Dial D for Deadman
Author: Barry J Hutchison
Date: 2017-07-30 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy; Humour; Horror; Crime
Description: The Space Team Universe just got a whole lot darker. In an alien city torn apart by crooked cops and ruthless criminals, private detective, Dan Deadman, specializes in cases unusual and bizarre. Sure, he doesn't smell great, and he's technically been dead for quite some time, but if you've got a rampaging Hell-beast tearing up your street, or a portal to another dimension appearing in your bathroom, Dan's your man. After saving a mysterious young woman named Ollie from the clutches of something big, slimy, and unpleasant, Dan gets entangled in a missing child case, a string of grisly murders,
Publisher: Zertex Books

DAN DEADMAN, SPACE DETECTIVE

“DIAL D FOR DEADMAN”

By

Barry J. Hutchison

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

AUTHOR NOTES

Copyright © 2017 by Barry J. Hutchison

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published worldwide by Zertex Books.

www.barryjhutchison.com

For You Know Who.

Also by Barry J. Hutchison

The Bug

Space Team

Space Team: The Wrath of Vajazzle

Space Team: The Search for Splurt

Space Team: Song of the Space Siren

Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan

Space Team: Return of the Dead Guy

Space Team: The Holiday Special

Find Space Team Universe stories in:

Pew! Pew!

The Expanding Universe Vol 2

CHAPTER ONE

Erron Nas was feeling pretty good about himself right now.

He’d spent weeks preparing for this moment. He’d painstakingly tracked the twin orbits of the planet’s moons over a full cycle, pinpointing his precise window of opportunity.

He’d stayed up late after work most nights, perfecting the necessary incantations, and spent every lunch break sourcing the required materials.

After days of research, he’d managed to track down and consult with the High Council of the Cult of Kalaechai. They’d been polite and encouraging, but he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling they were laughing at him as he’d turned to leave their chambers. Especially the fat one on the far end.

Still, they wouldn’t be laughing now.

He’d even bought himself a special purple robe. It wasn’t strictly necessary, of course, but you couldn’t leave the cult chambers without passing through the gift shop, and the moment he’d seen it, he knew he had to have it. Granted, from certain angles it made him look seventy pounds heavier and a full foot shorter, but he’d spent almost a week’s wages on the fonking thing, so he’d worn it, anyway.

Yes, with all that preparation, Erron Nas had been a very busy man.

And then there were the murders, of course. None of it would have been possible without those.

He’d been reluctant at first. All that blood. All that screaming. He’d found it… troubling, although he’d told himself that this was only to be expected, and nothing to be ashamed of.

By the third or fourth slaying, he was starting to get into the swing of it. By the time he’d slit the final throat, he almost didn’t want the wheezing and gargling to end.

Pulling his bruise-colored robe around himself, Erron weaved his way through the web of alleyways behind the warehouses. Without really intending to, he began to skip. He hadn’t skipped in years. Had he ever skipped, in fact? He couldn’t remember. Tonight, though – tonight was a night for skipping.

He’d done it. After all those weeks of preparing, months of planning, and years of dreaming, he’d actually done it. Tonight was a night he would remember forever. Tonight, if he were being completely honest, was the greatest night of his life.

Erron had just turned onto another alley when a corpse fell on him. It landed heavily on his back, feet first, and hurt quite a lot.

The corpse didn’t look happy, and while very few of them do, this one was notable in that it looked decidedly unhappy. It was also notable in that it was moving.

A hand, the skin rough and dry, wrapped around Erron’s throat. He let out part of a yelp as he was hoisted off his feet, the other part remaining stuck somewhere in his constricted windpipe. It was only ejected when Erron was slammed backwards against a wall, and all the air was forced from his lungs in one sudden gasp.

“Ack!” said Erron, although ‘said’ is a generous way to describe the actual sound that burst from his fish-like lips.

He had been aiming for something along the lines of, ‘Ow! Stop! This really hurts,’ but, given the circumstances, “Ack!” was the best he could do.

Not that his pleas for mercy would have done him any good, he suspected. The man currently hoisting him into the air, one-handed, did not look like the reasonable type. He looked like the dead type, more than anything. Smelled that way, too.

He wore a wide-brimmed hat, but had pushed it back on his head to give Erron a clear view of the horror-show that was his face. The guy’s skin was criss-crossed by scar tissue and decay, making his face resemble a map of a particularly depressing city center. His eyes were narrow, the pupils a slate gray with a disconcerting hint of milky white around the edges. His nose was crooked, and his lips were just on the wrong side of blue to feasibly still be alive.

Surprisingly good teeth, though, Erron noticed, as he fumbled beneath his robe for…

Aha!

With a sudden jerk, Erron buried his ceremonial dagger in the middle of the man’s chest, all the way up to the hilt. He twisted the blade, then summoned enough air to let out a tiny squeak of triumph.

Slowly – ever so slowly – Erron’s attacker looked down. “Shizz,” the guy said, in a voice like two bricks rubbing together. “I just bought that shirt.”

Erron suddenly found himself sailing sideways through the air. He was relieved to be able to breathe once more, but less relieved to crash head-first into a wooden crate.

Stunned, he staggered upright and lashed out with the knife again.

He looked at his hand.

The knife.

Where the fonk was the knife?

“Looking for this?” asked the walking corpse, gesturing to the knife’s handle, which still protruded from where his heart should almost certainly have been. He gave the ornate hilt a flick with his index finger. “Nice craftsmanship. Although a little too fancy for my tastes.”

He took a step closer to Erron, his long coat swishing around him. “Me, I’m a man of simpler pleasures,” he said. The way he said it, cracking his knuckles on the word ‘pleasures’, caused Erron some distress. Considering he had been pretty distressed to begin with, this made his breath start to come in short, weedy gulps, and a sudden deluge of sweat trickled the carefully arranged pattern of blood daubings on his forehead down into his eyes.

“G-get away from me,” Erron babbled, squirming beneath his robe.

The corpse stopped advancing. “Sure.”

Erron blinked in surprise. And also, to a lesser extent, because of the blood-sweat. “What?” he mumbled. “Seriously?”

The corpse nodded. “Seriously. Just tell me where the portal is, and I’ll be on my way.”

Erron swallowed. Oh, shizz. He knew.

“What portal?”

The hand was around his throat again in an instant, the smell of filth and rot and things long dead probing like fingers up Erron’s nostrils.

“Wrong answer,” the corpse growled. “See, I know you opened a portal to the Malwhere, Erron. You’re going to tell me where it is, and I’m going to shut it down. That’s Option A. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what Option B is, but I am very good at improvising.”

Erron’s eyes bulged in his head from the pressure around his windpipe. He found himself staring at the knife – his knife – sticking out of the man’s chest. There was no blood, he realized. Not a drop.

“Wh-who are y-you?” Erron managed to wheeze.

“Oh, that’s right. We weren’t formally introduced. The name’s Dan Deadman,” the corpse intoned. He leaned in closer until Erron could see nothing but that rotting skin and those creepy eyes. “And if you don’t start talking in the next five seconds, this mug of mine will be the last face you ever see.”

With that, Dan began to count backwards from five. Erron made it as far as ‘four’ before gesturing frantically to his throat and nodding in a way that suggested he was ready to spill his guts. Dan kept counting all the way down to ‘one’ before releasing his grip and letting Erron drop.

‘OK, OK,’ the smaller man grimaced, coughing and panting as he tried to remember how to breathe. “Give me a sec. I just…”

A scream split the night, echoing haphazardly around the warren of alleyways. Dan’s head snapped left, his eyes narrowing. “Know what? Doesn’t matter. I think I found it,” he said, then he turned to see Erron making a frantic dash for freedom, his robe hoisted up around his knees to stop him tripping over it.

“Ugh,” Dan grunted. He shoved a hand inside his coat and found the butt of his pistol. “I hate it when they run.”

Technically, the pistol was a fairly bog-standard blaster, albeit with a number of modifications that drastically increased its functionality. He had taken it from a Xandrie enforcer a few years back, and it had immediately become his go-to weapon of choice.

It had eight different types of round that Dan was aware of, ranging from old favorites like ‘stun’, ‘kill’, and ‘utterly annihilate’, to less traditional varieties, like the one he was about to call up.

“Mindy. Slowdown. Ten per cent.”

The handgun’s cylinder rotated, then illuminated in a series of blue lights as the round locked in the chamber.

Dan took aim and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash from the barrel, and a sound that was more whoosh than bang. Something streaked along the alleyway and struck the fleeing Erron squarely between the shoulder blades.

He didn’t die or explode. He wasn’t even stunned - at least, not in the traditional sense. Instead, his frantic sprint became a slow, lumbering gait, instantly dropping him from ‘high-speed run’ to ‘old man walking pace.’

His arms and legs still pumped as if he were running for his life – nothing had changed on that front – but the speed at which they were doing so was drastically reduced, to the extent that he now appeared to be moving in slow motion. Which, as it so happened, he was.

Dan strode quickly past Erron and blocked his path. Erron’s eyes widened – slowly – then he began to speak as Dan hoisted him onto his shoulder.

“Hooooooowwww thhhhhhheeeeee ffffffffff…?”

“No idea,” said Dan, interrupting. “Don’t know how it works, just know it does.”

He about-turned and set off with Erron in the direction the scream had come from. This was one of a dozen down-market warehouse districts in this sector of the city, and one of the very few he wasn’t painfully familiar with. The fact he knew the others quite so intimately probably said more about him than he’d have liked.

There were maybe thirty different industrial buildings in the immediate vicinity, ranging from huge, smoke-spewing factories to the row of compact individual units Dan now carried Erron past. Most of the units were in darkness, locked up for the night, but light seeped around the edges of the shuttered windows of one. Four shoes stood neatly outside the unit’s door – a pair of large men’s boots, and a much smaller pair of child-sized sneakers with smiling faces scribbled onto the scuffed material.

Dan stopped. “In here?” he asked, but then the screaming came again from somewhere along an alley on the left, and Dan quickly headed that way. A scream was rarely good news. The other sound, which he was only just starting to hear, was worse news. It was a wet sound. A wet, slimy sound.

And big.

Wet, slimy and very, very big.

“Erron, you’re a fonking shizznod. I want you to know that,” Dan muttered.

Erron didn’t reply. Or rather, he started to reply, but by the time he’d reached the second syllable, Dan had thrown him through a window.

While Erron himself was on a go-slow, the rest of the world wasn’t. The window exploded as his rigid torso smashed through it, showering the inside of the warehouse reception area in shards of flying glass. The big wet slimy noise immediately became louder.

Ducking outside the broken window, Dan listened carefully to the sound, then swore a number of times, very quietly. From somewhere inside the building, there came a slow, belated, “Ow.”

Dan inhaled deeply through his nose. He didn’t need to – he’d long-since left behind the need to breathe, in general – but it was a habit he’d never thought to break.

“Mindy. Explosive rounds,” he said, standing up. The weapon’s cylinder spun and locked as Dan vaulted in through the window. He caught Erron by the hair before he had even started to get to his knees, then dragged him across the foyer floor, cutting a trench through the carpet of glass.

There was a door leading through to the main warehouse area. Heavy. Probably locked. Dan considered throwing Erron through it, but he’d barely make a dent.

He threw him, anyway. Sure enough, Erron bounced off it and slid back along the glass-strewn floor, only stopping when Dan put a foot on his back.

Mindy kicked in Dan’s hand, and the door disintegrated. The reception area was suddenly filled with smoke and fire and a fresh round of screaming. Grabbing Erron again, Dan strode on through the now much-bigger doorway and wasted a few seconds taking in the details on the other side.

The portal – a shimmering hole in the warehouse floor - was huge. Stupidly huge. So huge, in fact, it was clearly the work of an amateur, and an overly-enthusiastic amateur at that.

He gave Erron a well-deserved kick.

Dan had hoped to stop the portal opening, but that ship had sailed. A frankly obscene number of tentacles whipped around the glowing red edges, scrabbling to get a foothold in this dimension. He didn’t recognize the tentacles. Not that he had expected to be on a first-name basis with any of them, but he had extensive experience of being struck, thrown and strangled by the fonking things, and was usually able to identify what sort of creature lurked at the other end.

These, though – a jumble of fat, shiny green ones and thin, whip-like yellow things – were new to him. Part of him almost wanted the owner to come all the way through so he could see who the tentacles belonged to.

But only part of him. And a small part, at that.

A woman – young, dark-haired, her face a mix of purples and pinks – stood pressed against one of the walls, her eyes fixed on the assortment of appendages squirming blindly on the floor in front of her. The screamer, Dan presumed, and a high-pitched shriek from the woman confirmed it.

Mindy let out three short bleeps and Erron came to life in Dan’s grip. “Argh! My arm! You fonking maniac, I think you broke my arm!”

Dan hoisted Erron to his feet and half-dragged, half-carried him towards the portal. Despite the whole ‘tossed through a window’ situation, the time dilation meant he hadn’t been cut by the glass. Hurt, yes. Definitely hurt. But not cut.

“Shut up,” Dan hissed. “How many people did you kill to get the blood you needed for this?”

“W-what? None!” said Erron.

Dan cracked the butt of his gun on the side of Erron’s head, not too hard, but hard enough. “How many?”

“Three!” Erron yelped.

Dan hit him again. “How many?”

“S-six! That’s all. I swear.”

This time, Dan didn’t hit him. He didn’t need to. He just brought him in close so his face was all the squirming little runt could see. “How. Many?”

“I… I can’t remember,” Erron whispered. There was a touch of hysteria to his voice. “I don’t know.”

Dan sighed. “Yeah. Figured as much.”

He marched towards the glowing edges of the portal, and towards the tentacles slapping around on the floor beside it.

“You fonking people, always messing with things you don’t understand,” he muttered.

Across by the far wall, the woman looked up, as if spotting Dan for the first time.

“H-help!” she cried. “Help me!”

“Gimme a second, sweetheart,” Dan told her. He returned to his muttering. “Opening holes to fonk-knows-where. And for what?”

He went silent for a moment, then shook Erron violently. “That was a genuine question. Why did you do it?”

Erron’s mouth flapped up and down. “B-because it’s cool. You know? D-demons.”

Dan grunted and gestured to the thrashing mass of rubbery limbs before them. “And yet you didn’t stick around to admire your handiwork up close. You people never do. You don’t have the guts to see it through. Also,” he added, “they’re not demons.”

“Help!” the woman screamed again.

Dan tutted. “Seriously, lady, I’m going to be right there. OK? Quit busting my balls here. Relax.”

He turned Erron so he was able to see the full horror of whatever he was in the process of unleashing. “Not so cool up close, is it?”

Erron’s mouth flapped some more. His eyes grew wider. His voice, when he spoke, was a whisper of awe. “It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It’s… It’s beautiful.”

Dan shrugged. “Oh well. I tried.” He held his gun up, ready.

Erron let out a high-pitched hiss of a giggle. “A blaster? You think you can stop it with a blaster?”

“Hmm? Oh, no,” said Dan, absent-mindedly. “The gun isn’t for that thing.”

With a grunt of effort, he tossed Erron into the thrashing mass of tentacles. One of the thinner tendrils snapped out, snagging the flailing figure around one leg. Erron swung, then hung there, upside-down, his robe falling upwards to reveal his skinny legs and ill-fitting underwear.

“N-no! Stop! What are you d-doing?” he cried.

“Blood opened this thing. Blood’s what’s going to close it,” Dan said, then he raised Mindy and squeezed her trigger until she bucked and roared in his hand.

Erron exploded, in much the same way as the door had, only with substantially more in the way of splash back. A gallon or two of blood, bile and knobbly bits fell into the hole, and Dan took a couple of hasty steps backwards to avoid the mist-like crimson spray that wafted his way.

The owner of the tentacles shrieked, the sound ejecting upwards out of the portal and rebounding off the high warehouse ceiling. There was a sound like garden shears snapping shut, and the hole became just a red circle smeared onto the concrete floor. All the tentacles that had been on this side of the portal hit the ground in a series of damp splats, oily black liquid oozing from the glowing ends of each severed stump.

“Huh, what do you know?” said Dan, sliding Mindy back into her under-arm holster. “That actually worked.”

He turned towards the young woman. “Now, then,” he began, then he stopped when he saw she was lying on the floor, either knocked-out or fainted. Possibly dead, although that was less likely.

Dan exhaled through his nose. Habit again, more than anything. “Well,” he said. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Isn’t that just great?”

CHAPTER TWO

A battered old Jonta Exodus cruised through the darkened city, its four fat tires rumbling over the uneven tarmac.

The streets were reasonably busy, even at this hour, and the Exodus stood out like a sore thumb among the lanes of sleeker, more modern vehicles that swished soundlessly past above the ground. Dan gunned the engine. It gave a throaty roar as he switched lanes and left the warehouse district behind.

While most people had upgraded to magnetic-levitation vehicles over the past decade or so, there were still a few of the old four-wheelers doing the rounds. Many of these older cars could be considered classics. The Jonta Exodus, however, was not one of them.

The seats were uncomfortable, the engine was noisy, and the whole thing rattled violently when accelerating or decelerating. And, to a marginally lesser extent, while maintaining a constant speed.

The steering wheel was exactly the wrong size. The bodywork seemed to attract scratches out of thin air. The brakes decided for themselves when – and if – they were going to function, and often changed their mind mid-way through the braking process without warning.

Still, there was something honest about it. It didn’t zip frivolously through the air a few feet above the ground, but stuck steadfastly to the street, instead. He liked that. It was literally the only thing he liked about the thing, and as reasons went it didn’t really make much sense, but he liked it, all the same.

Also, it had been cheap. That had been an important factor in his purchasing decision, also.

The Exodus merged into a lane of faster-moving traffic, forcing a smoothly-curved pod-like cab behind to brake suddenly. Dan glanced in his rear view mirror and caught a glimpse of the driver making quite a rude hand gesture. Dan touched his brakes, forcing the cab driver to slam on his own again, which almost certainly tossed his passengers around in the back seats.

“No tip for you, shizznod,” Dan mumbled.

At first glance, the sleek lines of the cab and the other mag-levs looked expensive. They were all second-hand bottom-of-the-range models, though, and while they were all out of Dan’s budget, they were within reasonable reach of most folks. They had to be. Anyone with money generally escaped to Up There, the network of artificial island cities hovering above the clouds. Down Here was the poor, slightly dim-witted relation. Of the sixty million people living in the planet’s only surface-based city, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a handful doing so by choice.

Dan had just begun a right turn that would take him towards midtown when the car was filled with screaming.

“Shizz,” Dan spat, momentarily steering the Exodus into oncoming traffic. Horns blared. Lights flashed. The car’s tires howled as Dan twisted the wrong-sized wheel, jerking the Exodus back into its own lane. The sudden turn became a skid. The car’s front wheels clunked against the curb, and the back end spun out in a cloud of burning rubber.

The screams from the back seat grew louder as the Exodus slammed into an overflowing trash can, spraying garbage in all directions. The car finally stopped with a crunch, and a screech of crumpling metal, nine tenths of it now on the sidewalk.

The horn blasted all by itself, then every one of the dashboard lights illuminated briefly, before the engine shuddered and died.

A moment later, the passenger airbag deployed with a half-hearted fart-like fanfare noise.

Dan gripped the steering wheel so hard his fingers left indents in the rubber. Only then did he turn and look at the young woman in the back seat. “You done?” he said, then he puffed out his cheeks as she let rip with another round of screams. “Guess not.”

He tapped his fingers on the wheel, waiting for her screaming to stop. Outside, a few passers-by tightened their coats around themselves and hurried on, sensibly opting not to get involved. Getting involved Down Here was never advised, rarely worthwhile, and often suicidal.

Had they been up town – the closest Down Here had to an affluent area – he’d have heard sirens by now. The Tribunal didn’t often venture this far south, though, unless in large numbers. And driving tanks.

The woman appeared to exhaust her repertoire of screams, and stopped. She started shouting, instead.

“Where am I? Who are you? And… And… Where am I?”

“Finally,” Dan said, exhaling the word as a sigh. He turned in his chair again. “You’re in my car. Which, thanks to you, is on the sidewalk. My name’s Dan Deadman. You’ve been involved in—”

“What? What are you saying? I can’t… What are you saying?”

Dan hesitated. “Is your chip on the fritz. Hello? Testing. Testing. You understand me?”

The woman’s eyes went to Dan’s mouth, as if lip-reading would somehow help. “Are those… Are those words? I don’t… What are…? I don’t understand.”

Dan pointed behind his ear. “Chip. Translator chip. Is it broken?” he asked, saying the last part slowly and in a louder voice, although he wasn’t entirely sure why. “Bro-ken?” he added, for good measure.

The woman clawed at the window beside her, completely ignoring the large, highly visible handle midway down the door trim.

“Let me out! Let me out! HELP! HELP!”

Dan shook his head, just a little, and reached into his coat. “Mindy. Stun round.”

The gun’s cylinder illuminated, spun, clicked. The woman had started to scream again, and was so busy trying to escape that she didn’t notice him taking aim.

A flash of yellow lit up the inside of the car, and silence fell.

“Thank fonk for that,” said Dan, as his unwilling passenger slumped sideways until her forehead was resting on the seat beside her. He studied her in the mirror for a few long moments. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”

* * *

She woke up suddenly, going from unconscious to eyes-wide-open in the time it took to eject a scream from the back of her throat.

The first thing she noticed was that she was no longer in the vehicle, and was lying on a bed in some kind of garage or workshop, instead. The second thing she noticed was the dull pain behind her ear.

The third thing she noticed was the thin, white-haired figure in the blood-stained apron. He stood over her, wringing his hands and dancing anxiously on the spot. He had ruddy orange skin that glistened with moisture, and eyes that went from white bit to black bit, with no color in between.

“Shh. Stop screaming! Shh! Please!” he pleaded.

She screamed louder. The man glanced to his left and pulled a worried face. “Dan. My wife!”

A hand clamped over the woman’s mouth. It was rough and cold, and the stench of it assaulted her nostrils.

“OK, sweetheart, enough with the hysterics. Time to calm down,” Dan intoned.

A light flared on the woman’s neck. It started as a pinpoint of purple, then bloomed immediately to fill the whole room. The other guy was unaffected, but Dan was launched backwards as if he’d been hit by a moving car. The woman didn’t realize this right away, on account of his hand remaining over her mouth.

Dan slammed backwards into a rack of what might have been power tools, but might equally have been instruments of industrial torture. The shelving buckled under his weight, and the din of crumpling metal and falling equipment echoed around the workshop.

A moment later, the hand – and the arm still attached to it – fell from the woman’s mouth and landed on the floor with a much quieter thud.

Silence fell. Quite a confused silence.

Judging by her face, the woman hadn’t been expecting anything that had happened in the last few seconds. Dan hadn’t, either, if he were being honest. The screaming, yes. The being partially blown to pieces and propelled across the room by an invisible force, no.

“Nedran?” called a gruff voice from somewhere through the wall. “What’s all the noise? What are you doing down there?”

The white-haired man wiped his hands on his apron. His mouth trembled as he tried to shape his voice into something convincing. “Nothing, dear. Just dropped a few things, that’s all.”

“You better not have broken anything. I ain’t paying for no replacements,” the voice called down.

“Nothing broken,” Nedran said, forcing a laugh. “Everything’s fine. Just me being clumsy.”

There was silence for a while, before the voice came again.

“Keep the screaming down. I’m trying to watch my shows.”

Nedran just nodded in reply, and seemed to relax a little. He shot the young woman a wary look, then turned to Dan in time to see him extricate himself from the tangle of shelving and tools. This involved quite a lot of muttering, a substantial amount of which was made up of swearing.

When he was on his feet, Dan looked down at his left arm. Or, more accurately, his left sleeve. He had removed his long overcoat while the woman slept, and now what was left of his shirt sleeve flopped limply down by his side. It was missing from just below the elbow, the edges ragged and slightly scorched.

Dan studied the blackened material in silence for a few moments, then shifted his gaze to the thousands of freckle-like bloodspots and knife blade-sized tear that decorated the front.

“Well, you did it,” he said, sighing. “You killed my new shirt.”

“I didn’t mean… I don’t…” the woman said, her mouth flapping open and closed. She seemed to tense up for a moment, then rolled sideways off the hospital-like bed she’d been lying on, and snatched up the closest weapon she could find.

“Stay back!” she warned, waggling Dan’s severed arm in front of her in what was presumably supposed to be a threatening way. In reality, it looked like the hand was giving the room’s other occupants a friendly wave.

“Look, we’re not going to hurt you,” said Dan. “You can understand me now, right?”

The woman hesitated, then nodded, just briefly. The hand continued to wave. She pointed it at Nedran when he shifted nervously on the spot. “Don’t move!”

“Or what, you’ll slap us to death?” Dan asked. “Look, I had to shoot you to stop you screaming. I thought your translation chip was broken, so I brought you to Nedran to fix it. Turns out, you didn’t have one.”

“Wait, you shot her?” said Nedran. “You didn’t tell me you shot her.”

Dan waved his one remaining hand, dismissively. “I didn’t shoot shoot her. It was a stun shot.”

“Still. Is it any wonder she doesn’t trust you?”

Dan shrugged. His hat had been knocked off when he’d hit the shelving. He stooped and retrieved it from the rough concrete floor. “If it wasn’t for me, she’d have been dragged into the Malwhere,” he said, giving the hat a dust, then depositing it back on his head. “What more does she want?”

“Not to be shot, presumably,” said Nedran. He turned to the woman and offered something that was passingly familiar with a smile. “I’m sorry, my dear. It seems you’ve had quite a difficult night.”

She swung the arm between them, almost as if it were a loaded gun, saying nothing.

“What’s your name?” Nedran asked.

“What does it matter?” Dan grunted. “You gave her a chip, she’s awake, she can get going.” He gave the woman a very deliberate look. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Nedran shot him an accusatory glance, then turned his attention back to the woman. “I’m Nedran. Nedran Wonfroun.”

He frowned, just briefly, then glanced down, suddenly remembering his blood-stained apron. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he said, hastily pulling the strap up over his head. He tossed the apron onto a pile of other, similarly-stained garments. “I help people. I’m a… doctor. A kind of doctor, anyway.”

Dan sighed and began to march towards the woman. “OK, sweetheart, give me my arm,” he said.

“No, stay back!” she yelped, and a pinprick of light flared on her neck again. It was coming from some sort of necklace, Dan realized.

He stopped, and the pendant’s glow didn’t get any brighter. He took a step back, and it faded away completely, leaving only the darkened metal symbol hanging at the bottom of her throat. The woman swung the arm between the two men a few more times, then lowered it.

“Oledol,” she said.

Dan frowned. “Huh?”

“My name. It’s… It’s Oledol.”

“Oh. Good for you,” said Dan. “Now give me the fonking arm.”

Oledol blinked. “Huh?”

Dan pointed to the dismembered limb in her hands. “The arm. Give it to me.”

“No, that other word. What was it?”

Dan’s scarred brow furrowed. “What, ‘fonking’?”

“What is that?” Oledol asked. She pointed the arm at him, threateningly, once again mistaking it for some sort of projectile weapon. She wasn’t the only one. Nedran raised his hands, before a withering look from Dan made him lower them again. “Tell me!” Oledol demanded, then her face softened. “I mean… please?”

Dan looked her up and down. “So, what? You’ve never had a chip? How can you never have had a chip?”

Oledol’s face said she had no idea what he was talking about.

“A Zertex translation chip,” said Dan, tapping himself behind the ear. “So you can understand people? Other languages, whatever?”

Her expression didn’t change.

Dan sighed. “OK. Ned put a translation chip in your head. It takes my language and his language and turns them into your language.”

Oledol shifted on the balls of her feet. A hand – one of her own, not the one she was currently wielding like a blaster – reached up, and a finger traced the ache behind her ear. “So what’s—?”

“Fonking,” said Dan. “Zertex doesn’t like us using bad language.” He made air quotes around the last two words, although, the arm situation meant he only made half of them. “So they censor us. Fonk, shizz, bedge, sloop. I’m sure you get the idea.”

From her expression, it wasn’t clear if Oledol did, in fact, get the idea, but she didn’t question it any further.

“Now,” said Dan. “Give me my arm back.”

He held out his one remaining hand. Oledol’s eyes shifted down to the stumpy limb clutched in her own shaking grip. Her expression contorted in horror, as if only just realizing what she was holding. She gave a little yelp and tossed the arm towards Dan. He snatched it from the air, then held it out to Nedran.

The older man took it, turned it over a few times, sniffed the end, then shook his head. “Too damaged,” he announced.

“Son of a…” Dan began, then the rest of the sentence ended in a drawn-out sigh as he drew Oledol a disapproving glare.

“What?” she said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course it was your fault,” Dan snapped. “You think I blew myself across the room?”

Oledol looked from the hospital bed to the tangled wreckage of the storage rack. “Didn’t you?”

“No! How would I? Why would I?”

“Well, how would I do it?” Oledol asked, her voice rising.

Dan started to cross his arms over his chest, then realized it looked stupid with just one. “You tell me. What were you doing in that warehouse?”

Oledol’s eyes darted left and right, as if looking for something she was sure had been there a moment ago. “I don’t… Warehouse? I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Convenient,” said Dan. He shrugged. “OK, I’ll bite. Then, what do you remember?”

The eyes darted faster, looking up and down now, too, searching for something. “I don’t… I can’t…” Oledol’s eyes stopped moving, and widened, instead. “Nothing,” she said, her voice coming as a whisper of panic. “I don’t remember anything.”

CHAPTER THREE

The man with the whispering voice sang to himself as he busied around outside the cage. She could hear him out there, beyond the wire mesh and the dirty blue tarp sheet. If she had stared hard enough at the tarpaulin, she might even have seen his shadow moving around.

She didn’t look, just in case. She had only been here a few hours, but she already knew only to look when he told her to.

His song was strange and tuneless. It wasn’t a real song. It was one he’d made up. It told of what he was going to do to her – of what he would enjoy doing to her. She didn’t understand much of it - she was too scared, too young, too innocent.

The fact she didn’t understand much of it would come as some comfort later. Not much. But some.

And not to her, of course.

Her name was Nona. It meant ‘hope’.

And Nona did hope. She hoped the man would let her go. She hoped her daddy would come for her. She hoped something – anything – would happen to make this stop. Why was this happening to her? What had she done wrong?

The singing came closer, and Nona bit her lip. He got angry when she screamed. She didn’t want him to be angry again. The side of her face still ached from last time. She made a silent promise to herself not to scream again, no matter what.

The tarp was pulled away, and she saw his rubber boots and splash-proof overalls.

“Look at me, Nona,” he sang, incorporating it into the words of his song. His voice was muffled, as it always was.

Nona didn’t want to look. She wanted, more than anything, not to look, but she also didn’t want to make him angry again.

She looked.

And then, Nona broke her promise to herself, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next twenty minutes or so dragged by. Essentially, it was one long, drawn-out interrogation process, as Dan tried to pick holes in Oledol’s story. Considering there was very little story to pick holes in, this quickly became repetitive.

“You must remember something.”

“Nope.”

“You must.”

“Well, I don’t, so...”

“You knew your name.”

“Yeah, but that’s all I know.”

That sort of thing.

Nedran stood at the side, his head tick-tocking between them. He stepped in a couple of times when Dan was flat-out accusing the woman of being a liar, and again when he threatened to shoot her in the face, but otherwise he tried not to get involved.

By the end of the twenty minutes, one thing was very clear: Oledol had lost her memory.

Or, she was pretending to have lost her memory.

It wasn’t actually all that clear, at all.

One thing was certain, though: Dan didn’t particularly care, either way.

“You know what? Whatever, you say, sweetheart,” he finally declared. “You want to go with the memory thing, you go with the memory thing. I got enough problems of my own.”

He gestured with a nod to his empty sleeve, then raised his eyes to Nedran. The older man hesitated, clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then smiled unconvincingly.

“What?” Dan asked.

“It’s just… It’s a pity it’s the left,” said Ned, approaching a large metal chest that had been pushed up against the back wall. There were a few tins of cleaning fluid and dirty rags strewn on top. He moved them aside, then began stabbing the buttons of a small keypad with one finger.

“Why?” asked Dan, when it was clear Nedran wasn’t about to expand on that statement.

“Hmm?” said Ned, still tapping the keys.

“Why is it a pity it’s the left?”

“Oh! Yes. Sorry!” The keypad made an encouraging ping, and the lid lifted a few inches. A cloud of cooled air rolled out through the gap. “It’s just, I’ve got plenty of rights, but we’re running a little short on lefts.”

He lifted the lid all the way, then bent over and began to rummage inside the metal box. Behind him, Oledol raised herself up onto her tiptoes to see what was in there, then came to the conclusion that she probably didn’t want to know, and so dropped down again.

“Aha!” said Ned, then: “Oh.”

“What?” Dan asked, his brow furrowing. “What’s ‘Oh’?”

“I’ve found one,” said Nedran, turning. His smile came again, even less convincingly than before. “But you’re not going to like it.”

* * *

Dan sat on the edge of the bed, flexing the long, slender fingers of his new left hand. The red-painted nails shone against the hand’s cold, grayish-green skin.

“A woman’s arm,” he said, his voice flat and measured. “You gave me a woman’s arm.”

“Yes. Sorry. As I say, not a lot of choice available, I’m afraid,” said Nedran, placing a selection of tools back in their leather case.

“A woman’s arm!”

Oledol, who had watched the limb-attachment procedure in fascination, suddenly started to bounce up and down on the spot. “Oh! I know! You could wear a glove. No one would know.”

Nedran nodded. “Excellent suggestion.”

“I’ll know!” Dan protested. He clenched the fingers into a weedy-looking fist. “I mean… for fonk sake. A woman’s arm.”

“Is that normal?” Oledol asked. “I mean, can everyone do that?”

“Get stitched back together like a ragdoll?” said Dan. He grunted. “Nope. Far as I know, it’s just lucky old me.”

“Oh. Oh, OK.” She looked down at her own arm with a sense of disappointment.

“Something else you forgot, huh?” Dan said.

“What? Oh! Yes. I guess so.”

Ned replaced his case on a shelf. He hesitated, then his hand went to something else tucked onto the shelf beside the bag. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, and by the way, I got you something.”

It took Dan a few seconds to process this. He tore his eyes from his new hand, then looked across at the older man. “Huh?”

Ned was holding a featureless white mask, which he thrust into Dan’s hands. The mask was made of some sort of porcelain-like material, and its hollow eye sockets seemed to look back at Dan as he studied it. He traced the rough fingertips of his right hand across the smooth, unblemished porcelain.

“I thought it might be… useful,” said Ned. His rubber gloves snapped as he pulled them off. The sudden sound dragged Dan out of his trance.

“I don’t need a mask,” he grunted.

Nedran rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder, then glanced very deliberately over to Oledol. “I wasn’t thinking about you.”

Dan frowned. “You think she needs a mask? I mean, the pattern thing is weird, but she isn’t that bad.”

Ned tutted. “No. I meant she - not just her, but, you know, others, everyone - might find you less… challenging if you wore the mask.”

There was silence for a moment. It was eventually broken by the sound of porcelain shattering on the stone floor. Ned stepped back, disappointed, but not surprised.

“I like challenging,” Dan said, reaching for what was left of his shirt. It had been discarded on the bed in a crumpled ball, which had done it no favors at all. Although, to be fair, the creases were the least of its problems.

“Thanks for the arm,” he said. “Let me know when you find another one. I’ll come back and swap it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that one,” Ned insisted. He tapped an old style RoboVac with a foot. It crept out from its spot between two mismatched cabinets, and set about cleaning up the broken shards of the mask.

“It’s a—” Dan began, but Ned waved him away.

“Stop being so sexist. It’s perfectly functional,” he said, then a thought struck him. “Oh! And I’ve added a metal support structure. Nothing extravagant, just some clamps and a Durium rod. I know you hate it when bits fall off. That should help.”

“Great,” said Dan, with zero enthusiasm. His female fingers fumbled with the final few shirt buttons. A new limb always took some getting used to. This one, he suspected, would take longer than most.

“Here,” said Ned, leaning in and finishing the final button. He stepped back, looked Dan up and down, and winced. “Good thing you’ve got a big coat.”

Dan stood up, and was immediately thrown off-balance by the additional weight of the metal in his new arm. He stumbled sideways, tripped over the RoboVac, then fell backwards against the bed, sending it crashing to the floor. The RoboVac let out a high-pitched cheep, then shot back into its hidey-hole between the cabinets.

“Nedran!” snapped the voice from somewhere through the wall. “I swear, don’t make me come down there!”

“Shh,” Ned urged, although who he was aiming it at wasn’t really clear. He unhooked Dan’s coat and holster from a hook on the wall and thrust them into his arms. “Here, you’d better go.”

Dan nodded. He began to sling his holster over his shoulder, but Ned’s hands were suddenly on his back, shoving him towards a corrugated metal door. It slid upwards at their approach, and a warm night breeze wafted in.

“Sort yourself when you’re out there,” he whispered, a pleading note in his voice. “If she finds you here, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“OK, OK,” said Dan, draping the coat over his arm. He shot a sweeping glance into the darkness, then stepped outside. “Thanks. Again.”

“Wait,” said Ned, catching Dan by the arm. “What about her?”

Dan followed Nedran’s thumb. It was jabbing in the direction of Oledol. She stood in the center of the workshop, her hands crossed in front of herself, her weight dancing awkwardly from foot to foot, all too aware she was being watched.

“What about her?”

“What do you mean, ‘What about…’?” the old man whispered. “You can’t leave her here.”

“Then tell her to go,” said Dan. He finished attaching his holster, and slid the lighter of his two arms into his coat sleeve. “She’s not our problem.”

“I can’t just tell her to leave,” Nedran protested. “She has no memory.”

“So she says,” said Dan. He held the older man’s gaze for a while, then sighed. With a whistle, he beckoned the young woman towards the door. “Hey. Sweetheart. This way.”

Oledol hesitated, but then clenched her fists, straightened her arms by her side, and marched determinedly towards the door. “You really shouldn’t call me ‘sweetheart,’” she said, holding her head up high.

Dan sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, dollface. Come on.”

She stepped outside. Nedran smiled warmly at her. “Lovely to meet you, Oledol. Good luck!” He leaned in and whispered, just loud enough for Dan to hear. “He’s a pussycat when you get to know him.”

He retreated a step and the shutter rolled closed between them. Oledol ducked so she could shout through the gap. “Thanks! Nice to meet you, too. You have a lovely garage. Thank you for all your—”

The door closed with a clang.

“—help.”

She straightened up, nodded once at the door, then turned to discover she was in a dimly-lit alleyway between two tall buildings.

And that she was also alone.

“Hey!” she called, her head snapping left and right. She could hear the sounds of traffic coming from the left somewhere, so she headed in that direction, scampering quickly through the half-darkness.

When she exited the alleyway, she saw Dan striding towards his car. It was slouching unevenly in a little car park, the smooth curves of a mag-lev parked beside it miraculously managing to make the Exodus look even worse than it actually was.

The car was purple. Very purple. So purple, in fact, that Oledol temporarily forgot she was supposed to be chasing Dan, and just stared at the car’s scuffed and dented paintwork for a while, instead.

Once she had fully come to terms with the car’s purpleness, she held up a hand and called to Dan’s broad back. “Wait, stop!”

Her feet scuffed across the sidewalk as she hurried after Dan. She was halfway across the car park when he reached the Exodus. Only then did he turn.

“What?” he asked.

Oledol stopped. “Uh,” she said. She said it in a way that implied there was more to come, but more didn’t.

“You ain’t giving me a whole lot to work with there,” said Dan. “What’s the problem?”

Oledol’s mouth flapped open and closed a few times. She gestured around her at the darkness. “I don’t know where I am.”

Dan opened the car door. “You’ll figure it out,” he said, sliding into the chair. The old leather creaked under his weight. He jabbed the starter button and the engine coughed asthmatically, making the Exodus shudder and shake. Something gave a bang. While it was not a sound usually associated with healthy combustion, the engine seemed to take some encouragement from it, and came dangerously close to turning over.

Oledol stood back, watching, her arms wrapped around herself. The air was warm, but she shivered as if wracked by cold.

The Exodus spluttered and died.

“You’re not really going to leave me here,” she said. Her voice seemed unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. “I mean… You’re not. Are you?”

“Watch me,” said Dan. He thumbed the start button again. Lights danced across the dash like some kind of slot machine on the brink of paying out. “Come on,” he grimaced, punching the button harder than he had intended. Part of the plastic dash trim buckled inwards, but the Exodus roared as the engine gasped into life. “Thank you.”

With a final nod at Oledol, Dan swept the Exodus towards the car park exit. All four headlights illuminated briefly, flickered intermittently, then all but one went dark. Fortunately, Dan’s night vision was better than average, and even if the Tribunal somehow spotted him, they wouldn’t risk stopping someone over a few busted lights.

The car’s rear tires spun as he cornered onto the street, then pulled away.

A few seconds later, Dan did something he knew he shouldn’t. He looked in his rear view mirror.

Oledol stood in the center of the cark park, getting smaller, her arms still wrapped around herself as she watched him go.

She’d had no chip. She hadn’t even known about the chips. He wasn’t buying her amnesia story, but… what if? What if she was telling the truth? How would she cope Down Here if she didn’t know who she was?

Not his problem.

But what if the Tribunal got hold of her?

“Not my problem,” he said, out loud this time.

Oldedol’s arms dropped to her sides. She began to look around, no doubt wondering where to go, or what to do next.

Dan tightened his grip on his partially buckled steering wheel. He gritted his teeth.

“Ah, shizz,” he spat.

He stopped the car. The airbag lay deflated on the passenger seat beside him, spread out like popped bubblegum. He pushed it onto the floor, then put a hand out through his side window and gestured for Oledol to come over.

“I just know I’m going to regret this,” said Dan.

And he was right.

CHAPTER FIVE

The drive back to Dan’s place only took a few minutes. Although Oledol tried to kick start a number of conversations, her attempts were all met by stony silence.

The Exodus seemed to sigh with relief when Dan shut off the engine. Oledol reached for the door handle, but Dan gestured for her to wait. The car gave a violent rattle, like the final throes of a dying animal, then fell still.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Oledol asked.

Dan looked impassively at her for quite some time, occasionally blinking. “What do you think?” he asked, eventually.

Oledol shrugged. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Yes. No. No?”

“No,” said Dan. “No, it isn’t supposed to do that.”

“Oh.” Oledol nodded. “Then… maybe you should fix it.”

Dan opened his door. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind.”

They stepped out into an empty side-street. There were a couple of other vehicles parked along the curb, both floating a foot or so above the ground. Oledol bent low and peered beneath them both, then looked at Dan’s wheels.

“Hey, how come…?” she began, but Dan was already striding towards a row of dilapidated buildings. One in particular looked more run down than the others. Dan headed straight for it, and Oledol hurried to keep up.

“Is this where you live?” she asked, looking up at the depressingly gray tower block looming ahead of them. It must have been a grand place at some point, but now the ornate cornicing was crumbling and decayed, and the brickwork looked more ruined than rustic.

A number of twisted figures lurked on various ledges, their faces fixed in unmoving masks of horror. Oledol regarded them with an oddly-delighted expression on her face, then lifted her eyes past them to the narrow strip of sky she could see between the buildings.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing overhead, her previous question forgotten.

“The sky,” said Dan, flatly.

“Ha-ha. Right, no. I mean, why’s it glowing?”

Dan stopped, frowned, then looked her up and down. “The engines,” he said. Oledol looked blank. “Up There? The cities?”

Oledol smiled, but shook her head, as if she’d been told a joke she didn’t quite understand, but didn’t want to appear rude about.

“Huh,” said Dan, then he continued on towards the heavy wooden door of the building.

The heavy and slightly ajar wooden door of the building.

