Archon's Queen (38 page)

Impostors?

“Did three Crossmen die a few nights ago?”

“Aye,” he said, nodding. “What’re you gettin’ on about? You know somethin’ bout it?”

“Yeah… I was there.”

He pushed her against the wall, holding her firm, but not hard enough to hurt. “What’s your game, luv? What are you tryin’ to do here?”

She stared into his eyes. His anger waned at the sight of her crying; his thoughts said his confusion equaled hers. Anna explained the events of the alley, leaving out how she killed them, and pinning the deaths on unknown men in black coats. Genuine tears came with her remembering his weight on her back and the cold metal on her bare skin. Her retelling left her sounding like some street kid Penny had taken under her wing.

“Bollocks.” He rubbed his mouth, pacing back and forth. “We’re not like that, girl.
Cross
-men. We’re the good guys. Vigilantes. We wouldn’t do that, especially not to a schoolgirl.” He pointed at her, finger an inch from her nose. “Somethin’ aint right.”

“Innit.” Anna bit her lip. “I-I gotta go.”

“Gatherers lurkin’ that way,” he said. “I’d rather not leave you alone.”

“It’s awright. I’m little and I know how ta hide. They’ll come after you. I ain’t got no parts installed, they won’t bother me. Look, mate. I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-three… Just short. I’ll be okay.”

The Crossman scowled at the street, obvious in his discomfort with letting her wander off alone. “I don’t like it but, if it’s what you want. Somethin’ ‘appens, scream. We’ll be there.”

Anna gave him one long, confused stare before she walked off. Rows of darkened streetlamps lined both sides of the road, shot out years ago and never replaced. Shadows crept along the ground from the moon, drawn by bodies that lay against old buildings. The wharf district played home to the type of augmented crazies too far gone even for Coventry.

It looked empty, but any one of the dark spots ahead could be hiding an attack. Here, she ran little risk of being violated in the traditional sense; these men wanted body parts. If she had no cyberware to steal, they might take organs instead. Rumors abounded. Some claimed they occasionally ate their victims.

That which terrified most people reassured her. The more cyberware someone had, the more vulnerable they were to her. Confidence gave her the walk of a soldier, and she went two blocks before the hypersonic whine of a vibro-blade powering up sliced the air behind her.

A group of a half dozen creatures that could no longer truly be called men shambled out of the darkness behind an abandoned warehouse. Many stood stooped to one side under the weight of crude replacement arms. Hoses, wires, whirring bits, and glowing eyes leered at her. What patches of living skin remained visible through the spaghetti of tubes glinted dirty and pale. Yellowing teeth bared through grins as they advanced; their posture said they looked forward to the chase as much as the kill.

Anna frowned at the lead man with a blade where his hand should be, at the tip of an oversized metal arm. Amber threads of light swam over him where electricity coursed through wiring both beneath and outside his skin. The power cell in his shoulder glowed like a miniature star and made her smile. She clawed at the air and drew her clenching fist away from him as if pulling at unseen fabric.

Blue lightning flashed out of his body, lapping at the ground and crawling up his face. With a flick of her wrist, he whirled about and fell to the ground; the impact sent crawling sparks searching the wet pavement in random directions.

Anna took a step at them. “Who’s next?”

The Gatherers hesitated; the street hung in quiet stillness disrupted by whirring cyberware and questioning murmurs. Glancing from her to their wounded man, they neither attacked nor retreated. When the injured one gasped and pushed his chest up from the pavement, Anna heard James’s voice in her head.

“You are better than these wretches.”

A snarl escaped her as she reached at him with both hands. A flower of lightning burst from his back, spinning into the sky in a rapid series of blue flashes. Horrendous screaming preceded blood flying from his mouth; his eyes exploded into rivulets of boiling foam. He collapsed to the ground, dead.

She held her arms apart, palms to the rear and fingers splayed. Sparks cracked between her hands and the wet road. Sympathetic azure flashes, manifestations of ionized air, nipped and popped randomly upon all of their bodies. Anna hardened her glare, hoping she looked meaner than she felt.

“One down. Who’s got the next dance?”
Run off, you bastards. Don’t make me kill you all.

The others scattered like roaches from the light. She dusted at her coat; little sparks crept over the wool as her hands brushed it back into place. Even if The Gatherers had the inclination to sell out a psionic to the government, Old Bill would shoot them before they had a chance to speak.

Several blocks east of The Ruin, she caught a whiff of food on the air. An all-night noshery nestled in a wedge-shaped building overlooking a three-way intersection. She sent a longing look at it, her initial sadness at thinking of the credstick she had left back at Coventry faded when she recalled the black bag. The NetMini from her pocket powered up, but she gave it a suspicious stare seeing it linked to her old PID.

