Code Noir (2 page)

The older one did the spooky thing and slid alongside his partner, his expression bleak and cautionary. ‘There is one condition. If the
karadji
are not safe before the next King Tide, Parrish Plessis, the deal is off.’

King Tide?
I swallowed my qualms and nodded in agreement.

With the slightest swing of his shoulders he threw a dagger in a low arc. It stabbed the floor at my toe tips.

I didn’t even have time to twitch.

Hotly, I bent down, jerked it free and waved it at them.

Too late! The doorway wore nothing but air.

I moaned aloud, letting the built-up fear and anger stream out of me and then subside. With only a tiny tremor I handled the dagger. The hilt shone like steel-coloured marble.
Polished iron ore.

The Cabal spear that had killed Jamon Mondo had been jewelled. Opal inlaid and glittery.

I fingered the handle of this one. It felt cold and warm at the same time.

The sensation sent a shiver.

Worse than any premonition.

 

 

 

 

I closed the screen on the cute wave metaphors of the tide tables and tried to listen to Teece, but that knowledge engulfed my thoughts.

So did the fact that the whole of One-World was crawling with meteorologists sprouking about how it would be the biggest tide in the Southern Hem’s history. Close to thirty metres due to the full moon and some other tongue-tying stuff that they couldn’t explain sensibly in a news grab.

It had brought the closet crazies out, and given the confessed ones carte blanche. Judgement Day was getting a fair whipping. Punters had already lined the beach dunes to catch the spectacle, while others had fled to the borders of the Interior.

The Militia were busy planning how to save the supercity’s inhabitants from themselves.

‘You’re insane!’ Teece complained.

His deliberate insult finally captured my attention. I thrust out my hips, fighting the temptation to shake my fist in his face. ‘They’re just kids, Teece. They need a home.’

‘
Just kids?
They make bio-weapons, for chrissakes! Anyway, there are so many of them!’

The ferals that Teece and I were arguing over fell into the ‘Parrish protects’ category and these kids
were getting a home
.

See, there’d been a war in The Tert recently. One of those weird things that the history archives will describe as ‘the six-day war’ or the ‘fifteen-day war’ or ‘the short war’ or some such convenient ridiculousness that was far from the reality. In truth it went for five days, and was for the most part eerily silent and absolutely brutal.

The ferals had been part of the reason I survived it. One kid in particular, Tina, had sacrificed herself to change the momentum of things. I owed her, and them, a debt beyond repayment.

I could start, though, by finding them somewhere to live that had water and power and a san. Trouble was, I cared - but I was damn likely to die or change into some
thing
that didn’t if I didn’t find an answer soon.

Now the Cabal had given me a glimmer of chance to see my hope through, but I needed someone to get things happening while I grabbed my chance to live.

That someone was Teece. He wouldn’t do it because he believed in it. He’d do it for me. That was OK. I wasn’t shy on calling favours.

‘The ’goboys are mostly gone now, apart from a few stragglers. We can convert the barracks.’

‘What’s this “we”?’ Teece growled.

I trailed a finger along his skin, above the worn nylon of his biker pants. It’s not my style to play coy or use flirtation to get what I want, but Teece and I had been
close
since Jamon Mondo had taken a Cabal spear in his chest.

He’d even let me live with him these last few weeks.

And maybe I was loosening up a little? He sure seemed to appreciate it when I did. This time he grabbed my hand and squeezed.

‘What’s it really worth?’ He grinned.

I pulled away and regarded him steadily, taking in his massive wide chest, long raggedly bleached hair and faded blue eyes. Teece the original bikie surfer. A tek wizard with a sharp mind for biz.

He was looking back just as hard at me. What did he see? I wondered. Had I changed?

I felt like I had. Gone were the dreadlocks in favour of a rough cut. Gone were the outrageous nylon skin-tights. I was still loaded with the usual arsenal. Right this moment I packed two unconcealed pistols strapped in holsters, a necklace of lethal pins and a stack of garrotting wires threaded into my underclothes. Teece reckoned it was like being friends with a human booby trap.