“Shizz,” he said, stopping again. The hand without the nail polish went inside his coat, while the other one warned Oledol to stay back.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

Dan touched a woman’s finger to his lips, and backed the gesture up with an angry scowl. He pointed to a shadowy alcove to the left of the door, as Mindy slid silently from her holster.

“Go. There. Wait,” he told Oledol. “Stay outside. Don’t come in.”

Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he took cover around the door frame and eased the door the rest of the way open.

The hallway’s automatic lighting clunked on, detecting the door’s movement. The hall itself was empty, aside from the usual collection of trash bags festering over by the back door. A puddle of unidentifiable liquid had leaked out of one onto the scuffed and cracked tiled floor. Not for the first time, Dan was grateful his sense of smell wasn’t what it used to be.

The stairs groaned underfoot as he marched up them. He stuck close to the wall so as not to be visible to anyone peering down into the stairwell from above, but that was the only token nod he bothered to give to stealth.

The creaking stairs would give him away to anyone waiting up there, and the fact that a new set of lights illuminated every time he reached another floor, thereby announcing his presence to anyone even remotely paying attention, didn’t exactly help, either.

The offices on the other floors were in darkness, locked up for the night. He pressed on to the top floor, listening for any clue as to who was up there, but hearing nothing.

He checked his gun. It was still in stun mode. On balance, that was probably for the best. A stun shot from Mindy would stop most things in their tracks, and he didn’t like to blow anyone into little bits unless he was at least ninety per cent certain they deserved it.

Well, maybe eighty-five.

The door to his office was closed when he reached the final step, but a light burned inside, silhouetting the writing on the frosted glass.

DEADMAN INVESTIGATIONS

No case too weird.*

Then, in smaller letters, right at the bottom of the window:

*Exclusions apply.

He ran through the list of people he wouldn’t object to having forced their way into his locked office. It was a list of two, one of which was him. The other, he’d left back in his workshop ten minutes previously.

He wondered if he should switch to explosive rounds, after all.

On closer inspection, the door only looked closed. It was actually resting against the latch, and opened with a nudge from his foot.

Dan snapped up the gun, taking aim at the cramped reception area just beyond the door.

Empty.

The door to the inner office stood wide open. A dim light seeped out. His desk lamp, probably. He heard the creaking as someone shifted their weight in a chair.

His chair.

“You coming in, or what?” said a voice from inside. Dan didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew the tone. If his own voice sounded like stones rubbing together, this one sounded like those same stones being formed deep in some planetary core somewhere.

Shizz. He definitely should’ve switched to explosive rounds.

He returned Mindy to her holster. No point making this even worse.

A lump of rock sat behind Dan’s desk, its back to the window, the light from the desk lamp casting half of it into shadow. It had arms and legs, and something that passed for a face, if you used a bit of imagination. An Igneon. And if an Igneon was here, Dan knew what was coming next.

It was impossible – or, rather, very difficult – to tell the sex of an Igneon just by looking at them, but the voice had already told Dan this one was male. He wore nothing on his top half, but Dan could see the elasticated waistband of some ill-fitting gray jogging pants before the rest of the legs were lost beneath the desk.

The Igneon held up a slab-like hand, gesturing for Dan to wait while he finished drawing a large and remarkably detailed penis on the desktop. His stone lips smacked together in a succession of spurting noises as he added three drops of flying ejaculate, then he nodded in satisfaction and replaced the pen in Dan’s cardboard desk organizer.

The Igneon interlocked his fingers, clasping his hands on the desktop as he looked up at Dan and smiled, showing off a number of diamond-like teeth.

“Now, then,” he said. With a nod of his boulder-like head, he indicated a wooden chair against the wall. It was the one clients sat in when they came to visit the office, and was coated with a thin layer of dust. “Well, sit down, then, before you make the place look untidy.”

Dan flicked his eyes around at an upended filing cabinet, and the paperwork strewn all over the floor. The guy had done a number on the place before he’d taken a seat.

Dan’s seat.

“I’ll stand,” said Dan.

“Suit yourself,” said the Igneon, something blazing in the dark hollows of his eyes. “You know why I’m here.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question, so Dan didn’t treat it as one. He cut straight to the chase. “I don’t have her money yet.”

The Igneon sucked a breath in through his granite lips. “You know what, Deadman? Looking around this place? I can see you don’t have her money. I mean, look at this.”

There was a loud crack as he poked a hole through the flimsy wooden desktop. He rocked in the chair, then snapped off an arm rest. “Falling to pieces,” he said. He leaned back in the broken chair. “So, I see this, and I think, ‘Clearly this guy don’t have twenty thousand credits just lying around.’ I mean, no offence, Deadman, but this place is a shizzhole.”

He leaned forwards again, steepling his fingers in front of him. “But then, you know what I think? I think, ‘That’s not my problem.’” He tapped the side of his head. It made a sound like a hammer-strike. “This little voice, way up here, says your financial dire straits are not my concern. And you know what? That little voice, it’s right. Your problems are your problem. Getting back what you owe Shornack? That… now that, is my concern. That’s my problem.”

Throughout the Igneon’s speech, Dan’s attention had drifted to the window. Usually, he could see a full six blocks into midtown before the view was blocked by an outcrop of much taller buildings. Now, though, the view was blocked by something else.

“What the…?” he began, then his voice drifted off into silence as the woman standing on the window ledge tapped against the glass.

“There you are,” said Oledol, her voice muffled. “Everything OK?”

The Igneon turned in Dan’s chair. He regarded Oledol for a few long silent seconds. She waved at him, but he didn’t wave back.

Eventually, he turned to face Dan again. “There’s someone on your window ledge.”

“There is,” agreed Dan.

Neither of them moved for a while, then the Igneon’s brow shifted, rumbling like a tiny tectonic plate. “Where was I?”

“It’s quite high up,” called Oledol.

“You were saying something about my financial situation,” Dan said. He tore his eyes away from the window, but found them creeping back after a moment or to.

“Ah, yes,” said the Igneon. “Thank you. So I was.”

Oledol knocked again. “Can I come in yet?”

The Igneon slapped the flat of a hand against the desk. The movement was sharp and sudden, and made something in the desk go snap. He sighed, then gestured to the window. “Let her in. We’re never going to be able to concentrate, otherwise.”

“It doesn’t open,” said Dan. “It’s painted shut.”

“Sorry?” called Oledol, turning her ear towards the glass. “What was that? I can’t hear you very well. It’s quite windy.”

The Igneon tutted. “Fonk, Deadman, what sort of operation are you running here?”

Standing, he punched a hole in the wall beside the window frame. Outside, Oledol yelped and caught hold of the window frame, then tumbled inside when the Igneon pulled the whole frame, glass and all, into the office in a cloud of plaster dust.

Oledol jumped up quickly, trying to brush some of the dust off her with one hand. As she was wearing black, and literally covered from head to toe in the fine white powder, it didn’t really help.

“Thanks,” she said.

The Igneon nodded and smiled, showing off those gemstone teeth again. He turned back to Dan and his smile fell away. “Maybe now I’ll have your undivided attention.”

Dan stared at the gaping wound where his window had been. The warm night air wafted in. This high up, it was just possible to make out the soft hum of the vast engines in the sky far overhead.

The Igneon was directly between him and the hole. Dan thought about charging him, trying to shoulder him out through it, but would a six story fall be enough to stop one of these things? Make him angry, yes, but stop him? Dan wasn’t sure.

Besides, it’d just make things complicated, and things were already complicated enough.

“Tell Shornack I’ll get her money,” he said.

“Plus interest,” he and the Igneon both said at the same time. The Igneon laughed.

“Know how I knew you were going to say that, Deadman? Because you said that last time. Remember? When Jojo paid you a visit? You remember Jojo, right? Nice guy. Too nice. Too trusting. Shornack had to let him go.”

He shrugged. The movement resembled a small avalanche. “I mean, technically, she had me let him go. Took him nine minutes to hit the ground. We timed it, the boys and me. Made quite the mess.” He smiled, almost wistfully. “Fun times. Fun times.”

“Uh, sorry,” said Oledol, raising a hand. “I have an uncomfortable feeling here.”

She pointed to her lower stomach. “It’s kind of, like, a pressure? Does that make sense?”

Dan and the Shornack’s enforcer both looked from her face to her stomach and back again. “And?” the Igneon asked.

“Just wondered if you knew what it was.” She gasped and her hand went to her mouth. “Am I dying? Is that what’s happening right now?”

Dan and the Igneon exchanged just the briefest of looks.

“No. You’re not dying,” said Dan.

“But it can be arranged,” the enforcer said.

Dan pointed to a door in the corner. “Bathroom,” he said.

Oledol looked at the door. “In there? I should go in there?”

“Well, you definitely shouldn’t go in here,” Dan said. He pointed again. “Bathroom.”

Oledol hesitated, then about-turned and shuffled, cross-legged, in the direction Dan had pointed. She opened the door, fumbled around for a light switch, then stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind her.

The Igneon tapped his fingertips together, then shrugged again. “Interesting friend you’ve got there.”

“She’s not my friend,” Dan said. “She’s a…”

“She’s a what?” asked the Igneon, when Dan didn’t finish the sentence.

“I don’t know. A witness.”

Oledol’s voice floated out through the bathroom door. “OK, so now what?” she asked. There was a faint clank. “Oh, wait. I think I worked it out.”

Both men waited for a few moments to see if she was going to say anything else, before continuing.

“Know what, doesn’t matter? Like I said, your business is your business,” said the Igneon. “But my business is my business, and right now, my business is getting back what you owe.”

“I told you, I don’t have it. Not yet.”

“And, see, that presents me with a problem, Deadman,” said the enforcer. “Normally, when someone can’t pay, I hurt them. I don’t kill them, because where’s the business-sense in that, right? Where’s the return on that investment? Nowhere, that’s where. So I don’t kill them, but I hurt them. I hurt them very, very badly. It’s crude, yes, but you’d be surprised how effective it is.” He shrugged. “Well, probably not all that surprised.”

He looked Dan up and down. “But you… Well, you see my difficulty. You don’t get hurt. How do I motivate someone who can’t feel pain? Huh? Cut your arms off?”

The Igneon looked deliberately at each of Dan’s hands. “Fun, sure, but what’s the point? You’ll only…”

He looked back at Dan’s left hand again. “Wait. Is that…?”

“A woman’s arm,” Dan confirmed. “Yes, it is. And no, you can’t hurt me.”

That wasn’t strictly true, but Dan was happy to let the enforcer keep thinking it.

“So, I guess you’ll just have to take me at my word,” he continued. “I’ll get Shornack’s money. I just need a little more time, that’s all.”

The Igneon rocked back on his heels, making the floorboards grumble in complaint beneath the faded carpet. “I guess I’ll just take something from you. We’ll call it a security deposit.”

Dan gestured around the trashed office. “Good luck with that,” he said, just as the bathroom door opened and an ashen-faced Oledol stepped out.

She closed the door quietly, leaned against it for a moment as if recovering from some terrible ordeal, then walked quickly over to Dan.

“Something happened in there,” she whispered. “There was… liquid involved.”

She looked down as one of the Igneon’s enormous hands wrapped around her upper arm. “Hey!” she protested. “That hurts.”

The enforcer ignored her, and flashed Dan a toothy smile. “She’ll do nicely,” he said.

Dan snorted, but then thought better of it. “No, please,” he said, forcing some emotion into his voice. “Not her, anything but her.”

It sounded far more sarcastic than he’d intended, but Igneon’s weren’t exactly renowned for their subtlety or humor, so it had the desired effect.

“Yeah, I thought so,” the enforcer said. “You want to see your friend again, you get Shornack’s money by this time tomorrow night. Otherwise, we’ll let her go. Like we let Jojo go.”

“Um, sorry, you’re hurting my arm,” said Oledol, her voice rising half an octave. She tried to yank herself free, but the Igneon’s grip was much too strong. She slapped him on his upper arm, but it was like hitting a mountain, and equally as effective.

With a tug, he pulled her towards the door. She cried out in pain as her arm was almost yanked from its socket. “Ow. Let me go!” Oledol protested. “I mean it!”

The Igneon hit her. It wasn’t hard – barely a tap, really – but it was enough to spin her around and knock her feet out from under her. The grip on her arm was all that stopped her falling to the floor.

“Do me a favor,” said the Enforcer, pulling Oledol closer and snarling in her face. “Shut your fonking mouth and stop—”

The rest of his sentence was lost in the explosion. Specifically, his explosion. There was a flash of light from Oledol’s neck, and the enforcer’s rock-solid frame became hundreds of smaller, rock-solid pieces, all hurtling in different directions at once.

The impact of several dozen chunks of flying Igneon knocked Dan off his feet. He landed heavily on top of his desk, which finally decided it had taken quite enough abuse for one day, thank you very much, and immediately collapsed beneath him.

The roar of the explosion became the rattle of pebbles bouncing off a number of hard surfaces, then that, too, faded into something close to silence. The only sounds in the room were Oledol’s ragged breathing, and the distant hum of the Up There engines rolling down through the clouds.

These were joined, a moment later, by the sound of something hard hitting something harder on the street outside, and the high-pitched bleating of a car alarm.

Flat on his back, Dan lifted his head from the wreckage of his desk and looked at Oledol. She was staring at her arm, where the Igneon’s hand had been holding her.

Dan cleared his throat, then raised his eyebrows when she turned her gaze towards him.

“OK,” Oledol said, doing her best to bring her breathing under control. “So that time might have been my fault.”

With a grunt of effort, Dan extricated himself from the desk. His hat had fallen off, and was now partially buried under a pile of rocks. He pulled it free, beat it back into shape, then placed it back on his bald head.

He flicked a few pebbles off his chair, and lowered himself into it.

Only then did he speak.

“Now, I’m sure this won’t come as any great surprise,” he said, a breeze blowing in behind him through the remains of his office wall. “But I have some questions.”

CHAPTER SIX

Oledol sat on the dusty clients’ chair, nodding as Dan made a list on his woman’s fingers.

“You launched me across Ned’s workshop without moving a muscle. You had no chip, no knowledge of them, and apparently no understanding of where you are. You climbed six floors straight up the side of a building in the dark.”

“You told me to wait outside.”

“Yes, I did,” Dan confirmed. “But I meant specifically in that spot, not vertically upwards. How did you climb all that way, anyway?”

Oledol appeared confused by the question, then she mimed a climbing motion with her hands. “Like that.”

Dan raised his eyebrows, clicked his tongue against his teeth, then shook his head.

“Moving on. You seem to have no understanding of basic bodily functions—”

“I just forgot, that’s all,” said Oldeol, tapping the side of her head.

“Yeah, except that ain’t how amnesia works, sweetheart,” said Dan. “And I speak from experience here. And then, of course, we come to the real question. The big one.”

He held up a sliver of shattered rock. “How the fonk did you do this?”

“Do what?”

Dan sucked in his bottom lip. It was mostly to stop himself shouting. The woman – Hell, barely more than a girl – looked back at him, her eyes wide, her face open and smiling. Like him, she was humanoid in shape and size, but the markings on her skin were unfamiliar. The skin itself was a pinkish purple, but with a network of lighter lines running across her cheeks and down both sides of her neck.

Down Here was a magnet for off-worlders, for reasons Dan had never been able to understand. He’d met people from all across the galaxy, even seen a few from beyond its boundaries. He’d never seen anyone like her, though.

“‘Do what?’” he echoed. He pointed to the stone shard. “How did you blow this guy to pieces?”

Oledol shifted on her chair. “Oh, that. Well… Actually, first, can I ask you a question?”

Dan sighed, but lowered the Igneon piece. “What?”

“How about ‘Ollie’?”

“Huh?”

“Instead of ‘Oldeol’,” said Oledol. “Ollie. Would you like that better?”

Dan frowned. “Why would I care?”

“Well, it’s just… You don’t seem to like me very much. I thought, you know, maybe if I changed my name you might…”

“Call yourself whatever you like,” said Dan. He held the shard up again. “Now. How did you do that?”

Ollie placed her hands on her knees and straightened her arms. “Trust me,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“You came from the Malwhere,” said Dan. “You weren’t just wandering around inside that warehouse, you came through the portal.” He gestured to her. “This isn’t you. Not your usual form, anyway.”

Ollie nodded, then spoke quietly. “OK, maybe you would believe me,” she said, then she noticed Dan’s gun was held in his lap, pointing at her.

“Mindy, explosive rounds,” he said. Ollie watched the weapon spin and illuminate.

“Wait, don’t shoot!” she protested. The pendant on her necklace began to glow. She slapped a hand down on it, pinning it against the top of her chest. “I escaped. I’m not one of them, I was trapped there. I was a prisoner.”

“Whose prisoner? Where were you?” Dan asked. “And why?”

The pattern of lines on Ollie’s skin paled. “I don’t know. I never saw him. Not directly. And I don’t know what I did. All I remember is that place. The darkness.” She swallowed. “And the things hiding in it.”

“That could be anywhere,” said Dan, holding the gun steady.

‘The Malwhere’ was a generic, catch-all description for any one of a few hundred known - and countless thousand still unknown - Hell-like dimensions. Better minds than his probably knew more about the science – parallel dimensions, bubble universes, or some such – but when it came to direct, boots on the ground experience, Dan was better placed than most to comment. ‘Dark and full of scary shizz,’ was a description that could be applied to any one of a few dozen Malwhere dimensions.

“I heard a name once,” said Ollie, still eyeing the gun. “Kalayguy?”

Dan’s grip tightened on the gun. “Kalaechai?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, maybe,” Ollie said.

It made sense. Dan had never had any dealings with Kalaechai directly, but had heard enough stories to know he was the kind of guy likely to have a giant tentacle-monster on the payroll. Hell, maybe he was a giant tentacle-monster himself. You could never tell with Malwhere types.

There was some loony underground cult dedicated to him somewhere in the city. Dan vaguely recalled having kicked one of them in the nuts a few years back.

“Purple robe,” he said, as the memory snapped into focus.

Ollie frowned. “Huh?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Dan. “So, you escaped Kalaechai? You got out of the Malwhere, just like that?”

Ollie nodded, then shifted her hand to reveal the pendant. It was a fairly simple-looking circle of metal with something a bit like a clock-face in the center. It was no longer glowing, but there was a faint aura about it that suggested the possibility of glowing wasn’t yet off the table.

“I found this. It helped me get out.”

Dan held out a decidedly-female hand. “Toss it over.”

Ollie’s hand clamped down on it again. “I can’t. If I take it off, they’ll find me. It hides me. From them.”

That, too, made sense. Dan had heard of similar tech before, although hadn’t seen a whole lot of it up close. Of course, there were the usual suspects who considered such things to be magical artefacts, but he’d found that the only real difference between magic and technology was a healthy dose of skepticism and a modicum of common sense. One universe’s sorcery was another universe’s dishwasher.

Dan relaxed his grip on the gun, but didn’t put it away. “So, the amnesia thing’s bullshizz?”

“Well, I mean… Kind of,” said Ollie. She nodded, sheepishly. “Yeah.”

Dan allowed himself a half-smile of satisfaction, and made a mental note to rub Nedran’s face in that at a later date.

“So, what are you? Really, I mean,” Dan said.

Ollie looked down at herself, the back at Dan. “I’m this.”

“Right,” said Dan, dragging the word out. “And yet you somehow don’t know how your bladder works.”

Ollie’s eyes flitted around the ruined room, as if making sure no one else was listening. She lowered her voice, just in case. “It was different there,” she whispered. “Everything was… It was different. I was this, I was the same as this, but… different.”

Dan puffed out his cheeks. “Thanks for the explanation. Real helpful,” he said.

“Was it?” asked Ollie, brightening suddenly.

Dan shook his head. “No.”

“Oh,” said Ollie. “Well, I suppose I was… lighter. Like, kind of untouchable.”

“Non-corporeal,” said Dan.

“Does that mean lighter, like, kind of untouchable?” Ollie asked.

“Pretty much.”

“OK, then yes, I was that, then.”

Dan leaned back in his chair a little, but the abuse it had taken at the hands – and, more significantly, the buttocks – of the Igneon made it slouch uncomfortably to one side, so he let it rock him forwards again.

Ollie’s story made enough sense to be viable, but was vague enough to mean it was impossible to corroborate. If he believed her, then she was a lifelong prisoner of one of the big name Malwhere Lords, but had somehow managed to escape his domain in the tiny window of opportunity presented by some idiot with a robe and a fancy dagger.

If he didn’t believe her, there was no saying what she was.

She yawned. This took her by surprise, and seemed to cause her some concern. “I didn’t do that on purpose,” she said, pointing to her mouth. “Am I dying? Does that mean I’m dying?”

Dan shook his head, sighed, then holstered his gun. “No, you ain’t dying. You’re tired, that’s all.” He studied her for as long as it took him to roll his tongue around inside his mouth, then click it against his teeth. “So, all this is new to you? You had no physical form?”

“I looked like this,” said Ollie, pointing to herself. “But I felt different. I can’t really explain it.”

“I know someone who might be able to,” said Dan. He pushed back his hat and scratched his head. “But it’s late, and he’s not the most reliable guy in the world come night time.”

A thought struck him.

He stopped scratching.

“My face,” he said.

“Huh?”

“You didn’t mention my face.”

Ollie’s eyes darted up from his chin to his forehead. With his hat back, the entire patchwork quilt or rot and decay was on full display. “Your face?”

“Yeah. Most folks have something to say about it.”

Ollie nodded slowly. “Oh,” she said, then her brow knotted. “Why?”

Dan blinked, the dry lids scraping across his milky eyes.

Ollie was doing that smile-and-frown thing again, the one that suggested she had failed to understand a joke that everyone else was already laughing at.

“You know,” said Dan, clearing his throat. “I never thought to ask them.”

He stood up. The breeze drifting in through the hole in the wall swished his coat around his legs. The car alarm had stopped its squawking now, and the only sound was the regular drone of the Up There engines.

“We’ll figure out what to do about you tomorrow,” said Dan. He gestured to the door leading out into the reception area. “Now, you should get some rest.”

“Oh, OK,” said Ollie, then she yawned, closed her eyes, and promptly fell asleep.

Dan stood watching her for a minute or more. She was sitting bolt upright, her eyes closed, her breath coming in short, shallow snorts.

“Shizz. Even I find that creepy.”

He looked back over his shoulder at the hole in the wall.

Finally, he sighed. “Should have left her in that warehouse,” he muttered. He took of his coat, gave it an experimental sniff, then draped it over her.

He wandered around the trashed office, half-heartedly sweeping up some pieces of Shornack’s enforcer with his foot, before he realized he couldn’t tell where the Igneon ended and the wall debris began.

With a grunt, he picked up the old filing cabinet and stood it upright. Then he scooped up a few armfuls of paperwork, squashed it all into a ball, and shoved the whole lot into the top drawer. It began to expand almost immediately, so he found a large chunk of Igneon – part of a foot, he reckoned – and placed that on top of the paperwork, pinning it down.

He wrestled the drawer closed. This took some effort, and he worried that if the squeaking didn’t wake Oledol up, the swearing might. Neither did.

He opened the far less stiff bottom drawer and found a clean shirt. Or relatively clean, compared to the one he was wearing, anyway.

Looking around to make sure Oledol wasn’t watching, he hastily changed. Had Ollie been awake, she would have seen the vast expanse of his back, the flesh withered and riddled with decay. He’d been in shape once. In a lot of ways, he was still in shape, although quite what that shape was was difficult to say.

He worked the buttons on his shirt. It was tricky, but took slightly less effort than last time. The fact he was getting used to the new arm was irritating him. It was ridiculous. A woman’s arm. It would have to go. First opportunity, it would have to go.

Turning, he looked over the office. His efforts to tidy it hadn’t made a whole lot of difference. At best, it had gone from ‘completely destroyed’ to ‘completely destroyed, but with an upright filing cabinet’, which didn’t really seem to merit the effort.

He gazed out over the city for a while, the wind playing across his face. A flying sphere rose up outside the building, a number of lenses all rotating to fix on Dan and his missing window. A Paparazzoid. Dan hated the things. Always scouting the city for scandal. It was the only way the rolling news channels could fill their schedules.

“Fonk off,” he told it. “Nothing to see here.”

Eventually, after it had ogled the damage for a while, the Paparazzoid flew off, leaving Dan staring out at the city again.

Finally, he lowered himself back into his seat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Yep,” he mumbled, raising his feet onto the wreckage of his desk. “Should have left her in that fonking warehouse.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ollie woke up screaming.

Looking back, she wouldn’t be able to say why she was screaming exactly. The memory of the dream – or the dream of the memory, maybe – slipped away quickly, leaving her with only a general imprint of some cold and shapeless dread.

Startled, Dan jumped in his seat. Thanks to the missing armrest, he fell sideways out of the chair and landed unceremoniously on the rubble-strewn floor, one hand already reaching for his gun.

Ollie stopped screaming. She was pressed back in her chair, ducking, her arms hooked over her head for protection. As Dan got to his feet, he spotted her eyes, hidden behind her arms and her curtain of dark hair. They darted anxiously around her, searching for something horrifying. The glow from her necklace made them sparkle and dance.

“Hey, easy, kid,” Dan said. He held up a hand in what was supposed to be a soothing gesture, then caught sight of the nail polish and winced with irritation.

Yep. That would definitely have to go.

Ollie’s eyes fixed on him, but the glow from her pendant didn’t fade.

Dan swapped hands. “You’re OK. It’s OK. Nothing’s going to hurt you. Relax.”

From out in the reception area came a series of metal clangs. Ollie jumped up with a yelp, and spun around. Her chair – the only fully-intact piece of furniture in the office, flew across the room and smashed against the wall.

“Son of a…” Dan began, before ending the sentence in a gruff sigh. “Look, just calm down. It’s nothing. It’s just Artur.”

The clanging came again, more insistent, this time.

“Alright, alright, give me a minute!” Dan bellowed.

The clanging stopped, but it did so in a way that managed to sound quite begrudging. It also somehow conveyed the sense that the clanging could resume at any moment, so someone should probably get their fonking skates on.

Ollie’s head went from the door to Dan and back again on an apparently endless loop. Her breathing was short and erratic, her hands no longer over her head, but clenched in fists by her sides, instead. They trembled, the knuckles turning white as the pendant around her neck continued to glow.

Dan thought about making a grab for the thing. He could tear it free and toss it out through the hole in the wall before she figured out what he was doing.

Correction. He could probably do all that. If he couldn’t, though…

He remembered the Igneon. It was hard to forget him, of course, what with bits of the guy still covering almost every available surface.

Dan decided against grabbing for the necklace.

“Look, you had a dream, that’s all,” he said. “It happens. It doesn’t mean anything. You’re OK. You’re safe.”

He looked around at the trashed office.

“You know. Relatively speaking.”

Ollie’s breathing slowed, just a little. Her hands remained in fists, but the whiteness faded around the knuckles.

“I was back there,” she said, quietly. “I mean… I thought I was back. With them.”

“Like I said, it was just a—”

The clanging resumed. Dan clenched his jaw, rolled his eyes, then headed for the door. “Can’t even give me two seconds,” he muttered, storming through into the cramped reception area.

Technically, it wasn’t really a reception area. A reception area most likely required a receptionist, and this room didn’t have one. It didn’t even have a reception desk, which was probably the bare minimum requirement for a reception area.

There was a small table in the corner, but it was mostly for eating at, and not really used for even light secretarial duties.

The contents of the room also included four threadbare chairs with the stuffing poking out through the padding lined up against the opposite wall, and another filing cabinet. All the actual paperwork was in the filing cabinet next door, so Dan tended to use this one for storing other things. The definition of ‘other things’ was as far-reaching as the name suggested, and the drawers were now so crammed with random junk that he couldn’t open the top one all the way without the whole thing falling forwards.

There were three hooks on the wall beside the door that led out to the staircase. Two of them had identical hats and coats hanging from them. The third was empty. Dan took off his hat and tossed it towards the third hook. It missed and flopped onto the floor, which did his mood no favors, at all.

The only other item of interest in the waiting room was a landscape painting. It showed the sea. A lot of sea. In fact, it was basically nothing but sea. The bottom half of the picture was dark blue. The top was gray cloud, with the occasional hint of electric blue shining through. Engine blue.

A ripple on the surface of the ocean suggested something large was moving beneath it. Quite how large, exactly, was difficult to gauge, what with the lack of anything else in the image to compare it to, but it was large enough.

The clanging came from behind the painting. Dan unhooked the frame and set it on the floor, propped upright. With the painting removed, a rectangle of much cleaner wall was revealed. In the center of that was a small metal door, set back so it was flush with the wall itself.

Part of the door was smooth and glassy, like a screen. Dan tapped a finger against it and a numerical display illuminated. The clanging came again, more insistently this time, as he keyed in the code.

“Alright, alright, give me a—”

Dan barely had time to lean back before the door flew open. He felt the wind as it swung past, narrowly missing his nose, and then a flailing blue shape, no more than six inches high, landed on his face and punched him right in the eyeballs.

“Ow. Fonk. Cut it out, Artur,” Dan grimaced, grabbing for the little figure. It lashed out with a foot, kicking him on the thumb, then scampered around the side of his head and bit him on the ear.

“Keep me waitin’, will ye?” the little figure spat. “Aye, sure, well, we’ll see about that.”

Had Dan been familiar with the languages and dialects of the planet Earth, he might have remarked long ago that Artur’s accent was quite unmistakably Irish. As he wasn’t even aware of Earth’s existence, though – never mind that of the Emerald Isle – he thought nothing of it.

Finding handholds in the crags of the much larger man’s rotten skin, Artur clambered up onto Dan’s head, found his balance, then began jumping up and down, driving the heels of his bare feet into Dan’s skull with each bounce.

“Every fonking time,” Dan muttered. He jerked his upper body sharply to the left, and Artur was launched across the room.

“Aah, ye big feckin’ shoite,” the little man managed to holler, before he thumped against the wall and fell what would, to him, have been a not inconsiderable distance to the floor.

Dan rubbed the top of his head. He spotted Ollie standing in the office doorway. She was looking down at the fallen Artur, who lay flat on his back, dead.

Or pretending to be, at least.

“There’s a little man,” Ollie said.

“Hoi! Less o’ the cheek, ye fat cow,” said Artur, still pretending to be dead, albeit much less convincingly now. “Who’re ye calling little?”

Ollie frowned. He was definitely little. She didn’t know much, but she was confident she was right on that one.

He was dressed – or possibly trapped – in a rectangular paper suit. Holes had been cut for his head and arms, and the bottom had been ripped off so his bare legs could poke through. He looked like he was wearing a deeply unflattering dress.

There was writing on the front of the ‘outfit’ but Ollie couldn’t read it. Had she known more about the world, she might have recognized it as an old envelope, but she assumed it was some kind of cultural thing, instead.

The man himself was a light greenish-blue, with a darker green beard that grew like moss across his chin. He had long hair (or long for his size, at least) tied in a loose ponytail, and eyebrows that well and truly stamped their authority across the upper part of his face.

“Come on, get up,” said Dan.

Artur didn’t move, other than to relax in a way designed to make him look even deader. “I can’t. Ye killed me, ye big fecker.”

Dan’s shadow fell on the little man. He raised a foot twice as big as Artur’s entire body. “That can be arranged.”

Artur’s eyes flicked open. He saw the underside of a dirty boot, and quickly rolled away. “Ah, come on now, quit actin’ the maggot in front of yer lady friend. Ye’re impressing precisely no one, Deadman.”

He stood up, making his envelope crinkle. His hands went to his hips and he cricked his back. “Ooh, that’s better. That’s grand.”

Once he’d finished straightening himself out, he leaned back and peered up at Dan. His eyes were tiny, but one was slightly bigger than the other, giving the impression he was constantly squinting. “Look at ye up there, ye big eejit. Head like a bag o’ spuds. What kind of time d’ye call this, exactly?”

He turned away, regarded Ollie for a moment, then winked. ‘Ye alright there, peaches? Ye well?”

Ollie blinked, then looked up at Dan. “There’s a little man,” she said, feeling no one had really acknowledged this properly the first time round.

Artur folded his arms. This made the shoulders of the envelope ride up so they were level with the top of his head. “I’m afraid I has to ask ye to refrain from usin’ that word,” he said.

“Oh,” said Ollie. Then: “Which word?”

“The L word,” said Artur. “Ye’re not to know, seein’ as how ye’re not from around here, so I’m not goin’ to hold it against ye. Least, not this time. Also, I like ye. Ye’ve got a kind face, and – if ye don’t mind me sayin’ – a crackin’ auld pair o’ tits on ye. So we’ll say no more about it.”

He winked at her again, unfolded his arms, then turned to Dan.

“Now, have ye got breakfast sorted? Sure, I’m so famished I could eat a reverend mother.”

Dan squatted down. Artur still had to crane his neck to meet the much large man’s eyes, but not quite as much as he had been. “How did you know she’s not from around here?” Dan asked.

“What? Come on, it’s written there all over her face,” said Artur. He glanced back over his shoulder at Ollie. “And a fine face it is, too,” he told her, then he turned back to Dan and pointed to the front of the envelope where his stomach would be. “Now come on, Deadman, ye’d think I didn’t have a mouth on me. Am I gettin’ some scran, or what?”

* * *

Dan worked his way through the queue quickly. He always did. Most people very rapidly became uncomfortable with Dan standing behind them, and a surprisingly high number would fall out of line, regardless of how long they’d been standing in it, having suddenly remembered they were supposed to be somewhere else.

The dumpling stand was a couple of blocks from his office, and never busy at this time of day, even when Dan wasn’t looming nearby. There had been another food place closer to home, but it had been shot to shizz by the Tribunal fairly recently, before, by all accounts, being partially trampled by a giant flying robot. He hadn’t seen it himself, but had heard enough people talking about it to believe it was true.

Shame. He’d really liked that place. It was pricey, but the owner owed him some favors, so he always got the staff discount. Which was ironic, because as far as he could tell, even the staff didn’t get that.

Of course, he didn’t really need to eat these days, but as his digestive system was one of the few parts of him that still worked, he liked to. He couldn’t taste things the way he used to, but he enjoyed the act of eating itself. It reminded him of… Well. It reminded him of other times.

His new arm itched. He resisted the urge to scratch it.

Dan wondered idly what had happened to the owner after the Tribunal had shot her place to pieces. They’d probably have taken her in, although something told him she wouldn’t have gone without a fight. Nana Joan rarely did anything without a fight.

The customer ahead of Dan in the queue, who had managed to resist the urge to run, took the paper bag with their food inside, mumbled a hasty, “Thanks,” then scurried off.

“Next,” said a voice. The word was low and drawn-out, like a recording played at half speed.

A furry brown creature slouched behind the stand, a pair of wooden tongs held in one clawed hand. She wore a colorful paper hat, a lightly-soiled apron, and an expression of total and utter defeat.

It was thought that the Parlooqs were the planet’s original native species, but they had been invaded and conquered by so many other races over the years it was difficult to be sure. They rarely, if ever, fought back, and seemed to welcome any new alien overlords whenever they turned up.

There had been a number of campaigns over the years to grant the Parlooqs equal rights as all other citizens on the planet of Parloo, but the Parlooqs themselves had been quite vocal in their objections, and so it had never come to much. Most of them now spent their days toiling endlessly in minimum wage jobs, and never once complained.

Or maybe they did, but they were so mind-numbingly tedious that nobody ever listened.

Dan waited for the Parlooq to finish her welcome speech. He already knew what he wanted to order, but had discovered that interrupting a Parlooq usually meant it just started over again, so it was best to wait for it to be done.

“Hi… there,” she said, in a voice that suggested she’d very recently been shot in the face with a slowdown round. “Welcome… to… Doodie’s Dump…lings. How may… I help… you…”

“I’d like—”

“…this morning…”

“Yeah, I’d like—”

“…sir?”

Dan hesitated. The Parlooq gazed back at him with something that straddled the line between ‘expectation’ and ‘suicide risk’. He decided it was safe to continue.

“I’d like a number six, a number eight…” He looked the printed menu board up and down. “What’s a ‘Funpling Mix’?” he asked, then he realized his mistake. “Wait…”

It was too late. The Parlooq droned out a lengthy, monotonous explanation which, after a good few minutes, basically came down to, ‘some sweet dumplings’.

Around two thirds of the way through the explanation, Dan felt a tingling on the back of his neck, like someone blowing gently on it. He looked around, but there was no one behind him. A few tourists were lurking nearby, probably waiting for him to vacate the area before they joined the queue, but there was nothing directly behind him. Nothing visible, at least.

He kept a look-out until the Parlooq finished talking, then turned and nodded. “Yeah, some of those, too,” he said, fishing in his pocket for his wallet.

Fifteen agonizing minutes later, Dan took three paper bags from the dumpling seller, scanned his ID card to transfer the credits, then about-turned and started making his way back through the thickening crowds of early-morning pedestrians.

That tingling on the back of his neck was still there, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Of course, hundreds of people were watching him – a good couple of thousand had filed past him while he was at the dumpling stand, and a high proportion had at least slowed to gawp at him for a moment or two. Even on a planet inhabited by species from all over the galaxy, a walking, talking corpse still managed to draw its fair share of attention.

But this was different. He didn’t feel like he was merely being glanced at, he felt like he was being observed. Scrutinized, even. He was sure someone was watching him, he just couldn’t figure out where they were. Or, more important, who they were.

He made a show of checking inside his jacket for his gun, nodded in satisfaction, then stalked off in the direction of his office. If someone wanted to come for him, good luck to them.

First, he was having breakfast.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nona’s wrists hurt. The plastic ties had cut grooves in her delicate flesh, and any movement – even her involuntary little spasms of fear, which were coming more and more regularly now – made them burn like fire.

She hadn’t seen who had grabbed her. She remembered a roar. No, two roars, both at the same time. At first, she’d thought they were animals, chasing her down. But not animals. They weren’t animals. They were engines. Old ones.

Rough hands had clawed at her. Darkness had enveloped her. She had screamed, but the roaring had drowned it out.

And then she’d been moving. Fast. So fast. So dark. So alone, and so afraid.

The men who had taken her had brought her to someone else. Someone new, who she hadn’t seen yet. She could hear him now, though, singing quietly as he did whatever it was he was doing out there beyond her covered cage.

She didn’t want to see him. She just wanted to go home. More than anything, she wanted to go home.

“Hello?” she said, but her throat tightened all the way, and the word didn’t come out.

Swallow.

Deep breath.

Try again.

“H-hello?” she said, forcing the word out as a whisper.

The singing stopped.

“Please,” Nona said, but there wasn’t enough air left in her lungs to add anything more to it.

The singing resumed, even more quietly now than before. Nona could hear her name in the mumbled lyrics, although it was the only word she could recognize. The voice was muffled, as if Nona had her hands clamped over her ears.

A moment later, the tarpaulin was pulled aside. Nona realized then why the man’s voice was muffled. In that same moment, she realized something else, too.

She realized she was never going home again.

CHAPTER NINE

“Ye going to be eating that, peaches?”

Ollie paused with a pale green, vaguely ball-shaped wad of dough held halfway to her mouth. Her eyes swiveled down to it, then back across the table to Artur. He was sitting on an upturned mug on the tabletop, with Ollie on his left, Dan on his right, and an assortment of crumbs strewn all around him.

“Yes,” she said, then she shoved the dumpling in her mouth before he tried to take it from her. She’d already watched him wrestle almost a full purple one out of Dan’s hand, and for the size of him, he seemed to be pretty strong. Also, very determined.

“Ah. Shame,” Artur said. His stomach rumbled beneath his envelope, and he looked up at Dan.

Dan chewed slowly for a long time, looking back.

Eventually, he swallowed.

“What?”

“I was going to ask if ye fancied sharing a bite o’ that, but me chances are lookin’ pretty feckin’ slim now.”

Dan ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, then swallowed again.

“Yup.”

Artur shook his head in disgust, then turned to Ollie. “Ye see the shoite I’ve to put up wi’? Ye see the way I’m mistreated by this Holy Joe sitting there? Look at him. Face like a blind cobbler’s thumb. I’ve a good mind to—”

Dan deposited a paper bag on the table in front of him. Artur did his usual scowl at it, then sniffed the air. “What’s this ye be puttin’ down now?”

“Funplings,” said Dan. “They’re new.”

“Funplings?” Artur repeated, rolling the world around in his mouth as if tasting it. “Sure, that’s the worst name I’ve ever heard for anything in me whole life.”

Dan reached for the bag. “Well, if you don’t want them.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” said Artur, jumping from the mug and striding over to the bag. He fished inside and pulled out a yellow blob that was easily twice the size of his whole head. He gave it an experimental lick, flicked his tongue across his lips a few times, then buried his face in it all the way past his ears.

It took surprisingly little time for Artur to finish the funpling. Or surprising to Ollie, at least. Dan had pretty much known what to expect.

When he was done, the little man wiped his bare arm across his mouth and beard, failed to notice the crumbs in his eyebrows, and reached into the bag again.

“Are they good?” asked Ollie, hoping he might offer her one. He didn’t.

“Aye, they’re grand. They’re a bit like… have you ever had cake?”

“No.”

“Oh. Right. OK, then. Have you ever had a bun?”

“No.”

“Right,” said Artur. He tapped his foot and stared into the middle distance, deep in thought. “Have you ever had, like, a smaller cake? Not the first cake I already said, but a different cake?”

Ollie shook her head. “No.”

Artur shrugged. “Ah, well, feck ye, then. See if I care,” he said, and he went back to eating.

An uncomfortable hush fell over the table, as Artur got stuck into the next funpling. “These are grand. These are proper deadly,” he mumbled, ejecting yet more tiny crumbs into his beard. “Ye should go and get more o’ these bad boys.”

Dan shook his head. “That’s your lot.”

Artur looked disappointed, but another bite of funpling took the edge off it.

“Can I ask something?” said Ollie.

“Is it about whether I’m single?” Artur asked. “If so, ye surely can, and I surely am.”

“No, it’s not that. Why do you keep him locked up?”

Artur and Dan exchanged a glance. “Oh, that,” said Artur.

“It’s complicated,” said Dan.

Artur shrugged. “T’isn’t really.” He lowered the funpling, thought for a moment, then continued. “See, the thing is, peaches, it is not unknown for me to get up to the odd bit o’ mischief during the wee small hours. I can’t help meself. I’m a terrible man at times.”

“Oh,” said Ollie. “Oh. OK.”

Some time passed.

The question eventually came, as Dan knew it eventually would.

“What kind of mischief?”

“Oh, ye know. A bit of this, a bit of that. Some pretty harmless bolloxology, mostly,” said Artur.

Dan cleared his throat.

“And, on the odd occasion, I’ve been known to get a bit lairy when it gets dark out,” Artur said. “You know, start fighting, and what have ye.”

Dan cleared his throat again.

“And the occasional murder. But rarely. Very rarely, in fact. Sure, I could count them all on the fingers of… what? Four hands? Something like that, anyway. If I had four hands, I mean, which I don’t, obviously. That would be mad.”

A thought struck him. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of thing, of course. Four hands, or whatever. You see all sorts round here. Sure, I saw a lad with three arses last week. Either that, or he was smuggling babies down there. I didn’t like to ask, ye know? Seemed a bit forward.”

He sniffed, then put his hands on his hips. “Now, what was I saying there before all that?”

“You could count them all on the fingers of four hands,” said Ollie.

“Aha! Aye, I could, an’ all. And they all deserved what they got. I mean mostly. Some of them. A few. Well, that one guy was asking for it. A bit.”

Artur shrugged. “The point is, peaches, I can be a bit… unpredictable, when it comes to the wee small hours.”

Ollie nodded slowly. She looked pretty relaxed and unsurprised by what Artur had said, as if mass-murder was a perfectly reasonable way to spend the evening.

“So that’s why you lock him up?” she asked Dan.

“I locks meself up,” said Artur. “Seein’ as how I’m a responsible citizen and all that. Yer man there just works the key.”

Ollie nodded for a little longer, then shrugged. “OK. That makes sense,” she said. She looked in her paper bag, hoping to find more dumplings in there. She found only disappointment.

