The Eternal Prison (11 page)

 

I looked around again and had to force myself not to stop and stare at the two men casually not enjoying cold cups of coffee while sitting on the very edge of a café half a block from me. Even if their supernaturally calm, stone-faced demeanor hadn’t screamed
cops,
the fact that they were identical twins in every way, including their striking, overtailored suits, would have caught my attention. The fact that they performed every gesture, movement, and weight shift almost simultaneously, one lagging a second or so behind the other, just strummed my alarms a little harder.

 

On a street that boasted about two dozen System Pigs of various ranks standing around, these two were suddenly the only ones I was worried about.

 

They were young, good-looking men, hair cut painfully close, square faces red and clean shaven. White, generic, with decent builds—though their suits had so much padding in the shoulders it was hard to judge—and big, nimble hands. I watched them both spinning their coffee spoons with dexterous twitches of their fingers for a few seconds, entranced. They each wore narrow tinted glasses with lenses that glinted purple in the hazy, cloudy light.

 

For a moment, I thought they might be after me, but I was clearly in their line of sight, and if they’d been looking for me it seemed likely I’d already be in the back of a hover with plastic laces around my wrists and a hood over my head. They were staring fixedly at Cop Central, watching everyone come and go, so I concluded that I was the last thing on their mind.

 

As I turned away, imagining myself innocent and preoccupied, my contact stepped out of Cop Central, moving fast. At first glance, she was your typical old-school System Cop: all slick clothes and hard edges, moving arrogantly and gracefully down the street. She was wearing a purple pin-striped suit, with matching long coat perfectly cut for her lithe figure. Her dark hair was swept back and up in a complex, fashionable style, and her face was made-up, porcelain in appearance. She wore a simple black patch over one eye, her one good orb glinting with a soft golden glow—an Augment. System Pigs with Augments—the fucking world had turned while I’d been in prison and then in Hell, Nevada.

 

She turned her head once to scan the street as she walked, and for a quick moment she was looking right at me. She turned away and kept walking, but in that flash I’d seen her face full on. She was terrified.

 

When the fucking
Pigs
were frightened, I started to worry.

 

As one, the twins stood and started after her, moving past me without a second glance. As they passed they each produced cigarettes and placed them between their lips with one hand while flipping open a lighter with the other, then cupping their hands around their mouths to light up, all in sync. It was like an invisible mirror followed the one around, reflecting him back to us.

 

I gave them half a block and watched my contact turn west down Forty-ninth Street. Moving fast but with controlled, easy motion—nothing tight and worried that might trip a crowd analysis Droid—I cut across the street and then in the opposite direction toward Fiftieth Street. If the city hadn’t changed too much, I’d beat her to our rendezvous by half a minute or so.

 

The cops were everywhere in their riot gear. I was used to cops layering uptown Manhattan like a fine grit, but this was beyond my most paranoid imaginings: blobs of them every half block or so, standing around with their faceless masks on or pushed up onto their heads while they smoked. They didn’t chat or interact, they just watched everyone as they passed, silently staring at you with those blank plastic goggle eyes. I kept moving past boarded-up storefronts; even the businesses that were open were festooned with multiple signs concerning what they didn’t have, squatting empty and ominous on the sidewalks, often with gangs of Crushers hanging about outside. Overhead, every few minutes I could hear displacement as hovers sailed by, and I looked up at each and every set, keeping my face in motion.

 

A block and a half down Fiftieth Street, there was a narrow alley between buildings, not even wide enough to spread your arms across. I sidestepped into it in one fluid motion, then pressed myself back against the wall for a count of five, listening carefully for any sign anyone had taken notice of me. Satisfied, I sprinted down the length of the alley and found the old fire escape ladder, rusted and creaky but still attached to the masonry. It shuddered and lurched as I jumped onto it, but I pulled myself up rapidly, crawling onto the gravel-lined roof.

 

I paused for a moment. Sitting with its back against the lip of the roof was a Monk.

 

You didn’t see Monks much anymore. After the Plague the System Pigs had made it a special project to clean up the Electric Church’s mess once and for all, and for a few months all you saw were Monks getting flushed from their hiding places and executed. They were still
people,
in a sense, still had human brains inside their chassis, still were citizens of the System, technically. But where once that had meant something to Dick Marin—back when he’d been controlled by the programmed limits of his own digital existence—it hadn’t stopped him from ordering their mass execution. Every now and then a Monk showed up somewhere, and it usually ended with a bullet in its brain. And most people shed no tears.

 

This one was obviously out of commission: rusted and tattered, it slumped there with both arms stretched out at its sides, stained white palms up. My guess was it had been there for a year or two.

 

I turned away and ran for the opposite edge. I leaped the gap to the next building easily and took that roof running as well. Three jumps later and I was descending another rusted ladder, this one missing several rungs and leaving me dangling off the ground a good eight or nine feet. I dropped into a steady crouch and popped up again, sprinting for the edge of the alley and skidding to a halt before stepping calmly out onto Seventh Avenue, thirteen steps or so from the huge Vid screen bolted to the side of a rundown old brick building. The reporter on it was a plastic-faced blond girl whose cheekbones were so sharply defined they would cut your hand if you tried to touch them, and the scroll beneath her cleavage was informing us that—in case we hadn’t noticed—the illegal siege of New York by forces under the command of Joint Council Undersecretaries continued. It then segued into a lengthy list of shortages and associated conservation edicts that had been enacted. I took up position under the Vid and watched my cop approaching. When she moved past me, I didn’t turn or look at her.

 

“Any reason you’ve got two Worms on your ass?”

