I looked around for something to throw, surrounded by nothing but mud. A few branches stuck out of the water, and roots arced out of the bank, but I couldn't get them loose without attracting the degodile.
"Hey," called Lisbold, and the beast turned, ending my need for stealth. I scrambled desperately around beneath the water looking for something heavy but liftable.
As the degodile slumped into the water demonstrating the least rush to catch a prey animal I had ever seen, I located a rock beneath the surface light enough to pry from the sucking mud. Not checking to see whether the croc was on me, I threw it past Lisbold's feet at the pad.
It rolled along the mud, and Lisbold grinned at me.
Splashes behind me, the degodile still coming.
I bent again, finding another stone just as Fache turned to see what I'd seen. I lobbed it through the air as his face formed the mirror image of Lisbold's grin. This was it.
Now or never.
Life or death.
In an instant, Lisbold's smirk was replaced by the pod of a swamp net. Neither man even made a noise as they were cocooned by the colossal fungus.
I wasted no time in scrambling up the river bank as the huge jaws of the degodile took a swipe at me from the water, a finger's width from my back leg. Undismayed, the creature started to climb up the bank after me.
Behind the pod, Fache was lying on the floor. He must have been standing at the edge of the net because the fungus had pulled all the meat off his left leg leaving mangled bone as he pulled himself out of it. He screamed hysterically, unaware of me running by him until I had his gun in my hand.
The degodile was up the bank, flapping its feet along the ground, its body curving like a snake. I stood just behind Fache who was desperately clawing his way through the slush.
He screamed curses and pleaded as if I was the one who dragged him all the way here, but the creature took no notice. It grabbed his remaining leg in its jaws and pulled him back into the water.
He screamed, "Simon!" before his cries died at the bottom of the bank.
Gunfire echoed from the pod. An explosion in my shoulder spattered my cheeks with bits of my own flesh. I catapulted backward even before the sensation of pain. Despite everything I had done to survive, Lisbold's final action was to fire the shot that sealed my doom. He couldn't even know where I was, surrounded by darkness as the swamp net sunk its blades into him.
I pushed myself up against a log. It was the strangest feeling, but I had a moment of sympathy for the bully who killed me. He never cared whether he got caught, possibly not even if he came out of Von Ras, as long as I didn't. Lisbold was too full of hatred and jealousy to care for himself. In that respect alone, I would not deny the similarity between us.
Raising the gun in my good hand, I fired two rounds into the pod before letting the weapon drop. I wanted nothing more than to rise one last time, and raise a steady stream of urine up Lisbold's pod, but I was too broken.
My mother once told me that we would see each other again in the next life. She had always believed that The Kaerosh couldn't be the end.
I didn't believe it though. I knew this muddy slush that was slowly numbing my senses to extinction would wipe clean all awareness of the thing called Simon Nidess.
There was no desire to see her again. We had disappointed each other enough in life that it seemed pointless to continue the process in death. It would have been different if she left with Sam, but something changed in her after his exile. Before, she had been the loving parent; the one who counseled reason and forced Sam to think of the consequences to our family. After, she had become distant, unable to let Sam go. She forced herself to find meaning in their separation, and the only meaning she could find was in his sacrifice.
I knew about the promise she made to him the night he left. She would stay out of the KFF until I was an adult able to take care of myself. But by the time I had 11 cycles, she was back in. By the time I had 13, she was disappearing every night the way Sam used to, and by 16 she was dead.
So full of holes that not even her skeleton was recognizable as human.
Whatever it was that she found so unlovable in me had become a mutual feeling. I had never forgotten my parent's teachings, but I had outgrown them. Where once their opinion of me would have been my only consideration, it had ceased to be important.
I tried to improve their methods, but at terminus my life and death proved as pointless as theirs. The Kaerosh was too powerful, too evil. None of us would survive it long.
The Iron Dump.
I was not sad to leave it, neither was my chief regret that Ruby had beaten me, only that I would never see Becky again; the chink in her nose, the dark lips that curved into that toothy grin with the slightest provocation, were all gone. All I could do was hope that she would be ok and know that my pain was about to end.
I dared to hope that she would miss me. She didn't feel the same way I felt about her, but then nobody ever had. I did at least think she would be sad – maybe even Sikes as well. I had never had so many friends as in the last few months of my life.
My shoulder gave off one last colossal throb, like the contraction of a kraaken's heart, and then clarity drained from me as the dim lights turned to blackness, my head sagging forward with exhaustion, too cold even to shiver.
Ruby may have beaten me, but I'd made a good last show.
Chapter 25
22/11/2256 FC
My eyes opened with the stiffness of being roused too early from deep sleep. Once again, I was in a hospital bed.
My shoulder looked as if I'd been shot and chewed, but that it had all happened a decade distant, and all that remained was scar tissue. The hole in my hand was filled in as if the bullet had been a dream, and my two left-most fingers no longer sagged like waste appendages.
This wasn't normal. People didn't heal this fast, not in The Kaerosh anyway. When Kloskin broke his arm playing varyball, he'd had a cast for a week. When Rainer got shot by a bounty hunter his wound had never completely healed, and his hadn't been filled with noxious swamp life. I should have been on tablets for months, in treatment for a week, yet somehow I had woken up as if it never happened.
