Tails You Lose (29 page)

She sat up on the bed and patted herself down. She was fully clothed, in slashed leather jeans and a baggy fleece shirt: styles that Alma would normally never wear. Curious, she got up, made her way to the bathroom, and stared into the mirror. A bleached-blond reflection blinked back at her. surprise written on her face.

"What have you been up to, Alma?" she asked it. Then she sighed. "I wish you were the type to keep an e-journal. It would make my life so much easier."

She checked the clock that was built into the kitchen stove—Alma didn't seem to believe in knowing whal time it was, since this was the only clock in the place—and saw that it was just after 10:30. Evening, judging by the dark sky outside the apartment window.

The window reflected a square of flickering light that was coming from a table on the other side of the kitchen counter. Night Owl walked into the section of the apartment that served as the living room, taking care not to disturb anything, and looked at the cyberterminal that was sitting there. Its flatscreen was split into four views of the apartment building: lobby, parkade, hallway and . . . her apartment?

Night Owl had shoved her hands into the pockets of the jacket to prevent herself from inadvertently touching anything. Inside one pocket, she felt the three coins that Alma used to cast the I Ching and two cylindrical objects. Pulling them out, she saw that both were keys. One had to be the key to Alma's apartment, but the other had an X scratched into one end.

Night Owl
tsk-tsked
. "You've been snooping, haven't you, Alma?"

The other pocket held an injector. Night Owl had no idea what drug was inside, but she didn't want to mess with it. She laid the injector beside the cyberterminal and touched a finger to the PAUSE RECORD icon that was blinking on the monitor. The digital numbers that were displaying the time of the recording froze at 10:34:18.

Letting herself out of Alma's apartment, Night Owl padded down the hall. She opened her own door cautiously, every sense on the alert, but there weren't any surprises. Alma had been content, it seemed, to merely observe. She hadn't laid any traps.

Night Owl stripped off the clothes she'd woken up in and left them in a pile by the door. She changed into jeans and a crinkle-foil shirt and strapped the Ares Predator against the small of her back. She picked up the SkyTrain token that had been lying on the counter beside it and slipped it into a pocket of her jeans, together with Alma's I Ching coins. Then she headed into the bathroom to paint her face.

She flicked on the light and stared into the mirror. Which color to use as the base for her mask? The red of loyalty, or the white of the evildoer? The black of righteousness, the blue of the temperamental troublemaker, or the yellow of a tortured soul? Perhaps the silver or gold of the supernatural being . . .

Night Owl closed her eyes and reached out for one of the tubes, letting fate decide for her. Gold it was. She applied the makeup slowly and carefully, streaking a diagonal of black down either side of her mouth and a band of black across her eyes, then filling the rest in with gold. She could count on just six to eight hours in which to roam before a bout of yawning signaled that it was time to return. As soon as she started feeling sleepy, she'd have about half an hour to get back to the apartment, scrub off her makeup, change clothes, and crawl back into Alma's bed.

As she stroked the makeup onto her skin, Night Owl reviewed what must have happened. Alma wouldn't have searched this apartment without going through the files on the cyberterminal, one by one, in her usual methodical fashion. She'd have read the FRYBABY file and realized that the serotonin booster that was implanted in Aaron's brain in 2039 had led to his suicide.

According to that report, the Superkids of Batch Alpha contained a genetic flaw: a mutation of the serotonin 2A receptor gene that enabled the brain to absorb more serotonin than usual. Under normal circumstances, when serotonin levels fell within the average range, there were no ill effects. But increase the level of that neurotransmitter, and the brain became supersaturated with serotonin. Terrible things started to happen, like the suicidal depression that had caused Aaron to jump—and the fragmenting of personalities that had occurred in Alma.

