Cosmo drew his own rod, primed it, aimed, and hesitated. The Parasites regarded him through round eyes, heads cocked. Alive. He couldn’t do it. Not even the memory of the blue creature crouched on his chest, sucking his very life force, could make him push the button.
At the corridor’s end, the apartment hadn’t managed to lock into place. A six-foot gap yawned between it and the main structure. Stefan cast a bridge across, using it to winch in the wayward apartment. Parasites flowed around him, eager to reach the wounded.
The youth looked back.
“Thirty seconds, remember?” he said. His eyes were wide, possessed. Only one thing was important to him now.
He ran across the bridge, blasting as he went. His team followed into the lion’s den. The apartment had obviously been struck with considerable force. Every stick of furniture was piled up against one wall. TVs, chairs, and domestic robots were reduced to little more than wires and sticks.
The people hadn’t fared much better. At least a dozen assorted men, women, and children were heaped in one corner of the room, limbs entangled. The Parasites were all over them like flies on meat, hungrily devouring their life force.
Cosmo’s doubt disappeared. He pointed his lightning rod at the nearest blue creature and pressed the red button. There was surprisingly little kick from the rod—it was almost like a toy. But the effect was anything but playful. The charge scorched the air as it passed, sinking into the Parasite’s midsection. The creature absorbed every volt, conducting not a spark to its victim. Its greed for energy was its undoing. The blast pumped it up beyond its limit, shattering the creature into a dozen spark-filled orbs.
Ditto was not shooting. He was the medic, doing what he could for the injured. He pulled gashes together with staples, doused open wounds with antiseptic disinfectant, and poured liquid painkiller down the throats of the conscious. For some it was too late.
Ditto placed his hand over the heart of an elderly man. “Shock,” he said sadly. “Just shock.”
Mona was half ninja, half gunslinger, popping off charge after charge into the blue creatures. She never missed. In moments the swaying room was filled with blue bubbles, like party balloons. They rose to the ceiling and melted through with an electric fizz.
Cosmo fired again, and again. The Supernaturalists were right. The creatures were sucking the life from these unfortunate people. And he had never known. Never seen. How could they beat adversaries like these?
Mona appeared at his shoulder, her chin sunburned by muzzle flash. “Chin up, Cosmo. You just saved a life.”
That was the way to keep going. Save one life at a time. Cosmo took aim at a creature glowing silver from absorbed life force. He fired. The creature dissolved into bubbles.
The floor beneath their feet suddenly began heating up. Cosmo’s rubber-soled boots left melting strings where he stepped. “The floor is burning!” he yelled.
Stefan laid a palm on the carpet. “Lawyers,” he pronounced. “They’re coming through the floor. We blocked the stairwell. Time to go.”
“But the Parasites! There are more.”
Stefan grabbed Cosmo by the lapel. “We’ve done what we can. If you get arrested, you can’t help anybody.”
An orange cutter beam erupted through the flooring, an inch from Cosmo’s foot, carving out a small circle in the surface. The beam withdrew, to be replaced by a fiber-optic camera.
Mona grabbed the cable, yanking it repeatedly until the cable separated from its box. “Wrap it up. It’s time to leave!”
The cutter beam reappeared, this time glowing blue for a quick burn. The harsh clicks of several guns being loaded emanated from the hole.
Stefan lead the retreat, shooting as he went. To the residents the Supernaturalists must have seemed crazed. Shooting at nothing, into the air, when there were people to be helped.
They traversed the retractable bridge into the main building. Cosmo glanced down through the gap. A dozen rapid-response lawyers were huddled on a raised platform below, the Scales of Justice logo plastered across their helmets, waiting for the cutter beam to finish making a hole. One spotted Cosmo.
“You there!” he shouted. “Do not flee the scene of an accident. There are waivers to be signed.”
“Keep going,” urged Ditto. “These guys have better equipment than we do.”
The lawyer ripped a Velcro patch from his combat vest, revealing a rappelling spike and coil.
“It is illegal to flee the scene of an accident!” he called. “Freeze! Or the Stromberg Corporation will not be responsible for your injuries.”
