The Eternal Prison (35 page)

 

“The good people of Moscow, yes,” he snapped. “Come, let us explore. We must find a strong room.”

 

Before I could say anything else, he strode purposefully out of the room, his rough bag slung over his shoulder, his fingers poking out of his black gloves like sausages. I looked at Marko, who stood blinking by the desk, running his hands over the console embedded in it as if it spoke to him.

 

“You have a spot welder kit?”

 

He nodded, eyes locked on the dead console. “Of course.”

 

I took two steps and grasped him by the shoulder, spinning him around roughly, getting a spluttered grunt as a reward. “Seal up the door, Zeke. Be useful. That should be your fucking motto, you know. Be fucking useful.”

 

I found Grisha in the next room, which was a small office, windowless and tight, crammed full of a desk and a large black cube from which cables snaked to and from the walls.

 

“Why don’t they just bomb the shit out of Moscow?” I wondered aloud. “Why starve it like this, freeze it out? A couple of hours of dumping ordnance on it, and it’s not here anymore.”

 

Grisha was looking at the walls critically. “They wish the Marin Prime as a prize, maybe,” he said. “Or maybe the SSF big guns keep their hover fleet at bay, who knows?” He stopped and looked at me. “You have a plan, Avery? For getting to the Prime? You get in, we find a way to access the data, we find the midget. Very good. But how?”

 

I wanted a cigarette in the worst way, even if it made my lungs bleed. Instead I rubbed my cold hands together. “We’re going to walk in.”

 

Grisha leaned forward, squinting at me. “Using Marin avatar? Will not work, Avery. Even assuming we can reconstruct damaged security modules in unit—which I doubt since even with Dr. Amblen’s help we barely managed dirty hack we did in New York—there is no doubt it has been listed out of commission and is no longer on trusted list. We will not bluff our way past automated systems that way.”

 

I nodded. Blue light began flashing into the room from the foyer, and I could hear Marko muttering angrily. I knew if I could hear him clearly, I’d be forced to hurt him. “We’re not going to bluff automated systems. Marin’s got a weak spot, whether he realizes it or not.” I stopped to beam a smile. “The Technical Unit.”

 

He blinked. “Yes?”

 

I started to pace. “Marin’s been afraid to process the Techies into avatars, right? Afraid they’ll lose whatever spark humanity gives them that lets them innovate and hack, right?”

 

Grisha nodded slowly, eyeglasses shining and making him look blind. “Yes. The Technical Unit is largely unprocessed.”

 

I snapped my fingers. “Social engineering, Grigoriy. The Techies in the fucking Kremlin are
humans,
and they can be conned. Fuck all his security. We walk in, looking like a bunch of hardass System Pigs, dressing the part, with Director Marin
himself
in tow, and we fucking snow them under. The usual tap dance—you’ll be cleaning toilets in Chengara this time tomorrow, you piece of shit; you want
me
to contact your supervisor? Shit, we’ll have them crapping their pants, and they will
let us in.
” I smiled, putting it on my face like a tool. “They will
guide
us to his office.”

 

“Perhaps,” Grisha said slowly, nodding. “We will need luck in who we encounter, but… perhaps. Marko with his SSF contacts can maybe do some research for us, find out who is on duty here and who might be a wise choice for confronting. Then, maybe.” Grisha raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “Who will… populate the avatar? Marin himself?”

 

I scowled. The light suddenly stopped. “Fuck no. Who knows what tricks that bastard has up his sleeves. He stays out of his own unit.”

 

Very wise, Avery,
Marin chuckled.
Very wise.

 

Grisha’s face folded into a slight, subtle smile. “You?”

 

I held up a finger. “I thought I made it clear that my imprint be destroyed, Grish—if I find out —”

 

Grisha put up his hands, his smile blooming. “I tease you, Avery. It is easy.”

 

I kept my hand up. “Do it again, Grisha.”

