“Great,” Hammell said, but he couldn’t complain. He’d started to become careless. It had only been a matter of time before he’d got behind the wheel with alcohol still in his system. The realisation was troubling; he’d stopped caring. He took one last look at his car – see you, old girl – and then turned back for the stairs. “And you definitely couldn’t have told me all this before we got to the car park?”
“You-”
“Did not ask,” Hammell completed for it. “Yeah, I know.”
He walked back up the stairs to the main entrance, took a last look around and then exited one final time. Walking off down the street, he thought about how Toskan had kept his composure; it helped him to keep his own head up until he was well away from the station. Then he dropped his box and slumped down to the pavement, heedless of the people around him, and began shaking uncontrollably.
Chapter 27
The last twenty four hours had been trying in the extreme, but he felt a mite better after a shower. Disposing of yet another bloody shirt in the recycling chute, he thought to himself that anyone monitoring his refuse would have some serious questions about his leisure activities. Li probably thinks I’m a serial killer, he thought. She probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid if he was.
He hadn’t slept properly in what felt like an age; his body was shutting down, even though it was still only early afternoon. He couldn’t even remember his last meal. It had probably been noodles. He tried to order some more with chicken balls for the cat, but it was too early for the Choi Inn. Instead he was forced to search around on the public networks until he found somewhere delivering, settling on a poorly reviewed pizza place which started serving at the frankly astonishing time of seven am. Wondering at the kind of people who might want pizza that early, and how discerning their palates might be, he ordered a meat-substitute feast, deciding he could drown it in chilli sauce if it proved inedible.
Turning on the news, he listened to Eva 2.0 reading him the day’s main headlines, hoping that Hetty had managed to lawyer up and fight I.T.F. to retain her iEye footage, so that she might get some part of the story out. But the highest ranked segments contained no mention of the incident on the river. Digging deeper, he found it, tucked away below a fluff piece about an old man who’d been posting letters in a dog waste bin for three decades, always wondering why nobody ever wrote back. It was merely a footnote about a fire on a fishing boat. Asha’s assault, the downed carrier, and the fact that the fire had been caused by a hail of missiles all went unmentioned.
Another story caught his eye. The end of a major policing power was newsworthy stuff, he supposed. If anything, it probably should have been ranked higher. He watched and re-watched short surveillor clips of himself and the former Commissioner leaving the office, carrying their little boxes, glad to find they hadn’t pursued him too far down the street. Hammell hadn’t really thought about it before, but Yun’s job had been dependent on the I.A. system. He had to have known his time was up too. In typical modern fashion, no time had been wasted – the Commissioner had been fired the very moment Hammell had exited the station.
Normally the news would numb his brain and help him sleep, but today reality kept butting in. He had no job and no car. His best friend had almost certainly been murdered – and he himself had been prevented from trying to catch the murderer. His new partner, who in spite of herself had somehow begun to grow on him, like a familiar but potentially dangerous mole, was as good as dead too. His family was long gone: His mother had been an addict of some kind - he had never asked for details - and had run away to Abaddon when he was small, abandoning him to be raised by his father, who had long since passed away. The only woman he’d met recently with any relationship potential was a wanted criminal, who just might also happen to be a part of a criminal conspiracy of underground robots planning to take over the world. He was finding it difficult to look at things in a ‘glass half full’ kind of way.
In spite of everything, he gradually felt his eyes growing heavy. Just as he began to doze off, there came a knock at the door. The suddenness set his heart pumping, forcing his mind back up into awareness. Grumbling as he clambered to his feet - sleep had now been banished for a time - he reached the door, recalling that it had been his own fault. He had ordered the pizza. The delivery driver must have got into the building through his dodgy front door, and had come all the way up the stairs without threats or bribes. The pizzeria began to grow on him - the Choi Inn driver would still never come up without coercion.
Opening the door, ready to give a big tip, he stared stupidly, his brain unable to process what he was seeing. Did I fall asleep? Am I dreaming this? Standing before him was Eva Valentine. For half a second his tired mind still believed she was bringing him pizza - he even held out his thumb for the payment and Eva looked quizzically down at it.
“I’m not that kind of girl anymore,” she said and Hammell quickly withdrew his hand.
Opening his mouth to speak, a series of disconnected syllables tumbled out. “Why...? What are you...? What are you doing here?” he managed to splutter.
“Do you want to find out in the hallway?” she asked.
“No,” Hammell said, collecting himself. “Please.”
He opened the door wide and she stepped past him. As if by magic, the cat appeared, instantly sucking up to the new guest in the hope that Hammell would give her treats to make himself look good. He despised shameless tricks like that, not least because they tended to work. Feeling disgusted with himself for being so easily manipulated, he snatched up the box of biscuits he kept by the door for whenever the little minx refused to come back inside until provided with a reason.
“What’s her name?” Eva asked as Hammell tipped the last of the treats onto the floor. The cat proceeded to eat them systematically, without showing the merest hint of enjoyment or gratitude. He felt like applauding her; she really knew how to play the game.
“Kitty,” Hammell said, feeling suddenly embarrassed about it.
“Named after someone? A grandmother…?”
