I paused, something tickling my brain again, a memory. Before I could pursue it, a horrible grinding noise came from the opened shaft and a shower of quickly fading sparks danced downward inside it. Before I could form a question for Marko, I watched in curiously delighted horror as the ancient lights inside the shaft banged on one after the other, most of the bulbs immediately exploding in a flash of soured light. The ones that survived gave the shaft a sickly yellowish glow.
The slow screeching began descending. Kev knows we’re here, I thought. I didn’t feel him on me, no Push that I could detect, but I was disinclined to move. Kev was coming, or Kev had sent some of his minions to finally kill me off, and I was relieved. I was tired. Exhausted. I turned to spit blood onto the ground while Lukens circled behind me, the climbing whine of her shredder filling the air, to cover the elevator doors when it arrived.
The car made terrible noises as it lowered itself, rust on rust. Dust shook down the shaft in front of us, and when the cab finally came into view it did so slowly, hitching and shaking like a square box being rammed down a round hole. It sank a few feet past the floor before shuddering to a stop, and then-silence. I could hear the rainlike sound of sprinkling dust and then the low, keening sound of complaining metal filling the cavernous space around us.
After a moment a booming noise came from within the elevator cab. Marko jumped and quietly moved farther back, his eyes locked on his little device. The Stormer didn’t flinch. She just stared at the elevator doors, one short finger resting lightly on the trigger of her rifle. The booming repeated twice, and then the cab’s doors parted about half an inch as the tip of a pry bar appeared between them. With a warping, grinding noise the doors were slowly forced open, centimeters at a time, with a jerking motion that hinted at great effort. One more inch, two inches, and I could see movement. Three more, and I could see hands. As the doors split open enough for someone to shoulder through, I finally raised my gun, which shook in front of me embarrassingly.
With a final wrench the doors slid all the way open as smoothly as they’d been designed to. A single figure stood in the shadows within. He dropped the pry bar, which made a metallic rattle, and put up his hands.
“Don’t shoot. I’m an old man.”
“Fucking hell,” I spat out, keeping my gun trained on him. “Wa, you’re a goddamn virus.”
He stepped slowly from the elevator, hands up, looking a little less pressed and neat than I was used to. Even his motion was less fluid, a little more brittle, as if Wa Belling had grown old over the past few days, a lifetime catching up with the old man. “From what I hear, Avery, you’re the virus, yes?” He gave me a raised eyebrow, an expression that used to convey endless disdain and amusement. It looked tired and forced now. “At any rate, I’ve come to throw myself on your tender mercy.”
“He’s not emitting any signals,” Marko announced. “He’s not carrying any devices, aside from four guns and some ammunition.”
“Of course not,” Belling said, smiling. “I’ve come to sur-render.”
“Fuck you, surrender,” I barked, coughing. “You did this to me. You fucked me, Wa. You fucked everyone.” I staggered forward, pushing my gun at him and making him retreat, raising his hands higher. A part of me thrilled at making Wa Belling retreat. “You killed Glee, Wa,” I hissed, my whole body shaking. “You had her chewed up and fucking digested.” I knew that if he’d come here to kill me, he’d have an excellent chance of doing so. One Stormer and a rusted-out Avery Cates wasn’t a match for the man who’d successfully posed as Canny Orel for years. I felt like I’d turn to dust if someone so much as used harsh language on me.
“I fucked everyone,” he admitted, his hands still up in the air. “And I got fucked in return.”
I struggled for control. I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted to hurt him. But I had a job to do, and Belling could help. “How’d you locate us?”
He waggled his bushy white eyebrows. “I tracked your nanos, Avery. They all know you’re here. You’re filled with transmitters. You can’t take a piss, the Freak up there doesn’t know about it.”
I considered this, fighting the urge to start coughing again. “Then why isn’t he down here?”
Belling looked at me, a hint of the old bravado smile on his face. “Because, Avery, the Freak doesn’t consider you a threat. What with his Wonder Boy brain and all, you see. Also,” he continued, looking away and making a show of examining his surroundings, “I have gotten the impression he wants you to die of this plague, slowly. He wants you to suffer. Or rather, the voice in his head does.”
When it is over, you will be punished again, I heard Kev saying not so long ago. I gave Belling my best hardassed stare: emotionless, cold. I was a little surprised how easily it came back to me. “So what’s changed, Wallace? What’s happened in the past two days that brings you to me?”
Belling’s expression changed, all the humor going out of it, rage lighting him up and filling him, peeling back a few dozen years instantly. “Avery, I made a deal-you can cry about it if you want, but you and I, we didn’t have a deal. We had an informal arrangement.”
I almost pulled the trigger right then and there, the words informal arrangement like acid in my ear. The gun shook in my hand, and I told myself it was pure, corrosive anger. I wanted to shove our informal arrangement up his ancient ass.
“I made a deal with the Freak. A deal,” he added, “that no longer exists.” He looked away, finding something over my shoulder to study. “He fucking reneged. On me. On Wa Belling.”
A smile flashed onto my face. I almost felt good. “You got fucked in return,” I said, feeling some small part of the universe click back into alignment.
The old man’s eyes latched onto me. “You can be amused, Avery,” he said icily, “at least for the remaining few hours of your life. As for me, I am not happy. I was going to be immortal, Avery. And now I am dying.”
I squinted at him. “So? Just kill Kieth. Kill Kieth and the whole nano network crashes, right? They’ll just become bits of silicone and alloy in our bloodstream, and we’ll piss ’em out.”
He nodded. “That asshole Kieth is a clever asshole, yes-his little back door in the nano design is the only reason he’s still alive. But Avery, it isn’t that simple. Every time I do something Kev doesn’t like the look of, he tells me to stop, and I stop, yes? And he is under… guard.” He shrugged, suddenly looking small. “And I’ve grown old, Avery. I need your help.”
I snorted at this ridiculous situation, which set off a chain reaction of coughing I couldn’t stop. I was laughing and hacking my lungs up simultaneously, face going red, sweat pouring down my back. I bent over, putting the gun flat against my knee, trying to suck in enough breath to respond.
“Where the fuck were you a day ago?” I gasped. “I’m fucking dying now.”
Belling had recovered some of his old fire and was grinning at me as if we were all sharing a little joke. “So am I! The metal fucker put me on the list. I’ve never been so fucking screwed in my life.” Then he sobered. “I don’t wish to die, Avery, but I want to make that Freak hurt.” He cocked his head at me. “You and I come from the same place, in some ways. You know what happens when someone screws you out of a deal.” He nodded as if that was all that needed to be said. “We were an excellent murder team, Avery. Excellent.”