Session 21

Faint red tinted the skies, slowly overtaken by black. A dry wind coursed through the canyons of Tharsis city. Perched on the roof ledge of a four story hotel, Spike lit his fifth cigarette in what seemed as many minutes. Below, nothing moved in the streets except for a few pieces of trash tossed carelessly on the wind. The same wind that tugged at the edges of Spike's trench coat.

Where are you hiding, Krait? And why is there is no sign of you? Tharsis was indeed a large city, filled with many disreputable souls. Word traveled fast, especially to the reigning syndicate. This meant either Krait had ghosted out of the city during the day, or this Snake knew how to go to ground.

The crunch of footsteps on the rooftop gravel caught his ear. Remaining outwardly relaxed, Spike shifted his hand toward his Jericho. With a glance over his right shoulder he spied the shadow in the faint light, the synthetic eye adapted instantly.

Lin.

Exhaling a breath of smoke he released the gun and plucked out the cigarette in one concealing move. "Got anything?"

Lin's shoulders hunched as he placed one foot up on the ledge. "Shin and I pounded every snitch we could find, every bum begging on the streets. No one has seen this guy. Are you sure the intel is correct?"

"Yeah." Spike narrowed his eyes. "The lead is solid."

A crow drifted on the current around the corner of the old hotel landing on the flickering neon sign. Ruffling feathers, it turned its head with a chattering caw.

After the conversation died, Lin cleared his throat and glanced at Spike. "Heard you and Vicious used to be inseparable."

Spike shrugged, his eyes searching the city scape as though he could see through the buildings and find his prey. An impossible feat without some really major equipment.

"Seriously, Spike. Lately you two are running in different directions. The team is talking about how odd it is."

"Is that right?" he muttered flatly. "That's not what they're supposed to be talking about, now is it."

"Well, no. It's just that—"

"You are not involved in every discussion we have, Lin." Just above his pocket, Spike's fingers absently toyed with the poker chip. "Vicious and I have our methods. Sometimes we can cover more area by dividing to our strengths. We have done it before. This is nothing new."

Lin glanced at the strange tick of his superior and replied, "To listen to the older team members—"

"Isn't really accurate. Ironwall's team got cut down a couple years back, right before Vicious and I were assigned to him. Only a handful survived that ambush, some incapable of enforcing anymore. Vicious and I were free-runners before that incident when we happened to jump one of the lackey's late for the hit. Prior to us joining Ironwall's team, the only one who kept track of how we worked was Mao Yenrai. Don't read into what you hear from the team. I doubt there are many like Vicious and I anywhere else in this syndicate. We're intentionally tough reads."

Lin buried his face in his jacket as the wind whipped up. "There are times when I swear you two hate each other."

Flicking the cigarette butt out into the air, Spike watched the crow launch itself after the glowing ember and hover off on the wind with its prize. "It's complicated. But we're a lot closer than it looks. We've both intercepted one another's death blow, more than once."

He blinked. "Really?"

"That's what partners do. We're like family. The bickering is part of it all. You hear that, we're fine. When it stops … that's when you can tell we're seriously divided." Spike elbowed Lin. "Come on, you got a twin brother, you telling me you two don't get into scuffles?"

Lin grinned crookedly. "Well, yeah, we do, sometimes. I guess you're right, you two are tough reads."

"Like I said, it's intentional. Makes it harder for people to guess what we're up to. Came in handy a lot when we first started out. The novice jobs of turning ISSP and government agents were a lot more fun when they couldn't guess which one of us was potentially negotiable." Spike chuckled and pulled out another cigarette. "The key was it depended on any given day. Still does, actually. Man, there are days I miss the street runs. Ran into all sorts of shit out there."

"You've been in a few years now."

"Few? Coming up on the six year mark from my initiation."

Lin's shoulders fell. "Oh, then you couldn't have been involved with the Bass Street Riot."

Spike practically choked on his laugh. "You kidding? Vicious and I crashed that party! We weren't supposed to be there. None of the fresh meat were supposed to. But it's not like that stopped us."

Eyes widened as Lin stared in awe. "How?"

