by Jeff Somers
He stared back at me, conscious, eyes bloodshot a deep red, like a vessel had exploded in his head, filling him with his own blood like pus, looking confused and demanding. He was a fucking kid. No older than I’d left him, fifteen, maybe, and a soft fifteen. He was crying, silent tears just streaming down the sides of his shaved head.
“You left me,” he said. “You fucking left me.”
I flinched, and racked a shell into the chamber.
“I told everyone you were coming back for me.” He coughed. “You never came back.”
I pinned his arms with my knees and put the gun against his forehead. He shut his eyes and just lay there, breathing, his flushed face twisting and untwisting as he waited. I’d had this kid following me around for months, fetching me things, cleaning my boots at night, king of all his friends because he was with me. Slept on the floor of my room above Bixon’s half the time, scrambling up when I woke to get me whatever warm shit they were calling coffee that day. And here he was, wired up and ten minutes from a summary execution delivered via subroutine and wireless link, with no judge or jury.
I eased the Roon off his forehead and leaned back, keeping my weight on his arms.
“You know who protected me when I was your age? ” I hissed. “When I was fucking younger than you? No one. Not a fucking soul.”
He just stared back at me, chest heaving.
I couldn’t hear anything. The new symbol in my HUD had swollen up to a size impossible to ignore, the countdown within it small and shrinking. I was going to be buzzed by God’s Middle Finger soon enough myself. I jumped back and let my augments steady me, then quickly retrieved both shredders and the duffel from the ground, along with Remy’s handgun. I didn’t doubt he had other weapons hidden away, but he was content to just lie on his back and say nothing while I huffed around. I didn’t know if I’d broken something, or if he’d just expended his hate for me for the moment.
“Don’t follow me,” I said, turning away.
“Mr. Cates.”
I stopped and shut my eyes. I was always telling myself about my fucking list, what I owed, and I should have known the cosmos would wait until the worst possible fucking moment to make me eat my words.
“I can’t go back,” he said quietly, a kid again. “I want to come with you. I can’t go back.”
I swallowed hard. “You don’t have a choice. I can’t save you—even if you could come with me, you’d just get killed. Trust me on that. Everyone who comes with me dies.” I shook my head, keeping my eyes closed. “Go back to your unit. Survive. That’s what your skill set should be. Don’t follow me.”
I jogged away. After the first turn I couldn’t hear the kid snuffling anymore. The silence was disturbing; I knew they’d blown my mines at the entrance and I didn’t doubt they’d be after me, but I should have heard something. But the subway was big and dark. A fucking army could have wandered around in the tunnels and not be noticed.
I moved easily down the tunnel, the blinking icon showing how dangerously far away Mara had gotten from the tiny bomb in my head slowly shrinking as I moved. She stood still, at least, for the time being. For several minutes I jogged in silence, the flashing number in the corner of my HUD shrinking and then suddenly fading out completely, the darkness and density of the atmosphere almost total. As I ran, I pulled the tiny disc from my pocket and snapped it open in my palm again, the glowing red map of Hong Kong blooming. With a twitch of my hand, I tunneled down into the subways and scoped to my present location; I was just a few minutes’ jog away from the Shannara Hotel.
Something pinged my senses from the darkness up above. Crouching low, I holstered the auto and unslung one of the shredders, slowing to a walk. A haze of slightly brighter tunnel was swelling up in front of me, the wall to my right ending as another platform rose up on my right. It was in slightly better shape and still had most of its wall tiles, and a single poster still clung to the wall, tattered and rusted. The stairs were wider and steeper, rising into a vague haze of twilight above me, its concrete steps chipped and crumbling. I pulled myself up onto the platform and crept toward the stairs, shredder ready, duckwalking my way to the very bottom.
The Poet was standing at the top, smoking a cigarette. He waved.
“We did not get far,” he said, giving me a humorless smile. “You might as well come on up. We have been delayed.”
XXVI
SHOOTING HEAT BEAMS FROM HER EYES
I squinted up at the Poet, studying his body language. It was in between alarmed and batshit agitated, so I tightened my grip on the shredder and stayed right where I was.
