by Anne Harris

In a near-future Detroit, the living polymer industry has the city in its grip. While vat-divers struggle to organize, the GeneSys Corporation works on making human workers obsolete. An escaped mutant, a con-artist and a techno-geek team up to unravel corporate blackmail, deceit and murder. One thing is certain: the city and the world will never be the same once the latest R&D development is unleashed.

Chapter 2 — The Odd Mark

Rain hissed in the magnetic field of Woodward Avenue, rising to a shrill whine with the passing of every gleaming, beetle-shaped levcar. Helix picked her way along the neglected sidewalk, the pot-hole freckled motor lane a buffer of neglect between herself and the shiny, rain slick blackness of the levway.

Like twin rivers, the maglev lanes flowed into Oz and out again, leaving the outmoded, the deadwood, in eddies along its banks.

Woodward was the first concrete highway in the United States. Automobiles weren’t invented here, but this was where they began changing the world. Now everyone who could afford it drove maglev. They were a big improvement; no pollution, no auto accidents.

Of course, not everyone could afford maglev. Rusting and battered automobiles stood parked along the side of the motor lane — Civics and Geos and Neons, their names fit for a world that had passed them by.

Although the bulk of her life had been spent in Hector Martin’s comfortable apartment in the GeneSys building, Helix had been a pedestrian before. At the orphanage every Saturday; released onto the sunbaked pavement to walk and run to the corner store to buy comic books.

In her memory, the sun was always shining, but that could not have been the case. Was the sun shining the day Matt and Tina had waited for her outside the shop and taken her Super Neutrino Man number eighty-six from her? She didn't remember. All she remembered were their vicious faces, their laughter, and the brightly colored pages fluttering torn to the cracked pavement of the sidewalk.

A sidewalk like this one, the metal screened shop fronts similar too. She was countless blocks from the tree-lined oasis of prosperity surrounding the GeneSys building, walking forgotten in a limboland of aging concrete.

Barricaded pawn-shops and living hair clinics gave way to a long stretch of defunct department store, its walls and windows coated with a thick layer of yellowish gray biopolymer paint. Plaint, as it was commonly known, was one of many materials based on matrices of organic cells which GeneSys produced.

The parked cars disappeared and maglev traffic thinned. An aged Ford Taurus rumbled down the pitted motor lane, sending up splashes of rain from numerous potholes. Its movement was labored compared to the occasional blurred whoosh of the levcars.

Helix watched the motorcar pass, lumbering into the distance at a pace still, despite its age, beyond her own. What's more, it was going someplace, which was more than she could say.

She’d left on an impulse, hoping to discover why when she got there; wherever it was she wanted to go. She was continually aware of the foolishness of it, but apparently that didn’t matter, she could not get herself to go back. Whenever she thought of it a hand — an invisible hand that she did not know — placed itself firmly on her heart and pushed her forward through the abandoned streets as it had pushed her out of Hector’s apartment door several hours ago.

Woodward led her down through the city, towards the river, past the university and the cultural center; beautiful, crumbling stone buildings shored up haphazardly, halfheartedly, with garish patches of purple and orange MasonBond.

A small group of people passed by, shaggy men and women in weather-faded greencoats and colorful knitted hats; students or squatters, or both. Helix drew in her shoulders and put her head down as they passed, but none of them seemed to pay her much mind.

She stopped in front of the Art Institute. Blank, boarded up windows stared back at her blindly, a line of polybond around each like heavy mascara, outlining their surprise at the theft of sight.

There were supposed to be people living there now, artists. The front doors were padlocked and barred and padlocked again, as if someone wanted very much for you to know you could not go in there. Before this denial brooded The Thinker, too large, too solid and permanently heavy to steal, but convenient to deface. His full body tattoo of fluorescent spray-plaint gave testimony to years of flourishing artistic expression.

She walked on, Woodward leading her visibly closer to Oz, through a district of moderate prosperity which supported clothing shops, small offices and restaurants.

She pulled Hector Martin's faded overcoat around her protectively as she passed a group of office people, chatting unceasingly with one another, oblivious to her presence. On the next corner there was a stoplight, and more people, all the time more people, and Helix took extra care that her mouth was completely shut.

A little girl in a pink biopolymer raincoat with matching hat and umbrella passed her in the intersection. As her father tugged her along, she looked at Helix with bright black eyes and smiled. But Helix didn't dare smile back.

