by Jeff Somers
“You have, of course, thought,” the Poet whispered from behind me, “that this is far too quiet. There should be someone.”
I nodded. He was right—even with the hotel suddenly locked down, Takahashi should have had people all over the place, and I would have covered the floors above and below where I had Londholm holed up, to guard against just this eventuality. I’d hoped to trap most of the security behind locked doors and sow some confusion—but there was no one, and no noise. No sound of spooked mercenaries relaying information, no noise of people on the move. Nothing.
“We’re either in the wrong place,” I whispered back, voicing the nightmare scenario of Londholm having been displaced from the Shannara before we got there, “or Takahashi’s better at his job than we thought and we’re about to get a face full of fuck you.”
“I vote for the last one. Idea of going crosstown, I would want to cry.”
“Baby,” I said, fishing for an appropriate insult and then pausing. The hallway suddenly deteriorated into a grisly battle scar: The carpet was scorched and stained brown with dried blood, the walls had been battered and dented, the tiny useless table smashed to pieces. The room door directly opposite was still shut, but it had been battered inward at the center, bowing into a convex shape. The carnage lasted for three or four feet and then the hallway resumed its pristine, insulated appearance, like the combatants had teleported in and out, leaving the rest of the place alone.
The stairs were just a few steps beyond, behind a metal fire door. I gestured Mara and Adrian to each side and crouched down, pushing myself up against the door carefully while Mara turned to cover our rear and the Poet stood over me, autos in hand. I listened for a moment, then reached up and pushed the door suddenly inward, finger along the side of the trigger of my rifle.
Nothing. I stayed on alert for a moment, staring into the dim, tight stairwell. Hot, thick air that smelled worse than the perma-mold we’d been breathing flowed against us, gently pushing, like a thick syrup that had been stored in the stairwells too long and had gone sour. The stairs themselves were old and rudimentary: rusting metal, wide enough for maybe two people to walk side by side if they weren’t too excited. No windows, no real lights aside from widely spaced emergency LEDs. They stretched up and down with narrow, dusty landings that would constrict and bottleneck us.
“It would be easy,” the Poet said thoughtfully, “to bury someone in there. Completely crush us.”
I nodded, standing up. “Yup.”
I stepped into the murk and spun around, exposing myself to the upper landing. Stupid, but I felt so fucking good it didn’t matter. Why be careful? What was I surviving for?
There was nothing there. I relaxed and straightened up, and we mounted the stairs. Dust came up in clouds again, choking us, and despite our care, our feet scraped and pinged the metal stairs as we ascended, making more noise than I would have advised in better days. My heart was pounding irregularly, and my blood was right under my skin, hot and eager, and I took the last three steps in bounds, coming up against the fire door on the twenty-fifth floor with a crash.
“Fucking hell, Cates!” Mara hissed.
“Push the button or shut the fuck up, Mara.” Glancing at the Poet, I put my hand on the fire door’s latch and raised an eyebrow, and to my surprise he smiled and nodded.
“I’ve always liked you,” he said. “Against all my best instincts. Go on, kill us all.”
I pushed the door open. It squealed like a living thing whose tail had been stepped on, slowly revealing another hallway like the one we’d just left. It was just as dim and just as carpeted, and it stretched off into shadow, the same doors on either side.
There was a muffled, distant explosion, and after a moment the floor vibrated under my feet as dust and grit rained down on us. I paused, looking around like an idiot, and then stepped into the hall. I’d walked only a few steps before another explosion made the hotel shake, and then another, and then a constant cluster of them, dust sifting down on me. I didn’t slow down. If the army was coming in heavy, if the army knocked the hotel down around me, that would be fine. At least Michaleen wouldn’t get his toy out of it.
I reminded myself to be ready when Mara made her move—the most likely moment was the second we found Londholm, I guessed, as she wouldn’t need me to put a bullet in him. I wondered how Adrian would handle it, if we’d have time to team up or if it would just be every man for himself.
