Code Noir (15 page)

By dawn temptation had a foot on the home straight and my pelvis was doing a funny crampy thing. I shoved him awake with my toe, avoiding flesh contact, in case the crampy thing turned into another orgasm and I died from mortification.

‘Let’s move. This place is making me scratch.’

He rubbed his eyes with his flesh hand and stretched, pulling his tee tight, flashing rib flesh. I tumed away willing the heat to leave me. How could anyone look so innocent one minute and act so rabid the next?

I got one flight down and the stairs stopped dead.

‘Loyl?’

He looked past me, slipping the Sprag loose from the straps of his pack. A wall of pale membrane blocked our path.

I touched it. ‘Feels like thick sorta web. It’s warm.’

He pulled me back, frowning. ‘This’ll be noisy.’

‘I like noisy.’

‘You would. Back up in case.’

I climbed back to the top of the stairs, marvelling how we slipped from enemy to ally so easily.

Daac sprayed fire directly into the membrane.

No richochet. When the vibrations stopped he stepped down to feel it. ‘Holes are there , but closing up already.’

Claustrophobia was on me. ‘Let’s look around.’

We marched down the corridor taking one room at a time. All the doors opened easily like ours. They were empty. About six in all.

Back in our room, Daac pointed on to the street. ‘Fancy a climb?’

I reached to open it, eager to get out. ‘Sure.’

The window was fastened shut, nothing unusual in The Tert.

‘Watch out.’ He swung the chair at it and nearly flattened himself as it bounced straight back at him. He touched the window. ‘Same stuff. Transparent though.’

I pulled a knife from my boot and stabbed at it. The ‘window’ barely dented and within seconds the surface smoothed.

‘Parrish!’ Daac had that tense, throaty tone.

I knew what he meant. Add ‘trapped’ to my phobia list.

I ran from room to room checking the ceilings. Dirty but smooth. No manholes. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? The only gap I could see anywhere was the aircon breather vent at one end of the corridor.

‘Look,’ I shouted.

‘I think you’d better look,’ he called, ‘here.’

I ran back to him. Through our window the grey-pink dawn lit a swarm of activity. He pointed to a quad-runna. Around it roved a guard of naked, painted-up young turks armed with kit rifles and fast-twitch muscles. Their movements were swift, exaggerated. And arrogant. A confidence you only got when you believed you were untouchable.

‘The web-stuff doesn’t seem to be covering the vent. Otherwise the aircon would have blown,’ I said.

‘How big is it?’

I glanced meaningfully at the width of his shoulders. ‘Big enough. Just. You should lose some weight.’

He jerked the Sprag. ‘I’ll cover the hallway. You get the damn thing open.’

I didn’t need to hear any more. I grabbed the chair and ran back down the corridor.

With my push dagger I pried around the edge of the vent. No go. I stabbed and hacked with each of my knives in turn. I couldn’t even dent the metal.

For a run-down piece of crappo architecture, this place sure had some interesting extras.

My hand strayed to my dagger belt. It brushed the Cabal knife.
Maybe?

The black metal sliced through the grating like cheese. ‘Loyl! Come!’ I bellowed.

Back near the stairway the wall began to harden and become brittle. The youth army was spraying it with something from the other side.

Loyl stood there transfixed.

I shouted to him again. ‘
Now!
’

He ignored me, dropping to his knee in the corridor. The Sprag sprayed its own message, perforating the membrane.

He was buying me time. Only I didn’t need a hero. That was my job.

Annoyed, I holstered the Lugers and hauled arse up into the mouth of the vent.

I’ve been in chutes before. Well once, anyway. But that was laundry and going down. This was aircon and going up.

Dusty and slippery.

My upper body strength was pretty good for my size, but that’s the problem. My size. The effort of getting my entire body plus pack up into the hole nearly did me in. Only the thought of what the small army of jacked-up pubescents was planning on doing to us got me up over the first lip.

I squirmed around and hung an arm down for Loyl.

‘Come
on
! Grab it.’

