Revolution (Replica) (7 page)

She had put an unfamiliar rasp into her voice and lowered it by about an octave. Usually, she sounded like a little girl, but tonight she sounded like a world-weary adult with a serious smoking habit. She made a face that was probably supposed to look like a leer, but looked more like a grimace of fear to Nate’s eyes.

Good thing for them Nate wasn’t the one she had to convince.

Captain Tight-ass gave Agnes an icy glare as he shouted up the stairwell. “Next whore that propositions me or my men is gonna get more than she bargained for!”

And then he dismissed both Nate and Agnes from his attention and ordered his men up the steps.

*   *   *

Nate
was almost giddy with relief over their narrow escape from the security squad, but they were still in deep trouble and they all knew it. Kurt no doubt had money hidden somewhere in that apartment of his, but Nate didn’t know where and hadn’t had time to search for it. Which meant the three of them were completely broke, no dollars, no credits, nothing. Being broke in the Basement was all kinds of dangerous.

After the brave show she’d put on in the stairwell, Agnes had lost some of her starch, and she clung to Nate’s hand as he led the way to Angel’s. The streets were getting progressively more crowded, and he prayed Agnes’s case of nerves didn’t attract any predators. Vulnerability was quite an aphrodisiac to a certain kind of Basement-dweller, and though Nate knew Agnes was trying her best to hide hers, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. At least they were on the Basement’s outer edges, which were safe and tame in comparison to the neighborhoods at its heart.

By the time they reached Angel’s, they’d been solicited by prostitutes of both sexes, drug dealers, black marketeers, and sundry others who were too stoned to make it clear what they were offering. Nate also had the feeling that they were being followed, though perhaps that was just paranoia. He looked over his shoulder a couple of times, but no one stood out. Or, considering this was the Basement, it might be more accurate to say that everyone stood out equally.

“We have a tail,” Dante said, and Nate kind of wished he’d voiced his own suspicion. Then he mentally rolled his eyes at himself for his constant need to play games of one-upmanship with Dante. Especially since he always came out the loser. He resisted the urge to take another look back over his shoulder.

“Is it security?” Agnes asked, biting her lip.

Dante shook his head. “Don’t think so. There are undercover agents in the Basement, but if this guy were one of them he’d have sicced the squad on us.”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Nate suggested. “No phone service, remember?”

“They’ll have walkies. Everyone knows phone service is unreliable here.”

Nate didn’t know what a “walkie” was, but he wasn’t going to reveal his ignorance by asking. The security department wasn’t the military, but it was pretty clear Dante had had some kind of military training before he’d joined up as a spy, and he liked to lord it over Nate in this sneaky kind of way.

Nate took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to let his irritation with Dante seep out with it. He should have been
grateful
for Dante’s skills and competence. Especially when his physique advertised them so plainly—Nate was sure some of the people who’d solicited them would have been more aggressive about it if Dante weren’t imposing enough to make them back off.

“As long as it’s not security, I don’t think it matters right now,” Nate said. He jerked his chin in the direction of Angel’s club, which was just opening for the night as indicated by the pair of bouncers who exited and then stationed themselves by the door. “We’re here.”

His heart was thumping in his chest, and a cold sweat broke out over his body as he eyed the bouncers and wondered if they had been among the goons Angel had ordered to beat the crap out of him. The goons had been wearing masks, so he didn’t know who they were, except that they were the kind of big, burly men Angel liked to use as bouncers.

Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea. While the beating hadn’t caused any serious injury, Nate’s body remembered the ordeal and was telling him in no uncertain terms that he was not setting foot in that club. Even if they
did
have some Basement predator on their tail, waiting for the first sign of weakness.

A dense, jostling crowd converged on the entrance to Angel’s in the Basement-dweller version of queuing up. Elbows were thrown and curses uttered as the would-be club-goers waited impatiently for their turn to be felt up by the bouncers. And then the problem with Nate’s plan to meet up with Kurt and Nadia here slapped him in the face.

