The Lucifer Deck Read Online Free PDF Page B

patrolled there.
    Pita gave herself a mental kick for not thinking of going to the Underground sooner. Not only was it the most likely place to find Yao; it was also the least likely place for Lone Star to find her. She shrugged and blamed it on the Mindease. She’d been doing entirely too much of the stuff since Chen died. This was the first time in two days that she’d been completely straight.
    Pita kept watching for Lone Star cruisers, mindful of the possibility that the mage might still be on her trail. He could be following her in an unmarked cruiser, even now. The thought made her quicken her steps. She turned up the collar of her jacket and ducked her head down into it, hoping that it hid her face from the passing cars.
    She crossed the highway and angled down Madison. The Renraku Arcology loomed at the base of the street, a towering pyramid seven blocks wide and more than two hundred stories high. Its silver-green windows shimmered with light; the rain sliding off them filtered it into soft ripples. Behind that tinted glass, thousands of people lived and worked in a climate-controlled atmosphere. Seattle could be experiencing gale-force winds or chilling hail, but inside Renraku, everyone would be wearing shorts and sunglasses.
    Pita hung a right and headed down
First Avenue
, turning her back on the arcology. The buildings along First were modern, but at street level they’d been designed to look like the historic structures they had replaced. The shopfront glass was bullet-proof, but was hand-lettered and framed in dark-grained plastic that was indistinguishable from real wood. The street was lined with brass-trimmed street lights and paved with cobblestones. Cars passing over them made a rumbling sound. This was an area of taverns, restaurants, and shops that sold tourist trideos and T-shirts.
    One of the largest of the area’s restaurants served as an entrance to the Underground. Pita pushed through the doors of the
Seattle
Utilities
Building
and caught an escalator to the basement. As she descended into the Big Rhino Restaurant, the noise level grew. This was a huge eatery, filled with long dining-hall tables crowded with patrons. The vast majority were orks, although a sprinkling of humans and dwarfs were squashed in among the larger patrons. Waitresses hurried back and forth with steins of draft beer or plates heaped with RealMeat and fries. Blue smoke curled around the ceiling fixtures in flagrant disregard of Seattle’s nosmoking bylaw.
    The rich smell of the gravy-smothered RealMeat made Pita’s stomach growl. She wound her way between the tables, inhaling the savory smell. At the same time, her lip curled with disgust. The restaurant was filled with orks of every size and description, all of them chewing noisily and shouting at one another. They stuffed too much into their gaping mouths at once, they picked their teeth with splinters of bone, they slurped their beer noisily and then belched when the stein was empty. Pita knew that some of the behavior was natural, some of it exaggerated. It was bad enough they were orks. Why did they have to flaunt it?
    She winced. That was her father talking. He’d never liked metahumans. Any of them. The elves were "pointy-eared pricks." dwarfs were "foot stools." and trolls were "horn heads" with the intelligence of a brick. Orks . . .
    Orks were what Pita was now. But she didn’t have to like it.
    She hurried through a second hall where most of the patrons were male. She tried not to look at the halfclothed woman who leered at the customers from behind a tall brass pole. The stripper had huge breasts, but it was hard to tell where they stopped and her bulging chest muscles began. Her face was painted in a horrible parody of a human woman; the dark eyeshadow gave her face even more of a greenish tinge, and the jutting canines ruined the effect of her lipstick. Even so, the men hooted and whistled, bellying up to the stage to wave in the hope of catching the