The right of Marianne de Pierres to be identified as
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Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

I
f Jamon Mondo touched me one more time I’d kill him. And then they would be after me. His dingoboys would hound me for retribution, licking up my blood as reward.

Parasites!

So what to do?

I stared across my plaster-chipped room at my translucent body replica, Merry 3#, and willed her to have an answer.

But she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Just a cheeky smile and a lot of see-through skin, who told me what calls I’d had and when my bills were due. No help at all!

See, Merry 3# and I were up to our heavily pierced ears in trouble.

I’d been working in The Tert - around Torley’s - for three years or more. Bodyguard stuff mainly. Defending my own piece of the poison, living on stim and second-rate protein substitutes, scraping for credits or barter.

It beat the hell out of home. Home was a
hands-on
stepdad and a mother who was genuinely addicted to romance. (Neuro-endocrine sims were the latest thing in the ’burbs.) When my sister, Kat, left home to play pro-ball,
Dad
turned his
hands-on
approach to me. I left before I killed him and broke Mum’s heart.

The Tert seemed the right place. Outside the city limits. A leftover strip of toxic humanity where, it was rumoured, you could survive on your own terms.

I did all right there. Not many women of my large size were as handy with their fists and feet. I also cut a mean, hungry look when I wanted. I could take care of myself but I’d never make the front cover of a glossy, on account of my badly rebuilt nose and flattened cheekbone (courtesy of stepdad, Kevin). I could have had it fixed up, I guess, but it reminded me of what I’d left behind.

I was getting by - until Jamon Mondo came along. Well, noticed me really. He’s been here for ever. I was the new kid on the block.

When he hired me, Doll Feast said I’d hit pay-dirt.
Parrish Plessis, bodyguard to the stars
. Well, to the dark prince anyway!

By the way the other babes on the Torley’s stretch reacted, I figured she was right. So I went along with it. Anything had to be better than one more protein sub, or another soft-bottomed white-collar chump looking for his piece of the wild side.

That dream died my first night on Jamon’s payroll. I was expecting the bodyguard drill.
How
he wanted to be protected, and from
whom
. Instead he took me to his barracks for a welcoming ceremony . . .

Dingoboys, panting, howling like the moons of Jupiter had lined up, in their uniform of dreadlocks, greasy skin and jutting teeth.

‘Strip her down,’ Jamon instructed.

It took five of them to hold me.

I stared at him like some dumb, miserable animal gazing up the slaughterhouse ramp. Fear spiked through my gut, so sharp that I moaned.

It was not a sound to be proud of, but then this wasn’t graduation night . . .

I tried to leave him after that but he had me followed and beaten. Once on Jamon’s payroll, always on Jamon’s payroll. A club you had to die to leave.

Why hadn’t someone told me?

‘
Parrish!!!
’

It took me a few moments to focus, weighted by my recent past. I checked my door, then automatically flicked to my comm screen.

It was Mei Sheong, her hair corkscrewing around her head in bundles of absurd pink curls. It cost her a week’s pay out of every month’s earnings to have it done. I’d suggested a straight replant, even genetic manipulation, but she reckoned that was bad karma. Who am I to argue with a chino-shaman?

She closed one eye and sucked on a curl. ‘I heard something.’

My attention clicked in. ‘How much?’

She sucked a bit longer before she answered, ‘I tell you, but when you die I get your room.’

I sighed. ‘Is it that good?’

‘Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’ve got to plan for the future, Parrish. No control otherwise.’

Control
. The mother of illusions. But it didn’t stop me wishing. Trying. Hoping my life might be mine again one day.

‘All right, Mei. But I’m not planning on dying yet. So don’t get any ideas about helping things along. Or you might find yourself closer to the spirits than you figured.’

She opened the other eye wide in surprise. ‘You threatening a chino-shaman?’

‘What’s it sound like to you?’

‘Sounds like you’re in an evil mood.’

I closed in on the viewer and her face. ‘The word, Mei. What’s the word?’

She stepped away from her screen and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Hein’s. Ten minutes.’

