The Eternal Prison (26 page)

 

“Mr. Rusbridge?” I shouted back.

 

“I’m dying, I think. I am dying.”

 

“You’re not going to die, Mr. Rusbridge. It’s a flesh wound. You’ll bleed for hours and be in a lot of pain. Trust me. I’m a professional.”

 

“No, I can feel it. I’m dying.”

 

“You’re in shock. Although we’re both probably going to be dead in a few minutes, so let’s not spend our last moments of brotherhood and friendship arguing, eh?”

 

“I’m dying.”

 

Aside from the crazy Gunner, none of the soldiers had moved. “Okay, Guy, fine. You’re dead. Sorry to have killed you.”

 

“Listen to me: there is a boat.”

 

I blinked. “A
boat?
”

 

“In Galveston. That is in Texas, Mr. Cates. Speak to a woman named Merris. You’ll need access to my files —”

 

I looked back at our comrades-in-arms, listening to Guy’s rasping voice with half an ear. It was always amazing what people told you when they thought they were going to die.

 

I considered my options, which were clarifyingly few. I could not, I assumed, allow the hover to land where it was intended to land. Guy and I stood out, that was clear, so any hope of melting into the fringes and disappearing was out. The cockpit looked pretty secure; I’d been in enough hovers to judge a hatch and this one looked to be magnetically sealed and most probably failsafe—the pilots would starve to death in there before I managed to get it open. So somehow hijacking the hover was impossible, assuming I could manage to subdue seven injured soldiers.

 

I ran my eyes over them again, licking my lips. Their absolute stillness while they bled, while tendons and shattered bones poked out of their uniforms was fucking terrifying. Even System Pigs screamed when you tore them up.

 

My eyes shifted to the bright red packs tied off behind them. I turned my head slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of that color dancing behind me and Guy, and looked back at the soldiers.

 

“Hey, Ginger,” I said. “If my friend and I wanted to get off before our final destination, would you have a problem with that?”

 

He stared at me, moving his jaw a little from side to side. “Only if you try to take one of those parachutes with you,” he shouted effortlessly. “Those are property of the System of Federated Nations Army. Otherwise, be my guest.”

 

A funny one. I gripped the shredder and wondered. For all I knew they were filled with Augments—muscle layers, nerve accelerators, tendon replacements. All apparently legal in the army. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to cut all seven down before one or two of them got up on me—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that anyway. So far they’d done nothing to impede me.

 

I considered him, all of them. Where in the world did the Joint Council Undersecretaries get an army in such a short time, men and women willing to have Augmenting procedures and be thrown into a war with the SSF? Desperate folks, I figured. The one resource the System was actually making more of. Food was scarce, energy getting thin, and factories went under constantly—but desperate folks were on an upswing.

 

“How much,” I shouted, “would two of those parachutes cost?”

 

The kid squinted at me, the first involuntary reaction I’d gotten out of any of them, and I got optimistic. I had yen. I was still sick with yen. Marin had paid me for the Squalor job, and I’d promptly moved that yen from the original account and spread it across a dozen hidden places, nooks and crannies of the System. Even with the economy in free fall I was fucking rich. Why not make some use of it?

 

… need a fucking wheelbarrow for all the yen

 

… I should never have paid you, Cates.

 

… I’m starving starving STARVING

 

The soldiers didn’t look at each other, but the kid’s eyes started to move a little, crazy, tiny little circles, and I realized they were talking to each other. Mentally. Not Spooks, though; they didn’t have the look. I glanced at the rugged-looking black cable popping out of his neck and running to the cowl and figured there was an Augment there, too—something I’d never heard of.

 

“Seventy million,” the kid said, face blank and expressionless. “And you can jump. One forty,” he added with just the slightest hint of a smile, “and I’ll order Gordy here
not
to shoot you out of the sky when you do.”

 

“Done,” I said immediately and took my hands off my shredder as a sign of good faith.

