“I’ll live again, baby.”
“No, you won’t, not really.” Merovech sighed, fatigue and pity leeching the anger from him. “Just because, somewhere, a robot remembers you, it doesn’t mean that you, the real you, won’t be dead.”
Linton gave a dismissive flick of his fingers.
“You believe what you want to believe, man. But time’s running out, and I’ve got a message I need to pass on before I check out of
this
body, and into the
next
.”
Merovech rocked back on his heels.
“Come on then, spill it. What’s the message, and who’s it from? My mother?”
Linton grinned around his unlit cigarette.
“It’s from Doctor Nguyen.”
“Nguyen’s dead.”
“No, he ain’t.” The kid’s breathing became laboured. The sweat continued to roll off him. “Of course he ain’t. And he says to tell you, he’ll see you and your friends real soon.”
As he finished speaking, the colour drained from his face. He gave a grunt of pain and bent forward, as if punched in the gut. With a shaking hand, he took the cigarette from his mouth and spat blood and phlegm onto the deck. Then he sat back upright, wiped the drool from his lip, and looked around at the armed guards lining the walls of the lounge. Sweat poured down his face.
“Okay.” He waggled the cigarette defiantly. “Which one of you motherfuckers has a light?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
ZERO
S
PREAD-EAGLED IN THE
roaring darkness, Victoria fell towards the sea. She could feel the wind ripping at the flaps of material beneath her arms and between her legs. Air filled her cheeks, snatching away her breath, and buffeting her chest like the mane of a bucking horse.
The monkey was somewhere behind her, lost in the night. Far to her right, the orange lights of Torquay and Salcombe; to her left, Cherbourg and Guernsey; and ahead, on the wine-dark sea, the red and green running lights of the yacht ferrying guests and provisions to the
Maraldi.
The darkness made it hard to visually judge height and distance, but readouts chattered in her head as her gelware interfaced with real-time GPS positioning systems, counting down to the moment she’d have to open her ’chute. But with the yacht moving away from her at a fair clip, the only question on her mind was whether or not she’d have the height and speed to catch it before it moved out of range, and she found herself stuck in the cold waters of the Channel, miles from land.
Her chest muscles ached with the effort of keeping her arms rigid, but she knew the slightest twitch could alter her direction or angle of descent, so she kept them as steady as she could. She’d minimised Paul’s image, but could still see a thumbnail of him in her peripheral vision, both hands wrapped across his mouth as he watched the fall through her eyes. She tried to ignore him. If she screwed this up, she’d screw it up for both of them, and that would be that. But right now, she didn’t need additional pressure; she had enough to worry about.
Her goggles pushed against her face. She didn’t have a lot of altitude left. She’d have to pull her ripcord in the next thirty seconds.
The boat loomed larger and larger beneath her, a ghostly feathered wake churning from its stern.
Twenty seconds. The countdown spiralled. She could smell the brine.
“Pull the cord!” Paul yelled.
Fifteen.
Come on, come on.
With five seconds to spare, she zipped over the vessel, high above its twin masts. The yacht’s windows were lit. People were partying.
Zero.
She yanked the release, and the black silk canopy billowed from her backpack. The wind caught it and jerked her back, hard enough to snap her teeth shut. Bruised and winded, she dangled like a rag doll, legs and arms swinging loose.
“Get out of the harness
before
you hit the water,” Paul warned. “You don’t want to get tangled in the lines.”
For a second, she thought she caught sight of the second black ’chute: a movement against the stars. Then the sea seemed to rush at her, much too fast. She unclipped the front of her harness. Before she could shrug it off, her boots hit the swell and she plunged into water so cold she thought it would stop her heart.
The speed of her descent carried her down in a maelstrom of bubbles. Frantically, she thrashed her arms free from the harness and, lungs bursting, kicked upwards.
The surface seemed further than she’d expected. When her head broke through, her face hit the sodden underside of the parachute, which lay draped on the ocean like a woefully inadequate pool cover. She flailed at it.
