Fade to Black

32

The Chapel of the Eternal Light was just over the border from Little Asia in Sector 7. For five hundred nuyen, they laid out Filly's body in a room with perfumed air, quiet music, and molded plastic flowers, no questions asked. That included a five-minute trideo funeral service, cremation, and an urn for the ashes.

Rico paid the tab, despite Dok's protests. It was his responsibility. He was the leader. It was his failure to properly prepare for the meet with Prometheus that had cost Filly her life. Compared to the moral weight of that fact, five hundred nuyen was nothing.

They all knew the risks. Death was part of the game. For the sake of the survivors, Rico was trying hard not to think about the price of his failures or the chance that he might slot up again. If you wanted any chance at surviving, you did what you had to do and saved all the grief, self-doubts, and questions till the run was over and people were safe in bed.

When the pre-recorded serviced ended, Piper said, "I want people to remember, when gray death sets me free, I was a person who had many friends, and many friends had me." She paused a moment, then added, "Filly had many friends. And we her friends have her still. In our hearts. We will always have her there."

Another surprise. Rico puzzled. The words seemed somehow too openly compassionate for a reticent Japanese, and too Christian for a fanatical Buddhist-Ecologist. Maybe it was gender. Maybe it took a woman to speak with that much compassion, to get past her own habits and beliefs long enough to say what ought to be said. Rico wondered where the first few rhyming lines had come from. They sounded like something from a poem, but Piper had never shown any interest in poetry.

Wasn't anything what it seemed anymore?

Dok cursed and cried, then clenched his teeth and turned and walked away. Rico didn't think any less of Dok for any of that. He was only showing his strength.

An hour later, they met Mr. Victor's contact amid the stacks and factories of Sector 10. The slag pointed them to an unoccupied warehouse not far from Port Sector.

The place was five stories tall, about as wide as a tractor-trailer, jammed between a truck terminal and some kind of foundry. The air smelled like burnt metal.

Beyond the big bay door was a loading bay, an open area, narrow but long, with a loading platform at the rear. Beyond the platform was a short hall sided by several small rooms: an office, a bathroom, — and what looked like a lounge. Plastic-molded furniture and cushioned benches. Semi-nude holopics of celebs like Maria Mercurial and Taffy Lee and the Sayonara Baby joygirls decorated the walls. A scattering of trash, narc caps, BTL carriers, and rat shit littered the floor.

"Now I know we're in deep," Shank grumbled.

A curt reply leapt to Rico's lips, but he held it back. Shank was right. Maybe they'd never enjoyed luxury accommodations while on a run, but they'd usually managed to find something you could call decent. Places where you had no second thoughts about using the furniture or maybe taking off your clothes for a shower. Taking refuge in a rat-infested squat in one of the filthiest parts of the plex didn't say much for how things were going. A glance at the bathroom confirmed it.

They supped on Nathan's Finest with rice and noodles. Rico watch Marena Farris dab at her mouth with a paper napkin. He'd have to make a decision about the woman: use her or lose her. Accept her proposal or let her go.

"Let's hear your proposition again," he said.

Farris hesitated, looking at Rico as if uncertain. Piper threw him a sharp glance.

Dok scowled. "What proposal?"

"Huh?" Shank added.

Farris told her story. The slag they'd busted out of Maas Intertech hadn't been Surikov, just a double named Michael Travis. The real Surikov was still with Fuchi Multitronics and not particularly happy about it. Farris had begun negotiating a transfer to another corp on the real Surikov's behalf just prior to being lifted. If Rico and the team would help her complete the transfer, she'd see to it that they were taken care of, paid cash nuyen, and forgotten by Daisaka Security.

"I wouldn't trust the fragging slitch."

The words could've been Piper's, but they came from Dok, hard and raw. Rico sat back and lit a cheroot. Shank said, "Nobody's asking you to trust her."

"No, of course not." Dok grinned acidly. "Just risk our lives!"

"We could use the money."

"Even if she's telling the truth, she can't guarantee Daisaka stays off our butts."

"There ain't no guarantees about nothing, chummer."

"And," Thorvin said, "we could still use the money."

"Money won't buy back your life, friend."

"Can't see living long without it, either."

Dok looked at Rico, and said, "You can't be thinking of going ahead with this?"

"No?" Rico said.

"It's insane!"

"No more than any other run."

In a way, Rico supposed, maybe they owed it to the slag who'd died in the parking field of the Willow Brook Mall, and to Filly. Both those people had lost their lives because of corporate treachery. Doing right by Farris and the real Surikov-assuming he was the real Surikov- would be a form of vengeance. Maybe the only kind of vengeance they could hope to exact. Somewhere down the road they might be able to cost Fuchi and the other corps a few percentage points on the exchange and lose them some money, crash their computers or spread nasty rumors about their financial health. For the moment, though, scoping out Farris' offer was the only chance for vengeance they had. A forced transfer of corporate assets. It wouldn't hurt a corp the size of Fuchi much, but it would still hurt.

"You in or out?" Rico said.

Dok stared, briefly. "You're saying the decision's already made?"

"The decision is we scan the scene, check what we can, make plans, do it right If everything's chill, then we

"We could be walking into a trap!"

Rico took a long drag on his cheroot before speaking "Look around you," he said. "The trap's already set."

"Yeah," Shank said. "An' it's closing fast."

The grime-smeared window beside the loading bay door gave a fair view of the street out front. Rico stood watch, if for no other reason than he couldn't sleep. Too much on his mind. He wasn't there in the gloom of the loading bay more than half an hour before Piper appeared on the platform at the rear of the bay.

"Jefe…?"

"Here, chica."

For someone with ordinary eyes, — the bay was nearly black. Piper groped her way down off the loading dock and across the bay. Rico caught her searching hand and drew her over to the side of the window. She hugged herself to his flank.

"We should just walk away, jefe," she said softly.

Rico murmured, "You know I can't do that."

"Why?"

He recounted the reasons for her, but the truth of it went beyond questions of money and survival. It went beyond any debts real or imagined to those who had died, It came down to something very simple: Marena Farris. Maybe the woman had plans to get away from Fuchi, but the fact was that she hadn't been ready to leave when they lifted her, so, in effect, she'd been snatched. Kidnapped. And now they'd had her too long to just send her back. Fuchi security would likely assume that she'd been tampered with, that they were getting some kind of trojan horse-maybe a spy or saboteur-in place of a loyal employee. She'd be questioned, analyzed, watched every minute of the day and night. She might never be trusted again. Piper would probably say it didn't matter, the woman was a fragging corporate, an enemy. Rico didn't see it that way. Farris might be a corporate and maybe she had secret agendas, but she was still a woman, and still a human being. That warranted some consideration. To Rico, it meant she had the right to walk her own path, and to get set back on that path if somebody tugged her in a direction she didn't choose herself.

Making that happen would take some doing, and Rico wished he could really trust what Farris told him. He hoped she was playing straight, or straight enough that any discrepancies didn't matter.

"Maybe we should go away somewhere after we finish with this," he said.

Piper clenched him tightly around the waist, moaning, "I don't care what we do as long as we get out of this alive."

"We'll make it."

For all their sakes, Rico hoped he was right.