"Alright, alright. I"m sorry. There is something else. In Vienna. It"s called the Rubicon Inst.i.tute. It"s a facility, funded by the government, for scion-abusers who haven"t yet caused permanent damage to themselves: people who still have a chance to reverse the effects of the drugs. It"s ground-breaking work, stripping back the DNA to its original form. Anyway, I was thinking I might be able to contact them, somehow, Rubicon, that is. If I was working indirectly for the government, they might be able to offer me some degree of security from Pechev. And I"m sure they would be able to find a use for me."
"Yeah, target practice..."
"No, come on, I am being serious now. If I created this situation, chances are I"m the one who can fix it, no? The way I see it, I could work for them as some kind of undercover agent. Help them crack the codes, you know? Show them my working out."
"Right. Like the working out in your infamous recipe book?" Crystal said, her tongue lodged firmly in her cheek.
Lek laughed for the first time that day. "Ah, you saw through that one, did you?"
"I put two and two together back in the flat, once I stopped fearing for my life."
The smile died on Lek"s lips. "Crystal, I... I was trying to think on my feet. If I"d known for one moment that he was.... you know I would never have let him hurt you. You know I..."
"Yes, I know. And I should have told you about the phone-call. We wouldn"t have even been in that situation if I had. But these people are killers Lek. I don"t need to tell you that. What is he going to find inside that locker anyway?"
"Well, if everything goes to plan, he won"t find a thing. I suppose I could leave my old notebook behind for him though. Sort of a consolation prize."
"Anything of interest in that?"
"Only some poor attempts at love poetry."
"Really?"
Lek nodded and Crystal closed her eyes as he leaned in towards her....
"Your car"s ready!" Lou stuck his head around the door. "You"re paying in cash, yeah?"
Chapter 13.
On a filthy blood-stained mattress, on the floor of a living room in a derelict house on Electric Avenue, Roma Bruce woke up. She yawned, licked her lips and opened her yellow eyes. A shaft of afternoon sunlight picked up the dust motes floating in the air. She rolled off the mattress and onto all fours, stretching out her limbs and arching her back. Without a thought, she reached out for last night"s hypo, and shot a full vial of Lupinex in between her toes. In an instant, it felt so f.u.c.king good to be alive again, and the whole world belonged to her. She raised her head and drank in the myriad scents and aromas that London had to offer on a hot afternoon in October. It was still too early to call the pack, but just the thought of the rumble set her blood on fire. She stood up a it was getting harder these days a and loped into the kitchen. The windows were all smashed, and fat bluebottles buzzed around a hunk of liver on the floor. Roma crouched over it, breathed deeply and sunk her canines into it with relish. She was as naked as the day she was born. But very different.
Danny Calabas had an aversion to needles. The very thought of sticking a pin into himself brought him out in a cold sweat. For that reason he preferred to take his drugs orally whenever possible, or a.n.a.lly when he had to. With a grunt, he pushed the Natterjack-Up suppository into his r.e.c.t.u.m, wiped his fingers on his denim shorts and clattered out of the cubicle, unleashing a torrent of abuse on the Filipino cleaner mopping the bathroom floor for invading his privacy. He didn"t even know which one she was. Kai-phen maybe, who could tell?
Natterjack-Up was a slow-release scion, completely illegal, which over a twenty-four hour period dripped essence of toad into the bloodstream, leaving the user in a permanent state of heightened s.e.xual desire, coupled with a pleasing sense of woozy apathy. Frequent abusers enjoyed the added side-effect of sweating weak hallucinogenic drugs through their pores, and could be seen licking themselves, or indeed being licked, in doorways and back-alleys around the city. Danny Calabas had been addicted for years, and found it the perfect drug in his line of work. Vidmar kept him in constant supply, in return for the use of Danny"s Serbian prost.i.tutes every now and again.
Danny"s club was called the Shangri-La, and it sat proudly on the corner of Upper and Theberton Street. It was an inst.i.tution in the club scene north of the river, and offered patrons three levels of enjoyment: a grimy speakeasy in the cellar, with secluded wipe-clean booths, a Castro-cave and a back street entrance which meant it stayed open after electricurfew. Upstairs was the day-club c.u.m lap-dancing bar, one of the few operating in this part of town, with a private function room for hire. There was even a kitchen too, serving the usual fare: meat-sticks, burgers and fries, but even the mashed-up regulars knew better than to touch the stuff. Finally, the top floor housed the brothel, "The Swinging Hammocks" as it was known, where Danny"s girls a mainly young Eastern Europans who had been duped into believing they were coming to London to work as au-pairs or cleaners a performed their duties in tiny single-bedded cells, two metres by three, some of which even had a view of the brickwork of the building opposite. Danny Calabas, the warty, bloated 48 year old, who still lived with his mother in Mile End, was master of it all. He shuffled into his office at the back of the club, kicked a couple of boxes of toilet paper out of the way and flopped into his swivel chair with a deep sigh. The inside of his wrist tasted vaguely of aniseed, and Danny stretched his arms out widely like a monarch looking out over his glittering realm of sunflowers and melting clouds, and belched loudly.