On the next corner the neon warmth of a diner beckoned, "Fine Food," and her stomach growled on cue. It had been hours since she’d left GeneSys, aimless hours of walking. There'd be even more people inside, and in closer proximity, but she was hungry, her stomach as empty as her vacant and searching heart.

The diner smelled of coffee and frying eggs. Helix sat in a red bio-vinyl upholstered booth at the back of the restaurant, speedily demolishing a club sandwich and fries. It was warm inside, the windows fogged and sweating, but she kept the raincoat on. Nobody, including her waitress, had paid much attention to her. As she reached for her coke, the waitress reappeared, "Anything else?"

Helix shook her head, and the waitress placed a swiper on the table and walked away again. Helix stared at it as if it were a cockroach that had just crawled out from beneath the napkin dispenser. Its screen showed a total for her meal, $12.67.

A chill went through her and settled in the pit of her stomach. She shivered, despite the muggy air. Sweat stood out on her arms and neck. Hector Martin's raincoat clung to her clammy skin. She'd forgotten about money.

Helix riffled through the pockets of Hector’s overcoat, searching for the cash card she knew she’d left behind in the apartment. All she found was a useless data card. She turned it thoughtfully between her fingers, then pantomimed passing it through the slot on the swiper, carefully shielding the card with her palm so an observer would not see that she hadn’t actually run it through. She stood up and walked down the aisle, passing her waitress on the way to the door.

Helix was almost past the cash register when the waitress called out, “Ma’am, you forgot to swipe your card!” Helix plunged for the door. “Ma’am! Ma’am!” the waitress cried again, running after her.

Helix slammed her upper palms against the polyglass door, overcoming its resistance with her momentum. She plunged towards the outer door, only to be brought up short by a sudden jerk at her shoulder. She whirled around, expecting the waitress, but instead she saw the corner of her raincoat, jammed in the crack of the door behind her. Helix tugged frantically at the raincoat, but it was solidly wedged in the doorway.

The waitress barrelled towards her, a dishwasher waving his hands in her wake. She reached the door and pushed on it. Panicking, Helix pushed back and they stood there, separated by the polyglass, deadlocked. The woman scowled and shoved at the door again. It opened a crack, and Helix bent to free her coat. The bottom button had torn off, and as she stood again the coat gaped open. Turning for the outer door, she caught a glimpse of the waitress staring, her eyes wide.

Helix fled blindly down the street, running at first and then, at the stares of passersby, slowing to a brisk walk. She turned a corner, and another, but heard no footsteps following her. They weren't chasing her. She'd seen that waitress' face. They were afraid of her.

She lifted a hand to cover her mouth, and found that her face was wet. She was crying. Silent tears spilled down her face and dripped off her chin.

Behind a drugstore Helix sat on a milk crate, staring at the pavement between her shoes, seeing not the cloncrete but that waitress' face; her eyes wide, her mouth gaped in shock, in horror. She'd seen. She'd seen what Helix was, and that was why Helix was always so very careful not to be seen.

In her mind she heard the shrieks and cries of her classmates as they surrounded her on the playground, Chet and Carla and Tim and Darron darting in from the circle to each grab one of her arms and then run, around and around, laughing, spinning her until she was sick and her arm sockets were sore. She remembered the whirling faces, contorted with joyous hate, and their voices, like the harsh cries of birds, calling, calling, in monotonous cacophony, "Freak Girl! Freak Girl!" And she, the eye of the vortex, screaming back, wordlessly, just screaming and screaming, her mouth open wide to show all of them her gleaming fangs.

Hector had rescued her. His first visit came the same day as the playground incident. He brought her a comic book — Clone Avengers number ninety-eight. He didn’t talk about adoption that first day. His third visit, he asked her to be his daughter. She’d been floored, mystified, but too desperate to escape her situation to question his kindness, and she never had cause to, after she went to live with him. He worked hard, it was true, and sometimes she was lonely, but he’d given her everything he could. That it wasn’t enough was her failure, not his.

He’d been up all night last night, working on some problem, fiddling with equations on his multi-processor, his face glowing green from the numbers and symbols floating in the air before him. He called them the keys to life. She didn't understand it; remained forever curious but exactly what it was that he actually did stayed well outside her grasp. All she ever saw was the multi-processor, his fingers restlessly striking keys — a far cry from the steady rhythm of the data entry work she sometimes did. Of course that was just when he was at home. Most of the time he was at the lab, and she had never been there, even though it was in the very building where they lived. She didn't even have the door number, floor number or the transceiver extension. He couldn't be disturbed when he was in the lab, she assumed, but she'd never asked, never asked for any of those things and he had never offered them, either.

