by Jeff Somers
I nodded weakly. “Come here and help me cut off this fucker’s arms and legs.”
Orel remained standing in the doorway, looking around lazily. They were dressed in remarkably good suits, hair slicked back, each of them bearing a smart-looking black bag, the standard kind of telecom bag the Vids used. I’d seen teams just like them at all the press conferences and riot scenes, and Orel, though old for the job, did have the polished, well-fed look of a Vid reporter. Gatz walked over to Dawson, who still twitched and sputtered. Milton and Tanner walked directly over to me, though, and took one arm each.
“Sit down, chief,” Milton said, her voice oddly gentle. “You look like you’re gonna fall down.”
I shrugged them off, shivering uncontrollably. “No time.”
Gatz glanced up from Dawson. “What are we doing with . . . this?”
I took a deep breath. “Cut off the arms and legs. I hit something important in his neck. I’m taking him with me, as a tour guide.”
“You motherfucker!” Dawson screamed, his voice warping in pitch and volume. “I’ll kill you forever!”
Kieth was still staring down at his handheld. “Probably the motor function data bus,” he said distractedly.
Gatz hesitated. “He’s going to draw a lot of attention.”
I waved wearily at the air. “We’re already screwed in the attention department. Get to work on him. Then you guys have to get back to being a fucking disturbance.”
“Okey,” Gatz said.
“How’d your end go?” I asked Milton.
She shrugged. “We were waiting on the right moment, when the alarms suddenly rang out. Fuck if we weren’t the only people standing in that fucking room after a minute. So we just followed the floorplan, found our way in, and waltzed in unopposed, as they say.”
“It was good work, that floorplan,” Tanner grunted.
“You were the goddamn disturbance,” Milton added.
“Whatever,” I said, putting my weight on my legs experimentally. “We’re inside. Dennis Squalor’s in here somewhere.”
“Not somewhere,” Kieth interjected, his eyes glued to the little screen. “I can tell you exactly where he is. He’s a goddamn data-well. Everything’s going to and from him in this place.”
I looked at Kieth. “Okay. You’re with me, then. You, me, and Barnaby Dawson.”
You took what came your way. Luck was as much a part of success as surviving murderous ex-SSF Monks. I figured I’d earned a lucky break.
Kieth acted like he hadn’t heard me. “This is impossible, though, the packet rate is just unbelievable.” He looked up and paused for a moment. “What did you say?”
Behind him, Gatz fired up the bone saw, white noise swelling to fill the room. He paused.
“Watch out. There’s gonna be sparks.”
Kieth stepped closer to me. “Ty isn’t muscle, Mr. Cates! He did not sign up to do the heavy lifting!”
“You’re with me,” I said weakly, “or you’re with Mr. Dúnmharú over there. Make your choice.”
Kieth looked over at Canny, who stood on guard, guns in hand, watching both doors. He looked back at me. “Fuck.”
“The rest of you,” I shouted, “are on diversion duty. This complex is filled with Monks. Get them after you. Keep them chasing. Give us twenty minutes. Mr. Kieth, you can locate Squalor within twenty minutes?”
Kieth waved his device distractedly. “Ty’s got him located now,” he wailed as sparks exploded behind him. Dawson’s cursing turned into a fluid, high-pitched howl I hadn’t imagined Monks could produce. “That isn’t a problem. The problem is, Ty didn’t sign up for this shit.”
I ignored him. The sparks ended suddenly, and Gatz held Dawson’s arm up over his head.
“Shit, this is heavy.”
“Move!” I snapped, adrenaline giving me sudden energy. “We’ve got five thousand Monks heading this way so quit fucking around!”
Gatz dropped the arm and fired up the bone saw again, the screechy whine tearing at my ears. He bent down, and sparks erupted into the air again.
I allowed myself to lean on Milton and Tanner a little. “We’ve got exit strategies?” I asked. I knew we did. But my mind was going in a million directions, and I needed focus.
Milton nodded. “We do. Assuming some of us make it out of here to need them.”
I nodded. “I’ve got an idea about that. Kieth, how are we on time?”
