[story] ghost story
Feb. 3rd, 2008 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ib_archiveauthor: pei yi
email: dreamsmoke [at] gmail.com
"I've got a plan," Christian said.
That was the first sign. Christian's idea of a 'good plan' usually ended in maimed people and the terrorising of innocent bystanders. His idea of a 'really good plan' usually ended in the destruction of public property, preferably with explosives.
Sam looked up. He looked pleased. Too pleased. That was the second sign. He'd also tipped his chair back to balance on two wheels while one grey-socked foot thumped an impatient tattoo on the table, and he'd dismantled their last functioning mechanical pencil.
She sighed. "No."
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, what, and you have a better plan, great leader?"
"I like plans that don't have us getting arrested every other week."
"Look, that thing with the Aztec death cult thingy wasn't my fault. And it's not like they held us for more than a day."
She glared. "I was talking about the time when eight traids tried to kill us. I could also mention the time you set an opium den on fire, or even the illegal mutant animal dealers--"
"That was your idea."
"It wasn't my idea to sell Jon to the circus."
"And look how well that--"
She lifted her corner of the table just enough to throw his foot off balance and he vanished with a howl and what sounded like the fifth broken office chair of the month.
"And you can get a new one from the junkyard yourself," she added.
"Fuck you," he said from under the table.
Sam ignored him and rubbed a tired hand over her eyes. She'd sectioned the table - maps in one corner, photographs covering the right side, the left corner piled with newspaper clippings, and a pile of photocopied documents set neatly in the center. She tapped a pen on a folder with Jon's printouts of all their related activity and observations and stared at her notebook. It was flipped to a clean, blank page.
Waiting for their next step. This would have fine if she'd had a next step in mind that would get them somewhere - but she didn't.
That was the third bad sign: when she ran out of plans.
Christian was swearing and kicking the wreckage of the chair out from under him. He didn't deign to sit up; Sam didn't bother checking to see what he was doing. If they were lucky, he'd get bored and go to sleep.
"So we spend another two weeks on 'surveillance,' meaning we watch them pick up fifteen minute hookers and the groceries, both of which we can't afford."
No such luck.
"Fuck it. We should just make the assholes tell us where the body is."
Sam knew they were going to regret this. She took a deep breath and began absently piecing the pencil back together from its remains. The spring hadn't rolled off the table, so they still had a semi-functioning pencil.
"So what's your idea? Torture the information out of them? It's not on the list of options." She pushed the chair back to look under the table.
He gave her a filthy grin. "Ghosts."
"Ghosts." Her tone was perfectly flat. If Christian's idea didn't make sense, at least she didn't have to worry about it getting them arrested.
He sat up and dusted himself off. "Remember what Thuoc said? Old Green goes to Mass and does the whole confession thing and shit. And what's he got on his conscience?"
"We'll tell them a ghost story."
Marcus Green was, among other things: a thief, a petty thug, a failure as a father, an alcoholic and too old for this shit. What he wasn't: in jail or dead. He figured that had to count for something; it had to mean he wasn't completely stupid.
They were being watched.
That wasn't all that special in itself. People watched people watch people a lot in this line of work. Having an eye on the right guy at the right time kept you alive.
But this was... different.
The glass was slick in his hand, the beer ran bitter down his throat. The pub was filled, but not crowded enough to be dangerous. Yet. Alcohol fumes and cigarette smoke hung thick in the air, but he'd stopped noticing it years ago, and even the pounding music and noise and raised voices didn't register tonight.
Behind the bar, they kept a clock propped up on a shelf with a brick. The face was grimy and for most of the ten years he'd known the Cadium, he'd figured it was broken. It wasn't. And he was waiting.
Tick.
The minute hand struck 11.03pm. His tongue felt dry and maybe, maybe, tonight would be different...
The power blacked out with a dying wheeze from the air conditoner. The music snapped out, all the better to hear the murmur of irritation that ran through the far.
"Bleeding Virgin on a stick, that's the third time this week!" someone shouted, and a glass somewhere shattered.
Then a breath of icy air brushed the back of his neck and he could have sworn he heard a voice--
Remember the last time?
He froze for one interminable moment of horror, then kicked his chair over and spun.
"Who's there?" he hissed.
The green glow of the exit sign flared into life. A full minute later, the rest of the lights finally flickered and then blinded the room.
Marcus reached for his knife but - Blue Mother, what use was a knife going to be against a dead man?
"Woah, put that down, man. My night's bad enough without guts on the floor."
He had to shake his head to clear the haze of blind panic that threatened to override it. Blinking in the light, he glared at the young man at the table across him. His blond hair looked dirty in the poor light, and his hard eyes managed to look quizzical and bored at the same time.
"You okay? You look like you saw a ghost," he said. "Sit down or something."
For a very long moment, he stared at the young man. He swallowed. "Shut up," he said, then groped for his glass and threw its remaining contents down his throat. Reaching down, he dragged his chair back up and sat down heavily.
At least a third of the bar's former patrons had left, leaving enough room that it felt almost open. No one had bothered to start the sound system up again; no one came here for the music. Those who remained had barely bothered to look up from their drinks. Power outages didn't happen this often or regularly, but they happened often enough that no one blinked anymore.
