Chap 4

Ceres. The western reaches of the Colony. Block 24.

It was almost eleven when Riki got back to his apartment. He was drenched. The falling temperatures had left him chilled to the bone as well. His cold-weather motorcycle jacket was water-resistant, but had soaked up enough water to turn the bright metallic blue a muddy indigo. His old black trousers were no exception. Neither was his underwear. The cold penetrated him to the marrow.

Shit, he muttered to himself. The weather only pissed him off more. Perhaps it was his misery that annoyed him the most. Or, it was chasing his tail all over town and being made a fool. His gray matter felt like soggy newspaper. But his thoughts wouldn't rest. At any rate, the first thing on his agenda was to warm himself up. He could tend to his unsettled thoughts later.

With trembling lips that felt like rubber, he stripped off his clothes and jumped into the shower. The hot spray felt like pins and needles all over his body. His frozen, shivering muscles finally began to thaw. His stiff body began to feel human once again. He took a deep breath.

That was when his phone hummed, indicating an incoming message. Thinking it might be a call from Guy, he turned off the water. It wasn't a phone call, but an alert announcing a visitor. And, based on the ring tone, that somebody had an unlisted number.

"What the hell—?" he muttered to himself. His dashed expectations only gnawed at him further. And he directed his ire at that stranger. "Piss off already."

He cranked up the shower and closed his eyes. In the slums everybody erred on the side of self-preservation, and watched their own backs first. Nobody would excuse bad behavior, but neither would they look kindly upon anybody who exposed a weakness.

Valuables would get stolen as a matter of course, and as long as no dead bodies showed up, the cops weren't going to investigate a mere forced entry or assault. Rather than waste time crying over losses, it was best to have a good defense.

A stranger showing up on Riki's doorstep on a dark and stormy night was out of the norm. Since Iason had pulled the same stunt the other day, Riki had been paying more attention than usual to his security.

That night, even after getting himself so wasted that he couldn't have walked a straight line to save his life, he was shocked at the ease with which Iason had taken him by surprise.

After that—to whatever extent he could say such things—he wouldn't be spending much time in his own home. But it would do to keep his wits about him in the meantime.

He finally stopped shivering, though his insides could stand some warming up. He stepped out of the shower and saw that his phone was still blinking.

Geez, give it a rest, he said to himself again. That fool was one stubborn bastard.

The chime from the front door echoed through the small apartment. Riki jumped despite himself and swallowed hard. With the rushing water in the shower, he hadn't heard it before. Whoever it was had probably been ringing non-stop.

What does this asshole want—?

Riki's brains must have been frozen solid. The doorbell sounded like a booming klaxon to him now. He pulled on his bathrobe. A malfunction, maybe? He drew his eyebrows together. Some dumb, practical joke? That was the only conclusion the clamoring noise pointed to.

What? What? What!

Having already been stood up by Guy, the tight spring of his emotions coiled tighter. But he wasn't so addled by his rising sense of irritation that he was just going to throw open the door.

Anything could happen in the slums, at any time and anywhere. Though the score had been settled with Jeeks, that didn't necessarily mean the whole game was over. Riki still had to be cautious. He switched on the peephole camera and saw a man he didn't know standing there.

Who the hell is that?

The man's sharp eyes glared into the camera lens. He looked to be around thirty or so, which confused Riki all the more. Riki didn't hang out with guys in their thirties. It wasn't that he had nothing to say to them and gave them the cold shoulder; in fact, they were the ones who went out of their way to avoid him.

And not just because he was Riki. But because he was of "that age," and crossing that generational divide was always difficult. Where they ate and drank, the territories they carved out for their daily lives, necessarily isolated them. The one possible exception was the haunts where they went cruising for sex partners.

More than the man's persistent ringing of his doorbell, the cool glint in his eyes made Riki hesitate. Times like that, his best recourse was to play it dumb and back away slowly. The impulse to do just that was already licking at his senses.

When it came to deranged stalkers, one Iason was enough. At that point, Riki had already had enough drama to last a lifetime. Those thoughts pressed heavily on his mind, making the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he felt a premonition of danger.

