Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle - Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 4
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Wildcards - Jokertown Shuffle Part 4

Brennan shook his head. "Maybe. But maybe he's reaching out from the grave.

Maybe he gave his underlings orders to kill all his enemies when he died."

Tachyon frowned, considering it. "Why would they wait over a year to strike?"

Brennan shrugged. "I don't know. But remember. You were on Kien's hit list too."

"I was, wasn't L" Tachyon sighed. "Yet another complication in an already too-complicated life." He looked at Brennan and was about to add something more, but a shout from the reception desk made them both turn and stare.

"Tachyon!" Havero called out suddenly. "Alert the staff, stat! Something's--"

Even as Havero spoke, there was a commotion at the door. An ambulance, lights flashing, sirens wailing, roared up and braked to a sudden halt. Havero reached over the counter, punched a button on the hospital intercom, and was reeling off orders as the ambulance attendants leapt out of the vehicle. One ran around to the rear of the ambulance; the other approached the clinic's double glass doors, which whooshed open as he neared.

"Gang fight," the driver cried. "Killer Geeks and Demon Princes. We've got a load, and there's more on the way." Tachyon cut across the reception area, Brennan on his heels. The driver headed back to help the attendant open the vehicle's back door. They slid a blanket-covered gurney from the ambulance, and Havero, standing in front of the reception counter, screamed, "Everyone get down!"

Brennan and Tachyon reacted with the reflexes of seasoned combat veterans. They hit the polished linoleum floor as the figure on the ambulance gurney sat up, threw his blanket off, and emptied a clip from an Uzi into the reception area at full automatic.

Brennan rolled as he hit the floor. In a frozen second he saw the bullets whine through the reception area like a swarm of angry bees. The old man spitting into the cup was stitched across the chest. He hunched forward and slid off the chair, surprise and pain on his face as his expression froze and his eyes glazed.

The woman reading the National Geographic was unharmed until she saw her children cut down as they stood rooted in terror in the center of the room. She leaped to her feet, an endless hysterical scream ripping out of her throat. The furry guy was lucky, too, but Cody Havero's luck was miraculous. The gunman seemed drawn by her scream and half instinctively swept his weapon in her direction. But she leaned backward, doing a strange sort of limbo, and Brennan saw out of the corner of his eye that most of the burst punched through the counter above her.

By then, he had reached the Browning holstered in the small of his back. Stomach pressed tight to the floor, he drew and aimed with one fluid motion, almost forgetting that he had a gun, replaying in his brain the instant coordination of muscle and mind that was his when firing a bow. He held the pistol out before him, both arms extended, hands clasped loosely, muscles relaxed, eyes almost closed. He squeezed off a single shot, and the man sitting on the stretcher bucked backward. Brennan's mind trapped the moment like an insect encased in amber. He played it back as the man fell and saw a round black hole punched in the middle of the assassin's forehead.

"Christ!" one of the ambulance attendants swore, and fumbled for something buttoned up under his coat. Brennan now knew that he had plenty of time, and he knew that they needed some questions answered. He shot both attendants in their kneecaps.

Tachyon was on his feet before they hit the floor. The hideous screaming of the joker mother suddenly ended, and she slumped into the pool of her children's blood. Brennan glanced at Tachyon.

"Told her to sleep," the little alien said shortly. He stood, fury clenching his delicate face into a hard, angry fist. "Ancestors! In my clinic. My clinic!"

"Better see to Dr. Havero," Brennan said. "I think she took a round."

Havero straightened as Tachyon ran toward her and waved him off. "Two rounds,"

she managed to say. "Just flesh wounds. I'm all right."

Tachyon changed direction in midstride, heading for the leaking bodies of the joker children. Brennan didn't bother. He could still see the snapshots his mind had taken of the bullets ripping their bodies, and he knew there was no hope. He went to Havero. She had two flesh wounds, upper arm and calf. The bullets had missed all bones and major blood vessels.

"How'd you do it?" Brennan asked her as Tachyon moved helplessly from corpse to corpse.

She shifted her weight and grimaced. "The old Havero luck," she said.