Kieth studied his screen, biting a thumbnail. “A minute. Maybe one and a half. The good news is, this area of the complex appears to be routinely deserted, as it’s used to process incoming . . . er, converts, who are then moved inward for, um, monkification. The Monks are coming from other areas.”
“You’ve got thirty seconds,” I shouted over to Gatz.
“Workin’ on it.”
I pushed Milton and Tanner aside and stood swaying. I cleared the chamber and dropped my used clip onto the floor, slammed a new one into place, and racked a shell into place. “Kieth, when they’re done, grab the Monk and follow me.”
Kieth looked up from his screen, his face a mask of outrage. “Grab the Monk?” he said in disbelief. “You’re joking. Ty can barely carry this.”
I bit my lip and resisted the urge to turn Kieth’s nose into mash. “Put it in the fucking box and pull it along,” I said instead, gesturing at the small hover I’d been brought inside in.
I left them all behind and limped over to Orel, pausing next to him. I couldn’t look at him. It didn’t make any sense, but I was angry, angry about Marilyn Harper. It was ridiculous. I’d killed plenty of innocent people, or at least not worried much when they got killed in the course of things, but this one I couldn’t get past. I wasn’t sure if it was because the old bastard had willfully ignored me, or the fact that it didn’t have to happen. One more day, it wouldn’t have mattered anymore. I ground my teeth and struggled to find my voice. Orel just stood there, elegant and immaculate.
“Do you want me to help on your end, Master Cates?” he asked pleasantly. “Or continue babysitting these bottom-feeders while we make hay with the Monks? I don’t care much as long as I get my compensation. One way or the other.”
His voice was neutral. I made painful fists, my knuckles aching along with every other part of me. With effort, I swallowed the instant rage his calm, arrogant voice had raised in me. “No,” I croaked. “You’re the distraction. I’m on Squalor.”
He didn’t move. “As you wish.”
I hesitated a second longer. “That’s all you care about?”
His voice sounded amused. “Looking for a revolution, Mr. Cates? I don’t see it here. Kill all the Monks for money you want, the System will still be here. Now, give me a bunch of System Cops to kill—that would be a revolution. This, this is just commerce.”
With a scream of tearing metal and a crash, Dawson’s final limb fell from his body. Gatz held the still-buzzing bone saw up in the air. “One Monk down, five fucking thousand to go,” he said tiredly.
“All right,” Orel said suddenly, still not moving. “Let’s move, then. Mr. Gatz, ladies, you’re with me. We’re to cause havoc and keep the heat off Mr. Cates and my dear old friend Mr. Kieth.”
They all made a fuss of checking their weapons. Gatz dropped the saw and wandered over to where I stood and stopped, looking off into some imaginary distance. He was still sweating, a sheen of moisture dripping from his face, staining his brand-new, stolen suit.
“I’m with you, Ave,” he said quietly. “You might need me.”
A wave of dizziness went through me, and I reached out to put my hand on his bony shoulder. He felt like a skeleton through the expensive fabric of his clothes. I wondered for the first time how much Gatz’s Push took out of him, really.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s dump Dawson into that hover thing they brought me in. Push him if you have to.”
While the rest of the team checked ammo and took last-minute directions from a calm Canny Orel, Gatz and I crossed to where Dawson la
y on the wrecked table, a trunk without limbs, wiring and insulation hanging out of his shoulders and hips. He turned his head to look up at us, his neck a ruin of scorched latex and wires.
“Fucking rats,” he managed, his voice warped and weakened.
“Shut up,” I advised, “or I’ll cut out what’s left of your voice box. I’ve got a deal for you.”
His whole trunk shook violently for a moment, and it took me a second to realize that the fucker was trying to laugh again. I reached down and forcibly turned his head toward the motionless carcass of Brother West. Dawson’s skin was cold and smooth, and I fought the urge to snatch my shaking hand back.
“This is my offer: Help me, and I’ll give you the same deal as that guy. Keep fucking with me, and I’ll carry you around with me for the rest of my life and fuck with you, and fuck with you, and fuck with you.” I leaned down toward his head. “And when I die, I’ll bequeath you to someone who will continue to fuck with you. What do you say?”
