Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Decisions. Decisions. Gabriel was silent. Unhelpful as always.

The relaxant’s health-spa glow had seeped through his entire body, levitating him. He was back in the womb again, warm, cosy, and untroubled.

“No,” he said. “Nobody knows.”

Leopold Armstrong’s smile illuminated the whole world.

Ade O’Donal had discovered that hard cash had its own special weight. Yeah, like no weight at all. He’d filled two Alitalia flight bags with New Sterling and Euro-francs; thick, hard wads of notes. Kilograms of them, stretching his arms as he walked down the stairs, but he could’ve carried them for ever. The bags were new, clean, and bright; when people saw them, their exotic foreign logo, they’d know he was for real. One shit-hot guy.

The crappy top stair creaked when he put his foot on it. That was all he needed-Sashy to hear him leaving. He’d waited until late afternoon before scooting, fewer eyes seeing what he was about, and she was still sleeping off an afternoon of majestic sex. It’d been one serious way of splitting. He’d been tempted to take her with him, Her compact brown body was the absolute best screw ever, like her brain was loaded with Kama Sutra software. But he was travelling light, ‘Bat Out of Hell’ time, breezing down the open road. A woman would hold him back; worse, Sashy was into family in a big way. Brothers, parents, cousins, hundreds of them. Daft girl spent half the day on the phone. She wouldn’t understand, he had to get lost, out of here, like he’d never existed. Kick loose from the shit glitching his life right now-Wolf, the two Event Horizon bastards.

He’d spent a couple of days collecting the money from cashpoints after that hard guy and the fat slag had turned up, initially terrified they’d pull the money from his Cayman account because of the blitz. Psychics, fucking psychics! Un-humans. Ade O’Donal still got cold burn in his balls thinking about it. His mind being torn open like a paper bag, thoughts held up to the light and examined. That was heavy-duty shit. Wolf must’ve gone acid crazy thinking they could get away with a burn against Event Horizon. That company was the biggest scene in England, even kombinates pissed themselves about Event Horizon.

Ade O’Donal had plugged himself but good into the circuit after the psychics had left; making serious connections, a cruise for any hard-core hotrod. Giga-conductor. New word. The circuit was ringing with it. The biggest deal in the known universe was going down, and Wolf had tried to run a spoiler. Shit. He could’ve been hurt. Hurt bad. Wasted!

The little patch of red blistered skin on his belly where the Event Horizon hardliner had zapped him with the Mulekick was still sore. A good memory. If he ever thought this was one giant curved syntho trip, that patch would set him straight. Might even be a scar. Girls like scars. Scars were macho.

There was a noise down below in the darkened hall. Footsteps clicking on the tiles.

“Brune? Hey, Brune, that you?”

He’d sent Brune out after lunch to top up the BMW, gas and watts. This was going to be one long flight. Cornwall, maybe. Ade O’Donal hadn’t made plans. He’d figured just go with the flow was safest. That way no one could load a tracer on him.

Brune was staying here, Brune with his leg in a tube of quik-set polymer. The guy was out of hardlining for a month anyway. Even the BMW would get axed eventually. Then there’d be just him, the money, some of the memoxes, and the Burrows terminal. That Burrows terminal was going to turn him into the circuit’s sexiest hotrod.

After the psychics had left Ade O’Donal had plugged the gate circuits into the Burrows to try and see how the flick they’d opened it without tripping the alarms. Fifty Richter disaster time. The Burrows had crashed, totally, the only thing left working was the power LED, not even the menu showed. Whatever had been in the gate circuit was hot enough to melt through the hardware core guardian programs Wolf had given him.

That convinced him he had plugged into the biggest underclass operation running. Cancer software that was better than Wolf’s! When he settled down he was going to retro that Burrows, no matter what it took. Those bytes were going to earn him mega money, like what Wolf paid was just small change.

He’d go for a total reincarnation, plastique, sign on the circuit as a virgin, build a reputation from scratch. A genuine hotrod, not dependent on anyone. Pity about Tentimes, mind, it was a slick kind of handle, told the girls all they needed to know out front.

“Brune?”

There was a figure in the hall, bending over a large crumpled bundle on the tiles. It straightened up as he reached the bottom of the stairs. And something about it was mega-shit wrong. The hospital had shaved Brune’s head, coating the back of his skull in dermal membrane. It looked like he was wearing a Jew’s skull cap from a distance. Good for a piss-take.

But the guy facing him was albino-white; death-mask face with jet-black lips, a close-cropped Mohican strip of titian hair running from the bridge of his nose over his crown and disappearing below the collar of his biker jacket. Ade O’Donal knew the look. Tribal. The guy was from Stoneygate.

Stoneygate wasn’t somewhere Ade O’Donal went even in daytime, loaded with freaked-out psychos. Five tribes protecting Leicester’s syntho vats, from the police and from each other, that district was wound up but tight.

Ade O’Donal dropped the Alitalia bags, making a dull slap on the hall tiles. “Brune?” it came out all wavery, like a whimper. And the broken thing on the floor was Brune, a puddle of blood spreading from a jagged rip in the dermal membrane. An ocean of blood, glistening sickly.

“Tentimes?” asked the Stoney.

“Shit, like no way. I ain’t never heard of him.”

“Lying, O’Donal, dey squirt me yo’ file.”

“Shit, man, I never told those two nothing, not a byte.”

“No crap, Tentimes. No interested.”

Ade O’Donal closed his eyes, didn’t want to see the gun, or knife or whatever. Praying it would be quick.

“Job for yo’.”

He risked a peek, ready to slam his eyes shut again. The Stoney was looking at him contemptuously.

“Say what?”

“Job. Burn.”

“That’s it?”

“Yay.”

“All you want is like a fucking burn, and you waste Brune for that! You syntho-crashed shit.” Ade O’Donal wanted to smash the Stoney with his fists, pound him into a pulp. His life was exploding into the all-time downer. People out of his nightmares kept coming for him, like every shitty deal in the world was his fault.

There was a tiny click, and a matt-grey ten-centimetre blade appeared a centimetre from Ade O’Donal’s eye, diamond tip reflecting tiny slivers of cold blue light. “Don’ gi’ me lip, I slice yo’.”

“Sure, OK, no problem, just cool it, man, right?”

“Where yo’ terminal?”

The temptation to let the Stoney open the door was near overwhelming. But he was wearing leather gloves, the charge might not be enough to penetrate. Too dangerous. “Down here,” Ade O’Donal sighed.

The Stoney took in the wine cellar’s hardware with a stoic gaze. “Alien,” he murmured.

Ade O’Donal crumpled into his chair behind the table that held his terminals. “What’s the burn?”

“Wolf say finish Event Horizon, d’ core. Suit yo’?”

“How?”

A shrug.

“Shit.”

“Be good. I break cover fo’ yo’.”

Cover? What the hell did that mean? No way could this arsehole be Wolf in person. This was getting extreme deep, the kind of deep he wasn’t likely to climb out from. “Hey, listen, how are you gonna know if I take out the core? I mean, you’re gonna leave me alone if I pull this off, right?”