"We'd just finished trying to turn a couple of ISSP agents, our assigned task. Didn't go so well, though. Vicious ran his guy through, and I accidentally put mine in a permanent coma. Ehhh, happened quite a bit. We were idling when we heard the commotion. Of course, we had orders to stay out of any firefights, you know, standard fresh meat warnings. Screw those! We leapt into the fray, got good and bloody that night, back to back cutting a circle through the crowd. By morning, ducked under a bridge we thought no one had seen us." Spike rubbed the back of his neck. "Found out we were dead wrong when we were dragged to Mao's."

"Dragged?" Lin leaned forward.

Spike half-hooded his eyes with a grin. "Literally dragged. Wallace tore the crap out of my shirt. I got my revenge on his ass later when I took his belt and gravity stole his pants in front of the men. But still, to say Mao was pissed about our self-assigned task was … ehh, an understatement. Before we'd jumped into the whole mess we swore to stick by our decision. So it didn't matter how hard Mao pressed us, we stood side by side, chins up no matter how deep the mire got … " he rolled his eyes, "for the next month of the shittiest duties Mao's evil mind could come up with. Let me tell you, he has quite an imagination when you piss him off."

Lin blinked, "Like what?"

"Like—" A loud boom shattered the quiet night. Spike's head whipped to the east toward the rising smoke ball. He stiffened, his eyes wide. "The Skeleton Key!"

Leaping down onto the fire escape, Spike dashed down the alleyways closing on the bar with Lin in tow. A dense smog filled the swirling air. Orange glows outlined where the windows and doors blew out, already burning themselves low.

No one stood outside as witness. Spike pulled up the collar of his trench coat up and held it against his nose and mouth as he ducked inside. "Dizzy? … Dizzy, answer me! … "

Deeper into the old brick building, the smoke swallowed Spike. "Anyone?"

Beneath the hazy lamplight Vicious's narrow eyes studied the smoldered remains of the bar. His shoes crunched the smoked glass shards in the empty street. Lin stood in the doorway, his head bowed as Vicious approached. "This is what the call was about? One of Spike's deplorable rat nests?"

"Sir." Lin nodded and gestured inside.

"Should have known this wasn't actually important." He pushed inside, avoiding the soot on the wall. Nothing remained standing in the fire gutted building. Ashen bodies lay strewn everywhere. Bricks cracked, all glass obliterated. On the edge of the collapsed stage, Spike sat cocked so his eyes stared at the smoking remains of an upright piano. Anger smoldered in those eyes. "Spike, need I remind you we're in the middle of a serious manhunt."

Spike's teeth squealed as he ground them. "I was here."

Vicious sighed. "Not surprising. This does seem like one of your usual shit holes."

"No. I was here." He jabbed his finger toward the piano. "Last night, talking to Dizzy! This is where I found out about Krait."

Scuffing a foot on the floor, Vicious smirked. "A fool who speaks in public deserves to die."

"It wasn't in public." Spike stormed behind the bar and tore open the small door, revealing the hidden room. "We spoke in here! No one else heard us. I don't know how Krait found out. But I'm gonna incinerate this prick, Vicious!"

"How do you know who it was? Fires happen. Look what we did to the Gilded Peacock and we weren't even trying."

Spike tossed a peeled metal box at Vicious. "That's how. Serious shit. Inside is the kinda setup you do to create instant death. In a structure like this you don't bring the walls down. You use it to hold in the shock wave, to focus it back and kill everyone where they stand. You've seen me pull off that stunt. No one was to leave this place alive."

Vicious tossed the bomb remnants aside and brushed his hands off. "Silence the squealer."

"Send a message." Spike growled, punching the wall. Powdered brick rained down. "This means Krait's still here in the city."

"Great," replied Vicious flatly, "the Hellhound's got a bone."

Grabbing the braid of Vicious's jacket, Spike yanked him in. "If it wasn't for Dizzy we wouldn't know about Krait. Your sources haven't turned up shit."

"And now your source is a pile of charcoal." Vicious hissed, "Let go of my jacket before I slice your fingers off."

Spike shoved him back against the wall and stormed out past Lin.

"Let him cool off." Fixing his shirt, Vicious came to Lin's shoulder. "Come with me, your brother is already on a task."

