what’s going on around you. Fast the first three bodies, step over the head-shot mage . . .
Then stop like I’m paralyzed. The top of the mage’s head is distinctly missing, but her face is still recognizable. And I do recognize it, and that recognition twists the knife of fear in my guts.
It’s Marla, the Snake shaman who was on my team when we hit the Eighty-Eights’ depot. Already knowing, deep down, what I’m going to see. I look at what’s left of the other faces. I recognize them all, every one of them.
They’re Cutters.
9
The engine of my Harley Scorpion howls in my ears as the glowing lines on the tach and speedo stretch upward. Wind and rain lash my face, and my drenched hair sends cold water seeping down the back of my neck. It’s cold, but nothing compared to the chill that’s already settled in my spine like dirty ice. I’ve got the bike bars in a death-grip, squeezing them so hard my forearms ache. It’s the only way I can stop my hands from shaking.
The Scorpion is screaming through the night, the big bike pushing its limit, wailing south on Highway 5 at one-sixty klicks. It’s not that I’m going anywhere—or that I know where to go—it’s just that I need to think, and I think better when I’m moving, preferably sitting in the saddle of a high-powered speed machine. It’s always been like this, even when I was growing up in Lake Geneva, before my family moved the fifty klicks or so north to Milwaukee proper. I’d wanted a trail bike, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Instead they got me a fifth-hand Bombardier WaveRunner, a water jet-powered thing that looked like a cross between a snowmobile and a miniature boat.
I sneered at first, but after taking that puppy out on the lake and cranking it up, I felt like I was home. My folks preferred my “lake hog” to a bike, on the grounds that water was softer than asphalt if I ditched. What they didn’t realize was that the WaveRunner, with the throttle cracked wide open, goes so fast that water’s no more compressible than concrete. I proved that one day in a spontaneous race with a neighbor who also had a WaveRunner, when I jumped it over a ski-boat’s wake, corkscrewed in, and broke my leg in three places—along with the keel of the lake hog. My folks got me fixed up, but they wouldn’t—categorically would not—let me do anything but sell the WaveRunner for scrap.
I shake away the memories with a growled curse. Drek, but it’s tempting to slide into woolgathering when the present’s one big Mexican frag-up. It’s a good thing I'm not running the big Scorpion on a vehicle control rig. From what I’ve heard, if your mind wanders when you’re jacked in, so does the bike. Unpleasant.
So, no more running away from reality. A Cutters team had been sent not to snatch me, but to take me out. If it had been merely a snatch, they’d have used very different tactics. A hit team composed of Cutters raised several distinct possibilities, none of them very pleasant.
First. The Team members were from the Cutters, but not of the Cutters, if that makes any sense. They could be members of the gang, but not taking their orders from anywhere in the Cutters organization. Maybe another outfit—possibly the Eighty-Eights—paid them or otherwise persuaded them to geek me. Likelihood? Minimal. One Cutters member, I could see it. A full team of four? Nah.
Next. The team was sent by someone in the Cutters, but its mission was not officially sanctioned by the gang. Perhaps there’s an internecine conflict going on between factions within the gang, and the leader of one faction sent his soldiers out to eliminate a member of the rival faction. (The corollary of this is, of course, that the faction who sent the team is maneuvering against Blake, because I’m obviously one of Blake’s good little boys.) Or maybe it’s not even that big. Maybe it’s just someone settling a score. If Bart and/or Ranger were still around, I’d give this one
Then stop like I’m paralyzed. The top of the mage’s head is distinctly missing, but her face is still recognizable. And I do recognize it, and that recognition twists the knife of fear in my guts.
It’s Marla, the Snake shaman who was on my team when we hit the Eighty-Eights’ depot. Already knowing, deep down, what I’m going to see. I look at what’s left of the other faces. I recognize them all, every one of them.
They’re Cutters.
9
The engine of my Harley Scorpion howls in my ears as the glowing lines on the tach and speedo stretch upward. Wind and rain lash my face, and my drenched hair sends cold water seeping down the back of my neck. It’s cold, but nothing compared to the chill that’s already settled in my spine like dirty ice. I’ve got the bike bars in a death-grip, squeezing them so hard my forearms ache. It’s the only way I can stop my hands from shaking.
The Scorpion is screaming through the night, the big bike pushing its limit, wailing south on Highway 5 at one-sixty klicks. It’s not that I’m going anywhere—or that I know where to go—it’s just that I need to think, and I think better when I’m moving, preferably sitting in the saddle of a high-powered speed machine. It’s always been like this, even when I was growing up in Lake Geneva, before my family moved the fifty klicks or so north to Milwaukee proper. I’d wanted a trail bike, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Instead they got me a fifth-hand Bombardier WaveRunner, a water jet-powered thing that looked like a cross between a snowmobile and a miniature boat.
I sneered at first, but after taking that puppy out on the lake and cranking it up, I felt like I was home. My folks preferred my “lake hog” to a bike, on the grounds that water was softer than asphalt if I ditched. What they didn’t realize was that the WaveRunner, with the throttle cracked wide open, goes so fast that water’s no more compressible than concrete. I proved that one day in a spontaneous race with a neighbor who also had a WaveRunner, when I jumped it over a ski-boat’s wake, corkscrewed in, and broke my leg in three places—along with the keel of the lake hog. My folks got me fixed up, but they wouldn’t—categorically would not—let me do anything but sell the WaveRunner for scrap.
I shake away the memories with a growled curse. Drek, but it’s tempting to slide into woolgathering when the present’s one big Mexican frag-up. It’s a good thing I'm not running the big Scorpion on a vehicle control rig. From what I’ve heard, if your mind wanders when you’re jacked in, so does the bike. Unpleasant.
So, no more running away from reality. A Cutters team had been sent not to snatch me, but to take me out. If it had been merely a snatch, they’d have used very different tactics. A hit team composed of Cutters raised several distinct possibilities, none of them very pleasant.
First. The Team members were from the Cutters, but not of the Cutters, if that makes any sense. They could be members of the gang, but not taking their orders from anywhere in the Cutters organization. Maybe another outfit—possibly the Eighty-Eights—paid them or otherwise persuaded them to geek me. Likelihood? Minimal. One Cutters member, I could see it. A full team of four? Nah.
Next. The team was sent by someone in the Cutters, but its mission was not officially sanctioned by the gang. Perhaps there’s an internecine conflict going on between factions within the gang, and the leader of one faction sent his soldiers out to eliminate a member of the rival faction. (The corollary of this is, of course, that the faction who sent the team is maneuvering against Blake, because I’m obviously one of Blake’s good little boys.) Or maybe it’s not even that big. Maybe it’s just someone settling a score. If Bart and/or Ranger were still around, I’d give this one
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