I stared at the LCD for a minute, trying to make sense of it as the screen flashed and the connection dropped.
The time said 3:13 a.m. I’d been in bed for a little more than four hours, and I had one more hour of sleep coming that I wasn’t going to get. The cold was already invading my bed. It was time to get moving.
Stretching again, I felt aches in my lower back and other places that were harder to explain. One night I had watched people on TV debate the possibility that a dream could be so vivid, it could affect a person’s physical body. At least one of them believed it was possible that dying in a dream that was vivid enough could result in a person’s death. It made me wonder whether the same premise held true for an erotic dream, and if one were vivid enough, would it be the same as actually committing the acts? If it was, it was grossly unfair.
I got up, hating the way my joints cracked as I stood and stretched. Since the tenant below had moved out, the floor was always freezing and I had gooseflesh head to toe in seconds. I snapped on the carnival glass lamp next to the bed, found my slippers, and shrugged on my robe, pulling it tightly around me. The floor squeaked under my feet as I made my way in a haze into the kitchen.
I’d spent the previous night comparing everything I knew about the victims, trying to find some kind of thread that tied them together, but so far I had come up pretty much empty. The murders had a ritualistic quality that made me think the selection of the victims should be significant, but none of them appeared to have anything in common at all, except their first- tier status, which wasn’t much to go on.
I poured a small glass of water from the filter and set it in the microwave, then took a single sugar cube from the little jar on the table. Using a dropper from the bottle next to it, I squeezed two amber drops onto the cube and watched the liquid bleed through the white granules. I was still staring at it when my phone rang again.
“Hello?”
“Dasalia, it’s me.”
“Shanks,” I said. The microwave dinged, and I winced as I reached in and pulled out the steaming glass.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“They found another one,” he said.
“Female?” I asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
I plopped down at the kitchen table, put the sugar cube on my tongue, and tipped back the glass. The cube dissolved as the hot water scalded my mouth, and I swallowed the bittersweet liquid in one hard gulp.
“We’re being watched,” I told him, blowing out a hot sigh. “I just got a call announcing the new victim.”
“The killer?”
“He implied he was. Have the officers look around; the call came literally less than five minutes ago. He could be watching you now.”
“On it.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Her name was Mae Zhu,” he said. “She was found in her car when they went to tow it. Same wound. Same chemical signature.”
Those were the only two constants in each of the murders, and the only two links we had to the killer. One was the unique shape of the wound pattern, and the other was a faint chemical trace that indicated he either worked with explosives or carried them somewhere on him.
“Send me the address.”
My phone beeped and I checked the incoming message; this murder had happened right in the middle of the shopping district.
“Any witnesses?” I asked.
“No one saw a thing.”
“I’ll see if any security cameras picked anything up,” I said. “I’m leaving now; I’ll meet you over there.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry to wake you.”
“I was up.”
“Your eval is today. Don’t forget.”
I sighed. I’d forgotten about the psych evaluation. I didn’t have time for that. There wasn’t enough time as it was.
“I’ll meet you over there,” I said.
I hung up and leaned back in the chair, feeling the warm, tingly feeling spread down my arms and legs as the stimulant kicked in. It was a sorry substitute for sleep, but it was better than nothing.
Pressing my palms over my eyelids, I felt my eyes aching behind them. That wasn’t my problem; I spent my whole life awake, it seemed. If it wasn’t for the sedatives, I’d never sleep at all.
My foot had started tapping as a surplus of energy surged through me, cutting through the fog and bringing me back to life. I had to get moving.
I’d showered the night before, so that was going to have to do. I brushed my teeth, bundled up, and grabbed my maglev chit off the countertop. When I made my way outside, it was still dark and bitterly cold. Sometime during the four hours or so I’d been in bed, it had snowed, leaving a thin white blanket over everything.
I pulled my coat tighter around me and started making the arrangements to have the security footage piped over. I headed down the sidewalk to the subway station, hoping victim number five would tell me something the other four hadn’t.
Calliope Flax—Arena Porco Rojo
“Calliope …Flax …is …
A judge was screaming through the amp, but fuck if I could hear anything else with my ear in the canvas and the rest of my face full of sweat, muscle, and tit. No one ever called me pretty, but if that bitch wasn’t XY, she was a freak. She was too thick and too hard, and to make weight she must have flushed out both ends for a week, because no way was she in my class. She was slow, though, and leaned too much on her size. I was seeing black, and all I knew was when I got loose, her size wouldn’t save her.
I couldn’t see her, but my palm was in her chin and I pushed until she had to move. When she went back and turned, I jammed my thumb deep under her jawbone so she couldn’t back come down and pin me like she wanted. I grabbed her jaw and twisted, and she had to get off and deal with me or I’d break it. When she did, I let go and kicked back, but I cracked into the chain-link pole at the edge of the ring. She came right back, but I got a foot in before she bashed me in the face with her big man hand, pushing me into the chain so hard I felt the skin split above my eye and blood run down my face.
She leaned down on my foot, mouth hanging open and face red, as she tried to crush me. Sweat stung the corner of my eye as a string of spit blew around on the end of her fat bottom lip. Even with my leg there it was hard to keep her back, so when she went to change position, I locked my legs around her waist and tucked her in close. She saw where she was going but was too late to stop it, and I didn’t give her a chance to tense up. I put the vise to her ribs full force and she screamed, face red and veins popping. For one split second, her brain was stuck on that and just that. I could see it.
A nose breaks easily, and hers broke flat when I fired my palm down on the bridge. Blood sprayed down her chin, and a lot of strength went out of her all at once. I let go of the scissor lock and brought one leg up on the back of her neck and locked that ankle under the opposite knee while I clamped down on her head and left arm.
By the time she saw what was up, it was too late and she knew it. That lock was death, and as I closed the triangle, cutting off her air, she knew it was done, but she kept at it. Even when I squeezed blood out of her nose and her face went dark, she tried to get up.
The crowd went ape shit with cheers, boos, and feet stomping on the stands. A hand reached through the cage
