Nylon Angel Read online

  Nylon Angel

  A Parrish Plessis Novel

  Book I

  Marianne de Pierres

  For

  Vicomte Henri Jaques Stanley de Pierres,

  who loved adventure stories

  Content

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Acknowledgments

  Coming Soon

  About the Author

  Part One

  Chapter One

  If Jamon Mondo touched me one more time I'd kill him. And then they would be after me. His dingo-boys would hound me for retribution, licking up my blood as reward.

  Parasites!

  So what to do?

  I stared across my plaster-chipped room at my translucent body replica, Merry 3#, and willed her to have an answer.

  But she wasn't much of a conversationalist. Just a cheeky smile and a lot of see-through skin, who told me what calls I'd had and when my bills were due. No help at all!

  See, Merry 3# and I were up to our heavily pierced ears in trouble.

  I'd been working in The Tert—around Torley's—for three years or more. Bodyguard stuff mainly. Defending my own piece of the poison, living on stim and second-rate protein substitutes, scraping for credits or barter.

  It beat the hell out of home. Home was a hands-on stepdad and a mother who was genuinely addicted to romance. (Neuroendocrine sims were the latest thing in the 'burbs.) When my sister, Kat, left home to play pro ball, Dad turned his hands-on approach to me. I left before I killed him and broke Mum's heart.

  The Tert seemed the right place. Outside the city limits. A leftover strip of toxic humanity where, it was rumored, you could survive on your own terms.

  I did all right there. Not many women of my large size were as handy with their fists and feet. I also cut a mean, hungry look when I wanted. I could take care of myself but I'd never make the front cover of a glossy, on account of my badly rebuilt nose and flattened cheekbone (courtesy of stepdad, Kevin). I could have had it fixed up, I guess, but it reminded me of what I'd left behind.

  I was getting by—until Jamon Mondo came along. Well, noticed me really. He's been here forever. I was the new kid on the block.

  When he hired me, Doll Feast said I'd hit pay dirt. Parrish Plessis, bodyguard to the stars. Well, to the dark prince anyway!

  By the way the other babes on the Torley's stretch reacted, I figured she was right. So I went along with it. Anything had to be better than one more protein sub, or another soft-bottomed white-collar chump looking for his piece of the wild side.

  That dream died my first night on Jamon's payroll. I was expecting the bodyguard drill. How he wanted to be protected, and from whom. Instead he took me to his barracks for a welcoming ceremony…

  Dingoboys, panting, howling like the moons of Jupiter had lined up, in their uniform of dreadlocks, greasy skin and jutting teeth.

  "Strip her down," Jamon instructed.

  It took five of them to hold me.

  I stared at him like some dumb, miserable animal gazing up the slaughterhouse ramp. Fear spiked through my gut, so sharp that I moaned.

  It was not a sound to be proud of, but then this wasn't graduation night…

  I tried to leave him after that but he had me followed and beaten. Once on Jamon's payroll, always on Jamon's payroll. A club you had to die to leave.

  Why hadn't someone told me?

  * * * *

  "Parish!!!"

  It took me a few moments to focus, weighted by my recent past. I checked my door, then automatically flicked to my comm screen.

  It was Mei Sheong, her hair corkscrewing around her head in bundles of absurd pink curls. It cost her a week's pay out of every month's earnings to have it done. I'd suggested a straight replant, even genetic manipulation, but she reckoned that was bad karma. Who am I to argue with a chino-shaman?

  She closed one eye and sucked on a curl. "I heard something."

  My attention clicked in. "How much?"

  She sucked a bit longer before she answered, "I tell you, but when you die I get your room."

  I sighed. "Is it that good?"

  "Yeah, it is. Anyway, I've got to plan for the future, Parrish. No control otherwise."

  Control. The mother of illusions. But it didn't stop me wishing. Trying. Hoping my life might be mine again one day.

  "All right, Mei. But I'm not planning on dying yet. So don't get any ideas about helping things along. Or you might find yourself closer to the spirits than you figured."

