I wasn’t strapped to a cradle this time. I peeled my eyes open to see I was locked inside a gravfix, floating in a tube-shaped statis of artificial gravity that throbbed around me with a droning hum. My arms were held out to the sides, legs dangling uselessly below me.
Not the worst way I’ve woken up, but it was pretty high on the list.
I was somehow bobbing, as if being swayed by an invisible ocean current, but held tightly in place. Sweat had frozen on my chest and shoulders, held by the gravfix as if already dry and crusted. I wrestled my head downwards to see the stormtech raging across my body like an oil spill. Blue ribboning from my neck down to the soles of my feet. The bare concrete cell I was in should have been cloaked in shadows, but the blooming stormtech painted it with shifting blue. Watching it play over my body, I felt like a robot, manipulated by it the whole time.
‘Well, you’ve been busy.’ Lasky wore his usual unpleasant grin. Perched on a stool, the Jackal looked at me like a hawk spotting a rat in a field. Smoke streamed from the burner glowing between his gloved fingers. ‘What shall we do with you?’
What would they do? Lock me back inside my suit with a Rubix until my brain turned to mush? Vivisect me and feed me to dogs like Artyom had said they’d planned? A hundred grisly images surfaced and I used my training to kick them back down and plaster a layer of calm over myself. The stormtech wasn’t helping, trying to break through my senses with an edge of panic. ‘Is he dead?’ I croaked.
Lasky looked puzzled until he realised I meant Luciano. ‘Yes, of course. He betrayed the House. He had to pay for that.’
It’s one thing to face an enemy soldier down the barrel of a rifle. It’s another thing entirely to be in the clutches of a murderous cult with a grotesque sense of self-righteousness. ‘And I thought the Shenoi Collective was crazy,’ I grunted, trying to ignore the feeling of ice growing down my spine. ‘You guys are a bundle of insane.’
Lasky smiled, his eye twitching furiously. He raised his arm, broken wrist held in a gelcast. ‘Just give me an excuse.’
‘You let him provoke you that easily?’ The Jackal snorted out a jetstream of blue smoke. ‘Retard.’
Lasky turned his glare away from me to train it on the Jackal. ‘Don’t call me a—’
‘A retard.’ The Jackal stood and slowly thrust his face into Lasky. Holding his gaze until Lasky dropped it, seeming to shrink under the Jackal’s cold, silent menace. The Jackal cocked his head. ‘Go on. Say it. “I’m a retard.”’
Lasky said nothing. The Jackal slapped him hard across the face. Lasky stumbled back, mouth gaping open in shock and the Jackal slapped him again, harder. ‘Say it,’ the Jackal repeated, almost whispering.
Lasky wilted under the Jackal’s gaze like flowers under a flametorch. I began to see who really was in charge around here. ‘I’m a retard,’ he croaked out.
‘That’s right,’ the Jackal said. ‘A stupid, snivelling, pig-headed retard who left a Reaper alone with the nightware briefcase. What next, were you going to hold the exit open for him? He should have stomped on your fat, worthless head and done all us all a favour. Now, watch. This is how you treat a prisoner.’
Lasky cowed for the moment, the Jackal reached into the gravfix. Almost casually, he pressed a dirty thumb into my right eyeball. Trapped by the gravfix I could only scream as he pushed harder and harder. The nail cut in deep, as capillaries popped and the tissue stretched. I thrashed and kicked furiously against the stubborn gravity, the stormtech whipped into a panicked fury along my spine. He took the burner from between his teeth and pressed it inches from my left eye as he spoke. ‘You’ve cost me a lot of money. That, I could let go,’ he said over my agonised screams. He dug deeper and electric pain shivered through my nerves, the lit end of the burner crackling so close I could feel my eyelashes scorching. ‘But you went after me. You made a fool of me. No one ever, ever makes a fool of me. So I intend to make quite an example of you.’
He stabbed down harder, punctuating the last words before releasing me and withdrawing the bluesmoke. I gasped. I could barely see. No way to tell how much damage had been done. Waves of agony crashed over me, so hard I wanted to puke. I went limp, trying to get my breathing and body under control. Had to gather my strength.
Lasky and Hideko’s malice had been random, thoughtless. The Jackal used cruelty like a surgical blade. Prodding the bruises and broken bones, going for the weak points to hit hardest. His eyes inspected me and I was reminded again of an intelligent animal that hunted for sport – but there was something deeper inside them. Like everything he did was for a reason only he could understand.
The Jackal’s palmerlog rang. His gaze still pinned on me, he answered. His brow creased as he listened. ‘It’s for you,’ the Jackal snapped.
The palmerlog crackled into loudspeaker mode. ‘For someone who’s new to Compass,’ the speaker said, ‘you’ve done an incredible amount of damage.’
The voice was young. Female. Calm and mirror-smooth, chamfered of emotion. I guessed I was finally speaking to whoever was in charge. What had Artyom called her? ‘Flattery doesn’t work with me,’ I responded, ‘but I’ll take the compliment anyway.’
‘You could have walked away,’ she sighed, as if I’d asked for any of this. ‘This was never any of your business.’
I tipped my head back to laugh. ‘Walk away while skinnies and Reapers drop dead like flies around me? While your men stalk me around Compass? You involved me.’
‘Believe that, if it makes you
