CHAPTER FIFTY
Neville:
Silent as an empty midnight mass, the silver-and-black chopper thumped to a velvet halt, descended like light from heaven, landed on the roof of the Carrington Hotel. A ragtag team of misfits climbed out, the one thing that united them a gen-spike stench, an odor of skin that had been stretched and pumped so many times that it began to decay from within.
a€?Follows me, boys,a€? I said, leading the way toward the stairwell. a€?And makes sure yur darts is loaded. Like I says, ya might not needs them.a€? I grinned over my shoulder at Seth, a lanky nineteen-year-old who still couldna€?t grow a beard. a€?But ya might wants to use them anyway.a€?
Seth returned the smile, exposing crooked teeth, yellow from years of jive-sweet. His skinny arms were pockmarked from street-grade gen-spikes, something that had changed after he hooked up with my gutter brothers. Now he only got the best stuff. Jive-sweet was yesterdaya€?s candy. Today it was all about that euphoric high of genetic alteration.
A beam of sunlight glanced off the chopper, cascaded into a rainbow that turned everyone around me into faceless silhouettes. I felt an apprehensive shiver, crammed a handful of jive-sweet in my mouth. Something about the way the light sparked around us reminded me of that night in the bar, that a€?sitter and his liquid light, the feeling I was being watched by something that transcended my understanding.
a€?Boss?a€? Seth hovered, uncertain, in the doorway, a shock of black hair falling across his forehead.
I lifted my chin and laughed. Pushed my way back to the front of the line, inside the door and down the stairs.
My laughter ricocheted and bounced throughout the narrow corridor. Like the fire of a machine gun. I pulled out a blowgun and slid it between my lips. Long and narrow, about the length of two cigarettes, it felt good as it rolled into place, a hollow slot between my first and second bicuspids.
I sucked in a deep breath through the tube, trembling slightly at the traces of bliss, the latest designer drug, that flowed into my lungs. Just enough to wipe away any lingering fear.
We all had our blowguns in place now; we all grinned as we jogged down the stairs.
I is light and freedom, I brings power to the people. Them that gots no hope.
I brings them what they needs.
Immortality.