The Hammer Falls Read online

HELLO, MR. HARKNESS

  appeared in stereoscopic 3-D in big red letters, hovering before him as if floating on air. “These are Heads-Up-Display lenses. Ms. Sukova requested them.”

  “Might come in handy.” Horace eased himself out of the chair, still feeling his face. “Where is everybody? How’s Tina?”

  “Her operation went splendidly. I believe Ms. Sukova said something about taking her shopping. A car is waiting for you downstairs.”

  Horace scrutinized himself in the mirror from a variety of angles. It was a strange sensation, looking out from another man’s skin. His tattoos had been covered with synth-skin.

  He stood and took a couple of steps, suddenly conscious that his entire body felt wrong. His shoulders felt hunched, his arms hanging in unfamiliar ways, his legs bowed. Some normally resting muscles felt oddly tight. “Whoa!”

  “That’s the chip feeding into your motor cortex. Posture and gait are like fingerprints to a sophisticated recognition system. Right now, you don’t even walk like yourself. It mostly works on automatic movements, like walking—”

  “Will I be able to fight?”

  “Certainly. Your muscle memory is still there. The chip works mainly in low-intensity situations.”

  Smooth blue text appeared in his HUD.

  HORACE, THIS IS BUNNY. ARE YOU UP AND AROUND?

  “Yes.”

  GOOD, GET DRESSED AND COME OUT TO THE CAR. WE NEED TO TALK.

  Bunny was leaning against the limo in the cavernous entry garage, arms crossed, chewing on her lip when Horace emerged from behind the steel door to the storage bays. The lights in the garage were dimmed to just a meager few banks of fluorescence.

  “Where’s Roxanne and Tina?” he asked.

  “Shopping. They took the Ferrari.” She appraised him for a long moment. “Not bad. I mean, your face is really well known, but the change is profound.”

  “And I walk like a caveman now.”

  “Not much change there.”

  “Funny. What’s up?”

  She gestured with her head toward a steel fire door and led him outside. The sun approached the horizon, and the day’s heat still rippled the air in every direction. The dusty, windswept alleys of the storage facility somehow gave him an unpleasant tingle. Too many this, too much that, endless chambers full of stuff its owners were unwilling to ditch or recycle but were also unwilling to jettison. A limbo for too many people’s excess junk.

  And a cover for illicit dealings.

  Bunny pointed to the downtown skyline in the distance. “See that?”

  He squinted. “See what? I’m on the verge of needing bifocals to take a piss.”

  “Those gnats swarming around downtown.”

  “You mean drones?”

  “Yeah, hundreds of them. Media drones, police drones, corporate surveillance drones, and even some bigger ones that look suspiciously like our friends from Buffalo. I’ve been popping outside occasionally trying to get a lay of the land, contact some friends, and the networks are log-jammed with drone communication traffic.”

  “I’ve never noticed this before.”

  “Well, drones are so commonplace that people don’t even think about them, except for the conspiracy-nutjob-crazies. Sometimes you have to step back and pay attention.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “How the heck should I know? Aside from the fact that we need to keep our heads down. You remember when I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to be your friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sure now. I don’t.” Her voice quavered with barely restrained fear.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  He encircled her with one arm, pulled her against his side, but she wormed away.

  “No, really,” she said. “I’m not doing this for you.” Anger found its way into her voice. “In fact, I didn’t want to come at all. But Miss Sukova is...very persuasive.”

  “What deal did she make with you?”

  “She said she would help me get my kids back. With my lock off, I can free them, protect them.”

  “That would be great.” Somehow this made him feel better, less guilty at accepting her help. Bunny was here because she had a dog in the fight.

  “The best.” She let out a long shuddering breath. “Now, leave me alone for a while.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Roxanne had booked them an ostentatious hotel room at Caesar’s to rest and prepare. Horace hadn’t been able to afford even a cot under the stairs here in over a decade, must less this marble-tiled, diamond-encrusted suite that would have made the asshole of every tin-pot CEO in South America clench with envy. Shame that he wouldn’t get to catch any sleep here.

