It's him. But you know, they all were.
The sound of laughter fades away in the dark.
Theo took off the headmount and looked at her, filling his lungs with a big breath and letting it out slowly. "You're fuckin' dangerous."
Gina flipped off the flatscreen she'd been watching. "That mean you like it?"
He dug his blocky fingers in his squared-off orange beard ("Burnt sienna, not orange. Don't you call it fucking 'orange,' I paid for burnt sienna, not fucking 'orange.' "), looking glassy-eyed. "It'll probably kill somebody, and we'll all get sued over it, but-" He shrugged and then started to peel off the hotsuit. "Get this off me before it squeezes me to death."
She stripped him quickly and tossed his clothes at him, keeping her back to him while he dressed.
"What's this?" he said jovially. "I only used to walk naked through EyeTraxx several times a week."
"Had it for lunch," she muttered.
"It's too early for lunch."
"So I had it for breakfast, then."
"You sure didn't eat breakfast here."
She busied herself with the console, setting it to make copies of Theo's video, zapping one into the release sequence. Apparently it had to make several stops before it actually made it to the release pipe; every second assistant's mother's brother had to screen it and put their okay on it, including Rivera. He could chew on this one awhile, see how it went with his diet of commercials.
"Did you hear what I said? I said, you didn't eat breakfast here."
"No shit."
"It scared me."
She frowned at him over her shoulder.
"The video," he added, slipping his vest on over his shirt. "It really fuckin' scared me."
"Everything scares you, Theo. You're the biggest chicken-ass I know."
He went over to her, smiling. "You want to try my ass out? See if you can really put the fear of God into it?"
She looked up at him. Theo was all of twenty-six and looked like somebody's video idea of the farmer's son, even with the stupid orange beard. The Beater had caught him in a theme club, jamming his own improvs into nostalgia covers, and she'd almost caught him herself in a weak moment. She patted his butt. "Take a number and wait. I got videos backed up like GridLid's day off."
A few minutes after she threw him out, the door buzzed. She pressed the release, and Valjean swirled in with his ever-changing cape. "Everybody wants to know," he said.
"No, I don't have your fall."
Moray appeared next to him, the closed keyboard hanging from her shoulder by a braided strap. Ecklestone was already pressing for the lift. "Nice place," he said. He'd gone 1940s zoot again. It didn't go with the dark blue frizz that trailed down his back.
Valjean showed off by straddling the ladder and sliding down. "There," he said, taking a bow. "That's one way."
"You're so hot, you do it," Gina said.
He noticed the flying harness tied up near the ceiling. "Give me that, I probably could."
"What do you want another fall for? You've had falls in your last six videos."
"Signature image," said Moray, wiggling down the ladder in her tight red rubber dress. Her hair was combed back and lacquered down hard.
Zigzags were marching across the cape in rigid formation. "See that?" he said, holding both arms out and doing a turn. The zigzags rounded and bulged briefly at the points as they moved. "That's it in cape. The new release. I had a kid on the Mimosa translate it into line display."
"Shit, you're making me cross-eyed."
"Anything to help. Want that fall."
She brought the flying harness down from the ceiling and put on the hotsuit, but she couldn't seem to fall far enough or fast enough to raise a blip of sensation. Even having Valjean push her off the catwalk railing wouldn't do it.
They went back to the original house wearing Gilding Body Shields. Gabe's didn't do much to soften the landing at the bottom of the chute, but Marly's handled the laser shot without even a scorch mark. Probably not true, Gabe thought, but Gilding didn't ask for cinema verite. For good measure he let Caritha's shot graze his ribs.
"You're okay, hotwire," she said, examining him. "But can't you do this without making me look like Deadeye Dork?"
The response gave him more of a jolt than the shot; the program was getting smarter on him again. "It's just for ideas," he whispered. "Don't worry, I'll leave you out of the final cut."
They made it through the ward, into the pseudo-elevator that dumped them in the alley.
"This registers us as outdoors for real," Caritha said, looking at a lighted meter on the back of the cam.
Marly looked around. "It sure got dark quick." She moved forward, keeping low. Gabe was right behind her when the shape dropped down from somewhere in the shadows above. He got a whiff of machine oil mixed with sweat and hesitated; he didn't remember requisitioning any smells.
Two strong arms grabbed him around the waist from behind and tried to lift him. There was a red glow and a sizzling noise, and the arms fell away from him. Almost immediately someone else rushed him; he saw the glint of a knife blade and fell backwards, leaving himself wide open. The knife came down, bounced harmlessly off his breastbone and out of his attacker's hand. Caritha swung the cam, bashing the figure in the head, and Gabe scrambled up again to help Marly, who was struggling between two others. He pulled one away, smashing his forearm down on the back of an exposed neck. The body armor stiffened in response to the impact, making the blow harder. Gabe winced a little, feeling the shock all the way up to his armpit. The sensors were really responsive today. Marly had already taken care of the other one; Gabe thought she'd punched him, but when he looked again, he saw the knife in her hand.
She wiped the blade on her arm and then showed him the stains. "Washable, I hope?"
He stared at the knife still in her other hand. There was something strange looking about it, but in the dim light he couldn't tell exactly what it was. Maybe it was the fact that it was in her hand at all, he thought a little dazedly; the Marly program had never before picked up a knife to stab with.
"That's all of them," Caritha said, sounding satisfied. "Unless you want to wait around here for more."
The knife in Marly's hand shimmered and changed. She didn't react.
"Pause!" he yelled, and pulled himself back a level from the simulation so that he was observing the alley on the screen inside the headmount without being in it.
"Status report," he said.
The lower third of the screen gave him the first five lines of figures on the simulation program. Everything looked normal.
"Scroll," he told it, and the next five lines rolled up from the bottom. He saw nothing out of the ordinary until he reached the twentieth line, which began an inventory of the storage items he was drawing on; the specs for the knife had both positive and negative values.
"Isolate knife, with detail." The knife filled half the screen, while the other half listed the figures defining measurement, appearance, and perceived weight and textures. The last figure was the negative value. There was a hole in the knife. Like a window, or a door. Someone was watching.
For one wild moment he thought it might be Sam; if anyone could have cracked him so decisively, it had to be Sam. But Sam would have announced herself, she wouldn't have just spied on him. Wouldn't she?
He plunged himself back into the simulation. Still holding the knife, Marly started to say something.
"Put the knife down," he told her. "Put it down and walk away from it."
"Can 't do that, hotwire," she said. Standing next to him, Caritha looked up at him and shook her head.
"You have to, Marly. I'll take a look at it myself, but please, put it down before it does something to you."
"Already has." She held out her hand and he saw how her fingers had melted together into the handle and how the blade, still sharp and dangerous looking, had changed from simulated metal to simulated flesh.