Stormblood, стр. 7

There was a brief, glassy click as I was severed from the electrostatic interface, the squirming tendrils along my back going dead. And there, crawling and curling and pulsing under my flesh, shining through the thick black fabric of my underskin, was the stormtech. A spool of blue circled my chest, writhing around my organs, sniffing between my ribs. Long threads coiled up my back, finding the notches in my spine and looping around my neck like a rope, as if to hang me.

Seven years since Harmony had injected it into me.

Felt like a hundred.

The men behind me shifted uneasily at the sight of it. I folded into the seat indicated, then noticed the grooves in the arm and leg rests of the chair, where restraints would clack around me if I tried anything.

They’d created me, but they didn’t trust me. Good to know where we stood.

‘Vakov Fukasawa.’ Kindosh looked at me like I was a particularly difficult puzzle piece that didn’t fit her worldview rather than a person. ‘Reaper turned thief and smuggler.’

Former Reaper, I almost corrected. I was no longer one of their biosoldiers, engineered by hostile alien technology to fight their war. But telling them that would have been pointless. Once Harmony, always Harmony, as the saying went. ‘What’s my business to you?’

‘It’s illegal, for starters.’

I laughed and the stormtech in my chest seemed to laugh with me. I gestured at it. ‘Please. Don’t tell me Harmony got an attack of conscience.’

Kindosh didn’t flinch. ‘You’re not here to discuss the Reaper War, Fukasawa.’ I couldn’t help staring at her coffee-stained teeth as she spoke. ‘We didn’t force you to join the Reaper programme, or to accept the stormtech. That’s done. We’re dealing with present problems now.’

‘What problems?’ I tensed. Were they after the genome I’d stolen? My smuggling record? The stormtech curled around my tightening muscles, twitching in the joints of my fingers, throbbing in my armpits. I hated everyone being able to see it.

Kindosh leaned back. ‘Have you or any of your contacts been involved in smuggling or selling stormtech substances, on or off Compass?’

If I wasn’t used to Harmony’s behaviour, I’d probably have been more taken aback. ‘You must be mad,’ I said. ‘I’d never mess with that poison, never spread it around. You’ve done enough damage with it already.’

Stormtech wasn’t a drug like synthsilver or bluesmoke. It was a literal weaponised virus. Experimental biotechnology that increased every physical and mental facet of the human body. It rewired our bodies with a hunger for adrenaline, dopamine and endorphins, earning their release through physical effort, risk-taking and, above all, aggression. The high others got from a good gym work-out, we got from throwing ourselves into danger, multiplied by a thousand. It made us crave the rush of fight-or-flight, the thrill of near-death and conquering opponents, let us soak up damage as fast as we could deal it out. One dose was enough to get you permanently hooked, the cocktail of your body chemicals constantly delivering the high as long as you continued giving into it.

We became addicted to our own bodies.

So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that we fared well in battle. We smashed Harvest to pieces, reclaimed our fallen planets and won the Reaper War because we didn’t know when to stop fighting.

We still don’t.

Once stormtech worms its way into your system, it’s there to stick around. It had fused with my nervous system, in every blood cell, wrapped around every bone. Even now, I could feel the hunger for danger zigzagging between my ribs, my mouth coated with sticky saliva, hands twitching. My eyes wandered to the autorifle dangling loosely in the nearest guard’s hand and I quickly tore them away, squashing any thoughts about making a lunge for it. There’s no such thing as a fantasy for me. If I think about doing something for long enough, I end up doing it.

Harmony knew all this but they wanted to win the war desperately enough to pump us with bleeding edge alien biotechnology. I hated their guts for it and always would. And I’d rather step into open vacuum than spread that stuff into other people’s bodies.

Kindosh gave a sage nod. ‘Good to know. Good to know.’

There was something they weren’t telling me. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked. ‘You can’t honestly think I’d be peddling stormtech around Compass.’

‘Why not? It’s the biggest drug on the market,’ Kindosh said. ‘The current craze. Hundreds of years ago it was alcohol. Prohibition period, you ever hear about that? Nucky Johnson and Al Capone – look them up. Then it was cocaine. Then synthsilver. And now this. I can imagine you wanting a slice of that very profitable pie.’

You’d think people would avoid stormtech like the plague the moment they heard horror stories from the Reaper War. But humanity’s greatest vices have always been the ones most likely to kill you. Besides, we don’t exactly have a history of playing smart with things we don’t understand. Some people who tried stormtech were just sniffing out the next high. Others were simply curious. Others had run their full course with other narcotics and wanted the peak of the psychotropic mountain. But most who voluntarily took stormtech liked the idea of tweaking their physiology. Of being rewired to crave tension, excitement, danger. They wanted their biochemistry to reward them for taking risks, for pursuing excitement. Stormtech didn’t just enhance those cravings. It made them addictive; it made people enjoy being addicted. Maybe they wanted to add some colour to their lives. Or escape depression. Or have the stormtech eat some yet-incurable sickness out of their bodies. Or have the courage to do what they’d never do without alien biotech urging them along.

There were as many reasons take stormtech as people who took it. But the results were always the same.

‘You want a likely candidate, ask the Jackal,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your time with me.’

‘We’ve got our eye on him,’ Kindosh said in a tone that revealed how little she