Noir

blood pressure back down with it.

The kid’s scrawny hands were still clawing at the transparent gel enveloping his head, all the way to the back of his skull. It had flowed onto his hands and down onto his wrists, welding them to the suffocating mass. The kid’s mouth was still gaping open; the gel trembled with his scream, but let no sound through.

A few of the other scattered theater patrons had roused themselves and looked over at what was going on. They watched in silence, either unconcerned or grateful that it wasn’t happening to them.

Past the kid’s mired fingers, the face that could be seen through the wavering, inch-thick layer of hydro-gel had turned red, as though even more blood were about to start seeping out of the kid’s pores. McNihil knew what came next, the red turning to black, the lungs laboring for breath that couldn’t penetrate the clear mask, anoxia and death. The heart stopping, and then the delicate cells of the brain collapsing into each other like fruits forgotten and rotting in a refrigerator bin-but faster. McNihil didn’t want that; he wanted the kid alive for at least a while longer. Trophying out a brain-dead corpse yielded unsatisfactory results.

McNihil reached over and grabbed the kid by the neck, his own fingertips sinking partway into the hydro-gel. He didn’t have to worry about it fastening onto his own skin; the gel had already locked onto the kid’s sweat and wasn’t interested in any other human touch now. Something reduced to less than human stared out of the panicking eyes under the gel; the kid’s consciousness had been devoured by animal fright. The scent of warmer liquid rose in the theater’s dark air as the kid’s urine soaked down his jeans leg and mixed with the spilled drink on the floor.

With his other hand, McNihil poked his way through the kid’s hands, caught by the gel. A crooked fingertip was enough to tear open a small breathing hole, right above the kid’s flattened nostrils; the gel had stiffened enough that it wouldn’t flow to refill the little gap. McNihil flicked the dollop of bloodstained matter away from his fingernail; it landed like soft crystal on the back of the next row’s seat, then dribbled snotlike downward.

“Let’s go, pal.” McNihil hauled the kid upright and dragged him toward the theater aisle. “We’ve got more business to take care of. I think you know what kind.”

A whinnying noise, sheer terror, came from the kid’s exposed nasopharynx. That, and the eyes that had managed to open even wider beneath the hydro-gel, was eloquent enough.

The girl behind the improvised snack bar cast a bored gaze at McNihil as he dragged the kid through the lobby and out onto the street. If she hadn’t seen it before in reality, she’d seen it over the wire, and that was close enough.

Strangled, muffled noises continued to be emitted from McNihil’s human parcel as he hit the sidewalk outside the theater. The kid’s urine-damp legs thrashed, heels against the cracked cement. McNihil wished he had torn a slightly smaller hole in the gel; the kid was getting just a bit too much oxygen into his lungs.

In the world outside the theater, time had rolled into its own dark hours. McNihil could see a trace of the dwindling sunset tingeing the petroleum-mottled ocean to the west; the ancient buildings of the city’s center were folding into deeper shadows. Human silhouettes wavered across the empty storefronts and up the alley walls; the bare-dirt park had become one bonfire, the uprooted 747 a skeletal carcass in the middle of the flames, like some sacrificial totem of a forgotten age.

The scene didn’t look good to McNihil. There was a much bigger crowd in the streets than when he had gone into the little fly-by-night theater. Riot time, he judged. The crowd was feeding the fire leaping above their heads; ragged figures hauled scraps of lumber and other fuel, broken furniture and commercial fixtures from the unoccupied buildings surrounding the area, and threw them in with a bright swirl of sparks and cinders. The roar of the fire gave the mob’s instigators something to shout over, to bring their voices to the properly impassioned hoarseness. McNihil spotted the bearded figure who’d operated the panhandling gantry, now standing on an overturned trash dumpsker, upraised fists shaking with every word.

McNihil quickly debated whether he should go back to the End Zone Hotel, where he’d left his gun and tools, all that ponderous metal that would’ve set off the theater’s security devices, or head to the train station with the stifled, struggling kid in tow. He decided against the latter; with this kind of civil disturbance in progress, every cabbie had probably-and wisely-fled to the outskirts of town. It’d be a long walk to the station, especially with an untrophied kid slung over his shoulder.

