Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Dok checked her out. One side of her mouth was a little puffy. Nothing to worry about. Nothing for Dok or Farris to worry about.

Rico remembered the trickle of red he'd seen coursing down from the corner of her mouth. She hadn't got that lying on the floor. She'd been in the other room when the team left for the meet and her hands had been cuffed in front, not behind her back. The obvious conclusion was that, for whatever reason, Piper had gotten a little rough. If Rico hadn't seen her pointing an Ares at Farris' face literally as he came through the door, he probably wouldn't have believed it.

But for the swelling by the mouth, Farris' stylishly contoured face was otherwise unmarked. The worst Piper could've done was slap her, maybe slap her a couple of good ones. That wasn't the point, though. The point had to do with what was right and what was wrong, what he could let pass and what he couldn't tolerate. He had serious problems with any woman getting beaten or abused, especially one like Farris, who obviously presented no real physical threat to anyone. The fact that another woman had done the beating made no difference. The fact that Farris had been cuffed and totally helpless only made the matter worse.

It made him want to throw up.

Once Dok stepped out of the room, Rico said, "What happened here won't happen again. You can take that for a promise."

Farris nodded, looking troubled. "What happens now? To me, I mean."

"That ain't decided."

Farris hesitated, then said, "Have you spoken to your woman?"

"What woman?"

"The Asian woman. I don't know your names."

"Who said she's my woman?"

Farris seemed disturbed by the edge that slipped into Rico's voice. "I'm sorry," she said in a hushed voice. "I just assumed…"

"Don't assume nothing."

"Yes, of course. Excuse me. But you should still speak to her. There are things you should know. We talked."

"We'll get to that later."

"There's something you have to tell me?"

Rico nodded. "The meet didn't go too good."

"How is Ansell?"

"He didn't make it."

"You mean he's dead?"

Rico nodded again.

Farris looked more than just saddened by the news. How much more Rico couldn't tell. Farris lowered her head. She wiped at her eyes. "Could I be alone, please?" she said. "This is… I'm afraid I'm getting rather upset…"

"If you want anything, just ask."

She shook her head, her hair falling forward, shielding her face.

Rico left her and went into the front room where he found Piper waiting. The look on her face was getting familiar: embarrassment, shame. Rico nodded toward the alley door. She preceded him up the hall and out into the alley. Rico spent a moment glancing around, checking that the alley was clear, then turned to Piper and said, "You wanna tell me what you thought you were doing in there?"

"It would be very difficult," Piper replied, looking everywhere but at him.

"Do it anyway."

She took a while getting to it. "I wasn't really thinking," she said in a whisper. "I saw that the meet had gone bad, jefe. I saw you were wounded. I saw Filly lying there in the van. I realized she was dead. I felt I had to do something. I felt it was my duty."

"Murdering Marena Farris."

"She is a corporate. Corporates are our enemies."

"Yeah? Let's talk about duty. You had a duty to me to watch out for Farris. You had a duty to the team."

Piper's face turned a dark shade of red.

She covered it with her hands.

"Please…," she moaned.

Rico turned and walked away a few steps, then lit a cheroot. It was that or bust a gut, or get violent. The frustration was almost too much. The way he felt now, Piper seemed like a complete stranger, a total mystery, a disaster waiting to happen, a slight against his honor that he didn't even want to consider. She was as gentle as a dove in bed. How the hell could she attempt cold-blooded murder? Did her hatred of corps run that deep?

Maybe the old saying was true.

Never trust an elf…

In a voice that wavered with emotion, Piper said, "I am shamed. It is my way, jefe. I have always been shamed. From the moment of my conception. I am kawaruhito. You cannot imagine… In Japan, all metahumans are vile. Reviled. They are hated. I was sent to Jigoku-To-Shi. That is Hell City. That is its name, jefe. It is a horrible place. I escaped. I found a way to Seattle, UCAS. I had heard of the promised land. The land of promise. Tir Tairngire. But they would not let me in. My own people. Elves like me. Like my father, they rejected me. So I am doubly shamed."

Rico had never heard this story before, not these particular details. Piper didn't talk much about herself. And Rico didn't expect a self-effacing Japanese and word-wary decker to give away any more than she might need, certainly no more than she wanted. He'd always been willing to accept whatever she chose to give and just forget the rest. He struggled to do that now. He struggled to see what this excerpt from her life story had to do with almost murdering somebody. Was shame the key point? Had she suffered so much of it that a little more didn't matter? He knew well enough that she wouldn't stand here and ask forgiveness because she'd had a rough We. Please feel sorry for me and forget what I did… Piper would never say that, not intentionally, anyway. Piper wanted nobody's pity.

"Shame is my Ms, jefe. It is all I am capable of. I have failed you twice on this run, and that is my shame. And I will fail you again, no matter what I do. Or how hard I try." She hesitated, then blurted, "You should leave me. For your own good. You should have nothing to do with me."

Rico clenched his teeth. He didn't believe in "fate." Luck, maybe, but that was different.

Piper had been acting under impulse, he decided. The shock of seeing Filly dead, the heat of the moment. Every body got that way sometimes, and these hadn't been a great couple of days. The run had become an abortion. "They were all feeling the pressure, and pressure had a way of bending people outta shape.

It all came down to one point, though. The same point that had been there from the start. "I don't work with killers," Rico said lowly. "Murderers. I won't live with one neither. Work like that, wetwork, it's for scum. The garbage you see in the gutters. That's your choice. You decide what's gonna be."

Piper started breathing hard before he got halfway done. He barely got out his last word before she said in an anguished voice, "I choose you, jefe. I choose you…" Her breath caught and she. grunted, almost crying. "I just… I'm just afraid… the corps, corporates… they're going to kill us this time!"

It was a distinct possibility. But it changed nothing.

Rico drew Piper into his arms and held her. They weren't dead yet, and Rico wasn't about to give up. Too many lives, too much at stake. His job was to find a way outta this mess they'd somehow come to own. Quitting wouldn't work. Neither would lying down and dying. "Just don't gimme any more problems, chica," he said. "I got enough already, Comprende?"

Piper nodded, face buried in his shoulder. "Hai. Wakarimasu, jefe," she said. "I understand."

The room was small and squarish, the decorations rather crude and the furnishings threadbare. The walls had been painted to look like a forest. A few dying plants slumped here and there in colored pots. The air smelted of incense. The pair of sleeping bags on the floor provided the only place to sit.

Farrah Moffit ran her eyes around the room one more tune, just to prove to herself again that she had no way to escape.

Even if she could get out of this room, she would need to find a working telecom, then manage to stay alive and free long enough to be picked up. The odds on that seemed long. She had seen and heard enough to guess that she was somewhere in the New York-New Jersey megaplex, but where exactly she did not know. Queens, the Bronx, Westchester-they all looked the same to her. One great mass of grimy ferrocrete. Outside Manhattan, she was lost.