Preying for keeps

10

"You really think you're some kind of tough guy, don't you?" Paulson demanded. He swung the cell door hard. The lock clacked and clanked and seized up.

Seated on the cot bolted into the wall, two and a half meters away from the crossbars keeping the groundhound out, Skater sat back against the wall and didn't say anything. The cell was dark, spartan, and held a dank chill shoved deep into the bowels of the earth under the sprawl.

Without another word, Paulson stalked off. Nina stood there looking at Skater with her big troll eyes, softer than they had been. "If we hear about the missing baby, I'll make sure you know. And, here." She unfolded her big troll fingers to reveal the stuffed, purple bear.

"Thanks." Skater stuffed the toy into his jumpsuit and looked up at her gratefully. "I owe you one."

She nodded, but the look she gave him told him that the only time she expected him out of the cell was for relocation to Metroplex Prison a few streets down and over. She walked away without saying anything else.

The undercurrent of jail conversations broke out around him. Threats, wheedling, promises, crying, and the hopelessness of the lost surrounded him, mixed in the odors of blood, sweat, and sour flesh. Skater made himself comfortable on the cot and tried not to think about how many things might be living in the cell with him, six-legged as well as fungal.

Being locked up scared him. He'd always hated being confined. As a boy growing up on the Council lands, Skater often liked to slip away by himself for hours at a time. When he got older and the old man had begun teaching him what he knew about surviving on the land, the two would go out for days. Andrew Ghost-step was a loner who didn't talk much, leaving Skater to his own devices. It was a freedom the boy had savored.

He was exhausted and tried to sleep, but images of Larisa kept darting through his mind like blood kites riding rebellious thermals. He remembered her face when they'd been together, how hard it was when she told him she didn't want to see him anymore, and the way it was in the coroner's office.

He gave up and switched on the public trid built into the wall. A small retractable earpiece was mounted in the wall. He held it for a moment and considered the possibilities of someone jacking into the security system through the trid grid. Archangel would probably know how to do it, but he didn't. And even if he did, he had no deck.

Slipping the earplug in, he listened to most of a commercial put out by DeGear's Electronics. Then the news came on and the anchor switched to a reporter named Chelsea Sable. She was lanky and black, the irises in her eyes metallic gold with jet flakes. Her voice was calming and captured an audience easily with its huskiness.

"So far," Sable told the anchor and the trid audience, "it looks like the bio to open a Seattle branch of the Tir Tairngire corporation of NuGene is going to meet with none of the roadblocks originally threatened by local opponents of the move. If anything, support for NuGene CEO Tavis Silverstaff is gaining momentum."

The trid cut to footage of an elf getting out of a luxury sedan in from of the Charles Royer Building. He was tall and impressive, with blue-black hair styled long, and a beard and mustache that lent him an air of royalty. He wore a crimson suit that set him off from everyone around him, accessorized by a white cape with gold trim. The footage had been shot during the day, and the jewels set into his gold walking stick glinted in the sun. His bodyguards stayed near him at all times, a protective wall of flesh and bone.

Silverstaff reached back into the car and a female elf jointed him, clinging to his arm. She was a full head shorter than he was, delicate and slender, except for her obvious pregnancy. Her dress was conservative, in a crimson that went well with the man's.

"One of KTXX's sources today told this reporter that sup¬port for NuGene's expansion into Seattle is part of an effort to keep the elven nation of Tir Taimgire from redeveloping Portland as a major port city. As economists often point out, re-opening Portland to any degree would cut deeply into Se¬attle's position as prime port of entry for trade goods in the region. UCAS interests have also thrown in their support for NuGene because a reinvigorated Portland would slash their tax-base in Seattle."

Silverslaff shook hands on his way into the building, a genuine smile on his face. Skater closed his eyes and put his hands behind his head, willing himself to relax. The woman's voice was soothing, and he focused on it the way he used to do with his grandfather's words.

Harsh voices interrupted his unexpected drowsing. Opening his eyes. Skater glanced at the trid. For a moment, he thought he must have slept through the news into a movie. Then he realized the jerky quality of the footage wasn't from a cheap budget. It was because it was being filmed live from a hand-held unit.

Four Lone Star uniforms were inside a house wreathed in spider's webbing. Plywood sections covered the windows. The blue crew split into two groups, each armed with high-intensity flashlights and automatic weapons, which they fired freely into the dilapidated ceiling and walls. Trapped' inside the house, the gunfire was a rolling onslaught of systematic thunder that challenged the trid's stereo capabilities.

