Lugan glanced up – Fuller rarely swore, and his flash of rancour was unusual.
The commander shot back, “We’re not all fucking brain-dead. Pilgrim ’asn’t won yet.”
“The pockets of resistance get smaller with every year,” Fuller said. “You’re an anachronism, Luge, a relic, and they know it. They’ll get bored with you one of these days, and then they’ll send the boys round. I fear our time is borrowed.”
So we’d better make the most of it.
He didn’t actually say it, but Lugan heard him anyway.
Ecko said, his rasp soft and sinister, “So let’s gettem, for chrissakes, before they get us, huh?”
Lugan rolled the shreds of collected tobacco into a new cigarette that was almost pure tar.
“All right,” he said, shoving himself to his feet. “I trust my team. You included. I dunno what kind of mess you just made, mate, but if you’ve just given us Grey, I’ll back any fucking play you make.”
“That was well timed,” Fuller said suddenly. “Collator’s back online – and we’re wanted in the office.”
* * *
“Bollocks,” Lugan said cheerfully. He leaned back in the big black chair and thumped his size fourteens on the conference table. He’d picked up a disposable lighter, and a tail of greasy smoke curled from the dog-end that was glued to his lip.
Beside him, Fuller fidgeted like a child expecting a scolding.
Around them, the Boss’s office was silent, soulless and dark. It was steel and glass and cold, VIP perfection; long black windows were silvered with skitters of rain. Outside, the harsh, halogen lights of the city were smeared to a watery blur.
The room’s only illumination came from the big flatscreen at the far end of the table – and from its image, reflected in the tabletop’s gleam.
Lugan took another drag from the dog-end.
The screen showed a familiar figure, a phantom of gleeful darkness, his skin and garments shifting with shadows, his movements framed in blood and smoke. He was terrifying, more extreme than Lugan at his worst, and utterly unhampered by conscience. He was swift as a thought and just as fucking careless. He carried no firearm, no blade, but the goons fell like a street kid’s tin cans.
Ecko.
His skill and savagery were horrifying.
Lugan blew brown smoke, and kept watching.
From impossible stealth positions, Ecko taunted his targets – they coiled in fear long before they coiled in pain. While they were still looking for him, his fists and feet broke bones, and when they fell, he burned them and they died screaming.
Lugan took another lungful of smoke.
Jesus ’Arry Christ on a fuckin’ scramble bike...
Then, with a silent snap, the screen went black.
And the Boss’s soft, Scandinavian voice said, “Well, gentlemen? Would either of you care to explain?”
Lugan and Fuller exchanged a glance, their faces now almost in darkness. Tobacco wreathed in the air. Neither of them spoke.
Instead, Lugan blew out an irritated tail of tar that made the smoke curls dance. He’d no fucking clue how the Boss had got Ecko on camera, but the devastation only made his resolve stronger – he was going to keep Ecko on his crew.
And then, they were going after Grey.
The voice said, “I’m waiting.”
Biting back his initial, blistering response, Lugan answered, “’E did the job, didn’t ’e?”
The light on the screen came up, brightening the room and returning the shine to the table. It showed a woman, blonde and in profile. She was beautiful, flawless and pale skinned, and apparently naked right down to the part of her shoulder that Lugan could see. She didn’t turn to face them – her attention was on something else, a screen within the screen, a light source that decorated her porcelain flesh in a shifting, fractal pattern of illumination.
“He left a crater.” Even speaking, the Boss didn’t turn. She gestured with one pale hand.
Lugan said, “They didn’t track ’im –”
“That really isn’t the point.” The lights teased her skin, danced over the tabletop. “If we’re to tackle Pilgrim effectively, then strategy is crucial, discipline is crucial, orders are crucial. I’m not taking chances on a loose cannon.”
Lugan’s dog-end was coming unstuck. Wetting a tarred and callused fingertip, he made an industrious effort to dampen and reroll it. Choosing his words, he said, “Just because ’e ain’t good with orders doesn’t mean ’e can’t do the job. ’E’s got ’is own ways of doing stuff.” He examined the dog-end, frowning. “An’ they work.”
The Boss ignored him. “I’ve no tolerance for chaos. I’ve dedicated my life and this organisation to taking Pilgrim down – and I don’t like surprises.”
Down by her bare shoulder, the Pilgrim logo folded onto the corner of the screen – the image of the strongly travailing worker, bent under his load. Beside it unrolled the strapline that now bound the heart and mind of every man, woman and child, the words that framed their lives, the flag that had become their only compass and motivation, and the banner against which the Boss’s organisation had pitched itself.
Valiant Be.
“Valium Be”, more like. Lugan relit the repaired dog-end and coughed tar. There’s a Fifth ’Orseman an’ his name’s “Apathy”. He flicked the little fame on the lighter, glanced at Fuller.
But Fuller shrugged, and pointedly turned his attention back to the screen.
The Boss said, cool and clear, “Quite apart from the collateral damage, Ecko killed fourteen people, one of them an approved Pilgrim medic –”
“An armed-to-the-teeth combat medic with an ’ypo fetish –”
“A trail of bodies, and a media circus. I don’t appreciate having to tidy that sort of a mess.” Her profile was perfect, pure and cold. “Unless you two have anything to add, this hearing has one conclusion.”
Fuck.
Thinking hard now, Lugan chewed stray tobacco.
Bloody Ecko. The little man was a genius – an erratic, irritating, indispensable fucking genius. He’d got a smart mouth and a ready wit, and a thing for practical jokes – in the three months he’d been with Lugan, he’d grown on the cell team like a particularly virulent form of mould.
Shit!
He wasn’t going to let her do this.
Aloud, Lugan said, “Without Ecko, we’d have fuck all. No info, no lead on Grey, a boot up our collective arse-crack.”
The Boss’s flawless face gave the faintest hint of a smile.
“Without Collator’s clean-up,” she said, “your collective arse-crack would be sitting on a cold metal bench. And that would be the fun just beginning. Ecko has a peculiar charisma, certainly, and I know you’re fond of him –”
“’E did the job.” Lugan gripped the dog-end between yellow-stained thumb and forefinger and blew a long, dirty plume of smoke. “You know I need ’im – ’e’s deniable, ’e can do the shit I can’t. My ’ands stay clean.”
“Unless they’re covered in bits of medic.” The lights on her flawless face changed, shadows flickered and cycled.
Her skin was shifting with mottle like Ecko’s. With a grin like a rusty knife, Lugan flicked the lighter’s wheel with a tiny, metallic chink. Nothin’ like takin’ a trip down Irony Lane...
“I need ’im.” Lugan blew the flame out and dropped the lighter back in the pocket of his old denim cut-down. “I want ’im on my team.”