Replica

CHAPTER SIX

It had been almost forty-eight hours since Nate’s murder, and still no word from Kurt. Not that Nate was expecting word anymore. If Kurt had been planning to contact him, he’d have left something in the secret compartment, even if it was just a scrawled good-bye. No, Kurt was gone, and he’d left Nate behind without a word. Even if he hadn’t needed Kurt’s account of what had happened on the night of the murder, Nate doubted he could have let go without making an effort to find him. No matter how dangerous that effort might be.

There was only one logical place to begin the search: the Basement.

There were parts of the Basement that respectable Employees and Executives could visit during the day with relative safety. These were the neighborhoods on the fringes, not controlled by any of the gangs. These were also the neighborhoods where the black market did a brisk business, selling goods smuggled in from rival states.

Though the Replica technology was unequaled anywhere in the world, the rest of Paxco’s home-grown tech was decidedly second-rate. Officially, Paxco citizens could buy Paxco products at reasonable prices, or a competitor’s superior products at absurdly high prices with a premium tax on top. Even the richest of Paxco’s citizens balked at those prices, and there wasn’t a single Executive Nate knew who didn’t take advantage of the black market’s offerings—usually through intermediaries, because even in the fringes the Basement was never truly safe.

What Nate was contemplating was not a routine visit. To track down Kurt, he would have to delve into the Basement’s human trafficking market—and that would require him to go deeper into Debasement, where even Paxco security officers feared to tread. It would require him to leave the relative safety of the daylight and venture into the dangers of the Basement night.

Even thinking about going into the Basement at night sent a shiver of adrenaline down Nate’s spine. Like any young man of means, he’d made forays into Debasement with friends, dipping his feet into the shallow end. The neighborhoods that housed the black market during the day turned into something much more sinister at night. The privileged rich could sample some of Debasement’s most tempting vices, dabbling in drugs, exotic contraband, and sex for hire. Such behavior was officially frowned upon, but everyone knew that perfectly respectable Executives and Employees took advantage of the opportunities there.

Nate had never told anyone, not even Nadia, the truth about how he’d met Kurt. Sure, Kurt had shown up at one of the Basement recruitment drives the Chairman sponsored, but he’d come because Nate had invited him. Nate had first met Kurt at a Basement-fringe club called Angel’s, one of the favorite destinations of well-heeled tourists. At Angel’s, you could get cheap, home-brewed drinks that ate a hole in your stomach, or you could get expensive brands that weren’t carried by any official Paxco liquor stores. You could also get any drug your heart desired, and a pretty girl or boy to “entertain” you in one of the private rooms upstairs.

Last year, Nate had gone to Angel’s with a group of friends. Well, not friends, exactly. It was hard to make real friends when you had a secret you couldn’t afford to share—and when most people who tried to make friends with you were just kissing your ass because you were the Chairman Heir. Anyway, he’d gone to Angel’s with a group of other Executive guys. Getting laid at Angel’s was practically a rite of passage for an Executive boy, but Nate had been more interested in getting drunk when the press wasn’t around to snap embarrassing pictures.

He’d been well on his way to achieving this aim when he’d caught sight of Kurt, prowling through the crowd in a palpable cloud of sexual energy. One glance was all it took to see that he was trolling for customers, but like any born-and-bred Basement-dweller, he always kept his eyes open for unexpected opportunities. Like when he’d bumped into a very drunk Executive douche bag and carefully relieved the man of his wallet.

The moment Kurt had slipped the wallet into a gap in his clothing—no doubt a secret compartment sewn in for just such occasions—his eyes had met Nate’s. If Nate were being a responsible Executive, he’d have stormed over and demanded Kurt return the wallet. Instead, he froze like a rabbit, immediately and completely fascinated. A slow, wicked smile spread over Kurt’s lips, and Nate had to grab the back of the chair he was sitting in to keep himself in place. Here in the Basement, he could let loose a lot of his inhibitions, but his companions weren’t so drunk they wouldn’t notice if he made a pass at a guy. And since they weren’t really his friends, that would be a bad, bad thing.