A second later he was there. He stretched to meet me.

I saw restraint probes snake out, fixing on to his neck. Flat-ended suckers delivering tiny paralysing kisses.

He gargled and flopped to the floor.

I should have gone down there after him. But the sight of his paralysis terrified me. Jamon had done the same thing to my legs not so long ago. Then he’d tried to rape me.

‘I’ll find you,’ I yelled consolingly at his unconscious body and contorted up around the first kink in the duct and along as far as I could squeeze.

I lay panting. Below I could hear voices. Shots bounced around the opening of the vent. Any second I expected web-stuff to come crawling up the sides. My muscles screamed with exertion, my mind screamed with dread.

So much noise.

 

In the end nothing and no one followed me.

I lay wedged there, fixated with guilt and worry at leaving Daac behind.

Stuck was the word. I tried the caterpillar thing and went nowhere. Ahead of me the duct narrowed away into a thin tube. My feet paddled and slipped on the smooth interior. Because of my pack, I couldn’t go backwards either. So I lay, arms pinned to my side, wondering what it might be like to mummify. Fingernails of panic clawed at my belly.

A few minutes later freezing air blasted through the pipe, over and under my clothes. Forget flooding the rat from the sewers - these scuds were trying to freeze me out!

Soon my teeth were chattering.

The cold must have frozen my brain because it took an age before I remembered the Cabal dagger. Or maybe it was just that it began to dig a hole in my groin. With difficulty and a lot of wriggle, I slid it from inside my knife belt.

I gouged in a small, laborious circle. Slowly it punctured the metal. Every now and then I stopped and poked a finger through. Encouraged and warmed slightly by the effort I worked on. The layer of insulation wrapped around the outside of the tube was easier. Soon the hole got big enough for my hand and arm, then my shoulder and finally my head.

With relief I squirmed out of the duct into the ceiling. I rummaged in my sack for my headband and slipped it on.

Fashionless enough to make Merry 3# gag - but effective.

The light illuminated the usual rafters, cobwebs and dust. No one had crawled through here in a while. I remembered the intricate mould patterns I’d admired in the room and wondered if they were connected in some way with the creepy mesh.

I checked my compass implant and got a bearing. Bent over like a hunchback I ran through my options.

Most Tert villas had cut-thrus into the next set. This one had been blocked off with scrap and chunks of plas - no signs of the mesh, though. The roof above was intact, which meant I either hacked my way out on to the roof - time consuming and noisy - or I removed the rubbish.

I didn’t fancy climbing around on the outside of the roof waiting for a canrat, or a whatever, to pick me off, so I went for the cut-thru option.

A minute later I was dust-coated, fingernails torn and bleeding from scrabbling and scraping, face and inside my nostrils caked. On the bright side, the Cabal knife was a freaking miracle of cutting power. When I found out what it was made of, Raul Minoj and I were gonna make a killing on the open market.

I hacked a rough circle in the plas bricks and put my boot through it with a couple of big heel kicks. Those sambo lessons I’d traded for karate had been worth every bruise.

I didn’t wait to check what was on the other side but crawled through, head first, hands out to break my fall.

Mistake. I touched something alive. Tilting my headlight downward, I scoped a dazed python, curled up tight for the winter.

Well, it would’ve been - if I hadn’t disturbed it.

It stirred sluggishly like it had a hangover. Pythons weren’t poisonous but their bite hurt and was filthy. Septicaemic in fact.

On instinct I grabbed its throat before it had a go at me then I tumbled the rest of my body through the hole. By the time I got upright, it had aroused itself and begun to constrict around my arm and shoulders.

I shuddered and sucked in a deep, steadying breath. I didn’t want to kill it, there were few enough native animals left in this country, and these guys kept the rats down, but I
was
in a bit of a hurry. With difficulty I unwound its heavy body.

Now what?
If I put it down it might bite. Maybe if I tied it
really
tight in my pack it might come in handy. Not many people could think straight when you waved a snake in their face.

I stuffed it in awkwardly, strapping the flap down hard. After a minute or two of frantic gyration, it went still.