Far from taking the hint, the young man had somehow shifted his chair so he was almost beside him. Before Marcus snarl, he said, from the corner of his mouth, "Been having some trouble lately, Mister?"
Linker would've said it didn't mean anything, the way Cadium had blacked out three times this week. It didn't mean anything that it happened at the exact same time every night - the same time they'd met Hwang for that last meeting.
And it didn't mean anything that he'd staggered home yesterday to find every single mirror and picture frame in his new apartment shattered, or how three mornings ago his printer had spent an hour printing a dead man's photo, over and over again.
Trouble. Blue Mother, he knew what he'd done.
"What do you know about it, boy?" The young man turned to look at him and then froze, Marcus' knife at his throat.
"You could say someone told me about it," he muttered. "I came to pass a message." He didn't look as nervous as he should have been with steel pressed to his neck. If anyone else in the bar noticed their conversation, they showed no sign of it.
"Who are you? And who the hell sent you?"
"It's kinda hard to talk, you know."
Marcus met his eyes for a long, taut minute - then drew the knife back. Not completely, but enough to let him move almost comfortably.
"Who are you?" he demanded again.
"My name's Jonathan. Tell me, Mr. Green. Do you believe in ghosts?"
Yes - No - How in Blue Mother did he know his name?
He felt his phone hum in his pocket. Pulling it out, eyes still fixed on Mike, he thumbed the dial.
"Marcus."
He nearly dropped the phone. "Linker? What--"
"I believe you. Fuck, I believe you. I saw him."
"Agent Shadow, Team Delta is in place. Report your position, Agent--"
"Angel? I'm at the cafe across the street. Do you really have to do that?"
They'd parked the van in an abandoned garage on the outskirts of the warehouse district. Left in command of the driver's seat, Angel twirled a strand of hair around a finger and examined the empty street.
"But what if someone taps the connection?" she said. "It could ruin everything, right? Anyway, I always wanted to be a spy--"
"I think our targets are a bit busy to tap the line of someone they don't realise is watching them," Sam's voice was dry. "How are things on your side?"
Any partition between the back of the van and the seats in front had been removed long before Chimera Investigations had rescued the wreck from a junkyard. Angel could just make out Jon's crouched figure in the mess of hardware and wires they'd somehow managed to fit.
"How's it going?" she called. When he didn't reply, she leaned over. "Joooooon. Sam's asking."
He started. "Ah. Setup's done, connections set," he said. "Was just running through the holographic simulations one last time..."
"He says the setup's done! He's just checking the holograph. You know, you should've just let me be the ghost, that would have worked just as--"
"Angel, all the makeup in the world is not going to make you look like the ghost of a 40-year-old man. Traffic around St Mike's is bad so don't move until I give the go-ahead. If we're lucky, it won't be necessary at all."
"But what if something goes wrong? I'm great at improv."
"With Christian around, I think we'll have all the improvisation we'll need."
Angel laughed. "How's Christian anyway?"
"He's waiting on the steps. We should have five more minutes before they arrive."
From the corner of her eye, Angel caught the faint glow of the holograph. Projected in miniature, a dark-haired man with a hawk-like nose and blank eyes hung in the air.
"Is this what you wanted?" he mouthed. Angel knew the words - She'd written them. Headphones over his ears, Jon frowned as the holograph finshed his speech and then vanished. He'd somehow managed to tangle a wire in his short, pale hair. Leaning over the seat, Angel brushed a finger down the back of his neck, then fished the wire off.
He jumped, and barely stifled a yelp. Ripping the headphones off, he spun, caught Angel's grin, and froze.
"Gotcha!" She dangled the wire at him from her finger.
Maybe he flushed red; it was hard to tell in the darkness.
Sam's voice snapped through the headset. "Targets have arrived in a car and Christian's in. I'm off."
Christian tossed the duffel into the car and slid into the backseat after it. The car smelled new, chemical, and the seats were covered in real leather - or at least, it looked real enough for him. Oh yeah, they'd done well for themselves alright.
Green sat in the passenger seat. He hadn't said a word, but even from the back, Christian could see the quick movement of his hands as they fingered a rosary of worn black beads. He turned to the driver's seat.
"Adam Linker?" he said.
Adam Linker wore his red hair long and tied back. An unlit joint hung from the corner of his mouth. Next to Marcus' grey hair and grey suit, they didn't look like people who would've given each other the time of the day, never mind partners for three years and counting.
Linker twisted around to eyeball Christian over a flashy pair of sunglasses. He looked more sober and alert than Christian had ever seen him in two week's worth of surveillance. Hell, you could even say he looked reasonably intelligent today.
"So you're our exorcist," he said,
"Jonathan Chabon, at your service," he drawled.
The car pulled away from the kerb with a sharp turn and a cacophony of angry honking. Christian watched a delivery bike swerve wildly to avoid them and grinned when the biker shook her fist and swore after them. There was something to be said for doing well for yourself - hell, make that a lot to be said.
"So what do you do with yourself, Chabon? Passing messages for the restless dead from the goodness of your heart can't pay too well."
"This and that," he said vaguely. "And you'd be surprised. People get really generous when they think it buys them peace."
"And does it?"
Christian gave him a bland stare. "Could depend on the dead and what you did to piss them off."
Linker's eyebrows rose and he shrugged. "Look, I tell it like I see it. And you know what? The dead are everywhere. Just be glad you can't see them and most of them aren't paying attention to you."
