Chapter 1

"I gotta go someplace, baby," Leon said with a reckless grin. "Don't pull that shit now."

His scarred, black face lost only a fraction of it's menace, but he didn't scare me too much. I'd started rubbing up against him in his BMW, massaging his fat cock through his pants. He had a thing for little boys and he'd fallen for me hard.

"No, you don't," I giggled, squeezing him. "You gotta fuck me, that's what you gotta do."

"Aw, bitch..." He laughed. "I'll fuck the shit outta you later. I gotta do some business now."

"Just quick, please?" I spread my legs under the dome light; it was getting late, like midnight out behind the Cipher Six. He could see my hairless scrotum and smallish erection just fine, and he licked his thick lips.

"Yeah. Quick, huh?" He was so predictable.

"Take it out for me. I got a popper," I promised, giggling again cause Leon loved it when I played cute just for him.

So he lifted his ass off the seat, working at his belt as I went digging through my pack like I had some of that cock candy he liked so much. And just about the time he had that big ugly prick loose, I put a 7.7mm bullet into his right ear. And that seventy-seven was so quiet, I heard the splat of Leon's brains hitting the glass on the opposite side.

"Bingo," I breathed, jamming the gun back into my pack. I reached across his skewed legs, the left still twitching and tapping his foot to a whatever song they were playing in hell. I found the trunk release and popped it with a dull thud.

"Reon?" someone asked, high pitched and rolling the L impatiently.

"Bingo," I answered as the door opened slowly.

"Who the fuck is you?" The Chinese guy stared down at me, or maybe he was Vietnamese, I didn't care. He wasn't from around there anyway.

"Special delivery." I held up the cheap briefcase I carried, but just a little cause it was heavy.

"I don't like this shit," a girl standing behind him said, old, like in her twenties, with too much makeup. She looked like a pro and we didn't like each other right away, I could tell.

"I'll tell Leon," I shrugged, turning around, but the guy stopped me.

"Get inside." He jerked his head and there were three of them. Two guys and the woman, all oriental, all gunned up and nervous. Amateurs.

"Here," the other guy said. He was short and round and holding a little briefcase of his own, nicer than mine, but just as heavy. He put it on the bed and I nodded, putting mine next to it. We opened them together.

"This shit good?" He looked at my briefcase, twelve kilos of pharmaceutical quality starlight.

"Just like you wanted. This money good?" I stared up at him, being just a little boy and not even close to five feet tall.

"Nine hundred. You want to count it?" the woman asked me.

"No." I shook my head, ignoring her tone. "Leon says if you need more, let him know."

"How come he ain't here?" the tall guy asked, because he'd been wondering.

"Cause he's busy fuckin' my mom." I shot him a frown, so maybe he believed me, maybe not. It didn't matter, I had what I wanted.

Nine hundred grand was a lot of trouble. Nobody carried cash like that, not anymore, not on Broken Window, but now I did and I didn't like it. The moons had already set and it had to be almost four in the morning, and I was bone tired. I had a stim and some pink meth, but I was saving that shit for an emergency, cause you never know.

The club was loud and it ran night and day, nonstop. People were in the streets, coming in and out. I passed a Chinese place next door with chickens in the window, and a tattoo shop on the other side. I kept thinking about it, but I couldn't ever make up my mind. Across the street, a big neon Jesus promised salvation and soup. All you had to do was listen to the rollers make their spiel. I'd eaten there plenty of times and the clam chowder was okay if you strained it.

A bouncer was busy kicking the shit out of his girlfriend, or maybe his sister from sound of it. Either way, he ignored me and I went down the stairs, into the basement where it felt like you were in the middle of an earthquake cause of the music and stomping feet of a thousand doped up kids upstairs. Some of those freaks would dance til their feet were bleeding, until they'd pass out, and even then they kept dancing, the crowd holding their bodies up, moving it around.

I heard of a girl who got fucked up there, gangbanged for a couple hours until they figured out she was dead. Overdosed probably and she never even hit the floor. But there's always a lot of stories like that around and you never know what's true and what isn't, not on this planet anyway. Broken Window ain't like the other ones.

"Hey, slut ... You want somethin'?" Some oiled up beefcake grinned at me, squeezing his cock all wrapped in leather.

I blew him a kiss and kept going, walking through the Gutter, the basement bar where all the sick fucks lived. I slipped around some girl with a dick, sucking off a guy painted green. Right behind therm, a vampire chick happily nursed on her girlfriend's ass, bending her over the table and sucking blood, black under the red lights, while another Goth goddess strapped her undead ass with a stainless dildo.

