SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (11 page)

“Oh, you’re fresh.”

“Compared to what?”

The Jade points to herself. “Life.”

“Congratulations.” Irritated and monotone.

“Are you looking for work?” the Jade persists with conversation.

“No offence, but we’re not really in the same line of business.”

The Jade misunderstands. “You can specify girls only.”

Silver suppresses a laugh. “That’s not really the problem, but thanks anyway.”

“Money’s money,” the Jade insists.

Silver is disturbed by her nonchalance. She can’t be more than twenty-years-old, and she’d be pretty, were it not for the garish make-up and the Handler-provided, minimalist trashy clothing. Fresh, fingertip shaped bruises on her arms and around her neck, below the electronic collar, tell a story of a recent work-related conflict. Her eyes are bloodshot and dry from the contact lenses she’s wearing. Probably daily lenses, left in for weeks to try and save money.

Electric green.

Silver doesn’t see the appeal, but in the Jade community, changing your eye color is no different than changing your socks. A saddening symptom of self-hatred, it’s another vain attempt to make themselves unrecognizable. People so desperate to forget who they are, or were, or who they are fast becoming.

Tell-tale track marks on this Jade’s inner arm mean that she probably hasn’t slept without the aid of barbiturates in a long time. Considered a practical necessity in the Fringe District, barbiturates carry the lowest street value of any illegal substance, and they flow freely throughout all branches of the community. Synthesized from the urea of Chimera and acetic acid derived from alcohol, it’s easy to mass produce and can be made into anything: pill, powder or liquid. In short, you can swallow it, snort it, smoke it, or shoot it. The latter is the most dangerous, especially for untrained hands, and it’s strictly a last resort for those needing a more instant and long-lasting hit.

In this case, Silver suspects that Codeine is the most likely culprit. It’s a pretty basic, entry level drug of choice for the beginner user, and Silver would venture this Jade hasn’t yet fallen much deeper into the abuse cycle.

Most begin with mild barbiturate downers, but over time and as the strength of the dose increases—or a more potent drug is experimented with—they need the uppers just to function. Amphetamines, cocaine and MDMA are among the three most popular—courtesy of dealers like Trip.

Her head still pounding, Silver wonders if the Jade might give up the name of her dealer. Best case scenario, she’d find Trip. Worst case scenario, she’d get some pain relief.

Win-win.

Before Silver figures out a way to broach the subject, the Jade’s client pulls out of her and flips her over so that he can fuck her from behind. She rolls with the motion and ends up bent over the table, resting on her elbows in front of Silver.

“Hi again,” she smiles.

Her breasts are almost popping out from the tattered bra and the torn tank-top that might’ve once concealed them, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it.

She glances down at the open file on the table. “Whatchya reading?”

Without waiting for an answer the Jade spins it around to face her, getting only a brief glimpse of its contents before Silver quickly pulls it back and closes it—revealing the Omega emblems and Police Division logo on the front.

Big mistake.

“Holy shit, you’re PD?” the Jade squeals.

Silver rolls up the file and stuffs it into her back pocket.

“I’m a … consultant.”

Despite being completely trashed, the Jade can still read between those lines.

“Who ya looking for?”

No time to answer that.

The Jade cries out in pain, and Silver’s eyes leap upward to see the Hunter forcing the distal end of a Chimera femur into her cunt.

“Hey!” Silver stands up to face him, finally drawing his attention away from his plaything.

She can tell by the look on the Hunter’s face that he recognizes her, but the only clue she has to his identity is the name emblazoned on his Kevlar vest.

Grinstead.

Silver is none the wiser. Can’t be very good at his job, she assumes, since she never before had occasion to remember his name nor even to see his face.

Unrepentant, he glares at Silver with how-dare-you eyes and prepares to proceed regardless. That is, until she steps in front of him and wraps her hand around his wrist, holding him back with a strength that takes him by surprise.

“Perhaps you didn’t understand me, but I told you to stop.”

At first, Grinstead says nothing. He just regards her with a drunken frown, before finally breaking into a smile and poking at her chest with a filthy, bloodstained finger.

“You’re not my boss.” The smile becomes a grin. “Not anymore.”

Smugness is one of Silver’s many pet hates, and tonight her patience is worn thin. Alcohol fueling her temper, she yanks the Chimera femur out of his hand and cracks him in the face with her elbow, breaking his nose.           

“You think I need a badge to be better than you?” She looms over him.

Gushing blood, Grinstead tilts his head back, trying to stem the flow.

“No, no, no,” Silver corrects him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you never to do that? You can choke that way. You’re supposed to tilt your head forward, not backward. Like this …”

Silver reaches around the back of his neck and bends him over, slamming his face down hard onto the tabletop while simultaneously driving her knee into his solar plexus.