It felt good to be in a car again. Crystal"s Proto might have looked like a wreck, but with the new biorg under the bonnet, it was running like a dream. Lek felt safe for the first time in hours - moving at speed, rather than skulking around the side streets hoping not to be spotted. The city was beginning to fill up again: the climate change in London had led to a shift in the working routine - most people tended to start earlier and finish later in order to take a couple of hours" siesta in the middle of the day. Lek caught a glimpse of Big Ben as they crossed the river at Westminster a it was nearly four o" clock. Still over six hours to kill, or be killed.
"What exactly are you planning to say to Calabas?" Crystal asked.
"Don"t worry. I"m going to make him an offer he can"t refuse." Lek had heard that line in an old film he had watched as part of the Leicester Square Open Air Oscar Winners" Weekend last year, and it had stuck in his head. "He"s a businessman after all."
"He"s a slippery b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Lek. He"s a toad, in all senses of the word. You don"t know him like I do."
"I"ve met him a couple of times, through work mostly. Vidmar likes to keep him sweet, so I make him up his own variant of Natterjack-Up. He"s got a thing about needles apparently."
"Yes, never touches them. He beat up one of the girls once for taking her insulin jab in the same room as him. Justified it by saying he wouldn"t be able to eat for a week with the nausea."
"Poor lamb," said Lek sarcastically. He put a hand inside his sports-suit top, fished around in a pocket full of vials and hypos, and drew out the two stacks of cred. It had been so tempting to lay-off the transponder on Lou Tech, but he was just an honest mechanic, if there was such a thing. "Keep your eyes on the road, Crystal".
"That"s a lot of money to be handling so.... casually."
"Let"s get rid of it then," he said, with a grin.
It came as no surprise to Vidmar to see Crystal Purcell and Lek Gorski walk out of an underground car-park two streets down from the Shangri-La. As soon his original suspicion had been confirmed, when he saw them leaving hand-in hand from her high-rise, Lek Gorski"s intentions revealed themselves to Vidmar like an easy cipher-square puzzle in the newspaper. He was sitting in a window seat of the Mash-Up on Upper Street, the harsh afternoon sunlight against the plate gla.s.s masking his presence completely from the couple, so they walked past within feet of him, ignorant to the danger they were in. Gorski even looked cheerful, although he did glance back over his shoulder a couple of times to check they weren"t being followed. Don"t these people know who they"re dealing with? thought Vidmar. He sucked on the straw of his papaya echinacea shake and watched the sway of Crystal Purcell"s hips as she sauntered down the road, brushing her hand through the tall wild flowers sprouting from the cracks in the pavement. Stay focused, he told himself, and traced a finger down his scar. He paid and walked in the opposite direction from his target, checking his watch before disappearing down the ramp and into the car-park.
Chapter 14.
A thin sliver of light broke through the depths of the tar pit where Delia was drowning and his mind swam up to breathe again. So deep was the induced slumber of the sloth extract, he had felt he was dreaming within his dreams, sleeping within the sleep, pinned beneath the weight of a thousand fur coats laid on top of him, and the faint drumming of his blood pulsing in his ears was the ba.s.s beat of the music playing at the party downstairs. Delia opened his eyes and saw an unfamiliar ceiling. It was several minutes before the leaden stupor in his limbs lifted and he was able to finally move again. He slowly swung his legs off the oil-bed and sat up, holding his bowling ball head in his hands. He ran his fingers his scalp, but couldn"t find any fresh lumps or bleeding. His thoughts trickled gradually into lucidity like treacle from a spoon.
What had they done? Drugged him? Possibly. Who are they? The Scientist. The... Doctor. Gorski. Yes! Gorski. And somebody else? Can"t remember. Maybe. But Gorski definitely. Hold on to that one. And why are you looking for him again? For the money. Yes. No. For Pechev. No. There was something else. Why am I looking for Gorski?
Something tickling his subconscious, like an ant crawling over his cortex, something on the tip of his tongue, a taste....
