by Jeff Somers
As if they’d been drilling for years, Tanner dropped to her knees below Orel and they both opened fire on three Monks who raced around the corner. The Monks went down one, two, three, each a headshot, each from Canny, who moved his gun with surgical precision: Bam! A tic to the right bam! A tic to the left bam! I couldn’t help but admire it.
For a moment, it was quiet, except for the latex sound of Dawson’s melted laugh. Canny turned his head slightly to glance at me.
“Don’t relax,” he advised with a wink. “There are more coming. Mr. Kieth,” he added, louder, “I forgive you your debt.”
“Why the hell did you come here?” I demanded. I was ready to let it roll over me, the huge, incomprehensible wave-just close my eyes and let it smother me-but Canny Orel got on my last nerve and I was damned if I was going to let him just do what he liked. This was my job. “You’re supposed to be the goddamned distraction.”
“We didn’t have a choice, Mr. Cates!” Orel snapped back, eyes fixed on the intersection and the three felled Monks. “We were fucking herded here.”
“It’s true,” Tanner said, her voice cracking and shaking. I looked down at her sharply, noticing for the first time that her face was a rictus of emotion, her body stiff and shaking, as if she’d physically felt the death of her twin. “Everywhere we turned, they pushed us back-except one direction. They came and came at us, and we fucking took dozens of those fucking Tin Men out, Cates, but if we fell back in the right direction, they let us.”
Two Monks flitted through the intersection like insects. Orel and Tanner tracked them, pumping shells, but missed, the Monks disappearing on the other side.
Anger flooded me. My hands spasmed, trying to clench into fists; it took all my concentration for a moment to stop myself from firing a shell into the floor, to keep my hands under control. I wanted to throttle Orel where he stood, so calm, so capable-probably the only one of us with a chance to fight his way out of this. I hated his competence, hated the fact that he was better, tougher than me. If I was going to die inside this fucking tomb, it was going to be my decision. I’d been dancing for Marin and Moje and everyone else for too long. I didn’t give a fuck about the cash-which I doubted I’d ever see, anyway-I wanted to put a shell into Dennis Squalor’s head because I’d come this far and I wasn’t going to get stopped now.
I whirled on Ty Kieth. “Get that fucking door open!”
He swallowed and glanced down at his handheld, pointing it at the door and prodding its screen with his thumb, a practiced, smooth gesture. Licking his lips, he nodded.
“I can probably do it, but-”
“Do it,” I snapped. “Or we’re all dead, right here, in this fucking hallway.”
He nodded, prodding his screen madly.
“Cates!” Orel snapped without turning. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
More Monks appeared at the end of the hall. A volley of shells from Tanner and Orel, and two fell into a heap.
“Cates, we were herded here. On purpose. Did you encounter any resistance? No,” Orel said slowly, eyes fixed on the sights of his guns. “I think that door is going to open soon, all on its own. I think you’ve been played. I think that opening that door is the last thing we want.”
I stared at him for a moment, thinking. Then I turned and looked at the door, smooth, unmarked, implacable, just as another volley of shots announced more Monks. What it came down to was, you always had a choice. There was always something you could choose to do.
I turned and looked at Kieth. He looked back at me. He was shaking.
“Mr. Kieth,” I said steadily. He jumped a little. “Get the goddamn door open.” I smiled, the familiar crazy laughter catching in my throat. “Let’s fucking surprise them.”
Kieth didn’t hesitate. He seemed almost happy as he pulled his small bag of instruments from his jacket. A slight smile played on his lips, and he didn’t even flinch when a fresh wave of Monks at the end of the hall brought on another volley of bullets from Orel and Tanner.
“Two more!” Orel shouted. He sounded almost happy, too. I was surrounded by madmen. Madmen of my own choosing.
Kieth began scanning the door with his little handheld device, running it up and down the thin, faint lines outlining the opening. While bent over scanning along the bottom, he paused suddenly.
“Huh,” I heard him say quietly. “That’s-”
The door suddenly emitted a loud, hollow banging sound. Kieth stood up instantly, and Gatz and I turned as one, me with my gun held out, Gatz with a shaking hand on his glasses. Behind me, there was more gunfire, and a stream of curses from Orel. I squinted down the sight of my gun, hand hurting from gripping it so tightly.
