by Jeff Somers
He nodded. “Very expensive.” He jabbed a finger at his neck. “One for each person I’ve killed. They still live on me.”
I raised an eyebrow. As I squinted at the freak, my vision suddenly zoomed and the tiny, animated tattoos came into sharp focus. They were very detailed, the faces contorted into masks of horror as they were murdered over and over again: a fat black man in a suit was garroted, his eyes bulging, his tongue popping out of his mouth; a slim woman with graying hair was shot in the forehead, the wound appearing suddenly, her eyes popping wide and staying that way; a dozen others endlessly replaying their deaths.
This was amateur hour. Maybe the cops weren’t interested in arresting anyone these days, sure, so wearing your own evidence wasn’t so terrible, but bragging and giving your enemies information for free, this shit was worth punishing. I swirled whiskey around in the glass, looking over the rim at him. His arms were...I wasn’t sure if I knew of a bigger word than fucking humongous and looked like good augment work, the muscles not twitchy or taut, but slow as fuck. He was sitting at Michaleen’s table, though; that meant something.
Michaleen. I knew I was going to have to table that bastard for the time being, and the thought of waiting another year to make him pay for playing me made my stomach sour.
“You proud of yourself? ” I asked, swallowing the whiskey. It tasted like shit, paint thinner burning all the way down, which was a huge improvement over Bixon’s slush back in Free Failed State of Englewood. The thought that the good stuff out there in the world was now shit was depressing, and all these kids who’d never had a pre-Unification cigarette or a decent glass of gin, they thought everything was fine. The standards had slipped, and people like me who knew better weren’t long for the world.
He nodded. “I am quality. I do work needs to be done. They call me the Poet.”
I raised an eyebrow theatrically. “Bullshit. I’ll bet you anything you like not one person has ever called you the Poet unless you had a knife up their ass.” I pointed a finger at him. “I will call you Nancy.”
He flushed, color coming in black on his cheeks. I felt good; I was running this meeting.
I smiled and raised the glass over my head. “Sweet-heart,” I shouted. “Another one of these, and a pack of cigarettes, on the Old Man’s tab!” As I set the glass back on the table I marveled for a moment at my hand: The cuts were still painful and visible, but they looked like they’d been healing for days, and I found I had full movement without too much discomfort. These army augments were fucking first class. I felt like doing push-ups. I put the smile on him and set myself, feeling an old dark joy filling me up—feeling this good was eroding my good sense, and I felt like a kid again, having fun, swinging my dick around.
“Tell you what,” I said, leaning forward. “I think being proud of sneaking up behind assholes and strangling them with your freakazoid monkey arms stitched onto your shoulders is nothing to fucking be proud of. And I think having your crimes tatted on your neck is flash. And I think the Poet is maybe the dumbest fucking name I’ve ever heard.”
He actually moved his arms, flipping over his hands so he could spread them wide, smiling back. “It is a good thing,” he said and paused, “that I don’t value your thoughts. Feel like teaching me? ”
My HUD suddenly flashed and I knew someone was creeping along my peripheral vision, a silent little twitch in my head. The girl, eyes wide and hands trembling, was approaching our table like it was a bomb that could go off at any time, which in a way I supposed it was. I turned my head to look at her.
“No one’s gonna hurt you,” I said slowly. “Don’t worry.”
“I give no such word,” the Poet said easily. “Take your chances like the rest. See if he helps you.”
I looked at him and we stared at each other. Slowly, she stepped between me and the table and set a bottle down, along with a dull metal cigarette case. My eyes lingered on the case; I hadn’t had a fucking cigarette since before I was fucking born. My mouth was watering. She smelled like shit, like someone who hadn’t been near water in a long time.
She scurried away as if I’d goosed her and my hands were opening the case before I was even conscious of them.
“I have heard of you,” the Poet said, relaxing his hands and shifting his weight. “More lucky than talented. That is what I think.” He pushed his chin at me. “You would not save her,” he added, his face comically serious. “You would kill her like the rest, if you felt you must.”
