26 – Takumi Stack

“You’re sure this is okay?” Addie asked, looking down at her new holster, which was attached to her belt, right out in the open.

“You know the rules. We got permission from Takumi corpo-sec. We’re good.” Tony drummed his fingers on the heavy-looking shotgun hanging by his side. He’d bought the sling for it at the same time they’d picked up her new holster. Addie picked up her yellow, polyweave bomber jacket, shrugging her arms into the sleeves. Then, she put a nanite injector into her left-hand pocket and the stimulant inhaler into the other.

As she zipped up, Tony lifted the bottom hem of her coat, tucking it behind her pistol’s grip. “Don’t cover that.”

“Okay.” Addie put her hand on her gun, getting a feel for the motion. She was used to the inside-the-waistband holster she’d trained with. She felt different, standing there with her gun on her hip—conspicuous. It was a pretty thing—sleek and deadly—and anyone who knew anything about guns would recognize it as serious hardware. Despite how showy it was, or maybe because of it, she likedit a lot. Sometimes when she was cleaning it, she thought about the woman she’d taken it from, the woman Beef had killed. What had she been like? Had she been proud of the gun when she bought it?

“You there?” Tony asked, standing just outside the van, holding the door open.

“Yeah, sorry.” Addie mentally commanded Humpty to trail her, then followed Tony out, hopping down into the garage the three Takumi housing stacks shared. They’d parked in a spot reserved for Takumi corpo-sec; the company had sent them a temporary permit. “At least we don’t have to walk far,” she said, moving toward the conveyance tunnels. There were three of them—one leading to each stack.

Tony gestured to the tunnel leading off to their right. “We’re heading to number three.”

Addie nodded, looking at the signage proclaiming Takumi Residential Housing Tower Three. Tony led the way, and she walked at his side. People were coming and going, and some gave the duo a second glance, but no one freaked out. Addie supposed it had a lot to do with the way Tony walked. He acted like he belonged there. He had a presence that made his heavy weaponry seem almost natural, like he was supposed to be armed.

He stepped onto the moving walkway, one hand on the black, tape-wrapped grip of his shotgun, idly tapping his fingers. Addie stood just behind him and watched the people going the other way. They’d glance at her and Tony, then quickly look away. It was kind of weird, and kind of ego-boosting, too. Addie wondered if that was how corpo-sec officers always felt. If they acted that way for a couple of runners in bomber jackets with some sidearms, how would people behave if she and Tony wore riot gear?

Tony glanced at her, then up at Humpty, almost silent as he shadowed them. “Dust good?”

“Almost max.” She’d put the little vial of refined Dust they’d taken from Zane in her pocket, just in case. If she had to throw lightning, it would drain her pretty fast. Besides, she had no idea what to expect from this mission and wanted to be prepared.

Addie had spent a lot of time thinking about him—Zane. She’d replayed the encounter that ended in his death a thousand times, remembering his words right before Beef had poleaxed him with his giant knife. He’d said she had disrupted his pattern, and then he’d mocked her, saying she hadn’t a clue what she’d even done. After meeting Pyroshi, though, Addie had a better idea of his meaning.

If Dust techniques required building patterns and weaves before pushing Dust into the world, did that mean the Dust she’d seen swirling around, and inadvertently pulled toward her, had been Zane’s gravity manipulation technique? Along those same lines, if she saw this rogue spark’s Dust in the air, could she disrupt him, too? Could she do it quickly enough to matter? How hard was it for him to rip someone’s heart out? How fast could he do it? How was he doing it? Was he fading? Was he yanking the heart into the in-between—that weird space between dimensions?

She was so lost in her contemplations that she almost tripped when the moving walkway ended. She made a quick stutter-step to recover, then followed Tony toward the elevator bank. They were on the basement level of the stack. Frowning, Addie looked back the way they’d come. The tunnel connecting the stack to the garage was oval, and the walls and ceiling were pale, sky-blue plasteel. She could almost imagine it was the real sky, but she knew better. They were buried under millions of tons of concrete and plasteel.

“Woah, there, bud. No weapons on site,” a strident, feminine voice said. Addie turned to see Tony a dozen meters ahead, talking to a woman in a Takumi security uniform near the elevators.