Images flashed on the screen fed by the dented broadcast receiver in Spike's seedy apartment. He slumped on the couch, barely watching. His thoughts spiraled over and over again into a tornado of destructive reasoning. How had this come to be? Had it even happened? Of course it had, Spike had stood in the gutted building. That time of night the place would have been packed. No one would have known, until … he shut his eyes.

Too close for comfort. Occasionally jobs got more than just standardly dirty. Innocent bystanders could get caught in the mix. Sure, Spike had even taken down buildings without making certain that everyone inside was involved. But this was a swing bar! There was no official link to the syndicate.

Spike stood and wandered along the paint flecked walls past the boxes of military marked grenades and C-4 into his makeshift bedroom. Flinging his phone onto the battered nightstand, he pulled out his Jericho and tucked it under his pillow. Not even unbuttoning his shirt, Spike ripped off his tie and pulled the garment over his head tossing it across the room.

"This bastard is serious. I owe it to Dizzy to bury him." He paced the room. "I need an edge."

The purple glint caught his attention. Reaching down into the duffle bag he grabbed a dispenser and a tube of Purple Eye seized from a thief a few days back. He had intended to hand it over at the tower, but hadn't yet made the run.

"Hmm, some say they can see the future with this stuff. Somehow I doubt that, but I know it speeds visual perception. What's that like?" Sliding the tube into the dispenser he held it up to his right eye and sprayed a half shot in. Blinking for a moment, he looked around the room and sighed. Nothing happened. "Well, that's disappointing."

He lined the nozzle up with his left eye and gave it the same quick shot. One blink. The second he opened his eye he dropped the vial. The room violently turned. But only in one eye. The mish-moshed signals completely obliterated his equilibrium. A fly buzzed through the room … normal to his right eye, slowed to a crawl to his left. He took a step forward and the floor came up to meet him, smacking him upside the face. Hard!

Acid burned in Spike's throat, churned up from his stomach by the instability of his world. Shutting his eyes did little to shield him, for even behind the lids the mismatched signals assaulted his brain. Clawing at the floor boards, he fought for each breath before the tell-tale belch.

Everything he had eaten in the last day spilled onto the floor in a series of gut-twisting wretches. Left gasping, Spike dragged himself across the room stealing glimpses of the room through the synthetic eye. The ground twisted and warped every time his left opened. Throwing an arm over the edge of the bed, he dragged his shaking body onto the bed and yanked the covers over his head with a moan.

Sleep did not come. He lie there for hours fighting to keep his eyes shut against the uneven effects, swearing it was a thousand times worse than his first experiences with the eye. Misery fell short of his state of mind.

The phone vibrated. Not for the first time. But now Spike could at least wrench his eyes open and see halfway straight. Pulling the covers back he reached for the phone. His fingers wriggled in the air. He edged closer, still missing. With a grunt he reached and leaned too far. His fingers caught the phone as he toppled over the edge landing hard on his side. "Oof."

The screen lit up. "Spike?"

Picking up the phone, Spike held the screen so he would show right side up. With a sniff he muttered, "Yeah?"

Lin cringed on the screen. "Whoa! What's wrong? You look … green! Are you hungover?"

"No." He shut his eyes and opened them slowly. "I must have picked something up."

"There's a flu that came over on a Callisto freighter. Could that be it?"

Spike sighed. "Sure … sounds close."

"You look terrible. You should go lie down."

Rolling his eyes, he winced. "I'm not precisely standing at the moment."

Lin blinked. His face on the phone changed orientation as he turned the device. "Are you on the floor?"

"Maybe … " Spike reached up and touched the mattress. " … yup. Definitely the floor."

"Get some sleep. I'll let Vicious know I reached you and you're sick."

"No. Don't tell him that." Spike muttered. "Do me a favor … just tell him I'm busy. I'll check in when I can."

Lin nodded. The screen went blank.

With a sigh, Spike tucked the phone in his pocket and steeled himself for the shaking climb back into his bed. Inch by inch, he crawled back up onto the old mattress mimicking the jerking motion of an chameleon. Pulling the blanket back over his body, he curled into a ball and shut his eyes tight.

"Never again! I swear if this passes … never again!"

See you, Space Cowboy