by Al Robertson
[ I’m almost beaten. Weapon systems all down. Hardly any shields. He’ll be a distraction. You might get out. And he’ll be far too busy to hack me, so …]
Fist’s voice cut off suddenly. Jack imagined crystal growing back into his mouth. There was a white noise blast, then silence. An alert flashed in his mind. Fist’s last firewalls were dying.
‘Little Fist all burnt out,’ Yamata chanted, pressing a hand down hard on Jack’s face. ‘And no Grey to save Jack the wannabe giant killer. You know,’ she continued conversationally, as he choked beneath her, ‘I’m enjoying this. I was so angry that Grey protected you all those years ago, but now I’m almost grateful.’
Jack’s consciousness began to slip away. He reached out for Fist. There was nothing coherent there to touch, only a mess of emergency defence and repair systems blinking rage and confusion. He imagined a small wooden mind, about to be torn apart; refused to consider the digital carnage that such dissolution represented. Now that he too was falling into unconsciousness, a strange and gentle calm had descended on him.
His principal emotion was a distant sadness that Fist would not after all inherit his flesh, that soon nothing would remain of either them. There was deep frustration, too. Yamata had named Kingdom as her patron, but dismissed sweat as his motivation. Even now, it seemed that Jack didn’t understand the true nature of his adversary. The problem of his exile remained unresolved.
Words drifted into his mind: ‘You really were too easy …’ He prepared to let everything drift away. But then a voice he recognised pulled him back.
‘He may be easy,’ said Harry grimly. ‘But I’m not.’
There was a gasp and the pressure lifted off his mouth, then his body. He had just enough in him to turn and see that there, in the centre of the room, larger than life, stood Harry. He was maybe seven or eight foot tall. Blue fire danced round him in barbed, jagged flashes. The flames that had burnt Fist didn’t seem to touch him. His voice was a roar, thick with Docklands rage.
‘You killed me, you ungrateful bitch, and now I’ve come to break you.’
The barbs of blue fire exploded off him, and all hell broke loose.
Yamata rolled off Jack, snatching up her gun as she did so. A popping sound followed her – bullets leaping into the air. Harry ignored them. She screamed as blue exploded around her. The scream ended suddenly as her body lost all focused motion, and she was a falling clutter of limbs tumbling limp on to the floor.
‘Well, that was nice and easy,’ gloated Harry. ‘Now for the rest of you.’ He turned and advanced on the floating creature that had broken Fist. Fire lashed out again, dancing through its tentacles and setting them writhing in agony.
Jack stood up. He tried to pull Fist back into his mind, but there was nothing there. He’d have to reclaim him manually. He moved back to where he’d seen him last.
‘You wanker,’ Yamata’s voice yelled. ‘I’ll just kill you again.’
Jack was baffled that the broken woman could still be present, still be attacking. Harry just laughed. ‘When I escaped you,’ he shouted back, ‘you must have known I’d come back. And I’d be ready for you.’
Jack quickly found Fist. The puppet’s plan was working. Harry had distracted Yamata. His crystal cage had disappeared. But Fist was unconscious, flickering in and out of sight, his core self straining to absorb the beating it had taken. Both his legs had been torn off. When Jack rolled him over, he saw that an arm was missing too. His eyes were open and unseeing, staring up at the ceiling. His mouth had fallen open in a lolling grin.
The lost arm was just next to Fist. Jack scrabbled round for the legs. One was untouched. The other was singed black, but basically functional.
There was a burst of light and swearing. Jack looked up to see Harry standing in front of the jellyfish, silhouetted by gouts of brilliant light as another attack exploded against it. Its tentacles thrashed in pain.
Harry’s laugh boomed out. ‘Did you really think you could hurt me, Yamata? I’ve spent the whole of my death getting ready for this.’
There was a tugging at Jack’s sleeve. Fist had regained something approaching consciousness. He could barely move his mouth to talk.
[Shut me down. Run.]
It would take a couple of minutes to force Fist into a protective closedown, swaddling his systems deep in Jack’s mind. Jack started the delicate process. It took all his attention. He couldn’t risk movement until it was complete.
