Yeah?"

"Sandals, too."

Monk looked down at the colors splashing across his Fixe Rescue tee, then down the lengths of his faded blue rippers to the black and red sandals on his feet. Flower children? Wasn't that what people called weed-eaters? elves? "I ..."

"Hmmm?" Minx looked at him inquisitively.

"I think ... something on the ... the California Channel ... about ... uh ..." What had she called it? Them

... "Flower children."

Suddenly, Minx covered her face with both hands and bent forward at the waist. She was laughing, Monk realized, laughing so hard that when she straightened up again she had to wipe at her eyes and gasp for breath. "See!" she said. "See what I mean!"

Monk wondered about that.

"So where do you live anyway?" Minx asked, fluffing out her hair, then smoothing it back again with delicate movements of her hands. She paused to look at him, and said, "Monk."

"Huh?"

"Wanna go to my place?"

Monk stared, feeling a strange heat rise up the back of his neck and into his face. This couldn't be happening. This beautiful, gorgeous, captivating woman couldn't be talking like that. He must have missed something, misunderstood, misconstrued something she said. But then Minx took hold of his arms and half-pulled him to his feet. She seemed pretty strong for a girl.

And she was small, really tiny. Her head barely reached his chest and he wasn't tall at all. But it only made her seem more gorgeous. When she shook back her hair and looked up at him and smiled and slid her hands up his chest, Monk felt his heart begin to pound. Like it would leap right out of his body.

"You're a lurker," she said. "You watch and listen. I like that."

"Huh?"

She laughed.

Just a few steps away lay a red and black Honda scooter. It matched Monk's sandals. Minx pulled it upright, touched the starter and revved the engine. This is what had bowled him over, Monk realized. The scooter.

"Come on, Monk, you booty," Minx said. "Get on."

Booty?

There was barely enough room. Monk eased himself onto the scooter's seat right behind Minx. There was no way to sit there without touching her, without feeling the soft swell of her hips against the insides of his thighs. The sensation was indescribable and left him feeling short of breath.

Abruptly, Minx looked back, tossing her frizzed-out hair, and pulled his arms around her waist. "Don't be shy," she said. "I'm a girl, you're a boy. Scan it?"

"What?"

"Hang on!"

The scooter whined and they were off, flying out of the alley and up the Main Line. It was a ride Monk would never forget. The scooter weaving wildly back and forth, crowds of people rushing past on either side. Arms and elbows and other parts of people's bodies banged off Monk's head, shoulders, and legs. Things began moving so quickly he couldn't keep track. It became a blur, a churning sea of people and buildings and the occasional vehicle, a series of near-misses that defied comprehension. Monk remembered the rat he'd seen threading a path through hundreds of feet just minutes ago. It was like that. No one could possibly steer a scooter through the crowds on the Main Line like Minx was doing, and yet she was doing it.

A huge black Department of Sanitation truck loomed up suddenly before them-the scooter was heading straight for it. In the final seconds, Monk glimpsed a crew of black-clad men tossing plastic body bags into the back of the truck.

Monk stared wide-eyed, and shouted.

"Yaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

In the next moment, or what seemed like the next moment, the scooter was in a back alley and purring to a stop. Minx slipped out of the circle of his arms and stood up. Monk stood up, too, but his legs were vibrating like the ground near a subway station. Minx smiled and chained the scooter to one of the metal struts of the seven-story coffin hotel rising between the rear of the buildings.

"Some ride, huh?" she said.

"Yuh," Monk answered.
"Clam."

"Wizzer." Minx took his hand, then stepped up close. Monk swallowed. "This is my private place, okay?" she said quietly. "So don't tell anybody you know."

Monk shook his head.

"You're so booty," Minx said, smoothing a hand like cool cream across his left cheek.

Booty ...

Abruptly, she was tugging him by the hand up the metal stairs and onto the gangway fronting the fourth story of coffins. Three steps along the gangway, a pair of ork gangers were tussling, growling, and swearing, arms and shoulders interlocked. Minx ducked between them and tugged Monk right along with her.

"Hey!" one of the orks roared.
"Smoothies!"

Something swept Monk's right foot out from under him, but Minx dragged him up by the arms and yanked him ahead at a run. Halfway along the gangway, she stopped, pulled out a credstick, slid the stick into a slot, then pulled open the hatch of a coffin. "Quick," she said.

"I'll tear ya to bits!" somebody snarled from behind them.

Monk didn't look back. He ducked into the coffin, banging his head on the hatchway. Minx followed, not banging her head, and slammed the hatch shut.

Someone started pounding on the hatch from outside, but Monk hardly noticed. The inside of the coffin was wild, a deluxe cubie, with enough space to actually stand up beside the bed! Storage cabinets ran down the left. Telecom and trideo were set into the wall opposite the hatchway. The low bed, the ceiling, and walls were scarlet red and covered with overlapping twenty-by-twenty five centimeter photos.

The photos caught Monk's eye, snared his attention. They were amazing. He'd never seen anything like them. The first few he looked at, taped on the wall above the bed, looked like shots of ... traffic accidents. Bodies. Dead people sprawled across dark-stained pavement, hanging out of demolished vehicles. The next few pics he looked at seemed to have been taken inside buildings. These showed bodies, too. Some with missing limbs. Some missing heads. One or two didn't look like bodies at all, not at first, because they were so horribly mutilated they didn't look like anything even remotely human. "Hey," Minx said.

Monk turned around. Something flashed-light, brilliant white light Dazzlingly bright. When his eyes finally cleared and he could see again, he found Minx smiling at him, holding up a little camera for him to see.

"Gotcha," she said, smiling.

She had a strange look in her eyes.

8

The little night-glo red-on-white sign on the back alley wall, read, "CyberDok: Top Chrome, Vat Organics, Primo Rates."

