The moon hangs over us, bloated, gibbous, and yellow—its beams look tainted as they slide over the corrugated shelters in rivers of oily light. We trudge along until the streets start getting brighter, and we’re greeted with a collage of low-slung buildings, flophouses and speakeasies. Distant, mellifluous notes slink toward us in the dark like melancholy whores.
No structure stands over two stories tall, as if they squat here in fear of giants that tear such hubris down, but an acrid smell hangs heavy in the air, declaring the machinery functional. We’re unlikely to do better at this time of night. So we turn at random into a white building with a sign that proclaims with laconic largesse: rooms.
We transact business with a greasy man wearing a shirt stained with a week’s worth of dinners and armpit sweat. Hair bristles from his face in a porcine fashion, and his grunts as we pay for our rooms reinforce that impression. He handles our rental through a metal grill, densely woven, only a slot large enough to slide a credit stick through at the bottom.
“Twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, down toward the end. There’s a communal san-shower, last door.” He manages to speak without moving his mouth, without making eye contact. Just as well because I’m not supposed look at people until I get some tinted lenses.
This isn’t the sort of place where they ask for names or identification, and I’m glad to go. The office smells of rancid meat and human sweat, loneliness and despair. Back outside, we follow the broken walk, counting the prefab housing units until we find ours. These rooms don’t have palm locks because that would require configuration technology. He’s given us three digits that open the metal tumbler latching the door, and there’s no telling how many others know it.
“Be careful,” I tell Dina and Doc, as they go on to their rooms.
She laughs. “Anything that comes in on me tonight better be prepared to die.”
March pauses at the door, spinning the numerals until I hear a snick. The room revealed barely qualifies for the name, squeaking in by virtue of its four walls and ceiling. No windows, no san facilities, no furniture, there’s just the ragged sleep-mat that appears to be affixed to the floor.
I flash him a wry smile. “No wonder I like you. Since you take me to such nice places, and you do hair, too.”
He has the grace to show chagrin as he runs a hand over my bare scalp. “I really am sorry, Jax. But it was for the best.”
“I know. You want the shower?”
Shaking his head, he drops his bag, then kisses the tip of my nose. “You take the first one. It’s only fair, considering what I’ve put you through. I might sack out, though, if you take more than five minutes.” He gives me a sleepy smile.
There’s the fist again, squeezing at my heart. Shit, I don’t want to feel like this, but sometimes, sometimes the man can be so sweet. It’s getting harder to remember what an asshole he can be. “Thanks.”
I can’t wait to be clean, so I head for the san-shower. It’s black in here, stale, sour air that smells as if it blows upward from sinister, sulfuric places in the earth. I bump the door shut behind me with my hip, and I’m immediately sorry.
“Lights on.”
Standing here in the dark convinces me the facilities must be manual, so I fumble around, hearing my own breathing. My heart resounds in my ears as I find the switch. Sudden illumination. I swallow a shriek as a swarm of chittering insects scuttle across the floor and out of sight. Being dirty seems much less objectionable, but I refuse to concede defeat. So I close my eyes and scrub up, amazed at how fast it goes without hair to wash.
I dress quickly, watching my feet for the return of those creepy things. Crunchy bugs make the inside of my stomach shudder. Shouldering my bag, I step out onto the walk, flick the switch, then shut the door behind me.
My heart gives a wild thump as Doc steps out of the shadows. Right, he’s in room 16, the last before the shower. But I thought I heard the murmur of him talking to someone, although I don’t see anyone else around.
“You scared me.”
Mary, he looks so strange in this light, something about the way the moon shines his eyes, almost blind but feral. I feel the same unease as I did aboard the Folly, after I discovered his deception.
“Did I?”
“Yes.” I back up a step, wrestling with an irrational instinct telling me to run.
“Intuition is an interesting thing,” he says. “Sometimes it gives us cues that cannot be explained by logic. Don’t you find that to be the case, Sirantha?”
“Doc wouldn’t have lied to me.” I take another step back, finding myself flush against the building. “He wouldn’t. Who are you?”
In a movement so fast I can’t track it, the creature whips an arm around my throat. “Excellent. I’m tired of this skin.” His flesh seems to liquefy, then it sloughs away to reveal a bony carapace with black holes where the eyes should be. The creature’s body elongates, no longer short and stocky. “So cramped and limiting.”
“You’re a Slider,” I breathe.
I’ve heard of them, so dubbed because they can slide into someone else’s life seamlessly. They’re the best bounty hunters in the known universe, native to Ithiss-Tor, but who expects ever to meet one? They’re rare like chi-masters and glass-dancers. I should feel flattered that the Corp set one on me. Instead, my stomach knots, and my palms start to sweat.