Skin (19 page)

Darius would
know, and as I waited to catch another sight of him all day,
hanging in and out of the Prime Life foyer and attracting more than
a few suspicious looks from the Mech guard, I realised that was
another thing I wanted to find out from him.

At
exactly ten o
’clock, Darius walked out of the Prime
building. His face was tired, his body looked like it was straining
under his own weight. I followed him, easy to do at the slow pace
he kept.

He stopped
outside a familiar door and made a call on his phone. In minutes
the door opened and he stepped inside. Sveta’s building. My
building.

This was
my home now. My girlfriend was upstairs, probably still in bed and
here was her ex-husband, paying her a visit in the middle of the
day and I couldn
’t move.

I should
go up. And what if I caught them going at in in bed? Would I say
that I had followed him up there and confirm Sveta
’s
theories that I was paranoid? If I was right, it wouldn’t be
paranoia. I was paralysed with indecision and rage, staring at the
door as if I could will it open with my eyes. I had to go up. I
wouldn’t be made a fool. My fists balled at my sides. I didn’t go
up.

I
skulked back to Prime Life and took up my seat on the courtyard
bench and waited. It was almost three hours before Darius returned
to work. At six o
’clock he moved out of the building
again and, having wasted the entire day sitting, fuming and
waiting, I followed the filthy Mech back to his
apartment.

I
climbed the fire escape, looking into every window on the way up
and found Darius
’ place on the third floor. It’s a
statement of this town that no one on the streets or even in the
other apartments noticed me or cared.

But I was
noticed. Darius sat in a worn out armchair, one leg on a milk crate
that served as both footrest and coffee table, skipping channels on
a too loud TV with a flickering reception. He sipped on a bottle,
placing the empty carefully, deliberately on the crate. He hauled
his great form out of the old chair, shrugged his shoulders and
cricked his neck, exactly as I had seen him do dozens of times
before a fight. He moved to the window where I was, unable to
conceal myself, and opened the window.

“
Get
inside,” he growled. “Before I pull you in by the head.”

I obeyed
without a word.

Darius
’ home was sad. Everything looked too
small. Like a man living among dollhouse furniture. Everything was
old and worn, like it might have been dragged in off a kerb, which
it likely was. It smelled like mould.

“
I used
to live where you live, sleep where you sleep,” he said, watching
me look around his place. “You’ll fall one day, Priest. You’re
starting to slip on the cross and the rest will follow.”

“
Did you
fall before or after you became a Mech?” I asked. “Is that why she
cast you out?”

“
Is that
why you’ve been following me all day? You unsteady with the lady
and need a few pointers on how to ride that beast?”

“
You’re
a Mech,” I said, doing my best to ignore the rise of fury at
hearing him, hearing anyone talk about Sveta like that.

“
And
you’re an Animus freak.”

“
So you
admit it then? Does Sveta know? Is that why she broke up with
you?”

“
You get
one taste of her tower and you think you know everything, right? I
know where you’re from,
Alistair
. I know all about your mummy and I know
about your pathetic vendetta against Prime Life. How
’s
that coming along for you then, eh? Your mama’s death retributed
yet? Is that another reason you sat outside the Prime building all
day today? Is it some kind of peaceful protest?”

“
I
didn’t sit there all day,” I said too defensively. “I followed you
out at lunch. Into my home.”

“
It’s
Sveta’s home. She called me. She needed me.”

“
Then
you know she’s sick?”

“
She’s
not doing well after that last implant,” he said. “She thinks you
hate her for getting it.”

“
She’s
sick. As in dying. That’s what the implants are for. She’s trying
to cure herself with some kind of Animus magic.”

Confusion creased Darius
’ brow. “What are you
talking about?”

“
You’re
fucking my girlfriend in the middle of the day. My girlfriend who’s
sick and, from what she’s said, probably dying.”

“
She
didn’t…” he stammered into a heavy pause.

He
didn
’t know anything about Sveta’s illness and in a
flash of guilt, I felt like I had betrayed her mentioning it to
him.

“
If
she’s so sick, dying, why are you following me around all day?” he
said. “Why is she calling me for company? That’s all it was. No
fucking. Just talk. We’re friends. We talk. She just wanted
comfort. Why is me giving it to her?”

Remorse hit me
hard and I scrambled for an answer.

“
Because
she deserves to know the truth about what you are. We all do.
You’re a Mech posing as a Natural. I might be Animus now, but I’m
not a fraud.”

I saw
his arm move and knew I was about to get hit before I felt his rock
fist collide with the side of my head. I spun, collecting myself on
the impact and came up under his arms, a furious propulsion of
fists into his ribs. We had missed our chance on the cross but we
were going to do it here, fight it out in Darius
’ rat
hole apartment.

Punching
Darius was like punching a side of beef. My fist slapped against
his immovable hulk about as effective as a mosquito against an
elephant. He swung his tree trunk arms, grabbing for me, but I was
too quick, using my new legs to propel up and over him and landing
a lucky shot right into the base of his skull. He stumbled forward,
taking the milk crate and twisting to fling it at me. I was out of
the way just in time to see the thing crash through the thin
plaster of the wall.

I jumped
up onto the old chair for leverage and sent my legs out, the full
power a force against his chest as he came at me again. He was
relentless. His arms rounding like windmills, always coming at me
and all I could do was to jump out of the way. I went to hop again
but missed my footing on the arm of the couch and fell, just a
stumble, just enough time for Darius
’ fist, that great
rock the size of a piglet to come down into my ribs. One. I gasped,
grunted and fell onto my back. Two. My chest popped. I couldn’t
breathe. Three. The fight was over.

