I double check the address on my palm screen, convinced my psych officer has set me up. This can’t possibly be where I’m supposed to pay out the life force I collected from Mrs. Riley. It’s not just the stink of recently expelled vomit from a junkie passed out in the alley. Or the fact that I’m on the east side of Los Angeles, the low rent district of the metropolitan basin, well past the hour for any legal business. The address Candy gave me points to an industrial warehouse buried deep in the sticky smog that coats everything at ground level. The building’s not even four stories tall. And high potential payoffs like Mr. Brodsky, the CEO of Brodsky Electronics, usually live well above the cancer-inducing air that pools at the impoverished feet of the city.
I knock on the metal door, shaking loose a few slivers of rust and hoping someone will answer quickly. I want to confirm I’m in the wrong spot and get out. The dull thuds only disturb the junkie, who rolls out of the spot of hazy street light. The building is deathly silent, a monolith of gray, windowless concrete. No sign. No number. My palm GPS says this is it, but something is very, very off. The feeling that someone is watching me itches up my back. I duck my head into the collar of my trenchcoat, glancing down the street, but if someone’s there, the creeping darkness gives them perfect cover.
I pound harder.
Finally a grinding sound comes from inside, a clacking of gears or rattling of chains. The jitters from the day—Ophelia’s abduction, the hit off the mob thug who took her, my nauseating visit with my psych officer—settle into my stomach. I still have Mrs. Riley’s transfer riding around inside me, too, but the churning feeling is mostly from the bonus life energy I stole from the thug. It’s filled out my bones again, replacing the sucked-dry feeling I’ve had since my first and only mercy hit two weeks ago. The high from helping Apple Girl’s sick sister wasn’t worth the aftermath of feeling like the life had been carved out of me. Not to mention chasing that high would have ended with me as a corpse.
The clanking inside the building screeches to a metallic stop, and someone is finally unlocking the door. It takes them a crazy amount of time to open it, banging around like there are a hundred locks. My foot taps the pavement. The mob might be torturing Ophelia right this moment—I don’t have time to waste with dead ends and wrong addresses.
The door slides open, ripping a cry of protest through the heavy silence of the street. I lean away. A man stands in the doorway; at least I think it’s a man. His goggles are like mini-telescopes, one protruding from each eye. There’s no part of him exposed, from his gloved hands to his masked face to the fine-weave mesh suit that’s lumpy over his clothes. The suit is so bright-white that it glows, making him look like an oversized, electrified bunny. His mini-telescopes scan me up and down, then he pulls the goggles away from his eyes and props them on his forehead.
His stare is intense, and I match it, mesmerized. He has one blue eye, one green. The green one seems to glint with its own light.
“You the debt collector?” His voice is rough with lack of sleep, or maybe fatigue.
I’m not sure if I’m relieved to be in the right place or not. “Is this Brodsky Electronics?”
The man glances down the street, then steps back inside, ushering me in with an urgent wave of his white-mitted hand. I hesitate. It’s so dark, I can’t see inside, and the man hasn’t verified anything.
“Are you coming, son, or not? I’m a busy man.”
He’s about to close the door, so I step through. While he works the battalion of chains, bolts, and electrified locks, the overhead panels blink on and light up a wire mesh cage that could be an elevator. The man brushes past me. He tugs off his mitts, and his thin fingers shake before he grabs the metal handle of the cage and yanks it
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