Toxicity (35 page)

“I guess the cat is out of the
bag,” heshe said.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you,”
said Horace.

“Save it for the fucking
peasants,” snarled JohNagle, and lunged. Horace slashed with the glass, cutting
a long stripe across JohNagle’s hand, but at the apex of the strike hisher hand
suddenly closed and wrenched sideways, tearing the shard from Horace’s grip.
Hisher arm came back, and heshe launched the glass like a spear. Horace
shifted, but not quite fast enough, and it cut across his shoulder even as
Silka burrowed towards his liver and kidneys and he gasped, breathless for a
second, disorientated by the feeling of his friend inside him, eating through
him in search of the worms that would tear his organs apart...

JohNagle crashed into Horace, and
they both slammed backward, staggering past the crushed table and into the bar.
There was a
crump
under the impact, and the whole structure wobbled.
Horace ducked a punch, and drove his own punch into JohNagle’s groin. JohNagle
grinned at him.

“Sorry man. No balls.”

The head-butt caught Horace
off-guard, and the punch to his windpipe felt like a sledgehammer blow. He hit
the ground on his back, choking, as JohNagle disappeared for a moment and then
loomed above him. Heshe heaved a safe, a huge block of steel, over hisher head.

“I’m going to crush you like a
bug,” growled JohNagle, and the safe came crashing down. Horace grunted as
Silka found the last of the worm parasites and chewed it into oblivion, then
turned - he felt her turn around
inside
his body - and followed her own
chewed tunnel for the exit. Horace rolled fast, and the safe left a deep dent
in the floor. JohNagle cursed, and bent to lift the safe again. Horace coughed
blood, and rolled onto his hands and knees. Then Silka emerged from his mouth
on a shower of blood droplets, landing sedately on the floor. She turned her
head, grinned at JohNagle in hisher act of lifting the safe, and launched at
hisher throat...

JohNagle screamed, staggering
back. The weight of the safe caught himher off-guard and Silka launched, biting
into hisher belly, chewing through flesh and muscle,
burrowing
into the
gestalt creature. Heshe screamed again, and the stagger became a fall, and the
heavy safe intended to crush Horace’s head instead crushed JohNagle.

Almost.

Heshe turned as heshe fell, the
safe glancing from hisher head and compacting maybe a quarter of hisher skull
into crushed brain paste. JohNagle gasped, legs kicking as heshe lay pinned to
the floor by hisher squashed head. If hisher head had been smaller, heshe’d
have been dead. However, JohNagle’s head was such a heavy, blocky thing, the
man-i-woman’s (or as the stand-up comedians called them,
momens,
or
wen
- a-har-har-har) skull saved himher.

Horace lay for a while, panting,
his insides feeling odd. He was churned up. Internally ruptured. Blood leaked
from several orifices. He felt sick; he rolled over, and
was
sick.

Horace pushed himself to his
hands and knees and squatted for a while, panting, drooling saliva and blood.
Then he coughed, and spat, and when he rocked back on his heels his eyes were
gleaming.

Horace eased himself upright, and
with one hand flat against his belly, moved painfully to stand over Juliette
JohNagle. He spat down into the Greenstar politician’s face.

JohNagle had lost hisher cocky assurance.
Hisher eyes were darting left and right, and the creature had lost the use of
one arm, and the remaining limb had not the strength to shift the safe.

Horace stared at JohNagle. It was
fair to say that his sense of humour had gone by this point.

“What are you doing?” snapped
JohNagle. “How are you even alive?”

Horace grinned, blood and saliva
stringing on his teeth. But man, he felt like shit. That was the hardest fight
of his career. Of his
life.
What the hell
was
JohNagle? “It’s
time,” he said, sitting down cross-legged in front of JohNagle’s pinned body, “for
us to have a little chat.”

Horace fished inside his suit,
and pulled out a velvet tool roll.

“What’s that? What are you doing?
What’s that, you fucker?”

“These,” said Horace, licking his
lips slowly, “are the tools of my trade. And as you said, they call me The
Dentist. Now it’s time I showed you why.”

“No,” said JohNagle. “I have
money. More money than you could ever dream possible! I can pay you! I can
promote you! Power! Women! Boys! Cash! A high position in Greenstar! Anything,
all this, I can do.” Hisher eyes were twitching spasmodically. Hisher lips
worked ceaselessly, as if recanting some religious doctrine that had condemned
himher.

“None of that matters,” said
Horace, unrolling the black velvet. Tools gleamed. The tools of The Dentist.

“I’ll tell you everything,” said
JohNagle, voice thick, words slurring.

Horace fixed JohNagle with a
vulture’s glare. “Yes. You will,” he said.

~ * ~

AND
THERE HE had it. His answers. Well,
some
answers. Laid out in neat
little rows like fine food on a silver platter. JohNagle had sung. Heshe’d
talked. Heshe’d chatted. Heshe’d begged, whined, screamed, drooled. Heshe’d
cried, threatened, cajoled, wept. But ultimately, heshe’d talked. Given answers.
Because Horace was The Dentist and The Dentist always got answers.