“No,” Hammell said. “Because she’s a cat.”
Eva nodded. “Clever.”
She walked on into the apartment and Hammell followed by way of the kitchen, dropping the empty box into the recycling chute. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked as he carried on into the living room. “Is it too early for a proper drink?” He stopped as he saw that Eva was frozen with a look on her face like he’d invited her into a house filled with the bodies of women he’d recently murdered.
“What. Is. That?” she asked as she pointed across the room.
“What?” Hammell asked, and his eyes widened as his brain twigged. “Oh,” he said, his face turning beetroot red. “Oh, shit. It’s nothing.” Hurrying towards the skywall, he waved his hand frantically to try to turn it off. The cat decided this was the perfect time to run between his legs, sending him sprawling. As Eva leaned in to look herself directly in the eye, he finally managed to get to his feet and close the display. Eva 2.0 vanished. “Forget about that,” he said, trying to sound casual.
“How did you…?” Eva asked. “That’s so… fucking… creepy.”
“Yeah,” Hammell admitted as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Ok, I suppose it might look a bit...”
“Creepy,” Eva finished for him. “Really, really creepy.”
“But maybe just a little bit sweet as well, right?” Hammell attempted.
“Sweet like a fucking stalker,” Eva said, shaking her head. “No, it’s just really, really, really creepy.”
“Alright,” Hammell said, thinking she was laying it on a bit thick. “It is a bit, I’ll give you that. But I just… I really did like the way you sang in the bar.” He felt almost sick as he said it. Genuine compliments were not something he was comfortable either giving or receiving.
With perfect timing, Eva spotted the big black box in the corner of the room. “Oh my god, do you...?”
“No!” Hammell sai
d quickly as he looked over at the sexulator, thinking that things really couldn’t get much worse. This was definitely not the way their next meeting had gone in his fantasies. Arresting her might actually have gone better. “I don’t. I wouldn’t,” he said, as if she would believe now that he was a man of principle. He kicked the cat away as she begged at his feet, thereby demonstrating that he was not.
Eva slipped a hand into her handbag, no doubt grabbing for a rape alarm or a can of mace and Hammell glared at the sexulator. “That thing has been nothing but trouble,” he muttered.
“So... what do you do with it… with me?” Eva asked. “If not... that?”
Hammell mumbled something as he yet again caved in to the cat’s persistence, heading back to the open plan kitchen to look for more treats. He cursed under his breath as he searched. Li had been coming here for years but she still didn’t understand his kitchen cupboard system. It was annoying, even more so now he was flustered; opening door after door and then going back again was making him look mad. “Stupid fucking woman,” he said to himself.
“What?” Eva asked.
“Not you,” Hammell said, wiping at his sweating brow with a sheet of kitchen towel he had to fight off the roll. “I’m not talking about you. Honestly.”
“So? What do you do with it?”
Hammell tried again to mutter something inaudible as he decided to just open a second food pouch. Kitty sniffed at the bowl suspiciously; this wasn’t what she’d been after, but she thankfully decided to accept it. With any luck the little beast would be satiated until he got things back under control.
“What?” Eva asked, not letting herself be dissuaded. “I can’t hear you.”
“You read me the news!” Hammell blurted out finally.
Eva paused for a moment. “You’re really strange, do you know that?”
“Alright,” Hammell said, “I know it’s weird. But I really think it’s a tiny bit endearing too. Like a tribute. An homage.”
Eva was shaking her head. “The sexulator would be odd, but at least that’s understandable – in a completely unacceptable, illegal, fucked up kind of way. But I read you the news? Somehow that’s even more creepy.”
“Ok,” Hammell said. “We’ve established that I’m creepy. Can we move on now?”
“I’ll take that drink now,” Eva said. “Whisky - on the rocks.”
“Right,” Hammell said, “yes, of course.”
Quickly re-washing a couple of glasses, just to be safe, he threw a big handful of ice into each. He was with Eva on this one; it was too hot to ever drink without, whatever the purists said. Digging around in the cupboard, he cursed silently as he found only a few dregs at the bottom of some very cheap bottles. He would have to mix them, unless he went to fetch the bottles from the hospital which he’d abandoned on the ground floor, or the ones from halfway up the stairs. He decided against it, not wanting to have to explain why he had boxes of whisky stashed about the building.
“So,” Hammell said as he handed over a glass, “are you going to tell me what you’re doing here? Did you come to give me Roy Brown, like you promised?”
“What happened out there on the boat?” Eva asked, ignoring his attempts to wrestle back control of the conversation. She took a sip - and winced. “What brand is this?”
“It’s a custom blend,” Hammell said, before continuing quickly. “I’m sure you know better than I do.” Sitting down on the corner sofa, he gestured towards the other end with his hand, but Eva didn’t join him.
“I wasn’t there.”
He tasted his drink and fought to keep his eyes from watering. “According to the official story, a trawler loaded with fish destined for the pet food industry caught fire and sank. I saw it on the news. You told me.”
“We’re not joking about that,” Eva said as she nodded towards the skywall. “And you and I both know that the boat was loaded with weapons, not fish, and that it caught fire because it was blown up by an I.T.F. carrier.”
