Escapology (39 page)

There’re forty-five of us, over one hundred of them. I’ve been careful, left as minimal a trail as I can, but he’ll be onto the breach before we get to him. He’ll be ready. I’m staying down in the building control-centre with Raid, we have some surprises planned. Be prepared. You’ll know when to strike, and you’ll need these. Okay?

His hands are warm. Feeling them on hers she understands just how cold she’s been without them. Without him. Too late now to change that, but she can show him how much she trusts him.

Okay.

He smiles, lets go of her hands and coasts the bike away, back toward the control building nestled in the trees behind the plaza. Takes half of her with him, as he always has. How long is it she’s been denying that? Too long. Pulling the goggles onto her head, she nods to Vivid and they enter the building, make their way to the shoots. This will be the first time Amiga’s ever taken them. Kinda fitting when this is the last time she’s ever coming here.

When Amiga and Vivid reach Twist’s house, gunfire is already raging between the Hornets and Twist’s troops. Taking shelter behind the rock garden to join the gunfight, Amiga IMs Vivid.

I need to get inside. Deuce has something planned. You guys stay out here. Reckon he’s going to light the competition.

Vivid nods.
Sounds like Deuce.
She pauses, then sucks in her top lip before blurting abruptly,
He’s single, y’know. Broke up with Fen Maa weeks ago.

Amiga stops firing. Stares.

“What?”

Vivid’s eyes shoot wide.

“Hey, IM, bitch,” she mutters, and adds,
Just thought you should know, because fuck knows he’s not going to get around to telling you. You guys make stubborn look downright cooperative.

Well shit. There’s a thing Amiga does not know what to do with. Packing it away for the moment, deep down, where it can’t affect the decisions she makes today, Amiga continues firing, sticking to her gun for now rather than the crossbow and waiting for whatever it is Deuce and Raid have planned. It’s taking a long time.

Minutes go by. Losses begin to pile up on both sides. Most on Twist’s, but he’s got more to lose. Six minutes passes like an hour. Two more Hornets go down, no time to check whether injured or dead, six more of Twist’s troops. Then the building hums all over. And the lights go out.

Snapping the goggles over her eyes, Amiga hits night vision and heads for the house, skirting around the troops hunkered in the garden. Geo’s at the front door, his entire bulk taking it up. Damn. She has no desire to kill him, he’s no fighter. But where’s choice when you need it?

Lifting her wrist, Amiga takes him out quick with a dart to the head. She jumps lightly over his body and runs through to the back room, toward three heat signatures, the only ones in the house. Outside, the lights come back up like Christmas. Every roof light pointed at Twist’s, lighting the competition, and judging by the gunfire, the shouts cut off midway, the Hornets are already taking them out.

There’ll be no lights in here. No sudden exposure and blinding. Surprise is the only weapon available, and Amiga uses it well, firing her crossbow several times into Twist’s heat signature as she enters the back room. He goes down hard, vibrating the wooden floor, and the Guns are on her before she can react, swords cutting at her arms, her torso.

They get in several good slices before she spins out of their way, firing as she goes. Her bolts take out the knees of one, rattle across the torso of the other and they hit the floor, one after the other; all of it in absolute silence.

Seeing her sister fall, Gun Two’s mouth gapes in soundless horror. She scrambles across the floor, dragging her legs behind her. Grabs Gun One’s hand and starts making shapes with it, trying to speak, but her sister’s hand just falls open every time and Gun Two curls over it, her shoulders heaving.

Amiga’s shocked to find herself choking back tears. Not helpful. Gun Two won’t cry for long, she’ll get up and kill Amiga. Emotion won’t change that. Tomorrow she can feel all of this, feel as sick and tired and inhuman as she likes; today, right now, she hasn’t time. Amiga lifts the crossbow and takes out Gun Two with a clean shot to the head that makes her feel unclean.

Before Gun One stops breathing, Amiga’s checking herself over through blurring eyes. The cut in her side is deepest, her fingers slipping into slick flesh, sending a shot of pain darting between belly and knees. Warm blood soaks her shirt, seeps down her trousers. Weigh it up, Amiga. How much more blood can you lose? Not much. Holding her side with her injured arm she goes to make sure Twist is down for good. He’s lying face to the floor. Wincing, she shoves him back over with her foot. Finds herself staring at a stranger.

“What?”

