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We tumbled on to the floor, a mess of limbs and bed sheets, to the sound of Merry 3# screeching a message.

  ‘Parrish. Message for Teeeeeece. It’s Honeeey.’

  I swear that p-diary was possessed.

  Teece rolled away from me almost immediately. He stood, pulling his shirt down, zipping his pants guiltily. The look on his face wasn’t exactly afterglow.

  ‘You’re an addiction, Parrish, and I want the cure,’ he said harshly. He stalked out of the room.

  I lay on my back, momentarily sated, and contemplated the shape of the damp stains on the ceiling. I wasn’t hurt and angry like Teece. I was probably going to die soon and everything I did felt good in comparison to that.

  Why why why . . .

  The parasite echoed its frustrations in my mind. It strained for release. If it found it - I might as well be dead.

  ‘Paaarrr-iiisshh.’

  Merry 3# again. I hauled myself up and my skirt down, and went to see what the fuss was about. She shimmered in the corner next to the comm screen, dressed up in clothes identical to mine.

  It wasn’t meant to be flattery - more like ridicule.

  ‘What do you want?’

  She put a translucent finger to her head and stuck her tongue in her cheek as if trying to remember.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Teece left the door open.’

  ‘And?’ I spun on my heel.

  ‘Bad company,’ she trilled.

  I swung around. A stranger with an ugly expression was framed in the doorway. I sized him up in the time it took me to drop my hands to my thighs. Competitor. Probably here on his own whim, though maybe on a cheap contract.

  He was my size: scarred fingers, boxer’s stance, unarmed. This scud liked to do it with his hands.

  That gave me an advantage despite my pistol - a replacement for the one I’d traded with Daac - being in my kitbag. I lifted my skirt and went for a knife.

  His eyes widened in interest for a second.

  Damn, no knickers.

  It bought me a precious second of edge, though, and I threw. My aim was straight but the stranger was no longer there. A blur of movement to one side, and everything had changed. Including him.

  The boxer had disappeared and a beast came at me instead - a shadowy thing hunched onto massive thighs.

  I dived sideways and fell heavily against the comm. The beast leaped over me to the other side of the room. As I scrambled to my feet he repeated the action, this time raking me with long-clawed feet. Blood spurted from a graze along my arm.

  Why is it playing with me?

  Merry 3# fizzed and spluttered over my shoulder, then came back screaming a girlie war cry and flashing guns.

  Cut the show, Merry. How about just shooting the bastard? ‘Get me some help,’ I shouted at her.

  The beast edged in front of my bedroom, cutting off access to my guns. I eased more upright and calculated whether I could make the front door. As I willed the distance to shrink, it filled with shapes.

  That’s why it was playing. More of ’em. Growling and howling.

  I felt at the waist of my skirt. The Cabal dagger was still there. Luckily Teece hadn’t ruined his manhood on it. I launched myself at them without ceremony.

  They fought each other to get through the doorway, giving me a chance to pick them off.

  One, slit throat. Punctured adrenals.

  Two, slit throat. Punctured adrenals.

  Three, straight into the heart. Punctured adrenals. Then the first one jumped me from behind. It tore my skirt right off and took a chunk out of my neck.

  Blood in a fountain - high. My blood. The world hazed.

  Jeez, I’m gonna die with no knickers on.

  . . . The Angel swooped furiously past my eyes, its sword cauterising-hot . . .

  ‘Boss?’

  I blinked. I hadn’t passed out exactly, more like hovered between two realities. Link, Glida and some of the feral children I’d helped in the past, crowded through the door. They liked to follow me around to keep an eye on things. I used to think it was cute. Right now I was just damn grateful. Calmly, they sprayed acid in the last shape-changer’s face. His screaming banished the last of my hallucinations.

  He toppled on to me. Which was bad . . . and good - at least I was covered.

  The ferals tugged at the body, trying to move it.

  . . . The Angel seared my neck wound until it closed . . .

  ‘Leave the body,’ I grunted. ‘Get Teece.’

  . . . Stupid human. Why . . . why . . .

