EMPATHY: Part 2
The elevator didn’t work.
Gina struggled up the stairs in Bomber’s wake, picking her way through a maze of ancient beer bottles, discarded syringes and chunks of fallen plaster. Frayed electrical cables and cracked pipes created a constant hazard to unwary foreheads. Dirty white paint peeled off the walls in patches as big as a man. Flakes of it floated everywhere, stinging her eyes and prickling the back of her throat.
Gina was on a first-name basis with poverty, but this was something else.
She sneezed into the sleeve of her borrowed suit and wiped her nose. Worries still plagued her mind. She tugged on Bomber’s leg and said, “Won’t they come looking for us here?”
Slowing down for a moment, Bomber let her catch up as he scanned the way ahead. “Yaks don’t come to Shanghai,” he said absently. “Triads shifted them out of here a long ways back. Lot of killing, lot of bad blood still around. They still fight over it sometimes.”
“And the Russians?”
“Don’t have any resources anywhere close. It’ll take them a few days to track us down, more than we need.” He glanced over his shoulder down the dark stairwell. Even here, he still had that annoying sense of calm about him, something Gina envied immensely. He remarked, “Y’know, for a Street girl, you’re not very turf-wise.”
Gina looked away to hide a flush of embarrassment. “I don’t get out much, okay?” she said sharply. Then she sighed and muttered an apology under her breath. “Are we there yet?”
He didn’t respond, just led the way onto a small landing between stairs, and started to climb outside through an open window. Though on second glance, Gina wouldn’t call it so much ‘open’ as ‘gone’. The glass, the frame, even the hinges were either stolen or rotted away.
Gina followed him without batting an eyelash. Craziness seemed to be the order of the day; she just thanked God that the residual Spice in her system was finally wearing off. It was a nasty trip to feel other people’s innermost thoughts when you couldn’t even keep your own emotions straight.
Across a rusted pile of metal that may once been an emergency staircase, she slipped through another open window into the next building, an old pile of red bricks with a flashing neon sign on the side. This was apparently written in the ‘giant pink’ style of Cantonese, its meaning forever lost on Gina, but the blinking lights reminded her of her own coffin at Easy Hotel. ‘Coffin’ was certainly the right word, and she amazed herself with a twinge of homesickness for the place. A book, a pile of warm covers and a familiar roof over her head. If only.
The flat was dark, dank and as big as a palace to anyone used to living in coffins. Bomber hit the light switch, shrugged out of his blazer and threw it over the sofa, revealing the black leather holster under his armpit. Gina caught a glimpse of a sleek stealth pistol with silencer attached. She’d seen enough hits on people — as a hired eye or just a random witness — to know a bit about weapons, enough to be very aware what they could do to someone, and guns gave her the creeps worse than spiders.
“Help yourself to whatever’s around,” he said. “We’re safe enough here for the night, but tomorrow we gotta move.”
She hated him for sounding so unafraid, for telling her what to do, for being the only one with a clue, but she was too hungry to blow up at anyone right now.
The kitchen could barely be seen underneath the piles of dirty dishes and half-eaten fast food. The faucet kept up a constant drip-drip, drip-drip, and she decided that Bomber’s refrigerator could very well be the oldest piece of functioning technology on the planet. The monotone growl of its cooling unit gave jet engines a run for their money. Inside, it contained a stunning variety of plastic-wrapped microwave meals, dehydrated noodles that could survive doomsday, and a lonely six-pack of Chinese beer.
She grabbed one of the cans, took a sip, and found a pan to boil some water in.
“Do you want anything?” she called.
“No, thanks,” he said. “Just here to pick up some stuff.”
Thank you for the information, Mr. Talkative, she grumbled in the privacy of her own mind. Glad I’m being kept in the loop around here.
She sighed, went over to the sink and splashed some water on her face. The endless distress and mental exhaustion were taking their toll on her. Yawning, she washed away her make-up and turned off the stove. A look in the mirror satisfied her that she was ready to pass out with dignity. Damned fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, girl. What are we going to do now?
The flashback hit her like a bolt of lightning, as sudden as it was overpowering. The twisted city loomed all around her. It was a giant strobe light blasting straight through her eyelids, flashing back and forth between the ash streets and Gabriel’s smile, faster and faster until the two merged into one image — an evil grinning face stretched from horizon to horizon, lording over the dead and wasted landscape. She cried out.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor, and Bomber was holding her. “Gina?” he asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”
“I . . .” she struggled, mouth dry as bone. Her head spun like a blender, up and down and left and right changing by the microsecond until she hung on to her sanity for dear life. Even blinking her eyes sent stabs of white-hot pain into her frontal lobe. She clutched her head and whined into Bomber’s shoulder, “I don’t know.”
Gina nursed her headache in bed while Bomber made up a place for himself on the sofa. She sipped rehydrated tea and vainly tried to make sense of it all. The entire night was starting to blur together in her mind, a sketchbook of colours all running into a dark mess. The only thing she could remember clearly was the burnt city and its poisoned sky.
The bedroom had no door, missing along with its hinges, leaving only a dark patch on the once-red carpet. It was long worn to pink by the tread of many feet, and Gina wondered how long Bomber had lived here. He was a quiet boy, she noticed. He walked in on her reverie without knocking or saying a word, examining the label on a small bottle of pills. He glanced up, meeting Gina’s eyes with an unassuming look, and set the bottle down on the rickety plastic nightstand.
“These might help you sleep,” he said. “Haven’t got much else here. I move around a lot.”
“If I had a place as big as this, I’d never leave,” Gina replied with a slightly forced smile. She didn’t feel much up to chit-chat, but a small part of her insisted it was required after all he’d done for her. Like drag her into this mess, another part of her noted. She really appreciated that.
“Yeah, well, a place you’re never at is great for throwin’ people off your trail.” He shrugged and echoed her smile. “How you feelin’, girl?”
“Never better,” she said sarcastically. “Could kill for a smoke, though.” He laughed like he meant it. Sometimes she had to remind herself that she was here on business instead of living out some kind of bizarre dream. And speaking of business . . . “Am I still getting paid?”
“Good question. One I ask myself all the time.”
A sour smile crossed her lips. “I see. So the Lamborghini . . .”
“It’s mine, just don’t show it to the cops,” he muttered. “Hey, listen, I know you’re pretty humped right now, but I think we need to start askin’ ourselves some serious questions. Like what the hell happened back there?”
“I’d tell you if I knew.”
“You gotta know, girl! You’re the telepath, right now you’re the only one with any answers at all. I watched the whole op on camera and it doesn’t make any goddamn sense to me. I just knew somethin’ was up when Gabriel started talkin’ into his collar, right after you left the table.”
She sighed. “Look, you know how, if you’re smart enough, you can hide your thoughts from a weak third eye? You just make yourself think about other stuff and lead them down these little mental dead-ends, diversions, while you finish whatever you’re doing. Make them lose the signal between the noise.”
“I’ve heard,” he said. “Never took the stuff myself.”