The lawyer ducked under the platform’s safety rail and fired the spike through a gap in the twisted stairwell bars. Cosmo ducked, and the spike buried itself in the ceiling overhead. The lawyer smacked a button in the rig, and the spike’s cable reeled him up at high speed. He crashed through two layers of plasterboard, landing in the corridor behind Ditto.
“Freeze, defendant,” he said, leveling a lightning rod. “You have the right to get seriously messed up if you attempt to flee.”
Ditto’s eyes were wide. A perfect imitation of an innocent six-year-old. “Seriously messed up? But, sir, I’m a minor.”
The lawyer snickered. “Not by the time your case gets to court.”
“I object,” said Ditto, head-butting his adversary in the stomach. The stunned lawyer tumbled through the hole in the floor; only his rappelling cord prevented him from plummeting to earth.
Stefan and Mona were already on the roof. “Move it, you two. We’ve got choppers coming in.”
It was a kaleidoscope of chaos. Different crises swirled into Cosmo’s vision and out again before he could deal with any of them. Lethal lawyers and a belligerent Bartoli baby. Life-sucking Parasites and now helicopters. All because they were trying to help people. Wasn’t there someone they could tell?
Cosmo scrambled up the bridge onto the rooftop. The night sky was alive with converging choppers. Dozens of searchlights strobed the building. Most were TV birds. Disasters were big news. Even small ones like this would be sure to headline every bulletin.
Mona and Stefan were crouched by the lip of the Stromberg Building. Stefan took a shockproof walkie-talkie from his belt, switching the volume setting to high. He threw the radio onto an adjacent building. “We need a bridge,” said Stefan. “Mona?”
“Not me. I already put down three. I’m almost out of gas.”
“Ditto?”
“Same here.”
Stefan kneaded his forehead. “Cosmo. Bridge. Now.”
“Me?”
“No time like the present. No one else has enough juice for a big gap. And there isn’t time to switch cannisters.”
The rookie Supernaturalist lifted his bridge from its rack on his back. It seemed simple enough: stand on the bar, shoot the nose out and guide it with the cable. Not as easy as falling off a building, but easier than threading a needle with spaghetti.
He stood on the bar.
“Put your heel behind it,” advised Mona. “Use your weight as an anchor.”
He shifted his foot.
“Keep the nose up, better to overshoot.”
Nose up. Okay.
Noises from below. Shouted commands and the thud of boots running.
“They’re coming.”
Cosmo wrapped his fingers around the reel, and fired. The bridge recoiled against his foot, sending tremors through his new kneecap. He ignored the pain, concentrating on steering the nose. It was heavier than it looked, and wilder. Twisting in the high-altitude wind. Cosmo leaned back on the cord, hauling the nose up. Then it was over, two feet clear of the next building. Cosmo relaxed, and the bridge touched down with a clang, two hooked grippers sprouting from the far end.
The team did not waste time on congratulations, bolting across to the safety of the next rooftop. Cosmo followed, stowing the bridge with the touch of a button.
Mona’s smile shone from the shadows. “Not too bad for your first time, Cosmo.”
Ditto smiled too. “Not too bad? The first time Mona laid down a bridge, we had to cut the cord, or it would have dragged her over the edge.”
Mona frowned. “Yes, well at least I’m tall enough to steer a ladder across a big gap.”
“Quiet!” ordered Stefan. “Company.”
The legal team was rappelling onto the adjacent roof, sliding through the wrecked roof box. Shoulder-mounted lights poked through the hole like wartime searchlights. Several lawyers were switching their shrink-wrap cartridges for illegal lethal ammunition belts.
The squadron assembled in a loose circle, searching for signs of their quarry.
Stefan whispered into a second walkie-talkie.
“Everybody down: lawyers on the roof.” The sentence was picked up by the first radio, two roofs away, and amplified so that it was clearly audible.
“This way,” barked the legal leader. “Don’t interrogate anyone until they’ve signed a waiver.”
The lawyers rappelled after the sound of Stefan’s voice. They were gung-ho now, but would shortly feel very stupid.
Ditto chuckled. “The oldest trick in the book. We have a crate of those walkie-talkies in the warehouse. I remember when lawyers were smarter.”
Mona peeped over the rim. “Some of them still are.”
Two of the lawyers were coming their way, lightning-rod rifles drawn tight against their shoulders.