The door banged inward as if a silent, dark explosion had propelled it, knocking Kieth back hard into Dawson’s temporary coffin. I glimpsed the figure revealed in the doorway for just a split-second, because in the balance of that moment I ticked my gun’s muzzle to the left an infinitesimal amount and pulled the trigger twice, turning his head into cheese.
Dennis Squalor stood there for another moment as we all stared, and then fell forward, leaking coolant and insulation.
For a moment, there was nothing. Then, rising like sour steam, Dawson’s terrible ruined laugh.
XXXII
YOU DID THIS FOR MONEY. YOU KILLED YOURSELF
00000
There was only Dawson’s terrible laughter for a moment. It went on and on without pause for breath, without inflection, a tape loop. I didn’t feel anything except the buzz in the bones of my hand, recovering from the gun’s recoil. I had seen his face, but I couldn’t believe it. It had been him, Dennis Squalor, and I’d killed him. But it wasn’t real. I stared at the slumped form in the doorway and didn’t move a muscle.
Behind me, shots continued to ring out in waves, punctuated by Canny Orel’s growled expletives. Kieth moaned and struggled to extricate himself from Dawson’s floating coffin, and Gatz was a statue next to me. I imagined I could hear the sizzle of my sweat on the gun’s muzzle, that I could smell the coolant leaking from Squalor’s metal body.
I opened my mouth to say something over Dawson’s endless laughter, but as I did so a second figure filled the doorway, and I froze again.
It was Dennis Squalor. Again.
“Avery Cates, shitbag,” Dawson’s ruined voice rumbled up from beneath Kieth. “Meet the Cardinals.”
The face was exactly as it had been shown on the Vids. Round, loose-skinned, and jowly, a ring of friarlike hair on an otherwise smooth, red scalp. Small, delicate-looking ears and a flat, broad nose. He looked about as old as anyone I’d ever seen, maybe sixty, and wore small round dark glasses molded to his face, hiding his eyes entirely. He wore a blindingly white shirt, buttoned to the top, and a suit of black clothes, the coat trailing along the floor like a fitted robe. He looked entirely human, standing there, and I would have thought he was human except I’d shot him in the face just seconds before, and yet he was standing there, over his own dead body.
Behind me, I heard Orel bellow something almost inhuman, a sound that was just pure frustration, as an endless volley of shots rang in the hallway, Tanner and him firing in waves.
“Cates!” Tanner screamed above the din. “Here they come!”
I didn’t turn around. I kept my eyes on this… thing, the doppelganger. With Orel’s yell in my ears like cotton, with Tanner’s words still hanging in the air like shattered glass, Squalor moved. It was just the subtle shift of his arms, a movement of millimeters by his coat. Old, burned-in instincts took over, bypassed all my higher functions. Before I consciously realized Squalor-or whatever it was-was going to draw and fire, I was moving. I threw myself back and to the side, taking Gatz off his feet as I pushed myself into the air, aiming for the floating coffin containing Dawson and Kieth.
In midair, I heard the sound of more bullets. When I crashed into the coffin awkwardly, half-in and half-out, the breath knocked out of me, I was fo
llowed immediately by a thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hitting the metal casing.
“Get off of me,” a melted, gurgling voice hissed in my ear. “And go die.”
“Oh, shit,” Kieth coughed from beneath me. “I think you fucking broke my ribs.”
I didn’t wait to hear more. The trick was always to keep moving. A moving target was hard to hit. You paused to catch your breath, you caught a bullet. Using Dawson’s head to push off from, I gathered my strength and launched myself up and over the back of the coffin, landing on the other side on the balls of my feet, something in my back tearing painfully, electric shocks going up both legs. For some reason I was suddenly very aware of the damp stone smell of the hall.
“Very nice,” Orel growled from behind me. I could feel him there, an inch away. “Mr. Cates, you are fucking not who I would have chosen to die with.”
“Fuck you,” I snapped, clearing the chamber of my gun out of habit. “You did this for money. You killed yourself.” I willed my hands to move faster through the practiced motions, automatic. “You think I would have chosen you? I don’t even know your fucking real name.”
