Nylon Angel (24 page)

‘Lang hired me for a job, said if I got him some files from a certain place in Viva it would put Mondo in gaol for life. How could I refuse a gig like that, Teece?’

He nodded, understanding. Jamon was part of the reason Teece didn’t come to Torley’s any more.

‘Turns out Lang set me up to take the rap for Razz Retribution’s murder.’

‘Why would he want to hang it on you?’

‘Messy story, and I’m not sure I know the answer. Yet. See, Razz Retribution had been financing some research. Genetic immunities to heavy-metal poisons. Apparently the research came up with stuff that could help a lot of Tert people. But someone took her out, which stopped the money supply, so the research stopped.’

Teece’s opened his mouth, as if he might say something, but my words kept galloping out. I told him everything.

When I finished he didn’t seem all that astonished, more troubled.

‘But you said they got wiped?’ he asked.

I grinned. ‘Not exactly.’

I got up, went to the san and pulled the disk from my boot. Then I returned, tossing it on to the bed in front of him.

‘When I realised what was happening, I bailed. What I saved is on here. I need to find out what it is. Will you help?’ I tried awful hard not to plead.

He didn’t rush me with an answer. ‘Why does Lang want you pinned for the murder?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno exactly. Seems I was convenient.’

‘What would Lang gain from stopping this research?’

I shrugged again and pointed to the disk. It lay between us on the bed like a grenade. ‘That’s what I want you to tell me. And there’s something else you should know. It might help you figure things out. Lang can alter his physical appearance - shape-change. Not with med-tek or cosmetics or anything like that.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘He just does it.’

This time his eyes narrowed in disbelief. Or maybe at the state of my sanity.

‘I’ve seen it, Teece. I think it’s something to do with the side effects of this research. They’ve done trials using Tert people.’

Teece gave a low whistle. ‘Heavy shite, Parrish.’

We stared at the disk for a while, contemplating it.

‘So how’d you manage to get so dirty?’ he asked eventually.

I told him about Gwynn, and Stellar and the pain parlour.

He laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ I hiccuped.

‘You. How do you find such dirty sandpits to play in?’

He leaned forward and spread his fingers across my shoulders where the muscles were taut and sore. The warmth soothed them and involuntarily I groaned.

‘It takes talent,’ I murmured. ‘Mmm, that’s good.’

He tugged at my towel, loosening it and slid his hands around my stomach.

‘Parrish?’

It was a question that didn’t need words as an answer. It might even clear my head of Loyl-me-Daac.

But a frantic hammering at the door took the decision out of my hands.

‘What?’ he called gruffly.

‘Sorry, Teece.’ The voice was seriously apologetic. ‘It’s important.’

‘Coming.’

I grabbed his hand. ‘Will you do this for me, Teece?’

I was asking a lot. Too much! But then, just coming here was that.

He picked up the disk and put it in his pocket. His faded blue eyes filled with longing. ‘This time you’ll
really
owe me,’ he said softly. ‘And I’m collecting.’

‘Sure.’ I smiled brightly. Bravado.

 

When he left I scrounged through his closet for something to wear and found an oversized T-shirt printed with a faded 3D holo of the Beach Boys.

I took my tank top from the side of the bath and slipped it on. Then I donned the T. It covered my backside - just. But there was no point in trying to wear any of his pants. We weren’t even close to being the same shape. I retrieved the wiper disk and forced my swollen feet into my boots.

Uggh! Not a good look. Or a good feel.

Pushing vanity aside, I smoothed my hair, picked up my case and went to find Teece.

He was sitting in his comm cache looking tetchy.

The face on the screen wore an expression easily as pissed off, and twice as scary.

I stepped back out of comm viewer range. Too late!

For a split second Daac’s eyes swept across me. I read things in them - surprise, annoyance, and something else . . .

From a corner vantage point I peeked at him again. He looked weak, but resolute as always.

His focus had shifted back to Teece. ‘Tomas.’

