Prodigal (26 page)

She made her way to the periphery of the Kirin, where she could more easily sift through members of the crowd. Most of them gravitated toward the center of the club, where a cabal of Crowley acolytes prepared an altar for a lavish ceremony. Above their heads, a large inverted crucifix hung from the ceiling on a rusted chain—one of the many religious icons stolen from Incorporated churches, each desecrated in some appalling way.

Only a few in attendance were true worshippers. The faithful made themselves known, trembling and swaying as if possessed by the spirit, spouting gutter talk and speaking in tongues. Everyone else just viewed the Black Mass as entertainment, sipping cocktails and laughing nervously while they waited to see what happened next. In that regard at least, the Crowleys did not disappoint. Candles flared around the sanctuary, flanking a processional of elders that slowly marched toward the altar. A young girl, no more than thirteen years old, accompanied them, her face dirty and haunted—a Tesla, born into this life but not yet consecrated. Avalon watched impassively as the elders peeled away her clothes and lashed her to the altar. With the audience cheering them on, they went to work with meticulous abandon. The girl shrieked, but soon enough her struggles ceased.

The depravities became unspeakable.

“Sweet, ah?” a voice next to Avalon said, punctuated by the smacking of dry lips. “The fragrance of youth. There’s nothing quite like baptism, is there?”

She looked down to find a man in a wheelchair nudging against her. His face was a map of wrinkles and scars, plotting a course that went back at least a century—making him as much of a relic as the motorized contraption that tooled him around. He was Japanese, or at least he had been at one time. Years of scrubbing treatments had leached his complexion, flaps of skin clinging to the contours of his skull.

“If you’re into that sort of thing,” Avalon replied.

The old man’s mouth cracked open in a smile, revealing dental posts instead of teeth, his breath fetid with garlic and decomposition.

“Oh, I am,” he assured her. “I most certainly am.”

“Nothing ever changes around here.”

The old man cackled. The labored heaving of his respirator swallowed most of his effort, which ended in a coughing fit that probably should have killed him. He wasn’t much more than a living torso, with prosthetics where his arms and legs used to be, the rest of his body cocooned in a plastic sheath to keep him from collapsing under his own frail weight.

“Don’t get many like you in here,” he observed. “Most of them are fun girls who want a peek at the dark side—but not you.”

“Is there a purpose to the conversation,” Avalon asked, “or do you just want someone to put the hurt on you?”

The old man grunted affirmatively, nodding.

Avalon could have swatted the old man away, and nobody in the Kirin would have cared or even noticed—but something in his voice made Avalon look closer. As his eyes widened, she saw his pupils expand until there was only black. He then turned his head, as if to acknowledge a secret, exposing the telltale bundle of electrodes behind his left ear. The fiber had long since been cauterized, his nervous system no longer able to handle a Deathplay link—but there was little doubt as to what the old man really was.

Avalon straightened back up. “You’re a Goth.”

“I try not to let that get in the way of business.”

“Business? In a Crowley establishment?”

If the old Goth could have shrugged, he would have.

“You go where the money takes you,” he admitted. “Yet another thing we have in common. That
is
the reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

Up at the altar, the Black Mass was ending. The young Tesla, released from her shackles, rose on bare feet smeared with blood. She hissed at the crowd and attacked one of the elders, before a couple of handlers jumped in with a few well-placed blows.

“I didn’t come for the scenery,” Avalon said.

“Yes,” the old Goth agreed. “It
is
rather uncivilized.”

“You have a place where the view is better?”

“That depends. Are you looking for something special?”

Avalon took one last measure of him before answering.

“Some
one,
” she said. “Yoshii Tagura.”

The old Goth laughed again, his breath reeking of tombs. He stopped when he saw that Avalon was completely serious.

“He’s expecting me,” she continued, implying her threat. “And from what I understand, Mr. Tagura doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

His eyes narrowed at her request, as he gauged her intentions—not to mention his fate if he refused her. It didn’t take him long to make his decision.

“Follow me,” the old Goth said, and rolled away.

Her guide navigated the Kirin with intimate knowledge, steering the congested paths between the old shops and cursing anyone who got in his way. For such an aged man, the Goth was remarkably fast, with the reflexes and wit to match his speed. Avalon guessed he had neural implants grafted to his nervous system, not unlike the web of her own sensuit, a terminal measure that kept his mind out of the slide that had already consumed his body. It was a temporary fix, buying him a few extra months at best—and if it was anything like Avalon’s experience, it had to be painful in the extreme. Why the old Goth would even bother was an existential mystery. After all those years of simulated death, jerking off to the nightmares of others, he still feared the real thing—or, perhaps, what waited for him on the other side.

The crowd thinned out deeper inside the building, the oppressive music fading to a sound like distant artillery. Avalon briefly lost sight of the Goth when he rounded a nearby corner, catching up to find him parked outside an unmarked door. He wasn’t alone. Some local muscle in a silk suit stood next to him, leaning in to hear the old man’s whispered instructions. He could have passed himself off as
Yakuza
out in the Territories, but working the Zone meant he could only be a disgraced
kobun.
Freelance gangsters often used them as trick boys—strictly mercenary, but very effective. He sized Avalon up in an instant.

“She is the one,” the old Goth told him.

The
kobun
reached into his jacket. Avalon tensed, preparing to shove whatever weapon he drew down his throat—but it was only a scanner wand, which he carefully held up for her inspection.

“You can never be too careful,” the Goth explained.

