Ecko Rising (2 page)

Fuller snorted. “World’ll be a better place if you ask me.” He nodded at the last of the walking workers. “Look at these poor bastards –”

“Not the fuckin’ point!” Over their aural link, Lugan went on,
This nutter must be wanted by every security agency in – !

A cloaked figure dropped into the light.

He was small, slight, as strong as coiled steel wire. His skin and cloak were dappled a shadowy, shifting blue-grey. As he put back his cowl with one thin hand, Fuller gasped, Lugan swore softly. Neither man was a stranger to cybernetic enhancement, but they had never seen anything like this.

This couldn’t be human.

The little man’s face was savage, sharp cheeked and gleeful. His skin was the same dark mottle – it seemed to be actually part of his flesh. Across it slashed a nightmare sneer – a black-lipped, black-toothed grin. But his
eyes
...

Black, blacker than pits, featureless and soulless, too large for his thin face. They were inhuman, alien – reminiscent of too many horror movies. Somewhere in their depths, there was the cold, blue glitter of an optical scan.

Even as the men stared, the skin-mottle was changing. Seeping, spreading. In a moment, it had flowed to the greys and reds of the surrounding buildings, the blue flicker of the distant laser show. Camouflaged perfectly against his background, the little man was almost impossible to see. Belatedly, Lugan tried his ocular heatseeker, tried to see weaponry and cybernetics; somehow he was not surprised when the man had no visible body temperature.

“You’re the ‘Ecko’,” Fuller said.

“The ‘G’ is silent.” The sprite grin was pure malice. He was a flicker, a fragment of nightmare; his empty black eyes as cold as blades. There was no mercy in his smile. “Last night... was a little ‘illustration’ –”

“You lookin’ for attention?” Lugan said. “Or you lookin’ for bidders?”

The face turned from Lugan to Fuller and back.

“Maybe I’m lookin’ for asylum.”

“No shit.” Lugan said.

“You’re killin’ me. Look, you’re kinda infamous round here – most bad guys know to stay outta your face. Take me in – turn me in. I’m the fuckin’ phantom fireworker and y’got me cold – whatcha gonna do?”

Fuller? Profile?
Lugan said.

Tamarlaine Benjamin Gabriel, aka the ‘Ecko’. Age: 32. Address: no fixed abode; suspected tunnel rat, Southwark area. No smartcard on record, no PIN. Criminal record: street-kid stuff; nothing after age 17. Collator says that, as of 19:00 hours, no one is yet wanted in connection with last night’s explosion.

But Bob fuckin’ Pilgrim, for gawdsakes!
Lugan said.

Tell the Boss we’ve got Pilgrim’s nemesis – it’s a major blow to them, Lugan, big kudos.

Big risk, y’mean. If ’e gets found...

He’s just the ‘Echo’. He’s got no criminal record to speak of – he doesn’t get found!

Unless he wants to be?

Self-evident.
Fuller glanced at his commander and shrugged.

Lugan pulled out a dog-end. He stuck it between his lips, paused for a moment and spat it out again. From somewhere across the river, the laser show danced on the glowering clouds.

It began to rain, drops of fat, filthy water.

“All right, all right, I’ll speak to the Boss,” Lugan said. “You, us, here, same time, tomorrow. And gimme back my lighter!”

Ecko tilted his head, his attention flicked from one man to the other and his black grin remained. “Do your research, guys. Then here. Tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us to come alone? No tricks?” Fuller asked.

With a snort, Ecko slid his hood back into place. “You try whatever you like.” He took a pace away, two; the chrome glint of Lugan’s lighter held in his hand. “But I’m keepin’ your kit – you get it back if you play nice.” He flicked a flame, like a farewell.

As Lugan blinked to clear the rain from his eyes, the little man was gone – faded into the London night until only the fire remained.

Just an echo.

PART 1:
_IMPACT

1: TO BE A PILGRIM

                    
THE BIKE LODGE AND THE BOSS’S OFFICE, LONDON

Through the single grubby window in the Bike Lodge office, the sky was a thunderous black. It was still early spring, but the London weather was close and stifling, and it was making Lugan tetchy.

