The Eternal Prison (44 page)

 

Left, right, pass two junctions, left, and there’ll be another pair of guards to handle.

 

I started walking. “I get the horrible feeling I’m going to be breaking out of Chengara forever.”

 

My soggy boots sucked my feet loudly as I walked down the empty, cold hall. Adjusting my steps to try and minimize the noise, I wondered how anyone found their way around the place, as it was all unmarked corridors of concrete and steel bathed in shadow-intolerant white light; I kept repeating Little Dick’s instructions as I walked, counting junctions and turns until I judged I was just around the corner from where my two errant—and unfortunately loyal—Techies were locked up. I leaned against the wall and slowed my breathing, listening for any sign that the guards had heard my approach. Odds were, considering my general state of grace and balance—not to mention the charming
wheeze
I’d developed—they’d only heard me if they were listening. And awake.

 

There was no sound, though. I frowned, forcing myself to wait another half minute, holding my breath until the blood pulsed in my eyes. I stretched my neck and took a deep breath, then stepped out into the hall, prepared to do my best imitation of a run.

 

The hall was empty.

 

The cell door was closed. I crept closer to it, Taser held loosely in my hand. “Well, Mr. Wizard,” I whispered. “Any ideas?”

 

Only that I’m going to have to wire in some pain circuitry in order to punish goldbrickers,
he groused silently inside me.
Any chance you’d be interested in a job as a security tester? This is embarrassing.

 

There was nothing for it but to keep going. I felt ragged and torn up and tried to steady myself as I prepared to use Marin’s code to open the cell door. Before I could, the door swung inward, slowly, and a moment later Grisha’s face appeared. He stared at me for a second, eyes wide in shock, and then he pushed the door open all the way, grinning. Behind him, Marko stood with a Taser in one hand. Two bodies lay on the floor of the cell between them.

 

“Mr. Cates!” Grisha said cheerfully. “Did you know there are
panic codes
hardwired into this complex?”

 

 

 

 

XXXIX

ALL ITS LIFE, ONLY WAITING FOR ME TO ARRIVE

 

 

 

 

“We’re going
down?
”

 

I prayed for strength, because Marko was talking.

 

“Isn’t escape and happiness
up?
”

 

We’d arrived at the elevator doors, which I gestured open. For a second the three of us just stared at the two prone Spooks.

 

“Avery has been busy, yes?” Grisha said, slapping me on the shoulder as he pushed past me. I made a vow to always somehow locate the skinny Russian for future descents into hell. If I had to deal with Marko every time the cosmos put me back into the slot, I was just going to let the next motherfucker I came across kill me and be done with it.

 

I limped after Grisha. “Yes,” I said.

 

“Wait a second,” Marko said, frowning as he stopped short of entering the elevator. “We’re riding the goddamn
elevator?
” He looked at me. “You don’t think that’s a little
obvious?
”

 

I turned to face the Techie. Both he and Grisha didn’t look too bad, like they’d been shoved from the hover into their cell and then forgotten. Marko’s hair was starting to fuzz in all over his face, making him look like a blotchy, slightly rotten peach. Silently, I gestured and the doors started to close.

 

“Fuck!” he squealed, dashing into the cab. Behind me, Grisha chuckled softly.

 

“Ezekiel forgets his place,” the Russian Techie murmured. “What are we doing, Avery?”

 

“Killing someone,” I said.

 

“I am glad of it,” he replied calmly.

 

I
loved
Grisha.

 

“Who?” Marko said, biting off the word unhappily.

 

“SFN Undersecretary Cal Ruberto,” I said as the elevator trembled to a stop. “I have it on good authority that he’s here on the seventh floor.”

 

“Aw,
shit,
” Marko groaned. “Every time I think,
Hooray, Avery just saved my life,
it always instantly turns into
Aw, fuck, Avery’s gonna get me killed.
”

 

“No one’s forcing you to follow me around,” I said mildly, hands twitching. “You can go on back up and wander the fucking desert, if you want. Me, I’m getting out of here alive. The price of the ticket is Ruberto. Do what you want.”

 

“Slow down,” Marko complained. “What’s the goddamn
plan?
”

 

I turned and took a step toward him as the elevator continued to sink. He shrank back a step, so I took another, enjoying the sudden look of pale horror on his face. I backed him into the wall and stopped, keeping my arms at my sides.

 

“The plan is simple, Mr. Marko. I’m going to let divine fucking guidance—with which I am currently
overflowing
—show me where the Undersecretary is. Then I’m going to kill him. Then I’m going to let divine guidance show me the way out.

 

You”—I lifted one arm and pushed a finger into his chest, making him flinch with a grimy little surge of joy inside me, ugly and dumb—“may be of assistance.”

 

I stared down into Marko’s bloodshot eyes, our breathing loud in the cab. After a moment, Grisha cleared his throat.

 

“In other words, Ezekiel, Avery will tell us as soon as he figures it out, no?”

 

Fucking Grisha. Marko visibly braced himself and swallowed. “All I want,” he said slowly, “is to get out of here and be dropped off somewhere within fifty miles of
anywhere,
and I won’t bother you ever again, Avery.”

 

I grit my teeth, and Marko suddenly shut his eyes as if bracing for a slap. I forced myself to turn away. I wondered why Dolores Salgado had been so quiet, why she wasn’t chattering away, warning me of dire consequences and unintended results. Her silence, once I noticed it, bothered me.

 

“What of the psionic?” Grisha pressed. “The Spook. He is possibly best I’ve ever seen. Could easily incapacitate all of us, I think. You have a plan for dealing with him?”

 

For a second or two, we all just stood there in silence. I was still looking at Marko, and he frowned back at me, his eyes shifting to my forehead.

