First Shot Page 3

  OUTSIDE, THE LOW CLOUD has turned from daytime gray to nighttime black. Business is always better in the shadows. Dyad doesn’t belong on the Mag Mile. She’s enough motive to inspire murder. All the UnderDwellers want her, so I leave her behind.

  All the while, I hope my pink doesn’t show through. Maybe somebody on the Mag Mile has seen Teq and Tonick. It’s a last-ditch chance of figuring out what happened to them.

  It’s a long walk in sex-me heels, but the Mag Mile doesn’t disappoint. It’s filled with UnderDwellers looking for an escape and lonelies looking for love. A long time ago, it was high-end retail. Now it’s a different kind of retail. Anybody can buy anything to take the edge off of reality.

  I take a seat on the couch. They can’t see pink down here. Pink means currency creds. Enough to live on for the rest of a life. Everybody wants a reward, and GenCor is persistent. There’s something about my genes. They need my cells to refuel the leaders of the free world. They want to make a line of smartbots with human bodies. They need to throw me over the cliff into the giant Aliens who need human sacrifices. The conspiracy list is endless, and I’ve heard them all.

  So I shave my head every time I need a little grocery money, and play the harlot in the UnderCity long enough to afford a bit of food.

  “I want you. What do you charge?” a whiny voice asks.

  This pinch-faced guy is old before his time, made ugly by his latest chemical trip. His voice is rough, and his body’s as wrinkled as a sultana’s under his black leather vest. He wears matching black leather chaps. Angry tattoos cover most of his skin. His flesh has pulled away from his ocular implant. Death rot eats away at the meat around it. I can smell the decaying citrus smell from here. It’ll kill him soon. It doesn’t start to smell until the infection is in the blood. The sensor in his implant must be a glitch. It’s a yellow LED, blinking at random intervals. The icing on this guy’s cake.

  He doesn’t have the genes for cybernetics. If he’d spent another couple thou, he could have been prescreened in a MidHeight hospital. Nobody has spare anything in the UnderCity. He made a risky choice, choosing implants without a genetic screening, but everything is a gamble down here. Cybernetics can make the difference between life and death.

  “Not for sale tonight,” I say, changing my mind when I shouldn’t.

  With my friends gone, I have no appetite. I’ll regret skipping the trick tomorrow, but I’m not hungry enough to put up with it tonight, and my stomach is in knots anyway.

  I sit on the ripped-up furniture, listening to the conversation around the fire barrels. I’m thirsty, so I wave at the floating barkeep, holding up one finger.

  It’s been over twelve hours since I’ve seen Teq and Tonick, and I still don’t know what to do. They’ve never been gone this long. I rub my sweaty palms down the fronts of my thighs as the barkeep heads my way.

  I have to find them.

  GenCor Invisi-Communique

  ***Begin***

  RE: Regrowth

  Confirmed in previous tests.

  RE: Transferability

  Inconclusive. Experiment failed.

  Seeking additional subjects.

  ***End***

  Chapter Four

  LOCUS: ALTER EARTH

  Bostgo Sector

  Mag Mile

  Date: 11 Pentian

  Time: 2200

  IT’S THAT GUY AGAIN. “Can I get you something?” he asks.

  He waves his hand under my chin, pointing at my mouth.

  Too close. He’s too close. I can’t do this right now.

  Maybe I’ll call Dyad. No, the crowds are thick under the haze on the Mag Mile. They don’t all need a reason to hunt me. Enough of them suspect I’m a Pink. I’ve heard them whisper when I’ve gone too long without a razor.

  “Not safe here,” he mutters. I can’t tell if he means for him or me.

  “No, not selling tonight. Find somebody else,” I say, then push his hand away and shift to the end of the couch. He follows me down the tattered cushions.

  He’s not taking the hint.

  “Then maybe you should go home,” he says, and stumbles, knocking my drink to the concrete.

  I consider punching him—death rot has probably given him a glass jaw, but he’s half blind. It wouldn’t be a win I’d feel good about, and it wouldn’t help my worry about Teq and Tonick. Besides, there’s something about him that I can’t quite grasp.