On the old couch, Fuller had long since fallen asleep. Still in his habitual battered suit, he was curled round his laptop as if he couldn’t bear to let it go. He was snoring, gently and sweetly, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Both men had been working through the night, systematically digging for obscure information, but for all their spade work, they were no closer to realising a decision. Ecko had been with them for three months, his probation was nearing its end, and Lugan still didn’t know which way he was going to jump. The little bugger was invaluable, had skills that surpassed the Boss herself, but he was about as reliable as a... Oh for fuck’s sake, Lugan was getting too tired for creativity.

Wincing, the cell commander took his glasses off, laid them on the desktop and then tipped his chair back to stretch the kinks from his shoulders. Tendons crunched, and he swore.

Bloody Pilgrim
, Lugan thought,
all the tricks they’ve pulled in the last ten years, all the bullshit they’ve promised, the new fuckin’ world they’ve built, they could at least have done something about my vision, about the old road wounds that still gimme gyp in the cold.

Nah. Fuckers. We know what their priorities’ve been...

Searching his pockets for a dog-end, he slammed the chair back onto all fours and Fuller started awake, blinking.

“What? What? What’s the time?”

“Half one?” Lugan patted another pocket. “An’ I ain’t no closer, mate. If I’m gonna make the Boss listen, I need more than old-school biker loyalty and all that bollocks – I need
facts.
” He patted the pocket again. Stood up. Patted the pockets in his jeans. Turned to his battered leather, hung on the back of the chair, and patted the pockets in that, too.

He’d been working sixteen hours, and he was
not
in the mood for this.

“On the other ’and, I could just let her shoot the little bastard.” Sending the old desk scraping backwards with a hefty shove, Lugan slammed the office door open and bellowed, “Ecko? Ecko! Bring me back my fucking lighter or I’ll wring your fucking
neck
!”

Fuller groaned and sat up.

Outside the office door, the big, open floor of the Bike Lodge was silent, the roller door shut and locked down. Metal shelving and skeletal frames made odd shadows on the oil stains, the current chop-job watched them from its one lidless and lightless eye.

Half expecting Ecko’s characteristic cackle to come from somewhere in the ceiling, or from down among the bikes themselves, Lugan was disconcerted to find the shop as quiet as the proverbial grave. Over his shoulder, he said, “Get the kettle on, willya?”

And the now-familiar voice in his ear said, “Boo.”

In no mood for it, Lugan spun, scowling.

“
Will
you fucking stop doing that?”

Ecko was standing directly behind him, his skin and cloak reacting to the overspill of light from the office. Lugan had no idea how he’d got there or where he’d come from, and his sense of humour was struggling. He’d been all night trying to find a concrete reason to keep this little bugger, to add him to the Boss’s tightly run cell network, and right now, Ecko’s pranks were a temptation to just tie a bike frame to his ankles and chuck him in the Thames.

Lugan said, “Gimme my lighter back.”

“Don’t have it.”

“It’s too early for this. Give me my lighter.”

“Don’t have it. Not this time. This time you lost it all on your ownsome.”

The commander drew a breath. “I’m warnin’ you –”

“I
said
, I don’t have it. An’ if you keep bein’ an asshole, you don’t get dinner.”

Motion pulled Lugan’s attention downwards. In Ecko’s hand, swathed in his stealth-cloak, was a crumpled brown bag. From it came the faint, curling scent of takeaway.

The smell made Lugan’s belly grumble, loud in the stillness. Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t s’pose you paid for that?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Ecko grinned like a fiend.

Unable to help himself, the cell commander chuckled, half in relief, half in exasperation. Ecko might be off-the-fucking-wall annoying, but what they’d do without him... Lugan didn’t want to finish the thought. Instead, he cuffed Ecko’s shoulder, made the smaller man wince. Ecko’s ability to get in and out of local businesses was frankly astonishing – hoverdrones, cameras, recorders – the little man might as well have been invisible.

One way and another, it was sodding handy.

And not just for free food.

“Well, what the fuck have I done with it, then?” His dog-end still between his lips, Lugan made one last search of his pockets and then shrugged and reached for the arc welder, behind him on a shelf.

He shielded the cigarette with his opposite hand and then swore round the thing as the arc nearly torched his beard.

Ecko cackled. “Addict.”

“Freak.”

The welder went back on the shelf with a bang.

“Serious for a minute?” Fuller’s voice came from the office. “My newsfeed’s just gone batshit. I think –”

From outside, there came the first wail of sirens.

