Escapology (28 page)

Teeth don’t hurt as they wrap her from hips to shoulders, yanking her up off the alley floor. There’s no pain at all, only sound and strange, disjointed sensation: deep, rumbling crunching noises, a bubbling warmth curdling in her throat, and a tight sensation in her torso and gut, like everything inside is squeezing together. Shark tosses her in the air, high up, her hair fluttering across her cheeks, soft and ticklish. As she falls, she spins, almost elegant, and marvels at its whole, massive golden length passing beneath her. She reaches out to touch it, or at least she thinks she does.

And then she hits the ground.

Mim can’t move. Nothing works. Nothing
feels
. She blinks, but her eyes remain wide, blurred with blood, or mud, or maybe tears. Mim doesn’t cry. She never has. Crying is weakness, lack of control. Mim’s always been in control, even when she wasn’t. Now she’s not even in control of her bodily functions.

If she could, she’d laugh at that irony, or maybe she’d cry. She’s not sure. There’s a smudge of colour against the black, it moves toward her, then veers away, disappearing into darkness. Sez, deserting her. No more or less than she’d do to him. She wants to scream, call out “
Don’t leave me alone
” but nothing works. Nothing
feels
.

And darkness is everywhere, closing in.

Li’s voice, brittle as old bone, crackles into her IM, resonating through her whole head.
What a mess. I hate messes. I trusted you not to make a mess, Mim. Such a shame.
Her voice cuts out, then comes back, soft with malice.
One can enjoy failure a little too much, Mim. Look at all you’ve lost. Was it worth it, darling?

Then she’s gone. Leaving Mim all alone in the dark.

The
Resurrection
limps into Foon Gung Harbour on seventeen of her twenty-four wheels, still smoking, her ravaged back swarming with crews working double-time to salvage what they can and assess the cost of repairs. The
Ark
is stranded way behind them and Daly is gone. Petrie’s bullet took him out fair and square, right between the eyes.

After he fell, as word spread, the
Ark
’s people retreated en masse, a sight to behold, and the
Resurrection
, seaworthy despite the damage done to her port side, her stern and her upper deck, sailed on without a backward glance. Whatever the
Ark
does now, however she survives, is the business of her crew, her citizens.

Their attack failed, so all is forgotten. The people of the
Resurrection
tend their wounded and mourn their dead, and they hold no grudges. Life on the ocean is what it is, and they live looking forward, to the next storm, the next salvage, always prepared.

Petrie jumps from the ropes to the rungs of Cassius’s crow. His body is sore from bullet scores and burns, but his centre is light, calm as the sea, the sky. Filled with a quiet pride. He didn’t stand and fight, but he stood up for the boy within, he avenged him.

Up top, heavily wounded in the fray, Cassius pores over incoming damage reports. He looks at Petrie, shakes his head.

“This is going to take some doing.”

“That it is. You okay with my leading the off-shore party for Volk?”

“Only man I’d trust for the job,” Cassius replies, then his face grows serious. “Back there, that was something. Proud to have you here, man. I know I’ve said it before, and likely I’ll have reason to say it again, but that’s why you’re my bosun. Never met a soul more capable of putting himself to one side for the benefit of his crew.”

Uneasy with such praise, as usual, Petrie merely smiles, nods. Cassius knows he’s not the effusive sort, won’t be expecting Petrie to acknowledge any other way. That’s why this is his family. People who allow you to be who you are, who’ll await your growth and change patiently, aware that everything happens in good time, they’re hard to come by. He’s never felt happier, and to think he once believed happiness was something that happened to other people. He’s glad to be wrong.

“We’re ready to go.”

“Report back regular. And boot that damned Harbour Marshall in the arse for me, would you? Claiming they have no struts or girders when I see a whole mess of ’em right there in the shipyard.” Cassius snorts. “Next that old crook will insist he’s got no bolts or cutters. What does he think we are?”

Petrie laughs. “He
hopes
we’re blind, stupid and deep of pocket. I’ll gladly kick his arse. I’ll wear my biggest boots.”

They take one of the schooners captured from the
Ark
, top-notch salvage, and a team of roughly 250 able men and women, eager to help even in the wake of the battle with the
Ark
. Petrie expected as much, he knows these people, but even so he’s amazed by the sheer number who responded to their call for volunteers. Good folk and good fighters all. He couldn’t ask for better.

