Code Noir (27 page)

I took the filthy piece of gauze, smarting at her faith that I’d return.

Glida and Wombebe were the last to get on the raft with Billy. I squeezed Glida’s arm.

She nodded. I could see the gratitude and apprehension in her eyes. Neither made me feel good. I watched the raft to the other side with heavy relief. Roo would see them home.

I
believed
that.

A drizzle had started up. I cupped it in my hands and wet my tongue, sucking greedily. The canal turned brown, as if the fresh raindrops had stained it. To the north, below the clouds, the air crackled with a peculiar, unhappy light. Like two worlds rubbing each other raw.

Mei was right. For a girl who didn’t like spirit shit, I was becoming a real buff.

It struck me then that none of them had said a word about Tug leaving.

I spun in a circle. ‘I can’t protect you. I doubt I can protect myself. You can come but you’re on your own,’ I shouted out.

He materialised from an alleyway and approached. ‘You will need me to heal.’

I wanted to groan aloud to match the agitation in my belly, but a trickle of excitement quickly superseded it. The Eskaalim was back, stronger. I’d let it loose in order to survive against the Cabal’s spiritual power. Now I would pay for it.

I glanced around for Loser. The damn unpredictable canrat hadn’t reappeared.

Not able to think of another reason to stall, I moved on, keeping to the cover of the last line of villas, following the canal north.

 

As the clamour of chaos and fighting got louder, I forced my way into the top floor vantage of a villa. With Tug’s help I kicked the boards from an old window. Twitchers roved the banks for several klicks in either direction of the maelstrom. They waded in amongst the mob, hauling them from the sides, trying to drive them back to Mo-Vay.

Tug grabbed my hand and pointed back east.

The skyline of Mo-Vay glowed with an unsavoury crimson tinge, as if the roofs were bleeding into the new morning sky. The fibre optic towers glinted: beacons in the sunlight. A heavy scent floated in - cloying, damp, electrical energy and recomposing matter.

On the gutter of the nearest villa, secretions burst and dripped from abscess-like growths. Dark mould stained the walls behind us, and below thick webs spread across openings. Tiny tremors heralded small eruptions in the pavements. The whole of the Inner Tert seethed and mutated with eerie purpose.

‘What have they done?’ I whispered. The blood lust simmered deep inside me, but fear chilled my skin.

Tug shivered at my side. ‘Maybe it’s too late. Even for the Cabal.’

I looked back to the canal. Several rafts bobbed upside down slowly sinking, their oarsmen drowned. Were these the decoys the Cabal had risked to get their last
karadji
back?

Was he really worth it?

Along the canal a dull noise built. Suddenly the water began to break its banks: a puddling that turned into a stream, and then a flood across the pavement. Twitchers and punters caught in the rising water convulsed and collapsed.

On the other side more Cabal launched their home-made rafts. With the upsurge of water, the Cabal seemed to gain a tiny momentum. Tulu’s salvos began to fall short and their earth-heat dissolved them in hot, conquering gusts.

Where had the extra strength come from? Surely not Billy Myora.

As the water flooded the first line of villas, hope revived in me. Where it came into contact with the wild-tek, it sizzled and steamed, dissolving the offensive substances.

‘Maybe not. I don’t think it can cross the water - must be the copper in it.’

‘But what about the people? What will happen to them if they don’t get out? What will happen to us?’ asked Tug.

In answer to his question Priers crammed the sky with ’Terros hanging from their bellies, their ’corders extended to full range.

The gust of their props lent Tulu a physical edge and the Cabal’s rafts began to wallow and tip dangerously, the oarsmen fighting natural forces.

A mob pawed the banks screaming for the rafts to come and save them. Some fled further north and south looking for another way.

Guilt assailed me. I’d just bargained to get Roo and the ma’soops rafted across. But what about these people?

Too many of them
, I reasoned.

Or was I just the same as Loyl Daac -
selecting
who deserved to be saved?

