The Eternal Prison (21 page)

this.
I’d been wading through dead bodies for years for
this.
It made me angrier, and I strained against the straps until my whole body was rigid, sweat beading on my forehead.

 

“Stop that,” the man admonished from somewhere behind me. “You’ll just make it more painful for yourself.”

 

I relaxed, and he stepped into my field of vision. He was tall and thin, wearing the same white coat as Dr. Kerril. His eyes were pale and gray, and his hair was a very light brown or blond, making him almost colorless. He held in one hand the largest fucking needle I’d ever seen in my life, and without thinking, I froze.

 

“Thank you,” he said, and without any further hesitation, he plunged the needle into my arm with a professional speed and accuracy I had to admire. I stiffened and then melted, a warm, dreamy syrup seeping into me, soothing my aching bones and slowing everything down. My leg drifted away, somebody else’s problem—I could still feel it, throbbing, but it was like I was hooked to it via wires while it lay a few blocks away. I was aware of the pain on an academic level.

 

“Okay,” Dr. Kendall said cheerily, tossing the autohypo onto a workbench. The whole room shuddered again, the booming noise louder this time, and a few things crashed to the floor. Kendall stared around, alarmed.

 

“Well, fuck,” he muttered, spinning and snatching things from the nearest bench. “Better get a
move
on, eh?”

 

I nodded. Fine by me. Everything was suddenly fine by me, even the large cordless drill he had in his hand when he turned from the bench. He gunned it once, the small roar revving up into a whine and then going silent, and nodded, stepping out of my field of vision. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I was memorizing names, on the off chance the rail wasn’t ending here, in this underground lab. I wanted to be ready.

 

“All right, Mr. Cates, I’m going to start drilling. You won’t feel anything, of course. Normally this part would be automated, but the robot labs are all in use. Lots of volume, you know. I’m going to strap your head down now.”

 

His head appeared upside down as he tugged a strap over my forehead and snapped it into place, holding me pretty motionless. He lingered, staring down at me. “Think of it this way,” he said, sounding kind. “You’re going to live forever. Maybe.”

 

“I know your name, asshole,” I said, my mouth thick and my words stretched out. “You better fucking hope I
don’t
live forever.” This seemed funny, so I started to laugh.

 

He squinted his eyes at me and then disappeared, and a moment later I heard the drill again. Another second, and there was a weird vibration in my head, my teeth, what was left of them, dancing in my mouth. Another deep rumble rolled over us, and everything on the nearby workbench jumped as dust sifted into my eyes, making me blink madly.

 

“Ah, dammit,” Kendall muttered. “Where’s the damn cops? The army’s here, that’s obvious. I don’t take sides. I’m a scientist. I was hired to do a job, that’s all. Fuck, this is taking forever. There.”

 

The vibration stopped. I noticed a red light flashing over in one corner of the ceiling, steady and ponderous.

 

“All right, threading… looks good. You’re a bleeder, Mr. Cates. I would have thought in your profession you’d have evolved better platelet response. Okay, first feed going in.”

 

Nothing alarmed me. The lights flickered and more deep explosions rippled the dusty air, but I just smiled, my head and limbs held firmly in place. The army was coming. I wondered what that would be like.

 

“Second feed.”

 

A rolling rumble of explosions shuddered above us, steady, unending. We were pretty far underground, I thought, lazily judging the timbre and tone of the noise. I realized I could smell blood,
my
blood, tangy and familiar.

 

“Third feed,” Kendall whispered, breathing heavily. “There. Okay, running protocols… done, looks clear. Traffic is heavy, but it looks like I’ve got good contact. Okay. Needles… needles…”

 

Needles,
I thought.
Wonder what he uses
needles
for?

 

A split-second image flashed through my thoughts, puncturing the warm, boozy feeling of serenity I’d been surfing on. My heart lurched in my chest, and I strained every tortured muscle against the straps, tendons creaking. Another explosion pushed some cracks into the ceiling, small chunks of rock hitting me in the face.

 

“Fuck me,” Kendall muttered in my ear.