  But what the hell? If this was to be his last night on earth, might as well drown in the luxury of the moment.

  After a long, hot shower, he stared at his new face through the fog in the bathroom mirror. With the contact lenses, he didn’t even look like a distant relative. The contact lenses were uncomfortable, unnatural. He kept half-expecting messages to pop up in his vision like thirty-meter billboards; it felt like an invisible leash tying him to Roxanne’s hand.

  A chill trickled down his arms, and he flexed his hard, meaty hands and forearms. A strange feeling to look like someone else, someone who had never been born, this massive, thick-armed bull-ape, faster than a speeding right hook, hairier than a locomotive, able to leap tall curbs in a single bound.

  The box on his chest beaded with moisture. The single dose of Go Juice remaining might well be his last hurrah.

  And if he died tomorrow, would his body ever be identified? Would word ever get out that Horace Harkness had met the Darkness once and for all? Or would he just be one of millions of unsolved disappearances pickled in a drum of vodka somewhere?

  Wrapped in a towel fluffier than an angora sheep, he stepped into his bedroom, toes luxuriating in the thick pile carpet, in time for a knock on the door.

  He cracked the door and surveyed the knockout woman looking up at him with her cat-green eyes. Brilliant auburn hair gleamed and tumbled over lithe white shoulders and a ruby-red mini-dress that fit her like a sheer silk stocking.

  “I didn’t order a hooker,” he said.

  “Fuck you, Gonad the Barbarian,” she said. “Why do you always have to treat me like a sexual object?”

  She had already been incredibly fluid and graceful, but now her movements incorporated a profound sensuality that Horace found difficult to tear his eyes away from. She moved like Roxanne now, and had gone from bombshell to nuclear warhead.

  “Why do you always show up when I’m mostly naked?” He stepped away from the door and let it swing open.

  “A deep-seated compulsion toward explosive nausea. You look different.”

  “So do you. I like redheads. On second thought, maybe I did order a hooker.”

  The smooth roundness of her cheeks had been sharpened with higher cheekbones and a chin cleft. Her button nose had been lengthened, her lips thickened. The full-sleeve tattoos covering both arms were now concealed by synth-skin. “That’s ‘million-dollar escort’ to you. Double that because you’re uglier than ever.”

  “And worth every penny.”

  She blushed.

  He let the sentiment linger between them for a moment, then said, “Did you and Roxy have a pleasant shopping trip?”

  “If by pleasant, you mean ogled by every swinging dick within a two-mile radius and forced to shop at the swankiest boutiques on the planet, the kind that charge more to sniff their leather than I make in a year.”

  He turned away from the door and moved toward the duffel bag that contained his meager supply of clothing. Facing away from her, he doffed the towel, snatched up a pair of underwear and stepped into them. “It’s a good thing you like the attention.”

  He smirked at the gasp of outrage behind him. “Why you always gotta bust my chops?” she asked.

  “Like to dish it out but can’t take it?”

  Her voice grew
nearer. “Seriously, they served us Dom Perignon while we sat there in our underwear—well, I had underwear.”

  “Nice visual.” He pulled his pants on to conceal the bulge that swelled at the thought of half-naked Tina and Roxanne sipping champagne together.

  “You’re hopeless.” Something tinged her voice that wasn’t playful banter, but a deeper, harsher judgment.

  “No, just unashamed. Got something you want to say?” He zipped up and faced her. The sensational luxury of the silk trousers caressing his legs made him appreciate Roxanne’s choice of tailors.

  His challenge pushed her back on her heels for a moment, and her new mouth worked some words around before they came out. “You did all this,” she said, “went to all this trouble, practically destroyed your life, destroyed my life, Bunny’s, Trask’s, and everybody else’s for this stripper you’re supposedly sweet on. And now while she’s in a coma—also on account of you—you’re off fucking somebody else?”

  “I’m not fucking her at this moment.”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “And you have no idea what I mean.”

  “Then enlighten me, Don Juan de Asshole!”

  “You got your head in all kinds of books. I’ll bet you even read romance novels. A bunch of naïve, romantic bullshit.”