  I lean forward with my elbows on the tops of my knees and clasp my clammy palms together, hunching my shoulders. Things go bad in a hurry down here.

  “Maybe you should go home,” he repeats. “It’s not safe here.”

  His hands settle over my mine, and he squeezes, but not like the others. It’s a caress, not a demand. He’s almost...tender. His behavior is so out of place down here that I’m shocked into inaction.

  Tenderness isn’t for sale on the Mag Mile, yet my eyes are drawn to his hand. His fingertips are already tipped with decay, his appendages suffering from the rapid spread of death rot. “It isn’t safe here.”

  His words shatter my reverie enough to realize that I’ve let him have the upper hand, but I refuse to recoil. I’m not afraid. Not of him. At least not enough for it to matter. “What do you want?” I growl through clenched teeth. The stench is horrid.

  He pats my fingers. “I’m dead already. I have nothing to lose,” he breathes, staring into my face, his clear mind still apparent in his one good eye. Something sparkles under his vest. A pointy necklace of some kind.

  “Go home, Pink.” He’s all there. And he knows I’m a Pink. He takes my arm. “Go home. Now. You have to get home.”

  My eyes widen, and I can feel the blood draining from my cheeks. I yank my hands away.

  “Get away from me, old man,” I say, but my voice trembles.

  I hate confrontations, but there’s something in his face, something I can’t quite define in the earnest expression. I draw my fingers across my bare scalp. It hasn’t grown back yet, so I can’t figure how he can tell.

  When I stand up, I nearly knock him backward to the floor. Stomping away, I trip on my heels and almost slam into the chemical dealer, Raina. She has to yank her wrinkled face back to avoid my flailing hand.

  She frowns at me, her dark eyebrows lower, and she harrumphs. “Watch it, Jin. Don’t give me a reason to turn you in.” Her lip curls to show an upper row of blackened and missing teeth.

  I kick off the shoes and scoop them up by hooking my finger in the rear straps. The stranger’s intensity hurries me along. I don’t know how, but he knows who I am.

  I fly through the streets, the inky blackness more frightening than ever before.

  My heartbeat pounds in my ears. I take a wrong turn and then another, glancing over my shoulder. I have to find Tonick, but I can’t if they catch me first.

  Nobody follows. The streets are as empty as they ever are, and I work my way toward home. Once I’m within sight of Cheers, I slow my pace.

  Huffing, I make it to the blown-out bar. The building is composed of the leftover shards of a generation’s habit that I’ve turned into the only place where I’m safe. I work the old man’s words over and over in my head, trying to decipher what he wasn’t saying.

  I don’t want to rush into a trap. The air is the same as it was when I left, spiced with smoke, but I can’t smell anything peculiar. No death-rot stench to signal the sick and the desperate. It hasn’t been that long since I left, but there’s something different in the weight of the air. Maybe it’s the way the trash is propped up against the building, or the way the dust seems disturbed on the empty windowsill. I never go in that close to the corner of the exterior frame.

  I cross my arms and stare at my home, trying to decide if it’s safe or not. I keep watching so long that I can’t tell how long I’ve been standing here.

  There’s nothing specifically wrong, only a bit of displaced dust that could have been a wild splice cat or a hunting dog or even an alley kid running her hand a
long the wall.

  Better get in. If I stay out here, I’ll get caught. I’ve had too many close calls lately.

  A thought turns my apprehension to anticipation. Maybe Tonick sent the old man. I need Tonick. I miss my daily dose. I’d never say it to his face, but I might run straight into hell for him.

  I dart across the pavement, glancing left and right. I’m so jumpy, even my heart is trembling. The road is emptier than I’ve ever seen it. One second that pleases me, but the next it terrifies me. I lick my lips and press myself flat against the exterior wall of the bar.

  The rough-hewn door is the way I left it: closed. Rusted hinges hold it tight against the frame. From this angle, nothing is amiss. There’s only the pressure of the atmosphere against my eardrum and the suspicion that it isn’t quite right.

  I slide down the brick wall, set my heels on the ground, and then lean over the windowsill. Besides the dust’s being gone on a sixty-inch section, there’s nothing out of place that I can see from here. I study the interior, the stairwell, and the catwalk that leads to spare rooms over the warehouse.