[ For gods’ sake Jack, just crash me. Factory reset me once you’re safe.]
[ No, Fist. You’ll forget everything.]
[ Two great years, five shit ones. Won’t miss ’em.]
Fist lost consciousness again. Waking so quickly had placed too much of a strain on his fragile self. Jack stayed on his knees. Blue and white flashes pulsed rhythmically behind him. The struggle had become entirely silent. There was no way of understanding who was winning. They’d both forgotten Jack and Fist.
At last the puppet was fully shut down. Jack ran for the exit, his shadow dancing shakily out in front of him like a monster from a half-remembered nightmare. The building was on lockdown. He had to smash his way through several doors with a fire extinguisher. At last he crashed into reception.
Yamata was lolling in an armchair. She had a gun in her hand and it was pointed at him.
Chapter 34
Jack stood frozen, ready to die. He was too surprised to be afraid, astonished that Yamata had moved so much more quickly than him. The gun’s nozzle waved backwards and forwards. Jack wondered if she was taunting him, then realised that she was barely conscious. He moved cautiously past her.
There was another woman lying flat on a sofa. She was also Yamata, and she was also armed. Jack stopped, amazed. Another door opened. The guard carried a third Yamata through it. She hung limply in his arms. When he saw Jack, he beamed, then looked sad.
‘I’m so sorry. These are tranquiliser guns. They’re going to try and stop you. If they can’t, they’ve got real guns too.’
The Yamata in the chair was twitching feebly, as if some higher force was trying but failing to control her. Her limbs shivered and she gasped, but she was not able to pull herself into any coherent movement. She dropped her gun.
The Yamata on the sofa seemed to have achieved greater self-control. She was slowly and carefully sitting up. Her head twitched left then right, scanning the room with insect focus. Her gun wavered towards Jack.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ she sneered. ‘Running away.’ The lips of the other two Yamatas trembled in time with her words. Her voice was a little slower than it should be. There was a loud pop and her hand shook. Jack jumped as a tranquilliser dart sang past him.
The guard laid the third Yamata down on the floor then hovered nervously, waiting for a cue from Jack. ‘I can get between you and the guns,’ he said, ‘but I think they’d just kill me.’
Jack edged across the reception area, keeping as far away from the armed Yamata as possible. ‘No,’ he told the guard. ‘Don’t involve yourself in this. It’s not your fight.’
The guard looked crushed. ‘But I’d so like to help,’ he replied.
‘Silence,’ ordered Jack. ‘Don’t move.’
The sofa Yamata was standing up, rising in a series of jerky stops and starts, as if supported by invisible wires. She tried to say ‘stop’, but the word caught in her mouth and would not finish. For a few seconds she rattled out ‘StoStoStoSto …’ – a hard, barbed-wire sound – then she slapped herself. Her head jerked round then back again, her mouth now firmly and tightly shut. The gun spat another dart. It bounced off the wall just by Jack.
When Jack reached the door, the sofa Yamata was taking her first steps. The Yamata on the armchair was leaning shakily down to reach her gun. The one on the floor was shivering gently, a prelude to functionality. The guard was in tears, but he had not moved and his weeping was silent. Jack pushed through the door and started running immediately. He was halfway to the exit gate w
hen a bullet barked past, tearing at the concrete path a few metres away from him.
When he reached the gate, he looked back. The three Yamatas were at the door. One had toppled over and was flailing feebly at the ground. The second was awkwardly trying to help her up. The third was walking smoothly towards him, but couldn’t aim her weapon effectively.
‘We’ll hunt you all the way back to Docklands,’ she called out. ‘We’re meant to take you alive, but we’re not going to try too hard.’
A great flash of white light burst upwards behind them, but they didn’t seem to notice. The dome over the building’s central atrium had shattered. Harry’s voice roared out, taunting Yamata. It seemed that he was winning the battle. Jack wondered briefly what death had allowed him to become. Yamata had also been remade as something more than human. He turned and ran.
It was habit that pulled his eyes towards the Pantheon. Without Fist he was offweave, so he saw nothing. He thought of Grey’s broken raven, East’s radiant wink. The night sky was serene without them.