Hammell nearly choked on his drink. “What were they for, Eva?” he asked, trying to cover his surprise. “Why do you need weapons?” Asha Ishi was right!
“Why do you think? Why do people ever need weapons?”
He glanced down at the bandage on her arm. “Asha Ishi believes there’s a war coming. She was investigating that theory on the dock when she had her throat slit.”
Eva shook her head slowly as she stared at him. “You should have stayed out of this. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
As she reached into her bag again, Hammell’s senses began tingling. He could feel an undercurrent of threat. “Why did you come here, Eva?” he asked. “Why really?”
Eva knocked back her whisky, grimacing. She placed the glass down on the coffee table, stood up and removed her hand from her handbag. Sure enough, it was holding a pistol.
Placing his own glass down on the table with a calmness he didn’t feel, he leaned back in his chair. “What’s this?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Eva repeated, her voice trembling. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Her hand was shaking even more than her voice; she was no assassin. The thought gave him confidence. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked as he glanced down at the gun.
“It has to be this way,” Eva said and her finger began to squeeze the trigger. “I’m sorry.”
Is this how Dave Toskan died? he wondered, making no move to duck or run. This was coming, one way or another, he decided. Like Asha Ishi said, when people lost everything they fell off the world, finding their way inexorably to the grave. Maybe this would be better in the long run. Death by gunshot would be cleaner and faster than most of the other options available.
Her finger squeezed a little tighter – and then her arm went suddenly limp. “No,” she said quietly, “it won’t be by my hand.”
“By whose, then?” he asked as she turned away and began walking back towards the door. “Roy Brown’s? Scalpel Hector’s? Tell them I’m here! Tell them I’m ready!”
She paused and looked back at him. “Leave the city now, tonight. Just take a ship and go. Otherwise…” She shrugged. Opening the front door, she came face to face with a tall figure silhouetted by the hall light. Sucking in a breath, she raised her gun.
The delivery boy was so startled that he dropped the pizza.
Eva pushed past him and set off down the stairs as the kid bent down to retrieve the box, attempting to slide the pizza back into place. “The uh… door downstairs was open,” the kid said. “I probably should have rung the bell, right?”
Hammell paid absently, including a tip big enough to make the kid wish more customers would shove guns in his face. His mind was elsewhere. Asha Ishi was right. He sat down and ate the pizza without tasting it, wondering why, if Providence was monitoring his iEye, he couldn’t hear sirens.
Chapter 28
The sound was barely audible, but it was out of place, such that it brought Hammell back up from a sleep as deep as any in recent memory. His eyes snapped open as he listened for it again through the hum of the air conditioning unit. After a few seconds his ears picked it up - a grinding, scratching noise. His first thought was the cat, but she was asleep on the bed at his feet, stretched out to a truly astonishing length. Groggily, he reached under the bed for the kitchen knife he kept there, but his hand encountered only dust, a suspiciously solid tissue, and something sticky that he didn’t care to investigate further. It had been some time since he’d last checked - Li had probably found the knife again and moved it. He wondered what went through her head sometimes; under what circumstances would a kitchen knife keep getting underneath his bed by accident?
The bed sheets had been doing their level best to consume him as he slept; he fought his way free and climbed out of bed. His apartment was almost entirely open plan, meaning that the moment he opened the bedroom door he would be visible to whoever might be there. No point being shy, he thought as he strode
out.
“Hello?” he said in a voice slightly deeper than his own. “Who’s there?” He doubted any intruder in the history of home invasions had come forward to explain themselves upon being asked such a question, but he had to say something.
Scanning the apartment, so much of it was dark and unused that there were literally dozens of potential hiding places; Toskan’s boxes alone could have concealed an entire gang. But Hammell’s wits were returning now. With Providence around, few people would be dumb enough to try to break into an occupied apartment. This was a very old building. It was perfectly possible that the sound he’d heard was natural - the structure settling as the nighttime temperature dropped from unbearable to just bearable.
He was about to return to bed when he spotted the front door. It was open.
“Shit,” he murmured to himself. After Eva’s warning he had triple-checked it before going to bed. He turned slowly around to scan the room again. “Alright, I know you’re here,” he said, with considerably more bravado than he felt. “Get the fuck out of my apartment and we’ll say no more about it.”
Catching a movement out of the corner of his eye, he instinctively flopped onto the sofa, just as a bullet smashed into the mantelpiece above the fireplace.
“What the fuck?” he exclaimed.
Poking his head around the side of the sofa, he saw his attacker: A pitch black matte-finish android, advancing towards him with a small pistol protruding from its right wrist. No fucking way. His surprise almost prevented him from ducking as the android snapped the gun onto him and put a bullet right where his head had been.
Looking around frantically, he realised he was trapped. He had to cover more than twenty metres of open-plan floor to reach the front door. Even if he got lucky and the assassin wasn’t using smart bullets, he’d still never make it. Androids were not exactly known for their poor shooting. He turned to the window. His only other option was to try to somehow jump through reinforced glass and then survive a seventeen storey fall. He slid down to the floor to hide behind the thick base as the sofa began emitting puffs of feathers, feeling screwed.
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