The light comes on, blinding her. Swearing, she flings off the goggles.

From behind her, Twist says, “Soft as well as stupid. Tears for my Guns? Really? They’re tools. Like you were.”

Amiga daren’t turn. Can’t bear to witness the look on his face. And here she thought collective blood loss was her biggest obstacle to remaining alive. Wow, how wrong can you be? She hears him cocking his gun, deliberately slow. He’s going to enjoy this.

“I’m not going to enjoy this.” Liar. “It’s too fucking easy. I’m not a fan of easy. It feels like cheating.”

As he talks, Amiga closes her eyes and turns the crossbow, careful not to give away movement. This might kill her, it might not. Who cares? Either way she’s pretty much a goner. Unlike Twist, she doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t speak, she just pulls the fucking trigger as many times as she can before her hand stops working. It’s painless going in, hurts like hell on the way out, but she’s smiling as she hears the thuds of bolts striking flesh. Hears Twist’s “
Oh
” of surprise. They fall together, hit the floor like a heartbeat, bah-
dump
. Last thing she thinks about before the darkness comes is what Vivid said about Deuce.

Funny how late is always too late.

Out of the station elevator, Shock leads the pirates to the shoot he cracked with Puss, a dull grey capsule almost too small to hold them all. It rises smoothly, eating up the floors to reach the 498th in minutes and without that peculiar belly sensation of too-fast movement. Shock turns to Petrie before the doors open.

“I’ve isolated control from the mainframe,” he murmurs. “But that’s no guarantee they won’t wrestle it back. Do not rely on this as an escape route once they’re alerted to our presence.”

Petrie nods tersely. “That’s a given.”

They burst from the shoot in small groups, scattering to cover and ready to fire, but no one’s there. The whole stone terrace, and the long atrium beyond, studded with islands of trees and ornate pots, drowns in oppressive, ringing silence. None of the usual piped music is playing, and the mechanical birds found in these wealthy buildings are either deactivated or gone. The unexpected emptiness has every alarm in Shock’s slow-to-react skull blaring.

“Too fuckin’ quiet,” Petrie says, gesturing his teams out ahead to the right and left of the terrace, close to the walls. “Don’t think we’re here first.” Keeping Shock just behind him, he moves to the left, asking over his shoulder, “These Harmonys, we’ve heard rumours, but they really that crazy?”

“Oh yeah. Completely off the rez.”

“Fuck.”

“You got that right.”

Petrie flashes a hand signal and everyone peels out in swift formation into the atrium, using the islands of trees as cover. It’d be perfect if their footsteps didn’t ring on the polished stone floor, giving away their position. Still, gunfire takes them off guard, crude in the silence, coming from troops concealed behind the islands up ahead.

The heavy hail of bullets penetrates the foliage with ease, laying out seven of their fifty-strong party in under ten seconds, spattering white stone and bright foliage in Rorschach patterns of blood and gore. Petrie barks out an order to take deeper cover and begins to return fire, dragging Shock behind one of the bulbous plant pots against the wall.

Careening in behind Petrie’s broad back, Shock succumbs to dizziness. His head cramps. Pulses like a flash migraine. Seems to disintegrate at the core, becoming heavy, molten—threatening eruption. His body responds with fever, a cold sweat sluicing his skin. He was expecting this, but not so soon. Surely it’s too soon, no matter how dire Volk’s prognosis was?

He looks for Volk. She’s on the other side of the corridor, automatic weapon in hand and laying down fire. If he calls her, they’ll know where to shoot. He needs Breaker. Right now. Puss takes the initiative, tapping in to the building’s systems and scouting this floor and the two above, looking for anything that feels like Breaker’s signal. Finds faint traces in a penthouse on the floor above.

Shock leans in close to Petrie. Murmurs, “I need to go. My drive’s not going to hold. Puss found Breaker on the floor above. Going to backtrack and make my way there.”

“Go. We’ll keep them occupied.”

Puss clinging to his torso as he clings to the wall, Shock retreats to the terraced area, closing his eyes to scoot around each pot on the way, sure a stray bullet will end him before Emblem does, almost welcoming the idea. He calls the shoot. Could be locked by now, could be he’s stuck here, but it isn’t and he’s not. He steps in, unsteady on his feet and the shoot moves off, gunfire fading to a distant patter like rain. Soothing. He misses it when it fades away altogether, leaving him alone in silence. Puss tightens her grip on his chest.

