Two Can Play (Entangled Ignite) (17 page)

Chapter Eleven

“This can’t be right,” Rena said over her shoulder to Gage as she turned the Commando onto the street where the Seattle Lounge was located. They’d driven past shops with broken windows, an abandoned movie theater, a burned-out office building, trash on the sidewalks, graffiti everywhere. The air was chilly and she’d be glad to get inside and warm up, but this had to be the wrong neighborhood.

“There it is,” Gage said near her ear, pointing to a worn brick building. Real Life Lounge flickered in neon, grayed by the dusk.

“It looks awful.” This was the first Lounge ever built, so she expected it to look old, but classy old, not decrepit old. Gangster-looking kids leaned against the brick below graffiti tags. “We got what you need,” one of them called.

Gage shook his head and the kid sagged against the wall. Lounges were strictly no drugs. Why weren’t Watchers chasing these losers away?

“Maybe it’s better inside,” Gage said.

She certainly hoped so. Rena found the parking lot entrance and drove up to the barred window, where an attendant gave them visitor passes. They parked two floors down and took the elevator up.

It was early, but Rena wanted a shower and some sleep to be fresh for the morning meeting. Mainly, she wanted to wash away what had happened with Gage. All through the day, she’d felt part of him, chest to back, thigh to thigh, heart to heart, at one with him and the machine rumbling beneath them. She could feel him on her skin, for God’s sake.

They were different with each other, too. They spoke in softer tones and whenever their eyes met, they grinned, as though they shared some big, happy secret.

Like an idiot, she wanted more. He was like a new game she wanted to play until she’d beaten every level three times and felt done with it. She needed to erase the vibrations on her skin, the buzz in her heart. She almost hoped he would stay here, transfer to the Seattle Lounge, so she wouldn’t have to spend an extra minute with him.

Then she stepped inside the Lounge and wondered why anyone would work in this sad and neglected place. No wonder they were always short-staffed and eager for temp Lifers.

The heavy bass of hip-hop thumped through the arena instead of trance and the furniture was worn, the armrests spilling stuffing or gray with the grease of a thousand hands. There were big sections where the game stations had been removed altogether. Most of what remained was outdated, except for six stations with plasma screens and new equipment. Players were lined up behind those, looking sullen. The Dome was nothing more than mats and theater backdrops. The place even smelled depressing—like mildew and dust.

Gage went to check in with the shift manager and Rena hit the Roomer desk, where they gave her a voucher for an off-site motel since the guest Quarters were full. Gage would bunk with the temps on the barracks floor.

“I’m on duty until midnight,” Gage said when he returned to her.

She told him about the motel—Ruby’s Rooms, just up the road a mile.

“I’ll drive you there. You look thrashed.” He cupped her cheek.

She jerked away. “What are you doing, Gage? Act normal.”

“Right. Yeah.” But he didn’t seem a bit sorry. At some level neither was she. His touch made her heart jump and her stomach turn over. She should never have crawled into that bag, no matter how scared she got. Now she felt off-balance, uneasy, and confused, which was no way to approach her first multi-Lounge manager meeting. She needed her head straight and her focus clear.

“You want to go?” he asked.

“I should touch base with the Phoenix group and meet some people. Vans run to the motel ’til late. Thanks, though.” She had to escape the guy for a while, get her balance back.

Mingling with the managers, the first thing Rena noticed was that they were mostly men. Scanning the name tags for Lounge and job title, females seemed to be low-level managers, except for one GM in Sacramento. Rena seemed to be the only woman Dome Commander. Clearly they all could use some Girl Power. She hoped her speech would convince them.

When she felt she’d mingled enough, Rena took a van to Ruby’s Rooms with a few of the other overflow managers.

There was nothing wrong with her room, except the streetlight came through the thin curtains and the sheets smelled so strongly of Ivory they gave her a headache. Stupidly, she had the urge to call Gage. She missed his arms in that sleeping bag in the wild dark of the woods.

Story over
. She pounded the pillow and tried to sleep, but it was no use, so she got up for an Electrique from her backpack. Cracking the lid, she felt a hot urge, an almost desperate feeling, for the first swallow. She looked at herself in the mirror.
Was
she addicted? She didn’t feel right until she’d had a dose in the morning and she needed one before bed, too. People who quit coffee got headaches, right? So it was a mild addiction.
Big deal
. Gage was full of it.