Dan nodded to the empty bag. “How was it?”

Fishing inside it, Ollie discovered a final large crumb. She tossed it in her mouth before replying. “Good. Really good. I mean… really good. I’ve never eaten those before. Although, I haven’t eaten anything else before, either, so I guess I can’t really compare it to anything.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get,” said Dan, leaning forwards so his elbows were on the tabletop. “How can you never have eaten? How can you never have been to the bathroom, if you were only a prisoner in… wherever you were, and not a native?”

Ollie’s face told him she didn’t understand.

Her mouth told him the same thing.

“I don’t understand.”

Dan nudged Artur aside with the back of his hand, then picked out a funpling from the bag.

“Steady, now!” the little guy protested.

Dan held the funpling up for Ollie to see. “This is you.”

“Only you’re a fair bit easier on the auld eyes,” said Artur, winking at her.

Picking up his empty paper bag, Dan dropped the Ollie funpling inside. “This is you back wherever you came from. Originally, I mean. Pre-Malwhere. If you say this,” - he gestured towards her – “is the real you, them presumably you were eating, using the bathroom, whatever, back when you were in here.”

He gave the bag a shake, throwing the funpling around inside.

Ollie watched him. Her expression was somehow wide-eyed and frowning at the same time. It was a neat trick. “When I was in a bag?”

“What? No, not… I don’t literally mean…” Dan tutted and lowered the bag. “My point is, even if you were kidnapped and taken to some Malwhere dimension where you had no physical form – and I’m not saying I believe that – but even if you were, what about before?”

“I don’t remember any before,” said Ollie. “I only remember that place.”

Dan leaned back. “And that’s why I don’t buy it.”

“Baby,” said Artur. At least, Dan thought that was what he said. The little man’s mouth was so crammed full of funpling, it was hard to tell.

Artur pointed to his bulging cheeks and chewed faster. This went on for several seconds, before he swallowed quite a large piece, and had to batter his chest with his fist to force it down.

“Ugh. That’s goin’ to come back and haunt me,” he wheezed, then he brushed the debris from his beard and looked from Ollie to Dan.

“What?” he asked. “Why’re ye both gawpin’ at me?”

“You said ‘baby,’” Dan intoned.

“Oh, yeah. Right. So I did. She could’ve been a baby. These Malwhere Lords, they love that kind of thing. The drama of it, or whatever, stealing a firstborn. Murdering – butchering – the parents, then having it away on their toes with the offspring. Tearing the things right off of their mother’s teat. They can’t get enough of that sort of thing. At it all the time, they are. Sure, it’s practically their hobby.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I didn’t know that.”

“That’s because you’re a useless great gobshoite,” Artur pointed out. He picked up another funpling, and tore a chunk off. “Where was ye, anyhow, peaches? Who was the toe rag what took ye?”

“Kalaechai,” said Dan.

Artur almost choked on his funpling.

“Ye’re not serious?”

“You’ve heard of him, then,” said Dan.

“Heard of him? I’ve met the guy, and let me tell ye, it’s not an experience I’d care to repeat,” Artur said. He looked at the chunk of funpling in his hand, sighed, then dropped it back into the bag. “See, now I’ve lost me feckin’ appetite.”

He smiled warmly at Ollie, before turning to Dan and lowering his voice. “No offence to the girl nor nothin’, but we should shoot her in the face, hack her to pieces, then burn whatever’s left before Kalaechai finds out she’s here. Then we should probably do the same to each other, just to be on the safe side. I’ll do you first.”

“Uh, I’d prefer if you didn’t,” Ollie said.

“We can’t always get what we want, peaches,” Artur said. He turned to her, frowned deeply, then spun on his heels back to Dan. “Wait a moment now. Wait just one moment.”

His face lit up in delight. He pointed to the end of Dan’s shirt sleeve, and Dan braced himself for what was coming next.

“Ye’ve a girl’s hand!”

“Yes,” said Dan.

“Ye’ve an actual girl’s actual hand!”

“I know,” said Dan.

“On the end of your arm!” cried Artur. “With the nail polish and everything!”

“Thanks,” said Dan. “I’d noticed.”

Artur’s grin threatened to separate the top part of his head from the rest of his body.

“A girl’s hand!” he squeaked, erupting into laughter. “Aw, that’s deadly. Aw, man. A girl’s hand. What a feckin’ gas! With the nail polish and everything.”

He continued to laugh for a full two minutes or so, bent double, tears streaming down his face as he tried to fight back the giggles.

Finally, he wiped his eyes on the back of his arm, exhaled slowly, and had a go at composing himself. “Aw. Holy Father. That’s funny. How’d ye end up with a girl’s hand?”

“It’s not just the hand. It’s the whole arm,” Ollie pointed out.

That set Artur off again. “It’s the whole feckin’ arm!”

By the time he’d finished laughing, Artur’s blue-green skin had a distinct red hue around the cheeks, and breathing seemed to require a lot of concentration. “Aw, man. Too funny. Too feckin’ funny,” he said. He strolled towards the edge of the table, announcing, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the jacks before I wet meself.”

He jabbed a thumb in Ollie’s direction. “We’ll figure out what to do with peaches here when I get back.”

He waited until she wasn’t looking, then mimed shooting her and chopping her up. He was midway through the ‘burning whatever’s left’ mime when he realized she was watching him. He stopped, straightened up, and cleared his throat. “Ye alright?” he said, then he walked to the edge of the table and turned so he was facing away from the drop.

He pointed a tiny finger at Dan and Ollie in turn. “Anyone touches my funplings, and I’ll swing for them,” he said, then he raised his arms straight up above his head, leaned backwards, and toppled over the edge.

Ollie leaned over, expecting to see Artur lying mangled on the floor. Instead, he was half-walking, half-skipping towards the inner office door, humming quietly to himself, and occasionally mumbling, “A girl’s arm,” before laughing under his breath.

With a shove, Artur creaked the door open just enough for him to squeeze through. His humming stopped once he’d vanished inside.

“Do ye know ye’ve a great big hole in yer wall?” he called.

“I know,” said Dan.

“And that yer desk is no longer worth shoite. Not that it ever was, mind you.”

“Aware of that also.”

There was a pregnant pause, as if Artur was about to say something else, but then the humming resumed. It faded as he made his way across the room, then was lost behind the bathroom door.

Ollie waited until she was sure he wasn’t going to come back out, then leaned across the table. “He is little, right?” she whispered. “I’m not imagining that?”

“No. You’re not imagining it,” said Dan. “He’s just sensitive about it.”

“Why?”

Dan shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”

Ollie glanced in the direction Artur had gone. “You won’t really do that stuff, will you?”

“What stuff?” asked Dan, raising an eyebrow. “Cut you up and set you on fire?”

“Yeah. That,” confirmed Ollie, nibbling on a fingernail.

“We’re brainstorming,” said Dan. “The thing about brainstorming is you don’t dismiss any ideas. All suggestions need to be properly explored.”

Ollie’s eyes widened in panic, and Dan felt a fleeting moment of guilt. Just a fleeting one, though.

“But no, we’re not going to cut you up and set you on fire,” he assured her.

Her relief was palpable. Her hand dropped from her mouth and was replaced by one of the broadest smiles Dan had ever seen. “Phew! You had me worried there.”

“Although, if you see him with anything sharp, I’d probably run,” Dan said, only half-joking.

Before Ollie could reply, Dan’s gaze went past her to the outer door. A shape loomed on the other side of the frosted glass. It didn’t knock, and something about it told Dan it wasn’t going to. He pointed to Ollie, then towards the inner office door.

“Go. There. Now,” he whispered.

Something about the tone of it cut through her instinct to question him. She quickly stood up, and had barely vanished into the office when the door flew open.

Ollie let out a barely audible cheep of fear when she peered around the corner and saw the thing standing there in the doorway. Dan couldn’t blame her. He’d seen some pretty horrifying things in his time – including every time he passed a reflective surface – but this thing was easily top twenty material.

Its mouth was a puckered anus that took up sixty per cent of the real estate on its face. Its eyes were bulbous and fish-like, and had been pasted haphazardly onto the sides of its head at slightly different heights. A misshapen bump in the middle of the thing’s forehead might have been a nose, but might equally have been a cancerous growth. Probably a terminal one, at that.

Physically, it looked mostly humanoid, but one that had been bent and twisted by years of abuse. It crawled in on four limbs, but the front two resembled arms more than legs. Its hands were gnarled into painful-looking claws, and there was a hunch the size of its head protruding from its upper back.

It wore nothing but scars, a collar, and an adult diaper (extra-large) that was secured tightly around its swollen gut with silver tape. The chain attached to its collar rattled as the thing shambled into the room, ejecting a gush of saliva down over its chins in a series of low, mournful moans.

At the other end of the chain was a tall woman in an immaculate white high-necked robe. She didn’t produce a badge, or any other kind of identification. She didn’t need to. Dan knew a Tribunal officer when he saw one.

The woman’s skin was a stark, midnight black. Her eyes were a near-identical shade, and it was only their glossier sheen that told Dan where the eyeballs ended and the rest of her face began. She was thin – unsettlingly so, in fact – and her stick like fingers seemed to be constantly in motion, crawling through the air like spider legs.

The chain was clipped to a white belt around her waist, and although she looked as if a strong breeze wouldn’t just blow her over, but likely cut her in half, her footsteps didn’t falter, even when the thing on the chain tried lurching forwards.

“Down,” she said, and her pet, or partner, or whatever the fonk that thing was, squatted down onto its haunches. It gurgled with satisfaction when she rested a hand on its scarred head for a moment, before turning her dark gaze on Dan.

“Dantus Deadman?” she asked. Her voice was light. Friendly, even. It was not a voice that fit with the visuals. “Of Deadman Investigations?”

“Yeah,” said Dan, standing. “That’s me.”

Ollie ducked fully out of sight behind the door, worried the glowing of her necklace was going to give her away. She had no idea who the newcomers were, but she had a feeling she didn’t want to find out.

The monstrous thing in the diaper was terrifying enough, but there was something perhaps even more unsettling about the woman. She didn’t look quite real, somehow, and while the tone of her voice was friendly, there was something about her that screamed at Ollie to run, and never stop running.

“We had reports of a disturbance, the officer said, her fingers moving like they were plucking at an invisible stringed instrument suspended in the air in front of her. “An explosion. A vehicle outside was damaged.”

Her eyes, already black, somehow found the energy to darken. “The Tribunal does not approve of such things. You should be aware of this.”

“I am,” Dan confirmed. “But it couldn’t be helped. A client of mine was attacked. Luckily, no one was hurt.”

Blown to tiny pieces, yes, he considered adding. Hurt, no.

The Tribunal officer’s gaze flitted around the room, sweeping over the place in one judgmental glance. “Your client?” the woman said, then the beast on the chain gave another lurch towards Dan.

“Fuud,” it snarled. Then, more questioningly. “Fuud?”

“Trust me. I’ll only give you indigestion,” he warned. He tried to remember what type of round he’d left Mindy set to, just in case. Had he switched to explosive rounds, or left it on stun? If the latter, he was in trouble. A stun shot would barely even tickle something like this, and he suspected he wouldn’t have time to select a new ammo type before it was on him.

Dan resisted the urge to glance look back at the inner office door. He just had to hope Ollie had the sense to keep out of sight. She had no chip, which meant she definitely had no ID, either. Having no ID was a capital offence Down Here, and it took more money than he had to make the Tribunal look the other way.

“Yeah. My client. She left, obviously. Last night.”

The thing on the leash let out a short, sharp shriek, then slapped and scratched at its scarred head with both hands. Dan noticed there were only three fingers on each, none of which appeared to be a thumb.

Still, he’d probably have taken one of those over the woman’s arm he was currently stuck with, he reckoned.

The officer jerked the chain and the thing fell silent again. It cocked its head to one side, watching Dan through one bulbous eye. Its pointed tongue flicked across its dry, shriveled lips, painting them with silvery trails of moisture.

“And where did she go when she left?” the woman asked. In the space of those five words, her tone went from friendly to friendly enough. It wasn’t a seismic change, by any means, but it was noticeable.

“I don’t know.”

The warmth in the officer’s voice dropped another degree. The movements of her fingers became slower and more deliberate.

“Then I suggest you have a think, Mr Deadman.”

“Already thought,” said Dan. “And I don’t know.”

The thing on the chain squealed again. This time, she didn’t reprimand it.

“If she is a client, you must have her details,” the officer said.

“Technically, she was a potential client. We hadn’t got to the paperwork stage,” Dan said.

The woman nodded, slowly. “I see. And what did she want? What did you discuss?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential,” said Dan.

The jolliness was completely gone from the officer’s voice now. “Nothing is confidential from the Tribunal, Mr Deadman,” she said, but she waved a hand, dismissively. “No matter.”

She unclipped the chain from her belt. The creature in the diaper began bouncing excitedly on its haunches.

“The slorg will find her scent. We’ll get to the bottom of it. One way or another.”

“Sure,” said Dan. “No problem. Just show me your TS-17, and you can go right ahead.”

The officer’s dark eyed widened, just for a moment.

“It is still a TS-17, isn’t it? The private business premises search warrant? They’re always changing names and numbers, it’s hard to keep track. I don’t know how you people cope with it all. All that red tape,” Dan said. “Ever think about going freelance? Happy to give you some pointers, if you’d like?”

He shrugged. “I mean, they basically come down to, ‘don’t do anything I do,’ but it all helps, right?”

“I don’t need a TS-17,” the woman said. There wasn’t so much as a hint of her earlier friendliness now. “I can conduct the search now, then get—”

“A C3-D2?” said Dan. “I mean, yeah, you could try, but what’s the backlog on those things? Eight weeks?”

The officer didn’t answer.

“More? Wow,” said Dan. He whistled through his teeth. “And that’s if you find anything. Which you won’t, and then you’re back to the original problem, only I can now file a M8-F private business harassment document, and… well, round and round we go.”

Dan gestured to the slorg. “And then there’s that thing. Bringing an unauthorized animal into a private residence or place of business without prior written permission - that’s what? A level two misdemeanor? I’m not familiar with it, but that thing is an animal, right?”

“The slorg is a recognized officer of the Tribunal,” the woman said, drawing herself up to her full impressive height.

“Not by me it isn’t,” Dan continued. “It isn’t wearing a uniform.” He held up a finger before she could answer. “And I’d think very hard about trying to tell me it’s undercover. It’s literally connected to you by a length of chain, which would mean you were actively compromising an on-duty undercover Tribunal officer, and that’s going to make a level two misdemeanor look like a level one infraction. You know what I’m saying?”

Dan fixed the officer with a cold, dead-eyed stare. It was a look he had perfected with very little effort. “Also, on a more personal note, if you let that thing loose in my office, you’ll be taking it out of here in a number of small buckets.”

The woman regarded him for a long time, saying nothing. The slorg whined gently as she clipped the chain to her belt again.

Her gaze went past Dan, to the inner office door. He hoped Ollie didn’t choose that moment to peek around the corner.

“I’ll be back, Mr Deadman,” the officer said, forcing the words out through her teeth.

“I’m sure you will be,” said Dan. He gestured to the door behind her. “Just like I’m sure you can see yourself out.”

He turned his back to her and waited for the sounds of her exit to fade. Ollie leaned around the door frame and opened her mouth to speak, but Dan shot her a look that shut her straight down. He counted quietly below his breath for what seemed like some arbitrary length of time, then nodded.

“OK,” he said. “I think they’re gone.”

“Who was that? And what was that creepy thing? And how did you know all that stuff?” Ollie asked, the words tumbling over themselves in their rush to be the first out.

Before Dan could answer, the door opened behind him again. His hand went to his holster and he spun, whipping Mindy out as he turned to face the door.

“I warned you,” he growled, then he stopped when he realized neither the officer nor her pet monster had come back. Instead, a small, meek-looking blond-haired woman stood in the doorway, her hands raised above her head in a gesture of surrender.

Her clothes were expensive, but mismatched and lined with creases. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in days, and her eyes were ringed with red. “D-don’t shoot,” she said, although there was a note to her voice that suggested being shot would be preferable to whatever else she was currently going through.

“Deadman Investigations?” she asked in a hushed croak.

Dan replaced the gun in its holster. “That’s right,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The woman swallowed and chewed on her lip, as if wrestling the words into submission. “It’s my daughter,” she said, her voice cracking. “Someone… Someone… They took my little girl.”

Her resolve slipped all the way, and tears rolled simultaneously down both cheeks. Dan shifted his weight from foot to foot, not quite sure how to deal with the awkward silence that followed. Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

“Alright, now,” said Artur, his envelope crinkling as he strode into the room. He looked around at the three occupants, before finally settling on Dan. “What’s with all the long faces?”

CHAPTER TEN

Dan stood in the school yard, the wind swirling discarded snack wrappers around his feet. He’d had to wait until the school day was over before coming, for a number of reasons. His face was arguably the main one, although the fact he didn’t like being around kids was high on the list, too.

It was a rough school in a rough neighborhood, and the single entrance gate had been heavily secured when he’d arrived. Not heavily secured enough to keep him out, but enough to tell him what sort of area he was in.

The woman, Solina, hadn’t been overly useful. He supposed, given the circumstances, he could forgive a certain amount of sobbing, but when he’d pointed out that the clock was ticking on her daughter’s life – assuming the girl wasn’t already dead – Solina still hadn’t focused properly. If anything, it had only made her even more hysterical.

He’d never understand women.

After a lot of probing, Dan had ruled out the obvious suspects. The woman had no enemies she was aware of, and the missing girl’s father – always suspect number one – had died before she was a year old.

Following a bit more questioning, and a lot more crying – her, not him - he’d eventually found out enough to be going on with, and she’d agreed to his fee without so much as batting an eyelid. When a client did this, it usually meant they had more money than they knew what to do with, or they had no money whatsoever, and even less intention of settling the bill when it arrived.

The condition of the school would have made him think Solina fell into that latter category, had she not given him part-payment up front. Eight-hundred credits were now sitting in his account, although most of it would have to go on a new window. If he was lucky, he’d have enough left over for a desk.

So the family had money. That suggested a bog-standard kidnapping-for-profit situation, but no ransom demand had been forthcoming. Besides, if the kid was going to a school like this, they were unlikely to have ransom-levels of wealth just lying around.

“So?”

An empty pack of something called Noogleblurp Bits hit Dan in the face as he turned. The wind held it there for a moment, affording him a close-up view of a grinning fair-haired cartoon boy who seemed to be excreting a fireworks display from his presumably charred and ruined rectum, then it fluttered off across the yard to join its brothers and sisters swirling around on the ground.

“So what?” he asked.

Ollie seemed momentarily confused by the question, but pressed on. “Where is she?”

“How should I know?” Dan asked.

“You’ve been looking at the ground for quite a long time,” Ollie pointed out. “I thought you’d have figured it all out by now. That’s what detectives do, right? They figure things out.”

He hadn’t wanted to bring her, but he hadn’t been sure what else to do. He couldn’t leave her in the office in case the Tribunal came back. He couldn’t just kick her out onto the streets, because Nedran would never let him hear the end of it.

He’d thought about letting Artur babysit her, but was concerned he’d come back to find a blaster, an axe and a large pile of ash on the floor of the office. Again, Nedran would never let him hear the end of it.

And so, he’d taken the only option he had left. He’d brought her with him. It had taken just minutes for him to wish he’d left her with Artur. Or with anyone else, for that matter.

“I’m not exactly a detective,” he said, squatting to examine the ground more closely. It was soft and slightly muddy, which was useful, but had been criss-crossed by several hundred child-sized footprints, which was not. “I used to be with the Tribunal.”

“Like that woman with the… monster thing?” Ollie asked. “Oh.” She took a few seconds to process this, which involved completely readjusting her world view. “She didn’t seem very nice.”

“No one in the Tribunal is nice,” Dan said. “They exist to make sure we do what they tell us to do.”

“You seem nice,” said Ollie.

Dan snorted. “Then you’re a terrible judge of character.”

Ollie said nothing. Dan went back to looking at the ground.

“But you quit?” Ollie said. “The white dress people?”

“The Tribunal,” Dan corrected. “Again, not exactly.”

He bent lower, trying to look beyond the footprints at whatever else might be there. According to Solina, this was where her daughter had been taken. Best as Dan could tell through all the crying, at least.

“What, then?” Ollie asked.

Dan blinked, and looked up, irritated. “What?”

“If you didn’t quit, what happened?”

“Oh,” said Dan. He went back to looking at the ground. “I died.”

There was a pattern between some of the footprints. A regularly repeating imprint in the mud. Tire tracks. Motorbike, he thought. Probably two.

“You died? As in… you died? How?”

“Murdered, mostly,” Dan said.

“Murdered?” Ollie gasped.

Dan nodded. “Mostly.”

“Oh,” said Ollie. She processed this for a while. “That’s a shame.”

Dan shrugged. “You get over it.”

There was something else in the tracks, too. The school yard was really nothing more than a patch of waste ground with a building surrounding it on three sides. Most of the soil was a dark brown, pitted with tiny pebbles and bits of weed, but there was a reddish-orange clump smooshed into one of the tire tracks that looked out of place. He rubbed a finger over it, then studied it up close.

He wasn’t sure what he hoped that would tell him, exactly. Up close, it looked like reddish-orange dirt, which is exactly what it had looked like while still slightly further away.

“What’s that?” asked Ollie, leaning over him. “A clue?”

Dan flicked the dirt from his finger as he stood up, then thrust his hands into his pockets. Times like this, he’d give his right nut to be a real detective. If he still had nuts.

A real detective could look at those tire tracks and tell exactly what the driver had for breakfast.

A real detective could taste those mud flecks and know there was only one place in the city they could have come from.

But all he saw were tire tracks. And his taste buds? Well, they weren’t what they used to be.

“Never been all that great with clues,” he admitted. Turning on his heels, he set off back in the direction of the now-busted gate.

“So, what? You’re giving up already?” Ollie called to him.

“I took the case. I plan earning the rest of the pay check,” Dan replied.

“Oh, right. Well… good,” said Ollie. She put her hands on her hips and looked from Dan to the mud and back again. “How?”

Dan stopped, just for a moment, and half-turned. “Trust me,” he said. “I got my methods.”

* * *

Ollie sat in the passenger seat of the Exodus, under strict instructions not to move. It had been almost two full minutes since Dan had ventured inside the seedy-looking bar across the road, though. He couldn’t have expected her to wait this long, surely? That would seem unlikely.

She decided to get out of the car. Or, more accurately, she got out of the car without realizing she was doing it, but then decided it was probably for the best that she had.

The street Dan had parked on wasn’t dark, exactly, just sort of miserable-looking. There was still daylight, but it felt grudged, and just a little resentful at having to show up somewhere as run-down as this.

Someone called to her as she scampered across the road. She wasn’t entirely sure what the voice was proposing, but it was very detailed, and for reasons she wasn’t aware of, made her blush. She decided it probably wasn’t something she should be getting involved in.

She replied with a, “No, thank you,” then stopped in the middle of the street to let a couple of ancient mag-levs cough their way past. She smiled at the drivers, but neither one returned it. She felt a little disappointed by that, but decided not to let it get her down. They were probably just in a rush.

Ollie had just reached the sidewalk, and was heading for the bar’s front door when the window exploded, and a shape tumbled out into the street. It was a large and squat shape, with a dome-shaped head and an insect-like jaw that opened and closed on a number of fleshy hinges. It had somewhere between six and ten eyes, but the way they were so closely bunched together and all blinked at different times made it difficult to count them with any more accuracy than that.

The creature slid a few feet across the sidewalk on its shell-like back, before tumbling off the curb and onto the road. A horn blared as a mag-lev hummed past over him, drizzling a thin trail of copper-colored oil across his face.

There was a crunch as a pair of boots jumped through the broken window and onto the carpet of glass.

“I swear, man, I don’t know what you want. I don’t know nothin’!” the bug-like figure protested. He had hauled himself back onto the sidewalk, and raised himself up onto his knees. He remained there, the elongated fingers of all four hands clasped together as if in prayer, his eyes blinking in sequence, one after the other.

Dan pushed back his hat, giving the guy a clearer view of his face. The reaction was instantaneous. The panicked look became one of full-blown terror. The pleading increased in both volume and enthusiasm. The guy’s whole body spasmed in revulsion and fear, and it was a minor miracle he didn’t shizz his pants. The reaction was everything Dan had hoped for, and more.

And to think, he’d almost taken the mask.

There was just one thing spoiling the moment.

“I told you to wait in the car.”

“Who, me?” said Ollie, looking around in case he was talking to someone else.

“Yes. You.”

“You were gone a long time. I was worried about you,” said Ollie. “And also bored. Mostly bored. There isn’t much to do in your car.”

Dan clenched his jaw, but said nothing. What was the point?

“Who’s this person? Is he a friend of yours?” Ollie asked. She gave the guy a friendly smile. “Hello. I, too, recently came through a window. Well, technically, it was the wall, but, still.” She punched him playfully on the arm. “Twinsies.”

Bug-face’s pleading faltered, just for a moment, while he shot Ollie a sideways glance, but then he went back to begging for his life.

“Please, don’t kill me. I don’t know nothin’.”

“I’m looking for a kid, Terry,” said Dan. “A little girl. Eight years old. Heard you might know something.”

A shape moved in the gloom behind Dan. Another of the bug people suddenly loomed over Dan’s shoulder. One of its four spindly arms swung down. There was a flash of a metal blade, then the sound of flesh tearing as the knife was buried in Dan’s chest.

“Got ‘im, Terry!” the newcomer cheered, still clutching the knife handle.

“Yes! Not so big and bad now, are you?” Terry sneered, jumping to his webbed feet.

Dan flicked his eyes down to the knife, then up to the creature reaching over his shoulder from behind. The second bug-thing’s smile gradually fell from its face.

“Uh, he ain’t fallin’ down,” it said, before Dan’s fist crunched into its wide, flat nose, making it even more so. As the thing stumbled back, Dan drove an elbow into its throat. It went down gargling and wheezing.

“I think you might have hurt that person,” said Ollie, drawing Dan’s attention to the rasping figure on the ground. “Did you mean to hurt that person?”

“I did,” Dan confirmed.

“Oh,” said Ollie. “Why?”

Dan pointed to the knife in his chest.

“Oh. Oh, right. OK, gotcha,” said Ollie. “Fair enough, then, I guess. Carry on.”

“Thanks,” said Dan. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Terry looked from his friend to Dan and back again, then immediately dropped back to his knees. He resumed his pleading with renewed vigor.

“Now, then,” said Dan, cracking the knuckles of his mismatched hands. “Where were we?”

* * *

Three hours later, Dan slumped heavily into the driver’s seat of the Exodus, and slammed the door behind him. A number of sharp implements protruded from his torso at various angles. As well as the bug-thing’s knife, these included a pair of scissors, a wooden stake, two shock arrows, and a high-heeled shoe.

Eight bars. A dozen scumbags. And for what? No one had known anything. He was no closer to finding the girl than he had been back when her mom had first walked into the office.

“Well?” asked Ollie. She was sitting in the passenger seat. Or, more accurately, she was tied to the passenger seat by her seat belt, which was where she was going to stay until she learned to follow simple instructions. “How did it go?”

Dan shook his head, then slammed his hands onto the steering wheel with such force the engine burped briefly into life.

It was fully dark now, and the light flooding out from a broken bar window cast Dan into silhouette. He stared at his hands as he flexed his fingers in and out. In and out. In and out.

“Are you OK?” Ollie asked. “Are you having some kind of psychotic episode?”

“What?” Dan snapped. “No. I’m thinking.”

“Oh,” said Ollie.

Some time passed. Ollie flexed her own fingers a few times, to see what all the fuss was about. She wasn’t keen.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

Dan shot her a sideways look. “What do you…? About the girl. About the missing girl.”

“Right. Right.”

Some more time passed.

“You’ve got things sticking out of you.”

Dan nodded. “I know.”

Yet more time passed.

“Still thinking about the same thing?” Ollie asked.

“Please stop talking.”

No one had known anything. That much had been clear. If they had, they’d have spilled their guts, he was sure of it.

Which meant he’d hit a dead end. He could try to find how many old-style motorcycles were registered in the city, but that meant calling in some favors that had already been called in too many times before. Besides, it would take a day or two to get the information, and by then, it would most likely be too late.

Like he’d explained to Solina, while it was possible her daughter was still alive, he’d seen enough abduction cases to know it was only a matter of time before she turned up dead.

He’d intended it as a sort of motivational call to action, but she had just collapsed into another flood of tears, further slowing down his questioning.

Women.

“So,” began Ollie, who had managed to last almost a full thirty seconds without saying anything. “What now?”

“The last resort,” said Dan. He sighed and – after a number of aborted attempts – fired up the engine. “There’s only one place left to go.”

“Where?”

Dan glanced in his mirror, then pulled away from the curb. He gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the wheel as the lights of passing cars played across his face.

“Paradise.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nona lay on the table, her arms and legs held down by heavy straps, her dirty skin lined with tear tracks and snot trails.

The spotlight suspended directly above her felt like thumbs pressing down on her eyes, forcing her to look away. The man with the wrong face paced around the table, just beyond where the light ended and the darkness began.

He whistled tunelessly through his teeth as he rolled a small metal trolley around from the foot of the table. The wheels squeaked – eerk, eerk, eerk – then fell silent when the trolley stopped directly in Nona’s line of sight. It was mostly shrouded in darkness, but she could see something sitting on top of it. A bag, she thought.

She wanted to speak. To scream. To do something, anything, to let the world know she was there. But the rag in her mouth made even breathing difficult. Calling for help was out of the question.

With a clarity borne of absolute terror, Nona knew no one was coming for her.

No one was ever coming.

In the shadows, a hand reached into the bag. Something long and sharp was withdrawn, then set down on the trolley with a clunk.

Nona thought of her mommy. Nona had once overheard her calling herself ugly in the mirror, and had never understood why. She was beautiful, and her face, when Nona screwed her eyes shut and saw it there in the darkness, looked finer than ever.

She thought of her daddy. Of her sister. Of the baby brother she’d never get to meet.

Something else came out of the bag. She heard it clack down onto the trolley.

“Now, then, princess,” said the man with the wrong face. Nona didn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t look at him. Not again.

She heard him lean closer, and felt the hot moisture of his breath on her face. The stink of it made her gag behind the rag, and would have made her eyes water, were her tears not all used up.

The man with the wrong face’s voice was a muffled whisper that crawled deep into her ears. “What do you say? Third time lucky?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Paradise’s compound was located in the most affluent area of Down Here. Hell, Paradise’s compound was the most affluent area of Down Here.

It stood behind a set of tall gates, guarded by a couple of mean-looking Gomos. With their leathery hide, sledgehammer fists and venomous bite, Gomos were in high demand in the security sector, galaxy-wide. They didn’t come cheap, and were usually reserved for up-close bodyguard duties. Having one on gate duty was unusual. Having two was unheard of.

But then, Paradise never was one for convention.

“Nice place,” said Ollie, peering out through the windshield at the palatial building beyond the fence. “Is this were your friend lives?”

Dan checked his gun’s battery pack, nodded once, then slammed it back into the grip. “She isn’t my friend,” he said.

“Want me to come?” Ollie offered.

“No. No, I do not,” said Dan. He tugged on the seatbelt to make sure it was still keeping her trapped, rummaged in the glove box for a parking token, then reached for the door handle.

He hesitated then. This wasn’t like the bars, where he knew he’d be coming back out again. He had no idea what was going to happen in there. Paradise didn’t like visitors, especially those who turned up unannounced.

He unfastened Ollie’s belt, and it whipped across her as it withdrew. Now free, she stretched her arms and jiggled her legs. She also opened and closed her mouth a few times, even though she’d been perfectly able to move that any time she liked – and had been doing, on a near constant basis throughout the entire journey.

“If I don’t come back, go see Nedran. He’ll help you out.”

Ollie’s gaze went from Dan to the compound. “You’re thinking of moving in?”

Dan frowned. “What?”

“You’re moving in there?” said Ollie. “I mean, I guess I don’t blame you, it looks very nice. I just thought—”

“No! I’m not moving in. I mean she might kill me,” said Dan.

“Oh. Oh. Gotcha.” Ollie nodded. “But I thought you were already dead?”

Dan reached for the handle again. “I can always get deader,” he said, then he left the car and threw the door closed behind him.

“OK, then be careful!” Ollie called through the glass. “I’ll just wait here.”

Dan was almost at the gate when a thought struck her.

“I don’t know where Nedran lives!” she shouted, but if Dan heard her, he didn’t let on.

The Gomos had already been standing at a sort of attentive slouch when the Exodus had pulled up along the street, but as Dan drew closer he could see them both stiffening, their muscles tensing beneath their impeccably tailored suits.

Neither of the creatures carried a weapon. When you were eight feet tall with scales, horns and a lethally toxic overbite, weapons were largely unnecessary. A raised eyebrow was often forceful enough to send any would-be attackers packing.

Dan’s gun was in its holster, but unfastened. Paradise wouldn’t be happy if he killed any of her underlings, and a stun shot would do nothing against these guys. Fortunately, Mindy had a few other tricks up her barrel he could call on, if needed.

He watched the Gomos flick their tongues across their teeth, their eyes narrowing and fists clenching as Dan approached.

Yeah. Those tricks of Mindy’s would definitely be needed.

But not yet.

“Catch,” he said, flicking the parking token towards the first Gomo. Its eyes followed the flash of silver, its head tilting back as the token flipped higher and higher.

They were tough, yes. But smart?

No.

No, not really.

Dan drove a fist into the Gomo’s exposed throat, then followed up with a thunderous knee to its groin. He finished with a powerful right cross to the thing’s jaw as it slumped to its knees, vomited up its breakfast, and fervently regretted not having been born a woman.

The other Gomo lunged, teeth snapping. Dan rammed the more feminine of his forearms into its mouth, shoving it all the way back into the thing’s jaws. It could bite through bone without any trouble, but there was no way it was getting through a Durium rod.

There was the venom to consider, of course, but that required blood flow to move it around the body, and Dan had been out of the red stuff for a while now.

Throwing himself forwards, he slammed the Gomo against the metal fence. Once. Twice. He heard the Durium rod groaning between the thing’s teeth, and yanked the arm free, taking a few molars with it.

The Gomo pounced again. This time, Dan spun around, letting the weight of the reinforced woman’s arm lead the way. It struck the Gomo across the temple with a faint but unmistakable clang. The monster staggered, its eyes glazed.

Dan leapt onto its back and wrapped both arms around its neck. The Gomo quickly found its second wind, and it was Dan’s turn to be pounded against the fence. He held on, hands locked, the Gomo’s throat constricting in his grip.

The guard twisted, driving an elbow into Dan’s ribs.

It reached back over its head, grabbing for him, but only succeeded in knocking his hat off.

It turned. It flailed. It hammered him backwards into the fence again.

Fonk, how long could these things hold their breath?

Not much longer, as it turned out. A second later, it was on its knees, which gave Dan the leverage he needed to squeeze the brute the rest of the way into unconsciousness.

Taking hold of its arm, Dan dragged the guard to one of the imposing brick pillars beside the gate, and pressed its finger against the security scanner. This was more difficult than it sounded, and involved quite a lot of frustrated swearing.

Finally, the panel chimed, and the gate swung inwards.

Dan dropped the arm, then retrieved his hat. It had been partially trampled during the scuffle, and he spent a second or two battering it back into shape, before depositing it back on his head.

That done, he glanced over at the car to make sure Ollie hadn’t moved – she hadn’t – then pressed on through the gates just before they swung closed again with a firm and mildly-threatening clunk.

A number of Tallosh trees lined the driveway leading up to the compound. Dan ducked beneath the first, using the shade and the trees’ long, drooping vines to make his way towards the main building without crunching across the gravel.

The trees were deliberately put there to tempt anyone trying to sneak in, he knew. The spores of the Tallosh tree, when inhaled, induced paranoia and the occasional nightmarish hallucination. By the time any would-be intruder made it to the compound, they’d be clawing their own eyes out in fear.

Inhaling them required breathing, though, and Dan hadn’t felt the urge in a good long while now. He exited the trees exactly as paranoid as he’d been when he’d entered them – just paranoid enough.

He paused beneath the canopy of the final tree, and considered his next move. There was a telltale shimmer over all the windows that told him they were shielded against blaster fire. The windows themselves were too small for a dramatic leap through, although that probably wouldn’t have been the best idea, anyway.

This was the problem, as he saw it: Paradise was somewhere within her compound, and almost certainly in her office, where she spent the majority of her time. From what he could remember of the two occasions he’d been here before – once when alive, once after, and neither time of his own free will – the office sat in the center of the building, next to a small enclosed courtyard.

Getting to the courtyard without going through the building was impossible, and even if he could, he’d likely have the same problems with that window as he had with these. That meant a sneak attack was pretty much off the table.

That left him with two options – a direct assault through the front door, or something else.

He much preferred the idea of something else, but was struggling to think of what that something else might be. If he’d had certain equipment from his storage unit, he might have been able to portal his way inside, although without an accurate diagram of the inside layout, there was no saying where – or who – he might end up in.

“Ah, fonk it,” he muttered, reaching into his coat. Mindy slid from her holster, and he checked the battery pack again, just in case. Still good, although if the next few minutes played out the way he thought they were going to, he’d need to charge it soon.

After a quick check to make sure no one was coming, Dan ran for the ornate double-doors and threw his weight towards them, shoulder-first. They flew open too easily, suggesting they weren’t even properly closed. Off-balance, Dan’s face met a plush carpet, the friction burning off patches of skin on his chin, nose and forehead, all of which had already seen better days.

The clatter of the doors hitting the walls reverberated around the entrance hallway. There were a number of things of interest in the hallway, including some sculptures, a few antiques, and a number of heavily-armed guards. Only one of these things interested Dan at that particular moment, although he was immensely grateful for the presence of the others. Paradise loved her antiques and sculptures, and none of the guards would be keen to accidentally hit one in a shootout.

It was Dan’s only advantage. Eight guards. Eight guns. But none of them likely to start shooting.

Dan got to his feet.

The guards started shooting.

“Son of a—” Dan hissed, hurling himself into cover behind the closest sculpture just as the floor erupted at his feet, and the doors, which had started to swing closed again, were peppered with holes at his back.

As luck would have it, the sculpture was a heavy, chunky twist of metal, which served as a pretty effective shield. Quite what it was supposed to be, he wasn’t sure. Some kind of rodent, maybe? A car? An abstract representation of the futility of existence? Probably one of those.

Useful, though, whatever it was.

He raised Mindy in front of him. Eight guards, all of various off-world origins. There was at least one Gomo in there, an Igneon, and six other equally capable-looking and violent types. Ideally, Dan didn’t want to kill any of them. He wasn’t ruling it out completely, but it wasn’t his preferred choice. Stun shots would do nothing, slowdown rounds might work, but they took a lot of charge, and he probably wouldn’t have enough power to get through everyone. Besides, the effect didn’t last long, and by then he’d be completely out of charge.

Part of the sculpture hit the floor beside him as a spray of blaster-fire hammered against it. Dan winced. Paradise wasn’t going to like that.

Of course, she wasn’t going to like what he was about to do to her carpet, either.

“Mindy,” he said. “Brown noise.”

Mindy’s cylinder spun and locked. Dan rolled clear just as the expensive sculpture became worthless scrap metal. He fired as he moved, and while nothing whatsoever seemed to happen at the gun end, the effect on the target was instantaneous.

In the middle of the entrance hallway, the Gomo shizzed himself.

And this was no run-of-the-mill shizzing of oneself, either. This was a full-scale eruption. The helpless guard grabbed for his stomach, yelping in wide-eyed panic as his bowels explosively ejected their contents with enough kinetic energy to force it all through the fibers of his suit pants.

Dan fired again. Something tall and fish-like grimaced in horror. It emitted a sound that was somewhere between a howl of anger and a wail of anguish, then a fiery shizz-fountain propelled him a clear foot into the air, before returning him to the carpet as a limp and sobbing mess.

One of the other guards, sensing which way the wind was blowing – and almost certainly smelling it, too - turned away, but a sudden churning in his guts told him he was too late. He staggered forwards, a spray of molten excrement propelling him towards another of Paradise’s treasured sculptures. This one was far less robust than the one Dan had taken cover behind, and shattered beneath the guard’s weight as he fell onto it, shrieking with impotent rage as what felt like everything from his sternum to his hips exited through his ass.

A stray blaster shot caught Dan low down on the leg, and carved a slice of rotten meat from his calf. He gave the shooter a double blast of brown noise, and savored the sounds of his panic as the poor guy practically excreted himself inside-out.

The rest of the guards met a similarly messy fate. Dan stepped between their writhing bodies, carefully picking his way between the hot, steaming puddles of runny sludge. He often lamented the gradual deterioration of his senses he’d been experiencing since returning to life. Right now, though, was not one such time.

“Sorry about that, boys,” he said, tipping his hat to the room in general. “I’m told it passes in an hour or so.”

A chorus of parps, squelches and groans accompanied him across the hallway to another set of double doors. Unless they’d changed the place since his last visit, Paradise’s office lay just beyond those doors.

There was a high probability that she’d heard all the shooting, shouting and shizzing, but from what Dan knew of her, Paradise spent a lot of her day jacked into the networks, brokering deals, ordering hits, and doing whatever else crime lords did to earn a dishonest crust.

If she was jacked in now, she wouldn’t have heard a thing, and would have no idea he was coming.

“Mindy, stun shot,” he commanded, as he approached the door.

Once the gun was ready, Dan listened for any sign of movement from within, then stepped back and aimed a foot at the lock. He was about to throw his weight into the kick when a voice rang out from inside.

“Oh, for goodness sake, Mr Deadman. It’s open.”

The voice took him by surprise, and he awkwardly aborted the kick, mid-swing. He raised Mindy in front of him, ready to fire, then thought better of it and slid the gun back into its holster, instead.

The polished doorknob turned with a faint click, revealing a room dripping with decadence. The floor was a dark wood, polished to a mirror-like sheen. The furniture looked like something from a bygone age. A better bygone age, where people cared about what they made and what they bought.

The window – which wasn’t actually a window, at all, but a glass door than ran all the way from the floor to the ceiling – stood open, allowing a breeze to play across the luxurious purple drapes and the soft lilting of late-evening birdsong to fill the room.

Paradise herself sat in a high-backed armchair, watching the door. Someone encountering her for the first time would be forgiven for thinking she had recently melted. The skin on her face and neck hung in droopy folds, suggesting her head had once been three times its current size. The sagging skin pulled her features down, so the top half of her eyes looked half-asleep, while the bottom part stared with bloodshot wide-eyed intensity.

She had tried to fight the effect by scraping her long gray hair back into a bun that was so tight it raised her eyebrows in an expression of indifferent surprise.

Her body, mercifully hidden beneath a beige leisure suit, was cursed with the same skin-sag as her face, and judging by the rolls and bumps under the suit’s velour material, even more so.

Her right leg was crossed over her left, the furry slipper on her foot bobbing gently with impatience as she waited for Dan to stop looking her over.

He didn’t leave her waiting long. It wasn’t like any of this had come as a surprise to him. He’d seen Paradise before, and had known what to expect.

What did come as a surprise was Paradise’s guest. She sat in a chair that looked just uncomfortable enough for it to be deliberate. She, too, smiled at Dan as he entered.

“Hey!” said Ollie, bouncing excitedly in her seat. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Dan blinked.

He didn’t really know what to do next, so he blinked again.

There was a damp-sounding phurrp from out in the hallway. Dan used his foot to close the door behind him, blocking out the worst of the noise.

He blinked again a few times, as he looked from Ollie to Paradise. The old woman gestured to a third chair. It was a subtle movement – barely a movement at all, in fact – but something about it told Dan it would be wise not to argue.

