Stormblood, стр. 33

because you put it there. It’s fused to your blood cells, your flesh, your pheromones, your nervous system, and it’s never, ever coming out. No unringing the bell. I’d had it at the end of a long day of training during the Reaper War, when I’d caught a glimpse of my reflection and not recognised myself with the blue lashing through my chest, arms, and legs. I’d sunk to the cold floor of my quarters, my entire body racking with sobs. Unable to breathe, unable to even raise my head, fighting back the urge to rip it from my skin and nerves.

This felt similar. I’d been so very wrong about my brother. My memories – my guilt, my determination to protect him – had blinded me. Even when he had practically told me.

Stupid. So sodding stupid.

I mentally picked myself up, gathering my thoughts together. The shardpistol gave a little whine as I snapped it into combat-ready mode. ‘I’m going after them,’ I told Grim, the tugging in my gut egging me on. ‘You know the score. I’ll be in touch.’

I cut him off before he could protest.

Keeping to the shadows between the columns, I followed their pathway across the derelict courtyard towards the mansion. I don’t go anywhere without knowing where the exits and blind spots are. I kept an eye on my flank as I advanced, scanning for tripwires Grim might have missed. Nothing. Broken ventilation clanked and crunched high above me. My comms spluttered and vanished as I walked. Signal jammer, and a strong one at that. Guess I really was on my own. I glided out of the darkness and made a beeline for the doorway, eyes peeled for secondary entrances and surveillance gear. Up a short flight of scorched stairs, heading for the shadow of a crumbling balcony. I’d almost made it to the mansion when there was a dull, familiar click behind me.

There’s only one thing in the universe that sounds like that.

‘Well, well, well,’ said a voice, barely above a whisper. He must have been watching over the deal, only to catch me. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Of course. I was fully suited up in armour. He couldn’t see me. Couldn’t guess Artyom was my brother. Had to keep it that way for his sake.

I tried to turn my head. ‘I—’

The weapon nudged my helmet, hard. ‘Eyes straight, mister. Eyes straight.’

I’d already seen what I needed to see. His handgun was retooled for high-calibre, armour-piercing rounds. They’d punch clean through my helmet and splatter out my visor, dicing my brain into fish meat. I’d no doubt he’d do it. Some guys think a ranged weapon makes them the boss of the room. Others understand that a gun is a tool. It only matters if you’re willing and able to use it correctly.

This guy was the latter.

My shardpistol was torn from my hand. Screwing the handgun to the back of my neck, he marched me down a series of miasmic hallways, infested with leaking plumbing. My comms were still dead. Minutes later, we reached the shelled-out remains of a compound. The words Crimson Star Industries were trapped in a glass frame above the lintel. The door dilated open and I was shoved into the vestibule. ‘Got a visitor,’ he shouted as the door slammed shut, heavy bolts thudding home.

Workstations, flexiscreens, storage cabinets and sofas sat atop a stained rug covering a spacious room. My visor picked up greasy smears of food and the powdery glimmer of grimwire on the glass desks. Place was lived in. A cracked viewport peered out into a small garage, the curving walls a smear of crumpled service machinery. The sort of place where they’d construct customised chainships and small spacecraft, outfit them with tattoo-like paintjobs. The skeleton of a black chainship, as if chiselled from space itself, was still suspended in front of a colourful catalogue of decals. Thigh-thick powerlines and rusted docking tubes jutted from scuffed decking like broken spinal cords. Long abandoned, the war had turned the whole place to a crumpled shell.

And now it was a base of operations for a stormdealer syndicate.

‘Lasky? What is it?’ A woman wearing an underskin with an arterial pattern trooped into the vestibule, chewing gum. Her long black hair dripped around her head like a stream of crude oil, her collarbones festooned with tattoos. She swore in Korean as she saw me. ‘Who’s this?’ she rasped. Her coal-dark eyes flickered over me like a butcher inspecting a cold slab of raw meat. It was the same calculating look I’d seen on a girl on New Vladi as she ran a kitchen knife down another girl’s face because all the boys said she was prettier.

‘He was following Artyom and Mueller,’ Lasky said, handgun still fixed against my neck. The little runt had dirty blonde hair, slicked back from a strangely childish face. He was a head and a half shorter than me, but a weapon’s got a way of equalling the dynamic.

She tilted her head back to call out without unlocking sights with me. ‘Hausk! Lyndon! Get in here.’ Lead-heavy footsteps echoed as two more men approached. They both wore armour, engraved with markings that placed them from some installation or wayward spaceport far from Compass. They were twins, ugly as each other, though one had dyed his hair a fiery red, and the other had a face crisscrossed with so many pockmarks and scars it looked like a butcher had used it as a chopping block. I decided the ugly one was Lyndon. ‘Hideko, what’s going on? Are we blown?’ he asked.

‘I’m handling it,’ Hideko snapped. Both men shut right up. She was evidently the boss around here.

Hausk was squinting at me, as if he could somehow see through my visor. ‘Who the hell is he?’

‘What an excellent question.’ Lasky moved around in front of me to thrust the handgun under my chin, tilting my head upwards. ‘You heard the man. Who are you?’

I was increasingly sure these guys were the