Clay entered the Hotel Fontaine and exchanged pleasant glances with the lobby staff. It looked like any upscale hotel catering to patrons who valued their privacy. Security was visible and slightly tighter than he would have expected, however. He noted one large, well-dressed man standing next to the elevators, hands in pockets, staring blankly at the wall before him.
“I’m not getting past him without a room key or personal invitation, am I?” he muttered, sending the visual from his implant to Ness in the aircar.
“No, you’re not. I told you, it’s a trap, Clay,” she said, laughing in his ear. “If you’re that curious, you could always scale the outside. It’s only 89 floors.”
Clay snorted. “After last night, my arms need a break. I’ll save that as a last resort.”
Instinctively, he passed two more guards and entered a lounge area. Ursza sat at the far end of the bar, much more relaxed and composed than the last time he had seen her. He could tell she was watching every person in the room, but she never seemed to take her eyes off her drink. “Seems I found our girl. She’s recently gotten a change of clothes and a decent fix of Shard. You were saying something about a setup?” Clay said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Don’t get cocky. She handily knocked you on your ass when she was shaking and strung out. If she’s had a fix and collected herself, she might actually be dangerous.”
Saying nothing, Ursza immediately pushed the glass away, left two credslips on the bar, and gracefully walked past Clay, bumping into him gently on her way back to the lobby. Walking up to the elevator, she whispered something in the big guard’s ear, who immediately turned and pressed the button to call the lift.
“Hey, she didn’t hit you. You’re finally winning her over,” came Ness’ voice. “You gonna follow her?”
“She didn’t acknowledge me, and the guard didn’t look at me when she spoke to him, so I don’t think I’m supposed to. What the hell’s going on here, Ness?” He thought for a minute, then instinctively put his hand in his outside pocket where Ursza had brushed him. He was rewarded with a single round metal disc, no more than three centimeters in diameter. He scanned it with his implant. “What does ‘yishi’ mean?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“It’s written on what looks like a chit or a coin of some sort. She planted it on me when she walked past.” He transmitted the visual to her. There were several uncomfortable seconds of silence.
“She’s on 89 now. It’s a recreation level — casino, swimming pool, multiple restaurants and lounges, most are open-air. She’s headed toward the south end of the building. The place is pretty packed. I’d sit tight and wait. There’s only one bank of elevators. She can hardly sneak out.”
“She planted the tracker on somebody up there, then came down here to give me this so I could follow her. She knows I need Keraunos before I can get her off the planet. She may be giving me a shot to get it.”
“And she may be setting you up to trade for her own skin. There are at least two hundred and fifty people on that level, and a dozen more posted as guards. You’re not going to get Keraunos by force. Maybe it’s best if you sit tight, surveil the lobby, and make your move when there are fewer witnesses. We’ve got the cipher, Clay. No matter who has the datarod, we’re still in the game.”
“Why don’t you want me going up there?”
“She’s a notorious nutcase, an unreliable drug addict, and malicious intent or not, I don’t think you should be playing her game, that’s all. Why do you want to go up there?”
“Because she’s making the rules of this game right now. What’s yishi, Ness?”
“Something you don’t want to be part of, trust me. Listen to me. You don’t have the firepower, the element of surprise, or a logistical understanding of the situation. You shouldn’t be engaging in these circumstances.”
“Who says I’m going to engage?”
“And as your handler and an expert in the operational field and local culture, I advise you of the best path to success. You’re being set up. Don’t fall for it.”
Clay swore and switched off the comm, ditching it in his coat pocket. He’d been in the business for nearly thirty years, and his instincts told him he was right, regardless of what Ness thought. He palmed the chit, strode purposefully towards the elevator, and discretely flashed it to the guard. The big man squinted, eyed Clay briefly, then casually turned around and called the lift. It arrived with a quiet chime ten seconds later, and Clay entered. The guard pressed the button for floor 89, glared questioningly at Clay again, and backed away as the doors closed.