Tony sighed, reaching up to run his plasteel fingers through his hair. His other hand was, of course, in his pocket—typical Tony. “Check your inbox. We’ve got permits.”

Addie hurried to catch up. The woman glanced at her; she wore a shiny red helmet that covered the top half of her head, and its mirrored visor hid her eyes. “SOA, huh? Shepherd and Ember?”

“Yep,” Tony said, somehow managing to make the one-syllable word convey his extreme boredom.

The woman stared at him, then at Addie for another few seconds, before shrugging. “Checks out. They hired you to look into the murders, huh? That means you’ll be up in the warrens. Better look lively, ’cause we don’t patrol those floors.”

“Warrens?” Addie blurted before she could self-censor.

Tony bailed her out, or more aptly, saved their rep with the woman. “She means they’re crammed in there like rabbits.” He scratched his jawline as he regarded the security guard. “That why they hired us? You all too nerved to poke around in your dirty backyard?”

She tilted her head, but her visor gave nothing away. “Not my department, but you’re not wrong—I wouldn’t go up there without a full squad in riot gear. Maybe they think the riff-raff will lay off you ’cause you’re not wearing this.” She touched the badge on her chest—a blue T flanked by orange flames.

Tony nodded, lowering his hand and stuffing it back into his coat pocket. “You heard anything about the killings?”

“Just the same rumors everyone else has—some kind of psycho cutting people’s hearts out. They say he’s an ex-Talon agent; that’s how he gets in and out of apartments without people knowing.”

Tony chuckled, shaking his head. “The hell would a Talon agent be doing living in a Takumi stack?”

She shrugged. “Takumi’s got eighty-four thousand people living in these stacks. That’s a lot of employees with all sorts of backgrounds. What’s a guy with an eye like yours doing poking around here? What about that fancy little drone?” She turned her visor back to Addie. “That’s some Dust tech, isn’t it?”

“How do you know it’s mine?”

The woman smiled, her glossy lips made more expressive by the visor that blocked off the rest of her face. “My visor enhances certain spectrums. Your eyes are glowing.”

“Oh, right.” Addie knew her eyes glowed a little when she channeled Dust, but it was hard to notice unless the room was dark. “Anyway, yeah. It’s Dust tech.” To change the subject, she asked, “Do you think the killer’s living on those floors?”

“Almost certainly. There’s a small recreation park”—she chuckled, clearly finding the word choice amusing—“at the center of the floor. It connects 145 and 146. If the killer used one of the elevators to come or go to another level, the scanners in the elevator would have noticed something.”

“All right. Well, we good to head up?” Tony gestured to the elevators.

She shrugged. “You’ve got clearance. Just, um”—she focused her gaze on Addie—“be careful.”

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Addie smiled, though the woman’s words made her feel decidedly like not smiling. “I appreciate you being helpful. Sometimes, corpo-sec officers can act a little peeved when we come in to do their job.” She wasn’t sure what made her say that; she’d never done a job for any corpo-sec in her life, but it felt right, like she ought to bluff a little and act more experienced than she was.

The woman’s glossy lips thinned out as she pressed them together, then she shrugged again. “Like I said, it’s not my department.” She stepped to the side, waving her red-gloved hand, signaling for them to proceed. “Good luck.”

Once they were alone inside the orange-painted plasteel box, Tony chuckled and nudged her shoulder. “That was smooth.”

“Well, I didn’t like her looking at me like I was a lost little school girl.”

“I get it. As far as corpo-sec goes, she was pretty cool, though. Half the time, they won’t even talk to contractors.”

“Do you think it’s going to be as bad as she said?”

“It’ll be bad, but not for us.” When Tony didn’t elaborate, Addie stared at him as the elevator hummed, rapidly lifting them upward.

“What does that mean?” she finally asked as the display indicated they’d just passed level 108.

“Huh? Oh, I just mean places like that—warrens—are ugly places. They don’t pay those people enough to do much besides go to their jobs in their factory, come home, eat something out of the corpo food synthesizer, and go to bed. Friends and family make the little apartments too crowded, so people hang out in the hallways and places like the, uh, park that the guard mentioned. It’s crowded, dirty, and the corp won’t repair anything until absolutely necessary.” He looked at her arching an eyebrow. “You’ve never been in a big corp’s housing stack?”