Shank touched the buzzer beside the black metal door. Momentarily, a small red bulb on the intercom winked to life while another one lit up on the security camera above the door. The intercom squealed and whistled. "We're closed," said a remodulated voice with clashing harmonics. "Slot off."

"Open the door."

"Shank?"

Shank grunted. People with sec cams ought to look at their monitors.

The door buzzed and slid aside. Thorvin stepped right through, cutting ahead, brushing Shank's hip.

That was typical. Shank frowned, then put out one long leg with a slight hooking motion, briefly catching the halfer's ankle. Thorvin tripped, stumbled, caught himself, then turned to look back and snarl, "Watch it, ya freakin' tusker!"

"Eff you," Shank growled.

"Flatline."

Shank grinned and followed Thorvin through the doorway into a small, dimly lit waiting room outfitted with a trio of molded plastic chairs and a plastic trash can. Holographic posters on the wall advertised suborbital and semiballistic flights to exotic locales. That was it for decor.

Shank figured it was enough.

A wall panel slid aside, revealing a doorway, and a smoothie. Her name was Filly. She was big for a female norm, and not bad-looking either. She wore a black and red tee chopped off just below where it mattered, a matching thong, and a pair of black socks. Her smile looked kind of sarcastic. "Dok's into some slag's cerebral cortex," she said. "What's tox?"

"We got a job," Thorvin said.

"Nice for you," Filly replied.

Thorvin grumbled something incoherent. Shank explained, "Rico wants you and Dok in the game."

"Big job?"

Shank nodded. "Heavy opposition. Some corp."

"It's always a corp. What's the pay?"

The pay was an equal share. Everybody always got an equal share because everybody on the job shared an equal risk of getting dead. That was how Rico worked things. Shank wouldn't have it any other way. He told Filly the numbers. For a few days' work, it would be a good piece of change. Assuming nobody got killed.

"Come on," Filly said. She turned to lead them ahead. Shank moved to follow her lead, but again Thorvin scutted in before him. They followed Filly down the hall past Dok's office and examination room to the operating room door. Shank knew the layout, he'd been here before. The building was narrow and deep, and Dok and Filly had the first two floors all to themselves. For just two people, that was a lot of space.

Shank guessed the CyberDok business must be okay. Nobody getting really rich, but nobody starving either.

In fact, Filly's twisting, swinging butt looked pretty damn well-fed. And well-exercised too, not fat, not skinny, but soft and firm and nicely shaped.

At the end of the hallway, Filly put a finger to the print-scanner on the wall, and the door to the O.R.
 
slid open.

Gleaming chrome cabinets and counters ringed the room. The operating table stood at the center of the floor. The slag lying there on his back was enclosed in a transparent isolation chamber that resembled a contoured coffin. A metal ring surrounded his head like a halo. Maybe a dozen skinny rods of different lengths stuck out of the ring at different angles, and, Shank realized, out of the slag's head.

Dok stood at the head-end of the table dressed in a black and red Jersey Annihilators Urban Brawl tee, shorts, and sandals. His silvery slash-hair and beard made him look like an old man, maybe a little before his time.

"Been scanning the Brawl, Dok?"

Dok looked back over his shoulder and grinned. "I do love to see the body parts fly. Hoi, Shank. Thorvin."

"Dokker," Thorvin said.

"What're you into?" Shank asked.

"A little gray matter," Dok replied. "You might want to keep back a few steps. I'm extracting a cortex bomb."

Dok had his hands encased in a pair of gloves that extended into the isolation chamber. He seemed to be slowly, carefully twisting one of the rods stuck into the slag's head. The monitors at his left elbow showed different views: something that looked like a worm lying in a mass of goo, something that looked like a pin lying in a mass of goo, and various masses of goo, some gray, some red, some yellow, some colored kind of like puke.

Shank edged a bit closer. "Ain't most cortex bombs rigged to blow if you mess with 'em?"

"That's what they tell me."

"What kinda charge?"

"It looks like a Chiba Black. Probably a micro C-9 charge. A few grams of explosive."

"So that's what? A blast radius of about half a meter?"

"Enough to blow this slag's brain to hell."

"Maybe a few of your fingers too, Dok."

"It's a possibility. These're Securemed gloves. Kevlar H-insulated. I probably should have gone deluxe."

On one monitor, something that looked like a pair of pliers slowly drew something that looked like an ant out of a mass of goo on what looked like a strand of spider's webbing.

"What's that?" Shank asked.

"The detonator," Dok replied.

"You had to ask," Thorvin grumbled.

"Rico wants us in on some job," Filly said.

"Is that a fact?" Dok replied. "Good job, is it?"

"Pay's okay," Filly told him.

"We'll be busting some slag outta corp hell," Shank explained. "Least that's how it figures."

"Wage slave making a break for freedom?" Dok asked.

"Naw, the slag got snatched about a year ago. It's an intercorporate thing. The slag's real corp wants him back."

"Does he want to go back?"

"The info we got says the corp that snatched him is using threats against his wife to keep him in line. I don't guess he'd be too happy about that."

"Probably not. Everything else scan okay?"

"Piper checked what she could. You know what this drek is like. It looks chill. About the only thing left to do is go in and meet the slag face to face."

"What if he doesn't want to go?"

"Then I guess we're in deep squat."

Dok looked back again and grinned. "Nothing new about that, is there?"

"Not much," Shank agreed. "You in?"

"I guess I could use the change."

"Got any idea where to find Bandit?"

Dok frowned, then said, "Good fragging question."

* * *

Farrah Moffit knew how she looked. Even lying in the dark of the bedroom on the broad expanse of the black satin-wrapped bed, she could see her own image clearly, as if reflected in a mirror.