The recipe book.
Delia had to move, but his legs refused to comply. He fell face first on to the bedroom floor and had to drag himself commando-style into the lounge. He saw the smashed lock and splintered wood of the front door and finally his memories of the meeting earlier that day broke through the dam of his drug-induced haze. He pulled out his iHound and sent out the signal for the iHare. The coordinates came back in a fraction of a second. Delia looked at them with doubt for a moment, but let it go. He didn"t feel he could sit on a motorbike just yet, so he stumbled to the kitchen, struggled to open the fridge and pulled out a litre of Limpopo Mineral. He sat back against the wall and drank it dry while the grogginess wore off.
"We"ll take the back-stairs," said Crystal, "There"s no need to let the bouncers know we"re here."
"He will be here, won"t he?" Lek asked, suddenly unsure of his plan.
"Oh yes, he only goes home to sleep. Otherwise he would never leave. Come on."
"Wait!" said Lek, trying to keep his voice down.
"What"s the matter?"
He stared around, his eyes wild, before breathing out, "Nothing. I just.... I just keep getting this feeling that we"re being followed."
"We probably are, hon. Come on."
They climbed a rusted wrought-iron flight of steps at the back of the building, up to the top floor where Crystal thumbprinted a Smarte-bell and a heavy security door clicked open. The air in the corridors of The Swinging Hammocks was heavy with the smell of s.e.x. Crystal was used to it, having survived her teenage years in one of the many cells, but to Lek the rank smell of blood and sweat was almost too much. He fought back the urge to gag, trying not to think of the thin Eastern Europan girls laying back, bending over, kneeling down in the rooms behind the thin plywood doors. He heard a deep groan of pleasure from one of the customers, but otherwise no other sound. The corridors were quiet.
"It"s still early," said Crystal, as if reading his mind, "This way," and she led Lek back down to the floor below, via the staff staircase to the thumping ba.s.s of the Shangri-La day-club and the tiny office where a puffy faced man seemed to be peering over a pile of dirty laundry. In truth, it was Danny Calabas, slumped in his swivel chair, staring intently into the middle-distance with a lascivious grin playing on his lips. It took a moment before his glazed bloodshot eyes registered the presence of other people in his office.
"Crystal." He croaked. "How"s the scars baby? Healing nicely?" He turned his head slowly, licked the back of his hand, and tried to focus on Lek"s face through a field of poppies. "Gorski. I heard your name on the grapevine today. What a surprise. So what can I do for you two lovebirds?"
"How much would it cost to buy one of your girls, Danny?" Lek began, without preamble, and he felt Crystal"s eyes turn on him.
"Ha! Which one you got in mind, doc? Lara? Sirita? Aija? It don"t matter. They ain"t for sale. None of them."
"Oh come on, everything"s for sale, Dan, at the right price." Crystal heard that same cold tone in Lek"s voice again.
"I"ll drink to that!" Calabas replied "s.h.i.t, I want that line on my headstone!"
"So how much? For Crystal here?" Lek asked.
"You two planning on.... running away?" said Danny, with a glint in his eye that suggested he knew more than he was letting on.
"Well, Crystal could run away any day of the week, but some twisted sense of loyalty keeps bringing her back to you. Maybe because you told her that if she didn"t play the game, rather than burn her nipples, you"d put one of her eyes out next time she stepped out of line. Isn"t that right Dan?" Lek paused for effect. He stood up, closed and locked the office door. "Somebody once told me a good deal is only a good deal when everybody walks away happy." He picked up the telephone from the desk, and in one fluid movement, wrenched the cable from the socket. Crystal gasped and even Danny snapped out of his trance. "So here"s the deal: I am going to give you this 5,000 cred," he said, pulling one of the bundles from his pocket, and Calabas" toadish eyes bulged even further out of their sockets. "That figure is non-negotiable, by the way, and in return, you"re going to let Miss Purcell here walk out of this filthy cess pit you call The Shangri-La a what a joke that is a and never come back."
Calabas gave a dry nervous laugh. "The thing is Gorski, she may be older than the rest of the girls and sure, she hasn"t got many miles left in her..." Lek stole a glance at Crystal, who looked like she might stab either of the men in the room at any given moment "... but she"s worth at least four times..."
"Oh wait, Danny," said Lek coolly, "I haven"t finished yet. Hear me out. So, C5,000 for Crystal, which you"ll happily accept, because if you don"t..." Lek reached into his other pocket and pulled out a handful of vials and hypos "... then I"ll personally mix you some brand new scions right here and now, and jab them into your eyeb.a.l.l.s."
