The Lucifer Deck Read Online Free

limp.
    A wave of warm fuzziness washed over Pita. The Mindease capsules were kicking in. Her hand drifted out in a gesture of goodwill to the cat, willing it to return and share the bounty she’d offered. Her head felt like a balloon attached to a string, floating high above her body. Something hot flowed over her other hand, trickled down her arm to her elbow. The soykaf. It must have been burning her skin. Pita laughed, and raised the cup to her lips to take a drink. The dark liquid sloshed out over her chin. Her wide grin made it impossible to shape her lips around the cup, so she dropped it and watched the kaf splash in slo-mo across the cement.
    The bang of a metal door brought her head around. She frowned, peering deeper into the alley. The office buildings in this part of town had been closed for hours. Lights still burned in some of the upper stories, but only for the benefit of the cleaning crews. Were they coming out into the alley to empty the trash? Pita hunched down in the shadow of the chesterfield and giggled. This was just like playing Hide and Search, the virtual reality game she’d enjoyed so much as a kid. She even felt like a computer icon, all thin and transparent.
    A man staggered up the three steps leading to street level. He emerged from the doorway clutching his shirtfront, gasping as if he couldn’t catch his breath. Even though the drug blurred her vision somewhat, Pita’s low-light sensitivity allowed her to pick out details. The man was sweating profusely; the underarms of his expensive-looking suit jacket were heavily stained. His tie had been jerked loose and sweat plastered his dark hair to his head and trickled down his neck.
    The man took one staggering step, two, then collapsed on the cement in front of Pita. He landed face-first with a solid smack. When he turned his head, she could see blood trickling from his nose. His mouth gaped open wide and his eyes rolled back in his head. A strange burning smell rose from him.
    The Mindease stripped all of her fears from Pita’s conscious mind, burying them deep in the back of her brain. She sat forward, intrigued. Giggling, she reached out a finger and poked the man’s cheek. It was hotter than her soykaf had been.
    A dim red light appeared in his mouth and nose. Pita knelt forward, lowering her head to the cool cement to peer closer. The smell of burning meat filled her nostrils. Then a steady rush of smoke began pouring out of the man’s mouth and nose. Sweat steamed off his body.
    "Mega wiz." she whispered, wondering if it was only some crazy effect of the Mindease. Then her street instincts took over. She flipped the man over and patted down his suit pockets. The way he was dressed, this guy had to be a corporate executive, his pockets full of goodies.
    The first suit pocket held a smog filter and a melted Growliebar. Pita tossed them aside. The next held a folded hardcopy printout and an optical memory chip, which she palmed. It just might have a simsense game on it. The only other thing the guy had on him was a credstick. But even if it had a million nuyen on it, she wouldn’t be able to access a single credit of it. To do that, you had to give a thumbprint, retinal scan, or voice sample. And Pita didn’t have the technical knowhow to fake any of that stuff. She was just about to throw the credstick away when she spotted the magnetic keystrip on the side of the stick. Maybe, just maybe, it opened a locked door with something worth boosting on the other side. She slipped the credstick into her pocket.
    The man was flopping now like someone hooked up to an electric current and his skin was nearly too hot to touch. And something else weird was happening. White light was now pouring out of his mouth and nostrils, the beams straight as lasers. His movements jerked the light around in jittering arcs. As it did, Pita glimpsed a flash of gold around the man’s neck. It was a gold chain, hung with a tiny pendant shaped like an angel with