“Beautiful equipment,” said Ditto. “Those rappelling rigs are hands-free. And the rods can shoot forever. Nothing short of an electro magnetic pulse will stop those weapons firing.”
Cosmo was too busy being scared to admire their equipment. “They’re coming. What are we going to do?”
Stefan unhooked his backpack, placing his lightning rod on the roof. “We surrender.”
Mona grinned. “Watch this, Cosmo. A thing of beauty.”
Cosmo noticed that both Mona and Ditto were switching cartridges in their weapons.
Stefan rose slowly to his feet, hands raised high above his head. “Don’t shoot!” he cried. “I’m unarmed.”
The lawyers split apart, becoming two targets. Both guns were pointed at Stefan’s head. “You fled the scene!” one shouted across the divide. “We’re legally entitled to wrap you.”
“I know, but come on, guys. I just wanted to see the show. I didn’t touch anything. Anyway, my Dad’s an ambassador. We have diplomatic immunity.”
The lawyers started. Diplomatic immunity had become more or less redundant since the One World treaty, but there was still the odd remote republic that held on to its rights. If you wrapped a genuine diplomat, you’d spend the next five years in court and the twenty after that in prison.
“If you have diplomatic immunity, why are you wearing that fuzz plate?” Fuzz plate was the slang for the night-vision masks Stefan and his team were wearing. The low-level radiation in the plastic meant that they could not only repel X-rays but also wipe video. Even if the Supernaturalists were caught on camera, their heads would show up as static fuzz.
“Ultraviolet protection, that’s all. I swear. I don’t want to get my brain fried.”
One of the lawyers cocked his weapon. “UV? At night? Okay, Mister Diplomatic Immunity. Let’s see some diplomatic identification. And it had better not be fake, or you won’t see a vat until morning.”
Stefan reached inside his overcoat and, using two fingers only, withdrew an ID card. “I’m going to throw it across. Ready? Don’t get trigger-happy. My Dad knows Mayor Shine.”
“One hand. Put the other one on top of your head.”
Stefan did as he was told, flicking the ID card high into to air. The wind caught it, spinning the plastic rectangle another twenty yards up.
“Moron,” said lawyer number one, his eyes tracking the card.
“I got it,” said number two.
At that moment, while both lawyers were watching the card, Ditto and Mona popped up simultaneously, squeezing off one round from their new cartridges.
Two green slugs sped across to the Stromberg Building, viscous trails in their wake. They splatted onto the lawyers’ visors, spreading green goo across the lawyers’ heads and shoulders. The two rapid-response lawyers keeled over, clawing at the blinding gunk on their visors.
“Gumballs,” explained Mona, smiling her dazzling smile. “The most disgusting substance on the planet. Those helmets are history. I got clipped with a gumball one time, ruined my favorite flak jacket. Those guys are out of the game until their squad shows up.”
Stefan watched the blank plastic card spiral toward the streets of Satellite City. Then his phone pulsed gently in his pocket. He pulled it out, consulting the small screen.
“A message from the computer. A citizen has pressed her panic button down on Journey and Eighth. Let’s go. We’ll take the street.”
“One second,” said Ditto. He laid down a bridge and quickly relieved the struggling lawyers of their rapelling rigs and weapons. The Supernaturalists were on a budget, and this equipment was too good to pass up. In seconds, the Bartoli baby was back with the rest.
“I thought you were out of gas,” Cosmo said accusingly.
Ditto shrugged. “Out of gas? Me? I did say that, didn’t I? Well, you learned, didn’t you? And nobody got killed.”
The Supernaturalists packed up, stowing bridges and holstering their lightning rods. Cosmo followed suit, his heart somewhere between his stomach and throat. The others seemed completely calm, oblivious to the insanity of their nighttime pursuits. Maybe they had been hunting the Parasites for so long that this was a normal night for them. Or maybe, and much more likely, they were all crazy.
Cosmo tightened the belt on his backpack, following Ditto through the roof-box door.
That meant he was crazy, too.
The Supernaturalists stumbled back to the warehouse at five A.M. The panic button on Journey Avenue had been a false alarm. Some old guy had stuck his hand in the microwave while it was still on, setting off his personal alarm. Many citizens carried personal alarms that could be activated in the event of danger or illness, summoning a protection or medical team. It was expensive, but private teams arrived on average two minutes ahead of the city police. And that two minutes could mean the difference between life and death.