Without meaning to, Nate licked his lips. The spark in Kurt’s eye said he saw the gesture as an invitation. Nate swallowed hard, wishing he could make a true invitation. But though he tended to recklessness, he wasn’t a complete moron and had no wish to experience the horror of “reprogramming.”

Most likely, Kurt knew exactly who Nate was and knew better than to approach. He merely winked at Nate and moved off into the crowd. Nate hadn’t been sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.

That might have been the end of their acquaintance, if one of the club’s hostesses hadn’t glommed onto him a while later and started flirting. Naturally, Nate wasn’t interested, but the girl was persistent, and so sexy Nate’s companions started looking at him funny for refusing her. He’d given in because he couldn’t afford not to, but she’d surprised the hell out of him by leading him to a room that was already occupied—by Kurt, who’d paid her to catch Nate’s eye and lure him upstairs.

That had been one of the best nights of Nate’s life, made all the better by the knowledge that he was doing the forbidden and getting away with it. There was an undeniable chemistry between him and Kurt, something Nate knew was mutual. Before the night was out, Nate had extracted a promise from Kurt to show up at the next recruitment drive, so that Nate could give him a safe, respectable job. He’d paid an absurd amount of money for Kurt’s time, hoping that Kurt would be able to get by without having to turn tricks until the recruitment drive rolled around, but he half-expected him to be a no-show. Nate had been more thankful than he cared to admit when Kurt kept his promise after all.

Angel’s would always be a favorite for Nate because it was where he’d met Kurt. But it was also a place where money, both company scrip and real dollars, changed hands in epic quantities. If Kurt had arranged passage out of Paxco, he’d most likely arranged it at Angel’s. So tonight, Nate was going there, as he had countless times before since his first trip at the age of fourteen. With one big difference.

This time, he was going alone.

Nate looked at himself in the mirror and wondered if he’d gone completely crazy. Nobody sane would think of doing what he was about to do.

The eyes that stared back at him from the mirror weren’t his.

Well, yes, they were. They just didn’t look like it.

Pale blue contacts leached most of the color from his eyes, and the kohl he used to line them made them look paler still, almost inhuman. His naturally dark hair was hidden under a white-blond wig, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were painted soot black with more kohl. A thin, blue-white powder cooled and lightened his warm skin tone, and his black lipstick didn’t go all the way to the edges of his lips, making his mouth into a harsh black slash in his face.

He couldn’t do anything to change his basic bone structure, of course, but a couple of pouches artificially filled out his cheeks, giving him dimples, and the changes in his coloring were so striking that even his own mother wouldn’t recognize him. If his own mother were around, that is. She and the Chairman had had a falling out almost ten years ago, and she’d withdrawn from public life, entering a fancy Executive “retreat” that bore a disturbing resemblance to a medieval cloister. Nate hadn’t seen her since. Apparently, staying away from the Chairman was more important to her than maintaining a relationship with her son.

Regardless, no one looking at him would guess that he was really the Chairman Heir in disguise. Right now, he was a different person. He was the Ghost, a Basement alter ego Kurt had helped him create. Well, bullied him into creating, at least at first. Nate had balked at just about every aspect of the costume. But he’d wanted to go to the Basement incognito more than he’d wanted to protect his dignity, and in this getup, he fit right in. Nate had the amusing thought that if his own staff should catch sight of him, he’d be detained as an intruder. But then he decided the thought wasn’t so amusing—if anyone should find out about his alter ego, his days of slipping away to the Basement would be over.

Dressed in black leather and silver chains that made his artificial skin tone look even paler and more sickly, Nate used the escape route he and Kurt had devised together to sneak out of his apartment without anyone knowing.