“Well, you’re lucky.” She reached for the nightstand and sipped a glass of tepid water. “We all lose it eventually. Just go crazy. Fast or slow, old hands or greenies, it happens to everyone. That’s why they pay us. I’ve been on the Street three years and I’ve never seen the same crowd survive from one week to the next. Anyway.” Gina didn’t much want to ride that train of thought right now. She was depressed enough already. “Yeah, it was a little like that, and a little like trying to read someone on heroin or LSD. Bad acid trip.”
“Was he on third eye?” Bomber asked, and she noticed his urgent tone. He was a perceptive one all right.
Gina furrowed her brow, forcing herself to think back. “I–” she hesitated, “I don’t know. Usually you can feel it, y’know? When someone else has got theirs open, it’s like feedback on an old microphone, the same mind-stuff echoing back and forth. You know what I mean?”
“No.” He added a sympathetic smile as if to say it wasn’t her fault. “So you weren’t getting any feedback from him?”
“No,” she said. She closed her eyes and screwed up her face as she strained to remember. “It was like . . . like being pushed under water. Drowning inside him. I saw some stuff, some pretty messed-up stuff . . .”
Drawing the covers up to her chin, she told the story as best she could remember it. The room seemed to grow cold around her. She started to shiver when she recounted the sudden white blankness, and Bomber got her another blanket.
She finished, “. . . And then this voice said, inside my head, ‘You shouldn’t do that.’“
He nodded without expression. “Never heard of anything like that before.” Before Gina could respond, he glanced at his watch and abruptly stood up. “Better get some sleep while you can. We got to move early in the morning. We’ll sort all this out then. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said, and curled up under the covers while he switched off the lights.
She awoke with a strange hand clamped over her mouth. The lights were out, turning the whole flat pitch-black. Not a shred of moonlight, no echo of neon nor even a single LED penetrated the thick black shutters over the windows. There was nothing she might use to see the man breathing into her face, smelling of sweat and cheap aftershave. A rush of panic blasted into her system. She wanted to reach for her Mk5 but it was in the nightstand drawer, out of her reach. She let out a muffled cry and started to struggle.
“Quiet,” came Bomber’s voice, a whisper in the darkness. “There’s three guys at the door and they ain’t friendly. We gotta go. I’m gonna take my hand away now, but you have to be quiet as the grave. D’you understand?”
Her heart thumped in her throat as she listened, and finally she gave a small nod. Bomber let go of her and she sensed him moving away without sound. When he spoke again it seemed to come from the doorway.
“They’ll try jimmyin’ the lock first. That’ll take ’em a while. Get dressed and get your stuff, fast, but don’t make a sound.”
Gina obeyed as best she could, tiptoed across the bare carpet, the fabric strange and unfamiliar beneath her feet. Distant sounds of metal scratching against metal. Lockpicks. She slipped into her borrowed suit, collected her purse and the Mk5, then whispered, “Ready!”
A hand came out of nowhere and took hers, leading her through the darkness and out the same way they’d come in. She dreaded going back into the mouldy stairwell, but the only alternative was to stay behind and get killed.
The shutters rustled as they climbed out into the night. The first light to hit her face was the reassuring pink glow of the Cantonese sign, whatever the hell it meant. It took the threatening, alien edge off the situation, pulled all the strange events around her back into the real world — the world she knew.
To her surprise, instead of going into the stairwell, Bomber led her down a series of rusty metal steps, each one a tiny death-trap, to an even rustier landing on the second floor. “Can’t go out the front,” he explained, “they might have spotters. We’re takin’ the emergency exit.”
He shone a small flashlight around the landing until he found what he was looking for. Someone had tied a length of dirty steel cable to the landing and let it dangle all the way to the ground. Bomber didn’t hesitate, he simply threw himself over the side and shimmied down the cable as if he were born to it.
Not to be outdone, Gina went right after him, clambering down to the ground with tomboy ease. Bomber stopped a moment to admire her, then pulled her through the alley at a breakneck pace, dodging potholes and the occasional rat on their way to the back street. At the corner he signalled for her to wait while he checked things out, moving to peek round into the street. This was their only way out of the dead-end alley, so they had to be careful.
“One on the street, one in the car,” Bomber said as he pulled back into the alley. “Fuck.” He worked his mouth as if to spit. “No way to get past ’em without bein’ noticed.”
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“Diversion. How d’you feel about bein’ a streetwalker for the next, say, two minutes?”
Gina scowled at him. “Finally, a chance to use my degree.”
“Hey, a girl with your looks could make a fortune.” He grinned. “Walk soft. Don’t give ’em a good look at your face, they’ll have pictures from the club.”
“Yes sir,” she growled, then walked into the open whilst pretending to straighten her bra. The two Russians at the corner took immediate notice. Gina plucked at her hair, rummaged around in her purse as if putting away some money, seized the opportunity to put on her faded old sunglasses. Now all I need is some bubble gum to chew, she thought venomously.
Putting on a vapid smile, she exaggerated her hips as she walked down to the corner. The man on the street flicked away his cigarette, slipped his hands into the pockets of his long grey coat. His eyes followed Gina every step of the way. His skin was like rough-hewn granite, lined and pallid grey. Gold teeth sparkled in a nasty grin half-hidden below his thick brown moustache.
“‘Evening, boys,” she called, winking over her glasses at the one in the car. “What’re you doing out this late? Looking for a good time?”
“No thank you,” the street man said. “We are on business.”
Gina pursed her lips and pouted, undoing the top button of her jacket. Then she put her arms together in front of her, leaned forward until the too-tight fabric around her chest was ready to burst. “You sure? I can show you around, I know all the best spots.”
“Sorry. Other time.” He was about to turn away when he stopped himself, squinting at her as he studied her face more intently. “Please to be taking off sunglasses.”
“Why? Don’t you like ’em?” she asked nonchalantly. Under the surface, her heart jumped into her throat, pounding like a drum. “I’ll take ’em off for you in private if you want, sugar.”
His arms tensed underneath his coat. If he had a weapon in there, he wasn’t hiding it well. He stepped towards her making himself tall and menacing. “No. Now.”
She snapped, “Hey, step off, buddy! Don’t make me–“
Things happened so quickly that she had no time to comprehend it all. The Russian’s arm shot out to grab her wrist, his other hand appearing from his pocket filled with a cheap silver revolver. She cringed as his fingers locked around her bare wrist, cold and clammy. She heard his voice muttering commands at her to be quiet. She felt his blood spatter across her face as his forehead exploded.
She cried out and staggered backwards, watching him fall. A rush of air whistled past her ears. Sound of glass breaking. By the time she could begin to run away, the Russians were no longer moving. Each man had one bullet in the head and one in the heart.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. She caught herself against the wall, sick to her stomach, while Bomber appeared out of the shadows by the corner, unscrewing a silencer from the pistol in his hand. His movements were quick and precise, his footsteps calm and assured like a predator. His face could’ve been carved out of stone for all the expression it showed.
