Ghosts of Punktown Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. A few other people were muttering. “Is that a Ha Jiin?” a woman said.
     
         “His skin isn’t blue,” her male companion hissed, as if afraid they’d be overheard.
     
         The man with the scarred face stopped behind the whispering couple, waiting for another of the elevators. Cal kept staring at him. He was trembling. If this were all some elaborate facade created by his Ha Jiin captors to trick him, then this one had let his mask slip. Had overlooked a critical detail: those ritualistic scars on his cheeks.
     
         Even though the line he was in was a little shorter, Cal shifted over behind the man with the scars. He stared at the back of his head, so close he could reach out and take his neck in his hands. And as if he could feel those imaginary hands, the man turned around to meet Cal’s gaze. Without being asked, he said, “Yeah – I know. I did this to myself, like they do. I lost five good buddies over there , so I...” He made a slashing movement with his hand.
     
         Why lie about it? Jeremy Stake wondered. But it was easier this way, wasn’t it? Not having to explain his mutation. Or that scene in the necropolis below the jungle floor. This way it seemed he was a good, loyal soldier, grieving only for his own dead. Not conflicted about some enemy who had murdered a teenage girl.
     
         Cal Williams said nothing. But there was more than just the scars. This man’s cheekbones were high and pronounced, his lips full, his eyes slanted, his pupils obsidian black, all like a Ha Jiin. His face wasn’t robin’s egg blue, but it had a bluish pallor.
     
         Seeing that the man behind him wasn’t going to respond, Stake faced around forward again. He felt the eyes of others on him, as well. Yes, easy for the counselor to tell him to go without the mask. And maybe it wasn’t a bad idea, really, to rid himself of that crutch. But he felt it was premature to have removed it here and now.
     
         The elevator arrived, disgorging one group of people and admitting the next. Cal watched the cabin fill up. The scarred man entered, then turned around to face outward. Cal was desperate to plunge inside so as not to lose track of him, but when the man faced him again he could not bring himself to move. The elevator door slid shut between them.
     
         But a moment later, Cal was racing toward the emergency stairwell.
     
     
     
    5
     
         Stake’s new flat was on Judas Street, in a brick tenement meant to look like native Choom architecture but merely looking mass produced and cheap. At least the gang graffiti gave all the buildings on Judas Street, whatever their style, a homogenous feel. His bed was narrow, his bathroom tiny, his kitchen little more than a counter, but there was a table near the window where he set up his new computer. It would serve as his phone, his VT, and his means by which to try to find out what had become of his former prisoner. The female Ha Jiin sniper named Thi Gonh, whom her own people had dubbed with admiration the “Earth Killer.”
     
         He recalled her face better than he recalled his own. Yearned for it more, too. He could still smell the scent of her long hair, and of her blue flesh. He remembered the taste of it.
     
         What would all the vets at the VA think if they knew how he had lain with her? Not that many of them hadn’t slept with prostitutes among their allies, the Jin Haa. But this was the enemy. A killer who had trained her sniper rifle on men and women just like them, and pulled the trigger again and again.
     
         And what would her people think, if they knew the same about her? If they knew how she had become...confused, as he had?
     
         Stake had his computer on now, running in VT mode, and the news station he was tuned to reported a seemingly endless list of recent crimes. A Dacvibese had been murdered by a gang right here on Judas Street and they showed a picture of the