At the sight of the needles, Danny Calabas recoiled like a vampire from a crucifix. He broke out in a sweat, which stood out on his warty forehead like oily bubbles, and his already greenish skin turned ashen.
Lek laid it on thick, "I don"t even know what I"ve got here," he joked, picking up the vials one by one, "let"s see, swordfish... bear... pig... crab.... worker-ant.... what a range. Think of the possibilities."
"Put... them... away! Please." spluttered Calabas. "Just get the f.u.c.k out of here! Take that wh.o.r.e with you!"
In a flash, Lek leaned over the desk, grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him off his chair. He picked up a single hypo, flicked the cap off and held it to Calabas" neck. "Don"t make me angry Dan. I wouldn"t want our deal to turn sour. You wouldn"t want to find one of these sticking out of your pillow in Mummy"s house, would you?"
Lek managed to push Calabas away just before he vomited bile down his shirt front. Calabas wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and swore violently.
"Get out of my club. You and your... woman. And keep your money!"
"No, I insist" said Lek, and threw the bundle of banknotes at Danny Calabas" head. "A deal"s a deal."
Chapter 15.
Apart from a few hairy moments when he had tried to take the odd corner too quickly and nearly lost the bike from under him, Delia was feeling better. The afternoon heat was fading and the cooler air against his face was helping him stay awake. He had stuffed in a handful of goji berries before leaving the flat, and his belief alone in their cure-all properties had done wonders for his groggy head. He changed gear and gunned the throttle on his Suzuki Plasma, roaring over Blackfriars Bridge. The biorg, wrapped around the motorbike engine beneath him like a fat yellow octopus, responded to the change and throbbed against his thighs. Delia felt the bike and its biorg were part of him, a single being on the chase. All he could think of was Gorski and the recipe book. He dipped his head against the wind and pushed the bike even faster through the traffic, the tails of his raincoat flapping out behind him and revealing the twin Meisters strapped against his naked torso.
Crystal pushed Lek through a fire door and into the Shangri-La day club. In the pitch darkness, he strained to make out the forms and faces of the nocto-goggled clubbers, high on Dolphine and grinding against one another in their kinetic-sound-suits, each producing a different vibe or pitch which made up the cacophony of so-called music. Lek hadn"t been to one of these places in years, and he still found them bizarre, if not a little disconcerting. Groupthink Music started in San Francisco in the early thirties, when experimental jazz club owners put the onus on the audience to provide their own entertainment and gave everybody at the door a cheap musical instrument to bang or blow for the duration of the evening. Anybody not playing was summarily kicked out of the club. It wasn"t until Zimmer Zimmer, a German DJ vibing in a small club in Hamburg designed the first sound-suit, which created its own noise based on the rhythm and speed of his movements, that the genre really took off. It was an explosion in the clubbing world, and sounded the death knell for the Cowell Inc. chart-based superclubs and dancehalls, where DJs only ever played the new wavs of flash-in-the-pan wannabes covering old cla.s.sics. Groupthink was something else, pulling collectively on the crowd mentality to create a new-clubbing experience. Every night was different, the music constantly evolving, depending on the mood in the room. Instigators were the new DJs: individuals who could single-handedly change-up the tempo or cool it off as the day wore on. They were often the ones seen doing lines of Border-Collie off the toilet cisterns, and on more than one occasion in recent months, dance-floor wars between heavy-hitting instigators had boiled over into violence, as two or more had struggled to be the one controlling the crowd.
It was five o" clock and although the siesta crowd had mostly left, the dance-floor was still packed, moving like a single h.o.m.ogonous cell of humanity to music that sounded like it was being beamed down from outer-s.p.a.ce. Lek turned to say something to Crystal, but received a hard slap in the face instead.
"How dare you?!" she screamed at him over the music. "Do you think I"m just a piece of meat that you and that w.a.n.ker in there can fight over? How dare you?!" she screamed again.
"It"s not like that!" Lek tried to explain.
"And 5000 creds! A lousy five grand! Is that all I"m worth to you?!"
"There"s more than that at stake here!" Lek shouted, grabbing at her arms in the dark, as she struggled to smack him again. "More than your pride! Can"t you see that?!"
The fight went out of Crystal, and Lek spoke as softly as he could above the music. "I couldn"t put a price on your head. Don"t you understand? I just can"t leave you behind. And I can"t take you without at least trying to make sure you"ll be safe from him."