  She opened the other eye wide in surprise. "You threatening a chino-shaman?"

  "What's it sound like to you?"

  "Sounds like you're in an evil mood."

  I closed in on the viewer and her face. "The word, Mei. What's the word?"

  She stepped away from her screen and glanced over her shoulder. "Hein's. Ten minutes."

  * * * *

  Some nearly neo-punk revivalist had done Hein's insides out like a bunker, old-style, electrified grilles and concrete look-alike walls—the only concession to comfort being the tactile chairs. Hein's had a burnt look like it had been bombed and hosed.

  Mei was perched on a tactile stool at the bar. Poured into a fluoro-pink bubble dress, red stilettos hooked around the chair's leg, she could have been Tinkerbell's kinky sister. The chair moaned soft ecstasy as she squirmed in her seat and flirted with Mikey, the barman's servitor.

  Mikey was one of Jamon Mondo's Pets—a hideous result of illegal biorobotic experiments. The Tert was that sort of place. Mikey's proximity to my best source made me uneasy.

  But—I reassured myself—that's why Mei was my best source. She could pry secrets from an autistic sheep.

  I sat in a khaki tactile with my back to the south wall. It was a bit of phobia I had. Wherever there was a south wall, I had my back to it. It felt right.

  The chair quivered a little and started whispering dirt to me in another language. I told it to be quiet or I'd stuff its chip somewhere unmentionable.

  Mei giggled with Mikey a few minutes longer, then drifted out of the bar. This was part of her pattern. Disappear. Then reenter from another door. It seemed stupid, but it worked. Whenever I asked after her, most people would say, She's just left. I guess it helped that Hein's patrons were lucky to focus more than a drink's length in front.

  Looking around, half a dozen faces were familiar and half a dozen were more permanent than the tactiles. A pair of 'goboys lounged behind the bar watching for trouble. I could smell them even without seeing their badge of dreads and elongated incisors. Their presence spurred my impatience.

  Where was Mei?

  I had to find some way to prise Jamon Mondo's jaws off me. Or there'd be two more bodies in Tert Town. His and mine.

  "You sure are in a bad mood." Mei sidled alongside, her hair now stuffed into a dirty, pink knitted cap. Wisps escaped from underneath. It didn't do a lot for her sallow skin.

  "Shows, huh? You going to tell me something to improve it?"

  She grinned slyly. "What about your room?"

  I couldn't understand her attraction to my tiny piece of r
ented air, but it seemed like a reasonable payoff—if the info was tight.

  "Yeah, deal."

  We sealed it, Tert Town style. Knuckles only. Crossing palms could get you dead or sick.

  She whispered so I had to lean over to hear. "Razz Retribution is dead. Murdered on the Hi-way."

  "Razz Retribution? The One-World journalist. So?"

  "The cops are looking for a biker and his pillion. But word is that the rider was Cabal Coomera—and the pillion was some geek he'd picked up as a decoy. The geek is hiding out in The Tert. If you find him first—before the cops—he might know something about the Cabal. Maybe enough to get you in with them. Then no more work for Mr. Mondo." Her almond eyes gleamed knowingly under Hein's stained fluoros.

  Am I that obvious? Or can she see inside my head?

  I soothed my paranoia with logic. That's the other reason why Mei traded info for a living. She could make those leaps of understanding about people. You didn't have to be a genius to work out I loathed Jamon Mondo.

  Still, I'd need to watch myself. I didn't want Jamon to know what I was planning. "Who else you sold this to?"

  Her face smoothed out. "Only you, girl. Mei knows who her friends are."

  I laughed at the lie. "When did it happen? You got ID on the geek?"

  "Hit was this morning. Word says he's petit crim. New 'round Tor ley's. Hangs out with another guy, named Dark."

  "Dark? What sort of a name is that?"

  She shook her pink curls loose from the beret and shrugged. "Takes all sorts. Now I got things to do. Don't forget our deal, Parrish."

  "Call me if you hear more."

  She grinned and drifted off.

