Stormblood, стр. 27
At the bottom of the case was a small strip of paper with a number and code punched into it. I angled the paper in the light and caught the words Upper Market in iridescent small print. I had no idea where the hell that was. Kowalski would. A white window expanded on my shib, filled with glowing blue text as I sent Kowalski the details. No response. It was well into the night and she was offline at this hour. Couldn’t afford to wait around. Grim had to know where this place was.
There was also a small metal tag, hanging by a length of chain. It was emblazoned with the Reaper symbol: a crossed pair of arms, forked with blue lightning. Couldn’t believe Wong still had hers. In the field, we were always sealed up in full armour and rarely removed our helmets. So we’d improvised with crossing our arms over our chests gesture. The rest of the Common thought the gesture was a salute, a greeting. But they’d never understand. It had been how we recognised family. A sudden lump surfaced in my throat. Wong had been a Reaper until the very end. Like Alcatraz. Like all of us.
My armour creaked as I stood. My ragged breathing echoed in my helmet, sweat running in rivulets down my arms. My heart was beating unusually loud and fast against my ribs. I placed my hand on the wall, soaking up the last, miserable memories of my friend. She had deserved so much better.
Why would someone do this to you, Wong?
9
Needle in an Asteroid
The Upper Market wasn’t just a few shops. That would have been too easy. It was an entire floor of Compass dedicated to them. It was never closed, never empty. It formed a honeycomb of thousands of shops, stalls and alleys, access tunnels and looping passageways, stairwells and multilevels. An urban jigsaw, all its pieces twisting and bleeding into one another, squeezing the geometries of their architecture into the space. I could spend hours exploring.
At any other time.
‘You weren’t kidding,’ I said to Grim as we entered the floor. ‘It’s huge.’
His grin ate up his whole face. ‘Told you.’
Grim had insisted on wearing his neon skeleton underskin, and I’d long learned that you can’t talk Grim out of something he’s into. So we made a hell of an odd couple: me a two-metre tall guy covered in heavy armour, walking beside a skeleton flickering with colours. Following the attack yesterday, I kept scanning our surroundings. It didn’t escape Grim’s notice. ‘If you’re trying to make me feel safe, it’s not working.’
‘Just being cautious,’ I told him.
‘What’d he look like, anyway?’ Grim asked as we entered the network of shops.
‘Well, he was hairless.’
‘Did you check everywhere?’ Grim asked breezily.
‘Sure. Got him to strip down for inspection when he wasn’t trying to stab me in the face with his big, ugly claws.’
‘Claws, you say?’
‘Yeah. Looked like he’d escaped from a body-splicing lab.’
‘Almost. He was probably a Shifter.’
‘A what?’
‘A Shifter, Vak.’ Grim threw two bone-arms up into the air with strained patience, as if this was common knowledge. ‘They’re into cybernetics. You know, tweaking their physiology and biochemistry, trying to become human-animal hybrids.’
‘Very interesting. Maybe we should focus instead on the part where the tosser tried to kill me?’
‘Why didn’t you take this to Kowalski?’
‘I don’t want it getting to Kindosh just yet,’ I said. ‘Not without knowing for sure why I was attacked. Same goes for Wong’s death being stormtech-related, not a result of poisoned rehab suppressors – I want to know for sure what happened before going back to them.’
That was part of it. But these were also Reapers, and I was going to do right by them. The war was over, so many of the good men and women I’d fought with had turned to ash and blood in the wind, buried in an unmarked grave on distant planets. But that didn’t mean our debts to each other were gone, or forgotten.
A million Upper Market smells swirled around me: the earthy bite of burnt coffee and freshly brewed sticky chai, spices and sizzling chicken, sickly-sweet candies and dairy. Around-the-clock eateries spun food and drink for the crush of people, offering delicacies from faraway locales. The display windows of booths and stalls were lined up one sweeping row, showcasing tropical fruit and dripping green noodles, sweet pastries and sticky rice, bubbling vats of meat marinating in their own juices, as well as less tempting fare like spongy red moss, deep-fried insects, vacuum-sealed meats from offworld colonies, and a squirming jelly that looked about as appetising as nutrition cubes.
We burrowed down the narrow, tangled streets, pipework and ribbed cabling squeezing past the crowd. The pixelsheeting above us had been set to mimic multicoloured tent-cloth, snapping and billowing in an imaginary breeze. On New Vladi we’d had big, sprawling markets like this on the first day of each month. No matter the weather, you could guarantee that wizened old babushkas and young smokeheads alike would be setting up and selling everything from robots that could shapeshift into different animals to replicas of old samurai weapons. I’d taken Artyom to one a few times, on weekends. Though once I’d turned my back for three seconds to look longingly at a