They’re tired of you.

They’ve had enough of you.

You are a threat.

Why am I a threat?

You are.

Says who?

Says The Children.

What fucking children?

Not any children. The Children.
The psi-children from the sludge, from the puke, from the fucking toxicity, all
right?

In what way am I a threat?

To Greenstar. To The Company.

I don’t see how that’s possible.
How is that possible? I am
employed
by Greenstar. Fat Man gives me missions; assassination missions. I fucking
WORK FOR YOU! I do your dirty laundry. I kill the terrorists who threaten you,
I wipe out those who oppose you, I terminate those who backstab The Company.

They still want you dead.

Who?

I don’t know.

Who?

I don’t know!
Aiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee. No, please, don’t do that again. Please. No. I’ll tell
you. Everything. Anything you want to know. I’ll tell you how to access my
credits. I’m a fucking wealthy man-i-woman. Fucking wealthy. You’re an
assassin. You work for money. I can outbid those who sent you. Don’t kill me.
Please don’t kill me.

How far does it go?

I don’t know!

How far?

Vasta. She’ll know.

Vasta?

Head of The Company’s Security.
She, like you, is a torturer.

Android?

Not sure. She’s certainly a fucking
bitch.

So. Then.

Don’t do that. Not again.
Please...

One more answer. Where do I find
this Vasta?

The Hub. Greenstar Factory. Base
HQ. East of the River Tox, west of Ebola Palace. Can’t miss it. Ten fucking
klicks wide...

Horace sighed.

Thank you,
he’d said.

~ * ~

HORACE
CLEANED HIS tools and stowed them away in the velvet roll. Silka, who had been
cleaning herself during the torture and execution, ruffled up her fur and
stared brightly at Horace.

“Are you okay?”

“I think I might have to repair
myself.”

“There’s a medical kit in the
bathroom. It’s basic...”

“Can it repair a Silka-sized hole
in my abdomen?”

“I’m sure it can,” she said,
sweetly.

Ten minutes later, with the
biggest holes stapled shut but still feeling like a perforated sack of shit,
Horace checked his T5 and then opened the door, peering out into the corridor.

“Do you think they know?”

“I guarantee it,” said Silka,
padding out into the corridor and standing by the skirting.

They moved down the corridor, as
a chambermaid rounded the corner with a trolley.

“Oh!” she said in surprise, one
hand to her mouth, eyes wide in shock at Horace’s battered, torn and bloody
appearance. She pushed a little wheeled alloy trolley containing towels and
toilet rolls and soap. Her other hand came up with... a Makarov 11mm.

Horace’s T5 cracked, and a hole
appeared in the maid’s head. She toppled back, dead.

“I told you,” said Silka.

“Hmm,” said Horace.

After that, there was no
pretence. They took the back stairs, and five porters appeared with machine
guns. Bullets screamed on trails of fire, spitting sparks from metal rails and
thudding with puffs of disintegrating plaster into the walls. Horace returned
fire, his T5
blamming
down the stairwell. Two porters went down with
bullets in their throats, fingers scrabbling at the wounds as if they might
claw out the metal parasites. Then Silka jumped to the rail, paused for a
second, bright eyes surveying the scene below, and dived, landing atop one of
the porters. Her claws slashed left and right, ripping out one man’s throat,
and the other man’s eyes. They dropped, screaming, and Silka glanced up, and
Horace could see her face, triumphant and feral...

The explosion seemed to rock the
very foundation stones of the hotel. Horace was picked up and thrown back
through the door - actually
through
the door - by the pressure of the
blast. Fire roared in the stairwell, which filled with thick black smoke in an
instant. A Babe Grenade. Designed to really
fuck you up.

Horace lay on his back, all wind
knocked from him, brain swirling in a blast of confusion. Stunned, he slowly
realised Silka was dead, and a heavy bitterness fell on him like funeral ash.
Horace’s eyes went hard. The bastards had detonated their own in order to take
him out. The porters with guns had been a come-on, a prick-tease, urging him
into a fight... a few more steps down that stairwell and he would have been
minced dog food. Instead, Silka had dropped into the abyss -and had been
detonated for her trouble.

“You bastards,” said Horace, lips
trembling.

Don’t lose your temper...

Don’t ever lose your temper...

Horace lost his temper. Not in an
explosion of anger and rage; no. When Horace lost his temper it was a
dangerous, internalised pressure. All rules of engagement were lost. Everyone
would die: friends, enemies, babies in prams, dogs trotting down the sidewalk.
All flesh to be annihilated.

Horace rolled to his knees, then
his feet. Every bone in his body hurt from the blast, but he ignored the many
agonies that assailed him. He was focused on the task.

A human would have died from the
pressure of the explosion. Horace was hurting. But he channelled the pain to
fuel his rage. He changed tactics: returned to the stairwell, stared down into
the still-billowing thick smoke. Good cover. He headed upwards, noting that
quite a few steel bars were twisted out of shape, and the whole staircase had
lost its integrity. The building had been damaged, been
twisted
by the
bomb.