On the way back from Journey, the warehouse computer had notified them of a shootout outside a bank on the expensive end of Journey. The Supernaturalists camped on a rooftop and took potshots at Parasites that flocked to the scene.
The sun was poking through rainbow smog when they finally arrived home. Even Ditto was too tired for jokes, his small face drawn, his kid’s trousers spattered with the blood of those he’d tended to.
They sat around the table, chewing on processed dinners from flash-food packs. Cosmo pulled the tab on his food pack, waiting ten seconds for the heat to spread through his rations.
“I thought we did okay tonight,” he said. “No one got hurt, and we blasted a hundred of those creatures.”
Stefan threw down his army-issue spoon. “And tomorrow night there’ll be two hundred to take their place.”
Cosmo finished his food in silence, chewing slowly. “You know what I think?”
Stefan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. His body language should have told Cosmo to shut up. “No, Cosmo— what do you think?”
Mona shot Cosmo a warning look, but he forged on.
“I think that if we could find out where they lived, then we could do some real damage.”
Stefan laughed sharply, rubbing his face with both hands. “For nearly three years I’ve been doing this, and I never thought of that. Wow, you must be some kind of genius, Cosmo. Find out where they live. Amazing.”
Cosmo’s new knee suddenly began to itch. “I just thought . . .”
Stefan stood abruptly, his chair sliding across the floor. He reined his temper in, but it was an effort. “I know what you thought, Cosmo. I’ve thought about it too. Find the nest, and take them all out at the same time. It’s a perfectly good idea, except for one thing. We can’t find it.
“Suddenly I’m not hungry,” he finished. “I’m going to bed.” The tall boy dragged his feet into his cubicle, pulling the curtain behind him.
Ditto managed a chuckle. “Well done on the sucking up to the boss, new boy.”
“Leave him alone, Ditto,” said Mona. “Or I’ll make you stand in the corner.”
Ditto laughed, raising his tiny fists. “I know I’m a pacifist, Mona, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
Cosmo pushed his own food away. “I didn’t mean to upset him.”
Mona scooped the unfinished meals into her own carton. “It’s not your fault, Cosmo. This is Stefan’s whole life. Awake and asleep. It’s what he lives for. And every night he has to face the fact that we’re not making a dent.”
“I keep thinking that there’s something I don’t know. Some other reason we’re doing this.”
Ditto opened a beer, draining half the bottle in one gulp. “We’re helping people, isn’t that enough?”
“We’re helping people? No other reason.”
Mona and Ditto shared a look. Cosmo caught it. “I get it. I’m not part of the group yet.”
Mona draped an arm over his shoulder. “You know what, Cosmo? You’re too tense. You need to get out for a walk.”
Cosmo thought of Ziplock suddenly. “I haven’t been out for a walk in fourteen years.”
“No time like the present,” said Mona, grabbing her jacket. “I can stay awake for a few more hours if you can.
Vamos
.”
Cosmo followed her to the elevator. “Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
“Ditto, you coming?”
The tiny Bartoli baby settled back in his chair, flicking on the TV. “Am I coming? No, thanks. I went for a walk with Mona once—I was lucky to make it back with all my fingers.”
Cosmo grinned weakly. “He’s joking? Right?”
Mona pushed him into the elevator cage. “No, Cosmo,” she said closing the grille. “He’s not joking. But hey, who needs ten fingers?”
Mona led Cosmo through the maze of supply pipes and abandoned assembly lines to a large loading bay on the ground floor. A hulking panel truck sat heavy on its suspension on the parking ramp.
Mona slapped the fender, scattering a swarm of rust mites. Rust mites were a new breed of insect that had evolved in Satellite City. The TV brains said that they were nature’s new superbug and would outlive even the cockroaches.
“The Pigmobile. This old heap has saved our hides more than once.”
Cosmo kicked one of the tires. “We’re not actually going to ride in this, are we?”
Mona popped the bonnet. “Don’t be fooled by the exterior.
I prefer drab to stolen. But we’re not riding today, Cosmo. The engine’s manifold is shot. We need a new one, or at least one that’s not too second hand.”
“I thought we were just going for a walk.”
