Page 53 of Spade

“I’m already dressed,” I said, and hung up.

By the time I hit the lobby, I had gloves in my hand, a helmet strapped to my thigh, and hair cinched back. The elevator would have cost me seconds, so I took the stairs in twos. There was no time for prep, no time for self-doubt, not even time for a last look at the world I might not see again. All muscle memory, all kill-switch certainty.

I hit the street at a run. The bike was where I left it, blacked out and ready, a bullet for a bullet. The engine turned over on the first try, and the street’s quiet snapped in half. I pulled out without signaling, lane-splitting through the yellowed sodium glow of the city, breath even, eyes locked on the freeway access like it was the only artery left in my body.

By the time the city’s north end bled into dead-zone warehouse blocks, every other part of my life had already fallen away. The war was on, and I was exactly where I’d always be: first in, last out, hands steady on the bars, every nerve already crackling for the next fight.

20

Spade

You never got used to the way North Las Vegas looked at two in the morning. Empty parking lots huffing up dust, sodium vapor lights painting everything in jaundiced streaks. The commercial row on Simmons had been blacked out for weeks, every window spray-painted or newspapered except the one on the end. That’s where we parked.

Selene’s engine died first, neat and surgical. The rest of us coasted in behind her, bikes whispering to a halt and lining up under the busted sign—two faded letters left, enough to guess it used to say something like “WELLNESS” or “WHOLESALE.” It was Aces and Joker up front, me and Nines in the stagger, Selene at point as always. We killed our lights and knocked down the stands. No one said a word. We already knew the plan.

Aces was on the lock cutter, hand steady on the grip. The side door had a hardware store padlock, the kind you could break with leverage and a little faith in Chinese metallurgy. Aces snapped it like it was made of chalk. The door opened with a sigh, not even a squeal, and we were inside.

What the recon camera didn’t tell you: these places always had a smell. The kind of antiseptic, institutional funk that said nobody here planned to stay more than an hour. The main floor stretched in front of us, with a low ceiling and cheap acoustic tile pocked with water stains. Rows of padded recliners marched to the back wall in a grid—every single one occupied.

The volunteers were all men. All ages, all shapes. Each had the same setup: fully naked except for paper shoe covers and a disposable wristband, seated in the chair with a plastic ring cinched just behind the head of their cock. Over that, a clear cup with black rubber seals, plumbed to a hose leading to a low-slung pump at the base of the chair. Each pump worked in a different rhythm, but the effect was a synchronized, low mechanical hum, like a hive of bored bees.

The articulated screens in front of the chairs were showing porn, like you might expect. Nearest to me, a guy with an ex-military posture was half-asleep, eyes rolling back under the blue wash of an OLED monitor. On it was a polar bear pacing an ice shelf, voiceover low and soporific in the headphones covering his ears. Two chairs down, a grad-student type in glasses was doing a crossword on his phone, pencil tapping his knee in the same slow cadence as the suction. The third chair was a suburban dad with a bad sunburn, nodding at us like we’d walked into a dentist’s office and not an open-air cum farm.

We stood in the doorway for a heartbeat. Joker was the first to break, lips twitching but voice dead level. “I’ve seen worse at a chiropractor.”

Aces did a perimeter sweep with her eyes. “Three exits. Windows sealed, front’s chained. Eight live clients, two staff.”

Selene didn’t even look at the men. She was watching the door to the back hallway, hand flexed open and closed. “We do this clean,” she said.

The nearest staffer—a bottle-blond woman with ‘Linda’ on her badge—froze mid-stride. She was holding a clipboard and a fistful of single-use vials, mouth open like she’d been about to speak. Joker motioned her to the floor with two fingers. She obeyed, calm but tight, eyes flickering from Selene to Aces and back.

Nines had her phone out, already filming. Her face was unreadable, focus absolute. I cut through the center of the room, boots making zero sound on the sticky vinyl, and pulled up at the first client.

The man with the crossword did not look up. “You want to wait a minute? I’m one clue from finishing,” he said. His voice was resigned, more annoyed than scared.

I leaned in, just enough so he could see the Royal Harlots patch on my vest. “You’ll have all the time in the world for puzzles, amigo. Hands where I can see them.”

He dropped the phone in his lap and laced his fingers over his chest, only then glancing down at the pump working steadily between his legs. “I can’t exactly—“

Aces cut him off with a barked order. “Everyone stays seated. Hands visible.”

The line of chairs went dead still, except for the humming, the rhythmic jerk of the pumps, and the click of Linda’s pen as she fidgeted on the floor.

Joker moved behind the row, putting herself between the men and the staff break room. She glanced at the second employee, a sallow man with a yoga instructor ponytail, who had been refilling a cart of clean collection cups. “You’re going to want to stay very still, big guy,” Joker said. “Maybe reflect on your life choices.”

The staffer set the cart down and folded his arms, expression shifting from alarm to a kind of fatalistic detachment. “There’s no cash,” he said. “It’s a research grant. They only pay out in gas cards and meal vouchers.”

“Who’s the principal investigator?” Nines asked, already panning her phone for video evidence.

The man’s brow furrowed, as if he had not expected to field an academic question from a biker with a sidearm. “Dr. Jessup. She’s not here.”

Selene finally stepped into the light, boots planted shoulder-width. Her voice was so level that it sounded artificial. “Where’s the storage?”

Linda, the woman on the floor, raised her hand like a grade schooler. “Cold room’s in the back. Samples go to Nevada Cryo at the end of the week. We don’t process on-site. It’s all anonymized.”

I moved down the row, checking each chair. The men weren’t drugged, just deeply indifferent to the situation. I guess if you signed up for this, you learned not to make eye contact.

Aces reached the back office, poked her head in, and came back. “Nothing on the computers. They’re wiped to factory settings. This operation is running straight through.”