The Electric Church

by Jeff Somers

  From what I heard, Orel had retired rich. Standing in the shadows, I knew I’d never be rich, because five minutes into my vigil I was aching all over and going batshit.

  There was a small explosion somewhere nearby; the hardcases were putting up a good show, and it sounded like a few of them had some serious firepower, too. That would slow down the Pigs, but not for long. The Pigs were funded by the System, and had everything. I’d had to work long and hard to get a Roon, the best handgun in the world. The SSF issued them like candy.

  I froze, stopping myself from leaning forward in the nick of time. Casually, as if nothing were happening, the three Monks emerged from the bar and walked past the Stormers. They didn’t hurry. Bullets flying everywhere, and they didn’t seem to care. I watched them in fascination as they moved blithely away from the chaos, and the cops didn’t pay them any attention. They were a protected religion, of course, and from what I’d heard the Electric Church had a lot of pull these days, maybe enough to cause even the SSF trouble. So the Pigs were playing it safe.

  I was about to look back across the way to see if the perimeter cops had shifted, when someone broke from the bar and made a mad dash behind the hardcases into the night. By sheer dumb luck, he made it—no one shot him, and as he sped out of the light, his path intersecting the Monks’, it looked like none of the Stormers had picked him up. I thought he was just going to make it, an amazing escape, but as he ran near the Monks, I could have sworn the Monk nearest him moved—twitched, shrugged, something—and the runner suddenly crumpled to the ground. The Monks just kept walking, and were swallowed up by the night. He stayed where he was.

  I shook my head. It was far away, and the glare of the floods hurt my vision. He’d probably been nailed by a random bullet, or a sniper. I scanned the black rooftops of the empty buildings. Snipers, too. Whoever they were here for was in for a world of trouble.

  I thought of Canny Orel, and my feet ached even more.

  “Got any flatfoots I can have?”

  The voice was flat and monotone, and too loud; not someone hiding. I moved my eyes, imagining the noise they made, and there just a few feet away was SSF, a tall, blond officer, cigarette dangling from a thin-lipped, small mouth. He was dressed expensively, dark suit and heavy overcoat. A linkup bud shone in one ear.

  I stared. Moving my eyes seemed like a bad idea. I had little doubt that if this cocksucker saw me, he’d shoot first and think about it much, much later, with a mild sort of curiosity about who he’d killed.

  Moments later, two Crushers jogged over to him. They were older than him, and breathless, two beat cops with sidearms, in uniform, one tall and bald and unshaven, the other shorter and stockier, his white hair standing up in a shock on his head. They both looked sweaty and tired. I could see the officer’s eyes as he stared at them. They danced, moving this way and that, unsteady, like fluttering wings. It was creepy as hell.

  “Jones and Terrell, Captain,” the tall one said as crisply as he could.

  “Great,” the System Pig drawled, cigarette wagging up and down. “You two look like fucking geniuses. Okay, geniuses, here’s the deal: We got a fucking cop-killer in here somewhere. Earlier today Colonel Janet Hense, working undercover, was popped over in Harlem. Working Sec on a VIP.” He paused to remove his cigarette. “We don’t think the shithead knew he was popping a cop, but who gives a fuck? We’re going to pull his arms off and beat him with them, okay?”

  The two Crushers shifted their weight uneasily. “Absolutely, sir,” the shorter one said.

  “Don’t talk, numbnuts,” the captain said, his voice betraying no emotion at all. “We don’t actually know who we’re looking for. We don’t have an ID, okay? We have a good tip that the shithead was in this bar. We have a description. Listen carefully, geniuses, because I will not repeat it.”

  The good captain went on to describe me. Pretty accurately, too. The woman flashed through my mind: Hanging upside down from the ancient fire escape, guns still clutched in her hands. I wanted to move so badly I thought about just shooting the three of them where they stood and rushing out into the night, screaming. It wouldn’t make my situation any worse; if I got IDed as a cop-killer, I might as well shoot myself, because it would be less painful than what the SSF would have ready for me.

