Free Necrochip by Liz Williams Page A

dropped a couple of cents into the
little shrine that stood at the foot of the wall. Inside, the small
plastic god stared placidly out and, as I watched, he raised a hand
and blessed me. It was only the motion of the coins crossing the
infra-red sensor that made him do this, but I felt better, somehow.
It was hard not to be superstitious in Singapore Three; ironically,
for such a high-tech city, the media was full of talk of magic and
demons and it got to me, after a while.
    Back at the box I rented on Hsin Tsu Street, I
stared out of the minuscule window at the lights of the city. The
night sky was a permanent orange glaze, but up the coast, towards
the Yellow River estuary, I could see an edge of darkness: a storm
coming in over the South China Sea. I shivered, despite the stuffy
night heat. I had no wish to spend another steaming summer in
Singapore Three, but it wasn’t looking as though I had much choice.
I was living pretty much hand to mouth in those days, and if I
really wanted to get back to Glasgow (which I sometimes doubted),
I’d have to find a better-paid job. That night, however, thoughts
of home didn’t occupy me for long. I couldn’t get the girl out of
my mind. I’ve never considered myself a particularly moral
individual, but her matter-of-fact acceptance of something so
extreme disturbed me. I told myself that it was up to people what
they did with their own lives and their own bodies, but my brief
conversation with her had given me an insight into the macabre that
I didn’t feel I could handle. And what had she meant by
‘treatment’?
    I didn’t see her again for a couple of days, and
when she next came into the Azure Dragon I was once again working
behind the bar. In between serving drinks, I watched her as she
struck up a conversation with some middle-aged businessman. He was
wearing one of those heat-sensitive suits that had been all the
rage in Beijing the year before last and I could hear the drift of
colloquial Mandarin as they talked; the slurring accent like a
drift of static above the words. With a disorientating sense of
déjà vu, I saw her fish in her bag and take out the necrochip. She
handed it to him. The businessman studied it for a moment, then
reached into his pocket and took out a credit card. I watched,
disbelieving, as she ran it through her pod. He gave a small, curt
bow and walked away. It seemed my friend had collected number six.
Her face did not change as she replaced the necrochip in her
wallet, but remained the same passive mask. She clicked her bag
shut and walked towards the unisex restrooms.
    On impulse, I put down the glass I was polishing and
followed her. I think I had some hazy thought of offering to help
her, save her from a life of prostitution – or a death of one, to
be more accurate. How I intended to accomplish this, I had no idea.
I suppose she appealed to whatever vestiges of romance I still
possessed: I saw her as a tragic figure, desperate to be saved. I
didn’t want to alarm her, so I opened the restroom door quietly.
She was leaning over the basin, spitting blood. As she heard my
footsteps her head came up and I met her eyes in the mirror. They
glittered a crystalline red, like neon in the rain. Her head
swivelled around and she hissed. I took a hasty step backwards and
fell over a mop that someone had thoughtfully placed by the
entrance to the restroom. When I extricated myself, she had gone.
The tiny window beneath the ceiling, a good eight feet from the
ground, was hanging open. Tottering back into the bar, I told the
manager that I was feeling unwell and would have to go home. He
acquiesced with a sour nod.
    Before I left, however, I went over to the dark
booth where Number Six was sitting over his whisky.
    “Good evening. Excuse me,” I said in my dreadful
Mandarin. “Could I talk to you for a moment?”
    Number Six gave me the sort of look that made me
wonder briefly whether I’d managed to call him an arsehole rather
than bidding him a