Necrotech (17 page)

I hoped it helped. This wasn't my trump card. This was simple intimidation. If I had to start breaking fingers, I wasn't going to feel very good about my day.

Normally, a guilty conscience wasn't my problem, either, but things were a little off kilter since walking away from Nanji. I wasn't sure what exactly I felt there – guilt, fury, confusion – but if I killed Jim here, Jax would know. Facing his knowing mockery later would really scrape my nerves raw.

I crouched, balancing lightly on the balls of my feet, and pressed my fingers lightly together, elbows braced on my knees and close enough that if he so much as twitched, he'd be in reach. “So,” I began slowly, “let's start with the reason you gave me a payout. What the hell did you get me into?”

“How can you not remember?” He stared at me like I'd grown a second head. I was getting a lot of that lately, too.

“Doesn't matter.” I knew my stare made him nervous; he was perspiring through his collar, staining the silk under his pits. “What has Taylor Jax sniffing around your accounts?”

Of all the things I could have said, that probably wasn't my brightest idea. Apoplectic rage replaced the purple mottling on his face, his weasel-like features twisting into something ugly and vicious. “Jax,” he spat, hoarse. “You tell that donkey-fucking spunk-bucket that he ca–”

I angled my fingers towards him. “Jim.”

His lips pressed so hard together, they turned into a seam of white.

His eyes darted to the right.

“Spill it,” I encouraged. “Last chance.”

A muscle jumped in his thin face, just at the point where he was probably trying to grind his teeth into powder. “Fine,” he snarled. “Fine! Just let me get up.”

I rose, looking down on his shivering, curled figure with something I was pretty sure was pity. And revulsion. It felt strange, to feel both at the same time, but Bukket Jehm had a way of making you feel sorry for him even while you were pretty sure he'd sell your grandmother for a crate of something snortable.

I stepped back.

I hated that Jax had me second-guessing my usual methods. My forced goodwill turned into Jim's opportunity as he threw himself between the farthest bed and the wall, rolled under it faster than I could lunge. His skinny ass cleared the lip with room to spare. “Damn it, Jim!” I thumped the wall with my flesh fist. “Get out here.”

“Make me!” The voice was high with victory.

Too early. It was a goddamned bed, not a fort.

And I was done talking. Setting my jaw, I bent, grasped the foot of the metal frame with my tech arm and tested the weight.

Too much, according to my lateral display. Way more than I'd have figured for a wire frame.

I heard shuffling, like rats clawing at walls, and then the unmistakable sound of something metal clanking against the frame I held. “Are you hiding under the bed?” I asked. “Seriously?”

“Fuck you,” he wheezed, fear making his voice tremble. “You go back and tell them the deal's off!”

Deal? What deal? How the hell had I become the principal here? “You,” I grunted as I tugged at the bed, “and I are going to talk, Jim.
Now.
” This bitch was nailed down. Of course it was. You give somebody a chance, they'll make off with anything that isn't. Explained the lack of decor.

I squared my stance, fingers tightening on the frame edge. Every muscle from my reinforced biceps to the hesitant ache under my scapula twanged a warning.

I ignored it.

Sucking in a hard breath, I yanked. Hard. Much harder than I thought I could have; much,
much
faster. The bed frame shrieked, the springs clanked in the old mattress, the floor groaned as the bolts tore out of their moorings. I cursed hard and long as every nerve in my nonexistent arm turned to molten lava and Fuck It Jim made the last mistake he'd ever make.

He pulled a gun on me.

The mattress was still in freefall, bed frame carving plaster furrows down the wall I'd thrown it against as I stepped in, kicked the gun out from his shaking hands. I don't remember making the decision. I simply reached down and seized his face in my metal hand. I slammed his head against the floor. Once.

He screamed.

Twice.

Three times, and the floor boards cracked.

He stopped screaming.

I didn't stop breaking.
Thud.

Crack.

Again and again.

When his head fell apart in my fingers, turning to so much mush and bone at the stump of the very motionless body I still straddled, I stopped.

Plaster dust rained like filthy snow, more gray than white, gathering like a fungus in the ruined shards of the fixer's head.

Like a switch had been shut off, I couldn't move, couldn't look away.

Blood dripped from my metal hand. Seamed between the small plates. It smelled like iron and sweat and the noxious stench of voided bowels – shit and ammonia and raw, stinking fear.

My heart didn't slow. It hadn't even launched into the adrenaline-fueled race I was used to. It beat. Slowly. Surely.

The coldest kill I'd ever done.

Holy tits. Holy mother of freaking fucking
hell
. What was
wrong
with me?