  “Got that?” the captain said. “Now, the only reason we’re using you assholes is because we got a crowd in there, and some of them are obviously unhappy that their liberty is being curtailed. Fuck ’em. But we need bodies to manage them, and I’ve got a temporary manpower shortage—every day there are more of these rats breeding in the streets. I know you guys who walk a beat have trouble with complex thoughts, so I’ll make it simple for you: Get your ass into that space and practice some crowd control. Think you idiots can handle that?”

  The Crushers looked glum, because this raid was costing them at least three or four more days of steady bribery. Plus it was always fun when the System Pigs showed up in their fancy clothes and their fucking hovers and kicked you in the balls for a few hours. They saluted and headed off, the night filled with noise, light, and the constant thick pressure of displacement. A second later there was a loud crash and a sudden flare of light as something exploded inside the still-crowded bar. The SSF officer just stood there, smoking, hands in pockets. There were a hundred people not far away who wouldn’t mind putting one in his ear, but he didn’t look worried. And why should he? The System Pigs were very good at what they did, carefully recruited and trained to an amazing level of skill. Everyone was afraid of the System Pigs—because it was damned hard to beat them, and if you did, you had the whole SSF on your ass. I glanced up at the hover, blurry and roaring, and then back at the captain. This was the hammer, coming down.

  I was straining so hard to remain still my muscles were twitching. I was no Canny Orel; I wasn’t going to retire rich and live to a ripe old age. I was twenty-six and I’d already lived too long and I couldn’t stand still for half an hour much less two fucking days. When the SSF officer finally turned away, flicking his cigarette into the air in a glowing arc, I almost sagged with relief. I had to get moving. I couldn’t hide forever, and soon enough they’d have the Crushers doing sweeps of the area on foot, and the hover’s heat sweeps scanning the ground. I could handle a couple of Crushers; I didn’t think I could handle an entire brigade of them, and I didn’t know if I could handle an officer, much less the ten or twelve of them I counted in the area. I’d seen the System Pigs in action. They were smart, and they were fast, and they were armed to the goddamn teeth—and no one was going to come after them if they killed me.

  I eyed the darkness around me. The System Pigs had an eye on the perimeter, obviously, and I didn’t know of any Safe Rooms or friends in the area. To my right, there was the bright glow of the hover, which had shifted position to illuminate the patch of ruined street outside the bar, where an intensifying firefight between cops—Stormers in their ObFu and the poor Crushers in their ill-fitting uniforms, clearly thinking they didn’t get paid enough for this shit—and the shrinking number of hardcases continued, the hardcases ensconced behind two ancient, rusting vehicles on their sides, internal combustion tech, useless except for emergency shelter. The Crushers might as well have been throwing stones at the steel barricades, but the Stormers had high-powered rifles, and were having more success.

  I looked up, examining the low and ragged wall I’d just pulled myself over. I felt tired just looking at it, but it was my best shot at this point. The System Cops had almost certainly done a heat-signature scan on the interior of the bar and determined we were all on the run. Running out into the night wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It was back over the wall for me.

  I took one last look around, squinting into the blackness around me. There was no way to tell whether some pair of night-visioned eyes was watching the wall, so it was best to just choose my moment by instinct and make my leap. I would have to make it over quietly and smoothly. If I ended up hooked on top of the wall flo
pping about like a dead fish, I’d just be target practice. The cops were making a statement here: An SSF officer had been killed, and the person responsible was going to be killed in turn, and any place that had given him shelter during the day was going to be leveled to the ground. I either got away completely unnoticed, or I was a dead man—if not today, then tomorrow.

  I eyed the top of the wall, took a deep breath, and launched myself at it. Keep moving, keep moving. I tore my hands up on the sharp stone and metal, pain slicing up my arms and lodging in my brain. I heaved with everything I had and pulled myself up, rolling over onto my back. For a second I stared up at the night sky over Old New York, a crisscross of light chains, hovers moving in complex patterns, freight and rich people.

  Keep moving, keep moving . . .

  I rolled off the wall and landed softly but awkwardly back inside, instantly crouching and touching the floor with my bloodied hands. I stayed there, trying not to breathe, and peered around the place, listening for any sign that I’d been noticed. There was no change in the cacophony outside, but I didn’t relax, because strolling with her back to me was a Crusher.

