The Peripheral Read Online Free PDF Page A

pseudo-phallus. Her left hand touched his side then, just below the ribs. Her fingers were curled, but loosely, her thumb against gray flesh.
    He shivered, for an instant. Swayed.
    She raised both feet, planted them against his stomach, and pushed. As her fist came away, it looked as though she were extracting a length of scarlet measuring tape. A thumbnail. As long, when it fully emerged, as her forearm. His blood very bright, against a world of gray.
    He released her. She landed on her back, instantly rolling, the nail shorter by half. He opened his vast maw, in which Netherton saw only darkness, and toppled forward.
    Daedra was already on her feet, turning slowly, each of her thumbnails concave and slightly curving, the left slick with the patcher’s blood.
    “Hypersonic,” said an unfamiliar voice on Rainey’s feed, ungendered, utterly serene. “Incoming. Deceleration. Shockwave.”
    He’d never heard thunder here, before.
    Six spotless, white, upright cylinders, perfectly evenly spaced, had appeared above and slightly outside the circle of patchers, all of whom had dropped their bikes and scooters and taken a first step toward Daedra. A vertical line of tiny orange needles danced up and downeach one, as the patchers, in some way Netherton was unable to grasp, were shredded, flung. The oculi of Lorenzo’s feeds froze: on one the perfect, impossible, utterly black silhouette of a severed hand, almost filling the frame.
    “We are so fucked,” said Rainey, her amazement total, childlike.
    Netherton, seeing the Michikoid, on the deck of the moby, sprout multiple spider-eyes and muzzle-slits, in the instant before it vaulted the railing, could only agree.

9.
    PROTECTIVE CUSTODY
     
    L ondon.
    She’d turned the LEDs down, finding that made it easier to spot the bugs. She left them that way now. She’d been hoping to get the ride down the side of the building, back to the van, because she’d be off duty then, free to look at things, but they’d just bumped her straight out.
    Unbent her phone, cracked her knuckles, then sat in tacky twilight, image-searching cities. Hadn’t taken long. Curve in the river, texture of the older, lower buildings, contrast between that and the tall ones. Real London didn’t have as many tall ones, and in real London tall ones were more clustered together, came in more shapes and sizes. Game London, they were megastacks, evenly spaced but further apart, like on a grid. Their own grid, she knew, London never having had one.
    She wondered where to leave the paper with the log-in. Decided on the tomahawk case. As she was putting it back under the table, her phone rang. Leon. “Where is he?” she asked.
    “Homes,” he said, “protective custody.”
    “Arrested?”
    “No. Locked up.”
    “What did he do?”
    “Acted out. Homes were all grinning and shit, after. They’d liked it. Gave him a Chinese tailor-made cigarette.”
    “He doesn’t smoke.”
    “He can swap it for something.”
    “Took his phone?”
    “Homes take everybody’s phone.”
    Looked at hers. Macon had only just printed it for her the week before. She hoped he’d gotten everything right, now Homeland computers would be looking at it. “They say how long he’ll be in for?”
    “Never do,” said Leon. “Make more sense if it’s till Luke’s gone.”
    “How’s that looking?”
    “’Bout the same as when we got here.”
    “What happened?”
    “Big old boy, holding up one end of a God-hates-everything sign. Burton says tell you same time, same place. What you’re doing for him. Till he’s back. Says an extra five for every other one.”
    “Tell him they’re all an extra five. What they’d be paying him.”
    “You make me glad I don’t have a sister.”
    “You got a cousin, dickbag.”
    “No shit.”
    “Keep track of Burton, Leon.”
    “’Kay.”
    She checked Shaylene on Badger. Still there, still ringing purple. She’d ride over there. Maybe see Macon, ask him about Burton’s phone, and