Then she moved, and it was close-the deciding factor not skill, but my armor-piercing bullets. Dumb luck. She feinted left-just a facial tic and a ripple of air, but enough to get my gut going-and then dived fearlessly right, scraping herself on scrap metal and jagged rocks, attaining the cover of a ruined wall.
I tracked her movement behind the wall and shot twice through it. When I crept around to the other side, she was just lying there, staring at me, eyes flat, chest torn open.
Weariness swept through me. My legs were soaked in blood from the knees down. My shoulder ached where I’d slammed it in the window. There was no time to contemplate or rest; I could hear the hover in the near distance, searching for me. I jammed my empty gun into my coat and started limping as fast as I could back to the black cop. I stood over him and stared down at him. Still gurgling breath in painful hitches of his chest, he stared back at me, his eyes pink and bloodshot and wide.
“If you live,” I said slowly, panting, “tell Colonel Moje that Avery Cates says to come do his own dirty work.”
For a second or two we stared at each other, and then I whirled at a noise, the sound of boots hitting the rubble, as if someone had jumped down from a second story. Despite my exhaustion, amazement crackled through me, because Dick Marin was marching determinedly toward me, a wicked-looking gun stretched out before him.
He looked like he had that first night: a short, smiling man with pale, pale skin and wrap-around sunglasses, dressed in an expensive suit and overcoat. His mirror-polished leather shoes glinted as he crunched over stone and debris. He held the gun out stiffly as he walked and fucking smiled at me. I had nothing left to fight him off with. If he tries to shoot me, I doubt I’ll even have the energy to fall down.
“Sorry, Mr. Cates,” he said evenly. “But you’re going to have to give that message to Colonel Moje yourself.”
He stopped when he was standing directly over the gurgling SSF officer, and without pause or ceremony pumped two shells into the Pig’s face. The cop twitched once and then lay still.
Marin immediately looked at me, a sharp, sudden twitch of the neck. His grin widened.
“Smile, Mr. Cates. This has definitely been your lucky fucking day.”
XXVI
WE DON’T GO EASY, DO WE?
I stared down at my coat as Dick Marin talked, mesmerized by the clean bullet hole that had appeared in the fabric near the hem. I hadn’t even noticed.
“You have a very strange attitude toward your subordinates, Director Marin,” I said, my voice sounding far away. I wanted to just curl up on the rubble and take a nap.
He nodded without looking up. “I’m director of Internal Affairs, Mr. Cates, and I have full discretionary powers to investigate officers of the SSF and to take appropriate action once evidence of malfeasance is acquired.” He looked up at me, a sudden, snapshot motion. “Once that evidence has been acquired, logged, and digitized, Mr. Cates, from that moment onward, the officer in question is completely under my authority. Understand? Once I have legally classified them as having committed a crime while working as an SSF officer, they are forfeit to me and my office. This man,” he gestured casually at the body he was leaning over, “is guilty of several felonies, including murder. I chose this moment to remove him from the force with predjudice. All very legal and completely within my powers.”
I considered this. I considered what percentage of the SSF must be guilty of crimes, and were walking around with those smug, well-fed smiles, not knowing that if it served Dick Marin’s purpose he would snuff them out-legally-in a moment. The thought cheered me.
Marin looked back down at the body.
“Elias Moje, may I someday get that cocksucker in my sights, named you as the main suspect in the Harper kidnapping. He didn’t give a shit whether you actually did it: He knew you were in London, temporarily beyond his reach, so he threw your name out there in order to bring you back within his influence. He did this so he could mobilize the SSF against you.” He cleaned his gun with a portable kit, moving with fast, efficient movements, not even looking at it as he worked. “You moved out of his sphere of influence and then you did the dumbest thing you could have done, taking that woman.”
I blinked. “How-?”
Marin cocked his head as if listening to someone very far away, whispering his name. “We are the police, Mr. Cates. Contrary to your experience, we do more than accept bribes, murder innocent men, and strut about in stylish clothes. Ms. Harper filed a memo with her bureau chief in Geneva, noting that she thought she’d seen notable murderer, terrorist, and all-around Anticitizen Number One Avery Cates on a flight to London, and that she was going to poke around a little. As I think I mentioned when we first met, I engaged several others in similar previous and parallel missions, and they are all dead. I sometimes wonder how it is that of all the people I hired to attempt this job over the past few months, you are the one who has survived.”
I shrugged. We were sitting in the ruined building with three dead cops around us, having a chat. Marin said the hover wouldn’t bother us, and I saw no reason to not believe him. “I didn’t have a choice,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. Bad idea. Anyway, he names you, and suddenly every System Cop in the world is looking for you-sure, you’re wanted for fifteen unsolved murders back in New York, Cates, but let’s be honest for a moment. Kill all the nobodies you want, and the SSF files your name for future reference. Bump a person of quality on the sidewalk and the SSF will spare no expense in bringing you to justice.”
I scrubbed my grimy face with my bloody, torn-up hands. “Are you watching out for me, Marin?”
He grinned, and then the grin shut off in a blink. “No. I came looking for you. It was pretty easy to find you by listening in on the SSF chatter.” He paused, his hands coming to a sudden stop. “You’ve got to move. Soon. Tonight, tomorrow.”
“What’s going on?”
He racked a shell into the chamber and stood up, gathering his kit. “Just move.” He looked around at the semicollapsed room. “Impressive, Mr. Cates. I have to admit I didn’t think you’d still be alive. See if you can manage to stay alive for a few more days.”
With a brilliant, snapshot grin vaguely in my direction, he began walking for one of the sunlit doorways. I just stared at him.
“Goddammit, what’s going on!?” I finally managed to shout.
He didn’t turn back, and in a moment he’d escaped into the sunlight. The King Worm had come to personally shoot one of his own subjects and urge me into action. I slumped back against the wall and sat for a moment, speechless.
To a tinny serenade of Mr. Kieth! Authorized visitors! Mr. Kieth! Authorized visitors! I limped into the Assembly Room. Moving past the hogtied and gagged Marilyn Harper as her red, angry eyes tracked me, I stopped in front of my team and looked from face to face, pausing on Canny Orel’s, who looked like he’d spent the afternoon shopping for grooming supplies. He grinned at me, and it was such a natural, human grin after Dick Marin’s insectlike mandibles that I almost felt affectionate toward him.
“What’s your real name?” I asked. I didn’t really expect an answer. He just smiled.
“We don’t go easy, do we?” he said.
I nodded. “Like roaches. How’d our shopping go?”
Canny nodded. “Mr. Materiel came through on all our items.”
Milton and Tanner gestured over their shoulders at a large shape next to our hover, covered by a canvas sheet. “The Vid hover as requested,” Milton said sourly. “Was a bitch to get a hold of, by the way. And it’s hot-won’t stay stolen for long, if you ask me.”