The Eternal Prison (32 page)

 

You won’t destroy it, Avery,
Dolores Salgado said.
Everything must be organized somehow. Tear this down and what then? A hundred little Systems separated by imaginary borders, like we had forty years ago. That wasn’t working out too well, either.

 

Shut up,
I thought back. It was my standard response.

 

Marko was panting, the fat bastard. Sitting behind a desk while I’d been roasting in the desert. It made me want to pull his card a little, have some fun. “Look, you’re playing by old rules,” he said. “This is a civil war, right? Marin’s avatar or avatars—they’re not going to be worrying about law and order. Maybe a year ago you were a priority of some sort, but fuck, look around—the King Worm doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you. We’re going to have to go
to
him.”

 

I squinted at the damn church. The Techie was probably right. I looked him over and then glanced at Krajian. She walked around like the living dead, like the glowing red badge she’d lost had been her soul, now withered and blackened. But she still walked. She put one foot in front of the other and cleaned her gun every night, and once or twice when she’d been spooked by something, I’d seen her display the sort of reflexes that still made me fear the System Cops. My avatar had been impressed with her and had trusted her to a point. But she stumbled around in a daze and gave me one-word answers to every question—what was she doing? She didn’t seem to give a shit about anything, about killing Marin or getting revenge, or anything. When I’d asked her point-blank why she was still with us, she’d chewed her lip for a long time and then sighed, saying simply, “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

 

I just hoped when bullets started to fly, old instincts would kick in.

 

“Avery?”

 

Blinking, I looked at Marko. His face was eager, cheerful—this was, I realized, Marko’s Happy Place. He was support staff through and through, and it didn’t matter much to him really who or what he was supporting. He was happy just to come up with helpful ideas and supply needed information. “Go to him,” I said.

 

He nodded. “Yes. We need to get on the offensive. We know where one of him will be—the front. He’s the general. He’s leading the police, and he can afford to be on the front line getting mauled because he can always send in a replacement, or maybe he’s got a fucking warehouse of himself somewhere in the city. So let’s go to the front—I’d suggest the Battery, where they’ve got some guns set up against the army’s air force. There’s a big concentration of SSF there, because it’s a likely place for a landing. If a Marin is anywhere on this island directing things, it’s there.”

 

I looked around. It seemed reasonable.

 

“Makes sense,” Grisha said over my shoulder. “He will be well protected, of course. We may have to wade through many layers of his Worms to get close to him. Once we are close, we have small field-limited Electro Magnetic Pulse device—this is easy, this is schoolboy project—knock the avatar off its feet before it can self-destruct or dump its core to the wire, and then we drag it to our lovely home where Dr. Amblen can help us dissect and reprogram it. Better plan than wandering city, dodging bombs, and starving to death, no?”

 

I kept my eyes on Marko. I liked Grisha’s mix of tech-savvy and common sense—rare in a Techie—but sometimes he got nervy. I didn’t think I could twist his nose like I did Marko—at least not without getting my hand slapped—but I was occasionally sorely tempted to try.

 

The Battery had been a melted-asphalt stub at the southern tip of Manhattan ever since I could remember, a patch of glassy black land lapped at by the oily bay water. The Star was almost a straight line south from it, the city rising up to the north like weeds reaching up for the sky.

 

A few hundred feet from the SSF’s position, we crouched behind a rusting chassis of some prehover vehicle, a baked-on brownish red frame of metal that some enterprising souls had used as a shelter from time to time, leaving behind a faint smell of piss and some of the usual debris—rotting, half-dissolved nutrition tabs, broken knife blades, plenty of old blood almost the same color as the rust. Getting down this close hadn’t been difficult—the cops we did spot on the deserted streets weren’t interested in us. I had a feeling we could get surprised heisting a safe out of a building or murdering some uptown Vid celebrity in cold blood and the Stormers would have just hustled past us. We had a good view of the operation, which was impressive. I’d never seen so many cops in one place—but then it was easy when you could manufacture them.

 

We were pressed in behind our cover. I could smell Mr. Marko, and I did not enjoy the experience.