 

The kid nodded and raised his hand to his face, spit into his palm, and held it out toward me. Fucking hillbilly. I did the same and we shook, and then he produced a battered and scorched credit dongle. It looked old.

 

“Can you scan a print?” I said. “I don’t have a piece on me.”

 

“Sorry, hoss,” the kid said, his face snapping back into cold, tight expressionlessness.

 

“Cates,” Guy said, surging up and grabbing my arm. “Here, give it to me.”

 

I looked at Guy as he slid his cowl up. He didn’t look good, clinging to me like it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. He was gray and thin, looking unhappy and stretched. “What?”

 

“Give me the dongle,” he shouted.

 

“The man said
one hundred forty million
,” I shouted back.

 

He pulled himself up by my arm into a sitting position. “Give me the fucking thing!” he hissed, panting, sweat pouring off his face.

 

I looked at the kid and shrugged my eyebrows. The soldier handed it over and I held it up for Guy, who stretched out a shaking hand toward it, thumb out. After a moment, the dongle lit up green, and I blinked, startled.

 

“Subdermal chip,” Guy panted, sinking back onto the floor of the hover. “Oh, fucking fuck me.”

 

“You have a hundred forty million yen?”

 

The soldier leaned forward and snatched the dongle back from me before Guy could gather himself to respond. He glanced at it and secreted it in his uniform. “Gordy,” he shouted, looking at me. “Stand down, brother.”

 

Immediately the crazy asshole on the big gun let go and stepped back from it. He was still grinning like a fucking loon.

 

The kid glanced at him and then back at us. “All yours.”

 

I nodded and stood up, tearing two of the red packs off the wall. They hooked right into the uniforms elegantly, the materials almost connecting themselves, almost seeming to move beneath my hands as I worked the metal clips. I rolled Guy over onto his belly, ignoring his screams, and attached his. Then I looked back at the calm, quiet line of soldiers—one of the girls had lost consciousness and might have been dead.

 

“Make a hole?”

 

For a second I thought I was going to get charged an extra thousand yen for this, but then the kid nodded and they all shifted a little to their side, opening up a narrow space. I left the shredder where it was, made sure I still had the automatic that had come with the uniform, and knelt down to pick up Guy, holding him in my arms and staggering for the bay door, wind pushing back at me, my body aching and protesting every inch. I stood for a moment at the edge. The ground below was blurry and indistinct; I had no idea where we were. Feeling certain that every extra second spent on the hover would be regretted, I closed my eyes and made sure I had a good grip on Guy, who was dead weight on me. I thought it best if I never met soldiers again.

 

Mr. Cates,
Marin whispered,
I know I am legion and all that, but I’d much prefer
another
of me die.

 

“I’ll try to arrange it as soon as possible,” I muttered, and stepped off into the air.

 

 

 

 

XXII

EVEN THE HUMAN ONES

 

 

 

 

“Mr. Rusbridge?”

 

I blinked, wondering if I’d been talking again, accidentally responding to the few dozen voices that still clung, tenacious, to my brain. Most of them had faded, but a few lingered and three—Salgado, Marin, and Dennis Squalor—had firmed up and become my own personal ghosts. Marin theorized that because I’d known the three of them, in some sense, I’d subconsciously concentrated on them and kept them “alive” while the rest were being dismantled, brain cells being cleaned out and reused for more important things, like drinking and trying not to throw up simultaneously.

 

Kept alive?
Marin whispered archly.
I’d hate to think we have to rely on your
concentration skills
for that.

 

Shaking my head, I tried to focus. The dented and rusted metal cup of—well, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, though it was harsh stuff and I was pissing drunk after two of them—seemed to float just above the rotten, damp wood of the bar, up and down, up and down. Behind the bar was Bheka, tall, skin so brown it was almost black, skinny as hell and always grinning. Bheka was leaning on the bar with his arms spread wide, squinting at me with a worried expression.

