Out of the Black (7 page)

Anne paused, uncertain. Grandma continued, "Don't be silly sweetie.... Go on." She said so softly it was almost a whisper. "We're all here for each other, you know." She raised one finger in mock lecture, "or at least we should be."

Anne took the poncho. The old lady gave her arm a pat, and moved toward the door.

"Thank you so much." Anne said, feeling horribly indebted.

"Don't mention it", she disappeared around the corner of the exit.

Anne was tearing the plastic wrapper off the poncho when her Uni chirped. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a thin hand disappear around the doorframe. She heard the sound of the old woman shuffling away quickly, giggling like a schoolgirl. "Get yourself a nice hot meal!"

Again with the homeless thing.

She pulled out her Uni and glanced at the transaction log. "CREDIT: $200.00 - SOURCE:
".

Reflexively, Anne moved toward the exit. She had to explain that she didn't need to work for food. She had to return they, but as she turned away from the mirror, her legs didn't do their thing and she almost fell. Could she actually be getting less coordinated? Moving from sink to sink, she slowly got more comfortable walking.

She abandoned her pursuit before she reached the doorway. At the last sink, she put on the yellow poncho. It was a large, one-size-fits-all piece of plastic, which is to say that it was a bit small on her. A little small, but a godsend! In the mirror, she looked like a big yellow ghost, but there was no blood visible except for the few small cuts on her face. She looked less desperate, maybe even less pathetic.

She would never be able to thank that sweet little old lady enough- not least of all because she would never be able to catch her.

She limped out the door, one hand on the wall for support.

Pearly, perfect smile, diamond-hard eyes, fearsome symmetry and midnight style - the mirror showed Jin everything she loved in life- her outside. Of course, inside her soul was a lingering puff of smoke at best, hollowed out by her life's many wild rides, emptied by passion and indulgence, until only her bright, beautiful shell remained. And the hunger.

Where was Mara?

Nature abhors the vacuum, Jin thought, it was just physics... or was it chemistry? Either way, she was sure nature's carpets were atrocious- where was she going with that? She couldn't remember or really care. The point was that she was in need. The point was that here she was again, clutching the counter in another nightclub bathroom, waiting and burning with the need to feel human again, to be linked again to the family of man... to be filled and warmed by the blood of strangers and the magic of the twenty-first century.

The empty, bottomless hunger grabbed her from inside and she almost doubled over, her grip on the counter cracking one of her perfectly manicured nails. With an exercise of will, she unclenched her teeth before she broke a perfect tooth and cost herself another trip to the dentist. In desperation, she looked again to the source of her strength. And there it was: pearly, perfect smile, diamond hard eyes, fearsome symmetry and midnight style.

"Mara!" Jin shouted as the door opened behind her and the club's music and lights spilled in like a brash promise. But when she turned, she saw a stranger staring back, body covered in glitter, face covered in an enviable, unnatural smile. Harmony, Jin thought, half disgust, half desire. Jin could admit that her path was The Whole now, could admit that connectivity drugs were the only thing that could fill the hole inside her, but Harmony... she watched headline news now and again. She was wise enough to realize that tearing her own eyes out was not an acceptable speed bump on the road to bliss.

"Mara to you too." The stranger sneered, knowing Jin's pain. "You need some Harmony in your life, don't you, schaweetie?"

Jin swallowed hard to keep from drooling on herself. Not that desperate yet, she affirmed silently... not yet. Beta Tryptamine was on the menu tonight, if Mara could pull off the buy. Beta wasn't nearly as good as Harmony, but then, nobody she knew of had gone on a killing spree after taking it. "No thanks, I find it hard to clean my own vitreous humor off my fingers after a wild night out. It's even harder to get it all back into my eyes."

"Suit your..." the woman with the crazed smile raised her head in gusa nod, all interest in Jin already gone. Head still elevated from the half-nod, she glided toward the nearest empty stall, rummaging in her purse. "Try to be high or gone before I link in, ok?" she said, seemingly to the air, "I'm gonna be feelin' every bit of your itch in just a few seconds, and I don't dig the pity trips." Then the giggling started and didn't stop until the stall door closed and the sound damper engaged.

