She finds herself walking past Sin Garden, where they first argued about bribes and kickbacks while Nikki tried to slip her a spiked mojito; and from beneath which Alice was abducted in order to more freely facilitate Nikki’s remorselessly illegal activities.
That’s where it hits her that Nikki might be the most corrupt, duplicitous and amoral woman Alice has ever met, but right now she is the only person on Seedee she can trust.
END OF DAYS
The restraints are seriously starting to chafe Nikki’s wrists as she is marched down Resnik, but she’s feeling another sting more keenly: that of humiliation. She is being escorted by a detail of four guards, two in front and two behind, sporting the maximum Seguridad weapons load-out, which is normally only deployed in the most extreme circumstances. They have the usual jizz cannons and electro-pulse batons, but these are supplemented by “goodnight guns” slung over their shoulders: suppression rifles that would normally remain safely in storage unless they needed to quell a riot.
It makes her look like some kind of monster, a dangerous animal who may need to be put down at any moment. And that’s what passers-by would see even without the overpowered arsenal.
She read once how the layout of Paris was altered after the French Revolution so that wide boulevards replaced the labyrinthine backstreets where mobs were formed and unrest fomented. They weren’t worrying about civil unrest when they designed Seedee, as it is nothing but narrow passageways, far from conducive to the discreet transport of prisoners. There is no option but to walk the short distance to the nearest dock, in full view of whoever happens to be around.
This is what the phrase “walk of shame” truly means. In the past it was merely a term she associated with stumbling home for a shower (or stumbling to wherever she was supposed to report for duty) with a blinding hangover and a queasy sense of embarrassment, details of her recent sexual exploits flashing into her mind like the pulses of her headache.
Nobody gave her a second look on those occasions, however. Today, she feels every pair of eyes burning.
She keeps her head down, which sucks because this is the last she’s going to see of the place. It looks kind of sad. Minus her lens, without all the overlaid information on every wall, door and citizen, it looks like a living room after the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Still familiar, still the same place, but somehow a little less warm, a little more dull.
Even the handcuffs look strangely denuded. Ordinarily she would be able to see the prompt, allowing anybody with the appropriate authority to release the restraints. She used to have that authority. She could have unlocked them with a gesture of her finger. She seldom needed them, though. That’s what makes her look all the more wretched. Nobody on the street will ever have seen somebody restrained like this, never mind under an armed four-man escort.
She can see the entrance to Dock Nine looming ahead. That’s when she starts to feel a dread sense of foreboding that reaches from deep in her gut to the ends of every hair now standing up on her neck.
Maybe it’s down to it truly dawning on her that this is real: not only is she leaving Seedee, but she’s looking at spending the rest of her life in jail, where she’ll never discover what this whole thing was about.
They pass through the reception area and proceed towards the shuttle bay, which she can see through the open doors. There is no spacecraft in position, no stevedores, no manifest administrators. Looks like flights in and out of Dock Nine have been suspended. The whole place is deserted, much as this same facility was when Yoram’s shipment got jacked. That’s where the vibe is coming from. The last time she came through here was when everything started to go south.
The déjà vu gets jacked up a notch as the party marches out onto the shuttle bay floor, where she sees two of the private-security-looking assholes who were there that day. They are waiting patiently, close to where the shuttle elevator comes up.
“The fuck are these guys?” one of the Seguridad detail asks.
“I don’t know,” replies Alonso. “Nobody is supposed to be here. I’ll check it out.”
One of the mercs is already on his way over. Unlike the Seguridad officers, he isn’t carrying any visible weaponry, but he looks all the more intimidating for that. There is a quiet assuredness about his gait, like nothing could threaten him.
“We’ll complete the transfer from here, Officer Alonso,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a suggestion.
“The hell you will. We’re to escort the prisoner all the way to Heinlein. We have explicit orders.”
“So do we, and I believe you’ll find that ours countermand yours.”
Alonso sees something on his lens and visibly blanches.
“No shit. Just two of you?”
“Two of us will be adequate.”
Alonso turns to the rest of the detail.
“Okay, change of plan. These guys are gonna take it from here.”
Up above, through the canopy, Nikki can see a shuttle approaching. In a few moments it will disappear underneath. She recalls the last time she witnessed such a sight. It was as she waited on a dock with Candace, about to be sold out.
Suddenly a lot of things become clear, none of them good.
Her foreboding derives from a subconscious awareness that is far ahead of mere cognitive deduction. She isn’t spooked because she is on Dock Nine again, but because there’s nobody here: no admins, no stevedores, no pilots.
No witnesses.
She’s bound for Heinlein.
Way, way too late she comprehends the real reason the shuttle platform at Heinlein was cleared and the capsule officially transporting Slovitz was empty. It wasn’t to conceal the fact that Slovitz was secretly still on Seedee. It was to conceal the fact that he had been murdered. The official record would show he went home, explaining the fact that he would never be seen on Seedee again.
