by Jeff Somers
“Fuck the hazard pay,” Mehrak said as melodiously as ever. “This is the worst assignment I’ve ever gotten.”
“Duly noted,” Hense snapped. “Now, in. Mehrak takes point, Avery and me in the middle, our two Tinkers in the rear.”
“Careful,” Grisha said, sounding out of breath but amused. “Parts of avatar can still be broken. You might trip down there in the dark.”
Mehrak shrugged. “If I do,” he said, “don’t recycle my chassis for one of your crunchy geeks, promise?” Without waiting for an answer, he plucked his sidearm from its holster and with a glance around jumped down into the darkness. I gestured on my helmet’s built-in light and jumped in after him before Hense could issue me any more instructions.
It wasn’t a very far drop. I landed easily on a brick floor and immediately stepped aside to let the rest follow Mehrak and me. We were in a tight little tunnel, big enough for us to walk in single file along its damp, slippery stonework. It graded down a few feet but then appeared to level off to a subtle downgrade, pitch-black aside from the trickle of sunlight from the hole and the thin light Mehrak and I were throwing around. I was just thinking that it was going to be a painful procession with Hense at my back barking orders when a shadow moved up ahead.
“Get down!” I shouted, my own voice buzzing in my ears with feedback. Mehrak dropped to a knee instantly, his gun coming up in time with my own. For a moment, we were statues, trembling with the desire to pull the trigger and make some fucking noise.
“Oy, don’t fuckin’ shoot,” a woman’s voice called from the gloom. “I’m comin’ on up to ya. Don’t fuckin’ shoot me.”
The shadow moved again, creeping up toward us, slowly resolving into a tall, thin woman with bright red hair, an unpretty face but a nice body, shown off to good effect in her skintight pants. She wasn’t wearing a lick of protective gear, and as her face resolved in the dim light I instantly knew why.
“Fuck me,” I said, straightening up. “Mara.”
She stopped a foot or so beyond Mehrak’s reach and put her hands on her hips. “Ach, Avery, you know better’n anyone here there’s no-fucking-body named Mara in this world. If you don’t recognize yer old pal Cainnic, or a version o’ him anyway, then t’hell with you.”
“Avatar?” Hense hissed from behind us. “Of Orel?”
Mara’s eyes flashed over my shoulder. “That’s right, sister. An’ I come bearing the fucking flag of truce.”
I licked sweat from my lips and wished fervently I could wipe it from my eyes. “Why’s that, ashole?”
Mara’s face smiled sweetly, transformed, for a second, into a pretty woman. “Because I’ve gone fucking batshit insane.”
XXVIII
SOMEONE WAS TELLING ME A STORY ABOUT BEING KNOCKED ONTO THE GROUND
I raised my gun and took a half-lunging step forward toward the avatar, looking just like the familiar young girl with reddish hair, a flat, angular face, and long, graceful-looking limbs. “This was a poor fucking day to find me and taunt me, Mickey,” I said as she scrambled backward from me, slamming up into the ancient, smooth stone of the tunnel. I pushed the barrel into its nose. “A poor. Fucking. Day.”
“Cates!” Hense snarled behind me.
“Avery!” Grisha shouted, breaking up into wet coughs. “Wait!”
I paused, my own breathing through my nose sounding impossibly loud in my ears. My HUD, inexplicably bright and shiny in my vision again, reported that my core body temperature was rising, but still well within tolerations. I flicked my eyes to my left out of habit, getting a good look at the shadowy interior of the rad suit’s helmet. I forced myself to dial it back a little, and I eased my finger off the trigger.
“Say it fast,” I said. The Mara avatar had its hands up by its ears, its tits thrust out at me, but its face was smiling.
“Avery,” Grisha said, his tinny voice like a tiny Russian Techie was standing in my ear, shouting. “If this is a copy of Orel, it may possess what we need.”
“Too fucking easy,” I heard Marko mutter. “I’ve been on trips with Cates before. Too fucking easy.”
I looked back at the Mara avatar, which was still smiling at me. I pushed the gun into its nose a little harder, but it just raised its eyebrows. I put my thick gloved finger up against the helmet approximately where my mouth was, and Mara winked.