“Too bright up there,” I said, loud. “Rats like me like the dark.”
He smiled. “Everyone likes dark—”
The Poet broke off. I sensed them behind me.
“Don’t move,” said a civil, calm, male voice. “Please relax. We are under parley, and you will not be hurt. We are going to let you keep your weapons, because you are a reasonable man. Please walk up the stairs.”
I didn’t move. My hands were on the shredder and my eyes were on the Poet. I cursed myself for letting someone sneak up behind me, but I was exhausted and my augments weren’t running at full capacity. I was in a strange tunnel and I was, I was increasingly aware, a fucking idiot.
Keeping my eyes on the Poet, I shrugged my eyebrows at him. He shook his head slightly, a bare tick of his head, and I loosened my grip on the gun.
“I’m gonna assume you’ve got guns back there,” I said, pushing a smile onto my face. “So when people ask you about this, make sure they understand I didn’t roll over and show you my belly because you called me ‘reasonable.’”
There was a deep peal of laughter disturbingly close to my ear. “We will tell the Vids that it took dozens to make you see reason. Now, ascend, please.”
I slung the shredder back onto my shoulder to join Remy’s and climbed the crumbling stairs, keeping my eyes on the Poet’s face for any signs or hints. He just stared back, smoking. I emerged into another stuffy, shuttered-in lobby, dark and dusty. This one had once been something—we’d moved up in the world of old Hong Kong. The floor was smooth marble polished by a billion long-dead feet, with thick columns soaring up to an impossibly high ceiling. The columns were sheathed in marble too, white and veiny, but some of the huge slabs had lost their grip and smashed onto the floor.
In the center of the lobby was a big hunk of metal, a sculpture of some sort, vaguely cube shaped, made from thick strands of twisted metal. It had fallen off its squat stone base and lay on the cracked floor oddly balanced, as if it had been frozen in the act of rolling over. Whatever it had meant was lost, and I had the immediate impression that if you made any sudden movements, it would animate and finish its endless fall.
Mara, looking like she might start shooting heat beams from her eyes, sat up against it, her hands bound behind her in a pair of bright metal bracelets. Standing at ease around me were four people, a woman in a bright yellow suit that was cut to drape elegantly from her thin, wide shoulders, and three heavily armed, broad-shouldered men, young and well fed, wearing a ragged collection of military clothing that looked old, nothing like the gear the SFNA wore. The men were dark skinned, and they all wore big, pitch-black sunglasses. Each of them had an almost comical amount of hardware: old-fashioned semiauto rifles in their hands and two more crisscrossed on their backs, two pistols on their hips and one or two crowding their shoulders, ammo belts looped across their chests, and bizarre fruit-shaped grenades clipped to their pants.
I’d seen the woman in yellow before, back at the SFNA Press Camp. Her hair had been green then, to match her suit. Today it was yellow, too. Her eyes still glowed blue, sucking data from the air.
I glanced at the Poet. He nodded at Mara. “They asked us to wait. They were quite calm and polite.” He shrugged. “Mara told them no.”
“Fuckers got hidey-holes everywhere,” she shouted suddenly. “Don’t be fooled, Mr. Cates—looks like three, but there�
��s a fucking roach motel of ’em hidden away.”
“If you got any hand on this one, Mr. Cates,” the woman said, her accent the same as my memory with its round vowels, “make her shut the fuck up, okay?”
I turned and found three more men coming up the stairs, more big bruisers, massive piles of flesh that gleamed in the low light, skin about as dark as I’d ever seen it, weighed down with the same ridiculous amount of old hardware.
“I’ll put a fucking hand on you, you goddamn piece o’ shit,” Mara said in a calm, steady voice. “I don’t forget a face.”
The woman grinned and winked at me. “I don’t doubt she’s got my face, and she’ll run it on the nets—whatever fucking nets are still around—as soon as she can.” She shrugged. “You know what she’ll find, Mr. Cates? ”
I gave myself a second or two to study her. She was relaxed and amused, a woman who felt like she was in charge. I pictured Mara, miserable on the floor, and thought, shit, she pretty much was. So I smiled at her. “You mean you’re not famous, like me?”