The hall was just as deserted as the last, though in worse shape. The carpet was torn up and charred, looking like the whole length of the hall had burned at some point. The walls were pocked with holes and dents, the wallpaper torn down on most of them, the floor damp and squishy as we walked. The only things that were preserved and untouched were the fucking doors, each of which crept past me without blemish or any sign that anyone had ever touched them, ever.
“Don’t y’fucking say we’re gonna try each one,” Mara hissed.
I ignored her, puzzling over the emptiness. My good mood soured into sudden anxiety—we were fucked, we were crawling into a trap, the whole fucking hallway was about to explode into mercenaries up our asses and we were never going to walk straight again.
And then I stopped, staring at the black square of a doorway without a door. The wall had buckled around the edges, indicating that something powerful had kicked the door in, tearing it out of its pocket.
I slid over to the wall, letting Adrian dash past the open door and paste himself against the wall on the other side of the doorway. I put my arm out to hold Mara back, glancing at her until she nodded, stiffly, and then I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a smoke grenade: tiny, harmless, and light. I held it up for her and she nodded again, a little more friendly. I shook it once, forcefully, and leaned forward to lob it into the room. I counted to three, heart skipping all over itself, finding it impossible to take a deep enough breath, and with a glance at Adrian, I rolled myself into the doorway, shredder first, just as the grenade popped and white smoke exploded into the room.
I crouched and duckwalked my way in, augments struggling to sift through the smoke. The room had been broken up, the rich furniture and decorations smashed and burned and torn to pieces, left in big piles everywhere. I passed a small open space filled with debris—once a closet, I guessed—and a closed door on my left that I crept past and left for Adrian and Mara. The rest of the room was just a large box with one wall of windows looking out onto Hong Kong. There was a single chair left in one piece right in front of the windows.
Outside, the sky bloomed with fireworks: field-contained armaments exploding in the sky, the dark shadows of hovers flitting here and there. Tracers streaked from the ground and as I straightened up, one of the hovers was hit and bloomed into a bright orange fireball. The floor shook under me again, but the soundproofing was so good I only heard a dim rumble. It might as well have been a Vid, or a portal into the future for all I could hear.
The chair had been set in front of the windows as if for an audience of one to watch the festivities. A figure sat slumped in the chair, its hands bound behind it with a pair of standard-issue SSF bracelets. I lowered the shredder as Mara and Adrian kicked in the shut door, and I stepped around between the chair and the windows.
“Oh, fuck, I wish I hadn’t opened that door,” Mara said.
I stared. Based on the photos I’d seen, the figure in the chair was Alf Londholm. Based on the smell and the condition of his skin, he’d been dead about two days.
XXXIV
RIDING HERD ON MR. CATES AND HIS CHARMING ARRAY OF PERSONAL TICS
A new icon bloomed on my HUD, a red, angry star that pulsed. Under it, in the dull font the military favored, it read SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE.
“This place is fucking deserted,” Mara said as she approached the chair, shaking her head, “so those fucks back there were tryin’ to sell us bullshit—”
She stopped, blinking, staring at the jellied, torn-up skull of Londholm. Someone hadn’t been g
entle. His skull had been cracked open and the topmost part of the dome sawed off with what looked like an extremely dull blade. Old blood was dried in streams down his torso, coating his hands as they clawed into the armrests they were tied to. His eyes were open, yellowed, and dry looking, and his face was sagged in a mask of suffering. Whoever had collected the God Augment from Mr. Londholm had done it while he was alive. Which begged the question: If the God Augment made you a fucking god, how did mere mortals sneak up on you and tear your brains apart?
“He’s been dead some time,” I said, wondering if Mara was just going to pop me now. This was it, mission failed, nothing more for old Avery to do for the Little Man. Unless he was going to keep me on a leash and pull me out of the box whenever he needed some dirty work that was beneath him done. For a second, I saw my brief, unhappy future cleaning up Michaleen’s details. I clenched my fists. This was fucking unfair. This was not fucking fair.
It took me a moment to realize Mara was laughing.
“Oh, you’re a piece o’ work,” she stuttered, shaking her head and grinning. “You let me spin my fuckin’ wheels in this bullshit for days!”
