The next pit was empty, and he had a moment of wildly joyful relief before he remembered that it was LeBlanc's.
Silkwood was sitting at his console with his back to the door. Gabe straddled the ladder and slid down to rush over to the man. Just as he touched the back of Silkwood's chair, he saw the connections were still in his head, but he was already pulling the chair around.
Silkwood had bled only a little from the eyes and nose. The majority of the blood came from his still-full mouth and from his hands resting in his lap. They were barely identifiable as hands now; Gabe could see the teethmarks where Silkwood had started on his wrists and forearms.
Only then did the smell hit him full in the face, thick and coppery, coming from Silkwood's lap and the chair and the place under the desk where the blood had made a small lake.
Lake…
Gabe's ears began to ring as patches of darkness swam through his vision.
Sometime after that, he found himself out in the hall again. He was sitting on the floor, and someone was pushing his head down between his knees. He tried to raise himself up, and a strong hand forced his head down again. A dark hand; that would be Caritha, he thought woozily. Caritha taking care of him while Marly did a little recon, making sure they wouldn't he ambushed by any headhunters on the way out. If they could find the way out. Costa had told them people had died of old age trying to get out. Marly and Caritha hadn't believed that, but he knew Costa hadn't been exaggerating, because he'd come damned close to it himself, dying of old age trying to escape from the House of the Headhunters and hell, he wasn't out yet, there was no telling because he was on blind-select, so he didn't know whether he was going to die in the end or not, and right now dying of old age in the House of the Head-hunters looked a hell of a lot better than some of the other things you could die from in here-
Someone raised his chin, and he found himself almost nose to nose with Gina. He frowned. Here she was again; dammit, he could not keep his mind from wandering and dragging her into his simulated realities-
She straightened up, and he saw the kid standing beside her, looking sick and frightened.
"Told you you wouldn't want to do this," the kid said.
"Now do you want to go on with the death trip," Gina said, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him to his feet, "or do you want to get the fuck outa here?"
"Where's this freight elevator you used?" the kid asked him.
"Down the hallway past the elevators, then down another. I'll have to show you," Gabe said. Gina grabbed him around the waist and wedged her shoulder under his armpit as they started up the hall, in spite of the fact that his legs were steady and he could obviously walk on his own. Let it be, he thought, if that's the only way she can let you hold her. The contact felt almost too good. The memory of the one night they had had together flashed into his mind, of waking to find they had settled perfectly, arranged themselves so comfortably around each other that it had been like waking to discover he'd come home, there in Mark's apartment, in the dark.
Halfway down the next hallway, Gina stopped so suddenly he almost fell over.
"What is it?" said the kid.
Gina pointed at one of the doors, not a pit door, but the door to an office, labeled Manny Rivera in tasteful black letters. She pulled away from Gabe and went over to it.
What's wrong with this picture? The question echoed like madness in Gabe's head. Absurdly the image of the lake with the stony shore came with it before he pushed it away and reached for her. "Gina-"
She gave him a brief glance before she pushed the door open with one hand and stepped inside. "Rivera, you shit! Do you know what happened out here?"
Gabe went in after her and stopped. Manny was sitting behind his desk, smiling vaguely. The blood had poured from his eyes and nose and mouth, soaking the wrinkle-free white shirt, beading on the soft hand-tailored jacket.
"You shit," Gina whispered.
There was a movement from the table by the window. The Beater was sitting there with the slightly puzzled expression of someone who has just taken a bad blow to the head and is still deciding whether to fall down or not.
"I had an appointment to get fired," the Beater said matter-of-factly. "We were going to eat lunch together, and he was going to fire me. When he let me in, he was on the wires, and he told me he'd never forgive me for laying down my ax and turning it into a biz desk. Then he started to bleed."
Gabe moved cautiously, almost tiptoeing around the desk. All the connections were still in Manny's sockets, and except for spatters of blood, nothing on his desk had been disturbed. Business as usual. Things to do today: fire the Beater; after lunch bleed copiously and, probably, die. All in a day's work.
He touched Manny's shoulder, expecting him to fall out of the chair. Instead, Manny suddenly swiveled around to look at him, and he jumped back.
"You shit," Gina shouted; all at once she was standing at the desk. "Do you know what you did, you stone-ass, mother-fucking-"
Manny sprang at her, grabbing her by the throat and dragging her across the desk before Gabe could even register that he'd moved. Gabe went for him, and Manny brought his elbow up directly into his face.
The pain was like a scream, overwhelming, drowning him. He was dimly aware of Gina cursing and struggling, and the kid yelling briefly, a couple of thudding noises. He rolled on the floor, feeling the blood pour out of his nose as he held it with both hands. He got clumsily to his knees and looked up.
Through a blur of tears, he saw that Manny had Gina pinned on the desk while he held something over her face. One of the connections from his own head, Gabe realized, and then understood what Manny meant to do.
He groped for the desk and pulled himself up on it. "Manny," he said.
"Not Manny. Mark," said the Beater, getting up from where he'd fallen on the floor next to the kid.
"Not completely," Manny said, "but more than not by this time, I think. Not completely a stupid fuck-up, either, Gina." Manny smiled, and it was Visual Mark's vaguely dazed and fixed smile. Gabe blinked at him through a fresh wave of dizziness. It was more grotesque than Silkwood, seeing Mark's expression on Manny's face. It was as though Manny had been trying to do an imitation of Mark and somehow become trapped in it. Simulating Mark.
Gina had stopped struggling and was staring up at him. "The problem is, it isn't an idea, it's a stroke. Or maybe a stroke is just Mother Nature's riff on an evil idea," Manny went on, still holding the wire near her head. "Oh, not just evil. Corrupt. This is what it looks like, rock'n'roll and big biz. The biz been Marked, see, and they're both fucked now. The way it should be. They were right, Gina-if you can't fuck it, and it doesn't dance, eat it or throw it away." His gaze drifted over to Gabe, and the expression on his face changed to vintage Manny Rivera. Gabe felt his stomach roll over. He couldn't breathe.
Gina's fist shot up, and Manny staggered back against the large wall screen, which came brightly to life as he collapsed on the floor. Gabe stumbled around the desk and collided with Gina.
"Get the kid and come on," she said, giving him a shove. He made a move toward the kid and then saw what was on the screen.
Not the strange pulsing shapes, but the lake with the stony shore. The perspective was moving slowly along the shoreline, and in another moment or two, Gabe knew it would reach the figure standing there, waiting. He wanted to look away, he didn't want to see the figure, he didn't want to find out who it was, but his body wouldn't move. The image on the screen had clamped onto the image in his mind, and the two of them had been meant to come together somehow, they'd been meant to merge because they were really one and the same-