She laughed, mouth splitting to reveal two rows of yellow teeth.
“Enough horseshit. Mr. Cates, I have an offer for you. My name is Mardea, and I represent Dai Takahashi. You know the name? ”
I nodded. “Sure.” I forced myself to affect a relaxed, easy mood, and gestured at my pocket. “Mind if I reach for my cigarettes? I have a feeling you’re the chatty type.”
She cocked her head, her flat, curly hair glistening in the twilight like it was perpetually damp; it looked like spun gold on her head. “Of course. Make yourself comfortable. We are under parley.”
I fumbled in my pockets for a pack of the cop smokes Hense had gifted me with when she’d fooled me into taking her fucking bomb into Hong Kong with me. “You keep saying that word, par-lay,” I said, putting a stick into my mouth and patting myself for my lighter. “I thought I knew what it meant. You sure you do? ’Cause this looks like I just got fucking kidnapped.”
She shook her head, her glowing blue eyes locked on me. She never blinked, and it was starting to freak me out. I wondered if she’d flinch if I went up to her and snapped my fingers in her face. “It means we are negotiating in good faith, and are not combatants. We pledge not to attack you, and you do likewise.”
I nodded, lighting up and sending a plume of smoke into the air. “Uh-huh. My understanding is that that’s supposed to be a mutual agreement. I didn’t get a memo from your office.”
She nodded, not smiling anymore, and spread her hands. “Consider this a fucking memo, Mr. Cates. Mr. Takahashi is a man of honor. This is why we choose to deal with you instead of ”—she glanced at Mara for a second—“others. He has an offer for you. You may consider it and then accept or reject it; either way, I and my retinue will withdraw and you can continue your business here unmolested—by us—until you come into direct opposition to our interests.”
I nodded, puckering my face around my cigarette. “Uh-huh. You talk like a fucking Techie, you know that?”
She smiled again. “Which means I talk like a bitch, yes, Mr. Cates? I assure you, I am of sterner stuff. Will you hear our proposal?”
I shrugged. “You might want to hurry it up. I seem to have offended some of the locals on my way here.” I pushed more grin into my face. “That happens a lot with me.”
“Do not worry. They will not bother us while we are meeting,” she said with complete, bland confidence. From what I’d heard of Takahashi’s outfit, she was probably justified—in small-scale territorial beefs, his group could probably hold down any building or block against anything smaller than an army brigade without too much trouble. That’s what he got paid for.
I nodded. “All right then. I could use the breather. Go on and talk.”
My HUD was red across the board. Although I felt fine, a glance at my vitals on the readout was depressing: If I were a doctor assessing me from data points, I’d start making room in the morgue.
She began to stroll lazily around an invisible box, a few short steps one way, a spin, a few short steps back. “Mr. Takahashi would like to offer you the . . . person of interest in return for a fair settlement in yen.” She glanced at me, eyes shining. “We have determined that you have access to sufficient funds.”
I gave her my screwed-up, serious expression. “What’s to say you won’t take our yen and then remove us from the equation? ”
“We are under parley, Mr. Cates,” she said with a raised eyebrow. “The sanctity of parley cannot be violated. Mr. Takahashi has a reputation to preserve. If he engages in good-faith negotiations, the safety of the interested parties is guaranteed.”
I snorted, waving a hand in the air. “Who’s to know? We pay your fee, you slit our throats—this city is fucking deserted.”
She tapped her own temple with one short, dark finger. “This is the System, Mr. Cates. There’s no such thing as privacy. Mr. Takahashi knows this—there are no secrets. Not anymore. A man’s actions always come back to haunt him.” She rasied her bright yellow eyebrows. “The reason Mr. Takahashi has decided to deal with you is because your past behavior inspires confidence in any deal we might make with you.”
“This ain’t the fucking System anymore,” Mara growled like a beat dog from the floor. “In case you ain’t fucking noticed.”