 

“You okay, Mr. Rusbridge?”

 

I slipped one hand into my coat pocket, finding my lucky charm. The charm was perpetually damp and cold, slick and slimy. I’d paid some yen to a twitchy geneticist to have it preserved, but it still felt like it was rotting.

 

Savage,
Squalor hissed.

 

Pay him no mind, Avery.
Salgado sighed.
Being in Mr. Squalor’s bad graces puts you in my
good
ones.

 

I pushed them all aside, something I was getting better at as the number of voices dropped. “No,” I answered, truthfully enough.

 

The bar was above the waterline, and that was about all you could say for it. It floated on the edges of the city, softly rising and falling, everything sliding first this way and then the other, nothing firm, nothing solid. I hated it. I hated it more than anything I’d ever hated before in my life. Which was saying something since I’d recently spent over six weeks hating a tub of roaches named
The Goose,
an ancient salvaged hull more rust than metal refitted with whatever its crew—a group of dour Scandinavians who claimed to speak no English and who seemed to resent my presence despite my yen—had been able to steal. Which wasn’t much.

 

Bheka’s eyes flicked over my shoulder as someone walked in behind me, and I spun, hand closing over the gun in my pocket. The newcomer was a short, thin man obscured by layers of oiled coat and a huge hood, water running off him in sheets as he inspected the damp seats. I turned back and Bheka looked back at me.

 

“Need something, Mr. Rusbridge?”

 

I shook my head and Bheka moved away, disappearing through a tiny door behind the bar, and I forced myself to raise up the cup and take a deep drink of the horrible liquor, sweet like fruit juice but slimy and bitter. My stomach clenched up in protest; I didn’t want to think too hard about what it was or how it was made.

 

I kept one hand in my pocket, on my gun.

 

Savage,
Squalor whispered.

 

I heard the new customer behind me get up and slosh out of the bar, which was hitched up to a long, ramshackle pier made of rotting wood and rusted brackets, the whole thing moaning and shuddering under you as you walked. The thing went on forever, encircling what was left of the city and occasionally sending a spur of rotted wood meandering inward to connect up with some submerged building or other permanent-temporary piece of floating real estate. I’d been in Venice about half an hour, and I hated it already.

 

I was alone in the place, and liked it that way. Trying to breathe through my mouth to suppress my sense of taste, I took another gulp of my drink.

 

Revenge, I would have told myself a few years ago, didn’t pay well. Not worth it. Here I was a few months in trying to track down Michaleen Garda, and all I had to show for it was a fever, feet that hadn’t been dry in weeks.

 

The door opened behind me again, and I spun, bringing the gun up, clicking back the hammer. It was still wrapped in tough, transparent plastic, protected from the endless damp.

 

The man standing in the doorway looked local, based on the expensive and neat-looking rain gear he was wearing. He looked fucking dandy, with a neatly trimmed beard and nice, white teeth, clean fingernails held up for my inspection.

 

“Ah! You must be Mr. Rusbridge, no?” he said, inclining his head a little. He’d been met with guns before; he was careful to keep his hands up and in clear view no matter what else he did, and he didn’t seem at all insulted by its presence. “Welcome to
Venezia,
Mr. Rusbridge. It is good to finally meet you face-to-face after so many years of correspondence.”

 

“Mr. Faliero?”

 

“Of course!” He looked at his hands. “May I?”

 

I nodded, stuffing my gun back into its pocket. “Sure. Buy you a drink?”

 

Faliero dropped his hands, water streaming down his sleeves onto the floor, and made his face into a cheerful mask of horror. “In here? Mr. Rusbridge! Please be friendly.” He let his square face shift back into a smile—a loose, easygoing face, plump, his skin shining with something beyond health, his beard expertly groomed. The mustache was bushy and had devoured his upper lip, making it seem like he spoke without opening his mouth. “I’d like to introduce my bodyguard, Horatio.”