We’ll be okay.

I hope so
, he says, but he remains unconvinced. Puss is reliant upon him, clever as she is, and he’s not strong. He’s never been strong. He has no idea how he’s still standing. Odds were against it from day one.

There’s no terraced area on the 499th floor, only a large, echoing lobby with a single feature. A biome tree, leafless and massive, its roots and branches contained beneath glass and stretching all the way out to the walls. There’s something melancholy about it, stranded up here so far from earth and sunlight, so far from where it belongs. It shouldn’t be alive, trapped in all this steel and glass. That it is feels like an affront.

The centre of the trunk is hollowed out into a walkway, and through it Shock sees the short, cul-de-sac corridor containing the staff entrances to each penthouse, double doors with a scan pad for the passkey. The penthouse with traces of Breaker’s signal lies to the left, but he has no passkey to get in. Puss, who’s been scanning them, puts his mind at ease.

They’re not on the mainframe.

Really?

Jumping into her scan, he offers fleeting thanks to the code jockeys responsible. Whoever they were, they’ve assumed that with all the layers of Heights VA surrounding them the software and systems for these doors need not be overly complex. They’re not stupid simple, but Shock and Puss together are a formidable force. It takes minutes for them to smash past, and then they’re in, stepping from polished stone to that echoing white wood floor he remembers from his meeting with Breaker. He tries not to give in to relief. There are only traces here; Breaker himself may be long gone.

Taking the gun from his pocket, Shock closes the door behind him, soft as he can. Fuck but he loathes firearms. He knows the mechanics of shooting, but he’s a crap shot. Seems hacking and coding skills requiring excellent hand/eye coord don’t necessarily translate IRL. His don’t anyway. Puss connects to his jack, and they scan the penthouse for body heat. Find one faint signature in the foremost room, the one he recalls from his meeting with Breaker, with the window curved around the outside edge. The lounge. Someone, possibly Breaker, is sat on one of the large white sofas. Such a thin sliver of heat. Breaker’s either not much bigger than Shock, or he’s dying and losing body heat fast.

“Fuck.”

Shock makes his way through the enormous penthouse as fast as he can. Not fast at all considering the state of him. He’s physically wrecked, hurting in every cell, and then there’s Emblem, on the verge of implosion. He can feel it moving in there. Rolling from side to side like mercury in a jar, bringing a sensation of liquid sickness to his gut that yaws dizzily with every movement. He’s staggering by the time he reaches the lounge. Making his way to the sofa, he sees the back of Breaker’s head. Statue-still. Gingerly, he reaches out and pokes his shoulder with the gun.

“Breaker?”

The slight figure damn near elevates out of the sofa, reversing at speed into the window, hands raised, eyes so wide the pupils look like islands in the white. Shock’s first thought, after “Fuck, I hope the window holds” is “
Scarecrow
”. Breaker’s taller than Shock, though not by much, and skeletally thin.

Splayed against the window he appears somehow pinched in, as if cringing, and far too tense, his entire frame shaking so hard he looks like he might fly apart. His face is all bones, the eyes already huge within that hollowed wasteland. Oddly, the clothes are all wrong. Corp gear. Grubby and threadbare from what looks like continuous wear, but expensive. Haute couture even.

“Breaker?” Shock asks again, more gently.

The hollowed head shakes frantically.

“Lakatos. Josef.” His voice is cracked. Trembling. “You can’t be here. You shouldn’t. Why are you here? He promised me he’d keep you away.”

This
is Josef Lakatos?
This
is the owner of Fulcrum? Somehow Shock had imagined him taller, more like a movie villain, Dracula in a hundred-thousand-flim suit maybe. At least the clothes make sense now, but nothing else adds up. What’s with the state of him? And why is he
here
? Word was Kamilla moved to one of the wealthier hubs decades ago. She certainly had no need to stay, Fulcrum could be run from anywhere. Shock would love answers, really, but Emblem won’t wait for that and Breaker is not in this room. Shock and Puss scan again, briefly, for Breaker’s signal. Still there. Faint, fading traces of it. They aren’t anywhere else. He has to be here.

“Where the fuck is Breaker?” Shock demands, too scared to be kind, despite Josef’s horrific, enervated state. “He was here. I know he was.”