“Quick as you can, Mr Deadman,” said Paradise. “We were just about to have ourselves a nice cup of tea.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dan watched a thin stream of glistening liquid pour from an ornate teapot into the first of three cups. The pot was shaped like some kind of animal, or maybe an alien species he was unfamiliar with. The handle was its tail, and the spout its beak. There were two eyes on top of the lid, staring at slightly different angles.

It was fonking hideous, Dan thought. Which, from him, was really saying something.

“How do you take it?” Paradise asked, flitting her heavy eyes towards him. He was sitting in the chair, which was exactly as uncomfortable as he’d imagined. Not uncomfortable enough to make the sitter want to stand up again, but enough to make them carefully consider it and keep them distracted for the entire duration of their time sitting in it.

“I don’t,” said Dan.

Paradise made a sort of, “Hmf,” sound that somehow made it clear he was having tea, and there would be no further discussion on the matter. Sure enough, once she’d poured the first two cups, she moved on and filled the third.

The crockery all sat on a polished silver tray atop a small folding table between Paradise and Ollie’s chairs. The old woman slid one cup a few inches closer to Ollie and gave her an encouraging nod. She passed Dan another cup, but the delicate handle was too fine for him to fit his fingers through.

“Try the other hand,” Paradise suggested. She took a slurp of her tea and watched him over the rim of her cup as he changed hands.

He didn’t give her the satisfaction of asking how she knew about his woman’s arm. She knew all sorts of things. It was the whole reason he’d come here, after all.

“A right job you did on them guards,” Paradise said. “I’ll have bouquets sent to the widows.”

“No one’s dead,” said Dan.

Paradise slurped again. “No one’s dead yet,” she corrected. “I don’t take failure lightly.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I wouldn’t presume to come to your office and tell you how to run your business, Mr Deadman. Please extend me the same courtesy.”

She held him with her droopy-eyed stare for a moment, then smiled and waved the conversation away, as if consigning it to the past. “Your new friend is fun, isn’t she?” Paradise said, tilting her head a fraction towards Ollie.

Ollie, who had been sniffing her teacup and eyeing the dark liquid with suspicion, looked up and smiled when she realized she was being talked about. “Huh?”

“How did she get in here?” Dan asked.

“I invited her,” said Paradise. She sipped her tea again. “She’s very interesting.”

Dan gave a non-committal shrug that suggested the jury was still out. “Just helping her get on her feet.”

“How thoughtful,” said Paradise. “I hope that works out for you,” she added, in a tone that suggested it almost certainly wouldn’t. “You could always leave her here, if you like. It’d be nice to have a young…”

She looked Ollie up and down and smiled, not unkindly. “Person around the place again.”

“I promised a friend of mine I’d take care of her,” Dan said. “But thanks for the offer.”

Paradise nodded, slowly. “How is Nedran these days? Retirement treating him well?”

Dan was caught off-guard by that, but recovered quickly. “Well enough.”

The old woman made a clucking noise with her tongue that suggested some sort of approval. “You haven’t touched your tea,” she said, looking at both Dan and Ollie in turn.

Dan glanced down at his cup, but made no move to drink it. Ollie, on the other hand, brought her cup to her lips and knocked the contents back in one go.

Her eyes immediately went wide and her free hand went to her throat. “Ooh! Ow! Ow!”

“Careful. It’s hot,” Paradise pointed out, a little belatedly, Dan thought.

“Thanks,” Ollie croaked, grinning goofily, despite the tears streaming down her face.

Paradise gestured to the teapot. “More?”

“What? No!” said Ollie, quite a lot louder than was necessary. “I mean, no. Definitely not.”

Paradise poured her another cup, anyway.

That done, she turned to Dan. “So, Mr Deadman, what brings you to my door?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Of course I know,” said Paradise. “But I’d like to hear you say it.”

Dan flared his nostrils, then chose those own words of his carefully. “There’s a girl.”

“You have no idea how often I hear those very words from someone who comes through my door, Mr Deadman,” said Paradise. She sipped her tea. “It seems there’s always a girl. Continue.”

“Not that sort of girl. A child. Her name’s Nona. She’s six. She was taken two days ago. Two… men, although that’s still guesswork, at this point, snatched her from outside her school. We – well, I – believe she was taken away on a motorcycle. Maybe two. Old style, with wheels.”

Paradise had remained motionless throughout all this. She still didn’t move now, other than to speak. “And?”

Dan hesitated. “And I’m going to take her back.”

“Are you? Mm. Bless,” said Paradise. She set her cup down on the tray. “What’s in it for you?”

“Money,” said Ollie, helpfully. “He’s being paid.”

Paradise didn’t take her eyes off the corpse in her armchair. “There are easier ways to make a living.”

“Not with this face,” said Dan.

A lot was going on behind Paradise’s eyes, but very little of it made its way to the rest of her expression. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, then she uncrossed her legs, crossed them the other way, and sat up straighter. “You want my help.”

Dan nodded, but said nothing.

“What’s in it for me?”

“A favor,” said Dan.

Paradise raised one eyebrow until it disappeared behind her hairline.

“I see. To be used at my discretion, no questions asked?”

Dan ground his teeth together, the part of his brain that was aware just how bad an idea this was fighting hard to keep the words inside. “To be used at your discretion,” he said. “No questions asked.”

“How generous,” said Paradise. Dan couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or not. “How are you at carpet cleaning, by the way?” she asked, glancing at the door through which Dan had entered. The distant fanfare of bowel movements continued to ring out. Paradise smiled and dismissed the remark with a wave. “I jest.”

She poured herself some more tea, then settled back into her chair. “Oledol, be a dear and fetch me that envelope,” she said, indicating a small coffee table over near the tall glass door.

Ollie bounded up enthusiastically, like a puppy about to perform its favorite trick. She practically ran to the table, picked up the envelope, then brought it over to Paradise in a few eager bounds.

“Well done,” said Paradise. She nodded to Dan, indicating Ollie should give the envelope to him.

“I went over there and got that,” Ollie enthused, handing over the postcard-sized rectangle of paper.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Dan grunted.

Ollie hung off, waiting for more of a response, then clicked her fingers several times, winked, and sat down again. “You’re welcome. Don’t mention it.”

Dan turned the envelope over in his hands, knowing that if he opened it, Paradise owned him. Not all of him, and not all the time, but she owned him, all the same.

He opened it, and was almost disappointed not to hear a peal of thunder or witch-like shriek of triumph.

Inside the envelope was a neatly-folded square of cream-colored writing paper. On it, in ever so slightly shaky block capitals, were three codes. He didn’t recognize the exact strings of numbers and letters, but he knew what they were.

“Tribunal case files?” he said.

“Correct.”

Dan looked down at the reference numbers again. “So… what? That’s it? That’s all you can tell me?”

“Of course not. But it’s all I’m choosing to tell you, Mr Deadman,” said Paradise. “It wouldn’t be very fair if I did all your work for you, now, would it?”

Dan slid the card back into the envelope, tucked the whole thing into his inside coat pocket, then stood up. “Thanks for the tea,” he said, returning his untouched cup to the tray.

“My door is always open, Mr Deadman,” said Paradise. “But next time, do call ahead, so we can avoid any…” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the door. “You know.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Dan said. With a tilt of his head, he indicated for Ollie to stand up. She did her ‘missed the joke’ expression, and briefly mirrored the movement with her own head, but otherwise didn’t move.

Paradise leaned over and whispered theatrically. “I think he wants you to go with him, my dear.”

“Oh,” said Ollie. Then, louder: “Oh, oh!”

She jumped to her feet, bumping the table as she rose, then made a frantic grab for all the cups as they toppled over, filling the tray with hot liquid.

“Sorry, sorry, totally my fault,” she said. She tried to scoop the hot tea up by bringing her hands together into a bowl shape in the center of the puddle, but it was exactly as effective as it sounds.

“Oh, please,” said Paradise, bustling her away. “Compared to the mess Mr Deadman has left me to clean up, a drop of spilled tea barely even merits a mention.”

Dan had a feeling the ‘mess’ the old woman was referring to wasn’t limited to the shizz-stains on her carpet. “Seriously. You don’t have to kill them,” he said. “They were doing pretty good.”

“Before they explosively soiled themselves into unconsciousness, you mean?”

“Don’t kill them. That’s all I’m saying.”

Paradise tapped a hand on her knee a few times, and smiled up at him. “That sounds like two favors, Mr Deadman. I’d think carefully about that, considering they were all extremely amenable to the idea of killing you.”

Dan glanced over his shoulder at the door, muttered quietly, then turned back to Paradise. “Fine. Two favors. But if any of them try to shoot us on the way out, deal’s off.”

“Very good,” said Paradise, bowing her head in agreement. It made her skin-flaps jiggle disturbingly. “You’ll be hearing from me, Mr Deadman.”

Dan headed for the door. “I’m sure I will,” he said, then he stepped out, gesturing for Ollie to follow.

“Thanks for the drink. You have a nice house,” said Ollie, before Dan caught her by the arm and bundled her through the door. “Bye!”

“I told you to stay in the car,” Dan said, taking her by the arm and leading her towards the exit. Ollie didn’t answer, her focus instead currently on the groaning, semi-conscious guards currently balled up on the floor in slowly expanding puddles of their own excrement.

With a grunt of effort, one of them reached for his blaster, which had fallen onto the carpet beside him. “I wouldn’t,” Dan warned, kicking the gun away as he passed. “And believe it or not, you guys owe me one.”

The air in the hallway was unpleasantly warm, and even more unpleasantly sour. Even Dan’s nose objected to the stench, and considering what it had to put up with at the best of times, that was saying something.

Outside, the cool night breeze proved a welcome relief. The sudden refreshing change snapped Ollie out of her gobsmacked trance.

“Huh?”

“I told you to wait in the car,” Dan repeated, pulling her along the path, being careful to keep her away from the trees.

“Some guy came and asked me to come inside,” Ollie said. “He took me in the back door. She seemed nice. Paradise, I mean.”

“Again, you’re a terrible judge of character,” Dan said.

He tipped his hat to the gate guards, who were in the process of using the fence to pull themselves back to their feet. They both glared at him, but as he was moving away from the compound now, saw no reason to engage him. They could both absolutely have taken him down if they’d wanted to, of course, but he was leaving, so there was really no need. No point wasting the energy now, even though they’d definitely have won, now that he wasn’t taking them by surprise.

“And stay out,” said one, although not until Dan was back in the Exodus, and safely out of earshot. He waited until the car had driven off before shaking a fist for emphasis. He watched the Exodus’s tail lights vanish into the night, then gave a satisfied nod. It hurt, quite a lot.

“Yeah,” he muttered, limping back over to his post. “That showed him.”

* * *

Dan trudged up the final few steps, repeating himself for what felt like the hundredth time. “Look, what part aren’t you getting?” he asked. “She might have given you tea. She might have seemed friendly. But she isn’t.”

“The necklace didn’t try to blow her up,” Ollie pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean she’s OK”?

“How would I know?” asked Dan. “It’s your necklace. But seriously, trust me. Paradise is not your friend. She’s the bad guy.”

Ollie skipped from side to side on the stair behind him. She clearly wanted to go faster, but Dan’s lumbering plod was holding her back. “Then how come you said you’d help her?”

“Because she’s not the worse guy,” Dan said. “There’s always a worse guy. So, you do what you have to do to stop the worse guy, even if it means siding with the bad guy from time to time.”

The final step groaned under his weight as he reached the top. “Make sense?”

“But she seemed really nice,” said Ollie.

“Yeah, well things ain’t always what they seem,” said Dan, pushing open the outer office door. “If you want to survive Down Here, you have to learn to expect the unexpected.”

Something invisible slammed into Dan with the force of a charging Igneon. He flew backwards past Ollie, who had skipped sideways out of his path just a split-second before. She turned and watched, open-mouthed, as Dan’s upper back dented the wall behind them. Grimacing, he fell forwards, smashing his forehead on the bottom step. His skull emitted a distinctly hollow clonk as it met the stair. He lay there, nose pressed against the wood, not moving.

“Well,” Ollie whispered. She swallowed, as a shape unfolded itself from the shadows of the office, and her necklace began to glow. “Pretty sure he wasn’t expecting that.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dan twitched.

OK.

OK, that hurt.

He felt winded, which was stupid, of course, because he had no need to breathe.

Still, though.

Ow.

He was lying down, he realized.

Sort of.

Down, definitely, but more ‘slumped’ than ‘lying’.

Had he blacked out?

Was that even possible?

He was just starting to contemplate lifting his head when something hit him again. Or grabbed him, maybe. Whatever, he went from moving slowly to moving extremely quickly in the space of a half-second.

‘Moving extremely quickly,’ very soon became ‘not moving at all’ as he hit the wall again.

No, a different wall, this time. As he slumped to the floor, he recognized the darkened door of the office below his and knew he’d been tossed down another flight of stairs.

“That was uncalled for,” Dan grunted, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. There was a sound like rustling leaves. Thrusting a hand inside his coat, he grabbed for his gun, but something stamped on his back, and Mindy eluded him as he was driven hard against the exposed floor boards.

“Wheeere issss shhheeee?” rasped a voice in Dan’s ear. He had no idea what had spoken, but the stink of the Malwhere was palpable. Didn’t exactly sound friendly, either.

“Who?” Dan asked.

Dan was launched upwards in a blur of speed. His back hit the ceiling, then gravity dragged him back to the floor.

The weight was on his back again almost immediately. “Youuuu kn-kn-knowww whoooo.”

Dan tried to turn, but whatever was holding him down didn’t budge an inch. He twisted his arm to make a grab for it, but found nothing. Finally, he sighed.

“Look, sorry,” said Dan. “I think you got the wrong guy.”

His leg wrenched and he was suddenly sliding back and sideways across the floor in a wide arc. He fumbled for Mindy again, and this time his hand found her grip.

Unfortunately, at exactly the same moment, his ribs found the metal railing of the staircase. Something inside his chest made a sound like a rotten branch snapping. The gun flew from his hand, slid along the floor, then clattered down the next flight of stairs.

“Wheeere…” the voice demanded. Dan’s head was pulled back, then pain exploded inside his skull as it was driven against the floor.

“Issss…” His head came back again, he thought, although everything was still spinning from the first time, and he couldn’t be all the way sure. It wasn’t until it was smashed against the floor again that he was able to confirm it.

“Sheeee?”

Dan’s spine creaked miserably as his head was pulled back for a third time. The word burst from his lips before his skull could be introduced to the floor yet again. “Wait! OK. OK,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

The grip on his head and the pressure on his back both eased off until he could feel neither. Tentatively, he raised himself onto his elbows and one knee. Nothing attempted to hammer him prone again, so he persevered until he’d made it all the way back to his feet.

A shape watched him. Dan couldn’t really say what shape it was. In fact, ‘shape’ probably wasn’t even the right word. It was a suggestion of a shape. Not a real, tangible thing, but a presence. Nothing more. No wonder he hadn’t been able to grab it.

“Wheeere—” it began, the words ejecting out of the very air around it. Dan held up a hand as he waited for the ringing in his ears to abate, and for the world to stop spinning.

“OK, OK, gimme a minute,” he said. He adjusted the collar of his coat, then jabbed a thumb in the direction of the staircase. “Up here. Come on, I’ll show you.”

The presence followed him up the stairs onto the landing midway between this floor and the one above. Dan looked back at it a couple of times, but it never seemed to move while he looked directly at it, only to instantly appear behind him the moment he turned away.

Creepy fonker.

Stooping, he picked up his hat and squashed it back onto his head. Ollie stood at the top of the stairs, her eyes wide and her whole body shaking. “Up there,” said Dan. “You want to find her? Look up there.”

The presence’s voice came from right behind him. “Shhhooow meeee.”

Dan tutted. “Seriously?”

Something jabbed him in the back, urging him on.

“Alright, alright, fine.”

He marched on up the stairs. Just for a moment, he felt his eyes flick towards Ollie when he passed her, but he forced them to face front as he continued onto the landing and through the door into his office’s reception area.

Dan felt the thing’s mood darken as he limped over to the filing cabinet and reached for the bottom drawer. “In here,” he said.

He was suddenly airborne again. It was as if the world had taken one big jump to the left and forgotten to tell him. The wall hit him like a speeding cargo-lev, and he had to grab for the top of the filing cabinet to stop himself falling again.

“Shheee ca-cannot possssibly beeee in theeeere.”

“Well, obviously she’s not in the fonking drawer,” Dan conceded. “But she wrote down where to find her, and the address is in there.”

He glowered at the shapeless mass, then shot the drawer a pointed look. “So, do you want to know where she is, or not?”

“Yessss.”

“OK, then. Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Dan. He wrenched open the drawer in a series of rusty screeches and increasingly violent tugs, then began rummaging inside.

The thing about being one of the galaxy’s foremost authorities on the Malwhere, was that you tended to pick up a few things. More often than not, it was information and knowledge. How to deal with the burns of some big acid-spitting frog-beast, for example, or the precise location of a Mal-ghoul’s nutsack, and the optimum angle at which to drive a steel toecap into it with all your might.

Sometimes, though, Dan picked up other things. Actual things. They were artifacts, he supposed, but usually little more than trinkets and junk. He’d usually sell them, to help pay the rent.

Rarely, though – very rarely – he’d get his hands on something potentially useful. Something that could help give him an advantage where he might otherwise have none, and help tip the odds in his favor.

He had found four such items in his life. Well, technically his afterlife. Two of them had, until a moment ago, been in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in the reception area of his office.

Now, they were on his hands.

Dan flexed his fingers, creaking the synthetic material of the gloves. He felt a crackling around his wrists like static electricity, and gave a satisfied nod.

“Hurrrry uuuu—” the presence began, but Dan cut it off with a devastating right hook that sent it squirming and pulsating across the room.

The atmosphere in the office changed in an instant, turning from threatening to terror-stricken. The presence took on a vague sort of oblong shape, emitted a series of sounds that might have been words, had consonants never been invented, then threw itself at Dan far less enthusiastically than before.

Dan jabbed at the thing, stopping it abruptly in its tracks. The glove sent a tingle through his arm each time he connected. Bam. Bam-bam!

“Found these in a market in the Remnants,” Dan said. He paused to hammer a series of hooks into what would have been the thing’s ribs, had it not been a homogenous floating mass of nothingness. “The guy said they allow the corporeal to interact with the non-corporeal. Which, if you ask me, is just a long-winded way of saying they let a guy like me punch the living shizz out of whatever the fonk you are.”

To prove this point, Dan punched the thing again, driving it backwards towards the door. It tried to retreat to the stairs, but he dug his fingers into it like talons. The thing thrashed and twisted in his grip as it tried to break free.

“If I ever see your ugly shapeless… whatever you are around here again, I will keep you. I will keep you, and I will never let you go. Is that understood?”

The thing vibrated hurriedly. Dan released his grip, and gave a push to help the presence on its way. “Go back to where you came from. Tell Kalaechai or whoever else sent you that I don’t know where she is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

His voice echoed down the gloomy stairwell, and he realized he was talking to himself. The presence was gone.

“Probably,” he added, but not for the presence’s benefit.

He turned to Ollie, who stood in the corner of the landing, her back pressed in against the wall. The pendant around her neck pulsed rhythmically, casting lengthening shadows across the ceiling.

“Get inside. You’re making the place look untidy,” said Dan.

Ollie nodded quickly, then darted towards the door. She stopped just before she reached it. “Are you OK?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Dan. He started to plod down the steps. “Now get inside. I’m going to get my gun.”

Ollie watched him go. He had barely made it to the third step down before she spoke again. “Thank you.”

“You’re still there,” Dan grunted. “Go. Inside. Now.”

He found the gun a couple of floors down, and took a moment to check it over for damage. Looked OK. She was a sturdy girl, Mindy.

To be sure, he told her to switch to explosive rounds. The cylinder spun and illuminated, as expected, and he slid the weapon back into its holster.

Something moved in his ribcage as he made his way back up the stairs. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but he could feel the grinding vibrating all the way through to his teeth. It wasn’t his first injury, or even close to the worst, but something about it felt different. He couldn’t say why, but it worried him, and it kept worrying him all the way back up the stairs.

Ollie was sitting at the table when he returned. She jumped up quickly, her face flitting between relieved smiles and concerned frowns.

“Is it gone?” asked a voice from somewhere near floor level. Artur leaned out from behind a chair leg, glanced around anxiously, then immediately adopted a confident swagger. “Aye, and just as well, an’ all. Sure, I was about to hop on and batter the fecker to within an inch of its life. It’s as well ye turned up when ye did, or I would not have been responsible for me actions. Put it that way.”

“Glad to see you’re OK, Artur,” said Dan, closing the door.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be? What, ye think I couldn’t handle a great bit eejit like that… that… whatever that was?”

Dan removed his hat and hung it on the empty hook. He kept his coat on. No point getting comfortable, he wouldn’t be staying long.

The door through to his own office was closed, and the whistling of the breeze provided a tuneless soundtrack as he crossed to the table and pointed to Ollie’s chair. “Sit,” he said.

Once she had, he leaned on the back of his own chair with both hands, bending forward to really give her a good look at his face. It hadn’t been a pretty sight in quite some time, and the repeated impacts with the stairs and floor had done nothing to improve it. To his mild annoyance, she didn’t so much as blink.

“Care to tell me what that was?” he asked.

“What what was?” Ollie asked.

Dan said nothing.

“Oh, the thing?”

“That’s right. The thing.”

“It’s something that had itself a lucky feckin’ escape, that’s what it is,” said Artur, scaling one of the table’s legs and pulling himself up onto the top. His paper outfit rustled as he fumbled his way upright.

Ollie wriggled on the wooden chair, like it had just become uncomfortably hot. “It was… I don’t know. I think it works for Kalay…”

“Kalaechai.”

“That. Yes. Him,” said Ollie. “I suppose… I suppose maybe he sent it to look for me?”

“Oh, you think so, huh?” Dan grunted. “You think maybe that’s why it kept slamming my face and torso into solid objects, while demanding to know where you were?”

“It would make sense.”

Dan closed his eyes and tutted.

“I think he was being sarcastic there, peaches,” said Artur.

“Oh,” said Ollie. She bit her lip, worried. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means of course that’s why it was here,” Dan barked. He straightened up, grimacing a little as his ribs ground together. “I should’ve let it take you.”

Ollie tried to nod and shake her head at the same time, and it became a sort of diagonal zig-zag of confusing head movements.

“But… you didn’t,” she said.

Dan exhaled slowly, and much of his anger seemed to leave his body with the breath. “No. No, I didn’t,” he said. “This time. If it comes back? We’ll see.”

“Ah, will he bollocks,” said Artur. The way Artur said the word, Dan was convinced ‘bollocks’ should be censored by the translator chip, but either it had never made the list, or Artur’s accent was too confusing for the chip to pick up on it. Whatever, he was able to use it freely and often. Which he did.

In fact, the censorship functionality seemed to have trouble with most of what Artur said, leaving him free to curse in pretty much any way he liked. Dan was quite jealous, if he were honest.

“He talks tough, don’t get me wrong, but he won’t just go selling ye out,” Artur continued.

Dan stared impassively down at the little guy.

“I mean maybe. Maybe he won’t just go selling ye out,” Artur corrected. “He’s a complicated man.”

Artur clapped his hands together, and nodded in the direction of the safe. “Now, I hope ye’ll both forgive me, but the night’s drawing in, and I can’t be held responsible for me actions, so I think I’ll retire for the evening.”

“No,” said Dan.

Artur’s brow furrowed, although you’d have to be looking quite close to notice. “Say what now?”

“I can’t lock you up. Not tonight. I need you.”

“Need me?” said Artur. “And what might ye be needing me for, exactly?”

Reaching into his coat pocket, Dan found the envelope Paradise had given him. He turned it over in his hands, considering the possible consequences of what he was about to propose.

Then, once he’d considered them, he tried very hard to forget them before they made him change his mind.

“I need you to break into a Tribunal station and access their systems,” Dan said. “It’s dangerous, obviously. I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way, but—”

Artur held up a hand and gestured for Dan to stop talking.

“You want me,” Artur began, gesturing to himself, “to break into a secure, state-of-the-feckin’-art Tribunal station filled with armed bastards and who knows what else, and hack their equally state-of-the-feckin’-art computer systems? Illegally. And me, what with it being night time, probably itching for a fight?”

Dan winced. When he put it like that…

“Pretty much,” he admitted.

Artur’s grin almost split his head in two. “Deadly!” he said, rubbing his hands together. “When do we start?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There were three Tribunal buildings within easy driving distance of the office. Two of them were bigger stations, with interrogation chambers, prison complexes, and vast numbers of officers coming and going constantly.

The third was a local outpost, only a couple of stories tall and minimally staffed. Or minimally staffed when compared to the other two, at least. There were still a couple of dozen officers working from the building, but most of them would be out on patrol. It wasn’t like the people of Down Here were going to violently oppress themselves.

The only problem with this place was that it had been built within the last six months, and Dan had never set foot in it. The two bigger stations he knew well enough, but this one was an unknown quantity.

Still, one Tribunal station was much like any other in terms of the basic layout, and he could take an educated guess as to where everything was. Active cases could be accessed from any terminal, but historical records could only be pulled up from the archive room systems. The case references Paradise had provided were all tagged with the ‘-HU’ suffix.

Historic case.

Unsolved.

So that meant the Archive room, which was on the upper floor.

Artur paced from foot to foot on the dash of the Exodus, flexing his fingers and breathing in short, sharp sniffs and puffs. A belt of tape pulled his envelope suit tightly around his waist, making it marginally less cumbersome than it had been. A loop had been left hanging from the belt so he could tie on the mempod with the downloaded case files, leaving his hands free during his escape.

“So, you’re clear? You know what you’re doing?” said Dan.

“Sneak in. Find yer room.”

“Archives,” said Dan.

“Find yer archive room. Punch in the numbers, grab the thingy, and have it away on me toes before anyone gets wind of me being there.” He looked up at Dan and raised his eyebrows. “That about the in and out of it?”

“That’s about the in and out of it,” Dan confirmed. He indicated the unfolded square of paper beside Artur on the dash. “And you don’t want to take the codes?”

“Sure, it’s twice the size of me,” Artur snorted. “What am I supposed to do, feckin’ hang-glide from it?” He tapped the side of his head. “Anyway, no need. It’s all up here. Mind like a Durium trap, Deadman. Mind like a Durium trap. I’ll get yer files for ye. Just wait and see.”

“Good luck!” said Ollie.

“Cheers, peaches, but I don’t need luck!” Artur proclaimed. He put his fists on his hips, adopting a pose which would have been quite dramatic and impressive, had he been one hundred times larger than he actually was.

He held the stance for several increasingly awkward seconds, then indicated the door handle. “I do need someone to let me out, though. I’m not a feckin’ magician.”

“Oh! Yes! Sorry!” said Ollie. She yanked the handle and threw open her door. The Exodus was filled with the sound of blaring horns as a speeding mag-lev was forced to swerve sharply to avoid smashing the door clean off its hinges. “Whoops! Sorry!” Ollie called after it. She flashed Dan an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

“Oh look, he’s doing the glare,” said Artur, sliding down the dash and landing on Ollie’s leg. “Look at him there, the big boss-eyed eejit. Don’t ye let him put the frighteners on ye, peaches. Don’t ye go standing for it, ye hear?”

“Just get a move on,” said Dan. “We’re up against the clock.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

With a hop, a slide and a clamber, Artur reached the door sill. He paused to look back into the car. “Be back before ye can miss me,” he said, then he dropped down into the darkness.

Ollie leaned closer to the windshield to try to watch as he ran across the road, but Dan stretched his woman’s arm in front of her, nudging her backwards. “The door,” he grunted, pointing with a red-nailed finger.

“Huh? Oh!”

Ollie closed the door. Through the window, she saw a brief flutter of movement low down by the station fence. Several seconds later, the front door of the station slid open, apparently of its own free will. She found herself holding her breath, only relaxing when the door slid closed again.

“Is he in? Did he get in?” she asked.

Dan nodded, just once.

“Good. That’s… that’s good, right?” Ollie asked. “Yes. That’s good.”

She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, crossed them the other way, realized the second way wasn’t as good as the first way, then put her hands behind her head, instead. Dan’s mood darkened a little further with every movement.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

“What?”

“The fidgeting. The moving around. What are you doing?”

“Oh,” said Ollie. Her eyes tick-tocked left and right, as if just noticing her arms for the first time. She unhooked the hands from the back of her head and placed them on her knees. “I was just getting comfortable.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” said Dan.

Ollie’s eyebrows lowered a little. “Shouldn’t what?”

“Get too comfortable. Here, I mean.”

“In the car?”

Dan’s face flinched with irritation, but he didn’t take his eyes off the Tribunal station door. “With us. With me. Tomorrow, I’ll get you set up with some ID and you can be on your way.”

“Oh. Oh, OK,” said Ollie. She looked ahead through the windshield for a while, then back to Dan. “What’s ID?”

Dan took a look at her to try to judge if she was being serious, and concluded that she was.

“Forget it. I’ll explain tomorrow,” he told her. He checked the time on the Exodus’s clock. If everything went according to plan, it should take four or five minutes for Artur to make it upstairs to Archives, then the same again for him to access the files and output to a mempod.

Factor in another five to get back out, and the whole process should take fifteen minutes, tops, assuming Artur didn’t encounter – or, for that matter, cause – any problems along the way. Fifteen minutes, that was all.

He had no idea what he’d find in those case files, but considering he’d sold his soul to Paradise West for them, he hoped they were worth it. He’d find out in – he glanced at the clock – still fifteen minutes. Fonk, this was already dragging.

“Think he’s OK?” Ollie asked.

Dan kept his gaze fixed on the station. “Fine,” he said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

A number of powerful spotlights illuminated outside the station, and a high-pitched alarm began to bleep with some urgency.

“Is that supposed to be happening?” asked Ollie.

Dan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No.”

From inside the building came a chorus of shouting, and a muffled bang that might have been something exploding.

“What about—?”

“Again, no.”

Dan grimaced and threw open his door, his hand already reaching for his gun. “Stay here. Stay right in this spot. Do not – I repeat, do not – go wandering off.”

“Stay here. Got it,” said Ollie, gripping the edges of her seat and nodding with a child-like level of absolute sincerity. She leaned towards Dan’s open door. “Wait! Why? Where are you going?”

“On a suicide mission,” said Dan, slamming the door closed. “Again,” he added, then he adjusted his hat, snapped up his collar, and, with Mindy in hand, darted across the road in the direction of the station.

* * *

“Mindy, stun shot,” Dan hissed, charging towards the station’s front door. He hadn’t been lying to Ollie. Running into a Tribunal station that was on high alert was suicide. It was lucky, then, that he was already dead.

He remembered, as the door slid open, that he still hadn’t charged the weapon’s battery pack. Idiot. This could be even more difficult than he thought. Still, there was no turning back now.

Raising the gun, he ran inside, and was immediately forced back by a wall of heat. The station’s front desk was on fire. And not just a little bit on fire, either. The whole thing was ablaze, the flames spitting and crackling, and spewing columns of black smoke up towards the ceiling.

A window had been broken. At least half a Tribunal officer was sticking through it, his or her legs the only part still visible from this side. Another officer was upside-down in a recycling can, gurgling and choking in the partially broken-down slurry.

A chair was in pieces. A riot shield lay on the floor, cracked down the middle. Someone – Dan didn’t need any detective skills to figure out who – had written “GET IT UP YE” in foot-high letters on one wall, in what may or may not have been some sort of squeezy cheese.

In the midst of all that carnage, his eyes wide and his beard bristling, stood Artur. When he spotted Dan, the little man brought his breathing under control, unclenched his tiny fists, and smoothed down the front of his envelope.

“Ye alright there, Deadman?” he said, squinting upwards.

Dan’s lips moved, like he was running through a number of possible responses. He finally settled on one. “What the Hell did you do?”

“Ye what?” asked Artur. He looked around. “Oh, ye mean this? Right. Well, I’ll come clean wit’ ye, Deadman. Just don’t go blowing yer top, or nothing’, alright? There’s been a bit of a hiccup. I may have got a tiny bit carried away with meself, and accidentally tried to murder a few people.”

Dan took in the destruction again. “You were in here less than a minute.”

“Was I really? Is that all?” asked Artur, putting his hands on his hips. “Well, I never. Fancy that. It's true what they say, like. Time does fly when ye're havin'—”

The floor exploded behind him as a blaster bolt slammed into it. Artur was tossed into the air, before sliding to a stop where Dan’s feet had been.

The feet, along with the rest of Dan, had moved, quickly, as more blaster shots screamed across the room. Half a dozen Tribunal officers rushed in through a couple of doors over on the far wall. They didn’t appear surprised by the state of the entrance hall, which suggested they’d already seen it via the security cams. If they’d watched Artur at work, then that would explain the full body armor they wore, too.

“Did ye see that, Deadman? Sure, one of those eejits tried to shoot me,” grumbled Artur, standing up. Dan had ducked for cover behind the flaming front desk, keeping enough distance to save his dead flesh from any further damage. His complexion was bad enough without adding third degree burns to the mix.

He did briefly contemplate shoving the woman’s arm into the fire and burning it off, but he’d probably need both hands if he was going to survive this, so decided against it, and focused on the swarm of armored shizznods now flooding the room.

Stun shots would do nothing against the armor. Same with the brown noise. Only explosive rounds would be able to punch through it, but did he really want to start killing Tribunal officers?

Well, yes. Yes, he did want to, but was it sensible? Of course not. Not unless he wanted to be on the run for the rest of his afterlife.

Artur screamed. At first, Dan thought he’d been shot, but then it rose into a sort of battle cry as the little man went hurtling across the floor, zigging and zagging through a hail of scorching blaster fire.

“Feckin’ shoot at me, would ye?” he hollered.

There was another scream. This one wasn’t Artur, and was somewhat muffled by body armor.

“Aargh! Help! G-get it off!”

“It?” Artur roared. “I’ll it ye.”

“Shizz,” Dan cursed. “Mindy, explosive rounds.”

The cylinder spun and rolled. Only three blue lights illuminated when it locked into place. Dan touched the front sight against his forehead, mumbled something angry, then pulled his hat down firmly on his head and rolled out of cover.

Artur was nowhere to be seen, but the way one of the Tribunal men was thrashing around and punching himself suggested the little guy had found a way inside the armor.

“Oh, now, these look interesting,” came Artur’s voice, faintly.

“No, wait, no, don’t!” the officer squealed, then he howled and went down hard, his gun falling as he grabbed with both hands for his groin.

Dan raised his gun, but hesitated. Ten or more officers now. Three shots. Three kill shots. Did he really want to do this?

The hesitation cost him dearly. Exposed and in the open, he caught the attention of four of the officers. Blaster fire sprayed towards him. He tried to dive back into cover, but the right side of his chest erupted, then something wet and sizzling hit the wall behind him.

It knocked him off-balance, mid-jump, and he sprawled backwards towards the door, the smell of burning flesh swirling up his nostrils.

He felt his anger flare as he crashed onto his back. He raised the gun to the officers, then raised it some more and fired twice. Twin explosions shattered the ceiling above the group. Aside from the guy still rolling on the floor, clutching his groin, they all looked up, just as a whole lot of masonry came down.

The sound was incredible, like the roaring of some great ancient beast. It only lasted a second or so, before being replaced by a number of other sounds. Groans, mostly, and the occasional cry for help that sounded far off in the distance.

A single blue light blinked on and off on Dan’s gun. One shot left. Reduced power. The debris of the roof collapse had blocked both doors that would have led upstairs to the Archive room. Not that there would have been time to access it, anyway. Sirens wailed, close enough for him to hear them over the sound of the station alarm, and getting closer by the second.

Sliding Mindy back into her holster, Dan hurried over to the rubble, crouched, and peered through the gaps into the dusty darkness. “Artur?” he said. “Artur, can you hear me?”

“I can hear you just fine,” said Artur. He was standing beside Dan, his beard white with dust. “Although, me ears are still ringing from the feckin’ roof falling down. This place is structurally unsafe. Sure, I’ve a good mind to sue.”

“Come on. We have to go,” said Dan, about-turning towards the exit.

“But what about yer numbers?” asked Artur, trotting along and doing his best to keep up. “Don’t ye want yer files, or whatever?”

“I do. I did,” said Dan, giving the inferno that was the front desk a wide berth. “But there’s no time. We’ll have to try another station.”

“Deadly!” said Artur, his face lighting up with barely-contained glee. “I can’t wait.”

“Yeah, next time, you’re not coming,” Dan told him. He paused for the door to slide open, then marched outside into the much cooler night air.

“What? Why not?” asked Artur, sounding hurt.

Dan stopped. “Why not? Seriously?” he said.

There was an ear-splitting crash as another section of roof collapsed.

“OK, I’ll give ye, it could have gone a bit more smoothly,” Artur conceded. “And I maybe didn’t follow yer instructions exactly to the letter, but c’mon, Deadman, gimme another chance.”

Dan said nothing. The sirens were closer now. He stomped back out onto the street, dodged a few mag-levs, and quickly made for the Exodus. Artur trotted along behind him, his much-smaller legs struggling to keep up.

“Get in,” Dan said, wrenching open the driver’s door.

“I can’t help but feel ye’re in some way holding me responsible for what went down in there,” said Artur, clambering onto the seat, up the wheel, and onto the dash.

“I am,” agreed Dan, getting in. He pulled the door closed with a thunk, quietening the wailing sirens.

“That’s not very fair, is it?”

“It’s completely fair,” said Dan. He fired up the car’s engine. It stopped trying to fight him after three attempts, and rumbled into life. “It was completely your fault.”

Glancing in his mirror, Dan waited for a gap in the traffic, and started to pull away.

“Hold on!” Artur shouted, and the Exodus jerked as Dan slammed on the brakes. “Are ye maybe forgetting something, Deadman?”

Artur nodded in the direction of the passenger seat.

The empty passenger seat.

Dan threw up his hands. “Oh for… Now where is she?”

“Hi!” said Ollie, appearing so suddenly at the driver’s side window that even Dan jumped in fright. Smiling broadly, she reached for the handle, before realizing she was on the wrong side. “Wait, that’s not mine,” she said, then she ran towards the back of the car.

A moment later, the passenger door opened and she flopped onto the seat. “Hi again!”

She pulled the door closed just as the first flash of red lights appeared through the traffic ahead. Dan eased the Exodus out into a gap, and made sure to keep within the speed limit as he drove off. Behind them, more Tribunal cars screeched to a halt outside the station, which was now billowing smoke through a hole in its roof.

“Where the Hell were you?” Dan demanded.

“I was—”

“I told you not to move.”

“I know, but—”

“You what? Got bored? Felt like stretching your legs?”

He crunched the stick down a gear and took a sharp turn a little too fast. The tires screeched, and several horns blasted angrily at him.

“Careful, now,” said Artur, gripping onto an air vent for safety.

“If I tell you not to move, you do not move,” Dan growled. “I mean, is that really so hard to understand? Am I really asking too much?”

Ollie’s smile was now curving the other way. “I just thought—”

“Ha!” Dan snorted. “You ‘just thought’. Well, first time for everything, I guess.”

“Hey, go easy now, Deadman,” Artur said. “What’s the poor girl ever done to ye?”

The tires screeched again as Dan took another corner. “What’s she done? Let’s see. Thanks to her, my office is in pieces, and has a hole where the window should be. I was tossed down several flights of stairs and almost had my head smashed open by some shapeless floating mass, and one of the big-name Malwhere Lords is probably carving my name into his own flesh even as we fonking speak. And not in a good way. Oh, and she almost just got us caught by the Tribunal. And all that’s in less than a day!”

Ollie looked down at her hands, which were resting in her lap. She didn’t speak.

“And don’t even get me started on the questions. ‘What’s that for?’ ‘Is that supposed to do that?’ ‘Why don’t you do it this way?’ I mean… wow.” Dan gripped the wheel and shook his head. “The sooner I get you out of my hair, the better.”

Ollie turned and peered at his hat. Part of his bald head was visible beneath the rim of his hat. She opened her mouth.

“It’s a figure of speech,” Dan snapped.

Ollie closed her mouth again, and went back to looking at her hands in awkward silence.

After a moment, something clonked onto the dash. Dan’s eyes flitted to it. He regarded the thing in silence, for a moment.

“What’s that?” he asked, despite knowing full well what it was.

It was a mempod.

An encrypted Tribunal storage device.

Just sitting there, on the dash.

“I thought, with all the shooting going on, maybe you wouldn’t be able to get to the room you wanted to get to,” Ollie said. She shrugged. “You left the paper with the numbers behind, and I’d heard you explain to Artur what to do, so I climbed in the window.”

Dan felt Artur’s eyes on him. Without looking, he knew the little man would be grinning.

“So… what are you saying?”

“I got your files for you.”

Dan turned to look at her. A horn screamed, and he snapped his head to the front again, steering the Exodus back into the correct lane. “You got the files? All of them?”

Ollie nodded, but said nothing. Her smile still hadn’t returned.

From his spot on the dash, Artur inhaled slowly through his teeth. “Ooh. Ye’ve made yerself look a right stook now, Deadman,” he said. “There’s ye layin’ boots into poor peaches here, and all the while she’s gone and done ye a solid. That’s low, Deadman. If ye’ve even a bit o’ shame about ye, ye should be feeling pretty feckin’ scundered right about now, I reckon.”

“Yeah, well,” said Dan. He grabbed the mempod from the dash and shoved it in his pocket, then shot Ollie the briefest of sideways glances. “Good job.”

“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” said Artur, right before the car skidded into a sharp right turn and he was flung against the windshield. “Oof! Watch it, ye bollocks.”

He thudded down onto the dash, then began to slide. Ollie caught him and held him steady as the Exodus finished the maneuver and powered, tires smoking, onto another street.

“Cheers, peaches,” Artur said, winking at her. His smile fell away as he looked up at Dan. “What’s the big idea with driving like a madman?” he demanded. “I was nearly through the feckin’ window.”

“Sorry. Almost missed the turning.”

Artur peered ahead at the narrow, dirty street whizzing by. “This isn’t the way home.”

“We’re not going home. We’re going to Ned’s.”

“Nedran?” Artur groaned. “That gobshoite? What do we want to go there for?”

“Know anyone else with a mempod reader?”

Artur sniffed. “Ye know full well I don’t.”

“Well, then. We’re going to Ned’s.”

Artur sniffed again, even louder, this time. “Fine. Then I guess we’re going to Ned’s,” he agreed. “But if that bedge of a wife starts on me again, I’ll not be held responsible for me actions. Understood?”

Dan nodded. “Understood,” he said, then he pushed his foot to the floor and the Exodus rumbled into the night.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nedran yawned as he beckoned them into his workshop, indicating for them to stay as quiet as possible.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he muttered. He almost closed the door on Artur, before spotting him. “And what’s he doing here? Shouldn’t he be locked up?”

“If ye must know, I was helping out on an important mission,” Artur said, striding through the door.

“That’s a generous way to describe your involvement,” said Dan. He waited until the door was closed, then held out the mempod. “I need you to access this.”

Ned blinked through half-asleep eyes and peered at the pebble like device in Dan’s hand. “What’s on it?”

“Don’t know,” said Dan. “Paradise West gave me case file references and—”

“Paradise West?” said Ned.

“Yeah. She gave me case file references, and the only—”

“As in… As in Paradise West? You asked Paradise West for help? Are you out of your mind?”

“Probably,” Dan conceded. He gave the mempod a little waggle, snapping Ned’s attention back to it. The older man hesitated, but then took it and held it up to the light.

“It’s a new model. Not sure it’ll work.”

“You’ll make it work,” Dan said. “You always do.”

“Hmf,” said Nedran. He nodded to Dan’s chest. “You’ve got a hole in you. We should fix that.”

“Later,” said Dan. “Get me those files.”

Ned shook his head and rolled his eyes, but knew there was no point arguing. “Fine. Give me twenty minutes. If you want to patch yourself up, go ahead. You know where everything is.”