I frowned. I could feel every crazy heartbeat in my head, a tide breaking against my skull.
She turned to face the Poet. “How long you think you beat us by? ”
Adrian shrugged, grinning, and stepped past her, circling around Londholm to stand next to me. He put his hand up to his chin, considering. “By the look of it, I guess a few days. Two, three. Maybe two.”
Mara produced a pack of cigarettes from somewhere on her and shook two out. “We can’t feel ’em, sure, but habits die hard, eh? ” she said, holding one out to Adrian. He took it with a smirk, finally reaching up and tossing his sunglasses away.
“A celebration,” he said.
I looked from the Poet to Mara and back again. “What?” I said. I’d had a lot more words in my head, but that was all that came out.
They both glanced at me. “Och, poor, poor Avery,” Mara said, sticking the cigarette in her mouth. “You are pretty good dealing the cards, eh? Sure, sure. But not so good at thinkin’ things through.”
Dealing the cards. I had a sudden flashback to the yard, Chengara, dead Stormers around me, and the hover just sitting there, ours for the taking. And the Little Man, Michaleen.
I brought the shredder up, but before I could get my hands right, I felt the cold kiss of a Hamada custom automatic against my temple.
“Don’t be tiresome, Avery,” the Poet said. “You’re always making dramatic gestures. It’s not very professional. Besides, it’s an avatar. Kill it twice, makes you feel better.”
“Michaleen,” I said. Nothing else would come out. The words were clogged in my throat like clotted blood.
Mara did a little curtsy, lifting the hem of an imaginary dress. “At your service, you fucking moron.” She smiled again, lighting her cigarette. “Wallace, you’re a national treasure.”
I shut my eyes.
“You’re like some sort of idiot savant,” the Poet’s voice said into my ear. “I swear I don’t know how you’ve lived this long. Put you in a room with a gun and ten men trying to kill you and you’re genius. But you can spend weeks with the two of us and not have a clue as to what’s going on.”
“Hello, Wa,” I said.
“That’s why I like ’im,” Mara—Michaleen—said, sounding cheerful in a way that voice had never sounded before. “He’s fuckin’ useful, Wallace. Y’wind ’im up and point ’im at somethin’, and he waddles on over and does it. Avery, Wallace has a theatrical bend, don’t he—he got all into it, didn’t he just, cookin’ up your new best friend, backstory, everything. You was havin’ fun, eh, Wallace?”
Belling grunted in my ear. The gun in my cheek didn’t move. I heard Mara moving and opened my eyes as she came close to me, dragging on her cigarette like she could actually taste it, feel it. I opened my eyes. She smiled at me. “I’ve run cons longer than this, boyo. Your problem has always been, you got tunnel vision. You only see what’s in front of you. And you’re fucking impatient. Did you really think I’d hang this on one vector?” She shook her head, her red hair swimming in the air. “I don’t take chances, Av’ry. I had Mr. Belling working his own line.” She turned and threw her arms out. “And damn if that old bastard didn’t come through.”
She paused, studying the Poet.
Belling moved the Poet’s face, frowning. “What? ”
I marveled. Adrian was right there, ridiculous tats, ridiculous nickname. So fucking ridiculous I’d bought him completely. Wa Belling—I’d known Belling for years. I’d worked with him. And I’d been absolutely convinced he was a young kid from Belgrade, his kills animated on his skin, someone I could rely on.
I remembered Belling in London, pretending to be Cainnic Orel.
“How did you survive the process? ” I managed to grind out. “Getting shoved into an avatar—”
“Used to kill you, sure, sure,” Michaleen said, his almost-pretty eyes still locked on Belling. “Time marches on, Avery, technology advances. The refined process has reduced fatalities to about one percent. We rolled the bones.” He cocked Mara’s head and squinted at Belling. “Where are you? ”
I put Belling in my peripheral vision, his gun and hand impossibly huge, his face far away. The tats still danced, a blur of red and black, up and down.
