by Jeff Somers
I squinted, pushing my aching eyes to see something, and nearly jumped when she spoke. “Mr. Cates, please don’t shoot at us.”
The voice was all round edges and endless vowels. I kept my gun up. “Fat Girl?”
“You can call me Lukens,” she replied, her voice sort of irritated. “We have names, eh?” A pair of dim figures began to resolve. “I’m here with Mr. Marko. I’m not threatening you, so quit moonin’ at me like that.”
I considered this. “Marko?”
“I’m here,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’ve been kidnapped. Again.”
This with an air of acceptance, as if he’d finally realized that his purpose in life was to be pushed from spot to spot by tormentors-among which, I assumed, I numbered. He paused, and Lukens shoved him from behind, a little harder than I thought necessary. I let them get closer, but kept them covered. The Stormer had her shredder looped over her shoulder and her sidearm holstered, sure enough. Marko wasn’t armed either, though he carried his black duffel and his handheld, fingers of one hand flying in complex gestures as he walked.
“Close enough,” I said when they were about ten feet away, visible in the shadows, two binary people, all whites and blacks. “Tell me why you’re here alone.” Somewhere in the darkness water was dripping.
They stopped. Lukens didn’t move or change expression. She was really a pretty girl, baby faced with a fine, long nose, that same strand of brown hair hanging in her face. She stared at me unblinkingly. “I was ordered to keep you alive, Mr. Cates. That order was not rescinded or altered. I saw you break away, and I saw one of those hard-case boys disobey orders and try to terminate you. I decided the best way to comply with my orders was to follow you. Since you left the first two floors of the building pretty clear, it was simple enough.”
She sounded sleepy. I made a mental note to ask her the secret of napping while the whole fucking world died around you. I looked at Marko. “And you?”
He opened his mouth without looking up, but Lukens interrupted. “I requisitioned Mr. Marko as a member of this detail because your chances of survival here are much higher if a Technical Associate is available.”
Marko shrugged without pausing his gesturing. “What the she-hulk here said.”
Lukens’s eyes shifted to Marko for a moment. “Shrimp,” she muttered.
I considered my options. I could handle the Stormer-I’d handled dozens of fucking Stormers-but I wasn’t sure I could afford to waste a resource. She wasn’t under my orders, but if she was going to watch my back while I encouraged Monks to shoot at me, that would be useful. And Marko doubly so, since they’d powered up the complex and the electronic locks, sensors, and security systems it contained.
“All right,” I said, lowering my gun and grunting my way up to a standing position. I hesitated, considering, looking from her frozen face to Marko’s absorbed one, bathed in greenish light. “You both should know that I’m sick,” I finally said. “I’ve been coughing blood for an hour now.”
Marko’s hand stopped, but he didn’t look up at me. Lukens didn’t flinch. She stared at me with that flat, cop stare I’d come to know so goddamn well. Like I’d just told her the time. Like I’d just told her nothing. Fucking cops.
“Gatz shut you down,” Marko said, his voice flat, hands still.
I was watching Lukens. She was still staring at me as if she were doing sums in her head. “Looks like it,” I said. “I think I broke some invisible rule. Kev was never… normal, you know, and now he’s fucking batty. Who knows what I did. Or didn’t do.”
Slowly, Marko’s hand resumed motion, gaining speed. “You’re further along than us,” he said. “We’ll be showing symptoms in an hour, maybe two, depending on when exactly the suppression field was deactivated. I’d estimate you’ve got thirteen hours before the damage done by the nanobots is irreversible.”
I smiled. “Thirteen hours?” I said, chuckling, my chest burning and trying to slip the reins again. “Mr. Marko, I could kill the whole damn System in thirteen fucking hours.” I started to cough, sputtering and flinging spit everywhere. “If… I can’t… kill… one goddamn Techie… in thirteen… hours…”
Marko finally raised his eyes from his handheld, staring at me for a few seconds. “You’ve no doubt noticed that this complex is powered. Sixteen generators, by my count. There may be more offline at the moment, coming into play as others fail. From what I can tell, this complex is about sixty percent bright, which is amazing, since I’m scanning just fifty-three Monks in the vicinity. They’re pulling an amazing load right here.”