Tomas? Was I missing something here? Since when had Teece ever been called Tomas? And since when were these two on comm terms?

‘What is it, Loyl?’ Teece rasped.

Loyl?
I held my breath. What could Loyl possibly want with Teece?

Daac gazed at him: an intense, zealot’s stare.

I shivered. The look I’d come to loathe.

‘I wanted to warn you, Tomas,’ he said distinctly. ‘The Gentes are at war.’

The air seemed to rush out of the room with his words. Teece sagged forward like he’d been punched in the gut, and the present rushed away from me with a whistling roar.

 

 

I came out of it seconds later - horizontal - with Teece eyeballing me at short breath’s distance and Loyl shouting tinnily through the speakers.

‘What’s your problem?’ I blurted, panic climbing my throat.

Teece hauled me up like a sack of dried beans. ‘What’s yours?’ he demanded.

I’d just had a full-scale hallucination. Half the world was chasing me. Now the man I most lusted after and trusted least was buddy with the man I didn’t desire and trusted most.

I couldn’t stand much more.

I ripped Teece’s fingers from the shirt and without another word I bolted.

 

Wandering half naked through The Tert is not sensible. Judging by the attention I attracted, I had to do something about it or Jamon would know I was back long before I hit Torley’s.

If Stellar hadn’t already told him. Somewhere I’d stopped thinking of her as the bodyshop bitch - right about when she cried all over the winch mechanism.

I bartered Teece’s Beach Boys’ shirt for some baggy duds and a muscle top with a stoned-out Slummer and hoped it didn’t get him killed on the beach in Fishertown.

Feeling a bit less conspicuous I skirted Shadoville, avoiding the district around the pain parlour, and mulled over what to do. Though Teece had fed me, my stomach ached for food already, and I was flat-strapped for credit. There was no way I could get near my room stash unseen. Having run out on Jamon I doubted he’d be very forgiving. He might have wanted to poison me along with Stellar, but that was his pleasure. He wouldn’t let anyone else take it.

As for Lang, well, stick his name at the top of my list of people to piss off! Whatever his game, I wouldn’t play sucker for him again.

All this confusion left me nowhere to go. I’d lived pretty low before, but never totally without means or a place to sleep. It didn’t feel good.

I slipped around the back of a tequila-cum-coffee house and hunkered down between the rubbish chute and an enormous steel vat of cooking oil.

Note to self: don’t eat in here. Who knows who had their paws in the oil after hours?

Methodically, I went over what I knew. Lang had crossed me. He’d set me up to be police bait when I broke in to Razz Retribution’s home. The more I thought about it the more I was convinced Lang’s shape-changing ability had something to do with Anna Schaum’s research.

Lang wanted me convicted for the murder. And the media had locked on to the idea. Coincidence? Or was there a link between the two?

The whole deal made that old expression, between a rock and a hard place, seem like silk sheets and gel pillows.

And what of Mr ‘dispensable’ Stolowski? He’d somehow got hooked up in this courtesy of Loyl Daac.

Part of me still wanted to protect Sto. He was on the sharp end, no matter what way you looked at it. His only sin was being in the right place at the wrong time, that, and believing in a zealot. Guilt by association with Loyl-me-Daac - self proclaimed messiah and pheromone-saturated hunk.

I crouched in the alley amid the squalor, and dithered.

Daac talked of war. What in the Wombat did he mean by that? Whose war? Why war?

According to Stellar, Jamon had been preparing for it.

Questions piled on top of me faster and thicker than answers. And now, to complete my perfect picture of chaos, I was having visions. My symptoms were uncannily like the ones documented in Anna Schaum’s files, but I couldn’t see how. I wasn’t one of her lab rats.

Still, the similarities scared me. It sent a quiver through my insides, like a deep, vibrating note. My temples throbbed and my mouth began to water.

Another vision crept unasked into my head.

