The second panther raised its head to the empty sky and growled. The sound was clearly artificial. The third and fourth sat resting on a large rock, eyes and ears swivelling. The rock seemed suddenly a little more unreal, a painted polystyrene prop discarded from an exhausted movie set.
[ He’s here. Hiding, but he’s here,] said Fist through the first panther. Its cat throat gave Fist’s voice a rich, deep huskiness. Jack remembered the tearing of claws, deep in flesh.
[Do we really need the panthers? Couldn’t you just crash his weave access?]
[ I could. And then we’d have him. But—] The second panther stretched, reaching out with its forelegs and pushing hard against the ground. Claws scratched at the sand. [—we wouldn’t have server access. We need to go through all this to get to them.] The cat’s haunches rose up high, its tail – segmented links that looked like a black spine – twitching and spinning above them.
[ Then stop preening, and get it over with!]
[Oh, I think I scent him now,] growled the third panther. It jumped down from the rock, thudded on to the sand and prowled forwards, its long shadow sliding along behind it. The others moved with it, the four of them forming an arrowhead. The lead panther turned back to Jack – [ He’s here …] – then snapped its head forward again. Its whole body tensed, then it was flying forward, pouncing at the empty air, claws snatching at something that, if there was a breeze, could just have been a billow of sand. But there was no breeze.
Paper-white teeth clashed with empty air. There was a thin high scream, and suddenly there was no sun or sand or rock. Blueness shimmered round Jack, the wooden panthers floating just ahead of him. A shock of cold broke against his whole body. He breathed out and bubbles rose. He and Fist had been pulled underwater. Akhmatov’s security beasts were lost to him, and so he was fighting back with the only thing that remained under his controclass="underline" the environment.
The shock of immersion made Jack forget to hold his breath. To his surprise, he felt his lungs fill with air. The simulation of being underwater was not complete. The lead panther thrashed around ahead of him. It was wrapped around something, mouth and claws tearing at it. Jack assumed that Fist was struggling with Akhmatov, but the club owner remained invisible, his security systems not yet finally defeated. His resistance had already lasted for at least five seconds – highly impressive, against Fist. The other panthers propelled themselves towards the fight with regular backward kicks. In the meantime, Jack could do nothing to help.
The sea was as empty as the desert had been. Above, there was only a lighter blue. There was no sign of a surface. Below, the water darkened to black. Shards of sunlight danced between Jack and the combatants, the ocean vast beyond them. Jack wondered how it had been coded. Perhaps it was finite and eventually stopped. Perhaps he could move through it forever, the simulation perpetually creating new distance before him. Fear chilled him. A digital eternity seemed so much emptier than its analogue equivalent.
Another of the panthers reached the fight. It threw itself into the fray and, once again, the world changed. They were no longer underwater. A gentle breeze gusted against Jack. He stood in a circle of henges, each one made of two upright man-sized stones supporting a third horizontal one. A sunset sky blazed with reds and oranges. Long shadows drifted across the centre of the circle, where a single sarsen lay flat. Two panthers rolled and snarled across it, their wooden bodies clattering against the rock. The others paced, looking for a way into the fight. Akhmatov’s security systems were not yet sufficiently compromised to give them access.
Fist had however managed to dismantle some of his camouflage protocols. The two fighting cats spun and snarled around a shadowy figure, an almost man-shaped mass of disturbed air. Teeth and claws tore into it. It bled tiny spatters of visual noise. They became spots of red as they hit the green grass. The third cat pounced. There was a howl, and they were in the jungle clearing where Jack had been tortured. Memories of virtual claws ripped through Jack. He wondered what state Akhmatov would be in when his defences were finally broken. He turned away and leant against a tree. It felt wet. His hand was covered with brown paint. He touched a low hanging leaf. His fingers came away green. This was no longer the reality that Akhmatov had built. Fist was remaking it according to his own needs.
Looking around, Jack felt like an actor who’d wandered into an empty stage set. Unreality was exploding into being everywhere. The jungle floor was nothing more than brown-painted concrete, the trees that leapt out of it brightly coloured flats. Even the bird-song that suffused the space changed, crackling through static for a moment then reinstating itself as a series of obvious imitations. The battle was nearly over. Fist let out a triumphant howl, drowning out Akhmatov’s scream of rage and terror. The painted jungle disappeared entirely.
There was a popping sound, and the sharp smell of burning plastic. Then a new scene took over. Fluorescent strip-lights lit an unremarkable room holding a desk, some chairs and four paintings. One showed a desert, one a sea, one a stone circle and one a dense jungle. Panthers prowled through each of them.
Akhmatov was lying on the floor, shaking. Fist stood over him, now just a wooden puppet again, and cackled gleefully. ‘If you try anything on,’ he said, ‘I’ll crack your mind open like an egg and piss in it.’
‘He means it,’ said Jack. ‘I’d do what he says, if I were you.’
Chapter 26
They let Akhmatov pull himself up and lean against the desk. He was dressed in a black shirt and trousers. Both were covered in silver weave sigils.
‘I’ve shut down his access to the club systems,’ said Fist. ‘There’s nothing there but flesh.’ Jack pulled the chair out from the other side of the desk and sat down. [And I’m running through his files, too,] added Fist quietly. [ I’ll let you know if I find anything good.] Akhmatov was wheezing. His skin was a traumatised grey. It was an effort for him to speak, but his voice was surprisingly strong when he did.
‘I should have killed you eight years ago.’
Fist started towards him, his little hands twitching. ‘No, Fist,’ ordered Jack. ‘You’ve had your fun. We need him able to talk.’ Fist sat down hard, grumbling to himself about nice cops. Jack turned back to Akhmatov. ‘And we should have raided your clubs and arrested you.’
‘You’d have been stopped if you’d tried that.’
‘Pantheon?’ said Jack. ‘They did stop me, in the end.’
‘And we learned from you. Yamata stripped anything to do with her patron out of my systems.’
[Shit.]
[ I’ll keep looking,] replied Fist. [ There’ll be something we can use. There always is.] Then he spoke out loud. ‘Don’t stop talking, Akhmatov. Tell us what we want to hear. Make it easy on yourself.’
‘That’s what torturers always say, isn’t it?’ Akhmatov was slumped against the table, legs splayed out before him, a puppet whose strings had been cut. ‘Rest assured the gods will torture you.’
‘Not for your sake, though,’ replied Jack. ‘You don’t really matter, do you? It’s Aud Yamata and poor dead Penderville that count. That’s what they don’t want us digging into.’
‘I’m saying nothing.’
‘Look at Yamata now. Disappeared. A new identity, a new weave presence, maybe even a new body. Where is she? Somewhere in the Wart? In Homelands? In Heaven, even?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She’s your boss. Why did she get promoted when you didn’t? What did she do that was so valuable? She was just one of the grunts back in the day, the one who brought the sweat in. But now you’re still stuck counting cash in a Docklands dive. And she’s who knows where, but it’s better than here, isn’t it?’