“No,” I said. “He’s too smart for that. He wouldn’t take the risk those codes would be out in the wild.” I smiled at the avatar, even though it couldn’t see my face. “Orel wouldn’t trust himself.”
Without warning, something heavy crashed into me, knocking me down. In the rad suit it felt distant, like someone was telling me a story about being knocked onto the ground. I flopped my arms, trying to roll over onto my belly, but something stamped down on my wrist, pinning me to the ground. I looked up at Hense, looking incredibly tiny and light, like she was made of loose twigs, and I tried to roll my arm free, but it was pinned to the floor like I’d been nailed down.
“Talk,” she said to Orel. “Make it quick. I can’t stand on his fucking hand all fucking day. You have one minute.”
I reached awkwardly to my left and eased my second gun out of its holster, but suddenly Mehrak appeared between me and the director, his legs planted on either side of my belly, his own sidearm aimed at my helmet. He smiled a little and just shook his head. “Sorry, darling,” he said softly, like he was kissing me good night.
“I appreciate yer time… Director,” Orel said in Mara’s rough feminine voice. I wondered if there had ever been a real Mara, whether she was long-dead or scratching away somewhere. “I know this is… surprisin’, and Avery’s never been good with surprises.”
Hense didn’t move a muscle. “That took ten seconds. You have to do a better job of managing your time.”
His smile spread across the girl’s face. “Aw’right.” He pointed one delicate finger at Hense. “I’m offerin’ you a deal. I’ve gone fuckin’ crazy. I popped that piece of junk into my head, and it was downhill from there.” He spread his hands in a slow, graceful way, a con man’s gesture, smooth and totally believable. “I’m offerin’ you me, on a fucking platter. All I want in return is a pardon. All I want in return is, you let me walk, no hard feelings.”
Hense nodded. “But I don’t need to make any deals. I have you, now.”
For a second, Mara’s plain face rippled with surprise and unease, and I was glad in my heart.
“Here’s my deal,” Hense said slowly, taking her time and, I would swear, enjoying herself. It all felt theatrical, too wide, too ripe. “We’re taking you. We’re calling off this mission and hauling your ass back to Berlin, where we’re going to feed you into the mainframes and suss out what we need.” She leaned in slightly. “And then when we’ve settled our problems, we’ll come on back for the real you.”
She sold it—I was even terrified of her, that tiny little dark-skinned woman with the fussy hairdo and the perfectly cut clothes, the soft steady voice and the unblinking eyes. Then Orel snapped Mara’s face into a wide grin again. He didn’t have any of the real Orel’s artificially stimulated Psionic powers, but he was still irritatingly sure of himself.
“Marin’s codes, huh?” The avatar barked a laugh. “You ’n me, we’re in that boat together. Because Av’ry’s right. That crazy bastard edited that out of his imprints. He edited a lot out.” Another laugh, this one harsher, Mara’s flat face getting red in another astounding example of avatar programming. “You imagine it? Brain salad surgery on yerself? He’s fucking far gone.”
Hense didn’t move. “I don’t believe you,” she said in a precise way that hinted at all sorts of violence.
Orel laughed, crinkling up Mara’s face in a way that evoked the old man’s wrinkled round head perfectly. “Yeah? You got the juice to take a risk, box me up, and check me out and then come back?” He shook his head. “You ain’t got the slack, Director. The good news is, yer wrong. I don’t have your fucking override codes. He deleted them
from me.” He spread his hands again, an actor on the stage. “I’m in th’ same boat, girly. I’m on the same fuckin’ network.” Mara’s face turned dark again. “That fuckin’ bastard sets me to be his lackey, rattlin’ around this fucking basement for months. He’s gone barkers.”
Hense didn’t move or speak for a moment. “How do I know you’re actually Cainnic Orel?” she said, and I knew she was taking his deal. He was right; the cops didn’t have the fuel, ammo, or functioning avatar units to make another assault on Split, so we had to proceed with the plan. She would, I was pretty sure, screw him and take the avatar back to Berlin anyway after they’d grabbed the main event, just in case. But I figured Orel had about as much experience with the System Pigs as I did, and so he must expect to get the screw from her.
Mara’s face bloomed into a wide smile as Hense turned to look down at me. “You’ve spent time with this old asshole,” she said evenly. “What do you think?”