How the devil long have they been watching me?

With a few swipes of her finger, she was in the financial management section of the GlobeNet, discovering she had a balance of two thousand five hundred credits. The deposit occurred less than an hour ago, and was unlabeled. Hardly a fortune, but it would be plenty enough for a meal.

With the eagerness of a schoolgirl running to recess, she darted toward the glowing windows at the angled corner.

en minutes after taking a seat in a booth at Bennie’s, the warmth of the place reached through the numbness in her toes. Her fingers cradled an oversized cup of orange herbal tea, leeching warmth. Small and cozy, the little restaurant held only three people at this hour: Anna, the waiter, and the man in back working the food machines.

“Whod ya do ta yer ‘ead?” inquired the waiter as he set a sandwich in front of her.

She touched her cheek. “What?”

He traced a line over his forehead. “Dat’s a dodgy sorta burn ya got there.”

“Oh that…” The lights flickered. “I got stuck with a Jiancorp sens-helmet.”

“Ahh. S’wot you get usin’ dat cheap shit. You need anythin’ just ‘oller.”

She rummaged her pocket for another stimpak and stuck herself in the arm with it. Seconds after the initial chill faded, tingling surrounded her head as well as her handcuff marks. Rubbing her ankle through her boot, she scowled at the food. Sudden remembrance of the devil’s bargain she agreed to dulled her appetite for a few minutes with worry for her friends, long enough to take out the datapad and turn it on.

A middle-aged man smiled up at her from the holographic display as she nibbled. Subsequent pages of data sent her into a choking fit that made the waiter run over to check on her. Careless in appearance, she made a deliberate motion to flip the pad upside down by the time he arrived. When he satisfied his concern she was not choking and walked away, she slid it off the table and held it in her lap out of sight.

Lord Connor Thompson, a moderate among the Lords Temporal, was the target of CSB Agent Gordon’s request. He wanted her to arrange a lethal accident for a Member of Parliament. The datapad held maps, schedules, access codes, and lists of names of everyone expected to have contact with him on a daily basis. Every bit of information an assassin could ask for was there, enough to plot infiltration from any number of angles.

Anna switched it off, stashing it as fast as possible into the bag. If she was seen looking at such a thing, the authorities would be after her even if she chickened out. The Gatherer in the alley was a wretch of a creature, a hazard to anyone normal. She felt only a little guilt about killing him, less than the Crossmen who had attacked her and Penny. In light of what she had learned of that gang, a new wave of unease settled in. The idea of murder for money, even if it would keep her two friends and an innocent child out of secret detention, seemed impossible to consider.

I kill him or they hurt the only people I love. No way out. I could just off myself.

On an intellectual level, she knew she should eat, but she did not feel hungry. Anna forced herself to pay attention to the food. Her stare wandered over empty seats and tables to the forlorn waiter half-asleep by a reefer counter full of desserts. Beeps and explosions from whatever game the cook played in the back echoed over the din of a small holo-vid player hanging from the ceiling by the waiter. Reruns of the day’s news dwelled at length on the results of a Frictionless match. Man-U was not involved, so Anna ignored it.

At quarter to three in the morning, Bennie’s had the same sort of somber atmosphere one would expect at a wake. The few people who showed up did not really want to be there, did not care to speak to anyone, and only wanted their meal to be done with. Hours from now, the place would be alive with impatient businessmen, tourists, and a twenty-minute wait for a seat, but now it held a wretched loneliness that seeped into her.

No sooner did she think of Twee than she heard a man’s voice say ‘Faye Taylor.’ Devon Meath, one of the reporters on the BBC news, stood in front of Nine Clifton Hill above the scrolling text ‘Molester Deacon Confesses.’

“…who is still missing. Ordinarily, the BBC does not report the names of victims of sexual crimes; however, Miss Taylor is missing and presumed at high risk. The Met is asking anyone who may have seen the girl to contact them.”

Anna leapt from her seat, jogging to the counter by the image. “Oi mate, turn that up.”

The man reached up and waved past the sensor on the device, increasing the volume.

“I’m here outside the home where, in a startling turn of events, Mr. Nigel Bell, respected deacon in the C of E, has just made an announcement confessing to the fact he engaged in inappropriate contact with a neighbor girl, thirteen years of age.”

Devon glanced over his shoulder at the puffy-faced man on the porch flanked by police. A crowd of citizens gathered on the sidewalk, behind a line of more police. The image swerved left away from the reporter, closing in on the beady-eyed Mr. Bell in his powder-blue pullover.