by Jeff Somers
I tossed their vests at their feet and held mine up, arms trembling with the weight of it. I thought about having that pulling me down as I tried to move fast through tight spaces. “We’re going to be moving through hostile streets under superior fixed positions—people on the goddamn roofs, waiting for us. Old-school don’t mean stupid, Mara.”
Taking another deep breath, I slowly pulled the vest on. Its weight was immediately suffocating, and a light sweat broke out all over my body. I pictured Michaleen, the little rat, his perpetually cheerful face twisted into a grin. The little bastard was laughing at me, and I was going to survive Hong Kong just so I could push a blade into his belly and give it a twist.
When the vest was snug around my middle, the Monk looked at me, that eternal smile on its face.
“Shut up,” I muttered. It just kept grinning.
“You okay?” Mara asked, cocking her head and raising one eyebrow. “You look like total shit.”
I stared at her face. Something was tugging at me. I’d seen her before. I was sure of it. Something in her manner, in her expression, something was tickling my memory. “I’m fine,” I said slowly. “You light up your brain like a power grid and kill sixteen people in two minutes, see how you feel.”
She smirked and turned away, but I kept my eyes on her, her long legs and narrow shoulders. Her perfect skin. She didn’t look like someone who’d spent a lifetime doing this work, someone who had Canny Orel’s trust and proxy. She didn’t look like anybody, no one I’d known or ever would know. I forced myself to turn away, full-body shivers making all of my muscles twitch to mysterious music I couldn’t hear.
“Let’s go, assholes,” Anners shouted, fitting his cowl onto his head.
“Any more treats there?” the Poet shouted, grinning, as the Monk pulled the duffel closed and picked it up. “Perhaps a tank or hover? Or midget ninjas?”
“Let’s go.”
I walked toward the colonel and his troops, not looking back. I felt hot but I was shivering. Sweat was pouring down my back and my heart was pounding in my chest. My vision was blurry. As I neared Anners, he turned without another word and started for the tunnel. I followed, and faster than I thought possible, darkness enveloped me.
Immediately, my vision adjusted, bringing up a version of the world that was tinged green and filled with flare like greasy light clinging to everything. The tunnel was wide, the cracked pavement visible for about twenty or thirty feet, then slowly sliding under the rippling black waves of water.
“How deep? ” I called out.
“You won’t drown,” Anners shouted back. “Now shut up.”
We walked. My legs felt rubbery, and when we waded into the water it was so cold my breath was knocked out of me, leaving me gasping as the black water slowly rose up to my belly, encasing my legs in liquid ice. After a minute or two, my legs were numb and I moved forward by magic, by simple mind over matter. The darkness became absolute, and even my night-vision faded to a murky sludge; by the time I realized the Poet was walking next to me, he’d been there for some time.
“You okay, Adrian? ” I asked.
“I have been better,” he said quietly, his voice tinged with strain. “I do not like the darkness. Talk to me, Cates, please.”
I grimaced. I didn’t know what to say. You didn’t admit weakness—people stomped on weakness when they saw it, exploited it, made a note of it and remembered, forever. Years later, you worked a job against someone and they remembered something you said, something they saw, a moment when you let your guard down, and they hit you on the head with it until you bled.
“Uh—all right, where in hell did ‘the Poet’ come from? ”
He didn’t respond right away. I counted six steps before he spoke.
“Did you ever test? I wanted to be IE, to be a damn cop. Can you believe that? But I got FA, fine arts. I wanted a gun. They told me to write stories. So I ran away.”
I shook my head in the darkness. Up ahead, there was a sudden burst of gunfire and a few muttered curses. Both the Poet and I dropped to our knees, crouching with our heads just above the frigid water. The floor of the tunnel under my hand was slick and gritty, and I wished very much to not be touching it.
“Clear!” one of the soldiers shouted, and we straightened up, shaking oily water from our hands and sleeves and pushing forward.
“I never tested,” I said. I knew, dimly, that any citizen of the System of any standing tested at a young age and got assigned a career, but I’d been out of the mainstream for years by the time I came of age and I’d never even seen one of the Testing Dorms.