 

The SSF officers were still not uniformed, though they wore armbands with pips to denote rank. The Stormers were everywhere, and most appeared to still be human—smoking cigarettes with their cowls slumped down around their shoulders, squinting in the clear, thin sunlight that spilled down around us. Off to my right and south, far away, a thick plume of black smoke was rising into the air, rippling and twisting as it went. I wondered why so many of the Stormers were still human but figured Marin had started with the officers and would work his way down.

 

The guns had been erected in a loose semicircle just above the yellowish stain of high tide. They were huge, scuffed gray contraptions, their barrels big enough for me to crawl into if I’d been inclined, and they moved with greased ease, up and down, side to side, spinning on their bases to cover 360 degrees of sky, all in response to the subtle weight shifts and gestures of their operators, who wore black uniforms and heavy shielded helmets. If Ruberto tried to take Manhattan from the south, he was going to get a kick in the balls.

 

“I don’t see Marin,” I said quietly, the wind in my ears. “But he’s got to be there.” I pointed at a temporary shelter that had been erected just behind the guns, a hard-shelled dome with a single entrance guarded by two identical-looking men with solid, wide builds and wraparound dark glasses.

 

“Yes,” Grisha said, squinting. “Of course—with a full detail of his Worms packed in there like insulation.”

 

I scanned the Battery again. “A hover—we’d need a hover.”

 

“Maybe,” Grisha said. I settled back down and leaned against the steel frame, feeling limp. We were just a few hundred feet from the most SSF I’d ever seen in one place, but there was a strange lack of urgency. It was like we were watching a Vid, comfortable and safe somewhere far away. “But there would be no pursuit, I think. The EMP”—he held up a fist-sized sphere of bright, chromelike metal—“will knock avatars within a few feet off-line for some hours. Even if we prevent the Marin unit from self-destructing and blanking its drives, once off-line it will be deleted from the security database and thus will not be able to handshake with the system again, and will probably dump core and self-destruct when it comes back online—all things we hope Amblen will be able to help us resolve. As a result standard procedure dictates pursuit is unnecessary.”

 

“Okay,” I said slowly. “We still need transport. We’ll need —”

 

“What you need,” Krajian said suddenly, standing up next to me and drawing two automatics from shoulder holsters, “is a distraction.”

 

I stared up at her. “What the fuck are —”

 

She stood there for a moment and then slammed the guns back into place. She glanced down at me, and her face had lost its tightness. I hadn’t even realized how twisted and cramped her face had been until she looked down at me, half-smiling. She looked
happy.
“Your window won’t be long. Don’t miss it.”

 

I stood up. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know anything about her beyond thirty minutes of combined conversation and the fact that my avatar, a version of me, had trusted her. She just smiled back at me while I stood there, my mind a blank. I didn’t have any words for her.

 

“This is fine,” she said, and a shiver went through me. “Everything is fine.”

 

Without another word she leaped up on top of the rusted hulk and then down onto the ground. I jumped after her, coming up halfway before Grisha’s hand on my shoulder pulled me back down. I whirled and had a hand on his throat without even consciously thinking about it.

 

“What the fuck,” I hissed at him.

 

“She is going,” he whispered back, choking. “And I do not think trying to stop her will be useful. Think, Avery: We have the EMP, and I do not doubt Officer Krajian’s distracting abilities. We should perhaps try to exploit this.”

 

I clenched my teeth. “No. We can’t —”

 

“She is police. Stop her is what we cannot do, Avery. Be ready!”

 

Everything is fine,
I thought, my hands balled into fists.

 

The cop was striding down toward the mass of cops, her coat thrown back, her head held high. She was a little grubby, but she
looked
like a cop. She was all perfect, arrogant confidence and wound-up violence, marching down toward them all without a second’s hesitation. She veered toward the shelter and no one seemed to notice her or be alarmed at her approach—here was the cop I’d kept expecting, here was a woman to worry about, to keep in sight. I watched over the rim of our rusted shelter as she strode right up to the twins guarding the shelter. None of the other cops paid her any attention.

 

Stopping in front of the two guards, she paused for a few seconds, turning her head to look around quickly—getting all the players fixed in her mind. Then, just as the two guards were rousing themselves to tell her to go fuck off, she reached across herself, drew both guns, and shot them both in the face.

 

“Ah,” I heard Grisha grunt appreciatively.

