Free The Cipher by Kathe Koja Page A

against my windshield and my wipers not up to the job, driving through a landscape smeared and troubled and my sore hand aching, aching against the wheel. Back home I tore off the new bandage, let my hand sit palm-up on the open windowsill to touch without catching the steady reach of snow. I slept there, and when I woke, in the early dark, my hand instead of being cold stiff as the rest of me was a lustrous pink, the flesh pliant and warm and I touched it, wonderingiy, and as I did a spurt of fluid as thick as jelly burbled out on the iced inner sill and in its yellow clot I thought I saw swimming a bright and winking eye.
    Listless afternoon checkout at Video Hut, bandaged hand clumsy and cold, somehow, at the fingertips, was my circulation going or what. Learning to use the laser pen with my left hand. Learning to drink coffee with my left hand. Learning—it cost me some pinpricks—how to pin my badge on. My fellow grunts past asking now "what happened," ignoring me and my wound with equal nonchalance. Just the way I like it.
    No snow today but cold, oh yeah, I could feel it coming off the big front windows, feel its demand every time the door opened. Beside me, new grunt in short brown braid and badge askew, asking under his breath, "What kind of dumbshits come out on a day like this to get Booby Prizes?"
    "Or Mommy's Little Massacre." Ignore the faint ooze beneath my bandage. Open door and "Look at this one," I said, clandestine nod at a definite damage case, big guy in cracked brown leather, pale all over, pale like a corpse. "Bet he's not here for the H&R Block tape."
    "Scary looking," and just as he said it the guy turned, he couldn't have heard but he turned, came walking straight toward the register, closed stride, and my new buddy melted backward, me left alone with my laser pen and my fucked-up hand, saying, "Can I help you?" in a less than forceful tone.
    "Are you Nicholas?"
    Flat, flat voice, not especially deep, and when he leaned hands on the counter I saw the pitted skin, hilly nails with years of black grease beneath. Up so close he was paler still, so white I thought Albino, though his eyes were a watery gray. Weird long lashes. He blinked a lot.
    "Yeah, I'm Nicholas," I said. "What can I help you with?"
    Closer still, dull gas-station stink off the leather as he leaned down to me to say, "The Funhole."
    I stared. I think my mouth was open, requisite dummy stance but I couldn't help it, I kept staring and he said, more flat and quiet still, "'S okay. Shrike told me all about it."
    "Who's Shrike?"
    Faint impatience now, which I suppose I can understand, here he was with his great mystic password and I was reacting as if he'd just stolen my brain. "You know, Shrike. You don't have to be nervous, man. She showed me the video."
    Well. It wasn't a bad name for her, Shrike. And she'd showed him the video, had she. So: this must be my replacement. Talk about eclectic. Looking more closely, "Randy" stitched in that lumpy universal red on the shirt beneath the leather, a tiny bisected skull, gold-toned and grimy, hanging from one grimier ear. White-blond hair, very clean, the cleanest thing on him.
    "So," I said. "What'd you think of it?"
    "Oh man," leaning even closer, and now that flat voice had passion, "what a fuckin' trip, I couldn't believe it. We must of watched it twenty times. Shrike says the more you watch it, the deeper it goes, goes in you, you know?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "I watch it and I think, Now this is God, you know?"
    "God. Yeah." Lord of the fried. I smiled, involuntary sour twitch and—man of many moods— Randy laughed. "I knew it," he said. "I knew I'd like you, man."
    What an accolade. Shut up, I advised myself, he can break you in half. We stood there smiling at each other for a few more seconds, me wondering what the hell to add to this surreal bonhomie, but Randy had no worries, he knew exactly what he was about. Leaning even closer, one more inch and he'd be right in my face, con-spiratory