Tug watched me, sensing my uncertainty. He would follow my lead, and his trust was just another burden.

I shook a fist at the hovering Priers. ‘I have to get to Tulu. She’s stopping the Cabal’s rafts from crossing,’ I said. ‘Wait here. Watch for them. When the rafts reach this side, get as many people on board them as you can. If something goes wrong and things go to crap . . .’

‘I couldn’t abandon others, Parrish.’ Tug flexed his powerful hands as if wanting to touch something.

I shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

 

I slipped out of the building and on to the pavement. Arlli’s veil cloaked me in an anonymity that made me uneasy - as if I had no identity. I reached for the comfort of the Cabal dagger and remembered Loyl had it.

I ran east, pushing past punters running the other way. The majority of them still clustered in villas near the old monorail crossing, watching for the rafts, downwind of the maelstrom. Fear and confusion ravaged their faces. I’d seen it before, in the recent gang war. Yet this was different. These people didn’t understand their enemy, or know how to fight it.

Nobody recognised me. Nobody stopped me. I shut out their panic and concentrated on controlling the blossoming urge I had to kill anyone who bumped me. The closer I got to the maelstrom, the deeper and more violent my mood became.

I felt like I was being followed. Using the feral’s mask to block the stench, I ran as close as I could to the flood line. My eyes skimmed the surface of the murky water. Haze arose where it intermingled with the
crawl.

Would the copper stop it? Or would it accustom and continue to spread?

A racket behind me drew my attention. I turned, searching the teeming pavement for the source. A moment’s glimpse at something dropped the base from my world.

A shout and a splash as a pair of Twitchers tossed something into the flooding canal.

Not something. Someone.

The hat spun away and the body floated for a second before the water gobbled it down.

I recognised the hat, and the sweet face.

 

 

 

 

My throat closed over.
He must have come back for me! He must have
. . .

Shock and anger took over. With all the energy and malice the Eskaalim could lend me, I burst through the crowd to get at the Twitchers, taking them both from behind with a kicking blow that knocked them down and jarred my foot. Senseless to the pain, I fell on the pair, hoisting one of them to the same fate as Roo.

I twisted the other one’s neck like a screw top, until my shoulders popped with the strain. He managed to drag my veil and mask away before he sideswiped me with a metal baton.

I heard my ribs crack. Felt my flesh rip. A flare of unnatural light in the twitcher’s eye told me he’d wired the others. In a minute a swarm of them would be here and I’d be dead.

I twisted harder until bones cracked and he flopped unconscious.

I knew it wouldn’t last long. His recovery time would be quick.

Roo deserves more than that
, I quarrelled with myself. That single thought got me up.

I hobbled towards a villa. Punters that witnessed the event helped me, running interference as more Twitchers arrived.

I struggled up two flights of stairs, into an attic and across a cut-thru. A rust stain seeped through the walls of the attic. I touched my headband on so I could see, and kept away from it. I wasn’t sure what contact with it would do and I wasn’t willing to find out. The memory of the body fixed to the fibre optics tower having its life sucked away was still fresh.

Like Roo
. . .

I took a second to strap my half-melted boots a bit tighter. With a conscious effort I sank deep into myself, giving over more to the Eskaalim. I needed the extra adrenalin to keep the pain at bay.

It flooded through me with a welcome numbness.

I knew if I could live long enough to get near Tulu, I had a payback need that’d see me through hell.

But the closer I got to the maelstrom the harder it got to move. My legs felt like they were bogged in
crawl.
I saw dead Kadai in alleys.

The idea that they were mortal distracted and frightened me.

I veered away from the canal to where Tulu hid herself. Her salvos drew me to her, a barrage of twisted spirit juice spewing out to challenge the Cabal. All the worst stuff she’d harvested from the minds of The Tert shaman and me.

You didn’t get it all, bitch.
I shouted the thought over the cacophony in my head.