I considered this. I wanted to look at Adrian, get a sense of his opinion, but I didn’t want to turn around. If Takahashi—or his girl here—thought I was in charge, I didn’t want to disturb that impression. So I glanced at Mara, who was staring at me like she’d read my mind about heat beams and was trying to evolve them right then and there. I considered, for a second, the fact that she was an avatar, and rummaged my brain again trying to place her—she seemed so familiar. I drew a blank again, and looked back at Takahashi’s girl. She was tiny, and could have passed for about ten if she wanted, but her expensive suit and complex augments argued against that. Brain augments usually didn’t go over well in kids under fourteen or so. Too much growth, too much development, and the augments went sour fast.
I dialed my smile to sweet. “So, let me get this straight: Your boss was hired to protect Londholm. And he’s so fucking concerned about his honor, he’s willing to sell his client to me.”
Her own face went blank, her glowing eyes locked on me. She hesitated, stock still, and I imagined her radioing home for instructions and getting them beamed back at her. “Mr. Londholm has broken his contract with Mr. Takahashi. Mr. Takahashi considers all obligations to Mr. Londholm as severed, and he is comfortable that his peers and associates will agree with his assessment of the situation.”
Broken his contract, I thought. Meaning his funds were exhausted and he couldn’t pay his own security anymore. Takahashi was trying to wring every last bit of profit from this adventure before the army came busting down the door. Takahashi couldn’t handle an entire fucking army, much less the three or four that Anners was bringing with him, so the mercenary wanted out. It made sense: Every one of us could just walk away clean, a simple, easy deal instead of a protracted battle with the army breathing down our necks.
I looked back at Mara. She stared at me with her perfect, fake eyes, and then nodded, once. I turned and looked at the Poet, who tossed the stub of his cigarette onto the floor and ground it out with his boot.
“We are all but flesh,” he said with a burst of smoke. “The road has been a long one, and I am tired.”
I stared at him a moment longer, and then looked back at the girl. “All right,” I said. “Let’s come to terms.”
She smiled again. “Excellent. Mr. Cates, you are a reasonable man and I salute your pragmatism.” She paused and stood for a moment, blinking. “Excuse me, I am receiving . . .” She trailed off and half spun away from me, one hand flying to her temple as she bent over slightly. “Excuse me,” she repeated, and then suddenly went down on one knee.
Around us, her bodyguard stiffened as one, and I felt my augments kicking in with yet another shivery adrenaline dump.
Her body language and posture suddenly screamed not right.
“Excuse . . .”
She went still, then slowly stood, smoothing her suit and pushing a hand through her golden hair. Then she turned back to me, her smile exactly as it had been. Her glowing eyes had gone from blue to a bloody, rusty red.
“Excuse me,” she said conversationally. “I have been . . . hacked.”
XXVII
OPERATING UNDER THREAT OF THE MIDDLE FINGER OF GOD
“Sweet fucking hell,” Mara hissed, kicking her way awkwardly to her feet. “What kind of fucking rinky-dink bullshit is this?”
I didn’t move. I looked around at her Gunners, all of whom stood uncertainly on the balls of their feet and sensing that something was wrong, but not sure how to approach it. She was still standing there, looking more or less the same. I knew what was running through their minds: If they moved, and this was just her having a bad day, they’d be screwed. If they stood there like recently erected statues of themselves and this was a bad thing, they’d be screwed.
Suddenly, they all relaxed at once.
“Please relax,” Mardea said in a calm voice, holding up one hand after a second’s delay. “These are military drafts and we are in possession of their controls as their nominal commanding officer.” She suddenly looked up at me, her glowing red eyes two small circles in the air, and then was still for a moment. “It’s good to see you still alive, Avery.”
I blinked. “What? ”
She stared, and then said, “We are SPS. We cannot allow the augment to leave the city.”
I rolled my shoulders to feel the shredders on my back, and squinted at her. “Who the fuck are you? ”
Mardea grinned as if someone had just figured out the controls of her face. “We are SPS.”