He didn't bother to add: Except for this one.
Murder had to rank pretty high on the list of ways to really piss a man off.
Linker's smile was thin. "Aren't we lucky," he said.
If Sam had been here, she would have called that a bad sign. Step softly, bail at the first sign of trouble, abort the case if necessary. Luckily, all Sam had was a mic tapped under his shirt and no line of vision. Christian leaned back and smiled.
Traffic around St Mike's Cathedral was dense enough that when the silver car pulled away from the curb with a reckless swerve and a screech of burning rubber, audible swearing followed. It also meant that getting from one end of the street to the other took a good ten minutes, more than enough time for Sam to toss her change on the table, grab the beat up motorcycle Christian liked to think of as his, and slide into the tangle of cars and bikes and trishaws herself.
In the jam, it would have been easy to lose them, but Sam didn't have to trace them by sight - or risk being seen at all. She turned into the nearest through alley, under lines of washing and dodging what looked like a makeshift open-air kitchen, until she hit the next street.
She skid to a stop. "Positon?"
"Almost at the junction, could be making a left turn but uncertain. Head down the street. I'll update," Jon said.
Following them as they disentangled themselves from the the snarl of downtown streets took a full forty minutes. By the time Jon said, "They're headed for the Flood District," Sam had waiting for ten minutes.
"Damn," she muttered.
Past the New Gardiner Expressway, the hustle and noise of downtown faded away into the quieter, more run down strip that separated it from the actual Flood District. Too many buildings here were rubble. A pack of mangy, mostly-wild dogs scattered as Sam wove her way along a pavement - here, you could almost forget it'd been more than thirty years since the Fall.
Past all that, she stopped. More half-ruined houses and buildings stretched into the distance; the difference was the water lapping around them, coming to an end just ten feet away. She hadn't planned for how they could follow them over water; none of them had thought of the lake and the area around it. A stupid oversight.
"They're at Miller Avenue. They've come to a stop. We'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"This is going to be difficult." She said it for herself more than anyone else listening. More likely, this was going to be a disaster. Sam parked the bike, shifted the portable projector slung over her shoulder, and set off at a jog.
They'd have to improvise. At least Christian would appreciate it, she thought sourly.
The street did not end so much as it simply ran into the water. The car lurched over a crack and slid to a halt. Christian snagged the duffel and climbed out of the car, staring at the view. Concrete and mildew and lake; in the distance, white birds rose against a grey sky. Christian could think of better places in Third York to stage a haunting, but this would do.
Then he remembered Sam and the projector and almost grinned. Oh, she was going to love this.
Green stood by the edge of the water. He was still now, the kind of calm that was all tension. Linker was watching him. Christian returned the favour and asked, "Got a boat hidden somewhere? Kind of tricky getting around here, isn't it?"
"The boat we had's at the bottom of the lake now. Think you can keep up?"
Christian made a derisive noise. "Shouldn't be too hard," he said. "Maybe it'll even be a challenge."
Linker's smile was thin. "Funny," he said, turning away. "Hwang used to say that a lot too."
The terrain was unpredictable - steel girders bridged brick and mortar islands, still furnished rooms (rotten and overgrown) with their ceilings ripped off. Finding a whole rooftop was a plateau. A rusted chain broke under Christian's weight and nearly dropped him into the untested depths. He swore, twisted in midair and just caught the crumbling edge of a roof with a hand.
They came to the remains of a skyscaper, broken in half so what had once been its peak lay sprawled across almost half the district, stretched out into the clearer lake waters. What had once been a mirrored wall of windows and steel had become a minefield of twisted steel and jagged glass. Green picked out a clear path and they followed him to the end of the tower.
"So this is it, huh," Christian said, before anyone could speak.
"It's all yours, kid," Linker said with an ironic flourish.
Christian stepped to the edge and eyed the water. If it had been clearer, it might have been possible to see the boat or body. Then, feeling Linker's eyes on his back like a tracer beam, he stared at the landscape. Still no sign of Sam. If she'd been stupid enough to drown herself somewhere, the least she could have done was scream so he'd know he could cut the charade.
"You guys went to a hell of a lot of trouble just to hide the body. Most people just drop them over the bridge or bury 'em," he said out loud.
"You're not here to ask questions."
He bared his teeth at them. "I'm not the only one with questions."
Dropping the bag at his feet, he kneeled and rummaged in it to fish out a long black and silver rosary and a plastic bottle of holy water that wasn't (Sam had drawn a line at stealing the real thing and it wasn't like anyone could tell the difference). A dead man's photograph, a box of chalk and a censer with its long chain.
Christian lit the censer, but left it on the ground. No need for that yet. What he had now was time to buy until Sam either got her act together, wherever she was, or he ran out of patience, which he figured would happen in another ten minutes. Meanwhile, they watched him.
He sketched a six-pointed star on what passed for ground here, big enough for a man to stand in its center. A breeze off the lake ruffled his hair and Green started.
"Is he here?" the older man suddenly asked, quiet. Christian looked at him, but he was staring out at the lake.
"Close enough," Christian said, cryptic.
"Close enough? I thought they were everywhere," Linker muttered.
For someone who spent most of his time talking to hallunications, Linker was a fucking annoying skeptic.