The lift opened to the middle of a poolside deck, dimly lit for a public lounge. There were sentries posted at various points around the outer perimeter. A small crowd of half a dozen people stood at one end, waiting to enter a walled-off area. All of them were dressed in formal attire, either all black or all white, with guards and servers dressed in gray. Most held long-stemmed glasses containing the green liqueur he’d seen the party crew drinking the night before. He didn’t recognize it but assumed it was local. Cautiously but confidently, he strode towards the line, again discretely flashing his “Yishi chit” to the doorman, who smiled broadly and turned to one side, gesturing him into the lounge. Though he was underdressed in business attire and the only one wearing brown, nobody looked at him as if he were out of place.
The lounge’s entry room was decorated with a marble floor, ornate rugs, and heavy tapestries lining the wall. An obsidian-topped bar took up one corner of the room, flanked by two half-scale statues he believed to be copies of famous Earth art and guessed to be Roman. A pretty woman, middle-aged, immaculately dressed in a grey bodysuit, stood behind the bar, filling a half-dozen glasses with still more of the same green liqueur – which felt like the only color in the room.
“No chance there’s a decent bourbon back there?” Clay asked with a smile.
The woman returned the smile. “I’m afraid not, sir.” She gestured at the rows of green with her free hand. Clay confidently grabbed one of the tapered glasses and sniffed at it. The drink had a pungent, sweet odor that stung his nostrils. He pretended to sip it, getting the faintest hint of an earthy spice on his lips. According to his ocular implant, his internal enhancements did not detect toxins, but he decided not to tempt fate by drinking it.
A tall, gaunt man with wiry hair and under-sized old-fashioned spectacles stood in the doorway between the entry room and the main room. He wore a wrinkled black suit and appeared to be slightly nervous. Clay would have instantly picked him out of the crowd, even if his enhanced vision hadn’t already alerted him to the tracking signal in his right breast pocket. The man didn’t look like a terrorist or even a fighter. Clay couldn’t decide if he was the one she traded the datarod to or just an unlucky dupe she planted the tracker on.
“You’re at the wrong party, aren’t you?” An attractive young woman dressed in a form-fitting white bodysuit sidled up to him, sipping at a mostly-empty glass. She regarded his brown jacket and raised one eyebrow flirtatiously.
Clay shrugged her advances off. “Well, honestly, I’m not even certain whose party this is.”
“Oh, it’s everybody’s party,” the girl said, gesturing to everyone in the room, then looked quizzically at him. “I’m Vivaine. You’re not exactly from around here, are you?”
Clay was disappointed. As soft interrogations went, she was a bit obvious. The criminals on this planet apparently weren’t used to covert operatives any more than he was used to terrorists and gangsters working in the open. “Actually, no, I’m in-system on business. My company is looking for partners.”
She seemed disappointed, not so much in his answer but in how he said it. “You’re looking for business partners at a yishi party?”
“No, this was just a last-minute invite for me.”
Vivaine sipped her drink again. “Invite from whom?”
Clay studied the girl for a moment. “I’ll tell you if you tell me who made you come over here and ask me that.”
“Mr. Hoefer,” the girl said without hesitation. “I told him you wouldn’t be interested, but he was most curious about you.”
“Interested?”
She pulled the neck of her dress aside, revealing a glowing, color-changing kanji symbol on her front deltoid. Clay stared at it curiously. “You really aren’t from around here,” she said.
“A guild brand of some sort. I assume it means you’re yorohito.”
“Very good,” she smiled and raised her glass to him.
“Yes, well, I appreciate the sentiment, but you don’t really have to do this.”
“I know that. Nobody makes me do anything if I don’t want to, not even a man like Hoefer.”
“I didn’t mean to imply…” Clay hesitated. “It’s just that…”
The girl laughed. “Procyon? Judging by your accent?”
