I summoned what was left from cellular levels in Ryker’s body and stalked forward.
Glass shattered, high above the killing floor. The shards rained down on the space between Kadmin and myself.
“Kadmin!”
I saw his eyes raised to the gantry above and then his entire chest seemed to explode. His head and arms jerked back as if something had suddenly thrown him wildly off balance and a detonation rang through the chamber. The front of his gi was torn off and a magical hole opened him up from throat to waist. Blood gouted and fell in ropes.
I whipped round, staring upwards, and saw Trepp framed in the gantry window she had just destroyed, eye still bent along the barrel of the frag rifle cradled in her arms. The muzzle flamed as she laid down continuous fire. Confused, I swung about, looking for targets, but the killing floor was deserted except for the remains of Kadmin. Carnage was nowhere in sight, and between explosions the noise of the crowd had changed abruptly to the hooting sounds of humans in panic. Everyone seemed to be on their feet, trying to leave. Understanding hit. Trepp was firing into the audience.
Down on the floor of the chamber, an energy weapon cut loose and someone started screaming. I turned, suddenly slow and awkward, towards the sound. Carnage was on fire.
Braced in the chamber door beyond, Rodrigo Bautista stood hosing wide-beam fire from a long-barrelled blaster. Carnage was in flames from the waist up, beating at himself with arms that had themselves grown wings of fire. The shrieking he made was more the sound of fury than of pain. Pernilla Grip lay dead at his feet, chest scorched through. As I watched, Carnage pitched forward over her like a figure made of melting wax and his shrieks modulated down through groans to a weird electronic bubbling and then to nothing.
“Kovacs?”
Trepp’s frag gun had fallen silent, and against the ensuing background of groaning and cries from the injured, Bautista’s raised voice was unnaturally loud. He detoured around the burning synthetic and climbed up into the ring. His face was streaked with blood.
“You OK, Kovacs?”
I chuckled weakly, then clutched abruptly at the stabbing pain in my side.
“Great, just great. How’s Ortega?”
“She’s OK. Got her dosed up on lethinol for the shock. Sorry we got here so late.” He gestured up at Trepp. “Took your friend there a while to get through to me at Fell Street. She refused to go through official channels. Said it wouldn’t scan right. The mess we made coming in here, she ain’t far wrong.”
I glanced around at the manifest organic damage.
“Yeah. That going to be a problem?”
Bautista barked a laugh. “Are you ragging me? Entry without a warrant. Organic damage to unarmed suspects. What the fuck do you think?”
“Sorry about that.” I started to move off the killing floor. “Maybe we can work something out.”
“Hey.” Bautista caught my arm. “They took off a Bay City cop. No one does that around here. Someone should have told Kadmin before he made the fucking mistake.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Ortega or me in my Ryker sleeve, so I said nothing. Instead, I tipped my head back gingerly, testing for damage, and looked up at Trepp. She was reloading the frag gun.
“Hey, are you going to stay up there all night?”
“Be right down.”
She jacked the last shell into the frag gun, then executed a neat somersault over the gantry rail and fell outwards. About a metre into the fall, the grav harness on her back spread its wings and she fetched up hanging over us at head height with the gun slung across her shoulder. In her long black coat, she looked like an off-duty dark angel.
Adjusting a dial on the harness, she drifted closer to the floor and finally touched down next to Kadmin. I limped up to join her. We both looked at the ripped-open corpse in silence for a moment.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“Forget it. All part of the service. Sorry I had to bring in these guys, but I needed the backup, and fast. You know what they say about the Sia around here. Biggest fucking gang on the block, right?” She nodded at Kadmin. “You going to leave him like that?”
I stared at the Right Hand of God martyr with his face shocked into abrupt death, and tried to see the Patchwork Man inside him.
“No,” I said, and turned the corpse over with my foot so that the nape of the neck was exposed. “Bautista, you want to lend me that firecracker?”
Wordlessly, the cop handed me his blaster. I set the muzzle against the base of the Patchwork Man’s skull, rested it there and waited to feel something.
“Anyone want to say anything?” cracked Trepp, deadpan. Bautista turned away. “Just do it.”
If my father had any comments, he kept them to himself. The only voices were the cries of the injured spectators, and those I ignored.
Feeling nothing, I pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I was still feeling nothing an hour later when Ortega came and found me in the sleeving hall, seated on one of the automated forklifts and staring up into the green glow from the empty decanting chambers. The airlock made a smooth thump and then a sustained humming sound as it opened, but I didn’t react. Even when I recognised her footfalls and a short curse as she picked her way between the coiled cabling on the floor, I didn’t look round. Like the machine I was seated on, I was powered down.
“How you feeling?”
I looked down to where she stood beside the forklift. “Like I look, probably.”
“Well, you look like shit.” She reached up to where I was seated and grasped a convenient grill cover. “You mind if I join you?”
“Go ahead. Want a hand up?”
“Nope.” Ortega strained to lift herself by her arms, turned grey with the effort and hung there with a lopsided grin. “Possibly.”
I lent her the least bruised of my arms and she came aboard the forklift with a grunt. She squatted awkwardly for a moment, then seated herself next to me and rubbed at her shoulders.
“Christ, it’s cold in here. How long have you been sitting on this thing?”
“’Bout an hour.”
She looked up at the empty tanks. “Seen anything interesting?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Oh.” She paused again. “You know, this fucking lethinol is worse than a stungun. At least when you’ve been stunned, you know you’re damaged. Lethinol tells you that, whatever you’ve been through, everything’s just fine and just go ahead and relax. And then you fall ass over tit on the first five-centimetre cable you try to step over.”
“I think you’re supposed to be lying down,” I said mildly.
“Yeah, well, probably so are you. You’re going to have some nice facial bruises by tomorrow. Mercer give you a shot for the pain?”
“Didn’t need it.”
“Oh, hard man. I thought we agreed you were going to look after that sleeve.”
I smiled reflexively. “You should see the other guy.”
“I did see the other guy. Ripped him apart with your bare hands, huh?”
I kept the smile. “Where’s Trepp?”
“Your wirehead friend? She’s gone. Said something to Bautista about a conflict of interest, and disappeared into the night. Bautista’s tearing his hair out, trying to think of a way to cover this mess. Want to come and talk to him?”
“All right.” I shifted unwillingly. There was something hypnotic about the green light from the decanting tanks, and beneath my numbness, ideas were beginning to circle restlessly, snapping at each other like bottlebacks in a feeding spiral. The death of Kadmin, far from relieving me, had only touched off a slow-burning fuse of destructive urges in the pit of my stomach. Someone was going to pay for all this.