His feet lashed out ineffectually against the attacker’s groin and belly. Carter spun the mercury garrotte, a processor-controlled liquid metal thread activated by mind augmentations, so thin that it could be undetectably concealed and so astonishingly deadly that it could cut through steel, and with a flick of his wrist sliced through one of the attacker’s arms. A burning hiss of slashed flesh and bone was barely audible.
The attacker screamed, a high shrill sound, releasing Carter who landed in a crouch beside the severed blood-pumping arm, limp-fingered and twitching and spilling gore across the carpet. The attacker spun, fleeing into the darkness without any further sound as Carter rubbed at his bruised windpipe and focused on regaining his breath and his vision. With his sight returned, he deactivated the MercG, located his Browning and crawled to the cabin door, peering out into the snow. But the attacker had vanished.
‘What is that fucking smell?’
Natasha, bleary-eyed and naked, hair tousled, nose wrinkled, stood in the doorway to the bedroom, looking confused.
‘Yeah, thanks for your help,’ croaked Carter, reaching up to flick on the light. An ambient cosy warm radiance contrasted with the stark images and thoughts that crashed through Carter’s brain.
Natasha frowned, then stared down. ‘Carter, there’s a fucking
arm
on the carpet.’
‘Really? You don’t say. I wonder how that got there -could it have been something to do with the noise that roused you from your wine-induced slumber?’
‘What was he after?’ Natasha pulled a blanket around her shoulders and moved to him, crouching. ‘Are you all right?’
Carter laughed, sliding the MercG back into its tiny hidden sheath at his waist and rising to lock the door of the cabin. ‘Nice to see my health is third on your list of priorities.’
‘Did he take anything?’
Carter prodded the severed arm with the toe of his boot. ‘I don’t know; I disturbed him before he found whatever he was looking for. Maybe he wanted Jam’s GridMap.’ Carter rubbed at his bruised throat again, noting Jam’s map which had been covered by Carter’s scattered wedding notes. The simplest hiding place was sometimes no hiding place at all!
‘Can you get me a glass of water? The bastard nearly crushed my windpipe.’
‘Hence the arm on the floor.’
‘Yeah. And get onto Spiral, comm a genetic sample, see if the CDb can find us a match.’ He coughed painfully as Natasha passed him some water. He checked first the door, then the carpet, then his Browning. ‘The fucker took a bullet.’
‘It didn’t wake me.’
‘That’s because the gun was silenced and you were drunk. I never knew I’d curse the damn thing! I could have done with some help, even from somebody who was pissed.’
‘You’re bleeding ... God, Carter, you’ve really been in the wars.’
‘Yeah, you’ll have fun picking the glass out of my flesh later’
‘Was this guy strong? A Nex?’
Carter stared with a frown at Natasha. ‘Too strong,’ he croaked, prodding at his windpipe. ‘So much for the Utopia I dreamed about. Had to be a fucking Nex - and a big one at that. I was hoping the SAD teams had wiped them all out by now ...’
‘They’ll never kill them all.’ Natasha stroked Carter’s cheek. ‘And it looks like they still want you dead, my lover.’
‘Yeah,’ he grimaced, ‘I’m a regular fucking hunted man.’
Music thundered, as if the Gates of Hell had been thrown wide open. Carter frowned, perched at the bottom of the stairs, smoke stinging his eyes, gazing out from this slight vantage point at the hundreds of people filling the hotel function room. After the previous night he was a touch on edge despite Spiral’s reassurances that there was no Nex activity in the area. The results of the gene-coding sample had been returned negative: the attacker had not been a Nex. Just a real tough human son of a bitch.
Carter grinned nastily and searched the crowd for a large one-armed man. The Browning in his belt would sort things out if Carter happened across the intruder again ... and the next time he wouldn’t take just an arm as a trophy.
Natasha, behind him, gave him a little push.
‘Come
on,
Carter, we’re late.’
Carter grumbled and muttered something: something about it being too smoky, too crowded and too loud. And how he had recently been attacked and so should really be at home in bed with a hot whisky and lemon, three sugars.