Mara turned her spotlight smile on me, burning me through the rad suit. Mehrak adjusted his grip on his gun as if he expected me to go batshit. I closed my eyes and let myself relax, soaking in my own fucking sweat twelve feet underground, time slipping away. If Remy had lived, I would have told him that you had to pick your moments. That sometimes you had to accept you were temporarily on the floor with Janet Hense’s boot on your wrist and Mehrak’s gun in your face.
“Back in the yard, you told me you knew somebody, Mickey,” I said. “Who was it?”
A second of pure silence, and then Mara’s obscure brogue. “Yer dad, Av’ry. I told you I knew ole Aubrey.”
I nodded. “That’s him,” I said. I opened my eyes and looked at Mehrak. “I’m getting up,” I said. “Okay?”
He hesitated a moment, and then stepped back. “Okay. Behave yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
Hense spun her foot off my wrist and watched me stand up. It was a ridiculously difficult process, like I was enveloped in odd gravity imported from some other planet, and everyone just watched me huff and puff my way through it. When I’d finally gotten to my feet I holstered my gun, and Hense turned back to Orel.
“All right, we have an understanding. I want you—the real you. Alive. You can help with that?”
Mara’s cheerful face nodded. “Sure, sure—I put myself in charge of the fucking security around here. I kin walk ya right in.”
Hense nodded, all business again. “And in return?”
Orel pushed off from the wall and shot Mara’s cuffs. “In return, Madam Director, I want you to shoot that fucking thing that used to be me dead, and I walk. That’s all. That ain’t me anymore. I’m me. You shoot that freak show dead and I walk. That’s it. That’s all I want.”
Hense nodded immediately. “Agreed.”
I made fists with my heavy, gloved hands. I would have told Remy that any deals made that fast were worth the air they were breathed in. I kept my mouth shut.
With a graceful little bow, Hense waved Orel on. “Take point, we’ll follow. Any hint that you’re walking us into a trap, I will give the order to open the shredders on you, and I will take your fucking core out and bring it back with me to hook up to virtual storage, where I will set the server for perpetual fucking torment before we go off-line, you understand?”
Orel put Mara’s hands up in supplication. “Sure, sure—I told you, Director, I’m in the same boat. I want you to get those codes. I want to stay alive. Awake. Awake an’ alive.” She took a few steps down the tunnel and then turned, looking down at the floor and scratching the avatar’s nose—I could again picture Mickey doing exactly that. “There is one more stipulation to our agreement, Director.”
Hense paused, cocking her head. “Yes?”
“There’s another avatar of me creepin’ around down here,” Orel said, turning away again. “It gets dead, too. There’s only one o’ me. Ever.”
XXIX
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A PLEASANT FORTY MINUTES
“We’re gonna run inta some resistance,” Orel shouted as we followed. “Soft.”
I shouldered my way past Mehrak to get right behind Mara’s avatar. It walked like a girl: sinuous and graceful. Behind me, I heard Grisha speak up.
“Hense, this is a mistake. You trust this? If this is Orel, do not trust him. If this is someone pretending to be Orel, do not trust him.”
“Duly noted, Grigory,” she snapped back. “Now back off or I order Mehrak to back you off.”
Grisha snorted. “Your monkey boy may try, certainly.”
“Fuck you,” Mehrak said, sounding jovial enough.
The tunnel was widening and getting damper, my little visor steaming up and staying one water droplet ahead of the rad suit’s mechanisms. I stayed on Orel’s heels, and after a second or two he turned Mara’s head slightly to look back at me and smiled.
“Uneasy, Av’ry? Sure, sure, you always have been. Uneasy in your soul, in your mind.”
“How many of you are down here?” I asked. “And what do you mean by soft resistance?”
“Just the one other o’ me,” he said, turning his head away and holding up one of Mara’s slender fingers. “Same avatar model. Same imprint. Prob’bly also hopin’ to make the same deal with the new director back there.”
“You always knew the fucking angles, huh, Mickey?”
“More than you, sure,” he said cheerfully. “But I’m behind th’ eight ball on this one, pup. I told ya: I went fucking crazy. Don’t recognize myself, an’ here I am trapped in this fuckin’ cesspool. First sign I’d gone off the deep ens movin’ inta this fuckin’ ghost ship.”
