Crash Deluxe (2 page)

‘What are you looking for?’

‘The terms of Ike del Morte’s sentence.’

He clenched his jaw but stayed silent.

I was already on my way out the door. If I didn’t get out of The Tert soon I’d end up in a face-off with someone. Everyone wanted a piece of me for one reason or another, and I had more urgent things to do than play Parrish, War Queen of the Urban Dump.

 

Gigi was waiting for us behind more security than Raul Minoj, my favourite armament dealer, could muster. She also had worse body odour.

‘Teece will sort out the details with you later,’ I said.

‘No details,’ Gigi laughed. ‘Cred comes in, I take my slice.’

The pair glowered at each other. Entrepreneur and banker. A tradition.

‘Save the bone-tugging, you two. I’m kinda in a rush, Gigi.’

She nodded toward a corner of the room that was half curtained off. ‘Don’t sweat up my gloves.’

Two body-sized sheaths hung in there, looking like humans with the flesh sucked out of them. Neither of them had resuscitators or bio-monitors.

‘No safety,’ Teece whispered. ‘If you lose me in there, you’ll be relying on Gigi to unplug you in time. You still want to do it?’

I threw Gigi a look. She was gorging on a carton of warm dough and licking the sugar off her fingers.

‘Gee, you better come get me out of this if I get into trouble. Or I’ll be haunting you.’

‘Sure,’ she burped.

I wasn’t keen on the quality of her reassuring smile.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ I said.

 

The Gigi-stench of the first glove was so bad that I handed it over to Teece.

‘Too big for me,’ I lied.

He frowned and swallowed hard a couple of times before he stripped off and got into it.

I followed his lead with the other, ignoring his stare on me. It smelled better than the first one but stuck to my skin in patches like a cheap Band-Aid.

‘Should I turn down my olfaugs?’

Teece shook his head. ‘Gigi’s set is visual with only some basic auditory. Two gen vreal.’

He didn’t waste time on an orientation, plunging us straight into full immersion before I had a chance to blink - his revenge for my bossy antics. I hadn’t done proper vreal since netschool and that had been to all the tourist spots, so the plunge sent my brain shrieking at the sensory rush.

I vomited into the mask and heard it drain down the spit-sucker.

He manoeuvred us to the top of the launch-pad queue.

I stared into the vastness. My netschool’s visual representation had been a rainforest - intertwined organics and nutrient-seeking roots. In between, among the roots, was the debris. A system that simultaneously lived and died. Replicated and ruined.

Gigi’s metaphors fitted more with the cityscape of the original virtuals. Hi-ways and caches of dwellings. Streets and business fronts.

I caught the reflection of the avatar Teece’d rented me - a Viking woman with oversized helmet horns.

His was an enduro bike that pinged like a hammer on a nail. I climbed aboard him and held on.

We dropped straight into a traffic stream, my horns tangling with other avatars as I craned to stare at the passing sights. A tenet appeared from nowhere and screamed warnings at me for corrupting other travellers’ boundaries, forcing me to keep my horns still and my eyes on the road.

‘Lose these frigging tusks, will you?’ I muttered.

I got a snort of exhaust noise and a burst of neck-snapping speed for my trouble.

The ride through the hi-ways was slick and blurred but missing the thrill of wind tear.

When we finally took an exit it felt as if the world narrowed and the sky got low. I told myself it was just a ploy to keep wanderers out of certain environs. Even so, I felt claustrophobia in me.

‘Relax,’ Teece thought-instructed.

I glanced behind and noticed that he’d constructed a giant muffler to quiet himself/the Gerda.

We slowed and nosed quietly in and out of side streets, winding our way towards a set of huge buildings near the docks. I saw feral animals on the streets that bore no resemblance to anything familiar. Plain people avatars - some in full-colour jackets, others in just the cheap outlines of bodies, some deliberately wafting about in spirit form. Gambling. Fighting. Buying, selling, cruising. It was the thing I hated most about net-vreal. Human imagination. There was no accounting for their weirdness and opportunism.

