Cloneworld - 04 Read Free Page A

shivered, but relished the feeling. Goosebumps rippled along her flesh. Pain teased her. But then - that was okay. Pain meant life. Pain meant existence. She opened her eyes. The world was grey. The world was black. Swirling whorls, a fluid jigsaw. And she remembered - no colour . Everything was black and white. Like an old filmy. Like the P-Earth-History books. She released a breath. A breath held in a cage for a million years. She sat up. Looked around. Her eyes settled on a table. On the table there was a photograph. Next to the photograph was a gun. She took the gun. It nestled in her palm, like metal flesh. She licked her lips. Studied the face in the photo. And instinctively, because she was programmed to, she knew what she must do.
     
    Franco groaned, long and low, and realised he was in the shit. This was going to be a week of being in the shit, he understood that now, and somehow it made him reticent to open his eyes because everything would be brown. I'll just lie here for a while. It's cool. No new violences are being visited upon my organs, and despite a rumbling in my belly and the craving for a few stiff whiskies, I think I could just get used to this.
    "Oy!"
    Franco remained stoically calm, and stubbornly refused to open his eyes. A distant pounding drummed through his skull from rough treatment at the hands and clubs of the Royal Ganger Police Force. The ends of his fingers tingled, signifying some element of nerve stress, and Franco tried hard not to imagine what would happen when Pippa finally turned up... and yet! Yet it had been going so well. And what happened when things were going so well, was that they usually stopped going so well, and then kicked a man in the balls - or if one didn't have balls, the nearest damn equivalent...
    "Oy! You there!"
    Franco gave in. He opened his eyes. He gazed up at cold grey steel. It was a cold grey steel ceiling attached to cold grey steel walls. A cool breeze washed over him. Aircon? A drink, sir? Maybe you'd like to retire to your room for a massage...? Franco clicked his brain into gear and ran a physical diagnostic. He wiggled everything. Everything seemed to work. His eyes were going in and out of focus, and he tenderly touched his head where a lump the size of an egg was threatening to crack open and spill yolk across the... yep, he checked, across the cold grey steel floor. So then! Police cell. Ganger police cell. A ganger police cell fashioned from, Franco blinked and checked around, a solid cube of grey cold steel. Shit. Shit. How did one escape from a cube? And more importantly, how did they feed you?
    "I said oy, you, bastad!"
    There came a whirring sound, followed by several clunks, and Franco shuffled into a sitting position on his cold grey steel bunk. From the steel gloom came a woman, a little old woman, and awww , Franco liked little old women because they reminded him of his mum, and Franco loved his mum, but this little old woman leered and loomed from the gloom because, because... the clanking stopped. She had splayed metal toes at the end of what could only be described as robot legs.
    "Er," began Franco.
    "What you in for?"
    "Excuse me?"
    "You, you bastad. What you in for?"
    Franco eyed the woman up and down. She looked perhaps eighty years old, assuming an old-hume lifespan. She was bent over, stooped, almost hunch-backed in that perennial display of the aged: weighed down by a great pressure of years. Her skin was wrinkled, and Franco stared for a while, fascinated by this phenomenon. After all, in most corners of Quad-Gal the QG Cosmetica Syndicate, one of the most affluent, powerful and influential of galaxy-wide corporations, had pretty much eradicated old age. Or at least, the appearance of old age. " Why Grow Old!" proclaimed the marketing slogans, with blatant disregard for correct punctuation. " Why Wrinkle and Prune!" spat aggressive marketing splats 24/7 on all available channels. " Let the Cosmetica Syndicate help you beat those