Repo Virtual by Corey White (read a book .txt) 📗

Enda exhaled loud. “Fine, but we have to be quick.”

When they were done, Enda climbed out of bed onto legs like jelly.

“Pass me your phone,” Crystal said.

Enda handed her the phone without thinking, and quickly dressed. She collected her bag from the corner of the room, still weighed down with her less-lethal arsenal. If she’d known her investigations would lead to an overnight rendezvous, she would have packed spare clothes—at least some spare underwear. Still, her appearance was hardly a concern when she was only tracking a porn-obsessed adolescent boy.

Enda watched Crystal pose for a photo, a cheeky smile framed by the waves of hair falling on either side of her face. She keyed her digits into the phone, walked around the bed, and gave it back to Enda. She leaned in painfully, teasingly slow, and they kissed.

“You have my number now. Call me.”

Enda stepped past Crystal and stood in the bedroom door. “I’m going to be busy,” she said. It was the truth, but it served as a lie.

“I’ll call you then,” Crystal said.

“I won’t answer,” Enda said beneath her breath. She hurried down the hallway, leaving Crystal, and their night together, behind.

Enda threw four breath mints into her mouth and their cool sweetness seeped across her tongue. She exhaled breath like ice and peered across the street at Osman’s apparent home base, a virtual reality café called the Varket.

The café’s neon sign glowed bright above the vantablack entrance, the footpath outside clear of pedestrians. Close by, a knot of people gathered beneath overlapping umbrellas. They stared at the café with haunted looks.

The hairs stood tall on the back of Enda’s neck. She pushed the sensation from her mind and crossed the road, ignoring the flash of red beneath her feet and the rain that fell steadily onto her head. At the café door she stopped to glance over her shoulder—most everyone on the street had paused, as though she’d stumbled onto a film set and all the extras were waiting at their marks. Enda went inside and pulled the door closed, shutting out the city.

Every surface in the café was painted black—scratched and scuffed in places, revealing layers of other black, gloss layers, matte layers, archaeological strata of black paint recording the years. The floor was sticky beneath the soles of her boots, and the place smelled of coffee, liquor, and the acrid scent of gunpowder. Enda reached into her bag. She retrieved her retractable riot shield, gripping it tight in her left hand. A small voice in the back of her head reminded her it wouldn’t stop a bullet—but she knew it was better than nothing.

The right side of the café was lined with large booths, upholstered in black vinyl, the small Formica tables littered with glasses, some standing, others knocked over in haste, liquid spilling over the edges and pooling on the floor. Two of the booths were scattered with computer parts, silicon and solder scattered in divination. Opposite the booths a long bar ran the full length of the space. The shelves behind it had been stacked with bottles of cheap booze—a scant few survived, the rest reduced to broken glass. The mirrored wall behind it was dented by bullets, and liquor dripped off the shelves in a gentle patter like rain.

A steady, quiet hiss played over the scene, like distant highway traffic, emanating from speakers mounted in the ceiling. An auxiliary cable dangled from a shattered tablet, the screen sparking a rainbow around the bullet hole, music like flying locusts played tinny from the device.

There was a sob from behind the counter; Enda turned at the sound, but thought better of peering over. She dipped her hand into her bag and found Tiny. She flicked its power switch and tossed the eye-drone into the air, where it faltered for a split second and hovered in place with a high whine. The drone’s low-res camera display expanded across the left side of Enda’s vision. In shadow mode, Tiny could be controlled using eye and eyelid movements. It could be unwieldy, but it kept her hands free.

Enda flicked her eyes up and the drone flew higher, giving her a view over the bar. She squinted slightly and Tiny flew forward, clearing the scarred, black-painted counter, and giving Enda a view of the Varket’s bartender, cowering with his back against a glass fridge door. His finely articulated prosthetic hand clutched a small knife—the type used to cut lemons for cocktails—and he held his phone in the other hand, trembling with the effort of gripping it. No gun.

Enda blinked the command to recall Tiny, and snatched it out of the air. She leaned over the bar for her first proper look at the bartender—hair soaked with booze, eyes red, translucent slug of snot leaking from his nose.

“What’s your name?”

“Min,” he sobbed.

“Min, I need you to put the knife down,” Enda said, gently.

“Are you the police?”

“What happened?” Enda asked, dodging the question.

He glanced toward the back of the bar.

“They still here?”

Min nodded. “Downstairs.”

Fuck. Enda slammed the center bar of her riot shield on the counter and Min flinched. Enda grimaced and hit it again, harder, and the shield extended a foot and a half in two directions.

“Climb over the bar, quickly,” Enda said.

Min hesitated. He stood slowly, uneasy on his feet, eyes stuck to the back wall of the café. He vaulted the counter and Enda helped him with her free hand.

“Outside. Wait for the police. Okay?”

Min nodded and scurried to the door, briefly admitting the noise of Songdo and a shaft of daylight that illuminated motes of dust and the drift of gun smoke near the ceiling.

Enda tossed Tiny back into the air. She took the baton from her bag, and swung it to full extension with a satisfying shick. Part of her wished it were a gun. She inhaled deep, and flew Tiny toward the rear of the café. Enda walked three steps behind the machine, urging her boots to a silence