I looked around. “You got any plans of this place?”
He nodded. “Sure. We’re one level below street level here-there’s a retro-fitted escalator over there,” he pointed off into the darkness. “But I’d recommend against it, as it’ll be the obvious choice if anyone’s waiting on us. There’s an ancient elevator shaft over there, and despite the structural concerns of such an ancient element, it would be a less obvious entrance.”
I looked in the direction he indicated but couldn’t see much. “You’re helping me?” I asked. “You know why I’m here, right?”
He shrugged without looking back at me. “You’re coughing blood, right? That means I’ll be coughing blood soon.”
I nodded. Everyone was just scrambling to stay alive. We started moving in the direction he’d indicated, me on point and Lukens bringing up the rear, shredder back in her hands.
“Why the hell do they have this place so bright?” Marko mused as we walked. “I can see firing up whatever bullshit security tech this complex has, but they’ve got this thing burning. I don’t get it.”
I swept my useless eyes this way and that as we walked, making more noise than I liked. “Fifty-three Monks, you said.”
“Yeah,” Marko agreed. “That I can see.”
Controlled burn, Kev had said to me. This is a controlled burn. “Fifty-three Monks who expect to pick up the pieces of the System in a few weeks when this is over. And this complex is a hospital.”
“Yeah? And?”
The elevator loomed up in front of us, rusting doors covered in faded, ancient graffiti, the two call buttons missing, disconnected wires spilling out of the wall. I stepped forward and ran my free hand along the seam between the doors, dust spilling down onto the gritty floor. “They’re not going to run the whole world with fifty-three fucking Monks, Mr. Marko. They need the power because they’re making more Monks.”
XXXIII
Day Ten: It was Like Living Underwater
Screaming rust, the elevator doors split open in response to some not so gentle pressure, revealing an empty, shadowed shaft, a damp-smelling breeze blowing gently against us. I leaned in and peered down into almost total blackness and then up, where enough light was filtering in from various sources to outline the dim shape of the elevator car hanging several floors above us. Realizing I was sweating freely, I pulled myself back and looked at Marko.
“Any juice in there?”
He leaned into the shaft with his handheld and stared around for a few seconds, then pulled back and nodded. “Yep. Either they’re using this elevator-which would be insane, considering the last time anyone serviced it-or they didn’t have the time or knowledge to route the power selectively and just juiced the whole place. But that shaft is hot.” He frowned. “I’ve also got a lot of nano traffic… but nothing like what I was seeing before. There’s been a-”
He trailed off to a low mumble, talking to himself, and I stopped listening. I considered, taking quick, shallow breaths. I’d identified the threshold where my lungs rebelled and spasmed, sending up chunks of myself in bloody packets, and if I stayed just shy of that point I could control the urge to cough. It was like living underwater. “I don’t suppose you could get that elevator to come down here?”
The Techie cocked his head. “I might, Mr. Cates, but I’m not sure that would be such a good idea, actually. It’d be noisy and would probably attract attention, and
as I thought I just pointed out, that car has been hanging there for decades at best. The chances that it would drop us to our deaths are pretty even.”
I nodded, swallowing blood back into myself, a light fever film all over me. “Excellent.” It was always the fucking Hard Way. Even when I’d just been a street-level Gunner, popping shitheads in a crowd for five hundred yen at a time, it had always been the hard way. Too many people, too many bodyguards. A mark who traveled underground all the time. A mark who wore body armor head to toe. A mark buried inside Westminster Abbey. A mark guarded by a System Pig on the take.
I paused, something tickling my brain again, a memory. Before I could pursue it, a horrible grinding noise came from the opened shaft and a shower of quickly fading sparks danced downward inside it. Before I could form a question for Marko, I watched in curiously delighted horror as the ancient lights inside the shaft banged on one after the other, most of the bulbs immediately exploding in a flash of soured light. The ones that survived gave the shaft a sickly yellowish glow.
