“I don’t usually do business with women, Rani. Well, not unless they’re selling something besides guns." He leered unpleasantly. From most people, the remark would have had sexual connotations, but from Mohinder it probably referred to street prices for transplantable organs. In most cases, at least.

"But they say you do business when the goods are worth it.” She pandered to his ego, unfailingly the largest part of any chauvinist.

“No complaints, Rani. Nice heat. I might even keep it for personal use.” His expression changed to a crafty smirk. “Show me some affection, lady.” He leaned very close across the small table, and she shuddered in repulsion for a moment until she realized what his gesture meant.

The package was pumped down his arm by the force of contracting muscle, then deposited inside her jacket as he caressed her right breast. He disgusted her, but she had some of what she’d come for. At least the slint hadn’t tried to kiss her; that would have been too much.

He ripped off a great strip of batter and crammed it into his mouth. He was clearly about to leave, looking around at the door, lifting his huge hands off the table and straightening his jacket.

“Mohinder, I’m still trying to find out what happened that night. Who set us up."

“But now that Imran’s spending all his days and nights on the streets he’ll be able to find out, huh? He tell you who hired him?" Mohinder’s brows frowned at her.

"Of course, but he won’t tell me where, nor any of the details.” She had to lie. If Mohinder knew that her own brother hadn’t told her a thing, he’d never trust her with any information he might have.

“I don’t think you’re leveling with me, gopi. You’ve still got the smell of the kitchen about you." He stood up, stretched his arms out behind his back, then folded them across his chest. "But you’re lucky. This afternoon I cut a fine deal. I’m a happy man tonight, Rani, so perhaps I will tell you a little something.”

She stretched across the table eagerly.

“But first you promise to put a word in with your man Mohsin, huh? Not that he wouldn’t do a good job for me anyway. He knows not to cross me. But family gets best treatment, and I’m not family, so you put in a word, right?”

Rani gave him her most winning smile. “I’ll threaten to dose him with one of old Chenka’s powders if he doesn’t give you the best!” Chenka could make up anything, including poisons and toxins that would send a troll’s guts into spasms for a month.

He laughed contentedly. "Deal.” He placed his huge paws on the table, staring straight into her face. Rani did not flinch from the inhuman stare of his cybereyes. “Well, Imran got a job I should have had. If your family had been working with me, little one, they’d be still alive and safe. Your brother is a greedy fool. Pershinkin hired him. The little rat would be an intermediary for some heavy rollers, yeah? Can’t tell you where to find him, though. He’s vanished. Wouldn’t mind a word with him myself. Not that you’ll see him-but if you do, tell him to look me up sometime.”

Finally he turned to leave. "Don’t you forget to have that word with Mohsin, girl. Now I got to sort out Typhoid Mary. Later.”

Without another word, Mohinder stood up with a howling scrape of chair legs, then shouldered his way through the crowd toward a gaunt young woman. She was dressed in black and wore her hair in a mass of tangles. A datajack showed on one temple, but she sat nervously avoiding everyone’s eyes and playing with a near-empty glass. Mohinder made only the slightest beckoning motion with one finger and she stood and followed him out of the noisy restaurant.

Rani pulled on her jacket and headed out into the thickening fog as the birthday party guests began emptying their pockets to pay the bill. She’d gotten what she’d come for.

Pershinkin.

A real freak. Part-Ukrainian, part-Indian, part-Italian. Spoke eleven languages, lied fluently in all of them. He drifted in and out of Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal, even the Squeeze. Chipped to the cybereyeballs and as fast and elusive as a greased piglet on crack.

Pershinkin was a big-time fixer, a conduit for corporate money stretching out to hire poor street muscle from across the river while his employers sat safe and cozy in their Estates penthouses and boardrooms or some other safe patch. Nobody ever knew how to find Pershinkin. He only appeared when he had to fill the bill for some work.

Rani had heard Imran mention the little man a few times when in a boastful mood. She’d never seen him, but she had a name and that was a start. At least she could confront Imran and force something out of him now, though she’d need Sanjay’s help if the wretch ever came out of his stupor.

She was most of the way down a deserted Brick Lane before she realized just how thick the fog was. She coughed into her hands, the sound quickly sucked up by the wet night. The street lights along here were intermittent, and the little light they emanated diffused into a purulent yellow haze at unpredictable intervals along the street. As an ork, her low-light eyes gave her an advantage most nights, but in a fog this thick even she struggled to see more than a few yards ahead of her as she padded along the wet sidewalk.

Near the junction with Mile End Road the fog began to thin out, a gap in the pea-souper suddenly revealing a circle of figures standing there. Their features were dim, but their intentions were obvious. The curved blades and chains made sure of that.

"What have we here, boys?" said one.

There was an answering voice from behind her. “Dear me, a little Indian girl out on her own at night. Bad gopi girlie." There was a nasal snigger.

The acne-scarred face of the snakeboy advancing slowly toward Rani broke into a grimace of pure hatred. “Well, well, that’s none too smart, huh? Oh and look, it’s an ork, too. The kind of filth we don’t need on the streets of our country. Wouldn’t you say, boys?”

Rani was dead and she knew it. Her terrified eyes took in the white flash marks on their jackets and on the forehead of their yellow-toothed, crazy leader. His twitching hands said he was high as hell on something, and the motif told her: White Lightning. Anti-metahuman, pure racist, neo-Nazi street scum.

All that was left to hope was that she could kill or maim as many as possible before they ripped her apart. She drew both knife and pistol, clenching them with trembling hands.

The leader’s face broke into an insane cackle, staring at her, pupils dilated to the max. “She’s going to make a fight of it, boys! Oh look, a little Ceska pistol! Frag me, it’s going to rip my ballistic so bad I’m never gonna scrag another rakkin’ subhuman again!” He clutched at his chest in mock agony. Head shot for you, you wanker, she promised him silently. One or two of the shadows behind him seemed just a little less eager at the sight of the twin weapons. Take him out and you might just reduce the odds, girl. Maybe only half a million to one.

Don’t think it.

Do it.

She armed the Ceska, drilling him right between the eyes. He dropped like a stone, blood spurting gore over his chest and the pavement. A low growl broke out from the others and they advanced on Rani, moving to flank her on either side. She realized that now they would have to avenge their leader.

Well, that’s one fascist scumsucker gone, thought Rani. If I knew who to pray to, I’d beg to take out another dozen before I die. She aimed at the closest gangboy, a drooling one-eyed skinhead with a ribbed scar running from forehead to chin. Before she could squeeze the trigger, something heavy hit her in the back and sent her shot flying wide. Running now, the gangers were still coming at her.

The first creep was four yards away and screaming, his knives ready for action, when his throat suddenly sprayed crimson and his scream turned into a ghastly dying gargle. Something from behind her had hit him, but she hadn’t any time to wonder what was happening. The gangboy staggered backward and half-knocked down the one behind him. Without pausing for thought, Rani kicked him sweetly under the chin, feeling the pleasing crack of a breaking jaw as her steel boot cap connected with his face.