“Ah, Mr. Cates.” He sighed. “Belling. Wallace Belling. My associates call me Wa. It was my priviliege to work with Cainnic Orel thirteen years ago. As for money-show me a way that doesn’t end with my meaningless death, and I’ll happily start tearing this whole godforsaken world to pieces.”
Done with the pleasantries, I popped up. The Cardinal wasn’t in the doorway anymore, so I dropped back down, all the way, stretching out on the floor. Dragging my eyes from right to left through the narrow band of air under the coffin, I saw Gatz, sitting with his back against the wall. The Cardinal stood directly over him. Its boots were brightly polished. The posture and position of them was instantly familiar. I’d executed enough people in my time, and stood off to one side while others were executed, to recognize the classic pose.
My whole body went rigid for a second, ice and razor blades pumping through my heart.
As if pulling it through thick mud, I dragged my gun over and put four shells in those boots, welts erupting in them, impact craters, the armor-piercing bullets tearing everything inside them to shreds. Any man would drop on his ass, screaming.
The Cardinal didn’t even move. I imagined the bullets destroying wiring, bouncing off titanium alloys, ripping tiny motors and etched circuits apart. But the Squalor clone didn’t flinch.
A second later there was a loud pop. Gatz’s body twitched, went still. Ice and razor blades pumped into my head, and my vision narrowed down. Ignoring the pain in my back, I jumped to my feet, suddenly graceful. I felt a hand in the fabric of my coat.
“Get down, asshole!” Belling yelled.
I ignored him and jumped again, up on top of the coffin, balancing precariously on the rim as it rocked and swayed. Belling’s hand fell away.
Behind me, more cursing, more shots. Below me, Kieth moaned, Dawson hissed. In front of me, the Cardinal, Dennis Squalor’s spitting image, still stood looking down at Kev Gatz’s lifeless body. A dark red pool of blood was steadily spreading out. The color was shocking in the grayscale universe of the Electric Church.
“Interesting,” Squalor said. His voice was smooth and unaccented and sounded completely natural. “A psionic.”
All I could see was the Cardinal. Without hesitation, I threw myself at it with everything momentum and gravity could grant me. My bones rattled and my vision swam as I hit, taking it off-balance. We crashed into the wall right next to the still-open door, bounced, and I fell backward, the Cardinal crashing down on top of me with crushing force. I couldn’t breathe, and his round, chubby face was thrust into mine, so real-except that his glasses had been knocked askew and lay across his face, revealing one delicate, tiny camera lens.
“Your actions will result in chaos, Mr. Cates,” it said reasonably. “There will be unrest, lawlessness, property damage. This cannot be allowed.”
The words were just noise. I felt no pain, just a hideous cold anger. A guttural, meaningless growl exploded from my throat, and I pushed, rolling the machine off me, staying with it so that I was right on top of it. I sat astride it and jammed my gun into its mouth, panting, staring down at the crazy glasses, the single revealed camera. Out of the corner of my eye I could see it swinging its weapon around toward me, so I pulled the trigger. Again. And again. And again, until all I got were dry clicks. Then I slumped backward and let my hand fall to my side, reflexively dropping the spent clip onto the floor. I was breathing hard, my face wet, shivering. Somewhere nearby, I could still hear Belling shouting, gunshots, moaning.
“Cates!” someone shouted. “The door!”
Slowly, I turned my head. The door was swinging shut. It seemed to move in dreamy slow motion. I felt like I could do a million things in the time it would take to close.
“Cates!”
I stood up and reached down, gathering a handful of the Cardinal’s coat in one hand. The ice and razor blades were gone. I was exhausted, a numb buzzing was all I felt. I pulled the Cardinal across the rough floor with deadened, stubborn determination, and managed to push it into the path of the door with a foot or so to spare. The door slammed into the body and froze, a soft mechanical whine rising from it.
I realized with a start that everything had gone silent. I turned to look around.