"I know. I know." Crystal sighed and Lek felt the tears on her face as he kissed her. She turned him around slowly and held him against the wall, pressing her body against his. The music swelled and pulsated in their ears and for a moment they were alone in a sea of obscurity, existing only for one another.
Lek pulled her over to a nearby sofa, where they joined a couple of semi-conscious Chillaxed clubbers. Crystal slipped their nocto-goggles from their heads and handed a pair to Lek. When he pulled them on the entire room appeared before him in shades of green, infrared and ultra-violet. And there was Crystal, smiling at him seductively in the half light. There, hidden in the darkness from the rest of the world, Lek had a fleeting feeling that they might just make it out alive. She turned around on the sofa and curled her body against his, and he buried his face in the nape of her neck, kissing her softly and breathing in the very essence of her. He thought about her perfect genes, thought about grafting her DNA on to his and feeling her, part of him, on the most fundamental level: in his bones, in his blood, on his tongue and under his skin. He wanted her there and then; could have stayed on that sofa forever, with the strange music and the soft glow of the mood-lights washing over him like the Aurora Borealis.
But Lek knew better, and he touched his lips against Crystal"s cheek one more time and reluctantly pushed her away. "We have to go," he said, "someone is coming."
Roma Bruce stood on the steps of her high-rise in the warmth of the October sun and called the pack. Her strangled howl - half wolf, half human - echoed off the walls of the housing estate and from the doorways of the tower blocks across the way, a group of five hooded figures loped into view. These were the top echelon of Roma"s gang - the Brixton Wolves. There were scores of soldiers spread throughout this part of South London, but Roma, as alphaafemale of the pack, dealt only with these five, her lieutenants. One by one they approached her, bowing in respect before offering their necks as a sign of deference. Roma stood before them, saying nothing at first, letting her yellow eyes bore into them all and revelling in her power. Some people are born into greatness, others have it thrust upon them, but Roma Bruce had earned her stripes on the mean streets of Brixton, fighting hard and killing ruthlessly when necessary. She was the worthy leader of the human-wolf pack and would fight tooth and claw to hold on to her position until somebody tough enough, or lucky enough, ripped it from her.
"How is our stash?" she growled, focusing her gaze on Zevon, her right hand man.
"Low, Roma. We"ve been pushing it hard lately and there hasn"t been a chance to..." Zevon began, by way of an apology.
"Don"t worry. There"s plenty of time before the pack-clash tonight." Of all of them, she knew that Zevon would never betray her. She stared into his golden eyes and felt something stirring inside her. She could smell the l.u.s.t in him. Maybe later, she thought, I"ll give him the honour of climbing on to my back. Maybe.
Roma had known Zevon all her life: they had mugged their first kid together in a back alley near The Academy on a hot summer night in 2032. She remembered how the kid had p.i.s.sed himself when they appeared and how they had taken his creds, leather vest and signet ring and then beaten him senseless just for the thrill of it, just because they hadn"t imagined that he would have handed over all his possessions without a fight. Good times, she thought. It was even Zevon who, two years later, when just the sound of heroin sizzling on a spoon was starting to upset her stomach, suggested they try something new, and offered her a vial of Lupinex. They had never looked back. Six years on: no family, no job, no fixed abode, and no belongings to speak of, and yet Roma Bruce was a queen, with no regrets.
"Show me then," she ordered, and the five turned out the pockets of their hoodies and shorts to reveal what little cash and drugs they had between them. "We are low," she murmured. "Give me one each and fight amongst yourselves for whatever"s left." Dahlia Ortega, the only other female in the pack, a tall grey-haired girl of seventeen, who would have been beautiful had it not been for the long sideburns and patches of rough fur on her cheeks, curled her lip at the order.
"Problem, b.i.t.c.h?" snapped Roma, aggressively, and Dahlia lowered her eyes and joined the others. Roma lay down on her front in the doorway while the pack prepared their hypos. If the pain in her legs was excruciating, she didn"t show it.
"Where would you like it, Roma?" asked the twins, Ronnie and Reggie, in unison.
"One in the back of each knee, one in my spine, two in the neck," she replied, and her five loyal lieutenants rolled up her clothing and obediently eased their needles into her flesh. She growled in pleasure and ran her long tongue over her teeth, allowing herself a moment to think about Zevon slipping himself into her before she felt the drugs working in her muscles.
The band of five were sc.r.a.pping on a gra.s.s verge over the remaining gel-caps, catching each other with sharp canines and pointed nails, drawing blood if need be, to make sure they got their share. "Hold back," shouted Roma. "We"ve got three hours to sunset, five to curfew. Save your energy for the hunt."