Escapology (33 page)

The first of their two stops is approaching. If Amiga were Yang’s man, she’d use what’ll be a mass passenger exodus to attack. Well fuck that, how about she attacks now and saves him the trouble? If he’s dead their chances of making it to the limo increase by a factor of no fucking bullets. Besides, she needs to kill something. Every nerve is screaming.

Slipping out along the seats, ignoring the protest of her damaged thigh, she flips down Deuce’s goggles to check for heat signatures. The guy’s still hunkered down near the door of the other carriage. If she had any darts left, she could take him out no sweat. But no point dwelling on the impossible, she’s going to have to provoke a hand to hand, or a shoot out. Fun. Amiga swiftly checks her leg, just to be sure. Still bleeding. Best not get hit again then. Easy. What she wouldn’t give for a bullet-retardant body suit right now.

“Halle-fucking-luyah,” she mutters, edging closer to the door, one row of seats at a time.

Her advantage here is that Yang’s soldier’s got no goggles, no mods, and Deuce has her blocked more thoroughly than Shock. That covers her until she reaches the doors and they slide open, giving away her position. Yang’s soldier starts firing immediately, over the top of the seats. Throwing herself forward and down, Amiga rolls in, comes up firing herself.

There’s no clean shot, he’s got his head tucked down, his torso protected by the seats. So she takes off his hand, two ugly but serviceable shots to the wrist. Limping down the remaining corridor to his hiding place she ignores his screams for mercy. Puts him out of his misery with a single shot. Swift. Cold. Slick. Her job description in words of one syllable.

At the platform, the mono empties out a stream of silent passengers. No one else boards. They all know better. None of Yang’s troops are waiting either, but Amiga allows no relief. They could be at the next platform, waiting to ambush them. She checks all remaining guns, taking any with more than one bullet and stashing them in her pack, and fetches Shock, supporting him to the doors.

Their stop is deserted, a fact that does zip all for her confidence. At street level she presses another bump into Shock’s neck, praying it won’t kill him. As it hits, blowing his pupils wide, Deuce’s block wears off and Shock’s effed up signal rolls back into her awareness, silent but deadly. She grits her teeth hard against the urge to scream.

“Limo. Now.”

Shock inclines his head to the left, throwing a small schematic into her head with the exact spot. Blanking the pain and growing weakness in her thigh, she takes his weight and they set off at a pace more dangerously slow than she’s comfortable with, considering he’s a beacon for trouble and trouble is not far away.

The limo’s parked in a side road, just beyond the border. Damn near faint with relief, or blood loss, Amiga opens the door and heaves Shock inside, wincing as his battered body falls across the seats, spattering blood on the upholstery, the dash and into the footwell. One and a half hours to Shin. There’s no way he’s surviving that long.

Climbing in carefully after him, she flinches backward as Shark’s nose batters the dividing window in her direction, its vast mouth a golden cavern filled with rows of teeth. There are gobbets of flesh stuck between them, the meat-red outrageous against the purity of Shark’s gold. How the fuck is it trapped in there? It’s a hologram. She should be meaty human goodness right now, considering this hologram can apparently chow down. Thank fuck she’s not. But she cannot, will not, deal with that thrashing all the way to Shin District.

“Sort that fucking beast out,” she snaps.

Shock doesn’t move, or acknowledge her, but Shark quits battering the window. Amiga nods.

“Right. Get that octopus to hide you in the damn limo and get us the fuck to Shimli.”

I can’t hide him. He’s vibrating beyond a frequency the limo’s connection to Slip can cover.

The reply is musical, hums like electricity and static in her mind, making her blink, sit back hard in her seat. Was that Shock? She checks him. Out cold. Her eyes shift to the octopus. Find it watching her. A direct gaze filled with such life, such personality, Amiga all but recoils, because avis aren’t fucking real. They’re not
anything
. They’re imprints. Golden masks, if that.

I haven’t time to muscle past your prejudices,
Octopus informs her acidly.
We are currently fucked to a monumental degree
.

Talking? It’s
talking
? What the…? Amiga blows out. Tries to speak. Fails. Tries again.
You er… But… Shock’s out of commission…
She feels crazy. Yeah, definitely crazy. Talking to an avi. Certifiable.