The escape started with a long slide down a laundry chute—one that was a lot less nerve-wracking when Kurt was waiting at the bottom. Tonight, Nate just had to hope no one was dawdling in the laundry room at one in the morning.

Nate hit the pile of laundry at the bottom of the chute with a soft “oof” he couldn’t suppress. The landing stole his breath for a moment, but he was relieved to find himself in a pitch-dark room. There was no one around to witness his escape.

When he caught his breath, Nate scrambled out of the laundry and edged his way to the door. From there, it was a long, nerve-wracking trek to the service stairs, and an even longer climb in the dim, echoing stairway down to the parking level. The only good news was that no one in their right mind used a stairway in a high-rise—especially at one in the morning—unless absolutely necessary.

Nate couldn’t set foot on the street in his disguise. Theoretically, Basement-dwellers could roam the city as freely as Executives and Employees, but in practice they tended to stay in the Basement. You could sometimes see them in their flamboyant outfits in the neighborhoods that bordered the Basement, but you’d certainly never see them in the streets of lower Manhattan, in the territory of the cream of Executive society. Even if he wasn’t immediately detained, he’d be noticed, and that might be just as bad.

But he couldn’t just commandeer his own car to drive out into the city. He’d have to use his parking pass to get in and out of the garage, and the activity would be logged for curious eyes to see. Which left him no alternative but to be a little … creative.

As a general rule, most people of the Employee class couldn’t afford to own gas-fueled vehicles, so they used public transportation. However, one of the men who worked the front desk at Nate’s building owned a motorcycle—an ancient Ducati he had inherited from his grandfather—that he doted on like a favorite pet. Thinking he might enjoy taking a joyride someday, Nate had persuaded Kurt to steal the man’s keys and make copies, a task that had been child’s play for Kurt’s nimble fingers. They never had taken that ride together, but Nate still had the keys. He figured it wasn’t stealing, as long as he brought the bike back in one piece. Besides, being on the bike would give him an excuse to wear a helmet and cover the most obvious parts of his disguise.

The bike had an obviously nonstandard storage compartment strapped awkwardly to the back. Nate removed his chain-laden leather jacket and stuffed it in the compartment, leaving himself in a plain black T-shirt and black leather pants. Still noticeably out of place in this neighborhood, but probably in the dark and on the move it wouldn’t draw too much attention, as the aggressive chains would.

Face and hair hidden by the helmet, Nate edged the motorcycle out of the parking garage. If anyone checked the records, they might well question the bike’s owner about why he’d taken the bike out when he was supposed to be on duty, but no one would guess Nate had taken it. No one would know he hadn’t remained safely asleep in his bed.

Maybe he was taking caution to the point of paranoia, but Nate decided not to drive the motorcycle all the way to the Basement. Instead, he pulled into a parking space on the street about three blocks from the border. By that point, he was well past the respectable neighborhoods where his outfit would draw unwanted attention. He hoped he wasn’t so far past civilization that the bike would disappear while he was gone. He didn’t want to think about how he would get home from here without it.

Of course, since he was walking into the Basement with no backup, planning to ask questions of people who generally didn’t take well to being questioned, perhaps he was being overly optimistic in thinking he would make it back at all.

With that cheerful thought, Nate stowed his helmet and donned the leather-and-chains jacket, taking a moment to check his disguise in the motorcycle’s side mirror. Was it his imagination, or did he look just a little wild-eyed?

As he walked away from the bike, his mouth was dry and his heart was jackhammering. He’d never realized before how secure Kurt’s presence on their jaunts had made him feel. Trips to the Basement had always triggered an adrenaline rush, but as long as Kurt was with him, he’d felt … safe. Which had probably been pretty naive of him. There was no such thing as “safe” in the Basement at night, even for its most powerful predators. But Kurt’s ease in his natural habitat had created a convincing illusion. And Nate had wanted to be convinced.