The harbour’s serene, nothing of the storm they encountered on the open sea seems to have made it to the Gung, not even a breath of wind, though the temperature’s scary low. Upon landing, Petrie takes a moment to do as promised, although his kick up the backside, as was implicitly understood between he and Cassius, is more of a stern lecture on withholding good materials from paying customers.

That done, he turns to Volk.

“What now, then? Where do we go?”

Volk’s not paying attention. Her gaze is focused upward, on the screens placed on scaffolds high above the harbour. There are such screens everywhere in the Gung, showing an endless relay of news, music and shows streamed from hubs where the film and television industries still thrive.

“Volk. Where do we go?”

“City centre. Look. Breaking news.” She points to the screens. “The Haunt’s already been into Slip.”

If Petrie couldn’t see it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t believe it. Shock’s a skinny little Korean with ratty black and candy-green hair, shining gold from his eyes like sunbeams. Unreal. Like one of the shows from the hubs. From those beams two avis build themselves IRL from golden thread, an octopus and a shark. It’d be beautiful if it weren’t so freaking bizarre, so unnerving, so evidently
wrong
.

“What the hell am I seeing?” he asks. “Was this supposed to happen?”

“I’m not sure,” Volk says, she’s frowning, concentrating hard. She winces. “Grief, his signal’s in a bad way. Emblem’s causing havoc in his drive. It won’t be contained for long.” Her eyes widen. “He’s been disconnected from Slip. Cut off completely. That’s what we’re seeing. That’s why we’re
seeing
them. We have to get to him.”

Petrie looks at the screens. The footage is on repeat. He watches it right to the end, to the moment Shock runs, a look of terror set deep into his thin face. Faces fall into expression two ways, they either strain the features, appear unnatural, or they fit into pre-existing lines, like a smile or a frown. Fear has been on that face before, enough times to make the fit perfect. That makes Petrie angry. Seeing this boy, his fear, he finds himself concerned about what they’ve come to do.

“Are you going to use that drug on him?”

Volk offers him a look of sheer disbelief.

“You don’t understand. I
can’t
. He’s already out. Whatever we do to help, it can’t be that. All I can think to do is take him to Breaker. And soon. Before that thing grows outside of his drive.”

Petrie stares at her. “Breaker’s with the Queens. We can’t go to him. He specifically told you to prevent Shock from delivering Emblem.”

“I know, and he was right. But Emblem’s
mutating
. Whatever it was in Core, it’s not that any more. It needs to be taken out of his drive as soon as possible, especially in light of what it’s done to him. He’s
out
, Petrie. Can you imagine how that feels?” The look of horror on her face tells him she can. Maybe through Shock’s signal.

He tries to do the same. Fails. “I can’t.”

“You won’t need to imagine if Emblem breaks from his drive. It could do the same to us. Worse maybe, because it’s already gone way beyond what it was when he plucked it from Core. I don’t know what the hell it is now. The only person I know who might be capable of halting its progress, getting it out of that drive—”

“Is Breaker,” Petrie finishes for her, understanding.

“It’s beyond risky, I know, but so is leaving Emblem in there. Emblem’s more dangerous than the Queens at this moment, because it’s
out
already and it’s changing
fast
. Growing at a frightening rate. I don’t think his drive can hold it for long, they were never meant for something like that. If Breaker can remove it, he might be able to contain it again. Confine it. Might be able to confine the Queens too. It’s not much, I know, but it’s the only chance we have.”

He nods. “Right then. Let’s move. We won’t be the only ones after him.”

“No, not even close. There are dozens of signals converging on him. He’s a huge, golden target.” She blinks. “And he’s gone.”

“What?”

“Found a way to hide. Probably stole a vehicle, wiped its signal from Slip.”

“So how do we find him?”

“We head for the centre. His signal will pop back up, it’ll have to. State of his drive he won’t be hiding long, he’ll know he has to act fast, find someone to help. When he does, he’ll be vulnerable again.”

“And we won’t be the only ones on his tail.”

“No,” she says quietly, “so we’ll just have to be the ones who catch him.”

