The Eternal Prison (47 page)

 

“Oh, Ave,” Marlena moaned, her voice still shaking. She’d stopped moving, and her hands were slack on her belly. A weak stream of blood leaked out of her, and she lay on the floor as if something heavy and invisible were sitting on top of her. “Oh, shit, I’m dead. I’m dead.”

 

I kept nodding for some reason. “We all go, right? You,” I said, pointing to the avatar. “Carry her. Be gentle.”

 

“Fuck you,” the avatar said through Dick Marin’s mouth. Its face was working through several expressions at once. The thought that the machine might be feeling my emotions made me angry. “Tell me to be gentle.”

 

“Avery.” Grisha pushed between me and the avatar, getting closer than I normally would have allowed. I held myself back. “Avery,” he said. “I am sorry for Lena, I am. I am sorry for
all
of us, yes? But she is dead. She will bleed out and die, and in the meantime we will be slow because of her. We should not bring her.”

 

I smiled, lifting my Roon from its pocket and clicking back the hammer. “We’re taking her.”

 

The avatar had already knelt down next to her and was murmuring softly as it slid its hands under her skinny frame. The amount of blood that had pooled beneath her was startling—it looked like a deep, wet, black pool had opened up underneath her. “Damn right,” it muttered.

 

This is touching,
Marin whispered to me,
but foolish. But you’ve been astoundingly foolish many times in my experience, Avery, and somehow you manage to survive your own mistakes. When this little war calms down and I have the time and resources, I may do a little study on you and your roachlike ability to survive. In the meantime: out. You want to head back to the elevators. Take this corridor until it terminates.

 

“Straight on,” I announced. I knew Marin would keep his word—the letter of it, at least—and guide us to an escape route. Whether we’d actually be able to escape was another matter. “Grisha, take up the rear. Marko and… Mr. Smith, you’re in the middle.”

 

Marlena screamed as the avatar stood up in a smooth, fluid motion, and I clenched my teeth and started off. Grisha could follow or not as he wished—he was a big boy and could handle himself. I was getting out of this shithole, and when we were in the air and leaving it behind, I was going to push Dick Marin’s avatar out the hatch and watch it hit the desert below.

 

Oh, Mr. Cates, you are full of mischief, aren’t you?

 

The dry old woman’s voice. I blinked.
Well, hello there, Dolores,
I thought, sweeping my eyes this way and that as I walked. The corridor was narrow and hot, with minimal lighting. We passed doors on either side, all shut tight, a diffuse red glow making them look forbidding. I assume it indicated they were locked down.
I thought maybe I’d lost the brain cells you were making your home in, Your Grace.

 

I did not and do not approve of your course of action. But I suspect it may have some unexpected consequences for Director Marin. We have been cut off inside you for too long, and I believe he has miscalculated. He expects that Ruberto’s death will result in the collapse of the government forces and an easy road to dominance for him. I suspect otherwise.

 

The corridor seemed endless, stretching out in front of us in red-tinged gloom.
Well, that’s grand. Good for you. If you’ll excuse me, Dolores, I’m fucking busy here.

 

Wonderful silence filled my head as we walked, our rough breathing, Marlena’s hitching cough, and the avatar’s heavier than normal steps all we could hear. The corridor took a sudden turn to the left, just as suddenly ending at a bank of two elevators, each gleaming, new-looking steel and each lit up a soft, soothing green color.

 

“This is an uneasy coincidence,” Grisha said sourly. “Everything
but
this elevator is locked down?”

 

I listened to Marin. “Mr. Wizard points out that this is an administrative level, and the only way up or down is via elevator.
Trust
me, Grisha. Please.”

 

The Russian grunted but said nothing more. I wasn’t used to having Grisha pushing back against me.

