Free Striper Assassin by Nyx Smith Page B

the driver’s seat shifts position. His name’s Axle. He’s got cyberoptics for eyes and black-wired jacks stuck into the side of his skull. He can pilot the van without even putting a hand on the wheel. That won’t be necessary tonight, though. Axle’s the rigger so he does the driving, but this job won’t require much of his special skill. This one is pure rock and roll.
    “Alley’s still clear,” Axle murmurs.
    The alley is about nine blocks away, well within the hell zone of northeast Philly. Axle can see it because he’s got a floater in the air, an Aerodesign LDSD-23, which is like a helium balloon with a sensor pod slung underneath. The alley Axle is watching is important because it provides the only access to the place they plan to visit tonight. Hammer isn’t worried about possible witnesses. There are no witnesses north of Spring Garden Street and Center City. Just gangs, crazies, thriller chillers, and bikers. Hammer simply prefers no one to get in the way. It would be inconvenient.
    The argument in the back of the van starts to get loud. The problem is less Dana than Mickey. They all know about Dana, what sets her off. She and Dog Bite can go at it all day and night yet never take it beyond just butting heads. But once Mickey gets involved, things get out of hand. Mickey just doesn’t care. Not about anything. That really sets Dana to mouthing.
    Hammer turns in his seat, looks back, snaps the slide on his Ingram smartgun. The metallic clacking snares their attention. “Showtime.”
    Dana gives him a look of profound appeal. Hammer takes it calmly, as calmly as the last drag of his smoke.
    “Hammer,” she says.
    “Just do your bit. That’s all.”
    The look in her eyes turns to resignation.
    Axle rolls the van ahead.
    Northeast Philly, more than any other part of the city, remembers the Night of Rage when humans and meta-humans met in the streets and set the night to burning. Even after fifteen years the scars are still plain. Block after block of two-and three-story row houses bear gaping wounds, seared and cauterized by fire, many with roofs and whole walls reduced to crumbling masonry, charred timber, and ash. Debris from fallen buildings and mounds of festering garbage flow from the alleys into the streets. Incinerated autos squat along the curbs. The only streetlights are the steel-can fires of derelicts.
    Against this background of devastation, tonight’s little job seems like a mere drop of rain.
    Clean Sweep, it’s called.
    Headlights off, the van turns down a broad alley. The entrance to the target site is just ten meters down, the black metal door of the building on the right. They all put on night-vision goggles with heads-up displays and wire-framed headsets with full ear coverage to guard against interference. All except Dana. The mage doesn’t need that kind of protection.
    They pile out. Axle keeps the van running in case they should have to stage a quick extraction. Hammer motions Mickey and Dog Bite to the left of the black metal door and takes the right side for himself. Dana steps up, standing directly in front of the door.
    She lifts her hands before her face as if to pray, then begins doing things with her fingers, linking them together, folding, unfolding, forming pyramids, triangles, circles, complex knottings that rush from one configuration to the next. She calls it the emblemology of power, these finger-signs she makes. Hammer doesn’t much care about that. All he knows or cares about is that whatever she does, however she does it, it works.
    The dark space between Dana and the door begins to blur and waver like hot summer air shimmering above a road. The door takes on a waxy sheen. The sheen begins to run, flowing, cascading down like a shower of water, only the water is the substance of the door. The next moment there is no door, just a puddle of something black and wet oozing into the alley.
    Dana sways, visibly draws a deep breath, then thrusts her hair back from