Fade to Black

8

The little night-glo red-on-white sign on the back alley wall, read, "CyberDok: Top Chrome, Vat Organics, Primo Rates."

Shank touched the buzzer beside the black metal door. Momentarily, a small red bulb on the intercom winked to life while another one lit up on the security camera above the door. The intercom squealed and whistled. "We're closed," said a remodulated voice with clashing harmonics. "Slot off."

"Open the door."

"Shank?"

Shank grunted. People with sec cams ought to look at their monitors.

The door buzzed and slid aside. Thorvin stepped right through, cutting ahead, brushing Shank's hip. That was typical. Shank frowned, then put out one long leg with a slight hooking motion, briefly catching the halfer's ankle. Thorvin tripped, stumbled, caught himself, then turned to look back and snarl, "Watch it, ya freakin' tusker!"

"Eff you," Shank growled.

"Flatline."

Shank grinned and followed Thorvin through the doorway into a small, dimly lit waiting room outfitted with a trio of molded plastic chairs and a plastic trash can. Holographic posters on the wall advertised suborbital and semiballistic flights to exotic locales. That was it for decor.

Shank figured it was enough.

A wall panel slid aside, revealing a doorway, and a smoothie. Her name was Filly. She was big for a female norm, and not bad-looking either. She wore a black and red tee chopped off just below where it mattered, a matching thong, and a pair of black socks. Her smile looked kind of sarcastic. "Dok's into some slag's cerebral cortex," she said. "What's tox?"

"We got a job," Thorvin said.

"Nice for you," Filly replied.

Thorvin grumbled something incoherent. Shank explained, "Rico wants you and Dok in the game."

"Big job?"

Shank nodded. "Heavy opposition. Some corp."

"It's always a corp. What's the pay?"

The pay was an equal share. Everybody always got an equal share because everybody on the job shared an equal risk of getting dead. That was how Rico worked things. Shank wouldn't have it any other way. He told Filly the numbers. For a few days' work, it would be a good piece of change. Assuming nobody got killed.

"Come on," Filly said. She turned to lead them ahead. Shank moved to follow her lead, but again Thorvin scutted in before him. They followed Filly down the hall past Dok's office and examination room to the operating room door. Shank knew the layout, he'd been here before. The building was narrow and deep, and Dok and Filly had the first two floors all to themselves. For just two people, that was a lot of space. Shank guessed the CyberDok business must be okay. Nobody getting really rich, but nobody starving either. In fact, Filly's twisting, swinging butt looked pretty damn well-fed. And well-exercised too, not fat, not skinny, but soft and firm and nicely shaped.

At the end of the hallway, Filly put a finger to the print-scanner on the wall, and the door to the O.R. slid open.

Gleaming chrome cabinets and counters ringed the room. The operating table stood at the center of the floor. The slag lying there on his back was enclosed in a transparent isolation chamber that resembled a contoured coffin. A metal ring surrounded his head like a halo. Maybe a dozen skinny rods of different lengths stuck out of the ring at different angles, and, Shank realized, out of the slag's head.

Dok stood at the head-end of the table dressed in a black and red Jersey Annihilators Urban Brawl tee, shorts, and sandals. His silvery slash-hair and beard made him look like an old man, maybe a little before his time.

"Been scanning the Brawl, Dok?"

Dok looked back over his shoulder and grinned. "I do love to see the body parts fly. Hoi, Shank. Thorvin."

"Dokker," Thorvin said.

"What're you into?" Shank asked.

"A little gray matter," Dok replied. "You might want to keep back a few steps. I'm extracting a cortex bomb."

Dok had his hands encased in a pair of gloves that extended into the isolation chamber. He seemed to be slowly, carefully twisting one of the rods stuck into the slag's head. The monitors at his left elbow showed different views: something that looked like a worm lying in a mass of goo, something that looked like a pin lying in a mass of goo, and various masses of goo, some gray, some red, some yellow, some colored kind of like puke.

Shank edged a bit closer. "Ain't most cortex bombs rigged to blow if you mess with 'em?"

"That's what they tell me."

"What kinda charge?"

"It looks like a Chiba Black. Probably a micro C-9 charge. A few grams of explosive."

"So that's what? A blast radius of about half a meter?"

"Enough to blow this slag's brain to hell."

"Maybe a few of your fingers too, Dok."

"It's a possibility. These're Securemed gloves. Kevlar H-insulated. I probably should have gone deluxe."

On one monitor, something that looked like a pair of pliers slowly drew something that looked like an ant out of a mass of goo on what looked like a strand of spider's webbing.

"What's that?" Shank asked.

"The detonator," Dok replied.

"You had to ask," Thorvin grumbled.

"Rico wants us in on some job," Filly said.

"Is that a fact?" Dok replied. "Good job, is it?"

"Pay's okay," Filly told him.

"We'll be busting some slag outta corp hell," Shank explained. "Least that's how it figures."

"Wage slave making a break for freedom?" Dok asked.

"Naw, the slag got snatched about a year ago. It's an intercorporate thing. The slag's real corp wants him back."

"Does Tie want to go back?"

"The info we got says the corp that snatched him is using threats against his wife to keep him in line. I don't guess he'd be too happy about that."

"Probably not. Everything else scan okay?"

"Piper checked what she could. You know what this drek is like. It looks chill. About the only thing left to do is go in and meet the slag face to face."

"What if he doesn't want to go?"

"Then I guess we're in deep squat."

Dok looked back again and grinned. "Nothing new about that, is there?"

"Not much," Shank agreed. "You in?"

"I guess I could use the change."

"Got any idea where to find Bandit?"

Dok frowned, then said, "Good fragging question."

Farrah Moffit knew how she looked. Even lying in the dark of the bedroom on the broad expanse of the black satin-wrapped bed, she could see her own image clearly, as if reflected in a mirror.

