The Terminal State

by Jeff Somers

  “Give me your thoughts and impressions on the move, Mara,” I said, pushing myself to trot into the gloom. “If we’re standing here hand-jobbing each other when the welcome wagon gets down here, we’re all going to be part of the fucking subway.”

  “Don’t fucking tell me,” she huffed behind me, her voice bouncing off the tiled walls around us and pinging back and forth. “Been at this longer than y’been alive, kiddo.”

  I ignored her. We had to keep moving, to distance ourselves from the blast if our pursuers fell for the same damn trick twice—and shame on them if they did—and because I didn’t know what we were going to find down here and wanted to cover as much ground as I could before the cosmos caught up with me with a new dance in mind. We were on a short, dusty platform, the tracks running alongside and stretching off forward and back into darkness. A few scraps of furniture were still rotting away, and a few square tiles still clung to the walls. I made for the edge and dropped over into the rut.

  The Poet fell in beside me, pistols still in his hands, sunglasses still on. They were certainly made to adjust to all lighting conditions, but I found myself irritated that he’d leave them on like some punk interested in looking like a fucking Gunner instead of actually doing the job right. I didn’t say anything. There was no time. I felt like the cosmos had put me back on the rail a few weeks ago, but that I’d jumped the track, that I wasn’t supposed to kill Londholm, wasn’t supposed to take the God Augment and turn it on Michaleen. I couldn’t explain it. It was just a feeling. I thought if I kept moving, kept my head down, I might tell the fucking cosmos to go fuck itself for a change.

  “Something on your mind, Adrian? ”

  The tunnel was slowly grinding down to pitch-black; my augments were struggling to make it visible. My HUD showed my climbing respiration as I jogged with the duffel and shredder hanging off me, some of my stats edging down into the red—I was pretty much staying upright with augment power at this point: If someone had been able to dissolve them out of me by magic, I’d probably drop dead. I hoped the fact that the subway entrance had been completely unmonitored or defended indicated that the Triads, or whoever owned the tunnels, had forgotten about lobby entrances, buying us some time. If we were quiet enough, we might make it through without having to pay a toll.

  I didn’t think we could afford any tolls.

  “You’re improvising,” he said, his voice picking up the strained pitch I’d heard before, in the tunnel. “This makes me very nervous. Bag of secrets, too.”

  “Noted, and who gives a fuck. You got a better idea, let’s hear it.”

  He didn’t say anything for a few steps. “That disturbs me, too.” He looked over his shoulder for a second. “We are not out from under. Push button.”

  “I’m right here, assholes,” she whispered. “I can fucking hear you.”

  “You surprised we’d gladly twist your head off? That hurts your feelings?” I whispered into the air without turning. I glanced at the Poet. “You see any opportunity to get out from under, Adrian, and I am listening. Until then—the only way out is forward.”

  We walked a few steps, the darkness tightening up around us. With a silent stutter, my vision suddenly turned murky green, lighting the place up a little better.

  “Also disturbing,” he said suddenly, his voice pitched lower, “someone is following us. Stealthy but clumsy.”

  I kept moving, but strained my augmented ears. After a moment I heard it, the creeping scrape of someone being careful with their foot placement but sloppy with their advance. “One person,” I whispered after a moment.

  The Poet nodded.

  I considered: They’d either already been down here, or they’d somehow bypassed my trip mines. Nothing was impossible, I knew that—you put down trip mines, someone walked right through them; it could be done. If they were already down here, they were possibly Triad, a guard, or just some poor shit wandering around. Either way, noise would be a mistake.

  Wordlessly, the Poet faded back, and I hoped he didn’t freak out again. I kept my eyes forward, struggling to pick out details. The tracks snaked under us clearly enough, and the rough concrete walls slipped past us in a steady scroll. The air was getting thick. I couldn’t imagine a train barreling through these narrow tunnels, pushing through this fog—I couldn’t imagine anyone voluntarily rushing through the darkness in a fucking tube, clinging to each other for dear life. If I’d been in charge during Unification thirty years ago, I would have poured concrete down each of these holes and not looked back.

