The Eternal Prison (29 page)

 

When he was halfway up the ladder, he stopped and stretched out an arm in my direction, and I realized he was going to take a few long-range shots at
me.

 

The shots sounded puny at this distance, and I just put my head down and kept running, see if the cosmos wanted to kill me off just yet. I wasn’t back on the rail yet, but it was close. For the moment, at least, I had a clear path in front of me and just one choice: forward or back. I liked that. It brought me back to the good old days of scratching out survival in old New York, everything easy, everything white and black.

 

One slug hit the pier ahead of me, sending up a spray of splinters, but my new friend had given up and was laboriously pulling himself up the ladder. I was gaining on him. Venice was going to be a hard place to hide from me, I thought. The pier—if it didn’t get sucked down into the water by the ongoing collapse creeping along behind me, the planks under my feet still humming and popping as I ran—was just a straight line looping around the place, with stairs or gangplanks or ladders reaching down from the various man-made islands toward it. Bridges made of rope and wood had been slung in a few spots, looking about as sturdy as spiderwebs, but mostly connected one building to another. There was no cover, no alleys or shadows, the sun falling down onto us like heavy gas and getting sucked up by the black water, everything glare and sparkle, impossible to focus on.

 

I reached the ladder just as he disappeared over the top. I skidded to a stop, my feet trying to go out from under me on the slick wood, catching hold of the ladder with one hand and bringing the gun up. Panting hard, I squinted up into the omnipresent sunshine and tugged at the ladder, making it shake.

 

Two, three seconds—and there the cocksucker was, appearing over the edge with his peashooter, thinking he’d have a safe shot down at me. All I could see was a backlit hood. I squeezed off two shots, the plastic sheath around my gun dissolving in my hand, melted plastic burning into my skin, and the head whipped back.

 

Putting the gun between my teeth, breath whistling in and out of my nose, I leaped up onto the ladder and began pulling myself up, wishing fervently that I’d thought to grab a pair of sunglasses somewhere, somehow. I’d been squinting into the sun for so long I thought my pupils had to be gray and pale by now, bleached.

 

As my head came level with the edge of the roof, my lungs bursting and my hands rubbed raw, there was nothing for it but to throw myself up over the edge awkwardly, scraping skin off my face as I landed bad and rolled. Spluttering, I sat up, swinging the gun around in a sloppy arc.

 

This was a much smaller platform, and was obviously used mainly as an entryway to the rest of the building; the city stretched out around it, the sky everywhere. A lone structure stood about twenty feet away, and a sloppy trail of fat blood drops led straight to it, almost lost against the rusty color of the roofing. Great stagnant puddles of water were everywhere, incubating future species and pumping damp rot into the air just in case you wanted to breathe today.

 

Coughing, I heaved myself up, tearing the plastic bag from my wrist and lurching forward. I could hear myself panting, hear the scrape of my boots and the constant muffled flutter of the wind. I hit the wall of the little shack and rolled to my right, one hand up to shade my eyes and the gun up by my belly. He was almost to the opposite end of the roof, clutching his side and giving it a lopsided roll that would eventually lead him in circles, if uncorrected.

 

I stretched the gun out and stared down its nearly useless sight. I could have blown his head off at this distance, but I put one into the roof near his feet instead as a warning shot, bracing myself for him to spin and throw some shots back at me. Instead, he didn’t pause or hesitate, running pell-mell for the edge and leaping off. I saw his arms windmilling briefly before he dropped past my line of sight.

 

Scrambling the last few feet, I threw myself down flat and tried to see everything all at once. It was a straight drop down into the water below, but the shallow outline of a submerged building spelled broken legs. I couldn’t see him anywhere—I twisted my head around, breathing hard, the sun pounding on my neck and pushing me down, crushing me flat.

 

I felt my chances slipping away. Faliero was probably dead, and while I had my data it didn’t tell me where the dwarf was, only where he had been. If this cocksucker was connected to the midget and he slipped away, it would be months or years before I found the thread again. He
might
just be some random fuck who wanted me dead… but I had a feeling he wasn’t.

 

Jump.
Marin chuckled.
Why not?

 

I forced myself to stay put and keep looking—impatient assholes would take the leap, letting adrenaline and desperation guide them, but I was fucking ancient and I knew better. It was bitter, but I fucking knew better about just about everything. I stood there with a half-dozen weak, dim voices buzzing in my head and kept my eyes on the water, the glare slicing into my brain and setting it on fire. Two, four, six heartbeats, the wind fluttering around me—and then he popped up, twenty feet out, just a head that sank below the surface again immediately. He popped up again and began thrashing about, doing something he may have thought was swimming but looked a lot more like drowning.

 

I whirled, lungs on fire, and managed a lurching run back toward the ladder. I half fell down, landing hard on my ass on the pier, the huge yellow sun leaping into my eyes and blinding me. Rolling, I pushed myself up and started running again, running in the uncanny silence of this fucking dead city, one big open sewer where the people were just too stupid to move the fuck away.

 

As I cleared the building I saw him, shouting and flailing. I stumbled to the edge of the pier and dropped my hands to my knees, sucking in the fetid air and watching him drown. Then I closed my eyes, listening to his choking, phlegmy cries. Fucking hell. You walked up to a man, shot him, slit his throat—you took action and you did it on purpose. You didn’t stand idly by while they fucking smothered.

 

“Fucking hell,” I panted. My heart was thumping hard in my chest as I straightened up and peeled off my coat. I hadn’t been dry in weeks. Why start now? I dropped onto my ass again and yanked my boots off with two savage pulls, sucked as much of this disgusting, heavy air into me as I could manage, and rolled forward into the water like I enjoyed it.

