Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan Page B

blood and paler tissue in clots across the wall in front of him
—made the landing before he’d hit the ground, and then erupted around the corner of the promoter’s office door.
    The echo of the first shot, like the first sip of whiskey, burning . . .
    Splinters of vision . . .
    The promoter tries to rise from his seat where two of them have him pinned and tilted back. One arm thrashes free and points in my direction.
    â€œThat’s hi—”
    The goon nearest the door, turning . . .
    Cut him down. Three-shot burst, left-handed.
    Blood splatters the air—I twist, neurachem hyperswift, to avoid it.
    The squad leader—recognizable, somehow. Taller, more presence, something, yelling, “What the fu—”
    Body shots. Chest and weapon arm, get that firing hand
wrecked
.
    The right-hand Kalashnikov spurts flame and soft-cored antipersonnel slugs.
    Two left, trying to shrug themselves free of the half-pinioned, flailing promoter, to clear weapons that . . .
    Both hands now—head, body, anywhere.
    The Kalashnikovs bark like excited dogs.
    Bodies jerking, tumbling . . .
    And done.
    Silence slammed down in the tiny office. The promoter cowered under the body of one of his slain captors. Somewhere, something sparked and shorted out in the console—damage from one of my slugs that had gone wide or through. I could hear voices out on the landing.
    I knelt beside the wreckage of the lead goon’s corpse and set down the smart guns. Beneath my jacket, I tugged the vibroknife from its sheath in the small of my back and activated the motor. With my free hand I pressed down hard on the dead man’s spine and started cutting.
    â€œAh,
fuck,
man.” The promoter gagged and threw up across his console. “Fuck,
fuck
.”
    I looked up at him.
    â€œShut up, this isn’t easy.”
    He ducked down again.
    After a couple of false starts, the vibroknife took and sliced down through the spinal column a few vertebrae below the point where it met the base of the skull. I steadied the skull against the floor with one knee, then pressed down again and started a new incision. The knife slipped and slithered again on the curve of the bone.
    â€œShit.”
    The voices out on the landing were growing in number and, it seemed, creeping closer. I stopped what I was doing, picked up one of the Kalashnikovs left-handed, and fired a brace of shots out the doorway into the wall opposite. The voices departed in a stampede of feet on stairs.
    Back to the knife. I managed to get the point lodged, cut through the bone, and then used the blade to lever the severed section of spine up out of the surrounding flesh and muscle. Messy, but there wasn’t a lot of time. I stuffed the severed bone into a pocket, wiped my hands on a clean portion of the dead man’s tunic, and sheathed the knife. Then I picked up the smart guns and went cautiously to the door.
    Quiet.
    As I was leaving, I glanced back at the promoter. He was staring at me as if I’d just sprouted a reef demon’s fangs.
    â€œGo home,” I told him. “They’ll be back. Near as I can tell.”
    I made it down the three flights of stairs without meeting anyone, though I could feel eyes peering from other doors on the landings I passed. Outside, I scanned the street in both directions, stowed the Kalashnikovs, and slipped away, past the hot, smoldering carapace of the bombed-out cruiser. The pavement was empty for fifty meters in both directions, and the frontages on either side of the wreck had all cranked down their security blinds. A crowd was gathering on the other side of the street, but no one seemed to know what exactly to do. The few passersby who noticed me looked hurriedly away as I passed. Immaculate.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Nobody said much on the way to the hotel.
    We did most of it on foot, doubling back through covered ways and malls to blind any satellite eyes the Mandrake Corporation might have access to.