A tranquilliser dart skittered past his feet. Jack didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see how much more easily his pursuers were moving, how quickly they would catch up with him. He realised that he was crying. It was then that East called to him. Her voice was impossibly soft. He felt as if he’d stepped out of hell and into a commercial.
‘You’ve seen Grey,’ she accused coquettishly. ‘Behind my back. Perhaps I shouldn’t rescue you, after all.’
Jack couldn’t speak. Darts, then a couple of bullets, cracked past him. His breathing was ragged. Soon he’d have to stop and rest, regardless of the danger.
‘Make for the Earthside development,’ East commanded. ‘There’s a little surprise waiting for them. Oh, and …’
Something impossibly deft touched his mind.
[ What happened?] said Fist, his voice broken shards.
[East woke you. Can you get onweave and get me to Earthside?]
[ No. Shit, my vocal calibration’s fucked.]
[ What about the rest of you?]
[Ma! Ma! Where IS the rest of me?] Fist shouted, giggling hysterically. [ Where? Where? Where? Where?]
[Maybe best you sleep.]
The giggles cut out suddenly, like a recording that had been turned off. Jack had to look back. The Yamatas were gaining on him. They’d started to move more fluidly. The lead Yamata looked almost human. She raised her tranquilliser gun to fire again. Jack sprinted round another corner, pushing himself to leave them as far behind as he could.
East drifted into being beside him.
‘The puppet’s in worse shape than I thought. Maybe I should show you the way myself. Oh, and you’re so sexy when you’re panting.’
Jack didn’t trust himself to reply. Each breath was a choking catch at the air. He wished he’d spent more time keeping fit when he’d been a prisoner.
‘You’ll be able to slow down in a moment. Make sure you take the next left.’
Jack was tempted to dart out of her plans and let his pursuers kill him, freeing him from both gods and men. But then, there was the risk that Fist would fall into Kingdom’s hands. Flight remained the safest option. There were mysteries to solve, too. Harry and Yamata had both become strange new creatures, challenges to Jack’s understanding of the world. The question of Kingdom’s deep motivation remained. Lack of knowledge left Jack feeling that he was still little more than a pawn. The only way to start acting on his own terms was to uncover the truth. And at the last, there was Andrea. He needed to warn her about Harry. He so wanted to see her again.
So Jack followed East’s instructions and turned, ammunition dancing in the air around him. Then he skidded to a halt, astonished and horrified in equal measure at the joke that East had played on him. Her soft laughter chuckled through his head as he confronted a vast crowd of Yamatas. There were perhaps two or three hundred of them, all identically dressed, all limping and shuffling in an insect parody of human movement.
‘YOU FUCKING BITCH!’ he shouted.
‘Oh, bless your paranoia, Jack,’ she laughed. ‘So, so scared of my lovely little flash mob.’
As the Yamatas tottered towards him, Jack realised that they had very little in common with the lethal creatures chasing him through the night. They were dressed and made-up to look like his pursuers, and were doing a very tolerable job of imitating them. But they were all different heights and shapes, all – in fact – different people. They were all quite young, too. It was difficult to see past the makeup, but most appeared to be teenagers.
‘My little acolytes,’ said East, her voice full of pride. ‘All sneaking out to help you. I’ve been setting this up for a little while, now. Dropping images of Yamata into fashion magazines. Hinting at exciting events. Getting them all so thrilled about it all. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘You knew that Yamata would chase me?’
‘I thought you’d run into her, sooner or later. When you found her lair, I sent out the call – and assembled my little throng.’
There was something almost maternal in East’s voice.
‘But – the Yamatas are armed. These kids are going to die.’
‘Only some of them. And they’ll die happy. They’ll be legends and their fetches will be so proud. But there’s only one of you. Keep running!’
Refusing to think about the implications of his choice – of his endorsement of East’s vicious, wasteful rescue plan – Jack started forward again. He pushed through the crowd of Yamata lookalikes, feeling his breathing and pulse slow as he did so. The mob let him through, coming back together behind him and covering his path. They were packed close together, filling the whole street. It would be near impossible for the Yamatas to break through them in their weakened state. They’d have to shoot hundreds to have any hope of catching him. Jack hoped they weren’t that ruthless. He kept moving.
