Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

She could see darkness around him, radiating from him. Could taste it, bitter and rancid, spreading across the back of her tongue. The pain came next. A jagged splitting bolt of pain, high on her forehead, followed by a wave of dizziness and nausea.

Natasha whipped her hands off the keyboard and clutched her middle, trying to catch her breath, thinking she might puke or faint. She felt loose-legged and wobbly, as if the stage was tilting up under her feet.

Then strong hands took hold of her from behind. One on her shoulder, another steadying her at the waist. Her bass and percussion loops kept playing, maintaining the bare foundations of the music. But a few dancers on the floor immediately noticed the change. They glanced up at the stage, quick snatches of curiosity about what was going on.

“Hey.” It was Duncan. His voice raised over the bounce of her loops. She smelled his aftershave, thick and herbal. “What’s wrong, sugar?”

She gulped down some air. “Nothing. Just got light-headed.”

He came alongside her, cutting his eyes briefly to the dance floor, then returning them to her face.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

He relaxed his hold on her but didn’t let go. “Let’s break. Get you some water.”

“No. I’m fine.”

Natasha scanned the crowd. She didn’t see the guy with the tribal ink. One second he’d been pressing toward the front of the stage, and now he was gone.

A long moment passed. Natasha felt her balance return.

“Let’s finish the set,” she said.

Duncan looked at her, his face an inch from hers. “Your call.”

Natasha forced a smile and slapped his chest. As he stepped back up to his console, she turned to the synth and hit the keys again, watching the people on the floor. They were still dancing and having a good time. Tribal Ink was still gone. But she also still had that rancid taste on her tongue.

It would linger for the rest of the night.

New York City stands on ghosts of old brick and stone.

Club Fallout—or the high, vaulted space it occupied—had been restored to life not once, not twice, but five times since its origin. Built midway through the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, it was one of five Gothic chambers meant to comprise an indoor market under its Manhattan anchorage. When the market failed to materialize, the city rented the vaults as wine cellars to importers of French wine and champagne. Four cellars were named after the rare, expensive vintages they stored—Avenue Sichel Bordeaux, Avenue Les Deux Oeufs, and so on. The fifth, unchristened chamber would become a taproom where grand balls were often thrown, the dancers whirling and curtsying under huge, elaborate wall frescoes.

Then Prohibition brought the merriment to a halt. As drab times set in, the wine merchants pulled out, and the chambers became cluttered storerooms for newspapers awaiting daily pickup. But they soon fell to disuse and neglect, and the ghosts again slept in silence, with only the rumbling of overhead bridge traffic—and the skittering of wharf rats—to interrupt it.

In 1933, after the alcohol ban’s repeal, the taproom reawakened for a single night of celebration, complete with flowing champagne, a waltz band, and a high-society guest list. This was its third incarnation. But for reasons unknown, the padlocks went back on once the party ended.

A generation later they came off again. During the 1960s, at the height of political tensions with the USSR, the Federal Office of Civil Defense—FEMA’s direct forerunner—claimed the unused taproom for secret use as a nuclear bunker, hauling away its wine barrels and trucking in boxes of water bottles, crackers, pharmaceuticals, and medical supplies. As fears of atomic Armageddon waned, though, it was once more left to bunker only the dockside vermin.

Another half century passed before its rediscovery and transformation into a nightclub. As a nod to the Cold War ghosts, its yellow-and-black fallout shelter sign had been cleared of rust and grime and hung above the bar.

Which was of no present importance to the man with the tribal tattoos. But he’d done his research while preparing for the job. You never knew what bits of information would come in handy.

Shouldering through the crowd on the dance floor now, he exited the main door, strode past a bouncer out front, and turned left under the swooping shadow of the bridge ramp.

His name was Tai. Alone on the empty sidewalk, he had a lot to contemplate.

Parked three blocks away on Gold Street, an opal-blue MINI electric subcompact sat with its lights off, slotted neatly into one of the few available spaces at the curb.

Called Kai, the man peering out from behind its wheel seemed at a glance to be Tai’s exact lookalike—aside from his tattoo sleeve being on his left arm rather than the right. But a careful observer might have found more ways to tell them apart.

Kai’s nose skewed slightly to the left, Tai’s to the right. Kai’s hair naturally parted on the left, Tai’s on the right. Kai had a tiny birthmark above his left cheek, Tai a mark above his right. Kai was naturally left-handed and Tai right-hand dominant, hinting at deeper differences under the skin.

The brothers were, in fact, rare genetic anomalies. While most identical twins are born when a single fertilized ovum divides within a week of conception, the embryo sometimes splits later in its development. Say, at two weeks. These siblings are not easily distinguished by the casual eye. Yet each is the inverse of the other. A mirror-image twin.

Which was of no immediate importance to Kai. Focused on the job at hand, he watched his brother come up the street, then unlocked the front passenger door.

A moment later, Tai slid in beside him. “You get the vid feed?” he asked without preamble.

Kai nodded and tapped the curved plastic-encased device behind his left ear. “She’s a right different sort...and quite the stunner,” he said. “Her skin white as snow.”

“Yeah.”

“Like a fairy. Or is it a pixie?”

“A pixie’s got butterfly wings,” he said. “The other has wings like a