Page 93 of Throwing Fire

“Not yet. I might use the stink to scare the Ojos into telling me somethin’.”

Acker chuckles.

“Listen,” I say. “I might have to use somethin’ stronger than stink to find out what I need to know. You don’t want to stick around for that, I won’t hold it against you.”

Acker twitches his whiskers. “If you can endure doing... whatever it is you need to do, I can endure watching you do it.”

“It can be tough to watch,” I say, remembering the times I had to watch interrogations in SAWL. It was part of advanced intel training,during my fifth year. I’d already seen plenty of shit by then, but interrogation training was its own special kind of hell. “Leaves a stain.” I scrub my fingertips along my breastbone.

“Is that how you think of yourself? Stained?”

“Nope.” I tap my chest. “Nothin’ left in here to stain.”

“There’s enough left for Lightfoot.”

“So she says.” I shrug. I gave up trying to figure out what Kez sees in me long ago.

Acker smiles, showing all those sharp teeth. “I will trust Lightfoot’s judgment in this.”

“Did you know Kez before that night in the Eff Tubes?” I ask, referring to the first time Kez and I met Acker. I haven’t asked Kez if she knew Acker before that night. She certainly knewofhim, but Kez has made it her business to know about Kuseros’s underground, so there aren’t many players in it that she doesn’t know. I doubt Acker has her encyclopedic knowledge.

“I had never spoken to her before that night. But her reputation precedes her.”

Not the first time I’ve heard about Kez’s impressive street cred. I shake my head. “I must be the only person on the planet who didn’t know who she was.”

“Perhaps you spent too little time underground.” He skirts a pile of rubble on the tunnel floor and turns up a side-passage that’s seen some serious action. The floor’s covered in loose rock. The tunnel walls are heavily pocked.

I run my fingertips over a charred streak that ends in a blast hole. “Was this Match?”

Acker stops beside me and nods.

“Where were you?”

“Returning from escorting your woman out of the Deeps. I took her out a different way, thinking that it was safer, that I would divert attention?—”

I grip his shoulder. “Stop blamin’ yourself. Maybe this is on me. Maybe not. Either way, we’ll findout.”

Acker nods but keeps his head down and doesn’t meet my eyes.

I peer up the partially collapsed, fire-blackened tunnel. “Where does this lead?”

“The basement of a v-loop shop on the Night Market.”

I can see why it’s little used. Even on a world as permissive as Kuseros most people don’t want to be seen frequenting sex shops. “What’s the access?”

“A security membrane and an airlock.”

“Anyone got the access codes?”

“Yes, a few of my people, but not many. It was really just for the shopkeep and his family.”

I turn to look at Acker. “Would they give you up to the Ojos?”

“I would not have thought so. Kestor is one of us. But—” Acker shrugs fatalistically.

Yeah, I know that feeling. “You got any need for this entrance?”

Acker shakes his head. “We have others in the Night Market. As I said, it was really just for Kestor and his family.”