I was grinning. “Who says I want to make it, Mr. Orel?”
“Then say so and I’ll put one in your ear for your fucking bullets, Mr. Cates. What’s the matter? Not enough dead people on your hands today?”
His voice was silky, cultured, and it sank into my ear and yanked, hard. I glanced around at Kieth, who held his gun awkwardly and actually thrust it forward every time he fired it, usually at the three-second-old shadow of a Monk that had just run by. He was hopeless, and obviously terrified, nose vibrating like a hummingbird’s wing. Kieth hadn’t bargained for this. He hadn’t even been in it for the money-his one moment of happiness had been tearing Brother West to pieces, discovering its secrets. But he’d stayed in anyway-for the money, on some level, sure, but for something else. Loyalty, maybe. Honor amongst thieves.
Gatz and Harper flashed through my mind. Milton, Tanner. A man in the backseat of a car. A woman hanging upside down from a fire escape.
“Ah, fuck,” I breathed. My cheer dried up, the laughter sucked back down into whatever dark hole it had come from. And I thought, I guess I can commit suicide any time. “Marin!” I shouted. “Do you have any communication with the outside?”
“Mr. Cates,” he responded in a scolding tone, “I’ve already explained to you that this avatar is the limit of resources-”
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Mr. Kieth! Do you have any open comm channels?”
A few moments ticked by. A half-dozen Monks ran by, screaming, as if we weren’t even there. Belling and I let them go. I tried to keep my eyes everywhere. “Yes, Mr. Cates!” He shouted back. “I have a narrowband signal I can use!”
“Marin, do the goddamn resources you’ve allocated include issuing orders to System Pigs if they’re standing right in front of you?”
Marin’s response was instant. “Yes.”
I nodded. “Kieth: Call the fucking cops!”
I imagined I could hear the sinews in Belling’s neck pop as he turned his head toward me. “Excuse me?”
“Call ’em, Kieth,” I shouted, as a Monk turned the corner, an electric whine coming from its open mouth, guns in each plastic hand firing indiscriminantly. I whipped my gun up and put a bullet into the back of its throat, knocking it backward.
“Mr. Cates, I should advise you that the surface is in a state similar to that of this complex,” Marin said. “I am doubtful you will be able to get the SSF’s attention-even though you are the great Avery Cates.”
Avery Cates, the Gweat and Tewwible, I thought grimly. “Don’t just call the cops, Kieth,” I advised, a slim trickle of the sick happiness returning. “Have them patch you through to Elias Moje. Tell Colonel Moje that Avery Cates is down here. Tell Colonel Moje that Avery Cates is a very rich man, and he’s laughing at him.”
For a moment, there was relative quiet, just the endless screaming of Monks, the endless distant and not-so-distant gunfire.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Belling muttered.
“I’ll try, Cates,” Kieth finally shouted back. “But it isn’t going to be easy to just find him.”
“Sure it is,” I corrected him. “He’s looking for me. Just shout my name on the SSF feed long enough, and he’ll find you.”
“Well this is a wicked fucking googly,” Belling muttered. “Extracted by the fucking System Pigs. I don’t know about you, Cates, but I’m not sure I want to make it out of here that bad.”
I was grinning again. “Like I said, who says I want to make it, Mr. Belling?”
XXXVI
GRINDING OUR NECKS UNDER THEIR SHINY, EXPENSIVE BOOTS
The Stormers came in like they’d been letting the Electric Church use the complex for a few years and had always intended to come home and clean house.
Faced with yet another unmarked steel door, I hunkered down and closed my eyes for a moment. Weariness pulled at me, dripping down like melted wax. It felt as if every joint and muscle in my body had been injected with grit and glass shards. I opened my eyes and stared at the blank steel door across the hall from us. Moving slowly up one side of the door was a bright light and a thin plume of smoke. It moved steadily, smoothly. For a moment, all the noise and terror was behind us, muffled by steel and concrete, and our combined, exhausted panting.
The door burst inward, hitting the floor with sparks and rattling to a stop just a foot away from me. The Stormers poured in through the doorway in classic two-by-two formation, their ObFu Kit blending with the walls until they were faint outlines of men.
Through the smoke and dust, Elias Moje strode in like a king, wearing a dark blue suit with pinstripes under a long leather overcoat, his boots shining in the white light. A gold chain hung from one belt loop, disappearing into one deep pocket. He didn’t bother to palm a weapon of his own.
He looked around, a half-smile on his lips. “Hello, rats,” he said amiably. “Just the four of you, now? Disappointing. I was so hoping to kill you all personally.”
“I’m afraid I have to order you to keep these men alive, Colonel Moje,” Marin said, standing up. “And to escort us from this location.”
Moje stared. “Sir,” he said slowly, then paused. “I just read a Flash Memorandum from you out of the Bogotб office.”
“Ordering all SSF personnel to protect key properties in cities against rising or potential riots and disturbances, yes, I know: I authored it. If you’d like to see what an official rebuke and recommendation of termination for an officer of the SSF looks like, please continue to stand there with that look on your face.”
Moje stared for another moment, and then straightened up. “Yes, sir,” he said, but he did not sound convinced. He turned to his Stormers.
“You heard the man. This is the chief of Internal Affairs, boys and girls, and he can eat your testicles for lunch any day he feels like. Make a hole, we’re bringing these men out of here. Exterminate anything that gets in your way.”
He turned to look over his shoulder. “All right, Chief,” he said. “Follow us.”
The Stormers formed around us and we began moving back the way the SSF team had come. The floor was littered with dead Monks, and the occasional ObFu Kit blending a corpse into the floor. I limped along with a painful hitch and forced myself to catch up with Moje, the crazy laughter gurgling in my throat.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to kill me once we’re topside. In fact, I’m positive.”
He ignored me, eyes forward.
“What’s the situation up there, Colonel Moje?” Marin asked suddenly.
Moje straightened up as he walked. “Chaos, sir. Monks have gone crazy everywhere-we’re getting reports in from all over. We’re stretched pretty thin trying to keep things bottled up. SSF brass issued a blanket directive to shoot Monks on sight about an hour ago.” A small grin broke through his manicured poise. “We’ve been enjoying ourselves ever since.”
“Once we reach the outside, Colonel Moje, I’ll be taking personal charge of the city, understood?” Gone was the herky-jerky Dick Marin I’d dealt with, the grinning, amused little man. Here was the chief of Internal Affairs, the King Worm, and my glee dried up again as I contemplated the obvious outcome of all this chaos-a power vacuum, with a few dozen Richard Marins dancing on top of the pyramid. It was the False Crisis coup d’йtat-the System in flames again, riots everywhere, and Dick Marin’s avatars everywhere taking personal command. Were thirty of him enough to handle a worldwide crisis? He was thinking in digital, arrayed chips processing clock cycles. As we walked through the death spasms of the Electric Church, I stared at Dick Marin’s back in admiration. It was genius.