Chapter 17

I heard the maglock hum slightly as the code from my credstick disengaged its hold on the door. Slowly—almost hesitantly—I turned the knob, easing the door open. A square of light fell upon the apartment's darkened foyer, illuminating the brass shell casings that danced and skittered across the floor with the door's passage, moving for the first time since this whole mess had started five days ago. I took a step into the foyer, plaster and shells crunching under my booted foot. And then the smell hit me. It smelled like the combination of rotting eggs, methane, and body odor. It was a smell I'd gotten my fill of in the past few days—the smell of death.

Blitz and Sugar stepped in after me, supporting Diana's limp body between them. Blitz wrinkled his nose. "God, what is that smell?"

"We left a little mess behind before we moved out. Didn't really have time to clean up," I answered as I made my way into the living room.

The living room was largely as we had left it. Bullets and other debris littered the floor, and blood had dried in a large pool where it spread out from the body that lay before the doorway into the kitchen. I was happy to see that the apartment's ventilation filtration system had done its job—at least part of it. It still stank to high heaven, but at least the body wasn't alive with maggots as it would have been on the streets outside.

Blitz's face quirked into an unreadable expression. "So, I guess that's the guy that tried to geek you?"

"Yeah. There's another one in the kitchen. Watch your step." I sidestepped the crusted brown stain around the body, and peered into the kitchen. The other corpse was just as dead as we had left it. I looked back to the others. "It doesn't look like anything has been disturbed. We should be safe here. In the mean-time, what do we do to help her?" I nodded to Diana.

Rei shrugged. "I don't think anything we can do can heal her. Her body isn't suffering from anything medicine can cure. I guess the best way I can explain it is to say that her spirit is . . . weary. It needs time to recharge."

"How'd you get to be such a fragging expert?" Sugar grumbled.

Rei shot her a look. "I started college in pre-med."

"I think we've got some stimulant patches back in the bedroom," I offered. "Would that help?"

Rei opened her mouth to respond, but Blitz cut her off. "No, Di told me those things do more harm than good. Something about the magic and the drugs just doesn't mix."

I sighed. "Okay, well I suppose the best place for her would be the master bedroom." I looked to Sugar to gauge her reaction.

She gave me an accepting nod and with Blitz's help began to maneuver Diana down the hallway, leaving Rei and me alone in the deathly still room.

For a moment we just looked at each other—like a pair of guard dogs suddenly unchained from their posts and told to fend for themselves. We were unsure of what to do or say next, how to dam the floodwaters we were already wading through waist deep. I broke the silence first.

"Well, I guess the first thing to do is get rid of the meat bags."

Rei just nodded mutely, watching the body as if the cadaver would rise from the dead if her eyes ever left it.

I went to the hall closet and took out an armload of blankets, hauling them back into the living room where Rei still had her eyes riveted on Mantis's corpse. "Are you okay?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. I mean, well, yeah." She gave a hacking cough, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "It's just I've never seen a dead body before—at least not this close, not this long." She tore her gaze away from the body and looked at me. "I guess you're used to this kind of stuff, huh?"

Her question caught me off guard. When I thought about it, she was right. I had grown callous to death. Only in retrospect did I feel the slightest twinge of guilt. Over the years I had clawed, stabbed, and shot my way through anyone who stood in my path. I thought I'd left that life behind three years ago, but when Michelson's goons busted in, three years of peaceful living couldn't erase what I was deep down inside. I was a killer.

That simple realization made my stomach turn. Those around me had always recognized that fact about me, but I had been blind to it for the largest part of my life. I forced those thoughts aside, afraid of the implications fraught within them. Swallowing hard, I looked up at Rei, giving her the most frank and honest answer I could.

"Yeah."

I cleared my throat suddenly. "Okay, lend me a hand here," I said, changing the subject to hide my own discomfort.

Rei and I knelt by Mantis's remains, and I lay one of the blankets to the side where we could roll her body into it. As I did so, I caught sight of the dead razor-girl's face, a bloated mask of blood and metal. Upon seeing her scarred visage, I felt a twinge of guilt—not for the bloated woman that lay before me, but for the other people that had died, who had just been doing their jobs and got caught up in this whole mess.

I looked up at Rei. "I'm sorry."

Her expression was blank. "Why?"

"Because of all of this—all of this that happened. Because all I managed to do was frag things up even more. Because of your people, your men. They died because of me. Because I couldn't see the truth."

"Peaches, they were trying to kill you—to kill all of us. I wouldn't have expected anything else."

I shook my head. "I don't mean them. I mean the people back in the factory, those people that were just trying to stick by you."

Her face softened. "I appreciate that. I really do, but . . . those men weren't Ayanami employees."