I nodded, cigarette between my lips, my attention on the case. It had a built-in lighter, and I traced my fingers over it, trying to figure out the mechanism. “You’re absolutely right, but I wouldn’t be fucking proud of it.”
His voice was a shrug as I finally produced a bright blue flame. “Your bullshit bores me. I suspect I’m not the first. You’re a chatty man.”
I sucked in smoke and decided I was ready for the cosmos to kick me off the rail and send me to hell, as long as I could smoke this cigarette first. It was the worst fucking cigarette I’d ever had. It tasted like ashes that had been wetted and molded back into the shape of a cigarette. I didn’t care. It was heaven. It put me into a better mood, and I sent the smoke back into the air and looked at my newest friend.
“All right,” I said. “Tell me about Amsterdam.” I looked around. “Doesn’t seem like the war has hurt it too badly.”
He cocked his head and smirked. “This is Old Man’s bar,” he said. “Not much left in this city, but it’s not dead yet.” He licked his lips. “The army bombed it, everyone moved underground; the streets are rotting.”
I looked back out the window at the crumbling street, the dirty canal.
“Then the cops show up, a couple of Spooks in tow, proclaim city free. Gathered up leaders, shot the lot dead in Dam Square, no time to brick them.” As I looked back at him, he spread his hands again. “Then army came back, dropped more bombs, re-took city, not much left for us.”
I grunted, picking up the bottle and pouring a few fingers into the glass. I felt wonderful. No pain—even my leg wasn’t throbbing—drinking and smoking in a bar. I held the bottle out toward my new friend. He held up a hand, a languid, majestic movement of his arm. “Thank you, but no thanks. I do not dull my senses.” He inclined his head. “Professional pride.”
We stared at each other in silence. Wearily, I wondered why it was always a pissing contest. This kid had his fucking credits animated on his skin, and I was an old man filled with nanotech, with someone’s boot up my ass directing me. Still, this asshole with the speech impediment thought he had to sit on me and make me like it. I knew I was going to have to make a demonstration for my peace of mind, and a wave of sullen heaviness swept through me.
I lifted the glass to my lips and tossed it back. It was wonderful to be in sin again. Holding the glass up, I made a show of studying it and smacking my lips, keeping the freak in my peripheral vision, which had suddenly become crystal clear and precise. “Do you know why I’m here, Nancy?” I asked. “Does the Old Man have something lined up? ”
The Poet nodded, frowning. A sensitive lad. You could call me names all day and I wouldn’t care, but assholes with vanity arms and their exploits in cartoon form on their skin didn’t like being made fun of. “Oh yes, he has job. Big pay, but competition.” He shrugged. “You are our ringer. To me, you look old. Methuselah in the flesh. Not worth the money.”
I nodded. “I am old.” I cocked my head and grinned, bracing. “How old are you, anyway? Did you know your mom? Who knows, I might be your daddy.”
It had been my experience that punks with sensitive egos always had sainted mothers.
The way he went still, frozen for a second, I knew I’d hit him where he lived, and tensed myself up, counting the seconds. I had the timing, and when he surged up from his seat, I shoved the table at him, putting my weight into it, slamming him back into the window, which groaned under the impact, the tape popping as the shards snapped free. Ridiculously, he leaned forward
and slapped his huge arms at me, a few inches short. I thought of his skinny, neglected legs under the table, useless.
“Lesson one, asshole,” I said, keeping the grin in place and giving the table an extra shove for the hell of it. “When someone insults you to your fucking face, they’re trying to bait you. Get that shit under control.”
From behind me, the sound of clapping. I waited a beat, winked at him, and with an extra little shove stepped back from the table, grabbed the bottle, and spun around. Michaleen was standing there with the red-haired girl, both of them grinning.
“Avery, Avery,” Michaleen said. “You’re entertaining as always, ain’t ya? Never imagined you as the patient tutor for the Lost Generation. Ah, so you’ve met the Poet here, who’s better in the field than perhaps he’s given the impression of. This is Mara, our Taker.”
He gestured at the girl, who looked past me for a second at the Poet, smirked, and looked back at me. “Welcome to the team, Mr. Cates,” she said in a rolling accent similar to Michaleen’s. “You’ll do well.”