And this morning she’d stood in the hallway as he stumbled off to the shower, “Aren't you going to get some sleep?"

He smiled faintly and shook his head. "No, I've got to go in. I'll just get cleaned up and rummage something up for breakfast." His smile turned more wistful still, "sure wish we had some of those pastries around.” He loved the raspberry and cream cheese danishes the bakery downstairs made.

And so she'd donned his coat and made her sojourn down to the public level,walking across the inlaid marble floors, looking up, as always, at the frescoes that graced the arches of the ground floor gallery. She wore Hector’s raincoat then, too. She always did, when she went out. She had to stand in line at the bakery counter, surrounded by working men and women, normal men and women, waiting for their morning croissant or bagel or whatever. The clerk behind the counter barely looked up as she spoke. “Six raspberry and cream-cheese danishes, two cups of coffee," she uttered with painstaking minimalism, her lips moving as little as possible, to reveal as little as possible.

The raincoat forced her to juggle coffee cups and bag all the way to the elevators and all the way up. An elderly woman in stately blue wool smiled up at her and said, "You need three hands."

"I have more than that," she wanted to say, scream, shout. "I have more, oh, so much more than that." But she only smiled thinly in mute acknowledgement.

Hector was just coming out of the shower when she got back, vigorously toweling his coarse blond hair, his white shirt partially buttoned and sticking to his damp skin. "Hey, where'd you go?" he asked, and then spied the telltale white bag on the table. "Oh, wow, thanks. Raspberry?"

"Yeah, and coffee."

"Good, coffee," he pried off the filmseal on one of the cups and breathed in the rich steam with gratitude.

"I don't know how you do it," said Helix, "You practically live on that stuff."

Hector shook his head, and bit into a pastry, "I'm just going to put in an appearance today," he mumbled, "Graham's been paying a lot of attention to the project lately, so I'd better, but I'll come home early and get some sleep."

Helix nodded. Early, that would be before eight. "Still, you should take a vacation. You must get time off, don't you?"

"Sure, but-"

"We could take a trip somewhere, the ocean maybe. I saw a holoclip yesterday, of the pacific ocean, the waves. I'm tired of sitting around here all the time." The truth was she'd felt more and more lately like she should be someplace else, but she couldn't think where.

"Maybe you should attend university."

"I do."

"On the holonet, sure, but maybe you should attend the physical plant somewhere, Mercy or Michigan."

"Why?"

Hector shrugged, "To get to know people, you know, face to face." Suddenly uncomfortable, Hector stared at the table. "You're grown now, you know."

"You think I should move out?"

"No! No. But you could commute, to Mercy anyway. I'm an alumnus, I'm sure I could get you in."

"But I don't know what I want to do, and I don't want to waste your money."

"I've got enough."

"It just seems so extravagant, to go to school, when I can have it come to me for free. Besides, sitting in a classroom with all those people, I don't think... I'm not ready for that."

Hector gazed at her, and said nothing. "Well," he said, "I'd better be going. I'll see you later."

"Okay."

As he was leaving, she said, “Why can’t we go on vacation?”

He stopped and looked back at her from the open door, "Because then Graham would assume that I'm through with the project, and I'm not."

The door shut behind him and Helix gathered the empty cups and threw them in the trash, put the bag with the remaining pastries in it on the kitchen counter and wiped off the table. Then she flopped on the polyhide couch and switched on the holotransceiver. The prism, a thick, triangular column of glass sitting on the coffee table, glittered with reflected light from the transceiver, and the holoweb appeared before her.

She flipped aimlessly through the entertainment sector, catching fragments of old movies, bits and pieces of soaps, sitcoms and direct to network holofilms.

She selected the interactive drama subgroup and dialed in to We Are the World, her favorite soap. There was still a slot open for Natasha, and she grabbed it. Natasha was a wealthy business woman, the creator of Entranced Parfum, and a former wife of Olin Thatcher, the ruthless communications mogul. Natasha knew how to get what she wanted, always.