 

His smile faded. “I apologize, Avery. If not you, and not Director Marin… ?”

 

I lowered my hand slowly. “We’re going to ask Dr. Amblen a favor.”

 

Grisha cocked his head, considering, and opened his mouth to say something when a hollow, heavy booming noise filled the air. We heard Marko’s startled squawk from the other room. I exchanged a look with the Techie and retreated back into the foyer, where Marko was slowly backing away from the door, which was shaking and vibrating, the fresh welds still glowing in places. He still held the small gun in a limp hand at his side.

 

“That’s a good weld, Zeke,” I whispered.

 

“Thanks,” he whispered back. “What is that noise?”

 

From outside, a sustained howling had begun, a crowd of people shouting at the same time. It was loud and angry and unintelligible, and it almost seemed like the noise was battering the door, a living thing pounding on it.

 

“Grish,” I said slowly, reaching into my coat and pulling out my gun.

 

Grisha nodded for no reason. “The war has been hard on Moscow,” he said quietly. “Moscow is starving.”

 

“Who the fuck is out there?”

 

He shrugged, wriggling out of his bag and pulling out his own gun, checking it professionally. I loved Grisha. I was going to marry him. “The good people of Moscow,” he said. “Cannibals.”

 

 

 

 

XXX

I WAS FOURTEEN AGAIN

 

 

 

 

“Wait,” Marko said, slipping his torch into his pocket. “They want to
eat
us?”

 

“That explains the smell,” my avatar said.

 

That explains the smell,
Marin echoed in my head.

 

“Come,” Grisha hissed. “This hotel is good place, but I have not been here in a very long time. We must secure it. I recommend we remain on the first floor and block the escalator and elevators. Not functioning, of course, but still access points. Come!”

 

A whole city cut off from the rest of the System by an entire army. Nothing in or out. The undead Director of SSF Internal Affairs and his zombie staff sitting in a fortress with dozens of emergency generators underground, keeping him warm and sizzling on the network. Everyone’s last stash of nutrition tabs gone weeks ago; people sent out to find supplies disappeared forever. We’d gotten in, of course, but then the army’s whole idea wasn’t keeping small parties of assholes from getting in or out, it was all about keeping huge shipments of supplies from getting in, or a huge server farm from getting
out.

 

The limitations of meat,
Squalor whispered, a worm in my brain, chewing.
Better that they pass, so that the saved may inherit the earth.

 

I checked my gun quickly and felt myself up for ammunition. “Grisha, give me the layout, fast.”

 

He didn’t hesitate as he dug through his bag. “Five rooms on first floor: this entryway, small office in rear you have seen, to left and right are escalator and elevator banks, and also behind us supply closet. Closet has two windows, high off floor.”

 

I nodded. “Fuck the soft spots. Back in the office and make a choke point.”

 

He shook his head. “You are good at slitting a single throat, Avery, but if we do that we will only be able to fire one at a time and we will be overwhelmed—the door to the office is too wide. We do not know how many are out there.”

 

Eyeing the office door—wide enough, indeed, for two or even three people to push through in a pinch—I listened for a moment. It was one blurred noise, rising and falling, like fingernails on my spine. “No more than five hundred,” I offered, blank faced.

 

“You take one bank,” he panted, standing up. “I take another. Mr. Marko takes the storeroom, and we sincerely hope the welds on the front door hold.”

 

Marko spun around. “What the fuck? You’re kidding, right?”

 

Grisha stepped forward suddenly and slapped Marko across the face, a hard backhand that spun the Techie around, making him stagger until he found the wall to catch him.

 

“You have a gun, you fucking complainer,” Grisha shouted. “Make use of it.”

 

I found I was smiling broadly. My heart was pounding, and I felt like my thoughts were lasered in, ticking along at a million miles a second. It had been a while since I’d had some easy, guiltless fucking carnage. I’d felt complicated for years. It all fell away, and it was just me, a gun, and the determination to survive. I was fourteen again.