In a sense, she had become a caricature of herself. Her body had been blown up, filled out, reshaped, and pared down-all with precise surgical attention to every detail-until she resembled less the woman she had once been than a man's lustful fantasy. A holographic dream, a vision of fleshy carnal cravings. There were reasons why that had been done, good reasons, and reasons she more than accepted, but she could never quite get past the idea that all these cosmetic improvements demeaned her. It told others that she probably lacked the native intelligence to get what she wanted without resorting to the lure of her body, that she had probably gone to bed for everything she had ever achieved. Whether that was true or not hardly mattered. The message was clear. She saw it in people's eyes every day. Envy, resentment, contempt…

A significant sum of nuyen had been spent on her flesh. Practically every part of her body had been modified in some way. Her hair had become a veritable forest, lush and prodigious, tumbling over her shoulders and halfway down her back. Her eyes been given such a lavish growth of lashes they seemed unreal. Her lips, made voluptuous, permanently puckered. Her breasts easily large enough to equip a cow, perhaps two. Round and prominent. And the list went on and on. Even her skin had been changed, given a light golden tan that would never fade.

She could hardly move without being reminded of the changes, without some portion of her body making the differences plain. She supposed that, at heart, she would never be completely satisfied with it all. There was indeed such a thing as too voluptuous. Her shape, her figure, her entire look was rather outrageous.

The telecom bleeped.

Rather than fumble in the dark and risk bending one of her luxury-length fingernails, permanently implanted, she drew a breath, and said, "Telecom answer… Yes."

The device bleeped again. A moment of quiet passed, then the voice of Ansell Surikov came from the speakers. "Darling?" he said. "Are you all right? The visual's off. You sound-"

"I'm fine," Farrah said lightly, interrupting. She smiled and made her voice soft and expressive. "I've just come out of the bath. I haven't any clothes on."

"Oh, I see," Ansell said, sounding amused.

"Will you be late tonight?" Farrah asked.

"A little while longer. I'm hoping you'll still be up when I get there."

"Aren't I always waiting when you come home?"

"Of course you are." Ansell chuckled. "You must think me a mad fool, darling."

"No more than I, darling."

Ansell said he would be home soon, then wished her good-bye and broke the connection. The telecom bleeped and switched itself off. Farrah lay there in the dark a few moments, gathering her will, her ambition, and energy, then she sat up slowly and shook back her hair.

"Lights."

The lights came on, the onyx lamps scattered around the room creating pinpoints of light that gradually swelled into a fuller illumination. Farrah rose and walked through the connecting door to her wardrobe. The mad fool who had called her on the telecom would be expecting a lush, sensual woman to meet him at the door. If instead he met a naked nymph, one with her proportions, he might have a coronary and drop dead at her feet. And that would be too infuriating to bear.

It still surprised her to consider how easily she had made the transition from mere wage slave to full-fledged corporate prostitute. That was such a dirty word and yet it fit so well. She found that she didn't care, didn't even mind the connotations. She'd grown up in the corporate environment. For the sake of economic reward, she'd traded practically everything she possessed to one corporate unit or other all her Me. Now she had included her body as part of the arrangement. Simple as that. The recompense had been more than adequate, enough to turn any ordinary prostitute green and blue with envy. And if her current project worked out, she would have nothing to worry about for a long time to come.

The advance security team arrived to check the apartment for bugs and unauthorized personnel. That was standard procedure. Farrah merely verified that the three-member team had the right corporate affiliation before letting them through the door.

Ansell arrived ten minutes later. His personal escort remained behind in the hall.

Farrah smiled, now wrapped in a neo-monochrome gown of scarlet red glinting with a thousand points of light The gown emphasized every lavish curve of her figure, baring her arms and shoulders and a striking depth of cleavage. Ansell gazed at her for several long moments, then dispensed with his trench coat, tossing it onto a nearby settee with a grand sweep of his arm.

"You look ravishing, my dear," he said, smiling, stepping toward her.

Farrah waited till he laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned close for a kiss, then, from behind her back, she drew out a pair of crystal goblets and a bottle of Bordeaux Superieur, Chateau Haul Brion…

Ansell hesitated, then lifted the bottle and looked at the label. "My dear," he said with a smile, "this is the twenty-nineteen. It's barely coming into its prime." Farrah inclined one finely drawn brow. "Live a little."

"Dare we?"

Faintly, Farrah nodded, and smiled.

It was the sort of extravagant gesture the man could not resist, Farrah knew. With a wild grin, he took the bottle of vintage wine in hand and declared passionately that, yes! they would break the seal this very evening. At once!

His darling wife must not be denied. The impulse of the moment would be fulfilled. And one impulse led to others.

The living room glimmered with soft light. Ansell set about opening and decanting the wine. Farrah drew a voluptuous 20-centimeter Montecruz Individual cigar from the humidor behind the bar, clipped the end, then passed it unlit to Ansell.

"The best of the best," he softly declared.

"Only the beginning," Farrah replied.

"Yes," Ansell replied, smiling archly. "The beginning."

At the touch of one key, the entertainment console initialized a preprogrammed routine. The lighting dimmed. Laser light slowly waxed and waned, filling the room with brooding colors. Music arose, Arabic in flavor. Farrah stepped to the center of the room and began a dance, sinuous as a serpent, supple as warm, flowing honey.

As Ansell laughed and applauded, Farrah reached behind her neck and opened a clasp. His laughter soon changed to cries of delight, for he obviously knew what was to come. Farrah's gown gradually descended into wisps of fabric adorning the lush carpeting around her feet. She continued on, now clad only in the skimpy costume she had worn beneath the gown. In time, she discarded that, too.

The dance led inevitably to the bedroom.

Ansell moaned with pleasure.