Today Natasha was meeting with her attorney in the murder case. She was innocent, at least that was what Helix believed. Samantha, the key witness for the prosecution, came out of one of the offices. The two women stood in the waiting room, staring at each other. "I hope you're paying him well, Natasha," said Samantha, "he's going to earn every penny defending you're worthless hide."

Helix/Natasha flashed her a tight lipped smile. "Not only is Walter West an excellent attorney, he's also a man of high principles. He's representing me because he wants to see justice done."

"Justice? You kill a man and then sleep with his wife! You call that justice?"

"You'd like to see me locked up, wouldn't you? That way I'd be out of the way, and you could move in on Amanda yourself. That's what you want, isn't it?"

"You bitch!" shouted Samantha, "I hope you fry!"

Whoever was playing Samantha was a rank amateur, to blow so quickly. They could have bandied insults for several minutes more, but now the confrontation was forced to a climax. Natasha/Helix stepped up quickly and slapped Samantha across the face. Then leaned even closer and whispered, "Don't ever talk to me like that, you little two-bit piece of gutter trash, or I'll-"

"You'll what, poison me? Like you did Lago?"

Natasha glared at her. "Think what you want, I'll have my day in court."

A secretary popped out of the office, "Ms. Ettelle? Mr. West will see you now"

Natasha looked Samantha over with withering disdain, "I have to go now."

"You haven't heard the last of this, I assure you," Samantha said to her retreating back.

By the end of the episode, Samantha was pushing for Natasha's arrest, insisting that she was violent and dangerous. Oops, thought Helix, shouldn't have slapped her. "Don't worry," said Natasha to her lawyer, "I'll think of something." Of course she, Helix, didn't have to. That was for the poor shlub that played her next.

Guilty over her dalliance, Helix switched over to the educational region and scurried down the menus to the corporate tax law seminar. As she scrolled through the most recent updates on preadjusted deficit deductions, she reached over to the end table, picked up a nail file and smoothed the rounded edges of her fingernails. She liked to keep her nails in good shape. Sometimes she painted them and sat in front of the mirror in her room, legs crossed, back arched, arms waving like seaweed, hands dancing like schools of little red fish.

An hour was about all she could take of tax laws. Helix climbed back out of the educational well and accessed her mail. A few pieces of direct mail had wormed their way past her filters, too-bland-to-be-real faces assuring her of the benefits of subscription to one or another access group. One didn’t even bother with the pretense of personal communication, showing simply a vista of palm trees and brilliant blue surf. A voice over said, "Isle Oblique, it's better than being there."

Helix dumped these messages and moved on to a letter from a friend, a text file. “Good morning, Helix, it’s Night Hag. What you been up to? Call me.”

Helix dialed Night Hag’s number. Her page circuit was open, but she didn’t answer until the seventh beep. “Helix, hi.” The holographic image of a slender woman with long, straight dark hair and olive toned skin appeared before Helix. She was reclining on a white vat leather chair. She wore black jeans, a black leather jacket, and round, opaque sunglasses.

“How do you like it?”

Oh, Helix liked it. A lot. “It’s cool.”

Night Hag grinned. “Cool would be what? Menacing? Dangerous? Chilled?”

“Dangerous, tough.”

“Oh good. Tough is good.”

The last time Helix had “seen” Night Hag, she was blond and dressed in leopard skins and white silk. The time before that she was a man in spats and a fedora. Night Hag changed constructs a lot. A lot of people did. It was easy, just pick out an image from the zillions of pictures in warehouses all over the net. There were even clubs you could join, Face of the Month, Columbia House, Backgrounds R Us. What you saw when you talked to someone on the net was no indication of what that person actually looked like. Some people felt it set them free to express who they really were. Helix had used constructs a few times, but she hadn’t felt that way. She’d felt as if she were hiding, which of course she was. She was always hiding. Kind of takes the entertainment value out of it, and so she preferred a blank mask. Let them use their imaginations; she could be secure in the knowledge that whatever they dreamed up, it would not be the truth.

“So what’s up?” asked Helix.

“That’s what I was going to ask you. I haven’t heard from you in days. You don’t write, you don’t call. What, you can’t pick up the transceiver?”

“There just hasn’t been much to say. Nothing’s going on, that’s all.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. A young woman like you, with nothing to do. That’s too bad. You oughta get out more.”

“I don’t like out.”

“How do you know? When was the last time you actually left that apartment?”

“This morning, actually.”

“Really?” Night Hag’s construct raised its eyebrows in surprise. “Where did you go?”

