The docs said Niki's new spine was coming along on schedule. I was commissioning the work on the Orbital-there was no tech like that on Lagarto. I could connect up at any time and look at it in its tank, a glass cylinder filled with brown gel, Niki Mozambe written on the lid. It didn't look like much yet, just the worm in a tequila bottle, but it'd be having a major growth spurt soon.
I entered Niki's room. The lights were off. A wall of monitors gave the room an electronic radiance. I didn't turn on the lights. I knew Niki liked it dark, no matter what time of day.
“What happened… to your h-hand?” Niki said between pumps of the respirator.
I bent over and kissed her on the lips, getting a lukewarm response. “Remember I told you I was going to do a job for Maggie. It got a little ugly, but it's done now. And it paid well. You'll be up and about in no time.”
“Save your… money.”
“We're not going to go through this again, are we?”
The way she was jutting her jaw told me we were. “I don't w-want this,” she said.
“Yes you do. You're just out of sorts right now, trapped in this room all the time.”
“It's more th-than that, J-Juno.”
I took a deep breath. Today, her paused speech annoyed me even more than normal. “I know it's hard, Niki. But it'll be over as soon as we get your new spine in. You'll feel better when you can walk again.”
“Why don't you f-fucking get it, Juno? You can fix my body… all you want, but I'll still be b-broken.”
“Stop talking like that,” I said, fidgeting in my seat. “This hospital is just getting to you, that's all.” I stood and flicked the lights on. “What do you expect being in the dark all the time?”
She rolled her eyes, those same fiery eyes that drew me in so many years ago with their flaming mystery. She stared at me, her eyes burning into me, making me feel small. I wondered just when it was that those eyes turned on me. They used to warm my soul, but now they seared and scalded instead. I looked away from her to get out of the heat, thinking five more minutes, then I could go, my daily duty fulfilled.
Another minute of the respirator's incessant hissing and wheezing passed before she spoke again. “It's not this… room that makes… me feel trapped… And it's not… this limp useless b-body, either… It's being… trapped inside of me… that I c-can't stand.”
The photos were coming out grainy-all the better. Gave them that undercover feel. I clothespinned the first one, no easy task single-handed, but I managed. I was used to doing most things with my left.
I kept working, moving prints from tray to tray, holding my right hand clear to keep the wrappings dry. It was such a tedious process, developing pictures from actual film. Hard to believe this was once the way it worked. Lucky for me, there were still a few hobbyists out there who liked to do things the hard way, the predigital way. If I hadn't been able to find film, I never would've successfully built a camera low-tech enough to be undetectable by an offworlder.
I hung what looked like the best of the batch, the devil poking and choking that whore. That had to rate some good coin. Even if the offworlder was nobody important, it would score strong on shock value.
I felt a headache coming on-always happened when I spent too much time in the red light. Knowing it would be a while before I could turn the other lights on, I decided it was time for a little break. I took a hit off my flask and cleared a place to sit, tossing a stack of pic rejects on the floor. I'd have to watch my sloppiness when Niki came home in a few months. It was finding pics like these that sent her tailspinning in the first place.
It had been one of my highest payouts. There was a local pol who I'd heard had a thing for young poon, the younger the better. I tailed him for less than a day before I spotted him picking up an underaged hooker on one of Koba's many Kiddie Korners. I followed them to an empty lot and snapped a few shots through the window of his car.
I'd been careless and left the pics out when I left the house. Niki found them and went off on a pain-pill binge, popping herself vegetative. I found her halfway to dead with one of the pics crumpled in her hand. It wasn't until after a screaming-fast ride to the hospital and a thorough stomach pumping that I smoothed the pic back out and saw why it sent her free-falling. I cursed myself for not noticing the resemblance the pol had to Niki's daughter-raper father.
When they released her, I spent an entire month at home to be by her side. I thought she was doing better, getting over the shock of seeing that picture and the memories it brought back. She was getting to be her old self again. I thought it was safe to start working again. I was a shitty nursemaid anyway.
I'd started with small jobs, the kind of thing that would only take a couple hours a day. I couldn't be positive that she was stable so I dropped a biomon into her hair when she was sleeping. The thing was top of the line. It crawled down to her scalp and burrowed under the skin. It didn't have much capability, but it was practically microscopic, next to impossible to detect. I could call into it anytime and get a report on her movements and vitals.
That was how I knew she'd jumped off a bridge. That was how I'd been able to get to her so fast, fast enough that the docs were able to revive her-she'd only been dead for fifteen minutes.
They were able to rejuve her brain, but practically everything else had to go-both legs, the rib cage, a half dozen organs, and a hip joint. I could've saved a bundle if I'd bought all used parts. Used parts were common enough. Lagarto's poor would often have their organs harvested in order to pay for their funerals, not that there'd be much left of the body to bury after harvesting. There were plenty of organs around, just not many people who could afford to pay for the transplant surgery.
But I didn't want to take any chances with used parts. Not with Niki. Niki wasn't going to get a hophead's liver or a glue-sniffer's lungs. No fucking way. This was Niki we were talking about. This was the Niki who could look into my eyes and see more than a broken-down thug. This was the Niki who had been by my side for all these years as I waded through the river of shit that was my life, right there with me, step after foul step. And she'd never pinched her nose. Not once.
I'd made it clear to the docs that she'd get nothing but top-notch parts. They grew everything fresh from Niki's own DNA. Piece by piece, they rebuilt her. The only thing she still needed was the spine to pull it all together. Then they could pull the air tubes and seal up her chest. That done, a couple months of rehab and she'd be fully healed.
The phone rang. I picked up-voice only. I didn't want a holo in my red-lit bathroom ruining my prints. “Yeah.”
“Guess who, boy-o?”
My nerves rattled when I recognized Ian's voice. My vision went redder than the darkroom. “What the fuck do you want?”
“You got my message, didn't you?”
I looked at the cast on my hand. “Loud and clear.”
“Good. Meet me at Roby's. Midnight.”
NOVEMBER 31, 2788
The nightlife on Bangkok Street was in full swing. Being midnight, it was late enough that everybody had a good buzz going, but still early enough that you didn't have to step over puddles of vomit. I weaved through the crowd out front of one of the clubs that was taking advantage of the rainless night by putting a bathtub full of shine on the street with a handwritten sign advertising a bottomless cup. For a thousand pesos, you get a tin cup branded with the club logo that you can use to self-serve a scoop of the white mash. Once you've sucked out the last of the alcohol, you dump the mash and go back in.
I moved down the block, stepping over the little piles of mash, my gut on fire. I wasn't sure why Ian wanted to meet with me, but I felt compelled to comply. There was something in his voice, something in the way he asked if I'd gotten the message that told me I had to. I pushed my rage to the back of my mind. I put a lid on my boiling stomach. I needed to be thinking straight.