“Before ye go, have ye any beer?” asked Artur.

Ned stopped and looked back. “Sorry?”

“Beer. Ye know. Alcohol. Have ye maybe got some stashed about the place somewhere? In case of emergencies, or what have ye?”

“No,” said Nedran. “No beer.”

“Aw, right. Gotcha. Shame.”

Ned hesitated. “Right,” he said, then he yawned again, and headed through a gloss-painted door into what Dan knew to be a very small, very cluttered study.

“Twenty minutes,” Dan said. “OK, then.”

He tried to look down at the wound in his chest, but it was too high up for him to bring it properly into focus. His fingertips traced the edge, trying to work out how bad it was. Bad enough, but repairable. Most things were. So far, at least.

While Artur set off to explore the workshop, Dan flipped the lids off a few storage boxes until he found a pack of needles and some surgical thread. The hole in his chest was too big to just stitch closed, but if he cut a chunk of flesh from Ned’s stock of body parts, he could plug it up. The viewing angle meant it wouldn’t be easy, and wouldn’t be neat, but it was better than leaving a hole all the way through from his front to his back.

He had removed his coat, and was working on his shirt when he caught Ollie watching him. “You might want to look away,” he warned her. “It won’t be a pretty sight.”

“I’m OK,” said Ollie, smiling back at him.

“I wasn’t asking,” said Dan. He waited until she took the hint and turned around, before removing the rest of his shirt and dropping it onto the operating table beside him.

“Does this sort of thing happen a lot?” Ollie asked. She stood with her back to him, looking ahead to the far end of the workshop. “Getting hurt, I mean?”

“It didn’t hurt,” Dan said. “It’s mostly just my head that ever actually hurts. Mostly.”

He opened the chest-like metal box where Nedran stored the body parts he’d harvested. “And yes. Often enough.”

Rummaging around, Dan was delighted to find a selection of recently acquired male left arms stacked along one side of the box. He didn’t have time now, but as soon as he’d found Nona, he’d be back for one.

He kept hunting until he found a leg with a suitably large calf muscle, and took it over to the table. The leg was fresher than he was, and the join would be pretty noticeable, but then it wasn’t like he made a habit of going topless in public.

Making a circle with his fingers, Dan measured up the hole in his chest, widened his fingers slightly, to be on the safe side, then marked out the resulting sort of oblong shape on the calf muscle using a pen he eventually found in one of his coat pockets. The ink ran out halfway through, but he reckoned the slightly wonky letter C he’d drawn on the leg’s skin gave him enough of an idea to be going on with.

He found a scalpel in another of the boxes. Since neatness was much less of an issue than time, he set the beam to wide and started to slice. The fat beneath the skin sizzled as the glowing sliver of heat carved through it.

“What you doing?” asked Ollie, appearing over his shoulder. Dan’s hand jerked, and the swooping curve of the circle became a sharp, jagged edge.

“Fonk! Don’t do that,” he snapped.

“Sorry,” said Ollie. “Is that your leg?”

Dan glanced down at his feet. Both his feet. “Does it look like my leg?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen your legs before.”

“No, but…”

Dan shook his head, deciding the conversation wasn’t worth the trouble. He returned to carving up the calf muscle.

“No, it isn’t my leg. Nedran has… associates who help him secure spare parts for me. Arms. Legs. That kind of thing.”

“Heads?” Ollie asked.

Dan bit his bottom lip. “No,” he said, doing a remarkably good job of keeping his voice level. “No, this is my head.”

“Oh. OK,” said Ollie. She watched him until he’d finished cutting the fist-sized chunk of flesh out of the leg. “What are you going to do with that?”

Dan jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the exit wound on his back. “I’m going to fill that. Or try to.”

“Oh. Right. Gotcha,” said Ollie. “Want me to help?”

“No,” said Dan.

“I watched Nedran put your arm on. I think I could do it,” she insisted.

“I said no,” Dan grunted. “Now, do you mind…?”

He watched her from the corner of his eye until she backed away. “OK, well, just shout if you need me.”

“I won’t,” said Dan.

“OK, but if you do.”

“I won’t,” Dan said again. “I am perfectly capable of sewing a piece of calf muscle into my own chest.”

“OK,” Ollie said, very quietly. “But if you do.”

Dan grunted and fished in the box for a needle and thread. “Seriously. I’ve got it. I don’t need your help.”

* * *

“Just a few more. Neeeearly done.”

Ollie hooked the needle through Dan’s flesh, wriggled it into the chunk of leg meat, and pulled it through. Dan had relented and allowed her to help just a minute or two into proceedings, when, unable to see what he was doing properly, he’d accidentally sewn his chin to his chest.

Since she’d taken over, Ollie had narrated every stitch in a voice clearly designed to have a calming effect, but which had very quickly started to have the exact opposite. If Dan heard, “You’re doing very well,” one more time, he wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions.

The back wasn’t taking as long as the front. She’d practiced, at first, by stitching up the smaller wounds he’d received while doing his sweep of the bars. Those had gone OK, for the most part, and as long as you only saw them out of the corner of your eye and didn’t look directly at them, and the lights were reasonably low, they could pass for a professional job.

After some experimenting on the leg in the chest hole, she’d found a technique that worked pretty well, and the natural curve of Dan’s back was now giving her an easier angle to work from. It was almost starting to look quite neat. Almost.

Yes, it still looked like someone had inexpertly sewn a ragged piece of leg flesh into a chest wound, but quite neat at the same time.

“So,” Ollie said. “How does this work, then?”

“How does what work?”

“You being, you know, dead. That’s not normal, is it?”

“Death is normal,” Dan said. “Coming back from it, not so much.”

“Right.”

She continued sewing. “So how did you? Come back, I mean.”

Dan started to shrug, then remembered the needle in his back, and stopped. “No idea. Stopped thinking about the why, and started taking it for what it was.”

“A miracle?” Ollie guessed.

Dan snorted. “Wasn’t exactly the word I was looking for.”

A few seconds of silence descended. It was a refreshing change, but Dan knew it just meant Ollie was thinking of something else to ask.

“And, so, your name. Deadman. That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?” she said. “Oh! What if that’s why you came back? What if your name is what brought you back to life?”

“It’s not my real name,” said Dan. “I got a guy who makes ID for… people without ID. Guess he thought it was funny.”

“I suppose it’s a bit funny,” Ollie conceded. “I mean, it’s not hilarious, but it’s kind of… cute.”

Dan scowled back over his shoulder. “Cute?”

“Kind of cute,” Ollie clarified. “A bit.”

She pushed the needle into his flesh again. “So, what’s your real name?”

“Doesn’t matter. It died when I did,” he said, making no effort to hide his growing impatience. “Now, you almost done?”

“Nearly. You’re doing very well.”

Dan closed his eyes and clenched his fists, but resisted the urge to strangle her.

Ollie finished looping the thread around in a knot that could best be described as ‘untraditional’, then cut off the trailing end with the scalpel and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

“Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

She cocked her head left and right, examining the repair-job in a bit more detail. “I mean, not 'good', exactly, either, but not bad.”

“It's fine,” said Dan, reaching for his shirt.

“Ah, now what do ye say, Deadman?”

Artur returned from the far end of the workshop, grinning from ear to ear. “What's that special word we're all waiting to hear from ye?”

Dan said something, but it was barely audible. Artur touched the back of an ear and pushed it forward. “Sorry? Didn't quite catch that there.”

“Thanks,” Dan grunted, slipping on the shirt and hiding the neat-ish wound.

“Any time, partner!” said Ollie. She punched him lightly on the shoulder, then hastily retreated when he glowered at her. “But seriously. Happy to help. I quite enjoyed it, actually. Is that weird? That’s weird, right? Is it weird?”

“It is a bit, although I've heard a lot weirder,” said Artur. He looked wistfully off into the distance. “Sure, I once knew this one girl. Belspeth Unk, her name was. Lovely girl, but big, y'know? I mean, like big. Anyway, she had this thing she used to love. Drove her crazy it did. She made me this little wetsuit, and loved having me climb up—”

The sound of the study door opening cut the rest of the anecdote short. Nedran emerged with a bundle of paper clutched in his hands. He looked wide awake now. Too awake, if anything, as if sleep might never be a possibility again.

“What is it?” asked Dan, getting up from the operating table. “What did you find?”

“I, uh...” Nedran began, then he looked down at the paper, before hurriedly thrusting the whole lot into Dan's arms and stepping back, as if he couldn't bear to be near it. “See for yourself.”

Dan set the stack down on the padded table, and picked up the top few sheets. “Autopsy report,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. He raised his eyes to Ned. “Murder cases?”

“Three of them,” Nedran replied. “They were... All three were girls. Six years old. They had been...”

He leaned against the body-parts box and breathed slowly, fighting the urge to vomit.

“For a man who spends his days looking for dead bodies to hack to ribbons, ye seem awfully shaken up,” Artur noted.

Nedran nodded and swallowed. “Those girls, they were... I mean...”

“Mutilated,” said Dan, flicking through the pages and stopping at a series of horrifyingly detailed close-up photographs. “Someone cut them open.”

Ned swallowed again. “Not just that. Damage and misplacement of their organs suggested whoever did it then... I don't know, rummaged inside them.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Ollie asked.

“I don't know,” Dan admitted.

The name on the front page caught his eye. “Wait,” he said. He grabbed at the stack of sheets and flipped through until he found a similar document with the victim details on it. “Oh. Shizz,” he whispered.

The final victim detail sheet was near the bottom of the pile. When Dan found it he stared at it for what felt like an eternity, unmoving, unblinking.

“Ye going to keep us all in suspense, or what?” asked Artur. “I'm on the edge of me seat here. What is it?”

“Her name,” said Dan. “Their name.”

“What about it?”

“It's the same. Nona. Different surnames, but the same first name.”

Ollie frowned. “Nona? But isn't that...?”

“The name of the girl we're looking for,” Dan said. “Same name, same age. They've got to be linked.” He looked up at Nedran. “I mean, they've got to be, right?”

Ned's eyes were darting left to right, as if trying to wipe away everything they'd seen. At first, Dan thought he hadn't heard, but then the old man puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. “It would seem unlikely if they weren't,” he said.

“Exactly,” said Dan. He continued flicking through the sheets. He was accustomed to seeing some pretty harrowing injuries up close, most of them having been inflicted upon him. Even so, he skipped the pages and pages of photographs that revealed the extent of each girl's injuries, unable to bring himself to look.

All three girls, he discovered, had been abducted a few weeks apart. There were some conflicting reports among the witness statements, but they broadly agreed on one thing. Each girl had been snatched by someone on an old-style motorcycle, although the differing descriptions of the abductor suggested there could be at least two different men behind the kidnappings, possibly on two different bikes. That would tie in with the tracks Dan had seen at the school, too.

There was a blurry photograph of one of them, captured from a security camera. From what Dan could make out, he was a big guy with long hair and a beard practically all the way down to his waist. He had something slung over his shoulder. A blaster rifle? Maybe some kind of shock rod. It was impossible to tell.

The bodies of each girl had been found less than twelve hours after they had been taken. Forensic evidence suggested they had been alive for less than four of those hours, and conscious for only a fraction of it.

Small mercies.

“So, I don't get it,” said Artur, once Dan had gone over everything he'd found. “Why would someone be killing lots of girls with the same name? Is he just mental, do we reckon? Or is there something sinister behind it?”

He stopped talking, then immediately started again.

“I mean, you know, even more sinister, like. I think we can safely say the whole thing is pretty feckin' sinister, all in all, what with the murdering children, and all that.”

“And why hasn't he cut open and killed the new one?” Ollie asked. She winced. “I realize that kind of sounds like I want that to happen, but that's not what I meant.”

“She has a point,” said Ned. “Those others were found in a matter of hours. How long has the latest been missing for?”

“Couple of days,” said Dan, still flicking slowly through the sheets, scanning for anything that might help.

“And still no body?”

Dan shook his head.

“Well, I suppose that's encouraging,” Ned muttered. He kneaded his temples and slumped down onto a chair. “Although it could be she just hasn't been found yet.”

“I don't think so,” said Dan. “What if this guy, whoever took these girls, what if he was looking for one specific girl? One specific Nona?”

“So, what are ye saying?” asked Artur. “He tracks down a new Nona, grabs her, cuts her open, rummages around in her guts and that, and only then decides he's got the wrong one? What's he doing, checking their kidneys for a name tag or something?”

Dan clenched his jaw a few times, then let it relax. “I don't know,” he admitted. “I don't know why he's doing any of it, but I'm going to find out.”

“How?” asked Ollie.

Dan leaned against the operating table for a few seconds. He seemed to sag, as if the life was leaving him, but then he straightened, gave a decisive nod of his head, and split the tower of paper into three smaller stacks.

“Go through these. Take one each, then swap,” Dan ordered. “Look for anything that could be helpful.”

“Like what, exactly?” asked Artur.

“Anything. I don't know. Clues.”

“Clues?” Artur snorted. “Just go through two thousand pages looking for 'clues'? I'm telling ye now, that's a big old waste of time. If there's clues in here, the Tribunal would have found them.”

“You think the Tribunal cares about these kids?” Dan snapped, spinning on his heels. “You think they put their best men on this case? You think they put any men on this case? Solving this stuff, looking out for the little guy, that's not what they do. It's what they're supposed to do, but it's not what they do.”

He pulled on his coat, then picked up his hat.

“So, what?” asked Artur. “Ye're going to do it?”

Dan snapped up his coat collar and pulled the hat down low on his head. “Someone has to,” he said. “I'm going to see what I can find out. Get going on that paperwork.”

“Fine, fine. Wouldn't be able to sleep, anyway,” said Ned. “But just be careful. OK? Don't go doing anything rash, or shooting up half the city trying to find her.”

“Fonk,” Dan cursed. He gestured to the end of the operating table, where his holster hung from a hook. “Put Mindy on to charge for me, will you? I'll need her later.”

“Ye're going out there without a gun?” said Artur. “Are ye wise?”

“I'm not going to get into trouble,” said Dan. “Won't need one.” He nodded towards the paper stacks. “Now, you sure you can handle it? The case files, I mean? There’s a lot of it.”

“You know your problem, Dan?” Ned asked.

“Where to feckin’ start on that question?” Artur called.

“You underestimate us. And yourself,” Ned said. “We’ll be fine.”

Dan nodded.

“OK. If you say so.”

And with that, he rolled up the door and stepped out into the night.

* * *

Down Here never slept. Not really. It dozed, at best, and even at times like now, with the morning hours away, vehicles still sped along the roads, and pedestrians milled around on the sidewalks. They were a different type of pedestrian to those who moved around during the day, but the actual number of them was only barely diminished.

It was the constant blue glow of the engines, Dan reckoned. The Up There cities filled the sky all around the planet, their engines painting both the relatively small area of land and the vast ocean in a permanent blue hue. It was more noticeable at night, and meant that many parts of Down Here never got all the way dark.

Some parts, though, usually sandwiched down between the taller buildings, were untouched by the light. They seemed to almost revel in their inky darkness, and it was here where the worst of the city’s secrets were kept.

Dan wandered down one such alley, letting the darkness wrap around him like a cloak. He heard voices muttering and cursing. He heard distant screams and far-off blaster fire. He saw shapes moving in the shadows, and felt attentive eyes turn to follow him as he strolled along, trying to straighten things out in his head.

Four girls. Four Nonas. Three dead. One, he hoped, not.

More than ever, he wanted to find her. More than ever, he wanted to bring her home, to save her from the fate that had befallen the others who shared her name.

Ollie had told Paradise that he was doing it for the money, and that suited him fine. He was doing it for the money. He needed that money.

But, like Paradise had said, there were easier ways of making a living.

A woman stepped from the shadows ahead of him, her skin pale and sallow, her eyes ringed with pain. “Hey, mister, you looking for a good—?” she began in a strong off-world accent, then she stopped when she saw his face, and quickly melted back into the darkness without uttering another word.

“Maybe next time,” Dan muttered.

He walked on, past boarded-up windows and shuttered doors, and eventually came to the end of the alleyway. He looked both ways, then continued out onto a wider street. The blue light from on high brought a veneer of civility back to this part of the city, and the people he passed looked flighty and nervous, as opposed to angry and violent.

How long had he been walking now? He couldn’t remember. He was a couple of miles from Ned’s place. He should head back soon, see if they’d had any luck.

He stopped beside a food stand. The front shutter was down, but he could hear someone snoring in there, and he envied them. Sleep, cook, serve, repeat. Not a bad life, he supposed. Better than most.

Dan was about to turn away when he saw the poster. It had been pasted onto the shutter recently, judging by the damp spots of adhesive showing through the cheap paper. He’d passed dozens of identical posters while walking, but it was only now that he paid it any attention.

Death Derby 88 the headline screamed, following it up with at least four too many exclamation points. These things had been growing in popularity over the past few years. They could best be described as a cross between a stunt show, a circus, and a gladiator arena. Members of the public got to try their luck in a variety of ‘games’ against established professional competitors. Winning involved either staying alive for a set amount of time, or killing the pro before they killed you. Most people went along just to watch, but there would always be enough volunteers to make for a packed schedule. Anyone who won against their pro opponent got a share of a prize fund. If no one won, the prize fund rolled over.

Judging by the number printed in a bold yellow typeface on the poster, it had been rolling over for a while now.

It wasn’t the prize money that had caught Dan’s interest, though. It was the man on the poster. He sat astride an old-style motorbike, his long hair and long beard trailing in the wind as he beheaded a fleeing opponent with some kind of long-handled chainsaw-sword weapon.

If Dan’s heart had been beating, it would have quickened its pace.

It was him. It was the man in the case file photograph. The man who had taken Nona. Who had taken all the Nonas.

And Dan now knew just where to find him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Laaaaaaadieeeeeeees and geeeeeeeentlemeeeeeeen!” boomed a voice from a floating Loudmouth speaker system. “What did we just witness?! Talk about an upset! Long-time Death Derby stalwart, Morsha 'The Castrator' Nuresh, slain by his own scissors! That’s what it’s all about! Am I right?”

Around the arena, the crowd, which had already been going nuts, went nutser.

Calling the place 'an arena' was being generous. Essentially, the organisers of Down Here's eighty-eighth Death Derby had placed a temporary fence around a football field-sized piece of waste ground, and arranged for some drone-lights to hover overhead to ensure maximum visibility of all the blood, guts and gore that audiences had come to expect.

And what an audience it was tonight. There were over a thousand people in attendance - off-worlders, mostly, but the occasional slow-moving native - and they were having the time of their otherwise worthless little lives.

The Castrator had become something of a legend since his first appearance at Death Derby 52. Since then, his scissors had worked their gory magic on well over a dozen foolhardy volunteers, all seeking a share of the increasingly sizeable prize money on offer to anyone who could take down a Derby regular.

And now, finally, someone had taken him out. Cameras flashed as the Castrator's twitching, partially-headless corpse was dragged over to the fence by officials, before it was hoisted onto a meat hook and raised up for all to see.

“And let's hear it for our butt-kicking, throat-ripping, pro-slaying winner!” the Loudmouth speaker decreed, and the cheering increased sharply in both pitch and volume.

In the center of the makeshift stadium, the victorious challenger - a young man who would have been fairly unassuming looking, were it not for the blood that now painted him from head to toe and the expression of demented glee on his face - raised a hand in victory. With the other hand, he did his best to keep his intestines from spilling out through a hole in this stomach and onto the uneven ground.

Sadly, his best wasn't quite good enough, and a ripple of laughter went around the crowd as his insides spewed out like sausages from a sausage machine, and he slumped, face-first, into the resulting bloody mush.

“Ooh, hard lines there!” announced the Loudmouth. “So close, and yet so... dead!”

The audience laughed again, appreciating what, for them, was about as close to a wry play on words as they were ever likely to get.

“You know what we say…” crackled the voice. The audience joined in and helped him deliver his much-loved, if grammatically questionable, catchphrase. “If you get slayed, you don’t get paid!”

A chant rose up from one end of the arena, and quickly down both sides until it reached the opposite end. “Hook, hook, give him the hook! Hook, hook, give him the hook!”

The officials ran into the arena's central court again, caught the now very much dead member of the public by the arms and legs, and carried him back to the sidelines, dragging his distended innards along with him.

A hook was buried in his back. A chain rattled. The body was heaved up onto the fence, and the chant became another round of boorish cheers, whistles and foot-stamps.

“Aaaaaaand now,” the Loudmouth blasted. “The maaaaaiiin event. The moment we have all been waiting for.”

From somewhere beyond the circle of light came the revving of an engine. The cheering reached fever pitch, before quickly dropping into a hushed, awe-struck murmur.

“The one.”

The revving got louder.

“The only.”

The engine roared like a wild animal.

“Tor von Haff!”

That did it. If the stadium had had a roof, it would have been blown off by the sheer force and volume of the cheering that followed. A smoke-spewing motorcycle was vomited from the darkness. It flew several feet through the air, landed on its back wheel, then paraded around in a circle with its front wheel raised.

On the bike's back sat something that looked like a highly-evolved warthog. It was all hair and tusks and beard and anger. Tor Von Haff's skin was rough and oily, his eyes two bulging nodules above an atrocity of a nose. He hissed and spat at the adoring crowd, which only seemed to make them love him, all the more.

The voice on the speaker system gave the crowd a minute or more to enjoy the show, then shouted them down.

“We're not here to admire this fine specimen, folks, we're here to do righteous battle! Who among you will dare face Tor in the arena? Who among you is strong enough, bold enough... insane enough to face one of the famous von Haff brothers in one-on-one, you-against-him, no-holds-barred combat?”

The cheering of the crowd became far less enthusiastic. Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting to see who would try their luck.

No one moved. Fighting the Castrator was one thing. Taking on a von Haff? Well, that was something else, entirely.

“Remember, folks, there is a prize of two-hundred-and-fifty thousand credits on offer to anyone who can survive just two minutes in the arena with Tor. We don't expect you to beat this guy - we're not crazy - just stay alive for two short minutes. That's all, and the money is yours.”

A few men in the audience stroked their chins and nodded, making a show of considering this, mostly for the benefit of their dates. Still none of them made any move to volunteer.

“Seriously?” said the Loudmouth voice. “Nobody is willing to step into the arena with my man Tor? Come on, there must be somebody with nothing to live for.”

A figure vaulted the fence, and a drone-light immediately circled to shine a spot on him. “I'll do it,” he said, in a voice like grinding glass.

“Aaaalllllllright! Finally!” hollered the voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a volunteer! Well done, Mr...?”

The volunteer removed his long coat, folded it neatly, then set it on the ground.

“Deadman.”

“Ha! Seriously?”

Dan took off his hat and placed it on top of his coat.

“Seriously.”

“That is awesome,” said the announced. “And, well, I hate to tell you, but I suspect that name is going to become pretty appropriate within the next ninety seconds, or so.”

Tor von Haff revved his engine. Dan shrugged. “We’ll see.”

A couple of officials wheeled in a metal rack. It held a variety of swords, axes, some sort of power tool and a large hook on a short chain.

“Challenger!” boomed the voice on the speakers, as the drone buzzed past over Dan’s head. The crowd joined in the chant, once more. “Choose your weapon!”

Von Haff opened up his throttle, driving the crowd wild with the throaty roar of his engine. Dan looked at the weapons on offer on the rack, then waved his woman’s hand. “I’m fine.”

“Haha! Uh… what?” said the Loudmouth.

Dan looked up at the drone. “I don’t need a weapon.”

The crowd let out a collective, “Oooh!” that sounded equal parts impressed and sarcastic.

“But… you do. You need a weapon,” the amplified voice insisted. “We want a show, Mr Deadman! We want you to have at least a fighting chance, and you’re not going to beat the mighty Tor von Haff with your bare hands.”

Dan nodded very deliberately, just once, in the direction of the biker. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

The crowd laughed at that. They liked this plucky newcomer. His agonizing death and subsequent dismemberment was going to be a blast.

Dan cricked his neck. “Can we get a move on?” he said. “I’m kind of in a rush here.”

“That is unfortunate for you,” said von Haff, his voice a guttural ejection of partially-formed consonants and vowels. “I vill be in no rush to kill you. But you vill vish I vas, so you’re suffering vould be—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan grunted. He made a winding motion with an index finger. “Let’s just hurry this up.”

“Uh, yeah,” said the Loudmouth voice, sounding less certain than he had all night. He’d been hoping the main event might drag on for a minute or so before von Haff lopped the dude’s head off, but this would be over in seconds, and that meant a disappointing finish to what had been an otherwise excellent derby.

He rallied and tried to inject some enthusiasm into his delivery, but it was apparent his heart wasn’t quite in it. “Here goes, ladies and gents, the big one. The main event. Tor von Haff versus, uh, Deady ‘The Soon-to-be Dead Man’ Deadman.”

There was cheering. There was always cheering. But the audience seemed to have picked up on the announcer’s concerns, and it was a much more muted level of cheering than normal.

Tor, on the other hand, was raring to go. He reached over his shoulder and pulled a saw-like sword from the sheath on his back. As he gave it a flick, a motor in the blade began to hum, and the saw teeth became a fast-moving blur.

“Fighters, take your places!” the announced instructed.

Before the sentence had even finished, von Haff pulled a wheelie and roared off towards the far end of the arena. Dropping back onto two wheels, he skidded around so he was directly facing Dan, and raised his weapon in the air.

“And there’s the sign to let us know that von Haff is ready! Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look quite so ready, before. He’s going to show this cocky upstart just who’s top dog around here. Make him suffer, Tor! Drag that shizz out!”

Please he added, silently. He was in no mood to handle complaints and refund requests.

“Challenger, are you ready?” the announced asked.

“Sure, whatever,” said Dan. He scowled in irritation. “Does it always take this long?”

That did it. Von Haff’s roar was audible even over that of his bike’s engine. Twisting his throttle, he powered towards Dan, dirt spraying behind him, the cheering of the crowd driving him on.

Dan waited.

Von Haff raised his weapon and swished it around above his head. With the beard and the tusks and the bulging, boggle-eyes, it was hard to read the guy’s expression with any degree of accuracy, but ‘unfriendly’ was a pretty safe bet.

The crowd was bouncing with excitement now, all slightly out of time so it gave the effect of a long, wriggling snake circling the stadium. The announcer was saying something, but it was impossible to hear him over the whooping and hollering and general frenzy.

Dan waited. As the bike closed in, he counted backwards in his head.

Three.

Two.

One.

And then the bike was there, dead ahead, all smoke and noise and spinning wheels. Von Haff drew back his blade to swing, just as Dan dropped to one knee, twisted, and shoved the woman’s arm through the bike’s front spokes.

Quite a lot of things happened, all at the same time. Most of them thanks to physics.

The bone in Dan’s arm wasn’t strong enough to jam the bike’s spokes, but the metal bar was more than up to the job. As a result, the bike stopped, very abruptly. Or the front of the bike stopped, very abruptly, at least. The back of the bike didn’t.

Likewise, Tor von Haff didn’t stop, either. If anything, he seemed to speed up as the rear end of the bike flipped over and hurled its rider, head first, onto the ground, before hammering down on top of him.

The bike’s engine buzzed angrily for a second or two, then fell silent. The crowd followed suit, a hush descending as they watched Dan wrench his arm free of the motorcycle’s front wheel.

“Shizz. Still there,” he grunted, looking the arm over. It was in bad shape – flatter in some parts than it should be, but bulging in places where it definitely should not – but still attached. He’d been hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but no such luck.

“Now, then… Tor, was it?” Dan said, kicking the bike sideways and catching the fallen rider by the shoulder. “I’m going to have to ask you a few questions.”

He turned von Haff over. A worryingly large piece of the guy’s brain stayed behind on the large rock he had smashed into. The rest of his brain was mostly visible through a hole in his skull, where a flap of bone hung open like an access hatch. Tor’s eyes were looking upwards at it, wide, bulging and largely lifeless.

“Muuuhhhh,” he babbled through his fat, blubbery lips. “Nnngg.”

“Aw, crap,” Dan muttered. He scooped up the largest chunk of brain and tried to squeeze it back inside Tor’s head. “Come on, don’t you fonking die on me, you lowlife piece of shizz.”

Von Haff gurgled. His brain slopped sideways onto the ground, his eyes rolled back, and the rest of him realized there was very little point in continuing.

“No, no, no, no,” Dan groaned, fumbling for the brain scraps again. He dropped them even before he’d finished scooping them up. Clearly, there was no point. His lead – his only lead – was very definitely dead.

Cursing himself, Dan stood up, dragging his woman’s arm with him. It was limp and heavy, the fingers barely responding. Suddenly, the whole arm-in-spokes thing didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Nearby, someone in the audience began to clap, slowly at first, but getting faster. Someone else joined in. A whoop rose up from someone else.

“Hol-eeeee shizz!” said the announcer. He was doing his best to sound excited, but there were some shocked and disbelieving undertones to it that were hard to miss. “Ladies and gentlemen, I… I don’t quite believe what I’m seeing here. Tor von Haff is down. The, uh, the challenger has… Well, he’s won. He’s won.”

The clapping became hollering, the hollering became cheers and whistling and the stamping of feet. Dan didn’t hear it, or if he did, he didn’t let on.

OK, so his lead was a literal dead end, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to find out from him. Squatting, Dan began rummaging in the pockets of the dead man’s biker jacket. For some reason, the crowd seemed to approve. Their cheering took on all new levels of euphoria. Even the announcer seemed to find his mojo again.

“Unbelievable! Incredible! Wow, folks, my eyes cannot believe what they’re seeing right now!”

It was an unusual reaction to someone rummaging through a dead man’s pockets.

Too unusual, Dan realized, but just a little too late. The curved blade of a sword stabbed through him from behind, tore through his guts, and erupted through his stomach in a spray of black, sticky blood.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for our surprise guest star!” the Loudmouth boomed. “Vextor von Haff!”

Dan stared down at the blade through his stomach, and listened to the animal-like snorting of the man behind him. “Well now,” he mumbled, something not unlike a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Thank fonk for that.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The sword withdrew with an oily-sounding shunk that was audible even over the din of the crowd.

Aware that taking a blade through the guts was one thing, but that the next strike might very well take his head off, Dan sprung to his feet, spun around, and crunched a right hook across what turned out to be the sturdiest face he had ever hit.

Vextor von Haff was clearly the bigger of the von Haff brothers. His tusk-like bottom teeth curved all the way up to his eye level, but jutted out at a shallow angle so he wasn’t constantly in danger of poking both eyes out.

He had the same beard as his brother, but longer and stragglier. His skin was a mess of weeping boils and oozing sores, and something had clearly attempted to bite his nose off at some point in the dim and distant past. Possibly himself, Dan reckoned. He looked the type.

Vextor’s expressions were as hard to read as Tor’s had been, but there was definitely a look of shock as Dan’s fist connected with his jaw. Not shock at being hit – and definitely not pain – but a sort of bewildered surprise that the guy he’d just impaled on a four foot long piece of pointy metal was still able to throw a punch, at all.

“Vot is this?” Vextor demanded, looking Dan up and down.

Dan hit him again, harder this time. He’d held back a little, last time, worried he might kill this one, too. That, however, now seemed unlikely.

The second punch turned Vextor’s head an inch to his right. Perhaps less. While his head barely moved, though, his face shifted around a lot. The raised eyebrow – singular – became a steep-sided letter V above his globular eyeballs. His tusks angled further outwards as his bottom lip curved up into a snarl, squeezing trickles of pus from the boils on his cheeks.

The older – and only remaining – von Haff hissed angrily and drove a battering-ram foot into Dan’s chest that knocked him back several paces. The roaring of the crowd became distant background noise as Dan saw Vextor lumber into a run, his sword arcing above his head, then swinging sharply down.

CLANG! Dan blocked the blade with his woman’s arm, then fired a kick at von Haff’s kneecap. The bigger man didn’t flinch, and Dan felt pain explode behind his eyes as the handle of the sword was smashed against the side of his head.

He staggered, off balance, and was in the process of reaching for Mindy when he remembered she was back at Nedran’s. He’d gone back for the car, but hadn’t taken the gun. Stupid. Stupid mistake.

The sword whummed in a wide horizontal swing towards him. He managed to get the woman’s arm in front of it, and the blade sparked as it cleaved through the flesh until it struck the Durium rod.

Roaring, Vextor swung the sword up and over his head, then down towards Dan’s. Dan got his arm up in time to block the attack, but Vextor hacked and chopped, again and again, until the vibration was about to make Dan’s teeth shake themselves out of their sockets.

He dodged the next strike and spun, smashing his metal-rod forearm across the back of von Haff’s skull with an ever-so-slightly damp sounding thack.

That got his attention. Vextor’s fist was a mallet-strike across Dan’s cheek. It split the thin, weakened skin and Dan’s head was filled with a sound like rushing water. “Hey, watch the face,” Dan growled.

He ducked another sword strike and hurled himself at Vextor’s legs, driving his shoulder into them, just above the knees. Von Haff started to topple, but scraped together just enough time to stab the sword through Dan’s back again.

Dan threw himself sideways, his body wrenching the sword from Vextor’s grip. They both hit the ground, but Dan was the first to get back to his feet. He drove the heel of his boot into Von Haff’s elbow as he tried to get up, knocking him back down into the dirt.

If the announcer or crowd were still making noise, Dan couldn’t hear them. There was just the whooshing inside his head, and the growling of Vextor on the ground. With some difficulty, Dan managed to remove the sword from his torso. He took it by the handle and weighed it up.

“Nice. I can see why you like it,” he said. He turned the sword so the tip of the pointed blade hovered just inches from Vextor’s battle-scarred snout. “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. And you’re going to answer. Understand?”

Vextor spat on the ground at Dan’s feet. “Guess not,” said Dan, then he stabbed the sword downwards, forcing it deep into Vextor’s thigh. Vextor opened his mouth wide, as if to scream, but no sound emerged.

Yanking the sword free, Dan tapped the flat side of the bloodied blade against one of Vextor’s tusks. It emitted a note that was oddly melodious.

“Understand?” Dan asked again. Vextor glowered at him, but this time, didn’t spit. “Good boy,” said Dan. “Now, I’m looking for a girl. Name’s Nona. Pretty sure you know her.”

“I don’t know vot you’re talking about,” Vextor hissed.

The sword tore into his other leg, and this time Von Haff was unable to contain a short, guttural yelp of pain.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” said Dan. He twisted the sword. “Let’s see if we can’t remind you.”

“W-wait. Wait!”

Dan let his weight rest on the sword for a moment, then whipped it free. “Something coming back to you?” he asked. He pressed the tip of the blade against Vextor’s upper arm. “Or do you need me to jog your memory again?”

Von Haff glanced around him. The audience was almost completely silent now, watching events unfold in shocked fascination. Even the announcer had given up trying to lift the mood, and was either lost for words or had turned off his microphone.

“I… I vill tell you.”

“Thought you might say that.”

“But not here. It cannot be here.”

“It can, and it will,” said Dan. He leaned closer. “Where is she?”

Vextor swung with a rock that caught Dan just above the ear. “Son of a—” Dan hissed, but then the ground turned to quicksand beneath him and the sky started to loop.

He stabbed the sword at von Haff, but von Haff was no longer there. Shaking his head, Dan tried to clear the marshmallow gloop that seemed to be filling it, clogging up his thoughts and making his movements slow.

Where was he? He spun, sword raised. Where was he?

The crowd roared, and Dan turned again, lashing out with the blade.

No, not the crowd. Not this time. The bike.

Dan’s double vision began to clear in time for him to see Vextor go hurtling towards a section of the fence, clouds of smoke spewing from the bike’s twin exhausts.

The people on the other side of the fence laughed and whooped with excitement, then yelped and fled in panic when they realized the bike wasn’t going to stop. It toppled the temporary structure with a creak and a bang. There was a brief frenzy of howls, then the squishing sound of chain-link fence being forced into flesh by several hundred pounds of growling metal and the additional weight of the madman riding it.

Dan tossed the sword, grabbed his hat and coat, and ran towards the gap in the fence. The people buried under it were barely recognizable as people now, at all. Bits of them had been squeezed through the gaps in the fence, and nothing short of reincarnation was going to help them get back on their feet.

He fumbled in his coat pocket as he slid across the hood of the Exodus and tore open the door. The engine spluttered and coughed, but when he cursed at it and smashed his fist against the wheel, it decided it should probably just do what it was told, and the car rumbled begrudgingly into life.

The Exodus’s tires also raised their voice in protest as Dan crunched the car into gear and hit the gas. The Death Derby had been set up way on the southern outskirts of Down Here, between the city limits and the wall that partitioned off the Out There wastelands.

There was a road, of sorts, but it had as many holes as it had surface, and the Exodus’s suspension creaked and banged as Dan powered the car over the crest of a ridge, and down the slope on the other side.

Von Haff’s bike was a quarter of a mile ahead, but wobbling unsteadily. At first, Dan thought Vextor was avoiding the potholes, but as he started to close the gap, he realized the bike itself was doing most of the weaving. It must have been damaged during the arm-in-spokes incident. It wasn’t the only one. Dan flexed the fingers of his woman’s hand, but only the index finger and thumb responded.

The city rose up ahead, an outcrop of low, dirty warehouse buildings rising to become towers of metal and glass. A few of the buildings in the business district stabbed at the clouds, as if aspiring to the dizzy heights of Up There, floating above on its thousands of individual engines.

There was half a mile, maybe less, until von Haff hit a real road surface, which could only help speed him up. Dan forced the Exodus into a lower gear and the engine sputtered in defiance. He forced the pedal to the floor and tightened the grip of his right hand, compensating for the weakened left.

The potholes dragged the car from side to side, bouncing and shuddering Dan in the old leather seat, and threatening to tear the tires apart.

Vextor wasn’t faring a whole lot better. He wobbled like a kid on their first bicycle, and even from this distance, Dan could hear the sshik-sshik-sshik of rubbing metal with every revolution of the bike’s front wheel.

The Exodus hit a mound in the track, and was briefly airborne. It slammed down with a cacophony of squeaks, bangs and rattles, and Dan held his non-existent breath, waiting for the dash to illuminate with warning lights, and the engine to hand in its notice.

The car somehow kept going. “Good girl, good girl,” Dan cheered. It was the first time he had ever addressed his car directly, and he promised himself it would be the last.

Switching up a gear, Dan hammered the gas pedal again. The Exodus screamed with the effort, but the gap was closing. The bike’s back wheel was thundering along just fifteen or so feet ahead. Any second. Any second now…

Vextor turned in his seat. A blaster bolt punched a hole in Dan’s windshield, and obliterated the passenger seat headrest. Charred fabric and burning fluff filled the inside of the car. Through the cracks in the glass, Dan saw Vextor taking aim again. This time, it wasn’t a seat headrest in the line of fire, it was Dan’s head.

“Shizz,” he grimaced, jerking the wheel just as von Haff let fly with another blast. It screamed past the car and punched a hole in the ground a handful of feet behind it.

The Exodus was now just behind and to the left of the bike, which forced Vextor to shift around in his seat to take aim again. They were close to the city now. Very close.

Dan slammed on his brakes just before Vextor could fire. The man on the bike sneered in victory, then turned to face front just as his bike hit the metal gate that marked the city limits.

Just as his brother had been before him, he was launched, screaming, over the handlebars. There was a thunk and a long drawn-out grinding noise as Vextor landed in the road and continued along it on his tusks, then he crunched into the side of a shipping container and stopped with a bone-shattering degree of abruptness.

Vextor coughed, and something damp and coppery filled his mouth. He got his hands beneath him and, arms shaking, raised himself to his knees, baring his teeth against the pain it brought.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

Von Haff looked up to find a boot coming down. It connected with the side of his head. There was a flash of white, a burst of pain, then everything in Vextor’s world sunk into a deep, oily black.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Artur walked slowly backwards down the length of the page, reading as he went. The fact he had to do this meant he had fallen behind the others as they’d all worked their way through the case files. He also wasn’t really big on – or very good at – reading, so that didn’t exactly help, either.

“Anyone found anything out yet?” he asked, once he’d finished the page he was on. He had developed a technique for changing pages, which involved half-jumping, half-sliding forwards until the top sheet of the pile moved enough for him to be able to step onto the sheet below, then he would catch the edge of the top page and slide it onto the increasingly haphazard stack of read pages on the table beside him.

“Not a lot,” Nedran confessed. “I can’t help looking at those wounds, though.”

“Well, that should be cause for concern, ye feckin’ pervert,” Artur replied. “Ye’re meant to be reading, so ye are, not ogling the pictures.”

“What? No! Not like that,” Ned spluttered. “Please! I meant… Why do that? Why cut a child open and forcibly push their organs aside like that?”

“Can we have less o’ the detail?” Artur said, wincing. “I’d rather not think about it, to be honest.”

He looked down the new sheet he was standing on. It showed a family photo of one of the Nonas, sticking her tongue out at whichever friend or parent was behind the camera.

“Sure, there are some real sick scumbags in the world.”

“What if…?” Ollie began, but the sentence just sort of petered out there.

Nedran watched her across the table, eyebrows raised. “What if… What?”

“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Sorry,” said Ollie. “I don’t know about any of this stuff, not like you do, but I was just thinking… What if they weren’t children? What if they weren’t people?”

Artur and Nedran exchanged a glance. “Ye what?” asked Artur. “What are they, then? Puppets?”

“No, I mean, they are children, people, you know, whatever,” said Ollie. “As far as I know, anyway. But what if the reports weren’t about people? What if they were about…”

She looked around the workshop, then down at her chair. With some difficulty, she wriggled a padded circle of fabric out from beneath her. “These?”

“What if someone had filed murder reports about cushions?” said Artur.

“Yes!”

Neither Artur nor Nedran said anything for a while, as they both seemed to consider this.

“Has she lost her feckin’ mind, d’you think?” Artur asked, eventually.

Ned smiled in a way that was more sympathetic than anything else. “You should take a rest,” he told Ollie. “This sort of thing, it isn’t... It shouldn’t be something you have to get involved in. The stress of it can do funny things to people.”

“No!” Ollie protested. “I meant, what if someone took one of these…”

“A cushion,” said Artur.

“Right. What if someone took a cushion, cut it open, and moved all the inside parts around,” Ollie continued. “What would you think then?”

“I’d think they’d ruined a perfectly good cushion,” said Artur.

Nedran stood up from his stool. “That they were looking for something.”

Artur frowned. “I thought we already knew that, didn’t we? Deadman reckoned whoever took the girls is looking for one in particular.”

Ned shook his head. “Not looking for the girl. Looking for something inside the girl.”

“Inside?” said Artur. “What, like a spleen, or something?”

“No, no organs were removed, just pushed aside. He was looking for something else. Something that shouldn’t be there.” Ned looked across at Ollie. “Well done. You figured it out.”

Ollie looked down at the cushion in her hands. “Wait, what? Figured what out? What’s happening?”

“You figured out whoever killed the girls was looking for something inside one of them,” said Ned.

“Did I?” Ollie asked, surprised by this news. She looked down at the cushion again, then cuddled into it and beamed. “Hey, go me!”

Artur puffed out his cheeks, although they were so small nobody really noticed. “Bit of a stretch, like, ain’t it? Why would a little girl have something stashed up in her guts? Unless… Unless it was stashed. What if some sick fecker put something there, then came back for it later?”

“Only he’s not sure which girl he used,” said Nedran, his voice climbing in pitch. “He knows her first name and her date of birth, but that’s all.”

“So he starts picking them off, one by one,” Artur finished. “Working his way through them, until he finds the right one! The old fella’s right, peaches, you’re a genius.”

“Am I?” Ollie asked. “Is that good?”

Before Artur could respond, there came a series of metallic thuds from the door.

“Shh, not so loud,” Nedran whispered, bustling over to the workshop entrance. He caught the leather strap at the bottom of the door and rolled it slowly upwards, trying to keep the noise to a minimum. “How many times have I told you, Dan? If you’re coming and going at this hour, you have to learn to be more…”

The thing standing on the other side of the door was not Dan Deadman. It was not, in fact, a man of any description, dead or otherwise. At least, not to begin with.

