Fantasmagoria (23 page)

Sciever nodded. He held up a set of black robes draped over his bandaged arm. “He’s clean.”

“All right, asshole. You wanted to talk to me. Talk.”

The half-mechanoid looked at the man in the chair, then Erasmus. He spoke with a thick Futurian accent. “I have come to make an offering, and to deliver a warning.”

“Aww, and you thought of me?” Erasmus mocked. “Fuck. Will somebody please dismember this thing?”

“Wait!” The half-mechanoid raised his hands. “The Amazons have returned, as was foretold. Their coming heralds the return of Kraxus.”

Sciever smirked and looked at the floor.

“You think you’re the first hybrid we’ve had down here?” Erasmus asked. “We got a blowtorch in the closet, next to the broom and the toilet cleaner. No bullshit, you cultist fuck.”

“Black Jack the Wanderer has taken refuge in the Old Arcade.”

“So I’ve heard. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“He’s getting a skin job as we speak. Soon you will not be able to recognize him.”

“Fuck.”

“We won’t allow your people in the Arcade, but we can bring him to you. For a price.”

“Of course.”

Everyone but Dobie was silent as Erasmus thought. The fighter gasped through his gag in short rasping breaths as his head rolled about.

The voice box in the mechanical spider clicked on. “I’ll give you five hundred large to kill him. But I want his body as proof. No body, no money.”

The naked assassin smiled.

“And I’ll double it if you find the ray gun.”

The assassin bowed and followed Sciever out.

Togo watched him go. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Can it. I want everybody we got left looking for Vernal the Infernal. Everybody! Shut down the casinos. Drag the carnies out of bed. Get the dealers off the streets. Call in the books. I want everybody, and I mean fucking everybody not mothballing the Dark Red out looking for that venereal half-pint and the wisps of hair on his scrotum-shaped head!”

Togo nodded. “And him?” He pointed at the blubbering boxer.

Blood dripped from Dobie’s crotch to the plastic below. He clung to life by a fingernail.

“Take him upstairs and feed him to Archie.”

Togo gulped. “Right.” He hated feeding the giant squid. The beast had twelve very long tentacles. You could never keep track of them all. “And Jack?”

“Zen-ji!” Erasmus moved his contraption back around his desk and settled in. “Don’t worry about Jack.”

“But--”

“I said don’t worry!” Erasmus snarled.

The ten-foot samurai blotted the doorway to Erasmus’s office. He had to bow to fit under the frame, and his footsteps shook the floor. As always, his face was invisible.

“Go to the Arcade. Keep an eye on things, but don’t engage. You hear me? Stay away from Jack. If those wackos kill him, make sure to get the body. If not, I wanna know where he goes.”

The giant warrior bowed, turned, and strode like a hunting cat out of the room.

The fluid in Erasmus’s glass tank started bubbling and his eyes bounced off each other. “The Hand will slow him down, buy us some time. But in the end, Jack Fulcrum will come to us.”

Togo grunted and lifted the limp, dying fighter over his shoulder. “How can you be sure?”

“Because this has happened before.”

(TWENTY-FIVE) Shadow of the Samurai

It is a universal law that noodles in broth comforts in the most trying of times. Hence it was no accident that Vernal found the only noodle shack in the entirety of the Old Arcade.

Jack stretched his new skin as he hobbled in from the promenade. His foot and arm were still busted, and he made a strange clicking sound every few steps, but he had new skin and a brand new set of clothes, thanks to his diminutive benefactor. He moved his jaw in circles. His new face felt different, tighter. It didn’t hang from his frame like his old skin had. And his hair was thicker, a neat crop of black over a wire-sewn mismatch of skin tones.

The noodle shop was narrow and filthy, and there was just enough room on one side for a single row of chairs. Vernal, the chipped-tooth stub, sat at the end hunched over a steaming bowl. He was the only patron. Behind the counter, an ancient man busied himself with boiling pots. He looked like an alchemist, a frail wizard brewing foul fortunes.

Jack sat down and the chair shattered. Vernal scowled at him lying on the floor and kept slurping.

“Sorry.” Jack stood and Vernal slid a long metal box across the counter.

Jack watched it but didn’t move. “What’s that?”

“The key.”

Vernal was washed, bandaged, and sharply dressed. Jack had no idea what he’d been up to. He’d told Jack to change clothes in the skin shop while he found a place to eat, and Jack had watched the key disappear a second time.

He picked up the box and examined it. It was thick and heavy. An indentation on the bottom housed four combination cylinders. Something metal bounced around inside. “Are you giving this to me?”

Vernal nodded. “No one in the world is going to keep that key safer than you.”

That much was true. “So what’s the combination?”

“Don’t get cute.”

Jack scowled and put the box in his pocket.

“Oh, and just so you know, that is a quarter inch of reinforced steel, but just in case you try to pry it open anyway, there’s a piston that will crush the key if the box is twisted or damaged.” Vernal smiled. “Pretty clever, huh?”

It was. Jack not only had to keep it safe, he had to keep it from being stolen. Thieves wouldn’t know about the piston. “You had it made?”

“At a machine shop down the way.” Vernal nodded as he slurped more noodles. “Bastard took longer than he promised,” Vernal mumbled with a full mouth. “Plus, I ran into a few snags trying to find you.”

“Snags? That how you lost the finger?” Jack nodded to Vernal’s gauze-bandaged hand.

Vernal held it up. “I like it,” he grumbled. “Gives a certain ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibe, doesn’t it? Sort of like your new stitches.”

Jack leaned against the wall and felt his jaw. “Whatever.” He noticed the base of Vernal’s other palm was stained a wispy brown. “You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

Vernal smiled and slurped. “You’re gonna steal something for me.”