  ‘I’m here, Parrish. Merry called me,’ he answered. I couldn’t see him but at least he’d come, and he’d been running.

  ‘Get . . . everyone . . . out. Don’t let them touch the blood.’ My ribs felt broken with the shape-changer’s weight. I concentrated on just getting air in until I heard the door clunk shut. Then the weight shifted.

  Teece stared down at me. His expression shifted from shock to amusement to disappointment. The room looked like a serial killer’s debut. Dead shape-changers lay around and I was semi-naked and awash in blood.

  ‘I left too early - as usual,’ he said, shaking his head sadly.

  I tried to laugh but my chest burned and ached at the same time and it came out like a gurgle.

  ‘Who were they?’

  I craned my neck up. The beasts had reassumed their human shapes in death.

  ‘Nobody,’ I lied. Loyl was wrong. I’m not the only one left. ‘That’s the problem. Even nobodies want to kill me.’

  He nodded in resigned agreement. ‘I know how they feel.’

  ‘Teece,’ I whispered as I lay there. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. So am I.’

  ‘Paaarrrrr-ish.’

  Merry again. ‘What?’ I growled.

  ‘Message from Laaa-rrrry.’

  I was on up my knees in a second. ‘What?’

  ‘Loyl Daac and a bunch of his men are looking for yoo-oou.’

  Teece moved to the door. ‘I’ll stall him.’

  I nodded. ‘Buy me ten minutes and I’ll be polite and sweet for the rest of my life.’

  We didn’t smile. Or say goodbye.

  I took a quick shower to wash away the shape-changers’ blood.

  My ribs felt like they were broken and the mark on my neck resembled an overcooked love-bite. They wouldn’t take long to fix, though. The only constructive thing the parasite had done for me - accelerated my healing.

  But what had it done to the rest of The Tert? Loyl obviously hadn’t dealt with the problem. The parasite must be spreading of its own accord. Those shape-changers were just the beginning. Not all of them would choose to transform into beasts, either. They could just as easily come after me in the shape of Teece or Ibis.

  That thought got me worried enough to make one last, quick call - to Lize, a bounty hunter who owed me.

  ‘Parrish Plessis?’ She squinted into the comm like she hoped she was seeing things.

  ‘Nice trip down the coast?’ I asked. A casual reminder that I’d let her live when she’d tried to kidnap me - a contract put up by Leesa Tulu.

  She looked embarrassed.

  ‘I need you to watch someone’s back,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Actually’ - I grinned - ‘there are a few of them.’

  I gave her names and a short version of what she was watching out for.

  She looked more scared than I liked. ‘I’ve heard stuff, but I didn’t believe it. What you’re telling me - shape-changers - it could be anyone any time.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘I can’t promise nothing on a deal like that.’

  ‘Do your best. And I’ll do my best to forget you ran a contract on me.’

  She frowned and sighed. ‘You gonna use this for ever? I’m just a grrl trying to earn a living. Can’t you dig that?’

  ‘You keep these people safe while I’m outta town and I’m off your case for good. Deal?’

  She held the back of her hand to the
screen, Tertstyle.

  I returned the gesture and cut the line before she could ask ‘How long?’

  I ran my checklist one last time. I wouldn’t be coming back to get something with Daac dogging me. Reluctantly I locked the Cabal dagger into my gun safe. Then I slipped Ike’s wetware onto a chain alongside a good-luck charm Honey had told me would convince Merv that I was kosher.

  Knickers, some dress-ups and the address for my Net repository with my fake identity. On impulse I snapped the lid on Merry 3# and bundled her into my pocket as well. She wasn’t gonna do me much good here and her scream was damn near a nuclear weapon.

  I velcroed the strap on my borrowed luggage closed, slung it over my shoulder and spared a glance in the reflect.

  New clothes.

  New hair.

  Same old grudges.

  Time to move.

  Chapter Five

  I wiggled my toes to stop myself squirming as the laser sculpted my face and wondered about the ridge of scale along my cheekbone.