Helix pursed her lips. “I went down to the first floor lobby to buy danishes.”

Night Hag’s construct shook its head and rolled its eyes. “Oh, Helix. Dear. You have got to get over this. I know you have a good relationship with your father and all, but, you’re a grown woman. Get out of there! Get some independence.”

“Why should I go anywhere? I’ve got the whole world right here in my living room.”

“No, no you don’t. The net, it’s lies and illusions, mostly. You think you know me. You think we’re friends. But you have no idea what I really look like, and for all you know, I’ve made up everything I’ve ever told you about myself. If we were in the same room together talking, there’d be a whole second conversation going on. One that we can’t have, not even with the constructs, maybe not even with true visual contact. The conversation between our bodies and our faces, the sensation of sharing space and time. That’s what’s out there, Helix. That’s why you have to go, because that’s where the truth is.”

Helix laughed ruefully. “You sound like my father. He was just this morning talking about me going to school on an actual campus.”

Night Hag’s construct tilted its head thoughtfully. “School, hmm. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know,” Helix sighed with exasperation. “I don’t know what I want.”

“But you want something, don’t you?”

“Y-yes,” Helix admitted, “only I don’t know what.”

“That’s why you should get out of there. You’ll never know as long as you remain dependent on Hector. Maybe you should get a job. Live independently for a while.”

“Oh yeah, jobs are just falling from the sky out there. You checked the unemployment rate lately? It’s still holding steady at fifty percent.”

“What about vatdiving? They’re always hiring people for that. And you live in Detroit, where most of the plants are. I bet you could get a job diving without even using Dr. Martin’s influence.”

“He wouldn’t like it. He probably wants me to do something more, you know, cerebral.”

“But the point is not what he wants, it’s what you want.”

“I don’t -”

“Know what you want. I know. So don’t look at it as a career, look at it as a stepping stone.”

Helix thought about it. Actually, it had a certain appeal. Of course the drawback was that she’d have to be around people, but Night Hag was right, she needed to get over that, too. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in this apartment, living off the generosity of a man who had already given her more than anyone could expect. Helix imagined herself floating in a great vat of growth medium, swimming through the viscous liquid, scooping out impurities and gently harvesting sheets of living polymer. It was dangerous work. Tales of vatsickness were detailed and grotesque, but it was practically the only unskilled labor you could get paid for, these days, and if she just did it for a little while, until she figured out what she wanted to do with herself, then she’d probably be okay. Vatsickness mostly struck people who’d been diving for ten years or more. “But you know,” she said, giving voice to her fears, “I don’t like people to see me.”

“I know. But you shouldn’t care. There’s nothing wrong with you. That bad time you had, before, when you were younger, that was kids, Helix. Grown people aren’t that bad, and besides, fuck them. You have to live your life.”

“You’re probably right,” she said with more conviction than she felt, “I’ve got to go now.” Helix switched off her holotransceiver and paced the living room floor, absently scratching her ribs. She went into her bedroom, threw herself onto her unmade bed and stared at the ceiling. She was bored, she realized, bored and itchy, her skin acting up again like it did when she got this way.

Maybe she should go to school, as Hector suggested, but the thought of sitting in a classroom made her blood run cold. Besides, there was nothing she really wanted to do. She took the tax law seminars because Hector had suggested it, and she felt she owed him something.

He had been more than kind to her, opening his home to her, becoming her father. She could never repay that, but she could, at least, refrain from being a burden to him for the rest of her life.

She got up, went into the bathroom and started running a bath, but the rushing water was not what she wanted either. She turned off the taps and wandered into the living room again, switched on the holotransceiver again, but this time she opened Hector's directory, instead of her own. She accessed his personal records, called up the adoption files, and opened her birth certificate.

The document hung in the air roughly two feet from her face. She was born at 10:19 AM on March 12, 2022, in Harper Hospital. Her biological parents were Mabel and Owen Harvey. Of course she'd heard the story. Hector had told her. She was the child of vatdivers. But Owen had died in an industrial accident while Mabel was pregnant, and economic necessity had forced her to give up her daughter. Helix knew all about that, but somehow, it didn’t answer the question of who she was.

That was when she left. She switched off the transceiver, took Hector’s coat from the hook by the door, and went out.

oOo

By afternoon, the weather had soured, and Chango, who had dallied the sunshine away at the Russell and in Palmer Field, found herself driving her old Chevy down to the hectic, gaudy streets of Greektown, where she parked under an overpass to protect the eternally top-down convertible from the rain.