“You are lucky, then. To be told what you will be—it is terrible. I wanted a gun, and so I went underground and got myself one.” I looked at him. His tattoos were monochrome in my enhanced vision, still moving in their silent little scenes, endlessly dying. If I were a superstitious man, I’d think he was making sure they stayed dead, by reminding the universe that he’d killed them. “My father was rich. A big fish in a small pond. I spoke too well, though. My new friends said I was soft, called me the Poet. You can’t always choose. You must own what life gives you.” He jabbed a finger at his neck. “My friends stayed with me.”
He did talk pretty. I couldn’t put my finger on it—there were no huge words or fancy flourishes, but when Adrian Panić started chatting, I liked it. I didn’t even pay attention to what he said half the time.
He suddenly stopped. I splashed ahead a few feet before realizing it, and then waded back, finding him standing stiff and rigid in the water.
“Mr. Cates,” he said slowly, his voice cracking, “some fucking thing brushed my fucking leg.”
I studied his face, nodding at him as I hunched down a bit and stared up at his nose. “You gonna move, Adrian? ”
He shut his eyes and shook his head. “I will...I will head back. I will . . . I cannot . . .” He trailed off and began muttering in his native language again, harsh and growling to my ears. I sighed and straightened up, still shivering, my own legs still feeling treacherous. I took a deep breath and reached up, slapping him hard across the face.
“Get moving,” I said with a sigh, “or I will push you under and hold you there while the rats chew out your eyes.”
I waited. I knew what it was like to freeze up. I knew fear. After a moment, I leaned forward again and whispered, “The only way out is forward, Adrian.”
He nodded as another, longer burst of gunfire ahead of us lit up the tunnel in tiny flashes. “Too bad you’ve seen this,” he whispered, taking a staggering step forward, splashing water everywhere. “Now I will have to kill you. Later. After tunnel.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, concentrating on moving my aching legs. “I’d hate to have to kill you in self-defense. I’m going to need you. You know what this is, right? A smash-and-grab.” I looked around to make sure we were isolated from the others, alone in our miserable pocket of darkness. “This thing Londholm has created, this God Augment—everyone wants it. The little shit Michaleen—he wants it. Bet your freak ass he does, Adrian. His creature back there, Mara, she’s here to make sure he gets it, after we get her in and get her close.”
The Poet was still walking like someone was tugging invisible wires embedded in his limbs. “And naturally,” he said, “then we’re no longer needed.” He gestured into the air. “God’s Middle Finger.”
I nodded. “I’m not going out that way. I’ve got shit to do.” Like murdering that short little bastard, I thought.
“I am with you, Cates,” he whispered. “First we must get to Londholm. And avoid tunnels.”
I nodded. “We’re with each other, and fuck the rest of them.”
I took two more slow, waterlogged steps and sensed something above me. My HUD lit up with a sudden surge, like it had been dormant and now woke up, and my feeling of heavy pain vanished. I half-ducked, leaning backward in a last momentary flash of energy and speed. Something heavy rolled off me, knocking me down into the thick, greasy water. I
was under it for a moment, blind and suffocated, and then a hand was on my neck and someone was pushing at me, holding me under, their skin rough against me, their fingernails long, thick, and sharp.
As my HUD status bars started screaming up and down, I lashed out my arms, grabbing onto a skeletal ankle, slippery and yet rough, like it was covered in scabs. I didn’t think about that too hard; I concentrated on not opening my mouth under any circumstances while underwater, no matter how much my lungs burned. I yanked on the ankle hard and the hand disappeared from my neck, allowing me to surge back up, breaking the surface to the sound of gunshots everywhere, a constant screech. Gasping, at first I thought lights were flashing in my vision, but realized it was the flash of the guns.
I tore my Roon from its holster and began putting bullets into the swirling black water in front of me, ticking the gun forward a few inches each time. When I’d emptied the clip, silence crowded in, and Anners’s mush-mouthed cursing echoed against the walls.