Night Owl knew what she was: an alter ego of Alma's. Her earliest memories were those that Alma had stuffed in the deep, dark hole of her subconscious—the ones that were too painful for her to remember herself. The time she'd been touched
there
by the technician—Alma had never understood why her favorite tech got fired. The time her cybereyes had shorted out, blinding Alma for three terrifying hours. And the time she saw Poppy's severed head. She got all of the drek—and none of the benefits. She couldn't even access Alma's cyberware.

Night Owl hadn't really come into her own, separate awareness, however, until the REM inducer was implanted in Alma's brain. She could still remember the night she was "born"—when she'd found herself jacked into a cyberterminal, staring at the memo that Gray Squirrel had sent to Mr. Lali. She had no idea what the file was about—the last thing she could remember was being an eight-year-old girl. But she knew that the memo was both terrifying and important. If it wasn't, she wouldn't have had tears pouring down her face. She'd copied it onto an optical chip, tucked the chip into a pocket, and jacked out. Somehow, she'd managed to stumble out of the PCI building and, after wandering across half the city, let instinct guide her home. She'd spent the night rummaging around Alma's apartment, trying to figure out who and what she was, and then had collapsed into a deep sleep.

She'd awakened from that sleep the next evening, and the search had begun anew.

Night Owl hadn't liked what she'd found. Alma was a corporate drone, blindly obedient to the company she worked for and incapable of seeing her "friends" and colleagues for the monsters that they were. She worked long hours of overtime without being properly compensated for it and then came home to a sterile apartment each night, alone. The one time she'd found true love, she'd let her overblown sense of propriety and duty cause her to throw it away. She was pathetic.

Night Owl, on the other hand, was carefree and bold. Drawn to Vancouver's shadows, she'd used her runs to do some good in this world. She might not have been able to contribute as much cred as she'd like to Cybercare for Kids, but she was certain some child, in some dirt-poor backwater somewhere, appreciated the little she'd been able to give.

Night Owl had to assume that Alma had read the GRIMREAPER report in its entirety. Alma was smart enough to realize that the REM inducer inside her brain was allowing an alter ego to awaken each night, every time she drifted into REM sleep. Getting the REM inducer removed wouldn't be so easy now—not with Gray Squirrel dead—but Night Owl was sure that Alma would find a way. Why else would a business card from the Executive Body Enhancements clinic have been inside Alma's pocket? When Night Owl had called the clinic, posing as "Jane Lee," they'd confirmed her appointment for February 28: tomorrow. After chatting with the receptionist, Night Owl had learned that the cyberware the chopdoc was going to deal with was a "serotonin booster" that had been acting up. She could guess what that meant: the REM inducer was coming out tomorrow.

Tonight could be her last run. She'd better make it worthwhile.

* * *

Night Owl glanced out over the city from the rooftop of one of the few large buildings still standing in the Richmond Ruins: the Relax Hotel. Outside the sky-cab shelter in which she stood it was raining—hard. Raindrops pelted the cracked plexiglass and collected in large puddles on the rooftop outside the shelter before draining down through the rockworm holes in the roof. Across the river, the lights of Vancouver wavered like an underwater mirage. Night Owl wondered if it would be the last time she'd see the city and then shook off the melancholy she felt.

Time to get down to biz.

The first buyer—the blond Seoulpa ganger—was the easiest to track down. When Tiger Cat had confronted the woman outside the coin store, he'd called her Alma's "Johnson." On a hunch, Night Owl scrolled through the autodial memory on Alma's cellphone and found an entry for MS JOHNSON. She highlighted the number and touched a thumb to the dial icon. After five rings, Blondie's face appeared on the monitor screen.

"
Yeboseyo
?"

Night Owl saw a restaurant in the background, rather than prison bars. Blondie had either recovered from Tiger Cat's magic in time to stagger away from the police, or she'd talked or bought her way out of being arrested. Good. That saved Night Owl the difficulty of dealing with someone she didn't know instead.

