Necrotech (11 page)

Problem was, for every point I scored, there were three of them to score one each for their battered buddy.

I caught a truncheon in my side, cracking ribs. Wrenching at it did nothing – the sticks were designed to snap into place with the gauntlets, negating disarming attempts like mine. Another jammed into my kidneys. Pain roiled under my skin, turned my vision inside out and nearly dropped me to my knees. The only thing that would keep me from pissing blood later was the nanos, but not if these sec-level spunkguzzlers did as much damage as it looked like they intended.

I punched the visorless one in the face with my tech arm, calling it a draw for the blood streaming from my mouth and into one eye, and gave it a little extra thrust for kicks. He dropped.

I had no time to celebrate. A boot slammed into the back of my right knee, another smashed into the side of it. Ligaments wrenched, popped with sickening visceral agony, spilling me to the floor and jarring my teeth. My knife went skittering across the tile.

It was all I could do to fight the urge to curl around the excruciating pain in my ribs.

No time. I rolled, biting back a scream, avoided the hands reaching for me. I hit the edge, found the stairs leading to the pit by sheer accident, and flailed ass over elbows. There were only two steps.

My broken ribs and devastated knee found both of them.

The lights, the music, the world turned into a black, tunneled vacuum.

I
f I passed out here
, I was dead.

It took effort, but I sucked in air through gritted teeth, forced myself to stay conscious. I just needed to wait out the damage, ride the pain.

Maybe seriously consider some pain dampeners; shove the risk.

I slung an arm over the rim of the padded table shoved into my back. I couldn't see out of one eye, and the floor was jerking back and forth, but I didn't need perfect vision to glare at the four silhouettes coming down the steps at me.

The pale glow behind me went dark. “That's enough.”

All four stopped.

The suit didn't shout; he didn't have to. His voice wasn't as deep as Jad's, but it carried the kind of weight you can't program into tech. It was effortless, patient, and cool. A signal that cut through noise with pure authority.

I was going to rip his voice box out and make him eat it.

“Bring her.”

My ass. I tried to get to my feet. My damaged knee buckled hard, twisting out from under me. Before I hit the ground, two sets of hands curled around my upper arms. Pulled me upright.

I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood as torture streaked through my broken ribs. It came out on a mangled, “
Fuck
.”

They half-carried, half-dragged me to a plastic arm chair across from the suited man, and set me gently into the padding. Two sets of hands clutched at my shoulders, holding me firmly in place.

“You must be Indigo's friend,” my host said. His eyes met mine across the neon-drenched club, too dark to see the color of.

Pain banked. Rage burned in its place. “Go to hell.”

He inclined his head. “Not my faith.”

Thought he was a bag of laughs, huh? “Listen up,
Malik
.” I drew his name out like poison, every muscle in my body taut with the effort not to launch myself at him. Or hunch into a miserable ball of pain. “You have exactly one minute. And the only reason I'm giving you that is I need the time to knit.”

“Understood.” Malik Reed did not smile. Or, at least, he didn't actually curve his lips and reveal his teeth. I wasn't even sure he could – he didn't seem the type. His top and lower lip were thick and full, but when matched with his high cheekbones and the sharp angles of his face, there was nothing soft about him. He wasn't commercially handsome, not by a long shot; his jaw was too square at the edges, chin too pronounced and nose too wide. All in all, probably the kind of bone structure a woman would die for, but he wouldn't score any points for charm.

Not that it mattered. The impression Malik Reed left was one of wealth, power, and the kind of prestige that comes with assloads of unshakable confidence.

And a seismic lot of fucks he didn't have to give.

He'd started this with blood. My fucks had exponentially increased, and not in the way I generally liked them.

In the club's light-speckled interior, Malik's gray suit looked crisp and perfectly tailored, creased at the pant legs and hemmed over shiny black shoes I bet cost too much. The shirt underneath his fitted jacket was black, a mandarin collar buttoned neatly at the strong lines of his throat. All very corporate chic. The whole thing probably cost as much as my cut from a decent run.

I printed my clothing by machine. Malik Reed had his tailored by hand.

That meant backing. Probably corp-level, since private sector didn't usually come paired with sec-level forces.
That
meant I couldn't twist his cunting head off his spine. I'd have to play this one carefully. SINless versus corp exec one on one, and I'd own his ass.

SINless versus a corp exec and four enforcers?