“Actually, yes,” Clay lied, remembering his cover. “Do you mind if I ask how you became a yorohito?”
Vivaine thought for a minute. “I was in the street gangs. Got into trouble a lot. When I reached a certain age, I was asked if I wanted to join the guild.”
“By whom?”
“A Cerberus recruiter. They paid for my conversion. In exchange, my services are at their disposal. The rest of the time, it’s run through the guild.”
“You volunteered for this?!”
She looked confused. “Well, yeah. It’s a hell of a lot safer than the streets, and I never had much of a head for politics or violence, so I wasn’t about to sign up with one of the factions and be a freedom fighter.” She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “And the perks are amazing.”
“I’m sure they are,” Clay said dismissively.
She glared at him. “You’re bothered by this. They don’t have yorohito on Procyon.”
Clay frowned, wondering how much he should say. “We call it slavery … human trafficking.”
“Slavery?!” She laughed. “That’s a bit extreme.”
Clay looked at her for a long moment. “Maybe you just don’t see it that way now.”
“No, I see it the way it is,” she said defensively, grabbed Clay’s hand, and led him into the next room, where the bulk of the crowd, he estimated three dozen in all, were gathered in a circle around a spectacle in the center. Heavy tapestries were draped over the balcony doors and windows, giving the room a dark, eerie tinge. No one paid any attention to him as the girl let him halfway around the room to get a view of whatever held their interest. He immediately regretted it.
There, chained spread-eagle to a table in the middle of the room, was a gaunt, pale girl, he would guess no more than seventeen or eighteen. Her face and body were severely bruised to the point that one eye was almost swollen shut, and a cut lip dribbled a combination of saliva and blood down her left cheek. She was completely naked and breathing laboriously as if exhausted, not even bothering to struggle against the bonds that held her to the table.
Three men circled her like vultures, eyeing a fresh bit of carrion. Every few seconds, one would slap her bare breasts, punch her stomach, shake her head by the hair, or prod her with a shockstick, trying to get a reaction out of her. The girl, barely conscious, looked like she’d given up the fight sometime earlier. The crowd, both men and women, watched in awe rather than disgust or surprise, occasionally whispering to each other. Some were even smiling in grim satisfaction at the show.
Clay saw Vivaine watching him out of the corner of his eye. He did his best not to react.
“It’s sick,” he said in a low grumble.
Vivaine laughed and nodded toward the girl. “Picture the best sex you’ve ever had in your life and multiply it by ten. That’s how she feels right now.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“Oh, I don’t. It’s all over her face. She’s trying to stay conscious, but the pleasure is almost too much for her.”
“You’re insane.”
Vivaine raised an eyebrow. “You don’t understand the conditioning. The more they enjoy it, the more the crowd enjoys it, the more she enjoys it. Her brain pumps out endorphins about five times stronger than yours, and her body is adjusted to handle them. You’d probably have a heart attack if you were feeling what she was feeling right now. Those guys are getting turned on by the power trip of beating on and hurting a woman, but she can’t feel any of it and is getting twice as turned on by their arousal.”
“It doesn’t look like it to me. How can you be so sure?”
Vivaine smiled. “Because yesterday, it was me on that yishi table.”
Clay stared at her.
“Okay, maybe I was a little bit sore when I got off the regen unit this morning, but it was worth it for the rapture of being on the table. I’m doing it again next week. You can watch if you don’t believe me.”
“Who’s making you do this?!” Clay demanded.
“I told you, nobody makes me do anything. Cerberus backs the guild and ensures I can refuse any client or service I want, even from Cerberus itself.”
“And I suppose you’re free to walk away and return to your life any time you want.”
Vivaine looked genuinely confused. “This is my life. I mean, sure, a couple of my friends have left for a while and tried other things, but they almost always come back. Every other experience is too … gray … I guess the word is.”
