SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) (The SILVER Series) (13 page)

“And in return?”

“A tag for my whore.”

Alice punches her in the shoulder. “Hey!”

Keeping her voice hushed, Silver tries to appease Alice before her outrage begins to draw suspicion. “Play the part, else we’re both dead.”

Alice folds her arms in protest. “I grab your boob once and this is what I get in return.”

“I thought you said that was an accident?”

Alice half shrugs that off, but doesn’t really commit to it. “Sure.”

The unspeakably foul smell of fresh Chimera dung begins to tickle at Silver’s gag reflex. She turns back to the jockey just in time to see a repugnant, steaming turd fall out of the larger Chimera’s asshole, and hit the ground with a sticky sort of smacking noise. Almost immediately, the other Chimera steps in it and chunks of undigested waste ooze between its toes like lumpy jelly.

“You sure you know what you’re asking?” the jockey draws her attention back.

Silver nods. “I bought her. I want her to be fully functional.”

“Rookie mistake,” the jockey disapproves. “You give her independence, she’ll run.”

“Run where? Back to the Handler who raped her with a Chimera femur?”

Personal experience: the foundation of all good lies.

Point made.

The jockey dismounts and clears his throat, spitting a yellowish ball of mucus and saliva onto the ground. So desperately dehydrated, the nearest Chimera stretches itself to the absolute limits of its constrictive harness and extends a sore and bleeding tongue to lap up the meager gift of liquid.

In her time as a Hunter, Silver would admit that she’d been unnecessarily cruel. One shot between the eyes or at the base of the skull can cause instant death, but she took pride in the elaborate nature of her kills. Their suffering fed her pleasure, and their last breath was her gruesome climax.

But at least, for them, death came.

For Silver, that was the whole point. It’s like the third date rule. There’s no point stopping at second or third base, so don’t even bother showing up if you’re not going to go all the way. Heavy petting is for virgins.

Likewise, Chimera abuse is for pussies.

It’s nothing more than inter-species bullying. One insecure creature trying to prove its dominance over another—something you don’t ever see in the wild. Out there, if a creature wants to show you who’s boss, it beats the shit out of you then kills you. It’s unlikely to keep you as a pet.

Silver has little tolerance for bullies, but the information she gleans from this is invaluable. Real men kill. Fakers and wannabes try to make up for their lack of strength and skill by belittling their opponents. Her conclusion? These ‘men’ may not be as hardcore as their appearance and reputation are intended to make people believe.

Finally, the jockey takes a few steps toward them and looks Alice up and down, assessing the quality of the product.

“Damaged goods?”

Silver’s glare swiftly prevents Alice from objecting.

“I got a good deal on the merchandise, let’s just say that.”

“Oh, my God …” Alice mutters under her breath. “Are you seriously talking about my vagina right now?”

Through gritted teeth, “Play along, unless you want to be shot.”

“I’m just saying, why’d you have to bring my vagina into this?”

“I really need you to shut up and trust me.”

“Meanwhile, you’re slandering my innocent woman parts.”

They fall into a hushed silence as the jockey approaches them and inspects the ‘whore’ by clutching her chin in his hand and tilting her head from left to right, looking for the telltale marks of an electric collar that’s been forcibly removed.

“I told you, I bought her. I didn’t steal her. There’s no value in her flesh to you.”

Stolen Jades can be traded back to their Handlers, and there’s a real market for that, though it doesn’t usually work out too well for the Jade. The good Samaritan gets a freebie, the Handler gets revenge, and the Jade … well, she gets some peace, at last.

The jockey kicks at the hold-all. “What’s in the bag?”

“Grenades, mostly.”

“Homemade?”

Silver shakes her head. “Omega issued.”

Snipers still targeting both Silver and Alice, the jockey shoulders his weapon and kneels to inspect the truth of Silver’s words. Pulling out the first grenade, he runs his thumb over the Omega imprint, just to be sure.

“Fine.” He tosses the grenade back in the bag, “I’ll take you to him. It’s been a slow week anyway.”

Heaving the bag onto his back, the jockey escorts them toward a warehouse at the far end of the shipyard, overlooking the water’s edge. Beyond the shoreline, Old World Isle of Meadows has become a Chimera farm. Fed on the corpses of Trip’s ripper victims, or clients that didn’t survive their appointment with his scalpel, these hand-raised beasts are eager for their next meal. Right on cue, they start pacing the shores of their prison at the sight of another potential dinner.

On the top floor of the warehouse, where every single window has either fallen out due to old age, or been looted, or shot out by stray bullets, there’s no protection from the harshly blowing southerly wind. Divided into quarters, this room has four purposes.

One corner is devoted to shelves and shelves and shelves of drugs, all labeled, bottled and categorized according to the kind of buzz you’re supposed to get from it. The top shelf is uppers, while the bottom shelf is reserved for downers. Above that, high potency pain killers—the best stuff, without the side-effect of making you into a groggy zombie. A collection of steroids and mood regulators are next, below the hallucinogens. Next to them, is a neat little row of inhalants in pressurized canisters.

