Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

That mostly means hacking financial institutions. They also handled propaganda campaigns when Zima could be bothered with them. Vasilev is never going to be bothered with winning hearts and minds.’

‘Right. So, this guy was a hacker?’ Clearly, Nakano did not trust himself to pronounce the Russian name, which caused Tatsu to grin. The question itself probably stemmed from Lagounov’s appearance. People tended to think of hackers as scrawny shut-ins and, like so many stereotypes, there was a grain of truth in that, but it was not universally correct. Lagounov looked like a middleweight boxer, including the broken nose and cauliflower ears. He had, in fact, boxed semi-professionally when he was younger and now taught boxing to teenagers in Funabashi. He was fit and muscular, if not exactly handsome, especially since his throat had been sliced open prior to him getting stabbed three times in the chest.

‘And a good one,’ Tatsu replied. ‘It occurs to me that someone has killed off the two people most likely to work out who killed Zima. From the gang, that is.’

‘The spy and the hacker.’

‘The two with the greatest capacity for critical thinking, but yes. Could be that Zima’s killer is just covering his tracks…’

‘Except this is escalation. You see it too, right?’

Tatsu nodded slowly. ‘I guess you’re right. Maybe it’s just that Lagounov took more hits to kill, but this attack does seem more…’

‘Frenzied? Angry?’

‘Those words will do. Of course, we could be looking at a different killer. Maybe this isn’t the same one and the only link is the gang.’

Nakano looked at her. ‘You don’t believe that.’

‘No, not really. I think someone with a grudge killed Zima. Now they’re taking out the management structure.’

‘And they’ve got a taste for it. Zima was clinical. This is less so. If we get more bodies, they’ll probably be in worse condition.’

‘Just what we need, a serial killer on a righteous crusade.’

‘Righteous?’ Nakano asked, frowning.

‘I’m sure he thinks it is.’

31st July.

Tatsu pulled her bike up outside a building in Narashino and swung her leg off it as it settled itself down to rest its stomach on the tarmac. The massive machine looked distinctly menacing, even in daylight. At night, when the glowing panels around the bodywork shone a subtle purple and the eye-like headlamps were on, it looked like a giant, mutated insect. Now it was a giant insect settling down to wait for its mistress.

This area had commercial premises on the lower levels with apartments above. Most of the shops were empty, and a couple were now squats, but not all of them. The one Tatsu headed for looked like it was out of business, but that was mostly because the shutters were down over the windows, and that was because Pauletta had no need for window frontage for what she sold. The shutters were almost always down and, if you looked closely, you could tell they were not the same as those on the other shopfronts; Pauletta had replaced her shutters with riot shields.

The shield was up over the door and Tatsu made her way inside. Somewhere in the back, a buzzer sounded, letting the proprietor know that someone had come in. Pauletta was expecting Tatsu anyway. The front room looked a bit like a tattoo parlour – a tattoo parlour crossed with a car workshop. There was a reclining seat, like in a tattoo parlour, but it was surrounded by rolling towers of drawers full of tools and diagnostic instruments on trolleys. A lot of Pauletta’s business was routine maintenance on cybernetics, handled in this room.

Tatsu continued to the back and went through a door marked ‘employees only.’ The backroom was a bit like the front one, but without the chair. Instead, a gimballed frame sat in pride of place. If you looked at it and squinted, it became obvious that this frame was designed to hold a human via various straps and padded clamps. This was where the serious maintenance work got done, the stuff that required access to more of the body. Without waiting for the mechanic to arrive, Tatsu began undressing, laying her clothes on a table at the side of the room reserved for that purpose.

‘I just love seeing you naked.’

Tatsu glanced around at the person who had entered from another door at the back. ‘I’m aware.’ Pauletta said something similar every time Tatsu came for her monthly session. She was mid-height, about five centimetres taller than Tatsu, and slim. Her hips stopped her looking too boyish, but everything else conspired to go the other way. Her hair was mid-brown and cut short. It flopped down on either side of her face from a parting on the right. Flopped did not do it real justice; Pauletta was attractive in a very slightly masculine way. Her lips were not especially full, her nose was small and pert, and her eyes were a very dark brown. Generally, she was as white as a sheet. She was originally from California, though she had barely had time to register the fact before her parents had shipped out across the Pacific to avoid the Cyberwar. Today she was dressed in a double layer of tank T-shirts, white over black. The white one had a stylised Chinese dragon in black and red printed over the chest. Around her hips, a set of coveralls hung as though carelessly sloughed from her shoulders.

Pauletta grinned. ‘Well, get your naked butt in the cradle so I can molest you properly.’ She was a lecherous sort of girl, but she was mostly joking.

Shaking her head, Tatsu climbed into position on the retractable foot plates and set about belting herself in. Meanwhile, by remote, Pauletta began positioning clamps which would hold Tatsu’s head still. Once that was set, there were straps to go around Tatsu’s legs and arms, and with all that done, Tatsu was basically immobile.

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