Kieth was slowly pulling himself out of the coffin. Belling sat sprawled on the floor, guns still in his hands, his arms limp at his sides. Gatz sat where he’d been. Tanner was facedown, her hand relaxed on her gun. I walked slowly over to Gatz and stood over him, gripping my gun hard, my whole body shivering.
“Ah, Jesus,” I croaked. “Ah, fuck. Why didn’t you Push it, goddammit it?”
“No brain!” Dawson’s gleeful, warped voice boomed from inside the coffin. “All digital, Cates! There was nothing for your rat-friend to Push!”
I ignored the voice, disembodied, like gas in the air. Gatz looked just the same. Pale, skeletal, hidden behind his dark glasses. If he’d stood up and wiped the gelled blood from his forehead and chin, it wouldn’t have surprised me.
I looked at Kieth, and then beyond him to Belling. Behind Belling there was a mass of Monks, and Tanner, slumped forward, hand limp on her gun. I thought, He must have murdered every last motherfucking one of them. The old man was panting, too, and looked a little disheveled and out of sorts for the first time since I’d met him. Another time, under different circumstances, I would have been impressed with the pile of busted hardware opposite him, but I had nothing left inside but weariness and a regret that floated on top like scum.
Kieth slid from the coffin onto the floor and knelt there, his arms wrapped around himself.
“You broke my ribs,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Fuck you,” I offered through gritted teeth. His fucking ribs. I’d lost the closest thing to a friend I’d ever had. Out of habit, I swapped in a fresh clip with stiff, arthritic hands.
“Cates,” Dawson’s voice bubbled up, sliding over the edge of the coffin and pooling on the floor. “Cates!”
I turned and walked over to the coffin and peered down into it, my hands still like rocks, my body shaking. Dawson leered up at me with his latex face and camera eyes, smiling.
“There’re dozens of Cardinals, Cates,” he rumbled. “You got lucky. They’re coming.”
With no conscious thought, I brought my gun up and aimed it at Dawson’s face.
“Fuck you,” I hissed.
Dawson’s mouth twisted. I pulled the trigger twice.
XXXIII
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE KING WORM
10011
Belling struggled to his feet and leaned against the wall, reloading. Kieth still knelt next to me on the floor, moaning and hugging himself.
“Shut up, for God’s sake. You aren’t dead,” I snapped.
“Ty isn’t made for this shit, goddammit,” he wheezed petulantly. “I think you punctured a lung.”
I reached down wi
th my free hand and pulled him up roughly. “Inconvenient, but survivable,” I advised him, and Belling let out a snicker of amusement.
Kieth squawked. “Survivable, Mr. Cates? Look around: Your team hasn’t survived all that well lately.”
I nodded. There was no force in the universe that would keep me from completing this job. I’d paid too dearly for it. Maybe nothing mattered, maybe you lived and died and unless you had the wisdom to get Monked and live forever that was it, a great yawning darkness that nothing ever escaped from. Maybe. But I was going to make this matter, by brute force if necessary.
“We got set up, Mr. Cates,” Belling said without looking up from his guns. “We were herded here, and pinned down, and then flanked. What I don’t understand is why only two of those-what did he call them? Cardinals? — those Cardinals showed up. We were pinned down. A few more coming through that door would have cooked our geese for sure.”
I didn’t care anymore. My whole existence the past few weeks had been at the whim of some power beyond me, and I’d finally accepted that whatever it was could kick my ass any time it wanted. It was time to just pull my arms and legs inside the safety cage and enjoy the ride.
“There’s been a lot of packet traffic in the air,” Kieth panted, wincing as he brought his handheld up for a look. “Then, suddenly, nothing. It’s like the whole EC just went quiet, all of a sudden.”
“I don’t much like the sound of that,” Belling said, racking the chambers of his guns and holstering them. “We should all be dead right now. I think I’ll be nervous until something starts shooting at me again.” He looked up at me, and our eyes locked. Belling was back to his old self: cool, unconcerned, projecting the impression that he was going to live through it all even if you weren’t. “I assume I’ve earned a full share of your payday, should we walk out of here alive?”
I gritted my teeth. A sudden rage flashed through me; if I’d released my limbs to it I had no doubt I would have tried to kill a member of the Dъnmharъ.