In polite society, the streets would be quiet at this time of night. But the Basement was anything but polite society, and the streets got progressively busier as he edged his way closer to its borders. The place came alive at night, its illicit clubs and bars filling the darkness with sounds and scents, drawing the unwary in like some exotic carnivorous plant luring insects with its nectar.

Once upon a time, the Basement had been the South Bronx, but when Paxco had bought out the state of New York, one of its first civic “improvements” had been to raze the neighborhood to the ground. That had happened well before Nate was born, and from what he’d heard, the residents had practically done the city’s work for it in the wave of riots that broke out when the plans were announced. They seemed to think they should make their own decisions about the disposition of their neighborhood and had shown their displeasure with the decree by tearing it down. Either that, or they’d just enjoyed the excuse to take to the streets in a frenzy of destruction.

The neighborhood that Paxco had built over the rubble was an homage to practicality. Every building was a high-rise, allowing Paxco to house its poor and unemployed in as small a footprint as possible, so the city could reclaim fringe neighborhoods and make them into something more respectable. And every building was identical, built of ugly gray concrete with small, regularly spaced rectangular windows.

There was technically no wall or other barrier to separate the Basement from the respectable neighborhoods of the city; however, the looming gray concrete high-rises were as intimidating as any wall, towering over the low-rent Employee housing that bordered them. When Nate passed between the first two buildings, a shiver traveled down his spine.

Most Basement-dwellers were far too poor to own cars, and most tourists were far too protective of their possessions to bring cars into the neighborhood. The architects behind the Basement had anticipated that, and they hadn’t bothered with wide avenues with multiple lanes and room to park. Instead, the Basement was a claustrophobic warren of narrow streets that made the high-rises on each side look even taller and more forbidding, and cars could only venture through when pedestrians allowed it.

In the Basement, there were no distinctions made between residences and places of business—not that there were any official places of business in the Basement anyway, unless you counted the soup kitchens and hospitals. The only way you could tell one building from another was by looking at the graffiti spray-painted on walls and doors.

This being a temperate almost-spring night, the streets of Debasement were at their most crowded. Floods of Basement-dwellers roamed the streets, hawking their wares or searching for prey. Others gathered just to socialize and posture, or to protect their territory.

Though Nate had been to Debasement many times, the first minutes were always a shock to the senses. In the world he was used to, there was a certain uniformity of appearance as Employees and Executives dressed in accordance with the conventions of their social circles. In Debasement, the convention was to be as unconventional as possible, each individual striving to stand out, perhaps in defiance of the uniformity of their surroundings. Nate had dressed in leather and chains because the outfit exaggerated the pallor of his ghostly alter ego, but the people around him sported a riot of colors. Neon orange, screaming hot pink, electric blue, sun-bright yellow.

Piercings had been a staple in Debasement since the neighborhood had first been born, but facial tattoos were becoming increasingly popular, and those who weren’t ready to commit to tattoos went for face painting instead. Street vendors offered to do elaborate face painting for a fee, a service that was used almost exclusively by tourists—and priced accordingly. It was like going to a very adult carnival—the kind where you could get your face painted while getting a blow job. The air smelled of street food, and of too many bodies, often laced with a whiff of illicit, sickly sweet smoke.

Dressed as he was like a native, Nate made his way through the crowd with relative ease, the predators ignoring him as uninteresting prey, the street salesmen dismissing him as not having money to burn. It was just the kind of camouflage he’d been hoping for, and it got him to Angel’s without incident. He almost let out a sigh of relief when the club came into sight, but passing through the crowd had been the least problematic part of his plan.

From the outside, the building that housed Angel’s club / bar / brothel / general den of iniquity looked no different from all the buildings around it, a bland gray pillar of concrete with windows like soulless eyes staring onto the street below. The name Angel’s had been spray-painted in metallic silver over the entryway, and the door was flanked by a pair of Debasement’s version of bouncers—men with the barrel chests and buzz-cut hair of lifelong soldiers but pierced, tattooed, and painted like some long-ago goth band.