 

I started to gesture at the elevators. “All right, then —”

 

Without warning the elevator doors opened with a slight hiss of escaping air, and instantly I felt like something very large and very strong—tentacles, perhaps—had seized me from behind and begun to squeeze. My eyes bugged out of my face and my mouth opened, tongue wagging uselessly as I stared at Bendix and the round-faced kid, each puffy and bruised from our last encounter but still wearing the hell out of their fucking suits.

 

The kid was staring at me with yellow, slitted eyes, like he wanted to make my brain explode into greenish chunks, was just waiting for the order. Or for Bendix to turn his back for a moment.

 

“Now —” Bendix said.

 

From behind me the gunshot sounded like a bomb going off in the tight, murky corridor. A large red welt appeared on the round-faced kid’s forehead, and his legs gave way, dropping him to the floor of the cab where his head bounced with a hollow clang. Bendix flinched and spun to stare down at the kid, and the tentacles disappeared.

 

I launched myself forward with everything I had, my bum leg twitching unreliably under my own weight and twisting me around so that I smacked painfully into the Spook off balance, my gun jammed between us and aimed approximately at my own liver. We grappled for a second or two as I strained every muscle I had, determined to get out, to get the
fuck out
of this fucking prison for once and for all. Bendix smelled bad up close. His breath in my ear was like rotten meat, and his skin smelled like old fish left in the sun.

 

He grunted, and I was pushed away from him violently, rising up and slapping into the ceiling of the elevator, making the whole car jitter and swing. I remained pinned against the roof of the elevator, my arms held stiffly up by my ears, pain shooting through my shoulders as I imagined my tendons creaking, the bones developing hairline cracks—the fucking Spook was going to break my arms.

 

“Mr. Bendix!”

 

It was Dick Marin’s voice. It was Mr. Smith, down below, me inside a Marin body—I could see it, standing just outside the elevator, still holding the limp form of Marlena in its arms like she weighed nothing. Just behind it was Grisha, gun still held up by the avatar’s ear, held stiffly and shaking slightly, caught in Bendix’s invisible tendrils. I pushed as hard as I could against Bendix’s mind, but all I got was more sweat dripping off my nose.

 

“Mr. Bendix!” the avatar repeated. “Have you lost your fucking
mind?
”

 

Bendix didn’t move. I remained pinned above him, staring down at his unmistakable bald spot, a glowing circle of pale skin in the midst of his dark hair.

 

“Drop that asset immediately, Mr. Bendix, or I will see to it that you are reclassified into our custodial department to spend your few remaining days on this planet shifting metric tons of fucking garbage around dumps. Do I make myself clear?”

 

The avatar cocked its head to one side suddenly, and a little thrill went through me. For a second it had looked just like the fucking Director of SSF Internal Affairs himself.

 

Bendix seemed to twitch below me. “What?”

 

“I’m going to have to review the entrance exams again, as it appears more morons than tolerable are slipping through,” the avatar said. “I am ordering you to release Mr. Cates and cease being an
unbelievable pain in my ass.
Now, in small words to make sure we’re clear: Do. You. Under. Stand?”

 

Everything was silence. I imagined I could hear Bendix’s eyes swiveling in their sockets as he reviewed the scene. Grisha and Marko were still in their suits—disheveled and sweaty, but they’d both worked in the machine and knew the blank expression of the underling, the very still way you stood when more powerful people were in the room. They would pass. The avatar looked like Marin and talked like Marin—I’d spent enough time with the King Worm to do a five-minute impression. Except for the dying woman in its arms, it might have
been
Marin, which was the ugly and unfathomable possibility Bendix was considering.

 

As if on cue, Marlena moaned. Bendix oriented on her, and I felt the invisible hand slacken just for a second, getting spongy as Bendix’s attention wandered.

 

The avatar dropped Marlena, just letting her fall at its feet like a bundle it had been carrying too long, bringing its own gun up faster than I ever could, faster than I ever
had,
even when I’d been young and limber and reckless. It fired twice, its aim perfect, and Bendix slapped back against the rear of the elevator as I dropped from the ceiling, landing hard on my bad leg. A red spike of pain shot up into my brain, and everything went hazy for a moment.

