Necrotech (19 page)

Clear my name, stock my cred, before anyone else came gunning for me.

Without cred, I was losing allies fast. That much was clear. A lone runner? Especially one who'd chunked a few smegheads on the way up? Yeah, it was only a matter of time before I was so much meat.

“Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “Turns out, whatever Jim was up to, it brought MetaCore on his ass. And mine.” I gestured at the mess I presented. “So, I'm a little wired. Sorry. I'll pay for Laila's door.”

“You're balls-out insane,” he muttered, but at least he relaxed enough to start pacing. I watched him stride through the small room, stepping in and out of the curtain-dappled sunlight. He slapped the unit against his palm rhythmically as he did it.

For the first time in, oh, hell, a couple years, I really
looked
at Indigo's trim body. Under all that olive skin, I decided that he wore leaner muscle well once I got used to it. His back shifted tightly, rippling the bold colors of the lotus tattoo. With his bare feet and naked, hairless chest, he looked a hell of a lot more lethal than he used to.

No wonder Laila had taken him home.

I almost snorted a laugh, and as he turned to throw me an inquisitive, impatient glare, all that anger, that emotional undercurrent of rage, drained right out of me. With the sudden loss of adrenaline-fueled anger, all those muscles tightened to the breaking point around my synthetic arm. Pain unfurled like a flame.

I rubbed at the curve of my neck as that phantom arm ached from false fingertips to brain, lancing every nerve in between.

Digo glared at the tablet. Then back at me. “Right now,” he said flatly, “you're on my shitlist in a big way.” He held up the tablet. “This may be something, but you're still the one who fucking watched my sister die.” He paused. “If you're even telling me the truth.”

Ouch.

“I'm not sorry I hired Jax to find you,” he said grimly, “but it's infuriating to think I paid him for counterfeit intel.”

An angle I hadn't considered. That wouldn't be good for Jax's cred, either. At least Indigo acknowledged that there was something wrong with this whole situation. Whatever data Jax had managed to get, it was nothing more than a ruse. A way to ensure nobody went sniffing around after Nanji.

Jax got bad intel. Indigo was losing his roster and didn't even know. I'd... sold that roster, maybe? Fuck.

So why? Why give Nanjali Koupra a finite end on a chopshop table but leave Lingo with an unexplained disappearance? But January and Deck both had solid reports on their deaths, too.

Whoever did this counted on the fact someone like Indigo would check up on it.

Was it something that would even occur to me? I didn't think so. But then, sometimes I surprised myself with my random acts of intelligence.

I dug my thumb into my eye to ease the headache pounding behind it. “There's a source for all of this,” I said, weary now. “That tablet tells me where to start. And now I have Reed's evidence. He can get me a team.”

He frowned at the unit. Stopped pacing. Then, to my surprise, he tucked the tablet into his waistband.
Mine
. He may as well have pissed on it. “Then we're going to go question Reed,” he said. Like it was already decided.

I blinked. “We?”

“The hell I'm letting you do another meeting in secret,” he said, his jaw stone hard as he glared at me. “I'm going this time, and I'll be asking all the questions.”

I stood. Fuck me sideways, I didn't have a choice. Very deliberately, I curled my hands into fists, ignoring the shot of pain through my shoulder. I'd have to spend every moment of this meeting balancing Malik Reed's douche factor with Indigo Koupra's raging trust issues. While hiding the fact that I
was
keeping something from them both.

I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off.

“You want to play with the big boys, Riko?” He jammed his feet into his boots, kicking at the programmed lacing until the material tightened up around his ankles. “Then you start figuring out when you're supposed to stroke your dick and when you're supposed to stow it.” He shot a hard look at me, thrusting at his own face with a finger. “That's
my
specialty. Don't fucking forget you're just a splatter specialist off her goddamn rails.”

I forced myself to hold still, to lock down the automatic need to drive a fist into his twisted face. A lump swelled thick and ugly in my throat.

He was right. Much as I hated it, I couldn't meet Reed without him, and I wasn't willing to kill him over a
maybe
. I needed Digo to set up the meeting.

I needed Reed to fund a run to that Vid Zone chopshop.

I needed to play the smegging game.

