Fuller inspected the device; a tiny LED winked back at him, teasing.
“The Philadelphia experiment, apparently.”
Lugan glowered. “Fuller, I want Strafe and ’Eels after Gabriel. Get ’er scrawny corporate arse back in ’ere - let’s find out if she’s a part of this. Tell ’em to behave - she’s a Big Fucking Noise and it ain’t gonna be an easy job.”
“Sure.”
“Get Eliza on Collator. It’s caught the clap - some kinda super-Trojan, still no clue what the fucker’s carryin’. Nutshell: virused to ’ell. Quarantine it ’til Eliza can get ’er ’ead round what the fuck’s the matter.”
“Was semi-quarantined anyway, it’s too vulnerable.”
“And?” Karine’s voice was blade-sharp. “What about the Bard?”
“God fuckin’ save me from starry-eyed idealists.” Lugan shook his head, stuck the dog-end between his lips, lit it.
Shut the recordin’ down a minute, will ya?
Done.
Squinting through smoke-tails, he said, “If ’e survives, ’e’ll come back. And you’d best be ’ere to meet ’im.”
Silence fell heavy like a metal coin, rolled across the table.
Smoke curled in the air.
“Survives?” Karine’s expression had congealed. “You didn’t say...” Suddenly businesslike, she stood up with a scrape of bench, started collecting mugs. “You murder Silfe, you injure Sera, you abandon Kale, you hand Roderick over like some cursed fruit basket. You fill my air with that stink, you burn holes in my
table.”
Her voice cracked. Furious, she flicked the extinguished dog-end at his chest. “I don’t even know why we’re
here...”
Lugan pinched out the butt he was smoking, dropped it back in his pocket.
“Me either, luv. ’E’s stronger than ’e looks, your bossman. ’E might talk like a big girl’s blouse but -”
Luge...
Fuller audio-nudged him, and he fell silent.
The hard line of Karine’s mouth shook. For a moment, she fought it, inhaling a determined hiss of air through gritted teeth. Then that air emerged as a sob. Mugs scattered across the floor as her shoulders slumped, rounded and shook. She buried her face in her hands.
Lugan shuffled his boots.
“He has to come back.” The words were muffled, hopeless. “He has to come
back.
And we have to go
home.
Please... can’t you go and get him...
please...
We’re all so
lost..!”
Luge, say something...
“I’m sorry, luv.” Uncomfortably helpless, Lugan patted her arm, but she shook him off, temper flashing from tear-lined eyes.
“Don’t
patronise me.”
“We’re all in the same bo-”
“No, we’re
not
! You haven’t lost your
world
! You don’t choke on the air you breathe - you’re not a prisoner, a
purposeless
prisoner, in something you used to love. The tavern’s
broken,
it— it’s not meant to be here. If we can’t get home, The Wanderer will die.”
“Fan-fuckin’-tastic.” Frustrated, Lugan slammed a boot into the table and sent it skidding over, jug splashing into a dark stain on the floor. He came to his feet, shadow looming.
“Look,
I didn’t send you people a fucking
invite.
Anytime you wanna try sortin’ this out yourselves - and gettin’ the
fuck
out my chop shop - is good with me.”
Karine rounded on him, snarling through tears, “It’s not my fault, don’t -!”
“I
don’t fucking care whose fault it is!”
Lugan was thundering now, his temper barely in check. He was fighting to control a lunatic situation he’d no way to understand and he’d passed “enough” three stops back. How the fucking
hell
had this insanity all become
his
responsibility?
His roar brought him wide-eyed quiet. The cat, unperturbed, was washing.
Ah, Luge? You okay?
With an effort, he grabbed his temper by the throat and choked the shit out of it.
“What d’you mean, The Wanderer will die?” His words were measured, tightly controlled. “If this is some kinda threat...”
“Two things can’t occupy the same space. It’s why The Wanderer’s cursed to jump - place unto place, rootless, ’til the end of the Count of Time.” Karine sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Here, it’s caught. Snagged. And it’ll disintegrate. Or you will.”
Or you will.
