Read Replicant Night for Free Online

gotten the new heart and lungs. The doctors had told him that his system had reached its limit-if anything happened to this set, there'd be no chance of putting another one inside him. And there had been something sitting on the table in front of him not a briefcase, but an actual Voigt-Kampff machine, regulation LAPD issue, just like the big black guns that blade runners carried around with them. The Voigt-Kampff had been opened and activated, its batwing bellows compressing and expanding, breathing in microscopic traces of sweat and fear; the tracking lens on its antennalike metal stalk ready to focus on the dilating pupil of anyone who'd been dropped down in the chair opposite him ...
    Where am I? The incomplete, unwilled memory had claimed him so hard that for a moment he had lost track of his location, whether Earth or the Outer Hollywood orbital studios. The bio-mech heart stumbled in sudden panic. What place, what time . . . Holden gripped the edges of the table with fear-rigid hands.
    "All right-" The claustrophobic set's door had swung open again, admitting a voice louder than the ones inside Holden's skull. The man who'd led him into the room had another, even taller figure in tow. "The director asked me to get your blocking down before we tried running tape."
    Holden looked up and saw the face behind the other man's, and recognized it. Another piece from the memory that had wrapped around him.
    "So what is it you want me to do?" From the chinless, brutal face of a Leon Kowalski replicant-another from the same batch as the dead one that Holden had glimpsed lying on the L.A. street set-small eyes peered with apprehensive suspicion. All the Leon Kowalskis were just bright enough to be mistrustful of humans . . . but not bright enough to do anything about it.
    So then, how'd you wind up getting iced by one of them? Holden's unspoken voice chided him. The rest of the memory regarding the room with two Tyrell Corporation chairs was starting to come clear, whether he wanted it to or not.
    "You know your lines?" The other man glanced sharply at the burly replicant.
    "Yeah ... kind of."
    "Sit over here." The man pointed to the empty chair at the table. "How about you?" He glanced over toward Holden.
    The apprehension transmuted to certainty. "Of course-" It took a couple of seconds for Holden to find his voice, to squeeze it past the constriction tightening around his artificial lungs. I know this room . And what had happened in it. "Yeah ... I know what to say."
    "Dynamite. You guys are a couple of real professionals." The man pulled something dark and heavy out of his jacket and handed it to the Kowalski replicant. "Here, use this. It's the same one you'll have when we're taping."
    The replicant examined the gun with small eyes narrowed even further, as though some personal anti-Kowalski trap might be hidden inside it. He finally wrapped both fists around its handle and levered it underneath the table.
    Oh no , thought Holden as he watched the preparations. I know what comes next ...
    "All right. Let's try it." The other man stood back against the set's doorway, arms folded across his chest. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, as if the scene before him had already been found pleasing. "Take it from where you ask him about his mother."
    "M-my mother?" The Kowalski replicant looked over his shoulder at the man.
    "Don't worry about it. It's not for real." The man's voice turned kindly.
    "It's just a video, okay? And it's not even that right now. Just for practice, that's all. A little rehearsal." He glanced over at Holden. "Come on, buddy; we don't have all day. Just say your line."
    The fluids that his bio-mechanical heart moved around in Holden's body had congealed-even the breath in his lungs felt thick and heavy as stone. Underneath that crushing weight, part of him struggled to push his legs beneath the chair, to stand up and walk out of the re-created room pressing tight around his shoulders .
    But he couldn't.