These were the addicts, the sex mongers, and it wasn't my thing. Sex was what I did, but only when I had to. It wasn't what I was good at. That would be killing. I was really fucking good at that and it's the reason I'd come down there, making my way through the crowd, weaving and holding that nine hundred kay close because I needed every dime.

I found the door I wanted. There were a lot of them, but this was the one and inside was the guy. Old too, like nobody's fuckin' business how old, and he sat at his desk, working a number cruncher while his little kids toted numbers on an old blackboard. The place was dusty with chalk and smoky too. It made my nose itch like I wanted to sneeze.

"I'm looking for a game," I told him, because he wasn't gonna talk first. He wasn't even going to look at me until I said something. He was the Dealer.

Then he did look, sitting back and taking in my pale body, the tight red hipsters, all fake leather and cheap. My tight little white top, like half a t-shirt ripped around my tummy. No tits, just hard nipples poking out like needles. Short blonde hair, pulled straight back so it was hanging just below my shoulders. Dark eyes, sapphire blue in the daytime, but pitch black at night and in shitty little rooms like this one.

"Lolita game?" He gaped at me, the inside of his mouth all pink and wet. "Little fucky fucky game?"

"Wrong room, fucky fucky boy!" one of the girls giggled. She was all dressed in green rubber and pierced hard through her nipples. Real hard.

"Cards," I stared at the Dealer. "Five hundred, right?"

"Non-refundable." He lit a death stick and breathed green smoke out his long hairy nose.

"And 400 on me..." I dropped the briefcase on his cluttered desk with a little whump, " ... to win."

"That's the only bet in town." He coughed a little, hacking and jerking his head so the boy hiding behind him, this one all tattooed up and castrated, could get the case.

"Nine, Daddy," the boy said a minute later. He'd tossed stacks on a scale while we watched.

"A dark horse," the old man wheezed. "Put him 30 to one, second race. Starts on Tuesday, midnight. You got a drop?"

"St. Peters, under the Virgin," I nodded.

"Stand still," Green Girl said, taking a snapshot of me. "You got a name fucky fucky boy?"

"Bingo," I shrugged, it was as good as any other and I was used to it now.

"Midnight Tuesday," the Dealer talked around his smoke. "You know the rule?"

"Last one standing." I stared back at him. "Anything else?"

"Nope," he cackled. "They're gonna love you."

"Yeah."

The game is easy. There's seven players and everybody gets six cards, plus your own. The cards have pictures and names, that's all, a little bio and some odds stuff, but nothing that's gonna be any real help. There's one for every player. They're wired too. Green is good, red is dead. The winner of the game is the one still breathing when all the other players aren't.

Leave the city and you quit. Your card turns grey and you're out, still breathing, but five hundred grand poorer and without a shred of reputation. On Broken Window reputation is everything. People who played cards would rather die than lose that.

My problem was that I didn't have one yet. That's why I got the long odds though, so it was cool. There'd be a couple people with short odds, really short, because they'd played before and won. A few others would be in the middle, local hitters or maybe a mechanic running from Sol, hiding out and looking for the other life.

I was the long shot and thirty to one was low probably, but I'd dumped four hundred kay cash on myself, so that brought the odds down quick, but they'd go up, and then go down again as cards turned red. I figured when I collected I'd be looking at eight to one maybe, when it was just me and one other.

The real money came from the scores, cause my four wasn't just sitting on the end, it was banking the kills too. That's where the real dope was. Winning just meant you got to collect it. If I got all six, got the sweep, I'd be set for life, maybe. But that was some serious chicken counting and I pushed it out of my head.

I needed some cash now, since I'd just given all mine away. I needed funds cause the game was being dealt in two days and I didn't have a home. I had my pack and my clothes and my seventy seven millie, but those were just stuff. Mostly I had brains and body and I was willing to use both.

I found my sugar in another club, a nice one catering to the other sick fucks who wandered into town on vacation. They stayed uptown, where the cops were thick and little boys like me got the hard eyes, and all I had to do was step on a crack to get my ass tossed. But that was just a risk and even carrying the piece I'd only be looking at a couple hours of interrogation anyway. The cops wouldn't keep me; they'd just bang the fuck out of me and toss me back into the ever lovin' arms of Jesus.