Skater blinked, realizing he was scanning pictures of human beings that looked like they'd been torn apart and devoured by wild dogs. Two of them, their sex unknowable anymore, lay in the living room. The news team followed one group of uniforms into a dusty bedroom and turned the portacam on a young man who'd apparently been stabbed to death in his bed. Guts oozed out from huge rips in his torso. Another man, the supposed murderer, was stumbling around the room swinging what seemed to be one of his victim's organs, occasionally going back to the bed and hovering gleefully over the gruesome corpse. The man's clothes were soaked with blood and he was laughing, his head rolling around on his neck like a gyroscope. He seemed retarded, or demented. Skater watched, hypnotized.

The man's skin was yellowish, almost jaundiced-looking, and looked loose and flabby, as if he were hollow inside. His eyes were a mass of exploded blood vessels, rounded and red except for a small black dot for a pupil, the iris completely obliterated. He gazed stupidly at the high-intensity light and let out a peal of laughter.

The Lone Star uniforms ordered him to move away from the dead man. but the demented man suddenly lunged at them instead. In an instant a hail of bullets chewed him up and threw him to the floor like a rag doll.

The reporter's voice-over announced that this was the fourth reported case this week of what they'd started calling the laughing death disease, and that Lone Star had quarantined one of the maddened killers and turned her over to their labs for testing. The condition was apparently caused by a virus, but it was as yet unidentified. This was the first Skater had heard of it, but it seemed to fit right in with everything else that had happened since this night had begun.

"You got a service contract with DocWagon?" a man in the next celt asked.

Skater started at the question. Wheeler Iron-Nerve worked as a rigger for DocWagon as his straight job, and Duran, Shiva, and Elvis had all freelanced-for the corp" s paramedic teams from time to time. But calling for DocWagon while on a run wouldn't have been good biz.

"No," was all he said.

"Good thing. The skinny I get on this drek, these crazies popping up around town have all been clients of DocWagon."

"What does DocWagon say?"

"You kidding, chummer? At this point, nada. Ain't they just another corp? Cover-up's a specialty, if you know what I mean."

Skater listened to the man talk for a while, then exhaustion finally had its way and sucked him down into a maze of dark dreams that promised no rest at all.

Whispering voices woke Skater and he lay still in the cot, peering through slitted eyes and kicking in the low-light vision enhancement.

A handful of shadows drifted to a stop in front of his cell. He was still figuring the odds when the lock on the cell door snapped open. It was probably harder to break into Lone Star than any other place in the whole Seattle sprawl, yet these people were doing it. Since he was in general lock-up waiting for his appearance in court and not one of the high-sec levels, it would have been easier. But not much.

And they were after him.

"Breakout!" he shouted as he rose to his feet in a defensive crouch. Then he yelled again to attract attention and alert the security systems, and to push up his adrenaline levels as he swung a bunched fist at the lead elf rushing toward him.

Flesh gave way under Skater's fist, and an elf howled a curse in Sperethiel as he dropped backward. All the elves were dressed in loose black clothing and moved like a unit. Their reflexes were military, concise and telling.

Skater caught a long leg speeding toward his face. Grabbing the elf's ankle over his shoulder, he dropped into a crouch and hammered his other hand home into his attacker's groin. He straightened and used the leg as a fulcrum, propelling die man back into his mates.

More confused yelling, angry and frightened, filled the slammer as other prisoners came awake.

Skater fought from desperation, the confines of the cell not permitting much skill. He punched and kicked, and clawed and bit, focusing all his energies on reaching the cell door. He sent a wheel kick rocketing, knocking an elf back into the arms of another behind him. For a moment, a path was clear to the door and he wasted no time making for it. He hurdled one elf who'd fallen and grabbed a bar to pull himself around the corner.

He didn't see the elf waiting for him until he was almost on top of him. This one was short and stocky, unusual for an elf, a few centimeters shorter than Skater and at least that much broader.

The elf came at Skater at a dead run, jamming a shoulder into his stomach, then crowding him up against the cell bars. Skater lost his breath as soon as the elf hit him, then heard the dull thunk of his head smashing up against one of the bars. A pyrotechnic display rattled the inside of his skull as his legs and arms turned rubbery.

"Secure him," the elf said, pushing back from Skater, barely breathing hard. "Let's get the frag out of here. The alert's gonna go off any minute now."

Skater felt cold steep clamp around his wrists and ankles, heard the ratcheting noises as they locked, then blacked out before he knew it.