“No, I have, but never one this big. I had a contact who lived in Boxer’s Delta Arcology. It really didn’t seem so bad…”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, depending on your pay grade, sometimes corpo living isn’t bad at all.” The elevator decelerated, and Tony lifted his shotgun, clutching the foregrip with his left hand, the truncated rear stock with his mechanical one. “Stay close to me, though, in case I have to remind someone of their manners.”

As soon as they stepped out of the elevator, Addie began to understand why the corporate guard downstairs wouldn’t want to venture to these levels. The first thing to hit her was the humidity. The air was warm and moist, worse than she could ever remember the air in her dad’s apartment ever being. She hadn’t expected to smell so much food, either. An almost overwhelming array of spices tickled her nose, and she wrinkled it, looking around the elevator lobby.

Graffiti, from simple spray-painted gang tags to holographic dragons, liberally covered the pale-blue paint of the walls. A recycling machine sat in the middle of the far wall, and the ground around it was littered with garbage that had fallen from its hopper. From where she stood, she could see its display flashing with a prominent red notice: SERVICE. Different groups of kids sat on the scuffed-up floor, playing various games that JJ struggled to block from her AUI’s display.

Tony nodded toward the long hallway leading away to the left. “Nora says the first apartment’s that way. She’s sending JJ the map.”

Addie followed him, one hand on the grip of her needler. “I thought you said they ate synthed food.”

“Heh, yeah. I mean, most do, but it only takes a few households cooking to make a smell like this.” He gestured down the hallway. “See all the open doors? They’ll take turns watching the kids to save on daycare, and the hallways are like a common area.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about stack life.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah, well, I didn’t grow up with money or a dad who owned a nice little pawn shop.” He threw her a quick smile, letting her know he was just teasing.

“Didn’t you say your uncle was a successful fighter?”

“For a little while—didn’t I tell you he got cheated? Anyway, he never made enough money to get my mom out of the stack.” He stopped speaking, nodding toward a group of men, all wearing various iterations of a Takumi work jumper, who were gathered at a corridor junction. “Stay cool.”

There were five of them, several sporting some serious rust-tech gear, the kind of stuff Addie seldom saw out on the streets of her neighborhood, even on the bangers. One of them had an arm that looked like it had been welded together in situ, with synthetic tendons, ligaments, and muscles stretching up into the puckered, scar-covered flesh of his shoulder. Another had an eye more like a camera lens stuck to a circuit board and then affixed to a wad of gray-toned synth-skin where the eye socket ought to be.

She could have continued ogling their many disturbing prostheses, but one of the largest of them, a man who, while rather pale and sickly, loomed over Tony as he hefted a large power tool—something like a grinder or saw. “The hell you doing here, skin?”

Addie knew the slang. People like these, people struggling just to scrape by, tended to have jaded outlooks on anyone who showed any sign of success outside the corpo-grind. In their eyes, anyone who managed to escape a life as brutal as theirs had to have sold their soul. To them, Tony and Addie were skins—flesh suits with no souls.

Tony cocked his head to the side, letting his gaze drift almost lazily over the men. “Here to clean up the shit stain those corpo-sec screwups left behind.”

“That right? So you a Takumi boy?”

Tony clicked his tongue. “I don’t work for Takumi. You do, though.”

The man leaned forward, tapping the button on his bladed tool, causing it to whirr briefly. “I work to survive. I ain’t no Takumi pleasure pup.” He looked past Tony, locking his bloodshot, pale eyes on Addie. “We don’t need you poking around, but if you want to come to my cube, doll—”

Suddenly, Tony wasn’t holding his shotgun lazily before him. It was outstretched, and the wide barrel was pressed against the big man’s throat. Addie blanched as she heard its batteries whine and saw tiny blue sparks jump between the magnetic blocks that lined the barrel. “Don’t be rude,” he said, his voice calm and easy.

It took a couple of seconds for the other men to realize what Tony had done; that’s how fast he was. When they saw his gun pressed into their friend’s neck, though, they crowded around him, reaching for their tool-like weapons, growling curses.

