Steel Rain (8 page)

Honjowara
-sama
pauses to take another sip of tea. Machiko feels his unrelenting gaze even though she averts her eyes, looking to the corners of the room, watching for enemies who do not show themselves. "You have heard the leaders of Nagato Combine," Honjowara
-sama
says. "They have long experience dealing with uncertain circumstances such as we now face. But you, Machiko, you are the warrior among us. What do your warrior instincts tell you now? What course of action do you recommend?"

Machiko considers this at length. She feels certain that Chairman will be as much judging the quality of her intellect, her insight, as any course of action she may suggest. She does not want to misplace her step. She has felt such shame already this night, she would rather die than fail to meet the Chairman's expectations, what must surely be expected of the senior member of the GSG.

Deeply, she breathes. She says, "I recall the words of the ancient masters, Chairman
-sama
."

"Explain."

Machiko bows. "The Chairman has said that we face many enemies. The ancient masters have written that, in such cases, the warrior must draw both sword and companion sword and assume a wide-stretched attitude. The warrior should sweep the eyes around broadly and attack. To wait is bad. Cut to the left and to the right. Drive the enemy together, and when they are piled up like fish on a string, cut them down without giving them room to move."

The Chairman seems to spend several moments considering this. "And how may this strategy be applied?"

"Chairman
-sama
," Machiko says. She bows deeply. "Draw the companion sword. While Nagato Combine's regular forces utilize routine channels of investigation, allow the GSG to utilize other resources."

"You propose to investigate?"

"To seek the truth, Chairman
-sama
. The truth of our enemy's sword."

"Do you propose to make use of gangster tactics?" Machiko breathes. She breathes twice deeply, and determines to hurl herself upon the sword of the Chairman's question as though she were already dead. "Chairman
-sama
," she says. "I propose that we are already at war. Our enemy makes war on us. We must find and defeat this enemy or face destruction."

"You speak as a warrior."

"I do."

The Chairman gazes at her with an expression like adamantine steel: hard and wholly unyielding.

It is many long moments before he gives his reply.

10

The interior of the building is like a maze, and it's dark. Neona's mirrored Porsche shades turn the black of night into twilight, but that's all. There's no lights, no jazz in the sockets. She finds a bank of public telecoms on one dusty, graffiti-layered wall, but the vidscreens are dead and the datajacks are red and brown with corrosion.

She nearly shrieks when she sees a cockroach almost half the size of her foot crawling onto her sneak. But instead she merely jumps half a meter into the air, trips, falls, then goes scrambling, gasping, fighting the fear, back the way she came.

She's safe here. Safe as it gets. The corridors are strewn with every kind of litter and devil rats rustle everywhere—
but
there's
no
people!
No cutters, no freaks. No jackboys or razor-punks to give her a hassle. No slags trying to shag her and no trogs wanting to tweak her condition a little nearer slab city.

She finds a stairway of steel rising to an elevated gangway. The rusted steel creaks and sings with every step, but the gangway holds. Both sides of the gangway are lined by narrow doors like locker doors, and abruptly she realizes where she is: a coffin hotel. Abandoned, derelict. Left for dead in the devastated wastes of the Zone. The Slag Heap. Somewhere in Long Island's County of Suffolk. It's buff perfect. Absolutely jewel. She pushes and kicks at doors till one slides open. The space beyond is a black pit, probably big enough to lie in and not a millimeter more, but that's all she needs. Exactly what she needs. She pulls the rickety metal door shut to keep the bugs out and feels her way around. There's a small tridscreen, a thin mattress, a couple of blankets, all the comforts of home and all she'd dare ask.

