City of Shattered Light, page 11
“Hey,” a voice called. Right on cue.
Verdugo was in Riven’s hand, her finger parallel to the trigger guard, before she even saw the green-haired woman perched atop the crisscrossing ceiling beams. Sparks fell from the blinking fluorescent light, and Riven noticed a pistol in the woman’s hand.
“Hey yourself.” Riven aimed her gun in greeting.
“What do we have here?” From the abandoned electrical room, a man with steel studs covering his scalp emerged.
Wait. She recognized him. Diesel-Breath, the bruiser who’d dragged her into Sokolov’s throne room.
He held an assault rifle, the stock braced against his shoulder. New-tech, with more firepower than Riven had on her. Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t good.
“You come to apologize?” Riven said. “You damn near messed up my wrists.”
The woman in the rafters giggled. “Not quite.”
“You brought a friend.” Diesel-Breath leered at them. “Both one hundred percent flesh? Wonder if your insides are just as pretty.”
Damn. He’d come to collect. “Sokolov’s given me until morning. That was the deal.”
His laugh grated like breaking glass. “There’s no way you’re getting that bounty before Dawnday. Figure I’ll get a cut if I make the harvest.”
“We don’t want trouble.” Tripp held up her hands, her brown eyes wide as portholes.
“Organ pirates,” Riven whispered. “They want trouble.” Organs were hot commodities for high-paying Corte buyers—the planet’s terraformed atmosphere and weird radiation created enough malformed guts for an organ shortage. And those people were too good for cybernetics.
Riven kept her gun trained on the man. She could make a gamble—hand over Tripp and hope the girl’s bounty was worth something to Sokolov. But this jackass would probably steal all the credit, and she wasn’t in the mood to negotiate. “You want to harvest? How do you feel about pulling a hollow point out of your chest?”
“You talk tough for someone with such a small gun.” He crept forward, until the muzzles of their guns were close enough to touch. “How about you drop it before I shoot your friend in the neck?”
Riven wanted to tell him how small her .44 bullets would feel when they ripped through his guts, but kept her mouth shut. She felt the warmth of Tripp at her back. For both of them, she had to stay calm.
“Avoid the lungs,” the woman in the balcony said. From the corner of her eye, Riven could still see the woman’s pistol trained on her. “Lungs are selling for double right now.”
Riven didn’t flinch. Couldn’t flinch. Tripp wouldn’t be quick enough to draw her stunner. That left Riven, outnumbered.
But she’d never be outgunned.
“You really don’t want my lungs. Trust me.” Riven steeled herself, noting the way the man’s finger hovered near his trigger. Two gunners, two options. It would only take one to kill her.
Diesel-Breath shuffled to one side, revealing the pistol in the rafters behind him. He was moving out of his companion’s line of sight, so she could take a shot at Riven.
Riven’s heart pounded. In a moment, she’d be good as dead.
But Diesel-Breath made a mistake: his eyes flicked to Tripp. In that fraction of a heartbeat, Riven had her opening.
The shot wasn’t perfect, but they weren’t expecting it.
In one motion, Riven had clicked the hammer, angled Verdugo sideways, and fired at the woman in the rafters. A choked cry signaled she’d hit her target.
She barely heard the woman’s pistol clattering to the ground as she drew Blackjack from her hip, using it to shove aside the man’s assault rifle. Three shots from his rifle discharged wildly, deafeningly loud in the tunnel.
Riven smashed her knee into him. He staggered backward, dropping the gun.
He clutched his crotch as she shoved his head against the wall. Riven kicked his gun away, crouching next to him. She pressed Verdugo to his heart and aimed Blackjack at his forehead. “I talk tough, huh?”
Blood trickled over his neck from where his head had hit the wall. “You’re nothing,” he spat.
She should shoot him now. No hesitation. But the thought of Sokolov encouraging this nasty shit made her pause. Any matriarch who allowed this needed to be ousted.
Still. This was his choice. Not only had he insulted her guns, but he’d threatened her. Mercy wasn’t an option.
