Read Fade to Black for Free Online

changing from red to yellow and green and shaped like short, stubby worms crawling all over their heads.
    Five passages like enormous, grotty tubes led from the room in five different directions. Rico took the one all the way to the right. The walls of the passage throbbed with light, like a vein. Scarlet fog flowed around Rico's legs. At the end of the passage waited a white biff wearing silvery spandex and fingerless gloves and boots to match. Silver-studded bands ringed her ankles, waist, wrists, and neck. Her eyes were like violet pits, infinite, her expression like stone, emotionless. Her hair looked like white fuzz, shorn practically to the scalp. She had a fine figure, slim but shapely and obviously well-conditioned. Rico paid her figure little attention. Too dangerous.
    She was called Ravage. Rico had seen her around, had heard talk about her. She walked the razor bodyguard, courier, collection service. She was supposed to be teflon slick, fast enough to blur. People said she didn't bother with merc guns because she had all she needed under her skin. Boosted reflexes, skillwires, cyberspurs, maybe an implanted pistol. How much damage could this lithe body actually do? Rico wished he had more than just guesses. If she had a gun with her tonight it didn't show. She stood with feet planted and spread wide, her arms at her sides, her head erect, alert. Violet pits aimed right at him. Rico paused about two steps away.
    "You solo?" Ravage said.
    "Your guess."
    "My guess is you're obsolete, old man."
    There was nothing in the voice, no malice, not even a shade of menace. It didn't matter. What she said didn't matter. Not from a woman, it didn't. A woman who talked like her didn't merit respect, or anything but a straight estimation of the dangers she might pose. Rico lowered his eyes to the modest prominence of her breasts, then to the juncture of her legs. That was his reply. Ravage didn't seem to notice.
    "Road kill," she said.
    Rico forced a grin. "Anytime, muchacha."
    "Soon as I'm free."
    She turned her back and started walking like Rico didn't worry her at all. The studded bands around her body caught Rico's eyes. Some of those studs could be optical pickups. Ravage might well have a 360-degree cyberview of the world. Chipped to the max and fluid as a snake. Nothing would surprise him.
    She led him onto a low balcony overlooking the club's main floor. Ranged along the right were softly backlit alcoves outlined in glaring neon. Ravage paused at the fifth one down, and Rico got his first look at L. Kahn.
    He sat behind an oval table, on a semicircular bench seat that filled the rear of the alcove. The alcove's subdued lighting cast his face and front in shadows, but only until Rico's Jikku Shadowhunter eyes adjusted. Low-light augmentation with glare compensation pulled L. Kahn's sculptured features out of the shade. He looked Amerind, with maybe a touch of Black-Af blood. A thick black wave of hair dangled down over one side of his forehead. Skinny braids hung in front of his ears. He had heavy brows, a substantial nose, and a broad, full-lipped mouth. His medium brown suit looked pure Armante. The jacket's thin collars rose into massive flanges that curved up and over his shoulders. A cloak curled around his sides, concealing his arms above the elbows.
    "Your player," Ravage said.
    L. Kahn looked at Rico and gestured toward the right side of the alcove's curving bench. Rico sat there, Ravage moved to sit opposite. L. Kahn tapped the keypad on the table before him, and the pair of nude slitches dancing around on the tabletop-forty-centimeter-tall laser displays-abruptly winked out.
    "Interesting locale for a meet," L. Kahn said slowly. Rico replied, "Ain't you been here before?"
    "I prefer more secluded climes." Rico didn't much care. The main fact on his mind was that job offers sometimes turned out to be setups, traps laid by people bearing grudges. It paid to be careful. Chimpira might be on the hairy verge between