  Generally, you only feared the Crushers when they came in force; they weren’t the officers, the System Pigs, they were just beat cops with peashooters. I thought of them as just like me, just citizens of the System of Federated Nations who hadn’t had many choices and who’d made what seemed like the best of a bad lot. I only fucked with the Crushers if they fucked with me.

  This one was obviously addicted to getting black market genetic augments. She had skinny, normal-looking legs and a skeletal face that hinted at someone who didn’t eat well, or often. In between the two was a broad, fantastically muscled abdomen and chest and two arms that rippled with every gesture. You could get an awful lot done to you—emphasis on awful—by black market surgeons these days, like night-vision eyes or a complete nerve-burn that inured you to pain. The lab-grown muscles were big business. They weren’t strong muscles, and they didn’t last forever—just like all the black market augments, they were inferior tech performed by half-tight asshats—but for a while they looked good, and for some suckers that was all that mattered. Looking at her profile again I figured this one had been diverting her grocery budget to augments for a long time now.

  I froze and watched from my shadowed position at the base of the wall. I scanned the room again. No one ever opened one of these illegal places without an exfiltration plan, so I was counting on there being a secret way out. The System Pigs were well-trained—we were all terrified of them for a reason—and well-equipped, but they were arrogant bastards, too. I didn’t think it would have occurred to Blondie out there that one of us rats might actually have managed to slip down a hole and disappear. I studied the bar area, from which the owners had run the place. This was too obvious, of course, because even a dim Crusher like my Lady Hulk here would think to check it out for ratholes. Still, it would have to be a place you could easily get to from the bar, a spot you could roll into within seconds, before any System Pigs showed up with enough on the ball to take notice of such things. My eyes traced the shadows and cracks on the walls, on the floor, and I made out a curiously squared set of cracks in the floor near the makeshift bar.

  I took a slow, deep breath, gritty and damp, and fixed the spot in my mind. My heart was pounding and my stomach was in revolt; I regretted every sip of the oily booze they’d been serving. I glanced at the Crusher, walking slowly around the room; it was surprising, sometimes, how long you could hide in plain sight if you kept your head. I was dressed for the shadows, of course—I was a Gunner, we spent half our lives standing in shadowed corners, waiting for someone to walk in through the door and be killed—and the Crusher was bored and obviously not too bright; I figured I could squat there in the dusty shadow of the wall until next week and not be noticed. But I doubted it would just be the Crusher and me for much longer. The Pigs were going to note they hadn’t scooped up anyone that looked like me soon enough, and while perhaps not very surprised at this discovery they’d at least do a final sweep of the area before giving up. I had to get out in the next few minutes, while my dimwitted colleagues continued to provide distraction and sound cover.

  I considered. I couldn’t just toss a chunk of concrete and distract Lady Hulk; with the hollow punching noise of rounds denting metal, the angry shouts and the continuing roar of the hover, she probably wouldn’t hear it. I squatted, listening for a second or two, chewing on it, and the bullets gave me a sudden inspiration. I tightened my grip on my Roon and considered Lady Hulk and the noise outside. I thought it very probable that no one outside would notice one more shot fired, and Lady Hulk offered a lot of nonlethal targets on her huge, rippling body. I didn’t want to kill her; she was just doing her job. But she was standing between me and the rest of my miserable life, so she was going to have to take a bullet. I tracked her as subtly as I could as she paced, waited for a fresh volley of fire outside, and popped her in one shoulder. She went over like a wet sack and I launched myself at the rathole in the floor.

  I hoped fervently that there wasn’t a lever or catch that had to be manipulated before the hole would open for you. This was the life: one goddamn thing after another. I hadn’t had a peaceful evening in fucking years; it was always this constant race from one emergency to another. Thinking that one more emergency might just kill me, I threw myself bodily at the floor just as two gunshots, sounding ridiculously small and harmless—pop! pop!—burped behind me.

  I didn’t have time to think about my bad luck—though bad wasn’t even the right word, they’d have to invent a whole new fucking language to describe my luck. The floor split downward as I hit the spot, and I fell into empty space. A split second of panic free fall, and I hit the ground beneath hard, my teeth rattling in my head, my gun knocked from my hand.

