Reunion in Death

«Not too shabby.» Eve cocked a hip, but her eyes were keen as a blade. «Could use it. When we're finished kicking the shit out of anybody who gives us grief,» Eve added pleasantly. «There'll be a squad down here shaking down what's left. Which will really irritate me as I'd have to share the pool with them. Mook,» she said again, and waited ten humming seconds.

«VR Hell,» someone said in the dark. «Dancing with the S&M machines. Asshole.»

Eve merely nodded, deciding to attribute the asshole comment to Mook rather than herself. «And where do I find VR Hell in this delightful and intriguing paradise many of you call home?»

There was another movement, and she whirled, braced, felt Peabody go on full alert beside her. At first she took him for a boy, then saw he was a dwarf. He was crooking his finger.

«Back-to-back,» Eve ordered, and they started down one of the dripping tunnels, facing out, guarding each other's backs.

The dwarf moved fast, skittering along in the steaming, stinking tunnels like a cockroach on shoes that flapped against the damp stone floor. He zipped past the bars, the clubs, the joints and dives, twisting and turning through the labyrinth of the underworld.

«Morgue pool was a nice touch,» Eve said under her breath.

«Thanks.» Peabody resisted swiping at the sweat dripping down her face. «I live to improvise.»

From somewhere deeper in the dank, Eve heard a woman scream in pain or passion. She saw a huge man crumpled on the ground sucking on a filthy brown bottle of home-brew. Against the wall beside him a man and woman copulated in an ugly parody of lovemaking.

She smelled sex and piss, and worse.

The tunnel widened, opened into an area jammed with video, VR, and hologram dens.

VR Hell was black. Its walls, its windows, its doors all coated with the same unrelieved, and somehow greasy black. Across it, in letters she assumed were supposed to reflect the devil's fire, was its name. A poorly painted image of Satan, complete with horns and tail and pitchfork, danced over the flames.

«Mook's in there.» The dwarf spoke for the first time in a voice like a bass drum constructed from sandpaper. «Digs on the Madam Electra machine. Bondage shit. Sick fucker. Got fifty?»

Eve dug for credits. «Got twenty. Blow.»

He showed his grayed, pointy teeth. The twenty disappeared, then so did he.

«You meet such interesting people down here,» Peabody said shakily.

«Stay close,» Eve ordered. «Anybody moves in, bang 'em.»

«You don't have to tell me twice.» With her hand gripped tight on her bat, Peabody followed Eve into Hell.

The noise was awesome: screams, sirens, grunts, and groans from dozens of clashing machines and patrons. The lighting was an ugly red that shimmered and swayed. It flashed her back to a freezing room in Dallas, made her stomach pitch before she controlled it.

She heard the ragged breathing, the hissed words of violent sex. She'd heard those in that room, too, before the end. Heard them in too many rooms to count where the walls were thin as tissue and brutality was only a whisper away.

The sound of flesh striking flesh. Gleeful punishment.

Stop it! Goddamn you, Rick, stop! You're hurting me!

Whose voice was that? Eve wondered as she stared around blindly. Her mother's? One of the whores he'd used when he wasn't using his daughter?

«Dallas? Lieutenant?»

The uneasy tremble in Peabody's voice snapped her back. This wasn't the time to lose her focus. It wasn't the time to remember.

«Stay close,» Eve repeated, and began to thread through the machines.

Most were too intent on the game, on the world they'd created to notice her. But others still had instincts sharp enough to make a cop. Though plenty of those people were armed, nothing was aimed in their direction, for the moment.

She passed a tube titled Whips and Chains where a woman, thin as a stick, wearing VR goggles, screamed in ecstasy. Sweat poured down her body like oil, over the tight leather loincloth, beaded on the restraints that locked her arms and legs to the console of her machine.

«Looks like we're in the right section. There's Mook.»

He, too, was locked in a tube. Stripped down to a black leather cock sheath and studded dog collar, his impressively muscled body jerked, his throat worked with gasps. His hair was candlelight gold, shoulder-blade length, and damp with sweat.

His back was crisscrossed with lash marks, proving that he didn't always settle for virtual punishment.

Though it wasn't quite proper procedure, Eve used her master to unlock the tube. His body was arched, his lips peeled back in a grimace of erotic pain. Eve hit the main switch and left him trembling on the brink.

«What the fuck.» His body sagged, muscles quivering. «Mistress, please. I beg you.»

«That's Lieutenant Mistress to you, creep.» Eve whipped off his goggles. «Hi, Mook. Remember me?»

«This is a privacy booth.»

«No kidding? And here I was looking forward to a fun group session. Well, next time. Now, let's you and me go somewhere quiet and talk.»