‘Prison’s the grey one. The blue one is Militia data-corps, ’ Teece thought-said.

I stared at the imposing, shininess of the Militia façades, each with their coat of arms. ‘Why are there three of them?’

‘Dunno. I’ve often wondered about tha—’

As if Teece had tripped an alarm, gunfire started up on both sides of the street.

He accelerated, weaving between bursts. I hunched low on the seat - the Gerda’s faring moulding over me for protection. I heard the projectiles glancing off it.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ve got my own virus defence.’

‘How long can you keep it up?’

Teece didn’t answer, swerving straight into the side of a small building. I braced against the crash but it didn’t come. Instead a narrow passage opened up, closing again behind us as we rode. It brought us out into the last street before the docks.

‘Drain hole,’ he told me before I could ask.

No gunfire now.

I sat up.

The sudden quiet stung my mind; the tang of salt stung my nose.

I shouldn’t be able
. . . ‘T-Teece?’ My teeth chattered. ‘I can s-smell . . . salt. I got a b-bad feeling.’

He pressed stubbornly on along the street, ignoring me. The prison building grew, blotting out the skyline. A monstrous, shimmering wall that I knew contained the information I wanted.

So close and yet . . . so much freaking security.

A faint thrum was the only warning we got. Then it came for us.

An olfactory firewall reeking of sulphur. The stench liquefied the Gerda underneath me.

I held my breath . . .

And woke up with Gigi giving me mouth-to-mouth. The taste of her foul breath and the feel of her lips on mine panicked me more than the realisation that I’d flatlined.

I knocked her on her arse and struggled out of the glove, sucking air like an asthmatic.

Teece was still gloved and twitching.

‘Is he OK?’ I shouted, spitting Gigi taste and sour vomit away.

Gigi hauled herself off the floor and rubbed her arse sulkily. ‘He knows what he’s doing. They came after you anyway.’

I stared at her suspiciously. ‘How do you know that?’

She tapped a polymer-capped stent behind her ear. ‘GeeGee don’t need that primitive shit.’

I looked at the fat banker with new respect. Not many people could handle a full-time net-vreal feed AND real-time. No wonder she spoke slow.

I was also mad at her. She’d given us her crappiest vreal tackle. She could have hosted us in something much smoother.

Despite her reassurances I dressed myself and hovered over Teece until he dropped out.

I helped him strip himself out of the glove. His skin was slick with sweat. He dashed tears from his eyes.

‘I lost you. I thought you’d—’

I stepped back, angry and relieved, not wanting to hear what he thought. Not wanting Gigi to hear. I handed Teece his clothes.

‘Let’s get out of here.’

 

 

 

 

‘I
thought you said it was just visual. Traditional. No surprises,’ I yelled at Teece. ‘You could have gotten us killed for nothing.’

He prowled around my living room. Ibis had wisely hightailed it back to the bar, leaving us alone to have it out. ‘I didn’t know. Gigi must have bridged her old set to a three-gen. She just didn’t think to tell us.’

‘Gigi never stops thinking,’ I retorted.

‘I guess that means you don’t want to hear what I found?’ he said.

I stopped dead. ‘You got in?’

‘Some of the way.’ He nodded. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to mention it in front of Gigi.’

‘Mention what?’ I held my breath.

‘I saw the terms of del Morte’s sentence. He was serving life for murdering and dissecting a bunch of cadet Prier pilots. Seems he had a thing for their bio-interfaces. His term was bought out.’

‘Who?’ I held my breath.

‘I couldn’t access that.’ Teece hesitated, as if there was something he didn’t want to tell me.

I crossed my arms and waited.

‘There is a record of it, though. I followed the signature as far as I could. The name you want is kept on an
impartial
.’

‘Where?’

‘Jinberra Island Detention.’

Jinberra
. My heart plunged. Jinberra wasn’t just quod - it was another dimension in prisons. ‘Cool.’

He ceased prowling and stared suspiciously at me. ‘
You
can’t crack in there.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But there’ll be someone who can. I just have to find them.’