He motioned for her to step forward. Avalon complied, allowing the
kobun
to wave her for weapons. The Goth licked his lips throughout, giddy with anticipation. When the
kobun
finished, Avalon saw the reason for it. The beefy man reached for her with his own two hands, meaning to pat her down manually—a move she blocked by clamping down on his wrist, squeezing hard with her own prosthetic. Avalon stopped short of breaking bones but gave the
kobun
pain enough to discourage further contact.

The Goth wheeled around them, studying her with a bizarre fascination.

“You do not like to be touched.”

The
kobun
trembled in her grip. Avalon’s instinct was to snap the man’s arm, then do the same to his neck, twisting his head off to dump it in the Goth’s lap. But that would get her no closer to Yoshii Tagura—and would only serve to entertain the demon in the wheelchair.

“You didn’t ask,” she said, and released the
kobun.
Suddenly free, he dropped back into a combat stance, his hands coiled and ready to strike.

“Shuush!”
the Goth shouted.

Conditioned to obey orders, the
kobun
froze—but his eyes broadcast humiliation on an open frequency. Avalon goaded him with her nonchalance. The Goth, however, would have none of it.

“Tachisaru,”
he growled.
“Sassoku!”

The
kobun
snapped to attention at that last word. Then he stepped away from the door quietly, avoiding the Goth’s heated stare—but keeping a close watch on Avalon. She deliberately turned her back on him. His footsteps left a heavy wake as he departed.

“You realize he will be obligated to kill you,” the Goth said when they were alone, “should the two of you meet again.”

Avalon didn’t care. “He’s
kobun.
He deserves no better.”

“Indeed,” the Goth affirmed. “Still, it would be a pity. We’ve barely even had the chance to know each other.” With that, he pulled a large brass key from a compartment in his wheelchair and slipped it into the lock. The tumblers opened with a loud click, followed by a thin creak as the door opened—and an atmospheric change that made the Black Mass seem tame by comparison.

The Goth twisted his face into a smile.

“This is the audience you seek,” he said, and showed her inside.

He locked the door behind them and remained at the entrance as Avalon wandered through the chamber. Most of the visible light cascaded down from virtual displays, which hovered near the ceiling like windows into some hallucinogenic dimension. Events and images rolled out of that void with no underlying logic—only fear, distilled into a gallery of grotesque faces and misshapen bodies, which exploded into graphic scenes of murder and sadism.

Deathplay rip,
Avalon thought.
So that’s what the Goths are doing here.

A common neural interface uploaded the data, recording it for later use. Avalon traced glowing fiber trails to the source, finding a few of the johns she had seen outside the Kirin. They were strapped in restraining chairs, plugged into the hard link and staring off into nowhere, tended by the same Teslas who had lured them into the club. Their mouths opened and closed wordlessly, sounding off in distant echo, their minds in a pliant, agitated state that supplied the gory images on the displays—manifestations of death, complete with emotions and identity. The Goths called it religion, but that was just another excuse for trafficking. Downloaded to implants, those experiences were worth a fortune in the subculture.

The audience in the rip chamber was a microcosm of higher society—a smattering of mid-echelon gangsters and their molls, peppered with a few corporate types taking a walk on the wild side. A couple of them plugged into the feed for kicks, but most contented themselves with expensive champagne and the voluptuous company supplied for the occasion. Avalon broke the surface tension with her presence, stifling their laughter as they wondered what to make of her—a flurry of whispered conversations leading their eyes toward the
real
power in the room. Avalon followed those stares to a large table near the back. Four armed
kobun
stood watch there—the most visible security in the chamber. Evidently, the host merited some serious protection.

They reached for hidden weapons as Avalon approached. Spreading out, they allowed her to pass without incident—but always stayed close, hovering no more than a meter away at any time. Their boss, seated at the table and flocked by surgically beautified women, smiled broadly when he caught sight of her.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said, looking her up and down. “I had no idea you would be so…compelling.”

Yoshii Tagura was, undoubtedly, accustomed to dealing with people as chattel, and he treated Avalon no differently. Just being this close to him made her feel indentured—which wasn’t far from the truth, considering Tagura’s financial arrangements with the
Inru.

“Neither are you,” Avalon replied. “I imagined somebody older.”

Tagura laughed. His teeth were sterling white, as perfect as his features—a warrior face, the samurai ideal. His age and vitality immediately aroused Avalon’s suspicions. Tagura Interglobal was the eighth-largest corporation in the world, not counting its illegal subsidiaries. That such a young man could be its head of state—the architect of its success—seemed unlikely at best.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said, draining the last of his champagne. “As a former free agent, you should know that.”

“Appearances are everything. As a company man, you should know
that.
”

“Point taken.” Tagura absently stroked the hair of the baby doll next to him, who quivered at his touch. It wasn’t his charm so much as his hormones, a synthetic variety secreted from dermoplasts beneath his skin. “Perhaps all that time you spent with Phao Yin made an impression. You certainly have a grasp of corporate politics.”

“I learn the ways of my enemy as well as my ally.”

“And which am I to be?”

“That would be up to you.”

Tagura’s smile remained frozen. He tightened his grip around the girl’s hair, forcing her face down into his lap. Her muffled giggles didn’t distract him in the least, nor did the activities she performed while she was down there. Tagura just wanted to see how Avalon would react.

“You were saying?” he asked.

Avalon refused to give Tagura what he wanted. Instead, she pulled a chair out from the table and sat down directly across from him. Reaching for the champagne in front of him, she took a swig directly from the bottle.

“Death doesn’t become you, Yoshii-san,” she said. “With all the world at your disposal, why would you choose to spend your time in this hole?”