“Holy fucking shit, y’all are damned jumpy. Remy, you take point up front there; Ollie, Hem, and Mullay, sweep back a few feet and make sure we’re clear—look up for fuck’s sake. Y’all gonna get a fucking burn tonight for this kind of weak shit, walking right under a fucking CHUD.” He came into view as a dark shape surfaced a few feet in front of me, facedown and skinny, like a greenish skeleton someone had dumped into the water. Anners glanced at the corpse as he joined the Poet and me. “All right, you got your boots wet,” he muttered, giving the body a nudge with his boot. There was a spray of gunfire behind us, and then silence again.
I felt myself deflating, getting heavy again, the all-over ache settling back into my bones. My HUD slowly dimmed. I was in fucking power-save mode.
Anners nodded. “We’re clear now,” he said, throwing a grin around. He pointed forward, and I squinted, spying a dim square of light up ahead. “All right, motherfuckers, you’re in sight o’ Hong Kong, eh?” He fell into an easy march next to us. “We won’t be walking you out of the tunnel, tho’. Be surprised if there were more than four, five thousand System Pigs holdin’ the city, total, but if we poke our noses out there I ga-run-tee you all of them will be standing there, grinnin’. You’re clear from here on, tho’. We scrubbed it.”
I stood dripping, my empty gun still clutched in my hand. I shook uncontrollably, and was glad for the darkness to hide in. I looked at the square of light again and tried to decide if I had the energy to walk it. “You gonna shoot us in the back after we pay up?” I asked as Mara and the Poet joined us.
“Fuck, no,” he said immediately, spitting forcefully onto the floor. “You’re a fucking gold mine, Mr. Cates. I’m gonna be waiting right here to get your custom on the way back.”
Mara joined us, her credit dongle already out. “Just fucking transfer your fucking money and get me out of this shithole,” she said.
The colonel swiped his thumb across the proffered dongle; Mara gestured and showed the display to him. He nodded crisply. “Pleasure. Most likely you’re dead in a few hours, sure, but if y’want an extraction, Mr. Cates can dial up my frequency on the SFNA net.” He looked around once and winked. “Good luck.”
He spun around. “On me,” he shouted. “Keep the way fucking clear. I got to pull a trigger, Remy, and I will give you a fucking dose of misery, you hear? And for fuck’s sake, watch for the fucking clingers on the ceiling.”
I watched the soldiers fade into the gloom, and then the Poet’s hand was on my shoulder. I spun and stalked after Mara, adjusting the strap of my gun. I felt hot and dizzy, and my feet hurt, sending shots of pain up my legs with every step.
As we edged toward the exit of the tunnel, emerging from the shallow, scummy water, we slowed and got down low, crawling forward. At the edge of the shadows, we paused and studied the scene—almost a mirror image of the other end: barricades, security gates, and a few dozen heavily armed men and women. The only difference was the lack of uniforms. The silence and stillness of the scene was unnerving.
The cops were out in force, and they were all lying on the ground, some squirming and struggling, others just panting. After a moment, I saw him: the old man from my train adventure, dressed in a cheap black suit and sitting on a burly-looking cop who was splayed on the ground, sweat streaming down his blank face. The old man had a face made of beard, gray-white hair wiggling everywhere as he chewed tobacco.
“Come on out, Mr. Cates,” he said with a grunt. “Before we pull you out.”
XXI
AT LEAST I STILL HAVE MY LOOKS
“Don’t fucking move,” I whispered. “Tele-K holding them all down. There’s no Pusher or we’d already be marching out there with our pants down.”
Outside, someone shouted hoarsely: “Avery Fucking Cates?” We all paused for an awkward moment, waiting for him to say something more.
“You have a friend here,” the Poet said, grinning, his tattoos dancing. “How nice to be welcomed here. You must be famous.”
“Fucking hell, I hate these freaks,” Mara hissed. “You want to beat someone or kill someone, do it with your bare hands like a fucking human being.” Her thin, pretty face was lit up with an ancient sort of rage. “This bullshit gets old.”
The Poet was lying on his belly, squinting at the scene. “There’s no way to move. The moment we leave shadows, we will be exposed.”
“And then we’re in the fucking air,” Mara spat. “I remember that cocksucking Tele-K.”