She was going to dose! Not four meters away, right here, where she could really rub it in, Jin though with a rush of mania. Jin would stand and clench and burn and wait, and in seconds, that madwoman would be linked deep inside the Whole; deeper than Beta would ever go. Not that desperate yet, Jin chanted again and again.

Empty. Wilted flower, petals scattered; a promise broken.

Haiku. It may have been all the acid she'd taken during the 2060's, but every time she was jonesing for a dose, her well-used mind would just strobe out the haiku. It was annoying, but sometimes it made her feel deep... which was even more annoying.

Where was Mara? Back to the mirror for a little support. She didn't grab the counter this time, but struck her strongest pose. Her shoulder length platinum hair was accented with streaks of shiny chrome and vibrant red. Her face was youthful tight and augmented to perfection. Her inky black clothes were inlaid with holowire so she shimmered when she was out moving on the dance floor. She was perfect in every way: sensual without being crass, striking beauty enhanced with flawless evening style. Her bearing was elegance with just a hint of arrogance to heighten the mystique. Only her ice blue eyes hinted at the Hunger. Without the eyes, she could almost pretend...

Why couldn't they just legalize drugs... or at least the good ones like Beta? The worst thing about outlawed drugs was the supply. You need it- it's not around. You can't afford it- oh, then everyone's carrying. Tonight she needed, she had money, so of course, Mara's connection would fall through and Jin would be stuck trying to forget what happiness was like by drinking herself into a coma. Things used to be better before the Harms showed up and started killing their friends. Those freaks were ruining it for everyone else, even the ones they didn't kill. Now the big, bad Gov was cracking down hard. She had half a mind to kick down that stall door and kick the living crap out of that smug junkie. Of course, the other half of her mind was squarely on the side of kicking down the door and snatching her Harmony. Oh, she remembered Harmony from before all the trouble started... Jin could survive on Beta, but it was Harmony that had made her feel alive.

Her fingers shook slightly as she tried to apply the color stick to her lips for what seemed like the hundredth time, touched up her hair for the fiftieth time, repressed the urge to scream for the thousandth time.

The door opened and the music and lights washed in around Mara's sleek form. The door closed behind her and the music ended along with the wash of psychedelic lights. Mara was smiling. Smiling, sweet baby Buddha! Jin's voice only shook slightly when she found it, "If the news is bad, lie."

"The news is not bad." Mara held up a closed fist and gestured to the stalls at the back of the room.

Feeling like lotto winners, they both bolted for the first open stall and engaged the sound damper. Mara handed over a small silver Ject with a familiar flourish. "Oh thank Shiva, destroyer of my stodgy, well-used blues!" Jin said, hands and head shaking. The dancing would be good tonight.

Rather than taking the Ject, Jin raised her chin slightly "Do me?"

Mara obliged by putting the silvery tube to Jin's neck. They smiled at each other as Mara raised her own neck and used her left hand to hold another Ject to her carotid. "Liftoff in three, two, one..." There was a hiss and a sizzle as Mara popped the Jects simultaneously.

Before Mara lowered her hands, the rush was all around them. The sensation was like a velvet fist closing around her body, pressing her inward, away from her skin. The sensation wasn't so much about the pressure as it was about losing herself in the velvety folds of the giant palm. "Thas sho good." Mara cooed from somewhere quite distant. Dissociative giggling hailed down around her in the small stall; some was hers, some was Mara's. She could tell which giggles were hers because they fluttered like hummingbirds out from her center. They passed through her mouth on the way out, tasting like cherries and butane.

Then the song started. She was singing, Mara too, in perfect synch. Jin didn't know the song, but Mara did, so Jin sang just as loud as they shared each other, linked into The Whole. They were like backup singers to the Beta, dancing and singing in the glory of the link.

"Hey." Mara said again.

"Mmmm?" Jin's eyes fluttered open.

"Lets hit the floor," Mara hooked a thumb over her shoulder, "the first five hours are the clearest burn."

Then there was a moment of crystal clarity. The world slowed and Mara expanded to fill Jin's vision. Though their lips didn't move, they were talking about something. They were sharing the moment, part of The Whole, two neurons in the same communal brain.

