Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

Rico said, ‘Yes.’

He reached out and took the flask from Samuel, then put it to his lips and sucked down a giant mouthful. It was warm and he tasted caramel and vanilla. Maker’s Mark, probably. He’d drunk himself into a stupor more times than he could count using every form of alcohol under the sun. He could pinpoint a brand when the taste seemed familiar. It was second nature by this point.

The effect hit him in seconds, although that probably meant it was placebo. Drink, and your brain convinces you you’re drunk well before the stuff actually hits your system. But he didn’t care what was real and what wasn’t. It felt real to him, and he settled back into the same groggy stupor. The consequences of his actions receded from the forefront of his mind.

Good, he thought.

This is all still a dream.

Samuel said, ‘I’m no longer needed.’

Rico said, ‘What?’

‘I was part of something. Now it’s over. Now I don’t have anything to do. I figured I might go kill somebody.’

This has to be a dream.

‘Who?’ Rico said.

Samuel shrugged. ‘I thought I’d come here first, but I didn’t find who I was looking for.’

‘Jason King and… who was it that you said before?’

‘Will Slater.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Enemies.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t like them. They took everything from me.’

‘What do they do?’

‘I don’t know. They’re just bad people.’

‘Did they hurt you?’

‘In a roundabout way.’

‘Do you know how to find them?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know what they look like?’

‘No. I know they’re big guys. That’s it. It’s frustrating. I shot at a big guy before. Someone at the end of an alleyway. I just … wanted to shoot at someone. Anyone.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Someone. Anyone,’ Samuel repeated. ‘All I saw was that he was big. I could only see his silhouette. I thought it might be God delivering one of them to me. But I couldn’t hit him. I tried to shoot him a few times, but then I couldn’t see him anymore. So I ran away.’

Rico didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. The whole spiel was bizarre.

He stayed quiet and waited for Samuel to speak again.

‘So, anyway, I’m pissed off,’ Samuel said, ‘and I want to do something about it. Who are you?’

‘Just a visitor,’ Rico said. ‘Not in town for long. I was at Palantir — you know the club?’

Samuel shook his head.

Rico said, ‘Bottom line is, I’m pissed off too. Some dickhead took my gun and slapped me around in front of all my friends. I have a reputation to uphold, you know? Piece of shit needs to get what’s coming to him.’

‘Did you get his name?’

‘No.’

‘Know where he is?’

‘No.’

‘Damn.’ Samuel paused and turned his face to the night sky. The bone around his eyes was protruded, and the sockets were deep and hollow. The shadows plunged into them, lending him an even more macabre expression. Eerily, he looked back at Rico and said, ‘You on drugs?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You got some?’

‘Yeah.’

Rico reached into his jacket pocket and came out with the small baggie of cocaine. An involuntary shiver rippled through him. Something close to phantom pain gripped his chest. Not a heart attack, not a palpitation — just his brain delivering a warning. Don’t you dare.

He handed it over. ‘Here you go.’

Samuel took it and stared long and hard. ‘You don’t want it?’

‘I’ve had plenty.’

‘Thanks.’

Rico held up the flask. ‘Mind if I take this, then?’

‘Go ahead.’

They ingested their substance of choice in unison. Rico lifted the flask back to his lips and drained the whiskey. There was plenty of it, and his throat burned as he finished the last drop. He lowered the flask to see Samuel rubbing white powder into his huge gums. There was residue peppered across his left nostril from where he’d snorted some, too.

Rico smiled.

Samuel smiled back. His smile was a hundred times more sinister.

He stepped forward, wrapped a friendly arm around Rico’s shoulders, and roared with manic laughter.

Then he said, ‘Let’s go kill somebody.’

Rico shrugged, deep in madness.

‘Okay,’ he said.

Why not?

With an arm looped over each other’s shoulders like long lost brothers, they set off into the city.

26

King had to admit he was underwhelmed by the HQ.

But that was the nature of the twenty-first century, wasn’t it?

Black operations were a different beast entirely. Separate from the official military structure, informal, without all the stringent rules and regulations and codes that dictated what could legally be accomplished. Today’s warfare took place on screens, in algorithms and in lines of code. The world of combat and warfare was now a place where the most important individuals in uniform were the ones who weren’t in uniform at all. They were the tech prodigies, dressed casually, responsible for keeping the peace from behind a desk. There were maybe a dozen of them here now, surrounded by enough hardware to destabilise emerging markets, if that’s what was required.

King didn’t pretend to know what he was looking at. He saw rows of desks set up in a space fashioned out of three tenement-style apartments laid end to end. The dividing walls had been knocked down long ago, creating a massive interior room with the same floor space as an empty church. The light was low, emanating only from the screens and a couple of weak desk lamps. Arched windows faced out, offering a plain view of the street below and the opposite apartment block. Inside the room, King saw stacks of CPUs and triple-monitor set-ups manned by an assortment of men and women that couldn’t have had a median age far above thirty.

They were operating at warp speed. He didn’t know whether they were hopped up on Adderall or other, more refined stimulants engineered by a separate wing of the government, but he certainly suspected they were. He’d never seen anyone work so fast. Not a single person looked at him or Slater as they stepped into the room. Their pupils flashed across the monitors like a bug watching flies. They tabbed from program to program, and when their fingers touched their