Mel Odom - Preying for keeps

Skater walked easily, dressed in street clothes and boots, the Predator tucked under his Kevlar jacket at the back. His heart was pounding in his chest when he reached the door of 305, but it wasn't from the exertion of the climb. The doorbell had been broken, and only two wires stuck out. He rapped his knuckles on the scratched surface of the door.

Archangel had checked the address out for him, finding that it was listed to Kalika Chilson, who was cross-referenced on both Larisa's birth and death certificates. Skater didn't think the message was a trap, but Elvis and Duran had ridden along as rearguard, maintaining a position in a van only a few blocks away.

The door opened hesitantly. "Yeah?" a harsh female's voice demanded.

"I'm Skater."

"You alone?"

"Yes."

The woman opened the door and stuck her face out suspiciously. She was short, thin, and frail, looking like a bleached mop that had been up-ended, given arms and legs, and shoved into a worn set of black synthleathers. She had on a white tee shirt that had gone sickly gray under the jacket, and the sagging breasts advertised that she wasn't wearing underclothes. Her ears and features were elven.

She didn’t invite Skater in, taking time to fire up a cigarette butt that sent her into a tit of coughing. She squinted up at him when it passed. "Larisa said there'd probably be some money in it for me."

"Depends on what you have," Skater said. "A telecom message chip she said you'd want."

"Did she say what it was about?"

"No." A black circle ringed under her left eye, a bruise already past its prime.

"Then why should I be so ready to pay you?" Skater asked.

"You come, didn't you?"

Skater didn't have a reply for that. "How much?"

She shrugged, trying to play it off and let him make the offer. She obviously didn't know what the message chip was worth. "Got my eye blacked over it." she said. "Two guys come to my squat yesterday. Wanted to know if I'd been in touch with Larisa before she died. I lied. Told them no. They hit me, wanting to make sure I was telling the truth. But I've been hit before. I can take a pretty good beating if I have to. Anyway, them showing up here like that made me start thinking Larisa wasn't lying when she said there'd be some profit in me calling you. At first, I was afraid it would only bring trouble. Since that had already got here, I figured I'd give you a call this morning."

Looking at the woman and listening to her. Skater wondered how Larisa could have even been in the same gene pool, much less the woman's daughter.

Evidently she thought he was still looking at her eye. "Larisa's father could throw a good punch when he wanted to." Kalika Chilson lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, then hacked her way through another coughing fit This time it ended with a gob of phlegm sailing over the side of the railing and splatting near a trio of troll boys who immediately started yelling profanities at the woman.

"Who were the men who came here?" Skater asked.

"Gutterkin," she answered. "One of them had on a fancy suit and a new face, but the mark of the street was still there. Fragging pieces of drek is what they were."

"The name Synclair Tone mean anything to you?"

"One was called Tone. The other one was Bobby. It was Tone who done the hitting. He liked it; you could see it in his eyes."

"What's on the chip?" Skater asked.

The thin shoulders rose and fell. "Don't know. It's password protected." She smiled at him, showing gapped teeth. "I'll admit, I ain't no saint." She licked her lips. "Think you want to spend five thousand nuyen to find out what's on it?"

Skater dug his hand into his pocket and took out one of the credsticks he had there. A brief glance showed him it was one with five thousand nuyen keyed on it. Lofwyr's coffers ran deep. "It's open-coded. Put your passcode and SIN in and you're wiz."

She took the credstick hesitantly. "I don't suppose I could ask for more?"

"No."

Her gaze was belligerent. "And if I did?"

"I'd book," Skater replied. "Maybe you could find the two guys who showed up here before. Maybe I'd even call them and tell them you lied. It doesn't sound like you'd get more than I'm offering."

Without another word, Kalika Chilson reached into an inner pocket of her jacket and retrieved the message chip. "Don't suppose you'd want to see the things she left here."

"She hasn't been here recently?"

"No."

Skater shook his head. "I don't think so." He inserted the chip into the portacom he'd brought and powered up. Larisa formed on the display immediately.

"Jack," the message said, "if you get this, I guess it

Skater shut it off. Whatever Larisa had left for him was private. He meant for it to stay that way. "I thought you said it was password protected."

"It is," the woman insisted. "You let it play a little longer, she'll tell you that."

Skater nodded and said thanks. He held the portacom as he went down the steps, wondering if the message held all the secrets. Some, he felt certain, he'd already guessed.

"Jack, if you get this, I guess it means I'm not around to talk to anymore." On the portacom screen, Larisa looked drawn and tired. She was wearing some kind of black outfit that looked good on her, and behind her was the living room of the Bellevue doss. Her figure hadn't quite bounced back from the pregnancy, but Jack thought she looked better than anytime he'd known her. And she'd changed her hair, wearing it shorter and more daring than before. The corpse Skater had viewed in the Lone Star morgue hadn't revealed that.

The time/date stamp in the lower-right corner showed that the message had been recorded only three days before she'd died. "First off, I want to tell you I'm sorry about what happened with us. There were a lot of things I never got to say to you that I wanted to. We fought, and I wish I'd had the chance to set that straight, too."

Seated in the back of the van as Elvis drove it back to their hideout, Skater felt a stab of pain at seeing her face and hearing her voice. Duran sat in the passenger seat with the Scorpion canted across his knees.

"I love you, Jack," Larisa said. "I just wish there was more time to explain. Everything got so twisted up so fragging fast." Tears glimmered in her eyes.

Skater's throat felt thick and tight, and he was uncomfortable knowing that Kalika Chilson had heard even this much of the recording. He rubbed his fingers lightly over ihe flat screen.

"It's hard to talk," she went on. "I promised myself I wasn't going to get emotional, I'm going to passcode the rest of this. One word. If you don't know about it, then you don't need to. Just remember that I love you."

The picture on the display faded out, leaving a password prompt blinking. Without besitation. Skater hit the keypad control and converted the entry into letters instead of numerals. He punched in five letters. C-H-I–I-D.

The prompt showed a reject flag.

He tried again, this time thinking that Larisa would have ragged on him for being so impersonal. Four letters, this time. B-A-B-Y. A word with more promise, more joy.

The prompt flashed an accept.

The screen cleared again. When it did, Larisa was visible once more, this time with another room of her apartment in the background. "Her name is Emma, Jack. It means 'one who heals.' I hope you like it." Then she held up a baby in her arms.

The round face and wispy dark hair and pointed ears reminded Skater of Larisa. It was like he'd seen the baby before, like he knew exactly what she would look like. Pan of it, he knew, was because of the resemblance between mother and daughter. Then, his heart seemed to thud to a stop inside his chest. The tiny face he'd seen on the trid the night before flashed in his mind. Ariadne Silverstaff's new baby. He peered closely at Emma and knew with cold certainty that the pictures had been of the same baby.