“They’ll come investigate when these two don’t report in,” he said tersely. He offered her no sympathy. Nor did he show any remorse for the two men he executed, just two inert lumps of meat spilling their blood across the cracked asphalt. “There’s a place we can hide a few blocks from here, if we hurry.”
“Who the hell are you?” she near-screamed, putting all her fear and horror into the words.
Bomber responded only with a grim smile and pulled her along.
The warehouse where Bomber stopped was closed off with a heavy door of reinforced steel, recessed deep into the concrete. To a casual observer the blank structure would seem abandoned, but Bomber went straight for the dirty fuse box next to the door. There was a small intercom grille inside, and he pushed the little red button underneath.
A crackle of static. Then a distorted voice buzzed, “State your business.”
“Hey, Jock, it’s Simon. Open up.” He was met with stony silence. Finally, Bomber sighed and said, “I need a favour.”
Seconds ticked away without a response. Gina wanted to get out of here, exposed and out of place. Anyone who stood talking to a blank warehouse door for long would attract unwanted attention. Finally, the latch unlocked with a heavy click, and Bomber led Gina into a cramped entry room with another similar door, like an airlock. The outer door closed automatically behind them. It was hot, stuffy, and so tight that Gina felt like she was choking.
The voice echoed all around them now; it seemed to come from all directions at once, electronic and alien. “You know the rules, Simon. No exceptions. Leave the armoury at the door.”
Bomber snorted, then took his pistol out and deposited it in an open locker recessed into the wall. The silencer followed it, as did a small pocket knife he kept in his boot. He looked up at the camera and smiled innocently.
“Who’s the girl?”
“A guest. Listen, Jock, it’d be a hell of a lot easier to explain all this in person.”
“Alright, come on down,” the voice said. The inner door unlocked and swung open. Bomber pushed through and glanced over his shoulder to see if Gina was following.
“Jock can get a little nervous,” he whispered to her by way of explanation. “Doesn’t trust me.”
The voice barked a laugh, buzzing with distortion. “I don’t trust anyone, Simon, you know that.”
Gina could believe it. It was all she could do not to gape. The inside of the warehouse was carefully arranged to seem abandoned, with lots of empty cardboard boxes and long-decaying crates, but Gina recognised the silvery nanofilm spread across strategic surfaces, as well as the glint of lenses hidden in every corner. There was a whole network of laser trip-wires, crowded in so tight that a mouse couldn’t sneak through undetected.
The place was wrapped up tighter than a nuclear missile silo.
A Chinese man in jeans and a red button-up shirt stood at the door leading below. Black hair tumbled down to his waist, and a large shotgun rested securely in his arms. Bomber smiled and slapped him on the back as if the two were old friends.
“How ya doin’, Stoney?” Bomber asked, half-joking. “Still watchin’ the door, huh? Did you miss me?”
“Always, Mr. Simon,” the man replied without moving a single muscle in his face. “I will call ahead and tell the Emperor you are coming.”
Bomber nodded, patted the man’s shoulder, and led Gina down the stairs into the bowels of the warehouse. Stoney shut the door behind them and followed, muttering Cantonese into his collar.
The Emperor. The words still echoed in Gina’s ears. Everyone in the City knew about the Emperor, the most powerful Triad lord north of Hong Kong, supposedly a descendant of ancient royalty. The Street was a largely Yakuza-owned territory, so Gina had heard all about the Emperor. He was seven feet tall and breathed fire, he was a humpbacked cripple in a wheelchair, he wore the eyeballs of his enemies as a trophy around his neck, he wore women’s clothing, he was toothless and had his men chew his meals for him, and he had a taste for sinking his razor fangs into babies right off the spit. It was a favourite topic in Japanese-friendly bars. The only clear fact was that the Yakuza were afraid of him.
“Leave the talkin’ to me, okay?” whispered Bomber. “Don’t say a word unless someone asks you a direct question. Best way to keep breathin’. I’m here on credit, and these folks don’t play nice. So we gotta play their game.”
A final door at the bottom, just as heavy and armoured as the others, swung open. They passed through it into a dark room gleaming with metallic reflections.
Now Gina did gape. The dimly-lit room throbbed and pulsed with activity like a military headquarters, more Chinamen whispering into their headsets and throwing elaborate hand signals at each other in between hammering on their keyboards. A giant holographic cube flickered in the middle of the room, showing something Gina didn’t recognise or comprehend. Several men stood watching it, but it was the one at the controls that drew her attention — a bald Chinese man with a long, stereotypical Fu Manchu moustache, dressed entirely in black. Gina read people pretty well even without her third eye, and this man emitted an unmistakable aura of command.
He stroked his moustache as he read the hologram. Paid no mind to her or Bomber until they were standing at his elbow. Then she noticed one of the men at the Emperor’s side, certainly the odd one out of this crowd — the lone black man in a room full of Chinese people. He was thin and had skin like milk chocolate, blue eyes framed by thick glasses and a slicked-back blonde mop on his head, literally drowned in hair gel. Putting voice and appearance together, Gina decided this had to be Jock.
It was the Chinaman who spoke. “Simon,” he said simply, as if tasting the name. “How interesting to see you.”
“Emperor,” Bomber replied with a slight bow of his head.
The Emperor nodded and turned his attention back to the holo-display. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about these Russians who are currently blowing holes in my city, would you, Simon?” He smiled thinly without deigning to look at Bomber. “I somehow suspect you would. And I think you’d care to explain.”
Gina followed the Emperor’s gaze into the cube. She saw blood on a distinctly Russian face, tongue lolling out of his mouth in death, a metal garroting wire wrapped around his neck. Her stomach heaved before the camera swung away, showing other bodies, some Chinese. Faint sound of gunshots.
“They were after us,” said Bomber. “Me and the girl. We were not the aggressors. How did you get involved?”
“I know everything that goes on in my city. When men enter my territory in force, I send some of mine to ask their purpose. These responded with violence.”
“I’m sorry.” Silence stretched out further and further. Gina could see the Emperor starting to get angry, cheek muscles working beneath the olive skin. Then Bomber added, “They’re with the Yakuza.”
The Emperor whipped around, fire in his eyes, and his arm snapped out like a striking snake seizing Bomber by the throat. His other hand whipped a pistol out of some hidden holster, drove the barrel hard into Bomber’s nose. The trigger was halfway down before the Emperor got himself back under control. With some effort, his face resumed its passive expression and returned to studying the hologram, muttering threats and curses in Cantonese. The gun never wavered from Bomber’s face. “Speak very quickly, Simon. You have run afoul of these . . . men? You led them here?”
“I have.” And Bomber laid the whole story out for him, beginning to end, while Gina remained silent and afraid.
The Emperor was no longer angry by the time Bomber had finished, only sat at the table with a thoughtful expression. These must be his personal quarters, Gina concluded. The artificial creek filled with expensive fish and water plants was a dead giveaway. The table looked like a solid block of polished silver, and the silverware seemed genuinely ancient. No expense was wasted to try and impress the Emperor’s guests.
