tasteful plaque that remains on some of the
other doors we’ve passed has been ripped
off, leaving a bare metal frame. But there’s
no question which unit this is. Someone has
holo-painted ‘three-thirteen’ in huge black
Uni characters across the door. As I move
behind Kez, the characters shift, twisting into
black dragons.
“Classy,” I comment to Kez.
“Yeah,” she says. “Wait until you meet
Missus Nightingale. She’s classy
personified. Oh, and watch out for the dogs.”
“How many dogs?”
“They used to have two. That was a year
ago. I’ve got no idea how many they have
now.”
Great. I glance at her. She’s wearing her
black knit sleeves, black tank and fatigues.
Absolutely no protection if the first thing
through that door is a dog. My jacket will
give me a moment’s protection. My knife
will give me more. I sweep Kez behind me.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Are we knocking or kicking it in?”
“Knocking.”
“Right. Stay behind me.”
“Um, okay.”
I knock. Immediately, a low growling
begins on the other side of the door. They’ve
still got at least one dog. “I’m not much of a
dog person,” I say to Kez. I slip my hand into
the pocket of my jacket and palm a shiv.
She fists one of her hands in my jacket.
“Me, neither,” she says.
“Brownie, stop that!” A woman shouts. I
hear a scuffling on the other side of the door.
“Bad dog. You be nice to paying customers.”
The door opens. A woman stands in a
green-stained hallway, holding a dog that’s
maybe as big as my forearm. It snaps its teeth
at me, but I doubt those little chompers could
even break skin. If it could reach any.
Fucking rat-dog.
The woman smiles at me with long,
yellow teeth. But for her teeth and the
yellowed whites of her eyes, she could be
the perfect granny. Gray curls cap her head.
She wears a shapeless flowered house-dress
and fuzzy peds on her feet. She comes up to
the middle of my chest.
“Hello, son,” she says pleasantly. “Are
you here for the party?”
“No.”
The pleasant expression slides off her
face like melting butter. She drops the dog
and brings up a plasma cannon that she must
have been holding behind her back. Fucking
gun’s twice as big as the dog. “Then you
don’t belong here,” she says, and I look into
her true face. Screaming psychosis barely
contained within wrinkled skin.
“Missus Nightingale,” Kez calls from
behind me. “We’re here to see Nevie!”
“Oh.” She lowers the plasma cannon.
“Then you are here for the party. It’s two
hundred for a half hour. Two fifty if you want
to fuck.”
“Give her two hundred credits,” Kez
whispers urgently.
Bemused by Ma Quaak’s casual pimping,
I fumble the bag around, stick my hand
through the flap and break open one of the
wrapped rolls of credits. I count out twenty
discs by feel, hoping they’re octagons, not
wanting to bring the roll out of the bag to
check. I hand her the small pile with my left
hand, keeping my right hand, and my shiv, in
my pocket.
She smiles at me the way I’d expect her
to smile after watching her grandson take his
first steps. “Just head or hand then, no
snatch.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. Focus on matching
her polite tone to help me bide my time until
she points that cannon somewhere else and I
can rid the universe of Psycho Granny.
She slings the plasma cannon over her
shoulder, turns and walks down the hallway.
When I don’t immediately follow, she
glances over her shoulder and says, “Come
on, son. We don’t got all day.”
I glance back at Kez, who nods. I follow
Ma Quaak into the unit. Her pooch jumps
around my ankles, growling and yapping. I
restrain the urge to punt the fucking thing
through the nearest window.
The hall ends in a great-room, with a
view of the other habitables through round,
green-furred windows. In the center of the
great-room, the scuffed, stained flooring has
been cut away. A jury-rigged fuel cell sits on
the bare permacrete. The fuel cell supports a
battered metal basin full of dried leaves that
give off the puthering green smoke. Ma
Quaak sinks down onto a genSkin couch that
was probably white once but is now stained
the same grimy green as everything else. She
rests the plasma cannon across her knees and
picks up a control pad from the seat. The far
wall of the room blares to life when she taps
the pad. Ma Quaak’s yellowed eyes fix on
the screen, which shows a superboxer match.
She claps her hands as one of the fighting
robots lifts another into the air.
“Body bang, Toro! Oh, I do like him,”
she crows. In the same breath, she says to
me, “Go on then, boy. Your half-hour’s
started.” She nods her curly gray head at one
of the two archways leading out of the great-
room.
Kez’s hand in my back urges me towards
the arch. With a long last look at Ma Quaak
to make sure she’s forgotten about us in the
excitement of her bloodless blood-sport and
the haze of her drug-of-choice, I let Kez push
me through the archway.