“I’ll give you a choice,” Riven said. “Verdugo’s my executioner. All live rounds. Blackjack has a cylinder full of wildcards—you could get a stun-round, a plasma round . . . or a shrapnel-scattering disruptor.” She swung out the cylinder and gave it a spin before clicking it back in. “Blackjack will sure as hell hurt, but it might not kill you.”
At point-blank, the odds weren’t in his favor.
“Those are some pretty guns, bitch. You wouldn’t be so strong without them.”
Riven felt a savage smile play at her lips. It was cute when muscle-heads thought bulky shoulders meant anything in a gunfight. “Having a gun doesn’t make you strong, dumbass. And humans didn’t evolve for strength. We wouldn’t last ten seconds against half the shit roaming the wilderness.”
She pulled back Blackjack’s hammer with her thumb, producing a satisfying click. “You know how humans conquered two star-systems? Hmm?”
His only response was a whimper. Guess he didn’t know.
“Because we are clever bastards,” Riven continued. “We built spears, holo-shields, guns . . . and suddenly, all those nasty predators were nothing to us.”
She pulled the trigger. Blackjack kicked in her hand.
Tripp let out a strangled cry as the back of the man’s head exploded pulpy red over the grimy white tiles. Metal shrapnel from the bullet sparked in the mess.
“Of course it was a disruptor round,” Riven muttered, standing up. “Expensive shit. You okay, Tripp?”
Tripp nodded, her eyes wide. Then she pointed to the rafters.
The green-haired pirate was still alive, clutching a gunshot wound in her shoulder. She pressed herself to the steel beam when she and Riven made eye contact, trying to hide from Riven’s line of fire. Drops of blood pooled beneath the beam, painting the woman’s fallen pistol.
Unarmed, and trapped up there. Riven could leave one alive.
“You there,” Riven said. “Tell your friends if they mess with Riven Hawthorne or the rest of the Boomslang Faction, they won’t have enough brain tissue left to sell afterward.” In a single motion, she spun her Smith & Wesson revolvers by their trigger guards and slid them into their holsters.
The pain in her chest burned hotter with the adrenaline rush. Whether Requiem or the sickness got to her first, she’d be dead within a few years.
But with the right reputation, you could live forever.
“. . . the hell is going on out here?” Voices, from the stairwells of the subway platform.
Diesel-Breath had friends. More of Sokolov’s bruisers, maybe, with more guns. She had a feeling they’d hound her for the rest of the night. It was time to go.
She kept the swagger in her stride as she grabbed Tripp and pulled her around the corner. She could never let the fear show, never let anyone see her lose her composure.
No matter how badly she was falling apart.
“Tripp,” Riven whispered, once they were out of sight, “this way. Now.”
chapter 11
GNOSIS
It wasn’t Riven’s first time seeing brains splattered across a wall, but it seemed it was Tripp’s.
The girl ran after Riven, her breathing ragged, mumbling “oh god, oh god, oh GOD.” Not a surprising response, if you’d never seen a bullet in action.
Only once they’d stopped at a tunnel intersection—where an abandoned train car sat derailed and rusted—did Tripp speak up. “Riven?”
Riven pointed Verdugo at the railcar, peering through a broken window. Indecipherable spray-paint curls covered the holoscreens where ads had once glimmered, and empty, dented glitch canisters lay on the seats. No signs of anyone inside though.
“What do you want?” Riven finally said.
“Why did you do that? I . . . I’ve never seen someone killed before.”
Not this again. Riven rolled her eyes. “Well, congratulations. Now you’ve seen what happens when you run into people who want to steal your guts.”
“You had them both disarmed.” Tripp was panting hard, distraught. “You didn’t have to—”
Riven’s lip curled. “Would you like to have your guts packed into biocapsules and shipping containers right now? Don’t be stupid. No way we would’ve passed without a fight. And the more people who know not to cross me, the better.”
Tripp huffed. “I hate this place.”
“Yeah? It probably hates you too. You might think you’re too good for Requiem, but you’d better damn respect it. It’ll devour you otherwise.”