“Quite an amusing tale, Simon,” he said. “You are either a master storyteller or an accomplished liar. And I already know you’re an accomplished liar.” This last was accompanied by a frosty smile.
“Every word of it is true, my lord.” Bomber returned the Emperor’s implacable stare. “I have no proof other than the girl, and the people who are now after me.”
The Emperor threw him a hard look. “And you came to me for . . . what?”
“I need a favour,” Bomber ground out, as if the words themselves were a weight around his neck.
“So you would owe me, yes?” The Emperor tapped his chin, the question entirely rhetorical. “How very interesting. What is it you had in mind?”
“Food. Shelter. Transportation. Assistance in finding my employer and learning more about Gabriel. And a loan.”
Hard fingernails drummed on the tabletop. Cold, calculating eyes swung back and forth between Bomber and Gina. To Gina he asked, “What he says is true?”
“Yes, sir,” she squeaked. She silently berated herself for sounding like a frightened little girl. That was exactly how she felt at the moment, but even so. Alone, far from home, hunted, surrounded without a chance in hell of escape if things went south, she really ought to be braver.
“Then so be it.” The Emperor snapped his fingers and muttered a few words to his personal aide. The servant retreated quickly, and Gina glanced at Bomber, whipcord tension in his shoulders. He was ready for anything.
The Emperor continued, “You will be my guests here. An expense account is being arranged for you as we speak. I’ve assigned Jock to assist you in whatever you plan to do, but no one else, and you will under no circumstances attract the attention of the Federals. Make no mistake, guests though you are, I do not wish to see either of you in the command room or anywhere else. Everything except your own room and Jock’s quarters is off-limits. You will not leave your room without an escort, nor will you be allowed off the premises without my permission. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly, my lord,” said Bomber, and he relaxed his guard for the first time tonight.
Gina understood little of the quick conversation in Mandarin that followed. At the end of it Bomber prompted Gina through their farewells, then followed their newly-assigned escort out of the room.
They were given seats in a small cafeteria, waiting for Jock to prepare his part of the agreement. The place was appointed like a Chinese tea house, filled with deep reds and greens and golds, with a holographic blue sky covering the ceiling and bird song tweeting from speakers hidden in the walls. A pretty expensive affectation in all. The only nod to practicality over atmosphere that Gina could see was the red vinyl flooring, stained by many a spilled cup.
“That went well,” Bomber said after a long silence. They never ordered tea, but a waiter delivered two cups to their table regardless. Bomber thanked him and breathed the bitter steam with relish.
“Looks that way,” she affirmed.
“It’s not much, but it’s a safe place. You’ll be able to get some sleep at least.”
Gina doubted the possibility of shutting her eyes at all after everything that had happened to her, but didn’t say it out loud. She appreciated the effort he was making to put her more at ease. She said, “Can I leave if I want to?”
“Sure. You might not be able to get back in again, but the Emperor won’t stop you.” He looked into her eyes and could see that that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “I’d rather you didn’t, though. I prefer you alive, and I think I’m gonna need your help.”
Gina worked up a smile at that. What a mess, she thought meanwhile. Who the hell do I trust? Why am I even still here? Wouldn’t it be better to walk back out there and just get it over with?
When she tried to say anything out loud, however, the words caught in her throat. She realised she did have a choice. Both options carried danger, but how what would it be like to face Gabriel and that horrible city again, compared to running with this cold-blooded killer and his freaky menagerie of friends?
The nightmare flashing back onto her closed eyelids, but she threw it off with a violent jerk of her head. When she looked at Bomber again, he was still waiting patiently for her response.
“Alright, I’ll stay,” she said. Bomber smiled and drank his tea.
EMPATHY: Part 1
Gina was an early bird. She was class. She got out of bed well before the competition, rested and ready, and she always showered before going out to work no matter how many hundreds of dollars it took to satisfy the Clean-O-Mat across the road. The rented coffins at Easy Hotel didn’t come with showers, but Gina didn’t mind. The Clean-O-Mat was cheaper.
The synthleather purse under her arm contained all her essentials. Lip gloss, make-up, stockings. Next to the make-up case was her trusty old anti-creep device, the Mk5 military taser, bought years ago at an army surplus auction. She never regretted the purchase. It had saved her life more than once out on the Street.
She always wore a cheap business suit to work, a form-fitting little number with a skirt so short it could only be studied under a microscope. It made her look like a slutty news anchor. The customers always liked that, the perfect mix of good girl and bad girl.
The only thing to break Gina’s illusion of respectability were her leather combat boots. People of her occupation couldn’t afford fancy shoes, at least not ones that fit. She’d seen other girls walking the Street in hooker heels and pink rubber skirts, Frankenstein’s monsters of plastic surgery, like drowned corpses under the neon light. But not Gina.
No, Gina was all natural, all class. She smiled a lot, a pretty smile with nice teeth. The customers liked that too. And they liked boots better than heels. They added a little spice to her image, caught the eye of more potential customers. Men, of course. It was the look that drew them and Gina looked the best. Women were a little different, passed her by as often as not, depending on what did it for them. They could always find men in the same line of work as Gina, or girls who affected a more innocent image as their ‘hook’, some even pretending to be first-timers — but Gina was more respectable than that. Than any of them.
She shook out her long red hair and lit up a cigarette, the only person on the Street before sundown. She could sense the double bottom of her purse, the hard nubs of her pills underneath. The dealers called it ‘Mind Rocket’, a ride that took your consciousness to new heights. The whitecoats, the hats and the suits all called it ‘Spice’, some kind of obscure science-fiction reference, Gina had been told. The users just called it ‘third eye’. It made you see in ways people weren’t meant to see. And out here, it made you enough money to get by one more day.
More people started showing up as the sun disappeared behind a steel horizon, mountains of glass and metal, rectangular giants competing for height. They stood at attention in endless rank and file down the road. No light showed through their dark-tinted windows, just many-coloured reflections as the sunlight was replaced by the colourful glow of neon. The signs and logos rose high above the surface, a random number of letters smudged, damaged or flickering.
Gina picked a spot under a street light, the best place to strut your stuff, the safest place. The monsters stayed out of the light. The killings and muggings all happened in the shadows, where the respectable customers never ventured. The competitors who envied her spot knew Gina, knew the taser in her purse, knew to stay the fuck out of her way. And they knew about her contract with the Yakuza, who charged you protection money and would actually deliver if anyone roughed you up. Her spot was her spot.
She kicked at the discarded fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts. Eventually a clearing formed around her, a small island of light on the stained paving stones. She got a lot of envy for muscling into this spot, but she knew how to handle that. She smiled at a handful of late arrivals edging around her spot, lanky people who lived in the shadows of the Street, shifty and smelly and nervous as a banker in the back part of town. Those types usually snorted or shot up their recreational substance of choice the second they arrived. They still got hired, though, by the kind of people who didn’t want respectability. Big-shot drug dealers. Russian mafia. The fuckin’ Yakuza. Guys who wanted silence, guys who wanted the long-gone no-hopers that wouldn’t even consider approaching the law.
