The Lucifer Deck (12 page)
***
Pita woke up in a hotel room. She was lying on her side on a bed, her wrists tied tightly behind her back. Her eyes felt gummy and her breathing was slow and deep, despite her pounding heart. She found it difficult to think, to focus. It was like waking up from a dream that you didn’t want to end—except this was a nightmare. With a start, she realized she was naked.
The two men staring at her were the same pair who’d been chasing her earlier. The heavy-set one was sitting on a chair near the bottom of the bed, feet propped up on the mattress. He regarded her with an utter lack of expression that Pita found frightening. His arms were folded across his chest, and the sleeves of his shirt had lifted a little so that Pita could see the dark blue tattoos extending from his arms onto his wrists.
Yakuza,
she thought, all hope fleeing at the thought.
The slender man was standing, leaning back against a table with his hands on the edge of it. One hand moved, clicking the rings on his fingers against the wood. The tip of his little finger was missing. As Pita groaned, he said something in Japanese to the other man, who grunted in reply. Then he leaned toward Pita.
"You took something that didn’t belong to you." he said in perfect, unaccented English. "A small bronze disk about so big." He held his thumb and forefinger about three centimeters apart. "A datachip. We want it back."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about." Pita said. The slap across her cheek took her completely by surprise. The man had moved as fast as a striking snake. Pita’s head bounced off the bed with the force of the blow, and tears welled in her eyes. Her cheek stung.
The man leaned back against the table once more. His eyes ranged up and down Pita’s naked body. She suddenly felt horribly vulnerable.
"We can do anything we like with you." the slender man said. "Anything at all." He let the words hang in the air for a moment. "And don’t try to scream for help. We’ll kill you if you do."
The larger man shifted in his chair. Pita looked fearfully at him, blinking back her tears.
"We know you take chip." he said in a low voice that was devoid of all emotion. "Chip not in pockets of dead man. Doc Wagon not take; cops not take. Mage do sensing, say you take. But chip not in your clothes. You tell us where chip is."
Pita gnawed at her lip to stop herself from sobbing. "What if I tell you?" she asked. "Will you let me go?" The slender man’s lips curved in a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Of course."
Pita knew she was trapped. There was no way out of this; the best she could do was buy herself a little time. "I thought the chip was a simsense game." she said. "I tried it in my digideck, but it didn’t work. All that came up were these weird diagrams. They looked like something maybe a mage would use. I thought maybe I could sell it for a few nuyen, so I took it to a shop on
The larger man lifted his feet from the bed and sat up. "What is name of man?" he asked.
Pita tried to shrug, to look as casual as possible, but her bound wrists prevented any motion. "I only know his first name: Aziz."
"And the name of the shop?" the slender man asked. "The Secret something-or-other." Pita answered.
The slender man glanced at his companion and said
something in Japanese. Then he turned for the door.
"Wait." Pita said. "I kept my part of the deal. I told you where the chip was. Let me go!"
"Not until we get that chip back."
"But you could at least untie me and let me get dressed." she pleaded. She gave a meaningful look at the larger man, who was plainly intent on staying behind to watch her. "Even with my hands free, I’m not going to get past him."
"You may dress." he said after a moment’s consideration. "I’m sure that Tomoyuki is tired of looking at you. But afterward you will have to be tied up again. And if I find that you have lied to me about that chip, you will die. There will be no second chances."
10
The blare of the telecom’s alarm snapped Carla awake. She groaned and wiped the sleep out of her eyes, then sat up and looked around her apartment. She’d slept in her clothes after kicking off her shoes and neatly folding her jacket over a chair. She’d only intended to take a quick nap, but she’d set the alarm for six p.m. just in case she slept too long. Now the logo and call letters of KKRU Trideo News scrolled across the screen as the newscast began.
The camera zoomed in toward Rita Lambrecht and Tim Lang, tonight’s celebrity news anchors. Carla winced. Rita was a ditsy elf who smiled even when reciting the night’s body count, and Tim was a dwarf wrestling champion who’d been chosen for his rugged good looks and deep baritone voice. It looked like Rita would give the lead-in to the top story. Carla hoped she didn’t muff her lines.
Amazingly, the lead story wasn’t on the dead mage. Instead, it was about a group of rebels who’d blown up an oil refinery in the
Nor was the dead mage mentioned anywhere in the international slot. Carla fumed through the first seven minutes of the newscast, debating whether or not to call the station. But then the local news segment began to roll, and Tim "Tiny Terror" Lang began to read the first story.
"In local news, a Seattle resident whose body was found in an alley two nights ago appears not to have been the victim of the thief who has been dubbed the ‘Magical Mugger.’ Instead he apparently died at the hands of a new form of magical spirit that may still be at large on the streets of our city. Here, with an eyewitness report, is Jun Masaki."
Carla sat on the edge of her seat, waiting for the report. She had to wait for the end of a ten-second infomercial between the lead-in and the news clip. Annoying, but these commercials were what kept KKRU on the air. Indirectly, they paid her salary.
The piece opened with a shot that superimposed a framed image of Pita over the footage Masaki had shot in the alley. When she pointed at the ground, describing what she’d seen, the ork girl seemed to be gesturing at the body itself, then at the mirrorlike windows from which the rays of light had bounced like a ricochet. As she spoke, white rays seemed to emerge from the body while the words GRAPHIC SIMULATION scrolled across the bottom of the screen. It was a standard editing technique; the dotted lines didn’t look enough like beams of light to arouse complaints of news fabrication, while the frame around Pita told the viewers that her take was a superimposed shot. The take ended with Pita describing how the dying man had dropped a datachip he’d been holding, and how she had picked it up. Funny, how she called it a "personal chip." Masaki should have called her on that one. It might weaken the Mitsuhama connection.