"So he's got a bad sense of timing. Being dead does that to you." He gave the chalk star a diffident sprinkle with the water, then gestured until the two men stepped into place, Green on one point of the star, Linker on the point opposite.
The harsh caw of a crow broke the silence at last. Christian didn't smile.
About time.
He fingered the rosary, closed his eyes and started muttering pidgin Latin. He counted seventeen beads before a choked exclamation made him open his eyes.
Linker stumbled back for a startled moment before he made himself freeze; Green was pale but strangely calm now that it'd come to this.
"Hwang," he breathed.
The man standing in the center of the chalk star blinked but his expression didn't change; the hollow eyes, the grim set of his mouth.
"Is this what you wanted?"
The voice whipped on the wind around them, came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Linker's eyes shifted uneasily.
"What do you want?" he bit out.
Hwang flickered out, then back. "I trusted you," he hissed.
Green swallowed. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Linker laughed, bitter. "Maybe you are. I'm not. You trusted us? Not enough to tell us who you were."
"How?" the wind asked.
"We got an offer we couldn't refuse. Know how much you're worth on the market? Used to be. A hell of a lot."
Hwang's image vanished - then appeared again behind Linker who swore and spun around.
"Who?" the ghost asked. "Who? Who--" The voice rose to a scream and Linker flinched back.
"Fuck off!" he yelled at the air. "Fuck off!"
"It was Malone's gang," Green said. "If we said no they'd have killed us anyway, we couldn't--"
"They'll kill you anyway," Hwang breathed, and faded away.
Silence.
The censer had burned itself out. Christian hooked it up with a foot and said, to no one in particular, "That could have gone worse."
Linker turned to him with a movement that should have given him whiplash.
"You," he snarled.
Christian looked at him, eyebrows raised. "You wanted more fire and brimstone? Hell to clean up--"
"This was a set up!"
Maybe he blinked, and maybe the split second made all the difference. "I don't know what you think--"
"Linker," Green said and gripped his partner by the arm. "Calm down, this isn't the time--"
"I don't know how but it has to be. And even if it's not, he knows too much. If the news gets out we're dead."
Christian knew where this was going: nowhere good. The censer's chain was a good weight in his hand; he hefted it and swirled it around his head with one smooth movement, then sent it crashing at Linker's head - or where it would have been if he hadn't thrown himself to the ground.
Green swore and fired the same moment Christian realised he'd drawn his gun. He hurled the censer at him with a wild swing just as a movement behind Green made him blink.
Sam scythed Green's legs out from under him just as Christian kicked the revolver from Linker's grip. He could have handled them both, guns or no; with Sam there, it wasn't even a contest. When he looked up, she was examining the two unconscious men with narrowed eyes.
"So do we kill them or leave them for someone else to take care of?"
She transferred the stare to him. "Killing is not in the contract," she said, acid. "This was supposed to be a quiet job."
"We got the information, didn't we? I guess we could drag them back and keep them somewhere till they're needed. I bet Madam Lee would fork a good tip for these two."
"If she wanted them she wouldn't have bothered with us," Sam pointed out. "It's going to take forever to just drag them out of the district..."
They caught the movement of Green's hand too late. He'd heaved himself up and hurled a small black device into the water by the time they turned.
"They'll never find the body," he said to them, even as low roar rippled beneath their feet, deep in the water.
"They rigged this with explosives? Shit, and I thought you were paranoid," Christian said, and Sam couldn't tell if he was disgusted that he hadn't thought of it earlier, or pleased at the prospect of more dramatic destruction.
No time to retrieve the projector; even less time to try and retrieve the three speakers she'd managed to plant in the vicinity.
"Last one back puts up with the princess and tells her the full story," Christian said, but Sam hadn't waited. He swore as she took a running jump off the skyscaper, then ran like hell and followed.
Sam won the race, but Christian had already won the point. His plan worked, didn't it?
The convent on the city outskirts was deserted, the grounds long lost under weeds and decay. Sam picked her way through the path to the chapel and let herself in. Contrary to appearances, the interior was clean and well-kept. The air was still and dusty, the light falling through the stained glass windows (miraculously intact) dim.
Two candles were burning at the altar, but Sam only sat herself in the last pew by the door and closed her eyes. Breathed the heavy air in. It was another fifteen minutes before the door behind her opened again. She opened her eyes and turned.
The woman by the door wore a white suit, mourning colour for Third York's triads. Her hair coiled ink black at the nape of her neck, and there was a hard, almost brittle quality to her careful calm. "The information?"
Sam flashed a memory card. "There were... complications. But we have everything else."
The woman nodded. "Payment will be made by the usual methods."
"And the opium den incident?"
The woman smiled then, thin-lipped but almost amused. "An unfortunate accident. Your names will not be remembered."
Sam nodded and stood. "It's been a pleasure working with you," she said politely, if not entirely truthfully.
"And you. Maybe we will find better reasons to remember you in future."
A chilling, if lucrative, prospect. Sam met her stare with bland calm herself. "I'm sure we look forward to it."
When the door closed behind the woman, she let out a breath and rubbed her eyes. The lady of the Lee had found her vengeance. By morning, more than fifty men and women would be dead in the streets.
the end
email: dreamsmoke [at] gmail.com
"I've got a plan," Christian said.
