“You work security for Jerry?”
She nodded, eyes flaring white around her irises.
“One chance. Where is he?”
“Bar,” she hissed through her teeth, fighting back the pain. “Table. Back corner.”
I nodded, stood up and sighted carefully between her eyes.
“Wait, you—”
The Philips gun sighed.
Damage.
I was in the midst of the spiderweb holo, reaching for the bar doors, when they swung open and I found myself face to face with Deek. He had even less time to react to the phantom before him than Milo had. I tipped him the tiniest of formal bows, barely an inclination of my head, and then let go of the fury inside me and shot him repeatedly at waist height with both Nemex and Philips gun. He staggered back through the doors under the multiple impacts and I followed him in, still firing.
It was a wide space, dimly lit by angled spots and the subdued orange guide lights of the dancers’ runway, now abandoned. Along one wall, cool blue light shone up from behind the bar, as if it was fronting an obscure downward staircase to paradise. Behind was racked with the pipes, jack-ins and bottles on offer. The keeper of this angel’s hoard took one look at Deck, reeling backwards with his hands sunk in his ruined guts, and went for the holdout below the bar at a speed that was truly semi-divine.
I heard the dropped glass shatter, threw out the Nemex and hammered him back against the displayed wares on the wall like an impromptu crucifixion. He hung there a moment, curiously elegant, then turned and clawed down a racket of bottles and pipes on his way to the floor. Deek went down too, still moving, and a dim, bulky-looking form leaned against the edge of the runway leapt forward, clearing a handgun from the waist. I left the Nemex focused on the bar—no time to turn and aim—and snapped off a shot from the Philips gun, half-raised. The figure grunted and staggered, losing his weapon and slumping against the runway. My left arm raised, straightened and the head shot punched him back onto the dance platform.
The Nemex echoes were still dying in the corners of the room.
By now I had sight of Jerry. He was ten metres away, surging to his feet behind a flimsy table when I levelled the Nemex. He froze.
“Wise man.” The neurachem was singing like wires, and there was an adrenalin grin hanging crazily off my face. My mind rattled through the count. One shell left in the Philips gun, six in the Nemex. “Leave your hands right there, and sit the rest of you down. You twitch a finger and I’ll take it off at the wrist.”
He sank back into his seat, face working. Peripheral scan told me there was no one else moving in the room. I stepped carefully over Deek, who had rolled into a foetal ball around the damage in his gut and was giving out a deep, agonised wailing. Keeping the Nemex focused on the table in front of Jerry’s groin, I dropped my other arm until the Philips gun was pointing straight down and pulled the trigger. The noise from Deek stopped.
At this, Jerry erupted.
“Are you fucking crazy, Ryker? Stop it! You can’t—”
I jerked the Nemex barrel at him and either that or something in my face shut him up. Nothing stirred behind the curtains at the end of the runway, nothing behind the bar. The doors stayed closed. Crossing the remaining distance to Jerry’s table, I kicked one of the chairs around backwards and then straddled it, facing him.
“You, Jerry,” I said evenly, “need to listen to people occasionally. I’ve told you, my name is not Ryker.”
“Whoever the fuck you are, I’m connected.” There was so much venom on the face before me it was a wonder Jerry didn’t choke on it. “I’m jacked into the fucking machine, you get me? This. All this. You’re going to fucking pay. You’re going to wish—”
“I’d never met you,” I finished for him. I stowed the empty Philips gun back in its Fibregrip holster. “Jerry, I already wish I’d never met you. Your sophisticated friends were sophisticated enough for that. But I notice they didn’t tell you I was back on the street. Not so tight with Ray these days, is that it?”
I was watching his face, and the name didn’t register. Either he was very cool under fire, or he genuinely wasn’t fishing in the senior fleet. I tried again.
“Trepp’s dead,” I said casually. His eyes moved, just a fraction. “Trepp, and a few others. Want to know why you’re still alive?”
His mouth tightened, but he said nothing. I leaned over the table and pushed the barrel of the Nemex up against his left eye.
“I asked you a question.”
“Fuck you.”
I nodded and settled back onto my seat. “Hard man, huh? So I’ll tell you. I need some answers, Jerry. You can start by telling me what happened to Elizabeth Elliott. That should be easy, I figure you carved her up yourself. Then I want to know who Elias Ryker is, who Trepp works for, and where the clinic is that you sent me to.”
“Fuck you.”
“You don’t think I’m serious? Or are you just hoping the cops are going to show up and save your stack?” I fished the commandeered blaster out of my pocket left-handed and drew a careful bead on the dead security guard on the runway. The range was short and the beam torched his head off in a single explosion. The stench of charred flesh rolled across the room to us. Keeping one eye on Jerry, I played the beam around a little until I was sure I’d destroyed everything from the shoulders up, then snapped the weapon off and lowered it. Jerry stared at me over the table.
“You piece of shit, he only worked security for me!”
“That’s just become a proscribed profession, as far as I’m concerned. Deek and the rest are going the same way. And so are you, unless you tell me what I want to know.” I lifted the beam weapon. ”One chance.”
“All right.” The crack was audible in his voice. “All right, all right. Elliott tried to put a lock on a customer, she got some big name Meth come slumming down here, reckoned she’d got enough shit to twist him. Stupid cunt tried to make me a partnership deal, she figured I could lean on this Meth guy. No fucking clue what she was dealing with.”
“No.” I looked stonily at him across the table. “I guess not.”
He caught the look. “Hey, man, I know what you’re thinking, but it ain’t like that. I tried to warn her off, so she went direct. Direct to a fucking Meth. You think I wanted this place ripped down and me buried under it. I had to deal with her, man. Had to.”
“You iced her?”
He shook his head. “I made a call,” he said in a subdued voice. “That’s how it works around here.”
“Who’s Ryker?”
“Ryker’s a—,” he swallowed. “—a cop. Used to work Sleeve Theft, then they upped him to the Organic Damage Division. He was fucking that Sia cunt, the one came out here the night you crocked Oktai.”
“Ortega?”
“Yeah, Ortega. Everybody knew it, they say that’s how he got the transfer. That’s why we figured you were—he was—back on the street. When Deck saw you talking to Ortega we figured she’d accessed someone, done a deal.”
“Back on the street? Back from where?”
“Ryker was dirty, man.” Now the flow had started, it was coming in full flood. “He RD’d a couple of sleevedealers, up in Seattle—”
“RD?”
“Yeah, RD’d.” Jerry looked momentarily nonplussed, as if I’d just queried the colour of the sky.
“I’m not from here,” I said patiently.
“RD. Real Death. He pulped them, man. Couple of other guys went down stack intact so Ryker paid off some Dipper to register the lot of them Catholic. Either the input didn’t take, or someone at OrgDam found out. He got the double barrel. Two hundred years, no remission. Word is, Ortega headed up the squad that took him down.”