There is a stillness to the shuttle bay, an unnerving silence in a place normally alive with noise and activity. The incoming shuttle has dipped out of sight, and the rotation of the wheel means she can see the Earth through the canopy. Both of her captors are gazing placidly at the main doors, through which the last of the Seguridad detail has exited.
They are not taking her anywhere, she realises. They’re going to do it here. They’ll make up some story that she was killed during an escape attempt, because they won’t want her taking the stand at any trial.
The three of them stand wordless for a few moments longer, like some solemn observance, before one of the mercs rolls out a black plastic sheet on to the floor. It’s not a prayer mat.
The other merc slams a fist into Nikki’s gut, dropping her to her knees.
“So how do you want it?” he asks. “Strangled like Giselle, sliced up like Julio, or skinned and butchered like Omega?”
She is doubled over, feeling the cold metal of the floor through the plastic sheet. She is gasping for breath. She knows these are her last moments.
Funny thing is, it was her intention to die here. Just not so soon.
Some say death is not the end, and right now she believes that, but not in any kind of bullshit spiritual way. For her, the end came fifteen years ago in Santa Monica. Everything since has merely been waiting.
And yet she doesn’t want to go. Wretched and self-loathing as she has allowed herself to become, she still wants more of it. She wants to make amends. She wants to get justice for Giselle. She wants to show Candace there’s a caring woman inside this callous shell. She wants to tell Alice Blake that she has inspired her to change. But none of those things is going to happen.
For the first time in forever, she permits self-pity. For the first time in forever, she cannot prevent tears.
Her captor draws a knife, and Nikki gazes at the Earth for the last time.
SELF DETERMINATION
Alice exits the static station and races down Resnik, pedestrians stepping clear and sending her curious looks as she runs flat out in the direction of the shuttle dock. On
e of them doesn’t see her, obliviously veering into her path, causing her to slow and to divert her course.
She lets out an angry sigh, a percussive exhalation. Most anyone else would swear, she is sure. Alice never swears. She even censors internally. Can she swear? Perhaps the Alice Blake persona is not allowed to, but whoever else is hiding in here must have looser moral parameters. If she can kill, she can surely curse.
She can see the entrance up ahead, further than she was hoping. With Nikki in custody, she thought she had more time. She was on her way to the holding cells when she learned that the prisoner was being escorted to Dock Nine for a shuttle to Heinlein. The order for immediate transfer back to Earth came from Boutsikari, but Alice suspects Ochoba’s hand. Ochoba needs a quick and visible win on this, and parading the one bad apple in leg-irons would do it.
That’s why Alice is hurrying to get there in person. If she contacts the officer in charge via his lens, he could quickly verify that Alice doesn’t have the authority to stall the transfer. On the spot, she can tell him she has received updated instructions, and he is unlikely to defy the Principal of the SOE to her face.
If he does, however, she has no idea what her move is. Does she really think she’s capable of springing a prisoner? Never mind the practicalities, would she do it even if she knew it was physically possible? Or is there some override protocol that is about to restrain her if she attempts an action that will obstruct Ochoba’s orders, or interferes with the unseen plans of whoever else the puppet master might be? Will it kick in even to prevent her from lying to the head of the Seguridad detail?
Her mind is a storm, has been since she saw Omega’s grab. She is feverishly deconstructing her own personal history, disoriented by the questions of whether any of it is real. She recalls the childhood memory of a tortured lizard that was sparked by the sight of the dry dock from the shuttle window. She doesn’t know if the incident really happened or if it was put there so that she would view the world a certain way, sympathetic to an ideology that would guide her decisions in a manner her invisible controller intended.
Her thoughts flick back further, to when she first woke up in the capsule and the ensuing shuttle journey.
There will be no children, she was told. And yet among the first people she saw were children.
There are no androids here.
And yet …
There are worse implications than merely the veracity of her memories. One in particular is quietly crushing her from the inside.
There will be no children.
She can’t have any. If she is not truly human, then she can’t have children. It wasn’t exactly a pressing priority, but contemplating that the possibility may have been taken away, she feels an emptiness she can barely explain.
There are other voids too. Can she have a relationship? Can she fall in love?
She’s had a couple of boyfriends, back in college. Nothing serious, but they were relationships.
No: not verifiable. Not admissible. Nothing she remembers before arriving here on CdC counts.
Does the past matter now? Is she defined by memories that may be fictions, or is she defined by her actions from here on in? And if she acts here in defiance of Ochoba, does this mean she is exercising free will?
She’s almost there. Ahead of her the concourse is empty, a lens overlay reporting that the dock is temporarily closed. She endures a moment of concern that the doors won’t open as she seeks out the prompt and sends it her credentials, but the outline turns green as she approaches.
A few seconds later, Alice Blake swears for the first time, if only to herself.
She’s too goddamn late.
INTERVENTION FROM ABOVE
As she approaches within a few metres of the doors, Alice sees four Seguridad officers walking out through them. They seem relaxed despite the rifles slung around their shoulders, an off-duty air about them as though they’re out for a stroll.