 

She fooled me. For a second she kept moving forward, just long enough to lull me, and then she whirled viciously, snapping out a telescoping prod and slapping it hard against the back of my knees. I didn’t feel a thing, but the joints buckled and I went down onto my knees with a teeth-chattering thud. She was already coming down hard for my head with the rod; I dodged to my right and took the blow on my shoulder, reached out and gripped her ankle with my left hand and yanked, throwing myself off balance but knocking her onto her ass in the process.

 

I twisted myself up onto my knees again, and she hit me on the nose with her fist, cracking something and knocking me onto my back, my vision flashing purple. I still didn’t feel anything, my consolation prize from the System for stealing six months of my life, but I put out a decent muffled scream and played dead, slumped on the cold, damp sidewalk. I snaked my hand under myself and took hold of my Roon automatic, the best handgun ever made. I heard the scrape of her boot and the snapping sound of the rod shrinking back to handheld size, and I let instinct direct me. Springing up, I grabbed blindly, finding a handful of her coat. Pulling as hard as I could, I let my own weight take her down until she was lying on top of me, my gun jabbed into her chest.
Her
gun was thrust painfully into my belly.

 

All around us, shouts and boots on the pavement.

 

“Ruberto,” I hissed into her ear. “I’m from Ruberto.”

 

She smelled good. Light perfume—not perfume, I decided.
Soap.
She smelled clean. She panted into my neck once, twice, and then she was pushing herself up, staring down at me, her Augmented eye flat and artificial, like it had been animated on her face. She still looked terrified.

 

“I know what you are,” she said. Then she climbed off me, dragging out her gold shield and whirling, showing it to the Crushers who’d surrounded us, shredders aimed, impassive plastic faces steamed from their heavy breathing.

 

“Back the fuck up,” she hissed, spinning, holding her badge out like a talisman. “I’m Captain Helena Krajian, and I said
back the fuck up!
”

 

The Crushers hesitated. I lay panting on the ground, numb, and my head swam for a moment. I never thought I’d see the day Crushers didn’t shit their pants when an officer told them to. It was fucking disturbing.

 

Krajian didn’t like it, either. She paused and then took two fast steps toward the nearest one and reached out, tearing his serial number from his uniform with one violent yank. She held the hunk of fabric out toward him.

 

“What’s your name, asshole?”

 

The Crusher looked around, but the moment had passed and his buddies were all lowering their weapons. He reached up and popped his mask up onto his head. His face was red and unshaven, with dark, thick eyebrows. He licked his lips two, three, four times. “Mikkels,” he said, his voice phlegmy. “Andrew —”

 

“You’re a fucking dead man, Mikkels,” Krajian hissed, stuffing his serial into her pocket. “I’m filing a nine eighty-nine on you and you
will not survive,
understood?” She glared around as Mikkels stood there looking stupid. “Anyone else? Any other of you
mental giants
want to defy an order from an officer? This man,” she said, gesturing at me, “is my prisoner and you will not do even a fucking OFR scan of him without my permission. Now back… the fuck… off.”

 

The world snapped back into normal focus, and the Crushers fell over each other to spin and vacate the area. Krajian stood there for a moment, panting, her gun in one hand pointed at the ground. Mikkels stood there gaping at her.

 

“Sir,” he started to say, but Krajian raised her hand and he shut his mouth.

 

“Your only chance of surviving me,” she said in a suddenly low, tired voice, “is to walk away right now. I make no guarantees.”

 

He blinked once, suddenly startled as if someone had poured invisible cold water down his pants, and then turned and jogged after his comrades. Krajian stood for a moment with her back to me and then turned, slamming her gun back into her holster and stepping past me. I didn’t feel anything, and my nose didn’t even seem to be broken. Everything was coming up Avery.

 

“Come on,” she snapped. “Surprise me again and I’ll blind you.”

 

Dripping blood onto the sidewalk, I struggled to my feet and holstered my own gun. “I think I’m in love,” I said, limping after her.

 

 

 

 

VIII

THIS WAS ENTERTAINMENT

 

 

 

 

“Slow down, you fucking cable runner,” I groused, dragging my stiff leg in the sandy dirt, blinking sweat out of my eyes.

 

Grisha spun and walked backward for a few steps, peering at me through his stupid, affected glasses. His narrow face was bright red and his jumpsuit sported a dark V-shaped sweat stain that appeared to be more or less permanent. He had his hands thrust deeply into his jumpsuit and a damp-looking cigarette, unlit, clenched between his teeth.

 

“You look like shit, yes?” he said without a grin. “Look like you fell into a bucket of razors, huh?”

 

I nodded, panting. “I’m popular around here.”

 

He nodded, swiveling the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth. “Yes, popular. I see.” He shrugged. “Someone does me dirt, my friend, I do not forget. I have my revenge. I do not forget.” He winked. “So please remember this, yes?”

 

I frowned. “What did you steal, Grisha?” I liked the skinny little bastard. He was unlike any Techie I’d ever met. “To get here, I mean.”

 

“As opposed to bullet in head, yes? It does not matter. It is worthless now, though apparently this fact escapes Director Marin’s attention. This data that has ruined me is safe anyway. In The Star.”

 

The Star: I’d never been in it, but of course everyone on the streets of New York knew of it. A star-shaped building a hundred feet high, solid stone, on an island off Manhattan. A data haven, now—for a few million yen you could store all sorts of things in secure servers. Some people even maintained entire labs inside it. Miles Amblen, maybe the most famous Techie in the System after Dennis Squalor and Ty Kieth, had done a lot of black market work in The Star, or so it was said.

 

Rumor was it had been a fortress before Unification, but rumors were worthless—whatever it had been, it was long gone. Some people liked to say the SSF couldn’t breach it, which was why someone like Amblen could hide up in there, but that was bullshit. If the System Pigs wanted inside a place, they got in.