That was the first sign. Christian's idea of a 'good plan' usually ended in maimed people and the terrorising of innocent bystanders. His idea of a 'really good plan' usually ended in the destruction of public property, preferably with explosives.
Sam looked up. He looked pleased. Too pleased. That was the second sign. He'd also tipped his chair back to balance on two wheels while one grey-socked foot thumped an impatient tattoo on the table, and he'd dismantled their last functioning mechanical pencil.
She sighed. "No."
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, what, and you have a better plan, great leader?"
"I like plans that don't have us getting arrested every other week."
"Look, that thing with the Aztec death cult thingy wasn't my fault. And it's not like they held us for more than a day."
She glared. "I was talking about the time when eight traids tried to kill us. I could also mention the time you set an opium den on fire, or even the illegal mutant animal dealers--"
"That was your idea."
"It wasn't my idea to sell Jon to the circus."
"And look how well that--"
She lifted her corner of the table just enough to throw his foot off balance and he vanished with a howl and what sounded like the fifth broken office chair of the month.
"And you can get a new one from the junkyard yourself," she added.
"Fuck you," he said from under the table.
Sam ignored him and rubbed a tired hand over her eyes. She'd sectioned the table - maps in one corner, photographs covering the right side, the left corner piled with newspaper clippings, and a pile of photocopied documents set neatly in the center. She tapped a pen on a folder with Jon's printouts of all their related activity and observations and stared at her notebook. It was flipped to a clean, blank page.
Waiting for their next step. This would have fine if she'd had a next step in mind that would get them somewhere - but she didn't.
That was the third bad sign: when she ran out of plans.
Christian was swearing and kicking the wreckage of the chair out from under him. He didn't deign to sit up; Sam didn't bother checking to see what he was doing. If they were lucky, he'd get bored and go to sleep.
"So we spend another two weeks on 'surveillance,' meaning we watch them pick up fifteen minute hookers and the groceries, both of which we can't afford."
No such luck.
"Fuck it. We should just make the assholes tell us where the body is."
Sam knew they were going to regret this. She took a deep breath and began absently piecing the pencil back together from its remains. The spring hadn't rolled off the table, so they still had a semi-functioning pencil.
"So what's your idea? Torture the information out of them? It's not on the list of options." She pushed the chair back to look under the table.
He gave her a filthy grin. "Ghosts."
"Ghosts." Her tone was perfectly flat. If Christian's idea didn't make sense, at least she didn't have to worry about it getting them arrested.
He sat up and dusted himself off. "Remember what Thuoc said? Old Green goes to Mass and does the whole confession thing and shit. And what's he got on his conscience?"
"We'll tell them a ghost story."
Marcus Green was, among other things: a thief, a petty thug, a failure as a father, an alcoholic and too old for this shit. What he wasn't: in jail or dead. He figured that had to count for something; it had to mean he wasn't completely stupid.
They were being watched.
That wasn't all that special in itself. People watched people watch people a lot in this line of work. Having an eye on the right guy at the right time kept you alive.
But this was... different.
The glass was slick in his hand, the beer ran bitter down his throat. The pub was filled, but not crowded enough to be dangerous. Yet. Alcohol fumes and cigarette smoke hung thick in the air, but he'd stopped noticing it years ago, and even the pounding music and noise and raised voices didn't register tonight.
Behind the bar, they kept a clock propped up on a shelf with a brick. The face was grimy and for most of the ten years he'd known the Cadium, he'd figured it was broken. It wasn't. And he was waiting.
Tick.
The minute hand struck 11.03pm. His tongue felt dry and maybe, maybe, tonight would be different...
The power blacked out with a dying wheeze from the air conditoner. The music snapped out, all the better to hear the murmur of irritation that ran through the far.
"Bleeding Virgin on a stick, that's the third time this week!" someone shouted, and a glass somewhere shattered.
Then a breath of icy air brushed the back of his neck and he could have sworn he heard a voice--
Remember the last time?
He froze for one interminable moment of horror, then kicked his chair over and spun.
"Who's there?" he hissed.
The green glow of the exit sign flared into life. A full minute later, the rest of the lights finally flickered and then blinded the room.
Marcus reached for his knife but - Blue Mother, what use was a knife going to be against a dead man?
"Woah, put that down, man. My night's bad enough without guts on the floor."
He had to shake his head to clear the haze of blind panic that threatened to override it. Blinking in the light, he glared at the young man at the table across him. His blond hair looked dirty in the poor light, and his hard eyes managed to look quizzical and bored at the same time.
"You okay? You look like you saw a ghost," he said. "Sit down or something."
For a very long moment, he stared at the young man. He swallowed. "Shut up," he said, then groped for his glass and threw its remaining contents down his throat. Reaching down, he dragged his chair back up and sat down heavily.
At least a third of the bar's former patrons had left, leaving enough room that it felt almost open. No one had bothered to start the sound system up again; no one came here for the music. Those who remained had barely bothered to look up from their drinks. Power outages didn't happen this often or regularly, but they happened often enough that no one blinked anymore.
Far from taking the hint, the young man had somehow shifted his chair so he was almost beside him. Before Marcus snarl, he said, from the corner of his mouth, "Been having some trouble lately, Mister?"
Linker would've said it didn't mean anything, the way Cadium had blacked out three times this week. It didn't mean anything that it happened at the exact same time every night - the same time they'd met Hwang for that last meeting.