"They weren't?"

She shook her head. "Most of them were just muscle I hired off the street for protection. They were just people like—" She stopped mid-sentence, with an uncomfortable look on her face. But I knew what she was going to say. It was the same thought I was thinking. People like you.

That comment, even if it was unsaid, forced me to see the invisible line I had been walking for so long. At any time in my life I could have been among the dead, just another gutter punk cast aside like the daily garbage. I had survived up until this point. But I had been lucky. Sugar had been right before. My bullheaded pursuit of the truth had put us all in jeopardy. We came close to dieing that night, Diana most of all. Rei's words, though she didn't dare speak them aloud, made me realize that we might yet end up in the grave alongside them before I had a chance to see this through.

Rei forced herself to continue, interrupting my thoughts. "The only company man was my bodyguard Marcus." She forced a smile. "He was loyal to the last. He took his oath to protect me seriously."

"That kinda thing is rare these days."

She coughed again. "Loyalty?"

"Yeah. In this day and age, everyone is just trying to get ahead, and they'll do anything they can to get what they want. But none of the cars, or girls, or whatever else makes a drek's worth of difference. If a man doesn't keep his word, he really doesn't have anything at all." I sighed. "After you're dead and gone, none of that stuff really matters. The only thing that matters is how the people you left behind will remember you." I gave a humorless laugh, indicating the corpse lying before us. "She could tell you that."

Rei didn't seem to get the joke. It was a bad one anyway. She just looked down at the razorgirl's body.

"Rei?"

She looked up at me. "Yeah?"

"We're going to set this right. I don't know how quite yet, but we're going to. I promise."

She gave me a sad sort of smile. "Thanks."

I cleared my throat and changed the subject. "Okay, help me out with this, will you?"

Together we rolled up the body into a pair of blankets. By that time, Blitz had returned from the bedroom. He looked at us curiously as we finished, but just shrugged.

"Sugar decided to lie down too. All this stuff has kinda taken it out of her."

I nodded, about to say something when suddenly Rei gave a hacking cough. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. I just have this condition. Too much physical activity brings it out. It's been acting up since we escaped."

"The cystic fibrosis?"

She looked mildly surprised. "Yeah. That's why this whole thing started." She coughed again, this time more mildly. "You see—"

I cut her off with an upraised hand. "We know the whole story. That's how we tracked you down."

"Oh," she said, lowering her almond-shaped eyes.

I motioned to Blitz. "Help me with this."

He grabbed one side of the tightly bundled body and gave me a sigh of disgust. "Damn P, this slitch fragging stinks."

"No shit," I grunted as we hefted her off the ground.

"Yeah, we can be thankful for that." He grinned at his own joke. "So where are we going with this thing?"

"Trash chute."

"Trash chute?"

"Yeah. It goes right to the incinerator. No one will notice them."

We managed to maneuver the body into the hallway and dumped it down the chute. Lucky for us, none of my neighbors were in evidence, so we hurried back into the apartment to take care of the other body before any our luck ran out.

I stepped over the body in the kitchen, taking the same care with it as I had the other. I lay a blanket by his side, preparing to roll him up into it when I caught sight of his face. Truthfully, it wasn't his youthful countenance that piqued my interest. It was the green nub of a mohawk down the center of his scalp—a color green that I had seen before. At first I couldn't place it, so Blitz and I went through the arduous task of bundling him up and dumping him down the trash chute.

Once we were back in the apartment, both he and Rei collapsed onto the couch. I, however, remained standing. Something still didn't feel right. I had this inkling in the back of my head like I was missing something. But then it hit me. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before.

"C'mon Blitz," I said, grabbing him by the arm and tugging him toward the door. "We're going for a ride."

He frowned. "In what? The van is toast. Do you know how many bullet holes are in that thing? It's like riding in a whicker box for frag's sake."

"Then we'll get a cab."

"What about Rei?"

"She's staying here."

This time it was Rei protesting. "No, I'm going with you."

"No, you're staying right here," I said as I headed for the door. "You have to hold down the fort."

"But—"

"Just do it, okay?" I almost yelled, whirling around to face her. "You're not going. We can handle this just the two of us."

She gave me a glare that would have shattered a mirror.

I ignored it in my hurry to get out the door, pulling Blitz after me.

"Where are we even going?" he asked as the door closed behind us.

I turned and looked back at him. "How do you unravel a ball of yarn?"

"What?"

"Just answer the question."

"Well, you find the loose end and unspool it from there."

"Exactly. And if I'm right, Michelson and his boys have left us a loose end to work with. All we have to do is grab a hold of it and give it a good shake. Now come on. We've got to find a cab."