A few of the Yamata flash mob costumes had been carefully prepared, but most looked hastily thrown together. Dark blue dripped down faces from poorly dyed hair, pale blue face paint sweated away in dark lines. Eyes were uncomfortably red behind cheap purple contact lenses.
It was the massed conviction of all the individual performances that made the mob impressive. As Jack pushed through it, nobody broke character; nobody smiled, or flinched, or did anything to reveal that they were just pretending. Their commitment was absolute. Jack risked a look back. The real Yamatas were stalking into view. Now the flash mob would be tested. The Yamatas stopped, as amazed as Jack had been by the sight of several hundred imitators.
The mob moved towards them and started to chant one phrase again and again. ‘Hello Yamatas, we’re Yamatas’ built from a mutter to a roar as Jack reached the end of the flash mob. It echoed back off the buildings around them. Empty office blocks became a chorus, chanting commentary at the drama. Their words weren’t strong enough to drown out the stutter of gunfire. The first flash mobbers reached the three Yamatas. Some fell immediately. Most poured on, a blue-stained wave rolling over Jack’s pursuers. Unable to add any support, he fled. After thirty seconds or so, the shooting stopped and there was only chanting. Then, suddenly, there was silence. Jack was too far away to see how many had survived as the crowd dispersed.
‘Oh, they’ll be all right,’ said East casually. ‘And now, you’ve got to hide yourself. You’ve got to go somewhere even I don’t know about! Because who knows if one of my little subsidiaries has been compromised, and people who shouldn’t be there are inside me now, watching. So now I’ve saved your life, I’m going to stop following you. Aren’t I good?’
‘How many died back there?’
‘Nobody died, Jack. Fifty-two people just became immortal.’
With that, East winked out of existence. Jack kept moving, pacing through the city at a half-run, a speed he hoped he could keep up for a little while longer. He would find refuge, and reassemble Fist. Only then would he let himself think about what East had just done to rescue him, what Yamata and Harry had become, and h
ow he was going to stop Kingdom.
Without Fist to manage his connection, he assumed that he was comprehensively offweave. He didn’t know how visible his absence was to InSec; whether they would – as Lestak had promised – start searching for him now that he had broken the terms of his access to Homelands.
For the moment, it was difficult to care.
Chapter 35
Jack’s flight took him through an abandoned light industrial zone. Fist’s emergency repair systems whispered status reports. None showed any progress. East’s intervention had hindered his recovery. The puppet was going to be unconscious for hours, if not days. Jack hadn’t had so much privacy for seven years. To his surprise, he felt lonely.
The road led through a shattered collage of factory units. They embodied a very specific decadence. Neglect of such usable space would be an obscenity elsewhere in the Solar System. In Homelands, it went unchecked. Jack wondered what kind of luminous imagery overlaid this dead district. Station was sometimes known as ‘Dreamlands’ by those who lived beyond it. It was meant as an exaggerated slight. Here, it was a literal truth. He snorted in half-laughter as he moved through perhaps the truest symbol of his home that he’d yet come across.
With that, Jack realised where he could seek refuge. The streets around him were buried behind a layer of illusion, but people still moved through them. By contrast the void sites, forbidden to all, were kept entirely apart, providing the perfect hiding space. Without Fist he had no weave presence, so wouldn’t trigger any alarms when he moved into one. It was unlikely there’d be any physical security systems present. The weave’s pervasiveness made them largely redundant.
The landscape changed. Broken factory spaces dropped away, to be replaced by housing and educational sites. These buildings were occupied. The rain fell back to a light drizzle. Jack was surprised at the silence of the night and realised again that he was missing Fist. He spotted a void site.
Wooded lawns sloped up to a partially burnt-out apartment block, perhaps six or seven storeys high. Streetlights cast a pale orange glow on its façade. Broken windows rose up like dead eyes above a ruined entrance hall. Double doors gaped open beneath the ragged remains of a canvas canopy. A high metal fence blocked any access to the complex. Jack trotted along it until he found low hanging branches reaching out from within. It only took a moment to pull himself up, over and into the garden.
