百度搜索 上海梦想 天涯 或 上海梦想 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
“Holographic TV is Satan’s jukebox,” Caldwell heard one of the intoxicated men at the bar say to Ram, the bartehe other men at the bar were still transfixed by the glimmering hologram that gyrated before them to blaring music. Ram, who was busy wiping the table adjat to where Caldwell was sitting with a gray cloth, stopped mid-wipe and smiled, revealing a row of surgically carved white teeth. They were the imported kind you could get for peanuts in the alleyways of East Ham. Teeth made to order, in any material you want, ivory, pearl, marble, even diamonds if you wao put your money where your mouth was. Caldwell had a funny feeling that Ram had been looking ily at his knapsack. Had he been listening to their versation? Did he know about the sole? Publis <code>99ｌiｂ?</code>were notoriously famous for stig their noses in gigs that were no of theirs.“Better the devil you know, better the devil you know,” Ram replied somewhat illogically to the drunk, his eyes shifting away, arms tinuing to swipe frantically with the cloth.
Glyph was still in the men’s room, probably emptying his bowels through some mea of teology or acrobatics, or both. Caldwell wondered how someoh no legs went to the toilet. Not e<var>9９ｌiｂ?</var>xactly the kind of thing you’d want to talk about if you were in his shoes. You even had to be careful with your puns or turns of phrase as Glyph would probably never ever wear shoes again.
Caldwell resorted to trivia, to avoid fag the truth of his current situation. Glyph could rig the wheelchair with its own sewage system, like they have on those space flights, allowing him to vely go and be sed, all with one meism. A vacuum er su device that extracted the waste, chemically treated it into something eco-friendly and stored it for recyg. Food for the plants.
There’s was a whole se of the wheelchair, below the seat, that looked like it could process and store anic matter.
“Same thing the astronauts and tourists use in space, It’s on the blink though. Must be the inhibited British side of you my friend.” Glyph had returned while Caldwell reoccupied with the meics of the hacker’s personal hygiene.
Glyph had alossessed an uny ability to mind read even via eleiversations. That’s what had made him su outstanding hacker and leader of The HUB. It was almost as though he could read the minds of the sysops whose lives he made a misery on a daily basis and whose jobs he placed at risk with his brash system exploits. The wheelchair settled behind the table and lowered itself so that Glyph wasn’t t above Caldwell, who had turned a funny shade of red.
“I think I may have seen them on the platform at Aation. The Yakuza I mean. A massive disfigured guy with a face like a car wreck,” Caldwell said.
“They probably just missed you. You could hang out at mine for a while or even safer, disappear until this blows over. I figure it won’t be long before my name es up on the Yakuza’s To Do list anyway.”
Glyph pulled out a scroll-like touch s from the wheelchair’s armrest and his big brown hands unfurled it across the table. He started tapping frantically on the s. Caldwell was thinking about his options. Lying low with Kat in the shadow of Waterle was a good idea. They would never find him there in that eclectigle of cardboard, Styrofoam and filth. He would fehe sole and weigh his options. Besides he hadn’t seen her in a while. Glyph’s tapping at his keyboard had bee increasingly frantic.
“Is this the guy you saw?” Glyph asked, pointing a hairy index fi the s. Caldwell looked at the grainy monoe image on the s. It was a digitally zoomed shot on the man he had seen on the platform as he had rushed through the closing doors of the MagLev.
“The joys of CCTV. My hato the CCTV grid now covers much of this try and links into systems in other parts of the Union,” Glyph boasted.
“ you pull up subsequent images, say two minutes after this one.
“Yeah, Sure. Just a matter of running face reition on all the station CCTVs goi from Angel.” Glyph started tapping away.
“Looks Japanese enough, even though it’s hard to tell with the stuff going on with his face,” Caldwell said.
“Sure. OK, he got on the rain. That face is bound to be the handiwork of a rival Yakuza fa and as you see here, this looks like the beginning of irizumi, the intricate elaborate Japanese body tattoos favored by the Yakuza,” Glyph said, thinking aloud. He didn’t expect Caldwell to answer. Suddenly, a look of alarm spread lyph’s face like water seeping underh a bathroom door.
“Wait a mihere are two of them ... and they exited at ... Isle of Dogs station.” Those were the last wlyph ever uttered.