Brennan nodded. I should be so lucky, he thought. The reception room was suddenly the focal point of an explosion of activity. Brennan knew that he had little time to waste. Someone had assuredly called the police, and he couldn't be here when they arrived. Also, maybe this was just a diversion. Maybe the real attack had gone through a side entrance and up a freight elevator to a supposedly secure room on the clinic's upper floor.

He walked calmly toward the two hit men still writhing on the floor. Neither looked very happy, but then, neither did Brennan.

"Talk," he said to the one who had been the spokesman. "I don't know, I don't know nothing, man."

"How about a busted elbow to go with your blown knee?" Brennan asked, aiming the Browning.

"No, man, I swear, I swear to Christ!"

Brennan aimed his pistol. The hit man shrieked and blubbered, but his cries didn't stop Brennan. Tachyon did. "He's telling the truth," Tachyon said. The alien sounded bone-weary but not especially surprised at the violence that entangled him. "They're freelance muscle, hired by the man on the gurney whom you shot. And he's not going to talk anymore."

Brennan nodded and holstered his gun. "Yes he is, in a way," Brennan said. He hunkered over the body and tore off its shirt, pointing to the bulky bandage high on the left shoulder blade. "I hit the only survivor of the attack on my country place right about there. This was his second try." He stood, reached into his back pocket, and took out an ace of spades. He scaled it at the body, and it stuck, face up, to the blood running from the dead man's forehead.

"Something for your friends from the law to think about when they finally get here from the doughnut shop," he said, and turned away.

"Wait a minute," Tachyon said. "Where are you going?"

Brennan glanced overhead. "To check on things." Tachyon nodded. "I understand.

Be careful."

Brennan nodded. Avoiding the lumbering elevator, he took the stairs up to the clinic's top floor. The corridor was dark and quiet. He went down it like a skulking cat, and when he flung open the door to Jennifer's room, a startled Father Squid whirled to stare at him.

"What was all that commotion down below?" the priest asked.

"Another hit," Brennan said briefly, holstering his Browning. "Everyone all right?"

Brennan shook his head. "I think they need you down there, Father."

The priest crossed himself and dashed out of the room. Trace was sitting in a chair by Jennifer's bed, looking like a statue of the wounded woman. Jennifer herself had faded to the point of translucence. She looked like a serene, beautiful corpse.

Brennan winced. This couldn't be doing her any good. He started to say something, but Trace looked up and rubbed tiredly at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

She looked at Brennan. "I found her," she said wearily. "She's lost, afraid and wandering. She wouldn't come back with me."

"You have to bring her back," Brennan said.

Trace shrugged. "I can't. She doesn't trust me." She looked at Brennan speculatively. "But maybe you can. If you have the guts."

Brennan started to answer her, but she held up her hand. "Don't be so quick to commit yourself," she said. "I know you're tough and brave and all that, but physical bravery has little to do with this." She pursed her lips and looked at Brennan seriously. "Your Jennifer was in a deep dream state when you were attacked. Instead of snapping back into her body, her mind somehow shunted itself off into another plane-another dimension. I suspect that this has something to do with the nature of her ace powers, that when she turns immaterial, she somehow shifts through adjacent dimensions."

"And this time," Brennan said, "only her mind shifted. Her body stayed behind, and she can't find her way back to it."

"Correct," said Trace.

"What's this other dimension like?" Brennan asked. "Now it's just a gray void, but that's because Jennifer's conscious mind is dormant. Once a waking mind enters it, it'll become the living manifestation of the archetypes that govern that mind."

Brennan frowned. "I see. I think. But what's so dangerous about that?"

"If you enter this dimension, it'll become populated by the driving images, by the symbolic figures that stalk your subconscious. Do you dare face them?"

Brennan hesitated. He had no great desire to examine closely the hidden secrets of his mind. But it seemed he had no choice. He nodded.

Trace smiled, but there was little humor in it. "All right," she said. "I guess we'll get to see how brave you really are."

