The man at the bar had been there a while before Grace noticed he wasn’t listening to the music.
Everyone else felt the bass through the floor. Even the ones too deep in Root to follow a conversation moved with it. This man kept watching the door at the back, where Bob had gone to count the night’s takings.
Grace set another drink in front of him. “You waiting for somebody?”
He smiled. “Just enjoying the place.”
“Sure,” she said, giving him a long stare.
He turned his stool towards the DJ. Grace turned to wash some glasses, but in the mirror behind the bar, she saw him touch the side of his neck. It looked like some sort of transmitter—a signal. Then there were sounds on the steps outside. Three men pushed menacingly through the entrance door.
At that moment, Bob returned carrying a cash box. He saw the men, saw Grace’s hand resting flat on the bar—an old signal they had worked out long ago—and quickly put the box beneath a table. Then he crossed to the DJ’s decks and flicked a switch. The sudden silence made all four strangers turn and look at him.
“We’re closed,” Bob said in a dead tone.
The man at the bar stood up. “Lot of customers for a closed bar,” he snapped.
“It’s a private fucking party. Like I said, we’re closed,” Bob snapped back.
He glanced at Grace. Months of growing, drying and selling sat behind the storeroom door. So did the money for a much-needed service on his old hand. Without it, the fingers would soon lock for good, and it would be many months before he could even think about getting something new.
“We just came for the Root,” said the man. “Heard you had the best.”
Bob looked them up and down. “You came a long way for a smoke, ’cause you ain’t from around here.”
Suddenly, one of the men reached inside his coat. Grace threw a glass into his face, and it shattered against his metal cheek implant. At that instant, Bob caught the man’s wrist with the hand that clicked and shook whenever he held a glass. It did neither now. Bone gave before the grip did, and the gun fell to the floor. Bob’s hand clenched into an iron fist, and he proceeded to pound the man’s head and body with implant-rupturing blows.
The room erupted. Chairs overturned. Someone barred the street door while the Dreads pulled the other two men away from the storeroom. Grace hit the man at the bar with a bottle. A buzzing, glitchy sound came from his skull. He fell against the speakers, and their housings boomed once under his weight.
Bob could have stopped there, but when the other three men were lying silent on the floor, he dragged the glitching guy to the back-room door and made him look inside. The shelves held Root, certainly. Behind them stood six Dreads who had come up from the cellar when the music stopped.
“Tell whoever sent you,” Bob said, “you found the Root, but it ain’t for the taking unless you want a war.”
He dragged the guy up the steps, deliberately letting his head bang against each one as he did so, then threw him against the wall outside the club. The other Dreads dragged the remaining three men into the street and tossed them in a nearby dumpster.
Grace checked the shelves, then Bob’s hand. One knuckle had split where flesh met the old metal.
“You’ll need that service sooner rather than later, honey,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes.
Bob looked at the cash box, dented and leaking credits across the floor. “Yeah, sure. After we replace all this.”
Grace looked over at the DJ and gave him a thumbs-up. The bass rolled back in, booming through the club and up the steps into the rainy streets. Everyone helped right the chairs, then began to dance, drink and chat again. From the street, anyone looking in would have seen Bob behind the bar, carefully pulling pints as usual with his damaged hand, Grace laughing with a customer about some long-past shared memory, and Root smoke passing beneath the coloured lights in a mellow purple haze. A laid-back, peaceful oasis in this dark and dangerous city.
The guy still lying dazed and glitching against the wall outside might have begged to differ as he watched three Reapers descend upon the dumpster across the road and start to rip apart the bodies of his friends. Even though he felt too sick to move, he staggered to his feet and started down the street as fast as he could, without looking back. He had seen the hooded, red eyes of one of the Reapers looking over at him and knew that if he did not move, he would be next.