The Lucifer Deck Read Free Page B

linger there for a full three seconds, then pulled back to frame a head-and-shoulders shot.
    "My friends were already dead, but the cops were cutting the bodies with machetes." Pita whispered. "Then they used their blood to paint the slogans on the walls."
    "The autopsy didn’t find any bullet fragments in the bodies." Carla pointed out. "The pathologist said the wounds were consistent with an attack by edged weapons. I trust my sources. If there’d been anything unusual, I’d have heard about it."
    "But there must have been bullet holes in the buildings where it happened." The girl looked up hopefully. "That would prove—"
    "It proves nothing, kid." Carla resisted the urge to shake her head. She kept the eyecam locked on the girl, waiting for any reaction. "Columbia’s a rough part of Seattle. Every building in it has its share of scars, many of them carved out by Lone Star guns."
    "One of the cops had a cyber hand. If you could find him, you could—"
    "Cybernetic enhancements are pretty common among cops." Carla countered. "There must be dozens of officers with cyberhands."
    "I know it was cybernetic, because it gleamed like chrome." Pita continued. "I couldn’t see the cop’s face, but I could see that."
    "A chrome cyberhand?" Carla asked. "It sounds like you got that one out of a comic vid. What you saw was probably an interface on the cop’s glove that caught and reflected the light."
    The girl winced, then stared up at Carla with angry eyes. "I’m not making this up."
    "I never said you were, kid."
    Carla sighed and deactivated her cybercam. "You tell a very passionate story, Pita, but the Star could refute every word you’ve told me. You’ve got no concrete proof to back you up. No firm details. And without proof, I haven’t got a news story."
    The ork girl dropped her eyes, her shoulders hunching in a defensive slump. Carla keyed her security code and opened the door that led back to the studio. She paused on the threshold, debating whether to offer the kid a few words of reassurance. She’d seen the bodies after the Policlub was through with them. If those were really the girl’s friends...
    But when Carla turned back again, the lobby was empty.

3
    Pita sat in an alley in the shadow of a rotted-out chesterfield. She’d tried sleeping on it the night before, but the springs had dug into her back. Now she leaned against its padded arm, ignoring the musty smell of moldy fabric. She took a bite of a Sweetnut Puff and washed it down with some steaming soykaf. The doughy pastry made her teeth ache, so she tossed it aside. Then she dug inside her pocket.
    The alley was only faintly illuminated by the sodium light up the street. Tilting her hand to catch its dim yellow glow, Pita looked at the capsules that lay on her palm. Three pale white ovals that promised an end to the flip-flops that wrenched her stomach and the nightmares that plagued her sleep. They’d cost her plenty—an unpleasant favor for the off-duty DocWagon attendant she’d met at the local bar. She grimaced, still feeling his sloppy kisses on her shoulders and neck. It hadn’t been anything like what she’d had with Chen . . .
    Blinking away the sudden sting in her eyes, Pita tossed the capsules into her mouth and took a gulp of her soykaf. It was still hot enough to burn her lips, but she drank it anyway, not wanting the capsules to get stuck in her throat. Then she waited.
    She heard a rustling noise somewhere to her left and turned her head. A cat with a matted coat and torn ears emerged from a recessed doorway and began to nibble at the piece of Sweetnut Puff she’d tossed. It paused as it sensed her movement, then turned to stare at her. Its eyes were twin red moons, reflections of the streetlights at the end of the alley. Pita felt suddenly uneasy, as if the cat were looking into her soul. Somehow, the cat shared the hunger that burned inside her. Then the animal turned and scuttled back to cover, favoring one leg in an ambling