“We don’t have money to pay the cover charge,” he said, cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner. Not that thinking of it sooner would have done them any good. It wasn’t like there was any chance of them getting hold of any money, not unless and until Nadia had managed to squeeze it out of Angel.

Embarrassingly, there was a part of him that was relieved at the idea that he couldn’t go in. He kept trying to shake off the memory of that horrible night, but he wasn’t having a lot of success, and nerves were making his gut churn.

“I guess we just have to wait until they come out,” Dante said, his face set in grim lines. He might not be a Basement-dweller himself, but he obviously knew how bad an idea it was to stand around in the street, especially when they knew someone was following them. His Basement costume included a flamboyant ankle-length duster, and he slipped his hand into its front pocket, no doubt fingering the gun.

“Can’t we just ask one of the bouncers to tell Angel we’re here?” Agnes asked.

Nate shook his head. “Those guys are not the helpful type. And if we tried to cut ahead in line, it would get real ugly.”

“So let’s get in the back of the line,” she suggested. “We’re going to draw attention if we just stand around here with no purpose.”

It was as good a plan as any, and their tail didn’t seem inclined to emerge from the crowd and confront them—not yet, at least—so they shuffled their way to the back of the line, and all three of them stared at the door, willing Nadia and Kurt to make a swift appearance.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nadia
could hardly say she was surprised by the increasingly skeptical expression on Angel’s face as she recounted what happened on the day she and Nate confronted Chairman Hayes at the Paxco Headquarters Building. It did sound pretty ridiculous when you came right down to it.

“So what you’re telling me,” Angel said slowly, her eyes narrowed in a glare that was probably supposed to intimidate the “real” truth out of Nadia, “is that our new Chairman isn’t really a human being at all. Do I have that right?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way,” Nadia said. “I think Dorothy probably technically qualifies as human, it’s just that her
mind
isn’t human. Think of her as a kind of robot housed in human flesh.”

Angel glanced over at Bishop. “She been dipping into the happy pills lately? ’Cause this all sounds more like a bad trip than reality.”

“I’ll vouch for Ghost and Honey both,” he said. “If they say that’s what’s going on, I believe ’em.”

“But
you
haven’t confirmed any of this bullshit story.”

“I can confirm that Ghost and I overheard the Chairman talking to Mosely about Thea and that when the Chairman found out we had heard him he ordered Mosely to stab his own son to death. Saw that part with my own two eyes. The story isn’t bullshit.”

Nadia had the suspicion it wasn’t so much that Angel didn’t believe the story, it was that she wanted to get out of paying for it. If the upper echelons of the official resistance consisted of people like Angel, then Nadia was just as glad they weren’t interested in joining forces. Just because they were opposed to Paxco’s current oppressive regime didn’t mean they were the good guys.

“Dorothy is going to make the late Chairman Hayes seem like a saint by comparison,” Nadia said. “He had a lot of flaws, but he did at least have some level of concern over the well-being of his state and some rudimentary respect for human life. Dorothy doesn’t have even that. When I threatened to go public with what I knew, Chairman Hayes wanted to protect his legacy, but he also wanted to protect the people of Paxco. He knew if it went public, there would be riots at the very least, a civil war at worst, and he knew thousands of people would probably die. Dorothy killed him because he wasn’t willing to take that risk—and she was. Because to her, thousands of people dying is not a big deal as long as she comes out on top.”

Angel rocked back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. The sound system came roaring to life, blasting out the kind of heavy, rhythmic music that made Nadia’s teeth vibrate. Nadia could see the front door opening as the club’s staff emerged from the shadows, ready to service their clientele.

“You know the information’s good,” Bishop shouted over the music. “Why don’t you just pay us and let us get the hell out of here.”

Angel leaned forward again. “Because this all sounds like a plot to a B-movie, and I still haven’t taken the idea of killing you off the table.”

“Remember what I said about Ghost and the others,” Bishop said, sounding not in the least bit intimidated by the threat. “They can cause you a shitload of trouble if anything happens to me or Honey.”

Angel grinned broadly. “Yeah, well here’s the thing: my bouncer just spotted the Ghost loitering around on the sidewalk outside the club.”