That shut Tripp up. Good. Riven waved her forward, past a waterfall of leaking ceiling pipes and burned-out neon lights from an old syndicate checkpoint. Fluorescent lights still shone overhead—Rio Oscuro’s smugglers kept the lights on for cargo runs.
Eventually Tripp whispered, “We could’ve died back there.” Tears brimmed in her startled eyes.
Riven had to look away before she started sympathizing with her cargo. If Tripp didn’t toughen up now, she was hopeless.
“Just speeding up the inevitable,” Riven muttered, watching for errant shadows. Clear, for now—the bullet through their companion’s head might’ve discouraged the others from following.
Tripp wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I won’t get in the way anymore. I promise. Whatever you need, I’ll help.” Her whisper burned with resolve. Seemed her shell shock was wearing off. “I’m glad you were there. Really.”
Riven couldn’t help but smile. “Whatever I need, huh? You any good with a gun?”
Tripp shuffled nervously. “I’m an engineer. So mechs and circuits, I can deal with. No idea what it takes to be able to handle a gun like that.”
“Used to practice for an hour a day.” Riven gave Verdugo a spin. Her nervous habit. Either Tripp knew how to flip someone’s switches, or she was genuinely impressed. Riven wouldn’t complain.
Beyond the hish of falling water, she heard a faint scuffling. Come on out, she thought, keeping Verdugo up. “Being able to pull out my gun before the other guy has saved my ass quite a few times.”
“And the spinning tricks?”
Riven grinned. “Make me more fun at parties.”
“But you use old tech?”
“No electricity, no circuit board. Unhackable. When I fire, it’s me aiming, and not some AI targeting system.” She ran her thumb along Verdugo’s varnished-oak grip.
Truthfully, she’d watched an old Earth film from Phase I too many times when she was younger. One character had been dying of tuberculosis—but it never stopped him from spitting bullets into anyone who crossed his friends.
And ever since that day at Sanctum’s Edge, Riven realized she needed to do the same.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Tripp said. “Haven’t ever seen you miss.”
“That’s because I don’t.” She pulled out Blackjack, giving it a twist in her left hand. This hand had been harder to master.
Tripp was looking her over. Riven couldn’t tell whether it was respect, or sizing her up.
“Old tech’s useful,” Tripp said. “They’d be unscathed if I had to toss an EMP grenade.”
Riven raised her eyebrows. She’d been so busy gawking at the biocapsule earlier, she hadn’t examined Tripp’s other gadgets. “Where’d you pick up EMP grenades?”
“I made them. But I haven’t done much testing yet—don’t know exactly how wide the knockout radius is. I’m saving them for an emergency.” Tripp pursed her lips. “They’d shut down most tech, including our wristlets . . . and the biocapsule.”
Riven frowned. Gadgets like that seemed outside an ordinary mechanist’s pay grade. A piece was missing here, and Tripp couldn’t hide it forever. Requiem had a way of cracking people open like eggs.
Even before they reached Gnosis, the nightclub’s diabolical bass reverberated through the tunnel. The barred back door was flanked by two armed guards—the Boneshiver matriarch’s sentries, wearing their standard red-and-silver. There was nothing uniform about them though—one wore a flanged helmet with mesh exo-armor, and the other a hooded wrap-around robe that left most of his lithe body exposed. Javier.
“Shove off, this entrance isn’t—” Javier squinted at Riven, then his face lit with surprise. “Riven Hawthorne. Been a while.”
“Yeah. Need to get in.” Javier still owed her, after she’d taken a job smuggling his rich aunt’s pet bruttore to Earth. Despite an assload of sedatives and a pink shock harness, Truffles had made a wreck of Boomslang’s cargo hold.
Javier glanced at Tripp but didn’t ask questions. “Better be on the lookout. Federation mechs have been on patrol all night. I think it has something to do with that Banshee nonsense.”
Riven felt Tripp tense up beside her. “Will do. Thanks, Javier.”
Javier lifted the crossbar on the door, and the flood of light and sound rushed through the opening. Riven braced herself.
“Chin up, shoulders back,” she said to Tripp. “It’s time to make an entrance.”