As soon as Blondie saw who was calling her, she grimaced. Her image filled more of the monitor as she moved the cellphone closer to her face and peered into it; she was probably trying to spot background detail and figure out where Night Owl was calling from. Night Owl had anticipated this, however—in fact, she'd counted on it. The angle at which she was holding the cell would allow its vidcam to pick up the ruined rooftop and part of the jumbled skyline behind it. She hoped that Blondie was smart enough to recognize the Ruins—and that she would start moving in this direction. Night Owl didn't have all night to wait for her.

She pulled one of Alma's I Ching coins out of her pocket. Her friend Miracle Worker had cast a nova-hot illusion spell on all three of them—a spell she'd promised would hold up to a camera's scrutiny. Night Owl was about to find out how hot her friend's mojo really was. She held the illusion-cloaked coin up so that the cell's minicam caught it full frame. "Is this what your master is looking for?"

Blondie's indrawn hiss of breath told her it was. "How did you—"

"Tonight I'm selling it to the highest bidder," Night Owl announced. "Either Mang, Chiao or Li—I don't care which. I'll call you in five for your opening bid." Before the ganger could reply, Night Owl cut the connection. She waited about ten minutes—long enough to let Blondie sweat about whether she really was going to call back—and then redialed. This time, the ganger answered on the first ring. She was no longer in the restaurant but in a moving car; outside the rear window, Night Owl could see the rain-blurred red W that topped the Woodwards Arcology receding into the background. Good. Blondie was on the move south.

"Well?" Night Owl asked.

Blondie looked guarded. "My master will pay fifteen thousand nuyen if it's the genuine article. But he insists on proof—"

"You call that an opening bid?" Night Owl rolled her eyes. "That's pathetic. I guess your master's not serious. Forget it. I'll call—"

Blondie's eyes spat venom at her. "Thirty thousand."

"That's more like it," Night Owl said. "Give me another five while I find out if the competition wants to bid higher."

"
Muyil
Wait while I—"

Once again, Night Owl cut the connection. This time, she let fifteen minutes slide by. While she waited, she walked to the edge of the shelter and doublechecked the floor, nudging the cement in front of her with the toe of her Dayton. From somewhere below came a faint
crunch-grind-crunch
of rockworms munching away. The cement under her toe shifted slightly, and she took a step back.

Night Owl redialed and spoke as soon as Blondie's face appeared on the monitor. "Your competition countered with offers of one hundred thousand nuyen, and between them they bid the price up to five hundred K," she said. "Your master is looking at six hundred K to stay in the game."

Blondie gave her a sour smile. "Six hundred thousand nuyen will be his final offer. Take it, and I will guarantee your life. Refuse . . ." She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air unspoken.

There was no need to fill in the blank.

Night Owl kept her face carefully neutral, although inside she was grinning from ear to ear. She'd gambled that Blondie's master wasn't on speaking terms with his scaly rivals—checking in with the other dragons to see if they really were bidding on one of the Coins of Luck would be the last thing that Mang would do.

Night Owl's bluff had worked. Blondie had bought it—pun intended.

"Offer accepted," Night Owl said.

"Good." Blondie smirked. "How soon can you deliver?"

"That depends on how soon you can transfer the cred. We'll do this like a run, with fifty percent down, and fifty percent upon delivery. There's an internationally registered charity I use for this type of biz. called Cybercare for Kids. You make an anonymous donation of three hundred K in the account whose number I'm going to give you, to show me that you're serious about this buy. Then you ask the bank to set up a double-blind trust account and put the other three hundred K in that. As soon as you're satisfied that the coin is the real item, they authorize transfer of payment. Your client's confidentiality is assured, and the buy winds up looking like an anonymous charitable donation."

Night Owl pretended to check a watch. "I'll give you five minutes to make the first payment. When I receive confirmation that it's been made, I'll call you back."

She gave Blondie the bank name and the charity's account number and then broke the connection. Two minutes later, a representative of the bank called to say that the deposit had been made to the charity's account and that a trust account had also been set up. As soon as Blondie discovered the coin was a fake, of course, the cred in this second account would revert back to her master. But Cybercare for Kids would still have made three hundred K.