“You pursued your own track,” Michaleen said, taking a step back and pulling his gun so quickly it was just a blur. “That was your fucking suggestion, Wallace. You’re supposed to be here waitin’ on me if you got through. So where the fuck are you, Wallace? ”
“I am sure that I don’t know,” Belling said in the Poet’s voice, without the Poet’s inflections or rhythms. “Because I’m a separate entity, you see.”
Michaleen nodded, pursing Mara’s lips, ticked his arm up an inch and put two shells into the wall behind Belling, missing him by precise centimeters. Belling didn’t flinch or move the gun from my cheek. Sweat streamed down my face. I felt like the gun attached to me was all that was holding me up, like I was hanging off of it.
“Don’t get fucking smart with me, Wallace,” Michaleen snapped. “Dying ain’t pleasant whether you’re flesh and blood or silicone and coolant, I’m thinking. At least when there’s a professional involved. And if you die here, Wa, die knowin’ I’m gonna kill each and every one of you out and about, yeah? So you got any theories on where you are right now, with my fucking property? And keep the fucking vocabulary small, eh, ’cause you know I’m just a rat from the streets, lackin’ your education.”
“Cainnic,” Belling said slowly, “I do not know where my physical body is. I have been with you, riding herd on Mr. Cates and his charming array of personal tics. We are, in fact, assuming that this is my doing. Perhaps I failed in my mission.”
Mickey grinned, shaking Mara’s head again. “Nope, this is classic Wallace Belling, ain’t it? You probably spent days loitering about, sneaking in and out just to show you could, and when you finally got tired of fuckin’ with them, you came in here and made the biggest fuckin’ mess you could. That’s you all over, Wallace. Nice suits and pretty words but you’re still that fucked-up kid I took under my wing, performing surgeries on dogs without anesthesia.”
Belling’s avatar shrugged as I went over the preceding weeks in my mind, searching for clues. It was uncanny how well Belling had played his role. I’d figured Mara for an avatar, and on some inner level I’d suspected much longer, but Belling had completely fooled me, and it made me want to reach out and strangle him. But there was no fucking point. Michaleen had his toy, and if it actually worked, he was going to be the most dangerous man in the System—what was left of it—and I’d lost my chance to make him regret ever fucking with me.
“If it was me, Cainnic, I still don’t know where me is, okay? Stop living down to my expectations. We need to—”
“Ah, the hell,” Michaleen muttered, jerked his arm up precisely, and shot him three times i
n the chest.
Belling dropped to the floor and Michaleen was in the air, launching his avatar toward us. Belling rolled into my legs, knocking me over and taking me out of the equation for a second—which seemed unnecessary; I was filled with lead and acid. It felt like I was dying, a little faster than usual.
Before I hit the floor, Belling’s avatar was up, a pinkish mixture of fake blood and white coolant spraying out of his belly and coating me. Michaleen landed where he’d been a moment earlier and slid an extra foot, losing his balance in Mara’s slim, flexible form, his feet shooting out from under him. I pulled on every remaining bit of energy left to me and scissored my legs underneath myself, pushing me up into a wild stagger. I crashed back into Londholm, knocking the chair and its grisly occupant over and landing on top of him. He burst open under my weight, the smell hitting me in the face as I flipped backward over him, avoiding clubbing my head on the windows by an inch or so.
I dragged my Roon from its pocket; it felt heavy and impossible in my hand, and as I tried to get a bead on either one of the fucking robots, it was like I’d slowed down my own personal time; the gun trailed behind them, waving this way and that, fucking useless. The tiny exclamation point representing Berserker Mode blinked in the corner of my eye, the only part of my HUD that hadn’t wilted into a dark, angry red or yellow, every single system monitored by my augments warning me of impending shutdown.
Michaleen sprang up, whipping his gun around, but Belling ducked low and barreled into the smaller avatar, slamming him back against the wall hard enough to crack the drywall. The old man—in his shiny young avatar—sprang back immediately and dived down, taking hold of Michaleen’s thin, girlish legs and jerking backward, straightening up and letting him slap down hard on the floor again.
I caught sight of Belling’s face—the motherfucker was grinning.