“Find a seam,” Paul called as her fingers scrabbled for purchase on the sodden material. “Find a seam and follow it to the front of the ’chute. Don’t go sideways or you’ll get caught in the lines at either end.”
Sensing her panic, the gelware switched her into command mode. She felt time slow and stretch, and her fear evaporated. She was still trapped, but now it was simply a problem to be overcome rather than a cause for alarm.
Using her teeth, she pulled off a glove and ran her freezing fingers across the underside of the parachute until she found a row of stitching. Then, in accordance with Paul’s suggestion, she kicked her feet, following it. Moments later, she ducked under the edge of the material, and out into open air.
For a few breaths, she was content to bob with the rise and fall of the water. Then, she turned to face the approaching yacht.
It came at her like a knife through the waves, its sails cupping the wind. She struck out sideways, her movements hampered by her waterlogged clothes, her booted feet kicking ineffectually.
After a few moments of struggle, the boat caught up with her. The wave of froth at its bow shouldered her aside. The yacht was a dignified old wooden vessel, with two masts and a row of portholes just above the waterline. As it slid past, she lunged with all her strength. Cold fingers caught the rim of the nearest porthole, and the boat dragged her along with it, spray smashing up against her arms and chest.
So far, so good.
Now all she had to do was find a way to clamber up onto the deck, preferably without detection. She heaved, dragging herself forward by her fingertips. The sea sucked at the flap of material between her legs, reluctant to release her. She could barely feel her hands, and her strength had begun to ebb, dissipating into the water with the last of her body heat. One final pull. Her vision went red. Her pulse throbbed at her temples.
“Come on!” Paul urged. She strained until she felt the muscles in her arms would snap, but still the edge of the deck remained frustratingly beyond her reach.
She fell back, clinging to the porthole’s rim, defeat washing through her. The sea clawed at her legs with a thousand fingers, and she knew she couldn’t hold on.
“I can’t do it,” she cried.
In her eye, Paul had both hands on the top of his head, fingers digging into his peroxide hair.
“You can’t give up now.”
“It’s not. About. Giving. Up.” Each word was an effort, shouted into a wall of stinging, salty spray. “It’s about. Not. Being able. To. Fucking. Reach.”
Her fingers were beginning to work loose, losing purchase on the wet steel frame. Her forearms were solid ropes of pain.
“Hold on, Vicky.”
“I can’t!”
To let go would be to drown. She wouldn’t have the strength to keep herself afloat against the weight of her sodden flight suit. It would be a suffocating and unpleasant way to die, but at least it would be relatively quick, and the gelware would be there to ease her through it on a wave of painkillers. And as for Paul, she could turn him off at any time. Perhaps that would be the kindest thing: to grant him instant, unknowing oblivion, and spare him her final moments.
Teeth clenched, she brought up the mental menu options to end his simulation.
“Sorry, Paul.” She’d execute the command as her fingers slipped from the porthole rim. Already, her left hand had worked almost completely loose, and now clung on by fingertips alone. When it slipped, the jerk would be enough to pull her right hand free as well.
“No,” Paul cried, “wait!”
“Can’t.”
She could hear music from the party inside the ship: teeny-boppers cooing Franglais slang over a bubblegum Euro-trance beat. Millimetre by millimetre, her fingertips scraped toward the rim. These were the final seconds of both their lives.
“I’m sorry.”
The water pulled at her thighs. She closed her eyes and prepared for death.
B
UT DEATH DIDN’T
come.
Instead, a strong leathery hand caught her by her flight suit’s collar, and hauled her up, over the rail.
She lay coughing and shivering on the yacht’s wooden deck. Ack-Ack Macaque sat on his heels beside her. He’d unzipped his wingsuit and now wore only his skullcap and leather jacket. A bullet belt circled his narrow hips, loaded with shells; his goggles were loose around his neck and, in his hand, he held the chrome-plated revolver he’d taken from the
Tereshkova
’s armoury. Tail twitching, he regarded her with his single, yellow eye.
“I’ve never jumped out of a plane before,” he said. “In real life, I mean. Kind of fun.”