  My whole body vibrated, a humming sensation. One jittery heartbeat, two jittery heartbeats, I just lay staring up, my body made of stone and damn, it would be nice to just fall asleep, just fuck it all and close my eyes. Take a rest for the first time since I’d been five, the first time since Unification, when the world was separate nations instead of just the System.

  A surging wave of panic swept it all away, and my body came back online screaming with pain and still vibrating. I sat up and spun around the dark space, searching with shaking hands for my Roon, my fingers closing around it just as the rathole above me flipped downward again, the weakened light of the hover’s searchlights lighting me up. I didn’t pause to think or aim, I just raised the gun and spat three shots upward. The rathole snapped closed again and I spun and forced myself into a staggering, unhappy sprint down a narrow man-made tunnel. I wasn’t in the sewers, which had long been the underground highway for the criminals of Old New York. This was a tunnel built specifically as the escape route for this place. Good work, too, a tight fit but the air felt dry and sealed, the stone floor solid beneath my feet. I’d been in escape tunnels that had felt ready to come down on my head if I sneezed, so I appreciated a competent job.

  I tried to pick up my pace. I figured I had an SSF officer on my trail, and the System Pigs weren’t like the Crushers they commanded—they weren’t easily scared and they weren’t stupid. I wasn’t going to have much of a lead. As I skidded around the first turn, I heard the rathole slap open again, and the heavy thud of someone dropping down onto the floor. The SSF officer, of course, would not have fallen like a sack of shit onto the floor and been stunned for a count of three. He’d undoubtedly landed gracefully on his feet, gun held firmly in one hand. The System Pigs annoyed me with their smirking perfection: They pushed people like me around, shook us down—it would be okay if they were really trying to enforce the law, but the SSF officers were just as bad as us—worse; they had that badge, and a budget behind them, which meant no one short of Internal Affairs could slow them down.

  I knew what was waiting for me if this one caught me: a bullet in the head. There was no due process with them, no rules of
law. They could do whatever they liked, so they did. The only question was, would I get a ridiculous speech before the bullet in the head, or not?

  I kept running.

  The tunnel wasn’t very long, of course. After about fifty feet more of twisting and turning, I stumbled to a halt just before a blank wall of earth. I looked up, and there, a few feet above me, was the ass end of a ladder bolted in place. Internally, I swore; there had probably been something nice and convenient to boost up on—an old stool, something—that the clever bastards who’d built the place had pulled up after them just in case they were pursued. For a second I stood there hating them with all I had, and then there was a bellow from behind me in the tunnel.

  “You made me run!” the System Pig shouted. “I’m going to eat your fucking kidneys, asshole, for making me run.”

  Thinking that my day was improving at a record rate, I stuffed my gun into my pocket, gathered everything I had left, and leaped for the ladder, catching the bottom rung with the tips of one hand’s fingers. Grunting through clenched teeth, I pulled until I could get my other hand onto the rung, and then reached for the next, legs dangling and breath whistling in and out of my nose. Arms trembling, I pulled one more time and managed to get one foot onto the bottom rung, pulling the rest of myself up just as two bullets smacked into the wall where I’d just been hanging.

  “Motherfucker,” I heard the SSF officer hiss. I didn’t look back, I just kept pulling for my life. The only thing worse than being shot in the back by a System Pig would be getting shot in the ass.

  I emerged, panting and sweating, into a damp-feeling space, a basement a block away, just outside the perimeter the cops had set up. It was dark, so dark I was blinded for a moment before dim shadows made themselves apparent. I didn’t stop to enjoy the view, I crawled out of the hole and pushed myself up, spinning fast to get a look around. I had no idea where I was, but the cop was right behind me and I didn’t have time to think up something brilliant. I oriented, squinting, and shot twice at the opening in the floor just to discourage him, and then spun around again, blinking dust and darkness out of my eyes. There were windows, high up and impossible to reach, and vaguely I discerned a stairway leading upward. Everything else was dark, mysterious. I started for the stairs, but at the bottom I paused—where was I running to? What was up there? I’d lived this long because I wasn’t some asshole running around blazing away, being stupid. If I was going to live another day I had to hold on to that.