“You’re pullin’ my fuckin’ chain.” Lugan leaned down to pick up the herbal jug, scuffed his boot in the stain on the floor. “Seems like we got ourselves a deadline,” he said. He looked around him for a moment, almost as if he expected to see the walls of the taproom warp or fade. “Fuller, best time to case Grey’s base - the sooner the better. We need to ’ave a little
word
with the good doc.”
Ecko drifted through layers of consciousness.
“...interesting case.” The voice was male, faintly familiar, though he couldn’t place it. His head seemed clouded with a hangover of smoke and doubt. His body was heavy enough to sink into softness beneath him. “He was very deep, it’s taken some effort to bring him back.”
“Sure.” The answer was clipped, female. Something about it sparked sudden alarm, deep but potent, a bright thread of awareness. Ecko held himself still, trying to wake up properly without giving himself away.
The air smelled faintly of old food, of...
Shit.
I know that smell.
The memory hit him hard, a slap that brought him awake with a hollow rush of horror, a rise of tension that made the awareness in him flare to sudden life. He kept still with some effort, but the voice above him chuckled.
“Seems our Mister Gabriel is waking - his ‘mom’ certainly crafted him some tricks. Sal, would you mind?”
Ecko felt the grasp of a hand, a pinprick in his wrist, felt the warmth begin to spread through his skin, up his arm, to lull him into that wonderful, easy feeling of contentment -
Oh no you fuckin’ don’t!
His adrenaline coughed, stumbled into life like it was exhausted, but it was enough, and the warmth began to recede. He struggled to sit, swaying but upright, eyes blinking at the man who stood before him, at the woman, at the tiny, familiar, room...
Oh no. Nonononono...
Denial clamoured, pointless.
It was a bolt-hole, a shit-hole. A corporate fucking special. It was familiar as childhood, as recurring nightmare. It was bed and wardrobe and console, the waiting world of anywhere-but-here. It was a mug of coffee; it was furred mould. Every part of this room was the same as the last time he’d seen it.
When he’d burned its occupant alive.
The memory brought its own adrenaline, a real rush this time, and he was down from the bed, on his feet and starting to rally, to fight back. Shapeless fury battered the lassitude that swelled through his body. The man - by every fucking God the
man
! - was tall, black hair in a ponytail, the sleeves of his white coat rolled up to reveal the needle marks that tracked the insides of his elbows. The woman was small, blonde, hatchetfaced. She had a small, folded-stock rifle against her shoulder.
Doctor Slater Grey.
Salva.
“Easy.” Grey was smiling, holding out a nicotine-stained hand. “It’s all right, Tam. I understand - but it’s all over, now, it’s all over. You’re back, we’ve taken the ’trodes away. I understand you’re confused, but nothing can hurt you, not while you’re in here. Take a minute, and relax.”
I understand you’re confused...
He’d heard those words before, felt this massive sense of disorientation, seen the light glimmer from a long, black ponytail. All of this had a familiarity that felt like déjà-vu, like he’d already fucking been here...
Confused? You got five seconds to tell me what’s what or I start breakin’ shit!
“What the hell did you put in my vein, you fucker? What was that? What’ve you done to me?” Ecko made a clumsy grab for the man’s white coat. He had a headful of uproar, endless questions tumbling one over another, but the swell of softness in his body was rising again, making him fall back. It rid him of words, of concepts, of understanding; it made him want to give up, to drift into apathy, into the grey and emotionless emptiness that brought relief from all things.
Why bother?
I am happy...
The doctor’s hand rested on his shoulder, soothing.
Ecko gritted his teeth, fought back.
No, I’m not going under, I’m not...
“It’s just something to make all this easier,” Grey said. “You were very deep, but it’s all right now - all that’s gone. No more anxiety, no more adrenaline, no more pain. Not ever.” He smiled like a snake. “No more transition. You’re home now. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Transition.
You’re home now.
Ecko could feel the lure, the gentleness of it, feel that wonderful nothing reaching to embrace him, to pull him down to contentment as it had pulled so, so many before...
But he was Ecko, and he wasn’t fucking having any of it. He had been doing something, been fighting, been passionate and determined and reckless and confrontational and offensive and fucking mad and he wanted that shit
back.
