Eve dug for credits. "Got twenty. Blow."

He showed his grayed, pointy teeth. The twenty disappeared, then so did he. "You meet such interesting people down here," Peabody said shakily.

"Stay close," Eve ordered. "Anybody moves in, bang 'em."

"You don't have to tell me twice." With her hand gripped tight on her bat, Peabody followed Eve into Hell.

The noise was awesome: screams, sirens, grunts, and groans from dozens of clashing machines and patrons. The lighting was an ugly red that shimmered and swayed. It flashed her back to a freezing room in Dallas, made her stomach pitch before she controlled it.

She heard the ragged breathing, the hissed words of violent sex.

She'd heard those in that room, too, before the end. Heard them in too many rooms to count where the walls were thin as tissue and brutality was only a whisper away.

The sound of flesh striking flesh. Gleeful punishment. Stop it!

Goddamn you, Rick, stop! You're hurting me!

Whose voice was that? Eve wondered as she stared around blindly. Her mother's? One of the whores he'd used when he wasn't using his daughter?

"Dallas? Lieutenant?"

The uneasy tremble in Peabody's voice snapped her back. This wasn't the time to lose her focus. It wasn't the time to remember.

"Stay close," Eve repeated, and began to thread through the machines.

Most were too intent on the game, on the world they'd created to notice her. But others still had instincts sharp enough to make a cop.

Though plenty of those people were armed, nothing was aimed in their direction, for the moment.

She passed a tube titled Whips and Chains where a woman, thin as a stick, wearing VR goggles, screamed in ecstasy. Sweat poured down her body like oil, over the tight leather loincloth, beaded on the restraints that locked her arms and legs to the console of her machine.

"Looks like we're in the right section. There's Mook."

He, too, was locked in a tube. Stripped down to a black leather cock sheath and studded dog collar, his impressively muscled body jerked, his throat worked with gasps. His hair was candlelight gold, shoulder-blade length, and damp with sweat.

His back was crisscrossed with lash marks, proving that he didn't always settle for virtual punishment.

Though it wasn't quite proper procedure, Eve used her master to unlock the tube. His body was arched, his lips peeled back in a grimace of erotic pain. Eve hit the main switch and left him trembling on the brink.

"What the fuck." His body sagged, muscles quivering. "Mistress, please. I beg you."

"That's Lieutenant Mistress to you, creep." Eve whipped off his goggles. "Hi, Mook. Remember me?" "This is a privacy booth."

"No kidding? And here I was looking forward to a fun group session.

Well, next time. Now, let's you and me go somewhere quiet and talk."

"I don't have to talk to you. I got rights. Damn it, I was about to get off here."

With someone else, she might have given him a quick little jab. But Mook, well, he'd just enjoy it. "I take you in, nobody's going to hurt you for the next thirty-six hours. You don't want to go that long without pain, do you, Mook? Let's talk, then you can get back to Madam Electra and her-what is it?-six million tortures."

He leaned in, straining against the restraints. "Make me."

"Want me to rough you up, Mook?" She kept her voice low, in a purr.

"Force you?" And when excitement filled his face, she shrugged.

"Nope, not in the mood. But I will give your dominatrix here a quick blast. I don't guess they're real quick on repair and replacement of equipment in this joint."

"Don't!" His voice squeaked in protest. Moving fast now, he nudged the toe release so that the restraints popped open. "Why do you want to mess me up this way?"

"Just part of my daily entertainment. Let's get us another privacy booth, Mook, one without the toys." She stepped back, and when he followed she saw his gaze land on Peabody's bat. He made a lunge. Peabody flipped it out of her belt, zapped him dead center of the chest. His body jerked, danced, then shivered.

"Thank you."

"Don't encourage him, Peabody." Taking Mook's arm firmly in hand, she strode to the nearest private-table booth. As it was occupied by a couple of chemi-heads in the middle of an illegals deal, she kicked the tube, flashed her badge. Jerked her thumb.

They slithered out and away like smoke.

"This is cozy." She settled in. "Watch the door, Peabody, and we'll keep this quick and private. Who's in the poison business these days, Mook?" "I'm not your weasel."

"A fact that has always brought me joy and cheer. As does the fact I can put you in solitary lockup for those thirty-six hours during which time your life will not be the living hell you know and love. The Reverend Munch is dead as Hitler, Mook, and so are all his merry men, but for you."

"I testified," he reminded her. "I gave the Feds all the info."

"Yeah, you did. Seemed like mass suicide was just a little over the top even for someone with your particular appetites. But you never told them who provided that curare and cyanide cocktail the reverend mixed up with the lemonade for his congregation."

"I was low on the feeding chain. I told them what I knew."

"And the feebies were satisfied. But you know what? I'm not. Give me a name, and I walk out of your sick and pitiful life. Hold out on me, and I'll be coming down here, or whatever cesspool you try to frequent, every fucking day. Every day, interrupting your S M games until orgasms are just a fond and distant memory for you. Every time you try to get off, jack off, whack off, I'll be there spoiling the fun.

Come on, Mook, it's been what... better than ten years since the cult offed itself. What do you care?"

"I was sucked in. I was brainwashed-"

"Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. Who brought in the poison?"

"I don't know who he was. They just called him the doctor. Only saw him once. Skinny guy. Old." "Race?"

"White-bread, through and through. I figure he drank the shit, too."

"Did he?"

"Look." Mook looked around, and though they were in the tube, lowered his voice. "Most people, they don't remember what went down back there; they don't know about it. People find out I was in the Church of Hereafter, they get all weirded out."

She glanced around as well, taking in the screams, the writhing bodies. "Oh yeah, I can see how people acting weird would be a major concern for you. Spill."

"What's it worth?"

Eve pulled out twenty credits, slapped it on the nail-head-sized table.

"Shit, Dallas, that don't buy me an hour VR time. Give me a frigging break."

"Take it. Or leave it and we'll stop being so friendly and go into Central. You won't see Madam Electra and her many exquisite tortures for thirty-six, minimum."

He looked sad, sitting there in his studded dog collar. "Why you gotta be such a bitch?"

"Mook, I ask myself that very question every morning. Never have come up with a satisfactory answer." He scooped up the twenty, tucked it into his cock sheath. "Want you to remember I helped you out." "Mook, how could I ever forget you?"

"Right." He looked around, through the smoky glass of the booth.

Licked his lips. "Okay, right. Nothing coming down on me about this shit, right?" "Not a thing."

"Well, see... I was going to tell the Feebs everything, total cooperation." "Get to it, Mook. I have a life to get back to."

"I'm telling you. I was cooperating, and I was gonna name all the names. But I saw him outside, behind the barricades at the church when they started hauling bodies out. Man, that was some scene, right. You were there." "Yeah, I was there.

"So... He looked at me."

Earnest now and just a little jazzed, he leaned in. "Scary guy, all pale and spooky. And me, I don't want to go out with no slurp of some poison. I could tell he knew I went in with the cops instead of following through on the promise. So I had to cover myself, didn't I? I just left him out of it. What's the big deal?"

"So, he's alive?"

"He was then." Mook shrugged his massive shoulders. "I never saw him again, and that was fine by me. I didn't know him," Mook insisted. "Swear on my dick."

"And that is a solemn oath."