 

“The cell doors… do you think…” He looked past me at Grisha. “Do you think the avatars in this place have panic codes? If we had an avatar, fully digital, no
brain,
the psionic wouldn’t be much use against
it,
now would he?”

 

I waited, but Marin said nothing about this.

 

“Interesting,” Grisha mused. “Possibly. However, even if this is the case, it does not help us much.”

 

The elevator had rumbled to a stop.

 

“You’ve hacked an avatar,” I reminded him.

 

“Yes, with tools and time and the help of Dr. Amblen. We have none of these things at present.”

 

I was getting annoyed at all this. “You didn’t have them in your cell, either.”

 

“Mr. Marko was part of the teams that helped design protocols in this complex,” Grisha said, waving his hand as the elevator doors opened. “He has a bad habit of hacking the SSF data banks and knew of the panic codes and wondered if they perhaps had not been changed. This proved a lucky truth, but I doubt we will get so lucky again.”

 

I leaned out of the cab quickly and caught a glimpse of an empty hall, smooth concrete floor and rough walls carved out of bedrock. A sensation of crushing weight settled on me. Death was all around us. At any moment we could be discovered, and I was tired and weak.

 

“Not
all
the avatars,” Marko whispered. “There’s at least one in this complex that’s already been hacked.”

 

I took a step back into the elevator and gestured deactivation, which closed the doors and kept the cab sitting where it was. “The Marin unit, which has
me
inside it.” I turned to face them. “That reminds me that someone in this elevator used the imprint of
me
I explicitly ordered them not to. But we’ll pay that invoice later.” I looked up at the ceiling of the cab. “Mr. Wizard,” I said, ignoring the look shared by Marko and Grisha. “Any idea where that avatar might be?”

 

Are you sure it’s been kept in this complex? Last we saw it was on the hover. It may have been removed. However, since it was one of my units, they may assume it contains an imprint of yours truly and thus would wish to download its data net and sift its contents. In that case it can probably be found in the lab, also on this level. You will likely remember the lab well.

 

I remembered cables snaking along the ceiling, the old woman singing to me, the needles. I remembered, all right.

 

“Let’s see if we’re lucky again,” I said, gesturing the doors open.

 

“Avery,” Grisha hissed at me as I stepped out into the hall.

 

Left, Avery.

 

I spun and began walking.

 

“Avery! I do not wish to burden you with silly questions, but perhaps you can realize that speaking to the ceiling and then announcing you have all the answers needed is not
reassuring?
”

 

“Fuck reassuring. You’re in Chengara again, Grisha. You feel reassured? No? Pick a fucking direction and start walking, then. You’ll be at the same fucking level of security as you are following me.”

 

A cloud of tense doubt trailed behind me like exhaust. I glanced up and saw the cable wriggling along the ceiling as I limped, Taser gripped tightly in one hand. The rail had angled downward, and I was riding gravity. Maybe I had a tumor. Maybe there was a lump in my head speaking in the whispered, imagined voice of Dick Marin and maybe my limp was it pressing against some nerve bundle. But fuck if it didn’t feel good.

 

I heard a rustle of fabric and then felt a hand on my shoulder. I took hold of it and spun, taking the arm with me and bending it around painfully, pulling Grisha tight against me. He grunted in pain and didn’t struggle.

 

“Avery,” he gasped, “how do you know where we are going?”

 

I took a deep breath and released him, letting him stumble forward a few steps before I pushed past him. I didn’t have time to really explain Little Dick and the voices. “I’ve been down here before, remember?” I said.

 

We passed doors on either side, but no other personnel. They’d cleaned up after the invasion, all the bodies and debris cleared away. The emptiness was alarming; I wondered where in hell everyone
was.

 

You’re the only prisoners in this complex at present, Avery,
Marin whispered.
How many people do you suppose it takes to contain you?

 

“More than you’ve got, apparently,” I whispered back.

 

We turned a bend in the corridor, and at the end of a long stretch of floor were familiar, battered swinging doors. A sign over them read lab-009 in faded, chipped letters.

 

There are three holding cells off this lab,
Marin noted.
If your pet avatar was retained, it is likely in one of those.

 

I crashed through the swinging doors, the sound exactly as I remembered from my last involuntary visit. My scalp itched where the needles had been stabbed into my brain. Then I stopped, my footsteps echoing away into silence—the space was empty, just a round high-ceiling room of concrete, several hanging light fixtures crowding the roof, and the walls puckered with sockets of every imaginable kind, waiting for cables to snake into them and bring the place back to life. It smelled clean, aggressively clean, like someone had set a small chemical fire in the place to burn off any trace of dirt or evidence.

 

Looking around, I saw the doors Marin had mentioned. The gestures to open them—complex and dainty—came to mind unbidden, supplied by my ghostly adviser. Without a word to Marko or Grisha, I limped over to the closest one and gestured savagely. The door remained shut. I took a deep, shuddering breath, swallowed down the coughing fit this tried to inspire, and forced myself to repeat the gesture calmly, slowly, precisely. The door slid into the wall instantly, a faint rush of stale air pushing against me. Within Chengara, for the time being, I was fucking god.

 

The avatar of Dick Marin stood in the doorway smiling, as if it had been standing there for all its life, only waiting for me to arrive. It didn’t look at all like Cal Ruberto. Somehow I could tell with just a glance that Marin’s personality wasn’t inside it. Something in the eyes, the kink of its mouth. I couldn’t believe it was
me
in there, but it wasn’t
Marin,
either.

 

“About fucking time,” my ghost said through Dick Marin’s face, twisting it into an expression I’d never seen on the Director. “Are we
finally
going to kill someone?”

 

 

 

 

XL

I’LL PROBABLY HAVE YOU CRUSHED INTO A CUBE AND CARRY YOU AROUND AS A SOUVENIR