Striper Assassin (11 page)

Certain sections of the floor creak softly beneath her weight. She pauses and lowers her head to sniff briefly at those spots, but detects nothing of termites or rust or rotting wood, or anything else suggestive of trouble in the making.

Her walkabout confirms what she already knew: doors and windows all sealed, no intruders.

No problems.

She returns to the entrance hall and stretches out on the floor. In her natural form, Tikki doesn’t bother much with furniture, except maybe for sleep. Chairs and sofas aren’t really large enough to accommodate her, and if she had to get up in a hurry, a chair or sofa might suddenly shift, throwing her off balance.

It was like her mother always said. Birds are meant for the sky. Monkeys are safest in the trees. Four-legs like her belong to the earth, and should stay close to it.

Abruptly, a swirl of dust set aglow by the moonlight sifting down from above whips up right in front of her nose. She tugs her head back in surprise, then grunts, grumbles. Another of Adama’s little jokes, a signal, meaning he’s ready for her now. She isn’t sure how he made the dust move like that, but she knows it isn’t magic. Adama doesn’t like magic any more than she does. In all likelihood, he would agree that her own special brand of magic is all the world should allow.

Probably, it was just some weird techie effect, electromagnetic, something like that. She’s used tricks like that herself. A little FX can make a rough job go smoother.

She heads down to the basement.

The room there is large, the walls, ceiling, and floor all black. The only illumination comes from the twenty flat-screen trids set into the wall on the right. Each of those screens plays and replays scenes from the end of the world, the Fifth World, and the coming of the Sixth: food riots in New York City, corp wars, devastation, death. Chaos struggling against human law for supremacy. Civilization hanging in the balance.

At the center of the room is a metal rack like a pull-up bar for exercising. Beneath the crossbar, spread-eagled, wrists and ankles secured, stands Adama’s chosen one for tonight, a voluptuous female, a redhead, naked. Beside her is a black marble table. Laid out across the table is a collection of gleaming stainless steel instruments. Beside the table stands a heavily built ork named Jacklash.

Adama sits at the left of the room, in an ornately carved wooden chair facing the captive female and the wall of trideo screens. Beside him rises a gleaming black marble stand formed of delicate strands gently twining around one another. Atop the stand rests a huge gemstone, as pure to the eye as diamond, and about the size of a man’s fist.

“Ah,” Adama says, smiling, smelling pleased, even gratified. He extends a hand toward Tikki. “The tigress comes. Join us. Please.”

The words are expressive, full of pleasure.

Tikki watches the ork.

Jacklash looks to Adama and back to Tikki again. He does not understand that she is Were, that she is a thinking creature. He imagines her to be a crude, unthinking beast. He fears her, as he should, and perhaps fears Adama too, but strives not to show it. His smell makes most of that quite clear.

Adama waves vaguely at the ork, smiles and says, “Don’t be disturbed. The tigress and I have an arrangement.”

“Yeah,” Jacklash replies. “You said.”

Adama smiles and waves.

Tikki walks forward, as far as the metal bars that hold the female in place. The many aromas in the air tell Tikki more about the captive’s condition than anything she sees. The female is very tired and in much pain. She has lost some blood. She is afraid. She is afraid of dying, and now terrified to see the massive tiger standing calmly beside her, barely a step away.

Jacklash is very anxious.

“Come,” Adama says amiably. “Sit by me.”

Tikki turns toward the man, and in turning brushes her tail across the captive’s thigh.

Terror pure and free blossoms into the air.

Good prey, very good.

Tikki walks over to Adama’s big chair, a very unusual chair, like a throne. It smells like real wood, which makes it very expensive, though not terribly interesting to Tikki. What intrigues her is the large gemstone on top of the marble stand. She pauses before it, sniffs it, wonders about it, but does not touch. Adama has warned her never to touch it. She would not in any event, under any circumstances. It’s too strange.

Some sort of natural phenomena, not magic, something else, has imbued the stone with unusual properties. It’s a very special piece of rock. The outer facets gleam with a fiery light, but further in, the heart of the stone seems to burn with fierce white light. Tikki has never seen anything like it.

Standing very close to it, she could swear she hears a murmur of voices, a subtle babble of voices, a nearly inaudible chorus of screams and shouts and cries of pure agony.

She ignores them, the voices, it’s nothing to worry about. Adama told her so. Just more FX.

She sits, haunches down, head erect.

“Does the huntress approve?” Adama says.

Tikki looks again to the captive, flicking her ears. Does she approve? Of course she does. The captive female is full-grown and full-bodied. Nothing in the female’s scent so much as hints at disease or illness. This a fine one, a good specimen.

Very good.

Softly, Adama chuckles, then waves a hand vaguely at Jacklash. The trial continues.

How long will the female survive?

That’s the real question.

Most humans are horrified by death. Tikki accepts it, sees it as an integral part of Nature. So does Adama. That’s part of what makes him so unusual. Adama not only understands, he savors the kill, anticipates it with pleasure, relishes the coming of the final moment. Tikki has felt much the same way on many an occasion, primarily in the wild, while hunting in her natural form.

That the prey in this case suffers torture rather than the torment of flight and the agony of capture is basically irrelevant. Adama says that death makes everything equal. Tikki is not so sure about that, but is willing to play along.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Adama inquiries. “My
Leandra.”

Tikki supposes that all prey is beautiful.

In a sense.

15

The pain comes out of nowhere, excruciating, captivating. Pounding into his body, piercing his skin. Slamming through his whole being like hammers and nails, the agonies as blunt as bricks and as sharp as spears. Shouts and screams and a strange staccato clattering fill his ears, but the sounds are oddly distant, and seem meaningless.

He remembers his mother, and begins to cry.