Through the arch there’s a short hallway
with three doors. A glance at the one on my
left shows it’s a ‘fresher, fixtures so old
there’s a toilet instead of a zap can. Kez
pushes me on, towards the end of the hall.
The last door is closed, but not shut. I can
hear wet, slapping noises from within,
despite the dull background roar of the
superboxer match. Heavy breathing.
Furniture creaking. The unmistakable sounds
of fucking. I put one hand on the doorframe
and resist Kez’s forward urge.
“Wait.”
“Snow,” Kez whispers, her voice full of
pleading.
Nothing good ever came of walking in on
anyone humping. I shake my head. From the
tempo of the breathing, it shouldn’t be long
now.
It’s only a minute before the sounds peak
in a man’s drawn-out groan. But it’s a long
minute. Kez leans against my back. She’s
shaking. I know she’s crying even though
she’s trying to be silent. I reach back with
one arm and wrap it around her. Keep the
other hand on the doorframe, my knife flat
against the permacrete.
Once the sounds stop, I nudge the door
&n
bsp; open with my boot. Keep one arm around
Kez and the other braced against the door
until I can see what’s going on.
The room’s dim, lit with the same green-
tinged light that fills the rest of the unit. The
weird light plays over so much clutter I can’t
see the floor. The room’s spacious, but junk
fills every corner, making it look smaller.
Clothes, shoes, pieces of furniture, the rim of
a broken holomonitor, a torn bodysuit from
an antique simstim rig, all lie jumbled across
the floor. A path has been roughly cleared to
a bed, pushed up against the wall, under one
round window. The bed sags on old
foamcore, and under the weight of two
people.
A man lies face-down on the stained
mattress. His legs and ass are bare, ghoul-
green in the odd light. A woman pulls herself
from under him and I immediately recognize
her. The beautiful girl from Kez’s house.
She’s still wearing her jade green tank top,
although she’s lost her sweatpants. She
shakes a curtain of silk-black hair back from
her face. Pulls a sheet around herself as she
sits up and smiles at me.
“Are you here for the party?” she asks.
Her voice is soft, sweet.
“Oh, God, Nevie,” Kez whimpers against
my back.
“Kezzy? Is that you?”
Kez pushes hard against my back and I
finally let her propel me into the room. She
starts to slide around me but I catch her wrist
and hold her by my side. “Be sure,” I say.
Wary of the danger inherent in trying to
rescue someone who doesn’t want to be
saved.
She glances at me, then at the bed, and
nods. Wipes her wet eyes. Stops trying to
pull free of my grasp and stands next to me, a
safe distance from the bed. “It’s me, Nev.
I’m so sorry I’m late.”
The beautiful girl smiles. It’s a strange,
beatific smile. The smile of someone who
has found what they were looking for, if only
for the moment. “It’s okay,” she says.
Kez hunches into herself and I see a fresh
tear streak down her cheek. “Nev, honey, it’s
not okay. Remember the baby? Nevie, do you
remember your baby?”
The beautiful girl looks down at her
belly, covered by the sheet, and rubs her
hand over the round bulge. “My baby,” she
whispers.
“Nev, we have to go,” Kez urges. “You
need your medicine for the baby.”
Nev raises her brown eyes to us, languid
and glazed with Hex. “Is the baby sick?”
“Hex makes the baby sick, Nevie,
remember?” Kez rocks a little, back and
forth, vibrating with anxiety. “We have to
go.”
Nev sighs and brushes her hair back.
“But we’re gonna have a party. Sky’s invited
a bunch of friends over. I can’t go yet.”
Kez stifles a cry by biting down on it. So
hard I see a line of blood well against her
white teeth. She looks up at me and the
anguish on her face is painful to see.
“Snow,” she whispers.
“Keep talkin’.”
Kez squeezes her eyes closed. Nods.
Takes a deep breath and tries again. “Nevie,
I brought the skimmer. We can go get your
medicine and come back for the party.
Remember how we used to party together?
It’ll be just like that. Just like old times.”
Some small spark stirs in those Hex-
blasted eyes. The girl smiles and begins to
climb over the unconscious man, moving
awkwardly, holding her belly, disjointedly,
as though she has to remember how to move
each limb. She jostles the man; he stirs and
lifts his head. He brushes a wave of longish
brown hair out of his face. “Nevie?”
“It’s okay, Sky. I’m gonna get my
medicine with Kezzy and then I’ll be back
. . .”
