Cates 04 - The Terminal State (7 page)

He shook his head. “Homophobic humor from you, Avery? Very disappointing.” He spread his hands. “Pockets of civilization remain, for those of us who have the influence. Not just plastics, though, Avery. I have had a full process. Artificial ligaments, skin therapies, artificial hormone emitters. I am, in a very real sense, younger than when you last saw me.” He shrugged. “I do not intend to die like some pathetic old cat, whimpering in a darkened corner.”

The eyes were freaking me out. The eyes were
old
.

“You, on the other hand,” Wa said, squinting at me. “You look
terrible
. Older than your years.”

I rewound Gupta’s assessment of me from a few moments before. “So I’m told, Wa.” I rolled my shoulders. “But I
feel
great.”

I kept my eyes on the old man and pictured the tent, everything in it, assessing the situation with old, undying instincts that had kept me alive beyond all probability. The pitcher looked like glass, but it might be a polymer or even cheap plastic, something that wouldn’t shatter into a satisfactory edge. The chairs would make decent bludgeons but they’d be clumsy to work with. And there was the fucking remote control; if Wa Belling had bought me to drag a knife across my throat, to eliminate a loose end from his past, I wasn’t going to be able to stop him—especially with lab-grown ligaments under his hide—but I wasn’t going easy.

A few seconds of silence wound around us, pulling tight.

“So,” I said, “what’s the going rate for old Gunners these days? ”

Belling studied me calmly, the remote control being spun around in his deft, piano-player hands. These, I noted, had also been left untouched by the surgeon—they were papery and mottled with age spots, the original issue. He reached out and pulled one of the metal mugs toward him.

“Well, Avery—”

He snapped his arm up and sent the mug screaming right at my head. My arm popped up and I snatched it from the air, surging to my feet.

“What the
fuck
—”

“I apologize, Avery,” he said, waving a negligent hand at me. “Sit down.” He reached into his coat and I tensed up, but his hand emerged with a large flask that he unscrewed slowly, watching me. “Your reflexes are still good. Have you been working? ”

I blinked. I felt very strongly that I’d lost control of the conversation. “What? ”

He took a long pull from the flask and then extended it toward me with a nod. “This reminds me of our earliest conversations,” he said cheerfully. “Me speaking clearly and simply, and you saying ‘
What
?’ over and over.”

I hesitated, and then stepped around the table and reached for the flask. I considered taking his wrist and breaking his arm instead, but he would be ready for that. I considered him taking
my
arm and breaking
my
wrist, but Belling had never been one to crack heads when he could simply shoot you from across the room—he’d see that as a waste of energy. So I pinched the flask between two fingers and took a sip: whiskey. Good whiskey.

I turned and walked back to the other end of the table with the flask. When I sat down again, I put my feet up and took a second swig, even though whiskey had never been my thing. Belling’s expression was one of annoyance, and I enjoyed it, since it was all I was going to get by way of revenge. For now.

“Working,” I said. “If you mean taking contracts, no. I’ve been in the armpit of the fucking System watching the troops march past. If you mean
killing
people, I’ve kept my hand in.”

He sat forward. “Glad to hear it, Avery. I’ve seen your medical reports, and with the standard-issue SFNA augments plugged into you, I must say you’re in better shape than I would have imagined.”

I wondered if that was an insult, considering what Gupta had told me about my physical state. “Let’s cut this bullshit short, Wa,” I said, setting the flask down on the table in front of me. I watched his eyes flick to it. “Why do you care what kind of shape I’m in? ”

Belling gave me his billionaire smile, spreading his hands. “Because we want you to work for us, my dim-witted American friend,” he said. “The Dúnmharú has been reformed, and you’re being recruited.”

I frowned before I could stop myself. The Dúnmharú—Canny Orel’s contract murder mill—was legendary. The best Gunners in the world banding together during Unification to take contracts from governments. The biggest money, the toughest marks. I knew Belling had been a charter member; Belling was
old
, despite the best work of his surgeons. “You just bought me, Wa. You’ve got that fucking piece of black plastic in your pocket, can make me sizzle. So cut the bullshit about
recruiting
me and tell me what it is you want me to do or else I get a zap, okay? ”

He shook his head and stood up, pushing his hands into his pockets. His suit was expensive looking and cut nicely, with a stiff back collar that was popped up behind his ears. I still marveled at the new Belling, younger looking now than when I’d first met him, all those years ago in London, when he’d been trading on Orel’s name. “You’d rather hump it in a suicide squad? Get assigned a shredding rifle and a date of death, running across some field already muddy with the blood of insignificant morons?” He shrugged. “Too bad. We’ve got a job, and we need someone with experience to run it for us.”