 

She spun, putting her back to the door of the shelter and picking off three nearby officers with exactly three perfect shots. The door behind her snapped open, and she spun back again, firing six times into the dark maw of the entrance before throwing herself into a neat roll, coming up on her feet like a dancer a few feet away, guns extended.

 

The cops still hadn’t reacted. She took out three more with quick, precise shots, her face impassive, her eye glowing.

 

“Now, Avery,” Grisha said. “Now, Mr. Marko.”

 

The two Techies stood and moved a few steps away, but I found myself transfixed by Krajian.
Everything is fine,
I heard her say, echoed by my own voice.

 

The cops were finally moving, taking cover where they could find it. It was chaos—most of them weren’t sure where the shots had come from, and even the ones who had an eyeball on Krajian couldn’t be sure she was alone.

 

Grisha was back at my side, panting. “Avery!” he shouted. “She has chosen this! We cannot do this without you!”

 

I allowed myself to be pulled up and staggered after him, pulling my own gun from my coat. The glassy ground made a strange, hollow thump as we picked up speed, running for the temporary HQ. The world bopped up and down as I limped as fast as I could, breathing in short, painful gasps, trying to keep her in sight as we scrambled. She was still on her feet as we made it to the open entrance, but two more of Marin’s remarkably similar bodyguards emerged as we skidded up to it. They were locked onto Krajian and she might have taken a few to the head, but they didn’t see us and putting one each in their ears was like old habit, reflex, an easy rut to fall back into.

 

Marko and Grisha pasted themselves against either side of the entryway while I faced outward, watching. Krajian had been winged, blood soaking one sleeve of her coat, but she didn’t seem to notice, rolling a few feet to her left and coming up in a perfect crouch, spitting shots at a group of cops who were hiding behind a tall pile of barrels and crates just above the high-tide mark. Her smile was still dreamy, pleased,
happy.

 

Somewhere nearby, I heard the familiar warming-up whine of Shredding rifles.

 

“Now,” I shouted over my shoulder, “would be a good time.”

 

Grisha shouted back, “EMP in!”

 

There was a soft, barely audible
ding
from within and then the sound of anything running on current shitting the bed and hitting the ground.

 

Then, Marko’s voice over my other shoulder: “Three… two… one… ah, shit, here I go!”

 

His voice disappeared inside the shelter.
Good luck, Zeke,
I thought, hoping Marko found a space filled with deactivated avatars and not pissed-off human beings. I spied two Stormers creeping up behind Krajian, who was still standing in defiance of the known laws of the universe, and I took the opportunity to help her out by putting them both down,
boom-boom,
easy at this range and with no one realizing I was there yet.

 

“Down!” Marko’s voice emerged from behind me. “Give me a hand. Marin weighs a fucking ton.”

 

“Faster, please,” I shouted, taking a useless shot at the officers crouched behind the supplies. Shredders suddenly leaped to life, but miraculously Krajian didn’t turn into a vaguely pink jelly as their roar screeched around us; they were aiming in the wrong place.

 

Krajian took the opportunity to limp over to the piled-up supplies. As I watched in disbelief, the grunts and curses of the two Techies emerging behind me, she calmly stepped around behind the cops kneeling there and shot them all in the back, steady shots, rapid and exact.

 

“Hurry up, now,” Grisha shouted as a hand tugged at my shoulder. He sounded winded. “Time to go!”

 

I started moving backward. No one had even noticed us. Krajian stepped from behind the shield of the supplies and looked in our direction for a second. I couldn’t see her eye. Her face was blank, bloodied from a gash in her forehead. Her arm hung limp at her side, the sleeve drenched in blood, and another wet-looking stain had swollen up in her midsection. Her skin was white, drained and ghostly, like she’d died five seconds before but hadn’t noticed yet. I imagined we locked eyes.

 

“Everything is fine,” I whispered, and imagined she could hear me.

 

I stumbled backward, gun held uselessly before me. The ground in front of her erupted as if underground explosives had suddenly gone off—the shredders finally finding the mark. Just before the shredders cut her into three almost equal pieces, she took a bead on a white-uniformed Stormer running across the field and sent him sprawling face-first with one easy shot.