I sighed. I’d have to stop collecting things; a Borgia canrat, now a diamond python. Anyone would think I was the animal kind.

I rechecked the straps several times before I levered the pack on my back, trying to shut out images of the python getting loose and throttling me.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. As soon as I got back on the ground, I’d dump it.

Taking a settling breath, I looked around properly. Now I’d broken through the wall of plas bricks, cut-thrus ran in all directions. I chose one randomly, keeping to a generally south direction, taking care to avoid any more sleeping creatures.

Twenty or more villas later I risked coming down. Even then I squatted for a time over the manhole, remembering my last roof crawling excursion. Stolowski and I had found our way into a Mueno living room. Considering I wasn’t even Oya, they were pretty chilled about it. If my hunch was right, that was the time I’d been infected with the parasite. That’d teach me to get splattered with sacrificial human blood.

Blood!
A surge of desire for it welled up in me - breathtaking in its strength. I bent it into anger and self-pity.

What the hell was I doing chasing Leesa Tulu around this place?

My head ached with the intrigues in my life. Everyone had an angle. And for some reason they all seemed compelled to use me to work them. Daac wanted to manipulate the Eskaalim, the Cabal wanted me to find their
karadji
, the Muenos wanted a real flesh goddess, and Teece wanted a woman who would stay at home helping him make money off black-market tek and motorbikes.

But what did I want?

I wanted to stay alive.

And I wanted Loyl Daac to stay alive. In that order. I cared about him. And that I
really
hated!

Forward was the only way I’d get those things.

Sighing, I hauled the manhole cover off and took a recce below. For once I caught a break. Empty - apart from small vermin and ankle-deep small vermin shit.

I dropped down and waded through it with big, impatient steps, stamping my boots clean when I hit the pavement. Then I checked my direction log.

Dawn had deserted and the sun already radiated on to the tacky plas overhangs with a new intensity. I felt the sudden change of season, a declaration that winter had pissed off. It got me jogging the return route with fresh determination. King Tide was only a couple of days away and I hadn’t found the
karadji
.

I recognised the villa set soon as I turned the corner. The ‘kleen beds and air con’ neon was dead, but it was unmistakably Chez Nutter. The quad-runna had vanished from outside, along with its legion of twitchers.

Panting with exertion, I took my pack off and squatted down next to it, wondering what to do next. Nothing came to me except the desire for food and a comatose sleep.

I only sensed the set of tampering hands when my pack got up a fair wriggle. Wheeling, I found a
petit
crim - spotted with bleeding, cauliflower-shaped hives - draped in a grey-green python.

I grabbed the snake’s neck as it fanged open to have a taste. ‘Get your fingers out of my stuff, or I’ll let go.’

The
petit
choked and coughed, waving his hands frantically in front of me.

‘What do you want?’
Petit
s didn’t bother me much. They were usually after food, sometimes drugs. Often they poached just for the sake of it.

This one had a curtain of limp, thin hair that did little to hide the bloody sores on his face and neck.

‘Did-youse-come-in-on-the-quod-copt? Youse-gotta-be-from-outwhere-cos-they-speak-different-so-slow.

I wasn’t surprised he thought that. He gabbed quicker than a cheap advert.

As I looked closer, I thought I recognised something about him. With a foot anchoring my pack to the pavement, I unwound the snake from his neck and wrestled with its tail.

‘You did biz with a friend of mine yesterday. Big guy with dark skin.’

He nodded, being careful.

I glanced over at Chez Nutter. ‘He ran into a problem. ’

The
petit
nodded. ‘Clancy-uses-
crawl
. Spread-quick.’ He glanced across at the lifeless neon almost bitterly. ‘Epox-can-afford-it.’

‘Clancy? Grrl at the desk?’

‘Uhuh-that’s-her.’

‘What’s an epox?’

‘Epoxyed-to-whatever. You’ll-see-more-of-’em.’

His face closed up then like he’d said too much. People were the same everywhere when they didn’t want to talk.