Is he threatening Omar’s family again? I can’t tell. There is no need for it anymore, but a sadist like Rex doesn’t need a reason to be a twisted fuck.
Omar’s brave facade crumbled. “Please, just leave them out of it. You have what you wanted. It’s over. You win.”
“Omar! Buddy! That’s not how this works.” Rex puts on a convincing show of remorse. “I’m sorry. Really am. I thought for a second you had us. Really did. Turns out the boss was one step ahead. He usually is. Guess that’s what it takes to be on top. Last words?”
Omar is shaking all over, but I can’t tell if it’s from rage or fear.
“No?” Rex shrugs. “All right. I’ll say goodbye to them for ya, don’t worry.”
That’s it. I’m done.
“Hey, Rex. Hang on a sec.”
He looks at me, his forehead wrinkling into worms again.
My fist snaps into his throat with an audible crunch, and he staggers back a step, clutching his collapsed windpipe and wheezing for air. His weapon swings shakily into line with me, but I take a long step toward him, bat it casually aside before he can pull the trigger. The plasma lancer goes skittering across the dusty floor, and then I deliver a kick. Straight to the groin. He doubles over. Still can’t breathe.
With his head in easy reach, I grab a fistful of his sweaty black hair to hold his head, then smash my knee into his face. His nose goes smush, and I feel a few teeth give way. Blood sprays everywhere, making a mess. Leaving evidence on my clothes. I’ll deal with it later.
Rex is gurgling now. He drops to his knees. Looks up at me. Confusion is written all over his bloody, lumpy face. He thought we were buddies. Like-minded fucks.
“You have any family?” I ask him.
A gurgle for a reply. He’s just about to be lights out from hypoxia. Won’t be long after that.
“Well, I’ll find them if you do. Don’t worry, I’ll say goodbye for you.”
Rex falls over, face-first, with a thud. Not wasting any time, I shove a hand into my pocket to hit the release button on the remote for the spider that’s still wrapped around Omar’s head. I turn to him just as it’s clambering off and down from his chair. The legs fold up, leaving a compact black cylinder beside his feet. Omar is staring in horror at the brutal result of the attacks that just saved his life.
“You killed him,” Omar mumbles.
“He had it coming,” I say, then use my neuralink to unlock the shockcuffs that tie his hands to the back of the chair. The cuffs fall with a metallic thunk, and Omar stands up slowly, looking dazed. I grab him roughly by the arm and start dragging him toward the exit, moving fast.
“We need to hurry. It won’t be long before this place is teeming with Mohinari’s goons.”
Omar just nods stiffly. He’s lucky he’s still conscious after all the pain he’s been through.
I snag Omar’s holoband on the way out and hand it to him. “You might need this,” I say.
“Thanks,” he replies as he slips it over his forehead.
Chapter 3
Before I set foot out of the packing center, I activate my holoband. A holoscreen shimmers to life in front of my face, projected directly from the band around my forehead. The faded edges of the display contain icons for various functions, a minimap in the top right with friend-foe-coded blips. Red for enemy. Green for friendly. Yellow for neutral. There is just one yellow blip at the moment—Omar—with a green one in the center to indicate my own position. Not that I expect the limited AI and sensors in my band to be able to see one of Mohinari’s goons coming and accurately code them as red.
Omar and I fly out the door and down the external staircase from the abandoned building. I use the cameras in the rim of my holoband to keep my eyes everywhere without having to turn my head. Our boots clang resoundingly on the metal stairs. An icy, whistling wind whips across the glacier, cutting through the thermal shield on my belt and searing my exposed skin.
As I lead the way down the stairs, I’m busy activating one of the black-market add-ons to my neuralink. It disables third-party monitoring even after I’ve legally bound myself to such an arrangement. Technically, Roman Arovitch is bound to that agreement, not Cade Korbin, so my employment contract is a sham, anyway. But most things I sign are. I never use my real name. Too much baggage. Too much risk.
We hit the bottom of the stairs. Snow flies away from my boots as I sprint across the glacier to my air car. One of Mohinari’s company cars, actually—a sleek, gleaming black Cavalier Courier with tinted, blast-shielded windows, four sliding doors, and a golden M on the front. Rajesh monograms all of his stuff, branding it like cattle from Earth in one of those ancient holovids about the wild west. This car can be tracked, which is a problem, but I have ways around that.
I reach the driver’s side, mentally trigger the door to slide open, and drop into a pristine, quilted black arak leather seat behind the controls. Omar slides into the matching passenger’s seat beside me. A festering stench comes in with him that lifts my upper lip and makes my nose twitch. Sweat, blood, and piss. The smell of fear. I know it well. The Paladins aren’t exactly the nicest branch of the Coalition’s Spec Ops. And my job in particular was filthy as hell. Probably why the bastards burned me and pinned me with all the shit they ordered me to do. Can’t have the Coalition’s holier-than-thou reputation sullied by the nastiness of consequentialism.
I turn the car on with a thought, and bend down to rummage around under the pilot’s seat for the signal jammer I attached there in case I ever needed this car for a getaway. After executing Rajesh, for example.
So much for that. Now I’m going to need a whole new plan to get close to him. Four months of prep work down the scrigging drain. I glance at Omar as I flick the physical switch to turn the jammer on. No sense leaving a digital trace to connect me to the illegal device. I can scrub the bio memories of this Deus-forsaken mess later.
Speaking of digital traces. I need his in case we get separated. I send a silent request to exchange comm numbers and location data with his holoband. He accepts without asking me why. Smart man. At this point trusting me is all he’s got.
“Where are we going?” Omar asks as I take the M-shaped control yoke in both hands and slide it straight up to lift off from the ice field. The car goes whirring into the air, buoyed up by its grav lifts.
I feel my spine compress with the sudden upward acceleration. That reminds me to dial up the inertial dampeners so I can keep the G-forces within tolerable limits. “To your house, where else?” I ask as I push the throttle all the way up to the max.
Omar looks uneasy with that statement. “You know where I live? Why are we going there?”
I send him a bland look, but don’t reply.
Within seconds we’re whistling along at over 500 klicks per hour, heading straight for the gleaming, crystal spires of Liberty City. The appearance of it is like a decorative glass sculpture with the city lights glowing in green, blue, and purple, and reflecting in colorful swirls off the surrounding ridges of glacial ice.
An alert flashes on the main holo display, the airspeed is flashing to get my attention—502 KPH. The limit is 350, but as long as I’m flying in one of Mohinari’s cars, the police wouldn’t dare to pull me over.