Strange Flesh (52 page)

That’s too much for Mondano, and he lunges out of his seat. Like many supposed tough guys, he can talk hard but isn’t much of a fighter. As I jump up, he aims a looping roundhouse at my head that doesn’t have a prayer of connecting. I think,
This is going to feel incredible,
as I pivot to send a debilitating kick into his testicles. I wonder who he’ll turn into with his nuts squashed into jelly.

But my kick never gets off the ground. I find McClaren, who’s gotten inside on me before I even know he’s there, standing on my foot. He catches Mondano’s punch, twists his wrist, and pushes him back into his chair.

He says, “Now, gentlemen, that’s no kind of attitude for a team. Ain’t any sense trading paint here when we’ve all got the same color stripes, right?”

I shrug and look down at my foot. He lifts his off of it, and I sit back down. I ask, “Where have
you
been?”

“I’ve been far afield protecting Ms. Randall, who we can all agree is our first priority. James, I had no idea you’d be so efficient after getting toasted. You seem to have a real knack for locating Billy. It’s hanging on to the slippery bastard that’s the problem.”

“Y’all can handle that without me this time.” I point at Mondano. “I’m not working with this clown.”

“Oh, you think you can just walk out?” he asks.

“Watch me.”

I trudge from the room with Blake calling at my back.

McClaren sidles up beside me before I get my cigarette lit.

He nudges me with his elbow. “Quite a diva routine you put on in there.”

“It’s not an act. You weren’t there. And
I’m
not going to be there when it all goes tits-up.”

McClaren nods sagely. “Yeah, I’ll admit it seems our fearless leader might have had a lapse in judgment. Billy’s sites are back online. Your boys don’t seem to be able to shut them down. So he’s under a lot of stress. Sometimes in ex-treem-is we listen to our baser instincts, in this case represented by our Eye-talian-American friend.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, I understand you’re kind of burnt out. Why don’t you spend some time getting your blow-bots back together? That’ll be important to the boss pretty soon here. Since you flushed him, we’ve got some new leads on old Billy we can run down.”

Not sure what I’m going to do, I keep quiet. McClaren pats me on the back and continues. “It’s been good working with you, Jimmy. You’re a real prince.”

As always, my conversation with McClaren was troubling. I suppose his grossly premature order to stand down is a sign of Blake’s loss of trust in me. But the way he put it sounded like I was due for a medal, and that the whole thing was essentially wrapped up. I try to prevent my frazzled brain from overloading his last comment.

He said prince, but did he mean knave?

In my voicemail, I have messages from a GAME administrator wanting to know what in the world is going on, Officer Aiden Rosedale asking for a statement about the fire, and the hospital trying to determine if I’m planning to pay my bill.

I call Xan.

She’s holding vigil at Olya’s room with Garriott, whom she puts on speaker.

She says, “James, you didn’t see fit to let the poor nurses know you were tired of their care and wanted to go and seek infection for your wounds?”

“Thanks for the concern. But I’m okay. Glad y’all are keeping an eye on Olya.”

“While you avoid helping the authorities apprehend the man who did this.”

“I’m working on that. What did you tell the police?”

“That Billy was stalking her and finally lost his mind.”

“Right. Good. Did they find anything that made them ask what went on in the Orifice?”

“No. Everything melted down to sludge.”

Garriott asks, “Do you think it’s a good idea to be, uh, messing about with the police? Maybe they’ll need the whole story to find that prick.”

“Believe me, we’ll have Billy in a rubber cell soon enough.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Then Xan asks, “James, what’s all this really about?”

A plausible fiction comes to my lips, but I decide my friends have a right to know what’s going on. “Billy thinks Olya and his brother killed Gina Delaney. He wants revenge. So for the time being, we need to take some more safety measures. Xan, I want you staying at my apartment for the next couple days . . . Garriott, you can crash there too.”

“Hardly, mate. I’m not afraid of that ponce. Just let him come near me.”

The idea of Garriott and Billy in a physical altercation is so amusing, I have to bite my tongue. But on the other hand, Billy has almost killed the indomitable Olya, so my levity is short-lived.

Almost none of Billy’s victims are making statements at the moment. Except Layton Mayfield, an Oakland police officer caught with videos he made exhibiting some appalling racial bondage scenarios.

He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

T
he stress of the day and the large weeping burn on my forearm convince me to permit myself some painkillers, which in turn convince me to allow myself a few hours of much-needed sleep.

When I wake later that night, McClaren still hasn’t left any messages. Changing my bandages, I reflect that Billy has no doubt disappeared back into the ether.

But it’s not in his nature to stay totally hidden. Midway through my rewrap, I hear the tone for a critical message on my phone:

[Script_Alert: Av_Stalker_07]
Lillie_Hitchcock @NodULE: http://nod.com/ule_find/
dev: 143.365.186

I would expect Billy to opt for the sterility of a new av, but here he’s reusing the very means of my penetration. He must want to talk.

Checking out the IP of his datastream leads to his usual double-buffered open-proxy hell. So I just fire up Jacques_Ynne and teleport to the location in the alert. It’s in one of NOD’s test sims, and he’s left the area in its blank default state, just a flat white plane floating in the perfect blackness of a binary vacuum. Until now, Billy has carefully curated his surroundings, and I’d imagine he’s got thousands of dramatic settings, from caves to sky palaces, in which to conduct a meeting. His av stands unmoving in the center of the space.

Though he doesn’t turn to face me, he can tell I’ve rezzed in. A dialogue bubble forms over his head.

Lillie_Hitchcock:

Still think my dear brother is innocent of murder?

Jacques_Ynne:

With a sibling like you, I'm not surprised that there’s domestic violence.

Lillie_Hitchcock:

And yet you were an incompetent accomplice to my assassination.

Jacques_Ynne:

You’re welcome.

Lillie_Hitchcock:

Why?

Jacques_Ynne:

Why what?

Lillie_Hitchcock:

Why did you let me go?

Jacques_Ynne:

Practical considerations only.

Lillie_Hitchcock:

No. You did it because you believe me.

Jacques_Ynne:

I believe that you need a straitjacket.

Lillie_Hitchcock:

I can prove my brother and his whore spilled Gina’s blood. Just make sure you’re not standing next to him when he reaps judgment for his crimes. But then. . . I’m not
really the one you should worry about.

Jacques_Ynne:

Meaning?

Lillie_Hitchcock:

He knows you know. Do you think he’s going to let you live?

Billy disappears with that baleful question literally hanging in the air. I pan around the void surrounding my av. Has the close call in the park stripped away all the baroque effects from his punitive fantasies? Are we now dealing with a more efficient and dangerous Billy, one who’s finally stopped playing games?

I write McClaren a short note about this most recent contact, but I don’t send it.

What am I waiting for?

Slowly it dawns on me: I’m waiting to see Billy’s proof.

T
hough he was masking his NOD connection, Billy most likely logged on from a computer somewhere relatively nearby. I’m sure it will be pointless, but I check the state of my tentacles into his laptop. As I suspected, it’s gone dark, probably permanently. Once your machine has been infected by a real hacker, you can’t ever trust it again. He’d have figured out we located him through his phone and assumed his computer was compromised as well.