  Walking along, knowing that someone was shadowing us, was stress. My hands were tight on the body of the shredder, still warm. I wanted to spin and just send fire everywhere, taking down everyone, taking down Mara, too, and feeling my head explode as a result of the frag. It was tempting.

  The only way out is forward, Dennis Squalor whispered, the sound of a ghost, a man long dead even before I pulled his plug.

  Something sizzled through the air to my right, and I stopped, shredder coming up and trying to track it as it landed with a hard-sounding skittle across the tracks. Something small and dense. For a second, there was no sound.

  “That’s an RD mine,” a voice called out from behind. “If I toggle it, we’re all dead. No one move.”

  My eyes strained to pick it out, though I wasn’t sure what I planned to do if I found it. “You blow it, you’re dead too.”

  “That’s what ‘we’re all dead’ means, Mr. Cates.”

  I closed my eyes. Mr. Cates. I suddenly recognized the voice. “How’d you get down here, Remy?”

  “I’ve been trained in live explosive decommission,” he said, sounding older and colder than I remembered. “Those are military-issue trips; I know ’em well. Don’t worry, I set them again when I was through.”

  I nodded. Remy had always been a smart kid. “How’d you get away from Anners? ”

  He didn’t answer for a second or two. “I just walked away. It’ll be a few hours before he realizes I’m gone, and then he’ll probably pop me. Or maybe he’ll wander out of range and I’ll get popped automatically. I don’t know. I don’t care.”

  I opened my eyes again, HUD automatically fading to a transparent film on my vision. For a heartbeat or two, we were all silent again, and then I took a breath. “I tried—”

  “Yeah, you tried real fucking hard, Mr. Cates,” he said coldly. “You paid that asshole a fucking fortune to get you escorted into Hong Kong, but I guess I wasn’t worth that much.”

  “Who the fuck is this pip, Cates?” Mara snapped. “One o’ your bastards come to pay his respects? ”

  Just someone on my list, I thought. “What do you want, Remy?”

  “What do I want? You’re a fucking piece of shit, Mr. Cates. If they hadn’t pressed you, you’d have just run for it back in Englewood. You didn’t give a fuck about us then, and you didn’t give a fuck about me here. So what do I want? What do you think I want? My head hurts, Mr. Cates. I got a blinding headache every fucking day from these augments. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. They push tabs down my throat to keep me alive. Whatever they want me to do, I do. I can’t not do it; I’m fucking plugged in. They push a button, I’m on the floor, screaming. They push a button, I’m comatose. They push a button, I’m killing people with my bare hands. Some of the officers . . .” He paused, his words bouncing around us. “Some of the officers like to have their fun with us. Make us dance, like puppets. So dying, I’m okay with. I’ve been thinking of just wandering off, seeing how long I got before Anners pops me. And then you showed up and sailed on past and I thought, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to kill him first. If I can.’”

  “Hell, Cates,” Mara said cheerily, “you sure do make friends everywhere you go, huh? Kid, am I to understand that you’re only concerned with Cates and his less-than-noble past? ”

  “Stop talking.”

  “Sure, sure, but let me be more blunt: Are you sayin’ if we give ya Cates, we can just walk on off?”

  I froze
.

  “You cannot do this,” the Poet hissed. “You cannot just leave him here. We will need the man.”

  “Mr. Panić, you’ll do best to shut the fuck up before I pop you, right? Now, kid, what’s the word?”

  Another few seconds of quiet passed us by. “I don’t give a shit what you two do. I want Mr. Cates to stay right here.”

  “Done,” Mara said immediately. “He’s all yours.”

  “You—”

  “Mr. Panić,” Mara snarled. “Say one more word and your brain’ll be mush. We’re going.”

  “Go ahead, Adrian,” I said, surprising myself. “No sense in both of us getting killed.”

  “If you come back, I’ll just blow the mine,” Remy said flatly.

  I heard the scrape of Mara and the Poet getting to their feet and walking toward me. I felt someone looming up behind me, and then there was a hand on my shoulder. “We ain’t comin’ back,” Mara said cheerfully.

