((you have already defected once today * how about twice? * you know how powerful we are * you know our cause is just * you know we can reward you in ways beyond your capacity to measure * the one you seek has been a disappointment to us * agree and we will provide your prisoner as the first installment of a reward that will enrich the rest of your natural life))
“It’s tempting,” I said. “If I didn’t blame you for the deaths of my family and a life spent considering myself a monster, I’d almost consider it. But no thanks. Now step aside or take it up with my superiors.”
Their retort was sharp: ((we are your superiors too, andrea cort))
It happened to be true. They were smarter than me, faster than me, more powerful than me, more advanced than me, and more dangerous than me. Against them, I had nothing but attitude.
But attitude I had plenty of.
“Are you theirs?”
For several heartbeats it kept me guessing, floating before me as uncommunicative as any other blank slate, leaving me to wonder whether I was about to find out the consequences of going too far. Then the flatscreen contracted to a single point, and the broken-glass voice grumbled in retreat.
((we will have to discuss the price for this someday soon))
A single portal had opened, on the right side of the infinite corridor, about fifty meters down. The light spilling from that portal cut a brighter wedge in the overall gloom. I thought I saw a shadow briefly eclipse that region of relative light, before once again joining the realm of the unknown and unseen.
Whatever it was passed too quickly to reveal its shape. But I could see its haste.
I felt, rather than saw, the presence of the Heckler.
I flattened myself against the wall, and moved toward the wedge of light, hating the soft sibilant sound of my tunic sliding against corridor wall. My own breath, controlled and calm as it was, was nevertheless deafening. I pursed my lips, remembered the armor my quarry had used against the skimmer carrying Oscin and Skye, imagined trying to take on an enemy armed with such weapons in a corridor so narrow that I couldn’t even dodge from side to side, and ignored the internal voice that tried to assure me I had nothing.
Because I had more than nothing.
I had Bocai.
The wedge of light spilling into the corridor didn’t flicker again. It took on a sickly yellow tinge, the color of old paper, but it revealed nothing of the room that cast it. The Heckler could be waiting just inside, or could have fled far beyond my reach. Short of following, there was no way to know.
My eyes stung from cold sweat. I cleared them with the back of my hand, fought dizziness as a wave of exhaustion overcame me, wished once again that I’d put this off for an hour or day or year, and whipped myself around the edge of the portal, hitting the floor in a blind roll.
Big joke. Nobody tried to ambush me.
I’d entered an industrial vestibule of some kind: one of those places, common to all technological societies, where the machinery is tucked away to keep it from marring the smooth, presentable facades everywhere else. Nothing here looked like it had been made for the convenience of human beings. The walls were lumpy with protrusions, some of which were nothing more than solid geometrical shapes, others of which shifted and flowed and formed new combinations, like recombinant candle wax. Some gave off colors I could see but could not recognize from the visual spectrum I knew. They hurt my eyes when I looked at them, and left nasty afterimages when I looked away.
The nastiest was right in front of me.
The platform beside another portal on the opposite end of the chamber bore a bloody severed head.
I’d only encountered the indenture, Cartsac, a few times. I think I’d seen him awake a grand total of once. He looked alert enough now, even if dead. Both eyes looked like protruding marbles, too glossy with blood to admit the existence of irises or pupils. Whatever had reduced him to this state had done a sloppy job of it, not severing the neck clean so much as brutally ripping the head free of his shoulders. The ragged, browning flaps of skin hanging over the edge of his platform still dripped enough to testify to a murder mere minutes old.
I was not impressed.
I stood, crossed the room, and passed my hand through the horrific image, revealing it as just another projection.
“Is that all you can do?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
I didn’t even bother to duck and roll as I passed through the next portal. I just darted on through, half expecting to be attacked as soon as I showed myself.
Inside I found the place where the Heckler had been sleeping.
It was a home only because the walls, just as amorphous as the ones in the chamber I’d just left, were here just backdrop to a scene of almost comical domesticity. A hammock, of the old-fashioned, open kind, meant to accommodate a supine human being, hung unoccupied to my immediate left, its anchor points hidden behind shifting, kaleidoscopic shapes in the ceiling. Their movements didn’t affect the cords, or the hammock, at all as far as I could see. The canvas itself bore stains I recognized from Hammocktown and, more recently, my own clothing: manna sap, leaking from a patch of Uppergrowth overhead. Fresh pears hung in bunches at its center. To me this resembled nothing so much as a dispensary kept stocked to feed any small creature confined to a cage.
I snorted. “And is this your great reward? All your masters have to give you, for the rest of your life?”
Something shifted behind the next open portal, an open wound in the wall to my right. Two more images of violent death bracketed it on both sides.
The right side of the room bore another portal, bracketed on both sides by more images of violent death. The one on the left was a gaping Cynthia Warmuth, looking much as she must have looked when crucified on the Uppergrowth: her limbs splayed, her eyes wide in uncomprehending horror. Bright red circles had been painted on both her cheeks. The one on the right was Peyrin Lastogne, his skin blackened and crisped beyond comprehension, his identity obvious by the burned-meat visage that insisted on retaining the man’s trademark grimace. His untouched eyes testified that he, too, had been denied death: he had to sit there, aware of what had been done to him, suffering more than his capacity to register anything else, but unable to count on release.
The Heckler had slept with these images, woken to them, taken pleasure in them, drawn strength and motivation from them. Used them as reminders to hate.
I imagined taking on an enemy armed with that kind of obsession, and ignored the internal voice that tried to tell me I had nothing.
Because I had more than nothing.
I had purpose.
I took my time stepping through the portal into the chamber after that. It turned out to be a great oval room, an ampitheatre really, large enough to swallow Hammocktown and all its residents several times over. It bore the Heckler’s art gallery: hundreds of images, no two of them alike, clustered around the walls, with every single member of Gibb’s crew singled out for at least one violent death. They’d been beaten, starved, exsanguinated, strangled, perforated, skinned, burned, impaled, inflicted with diseases that had made the flesh rot off their bones, or simply chained in place and left to starve. At least a dozen separate executions, all nasty, had been reserved for Cynthia Warmuth. I spotted almost as many versions of myself, including a couple identical to messages I’d already received. The Porrinyards shared only one: a cute image of the two indentures, rendered so thin and ravenous they were reduced to gnawing the meat from their respective bones. There was one even worse, reserved for Stuart Gibb: and if I ever again feel any doubt about my mind’s ability to police itself, I only need remind myself how kind it had been to flense that one image from my own permanent memory.