  But the light doesn’t extend to the sides of the room. There are enough shadows to hide a gang of mercenaries or white-coated GenCor creeps. Yet...

  There’s no stench of rotting citrus, no sickly-sweet smell of death rot, no putrid body odor of the unwashed, no strawberry-scented clouds of chemical happiness.

  No sound of breathing, creak of leather, pulled grenade pins, or trigger clicks.

  It might be safe, but there’s really only one way to find out.

  I maneuver the top half of my body inside and toss my shoes over, one at a time.

  Nothing bad happens. No alarms. No bullets. No explosions.

  I throw one leg over the low separation.

  And I set my foot down on something sticky. I bite down on a yell and study my toes. They’re covered in something red.

  That means somebody’s in here. I don’t know how I missed this bloody puddle.

  Scratch that. I do. I looked everywhere but right under me. I take a few steps and leave red footprints behind me.

  A moan pulls my attention to the perimeter. Somebody’s lying on the ground beneath the virtual bartender interface. Their back is to me. From here, I can’t tell if it’s male or female, armed or unarmed.

  “Who’s there?” I ask. There’s no answer, but the figure groans again. The noises don’t sound robotic, so I creep closer. She’s wearing a blood-soaked tank top and military fatigues from some previous version of this planet’s military. The top half is definitely a her. The kind of her Tonick and Teq both would like.

  She mumbles something, rolling the rest of the way toward me. Dreads fall away from her face into a puddle of light from the flickering bulb.

  Oh my god.

  She’s a Pink. Like me.

  She stretches a freckled hand toward me. She can tell I’m here, but she doesn’t open her eyes. I settle into a crouch. I remember nothing before when I woke up to Teq and Tonick leaning over me, but I remember that as though it were yesterday. This is an out-of-body experience. It’s like staring into a warped mirror.

  Except this reflection is bleeding all over my floor. There can’t be much left in her. I kneel beside her and lift her shirt so I can get a look at her side.

  The wound is horrendous. Mutilated edges and angry gouges circle the main wound. A large flap of pale skin is hanging on by a corner. I lay the loose skin back over the wound.

  But then I see what’s on it. Screaming isn’t a good idea, but it gets out before I can stop it. On the barely connected, palm-size piece of skin, I read, “Property of GenCor. Return this unit to GenCor.” The logo’s been impressed into the skin, a permanent mark declaring allegiance. This ReProd has been branded.

  Now I’m waiting for a chorus of tinny voices to spring the trap, commanding me to halt. It’s nightmarish. I’ve never seen a Pink stamped like this.

  I study the edges of the flesh, and my heart twists. I recognize the tool marks. The butcher did this. He works down on the Mag Mile next to Raina. Rumor has it that he takes MidHeighters on hunts in the slums. I never thought that meant he hunted us. I squint at the disfigurement, wondering if she was marked before or after the butcher got her.

  She brings up so many questions.

  Somebody tried to cut the label out of her like a trophy off a hunted animal. Nobody deserves to be treated like a possession. Nobody is worthless.

  I bite my lip when she whimpers. If I can get the series of nanoinjections into her fast enough, the ruined skin might still be saved. I pull off my shirt, rip one seam, and then tie it around her to hold her together while I can figure out what to do.

  I contemplate the distance between her and the medical supplies. My room is upstairs next to Teq’s. I don’t think I can carry her that far, but I can’t leave her here. A bit of light and she’s in full view. The Corp cops or anybody out for a walk in the UnderCity could peek in the window and see her.

  Months ago, Tonick fixed us up in his bedroom under the bar. It’s normally off-limits to me unless it’s shower time. He keeps it locked up tight against the crazies that run in gangs down here. But he’s not here to give permission, and I know the code. I watched him punch it in once when he was flirting with Teq.

  I wish Teq were here. She would know what to do.

  I brush my fingers along the new Pink’s bicep.

  Her eyes pop open. “Help me,” she whispers.

  That decides it for me. Tonick will have to deal with intrusion. I’m going to save her.