Nadia almost gasped at the news. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed the discreet rubber earpiece Angel was wearing. The last Nadia had checked, phone service was still down, so whatever communication system Angel was using didn’t utilize phone frequencies.

Bishop laughed. “Now who’s spouting bullshit stories? The Ghost sure as hell wouldn’t come
here.
”

“No?” Angel asked with a confident smirk. “So my bouncer is lying when he says the Ghost is outside my door with some blue-haired chick and a guy with a multicolored duster.”

Bishop sobered quickly and Nadia swallowed hard. There was no way Angel would know anything about Agnes’s and Dante’s Basement disguises—unless she was telling the truth. But Angel’s death threats aside, there had to be something seriously wrong for Nate and the others to have left the apartment and come to the club.

Nadia hastily stood up, almost knocking her chair over. There was a steady stream of Basement-dwellers pouring in through the front door, to the point that getting out might be a challenge.

“Sit down, Honey,” Angel commanded. “We’re not finished here.” She then spoke into what Nadia presumed was a microphone, although it was so well hidden it was invisible. “Bring them in. If they give you any trouble, go for the girl. That’ll be their weakness.”

Nadia looked at Bishop. He was the expert in surviving in the Basement and was more likely to know if this situation called for an escape attempt or more negotiation. He was still seated, and when she met his eyes, he nodded.

Slowly, Nadia sank back into her chair.

*   *   *

When
one of the bouncers left his post by the front door and started making his way along the line—if that’s what you’d call the jumbled crowd of Basement-dwellers and tourists vying for a place in the unruly mob waiting to get in—it didn’t immediately occur to Nate that the huge blue-painted man was coming for him and his friends. Nate had encountered the blue man before in his trips to Angel’s, back when he’d been one of the privileged assholes who came here for fun. He went by the name Djinni, and he seemed to take great pleasure in patting people down, trying to provoke a reaction by being unduly rough or invasive.

Djinni was enough of a bruiser that even hardened Basement veterans moved aside for him as he made his way toward the back of the pack. His eyes scanned the entire crowd without ever pausing on anyone in particular, so Nate figured he could be excused for not seeing the man’s purpose until it was too late.

Nate turned his face slightly away, but it wasn’t like that would stop Djinni from recognizing him. Not that Djinni had any idea who the Ghost really was, but Nate wasn’t sure of his welcome here after his last encounter with Angel.

Djinni’s eyes didn’t lock onto them until he was within arm’s reach. That was when his hand suddenly shot out and latched onto Agnes’s upper arm, startling a choked scream out of her and cries of protest from both Nate and Dante.

Nate grabbed Djinni’s arm, taking his own life into his hands, but the blue man had to weigh over three hundred pounds, all of it muscle. Nate had no chance of prying Djinni’s hand free. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

“Let go of her!” he said, but he felt about as effective as a five-year-old trying to wrestle a football player.

Dante was smart enough not to try to pit his strength against Djinni’s, but his hand was in the pocket of his duster, and he withdrew it just far enough to show he had a gun. Nate didn’t like their chances in a shootout—a large percentage of Basement-dwellers were armed at all times and might enjoy the chance to participate in some random mayhem.

“You need to get your hands off her
now
!” Dante commanded. He sounded like he actually expected Djinni to back down. But then, he hadn’t spent a whole lot of time in the Basement.

“Angel wants to see the three of you,” Djinni said, still holding on to Agnes’s arm. “The girl’s coming with me. You boys can either come along or get lost.”

Their little confrontation was drawing the attention of bored club-goers still waiting their turn to get in. Drawing attention was a bad idea, especially with Agnes looking so frightened and vulnerable. Basement predators would have a field day with a girl like her, even not knowing who she was. And if they should have any reason to realize she was not only a top Executive but a Chairman’s daughter, they would tear her limb from limb.

Even knowing the drawbacks of creating a scene, Nate didn’t let go of Djinni’s arm, and Dante didn’t take his hand away from the gun. They couldn’t just stand idly by and let Agnes get manhandled by some blue-painted bruiser.