my hands on her, she’s dead. If she gets her hands on me, I’m dead. Or captured and enslaved.”
“Thank you for saving me from enslavement .” I meant it from the depths of my heart. After Keaton, avoiding enslavement was high on my list of priorities. “I’ll let you cover me.”
I sensed a faint juice tingling, well outside of my capabilities to understand. Or notice any difference thereof. “That was it?”
“You sensed nothing?” Rumor cursed. “The culmination of my talents as a Crow and you can’t even sense it! I am outraged at the irrationality of the universe. What use is my ability to create beautiful dross constructs if only Crows can appreciate them!” He continued to mutter for many minutes. Rumor was a strange creature. Just like all the other Major Transforms I had run into. “Will six hundred dollars be sufficient to send you on your way?”
Oh. The money. Six hundred was not what I consider ed a major payoff, but I had no more knowledge of Crow economics than Crow personal capabilities. “Yes,” I said.
Rumor left the money on the ground and then hesitated. “I have one more piece of information for you, madam Arm. A gift.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Someday, you should attempt to have your glow healed. Dross infests your glow, and the dross has damaged you; old damage, a year or more old. You’ve tried to eliminate some of that dross recently, but you didn’t get all of it. You’re still infested.”
‘Glow’ had to be my juice structure, but w hat the hell was dross? And how had I gotten contaminated by it? If the damage was a year or more old, I must have gotten it from the St. Louis Detention Center. How had I eliminated any of it? Did this have something to do with the strange effects I had at the edge of withdrawal earlier today? His comment didn’t make any sense.
“What is dross?” I asked, but Rumor was five hundred feet ahead of me, leading me to my kill. I followed.
Rumor’s last words to me were, “If you ever find a Crow in distress, remember my help for you, and be kind to him. It’s not safe for you to come back to Pittsburgh until you’re a mature Arm. Seek me out if you come back. I’ll have more information to trade.”
I boosted a car, stuck the Transform in the trunk so I could juice suck him later in safety, and got out of town. I had some serious Network ass to kiss.
Carol Hancock: September 26, 1967
Late the next day I pulled into Boston, ate several dinners, enjoyed life for a few minutes, and waited until dark. Precisely at 7:50 PM, I broke into Dr. Rizzari’s Boston College lab, a place I had visited once before when even more injured. I had several things to show Dr. Rizzari, perhaps enough to buy off the Network, and my way off their shit-list. I thought I knew anger from dealing with Keaton, but Dr. Rizzari had damned near melted my brain over the phone when I told her what I had done. I hadn’t been able to get hold of Zielinski, my real Network contact. That worried me more than I cared to admit.
I wondered what precautions a Focus would take when meeting an Arm. I expected bodyguards, half a dozen veteran ex-Marines. With M-16s and bazookas. I expected shackles, cages of bulletproof glass, something. I imagined an entire work crew setting up her lab for the meeting. Focuses had to be terrified of Arms. We were predators. They protected our prey.
Instead, the lab stood empty and unlocked, smelling of not too old blood, fresh antiseptics and preservatives. Chemicals had corroded spackles into the linoleum floor and odd machines and metal tables lined the walls. I recognized the gas chromatograph from my last visit. I still didn’t know what it did. My very own autopsy table still sat in the center of the room, the same as my last visit. Battered metal folding chairs leaned against the far wall. The only light came from an
“Thank you for saving me from enslavement .” I meant it from the depths of my heart. After Keaton, avoiding enslavement was high on my list of priorities. “I’ll let you cover me.”
I sensed a faint juice tingling, well outside of my capabilities to understand. Or notice any difference thereof. “That was it?”
“You sensed nothing?” Rumor cursed. “The culmination of my talents as a Crow and you can’t even sense it! I am outraged at the irrationality of the universe. What use is my ability to create beautiful dross constructs if only Crows can appreciate them!” He continued to mutter for many minutes. Rumor was a strange creature. Just like all the other Major Transforms I had run into. “Will six hundred dollars be sufficient to send you on your way?”
Oh. The money. Six hundred was not what I consider ed a major payoff, but I had no more knowledge of Crow economics than Crow personal capabilities. “Yes,” I said.
Rumor left the money on the ground and then hesitated. “I have one more piece of information for you, madam Arm. A gift.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Someday, you should attempt to have your glow healed. Dross infests your glow, and the dross has damaged you; old damage, a year or more old. You’ve tried to eliminate some of that dross recently, but you didn’t get all of it. You’re still infested.”
‘Glow’ had to be my juice structure, but w hat the hell was dross? And how had I gotten contaminated by it? If the damage was a year or more old, I must have gotten it from the St. Louis Detention Center. How had I eliminated any of it? Did this have something to do with the strange effects I had at the edge of withdrawal earlier today? His comment didn’t make any sense.
“What is dross?” I asked, but Rumor was five hundred feet ahead of me, leading me to my kill. I followed.
Rumor’s last words to me were, “If you ever find a Crow in distress, remember my help for you, and be kind to him. It’s not safe for you to come back to Pittsburgh until you’re a mature Arm. Seek me out if you come back. I’ll have more information to trade.”
I boosted a car, stuck the Transform in the trunk so I could juice suck him later in safety, and got out of town. I had some serious Network ass to kiss.
Carol Hancock: September 26, 1967
Late the next day I pulled into Boston, ate several dinners, enjoyed life for a few minutes, and waited until dark. Precisely at 7:50 PM, I broke into Dr. Rizzari’s Boston College lab, a place I had visited once before when even more injured. I had several things to show Dr. Rizzari, perhaps enough to buy off the Network, and my way off their shit-list. I thought I knew anger from dealing with Keaton, but Dr. Rizzari had damned near melted my brain over the phone when I told her what I had done. I hadn’t been able to get hold of Zielinski, my real Network contact. That worried me more than I cared to admit.
I wondered what precautions a Focus would take when meeting an Arm. I expected bodyguards, half a dozen veteran ex-Marines. With M-16s and bazookas. I expected shackles, cages of bulletproof glass, something. I imagined an entire work crew setting up her lab for the meeting. Focuses had to be terrified of Arms. We were predators. They protected our prey.
Instead, the lab stood empty and unlocked, smelling of not too old blood, fresh antiseptics and preservatives. Chemicals had corroded spackles into the linoleum floor and odd machines and metal tables lined the walls. I recognized the gas chromatograph from my last visit. I still didn’t know what it did. My very own autopsy table still sat in the center of the room, the same as my last visit. Battered metal folding chairs leaned against the far wall. The only light came from an
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