“Easy, boys,” the big man said, looking down the length of Tony’s gun. “He’s got a point. I was rude.”

Addie could only see part of Tony’s face from her vantage, but she thought he smiled, at least halfway, as he nodded and lowered his gun. “No need for anyone to get hurt.”

Addie had had enough of standing around being a silent witness. “Just calm down, everyone! We’re no friends of any scummy corp, but we need to get paid just like you. We’re here to take care of that murdering creep anyhow, so you ought to help us out.” As she spoke, she sent Humpty humming forward, weaving in between the men, spinning left and right so his camera lenses flashed, reflecting the overhead LED lights. He had the desired effect, setting the men off balance as they turned and watched him rapidly circle the group.

Tony nodded, lifting his gun to slap the foregrip into his left hand. “What she said.”

The guy, still frowning, rubbed his thick, bristly stubble with his thumb, then shrugged. “Just don’t hang around. Which murderer you after?”

Tony glanced at Addie, and she asked the question they both were thinking, “There’s more than one?”

He shrugged. “Someone gets killed up here every few days.”

“They better not be here for Ed!” one of the other men said. “He was just defending himself!”

Tony shook his head. “We’re not here for any of that stuff. We’re here to look for the guy taking hearts.”

“Oh, shit! Those murders.” The tall, sickly guy shook his head, hooking his saw onto his belt. “You got it all wrong. That ain’t a guy—it’s Cold Mary.”

“Cold Mary?” Addie asked.

“Yeah. She got locked up by Boxer a while back, but everyone knows it’s her.”

“She’s a fade,” one of the other men chimed in.

“How do you know it’s her?” Tony asked.

“You seen the chicks she iced?” another man asked.

“Young and pretty,” one of the others added.

The big guy sighed, shaking his head. “Shut up, and let me talk.” The man beside him grumbled but stepped back, staring at the ground as the big guy continued, “Cold Mary was jealous—she was a doll for a while, then she started fading, and she kind of lost it.” He glanced at Addie. “It’s a gross story.”

Addie frowned. “Go on.”

“She went batty, I guess, and sliced her, uh, client’s junk. Well, you know, he didn’t like that, so he took her knife and carved her face up. Anyway, Boxer took her, but everyone knows she’s out and she’s back.” He visibly shivered, looking around the corridor junction. “Everyone knows she don’t like the pretty girls up here—especially the ones working as dolls on the side.”

“That right?” Tony glanced at Addie, and his expression said he wasn’t buying it. “Well, we’re going to get on with our investigation.” He cleared his throat and tapped his shotgun with his mechanical fingers—click-click. “We won’t stay longer than we need to, and we’re not interested in your business.” With that, he pushed right through the men, forcing the guy on his left to hastily step back. Addie followed him, and the men, surprisingly, didn’t leer or say anything rude as she cleared the junction.

She followed Tony a short distance, passing an open door where the distinct scent and sounds of sizzling taco meat drew Addie’s attention, but then Tony said, “You think there’s anything to that? Fades don’t ‘come back,’ do they?”

“I don’t think so. It’s true the victims are all young women, though.”

Tony nodded. “Might be an angle we can explore. If they were working as dolls, that might lead to a different sort of motive.”

Addie nodded, but she was distracted by their encounter with the workers. “Those men were desperate-looking. I mean, it’s hard to believe they all work for Takumi. Bangers have better cybernetics!”

“Corps are nasty business. You know that. Those guys probably pay half their wages to service Takumi debt, and, when they come up short, Takumi will subsidize their rent, their food, their medicine—all for a bit more debt. They’ll never get out from under it.”

“Yeah, I’ve done a story about that. I mean, my focus was Boxer, but it’s all the same. I wonder if—”

“Shh!” Tony slapped his shotgun into his hand and spun, looking over Addie’s shoulder. He shook his head. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Sec, I’m having Nora replay…” He tilted his head, frowning, then he turned and jogged ahead. “A scream!” he yelled. Addie ran after him, glancing at her mini-map. Their destination, Leah Grey’s apartment, was just ahead; sure enough, that was where Tony stopped. But why? Leah Grey was already dead—who was screaming?