VII
JUST THE WORST THING THAT HAD EVER HAPPENED TO THESE POOR PEOPLE
“Thank you, darlin’.”
The blond girl stared at Michaleen in terror for a moment, and then she managed a jerking, horrifying curtsy before spinning and walking away with tight, awkward steps. I watched her go while Mickey inspected his cup of tea and wondered where he’d found her and why he kept her around as his personal waitress. Why he thanked her.
I was seated between the Poet and Mara, the Taker. She smelled nice, and her hip was warm against mine under the table, a girl of maybe eighteen with milk-white skin and a tense, uncomfortable sense about her, like she was always in slight pain. The Poet was calm again, quiet, with his shovel hands folded in front of him. The window behind us was letting in the wind now and the sour smell of Amsterdam, like all of the canals had gone stagnant, like the sewage system had backed up and spilled the guts of the dead population back into the air.
Michaleen picked up his dainty cup and smiled around at us, his whole face folding up and crinkling into lines. “Avery,” he said with a nod. “Walk with me, eh? ”
I cocked my head. “You sure I won’t jump you again? ”
He chuckled, standing up, and with a subtle movement of his hand produced the square remote control. “You can try, boyo,” he said, and with another flexing of his hand the remote disappeared.
I stood up. “All right,” I said. I didn’t mind the pain, or even the inevitable blackout, but there was no point in going after Michaleen if it was just going to end with me pissing myself again while he shook his head and chastised me. He’d set the anti-frag to a couple of inches, so unless I thought I could kill him with one smack, I was going to have to play along with him until I figured out a way around the augments the army had stuffed into me.
He led me out into the cool, curdled air. My eyesight adjusted to the new brightness automatically, a flash of information giving me the temperature, the humidity, and my position in a series of numbers I didn’t completely understand. The status bars in the corner were green, but they’d faded to a pale transparency that I found easy to ignore. We went a few steps along the broken pavement, which narrowed in places so that only one of us could walk at a time. I was conscious of the raw earth underneath it all, ready to give way at any moment, the hungry water lapping at it endlessly, patient. I amused myself by hopping one-legged from spot to spot, one hand out casually to brace myself against the building facades we passed.
Something in the canal caught my eye. I watched it resolve into a corpse, bloated and green, floating slowly by us. I paused to watch it for a moment as it passed, bobbing peacefully, the eyes in the blackened face open and staring, yellowed and syrupy. I didn’t like bodies. I usually walked away from people the moment they died.
“Been hard,” Michaleen suddenly said, sipping his steaming tea. “Amsterdam was pretty safe for a while, a cop stronghold with a lot of space around it. But it got swollen up with refugees and such, people running away from the front. Got so big the army decided it needed reducing, eh? ” He shook his head. “But I like it here.”
Amsterdam looked peaceful. I realized the line of buildings across the river was just facades, the outline of buildings attached to each other. Behind the empty windows and scorched rock of the fronts was nothing but rubble, as if somehow the SFNA had a bomb that carved off the fronts of buildings, leaving them intact. If you squinted and didn’t pay attention, it was beautiful: the storefronts and old buildings, the water slipping past, a few trees still hanging on along the edges of the pavement. The smell was horrible, sour-sweet, rot, and something else, something scorched and burned and unpleasant. But the sky was blue, and everywhere. I didn’t remember seeing the sky much, back in New York. It always seemed gray and clouded, and it had always been full of SSF hovers, waiting to rain Stormers down onto us.
The sky was empty above us, and it suddenly made me feel naked. I missed those hovers.
“I won’t pretend,” Michaleen said, “that you’re a partner in this, Avery. You don’t have any choice—you’re gonna do what I want and help us with this.”
I didn’t say anything. After a moment he spat into the canal.
“So there’s that. But I will offer you an incentive, yes? I’ll offer you a deal, from the goodness of m’heart. Here it is: Run this for me, take lead and get it done, an’ I’ll cut you loose with jus’ your word not to come bother me.”
