“Sorry, Mr. Cates,” he said, sounding almost sad. “But you’re worth a lot more money to us dead than alive right now.”
I felt hands on my arm, the cold bite of the needle, and
XXVIII
A BOTTOM-FEEDING FISH, BLACK AND SWOLLEN AND COVERED IN SPIKES
An icepick in my chest, tearing apart blood vessels as it slid along my arteries, propelled by the sluggish, back-and-forth tide of my blood, bloating me with a sudden, razor-sharp heat that sank into every unprotected organ. It was a bottom-feeding fish, black and swollen and covered in spikes, puffing up as it neared the surface, ready to explode. I opened my mouth to scream but found myself biting down on the strip of leather instead. It kept coming. It was too large for my arteries, it tore through and began swimming in my guts, perforating and wriggling, headed unerringly toward my heart. It tore through my pelvis, it lacerated my lungs. Gasping, choking in the open air, it bloated up through my chest and slammed into my heart and exploded there, sending spikes shooting through my insides, landing with wet, shivering force in my spine, my bones, my cartilage.
I stiffened, my whole body going taut as a fuzzy numbness burned its way from my feet upward. I shook and shivered, biting through the leather strip in my mouth, staring pop-eyed at Ty Kieth, who silently took a step backward, eyes on the exits.
Then, suddenly, everything went dark as I passed out.
When I came to, my vision snapped on, as if God or someone had flicked a switch. One second, nothing, the next, I was staring up at Brother West’s hideously cheerful mask of a face. It loomed over me, waxy, pale, permanently smiling.
“Mr. Cates? I do not know if you can hear me, but I want to assure you I will keep my end of the bargain. Mr. Gatz assures me you will keep yours. It is time to go.”
His head floated away, and I was staring up at the ceiling. There was no noise. Then some sounds I couldn’t identify: a swishing sound, a sharp, metallic clang, a tearing sound. I struggled to bring my thoughts into line, but they squirmed and writhed out of my grasp. I wanted to shake my head to clear it, but couldn’t.
Then the pain started to come back.
At first it was just a buzzing in the background, a dim memory of something terrible, teasing at the ends of my thoughts. It gathered like distant thunder, growing in ominous volume until it broke over me like terror, like bamboo shoots under my nails going deeper, further, faster.
I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. I wanted to howl and writhe and attack anything around me, to pass along the infection, expend some of it, but couldn’t. I stared up at the ceiling, my vision turning red, my skin peeling off, my bones splintering. On top of the pain there was a thick layer of numbness, my arms, legs, every part of me dead and without feeling. Underneath, in the core of me and sinking deeper every second, were razor blades, broken glass, thumbtacks.
I tried to quiver, and couldn’t.
I was lifted, then, the ceiling drawing closer and then sliding away, and carried out of the kitchen area. Gatz’s head suddenly loomed into my vision, pale and waxy like the Monk, but with a film of sweat on his taut, gaunt face.
“I Pushed him hard, Ave,” he gasped. “If you can hear me, I Pushed him hard. I’ll stay close, keep it up as long as I can. I’ve got your back.”
His face disappeared, and there was just the sound of moderate physical effort, and the ceiling, and the pain.
“Set him down a minute,” I heard Milton say. The world tilted, and I was lowered to the floor. At the last second Gatz’s hand slipped, and I dropped the last foot pretty hard. My head flopped over to the side, and if I could have, I would have crawled backward, cursing, because Marilyn Harper was staring at me.
She was sprawled on the floor and looked startled, as if she’d somehow fallen that moment, and was just lying there in shock. Her hands were still tied, her arms were bent uncomfortably back. Her hair spilled wildly over her face, red and stiff. Her mouth was open slightly. Her eyes were wide open, her face a mask, the ragged hole torn in her forehead still dripping.
“That’s a fucking shame.” Tanner sighed, sounding out of breath. “That fucking old man is pretty harsh, huh, Wonderboy?”
Gatz didn’t say anything.
Her accusing eyes bored into mine, and I couldn’t look away. I’d lived too long, held on selfishly, and this was the result? I hadn’t had any affection for Marilyn Harper, but this wasn’t civilized. She hadn’t done anything to rate this, shot in the head by Cainnic Orel. That was how I deserved to die, and I couldn’t help but think that she’d caught my bullet.
With my bones being burned to ash inside me, I wanted nothing more than to turn my head away.
“All right, Wonderboy.” Tanner finally sighed. “Let’s go. The Tin Man is waiting out back. It makes sense to the Monks if Cates is nailed here. More realistic. So let’s go, and then I gotta get into costume.”
As I was carried out of the Assembly Room I had a good view of Gatz’s shoulder, sweat dripping down from it, and I could hear his breath, strained and phlegmy, rattling in and out of his open mouth. I realized that my life was in his hands. If Brother West came out of the Push too soon I’d either get carved up or just be left to drift away. It was all up to Kev Gatz. I wasn’t afraid. I was ready. I was ready for it to be over.
When the pain ate the edges of my vision and things went dark again, I went down eagerly.
I came back groggy. In the distance, hover displacement, shouts, something that might have been a gunshot. Nearer, just above me: humming.
The red pain receded like water evaporating, leaving me blind, inside something, moving. The steady thump of heavy boots on the cracked, damp stone street led the way, wrapped in the dim, quiet hum of hydraulics. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. I tried again, mentally flailing, screaming, pounding against the sides of whatever I was trapped inside. Nothing. Not even a wheeze of horror. I just lay, staring at blackness, listening to the heavy tread of Brother West as he conveyed me somehow to Westminster Abbey.
All I could see was Marilyn Harper’s eyes: wide, staring, just like twenty-six other sets of eyes I’d seen. An old man, startled up from breakfast in a cafй on Morton Street, nailed with a lucky shot that turned his nose into a pit of blood. Twin brothers collapsed back into their hover, staring blankly, blood running down their scalps. A woman, guns falling from both hands, hanging from an ancient fire escape, her foot caught between slats, staring down at me, blood dripping. All of them, bad people. All of them, dead. All of them, killed by me.
I hadn’t pulled the trigger, but I’d killed Harper just the same. Twenty-seven dead in twenty-seven years plus all the damn cops who’d stepped in front of my gun recently. And now my comeuppance was at hand.
I listened. I could hear-I knew it was probably pitch black inside the little hover I’d been loaded into as a new Church “recruit,” so maybe I could see, too. I couldn’t move, or breathe, or stop feeling the terrifying sharp-edged pain that lapped at every nerve with a razor tongue. My mind raced through the diagrams and flowcharts we’d worked on, scratched onto any available surface, Kieth’s neat script and my own huge scrawl. We must, I thought, be on one of the private transport hovers the Electric Church used to move its cargo-it wouldn’t do to have Monks cheerfully transporting recently murdered citizens through the streets, whistling. The Church had its own zoned air lanes for its hovers. All registered religions did, though most of them, I was pretty sure, weren’t using them to transport bodies.
I had no idea how much time had passed. A weird, electric hum of terror stabbed through me, and then again, and then it became a constant, searing presence. I wanted to scream and wave my arms about and beat myself senseless against the walls of my tiny prison, but I just lay there, my dead body mocking myself. If this was what death was like, if this was even just a second, a momentary horror right before you sailed off into infinity, I was all ready to sign up for my Monk suit.