…

“L.E.? Yeah. I remember her. Mad drawing skills.”

Gage nearly dropped the back of the
Asteroids
machine he was working on when the tech guy answered his question with those words. The first folks he asked about L.E. were transfers, so they didn’t know many of the other Lifers. Then he got stuck doing repairs on the antiques, so he’d had to snag passersby to ask after her.

This tech was his first hit.

“You know her level?” he asked, trying to act casual, picking up the screwdriver to close the dead machine up.

“Nah.” He shrugged. “Haven’t seen her lately. She hung with Ruben.” He pointed to Blood Electric. “He’s a bartender. That tall, bald guy wiping glasses.”

“Thanks.” As soon as the tech manager was out of sight, Gage moved to the bar, intending to make himself useful. “How you doing for E?” he asked Ruben, who had morose eyes and a jaded expression that said he’d seen it all and done it twice.

“Guess I could use a case. You new?”

“Temping from Phoenix. Name’s Gage.”

“Ruben. Cans are in the back room.” He shot a thumb over his shoulder.

A Watcher reading
Playboy
grudgingly unlocked the storage room so Gage could grab a couple cartons. Bounding back up the stairs, he filled the refrigerator, waiting for Ruben to finish pouring a beer-and-E for a black kid in an oversize basketball jersey snagged on the butt of a handgun in his pants. Lounges were weapon-free, but no one seemed to be hassling this dude. Supposedly, NiGo would open a dozen new Lounges as soon as
EverLife II
launched. Why would they let the first Lounge deteriorate so badly? He understood the news clip that suggested they were selling it to drug interests. The place was totally ghetto. No wonder they needed temps. Anyone who could would likely transfer out.

“Anything else you need, Ruben?” Gage asked.

“You could wash those glasses.” He nodded at a tub full of steins.

Gage started to work. “I heard you know a friend of mine. L.E. Pearl?”

The guy stilled, then slid the V-Trique glasses he’d dried into the overhead rack. “I knew her, yeah.”

“Knew?”

“She’s gone. About a week ago.”

Damn, damn
,
damn
. Frustration made Gage want to smash every glass in the place. “You have any idea where to?” he asked as calmly as he could.

Ruben shrugged, but ducked his eyes. He knew more.

To find out exactly what, Gage became Ruben’s unseen shadow, watching for a chance to talk more, probe a bit. He got his chance at eleven, when they were taking out the garbage. When they dumped the last bag, Ruben sank onto the steps and pulled out a pack of Marlboros he extended to Gage.

“I quit a couple years ago.” The dirty alley was lit by a half moon and the single streetlight that hadn’t been busted out. The cold, damp air made him glad of his jacket.

“You’re smart. We can’t even smoke in Quarters anymore.” Ruben lit his cigarette, took a deep inhale, then blew smoke in an upward stream. “You thinking of transferring here? We could use you. Some of these Lifers are lazy fucks. Half the time we can’t keep ’em long enough to jump levels.”

“Truth is I was hoping to find L.E. You have any idea what became of her?”

“Not exactly.” Ruben took a short puff and a quick blowout, one eye closed against the smoke. “You’re not the only one looking for her.”

“Yeah?” He went tight inside.

Ruben checked the deserted alley for anyone who could overhear. “Watchers have been asking around. Her boyfriend got booted and the next day, she’s gone, too. She left on her own, worried about him.”

She had a boyfriend?
“I thought long-term hookups were frowned on.”

“It happens. The guy went by ‘Smurf.’ Had a blue Mohawk. He was smuggling beer into the Quarters. Drunk all the time.”

“Was that why he got kicked out?”

“That and all the bitching he did. Big whiner. I know L.E. was pissed when the health center didn’t help him.”

“What was wrong?”

“Bunch of hysterical paranoid crap. He claimed he’d been poisoned, it felt like razor blades under his skin. I don’t know what she saw in the guy.”

Hadn’t Cassie said she felt like she had broken glass in her veins? “Smurf got evicted, so L.E. left with him?”

“I didn’t get why she didn’t get kicked out, too. She complained more than he did. They sure as hell want her back.”

