The ork stared. He walked around the table and nudged the unconscious doc with his foot. The man moaned, and shifted a bit, but did not wake up. The ork grunted, kicked the others. They all had the same reaction.
'No one can know of this,' the ork murmured.
Deke swallowed.›Get to the wheels.
›MORE YAKS. COMING UP BEHIND ME. GOOD GUYS, I THINK.
The ork swung around. 'Lincoln is moving. Where is he going?'
›Ping me every two seconds. Let me know you're still there. Watch the new guys. Deke shrugged. 'Maybe he saw something.' He took a step toward the door. A light flashed on his AR, every two seconds. Deke clenched his jaw.
The ork inhaled deeply. The tattoos on his face and arms flared brightly, and the ork shuddered with exertion. 'I have friends outside now,' he said.
The light stopped flashing on Deke's AR.
The ork's eyes opened, turned toward Deke.
Deke shot him, two rounds, in the stomach. The ork cried out and collapsed, arms wrapped around himself.
'Dragon's piss!' Deke swore. He moved quickly around the small table, where the ork had fallen. Using the toe of his boot, he rolled the ork over. As soon as the yak was on his back, Deke planted a knee in the center of his chest and leaned down. The pistol, traces of smoke and cordite still wafting from the barrel, notched itself between the ork's eyes.
'Is Lincoln still alive?' Deke demanded.
'Yes,' the ork said.
'Transfer the money.'
'I cannot,' the ork said. He groaned in pain, and then opened his eyes and stared at Deke. 'It requires me to commune, and I cannot while in this much pain.'
'Then do it tomorrow.'
'Why should I, when you have betrayed me?'
Deke laughed. 'Tell your bunny that he owes me what was promised. Whether he wants his little princess back or not, he'll want the secret kept. I'll keep his secret. Lincoln and I, we're getting off this rock. But I'm taking some insurance.'
'We will hunt you dow-'
Deke reached behind his back and pulled the stasis pack out. He brandished it in front of the ork's face. 'I have these.' The ork's eyes widened. A finger and a half lay nestled in the sterile package. 'You come after me, these come out.'
The ork grunted in pain as Deke shifted his weight and stood. 'I don't care what you all do around here. I'm getting out.' He slipped the fingers back into their pouch above his belt. 'But I want to be left alone.' He aimed the pistol. 'Do we have a deal?'
The ork stared at him, then yelped as Deke pushed down with his foot before nodding at the runner. 'We do.'
Deke smiled. 'Then so long, lad,' he said. 'And remember. They world may not care, but you do. And I've got these bloody fingers.' He smiled, a full, toothy smile, and spun and slid out the doors with nary a whisper of noise. The yaks outside are on the wrong side of the building.And was gone.
Better Than
Moses loved the night. Not because he could see better in it-which he could due to various enhancements in his cybereyes-but because that was when the snakes crawled out onto the sidewalks.
Moses loved to watch the snakes.
Pink, grass-green, blue, day-glo yellow, purple, they slithered into the low spots still filled with rainwater from the late afternoon deluge. They shimmied into splotches of beer and butted up against pretzel pieces puked from the drunkards tossed out of bars along Western Avenue. They slipped into puddles of piss provided by Seattle's vagrants.
Reflections from the neon signs was all they were, so his chummer Taddeus had said.
But Moses thought they looked like real snakes-beautiful, colorful, electric, eclectic, squirming, mesmerizing, fireworks-come-to-ground-just-for-his-very-own-pleasure snakes.
He stood on the corner of Western and Seneca, eyes locked onto a thick cherry and grape striped snake that twisted seductively in the water pooled between his size-eleven feet. He liked this city because it rained almost everyday.
The snakes only came out for the water.
'And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.' Moses liked that particular Exodus quote because of the water part. His father was a minister in Renton, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist… or was that Lutheran… who'd named all his children after significant folks from the Bible. Ruth was the oldest, followed by Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac. Moses was the youngest, and the only one who'd remained wholly human. Father said it was a sign that Moses was destined for great things. Moses thought it was a curse. He didn't have his sister's naturally-keen hearing or Isaac's tough skin. He didn't have Abraham's fine-looking tusks or Jacob's affinity for magic.
So he had to turn to tech to compensate. And tech was damn expensive.
He touched the tip of his boot to the pool, sending out a ripple that made the cherry-grape snake dance.
The snake had crept down from the overhead neon sign advertising 'Live Nude Dancing Elves.' Moses idly wondered if any place advertised dead ones. He tapped his foot and the snake wriggled faster.
Moses hadn't given the snakes much thought until a handful of months past. That's when the microscopic vision subsystem implanted in his cybereyes malfunctioned. The series of minute optical lenses, designed to magnify objects up to a thousand times their normal size, splintered during a fight with a trog razorguy. Moses, who'd emerged battered but victorious, had been on a run with Taddeus and a few others into the Barrens, and they didn't pull enough nuyen from the job to get his lenses replaced. Didn't matter-he was kind of glad he hadn't, as rather than magnify the snakes they now enhanced their color and sometimes spun pieces of them away like one of those toy kaleidoscopes kids looked into. The cracked lenses made the snakes breathe, too-Moses saw their sides moving in and out, and when he cocked his head just right, as he was doing now, he could see their tongues flicker from between their invisible fangs to taste whatever interesting things were in the water.
In fact, Moses hadn't realized Seattle's sidewalks had snakes until the lenses cracked.
'Move it!' This came from a muscle-bound troll who cursed and stepped off the curb to get around Moses. 'Go stand somewhere else, you ugly vatjob!'
Moses flicked his tail at the oaf, but the troll was quick, already on his way down the street. Moses liked his tail-it was one of his favorite modifications. A meter and a half long, covered with tiny lizard-like scales with mirrored surfaces, it had a built-in light at the end that he sometimes read by. It was one of those balance tails, weighted and grafted onto the base of his spine and keyed to a processor that monitored his center of gravity.
He'd gotten his shaped dermal plating at the same place he'd bought the tail-from his trusted ripper doc. Paid almost full price for the plating and had it stylized with ridges at the elbows, bumps across his forehead for the heck of it, and made to look like he had great abs and a broad chest.
Made him look better than human.
It was decorated just above his heart-not with tribal art or hieroglyphs like most favored-but with 'EXD 3:6' in reference to the Bible verse: 'Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.' Moses hadn't been able to find a verse that at the same time mentioned Ruth, but then she had a whole book devoted to her.