The slow screeching began descending. Kev knows we’re here, I thought. I didn’t feel him on me, no Push that I could detect, but I was disinclined to move. Kev was coming, or Kev had sent some of his minions to finally kill me off, and I was relieved. I was tired. Exhausted. I turned to spit blood onto the ground while Lukens circled behind me, the climbing whine of her shredder filling the air, to cover the elevator doors when it arrived.
The car made terrible noises as it lowered itself, rust on rust. Dust shook down the shaft in front of us, and when the cab finally came into view it did so slowly, hitching and shaking like a square box being rammed down a round hole. It sank a few feet past the floor before shuddering to a stop, and then-silence. I could hear the rainlike sound of sprinkling dust and then the low, keening sound of complaining metal filling the cavernous space around us.
After a moment a booming noise came from within the elevator cab. Marko jumped and quietly moved farther back, his eyes locked on his little device. The Stormer didn’t flinch. She just stared at the elevator doors, one short finger resting lightly on the trigger of her rifle. The booming repeated twice, and then the cab’s doors parted about half an inch as the tip of a pry bar appeared between them. With a warping, grinding noise the doors were slowly forced open, centimeters at a time, with a jerking motion that hinted at great effort. One more inch, two inches, and I could see movement. Three more, and I could see hands. As the doors split open enough for someone to shoulder through, I finally raised my gun, which shook in front of me embarrassingly.
With a final wrench the doors slid all the way open as smoothly as they’d been designed to. A single figure stood in the shadows within. He dropped the pry bar, which made a metallic rattle, and put up his hands.
“Don’t shoot. I’m an old man.”
“Fucking hell,” I spat out, keeping my gun trained on him. “Wa, you’re a goddamn virus.”
He stepped slowly from the elevator, hands up, looking a little less pressed and neat than I was used to. Even his motion was less fluid, a little more brittle, as if Wa Belling had grown old over the past few days, a lifetime catching up with the old man. “From what I hear, Avery, you’re the virus, yes?” He gave me a raised eyebrow, an expression that used to convey endless disdain and amusement. It looked tired and forced now. “At any rate, I’ve come to throw myself on your tender mercy.”
“He’s not emitting any signals,” Marko announced. “He’s not carrying any devices, aside from four guns and some ammunition.”
“Of course not,” Belling said, smiling. “I’ve come to sur-render.”
“Fuck you, surrender,” I barked, coughing. “You did this to me. You fucked me, Wa. You fucked everyone.” I staggered forward, pushing my gun at him and making him retreat, raising his hands higher. A part of me thrilled at making Wa Belling retreat. “You killed Glee, Wa,” I hissed, my whole body shaking. “You had her chewed up and fucking digested.” I knew that if he’d come here to kill me, he’d have an excellent chance of doing so. One Stormer and a rusted-out Avery Cates wasn’t a match for the man who’d successfully posed as Canny Orel for years. I felt like I’d turn to dust if someone so much as used harsh language on me.
“I fucked everyone,” he admitted, his hands still up in the air. “And I got fucked in return.”
I struggled for control. I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted to hurt him. But I had a job to do, and Belling could help. “How’d you locate us?”
He waggled his bushy white eyebrows. “I tracked your nanos, Avery. They all know you’re here. You’re filled with transmitters. You can’t take a piss, the Freak up there doesn’t know about it.”
I considered this, fighting the urge to start coughing again. “Then why isn’t he down here?”
Belling looked at me, a hint of the old bravado smile on his face. “Because, Avery, the Freak doesn’t consider you a threat. What with his Wonder Boy brain and all, you see. Also,” he continued, looking away and making a show of examining his surroundings, “I have gotten the impression he wants you to die of this plague, slowly. He wants you to suffer. Or rather, the voice in his head does.”
When it is over, you will be punished again, I heard Kev saying not so long ago. I gave Belling my best hardassed stare: emotionless, cold. I was a little surprised how easily it came back to me. “So what’s changed, Wallace? What’s happened in the past two days that brings you to me?”