They hire trucks and cater-bikes at the harbour yard and head off at high speed, Volk locked in to Shock’s signal’s last location, waiting for it to pop up again. Petrie trusts his people to fight, and fight hard, but what chance do they have? Their one ace in the hole, Volk’s drug, is useless. Firepower might work against Twist Calhoun, against other criminals also after Emblem, but it won’t work against Queens. If the Queens get Emblem, if they get out of Slip, they’ve got no means of stopping them.

As they drive up out of Harbour District, Petrie keeps eyes on the
Resurrection
until she’s impossible to see. He always expected ship life to come to an end, and probably within his lifetime considering his age. It’s not exactly a missable trend that decline in numbers, but at least it was going to be somewhat natural.

He tries to imagine what might happen now: huge Queens striding across the Gung, and into the ocean? What could they do? What couldn’t they? He should be angry with Fulcrum, with Kamilla, even with Josef for not pushing his mother hard enough, but there’s no point. Done is done. Just gotta hope that they’re not all done for.

Foot down, weaving erratically through the highway traffic, Shock negotiates with his inner hysteria. Not only are they cut off from Slip, a state so excruciating they’ve united against feeling it, but Shock’s signal loud and getting louder. At some point even the limo won’t be able to conceal that. Panic and need seize his intestines. Goddamit but he needs something for all of this shit. Anything. He’d take a year-old S-series half-melted in a puddle of piss at this point.

“Fuck,” he snarls, grinding a fist into his belly, trying to erase the cramping of withdrawal and succeeding only in adding muscular distress.

Puss slides across the passenger seat and settles into his lap, coiled in a nest of her own tentacles. Strange how reassuring that is, how much it helps, despite his continued wariness of her being
her
. Strange too that the close proximity of Shark’s meat-flecked jaws, the churning power of its muscular bulk in the back of the limo, comfort Shock much the same. He’s never felt this close to anyone. He finds it disarming. Disconcerting. It’s too real.

He wants illusion. The world a dream, soft focus and fleeting, ending whenever he closes his eyes. Wants the option of shutting his eyes and never opening them again. The world is too raw, too loud. It swamps him, drowns him out like a shout in a club, diminishing him even when he’s trying to stand tall. Defeats him. Or leads him to defeat himself, who knows?

Breathing in deep, Shock shuts his eyes, sinking into the comfort of Puss on his lap, Shark at his spine, and trying to ignore a thought that wants to march into his head and stage a takeover: How can he protect his avis when he can’t even protect himself?

* * *

Starting awake, Shock blinks, sleepy and bemused, at the car display. Ninety minutes. Ninety minutes gone. He shoots an accusing glare at Puss, back in the passenger seat but clearly still in control of the car because
he
sure as hell isn’t. Her eyes swivel in a surprising approximation of an exasperated roll. The expression is so unutterably female it spikes his already irritable mood into a full-on strop.

“If I needed to sleep, I’d have asked for it,” he snaps.

She turns away. Total cold shoulder. The second she does it, he’s sorry for snapping. All the odd moments in Slip make sense to him now. The way Puss made him change course or avoid certain areas, the way his head just works in there. Not a superpower at all. Puss looking after him, as she’s trying to even now, way out of her natural habitat.

He did need sleep. The bitch of bruising in his side has muted to a mumble and his head feels better, though that easing is more illusory; Emblem’s no less destructive than it was when it tore his avis from Slip and cut them, and him, out cold. Unable to find the words to apologize for being a dick, Shock looks out of the limo and finds they’re on the outskirts of Sakkura. She’s driven them all the way, plucking the destination straight out of his head.

“Hey, thanks,” he says, meaning both this and sleep. Relieved to find a way to say what he couldn’t before.

Puss rolls out a tentacle and squeezes his arm. All forgiven. It makes him feel better and he starts to formulate what the hell he’s going to say to Joon when they reach her apartment.

He knows she’ll be there. Joon’s a magpie. When she’s settled in, her hovels look like they’ve been spackled in hippy glitter. Scarves everywhere. Walls painted in crazy, hypnotic patterns. Every piece of furniture mismatched and covered in polka dots and paisley. Primary-coloured chaos. This apartment is yet to be spackled, so she’s still there, and she’ll be in too.