 

I spun and jogged over to Marko, who was leaning against the wall rubbing his chin with a look of such stupid amazement on his face that my cheer doubled, swelling inside me. I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him with me, making for the storeroom door with him limply in tow. I kicked the door open and peered inside: rows of shelves reaching up to the ceiling, the two windows grimy and dim squares of feeble, icy light. Anyone coming in would first have to smash what looked like thick, robust panes of glass and drop a good ten feet to the floor, where they would be momentarily blind and off balance.

 

“Look, Zeke,” I said, forcing myself to speak slowly. “In this case a choke point—the door—will work; it’s a narrow opening. They’re going to hit the floor shaky and blinking. They’re going to have glass in their hands where they steadied themselves.” I took his arm and raised it up, bending it at the elbow, positioning it. “Be relaxed, accept the recoil. Take your time—they can only come at you one at a time. Don’t be fancy, just hit them. You don’t need headshots, you don’t even need to kill them. Writhing bodies on the ground will actually be to your advantage, and despite what you might think, most people when shot—even in the fucking leg or arm—go down like pussies and start screaming. It
hurts.
Okay?”

 

Marko’s eyes were wide. There was a particularly loud boom against the front door; and he flinched, then nodded, taking a deep breath. He looked down at himself and fumbled in his pocket for a moment before bringing out the Roon I’d let him have. Wasted on him, of course, but it wouldn’t jam, and the smooth action would help him stay calm. “Okay. I think.”

 

I took the gun from him, just reaching out and plucking it from his grasp, which worked more often than you might imagine. I popped the clip out and checked it: full. Slapping it back, I handed it to him. “Make sure you have clips. Don’t forget to reload. Don’t wait to be clean out; pick a moment of slack when you can pause for ten seconds. Don’t
forget
to reload, okay?”

 

He nodded again, accepting the gun. “Okay. I have five clips in my pocket.”

 

“Make sure you can reach them. Make sure they’re the only things in that pocket. Be calm. Take your time. Don’t be picky.”

 

“Okay.”

 

I nodded and stormed away. “I’ve got the bank on the right,” I said. “If you get swamped, scream.” I glanced at my avatar, grinning at me with Dick Marin’s evil energy. “You don’t fucking move. Stand in front of the door, be an obstacle.”

 

Dick winked at me with my own eyes and stepped forward.

 

Can’t eat me,
the Marin in my head said.

 

“Can
eat me,
” I reminded it.

 

As we passed each other, heading for the opposite elevator banks, Grisha and I exchanged a stiff, curt nod. Breath steaming from me like exhaust, a light grit crunching under my boots, I stepped out of the foyer into the elevator and escalator banks. Two grim, dented brown elevator doors were on my left, pocket doors that slid into the walls. I ignored them. Even though it would be trivial to open the door once inside the cab, getting from the second floor down into the elevator cab and then triggering the emergency release on the doors would be slow and difficult. If I were starving, half-mad, and ready to tear some people apart for sustenance, I wouldn’t be in the frame of mind to go through that kind of trouble, not when I could scramble down the wide-open escalator.

 

It was a risk, but I moved past the elevators and stared up the escalator. It was new looking, free of rust. It looked like you could just fire it up, scrape the ice off, and press a button, and it would begin to silently and endlessly rise up and sink down forever. Each track was wide enough for two people to stand abreast or one person and their luggage. I didn’t think this leaky hellhole was the sort of place to have a few Droid bellhops to haul your crap up to your room. The tracks rose up on a fairly steep angle, leaving a lot of dead space on the sides. I dashed around the side of the far escalator and pressed myself into the hollow formed between the rising escalator rail and the rear wall. Crouching down, I’d be completely out of sight to anyone tearing down the steps until they were in my line of fire. It was risky; if any of them proved to be calmer than expected, they might make their way down the elevator shaft and hit Grisha and Marko from behind, or if they were faster than expected, I might miss one pouring down the escalators.