 

The lights flickered, there was a sudden hum of something powering up, and then voices, distant and rushing toward me, a searing invisible knife in my head. The voices were
in
my head, silent, whispering, a dense knot of words, impossible to pick apart. I felt the table jump under me, a series of loud explosions. One voice resolved for a moment, elderly and amused.

 

In death,
she said in my head,
all things are possible.

 

 

 

 

XVII

FLAMES WHERE THEIR EYES SHOULD HAVE BEEN

 

 

 

 

The bag smelled like rotted flesh.

 

After ditching Krasa and Marko’s badges and chips in a few randomly selected body bags and drawers, we climbed into our own personal slice of death and let ourselves drop into the pile, wrapped up in pitch darkness and the oozing cold sweat of previous occupants. The silence was perfect, airtight and greasy.

 

Belatedly, I thought,
Well, shit, if they do a heat scan we’re fucked.
And then, even more belatedly, I thought,
Maybe we should have just ditched the chips and badges somewhere else, far away from us.
Laughter threatened to bubble up out of me, but I reminded myself that Marko’s big brain hadn’t considered that either, or offered any better ideas, and managed to get angry enough to stay sober.

 

We hadn’t discussed anything beyond getting in the bags, but none of us said anything, and my world became static.

 

I counted seconds.

 

Waiting, again. I’d gotten better at it, impatience burned out of me. Sleep wasn’t an option—you never knew what you might say or do while asleep, and a noise at the wrong time would be disaster. So it was the waiting game, the Gunner’s special hell.

 

I’d gotten better at the physical aspects of it; I didn’t have the aches and pains and jitters I used to—prison’s little gift to me. I knew I could lie in my little pond of pitch-blackness, completely still and quiet, for hours. I had Canny Orel, the legendary Gunner, finally beat—and maybe that’s all it took, a little judicious aging. Some key brain cells removed, and you could just sit in the fucking dark dreaming of the yen you were earning all goddamn night.

 

They came after an eternity, Marin’s Internal Affairs, creeping, the soft sound of rubber soles squeaking on the polished floor. Four or five avatars, Droids with digitized human intellects, soft-shoeing around us, heavily armed and so damned silent. They found the chips and badges easily and immediately began making noise as they assumed we’d ditched the trackers and gotten as far away as possible—a natural assumption of human nature. They
sounded
so human—so normal, making jokes and muttering about what a pain in their ass Krasa had turned out to be, calling her a useless bitch and wondering if she was worth even “processing.” The Worms stood around for a long time shooting the shit, occasionally poking a swelling bag or popping open a squealing drawer as they made a show of keeping up the search; all while I lay there breathless, clenching my fists, teeth bared to the darkness. I tried to will Marko to stay quiet.

 

And then, just when I’d bought the whole aw-shucks-we-give-up routine, the deafening report of a good automatic pistol smothered the oxygen in the room. Two squeaky steps, and then another shot.

 

I listened to the dead air that collapsed around me. More squealing steps; I imagined thick, black soles, steel-tipped shoes, perfect for kicking people until bloody snot spouted from their heads or for fieldwork, stepping through the rubble of downtown or the wastelands of Jersey without getting your feet wet. I saw them replaced every fucking week—fifty thousand yen a
week
—unwrapped in the morning, gleaming and perfect, the old ones, scuffed and stained from bone and blood, tossed into the burner without a second thought.

 

Another shot, right next to me, a fucking bomb going off. My ear didn’t ring or go muffled, and I managed to keep still and not react. A moment later one of them stepped on my leg, putting all his goddamn weight on it. I bit down on my tongue from habit and kept still as the bastard tattooed his tread into my skin; I didn’t feel a thing, but the pressure was intense, and I imagined the bastard leaning down to point his gun at my head, his plastic face smirking.

 

My hands twitched. I shut my eyes and imagined the bullet, splitting skin, cauterizing as it went, shattering bone, and shredding my brain. I lay there forever, face set in a permanent wince, and all I got in return for my efforts was another few squeaks of their shoes.

 

“Fuck it,” a man’s voice spat, glass being ground in mud. “They ditched and ran. Fucking cunts.”

 

I memorized the voice. It wasn’t hard. I just pictured a volcano vomiting up nicotine-tinged phlegm, and it came back to me immediately.