Nate felt the eyes of the bouncers on him as he climbed the stairs to the front door of the club. He’d been here enough times with Kurt that he was sure they recognized him, but they gave him the evil eye anyway. As a general rule, Angel encouraged Basement-dwellers who didn’t work for her to take their business elsewhere; her club catered specifically to the Employee and the Executive class, where the money was. But money trumped everything, and a Basement-dweller whose pockets were pleasantly stuffed after a lucky score could buy a handsome welcome.

Nate wished Kurt hadn’t taken all his dollars. He shelled out the cover charge in Paxco scrip, paying three times what he would have if he’d had dollars, and immediately demoting himself in the eyes of the bouncers. Customers bearing dollars were treated like visiting dignitaries, regardless of their class. Those paying with scrip were tolerated as long as the money held out, but ripped off at every opportunity.

Nate endured an overly personal manual search from one of the bouncers, whose hands moved slowly and squeezed harder than necessary. The guy stank of body odor and cigarette smoke, and was about as sexy as a pickup truck on cinder blocks. It was an effort of will not to shrink away from his touch.

“Want me to turn my head and cough?” Nate asked when the bouncer’s hands lingered where they shouldn’t.

The bouncer gave him a scowl to let him know he wasn’t amused, then gave his family jewels a little extra squeeze. Nate reminded himself that he could hide signs of weakness without resorting to his own special brand of humor, which he doubted would be much appreciated by his current audience.

Finally satisfied that Nate wasn’t carrying anything into the club that he shouldn’t, the bouncer let him go. Yet another hurdle overcome, but the greatest challenge still awaited him.

Someone with a keen understanding of architecture and structural engineering must have helped Angel renovate her club, because although it was located in a building identical to those around it, it was completely different on the inside. The apartment buildings had eight four-room units per floor. They were supposedly designed to house families of four, but they would be tight and cramped even for two. Certainly they weren’t designed to house a nightclub, which was why Angel had had all the apartments on the first two floors of her building ripped out.

What she’d done was technically illegal—the high-rises were meant to be free housing for the poor. When the city planners had first designed the Basement, they’d made sure that there was enough housing for everyone who needed it. What they hadn’t planned for—or, more accurately, what they’d willfully ignored—was the human desire to lay claim to territory. Housing units were claimed by whoever had the strength to hold them, and if a powerful Basement-dweller like Angel of Mercy wanted to take over whole floors of an apartment building, rip out all the apartments, and turn them into a club, no one was going to stop her. And the fact that she’d managed to rip out all the apartments except for a few support pillars here and there without bringing the entire tower down around her suggested she’d had high-level help doing it.

Angel was most likely the richest person in all of Debasement, and with her money she could no doubt have decorated her club as elegantly as any legitimate Executive club in the city. However, she was also one of the savviest people Nate had ever met, and she knew exactly what her customers wanted. They didn’t come to Debasement in search of an elegant club they could find in their own neighborhoods; they came to see how the “other half” lived—without actually having to see anything more than a prettied-up fantasy.

The club was decorated in what Nate liked to think of as jailhouse chic. The pillars and floor were naked concrete, complete with chips and pockmarks to make them look like they came from a war zone. The ceiling was exposed beams and wiring, and lighting was provided by bare bulbs on wires. The walls were concrete, too, only you could barely see any of the concrete gray behind all the spray-painted graffiti that decorated them. Most of it was gang tags—for “artistic” effect, not because Angel’s was part of any gang’s territory—and suggestions to do things that were anatomically unlikely. There were also some pornographic cartoons, and one whole wall displayed a spray-painted portrait of Angel herself, holding a wicked, serrated blade to her chest and testing the edge with her finger as she looked out over her club with all-seeing eyes.