Still, I looked at the cocksucker’s smug, smoothed face and I couldn’t just give in. I leaned back in my seat and pointed at him, letting him squirm a little.
“Experience?”

He shrugged again. “Avery ...” He paused and looked at his hands appraisingly. “Avery, the System is not operating at peak efficiency.”

I snorted. “That’s the fucking understatement of the year.”

“Yes. Civil war—the front line shifting back and forth hundreds of miles in a week, cities bombed to pieces, whole populations displaced, press squads denuding the world of labor forces, breakaway states, ruined communication lines, restricted travel.” He looked up at me from under his eyebrows, suddenly and obviously casual. “Hong Kong is days away from declaring independence. Did you hear that? ”

I thought about telling him what Anners had said about taking his unit to Hong Kong, wanting to one-up the old bastard. Instead, I just shook my head, and he sighed.

“Avery, thirty years ago, during Unification, we made a fortune taking on contracts from governments, playing them off each other. Those times are here again, and there’s an opportunity to not only remake those fortunes, but to shape the world. To take command. To shift the course of things.” He leaned back, satisfied with himself as usual. “The problem is, there’s a lack of individuals with the talent level we require.”

I raised an eyebrow, and he jabbed a finger in my direction, his face comically enraged.

“Don’t bring up old news, Avery. I live in the present. You can’t just skim through the slums anymore and find some talented kid who can be trained. They’re all dead. Or in the army, which is the same thing.” He scowled. “You’re, what, forty now? Old, but you have
experience
. You’ve organized large-scale jobs. You’ve survived global emergencies—you survived
me
. Not many have.”

I nodded. “I’m all you’ve got.”

“
Yes
,” he hissed, unhappy. He stood up, shooting his expensive cuffs. “Money doesn’t mean anything, anymore. Power
always
means something. And the Dúnmharú means power.” He paused and gave me what he probably imagined was a friendly look. “You were once powerful, in your way. In New York, after Squalor. You remember it, I am sure.”

I sighed. I needed to stay with him, needed to get out of the army’s sphere and wait for Belling to make a mistake so I could kill him. It didn’t matter what line of bullshit he thought he was feeding me.

I thought of Remy. “I was scooped up with some other—”

“No, Avery,” Belling said and shrugged. “We’re here for you. No one else. I don’t want to hear your bleeding-heart bullshit. In or out, that’s it.”

I scowled. “Listen, goddamn—”

“In or
out
, Avery! There’s no room for anyone else.”

“I’m in,” I said quietly. Let Belling think he’d beaten me down. Let him think I was too tired to go after him. I felt like a fucking newborn. “So how much
did
you pay for me, Wa? ”

He dug through his coat and produced the plastic remote control, appraising it. Then he looked up at me. “Oh, for god’s sake, Avery,
I
didn’t buy you. Michaleen did. He’s Canny Orel, after all. He
is
the Dúnmharú.”

Stepping onto the hover that Belling had somehow gotten permission to haul through SFNA airspace was like going back five years in time.

The hover was first class. Even five years ago it would have been first class, and these days, when just getting a hover into airspace without seeing it shot down was impossible, it was like some sort of miracle hover. The interior was luxurious, with polished wood everywhere, thick carpeting, and soft leather seats that moved any way your body shifted, always offering maximum support. A tiny Droid roamed up and down the aisle, offering cocktails and food, clearing away trash the moment you set it down, and humming a soothing little tune that made me want to smash a fist into its tiny plastic face. But I didn’t want to be rude so I contented myself with obstructing it with my foot every chance I got, making the thing vibrate in frustration until I moved.