In a world of such great depression, virtually any substance can be manipulated or exploited to obtain a high. Whether you’re doing it for fun, or just to take the edge off, you can find the right prescription in the Fringe District—guaranteed.

Kitty corner to the pharmacy is a plastic explosives workstation. Though most of Trip’s RDX is manufactured on the lower floors, the extra ventilation on this level is perfect for mixing the more temperature specific parts of the process. Here, an old metal bathtub has been filled with crushed ice and water. A steel pipe has been attached to the plug hole and covered with tightly woven gauze. The lower half of the pipe has been fed through a circular hole cut into the floorboards, and disappears into the level below. Beside the bathtub, an old biofuel drum has been filled with nitric acid and is being stirred vigorously by one sweating man, while another pours in measured amounts of hexamine. A third workman keeps a close eye on a thermometer, monitoring the temperature of the mixture to make sure it doesn’t go above thirty degrees Celsius.

Once the mixture is done cooking, it will be poured into the bathtub and drained. The crystals formed in the crushed ice will be RDX, ready to have the acid filtered out of them. Assuming nothing blows up in the process, which, as Silver can see from the rising thermometer gauge, is a pretty big risk. 

Next to this rather volatile kitchen is an autopsy table. Upon it, a dead Chimera. Silver can tell by the droop in the animal’s jaw, the calluses on its feet and the tell-tale sag of its oversized testicles, this creature died from old age—not from a bullet. In any case, it’ll be stripped apart before the rigor sets in.

A tray of tools is prepped for organ harvesting, and two vials of milky eye fluid have already been extracted directly from the animal’s ducts. A valuable commodity in the human health market, this abstergent serum has antibacterial, antifungal and antiseptic properties.

The harvested organs will be used for juicing in stews, and its meat sold to the retailers in Mid Town. The fat will go to the candle makers, and the bone to the carpenters. All in all, this one animal could be worth a month’s supply of ammunition, or enough vodka to drown yourself in.

Finally, in the red corner …

It looks like the walls have been painted, but that’s just an illusion. Arterial blood has permanently stained the walls and floor all around, and even the leather of the old tattoo parlor chair has begun to take on a deep red-brown hue. It smells like metal, but not the polished and oiled scent of a freshly cleaned gun, like Silver is used to.

It’s iron.

Human blood.

Alice clutches at Silver’s side, shaking her head. “No, no, no …”

She turns, ready to force her way out of the room, but Silver holds her back.

“Come on, don’t bottle it.”

“I’m happy just the way I am. I don’t need this.”

“You’ll thank me when this is over.”

“Assuming I still have a heartbeat.”

Behind them, the snap of a latex glove against skin grabs their attention.

Trip, Silver presumes.  He matches Maydevine’s mugshot, anyway.

Too chubby for his own good, he’s obviously making a decent living for himself. So that’s two things you don’t often see in the Fringe District: someone with a satisfactory income, and someone with a wonky BMI. If Silver had to guess, she’d venture she was losing about a pound a day, so far—and that has to change. So long as she can keep money in her account and meat in her belly, she’s pretty confident that a rigorous fitness regime will keep her muscle mass on balance. The gummy worms she can live without, if she has to.

Behind Trip, the jockey drops Silver’s hold-all down onto the floor.

Price agreed.

Time to get to work.

Wasting no time, Trip snatches up Alice’s left wrist and inspects it closely.

No scar.

“When were you sold?”

Alice opens her mouth to speak, but doesn’t understand the question and doesn’t know how to respond. She ends up looking like a little kid trying to blow bubbles, so Silver steps in and answers for her.

“Her first bleed.”

“Hmm.” Trip drops Alice’s wrist, disinterested. “A lifer.”

He opens up a tiny drawer in a nearby cabinet, and Silver peeks inside. She can see a few dozen black tags, covered in dried blood, and a rusty razorblade. In the back, there’s an Old World snap mouse trap with a severed human finger speared to the trip for bait.

He selects one of the tags, quite at random, and pulls a portable tag programming unit out of his pocket. The machine is Omega issued, but an old, obsolete model. It was probably trashed a long time ago, and traded into the Fringe by an unscrupulous Agent or Hunter seeking to pay off a debt to their bookie.

At some point, the bookie would have realized the unit couldn’t work without being hotwired and hacked to unlock the data stored in a black tag. That’d be the point at which Trip offered to take the unit off his hands, in exchange for a free tag replacement.

According to his Police Division file, Trip was a computer programmer before his banishment—a fact which made him the perfect candidate for a career as a Ripper. Not that he’d actually do any of the dirty work himself, of course. Not at all. He has goons for that.

Silver glances over her shoulder and eyeballs one of the goons, his hands still stained with the blood of the last Fringer he ripped. Trip is just the brains, she assesses, not the hand. Skilled in mathematics and the precision and discipline of science, he provides the method for their work.

Using the periphery of her vision, she checks up on the progress of the RDX chefs, surmising that Trip is most likely responsible for sourcing the ingredients and measuring up the exact quantities of each. Of course, the danger in outsourcing all the work to the goons is that you can’t hold any secrets.