  Takes all sorts. Coming from a crazy pink and yellow chino-shaman in a bar full of total rejects—that tickled. But I had other things on my mind that weren't funny. Like the rumor she'd just leaked.

  You see, I wanted in with the Cabal Coomera. Who am I kidding? I didn't just want… every fiber of me craved it.

  Cabal Coomera were The Tert's real lawmakers. A mysterious, unaccountable sect who operated above the daily Tert politics. Some said they were descendants of the Kadaitcha, the feather-feet police of the original indigenous tribes, but that sounded like romance to me. More importantly, though, they protected their own. If I could gain entry to the Cabal, then Jamon Mondo wouldn't be able to touch me.

  I wasn't totally inexperienced at their game either. I'd ridden with a vigilante group for a few months, before Jamon, but their race politics bothered me. So I concentrated on bodyguarding and building my own weapons cache.

  You had to be able to take care of yourself in The Tert. Most babes are chocked up with enhancements. Wired so tight their buns act like capacitors!

  I've got different ideas. Sure, some things you can't live without—compass implant and olfactory augmentations (olfaugs)—but the rest is pure me. Nearly two meters of well-honed skin. In hand-to-hand combat I can match anyone.

  Yet I didn't know much about guns. That was the one small plus to being owned by Jamon Mondo. I'm in good shape for fighting but it means fairy sprinkles if someone shoves a Smith & Wesson up your nostrils.

  When Mondo took over my life he insisted I train in a shooting gallery with his dingoboys. For him I'm just another cheap soldier in his muscle pool.

  So why don't I take Mondo out?

  Believe me I've thought about it. But it's not that simple.

  So I'm working on this other way.

  "Parrish. Deep in wonder? Thinking about me?"

  The voice was silky and heavy and sarcastic. I knew it in my nightmares.

  "Jamon." Breathe, Parrish. He can't see what you're thinking.

  "Where were you last night? I wanted you." He reached forward and pinched my skin through my clothes.

  "Earning a living," I snapped, pulling away.

  Undeterred he reached with his other hand and trailed his fingers down my body to my crutch. "Don't I pay you enough?"

  I stared him full in the face, this time without flinching. "You could never pay me enough."

  He whitened at my jibe and removed his hand, but his look of cool amusement never faltered.

  He was shorter than me, fair and slender. Fine boned. A holographic tattoo shimmered on his cheek-bone, a naked girl on top of a man. Her head bobbed from side to side. One day I planned to gouge that implant out.

  "Come, Parrish. You're the envy of the stretch. You have my protection. My attentions…" He kissed the tips of his fingers meaningfully.

  I ignored the public display. Jamon's way. Like wearing his brand on my butt.

  Lucky me! Luring a perverted death adder!

  It wasn't the first time I'd pictured Jamon like that. The net's holo zoo featured death adders regularly on its Nearly Extinct Creatures series. Jamon had all the characteristics of one. Small, sinister, deceptive, deadly. You could mistake an adder for a harmless lizard, meanwhile it poisoned you in seconds.

  A shudder rolled through me.

  "Trembling with anticipation, little one?"

  I arranged my facial muscles into a blank expression. I'd given too much away already.

  Casting an eye over Hein's dismal crowd, he continued, "I'm entertaining tonight. Be there early. And wear something… interesting."

  His eyes refracted then, like a crystal in the light. Something new. I wondered how much they had cost. Rainbow eyes. The idea made me want to howl. The one beautiful free thing left in this whole gray world was imaged in Jamon Mondo's eyes.

  "Be there, won't you, Parrish?"

  I nodded and hated my guts for it.

  Chapter Two

  The aged Trans-train limped out of the station and headed south past Fishertown where the view wasn't pretty. I often wondered who paid who to keep it running. Mostly its passengers were like me, locals taking the quick way from one end of The Tert to the other—Torley's to Plastique in a couple of hours. The rest of the passengers either couldn't afford the Hi-way bypass, or were bent on glimpsing real misery.