The crowd gave no attention to anyone dragging a gel-bound captive down the sidewalk. McNihil kept close to the buildings, but was still jostled by newcomers streaming into the action zone. The fire mounting at the center laid a shifting orange glow over the sweating faces, the sparks dancing in their overstimulated eyes.

In the hotel lobby, the television audience spread out on the sagging couch and upholstered chairs hadn’t stirred. The program’s addicts and hustlers were still going through their paces, copping and geezing, while the tubed-together viewers received their sympathetic hits. Whatever glow of the outside flames landed on their gray faces, it wasn’t enough to ignite their interest.

“I’ll take my room key now.” McNihil had dragged the kid up to the lobby desk. He dropped him onto the floor and pinned him with a foot to his spine, so he wouldn’t try running away. “Any’ll do.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy.” The desk clerk looked aghast behind the heavy mesh screen. His face was radiant with sweat and he had a fire extinguisher cradled in his arms, as though the mob outside were about to burst through the lobby doors. “Get the connect outta here.”

The metal drawer beneath the grille pushed against McNihil’s stomach. He looked down and saw the familiar comforting shape of his tannhauser and the pack of asp-head tools he’d previously deposited with the clerk. McNihil scooped them up, dropping the gun into his free coat pocket and holding the tools in one hand. “I still need a room. I paid for one, remember?”

“Aw, Christ…” The clerk got the sick, dismayed look that comes with the realization that one has just handed a high-caliber weapon over to another person. He hurriedly pulled money out of a cashbox, shoved it into the drawer and back toward McNihil. “Look, there’s a refund. Now just get moving, pal. I don’t want you around here.”

“Can’t.” McNihil shook his head in a show of regret. “Still got a little business to finish up.” He spread the pack of tools open on the narrow shelf in front of the grille. On a bed of cushioned black leather lay a row of shining surgical instruments, their polished steel and honed cutting edges touched with the fire mounting outside the End Zone Hotel. “I would’ve preferred a little privacy for this part-hey, he probably would-” McNihil nodded toward the struggling figure under his foot. “But if you want it to all happen right out here in the open…” McNihil shrugged and picked up the scalpel with the biggest blade. “I’ve worked under worse conditions.”

The desk clerk looked even more panicked than before. His stare shot past McNihil, to the lobby’s door and windows. None of the crowd had noticed that McNihil was inside the hotel. But it wouldn’t be long before they did.

“All right, all right.” The clerk hurriedly snagged a key off the board behind him and shot it out in the drawer. “Do it, and then just get out of here, for God’s sake. Please-”

McNihil rolled up his tools and picked up the key. “Thanks,” he said as he dragged the kid away from the counter.

The elevator, an antique cage, was out of commission; the kid’s head bounced against each stair as McNihil hauled him two floors up.

He slammed the hotel room’s door shut and turned the lock; leaving the kid squirming in the middle of the floor, McNihil pulled up the dirt-smeared window and looked out. The bonfire permeating the skeletal 747 had grown larger, the flames leaping as high as the surrounding rooftops. The crowd had grown larger as well, having gone well beyond the critical-mass point; McNihil could see the eddies and ripples running through the closely pressed bodies. At the edges of the open space, the street levels of the empty buildings had been broken into, with flames and smoke pouring out of the shattered windows and plywood barriers.

Get to work, McNihil told himself. Fortunately, this part always went fast. Other asp-heads had always admired his speed with the knives.

McNihil knelt down with his tool pack. He rolled the kid facedown, turning the gel-encased head to one side so the exposed nostrils could still draw in some breath; the kid’s lungs weren’t superfluous yet. An agonized scream managed to pierce the clear mask, coming out as a muffled, distant wail, as McNihil jabbed the first sharp-edged tool into the vertebrae between the kid’s shoulder blades. Using anesthetics had never been part of an asp-head’s job description; he had a few bee-sting syringes and quick-dispersion epidermals in the pack, and had used them on occasion, but there was no present need. The shouts and excited cries coming through the window drowned out whatever noises the kid would make.

Blood had started soaking into the T-shirt, as though the white fabric had been wounded rather than cut. McNihil grabbed the edges on either side of the knife and tore the shirt to either side, exposing the kid’s skinny