And I was so cunting tired of needing everyone else to do it.

“Fine,” I gritted out. “Set up the meeting.” He exhaled soundlessly, like he'd been holding his breath. Only to curl his lip when I couldn't stop myself from adding, “Asshole.”

“Keep stroking it, Riko.”

His inflection suggested I needed to shut up.

I
ndigo left
a few credsticks for Laila. To replace the door, I think, without my help. I said nothing, but I did avail myself of her shower and printer while he made the call. Unlike mine, her radiation shower was fast enough to deal with. She had decent digs, for the shithole the building was, and at least she tried to make it comfortable.

“Let's go,” was all he said when I stepped out to find him dressed and waiting.

I'd opted for black, because trite as it is to go for a badass vibe in black, it hid blood well and didn't stand out in the street. I actually preferred color, but this was me. Being practical.

Lucky would be so proud. Except for that part where I tanked my cred, assaulted and alienated one of the only friends I had left, and pinned a MetaCore target to my back.

My pants were close to the ones I lost to Lucky's table, though Laila's database didn't have my chosen make and model. I'd traded the ruined baby blue for a skintight sleeveless shirt that wouldn't bunch under the harness I intended to requisition soon. I'd even pulled out a pair of cheap wraparound sunglasses. I looked like the streetcore mercenary I was.

Indigo had replaced his own neoprene blue with black, which made us look like a twin set, but whatever. If anyone had anything cute to say, I was itching for a fight.

He said nothing as I followed him out of Laila's apartment. He did mutter a string of profanities when the door refused to sit straight, and I very determinedly refrained from contributing to the non-conversation. I doubted anything I had to say would have helped.

He was still fuming as he backed his motorcycle out of the alley he'd stashed it in. I got to ride bitch. Lucky, lucky me.

There was no sense of easy camaraderie between us as we headed out past the rack and hit one of the boundary byways. I watched the scenery go by, focusing on the sharp, jagged streaks of pain the cycle juddered through my left side because it hurt less than the knowledge that I'd lost pretty much everything I'd made for myself in the past few years. My reputation, my team, my mentor.

My girlfriend. Even if she was one in a string of many.

Poor me. A real quality pity party on the back of Indigo's babied Wolfram K-700. Built for sleek menace, high visual appeal and road domination, the metallic blue and chromed motorcycle had been his longterm girlfriend of choice for as long as I'd known him. I loved the bike – had even considered replacing my less sleek Vix Jp with a similar model after a run had trashed the Vix a couple years back.

Maybe one day. Runners aren't great at saving. We risk our lives for thrills and pay, and spend that pay for more thrills. Without Indigo in my corner, I'd have to freelance. That meant it'd be a long ass time before I could afford it.

He threaded through traffic like the cars around us were other people's problem. For an hour, we rode straight through. No talking. No stopping. By the time we pulled up to what I assumed was our destination, we were ass-deep in corporate polish. The bike slowed, darting out of the steady flow of vehicles that had steadily turned cleaner, sleeker, classier with every block in.

He idled at the curb, next to a complex whose glassy front started at street level and climbed into the pristine blue sky. It was clearer here than the districts I haunted, less baked into a crust by the sun bloated and brilliant overhead. Tighter shields. Just enough to let the summer season in, not enough to turn loose the pollutants that infected every part of the city to some degree or another.

Fancy.

I leaned a little bit over, tapping his shoulder. “You're telling me Reed actually shacks up in C-Town?”

C-Town was what we called most of the corporate boroughs from the Fourteenth Divide on up. The “C” stood for Capital, but was often replaced by any number of epithets. Corporate, cred, chum, cunt. Insert your own at your leisure. It was full of suits, polished to a shine, and screamed corporate propaganda.

We were about seventeen blocks in, surrounded on all sides by soulless metal and glass. But way less ads flooding my filters. I clocked it in at three seconds before my chipset calibrated to the district and they all winked out. Much, much nicer than the standard fifteen.

Indigo spared me a shrug. “He's got a credline that goes deep. Don't tell me you didn't notice.”

“Oh, I noticed.” Once the blood had cleared from my eyes.