  Eighteen minutes later, she’s gasping through her open mouth, a cage fighter who forgot her cardio. I’ve got her up against me, her arm flopping. Her legs are limp and she’s no help, just dead weight I’m dragging from one place to another. I’m sure I’m hurting her. Her blood is all over me, all down my bare front. I’m trying to keep from injuring her side more, but it’s taking forever to get her across the room.

  I grit my teeth. I hope I’ve made the right choice.

  A siren chirrups outside. Perfect. Just perfect.

  The Corp conducts random scans of the UnderCity. The patrol is working down the road, scanning the other places—the former shops, the gutted apartments, the tumbled-down multilevels. The emerald beam sweeps up, down, and then from side to side over each building. If we hold still, we might make it.

  Runners, not hiders. Runners, not hiders. Runners, not hiders.

  The words echo in my mind, identical train cars clacking along on a circular thought track. Dyad won’t help me out of this mess. I want to be here. Home means safety for all of us.

  In front of the counter, I guide the Pink to the floor and slip behind her, one leg on either side of her, propping her up against me. I press one hand against the wound in her side and the other over her mouth.

  She whines.

  “I’m sorry, Wiskee,” I whisper in her ear. And just like that, I’ve given her a name. “The patrol...” I hope she knows what I mean. I hope she won’t fight me. I hope she doesn’t have a tag.

  Wiskee is breathing fast through her nose. She’s going to hyperventilate. Her eyes are wide, the whites twice as big as before. She scratches at my hand, and a sharp pain travels up my arm.

  “Slow breaths, Wiskee. Slow,” I soothe. “We’re halfway there. Once they go by, I’ll get you fixed up. I promise. We just can’t get caught. They’d take us to GenCor. We can’t get caught.”

  Wiskee’s eyes widen even more at that name, but she stops squirming. I think she gets it. I hold my breath and lean back against the bar, as far as I can, as flat as I can.

  It won’t do us any good, but instincts are instincts. I tense and squeeze my eyes shut as the bright green light passes over us. I can’t help it, though they’ll either see us on their scans or they won’t. My Pink friend stops hyperventilating, too. Wiskee definitely gets it.

  There’s a beep, and the green light makes another pass.

  This is it. They’ve seen us on
their sensors. I count to ten.

  Wiskee slaps at something on her boot. It’s a heat peg like the ones on my wrist cuff. Her leg vibrates and something pings. New sensor-scattering tech?

  And then the robot officer moves on to the next building. Programming doesn’t get lazy. Had that been enough to send them on their way?

  I don’t start breathing until they’re on the third one down. I ease out from beneath the new Pink and crawl to the window. I peer out in time to see the patrol turn at the next intersection.

  I turn around, slide down the wall, and settle on my bottom, huffing with the effort of not panicking. It had to be because of yesterday. They have to know I’m here. I shove Wiskee away from me. Is it her? Is she a plant?

  No. It’s the thing on her boot, right? It sent them away.

  She moans, and my heart twists. Tonick warns me. I hear him in my head, but I can’t bring myself to turn away. If I get her into Tonick’s room, then I can search her for a tag.

  My gaze lands on her. I scowl. There’s something wrong. Her chest isn’t rising and falling. Her eyes are wide open and glassy. I scoot across the floor.

  I thought she was holding her breath. When I touch her shoulder, she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t blink. I scramble to my feet and careen around the curve to the hidden entrance. This can’t be happening.

  God, I wish Tonick were here. Teq. Either. Both.

  Don’t be dead. Wiskee, don’t be dead. Not on my watch.

  I hurtle around the bar end. At the back of the room, beneath the carefully stenciled motto, I swipe my arms across the top shelf, knocking glasses and bottles to the floor. I don’t have time to search beneath each thing.

  The button is right here. It’s right here. I’ve seen Tonick hit it a hundred times.

  There.

  I punch in the code on the pad expertly disguised as a paper coaster and slap the red octagon at the bottom. The shelves rattle and slide to the right. There’s a hiss as the seal in the floor disengages and the camouflaged door moves down, exposing a narrow metal stair, illuminated by harsh white lights.