Dead Man Rising

I felt the gnaw of hunger just under my breastbone. For the first time, I had truly extended my powers, and I found I was starving. I ignored it, for now.

My eyes felt dry and grainy. I locked my jaw against the slight moaning sound I wanted to make. Grieve later, I told myself. Work now. Grieve later.

The door to the coffeehouse opened, and I glanced over. Nothing impressive, just a slicboard kid, his hair done in wild spikes of blue and green, wearing three torn, layered Fizzwhackers T-shirts and loose plasleather shorts with a chain for a belt, along with the newest and most expensive gleaming white Aeroflot sneakers. He looked at me with the supreme unconcern of the very young, and my blood turned to ice when I thought I recognized his face. Then the moment passed. He was too young to have been at Rigger Hall. Far too young, and normal besides. Not a psion.

I noticed for the first time that the shop was very quiet, and glanced up. The three employees were trying not to stare at me, and uneasiness roiled in the air. I set my jaw, put my datpilot away, and left, no doubt to their great relief.

Walking through Saint City at night is always interesting, due to the fact that the city rarely sleeps. In some districts, it never sleeps at all except during daylight. I wandered, head down and hands more often than not clasped around the katana's scabbard. I wasn't quite thinking. It was more like a sort of haze, shot through with different crystal-clear images.

Like the corner of Thirtieth and Pole, a hooker leaning against a streetlamp opening her mouth to proposition me but retreating rapidly as soon as she saw my tat, the call dying on her lips as streetlamp light kissed and slid over her tired human face.

Or a neon-lit alley, where I paid the entrance fee and went into a screaming shuddering nightclub, going to the bar and paying also for a shot of vodka I didn't drink; the atmosphere of synth-hash smoke, sex, and frantic clinging as painful as the loud screeching noise that passed for music. Then, turning away from the bar, wandering aimlessly through the dancers and the occasional ghostflit riding the waves of sound and sensation, and finally going out the front door again onto the black streets.

Or a deserted street, wet because rain had started to fall, patterns of street light swimming against the gleaming concrete. Shapes I almost knew flickered through the gleam of the falling droplets as the storm moved in, washing the air clean.

I penetrated the tangle of alleys in the Bowery, the deepest part of the Tank District. They led to the Rathole, and I spent a little while standing on an abandoned shelf looking down into the huge sinkhole that used to be a transport well, watching the little firefly flickers that were the slic tribes getting ready for their nightly cohesion of slicboard deviltry and community-building. Each young slictribe kid down there whirling on a slicboard through the ramps and jumpoffs was a star, reactive paint glittering as they swooped and yelled with joy; I felt the meaning of the patterns of their chaotic dance tremble at the edge of my understanding.

The idea swam just under the surface of my mind. I always thought best while moving, and this aimless back and forth did qualify as moving. I had read once that sharks in the ocean's cold depths couldn't stop swimming or they would drown.

I understood.

Dawn came up in a glow of rose and gold, the storm passing to the south after having dropped its cargo of water. I found myself up on a rooftop in the University District, the spell of night wearing off and the furnace of the sun breaking free of Earth's darkness. I saw dripping trees in Tasmoor Park below me, heard the hovertraffic overhead take on a new urgency to begin the day, felt my dry burning eyes wanting to close.

When the sun had been up for a while, I got up from lying on the wet, cold concrete of the rooftop and climbed down the rusty fire escape to the alley below, and went in search of a callbox. It took some doing—on this edge of the U District the last riots had destroyed a few callboxes, and phone companies were loath to put more in when everyone had datpilots with voice capability—but I finally found one on the fringe of the Tank District on the edge of an abandoned lot. I stepped into the lighted box, my wet clothes sticking to my steaming skin, and dialed a familiar number.

"Spocarelli, Saint City Parapsych." She sounded hassled and tired. Behind her, frantically ringing phones and raised voices, snuffling papers. It sounded busy.

"Gabe." My voice was a husk of its former self. "It's me. Any news?"

One lone second of silence was all I got. Then, "Holy fuck," Gabe whisper-screamed into the phone. "Where the fucking hell are you, Da

This struck me as an excellent question. What was I doing? "Thinking. Been thinking. Look, the other four on the list—"

"Three," she said grimly. "It was a busy night. He got a Shaman named Alyson Brady last night and killed four cops to do it. It's like he has some sort of link with them, he's hunting them down like a bloodhound. We had all of them in safehouses. Now we're moving them every two hours. The holovids are having a field day. They're calling him the Psychic Ripper. Chief just got finished chewing my ass out over this. I sure hope you have a good fucking idea in that steel box you call a head, I have been worried sick about you, goddammit! Why didn't you call me? Goddamn you and your theatrics, Valentine!"

I closed my eyes. Four Spook Squad cops down, and Brady. I'd known Brady, even worked on a mercenary job or two with her. I might have even seen her wearing that spade necklace. We'd never discussed Rigger Hall at all, not even when we were crouched behind a pile of wreckage with three desperate bounties shooting at us, me bleeding from my head and her bleeding just about everywhere else. That had been the Gibrowitz job; the bounties were wanted for the rape and murder of the Hegemony senator's daughter. We'd brought them in a little worse for wear. Brady, in particular, did not like rapists.

The necklaces.

Instinct clicked under my skin. I actually gasped, cutting off Gabe's frustrated swearing.

If I hadn't been so tired, so physically and emotionally exhausted, I might not have seen it. "Gabe." My voice took on a new urgency. "Look. Do they still have the spade necklaces?"

"I don't… I know Brady had one." Gabe's tone sharpened suspiciously. "Da

"Get those necklaces from them. Do it now. Take 'em to the station, and don't touch them if you can help it. Leave them on your desk for me and clear out. I think that's how he's tracking them. Get all the necklaces together. I'll be there in an hour to get them. Draw him off."

"Da

"I think I know what's going on. And he killed Jace because he couldn't kill me, Gabe. I'm the best equipped to track him down, goddammit, if it's a ka I'll take my goddamn motherfucking chances." My voice was infused with a certainty I didn't feel. Then something else occurred to me. "Why did you think Lourdes had taken me out?"

"Your house, you idiot! Didn't you see the footage?" Phones beeped and buzzed behind her. I heard someone shouting about a Ceremonial trace. More shuffling papers.

Click of a lighter and a long inhale—she was smoking again.

I think that is the very first time you have ever called me an idiot, Gabe. "What footage?"

"Hades, Da