The shaking slowly subsided. “Fucking rats,” Dawson drooled out, his voice like bubbling magma. “What do the fucking rats want?”
“Get me to Squalor.”
The shaking began again, more violently than before. “Fucking asshole. Squalor knows you’re here. Where do you think I came from? He programmed me. He’s looking for you.”
“So you’re taking my offer?”
That molten laugh again. “Why not? You make it three steps out that door you can do whatever the fuck you want with me. It’ll be worth it just to watch them pull your spine out through your nose.”
“Mr. Cates!” Kieth sang out nervously. “We will not be alone much longer!”
I glanced over at Orel and the others. “Move. Keep them busy.” Orel and I looked at each other for a moment. He winked at me, and I turned away.
“Kev, grab Captain Dawson, will you? Kieth, keep me apprised.” I checked my gun and let my fingers linger on the cool metal of the barrel, familiar and satisfying. “Let’s go get this goddamned job done.”
“Amen,” Gatz said weakly, dragging his expensive sleeve across his forehead. “A-fucking-men.”
It was fucking chaos, and I didn’t care. I was probably going to die, and I didn’t care. With the alarm drowning out my thoughts, with the tiny room stuffed full of people and mutilated Monks, it was hard to think, and it seemed momentarily amazing that I was planning to just walk into a room, put two shells in whatever Dennis Squalor was using as a brain, and then . . . nothing. I didn’t have a plan for after that. My eyes lingered on Brother West for a moment. Hell, there’s at least one promise I’ve kept.
Behind me, the door my team had come through burst inward as if a bomb had exploded on the other side, a Monk with a leveled shotgun framed in the doorway. Orel threw himself flat on his belly as if he’d been practicing the move for decades in hopes of an audition, put three shells in the Monk’s forehead, and leaped to his feet, beaming. His papery skin flushed and his white hair just slightly askew, he grinned at us.
“Saddle up, Americans!” Canny boomed, clicking back the hammers on his shiny silver guns in unison. “Let’s go hunt some fucking Monks!”
XXXI
The Melting
Asphalt Sound
00101
The alarms were everywhere. I was breathing alarms, inhaling the noise and exhaling the noise, the air thick with it. In the near distance, I could hear steady gunshots, punctuated by occasional shouts—my team causing a professional-grade ruckus. The hall was narrow and made of plain gray concrete, lit by bare bulbs at regular intervals. We walked; me, then Gatz and his luggage, then Kieth, occasionally finding Monks slumped on the floor, their heads exploded, evidence of Canny Orel’s Merry Pranksters. I felt disoriented. When I closed my eyes I could picture our location on the mental diagram of the complex, a red dot moving slowly but steadily. But with my eyes open, I was lost—every hall was the same gray stone, the same bare bulbs, the same damp, heavy feel. It wasn’t a place for humans.
At every intersection, Kieth called out a direction, shouting over blaring alarms and the sparkle of gunfire. When we came to the first door, I had Gatz pull the hover containing Dawson forward. As soon as we got Dawson within a foot of the door, it snicked open, and we resumed our ordered march.
“Ave, you okay?” Gatz ventured in a low, strained voice, like thumbtacks in my ear.
“Fuck no,” I said without looking back at him. “I’ve been dead, you cocksucker. Cut me some slack.”
There was an explosion of distant, echoed gunfire and screams. I didn’t pause. We were so close, so fucking goddamned close. I wasn’t going to get this close and fail. I wasn’t going to go down with Barnaby Dawson’s digital laughter ringing in my ears.
“Keep going straight, Mr. Cates,” Kieth shouted. “We’re very close. This whole place is in chaos, if I’m sniffing these packets correctly. There’s activity everywhere.”
“Ever see a thousand wolves tear a rat apart, Cates?” Dawson cackled in his bubbly, engine-oil voice. “It’s really, really entertaining.”
We were sloping downward, and the chilly damp feel of the upper areas of the Abbey compound was giving way to heat, heavy and resisting. “Kieth, what the fuck’s going on up there?”
Kieth pressed his hand against his ear. “Tanner! Milton! What’s happening?”
We walked a few steps. My hand was aching, so I tried to loosen my white-knuckled grip on my gun.