‘How old are you, you moaning old goat? Jesus, Carter, it’s not like we go to
many
parties! Make a bloody effort or I’ll break your spine.’
‘Someone already tried that,’ he grumbled, feeling the medical staples that Natasha had applied pull tight in the flesh of his back.
Carter watched Natasha’s low-cut black dress disappear into the throng, and he followed, more sedately - like a dog on a leash, growling.
Carter blinked, then stared hard at the flamboyant and very well-presented breasts which had just bumped rudely into his chest. ‘Excuse me,’ came a voice slurred by High German and beer.
Carter’s eyes flickered up from the impressive cleavage to a beautiful young face regarding him with positive appraisal. He shook his head, took a deep smoke-filled breath, and fought his way to the bar where he ordered a litre of Schwarz-Bier and sunk his face into its cold welcoming depths. The liquid nectar soothed his throat, soothed his brain and soothed his temper. Parties were not exactly Carter’s scene; it wasn’t the party
perse,
more the horde of bustling party people all with their own little agendas. Carter wasn’t exactly the human race’s greatest fan, and he had the word
cynicism
branded - hardwired -into his brain.
‘There you are!’
Natasha twirled into view, giggling, a man on each arm.
Carter, with a Schwarz-Bier moustache, frowned at her. His field-staples were hurting - he could feel the tiny pins piercing his skin and muscle - and the bruises on his throat were a testament to his recent attacker’s formidable strength.
‘Dancing! You coming dancing? This is Hans ... and, and, and—’
‘Mm!’ grunted Carter, which translated through intonation to something considerably more rude.
Natasha took the hint, and disappeared, bump first.
Carter ordered another beer. He changed his mind, and ordered two. Then he thought: fuck it, and ordered a third, with a triple-whisky chaser. It’s going to be a long night, he thought as the lights dimmed and more lasers kicked spirals of colour across the walls and beams - and the music’s volume increased painfully.
‘
You happy?’
came the taunting voice of Kade. Carter ignored him, ignored the tone of arrogance and deceit.
‘Come on, Carter, talk to me! This is a fine place, full of fine woman flesh — look there! You see her hips? Fine child-bearing hips ...’
‘Leave me alone,’ said Carter softly.
‘
But... Carter, I can’t leave you alone, dickhead. We are brothers. And I feel I should warn you that things here are not as they seem.
‘
‘In what way?’
‘Ahh, that would be telling.
‘
‘Kade, you fuckwit, what’s on your mind?’
Carter dismissed Kade with a mental surge of anger and, calming himself, leant back against the bar - good solid wood protecting his back - and watched the people around him, a tankard in his fist and a gun in his belt. Fuck Kade, he thought sourly. He was just a bad demon who’d got out of bed on the wrong side and fancied a little bit of shit-stirring as his starter.
Men and women gyrated in parodies of dance, as some Swiss musician massacred a song about the mountains and added GBH boot first to the tune with a happy accordion melody. Carter watched the people and the people ignored him - it was as if he wasn’t there, an invisible player beyond the boundaries of these strangest of rules, this most esoteric of games. It always amused Carter: stay sober (or sober in comparison to those around you) and you could neatly sidestep the alcohol bubble; withdraw from the party sphere and allow yourself time to watch and study and fundamentally
learn
the mechanics of humankind.
The young German woman with the proud chest sidled along the bar towards him. Carter grabbed his Schwarz-Bier and was about to make a dash, but was too slow in his haste to salvage his drinks. Her talons curled around his bicep and she held him, trapped by manners, imprisoned by etiquette.
‘Yes, love?’
‘Ahh, English. You here to ski, yes?’
Carter looked into her eyes, saw the gleam of alcohol on her lips, eyed the painted decorative nails around his arm and swallowed hard. She was out for the kill.
‘Yes, yes ... well, snowboarding, actually.’
‘Ah, the snowboarding man. Athletic! Can I buy you a drink?’
Carter eyed the three tankards and the huge glass of whisky - the kill-switch in his brain refused to trip. ‘Yes, sure, don’t mind if I do.’ He mentally kicked himself, then caught Natasha staring at him from the dance floor and frowned at her. She gave him a broad wink and he stuck out his tongue.