* * *

Half two.

The lights in the Bike Lodge were off. Outside, it was quiet; the last yowl of siren was finally fading. Inside, the curry was roiling uncomfortably in Lugan’s belly, and he still hadn’t found his lighter.

Agitated, the cell commander was pacing.

In this new age of Pilgrim’s social tranquility, sirens were rare and disturbing things. Sirens for almost an hour could well mean the fucking apocalypse.

Bollocks.

Lugan spun on his boot heel and paced the other way. The various oil-stained papers tacked to the wall – ID numbers, serial markings, notes, addresses – fluttered in his wake as though trying to escape.

On the couch, Fuller had discarded the older laptop and was glued to his tiny, secure flatscreen, trying to track and identify the night’s events. Ecko was sat next to him like some sort of urban grotesque, hunched up with his knees almost into his chest.

Lugan had never seen him look this pensive.

And it made him angry.

“What the fuck did you do? I thought you went out after dinner! Tell me you got out clean and they didn’t follow your arse back ’ere?” The commander paced back, jabbing a stained and callused finger at Ecko as he did so. A dog-end was still clamped in the corner of his mouth and reflexively his hands kept going for the lighter that wasn’t there. “I got your future to fight for, mate, an’ you better not be takin’ the piss.”

Ecko snarled back at him, “I’m doin’ your job, for chrissakes. I went out after leads, on Pilgrim, on how to take them down. Better than sittin’ on my ass in here.”

“What I don’t want is the Met on my doorstep...”

“Please.” Ecko snorted. “They couldn’t find me with Sherlock Holmes and a bloodhound.”

That much was probably true. One advantage to the little fucker being so reckless – Ecko wasn’t afraid of much, and that made him honest.

Lugan spun again. “I ’ope you’re right, you little bastard, because if they do, I’ll slit your throat myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

“Chrissakes, I can’t watch my own throat.”

Fuller chuckled at their double act, smothered it.

For a moment, Lugan stopped pacing and glared at the pair of them as if he was the only sane man left in the city. Then he flung himself back in his chair, swore venomously, and picked up the now-cold mug of tea.

“What says Collator?” he said to Fuller. “You trackin’?”

“Still on radio silence,” Fuller answered. “For the moment, I got nothing.”

“Fuck.”

“Easy, Luge,” Fuller said. “If the Met knew anything, they’d be here with the tear gas by now. The chaos is calming down.” He glanced round at Ecko, the light from the little screen making his eyes glitter. “Luck is on your side, it seems. Again.”

“Luck, for chrissakes.” Ecko grinned back, like the Cheshire Cat’s evil twin. “Skill.”

“I swear, one of these days you’ll give me a fucking ’eart attack.” Lugan eyed the tea and thought better of it. He smacked the mug back on the table. “Now. Quit dodging the subject. If I’m gonna defend your arse to the Boss, I need to know what you did. And ’ow much of a mess you made.”

Ecko shrugged. “I went after the pharmacist, Grey.”

As Lugan opened his mouth to answer back, Ecko cut him off.

“C’mon, Lugan, we’ve done fuck all for months. D’you wanna do this, or what?”

“Grey’s the cook, not –”

“In fact,” Fuller commented, “Grey’s another major shareholder. When Pilgrim bought out the NHS in the early tweens, he was the orchestrator. It’s
his
utopia we’re living in.”

Ecko said, “See? Major bad guy. I found his Secret Lair.” He grinned. “So now we can go bust his ass.”

Lugan said nothing. On the desk in front of him was an old pub ashtray, half full of roll-up remnants. Carefully, he began to shred them and collect the remaining tobacco. It was a habit he’d picked up a decade or more before, while waiting on His Majesty, and he’d never quite given it up.

Ecko was bristling with anticipation, his obsidian-black eyes flickering with a faint, red light. His impatience was infectious, and Lugan could almost hear his thoughts,
C’mon, let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s...

“We can get Grey? You serious?” As the realisation sank home, Lugan was beginning to think that, aggravating or not, Ecko needed to stay on his team.

Like, big time.

Ecko’s grin spread. “You wanted leads. I know where’s he’s at. An’ we can fuckin’
get
him.” He was almost bouncing on the seat. “Well,
I
can.”