My insides felt crowded to bursting. The Eskaalim, the spirit guides, and now a link with Mei and the shaman. I made multiple-personality disorder look lonesome. If I wasn’t already crazy, then I was definitely on the low road.

I grabbed at one notion to keep me afloat and wrapped myself around it.

Single-minded revenge charged with the unholiest of blood lusts kept me moving past a swell of Mo-Vay punters, freaked and milling like animals, and skirting round a knot of Twitchers.

I located the maelstrom at the top of a villa set, half a click back from the canal. Tulu wasn’t getting too close to the action.

More Twitchers circled her building at a frenzied pace. If Ike was calling their moves, he had a major hard on.

I ran scenes in my mind. Frontal assault? Subterfuge? Distraction? Decoy? None of them seemed right and I could die waiting to find the correct way. If only I had a decent weapon. A firestormer. A semi. If only I had the damn Cabal knife!

I thought about trying to ambush Tulu using my mental links, but passed on the idea immediately. Whatever small talents I possessed were trivial and untried next to hers.

Besides, she’d harvested spirit sap from a shed full of shamans. Who knows how juiced she’d got on that cocktail? Or how strong it had made Marinette.

I shuddered at the memory of the evil loa. Marinette had an acute case of total vice.

No, I needed to stay with what I did best. Rash and reckless.

Make that rash, reckless and vengeful! Ike would find out just what it felt like to have his flesh liquefied.

As I crouched, watching for an opportunity, the Twitchers guarding the doorway suddenly deserted their post and ran towards the back of the villa.

Unable to believe my fortune I loped awkwardly across the alley, flinging myself in through the open door. Stairs - straight ahead, living room - to the right.

I took the stairs.

A quick recce at the top revealed rust pus seeping through walls. Otherwise the place was empty aside from some unhappy vermin. Murmurs, though, drew me out toward an enclosed balcony. These villas must have been top of the range in their day. Balconies, en suite sans and auto-dim on the windows. The window dim had failed years ago leaving the glass door with a kind of smoky smudge.

I tugged at the slider and felt the suck of the pressure change. Crouching down, I peered cautiously around the sliding door. Through the crack I saw Tulu outlined, staring north to the canal. I could practically feel the chi-stream launching from her towards the water. She had two Twitchers guarding either end of the balcony to deter climbers.

A noise from below drew me back to the top of the stairs. I stuck my nose around the balustrade expecting a Twitcher. But it was Ike, fully kitted in exoskel and combat hood and wedged into a mobile command plinth. The skel rippled on him, wheezing and murmuring. The hood had to be running the Twitcher command.

He lifted the hood to get a proper look at me.

I wanted to rush down to him and pulverise the puny body under the skel. As if guessing my intention, he murmured something into his pickup.

Pain jarred my mind.

Where the hell
. . . I glanced back. The balcony door was open. The two Twitchers had pierced my shoulders with large, spiked clamps.

I gasped for breath as they jerked me off my feet, and a second inferno of pain lit through me.

More like Parrish spitting!

Following on the heels of the second pain came a second wind of animal hate and fury - a rush of numbing endorphins. It sent my senses into hyper-reality.

‘Bring her here,’ ordered Ike coolly, patting the base of the plinth.

They stepped down in unison, with me strung between them. At the bottom they dangled me like a crucified puppet in front of him.

I could see it in his face. Ike wanted to chat.

I tried to think across the top of the pain.

What was his weakness? The skel shielded him from any bodily attack. That left his neural webbings and face, and only while the hood was up.

One chance.

I gave him my best high kick, my sprained foot catching underneath the side of the helmet, knocking it askew. I didn’t even wince.

The Twitchers jerked me backwards but I kicked again, just connecting, booting the hood clean off his head.

He screamed and spasmed as the neural sponges tore free of his neck and skull.

I screamed as the Twitchers dumped me.

They both fell to the floor, writhing and frothing with seizures brought on by the withdrawal of Ike’s neuro-ghost.