The Eternal Prison (16 page)

 

She shrugged, standing up, her knees giving off soft cracks that sounded loud in the near silence. “Just the messenger, Cates. Maybe when we’re done listening to the midget, we’ll see about
seducing
you.” She pronounced the word like it was a prim curiosity, the sort of thing assholes said. I didn’t like that, but swallowed it as I sat up and started to push myself to my feet.

 

Marlena put a hand on my shoulder. She didn’t push, just laid her calloused, bony hand there, and I sat back down, looking up at her. She stared down at me steadily.

 

“You really think he can get us out? Michaleen?”

 

I considered, keeping my eyes on hers. Her face was impassive, but her eyes burned down at me. I knew the look: desperation. She was a pro and hiding it well, but there it was.

 

I pictured the little man. I’d seen him just that morning, sitting in the sun out in the yard, alone except for three rations of water—how he’d gotten them I didn’t know—sipping and sitting still. Perfectly still. I’d watched him for half an hour from the shadows of the dorm walls, and the little man hadn’t moved so much as an eyelid except to drink.

 

“Yes,” I said honestly. “I think that creepy little bastard can do it.”

 

She nodded. “Yeah, okay. But I don’t trust him. I think he’s using us.”

 

I smiled. “C’mon, Lena. Of
course
he’s using us.” A flare of anger lit up inside me, a tiny ember flickering. The man had invoked my father, had used his name. I knew it was bullshit; I knew it was just to make me soften a bit, old Uncie Mickey from the neighborhood. And yet I hadn’t called him on it. I’d let it sit there between us, unchallenged.

 

She nodded again, her face still composed. “I think he’ll leave us behind if he can. Don’t let that happen. If he comes to you with some story about how I got left behind,
don’t let it happen.
” Her mask fragmented for a second and she looked away, the muscles of her throat working. “I don’t want to die here, Avery.”

 

For a moment I just looked up at her, fully awake now and unsure of what to say. I knew if I made a promise of any sort it would complicate things. You didn’t make promises, you didn’t accept responsibility for anyone else, because in the midst of a plan you were usually lucky to be able to take care of yourself.

 

“We all get out,” I found myself saying, amazed. “Or none of us get out.”

 

Without another word, she nodded and turned, walking away. I shook my head and swung myself into motion after her, watching her hips sway under the tight fabric of her short pants—one of the only prisoners who’d ditched the orange jumpsuit, opting for a perpetual sunburn.

 

“Wait a sec,” I said, turning to cross the dorm, stopping about ten feet away from where Bartlett sat on his bunk, a dark form with a bright cigarette coal dancing in front of it. “You coming?”

 

Behind me, I heard Skinner hiss, “You have
got
to be shitting me,” but I ignored her. Bartlett swung his legs off the bed and stood up. I’d never seen the ex-cop sleep. I supposed if I’d been thrown in with a few hundred folks who wanted me dead, I’d probably have learned to do without as well. As for me, my two admirers had been disappeared a few days ago—
poof!
they were gone, and I hadn’t had any trouble from anyone else since.

 

Skinner hesitated as we approached, then shook her head and spun away, muttering. She led us into the yard and over to the debarkation area, where a train had arrived and was disgorging a fresh bunch of People of Interest, all of whom looked a little stunned and horrified. Mickey, Grisha, and the fucking
Christian
were already there, a few feet from the sturdy chain-link, electrified fence. The little man was sitting with his back to the train, cross-legged, eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap.

 

“Good evenin’, Avery,” he said without opening his eyes. “Thank you, Marlena.”

 

I watched the newbies being detrained, moving stiffly through the cool air. I startled when I saw him: the bearded fuck, the non-Crusher, my old friend from my first day. I’d seen Bartlett kill him, I
knew
I had. But there he was, barking at the newbies like he felt better than ever. As I stared, he glanced at me, then did a little double take, and grinned.

 

I looked at Michaleen and watched him for a moment. He was sitting perfectly still, a statue. I let a few heartbeats go by, watching, but he didn’t twitch or even seem to be breathing.