The Tert - the run-down villa sprawl where Teece and I lived - was as cold as it ever gets in late August, enough to keep me in a short-fringed leather jacket over matching duds. Not cold enough for me to zip the jacket up. The thoroughly dude clothes were a gift from a friend, Ibis, who said he’d picked them up in a ‘collectables’ shop in Vivacity. Ibis is such a girl when it comes to clothes.

But that was just the outside stuff.

Inside was where the real difference lay. The parasite was feeding off the epinephrine manufactured in my adrenals. I was its host. And to say I wasn’t happy was a blind understatement.

I was pissed off.

Teece knew what was going on, but we didn’t discuss it - the hallucinations, the voices in my head, my accelerated healing - and I took care to make sure he wasn’t contaminated with my blood.

Blood contamination was one way the parasite spread - the slow way. And I was one of the few people in the world it was affecting - so far. My guess was that there were probably about a fifty or so of us. Eventually it would take me over completely. At least that was its aim.

If I didn’t find a way to stop it, my aim was to kill myself before it could.

That was something else Teece and I didn’t discuss. But sometimes I’d catch him looking at me like he was in pain. I knew then he was thinking about what might happen.

You see Teece loved me. Truly. The way people should.

And in a perfect world I would have felt the same way. But I didn’t. I respected and liked and cared loads about him, but my deepest desire was reserved for someone else. Loyl Daac.

Shite happens, eh?

Teece crossed his arms like an obstinate kid. ‘What’s it worth?’

I thought for a moment. ‘Remember that Brough Superior?’

‘Yeah,’ he said suspiciously.

‘I’ll make good on my promise.’

He eyed me for a minute. Then he took one step across and lifted me up into the air.

That was no mean feat. I was just shy of two metres tall and eighty plus kilos. Teece only came up to my ears, but then he was built like several tanks.

‘Put me down, or I’ll slice you,’ I barked, sliding a garrotting filament out of my crop. Maybe I hadn’t loosened up all that much.

But he just laughed at me in his way. ‘Do you
really
know where to get a Brough?’

‘Sure. Now are you going to help me with the barracks? ’

‘Such a gracious invitation.’

I’d dangled the Brough carrot before. A Brough SS1100 was one of the first superbikes ever made. There was probably only a handful in existence. And Teece was a biker from way back. In fact he ran a transport business hiring bikes out to cross the wasteland that bordered on the west side of The Tert. We were living there right now, he and I. But that was about to change. I needed action and I couldn’t think of any gentle way to break the news, so I just said it.

‘I’m moving on today.’

Teece froze. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve got some urgent business to attend and I’m going to base myself in Jamon’s old place.’

I held my breath, unsure if I was right to gamble on him following me.

He trembled and then took hold of himself. ‘I wondered how long it would be, Parrish. I only had you on loan, didn’t I?’

His words stung, but then the truth is famous for being a first class bitch.

I shrugged. ‘I’ll lose my salvage rights if I’m not seen there. And there are some other . . . matters.’

I stepped away from him, over to his comm cache, not wanting to see his hurt, and tapped in a Vivacity home code.

A plump man with pink skin and a flirtatious mouth appeared on the screen. Ibis.

‘Parrish, darling? How lovely.’

I smiled at him. ‘What are you like at interior decorating? ’

‘Brilliant, of course!’ Then, ‘Where?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Here. In The Tert.’

His cheeks, paled. For a second I though he might faint. ‘Are you insane?’

 

 

 

 

I left Teece sulking with his bikes and ran east towards Torley’s, urgency claiming me. I had to find a quick lead on the
karadji
and Larry Hein’s snoops were the best on the northside. He just might need to be
persuaded
to help me.

I reflected on my approach to Larry as I took in the landscape. From ‘Teece’s Bike Hire’ biz to Torley’s stretched a jumble of conjoined villa sets, long eroded of style and robbed of any dignity. These days The Tert was a sprawl of detritus architecture. Art Crappo.