Clay felt his blood boiling. He tried to distract himself by scanning the room. He caught Ursza Venter sitting on a stool in the corner, sipping the strange green drink and watching him intently. The look on her face indicated she knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling right now. Two men stood on either side of her, each with an arm around her back. One was handsome, well-dressed, and had an air of aristocracy. He spent most of his time watching the crowd, only occasionally looking at the scene in the middle of the room. The one time the man locked eyes with Clay, his gaze casually kept moving, apparently making nothing of the poorly dressed stranger in their midst who was eyeing the entire scene with disgust and unsatiated blood lust. The other man to her left had a bulbous build and wore an ill-fitting suit that drew attention to it. His pock-marked face and oversized nose were almost a caricature of a human.
“Can you tell me who those men over there in the corner are?” he asked.
The girl looked over and smiled. “Well, the handsome one is your host, Nils Hoefer. He’s the head of Tachibana’s Shadow. The troll next to him is Drea Berger, who runs this hotel. Nice enough guy normally, but he’s always on his best behavior when Hoefer’s around.”
The one thing Clay didn’t need right now, when he was trying desperately to control himself, were two targets like that. He briefly contemplated discretion before reaching into his coat for the plaser in his shoulder holster. Half the crowd was probably carrying weapons, so he knew he was outgunned at least eight to one, not counting the guards in the hallway. This no longer bothered him…
… until he found his holster empty.
Ursza had somehow disarmed him back in the bar when she planted the Yishi chit. She wanted him to see this but not interfere. But why?
Ursza continued to regard him. Gray eyes intently locked onto him. Her face was utterly dispassionate about everything happening in the room. She arched one eyebrow, challenging a response from Clay. This was cool and organized – a far cry from the desperate, drug-addicted girl scratching at her wrist earlier this morning. He wanted to shrug and tell her he’d have done something if only she hadn’t taken his only weapon from him. Instead, he stared coldly back at her as if all this was somehow her fault.
She responded by slowly getting up, kissing Hoefer softly on the cheek, and walking back toward the entry room.
Seconds later, Hoefer felt inside his shirt. His hand came back covered in deep crimson blood. He let out a yelp and tore off his jacket. Ursza pointed toward Berger next to him. “Monster!” she yelled.
Berger stood dumbfounded as Hoefer collapsed next to him, dead. Then, looking shocked, the fat man spotted a blood stain expanding from his coat pocket. He reached down and extracted a bloody knife. Ursa screamed and rushed into the crowd, half of whom stared in shock while the other half moved in to restrain the presumed assassin. Surprisingly, no one panicked or screamed, but most hastily exited the room. Vivaine was the first to disappear into the crowd. It was as if this was commonplace on this insane world.
Clay recorded as many faces as he could until he spotted Ursza emerging through the far end of the rush of people, briskly walking toward the exit. As she passed, she casually handed her drink to the gaunt, older man she had placed the tracker on earlier. Instantly, the tracker went dead. Clay smirked in complete confusion as he watched her subtly turn it off and drop it in her waist pocket. He let out a half-laugh and pushed through the crowd to get behind her. He thought about freeing the chained woman on the table but realized she would never be able to escape on her own and would make fine evidence when the authorities arrived in a few minutes. He would settle for grabbing Ursza and learning what this had all been about.
He shoved his way toward the lounge’s exit, but by the time he reached it, there was no sign of Ursza. She could not have made it to any of the exits that quickly, he decided as he scanned other doors on his way to the elevators in the pool area. He passed four large suites and noted one whose door was slightly ajar, emitting a frigid breeze. On a hunch, he entered and shut the door behind him.
One of the large windows on the room’s far end had been removed. Several cables ran from various heavy statues, which were tied off and dangled out of the room and down the side of the building. He ran to the window and looked down just in time to catch Ursza rappelling the last few meters down to street level. He muttered a curse and flicked the transmitter back on.
“Ness?”
“Clay, thank God. The security network lit up with word of a murder on the 89th floor. I just assumed it was you.”