The bike tilted, all the warning I had, before he zipped back into traffic – earning three horns and a flash of LEDs – and circled around to a parking garage. The air abruptly turned cool, the light dimmed, and I breathed in gratefully as Indigo found and claimed a parking spot in the shadowed interior.

I hopped off first, stretching my aching arm. “How did you know about this?”

“It's my business.” A short answer. Fair enough.

He flicked a screen with a finger and stepped back as a faint blue shimmer rolled over the machine. Security. The kind that would deliver a blackout jolt of juice to anyone who laid a finger on it. Standard street procedure. Only complete fuckwits risk touching a SINless vehicle without testing it first, and I didn't think it'd be a problem this time. He'd been nice and legal about parking.

Indigo strode for a bank of elevators at the far wall of the garage. He didn't have to hit a button. That wouldn't have been classy at all. Instead, sensors picked up on our presence and one of the doors slid right open with a merry little chime.

We stepped in, and I took the opportunity to smooth one hand over my tousled hair, untangling it with a quick run of my fingers.

Indigo punched in a code. When the doors closed, he made damn sure not to meet my gaze in the reflective walls.

I bit back a sigh, barely even noticed when the elevator car lifted, it was so smooth. No music. Just a panel counting up as we passed floor after floor. Super awkward elevator silence.

The elevator chimed again, announcing our arrival a hundred and fifty-nine stories up. Nice.

When the doors slid open, I expected a hall. Instead, we stepped out into a vast lobby that would have fit the entire row of my squatter tenement inside it and still have room for the junk they hoarded around the perimeter. Delicate music played over discreet speakers, while lush green plants provided an atmospheric touch to the professional digs.

I whistled.

A tall cream-colored desk took up the center, though there was no lettering or signage to tell me what the hell I'd been dragged into. A woman with sleekly knotted blonde hair looked up from the translucent projection screen her fingers hovered over, a welcome smile already in place. She was maybe my age, maybe a little younger, with nondescript features geared toward unremarkable anglo – modest genetic cultivation, I'd stake what was left of my cred on it – but good bone structure beneath reserved makeup. The perfect unobtrusive welcome. “Good afternoon,” she said brightly. Her brown eyes gleamed with unconcealed sincerity behind wide-framed glasses. “Do you have an appointment?”

Indigo nodded. “Made it about an hour ago.”

“You must be Mr Koupra.” The receptionist turned her expectant, unreasonably cheerful gaze to me. “And guest?”

“And guest,” I agreed before Digo could open his mouth and say my name.

She waited a moment, head tilting. I didn't elaborate.

“Give it a rest,” Digo muttered, low enough that I wasn't sure the receptionist heard. “Everything's a fucking competition with you.”

I ignored him. If she did hear, the receptionist simply shrugged her shoulders beneath a blouse I was sure was real silk and said, “Mr Reed will see you both.” She gestured with a manicured hand to our left.

Indigo strode off without another word.

“Thanks,” I said as I followed.

“Of course.”

The wide lobby didn't narrow. Instead, it kept going, with crystal clean windows on one side looking out over the wide expanse of the district – broken, naturally, by skyscrapers as tall as this one – and a paneled wall on the other. Pictures filled it, art that I didn't recognize but was sure was expensive. Probably originals of some kind, though I couldn't tell at a glance. Art snobs and rich assholes liked to claim a difference, but the great replications didn't look any different from one copy to the next.

I couldn't tell if this was a business or a home. It kind of reeked of both. The view was a guaranteed power play, but even I had to admit it was kind of pretty. As much as this soulsucking shithole of a city could be pretty, anyway. The golden haze coloring the sky between gaps in the glass skyline was interesting enough, if you didn't stop to consider that it was pollution hovering in the distant wards.

There were no signs, no logos. Nothing that told me what corporation, if any, this guy worked for. Which made me think it wasn't much more than a place to meet people. Probably one of many setups he had in place. He seemed cagey enough.

The corridor ended at a set of double doors. Indigo pushed inside first, which made me glad I'd left my shades on as the modulated sunlight seared through the overhead skylights.