  “I am sorry, friend,” Adrian said, his voice tight and shaky. “This is not how I want it. I would—”

  “Just fucking go,” I said, not moving. “This isn’t your fuckup.”

  His hand stayed on my shoulder for a moment, and then slipped away, and the two of them crept into the gloom, dissolving slowly into particles of light too diffuse to be coherent. I thought the Poet looked back at me as he was swallowed by the darkness, but I couldn’t be sure. At least Adrian wasn’t on my list, I thought. On someone’s list, sure, but not mine.

  “Remy,” I said slowly, still not turning. I was curiously calm, my HUD still pus yellow and pulsing in alarm here and there, but I felt nothing aside from vague aching in my leg and a general weariness. The bold exclamation point in the corner of my HUD was still blinking, and it expanded slightly as I focused on it. I could go that route, I thought. Go into Berserker Mode again and go for Remy, if I didn’t stroke out, if I didn’t just kill myself in the attempt.

  The exclamation point shrank down, slowly, as my thoughts slid off of it. I could hear the kid approaching, stuffed full of augments, but still dumb enough to think that just having me with my back turned made me defenseless. Made me easy.

  “Don’t talk, Mr. Cates,” he said, closer.

  I decided to irritate him, on the premise that it couldn’t make my situation any worse. “Fuck you, don’t talk. A fucking brigade snatches you out from under me and I’m to blame? You assholes begged me to stay. I told you all to get the fuck away, to run, but you all stood there with your sad little faces kicking the dirt, fucking useless pricks who can’t handle shit for themselves, and suddenly I’m supposed to be your big fucking brother? Fuck that noise. I did what I could for you.”

  “You were supposed to take care of me,” he said, voice rising and suddenly sounding young, like the little kid I’d known. “You ran away.”

  He was right behind me. I thought of the mine up ahead, near enough to turn me into a fine mist. I thought of the gun he must have behind me. Would it be the shredder, like an inexperienced asshole, a gun that bucked like a horse, entirely wrong for an up-close attack, or a handgun? Would he just put the barrel against my skull and pull the trigger, or would there be drama, speeches, tears? I didn’t like to think of Remy as an asshole, but I hoped he was.

  Then he was right behind me, and I cleared my mind, imagining the old glass sphere I used to hide in when my mind had been filled with ghosts, right after my half-processing into an avatar. I pushed all thoughts outside and closed my eyes, ready, listening. Remy was on my list, but I wasn’t going to die in this shithole tunnel. I wasn’t going to die with Michaleen Garda still out there, laughing at me.

  Remy was right behind me. “On your knees, then.”

  XXV

  THEY RESTED, THEY PLANNED, AND THEY CAME BACK

  “I said, on your knees.”

  I didn’t move. “Remy, if you’re going to kill me, just fucking do it.”

  I listened. My augmented hearing brought me every tiny scrape and every hitch in his breathing, which was short and labored like he had a cough he was suppressing. I knew what kind of training the military gave its pressers—assuming augments surgeried in counted as training—and was ready for him when he put the barrel of the shredder against the back of my head, like somehow its presence there would hold me in place. My HUD clarified as a surge of calm and energy swept through me like cool fire, briefly masking my exhaustion and pain, slowing things down and steadying me.

  I took a deep breath, flopped down onto my belly in one sudden swoon, scissored my legs around his, and rolled, jerking the lower half of my body with as much force as I could. He lost his balance and fell backward onto his ass, sending a quick burst of shredder fire up into the air, a rain of broken tile and concrete drifting down onto us.

  I leaped up and dived, letting gravity pull me down onto him hard enough to crack a few ribs, the shredder pinned between us. He still had his cowl on, his face a blank swatch of hardened plastic. I raised up a little to get some leverage and he jerked his knee up into my balls about as hard as I’d ever had it done to me, and stars burst into my sight, everything going fuzzy and loose. The kid brought the shredder up and smacked me in the chin with it, snapping my head back and cracking my teeth against each other. I lashed out one hand and took hold of the hot barrel of his gun and held on for all I was worth, hanging from it and letting my weight make control of it impossible.

  “Let go!” he snarled, his voice going pitchy.