Speaking with Mara’s light, feminine voice, he sounded like someone in charge, like he was giving us a tour of this narrow tomb. As we walked, the ground shook gently under our feet, a ceaseless, distant thudding from the System Pigs’ assault on Split. Dust sprinkled down from above, making my vision muddy.
I reached out and put a fat glove on her shoulder. “And the soft?”
He stopped suddenly and turned to flatten Mara against the wall. “There’s the soft, Av’ry.”
I looked past him and saw them, and had an instant flash to Bellevue Hospital, with all the victims of the Plague staggering to their feet. They had the same noodly way of walking.
A few hundred feet away, there were people. About twenty of them, crowding into the tunnel. They looked more or less like regular people, aside from the running sores on their skin, the deep bluish bruising, the thick trail of blood leaking from their eyes and noses. They didn’t look bothered by any of it, though; dressed in regular clothes I’d seen in a million slums and downtowns, without any protective armor at all, they limped toward us, lugging old-fashioned-looking rifles they held diffidently, like they’d never been shown the right way, or been shown and didn’t care.
As I stared, the two in the lead, a broad-shouldered man with a nose that looked to have been broken at least three times and a square-shaped older woman with a bowl haircut, slowly seemed to focus on me, staring as if seeing another human being for the first time. With blood dripping from their noses, they each raised their rifle in a weird, slow motion. I stared back, transfixed. It was like they were miming, pretending to move. It didn’t feel real.
When they fired, I just blinked. The floor of the tunnel in front of me poofed up into a tiny cloud of dust. Then again. It was impossible that people moving so slowly could hurt me—avatars blinking by faster than humans could manage, Monks moving at clock speeds, sure. This kind of slow-motion murder was just playacting.
“Cates!” Hense shouted from behind, blocked by Orel and me. “What’s happening up there?”
Orel, in Mara’s silicone body, snorted. “He did this right away. He moved into this fucking graveyard, and people started showin’ up. Pushed. You kin only Push someone you kin see, but he figured out a neat trick: He could Travel into someone, someone he’d picked out already, someone he could keep in mind. He could Travel into that poor shit over an’ over again, and Push people har
d through that person.” He shook Mara’s head almost sadly. “So he’s been poppin’ into some poor bastard’s head in the outlyin’ villages and layin’ the Push on a dozen people at a time, forcin’ ’em to show up here and do ‘service.’ ”
The two in the lead fired again, clips suddenly popping up and out from their rifles and fluttering through the air, and again a spray of dust went up around my feet.
“Cates!”
I kept ignoring Hense.
“That ain’t me,” Orel said through Mara’s mouth as he stared ahead at the shuffling group of bleeding people. “I don’t mind crackin’ a few eggs to get what I want, Av’ry, but this shit is just fuckin’ cruel. They wear out fast ’round here. A few hours, sometimes a day. They keep doing what they’re told until they can’t do it no more, and they don’t complain. Just bleed out and suddenly fall over. The fucking place is littered with corpses, just people fallin’ over, dead.” He shook his head again. “Ain’t me.”
I raised the extra sidearm the cops had given me; I’d lost the Roon when Mehrak had blindsided me. The two people hadn’t made any move to reload; they were sort of standing there, eyes half-mast, mouths open, bloody bubbles forming as they breathed laboriously in and out, as they melted under the invisible sun of Split’s radiation load. I took a bead and fired twice, managing two head shots that sent them down like wet sacks, revealing three more right behind them. The one in front was a skinny young kid, his shirt soaked with sweat and blood and hanging open to reveal a bony, concave chest turned into a swamp of scabby sores.
Just people fallin’ over dead. I reached out and took hold of Orel’s avatar by the collar of its leathery coat. “It’s fucking you, all right,” I hissed, and pushed it in front of me. “Move. Take some bullets for me, cocksucker.”
Orel spun around and started walking backward as I advanced. Two more of the weak popping sounds of those old rifles being fired, but Mara’s face remained calm and I couldn’t tell if he’d taken some rounds for me. I looked over my shoulder. No one had moved to follow me.
