Lennox aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The blast of whitewas blinding, a stream of liquid lightning. He shut his eyes to keep fromscorching his retinas. But he was a sure shot, and the plasma hit the targetsquare in the back, burning straight through the jacket, through the bodyplating, flooding the central processors. The mandroid froze, gripping one of theflailing ghouls by the throat. The machine swayed on its big flat feet like itwas considering whether to fall forward or back. Then it tipped over onto itsface, crashing with a heavy metallic boom. The ghoul leapt aside, free andalive. The others groaned with disappointment.
"Clean up this mess." Lennox tossed the SYN the rifle.Useless now. He'd fired everything it had with that one shot. So muchfor prototypes. If only it had cost him less than six million credits. Live andlearn, he supposed.
"Yes, sir." The synthetic looked bewildered holding thelarge weapon. Its eyes darted from the downed mandroid to the bloody, scatteredresults of the mayhem.
"And let these little creeps in here. Their credit's doing nogood outside." He gave the ghouls the finger and winked.
They roared, hurling foul obscenities and returning thegesture—their way of showing appreciation. So different from The Pearl and themore refined ways of a long-forgotten era. Lennox sometimes found himselfmissing it when he was here. But he told himself this was a good reminder. The Gavin Lennox of thisreality hadn't held his ground. He'd been a push-over, caving into theinvestors and doing the nightclub their way.
His alternate had been a weak man. A slobbering drunk Lennox hadkilled with his bare hands.
He fingered the smooth silver lighter in his pocket andcontemplated returning to The Pearl. Sally had said the mayor was in attendancetonight. It would be wise to touch base with him, pick his brain a little tosee what was in there.
Lennox wasn't needed here. The zombies were down for the count assoon as they Linked up and started writhing around the dance floor. And Tormentwould more than likely scream all the way through the night, considering thisfresh batch of ghoulie groupies entering through the gate. He could disappear for a few hours, thenreturn and make sure everything was under control.
But things here were not under control. Not yet. The Cyrus Hortonin the alley outside The Pearl was in pieces—if the mandroids had done theirjob right. He was no longer useful. But here, as far as Lennox knew, there wasanother Horton still alive, one who could contact him at any moment.
He might not take the bait. Things were different onthis side—obviously. The Horton of this world had designed weapons thegovernment often couldn't afford to contract. The BackTracker may not evenexist in this reality. If so, Horton would have no idea what the Linkmessage was about. He wouldn't respond because it would have no meaning to him,wherever he was hiding himself these days.
Yet there was still a chance. Lennox needed that chance. It wasall he had left.
He glanced at the mirrored wall high above the stage andconsidered going back to wake up those women on his living room floor. Letnature take its course. The alpha male and his pride. But he shook his head,dropping his gaze toward Torment's antics. He wasn't in the mood for sex, drugs, or blood metal.Sometimes it amused him, the sheer extent of the depravity, but not tonight.There was a sick, lost feeling in his core. Discontent taken to its extreme:disgust with life itself.
This life. His life. One unlike any other. That should have beenenough for him. Perhaps it had been for a while. He existed beyond the confinesof mere mortals. And yet...he was still limited. And that infuriated him.
He ducked his head and turned, striding across the second tier tohis preferred corner, a dark one where he would be left alone unless he desiredotherwise. A large couch he could collapse into, sink down and be swallowed up,maybe fall asleep for a while. Torment's dissonant noise neverinterfered. There he would wait, sit through the night and hope that the CyrusHorton of this reality was as predictable as his dead counterpart.
Lennox fell into the couch and glanced at his surroundings. UnlikeThe Pearl, where every table on every tier was taken this time of night, heremost of the couches were vacant. A few across from him held ghouls Linked upand stoned cold; another set, back against the wall, held a threesome bobbingand moaning in the dark. Most of the patrons were down on the dance floor wherethey remained for endless hours, writhing and twitching across one another likenaked worms, oblivious to anything around them, reacting unconsciously to thestrains of noise from the stage.
Zombies. How they even made it inside was always amystery. Most of them seemed incapable of leaving their own homes. The mandroidat the gate—when it was functioning properly—scanned their credit into the system,and as long as the digits were there, these freaks were welcome to stay and dowhatever they wanted. It wasn't his lifestyle, and he didn't really understandit, but he wasn't here to judge them. He was an outsider—in more ways thanone—but he knew what kept them coming. So he provided it.
And in the process, he had become a very rich man. There wasnothing he couldn't buy, nothing he couldn't do.
Except change the past.
For most, this limitation was an accepted part of life. You makeyour choices, and you live with the consequences. You do the best that you canwith what you're given, and you move forward. You learn from the past, but youdon't dwell on it. It can never be changed.
But Lennox knew it didn't have to be this way. He knew the deviceCyrus Horton had createdwas an invention too incredible to exist, and yet itdid. He was sure of it. Because the lighter in his pocket existed. It had takenhim here.
His eyelids sank as he thought back, replaying scenes frommemory. The day he'd paid off that idiot police sergeant, setting him up forlife on some unknown island in southeast Eurasia, keeping him out of NewCity and keeping his mouth shut. Probably should have killed him,