Belling had a suit of clothes waiting for me in the hover. At first, I’d been angry, but the clothes I’d been given on our way off the army base weren’t mine; they smelled like someone’s sour cologne and were two sizes too big, handed to me from a huge pile in the processing tent where Belling signed me out. The suit from Wa was beautiful: black, quality, and close to a perfect fit. The moment I’d peeled off the creepy military issue and had it on, I felt like a human being again and decided to forgive him. Until I managed to kill him.

I sat in my ass-hugging seat sipping a glass of gin that was absolutely perfect except that it was completely unlike any gin I’d ever tasted. It was perfect: chilled, with a curl of something green and fragrant hooked onto the glass—and I hated it. I hated Belling, I hated Michaleen or Canny or whatever the fuck his real name was. I stared at Belling while he made a show of strumming a small handheld, his elegant hand swirling around in lazy patterns, data glowing in bright clumps. He looked like a dandy, like a rich old man who’d been eating well and drinking well and fucking well his whole life. I knew better. I watched his hands and knew that Belling was better than me, and always had been: faster, dirtier. Crueler. Even as an old man, Belling would beat me, with or without his remote control.

I hated him even more for being better than me.

For a moment, I was filled with so much hatred my hands shook, and I wanted to try and strangle the bastard despite the bleak odds.

I closed my eyes and imagined my globe of glass, everything else on the outside. Inside, just peace and quiet. I realized my hands were clenched into fists, and I forced myself to relax them just as Belling spoke.

“Avery, I can almost
hear
you plotting from over here.”

I opened my eyes. The Old Man was looking at me, calm and relaxed, the plastic remote held idly in one hand. I put my eyes on it for a moment and then smiled back at Belling. “Why would you think that, Wallace? Because you sold me out to Kev Gatz? Because you made me
Patient Fucking Zero
in the Plague? Because you’re a fucking liar? Because you’re working for Michaleen?” I shook my head and offered him a smile. “Wallace, you’re not afraid of
me
, are you? ”

He smiled back, shaking his head. “No.”

His finger twitched, and I almost bit my tongue off.

Pain like I’d never felt before flooded into me like liquid being pushed through a needle directly into my nervous system. White hot and corrosive, it shattered my imagined inner peace and in the second or two that I remained conscious, it taught me that whatever I’d been defining as
pain
before was just a shadow of the possibilities.

 

 

Cold, wet, and awake.

I surged up to consciousness, still twitching on the floor under my seat. I was damp everywhere; I’d pissed myself and the carpet around me. As I lay there, shivering, a huge snot bubble inflating and deflating on the tip of my nose, I could feel gravity tugging on me; we were in descent.

“Behave yourself,” I heard Belling say cheerfully, his voice muffled by the leather upholstery between us. “You’re now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dúnmharú. Fuck up and I’ll stroke you out.”

My whole body ached like a shallow echo of what Belling had just done to me, softly vibrating. I squirmed to get my hands under me, my fingers sinking into the damp pile, and pushed myself over onto my back. I lay there gasping, legs still twitching every few seconds. The ceiling of the hover was smooth white, with small round lights set every two feet or so, making me blink. After a moment, Belling’s weird, smooth face swam between me and them.

“Up and at them, boy,” he said, giving me a little tap with one shined boot.

“Where are we? ” My voice came out rubbery, soft and stretched.

“Amsterdam. That’s where the man is, so that’s where we have to go.” His upside-down face scowled at me. “Michaleen does not do any kind of electronic communication. You want to talk to him, you go where he is. Now, get the fuck up before I get irritated. This is probably the last hover flight we’ll sneak out; our usual contact with the System Pigs can’t help us anymore, having been shot to death in the recent Northern Europe campaign. The army’s in charge up here now and we don’t have any contacts with the Europe Central Command.”

I gathered myself slowly and pushed up onto trembling arms, finally maneuvering my way around so I could hook an arm onto the seat and support myself sitting up. A shock of adrenaline hit my bloodstream; I was going to see Michaleen. I was going to be in the same fucking airspace as the little fucker, and I would have a window when the remote was still hooked to Belling. A window when maybe I could take a shot at Michaleen, aka Canny Orel, aka the greatest Gunner in history. And me, piss-soaked and shaking. I squinted at Belling, who was primping, smoothing himself down like a peacock. The Old Man would slit someone’s throat for a better view of a Vidscreen; I didn’t see him diving in front of a bullet to save Mickey.