Part 11 (1/2)
”Help me,” Konstantin said. The voice came out little-girl-lost desperate. ”He's gonna kill me.”
”Then you better keep running, Chicken Little,” said the Dragon Lady airily, waving one hand over her head dismissively.
The s.h.i.+rtless bodybuilder jerked a thumb to his right. ”Hurry now.”
More annoyed than ever, Konstantin ran down to the end of the hall, turned another corner, and jumped into a large empty elevator just before the doors came together. She wasn't actually afraid that Goku was going to kill her -- she had just wanted to see if she could get some help. Apparently not; from the disgusted sound of the Dragon Lady's voice, Konstantin thought the woman probably felt the same about kid-face in AR as she did. Just my luck.
The elevator gave a jerk and Konstantin felt it start to move backwards and down at a slight angle instead of straight up or down. As it began to pick up speed, the doors suddenly turned transparent, and she saw that she was moving through a long tunnel on oily-looking rails; she could see Goku in silhouette at the far end growing smaller and smaller, one hand pounding on what she figured must be the call b.u.t.ton. Then he raised the same hand and pointed it at her, holding his wrist steady with the other.
Konstantin saw his head drop slightly; she threw herself down on the floor just as something hit the back wall, crackled, and blew a hole in it about the size of her head. The doors hadn't gone transparent -- they'd disappeared.
What the h.e.l.l kind of a thing was that? Furious, she elbowed Taliaferro's connection.
”He used a demolecularizer.” From his casual tone, he might have been talking about something she had in her kitchen drawer.
”A what?”
”Something he pulled out of his catalog. Nice bit of premium stuff. Reusable.” Taliaferro sounded amused. ”If he'd hit you, all of that expensive encrypted face would have gone kablooie, leaving you in your virtual underwear with your ident.i.ty hanging out.”
Konstantin rolled over and sat up with some difficulty. The elevator dipped and swayed as it kept accelerating. ”You think he knows who I am?”
”No, but he seems to know what kind of face you've got on and he wants to strip it off you.”
”What do you mean?” The elevator hit a b.u.mp and dropped almost straight down for two seconds, giving her an all-too-realistic sensation of freefall.
”He recognizes the expensive get-up. He might even know You (Not You)'s work. He probably thinks you're the advance for a new kid gang out to take his turf.” Pause. ”Of course, I'm just guessing.”
”OK. Next question: what is this thing and where am I going?”
”It's only a carnival ride,” Taliaferro told her. ”A little roller-coaster interlude to break up the monotony of everyone chasing around trying to kill each other.”
”How long does it last?” Konstantin asked, starting to feel breathless. She closed her eyes and the feeling of acceleration vanished, although the elevator was still rocking from side to side and tilting up and down. The incipient vertigo vanished and she sighed with relief.
”About another minute. Then you get dumped outside in the alley. Look alive, because Goku's going to be waiting there for you.”
”Is there any way to get out before that?”
”Only if you have a Lucky Escape coupon in your cat.”
The coupon materialized in Konstantin's small hand, which at that moment actually looked oversized to her, but still like a child's. The elevator slid to a halt, and a trap door in the ceiling fell open.
”Wow,” Konstantin said, staring up at it. ”Talk about your deus ex machina. Doesn't it know the doors've already been shot off this thing?”
”The trap door comes with the Lucky Escape, not the elevator,” Taliaferro told her serenely. ”I suggest you not waste it, however.”
Konstantin sighed and got to her feet. ”I know. There's no putting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d back in the cat once it's out, and if you waste it, it taints anything else you use.” She managed to catch the edge of the openingwith both hands on her first jump and hung there for a moment, swaying a little and gathering her will.
For this kind of physical maneuver in AR, it was more a matter of will than physical strength. If she let herself think of her body in a reclining chair, she'd find herself lying flat on her back on the floor of the elevator. What she had to do was sense-remember what the movement felt like for real, which would enable her nerves to provide just enough cues for the hotsuit to provide the proper sensation.
You might think this is the squish-headed part, Tonic had told her. It's more like learning to use a prosthetic limb, except the limb is actually an auxiliary body. Kind of.
She managed to get one elbow up on top of the elevator and then the other. After that, she was surprised to find that getting herself out onto the roof of the elevator car wasn't as hard as she had thought it would be.
Child's body, she thought. Child's body, but I'm willing it with adult strength. I guess. It was as good a theory as any. She went to the front of the elevator, clambered down so that she was dangling by her hands again, and then dropped. Tarzan was a girl. Take that.
She found a reusable flashlight in her cat and started to head back the way she had come before remembering the roller-coaster-style drops. ”Taliaferro?”
”Walk straight ahead until you hit an incline. There's a door in it that should lead to one of the casino's many infamous secret pa.s.sages. Follow that in any direction for any period of time and use any exit you care to. You'll end up in the casino. And then look doubly alive, because Goku will have figured out why you didn't appear in the alley and he'll know where to look for you.”