This was Clazran's hospital again, which meant one thing. Pressen hadn't published the article. I wasn't yet a traitor.
Aside from a pair of underwear and a hospital robe, I had no clothes. My tablet was gone, so I couldn't check if I still had time to catch Ruby. For all I knew, I had been out for days.
I remembered Fache's last words before he started screaming. This is for Hobb. Ruby blamed me for Hobb's suicide, but she was wrong. It was my job to interview suspects and push them to get information. She knew he wouldn't be able to hack it, and she used him anyway. It was transference, plain and simple. She was to blame not me, and when I killed her in the Attari baths, I might whisper the same words back in her ear.
I got out of bed, landing cautiously on my good leg before testing the one kicked by Oldan. Painless. Whatever they did to me while I was asleep was amazing. Von Ras was a different life.
There was no sign of clothes in the drawers next to the bed or the larger cupboard in the corner of the room. I was in a private suite in Clazran's private hospital. Most of his citizens wouldn't even know that this level of treatment existed. Why I was sent here again, I didn't know. Clazran made it clear he wouldn't help me unless I solved the case. Since he didn't know I had, I should have woken up in some state clinic with a bullet still in my shoulder and gangrene spreading across my chest.
I was looking under the bed when I saw the nurse's feet hurrying towards me. "Mr. Nidess, what are you doing on your feet?" It was the same muscular nurse Lint striding towards me as if neither person nor structure were any obstacle.
"I'd like my clothes, and to know what day it is."
"I told you before, Mr. Nidess, if you got out of bed too early you'd be right back." Reproach rattled off her tongue like bullets from an automatic. "I told you a thousand times you
weren't ready to get out of bed. I said to take it easy and not stress yourself, and what do you do? You go off gallivanting into the depths of Von Ras! Get back into bed right now or the same thing will happen again. Honestly, the trauma you went through yesterday, you shouldn't even be awake."
I was smiling as she pushed me back onto the bed. I had only been unconscious one night, meaning Loshe would be going to the baths later today, and Pressen would not have published the article.
"I appreciate any level of warning you're willing to offer nurse, but next time if you know that my getting out of bed will result in my abduction and shooting, a more specific statement of the threat would better allow me to avoid it."
Lint was not amused. "I'm warning you, Mr. Nidess, if you leave this bed today, as I know you intend, then it won't be a couple of months before you're back here again. It will be tomorrow, and you won't be leaving for a week."
"How did I get here?"
Her cheeks bloated with irritation. "The police brought you in on a stretcher. They saved your life and carried you all the way back through the outskirts of Von Ras." Her tone indicated she would not have done the same.
"I don't suppose I had any visitors?" I asked, painfully aware that the only person who came to see me last time was Fache.
"Two," she said. "A young man and a young girl."
"Becky?" Her name came out amid a spasm of coughing.
Lint rubbed my back as if she was trying to squeeze me through a hole. "I told you, you shouldn't have been out of bed. You're not ready."
I was pushing the sheets off as quickly as she could lift them over me again. "Miss. I thank you for your concern, but I really have to be going." Again and again, I tried to swing my legs off the bed but no matter which side I chose or how quickly I moved, she caught them and pushed them back again.
"If you leave now, Mr. Nidess..." She trailed off, unable to find words of sufficient threat. "Cythuria! You were shot twice, and you breathed in enough lliandrian spores to fill a lung. Stop being so impatient!"
When it was clear that attempting to ignore her wasn't going to have a reciprocal effect, I gave in and let her tuck me in. "Are my visitors still here? I'd like to see them."
"Your daughter is it?"
For a moment she had me at a loss. "No she isn't my daughter! She's a colleague."
Lint smiled as she fiddled with my pillow, fluffing it with her muscular arms as if exercising in the gym. "Apologies, Mr. Nidess, she was crying is all. Thought she must care about you. If you'll promise to stay in bed, I'll go and tell her you're awake."
I nodded.
Sikes stood in the doorway as the nurse passed, his features suggesting that he was watching something supernatural. "How are you feeling?"
"Never better." I tugged at the sheets, freeing myself from the nurse's vice. "We need to get down to those baths. You can tell me what's happened on the way." I lowered my feet to the cold floor, cautious more of the cold than the strength of my limbs. "Where are my clothes?"
"Becky will be here in a minute."
I could see there was something wrong. His eyes met mine for the briefest instants before he returned them to the window.
"What is it?"
"My uncle vanished shortly after you did. Most of the force are still looking for him. It was a nightmare, sir. No one was listening to us at all. I must have told a thousand people that you'd been abducted, and the kindest response I got was none at all. My uncle assigned six guys to help you, and they stayed with us at first, but when it turned out the security footage showed my uncle never left the building, they started calling up all the officers to take part in a search. They still haven't found him, but when we saw on the tracking chip in the van that you'd been taken to Von Ras, we knew we were going to need help to find you–"
Struck by one of the implications, I interrupted. "Did you tell anyone that Loshe might be the one who took your uncle?" If he had then we were all dead. Loshe would not tolerate us knowing his role in the SP, and he certainly wouldn't fall into our trap.
