She muttered to herself, lost in concentration as she lifted storage boxes and shuffled various bits of substation trinkets around the large front desk.
“Merry.” I let the drape fall closed behind me, muting the sinks’ background hum.
“Yes, yes.” Merry waved long fingers at me, either shooing me away or just acknowledging my arrival. She continued to flit about behind the desk, scurrying back and forth.
“Crater is dead.”
“Crater, Crater… Should Merry know Crater?” she asked quickly.
“One of today’s recipients and the mineworkers’ union leader.”
She stopped, straightened from her hunched posture, and finally looked over. “Oh.” Her nose twitched, a sure sign she was disappointed. “Before or after Kesh get her cut?”
“Before.” Her glossy marble-like eyes contracted. There was little Merry hated more than not getting paid. “It gets worse,” I said. “Crater’s crew think I killed their leader, and the evidence I didn’t is on Sota, but he was stolen from me.”
“Stolen?” She barked a short, tinny laugh and went back to her searching. “Must be some thief to steal drone from Kesh.”
Some thief, indeed. I couldn’t tell her about the fae. At best, she would think I was lying. At worst, she would alert the authorities and I’d suddenly be at the center of a planet-wide fae hunt and I did not want that heat. The less attention on me, the easier things were.
“Merry, I need to know who sent that message.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no…” And pointed a finger. “Kesh know that information is secure. Merry not paid for snooping. Merry paid for discretion.”
“I know that.” I reined in the frustration from my voice, but Merry’s ears heard everything. Her wiry eyebrows pinched inward. “But this is different,” I told her. “He has Sota.”
“Pfft, make another drone. Take another message. Innocence easy to prove. Surveillance.” She circled her hand above her head, even though we both knew there was no surveillance in the sinks.
For people like Merry, it was easy to forget how the surveillance that monitored them, kept them safe, didn’t apply to me. Normally, being a tek-whisperer was an advantage, but not today, not when I needed that proof. If there was any footage out there, it probably consisted of me running away from the scene.
“Sota is unique,” I said carefully. “And you know there’s no surveillance around me… You don’t have to tell me who sent the message, just point me in the right direction. That way, your discretion will be intact and I’ll leave you alone.”
Merry looked at me as though debating if I was worth the trouble. We weren’t friends. At best, we were business associates. She was probably wondering how far I would push this.
“Job came from Istvan—unlikely real name.” She scratched at her neck. “I get you location code, you track. Then no more.”
A code would be enough to narrow down the sender’s vicinity. It should be easy enough to track down an Istvan from there. Finding the sender would lead me to the fae. He had to be involved with the message to have known when to shoot Crater.
Merry whipped a datastrip off her desktop and swept her finger across it, leaving behind a six-digit number. “There. Go.” I scooped up the strip and memorized the number. “And do your job!” she called as I pushed through the drape.
The assault of hot and spicy smells wrapped around me. Whooping fans, distant clangs of metal on metal, and the chatter from stacked containers accompanied my walk deeper into the sinks. I flicked my collar up, kept my chin tucked in, and moved among the drifters. Anyone down on their luck usually got washed into the sinks. The homeless, the unemployed or the unemployable, or those system-wide drifters who had never had a home to call their own. There were plenty of vultures here too. I passed by brightly lit sex parlors, pawn stores, beggars and bars. One of the most popular bars was The Boot, a mismatch of modified containers stacked together like kids’ plastic blocks and arranged over various floors. A lot of business went down in The Boot, most of it illegal. I pushed through the swinging steel doors. Heading toward the bar, I caught sight of my reflection in the dozens of mirrors hanging on one wall. There had to be roughly fifty people in the main bar—where I’d just entered—now fifty-two, including me and the tail I’d picked up after leaving Merry’s.
He wasn’t the most discreet of tails. The guy had a limp and wore overalls dirtied up with grease from boring machines. I’d turned into The Boot as a final check, and sure enough, there was his reflection in the patina-marred hanging mirrors, pushing through the doors and scanning the crowd for me.
“Hulia.” I leaned on the bar and waved over the dark-skinned, bright-eyed woman behind the bar. Double eyelids flickered at the sight of me.
“Kesh!” She finished pouring a customer a drink and then slinked my way, shoulders and hips swaying rhythmically.
“Hey, Hulia… Is Kampa working?”
“Sure, she is.” She grinned and poured me a drink. “She’s around here somewhere. You lookin’ for a little action, Kesh?” She raised an eyebrow and grinned like she’d just won a bet. “Didn’t know you swung that way, darling. Ask nicely and I bet she’ll do you for free. We’ve all been wondering what’s under that coat of yours.”
“You’ll find out the day you tell me what you really are, Hulia.” She wasn’t human, of that I was certain.
She chuckled and leaned in. “What I am would blow your little mind, Kesh Lasota.”
“Is that a promise?” It was harmless banter, the same teasing we had tossed both ways all the years I’d been coming to The Boot. I couldn’t say Hulia’s words didn’t draw me in. Curiosity was a weakness of mine, and there was something about Hulia that made her… irresistible.
“For you, darling, you know it.” She giggled and, spotting Kampa, waved her over. “Get that drone of yours to film you two in action and I can make you a pretty sum.”
I recoiled and pulled a face.
“Too much?” She shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
“Hey, Kesh.” Kampa leaned a hip against the bar and examined her long nails. Nanotek glistened on the tip of each finger, working to finish each nail’s polish in a glossy red. She had already had them work on her face, smoothing away lines. “About that… thing,” she murmured, averting her gaze, “you did… It worked, so, yah know… thank you.”
That thing had been a particularly nasty low-life stalker who had figured “no” didn’t apply to him. I’d made sure the right kind of evidence—most of it legitimate, some of it fabricated—found its way to the right kind of marshals to get him off her back and put down for a few rotations. That thing wouldn’t be bothering her or anyone for the next couple of decades.
“You’re welcome.” I picked up my drink and gulped half of it down. A pleasant warmth filled some of the emptiness Sota’s theft had left me with. I would have liked to stay, maybe share a few drinks, but my tail would probably be calling in backup soon. “I need to call in that favor.”
Kampa straightened. “Oh?”
“You see the stiff by the table in the corner?”
“The old guy on his own, pretending he can blend in like a whore at a virgin ceremony?”
“Go keep him company while I slip out the back?”
Scarlet lips broadened into a wide smile. “My pleasure,” she purred. The tek she wore in her hair and inside the seams of her clothing shimmered into action, simulating long lashes, slightly wider eyes and fuller lips. I watched her sashay her way over to my tail and pour all her alluring self into his lap. He wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
“You in trouble?” Hulia quietly asked.
I shook my head and pushed away from the bar. “Just a little unwanted attention. I’ll catch you later.”