Chapter 13 #2
Ten more steps … five … Kyle hung back a bit, smart boy, and Isidore stepped through the door.
The conversation nearest to him slowed, and he could almost feel the wave of sudden attention flow over him.
His proximity sense kicked into overdrive, detecting the electrical fields of the men above him, letting him turn and catch the first one as he leapt down from above the entryway.
It was Lightning Ray, a long, skinny guy whose mods had added an extra foot of length to each limb.
If he could keep you back, he was hard to fight, but Isidore was already inside of his range and grabbed the man by the throat as they both tumbled toward the floor.
He turned his hand into a claw and dug inward, his nails puncturing flesh and gristle with ease.
Blood began to bubble out of Ray’s gasping mouth, and Isidore kicked him away just in time to sit up and lunge for the second man, who’d jumped down and headed back toward the hallway to run down Kyle.
The second man—Nathaniel, Isidore thought—was unfortunately a much better grappler than Lightning Ray.
He turned into Isidore and charged, putting him flat on his back again.
Isidore struck out with his hands, but Nathaniel just leaned in and wrapped Isidore’s arms up as high as the shoulders, immobilizing them.
He did the same with his legs, twining his own around them like vines.
Nathaniel was incredibly flexible, and it didn’t take Isidore long to realize that if he didn’t do something fast, he’d be incredibly stuck.
“I hope you like being on the bottom like this,” Nathaniel whispered in Isidore’s ear as he leaned in close. Isidore didn’t say anything, just stretched his neck as far as he could and then bit Nathaniel hard on the cheek.
Nathaniel reared back but didn’t let go immediately. “You fucking little shit, what the fuck was that? I’ll take that … take it out of … out … of …” His grip loosened, and Isidore fought free immediately, already looking for Kyle, where was he, what had happened—
Kyle’s attacker, a bald man that Isidore didn’t recognize, was laid out at his feet.
Kyle’s one-shot taser sent a tendril of smoke up from where it was still embedded in the guy’s gut.
Kyle himself looked stunned, staring wide-eyed at Isidore.
After a moment, Isidore realized he had Nathaniel’s blood smeared across his mouth. He licked his lips. It tasted foul.
“Back up, people.”
Isidore could have melted at the sound of Robbie’s voice, but he just took a step back from the carnage instead.
Robbie led four bots, one of whom snatched up Nathaniel, who was beginning to foam at the mouth, and another who went after Lightning Ray, noisily choking on his own blood.
Another bot went for Kyle’s attacker, and the final one?
Straight for Kyle. It reached for his hand with its gripping appendage, and Kyle let it take hold.
“You need an intake number,” Robbie grunted.
“And these idiots apparently need the infirmary. And you …” He turned gimlet eyes on Isidore, who met them in total silence.
“You need to learn to finish the job, punk. Save me some fucking time, why don’t you?
” He turned around, and the bots went with him, leaving nothing but stains across the floor.
Isidore spat his mouthful of another man’s blood out onto the rest of the filth, then turned to the watching crowd. “If Rory has something to say to me, he should just say it,” he said quietly. “No need to waste people.”
“Come on, then.” The man in the very front stood up from a table: Sylvester, one of Rory’s lieutenants. “Let’s take you to speak to him.”
Rory was shaped so strangely that it was hard for Isidore’s brain to register him as human at first, and coming from a man who’d spend the last decade on Solaydor, that was saying a lot.
Rory looked like a human who’d been crushed in a gravity field, compacted down and out.
He was a foot shorter than Isidore and maybe four times wider, so thick through the shoulders and chest it would have been impossible for Isidore to reach all the way around him.
His muscles were hard slabs of sculpted meat, and his enormous hands could have doubled for mining picks.
Rory sat at a table at the back of the Pit, alone, using a sharpened sliver of metal to clean beneath his fingernails.
When Sylvester brought Isidore through the crowd to him and motioned him to sit down, Isidore immediately began to calculate all the ways that Rory could take him apart with that tiny metal toothpick.
According to rumor, there were dozens of possibilities.
It didn’t matter. Isidore sat and waited, but he didn’t have to wait long.
“You,” Rory said, his voice surprisingly smooth, “aren’t much of a fighter.”
“No,” Isidore agreed.
Rory glanced up at him. “You admit that rather readily.”
“I know my own weaknesses. Combat is certainly one of them.”
“But you also have a good handle on your strengths, of which deception seems to be at the top. What did you do to Nathaniel, anyway?”
Might as well tell the truth. It wouldn’t do to lay false expectations about the man’s recovery. “I poisoned him.”
Rory nodded. “I thought so. He won’t be coming back, will he?”
“Not unless they’ve found an antidote for cluthe that works faster than the time it will take that bot to get him to the tank.”
“However did you smuggle something like cluthe in here?”
Isidore smiled. “That would be telling.”
“Clever and quiet.” Rory shook his head.
“I should have taken you for one of mine when you first got here. You’re a political, though, and I tend to avoid the politicals.
Radicals of any kind aren’t the sort of people I care to deal with.
Too many ideals getting in the way of the practicalities of life and death. ”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You can make it up to me by explaining your interest in Kyle Alexander.” Rory shifted slightly, his massive bulk moving with inexplicable sinuousness. “He’s a high-value commodity. Why should I let you keep him?”
“Apart from the fact that you’re not sure I can’t kill you, me, and everyone within a twenty-foot radius before you could stop me?
” It was a minor bluff, but after what he’d just done to Nathaniel, Isidore was willing to bet that Rory would give him the benefit of the doubt.
He wasn’t wrong, and the rapid backpedaling of dozens of feet brought smiles to both of their faces.
“Apart from that,” Rory agreed.
“Kyle Alexander is as political as it gets.” Isidore would have to play it close to the line here; he wasn’t a good enough liar to do otherwise. “The highest political powers in the universe want him dead or under their control. If he’s under my control first, I get a stake in that.”
“Interesting.” Rory moved on to cleaning his other hand. “And you think you can hold onto him for the time it will take to make your play?”
“I don’t know, but I’m willing to use every trick I’ve got to try and ensure that.”
Sun-bright eyes looked him over. “And you’ve got quite a lot of them, don’t you?”
“More than you know.”
Rory grinned, then put his little shiv away.
There was a collective exhalation in the room.
“I like you, Isidore. Being near you is like walking side by side with death. I’ve done that, you know, in the Beyond.
I challenged death there, and I won.” He leaned over slightly.
“I like my chances with you too, but I’ll put my personal desires aside for now.
Curiosity is the only cure for boredom I’ve found, but sometimes even curiosity serves you better if you delay it. ”
“I agree.” The door to the Pit started to open again.
“Go get your boy and remember to expect the unexpected. After all”—Rory bared his teeth in a grin, and they were all as black as space— “turnabout is fair play.”