They called it the Street of Eyes. Wherever you went, someone was always looking, checking you out. You couldn’t scratch your ass without a half-dozen people taking note. You couldn’t even think about doing it. You just had to clear your head and wait for a customer to single you out.
The first customers to arrive were always the shady ones who passed her by without a word, headed for the back alleys where the darker deals were made. Soon the others followed, people in suits who looked at Gina with a critical eye. She leaned against the street light and arched her back to give them a little incentive. Gina was a kind of saleswoman, after all, and she knew how to make a nice display.
“You free?” asked a voice from behind her, and she turned around lazily to give the speaker full advantage of her curvy side-on perspective.
“If you got the cash, baby, I can do anything you want.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes searching for the suit . . . and stopped. Not a suit. The guy wore faded jeans, a yellow-blue bomber jacket and a matching baseball cap, and he kept both hands firmly in his pockets. That set off Gina’s creep detector something fierce. She hated the weird ones, you could never predict what kind of shit they’d do. Her hand went to her purse, to the Mk5 — but stopped halfway there. She really needed the cash. No sense scaring him off just yet.
The guy smiled at her intense scrutiny. He was looking straight into her eyes, rather than staring mesmerised at her breasts, and that was unusual. If only she could open her third eye now to see through this guy’s game. If only. It cost too much to keep it going all the time, ’cause the pills didn’t last forever and she needed them to make any money. Worse, eating Spice in front of a potential customer was a sure way to drive him off. It showed you didn’t trust him. The Yakuza and Organizatsiya front-men took that very personally, and Gina did not need a bunch of mobsters after her. Her contract wouldn’t mean a damn thing if she offended someone big.
“Honeybabe, I could keep you busy all night long,” the guy said. He knew the Street lingo. Translated into English, he’d just made her a formal offer for an entire night of work, as formal as it got on the Street. Something not to be ignored.
“All night long, huh? You got the pockets for it?”
“Not my pockets, babe. I got a sugar daddy who’s run ’em deep, deep. You look like a gal who knows what daddy wants. ‘Cause daddy wants your eyes.”
Gina’s eyes narrowed as her interest piqued. ‘Sugar daddy’ meant the guy worked for some kind of big corp, an agent, a recruiter. They always paid well.
She stepped closer until her lips were almost touching his ear. “I’ll do anything daddy likes, if daddy’s big enough.”
“He’s got five hundred big ones waitin’ for ya, sugar,” he replied, holding up a credit slip. Its tiny LEDs glowed in the shape of the number 500,000. A spinning hologram at the top right of the card caught Gina’s attention, the AmeriBank mark of authenticity. “Fifty up front. You want in?”
Fuck it. For a week’s worth of cash up front, she’d risk any number of serial killers.
“You got me, baby,” she whispered in her sultriest voice. “You got me all night long.”
The Street buzzed around them like a pack of hungry vultures. In less than an hour it had filled up to the level of a Japanese subway, islands of people packed shoulder to shoulder with tight paths in between. The business of the Street slowly got into full swing. Drug dealers, greasy food stands, rip-off merchants of every make and model.
Gina and her buyer strolled arm in arm past an old gypsy woman selling beads for six times their worth, his yellow nylon jacket rubbing against Gina’s sleeve. Her eyes searched and found the dull understanding and resentment in the faces of those who took notice of her. She kept one hand in her purse at all times, ready for anything, and she flashed the warning hand signal to anyone who got too close. She had a buyer. The ones who didn’t had better not get any ideas.
They took a roundabout course to the nearest exit whilst pretending to make empty conversation, never too bold or hasty, never attracting attention. Gina had to admit the man was good. He handled the Street like a natural, like he’d been born to it. The two of them followed the natural ebb and flow of the crowd, made a show of looking at stands here and there while they let themselves drift closer and closer to an outbound intersection. Then, smoothly, without disturbing the flow, they poured into a side street and blinked off the radar.
It was like stepping into another world. The noise and the neon faded behind them, replaced by flickering street lights and the faceless office fronts of Downtown. Gina looked back once. She always did, and she shivered at the sight. A mass of faces with no names, fishing a poison river.
Her hand tightened on the soft polymer grip of the Mk5. This is it, she thought, her heart beating faster with anticipation and a touch of fear. Make your move, mister. Are you an axe murderer or aren’t you?
He smiled the same unworried smile and let go of her arm. “Got some wheels parked around the corner if you don’t feel like walkin’.”
“Mommy always told me not to get into cars with strange men,” she whispered in her teasing way. “Guess I don’t listen very well.”
Gina’s heavy boots thumped against the paving stones as they walked. The alley was abandoned. No one came to the Street from this side, there was nothing here but an old road straight into the heart of the corporate slums. Certainly nothing for Street people except maybe burglary. Corp recruiters certainly knew better than to enter the Street from this direction. It’d be known all over in a matter of seconds, and they would be known, an immediate target for Street people with backers — be it corps or gangs — to make their pitch.
That was how most things worked in the City. Covering pretty much the whole of mainland China, it was a mess of towns, villages and cities grown together without any sort of plan or guiding directive. It contained buildings of every imaginable kind within its many districts — tumbledown slums of wood and bricks in one district, blocks of skyscrapers and modern construction in another. Buddhist temples next to shopping streets next to endless apartment blocks.
It had started out as a big construction program to accommodate the massive population boom in the 2030s after the repeal of China’s anti-birth laws. However, the construction never stopped, and soon the expanding towns and urbanised districts grew together into a contiguous region of city all over the country. The City.
Gina thought about stuff like that sometimes, how her world had come to be, how history had shaped things from little seeds into big changes. It intrigued her. Only sometimes, though. Doing it too often was just depressing.
The buyer kept pace beside her, sunk his hands into his pockets and said, “Don’t worry, babe. It’s just a job, nothin’ to it.”
She nodded as if she understood. “You got a name, mystery man, or should I just call you ‘Bomber’?”
“Bomber?” he asked, momentarily puzzled. “Oh, the jacket, right. I like that. Sure, call me Bomber.”
Crap, Gina thought and kicked herself on the inside. “Okay. So where are we going, Bomber?”
“The car.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Naw, you’ll see. You don’t have any plans for tomorrow, right?”
“Would that be a problem?”
“Job might run a little late, is all. Not my place to brief you.” Turning around the corner, he produced a small remote control and aimed it ahead of him. Two sets of headlights blinked on, one on top of the other, and the engine started itself with a V8 roar. Sleek black lines gleamed against the night. A tiny Lamborghini logo glowed in neon on the hood. Gina could only smile — he had to be the real thing to drive a beast like this.
He opened the door for her and, just as she got in, he asked, “Hey, if we’re givin’ each other pet names, what should I call you?”
“How about ‘Beauty’?” she said.
“Perfect.” A big grin spread across his face. “Beauty and the Bomber.”
She wrinkled her forehead at him. “What?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Strap in.”
When she made no move towards her seatbelt, he climbed into the driver’s seat, slammed his door, and put his foot down.