Asa watched Riven burst through the doors like she was arriving home, as if the brawling and reveling was all for her. The guns slung at Riven’s hips accentuated her calculated, confident stride, and her magenta-streaked braid swayed behind her.
Something about Riven’s roguish smirk and deadly confidence made it hard to tear her eyes away. Asa’s cheeks warmed. She’d kissed girls before, in the storage room of machine-shop class when her professor wasn’t looking, but it was stupid to think of Riven that way. To Riven, she was nothing but a payout.
Asa stumbled after Riven as the aggressive flashes of color blinded her. The bass pulsed so angrily it might’ve replaced her own heartbeat. She clutched her backpack straps tighter, following Riven through the jungle of sweating, gyrating bodies and wristlet screens blinking in the dark.
With Riven’s every step, rings of colored light rippled from her feet, like stones dropped in a toxic pond. The animated floor reacted to the pressure of every footstep in the crowd.
“Where are we going?” Asa had to yell.
Riven grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the crowd.
The club was open to the night sky and the atmo-dome above the city. Crystalline arches with glaring lights crisscrossed between the glassy towers around them. Asa flinched whenever a light would flash orange.
Hell would break loose if Banshee ever got into a place like this. Maybe it was already on its way.
“Hey, Riven!” A man shouted over the thrumming bass, though he was close enough to touch. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Here on business,” she called without looking back. Riven seemed to know everyone in this part of town. “Can’t talk.”
He scuttled through the crowds, following them. His hair was pulled into a messy blue bun, and his smile revealed sharp metal caps on his teeth. “Who’s your friend? She’s cute.” Asa shuddered. When Riven didn’t respond, he turned to Asa. “You look like a glitch virgin. Ever done a Broken Saddle, chickling?”
Revulsion crept over her skin. Either he was talking about drugs, or something else entirely. “I’m not interested,” Asa said firmly, hoping to absorb some of the confidence Riven radiated. No way this guy would hit on her if he knew she was an Almeida, and a thousand miles out of his league.
“There’s a first time for everything.” His grin widened, those teeth glinting under the strobes.
Asa winced, looking to Riven for support. Riven’s gaze was leveled right at her. Do it, it said. Tell him off.
Asa took a deep breath, summoning her father’s iron calm. So what if she didn’t have a gun? She had Riven at her side, and that made her a little braver.
“Do I need to repeat myself? Or do you get a rise off badgering girls who don’t know better than to avoid you?” With one last glance at his slack-jawed expression, she sauntered in the direction they’d been heading.
Riven chuckled and retook the lead as they sidled between mod junkies with feathered hair and silver beaks over their noses. “Not bad.”
Damn, Asa needed to get out of this place. The image of red splatter on white tile was still etched into her head, and all she wanted was to be alone. Away from this neon-drenched city trying to sink its claws into her.
Riven dragged her up the steps to the bar, where excessively-pretty androids of every gender served drinks. Asa had never been in a real nightclub, since she wasn’t quite old enough for the ones on Corte. This was beyond any party she’d ever seen. Feverish, frantic, threatening. She was both invisible and prey at the same time.
Kaya would love this place. There was a certain freedom to being nobody. But Asa would’ve taken a mango soda over the dubious blue liquid in the glass tubes any day.
“Is Diego in his office?” Riven leaned over the bar counter.
The android’s glassy, cartoonish eyes fluttered. Her metallic shell mirrored the bubbling drink tubes and reflected the flashing lights. “Diego?”
“I’ve got an overcoat in need of a wash.”
It didn’t make sense, so it might’ve been code. The wide-eyed innocence disappeared from the android’s face, and a knowing smirk crossed her features. “He’s not taking clients right now.”
“I’ll see about that. Give me the elevator code.”
“Sorry, but due to the quarantine, elevator access to Alcyone Tower is restricted to residents,” the android recited in an irritatingly saccharine voice.
“Do you know the code?” Asa said. Restricted meant nothing to her. A plan was already forming, and she felt a thrill at the idea of showing off for Riven.