  “This is not about my choice of reading.” She crossed her arms.

  “No, it’s about the fact that you don’t know a business transaction when you see one. Roxanne is using me. I’m using her.”

  “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”

  “I have no idea what you just said, and you have no idea where I’ve been, what I’ve done!” The swell of emotion, a wave, a lifetime of blood and sex and pain like a ragged exposed nerve, the kind of pain that had to be embraced like its own kind of twisted lover, surprised him. “You got no right to judge me.”

  She stepped back from him, wary but unafraid.

  He took a deep breath and steadied his voice. In that moment, he was struck by how young she was, how inexperienced. A few years ago, before he had dropped almost completely off the map, he’d been bedding pit girls younger than she was. So why did she seem so much more innocent and naive? “When was the last time you got laid?”

  “None of your business!”

  “Exactly.”

  She paced and stewed at this for a few moments.

  “My whole life,” he said, “I’ve been nothing but a piece of meat. So is she, and she knows it, too. I’ve seen Lilly put raw vagina in the faces of a hundred different guys so she can pay her rent. Unlike most people, I own it. So call me a little jaded.”

  “So goddamn jaded that you went off and fucked somebody while the woman you supposedly love—”

  “I never said I loved her. I ask myself all the time if I really know what that amounts to. Does anybody ever? Suppose I do? What of it?”

  She flailed clenched fists. “Then what the fuck are you even doing this for!”

  He took a deep breath, let it out, took another, and started slowly, his voice soft. “Every time I walk into the pit, it might be a friend I’m facing, somebody I drank with, joked with, trained with, chased pussy with. And my job is to kill him, and his job is to kill me. And sometimes he doesn’t come back. And for doing what I do, I get a huge payoff and women dropping from the trees. Feelings cause trouble.”

  He clutched the box on his chest. “Lilly is only the second woman who lights my fire all the way to the ground. But even if by some miracle we survive all this, I’m fifteen years older than she is, and the last time I saw her, she punched me in the face. How long you think that’s gonna last? The one and only closest thing I’ve had to a relationship disappeared with my son inside her. That poster you’ve got on your wall is more than I have of her.”

  “Must have been your sparkling personality.” Her words slashed across his face.

  He looked at her for a long moment as the guilt welled up in his throat. Then he turned away so she couldn’t see what his face was about to do.

  Her voice softened. “Over the line?”

  He swallowed hard and sat on the bed, let his voice go quiet. “The clock is ticking before they shut her off. You and me and Roxanne and Bunny, we could all be hacked to little bits by this time tomorrow. I’ve been a walking dead man for twenty-eight fucking years. I care about who I care about, and I do what I do, and that’s all there is.”

  He felt her eyes on him for a long time.

  “Look,” he said, “kid—”

  “Call me kid one more time, and I’ll eat your balls for breakfast.”

  “Fine. ‘Overconfident kid.’ You think I’m some big romantic teddy bear. You think it’s all so simple. You think there’s a happily ever after. I’m sorry I don’t subscribe to your little chivalrous, romantic notions about whose penis should go where. Truth is, I’d fuck Trask if it got me within range of Mogilevich.”

  “There’s a disturbing visual...”

  “There’s no such thing as happily ever after, so all I got is happily right now.” The words kept rolling out of him, surprising him in their volume and earnestness. “Heard a man say once that every love story ever told ends in heartbreak and tragedy, and I can vouch for that. There’s about fourteen million ‘ifs’ between now and Lilly and me riding off into the sunset, and every one of them has a toe-tag with our names hanging from it.”

  Out in the common area of the suite, the doorbell rang with a warm vibrato.

  Horace headed for the outer door, forcing Tina to step aside. In the foyer, he touched the intercom pad. “Yeah, who is it?”

  A bored male voice replied, “Delivery for Ms. Roxanne Smith.”

  “Delivery from who?”

  “Harmony Tech Industries.”

  “Leave it out there and shove off.”

  “Jesus, man, you gotta sign for it!”

  “I said, fuck off!”