Gina screamed.
Bomber opened the car door for her, and she stepped out half-blinded by brightness. The street around them glittered with electric light, almost too much for her eyes to bear, white titanium and glass next to antiqued steel and fake plasterwork, every inch of it clean and shiny and glamorous. Hotel lobbies made of marble and mirrors; squares of too-neat grass and too-perfect trees; club entrances blasting mad flashing colours into the street; clear glass facades showing huge, colourfully-lit fountains all spewing in harmony. It was like an old vid, some sappy flick about romantic entanglements, where the two leads always ended up together on top of a fat pile of cash.
The only thing Gina cared about was the fat pile of cash. Bomber was just another middleman and this, she reminded herself, was not a vid. The glitter was hollow, the smiles feigned. She’d seen the dark underbelly of the rich sections before, little shiny islands in the black soup of the City. They played host to just as many back alleys and shady deals as the Street itself. The only difference was the number of suits.
“Welcome to the Hilton, babe,” he said, the first words they’d exchanged since they got into the car. The thunder of the V8 had overpowered any attempt at speech. For that reason the Lamborghini came with wireless radio headsets, but Gina had left hers in its cradle. Talking couldn’t have been further from her mind. Every time she went out on a job, the queasy sense of danger hovered in the pit of her stomach. If she wasn’t careful, if she let her attention slip just for a moment . . . anything could happen.
“It’s nice,” she said as they strolled into the lobby, trying to sound unimpressed by the lavish appointments. Bomber sniffed but made no comment. The stuff in the Hilton’s lounge didn’t need a dissertation, it spoke for itself. Lush carpets, nice plants filled with surveillance bugs, hand-crafted wooden tables and seats. Very expensive. However, they paled before the main attraction.
Colours sparkled off the massive disco ball suspended from the ceiling at the centre of the hall. Now there was a forgotten relic, Gina thought. Many upscale hotels did things like that now, buying cheap century-old crap and mounting it as display pieces. This one had a plaque and everything, proclaiming the ball to be of some vague historical significance. Gina shrugged at it as they moved forward.
The massed crowd accepted them like drops flowing into a multicoloured ocean. Gaijin of every nationality mixed freely throughout the crowd, quietly resented by everyone else based on their colour and country of origin. The Chinese and Koreans held down opposite sides of the room with a buffer of no man’s land in between, pretending not to loathe each other. Clumps of too-clean Japanese sararimen nursed their non-alcoholic drinks at the bar, roughing it down on the mainland, holographic Zaibatsu logos tattooed on the backs of their necks.
Gina listened to the hum of the maglev elevator and let her eyes absorb everything on the way up. After a while in the business, you learned to read hotels like books. The Hilton tried to put its clientele more at ease by being unobtrusive in everything, particularly in watching that clientele. The appointments were lavish but understated, careful not to draw attention to themselves — soft red carpet, real potted plants at every corner, the maglev elevator with its mirror walls. Gina couldn’t see the bugs but caught the subtle implication that they were there, hidden just out of sight.
A glimpse of silvery film on the mirror in front of her seemed to bear out her suspicion. Millions of nanocams spread out over a huge area, their tiny eyes — all but blind individually — combining to form a perfect picture. And up in the ceiling, little pits in the imitation wood panels where audio bugs might be hiding.
There would certainly be more cleverly-hidden systems watching the elevator, though, and Gina didn’t want to be too obvious about looking for them. The real stuff would be invisible anyway. Generally, anything you could find with mere human senses would be there only as a friendly reminder from the management. She could mention she needed a drink and there’d be a room service cart waiting at her chosen floor.
A soft-spoken voice announced their arrival at floor twelve, first in Mandarin, then English, Conglom, Spanish and Japanese. Mostly gibberish. Gina was China-born, but grew up with nothing but English at home and a smattering of random bits and pieces at school. She had no talent for languages, the only ones she really understood were English and Conglom. Learning Conglom had been mandatory once. Back in her day it was the officially-endorsed alternative to English as a common language for most of the Eastern world, so it became a continent-spanning monster with millions of speakers all the way from Europe’s Recommunist states to Australia in the south.
Most of the time the two big languages were enough to get by. Gina’s lack of education created problems sometimes, but not enough to compel her to start studying again.
The elevator doors whirred open, and Gina swallowed a gasp.
The walls of the 12th floor were covered top to bottom in intricate water paints, so beautiful they took her breath away. It seemed like every corner had a new scene to offer. Flowers in full bloom, puffy white clouds against blue ocean skies, tropical beaches at sunset, coral reefs full of life. Gina wandered through it dazzled by the liveliness of it all.
“Nice place, huh?” Bomber said, then shrugged. “Beats the hell out of my flat in Shanghai.”
“You actually have a room here?” she asked.
“We do tonight.”
His key card clicked into the slot, the door popped open, and Bomber motioned for her to go inside. Gina’s hand once again slipped into her purse, to the Mk5, her unfailing insurance policy. She summoned up her courage and went inside.
The room carried a distinct art style, all sharp angles and primary colours. The walls were no more than coloured cubes on a white gridwork. The retro furniture looked designed for robots, not people — Gina certainly didn’t want to try sitting on any of it. A huge glass coffee table dominated the centre of the room, with gleaming plastic stools arranged around it like big square mushrooms.
A woman rose from her seat at the table. She was dressed in a smooth grey business suit with trousers instead of a skirt, her feet clad in black Italian leather instead of heels. Tall, dark, skin like desert sand and posture straight as an arrow. Although she didn’t fill a suit as well as Gina, there was no mistaking her shape.
The woman took one long look at Gina, then said, “This is the best you could do?”
“No less,” Bomber replied. He didn’t seem at all put off by the reaction. “You’re lookin’ at the primest rib in the Street right here, make no mistake.”
No, there was no mistaking who wore the penis in this operation, Gina decided — but Bomber obviously believed in his decision.
“She got a name?” the woman asked, still looking at Gina.
“Beauty,” Bomber answered for her.
The woman’s eyes flicked to him for a moment, staring disapproval. Then she circled around the coffee table and stopped in front of Gina, so close that Gina could smell her breath, as clean and perfect as the rest of her. “A real name.”
“Gina,” she confessed reluctantly, “just Gina.” This was one of the weirdest situations of her entire life. She felt like a little girl caught in front of her schoolteacher, compelled to answer the woman’s questions. And ‘Gina’ was pretty much her name now, even to herself.
“Did you bring any Spice, Gina?”
“A little, ma’am, but I didn’t take any . . .”
The woman paused, nodded her head. Gentle fingers cupped Gina’s chin, turning her head left and right. Finally, she said, “How long have you been in the business, Gina?”
“About three years, ma’am.”
“Then I have to agree, you do look good. I’ve seen people lose it after their first dose.” She clacked her tongue. “Are you out there every night?”
“No, ma’am, only when I need the money.” Then, somewhere inside her, a spark of courage flared up. “Why are you asking me all this? I don’t know anything, I’m just here for a job. He promised me a thousand K.”