And it didn't mean anything that he'd staggered home yesterday to find every single mirror and picture frame in his new apartment shattered, or how three mornings ago his printer had spent an hour printing a dead man's photo, over and over again.
Trouble. Blue Mother, he knew what he'd done.
"What do you know about it, boy?" The young man turned to look at him and then froze, Marcus' knife at his throat.
"You could say someone told me about it," he muttered. "I came to pass a message." He didn't look as nervous as he should have been with steel pressed to his neck. If anyone else in the bar noticed their conversation, they showed no sign of it.
"Who are you? And who the hell sent you?"
"It's kinda hard to talk, you know."
Marcus met his eyes for a long, taut minute - then drew the knife back. Not completely, but enough to let him move almost comfortably.
"Who are you?" he demanded again.
"My name's Jonathan. Tell me, Mr. Green. Do you believe in ghosts?"
Yes - No - How in Blue Mother did he know his name?
He felt his phone hum in his pocket. Pulling it out, eyes still fixed on Mike, he thumbed the dial.
"Marcus."
He nearly dropped the phone. "Linker? What--"
"I believe you. Fuck, I believe you. I saw him."
"Agent Shadow, Team Delta is in place. Report your position, Agent--"
"Angel? I'm at the cafe across the street. Do you really have to do that?"
They'd parked the van in an abandoned garage on the outskirts of the warehouse district. Left in command of the driver's seat, Angel twirled a strand of hair around a finger and examined the empty street.
"But what if someone taps the connection?" she said. "It could ruin everything, right? Anyway, I always wanted to be a spy--"
"I think our targets are a bit busy to tap the line of someone they don't realise is watching them," Sam's voice was dry. "How are things on your side?"
Any partition between the back of the van and the seats in front had been removed long before Chimera Investigations had rescued the wreck from a junkyard. Angel could just make out Jon's crouched figure in the mess of hardware and wires they'd somehow managed to fit.
"How's it going?" she called. When he didn't reply, she leaned over. "Joooooon. Sam's asking."
He started. "Ah. Setup's done, connections set," he said. "Was just running through the holographic simulations one last time..."
"He says the setup's done! He's just checking the holograph. You know, you should've just let me be the ghost, that would have worked just as--"
"Angel, all the makeup in the world is not going to make you look like the ghost of a 40-year-old man. Traffic around St Mike's is bad so don't move until I give the go-ahead. If we're lucky, it won't be necessary at all."
"But what if something goes wrong? I'm great at improv."
"With Christian around, I think we'll have all the improvisation we'll need."
Angel laughed. "How's Christian anyway?"
"He's waiting on the steps. We should have five more minutes before they arrive."
From the corner of her eye, Angel caught the faint glow of the holograph. Projected in miniature, a dark-haired man with a hawk-like nose and blank eyes hung in the air.
"Is this what you wanted?" he mouthed. Angel knew the words - She'd written them. Headphones over his ears, Jon frowned as the holograph finshed his speech and then vanished. He'd somehow managed to tangle a wire in his short, pale hair. Leaning over the seat, Angel brushed a finger down the back of his neck, then fished the wire off.
He jumped, and barely stifled a yelp. Ripping the headphones off, he spun, caught Angel's grin, and froze.
"Gotcha!" She dangled the wire at him from her finger.
Maybe he flushed red; it was hard to tell in the darkness.
Sam's voice snapped through the headset. "Targets have arrived in a car and Christian's in. I'm off."
Christian tossed the duffel into the car and slid into the backseat after it. The car smelled new, chemical, and the seats were covered in real leather - or at least, it looked real enough for him. Oh yeah, they'd done well for themselves alright.
Green sat in the passenger seat. He hadn't said a word, but even from the back, Christian could see the quick movement of his hands as they fingered a rosary of worn black beads. He turned to the driver's seat.
"Adam Linker?" he said.
Adam Linker wore his red hair long and tied back. An unlit joint hung from the corner of his mouth. Next to Marcus' grey hair and grey suit, they didn't look like people who would've given each other the time of the day, never mind partners for three years and counting.
Linker twisted around to eyeball Christian over a flashy pair of sunglasses. He looked more sober and alert than Christian had ever seen him in two week's worth of surveillance. Hell, you could even say he looked reasonably intelligent today.
"So you're our exorcist," he said,
"Jonathan Chabon, at your service," he drawled.
The car pulled away from the kerb with a sharp turn and a cacophony of angry honking. Christian watched a delivery bike swerve wildly to avoid them and grinned when the biker shook her fist and swore after them. There was something to be said for doing well for yourself - hell, make that a lot to be said.
"So what do you do with yourself, Chabon? Passing messages for the restless dead from the goodness of your heart can't pay too well."
"This and that," he said vaguely. "And you'd be surprised. People get really generous when they think it buys them peace."
"And does it?"
Christian gave him a bland stare. "Could depend on the dead and what you did to piss them off."
Linker's eyebrows rose and he shrugged. "Look, I tell it like I see it. And you know what? The dead are everywhere. Just be glad you can't see them and most of them aren't paying attention to you."
He didn't bother to add: Except for this one.
Murder had to rank pretty high on the list of ways to really piss a man off.
Linker's smile was thin. "Aren't we lucky," he said.