Victoria levered herself into a sitting position and looked around. The deck seemed deserted. Music came from an open hatchway amidships, louder here than it had been from her earlier perch.
“Where—” She coughed. “Where are the crew?” They were passing through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, yet the deck was dark and deserted.
The monkey gave a nod of his head, back towards the stern.
“There’s two in the wheelhouse.”
“Have they seen us?”
“I don’t think so. They’re watching TV. The boat seems to be driving itself.”
Victoria pulled down the zip of her wingsuit and kicked it off. She retrieved her quarterstaff from its strap on the back of the suit, and kicked the rest under the rail, into the sea. Her feet were still numb from the water. Watching her, Ack-Ack Macaque scratched at the fur on his cheek.
“You’re dry,” she realised. Then, “How did you get aboard?”
He looked up at the masts stretching into the sky above them.
“I saw you ditch in the sea, but the boat was getting away from me. It was all I could do to catch it. I pulled my ’chute at the last second, and came down as close as I could to the mast. Then I simply unclipped my harness and dropped onto the yardarm.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
Ack-Ack Macaque gave a small shrug. “No worse than jumping from one tree into another. The ‘chute blew away, and I climbed down the rigging.”
Victoria glanced at Paul. His translucent image seemed to hang in the air above the rail. He had his fingers laced behind his head and his eyes screwed shut, so she quietly minimised his image without speaking. After all he’d been through over the past few days, she figured the poor guy deserved a little private time in which to freak out.
The wind blew across the deck and straight through her wet clothes. Her hands shook. To still them, she gripped the carbon fibre shaft of her quarterstaff.
“Okay,” she said through chattering teeth, “we need to make our way to the hold and lie low until we reach the
Maraldi
.”
Ack-Ack Macaque waggled his revolver towards the bows. “The hatch is that way. If we stay low, they won’t see us.”
He started to move, but Victoria caught his arm. She would have liked nothing more than to get below decks, out of the cold evening air; yet something held her back: some instinct scratching at the inside of her skull, warning of danger.
“This isn’t right.”
Ack-Ack Macaque crouched beside her, his eye scanning the deck for threats.
“How so?”
“There should be more security. I expected at least three or four people on deck, keeping watch. I thought we’d have to sneak on board.”
“We
are
sneaking on board.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this easy. Look, they don’t even have security cameras.”
The monkey turned to fix her with his sallow stare.
“So, maybe we got lucky?”
A soft whine came from somewhere astern, rising in pitch.
“I don’t think so.”
Victoria sprang to her feet and ran, her wet feet pushing against the slick planking on the deck. How could she have been so stupid? Of
course
they’d have security bots.
She heard other turbines spin up, and risked a glance over her shoulder in time to see three fat, tyre-shaped sentinels rise from behind the wheelhouse, red and green targeting lasers glittering from their rims.
The cargo hatch lay ahead of her, but she knew she’d never reach it in time; and even if she did, they’d know where to find her. Her only escape would be to throw herself over the rail. But would that really be an escape? The bots could fly over water as easily as they could fly over land, and they were quite capable of picking her off when she came up for air. And anyway, having escaped drowning once, she wasn’t in any hurry to get back in the water.
Shots came from behind her as the monkey emptied his revolver at their pursuers. She turned, having nowhere else to go, and saw one of the bots spiralling drunkenly, its manoeuvring fans splintered and smoking from multiple bullet hits.
As it fell, the other two bots let rip. Gun barrels flashed. Ack-Ack Macaque staggered under a hail of impacts, and went down with a screech. The silver revolver flew from his fingers.
Horrified, Victoria dropped the quarterstaff and stepped back, hands in the air, ready to surrender.
For half a second, she considered trying to overclock her neural processes, but knew she didn’t have time to lay in the necessary commands; and even if she did, she seriously doubted she’d be able to move fast enough to dodge the bots’ fire.
Instead, she stood there, dripping wet and shivering as lasers caressed the material of her shirt. Water slapped and gurgled against the hull. Her lips held the tang of sea salt and, far beyond the rail, the orange town lights of England shimmered on the water.