Deckard finishing pulling on the gloves of thin black leather, the last bit of the jackbooted ensemble. He ignored the shucked cop’s squirmings and malevolent glare, searching through the belt’s other pouches until he found what he was looking for. A rectangle of grey plastic, credcard-sized, with a row of pressure-sensitive dots along one edge.
He knew better than to try his own activation code. The pass cards were all linked on a high-freq’d trans net; his old numbers would undoubtedly set off every alarm in the central station’s tracking unit.
The cop’s gun had landed a couple of feet away. He picked it up, then leaned down anti set its muzzle against the previous owner’s forehead. “Let’s be real quiet.” With his other hand Deckard peeled back a corner of the gag. “Just whisper, okay?” The cop rolled his gaze toward the gun at his brow, then back to Deckard’s face. “Just tell me your pass code.”
“Get fucked.”
“Wrong answer.” He was familiar with the department’s standard-issue small arms, from his own long-ago bullwalking days. Whereas this guy was young enough to be a rookie-why else would he have been stuffed into a copin-a-box koban?—and therefore breakable. Deckard pulled his crooked finger back just far enough to produce a nerveracking click from inside the gun’s machinery. “Try again.”
No bravado this time. The cop rattled off a string of numbers, probably his own birth date; his face shone with a sudden tide of sweat. Deckard thumbed the code into the card.
Chameleonlike, it changed from dead grey to an iridescent, slowly fading red. It would work.
“Thanks.” He made sure the gag was sealed tight around the cop’s mouth. He held the gun against the wet forehead a moment longer. “You know. I really should do this . . .” The debate inside his own head went the other way. One, he didn’t want to confirm that asshole Isidore’s estimation of him as a murderer of actual humans—which hadn’t been proven to his satisfaction, anyway. And two, as far as the LAPD was concerned, it was one thing to be a murderer, another to be a cop-killer. Whatever dragnet was under way for him now, it’d be nothing compared to what’d ensue if he gave himself a jacket like that. Even if he managed to get away, out of the city, they’d come after him just to ice his ass. A matter of group loyalty.
He took the gun away from the cop’s forehead, reholstered it. “You just stay nice and quiet, right here.”
That might be awhile, at least long enough for him to accomplish what he needed to do, the next step in his nowcoalescing plan. Deckard scanned toward the mouth of the alley and the street beyond. The other cops who’d come swooping in looked to be busy, their investigation heading in the opposite direction, where the group who’d downed the U.N. blimp had disappeared; it’d likely be hours before they checked out this little pocket. He had no idea what all the commotion had been about-mortar rounds and bullhorns, for Christ’s sake—but it’d all worked out to his benefit. Now he had about twice the chance he’d had before. . . .
Which was still just about a notch above zero.
Keeping close to the brick wall, to avoid being spotted, he slid farther down an alley.
To a door, easily kicked in. He found himself standing at the top of a low run of stairs.
The small, clicking echoes of mah-jongg tiles died away as a mixed group of Asian and Anglo faces swung his way.
“This strictly social club.” An officious woman in a highcollared brocade dress fluttered before him. “All money on tables for decorative purposes only.”
“Yeah, right.” Around the edges of the basement room, it looked to be pai gow at vicious stakes. The whole world could’ve been coming to an end outside, and the gamblers wouldn’t have looked up. Deckard strode through the lowceilinged space, scooping up a handful of cash from the center of one table, the usual policeman’s tax, and pocketing it. That could come in handy as well. “Keep it that way.”
Another flight of stairs took him up to the street on the other side of the building. The crowd was thinner here, a lot of it having headed over one block to gape across the yellow POLICE INVESTIGATION tapes at the fallen blimp and general disaster scene.
Head down, Deckard strode rapidly, the people on the street parting to either side, making way for him. At this clip, it wouldn’t be long before he reached the central police station.
7 . . . . .
Holden opened his eyes.
“Wait a minute.” Not lying down, but sitting up. No black attach‚ case, either gurgling or silent, strapped to his chest. Holden looked down at his own right hand prodding his sternum.
A strip of navy-blue cloth dangled from his throat. “What the . . .” His voice louder now as well, almost deafening as it reverberated inside his skull. “What happened . . .”
“I had to break into that storage locker downtown, that one where all your stuff got shoved when they cleaned out your old apartment.” A now-familiar voice sounded from somewhere nearby. “Sorry about that. There might be somebody you could bill for the padlock I busted.”
Holden looked over and saw Roy Batty sprawling with hands clasped behind his head, folding metal chair tilted back onto its rear legs. Watching him. He glanced down at himself again and saw that the strip of cloth was a necktie, one of his own good silk ones. The white shirt and grey suit, and everything else, were his as well. Stuff from another life, the one he’d lived before he’d gotten blown away at the Tyrell Corporation headquarters. Another life, another world.
“How you feeling? You feeling okay?” Batty had rocked forward in the metal chair. He examined a small remote control in one hand. “The doctors said these settings were about right, for your body weight and everything. You lost some muscle mass while you were flopped down in the hospital for so long. The works we implanted will automatically adjust for when you start getting back in shape. Probably give you a little more blood flow then, I guess.”
Holden pushed the necktie aside and undid a couple of the shirt buttons. His bare chest was no longer an open, gutted wound; no tubes or hoses sticking out, either. An intricate map of scars and black stitches overlaid his pallid white skin.
“Don’t go poking too much at those. They’re not too fragile—I made ’em use the heavy-duty sutures—but you don’t want to get them infected.”
Holden traced his fingertip down one of the vertical lines. A dull twinge of pain, as though wired to tissue deep inside him. Plus either the faint sense or hallucination of muted ticking and sucking noises buried underneath the reconstructed flesh and bone.
“What’s going on?” He looked up at Batty. “What’s been done to me?”
“What, you worried about the bill or something? Jeez.” Batty shook his head in amazement. “It’s paid for, okay? You’ve been given a new lease on life, buddy. Free, gratis, per nada. So don’t sweat it. Enjoy it, already.”
“Implants . . .” He laid his hand fiat against his stitched chest, feeling against his palm the hum and surge of the machinery inside him. “A complete set . . . heart and lungs . . .” He took a deep breath, a last trace of spider-silk lifting from his brain. At the back of his throat was a taste of plastic and stainless steel.
“State of the art. None finer.” Batty held up the remote. “I told the people here to use the best parts they could get None of those pulls they’ve taken out of other jobs and had sitting in a bucket somewhere.”