She stood under the awning of a pachinco parlor, studying the street from beneath the rim of her second-hand biopolymer rain hat. It was bad weather for scanning, but she was out of cash, and Mavi had just yesterday mentioned how she was running out of food. She planned to crash there tonight, and she felt like something a little better than peanut butter and rice for dinner. Besides, as often as she was over there, Mavi could charge her rent, but she never did, never hassled her to get a real job either. They’d known each other forever, ever since she was a kid, and Mavi was her big sister’s lover.

But this street-corner hanging was getting nowhere. With the rain, people were just moving too damn fast to scan them. She'd have to go inside somewhere and hope that the swiper in her coat pocket would go unnoticed.

It was one thing to stand out in the street, catching whatever came your way and dodging the eyecard carriers, but if you went in someplace, and got caught, then you had to deal with the proprietor and the police.

Chango crossed the street and went into the Pegasus Hotel and Casino. She stood in the foyer, dripping wet and fumbling with the clasps of her raincoat. The door man scowled at her. The Pegasus pretty much let anybody in, that's why she was there, but they let you know they weren't happy about it.

Chango shrugged off his glare and went down the steps to the casino, losing herself in the crowd. The scanner in her raincoat pocket bumped lightly against her side as she wove her way through the throngs of gamblers clustered around the tables. The air was a warm, hazy soup of reefer smoke and damp bodies. She made her way to the bar, lit a reefer, and ordered a coke.

Swiveling in her stool, she leaned back against the bar and took in the action. Someone was on a roll at table five, black jack. The crowd there was denser than at the other tables, and stiff with expectancy. Hungry eyes surveyed the table as the dealer laid down the second round.

The focus of their attention was the player second to the right of the dealer. Over the craned heads of onlookers Chango just made out a head of feathery blond hair, but that was all. She couldn't see the pile of chips on the table — she didn't need to. The eyes of the spectators told her it was big, and growing. Chango examined the fringe of the crowd. An elderly woman in a gold lame turban sipped vodka from a fluted glass and glanced periodically around the room — security, the turban was armor. A young man watched the dealer with the patience of a veteran. Two women in matching glitter body suits whispered to each other and laughed. And there, beside them, a middle-aged man, his mouse-brown hair receding at the temples, stood rapt, following the deal of the cards, licking his lips as the players called their bets.

Chango set her glass down on the bar, half drained, stubbed out her smoke and walked towards him at an oblique angle, her body facing the main flow of the traffic, not looking at him, but moving sideways with each step, her body language damped to a minimum, which was almost as good as being invisible, especially in a crowd like this. Each step brought her closer to her mark as he stared with desperate concentration at the winning player. Chango pretended to lean around him for a better view as she slipped her hand into his overcoat pocket and withdrew his wallet. She slipped it into her own pocket, the one with the scanner, her knowing fingers picking the cards out of their slots and swiping them. The codes could be sorted later, one of them was bound to be his cash card. She bumped against him as she went past, using the distraction to slip the wallet back into his pocket. "Sorry," she smiled at him, and moved away. Glancing over her shoulder she saw him check his pockets, and smile, relieved at finding his wallet still there, his cards still in it.

She didn't like to do more than one scan per place, so she moved on, to Rhoda's, the Laikon, Trapper's, Parthenomicon. That was where she saw her: A reasonably tall woman in a battered grey raincoat, her dark brown hair short and spikey with rainwater. She glanced about the crowded room with blank alarm. She was scared, but not in a focused way, only in the what-am-I-doing-here, what's-going-on kind of way that made for an easy mark. Chango began to circle in towards her. As she did she noticed that the woman's eyes were a startling shade of blue, her olive skin smooth and even. If she kept up this noticing, she wouldn't be able to make the score. She stopped looking at her, and focused instead on the pockets of the raincoat.

Chango moved up beside her and slipped her hand into a pocket, very softly, very slowly, as if she wasn't moving at all. She wrapped her fingers around a slim, smooth square and then bumped into the mark, actually pushing her away from her card. As Chango jostled her, she felt something beneath the raincoat, something long and rounded. She was carrying a shotgun under there.