Belling’s expression changed, all the humor going out of it, rage lighting him up and filling him, peeling back a few dozen years instantly. “Avery, I made a deal-you can cry about it if you want, but you and I, we didn’t have a deal. We had an informal arrangement.”
I almost pulled the trigger right then and there, the words informal arrangement like acid in my ear. The gun shook in my hand, and I told myself it was pure, corrosive anger. I wanted to shove our informal arrangement up his ancient ass.
“I made a deal with the Freak. A deal,” he added, “that no longer exists.” He looked away, finding something over my shoulder to study. “He fucking reneged. On me. On Wa Belling.”
A smile flashed onto my face. I almost felt good. “You got fucked in return,” I said, feeling some small part of the universe click back into alignment.
The old man’s eyes latched onto me. “You can be amused, Avery,” he said icily, “at least for the remaining few hours of your life. As for me, I am not happy. I was going to be immortal, Avery. And now I am dying.”
I squinted at him. “So? Just kill Kieth. Kill Kieth and the whole nano network crashes, right? They’ll just become bits of silicone and alloy in our bloodstream, and we’ll piss ’em out.”
He nodded. “That asshole Kieth is a clever asshole, yes-his little back door in the nano design is the only reason he’s still alive. But Avery, it isn’t that simple. Every time I do something Kev doesn’t like the look of, he tells me to stop, and I stop, yes? And he is under… guard.” He shrugged, suddenly looking small. “And I’ve grown old, Avery. I need your help.”
I snorted at this ridiculous situation, which set off a chain reaction of coughing I couldn’t stop. I was laughing and hacking my lungs up simultaneously, face going red, sweat pouring down my back. I bent over, putting the gun flat against my knee, trying to suck in enough breath to respond.
“Where the fuck were you a day ago?” I gasped. “I’m fucking dying now.”
Belling had recovered some of his old fire and was grinning at me as if we were all sharing a little joke. “So am I! The metal fucker put me on the list. I’ve never been so fucking screwed in my life.” Then he sobered. “I don’t wish to die, Avery, but I want to make that Freak hurt.” He cocked his head at me. “You and I come from the same place, in some ways. You know what happens when someone screws you out of a deal.” He nodded as if that was all that needed to be said. “We were an excellent murder team, Avery. Excellent.”
I spat a glob of red phlegm onto the floor and stared down at i
t, still doubled over, gasping shallowly. I was slowly getting myself back under control. I put my gun on him again. “You can say what you want, Wa, but we had a deal, you and me. I should shoot you in the belly. Shoot you in the fucking belly and leave you here to bleed and be eaten. To feel what she felt. And you want me to trust you?”
“You have a choice?” He laughed, lowering his hands with a glance at Lukens. “My dear, feel free to shoot me if I make any false moves. That will be our deal.”
She nodded and spat on the floor as if chewing an invisible wad of smoke. “All right.”
He looked back at me. “You’re half the man you were yesterday, Avery, and sledding downhill. You have one System Pig here who is not taking your orders, but we’ll list her as an asset on the assumption that since she hasn’t killed you yet, she probably won’t, and may even kill your enemies in the meantime. You-what the hell is your name?”
Marko blinked. “Ezekiel Marko,” he said, sounding confused.
“Ezekiel?” Belling repeated wonderingly. “Well, Zeke, my friend, what are you bringing to the operation?”
“Uh,” Marko frowned in thought for a second, then held up his little device. “Uh, this.”
“Ah,” Belling said with a sour twist of distaste. “A Techie. My favorite people. Very well; I assume you are skilled?”
Marko nodded slowly. “Uh, according to my OFS of you, you’re fucking Cainnic Orel.”
Belling waved him aside. “Optical facial scans are notoriously unreliable,” he said, “and the database you are pulling from is an official SSF one, yes? Years out of date, I assure you.” He looked back at me. Somehow he’d filled up again, swelling until he was Wa Belling again, bouncing on his feet and speaking in that subtle brogue I knew so well, maybe the last living member of Canny Orel’s old Murder Incorporated. “You have no choice, Avery. You and I, even at half speed, can take down any mark, I think. And we have more resources here than we’ve had at low times in both our careers.”