Malik Reed stood beside a heavy glass and metal desk, scrolling through data in a projection tablet about a thousand times more advanced than the junk Fuck It Jim had been cobbling together. He was dressed in another gray suit, this one lighter but obviously expensive. His pants were precisely creased, tailored neatly to his long legs and narrow waist, and accessorized with a thin black belt. This time, he wore a pale blue dress shirt, a tailored vest in the same color as his slacks, and a tie colored a cross between blue and gray. Black shoes to match the belt, less shiny than last time but no less exclusive. The only concession to the summer sun streaming through the window was the suit jacket hanging up on a coat rack to my right.

The overall affect wasn't one of casual welcome or easy comfort. Any other man I'd known would have rolled up the sleeves, or loosened the tie. This man stood in the middle of all this glass and sunshine and made it look like it was just another day in the office.

Hell, maybe it was.

He didn't look up as we entered, but he did gesture to the chairs arrayed in front of his desk as he turned away. “Have a seat.”

Indigo sat, shoving his sunglasses up on his head.

I didn't. “Nice to see you, too,” I drawled.

This time, Digo didn't bother vocalizing his impatience. He knew better. The receptionist was one thing, but Malik Reed was a player in the game. It
all
came down to cred, to swagger, and Digo needed to keep face as much as I needed to regain mine.

Whatever our host needed, I hadn't figured out yet.

His eyes were dark as motor oil as he seized the projected screen in one hand and tossed it to the side, gaze pinned on me. The screen vanished. “You look like a third-rate burglar.”

I showed him my teeth. “Worried?”

“Not even a little,” he replied, dismissing me easily as his gaze shifted to Indigo. “What can I do for you, Mr Koupra?”

Digo, for all his years on the street, couldn't match the other man's perfect air of control. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, balled-up frenetic energy. “Riko's got intel for you. I have questions.” He tilted his head at me. “Start with her.”

Malik's eyes returned to me, coolly reproachful. “You should have taken the card.”

“You should have paid that bouncer better,” I returned. I tilted my head, arms folded under my breasts. “How is he, by the way? Did you promise medical?”

A black eyebrow lifted. “He'll live.”

“Oh, good.” My tone said I didn't give a shit.

Unlike the earblasting confines of Plato's Key, the music in the lobby didn't reach this room. The light didn't leave anything to the imagination, and I had no trouble discerning the complete lack of amusement in his features this time.

“Not even a sigh,” I pointed out, pulling my mouth into an expression of affected dismay. “I must be losing my touch.”

“You are also losing my attention.”

Jackhole.

“Indigo.” I glanced at him. “The data.”

He withdrew the tablet from its place in his waistband. Maybe he was making a point, too, because I took way too much pleasure from the fact that it left a streak of black on the nice clean desk he threw it on. The clatter forced a faint tightening of Malik's shoulders.

Most wouldn't be able to tell, but I could sense Indigo's nerves. I couldn't blame him. Being on Malik Reed's turf was a great big fuckoff unknown.

I was too stubborn to play nice. “There's your evidence,” I said. “Now get me my team.”

A long-fingered hand lifted the device. A ring winked in the bright daylight. I didn't remember seeing it before, but I hadn't exactly been focused on his hands.

A wedding band, obviously, and in gold. Most couples who bothered with rings didn't usually pick gold. Titanium or platinum, or, if you were trendy, diamond steel with microchips that could contain all kinds of fun surprises. Honeymoon photos. Tracking bugs.

Aphrodisiacs.

Yeah, that was a thing.

“Did you run over it a few times before you brought it here?” he asked mildly, turning the screen rightside up with two fingers.

“You could say that.” I could have mentioned MetaCore, but I figured I'd hold off on that one. I didn't know who the man worked for yet, and if he had ties to the conglomerate, I wanted what I could get from him before I blew that bird cage open.

I waited in silence, stooping to lean on the back of the other chair as he scrolled through the information. He, like me, did not sit; a fact I think made Indigo even more nervous.

I kind of hoped one of them would do something stupid. It was that kind of mood.

Instead, Malik glanced up. Not at me, but at Digo. “Are you aware of current events in the Vid Zone?”

The linker shook his head, his features tight. “Most of the information streaming out of the Vid Zone has been unofficially gagged.”