“Five hundred,” he corrected her, smiling. “Don’t wanna price yourself out of the market, darlin’.”
She put on a haughty air and sniffed, “I can leave if you don’t want me.”
The woman, too, started to smile. “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. You’re everything we need. Good-looking, experienced, and tough. Good find, Simon.”
“I do what I do,” said Bomber.
“So this is about a job?” Gina snapped in frustration.
The woman gave an affirmative hum, still studying every feature of Gina’s body. “We need your eyes, girl, and we’re willing to pay.”
The clock crept closer and closer to showtime as Gina smoothed her borrowed suit, a size too small in every place that counted. She’d worn a miniskirt so long that the lower, classic style felt unnatural and constricting like a thick layer of clingfilm wrapped around her thighs. The jacket was so tight she could hardly breathe. Still, appraising her reflection in a mirrored window, the ensemble looked a little bit more dignified than anything she’d put on in the past decade.
Well, everything except the combat boots, for which they hadn’t been able to find an alternative. None of the woman’s shoes fit Gina and they hadn’t had time to go shopping. Just as well. Gina never did develop an appreciation for heels.
“The mark’s name is Lowell,” the woman’s voice echoed from memory — her name never quite seemed to stick in Gina’s mind no matter how many times she heard it. “First name unknown, alias ‘Gabriel’. Over the past two months, we’ve spent about three billion dollars gathering intel about Lowell and what he does. What we’ve learned in that time fills about one page of print, if you leave the bottom half blank.” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis, reminding Gina just how deep she was in it. “That’s why we decided to recruit someone of your . . . talents.”
Whatever, she thought at the time. The buyers could be as condescending as they liked as long as they coughed up the dollar. With a fifty-K credit chip in her hand, Gina could sit through any kind of lecture. It was a lot of incentive money. Enough to make the night worthwhile on its own, so Gina approached the rest of the job with a blasé attitude. The Street was full of this sort of thing; she couldn’t count the number of business deals she’d been paid to ‘observe’. ‘Facilitate’. They used such lovely words for it.
“He’s big in nanotech,” the woman continued. “Ties to a lot of corporate R&D institutions, but no one knows exactly how or what. He divvies up most of his time between his activities in the City and an unknown location somewhere in Geneva. The underground says, if you want anything nano-related, you talk to Gabriel.” She sighed. “Now you know as much as we do. This is far from an ideal situation. We want to know this man inside and out, by whatever means necessary. Do you understand?”
Gina nodded. Then she said, “Who exactly do you work for?”
The woman smiled and continued her briefing.
Why did I take this job again? she asked herself. The money, sure, but that couldn’t be all of it. Business wasn’t slow by any means, the buyers loved Gina, she could’ve attracted any number of other jobs. But she went with this one. The one where the weirdness of the people involved, the tone of the briefing, and her gut instinct all warned her away. A vague scent of danger clung to the whole proceedings.
Strange to think. For some reason she couldn’t quite understand or didn’t want to admit to herself, she wanted all of that.
They left the Hilton somewhere around ten o’clock, stepped into the artificial brightness of the City. Bomber had disappeared shortly after delivering Gina to the hotel and hadn’t come back. Neither had the Lamborghini. The woman simply expressed her need for a car on their way down to the lobby and found a taxi waiting for them by the time they reached the kerb.
Afloat in an ocean of memory, she swam back to the present to notice her body entering the nightclub, arm in arm with the woman. She needed the physical support with her third eye open. Waves of thought and emotion rushed into her, a million hot needles pricking her skin, her every nerve tingling with sensation. She could feel bodies grinding together on the dance floor, the mad flicker of colour from high-powered strobes and disco lights, the pounding throb of the music heard through a hundred ears at once.
It was a maze of flesh and steel, pitch dark except for the strobes and flickering spotlights. Rows of half-naked women danced in cages suspended from the ceiling, dressed in all varieties of fetish gear from nurse uniforms to dog collars. A series of little tables lurked at the back of the room where men of taste liked to meet, in full view of the cage dancers while shielded from most of the noise. The woman nudged Gina towards that direction, where a group of men sat waiting at a table.
She recognised him straight away, piecing together features from the grainy photo in his file. Black-and-white laminate resolved into flesh and blood before her eyes. The high forehead, the strong cheeks flowing into an elegant, almost delicate jawline. Hair like polished copper gleamed under the soft light, and she caught a glimpse of eyes the colour of wildfire.
Hard bronze faces looked up to study the new arrivals, their eyes lingering on Gina’s body. They always lingered. Six pairs of them stared openly as she sat down, but she felt his eyes most of all. Smiling eyes, looking straight through her.
The music seemed even louder back here, its hypnotic rhythm coursing through the room like a massive heartbeat. The pumping life of the crowd. She was glad for the bench as she found a seat, legs trembling, barely able to support her own weight. The woman sat down across from her, setting a leather briefcase on the table.
She glanced at Gina with a simple message in her eyes. This is it. Don’t fuck up.
“Gabriel,” she greeted him, her voice pleasant and inviting.
“Jezebel,” he replied. “Who’s your friend?”
“An advisor,” she replied, glancing at Gina. “I trust her implicitly.”
He inclined his head in acceptance and reached out to Gina. She hesitated before taking his hand. When she did, he immediately pulled her arm in close to kiss the back of her wrist. His lips felt strange, soft but dry against her skin. Still holding her hand he asked, “Does she have a name?”
“Beauty,” said Gina. She somehow managed to keep the stammer out of her voice. The surreal pulse of the club made her head swim, kept her confused and disoriented. It was so hard to concentrate . . .
“Glad to meet you, Beauty.” He smiled his charming smile, then flicked a pair of logo-printed Camels out of a hidden pocket in the cuff of his jacket. She begged off when he offered one, lying that she didn’t smoke. Unperturbed, he vanished the cigarette back to whence it came and lit the remaining one for himself.
After a long drag, he exhaled and finally turned back to the woman. “All right. Let’s talk. What do you need with me?”
“I want something,” she answered.
“Don’t we all?”
“I’ve been told you can get it for me. If I was misinformed, I’m sure I can find someone who can.”
He laughed softly. “She plays it hard, this one. Okay. Tell me what you need, and I’ll tell you what it’ll take.”
The woman smiled and launched into a very technical monologue of which Gina could follow five, maybe six words. She didn’t care. She was waiting for a sign from the woman, the tug of an earlobe, letting her know it was time. She half-dreaded it. But, she reminded herself, this was what she did, and she was good at it. A sense of power burned in her bloodstream.
“And that’s what we need,” the woman murmured at the end of her speech. “What’s your offer?” She pulled on her earlobe almost as punctuation. Gina caught it, let out a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate. Slowly, by an effort of will, she submerged herself into the semi-trance of her third eye, cutting through each layer of interference like stepping through a spider web.