If Sam had been here, she would have called that a bad sign. Step softly, bail at the first sign of trouble, abort the case if necessary. Luckily, all Sam had was a mic tapped under his shirt and no line of vision. Christian leaned back and smiled.
Traffic around St Mike's Cathedral was dense enough that when the silver car pulled away from the curb with a reckless swerve and a screech of burning rubber, audible swearing followed. It also meant that getting from one end of the street to the other took a good ten minutes, more than enough time for Sam to toss her change on the table, grab the beat up motorcycle Christian liked to think of as his, and slide into the tangle of cars and bikes and trishaws herself.
In the jam, it would have been easy to lose them, but Sam didn't have to trace them by sight - or risk being seen at all. She turned into the nearest through alley, under lines of washing and dodging what looked like a makeshift open-air kitchen, until she hit the next street.
She skid to a stop. "Positon?"
"Almost at the junction, could be making a left turn but uncertain. Head down the street. I'll update," Jon said.
Following them as they disentangled themselves from the the snarl of downtown streets took a full forty minutes. By the time Jon said, "They're headed for the Flood District," Sam had waiting for ten minutes.
"Damn," she muttered.
Past the New Gardiner Expressway, the hustle and noise of downtown faded away into the quieter, more run down strip that separated it from the actual Flood District. Too many buildings here were rubble. A pack of mangy, mostly-wild dogs scattered as Sam wove her way along a pavement - here, you could almost forget it'd been more than thirty years since the Fall.
Past all that, she stopped. More half-ruined houses and buildings stretched into the distance; the difference was the water lapping around them, coming to an end just ten feet away. She hadn't planned for how they could follow them over water; none of them had thought of the lake and the area around it. A stupid oversight.
"They're at Miller Avenue. They've come to a stop. We'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"This is going to be difficult." She said it for herself more than anyone else listening. More likely, this was going to be a disaster. Sam parked the bike, shifted the portable projector slung over her shoulder, and set off at a jog.
They'd have to improvise. At least Christian would appreciate it, she thought sourly.
The street did not end so much as it simply ran into the water. The car lurched over a crack and slid to a halt. Christian snagged the duffel and climbed out of the car, staring at the view. Concrete and mildew and lake; in the distance, white birds rose against a grey sky. Christian could think of better places in Third York to stage a haunting, but this would do.
Then he remembered Sam and the projector and almost grinned. Oh, she was going to love this.
Green stood by the edge of the water. He was still now, the kind of calm that was all tension. Linker was watching him. Christian returned the favour and asked, "Got a boat hidden somewhere? Kind of tricky getting around here, isn't it?"
"The boat we had's at the bottom of the lake now. Think you can keep up?"
Christian made a derisive noise. "Shouldn't be too hard," he said. "Maybe it'll even be a challenge."
Linker's smile was thin. "Funny," he said, turning away. "Hwang used to say that a lot too."
The terrain was unpredictable - steel girders bridged brick and mortar islands, still furnished rooms (rotten and overgrown) with their ceilings ripped off. Finding a whole rooftop was a plateau. A rusted chain broke under Christian's weight and nearly dropped him into the untested depths. He swore, twisted in midair and just caught the crumbling edge of a roof with a hand.
They came to the remains of a skyscaper, broken in half so what had once been its peak lay sprawled across almost half the district, stretched out into the clearer lake waters. What had once been a mirrored wall of windows and steel had become a minefield of twisted steel and jagged glass. Green picked out a clear path and they followed him to the end of the tower.
"So this is it, huh," Christian said, before anyone could speak.
"It's all yours, kid," Linker said with an ironic flourish.
Christian stepped to the edge and eyed the water. If it had been clearer, it might have been possible to see the boat or body. Then, feeling Linker's eyes on his back like a tracer beam, he stared at the landscape. Still no sign of Sam. If she'd been stupid enough to drown herself somewhere, the least she could have done was scream so he'd know he could cut the charade.
"You guys went to a hell of a lot of trouble just to hide the body. Most people just drop them over the bridge or bury 'em," he said out loud.
"You're not here to ask questions."
He bared his teeth at them. "I'm not the only one with questions."
Dropping the bag at his feet, he kneeled and rummaged in it to fish out a long black and silver rosary and a plastic bottle of holy water that wasn't (Sam had drawn a line at stealing the real thing and it wasn't like anyone could tell the difference). A dead man's photograph, a box of chalk and a censer with its long chain.
Christian lit the censer, but left it on the ground. No need for that yet. What he had now was time to buy until Sam either got her act together, wherever she was, or he ran out of patience, which he figured would happen in another ten minutes. Meanwhile, they watched him.
He sketched a six-pointed star on what passed for ground here, big enough for a man to stand in its center. A breeze off the lake ruffled his hair and Green started.
"Is he here?" the older man suddenly asked, quiet. Christian looked at him, but he was staring out at the lake.
"Close enough," Christian said, cryptic.
"Close enough? I thought they were everywhere," Linker muttered.
For someone who spent most of his time talking to hallunications, Linker was a fucking annoying skeptic.
"So he's got a bad sense of timing. Being dead does that to you." He gave the chalk star a diffident sprinkle with the water, then gestured until the two men stepped into place, Green on one point of the star, Linker on the point opposite.