At first glance, it appeared to be a number of different things at the same time. Ned saw glimpses of eyes and teeth and fat, squirming tentacles. He saw flashes of faces, some human-looking, most not.

And then worse. He saw not just what this thing was, but what it had done. He saw pain and hatred and fear and hurt. He saw other things, too. Things he would never be able to bring himself to admit he’d seen. Things he wished he could unsee. Please, someone, let him unsee them.

As the high-speed slideshow of horror whirred like a flick-book through his head, Nedran staggered backwards, a tide of nausea flooding over him, and a raw, primal sound bursting on his lips.

And then, the thing was a man. A naked man, albeit with a perfectly smooth, featureless groin, and precisely zero going on on the nipple front.

He spoke with not one voice, but billions. Hearing him talk was like being in an auditorium where everyone was whispering the same words at the same time, and in a tone that suggested they all thoroughly despised each other.

“May I come in?” he asked, and then, without appearing to move, he was inside the workshop, just a foot or two in front of Nedran.

“Friend of yours, Neddy?” Artur asked. “Sure, why don’t you introduce us?”

Ned shook his head, and kept shaking it, like he didn’t know how to stop. “He’s not… I don’t… I’ve never seen him before.”

The thing that was not a man looked from Ned to Artur, then around at the workshop. His eyes passed over Ollie completely. She stood on the other side of the table, the cushion clutched protectively in front of her, her pendant glowing brighter than ever behind it.

The man was oddly generic-looking, like the avatar of a video game before the player customized it. He was not short, but not particularly tall, either. He was slim, with muscles that were defined, but only loosely. His eyes and hair were matching shades of brown, his face clean-shaven, and the rest of him completely hairless.

His hands and feet were the only anomalies, being half again as large as they should be, so they looked cumbersome and out of place.

“Where is she?” he asked, and Ned felt his skin try to crawl from his flesh in revulsion at the sound.

“Uh, what? Who?”

The man took a step closer. Ned tried to take a step back, but his legs had become dead weight, and were refusing to respond.

“Where is she?”

“What’s he on about?” asked Artur. He squinted up at the newcomer. “What ye on about, ye big bollocks? Or ye big no-bollocks, as the case seems to be. Who’re ye after?”

The man lowered his head. His eyes met Artur’s, and something seemed to pass between them. Artur stumbled backwards, his squinting scowl falling away into something less vitriolic. “Aw, feck. Ye’re him. Ain’t ye?”

“H-he’s who?” asked Nedran.

“Now, don’t go getting yer knickers in a twist here, Neddy. That there’s Kalaechai, the Malwhere Lord.”

“O-oh,” Nedran stammered. “That probably explains why I’ve s-soiled myself.”

“Right behind ye, big man. Right behind ye.”

“Where is she?”

Ned’s legs were still refusing to move, but he managed to turn his top half. He looked directly across the table at Ollie. She was frozen in fear, her whole body shaking, her breath coming in squeaky little gasps. The glow of her necklace shone around the edges of the cushion now, casting it into silhouette.

She was right there, and yet this thing – this Kalaechai – apparently couldn’t see her. Nedran looked deep into her wide, terrified eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He faced front again.

“I don’t know who you’re looking for.”

Something hit him. It was hard and invisible, and lifted him off his feet. There was no time to brace himself before he hit the operating table, and both he and it crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and metal.

“Nedran!” hollered a broadly female voice from somewhere in the house. “Is that you? Keep the noise down! I’m trying to sleep!”

“S-sorry, dear,” Nedran whispered, but not loud enough for her to hear.

Kalaechai advanced, plodding forwards with a lurching, awkward gait, as if he were being operated by someone on a 'come and have a go' introduction to puppeteering course.

“Hey, steady now,” urged Artur. “Let's talk about this. No need to get violent. Sure, laying boots in never really solved anything, did it?”

Ned struggled against the upturned table, trying to untangle his arm from the folding mechanism. He almost had it when something hit him again. His nose exploded and he flipped backwards. His arm, still trapped in the table, snapped, and the only thing that stopped Ned screaming was his deeply ingrained instinct not to disturb his wife.

“Aw, come on now,” pleaded Artur, then his voice became a growl. “Leave him alone. Ye want to start shoite with someone? Sure, I'm standing right here. Come and have a go if ye think ye're—”

The same invisible force struck Artur like a golf club striking a ball. He rocketed upwards and backwards, hit the underside of a cabinet, bounced off a wall, and dropped into a metal sink with an echoey clang.

Kalaechai shambled another step closer to Nedran. Ned was shaking violently, his mangled arm still trapped in the workings of the operating table. He stared at it, frowning, as if he couldn't quite understand what he was seeing.

“Where is she?” asked Kalaechai.

“Wait!” said Ollie. “Don't. Stop. Please. I'm here. I'm here. I’m right here.”

Kalaechai didn't turn, or do anything to suggest he’d heard her.

“Where is she?”

Ollie looked down at the pendant, which was growing so brightly it hurt her eyes. She grabbed the necklace and pulled, trying to yank it off, but a jolt of energy surged through her, forcing her to release her grip. “No, stop. You have to stop!” she said, taking the chain in both hands and trying to snap it. This time, the energy surge arched her back and brought her to her knees.

She watched between the legs of the table as Kalaechai took another lurching step closer to Nedran.

Ned tore his eyes from his arm and forced himself to look at the approaching Malwhere Lord. The human-mask was still in place, but it seemed to shift and squirm, as if everything else Ned had seen was trying to force its way out.

“P-please,” Ned begged. “Stop.”

“Where is she?” Kalaechai asked. There was no anger or urgency to his voice, just that same tone of whispered contempt as before.

He stopped approaching, and bent his legs backwards at the knees, lowering himself into some twisted, nightmarish version of a squat.

“Please. I'm here!” Ollie said, but the words were barely a croak, and when she tried to stand, the pendant forced her back down.

The skin on Kalaechai's face heaved as if alive, and Nedran threw up, just a little, onto the floor. He felt slightly better because of it, but only slightly, and not for long.

“Where is she?” Kalaechai asked again. His eyes became two swirling pools of darkness, and Nedran felt like he might fall down them at any moment. “Where is my daughter?”

That made Nedran pay attention. He did several minutes worth of blinking in the space of a couple of seconds. He tried not to look over at Ollie, but his head moved all by itself, and he was too weak and too scared to fight it.

“Your daughter? You're looking for your daughter?”

Kalaechai placed one of his oversized hands on top of Ned's head. The fingers tightened on the old man's skull, making him hiss in pain.

“Where is she?”

Nedran winced.

Nedran swallowed.

Nedran closed his eyes and quietly made his peace.

“Sorry,” he said, as brightly as he could manage. “I have absolutely no idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Vextor von Haff opened his eyes. Almost immediately, he wished that he hadn't.

He was upside-down. That much was clear.

He couldn't remember if he was supposed to be upside-down, but he suspected not. He could count on the fingers of one hand how many times he had purposely been upside-down in the past few years, and still have six or seven fingers left over, depending on which hand he used.

His face hurt. Not any specific features of it, just the whole face in general. Likewise, the rest of his head, torso and limbs.

A moist wind slapped at him. It tasted salty. The docks. That would explain the water below him. Or above him, depending on your point of view.

A few sea birds squawked in the middle distance. The sea itself lapped softly against the wooden struts of a pier. It was actually quite pleasant, if you liked that sort of thing and weren't, as he was, being held upside-down.

“Finally,” grunted a voice from somewhere behind him.

Vextor rotated himself, the ropes around his ankles groaning as they twisted. The guy from the Derby was standing on a rickety-looking platform maybe twenty feet away. In one hand, he held the other end of the rope that, via a system of archaic and rusted pulleys, currently suspended Vextor above the choppy water.

“Thought you were never going to wake up,” Dan said. “Was starting to worry I'd killed you, like I did your piece of shizz brother.”

Vextor growled and thrashed on the end of the rope. Dan dismissed the protest with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, yeah, struggle all you like. You ain't going anywhere.”

Still holding the rope in one hand, Dan reached into a large bucket on the platform beside him and withdrew a metal scoop. A mound of bloodied, gelatinous fish-innards wobbled on the end of it, then tumbled into the water when he gave the scoop a flick.

“You know, the ocean, it's a pretty amazing place,” Dan said, scooping up some more of the fishy mush. “I mean, this planet is... what? Five per cent land? Less? That's a lot of water.”

He tossed the chum, and Vextor watched it vanish beneath the waves, leaving an oily red slick on the surface.

“You wonder, just what is out there?” Dan said, gazing off across the water. The blue glow of the Up There engines danced across the undulating surface, a flickering lightshow that stretched all the way to the horizon.

“But anyway, I digress,” said Dan. “Where is the girl? What did you do with Nona?”

“Fonk you,” Vextor spat.

Dan released the rope. Von Haff watched him, grinning, even as he plunged towards the ocean below.

Vextor was big, and the splash didn't disappoint. Dan felt the spray of it fleck across his face, even from his high vantage point.

He picked a random number between one and twenty, counted to it, then hoisted Vextor up again.

He dropped him immediately, and enjoyed the fleeting expression of panic on the shizznod's face, before he smashed through the surface again.

Dan picked a different, higher number, and counted again.

Then he waited a bit longer, just for fun.

When Vextor was finally raised back up into his original position, his long hair hung down, pointing to the water below, and his beard was plastered across his cheeks and up into his eyes. He was wet with a combo of water and fish innards, and it was obvious from his expression that some of the fight had already gone out of him.

Dan hoped this wasn't going to be too easy.

“Where is she?” he asked. “Where is the girl?”

Vextor didn't sneer or bite back, but he didn't say anything useful, either.

“Have it your way,” said Dan, scooping out more chum. This time, he flicked it straight at the dangling Von Haff. It hit him with a splat, covering him in chunks of greasy fish guts. “You know what I call this? Fishing for information.”

He raised his eyebrows, clearly hoping for some sort of response. “No? Suit yourself,” Dan said, shrugging. “I'm going to ask you again, so pin back your ears and listen. Where is she?”

Vextor opened his mouth, and Dan thought he was going to break. But then the dangling man drew in a deep breath and clamped his mouth shut.

“Have it your way,” said Dan, and he released the rope again.

The water wasn't as cold this time when Vextor plunged beneath its surface. He was getting used to the shock of it, and the shuddering impact of his head hitting the surface.

What was harder to get used to was the way it tried to force its way inside him. He could feel it exploring him for weaknesses, probing his nostrils and trying to find a way in through his mouth.

It was dark, but not as dark as he'd expected. The engine lights created a sort of ambient glow through the top dozen or so feet of water, with the occasional shaft of light stabbing down into the murkier depths below.

Somewhere in those murkier depths, Vextor saw something move. It was as if the darkness itself were coming alive and forming itself into a long, wide shape that flicked lazily towards him, following the scent of guts and gore.

A bubble escaped Vextor's lips and rolled upwards. He suddenly became aware of other movements, even further off. He couldn't see them, exactly, but the way the light and shadows shifted told him that something - no, some things - had been drawn by the lure of the blood.

The rope tightened on his legs, and he was jerked upwards again. He started talking before he was even clear of the water.

“Bleunf-mmfk-ggt me down! Get me down!”

“Down?” said Dan. He shrugged. “OK.”

The rope went slack. Vextor screamed as he plummeted, the panicky squeal becoming a trail of bubbles as he sunk like a stone.

Dan picked a low number this time, to be on the safe side, then pulled him back up. Vextor was a thrashing, babbling mess. His eyes were so large they looked as if they'd been inflated, and the words were tumbling out of him all at once.

“I took her! I mean, ve took her! OK? Ve took them all.”

“Where?”

“To... To... Look, please, get me down. There is something moving around in—”

Dan released the rope. Vextor howled, then jerked to a stop a few feet above the surface.

“WHERE?” Dan roared.

“A van. A van, that's all I know. Ve didn't hurt them. Not really. That vasn't us. Ve… A van! He… He had a van. He had a van, and he’d tell us vhere to be, and ve'd hand them over.”

“Who was he? Why did he have you grab them?”

Vextor lifted his eyes to the water below him. The blood had spread out, and the fish chunks were rippling out in different directions. He tried not to think about what he'd seen under there.

He tried, but failed, and his confession became a hysterical string of high-pitched babbling.

“Stay focused, you piece of shizz,” said Dan, hoisting him a little higher. “You think you're scared? There's a mother out there who doesn't know where her kid is. Because you took her. You took her daughter!”

“She's his d-daughter, too!” Vextor yelped.

Dan's brown furrowed. He titled back his hat. “What? What are you talking about?”

“It's true,” said Vector. “That’s vhy he vanted her. The girl. She's his—”

It was then that the fish ate him.

Technically, it might not have been a fish. It might not even have eaten him, in fact. All Dan saw was a gaping orifice, roughly the size of a small building, emerge from beneath the waves. He smelled the sea, even more than he already had been, and felt a gust of warm air rise up from below.

He heard Vextor try to scream, but it didn't amount to much. Then the mouth - if, indeed, it was a mouth - and the villain were gone.

Dan gazed down at the ripples growing across the ocean's surface, and watched several thousand bubbles become several hundred bubbles, then several bubbles, then no bubbles at all.

“Shizz,” Dan cursed. “You couldn't have given me just five more seconds?”

* * *

The Exodus chugged to a stop outside Nedran's workshop, spat a wad of something gloopy from the exhaust, then died in a puff of smoke and melodrama.

The door took a firm shoulder or two before it flew open, and Dan spilled out onto the sidewalk. He jumped up immediately, tried to pretend like he'd meant it the whole time, in case anyone was watching, then banged the door several times until it agreed to stay closed.

That was going to get annoying fast. It was already annoying, in fact. He added it to the list of things to get fixed. It was quite a long list, now, and arguably longer than the list of things that didn't need fixed.

He was almost at Nedran's door when he realized it was open, the metal shutter rolled all the way up to the top.

Weird. It wasn't like to Ned to leave the door open, and especially not at this time of night.

For the second time that night, Dan reached for a gun that wasn't there. For the second time that night, he cursed his stupidity.

There was no sound from inside the workshop. No voices. No movement. Dan felt a tickle of dread down the back of his neck, and decided to forego stealth in favor of finding out what the fonk was going on.

He hurried through the door and made straight for where his gun was charging. “Ned?” he called.

Then he stopped.

For a moment, everything stopped.

Nedran was on the floor, his blood pooling in a puddle beneath him. His face was a mangled mess, barely recognizable. One of his arms was bent back, the bone protruding through the bruised skin. His legs were folded beneath him at an angle they shouldn't be. Couldn't be.

Ollie knelt beside him, sobbing silently, her hands on his unbroken arm as she shook him back and forth.

“Oh. No,” Dan croaked.

Ollie looked up, her own face a mess of blood, tears and snot - only two-third of those her own. “He won't wake up,” she said. “I keep trying, but he won't wake up.”

Dan dropped and scrabbled across the floor. His fingers went to his friend's neck, but the wide, staring eyes told him what he'd find there. He wasn't giving up that easily, though.

Pushing Ollie away, Dan interlocked his fingers and pressed the heel of one hand onto Ned's chest.

“Nedran! Ned, can you hear me?” he shouted, compressing the chest. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

He counted to fifteen, then tilted the old man's head back. Lowering his own, he drew in a breath, then remembered he no longer worked that way.

“Put your mouth over his. Breathe,” he told Ollie.

Ollie's face contorted in confusion. “W-what?”

“Mouth over his. Blow. Big breaths. Now!”

Ollie did her best to follow the instructions, but after just one breath Dan pushed her away. “No, not... Forget it!”

He began to pump the old man's chest again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Who did this?” he demanded.

More tears streamed down Ollie's face. She coughed, choking on her own snot.

“I said who did this?” Dan roared, then his head snapped down as Ned wheezed back to life.

“D-Dan.”

“Oh, thank fonk,” Dan said, the words coming out as a strangled sob. “I'm here, buddy. I'm here. You're OK.”

“O-Ollie? Did he g-get her?” Ned's voice was fragile, like a house of cards in danger of toppling at any moment.

Dan raised his eyes to Ollie, unable to hide his contempt as the picture of what had happened became clearer. “No. She's fine. But don't worry about her.”

Nedran managed something like a smile, and Dan saw that several of his teeth were missing. “He c-came for her.”

“It's OK, buddy. It's OK.”

The old man twitched, his muscles spasming. “He came for her,” he said again. “Kalaechai. Her f-father.”

Dan had no blood. Not really. If he had, it would have run cold. He raised his eyes to Ollie again, but her head was lowered, her tears creating lighter red spots in the puddle of blood on the floor.

“Her what?” Dan growled, but then he shook his head and turned his attention back to his friend. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll get help, OK? You’re going to be fine.”

“Kept her safe, though,” Ned whispered. His eyes were glassy. He looked past Dan, and up to the ceiling at something that wasn’t really there. “Whatever h-he did… Everything he did. I k-kept her s-safe. Told you y-you underestimate me.”

One of the old man’s hands reached out, fumbling in the air until it found Dan’s face. “Now it’s your turn,” he wheezed. “D-don’t blame her. She’s a g-good one. Good for you. You shouldn’t b-be alone all the t-time.”

“What? I'm not alone. I've got you and Artur, you old...” He frowned. “Wait. Artur. Where's Artur?”

A groan echoed out of the sink. “Ooh, that fecking hurts. Where am I?”

Artur's hands appeared, then there was a kicking and scrabbling as he heaved himself out of the sink. “Deadman! There ye are, ye big feckin'...”

Artur's eyes fell on Ned and he stopped. “Aw,” he grimaced. “Shoite.”

“He's OK,” said Dan. “He's going to be...”

He turned back to Ned. The old man’s eyes were still open, still looking past him, but now seeing nothing at all. Ned's last breath left him in a low, burbling wheeze. His chest clicked, like the sound of a telephone receiver being hung up for the last time.

Dan kept hold of his hand for a few more seconds. He thought about trying chest compressions again, but knew, deep down, there was no point. He was gone. His oldest friend - maybe his only real friend - was gone.

Setting the hand down, Dan gave it a final squeeze, then raised his gaze to Ollie. Her bottom lip was trembling and her eyes were red as she watched Ned's body sag further into the embrace of death.

“Is he...? Did he...?”

“You did this,” said Dan.

Ollie's eyes widened. She sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. It left a slick of Ned's blood across her cheek. “Huh? N-no, I didn't. It was...”

“YOU!” Dan roared. He was on his feet in an instant, his one working fist clenched. “He was looking for you. He came for you! And you let him do this!”

Ollie shook her head. “No. No, I tried to show myself. I tried to stop him, but once the pendant is activated, it won’t… I didn't want this to happen. I didn't want any of this.”

“You think Ned did?” Dan spat. “You brought this on him. You! No one else.”

“Steady on there, Deadman,” said Artur, jumping down from the worktop. “Neddy knew what he was doing. He wanted to protect her. Sure, it's not her fault she's got some headcase from the Malwhere after her.”

“Her father,” said Dan, not tearing his eyes away from Ollie.

There was a lengthy pause before Artur spoke. “Say what?”

“Not 'some headcase'. Kalaechai is her father.”

“Her father?” said Artur.

“That's right.”

“As in... as in she's his daughter?”

“Right again.”

Artur looked between them both, then snorted. “Yer arse. There's no way she's his daughter. No way. Right, peaches?”

Ollie felt the tears come again. She fought them back as best she could, but one or two snuck through and plopped into the blood puddle at her feet.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t tell you, but the rest was all true. I was still his prisoner, he was still keeping me there. He was never going to—”

Dan spun and kicked a table aside. It flipped and smashed against one of Ned's many cabinets. The noise would wake up Ned's wife, but he didn't care. Hell, he was going to have to wake her up, anyway. He'd never liked the woman, but she didn't deserve this. Ned didn't deserve this.

Ollie’s throat was soft and pliable in his grip. One squeeze, that was all it would take. Sure, her necklace might go off, but by then it'd be too late.

One squeeze. That was all.

Ned's wife hadn't woken up.

Why hadn't she woken up?

“What did he do?” Dan demanded, his grip tightening, just enough. “After he did this to Ned, what did he do?”

“I tried to stop him,” Ollie whispered. “But he couldn’t see or hear me. She kept shouting, and.. and... he got angry.”

Dan let out a sharp, sudden cry that made Ollie jump in his grip. He shoved her aside, tore his gun from the charging point, then raced for the door leading into the rest of Ned's house.

He slowed just enough to shout back over his shoulder. “Get out,” he commanded. “And just hope you never see me again.”

“What?” Ollie spluttered. “But... But, I didn't mean this. I didn’t mean any of it, honest. What will I do? Where will I go?”

“Not my problem,” Dan spat, then he kicked open the door and vanished into the hallway beyond.

Ollie sagged, the tears coming again. Maybe he didn't mean it. Maybe he'd change his mind. Maybe Artur could talk him round.

“What are ye waiting for, peaches?” the little man said, scowling up at her. “You heard him. You don't want to be here when he comes back, trust me.”

Ollie felt her stomach twist. Her voice came as a babbled string of syllables. “But I don't have anywhere to go.”

“I know. And I'm sorry,” Artur said. He crossed his arms and very deliberately turned away. “But like yer man says. That's not our problem.”

“Please,” Ollie said, but she couldn't loosen her throat enough for the word to come out. She looked from Artur to the door, then down at the lifeless lump that had recently been Ned. He had been nice to her. He had protected her.

And now he was gone.

And it was her fault. She wanted to deny it. She wished it wasn't. But it was her fault. And that was that.

Ollie sniffed. She swallowed.

Then she stepped over Ned's body, and plick-plicked through the puddle of blood until she reached the open door. She waited there for a moment, looking back at everything she was leaving behind.

“I'll just… I’ll go, then. Tell him I’m sorry,” she managed to say, then she stepped through the door, and out into the dark and unfamiliar city.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Dan called it in from a payphone in a bar two blocks away. There’d been some sort of break-in. Two victims, both dead. No, he wouldn’t give his name.

He got back in the Exodus and drove off before they could trace the call. He had no interest in dealing with the Tribunal right now. Even if he’d had the time. Which he didn’t.

Twenty minutes later, Dan stood outside an apartment in a run-down block, and thudded his fist against the door with enough force to shake the flimsy walls.

“Steady on there, Deadman. Ye trying to wake the dead, or something?” asked Artur from somewhere near floor level. He winced hard enough to make his envelope outfit crinkle. “Sorry. Didn’t think that through. I know you and Nedran were tight.”

“Right,” said Dan.

“It was insensitive, is what I’m saying.”

Dan nodded.

“Me and me big gob.”

“OK, you can stop now.”

“Right ye are.”

Dan hammered the door again. From beyond it there came the faint but unmistakable hum of a blaster pistol powering on.

He put his weight into a shoulder-charge, tearing the cheap door from its hinges. A bolt of energy crackled across the room, punching a hole in the wall high above Dan’s head, and much, much higher above Artur’s.

Dan clamped a hand over the pistol and wrenched it from the shooter’s hand. Solina, Nona’s mother, stumbled back, her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I thought…”

“Forget it,” said Dan, ejecting the battery pack from the gun and tossing both parts onto an armchair. There was a blanket heaped on the floor in front of it, suggesting Solina had been sleeping there, and had jumped up in a hurry.

“Did you…? Did you find her?” the woman asked. She looked past Dan at the open doorway, her hopes visibly fading when she saw it empty. She hurried over to it and looked out, just in case. “Did you find her?” she asked, but her tone told them she already knew the answer.

“Not yet,” said Dan. “But we’re going to. We’ve got a lead.”

“We do?” said Artur. “Aw, deadly. Ye didn’t say. I thought we were coming to give her a refund. Is it the cushion thing?”

Dan and Solina both looked down at him.

“The what?” Dan asked.

“You know, the cushion thing. Wait, didn’t I tell you about the cushion thing?”

Dan shook his head. “No.”

“Ye sure? I thought I had done,” said Artur. “The cushion thing,” he repeated, a little more slowly this time, in case that jogged Dan’s memory.

“What’s the fonking cushion thing?” Dan barked.

“Right, well… Ye sure I didn’t…?” Artur caught the look on Dan’s face and held up his hands. “Alright, alright, steady yerself. Oledol was the one to figure it out, actually. Not that that’s significant, or anything, but thought I’d mention it in the interests of…”

“Artur!”

“Alright, alright. Well, we was looking at the injuries of the other girls—”

“What other girls?” asked Solina. “What cushion thing? What are you talking about?”

“There were three other girls. All called Nona. All sharing the same date of birth,” Dan explained.

Solina’s face crumpled. “And they were injured? How badly?”

“I was about to get to that,” said Artur. He shot her a slightly too reproachful look, then turned his attention back to Dan. “Anyway, you know how he cut the girls open and was rummaging around in their insides?”

“What?” Solina howled. “N-no!”

Dan glared at Artur. He shook his head, just a fraction.

“Uh, a bit, I mean. Just a tiny bit,” Artur said. “Nothing too serious. It was actually kind of…” He fumbled for a suitable word. “…lighthearted,” he said, completely failing to find one. He smiled with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, then went back to talking to Dan. “We think he was looking for something. Something hidden inside one of them.”

Dan’s brow furrowed. “What the fonk does that have to do with cushions?”

“Forget it, don’t matter,” said Artur. “The point is, whatever he was looking for, maybe he’s found it. That’s why the girl – this girl, I mean – hasn’t turned up yet.”

“So what’s he looking for?” Dan wondered.

“Who?” Solina cried. “Who has Nona? Who has my baby girl?”

Dan indicated the armchair. “You should sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down! I want to know where my daughter is!”

Dan chewed his lip. “OK,” he said. “I think her father took her.”

“Her…?” Solina’s eyebrows almost raised all the way off her head. “How could…? Her father’s dead. I told you that. I told you that in your office, weren’t you listening? Janto’s dead. He’s dead.”

“Maybe,” Dan conceded. “How did he die?”

“A fire. He was working on… I don’t know what, but… The Tribunal got involved, and there was a fire, OK? He died. I saw his body.”

“The Tribunal?” said Artur. “What was he up to for them to be taking an interest?”

Solina wrung her hands and shuffled from foot to foot as she decided how much to share. “He was a bio-engineer. Working on… I don’t know what. Some sort of cure for something, that’s what they told me, afterwards.”

“A cure?” said Artur. “For what?”

“Everything, he said. I mean, I don’t know,” said Solina. “Something to do with biology… something. I don’t know. He never really spoke about it. He told me it was a government thing, but he lied. He wasn’t licensed. The Tribunal found out, and they came after him.”

“And what about the cure?” asked Dan. “What about the thing he was working on?”

“Lost in the fire,” Solina said.

“Or hidden, maybe,” Dan mumbled.

Artur’s eyes widened. “What? No. Surely not? Ye’d have to be a special kind of bastard to do something like that, wouldn’t ye?”

“Something like what?” asked Solina, her voice growing louder and more anxious. “In fact, no! It doesn’t matter. He’s long dead, and someone has my daughter! You were supposed to get her back. You told me you would get her back!”

“Yeah, well…” Dan began. He glanced at his feet and squeezed the bridge of his nose. It had been a long night, but no need to take it out on this woman. “If he was alive. Let’s just say. Any idea where he’d be?”

“What? But, no, he…” She shut her eyes, composing herself. “No. I don’t know. His lab was destroyed in the fire. They knocked it down. I think there are houses there now.”

“Right,” said Dan. Another dead end.

“But he isn’t alive. He can’t be. I saw him. What was left of him. There’s no coming back from that.”

“Yeah, well, you’d be surprised,” said Dan. “Do you have any pictures?”

Solina’s brown crinkled. “Pictures?”

“Of him. Of Nona’s father.”

A flash of something like anger flew across Solina’s face, but then she relented. “Somewhere. Yes.”

“Could you find them?” Dan asked. He pointed to a door leading off from the room. A smiley face had been drawn on one of the gloss-painted panels. “Nona’s bedroom? Would you mind?”

“Please,” said Solina. “Please, anything. If it’ll help.”

Nona’s bedroom was small, and managed to look tidy, despite half the floor space being taken up by toys of various shapes and sizes. Dan stood just inside the doorway, eyes searching for something his brain hadn’t decided on yet. He felt a strange pang of guilt, like he shouldn’t be there, but fought the urge to turn away.

Artur, meanwhile, made a bee-line for the toys. One in particular.

“Psst, Deadman. Check me out,” he said.

Dan looked down to find Artur leaning against the door frame of a doll house. “What do ye think of me new pad, huh? Pretty grand, don’t ye think?”

“Get away from there,” Dan told him.

“Not on yer life,” said Artur, grinning. He pushed open the perfectly-sized door and disappeared inside. “Holy father, this place is amazing! Sure, it’s even got a big TV. Does it work, I wonder?”

A few moments passed, before his voice came again. “No, it doesn’t. Still nice pad, though.”

Shaking his head, Dan went back to examining the room. Or as close as he could get to examining it without moving.

It felt so pure, so whimsically innocent, with Nona’s own pictures covering the colorful walls, and a regiment of soft toys all standing guard around the bed. Dan, with his blood-stained shirt and coat, and scarred, decaying skin, had rarely felt so out of place. So unwelcome.

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” he muttered.

What had he been expecting to find? A note from the kidnapper with instructions on how to get her back? A hand-drawn map with ‘I am here’ scribbled on it in Nona’s handwriting? Those would have been nice. Unlikely, but nice.

Instead, he found nothing. Nothing that wasn’t just usual kids’ room stuff, at least. He traced his fingers across a small, clumsily-painted dressing table. Another smiley face had been drawn onto the top. This one was winking, and Dan couldn’t shake the feeling it was taunting him, somehow.

“Artur, come on. Let’s go,” he said, turning away.

“Give us a minute there, Deadman. I may have found something.”

“Oh?” said Dan. “What?”

“Just hold yer horses while I check it out,” Artur replied, but Dan was in no mood to wait.

Squatting beside the doll’s house, Dan found the latch that held the front wall in place, and unclipped it with the two working fingers of his woman’s hand. The wall opened like a door, and Dan was confronted by a close-up view of a bent-double Artur’s bare buttocks.

“What the fonk are you doing?” Dan whispered.

Artur straightened with a yelp. “Ah! Bloody Hell, Deadman! Don’t sneak up on me like that, ye near gave me a feckin’ heart attack, ye big eejit!”

“What are you doing?” Dan hissed. He glanced back at the bedroom door. “Why are you naked?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have been naked if you’d given me a minute like I asked ye to,” Artur told him.

“Why are you naked at all?”

Artur, who was making no attempt whatsoever to cover said nakedness, gestured to a tiny wardrobe standing against the back wall of the doll house. “Observe, Deadman,” he said, then he danced towards it, sideways, in a way deliberately designed to make his penis twirl like a baton. Dan looked back to the bedroom door again.

“If she comes in and sees this…”

“Check it out!” said Artur, reaching into the wardrobe and pulling out a long summer dress. “Clothes. My size clothes. Not ones made by sticking some holes in a paper rectangle.”

He took out another outfit. It was white and blue, and resembled the uniform of the Girls’ Brigade, or the Young Ladies’ Platoon, or whatever it was calling itself these days.

“She’s got the whole shebang. Hats and shoes. Sure, there’s even some little scarves. For when it gets cold, like.”

“They’re all women’s clothes,” said Dan. “I mean, female doll clothes.”

“That’s a bit rich, ye big woman-handed bastard,” Artur replied. “And I remind you again, Deadman, that until thirty second ago, I was wearing a feckin’ envelope with a hole cut in it for me head to go through. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Wait, what?” Dan said, his voice dropping even further into a whisper. “You can’t take them.”

“I can, and I am,” Artur corrected. He slid the dress over his head and gave a twirl. “Fits like a glove. Here, quick, put the rest in yer pocket.”

“No! You can’t just take her stuff!”

“Come on, she’s bound to be dead now, anyhow,” said Artur, admiring himself in a mini mirror. “And if she’s not, I’d be surprised if her dolly’s clothes are going to be the main focus of her concerns.”

Dan ground his teeth together. “Pick three,” he said.

“Three? How am I meant to do that?”

“What are you doing?” asked Solina, appearing in the doorway behind them.

Dan resisted the urge to jump up, knowing it would leave Artur exposed, so he remained in his squatting position, but twisted around to face the door.

“Hmm? Oh, just looking for clues.”

Solina’s eyes flicked past him. “In the dolls’ house?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Dan, although he didn’t go so far as to explaining why she’d be surprised, or what by.

He felt a weight drop into the coat pocket closest to the doll house. “Well, nothing to report in there,” Artur announced from inside the pocket. “No, you know, clues or what have ye.”

Dan closed over the front of the toy house, then straightened up. Solina extended a photograph out to him. “This is the only one I could find,” she said. “Janto hated getting his picture taken.”

The image was taken in some sort of science lab. It was a full length shot of a middle-aged humanoid male struggling to hold a furry creature Dan thought was a bompit. The cuddly critters were popular as both family pets and scientific test subjects. This floppy-eared specimen was several times as big as it should have been, though, and the man was craning his neck to see above a row of spiked ridges that ran the length of the animal’s back. Dan had never seen those on a bompit before.

Nona’s father was smiling, and looked friendly enough. Dan couldn’t see much of him behind the bompit, but he seemed to be wearing a lab coat and some sort of apron. His pants were brown and slightly flared at the bottom, and the only even vaguely noteworthy thing about him was that he was only wearing socks, not shoes, on his feet.

“No shoes,” he remarked.

Solina shrugged. “He always did that.”

“Right,” said Dan.

And that was it. There was literally nothing else he could figure out from the photo. Once again, he wished he were a real detective. They’d know the questions to ask, the telltale quirks to look for that would lead them to the big break they needed to solve the case.

All Dan saw was a man with an oversized bompit and no shoes on, and he didn’t think either of those things were likely to tell him anything useful.

“Thanks,” he said, passing the photo back.

Solina took it and managed a hopeful smile. “Did it help?”

“Yeah, it, uh…” Dan began, but there was nowhere to go from there but into bare-faced lying, and the woman deserved better than that. “No,” he said. “No. Didn’t help.”

Solina sagged down and sat on her daughter’s bed. Her hand glided across the smooth linen, her tears coming again. “Where is she? What’s happening to her?”

“I wish I knew,” Dan told her. “I’m sorry.”

Something about this voice made the woman look up. “You’re not… You can’t give up. You said you’d find her.”

“I said I’d try. And I have,” said Dan. “I’ve tried, but I don’t know what else to do. This isn’t the sort of thing I usually… I shouldn’t have taken your case. I’m sorry.”

“No! You can’t quit. I won’t let you!” cried Solina, jumping up and shaking him by the shoulders. “You said you’d find her. You took my money. That’s a contract! We made a contract!”

“I’ll repay the money,” Dan said. “Trust me, it’s in your daughter’s best interests if we let the Tribunal handle this.”

“The Tribunal?” Solina spat the words out. She punched Dan in the chest. It was limp, and there was no force behind it, but it hurt worse than anything else he’d been hit with that night. “You think they’ll help her? You think they’ll do anything? They don’t care!”

“And what makes you think I do?” Dan retorted, catching her fist before she could hit him again. “You paid me to do a job, I can’t do that job, so I’ll give you a refund. This was a business transaction. Nothing more.”

He felt himself wince at his own words, but turned away to disguise it. “I’m sorry. I hope you find her, I really do.”

As Dan made for the door, Artur’s head popped up out of his pocket. “He doesn’t mean that. About not caring, I mean. Trust me, he’ll be feeling guilty about it for days. Seriously, I won’t hear the end of it, he’ll be all—”

Dan shoved his hand in his pocket, forcing Artur down. He hesitated at the broken door, but only for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And with that, he was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Two more over here, barkeep,” called Artur, clicking his fingers. He had stashed the entire contents of the doll house wardrobe – and the wardrobe itself – in Dan’s pocket, and was now wearing a cheeky off the shoulder cocktail dress, which he’d paired with some plastic yellow clogs. “And make them doubles.”

Dan nursed his glass between the finger and thumb of the more masculine of his arms. The liquid inside swirled around as he turned the tumbler, coating the sides in an amber sheen. Artur’s glass, meanwhile, was empty. He held his paper straw like a wizard’s staff, tapping the bottom of it impatiently on the sticky bar top.

“What do ye think?” Artur asked.

Dan tore his eyes from the glass. “About what?”

“About this? About the ensemble?” said Artur, gesturing down at himself.

A number of responses lined themselves up in Dan’s head. He ignored them, and went back to staring at his drink. “You don’t want to know what I think.”

“You know yer problem, Deadman?” Artur asked. “One of them, I mean. To be fair, ye’ve got quite a few. Ye know, the face, and being dead and useless, and what have ye.”

“You’re too kind, Artur.”

“Ye know what I mean. Ye’re hardly living the feckin’ high life, are ye? Moping about in a dingy strip club.”

“You brought us here,” Dan pointed out. “I didn’t want to come.”

“Well then, ye’d best add ‘easily led’ to that list of problems I mentioned, because I didn’t hear ye put up much of a fight,” Artur said, sniffing. “But anyway. Rigid gender boundaries.”

Dan frowned. “Rigid gender boundaries?”

“That’s yer problem. One of yer many problems. Ye got all up in arms – pun absolutely intended, by the way – about yer woman’s hand there, and now ye can’t bring yerself to admit that I look feckin’ fabulous.”

“You look ridiculous,” Dan said.

“Point proved. Case closed,” said Artur. Two drinks were deposited on the bar in front of him. “Finally!” he cheered, then he scowled up at the bartender. “Where did ye have to go for them, Melmac or something? Sure, I thought I was about to die of thirst.”

“Ten fifty,” the bartender grunted.

“Ten fifty!” Artur yelped. “Ten fifty, he says! For two drinks? Have ye no shame at all, ye robbing shoitebag? I’ve a good mind to send them back, so’s I do.”

The bartender sighed and reached for the glasses. “But I won’t on this occasion,” said Artur, grabbing his glass. He gestured with his head to Dan. “He’s paying.”

While Dan charged his card, Artur deposited his straw into his glass and sucked. The volume of liquid in the container fell by around half, and Artur let out a belch that would’ve seemed loud for someone ten times his size.

“Now then, drink up,” he said, gesturing to Dan’s glasses, both of which were still full. “It’s what Neddy would have wanted, rest his soul.”

“Getting wasted in a back street strip joint?” Dan said. He snorted. “It’s literally the last thing Ned would want.”

“Aye, fair point, well made. He was an uptight old bastard, wasn’t he? Rest his soul,” said Artur. “But here’s to him, anyway.”

He sipped another inch of his drink. Dan had no idea how the little guy managed to fit so much liquid inside him, never mind remain sober throughout. Or relatively sober, anyway. His voice was becoming a little louder with each sip, and his squint more pronounced, but those seemed to be the only effects the alcohol was having.

“What do ye reckon the Tribunal will make of it all?” Artur wondered. “Neddy and his cow of a wife, I mean.”

“Not much,” said Dan. “People get killed every day. They’ll log it, probably put it down to a break-in, then send it to archives.”

“The box of severed limbs won’t ring any alarm bells with them, then?”

Dan’s eyes and mouth became three circles of surprise. “Aw, shizz. My arms! Why didn’t I take the arms?”

“Because – no offense intended here – yer a useless great eejit.”

Dan muttered something inaudible, flexed the two working fingers of his female hand a couple of times, then went back to staring at his glass.

“He didn’t deserve to go like that.”

“True. True,” Artur agreed. He had turned away from his glass and was now gazing across the busy club, watching a variety of differently-shaped females gyrate seductively on several small stages. “Still, ye shouldn’t blame yerself,” he said. “Holy father, would you look at the legs on that? Sure, I can’t even count them.”

“I don’t blame myself,” said Dan.

“Well, good. Glad to hear it,” Artur muttered. His beard bristled and he let out a low whistle. “Now that is a fine figure of a woman. We should come here more often, Deadman. Ye think they do a membership? Maybe, like, a two-for-one deal, or something? Ye’ll have to pay for it. I’m a little short.” He grinned proudly. “See what I did there? Short.”

“I blame her,” said Dan.

Artur continued to ogle the multi-legged female for a while, then darted his eyes sideways to Dan. “I don’t see how it can be her fault,” he said. “Sure, she’s just a stripper. I doubt she’s ever clapped eyes on Neddy in her life. Rest his soul.”

“Not her,” Dan scowled. “Oledol.”

“Oh, right, right. Gotcha. That makes more sense,” Artur said. “Still a load of old bollocks, mind you. Wasn’t her fault.”

Dan turned on his stool. “What are you talking about? Of course it was her fault. If it wasn’t for her, Kalaechai would never have come looking. Ned would still be alive.”

“True. Granted,” Artur conceded. “But think about Nona. Yer missing girl.”

“What about her? What does she have to do with anything?”

“Let’s say she escaped. Today. Right now, in fact. Let’s say she somehow got free from whatever maniac has got her, and she found her way right here to this bar. Security’s shoite, so she’d have no bother getting in.”

Dan puffed out his cheeks, signalling his impatience. “And?”

“And so in she comes, all teary-eyed or whatever. All snot and sobbing, like. She’s had a helluva time of it, but she’s alive. She’s made a break for it, and she runs right up to ye.”

“Is this meant to be going somewhere?”

“It is,” said Artur, taking another sip of his drink. “But wait, oh-ho, what’s this? It’s her kidnapper, coming after her. He wants her back, see? So he comes in here, and he shoots ye, right through the face. Feckin’ messy it is, too. They’ll be scraping yer brains off the fixtures and fitting for months.”

Dan exhaled through his nose. “Art, what’s your point?”

“My point is, who’s to blame for ka-blamming yer face off, Deadman? In that situation, I mean? The poor girl who’s just running for her life, or the guy who pulled the trigger?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Which one’s to blame?”

“The shooter. The shooter’s to blame, but it’s not the same—”

“It’s absolutely the same… Fonk, look at the tits on that one. They can’t be real, can they? I could live between those things for the rest of me life. Very happily, too.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Dan repeated, although quite whose benefit it was for was hard to judge. “Kalaechai’s her father.”

Artur raised his eyebrows and peered up at Dan, saying nothing.

“What?” Dan asked, eventually.

“I’m waiting for the penny to drop is what,” said Artur. When it was clear it wasn’t going to, he tutted. “Who’s yer current suspect number one? Who is it ye think took Nona? Remind me.”

Dan opened his mouth.

Then he closed it again.

“Not the same,” he muttered.

“Me bollocks,” said Artur. He drained the rest of his drink. “Think she’s OK? Ollie, I mean. We’ve established the other one’s probably dead by now. Rest her soul.”

“Don’t know,” said Dan. “Don’t care. Not my problem.”

“Yeah. Keep tellin’ yerself that, see how far it gets ye.”

Dan felt someone approaching him on his left. “Hey, handsome,” purred a woman who, despite being several hundred times Artur’s size, was somehow wearing less fabric than he was.

With a tilt of his head and a tip of his hat, Dan sent her scurrying back into the crowd, her eyes bulging in horror and disbelief.

“Ha! Did ye see the look on her?” laughed Artur. “Did ye see her face when she saw yer ugly mug? That was great.”

“Yup. Great.”

Artur cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hoi, sweetheart, if its six and a half inches that yer after, I’m yer man!”

Artur raised his straw and blew through it. “I can provide me own breathing apparatus. I’ll even take me shoes off. At the front door, so to speak. Can’t say fairer than that!”

He thought for a moment. “Or the back door, for that matter. I’m game for anything.”

He held his arms out at his sides, presenting himself to anyone who might be interested in such an offer. To his disappointment, if not his surprise, no one was.

“Ah, well, feck ye, then,” he said. He peered up at Dan. “Ye going to drink that, or what? Sure, they’ve watered it down so much it’ll evaporate if ye don’t get a move on.”