“You’re not that lucky. Get moving. The girl is headed east, away from the building. I’m trying to find an exit.”
“Got it,” Ness said, and Clay heard the aircar’s repulsors engage. “What the hell happened? Who’d you kill?”
“She just stabbed Nils Hoefer in front of three-dozen people and planted the knife on Dre Berger to make it look like he did it.”
“Oh, cripes, the head of Tachibana’s Shadow?! We need to get you out of there now! They’ve locked the building down until the authorities get there. If you give me a second, I can get you out through the utility chases, but—”
“No, stay on the girl. Any security footage and a dozen witness accounts will verify I was on the other side of the room and nowhere near the action. I’ve got nothing to fear from the authorities.”
“Nobody is going to buy Berger killing Hoefer. The authorities will pin it on the most convenient person they can find. You, being the off-world stranger, are made for the part.”
“In which case, they’ll be after the girl.”
“Clay, half of them are on Hoefer’s payroll. Even if they wanted to risk never seeing Keraunos, or incurring the wrath of the ninja, it’s too much effort to nap an expert like her. They just want to close the case fast and get the bounty and favor of the new boss. That means the slow, older offworld guy that nobody has ties to.”
“Swell,” Clay said, trying to think fast. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the gaunt man at the back of a dozen men and women. A guard was directing him to the opposite end of the floor.
“Who’s this guy? She put the tracker on him.” Clay sent his optical feed to Ness.
“Sem Talbot, a scientist at Shimizu Synthesis. He’s well known as being something of a sexual degenerate, so I’m not surprised to see him there.”
“Ties to any of the factions or crime organizations?”
“Nothing outright. Shimizu deals mostly in biomedical components and chemicals, but if he’s at a yishi party with some of the worst of the worst on this planet, you can be pretty sure he’s involved in something shady.”
“Stay on her. I’m tailing Talbot.”
“Good luck.”
Clay stepped in behind Talbot and followed him through the pool area and adjacent casino. On the terrace outside, he saw an airbus approach and land. The guards slid the plastene doors open and directed the group outside. Clay attempted to merge with the crowd but was roughly grabbed by one of the security men.
“Sorry, sir. That airbus is full.”
Clay smiled charmingly. “Yes, but that’s my party, there. I’m a personal guest of–”
“I don’t think so, sir. I suggest you return with the rest of the guests and have a drink. All of this will be straightened out very soon.”
Clay instantly relaxed. “Oh, a drink,” he said, smiling. “That sounds great. What do you recommend?”
The guard stared at him, unsure if he’d heard correctly. Immediately, Clay leaned in and jabbed with his left hand. His opponent quickly countered, blocking the punch, just as Clay’s right hand, with the full force of his weight behind it, connected with the man’s jaw, sending him to the floor.
Clay leaped over the body, pushed through two more guards, and reached the terrace just as the airbus lifted off. He heard the shouts of guards behind him, coming closer. He didn’t turn around, but he estimated it would only be seconds before he was tackled to the ground and handed over to the local authorities. He climbed onto the top of the railing and tried to summon his concentration as the airbus began descending down the side of the building just a few meters in front of him.
The guards had just reached the doorway when he leaped from the railing, landing on the top of the airbus with a thud a few seconds later. He kept his footing as long as he could, then fell onto his side as they began speeding up and making a dive for street level. He slid halfway down the roof and caught himself on a handhold above the door seconds before tumbling off the front. He held on for dear life until the airbus leveled off and stopped just across the street from the hotel’s main entrance, at which point he swung his leg over the side and let go, landing on the street right next to the door where the passengers were exiting.
Sem Talbot was one of the last ones off. He looked around, then proceeded up the street, walking faster than the other pedestrians. Clay followed casually about ten meters behind. Busy wiping sweat from his hands and brow, Talbot was utterly oblivious to everything. He walked immediately to the nearest transit station and boarded the first train that arrived. Clay was behind him the entire way.
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