The way the man was hugging the door, he didn't look like he'd be leaving anytime soon. Not after he'd confirmed that Riki was at home. It was a little too late to go around turning off the lights and sitting quietly in the darkness.

Riki scowled. "Who are you?" he asked over the intercom and steeled himself for the worst.

No answer came, but at least the incessantly ringing doorbell finally stopped. The expression on the man's face changed subtly but distinctively. Enough to give Riki the clear impression that he didn't care for his existence.

"What do you want?"

"If you don't want me breaking down this door, let me in." The man's first words were full of bluster and irritation. A voice pitched low, grim and tense. In a completely different manner than Iason, it carried a weight that resounded deep in Riki's gut.

Riki sensed big trouble coming his way. But there was no ignoring it now. Besides, he didn't doubt that the man really would come crashing in.

Gritting his teeth, he unlocked the door.

The first thing Riki saw coming at him the second the door cracked open was the black luster of a gun. He instinctively jerked back. A second man—hiding somewhere out of view—pushed in after him, dressed all in black and moving in a manner that suggested he wasn't an ordinary working stiff.

Shit—

The turn of events was totally unexpected. Riki didn't feel or think anything. He was simply dumbfounded and couldn't grasp what was happening before his eyes.

In the slums, where gun control was strongly enforced, only a cop would ever brandish a firearm—let alone one with laser sights. And these guys sure didn't look like slum cops.

Guns at the ready, the men turned the apartment upside down. Looking under the bed. Checking out the closets. Peering into every nook and cranny. What they were looking for and what Riki had to do with any of it—nobody was providing any explanations.

For all their efforts, their search was unsuccessful. Unless it was just a show before getting down to the job at hand. The men exchanged glances and again pointed their guns at Riki. During that time, Riki had been keeping a cool head, trying to figure out who these guys were. But then a strange and unsettling sensation began welling up inside him.

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared at the sight of those guns. But the shock eyes dangling from their utility belts pointed to just one conclusion: these assholes are Midas Darkmen.

A renewed sense of surprise hit him. What were Darkmen doing there? And why? Confusion, amazement, and suspicion swelled inside him all at once.

As far as Riki knew, the Midas Darkmen—who despised the existence of the slum mongrels—were equally prisoners of their PAM devices. Then what was going on? How could they have crossed an impenetrable border?

Riki knew he wasn't a walking encyclopedia, but he'd never once heard of Midas cops forcing their way into Ceres. In the first place, such an occurrence would have thrown the slums into a panic. Up until a few minutes ago, the flow of human traffic had been one way—from the slums outward because of PAM. But what if that wasn't really the case?

That was a reality Riki didn't want to contemplate. He seriously wanted it all to be some sort of waking dream. One trip he'd never take again.

"You Riki?" said the man with short-cropped, silver hair.

After they'd ransacked the place and stuck their guns in Riki's face, hearing them throw his name at him as an afterthought didn't do much to assuage his temper.

"What if I am?" he shot back, not bothering to hide his bad mood. Their intrusion into his home was stirring up feelings of disgust and suspicion. Despite the surprise and bewilderment, he wasn't feeling timid at all.

Riki's shining black eyes focused on the man with the silver crew cut that covered his skull like a slab of dry ice. He wasn't trying to strike a provocative pose with the Darkman or anything.

Whether taking that as a gritty act of defiance or an ill-advised bluff, the man glared at the bathrobed, damp-haired Riki with seemingly new eyes. Then, without a twitch of an eyebrow, he said in a high-handed manner. "Get dressed."

There was a hardness in his voice, that of a man used to giving orders and having them followed. Compared to a guy like Katze, though, whose tempered toughness could silence black market ruffians with a single glance, the man had a bit of warmness about him. And he possessed nothing like Iason's absolute and cruel authority that could turn the sternest resolve to jelly.

There was no way that Darkman was going to intimidate Riki. But it was neither the time nor the place to make any futile last stands. Riki knew that in his bones.

"Fine." Better to step on the brakes than pop off with a useless display of ego. He turned on his heels, feeling the man's gaze on his back like a knife point.