***
A rush of air, barely perceptible, blasted past Caldwell’s left ear, leaving his eardrums ringing. Almost simultaneously, a blank look came lyph’s fad his green eyes misted over. Instinctively, Caldwell turned around, ears stinging, vision blurring but still able to make out the disfigured Japanese and his panion heading towards them. Scores of eyes at the bar trained on the otion and Caldwell w why all he could see clearly was the fear and surprise blaed across their faces.
He could barely make out a tube-shaped on firing projectiles that looked like mini torpedoes in their dire, the gun a gray blob spitting fire. Instinctively, Caldwell ducked, hoping that the raised back of the padded seats would offer some prote from the chaos erupting around him. As he went down, the small round black hole in the middle of Glyph’s forehead was revealed in sharp detail. Whatever caused it had bored a smooth turaight through the hacker’s skull. Caldwell could catch a glint of light at the far end of the gaping hole.
Several dull thuds ejected plugs of syic leather and foam from the back of the <u></u>seat, causing him to sink deeper below the table. The fake oak of the seats splintered in all dires. He was being taken out. His only instinow was survival. The sound of a bullet, or whatever those things were, strikial a bit too close to his head. He decided it was now or never. He grabbed the handle of his knapsad pulled hard. He could the feel the reassuring deadweight of the sole. Split-sed thinking, synapses screaming like angry seagulls. A plan of a formulating itself in a split sed.
If the table was bolted to the ground or was too heavy, he was as good as dead. Mustering every ounce of strength he shoved upwards against the table in the dire of The Puzzle’s floor-to-ceiling windows. There was a small explosion as Glyph’s puter self-destructed. The big man had been dead serious about proteg his data.
Caldwell propelled himself forward, past the blue blur that was the Japanese. He could see the man’s big hands reach out to grab him. Don’t look at his face at all cost, Caldwell told himself. That would just stop him dead in his tracks. It was a face that must be even mrotesque close up. The shooting had stopped, the man feeling that he was close enough to not he gun. The last thing Caldwell saw was the diagonal holes in the wall left by the Japanese’s bullet as he closed his eyes and crashed through the window in a shower of glass and made tact with the pavement.
Open your eyes. Caldwell’s eyes opened wide, a strange kind of focus evident. The windoartially shattered into thousands of small harmless cubes. The man with the grotesque face was stepping through the irregular-shaped hole Caldwell had created in The Puzzle’s facade. Through the broken window he could see that the other Japanese had taken Ram and his early m tele hostage. Oreet electrics drove past the se, passengers safe in their reinforced fiberglass cos, disting the melee as just another Union street brawl, one of probably thousands on any given day.
Caldwell willed himself to get on his feet even though he was sure the oute would be the same regardless. He was being taken out. Who was it that said wheh was immi, you felt this immense weight like the sky had e thundering down upon you? Frowning now because whoever had said that had not said it in English. The sentence was ringing in his head in some other language. Was the trauma of his impendih opening up old memories?
The world moved in slow motion. Everything from the grotesque man grabbing him by the shoulders and reag for the knapsack, to the pieces of glass glimmering on the pavement had slowed down to a crawl. The hard edge of the Japanese’s on was cold against his temple now. A maelstrom of questions and images, interspersed with visions of Glyph dead, flashing itently into the ial chaos. All he could do was hold on to the knapsack, his mind haunted by the blank stare of the hacker caught iill-captured shutter frame of surprise.
* * *
The questi through his beleaguered mind like a persistent phone call during an enjoyable afternoon nap that refuses to hang up. Was there life after death? In the January chill, everything had taken on a freeze-frame quality with the seds jerking by in slow motion. Time was having a hard time maing itself. There was no tunnel of light ht at the end of a tunnel but he found himself staring down the barrel of the Japanese’s mysterious on and waiting to die.
“Not so fast,” said the Japanese in ated English, brushing off shards of glass from his shoulder.
There was something medieval, yet futuristic, about the on and for some strange reason Caldwell found himself admiring its beauty. He was no gun freak, but he knew a bea<dfn>藏书网</dfn>utiful on when he saw ohe disfigured Japanese forced himself into his line of vision. Caldwell did everything he could to avoid looking at the man’s fad the Yakuza k.