  The low, nauseous ball in my belly faded as my strained augments kicked in, smothering it, and I yanked hard on the shredder, using my dead weight to overbalance him—he was still thin, barely there, and in a second he had a choice to make—either let go of the gun or let me pull him back down on top of me.

  He didn’t let go, and he crashed down on me with a growl of pure frustration. I was ready and rolled immediately, pushing him over before he could settle in and get his weight spread. Slamming him onto his back again, I pushed the shredder down onto his neck, making sure to lock his legs under me to stop him from kneeing me again. I gave it what I had, leaning down and pushing the gun onto his throat, my sweat dripping down onto his cowl in a steady stream of fat drops.

  In the distance back the way I’d come, three quick explosions shook the tunnel around us. I looked up; I could feel the vibration in the tracks beneath us; my other friends tripping the mines. With any luck, they’d caved in the stairwell, but I wasn’t sure I was that blessed. If not, it wouldn’t be long before their next wave crept down. My HUD was creeping into red, all my status bars getting a bleary, dangerous look to them, and I wondered, for a second, if this is what it looked like to die. If these were the visuals.

  “I fucking hate you!”

  Remy surged beneath me and with surprising strength flung me off to the right; I kept my death-clutch on the shredder and tore it from his hands as I sailed a few feet, landing on my back on the tracks, the wide rail trying its best to snap me in two. My HUD flashed again, and then normalized. I didn’t wait to interpret it; I got my hands and feet under me and scrabbled backward as fast as I could manage, then rolled myself to the left, tucking my legs under and pushing myself up into a stumbling run that smoothed out after the first few steps. I sprinted, marveling at the effortlessness of it, the way my wired-up body just pulled the necessary resources, dumped the necessary chemicals, and pushed my limbs into motion. On one level, I knew I was exhausted, too tired to stay alive, but on another, I was removed from it, cushioned, and I knew I could run full tilt until I dropped dead, with no warning in between, aside from the light show in my head.

  As I ran, a new icon faded in on my HUD, blinking a dull orange: four military pips surrounding a distance meter. Mara, my nominal commanding officer, was closing in on the range that would define me as a deserter. When she crossed that invisible barrier, I’d be dead.

  Just as this new anxiety splashed itself across my thoughts, Remy slammed into me from behind, like a bag of wet cement, knocking me down
and slamming me back onto the gritty tracks. I held onto his shredder, letting my nose take one track straight on and crunching into mulch with the ease of the frequently broken. Remy was younger, in better condition, and wired up just like me. I wasn’t going to get past him one on one.

  He didn’t weigh anything, though, and I rolled us over halfway, shifted my hands on the rifle, and pushed the firing toggle for all it was worth. The high-pitched whine of the shredder sent my audio status into the dark angry red for fifteen seconds as thousands of rounds spat up into the air as I waved the rifle around, aiming at nothing. Remy scrabbled back, startled, moving awkwardly on his hands behind him, and I swung myself up onto my knees and took hold of the shredder’s sizzling barrel again, ignoring the searing pain as my hands burned, and swung it down at him like a club.

  He dodged with sudden speed and shot up, taking hold of the shredder and yanking it toward him violently; I angled one arm down and sent the stock into his face using his own force, giving him a good crack against the side of his head that splintered his visor and sent him staggering backward. I didn’t hesitate. I’d had enough people want to kill me to know the one lesson they taught you: They never gave up. Even if you half killed them, they rested, they planned, and they came back.

  I lunged forward and used the rifle as a lance, driving it into his belly and knocking him backward. There was no time for anything fancy; our new friends from up above might already be picking their way down into the murk. I ran him down until he finally overbalanced and I knocked him back onto his ass. Raising the shredder over my head, I steadied myself for a second and brought it down on his skull with every bit of strength I had. He twitched once and went limp.

  I stood over him for a moment, panting. I was swimming in my own sweat. I struggled to stay alert and ready, watching the kid closely for signs of playing possum, and when I was certain he was down I dropped the shredder, fell to my knees, and reached for his cowl as I pulled my Roon. With a jerk, I tore it off of him, ready to put two in his face, something I’d done a hundred times before with no hesitation.