I was meat.

I gripped the arms of my chair, uncomfortably aware of the hands curled over my shoulders, the mind-altering waves of pain radiating from knee to ribs to, oh, every bone in my body, and the taste of blood on my tongue. I narrowed my eye. The other one was already a bloody slit. “Get your spunkchuckers off me.”

In this techno-strobe mess, I couldn't tell what color Malik's skin was. Dusky, anyway. Given the features, I'd guess a blend of anglo, African, and a handful of other landmarks from Native to Mexican. Muddled, like most of us beyond the restricted cultural reserves. His eyes were practically black in the shadows, his limbs long and movements precise as he gestured in two directions.

The hands at my shoulders let go. He didn't stop there, turning his head to glance somewhere to my left.

The lights played over the harsh, sculpted angle of his jaw, outlined his profile briefly, and slid back onto the dance floor somewhere to my right. “Now you have my full attention,” he said, turning his gaze back to me as if he'd done me a favor.

My fingers fisted. “Great.” I showed him my bloody teeth. “Just for the record, I am going to kill you.”

“Why?”

The answer was so obvious, my brain hitched.
Why?
Because he'd stood by while his tapdancing assclowns beat me down like a stray dog. Because if he was corporate, that meant he knew people. Probably knew some of the same people that operated in my sphere. In my line of work, reputation was everything. It didn't matter how good I was, it'd all go to shit if he opened his girly lips and blabbed about the trap he'd set on me and the damage his team had caused.

I had more to prove than he did.

“Because,” was what I managed, and this time, he did smile. Sort of.

The faint kick of humor at the corner of his mouth slammed a shard of something hot and hungry in my chest. Need, yes. Not the sexy kind. Not, anyway,
all
the sexy kind.

I recognized his magnetism, but I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt the men I
knew
hovered just out of range.

I wanted to pull him out of his too-expensive suit and see if he still thought he was hot shit without it.

That thing I'd mentioned about his voice box? Forget making him eat it. I was going to shove it so far up his ass, he'd have to bark his orders upside down.

Red numbers spiked in my lateral display. The arm of the chair splintered, disintegrating under my grip like so much straw.

His gaze dropped to it, then back up to me like it didn't matter. “I appreciate the display. Are you finished?”

“Come a little closer, jackass.”

Not even a twitch. “Let's not waste time. Your attempt to set up a meeting on your...” His gaze flitted to the empty club, disdain flaring his nostrils. “This isn't your territory, that much is obvious, but you obviously wanted to discuss business in a public venue.”

“So, what?”

“Your terms didn't agree with me. No,” he cautioned. “Don't make that mistake.”

Shit. I'd only shifted, testing my footing, but he'd seen.

“You claim to need a minute, but your right knee is going to require six and your ribs fifteen. You're hardly running at optimal.”

He'd scanned me. More, he'd probably used that fight to get a total readout on my abilities. A sneaky way of doing it.

I ground my teeth so hard, the noise shaved the edge off the music thumping in the empty club around us. “Go fuck yourself.”

“There is tech for that,” he replied, “but you may be disappointed to learn I don't have it.”

“Get it. Then go fuck yourself.”

This time, Malik's smile revealed even white teeth and crinkled the corners of his dark eyes. It did nothing to soften his hard edges; nothing to ease the corporate stink surrounding him like a toxic cloud.

It made me feel a whole lot like prey, and I wasn't prey.

But my breath sucked out of my chest anyway.

There are people out there who have smiling down to an art form. Someone might say that a person can light up a room or make a bad day go away.

The club was still dark and strobing, and my bad day was still bottoming out at shitty, but this guy was wired for social programming in ways even a politician would envy. One smile, and I practically swallowed my tongue.

Pheromones? Even as it occurred to me, I trashed it. I wasn't close enough. Besides, it wasn't that kind of curve. No one in their right mind, drunk or sober, would call that slash sexy.

It reeked of power and ego and raw masculinity; maybe not unexpectedly, it made
me
think of blood. Lots and lots of blood. The kind that drew hungry predators.

I could shape my smile into a visceral promise of ruin, but I didn't like the razor-honed potential in his.

“I will take that under advisement,” he told me, in a tone that said he wouldn't waste a brain cell bothering. He turned his right hand palm up, fingers flicking. “When you're done sulking, let me know.”