 

I’d learned to swim, like I’d learned everything else, running from the System Pigs in old New York; sometimes diving into the East River had been the easiest way to get out from under a pack of cops bent on assfucking you. It wasn’t pretty, but I could move myself through the water without drowning, and that was all that mattered.

 

When I got to him, he grabbed onto me like I was a vision of the messiah and tried to push me under him, figuring he could float back to safety on my bloated, buoyant corpse. I got my hands on his head and shoved him down, holding him under until he started to get a little weak, then let him pop up, took hold of his hood, and began towing him back to the pier. He just floated there behind me, spluttering. At the pier I pulled myself up and reached down to grab his arm, guiding his hand to the edge of pier and holding him there until he took hold. I got to my knees and pulled him up, rolling him onto his back. His hood had fallen back, revealing his white, round face. I sat there, staring for a moment, and then looked away, panting.

 

“Hello, Grisha,” I said. He looked worse than when I’d last seen him in Chengara, and he’d had a head injury then. Now he was thin, his face tight against the bones, and wet like a drowned rat.

 

“Fuck.” He coughed. “You. Let me catch my breath, and I will continue killing you.”

 

I wanted a cigarette badly. I thought of Gall on Faliero’s roof, all those good cigarettes, blown up. “Why have you been trying to kill me, Grisha?” I managed, dropping onto my back and just breathing, eyes closed. If the skinny little bastard had enough oomph left in him to shiv me, so fucking be it. I’d been stabbed by worse.

 

“Why?” He dissolved into painful-sounding coughs, the kind that usually brought chunks of bloody pulp up. “Why?” he repeated hoarsely. “You betrayed us. The little fucker explained it to me. When I discovered you were alive, I thought that unfair. You being alive.”

 

The little fucker. “You mean Uncie Mickey?”

 

Grisha spat black water onto himself. He looked darker than I remembered, baked. “I don’t know this term
Uncie,
but yes, Michaleen.” He sat up and spat oily water onto himself, panting. I sympathized. With a bellyful of that swamp, vomiting was a step up. He snorted. “The great Avery Cates, eh? Now we know how you have lived so long. You abandon your friends whenever it is convenient.” His face was dark and impassive. “I awoke bloody and alone in the drop bay of the hover. No Marlena, no you. I took up a spanner from one of the tie-down boxes and crept into the cockpit, where I found the little man, furiously ransacking the console for spare tech.” He looked away and spat again. “He explained all to me, about the
great
Avery Cates.”

 

I sat up a little, a sizzle of electricity animating me. “No Marlena? What happened to her?”

 

Grisha slumped down again, breathing hard. “Do not pretend, Avery. Have at least that much courage.”

 

I went cold, and began dragging myself onto my feet so that I loomed over the Russian. Staring down at him, I let my hands curl and uncurl. “What did that little bastard tell you, when you
surprised
him with a
weapon
in your hand, huh?”

 

He lifted his head again and squinted at me. The sun had warmed my damp clothes, and steam was starting to rise from us. Behind me, a small secondary explosion made the fragile pier shimmy under us. Grisha considered me for a long moment, not looking afraid at all. “He told me you had betrayed us. That when you had taken the hover as planned, you killed the Christian and then attempted to leave without us. That when we arrived, you killed Marlena and took our hover. That only sheer luck had provided us with another in the chaos.” He nodded. “I told you once that I do not forget, Avery.”

 

I stood breathing hard over him. I’d been happy to track down the short fuck because he’d betrayed me, because he’d left me to be mechanized, because he’d used the ghost of my father against me. If he’d killed Marlena, too, I was prepared to kill him
twice.
Without warning, anger swelled up and took hold, and I dropped to my knees and grabbed Grisha by his coat, yanking his face up close to mine.

 

“You don’t
forget,
you stupid fuck? You don’t
think,
either. You get the drop on Michaleen and he spins you a story, you let him walk away, and he’s fucking
laughing
at you. That little bastard played us all. The only reason
you’re
alive is you woke up before he got around to killing you.” I let him drop, his head smacking into the wood. He just stared up at me. I leaned back onto my legs, breathing hard. My voice quavered slightly and I swallowed something thick and bitter back. “He fucked us, Grish. And I’ve been trying to pay him back the favor.”

 

We stared at each other for a few heavy breaths. Grisha hadn’t twitched. He was like no other Techie I’d ever met. “All right, Avery,” he said slowly. “All right. I have no strength left. While I regain strength, explain to me.”

 

I reached into my pocket and produced the data cube, holding it up to the sun. “I’ll explain it all to you on the way to New York.”

 

 

 

 

PART THREE

 

 

 

 

XXV

SURVIVES THROUGH MYSTERIOUS MEANS

 

 

 

 

Shut up,
I thought, and for once, they did.

 

I opened my eyes and looked around The Star again. The cop with the golden eye looked like she was going to fall asleep; she just sagged there like there was no point to resisting gravity anymore. Mr. Marko—Mr. fucking
Marko,
who I’d been plotting to kidnap for days now—kept staring from me to the avatar like he was afraid we’d explode if we touched each other. The avatar—
my
avatar, with my thoughts in its head, my ugly mug on its face—looked short to me, like they’d gotten my specs from some old SSF jacket and a number had been blurred.

 

Behind them, Grisha stood calmly, autos in each hand. Grisha was a Techie in some ways, but he was a Techie who’d somehow learned how to survive in the world.

 

Survival is not permanent. You all will wither from the earth.

 

I shook my head a little and waited a second, but Squalor declined to say anything else.

 

“Mr. Marko,” the avatar said, sounding like me, like how I’d say it. “Have any light you can shed on this bullshit?”

 

Marko started to reach into his pockets, and Grisha stepped forward to push one of his guns into the Techie’s back. “Do not forget me,” the Russian said, his face impassive.