The last thing Chango wanted to do was mess around with somebody packing heat, for any reason. "Sorry," Chango said, bending over and pretending to pick up the card. "Did you drop this?" she asked, but she got no answer, the woman was through the door before she had a chance to straighten up. "Shit," Chango glanced at the square in her hand. It wasn't a money card. It was a data card. Chango stared at it for a moment, and then she was out the door herself, glancing up and down the street. She caught sight of the woman almost a block away already, practically running and heedless of the disreputable figure that detached himself from a shop front to tail her. Chango fell behind him, following him follow her failed mark.

oOo

Helix fled down the street in a blind panic. There were so many people in there, and someone had bumped into her and felt — they had to have felt it. Helix swerved, barely avoiding collision with a heavily made up transvestite. People, so many people. Suddenly she felt as if she’d crawl out of her skin in order to get away from them all.

It was almost night now, the rain soaked streets glistening into darkness, reflecting the colors of the neon signs like the rainbow oil slicks of old.

Soon, she'd have to find someplace to spend the night. She couldn't just keep walking forever, despite what her inner urging prompted her to do. She sighed, glancing up at the windows of the Old Laikon Hotel. She had no money for a room.

Suddenly Helix was struck with a longing so powerful it stopped her in her tracks. She wanted... what? To find her mother? Maybe. It was the only thing she could think of. She wanted something, badly, but her life with Hector Martin had been comfortable, safe. So what else could she be lacking? Only her mother, surely, and yet, just then, all she could really think of was a large tub of warm water.

The thought distracted her and she nearly bumped into a man with orange hair sticking out from under a polyweave cap. He grinned and stepped even closer to her. Panicking, she darted down an alley on her right. The lights and music of the casino district faded into shadows and the distant drip of a leaking gutter. She walked past hulking waste modules, the peppermint smell of garbage eating microbes seeping from their seals. Ahead of her, leaning in the shadows of a service entrance, was a man, the faint red glow of his cigarette a beacon to his presence. As she approached he stepped away from the crates, flicking his cigarette into oblivion. Behind her, she heard other footsteps.

She walked on stiffly, as if she hadn't noticed there was any one back there, but they undoubtedly had noticed her, and as she approached the man with the cigarette he called out to her, “Where you going, honey?” She didn't answer, she kept on going, but they were closing in behind her too.

Finally, after seconds stretched out by the rasp of her breath, her footsteps stuttered to a halt and she turned to see the two who now stood, side by side, in the middle of the alley, blocking her exit. They were lean young men, with old faces and dirty t-shirts. One of them was the guy with red hair she’d nearly collided with earlier. The other one held the glimmering threat of a knife at his side. From behind her, a hand fell on her shoulder. "Hey, lady, you got some spare change?"

"No," she said, and turned halfway to face him. She stepped back, trying to keep all three of them in view.

"No?" the one with the knife queried, "you better be lying."

She shook her head and took another step back, but Red Hair grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her. She gasped at the sudden flash of pain. "I don't-" she paused, "I don't know, let me see."

"Yeah," laughed the one who'd been smoking, "that's more like it. Why don't we see what you've got. I'm sure we can use it, whatever it is."

"My wallet's in the inside pocket," she lied, "let me open my coat."

"Aw, don't strain yourself, darlin', I'll do it for you," said Cigarette, and he proceeded to slowly unbutton her coat.

Her breath sounded harsh and loud as he worked his fingers over the buttons, undoing them one by one. He was standing close. So much the better, she thought, as she waited for him to finish with the third button, at waist level.

He undid it, and looking up at her smiled. "I think that's enough, for now anyway."

She smiled back at him, widely, baring her fangs, and shot her lower right fist through the opening of the coat and into his midsection while she stomped on the instep of the assailant behind her with her left foot.

Cigarette doubled over from the force of her blow. "What the fuck?!"

Meanwhile, the grip on her upper right arm had loosened momentarily. It was enough for her to wrench it free, and shrugging her shoulders, she let the coat fall to her feet. She stretched out her four arms, so there could be no mistake, and turned, so she was facing all three of her attackers, revealed for what she was.

Their faces registered shock, but Knife only hesitated for a moment before he was upon her, driving his blade towards her belly. She grabbed his hands in hers and pulled him towards her, forcing his arms up as she kneed him in the groin. He sagged in her arms and she released him, pushing him from her to fall to the ground, curled into a tight ball of pain.

