Stormblood, стр. 22
Like Alcatraz, Wong had been taking suppressors from Harmony’s clinics. And if the furious articles popping up on my shib newsfeed were any indicator, Harmony was already copping the blame for her death.
I’d already viewed the security footage of the incident. She’d been sipping a coffee by the viewport when she’d collapsed, twitching and spasming on the floor. There were vivid, raked gouges along her arms where she’d tried to claw the stormtech out. When that failed and it overwhelmed her, she’d turned on the people around her. Leaped at a man twice her size, slamming his face against the glass so hard she’d broken his nose. The security robot had been forced to shoot her, or risk her killing someone.
First Alcatraz. Now Wong. How many more of my friends would I have to stand over, staring at them like broken puzzle pieces? I remembered Wong sitting next to me after an operation went sour. A smelter-grenade had just blasted good men and women into a pile of guts and gristle. She told me we’d get through this, that we’d look back on it some day like a distant nightmare, realising how far we’d come since. Looking at her corpse spread in front me now, the memory almost felt cruel.
A cool salt breeze drifted through the cruiser-liner’s porthole. An artificial beach stretched below us, aquamarine waves crashing on a curve of golden sand, scattered with sunbathers and people striding along a sun-bleached boardwalk. Even the air smelled salty and fresh, the way the real thing was meant to. I rubbed my neck. I’d left my suit charging at home, thinking it probably wasn’t a great idea to show up to a crime scene armed to the teeth, especially in this district. No need to freak these people out even more. It meant that the alien plumbing zigzagging through my flesh shone through my clothes, but it was no secret I was here on Harmony’s behalf.
The owner of the cruiser-liner was a soft-spoken giant with a sharp jawline and purple bags under his eyes. Probably hadn’t slept since the incident last night. ‘Did she come here often?’ I asked, remembering how Wong would give someone a piece of her mind if they stepped out of line, but would give them the shirt off her back if they needed it. You couldn’t hate her if you tried.
‘All the time.’ He pointed to a stool in the corner. ‘She’d sit there. Liked three sugars in her coffee. Full-cream milk, always. And yesterday she just … snapped.’ His Adam’s apple bobbed and he shook his head. ‘She was good. Wouldn’t have hurt anyone. Offered to help clean up a few times. This isn’t right.’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said. Reapers didn’t just snap. Not when they were clean. She’d been targeted like the rest.
‘Was she with anyone?’ I asked.
‘No. Always came alone.’
‘She ever talk of family? Friends? Anyone she was seeing?’
‘She wasn’t chatty. Not like that. She seemed lonely, if I had to guess.’
‘Do you know where she lived?’
‘Sure. Got to have an address to sign on for a cruise.’ While he went to check his records, I stooped down to examine Wong’s hands. The fingerbones seemed to be moving, curling back and forth, subtly enough you’d never notice if you weren’t looking. She’d had machinery installed inside her hands. The cheap kind, if they were malfunctioning like this. She definitely wasn’t wired up when I knew her.
Brushing the thought aside, I rifled through Wong’s sparse belongings, found nothing of interest until I happened upon a small, magnetically sealed phial in her handbag. Empty, from the weight. I popped it open and sniffed. Sweat broke out on my forehead as I raked in a desperate breath and feverishly snapped the lid closed. My body was all too familiar with the smell of raw stormtech. The stormtech in me writhing in response to it as I tried to think. This phial would have contained the crystallised essence of stormtech, ground down into blue particles the size of salt crystals for oral ingestion.
Stormtech might be locked permanently inside us all, but like any muscle, it doesn’t strengthen overnight. It takes time and training to reach the higher levels of ecstasy, building a tolerance for the drug. Training. But, like a shot of anabolic steroids, if you wanted an immediate, supercharged burst of stormtech-induced bliss, you could ingest the stuff. Most people were already overwhelmed by the stormtech inside them. Those who took additional shots were usually recovering addicts, desperate to reclaim their highs, even temporarily.
It seemed Wong had been one of them. I found I was disappointed, although I’d known plenty of Reapers who went down this toxic path, knowing would it’d do to them. The tube was cool in my sweaty palm, my body daring me to prise it open again. Get another whiff. I stuffed it firmly into my suit pocket as the owner returned with Wong’s address. It was almost a hundred floors away, scraping the bottom of Compass’ barrel.
Stepping from the cruiser onto the boardwalk, I swept a tumble of black hair out of my face, slicking it to the back of my head. The stormtech accelerates cellular growth, which means hair and nails grow faster. I hadn’t trimmed it in almost a week and it was starting to fall down to my neck in blue-black waves. I strode past rows of hotels, apartments, restaurants, libraries and attractions fashioned in the style of an open-air city harbour. Cafes advertised unique coffee blends and cocktails, while music and the scent of seafood wafted from open windows. Glass galleries, sculpted in the shape of animal skulls, loomed overhead.
That breakfast wrap hadn’t been enough, so I grabbed another and watched the early morning swimmers dive and swim in the swell and curl of the whitecaps. Yachts bobbed on the glistening green water,