“Well, maybe not quite like that.” She pushes him to the floor. “I might’ve improvised a little bit.”

Crunched up in a ball on the floor, Grinstead passes out.

In the kerfuffle, Silver’s Hunter Division dog tags shake loose from beneath her shirt, and the Jade sees them now for the first time.

“Hunter …” she whispers.

A lone pair of slowly clapping hands disrupts the awkward silence the room has fallen into, and Silver glances up to see a man—the Jade’s Handler, presumably—walking casually toward them.

He is about the same age as Silver, but built like a tank—tall and wide, and heavy.

“Bravo, Hunter.” He points down at Grinstead, addressing Silver. “He’ll never see one of my girls again.”

“Is that your way of saying ‘thank you’?”

“Not quite.”

Now within arm’s reach, the Handler punches Silver in the face, almost knocking her unprepared frame completely off her feet.

“You owe me,” he growls at her.

Silver swallows her own blood and waggles her jaw to make sure it’s not broken.

“I did you a favor.”

“By losing me repeat business?”

“If you’ve got no girls, you’ve got no business, math whizz. I was protecting your merchandise.” Silver straightens herself up. “If anything, you owe me a security fee.”

He raises his fist to strike her again, but the Jade quickly slips in between them.

“Please, don’t. She was only trying to help.”

A small trickle of blood running down her inner thigh distracts her Handler from his assault against Silver. Perhaps it alerts him to the potential damage Grinstead’s actions may have caused. Perhaps he just has better things to do. Either way, his flexed muscles relax and he takes a step away from them both.

“Go clean yourself up. Your next one’s in fifteen minutes.” He turns to Silver. “And if I ever see you in here again, you have my word, I’ll kill you.”

He pantomimes a gun firing at Silver’s head and turns away, while the Jade scurries off in the direction of the washroom. Silver, too exhausted for any more of this bullshit, snatches up her hold-all and the bottle of vodka, more than happy to agree to his terms.

In the street outside she tries to formulate a plan of action in her cluttered head, but fails. Shards of broken thoughts rattle around inside the hollow balloon of her brain, and it feels like it could pop at any moment. The Handler’s hit shook more fragments of sanity loose, and her headache is now a full blown migraine.

“Pssst,” a voice murmurs out from somewhere in the darkness.

Silver looks around, but doesn’t see the voice’s point of origin.

“Hey!” Whispered. “Hunter!”

It’s the Jade, leaning out through a broken pane of glass in the bar’s washroom window, beckoning Silver closer.

Keeping her voice hushed, “You’re looking for Trip, right?”

“You’re a fast reader.”

The Jade shakes her head, snorting. “Yeah, right. I recognize his face, is all.”

“You know where he is?”

“I know where he does business. My Handler, Rat, had me ripped a few months ago after I got in some trouble with a Fisher.”

Fishers.

Police Division Agents who patrol the Fringe District looking for Dodgers.

“Why are you telling me this?” Silver frowns.

The Jade shrugs. “You didn’t have to help me, but you did anyway.”

“Nasty habit, I’ve got.”

“Yeah, well, habits like those are rare around here. Most other Hunters would have joined in.”

Sadly, that’s true. Fringer life is frequently disregarded by the Sentinel District elite.

“Well, I’m not a Hunter now, am I?” Silver reminds her.

“Hunters are born, not made. Isn’t that what you folks say?”

That’s true, too. Once a Hunter, always a Hunter.

Silver doesn’t need to answer her. The Jade passes her a torn sheet of toilet paper, smeared with her own blood and a note scribbled in eye liner.

An address.

Kind of.

It’s a picture of a rectangular building with some vague directions, and a few landmarks noted in diagram form. In the corner, a stick figure labeled ‘Anna’ is waving.

“That’s me,” the Jade smiles. “I’m wishing you luck.”

“Thank you.” Silver carefully pockets the tissue, somewhat hesitant to leave. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ve managed, all these years.”

Rat bangs on the locked door to the washroom, making Anna jump.

“Anna! Are you still in there?! Hurry the fuck up!”

“I’ve gotta go,” Anna whispers, and slips quietly away from the window. “Don’t come back here, ever. He’s not kidding when he says he’ll kill you.”

A second later she’s gone.

“See ya,” Silver whispers to the empty air.

She looks again at the toilet paper map. It looks like a warehouse, near the westernmost banks of Old World Fresh Kills Creek. A quiet, less residential area in the Buffer Zone, perfect for manufacturing drugs and dropping ripped corpses into the ocean.

First, though, one more errand …

Taking a slightly longer route home, Silver seeks out a small one-stop shop she remembers visiting a year or so earlier. Throughout their Hunter Division years she and Alex frequently traded Chimera to the butcher shop owners, and had managed to forge a few good affiliations. On one occasion she’d miscalculated the Ketamine dose, and the animal woke up en-route.