Free Subterrene War 03: Chimera by T.C. McCarthy

breakthrough in the La Tumba murders, so it was time to cut our losses and split; he was in the kitchen, finishing the last uploads of the flexi-tabs so we could burst transmit to an orbiting platform and bail.
    “Kill her and get it over with,” Ji said. “Isn’t that your game?”
    Another cigarette burned red. I took a few more puffs, holding the smoke in for as long as I could, and thought,
Fléchettes would be too cruel.
She would have seen me draw, and there’d be that brief moment of horror before I fired, which was an image I didn’t want burned into my brain—at least not until I had some bourbon.
    She started crying more loudly, and I turned to walk back toward the coffee table. My kit rested on it. It took me a second to decide on what I wanted, but even when I lifted the injector, I couldn’t turn, didn’t want her to see the hesitation.
    “Jihoon.”
    “What?”
    “Tell her that we’re going to put her to sleep. That when she wakes up, we’ll be gone and she can go home.”
    He said something to her and then cleared his throat. “It’s done but why?”
    When I turned, she saw the aeroinjector and shut her eyes. “Because it makes a difference.” I knew without looking that Ji was watching. The girl’s skin was pale, a kind of white that I recalled seeing once in Georgia, on kaolin roads that stretched forever under overhangs of willows and Spanish moss, and when the aeroinjector pressed against her neck, the skin went even whiter. She whispered something, and Jihoon started to translate, but I didn’t want to know, telling him to shut up before he could even get started. Three pulses later she was unconscious.
    “The paralytic?” Jihoon asked.
    “Truth serum overdose. The stuff has an opiate in it, and I gave her enough to kill an elephant.”
    When it was over, I swept the area to make sure everything was in my kit, and then we both wiped down the apartment with bleach, taking anything that might have our hairs or skin—sheets, pillowcases, everything. It would be awhile before the Spanish could sift through all the DNA since there had to be thousands of other samples in such a public place as La Tumba, but we needed to be careful anyway. It hit me in a wave of dizziness. The sight of her on the floor and the twin images of Margaret and Bea both made me feel sick, the kind of sick that getting drunk would take care of, and Jihoon’s voice—his announcement that it was time to book—sounded as if it came from the other side of the world. I had to make sure. I pulled out my fléchette pistol and squeezed three rounds into her forehead before we left, before we walked down the stairs and into a rainy Madrid morning.
    “You on a commercial flight?” I asked.
    Jihoon nodded. “Out of Madrid. You?”
    “Better if you don’t know. I’ll see you in Asia; if there’s a delay, just keep going to the meeting point every day at noon.”
    We shook hands and nodded to each other before walking in separate directions.
    Cameras. Street cameras, like the ones in the States but hidden to preserve the old city’s appearance, and high-altitude police drones—those had done it, allowed the cops to finger me more quickly than I’d anticipated. They’d recorded me entering and leaving La Tumba. Now my face hovered over every one of Madrid’s holo casters in a grainy portrait, just clear enough to make out my features. It was night now. I’d spent all day in the sewer, hiding with the rest of Spain’s garbage and doing my best to call the next move.
    The satellite phone was cold, dripping wet as I phoned in the first report to let them know that the data was on its way and that I’d be moving out on an alternate schedule, and rain fell in sheets, in a wind so strong that it blew the drops sideways. When I finished, I smashed the phone on the concrete and then threw the pieces into the gutter. Flashing lights blinked from the direction of our flat. They turned the rain into a light show of