Black Man / Thirteen

They faced each other either end of the stare, a couple of meters apart. To Sevgi, the room seemed to rock gently on the axis of their locked gazes.

“This is my house you’re in,” she reminded him.

“Then book me into a fucking hotel.” He held her eyes for a moment, then looked down at the extended futon. “One with room service that doesn’t lecture the guests.” Another pause. “And an elevator.”

Out of nowhere, the laugh broke in her. She coughed it up.

“Right,” she said.

He looked up again. Grimaced. “Right.”

She seated herself on one arm of the couch. Hands still tucked in her pockets, but she could feel the tension in her begin to ease. Marsalis raised an arm toward her and let it fall.

“I’m tired,” he said. It wasn’t clear if he meant it as an apology or information. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going to try and run out on you. I’m going to get some sleep and see if we can’t make a fresh start in the morning. Sound okay to you?”

Sevgi nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Yeah.” He looked around, fixed on the futon again. “Well. Thanks for making up the bed.”

She shrugged. “You’re a guest.”

“Could I get a glass of water?”

She stood up and nodded toward the kitchen. “Sure. Chiller on the counter. Glasses are in the cupboard above. Help yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. G’night.”

She went to the bedroom and hooked the door closed behind her. Stood there for a while, listening to him move about in the kitchen.

Then she took her right hand out of her jacket pocket, opened her palm, and considered the Remington stunspike it held. It looked i

She hesitated for a moment, then slipped the spike under her pillow and began to get undressed.

He lay flat on his back on the futon, head pillowed on his crossed palms, and stared at the ceiling.

Still locked up, then.

Stupid fucking bitch.

Well, not really. She saw you coming a thousand meters out. That makes her pretty fucking smart.

He sighed and looked across at the window. Six floors up, probably jacked into the same security as the door anyway. Not a chance.

Could always—

Oh fuck off. Weren’t you listening to Sutherland? Only do what you are happy to live with. She made your bed, for fuck’s sake. You’re out of the Republic, you’re out of jail. How bad can it be? Sit it out, look at the case. Make some suggestions, let them get comfortable with you. If they want this to work, they can’t keep a leash on you twenty-four seven.

He reached over for the glass and propped himself up to drink.

So she’s an unluck-fucker. Doesn’t seem the sort.

The sort being? Zooly?

Come on, that was a one-off.

A twice-off. So far.

Zooly’s a friend.

Yeah, a friend who likes to fuck unlucks on an occasional basis.

Maybe it’s me Zooly likes to fuck on an occasional basis. Ever think of that? Maybe my genetic status has fuck-all to do with it.

Right. And maybe this Ertekin woman just liked to fuck her unluck boyfriend for who he was, too.

Ah, go to sleep.

He couldn’t. The mesh sent rusty twinges through him, out of time with his pulse.

Better deal with that tomorrow. Nearly four months of substandard chloride, you’ll be lucky if it doesn’t seize up on you soon.

Seemed to work on Dudeck and his pals.

Yeah, this isn’t some bunch of neo-Nazi fuckwits you’re dealing with now, this is another thirteen. An adapted thirteen, by the sound of it. You’ll need to be wired all the way right if you’re going to—

Hoy. Going to what? Couple of days and a dropped guard, we’re out of here, remember.

He went back to staring at the ceiling.

CHAPTER 18

A bad chloride twinge kicked him awake, bone-deep aching along his left forearm and sudden sweat from the intensity of the pain. He’d curled up around it instinctively in his sleep, and there was a faint whimper trapped in his throat as he woke. Aunt Chitra’s pain-management training, the silent imperative. Take the pain, breathe, breathe it under control, and don’t make a fucking sound. He swallowed and rolled over, protecting the aching limb with his other arm.

Remembered he was in Sevgi Ertekin’s home, and relaxed. The whimper got free as a low groan.

The room was full of barely filtered light—there were varipolara drapes at the windows, and someone had forgotten to opaque them the all the way down the night before. His watch said it was a little after nine. He grunted and flexed the fingers of his left hand, chased the pain to fading. The mesh, for reasons the Marstech biolabs apparently still didn’t understand, “remembered” injury trauma and tended to overload the system in those parts of the body that had suffered it in the past. Fine so long as you fueled the system right; the worst you got was a faint warmth and itching at the site of previous wounds. But with the shit he’d been buying from Louie over the last few months, the neuromuscular interfacing would be ragged and inflamed. And Carl had once stopped a Saudi opsdog with that forearm. Some monstrous engineered hybrid, ghost-pale and snarling as it materialized out of the desert night and leapt at his throat. The impact put him on his back, the jaws sank into the bone, and even after he killed the fucking thing, it took them nearly five minutes to break the bite lock and get it off him.

He listened for sound through the apartment, heard nothing. Evidently Ertekin was still out cold. No chance of going back to sleep now, and the door was still locked. He thought about it for a moment then got up, pulled on his pants, and padded through to the kitchen. A brief search of the cupboards produced coffee for the espresso machine in the corner. OLYMPUS MONS ROBUSTA BLEND—FROM ACTUAL MARSTECH GENE LABS! Yeah, right. He allowed himself a sour grin and set up the machine to make two long cups, then went to the fridge for milk.

There were a couple of LongLife cartons open, one weighing in at about half full, the other a lot less. On impulse he sniffed at the torn cardboard openings on both. Pulled a face and upended each carton carefully one after the other over the sink. With the least full of the two, the contents came out slow and semi-solid, splattered across the metal in slimy white clots. He shook his head and rinsed the mess away.

“You and Zooly’d get on like a fucking house on fire,” he muttered and went back to the cupboards to find more milk.

“Who you talking to?”

He turned with the fresh carton in his hand. The kitchen had filled with the smell of coffee, and either that or the noise he was making rummaging in the cupboards had woken Ertekin. She stood in the kitchen doorway, eyes heavy-lidded, hair stuck up in clumps, wearing a faded NYPD T-shirt several sizes too big for her and, as far as he could tell, nothing much else. The look on her face wasn’t friendly.

“Singing,” he said. “To myself. I made coffee.”

“Yeah, so I fucking see.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

She looked back at him for a moment, impassively, then turned away. He caught the lines of her hips under the T-shirt, the length of her thighs as the about-turn brought her legs together.

“What time is it?”

“’Bout half past nine.”

“Fuck, Marsalis.” Her voice trailed away, back toward the bedroom. “What you got, insomnia or something?”

Sounds of water splashing, a door closing it off. A sudden, unlooked-for image opened in his head. Sevgi Ertekin strips off her T-shirt and steps into the shower, hands gathered under her chin beneath the stream of warm water, arms pressing breasts flat and—