“We are walking,” grunted Mona, yanking the tubular manifold from its clips. “No choice in the matter. I just need to do some business on the way.”
“So, what do you need me for?” asked Cosmo, although in truth he was more than happy to accompany Mona anywhere she wanted to go. After all, he was fourteen years old, and Mona was the first girl he had ever spoken to unsupervised.
Mona wrapped the manifold in a rag. “Cosmo, I need you for backup.”
Booshka
was Big Pig slang for car theft. There were so many stolen automobiles in this region of Westside that the entire area was nicknamed after the pastime.
Teenage booshka pirates popped BMWs, Kroms, and Benzes right out of their racks in the uptown parking lots and refitted them for off-road racing. Every night, groups of youths gathered in abandoned warehouses for illegal drag races.
Booshka. Mona Vasquez’s home turf.
It took almost an hour for the pair to walk from Abracadabra Street down to Booshka. South along Journey, then across the river to the old police blockade. Once past the line of burned-out cars, the pair were living on their wits. No police would respond to an alert from Booshka.
Cosmo tried to make himself invisible. It was a trick he’d learned in Clarissa Frayne. Shoulders hunched, small steps, and don’t make eye contact with anybody. Mona did not subscribe to the invisibility theory.
“Down here, Cosmo. You gotta walk tall. Any of these vultures smell weakness, and they’ll mess you up faster than sugar in a gas tank.”
The vultures in question were groups of adolescents on their way home from a night’s drag racing. They lounged on the sidewalk, or bounced their automobiles along the street on enhanced suspensions. There was no Satellite guidance down here; everything was manual.
Most of the vultures seemed to know Mona. “Hey,
chi
quita
,” shouted one of a large group, a muscular youth with a bandanna tied over one eye. “When are you coming racing again, Mona? We miss you.”
Mona grinned. “
Hola
, Miguel. Maybe I’ll come race when you build something worth racing against. I could walk faster than that last piece of junk.”
Miguel moaned, placing one hand over his heart as though he’d been shot. “You got me, Vasquez. But someday I’ll get you.”
Mona kept grinning, but also kept walking. “In your dreams, Miguel. In your dreams.”
When they had rounded a corner, Mona shuddered. Her bravado was all for show; beneath it, the girl was worried. “I thought they might ask me to come back. Miguel is a Sweetheart.”
Cosmo blinked. “You think so?”
Mona punched him on the shoulder. “No,
estúpido
, not that kind of sweetheart. The Sweethearts are the biggest gang in Booshka. I used to run with them. I was their mech girl, looking after the hot rods. You check under those bandannas they wear, and you’ll find a tattoo just like mine.” Mona pointed to the DNA strand over her eyebrow.
“That’s a gang tattoo, isn’t it? What does it mean?”
Mona leaned close so Cosmo could get a better look at the ink over her eye. “It’s a DNA strand made from car parts. You see the wheels and the pistons? It means that deep down all Sweethearts are the same. We live to race.”
They walked on for several blocks, past the rows of pig-iron housing and barricaded shops. Vendors were warming up their street burners, protecting their wares with large dogs or visible sidearms. Several other gang members called out to Mona. And not just Sweethearts: they passed Celtic, Anglo, Slav, African, and Asian groups. Mona explained as they went along.
“Those are the Irish I’s. They specialize in truckjacking from the docks across the bridge.” She pointed at a pair of Africans in black suits. “Those tall guys are the Zools. Bodyguards mostly, they all learn some kind of African martial arts. One of those guys throws something sharp at you, and it’s all over.”
Cosmo tried to make himself look even more invisible.
“Those men with the piercings are the Bulldogs. They can strip a bike down in seconds. You turn away to tie your bootlace and when you turn back, your bike is just a skeleton.”
“How did you get out of the Sweethearts?” asked Cosmo. “I thought gang membership was a for-life kind of thing.”
“Stefan saved me. Eighteen months ago I was in a drag crash, a bad one. One of my lungs had collapsed and I was bleeding to death. The Parasites were settling in to suck me dry, and of course my brother Sweethearts scattered as soon as I hit that pylon. Stefan was out on a night patrol and heard the explosion. He came down here and blasted those monsters right off my chest. Ditto inflated my lung and they dropped me at General. On the way I was babbling about blue creatures sucking my life away, so a week later Stefan showed up at the hospital and offered me a new life. I took it. There was nothing to stay in Booshka for. My parents are gone and Stefan is eighteen, so he sponsors me. You can’t believe how good it feels to be a legal citizen. I don’t have to spend my life waiting for the state police to toss me in some institution.”