I shook out another cigarette, feeling prosperous to suddenly have a bellyful of decent booze and a fresh pack of cigarettes, even if they were synthetic and tasted like fuck. Sticking one in my mouth, I fiddled with the case lighter again, the trick of it mysterious once more. “Tell you what, if I don’t find a way to fuck you over once we’re out in the field, I’ll take you up on that.”
He chuckled. “You’re a fuckin’ card, ain’t ya. But that’s why I’ll be signing over the remote to my girl while you’re out and about, right? She’ll be ridin’ herd on you, keepin’ you on point.”
I considered this as a bright blue flame suddenly appeared from the lighter in response to a mysterious gesture I’d managed and couldn’t re-create in my head. I lit my cigarette before it could change its mind and fade away. “So this is the fucking famous Dúnmharú, huh? Two old men, a fucking freak, and a girl who looks like she traps spiders and sets them free.”
He winced around his teacup. “You’ve got a mouth on you, boyo. If I didn’t have this endless affection for you, and a sense of having wronged you—”
I choked, sending out a premature cloud of blue smoke. Wronged me.He’dgottenmetohelphimescapeprison,and my reward had been watching him rise into the air while I got dragged down to an underground lab to have needles shoved into my brain. A sense of having wronged.
“—I’d set this cup down and teach you some fuckin’ manners.” He took three steps in silence, chewing his tea.
“Try it without the remote, since you’re such a fucking legend,” I said, studying the coal of my cigarette, “and I’ll pull those ridiculous ears off of you like they’re a fly’s wings.”
He waved an impatient hand at me. “The Poet—his name’s Adrian, by the by—he’s skilled. A bit of a fuckin’ weirdo, o’course, but the man has credits. He’s a thinker, like you. And you’ll need the muscle on this. If I’d had time to recruit five more people, I’d have given them all to ya, Avery, but time’s short—you were kinda a lucky find for us, at th’last minute. And Mara is a pro. Not a killer, maybe, or maybe she is, but she kin find anyone, and get plugged in—even in these sad times—anywhere. Trust me. These are the best available.”
“I expected more, Mickey. You’re a fucking legend. This is . . . not legendary.”
He grimaced. “Fucking hell, Avery—you think it was back in the day? Shit, you think we were sitting around in fucking tuxedos, smoking cigars and what, slitting throats from across the room with our fucking Psionic powers? Me and
Wallace and Turnby and Tracy—we were just men and women.”
Eoin Turnby, Gwendolin Tracy—I’d heard the names. Dim and dark, just names.
“We killed people. It was fucking messy and it took effort, but that’s all we were. We just killed folks who were supposedly too well protected, too rich, and too powerful to be killed. And the fucking world was shaking down around us, so when it was all done, all that was left was bullshit and such.” He laughed. “Hell, Avery—if you met Eoin Turnby on the street thirty years ago you would’ve given him the shoulder out of principle. He looked like a fucking shabby Pick.” He paused. “Died with a fuckin’ ice pick in his throat, hands tied behind his back. Bled out over four fucking hours. No way for a killer to go.” He looked at me sideways and let that ring for a moment. “Your problem is, you’ve had too much Wallace Belling. That fucking dandy’s always liked playin’ the part. Likes playin’ it more than he likes livin’ it. He’s a fuckin’ actor. Enjoys fuckin’ with people.” He sighed, sipping tea. “Still, Wa’s the best I ever saw with a traditional pistola, y’know? Could shoot the tits off a pigeon a mile away.”
We took a few steps in silence. The city wasn’t entirely quiet, though, I realized; my augmented ears were picking up some crowd noise not too far off to my left. As we passed a large intersection, I turned and saw a smoke-stack-shaped hunk of stone thrusting up into the air in the middle of a large, empty square. There were people dotted around it, sitting, standing, moving about, the first natives I’d seen so far. Michaleen turned and we headed toward it.
“Fuckin’ war,” he muttered, tossing the rest of his tea out onto the street and shaking the cup. “This is fuckin’ worse than Unification. At least you had countries goin’ at it, back then, organized countries. Now it’s just these fuckin’ armies running back and forth tramplin’ everything, the whole world going to shit.”
I shrugged. “I heard some places are going independent. Breaking away.”
