I had to know where Julia was, but the only thing I’d learned from the dream about where she was that morning was that she’d met up with Faye at some point. Granted, I didn’t know where they’d met up or even when—I was pretty sure it was after she cut off our video conversation, but I hadn’t bothered her with specifics, because I didn’t think I needed to know about them at the time. (Well, that, and I was somewhat distracted by the immanent dogfight with the Red Dragons.)
“I don’t know what’s going on with the Red Dragons, but it’s really not your problem, now, right?”
Of course, Jet’s commentary wasn’t much help. I suppose he was mostly doing it to keep his mind off of the pain while one of my contacts in the medical profession removed the bullet from his leg. I sort of had to admit that I used to be in the syndicate while I was taking him here, because there was no way I could come up with any bullshit that he’d believe. Besides, he had told me how he’d lost his arm. Betrayed by his best friend, apparently—I could certainly empathize with that feeling.
“‘Vicious’; ‘Julia’: To me, those names sound ominous, like a magic spell that unlocks an old door. A door that should stay closed.” Jet’s strange love of the first half of the twentieth century didn’t stop with his love of jazz (particularly bebop—he did name his ship after the subgenre, after all); he also had this obsession with film noir that occasionally reared its ugly head in when he felt the need to wax poetic on something or other (and when I say ‘poetic,’ I mean it in the loosest sense of the word). I try to avoid responding when he gets like that. It only encourages him.
Sometimes, however, he keeps going anyway: “What are you gonna—argh!”
“Keep it still, please.” The doctor said gruffly as he finally pulled the bullet out of Jet’s leg and effortlessly tossed in into a metal tray.
Needless to say, this happened the same way as the dream, too. I’d begun to accept that I’d had a chance to see what was going to happen in the next day (give or take a few hours—I knew for certain that I’d seen two distinct sunrises in my dream, and the first one hadn’t happened yet). The problem was that I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do with my second chance. Sure, it would be nice to meet up with Julia and ride off into the sunset with her, but we had the Red Dragons after us—worse, if what happened in the dream came to pass, we’d have Vicious after us, which, as you can probably guess, isn’t exactly a sign that things will end “happily ever after.” Even if we managed to survive through the day—a rather huge if in and of itself. Staying alive was going to be a tall order as long as the Red Dragons had strong, focused leadership, whether from the elders or Vicious.
“You’re not in the syndicate anymore, Spike.” Easy for him to say; he was never in the syndicate. Hell, that was the reason he’d lost his arm in the first place. If he’d ever been “in,” he’d have known that getting out completely was damn near impossible. The only reason the Dragons had left me alone was because they had thought I was dead for years. Likely as not, the only reason I hadn’t been killed as soon as they learned that I was alive was because of the upheaval in the syndicate’s internal politics. Still, even though Jet had been part of the ISSP’s organized crime division, he really didn’t understand the subculture (like I said, this is why he’d lost his arm in the first place) so, I gave him a nice, laconic non-answer: “Yeah, I know.”
“And you, doctor, you forget everything you’ve heard. In fact, forget we were here.”
As if he needed to tell the doc. “What are you yowling about? I’m just feeding stray cats that wandered into the office. Pesky cats I can’t even get rid of.”
In all honesty, I hadn’t really been paying close attention to this part of the conversation the first time around; I was lost in thought—lost in my past. But this time, I decided to pay attention to what was being said, and as I expected, it was boring as hell.
“I’d tell you to get some rest and stay out of trouble, but somehow, I doubt that’s really an option for you.”
“Whatever,” Jet responded with a groan. “How much do we owe you?”
“For something like this? Nothing.”
“Thanks—”
“I’m not being charitable. If you give me any woolong for this, that could prove you were here.”
“Right.”
I’m sure there was more, but at that moment, I wasn’t interested in hearing it, so I just decided to “fast forward” to the end, so to speak. “Then if there’s nothing else, we’ll head back to our ship,” I said, standing up and walking over to my partner. “You have a crutch he can use?”
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(Posted Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:21)
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