“They’re stuck,” Kieth said breathlessly. “Penned in. A lot of Monks. It—it—” he paused. I just kept moving. “I’ve lost contact. All I can hear is noise—shouting.”
“Someone’s still alive, then,” I offered. “Which way?”
“What? Left, then straight toward another doorway—wait!”
I stopped, staring straight ahead at the door we were approaching. The walls were perfect gray concrete. They joined the floor and ceiling with computerized precision. The door was like all the others we’d passed by or through; steel, dull, with no handle or obvious way to open it. We’d moved away from the ruckus Orel and crew were causing, and I could barely hear the gunshots. I waited a count of five.
“What is it?” I said, gritting my teeth against the urge to scream. I felt trapped. Tons of stone and metal on top of me and a thousand murderous cyborgs all around. Every muscle was tight, every pore open, desperation and terror leaking out. A mile above, London ground along unawares. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew there were faded, thinned men and women standing on the Dole Line, while sleeker, sharper men and women moved through them, picking them off. While fat, expensive cops grabbed everyone by the ankles and shook vigorously to see what would fall out of everyone’s pockets.
Underneath, we had screams and gunshots and the echo of my ragged breathing.
“Mr. Cates, Ty doesn’t pretend to know everything, but Jesus, something’s going on right behind that door.”
The melting asphalt sound of Dawson’s laughter bubbled up again, and I closed my eyes and tried to grit my teeth harder in response, the sound slicing up my spine. My teeth, I imagined, would shatter at any moment.
“You made it, Cates,” Dawson gurgled. I stared at the door and imagined his voice as dark fog, spilling over the edges of the hover crate and pooling on the floor. “That’s the only entrance to the Inner Sanctum. The Holy of Holies where Brother Squalor contemplates his slice of forever and counts the heads as they roll in!”
I opened my eyes and stared at the door.
“I can’t open it,” Dawson continued, managing somehow to convey glee through his warped digital voice. “Only Squalor and his Cardinals can. Have you ever met a Cardinal, Cates? I’ll bet you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“You can’t open it?” I asked.
That dripping cackle again. “You can’t either. Right about now there are five hundred Monks homing in on you. You’re trapped like, dare I say it, like a rat!”
I turned around and looked at Dawson, who
lay smiling in the portable coffin, a mess of wires and insulation and coolant fluid. I shifted my eyes to Kieth, who stared back with pop-eyed nervousness, clearly terrified of what I would ask him to do next. “Can you pry this fucking door open?”
He leaned sideways to run his eyes over the door. He shrugged. “Maybe. Ty’ll have to do some scans, trace some wiring. Might need some spare parts, which Ty did not bring. He might also just as easily fuse everything shut pretty solidly.”
I nodded. It was always some fucking thing. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t even been a month since Dick Marin had scooped me off the streets of Manhattan and ruined my fucking life. “Kev, make sure Captain Dawson is telling us the truth, okay?”
“Right,” Gatz whispered, turned, and leaned down over the Monk, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. After a moment, he straightened up, putting a hand out to the wall to steady himself. “Go ahead, ask,” he gasped, breathing hard.
“Can you open that door?”
Dawson shook, his whole torso vibrating. “No,” he finally oozed. “Can’t.”
I nodded, reached out, and grabbed Kieth by the shoulder. I spun him around so that he faced the mutilated Monk. “Anything in that motherfucker you can use? Monks are just crammed full of interesting tech, aren’t they?”
Kieth nodded, his shaved head reflecting the dull white light. “Yes. Very possibly.”
I nodded. “Rip ’im up, Ty. Take whatever you need.”
“Hey, Avery,” Gatz said between loud breaths. “They’re getting’ closer, huh?”
I paused, listening. Kieth started to say something about the door, so I reached out and clamped his lips shut with one hand.
The shouts and gunshots were getting closer. Fast.
“What the—”
Before I could finish, Canny Orel suddenly appeared around the corner, guns shining in his hands, running full-tilt. Seconds later one of the twins followed. Orel actually looked disheveled: hair mussed, coat torn, a large dark stain spreading through his shirt on one side.
