Metrophage by Richard Kadrey

Author:Richard Kadrey [Kadrey, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Thrillers, Science Fiction, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian, Technological
ISBN: 9780062334473
Google: QW6BAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00ICN300O
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 1988-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

8

THE MENACED ASSASSIN

“You’re a very stupid boy, Jonny-san.” Water hit him and someone pulled the hood away. He found himself facedown on the riveted steel floor of an abattoir. His shirt was gone; the freezing water cut into him like knives.

“How much of this have you taken?”

He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a stack of old Seatrain cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed at the far end of the place like a beating heart, pushing liquid oxygen through a network of pipes that crisscrossed the walls and floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of discolored meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant.

“We found your pockets packed with this. From the size of your pupils, I would guess you’ve snorted up a small fortune’s worth.” She wore a bulky floor-length coat of some opalescent sea-green fur. Shrugging, she turned away from him, a tense, mechanical gesture. Her exoskeleton whirred. “We could have extracted the information we need painlessly, with drugs. But that seems impossible now. Who knows what might happen when the mnemonics mix with the toxins you’ve ingested. We’ll have to do it another way. But I want you to remember,” Nimble Virtue said, “you’ve brought this on yourself.” (He heard her voice overlaid with Zamora’s then: “You beg for it, Gordon—”)

Easy Money and a thick-necked cowboy Jonny knew as Billy Bump stepped into his field of vision. Easy was wearing a sleeveless gray down jacket, Billy an army-surplus parka. Each held a medusa. Easy swung the whip end of his in a lazy arc before him. A bright, almost luminous fury welled up in his eyes. “So when is it, asshole?” he asked.

“When is what?” Jonny asked.

“When’s the raid?” snapped the cowboy. He spoke in a thick South Texas drawl, the result of a quartz chip implanted in the speech center of his brain. He spit a rust-colored stream of tobacco juice onto the floor. Billy Bump had picked up his name as a teenager, when he had a habit of pushing people in front of moving cars for their pocket change.

“I can’t hear you,” Easy said in a mock-singsong fashion.

“Why bother?” Jonny asked. “You’re not going to believe anything I say.”

“Jonny, please tell me when Zamora is going to move against us,” said Nimble Virtue.

“I don’t know,” Jonny told her.

Easy Money whipped his arm out. The charged copper tips of his medusa snapped into Jonny’s chest, blinding him with sparks. The water radiated the shock across his arms and down into his groin. Jonny doubled up and came to, finding himself clinging to a side of gray meat for support. He could barely breathe.

“When are the raids?” asked Nimble Virtue.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Asshole,” said Easy. Jonny pushed himself from the meat and took off between the stinking rows, but Billy was waiting for him.

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