My face throbbed. My ribs ached, and my head felt ready to split. I wiped at my nose, and felt a little blood there.
“I—”
“Alexei, I said go to bed,” I said. As soon as I did, I realized how curt my voice sounded. I turned to apologize to him, to try to calm down so I could deal with him, but I looked over in time to see his door slam shut.
Great.
I trudged down the hall to my bedroom and shut the door behind me. I plopped down on my bed, then took the Escher tablet from my pocket and turned it over in my hand.
“I didn’t order anything else.”
“Yeah, well, your friend did….”
I waved my finger across the screen, causing the blank, metallic screen to flicker as the field opened, expanding as it jumped up into the air in front of me. I reached in and removed the heavy, cinder-block-shaped box from inside it.
The box had no markings. I peeled the tape away, and pulled the lid up. Inside, three rectangular gray bricks had been packed, side by side.
I felt pretty sure I knew what they were even before I scanned the codes on the edges of the bricks. They were explosives. Dao-Ming had me buy, and transport, ten pounds of plastic explosives that had been smuggled into Hangfei from who knew where.
“You didn’t,” I whispered, but she had, and now they were sitting in my apartment, right in my lap. The guns, if we got caught, would mean prison for sure. That box would mean death for whoever sold it, and whoever bought it.
I closed the box tight. After a minute, I hauled it over to my closet and pushed the racks of clothes aside. I used my twistkey to open the black hole gate in back, and carried the box inside.
The light from my room cast a dim glow through the hidden room, so dim that even the small concrete space trailed off into shadow. I took the flashlight from next to the opening, and turned it on.
There was plenty of room for the box among the other things I had hidden there, but somehow even the black hole itself didn’t seem like a big enough barrier between it and the rest of Hangfei. I cast the flashlight ahead and carried it farther into the darkness.
Down the dark, grimy hall I saw the rusted green door. I made my way over to it, and looked through the gap and the bottom left corner. It led into another open space.
I pushed against the door, heaving until it moved with a scrape and a squeal against the metal jamb and concrete floor and I could push the box inside and then crawl through after it.
The door opened into a big, dark cavernous room whose ceiling looked ready to cave in. As I cast the flashlight beam around, I saw wires and sections of metal grid work that hung down above an area filled with large, heavy shapes.
“A factory,” I whispered. It must have been demolished, buried under the rubble of the Impact.
The underground facility covered a huge, wide open area where rusted pylons stretched from the stained concrete floor to an exposed ceiling of metal beams and crisscrossing pipes. The hulks of old machinery rested under dust-covered tarps, and huge metal hooks hung from the rafters here and there, covered in grease and grime. They dangled from thick cable that wound around great mechanical pulleys that loomed in the shadows above. From somewhere far up above, I could hear the faint moan of wind coming from the Impact rim.
It would do. I put the box against the wall next to a pile of crumbled cinderblock, along with the guns and ammo. If the whole place collapsed at some point, all the better.
I headed back, through the door, down the dingy hallway and back through my closet where I shut down the gate field and hid it behind my clothes again. I heard Alexei stir in his room, but he didn’t get out of bed again. When I checked his 3i icon, it had gone gray.
I sat back down on my bed, my mind racing, and wished I’d never called Dao-Ming.
Chapter Ten
Sam, it’s Vamp. The message popped up on the chat in front of me as I headed down the hallway of Dragan’s apartment complex. I’ve got the info you asked about.
Nice.
You were right. I scanned your 3i client and found a little piece of spyware had hooked into it. I got rid of it.
How’d it get in there?
It could have ridden in on anything you were sent, or that you scanned recently. You’ve got to watch for that stuff.
Dao-Ming’s list. She’d sent me a list of the type of pistol and ammo she wanted specifically, along with her cash-card code—and the spy bot.
I figured. Okay, thanks, Vamp.
Checked out the apartment security footage too, for your mysterious visitor last night. This guy look familiar?
He sent an image of a man, dressed in white gonzo robes, caught midframe as he moved down the hall with his hands clasped in front of him.
I don’t recognize him, but he’s a gonzo. I know why he came.
For Alexei?
No, for me.
Why you?
I don’t know. Gohan’s a freak. Look, I’m at Dragan’s, can I call you back?
Sure. Why Dragan’s?
We’re doing the daddy-daughter thing. He’s been bugging me for a day trip so we’re going to Render’s Strip.
Okay. Talk to you later.
When I knocked on Dragan’s door he didn’t answer right away, which was weird, because when I checked my phone I saw I was a little late and that usually bugged him. I knocked again, a little louder.
“Yo, Dragan,” I called.
I heard something stir inside; then his heavy footsteps approached. When he opened the door, I noticed that while his clothes were clean and pressed as always, his hair had been a little mussed.
“Sorry,” he said, smoothing it back.
“Where’s Alexei?” I asked, looking past him, into the apartment.
“At school. He give you any trouble the other night?”
“No, he was fine.”
“Yeah?”
I shrugged. “I think he’s still a little mad at me. I had to hand him off to Yun for a couple hours.”
“I thought he liked Yun.”
“He does, but between getting juggled from you to me, and from me to her, I think he’s getting pissed.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He looked tired. “Why’d you have to leave him with Yun?”
“I had an errand I had to run.”
“That where you got the bruise?”
He moved to take a closer look at the spot where the dealer had hit me, and I turned my head. I noticed, then, that in addition to the mussed hair, I noticed a red mark, too, on his lower lip.
“What the hell happened to you, did you get in a fight or something?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
I tried to peek past him and he maneuvered to sort of block me, keeping the door partway shut.
“What’s with you?” I asked, but then I realized what was wrong with his lip. I reached up, and wiped it with my thumb. “Is that lipstick?”
Behind him, I saw Dao-Ming step out from his bedroom wearing a thin robe, and nothing else. Her hair, mussed, had come straight from the pillow.
She glanced back at me, her expression cold, and our eyes met. She was furious, still, that I’d stashed her purchase and wouldn’t give it over. The look in her eyes unnerved me a little, but I didn’t look away.
You owe me something, she sent over the 3i.
I’ve got no idea what you mean.
The other day—
Never happened.