Dan used the back of his hand to slide his glass a few inches closer to Artur.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Artur said, depositing the end of his straw in the glass and taking a sip.

The last sixty seconds or so replayed in Dan’s head. He had no idea why.

“What did you say?” Dan asked.

“What? When? About the six and a half inches?”

“No.”

“About me using the old tradesman’s entrance? Well, I’m not too proud to say it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve inserted meself up a lady’s a—”

“No, you said… Taking your shoes off.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. Well, it’s just polite, isn’t it?” said Artur. He belched loudly. “Manners cost nothing, Deadman. That’s what I always say.”

Dan shifted in his stool so he was gazing directly down at the little man on the bar. “But why would you take your shoes off?”

“What? Well, out of respect,” said Artur, looking ever so slightly incredulous that the question even had to be asked. “Out of respect for the old shagpile.”

“Shagpile?”

“The carpet, Deadman. Holy father, ye really are dense sometimes. Take yer shoes off at the door, so you don’t go traipsing mud or shoite or whatever over the carpet. Did yer mammy never teach ye nothing?”

“Nothing about carpets,” Dan said.

“That explains a lot,” said Artur. He burped again. “I mean, I don’t know what, exactly, but it certainly explains something.”

Dan’s stool creaked as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar. “Nona’s father. What’s his name?”

“Don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Janto, was it?”

“Again, I have no idea.”

“He had no shoes on. In the photo, I mean.”

“See what I mean? Even child murderers have the good graces to leave their shoes outside,” said Artur. “Even those gobshoites respect the shagpile.”

Shoes. He took his shoes off.

He always did that. That’s what she’d said. He always did that.

An image flashed somewhere way at the back of Dan’s mind, like a fish breaking the surface of a lake, there one moment, gone the next.

Dan’s eyebrows knotted together, as if grabbing for the image before it could escape. Too late. He felt it slip away like a dream, and found himself staring at his glass, instead.

“Fonk it,” he said, draining the contents and slamming the container back down onto the bar top. He beckoned the bartender over. “Line them up.”

“Now yer talking!” cheered Artur. “Let’s get totally feckin’ langered!”

* * *

The cooler evening air hit Dan as he stumbled down the steps from the club. He wasn’t drunk, exactly, but there was a certain amount of fuzziness that made his head feel like it was filled with soup.

“Aw, man, that was deadly,” announced Artur. “Pure class. But ye might want to stop swinging me around so much, or I’m going to chuck me guts in yer pocket.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Dan warned. “And I’m not swinging you around.”

“Yer not? I must’ve had more to drink than I thought.”

Now that they were out of the heat and noise of the club, Dan could feel the cool air sharpening his senses again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sharpening them enough.

Dan failed to spot the large, rock-like figure stepping out from behind the Exodus as he approached it.

He failed to react in time to the fist, as it smashed into his face, and he landed in a sitting position on the sidewalk.

He failed to fight off the feeling of cold dread that bloomed in his gut as two other Igneons appeared as if from nowhere, and joined the first.

He failed. Just like he’d failed the girl.

All three Igneons loomed over him, their stone knuckles cracking, their diamond teeth on display. “Not so fast, Mr Deadman,” said the first. “Shornack has asked us to send you her regards.”

“Oh… fonk,” Dan groaned, then a slab-like foot smashed against his skull like a hammer blow, and the sidewalk dragged him down into darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Hey. Psst.”

Waking up after a beating felt not unlike rising from the dead, Dan often thought.

First, there was the confusion, as the fractured memories of what had happened knitted themselves back together.

Then came the surprise and relief at having woken up at all.

Then came the pain, quickly followed by the nagging suspicion that perhaps death would have been the better of the two available alternatives, after all.

“Psst. Wake up, ye big eejit.”

“I’m awake,” Dan whispered.

It took a moment for Artur to respond. “Are ye sure? Ye don’t look very awake.”

“What’s happening?” asked Dan, still not moving. “How many?”

“Still just the three. They’re gassing about something. Probably what they’re going to do to ye when ye wake up. By the looks of them, I think we can safely rule out it being anything nice.”

“Where are we?”

“It’s… I don’t know, I couldn’t really see where they took ye, but it’s nowhere pleasant, let’s put it that way. I think it’s some kind of waste water treatment place. Ye know, shoite, and what have ye.”

“Gun?” Dan asked, although the lack of weight under his arm told him at least part of the answer.

“I make it about twelve feet away. Sitting on a crate.”

“Direction?” Dan whispered.

“Over that way,” Artur said.

Dan waited.

“Oh, wait. Right. About fifteen o’clock. Maybe quarter past.”

Dan let his head loll ever so slightly to his left. “Close enough,” said Artur.

There was a pole or pillar or something at Dan’s back. Stone, anyway. Solid. His arms were wrenched around behind it, a set of energy cuffs buzzing around his wrists. He gave them a tug, while trying at the same time not to make any obvious movements.

“I tried getting ye out, but they’re a bit beyond me,” Artur said. “Had they been proper handcuffs – you know, the old-fashioned metal type – I’d have had ye out of here already, but these energy bastards are nigh-on impossible to get free of.”

Dan’s much smaller woman’s hand felt like it might get through if he pulled hard enough, but not without doing it some damage.

But what was the point? If he got free, if he made a run for it, what was really the point? What good would it do?

Anyway, did he want to run, even if he could?

The girl’s mother had pinned all her hopes on him, and he’d failed. He’d let her down. He’d let them both down. Whatever the Igneons were going to do to him, it was almost certainly nothing he didn’t deserve.

“Watch out,” hissed Artur. “One of them’s coming over.”

The floor trembled beneath the Igneon’s footsteps, then something wet and warm crashed like a waterfall over the back of Dan’s head. He made a show of jumping awake in fright as it poured down over his face. “What the fonk?” he hissed.

One of the Igneons loomed over Dan, an empty bucket in his hulking hands, a satisfied smirk on his face. “Wakey wakey.”

Dan spat out some of the rust-colored liquid that had found its way into his mouth. Pressing his back against the pillar, he managed to get himself into something close to a standing position. “Hey, fellas,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

A fist hit him from out of nowhere, snapping his head to the right. He sagged against the column of stone, then clicked his jaw back into place and straightened again.

Yes. Yes, he deserved this.

“Sorry,” said Dan. “Didn’t quite catch that. Can you tell me again?”

The fist came up a second time. BAM! Dan’s head crunched backwards against the pillar, and he saw shapes swirling behind his eyes. Stars and spirals and…

And… something else, too. Floating among the dots and swirls. That image from back in the bar. That glimpse of something important. Something he was missing. He felt it, rather than saw it. Something he should know. Something he should have figured out by now.

He tried to hold onto it, but as the stars faded, they took the other image with them.

“Hit me again,” Dan urged.

“Ha!” said the Igneon, without a hint of mirth. “Are you crazy?” He turned and looked back over his shoulder at his compatriots. “Mr Deadman here says I should hit him again.”

“Is he crazy?” replied one.

The first enforcer nodded. “That’s what I said. I think he might be. I think he might.”

“Ask him about Lewey,” suggested the third.

“I was about to do just that,” said the first. He turned back to Dan. “Where’s Lewey?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” said the Igneon. He called back over his shoulder. “He says he don’t know.”

“He don’t know, huh?”

“That’s what he says.”

A jackhammer fist crunched into Dan’s stomach. He grimaced, but in annoyance, rather than pain. “The face. Hit me in the face.”

The first Igneon appeared momentarily taken aback, but then was only too happy to oblige. The punch spun Dan part of the way around the column, and crumpled his legs beneath him.

“What are ye doing?” hissed Artur from his pocket. “He’s gonna punch yer feckin’ face off.”

Dan blinked rapidly, trying to hold onto whatever it was he wasn’t quite seeing. Those shapes. Circles? Was that it? Three… no, four circles of different sizes.

“You know. Lewey,” said the first Igneon. The sound of his voice chased Dan’s circles away. “You know who Lewey is. Paid you a visit, couple of nights ago. Shornack, she ain’t heard from him since. Figured you might have something to tell us.”

“Oh. That Lewey,” Dan said.

The enforcer looked round at his colleagues. “’That Lewey,’ he says.”

“I can kind of remember him,” said Dan. “Maybe if you jog my memory...?”

Another punch made something in Dan’s cheek go crick. A nebula of stars illuminated, superimposing themselves over everything he could see.

“You think it’s funny?” the enforcer demanded. He hit him again, a powerful left cross that spun Dan the other way around the pillar.

Dan swam through the pain, trying to grab for that image. Circles? No, not all of them. The one at the bottom was… Come on. It was… He wasn’t sure. A half-circle, maybe?

The Igneon leaned in closer. “Look at my face? You see me laughing? You see me smiling, wise guy?”

Smiling.

Not circles. Not a half circle.

A face. A smiling face. A deranged rictus grin that…

That…

Oh. Oh, shizz.

The photograph of Nona’s father. His shoes. He always did that.

The image in his mind snapped into focus. The force of it hit Dan harder than any punch. Not a smiling face, a smiley face. Three of them, all the same.

One on a door.

One on a dressing table.

And one on a pair of child-sized canvas shoes in a warehouse district on the wrong side of town.

“I know,” Dan gasped. “I know where she is.”

“Who, Shornack? You just count your blessings she ain’t here.”

Dan dragged together what little moisture he could from his mouth, and spat it into the Igneon’s face. “Come on, princess. That all you got?”

The Igneon looked back over his shoulder. “Is that all I got, he asks me,” he said, then he spun, fist drawing back. Dan dropped to his knees, and the top half of the column shattered as the enforcer’s right hook punched through the stone.

Jumping up, Dan unhooked himself from the broken pillar. With his arms free, he had the momentum he needed to tear his woman’s hand through the energy cuff bracelet. The thumb dislocated with a crunch, but he didn’t care.

Roaring, Dan drove a shoulder into the Igneon, wrapping his arms around him as he attempted, with very little success, to knock him off his feet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the enforcer asked, snorting out a suggestion of a laugh. “No way you gonna push me over, pal.”

“Wasn’t trying to,” said Dan. The elasticated waistband of the Igneon’s pants snapped back against his rocky hide. “Artur. Tradesman’s entrance,” he barked, pulling himself free just as the Igneon’s brow furrowed into a veritable landslide of a frown.

“Yer a feckin’ shoitebag, Deadman, ye hear me?” Artur shouted, his voice muffled by the Igneon’s pants. Shornack’s enforcer went tense and rigid, his eyes widening in horror as he clenched his granite ass cheeks.

“W-what the…?” he stammered, completely failing to react – or even notice - when Dan dodged past him and made a run for his gun.

The other two henchmen did notice, though. Fortunately, Igneons relied on fists and brute strength to hurt people, and didn’t much go in for blasters. Finding guns with trigger guards large enough for their fingers to fit through was a problem, for one thing, and even if the average Igneon did come across such a weapon, they’d be far more likely to bludgeon the target to death with the heavy end than they would be to shoot it.

Dan reached his gun before the Igneons were even halfway to him. He contemplated trying to reason with the thugs, now that he had the upper hand, but only briefly. He’d regret this later, he knew, but right now, there was no time to argue.

Mindy roared twice, and explosive rounds reduced both Igneons to mounds of rubble. Dan spun, expecting to find the one remaining enforcer racing towards him, but the guy hadn’t moved. He just stood there, buttocks clenched, eyes wide, the occasional whimper sobbing its way through his stony lips.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Dan said. “Not today. Tell Shornack I’ll get her money, but I need more time. If she sends anyone else after me, they’ll end up like your friends there. Understood?”

The Igneon didn’t respond. Dan thrust Mindy forwards, just a little. “Is that understood?”

“Yes!” yelped the enforcer, although Dan would be very surprised if he’d actually been listening to a word he’d said.

“Good,” said Dan. “You be sure to pass that on.”

He turned, away, then stopped and turned back. “Oh, and I’m afraid I’m going to need my friend back.”

He raised the gun again. Despite himself, he smiled. “Mindy,” he said. “Brown noise.”

* * *

Ollie shuffled forwards in line, a tray in her hand, a variety of unpleasant smells filling the low-ceilinged room.

She wasn’t sure what this place was, exactly, but when the people in white had found her wandering the streets, they’d brought her here. The squat, stocky six-armed woman who had taken her from them seemed friendly, and had even swapped Ollie’s blood-stained clothing for the outfit she was wearing now.

None of the clothing would have been Ollie’s first choice. It was all either too big, too small, or smelled like something she couldn’t place, but which immediately made her uncomfortable. The top had a slogan on it – “I’m with stupid” – and an arrow pointing off to one side. She didn’t really understand why, but the woman had told her it was funny.

None of it was covered in Nedran’s blood, though, and that was the main thing.

There were other people in the food queue. None of them had spoken to her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to speak to them, either. They were all women of various species and races, and she was sure she could hear them whispering about her whenever she wasn’t looking.

As well as the queue, the room contained a stand where people were getting their trays filled, and three long tables with twelve or so chairs at each. Some of the chairs were empty, but most were occupied. A few people sat on their own, but the majority hung out in groups of three or more. Very few, if any, were speaking. They kept their heads down and scooped the gray mush from the indents in their trays, eating in silence.

A couple of men in dirty uniforms paraded up and down between the tables, watching everyone eat. One of them twirled a short metal pole around by its strap as he paced slowly along the row. The other carried a similar pole. He slapped it against his palm in time with each slow step, his eyes darting left and right between the tables.

“Next.”

Ollie looked around and realized the person in front of her was gone. Something with a face made up of hundreds of little suction cups glared at her across the counter.

“Come on, come on,” the thing urged. “We don’t have all day. Tray.”

Ollie heard the whispering become a giggle somewhere behind her. Cheeks stinging, she shuffled forwards and held up her tray. A dollop of mush landed in one of the indents with a thlump, then wobbled unpleasantly for a few seconds.

“What is it?” Ollie asked.

“What, you never had fauff before?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ollie, although she wasn’t sure what this had to do with anything. She looked down at her tray again. “What is this?”

The laughter came again from the queue behind her, and Ollie decided not to wait for the answer. “Thank you,” she said, hurrying off.

It took her three attempts to find a seat. The first time, she’d sat next to a woman with long green hair that smelled of salt and dampness. The woman had hissed at her and kicked her chair, though, so Ollie had gone to sit elsewhere.

She tried joining a group of four other women, but they had all turned and glared at her until she’d found it too uncomfortable.

Finally, she’d found a seat well away from anyone else, and sat there. For some reason, this still drew a few scowls from some of the other diners, but she kept her head down and ignored them.

Ollie looked down at the gelatinous mound of fauff. She wasn’t really sure what to do with it. It didn’t look particularly edible, and yet everyone else seemed to be scooping it into their mouths with their hands. Reluctantly, she thought, but they were still doing it.

She was giving her own helping an experimental sniff when the six-armed woman who had given her the clothes appeared, smiling cheerfully.

“Ah! There you are. Settling in? How’s the fauff?”

“I haven’t tried it yet,” said Ollie.

“Good idea. It’s better cold,” Six-Arms clucked. “Well, relatively speaking. Clothes OK?”

Ollie looked down at her mismatched ensemble. “Yes, thank you. But, uh…?”

“Yes?” said Six-Arms. “You have a question?”

“Where am I?” She glanced around the dining hall, then leaned across the table. “Am I back in the Malwhere?”

“The what?” asked Six-Arms. She waved two of her hands. “No. It’s a… center. For lost women. Like you. Those Tribunal officers found you wandering, and you had no ID, so they brought you to me. You’re lucky. By rights, they could have terminated you, but they know me, and they know I’m always looking for… new recruits. I paid them a lot of money so they would spare your life.”

“Oh,” said Ollie. “Oh. OK. Well… thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Happy to help. It’s what we do here,” said Six-Arms. “Help each other. I do you a favor, and you do me a favor. One good turn deserves another, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ollie nodded slowly. “I guess that seems fair.”

Six-Arms’ smile widened. “Excellent. I knew you’d get it. I knew you’d understand.” She gestured down to the fauff, while at the same time beckoning over one of the pacing men. “Come back to that when it’s cold. Trust me. We’ll have Morrin give you the induction first.”

Morrin appeared behind Ollie in a cloud of sweat and cheap cologne. Even once he’d stopped walking, he continued to slap his metal rod into his palm without missing a beat.

“Ma’am,” he said. His eyes, which were a couple of inches further apart than seemed strictly necessary, flicked downwards. “Want me to…?”

“Please, Morrin,” said Six-Arms. “Show her what we do here.”

The tip of Morrin’s pointed tongue darted briefly across his lips, and he let out a low whisper of a moan. Something about it made Ollie’s skin crawl, and her pendant grew warm against her chest.

“With pleasure,” the guard said, then he caught Ollie by the arm and hoisted her to her feet. “This way,” he said, showing his yellowing, scum-coated teeth. “You and me are going to have us some fun.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Despite the odds being hugely stacked against it, the Exodus made it all the way to the warehouse zone without dying.

Dan shuddered into an empty car park, just as the engine coughed to a halt. He rolled it the final few feet into one of the few empty bays, and came to a stop when the wheels bumped the curb.

It was the same car park he’d abandoned the car in when he’d been here last time. He’d stopped that shizznod, Erron, from unleashing Kalaechai’s entire domain on Down Here then. He’d met Ollie, too.

And he’d seen the shoes outside the door. One adult pair. One child-sized, a smiley face drawn on the fabric.

And now they were gone.

“Fonk,” Dan hissed, his hand tightening around Mindy’s grip.

Too late. Too slow. Too stupid.

Dan raised a leg and sent the door crashing into the darkened industrial unit. The smell hit him before the lights could click on – a rank, sulfurous odor that made its presence felt even via his barely-functioning nostrils.

“Ugh. Shoite. What’s that? Something’s stinking,” said Artur, gagging loudly in Dan’s coat pocket.

The lights flickered on and off, strobing over a scene lifted straight out of a horror movie. An operating table stood in the center of the room, blood pooling atop a plastic tarp that had been spread out on the floor beneath it.

The table had been fitted with a variety of straps and harnesses, as well as a couple of industrial-looking metal clamps, the purpose of which Dan didn’t want to even guess at.

Beside the table was a rusty old trolley with a range of tools laid neatly on top of it. Some of them were surgical, while others looked more suited for use in a large scale DIY project.

A wire mesh cage stood in the corner, most of it covered by another plastic sheet. Dan had no desire to look under the covering, but knew that he had to. He approached it slowly, his footsteps crackling on the plastic floor covering. If his heart had still worked, it would have been crashing like a drum in his chest.

When he reached the cage, he stopped, listening for any sound coming from the other side of the tarp. A whimper, maybe. Or a breath.

But no. There was nothing.

He inhaled pointlessly, gritted his teeth, and used Mindy to nudge the covering aside.

Empty. The cage was empty.

Dan deflated, unsure whether he was disappointed not to find the girl there, or relieved. Based on the rest of the room, had he found her in the cage, she was unlikely to still be in great shape, or even one piece.

“Any sign?” asked Artur, popping his head out of the coat pocket.

“She’s gone,” Dan said. “They’re both gone. I was too late.”

He picked his way across the floor, his boots splashing and sliding through the blood, until he reached the operating table. As well as the straps and clamps, three different pumps had been set up at the sides of the bed, all designed to push fluids into the occupant.

Dan tore off one of the pumps and examined it. A trickle of liquid sloshed around inside it, but it was otherwise empty. He sniffed the dispenser nozzle, but either the stuff had no odor, or not enough for his reduced sense of smell to pick up on.

Along the back wall of the unit was a little makeshift lab. Unlike the rest of the room, it was meticulously tidy, with rows of neatly lined test tubes and beakers, most of which contained a range of colorful liquids.

“Ye know what this place needs?” said Artur. “One of those things with the two wires that goes fzzt. Ye know? Like in the movies. All yer mad scientists have one.”

Holstering Mindy, Dan picked up one of the test tubes and studied the label. The name printed on it was so long he got bored halfway through reading it, so set it back down in the rack again.

“Any clues?” asked Artur.

Dan turned and surveyed the room. “Hundreds, probably. But I’m fonked if I know what they are.”

“Come on now, yer a detective, ain’t ye?” Artur said. “So feckin’ detect.”

“I’m not a detective,” Dan said. “Never was.”

“Well, the sign on yer front door would beg to differ,” Artur replied. “Why did ye get that stuck on there, if ye’re not a detective?”

Dan moved to pull his hat down on his head, then realized it wasn’t there. When had he lost that? Back at the Igneons, he guessed, although it may have been the bar.

“Because…”

“Because why?”

Dan scowled. “Because people are idiots. They see ‘detective’ and they think I can help them. I needed a job. I needed money. That’s why.”

“Me bollocks. There are plenty of ways of making money, that don’t involve getting the shoite kicked out of ye on a regular basis,” Artur said. He climbed out of Dan’s pocket and hopped onto the lab bench. “Fact of the matter is, ye can’t help but help. It’s who ye are. That’s why ye put up with me. That’s why ye’re feeling guilty about kicking Ollie out, even though ye’ll never admit it. And don’t waste yer breath trying to deny it. Ye act like ye’re a big heartless dead bastard who couldn’t give a shoite about anyone else, when really ye’re the opposite.”

Dan shifted uncomfortably. “You’re way off,” he said. “Way off. But even if you weren’t, what good does it do?”

He gestured around at the horror-show room. “She’s gone. She was here the whole time, and I didn’t find her.”

“Maybe not, but ye’re the only one who bothered to look,” Artur pointed out. He put his hands on the hips of his cocktail dress. “Now quit moping, ye big ugly bastard, and finish the job. Bring that girl home, whatever state she’s in.”

Dan felt a surge of something like adrenalin, although he couldn’t be sure. Finish the job. Bring the girl home.

He looked around the abandoned room and the surge spluttered, then died. How could he finish the job? He couldn’t even keep track of his hat.

“I’m not a detective,” he said. “I’m just a scary guy with a big gun.”

He held open his coat pocket. Artur peered into the dark chasm of the fabric, then crossed his arms defiantly. “I’m staying where I am. I’m not giving up so easily.”

“Suit yourself,” Dan grunted. He turned and walked away, the stench of sulfur and blood and failure pushing him towards the door.

As he passed the operating table, he stopped, the crimson puddle lapping around his boots. Tentatively, he reached out and laid his woman’s hand on the bed’s padded material. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. A token gesture of sympathy. A final farewell to a girl he’d never met. The girl he couldn’t save.

He walked on, trailing his hand along the table until there was no more of it left.

Two steps further on, Dan stopped again. He raised the hand and stared at it, as if seeing it for the first time. It was in bad shape, and the nerve endings had mostly all died off, and yet…

Spinning, he darted back to the lab bench and snatched Artur up. “Hey, what d’ye think ye’re playing at?” Artur demanded, before he landed on the operating table and rolled into an undignified heap.

“Feel there,” Dan told him, pointing to a spot near the foot of the bed.

“Ye what?”

“Feel there. With your hands.”

“Well what the feck else would I be using?” Artur asked. With a sigh, he bent and placed his hands flat on the padded surface. “There. What am I meant to be feeling?”

“Now up here,” Dan said, catching Artur’s dress between finger and thumb and depositing him near the head of the bed. “Feel there.”

“Fine. But I don’t really see what the point of…”

Artur blinked in surprise as his hands pressed on the bed. “Warm. This end’s warmer.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Dan. “Someone was on the bed. Very recently. Like, I don’t know, within the last two minutes.”

From somewhere not too far away came the sound of a car door closing, and the electric hum of a mag-lev engine powering on.

“Is that them, d’ye think?” asked Artur. “I thought the car park was empty?”

“Must be another one out back,” Dan realized. His eyes became saucers. “That’s where they are. She’s right out there!”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about,” crowed Artur. “Ye are a detective!”

Dan shook his head. “Not a detective,” he said, reaching into his coat and pulling out Mindy. “Just a scary guy with a big fonking gun.”

He aimed towards the back of the room. “Mindy. Explosive rounds,” he barked.

“Oh… shoite!” yelped Artur, hurling himself into Dan’s pocket just as the back wall erupted in a flaming cloud of rubble.

A delivery truck was parked just beyond the hole. It hesitated for a moment, then lurched away from the curb.

Leaping through the collapsing wall, Dan launched himself at the back of the truck. His woman’s hand found the welded metal ladder attached to one of the vehicle’s back doors. Dan’s one working nail-polished finger hooked onto a rung, and his legs flew out behind him as the truck sped out of the car park on a cushion of magnetized air.

It swerved as it careened out onto the road. Dan swung wildly, clattered against the truck’s back doors, and felt his one-fingered grip begin to slip.

“Shizz,” he spat, shoving Mindy back into her holster. His other hand took up the strain on the ladder, and he pulled his feet up onto the bottom rung.

The truck weaved sharply left and right, which meant either the driver was drunk, or he knew Dan was there. A vehicle coming in the opposite direction blasted its horn and dodged. Dan saw the driver’s face go from furious to gobsmacked as she passed and saw him heaving himself up towards the truck’s flat roof.

The wind whipped at him as he stuck his head up above the roof. Narrowing his eyes against it, he searched for a handhold on the smooth plastic, but found only a thin ridge where two panels had been sealed together.

“Shizz,” he said again, but the wind tore the word from his mouth this time, and tossed it somewhere far behind him.

Reaching out, he gripped the ridge with his final functioning woman’s finger, brought his feet up to the highest rung he could find, and threw himself forwards. The wind whistled around him, catching his coat and dragging him back. He thudded hard against the roof, scrabbled to find a grip with his other hand, then slid sideways as the van took a bend at high speed.

“Fonk, fonk, fonk!” Dan grimaced, kicking his feet against the plastic as he fought to stop himself slipping over the edge.

“Holy shoite, Deadman, what are we doing up here?” Artur yelped, peeking out of Dan’s pocket. “Couldn’t ye have just held onto the feckin’ ladder until he stopped?”

Dan’s boot squealed as the sole friction-gripped him to the truck’s roof. Shizz. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“Uh, yeah. I could have, but… Uh…”

“But ye’re a big mad bastard?” said Artur.

Dan smiled grimly. “Something like that.”

He reached for the next handhold, and pressed his fingertips against the thin line of raised plastic. Kicking and pulling, he inched along the roof, sliding himself closer and closer to the cab at the front. Quite what he was going to do when he got there, he wasn’t sure. He’d figure it out.

The next handhold was easier. The plastic seal had broken off, leaving a gap between two panels he could wedge his woman’s finger into. He pulled himself along until his eyes were level with the gap, and peered inside.

Most of the truck’s interior was in darkness, but a thin line of light from the crack picked out part of another hospital-type bed. Someone was lying in it, and as the truck lurched again, the glow picked out a flash of blonde hair and a glimpse of a child’s arm.

“It’s her,” Dan said, as much to himself as anyone else. “It’s her. She’s here. Artur, can you—?”

“Already on it,” said Artur, pulling himself up onto Dan’s shoulder. “What, ye think ye’re the only mad bastard around here?”

Dan prized the gap further apart. “Be careful,” he urged.

“What are ye, me mother?” said Artur. “Just go kill that fecker.”

And with that, he jumped through the gap, shouted, “Oh bollocks!” at the top of his voice, and plummeted all the way to the floor.

“I’m alright,” he called, a few moments later. “Although this dress is totally feckin’ peeled.”

Dan pushed on, dragging himself against the whistling wind. The edge of the truck’s cargo box was almost in reach, the cab just beyond it.

The cab itself would be smooth and domed, with nothing to grip onto. He couldn’t just shoot the driver, or the truck would crash, and the girl would be left in an even worse state than she already was. He had to get inside the cab, which meant going through the door.

Unfortunately, that meant hanging off the side. If he fell, he wouldn’t just lose the girl, he’d lose Artur, too, and he’d already lost too many friends today.

So he wouldn’t fall. Decision made.

Gripping the edge of the cargo box with his favorite of his two hands, Dan whispered a series of heavily-censored curse words, gritted this teeth, then swung down. His already mangled woman’s arm became even more so as he drove it through the cab’s side window, making a grab for the driver.

He stopped when he saw the figure behind the wheel. Dan was well aware that his own face was nightmarish, but this guy’s beat it, hands down.

His head was a shriveled knot of burned and blackened flesh, with melted nubs where his ears should have been. Most of his face was covered by what Dan at first thought was a flap of yellowing skin, but which he realized was some sort of medical dressing.

The man’s neck was a trunk of charred muscle fibers, and while most of him was hidden beneath a set of blood-stained surgeon’s scrubs, an exposed area of forearm between where the sleeves ended and his rubber gloves began revealed the burns extended over the rest of his body.

Dan was so transfixed by the horror of it, that he didn’t hear the blaster humming until it was too late. The door exploded outwards on its hinges, the metal immediately buckling under Dan’s weight.

The wind tore at Dan again. He scrabbled desperately for a handhold, but his woman’s hand was dead now. As the lifeless fingers thudded uselessly against the side of the cab, Dan found himself briefly weightless, then he fell, cursing, towards the road.

* * *

“Hey. Hey, princess. Ye alright?”

Nona opened her eyes to find a doll-sized figure in a badly-torn cocktail dress standing on her chest. She said nothing for a while, trying to figure out if this was a dream.

“Molly Anne?” she eventually muttered, her voice a dry, painful croak. The place was dark, and her eyes were blurry, and she couldn’t make out a lot of detail. “Is that you?”

Artur leaned in closer, revealing his beard and boggle-eyed squint. “Not exactly. But I’m an old friend of hers. She asked me to come and rescue you.”

Nona blinked slowly. “How? She’s just a dolly.”

“Ah, ye’re a sharp one, alright,” Artur told her, grinning. “No pulling the wool over ye’re eyes, is there? But I am here to rescue you, that’s a promise, OK?”

Nona’s eyes closed for a long time. Artur was about to try to waken her again when she opened them. “OK.”

“OK, good girl. Now, tell me, are ye hurt?”

Nona’s bottom lip trembled as she nodded. Artur felt a flicker of rage flaring up inside him, but pushed it down. “Oh, well, I’m very sorry to hear that, princess, but no one’s going to be hurting ye from here on in. My name’s Artur, by the way. Everything’s going to be OK now, ye hear?”

From somewhere up front there came the sound of breaking glass. “That’s a friend of mine. He’s here to help ye, too, and sure, he’s even more set on it than I am. Yer mammy’s dead worried about ye, so she is. I bet she can’t wait to see ye.”

“My mommy’s here?” Nona sniffed, a tear trickling down the side of her face.

“No, she’s at home waiting for us to bring ye back,” said Artur. “Now, tell yer Uncle Artur, where does it hurt?”

Nona’s lips became thin and more tears began to fall. “I don’t want to talk about,” she whispered.

“Alright. Ye’re alright, princess.”

The sound of blaster fire and tearing metal filled the darkened box. Artur hesitated, not quite sure what to make of it, but then he broadened his smile and turned around on the spot.

“Well, let’s see now. Ye’ve got all yer arms and legs, so that’s a good start. Head’s where it should be. Face, gorgeous as ever. Sure, ye’re not doing too badly,” he said.

“My back hurts,” the girl whimpered. “H-he hurt my back.”

Artur’s beard bristled. There it was again, that rage. That urge to punch a hole into the cab and rip that bastard’s tongue out through his arse.

“Did he now? Well, he’s going to pay for doing that to ye, mark my words,” Artur assured her. “But for now, I want ye to try and relax, OK? I’m here with ye now. Nothing’s gonna happen to ye, not on my watch.”

He squatted down and rested a tiny hand on her shoulder. “Yer safe now, Nona. That’s a promise.”

Nona shook her head. “N-no,” she croaked. “Not safe.”

“Sure ye are. I might be small, but I’m surprisingly handy in a fight. Anyone tries to get in here, and I’ll have a thing or two to say about it.”

“It’s already in here,” Nona whispered. “You’re too late.”

Artur frowned. “Say what now?” he said.

And then he heard it. A movement from the far end of the cargo box, over by the back door. Something was breathing. Something big. Something animal-like.

“Well now,” Artur muttered, standing up and gazing into the darkness. “Just what do we have here?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Dan’s legs hit the ground. He braced himself for the rest of his body to follow, and was surprised when it didn’t.

His woman’s arm clanged against the underside of the mag-lev truck, the metal rod drawn to the hovering vehicle’s magnetic charge. The sudden jerk ripped at the stitches, but the arm held, and Dan bounced around under the truck, his legs alternating between smashing against the chassis and dragging along the ground.

“Ned, you’re a fonking genius,” Dan muttered.

With his free hand, he got a grip on the chassis, then managed to find places for his feet to go. He could hold on until the truck stopped, then climb out and beat the shizz out of that ugly melted fonk in the cabin.

He wasn’t quite sure yet how he’d detach his arm from the magnet, but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Right now, he could catch his breath – figuratively speaking – and wait to catch the shizznod by surprise.

“DEAAAADMAAAAAN!” hollered a voice from somewhere above. Artur. “We’ve got us a big feckin’ problem in here, Deadman! Get us out!”

“Aw, shizz,” Dan grunted. “What now?”

Twisting his head, he studied the underside of the mag-lev. He knew he wouldn’t find a handy access hatch or emergency stop button, but it didn’t stop him looking. As expected, he saw neither of those things. What he did find was a coil of thick, heavily-insulated cable clipped into a recess in the chassis.

Dan gazed at it for a while.

He gazed at the ground whizzing past below him.

“DEAAAADMAAAAAN!” Artur cried. “Ye might want to get a move on!”

“Ah, fonk it,” Dan muttered. He grabbed the cable with his good hand and pulled.

There was a spark and a bang and the front of the truck dipped suddenly. The woman’s arm was immediately demagnetized, and flopped loose. Leaving Dan holding onto a single strand of broken cable with his other hand.

His feet jerked free from where he’d been pressing them. The mag-lev roared across the ground, sending a shower of sparks into Dan’s face. Above him, the rest of the truck began to wobble, then dip. Dan released his grip and fell, just as the rear magnets gave out and the truck crashed fully onto the tarmac, trapping Dan’s new arm beneath it and dragging him along.

Unable to turn, the truck punched through a wire mesh fence and stopped abruptly as the cab slammed into a low wall just beyond it. The rear of the mag-lev bucked upwards, and Dan rolled free before it clattered back down again.

He was halfway to his feet before he noticed he was missing a hand. Not just a hand, in fact, but everything from the elbow down. His coat sleeve hung limp and lonely from the stump. The arm itself was nowhere to be seen, but was presumably mangled beneath the unmoving mag-lev.

On the one hand, he was disappointed to lose part of a limb – even this one – at such a crucial stage in proceedings. On the other hand…

Well, he didn’t have another hand, so he just left it at that.

“Deadman!” hollered Artur from inside the cargo box. “What the feck are ye doing out there?”

“Alright, alright, I’m coming!” said Dan.

A noise from behind him made him turn.

“No. No, you aren’t,” slurred the burned man. The synthetic dressing on his face made reading his expression difficult, but Dan could tell he was angry. The blaster pistol he was currently pointing directly at Dan’s head was a big enough clue for even Dan to pick up on. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Tribunal?”

“You should be so lucky. Janto, isn’t it? I’m the guy who killed your two biker friends,” said Dan. “Well, technically one of them got eaten by a big fish…”

“What the Hell is wrong with your face?” Janto asked, butting in.

“Long story. And that question is pretty rich, considering.” He waved an arm, gesturing at all of Janto in general. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Like you say,” Janto spat. “Long story.”

Dan raised onto the balls of his feet, but it didn’t go unnoticed.

“Don’t move!” Janto screeched, the gun shaking in his gloved hand. “Don’t you fonking move!”

Something went thud inside the back of the truck. Dan’s eyes darted towards it, but he raised his one-remaining hand above his head. “I just want Nona,” Dan said. “Let me take her, and you can go do whatever weird shizz you want. I just want the girl.”

“She’s my girl!” Janto said. “Mine. She stays with me.”

Dan shook his head. “See, I can’t let that happen, Janto.”

“You don’t get a say in what happens!” Janto barked. “I need her. She has secrets. My secrets. She can make me better. Make me whole again, instead of… Instead of… this thing.”

His tone changed from confrontational to soothing. “Both of us. She can fix both of us. I just need more time.”

Dan flicked his tongue across his dry, peeling lips. “Some things are too broken to be fixed.”

“No, I can. With what she has inside her, I can fix you!” Janto insisted.

“Wasn’t talking about me,” said Dan. “You killed those girls.”

“I had to. It wasn’t my fault,” Janto said. “She changed their last name. Hers and Nona’s. I didn’t know where to find them.”

“You had to?” Dan growled.

“Trial and error,” Janto insisted. “It’s a scientific method. Trial and error. Eliminate the wrong answers until you find the right one. Trial and error. It’s just… It’s science! That’s all. Necessary science.”

“What the Hell’s necessary about it?”

“Look at me!” Janto bellowed, tearing the dressing away to reveal the hollows of his nose and his lipless mouth that showed all his teeth at once. “Look at it! What I was working on… I can fix this. I can fix it, I just need more time to perfect it. I just need more time.”

“Yeah, well time’s up, you psychotic piece of shizz,” Dan told him.

The thudding came again, rocking the truck.

“What is that?” Dan asked.

“It’s nothing. It’s… It didn’t work properly. One of the samples I stored inside her, it got corrupted, somehow. That’s all. But I can fix it,” Janto babbled, his lidless eyes bulging in their sockets. “He knew the risks. He knew what could happen. But I can fix it.”

“Who knew what could happen?” Dan asked, lowering his hand.

Janto was trembling from shriveled head to gnarled toe. The blaster swayed in an erratic figure of eight, moving from Dan’s face to his chest and back again. Janto’s lipless mouth was moving, but very little sound was coming out.

The truck rocked again. There was a clank and a dent appeared in the mag-lev’s back doors.

“Janto!” Dan barked, snapping the other man to attention. “Who the fonk is that? Your daughter is in there!”

“He’s restrained. He… he can’t get free,” Janto said, his voice no more than a scratchy whisper. “He knew the risks. He knew.”

Dan scowled and made for the truck. “Artur? Artur, hold on, I’m coming.”

“Stay where you are!” Janto roared, gripping his blaster in both hands.

Mindy slid free of her holster in one smooth movement. Unlike Janto, Dan’s hand was rock-steady as he aimed the weapon squarely at the other man’s head. A movement from somewhere overhead briefly broke Dan’s concentration. He flicked his eyes up and spotted a Paparazzoid adjusting its flight path to check out what was happening below. Great. Just what he needed.

He tried to ignore it, and gave Janto his undivided attention again.

“Either drop the gun, or I drop you,” Dan warned. “And when I say ‘drop’ I mean turn you into a million little chunks of crispy-fried flesh splattered over a fifty foot radius.”

“I can help you!” Janto wailed. “I can make you better.”

“Three.”

“Please! Look at me! I need this. I need this.”

“Two.”

The gun vibrated more violently in Janto’s grip. He tightened his hands around it and drew in a sharp breath, as if preparing to fire.

“One.”

Janto dropped the gun and raised his hands. “OK, OK, don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me! Please!”

“Not so tough when you aren’t dealing with little girls, huh?” Dan growled. “Mindy, stun shot.”

The gun’s cylinder spun. “And make it hurt.”

“What? No, don—” Janto pleaded, but a bolt of yellow light turned his body rigid, cutting off the rest of the sentence.

Dan turned away before Janto had even hit the ground. “Artur!” he called, making for the truck. Thanks to his lack of available hands, he had no choice but to shove Mindy back in her holster before reaching for the door handle.

A fist punched through the door, stopping just inches from Dan’s nose. To call it a large fist would be to do it a disservice. It was around fifty per cent larger than Dan’s head, each finger as thick as the wrist of his woman’s arm had been. Bone-like protrusions jutted out through the flesh at irregular intervals, like metal spikes on some kind of medieval weapon designed specifically for smashing in skulls as efficiently as possible.

Dan jumped back, pulling his gun out again as the door was torn inwards. The hinges gave way with a terrified squeal. Dan ducked as the twisted remains of it whummed out of the truck and smashed against the road some distance behind him.

“Mindy, explosive—” he began, but then the thing that had been in the truck slammed into him, sending him tumbling in one direction, and the gun skidding in another.

That spiked ball of a fist fell like a hammer towards Dan’s head. He rolled sideways and the ground shattered into a spider-web of cracks.

Kicking his legs, Dan tried to get up, but a scything arm shattered his ribs, dropping him again. He turned, scrabbling backwards, and got his first look at the thing as it threw back its head and howled at the Paparazzoid hovering above.

He’d never seen anything like it before, but he recognized it, all the same. He’d assumed there had been two von Haff brothers, but now realized he was wrong. He had no idea where this one had come in the pecking order before Janto had done whatever he’d done to him, but he was definitely the Alpha male of the family, now. He definitely wasn’t the looker, though, and considering the only other family members Dan was aware of had either had their skull caved in, or were being digested by a fish, that was really saying something. This guy had a face only a mother could love, and a blind, masochistic mother at that.

His face reminded Dan of an old tree, all knotted and gnarled. His eyes were set at vastly different heights, and there seemed to be a third eye tucked into a fold at the side of his throat. His tusk-like bottom teeth had been joined by a number of sharp, angular bones that sprouted from his cheeks and forehead with no sense of pattern or symmetry.

Similar protrusions grew from his shoulders and back. It was as if his skeleton had taken one look at the rest of him, and decided to make a run for it, only to get stuck halfway.

He had the same long hair and beard as his brothers, although neither crop of hair had grown at the same pace as the rest of him, so they looked comically undersized against his hulking, distorted frame.

Mindy was a few feet away. Dan made a lunge for the weapon, but a monstrous hand grabbed him by the ankle. The world lurched away. Dan barely had time to figure out what was going on before he slammed, back-first, against the ground.

“Oh, fonk,” he grunted, as he was swung over the monster’s head again. He braced himself for the impact, tucking his chin into his chest to protect his head.

Something in his leg went pop and he felt the grinding resonate all the way into his guts. He kicked out with his other leg, slamming his boot against the monster’s wrist. It didn’t notice. Dan’s leg let out a series of stomach-churning crunches as he was swung sideways. He spiraled through the air, rolled over and over across the tarmac, before getting entangled in the remains of the wire mesh fence.

“Leave him alone, ye big bollocks!” hollered Artur, jumping down from the truck. His plastic clogs clip-clopped across the tarmac as he ran at the monster, tiny fists clenched.

“Artur, no!” Dan barked, heaving himself back to his feet. His left leg felt heavy and lifeless, but it took his weight as he stumbled along the side of the truck. “Look after Nona. Leave this thing to—”

The monster crossed the gap between them in a single bound. Its fist connected with Dan’s face, dead center, compacting his nose and sending him stumbling backwards.

“Oh yeah, looks like ye’ve got it all in hand,” Artur said, raising his voice to a shout.

“Get in the truck,” Dan wheezed, the words coming out through bubbles of his own blackened blood. “Keep the girl safe. I got this.”

“Have ye bollocks!” Artur replied. A gnarled foot stomped down at him, forcing him to zig-zag to safety. “This thing’ll rip you to pieces.”

“Maybe,” Dan conceded. “But better me than her. I stitch back together, she doesn’t. Go.”

Artur dodged another foot-stamp, glared up at the mutant von Haff, then let out a sharp cry of outrage. “Fine! Fine, I’ll go and feckin’ babysit. But you’d better take this bastard down, Deadman, ye hear?”

“I hear,” said Dan. He clenched his one working fist and squinted through his swelling eyelids at the von Haff monster. “Now come on, you ugly fonk. Is that all you’ve got?”

* * *

Ollie followed the guard, Morrin, through a large wood-paneled room lined with a dozen or so beds. Some of the beds were empty, but many were not. Shapes moved beneath the covers, bodies tangling and thrusting together hidden, if only just, from view.

“What is this place?” she asked, but Morrin just grunted and quickened his pace.