I pushed off Jim's inert form, my gaze skating away from the carnage of his head. Blood everywhere. Pink mush, gray bits. Plaster turning brown and red. Strained meat and pooling plasma.

I'd killed him. And it'd been so easy.

I staggered, half-crawling backwards, until my back hit the wall I'd pinned him against.

I'd killed before, obviously, but this was... different. It'd felt different. I hadn't been riding a wave of adrenaline or fear. I hadn't felt hatred or been paid or any of the usual reasons a person like me killed a man.

I'd simply... reacted.

And Fuck It Jim was dead.

Dead before I'd gotten the answers I so desperately needed. What the hell had gone through my brain? Why? I hadn't even thought about it, I'd just...
Squish.
No more Jim.

That wasn't like me.

My meat hand shook. My insides trembled violently – nerves. Serious nerves. Lucky had cleared me, but what if he'd missed something?

What if it wasn't something his scanners could see?

“Oh fuck,” I gasped, bile welling up in my throat. Whatever had gone sideways, whatever it was, I knew enough that it was
wrong
. It wasn't me.

And I wouldn't get any answers from Jim now.

Something cold, sharp, and bitter curled into my chest. I shuddered, suddenly freezing where before I'd been warm. I sucked in a breath. My teeth chattered; I clenched my jaw.

It didn't help.

Shaking, I stared at the corpse, the ruined bloody stump pointing to the pile of raw mush I'd made of his face, and I couldn't manage to think in cohesive words.

Something was
so
wrong with me. But who the shit could I trust to help now?

The sunlight darkened behind the thin curtains, turning the congealing stains black. I blinked stupidly at the body. Glanced at the dimming daylight.

A muffled thump shook the complex.

Instinct threw me behind the other bed a nanosecond before the windows shattered inward.

T
he apocalypse rained
down in Fuck It Jim's hotel room.

Glass sprayed a glittering volley of sharp edges and razor points. I felt it pepper my head, my bare shoulders like sand. The bed groaned beneath the impact, but held. The one I'd ripped from its moorings went flying, slammed into the far wall, juddering the whole room as I clapped my hands over my ears.

The high-pitched whine of a helo was as unmistakable as the impact of booted feet hitting the floor.

What the
shit.

Now my heart spiked into overdrive. Adrenaline slid through my limbs, narrowing my focus away from Jim's corpse and to the voices barking out orders nearly incomprehensible in the chaos.

Surprise was my only weapon.

I reached under the bed, grabbed the bare springs and dragged myself underneath the frame. The metal edges scraped against my front, bunching my tank. Ouch.

On the bright side, if my tits were even a little bit bigger, I'd have gotten stuck. Eat that, Fuck It Jim.

Well, posthumously.

My feet vanished as a set of boots circled around the foot of the bed, moving quickly to the small door I figured led to the bathroom. “Clear!” I heard.

Sucker.

I reached out from under the bed – every kid's worst nightmare – and grabbed the second guy's ankles. Jerking sharply rammed his shins into the metal frame, providing me the leverage to pull myself out. I wrenched his ankles on the way past and sent him staggering for balance.

Rolling to my feet, I seized one of his windmilling arms, jerked hard and ducked under his elbow as his weapon came around – another Sauger 877, which was probably a coincidence, given Sauger's standing among paramilitary personnel.

That part where it could cut me in half was just frosting.

The gun in my dance partner's hand went wild, bullets spraying. It peppered the wall, tearing holes through the plaster.

The man shouted a warning to his companion as I kept hold of his elbow, and I spun behind him, my arm hooked in his until we were back to back. I was shorter than the guy – he couldn't clock me with his helmet and I wouldn't be target practice for his buddy.

As I used him as a shield, I craned my neck to mark the white logo splashed across the back of his all-black, heavily armored uniform.

An
M
and a
C
, interlocked together in a circle. Son of a bitch.

The letters were as familiar as the city's unique stench. MetaCore, Incorporated isn't just a company. It's a megacorporation that eats smaller firms for breakfast, lunch,
and
dinner – the kind of superconglomerate with fingers in everything from tech development, arms, and industry, to multibillion-dollar style and beauty firms. Sauger had been an independent firm before MetaCore had bought them, as had the makers of the TekSpek software that now held prime turf as the go-to for most weapon-to-HUD linkups. This was the kind of overarching umbrella group little companies died at the feet of.

Died, or sold out to.

Which meant way too big for a smalltime fixer like Bukket Jehm.

What had he gotten into?

Or was it me they were after? I flashed back to that botched MetaCore job that was my last real memory and couldn't shake the hunted feeling plucking at my survival instincts.