He’d been in this room before - and he’d been
going
somewhere...
“Where was I? You had me plugged into that shit? Why? What the fuck did you do?”
“Not me, Tam. I’m your friend and you can trust me. If you let me, I can bring you peace -”
“Peace this.”
He lashed out, but his targets slewed and Salva was moving and he found the rifle up his nose, perfectly positioned to spatter the back of his head up the wall. Her face was stone-hard. Something about her presence bothered him, but amid the struggle between motivation and apathy, the tangle of memories he was trying to unravel, he couldn’t place what was wrong with -
“Get your fucking cock out my face.”
In answer, she shoved the muzzle harder.
He slammed it sideways with a forearm. The violent motion helped him focus - and it seemed Grey had realised it. The doc laid a hand on Salva’s shoulder and she drew the weapon back.
“We’re friends here, Sal. No need for confrontation. We have to help Tam understand. Maybe we should use another needle?”
“You
touch
me with that shit...!” Ecko backed up as far as he could, right into the edge of the bed. He could see better now, see the outside edge of the bolt-hole, the halogen lights that illuminated the stacks of these fucking things that Grey had in here, all of them occupied.
Have I been here all this time?
Had there never been an Eliza, a Collator, a Virtual fucking Rorschach?
Images came at him, a tumble of sensation. The warmth of a tavern, a woman with opal stones in her cheeks, a young man burning, the rise of some creature of flame, stone ruins, endless vistas of grass.
Chrissakes, he
had
been somewhere. Somewhere
else.
A sense of crisis shuddered up his spine and forced the lethargy back further. He’d been fighting, creatures misshapen, white light and nightmare...
What the hell?
But that wasn’t fucking possible. They’d pulled ’trodes off of him and he was disoriented, confused...
Grey said, “Let me help you, Tam. I don’t know how much you remember, but you made a mistake. In coming here, you’ve made yourself a danger to society, a renegade. You’ve blown your cover - finally and for good. If I let you go, you’ll face trial and probably worse. The government of this country doesn’t take kindly to terrorism. But if you stay here, I can help you.”
Grey’s voice sounded like the spread of lassitude in Ecko’s veins.
He spat back, “You can fuck yourself.”
“I’ve done so,” Grey said, “and gloriously, many times in the past. You think I don’t understand, that I’m just some callous scientist? I know where you are, Tamarlaine, understand where you’ve been. I know the forces that drive you and I know how terrible they can be, how they eat at your mind, at your soul.” He turned one arm up, showing the needle marks like tiny, open mouths. “I lived in passion, and desire, and hopelessness. I lived a fucked-up life and it taught me many things. Now, I help, I bring calm. I’ve brought a society in agony to a place of peace, of productivity. No more poverty, no more want, no more need, no more struggle. No more rebellion. All you have to do is trust that I can bring you happiness. You’ll never want for anything again.”
For a moment, for just a moment, Ecko saw the warmth -saw the soft grey oblivion that would claim him. There would be no more urgency, no more need, no more drive. He could be content with what he had, always.
Trust me.
And then there was something else in his head, some flash of vision. This time, it was an old man, crouched in a corridor, his eyes all wrong, his pupils the wrong sizes. He was staring at Ecko, staring hard out of the memory, staring as if he were trying to say something.
As if he was trying to say,
Kazyen.
* * *
Amethea could not see.
Her eyes were open. If she closed them and pressed the lids gently with her fingers, she could see colours in her vision - she was not blind, there was just no light. The air was warm and still. It smelled faintly of...
What
was
that smell? A taint of smoke? Scented woods, incense? Something -?
“Little priestess.”
The voice was amused, familiar - it sent a hot shock through her skin.
A door closed, a heavy bootstep came towards her in the dark... and then there were hands on her shoulders. Warm hands, hands rough with calluses. Gently, they spun her about, but she could see nothing of him in the pitch-black.
She said, her voice a whisper, “You’re not here.”
“But you are.” There was humour in his tone, and the power and confidence that she remembered, oh, all too well. The smell seemed to be coming from his skin. She raised her hands to push him away and they lay on his chest as if she had deliberately left them there.