For a few heartbeats, we lay there in silence, listening to the wind. My body was bonding with the rough pavement, my eyes getting heavy. I wanted to just put my head down and sleep, wake up a thousand years later, when the persistent spiky throb in my head might have faded away. Rolling over onto my back, I took a painful, deep breath, swallowing a spasm of coughs, and stared at the cracked, corroded ceiling, shadow bleeding into the damp, weak light. “Anyone seen the fucking Monk? ”
For a second, we were all still, and then they both rolled over, searching the gloom.
“Well, that’s fuckin’ disturbin’,” Mara said after a moment.
“I wished it to go,” the Poet said contemplatively. “Now I wish it would come back. A lesson here, yes? ”
A tremendous shattering crash made us all jump. Concrete dust rained down just outside the tunnel’s exit.
“Mr. Cates,” the old man called out. “I know you are cowering in there. Attend to me, please.”
“Attend to you?!? ” I shouted up at the ceiling. “I’m gonna have to ask you to rephrase your request in a language other than asshole.”
“Maybe we split up,” the Poet said. He was completely himself again, all the quaver and strain out of his voice. “Each in his own direction, hell-bent for leather.”
I felt peaceful, suddenly, staring up at the ceiling of the tunnel. “That asshole picked up a fucking train with his mind,” I said. “He’s squashing, what, fifty, sixty cops to the ground simultaneously. You think he’s going to have trouble with three more people?” I rolled over onto my belly and peered out at him. The poor fuck he was sitting on looked like he was waiting for permission for his heart to explode, his face purple, sweat dripping off his nose. A few feet away, in a similar position as if someone had recently been sitting next to the old man, was another cop, his suit a shiny silver job that clashed with his blistered, lobster-red skin, his whole body one big third-degree burn. My HUD was yellow everywhere. I felt fucking yellow. I pushed myself up onto my knees and my heart did a crazy little dance in my chest, fluttering.
“We snipe his ass,” I said. “Adrian, how’re you with a scope? ”
He made a face behind his grimy-looking glasses. “I am average,” he admitted. “Can kill most things at a distance; can’t say kill for sure.”
I nodded. He was honest. “You? ” I asked Mara.
She gave me a smile that was almost pretty, but I had a creepy shiver, staring into her eyes. The idea of fucking Mara was so distant and alien I wanted to look away, keep my eyes off her.
“I always prefer my kills up close,” she said, shaking her head. “And I’m the sort who does everything okay, nothing great, and gets by with gettin’ everyone else to do her dirty work.”
I nodded. “Okay. Pass me the needle—just keep low and move slow.”
The Poet crawled over to our deflated duffel bag and unzipped it without raising his head. Fishing inside, he quickly found the sniper rifle I’d specified back in Brussels and slowly extracted it, inching it from the bag while lying flat beside it. When he had the whole rifle out, he slid it along the damp floor of the tunnel’s mouth until I put my hand on it and pulled it in the rest of the way. Carefully flopping back over onto my belly, I squinted out into the light.
This had once been a system of rising roads, concrete, and asphalt, spinning upward in wide loops and then shooting off into different directions. Shacks had been built up on all of the crumbling overpasses, loops within loops of dirty, tiny huts mixed in with a few larger structures. The wood all had a gray, weathered look to it, most of the slats warped, ancient nails being pulled inexorably from their homes. Some shacks were just a few feet wide, some had been built up to dangerous heights—I could see the stories waving in the winds like reeds or branches—but they were all on the verge of turning into dust. A single path wound its way through the crowd, slowly widening until it led directly into the heart of the city. When it had been built, people had used roads to get into Hong Kong, but now people used hovers. Unless they couldn’t afford hovers, and who gave a shit about them then?
I reached up and slowly pulled out the built-in barrel supports until they clicked into place, then slowly extended the gun, trusting to instinct for the proper angle and elevation.
The ground suddenly pulled away from me, the rifle dropping as I sailed up, and I was in the middle of an invisible fist being dragged through the air. For a second it was so fast my whole body tensed in preparation for impact, but a second later I stopped cold, hanging a few feet in front of the old man.