Altered Carbon

“I think she’s full of shit.” I raised my hands to forestall Ortega’s outburst. “No, listen, I buy Miriam Bancroft as scary. I’ve got no argument with that. But there are about half a hundred reasons why she doesn’t fit the bill. Ortega, you polygraphed her for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ortega followed me down the corridor. “But that’s what I’ve been thinking about. You know, she volunteered to take that test. I mean, it’s witness-mandatory anyway, but she was demanding it practically as soon as I got to the scene. No weeping partner shit, not even a tear, she just slammed into the incident cruiser and asked for the wires.”

“So?”

“So I’m thinking about that stuff you pulled with Rutherford. You said if they polygraphed you while you were doing that, you wouldn’t register, now—”

“Ortega, that’s Envoy conditioning. Pure mind discipline. It’s not physical. You can’t buy stuff like that off the rack at SleeveMart.”

“Miriam Bancroft wears state-of-the-art Nakamura. They use her face and body to sell the stuff—”

“Do Nakamura do something that’ll beat a police polygraph?”

“Not officially.”

“Well there you—”

“Don’t be so fucking obtuse. You never heard of custom biochem?”

I paused at the foot of the stairs up to reception and shook my head. “I don’t buy it. Torch her husband with a weapon only she and he have access to. No one’s that stupid.”

We went upstairs, Ortega at my heels.

“Think about it, Kovacs. I’m not saying it was premeditated—”

“And what about the remote storage? It was a pointless crime—”

“—not saying it was even rational, but you’ve got to—”

“—got to be someone who didn’t know—

“Fuck! Kovacs!”

Ortega’s voice, up a full octave.

We were into the reception zone by now. Still two clients waiting on the left, a man and a woman deep in discussion of a large paper-wrapped package. On the right a peripheral flicker of crimson where there should have been none. I was looking at blood.

The ancient Asian receptionist was dead, throat cut with something that glinted metallic deep within the wound around her neck. Her head rested in a shiny pool of her own blood on the desk in front of her.

My hand leapt for the Nemex. Beside me, I heard the snap as Ortega chambered the first slug in her Smith & Wesson. I swung towards the two waiting clients and their paper-wrapped package.

Time turned dreamlike. The neurachem made everything impossibly slow, separate images drifting to the floor of my vision like autumn leaves.

The package had fallen apart. The woman was holding a compact Sunjet, the man a machine pistol. I cleared the Nemex and started firing from the hip.

The door to the gantry burst open and another figure stood in the opening, brandishing a pistol in each fist.

Beside me, Ortega’s Smith & Wesson boomed and blew the new arrival back through the door like a reversed film sequence of his entrance.

My first shot ruptured the headrest of the woman’s seat, showering her with white padding. The Sunjet sizzled, the beam went wide. The second slug exploded her head and turned the drifting white flecks red.

Ortega yelled in fury. She was still firing, upward my peripheral sense told me. Somewhere above us, her shots splintered glass.

The machine gu

The dome above our heads smashed inward. Ortega yelled something and I rolled sideways. A body tumbled bonelessly head over feet onto the ground next to me.

The machine pistol cut loose, aimless. Ortega yelled again and flattened herself on the floor. I rolled upright on the lap of the dead woman and shot the synthetic again, three times in rapid succession. The gunfire choked off.

Silence.

I swung the Nemex left and right, covering the corners of the room and the front door. The jagged edges of the smashed dome above. Nothing.

“Ortega?”

“Yeah, fine.” She was sprawled on the other side of the room, propping herself up on one elbow. There was a tightness in her voice that belied her words. I swayed to my feet and made my way across to her, footsteps crunching on broken glass.

“Where’s it hurt?” I demanded, crouching to help her sit up.

“Shoulder. Fucking bitch got me with the Sunjet.”

I stowed the Nemex and looked at the wound. The beam had carved a long diagonal furrow across the back of Ortega’s jacket and clipped through the left shoulder pad at the top. The meat beneath the pad was cooked, seared down to the bone in a narrow line at the centre.

“Lucky,” I said with forced lightness. “You hadn’t ducked, it would have been your head.”

“I wasn’t ducking, I was fucking falling over.”

“Good enough. You want to stand up?”

“What do you think?” Ortega levered herself to her knees on her uninjured arm and then stood. She grimaced at the movement of her jacket against the wound. “Fuck, that stings.”

“I think that’s what the guy in the doorway said. ”

Leaning on me, she turned to stare, eyes centimetres away. I deadpa

“Jesus, Kovacs, you are one sick motherfucker. They teach you to tell post-firefight jokes in the Corps or is it just you?”

I guided her towards the exit. “Just me. Come on, let’s get you some fresh air.”

Behind us, there was a sudden flailing sound. I jerked around and saw the synthetic sleeve staggering upright. Its head was smashed and disfigured where my last shot had torn the side of the skull off, and the gun hand was spasmed open at the end of a stiff, blood-streaked right arm, but the other arm was flexing, hand curling into a fist. The synth stumbled against the chair, righted itself and came towards us, dragging its right leg.

I drew the Nemex and pointed it.

“Fight’s over,” I advised.

The slack face gri

“For Christ’s sake, Kovacs,” Ortega was fumbling for her own weapon. “Get it over with.”

I snapped off a shot and the shell punched the synth backwards onto the glass-strewn floor. It twisted a couple of times, then lay still but breathing sluggishly. As I watched it, fascinated, a gurgling laugh arose from its mouth.

“That’s fucking enough,” it coughed, and laughed again. “Eh, Kovacs? That’s fucking enough.”

The words held me in shock for the space of a heartbeat, then I wheeled and made for the door, dragging Ortega with me.

“Wha—”

“Out. Get the fuck out.” I thrust her through the door ahead of me and grabbed the railing outside. The dead pistoleer lay twisted on the walkway ahead. I shoved Ortega again and she vaulted the body awkwardly. Slamming the door after me, I followed her at a run.

We were almost to the end of the gantry when the dome behind us detonated in a geyser of glass and steel. I distinctly heard the door come off its hinges behind us, and then the blast picked us both up like discarded coats and threw us down the stairs into the street.