  Dr Yan Drastic, Plastique’s best cosmetic man, told me flat out he couldn’t do anything about it - it wouldn’t come off. He didn’t even know what it was. When he tested the edges my reaction became violent.

  We compromised on a paint job. He said he’d make it look like a beauty spot.

  After the face-sculpt came an iris-tint - all done in a quickie package. Money really could buy almost anything in Plastique.

  As I waited for fake skin to set over my scars and the nanos to gobble my blemishes, it occurred to me how ironic it was to be having a physical make-over when all I had to do was stop fighting the parasite and I’d be able to shape-change.

  When the face-over was finished, I bought a language infusion from Leong Shu’s Smart Shit stall. He hit me up with it right then and there. When I asked him about the warranty he threw in an extended dictionary to shut me up.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Three months if you don’t overuse it,’ he said in his perfectly snobby way.

  Breaking my own rules, I flagged a Pet to get me to the Trans station. If Loyl Daac was out looking for me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

  My mind ran another list as the Pet trundled me out to the Pomme de Tuyeau depot.

  Get a job in the Flesh Industry.

  Use it to get close to Merv.

  Convince him to crack the Jinberra impartial.

  Track down who was Ike del Morte’s sponsor.

  Deal with them.

  Find Wombebe.

  Leave.

  Easy.

  I slipped Ike’s wetware out and fingered the delicate webbing. Maybe along the way I would finally learn what the Eskaalim was.

  Most of the time I believed it to be alien. But occasionally I got a reality shift, especially when people like Loyl Daac practised their mind games on me.

  I mean, if anyone had told me that they were infected with an alien parasite who lived off the epinephrine in their body I’d have thought they were nuts.

  On the other hand, I was the one living with hallucinations and a voice in my head. Although the hallucinations had got less since Dis, the inner voice was there like breathing.

  I wanted to believe it was a parasite, and that was the dangerous thing. There’s no tragic glamour in being just stone-cold crazy.

  Or paranoid.

  And I was having a tankload of trouble trusting anyone.

  Teece had fallen in love with someone else, and Daac . . . well, his treachery was worthy of Judas.

  I sighed and returned to my mental list as the Pet ploughed a path past brawling Fishertown slummers.

  Look up Bras.

  Bras was a kid who’d helped me once and had wound up adopted by the banking royalty of Viva and head of her own company - the new face of prosthetics.

  And Gwynn.

  Gywnn was an amputee who lived in a drain on the Tert/Viva border. He’d been a one-time Pan-Sat athlete, a weightlifter who’d been reduced to minding an opening to the old sewer labyrinth. I’d promised him I’d get some turk called Trunk off his back, and I hadn’t been keeping my promises as well as I’d have liked.

  I decided to call the last two items on the list my before-someone-puts-a-bullet-in-me resolutions and went back to the top . . .

  I was still recapping the order in my head when I caught the Trans up to Fishertown and dropped past Teece’s bike biz.

  Mama was minding shop for Teece while he was minding shop for me.

  ‘You gotta nerve, turning up here,’ the ex-sumo glowered.

  I still owed Teece for the damage to the last bike I’d hired from them. Mama looked as if he wanted nothing more than to suffocate me between his huge thighs in settlement.

  ‘So they tell me,’ I said. ‘If Loyl-me-Daac comes looking for me, Mama, you send him south, OK?’

  Mama grimaced. At least, I think that’s what it was. The fat folds on his face and neck made it hard to tell. ‘You got it coming, grrl,’ he added.

  I had to be content with that.

  I caught the Trans north, changing connections until it brought me to a huge, badly air-conditioned puffball dome full of comings and goings.

  Trains, Aeros and Cruisers all docked at Viva’s Eastern Interchange, which made the place busier than most of the supercity’s checkpoints and the best point of entry to slip through cracks.

  I paid for a luggage drone and walked to the Viva Visitors lattice to dodge the Militia with body scanners positioned along the ped-ways. When I got there it was bottlenecked, with everybody being physically searched.

  ‘What’s the go?’ I asked the p-diary salesman lined up in front of me.