I expected Teece to argue. To tell me it was impossible. When he didn’t, I knew he had someone in mind.

I grabbed him. ‘Teece, you must help me if you can,’ I said fiercely.

He stiffened.

He was right to be careful of me. I’d come back from MoVay with more preoccupations than scars - only to develop a bad case of sour grapes over his new love life.

I forced myself to back off and reached out an appeasing hand to him instead. ‘
Please
. . . help me.’

He took my fingers hesitantly. Then he squeezed them together, hard.

A Teece-size bear-hug would have been nice, but I settled for a crushing handshake.

I smiled.

He smiled.

Things were better again. Not the same - but better.

‘I need that name, Teece. Whoever paid to have Ike freed also paid him to infect the whole of The Tert with the parasite and form those . . . those . . . creatures. If the canal hadn’t been saturated with copper sulphate we’d be overrun by freak knows what right now. As it is, some of them may be loose on this side already.’

Teece groaned.

‘What?’

‘I owe you an apology, Parrish.’

I dropped my fists, surprised. ‘You . . . me?’

‘When you came back from there, I thought you were going to run out on me . . . on us. I should have known you better than that,’ he said.

I sighed. ‘You
do
know me, Teece. The truth is . . . I
was
going to. But not for the reasons you thought.’

I hesitated. I hadn’t told him this - should I now? The chances of coming back from my next jaunt rated in the minus minuses. Somehow it was important that he knew everything if I was going to wind up dead or in quod for life.

His stare drilled me. Faded blue eyes - slightly aggrieved, always concerned.

I sank down onto the couch.

‘In MoVay . . . I lost consciousness at the end of it all - when I was with Tulu. I woke up and Loyl was waiting for me. He told me I’d changed - shshape-changed. And I believed him, because . . . well . . . I tried to. I stopped fighting the parasite and let it take over.’

Teece’s expression got incredulous and I rushed on, justifying myself.

‘It was all I had left to fight with, Teece. I was dying and I wanted to buy the Cabal some time so they could defeat Ike. I thought that if the parasite took me over totally I’d have the strength to hang on a bit longer.’

‘And . . .’

‘Loyl said I’d gone all scaly-monster and then healed. I believed him. But I wanted to come back and see you, put things in order before I went away. And I
had
to go away, Teece. No one else was going to put a bullet in me but me . . . you understand?’

He nodded slowly, processing all the nuances and implications of my confession.

‘But now you believe that you didn’t shape-change? ’

I nodded slowly. ‘I’ve got an . . . ally. A Prier pilot. She’s contacted me a couple of times. The last time was to say that she had taken Wombebe, one of the MoVay ferals.’

‘You call someone like that an ally?’

‘She wants me to stop whoever is playing God with us. She said she ’scoped me unconscious back there in MoVay. Swears I didn’t change, and that Loyl is lying.’

‘You believe her?’

‘Yes.’ I tried to sound confident.

‘And you expect me to believe you, regardless of how crazy it sounds, don’t you?’

I shrugged. ‘I just want you to trust me, Teece, the way I trust you.’

He took a step over to the bed and grabbed my wrist, pulling me into his arms. His hug was better than I remembered. It forged our bones together.

‘You never tell me the whole story when you should,’ Teece muttered into my ear.

‘Yeah, probably.’

He gave me a resigned look and stepped away. ‘Meet me in Hein’s tonight. I should have something that will help you.’

‘Thanks.’ I gave him my best smile.

He gave
me
the once-over. ‘Meantime, if you want to go anywhere without ending up in prison you’ll need to do something about the way you look.’

Teece was being practical, so I stopped short of punching him.

 

 

 

 

‘L
arry. Tequila.’ Every person on a bar stool turned to look at me.

When I’d gotten over the insult, I’d seen the sense in Teece’s suggestion and had used the time to work up a different image. In my normal clobber I’d be arrested in double quick time.

So here I stood: waist-long, blood-red tresses, hip-smooth leather mini (long enough to hide the knife sheaths strapped to my thighs), high heels and a sleeved corset thingy to hide my armoured-up leather crop.