The Eternal Prison (36 page)

 

I bent down as much as my back would allow and gripped my own Roon, forcing myself to wait. A professional, one that lived past his teen years, learned how to fucking sit still and make like a rock. It was usually the main difference between survival and death.

 

I made like a rock.

 

The noise outside had taken on a different flavor, echoing distantly with the tinge of murder, as if the crowds of people had floated up into the air and hung there, snarling and dripping sizzling spittle down onto the street. They were everywhere, all around me, encased in concrete and harmlessly terrifying.

 

I imagined my glass shield in my head, even though no one had spoken inside me in a long while. I didn’t dare hope that they might have gone away, been flushed down whatever drain stole my memories and made it possible for me to sleep. I concentrated on my breathing, counting seconds and trying to slow myself down a little at a time, fighting the urge to suck in gasps of air.

 

Up above me, unseen, there was a hollow crash, and the howling was suddenly all around me, echoed back and forth, bouncing off the walls. I took a deep breath and put my finger on the trigger, blinking once, deliberately.

 

The first two came down the escalator in huge bounds, three steps at a time, landing on the floor in front of me at a run. They were just blobs, wearing heavy winter coats that were like gigantic, blubbery exoskeletons, ripped and torn in places. I exhaled and squeezed the trigger twice, and all I got were two silent puffs in the backs of those pillowy coats. The two Howlers went down, belly flopping onto the rough floor and skidding a few feet.

 

Three more were right behind them, windmilling their arms and screeching as they invaded. I took the first two
bam-bam,
right in the square of the back, but the third—not even noticing the bodies on the floor—almost made it around the corner before I managed to orient on him and catch him down low, knocking his feet out from under him.

 

I reminded myself of my advice to Marko: Don’t be fucking fancy. I didn’t have
time
for fancy.

 

One more, wearing what looked like several suits of thin clothing, maybe every stitch he’d been able to find. He was skinny, his head looking way too big for his body as he stumbled to a halt at the bottom of the escalator as he almost tripped over the bodies lying there; a quick shot and he dropped, weightless, floating to the floor.

 

A wave of them then, six at once, all bunched up as they leaped downward, howling, crashing into each other at the bottom. There were two men in the bubblelike winter gear, seeming to float along, and four women in multiple layers of rags, their skin gray, their hair falling out. As they bunched up, startled, at the bottom they whirled to face me, snarling. I fired twice out of reflex, knocking the two men onto their asses, blood spurting up from the floor in a weak fountain, and then I hesitated; the stretched, skeletal faces of the four women were scabbed and stained with dried blood, their teeth greenish and jagged.

 

One of the girls shouted something, and they launched themselves back toward me. I forced myself to stand still, hitting each one in the abdomen, their howling transforming suddenly into a keening scream. I found I preferred the former but didn’t have time to think on it anymore: Three more Howlers were already racing down the escalator, the lead one screaming something and gesticulating at my hiding place. I skipped forward, spinning to run backward just before they vaulted over the side to land right where I’d been, each of them filthy, dried blood all over their faces and the fronts of their ragged clothing. Their fingers were blackened and curled into permanent hooks, and none of them looked particularly hearty or energetic as they struggled to their feet after the fall.

 

The first one up took a second to find me as I glided as best I could in a wide curve away from them, lining up with the escalators. He was older, maybe my age, with a severely broken nose and a thick white beard under all the scabbed residue. His eyes were dull, landing on me and just sitting there like bugs, no spark of surprise or joy or hatred. They simply registered me and stayed with me. He said something, and the three of them came at me with no art, no creativity. They just staggered at me, running dead on, and I hesitated. I watched them run, mouths open, tongues lolling. Then I saw shadows up at the top of the escalators, the next round, and I put three bullets in them, the old man dropping just four or five feet away from me, his feet sliding out from under him as his face exploded.

 

Staring at him, I dropped my clip and fished a fresh one from my pocket. I realized everything had gone quiet.

 

I looked up, bringing the Roon up with me. I had a clear line of sight up the escalators; all the way at the top was a knot of them, gray and rail thin, some enveloped in the huge, puffy winter gear, some just wearing every scrap they’d found, looking like scarecrows. My breath piled out of me in thick white jets as we stared at each other. I counted fifteen.

 

Fucking hell,
I thought.
I’m about to be fucking swamped.

 

One of them took a slow, careful step down. She was tiny, short, her limbs stubby. She would have passed for a child from behind; from the front she passed for about a century old, with a leathery, tanned face and limp, gray and white hair that had grown wildly, frizzing out at the ends. She had the same dull, empty eyes as the three I’d just cut down, eyes that just sat there, dumb and implacable.

 

She said something in that blurry language. Russian, fucking hell—no one could be civilized and speak shit like this.

 

I didn’t move or say anything.

 

She squinted down at me, gestured with one arm toward the bottom, and repeated herself. Then she closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When she popped them open again, she stabbed a black finger at the floor.

 

“Bodies,” she said in her reedy, weak voice. It sounded like
boh dees.

 

I blinked and glanced around again. One of the trio who’d just come for me was dragging himself toward me by his fingers, leaving a thick trail of blood behind. Everyone else was still. I took a step back from the escalator and nodded once.

 

“Da,”
I said. Grisha had taught me that much. I held up five fingers, and the crone nodded.

 

Well, it’s easier than bracing you,
Marin chortled inside, seemingly loud and crisp after so much interior silence.
Hell, Avery, you just fed these folks for a week.

 

This is modern man,
Squalor chimed in.
This is the disease in action. When we are all freed, there will be no need for food, and thus no need for sin.

