"Our ride's here, people" said Marcus, slowly standing. The metal landing shuddered and shook as he pulled himself up, flakes of rusted paint fluttering away beneath them.
Cessus drove the cab of the huge cargo truck under the landing and Marcus lowered them all onto it. They limped over the hood and into the cab, Fede and Cass crawling into the back of the cab where a small couch formed a bed. The truck was an unmarked shipping line, a huge white freight container its only cargo. A steep whine announced the release of the pressure break, and Cessus pulled out of the alley and into a yard full of similar trucks. They stopped next to the oversized gate and Cessus pulled out a pen-shaped device. He twisted its top and held it out towards the speaker grille.
"Samuel M. Miller" the pen announced. The voice reeked of New Jersey. The gate opened and they pulled out, took a right onto the arterial, went two blocks more before turning onto an onramp.
Cessus pulled up some maps on the dash-mounted view screen. The hiss of aerosol came from the front seat as Marcus tended to himself.
"Where are we going?" asked Cass.
"South" said Cessus. "We're going south."
They rolled on, the truck taking to the far lane and settling into cruise control. Cessus sighed, point out the window to his left. "Going to miss that place." he said. In the distance a thin pale plume of dirty smoke rose above the center of the city.
"Sorry about your house, Cessus" said Cass.
"Cessus's house?" asked Fed. "I thought that was Marcus'."
Marcus chuckled and Cessus smiled.
"Turns out international credit card theft pays more than mod fighting" he said. "Get some sleep. The shock's going to wear off any minute and when it does you're going to wish you were unconscious."
Fede sat back against the small couch, Cass's boots wedged against his hip. Traffic rolled by, Cessus and Marcus speaking quietly together in the front, words hidden by engine noise. Fed looked around the small space, saw a poly-fleece blanket wadded into one shelf and pulled it out. Slowly, he spread it out over Cass, tucked it gently over her shoulder.
She wiped her nose against the back of her hand, wincing slightly as the cut on her lip reopened. Fede smiled, and she smiled back.
"Sorry about your eye" she said quietly. She laughed. "You look like shit."
Fede waddled up to the front of the cab.
"I left my comm back in the house" he announced.
"Bullshit" said Cessus, without turning. "Picked it up on the way out. Wouldn't have mattered anyway; I was running a tracker on your box all last night as part of the input monitor."
Fede turned and looked expectantly at the bag resting between Marcus's knees.
"Get some rest, Feed" said Marcus. "We're going to need you pretty soon." The big man crossed his arms and leaned his head against the rear of the cab.
Fede did as he was told.
Austin was truly a shithole city, Tonx decided for the fifth time that day. He'd finally gotten in touch with John, placing a call from a public terminal in a pachinko parlor high up on the fifth floor of a mall gallery. The clamor of thousands of tiny metal balls filled the air. He glanced back at the skinny kid with golden shark teeth and bad skin eying him warily from behind a pink and purple desk. It was mounted in a giant plastic ball at the front of the store, Asian pop stars gyrating across its surface cast by external projectors.
"You sure this deal's good, John?" he asked again.
"Given the stunning lack of information you've provided I'd say you ought to count yourself lucky I could help you at all." The deeply tanned skin over John's beard wrinkled into a smile and he winked conspiratorially.
"Serious. I know my boys aren't your style, but they're running some legit business up that way and are about as good a cover as you could ask for. Given what you've told me you could use the muscle, and the reputation sure won't hurt either."
John leaned over, out of view of the screen, and said something to someone Tonx couldn't see.
"Just do me a favor, okay? Make sure you bring me in on marketing whatever it is you get out of this. I can tell it's big - much respect - but I'm pulling some strings for you here. You got me?"
Tonx smiled warmly. "I got you John. You know I'd spill if it'd help you, but right now it'd be more risk for you than it was worth."
"I figured" said John. The broad face wrinkled, frowned, glanced off screen.
"Don't worry, I'll cut you in when I got something" said Tonx. His comm ringed.
"Don't answer" said John, not looking up.
Tonx's glasses showed an unlisted number buzzing through with a Florida area code.
"It's biz" he said, not asking how John knew he was getting a call, annoyed that he did. "I got to run."
John's eyes got wide and his lips puckered to speak as he glanced up at Tonx.
Tonx flipped the call open, stepping back from the terminal and turning slightly away.
"Tony Riel you are under arrest pursuant article D.B.12 of Private Corporation number one-one-three. You will remain where you are until our agents have arrived. You have the right to your company's legal counsel"
Tonx flipped off the line, looked back at the terminal. John's face was turned off screen again, teeth clenched in concentration.
