Twelve
TWELVE
—the recovered files of Dragonfly Martim
The Epic Vibe isn’t anywhere near SoCon GasPro.
It’s in the Field Transport division, a forty-minute tram ride away.
Isako doesn’t know why Martim has a coaster from a bar on the other side of town, but whoever Vincent is, there’s a chance he’s expecting Martim to meet him and that he’ll know more than she does.
She arrives at half past the twenty-third hour.
The warmth of spring is nowhere to be found after the sun goes down, especially in the lower-income parts of Tenacity.
A line of people shiver and stamp their feet and breathe steam into the pink neon glow that halos the unmarked concrete door.
When Isako gets to the front, the strapping bouncer looks her up and down and raises bristly eyebrows.
It’s not every night, she suspects, that a fifty-year-old woman with a longknife comes alone to the nightclub.
Maybe she’s not dressed well enough to get in.
What does one even wear to a nightclub these days?
She has no idea. From the limited selection of clothes she brought over to the hotel from her apartment, she chose a drapey white top, black leggings, and the boots she wore to the Agency.
Her coat falls over the top of her triggersheath, but the bouncer’s observant.
He sees her black badge, and his eyes drop to her left leg.
Isako smiles innocently and points to the bouncer’s black badge, like hers but without the silver rim. “There’s no rule against contractors here.” He’s in the edge life, too, a gencon picking up extra work at night. “I’m just here to meet someone for a drink and a chat.”
“I’m going to assume you’re Code abiding to have lasted this long, grandma.” He motions her through. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Inside, the club is hopping. Isako grimaces at the sudden onslaught of pounding music and flashing strobe lights.
Shoulders and hips jostle her heedlessly as she pushes through the crowd in front of the glowing blue bar and the crush of sweaty bodies on the dance floor.
Scantily clad clubgoers who look about Maya’s age gyrate and shriek their approval as the DJ spins the next track.
Couples grind and make out. The pungent odor of leafsmoke clogs air made thick by the vapor from the fog machines.
She remembers at one time enjoying places like this.
Were they always so insufferably loud? Once she gets to the relative quiet of the stairwell, a metal door propped open at the end of a narrow concrete hallway admits icy air that’s a blessed relief on her face.
A dozen people are lined up for the single bathroom just inside the stairwell door.
Most of them ignore her as she passes, but a few glance over curiously.
She’s not sure what stands out more: her age, her weapon, or the sour look on her face.
On the second floor, she orders a drink from the bar just to have something to do and to fit in.
She considers vodka or gin, but that’ll make her sleepy.
Good thing she took a two-hour nap this afternoon.
She’s still sore from her visit to the Agency, and the sim-enhancing drugs messed up her sleep the night before.
Staying up working late into the night didn’t used to be a big deal; now a couple nights of bad sleep in a row will make her feel like shit.
And her reflexes will be shot to hell—not good, when facing potentially hostile situations with a weapon strapped to her thigh.
A warm bath, followed by her bed, would be fantastic right now.
She settles for a mint mocktail and retreats with it to a corner of the room to survey the situation.
The second-floor lounge, while still noisy and bustling, is thankfully more sedate than the main floor.
It’s a mixed crowd of students and wagemen from Field Transport, some of them having come off late shifts and still in work uniforms. A heated competition involving excessive drinking is occurring around the light pong table.
A row of cushioned booths lines the back wall.
Two of them are occupied by groups of friends, one by an amorous couple, and the final one, to the far right, by a thin-faced man with a soul patch beard, wearing a backward cap and a chain around his neck with a gold amulet—the Sefan Emancipist symbol of life, the woman in the tree, representing the Mother in Chains.
No Company badge—in gold, white, or black. The man’s badgeless. A freelancer.
And he doesn’t seem to mind people knowing. The pendant hangs where his badge normally would, drawing attention to its absence.
He has company in the booth—two young women, one of whom pushes an offscrip chip across the table.
The man palms the fragment and passes a package to her discreetly.
She and her friend depart. The man in the booth sits alone with his drink for less than five minutes before someone else arrives and takes the spot the women vacated.