Nate fought his way through the crowd toward the bar. If you were looking for someone in a bar, the best place to start was generally with the bartender, and Kurt had always seemed to be at least mildly friendly with one of the ones who worked here. Nate darted through an opening to grab one of the rickety barstools. To his disappointment, the bar was being tended by Viper, a foul-tempered asshole Nate would have just as soon avoided. There was an off chance that Kurt’s friend, Random, was also on duty today, but Nate would just have to wait and see, because he didn’t want to ask questions of Viper if he didn’t have to.

A petite blonde in heels so high they should have given her a nosebleed climbed onto the other end of the bar. The girl was an obvious Basement-dweller, her hair dyed jet black with neon blue and green streaks, tattoos peeking out from the edges of her clothes, her face dotted with holes where she was pierced but not wearing her jewelry. But she was dressed in Executive finery, wearing a clingy red skirt suit that fit her like it was made for her, a white button-down blouse, and a conservative string of pearls. The stilt-like red pumps that looked like they were made out of plastic definitely did not go with the outfit.

As the patrons hooted and hollered out encouragement, the girl began to dance on the bar, stepping around bottles, jars, and glasses. Dollar bills and scrip appeared like magic in people’s hands, and as the girl slithered out of her clothes, she revealed convenient places for patrons to tuck the money. Viper worked around her, taking money and giving out drinks as if she weren’t even there.

Nate would have preferred to just buy a drink and sip quietly as he kept his eyes out for Random. But he knew from experience that if he ignored the stripper, she might make it her personal goal to gain his attention, and he was not in the mood for a lap dance. He held out bills like the men around him and tried to enjoy the show.

Technically, strippers weren’t supposed to remove their G-strings, and patrons weren’t allowed to touch, but those rules were ignored in Debasement with the same negligence as most laws. The strippers at Angel’s never seemed to mind, always encouraging the patrons to sample their wares—as long as there was money involved, naturally. Maybe it was because Nate was in a somewhat altered state of mind, or maybe this particular girl was new and not as practiced as the pros he’d seen before, but he couldn’t help noticing how frozen her eyes and smile were as she pranced across the bar, naked except for her shoes and her money-stuffed garters, letting the patrons, men and women both, touch her whenever and wherever they wanted.

Nate stuck a bill in her garter when she invited him to, but he did it almost gingerly, trying not to touch her any more than necessary. There were some girls he found attractive, but this chick wasn’t one of them. Her movements were almost mechanical, her expression behind the fake smile one of bored indifference. Based on the number of bills in her garters, Nate was the only one who gave a crap.

When Nate came to Debasement with Kurt, he always had a blast, and time had a way of getting away from him. It was always Kurt who had to gently break it to him that it was time to go. Together, they had sampled the various exotic drinks offered at the bar, danced openly as a couple because in Debasement, no one cared—and none of the tourists could see through Nate’s disguise—and rented the rooms upstairs when they wanted … privacy. They had enjoyed Angel’s male strippers, had bargained for contraband with the club’s favored black marketeers, and had even dabbled in some of the tamer drugs, though Kurt had advised Nate to caution on that front. When Kurt championed caution, Nate listened.

Angel’s without Kurt was nowhere near as much fun as he remembered. Drinking alone held little appeal, especially when he was drinking the watered-down crap that was served to customers paying in scrip. And without Kurt to distract him, he found himself really looking at the strippers and sex workers for the first time. There was nothing wrong with sex for hire, as far as he was concerned. Two consenting adults and all that. It certainly seemed a less unsavory “career” for a Basement-dweller than the drug dealing and violence that were the most obvious alternatives. Sex was fun, after all. But with nothing to do but sit back and observe, he was seeing things that before he’d always ignored, like the way the prostitutes’ hungry smiles tended to wilt when their customers weren’t looking.

It was all uncommonly depressing, and within fifteen minutes of arriving, Nate was more than anxious to get the hell out. But he’d come here for a reason, and it wasn’t to have fun. He risked asking Viper if Random was on duty tonight, but Viper ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken. The guy on the next stool said he hadn’t seen Random in weeks, so maybe he’d gotten another job. Or maybe he’d just disappeared, the way Basement-dwellers sometimes did.