"Two floors down, the tea parlor. Ask for Cheung. Do what he tells you. Go. Now!" The terminal flickered off, flicked on again.
"Tonx!" he called. Tonx turned back. "Get rid of your comm. Garbage can by the exit. Sharky will dump it."
Tonx disentangled his gear, popped the memory stick that held his vital files and tucked it in his pocket. He slammed it and his chord into the large plastic bin alongside pre-rinsed coke bottles, a separate pail for their caps hung on its edge with wire. He darted back and tossed his glasses in after it. Golden-tooth boy stared open-mouthed, then turned as his terminal buzzed. Tonx took off, down two flights of escalators in a rush. Mall security would be on him but shouldn't do more than tail him - security liked to run folks off, not actually touch them.
Two floors down Tonx glanced around for a tea parlor. There it was, tucked between a Pizza Us and a Veggie McDonalds, a rainbow-colored flat-panel sign with tiny animated characters marching along the letters 'Pink Fizz'. Teenagers poured in and out of it clutching oversized polyurethane cups with color-tinted domelike tops, sucking thick tapioca plugs through oversized straws. Bubble tea, back in fashion for the third time since Tonx could remember. A slight young man in nicely cut business wear appeared through the doorway, looked around before pressing his comm more firmly into his ear. Before he could look away he spotted Tonx and pointed to a sky tunnel leading from the arcade to another mall across the street, hurrying towards it without looking back.
Tonx's stomach tightened and he followed. A few seconds later he fell into step besides the young man. His thick dark hair betrayed an Asian heritage, his eyes taking in Tonx in a quick competent glance before he handed him an unmarked cred card.
"Chueng?" asked Tonx.
"Take this to the phone shop, basement level" Chueng said, nodding. "Tell them you need my backup package. It should stay secure at least twenty-four hours after you start it up."
They slowed, shoved their way through a large crowd of frizzy-haired matrons on a mall walking expedition, their guide holding a three-foot placard flashing purchasing options and recommendations.
"After you get the phone leave through the parking garage exit. Go to the back of the garage and look for a dumpster. Wait behind it. I don't know any more than that."
"Thanks" said Tonx.
"No need, glad to help. Besides," he stopped and shrugged as they entered another shopping arcade in front of a bay of escalators, "I never saw you."
Chueng smiled mischievously and turned, disappearing into the crowd. Behind them a fire alarm went off and red lights flashed from a store next to the sky bridge, followed by wire gates sliding shut across the bridge's mouth. Fed's mouth twisted into a grin. He didn't bother looking for Chueng. Tonx slid past a pair of teenage girls in floor-length transparent plastic raincoats with matching bikinis and double-stepped down the escalator.
He was out of breath by the time he got to the basement level, fear dulling his senses, his eyes darting from face to face. He passed a shop selling fake candles, tiny LEDs glimmering in phased-array series like slow-mo flames through rainbow colors. An enormously fat person of indiscriminate gender wearing a kilt and a black mumu-like shirt filled the space between the bottom of the escalator and the store on the other side, and Tonx had to go around. As he backtracked he saw a Hot Topic shop, retro-80s, 90s, early 2thou gear done and redone and redone again across retro cotton to polyplast fabrics, icons resituated across genre and subgenre. Strawberry Shortcake, the standard borne by early teen drug users when Tonx was a kid had reappeared as a goth dominatrix. Hello Kitty was being branded on cloned human-flesh wallets and shoes from Japan. His Mom used to like Hello Kitty, he thought distantly.
As he passed Hot Topic he saw the phone shop, a half-width store split by a darkened glass shelf, its clerks' raised elbows testifying to the miniscule space allowed them. He shuffled in sideways, retracted as a short Spanish woman and her son advanced, reinserted himself.
"How can I help you?" asked the woman before him. She was of indeterminate age, indeterminate background. Her hair was a watery brown, her features a bland, forgettable, and beautiful blend of Asiatic and Caucasian. Tonx started as he realized she'd had extensive pore-shrinkage, her skin a smooth seamless sheath. He couldn't tell if she was an Asian who had had bone work and gene therapy, or a Caucasian who had had melatonin injections and facial muscular reconstruction. She was a woman, as beautiful and sexually uninteresting as a nice car.
"Who did your work?" he asked impulsively. She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth.
"Actually, Pastor Frankel does all my work" she said, her eyes crinkling slightly. Asian, epicanthic folds removed, decided Tonx. He didn't recognize the name.
"Nice. I'm here for Chueng's backup package." The smile disappeared as she reached for the keyboard beneath the counter, her elbows tonging softly off the glass panel behind her. She didn't seem to notice.
"You don't look like Chueng's type" she said softly.
He didn't reply.