“
Get
out,” Darius said. He was breathing hard. The bandage had come
loose and I saw the Strix cut, crusted over with the dark grey Mech
fluid. His lip was split. A small trickle of blood made its way to
his chin.

“
Get out
of my house, Priest. And if you say one word to Sveta about
anything, I will kill you. I swear it.”

I left Darius
’ apartment, the place
trashed, my ribs just as trashed. Every step home, every breath was
a stab of eye watering pain.
I had had my
ass handed to me far too many times.

Sveta was sitting up in bed when I came in, reading on her
computer. Mariosa asleep at the foot of the bed like any kind of
faithful pet. The mountain lion lifted her eyes just enough to
watch me move through the room, a low growl the reminder that she
still didn
’t like me being there. Had she
growled like that when Darius had been in here earlier that
day?

“
How are
you feeling?” I asked Sveta. I pulled off my shirt and didn’t mean
to gasp in pain.

“
Tired,”
she said. She didn’t ask me about why I was coming home with a
chest load of broken ribs and a swollen jaw. She didn’t look at me
at all.

“
I’m
fine,” I said. “I just got into a fight is all.”

“
Hmm,”
was all I got from her. I threw my blood stained shirt on the floor
and went into the shower.

The water needled into my skin, scalding hot and stinging.
The cuts on my face stung like hell and my jaw felt it was three
times the size it should have been. It was just something to feel.
Guilt made her ignore me. She’d been with Darius today. Darius had
known I was following him. He had told her. She knew that I knew
and she didn’t care. That was the level of respect she had
reached.
I would not keep
Darius
’ secret. Why should I?

He probably wasn
’t the only piece of
Sanctuary she had calling on her. It would explain why she had been
so cagey, why she had no time for me anymore. She had brought me
in, seen me rise and now, bored, she was moving onto the next man.
Plural.

And
where did that leave me? I laughed out loud. How could I have been
so stupid to fall for her and her show. Cato had warned me on the
first day we had met. Even he had had his turn with her. That’s all
I was doing, taking my turn and it seemed to be over.

I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower without
bothering with a towel. I would make my return to the cross and to
Sveta. The next time I went out there, I would give them something
to look at, and it wouldn
’t be this body,
battered, bruised and broken.

Everyone had
their secrets. Now it was time to move forward and take my own.

It was
just after dawn when I knocked on the roller shutters of the junk
shop in the nasty end of Chinatown. I did not expect a place like
The Lucky Pig to have standard business opening hours. Was
everything in Guessing posing as something else underneath the top
business exterior? An elite gym covering an underground fight club,
and I
’d heard a thing or two about what went on
underneath Thel’s grocers too.

Imogen had
told me about The Lucky Pig when I was still recovering from
surgery. We were chatting in Sanctuary about the feeling of the new
implants, the feeling of fusing flesh. It kind of tingled as the
human tissue fused to it.

“
They do
remarkable things at Omega, real state of the art stuff. Not like a
lot of the other Animus joints around,” she said.

I
don
’t know why I was surprised to learn Sveta’s place
was not the only Animus operation. So she wasn’t the centre of the
Animus universe after all.

“
They
pop up all over Guessing and you can usually tell the poor
unfortunates who take up a cheap backyard job. I myself had some
issues with these,” she smoothed out the fur on the back of her
hands. “That junk shop in Chinatown, Lucky Pig. They’ve got a
back-shop business in rare implants. I thought I’d done all the
research, been smart about it. I certainly was a lucky pig that I
didn’t die from the infections.”

It was risky
but there was no way I could just wander into Omega and order an
implant like I was getting an off the wall tattoo.

I was
just about to give up when a small door opened and a
boy
’s face, no more than sixteen, peered out under a
cloud of deep suspicion.

“
We
don’t open until ten,” he snapped and moved to close the
door.

“
I’m not
looking to go shopping,” I said. “I know what else happens
here.”

The boy
stopped before the door fully closed.
“I get father,”
he said. He closed the door.

Just
when I had been waiting long enough to start to think this whole
thing might not be a great idea, the door opened, just a sliver,
and the boy
’s face peeked out again. “Around the
back,” he said. “Blue door.”

I followed the
rough directions and found a door of peeling blue paint in the back
alley. It was a nasty picture. A cat skittered out of an overturned
trash can. A writhing mass of maggots. A rat scurried up the wall.
Eye watering stink of rotting meat of God knew what kind of animal
they could afford to eat in this end of town, and stagnant water,
scraps of old vegetables.

The blue door
opened before I could knock. I stepped into the damp hall that was
lit by a single low burning bulb. The floor was bare concrete. I
tried not to screw up my face at the stink of the alleyway mingling
with the stink of animals and shit. The boy closed the door. He was
short, scrawny even for a young guy. He wore a stained baseball
shirt, pants far too big for him and a tired expression he should
have been too young to have.

“
Follow
me,” he said.

I
followed him down the hallway lined with peeling wallpaper and the
muffled sounds of animals, squawking birds, a yapping dog. If there
was a window anywhere, it hadn
’t been opened in a
lifetime or two.
Talking voices erupted into a yell in
a language I couldn
’t recognise.

At the end of
the hall, the boy knocked on a door that might have once been
white, now a mould speckled grey.

“
Wait,”
he said. I did, watching the kid shuffle away down the
hall.