Nate decided his next best option was to talk to Angel herself. She rarely failed to make an appearance, so Nate settled in to wait.

An hour passed, and then another, and Nate still hadn’t caught a glimpse of Angel. It was possible this was one of those rare nights when she didn’t show up at the club. By the end of the third hour, he’d wandered from one end of the club to the other at least three times, and he still hadn’t found her. To keep from being kicked out, he’d had to keep the money flowing, buying more drinks than he dared to swallow—being alone and drunk in Debasement was a recipe for disaster—and stuffing G-strings of strippers he had no interest in. He was running low on scrip, and he was aware that soon the staff would notice and ask him to leave.

At just after 4:00 A.M., Nate made his way to the bar once more and gestured at Viper. The vertically slitted yellow contacts he wore certainly enhanced his reptilian look, as did the curved, fanglike implants that replaced his upper canines. Even when Nate had been here with Kurt, throwing dollars around with aplomb and thereby buying the devotion of the rest of the club’s employees, he’d always felt like Viper disliked him. Of course, like everyone else who worked at Angel’s, Viper was a part of the “atmosphere,” filling the role of the scary-ass bartender to give the tourists a thrill. Maybe acting like he disliked everyone was just part of his job.

Viper waited impatiently for Nate to order a drink, and Nate knew even before he opened his mouth that he was making a mistake. But he was almost out of scrip—if he ended up having to do this again, he’d make sure to bring a lot more money with him—and it was his last shot. He leaned over the bar, forced to shout over the music even though he’d have rather kept his voice down.

“I was hoping to talk to Angel tonight,” he said, then folded his hand around the remaining scrip in his pocket and slid that hand in Viper’s direction, making sure a corner of paper showed.

Viper looked at Nate’s hand and made a face. Nate thought the feeble bribe was about to be refused, but Viper tapped a sharpened, clawlike fingernail on the corner of paper and drew it out of Nate’s hand. He looked at the hundred-dollar note with obvious distaste, picking it up gingerly and dropping it into the tip jar he kept behind the bar. (Keeping a tip jar where just anyone could get to it would have been begging for the Basement-dwellers to help themselves.)

“Outta luck,” Viper said, managing to make his words hiss despite the lack of sibilant letters.

It was more than he’d gotten when he’d asked about Random, but it was a little thin at fifty dollars a word. Nate waited a second to see if Viper planned to elaborate, but the man turned and started to walk away. Unwisely, Nate leaned over the bar and grabbed Viper’s arm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the bouncers take notice and start moving his way. The smart thing to do would be to let go, but Nate was too frustrated to be smart.

“What do you mean I’m out of luck?” he demanded. “Is she not here tonight?”

Viper stared at him with those slitted yellow eyes, and Nate fought a shudder. He’d always assumed the reptilian effect was caused by contacts, but now he wondered if they were implants, like the fangs. Cosmetic surgery performed by amateurs struck Nate as a terrible idea, but, like many terrible ideas, it was popular in Debasement.

“Time to go,” someone said from behind Nate, and a hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Let go of Viper, unless you want to lose fingers.”

In a bar in civilized society, Nate might not have taken that threat seriously. Here, he knew the bouncer was dead serious. Nate wasn’t here as the Chairman Heir of Paxco; he was just some anonymous Basement-dweller, and if Angel’s staff wanted to torture or even kill him, the law wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

“Please tell her I need to talk to her,” he said a little desperately as he let go of Viper’s arm. “There’s money in it.”

The bouncer yanked on Nate’s arm, practically dislocating his shoulder, and Nate stumbled forward. He tried to turn and say something else to Viper—he wasn’t sure exactly what he could say that would persuade the man to convey the message—but the bouncer was having none of it. Another joint-torturing yank propelled Nate away from the bar, and oblivious patrons filled in the space he’d just vacated, hiding the bartender from view.