“You killed him, you bastard,” Caldwell mao blurt out as he prepared to meet his maker. What did he have to lose anyway? Just a few hours earlier, he had been more than willing to kill himself. The Japanese could take the sole and do with it as they pleased. Shove it up their backsides if that made them feel better. It made no differeo him if he was dead. But something in him had awakened with the current trauma, an ag o find out what this sole was desigo do. Glyph robably right. There was some bleeding-edge work out there that the sole gave access to. He khat every cell in his body wao jato it and delve into its very core. He couldn’t die just yet. The shimmering lights of cyberspace still beed.
“Your friend was not important and besides he was too greedy. Anyone who rats out a friend has no honor and deserves to die,” said another voice with a thick at. The other Japanese man was bag out of the door, with a gun to Ram’s head. The younger Japanese signaled for his disfigured panion to take over trying t Ram’s neck.
“What do you mean?” Caldwell spluttered.
“Your so called friend was betraying you, Caldwell-saold us you’d be meeting him here.”
“Liar! Liar! Why should I believe you?”
“I have no reason to lie to someone who will be dead in a matter of seds. No hard feelings. Give me the bag.” The Japanese’s finger was twitg origger as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to shoot now or later.
“If Glyph told you I’d be here, why was yuy at the station at Angel?”
“Because we wao make sure that your disabled traitor frie his promise. He wanted only twenty thousand Euros in exge for you. I make it a habit only to pay traitors in the currency they deserve.”
The disfigured Japanese now had everyone in the bar kneeling on the pavement outside. He walked circles around them, one eye cheg on the hostages, the other sneering at Caldwell. Caldwell remembered he had o slip to Glyph in cyberspace that he was holed up in a capsule in the Angel area. So Glyph had <q></q>told them that he lived in Angel, and had sent the message about meeting at The Puzzle as a ruse to get him out of the capsule and into the Yakuza’s trap. The hacker had no iion of meeting up with him.
“I rusted Glyph anyway. Do you think I would have been so stupid as t the sole here?” he asked calmly.
“ry old boy. You friend already firmed you have it. Hand it over before I blow your brains out,” the Japahreatened.
“I figure you’ll kill me anyway. I’ll take my ces. You kill me and if the sole is not in this bag as you say, you’ll never find it,” Caldwell threatened weakly. The Japanese’s fiwitched origger.
“Three seds. One ...”
“Yoing to have to kill me and take the risk that what you are looking for is not in this bag,” Caldwell repeated, mustering some ce. Taking advantage of a momentary lapse as the Japanese sidered the situation, he shakily rose to his feet. Caldwell was buying time with zero currend he had no idea what the delay tactic was going to achieve. heless, he was damned if he was going to hand over the sole to this guy or the disfigured goon. He needed an alternative fast.
“We’ll take our ces,” said the young Japanese menagly. He had harshly slanted eyes and irises the color of charcoal. His perpetual sneer looked like it wouldn’t go away even if you held a gun to his head. The man’s fiightened origger. Instinctively, Caldwell took a step backwards only to find himself in the grip of the disfigured Japanese.
“The only thing more certain than the fact that what we are looking for is in that bag is the fact that yoing to …”
Caldwell thought he heard the sound of the man’s gun going off. Something smooth and powerful rushed past him. The young Japanese impostor was stopped in mid-sentence by an invisible object that thumped into his chest so hard, the funny shaped on wilted in his hand ao the pavement. His disfigured panion spun round, hand reag into his waistband but he was also stopped in his tracks by another discharge that Caldwell barely heard. The goon’s knees buckled helplessly underh him. Sound gun? Had to be, there was no visible blood.
During the exge with the young Japanese, Caldwell hadn’t noticed the huge black electric limo cruising up the road. As he swung round instinctively to make a run for it, both side doors of the vehicle opened with the k of some sophisticated log meism. Two pairs of identical bat boots stepped out on to the pavements followed by a double pair of well-built legs, torsos and arms. Before he could instruct himself to bolt, Caldwell was already being bundled into the back of the black limousine by two burly pony-tailed men clad in black suits and matg aviator mirror shades. He noticed that one of the men had the Japanese man’s on in his hand. Caldwell could have sworn he hadn’t seen him pick it up.
He turned round to see whether the Japanese men were dead. They weren’t. They were holding on to their ears with blood stained hands. They both seemed to be delirious. Delirious is a whole lot better than dead. The whole exercise lasted only a few seds. The limousiinted windows slid upwards and the electrigihrust forward into light traffic.
百度搜索 上海梦想 天涯 或 上海梦想 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.