Isako watches for a while longer, as two more customers come and go.
Disappointment leadens her stomach. She hoped Martim was coming here to meet someone important to him—a lover, ideally, not that she ever knew whether he was into men.
Or an ally from another division that he was secretly working with on whatever he was doing before he died.
Someone who might know what really happened to him.
All she’s found is his drug supplier.
What did you get yourself into, kid? I thought you were better than this.
What would she know, though? It’s been years since she was in regular contact with her apprentice.
A lot can change about a person in a few years.
She would know. Or was he already using years ago, while she was mentoring him?
If so, she missed all the signs. If he was struggling at the time, he hid it from her and everyone else.
Maybe she even contributed to his habit, pushing him as much as she did, encouraging his hard-driving, all-hours workaholism.
The possibility is not a nice thought.
Nevertheless, she came all the way here and the man in the booth is currently her only lead. The next time he’s alone, Isako crosses the floor and slides onto the bench across from him. It’s hard to sit in proper zanshin on the lumpy vinyl cushion. She does her best.
“You’re Vincent,” she says.
He’s instantly wary. All his other meetings tonight were expected, it seems. She’s not one of his regulars. But he’s open to new customers. He glances down at her black badge, then into her face with a guarded expression. “What if I am?”
She thinks to say, I’m surprised you’re allowed in here.
Many reputable businesses won’t deal with freelancers.
No Freelancing signs are common in windows, at least in nice areas.
Without scriplines or Company health coverage, the badgeless are walking liabilities.
When they’re able to pay their bills, they do so with offscrip, the secondary physical currency that circulates freely throughout the unofficial economy of the cityhab.
But Isako doesn’t want to start off the conversation in an antagonistic way. So she glances around with feigned curiosity before asking, “How long have the club owners been letting you run your little business up here?”
“I bring them customers and don’t cause any trouble,” he answers defensively. “I settle my tab every night, so they’re not even out the alcohol. Offscrip’s nearly as good as scrip in this part of town.” He eyes her impatiently. “Are you here for something or not?”
Isako decides to play this out. “Yeah.” She makes herself sound interested but uncertain. “I don’t know what I need, though. What are you offering?”
Vincent leans forward and switches to salesman mode.
“Depends on whether you’re wanting uppers or downers.
Most tracs, they want both, an all-around package.
Something to keep them at the peak of their game, especially as they start slowing down a little, you know what I mean?
” He gives her a knowing look, unsubtly pointing out that she’s on the older side to still be living the edge life.
“And something to help them relax, take away all that stress. I’ve got the perfect starter combo, if you’ve got four hundred fifty offbits. ”
Isako waits a beat. “What were you selling to Dragonfly Martim?”
Vincent blinks, then sits back. “Martim sent you to me?”
“You could say that.” Isako pulls out the plastic coaster she took from Martim’s apartment and puts it on the table between them, face up, with Vincent’s name on it. “I found this in his place.”
“I barely know the guy,” Vincent says hastily. “He’s one of my customers, is all. He comes here to get what he wants, but it’s not like we have a personal relationship.”
“In that case, it’s no skin off your nose to tell me the truth. When was the last time you saw him?”
Vincent’s eyes dart from side to side. A sheen of sweat is breaking out on his forehead, and it’s not from the stuffiness inside the lounge.
She knows what he’s thinking. Contractors are often out to sabotage or harm other contractors, usually in the name of client service, occasionally out of personal motivation to remove the competition.
For all he knows, she might be a shadowcon, operating outside of the Code, sent to slit Martim’s throat.
And if Vincent doesn’t cooperate, absolutely no one will bat an eyelid if a freelancer disappears.
Especially if the freelancer in question happens to be a drug dealer.
They’ll simply assume he either exhausted his two-year grace period and finally resigned, was offed by some other lowlife, or more likely, was terminated as part of an eviction.
“I haven’t seen him in a while,” Vincent insists. “Seven or eight weeks, maybe.”
“Did he come here regularly, before that?”