She sits, pulls the blankets up over her knees, and leans back into a corner. She's hungry, but she'll survive. Once she gets to the city she'll figure a way to sleaze some nuyen. The gray nylon carrypack she holds clenched to her stomach contains a macroplast-shielded Fairlight invader, and with tech like that she's sure to find work slurping data or busting code red or some fragging thing. She just needs some sleep. A minute to breathe. Stumbling through the Zone half-crazy with terror and buzzing on adrenaline wears a body out. She feels like she's been running for days. Probably running around in circles. Give her the trons of the local telecommunications grid and she'll find her way home in a flash, like the 'Lectron Angel she is, but throw her meat body into the Zone and she'll freak. She ain't meant for this kinda squat.

She closes her eyes and suddenly she's in a dream, the nightmare that's been looping through her head ever since she met this slag called Gamma. As real as simsense and as chilling as roaches climbing her spine. Someone's got her tied down on a bed of cables writhing like snakes and he's prying open her skull. Microtonic tools clack and clatter and whiz and the air smells of solder and burning skin and she feels the truth turning her stomach and churning through her bowels. He's putting a deck in her head—
a
cranial
cyberdeck!
Now it opens a plate in her skull every time she needs an upgrade, new memory, more processing power. Now it's risking frying her brain every time she test-drives a new component. No way,
no
fragging
way!

She wakes up shrieking.

And abruptly cuts it short.

The gangway outside is rattling. The door to her little cranny crashes open and there bathed in a pale shade of moonlight is one of Gamma's cutters, a big mother-reaming razorpunk like out of a combat biker trid. Neona squeezes back into her corner and looks frantically around, but there's only one way out. She searches the dark, her mind, her pockets for any kind of a weapon, but she already knows she's got nothing.

"Kept me up all effing night," says the cutter. "Let's go, jackhead."

"Don't... don't hurt me," Neona whimpers.

"Move it, slitch!"

She's shaking so hard she can't hardly stand up. The cutter reaches through the doorway and catches the back of her neck and jerks her ahead, through the doorway and onto the gangway. She stumbles and gasps and snivels so loud it echoes, and then turns and rams the hard macroplast corner of the Invader's casing into the cutter's groin. Terror makes her strong and quick.

The cutter shouts in pain, and he roars "
Fraggin
BIFF!
" but her feet are slapping the gangway to match the pace of her hammering heart and she's down the stairs to ground level before she has time to think about breathing.

She hears other shouts, rattling equipment, pounding boots. Which way? Which
way
out
? She runs and runs, tearing down passageways, scrambling around corners, banging through doors, tripping and sprawling over mountains of litter and junk. Moonlight glares into her eyes. She scrambles through a jagged hole in a concrete wall and then tumbles down a pile of debris.

When she wakes, she's lying on her back. Her breath is rasping and her nose feels broken. She can't move. Her head's pounding like it's under a fifty-ton pile driver. The crescent moon fills her eyes, burning like a white phosphorus incendiary charge. She can't see the hands holding her wrists and ankles, but through the burning glare of the moon she can just make out the slim figure towering over her, leaning on his mage's wand like a cane.

"Why did you run?" Gamma asks.

She struggles, tries to break free, tries twisting her head around to catch sight of her Fairlight Invader, but it's no use. The hands are too strong, the moon too bright. Already, she can feel Gamma's fingers walking up her spine like a thousand little roaches, forming into a glove, a glove that gives a little tug and makes her straighten her head, a glove that squeezes down slowly, slowly, slowly, till she's sure her skull's going to split under pressure, and the pressure builds and builds, till it's too much, too much to withstand.

"Angel, why did you run?" Gamma asks.

She nearly blacks out. It's hard to think. Hard to remember. The pressure eases a little, but it hurts. Oh, frag,
it
hurts'
. She'd do anything to stop that hurting. Anything at all.

"We have an agreement."

She's grunting, trying to answer, to nod.

"Haven't I treated you well?"

"Sorry . . ." She snivels. "I'm sorry . . ."

"After everything I've done for you."

The pressure eases. She's panting, gasping, breathing. She remembers, too. Everything he's done. When she was bone busted and broke, Gamma took her off the hard-core streets of the Bronx, gave her Matrix work. He gave her space in his doss. He's lining her pockets with fifty nuyen an hour. Why did she run from him? Is she crazy? Brain-fried? She's had it worse, a lot worse. Shick, Gamma's treated her jewel. "You're an ungrateful little wretch."

