“—not saying it was even rational, but you’ve got to—”
“—got to be someone who didn’t know—
“Fuck! Kovacs!”
Ortega’s voice, up a full octave.
We were into the reception zone by now. Still two clients waiting on the left, a man and a woman deep in discussion of a large paper-wrapped package. On the right a peripheral flicker of crimson where there should have been none. I was looking at blood.
The ancient Asian receptionist was dead, throat cut with something that glinted metallic deep within the wound around her neck. Her head rested in a shiny pool of her own blood on the desk in front of her.
My hand leapt for the Nemex. Beside me, I heard the snap as Ortega chambered the first slug in her Smith & Wesson. I swung towards the two waiting clients and their paper-wrapped package.
Time turned dreamlike. The neurachem made everything impossibly slow, separate images drifting to the floor of my vision like autumn leaves.
The package had fallen apart. The woman was holding a compact Sunjet, the man a machine pistol. I cleared the Nemex and started firing from the hip.
The door to the gantry burst open and another figure stood in the opening, brandishing a pistol in each fist.
Beside me, Ortega’s Smith & Wesson boomed and blew the new arrival back through the door like a reversed film sequence of his entrance.
My first shot ruptured the headrest of the woman’s seat, showering her with white padding. The Sunjet sizzled, the beam went wide. The second slug exploded her head and turned the drifting white flecks red.
Ortega yelled in fury. She was still firing, upward my peripheral sense told me. Somewhere above us, her shots splintered glass.
The machine gunner had struggled to his feet. I registered the bland features of a synth and put a pair of slugs into him. He staggered back against the wall, still raising the gun. I dived for the floor.
The dome above our heads smashed inward. Ortega yelled something and I rolled sideways. A body tumbled bonelessly head over feet onto the ground next to me.
The machine pistol cut loose, aimless. Ortega yelled again and flattened herself on the floor. I rolled upright on the lap of the dead woman and shot the synthetic again, three times in rapid succession. The gunfire choked off.
Silence.
I swung the Nemex left and right, covering the corners of the room and the front door. The jagged edges of the smashed dome above. Nothing.
“Ortega?”
“Yeah, fine.” She was sprawled on the other side of the room, propping herself up on one elbow. There was a tightness in her voice that belied her words. I swayed to my feet and made my way across to her, footsteps crunching on broken glass.
“Where’s it hurt?” I demanded, crouching to help her sit up.
“Shoulder. Fucking bitch got me with the Sunjet.”
I stowed the Nemex and looked at the wound. The beam had carved a long diagonal furrow across the back of Ortega’s jacket and clipped through the left shoulder pad at the top. The meat beneath the pad was cooked, seared down to the bone in a narrow line at the centre.
“Lucky,” I said with forced lightness. “You hadn’t ducked, it would have been your head.”
“I wasn’t ducking, I was fucking falling over.”
“Good enough. You want to stand up?”
“What do you think?” Ortega levered herself to her knees on her uninjured arm and then stood. She grimaced at the movement of her jacket against the wound. “Fuck, that stings.”
“I think that’s what the guy in the doorway said. ”
Leaning on me, she turned to stare, eyes centimetres away. I deadpanned it, and the laughter broke across her face like a sunrise. She shook her head.
“Jesus, Kovacs, you are one sick motherfucker. They teach you to tell post-firefight jokes in the Corps or is it just you?”
I guided her towards the exit. “Just me. Come on, let’s get you some fresh air.”
Behind us, there was a sudden flailing sound. I jerked around and saw the synthetic sleeve staggering upright. Its head was smashed and disfigured where my last shot had torn the side of the skull off, and the gun hand was spasmed open at the end of a stiff, blood-streaked right arm, but the other arm was flexing, hand curling into a fist. The synth stumbled against the chair, righted itself and came towards us, dragging its right leg.
I drew the Nemex and pointed it.
“Fight’s over,” I advised.
The slack face grinned at me. Another halting step. I frowned.
“For Christ’s sake, Kovacs,” Ortega was fumbling for her own weapon. “Get it over with.”
I snapped off a shot and the shell punched the synth backwards onto the glass-strewn floor. It twisted a couple of times, then lay still but breathing sluggishly. As I watched it, fascinated, a gurgling laugh arose from its mouth.
“That’s fucking enough,” it coughed, and laughed again. “Eh, Kovacs? That’s fucking enough.”
The words held me in shock for the space of a heartbeat, then I wheeled and made for the door, dragging Ortega with me.
“Wha—”
“Out. Get the fuck out.” I thrust her through the door ahead of me and grabbed the railing outside. The dead pistoleer lay twisted on the walkway ahead. I shoved Ortega again and she vaulted the body awkwardly. Slamming the door after me, I followed her at a run.
We were almost to the end of the gantry when the dome behind us detonated in a geyser of glass and steel. I distinctly heard the door come off its hinges behind us, and then the blast picked us both up like discarded coats and threw us down the stairs into the street.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The police are more impressive by night.
First of all you’ve got the flashing lights casting dramatic colour into everyone’s faces, grim expressions steeped alternately in criminal red and smoky blue. Then there’s the sound of the sirens on the night, like an elevator ratcheting down the levels of the city, the crackling voices of the comsets, somehow brisk and mysterious at the same time, the coming and going of dimly lit bulky figures and snatches of cryptic conversation, the deployed technology of law enforcement for wakened bystanders to gape at, the lack of anything else going on to provide a vacuum backdrop. There can be absolutely nothing to see beyond this and people will still watch for hours.
Nine o’clock on a workday morning it’s a different matter. A couple of cruisers turned up in response to Ortega’s call in but their lights and sirens were barely noticeable above the general racket of the city. The uniformed crews strung incident barriers at either end of the street and shepherded customers out of the neighbouring businesses, while Ortega persuaded the bank’s private security not to arrest me as a possible accessory to the bombing. There was a bounty on terrorists, apparently. A crowd of sorts developed beyond the almost invisible hazing of the barriers, but it seemed mostly composed of irate pedestrians trying to get past.
I sat the whole thing out on the kerb opposite, checking over the superficial injuries I’d acquired on my short flight down from the gantry to the street. Mostly, it was bruising and abrasions. The shape of the forum provider’s reception area had channelled most of the blast directly upwards through the roof and that was the route the bulk of the shrapnel had taken as well. We’d been very lucky.
Ortega left the clutch of uniformed officers gathered outside the bank and strode across to the street towards me. She had removed her jacket and there was a long white smear of tissue weld congealing over her shoulder wound. She held her discarded shoulder holster dangling in one hand and her breasts moved beneath the thin cotton of a white T-shirt that bore the legend You Have The Right To Remain Silent—Why Don’t You Try It For A While? She seated herself next to me on the kerb.
“Forensic wagon’s on the way,” she said inconsequentially. “You reckon we’ll get anything useful out of the wreckage?”