. . . bleeding, battered bodies. Bodies strewn across pavements, hanging from windows of buildings. Salty, metallic warmth in my mouth. Sliding down my throat
. . .

Shaking my head I forced the images away. With horror I realised I was biting my own arm, sucking at the wound for blood.

I gagged and vomited.

Then I calmly stood.

I knew one person who could help me.

Mei.

But Mei meant Stolowski. Sto meant Daac. Daac meant my insides flip-flopping and some explaining I’d rather not do.

Since when did I get to be such a coward?

I sighed and scraped vomit off the tip of my boot. There was no point in agonising over Daac and his family obsession, or which media ’Terro was going to shoot me in the back. If I didn’t stop these visions I’d save everyone the trouble and shoot myself.

One thing I can’t stand is stone-cold crazy people.

 

Mei, I figured, would be hanging out in one of two places. Either my old room or Daac’s medi-facility. Since my room was definitely off-limits unless I wanted to wind up back in Jamon’s grasp, I decided to try the other.

I reviewed my compass memory from the day I’d left Daac standing on the roof pointing to Fishertown, and set my direction. With all going well I’d be there the next day.

The Tert reeked of its usual unappealing odours and strange noises as I followed my bearing east. Normally I would take the route along the northern perimeter of Torley’s. Instead I cut south of east, passing behind the places I knew well.

The Tert had no strict divisions, apart from tolls, on the everyday walkways. The change of territory was just something you learned - like left from right. There were some obvious signs.

Muenos tended to decorate things with gaudy colours. Torley’s, Shadoville and the northern strip were easy to identify by the ratio of bars to everything else. In Plastique you found the results of some of the more extreme surgical makeovers. Where Teece lived on the eastern edge was populated with part-time Fishertown squatters who brought to it their own peculiar stench.

The way I was headed - south-east of Torley’s - increased the risk of encountering some first-grade crazies. They gravitated there inwards, acting like a buffer zone to Dis and the black heart of The Tert.

Walking along a cramped, disintegrating side path of one villa set, I felt the prickle of attention. Someone watching closely. Slowly and deliberately I peeled a broken plank from a makeshift barricade, making sure the nails were still attached. The watcher stayed with me for some time but made no move.

Shame. I was nearly back in the mood for bother.

I consciously drifted to more crowded thoroughfares and, as the day wore on, lost all sense of being followed.

By late afternoon the rear of Torley’s district gave way to rows of units with their plethora of lumpy cocoons and spider-like antennae on each roof.

I holed up on a rooftop in an empty cocoon, sleeping fitfully through the night. By mid-morning the following day I began to recognise the architecture near Daac’s patch.

Now I had to sniff out his enclave. My stomach nagged at me to feed it, but I’d gotten good at ignoring it. Palatable water was the main problem. Most people drank from communal rainwater tanks. Some had their own small ones. Clean running water was a thing of history in Tert Town.

I fought tiredness and despondency.

How could I get water, food and information with no cred?

I rifled through my case and closed it again, unable to part with anything in it - even for water. In desperation I searched the pockets of the Slummer’s pants.

Nothing. I ran my finger along the tattered seams. Tucked in the hem, I found something. I ripped it free and examined it.

I hastened to the nearest hockster, a family-run stall with a rash of feral kids hanging around it. Without preamble I asked for a price.

The trader laughed derisively.

‘I need money,’ I insisted.

He stared hard at me. I saw a glimmer of recognition.

‘You’re the one who tried to save that feral kid. I saw you on LTA. You got a damn ’Terro after you. And the Militia.’

LTA! Live To Air
. I held my breath wondering what he’d do with the knowledge.

‘My woman says youse a saint. Here. Staysharp hooks are pretty rare.’ With a big wink, he gave me a handful of cred for the tiny hook. Not a fortune, but enough for a meal and some.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll remember. What’s your name?’

‘Fleshette. But don’ you go mentioning it to anyone. You’re dangerous tackle. Keep your head down.’

I thanked him again and headed straight for a food stall.