 

“Boss isn’t going to like it,” a milder, almost human voice responded.

 

“Boss doesn’t like anything these days. Fuck it. They’re in the building. Tear it up.”

 

After a brief pause, the second voice said, “You heard the man. Tear this shit up.”

 

Footsteps then, the door popping open and then closed. I listened carefully, trying to decide if they’d all left—
how many? Three? Four?
Could have been a fucking dance team standing around with their mouths shut.

 

The silence felt like heavy gas pumped into the room, settling down on me, pushing the slick walls of my tiny prison against me. I knew what was supposed to happen—within the hour Droids would gather up the bags, and we’d be loaded onto a hover, which would take us crosstown to the incinerators on the East River. Knowing didn’t help me stay still and quiet.

 

I started to picture myself in a field, my usual trick, forcing all thoughts outside the glass surface of my mental bubble. Just as I was succeeding, the image firming up in my mind, I felt a distant but heavy rumble tremble through the floor. It faded fast, and then I lay there trying to analyze it, wondering what in hell had caused
that.

 

Just as I started to relax, it was followed by another. It felt like the whole building was shaking slightly.

 

“What the fuck,” I heard Marko whisper, “was
that?
”

 

I bit my lip. Responding would be stupid—the idea was
less
talking and noise.

 

“Any ideas?” he pleaded.

 

“Shut
up,
” I whispered.

 

“That doesn’t worry you?” he hissed back. “That doesn’t
concern
you?”

 

“Fucking hell. Zeke, if you say one more goddamn word, I will crawl over there and cut your tongue out, understood? Say absolutely fucking nothing if you understand.”

 

Since I hadn’t been shot in the head, however, I had to conclude no one was waiting in the room. Marko stayed quiet for about thirty seconds. I could feel him struggling with his own massive stupidity like a boulder that had rolled on top of him, smothering.

 

“That is not
normal,
is all I’m saying,” he stage-whispered.

 

I prayed for strength, but before I could make my own mistakes, the door popped again, a buzzing alarm announcing the arrival of the cleanup Droids. The next five minutes was noise: clangings and whirrings and the incessant alarm that crawled under my skin and bit at my nerves directly. I imagined my grassy field again, managing to stay still and calm until I was suddenly shoved, knocked roughly into a short roll and then shoved again and again, teeth-chattering impacts that changed momentum every second, smacking me against the floor, the other bodies, and something unpleasantly hard.

 

I had a sensation of falling, and just as I wondered if maybe I’d killed us all, a terrible sour spike pushing into my belly and curdling me, gravity smacked me into something that tolled momentarily with a metallic, bell-like noise. I slid a few inches and came to a rest, but before I could appreciate the sliver of peace, someone fell on top of me. And then someone else, a rainfall of bloating, dead bodies in bags, burying me. The weight, the pressure built and built in the darkness, pressing me down into the unyielding darkness. I ground my teeth and made fists, but it grew heavier and heavier, bodies pushing down on top of me. I opened my mouth to scream and the bag was pushed into it, the germy slick material and the cold metal zipper.

 

A shiver stuttered through me. I tried to kick and swing my arms, but I was pinned in like a brick mortared into place. Suddenly I was back in the coffin, being transported into the Abbey in London when we’d gone after Squalor, 90 fucking percent dead and pain flowing through me, burning every thought into ash. Panic took over, swelling in me like a balloon that filled every limb and pushed them into strained rigidity. I pushed with everything I had, with my arms and legs, and slowly managed to make some room, just an inch or two of inky space, all for me. With gagging effort I pushed the rubbery material out of my mouth, working my jaw and tongue until they ached.

 

I had the sensation of movement as a steady buzz vibrated against me. I imagined we were being loaded into the transport hover to our fiery fate, a split second of heat and then who the fuck knew—but I was in no rush to find out. Maybe everyone I’d ever killed, waiting for me. Maybe everyone I’d ever failed, waiting for me. That was worse. I saw them all. Waiting for me, flames where their eyes should have been.

 

Trembling, I moved one arm up, inch by inch, and took hold of the zipper. As I slid it downward, the body on top of me sagged to fill the sliver of space I’d created, and I had to reset my back against the floor of whatever I was in and push upward again.