Russo, the attendant, looked up from filling out an invoice and squinted toward him. He was perched on a stool behind the screen, and he exuded a stale, sweaty odor from his sparse blond hair and his wrinkled gray bodysuit. Kane could smell him, and it wasn’t pleasant. Neither was Russo’s attitude.
“Whatcha got there?”
Kane hefted the mini-Uzi. “A blaster, lifted from the Pits.”
Russo peered through the screen. “An Uzi, huh?”
“Close. A mini-Uzi.”
“Kind of rare. Had a matched set in here a while back. Pristine condition. Museum quality.”
It took a second for Russo’s comment to register.
“How long a while back?” Kane asked.
“A year, maybe two. Longer than that, maybe.”
“What happened to them?”
“Transferred ’em to the armory, what the hell else?”
Kane stepped closer to the man, extending the blaster for his inspection. “Does this look like one of them?”
Russo eyed it and answered petulantly. “No, the ones I saw were green and had mustaches. Of course it looks like ’em. A mini-Uzi is a mini-Uzi.”
Kane’s icy eyes bored into his, and Russo added nervously, “Hell, Kane, there’s got to be fifty Uzis in the armory. Maybe even half a dozen of those mini jobs.”
He pointed with his pencil to Kane’s right. “Put it on the table. I’ll tag it later.”
The table in the corner was cluttered with recent acquisitions, most of it useless salvage, like home-forged single-shot pistols, knives and even a crude crossbow. Kane cleared a space and laid down the blaster. Squatting on one end of the table was a computer console, a DDC. He glanced at it, glanced away, then looked again. It was an old manual model, and he had seen it a little less than twenty-four hours ago. He knew for certain, because of the fine cracks just next to the screen, which were like a stamp of identity.
And he didn’t quite know why, but the floor seemed to split under his feet, leaving him hanging on a crumbling edge by his fingernails.
He spun toward Russo, feeling cold perspiration breaking out on his forehead. Forcing a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he asked, “When did that comp come in?”
“An hour, hour and a half ago. Why?”
“Who brought it?”
Russo consulted his invoices. “Let’s seethat guy from Intel.”
“Intel?”
“Yeah, you knowdark-complected guy”
“Morales.”
“That’s him. Why, what’s up with it?”
Kane didn’t answer. Stomach muscles quivering in adrenaline-induced spasms, he whirled and flung open the door.
“Hey! Kane!” Russo shouted after him. “What’s up?”
Half jogging, Kane hurried down the corridor and entered Intel. His eyes swept the room, and when they didn’t spy Morales, he approached the nearest tech.
“Morales is supposed to be on duty,” he said stiffly. “Where is he?”
The tech, a pock-faced, sleepy-eyed man, blinked at him owlishly. “Salvo put him on another detail. Something about historical.”
Kane darted back into the corridor and ran full out for the elevator. A clerk stood before the opening door panel, arms laden with file folders. Kane shouldered him roughly aside amid a flurry of paper and savagely punched the button for B Level. The door shut in the tech’s angry face.
The ascent took no longer than fifteen seconds, but to Kane it felt like an eternity, stretched out like a rubber band of infinite length. The elevator hissed to a stop, and Kane whipped out of it before the panel had fully rolled aside. He sprinted through the many archways, knowing his badge was attuned to the photoelectric field sensors.
He raced past doorway after doorway, past room after room filled with all the pride and glory and foolishness of the predark dead. Kane had eyes only for the living, and for the quartet of figures coming toward him beneath the final archway. They were Salvo, Morales, Waylon and a female figure. It was Brigid Baptiste.
His shocked eyes registered that her arms were held behind her at unnatural angles, bound with the standard-issue plastic riot cuffs. Her hair was disheveled and her glasses were missing. The only color about her white, stark face was from the crimson threads streaming from her nostrils, over her lips and across her chin.