JEFFREY THOMAS - DEADSTOCK

Gentile moved to a cabinet filled with a clutter of music and movie chips in their jewel boxes, magazines, other odds and ends. He shoved aside the stack of jewel boxes and dug out an object that he'd stashed behind them. He turned and offered the object to Stake. It was a young girl's pocket-book.

"She wasn't here, but this was hanging on the back of his computer chair. And her clothes were folded on the chair, too. Even left her shoes. I got all that stuff hidden away, too. Anyway, when he saw her clothes and all he knew something wasn't right. So he got worried, and ended up calling me. He sure couldn't call her father. Smirk told Brat herself that her father is one mean bastard.

Connections with the Neptune Teeb family and everything." Gentile squirmed a little. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that."

"I've met the man. Wouldn't surprise me if he had friends in the syndy."

Stake had taken the pocketbook from Gentile and sat on the edge of the bed to open it on his knees. Makeup, a package of tissues, a little palm comp (Krimson didn't care for the wrist comp variety, he supposed). And a black hand phone, with cute-eyed sheeted ghosts all over it: a Ouija phone.

Gentile went on, "I blocked the palm comp from being traced, in case her father figured on trying to home in on its whereabouts." That could be done, even if the device were currently inactive. "I have her backpack, too, with some school dung in it. Books and such. There was room enough inside that maybe she brought a change of clothes with her. But even so, why leave her school uniform with Brat?"

"But the doll."

"He said she didn't have her own kawaii-doll when she came over. But yeah, that's the only thing she took with her when she left, apparently-the kawaii-doll she stole from that other girl."

"So last time Brat saw her, they were both in bed."

"Right. They were lying around naked, you know. Lovey-dovey, pillow talk. She picked up the doll and hugged it, all giggly, he said, trying to be cute. Brat couldn't stand the touch of it, himself. Anyway, somewhere in there he fell asleep."

Stake got up from the edge of the bed and turned to survey it again. The sheets were still in disarray, as they must have appeared to Brat on the day he had awakened from a deep, post-coital and maybe post-alcoholic slumber to find his young girlfriend no longer beside him.

Observing the hired detective, Gentile said, "Christ-o-mighty, man, now you're starting to look like me a little bit. Or what it would look like if Javier and me had a love child." He snorted again. "You doing that on purpose?"

"No," Stake said. "Mind of its own."

Gentile's gaze shifted to sweep the room as Stake's had, but with more melancholy. "I wish I'd come back from the in-laws' place as soon as he called, but how was I to know what would happen? I figured the little she-beast was just playing games with the poor kid. He didn't call me again, and when I came home he was gone. I thought he must be with his crew, but when he didn't show up I went out looking for the Snarlers and I couldn't find any of them, either. That's when I got the chills, man, deep chills."

"I have to say," Stake agreed, flipping up the pillows to peek under them, "it's very disturbing. I can see Tableau coming after your brother, but I don't know what to make of the whole gang going missing."

"I'm trying not to think so negative," Gentile said. "Maybe the Snarlers have gone underground with Brat to protect him from Tableau. Maybe they're all okay."

"That does sound like a strong possibility," Stake reassured him. But as for Krimson, he thought the odds were less in her favor. Seeing her Ouija phone had reminded him of Caren Bistro hearing the missing girl on hers.

He got down on hands and knees next and looked under Brat's bed. A sock, a porn magazine, dust bunnies. On the far side of the bed, though, he noticed something more interesting. He rose, walked to the foot of the bed and started pulling it away from the wall. Gentile came over to help him. "What?" he said.

Stake pointed down to a square hole in the wall at floor level. A grille partially covered it. Only partially, because the grille had been pulled out of its frame at one corner and bent upwards. "That an air duct?"

"Yeah. And before you ask… no, I didn't know it looked like that. But there's no way Smirk could have fit through there, if that's what you're thinking."

Stake stared at the air vent. "That's not exactly what I was thinking," he said.

Floor Three. Then, the button for the basement again, before the door could open. Sometimes when they briefly stopped before ascending or descending yet again, they heard fists pounding on the outer security door. Thank God the things didn't think to try the elevator keyboards on each floor. Thank God the elevator's mechanism had not given out and trapped them somewhere between floors. Javier had visions of the Blank People shimmying up the cable from below. Or worse, dropping down the shaft from above onto the top of their carriage, and prying open the hatch above their heads.

The elevator had to keep moving and moving, like a shark that will die if it stops passing water through its gills.

Javier looked at Patryk, who leaned his tall body in the corner, playing around on Nhu's wrist comp.

He felt a fondness and a bittersweet pride. The last of the Folger Street Snarlers besides himself. Quietly strong, loyal and calm, with an unquestioning faith in his leader. But Javier felt no less fondness for the others, despite the flaws that might have led to their deaths. How could he have outlived them? He was twenty-five. Some of the others had been teenagers. He had passed through more fires in his life on the streets than they had, but had still come out the other side where they had not. So far.

He took in the last of the Tin Town Terata. Barbie had fallen asleep, hunkered down near Patryk's feet with her arms around her knees. Her two cognizant faces had closed their eyes, but the largest of the five faces flicked its eyes back and forth madly as if in a panic. REMs, Javier realized. For the sake of room inside the cramped elevator, Satin had folded up and collapsed the limbs of his mechanical body as best he could. He glowered at something only he could see, but occasionally roused from his distanced fury to glance around at his remaining comrades as Javier was doing.

And Mira. She had fallen asleep, too, curled on her side like a child at his feet. He wanted to kneel down close to her and touch her hair, her face, her shoulder, but was too self-conscious in the presence of the others. Why was he so attracted to her? Had this circumstance drawn the two of them together only because they needed each other? He had heard that the nearness of death brought out the instinct to fuck, to procreate, to continue the species. Could that impulse have found a more tender manifestation in the both of them? If he had met Mira on the street would he have done anything except maybe crack a joke behind her back to Mott or Hollis? He had had beautiful women of all races. Whole women. Mutants were to be scoffed at, shunned, or at best pitied. Maybe she had used her gift, he kidded himself. Got inside his brain and twisted it like a balloon animal into the shape of love.

Whatever the case, whatever the cause, that was what he felt when he lowered his eyes to her again. He felt love.

The elevator had reached the basement level. Javier was quick to poke the button for Floor Three. They began to rise up smoothly through the body of Steward Gardens again.

Javier noticed Satin's eyes were on him. They had an angry look, but then they always did. He realized the mutant had been waiting to say something to him. Maybe waiting for quite a while.