Kien got up, walked to his office door, and closed it, shutting out the annoying beep-boop-bap coming from the antechamber where Rick and Mick were playing Donkey Kong on the Atari.

It baled Kien why anybody would waste his time like that, but he allowed lesser men their divertimenti. He had his own plans to occupy his mind. He should be hearing from Lao about the hit on the clinic at any time now. If Brennan and that arrogant little space bastard were dead, fine. But Kien had the feeling that it wouldn't be that easy, that he would need a more subtle web to ensare them. Then, spiderlike, he could suck out their juices and cast aside their desiccated corpses like yesterday's garbage.

Yes, he told himself as he sat back in his chair, feet on his desk and fingers interlaced behind his head, nice image. I like it. I am a spider, a great, powerful emperor spider who sits in the center of his web, patient and cunning, reading the vibrations made by lesser men as they scurry like trembling flies from strand to strand. I pick those to reward and those to use and discard. I've come a long way since Vietnam and the store that was my father's.

His father, Kien realized, had frequently been on his mind lately. It wasn't like him to be obsessive about the past. Thinking about the past did no good. It couldn't change things. It did no good to brood about the old man's death, the way Kien had found him lying slaughtered on the dirt floor of their store. Kien had never had much as a child. He endured poor food and patched clothing, and was jeered at by the other children in the village as much for his pauperish appearance as for being Chinese. But the French bastards who murdered his father took what little money the old man had accumulated, dug the strongbox right out of the secret place where Old Dad had kept it hidden. They left nothing for Kien. That was why he had to change his name and go to the city. He didn't desert his family. He did what he could for them-- There was a sound, a knock on his door, and Kien started. "Come in," he said.

It was Rick and Mick. "Just got word from your informant on the police force,"

Rick said.

"He kept an eye out like you told him," Mick added, "and went to the scene when the call came that something was going down at the Jokertown Clinic."

"And?" Kien prompted.

Rick and Mick looked at each other, and Kien realized that neither wanted to be the bearer of bad tidings. They nudged each other a couple of times, and Rick finally came out with it. "Lao's dead. Shot once through the forehead. There was an ace of spades on his body."

Kien clenched his teeth. "And Brennan and Tachyon?" Rick and Mick shook their heads. "Don't think they were hurt. Lao got some joker -kids, a joker geezer. He also wounded one of the doctors. Tachyon's still at the clinic, but from what the witnesses said, this Brennan guy just disappeared. He kneecapped the guys Lao hired to help him and left them behind for the cops."

"But they don't know nothin'," Mick was quick to add. "They're not Fists.

They're not connected to you."

They seemed to expect some kind of explosion, but Kien just nodded. "I'd planned for this possibility" he said. "If you want something done right," he mused aloud, "you have to do it yourself."

He stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and started to pace around the room. "Tachyon's no problem," he muttered. "I can deal with the little fool anytime I want to. It's Brennan I have to track down as soon as possible." He fixed Rick and Mick with a stare. "Where would he go after the attack?" Rick and Mick looked at each other, looked back at Kien, and shrugged.

"He would be worried about his bitch. Yes. His sentimentality would get the best of him, and he'd head right for her side to make sure that she was all right."

He stopped, stared at a three-tiered glass stand that held part of his fabulous collection of ancient and rare Chinese ceramics. "He said that she _ was at the clinic, but they wouldn't just put her in an open ward. She'd be somewhere that they thought was safe." He paced back to his desk. "Where, precisely, would that be?"

Someone behind him sneezed. "Bless you," Kien said reflexively. "I didn't sneeze, boss," Rick said. "Neither did I," Mick added.

Kien whirled around. "Then who did?"

"I think it came from there," Rick said, pointing at the vase on the middle tier of the glass stand.

It was a green-glazed vase with a black background dating from the Yung Cheng period. Very old and extremely rare in color and form, it was one of the cornerstones of Kien's art collection. He frowned, stood, and went back to the glass stand. He peered into the vase.

Inside was a manikin, a wrinkled, leathery-looking homunculus whose skin seemed about five sizes too large for his body. He had both hands clamped over his nose and mouth, and tried to stifle another sneeze. It came out with a tiny blatting noise. He wiped his nose on his arm and stared back up at the huge face looking down at him.