  “Look, dickhead. My goggles can read your biosignature from here. You’re a big sonofabitch, what, 170 centimeters? If I had nefarious deeds planned, I would have shot you through the door. Now open up. This is my last run tonight.”

  Horace opened the door, reached out, snatched a fistful of the man’s jacket, and yanked him off his feet and into the room.

  The man yelped and stumbled, but Tina caught him in a wristlock that cranked his yelp into a squeal. “Fuck! They don’t pay me enough for this shit!”

  In the hallway outside was a robotic cart laden with blockish aluminum cases. A red light flashed on the front of the cart, and a flat, electronic voice said, “Release him or security will be notified.”

  “Yeah!” the delivery man said. “Ow!” The name embroidered on his jacket read Mitul.

  Horace sighed. “Fine. Let him go.”

  Tina released him, grinned, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Mitul shrugged away from Tina and straightened his jacket. “The fuck is wrong with you people?” He wore a baseball cap and dark metallic goggles that wrapped around his head. Without question, such headwear would incorporate full netlink feeds.

  A moment of panic sliced through Horace until he remembered that he was not Hammer Harkness anymore.

  After a moment to further compose himself, Mitul gestured to the robot. “Come in, Mippy.”

  The cart hummed through the door and stopped in the foyer, the red light on its console still flashing.

  “Stand down, Mippy,” Mitul said.

  The red light turned amber.

  Mitul snatched a datapad from the top of the load and handed it to Horace. “Index fingerprint in the blue box.”

  Horace had not yet attached the prosthetic fingertip. Tina stepped in before his hesitation became too glaring, took the datapad, applied her fingertip, and handed it back.

  Mitul waited for the screen to flash green and accept her ID. When it did, he glanced at her. “Thank you, Ms. Welch. Mippy, unload.”

  The robot’s payload platform hummed with hydraulics and servos. Fifteen seconds later
, the heavy-looking cases had been deposited on the floor.

  “And a good night to you, Ms. Welch. And you, dickhead.” Mitul pulled his cap tighter onto his head and stalked out. In the hallway, he said, “Mippy, come.”

  The robot followed him like a puppy.

  Horace shut the door.

  Tina fixed him with a simmering glare. “Mitul was an astute judge of character.”

  “Duly noted.”

  The cases contained, gently nestled in black, feather-soft foam, the kind of hardware that even Horace found difficult to wrap his mind around. Some of it was slathered in warning labels and blood-red tape that read “WARNING: DANGEROUS!” and big, black skull-and-crossbones.

  The armor grabbed his attention first. Conceptually similar to his pit fighter armor, this military-grade combat armor would cover him from toe to skull. It resembled dark gray rubber, almost like a wet suit, but with a more cloth-like feel and a number of stiff but bendable plates encasing the abdomen, back, shoulders, thighs, and shins. A battery pack about two centimeters deep was spread just under the shoulder blades.

  While Tina pored over the manuals, Horace dug into the cases like they were boxes of Christmas toys and Halloween candy. Knowing how dangerous the electro-fiber dagger had been, he touched nothing without first identifying what it was. However, he did try on the armor immediately. It fit him like a smooth, silky glove, reasonably comfortable to wear under clothes. The chest plate was uncomfortably tight over the box on his chest, but there was nothing to be done about it. The weight of the battery pack felt thick on his back, hugging his ribcage just under his shoulder blades.

  As Tina read the manuals, sitting cross-legged on the floor in workout pants, she cackled in almost diabolical glee. Over and over, she said, “Oh, my god, you won’t believe this shit!”

  After he had finished zipping and buckling the armor into place, she stepped up to him and punched him in the kidney, hard, a blow that would have doubled him over—except that the armor instantly hardened under her blow. The armor’s fibers had contracted and hardened instantaneously.

  She stepped back, shaking out her hand. “Ow. So, yeah, it’s reactive armor. The fibers are like muscle fibers that contract when it senses an incoming projectile or blow. The battery pack is recharged continually by movement and bio-electricity. You could wear it for weeks without a break.”