Under Jin's unflinching stare, Mara's pupils began to dilate, eating away at the painfully blue iris until her eyes were only black and white, until they were only black. Without moving her lips, Jin asked Mara what was up with her peepers. "Dunno" Mara replied in an equally silent manner. Black-eyed Mara seemed to be speaking from a stream of doors in Jin's mind, each opening and closing around a single word, then moving out of the way for the next door and word.

Mara's black eyes were vibrating now. Nifty. "Shall we?" Mara gestured to the stall door as the moment ended.

"This is stellar Beta, Mar." Jin said as they crossed the bathroom in a perfect syncopation of shifts and steps. The dance had already begun.

"Beta?" Mara said, laughing. "Couldn't find any Beta."

"Right!" Jin said conspiratorially, pushing the bathroom door open into the wider club.

***

It was early morning when the unmarked police sedan with the foil patch-tape on the roof pulled to the curb in front of the modest apartment complex just north of Rosemont College. The neighborhood looked like any college ghetto. There were small vehicles of every expense and taste filling the multilevel garages. Plants and posters filled windows. Fliers for parties, bands, and ads for used bicycles crowded the obligatory bulletin boards. Early morning joggers ran the zombie gauntlet as they slipped around the shuffling remains of those returning from a long night out.

Ping was here for Alexander Ahmed, the most promising lead from the murdered, sword-wielding driver's address book. Ping re-examined Ahmed's records from the civil database. He was twenty-two, a bt on the scrawny side, being a full centimeter shorter than Ping. The photo linked to the ID record showed a young man with an aggressive hairstyle painted like glossy chrome. His polished style and slack clothes made him look like the archetypal college sophomore living life in the party lane.

Sometimes looks are deceiving. Ahmed had won the Hawking prize for scientific innovation at eighteen for work with swarming nanomachine control systems. Less than two years later, he won the Rumbaugh semaphore for cooperative AI security heuristics. Shortly after that, he graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

So now, two years later, instead of claiming his place among the technical illuminati, he has chosen the road less traveled... way less traveled. He'd chosen the road of a master's degree in History at sleepy Rosemont College and a part-time job grading papers for the now extremely dead Dr. Ivo Lutine. Ping wasn't exactly sure how much History TAs made, but he was pretty sure it was a lot less than the seven-figure salary Ahmed had surely given up to take the job.

With a shrug, Ping got out of the car, patted the tape-covered hole in his roof, and headed for the building's entrance.

Cold sunlight and the smell of freshly mown lawn dominated the morning. It was a stark contrast to the grisly dark beneath the bridge he'd left only hours ago. In places like this, in the optimistic light of the morning, it was almost possible to believe that the extremities of the world's problems were bounded by lost love and pop quizzes.

The front door's security system admitted him after verifying his police ID and he strode into the sparse lobby. The only inhabitant was a bristly-haired student maybe in his early twenties. He was sitting on a couch, engrossed with his tablet.

Ping made his way carefully across the freshly mopped floor. As he passed, the guy on the couch glanced at him over the top of his expanded tablet. Perhaps he was waiting for someone he didn't know well, because he gave Ping a surreptitious, but longer-than-usual appraisal. The kid probably realized his mistake and his eyes returned to his tablet.

Ping exited the slippery lobby and entered a waiting elevator. He pushed the button for the fourteenth floor.

As the elevator doors closed, Ping's eyes settled on a red-brown smudge near the handle of a utility closet across from the elevator. The elevator's doors closed before he got more than a glimpse, but his memory and imagination combined to turn the probably innocent smudge into part of a bloody handprint.

Back on the first floor, across from the closed elevator doors, behind the door with the smudged blood, sat the freshly used mop and bucket. Though the empty bucket and utility sink were clean, the mop head was still tinged with the rust-black residue of blood. The pieces that added up to three bodies were concealed in two cleaning supply cabinets, wrapped in multiple layers of thick industrial trash bags. Beneath the cabinet, lying where it had fallen in the rush to conceal the morning's violence, was half of a military auto-pistol. Half of the barrel, the front corner of the trigger guard, and the bottom of the grip and magazine had been removed by a single, clean slash. The edges of the slash were smooth, as if an industrial laser had cut the metal and ceramic of the gun.