Some nearly neo-punk revivalist had done Hein’s insides out like a bunker, old-style, electrified grilles and concrete lookalike walls - the only concession to comfort being the tactile chairs. Hein’s had a burnt look like it had been bombed and hosed.

Mei was perched on a tactile stool at the bar. Poured into a fluoro-pink bubble dress, red stilettos hooked around the chair’s leg, she could have been Tinkerbell’s kinky sister. The chair moaned soft ecstasy as she squirmed in her seat and flirted with Mikey, the barman’s servitor.

Mikey was one of Jamon Mondo’s Pets - a hideous result of illegal bio-robotic experiments. The Tert was that sort of place. Mikey’s proximity to my best source made me uneasy.

But - I reassured myself - that’s why Mei was my best source. She could pry secrets from an autistic sheep.

I sat in a khaki tactile with my back to the south wall. It was a bit of phobia I had. Wherever there was a south wall, I had my back to it. It felt right.

The chair quivered a little and started whispering dirt to me in another language. I told it to be quiet or I’d stuff its chip somewhere unmentionable.

Mei giggled with Mikey a few minutes longer, then drifted out of the bar. This was part of her pattern. Disappear. Then re-enter from another door. It seemed stupid, but it worked. Whenever I asked after her, most people would say,
she’s just left
. I guess it helped that Hein’s patrons were lucky to focus more than a drink’s length in front.

Looking around, half a dozen faces were familiar and half a dozen were more permanent than the tactiles. A pair of ’goboys lounged behind the bar watching for trouble. I could smell them even without seeing their badge of dreads and elongated incisors. Their presence spurred my impatience.

Where was Mei?

I had to find some way to prise Jamon Mondo’s jaws off me. Or there’d be two more bodies in Tert Town. His and mine.

‘You sure are in a bad mood.’ Mei sidled alongside, her hair now stuffed into a dirty, pink knitted cap. Wisps escaped from underneath. It didn’t do a lot for her sallow skin.

‘Shows, huh? You going to tell me something to improve it?’

She grinned slyly. ‘What about your room?’

I couldn’t understand her attraction to my tiny piece of rented air, but it seemed like a reasonable pay-off - if the info was tight.

‘Yeah, deal.’

We sealed it, Tert Town style. Knuckles only. Crossing palms could get you dead or sick.

She whispered so I had to lean over to hear. ‘Razz Retribution is dead. Murdered on the Hi-way.’

‘Razz Retribution? The
One-World
journalist. So?’

‘The cops are looking for a biker and his pillion. But word is that the rider was Cabal Coomera - and the pillion was some geek he’d picked up as a decoy. The geek is hiding out in The Tert. If you find him first - before the cops - he might know something about the Cabal. Maybe enough to get you in with them. Then no more work for Mr Mondo.’ Her almond eyes gleamed knowingly under Hein’s stained fluoros.

Am I that obvious? Or can she see inside my head?

I soothed my paranoia with logic. That’s the other reason why Mei traded info for a living. She could make those leaps of understanding about people. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out I loathed Jamon Mondo.

Still, I’d need to watch myself. I didn’t want Jamon to know what I was planning. ‘Who else you sold this to?’

Her face smoothed out. ‘Only you, girl. Mei knows who her friends are.’

I laughed at the lie. ‘When did it happen? You got ID on the geek?’

‘Hit was this morning. Word says he’s
petit
crim. New ’round Torley’s. Hangs out with another guy, named Dark.’

‘
Dark?
What sort of a name is that?’

She shook her pink curls loose from the beret and shrugged. ‘Takes all sorts. Now I got things to do. Don’t forget our deal, Parrish.’

‘Call me if you hear more.’

She grinned and drifted off.

Takes all sorts
. Coming from a crazy pink and yellow chino-shaman in a bar full of total rejects - that tickled. But I had other things on my mind that weren’t funny. Like the rumour she’d just leaked.

You see, I wanted
in
with the Cabal Coomera.
Who am I kidding?
I didn’t just want . . . every fibre of me craved it.

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