Through it all, he feels a tingling, an electric energy, like a zillion megawatts of static electricity enveloping his skin; and then a tugging, a yanking, as if his heart, his internal organs, are being wrenched right out of his chest.

Then, suddenly, he’s flying forward as if fired out of a cannon, hurtling down a long dark tunnel at an incomprehensible speed. Faster and faster. Till the speed becomes a tangible power, flaying his body, tearing at him, threatening to break him into pieces and crush him.

The tunnel grows brighter, so bright it’s blinding, and he’s plunging into a sea of incandescent white, an inferno of white. The agony only swells.

Never-ending…

16

The Master Corporator sits behind his magnificent onyx desk in the huge main office of his luxurious private suite, at the helm of a vast multinational corporate empire. His position is one of near-omnipotence, the resources at his command virtually incalculable, and that is as it should be. Destiny has declared that he should rank high among the world’s corporate elite, as in fact he does, and with good reason. His intelligence is unrivaled. His foresight borders on the uncanny. His wit, his ability to perceive opportunities and the best possible manner in which to exploit those opportunities have no parallel. All that he has achieved in his lifetime is his by right of his own superlative ability. He owes nothing whatsoever to luck or to the errors of other persons less brilliant than himself. He has proven this countless times before, and will do so again.

Naturally, the world will strive to drag him down, to topple him from his position of power, but he will reign supreme.

Few things could be more apparent.

His Birnoth Comitatus executive protectors glance past him, scanning the room. The privacy function is on. These elite protectors are necessary only because he does not choose to exert himself in the realm of mere physical violence. That would hardly be appropriate for an individual of such limitless capabilities as himself.

Softly now, Ohara laughs. His concerns over the police investigation into the death of Robert Neiman were entirely unfounded. Clearly, he has nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Once again he has demonstrated his transcendent abilities. Though a potential problem existed, he laid plans to eliminate it before the difficulty could manifest.

When he came onboard with KFK, taking charge of Exotech, he had another kind of problem, a lack of funds, no investment capital, and that was what he needed to turn an industry dog into a leader. Did he beg and plead with the KFK board for money? Of course not. He approached the problem creatively, laterally, and solved it. Solved it in a way that was almost
Better Than Life!
He set up a BTL production lab, using the profits from that venture to finance a special undertaking in Exotech’s Special Projects Unit. With that money, he hired top-notch talent, produced a simsense masterpiece—still at the top of the charts—and brought Exotech to a position of dominance in the marketplace.

Now, of course, he has no more need of the “special financing” provided by the BTL lab. Clean Sweep took care of that and so eliminated a potential problem.

The Master Corporator.

Indeed…

Ohara smiles and removes the unmarked chip from the chipjack concealed behind his right ear. He has no further need of the artificial emotive boost from a common track-loop BTL. The truth is too obvious. No one could ever possibly come between him and the attainment of his objectives. No one.

The telecom bleeps softly. The word RECEPTION appears in block letters that wink on and off at the center of the monitor screen. “On,” Ohara says with a grandiose wave of his hand, tapping a key to make the cosmetically flawless features of his receptionist immediately fill the screen.

“A Lieutenant Kirkland of Minuteman Security to see you, sir,” she says.

Ohara smiles, amused. This is, what, the lieutenant’s second visit this week? The man must be a complete incompetent to require another interview so soon. “Show the lieutenant in.”

“Right away, sir,” the receptionist replies.

This time Kirkland comes through the main office door. He does not scam his way past KFK security, slipping in through side doors, as on his last visit. Heads have rolled over that little episode. KFK Plaza is now on full terrorist alert.

Ohara’s Birnoth Comitatus protectors look Kirkland over briefly as he enters the office. Kirkland wears a visitor’s badge. He walks directly up to Ohara’s desk, offering a hand, and saying, “How are you?”

“Quite well.” Smiling, Ohara rises graciously from his chair and accepts the offered hand. One shake is enough. Ohara sits, gestures casually for the lieutenant to have a seat. “And how are you. Lieutenant?”

“Not bad,” Kirkland says. He spends a moment sorting through his synthleather portfolio. His rather cheap-looking, worn, synthleather portfolio. “I’d like to show you a couple of snaps.”

Ohara smiles. “Of course.”

The lieutenant hands him a thin sheaf of twenty-by-twenty-five centimeter photos, which Ohara looks at one at a time. He has the time to do Kirkland the favor of pretending to be interested, more than that,
cooperative.
Time is his to spend as he desires. There are seven snaps in all. Each one focuses on a single individual. The quality of the shots varies. Some are blurred, variously distorted. The only one that stands out is a photo of a woman in crimson mirrorshades, red and black facepaint, and matching synthleather. She stands behind a man who kneels on a bare white floor. In one hand, she holds something, perhaps a strip of wire, wrapped tightly around the man’s throat. In her other hand, she holds a gun, a huge automatic, which points straight out from the center of the picture.

The look on her face, or what can be seen of it beneath the visor-style shades, is one of inhuman resolve, a look emotionless as stone, utterly ruthless.

Ohara feels a sudden shocking rise of tension, a gnawing in his gut, a crawling up his spine. This woman with the facepaint and the gun is not unknown to him. In fact, he has encountered her in the flesh, face to face, once, just once. It was the first time in his life that he was ever forced to admit, if only to himself, that certain powers existed in the world with the potential to invalidate his plans, through the simple expedient of ending his life.

“Ever see any of them before?” Kirkland asks.

“No.” Ohara hands the snaps back to Kirkland. Maintaining his aura of pre-eminence is difficult now, though a lesser individual would be completely unnerved. He considers the chip safely ensconced in the plastic carrier in his inside jacket pocket.
The Master Corporator.
He could use an emotive boost right now. First, he’ll have to get rid of Kirkland…