They weaved their way between a group of faded and torn armchairs. Other women sat in them, eyes open, but unseeing. Flecks of foam formed at the corners of their mouths, and they groaned in pleasure as whatever was hooked up to their arms pumped a dark, oily-looking fluid inside them.

There was something about their faces that made Ollie’s stomach knot up. Those open eyes, staring upwards through the ceiling, those guttural, inhuman grunts and moans of satisfaction. Or despair, maybe. Ollie couldn’t tell which.

“Through here,” said the guard, punching in a key code and opening a door.

Ollie could feel his breath on her neck as she squeezed past him. She shuffled through into a small, dimly-lit room that smelled of something she didn’t recognize, but instantly disliked.

There was very little in the room, besides an unmade bed, a lop-sided bedside table, and a screen on the wall. Morrin joined her inside and closed the door, revealing two coat hooks on the back of it.

“What’s this room for?” Ollie asked.

“Sit down,” he told her. “On the bed. I’ll show you.”

Ollie hesitated, but then sat down. Morrin reached up to the screen and flicked it on. After an initial burst of static, the image changed to show an aerial view of a street. It was dark and blurry, and hard to make out what was going on, but the guard wasn’t paying it any attention, anyway.

He turned the volume up and the chatter of commentary crackled out from the screen’s speakers so loudly it made Ollie wince.

“Thin walls,” the guard said. He grinned, showing off his scum-coated teeth. “Wouldn’t want anyone listening in now, would we?”

“To what?” Ollie asked.

Morrin snorted. He kicked off a shoe. “Man, I love the dumb ones.”

Ollie gazed up at the screen. The sound was turned up so high the commentary had become too distorted to properly understand. Two people were fighting. Although one of them didn’t look much like a person, and ‘fighting’ was being generous to the other one, who seemed to be spending most of his time being thrown around or slammed into things.

There was a zzzip as the guard began to remove his uniform. Ollie didn’t notice.

She peered up at the screen and watched as the smaller of the two figures made a dive for something on the ground, only for the larger to kick him on the side of the head. The camera swooped down to get a better view, bringing both figures more sharply into focus.

Ollie stood up, her eyes not leaving the screen. “Wait a minute.”

“Sit down,” Morrin instructed.

“Is that…?”

“Sit. Down.”

The guard’s hand was a vice-grip on Ollie’s arm. He tried to push her down onto the bed, but a jolt of pain tore up his arm, escaping through his teeth as a hiss, as Ollie’s necklace lit up like a flame against her neck.

“Where is that?” Ollie asked, still staring at the screen.

Morrin tried to pull his hand free, but his fingers weren’t responding. “Wh-what are you doing? What is this?” he whimpered, before another shudder of pain reduced his words into a series of incomprehensible babbles.

Ollie finally shifted her gaze from the screen to his face. She looked him up and down, as if only just noticing he was there. Something burned behind her eyes, and the guard’s legs gave way beneath him as he tried desperately to pull away.

Pointing to the screen, Ollie asked the question again. “Where is that?”

“Raaargh!”

The guard jammed his electric shock-rod weapon into Ollie’s ribs. A buzzing noise filled the room, followed very quickly by a loud, distinctly moist-sounding, bang.

Ollie looked down at her arm, then up at the guard, who was now nothing more than a haze of red mist in the air.

“Fine,” she said, shooting the screen another glance. “I’ll just have to ask someone else.”

* * *

Artur clambered into the truck, scurried to the back, then made his way up the side of the bed. He stopped then, with his hands on his thighs, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Holy father, that’s higher than it looks,” he panted, before straightening up and jabbing a thumb back in the direction he’d come. “Seriously, it might not seem like much from up here, but that’s a climb and a half.”

Nona peered back at him, saying nothing.

“But anyway, probably not the right time to be dumping my problems on ye. Sure, we’d be here all night,” said Artur. He scratched his head and gestured to the closest of the girl’s wrists. “I reckon we get ye out of these things. What do ye say?”

He rattled one of the two pairs of handcuffs that shackled Nona to the bed’s frame. “Ah, he’s gone old school, that’s what I like to see. The classics. None of yer energy cuff nonsense. I can work with these.”

Something thumped against the side of the truck. “Ow,” said a muted voice, and then there followed a sound that was not unlike a scream, which rapidly got further away. “That’s me mate, he’s taking care of… whatever that thing is. So he tells me, anyway.”

Dan flew past the open doors of the truck, upside-down. A moment later, a monstrous shape bounded after him, hissing and snarling with rage.

“Yeah, looks like he’s on top of things,” said Artur. “Nothing for us to worry about, princess.”

“You promise?” Nona sniffed.

“Have I ever steered you wrong before?” Artur asked.

“I’ve never met you before,” the girl croaked.

Artur grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Like I say, ye’re a sharp one, so ye are,” he said, shoving an arm into the handcuffs’ keyhole. “Now then, let’s get ye out of these things.”

He stuck out his tongue and closed one eye in concentration. His fingers found a groove in the mechanism and he gave a little nod. “See, the trick with these locks is to take yer time. Ye might be tempted – ye know, if yer best mate’s having the shoite kicked out of him by a monster, say – to rush things. But that would be a mistake.”

As if on cue, a Dan-shaped indent appeared in the plastic wall of the cargo box, then popped flat again.

“Here’s a tip for any situation, princess - rushing gets ye nowhere fast. I know, I know, it sounds like a load of old garbage, but it’s true. So ye have to go canny, like.” He found a spring and felt along its twisting ridges. “Take yer time. That’s the trick to it. Nice and easy.”

He slid his hand between two intricate levers and applied just the right amount of pressure.

“Nice and easy.”

He adjusted the tension, just a fraction.

“Nice and…”

Artur yanked his hand free, his face twisting into a furious scowl. “Ah, bollocks to it,” he spat, then he grabbed the chain where it connected to the second bracelet, jammed his feet against the bed frame, and pulled with all his strength.

“Are you OK?” Nona whispered.

“Nng. Fine,” Artur squeaked.

“You’re going purple.”

“Perfectly healthy color, purple. Nothing wrong… oh, feck, that’s strong. What are these made of? Nothing wrong with turning—”

The chain snapped. Artur exhaled sharply as he swung from Nona’s wrist by the broken links, then scrambled up onto her hand.

“There, that’s better,” he said, nodding at her as he ran up her arm, across her chest, and down the arm on the opposite side. “Now, assuming ye hold still, and I don’t have a massive heart attack or anything, we’ll have ye out of here before ye know it.”

Outside, Dan thumped and the monster roared. Artur risked a glance at the truck’s missing rear doors. “And not a moment too feckin’ soon,” he muttered, then he took up his grip on the second handcuff chain, and heaved.

* * *

Dan tried to stand, but couldn’t quite figure out where the ground was. Down, he assumed, but the world was spinning so fast that he was unable to put his finger on which direction down was at this precise moment.

His ribs felt like they had all concertinaed together, pain screamed through his skull like a fire alarm, and no matter which direction he looked, he could see his nose. Even up.

If, indeed, that way was up.

One of his legs had been completely dislocated at the hip, but a subsequent impact (against the truck, he thought, but they were all kind of blurring into one now) had rammed it back into place for him.

Lucky.

You know, kind of.

How long had he been fighting? A minute? An hour? He’d passed out at least twice, he was sure, although the real number was very probably much higher.

The thing was toying with him. That was the only reason it hadn’t torn his head off yet. Dan had punched, kicked, gouged and headbutted at every available part of it, but it had brushed them all off without so much as flinching.

And that was at the beginning, when it had been smaller. It had been growing steadily during the course of the fight, becoming more monstrous with each moment that passed. It had been the size of an alpha male pukbull when it had emerged from the truck, but now it was as large as three of them, all squished together, and its bony protrusions had grown at a correspondingly terrifying rate.

Dan had tried to grab for his gun a number of times now, but the fonker always caught him just in time, before sending him hurtling through the air in the direction of some other heavy and stubbornly immovable object.

Frankly, he was getting pretty sick of it.

He heard the von Haff thing bounding towards him again, poundings its spiked fists against the ground like front legs. Hazarding a guess as to which direction was which, Dan made it to his feet just in time to avoid a crunching overhead strike. Another pothole appeared in the tarmac and the world trembled with the force of the blow. Then the monster swung with a wild backhand that Dan only barely managed to dodge.

Spying an opening, he jumped in and rained a flurry of jabs in the thing’s kidneys, but its skin was now a coarse hide that did more harm to Dan’s knuckles than they did to it.

What Dan wouldn’t have given to have his woman’s arm back. A couple of Durium-enhanced left hooks might have run this thing’s bell for it. More than he was ringing it now, anyway.

The fist swung again. Dan ducked, then realized his mistake. The thing’s other hand caught him by the throat, its fingers overlapping at the back of his neck by several inches. It squeezed, and Dan felt panic ignite in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t worried about it choking him, for obvious reasons, but the way the thing was tightening its grip, there was no saying his head wouldn’t just pop off like a cork.

He punched it. It didn’t flinch.

He kicked it where he guessed its balls would most likely be.

Nothing.

He tried to wedge a thumb into one of its eyes, but its face just twisted into a disturbing mockery of a grin.

“Cannnn’t hurrrrt meeeee,” it said, the words ejecting from the back of its cavernous throat. A flicker of surprise crossed its face, like it hadn’t been aware it could still speak. “Buut I huurrrt yooouuu.”

The monster squeezed harder, and Dan felt the pressure building behind his eyes and up into his skull. He hammered a fist against von Haff’s elbow and forearm, trying to break the grip, but the thing just giggled and snorted, its bulging eyes growing wider.

“Hey!” called a voice from behind it. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

The von Haff mutant threw back a fist. Dan heard a woman let out a yelp of pain as the spiked knuckles connected with her, sending her spinning to the ground in a mess of tears and blood.

Ollie. Shizz. What was she doing here?

“Stuuupid girrrl,” the monster spat. “You aaaare nnnot my ssssize.”

“I know,” Ollie sniffed, shuffling shakily onto her knees. She met Dan’s boggle-eyed stare for a moment, then turned her attention back to von Haff. “But I wasn’t talking about me.”

And with that, she caught her necklace in both hands, closed her eyes, and pulled.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Whatever Ollie had been expecting to happen, didn’t. Unless she was expecting nothing to happen, in which case, it did.

Still on her knees, she looked around in a sort of mute confusion, before concluding with a shrug and a slightly disappointed sounding, “Huh.”

“Oh, for…” Dan rasped. He pointed frantically towards the middle of the road. “Gun. Get my gun.”

“Gun?” said Ollie, frowning, like she’d never heard the word before. Her eyes fell on the fallen weapon. “Oh! Gun!”

She sprang forwards like a sprinter off the blocks, making a bee-line for the gun. Halfway to it, Dan hit her in the back at high speed, and they both rolled to a stop in a tangle of arms and legs.

“You’re not helping,” Ollie said, her legs pinned beneath Dan’s back.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Dan snapped. “The fonker threw me.”

They both rolled free and set off for the gun again.

“What are you doing here?” Dan demanded.

“I saw you on the moving picture thing,” Ollie said. “You looked like you could use my help.”

“Your help? And how are you helping, exac—?”

A hand caught him by the ankle and he thumped forwards against the ground. “Not again,” he groaned, then he was swung like a throwing-hammer and sent flying through the air in the opposite direction, far away from Mindy.

His landing was less than graceful, and involved skidding several feet on his face. By the time he picked himself up, the von Haff thing was looming over Ollie, its ever-more-hideous bulk penning her in on at least three sides.

She was too far away for him to reach before the thing attacked. And even if he did, what could he do? He was powerless against the monster.

Ollie dragged herself backwards away from the thing, one hand held protectively in front of her. She held her pendant in it, the cryptic symbol dangling from its broken chain.

Why had she snapped it off? What was she…?

No.

No, surely not.

Pick on someone your own size.

“Aw, fonk,” Dan grunted, as he realized her plan, while simultaneously realizing it was far better than any he had so far been able to come up with. He cupped his one remaining hand around his mouth and shouted. “The necklace. Toss the necklace.”

Ollie glanced his way, then did as she was told. The pendant chinked as it landed several feet away. The von Haff creature watched it for a moment, then howled as it raised both medieval fists above its head. The howl rose in pitch, becoming a sickening roar of triumph as it swung the fists down towards the helpless Ollie.

And then a long thin tentacle wrapped around von Haff’s wrists and jerked him violently to one side, making him miss his target.

Dan had seen many things during his visits to the Malwhere. He’d seen the very worst the Hell-dimensions had to offer.

Or so he thought.

The thing emerging from a fold in the fabric of space was now a new entry at the top of his list. It seemed to be all shapes and every size at once. Reality itself bent around it, as if afraid to get too close. One moment, it was a shapeless expanse of nothing, while at the same moment, it was a thrashing ball of slimy tendrils, a howling vortex of luminous wind, and the fiery heart of a supernova.

And, also at the same time, it was a man. A very plain, very naked man. He was easy to overlook, as he didn’t immediately draw the eye the way the billion other forms the thing took did, but he was definitely there, standing in the middle of it all, hands crossed behind his back.

Von Haff screeched and tore his hands free of the new arrival’s grip. The monsters hurled themselves at each other, hands and teeth and tentacles and claws ripping and tearing as they locked in battle.

“Hey,” said Ollie, making Dan jump.

“Shizz. Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he told her.

“Sorry. I got your gun,” she said, holding Mindy out to him.

He took the weapon without a word, and quickly checked it over for damage.

“You’re welcome,” Ollie said.

“What?” Dan asked, then he grunted. “Oh. Yeah.” He gestured to the multitude of shapes currently slapping the von Haff thing against the ground. “Is that…?”

“Kalaechai,” Ollie confirmed. She looked down at her feet for a moment, then back up. “My father.”

“The resemblance is uncanny,” said Dan. “Think he can beat that thing?”

“Ha!” Ollie snorted. “He has scarier things for lunch. Yes, he can beat it.”

“Right. Good,” said Dan. He turned away, then hesitated. “And then what?”

Ollie puffed out her cheeks. “Then he’ll take me back with him,” she said. “Or, you know, destroy the world and then take me back. One of those.”

Dan stared at her, agog. “Great. Well, that’s… great. A big improvement. Thanks.”

He limped across to the truck just as Artur and Nona appeared from the shadows. “Hey, Deadman, good to see ye in one…” Artur looked past Dan and winced. “Oh, what the feck is that now? That’s not…? Is it?”

“It is,” said Dan. He looked up at Nona and scraped together a smile. “Hey. I’m Dan. We’re here to get you home,” he said, but the sight of his face made Nona turn away in fright, so he didn’t go any further.

“Don’t take it personally,” Artur said. “She’s had a rough time. Speaking of which, where’s her old man? I’d very much like a word with him.”

“He’s over…” Dan gestured to where Janto had fallen, but the bamston was nowhere to be seen. “Shizz. I stunned him. He shouldn’t have been awake already.”

“Ye lost him? Ye daft bollocks. Go find him!”

“I will,” Dan said. “Look after the girl.”

He had barely gone a few paces before Ollie called out to him. “Good luck.”

Dan paused to look back. She smiled, but her eyes gave her true feelings away. “I’ll… I think I’ll be gone when you get back.”

She gestured over to where Kalaechai and von Haff were still locked in battle. It was shaping up to be as one-sided as Dan’s fight with the mutant biker had been.

“And, you know, thanks,” Ollie said.

“For what?”

“For helping me.”

Dan blinked. “When?”

“Uh, always. Pretty much.”

“Just get a feckin’ move on!” Artur snapped. “Go and kill that evil shoitebag before he gets away.”

Dan nodded, and began to run. Ollie stopped him again, almost at once.

“Uh, he went that way,” she said, pointing through the broken fence to the darkened factory beyond.

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

Dan changed direction and headed for the fence. He soon stopped again.

The von Haff thing was being slammed repeatedly against the ground by a billion shapes all masquerading as one enormous tentacle. Kalaechai would be done with it soon, and then…

“Why did you come here? Really?” Dan asked.

Ollie’s face took on that not quite getting the joke expression. “Because you’re the only person I know. And because before he… Ned asked me to look after you.”

“He did, huh?” Dan mumbled.

“He kind of made me promise,” Ollie said.

Dan looked up, shook his head, then sighed. “Fine. Come on,” he said, beckoning with the gun for Ollie to follow him.

Ollie pointed to herself, then looked back over her shoulder. “Who, me?”

“Don’t make me change my mind,” Dan grunted. “Help me find this piece of shizz.”

“But… he’s going to come after me,” Ollie said, her eyes darting to the ongoing battle.

“Yeah,” said Dan. “Probably. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Aw,” said Artur. “Isn’t this just a beautiful moment that we should all take some time to… No, wait. I tell a lie. Get a feckin’ move on!”

* * *

Janto hobbled across a metal walkway and heaved himself up a flight of stairs. His warped, leathery limbs creaked as he moved, but there was no pain. His lack of nerve endings meant pain was nothing more than a memory, albeit one burned into every nightmare he’d had since the fire had stolen his life away.

He’d almost stolen it back. He’d found her, even after her witch of a mother had changed their last name, he’d found her, and all the secrets he’d hidden inside. Everything he had ever worked for, every worthwhile thing he had done in his miserable life, right there inside the girl.

And then he’d lost her.

No, not lost her. She had been taken. That freak with the gun had stolen her from him, kept her from him. But he wasn’t done yet. He’d get away, hole up, use the information he’d been able to get to make himself better. Stronger.

And then, when he was able, he’d come back. He’d find Nona – his Nona – again, and plunder every one of the remaining secrets from inside her.

Yes, this was a setback, nothing more. He smiled, although the tightness of his skin would have made it impossible for anyone to tell.

And then, just as he readied himself to take another set of stairs, a bolt of energy struck him in the back, and the entire contents of his bowels were evacuated in one sudden explosive thwurp.

“Don’t move,” Dan warned, stepping onto the walkway behind him.

“Aren’t you supposed to say that before you shoot?” Ollie asked.

Dan shrugged. “I like to mix it up sometimes. Keep it fresh.”

“I don’t think that’s fresh,” said Ollie, her nose wrinkling as the smell reached her.

Janto stood frozen, his face a wide-eyed mask of horror. Even more so than usual.

“W-what is…? How did…?” He clutched at his stomach as another jet of hot effluent erupted down his legs. “Oh… shizz!”

“Bingo,” said Dan. “I call it Brown Noise. It’s messy, but effective.”

Janto hugged himself and hopped from foot to foot. “But… but why?”

Dan shrugged. “Mostly for my own amusement. I wanted you to suffer. You know, before.”

“B-before what?”

“Mindy. Lethal rounds,” Dan ordered. The cylinder spun. The lights illuminated.

“No! No, don’t!” Janto pleaded. “I can help you. I can make you better.”

Dan took aim. “I doubt that,” he said.

“Wait!”

The voice echoed around the factory. Dan didn’t recognize it at first – not when it was so out of context – but when he did, his unbeating heart sank.

“So, you found him, then?” said Paradise. She glided along the walkway on a hovering CareChair, a tartan blanket wrapped around her legs to keep out the cold. “Good for you, Mr Deadman. I knew you had it in you.”

“Hey, it’s that old lady!” said Ollie. She moved, as if to greet her, but Dan caught her arm. Without saying a word, he raised his eyes to the walkway above them. A dozen or more henchmen had weapons trained on them, ready to open fire.

Paradise stopped a few feet from Janto and crinkled her nostrils in disgust. “Ugh. And I see you’ve been up to your old tricks,” she said, shooting Dan a disapproving look.

“How’s the carpet?” Dan asked.

“Replaced. There was no other option.” She wagged a finger at Dan, reproachfully, but then smiled. It was a shark’s smile, cold and calculating, and broadcasting the suggestion that it would be the last thing you’d ever see. “Still, no matter. You brought me to this gentleman, and that’s what counts.”

She beckoned to Janto with a withered finger. “Come on, then. But keep your distance. Your stench is not something I wish to become any more acquainted with than is absolutely necessary.”

“What? What are you doing?” Dan demanded, his gun still trained on Janto.

Paradise raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I’d have thought that was obvious. I’m taking him to work for me.”

“No,” said Dan. “You aren’t. I can’t let that happen.”

Overhead, a number of guns that had been aiming at Dan started to aim at him even harder. Paradise clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Oh, but you can, and I am, Mr Deadman. See, I’m calling in one of those favors you owe me. You’re going to lower your gun and let our friend walk out of here with me.”

“He killed those kids,” Dan said. “He has to be punished.”

“And he will be, I assure you. You have my word on that,” soothed Paradise. “But I could use a man of his talents in my organization, and while I can understand your desire to kill him, I’m afraid I can’t allow it. He’s too…” She looked over at Janto, just as the Brown Noise loudly demonstrated its effects once more. “…valuable,” Paradise concluded.

“Yes!” Janto yelped. “Yes, please. Take me. Take me with you. Don’t leave me with him.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to go with her,” Dan said.

“Better that than you kill me!” Janto sneered.

“Nope. It really isn’t,” said Dan.

“There are two ways this can go, Mr Deadman,” said Paradise, reversing slowly on her CareChair. “You can be a man of your word, uphold your side of our bargain, and do me this favor – in which event, I leave here with this gentleman. Or, you can refuse, and my men kill you and young Oledol, and do so in a way that will ensure you stay dead. In which event, I leave here with this gentleman.”

The old woman shrugged her slender shoulders. “I have no real preference for which option we go for. I suspect, however, that you probably do.”

She smiled that shark smile again. “So, what’s it to be?”

Before Dan could give his decision, a sizeable chunk of the factory wall collapsed, revealing the shapeless, yet simultaneously multi-faceted form of Kalaechai. From this angle, he looked like a big spider, a gelatinous blob, a swarm of insects, and a tower of light, all at once.

“He’s here,” Ollie whispered.

“Yup, noticed,” Dan grunted.

“What… What is that?” Janto asked. “Did I make that?”

Kalaechai threw back his heads and screeched. Paradise’s gunmen opened fire, and Dan made his mind up on what he should do. Raising Mindy, he took aim at Janto, but a scything tentacle carved upwards through the walkway, and the metal screamed as it was torn in two.

Ollie lost her footing as the walkway bucked, then sagged. Her hands slapped against the metal, and she clawed frantically at it, trying to get a grip as she slid down, down, down towards the ragged edge. Kalaechai waited below, an enormous set of snake-like jaws unfolding beneath the struggling Ollie.

She screamed as her momentum carried her over the edge, then jerked to a stop when Dan caught her by one flailing arm.

“Hold on,” he told her, hooking his foot around one of the walkway’s hand rails to stop them sliding any further.

“Holding on. Definitely holding on,” Ollie confirmed, then she let out a yelp when a thin tendril tangled around her ankle and yanked her downwards. Dan grimaced as he felt her grip slip. Once again, he lamented the loss of his other hand.

Heaving and groaning, he fought against the Malwhere Lord’s pull. “Metal pole beside you,” he grunted, nodding towards a broken piece of the walkway. “Grab it. Don’t let go.”

Ollie followed his directions without question. She took hold of the pole first with one hand, then the other. It grumbled in complaint at her weight, and the force of the pull on her leg.

A series of wails followed three of Paradise’s goons as they were yanked from their perches and tumbled into Kalaechai’s waiting mouth. Dan watched them be swallowed up by the gaping maw.

“When he lets go of your leg, climb up and get out,” Dan said.

“He won’t let go,” Ollie said, gritting her teeth as she fought to hold on.

“Trust me,” said Dan, drawing Mindy from her holster. “He’ll let go.”

He stepped up to the walkways buckled edge. The whole structure creaked and bobbed like a diving board.

“Mindy. Slowdown. One per cent,” he ordered, and before the cylinder had even finished spinning, he jumped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dan fired three shots into Kalaechai’s open mouth, then a couple more, just to be on the safe side.

To be on the even safer side, he emptied the rest of the battery into the fonker, finishing just as he tumbled into the monstrous throat and slid down its gaping gullet.

He landed with a gloopy splosh in a knee-deep pool of stomach acid and partially-chewed henchmen. The impact fractured bones in his legs, dislocated something in his spine, and made one of his shoes fall off.

He’d had worse.

Sliding Mindy back into her holster, Dan fished around in the bile for his shoe. Once he’d found it, he tipped out the yellow-green mucus, then pulled the shoe on, and waited.

And waited.

He realized a hip had come out of its socket.

He popped it back into place.

Aaaand waited.

In hindsight, he may have overdone it with the slowdown rounds.

Kalaechai’s innards were an unmoving mass around him, almost completely frozen in time. The slimy stomach lining seemed completely solid, yet oddly ethereal at the same time, like a dream trapped under a microscope. And yet, even this firm and intangible thing was only one manifestation of his physical form, Dan knew. There was more – much more – to the Malwhere Lord than that.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Dan sang, exactly as tunelessly as you might expect.

It took almost a full minute more before Kalaechai’s humanoid avatar materialized inside the stomach beside Dan. He appeared gradually, as if someone were slowly turning his brightness up.

Dan hadn’t been sure the slowdown rounds would affect Kalaechai on every level, but as he faded into view, it became clear the monster’s movements were laborious, his voice a drawn-out tedious drone.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave—”

“I done to you? I slowed you down to a fraction of your normal speed,” said Dan. “I thought it’d give us a chance to… talk. To get to know each other a little better.”

He paced around to the back of Kalaechai’s humanoid form, and waited for him to turn. This took some time, so Dan filled it by cricking his lower spine back into position.

“Now, I’m going to explain this as slowly as I can, but to you, it’s going to seem fast, so do us both a favor and pay attention,” said Dan, once Kalaechai was facing him. “Because I sure as shizz won’t be repeating myself.”

Kalaechai’s face began to twist in rage. It was like the coming of the dawn, all creeping shadows and not a lot really happening. “Hooooooooooooooow—?”

“Dare I? How dare I speak to you like that? Is that what you were going to ask?” said Dan, interrupting. “It was, right? You know how I know that? Because that’s what you all ask. You ‘Malwhere Lords.’”

He made half the quote marks in the air with his fingers around that last part, then shrugged and began to pace again. He walked slowly, but just fast enough so Kaleachai always had to keep moving.

He could smell the stomach acid eating away at his pants. At least, he hoped it was his pants. Fractured legs, he could deal with. Digested legs? That was more of a problem.

“See, I’ve met a few of you guys now and, well, I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan,” Dan said. “Either you end up here, or I end up in there, and one way or another, we always come to blows.”

He stopped walking. “Tusshuk of the K’trubbon. Heard of him? Real piece of work. Had a thing for young men. Boys, really. He’d use their bodies as, I don’t know, vessels or some such. He’d move in, use them for a day or two while he burned them up from the inside, then move on to his next victim, and repeat.”

Dan pointed down to where he stood. His face, which was already serious, became many shades more so. “Here. He did that here. In my city.”

The stomach acid sloshed as Dan began to circle again. “You know what happened to Tusshuk in the end? No? No one does. Well, no one except me.”

Dan smiled and pointed at the man-shaped version of Kalaechai. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I killed him. Right? Well, nope. You’re wrong.”

He stared upwards, almost wistfully. “He asked me to. Begged me to. Oh, man, did he beg me to. But nope. Didn’t kill him. Probably never will.”

The bile sloshed around Dan’s legs as he moved faster, his words tumbling out more quickly. “Transha Narr-te Assiin, ruled some shizzhole of a dark realm where they hunted people they’d harvested from other dimensions. Men, women, kids, they didn’t care. For sport, you know? For fun. Took me three weeks to finally find a way in there, then three minutes to bring their whole stinking universe down around their ears. Not that they had ears, but you know what I mean.”

Dan began to list off on his fingers. “The Norts, all dead. Likewise Brinshuk Twelve, Hondra Oolas, and the vast majority of the Jepton Intelligence. Lady Effk – you know, the soul-eater? Inside-out, last I checked, although I haven’t been to visit in a while. It’s partly because of the screaming, but mostly it’s the smell. I mean, she don’t look too pretty, neither, but… the smell.”

He shuddered, then stopped. The stomach fluids rippled as he turned on his heels. “My point is, Kaleachai… I’m going to call you Kal. My point is, Kal, you might think you’re something special. That you’re a big shot. You might think you can come over here, throw your little hissy fit, and we’ll let you do whatever you want, but you only think that because you don’t know who I am. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. And you know how I know that? Because you all make the same mistake. You’re all the same.”

Mindy bleeped softly in Dan’s coat. He stepped closer to Kalaechai so they were face to face. “Here’s the deal. This is the one and only time I’m going to offer it, so listen very closely. You took my friend, so I’m taking your daughter,” Dan said, his voice a low rumble. “She stays here. You go back to where you came from. That’s us even. That’s the end of it. Because if you don’t, then just like Tusshuk, you will beg me to kill you.”

He leaned in closer still, his voice becoming nothing but a whisper. “But I never will.”

Dan stared deep into the Malwhere Lord’s eyes for several seconds, until he was sure his point had been made.

“Also, I have a friend who, at my command, will crawl up your shizzpipe and never leave, so you might want to take that into consideration, too.”

He stepped back and waved his remaining arm, dismissively. “Now close your mouth. The slowdown wore off thirty seconds ago.”

Kalaechai’s smaller form looked down at his hands in surprise. His jaw, which had been hanging open, snapped shut, just as the larger version of himself sprung back to life, its intestinal walls shuddering and wobbling. Hissing in rage, the man-sized Malwhere Lord made a lunge for Dan, but Dan didn’t move a muscle.

“Do it,” Dan said, standing his ground. He looked almost excited, like this was what he had hoped would happen, all along. “Just give me an excuse. Please.”

Just before Kalaechai reached him, the humanoid form disintegrated into vapor. It swirled around him like steam for a few seconds, then was gone.

A moment later, the gelatinous, fleshy walls of Kalaechai’s larger form also became mist. The pool of stomach juices rolled away, spreading into a much wider and shallower puddle on the floor.

Dan looked down and saw that his pants had become shorts, and his coat was missing from below the knee. His legs were a brownish-red, as opposed to their usual greenish-gray, but otherwise undamaged. It was actually an improvement, he thought.

Above him, the broken walkways were empty. No Paradise, Janto, or any of Paradise’s remaining henchmen. No Ollie, either.

To Dan’s surprise, it was that last one that bothered him the most.

“Well, then,” he muttered, fixing the collar of his coat and making some final adjustments to his spine. “Guess I’ll go see what shizzstorm awaits outside.”

* * *

Dan limped out through the factory entrance, and almost tripped over Artur, who was running in the opposite direction.

“Hey, watch it, ye clumsy big bastard,” Artur protested. He looked Deadman up and down. “What the Hell has happened to yer pants?”

“Stomach acid.”

Artur winced. “Shoite. Again?”

Dan nodded. “Yup. Again.” He limped on. “Shouldn’t you be with Nona?”

“Ollie’s got her,” Artur said. “She said you were having a spot of bother with yer man, Kalaechai, so I thought I’d come and lend a hand.”

He peered into the factory. “But I can see ye’ve taken care of it. How’d ye manage that?”

“I told him what I’d done to Tusshuk of the K’trubbon.”

“Oh. Right,” said Artur. “And who’s Tusshuk of the K’trubbon when he’s at home?”

“Fonked if I know,” said Dan, shrugging. “Sounded good at the time, though.”

Artur grinned. “Yer a sly one, Deadman, ye know that?”

“I have my moments.”

“That ye do, matey. That ye do,” Artur agreed. “And how about that feckin’ eejit?”

“Who?”

“What d’ye mean, ‘who’? Yer man. Nona’s father. Ye took care of him, I take it?”

They heard the screaming before Dan could reply. It came from up ahead, beyond the broken fence, and around the back of the truck.

“Nona!” Artur yelped. He set off running, with Dan hurrying along behind as best he could.

“Artur, wait,” he called. “There’s something you need to know.”

He caught up with the little guy at the rear of the truck. Nona had stopped screaming, and now stood tucked in behind Ollie, her face pressed against Ollie’s lower back, her eyes screwed tightly shut.

Paradise West sat in her CareChair, flanked by seven guards. Janto half-stood, half-crouched beside the chair. One arm held his stomach, like he was afraid it was going to fall out through his rectum at any moment. The twisted fingers of his other hand beckoned to the little girl.

“…just a few tests, that’s all. I won’t hurt you, Nona,” he said, his voice like a crackle of Fall leaves. “You’ll be helping me. You’ll be Daddy’s special helper.”

“Leave her alone. You’re not taking her,” Ollie said.

“Too feckin’ right he isn’t. Deadman! Why isn’t this crispy-fried bastard dead?” Artur demanded. “And Holy Father, what’s that smell? Has someone shoite themselves or something?”

Paradise raised her eyebrows and smiled. “Do you want to tell him, or shall I?”

Dan ground his teeth together, holding the old woman’s gaze. “I owe her a favor,” he intoned. “She helped me find Nona. And now she’s taking that piece of filth with her.”

“My hairy arse she is!” Artur protested. “If ye’re not going to kill him, I’ll do it meself.”

He tensed, getting ready to throw himself at Janto, but seven blaster rifles trained on him, and he reluctantly thought better of it.

“So… what?” he snapped, squinting up at Dan. “We’re letting him go? We’re letting him get away with it?”

“Oh, he’ll get away with nothing,” said Paradise. “He’ll be punished for his misdeeds, mark my words. I’m not a monster, you know? I wish to see him pay for what he did to those children as much as you do.”

“I highly doubt that, wrinkles,” Artur spat.

Paradise’s mouth formed a shape traditionally associated with smiling, without ever actually becoming a smile. “Ha. Quite.” She raised her eyes to Dan. “So, it’s agreed. I cash in one of those favors, and I take Janto here for my own purposes?”

Dan felt the heat of Ollie and Artur’s gazes on him. He ignored them both. “Agreed,” he said.

“Deadman, ye can’t be serious!”

“Artur, shut up,” Dan said. He turned away, unable to look at Paradise’s smirk any longer.

“And we’ll need the girl, obviously.”

Dan froze.

“Not for long, and I won’t let him hurt her. Just some blood samples. Tissue, DNA, what have you. She’ll be well compensated, of course.”

Slowly, his boot heels scuffing on the tarmac, Dan turned. Artur now stood in front of Ollie, providing an extra line of defense between Nona and her father.

Paradise indicated Janto with a nod. “It seems this one’s worthless without her. She has information he needs for his work, otherwise he’s of no use to me.”

Dan’s one remaining fist clenched. It did not go unnoticed.

“Don’t forget, Mr Deadman, you still owe me another favor.”

Dan turned and looked at the girl cowering against Ollie’s back. Through a gap in her fingers, he saw one of her eyes, wide and red and too exhausted to cry.

He sighed. “You’re right. I do.”

“I knew you’d see sense,” Paradise said. She gestured for one of her guards to take the girl. The man snapped to attention and made his move, only for Dan to block his path.

“I wouldn’t,” he said, meeting the guard with a dead-eyed gaze. “See, Paradise, I am going to do you that favor, just not the way you ask.”

“I’m sorry? I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Dan placed a single finger in the middle of the guard’s chest and pushed him slowly backwards. “The favor I’m doing is this.” He loomed over her CareChair, ignoring the weapons being trained on him. “I’m going to give you a head start.”

“I beg your pardon?” Paradise snorted, her eyes narrowing.

“You heard me. I’m going to give you a head start. Let’s say three minutes. If you’re gone when those three minutes are up, then so be it. I’ll leave you to get on with your business.”

He leaned closer to her, and felt a sense of grim satisfaction when she drew back into her chair. “But if you’re still here, then your business becomes my business, and all bets are off.”

Paradise shifted in her seat. “And if I refuse?”

“You won’t,” said Dan. “Because I’ve had a really bad day, and you’ve only got seven guns.”

He straightened up. “Artur, you got a watch?”

“How would I wear it? As a feckin’ belt? No, I don’t have a watch.”

“Ollie?”

“What’s a watch?”

“Guess that’s a no, then,” said Dan. He shrugged. “We’ll just have to estimate it. Although, I should warn you, a good friend of mine recently told me I have a habit of underestimating things. Turns out he was right. So you should probably start moving.”

Paradise held his gaze for several seconds, then relented. “Very good, Mr Deadman,” she said. “Well played.”

With a wave of her hand, she ordered her guards to stand down. Her CareChair hummed as it turned, and Janto scurried along beside it as it skimmed across the tarmac towards a group of expensive-looking mag-lev vehicles parked further along the street.

“I can’t believe ye’re letting him away with everything he did,” said Artur, disgust dripping from every word. “I can’t believe it.”

Dan held a hand out, silencing him. He waited until Paradise was a good thirty feet away, before calling to her. “Oh, and one more thing.”

Paradise’s CareChair slowed, then stopped. She turned. “What?” she asked, her usual air of false pleasantry falling away.

“You said it yourself. Without the girl, he’s worthless.”

Paradise’s eyebrows dipped in the middle, then raised higher than ever. She looked Janto up and down. He practically bowed and scraped, wilting beneath her gaze. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?”

Dan stepped in front of Ollie, turning to face her.

“Wait, n-no, please, don’t do—” cried Janto, and then a series of blaster shots ended his sentence, and him in general.

Dan waited until he heard the humming of the CareChair moving away. He sagged a little, giving in to his exhaustion. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get this kid home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Returning Nona to her mother was, Dan had to admit, the high point of his day. Considering the day he’d had, though, that wasn’t exactly saying much.

There had been tears, roughly equal thirds split between Nona, her mother, and Artur, who sobbed uncontrollably for most of his time in the apartment, and even offered to give Nona her dolls’ clothes back. She had declined, and rummaged under her bed until she’d found a whole box full of boy doll clothes, which Dan had been forced to carry, one-handed, down to the Exodus, after they’d said their goodbyes.

“Ye did a good thing, Deadman,” said Artur, from his spot on the dash.

“Yeah, well, I got paid, that’s the main thing,” Dan said.

“Yeah, sure. Just ye keep telling yerself that,” Artur said. He rolled his eyes and turned to Ollie. “Ye hear the shoite that comes out of his mouth, peaches? ‘I got paid, that’s the main thing.’ And the worst of it is, he thinks he believes it.”

Ollie let out a nervous laugh, and tucked a strand of hair back over her ear. She spoke to Dan without looking at him. “Uh, so, what happened with, you know?”

“Your father? Your father, who murdered my friend while looking for you?” said Dan.

“Harsh, Deadman,” said Artur.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, him,” said Ollie. “Is he… Am I going back?”

“Do you want to go back?”

“No!” Ollie said. “No. Never.”

Dan shrugged. “Then you’re not going back. We made a deal.”

“Oh? Oh!” Ollie lunged across the car to give Dan a hug. Instinct got the better of him, and he deflected the move with a crunching elbow to the jaw.

“Shizz. Sorry. I thought…”

“He’s not used to displays of affection,” said Artur. “Probably should’ve warned you about that, peaches.”

“No, no, that’s OK, that’s OK,” said Ollie, nursing her chin in both hands. “My fault. Totally my fault. Boundaries overstepped. Lesson learned. No harm done.”

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, then lightly punched Dan on the shoulder and winked. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Dan said. “And, you know, sorry about the elbow thing.”

“Don’t worry about,” Ollie said, her voice slurred. “I can barely even feel it.” She shifted in her seat. “So… what should I do now?”

“I’d put some ice on it, personally,” Artur suggested.

“Huh? Oh! No, I meant… What do I do now in general?”

Dan shrugged. “Well… I don’t know. It’s a big city. Lot of opportunities.”

“Drugs,” said Artur. “Prostitution, getting murdered by some feckin’ headcase with a big knife. Sure, the streets are practically paved with gold.”

“Lots of real opportunities,” Dan insisted. “If you look for them. You know, hard enough.”

“Well… good. OK,” said Ollie. “That’s… that’s good. Opportunities.”

She waited for him to say something.

He didn’t.

Ollie reached for the door handle. “OK, well… I guess I’ll see you, then.”

“I guess so,” said Dan.

The door opened, and the sound of the city filled the car. The sun was coming up, and the shift change between night people and day people was in full swing.

“Although,” Dan began.

Ollie stopped, halfway out of the car.

“You did make a promise.”

“I did?” said Ollie.

“To Ned.”

“Oh. I mean, yes. Yes! I did.”

Dan flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Seems you owe him that much.”

Ollie blinked. “You mean…? You mean you want me to stick around?”

“Well, ‘want’ is a strong word,” said Dan.

Up on the dash, Artur tutted. “Oh, just start the car and cut the shoite, ye predictable big eejit,” he said, scowling. “And take us home.”

Dan fired up the Exodus. To his surprise, it started first time.

Then died, almost immediately.

He sighed, and turned to Ollie. “Don’t suppose you’d like to give me a push?”

“What? Oh! Yeah! Sure!” Ollie said.

She pushed him.

“Walked into that one, Deadman,” Artur said, sniggering.

“The car. I meant the car,” said Dan. “Could you push the car?”

“Oh! Yes! Of course! Gotcha!” she said. “Get out and do it, you mean?”

“Well I don’t see how you can do it from in here.”

“Right! Yes!”

Ollie jumped out of the car and closed her door.

She opened it again.

“Should I close the door, or leave it open?”

“It’s fine,” said Dan. “Leave it open. Just push, and when you hear the engine, jump in.”

“Through the door?”

“Where else would you suggest?” Dan asked.

Ollie frowned, then smiled. “Wait, that’s not a real question, is it?”

“Oh-ho. She’s catching on,” said Artur.

“No. Not a serious question. Use the door.”

“Gotcha!”

She vanished, then came back.

“And push the car that way?”

Dan nodded. “Forwards. Yes. Ideally.”

Ollie gave a thumbs-up, then disappeared around the back of the Exodus. Dan watched in the rear view mirror as she placed both hands against the back, gritted her teeth, screwed up her face, and pushed.

“Ye know something?” said Artur. “I think she’s going to fit in just fine.”

“We’ll see,” said Dan.

They both watched her struggle to start the car rolling.

“Ye know ye’ve still got the brake on, right?”

Dan nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Ye’re a bastard, Dan Deadman.”

“Yeah. I know that, too,” said Dan, then he released the brake and looked at the long dark road ahead as the Exodus began to inch forwards.

“Now, let’s go home,” he said.

And they did.

Slowly.

AUTHOR NOTES

Hey there! You made it to the end of the first full-length Space Team spin-off novel. Well done. Give yourself a pat on the back, and a high-five from me.

I hope you enjoyed Dan’s first solo (ish) adventure. If you haven’t done so already, you can read Dan’s first appearance in Space Team: The Guns of Nana Joan, where you might even see one or two things referenced in this book unfold (hint: there’s a giant robot involved). In fact, if you enjoyed this book, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the Space Team series in general, so do feel free to check it out.

You can get started with this free short story, Space Team: The Holiday Special.

Dan Deadman didn’t start out as a space detective. He wasn’t even called Dan Deadman, in fact. The character was originally something I came up with for a comic book series called Gangrene, which didn’t quite get finished. It always bugged me that the character was never going to get to see the light of day, so I’m excited that he’s finally had his time to shine, albeit in a slightly different form.

Putting this book out into the world has been pretty scary. The Space Team series is doing pretty well for itself, and has an amazingly dedicated group of fans. Creating something new within the Space Team Universe has caused me no end of worry, in case I let them down in some way. Hopefully I haven’t.

If you’d like to see more of Dan Deadman, Ollie and Artur, then be sure to let me know. I love hearing from readers, and you can contact me via my website – barryjhutchison.com – or drop me an email to barry@barryjhutchison.com.

Finally, if you’ve enjoyed this book, it’d be a huge help if you could leave me a review. Reviews are a great way of letting readers know what to expect, and they also please my master, Amazon, and make them look more favorably upon my sniveling, worthless hide.

Thanks again for taking the time to read, and I hope you had as much fun as I did.

Best wishes,

Barry

Dan Deadman will return in

DEAD MEN DON’T GET PAID

Coming January 2018

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