”G.o.d, this is all so calculated,” she muttered, s.h.i.+ning the light ahead of her as she went.
Taliaferro chuckled. ”As opposed to real life.”
Konstantin kept between the greasy metal rails, noting that the floor seemed to be unremarkable black parquet. No one had found a good reason yet to colonize the more horizontal parts of the elevator shaft, or tunnel, or whatever it was, something that she might well be able to use to her own advantage in some way. She took a moment to activate the bread-crumber in the cat before continuing.
The incline was a perfect forty-five degree angle; the door was set into it like an old storm-cellar. It was chained shut, but she found she could pry an opening just wide enough to slip through. No stairway, just a very steep ramp that she stumbled on, almost sending herself rolling all the way to the bottom, where the floor evened out and became a standard secret pa.s.sage, complete with peep-holes, so many that Konstantin turned off her flashlight. They were all on the left side of the pa.s.sage, which meant that the other side might be an outside wall.
The first half dozen peepholes were all set too high for her to look through, and she didn't want to spare anything from the cat. ”Taliaferro?”
”All I can get it to tell me is 'secret pa.s.sage,'” he told her. ”I'm not even sure what part of the building you're in, whether you're above- or below-ground. Probably below, but don't quote me. The casino develops uneven terrain when it needs it.”
”Don't we all,” Konstantin muttered, not even sure what she meant, except that it sounded right.
She came to a peephole low enough for her to put her eye to and did so.
She was looking at a woman lying on a bed in a room that was unmistakably someone's idea of what a high-cla.s.s brothel in the Orient must have looked like in the nineteenth century, except the man standing at the end of the bed was dressed in detail-perfect twentieth-century punk-rocker drag. The woman was slumped against satin pillows, one knee bent so that the split in her black silk dress showed plenty of thigh. The guy unbuckled a studded belt and tossed it on a velvet chair. His hair stuck out from his head in all directions in a myriad of lacquered spikes.
Konstantin shook her head. For some reason, people thought that anachronism equaled imagination and simultaneously cancelled out cliche. But at least in AR, you never had to worry about messing up your hair spikes. She moved on to the next peephole she could reach.
A seven-foot man dressed entirely in red except for the black hood over his head was holding an enormous sword in two hands while another man knelt down and put his head on a well-used chopping block. Behind the second man was a long line that went beyond the entrance, men, women, lizard people, bird people, and a few other creatures she couldn't identify, all waiting patiently to be executed. A moment later, she realized that the swordsman was actually nude. She flinched and moved on quickly. At the next peephole, she hesitated; did she really want to see any more of lowdown Hong Kong's non-gambling attractions? No, of course not, but it was her job. She stood on tiptoe and put her eye to the opening.
An eyeball stared back at her. She yelled and jumped back, hit the opposite wall and then just stuck there.
Sharp, thin lines of very bright light appeared slowly around the peephole. The lines held for a moment before exploding outward, blinding her. Konstantin struggled, trying to free herself. Two big hands took hold of her wrists and peeled her arms slowly away from the wall with a practiced motion before pulling her hands up over her head and stripping the rest of her body away from whatever she was stuck to. Her feet dangled as she was carried through the doorway and casually tossed down, the child body tumbling backwards easily in natural acrobatics. She was on her feet again almost before she knew it, with a vicious little serrated blade in her left hand. Only in AR, she thought, looking up at the muscular, s.h.i.+rtless man she'd seen gambling in the private room with the Dragon Lady and the others, would anyone think that a junior Swiss Army steak knife could stand up to a man nearly seven feet tall. From the look on his face, Konstantin surmised he was thinking something similar.
”What're you gonna do that with that little toad-sticker -- cut me?” He stood with his legs apart, hands on his wasp waist. ”I don't think so, little girl.” Contempt twisted up his mouth. ”You've come around the wrong person, you pervert. Some of us know how to deal with your kind, we don't all fall for your little baby-wh.o.r.e routine. That surprise you?”
He took a step toward her and she jumped back. She tried brandis.h.i.+ng the knife, but she felt as if she were threatening him with a nail file. Come any closer and I'll give you a manicure, you big bully.
”You filthy-minded creatures come in here thinking you're gonna exploit a lot of weak-minded degenerates that can't help themselves. But I got a little news for you, you pervert. I know some tricks, too. I know how to grab your arm just so that it makes your muscles knot up in such a bad cramp, you sprain it for real.” He bent down and put his big hands on his knees. ”Give you some bad muscle spasms, maybe you'll think twice about coming back in here lookin' like a kid, you unmitigated pervert.”
”Why don't you just mind your own business, big fella?” Konstantin winced, not just at the childish, pouty sound of her voice but at her words. What she had actually tried to say was, Leave me alone, I'm an employee working undercover. ”Taliaferro, doesn't this thing have an override?”
”How should I know?” came the reply faintly. ”You're the one wearing it.”
”Look at the schematic for me.”
”Hey, f.u.c.khead, I'm talkin' to you.”
”So what?” Konstantin's bratty voice said.