Sikes stared at me, the subtle vibration in his eyes a testament to his anger.
"Wally, this is important, did you tell anyone about Loshe?"
"I'd have posted his name in every chat room in Cos if I thought it would get my uncle back."
"You told them Loshe was trying to kill us." It was over. I sat back on the bed and waited for the life to drain out of me.
"I may be young, but I'm not a fool. There isn't a cell in my body that wouldn't have sacrificed the mission to save my uncle, but I know the best way to do that is to have Loshe fall into your trap."
My relief was short-lived as I realized a second problem. "Did you call back Wolsad to help with my search?"
Sikes eyed his shoes. "Yeah, I did. We called everyone who we thought might help, and I'm not going to apologize for that."
"And did he tell Kathryn that she was meeting with Loshe today?" It was imperative that Wolsad had done his job right if I was going to catch Ruby and kill Loshe.
"I don't know."
"You need to find out. Use the hospital network screens to contact Wolsad."
"I will, but before I go, I want you to know that without Becky you wouldn't be sitting here right now."
I nodded, suddenly worried by his tone. "Why would you want me to know that?" If something had happened to her...
He swallowed. "At terminus, we got three men to help in the search for you, and I didn't persuade a single one of them. She told them that my uncle had assigned them to you, and if we got you out without their help then it would be the end of them." He smiled for the first time since he entered the room. "Becky was merciless, and when we were trudging through that swamp, it was her who kept the pace. She didn't find you, but if it weren't for her, the man who did wouldn't have been there."
I asked again why he was telling me this, worried and angry that he wouldn't say.
When Becky appeared in the doorway, my relief was as akin to rolling a boulder off my chest. Sikes had made me sure something had happened to her.
She looked paler than a woman dying of blood loss, her eyes surrounded by rings so dark they could have been makeup, her cheeks swollen by the passage of tears looked old and bruised. Only her blue hospital scrubs were clean. She was wearing the same green dry-top as yesterday, except now smears of mud and dried blood made it look like army camouflage, but despite it all she was still the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The thing I thought I would never see again.
"Hi Boss," she said, using her formal greeting. "They really can't kill you, can they?"
"I hear I have you to thank for that."
Sikes put his hand on Becky's shoulder. "I'll leave you two alone."
"You don't have to thank me for anything." A fresh tear ran down one eye, but she held the rest back, a look of suicidal belligerence appearing on her face. "I told Ruby that we set a trap for her." Hazel eyes flashed from floor to ceiling and then straight at me. "Cythuria, Simon, we were chasing the pedophile killer to protect the pedophiles. I couldn't let her walk into that trap knowing what the SP would do to her." She looked away, wiping her cheek with a muddy thumb. "And then you and Hayson disappeared, and I knew I'd killed us all."
I said nothing. I was shocked. Stunned. The realization hit me like a second bullet to the shoulder.
Becky had betrayed me.
My whole throat turned to vinegar. Everything she said to me, everything about trust, it was all a lie. She was the last and the greatest of Ruby's maneuvers against me. The girl that I felt so strongly for was a sham, the webbing used to hold me for the spider's bite.
I looked at her, painfully aware that whatever she did, whatever she was, I could forgive. It was not a matter of choice. My feelings for her would not allow me otherwise. Only trust could not be regained.
"Have you always been on her side?" I asked, but the words jarred in my throat, and I was almost unable to finish.
She walked to the edge of the b
ed and took my hand. "Not side, Simon. I never planned to betray you when I accepted the job. I thought Ruby was making The Kaerosh a better place, but I see now I was wrong. She used me to get to you, and I can never forgive myself for that."
I smiled, but it hurt too much, so I let it fall again. "Forgive yourself. I already have."
Forgive. Never trust.
"Did you tell her where I was?"
She shook her head, one tear following another down the same track. "I lied to you. I did have her number from when we worked together. I told her that you figured out she was the killer and you'd set a trap for her so she should go into hiding. I only wanted to save her life, never endanger yours."
She squeezed my hand so tightly it took all of my restraint not to pull away, but there was something that didn't calculate about her story. If she didn't tell Ruby where I was then she had no reason to think Ruby had anything to do with my abduction. The logical assumption was that Fache and Lisbold acted alone or were used by the SP. My instincts fought each other. I wanted both to trust and trick her. I would not survive an admission of continued betrayal, but neither was I likely to survive the lie. Willful delusion and suspicion battled for my preservation, and I found only one way to ask the question. "Why do you blame yourself for my abduction?"
She let go of my hand and stood up from the bed. "You were in high fever when we found you. All you said was Ruby, over and over." Anger creased her brow like a crack down an aging statue. "I connected the dots that she sent Fache and Lisbold after I told her about your plan."
"And you took the job because you wanted to work for me, not to spy on me?" It was a profoundly stupid question, but I had to hear her denial, whether I believed it or not.
She nodded. "I betrayed you, I know that, but I am not here to betray you."
The Iron Swamp Page 31