Carter spent the next fifteen minutes stumbling through a broken conversation - broken because he refused to acknowledge his fluency in German, and thus allowed the poor girl to struggle with her distinctly bad English.
It was when her hand started brushing against his thigh that he made a lame excuse and, finishing his beer, headed across the dance floor and into No Man’s Land.
‘I’m getting a headache.’
Natasha tutted, boogying with Hans and twirling in a pirouette in front of Carter. ‘Do you find me sexually pleasing to the eye, future husband and father of my child?’
‘Yes, yes, but I’ve had enough of this. It’s not my scene. I’m going out for a smoke.’
‘Bad Carter.’
‘Yeah, so shoot me. Every other fucker tries.’
Carter bounced from body to body and finally made the exit. Cold air hit him - crisp and fresh and exhilarating. The sky was partially clouded, but between the puffs of moonlit cotton twinkled stars brighter than crushed diamond. Carter breathed deeply, eyes closed for a moment of ultimate simple pleasure; then he pulled out a cigarette, lit the battered specimen and filled his lungs with a pleasant impurity.
He could hear the thump of the music and a cold wind blew across him, chilling his body after the sweating, heaving, dancing crowd. He enjoyed the cigarette, the beauty of the simple night air around him and the crisp stars above. Enjoyment, he decided, was something without action; without adrenalin; without the defying of death. But then - there was always an intense gratification after shooting a bad man in the face.
Slowly, teasingly, there arose a deep, distant, subsonic rumble.
Carter froze, smoke pluming around his slightly wind-chilled face, eyes narrowed.
The rumble came again, heavier, gravelly and deeply bass. Carter felt a tremor beneath his boots and his hand shot out to steady himself; and then he watched in horror as the hotel in front of him
moved,
shaking to the tune of suddenly screaming voices, and the whole world seemed to fill with a trembling roaring song as the structure thrashed backwards and forwards. The ground was shifting and flexing beneath him and Carter whirled, forgotten cigarette extinguished in the snow as he sprinted for the entrance to the party ... which spat forth a machine-gun stream of screaming people, faces contorted in horror and fear. With a deep, climactic surge of noise the hotel buckled near its centre and part of the roof disappeared, slipping into darkness. Some of the lights went out in a domino swathe ...
‘Fuck ...’
Carter fought his way violently through the throng of escaping, stampeding people, ‘Nats!’ he screamed as the rumbling continued, some Earth-giant coming awake beneath their very feet. The world was a confusion, a shaking, rumbling, heaving insanity and Carter plunged past flailing, screaming people who struggled against him, kicking and pushing, but he was fighting not to get out but to get
in ...
Natasha was dancing with Hans, slapping away his cheeky hands as the first tremor warned her through the soles of her boots. The smile fell from her face as somebody cried out. The ground suddenly roared beneath them, walls shaking, glass smashing from the bar and dropping from people’s quake-slippery fingers. Beer washed across the floor amid broken glass and overturned furniture. As one, the population of the party turned and ran, scrambling and pushing for the exit as—
Natasha blinked.
The floor opened and a jagged metre-wide scar tore towards her. With a yelp, she dragged free a concealed knife and leapt upwards, embedding the knife in a wide beech beam. It held her suspended as Hans hissed in surprise and disappeared into the gaping black cavity—
Warm air drifted up from the yawning crevasse.
Natasha blinked, licking her lips slowly, nervously.
Hans was gone.
Natasha watched, hands sweating in the sudden blast of heat, as a woman slipped, fingers clawing at the flagstone floor, and disappeared into a deep-seeming infinity of darkness. Warm air stinking of sulphur and other chemicals washed upwards over Natasha and she gagged, bile rising from her stomach, and still the rumbling moaned, then started to increase in tempo again as the crevasse - its movement halted briefly for a suspended moment in time - snaked across the ground once more in a bass-screeching zigzag of tearing stone, towards the terrified bar staff who froze like rabbis in the headlight beams of a fast-moving juggernaut...