There’s a brief sputtering noise in her IM. Laughter?
If we follow that logic,
Octopus replies,
then I could not possibly be functioning enough to drive a limo.

That’s a point and a half. As Shock said earlier: tou-fuckin’-che.

So you’re not Shock then?

We are both Shock and not Shock. We are three iterations of the same person acting as both individuals and a singular, united entity.

Is Emblem doing that?

No.

There’s that moment when you drop something when you know it’s going to smash into a million pieces all over the floor. You get this pinch in the intestines as you anticipate the noise, the mess, the hours of clean up. So it goes with Amiga’s preconceptions. In shattering they make a mess she imagines it will take years to clean up. She should have been braced for this, but even with everything she’s learnt over the past few days she’s still hanging on to whatever ignorance she can find. Stupid really, Amiga was never going to find her bliss. Not in this lifetime.

So you’re…

Alive. Yes.

Is Shark?

Yes, although he’s more… instinct than consciousness. He’s a tool, I am a gestalt, but we are both still beings. Okay with that? Ready to move on to the fuckage?

Wow, Puss is one acid-tongued, straight-talking SOB. Amiga can dig that.

Yup. Moving on. Fuckage. Go.

All activity at Yang’s current HQ mobilized in our direction as soon as the block broke.

Can we outrun them?

No.

Shit. ETA?

Even at top speed, they are currently due to intercept within minutes. Their vehicles are faster.

I have no guns.
The ones she took are less than useless in this situation.

This vehicle is bullet proof, even the tyres will withstand barrage, but they will surround us. We are out of options.

Shark?

If Shark is damaged at this moment, Shock will die, he’s too weak to cope with the loss. That is why we have remained separate until now; we were maximizing our chances of surviving and therefore maximizing his.

Ah.

As I said, we are fucked to a monumental degree.

Note to self: Puss does not do exaggeration. Good to know. Amiga peers out the side window, spies the shit-ton of cars speeding into view, catching up too quickly. Within range for guns clearly not made with a printer, their windows slide down and they begin to fire. Experiencing that catastrophic elevator crash of the vitals as bullets begin to pepper the road around them, Amiga finds her mind capable of only one single thought: Exactly how long do bullet-proof tyres hold out?

As it happens, Amiga doesn’t get to answer her question. The bullets cease and four of the cars in pursuit manoeuvre to intimate positions on all sides, their windows gliding upward.

“Oh
hell
no!”

Amiga scoots back at double speed, hitting the belt button with her foot and taking firm grip of Shock. Just in time. The cars surrounding them move in concert, slamming metal elbows into their front, back and sides. Crunching the limo between them, a car compactor formed of cars. And the noise is excruciating, hits her body the way the sound of Shock’s drive agony hits her mind.

She hunkers low in the seat, enduring it all, cradling him her lap. It’s all she can do. It’s not enough. He’s bleeding again, not only from the heavy impacts shaking him around, but from the simple fact of her hands on his skin. She doesn’t know what else to do to help him. This has never happened before, this helplessness. Cleaners always have a back-up plan, a way out, that’s their job, that’s
her
job. Get it done, get away clean. Where’s her clean getaway?

Inside, she’s screaming frustration. She wants weapons, some kind of fucking firepower, a way to fight back. There is none. Only the persistent thunder of collision. And blood. Way too much blood. Shock’s and hers.

Amiga. You have my Haunt. Why is he not in my possession?

Twist’s voice in her IM usually drops a shot of liquid ice into her guts, so Amiga’s surprised to find fury bubbling up, hot and ugly. How fucking
dare
he? She’s not some lackey, fulfilling a duty. Following orders won’t magically erase the epic shit mountain she’s straddling the peak of, enabling her to jolly along to Sendai and casually drop Shock into Twist’s lap. Like she would anyway. Even if handing over Emblem were not ninety-nine percent of the problem, she wouldn’t give Shock to Twist.

That pulls her up short.

She hasn’t had a moment since Breaker yanked her through her IM to contemplate why she made the choice to follow shrivelled principles and protect this boy. Didn’t consider where the choice came from, what insane impulse drove it. Because there’s nothing sensible about it. In her position what she’s doing is a surefire death sentence, more certain than cracking Twist’s vault ever was. But she’s set. At peace with the outcome. What’s changed to make her feel that way? She’s not suicidal. She wants to get out of this alive.