That screen flicked on again, turning his features into a wash of pale blue light and demonic shadows. The projection probably came from his watch, or maybe a chip inserted somewhere in his palm. He left me scowling at him as he returned to whatever charts filled the space between us.

At least it let me get a closer look. The light revealed the shadow of a finely sculpted goatee framing his mouth. And, much to my surprise, freckles. A mass of them speckled over the bridge of his nose, his high cheekbones and scattered faintly over his forehead.

They did nothing to make him look naïve or innocent. Not even close.

“Your ego must be enormous,” I said.

He didn't look away from the projection. “Yes. That's why I cleared the club.”

“Didn't want to be seen slumming it in the Key?”

“Would you?” Absently cool, like he only spared half a thought for my distraction.

To my chagrin, a corner of my mouth twitched. My jaw clenched against it.

Two minutes.

“All right,” I said, breaking the music-studded silence between us. “Tell me why Indigo suggested I meet you.”

For a moment, I wasn't sure he'd respond. The spotlights glazed over his head, picked out his extremely short, coarse dark hair in a startlingly bright gleam of pink luminescence and glanced off my yellow top before skating away.

Finally, he curled his fingers under the projection. It collapsed, winking out entirely.

“Tell me why you wanted a meeting,” he countered, “and I'll tell you what service I can provide.”

“Service.”

He only watched me. Like it or not, I had zero viable options. He'd already proven he had the upper hand, and no matter how angry I was over it,
he
didn't need
me
. I, however, probably needed him. At the very least, I needed something, and Indigo recommended him.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

Had he known? Had Indigo walked me into a trap?

That thought shot a white-hot ball of rage into my chest.

Then again, maybe Malik had taken Indigo's request to meet and made his own arrangements.

It was better for
everyone
that I bought that one. If I stopped to think about the fact that Digo had turned me over to this suit, I wasn't sure what I'd do. It was too big for the space my head was in – too fucking complicated.

As long as I figured Malik for the smug exec he seemed to be, I could play the game.

Suits always liked to think they had the upper hand on us runners. Lucky for him, I actually needed whatever it was Indigo claimed Malik had. I needed that help.

Not like I was getting it from anywhere else.

Did I dare tell him everything? Did Indigo already? I should have made sure first.

“Are you a fixer?” I asked.

“No.”

At least he didn't dick around. Great. So much for that. “Then you can't help me.”

“Don't be closeminded.”

What the tits? Lessons in tolerance from a suit. Fuck me. “You think you can help? Fine. I need a team,” I told him, as much a challenge as anything. “A real one, street-trained and savvy.” He didn't even blink, eyes level beneath thick black eyebrows. I took that as encouragement to go on. “There's a corporate prison and they've got data I need.”

“What firm?”

“I don't know.” And because I didn't like the fact that he'd judge me for it, I added, “They stripped it of all branding. The security held Saugers and Manticores, and they didn't have badges.”

“Both firearms easily acquired by any agency.” He didn't frown. He didn't even nod encouragingly like a shrink on autopilot. He just watched me. Catalogued me.

Creepy.

“Tell me about the place.” An order.

I let him have the luxury. Told him what little I knew. It took a hair under a minute. I left out everything that even smelled like necro, because, hell, for all I knew, he'd order the place razed when I found it.

Four minutes down.

The ache in my knee was easing. The guy knew his statistics.

“When you say corporate, you mean what?”

“Clean,” I replied. “Stark, bare of all things with soul or even aesthetically pleasing, and, oh, yeah, riddled with assholes. You know the type.”

Black eyes didn't waver. “I am the type.”

Well, hey, at least he was honest with himself. “Then you see why I said corporate.”

“No, I see sloppy assumptions based on dogmatic sentiment.” His deep voice hardened. “I can't possibly give you what you need based on this.”

My fists clenched. “What do you want, then?”

“It's not a question of want, it's a question of time and effort versus payoff. Right now, I see a wild story spun by a delinquent with no concept of the amount of assets required to carry you on your crusade.”

My cheeks stung. Anger. Worse, embarrassment. “That's not–”

He held up a hand, his palm paler in the partial light. “I need evidence. More than your word.”

“My word is good.”

“Only as good as your reputation.” His mouth quirked again, that tiny half curve that made me feel like I was twelve years old and seated across from an imposing teacher. My palms itched to wrap around his throat. “I don't know you from Jane Eyre, and what I've seen tonight doesn't impress me.”