No Dogs in Philly by Andy Futuro Read Free Book Online Page B

to disable the hate response
of the typical elzi. Watch.”
    He flicked the elzi’s implant. Saru’s hand shot
to her prod. The elzi twitched but did nothing. Saru sucked in a
breath.
    “ That’s not funny.”
    “ I assure you he’s quite harmless.
The effect will last about twelve minutes before the implants
discover a suitable counter. That’s what I couldn’t figure out
before—almost lost a few fingers—you need to mix in different drugs
every time or they counter it. And once one of them knows the
counter, they all do. Fascinating.”
    He went to the workbench and picked up what
looked like a thumb-sized satellite, and then walked over to the
operating table. She flinched when Friar clipped it onto the elzi’s
neck, but the elzi didn’t react other than to twitch.
    “ Now, watch this,” Friar said. He
leaned in close—closer than Saru would have liked—to the elzi’s,
cracked, rashy ear. “Jonathan. Where is the girl?” Nothing
happened. Saru realized suddenly that she was wasting her time here
and that precious minutes in the hunt for ten million dollars were
slipping away.
    “ Well, this has been
fun…”
    “ Jonathan, where is the
girl?”
    “ Caaan’t tell…”
    She nearly pissed herself. The elzi spoke—it
fucking spoke!—but not in any voice that a live person ever used.
It was like someone squeezing his guts to force the air out of his
throat.
    “ Please, Jonathan, we must know
where the girl is.”
    “ How would he…”
    Friar gave a look to silence her.
    “ Do you know where she is,
Jonathan?”
    “ Yessss.”
    “ You must tell me
Jonathan!”
    “ No…no!”
    He screamed and his body tensed and he thrashed
and tore against the chains. Friar jumped back, away from the
flailing arms.
    “ Noooooo!” the elzi screamed.
Lines appeared in his skin, like fat worms crawling beneath the
surface. Bubbles formed and popped, splattering blood. There was
the cracking of bones, over and over like kids throwing poppers on
the ground, and they burst through the skin and ripped it apart.
The elzi dissolved before them, torn apart from the inside. And
then there was nothing left—a small pond of gore and viscera and
the implants glinting evilly. The tiny satellite had
melted.
    “ Thank you, Jonathan,” Friar said.
He seemed shaken, but not as shaken as he should have been. Saru
felt like she was going to barf again.
    “ You…sick fuck,” she said. “What
did you do to him?”
    “ I? I did nothing, though I admit
that was a likely outcome.”
    “ You knew that would
happen?”
    “ Not that, exactly. It was very
likely Jonathan would die helping us, but the manner of his death I
did not know.”
    “ What…what…did you do to
him?”
    “ I offered him a conduit, a
moment’s escape from the Uau. Imagine a paper bag over your head
and a single pinprick of light—that’s about as much as I can do to
penetrate the spectrum. His mind belonged to the UausuaU; it was
his price, you see, for the ecstasy, the knowing. I tried to steal
that knowledge, appeal to his forgotten humanity.”
    “ What are you saying?” She
couldn’t take her eyes off the bloodstain. “That some random elzi
you clubbed and dragged into your torture chamber knows where this
fucking girl is?”
    “ He knows what Uau know—and he
knew where the girl was. That means the feasters know where she is,
or have a good idea.”
    “ Well shit, that doesn’t help. I
don’t know where to look even!”
    “ Yes, you do,” he said. He too was
staring at the blood now. She looked at him and then back at the
blood and then the skin on the back of her neck began to crawl.
There was a sensation in the room, a feeling like she had had with
ElilE when the day had gone suddenly to night.
    “ I…may…have gone too far this
time,” Friar said. He hefted himself onto the operating table,
right onto the pile of gore. It soaked into his pants, red stains
climbing up the fabric. He unlocked the foot shackles, removing