Under Dark Sky Law Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands on her hips. “We don’t let
our own die anyone else’s hand, and that includes bugs and viruses.
Even if you guys drive me crazy, that’s a pact I made when I
brought you on board, and you can still count on that. Trina will
be better by the end of the week,” she said.
    Argon released a lungful of air, relieved,
but a pensive look remained on his face. He opened his mouth to
speak, but Xero interrupted him.
    “Don’t worry. I know you and Trina have
fucked, and I don’t give two shits. I’m sure Milo knows too, and he
doesn’t give a shit either,” she said. “Rule one of the Grease
Weasels—we could all die tomorrow, so you better be having some
fun. Fuck who you want, when you want. Just try not to get your
dick lopped off.”
    He nodded, visibly relieved. “Well, in that
case, let’s go have some fun and play with that dead body,” he said
with faux enthusiasm.
    She stuck out her tongue. “I’m putting you in
charge of poking at the body. I could also give two shits about
touching a corpse, but I swear to god I am not taking another
fucking cold shower before leaving for the dome.
    He laughed. “I’ll be sure to get you a big
stick to poke it with. Good thing being respectful to the dead
isn’t in our code of ethics,” he said.
    “Fuck respect. Nothing is as serious as a
cold shower.”

CHAPTER 4
     
    One of the reasons they had chosen a slum
that was directly next to the river had been to try and vie for
some privacy. Under the abandoned underpass there were ruins of
hundreds of old houses, all abandoned decades ago after the river
had made it too polluted for anyone to live there for long without
developing horrendous health consequences. Skin peeling off?
Strange growths? Sudden death? Noxious odors? Their neighborhood
had it all, and that morning the odors were especially pungent.
Argon and Xero both had the apex of the resistance gene, giving
them strongest resilience against the environmental toxins, but
that morning even Xero was having trouble not letting her eyes blur
and water against the acrid fumes belching up from the remains of
the Verde River. Almost all the failed domes had been built
directly over rivers, and that ended up being their downfall.
Eventually, nature caught up with you if you didn’t run fast
enough. It was one reasons why Xero liked to keep running.
    “Jesus Christ, it’s fucking foul out here
this month,” she said, silently hoping that the smell didn’t creep
into her hair. There wasn’t much of it to deal with in the first
place, but if the federalies thought she smelled contaminated,
they’d make her go through a decon shower, and that was the last
thing that she wanted. That shit burned like nothing else, and on
occasion some idiot forgot to calibrate the formula so that it
contained a safe amount of acid. Those were the types of accidents
that went around the media and dove straight into the graves at the
edges of the pits. It wasn’t something she was especially proud of,
but corpse removal runs were especially lucrative, and the
federalies tended to look the other way, leaving her far more
leeway to get her own business done at the same time without having
to worry as much about getting caught.
    Despite the putrid smell, the river flats had
a certain strange beauty to them. The abandoned underpass reminded
her of where she used to hang out as a teenager, and the lack of
residents in any of the crumbling tin and wood shacks let her hear
the oddly soothing surge of the mottled, lumpy river. Trying to go
for a dip in that might not be a great idea even for Xero or Argon,
teeming as it was with chemicals and debris aggregating from the
state’s intact domes. It had been so long since anyone had lived
down there, and the river was so acidic that there was virtually no
trash littered on the banks or anywhere else in the surrounding
neighborhood—what was there had either eroded in the acidic soil
over the past decades, or it was directly swept away