Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) Read Free Page B

took a shook off ya fence, I want you to help me get her out of the rain, try and help her. We ain’t got time to screw about here, yeah? Can ya help?”
    “Who are you people?” She raised her face to him, trained those weird orbs on his face. She swayed her head, held it at a crooked angle as if she wasn’t sure where she should be looking. Her upturned lips transferred her confusion.
    It dawned on him then: she clearly hadn’t received the message he and Petal had sent responding to her request for help for her job. That, or Xian hadn’t sent it. Given how his brain was full of a varied concoction of toxins, that wasn’t so surprising.
    He quickly explained that they were there for the job.
    “Right!” she said. “Yeah, about the job. You’re here for that? Good. Come. Bring the girl. I’ve got just the thing—for a price.”
    Gabe didn’t care about the price; he just wanted her back. He’d negotiate afterwards. He gently lifted Petal from the ground, placed her arms around his neck, and carried her towards the open door of the Tinker’s graveyard compound.
    As he passed through the door, held open by the Tinker, she had pulled her cloak slightly to one side, exposing a beige-coloured leather jerkin that had—
    What the hell? He looked closer to confirm his suspicions. The markings on the jerkin were tattoos. That wasn’t leather! It was skin.
    She gave him a wicked grin, exposing her rotten black gums.
    Skin jackets, foul breath that stunk of rotting meat... He tried not to think about what that all pointed to.
    “Over there.” The Tinker pointed to the broken fuselage of a passenger jet. The nose cone and tail-fin had come away as did one of the wings. It had the colours of a Russian airline: white and red. The windows were covered with hastily welded scrap pieces salvaged from other planes. The steps to the cabin door were a combination of robes, wooden steps, and yet more salvaged metal.
    Gabe waited her for to lead the way, but she stood there, her cloak open, her hand resting on the butt of a rifle that was hanging from a belt: a not-so-subtle threat. But that was fine. She wasn’t the only one concealing arms.
    Not wanting to hang around, he accepted the situation and headed for the plane, all the while the hairs on the back of his neck tickled as if being brushed constantly by a ghost. He just hoped that by the time he got inside, the clearly mental woman would have shot him and decided which bits of his body she would barbecue first.
    It was that unfortunate thought that drew his gaze to his side as he made his way across the muddy ground and through the piles of scrap metal. Through a narrow gap between two ten metre high piles of wings and fins, a series of sharpened sections of metal reached out of the ground. Upon them, hung like nothing more than laundry, were the skins of three separate individuals. Their bodies were casually tossed to the site in a pile of garbage.
    Holding Petal over his shoulder with one hand, he reached the other inside of his duster, placed his palm around the grip of a revolver.
    “Up there, go in and turn right. Place her on the bench.”
    He just nodded, followed the orders, and waited. As crazy as she seemed, and potentially murderous, she could have just killed him from a distance. He couldn’t give up on Petal now. He’d have to see this through for her sake, one way, or another.
    ***

    Inside the plane was a veritable warehouse of junk-treasure, objet d’art, and pieces of salvaged tech in myriad states of repair. Racks and shelves lined the left side in place of the passenger seats that had been taken out to leave a wide long space within the tube. Various tools littered the shelves: some taken from various plane assemblies, maintenance kits—as per the markings on the various boxes—and others clearly homemade.
    In the dark light of the fuselage he found the bench.  Carefully clearing a place on its busy surface, he placed Petal down as gentle as if