"Oh, shit," he said.

The city was afire, though it did not burn.

Brennan had never felt such heat. The air shimmered with it. It rose off the pavement in waves, licking his face like the fetid tongue of a great panting beast. It crawled over his body, sending tendrils of sweat trickling down his back and legs. If he had been of a religious bent, he'd suspect that this was hell. He remembered the motto commonly found embroidered on jackets favored by combat vets in Nam: I'm going to heaven when I die 'cause I've already spent my time in hell.

Maybe this wasn't hell, but it was the city of Brennan's worst nightmares. He moved on down the alley, stepping over the bubbles of asphalt oozing through the cracks in the pavement. The buildings surrounding him were decaying, the streets buckling and choked with uncollected trash. It was a ghost town. No one but Brennan walked the garbageinfested streets.

He emerged from the alley and looked up at the rusted and bent sign hanging overhead from the streetlamp: Henry Street. The Crystal Palace, then, should be ...

Brennan looked down the street, and there it was. The Palace still stood in this place. And if the Palace still stood ... Brennan found himself drawn down the street like a sailor pulled helplessly to siren-infested rocks.

The door to the Palace was unlocked. Inside it was dark and cool. Brennan felt a shiver go through him as the sweat running down his face and body suddenly evaporated, leaving him cold and clammy.

Maybe it was the coolness of the Palace's interior that caused the shiver. Maybe it was the sight of her sitting in her customary table in her customary high-backed chair, barely visible in the dark, her customary glass of amaretto sitting by her hand.

"Chrysalis," Brennan whispered.

She looked at him, the expression on her fleshless face as unreadable as ever.

Chrysalis was a woman of blood and bone, her skin and flesh invisible, her muscles mostly so.

Some found her hideous. Brennan had been fascinated by her.

"Is it really you?" he asked.

"Who else would be sitting in this place, in this body, drinking amaretto from a crystal glass?" the spectre asked. Brennan shook his head. She hadn't really answered his question. Perhaps the rules governing this skewed dimension didn't allow her to. Or perhaps she was forbidden to speak clearly by the rules that governed his skewed subconscious. "You knew everything that happened in Jokertown," Brennan said. "What about in this place?"

"I know you," she replied. "I know something of that which goes on in your mind."

"Can you help me?" he asked. "Can you help me find Jennifer?"

If the spectre was upset by his mention of her rival, she didn't show it. "Look in the center of things," she told him. "You will find that which is most precious to you in the arms of your greatest enemy. But be careful. You are not alone in this world."

"Is this place," he asked her, "real?"

"It seems real enough to me," she replied.

"Me too," Brennan said in a small voice. He hesitated. He wanted to touch her, but somehow he didn't think that was a very good idea. He was afraid that she would dissipate like smoke. Worse, he was afraid that she would feel warm and alive, like solid flesh. "I have to go," he finally said. Chrysalis nodded.

"Another quest," she said as Brennan backed out of the room. "Be careful, my archer. Be very, very careful."

It seemed to Brennan that she looked sad, but there was nothing he could do to cure her sadness. He just took a piece of it with him as he left the Palace for the last time.

Outside, the sun was so bright that he had to blink against its glare. It hadn't gotten any cooler, either, and he broke out in an instant sweat as he stood outside the Palace considering his next move.

If he was to take Chrysalis's advice, he should look for the "center of things."

That, unfortunately, was a rather nebulous description. He started up the street, thinking about it, and then he noticed that another part of Chrysalis's prophecy had come true.

He wasn't alone.

There were people on the street. Most were wearing the blue satin jackets of the Immaculate Egret gang, or the face masks of the Werewolves. They stood singly or in small groups, in front of, behind, and all around him.

Brennan reached for the Browning holstered in the snug of his back but came away empty. His gun, it seemed, hadn't been translated to this place with him. Then he suddenly realized that it might not matter whether he had his gun.

Add the men surrounding him were already dead.