Shadowplay by Nigel D. Findley

Author:Nigel D. Findley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780451452283
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1993-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

0717 hours, November 14, 2053

Falcon was bored.

At first the concept of watching two deckers at work had fascinated him. Like everybody who’d ever watched the trideo, he knew something about the Matrix, but had never hung with anyone who dived brain-first into it for biz. He’d imagined it would be exciting, tense, with the dedicated decker hunched over her deck, while her friends kept nervous watch, wishing they could help but knowing they were unable to do so.

At least, that was the way it looked on the trid. But of course, on the trid there was always the tense soundtrack, the fast-paced camera cuts back and forth between the decker’s sweating face and the anxious expressions of her chummers.

In real life, without the cinematic tricks, it was just two women tapping away at keyboards. About as exciting as watching people in a word-processing pool, the ganger quickly decided.

Well, maybe not quite that bad. Now and again one of the women would grunt or mutter something to herself or to each other, Falcon wasn’t quite sure which. But an electrifying high-energy media extravaganza it wasn’t.

Modal seemed to have the right idea about how to han-dle things. The thin elf was slumped bonelessly in a chair, one leg dangling over the chair’s arm, fast asleep.

That’s what I should be doing, Falcon told himself. He was exhausted; his muscles ached, his skin was sore, and his eyes felt gritty.

How long since I’ve slept? he wondered. Not that long actually. He’d crashed out at Doc Dicer’s body shop, waking up at around twenty-one hundred hours the pre-vious night. That meant he’d only been awake for—he checked his watch—a little more than nine hours.

A very busy nine hours, of course, which went at least some distance in explaining why he felt so drek-kicked.

He looked back at the two deckers. How long was this going to take?

Suddenly, shockingly, the two women jerked violently as though they’d been poked in the solar plexus. Sly fell back in her chair, mouth hanging open. Her eyes were half-open, but rolled so far back that Falcon could see nothing but the whites.

Smeland slumped over to the side, the thick carpet cushioning her deck as it slipped to the floor. The woman moved sluggishly. Her eyes were open, too, but definitely not focusing. Her mouth was working, and she was mak-ing garbled “whurr” noises.

So fast that Falcon didn’t even see him move, Modal was beside Sly’s chair, cradling her head gently in his hands. Falcon jumped from the couch, knelt beside Sme-land.

The decker was starting to return to some semblance of consciousness. Her eyes were rolling wildly, but Fal-con could tell she was at least trying to focus. No such attempts at control from Sly. She was out—dead?

Smeland covered her face with her hands, rubbed at her eyes. Then, with an obvious effort, she forced herself back to a sitting position. She looked like hell, Falcon thought, face pale and sheened with sweat, eyes blood-shot, chest heaving.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Modal demanded.

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