 

“All right,
Uncle,
” I said, stretching, several things in my back popping. “What’s up?”

 

He opened his eyes to look at me and then closed them again, settling himself. “Somethin’ on your mind, Avery?”

 

I twitched. It might be true, who the fuck knew. I
wanted
it to be true. “Not yet,” I said.

 

He didn’t open his eyes. “Time’s running out, Avery. We need to get a plan in place and start moving, before members of our merry band start vanishing, yes?”

 

I was irritated and tired. I’d been tired for days, feeling gravity get a little stronger every minute. “Why out here, little man?”

 

“No bugs out here, Avery. The cots’re full of ’em.”

 

“You have a pretty broad skill set, Mickey,” I said slowly. “Maybe I’d like to know a little more about who I’m getting in bed with.”

 

He sighed, producing a cigarette from behind his ear. “I’m nobody, Avery. I was a clerk. I was sent to collect debts. I must have seen somethin’ along the way.” He grinned. “Don’t kick my balls, Avery.”

 

I decided to let it go, for now. I didn’t know if he was lying to me about my father, about any of this, but I did know I was going to stick next to him when we got out, and if he was lying about anything, I was going to make him eat it. I nodded and shrugged. “O-kee. You’re a clerk who has magical knowledge of the SSF’s listening devices—a clerk in the Listening Device Office.”

 

He smiled. “That’s the ticket then, Avery. Now”—he nodded past me—“why bring the Pig? He’s not pop’lar here, you know.”

 

I spread my hands. “He says he wants in, and he can buy a ticket.” I turned to Bartlett, who stood like a small mountain, his eyes bright white. I swept my hand toward the rest. “The floor’s yours, Espin.”

 

He glanced at me and then back at the group. I sauntered over to sit down next to Grisha, who greeted me with a nod, and then we were all staring at the ex-cop in silence, the shouts and insults of the Crushers unloading their cargo behind us.

 

“All right,” he grunted, nodding. “You all want out of here. Good. Every single
one
of these shitheads ought to be digging tunnels with their
hands
to get out of here. Flappin’ their arms like wings to fly out of here. Fuck the desert, man. Take your chances.”

 

We stared at him. None of us said anything.

 

He sighed. “Any of you know what an avatar is?”

 

I let a few seconds go by. “A mechanical ghost,” I finally said. “A Droid with an uploaded human brain—a digital recording of a human brain. Made to look like the human, so it goes around looking just like whoever it’s supposed to be, acting like him, talking like him.” I nodded, reaching down and taking a handful of still-warm dirt. “Used to be they had no eyes—just cameras for eyes, like the Monks. Same technology. But not too long ago I saw one that could’ve passed for human.”

 

Bartlett nodded. “One of the
new
models. A cop, yeah?”

 

I nodded back without looking at him. I saw Janet Hense, a pretty little thing. I could remember how she smelled. I could remember the stillborn smile on her face when she left me for dead. I could remember her flying through the air, taking bullets, and not batting an eye. “A cop.”

 

“Reason I’m here, that rat-fuck Marin is replacing cops with
avatars.
And it isn’t voluntary, you get it? Your partner goes on assignment, comes back, acting a little wiggy—fuck, his brain’s been sucked out of his head and a copy put into storage, a copy put into an avatar. He goes back to the beat; you can’t put your finger on why, but you don’t trust him anymore. Then, a few weeks later,
boom!
Happens to you. Marin’s doing this on every single cop in the force. That’s why I’m here—I found out; I started making some trouble.” He hung his head for a moment. “Shit, I should have known better.”

 

I kept studying the dirt. None of us said anything until Michaleen cleared his throat. “I don’t give a fart about the fucking cops getting theirs,” he said amiably. “You got a point?”