Carla was also irritated to see that Masaki had used
a "Jane Doe" face to digitally mask the girl’s features. But the kid was speaking well, giving a vivid description of what she had seen.
The take dissolved into a split-screen pairing, the left half of the screen showing Aziz seated amid the clutter of his shop, while the right showed Mrs. Samji. Wayne had done a seamless job of editing; the two seemed to bounce comments off one another, livening up an otherwise boring "talking heads" take.
Aziz: "The spell on this chip is unknown in the hermetic tradition."
Mrs. Samji: "My husband followed the Zoroastrian faith."
Aziz: "It’s a formula for conjuring a spirit."
Mrs. Samji: "Farazad regarded magic as a religious practice. He often used it in his sermons."
Aziz: "The formula seems to summon a spirit I am unfamiliar with."
Mrs. Samji: "We Zoroastrians conceive of God as light."
Aziz: "The uniqueness of the ritual seems to indicate the spirit manifests as a blinding light."
Mrs. Samji: "Farazad was wrong . . . to . . . call on . . . the creature."
Carla caught the slight tonal shifts that indicated Wayne’s splicing of the last comment. But it was extremely subtle, something the average viewer would never notice. The story would be getting to the point any second now, by revealing the Mitsuhama connection. She leaned forward expectantly as the right screen did a fast cut to an interview with the medical examiner who’d examined the body. The doctor reiterated that the mage had died of massive internal trauma due to heat—"cooked alive from the inside out." as she so eloquently put it. She also speculated that the burns were assumed to be magical in nature, since there had been no evidence of fire in the immediate vicinity.
The frame containing the image of the medical examiner did a flickering dissolve, as if it were being consumed by fire. Carla smiled and gave it the thumbs-up. "Nice touch, Wayne." she said to herself.
But her smile soon evaporated. There was one last clip from the Aziz interview, in which the mage speculated that the powerful spirit might have been conjured by Farazad and then somehow escaped from his control to become a free spirit—a magical wanderer. The story did a quick cut to a meteorologist, who noted that sheet lightning—a rare occurrence over Seattle—had been spotted over the city skyline in the past two nights. Then Carla and Masaki appeared for a quick voiceover byline.
And that was it. The story ended with a dissolve back to the studio.
"Well, well." Tiny Terror commented. "A dangerous new spirit on the loose in Seattle. That’s not something to make light of."
His co-anchor laughed brightly at his pun. "Keep an eye on the sky tonight, folks. In other news . . ."
"What?" Carla leaped to her feet. "That’s it?" She snatched up the telecom remote and furiously stabbed the icon that would fast-dial the station. After a second or two, the screen displayed the image of Gil Greer, producer of the six o’clock newscast. He was human, but large enough to be taken for a troll in the wrong light. His shoulders strained the fabric of his suit, and he usually ambled about the office like a large, untamed bear, scratching his back on door frames and glowering at the reporters. He frowned out at Carla from the telecom screen. A single word was all that was required; this was a line reserved for use by KKRU reporters only: "What?"
"The story on the dead mage—Farazad Samji." Carla said. "What’s the idea of running it as a metro piece?"
"The death is two days old." Greer answered. "The only thing that made the story fresh was the free-spirit-as-cause-of-death angle. You’re lucky your boyfriend is such a looker and that the story had a tie-in
with the weather update, or we wouldn’t have run it at all."
Carla stopped short of protesting that it had been more than three years since anyone could have called Aziz her "boyfriend." Instead she kept her professional cool. "But where’s the Mitsuhama angle? This is a story about a corp dabbling in a dangerous new magical technology—not about unusual fragging weather patterns!"
"What Mitsuhama angle?" Greer grumbled.
"Didn’t Masaki tell you?" Carla asked, dumbfounded. "The chip from the pocket of the dead mage. The spell. It’s a Mitsuhama project."
"I didn’t see any footage showing that connection."
"Farazad Samji worked for Mitsuhama’s research lab." Carla explained. "The day before he died, he contacted Masaki, telling him he’d turn over the specs on a top-secret research project the corp was developing. He was on his way to meet with Masaki on the night the died!"
"I guess Masaki didn’t think his own testimony was enough to establish a link. Without outside confirmation and hard evidence, we haven’t got a story."
Carla was dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe Masaki had given up so easily. A story about the contents of the chip that deliberately did
not
mention Mitsuhama probably made him think he was safe. He could curl up in his cozy little world of feature pieces and the big bad corporation and its goons would go away. The sad part was, he was probably wrong.
"We’ve still got a story." Carla argued. "A good one. About a corp that’s experimenting with dangerous new magical tech."
"No, we don’t." Greer countered. "At least not until I see some evidence that directly links this crazy spirit thing to Mitsuhama." He sounded irritable; his patience was obviously wearing thin. Still, Carla wasn’t one to give up a story without a good fight.
"We could have at least worded tonight’s piece to imply that—"
"You don’t take on the big boys without documentation." Greer cut her off. "You don’t even drop hints. Not when Mitsuhama’s legal department has a bigger budget than our entire news network."
"Give me one more day." Carla pleaded. "I know I can get something. If I follow up the angle that—" Greer was glancing at something to one side, only giving Carla part of his attention. "We’re on the air." he reminded her. "I haven’t got time for an extended debate on the merits of this supposed story."
"One more day!" Carla insisted.
"All right." Greer at last agreed. "But if you don’t come with anything new, I spike the story."
Pita edged around the bed to the spot where her clothes lay in an untidy heap. The big yakuza stood by the door, arms folded across his chest. The look in his eye warned her not to try anything. Pita had never seen such an empty, merciless expression. She knew, deep in her gut, that this man could kill her with as little remorse as if he were swatting a mosquito.