But it didn’t end there. The Tert boundaries spread peninsular-style to the south of the supercity, Viva. Slick and sick Fisher Bay on one side, the ailing Filder River on the other: a despoiling one hundred or more klick strip of rabble - animate and inanimate.

It was once a massive engineering works site that got ripped down and disguised as a villatropolis - until the locals started showing signs of heavy metal poisoning from the industrial landfill.

Now it was a weird territory for serious offenders. Every kind.

A sterile strip of wasteland like an excessive firebreak divided it from the rest of humanity.

To look at, nothing much had been altered by the short, intense war. The already patchwork human dwellings that had been damaged were now repatched and as functional as they would ever be. Not so their inhabitants.

Nearly a thousand people died in a few days. The stink had got so bad that they’d allowed the Militia in to clean up. The mass cremations happened on the wasteland near Teece’s patch. Sometimes when I woke up in the night I could still smell it.

The media gave all the death a heap of airtime. One-World, Common Net, Out-World - you name it. Nothing like a stack of burning, expendable bodies to boost the ratings!

Priers - pilot/journos and their intrusive cam-cording ’Terrogators in fruited-up ’copters - supervised the whole affair jostling their Militia lackeys out of the way for the best close-up footage. Image scavengers!

I became so desperate to lay my hand on some anti-aircraft hardware Teece had practically chained me up to stop me chucking grenades at them.

 

I jogged until my energy waned, then I walked. Eventually I hauled my arse into a café for beer and food. Transport was around: scooters and Pets. I’d never been a fan of Pets. It didn’t seem right riding on a back of a kid even if it was half mekan. A more pragmatic person would have said, ‘Yeah but you’re putting cred in their pockets.’ But practical isn’t always my bag.

More like hyped-up gut reaction!

And getting worse.

The food was average but the beer was good. Funnily enough it was one of the few things in The Tert that always was. Humanity might be on the fast track to hell but the beer in Tert town’d always be cold. I sipped my way through it and enjoyed being alone for the first time in a while.

Not that I was really alone here. Since Jamon went down with the Cabal spear in his back, and I’d put a bullet in a shape-shifter named Io Lang, everyone knew me. Sometimes it was good, mostly it wasn’t, and some of the time I had to stop myself from hurting them.

I was carrying a load of aggression inside that wasn’t entirely mine. It had to do with the needs of the parasite and the way it manipulated my body. The more epinephrine that flowed, the fatter and happier it got. The less human I got.

Most of the time I controlled it. I’d even taken up meditation. But sometimes it got me so bad anyway that I turned rabid: angry and lusting. I likened it to a werewolf in the change - not that I’d ever seen one - but sometimes the need overwhelmed the rest.

I guess you could say there was a new confidence in my look now, but it was shadowed by a dark preoccupation. I’d become the sort of person I used to admire - the person no one messed with, the one with nothing to lose. It wasn’t the way I expected it to be. Not one little bit.

When is it ever?

People didn’t mess with me but they competed endlessly.

I slipped my hand into my pocket and fingered the little box of tattooed skin strips the ’Terro had given me. Why was King Tide so important to the Cabal? This wasn’t Fishertown.

I drained my tube and asked for another. I wanted to get smashed but I didn’t have time.

Besides, even that pleasure was denied me. The parasite kicked in when I reached a certain point of getting stoned and annulled the effects. You wouldn’t think you could crave waking up with a mother of a hangover and a mouth drier than six-month-old bread.

But I did.

One-World
blathered on the bar vid. I switched sides of the booth to avoid seeing it. I didn’t watch net news any more on account of a personal grudge. Business conglomerates and politicians used to control the world. Now the steering wheel was in one set of reality-murdering hands. The media. They’d tried to frame me for the death of Razz Retribution, media hound and presenter. A capital offence. One I entirely did not commit.

I was taking that grudge to the grave.