Things snapped into focus, sharp and clear as crystal. She could feel the individual members of the crowd, single them out and see them for what they were. She touched the drug-absent thoughts of the cage dancers, gyrating mindlessly to the beat. She sensed greed and suspicion mixing in the minds of the Japanese suits around her, yet she knew that none of them were truly important. Expendable Zaibatsu middle-managers and mob frontmen. None of them made any decisions. They were there just to observe, watching ‘Gabriel’ in action.
She reached out to touch him.
Cheap horror stories had kept Gina company since she was a little girl. She’d imagined all those feelings a thousand times. Heart-stopping fear, the breath squeezed from your throat, skin crawling like a hundred spiders writhing across your body. But she never experienced it until now.
The third eye trance could do some real fucked-up things to you if you did something stupid, like reaching out to someone on LSD or other psycho drugs. Gina had made that mistake once, by accident, when she was just learning the trade. She still saw pieces of it in her nightmares.
It tasted like that when she entered Gabriel’s mind, like breaking into someone else’s fever dream, shapes and shadows beyond her understanding. Chaos. Landscapes that changed completely from one moment to the next, a twisted mockery of cities, half-melted skyscrapers sagging forward like old steel skeletons, their windows all blown out, sharp glass shards replacing the grass beside scorched puddles of asphalt. Black hills framed the horizon, where the sky wept acid and the trees begged to die.
Then she realised it was the same city, seen from a hundred different angles, where ash statues of people flaked away in the wind, arms thrown up to shield themselves with eternal futility, lifelike faces carved in horror. Children crumbled to dust in their mothers’ arms. The wind itself was no wind, only their screams howling through the streets.
She fought to regain her balance in the emotional whirlwind. Real tears streamed down her cheeks, and real hands tried to hide them, brush them away before they were seen.
Suddenly, the city scattered like bits of torn paper. White silence filled her mind, a blank state of being where nothing could exist, not even vacuum. There was only Gina, observing it without being part of it as she strained to grasp the situation with which she was confronted.
Then a quiet voice in her head said, “You shouldn’t do that.” And simultaneously through her eyes — her real eyes — she could see him sit there smiling at her from across the table. Smiling. As if he knew.
Gina started, her trance ripped away by a shock of cold terror, but her limbs wouldn’t respond. When she tried to swim back to her own body, it only seemed to drift further away from her. The city closed in around her, exploding over and over and over again, and she felt her skin blister and burn with the agony that filled the dead statues. She wanted to cry out, but she had no mouth.
She bit down hard, and the sudden taste of blood filled her mouth, real pain linking her back to her own body. She welcomed it. It was a sharp, wonderful ache, and she clung to it as if it were a lifesaver. Inch by terrible inch, the waking nightmare receded, and Gina hung on against it until she saw only the inside of her eyelids. The sounds were harder to shake — crackle of blackening skin, eyes hissing as they melted and streamed down her cheeks.
When she was inside herself again, more than a little shaken, her terrified strength and determination fled her body. Her head drooped, heavy as lead, sapped by the effort of survival. She licked her lips with a tongue like sandpaper and lifted her wine to her mouth, gulping it down with no regard for taste.
“What’s the matter?” the woman asked, interrupting her monologue at Gabriel. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t–” Gina began. Suddenly, her stomach heaved, the emotions of her experience flooding into her all at once. She put a hand over her mouth and fled the table. Her unsteady feet took her into the back of the club, desperately in search of a bathroom.
She ran into the ladies’ room and dove for the nearest place to be sick into, somewhere between the chipped blue porcelain and the old mirrors made opaque by years of smudged graffiti. The City had few health regulations, and it showed. She doubled over the dirty sink as another wave of nausea hit her, ejecting her Hilton dinner into the rusty drain. Her head was pounding. After-images of the wasteland flashed on her closed eyelids, silhouettes on a red sky, as if the whole world were on fire. Gina wanted to scream at them to stop.
Struggling fingers turned on the tap, which spewed out a stream of brown water to wash things down. Too distressed to focus and control it, she endured the chaos of her third eye lashing out at random, like a dog straining at its leash. The drugs still buzzed wild through her system. She felt a young couple hiding in one of the stalls, riding against each other very, very quietly to avoid attracting attention. Their sex-charged emotions hit Gina like a sledgehammer, triggered a blast of arousal hormones straight into her bloodstream, which only served to upset her more.
She was still in a haze when she stumbled out of the bathroom. Wild and half-panicked. What was she going to do? The mere thought of going back to the table frightened her. She never wanted to see those things again. And Gabriel, he’d felt her. He knew she was trying to read him. That frightened her most of all.
“Can help, miss?” someone asked from behind her. She jumped and turned to face the unexpected voice. Before she even knew what was happening, a muscular hand clamped over her mouth and she was dragged out of the club through the back door without so much as a by-your-leave.
Cold steel prickled against her throat. A knife. Hot breath in her ear, a whisper, thick Russian accent, “Don’t move. You come with me.”
A body muscling her forward, thoughts that stank of lust struggling with some sick sense of duty, trying to decide whether to ‘just follow orders’ or maybe spend a little time with her in the back seat before turning her over. The thug was twice her size. Even confused and disoriented, she knew she didn’t stand a chance. She wriggled, but not so much as to arouse suspicion, while he wrestled her towards an old car made up of squares and rectangles, its make long-forgotten and lost to history. Sadistic pleasure echoed from his mind to hers.
He reached past her to open the door — and crumpled like a wet rag when Gina pulled the trigger on her Mk5.
“Fuck you too,” she spat. She felt dirty from head to toe. Breathing hard with fresh adrenaline, still gripping the Mk5 tightly, warm plastic humming in her hand as it recharged.
“Gina!” someone hissed, again surprising her, and she whirled around to zap him, but a hand caught her arm before she could take aim. “Girl, wake up, it’s me!”
She recognised the voice. “Bomber . . .?”
“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t look anything like Bomber without the yellow-blue jacket and cap. Instead he wore a pair of jeans and a black blazer that bulged unnaturally at his left armpit. Gina instantly knew it to be a shoulder holster. “Listen, we gotta get out of here. We got made. When Gabriel finds out you took out the guy he sent to grab you, there’s gonna be serious heat coming our way. Come on, get in the car.”
She reached for the door, obeyed without even thinking about it. Then she stopped to think about what she was doing. “You’re gonna steal his wheels?” she asked incredulously.
“Yep,” he said, pulling a bunch of keys out of the Russian’s pocket. The heap of flesh and bone still twitched every few seconds, eyes still open and moving although he was out cold.
“What about that woman? Is she still inside?”
“Jez’ll have to look out for herself. I don’t get paid enough to die.”
“God,” she whispered, her knees weak with panic and confusion. The sight of more Russians running out of the club spurred her into action; she let out a high-pitched squeal and dove inside. “What the hell is going on?!”
“Don’t know,” he said, leaping into the driver’s seat. The rear window shattered into a million pieces as a burst of bullets came tumbling through. Bomber glanced into the driver’s rear mirror and said, “Seatbelts.”
Gina was appalled at how he could think about seatbelts at a time like this. She soon learned that Bomber drove every car like it were a Lamborghini.
