BooksBarbecue
Back Woken Furies
Chapters (56)
  1. PROLOGUE
  2. PART 1
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. PART 2
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. PART 3
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. PART 4
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. PART 5
  44. THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. THIRTY-NINE
  46. FORTY
  47. FORTY-ONE
  48. FORTY-TWO
  49. FORTY-THREE
  50. FORTY-FOUR
  51. FORTY-FIVE
  52. FORTY-SIX
  53. FORTY-SEVEN
  54. FORTY-EIGHT
  55. FORTY-NINE
  56. EPILOGUE

I think he was still alive when I got back to my feet and went to help Segesvar. The sounds he was making followed me all the way out of the alley, and news reports the next day said he’d finally bled to death some time close to dawn. Then again, the same sounds followed me around for weeks afterwards, whenever I went anyway quiet enough to hear myself think. For the best part of the next year, I woke up with them clotted in my ears as often as not.

I looked away from it. The glass panels of the terminal slid back into focus. Across the table, Segesvar was watching me intently. Maybe he was remembering too. He grimaced.

“So you don’t think I have a right to be angry about this? You disappear for nine weeks without a word, leave me holding your shit and looking like a fool in front of the other haiduci. Now you want to reschedule the finance? You know what I’d do to anyone else who pulled this shit?”

I nodded. Recalled with wry humour my own fury at Plex a couple of months back as I stood seeping synthetic body fluids in Tekitomura.

“We, uh, we need to reschedule, Tak.”

I’d wanted to kill him, just for saying it like that.

“You think thirty per cent is unjust?”

I sighed.

“Rad, you’re a gangster and I’m.” I gestured. “No better. I don’t think either of us knows much about what’s just and unjust. You do what you like. I’ll find you the money.”

“Alright.” He was still staring at me. “Twenty per cent. That fit your sense of commercial propriety?”

I shook my head, said nothing. I dug in my pocket for the cortical stacks, kept my fist closed as I leaned across with them. “Here. This is what you came for. Four fish. Do what you want with them.”

He pushed my arm aside and jabbed an angry finger in my face.

“No, my friend. I do what you want with them. This is a service I’m providing you, and don’t you fucking forget that. Now, I said twenty per cent. Is that fair?”

The decision crystallised out of nowhere, so fast it was like a slap across the back of the head. Picking it apart later, I couldn’t decide what triggered it, only that it felt like listening again to that tiny voice out of the darkness, telling me to hurry. It felt like a sudden prickle of sweat across my palms and the terror that I was going to be too late for something that mattered.