The harsh caw of a crow broke the silence at last. Christian didn't smile.
About time.
He fingered the rosary, closed his eyes and started muttering pidgin Latin. He counted seventeen beads before a choked exclamation made him open his eyes.
Linker stumbled back for a startled moment before he made himself freeze; Green was pale but strangely calm now that it'd come to this.
"Hwang," he breathed.
The man standing in the center of the chalk star blinked but his expression didn't change; the hollow eyes, the grim set of his mouth.
"Is this what you wanted?"
The voice whipped on the wind around them, came from nowhere and everywhere at once. Linker's eyes shifted uneasily.
"What do you want?" he bit out.
Hwang flickered out, then back. "I trusted you," he hissed.
Green swallowed. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Linker laughed, bitter. "Maybe you are. I'm not. You trusted us? Not enough to tell us who you were."
"How?" the wind asked.
"We got an offer we couldn't refuse. Know how much you're worth on the market? Used to be. A hell of a lot."
Hwang's image vanished - then appeared again behind Linker who swore and spun around.
"Who?" the ghost asked. "Who? Who--" The voice rose to a scream and Linker flinched back.
"Fuck off!" he yelled at the air. "Fuck off!"
"It was Malone's gang," Green said. "If we said no they'd have killed us anyway, we couldn't--"
"They'll kill you anyway," Hwang breathed, and faded away.
Silence.
The censer had burned itself out. Christian hooked it up with a foot and said, to no one in particular, "That could have gone worse."
Linker turned to him with a movement that should have given him whiplash.
"You," he snarled.
Christian looked at him, eyebrows raised. "You wanted more fire and brimstone? Hell to clean up--"
"This was a set up!"
Maybe he blinked, and maybe the split second made all the difference. "I don't know what you think--"
"Linker," Green said and gripped his partner by the arm. "Calm down, this isn't the time--"
"I don't know how but it has to be. And even if it's not, he knows too much. If the news gets out we're dead."
Christian knew where this was going: nowhere good. The censer's chain was a good weight in his hand; he hefted it and swirled it around his head with one smooth movement, then sent it crashing at Linker's head - or where it would have been if he hadn't thrown himself to the ground.
Green swore and fired the same moment Christian realised he'd drawn his gun. He hurled the censer at him with a wild swing just as a movement behind Green made him blink.
Sam scythed Green's legs out from under him just as Christian kicked the revolver from Linker's grip. He could have handled them both, guns or no; with Sam there, it wasn't even a contest. When he looked up, she was examining the two unconscious men with narrowed eyes.
"So do we kill them or leave them for someone else to take care of?"
She transferred the stare to him. "Killing is not in the contract," she said, acid. "This was supposed to be a quiet job."
"We got the information, didn't we? I guess we could drag them back and keep them somewhere till they're needed. I bet Madam Lee would fork a good tip for these two."
"If she wanted them she wouldn't have bothered with us," Sam pointed out. "It's going to take forever to just drag them out of the district..."
They caught the movement of Green's hand too late. He'd heaved himself up and hurled a small black device into the water by the time they turned.
"They'll never find the body," he said to them, even as low roar rippled beneath their feet, deep in the water.
"They rigged this with explosives? Shit, and I thought you were paranoid," Christian said, and Sam couldn't tell if he was disgusted that he hadn't thought of it earlier, or pleased at the prospect of more dramatic destruction.
No time to retrieve the projector; even less time to try and retrieve the three speakers she'd managed to plant in the vicinity.
"Last one back puts up with the princess and tells her the full story," Christian said, but Sam hadn't waited. He swore as she took a running jump off the skyscaper, then ran like hell and followed.
Sam won the race, but Christian had already won the point. His plan worked, didn't it?
The convent on the city outskirts was deserted, the grounds long lost under weeds and decay. Sam picked her way through the path to the chapel and let herself in. Contrary to appearances, the interior was clean and well-kept. The air was still and dusty, the light falling through the stained glass windows (miraculously intact) dim.
Two candles were burning at the altar, but Sam only sat herself in the last pew by the door and closed her eyes. Breathed the heavy air in. It was another fifteen minutes before the door behind her opened again. She opened her eyes and turned.
The woman by the door wore a white suit, mourning colour for Third York's triads. Her hair coiled ink black at the nape of her neck, and there was a hard, almost brittle quality to her careful calm. "The information?"
Sam flashed a memory card. "There were... complications. But we have everything else."
The woman nodded. "Payment will be made by the usual methods."
"And the opium den incident?"
The woman smiled then, thin-lipped but almost amused. "An unfortunate accident. Your names will not be remembered."
Sam nodded and stood. "It's been a pleasure working with you," she said politely, if not entirely truthfully.
"And you. Maybe we will find better reasons to remember you in future."
A chilling, if lucrative, prospect. Sam met her stare with bland calm herself. "I'm sure we look forward to it."
When the door closed behind the woman, she let out a breath and rubbed her eyes. The lady of the Lee had found her vengeance. By morning, more than fifty men and women would be dead in the streets.
the end
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Date: 2008-02-03 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-31 04:13 am (UTC)Assuming I/fellow co-author ever get around to writing more or uh, even DEVELOPING more, this is basically one random episode in a... ridiculously big universe. Ahaha.
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Date: 2010-05-19 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 05:42 am (UTC)