“Like hell.”

“From Pimpernel’s vault, the one behind the picture of the Riming Temple. That’s where he kept the key, right? Shit, you’re one of probably three or four people who’s seen the inside of that vault.”

“You’re crazy if you think I can get out of there in one piece. Not now.”

“You don’t have to get out. You just have to get in.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Vernal slurped again and smiled. It was full of doom. “I’ll teleport you out.”

“What?”

Vernal nodded. “But it only works one-way. You get in, and we’ll teleport you out. Cleanest getaway in the history of the world.”

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, which means that’s one of the stupidest things anyone’s said, ever. There’s no such thing.”

“The Hand have dark arts, Jack, secrets they’ve been harboring for centuries.”

“Yeah . . . but, come on.”

“I’m telling you. There’s a voodoo technocrat here who can do it.”

“I don’t believe in magic.”

“It’s not magic. It’s science. And nobody knows the scientific and mystical arts better than the Hand. Ol’ Cho here is in good with the Order. He knows a guy who knows a guy. And I know where he is.”

“Where who is?”

“What?” Vernal squinted.

Jack shook his head. “Why is Cho helping us?”

“He owes me.”

“For?”

“Getting his wife exiled to Lower Theria.”

Cho smiled. He was missing teeth.

“Once you steal the Genix, we’ll teleport you out, I’ll give you the combination to the box, and everybody’s happy. We can do it tonight after everyone’s asleep.”

Jack shook his head.

Vernal shrugged. “Your choice, Jack. I need the Genix, and you need the key. It’s a fair trade.”

“What’s it for, this genicks thing?”

“Come on. You know how these capers work. You’re not supposed to ask.”

“Bullshit. I’m the one with his balls on the line.”

“Elsa didn’t give you any balls.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Aliens.”

Jack paused. “What?”

“Aliens,” Vernal repeated.

“Like from Japanamania or something?”

“No! From outer space.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

“Toldya. But it’s the truth, Jack, as sure as I gotta take the biggest god-damned dump since Goyen shat the world.” Vernal looked around for a bathroom and did a little dance. “Fuck, those noodles went right through me.” He scowled at the old man. “What the hell did you put in there?”

But the old wizard was gone.

Jack and Vernal looked at each other. They had been arguing and hadn’t noticed the crowd of the promenade fade under the moonlight.

Jack walked toward the door. “I’m guessing they know we’re here.”

“Don’t worry,” Vernal blew him off. “I’m in good with the Hand. I dispose of more corpses for them than anyone in the city. Just let me do the talking.”

Jack and Vernal stepped onto the mezzanine of the promenade. It was deserted except for a small band of dark-cowled ninjas, three standing and two more crouched on awnings overhead.

“You sure?”

All were armed with swords, but two on the ground also carried cattle prods. Sparks sprinkled from their tips like tiny rain.

“Ha.” Vernal smiled. “They think you have an electronic brain.”

“Shit,” Jack cursed.

“Don’t worry. Those prods won’t hurt, you mechanical pussy. You can take ’em.”

“Yeah . . .”

Vernal looked at his large companion. “What?”

The assassins crept closer.

“Never mind.”

Vernal put his back to Jack’s as the circle tightened. “Now is not the time to hold out.”

“I might have a hundred pounds of plastique inside me.”

“What?”

Jack nodded. “Pugs put it there. I unplugged the detonator, but if I carry a charge through my skinjob . . .” Jack raised his eyebrows.

Vernal squinted and clenched his fists. “Fuckity fuck fuck!” He stomped the ground three times.

A cowled ninja leapt from above, sword raised high. Jack swung his limp arm over Vernal’s head like a bat and knocked the killer into a wall of aquariums. Glass shattered and water ran over the ground. Strange and venomous fish flapped and hissed and bit the flailing attacker.

Another assassin leapt from Jack’s right. The mechanical gunslinger pivoted 360 degrees on his waist and caught the cultist in midair, knocking him back several yards where he landed with a roll and leapt to his feet. But that left a gap in the circle.

“Come on!” Vernal led Jack down a narrow alley behind them. The pair scurried past the walls of the noodle shop and into the labyrinth behind as fast as Jack’s damaged leg could carry him. They ran past squalor and darkness, turned, and ducked under an arch.

Vernal clutched at his ass. He really had to take a shit. He noticed the hobbled gunslinger falling behind. “Jack!” He smelled burnt flesh. There was plenty of Neverod in the Old Arcade. Feather-boaed gigolos, seated in a row of concrete cubicles, shut their curtains and disappeared.

Jack clutched the box in his pocket. He was not going to lose the key.

The assassins leapt down through the hanging laundry and Vernal stepped closer to Jack. The prod-wielding attackers appeared ahead of the pair. They were flanked.

“You know, after careful consideration, I’ve decided I really hate you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Jack grumbled. “Shit.”

Vernal looked up. Standing at the very top of the makeshift slum, a giant armored Japanaman stood in front of the moon and stared down at the scene from a shrouded face.

“Is that who I think it is?”

“Yup.”

“What’s he waiting for?”

“Don’t know.”

An assassin cried out and lunged and the rest followed. Jack swung his arm again but missed, and a cattle prod hit him in the chest.

“Dammit!” Jack punched with his good arm.

The assassin tried to block but Jack was too strong and the hooded man flew back.

A second prod hit Jack’s leg but Vernal grabbed it and yanked it free. “Ha!” He was proud.

A ninja kicked Vernal from behind. He went down and dropped the prod. Three attackers grabbed Jack and wrestled with him as a fourth approached and stepped over Vernal.