Was I being tracked? Followed? What for?

Fuck
.

The other guy didn't fire at his buddy, which suggested he'd been trained not to shoot randomly. Great. More competent assholes. Just what I always wanted.

“What the
hell
is your problem?” I gritted out, straining as my reluctant companion struggled to pull me off balance. The most prominent disadvantage to full armor was the lack of flexibility.

The bonus was, oh, he'd be a bitch to kill.

Lights seared through the window, painting the scene in florid blue and white. The heat from the helo's backdraft burned out the air in the little apartment, and I heard shouting, barking orders, status updates, even while I danced with the one to keep him between me and his buddy.

My odds here sucked.

“Stand down,” ordered the man I grappled. “You are ordered to comply with Civic Code–”

Oh, screw this.

I reached back with my free arm, hooked my metal fingers into his faceplate and jerked as hard as I could. His words halted as his head snapped back, which cracked the top of mine hard enough to send stars shooting through my vision. It hurt me more than it did him, but it wasn't his skull I was going for.

His elbow lashed back into my ribs, scored a direct hit that blew my breath out. I jammed my boot heel into the back of his knee, felt it catch on plated armor, but he jerked. When he staggered, I rammed my back into his, forcing him forward, right into his similarly outfitted pal.

I'd get one shot at this.

“Don't move!” shouted the second guy. Er, lady.

Whatever.

Still didn't work.

I palmed a smoke grenade off my dance partner's belt, then let him go at the same time I shoved my foot between his. He flailed into his friend, armor meeting armor in a clatter eaten by the sound of the helo's thrust outside the shattered window. The curtains flapped wildly, roiling up debris.

I spun around, launched a flatfooted kick into the guy's back to make sure he stayed tangled with his galpal, and didn't stop to watch them work out their balance. Darting across the room, I had a split second to decide which of Jim's units would provide me the answers I needed.

And possibly make me a continued target for MetaCore, but if I could get out, I could shake them.

“Get her!” yelled one of the faceless freaks.

Naturally.

Eenie, meenie, miney,
fuck it
.

I palmed a unit, a handheld tablet hooked up to a dock, ripped the device out of its frame and sprinted for the opened window.

Glass crunched under my feet. The men behind me must have sorted out their differences because the deafening whine of the helo blocking the light was suddenly torn wide by the report of bullet spray. My skin crawled beneath a sheen of sweat, my heart pounding as I waited to feel the horrific agony of flesh and bone brutalized by 5.56mm caseless rounds.

For once, luck was on my side.

Muscles straining, legs screaming, I bent, and as I launched myself into the air – rolling and hunching gracelessly around the tablet I held to my chest – I thumbed the trigger on the canister I'd stolen and dropped it in my wake.

A woman yelled out something I couldn't hear and the bullets ceased. Nobody saw the canister hit the floor until it exploded in a rapid burst of thick purple smoke. It belched out of the window I tore through, so fast I failed to see how close the helo really was until I felt the burn of its engines score my cheek, my bare arm, sear my shirt against the skin of my back.

I wrenched myself in mid-air and managed to tuck and roll into the most awkward dive of my extremely screwed up life.

I'd forgotten about the railing.

I skimmed off the top. My knee collided with the flimsy rail and bent it, which was enough to send me spiraling out over concrete. Landing one short story down drove the breath from my lungs, jarred my bones and my shoulder, and shot sparks where my metal arm scraped across pocked asphalt. I rolled, over and over, scrambling what was left of my brains, tearing away all sense of up and down.

When I finally stopped, laid out on my back and the world spinning, every inch of my body shrieked a string of curses I couldn't summon the breath to vocalize.

So. Much. Pain.

My fingers cramped around the edge of the tablet as I forced myself to sit up.

I smelled burning fuel, a sharply acrid tang that only undercut the oppressive reek of a city baking under the summer heat wave. People had started to gather, a blur of color and open-mouthed faces gathering behind a line somebody stupid had designated as “a safe distance”. The hovering black machine hanging over what used to be the fixer's base of operations backpedaled on an upsurge of thrust I felt singeing the fine hairs on my skin. What was left of it, anyway.

Shit.

The torrent of purple smoke was more than enough to cover my tracks from the ground crew, but if that helo locked on me, I'd never outrun it.

I leapt to my feet, gritting my teeth against the waves of pain surging from ringing skull to aching heels, and took off – right for the crowd watching it all unfold like some kind of daytime soap feed.

Eyes widened. The bodies comprising the stupidest idiots in the area rippled.