Redhead ducked to one side, dived and rolled and with a quick jerk, yanked at the coat still lying around her feet. The next thing she knew she was on the ground, and Cigarette, recovered, rushed up and delivered a vicious kick to her head. Her vision blurred momentarily, and her head sang with pain.

She rolled away as he was winding up for another kick, but Redhead was there. "I don't know what you are, but you just made a big mistake," and he kicked her too, in the stomach.

More kicks came, sharp punctuations of pain in her ribs, her abdomen and her head. She rolled onto her back and grabbed somebody's foot with all four of her hands, twisting his ankle and knocking him off balance. In that brief and partial respite she forced herself to her feet. Redhead closed in again, grabbing for her arms. She let him have the lower two, and with the others grabbed his head, bent it back and with her jaws stretched wide she sank her teeth into the side of his neck. He screamed and something sharp sank into the small of her back. She released Redhead and turned, snarling, her mouth smeared with blood, to face Knife. His eyes widened with fear and she used his moment of hesitation to smash a fist into his face.

"Fuck," someone was screaming, she wasn't sure who, "Let's go." She heard footsteps running away, caught a glimpse of their backs as the three of them fled, one limping, one bleeding. She was bleeding too. In fact, she didn't feel well at all, she thought, as she sank to the ground.

She didn't pass out, but only lay there, her face against the dirty cloncrete, staring at a trodden gum wrapper. She should get out of here, she thought, but when she tried to move, everything, and especially that bleeding spot in the small of her back, hurt. She put her hand to it. It didn't seem very big, to be producing so much blood. She tried to keep a hand over it, pressing, to stop the flow, but she kept forgetting. All of this reminded her of something, some other time when she'd lain, beaten, on the ground. What had she done then? When? On that regrettable day at the orphanage. But Hector had rescued her from that place, and now she'd left him.

Footsteps, just one set, approached slowly. She tried to turn and look but pain lanced up her spine and she subsided, closing her eyes. Whoever it was would come, search for a wallet or something valuable, and hopefully leave her alone.

The footsteps stopped, and she felt a hand on her upper right arm. "Are you okay?"

"No."

"I'll call an ambulance."

"No!" she shouted, which made her head hurt. "No doctors, please. I'm all right. I'll be fine. I just need to rest a little, okay? Please, please, just leave me alone."

"But you've been stabbed, possibly in the kidney. You need help."

"No. No, I don't need any help. I'm fine." With the remainder of her strength, Helix forced herself up onto her hands and knees, and then, using the wall, dragged herself to a standing position. Pain arced through her body, and she trembled. "See?" she said to the stranger, who she still had not looked at. "I'm fine. I'm leaving now, see? I'm fine." And she took a step and the pain made her gasp, but she kept her footing, for a moment, until dizziness swooped in from the corners of her vision like the black, confused wings of birds, and she fell, into the arms of this stranger, who as it turned out, was not very big at all. Staggering under her weight, the stranger slowly returned her to the ground.

"Okay," she said. Helix still hadn't gotten a very good look at her face, just a quick blur of small pointed features and something peculiar about the eyes. "Okay, no doctors. I've got a car. It’s not far, I parked it under the overpass on Monroe. I'll go get it, and I'll take you to see someone. Not a doctor, a friend of mine. Hang on." and she took one of Helix's hands, and placed it over the wound in the small of her back. "Keep that there, you don't want to lose any more blood. I'll be right back."

And she was, with a rag which she tied around Helix's waist. "I shouldn't be moving you at all, but I can’t get that boat of a car down this alley. Here, give me your arms." and she wrapped Helix's right arms around her shoulder, and with her arm around Helix's waist, gently lifted her up to a standing position and steadied her.

"Wait, my raincoat," said Helix.

"Forget it, you can get another one."

"No, no I need it."

"Then I'll come back for it. Now let's go." And together, they spent the most excruciating ten minutes of Helix's life, getting her out of the alley and into the back seat of the stranger's car. A motor car, a big old convertible with the top down, ancient but still functioning.

Helix stared up at the sky, the night air chill through the fabric of her celluweave bodysuit. "My raincoat!"

The stranger sighed, "Okay, hang on."

She was back again in a moment, and she put the now torn and soiled raincoat over Helix, tucking it in on the sides. "Just as well, you need to keep warm."

The car rumbled to noisy life and started to move. Helix didn't ask her where they were going, she just gazed up at the night sky, at the stars spinning far above her.