“What?” The man’s expression changes
in a split-second from bewilderment to
absolute, utter rage. If I needed any
confirmation of his relation to Ma Quaak,
that expression confirmed it.
He launches himself off the bed with a
strangled roar.
Kez sidesteps him. Twists and slams her
elbow into the back of his head. He hits the
floor like a sack of wet laundry. I didn’t
know she had that move in her, and by the
look of total surprise on her face, I don’t
think she did, either.
“Sky!” Nev half-climbs, half-falls out of
the bed, tangled in the sheet she’s pulled
around her lower body.
Kez is on her in a second, clapping her
hand over Nev’s plush mouth and pulling her
down into a crouch on the floor. “Shh,
Nevie.” Kez watches the door nervously and
I realize she’s watching for that plasma
cannon.
I seriously doubt Ma Quaak can hear
anything over the howl of the superboxer
match and her own hateful internal
soundtrack, but I realize that there’s no way
we’re going to get out of here without going
through Psycho Granny.
“Stay here,” I say to Kez. I slide the
money-bag off my back and drop it next to
her. I don’t want anything in my way if I’m
going up against that plasma cannon. I push
the small shiv I had out back into my pocket
and take out the big guns, two hollow-ground
boots. Took me weeks to make and there’s
no better weapon for a slashing cut. Since
that’s what I intend to do to Ma Quaak’s
throat, they seem like the right tools for the
job.
Chapter 11
At the doorway, I drop to my knees
before I peer around the door. If Ma Quaak
is standing in the hall, waiting to blast
whomever sticks their head out, I’d rather
she hit permacrete than my face.
The hallway’s empty. I drop to my belly
and crawl towards the great-room, keeping
below Ma Quaak’s line of sight should she
decide to tear her attention away from the
match. Down this low, I’m under the green
smoke, but the carpet’s so permeated that
each movement sends a billow of quaak, wet
dog and sweaty feet up my nose. I hold my
breath and move steadily towards my goal.
When I reach the great-room, I follow the
outer wall until it brings me directly behind
her.
I lift my head off the stinking carpet and
consider the angles. The couch is at a slight
angle to the vid-wall, so she won’t see my
reflection in the screen when I rise behind
her. Then there’s the angle of the kukris. I
could take her head off with just one of them,
but I prefer the surety of bringing the blades
across each other.
Thirty degrees is the best
angle, to take advantage of my height, the
inwardly curved cutting surface of the
blades, the soft tissue of her neck, and the
strength of my wrists.
I start to rise behind her, kukris held at
my sides.
Ma Quaak giggles.
It’s a feminine sound. And it stops me in
my tracks. No matter what else Ma Quaak is,
she’s still a woman. And I’ve never killed a
woman. At least, not deliberately. Marin’s
face in that last moment, when she knew she
had died for me, flashes across my vision.
Marin, you can really pick your moments.
I straighten and extend my arms to bring
the kukris to the right angle. She’s a monster
in a house-dress. A monster that pimps out a
pregnant, Hex-addled girl for two hundred
credits a pop. Killing her is a community
service.
But I’ve never really been all that
community-minded.
I shove the kukris into the back of the
couch. Reach across Ma Quaak as she
registers the impact and slap one hand down
on the business end of the plasma cannon.
Catch the stock as it flips up off her knees. I
snug the stock into my shoulder and train the
cannon on Ma Quaak as she turns around.
Beside her on the green-stained couch, her
dog wakes from its doggy dreams and begins
yapping frantically.
“Shut the dog up or I shoot it, and then I
shoot you.” Whether it’s my tone, all the
deeper and more pissed off for being
thwarted by Marin’s ghost, or having her
own weapon pointed at her, Ma Quaak
wraps her hand around the dog’s muzzle
without a peep.
“Kezra!” I roar to make myself heard
over the superboxers. I hear footsteps in the
hall but I don’t take my eyes off Ma Quaak.
She’s not saying anything. She doesn’t need
to; her dark eyes speak volumes. Whatever
compunction I had about killing her, she
doesn’t feel the same way. Not. At. All.
Kez finally appears in my peripheral
vision, dragging her friend.
“Get my knives,” I tell Kez. I like the
kukris, and there’s no way I’m leaving a
weapon within Ma’s reach while we get the
fuck out of her quaak den.
Kez props the beautiful girl against the
wall, scuttles over in a half-crouch and
ducks under the cannon’s barrel to tug my
knives out of the back of the couch. Good
girl; most would have crossed my line of
sight. I doubt Kez has much experience with
guns, since they’re strictly illegal on