Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Shank stepped out of the van, showing his iron. Rico followed, then moved out as far as the middle of the street. Osborne met him there. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the air felt unusually warm and humid. "Sticks?" Rico said.

Osborne handed him a synthleather wallet containing seven certified credsticks, which checked out on the reader on Rico's belt Rico handed the wallet back, then keyed his headset.

The side door on the van slid open, giving Osborne a plain view of Surikov and Moffit. Piper was in the van with them. Rico hoped she had the sense to stay clear, stay under cover. She knew how meets like this worked, but he feared she wouldn't do what she should. "My tech's in the other car," Osborne said. Rico nodded.

Osborne waved, and a slag in a dark blue suit came forward. After Dok's diagnostic analyzer declared the tech's DNA and retina scanner safe, Rico nodded toward the van. The tech went over to scan Surikov. Rico kept his eyes on Osborne and the cutter, but neither looked suspicious or like they had anything more on their minds than the careful biz of "buying product," or "recruitment."

The clouds overhead seemed to be coming lower. A few curling tendrils of fog drifted along the street. No warnings from Thorvin or Bandit, though.

The tech returned from the van. Nodded.

Osborne motioned him back to the second limo, then looked at Rico and said, "Anytime you're ready."

"You're satisfied the product's real."

"As real as it gets."

Rico keyed his headset. As Surikov and Moffit came walking out to the middle of the street, Osborne handed over the credsticks. "Thank you," Moffit said, looking at Rico.

She even made it sound sincere.

Rico backed away, then turned quickly and climbed into the van. Shank followed and slammed the side door.

The van rumbled and rolled ahead, accelerating quickly.

Surikov and Moffit and the pair of white limos disappeared into the gathering fog.

Then, the van rounded a corner, and Bandit said, "Trouble."

There was no distinguishing fog from clouds. The van slid into a sea of whirling, billowing white. Thorvin shouted curses.

Abruptly, something came straight at them. Rico had just enough time to see it was a helo flying right on the deck, barely two meters above the pavement. It seemed almost near enough to touch. The only detail he noticed was the black annis logo on the forward slope of the helo's nose.

Something exploded. Maybe a rocket. Rico saw fire. The world roared and crashed and tumbled and when it finally came to a halt, he could barely see anything for all the smoke. Blood was running into his mouth, he felt a tightness in his left side, and if he breathed too deeply it hurt like hell. The van seemed to be lying on its roof, windows cracked and smashed. Rico struggled to stand, but something hanging above him kept getting in his way, and then he realized Piper was right beside him, gasping, grunting with pain, suddenly coughing.

He found her shoulders. Her grunts rose into shrill cries as he pulled her up. Smoke filled his eyes. It was turning from gray to black. Where the hell was the door? any door…

Something crashed. Shank shouted. They stumbled out onto the street. Smoke mixed with fog. Burning debris littered the roadway for as far around as Rico would see.

The shooting started, a full company's worth of weapons blasting away on autofire.

"WHERE'S THORVIN?" Shank hollered.

The ground roared at their backs with the fury of another explosion. The shock wave all but knocked Rico off his feet. Rico staggered and caught himself, but Piper stumbled and fell to her knees. Rico tugged her back up, but she wouldn't stand, wouldn't stay on her feet. That was when he saw the bloody mass of hair at the side of her head and the dark stains on the back of her jacket.

"She's FINISHED!" Shank bellowed.

Shank yanked Rico forward, and Piper slipped out of his hands, falling like a sack, a sack of meat. Rico tried to stop, but Shank kept pulling him and then half a dozen rounds slammed into his shoulders and back and he nearly passed out.

This was it, he realized. The end. There was no cover anywhere. It seemed like a thousand machine guns were stammering from all around. He tried to pull the Predator 2 from the holster on his hip, but he couldn't get a firm enough grip to tug the weapon free.

He stumbled over chunks of debris, piles of trash, with Shank shoving him forward and shouting, "Keep MOVING!"

When finally Rico stopped and looked around, he stood in an alley and Shank wasn't around. The alleyway was deserted. He staggered forward a few steps, then turned and started back. All he could think of was leaving Piper sprawled like a bag of meat on some street in no-man's land without anyone to mourn her passing.

What the frag…

What the frag was wrong with him?

His legs gave out. He hit the ground hard. He felt so tired, so weak. He couldn't keep his eyes open. He laid his head against the cool, gritty concrete and exhaled deeply.

Fade to black.

Minx hesitated and looked away, a faint smile curving the comer of her lips. When she did that, Monk now knew, she was listening to radio calls or maybe getting a telecom call over her implanted headware. She had once been a sort of messenger. Now, she mostly took calls from friends.

The change didn't affect that, the implants. After the change you couldn't get stuff like that put in, for various reasons that Minx hadn't yet explained, but anything you had before the change went on working just like before.

Which was good, Monk thought.

Now, Minx looked at him and smiled.

"It's time," she said.

"Uh-huh."

They ran-ran and ran-down stairs, down a long tunnel, more stairs, through a door, then onto the elevated walkway beside the lanes of a transitway. They had to run because they had what Minx called "only a small window of opportunity." That meant they had to be fast. They had to be "on time."

The red-hued darkness didn't slow them down. Monk could see just fine. Better than in full daylight, in fact.

A huge stepvan with flaring strobes and flashing lights came screaming around the comer of the transitway and screeched to a halt right in front of them. The passenger door banged open. Minx tugged on Monk's hand and they scrambled inside.

The truck roared and raced ahead. The slag at the wheel in the Omni Police Services uniform looked at them and grinned. His eyes glared a fiery red. He laughed. Minx covered her mouth and swayed with silent laughter. Monk couldn't resist a grin, though he wasn't exactly sure just what he was grinning about.

Minx had this sort of private joke between her and her friends that wasn't entirely clear. Monk guessed it had something to do with what they were, or what they had become, or the change, or something, but he hadn't quite figured it out.

Minx didn't seem to mind.

"You're so booty," she told him. "You'll scan it. Just give it time."

The stepvan roared out onto some ground-level street, and everything got hazy and foggy. The haze and denser patches of fog all looked kind of reddish. Everything did.

Abruptly, they came to a halt in what looked like the middle of a war zone. Police cruisers everywhere, flashing strobes, slags in uniforms, slags with guns. Minx grabbed Monk's hand and pulled him from the stepvan. There was a body on the pavement just a few meters away. The body of an Asian woman.

Minx smiled and nodded, urging him with her eyes, her whole expression, to go ahead.

Monk knelt down. The Asian woman might have looked dead, just at a glance, 'cause there was a lot of blood, but she wasn't really dead, not quite yet. The subtle radiance of the living lingered about her body. It was hard to see, and Monk had only just recently begun to notice this kind of thing, but now that he knew what to look for, now that Minx had pointed it out, he could see it and see it clearly, as long as he took a moment to look.