Amiga. You know how unwise it is to ignore me.

There’s that tone again. Oh and the anger to follow, sharp as indigestion. Closing her eyes, Amiga breathes through it, surprised by how much it hurts. She’s so
full
. There’s not one millimetre of her that this anger does not reside in. It’s as if by stepping outside of the path she chose, she’s opened herself wide to everything she ignored to stay on it, and she’s so fucking
sick
. Sick to death of Twist, of being his hands, of doing his dirty work and never, ever being clean. She’s wanted to erase him from her life for the longest time and never had the courage. Now she realizes it wasn’t courage she needed, but this anger. This sickening, all-consuming rage.

Deuce once showed Amiga how to burn an IM link out. That’s the thing about virtual links. You can eradicate them. They aren’t fucking
real
. Amiga sends the command Deuce taught her to Twist’s link. It’s probably going to hurt him. Hell, it’s probably going to hurt her, but it’s okay. It’s good. Funny thing about taking a stand that, it might hurt like hell but if it’s right, there’s no feeling better. She’s only just realized that, and now she knows she wants to do it every single day. If she lives to see another.

Twist shouts her name as the link fries. Twist never shouts. It makes her laugh, and she realizes that this is how she’s going to die. Laughing. The thought makes her laugh harder. Jeez but she’s clearly gone off the wrong side of crazy.

Drones incoming
, Puss shouts in warning.

Laughter dying in her throat, Amiga checks the rearview. Dozens of drones bear down on them from between ’scrapers, silver glints in the sky swift and deadly as meteorites. Unexpected tears gather in her chest, hard and fast as gunfire. These could be other drones, of course they could, but her instinct screams otherwise. Tell her what she doesn’t want to know: these are the drones that hit Jong-Phu, and now they’re here. That means one thing only. Anger drops away, sudden as the ground in an earthquake, leaving her hollow. Light-headed.

She starts to tremble. At the centre of her chest pressure builds, a hard knot of it, burning and burning. Her lungs push in on either side of it, heaving for air. The Hornets. What the fuck has happened to her family? Is Deuce gone? Can she imagine that? No, it hurts too much. She just burnt her bridges with Twist, and now she’s an island, like it or not. She’d forgotten how painful it is to be alone. How it constricts every cell. She can’t fucking breathe, can’t stand it. For a moment all she wants is for it to end. For a bullet to breach the engine and burn her away. Every last aching cell.

Tyres screech at their rear, cutting sharply through the dull retort of constant gunfire. Wiping wet eyes on her shoulders, one after the other, Amiga tries to see what’s happening, but there are too many cars around them, blocking the view, shuffling together. Why are they doing that? A moment ago they were all focused on attacking the limo. How did she not notice they’d stopped? Her game is all over the place.

What’s happening?
she asks Puss.

Company.

Amiga looks around. Tries to see between cars struggling to spin in close quarters, their gunners still firing. She can’t tell the direction of the shots. Are they firing behind, or up? Are the drones after them? They certainly haven’t yet fired on the limo, which confirms Deuce’s assumption about the attack on Jong-Phu being a calculated move by the Queens. Amiga had assumed with Emblem in Shock’s head, the Queens would be trapped. Powerless. Stupid of her. How do people know what
trapped
means to things like them.

Finally she catches sight of the drones again, firing at something behind the limo and its accompanying vehicular swarm. But they’re also falling.

“What?”

She squints to focus. No she wasn’t imagining it. Stuttering and then slipping as though their strings have been severed, drones are falling mid-flight. The impacts as they begin to hit the ground reverberate in ripples, making the limo shudder. Even knowing it’s not an earthquake Amiga cries out, slams a shaking hand onto the dash, bracing for the worst. Some things are ingrained so deep in the DNA they become part of human nature.

Writhing as it loses power, one drone careens across the sky into another and straight into a ’scraper, taking a huge chunk of the wall, smashing windows as it tears a channel all the way to the sidewalk. There are bodies in there, caught in the collapse; she can see their limbs flailing in the falling rubble. Can she hear them screaming? Not over the traffic and gunfire, no, and yet she hears them loud and clear, instinctually adding voice to violence, knowing too well what it sounds like.