For her hundred grand, no doubt.
Today was her birthday. Maybe she’d come to her senses, left the Life and would use the money to start over somewhere. That was his hope. His gut wasn’t so sure. If NiGo still had its claws in her, no telling what she’d do. “Where do they take Lost Lives?”

“They get a van ride home if they’re local, I heard, or a bus ticket if they’re not.” He let his cigarette dangle, arm resting on his knee.

“In Phoenix they get taken to a homeless shelter.”

Ruben smirked into the darkness. “Probably what they do here. There’s no budget for bus tickets. They tell us that shit so we don’t feel sorry for the losers.” He took an angry puff on his cigarette, then glared at Gage. “There’s a serious bullshit factor around here lately. One minute this Lounge is being sold for hard cash, the next we’re getting a community partner with funds. Is it that way in Phoenix?”

He considered how much to say. “There’s some screwy stuff with money, that’s for sure. You hear anything specifically foul?”

The guy studied him, then looked out. “Not really.” Another lie, but Gage didn’t dare push him. He’d already revealed a lot. “Why are you after L.E., anyway?”

“I just want to know she’s okay.”

He considered that. “She needs to cut Murphy loose.”

“Murphy?”

“Smurf. Mike Murphy’s his real name.” He ran his hand across the top of his pale scalp. “No idea what went wrong. He used to be real into the Life. He was Lifer of the Month a while back. Hell, his picture’s still in the break room.” He shook his head.

Gage could snap a phone shot of the guy to show around, at least. If Beth loved him, she’d be with him. They’d been gone a week.
They could be anywhere.
He gritted his teeth to keep from swearing. He’d missed her again.

Ruben shook his head sadly. “Let her go, man. Chicks are like bad drugs. You don’t realize until it’s too late to throw it all up.”

Gage said nothing.

“Focus on the Life. You’re better off.” He stood, dropped his cigarette, ground it out, and turned to go back into the Lounge.

Gage followed him, aching inside, wanting to pound the unforgiving brick until his fist was bloody. Beth would never stay in a shelter, even if they’d dumped her boyfriend there. She’d more likely camp.

Ruben turned to look at him. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“I can’t.”

“Hell. Check hospitals first. Smurf was sick. She’d get him treated just to shut him up.” Ruben gave him directions to the nearest ones and he thanked the guy.

“Don’t thank me, pal. This can’t come out good.”

Gage was afraid he was right. Dread seeped into him, dank as the scent of rotten fruit from the alley. Something was very wrong.

For now, he had a shift to pretend to cover.

Slipping into the break room, he snapped a photo of the blue-haired doofus Beth had fallen for, then managed three quiet calls to hospitals pretending to be Michael Murphy’s brother. No patient by that name at any of them, though the guy could have come in as an emergency patient, never getting a room.

Gage had some hours tomorrow, since his shift didn’t start until three, so he’d visit homeless shelters, hit the police about a missing-persons search. For the time being, he’d remain a Lifer, since NiGo was after Beth. At some point, he’d ditch Lounge Life and search full-time.

Closing out his shift, Gage headed to the barracks, where he spent some time working over Beth’s code. He’d tried twelve different arrangements of alphabet letters, testing them with the directional pictures, ending up with nothing. Unless he got lucky, it would take another week to eliminate all but the correct combination of letters. He dropped onto his bunk to try to sleep, except the snoring crowd and his reeling thoughts made that impossible. For a flick of time he considered driving to Rena’s motel and curling up with her. Ruby’s Rooms was close by, after all.

She would completely freak. The “time-out” was over. She’d declared them “back to normal.” He didn’t think that was possible now. She stayed in his head. He got flashes of the sex, the way she’d trembled in his arms, the stubborn courage she wore like an avatar skin, the look in her eye when he’d pissed her off. She was easy and hard at the same time. He didn’t mind. He’d never had anyone stay in his head before.

Thinking about her, he was surprised to find himself drifting to sleep.

…

The conference room was jammed when Rena entered for the meeting. Attending were managers from the six Lounges in the western U.S. Chairs were three deep around the huge, battered conference table. At the head of the room was a pull-down screen showing a PowerPoint:
NiGo Interactive, Our Present Glory, Our Future Dream.

The crowded room was warm and smelled of coffee and doughnuts and men’s cologne. The talk was a roar until a flurry of movement near the door brought an abrupt silence.