It's true, but so hard to admit. "Always been . . ."

The glare of the moon subsides. She catches sight of Gamma's head, the buzzcut hair, the impassive Asian features. He smiles softly, faintly, but she can see the subtle sadness in his eyes, the hurt from her betrayal. "I understand," he says in a voice grown tender. "You've had a great deal of hardship. Hard luck. You're so used to running, slot and run, isn't that right? You're afraid to stop running even when you're safe. You're always afraid Mr. Johnson might be just a step behind you."

The mere mention gives her a shiver of nerves. She steals a quick glance around with her eyes. It's been a couple of years already, but she's still running from that job in Miami. How could she have forgotten that? Her Mr. Johnson turned out to be dirty. The Miami job was a setup. She got some wiz tech out of the deal, but her chummers all got dusted. She barely escaped with her life. She made it through Philly, Baltimore, New York City. Now here she is on Long Island, the Zone. Hiding with Gamma. Hiding in the Zone. Her and Gamma and his cutters.

What was she thinking? She's got jack for brains. Run from Gamma? Is she blasted? totally scrambled? Gamma's the only chance she's got. Gamma said so and it's true. "Sorry," she blurts. "I'm sorry."

"Let's go back to the doss, all right?"

She chokes back a sob. "Jewel."

The cutters help her up. She's a little unsteady. She feels like she's got bruises all over her body and a trickle of blood slips out of her nose. One of the cutters hands her the Fairlight Invader, a little dusty but no worse for wear. Gamma cradles the back of her head and gently presses a kerchief to her nostrils till the trickling blood comes to an end.

"I really care for you a great deal," he says softly.

Neona closes her eyes, and whispers, "I know."

The Leyland-Rover van waits in the street, just on the other side of a pile of rubble. Neona moves through the sliding side door to one of the bench seats behind the bucket up front. Gamma sits beside her, slips an arm around her shoulders. It's a comforting feeling. Reassuring. She's going home, and she's exhausted. All she wants is sleep. One of the cutters takes the wheel. The others take the bench in the rear and the van starts humming, moving out.

It's a long slow ride. Around piles of debris cast down by crumbling buildings. Through streets full of burned-out hulks and stripped-down junk. Past forests of withered lifeless trees and oceans of gnarled twisting vines. Ponds and puddles with a stench so strong it burns the eyes. Whirling dust demons. The cutter at the wheel sends them banging through ruts and potholes and bouncing over sprawling debris, but he does not turn on the headlights. The fog curls and flows everywhere. Never shine headlights into the fog, not this fog. It attracts bad things.

A low brick wall appears on the left. It supports a sign. An old black sign with faded white lettering. Neona's seen it in daylight and knows how it reads: "King P Psy Ctr." She doesn't know what that means. She knows that the buildings lying just beyond, on both sides of the rutted road, look ancient, medieval, big brick castles with bars on the windows and metal gratings over the doors. Maybe a hundred years ago, this was some kind of psychic research center, or maybe a gov lab. It looks like the kind of place where a person could scream and scream and never be heard. A place where razorguys in black synthleather burn holes into people's brains with burning metal brands.

It gives her shivers.

But it's safe. It's home.

They pull around to the rear of a building and park. One of the cutters tugs open a heavy metal door and Neona precedes them all inside, down a flight of stairs to a broad open space: the "commons," they call it. Mostly it's just doss space for the cutters Gamma keeps around: cots, a table for eating, and other accommodations. Neona's telecom and
couch are right in the middle of things.

As she enters, Neona spots the only other girl she's seen with the group. Her name is Poppy and she's kind of a cutter, with cybereyes and hand razors. She's also Gamma's girlfriend. Now, though, she's lying on a cot on her back like she's unconscious and her face is a purplish mass of bruises.