Two more were kneeling by the front windows, pretty impressive sniper rifles mounted on the sills, the barrels moving through narrow slits they’d cut into the boards. The wood didn’t give them any armor protection, but by kneeling on the floor they had a decent field of vision, weren’t very exposed, and could rake the street below with their careful, sissy shots. Seeing me, they both flopped around squawking. With their rifles bolted to the fucking windows and without any backup weapons, they were a couple of chumps. I knew it was a sloppy move, but I dropped my arm and ignored them. They weren’t a threat. Throwing myself back against the wall just inside the door, with a tearing pain in my splinted leg, I waited a moment, forcing myself to listen, my breathing loud and raspy.
Three breaths, and I ducked out into the hall. A shot sizzled over my head and thunked into the wall above me. I put a quick shell into the kneecap directly across from me, dropping the figure into a ball that squirmed and screamed. The hall was clear, so I tossed my clip and fished out a fresh one just as a boot edged out of the far doorway. I pushed off and rolled back into the front room, slammed my clip home and racked a shell into the chamber, then rolled back out. This one was a big round guy, a fucking blueberry in a tight black bodysuit-the latest fashion, I supposed, for facing Armageddon with the best people. I was afraid a bullet in the gut would just be absorbed and processed, so I ticked upward. The blueberry had his rifle slung over his shoulder, and the pistol in his hand shook terribly. As I moved my arm up he fired, the gun jerking in his hand, sending another shell about a foot above me. I held my breath, chest heaving, and showed him the right way to do it.
I opened my mouth and sucked in air, my chest heaving, and as I struggled to my feet, face feeling tight with blood, I coughed uncontrollably, spittle drooling from my mouth as I stumbled forward, pushing myself into the middle room long enough to see five empty cots and a lot of trash. I whirled and stumbled back out, turning around to sweep the hallway as I stepped into the final room. The spasm passed, and I gulped in mouthfuls of hot, stuffy air.
The room was empty. In the back were two more windows covered by thick boards, one with a sniper rifle bolted into place, the other hinged, a large padlock holding it shut.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered. I shot the lock off and staggered for it, pulling the boards up and staring out into the back garden, the huge storm drain exactly as I remembered it, open, yawning.
Pushing my gun into a pocket, I climbed out onto the rusted fire escape and slid down the steep ladder, dropping the last few feet and landing on my ass to spare my splinted leg, teeth rattling in my head. Behind me everything had gone ominously quiet, so I kept moving, pushing up onto my stiff leg and hobbling over to the drain. The silence behind me was worrying, and pushed me along like a sour wind, urging me along. At the edge of the drain I sat down and slid my legs over, easing myself down until I was hanging from the lip. Bracing myself, I dropped the last few feet into a familiar damp sludge, pain shooting up from my fractured leg.
Everything was starting to make sense again: I was back in the sewers.
XXXII
Day Ten: This is a Controlled Burn
Unconcerned with Best Practices-coughing up sewage and my own blood, I was ready to take a head shot and be done with it-coming up was like being born again. Covered in blood and grime, I pushed my way through a narrow shaft, oozing out onto the damp floor of a subbasement far below street level. It was cold, and I lay there hacking up loose, rust-flavored phlegm and shivering, feeling sorry for myself. I should have been at the top of my game by now, rich and happy. Instead, here I was buried underground, dying and alone. I’d wasted the past five years on petty revenge, and for what? A few dead cops, the System still alive and well, Dick Marin still immortal and everywhere.
Me, dying alone and underground. The game had been stacked against me, and I didn’t like it. I intended to find some way to shake it up.
After a minute or two of gasping on the cold concrete like a fish out of water, I felt my chest ease up a little and the burning gashes on my arms and thighs subsided. I got to my feet and tried to get my bearings. I knew the sewers, and finding Bellevue through them hadn’t been so hard, but I’d never been on this level, and my memories weren’t very helpful. Bellevue was a huge complex, and wasn’t designed for internal defense-there was no easy way to close off sections of it. As I crept around the gloomy space, feet squishing inside my tattered boots, leg aching steadily, I imagined the Monks spread thin, concentrating on the perimeter in order to defend against an external assault, the interior of the complex empty and cavernous.
The floor sloped upward, the room growing brighter as I walked, until I was standing at the bottom of a softly humming escalator, the illuminated edges of the steps gliding upward in a steady, mesmerizing rhythm. Hell, I thought, the Monks have power. The rich assholes had been in one small building and they’d been sleeping on cots, eating nutrition tabs, and crapping in a fucking hole in the floor. Maybe the Monks were going to inherit the earth after all.
Thinking about the rich assholes, I decided maybe that wasn’t the worst-case scenario.
I stepped onto the escalator and enjoyed gliding up silently through the darkness. I drew my gun and held it loosely against my hip, trying to bounce on my feet as best I could. Remarkably, I felt pretty good, aside from my aching leg and the way each breath made me wince. I felt loose and calm. Things had narrowed down to a familiar and happy point: I had to kill someone and go through hell to get to them.
At the top an automated door split open, disgorging me into an open, dark area of sloping, cracked pavement and dusty steel. Ancient paint marked out areas on the floor. Whatever the space had been, it was underground and long abandoned, though a few yellow lights gleamed weakly here and there. My wet boots echoed as I walked, leaving tracks in the dust behind me. But the smooth, settled look of all that grime made it pretty clear that no one had been down here in years, maybe decades.
I picked a direction and stuck with it, squinting through the dark for signs or any other info. After I’d gone a few dozen steps a mechanical hissing from behind stopped me with my bad leg in the air. The automated door I’d just come through had opened.
I knew I was probably well concealed in the darkness, unless these were Stormers with their vision filters or someone with a night-vision Augment. The thick silence meant that any kind of move would give my position away, but just standing in the middle of the room was a surefire way to get sniped. I let my foot sink slowly down to the pavement and then eased down until I was kneeling on my good leg, my bum one stretched out stiffly before me. I crouched, trying to make myself small, a shadow, and turned around just as slowly, swallowing my flexing chest and keeping my gun up and ready. I could hear two sets of steps approaching.
I squinted, pushing my aching eyes to see something, and nearly jumped when she spoke. “Mr. Cates, please don’t shoot at us.”
The voice was all round edges and endless vowels. I kept my gun up. “Fat Girl?”
“You can call me Lukens,” she replied, her voice sort of irritated. “We have names, eh?” A pair of dim figures began to resolve. “I’m here with Mr. Marko. I’m not threatening you, so quit moonin’ at me like that.”
I considered this. “Marko?”
“I’m here,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’ve been kidnapped. Again.”
This with an air of acceptance, as if he’d finally realized that his purpose in life was to be pushed from spot to spot by tormentors-among which, I assumed, I numbered. He paused, and Lukens shoved him from behind, a little harder than I thought necessary. I let them get closer, but kept them covered. The Stormer had her shredder looped over her shoulder and her sidearm holstered, sure enough. Marko wasn’t armed either, though he carried his black duffel and his handheld, fingers of one hand flying in complex gestures as he walked.