 

When my sight returned, Dick Marin’s face was hovering directly over me, smiling. I could feel the very slight vibration of the elevator as we rose upward out of the prison’s guts.

 

“She’s still alive,” it said. “Had to be done.”

 

“I’m still going to brick you when we’re free of this place,” I said softly, forcing myself to sit up. I still had my gun in my hand.

 

The avatar nodded. “I know. Because you’re a miserable bastard. And because I’m
you.
”

 

The elevator stopped, and I heard the doors behind me open with a soft, serpentine hiss, heat slapping me on the back like something solid. The avatar looked up from me and its expression blanked instantly.

 

“Oh, sh —” I heard Grisha say, and then the loudest noise I’d ever heard in my life swept into the elevator like a wave and smacked me back against the rear wall.

 

 

 

 

XLIII

IMAGINING THAT I ALWAYS GOT TO
DECIDE
WHO I KILLED WAS JUST ARROGANCE

 

 

 

 

I bounced off the wall with my own unexpected inertia, landing flat on my back, my head bouncing hard on the floor, making my vision swim again. The heat was suddenly a living thing in the elevator with us, the crank air we’d been living in a memory, and a hazy one at that. Blinking my stinging eyes, I twisted around, slapping my hands out for my lost gun.

 

“It’s a fucking war zone,” Marko said in a strangely level, calm voice.

 

I squinted into the bright, hot light just as several shining silver hovers flashed past the ragged hole above us. The elevator spilled out into a crawl space that had once been just deep enough for a normal man to stand up in, located just below the prison’s common dorm room, which had been completely torn away. Scraps of the joists still remained, and a few sharp-edged pieces of cinder block jutted up here and there, but otherwise it was as if the old dorm area had been torn off cleanly, leaving behind the exposed subbasement.

 

Something smashed into a guard tower off in the distance, an explosion of rock and dust and smoke followed a second later by a high-pitched whine and the concussion. Another silver hover shot over us and through the dissipating cloud of dust that had once been the tower.

 

What the fuck,
Marin hissed in my head,
is going on?

 

Looks like things have slipped beyond the King Worm’s control,
Salgado whispered, somehow conveying glee.
He thought Ruberto controlled everything. Start a war and think you can control it? Foolish. Considering the function of this place, we have long wished to destroy it to slow down Marin’s ability to transform his people into avatars. Ruberto vetoed this in favor of occupation, but it appears hotter heads have finally prevailed. Marin will not find it easy to rebuild his labs elsewhere.

 

There was return fire from the ground, streaks of white soaring into the sky impossibly fast, intersecting with spiraling, swooping hovers a mile up. I’d never seen hovers move that way, zigzagging and rolling, darting through the air. The new military was setting the standard.

 

An explosion nearby made the whole world tremble again, and we all instinctively ducked our heads a little, crouching down inside the elevator. As I was considering the wisdom of remaining inside an elevator while the general area was being bombed into oblivion, Grisha turned and grabbed onto my coat, pulling me close to shout over the roar.

 

“Well, Mr. Wizard? We cannot
sit
here?”

 

Another bone-rattling explosion, and the elevator lights flickered off for a second, then back on again. We had to move quickly.

 

Well, Mr. Wizard?
I thought.
We had a deal.

 

If the hover is no longer in place or is damaged,
Marin whispered back,
I cannot be held responsible. That said, I am an entity of my word. You will have to climb out of this debris and work your way around the rear of the installation.

 

I nodded. “Up and out,” I shouted, pushing Grisha toward the doors. I stood up, the elevator wobbling this way and that as I shifted my weight, and pushed forward, taking the lead. Marlena hung limply in the avatar’s arms, bleached and limp, her ink looking like something beneath her skin leeching out of her, some sort of terrible worm. I forced myself to look away and get moving.