  The Tert stretched for a hundred klicks or more between the sea and the snaking river, a turtle-shaped strip of land that should have been priceless. Instead, it harbored the wretched, the sick and the downright sicko. No dinkum straight would dream of going there, with its toxic soil and crazy population.

  Years ago it had been a massive foundry and industrial site—whispers of long-buried tek as well—way out past the limits of the expanding city, Viva. Now, Viva was called Vivacity, one of the world's carnivorous supercities, spreading down the east coast of Australia.

  The industrial structures had long since been demolished. A spanking plastic villa metropolis arose on its remains, complete with pocket courtyards, identical black lacquer front doors and palm trees.

  It took fifty years of high-density living before the side effects of the poisoned soil became obvious. Now the long-termers in The Tert were either morons or nutters. Short-termers paid a fortune in protectives or took their chances with the rest.

  The villa metropolis was no longer recognizable as distinct pieces of architecture, only a morass of living.

  The seaside of The Tert was known as Fishertown, a gray stretch of ilmenite black radioactive sand. Slums huddled like clumps of seaweed along it, home to a miserable collection of fishing families.

  Not the place for romantic moonlight walks.

  I was headed to pay a visit to Minoj Armaments and Software, on the south side of The Tert. The "scenic" Trans-train was the quickest way there.

  I found I was spending more and more time at Raul Minoj's, ogling his range of weapons. It gave me a kind of peace when nothing else would. Peace from things like my evening "date" with Jamon.

  I stared at my reflection in the dull chrome piping of the train interior. Wear something interesting, he'd said. Well, interesting he got! I'd changed to a funky black nylon suit with lime pleats interweaved into the flared legs and a leather tank top underneath.

  And dangerous. The tank had specially worked com
partments into which I slipped evil-long poisoned pins. Handy in a fight! Underneath the pants I wore a string that stretched like a cobweb, front and back. Garrotting wires wound into the web.

  Shoes? Well, I felt naked without my boots. The first pair I ever had were steel caps. Not much good for running. These days I wore titanium inserts. You could still kick the crap out of someone and sprint if you had to.

  The train slid into the Pomme de Tuyeau on the southeast tip of The Tert and the doors twitched translucent before they opened. I found this a useful little bit of teknology. It gave you time to change your mind if the scene didn't look right. When you're my size, you're a target in any situation. I hated that. Being small had advantages.

  The toll boys on the Pomme were Tert specials. Body-enhanced, skin-mixed, libido-jacked jerks. The latest craze in Plastique-ville was patchwork skin: Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid with a splash of Albino thrown in for highlights. Infection rates were high amongst zigzags.

  "Who wants to look like a frigging zebra?" Doll Feast would say to me. Her laugh sounded like a tracheotomy.

  I cruised past the toll boys without paying. One blond giant with a piebald face and bulging triceps glowered at me but made no move.

  How did they see me? I wondered. Doll Feast's lover? Jamon Mondo's whore?

  Resentment squirted through my gut. One day it would just be about me, Parrish Plessis.

  Inside the villa corridors and melded rooms anything and anyone that sells was for sale. Fishertown Shimmers were everywhere, hawking shellfish aphrodisiacs and longevity oils smelling as potent as their scam. They had the voracious look of the half starved.

  I silently counted my way to the hardware villas, reciting it like a litany.

  Five villa sets north: Pharmaceuticals and Pleasure. No coin needed to pass through Doll's patch. The babes came here for fripperies and Doll was good to me.

  Three villa sets east: Bodyparts, Replacements, Makeovers. Frigging zebra country!

  One villa sets south: Stolen Tekno. Hmmm, tight ice. Who knows how far back that goes?

  Then it's… Hardware.

  I climbed up some battered stairs to the roof and across a planking arrangement, watching out for dayrats. Then down some defunct escalator steps to the fourth door along the bottom where I was scanned by security vid and optic ID, and decontaminated for blood residues and parasites. By the time Minoj's face appeared on the vidset I was tugging my dreads impatiently.