"May I have your cred card please?" she asked, grey eyes zeroing on his.
He handed her the card Chueng had given her. She ran it without comment. The angle of the terminal reflected against the glass and he scanned, upside down and backwards, credit card numbers, names, and addresses flashing by. A summary line appeared a the bottom of her screen, listing either the number of accounts or the total expected cash return. Either way, it was a large number. Card numbers; underground currency. The shop was laundering. He owed John some favors - what he was getting wasn't cheap.
"One moment please" she said, smiling with her lips alone. She shuffled sideways down the length of the counter, waiting for the clerk beside her to move out ahead. She bent, slightly, back straight and stood with a paper bag stapled shut in one hand, shuffled back with the patient practice of routine. Her long arm extended over the counter, bag in hand.
"Thank you for your business" she said, nodding. "The exit is over there."
He left, forgetting her face the moment he turned away. Pushing through a sudden crowd of young black men in ultra thin cotton zoot suits he saw the garage exits before him, cruised through and dodged left. He stood for a second in the shadow of the entrance to the garage, scanned it. People flowed in and out, suits, kids, mommas and papas. No way of knowing. Nothing to know. He popped the staples on the bag and crossed past the doors towards an ancient soda machine, its coin slot roughly sawed out and replaced by a card reader secured with clear caulking.
"Fuck" he said, pulling out a sealed plastic bag containing one pair of glasses, one comm, one earbud, and a watch-ring dongle. All done in matching yellow Hello Kitty brand. As he watched the icons moved in a rapidly slowing synchronized dance, obviously powered by the motion of his movement. They faded slowly to the end sequence, running out of juice, the image of Hello Kitty with shotgun held overhead inert on the thick yellow plastic.
He rolled the plastic bag and stuck it in his pocket, crumpled the paper bag and placed it carefully in the fifth bin past the soda machine marked "paper, uncolored, clean." He began to walk purposefully to the back of the garage.
He heard his ride before he'd gotten halfway there. The rumble of big-bore engines announced them. He heard loud voices laughing, a bang and crash of something metal, and turned a corner around the last column at the long row of cars.
A crew of twenty-some Hell's Angels on big hogs of all stripes stood idling around the dumpster towards the back of the garage. Tonx drew back his lips, sucked in a breath. Without slowing he continued forward.
A small man in a worn but carefully tailored cameo-pattern suit jogged forward before Tonx got more than twenty feet from the group. Engines died, the sudden silence stifling in the dim garage. The guy in the suit adjusted his wire rims and produced an e-board, text flaring into view against the battered metal casing.
"Please sign" he said politely, a British accent coloring his voice.
"Who are you?" asked Tonx.
"Mr. Snipes. I am this crew of righteous' bastards lawyer" he said, pronouncing the words as it were a title. Maybe it was.
Tonx sighed and signed, waited for Mr. Snipes to turn and jog back towards a big bike monkey with a handlebar mustache. The man glanced at the e-board and nodded at Tonx.
"Ride with Nancy" he called over the sudden roar of engines, jerking his head at a woman near the edge of the crew. Nancy was in her 40s, frizzy blond curls tied sensibly behind a jaunty kerchief. She had a 2005 Toyota GoldenBoy, factory original from the look of it, based on the Harley Fat Boy line from some decades before. There was a matching sidecar, and as Tonx approached Nancy smiled broadly and reached over to toss him a helmet from inside it.
"Hope you don't mind riding shotgun" she laughed, a tinkling sound that seemed oddly out of canter. As Tonx pulled on the helmet he saw an ugly pink scar knit straight down Nancy's breastbone. He must have stared - scars were rare things to see these days - as Nancy paused from adjusting the choke to give him an odd grin. She hooked her thumb over the edge of the flowered blouse inside her Cordova jacket and pulled it back to reveal a patchwork of musclework wrapping over her collarbone and down her shoulder. Full muscle replacement, cloned or stolen and stitched in direct. Scary sloppy work, laser-cauterized in place but surprisingly effective, Tonx knew. The threat of rejection was constant, the pain continuous as misplaced nerve tissue attempted to grow through dissimilar slabs of muscle, but if you wanted crazy strong fast-twitch muscle and a lot of it this was about as good as it got. As good as it got on the street, anyway. Nancy smiled broadly and Tonx slotted her tiny pupils as due to amphetamines and pain-suppressants.
"Both arms, full down to my fingertips" she announced proudly. She leaned and patted the side of the side car, thumbed the start switch.
"Come on, boyo. Let's ride."
Johnny Cash rumbled up from the base of the sidecar and Tonx fastened his helmet, climbing into place. The group rode thundering out of the garage, streaming onto the street outside in a menacing phalanx.