 

Five of them came, limping down the escalators while the rest stayed up top, staring at me listlessly. The silence was complete, suddenly. As the five reached the floor, I began backing away on a curve, angling my way so that they stayed in front of me until I was in front of the doorway back to the foyer. They each took a corpse, getting their hands under their shoulders, and began dragging them back up the escalator. As each made it back to the top, a new recruit would glide down and retrieve one more.

 

When they finally got to the crawling guy, he’d managed about six inches. They just grabbed him under the shoulders like everyone else, and he let out a long, raspy moan, then fell into silence as he was dragged up the escalators. When all the corpses had been collected in this way, the rest of them just turned and walked off, disappearing into the shadows of the second floor. I considered going up there to make sure they’d left the building but turned instead and headed for the foyer, where Grisha was already standing.

 

“They just faded back,” the Russian said. “They just gave up.”

 

I nodded. “Let’s barricade the elevator banks,” I suggested, moving my finger from the trigger to the side of my gun. “And set up in these three rooms. Though I think our friends the Howlers are going to have a little party these next few days; we shouldn’t get much trouble from them.”

 

Grisha spat on the floor. “Yes, unless there are other
Howlers,
eh?”

 

I shrugged. What could you do? “Come on. We’ve got to shave Marko’s head.”

 

Grisha blinked. “Why? Will not help with Optical Face Scan.”

 

I nodded, heading for the storeroom, where Marko still stood in the doorway, his gun up and ready. “Just in case some human Techie in the Kremlin recognizes the infamous Ezekiel Marko.”

 

Marko jumped a little and turned, momentarily pointing the gun right at me. I sidestepped a little and reached out, pushing his arm down.

 

“No one came through the windows,” he said, sounding tired. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

 

I winked. “That’s okay, Zeke,” I said. “I did.”

 

 

 

 

XXXI

THEY ALWAYS CAME BACK

 

 

 

 

Moscow was the future.

 

The city hummed around us like an open line, background static and white noise. You could wander the city for hours and not see anyone, not even a sign that anyone had ever been there, and then suddenly turn a corner and find dead bodies, blood frozen around them like melted red plastic, neat fillets cut out of them, their organs gone.

 

Eventually, when Marin had converted everyone into his little puppets, this would be all the cities, just empty corridors. Would Marin even need everyone to be turned on and moving around? Or would it be easier to just have everyone shut down into power-saving mode? Or stored on the Big Iron, nothing more than programs?

 

Shit. It would be like an eternal prison, locked down inside yourself. I was on the rail too much as it was, but at least I wasn’t a damn Droid.

 

We crept along the frozen river. It would have been better to arrive in a hover, like the most powerful… thing in the System actually would, but getting a hover into the wasteland between Ruberto’s army and Moscow was not within my feeble powers. So, we improvised. The only thing I had going for me was the as yet uncharted stupidity of your average highly trained System Techie.

 

As the Kremlin came into view, a collection of distant spires and walls on top of an icy white bump in the landscape, I stopped suddenly, cocking my head. Grisha, Marko, and Amblen—inhabiting the Marin avatar with a sullen lack of grace—caught up to me, all of them looking like new and better people in the expensive suits we’d scavenged from stores, all abandoned and icy, their wares left undisturbed since, I assumed, you could not eat them. My own avatar, empty and dead, we’d left in the hotel. I found myself picturing it, staring up at the ceiling with my ruined eyes.

 

“Problem, Avery?” Grisha asked, looking around with his sharp eyes.

 

I pushed my eyes around the landscape, the rotting buildings and snow-choked streets. There was nothing there, no movement, no shape that shouldn’t be there. But I’d… heard something? Smelled something? I wasn’t sure, but my underbrain had twitched. I’d learned to listen when that happened.

 

“No,” I finally said, turning back. “I’m imagining things, I think.”

 

We started off again, soft crunching and wind, four black figures. I felt small. Moscow, so huge around us. The System so huge around Moscow. And both decaying, falling apart. As we stepped past a row of collapsed buildings, rubble and ice, I wondered if anything I’d ever done—Mitchell Kendish, Squalor, the cops in New York, the Plague, everyone directly or indirectly murdered by me—mattered. If we all weren’t going to be erased, not only killed but plowed under by a million years of slow growth, sandpaper winds, and dry rot turning everything we do into an indistinct mush. I’d been plotting for years, with nothing to show for it—Pickering’s gone, Glee gone, everyone I’d been trying to kill for years still moving around as they pleased.

 

Grisha faded back to match my pace. “I see it, too, Avery,” he said. “We are being followed.”

 

I startled; I hadn’t
seen
anything. “Fucking hell, Grisha,” I muttered. “Where were you ten years ago? We could be running this whole world by now, you and me.”

 

“Ten years?” He smiled slightly. “Ten years ago I was in tiny office, designing nanocircuits. I never knew what they were for—I received only as much spec as needed for the part.” He shook his head. “No, I would not have been of much use ten years ago.” He cocked his head. “
Three
years ago, perhaps. You do bring a certain something, do you not?”

 

I allowed myself a smile. “A tolerance for pain, so far, seems to be my only marketable skill.”

 

He shrugged. “Do not underestimate that. But it is your inability to cheat which makes people follow you.”

 

Bullshit,
I thought.

 

Bullshit,
someone echoed in my head.

 

“Marko,” I said softly. “Any ideas who’s back there?”

 

He pressed a finger against the bud in his ear, a habit I hadn’t had time to break him of. No matter how often I’d slapped him, he still did it and might as well have placed a bright sign on his head saying earbud with an arrow. “I’m getting a single-step pattern. One person, I’d say. Light-footed, knows how to move quietly. Not heavy. One fifteen, one twenty pounds. If I had —”