 

Bartlett stared at the little man for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I got a point. I said they store a copy, right? Process kills you, but no matter—Marin gets your brain on a quantum drive and it gets stored, and they can make as many of you as they want. Manufacture the body, upload the brain, done. That one gets killed? Do it again. Storage is no problem—you could store the entire force, all seven fucking million cops, in one building.” He paused and took his eyes off Michaleen to look at the rest of us. “Could do the same thing with
Persons of Interest,
huh?”

 

A sharp sense of dread bloomed inside me; rusty blood dripped into clear water.

 

“They’re makin’
avatars
outta us?” Marlena said with a snort.

 

“No,” Bartlett said. “They don’t bother. We’re all here because we all got something in our heads Marin wants or thinks might be useful. We
People of Fucking Interest.
But he don’t need us wandering around in souped-up Monk bodies, passing for human. He just wants what we know. So he rips your brain, puts it on a drive, and stores it. You die, but whenever he gets around to seeing what you got, he just pops you into the Big Iron and pokes around until he finds it.” The cop grimaced. “It’s called a fucking
economy of resources.
Us sitting here in this prison, it costs money. It costs resources. Sticking us in a solid state storage brick? Cheap.”

 

Grisha sat forward. “So they make a redundant brain wave imprint—using Amblen algorithms, I assume?”

 

Bartlett shrugged. “Fuck if I know that shit. What I do know is, the assholes they have patrolling this place? That pop up out of nowhere and kick balls?” He nodded. “Avatars. You take one out in some miracle of shithead physics, they’re back in an hour, shiny-new. They do real-time incremental backups over the air, so the avatar loses no memory. You can shank the guards here all you want. They’ll make more.”

 

Michaleen had closed his eyes again. “So we move soon, or we end up quantum ghosts, eh? All right,
Officer,
I’d be moved to say you’ve acted in good faith and given us valuable information.” His eyes popped open, steely and hard in the midst of his jowly, smiling face. “But how do we know you aren’t here to fuck us? A mole? Undercover?”

 

Bartlett stared for a moment and then sort of deflated. “I guess you don’t. Sure, could be, if you think that highly of yourselves.” He shrugged. “If that’s so then your little escape plot’s borked anyway, right?”

 

Michaleen smiled. “Sure, sure—ruined in any event.” He looked around. “I’d take him along. Anyone object?”

 

The rest were staring at Bartlett but said nothing. The Christian, who I’d never heard speak, shifted lazily, stretching her thin, long limbs.

 

Michaleen nodded. “All right, Mr. Bartlett—you’re in, on fucking sufferance. I don’t like the way Pigs smell, so stay upwind, y’hear? Don’t irritate me. But you can crawl up our ass when we make the move, providing I don’t change my mind.”

 

Bartlett didn’t say anything. He just stood there, hands slack at his sides. I wondered what he planned to do, where he planned to go—if there was an Island of Burned Cops out there, somewhere. “Mickey,” I said, dropping my handful of dirt and scrubbing my hands. “Speaking of our
move,
what’s the plan? Murder an infinite number of avatar-Crushers and die of thirst being cooked and frozen out there?”

 

Michaleen didn’t look at me, but his flattened face turned sour. “I swear, Avery, if I didn’t have the tenderest feelings for you as if you were my own son—all right. That’s why we’re here tonight, isn’t it? You’re right, we can’t just walk out of here. Even if we scale the walls without takin’ one in the back, we’re wanderin’ the desert like fucking assholes. Won’t work. So we’re not going to
walk.
We’re going to
fly.
”

 

A faint rustle of movement swept through everyone, but it died fast and no one said a word. I studied Michaleen’s smug, satisfied face, old and leathery, and thought again,
Who the fuck are you, little man?

 

 

 

 

XIII

A LITTLE GOD

 

 

 

 

I twisted my hands in the bracelets, checking them. They’d been put on loosely, but I estimated it would still take me a minute, maybe two due to rust, to get out of them.

 

“I don’t like this,” I said.

 

“So you said,” Krasa replied over her shoulder, not slowing her pace. “But fuck you. I can’t explain you running around inside here armed and uncuffed. I’m hours away from being burned as it is. We need to maximize that time, not shorten it.”