“Corp raid!” I shouted. Probably the most effective call to arms this city would ever care about. Raids were a fact of life. On a good day, there wasn't a person existing in these streets who wasn't fucking around with something illegal, intentional or otherwise. The question was how much it would be worth to the corps to litigate it.

The motel looked like a military strike zone from the outside, which meant to anyone with any street sense at all that MetaCore wasn't playing patty cake. Raids like this, even spectators would end up dead. No one would care. The whole place could go up in smoke and it'd be just another footnote in the feeds.

But people love a good show.

What a bloody, abraded mess of screaming fleshbag couldn't accomplish, the helo's efforts to pull back and orient did. The spectators scattered. Like roaches under a light, thirty or so people darted for cover – cars idling in the street, alleys tucked between pay-by-the-hour shitholes like the one I'd left, whatever was handy.

The helo shuddered, swerving away from the smoking motel. A pack of people headed farther down the street, scared into a stampede as the helo's loudspeakers crackled behind us. “Cease and disperse,” it droned. “Return to your homes. You are in violation of Code 311.875c. Repeat, cease and disperse.”

Chunk that noise.

Smelling my own sweat and blood beneath the reeking assault of garbage, oil and fear, I ducked my head, hands tight around the stolen comp unit, and ran like I was one of the crowd.

As I'd hoped, the smoke covered my trail from the ground team. Without a definite lock, I was just a warm body among a bunch.

Honestly, MetaCore should have been better than that; except maybe, I figured as I sprinted into an alley barely big enough to run through, they'd been surprised by my presence in Jim's room. If they'd been there for Jim, and whatever he'd been digging into, then I was an unknown. A side project.

The last thing I wanted was giant MetaCore on my dick. As if my reputation wasn't shit enough. Once everyone else learned I had some kind of massive target on me, my cred would only be as good as the bounty a corporation would pay for it. MetaCore could afford just about anything.

I couldn't afford jack. But given the lack of pursuers in my wake, maybe that was one problem I didn't have to worry about.

My breath came in hard gasps as I slowed halfway down the narrow alley. It was little more than a runoff drain, filled with the debris thrown out the windows inset into walls overhead and left to rot. I stepped over decaying clothing, abandoned plastic containers, crates broken into jagged angles, and shattered glass.

I was sweltering. The sun baked my seared skin into a crusty mess, sweat stinging the rapidly healing gashes the pavement carved into me. My throat was a dried, raspy column of bottled-up obscenities, and I wheezed a few for emphasis as I finally stopped running and sank into a gasping, aching crouch.

“What,” I panted, “the shit.”
What
the
shit
. What had Jim been dealing in to bring Meta-fucking-Core to his doorstep? He wouldn't be the first fixer to wind up dead for dealing in the wrong information, but I never expected Jim to aim that high. MetaCore was serious baggage.

The memory of the sweaty stain his hands left on his own shirt flashed back through my rattled skull, and I swore again for emphasis.

No wonder he'd been so scared. I'd thought whatever it was he didn't want me to know had done that. Had he been afraid of a raid?

That cunt.

I sucked in a long, slow breath, let it out on a gust.

So much for answers.

Idly, I flipped the comp unit over in my hands. The screen was already on, jarred awake by my rough handling, though it didn't seem sure what to do with the remains of the dock still clinging to its connector. More than a few files had opened on the screen, probably from my stray fingers.

As I focused on breathing in and out, clearing the adrenaline-fueled rapid pulse from my chest, I eyed the info.

Names. Places. Dates. Bits of shorthand phrasing I suspected was Jim's way of reminding himself what meant what.

And a single document called
retirement plan
.

Aw. So the weasely little bastard had his own dreams of a happily ever after. That was kind of sweet, in a naïve and definitely too late kind of way. Not that it was my fault. I mean, sure, I'd killed him horribly, but he was probably dying anyway.

This business wasn't made for retirement.

Yeah. I'd pretend that somehow made what I did to him better.

Shifting my weight onto my heels, I flicked the folder open with a finger. Contract lingo filled the narrow screen.

I skimmed it. More names. More dates. More places.

And a shit ton of creds. Payouts, each listed with far too many zeroes to be right.

Only difference here was that I recognized the names on that list.

January. Indigo had brought her in on a run last year. Solid splatter specialist; I'd taught her a few tricks along the way. Young but hardcore.

Deck. A linker who'd worked on a co-op with Digo on a big score against a GinZeng operation.

Lingo. A fixer Indigo trusted enough to share a few intel lines with.

Fuck It Jim had been brokering deals to sell mercs. Somebody had been working with that weasel-faced fuckwit to
sell
SINless.

Among them?