Frankie coloured. “It, ah, it’s working on me.”
“Juno, darling,” The music came to a gentle finale and Rope was there, nodding politely. “I hate to press you, but there are people here-”
“Oh, of course,” said Frankie, disengaging. “I, uh, I’m sorry if-”
Juno drifted away from him, and sent him a dazzling smile. “Don’t be. We’ll talk more later.”
Frankie watched her melt into the partygoers and blew out a breath. He licked his lips. His palms were sweaty and his pulse was racing. The moment Juno was gone from him he felt almost a physical need to have her close again. He shook off the sensation and snared a drink from a passing waiter. The tumbler of Glen Fujiyama went down in a single jolt.
“Quite something, isn’t she?” Mr Tze crossed his line of sight, four girls in unfocussed disarray following him in a loose gaggle. “It’s hard not to fall for a woman like that.”
“She’s a fantastic dancer,” he said lamely, bereft of anything better to say.
Tze laughed, a brusque bark of sound over the music of the string quartet. “Of course she is.” The executive gestured at the girls with him. “Francis, some of us are retiring to the private suites. Perhaps you’d like to join in?”
“Are you Mr Tze’s protege?” asked one of the women, the hint of a predatory smile on her doll-like face.
“He may well be, Nikita,” said Tze. “Francis has a shining path set out before him.”
Frankie gave a shallow bow. “Thank you, sir. I’m, uh, grateful for the opportunity.”
The girl, Nikita, extended a hand to him. “You’re coming, then?” The other women giggled.
His stomach knotted with disquiet. Tze’s women looked at him with calculating eyes. Frankie felt like he was beneath a microscope or pressed on to an auction block. “Perhaps later,” he mumbled. “I’d, ah, I’d like to enjoy the party some more.”
There was the very smallest flash of annoyance in Tze’s expression, but then it was gone so fast Frankie wondered if he had imagined it. “Of course. Later.”
Nikita tossed a last look at him as the group vanished into the depths of the atrium, to the chambers and rooms hidden in the shadows.
He watched the party diffuse, the people drifting away or coming together into small knots of murmured conversation. He spotted Juno’s manager but each time he crossed the atrium to find him, Rope was gone when he got there. The pillars of creamy green jade and the artfully strewn furniture made the chamber difficult to navigate.
As Frankie crossed and re-crossed the room he became aware of a shift in the mood around him. The melange of genteel conversation and light amusement had faded, and in its place was a shady ambience, a sense of secrets and harsher humour. Startled, he happened on a couple in one of the booths engaged in slow, mechanical sex while a dozen silent spectators watched. Both of the performers were blindfolded with silk ties that bore the YLHI corporate logo, and their hands were fixed to a seat frame in the same manner. The spectators were breathing in a chorus of rhythmic, gasping breaths. One of them offered Frankie a tray of blue capsules and he shook his head, backing away.
He stumbled into Alice and half-stuttered an apology. She eyed him. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her ornate jacket and the red silk blouse she wore was open, revealing a glimpse of breasts beneath.
“Hungry?” she asked. Her eyes were glassy but there was a challenge in her flat tone.
“No.”
“Liar.” She pushed into his personal space, crowding him. “You want something more plastic, is that it?” Alice walked lazy fingers over his jacket and pulled his glass from his hand, swigging the contents. “Go on then,” she snapped, turning her back on him. “Go play with your dolly.” Alice wandered away, unsteady.
Frankie glanced around. Suddenly it seemed everywhere he looked, there were bodies pressing bodies and the taint of drug haze in the air. He felt flushed and uncomfortable. Sure, he’d been at corp raves dozens of times, seen drink and drugs and sex tossed around like party favours, but here it seemed… darker.
Cautiously, he walked out of the atrium proper and into the shadows.
Tze closed the door behind Nikita and nodded at the other girls. They had been here before and they knew how things were going to play out. Nikita flashed him a look, a heady mixture of fear and arousal in her dull eyes. He showed her where the suite’s small bar was and ordered her to make some drinks. She did so, eyeing the door now and then, thoughts of bolting warring with her baser, more avaricious instincts.
He wandered about the room as the other trio took items of equipment from the hidden compartments beneath the wide, burgundy-coloured sofas. Tze feathered the dimmer control on the discreet lighting control panel-he liked the gloom to be thick and warm-and started the recorders concealed in the walls and the ceiling.
There was a bowl of blue capsules on the low table in the corner, and next to that a flat metal case the size of a hardcover book. It was cold to the touch, condensation speckling the surface. Tze tapped it lightly and the lid sighed open, letting a waft of white vapour escape before he reached in and took out two glassy rods. He glanced up. The girls had the rig fixed up, straps and spars dangling from the rings fixed to the ceiling. They played a quick game of rock-scissors-paper and the blonde was the winner. Nikita returned from the bar with two highball glasses and she stopped short as she took in the scene. The other two girls were stripping the blonde, binding her into the cruciform support frame.
Nikita blinked and backed away a step as Tze crossed to her and took his drink. “Hard to know what to think, isn’t it?”
The other women giggled, and began to toy with one another, taking capsules from the bowl.
Tze rolled a blue caplet between his fingers, and despite herself Nikita licked her lips when she saw the glittering Z3N embossed on the side. There were hundreds of the pills in the receptacle.
“Don’t be shy,” Tze smiled, offering her the tablet. The smile turned into a laugh as her free hand shot out and snatched the Z3N capsule. She washed it down with a sip of her drink.
“Good,” he said. “We’re getting somewhere.” He nodded to the other two women. They opened a cabinet on the far wall to reveal a dozen mirror-bright arcs of surgical steel within. Giggling, they each selected a curved blade, wicked and sharp as a raptor claw. Eyes glinting, they descended to the blonde’s bare flesh and began to cut on her.
The private chambers ranged away along the darkened corridor. Each had lights above them, some dark but most illuminated. When Frankie pressed his ear to the doors, there was nothing but silence. A chill went through him. The rooms were soundproofed. Anyone could be doing anything in there and nobody would know. He turned in place, his hand trembling, and then at random he tugged at a handle. To Frankie’s surprise, the door opened without resistance, and brought with it a draught of potent human scents. He peered in and his throat went dry.
The room was so dimly lit that it was barely possible to be sure of what he was seeing, but he could make out the forms of men-one of them was one of the APRC officers he’d seen before, wearing nothing but his uniform jacket-coiled on the floor and snarling like animals. He saw flashes of female flesh in there, and violent rutting caught between the motions of sweating, scratched bodies. Someone was crying, and the sound of it drew Frankie’s attention to the ceiling. There was a man up there, ebony screws as fat as a finger holding him in place where they punched through his ankles and wrists. Skin hung off him in flayed strips, wet red meat showing in the half-light. The unfortunate’s face was twisted in agony, tracks of black tears crossing cheeks laced with complex scars. Frankie recognised the man: Ping, from the airport, the careless one who had lost the escort car.