  ‘Someone heard that Garter Thin and the VBs are coming to town to play at some big, rich party for the Pan-Sats. Seems like everyone on the east coast’s come to Viva thinking they might catch a glimpse of ’em.’

  Thin and the VBs were a big deal in the Southern Hem. I’d heard their music. OK if you liked that old-style hard-girl-rocker image. Personally I thought they looked like they wouldn’t last a round with Mama.

  Or me, come to think of it.

  The doors to the celeb lounge seemed a helluva lot quieter than the cattle grid so I headed for the nearest san, slipped off my coat off and re-emerged in full borrowed Amorato regalia. Translucent high-collared shirt and floaty skirt, high heels and pliable snake bracelets up to my armpits. I’d left my leather crop in my case.

  I passed through the weapons scanner without a problem and the doors popped open.

  Four stoned-out bodies and one luggage-burdened intimate occupied the perfume-aired, satin-decorated lounge. A couple of ornately uniformed Militia sat in a booth near the exit.

  I threaded between the bodies, giving the Militia boys time to look at me.

  And me time to look at the bodies.

  I recognised Garter Thin, the singer from the VBs by the tattoos on her voice supplemental and her cosmetically adjusted lip sneer. The rest of them could have been any dregs from the street.

  Maybe they were.

  ‘Go round the other way,’ the singer rasped.

  I ignored her, stabbing my heel into her leg as I stepped over it.

  She swore and kicked out at me.

  I caught her foot in both hands and twisted it, dumping her on the floor.

  Without breaking stride I walked on to the booth. The soldiers hadn’t seen my antics. Too busy watching porn.

  I tapped on the booth to attract their attention and slid my fake visa under the glass.

  ‘Jales Belliere. Amorato,’ read the one with the vreal implants and a svelte muscle-conditioning suit.

  The other, wearing the logo of a runner on his uniform and prettily plaited hair, opened the door and stepped out to make a more personal survey. He began to feel me over, his tongue busy in the corner of his lips as though he might like to taste me.

  ‘Haven’t had one of your . . . kind through in a while,’ he said.

  I stood rigid in his grip and slapped
his hand away when it reached my waist. If he was hoping that I might jump his bones for free, then he was way, way, waa-aay south of wrong.

  ‘Hands off,’ I growled and stepped back.

  Mr Pretty Plaits looked affronted and confused.

  The one with the suit stiffened at my reaction. I saw his head shake as he ran a more thorough check of my details through his oculars.

  ‘Bend over,’ he ordered me through a monotone larynx.

  Plaits smilingly held up a tissue probe.

  Do something, Parrish, I told myself. Anything to avoid breaking their heads and ending up arrested before I’d even begun my business in Viva.

  I thought back quickly to the lecture that Ibis had given me about Amoratos before I left.

  ‘They have class, Parrish. And they’re comfortable with what they do. Sex is like breathing to them. They have all sorts of tricks and artistry that no one outside their profession understands. They’ve turned it into an art form. A reputation like that builds expectations. You can make a little work a lot for you, depending on how smart you are.’

  Amoratos certainly didn’t bare their teeth and growl at potential customers. And now these two were suspicious of me.

  Honey had assured me that Amoratos never got body-searched on account of the booby traps they used to keep themselves safe - part of their immunity to the normal laws.

  Plaits here hadn’t read the same rule book.

  I needed to distract them and allay their suspicions.

  On instinct I sought out the Eskaalim presence and found it crouched inside me like a prisoner down a dark hole awaiting release.

  What would happen, I wondered, if I carefully - soooo carefully - loosened my mental control?

  The answer came in a surge of black, raging anger. I seized the sensation and tried to focus it all into one image.

  Loyl Daac between my thighs.

  Instantly the aggression turned to lust. Warmth seeped through my limbs, building into a torrent of urge. Heat blazed off my skin. I could almost smell the thick scent of sex rolling from me. My hips tilted forward of their own accord.

  ‘What I mean is . . . my business is urgent. But . . .’ I wet my dry lips. ‘Perhaps I could find time . . .’