"Nyx Smith - Fade to Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Nyx)

instant was all it took. This was 2055. There were slags walking the streets who would cut out your heart
and feed it back to you before you could know you were dead.
Rico leaned back against the bar, one hand dangling near the butt-grip of the Ares Predator 2 slung
from his hip. He kept his eyes moving. He didn't show anything with his face.
Before long, the silver-eyed trog leaned over the bar to say near Rico's ear, "The man's ready,
chummer." Rico nodded.
The alley led onto Ridge Street. Rico joined the jostling, hustling stream of people heading that way:
chipheads, gangers, groupie wannabes, day laborers, cheap muscle, anonymous gutterpunks. Every slant of
human, ork, elf, troll, whatever. They went dressed in cheap paper uniforms, studded synthleather, gleaming
mylar, glistening spandex with chains and ribbons and glowing fiber optics. Face tats and body color. At
least a few of these slags were here because they wanted in on the biz. Sector 3 might be impoverished,
over-crowded, crime-ridden, the seventh and lowest circle of a decaying urban hell, but it was one of the
best markets in the plex. Anything could be had for the right amount of nuyen. And some things could be
had for practically nothing at all. People said this part of the plex used to be lined with little two- and
three-story houses, brownstones, tenement apartments. Nice places where nice families lived. Rico doubted
it. The traces were few, and most of what people said usually amounted to pure drek, like what comes out
the butt-end of a bull.
Sector 3 was all steel and crete now, rising up seven stories with retrofitted pipes and conduits, all of it
scorched by the acid of the nightly rains and stained black and brown by soot and all the other garbage in
the air. Garish neon signs glared from every direction, the night burned as bright as day. Stores and shops
filled the ground floors of the buildings. Booths and stalls flanked the sidewalks. Ad stands lined the curbs,
sound tracks reverberating, echoing. The street itself was divided in half by four- and five-story coffin
hotels mat ran from corner to comer, served by rusted metal gangways. Vehicle traffic was banned. You
caught an auto-cab in the underground, or the subway, or you walked Rico paused to look as the staccato
stammer of automatic weapons arose suddenly from the general direction of Abington Avenue East He
saw only the mass of people surrounding him, passive, stone-featured faces. He took his lead from the
crowd and continued on. The rising shriek of belt-screamers alerted him to the DocWagon High Threat
Response team coming his way, bruising path through the congested street. The two orks with the team ran
interference. Rico shoved into the crowd at his left to get out of the way, then turned the corner onto
Treadwell Street.
At mid-block was a four-story brownstone with a porch and steps sided by black metal railing-a
remnant of the times long gone, if what people said was so.
On the brownstone's porch waited a pair of razorguys in studded blue synthleather. They were prime
cutters, chromed to the max and willing to prove it. Rico knew that for a fact, he could have guessed it at a
glance. The cutters held themselves like real gillettes, like they had whatever it might take to meet." any
challenge from the street. They watched Rico start up the steps with what looked like casual indifference,
but as he reached the porch, they stepped into his path-no hesitation, no doubt about what they were doing.
Stop or fight, that was the message.
Sometimes a man had no choice but to fight. This wasn't one of those times. Watching the cutters'
eyes, Rico said, "I'm expected."
"We know," one said quietly.
Moments passed. Rico waited. Custom had to be satisfied. Certain things had to be done in certain
ways. You didn't just walk up the steps to the man's house and breeze right through the front door. Rico
knew all that and had no objections. If nothing else, respect demanded it.
Another prime cutter came to the door, looked out, motioned Rico inside and led him through the
house. No one asked to check his weapons or suggested he give them up. Respect worked both ways.
They came to an expansive atrium rising to a translucent roof four stories overhead. Colorful exotic
birds flitted around, darting among the limbs of a few tall tress or watching from various perches high up on
the walls. The birds alone were probably worth a fortune. The rest was like something you'd only see on
the Museum Channel: bushes, flowering shrubs, beds of flowers. A waterfall. A path winding through it all