Dead Man Rising

The motion detector beeped as I stepped into the warm gloom. It looked dingier and even more rundown, but there was the same ice machine and rack of holovid mags, shelves of crisp packets and junk food in bright wrappers, and a plasilica cabinet holding cheap jackknives and datband add-ons, gleaming like fool's gold. The floor was still white and black squares of linoleum, dirt and dust drifting in the corners. Memory roiled under my skin. I expected to look down and see my scabbed knees under a plaid skirt, feel the stinging weight of the collar against my vulnerable throat and scratchy wool socks against my calves.

"Help ya?"

The voice was a rude shock. Even more of a shock was the man—fat, almost-bearded, dressed in a stained white T-shirt, oily red suspenders, and a pair of baggy khaki pants. I let out a breath. My left hand, holding the sword, dropped. "Hi." My eyes adapted to the gloom. Red neon cigarette-brand signs buzzed in the windows. Tamovar. Marlboro X. Gitanes. Copperhead. "I'm here for a pack of Gitanes. Make that two. And that silver Zijaan, in the case." I picked up a handful of Reese Mars Bars—my favorite during school years. I rarely had any money left over from my state stipend after it was applied to tuition and my uniforms. Even though Rigger Hall was for the orphans and the poor, the kids with families usually had a little more pocket change.

A psion was state property, their upbringing supposed to be overseen by trained professionals, the family just an afterthought—nice if it was there, but not terribly necessary. Had I missed my family? I'd had beaky, spectacled, infinitely gentle Lewis, and my books. The pain of that first loss seemed strangely sweet and clean to me now, compared to the sick, twisting litany of grief and guilt caroling under the rest of my thoughts. I'd had Roa

The library, the hall where we were taught fencing, a few of the teachers that weren't so bad… there had been good things too, at the Hall. Things that had sustained me. I hadn't missed the mother and father who had given me up at birth. I hadn't known enough to miss them, and still didn't.

I shook myself out of memory. Couldn't afford to be distracted now.

What else? I cast around.

There, on the rack, was a holovid mag that showed a picture of Jasper Dex leaning against a brick wall, his bowl-cut hair artistically mussed. It was a retrospective issue; memory rose like a flood again. I pushed nausea and memory down, trying not to gag at the smell of unwashed human male.

Mrs. DelaRocha had been behind the counter in my younger years, balefully eying the collared kids from the Hall, suspiciously peering at you, following you down the two aisles of the store, breathing her halitosis in your face when you asked for cigarettes. I squashed the guilty idea that if I turned around I would see her right behind me, her skirt askew and her cardigan buttoned up wrong, lipstick staining her yellowed teeth, her hook nose lifting proudly between her faded watery hazel eyes.

I laid the candy and the magazine down on the counter. He looked at me curiously, but got the cigarettes and the lighter for me. "The Zijaan's full-up. You want lighter fluid?"

"No. Thank you." I paid with crumpled New Credit notes instead of my datband, because that's what I would have done as a kid. He pushed everything back over the counter at me, glowering as he counted out my change—three single credits, everything in the store was priced in whole numbers and the Hegemony never indulged in the antique custom of sales tax like some of the Freetowns did. They had other ways of getting your credits.

The candy and the magazine went into my battered messenger bag. My emerald glittered, a sharp green spark crackling in the dimness. The man jumped nervously. The sight of all that blubber quivering made a completely reprehensible desire to giggle rise in my throat. It was suppressed and died away with no trouble at all. His T-shirt was filthy and barely covered his hairy chest; stub-ends of cigars lay in a plastic ashtray shaped like a nude woman with her legs spread. No doubt a commemorative item, the ashtray was half-pushed behind a stand-up holoshell calender.

Today is (blank spot). The last two digits of the year blinked—75. I shivered. The calendar was a good twelve years slow.

The extra pack of Gitanes went into my pocket. I opened the first pack, took my change, and stalked out of the store, ignoring his sarcastic "Havva good evenin'."

It's extremely unlikely I'll have anything of the sort. I stepped out into the fog-laden street. My hands shook only slightly as I clicked the Zijaan with my free right hand and lit the first Gitane. The smell of synth hash rose up, nearly choked me. I blinked. My eyes watered. I walked across the street again, head down, dawdling like I used to do on the afternoons when we were free to leave school grounds. Then I glanced back at the Sommersby Store.

A chill ruffled my spine.

It was dark and boarded-up, no neon in the windows. Abandoned like all the rest. No sign of lights, of neon, or of the fat hairy storeowner.

Chapter Thirty-two

My mouth went dry, and the gray of shock fuzzed around the corners of my peripheral vision. I forced it away, bent over, my right hand twisting into a claw once again. The red eye of the cigarette taunted me. I inhaled smoothly, down into the pit of my belly as I'd been taught.

"Holy shit. I just bought Gitanes from a ghost." My voice sounded high and childish even to myself. Did this mean that the gods were with me? Or was I hallucinating again? Both were equally likely.

I re-crossed the street. If anyone was watching, they would probably think I was a lunatic. I poked at the boards over the shattered glass door I'd just walked through whole, went on tiptoes to peer inside the cave of the store. A heady brew of wet decay and other garbage-laced smells poured out; my demon-sharp eyes caught sight of a magazine rack upended, a few holomags scattered, drifts of trash on the floor. The plasticine counter was shattered too, and I saw a scraped-clean circle off to one side and a blackened scorch mark on the floor. Probably a fire some transient had made inside the abandoned building.

I dropped the smoking cigarette, then opened up my bag. The magazine was gone, and the candy, but one pack of cigarettes was there. I fished the other pack out of my pocket and stared at them, turning the unopened one over to read its warning label; there was a sweepstakes to win a free hover blazoned on the back.

I crumpled both packs in my fist, feeling the sticks break inside, and dropped them heedlessly. Then I drew the silver Zijaan from my pocket.

The breath left me in another gasping rush. The lighter was battered and scratched with hard use, and etched into one flat side was a cursive C wreathed with another cursive M.

I blinked. Flipped the lighter open, spun the wheel with a click, and orange flame blossomed. I snapped it shut. I ran my fingers over the carved letters.