“Given the flight time to Heinlein and back, I reckon we can take us the rest of the day off,” one of them is saying to his colleague: Officer Alonso according to her lens.
“Where’s your prisoner?” she asks.
He gives her a disdainful look and she can tell he is about to dismiss her query. She recognises the very nano-second that her name and status registers on his lens. He stiffens. They all do, like a wave passing through them.
“We had new orders to hand her over to the two guys who were waiting for us inside.”
“Which guys? Who were they?”
He blanches, a gravity about his expression.
“We didn’t have clearance to see their names.”
“And you just handed over your prisoner to them?”
“Their orders came from the highest echelons in the Quadriga. Seems somebody doesn’t trust us to handle the transfer.”
“This is unacceptable. I need to speak to the prisoner. Come with me.”
“Ma’am, our orders were countermanded from on high, and obstructing them is punishable by a ticket home. Besides, these are not guys you want to cross. We’re glorified rentacops. These were soldiers.”
Alice remembers Nikki’s description of the unidentified actors who had closed down this same dock a few days ago: high-level mercenary types. She doesn’t know what strengths or skills might be secretly residing within herself, far less how to activate them, but she does know how to exploit the element of surprise and an elevated angle of fire.
“Give me your weapons,” she commands.
She expects a modicum of resistance, but Alonso shrugs and complies, a man well-used to navigating the path of least resistance.
“It’s your funeral,” he says, that path no doubt taking him and his buddies to the nearest bar.
Alice races up the ramp to access the receiving areas above. She slips inside quietly and crouches close to the edge of the platform, peering through the glass barrier.
Down below she can see Nikki. She is handcuffed, kneeling on a sheet of black plastic with two men standing over her, their backs to Alice. They are dressed identically in charcoal fatigues; they are not uniforms but there is something unquestionably military about their appearance. One of them is holding a knife.
Alice stands up and raises the suppression rifle. The weapon automatically links to her lens, overlaying a cross-hair upon her view, which she places over the knifeman’s head. She takes a steadying breath and pulls the trigger.
IN THE FRAME
The part of Nikki that’s resigned to this wants to close her eyes, but the part that’s pissed at never getting another shot of Speyside wants to look this fucker in the face. She lifts her head and stares at him in defiance
He suddenly flinches and puts a hand to the back of his neck.
“What the fuck?”
When he pulls it away, there are several tiny bloodspots on his palm, a pattern of dots in a cluster.
The knifeman and his buddy turn around to look in the direction of possible fire, at which point a second cluster blooms on the other merc’s cheek.
He looks up towards the viewing gallery, both of them drawing flechette pistols and aiming them instinctively. Nikki watches a slight, silhouetted figure duck swiftly as a hail of plastic darts impacts uselessly against the glass. The figure isn’t going anywhere either, just sitting tight and observing. Which would indicate that the weapon Nikki can see is one of the Seguridad’s goodnight guns.
“Who the hell is that?” asks the knifeman.
“Too far to ID. Dart just grazed me anyway. Give me some cover while I go deal.”
“You got it.”
“No,” Nikki says. “You boys best take a seat.”
“What?” he asks, irritated but curious.
“So you don’t injure yourselves when you—”
He collapses like a felled tree, no hands reaching to cushion the fall. Consequently his face slams against the deck, a tooth clattering out across the metal, but by that point he is oblivious of pain and injury.
Riot control measures, Seedee style: suppression rifles deliver a high-velocity blast of rapidly-acting tranquilliser pellets. Once you’ve been tagged, you’ve got a matter of seconds to make yourself comfortable, then …
“Goodnight,” Nikki says.
From below comes the rumbling of the elevator bringing the shuttle up the shaft. It was supposed to be her hearse. She was bound for the cargo hold wrapped in this black plastic sheet. Less than a minute has passed since that merc drew his knife, but she’s already supposed to be dead right now.
Nikki looks up again and watches her saviour climb over the glass barrier. She drapes down, landing on the floor with practised gymnastic elegance. Nikki immediately thinks of the assassin at Habitek, but no, it’s even weirder than that.
Walking towards her with a suppression rifle slung across her back is G2S herself: Alice fucking Blake.
Nikki’s handcuffs fall open and tumble to the ground.
“We need to get this pair into the passenger cabin,” Alice says, bending down and trying to drag one of the mercs towards the platform where the shuttle is beginning to emerge.
Nikki watches, still paralysed by disbelief.
Alice stops mid-drag and glares at her.
“You going to give me a hand here or not?”
“I dunno. I’m getting mixed signals and I want to consider my next step. I mean, I recall telling you that your attitude to law and morality was kinda rigid, and I’m getting the impression that your position is a little more ambivalent than last time we spoke—which I applaud, don’t get me wrong. But you wanna tell me just what the fuck is going on?”
Places in the Darkness Page 30
