I put my eyes on Kieth, who’d succeeded in pushing his gag completely out of his mouth, but he continued to stare at me in silence, mouth open, chest heaving. He remained frozen until I was a step away; when I languidly racked a shell into the chamber of my gun, it was as if someone had pressed a button inside him.
“Mr. Cates!” He hissed, forcing a squeamish smile. “Mr. Cates, Ty is glad to see you! Rescue at last!”
Behind me, there was more gunfire, and I sensed movement, harried and desperate, but nothing was left inside me to produce alarm or urgency or fear. I stared down at Kieth with my gun held waist-high, almost forgotten, and felt only a tired sadness.
Kieth licked his lips. “Rescue at last,” he repeated more quietly.
My whole body tightened as I looked down at him, and I brought the gun up. His eyes flashed to it and he convulsed on the table, struggling madly against his bonds, whipping his head back and forth.
“Ty had no choice, Mr. Cates! Ty had no choice! Please, please, Avery-Avery! You know me! You know me! Please!”
I nodded. “I know you, Ty.”
He nodded back eagerly. I felt like the world’s biggest asshole, making him squirm, making him beg. “Ty can work on this, Mr. Cates. We have some time. Ty designed this; Ty can hack it under control. Mr. Cates. Please.”
I could feel the universe pushing against me like wind in a sail, pushing me inexorably, gently toward its preordained destination-which was, unfortunately for Ty, a bullet in the Techie’s head, everyone linking arms and singing as we all got well again. Or some bullshit like that. My city gone, even if they repopulated the buildings. Glee gone. Everything gone.
And I decided, Fuck the universe.
Feeling weak, I jerked my arm and my blade snapped into place, the one thing left in the world that was still working properly. With a slash I cut through Ty’s bonds and then stood there wobbling a little. I let the blade slide back into its holster on its spring and brought the gun up, shuddering a breath into my ruined lungs.
“Ty,” I said raggedly, fighting an epic coughing fit that was beating its way up from my chest. “I’m going to get you out of this building.”
Fuck the universe. I was off the rail, and for the first time in a week felt normal again. I was probably going to die-it was a wonder I wasn’t dead yet-but for a while now I’d known I’d outlived my time. It felt all right. It felt natural. I was going to get Ty out of here, and he’d do his best.
Ty struggled upright, nose quivering, eyes damp and glassy. “Mr. Cates,” he said hoarsely, “Mr. Cates, Ty doesn’t know-”
“Ty,” I said tiredly, waving my gun toward the exit, “you’re not going to kiss me or anything, are you? We don’t have time.”
He smiled, convulsing into an unexpected laugh, radiating relief. As he opened his mouth to say something, the back of his head exploded, splattering a sticky mess of blood and bone onto the wall behind him. As if a supporting thread had been cut, Ty flopped back down onto the table.
I whirled, a push of adrenaline giving me a last burst of energy. Belling stood in the doorway, sweating and pale, one gun still outstretched toward me. His eyes shifted to me, and I squeezed my own trigger, getting a dry click in response.
Belling nodded, keeping his gun on me but not firing. “You never could go that last bit, could you, Avery?” he said, and in his mouth it was a curse. Wordlessly, he turned and strode away.
There was no moment of salvation, no feeling of disease evaporating. I felt as shitty as I had a second before. Whatever damage the nanobots had done to me had been done, and whether that was enough to kill me remained to be seen. A molten, distorted scream filled the room, and I felt Kev’s Push, harder than I’d ever felt before, crashing into my head like a boulder, flattening everything that was me. Before I could blink I’d bent my arm up and put my gun against my own forehead and pulled the trigger. Another dry click sounded like thunder in my ear. Behind me, I heard a volley of gunshots, and Kev’s Push vanished as suddenly as it had hit me, my arm dropping, the gun slipping from shaking, numb fingers. My legs disappeared and I hit the floor softly, just sort of sagging down onto it, feeling like every nerve ending I had left had been pulled to the surface through my pores, screaming and raw.
I heard a soft rustling behind me, and then Hense’s boots appeared near my head. She stood for a moment staring down at Ty, hands loose at her sides, one still gripping her automatic. Her hands were spotless: not a nick, cut, or bruise. I wondered if Colonel Hense was even human. I shifted my eyes and studied her upside-down face, and with a surge of adrenaline I remembered where I’d seen her before.
Hanging upside down from the ancient fire escape, guns still clutched in her hands. I’d killed her. Years ago. She hadn’t been a lofty colonel back then, and she’d shown up moonlighting as bodyguard for one of my jobs. I hadn’t expected a bodyguard, and I remembered barely surviving the encounter.
I never actually killed the target.
Without a sound she turned and disappeared from view, and then those perfect tiny hands were sliding under my arms and pushing me into a sitting position with my back against the examination table. I looked up at her as she knelt before me. She stared at me. She wasn’t sweating. She wasn’t breathing hard. Why would she? She was a ghost. Her face was cocked at me like a bird or a cat examining prey, just like Dick Marin, and I thought, Fuck me, she’s a fucking avatar.
If Marin had started making avatars out of the cops, we were all completely screwed. You’d never be able to stop someone who could just pull another body out of the fucking warehouse and return to kick you in the balls again and again.
She put one of her small hands on my cheek and looked at me, her face almost soft, a slight smile in place. A tiny flare of hope sparked inside me. I liked Hense, cop or no cop. “I am a woman who keeps her word,” she said softly. “Mr. Kieth is dead, and in your way you brought us here. I could quibble about details, but I see no reason to kill you, Avery.”
She wiped something off my face in a gentle, almost affectionate gesture. “Because the Monks will almost certainly do it for me,” she said quietly, patting my cheek and standing up. I watched her walk out of the room without another word as I struggled to suck air into my ruined lungs, too tired to even mind the pain.
For a moment Marko regarded me from the doorway, hands clenching and unclenching in indecision, and then he whirled to follow.
I heard the remnants of the cops pulling out, a few ragged shouts, Hense’s voice clear and unfatigued. A ghost. As they faded, silence crept in behind them, and for a while I just sat there, staring at Happling’s corpse. I thought of Gleason and tried to imagine what she’d say about this, what wise-ass remark, but I couldn’t think of anything. Then the distant sound of heavy boots running.
XXXIX
Day Ten: I Should Have Been Killing Monks
Right, I thought, that’s goddamn fair. For a few moments I sat and stared blearily at the door, happy to not move. This was fitting. After all that, I was going to be torn to pieces by the last of Kev’s Monks, fifty or so still in the complex. We’d slipped past them and they’d arrived too late to save their boss, but here I was, the consolation prize.
In a strange way, I thought it was only right that Kev have his revenge. I’d led him down into Westminster Abbey and he’d died sitting on a bare concrete floor, one of Dennis Squalor’s digital avatars grinning down at him. Now I was sitting on a cold floor, high up this time but close enough. I sat there immobile. My arms weighed a hundred pounds each, useless lengths of bone and flesh, and the thought of moving them made my head ache.