“And the Sweethearts just let you go? Their best mechanic?”
Mona stopped at a stall and bought a couple of fresh rolls. They sat on upturned trash cans, eating the hot bread.
“It wasn’t that easy. Miguel turned up at Abracadabra Street one night with a bunch of muscle. Stefan let them get into the loading bay, then he turned on the spotlights. He told Miguel that the Sweethearts had forfeited their right to my services when they left me to die.”
“And the Sweethearts left it at that?” said Cosmo skeptically.
“No,” admitted Mona. “Stefan offered them a Myishi Z-twelve prototype nitrous racer in return for my ticket out of the gang.”
“Stefan bought you?”
Mona punched him on the shoulder again. “No, Cosmo. He bought my freedom. That’s why we’re riding in the Pigmobile these days. And that’s why we’re down here looking for an ancient manifold.” Mona finished her snack, throwing the wrapper in a street incinerator. “Let’s go. We have some negotiating to do.”
Cosmo followed Mona down a narrow alley that reeked of raw sewage and motor oil. Rats tussled over food scraps, and rust mites burrowed into exposed patches of girder on the pig-iron walls. Mona pulled aside a lank oil-stained cloth. Behind it was a steel door with a security camera. Mona tapped on the safety screen. “
Hola
, Jean-Pierre, open up.”
Nothing for a moment, then a crackle of static. “Mona Vasquez, you’re still alive. Who’s the kid?”
“Cosmo is with me. I can vouch for him.”
The locking bars were remote opened, and the door swung aside. “Come on in, but don’t touch anything.”
They stepped into a mechanic’s dream. The very walls appeared to be constructed from car parts. Everything from the latest plasma converters to ancient combustion engine components. They passed a maze of auto-parts walls and several cars in various stages of repair.
A tall slender man was buried to his waist in the engine of a Krom six-wheel-drive. His fine blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and every exposed inch of his skin was blackened by oil and exhaust fumes.
“Hey, Jean-Pierre, what’s happening?”
The man extricated himself from the engine, pulling off magnifier goggles. “Vasquez,
ça va
? What’s happening is that you are about to pay me the hundred dinars that you owe me for that exhaust box.”
Mona laughed. “
Vaya al infierno
, Jean-Pierre. Go to hell. That exhaust box was full of filler. It blew up after a hundred miles. What I should do is kick your French behind all over this shop.”
Jean-Pierre shrugged. “
Très bien
. Okay, you can’t blame a man for trying.”
“You owe me one and I’ve come to collect.” Mona threw the manifold on a workbench. “You get me one of these and we’ll call it even.”
“Even? You’re kidding me, Mona. These aren’t easy to come by. Eighty dinars, if I can find one.”
Mona folded her arms. “Thirty dinars,
hombre
. And you already know whether you have one or not.”
Jean-Pierre smiled broadly, his teeth bright against the oil. “Mona, I have missed you. Okay, thirty, but only because you make me laugh.”
Jean-Pierre disappeared between two metal-lined aisles.
“He’s the only half-reliable parts man in Booshka,” Mona told Cosmo. “Whatever you need, Jean-Pierre can get it or make it. The gangs leave him alone, because without him their rides would fall apart.”
Jean-Pierre returned, twirling a replacement manifold like a baton. There was a Parasite perched on his shoulder. Cosmo reared backward, knocking over a tower of hubcaps. “Mona! Look! Can’t you see it?”
The Frenchman frowned. “Hey,
mon ami
, watch the merchandise. What’s the matter with you?”
Mona didn’t bat an eyelid. “Ignore him, Jean-Pierre. He’s crazy. He swallowed too many fumes at the drag meets. Sometimes he sees things.”
Cosmo couldn’t take his eyes off the creature, crouched there, waiting. “Can’t we do something? Kill it?”
Mona picked up the hubcaps, glaring at him. “Shut up, Cosmo. There’s nothing there! Nothing, get it?”